Poll: Which party will get your vote in the General Election?

[dirtydog]

Not at all, it's very much a class and parent thing. Lots of older people rember thatcher days and still like her.
she had a difficult period and like all parties they will make mistakes. but she also broke the unions and got the countries debt under controlled , by selling north sea oil, which helped are economy for decades.

You're quite right. The Tories enjoyed the success they did thanks to the windfall of North Sea oil revenues (which any party in power would have enjoyed) and by selling off the 'family silver' in the form of privatising anything which wasn't nailed down, generating one off windfalls for the taxpayer.

The next Tory government will not be so lucky.

 

[Glaucus]

we're still heavily paying the cost of the last Tory government whichever way you look at it

And which ever way you look at it we will be paying labours errors of for decades.

keeping the oil for now would have been a silly idea when we had so much debt.

 

[Cosimo]

TBH whoever gets voted in will be rubbish anyhoo!

GD's political correspondent has spoken.

 

[britboy4321]

And which ever way you look at it we will be paying labours errors of for decades.

And there was me thinking it was a global economic crises.

 

[Hatter The Mad]

And which ever way you look at it we will be paying labours errors of for decades.

keeping the oil for now would have been a silly idea when we had so much debt.

Quite. Unlike Labour, who sold off our gold, many assets and continued to increase the country's debt (when all other counterparts in Europe decreased their debt) when we were riding the biggest tax revenue boom, ever.

 

[Glaucus]

And there was me thinking it was a global economic crises.

A) Not all the debt is due to the crisis
B) the government handled it terribly and actually set us up for a big fall for the last 10 years. Most other EU countries have been out of recision for over 6 months,

 

[Hatter The Mad]

And there was me thinking it was a global economic crises.

The banking crisis came at the perfect time for Labour - it masked their overspending.

Come 2008, they would have had to start cutting anyway.

Unfortunately, people like yourselves (who I presume have not researched around the matter) have been successfully hoodwinked by the Government, and now believe that the situation this country (specifically) is in no worse state due to the Government's decade of incompetence.

 

[britboy4321]

The banking crisis came at the perfect time for Labour - it masked their overspending.

Come 2008, they would have had to start cutting anyway.

Unfortunately, people like yourselves (who I presume have not researched around the matter) have been successfully hoodwinked by the Government, and now believe that the situation this country (specifically) is in no worse state due to the Government's decade of incompetence.

That's right -- someone even told me that we'd enjoyed the longest period of economic growth since records begin -- when Labour were in power.

What kind of decade of incompetance gives us the longest economic rise ever eh? Gosh labour were terrible as we were all absolutely raking it in.

I guess we really during those years needed a bout of 'conservatist competance' -- the kind in which we do NOT enjoy the longest period of economic growth ever.

I love the way the fact we had the longest economic growth in history is kind of 'Labour getting ready to screw us all up, and taking 10 years over it'. Next thing you'll be saying 'Yea the conservatives 'did the legwork' for the massice economic success and then labour just 'took it all' and free-wheeled for -- er -- A DECADE OF MASSIVE GROWTH!!! Lol!

If they were incompenent they would have taken us into economic distress within 18 months. It wouldn't take 10 years.

How quickly you lot forget of the longest period of economic growth in history. Hell, if a recession had not come for another 30 years you'd be saying 'Labours 30 years of incompetance FINALLY causes a recession'!!! Its almost laughable!

 

[Glaucus]

What kind of incompetance gives us the longest economic rise ever eh?

.

A massive one, if it sets you up for a massive fall. it's like taking out loads of loans going I've had the best decade of my life, only to find out that you have to pay it back.

 

[Tefal]

That's right -- someone even told me that we'd enjoyed the longest period of economic growth since records begin -- when Labour were in power.

if you keep getting new credit cards and loans and maxing them out you'll find you'll be able to buy loads more stuff but eventually it's going to come bite you on the ass.

 

[aardvark]

That's right -- someone even told me that we'd enjoyed the longest period of economic growth since records begin -- when Labour were in power.

What kind of decade of incompetance gives us the longest economic rise ever eh? Gosh labour were terrible as we were all absolutely raking it in.

I guess we really during those years needed a bout of 'conservatist competance' -- the kind in which we do NOT enjoy the longest period of economic growth ever.

I love the way the fact we had the longest economic growth in history is kind of 'Labour getting ready to screw us all up, and taking 10 years over it'. Next thing you'll be saying 'Yea the conservatives 'did the legwork' for the massice economic success and then labour just 'took it all' and free-wheeled for -- er -- A DECADE OF MASSIVE GROWTH!!! Lol!

If they were incompenent they would have taken us into economic distress within 18 months. It wouldn't take 10 years.

How quickly you lot forget of the longest period of economic growth in history. Hell, if a recession had not come for another 30 years you'd be saying 'Labours 30 years of incompetance FINALLY causes a recession'!!! Its almost laughable!

growth or debt?
all labour have done is pay for growth using enormous amounts of debt which we will now have to repay for decades.

 

[Hatter The Mad]

What kind of decade of incompetance gives us the longest economic rise ever eh?

For one, the Government continued to rise taxes (particularly from the lower 50% of earners in the country) through fiscal drag (Gordon Brown's greatest weapon of stealth tax), despite the boom.

He got away with it by essentially encouraging personal borrowing on the back of their inflated house prices to feed our increased expectancy and desire for consumption - because, of course, he had abolished boom and bust.

You still haven't countered my argument, and come up with any logical reasoning as to why the Government had to:

1) Increase the country debt by borrowing more
2) Sell off country assets (such as gold in the Brown Bottom, now almost all owned by India and soon Australia)
3) Increase tax

Despite being the recipient of the largest tax revenues and riding the biggest income boom, ever?

The reason is because they are bad economists and bad managers of money. They try to manage too much, and they do it badly. They've created a self-serving government and bureaucracy that is now so big they cannot tackle it. I am sure they meant well, but well meaning isn't enough to negate their sheer incompetences.

 

[britboy4321]

No, GDP increase was way way WAY ahead of the increasing country debt during those YEARS AND YEARS AND YEARS of success.

Sorry lads -- that's just the way it was. So whole 'loads of debt' think before the banking crises is a complete fallacy .. you've been listening to 'Tory FM' for too long!



True or false -- hand on heart -- if we'd had another 10 years of economic awesomeness before the global recession -- would you not have said 'FINALLY - 20 years of labour incompetance have caused a recession. Gosh them lot are useless'.

Don't you see the lolz? Under the tories the economy went wrong very much more often (although undoubtably you think somehow that was magically also labour's fault!

(Hint -- the answer is 'yes')

 

[Hatter The Mad]

No, GDP increase was way way WAY ahead of the increasing country debt during those YEARS AND YEARS AND YEARS of success.

I don't quite understand what you're saying here, so can you point me to the source of what you're trying to refer to?

So whole 'loads of debt' think before the banking crises is a complete fallacy .. you've been listening to 'Tory FM' for too long!

No it isn't.

Note the initial drop in debt, which was a slide started by the tail-end of the Major government. That is until Labour policies really started to grip, and started exhausting money.

Labour increased our debt (as a % of GDP) by nearly 5% between 1999 and 2007. Unfortunately this chart is not normalised.

As you rightly pointed out, GDP boomed like a nuclear bomb between 2004 and 2007 - making the figures (what appears to be a tiny little increase between the molehill and borowing post-2008) of debt as a % of GDP even more terrifying.

 

[Glaucus]

No, GDP increase was way way WAY ahead of the increasing country debt during those YEARS AND YEARS AND YEARS of success.

which makes no difference, of course growth was above debt. But there's sensible investing to get returns and then what labour did.,

True or false -- hand on heart -- if we'd had another 10 years of economic awesomeness before the global recession -- would you not have said 'FINALLY - 20 years of labour incompetance have caused a recession. Gosh them lot are useless'.

they would have done well, but we would have fail even with out global recession. The recession has hidden their incompetence rather well, all though can still be seen by the inability to get out of the recession.

 

[britboy4321]

My source is your graph! It seems to me that borrowing as a % of GDP remained about the same until the banking crises.

People here think it actually went up before then - massively

Together, we'll have to educate them into the truth ... they should at least vote based on fact .. not what Tory HQ has told them to believe ..

 

[Hatter The Mad]

My source is your graph! It seems to me that borrowing as a % of GDP remained about the same until the banking crises.

About the same? It increased nearly 5% between 2000 and 2007. 5% of a booming GDP is a lot - how can you cast the figure aside as negligible? That is nearly £130b extra borrowing, before the banking crisis. Lets not forget to factor in the absence of our assets, like gold, which were relinquished.

People here think it actually went up before then - massively

It did... look at the graph

 

[Hatter The Mad]

Together, we'll have to educate them into the truth ... they should at least vote based on fact .. not what Tory HQ has told them to believe ..

Indeed. Start by reading "Squandered" (a book) and http://burningourmoney.blogspot.com/

 

[Naffa]

which makes no difference, of course growth was above debt. But there's sensible investing to get returns and then what labour did.,


they would have done well, but we would have fail even with out global recession. The recession has hidden their incompetence rather well, all though can still be seen by the inability to get out of the recession.

Please do not tell me that you think the Conservatives would have faired any better?

Their policy has always been not to invest, but to cut. This utter idiocy and I haven't heard anybody with a background in economics that would say it is/was the right way to approach recession. Reading David Branchflower's column the other day (who, in all fairness, is a centre left economist), he was writing about the proposed cutting of the fiscal stimulus prior to economic growth and how it would send the UK economy into a depression.

I'm not saying vote Labour, or anything even close to it, but can you really say with a straight face that Cameron and Osborne would be better?

 

[Beren]

I will vote lib dem, as I have previously. It will be a wasted vote here as the tories will win by a landslide in this area. I still think they have some key fundamentals right - not that they don't have a lot wrong. We should imo have been building new nuclear power stations 10-15 years ago. I am not sure they would really shrink government by as much as it needs to either. On balance I like more of their people and policies than I do others though.