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

Which party will get your vote in the General Election?

  • Conservative

    Votes: 704 38.5%

  • Labour

    Votes: 221 12.1%

  • Liberal Democrat

    Votes: 297 16.2%

  • British National Party

    Votes: 144 7.9%

  • Green Party

    Votes: 36 2.0%

  • UK Independence Party

    Votes: 46 2.5%

  • Other

    Votes: 48 2.6%

  • Don't care I have no intension of voting.

    Votes: 334 18.3%
  • Total voters
    1,830
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Bank of England governor urges Darling to outline major spending cuts in the Budget

Mervyn King has warned the government that it must significantly reduce the deficit if it is to avoid prolonged economic uncertainty. The governor of the Bank of England, who has persistently drawn attention to the size of the £187bn deficit, made it clear that he expects Alistair Darling to outline new spending cuts in his final Budget before the general election.
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http://www.newstatesman.com/2010/01/king-darling-budget-governor
 
Any recovery will be temporary anyway. If the developed nations move into recovery, our demand for oil will grow which will push up the oil price to painful levels which will then ultimately push us back into recession again. Just wait and see.

At the moment the oil price is artificially low, because demand has been destroyed due to the recession/depression. Lots of businesses closed down and workers unemployed don't use oil. Yet even in spite of that, oil has doubled over the last year.
 
Dolph said:
I would love to see King's letter if inflation goes over 3%...

"Dear Gordon.

It was your fault. VAT rate change and continued duty rises. Please learn the effects of the actions of your government.

Thanks

BoE"

Would be brilliant and highly appropriate.
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If inflation goes over 3%?

3%?

Yes -- indeed -- 3% inflation would be an absolute unmitigated disaster :D

(I even posted a link of average inflation over the last 400 years. Yet you think 3% is even remotely an issue? lol?)
 
britboy4321 said:
If inflation goes over 3%?

3%?

Yes -- indeed -- 3% inflation would be an absolute unmitigated disaster :D

(I even posted a link of average inflation over the last 400 years. Yet you think 3% is even remotely an issue? lol?)
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Do you believe that the official measures of inflation bear any relation to reality?

Anyone who pays bills or buys food knows real inflation is well over 3%.
 
britboy4321 said:
If inflation goes over 3%?

3%?

Yes -- indeed -- 3% inflation would be an absolute unmitigated disaster :D

(I even posted a link of average inflation over the last 400 years. Yet you think 3% is even remotely an issue? lol?)
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You do know what will happen if inflation goes over 3% this time round? You do know, don't you? Don't you?

Please explain it to us if you do
 
britboy4321 said:
If inflation goes over 3%?

3%?

Yes -- indeed -- 3% inflation would be an absolute unmitigated disaster :D

(I even posted a link of average inflation over the last 400 years. Yet you think 3% is even remotely an issue? lol?)
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Inflation of 3% is a third higher (33%) than the BoE's (and previously, Labour's) target rate. Research why the target is set at 2%, and also take into account the fact that a 3% CPI is not at all uniformly applicable to the population, and even less so in a recession.
 
scorza said:
Do I trust an official statistic over people's perception? Sure I do.
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dirtydog is not talking about perception, he is talking about actual values. The problems with the 'official' figures being misaligned with reality are well documented.

http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/economics/article4363016.ece

http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/news/article.html?in_article_id=429519&in_page_id=2

But as Chancellor in 2003, Brown switched to the Consumer Prices Index (CPI), which strips out some of the largest household expenses such as council tax and rent.
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It is RPI that many believe best reflects the increase in the cost of living - and it is this measure which workers use in wage negotiations. The argument therefore goes that any pay rise below 4% is in fact a pay cut in real terms.
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How does your personal rate of inflation stack up? http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7669072.stm. Mine is nearly 4%.
 
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To be honest this close to the elections I fully expect Labour to be cooking the books, it's the same with the unemployment figures this morning they probably just threw a load of unemployed people into training schemes which they conveniently class as employed and will probably continue to do so at great expense to the tax payer for the rest of their term.
 
dirtydog said:
The pound has held up due to QE effectively meaning the BoE is printing money to buy public debt (gilts). Once QE ends the pound will be more exposed. Then let's see what happens to inflation.
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Increasing the supply of pounds leads to the value of a pound decreasing. Stopping QE will increase the value of sterling and indeed the pound has is at its highest level vs. the Euro and the Dollar for quite some time.

Also, I think the money they print is used to buy corporate bonds - particularly banks, not public debts, in the hope that this increases the amount of money that banks will lend to us.
 
Hatter The Mad said:
dirtydog is not talking about perception, he is talking about actual values. The problems with the 'official' figures being misaligned with reality are well documented.

http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/economics/article4363016.ece

http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/news/article.html?in_article_id=429519&in_page_id=2





How does your personal rate of inflation stack up? http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7669072.stm
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RPI is lower than CPI at the moment, at 2.4%
 
scorza said:
Increasing the supply of pounds leads to the value of a pound decreasing. Stopping QE will increase the value of sterling and indeed the pound has is at its highest level vs. the Euro and the Dollar for quite some time.

Also, I think the money they print is used to buy corporate bonds - particularly banks, not public debts, in the hope that this increases the amount of money that banks will lend to us.
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Let's wait and see what happens - I think things are about to get very interesting.
 
scorza said:
Do I trust an official statistic over people's perception? Sure I do.
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The problem is that the CPI can be a bit misleading. Because of the makeup of the basket of goods it can hide the actual cost of inflation to households, especially those on low incomes where the majority of their expenditure is on food, fuel etc.

As it includes furniture, household appliances, cars, house repairs etc, it can easily disguise a large increase in fuel (domestic and vehicle) and food. So, yes, it may be cheaper overall, but if you are already on a low income the fact that a brand new BMW is 5% cheaper isn't really going to help.
 
dirtydog said:
Let's wait and see what happens - I think things are about to get very interesting.
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I agree that things are a little too interesting for my liking, however I think that the main threat to the UK economy now comes from looming spending cuts, not hyper-inflation.

Like Tupac said, hard times.
 
mmj_uk said:
To be honest this close to the elections I fully expect Labour to be cooking the books, it's the same with the unemployment figures this morning they probably just threw a load of unemployed people into training schemes which they conveniently class as employed and will probably continue to do so at great expense to the tax payer for the rest of their term.
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I suspected that Labour has been doing this long-term anyhow
 
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