Autumn Statement 2014

scorza said:
Expecting lots of sleight of hand from this chancellor, tax giveaways that are recovered elsewhere, public spending increases that aren't, dubious claims about the state of the economy. Gideon is the master of this.
Click to expand...

*Yawn!* Referring to the chancellor as Gideon is as tiresome as calling the US president Barack Hussein Obama. It's classist bigotry. Osborne changed his name when he was a child, not through political motivation but because he didn't like it.

And claims about the economy aren't "dubious" at all. There is a recovery and it is stronger than expected. Even the Guardian says so.

I'm always interested to know, when people pour scorn on the current government's economic policy and record, how they envisage the last 4 years going under Labour's 'spend our way out of recession' plans proposed at the last election. A continuing structural deficit of £150billion each year and debt of £1.75trillion? Doesn't look so good does it?

Ed Balls was the master of smoke & mirrors economic policy when he was last at the treasury. Forcing interest rates to be held down thereby driving ballooning property prices and encouraging massive private debt while telling us all we've never had it so good, and when the public coffers ran dry taking public borrowing from a surplus to £250billion of additional debt in times of supposed economic prosperity.
 
Last edited:
WillyNelson said:
And claims about the economy aren't "dubious" at all. There is a recovery and it is stronger than expected. Even the Guardian says so.
Click to expand...

Which again is just spin, the 'growth' seen is still based on the service sector and consumption being paid for by consumer debt, not in manufacturing or construction.

And it's only GDP that has increased, which is a meaningless statistic without it being GDP / head...which is still lower.

And the criticism can easily be justified as the Conservative claims were to eradicate the deficit over the term of this parliament....which obviously hasn't happened by a very very wide margin, and in fact is back to increasing.


I'm always interested to know, when people pour scorn on the current government's economic policy and record, how they envisage the last 4 years going under Labour's 'spend our way out of recession' plans proposed at the last election. A continuing structural deficit of £150billion each year and debt of £1.75trillion? Doesn't look so good does it?
Click to expand...

The Conservatives are announcing a large raft of infrastructure spending, all going contra to what they said would be the prudent thing to do, when others were saying it was exactly what they should be doing.

Ed Balls was the master of smoke & mirrors economic policy when he was last at the treasury. Forcing interest rates to be held down thereby driving ballooning property prices and encouraging massive private debt while telling us all we've never had it so good, and when the public coffers ran dry taking public borrowing from a surplus to £250billion of additional debt in times of supposed economic prosperity.
Click to expand...

Very simplistic and a tad innacurate view of what happened. Funny now when there is pressure on the economy now the Conservatives are shouting 'Global Recession' but don't take that into account with the major credit crunch that happened during the end of Labours last term - when nearly every governments deficit increased.

For reference, I'm not a Labour voter before you try and dismiss any contry views that way :p
 
Last edited:
Freakbro said:
The Conservatives are announcing a large raft of infrastructure spending, all going contra to what they said would be the prudent thing to do, when others were saying it was exactly what they should be doing.
Click to expand...
Thats common practice though isn't it? At this stage in government cycle, a wish list is produced and if there is money left in the pot they get implemented.
 
WillyNelson said:
*Yawn!* Referring to the chancellor as Gideon is as tiresome as calling the US president Barack Hussein Obama. It's classist bigotry. Osborne changed his name when he was a child, not through political motivation but because he didn't like it.
Click to expand...

I make no apologies for being a "classist" bigot :D The whole system of class and privilege needs to be torn down.

WillyNelson said:
And claims about the economy aren't "dubious" at all. There is a recovery and it is stronger than expected. Even the Guardian says so.
Click to expand...

So why has he missed his deficit target then? I'll tell you why, it's because he abandoned Plan A a while back (around the time he announced Help2Buy) because it wasn't working - just like every serious economic commentator was telling him it wouldn't. Now he's talking about eliminating the structural deficit by 2017/18 - which is when Labour planned to eliminate it in the 2010 election campaign.

WillyNelson said:
I'm always interested to know, when people pour scorn on the current government's economic policy and record, how they envisage the last 4 years going under Labour's 'spend our way out of recession' plans proposed at the last election. A continuing structural deficit of £150billion each year and debt of £1.75trillion? Doesn't look so good does it?
Click to expand...

As above - if Labour had won the general election I imagine we would have the same deficit and debt as we have now, but more growth.

WillyNelson said:
Ed Balls was the master of smoke & mirrors economic policy when he was last at the treasury. Forcing interest rates to be held down thereby driving ballooning property prices and encouraging massive private debt while telling us all we've never had it so good, and when the public coffers ran dry taking public borrowing from a surplus to £250billion of additional debt in times of supposed economic prosperity.
Click to expand...

As you know the additional debt came about mainly as a result of collapsing GDP from the worst global economic crisis since the 1930s. Have I missed the announcements about interest rates going back up or something?
 
WillyNelson said:
I'm always interested to know, when people pour scorn on the current government's economic policy and record, how they envisage the last 4 years going under Labour's 'spend our way out of recession' plans proposed at the last election. A continuing structural deficit of £150billion each year and debt of £1.75trillion? Doesn't look so good does it?
Click to expand...

Well... we don't need to envisage as what Osborne has done is essentially carry out Labour's plan :eek:

Screen-Shot-2014-12-01-at-18.54.19-589x413.png


Image from here - decent story about the deficit if you ignore the political point scoring

Of course, Labour now criticise something that is essentially the same as their own plan :rolleyes:. But it does explain why they seemingly have no narrative on what they would have done differently!
 
scorza said:
So why has he missed his deficit target then? I'll tell you why, it's because he abandoned Plan A a while back (around the time he announced Help2Buy) because it wasn't working - just like every serious economic commentator was telling him it wouldn't. Now he's talking about eliminating the structural deficit by 2017/18 - which is when Labour planned to eliminate it in the 2010 election campaign.
Click to expand...


Plan A was pie in the sky as projected tax incomes weren't realised and the spending cuts would have been too severe. However, with the impact of reduced taxation income would Labour's plans still have seen the deficit eliminated by 2018? How would they have maintained higher spending while reducing the deficit at the current rate?

scorza said:
As you know the additional debt came about mainly as a result of collapsing GDP from the worst global economic crisis since the 1930s. Have I missed the announcements about interest rates going back up or something?
Click to expand...
Freakbro said:
Funny now when there is pressure on the economy now the Conservatives are shouting 'Global Recession' but don't take that into account with the major credit crunch that happened during the end of Labours last term - when nearly every governments deficit increased.
Click to expand...
Which impacted in 2008/09 but there was a deficit already running from 2001. It spiked from about £40bn per year through 2001-2007 to £100bn in 2008 and £150bn in 2009. So no, the deficit in Labour's last parliament was not all down to the global economic crisis.
 
Freakbro said:
Very simplistic and a tad innacurate view of what happened. Funny now when there is pressure on the economy now the Conservatives are shouting 'Global Recession' but don't take that into account with the major credit crunch that happened during the end of Labours last term - when nearly every governments deficit increased.
Click to expand...

The problem is Labour claimed they produced years of growth when every country across the world was booming due to being awash with cheap credit, so its only consistant they take the blame when the whole world went into the credit crunch.
 
scorza said:
Expecting lots of sleight of hand from this chancellor, tax giveaways that are recovered elsewhere, public spending increases that aren't, dubious claims about the state of the economy. Gideon is the master of this.
Click to expand...

Its always sleight of hand, theres a finite pot of money and its just moved around to make one group happy and the other group annoyed. Next time is all change, rinse and repeat.
 
He has just said, with a straight face I might add , that the jobs that have been created have given families security. Are these the same families that still need to claim benefits on top of the low wages just to live?
 
scorza said:
As above - if Labour had won the general election I imagine we would have the same deficit and debt as we have now, but more growth.
Click to expand...

If Labour were in, the deficit and debt would have been considerably worse. They were all for spend, spend, spend until no one believed they were fiscally competent, then they changed their tune to, we would only cut a bit slower but only nice cuts but wouldnt say what they were.
 
WillyNelson said:
And claims about the economy aren't "dubious" at all. There is a recovery and it is stronger than expected. Even the Guardian says so.

I'm always interested to know, when people pour scorn on the current government's economic policy and record, how they envisage the last 4 years going under Labour's 'spend our way out of recession' plans proposed at the last election. A continuing structural deficit of £150billion each year and debt of £1.75trillion? Doesn't look so good does it?
Click to expand...

A selective recovery is not a recovery and there's plenty of government spin put on the recovery. Meanwhile vulnerable people have access to services cut, essential services such as Fire & Police are cut and even people who get working benefits to actually make ends meet are having them cut.

Compared to GDP the debt isn't that bad anyway, and just another excuse from the Tories to to cut services for the poor and move other public sector services towards privatisation and who wants private fire and police?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom