Condem Government 100 Days Old Today

[Blackpool Jags]

Aye, 100 days of austerity, doom & gloom, cuts, more cuts, "permanent cuts", devastation of the public services, rising unemployment, abolition of the Regional Development Agencies, increasing amounts of house repossession and negative equity and general hopelessness.

 

Oh, aren't we dead chuffed with ourselves for giving these basturts a sniff of power?

 

Get them TF and pronto!

[B.C.G. JAG]

Mind the Tories election campaign, where they said they could get the deficit down with simple efficiency gains? Yeah? Then as soon as they get in, they're talking about 40% cuts across Government Departments! But whilst they're protecting big business with cuts in Corporation Tax, and the Bankers are still awarding themselves massive bonuses from OUR money (don't forget "We're all in this together!"...Ho ho ho), The ConDem's are offering us these selected highlights:

 

Cutting winter fuel payments (and raising the age eligibility) and with similar changes ahead for Child Benefit even though the Tories campaigned on protecting both, 35% cuts to University funding, scrapping Council funding for new transport/housing/education projects, abolition of the UK Film Council and the Museums Archive Council, Jets/Tanks/Warships to be sacrificed in favour of the white elephant that is Trident, Building Schools For The Future project scrapped, 1300 Community Playgrounds abandoned, £775m funding to Green Energy initiatives pulled, selling off nature reserves, privatising the Forestry Commission and ending funding to British Waterways, the building of North Tees and Hartlepool Hospital scrapped whilst the English NHS has been told to find £20Bn of savings even though we're being told that it's being protected. Then there's VAT rise to 20%, the 15000 job losses at the Ministry for Justice, closure of 157 County Courts and Magistrates in England and Wales, £704m wiped from each of the regional budgets (which of course includes Scotland), Transport For London loses £108m, Network Rail loses £100m, scrapping new rolling stock and road upgrades, whilst the Audit Commission has been scrapped so we've no idea of the value of any of this.

 

Big Society? With a 40% reduction of The State, that's starting to sound a little ironic. The Tories are using the deficit as cover for their ideological dismemberment of The State, with everyone at the bottom most affected. Meanwhile the Lib Dem's are being used to justify it all. But they can hardly rebel can they? It's in the interests of their flagship policy of PR to show that Coalition Governments of any colour work. They whored themselves over a possible change to the voting system.

 

Sadly we are much less organised than the last time we faced these ********. I urge everyone who can to join a Trade Union now and prepare for a long hard winter.

Edited August 18, 2010 by B.C.G. JAG

[crazy davie]

The Tories are using the deficit as cover for their ideological dismemberment of The State, with everyone at the bottom most affected. Meanwhile the Lib Dem's are being used to justify it all. But they can hardly rebel can they? It's in the interests of their flagship policy of PR to show that Coalition Governments of any colour work. They whored themselves over a possible change to the voting system.

Yup - I blame the LibDems. Everybody knows what the Tories are like. They had them on a leash and they set them loose. And all so they could strut about Westminster for a couple of years.

[B.C.G. JAG]

Yup - I blame the LibDems. Everybody knows what the Tories are like. They had them on a leash and they set them loose. And all so they could strut about Westminster for a couple of years.

 

100 days of Liberal whores with leashes would have sounded like a pretty interesting proposition once.

[Blackpool Jags]

Mind the Tories election campaign, where they said they could get the deficit down with simple efficiency gains? Yeah? Then as soon as they get in, they're talking about 40% cuts across Government Departments! But whilst they're protecting big business with cuts in Corporation Tax, and the Bankers are still awarding themselves massive bonuses from OUR money (don't forget "We're all in this together!"...Ho ho ho), The ConDem's are offering us these selected highlights:

 

Cutting winter fuel payments (and raising the age eligibility) and with similar changes ahead for Child Benefit even though the Tories campaigned on protecting both, 35% cuts to University funding, scrapping Council funding for new transport/housing/education projects, abolition of the UK Film Council and the Museums Archive Council, Jets/Tanks/Warships to be sacrificed in favour of the white elephant that is Trident, Building Schools For The Future project scrapped, 1300 Community Playgrounds abandoned, £775m funding to Green Energy initiatives pulled, selling off nature reserves, privatising the Forestry Commission and ending funding to British Waterways, the building of North Tees and Hartlepool Hospital scrapped whilst the English NHS has been told to find £20Bn of savings even though we're being told that it's being protected. Then there's VAT rise to 20%, the 15000 job losses at the Ministry for Justice, closure of 157 County Courts and Magistrates in England and Wales, £704m wiped from each of the regional budgets (which of course includes Scotland), Transport For London loses £108m, Network Rail loses £100m, scrapping new rolling stock and road upgrades, whilst the Audit Commission has been scrapped so we've no idea of the value of any of this.

 

Big Society? With a 40% reduction of The State, that's starting to sound a little ironic. The Tories are using the deficit as cover for their ideological dismemberment of The State, with everyone at the bottom most affected. Meanwhile the Lib Dem's are being used to justify it all. But they can hardly rebel can they? It's in the interests of their flagship policy of PR to show that Coalition Governments of any colour work. They whored themselves over a possible change to the voting system.

 

Sadly we are much less organised than the last time we faced these ********. I urge everyone who can to join a Trade Union now and prepare for a long hard winter.

 

In summary, umpteen damn good reasons why we (the UK) should lament the hideous faux pas we committed by voting in this disgraceful collection of rapscallions and get out there and join a Trade Union, working towards the defence of our standards of living and all that goes with that.

 

Like CD says, you know what you get with Tories; they do what it says on the tin, but as for the Glib Demics - never have I encountered such an array of power-thirsty, supine invertebrates as the bunch who've thought nothing of diving off the wardrobe and into bed with the seed of Thatcher. Utter shamelessness.

 

All being well, this witches' coven will self-destruct and we can get on with the job of clearing them out into the democratic wilderness.

[John Blutarsky]

abolishing tax-breaks for the games industry hasn't helped the private sector either. last thing dundee needs is another 200 people out of work.

[Gorgon]

Aye, we should have voted liebour back in - they wouldn't have made any cuts, would they? Time to wake up and smell the coffee, I'm afraid. Liebour has bankrupted the country good and proper (and ignored countless dire predictions - all proved true - along the way). Nasty medicine the only answer and if you believe liebour would have used a significantly different approach, then I think you are living in cloud cuckoo land. I look on the disappearance from the public gaze of "the man who saved the world" as a realisation/confession of the total bal**up he has made of the economy.

[Dr.D]

Mate of mine been on benefits for 20 years now. Just back his holidays in the Bahamas. How do they do it?

Whole system needs revamped.

If you have a flat screen TV you're not exactly poor.

[Mediocre Pundit]

They're dinug what needs to be done. It might not be popular but Its necessary. People who can't see this need to get their heads out of the sand.

[Blackpool Jags]

Aye, we should have voted liebour back in - they wouldn't have made any cuts, would they? Time to wake up and smell the coffee, I'm afraid. Liebour has bankrupted the country good and proper (and ignored countless dire predictions - all proved true - along the way). Nasty medicine the only answer and if you believe liebour would have used a significantly different approach, then I think you are living in cloud cuckoo land. I look on the disappearance from the public gaze of "the man who saved the world" as a realisation/confession of the total bal**up he has made of the economy.

 

Absolutely. They did it all on their own without so much as a jot of assistance from the Tory-friendly bankers, speculators and Hedge Fund managers who all had the best interests of the working class at heart. Maybe we should be grateful that we've now got a government in place which has the balls to kick the living sh*t out of us. That'll teach us to flirt with dodgy Labour and the evil Trade Unions who are only after our subscriptions.

[jaggybunnet]

Absolutely. They did it all on their own without so much as a jot of assistance from the Tory-friendly bankers, speculators and Hedge Fund managers who all had the best interests of the working class at heart. Maybe we should be grateful that we've now got a government in place which has the balls to kick the living sh*t out of us. That'll teach us to flirt with dodgy Labour and the evil Trade Unions who are only after our subscriptions.

 

 

glad to see you have seen the light at last.

 

 

and yes labour did have a bit of help with all the debt we have. They could have stopped the banks but no they took all the constraints from them and still managed to banktrupt us by borrowing when we should have been saving

 

so yes it was labours fault.

 

 

you cant still be defending labours, lets make jobs up that we cant aford to pay stance.

 

glad to see that the labour party blinkers are still firmly in place keep the good work up

Edited August 18, 2010 by jaggybunnet

[B.C.G. JAG]

Mind you don't get cold this winter JB!

[Woodstock Jag]

It's all head in the sand stuff. Some of the cuts are ideological (the belief that less state interference is fundamentally good - see the scrapping of ID cards) but a lot of them are driven by necessity to rebalance public sector spending in such a way as it is sustainable in the long-term.

 

Mediocre Pundit surmises it excellently. It's head in the sand stuff from all too many people, especially those on the left. Year on year the government spent more than it was taking-in in taxes, propping up schemes which weren't viable and wasting billions on PFIs, keeping them off the books to inflate their performance, making the children of people yet to be born pay for the cost of constructing hospitals before the turn of the century.

 

No one is arguing that the state doesn't have a role in the welfare of its citizens. What is ultimately pretty clear, though, is that under Labour from 1999-2010 (they followed Tory spending plans in 1997 and 1998) they have consistently spent more than they've brought in. It's time to reassess what we can legitimately expect from the state. Of course there are going to be examples of what is seen as hypocritical spending, but no more so than if you had any other set of politicians in their place. What is important for jobs in the long-term, though, is that we have an economy that goes back to basics and grows sustainably; rather than what we have at the moment where people expect a never ending exponential improvement in standard of living.

 

I also refute the idea that Trade Unions somehow properly represent the long-term interests of their workers any more. Take, for example, the threatened BAA strike, which in tough economic times would have detrimentally affected the company, and made workers go without a few days' wages when money is already tight, putting job security on the line. Only yesterday was it averted. The demand from the Union was that their members be paid part of a bonus for a target they didn't reach, and to get a pay rise (granted a real-terms small cut) while people across the private sector have being taking actual (c.f. real-terms) cuts, sometimes as substantial as 25% just to retain their jobs. This expectation that wages should always rise higher than inflation just doesn't stand up to any economic scrutiny at all, and is endemic of the attitudes held by people, not only of job entitlement but of a pre-requisite entitlement to a good standard of living.

 

To address some of BCG's post though...

 

Cut in corporation tax: who makes the economy grow? Answer: business. It's been established by many leading economists that a lower tax rate has the potential to yield a greater tax receipt, because business have greater means to take on more workers/lay-off fewer workers, improve productivity and ultimately make more money. Besides, I seem to recall that the cut in corporation tax actually applied to small and medium-sized businesses, alongside the employers' NI deferred increase and NI exemption for the first few staff on the payroll. This isn't about protecting big business, but growing new ones and restoring economic prosperity and jobs in the medium to long-term rather than throwing more good money after bad to protect unsustainable jobs just now.

 

Bankers' Bonuses: I didn't see Labour do anything of note to stop these bonuses.

 

Winter Fuel Payments: no cuts have been confirmed, and raising the age of eligibility is, at the moment, only one of the options being considered. We have to ask ourselves why should the state be providing subsidies to people of working age, when the intention of the subsidy should be to mitigate the problems people unable to work face of paying a basic utility bill?

 

Child Benefit: the cuts are applying to the upper-bracket. Families earning over £40k a year frankly don't need Child Benefit. That money would be much better spent targeted at those earning about half of that, of which there are far more.

 

University Cuts: 35% over 4 years, it should be pointed out. My own view is that too many people go to University already, and that a greater emphasis should be on vocational courses taught by College based institutions. The cut isn't exactly just an efficiency saving, but if it means Universities offer fewer places, I'm all for it. Far too many people going to Uni and either dropping out or getting qualifications that serve them no benefit in the future jobs market.

 

Scrapping Council funding for new transport/housing/education projects: you can blame the PFI cash-cows that New Labour backed for these no longer being affordable.

 

Abolition of the UK Film Council and the Museums Archive Council: Funding to continue through other bodies, we've discussed this already.

 

Jets/Tanks/Warships to be sacrificed in favour of the white elephant that is Trident: Not that Labour would have done anything different, given they too wanted a spending review but were also planning to keep Trident out of the considerations.

 

Building Schools For The Future project scrapped: again, see the PFI waste.

 

1300 Community Playgrounds abandoned: We're broke. There's no value in wasting public money on swings and see-saws.

 

I could go on, but all of the things you brought up point to the same conclusion: Labour spent too much when the times were good, instead of using economic growth as a means to reduce national debt and cushion the suffering whenever a downturn arises. We ran up annual fiscal deficits when times were good, on: 1) vanity projects 2) infrastructure projects which were poor value for money 3) a benefits system that was barely economically viable in the good times, let alone in circumstances of higher unemployment and an ageing population.

 

Labour were completely disingenuous in their attitude towards public spending: indeed until about a year ago, Gordon Brown was denying that there would be real-term public spending cuts if they won the election! Alistair Darling was the only front-bench figure to emerge with even a whiff of credit, for admitting that the Treasury had overreached itself, and that cuts were going to have to be deeper than those under Margaret Thatcher if we were to set ourselves back on a decent economic footing again. What Labour (and to be fair, all the parties) failed to do during the election was admit exactly where the axe was going to fall. At least now that the Tories and Lib Dems are in power, they're showing where they're going to have to come, whilst Labour has actually regressed on its line when it was in government by attacking every cut in sight, refusing to look at the bigger economic picture.

 

There are two related issues the coalition are trying to deal with: public spending versus tax income; and the attitudes of expectation we show towards the state. I can see substantial comparisons between the situation of the country now and the financial situation of a lot of Scottish football Clubs. When you are spending more than you are taking in, you simply have to spend less, even if it means that in the short-term the performance output drops. The danger of not living within your means in the long-term is far more devastating, with widespread suffering being even worse.

 

The choice is simple: lance the boil now or let it grow and lance it later, when it will be much, much more painful.

Edited August 18, 2010 by Woodstock Jag

[Uncle Psychosis]

Methinks you're all missing the point:

 

99% of all politicians are greedy, lying scum regardless of what colour tie they're wearing.

 

Lets face it, Joe Average gets shafted regardless of who we vote for. For me, thats the most sickening thing about the whole sorry enterprise.

 

A whole bunch of stupid, greedy, rich ********* have shafted the rest of us. The Labour Party let them do it, but lets not pretend that if the Tories had been in charge things would have been any different. They'd probably have let them do it even quicker.

 

Arguing about whether or not Cameron is better than Brown is a bit like debating whether you'd rather drown or burn. Anyone who thinks either of them is up to much needs their heads examined.

[Phoenix]

Correct me if I'm wrong but I'm sure I heard that the proposed cuts in public sector jobs e.g. Councils, police, NHS would take us back to the numbers that were in the Public sector in 1997 and I don't remember many major problems then.

[jaggybunnet]

Mind you don't get cold this winter JB!

 

 

why?

 

seriously, cant you admit that due to labours total ineptitude were are in the state we are in.

 

I might not agree with all the cuts or all there plans but at least they are trying to fix this mess and not pretend it doesn't exist like labour did.

 

as I have said before labour have a cheek having a go at the coalition after there effort.

 

 

blinkered and it would seem to what's right in front of all your faces

[jaggybunnet]

Methinks you're all missing the point:

 

99% of all politicians are greedy, lying scum regardless of what colour tie they're wearing.

 

Lets face it, Joe Average gets shafted regardless of who we vote for. For me, thats the most sickening thing about the whole sorry enterprise.

 

A whole bunch of stupid, greedy, rich ********* have shafted the rest of us. The Labour Party let them do it, but lets not pretend that if the Tories had been in charge things would have been any different. They'd probably have let them do it even quicker.

 

Arguing about whether or not Cameron is better than Brown is a bit like debating whether you'd rather drown or burn. Anyone who thinks either of them is up to much needs their heads examined.

 

 

unfotunatly very true and will never change unless........ buggered if i know, depressing

[B.C.G. JAG]

Not very Cleverly

[Woodstock Jag]

Not very Cleverly

 

Politician in being a dick, shocker.

 

That said, it could apply equally to both of them in the story.

[B.C.G. JAG]

Politician in being a dick, shocker.

 

That said, it could apply equally to both of them in the story.

 

Cracks starting to show, but as I said, the LibDem's are somewhat compelled to hang on to the Coalition no matter how many of their policies are stamped on, just to preserve the hope and promise of PR. However I think it's going to be a short lived romance and I see another election within 2 years. Will anyone bid more?

[jaggybunnet]

Cracks starting to show, but as I said, the LibDem's are somewhat compelled to hang on to the Coalition no matter how many of their policies are stamped on, just to preserve the hope and promise of PR. However I think it's going to be a short lived romance and I see another election within 2 years. Will anyone bid more?

 

 

LOL those blinkers must be chaffing by now BCG if that is as good as you can do.

 

i, labour are solid as a rock when all the wannabee "leaders" are briefing against each other in private and saying how much they love each other in public.... solid as a rock

 

so then, do you deny that labour made a mess of our econemy or you still going to waffle on about poor labour being picked on

Edited August 18, 2010 by jaggybunnet

[Woodstock Jag]

Cracks starting to show, but as I said, the LibDem's are somewhat compelled to hang on to the Coalition no matter how many of their policies are stamped on, just to preserve the hope and promise of PR. However I think it's going to be a short lived romance and I see another election within 2 years. Will anyone bid more?

 

It's not cracks. It's the in-laws who never liked each other in the first place squabbling. The grand-centre-right Civil Partnership will last the full 5 year term.

Edited August 18, 2010 by Woodstock Jag

[hamiltonjag]

LOL those blinkers must be chaffing by now BCG if that is as good as you can do.

 

so then, do you deny that labour made a mess of our econemy or you still going to waffle on about poor labour being picked on

What do you think the tories would have done had they been in power when the worldwide economic meltdown took place?

Do you think it makes economic sense (let's forget the human cost cost the tories have) to increase unemployment with massive job cuts... less spending power, less spending in the shops.

Does anyone trust the lib dems now after their manefesto pledges like opposing rises in VAT, gradually making cuts in public spending rather than the hatchet approach etc have conveniently been forgotten?

And please before you start ranting and pigeon-holing me let me say I'm not much of a "noo labour" fan.

[Woodstock Jag]

What do you think the tories would have done had they been in power when the worldwide economic meltdown took place?

 

What do you think Labour would have done in 1979? Point caller?

 

Do you think it makes economic sense (let's forget the human cost cost the tories have) to increase unemployment with massive job cuts... less spending power, less spending in the shops.

 

Large short-term job cuts now vs more and longer-term job cuts later. Propping up your economy with lots of public sector jobs just means money gets recycled rather than created. You need to look at the bigger picture to see why we can't afford to throw good money after bad.

 

Does anyone trust the lib dems now after their manefesto pledges like opposing rises in VAT, gradually making cuts in public spending rather than the hatchet approach etc have conveniently been forgotten?

And please before you start ranting and pigeon-holing me let me say I'm not much of a "noo labour" fan.

 

The Lib Dems didn't actually oppose the VAT rise. They didn't rule it out, but accused the other parties of failing to disclose it in their budgetary plans when it was so patently secretly planned by both Tory and Labour. Both Labour and Tories said "we presently have no plans to raise VAT" whereas the Lib Dems said "VAT increases haven't been budgeted for, but any change in rates of tax must reflect the economic conditions at that particular point in time".

 

With respect to the timing of cuts, they've made perfectly clear that they've changed their minds as a result of the impact of the debt crisis on the Continent in and around the election, in addition to the discovery that the structural debt was several billion more substantial than Labour had been publicising.

Edited August 18, 2010 by Woodstock Jag

[B.C.G. JAG]

LOL those blinkers must be chaffing by now BCG if that is as good as you can do.

 

so then, do you deny that labour made a mess of our econemy or you still going to waffle on about poor labour being picked on

Nice of you to be so conversational. As always JB, you really do add something to the debate. Snide sarcasm and ill informed opinion mostly, but there you go.

 

I'm not a big fan of Labour, but they aren't hell bent on destroying public services like the Tories. Yes, Labour got into bed with the banks, but the Tories would have been even more relaxed about the whims of the market - Tories don't believe in State interference with business. However, whilst Labour overreached itself in it's spending commitments, the Tories would have let ordinary people sink to Dickensian levels of squalor, as they seem bent on doing again now.

 

So, JB, when the Tories campaigned on reducing the deficit by efficiency gains only, why didn't they mention abolishing 40% of the State? Why did they say that the Winter Fuel Allowance and Child Benefit were safe in their hands when they plainly aren't? Why did they say that NHS would be ringfenced when in England it has to find £20BN of savings?