Martin2005

I wasn't demeaning anyone. UB in his usual style was suggesting that anyone who didn't agree with him was a. a socialist and b. couldn't write a coherent sentence, which was kind of ironic given that he couldn't spell sentence.

I've never once cliamed to have perfect spelling!!!!

Martin2005

Well I'd love to hear your views on how things would of been different under the conservatives? (apart of course from having praise heaped upon them for 12 years of economic growth )

Also what are you expecting to change under DC's Tories?

Leslie

To be strictly honest, and just like anyone else, I don't really know yet. It took the Conservatives a long time to recover from the parlous mess the economy was left in by the previous Labour government and also their big mistake which gave rise to Black Monday. They did however get the economy back into good shape by the time Billy Liar took over.

What I do see is the lies we were fed with right from the start of NL and although the economy was made to look artificially well run with overborrowing and cheap credit, they basically threw all our taxes away on creating a vast beaurocracy as well as stealing people's pensions away and inventing stealth taxes at every step to try to maintain their extremely high spending habits. Most of the money they have thrown at the public services has been wasted on top heavy management to run their target driven work force which is the worst way to run it anyway. They are so quick to come up with yet another new initiative when it all falls apart but what they forecast just never seems to happen. They have deliberately swamped the country with illegal immigrants which has also hit the economy to the detriment of services to the people of this country who paid for those services in the first place. They have continually lied about the numbers involved also. They have never saved any kind of a reserve in case of the recession which was bound to come anyway and are now going to rely on overborrowing by twice what they were borrowing before. They have built up an enormous debt through PFI which we will be paying for over years to come.

Above all, I decry they way in which they have destroyed all what this once great country used to stand for and dragged it down towards the depths of moral degradation. They are working towards handing us over to the Eu on a plate by which time they will be expecting very nice sinecures in return!

I think that will be enough to go on with Martin, Of course I do not know whether "Dave" will do better, but I am quite certain that he won't do any worse! The Conservatives have always had a much better record as far as the economy is concerned and I believe that they are more likely to stand up for our country.

Les

Martin2005

Well I agree with most of this, my biggest gripe has always been that the money has been spent inefficiently (although it's hard to put an arguement together that we didn't need to significantly increase spending on the public services)

The recent conservative record on the ecconomy is actually shocking, 2 recessions, and the ERM, so not sure how you can claim they have 'always had a better record'. The last few years of the last Tory government were spent recovering from a terrible economic catastophy, you or I could of done the same job as Ken Clarke given the depths our economy sunk to, the only way was up.

As for credit, I'm not sure what the government are supposed to do, we have a free markets for housing and financial services, coupled with historically low interest rates, if people want to barrow agianst the increasing value of their houses they will. If a Labour government had tried to intervenne in this I can only imagine the reaction there would of been. Unless you are suggesting that interest rates should have been artificially increased to discourage borrowing?
We had a pretty good run, average incomes have increased significantly and unemployment has been low, hence consumer spending and credit. Of course we are at the wrong end of this economic cycle now and things are going to get really bumpy for a while.

One other thing, government borrowing is high and breaks one of the 'golden rules', but the conservatives were forced into even higher levels of borrowing when things turned bad for them.

My point? It's easy to just critisise the government, but the reality is, our political parties are all devoid of ideology, they are all dancing on the head of a pin, in policy terms, and if anyone thinks that David Cameron is likely to serve up anything other that social democratic policies they are in for a big dissappointment.

I'd love to read (just once) someone actually attempting to at least acknowledge that this isn't a Socialist vs Thatcherite political backdrop, just shades of grey.

Too many people on here want the government to fail, to justify their own narrow political allegences, even when things are going well find reasons to attack the government, and postively delight when thing go wrong.

unclebuck

Hmm, now let's see... oh dear...

arguement
ecconomy
catastophy
agianst
intervenne
critisise
dissappointment
allegences
postively

tsk, tsk....

_RIP_

"For 'tis the sport to have the enginer, Hoist with his own petar; and 't shall go hard"

Martin2005

Leslie

I criticise this lot because of what they have done to our country and how they have lied to us and let us down.

I am apolitical and if they were doing the sort of job they should be then I would support them.

Les

r32

Some 'financial expert' on radio four this morning had a huge list of things which suggested this is a bad idea. My comment on it all is where is this money coiming from, there is currently a huge black hole in Government finances, the money must come from somewhere. So its either increase borrowing from the IMF or similar or another raid on taxes.

r32

According to the OECD we are the only major economy in recession, perhaps we have to enquire why this country in particular has done so badly.

Surely we should all decry the raid on pensions. It will affect us all quite badly. We only seemed concerned about direct taxation.