George Osborne's speech.

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Discussion

powerstroke

10,283 posts

159 months

Monday 8th October 2012
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AJS- said:
So what will happen when there's literally no more moneyt to pay the benefits? That's what happened in Russia in the early 90s and short of slashing everything else - health, education etc then I can't see another way out.

A wholesale cull of government departments might help though. I know they're small fry but Culture, Media & Sport, Foreign Aid, Department of the Environment, Department of Industry - let's get rid of them all.
yes but dont forget about all the money we pay into the EU???

markcoznottz

7,155 posts

223 months

Monday 8th October 2012
quotequote all
powerstroke said:
AJS- said:
So what will happen when there's literally no more moneyt to pay the benefits? That's what happened in Russia in the early 90s and short of slashing everything else - health, education etc then I can't see another way out.

A wholesale cull of government departments might help though. I know they're small fry but Culture, Media & Sport, Foreign Aid, Department of the Environment, Department of Industry - let's get rid of them all.
yes but dont forget about all the money we pay into the EU???
It's not a lot in the overall scheme of things. The biggest problem is running the government, especially when tax receipts are tanking like now. The deficit will grow out of control, if we keep doing qe no one will buy our debt unless It's at a very high %, the only options are devaluation, inflation, tax rises and spending cuts, and that includes sleight of hand such as raising the pension age etc. There really is no other way, we can't export our way to prosperity because 100's of millions of Chinese will work for peanuts. That might actually be it then. The government either sees people literally starve in the street or it seriously cuts its expenditure. We've had the crisis but the elected government is still raising spending. Even allowing for inflation it's up, albeit very slightly. The penny hasnt dropped for the political class has it, Tories or labour,e those parties don't mean anything anymore, we need emergency measures and fast.

sugerbear

3,928 posts

157 months

Monday 8th October 2012
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Mojocvh said:
AJS- said:
martin84 said:
AJS- said:
Actually I just googled that and it's gaining ground fast! £44bn compared to £89bn Education, £124bn on Health. Good old social security still trumps all at £194bn though. According to the first pie chart I found.
Around half of that is pensions though isn't it? Not in and out of work benefits being sponged by the lazy feckless unemployed rolleyes
It doesn't really matter what it is, it's a staggering amount of money.
That people have paid for all their working lives.
They were just funding the lot prior to themselves who didn't pay anything in. The idea that the tax you pay today is paid to go into some magical pot that you can then use in the future is a fallacy. You are paying for the previous generation (who paid for the previous generation).

grantone

640 posts

172 months

Monday 8th October 2012
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sugerbear said:
They were just funding the lot prior to themselves who didn't pay anything in. The idea that the tax you pay today is paid to go into some magical pot that you can then use in the future is a fallacy. You are paying for the previous generation (who paid for the previous generation).
I wish the younger generation had the balls (and political organisation) to default on all the pension promises made on their behalf by the previous generations.

martin84

5,366 posts

152 months

Tuesday 9th October 2012
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In Osbornes defence he is currently in a job nobody would want with a very hard task in front of him, however the man does make my skin crawl. I think he's lucky Boris Johnson will steal most focus from him - and probably the Prime Minister - at the conference because Osborne is a poor public speaker and although some of what he said today made perfect sense, I was surprised some parts of his speech got approved by the wonks behind the scenes. Not to mention the fact Osborne mostly brings a message of doom, leading to a very sombre audience at the conference but Boris is greeted as if he's Brian Johnson as he lifts the whole place. Osborne should be thankful for Boris filling up the column inches instead of him.

It's depressing almost any political thread on here now gets bogged down into a benefits rant - especially as a mere fraction of Osbornes speech actually mentioned them - but I don't think Osborne helped his cause with his choice of words today. One moment he speaks about how we will not 'pit one group against another' and something about not demonising people but mere minutes later he outlines a scenario about the shift worker heading out to work as their neighbour is fast asleep on benefits, declaring 'we are for that shift worker!' Once again he has suggested that 100% of people on benefits are scum who can't be bothered to do anything, not sure how that ties in with not demonising people. I don't know why he feels compelled to feed the ignorance of the Daily Wailers.

groak

3,254 posts

178 months

Tuesday 9th October 2012
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anonymous said:
[redacted]
Well, under Universal Credit the taxpayer is forced to hand the indolent and feckless largish lump sums which are likely to be abused and misused rather than used to pay for the essentials of life which the taxpayer has generously agreed to provide. The junkies will spend the rent portion on drugs. The alkies on booze. The addicted gamblers on bets etc etc. In the private sector this will result in them being ejected, and batted back to LA/HA housing provision (from which most of them originated anyway) at a far greater cost to the taxpayer than providing private sector rent ever incurred. And once installed in it they will recommence the expensive 'destructathon' which -traditionally at least- the public sector have never been able to cope with effectively.

And worse. Obviously they will continue to misuse their Universal Credit and their LA/HA rents won't be paid any more than their private sector rents were. What then? A huge and wholesale collapse of now seriously underfunded LA/HA property already being collapsed via the 'destructathon' which only incoming rent can continue to remedy? Are they then going to be evicted onto the street? Or kept rent free in LA/HA slums? The street isn't going to be an answer. Not possible with the numbers involved, including one assumes all the offspring of this feral multitude. Not to mention the laws that aren't going to allow mass-scale eviction including of families and children.

But there are worse scenarios. This Universal Credit is also to be universally applied for and administered online. And unknown to PHers there's this HUGE underclass who don't have and never will have a computer and can't read or write never mind use one. A chunky number have learning difficulties of all grades. Another chunky number have diagnosed mental illnesses of a spectrum of severity. And so on and so forth. What the hell are THEY to do? They didn't ask to have schizophrenia or brain damage. It's just a hand life dealt them. They're sort of like little children. They really can't manage their own affairs or deal with things like budgeting or cashflow balancing. And often enough they don't have relatives or anyone else interested enough in their welfare to help them.

In terms of their housing, they aren't going to manage either the admin or the rent admin,and unfortunately we're not going to be able to house many of them for free or any of them for too long.

So far, Mr Duncan Smith has refused to commit himself as to how the interests of these vulnerable people are to be served in this system of his which everybody knows these people aren't capable of operating in.

Why not is a mystery.




martin84

5,366 posts

152 months

Tuesday 9th October 2012
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Some posts here make me wonder if winning the war was worth the bother.

groak

3,254 posts

178 months

Tuesday 9th October 2012
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....a thought that might be shared by a returning under 25 year old damaged ex-Brit fresh from Helmand and heading for a civvy street he might well struggle to cope with. Not least because George Osborne will be asking him to live (by dint of his age) in a cardboard box or under a bridge or maybe even a doorway. 2012 tory version of 'Homes Fit For Heroes'.

martin84

5,366 posts

152 months

Tuesday 9th October 2012
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Assuming We Know Everything About People We've Never Met Since 2010

Vote Conservative

BlackVanDyke

9,932 posts

210 months

Tuesday 9th October 2012
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groak said:
....a thought that might be shared by a returning under 25 year old damaged ex-Brit fresh from Helmand and heading for a civvy street he might well struggle to cope with. Not least because George Osborne will be asking him to live (by dint of his age) in a cardboard box or under a bridge or maybe even a doorway. 2012 tory version of 'Homes Fit For Heroes'.
The broad assumption that everybody's got parents to put them up or bail them out is really disturbing me. I'm bloody lucky, my mum and dad are still around and can and do help me as much as possible... but I haven't read anything yet that takes into account what happens if your folks actually kicked you out at 16, or carked it years back, or in fact are just living in a poxy one-bedroomed flat somewhere (bedroom tax!) and living paycheck-to-paycheck with nothing to spare.

hidetheelephants

23,547 posts

192 months

Tuesday 9th October 2012
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martin84 said:
Assuming We Know Everything About People We've Never Met Since 2010

Vote Conservative
Look on the bright side; it's a choice between Boy George spunking your hard-earned into an ever expanding PSBR or Edney Spheres doing exactly the same thing. The main benefit is George isn't nearly as sanctimonious about it.

AJS-

15,366 posts

235 months

Tuesday 9th October 2012
quotequote all
DJRC said:
AJS- said:
I suspect if Labour had won again we would be in better shape now. Sounds nuts, I know but hear me out.

Broon would have won with a small majority, a Lib Lab coalition even better. They would have QE'd the currency to st, kept borrowing, soaked the rich, and the whole towering monstrosity of left wing economics would have crashed down around them, 15 years into a left wing government with no one else around to blame, and those few Tories who genuinely stuck to their guns on government spending would be looking pretty clever.

The coalition would have fallen apart and a reinvigorated Conservative party with the confidence and moral authority to implement meaningful reforms could have won the following election.

But who was to know? Except me. And anyone who has read about or can remember the 1970s.
So you are saying we would have been better shape if the country was brought to its knees?

Are you fking insane?

I know this is painful to here but the country isnt fked. It isnt even remotely close to being fked. Its muddling along. Its not bankrupt. Its not going bankrupt in the near future, its just muddling along and in the light of whats going on out there right now...thats as good as you bloody get! It makes Britain doing the 2nd best in Europe right now after Germany, i.e. a fking st load better than the rest of the place.

But you think it would have been better to have bankrupted us. Even for ph that is moronically imcompetently idiotic.
Unless the economy magically fixes itself and gets strong, probably double digit growth for a few years without us fixing the structural problems that have built up for the last 15+ years, then we are going to have a crisis at some point. The variables are when, how badly, who is in charge and what happens next.

We don't have very much control of when, as it could well be triggered by some external factor like a spike in commodity prices, a political crisis in the middle east. Or it could just come about by our being unable to service our own debts, but even that is pretty hard to predict.

In terms of how deep the crisis is, the longer we put it off for the worse it's likely to be, as all these in built problems have had longer to develop, and are harder to remove.

Who is in charge isn't all that significant, as any government will then be forced, by the IMF or by economic reality to do the same thing. Whoever it is though will shoulder a good chunk of the blame, even if the problems run much deeper.

And that feeds in to the all important what happens next. If we then elect Labour to office and the disgraced Tories are relegated to opposition for another 10 years, it's quite likely we'll just spend another decade in an economic malaise with no real growth and no meaningful cuts, and continue a slide into second rate irrelevance along with Argentina, and other once wealthy countries who decided to go down the path of socialism.

So I would rather Labour had stayed in charge, had the crisis and relegated themselves to opposition for the foreseeable future, so that come the next election we could kick them out and replace them with a strong, Thatcherite government who could set implementing some worthwhile cuts.


Even if we do somehow "muddle through" without a crisis, the economy returns to slow growth, and we're able to continue our borrowing and spending fetish indefinitely, is that really a good thing? We're not suffering here from a temporary slump in demand, we're suffering from an economic meltdown caused by absurd levels of debt catching up with us. And we're lucky that interest rates are historically low. In order to get a prosperous economy, showing strong growth, we still need to make deep cuts, and the impetus to do so won't be there without a crisis. We'll just be storing up more future problems.

And another thing. Strong growth is all well and good, but actually the UK is already pretty second rate. We're on about 2/3rd of the GDP per capita of the US and other leading countries, while growing slower and looking less likely to do anything about it. If we actually want to be on a par with these countries then we need to do some pretty spectacular growing for a few years just to catch up.

Guybrush

4,328 posts

205 months

Tuesday 9th October 2012
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Of course we're still in the shiite after Labour. For years while Labour were doing their damage, many said the next election would be a good one to lose. Of course it is, any election after Labour has been in power is a good one to lose, but that would mean the ultimate destruction of the country. Trouble is, the more stupid sections of the electorate are easily bribed with borrowed money. http://www.debtbombshell.com/

Digga

40,156 posts

282 months

Tuesday 9th October 2012
quotequote all
AJS- said:
So I would rather Labour had stayed in charge, had the crisis and relegated themselves to opposition for the foreseeable future, so that come the next election we could kick them out and replace them with a strong, Thatcherite government who could set implementing some worthwhile cuts.
But think about it, if labour had stayed at the controls, pretty rapidly the bond markets would ahve mugged us and base rate would be way higher than it is now and, with the resultaint crash (far greater carnage from business and private foreclosures) the economy would be flatlining at best, if not reversing faster than an Italian battle tank.

Then you expect the Cons to resume control, at this point and be able to 'look good' for the man on the street? I doubt it!

As I said, there should be a rule - any serving cabinet or opposition member should be able to recite the values of at least two (preferably three) major elements of the last year's spending figures. Then we can all start talking from the same page.

AJS-

15,366 posts

235 months

Tuesday 9th October 2012
quotequote all
I expect the economy would have utterly tanked and we would have had a major, year long recession. Huge nasty spending cuts would have been necessary and unemployment would shoot up. The pound would probably have dropped significantly too.

However, it's what happens after that that is important. Low asset prices, higher interest rates and available labour would have lead to greater investment and the beginnings of a recovery. Exactly as happened in the early 90s after the ERM debacle, and similar to what Iceland is experiencing now.

When the entire country is inflated, and resources so woefully misallocated by decades of over spending there's really no easy way to let it down without some pain, and the sooner the crash is out of the way the better.

AJS-

15,366 posts

235 months

Tuesday 9th October 2012
quotequote all
Guybrush said:
Of course we're still in the shiite after Labour. For years while Labour were doing their damage, many said the next election would be a good one to lose. Of course it is, any election after Labour has been in power is a good one to lose, but that would mean the ultimate destruction of the country. Trouble is, the more stupid sections of the electorate are easily bribed with borrowed money. http://www.debtbombshell.com/
79 was a good election to win as Labour's plans had been found badly wanting. 2010 would have been a good one to win, but they didn't win it. The mistake wasn't doing too well in the election, it was going into a lame duck coalition with a party who are fundamentally opposed to cutting public spending with every fibre of their being.

AJS-

15,366 posts

235 months

Tuesday 9th October 2012
quotequote all
Oh an yes, we could have avoided a crash. Still could probably. But that would have involved making some tough choices and painful cuts now. All parties have neglected to do that.

DJRC

23,563 posts

235 months

Tuesday 9th October 2012
quotequote all
AJS- said:
DJRC said:
AJS- said:
I suspect if Labour had won again we would be in better shape now. Sounds nuts, I know but hear me out.

Broon would have won with a small majority, a Lib Lab coalition even better. They would have QE'd the currency to st, kept borrowing, soaked the rich, and the whole towering monstrosity of left wing economics would have crashed down around them, 15 years into a left wing government with no one else around to blame, and those few Tories who genuinely stuck to their guns on government spending would be looking pretty clever.

The coalition would have fallen apart and a reinvigorated Conservative party with the confidence and moral authority to implement meaningful reforms could have won the following election.

But who was to know? Except me. And anyone who has read about or can remember the 1970s.
So you are saying we would have been better shape if the country was brought to its knees?

Are you fking insane?

I know this is painful to here but the country isnt fked. It isnt even remotely close to being fked. Its muddling along. Its not bankrupt. Its not going bankrupt in the near future, its just muddling along and in the light of whats going on out there right now...thats as good as you bloody get! It makes Britain doing the 2nd best in Europe right now after Germany, i.e. a fking st load better than the rest of the place.

But you think it would have been better to have bankrupted us. Even for ph that is moronically imcompetently idiotic.
Unless the economy magically fixes itself and gets strong, probably double digit growth for a few years without us fixing the structural problems that have built up for the last 15+ years, then we are going to have a crisis at some point. The variables are when, how badly, who is in charge and what happens next.
No its not. Its going to depend entirely and utterly on the global economy, not on Britain's individual economy as we are locked into it. The neccessary cuts can only come when the economy is moving again because only then can come breathing space needed. You make anything like the cuts you are advocating now and you will rip Britain to shreds. This isnt a political ideology thing, this is just brute reality. Politics is the art of what is and is not possible, not what you want or wish for or what you think is right. What you are advocating at the moment is simply not possible. Not right or wrong, desirable or advantageous, it is simply not possible and retain a functioning coherent country.

Not to mention that the picture is never as dark as it seems nor ever as sunny as it seems.

ralphrj

3,500 posts

190 months

Tuesday 9th October 2012
quotequote all
markcoznottz said:
especially when tax receipts are tanking like now.
Exactly how are they "tanking"?

Central Government Current Receipts:

2009-10 £476.1bn
2010-11 £511.2bn
2011-12 £532.8bn

The first 5 months of this year are up on last year.


anonymous-user

53 months

Tuesday 9th October 2012
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Number of times "growth" is mentioned on this page of the thread: 6

Number of times "growth" is mentioned in George Osborne's speech: 0