| All this talk of how did the Cons do so well.... 08:36 - May 8 with 2263 views | BanksterDebtSlave |
.....and not one mention of their discovery of the money tree!! |  |
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| All this talk of how did the Cons do so well.... on 10:14 - May 8 with 924 views | StokieBlue |
| All this talk of how did the Cons do so well.... on 10:09 - May 8 by BanksterDebtSlave |
My op is a statement of fact....as usual it is your subjective interpretation that betrays you as not being the perfect scientific machine to which you aspire! |
I disagree. Your statement lacks context which is important.
Not sure there is any need for your constant sniping at me either. You've ignored context the whole pandemic, people haven't forgotten.
SB |  |
| Avatar - IC410 - Tadpoles Nebula |
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| All this talk of how did the Cons do so well.... on 10:14 - May 8 with 921 views | Darth_Koont |
| All this talk of how did the Cons do so well.... on 10:02 - May 8 by Nthsuffolkblue |
And how much were they voting for austerity when the slogan was "get Brexit done"?
People vote for many different reasons.
The point in the OP, I believe, is that austerity is an ideology that has been show to be flawed - it has not improved the economic position or it would have only needed to be a temporary thing.
Boris has openly been against it in principle. Which would also suggest that is not the reason his party has been voted in either.
As Mhairi Black said in her maiden speech to parliament (I think it was), "no government ever said it didn't have enough money to go to war". |
Well said. When there’s a war we always seem to find a bundle of cash down the back of the sofa.
Maybe we should look their first? |  |
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| All this talk of how did the Cons do so well.... on 10:20 - May 8 with 903 views | BanksterDebtSlave |
| All this talk of how did the Cons do so well.... on 10:14 - May 8 by StokieBlue |
I disagree. Your statement lacks context which is important.
Not sure there is any need for your constant sniping at me either. You've ignored context the whole pandemic, people haven't forgotten.
SB |
Constantly sniping at you, constantly being mean to Starmer...come on now Stokie! Don't go all sensitive and human on me now....  | |
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| All this talk of how did the Cons do so well.... on 11:47 - May 8 with 869 views | Guthrum |
| All this talk of how did the Cons do so well.... on 10:11 - May 8 by lowhouseblue |
economically, there is just a chance that the tories are about to benefit form something much more magical than the money tree - growth. led by the US and covid spending we may be about to finally escape 2008. we may have a period lasting pretty much until the end of the decade before inflation and interest rates really rise. if the success of the tories now is depressing wait and see what happens to them in period of growth and perceived prosperity. |
Altho the "growth" is really just a rebound from the crushing impact of Covid. That not being a bad thing (better than an extended economic depression), but the same limitations upon how far it can be sustained beyond that recovery phase still exist. |  |
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| All this talk of how did the Cons do so well.... on 11:51 - May 8 with 864 views | Guthrum |
To be fair to them, the Budget Sunak brought out in early March - before the Pandemic really took hold in the UK - was quite an about-face in terms of using ultra-cheap borrowing (the magic money tree) to reverse austerity measures and increase spending. | |
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| All this talk of how did the Cons do so well.... on 11:54 - May 8 with 850 views | lowhouseblue |
| All this talk of how did the Cons do so well.... on 11:47 - May 8 by Guthrum |
Altho the "growth" is really just a rebound from the crushing impact of Covid. That not being a bad thing (better than an extended economic depression), but the same limitations upon how far it can be sustained beyond that recovery phase still exist. |
my point was that it's far from impossible that we will see something more than just a rebound. growth can be cumulative and we are on the verge of a huge US fiscal splurge and fairly massive pent up savings. inflation and interest rate rises are probably still a long way off. if the tories are doing well now a few years of sustained growth would reduce the opposition to a small rump. |  |
| And so as the loose-bowelled pigeon of time swoops low over the unsuspecting tourist of destiny, and the flatulent skunk of fate wanders into the air-conditioning system of eternity, I notice it's the end of the show |
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| All this talk of how did the Cons do so well.... on 11:57 - May 8 with 855 views | Lord_Lucan |
| All this talk of how did the Cons do so well.... on 11:51 - May 8 by Guthrum |
To be fair to them, the Budget Sunak brought out in early March - before the Pandemic really took hold in the UK - was quite an about-face in terms of using ultra-cheap borrowing (the magic money tree) to reverse austerity measures and increase spending. |
Borrowing is / was very cheap and that undoubtably saved the nation as we absolutely had to fund the way out of Covid, we have never seen the like of this before and we didn't think it could happen in the western world, it simply had to be done.
It is also quite clear to anyone who has any idea of budgets and finances that if it wasn't for a few years of austerity we wouldn't have been in the position to sort the feck out of anything. |  |
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| All this talk of how did the Cons do so well.... on 12:00 - May 8 with 844 views | footers |
| All this talk of how did the Cons do so well.... on 11:57 - May 8 by Lord_Lucan |
Borrowing is / was very cheap and that undoubtably saved the nation as we absolutely had to fund the way out of Covid, we have never seen the like of this before and we didn't think it could happen in the western world, it simply had to be done.
It is also quite clear to anyone who has any idea of budgets and finances that if it wasn't for a few years of austerity we wouldn't have been in the position to sort the feck out of anything. |
Nonsense.
Austerity was a completely ideological choice from the Tory government to shrink the state. It was totally avoidable.
For a supposed leftist you don't half hold some strange opinions. |  |
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| All this talk of how did the Cons do so well.... on 12:02 - May 8 with 842 views | Darth_Koont |
| All this talk of how did the Cons do so well.... on 11:57 - May 8 by Lord_Lucan |
Borrowing is / was very cheap and that undoubtably saved the nation as we absolutely had to fund the way out of Covid, we have never seen the like of this before and we didn't think it could happen in the western world, it simply had to be done.
It is also quite clear to anyone who has any idea of budgets and finances that if it wasn't for a few years of austerity we wouldn't have been in the position to sort the feck out of anything. |
That doesn’t sound right.
I know economists don’t agree on much and many were at fault for suggesting austerity in the first place but do you have any sources for that view re: the need for austerity?
We already had a debt in the trillions and a deficit in the billions so what did those “few years of austerity” change? | |
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| All this talk of how did the Cons do so well.... on 12:05 - May 8 with 826 views | Lord_Lucan |
| All this talk of how did the Cons do so well.... on 12:00 - May 8 by footers |
Nonsense.
Austerity was a completely ideological choice from the Tory government to shrink the state. It was totally avoidable.
For a supposed leftist you don't half hold some strange opinions. |
I disagree. | |
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| All this talk of how did the Cons do so well.... on 12:30 - May 8 with 787 views | Guthrum |
| All this talk of how did the Cons do so well.... on 11:57 - May 8 by Lord_Lucan |
Borrowing is / was very cheap and that undoubtably saved the nation as we absolutely had to fund the way out of Covid, we have never seen the like of this before and we didn't think it could happen in the western world, it simply had to be done.
It is also quite clear to anyone who has any idea of budgets and finances that if it wasn't for a few years of austerity we wouldn't have been in the position to sort the feck out of anything. |
I take a middle path on this. Some austerity was necessary in the immediate aftermath of the 2008 Crash, but it was taken beyond that level and duration for ideological reasons.
Also, there was some very poor targeting. Benefits reform was probably necessary. However it was badly done and, as a result, vast amounts of money wasted, not to mention much unnecessary hardship caused. | |
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| All this talk of how did the Cons do so well.... on 12:36 - May 8 with 781 views | Lord_Lucan |
| All this talk of how did the Cons do so well.... on 12:30 - May 8 by Guthrum |
I take a middle path on this. Some austerity was necessary in the immediate aftermath of the 2008 Crash, but it was taken beyond that level and duration for ideological reasons.
Also, there was some very poor targeting. Benefits reform was probably necessary. However it was badly done and, as a result, vast amounts of money wasted, not to mention much unnecessary hardship caused. |
I agree about benefit reform.
It seems to me that the people in most need don't get anywhere near enough, not just financially but also non financial types of support.
It was partly a vote winning exercise because people were fed up of the lead swingers and lazy bastards. | |
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| All this talk of how did the Cons do so well.... on 12:52 - May 8 with 750 views | XYZ |
| All this talk of how did the Cons do so well.... on 09:07 - May 8 by StokieBlue |
My point is that you have no point.
Any government would have had to borrow in the same way and they have done in almost every country.
So if your actual point is that they voted for the free money due to the pandemic why the constant criticism of Starmer? If that's your reasoning there is nothing he could have done about it...
Perhaps one to think about.
SB |
£500 billion QE is not borrowing.... |  | | |
| All this talk of how did the Cons do so well.... on 13:32 - May 8 with 733 views | StokieBlue |
| All this talk of how did the Cons do so well.... on 12:52 - May 8 by XYZ |
£500 billion QE is not borrowing.... |
That's technically true but the end results is that the BOE ends up holding debt which has been issued by the government at some point. There has also been borrowing in the markets to fund the pandemic relief as well as QE.
Once again, I am not defending the Tories, there is no way they they should have done austerity and other such policies, I just don't think that in the context of the pandemic this is really the time to cite magic money trees.
There was no choice but to provide the relief that was provided, probably in reality they needed to provide even more.
SB | |
| Avatar - IC410 - Tadpoles Nebula |
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| All this talk of how did the Cons do so well.... on 13:50 - May 8 with 708 views | XYZ |
| All this talk of how did the Cons do so well.... on 13:32 - May 8 by StokieBlue |
That's technically true but the end results is that the BOE ends up holding debt which has been issued by the government at some point. There has also been borrowing in the markets to fund the pandemic relief as well as QE.
Once again, I am not defending the Tories, there is no way they they should have done austerity and other such policies, I just don't think that in the context of the pandemic this is really the time to cite magic money trees.
There was no choice but to provide the relief that was provided, probably in reality they needed to provide even more.
SB |
I agree, but QE has always been an option (certainly since 2008) and May's "no magic money tree" stance was a lie. Austerity was simply a political choice to kick the poor disguised as economic prudence.
They'll be doing it again as soon as they can. | | | |
| All this talk of how did the Cons do so well.... on 14:47 - May 8 with 699 views | jeera |
| All this talk of how did the Cons do so well.... on 09:07 - May 8 by StokieBlue |
My point is that you have no point.
Any government would have had to borrow in the same way and they have done in almost every country.
So if your actual point is that they voted for the free money due to the pandemic why the constant criticism of Starmer? If that's your reasoning there is nothing he could have done about it...
Perhaps one to think about.
SB |
It's not just the money spent that's been the problem though Stokie. It's the waste and the blasé attitude with which this lot have thrown public cash around.
Grayling alone cost the country a fortune before the pandemic was even an apple in some bat in China's eye.
The way they flushed millions, or rather billions, away on thin air and inflated contracts without a care, is just another example of their carefree approach with other people's money.
And that's without mentioning fanciful bridge projects. It's all a game when it comes to the public purse. |  |
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| All this talk of how did the Cons do so well.... on 17:41 - May 8 with 655 views | BanksterDebtSlave |
| All this talk of how did the Cons do so well.... on 14:47 - May 8 by jeera |
It's not just the money spent that's been the problem though Stokie. It's the waste and the blasé attitude with which this lot have thrown public cash around.
Grayling alone cost the country a fortune before the pandemic was even an apple in some bat in China's eye.
The way they flushed millions, or rather billions, away on thin air and inflated contracts without a care, is just another example of their carefree approach with other people's money.
And that's without mentioning fanciful bridge projects. It's all a game when it comes to the public purse. |
The wealth of the established wealthy has always come from dipping their hands into the public's purse/commons. | |
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| All this talk of how did the Cons do so well.... on 17:46 - May 8 with 653 views | HARRY10 |
| All this talk of how did the Cons do so well.... on 14:47 - May 8 by jeera |
It's not just the money spent that's been the problem though Stokie. It's the waste and the blasé attitude with which this lot have thrown public cash around.
Grayling alone cost the country a fortune before the pandemic was even an apple in some bat in China's eye.
The way they flushed millions, or rather billions, away on thin air and inflated contracts without a care, is just another example of their carefree approach with other people's money.
And that's without mentioning fanciful bridge projects. It's all a game when it comes to the public purse. |
"another example of their carefree approach with other people's money. "
I beg to differ
They have been very careful to make sure it ends up in the right pockets.
However, as with John Majors trickle down economy where wealth was to cascade down the generations
I should imagine the good folk of Hartlepool will soon be dancing in the streets as they will personally get their share of the moolah
....................won't they ? | | | |
| All this talk of how did the Cons do so well.... on 18:47 - May 8 with 628 views | GeoffSentence |
| All this talk of how did the Cons do so well.... on 09:37 - May 8 by StokieBlue |
I'm not sure it's the same thing at all. There was literally no choice but to provide things like furlough and the cost is massive.
Austerity is clearly wrong and hopefully that won't happen again. That was a choice though by the voters (and obviously a bad one) whereas the requirements of the pandemic are not optional.
It seems to be that a lot of context it being totally ignore with regards to these election results and blame being attributed when there was very little that could be done given factors like the vaccine rollout and the ongoing Brexit nonsense. No government for 100 years has had to deal with a pandemic, there was always likely to be a favourable bounce when things were looking better due to the stress everyone has faced in the previous year.
SB [Post edited 8 May 2021 9:39]
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"Austerity is clearly wrong and hopefully that won't happen again."
You know who's in charge, right? |  |
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| All this talk of how did the Cons do so well.... on 21:03 - May 8 with 607 views | bournemouthblue |
| All this talk of how did the Cons do so well.... on 09:55 - May 8 by bluelagos |
Did they receive more than 50% of the vote?
They got elected. But not with majority support. So I don't accept the majority of voters voted for austerity. They didn't. Our sh1t system delivered us as an austerity supporting party elected on a minority vote. |
The following government then managed to frame a the issues caused by austerity on the EU and asylum seekers etc and not themselves
People then voted for a government who wanted to bring back the 20k police officers they scrapped a decade ago and no one seemed to blink an eye that the original idea was a bad one or that the Tories were remotely sorry for it
We live in truly strange times! |  |
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| All this talk of how did the Cons do so well.... on 08:17 - May 9 with 568 views | Pinewoodblue |
There was no mention of the money tree as it wasn’t relevant to the election result. The vast majority of those who voted Tory last week always vote Tory.
They had a good result because too many of those who usually vote Labour stayed at home, didn’t bother. If you look deeper into it Labour had a good election, in those areas where it meant something. Wales, Manchester, even London, where the party still stands for something traditional Labour supporters understand.
The Labour Party lacks direction, lacks leadership, doesn’t stand for anything meaningful. Not for those who really matter and that is voters in general, not just those who have a voice on social media. |  |
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| All this talk of how did the Cons do so well.... on 08:26 - May 9 with 564 views | GlasgowBlue |
| All this talk of how did the Cons do so well.... on 09:55 - May 8 by bluelagos |
Did they receive more than 50% of the vote?
They got elected. But not with majority support. So I don't accept the majority of voters voted for austerity. They didn't. Our sh1t system delivered us as an austerity supporting party elected on a minority vote. |
The choice in 2010 was between two pro austerity supporting parties.
The alternative to Cameron’s Tories was Gordon Brown’s Labour who were promising “cuts in public spending [that] will be deeper and tougher than Margaret Thatcher's in the 1980s”.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2010/mar/25/alistair-darling-cut-deeper-mar [Post edited 9 May 2021 8:28]
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| All this talk of how did the Cons do so well.... on 09:10 - May 9 with 549 views | HARRY10 |
Thankfully the country was saved from Darlings Scrooge like behaviour by George Osbornes modest cuts Cuts that would be nowhere "Labour was planning greater austerity than that achieved by Thatcher's chancellors Geoffrey Howe and Nigel Lawson. "
or in reality what Osborne did when Chancellor
"His first budget, in 2010, delivered what Robert Chote, then head of the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS), called “the longest, deepest sustained period of cuts to public services spending at least since the second world war”.
Osborne justified his “tougher than Thatcher” pledge with hair-raising visions of Britain on “the brink of bankruptcy”, at risk of joining Greece on the precipice. None of it was true. “We were clearly nowhere near bankrupt,” says Paul Johnson, the current IFS director. “We could have borrowed more. Government debt was cheap as chips.” Osborne cut down the green shoots of growth, and by 2013 he had lost the AAA credit rating he had warned was vital to survival; it wasn’t. “He delayed the recovery,” says Jonathan Portes, professor of economics and public policy at King’s College London.
But let’s pretend Osborne believed his own “verge of bankruptcy” scare-mongering. Let’s imagine his antediluvian, pre-Keynesian economics were sincere. After promising that we were “all in it together”, why did his axe fall on the weakest, poorest and sickest people, and on children, leaving his middle England voters unscathed? “He redistributed away from those with the lowest incomes, away from children, toward the middle and upper middle,” says Portes. Paul Johnson agrees: “The poorest third of working age were hardest hit; the upper third got off scot free.”
By geography, he cut the poorest local authorities hardest, so Liverpool took the worst hit, Dorset sustained the least damage. His economics were pure politics: Labour councils bore the brunt. Nick Clegg later revealed that Osborne refused to build council houses as “they would create more Labour voters”.
“He assumed he could do it again and again.” And he did, gouging another £12bn from benefits in 2015. The bedroom tax raised very little money, but the public understood its viciousness. The first case that was brought to my attention was that of a Hartlepool family charged for the empty room of their recently deceased seven-year-old. Cuts to universal credit, a four-year benefit freeze, a benefit cap and more came with that Osborne trope about idle scroungers in bed with the blinds down while honest folk went to work. Meanwhile, the top tax rates fell. He was clever: raising the tax threshold seemed to help the low paid, but he knew the bulk of the relief went to the top half — his middle Englanders.
An opera-going man of culture, Osborne assaulted the BBC, making a deeply damaging cut to its budget by making it pay for free TV licences for the over-75s. Osborne left the country defenceless against a pandemic. Despite election pledges, NHS funding per capita fell as never before, public health was denuded, social care stripped, school spending per pupil cut by 8%, councils weakened by up to 40%: all our social defences were down. A million public sector jobs were lost, leaving Whitehall perilously incapacitated."
But fear not, a lie to win an election by a senior Tory (as above) won't happen again.
as Johnson has told us | | | |
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