Thought Id start this one going because its rather dead on this board at the moment and I suppose all my usual muckers are either at the Stella tennis event watching Dim Tim (lose again) or at Henly Regatta eating cucumber sandwiches (they wish,...NOT).

Anyway please feel free to just talk to yourself blast away and let it go on any company or subject you wish. Just wish Id thought of this one before.

cheers GF.

Austerity as worked?????????laugh my ass off.

Hays we have only got rid of 1/3rd of the deficit not what was promised by Osbourne, and it as been a total failure built on cuts and Arthur Daley type jobs and policies backed up by lies from the DSS.

Heres todays Ashcroft figures.........hardly supporting austerity and the coalition......

Ashcroft National Poll: Con 28%, Lab 33%, Lib Dem 9%, UKIP 17%
Monday, 23 June, 2014

cynic you still havent grasped my point have you........i give up.

The case for austerity measures rests on the Great Debt Lie and the myth of the structural deficit.

The 2008-9 recession was the worst we have had in this Country, and globally, for sixty years, and it was predicted by no-one – not even Vince Cable. The Labour Government responded to the crisis with fiscal stimulus. From the start of the financial crisis, Labour took decisive and clear action (including temporarily cutting VAT to boost demand), and it has become increasingly clear that it was this decisive action that brought about the green shoots of recovery (Radeke, 2009).

This, combined with the usual effects on GDP of a recession, meant that the budget deficit rose. But without such swift action we simply would not have the signs of tentative recovery that we saw as a result.

So what went wrong? What happened to the green shoots of recovery that were carefully nurtured by the last Labour Government?

That would be the Tory-led Coaliton.

This Government is cutting the very measures that would ensure not only growth in the short-term, but economic security in the future, too. They are portraying their cuts as eliminating “waste” and “necessary”, when in fact they are seriously jeopardising our future economic prosperity: cuts in funding for Regional Development Agencies; scrapping the Future Jobs Fund, which was a success and supported at least 200,000 people back into work through the recession; withdrawing industrial support, for example.

That is before we even begin to discuss the damning, detrimental economic and social implications of the welfare “reforms” (CUTS), and the Localism Bill (more CUTS), and Legal Aid Bill (even more coordinated and carefully planned Tory CUTS that will serve to keep quiet and hide away evidence of the rising numbers of impoverished, destitute and starving victims of all of the other CUTS and subsequent human rights abuses).

And there seems to be very little evidence to support their decisions. No facts, no consultation, no listening to expert advice. Just the ideology of the small state, propped up by notions of “self-reliance” – but only for the poorest of course – being pursued by the Tory right and the Orange Book Liberals.

The Tory budget is highly regressive, hitting the poorest the hardest whilst asking for very little from those at the top.

Here are some facts which demolish the fallacy that the present economic crisis is the result of excessive spending, leading to unsustainable debt:

• Analysis by the Institute of Fiscal Studies has concluded that on the eve of the financial crisis ‘the public finances were in a stronger position than they had been when Labour first came to power in 1997.

• Average annual spending and taxation were both lower as a proportion of GDP under the last 3 Labour Governments (38% and 35.4%) than under the 4 Conservative governments which preceded them (40% and 35.5%).

• National debt was lower as a proportion of GDP at the start of the financial crisis in 2008 (36%) than in 1997, the last year of John Major’s Conservative government (42%). The national debt is forecast to hit 74.7% of GDP this year and peak at 79.9 per cent in 2015-16.

• In 2010, the UK’s national debt as a proportion of GDP (52%) was the second lowest of the G7 countries.

The budget deficit is no more “structural” than an overdraft in your bank account when you spend more than you earn. There is either a real deficit or not, and if there is, then it is due to either excessive spending or an inadequate tax take. Since it can easily be demonstrated that the problem is not the former, then it must be the latter – caused by the financial crisis and consequent recession and likely to be aggravated when taxes are cut later during this parliament to the benefit of high earners, corporations and banks. As The Investors Chronicle states (15th February 2010):

“The idea of a structural deficit serves a political rather than analytical function. It’s a pseudo-scientific concept which serves to legitimate what is in fact a pure judgement call – that borrowing needs cutting.”

Osborne began to revive the myth of the structural deficit in June 2010, when it was becoming clear that the deficit would be under £155 billion, well below the Treasury’s £178 billion estimate made six months earlier. In other words, the deficit was narrowing after Labour increased spending in 2009.

The fact that the US, which has made no serious deficit reductions, has suffered almost the smallest recession of any major developed economy, whereas Ireland and Greece have suffered the worst because of drastic spending cuts further undermines the Government’s claim that radical austerity measures are needed – and shows that Osborne’s main aim is not to reduce the deficit but to accelerate the transfer of wealth to the already very rich.

And if anyone still wants to talk about a “structural” deficit, then they should remember that the last 3 Labour Governments managed to earn enough to cover their spending for 4 of their 13 years in office, whereas Thatcher and Major only managed to balance the books for 2 out of 17 years.

The Coalition continue to deny that alternatives to austerity are viable.

As a Tory lie repetition strategy, this is based on the idea Goebbels had – repeated lies will somehow convince people that they are true. Cameron was busted when he repeatedly told the lie “We are paying down the debt.” Despite being rumbled, the Coalition have stuck with this lie doggedly. The bonus of the lie is that it may undermine the Opposition’s economic credibility, and the Tories particularly delight in the lie that it’s all Labour’s fault because they “overspent” as it further justifies austerity measures and starving public services of Government funding, with our paid taxes, as well as stripping our welfare provision away.

It was the Tories that lost the Moody’s Investors Service triple A grade, despite pledges to keep it secure. Moody’s credit ratings represent a rank-ordering of creditworthiness, or expected loss. The Fitch credit rating was also downgraded due to increased borrowing by the Tories, who have borrowed more in 4 years than labour did in 13.

The Coalition have REALLY messed up the economy. We know it’s a big fat Tory lie that cutting spending at a time of economic recession will re-balance public finances. As many academics and economists have stated, cutting spending when the economy is flat is likely to cause further contraction to the economy, and that will negatively affect public finances, rather than help at all.

The Government will never confess to this because they are so tightly ideologically bound to an übertreiben Neo-Liberalism, no matter what the cost is in human terms, or even in economic terms. What we need is Labour’s expansionary fiscal policies, not contractionary ones. Real, sensible economists know that the only way to address a recession is to grow the economy, and that means more public spending in the short term, to stimulate economic activity, and cutting if needed when the economy is back on the up (which needn’t mean absolute cuts, but relative cuts because the economy is growing).

well that's a definite result then :-)

The Blame Game

The Government are playing a game. They don’t serve the needs of the public. They serve a wealthy elite. The Coalition don’t care about the consequences of taking money from the poorest and giving it to the wealthiest. But they won’t tell us that. They are playing the game that the game is not a game.

It’s called the “blame game.” As welfare “reforms” and housing cuts bite increasingly harder, do we ever reach the point where the Government concedes that the horror and hardship caused to many is an inevitable consequence of their own policies? Not at all. Instead we see their adeptness at digging ever deeper holes of denial.

At least Thatcher admitted there was increased unemployment, that it was as a tool of economic policy, and it was, in her opinion, a price worth paying to bring down inflation. Shucks, shame that didn’t work, Maggie. Gosh darn, we had high unemployment AND high inflation. But at least she was honest about her original intent.

The Tory-led Coalition denies that there is unemployment. Or indeed any hardship at all, or sacrifices made through elitist economic policy-making. They blame anyone other than the ministers who have instituted the cuts. Whenever some new example of the horrendous effects of their policies is presented to them, they have a range of stock responses. You have to wonder if there is a standard Whitehall crib sheet for ministers. Well here is what the cheat sheet looks like, in the interests of democracy and open Government:-

Deny that alternatives to austerity are viable.

The repetition of a lie ad nauseum is based on the idea Goebbels had – that repeated lies will somehow convince people that they are true. Cameron was busted when he repeatedly told the lie “We are paying down the debt.” Despite being rumbled, the Coalition have stuck with this lie doggedly. The bonus of the lie is that it may undermine the Opposition’s economic credibility, and the Tories particularly delight in the lie that it’s all Labour’s fault because they “overspent” as it further justifies austerity measures and starving public services of Government funding, with our paid taxes, as well as stripping our welfare provision away.

The Coalition have REALLY messed up the economy. We know it’s a big fat Tory lie that cutting spending at a time of economic recession will re-balance public finances. As many academics and economists have stated, cutting spending when the economy is flat is likely to cause further contraction to the economy, and that will negatively affect public finances, rather than help at all.

The Government will never confess to this because they are so tightly ideologically bound to an übertreiben Neo-Liberalism, no matter what the cost is in human terms, or even in economic terms. What we need is Labour’s expansionary fiscal policies, not contractionary ones. Real, sensible economists know that the only way to address a recession is to grow the economy, and that means more public spending in the short term, to stimulate economic activity, and cutting if needed when the economy is back on the up (which needn’t mean absolute cuts, but relative cuts because the economy is growing).

Repeat that implementing the cuts is avoidable.

The trick is to give the impression that all the cuts can be made painlessly by eliminating luxuries and sacking “backroom staff”. Cameron used this one at PMQs last week when he accused Councils of making high-profile cuts “to try to make a point,” and not because they need to. Delivered with a straight face and psychopathic calm, this sounds like a feasible lie that some will believe. So, Central Government is severely reducing budgets to Local Authorities, leaving them with a kind of impossible table cloth pulling trick to accomplish. Rip away the funding and hope the contents of the table – local services and provisions – stay put, and don’t crash to the floor. Of course, Labour Councils will be affected by the cuts more than other Councils, too. That also works out well for the Coalition.

Blame the previous Labour Government.

“It’s all their fault we have too few homes.” The Coalition focus on the fact that housebuilding in Labour’s very last year was the worst they achieved, even though we know that was because of the credit crunch. The Government won’t admit either that housebuilding under the Coalition is on average 45,000 homes less per year than the output under Labour, or that 2010/11 and 2011/12 were the two worst years since the war for English housebuilding. They don’t mention that Thatcher sold off all of the social housing stock, either. Again, they blame Local Government. Westminster is putting homeless families up in expensive hotels and Camden’s sending them to Coventry (or Leicester, Liverpool, or somewhere else absurdly far from London). The Government say, hiding their smug smiles, how stupid this is, and tell them to stop it, even though both they and we know they cannot.

(See also The UK deficit scam: George Osborne is nailed, we are paying down the debt and rumbled).

Don’t admit that cutting welfare affects anything else.

Cuts in all benefits for private tenants will mean that more of them will become homeless, and more people will need accommodation with lower rents in the social sector. The Government deny that this will happen. Most of the political debate at the moment is focused on the consequences of the bedroom tax, and the implications of private sector high rents, local rent allowance caps, (and in some areas, Councils are quietly imposing a bedroom tax on those in privately rented properties, too, despite the rhetoric that this will affect only those tenants in social housing) the poll tax style council benefit reductions and DWP related benefits cap have been somewhat obscured. Current debate does not, and probably cannot cover the depth of utter disruption and destruction to people’s lives that these changes are going to bring about. That is partly because the full details of the changes are not being released by this Government in a transparent and timely manner.

If any evidence emerges that shows them to be wrong, under no circumstances will the Government agree with it. All valid criticism and evidence will be passed off as “scaremongering”. Better still, the Government don’t read the evidence then no-one can accuse them of knowing the facts but ignoring them. Alternatively, officials may be able to find an obscure or outdated source that on the surface appears to contradict the evidence.

Blame the victims

Extravagant housing benefit claims may only happen in a few isolated cases, but even so the press will amplify and stigmatise those few, especially if they are large families, unemployed, migrants or – even better – all three. The Government gives the impression that such claims make up most of the welfare budget. They won’t ever admit that over half of welfare spending goes to older people, as they are seen as deserving of it, by the general public. If the Coalition is talking about housing benefit, they will try to give the impression that it’s spent by the tenants themselves to fund their indolent lifestyles – they won’t ever confess that the money goes directly to landlords who are pushing up rents because there are insufficient houses available. There is the old Poor Law binary conceptual schema, especially resurrected to inform Tory narratives - the notion of “deserving” and “undeserving” poor, which is implicit in all of their anti-welfare and anti-public service rhetoric.

The Government use keywords and sound bites in debate, speeches and in the media. They repeatedly refer to “scroungers”’, “the workshy,” “strivers” not “skivers” and talk about “subsidised housing,” and not council homes. (£23,000,000,000 every year is given to private landlords in subsidies by the tax payer). This helps “confirm” the impression that most welfare spending is a waste of (“striving” tax payers’) money. Suggestions for new and even more derogative terms are always welcome. IDS has made a good attempt to link welfare recipients in the public collective consciousness with drug addicts and alcoholics. Other MPs are following his lead. Again, evidence that is presented to the contrary is dismissed, usually with angry derision and a renewed psychological and linguistic assault on the victims, and/or the label of “scaremongering” directed at the critic that presented the evidence.

Another strategy employed by the Tories is to manipulate the victims of their savage cuts via propaganda, so they blame each other. Those in low paid work can blame the poor unemployed for the economic recession and the misery of the cuts, those unemployed people can blame poor immigrants, and everyone can blame the poor “feckless” and “fraudulent” sick and disabled people. The Coalition are very adept at creating folk devils and moral outrage. It’s an old and established bullying tactic to blame the victim, as this serves to cover up the abuse of the victim or to “justify” that abuse. The Tories managed to use others to persecute victims further in order to oppress and silence them. Scapegoating victims and persecution is also one of the hallmarks of an authoritarian Government, one that does not serve the needs of the public, but rather, sees the public as a means of serving Government needs.

Deny that the cuts are taking place.

The Government will point out if there is any part of any budget that they decided to protect, however small, and they will grossly exaggerate its importance. Take a lesson from Grant Shapps: every time someone has said funding for homelessness is being cut and services are being decimated, he would point to his Department’s small fund for homelessness prevention, and claim that because it hadn’t been reduced, other services had been unaffected, or – oh yes of course – any cuts are the fault of the Local Authorities. The ones that have had their funding drastically cut by Central Government, and that will face even more cuts once the Localism Bill is implemented.

It’s obvious to a fool that the scale of the welfare cuts in reality must mean massive suffering and hardship. Furthermore, Labour find and present deserving examples of cases, such as people dying of cancer, homeless ex-servicemen, that sort of thing. (There are many, many deserving examples of cases, too.) One Tory tactic is to almost always offer to investigate the particular case, implying they may do something (even though they won’t.) Another is that they point to the money that’s been set aside for special cases (e.g. Discretionary Housing Payments). They never fail to give the impression that this is sufficient to deal with any genuine hardship. Usually there is mention of an amount e.g. Discretionary Housing Payments total £60 million in 2012/13. This will seem a large sum to the public even though it’s only a tiny fraction of the cuts taking place. There isn’t a chance in hell that such a small amount of funding “on one side” will alleviate the chaos, suffering and mass homelessness that is to come when the bedroom tax, new council ‘poll’ tax and benefit cap are implemented and their effects hit hard, which they undoubtedly will despite the pseudo-reassuring Tory rhetoric that glides with glib indifference over the surface of these horrors.

Stick a public plaster on it.

Unfortunately some problems are so big and so obvious that the Coalition have to pretend they are doing something about them. For example, every fool knows builders have almost stopped building. Given that the housing budget had one of the biggest cuts of all in the Spending Review, there’s precious little they can can do, but they will pretend otherwise. Firstly, they argue that output is going up even when it’s going down (Tory tip – don’t appear on Sunday Politics, choose programmes where they don’t do their research.) Secondly, the Coalition always have to hand some useful initiative available that sounds like it might solve the problem, even if it’s far too small to make any difference. Grant gave us NewBuy and FirstBuy, which both sound sufficiently impressive, but then they may need to invent one or two more when people realise how inconsequential they are. The Coalition have said they are selling more homes under the right to buy Scheme, as if this helps solve the problems, even though they aren’t and it doesn’t.

Richard Vize made an excellent point in the Guardian last week that Cameron and Co. are undermining Local Government and failing to prepare people for the depth of the cuts that are now hitting them – with much worse still in the pipeline. He says that ministers are “giving the impression that public services can indeed manage cuts without pain or profound change. They can’t.” How on earth can the Coalition expect to be taken seriously as a Government, if they make cuts on an unprecedented scale over a dangerously tight time-scale, but refuse even to admit there might be consequences for public services?

Perhaps the frightening answer is that they refuse to admit it because their intention is to push ahead relentlessly, and regardless of public opinion, and that they don’t care about the consequences.

GF.

But the tories have done well with the debt!

A nice little problem for the kids to sought out.

Austerity!

I wonder what Osborne and Cameron's family earnings were for the last 4 years!

http://www.nationaldebtclock.co.uk/

Hays caught out fibbing again......

Haystack - 23 Jun 2014 10:01 - 42729 of 42737

There was an anti austerity march in Central London on Saturday. You wouldn't know from the media reporting. It seems to have been ignored by TV and press news. Not that many people turned up. Is this a sign that austerity has worked and has been seen to work.........................................ENDS

Thousands attend People's Assembly's first austerity protest,

22 June 2014 Last updated at 10:37 BST

The first austerity protest organised by the People's Assembly campaign group has taken place in London.

Organisers say tens of thousands of people met at Portland Place and marched to Parliament Square on Saturday.

The group included politicians and union leaders and was protesting about the impact of cuts around the country.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-27962963

Deficit all Labour's fault!

Just a march of activists on Saturday. Real people don't give a toss.

sticks - are you happy that labour would allow ever more power to devolve to brussels with nary a squawk and certainly without any referral to the voters?

Haystack - 23 Jun 2014 17:26 - 42740 of 42742

Deficit all Labour's fault!..............................ends

IGNORANT POST AS USUAL

Hays,

I can see you are having problems and NHS Mental Health care has had cut backs under the present government make it difficult for you to find a NHS bed.

Ask you wife if she can find a private hospital bed willing to take you.

I am sure she will oblige!

Labour are keen on the federalist agenda. Their aim is a left leaning European centralist government with lots of immigration.

sticks - may i have an answer to the q i posed you (42742) ..... no political diatribe required :-)

Manuel,

I am happy, like the majority of "subjects of the EU", for renegotiation of the laws, rules and regulation within the EU and in the UK.

But feel negotiating rather the constant moaning, bleating, threatening and blustering by Cameron and Cronies, UKIP and others.

Also, the blustering and poncing about by Cameron and crew irritates many in Europe and they will give the UK a less sensitive hearing.

The blustering of Cameron's is seen being done for internal political reasons to try to keep him as a feeble leader of the con party, of which he makes a very capable leader.

for goodness sake fred .... are you really totally incapable of giving a simple response instead of always but always jumping onto your political soapbox?

in fact, i see you don't answer the question, but then perhaps i didn't phrase it well enough, though i still think it clear enough

Manuel,

I am sorry.

i thought that was a simple answer, but forgot your limitations!

Hard luck!

INSIDER INFORMATION HERE ABOUT THE DWP

Dear ------,

They’re figures you won’t hear the DWP press office crowing about, unlike the massive drop in employment and support allowance (ESA) appeals. Nor will you see them splashed across the tabloids.

The latest ESA outcomes statistics were released quietly last week, covering the period July to September 2013.

They show that 27% of new ESA claimants were found fit for work.

In the quarter immediately before the coalition came to power, on the other hand, the proportion of claimants being found fit for work was 61%.

So the percentage being found fit for work under IDS has more than halved.

But it’s the increase in the proportion of claimants being put in the support group that has been the most astonishing. When IDS became a minister it stood at 10%.

It is now an extraordinary 57%.

That’s right: almost six times as many people are getting into the support group under the coalition compared to when Labour was in power.

It’s true that there is such a massive backlog of ESA claims now that these figures may change when all the assessments have been done: there has been a particularly big rise in support group percentages in the last three quarters that statistics are available for.

But this isn’t just a blip: the proportion going into the support group has risen every single quarter since IDS took over. It had more than trebled by the beginning of 2012.

Elsewhere in this newsletter you’ll see:

that the DWP now privately believe universal credit, with its fewer than 6,000 claimants, is dead;
that there is a massive backlog of 700,000 ESA medicals, leading a top judge to declare that the WCA process has virtually collapsed – we have an update on which groups are currently having assessments and which will be left in relative peace;
that three quarters of PIP claims are still undecided, but that PIP success rates are now higher than under DLA;
that the DWP is overturning more than half of its own DLA decisions under mandatory reconsideration;
that an IDS aide bullied the Trussell Trust foodbank into toning down its criticism of benefit cuts.

IDS likes to portray himself as a great reformer, weaning millions of sick and disabled claimants off their supposed benefits dependency.

The reality is that he is a startlingly incompetent failure protected by a discriminatory and unprofessional press office.

And, one day soon, even the hate-mongering tabloids he feeds will grow tired of covering up his catastrophes and turn on him.

IDS likes to portray himself as a great reformer, weaning millions of sick and disabled claimants off their supposed benefits dependency.

The reality is that he is a startlingly incompetent failure protected by a discriminatory and unprofessional press office.

And, one day soon, even the hate-mongering tabloids he feeds will grow tired of covering up his catastrophes and turn on him.

Call me Dave's bosses must be really twisting his nuts...



David Cameron may campaign to leave EU if Juncker is appointed, No 10 suggests

Downing Street refuses to rule out campaigning for a 'no' vote in any future referendum on the future of Britain's place in the EU in an effort to spur Europe into action on reform






By Georgia Graham, Political Correspondent

2:34PM BST 23 Jun 2014



David Cameron has refused to rule out campaigning for Britain to leave the EU if European leaders support the appointment of Jean Claude-Juncker, Downing Street has suggested.


The Prime Minister’s deputy spokesman would not deny reports Mr Cameron has told European leaders that Mr Junker’s election could lead to him recommending Britain vote to leave the EU if the promised referendum takes place in 2017.


Mr Cameron has been attempting to block the appointment of Mr Juncker but is increasingly resigned to defeat.



More: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/eu/10920040/David-Cameron-may-campaign-to-leave-EU-if-Juncker-is-appointed-No-10-suggests.html