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Comments
@Arkady - my point was to criticise your Liberals and they are even bigger target now than before the election [ironic given the loss of seats] This needn't always require me to furnish an alternative idea. In your facing-all-directions-at-once bubble that might be confusing. Perhaps you're lashing after being suckered in to a Tory govt. by your party that now stands for so much of what you didn't vote for and the great LIberal tradition is a looking blue-lipped. There are numerous Liberal heads in sand for certain.
@ADGS what Tory stereotype was that? - the one that says they all hate poor people, or anyone different from themselves. or the one that says they hate paying for an NHS and BUPA, state schools and school fees. Or the one that truly believes Labour ran up the national debt all by itself without any help from incompetent Tory-voting bankers and without the need to re-balance UK's investment in infrastructure and public services after more than a decade of neglect by guess who?
Tell me this budget was ALL about economics and not ideology
from a Cabinet of millionaires [23 out of 30 approx.] Tell me you heard a cacophonous support around 'our country' as George likes to call it for his budget speech which 'rescued' us from the brink despite being the first in many years that didn't talk about creating jobs.
Of course these are ‘new’ ideas from a self- branded 'progressive coalition' marketed as honest and fair. No one was pretending cuts weren't necessary or imminent, the country knew that yet Nick,Dave & George have spent 50 days reiterating the obvious in a Smarm Campaign to make us believe they are a solution. The question of implementation looms large as always.
The interesting figures compare like this:
Previous govt. planned to halve the debt over next four years and had projected a deficit by 2014 of 1.4trillion - remember they were to pass a law requiring any Govt. to halve the deficit in that period.
This new govt. are making cuts at approx 150% of that proposed scale and their LibCon. projected deficit for 2014 is 1.3trillion.
[worth it?]
This 'emergency coalition' budget will take £2bil. from the banks and £13bil. in VAT from the rest of us - disproportionately most from the poor. [fair?] Explain the logic in increasing a tax on consumption whilst at the same time making sure we all have less to spend. [ To yield the same amount of tax revenue from less expenditure perhaps? - surely this 'tough' budget is not a smoke screen ]
Boy that showed the private sector, I bet they won’t misbehave again especially now the FSA is being placed within the Bank of England and they are on ‘trust’ to regulate themselves. Oh, and the small matter of £30plus-bil. being removed from the economy - e.g introducing medical assessment for every disabled person to check that they are still disabled [ ‘So you still blind or what?! How come you need Sunglasses ' or 'If you're deaf how come you just heard the doorbell!' ] Intimidate them off their benefits.
Choking the money supply and higher unemployment are pre-requisites for this to work. [ Still it's handy to deal with rebels - ask Chile the only other country to use a similar economic strategy etc. and then sell the idea to Thatcher - we have been here before!]
Flatten the public sector where salaries have been frozen and 100,000 jobs have already gone in last two years – but hey what did the public sector ever do for us? - ok apart from free health, the emergency services, free schools,[ i.e a no payment required not a 'Free School' where pushy parents pool mater & pater's inheritance/capital gain from second home and set up something nice for their kids with match funds from the taxpayers money] etc. etc.
Again, who was it who said ? ‘words are not enough’
Not Nick or Dave that's for sure that would require an original script. Saw their display on TV last night they really really are the Smug Brothers. Nick's point about children, grand children having to pay down our debt was vomit-worthy. What the hell have we done for a national debt that stems back to 1917 at least - it's not really something you get a choice in - typically deceitful of Clegg to sound caring whilst avoiding a question. He's a chinless lying careerist much like Cameron.
Similarly, New Labour were already bent on privatising Jobseeker's - I very narrowly escaped the workhouse lite programmes which resulted. Intimidating people off benefits? That was already well underway. Which is precisely why I place no faith in them as they were, or as they would have been had they clung on. What they might become after a rethink, and if they make the right choice of leader - well that's a different matter.
As for general support for the budget - the only poll I've seen was quoting 59% in favour. Even with modern house prices, that's an awful lot of millionaires. Personally, I wouldn't go so far as to say I'm in favour of it - especially with the climbdown on CGT - but I do think it's better than New Labour would have managed (they'd have had to find the money to fund eg ID cards as well, and were rumoured to be contemplating the VAT rise themselves), and definitely better than a Tory budget not ameliorated by the Lib Dems would have been. So I sure as Hell don't regret my vote. And hey, better chinless than eyeless.