The Leaders Debate Megathread

[dell12]

The descriptions of waste in the Civil Service. There were numerous examples suggesting significant amounts of money can be squeezed out of the public sector. The public sector has been through spending review after spending review to do this already. It simply isn't possible to achieve anything much more squeezing the public sector without it directly affecting the services that people rely on.

 

I know for example the "credit cards" that Cameron mentioned as being used to spend a £billion on food and drink, is complete tosh. They are used for easy payments of small items unavailable through formal internal procurement channels. The money will mostly have been spent in places like office world on competitively priced essentials, rather than food or drink.

 

You don't happen to work for the civil service do you?

 

I tend to agree with you about the idea of what has been deemed 'waste'. Irrespective of how important the service is, what has been defined as 'waste' is people's jobs and livelihoods! Packaging it as 'waste' is a very neat way of anoucing jobs cuts which sound seemingly painless.

 

While I agree that Clegg tonight did probably use the term 'waste' a little liberally, I feel that cuts are going to have to be made (though no fault of our own) in some way. As a (old) Labour voter i'm mightily annoyed at New Labour at their lack of banking regulation imposed on those who are the reason we're having to make these cuts in the first place. I certainly don't trust the Tories to make the cuts, which doesn't really leave me with many options.

[shorty-]

Why does it matter what Gordon Brown looks like? Its the policies which matter.

Gordon Brown is the best person to help with the current financial situation as he has the most experience. We cannot blame Brown for the economic crisis as it was a global event out of our control.

I think Brown did very well considering all the stick he gets. He is the only one who truely believes in social justice.

[Vague_Boy]

i'm mightily annoyed at New Labour at their lack of banking regulation imposed on those who are the reason we're having to make these cuts in the first place.

 

These cuts need to be made because Britain has been living beyond its means since at least 1998.

 

The deficit (that is, the amount that we overspend every year) is around £175 billion per annum.

 

The debt (which is the total of all the annual accumulated defecits) is over £800 billion and expected to reach over a trillion pounds by 2012.

 

If there is one date future historians may look back on as having heralded the eventual self-destruction of Britain – let alone that of the New Labour "project" – it is July 14, 1998. That was the day Gordon Brown first indicated that, after initially sticking to the strict curbs on public spending he had inherited from the Tories (which by 1999 had cut back the Government's share of national spending to 36.3 per cent), he was now preparing to let rip. As The Economist put it at the time, it was the moment when the Iron Chancellor morphed into Father Christmas.

 

By 1997, public spending stood at £322 billion. After Mr Brown's 1998 Comprehensive Spending Review, it was projected that it might almost double, over 10 years, to more than £600 billion. So it turned out. The public sector exploded in every direction, as these additional hundreds of billions began flooding into health, education, social benefits – and into the inflated salaries and pensions of our new lords of local government. Nothing better symbolised the way that much of this new money was spent than the fact, noted by the King's Fund a year or two after the start of the spree, that the number of managers in the National Health Service had risen by 66 per cent – much faster than the numbers of new doctors and nurses.

 

And now we begin to see the consequences. As public spending rises this year to £661 billion, more than a quarter of it is having to be borrowed, giving us a larger public sector deficit than Greece, the country having to be bailed out by the IMF.

LINK

 

"Giving us a larger public sector deficit than Greece". And that's without counting "off-budget" items like the cost of PFI projects (but that's likely to be a mere £170 billion or so, chump change these days).

 

Most people are utterly clueless about the dire financial situation the UK is in. All they want is for the makework McJob gravy train to continue. It won't.

[bizzle]

Anyone else watch it? I am watching it now.....23 mins in my ears hurt from their BS & I feel like twatting David Cameron. Lord knows how he thinks he can appeal to the general public. He is very good at avoiding Q's & twisting the truth.

 

All three are good at tallking the talk but will they & can they deliver.

 

Cameron has that presence that makes you dislike him. He has one of them faces. He reminds me of Willam Hague but worser.

 

My vote is split between the Libs Dems & Labour.

[redrobbo]

I listened to the debate on the radio. I thought both Brown & Clegg were far better than Cameron.

[bizzle]

I listened to the debate on the radio. I thought both Brown & Clegg were far better than Cameron.

 

I agree & they both came across as they understand the general public however Cameron came across as quite isolating with his old views. I don't think he knows how to relate to the general public really well.

 

They all (two) sounded really well & said what most of the country wants to here but it will be interesting to see how they can change & deliver what they say.

 

I think before this (debate) that the Tories may have had a good chance to get in & it will probably be a close call between them & Labour but after watching the debate I think Labour will succeed. Nick Clegg has definately got new voters after tonight me thinks.

[esme]

thread merge

[purdyamos]

Why does it matter what Gordon Brown looks like? Its the policies which matter.

Gordon Brown is the best person to help with the current financial situation as he has the most experience. We cannot blame Brown for the economic crisis as it was a global event out of our control.

I think Brown did very well considering all the stick he gets. He is the only one who truely believes in social justice.

 

 

Rubbish. The crisis is global, but the way it has impacted on countries is starkly different, and that is because each nation had in place different fiscal policies and practices. Gordon Brown took the shackles off while chancellor kicking off a delusional free for all. Our situation is way more precarious than many other comparable countries, and that hasn't happened by random accident.

[Wildcat]

.........

Most people are utterly clueless about the dire financial situation the UK is in. All they want is for the makework McJob gravy train to continue. It won't.

 

Despite all the hyperbole public sector debt has been much higher than the 76% today. As right wing FT and Spectator Columnist Samuel Brittain puts it:

 

Debt ratios of this size are historically far from unprecedented. In the early Victorian period the ratio was nearly 200 per cent and almost reached that level again in the early 1920s. In 1956 it was just under 150 per cent. Harold Macmillan, who was chancellor at the time, quoted the historian Lord Macaulay: “At every stage in the growth of that debt it has been seriously asserted by wise men that bankruptcy and ruin were at hand; yet still the debt kept on growing, and still bankruptcy and ruin were as remote as ever.” In fact the debt was gradually reduced from the peaks mentioned above without any heroic gestures.

 

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/4679c2be-aed0-11de-96d7-00144feabdc0.html?nclick_check=1

 

And as he goes on to say:

 

The danger of premature tightening was illustrated in the US in 1936-37, when the ending of a war veterans’ bonus and the introduction of social security taxes helped push the US back into recession when recovery from the Great Depression was far from complete.

 

He explains in this article the common assumption that is the flaw of people's thinking on the subject:

 

The basic fallacy is known as the fallacy of composition: the belief that what is true on the small scale must be true on the large. Shakespeare's Polonius said "Never a borrower nor a lender be." Margaret Thatcher advised young people not to get into debt (except of course to buy a house!) Even accepting these homilies at their face value, they do not necessarily apply to the Government of the whole country.

 

The big error of the present economic discussion is to treat national budgets as on a par with the budgets of individuals or firms, which need to balance except for narrowly defined investment projects. Even if you also favour a balanced budget at the national level, it is at most a second order rule to give way if it impedes the achievement of broader economic objectives.

 

In fact the public sector balance has an entirely different function: that of offsetting gross disequilibria in the national and international economy. If attempted savings exceed investment opportunities, public sector deficits are needed for as long as necessary to fill the gap - a job which will otherwise be done by stagnation and unemployment. When economic recovery has reached a certain stage, the time may come to roll back public sector borrowing. But we have certainly not reached that stage yet and it is far too early to rule out a second or even third leg of the recession.

 

http://www.samuelbrittan.co.uk/spee59_p.html

 

So why are all the main parties queuing up to reject the wisdom learnt from past recessions to attack the public sector?

 

Why do we appear to have a choice of vindictive donkeys competing to cut public services when the evidence of the past shows this will be bad for the economy?

 

We need some more intelligent thinking from the people that would be our leaders if they are to really help the country. It may require challenging the financial myth of composition that what is good on a small scale is also good on a large scale, but if they stick with populist sounding policies that don't engage with the financial realities we will all be poorer for it.

[bizzle]

there's a megathread on this already

 

Sorry, I have just noticed. When I was making the thread it never came up in the suggestions box that a thread similar to this had been made.

 

Can this thread be merged with the one that is already existing. Thank you