George Osborne Options

[Penelope]

Good old George, "we are all in this together" he said before he got into his chauffeur driven limousine to go home to his mansion.

Here's news for you George, no, we aint.

[GMR]

Poor George, he'll be hurt that you are not in it with him.

[Spider]

If the Tories don't get it right before the next election then this country will be in trouble. I noticed that last weeks Labour party conference that, even though they criticised the Tories, they offered no real alternative or solution.

[lordtup]

When the present incumbents took up residence in No 10 they portrayed themselves as the great white hope that would in the course of the next Parliament reduce the deficit , get us back on a sound fiscal footing and generally go down in the annals of history as a modern progressive party for the future .
It is now blatantly obvious that they are just as incompetent as the last lot .

[Berkshirelad]

I noticed that last weeks Labour party conference that, even though they criticised the Tories, they offered no real alternative or solution.

nor did they manage to mention the deficit and how they caused it (and how sorry they are!!)

[Spider]

nor did they manage to mention the deficit and how they caused it (and how sorry they are!!)

That is exactly right. They missed out a lot in their party conference. All party conferences are just a show piece for the converted and gullible.

[Weavers Walk]

nor did they manage to mention the deficit and how they caused it

Excellent! Just a moment of your time please?

Could you explain how the Labour party caused it? I'm sure Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac would be interested.

Maybe, if you still have the time you'd explain how the Tories would have regulated their friends and paymasters in the City better had they been in power?

Thank You.

[Andy Capp]

Could you explain how the Labour party caused it?

I found this:

http://www.debtbombshell.com/britains-budget-deficit.htm


"In 1997 Labour inherited a budget that was actually in balance. After a painful and turbulent decade under the Tories, the public finances had finally been brought under control. But after four years in office Gordon Brown took out the country's credit card and let rip. By the end of 2009-10 our annual deficit had ballooned to £170.8 billion."

[x2lls]

I found this:

http://www.debtbombshell.com/britains-budget-deficit.htm


"In 1997 Labour inherited a budget that was actually in balance. After a painful and turbulent decade under the Tories, the public finances had finally been brought under control. But after four years in office Gordon Brown took out the country's credit card and let rip. By the end of 2009-10 our annual deficit had ballooned to £170.8 billion."

He was also responsible for the wanton destruction of a huge amount of private sector pensions.


Labour always leave this country broke.

[Weavers Walk]

I found this:

http://www.debtbombshell.com/britains-budget-deficit.htm


"In 1997 Labour inherited a budget that was actually in balance. After a painful and turbulent decade under the Tories, the public finances had finally been brought under control. But after four years in office Gordon Brown took out the country's credit card and let rip. By the end of 2009-10 our annual deficit had ballooned to £170.8 billion."

That is certainly one spin on it. (and I suspect one from the Right)

What that graph actually shows, if you look, is that the debt under Labour was handled much better than the previous Tories. That is, up until 2007-8 when the present financial crisis started.

However, if balancing the books, is the yardstick you use to judge a government, then the fact that the Tories are now borrowing more than Labour should somewhat alarm you.

Osborne borrowing

I still haven't seen any evidence to back up the assertion that Labour caused the present global mess we're caught up in.

[blackdog]

I found this:

http://www.debtbombshell.com/britains-budget-deficit.htm

"In 1997 Labour inherited a budget that was actually in balance. After a painful and turbulent decade under the Tories, the public finances had finally been brought under control. But after four years in office Gordon Brown took out the country's credit card and let rip. By the end of 2009-10 our annual deficit had ballooned to £170.8 billion."

The trouble being that this is wrong - Labour inherited a deficit of almost £30bn. Brown turned this into the biggest ever budget surplus before starting the spending spree. The Conservatives had followed much the same pattern in in '79-'96 though it took them a lot longer to turn a much smaller deficit into a surplus following which they too went on a spending spree to try to buy votes.

The huge difference and the cause of the £152bn deficit was the banking crisis in 2008 - prior to this the largest deficit year was 1993 (14 years into Conservative rule). Whoever was in power in 2008 would have spent many billions propping up the banks etc so the huge deficit would have happened regardless of who was in power.

[Andy Capp]

That is certainly one spin on it. (and I suspect one from the Right)

What that graph actually shows, if you look, is that the debt under Labour was handled much better than the previous Tories. That is, up until 2007-8 when the present financial crisis started.

But that wasn't what was said. Labour benefited from a good tax yield, kick-started by the previous government. If you think that the site is right-wing biased, then you haven't read any of the the other pages on the site.

However, if balancing the books, is the yardstick you use to judge a government, then the fact that the Tories are now borrowing more than Labour should somewhat alarm you.

It alarms me, but we are struggling from a lack of growth, and therefore a lack of tax receipts.

I still haven't seen any evidence to back up the assertion that Labour caused the present global mess we're caught up in.

Well you have changed the argument. Labour were responsible for the budget deficit, that is a fact. Whether they were responsible for the size of the national debt (a different calculation) is another matter. In some cases they are; it was on their watch and they didn't see it coming. Whether it would have been any better under any other government is unlikely.

[GMR]

Excellent! Just a moment of your time please?

Could you explain how the Labour party caused it? I'm sure Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac would be interested.

Maybe, if you still have the time you'd explain how the Tories would have regulated their friends and paymasters in the City better had they been in power?

Thank You.

The trouble is they weren't in power at the time; Labour was. It is the second time the Tories had to clean up Labour's mess (1979).

I've read Alister Darlings biography and he admitted that they got it wrong. Also Gordon Brown admitted he should have done things differently. We also mustn't forget Labour's overspending; which Blair blamed Brown for.

[Weavers Walk]

Well you have changed the argument.

Sadly not. One poster on here said 'Labour had caused it', I was replying that although they may or may not have handled it badly, they didn't cause it.

GMR states that Darling said he got it wrong. Allowing that Darling is now to be taken as the font of all knowledge (and not at all just being vindictive and spiteful after Brown and Ed Balls engineered his departure) Darling also goes on to lash “stupid” and “arrogant” bankers for taking Britain to the “brink of collapse".

Some might find this interesting:

Click Through

[Andy Capp]

Sadly not. One poster on here said 'Labour had caused it', I was replying that although they may or may not have handled it badly, they didn't cause it.

Berkshirelad said:

nor did they manage to mention the deficit and how they caused it (and how sorry they are!!)

The deficit is the budget deficit. This is the difference between what a government spends and what it collects. It is a fact that Labour stopped balancing the books and broke its own fiscal rules in around 2001.

After collecting a war chest (originally using Tory fiscal policy), GB went on a spending spree. The problem was he didn't spend it wisely, he spent it on stuff that is not sustainable. Unfortunately for him, he didn't appear to see the financial crash coming (few did), so he was left with no option than to borrow heavily to keep the banks from collapse and to pay for the budget deficit and the burgeoning national debt. This added to the national debt, which is an accumulation of budget deficits.

So, I say, Labour are responsible for the budget deficit the coalition inherited, but what Labour might not be so responsible for is the magnitude of the debt which was influenced heavily by unforeseen circumstances.

Budget Deficit = the difference between how much you spend and receive (over a year).
National Debt = is the accumulation of all the budget cycles, be they surplus or debt.

Deficit and debt will usually be different figures.

GMR states that Darling said he got it wrong. Allowing that Darling is now to be taken as the font of all knowledge (and not at all just being vindictive and spiteful after Brown and Ed Balls engineered his departure) Darling also goes on to lash “stupid” and “arrogant” bankers for taking Britain to the “brink of collapse".

Labour will have no kudos until it can draught its own plans for turning the country round. To be fair to them all, I don't think there is anyone than can do that, but the public gets what the public deserves.

[GMR]

Sadly not. One poster on here said 'Labour had caused it', I was replying that although they may or may not have handled it badly, they didn't cause it.

GMR states that Darling said he got it wrong. Allowing that Darling is now to be taken as the font of all knowledge (and not at all just being vindictive and spiteful after Brown and Ed Balls engineered his departure) Darling also goes on to lash "stupid" and "arrogant" bankers for taking Britain to the "brink of collapse".

Some might find this interesting:

Click Through

Nobody is excusing the bankers, however, for the bankers to get reckless they had to be given free range by Labour; with hindsight Brown and Darling believe they now shouldn't have relaxed the regulations. But you always see it differently when not in power.

[Rusty Bullet]

People with more open minds might like to try this link

Osborne in his own words

[Andy Capp]

People will hopefully recognise the partisan nature of that web source too. What that site ignores is the unsustainable spending policy of the previous government. Public Sector Net Borrowing has been rising since 2001, rising steeply since the financial crash.

My view is, regardless of who was in power, we would be in the stuff. I also don't believe Labour would do a great deal different than the coalition are doing now.

[Spider]

George Osborne is a very strange man who keeps strange company. But would it have been any better if Labour had won with the Liberals support? We will have to see I suppose.

[gel]

George again:
19/10/12
'George Osborne became embroiled in a dispute with a ticket inspector on Friday, after one of his aides asked for him to be allowed to sit in a first class carriage despite only having paid for a standard fare.
The rail fracas occurred while the chancellor was on a train from Wilmslow, near his Tatton constituency, back home to London for the weekend. An ITV journalist in a nearby carriage recorded events in a volley of tweets, which quickly stirred up a frenzy in Westminster.


“Just like Andrew Mitchell, George Osborne obviously thinks it’s one rule for him and another for the plebs he’s so keen to sit apart from,” Mr Dugher said. “So much for ‘we’re all in it together’.”

Virgin Trains confirmed that the incident had occurred but insisted it had been resolved amicably. “I don’t believe the chancellor himself was involved in the discussion,”it said.'

Remember we're all in it together.