Public borrowing £20.3 billion in November alone!

The_White_Horse

70% of their funding comes from Unions.

They like Lord Sugar because he is self made. But they will despise his children - especially if he had the cheek to send them to a decent school!!

Sapphire

markharding557 wrote: »

Labours whole point is to take from those who work to give to scrounging scum, create so much red tape no one can function anymore and place themselves in a position where they can meddle in every facet of everyone's lives. They hate people who do well and always try and bring everyone down to the lowest common denominator so we can all be the same - WE ARE NOT ALL THE SAME YOU LEFTY FILTH!!!!

absolute jokers.

your view of the last twenty years seems very blinkerd ,i seem to recall welfare dependancy was very well established under john major,didn't they encourage doctors to sign people on incapacity to keep unemployment figures down?

As for hating people who do well-why did they appoint alan sugar?are there not millionair labour mps,and tony blair-he seems quite upper class-expensivley educated etc.
Labour socialist! they haven't got a socialist bone in their bodies-everything would be nationalized by now if they were.[/QUOTE]

They appointed the awful Sugar because they perceived he had popular appeal, and would appeal to the 'masses' as a celebrity. As for millionaire labour MPs, etc, there were millionaire leaders in communist Russia. Double standards. :cool:

1984ReturnsForReal_2

The_White_Horse wrote: »

Is it much better, considering the amount of cash thrown at it?

Yes. Much better....

They could save more money on it (management & contracted services & pfis') but there is no doubt its better.


The cons need to stay off being critical of the NHS as it will make them look like idiots to anyone with half a brain who has been ill...

Graham_Devon

With these types of figures, would anyone care to take a guess at the types of policies that may need to be introduced to pay this back, say over the next 10 years?

I wasn't around in the 70's and in the 90's I was at school.

I keep seeing these massive sums of money, I think myself that this is going to hurt, but don't quite know how badly it will hurt.

Basically I would like to prepare myself now, for what may happen in the future. Of course no one actually knows, all we have is living history to show us.

The_White_Horse

basically the leftie filth has f**ked up the lives of two generations, in three lousy terms.

These people should be imprisoned for crimes against humanity!!!

You should be able to opt out of tax and pay for everything privately except for defence of the realm!

Generali

Graham_Devon wrote: »

With these types of figures, would anyone care to take a guess at the types of policies that may need to be introduced to pay this back, say over the next 10 years?

The idea with Government debt isn't to repay it, instead inflation and GDP growth reduce the burden of the debt and so it becomes cheaper (as a proportion of tax receipts) to service the debt so Governments can run deficits pretty much indefinitely. I think since Lady Thatcher was elected in 1979 there have been 3 or 4 years when the UK Government has paid down the nominal level (that is the actual pound note figure) of debt.

Now clearly there is a problem here. What happens if GDP falls or is flat over time? What happens if you have deflation and not inflation over time?

Well Japan has borrowed and printed money over the past 20 years but a risk averse, aging population has gone from being a group of consumers to being a group of (net) savers. This has led to pretty much stagnant GDP 'growth' and deflation and Government debt looks likely to hit 200% of GDP before too long.

If interest rates in Japan rise, the Japanese state is in very serious trouble. A debt of 200% of GDP would cost 10% of GDP (or a quarter of the maximum available taxes in practical terms) to service at an interest rate of just 5%.

Graham_Devon

Thanks Gen.

One question though as I see the "inflate the debt away" argument used quite a lot.

Could we realistically do this when we rely on a "global" economy to survive?

kabayiri

1984ReturnsForReal wrote: »

Yes. Much better....

They could save more money on it (management & contracted services & pfis') but there is no doubt its better.

I don't doubt that it's better.

But at this point in time, we need to look at every department on the grounds of affordability.

There should be no sacred cows.

kabayiri

Generali wrote: »

The idea with Government debt isn't to repay it, instead inflation and GDP growth reduce the burden of the debt and so it becomes cheaper (as a proportion of tax receipts) to service the debt so Governments can run deficits pretty much indefinitely. I think since Lady Thatcher was elected in 1979 there have been 3 or 4 years when the UK Government has paid down the nominal level (that is the actual pound note figure) of debt.

Now clearly there is a problem here. What happens if GDP falls or is flat over time? What happens if you have deflation and not inflation over time?

I'm curious on this growth issue.

What happens if other countries are better placed to come out of this recession before us, and have better foundations in place? Emerging economies such as the BRIC countries are demanding a greater say in future global economic matters.

Are we still pinning a lot of our future prosperity on these large banking institutions we have, like RBS?

Generali

Graham_Devon wrote: »

Thanks Gen.

One question though as I see the "inflate the debt away" argument used quite a lot.

Could we realistically do this when we rely on a "global" economy to survive?

A year ago I would have said definitely not. Any attempt to do so would have led to a strike in the Gilt markets.

Now? Well it's not quite so clear cut. QE isn't working insofar as it hasn't raised lending and the money supply as measured by M4 is flat-ish. Inflation hasn't exactly been galloping ahead either. How can that be? Increased money stock >> increased money supply >> increased inflation.

The thing is, much of the QE money has been used to buy Gilts held by non-UK institutions who have the most to lose from the UK 'inflating the debt away'.

If the Government can strip out the foreign borrowers it would be pretty easy to force through more Gilt sales in the UK in the short term regardless of what basket case monetary and fiscal policies the Government is persuing - all they have to do is change the risk rules for pension funds thus forcing them to buy more Gilts. They already (AIUI) force you to invest the entirety of your annuity into a single asset class, Gilts.

Basically the Government would be confiscating a part of private pension schemes, ie confiscating savings. There is a history of doing things like this in Argentina amongst other places.

An alternative wuold be for the Government to balance the books and then expand the QE program to cover pretty much all of the National Debt. That would be a big "F--- Y--" to holders of UK debt and would cause big problems later but would certainly fix a short term problem.