'I messed up' - David Cameron

StevieJ

Emy1501 wrote: »

So far, the Bank says it has spent £175bn on this policy - with another £25bn to be injected by the end of January 2010.
The surprisingly weak third-quarter GDP numbers, which showed the economy contracted by 0.4% between July and September, indicated the economy is still struggling to recover.
DeAnne Julius, a former member of the Monetary Policy Committee, says there's very little evidence that quantitative easing is providing any support for the "real" economy i.e. for industries other than banking.
However, she says there are some signs that it has helped the financial markets by keeping down the interest rate on government bonds.

But the BOE says it was there to fight deflation which so far has been successful (in the article), no more Chewbacca please BTW DeAnne Julius doesn't say it is not working there.

wymondham

'pledges' mean nothing. You should always ignore any sentence with the word 'pledge' in it - see how much real substance is about .... not much!

Milarky

wymondham wrote: »

'pledges' mean nothing. You should always ignore any sentence with the word 'pledge' in it - see how much real substance is about .... not much!

Yes, he didn't even say 'pledge' he said 'I believe [that such and such]'. Yet the media presented it as 'policy' - their call. I made a slip-up however in the quote from the Tory website. They do describe it as 'a campaign' [to get pensioners to 'ask' the government to follow their own 'submission'] in the April 2009 budget. So far, so good. But then they describe the concept as a 'plan' (which I suppose it was) - so definitely less than a 'policy' and certainly not a 'pledge'.

BTW I definitely am not coming on here defending Brown's role as Chancellor or PM.

Milarky

Whoops, even the Speaker, David Cameron described it as a 'policy announcement' at the time - thus making it a 'policy' rather than a 'submission'

(Long Quote)

In order to help deal with Labour's Debt Crisis and help turn Britain from a spend, spend, spend society into a save, save, save society it is time to abolish income tax on savings for everyone on the basic rate of tax, with top rate taxpayers continuing to pay the same and it is time to raise the tax allowance for pensioners by £2,000.


We would pay for this change by restricting the growth of public spending in the coming year 2009/10. While the government has cut back its spending plans from 2010 onwards, so far it has left its 2009 spending plans untouched.


I believe this is wrong. The time to start being prudent is now. Why? Because by doing so we can help the victims of Labour's recession and help build the long term strength of the economy. These two proposals would be more than paid for by maintaining the government's spending plans for the NHS, schools, defence and International development, but restricting other departments to a 1 per cent increase in real terms. A culture of thrift at the heart of government, and a culture of saving at the heart of our economy: these changes will provide strong foundations for the new economy we plan to build. And there are two further policy announcements we're making today that illustrate the new direction in which we want to lead our economy.

Now is that just semantics or were they trying to gild the lilly by or in what sense are they not 'policy announcements' but merely 'submissions'?