Prime Minister warns of 'Years of pain ahead'

thescouselander

Old_Slaphead wrote: »

Your original comment was that you thought the private sector wasn't doing as badly as made out was apparently based on the premise that your OH received a 7% payrise & a large bonus.

Your comment above has now been adjusted to "not all have suffered" - subtley different and impossible to refute


I think that your observation was based of a fairly small and probably unrepresentitive sample.

I prefer wider-ranging ONS stats which show, at around 1.5% for the private sector as a whole, pay awards have been significantly lower than the 2.5% average awarded to the publc sector....this in addition to significant job cuts & reduced hours working.

I have not adjusted my comments. Originally I was replying to:

kabayiri wrote: »

So far the pain has been completely uneven.

Ask anyone who worked in private sectors hit, who have had to take pay cuts. I know mine has been down for several years now.

Ask savers who receive minimal interest now.

It's more a case of spreading the pain out to other areas now.

So I did ask anyone - I asked my OH whose experience did not match the original supposition.



Furthermore my comments weren't just based on the experience of my OH. I cant think of anyone who I know working in the private sector who has been given a pay rise they are unhappy with. No one I know has been made redundant with the exception of one person who was working for the council (therefore public sector).

So no, based on the anecdotal evidence I have seen first hand I don't believe some of the nonsense posted on here re conditions in the private sector. My original point still stands, things are not universally bad across the private sector.

Degenerate

donaldtramp wrote: »

Better than expected?????????
It's a lot worse than that. The debt isn't £156 billion. The budget deficit is £156billion, which means we are currently living beyond our means to the tune of £156billion per annum.

Actual Debt is closer to one trillion, built up over years of increasing budget deficits.

Try to actually understand what is behind the numbers please before you rec posts eh?

The comprehension problem is yours, since in your attempt to patronize me you have failed to contradict me at all, just quoted numbers and beseeched me to "actually understand". Nowhere in my post did I say anything to indicate a confusion between the budget deficit and the cumulative national debt, and in any case the point I made was valid for both measures.

You're obviously struggling a bit, so let me spell this out v e r y s l o w l y :

£156B Actual deficit was lower than £163.4B predicted deficit

Adding a lower than expected deficit to our cumulative debt produces a lower than expected cumulative debt.

Therefore both measures came out lower than expected.

By saying things are "worse than expected" Cameron is lying, unless we are to believe that he actually had a way more optimistic view than Brown and Darling and expected a deficit lower than even the £156B figure.

Graham_Devon wrote: »

Figures don't matter here. It's a labour supporter trying to spin that cameron is now lying.

On no, let's be clear the figures matter rather a lot. The thing is, they've been encouraging recently. Economic growth revised up, deficit revised down. This just doesn't fit the "national crisis" narrative that Cameron wants to use to justify his cuts. So instead he's decided to just lie about it.

wolvoman

Degenerate wrote: »

let's be clear the figures matter rather a lot. The thing is, they've been encouraging recently. Economic growth revised up, deficit revised down. This just doesn't fit the "national crisis" narrative that Cameron wants to use to justify his cuts. So instead he's decided to just lie about it.

So is everything rosy then? Can we keep on spending?

kabayiri

thescouselander wrote: »

So I did ask anyone - I asked my OH whose experience did not match the original supposition.

Incorrect.

I stated 'ask anyone in the private sector WHO has had to take a paycut'.

Not even the Hamish brand of esoterica maths can describe your wife's 7% pay rise as a cut.

My original point was that the pain so far had been felt in an uneven fashion. This is both by private/public and by sector. The impact of the recession to manufacturing heartlands is much more acute than wealthier areas such as London.

For me personally it wasn't so much the reduction in income, but the need to demonstrate flexibility. I was told by the client that to win a particular contract we had to reduce specific costs. I was part of those costs. It made sense to be pragmatic.

I honestly think that if we see flexibility from all sectors we can minimise the abrupt loss of income a job loss represents. Will that happen though?

JP45

Degenerate wrote: »

£156B Actual deficit was lower than £163.4B predicted deficit

By saying things are "worse than expected" Cameron is lying, unless we are to believe that he actually had a way more optimistic view than Brown and Darling and expected a deficit lower than even the £156B figure.

I'm not sure what to make of Cameron's claim that things are worse than expected, given the recent improvement in the budget deficit figures.

It's possible that he's basing it on a more gloomy set of growth forecasts. I seem to recall reading an article in the past couple of days which suggested that the new Office for Budget Responsibility is likely to adopt a lower set of growth forecasts for next year and beyond, more in line with those of indepedent forecasters.

If that is the case then I suppose it would provide some justification for Cameron's claim that the situation is worse than expected.

kabayiri

Is it possible that Cameron feels that the public mindset hasn't adapted to the situation in front of us?

Perhaps if they keep stressing the need for cuts and cost control over the coming months, it will slowly embed itself into the public psyche.

lostinrates

JP45 wrote: »

I'm not sure what to make of Cameron's claim that things are worse than expected, given the recent improvement in the budget deficit figures.

It's possible that he's basing it on a more gloomy set of growth forecasts. I seem to recall reading an article in the past couple of days which suggested that the new Office for Budget Responsibility is likely to adopt a lower set of growth forecasts for next year and beyond, more in line with those of indepedent forecasters.

If that is the case then I suppose it would provide some justification for Cameron's claim that the situation is worse than expected.

Dave said today:

But what we didn't know for sure before is how much the interest on our debt is likely to rise in the years to come. We didn't know this because the last government refused to publish the information. Now we've got the figure, I can see why they tried to keep it secret. So what's the figure?

chucky

kabayiri wrote: »

Is it possible that Cameron feels that the public mindset hasn't adapted to the situation in front of us?

Perhaps if they keep stressing the need for cuts and cost control over the coming months, it will slowly embed itself into the public psyche.

according to some people they're talking down the economy to make them look good in the future by saving us from those really deep cuts that they promised in the run up to the election.

Degenerate

wolvoman wrote: »

So is everything rosy then? Can we keep on spending?

I'm pretty sure you'll find all sides of the political spectrum agree public spending should continue, except perhaps the anarchists.

Thrugelmir

tomterm8 wrote: »

It would be stupid to ring fence the NHS. Isn't going to happen. Can't happen.

Front line budgets have been squeezed for years. Every year they have made to make efficency savings by making their budgets pay for more. This year its 4%.