Osborne's plan to spend his way out of trouble

Graham_Devon

wotsthat wrote: »

Apparently there have been no cuts but there have been lots of savings. I thought the words were interchangeable but the difference is very very important. Cuts, which haven't happened, don't affect GDP and savings, which happen all the time, don't affect GDP.

Well I thought you'd find it difficult to answer or discuss. No surprises you are going for the "strip the context and have a pop" route!

Hamish often has a good argument. But this time he managed to spectacularly dodge it.

wotsthat

Graham_Devon wrote: »

Well I thought you'd find it difficult to answer or discuss. No surprises you are going for the "strip the context and have a pop" route!

The only context to your last few posts is that your arch internet rival has posted and and you are hardwired to argue the opposite point no matter how silly or obscure the reasoning gets.

Come on - in real life you wouldn't really make a big deal about the difference between a reduction in spending and a cut - would you?

Mr_Mumble

Funny how Hamish is now using "real terms" in favour of his government spending spiel when he so often ignores it when looking at house prices

The UK government's planned "total managed expenditure" for 2011/12 at the time of the 2011 budget was £710.4bn up from £694.4bn that was spent in the 2010/11 financial year.

Many look at total spending, see it go up and say there are no cuts. Others look at individual cases and see nominal or real cuts and surmise everything is being cut back on.

The Tory government came in and changed the composition of spending plans quite drastically and the press have done a very poor job at informing the public about this.

The government splits spending into two areas - they're shown as "departmental expenditure" and "managed expenditure" in HM Treasury's documents but I like to use the laymen terms of "services" and "distribution".

Government provided services, aka departmental expenditure, is being cut in real-terms quite sharply (current expenditure rises from £327.6bn in 2010-11 to 'only' £335.4bn in 2015-16) it feels particularly bad for certain government services such as the judiciary, defense, transport and police since the biggest government services, NHS and education, are being protected.

On the other hand the amount government distributes (e.g. benefits, tax credits, debt repayment, public sector pension payments, EU transfers) is rising at a strong pace (current expenditure rises from £305.6bn in 2010-11 to £378.0bn in 2015-16). So, while services are being cut the amount being allocated by government is still going up at a fair clip because the amount government distributes is, politically, more difficult to reel in.

Note: all of the above can be be found on page 93 of the 2011 budget. For clarity's sake, and the fact it looks like we may see a drastic change tomorrow, I've excluded capital/gross investment in all the above numbers except for total managed expenditure.

macaque_2

HAMISH_MCTAVISH wrote: »

Stimulus spending is no different to any other spending. And spending stimulates growth, which eventually becomes self sustaining.

That was Gordon Brown's theory but as we are discovering, it is deeply flawed. Much of Government spending creates dependency not growth.

Graham_Devon

wotsthat wrote: »

The only context to your last few posts is that your arch internet rival has posted and and you are hardwired to argue the opposite point no matter how silly or obscure the reasoning gets.

Come on - in real life you wouldn't really make a big deal about the difference between a reduction in spending and a cut - would you?

Excuse me?

Hamish is editing out parts of sentences to make it look as if staff are being cut.

Yet you pick me up on posting the FULL sentence, and arguing that what he is saying is not only factually incorrect, but emotional twaddle...and secondly, he's actually resorting to editing out parts of paragraphs!

He simply refuses to answer the question. This isn't about arguing. I started simply by asking what cuts. He refused to answer and turned it around into a personal issue straight away. Re-read. I only asked "what cuts".

Reasonable answer would have led to a reasonable discussion. As it is, it didn't and he ended up simply fabricating stuff by actually deleting words from his apparently quotes.

You'd normally answer none of this and simply have a wisecrack in response. You won't now, as I have highlighted it. But come on. Even you would find it difficult to back someone up when they are purposely editing stuff out to make it look like something else.

heathcote123

HAMISH_MCTAVISH wrote: »

teaching grant under the government’s plans …
York St John University teaching grants
York St John University (YSJ) is facing the abolition of its entire …

I'll admit I only skimmed that one ... but my eyes landed mid scroll on this one:

Plans to build a new athletics track at Chase High School in Southend were scrapped after £660k of government funding for the …

Is that like an athletics track you can make out of grass and white paint?

660k for a school athletic track? really?

Is it any wonder we need to make cuts?

Graham_Devon

And now hes off just posting random new threads about cuts. Good lord.

HAMISH_MCTAVISH

heathcote123 wrote: »

I'll admit I only skimmed that one .

BTW answered you in full here

http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showpost.php?p=48912735&postcount=30

Which you may have missed in all the GD thread trashing.

HAMISH_MCTAVISH

Graham_Devon wrote: »

And now hes off just posting random new threads about cuts. Good lord.

You should probably tell the 69% of UK voters that think the cuts are too much that they're wrong. There are no cuts. Just "grants not being renewed". :rotfl:

zenmaster

heathcote123 wrote: »

I'll admit I only skimmed that one ... but my eyes landed mid scroll on this one:

Plans to build a new athletics track at Chase High School in Southend were scrapped after £660k of government funding for the …

Is that like an athletics track you can make out of grass and white paint?

660k for a school athletic track? really?

Is it any wonder we need to make cuts?

Well, they'd need to cut the grass.