"Cost of living crisis" nonsense

Fella

Can't believe the Tories are giving this nonsense the oxygen of publicity.

Leaving aside for a moment, the fact that it was Labour who screwed the economy so royally it beggers belief that whatever nonsense they trot out regarding the recovery is given so much credence.

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Southend1

Except there is a cost of living crisis. Pay has been lagging well behind prices for a few years now. The cost of essentials ie housing, energy, food has risen particularly fast in relation to wages.

michaels

Yep - real wages have fallen by a similar amount to the fall in the deficit - ie we are living slightly less off the back off borrowing. What the govt borrows is paid back via taxation - ie by all of us so if we start trying to live off only income rather than borrowing then we feel worse off in the short term.

The Labour solution to this 'crisis' seems to be for the govt to carry on borrowing more and more on our behalf and s*d the future.

nickj_2

personal tax allowance up , council tax frozen , no fuel duty , the govt has done it's share , the cost of food, fuel, gas and electric etc are out of it's control .

N9eav

Personally I have had a wage freeze for 3 years, so I am down potentially £3000 in what I would have had under the previous Government pay agreement. A lot of prices have stabilised recently and diesel and heating oil is dropping again.
Electricity gone up to pay for share dividends.
But interest rates are low saving me a bundle on my mortgage, council tax freeze and water rebate in the southwest, although we pay more than anyone else. Tax breaks are neutral for me as they up the amount at the bottom end, but reduce the threshold in the mid range.
So I am worse off, but there was a problem with the economy that needed fixing urgently. I think the Tories are doing the right thing and now with improving figures for unemployment and economy forecast we are looking pretty good compared to most countries.

CLAPTON

even a child can see this is nonsense

Fella

Good reply. Oh hang on, I mean your usual sniping garbage with no cohesive point to make.

Fella

Southend1 wrote: »

Except there is a cost of living crisis. Pay has been lagging well behind prices for a few years now. The cost of essentials ie housing, energy, food has risen particularly fast in relation to wages.

No there isn't. The current situation is basically far better than any sensible economist dared hope it would be at this point. Standards of living will rise if the economy improves, it's inevitable.

Anyone who thinks things are going badly has no comprehension of just how much mess we were (are) in when Labour left office.

A reasonable analogy would be if someone was badly beaten up, then went to A&E who patched them up, and afterwards the person complained because they didn't feel as good as they did prior to being beaten up.

CLAPTON

michaels wrote: »

Yep - ral wages have fallen by a similar amount to the fall in the deficit - ie we are living slightly less off the back off borrowing. What the govt borrows is paid back via taxation - ie by all of us so if we start trying to live off only income rather than borrowing then we feel worse off in the short term.

The Labour solution to this 'crisis' seems to be for the govt to carry on borrowing more and more on our behalf and s*d the future.

the current government's solution was / is to borrow more as evidenced by the continuing deficit.

it's a moot point exactly what the 'right' level of borrowing 'ought' to be

what the government borrows is paid back largely by printing money and the inflation effect: difficult to determine the outcome sometimes and most of the money is owed to UK taxpayers

ruggedtoast

My salary has been pretty much frozen for 4 years because, mainly,there aren't many proper jobs around anymore. Back then it also cost about £1 a litre to fill up the car. Rents and house prices were already high, but not as bad as now.

Water, fuel and heating costs have spiralled, the trains and buses rocket in price every year and VAT is still a painful 20%.

I'm glad you're doing well with the recovery Fella, but for many people it exists on paper only, and as dreadful as Labour were in power they are in opposition now and it is not their job to support Coalition spin.

Fella

ruggedtoast wrote: »

My salary has been pretty much frozen for 4 years because, mainly,there aren't many proper jobs around anymore. Back then it also cost about £1 a litre to fill up the car. Rents and house prices were already high, but not as bad as now.

Water, fuel and heating costs have spiralled, the trains and buses rocket in price every year and VAT is still a painful 20%.

I'm glad you're doing well with the recovery Fella, but for many people it exists on paper only, and as dreadful as Labour were in power they are in opposition now and it is not their job to support Coalition spin.

Either deliberately or not, you're missing the point entirely.

The point is that we DON'T have a "cost of living crisis". This is a meaningless phrase spun up by Labour. What we have is an economic crisis that we're slowly working our way out of. When the figures were bad, Labour were happy to talk about the economic crisis. Now that the figures are good, they cannot, since pretty much every accepted measure of how well the economy is doing looks increasingly good. So Labour have invented a new, pretty-much unquantifiable measure & coined it the "cost of living crisis".

That's the point I'm making. Everyone knows that there are lots of people worse off than before the recession. Only a child is surprised by that fact & only a child would have expected anything different at this stage.