Election campaign kicks off

CLAPTON

Graham_Devon wrote: »

Sorry, but you have suggested it's wrong for me to suggest people who can afford to pay for prescriptions pay for them - instead of getting them free from the state....

....but then equally have a pop at lower earning individuals going "cap in hand" to the state suggesting they should do more to look after themselves.

Your desire to have a go has overtaken your ability to avoid shooting yoursef in both feet.

most people can afford to pay for prescriptions : the current exceptions are political policy and not essential need

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N1AK wrote: »

UK government debt was £530 billion before the crisis. We have borrowed £124 billion in total to support the banks. Since 2008 total debt has gone up £700 billion. So although the bailout is a huge amount of money, it's far less than total borrowing before or after the crisis.

The bank based debt is about 10% of our national debt.

I agree with all you are saying....

I'd also like to check some of the facts because I've been looking at ONS data and what you say is not what I found there. So I've probably misunderstood the data....

GDP was 370 billion at 2008 and gov debt was 40% of GDP at that point.... so your figure of gov debt at 530 billion pre crash doesn't match ONS.

Some data shows debt vs GDP massively change in 2008, but GDP only decreased by very small percentages, around 2%. So the data doesn't all match up.

I'd like to see some clear official online stats that explains the public debt and how is it comprised.

It is such a politically charged data set we should all know and facts and understand it clearly to avoid being fooled by the politicians.