The Chairman Mao resembling, Monarchy hating, threat to Britain, Labour Party thread

[Chindie]

5 minutes ago, blandy said:

I'm not sure that's exactly right, is it? The black hole exists because the (then) Tory Gov't set plans and wotnot for doing stuff and spending money on doing that stuff, but actually didn't allocate the resources, or allocated lower resources than are credible. Yes the paydeal for public  sector workers is part of it, but the tories set aside an unrealistic 2% for that, some of which was to come from non-credible cuts to education, health etc. budgets to pay for it. I think the pay review body didn't report till after the election. When the IFS and the OBR say the Labour Gov't is right (broadly) about the black hole, I tend to accept that argument. Of course if Labour had different objectives around overall debt levels and stuff, they wouldn't necessarily have to chop projects and so on, but the "black hole" would still be there in the budget - it would just be filled by borrowing the money.

You've essentially agreed with me, but chose to clothe it in a manner the red Tories prefer. 

It's a choice to make a 'blackhole', or resolve it in other ways. The original Tories were **** around, everyone knew that, everyone knew the story was going to be the finances were buggered, but it's a choice how that is approached and how that is dealt with. Labour have made an austerity choice and set lines they wish to meet and are making out that this is objectively the only choice, with the usual household budget allegory crap. They've chosen to make the issue, and we all know why.

Liars.

[blandy]

Quote

the extent of the in-year funding pressures does genuinely appear to be greater than could be discerned from the outside, which only adds to the scale of the problem...

...some of the specifics are indeed shocking, and raise some difficult questions for the last government. If the scale of these overspends and spending pressures was apparent in the spring – and in lots of cases, there’s no reason to suppose otherwise – then it is hard to understand why they weren’t made clear or dealt with in the Spring Budget.  Jeremy Hunt’s £10 billion cut to national insurance looks ever less defensible. On asylum costs, the decision to effectively stop processing claimants, and to budget virtually nothing for the resultant costs of housing them, looks like very poor policy making. The new Chancellor is right to be cross....

The requirement for the Treasury to share more details of the pressures on departmental budgets with the OBR is eminently sensible, as is the commitment to hold only one major fiscal event a year. The proof will be in the pudding, but these changes should lead to better and more transparent fiscal policy making.”

IFS response to Rachel Reeves’ spending audit | Institute for Fiscal Studies

 

[PaulC]

18 hours ago, tonyh29 said:

Here’s a policy that will kill old people , but don’t worry , most of them voted Tory and probably voted leave as well  …

Ah well that’s ok then , as you were 

£200 going to make a difference between life and death. And the poorest pensioners, those on pension credit will still get it. 

[blandy]

Just now, Chindie said:

You've essentially agreed with me, but chose to clothe it in a manner the red Tories prefer. 

I don't think so. I don't disagree with you mostly on this. The point I'm trying to get across is that the tories (deliberately, I think) hid costs they knew would be incurred from the OBR and they spelt out plans to do x, y and z without having the departmental budgets to actually do those things. So when Labour came along, there were a set of projects and so on ongoing, but the departments to which those projects belonged did not have the budget or finances to actually achieve those projects. Now you're right that Labour could (if they wished) to borrow money to pay for those projects, instead of cancelling them (in full or in part), but that doesn't mean the black hole  - the gap between money allocated and money required to do the stuff didn't exist. Labour's chosen to bin a load of stuff, rather than borrow money to pay for the stuff. They didn't know before the election they'd have to do that to the extent they have now found out, because the tories hid the scale of the mess from even the OBR, who were legally obliged to do their sums based on the figures given to them by the (then) Chancellor, Jeremy C.

So the politics I agree with your point, the maths/accounting part, not so much (but still a bit).

 

[Chindie]

I'm glad we agree.

[chrisp65]

There is no way Labour could have known about the £20 billion black hole other parties were telling them about and accusing them of ignoring in their promises?

To be precise, the ‘hole’ was £18 billion, but it didn’t account for the 5.5% pay increase which is a labour choice not a tory omission.

Both sides are playing politics on the presumption nobody pays attention or we are all thick.

[blandy]

8 minutes ago, chrisp65 said:

There is no way Labour could have known about the £20 billion black hole other parties were telling them about and accusing them of ignoring in their promises?

To be precise, the ‘hole’ was £18 billion, but it didn’t account for the 5.5% pay increase which is a labour choice not a tory omission.

Both sides are playing politics on the presumption nobody pays attention or we are all thick.

The pay increase recommendations would have been exactly the same if the Tories had won. The budget to cover that wasn’t there in what labour inherited from the Tories. 

[magnkarl]

If only our governments invested the oil money when we had North Sea oil revenues that mattered rather than squander it, we could be sitting on a 1.6 trillion sovereign wealth fund like our neighbours across the ocean now, where withdrawing 3% yearly to keep it growing is more than the total yearly GDP produced by entire European nations such as Slovenia, Croatia and Bulgaria.

Let's face it, our politicians are like sailors on shore with whatever they get their hands on.

[chrisp65]

1 minute ago, blandy said:

The pay increase recommendations would have been exactly the same if the Tories had won. The budget to cover that wasn’t there in what labour inherited from the Tories. 

The recommendation, yes.

 

[blandy]

10 minutes ago, chrisp65 said:

The recommendation, yes.

 

Zackly. Whoever was the guvmint would have to decide whether to implement the recco or not. The independent body was set up to take the politics out of the public sector pay awards and until relatively recently that’s what happened. Then came austerity and the Tories not implementing the recommendations. That had a cost on strikes and declining performance and so on. Labour has accepted the recco and in terms of the black hole the prospective costs ( benefit) of no strikes should be removed from the calculation, but the cost of the rise above 2% should be included .

[Chindie]

I don't even particularly care about what they've cancelled. Things like the Stonehenge tunnel are **** stupid and winter fuel payments probably should be means tested.

But don't celebrate being lied to.

[chrisp65]

2 minutes ago, Chindie said:

I don't even particularly care about what they've cancelled. Things like the Stonehenge tunnel are **** stupid and winter fuel payments probably should be means tested.

But don't celebrate being lied to.

That’s pretty much where I’m coming from, there was an opportunity to reset a lot of politics which hasn’t been taken. People not quite grasping what ‘they are both the same’ means to some people.

They set out a stall pre election to remove obstacles to power such as promising no tax rises when in reality a more grown up conversation could have been had. Now they have painted themselves in to a corner of continued austerity, or broken tax promises. That they’ll probably end up doing a little of both, kind of means we will remain in a state of managed decline with people just content it isn’t Johnson or Braverman.

[sidcow]

Can't believe the bitch is taking the winter fuel payment away from Bernie Ecclestone. 

I bet the bastard claimed it too. 

[chrisp65]

1 minute ago, sidcow said:

Can't believe the bitch is taking the winter fuel payment away from Bernie Ecclestone. 

I bet the bastard claimed it too. 

Personally, I’ve got no problem with Roger Daltry and the Queen not getting a winter fuel payment (providing the admin of filtering them out doesn’t actually cost even more).

It’s the game playing of their Tresury staff acting concerned the tories might have done the very same thing a few months ago. People will get very disillusioned very quickly if they are just playing politics.

It might feel refreshing right now to just be done with sleaze. But perhaps we should be aiming a little higher than not eating babies.

[Xann]

Some posters seem incapable of taking on new information.

Others shy away from the evidence that lands culpability for the nation's woes in their own laps.

[Chindie]

4 minutes ago, chrisp65 said:

That’s pretty much where I’m coming from, there was an opportunity to reset a lot of politics which hasn’t been taken. People not quite grasping what ‘they are both the same’ means to some people.

They set out a stall pre election to remove obstacles to power such as promising no tax rises when in reality a more grown up conversation could have been had. Now they have painted themselves in to a corner of continued austerity, or broken tax promises. That they’ll probably end up doing a little of both, kind of means we will remain in a state of managed decline with people just content it isn’t Johnson or Braverman.

People voted for change. And as predicted by anyone cynical enough, the change is simply going to be presentation, and mild tinkering. It's all shit.

[Xann]

8 minutes ago, Chindie said:

It's all shit.

Crime scene.

Conned and fleeced.

[Chindie]

1 minute ago, Xann said:

Crime scene.

Conned and fleeced.

I wasn't conned. And we all got fleeced by default. 

I'm not conned by this Labour party either. 

The ships direction has to change. Changing the light fittings and what the band plays isn't saving the Titanic. A more professional hand on the tiller, that will not move it, isn't either. 

But apparently that's change. Lol.

[Xann]

5 minutes ago, Chindie said:

I wasn't conned.

I know that, Bud  

[ROTTERDAM1982]

£9billion of the black hole is to fund public sector pay rises

£6 billion is the annual cost of the refugee issue