Sore losers

[Alan Stubbs]

I was listening to the radio over the last few days and was getting rather irritated by Alistair Darling's moans about press releases about the financial state of the country. He said 'It's the oldest trick in the book - blaming the outgoing administration for all the ills'

 

I hate to sound curmudgeonly and pompous but the Scot's tw*t overlloks a few salient points....

 

When he became Chancellor, he was left a note and half a bottle of scotch - the note said '....there is no money' - and he wasn't going to slag off his boss, was he?

 

The only reason his predecessor couldn't do it was that he said he was going to stay with the already announced spending plans of Kenneth Clark - one of the best Chancellors we ever had - actually handing over a fundamentally strong economy which cannot be said of Darling and Brown.

[Vagabond]

Just so we can establish a base line for future reference.

 

The day after Labour left office......

 

The UK was £163,000,000,000 (163 billion in UK nomenclature) in the red

 

Inflation according to the Bank of England was 5.3%

 

2,510,000 (over 2.5 million) people were officially unemployed.

 

Countless (estimates vary, but it's a lot) numbers are facing an inadequate pension on retirement.

 

Gold reserves have diminished to almost zero.

 

Whatever it takes to get out of that is gonna hurt..............

[barry luxton]

Is there not also a further few mil who are at work age but can't due to 'problems' such as can'tgetupinthemorningitus, and the classic, reported recently, temper tantrum if the guy wasn't spending handouts on soothing booze. Just hope that this new administration will help all these folk out. Specially the one's you see constantly littering shop fronts all day can in hand, smoking fags. Then there's these poor hardone by families with half a dozen kids or so who are struggling to bring them up on the megre amounts of rent and other handouts amounting to sometimes 30k a year. Surly there must be places that these poor folk can go, like boot camps. Sure a lot of them could cope with a little soothing excercise, like sewing mail bags, in between sips.

Edited May 19, 2010 by barry luxton

[ColinW]

Of course, as you are well aware but choose not to mention, that 5.3% inflation figure is largely down to the rise in VAT from 15% to 17.5% and a recent rise in the price of oil. So the next figures are bound to be lower unless the con-dems raise VAT even higher (oil has fallen sharply over the lsat two weeks).

Being in debt does not necessarily mean we are in trouble. Not being able to pay it off is what will put us in trouble, and one way to risk that happening is to put half the workforce on the dole, which has in the past been the Tories only answer to any problem.

[Steve Walker]

Being in debt does not necessarily mean we are in trouble.

 

The current cost of interest alone on the national debt is £42.9 billion per year. Just to put that into context, if we didn't have to pay it, we could abolish council tax and cut the price of petrol by 38p a litre.

[n4lly]

The current cost of interest alone on the national debt is £42.9 billion per year. Just to put that into context, if we didn't have to pay it, we could abolish council tax and cut the price of petrol by 38p a litre.

 

 

That would look good in the June budget, lets do as Darling has said and not pay anything back

this year and carry on partying

[barry luxton]

for every four pound paid in council tax, one pound goes into the black hole public blue chip pension fund, guess what, it's has rather a large deficit. That makes brown 's theft of the 5 bill anually out of the private pension fund even more galling.

 

Anyone know what he spent it on?

Edited May 19, 2010 by barry luxton

[Vagabond]

Is there not also a further few mil who are at work age but can't due to 'problems' such as can'tgetupinthemorningitus,

 

True, but the official figure is 2.51 million, which is what I quoted.

 

Adding the grey area probably doubles it - and it is interesting that one of the few figures actually quoted tonight by George Osborne in his speech to the CBI was "5 million unemployed"

 

ColinW. Yes the VAT increase is included in my figure. If you ignore it, the inflation is still 4%

....but just wait until VAT goes up to 20%, which IMHO is what is required to bring the interest we pay on government borrowing down to manageable proportions.

 

Labour borrows and spends, as it always has done, until the nation is near bankrupt. Then "the wicked Tories" have to impose spending cuts and higher taxes to get Britain solvent again. This time they can at least share the "blame" with "the wicked Liberals".

 

There is going to be a lot of whingeing from the left. Excuse me if I fail to show very much sympathy.

[Vagabond]

That makes brown 's theft of the 5 bill anually out of the private pension fund even more galling.

 

Yes, I'm pretty annoyed, and I'm not even affected by it (except indirectly in ultimately having to help support those that are - or perhaps finding my pension providers going bust!).

 

I was fortunate in reaching pensionable age before that piece of thievery began to bite. If I were still paying through the nose for a pension that will prove inadequate I would be deep-puce livid.

[barry luxton]

True, but the official figure is 2.51 million, which is what I quoted.

 

Glad this house flipping porn lover has joined the list, saved the tax payer some exes in doing so.

 

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/8693537.stm

 

Mind you looking at her, i can see why the husband needed a leg up, so to speak.

Edited May 20, 2010 by barry luxton