For the second month in a row, Britain's borrowings (to pay back Labour's debt) have been £2 Billion less than anticipated, and also less than the equivalent month last year.

Unfortunately, the overall debt (ie compound interest on Labour's debt) has hit £1 Trillion - for the first time ever.

All the benefits of the cuts etc have been wiped-out by the escalating interest which Labour's debt has left us with.

Still ... we ARE going in the right direction - and things would have been much much worse if we had listened to Labour's "pay back more slowly" (and let the interest rocket !) mantra.

Cuts don't work. How many more times? The worse off become worse off. How do you think we came back after WW II when our deficit was much greater? We invested. Investment is the only answer to growth. As for debt, we will always be in debt and always will be.

In answer to your question...NO...they aren't doing well at all.

In The Know wrote:
For the second month in a row, Britain's borrowings (to pay back Labour's debt) have been £2 Billion less than anticipated, and also less than the equivalent month last year.

Unfortunately, the overall debt (ie compound interest on Labour's debt) has hit £1 Trillion - for the first time ever.

All the benefits of the cuts etc have been wiped-out by the escalating interest which Labour's debt has left us with.

Still ... we ARE going in the right direction - and things would have been much much worse if we had listened to Labour's "pay back more slowly" (and let the interest rocket !) mantra.

Hi 5 that ITK!

There is almost no difference at all between Labour and Tory, so we would probably have been in pretty much the same situation under Labour. And if Labour created the deficit, then how come half the world is in the same boat?

you're a bit of a Canute aren't you, In The Know?

Now did I write...'we will always be in debt and always will be...' ?

That's one hell of a bloomer innit?

The Fat Controller wrote:
Cuts don't work. How many more times? The worse off become worse off. How do you think we came back after WW II when our deficit was much greater? We invested. Investment is the only answer to growth. As for debt, we will always be in debt and always will be.

In answer to your question...NO...they aren't doing well at all.

One of the great successs of tabloids like the Daily Mail et all, is that by speaking in sound bites they have convinced enough people to think similarly such as in the ever so nice but non too bright ITK.

thus public debt becomes some sort of giant evil despite Noo Labour..(same same Tories replace Blair with Cameron..a clone) convincing half the population to get into debt via mortgages /credit cards and so on.

The public are convinced debt will be the ruin of us all (yet not a peep about the great wedge of money spent on the most useless and non-productive parts of the economy-armanents and the armed forces.)

At the same time they allow giant corporations like Vodafone to shift profits (2B a year), News Corp and 100s of others, off shore and avoid hundreds of billions billions that would easily pay any debt accrued and for all services via that great scam 'globalisation'.

And sell of your most precious assetts as well..railways, electricity and so on ( as Greece is being forced to at rock bottom prices...a fire sale to pay their debt)

In the end a target is chosen..say welfare mothers (or the 'welfare queens'..code for blacks in the USA) who are the cause of all evil and should be...well we don't what their solution is for them....but they become the scapegoats.

After WW1 we pounded Germany with debts so debilitating it lead to WW2 after which...we invested (loaned) endless billions to create the modern Germany (and Japan).

Gi-normous debt to get us where we were ..the blissful years from 1945 to early 1980s before the fundamentalists like Thatcher/Reagan/ all in between up to Blair/Cameron went into overdrive with missionary zeal to pass government debt to private citizens for 2 reasons : destroy unions and thus destroy the working man's power to negotiate wages and embroil them in debt whereby they are powerless to then negotiate wages and are forced to accept lower and lower wages as they have become debt slaves.

prove me wrong.

Nobody knows what Labour would have done,luckily for them they lost the election

But on a serious note I think the government have got it right this time.The markets are so volatile that any attempt to defer paying back would see our interest rates go sky high.A look at Italy et al over in the eurozone will show you what happens now to the peeps who can't persuade the money markets debt reduction is going according to plan.

Innocent Accused wrote:
Nobody knows what Labour would have done,luckily for them they lost the election

But on a serious note I think the government have got it right this time.The markets are so volatile that any attempt to defer paying back would see our interest rates go sky high.A look at Italy et al over in the eurozone will show you what happens now to the peeps who can't persuade the money markets debt reduction is going according to plan.

yes may have it right to avoid large interest rates BUT..attacking the wrong target because it's the easy target and the tabloids have softened up people for the attacks.....those at the bottom of the heap..welfare mums, disabled, sleeping unemployed etc etc.

The finance sector which has deliberately caused the calamity since 2008 get off scot free.

And of course corporations who do not pay tax...enough corporate tax is avoided which would pay of Britain's debts within 5 years.

and when the the taxation department sold off it's offices and now rents them back from a corporation HQd in the Caymans...an indication of the problem.

The problem is an artificially created one. And similar to that created to cause the Great Depression.

"Still ... we ARE going in the right direction"

Really?

"The economies of Britain and Germany surprised economists on Wednesday, but in different ways.

While official data showed the British economy shrank more than expected in the fourth quarter, raising concern about another recession, a closely followed business confidence index in Germany beat economists’ forecasts for January, a sign that Europe’s largest economy is improving.
(...)
In Britain, the economy is struggling to avoid falling back into a recession. Gross domestic product fell 0.2 percent in the fourth quarter of last year from the third quarter, more than the 0.1 percent some economists forecast, the government said Wednesday. Manufacturing shrank 0.9 percent; London has been trying to stimulate the sector in an effort to make Britain’s economy less dependent on services."

www.nytimes.com/2012/01/26/business/glob...ain-and-germany.html

Innocent Accused wrote:
Nobody knows what Labour would have done,luckily for them they lost the election

But on a serious note I think the government have got it right this time.The markets are so volatile that any attempt to defer paying back would see our interest rates go sky high.A look at Italy et al over in the eurozone will show you what happens now to the peeps who can't persuade the money markets debt reduction is going according to plan.

At last ! Someone who understands simple economics (and reality) !!!!
Have a chocolate digestive.

veritas wrote:
yes may have it right to avoid large interest rates

...ooohh ! veritas admits that he is wrong !!!!!


BUT..attacking the wrong target because it's the easy target and the tabloids have softened up people for the attacks.....those at the bottom of the heap..welfare mums, disabled, sleeping unemployed etc etc.

Former Archbishop of Canterbury Lord Carey has thrown his weight behind the Government's plans to introduce a £26,000 benefits cap.
Writing in the Daily Mail, the cleric argued that the current welfare system is rewarding "fecklessness and irresponsibility".

He criticised opponents of the annual benefits limit and said the scale of Britain's public debt - which hit £1trn this week - was the "greatest moral scandal" facing the country.

"If we can't get the deficit under control and begin paying back this debt, we will be mortgaging the future of our children and grandchildren," he said.

"In order to do this, we desperately need to reform our welfare system".

from - news.sky.com/home/politics/article/16155999

DJones wrote:
London has been trying to stimulate the sector in an effort to make Britain’s economy less dependent on services.

Thats right ... loony Labour scrapped all UK manufacturing (they couldn;t get their Union friends to actually make anything) and so B-Liar / Brown relied (almost totally) on the now-corrupt financial services industry to fund 13 years of Labour over-spend.

That illusion has come crashing down.

It will take time (to undo Labour's 13 years of recklessness) but ... we ARE going in the right direction.

In The Know wrote:
Innocent Accused wrote:
Nobody knows what Labour would have done,luckily for them they lost the election

But on a serious note I think the government have got it right this time.The markets are so volatile that any attempt to defer paying back would see our interest rates go sky high.A look at Italy et al over in the eurozone will show you what happens now to the peeps who can't persuade the money markets debt reduction is going according to plan.

At last ! Someone who understands simple economics (and reality) !!!!
Have a chocolate digestive.

Can I have one too?

ITK lives in a world of fantasy where he believes there is a difference between Nu Labour and the Conservatives.

Next he'll try to tell me that the US Republicans are different to the Democrats.

In The Know wrote:
DJones wrote:
London has been trying to stimulate the sector in an effort to make Britain’s economy less dependent on services.

Thats right ... loony Labour scrapped all UK manufacturing (they couldn;t get their Union friends to actually make anything) and so B-Liar / Brown relied (almost totally) on the now-corrupt financial services industry to fund 13 years of Labour over-spend.

That illusion has come crashing down.

It will take time (to undo Labour's 13 years of recklessness) but ... we ARE going in the right direction.

So Thatcher and Major did nothing during the 80s?
You're improving as a poster by far ITK,but these kind of sweeping statements put you back to square one Even an idiot knows manufacturing was devastated during the 80s,seen by many as a way to undermine union power.

Spain's unemployment hits 5 MILLION !

Thats what comes of loony Labour policies (and what is their credit rating these days? It will cost far more than usual to pay their benefits - and therefor slow down any possible recovery)

In The Know wrote:
Spain's unemployment hits 5 MILLION !

Thats what comes of loony Labour policies (and what is their credit rating these days? It will cost far more than usual to pay their benefits - and therefor slow down any possible recovery)

ITK ...your 'looney Labour' were further to the right than Thatcher and the Tories but I'm not sure they can be blamed for Spain's woes.

What about the countries that have had centre -left govenments for decades ..Australia, New Zealand, Canada..surfing along like crazy...those with left wing govts..most of Scandanavia..living the high life....or the straight out Communist..China..overtaking the entire world

5 years in a re-education camp would do you the world of good.

In The Know wrote:
Spain's unemployment hits 5 MILLION !

Thats what comes of loony Labour policies (and what is their credit rating these days? It will cost far more than usual to pay their benefits - and therefor slow down any possible recovery)

Spain has a Conservative government.

ITK wrote:

"Still ... we ARE going in the right direction - and things would have been much much worse if we had listened to Labour's "pay back more slowly" (and let the interest rocket !) mantra."

Don't belive the hype:

"The embarrassing truth is that, for all his talk about how you can’t borrow your way out of a debt crisis, he [Osborne ]is now trying to do just that. Before the last election, fearful of Labour attacks, he adopted a deficit reduction plan that was only a slightly modified version of the one proposed by Gordon Brown. He dressed it up in the language of austerity, and still speaks in blood-curdling terms about the urgent need to confront the deficit - while borrowing more than even Labour planned. It has been a political success: just look at those opinion polls. But not, so far, an economic success.


The list of undead Brownite policies lingering in the Treasury is long and ignominious. Osborne inherited a 51p tax on the rich, and upped it to 52p (courtesy of National Insurance). Brown planned for UK net debt to rise by 60 per cent, to £1.37 trillion. Osborne, for all his talk, is raising it by 61 per cent to £1.4 trillion. Both men pinned their hopes on the Bank of England printing a colossal amount of money, one of the biggest quantitative easing experiments the world has ever seen. Both have a weakness for tinkering. Both show little interest in supply-side economics, and regard tax cuts not as a stimulatory tool, but as a luxury to be awarded at some point in the future, and only if the country behaves itself."

www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/904176...sound-the-alarm.html

But DJones ....

You have to start from where you are !
You cannot abandon a plan entirely and do something else - you have to adapt / change existing plans etc. Thats what Osbourne is doing.

If he were not reducing the deficit ...
How come last months borrowings were £2 BILLION below the same month last year (and £2 Billion below forecast) ?

How come, also that the IMF / Poor & Moodys etc have left us with out AAA credit rating - whereas everyone else has been reduced and now have to pay MORE to borrow (and need to borrow MORE anyway) ?