Who has got a 'sensible economic policy' then?

Damned if I know!

Well you could move about within the EU - not sure if there are any low tax countries in there though. I'm sure Bruxelles wouldn't like it if there were.
Maybe time to take Nomans advice and get on your bike.
Perhaps that is more of an American ethos?

Damned if I do either. Trouble is we're governed by Europe these days so it makes not much difference which party is in power. Which is what makes the obsession with MPs *allowances* so laughable. They are basically powerless so we could sack the lot and it'd make no difference.

Dave

But I like a good rant-especially about this sorry load of self seeking incompetents. :)

They allowed the Bankers to acquire all their wealth from the rest of us, and they are still doing it of course, without any kind of control, by paying themselves out of the money which comes from our taxes, now and in the foreseeable future!

Everyone else might have got the impression they were wealthy because they were putting themselves further and further into debt through easy borrowing. Look at the present and coming problems because of all that, and the repossessions too!

All the time the economy was made to look artificially good because of Flash's overborrowing!

I look forward to your explanation of it all Martin.

Les

Well it's not my job to explain the government cock-ups I will say that for 10 years we didn't just have the appearance of a strong economy, we have a strong economy.

I think you'll find that government borrowing (as a % of GDP) only very recently reached levels that are out of the ordinary.

Also not everybody got themselves into debt some of us lived within our means and thrived in the boom years (mind you it's Mrs Martin2005 who does the household finances, left to me it might be a different story:lol1:)


BTW I think we the electorate should shoulder some of the responsibility for the way our politicians perform, we are the ones who make them promise the world (if they don't they don't get elected) and when they fail to live up to their promises we blame them. Maybe a little more realism all round wouldn't go amiss

An interesting article about putting figures in context, something the media doesn't seem to bother with much.........I know its a bit old now so apologise if its been posted before..oh and yes its the BBC so I expect the usual comments on how the BBC is an arm of the government etc etc:rolleyes:.

BBC NEWS | Magazine | The myth of record debt

Actually whether its your job or not Martin, you seem to do an awful lot of attempting to justify their overall incompetence. :)

If the economy was so strong, why did they not increase our reserves because as we have seen so many times, boom and bust seems to be inescapably part of history. They failed spectacularly to monitor the wild actions of the bankers to make money for themselves and to fail us and their own businesses. Its not that they were not warned either.

It is true however that they did borrow large amounts to bolster up their profligate spending in so many useless ways. We have next to nothing to fall back on which is why we are in the hole for amounts which make the GDP look silly!

Yes I agree that so many wound up in extreme debt due to their own actions, even you could have done that by your own admission. You should beware of gross inflation in the future, you can't print money and escape such a risk.

You are quite wrong to put any blame on the electorate for the situation. These people set themselves up, we don't insist on what they say which is a pack of lies in the end. That is down to them for dishonesty.

If they can't cut it that is entirely down to them, and how do you feel you can trust most of them after the present revelations?

All those who misused the wide ranging self generated rules to steal our tax money are morally corrupt and should be given the old heave ho so that it can all start again from scratch I reckon.

Les :(

But that's not happening is it? The current 'snouts in the trough' are setting up the rules for future troughing ...

Hope yet though - from Has Nick Brown Just Twittered the Election Date? - Guy Fawkes' blog - a possible election date??

Dave

Les far be it from me to accuse you of being a tad arrogant on this but...

Please could you at least add the words 'in my opinion' before the words 'you are quite wrong':)

The electorate demand the impossible from their politicians, so the politicians promise the impossible. This isn't something that I am 'quite wrong about' it something real and obvious.
Any political party that said that they couldn't really solve most of our social problems wouldn't get elected, any party that said that they didn't have a 'sliver bullet' to fix the economy wouldn't get elected. Any party that claimed that they couldn't improve public services whilst cutting taxes wouldn't get elected.

You see in some ways we get the politicians and politics we ask for, unrealistic and completely unachieveable.

whats intersting and ironic about this is that in the UK a UK citizen can have his tax affairs dealt with by another country, most notably Switzerland i.e. Philip Green -- who pays, on a 1 billion pound wage, nothing in UK tax, but makes his money here

in the US this is not possible all US citizens -- regardless of where they live have to pay Federal tax to the IRS, whererver they live and earn it

the article above talks about State taxes not Federal taxes

The US in effect have a citizen tax

Nice bit of propaganda. What about all the labour stealth taxes?

NEWS TODAY -

IMF praising the UK govt for it's reaction to the economic crisis :thumb:

£ well up agains the $ and climbing steadily....should nicely level off at about $1.60-1.70 in the long-term which is it's correct natural comparative level.

Good job the government knows what it's doing....while the TORIES still have NO ECONOMIC POLICY at all.

They are included - it's the word TOTAL that lets us know this.

Whoever wins the next election will have to raise taxes, end of story.
At the current rate labour are borrowing tax will have to rise £300 per person per year at best, at worse it will be over £700 per year per person.
The next government will be judged not on how much money they can spend but on how much money they can save.

The Tories probably plan to get all the money back through expenses claims although what they've claimed probably already balances out the national debt.

£50Billion swimming pool sir?

:rolleyes:

With taxes set to rise we could always ask Ms Blears for tips on how to avoid paying tax. Afterall, she found a way to avoid paying capital gains ;)

There was nothing in the reserve when NL came to power; Thatcher had sold it all! Gas, Oil, Water, Rail, North Sea Gas, etc., etc.

Correct - Brown built up a reserve and PAID OFF NATIONAL DEBT year after year in the good times.

Sorry but you are simple not allowed to point this out on here:lol1:

I think you are quite wrong Martin.

The reason why they promise the earth these days is because in politics, power is everything and they will do and say anything to achieve that. That fact that they don't succeed in those promises does not seem to worry them very much-they just ignore the question if it comes up and think up yet another grand initiative to take our minds off it!

If we try to tell them what we really expect, they take no notice and just do what is best for them rather than us-bit like attacking Iraq really, and all the lies we were told about that!

There is no way you can put all that down to the demands of the electorate, it is all down to the self seeking politicians as we well know now of course.

We have been shown that the House is full of morally corrupt people, and the party leaders are acting in a blind panic now to try to either gain or maintain power.

How well would you be prepared to trust the average one of them these days Martin, knowing what we now know?

Les

And now? Public Sector Net Borrowing Reached £8.5bn In April | Politics | Sky News

"... The country's debt currently stands at £754bn. This is equivalent to 53.2% of the UK's entire annual economic output, the highest for more than 30 years ..."

But it all started in America apparently .... :Suspiciou

Dave

So Brown paid off the Tories debt in the good time and now has to borrow in the bad seems perfectly reasonable?

I don't think so. Public Sector Net Borrowing Reached £8.5bn In April | Politics | Sky News

"... A credit ratings agency has cut the UK economy's outlook to "negative" as official figures show Government borrowing soared to a record £8.5bn in April ..."

Good ol' Flash. But at least he paid off the Tory debts eh? Oh, how did those debts accumulate? Nothing to do with the previous Labour policies at all then. 'Course not ....

Labour. So predictable. ALWAYS leave the economy in a worse state than they inherited it.


Dave
[/B]

the traditional view is that Conservative governments implode on sex and sleaze scandals and Labour run out of money

Les, we are in danger of blaming all MPs for the wrongs of a few. Lets not forget that only a relatively few have been shown to of done anything wrong, that leaves the vast majority as innocent, unless you know something about all MPs that I don't.
I find it hard to believe people go into politics to be 'self-serving', surley the exact opposite is the motivation (or at least should be), of a representative of the people.
I think you are very bitter about things and this is clouding your views on everything politics related. As witnessed by your almost 100% strike rate of attack on government and MPs. They can't be as bad as you make out, if they were we wouldn't vote for them would we?

I find it difficult to rationalise your response to my past comments, I cannot understand how you can possibly refute the fact that politicans over promise, because they have to in order to get elected by an electorate that asks the question 'what's in it for me' far more frequently than 'what's in it for the country'?

I think real stand up honest politics was finally killed off by the current Labour government, a nasty rot has set in within parliament that will not easily be removed. Being a minister seems no longer about doing what is best for your country or holding the moral high ground.

The simple fact is the job requires very little intelligence, has almost zero accountability and requires very little for an over inflated salary which the old boys club set for themselves. It is bound to attract the wrong candidates, and will continue to do so until massive change is made, and that will only happen if the public demands it.

Blair was just a mouth for a governments spin designed to take peoples eye from the fact they where doing very little to help the country but would enjoy the good years as long as they possibly could. An election itself will not change that attitude. The current big parties only seem to care about the next pay check, which might be acceptable in a private sector but is not what you want in a person who is supposed to have his/her constituents at heart.

In my opinion an MP should get the same basic wage as a nurse or police office etc The job is about doing what is right for the country. It’s prestige is the chance to do massive good and help people! It should not be about driving about a Jaguar, 300k first home, 300k second home (A free of charge bonus paid for by tax payer) 30k + expenses (You live for free with food and school fees etc paid for) You might even have your wife as a member of staff and pull in another 30k etc.

Short term thinking and greed killed the banks, the same short term thinking and greed has killed this Government and possibly parliament. Things need to change.

What the public should demand is MP’s paid 25k with a fair expenses package.
Maybe then we will see people in government that want to face social and economic problems for the right reasons, putting the people first and the next election second.

----------------------------------------

I have no political allegiance but only a very stupid person would stand up for the current government that has ripped the heart out of the moral and financial fabric of the country and shown time and time again - it does not listen and it does not care. If it were possible to rape a country, that is what I would accuse the current Labour government of doing. Anyone saying otherwise is putting party colours before the people of the country which is very sad - and should have no place in politics.

No MP's do the job for the money.

The money is crap by comparrison to what they earned in the majority of their own professions prior to becomming an MP. This leaves them rather short in a lot of cases so obviouslty they stretched the expenses claims.

My view is that we should pay MPs a lot more for the amount of work they do and do away with expenses altogether. A high salary will also place them beyond the reach of back-handers and temptation.

As the Labour peer pointed out, the part time BBC news reader earned TWICE as much as an MP, also funded by the tax payer :rolleyes:

Good point about the Beeb new reader but as for the rest, you are a wind-up merchant aren't you? PSLewis in disguise????

Dave

Hello Nat

What they earned before is not relevant to my argument, but since it has been raised lets touch on it. The current annual salary for an MP is £64,766 which makes them out of touch with the man on the street from day one. The majority did not earn more than this. The minority might have done. Also when you add in a paid for second home (which they keep) plus living expenses I'm sure none off them had a net income anywhere near these huge sums until they became MP's.

A high salary will attract money driven people to the role of MP and in the majority these are not the types you want looking after your country.

An even higher basic salary is just what you do not want. Fat cats paid by tax payers money? That is already a big part of the problem. £25k is a suitable salary for the job. As I said, the populous should look upon the MP as a man or woman doing what they do for the love of the job, not the insane salary, benefits package and upper class lifestyle that goes with it. MP's are civil servants, nothing more, nothing less. They would do well to remember it.

Sensible expenses are important as some peoples will be higher than others so I do not see how this can be removed or the need for it to be. Most successful companies have a fair expenses policy, the difference is if you are accountable. Quite besides the morally disgusting behaviour of some of the Conservative MP's, for which I suspect many MP will be found wanting, I still cannot believe some Labour MP's giving back money effectively defrauded and in some cases stolen believing that makes things ok? In my opinion this is a parliament that is out of control, out of touch and believing they above the laws and rules of the rest of the citizens.

I'm sure the BBC will be looked at more closely in future.

Well I am certainly not in danger of blaming them all Martin, I would not be that unfair. There are of course honourable men still in all the parties.

We cannot say yet whether it is relatively few yet of course since we do not know all the results of the liist of individual expenses. It will take some time to go through it all so until then we just have to wait without making any positive comments about something we do not yet know. We are entitled of course to castigate the ones that we do know about and who have no possible excuse for milking a corrupt system based on lies and misuse of the rules which were made by MP's for their own convenience!

I am sure there are still MP's who went into the job for altruistic reasons, but not as many as we once might have imagined. I have not attacked all MP's by any means as you say. we voted for them because as in years gone by, we thought that an MP was a man to be trusted and respected. Well those who have not knowingly claimed for expenses which morally were not justifiable, and that really is not too difficult to work out, are to be praised and supported. We shall know how many eventually.

If you had seen the most recent edition of Question Time you would have realised the strength of feeling in that audience which is a good cross selection of political support. Can you blame them after what we now know, how can we trust so many of the present crop of MP's and for that matter, Parliament itself. Our political organisation is in deep crisis and it will take a very big shake up to get any kind of trust back from the electorate.

I stand by my previous statement that it is down to the politicians as to how they make promises because of their lust for power rather than what the electorate expects.

How do you feel about the broken promise about the referendum on the Lisbon Constitution, because that is what it is despite the lies we have been told about it?

Les