Quote Sal Paradise="Sal Paradise"Haven't the Tories shown a significant increase in the national minimum wage £2/hr - a 33% increase. Combine that with increases in personal allowances of £6k - surely these policies positively impact the poorly paid. So given the financial situation the Tories inherited what do you think they should have done? The idea that Corbyn is negatively impacted by the press needs to be offset by the strength of Labour with social media - who actually buys a newspaper these days? Far more people read/use Twitter so its just a spurious excuse because we don't want the state to own all our businesses and Labour's message simply doesn't stack up to scrutiny. McDonald showed the angry side of Labour on Marr today - lost his cool and the argument.'" I agree with the first 2 points that you make, which are offset by the younger workers and the dreaded zero hours contracts - £2 and hour more, if you lose 3 or 4 hours of work may still be a reduction ?? and of course you dont mention those who, for a multitude of reasons, cant work and should we gloss over child poverty, crime and massive increase in foodbanks, all as a direct result of austerity cuts And, just to show the utter contempt that the Tories have for the poorest people in the country, their candidate for Broxstowe, tells people, rather than use foodbanks, they should take out payday loans https://universalcreditsuffer.com/2019/ ... yday-loan/ As long as his conscience is clear Is this who we should vote in on Thursday ??

Quote Sal Paradise="Sal Paradise"Haven't the Tories shown a significant increase in the national minimum wage £2/hr - a 33% increase. Combine that with increases in personal allowances of £6k - surely these policies positively impact the poorly paid. So given the financial situation the Tories inherited what do you think they should have done? The idea that Corbyn is negatively impacted by the press needs to be offset by the strength of Labour with social media - who actually buys a newspaper these days? Far more people read/use Twitter so its just a spurious excuse because we don't want the state to own all our businesses and Labour's message simply doesn't stack up to scrutiny. McDonald showed the angry side of Labour on Marr today - lost his cool and the argument.'" I agree with the first 2 points that you make, which are offset by the younger workers and the dreaded zero hours contracts - £2 and hour more, if you lose 3 or 4 hours of work may still be a reduction ?? and of course you dont mention those who, for a multitude of reasons, cant work and should we gloss over child poverty, crime and massive increase in foodbanks, all as a direct result of austerity cuts And, just to show the utter contempt that the Tories have for the poorest people in the country, their candidate for Broxstowe, tells people, rather than use foodbanks, they should take out payday loans https://universalcreditsuffer.com/2019/ ... yday-loan/ As long as his conscience is clear Is this who we should vote in on Thursday ??

On the issue of austerity and public finances:

In 2006/07 the budget deficit was 2.6 per cent of GDP. In the 2007 Tory conference, George Osborne [url=https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1562023/Tories-vow-to-match-Labour-spending.htmlcommitted the Conservatives to matching Labour's spending plans[/url and said it was a myth that the Conservatives would not invest as much in public services as Labour.

The financial crisis hit in 2008 and tax receipts crumbled and the budget deficit jumped up to 9.9 per cent of GDP. At this point the Tories saw electoral advantage in making the deficit their key campaigning point and so they started to say Labour had been spending too much for years and that's why the public finances were such a mess. It would have been more credible if in 2007, they had made a big deal about the 2.6 per cent deficit and said we need this to be zero so we would reduce spending, but when you campaign on 'we will match Labour's spending' and then subsequently claim Labour's spending was too high, you can see this was based on political opportunism not economics.

As for how to reduce a budget deficit: you're looking at government spending minus tax receipts, where tax receipts are a function of tax levels and economic growth. When spending cuts limit negatively on economic growth you're going to reduce your tax intake, especially when you slash investment spending like Osborne did in the early years before belatedly reversing some of that in Spending Review 2015.

Osborne inherited a budget deficit of 9.9 per cent and left a deficit of 3.8. That's a 6.1 percentage point reduction over 6 years.

In comparison, there was a budget deficit of 6.6 per cent in 1994 (this was after 15 years of Conservative government some of which coincided with the time we had the windfall from the oil receipts, strangely we didn't hear so much about this government being careless with the public finances...)

Ken Clarke introduced a few tax rises that caused a bit of a stir in the Daily Telegraph but didn't drive hordes of wealth creators out of the UK. The budget deficit was 3.0 at the point the Tories left office in 1997, and was 0 per cent in 1998, which can be credited still to Clarke's plans given that Gordon Brown committed to using Clarke's spending plans for the first three years of Labour's term.

That was a deficit reduction programme which took out 6.6 percentage points in four years - more effective than Osborne's and without anything like the scale of cuts.

I haven't gone into anything about the inequality aspects of Osborne's austerity, just the basic public finances. The idea that 'there was no alternative' is false. Osborne actually chose a less effective path.

Source: [url=https://obr.uk/data/OBR data[/url

Well nearly all nurses starting out will be renting as they are very unlikely to own property so the vast majority will be paying somewhere close to the national average rent.

Well for starters I was referring to your views not those of the Conservative party. Well not very many of your views have made it into their manifesto - what they'll actually do is open to question of course as I imagine many of them actually harbour opinions that are rather closer to the ones you express.

Most when they start will be living in shared accommodation as they would do at university or even in halls if their degree allows.

That's alright then, why would or should they ever want their own place


We could pay them a bit less, cos they're only nurses - not like proper doctors ??

Quote wrencat1873="wrencat1873"I agree with the first 2 points that you make, which are offset by the younger workers and the dreaded zero hours contracts - £2 and hour more, if you lose 3 or 4 hours of work may still be a reduction ?? and of course you dont mention those who, for a multitude of reasons, cant work and should we gloss over child poverty, crime and massive increase in foodbanks, all as a direct result of austerity cuts And, just to show the utter contempt that the Tories have for the poorest people in the country, their candidate for Broxstowe, tells people, rather than use foodbanks, they should take out payday loans https://universalcreditsuffer.com/2019/ ... yday-loan/ As long as his conscience is clear Is this who we should vote in on Thursday ??'" I agree with you about those that can't work - the concept of universal credit is a good idea the application by the Tories has been cruel and heartless - yes I get the six weeks if you just walk out on a job but in the real world you would be paid notice and holiday pay to cushion the blow. Six weeks with no money I don't agree with. Crime is a society issue - people's attitude to authority has shifted significantly - would having more police on the streets sort out the gang issues in London, domestic abuse, widespread drug availability etc. no it wont - they might catch more of us speeding. I ask again what is considered poverty and realistically how many people does that cover - if we say food banks gave out 5m parcels and we say there are 30m people buying food every week that represents .03% yes it should not happen and if the aforementioned benefit system worked properly then the number would be far less - but there will always be people who for whatever reason get into financial strive so you will never fully eradicate it - same goes for homelessness. There are homeless people in every major city in the western world. You call out the Tories but you could equally call out Labour on a whole area of issues - racism being one.

Quote wrencat1873="wrencat1873"I agree with the first 2 points that you make, which are offset by the younger workers and the dreaded zero hours contracts - £2 and hour more, if you lose 3 or 4 hours of work may still be a reduction ?? and of course you dont mention those who, for a multitude of reasons, cant work and should we gloss over child poverty, crime and massive increase in foodbanks, all as a direct result of austerity cuts And, just to show the utter contempt that the Tories have for the poorest people in the country, their candidate for Broxstowe, tells people, rather than use foodbanks, they should take out payday loans https://universalcreditsuffer.com/2019/ ... yday-loan/ As long as his conscience is clear Is this who we should vote in on Thursday ??'" I agree with you about those that can't work - the concept of universal credit is a good idea the application by the Tories has been cruel and heartless - yes I get the six weeks if you just walk out on a job but in the real world you would be paid notice and holiday pay to cushion the blow. Six weeks with no money I don't agree with. Crime is a society issue - people's attitude to authority has shifted significantly - would having more police on the streets sort out the gang issues in London, domestic abuse, widespread drug availability etc. no it wont - they might catch more of us speeding. I ask again what is considered poverty and realistically how many people does that cover - if we say food banks gave out 5m parcels and we say there are 30m people buying food every week that represents .03% yes it should not happen and if the aforementioned benefit system worked properly then the number would be far less - but there will always be people who for whatever reason get into financial strive so you will never fully eradicate it - same goes for homelessness. There are homeless people in every major city in the western world. You call out the Tories but you could equally call out Labour on a whole area of issues - racism being one.

If you really want to encourage people in to work then the benefits system needs to incentivise people who come out of unemployment to take insecure jobs and guarantee an 'income floor' for a certain period which guarantees that they will be better off than sitting on benefits.

So if you take low-paid part-time, variable hours work, the benefits system should smooth your income and avoid income gaps.

The big problem with the current system is because of the gaps in receiving payments when your status changes, people can't risk it because they don't have a cushion of savings to smooth cash flow problems.

There has been a lot of good thinking on welfare reform and incentive design from both left and right wing policy groups but the UC reforms have been undermined by the fact the government has targeted reducing the overall benefits bill, which means they look to chip away wherever they can, rather than thinking strategically how best to create a system that incentivises work.

Because they get a partner and together they want to build a future together and renting is dead money where its council property or a private landlord. Anybody with half a brain can see that.

Who has suggested paying nurses less - certainly not me, both my parents were SRN's in their youth - father left to work for a pharmaceutical company because in the 60s he couldn't support his family on the monies Labour under Wilson were prepared to pay.

With deposits on property so prohibitive, renting is the only option for younger people, unless they are very well paid or, they have parents who can "help".

Perhaps as parents that is what we should be doing - rather than passing on wealth when your kids don't really need it giving it them when they do. Maybe less spent on lavish weddings and more contributed towards deposits would be beneficial?

My estate has 110 houses cheapest £225k - the average inhabitant is well under 30 - so to say young people can't get on the property ladder is not the case, if they want a house it needs to be a priority - blowing £200 on a typical Saturday night out doesn't help.

The younger 'milennial' generation certainly seem to spend a lot less than even my generation (late 30s) did. I can remember going for nights out in the late 90s and early 2000s when we were totally carefree, but back even then the housing situation was different for say a university graduate of a redbrick uni.

The usual attitude back then was, get your 2:1 but have lots of fun while you do it. Start a grad job on about £20k, after about 5 years or so you can be on £45k to £50k. Banks back then let you leverage up many multiples and so getting a mortgage of £200k was feasible and you would be able to get a house for that, even in London. I know people in areas like Dulwich who just sneaked in when they could buy for £250k in the 2000s, and houses in their area are going for £600k now.

You could still enjoy yourself back then - without going mad - and have a chance of getting on the property ladder, if you made some sensible prioritising decisions.

But when I see the younger graduates where I work now, their situation really is grim. They are much less in to partying than we were, they are much more health-conscious but their whole life choices are on a budget because they are trying to save up deposits which now in London really need to be six figures. And given what rents are, it's hard to save. The grads these days are on about £28k to £32k and even on those salaries, landlords are creaming off half their salary in rent, and not giving them much for it.

Mind you, those that end up buying the 'new builds' in London (usually due to an inheritance or wealthy parents) are on to a loser too. The quality of the building in these is poor and there are all sorts of problems, and management companies are just wealth extractors like landlords, taking huge service charges and not providing any proper service.

I know a lot of 'boomers' like to believe easy prejudices that 'the young of today just think the world owes them a living', but you need to wake up and see what the experience really is like for young people today. It's even massively different from my 'early milennial' generation who at least had a bit of a fair chance.

Thats why younger milennials are attracted to radical politics (Corbyn, green), and just saying, ah they will come to their senses when they get older and get a house and car won't wash, a lot of these are going to be angry 40-50 year olds still trapped in poor housing situations and that will be when the political sands turn. I don't think this is unique to the UK either, I expect in about a decade you will see a wave of green/far-left movements with a huge block of committed votes behind them.