Indeed, I don't know why they don't.
One of Blair's pre-election successes was the so-called "Rebuttal Unit", set up at Millbank to knock-back Conservative accusations of uncosted spending and to challenge/disprove fuzzy promises/predictions/claims of success from the Conservatives.
If set up again, once the press knew of it they'd be phoning it all the time.

But is not all that a direct result of a nation previously living above its productive means? EU subsidiay, piggy backing on Germany's strong currency, artificially high wages, cheap credit, property bubble. Isn't this just the awful reality of all those "good" years coming home to roost? All this talk of a choice between "austerity" and "growth" is utter nonsense.

The so called "growth" strategy of paying people artificially high wages (often to do artificial jobs) and providing them with easy spending power is what lead to the financial crisis. It has been tried and failed on a monumental scale.

People's thinking needs to move beyond the inane and think of how to tackle the reality. That's one of the reasons why Labour will lose the next election - they have no strategy for the UK that will stand up to the public's scrutiny.

And that's where it all falls down. The public, such as they are, are more interested in who the douche from One Direction is shagging at the moment and doesn't Kate look great now she's pregnant etc, than the realities of sorting out the mess the banks left us with. The public's scrutiny will be like the blind leading the blind (if there was any scrutiny worth the name now, Gideon's plans would be toast).

I'm sorry Dally but I've run out of patience with your (probably deliberate) missing of the point.

Apart from a bit about it raining on polling day and Emmerdale and Corry are on so not even bothering to cast a vote anyway, that is pretty spot on.

No.


Great. When will you start?

So, you must be arguing that Spain's "growing" economy was sustainable in its previous form. If that was the case why the austerity now, why isn't it still powering ahead and recruiting unemployed people from other EU member states?

It was sustainable pre-crash. GDP was growing slowly but steadily. Unemployment was falling slowly but steadily. Govt debt to GDP was falling significantly. Then the crash hit and the inability to print money and devalue their currency combined with falling domestic demand due to the crash and austerity measures has led to the current problem.

So there property prices were sustainable? This crash of which you speak is not something divorced from the "real" economy. It occurred because the real economy of the "Western" world was a basket case.

Spain and to a lesser extent, Portugal, embarked on a massive construction programme. Most of this construction was apartment and villa developments and strangely enough was funded by Irish banks or funded by Spanish banks on behalf of Irish investors. When the Irish economy (especially the banks) tanked, it led to an emergency stop on the Spanish property market. Couple this with a typical southern European method of conduting business, where 75% of any deal is legitimately declared and 25% is "black money" - i.e. paid in cash. There's no wonder the Spanish economy is in a dire position.

What boils my pi[is[/is is when I hear Osborne and other right-wing fukwits telling us we need to keep on the path of austerity because we don't want to end up like Greece, Portugal or Spain. There is absolutely zero chance of us following them into the catastrophic state they currently experience.

We desperately need to embark on a massive building programme, not to flog off to speculators, in the hope of a quick buck but to house our own population at a reasonable cost. This situation is not too dissimilar to the one we found ourselves in at the end of WW2 and as a nation, we were more skint then than we are now. I have previously given an example of how this could be achieved through issuing government bonds. The only thing preventing it is an ideological aversion to non-private renting.

Except it wasn't. The vast majority of the "real" economy of the Western world was perfectly fine. 1 part of it was not due to the greed/incompetence/short-sightedness/short-termist culture that had developed in the financial sector.
Everyone knows something was wrong to cause the crash, that's not the issue being discussed. You were inferring that the Spanish economy was unsustainable pre crash, it wasn't. It was perfectly sustainable. As in most countries, the reduction in demand post crash is the main reason why the economy has contracted. That reduction in demand has been exacerbated by austerity measures and the Euro. In Britain we're lucky to have the BoE to print money and lower interest rates to try and stimulate demand. Sadly the government has been undermining that with contractionary measures.
In Spain they don't have the option to print money and lower interest rates, so the austerity measures have an even more deleterious effect. Spain was in a weaker position to us, no doubt, but had they still retained monetary control and pursued an expansionary fiscal route instead, they would not be in the current horrible position they are.
Of course if we didnt have a government determined to pursue ideology and stopped contradictory fiscal & monetary policies by increasing government spending to fill the demand gap then we would be a lot better off too.

The financial sector does not operate in isolation! The apparent boom in economies was primarily (if not wholly) down to cheap money creating asset price bubbles. The construction of which you speak was the most tangible and obvious example. Eire is the extreme case of its effects - a booming "tiger" economy built on building. I spent half a day in Dublin a couple of years before the collapse and they were all buzzing. When I pointed out the obvious - that there was no need for all these buildings and it would end in tears they didn't seem to see that. In short, the real economy was not in good shape or else all those secured loans could be serviced and the banks would not be shakey now. Your naivety and head-burying is staggering.

Must I? How do you work that out, then? You asked?"
..to which I replied "No." I.e, no, it is not a direct result of a nation previously living above its productive means.

I did not refer to "Spain's growing economy", I did not mention its sustainability or otherwise, and so as per you are commenting from the wrong orifice.