Still think there looked to be more than 12k last night

I had must admitt I had a chuckle when I saw the thread unfolding .
Just confirms my suspicion that our site has the smartest scribes ol all the sites!!. In the interests of peace and harmony I will not nominate the dumbest sites in the rugby league. Others may care to do so.

Early 80s when I started too?

There was only really bigger crowds when hull came to visit.

I started in the late sixties -early seventies , the big advantage with lessor crowds in the south stand was you could have a few beers in the bar. Then ten minutes before kick off casually walk up and find a good spot.
Ps. Drummers not thought of those days.

I was there and it was bloody cold!!

The problem with the growth statistics coming out of the OBR is that they're based upon the first round of data you have, and there's a problem of inherent optimism bias within that data. That's why the growth figures for every quarter other than Autumn 2012 (Olympics) have been downgraded after their initial release. The likelihood is that the 0.3% growth (which is a truly pitiful amount) will be revised down, to 0.1% or even zero.

In any case, whether the UK is technically growing or not is irrelevant. The way labour have banged on about 'wanting growth' has allowed the Tories to present any growth, however small, as a victory for them. This is false. The UK is hugely less productive than we were in 2007-8, and it's going to take a very long time to close that productivity gap. We have rising unemployed, LT unemployed and NEETS with 'employment' figures that are massaged by taking certain people out of the definition of 'economically active', which effectively consigns them to the scrapheap.

We don't need a little bit of growth, we need a hell of a lot of growth so that we can avoid the social costs of the current economic policies and so we can raise enough revenue to actually pay off the debts the Tories so worry about. The fact is that any attempt to compare the UK to Greece is utterly fatuous. Our national debt is lower than it has been for most of the preceding 300 years, a debt-to-GDP ratio is better than many other countries, and unlike them, we have a good record of paying off our debts in the long run, meaning people will stick with us. It's also no good blaming the banks for not lending, as they're currently in hock to two contradictory demands. Firstly, to recapitalise themselves against failure to a much greater degree as part of Basel II, and second to make lots of medium-risk loans to small businesses. They can't do both.

The current slash & burn policies are throwing thousands of people out of work and increasing the welfare bill, meaning we get less in tax and spend more on the previously productive. That becomes a vicious cycle when the spending of the previously-employed goes away, and businesses have to make job cuts to offset the loss of customers. This creates exactly the kind of contraction & stagnation we've seen, with QE barely managing to keep our head above water by acting as a fairly ineffectual stimulus.

The only way out is to get people back to work, get them spending money and get money moving around the system again. Invest in projects that will be long-term economically beneficial and that will adjust the economic balance of the country. Transport, Social Housing, Communications, Energy and Schools are all good avenues. At the same time, cut non-economically beneficial spending. This means huge cuts in the military, specifically the Trident replacement.

Once the economy is growing again and tax revenues are rising, you can start paying down the deficit. This will mean 'borrowing to pay off' and it is counterintuitive. It does, however, work. The result of cuts is not that we cut services & spending during the bad times, but that we don't invest in them during the good. The job of the next government will be to rein in peoples expectations, as huge amounts of public money go to paying off the debt rather than being invested.

It appears you're referring to the quarterly GDP (Gross Domestic Product) figures in this context. The OBR (Office for Budget Responsibility) isn't charged with reporting these - I think the acronym you were searching for is the ONS (Office for National Statistics)

Not the greatest of starts but I would agree in principal with the tone of the rest.

When the Tories say things like 'you can't borrow your way out of a financial crisis' I wonder if they've noticed the effects their policies are having on revenue and the increased borrowing requirements over their independent OBR forecasts from 2010.

Ouch .

Looks like the drummer boy is a fan of the late John Maynard Keynes , broadly speaking to practice this doctrine you have to start from a low base of government debt. You then borrow lots of money to kick start the economy,thus creating work and people paying taxes. You then pay off the borrowings, unfortunately we already have a huge debt so adding more debt is extremely risky. The danger being the people we borrow money from may increase the interest rate,thus mortgages and business overdrafts will rise.
I am doing my bit for the economy, I am off to the village pub for several pints of Sam Smiths fine ales, thus paying tax to the government . It's only a small gesture but one has to try.

yeah my bad, wrong office. However the statistics have been revised down by an average of about 0.2% iirc every following quarter, so lots of the quarters announced as growth we're now seeing as being stagnant or in recession. David Blanchflower has done some excellent work on this.

Backwoodsman-we do have debt, but it's important to understand what and where that debt is to properly understand risk. The massive increase in debt under Labour happened suddenly, it's not a case of it being built up gradually through lax spending. Most of the debt accrued up to 2010 was as a result of nationalising the banks we now have equity shares in.

So a large amount of that debt can be wiped down by creditors as stuff that will eventually return. The problem is not 'debt=bad' because countries, unlike individuals, pay off debt over a much longer time, debt is sustainable just so long as there is a strategy in place to pay it back. That becomes less likely when you send the economy into a period of stagnation (see Japan), as the overall shrinkage kills off tax revenue and leaves everyone worse off.

The loss of the Triple A rating was not down to too few cuts, but too many. That's why the ratings agencies, the IMF, the World Bank & every sensible economist are now saying the government needs to ease off the austerity and borrow to invest.

In 2011 the attendance was up probably because our season tickets were so cheap and we sold more. Our average attendance that year was 13967.

In 2012 we sold less season tickets but as the game could have been our 'last ever game', Bradford and Leeds fans came in their thousands to boost the attendance over 20000, over 8000 above our 2012 average of 11755.

Friday night's attendance was so low because we've sold less season tickets than in 2011 and 2012, and the match was televised.

As a Bulls fan I am disappointed that the attendance was so low but if we want a bigger crowd than that we'll have to sell more season tickets.

By the way, well played on Friday. You were far better than us.

How can it be rational to propose more borrowing when we've had to print 25% of the money we've borrowed already?

It's rational to fill the demand gap, to increase the money supply and to take advantage of the record low bond rates by borrowing now to invest and create jobs and stimulate spending. It isn't rational to have a monetary policy that is attempting to increase the money supply and a fiscal policy that is attempting to decrease it.

Well, first of all what Mervyn King said was that 25% of GDP is now QE.

The simple answer is that you'd borrow it to do different things than what this government have done. So far, QE money has gone to recapitalising banks and keeping interest rates down, not to doing anything particularly useful. So you'd borrow to get people back into work, thereby increasing tax revenues and creating a virtuous circle of growth. You don't pay back that debt straight away, the cuts come during the good times. It's the nature of governments that they have to spend & cut countercyclically. The emphasis on cutting the deficit quickly is intuitive, but disastrously misguided.

Look its simple, we are going to be saved from this nightmare by one man


Nigel Farage



*s*