Where do I demand anything? All I've said is that mass strikes and anarchy wouldn't help. I've even agreed with you that of course people should have the right to withdraw labour, but that I don't think it would help.

You keep trying to put words in my mouth, it's really helping to make you look clever. No, really?

Their strategy was to at least maintain public spending for this year in order to avoid a fall back into recession and if you look at the link I provided (albeit from the Labour party themselves) then Cable certainly thought it a reasonable proposition and even Cameron admitted that slash and burn in 2011 would be risky whilst at the same time offering no other firm strategy.

As for any party's manifesto are you suggesting that they are all so meaningless and that we should simply take a lucky dip in the ballot box - maybe we can get the National Lottery machines to decide the next election (certainly seems to have been the way the last one worked),

EEC vote ? To vote out of the EC now would be a bit like the kid who turns up at a party starving and in rags and then leaves halfway through having eaten all the cake and trifle and rifled through the hosts wardrobe - half of this country's infrastructure has been built on EC funding since the late 1970s, it was EC money that kept me in a construction job from '75 to '83 and most people in the north east would still be living in colliery rows (without the colliery's) if it wasn't for EC money.

They were still going to make the cuts - where did they think the growth in the private sector was going to come from to avoid going into a recession.

How many people actually read and take any notice of the manifesto? The vast majority of the public vote the way they have always voted - when was the last time you got a Tory in South Wales and Labour in Ascot!! The floating vote is a very small but important minority.

Whether it was right or not the vote on EEC should have gone ahead as promised - the fact it didn't shows the value of the manifesto.

You are quite right. Most voters stick with their predjudices.

Nobody believed the Labour manifesto after their years of spin and lies. Their solution to the financial mess that they were in part responsible for, was to put off the rainy day a bit further. The country rejected this at the General Election. One year on when, after the cuts etc., you would expect the Coalition to be out for the count yet Labour has made no little or no progress at the recent local elections in convincing the county that they have viable policies and in Scotland they have a big problem. Without their Scottish MPs they will have no chance at the next General Election.

If you could sum this crisis up in one sentence, then this would be it. There’s no doubt that the people entrusted with how the tax money is spent have spent it all in the wrong way. This tax money has gone on to create industry’s that would be non-existent if it wasn’t for the Tax man been deceived by so called Philoanthrocapitalist who cry ‘pay me millions and I’ll make this world a better place’ in order to get more money into they own banks.

The reality is that the money that is meant to help the poor isn’t going into the hands of the poor at all. It’s going to some kind of middle man who charges the government in order for him to carry out services to the poor and these services are crap. The services are crap for a reason and that reason is that solutions aren’t profitable.

Poor people have problems for years whilst all these charities exist alongside them. They don’t help the poor people – they maintain them. After all where would Unicef be if they fed all the kids in the world? They staff would be starving themselves because they’d be no more administration money to squeeze out of the donation money.

The bottom line is that a problem free world is not profitable so things will never get solved properly.

The UK came out of the recession in the 4th quarter of 2009 under the last government. It was making steady progress right up until the point the coalition government introduced their 'unavoidable' emergency budget.



Since then the figures have gone into decline with each subsequent forecast for growth being downgraded. The economy has effectively flatlined for the past 6 months and needs to pick up.

The outcome of the 'gamble' currently being taken with the economy is far from a given. Last year I predicted (on here) disappointing growth would be the order of the day for a few years to come despite the (6% - as shown in the graph) spare capacity after the longest and deepest recession in living memory - but unfortunately I'm no economist.

Come on David, please read what I posted, not what you imagine I might have posted.
Where did I even imply that everything is a holy cow?
What I said was that the issue is what to cut, how deep and how soon.


See tvoc's chart... at least Labour had a strategy to encourage growth.
The strategy of mere hope that you describe is Gideon's not Darling's.

Plus Labour did voice their plan to halve the deficit over four years.
i.e. We have to cut, just not all at once.

Gideon glibly describes the (global) recession as "Labour's recession" ... how shifty is that?

Its an undeniable truth that Labour had a plan to make cuts beyond this current financial year, their concern was that the steady growth that was being experienced at the start of 2010 was maintained throughout 2011 and in this Vince Cable appears to have agreed and even David Cameron seems to have grudgingly admitted that a plan to slash and burn in 2011 would be risky.

Suddenly on a day in May last year their previous statements were abandoned and a "slash and burn by proxy" policy adopted together with a "slash and burn by opinion poll" policy where they themselves could not avoid responsibility for the slashing.

There is the suspicion of course that the current fiscal policy is politically motivated and not financially required in such a severe manner, the abandonment of pre-electioneering promises so quickly into their tenure only heightens that suspicion, there can't have been many governments elected in living memory where promises were gleefully abandoned within weeks of taking office, I would have been much happier to see Cameron try and proceed with his small minority and convince one or the other of the opposition party's to back him on each individual policy - now that would have been an interesting term.

The Government could make a start on reducing the deficit by getting a bit more tax from the likes of Vodaphone and others.

You missed off the following heading from your copy of the published graph
“Economy grows by 0.5% in Q1 2011”

And it was not all bad news as the following was also published in the same report.

“Gross domestic product grew by 0.5 per cent in the latest quarter, unrevised from the growth previously published. GDP in the first quarter of 2011 is now 1.8 per cent higher than the first quarter of 2010.

Output in the service industries rose by 0.9 per cent in the latest quarter. The rise this quarter was due to transport, storage & communication increasing by 3.0 per cent; business services & finance rising by 0.6 per cent; government & other services rising by 0.6 per cent; and distribution, hotels and catering rising by 0.8 per cent.

Inventories rose by £1.4 billion on the quarter.

In the first quarter of 2011 the trade deficit in real terms decreased to £5.7 billion compared with £11.5 billion in the previous quarter.

Exports of goods and services rose by 3.7 per cent and imports of goods and services fell by 2.3 per cent.

The GDP implied deflator rose by 2.8 per cent compared with the first quarter of 2010.

Compensation of employees at current prices rose by 1.3 per cent in the latest quarter and is 1.9 per cent higher than the first quarter of 2010.

Total gross operating surplus of corporations rose by 1.4 per cent and is now 6.5 per cent higher than the same period last year.”


You conclude that the sole reason for the disappointing growth figures to be the Coalition’s cuts. As you say you are not an economist and neither am I. However most economists would have included the corresponding increase in commodity costs as being a major factor in restricting growth as the following index clearly shows.

Description: Commodity Price Index, 2005 = 100, includes both Fuel and Non-Fuel Price Indices:

Date Value
"Feb-2009","98.29"
"Mar-2009","100.18"
"Apr-2009","104.18"
"May-2009","114.88"
"Jun-2009","128.16"
"Jul-2009","123.42"
"Aug-2009","132.72"
"Sep-2009","127.54"
"Oct-2009","134.81"
"Nov-2009","140.92"
"Dec-2009","140.93"
"Jan-2010","146.11"
"Feb-2010","142.42"
"Mar-2010","148.88"
"Apr-2010","157.96"
"May-2010","146.48"
"Jun-2010","143.37"
"Jul-2010","143.94"
"Aug-2010","148.36"
"Sep-2010","150.19"
"Oct-2010","159.38"
"Nov-2010","164.69"
"Dec-2010","174.67"
"Jan-2011","181.91"
"Feb-2011","189.82"
"Mar-2011","199.32"
"Apr-2011","208.41"

A recent analysis from the OECD shows that public spending in Britain, as a percentage of GDP will fall by slightly less than the average across the 17 countries in the eurozone in the two years to 2012.

To put matters in perspective for the period 2011/2012 Darling had proposed cuts of 14 billion against Osborne’s 16 billion.

You have frequently used the exaggerated term “slash and burn” to describe your view of the Coalition’s planned cuts in a way similar to the language of a trade unions leader.

An analysis of OECD figures show in a recent report by the Centre for Economics and Business Research (CEBR) that public spending in Britain, as a percentage of GDP, will fall by slightly less than the average across the 17 eurozone countries in the two years to 2012. (UK -2.2% compared with average fall of 2.4% in the eurozone countries)

Public spending in the UK rose very sharply as a share of GDP during the recent recession and the government is now bringing down the public expenditure as a share of GDP in line with most other OECD countries.

The Office of Budget Responsibility has lowered its estimate of how many public sector workers will lose their jobs because of the cuts from 490,000 to 330,000.

While the British government has frozen pay for better off public sector workers, the Greek, Spanish, Irish and Portuguese state employees have had to take pay cuts.

Scaremongering should be left to the union leaders and the BBC

Thats exactly when I lost interest, that point there.

Somebody wake me up when he's gone again.

Typical blogger. All hot air and no substance.

I didn't miss it off, I probably just blinked and missed it altogether.

Even accepting and adjusting (after we had the wrong type of snow) the final quarter figure would have shown 0% 'growth' and then followed by 0% 'growth' for the first quarter of 2011. No/poor growth with inflation rocking up to 5% - stagflation is back, haven't needed that term for a while.

What happened to the recovery that was in evidence when the coalition took office? It appears to be stalling as the OBR, OECD and BOE revise their forcasts down for this year and next still further.