You just don't get it do you. Does it never dawn on you the Tories would love to spend billions/trillions on health/education (in every govt department) as all political parties in the world would because they ultimately want our votes. But at some time there comes a point when economic nous says, no we must cut our cloth as we see it we can't afford this and we must put a limit on this, that is what the Tories (in my opinion) try to do. Labour and the left seem to think that this does not apply to them and can just blow it all on the credit card and that is why we are now £165,000,000,000 in debt.
An example of pulling the plug is what is/was happening in Greece now (junk ratings etc. difficult to get further credit, draconian cuts to public spendings an absolute necessity now). The markets/creditors would have no hesitation in sweeping the UK in with Greece if the new government didn't come up with a realistic plan to do something about the biggest peacetime debt ever, now.
The Uk economy is totally different to that of Greece. Reference to their austerity measures is merely scaremongering of the highest order.
As for the Tories spending money on health, they could have done that in their last government but didn't. If you think the Tory mantra is to spend on public services to win votes you are clearly delusional. The Tory philosophy is to to reduce public services and put money back into the pockets of their supporters so they can decide where to spend it, ie on private schools, private medical health etc etc.
There's far too much "blame" in this thread.
The way I see it the private sector's doing OK considering, while the public sector's grown disproportionately large under Labour's stewardship and the Coalition are simply applying some common sense and good housekeeping by shedding 600,000.
By and large those 600,000 were doing meaningless jobs. Where is your evidence that the most of the 600,000 are doing meaningless jobs. A few hearsay anecdotal posts or daily mail headlines. No doubt there are some doing meaningless jobs as there are in the private sector. As Tony Hayres once said to Alan Partridge "We don't owe you a living."
We can all name at least one person we know in the public sector with a micky mouse job, not working that hard. It's about time people started tooling themselves up with proper qualifications and doing a real job.
So who is to blame for the £1,500,000,000,000 (thanks Titanic) debt we as a country are in? Answer 13 years of New Labour
Who has to do something about it? Answer Tories
Nothing changes!
You seem to live a life of ignorance!
Well it seems to me to be a Tory Chancellor and PM so I would guess they would get any credit/discredit as to how it all ends up.
If it wasn't Labour's fault then whose is it that after their 13 years in (absolute i.e working majority) power and 13 Labour budgets we are £1,500,000,000,000 in debt?
It's so sad. One would hope as a Tory you might have some grasp of economics rather than spouting of statistics you now nothing about.
In 1997 the UK National Debt was £830m.
Absolute crap. Perhaps you will enlighten us to the source of this fiction. According to the Telegraph (a Tory rag mind!) the National Debt in 1997 was £350,000,000,000, ie 400 times higher than you suggest!
I make that (1997) £830,000,000 to (2010) £1,500,000,000,000
Quite a jump!
Sorry Simmo, showing your ignorance again.
Take out the world recession caused by the private sector finance industry, then in 2007 the 'record' national debt of about £500b was only 38% of GDP, ie less than the 43% that the then labour government inherited from the Tories in 1997. The subsequent recession had to be managed and most governements did follow Browns recommendations.
The fact is the Tories want to cut the deficit rapidly and whereas Labour and (pre-election) the Lib Dems, were proposing bringing under control over a longer period using the increase in the GDP to support that. We are faced now with possibility of double dip recession.
Not all EU Governments are using Osbornes slash and burn tactics and even the US have stated that governments should not risk undermining growth for the sake of reducing deficits. However, they all recognize the need to reduce the deficit, funnily enough, including the Labour party!!!
Just out of interest, and trying to put everything into context, have a look at the attached article.
BBC NEWS | UK | Magazine | The myth of record debt
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