[Jaspersharpe]

The Tories are making a total bollocks of their conference so far aren't they. They've managed to piss the media off from Left to Right and this backtracking with the disastrous "Married Couples Tax Break" policy is just going to make things worse.

A PR disaster and from what I've seen it's mostly down to Gideon springing the CB announcement on the rest of the party most of whom had no idea that he was going to make it. What was he thinking?!

Sloper, you may know more about this? I think it's quite funny anyway....

[superfurrymonkey]

Analysis by the Institute of Fiscal Studies has concluded that on the eve of the financial crisis ‘the public finances were in a stronger position than they had been when Labour came to power in 1997’:

Though public spending increased from 39.9 per cent in 1996–97 to 41.1 per cent in 2007–08, over the same period revenues grew by 2.3 percentage points, meaning that total borrowing fell by 1.0 percentage point over this period. With more being spent on investment in 2007–08 than in 1996–97, the current budget strengthened even more – from a deficit of 2.7 per cent of national income in 1996–97 to a deficit of just 0.3 per cent of national income in 2007–08. Meanwhile, public sector net debt fell from 42.5 per cent of national income to 36.5 per cent, as the UK economy grew faster than the accumulation of new borrowing. (Chote et al, 2010)

Hardly the statistics of a government whose spending is ‘out of control’.

Full article here.
http://www.renewal.org.uk/articles/the-politics-of-the-deficit/

[Jaspersharpe]

Rachel Reeves is a Labour MP so there's a fair bit of bias there!

However, there's also a lot of economic sense and quite a bit of what I've been banging on about.....

[superfurrymonkey]

Sorry didn't make the connection to Reeves but one of her references is certainly worth reading http://www.progecon.org.uk/2010/06/rethinking-deficit-reduction/ it's quite long but very interesting.

[Jaspersharpe]

Thought I'd put this here as it's closely related:

http://bit.ly/9HxUax

[Sloper]

FFS, why do I bother when people can't see the moronic flaws in Reeve's et al arguments.

First of all she ignores the fact that because Brown kept the Tory measures in place from 1997 - 2002 we were in surplus.

Secondly she doesn't recognise the fact that Labour ran a deficit from 2002 to 2007/8 (i.e. before the shit really hit the fan).

Turdly she doesn't seem to appreciate what happened from 07/08 to 09/10.

And lastly she doesn't recognise that much of the increase in receipts,was in the great old new labour phrase, 'un-earned income' from the £20bn from the sale of the £g licenses, to the sale of the gold, to the privatisations (too many to detail), stamp duty, IHT and so on, i.e. unsustainable / one off receipts.

As for investment, the spend wasn't from reciepts you .. . . .. . .. it was on PFI, off balance sheet and at vast expense to future tax payers.

As for Chote and the IFS, do be honest, these are some quotes from the summary from Chote and the IFS report . . . after 10 years of boom Labour had 'reduced public sector borrowing slightly below the level it inherited from the Conservatives' (see above about PFI) before going on 'But over the same ten years the vast majority of other leading industrial countries reduced their borrowing by more than the UK' and on 'Once again, the UK public finances have underperformed relative to comparable industrial countries.'.

http://www.ifs.org.uk/bns/bn93.pdf

FFS this is like trying to argue with creationists about whether dinosaurs were real or just God's test of faith for the non believers.