All the red ties are out on the front bench for this one. Tony has a pink one though, that's what you get if you mix red and blue isn't it?
Anyone see our Tony on Comic Relief? Must say he was very good.
The British public will never elect that miserable, dour, sweaty. Especially with those fingernails.
0
Comments
Tony was good with Catherine Tate, got the accent just right.
Nooooooooo.. im about to get one!
Trouble is, i'm not sure if the current opposition are up to the task. Worrying times for the UK citizen...
And the barsteward is top of the CL prediction league!
You mean by under quoting the Olympics by about 6 billion. Small mistake that was! Can't wait to see how we get stung in our taxes to cover that little hiccup.
I'd love to find out where he get's his money from...his figures simply do not add up...then we get a tax cut...most strange
I'd love to find out where he get's his money from...his figures simply do not add up...then we get a tax cut...most strange[/quote]
Tax revenues...which have steadily increased over the last ten years.
There'll be plenty of analysis but the key things from a taxation perspective that I can see are that he brought down both Corporation tax and income tax and extended the upper tax band.
That should create a lot more cash in the pockets of both individuals and companies and hopefully that will have a positive knock on economical effect.
It's worth pointing out to his detractors that the British economy has grown every quarter in the (nearly) ten years that he's been Chancellor. Compare and contrast with the previous ten years and more importantly with his peers in France, Italy, Germany, the USA, Japan etc (ie the G7 nations), all of which have had recessions in that time and/or have borrowed maasively to finance growth.
Sure a lot of borrowing has been undertaken to pay for that, and that worries me, but the investment has been necessary to get schools, hospitals and other projects up and running, and many of these things were neglected under the Conservative government and the job of the government is to borrow/spend, particularly when the economy is sluggish in order to maintain growth. The theory being that when GDP rises the borrowings are paid off.
During his ten years interest rates have been low (and these are outside of his control - so the micro-managing charge doesn't really add up), more importantly inflation has been low and Gord has promised to balance the budget over the economic cycle - this he's done, ending up some £11 bn to the good. His detractors seem to despise him but he's done a very solid job as Chancellor and that is why we are seeing GDP growth rates of 2.5-3% every year. Of course he could ramp up spending and tax cuts as the Tories often did, that creates a great feel good factor, but leads to severe recessions.
On the downside, I'm not sure about scrapping the lower rate of tax, that will mean lower paid people will be paying more tax (ca £160/PA) but he has targeted incentives at those people in that group (family aid etc).
On the whole it looks a good budget - no wonder those on the right are pissed off.
Those on the right could be split - he has stolen their thunder (clever), but they could use this as ammunition (has he come round to their way of thinking??) I thought Cameron's response was interesting aswell - a well drafted riposte.
Probably not, but I'm more worried that a post advocating Keynesian macro-level economics will be allowed. After all the assertion that the importance of aggregate demand for goods as the driving factor of the economy, especially in periods of downturn isn't necessarily a popular one and always seems to attract a fair amount of criticism from those who prefer a supply sided solution to our economic governance and a greater degree of equilibrium in money supply, but that depends on restraining momey supply and in my opinion that leads to a lack on investment and has a consequence with the government restraining spending for the long-term preferring short term fixes, ie preferring current expenditure over capiatl expenditure and investment, which naturally is more expensive over the short-term although the benefits are there in the long term. think acadaemies, training players up etc over going out and buying a team from scratch. Naturally therefore I would argue that government policy should be used to promote demand at a macro level, to fight high unemployment and deflation of the sort seen during the 1930s but also frankly to stop the Tory party ever getting their grubby hands on ever running Britain again.
Alan Pardew's red and white army ! :-)
Ollie - help us out on this one please mate
Still don't like Brown though!!! :-)
Those on the right could be split - he has stolen their thunder (clever), but they could use this as ammunition (has he come round to their way of thinking??) I thought Cameron's response was interesting aswell - a well drafted riposte.[/quote]
Has he been lucky? How? He has ten years of economic growth every quarter - no other British Chancellor has ever achieved that, either on the left or right. To be fair he inherited a growing economy with Ken Clarke having sorted out a lot of the problems that Lamont caused (how much money did we chuck away in just one day maintaining a place in the ERM??), but undoubtedly he's been skillfull in maintaining that growth, of course mistakes get made and most seriously I think that the tax burden on the lower paid has been too high (it has increased under Brown) and needs to be reduced to act as an incentive to work (if we can have tax cuts for high-earners as an incentive, then it follows the lower paid should be incentivised too). I have no problem with a budget for the middle classes, that group effectively run the country, not the industrialists and not the unskilled workers. The middle classes are the ones who predominantly send their kids to state schools, use the NHS and will enjoy a few extra quid in their pockets and make up the majority of the population, especially the working population. As for Cameron's response...well do you really expect him to applaud Brown and sit down and shut up?
My feeling is that people dislike Brown not for any specific reason but just because they see him as too dour and perhaps a bit intellectually arrogant, that he thinks that he knows best, (maybe he does), perhaps if he looked like Ken Clarke and enjoyed a pint or two and smiled a bit more often then he'd be a bit more personally popular. In all I think he's done a good job as Chancellor, whether that means he'll be a good PM I don't know, the two jobs involve different skills and I'm not so sure that he'd make a good charismatic leader/diplomat which is necessary to keep the party under control as well as making it look electable - although he has a formiddable political brain. In all I think he's spent too long as Chancellor and that he should have been made PM a year or two back allowing him to select a Chancellor to carry on his work, but who'd be a Chancellor under him?
right lets try and break this down, Keynesian Macro-level = oh man never eard of it! i give up lol
While we have a Union, why not?
I want the best person for the job.
BFR - politics is short term-ism and has been for a long while. The NHS was built on the back of a war - i.e. everything had collapsed and we had somewhere to start from. It is all plate spinning now. A massive investment (and actuall follow through) in renewable resourses would be a good legacy for this government imo.
This worries me when I know who you work for : - )
The immigration issue is, in purely economic terms, a symptom not the cause of the boom. People come in most cases to work in thriving economies that want their labour be they cleaners or IT bods. It has also been that way and London in particular
As for Brown, its not a political thing with me and its not a total dislike. Didn't go much on Ken Clarke either. Maybe Brown is too dogmatic to be PM, but we'll get the opportunity to find out soon enough.