Politics

[Tooj 17]

I think you mean the greatest Prime Minister of our lifetime.

[Kevin Carr's Gloves 3894]

Dr Liam fox today said "I am a cunt with a lot of money I believe that myself and other rich cunts should be given tax breaks while horrible poor people pay for the deficit. By doing this I show I am as more of a right wing cunt than all the other right wing cunts in the TOry party and that my grasp of economics makes George Osbprne look like a fucking nobel laureate"

 

Sorry Cath.

[Meenzer 15525]

Making a play for the leadership now that Dave is on the ropes?

[ewerk 30602]

Eight months each for Huhne and his ex.

 

Well that's certainly backfired on her.

[Sonatine 11375]

Frankie Boyle ‏@frankieboyle

Ironically, "Huhne" is what I'd choose for the phonetic spelling of the grunt made by a prisoner penetrated without consent

 

[PaddockLad 17255]

A short history of austerity: it almost never works

 

You have to be one of Vince Cable's 'austerity jihadists' to believe you can cut your way out of a slump

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  • Aditya Chakrabortty
    
  • The Guardian, Monday 11 March 2013 20.00 GMT
    
  • Jump to comments (403)
    

Liam Fox has called for a £345bn cut in public spending. Photograph: Dan Kitwood/Getty Images

 

Vince Cable is shocked – shocked! – to find that he's been sharing a coalition with Tories waging an "ideological jihad" on public services. As if to back him up, Liam Fox yesterday obligingly decried Tony Blair's "great socialist coup", and called for a £345bn cut in public spending, as well as a complete suspension of capital gains tax (this last measure doesn't actually feature in General Pinochet's Little Book of Counter-Revolution – but from tiny acorns and all that).

Fox fits snugly into his former cabinet colleague's pigeonhole. Yet if the business secretary really is on the hunt for austerity jihadists in the government, he'd better pack a giant butterfly net. If one definition of an ideologue is one who clings on to a strategy long after it's been proven to be a failure, then on deficit reduction David Cameron is as swivel-eyed as they come. Last week, the prime minister claimed "signs that our plan is beginning to work", but next Wednesday will see George Osborne deliver yet another budget in which growth forecasts are lowered, borrowing projections raised and even more spending cuts laid out.

This will be completely in line with every other budget and mini-budget the chancellor has delivered since he first laid out Plan A. To revisit those debut budget predictions from June 2010 is as tantalising as a glimpse of heaven to a fallen sinner. Back then, Whitehall assumed that Britain would now be amid a roaring recovery, with GDP growing 2.8% in 2012 and 2.9% this year. Instead, national income shrank in the last three months of last year and we will be lucky to see a 1% increase this year. Back then, it was assumed that unemployment would now be drifting downwards, businesses would be investing like billy-o, while public debt would be about to peak before heading south and the government would be on its way to the polls in 2015, the work of fiscal consolidation done.

Clearly, none of those things are going to happen, which is partly why Tory backbenchers are now so restive. But you would have to be one of the austerity jihadists to believe that you could cut your way out of a slump. The entire modern history of expansionary fiscal contraction, as coalition ministers used to call it, is that it almost never works.

Instead, severe austerity tends to turn recessions into depressions, consign millions to the dole or under-employment and lead to frightening political turbulence.

The most famous episode of austerity was during the interwar years, as Germany, Britain, France and Japan all fought to stay on the Gold Standard even amid the Great Depression. The deflationary impact of keeping their currencies pegged to gold, along with the austerity policies they followed to do so, was disastrous.

In Britain, unemployment jumped from 10.4% in 1929 to 22.1% by early 1932, even while government debt surged. In Germany, the Social Democrats stupidly clung to the orthodoxy of austerity, pushing joblessness up to to 30% by 1932, and opening the door to the Nazis.

In Japan, the Showa Depression saw household incomes more than halve within two years between 1929 and 1931. Tokyo cut spending by nearly 20%, with the military bearing the brunt of the privations. The result was a wave of assasinations of government ministers and bankers and attempted coups. As the political scientist Mark Blyth says in his new book, Austerity: "Austerity didn't just fail – it helped blow up the world. That's the definition of a very dangerous idea." And yet when Europe's crisis began in earnest in 2009, rightwing politicians across the continent adopted the line that the best governments could do was cut spending to encourage the private sector to spend. Two of the leading proponents of the argument, economists Alberto Alesina and Silvia Ardagna were invited to present their ideas to European economy and finance ministers.

Yet as Blyth points out, their counter-examples of successful austerity were nothing of the kind. Ireland's cuts from 1987-9? The economy piggy-backed on the Lawson boom in Britain and a global upswing. As for Australia, Alesina and Ardagna mysteriously ended their happy story just before the worst recession in its postwar history. Even now, austerity merchants scratch around for poster children. There's Latvia, whose cuts over the past few years have been described by IMF boss Christine Lagarde as "a success story … an inspiration for European leaders grappling with the euro crisis". Yet around one in 10 of the labour force have emigrated, a further 16% are unemployed and, on IMF estimates, the country will not get back to its pre-crisis trajectory for another decade.

When austerity fails to deliver economic recovery. its proponents fall back on exactly the kind of naked ideology attacked by Cable. Last week, I attended a meeting of Syriza Cambridge and heard the party's central committee member Stathis Kouvelakis describe how Greeks had been forced to accept the most painful austerity programme in recent European history. The parallels with Britain were striking. Where Athens lost its sovereignty to the IMF and Europe, the coalition claims it must placate financial markets. Where ordinary Greeks were branded as lazy and cosseted, Osborne and Iain Duncan Smith want to end the "culture of welfare dependency". And where in Greece, historic cuts were rolled out in the name of economic modernisation, here Cameron wants to whip us into a "global race".

If Cable thinks he has to fend off a few austerity jihadists, he should think again; he's in a government full of them.

[Happy Face 29]

Dr Liam fox today said "I am a cunt with a lot of money I believe that myself and other rich cunts should be given tax breaks while horrible poor people pay for the deficit. By doing this I show I am as more of a right wing cunt than all the other right wing cunts in the TOry party and that my grasp of economics makes George Osbprne look like a fucking nobel laureate"

 

Sorry Cath.

 

 

It's evil innit really?

 

Dunno how CT can defend such unconscionable self interest from the wealthy fucks.

 

Shameful.

[Christmas Tree 4725]

Unlike the Labour fucks who failed to regulate the banks in 13 years, failed to tax the rich in 12 years 9 months, screwed a generation by signing disgusting PFI'S deals with all their rich mates, screwed the country bt taking us into an illegal war, failed to tie pensioners pensions to the retail price index, failed to raise the lower rate of tax taking millions out of tax altogether, shook hands with Gadaffi, failed to fix the the roof while the sun was shining, oversaw the biggest financial collapse in living memory, joked about there being no money left.....

 

Sorry, lights have changed to green

 

#pious labour

[PaddockLad 17255]

I've never voted Labour in my life CT.

 

But I do know theres no votes in austerity

[Tooj 17]

Love that old chestnut about it being Labour's fault that there was a global recession.

[Happy Face 29]

Unlike the Labour fucks who failed to regulate the banks in 13 years, failed to tax the rich in 12 years 9 months, screwed a generation by signing disgusting PFI'S deals with all their rich mates, screwed the country bt taking us into an illegal war, failed to tie pensioners pensions to the retail price index, failed to raise the lower rate of tax taking millions out of tax altogether, shook hands with Gadaffi, failed to fix the the roof while the sun was shining, oversaw the biggest financial collapse in living memory, joked about there being no money left.....

 

Sorry, lights have changed to green

 

#pious labour

 

I don't defend Labour either. I was among their harshest critics on the majority of those things.

 

Your partisan view, treating it all as nothing more than a laugh to be had on here, is pathetic.

[Meenzer 15525]

Unlike the Labour fucks who failed to regulate the banks in 13 years, failed to tax the rich in 12 years 9 months, screwed a generation by signing disgusting PFI'S deals with all their rich mates, screwed the country bt taking us into an illegal war, failed to tie pensioners pensions to the retail price index, failed to raise the lower rate of tax taking millions out of tax altogether, shook hands with Gadaffi, failed to fix the the roof while the sun was shining, oversaw the biggest financial collapse in living memory, joked about there being no money left.....

 

Sorry, lights have changed to green

 

#pious labour

 

You forgot the biggest calamity of all ("tied the population's economic prospects to the impossibility of ever-rising house prices").

[PaddockLad 17255]

And criticising Labour for not regulating the City

 

Fuck knows how you can keep a straight face on that one CT....Thatcher's "big bang" was designed to keep a tight hold of regulation and didnt plant the seed in any way, shape or form for what happened in 2007...no, not at all...no...

Edited March 12, 2013 by PaddockLad

[NJS 4379]

And criticising Labour for not regulating the City

 

Fuck knows how you can keep a straight face on that one CT....Thatcher's "big bang" was designed to keep a tight hold of regulation and didnt plant the seed in any way, shape or form for what happened in 2007...no, not at all...no...

 

And of course Osborne's repeated calls for more deregulation before and even after 2007.

[Christmas Tree 4725]

 

I don't defend Labour either. I was among their harshest critics on the majority of those things.

 

 

I don't recall you calling posters for voting Labour. Perhaps I missed it.

[Happy Face 29]

I don't recall you calling posters for voting Labour. Perhaps I missed it.

 

http://www.toontastic.net/board/topic/27471-politics/page__st__2360#entry1101723

 

 

That said, you're right I am less inclined to criticise someone voting labour because there is at least an ounce of social conscious behind their policies. There isn't a glee behind saving money for the wealthy and crippling the poor. Their policies are better for the North East, for my home town, for my friends and for my family.

 

http://www.toontastic.net/board/topic/27471-politics/page__st__1920#entry904177

 

That's not to say I blindly support everything (much?) they do, as you do the Tories though. It's important to criticise those you support when you think they're doing something wrong. It's important to look at evidence and hold your hands up when it suggest those you support are going about things the wrong way, to have principals but to base them on facts.

 

Not that you have difficulty changing your mind like, this time next year you'll be Labour through and through so I don't know why I'm bothering, I'll just wait it out and agree with you when you do your next 180.

[PaddockLad 17255]

I don't recall you calling posters for voting Labour. Perhaps I missed it.

 

Is it just me or is that a really fuckin strange thing to accuse anyone of, whether its true or not?....

[Christmas Tree 4725]

 

http://www.toontastic.net/board/topic/27471-politics/page__st__2360#entry1101723

 

 

That said, you're right I am less inclined to criticise someone voting labour because there is at least an ounce of social conscious behind their policies. There isn't a glee behind saving money for the wealthy and crippling the poor. Their policies are better for the North East, for my home town, for my friends and for my family.

 

http://www.toontastic.net/board/topic/27471-politics/page__st__1920#entry904177

 

That's not to say I blindly support everything (much?) they do, as you do the Tories though. It's important to criticise those you support when you think they're doing something wrong. It's important to look at evidence and hold your hands up when it suggest those you support are going about things the wrong way, to have principals but to base them on facts.

 

Not that you have difficulty changing your mind like, this time next year you'll be Labour through and through so I don't know why I'm bothering, I'll just wait it out and agree with you when you do your next 180.

 

"I haven't", would have sufficed

[Christmas Tree 4725]

 

Is it just me or is that a really fuckin strange thing to accuse anyone of, whether its true or not?....

 

Just you

[Happy Face 29]

"I haven't", would have sufficed

 

Side-stepping the points raised like a model Tory MP.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

....or Labour.

[Gemmill 44864]

If I was a father of 3 (4?), I'm not sure I'd be so cosy in my opinions of what a good job the tories are doing. I'd be more than a bit concerned about their futures, particularly for staying in this region.

[PaddockLad 17255]

Just you

 

So, to prove my point in a way, you agree with everything the present Government do and stand for, because theres pretty much one way praise from you for them, and very little, if any, criticism of them...is it fair to say that?...

[Christmas Tree 4725]

 

Side-stepping the points raised like a model Tory MP.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

....or Labour.

 

I have no I retest in "points". (Haven't even read them tbh - one of those can't be arsed with nowt days), I was merely pointing out that the last Labour government were responsible for a whole lot of bad shit, yet you don't run around calling the many Labour supporters.

 

I know you were probably just baiting / teasing

[The Fish 10857]

I have no I retest in "points". (Haven't even read them tbh - one of those can't be arsed with nowt days), I was merely pointing out that the last Labour government were responsible for a whole lot of bad shit, yet you don't run around calling the many Labour supporters.

 

I know you were probably just baiting / teasing

 

I'm not interested in discussion, I just want people to agree with me.

 

Thing is CT, if informed and interested parties are taking the time to explain why they disagree with your stance, you should have the good grace to listen, consider and (if neccesary) present your equally considered arguments to the contrary.

[Happy Face 29]

I have no I retest in "points". (Haven't even read them tbh - one of those can't be arsed with nowt days), I was merely pointing out that the last Labour government were responsible for a whole lot of bad shit, yet you don't run around calling the many Labour supporters.

 

I know you were probably just baiting / teasing

 

When did i call anyone just for being a Tory supporter?

 

If you condemned their stupid policies while making a valid case for those you agree with I wouldn't call you. When you troll the board with unstinting support for idiotic policies despite all of the evidence that's what you get called for. Not for ticking the box for the party you hoped would do better.

 

Cameron and Osbourne HAVE to keep banging the drum, they've staked 5 years on it, their entire political career. You've no cause to back them up while everyone is laughing at them.