Debt, debt and more debt

TPR

A "scorched earth" beyond even our worst nightmares. It's like the passing of a nation!

J H Holloway

Yup.

End of the New Labour project. And end of Labour, for good?

It took 18 years and total revamp to forgive them for the disastrous industrial policies of the 60s and 70s.

If next year is bad, that could be proper end of Labour in 2010 and an eventual re-alignment of the left.

And the thing about leaving so much debt behind, is that, even after 2010, it will always be 'Labour's debt'.

Truth is, Brown may have killed his beloved party thanks to his decade-long spending spree.

Simon Stephenson

I wonder whether the key policy that will guarantee the Conservatives the next election could be an admission that the chance of uncompromised Conservatism is a less important objective than is preventing people like Blair and Brown from EVER again being given the absolute power to govern this country whichever way they choose.

Proportional Representation.

Obviously, it's defensive, but first-past-the-post has shown that it is possible to have a megalomaniac as Prime Minister. Preventing this from happening again must, surely, be as important as anything else for someone with the interests of this country genuinely at heart.

TrevorsDen

You were on TV with some oik of a journo from I think the Sun. he seemed to be living in the same dreamscape Brown habitually inhabits. He said Brown was happy because he loves big government - 'pulling the levers'.

Well one of these days Brown will pull a lever and it will open the trapdoor he is standing on.

I wonder if that day was today.

Samantha

Please please please dont let the tories committ to debt repayment!

Its going to be hard enough to cut taxes as it is.

C Powell

And it's not just the rich who will pay. Everyone on incomes over £40K will pay more national insurance, those on between £100K and £150K will pay a marginal rate of 60% because of the withdrawal of the personal tax allowance plus the new super higher rate of 45% plus 11.5% NI so practically back to the 60% we had when Labour was last in charge.

And that's just for starters.

The only good thing to come out of this: it's made me even more determined to vote the bastards out!

Doug

I agree with your writings. As usual. But we have in fact been fighting 2 wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Then again we have to concede that they have been austerity wars because of Brown's distaste for increased defence spending. And obviously not the scale of a world war.

Judith

Credit where its due though. At least there is a plan to bring the public finances into balance.

I didnt think we would even get that.

One question I've got though, is how much the tax burden falls on the wealthy versus taxes on the middle. Anyone know?

Oh Please

Let's not get too pious about this: just as we're *much* more productive than our grandparents, so too will our grandchildren be more productive than us. They can really quite easily take one for the team.

Mac

"Labour has done it again". Keep repeating it.
£1 trillion debt racked up by the great British patriot. Keep saying it.

Expect the Ministry of Truth at Wood Lane and its resident Labour shills to be spinning flat out for the rest of the week . . .

kinglear

I keep telling you - this lot have NO idea about economics, business, money or even morals

dilys

" this not just an economic failure, but a moral one."
So what happened to the compass then?
I'd love to vote again for my constituency MP but if I do it'll look like a vote of confidence in this cretin.

albert son of a gypsy.

Mr Nelson. Since when did Brown have a moral compass?

This is a cynical political move, which like most of Brown's cynical bidgets will collapse in a heap.

It was so bad, that after most, if not all, the newspapers, over the next days and weeks, The result could well be a situation whereby, through a Wilsonian type illness!!, Brown resigns.

Whatever. It is the end of New and Old Labour. They have bankrupted the Country and the election after next will be yet another reminder NEVER TRUST LABOUR. So Labour can look to twenty years or more of being in the wilderness.

TrevorsDen

What other bad news has been sneaked out today?

Matt

Truth is Britain has been fighting two wars, Iraq and Afghanistan. No wonder we are in trouble.

TGF UKIP

The biggest gift to the Tories is that TRILLION pounds in debt. They should ride it and ride it. What it really needs is the right rhyming sound-bite. (Coffee House competition?)

So far as the political reporting is concerned I am completely gobsmacked. On the six o'clock news the BBC went to a shopping centre in Leeds for a vox pop. Here we go, I thought, the producer will have corralled a couple of Labour supporters to give it all a massive thumbs up, best thing since sliced bread etc. But no, exactly the opposite. While the Beeb couldn't quite bring themselves to mention that trillion figure, they certainly headlined £118 bn next year and half a billion over the next five years. Moreover the ten o'clock news was only slightly better for Gordon, he really must wonder what's going on.

Meanwhile, contrary to what I've been posting lately, with absolute certainty, there's now definitely going to be no 09 election. I was dead wrong. Instead, Gordon today set the stage for 2010 when he's anticipating a propsective Tory government will not accept spending and debt at these levels and will be forced to campaign on a platform of large spending and borrowing cuts.

His gamble is that by May 2010 we'll be well on the way out of recession so it will be Tory cuts versus steady as you go Gordon.

His problem is, though, that we might well be in just as much of the soft and smelly, if not more, than we are now.

James

My fairly religious Presbyterian wife, not one prone to swearing, shocked the hell out of me this evening with the following " well we can't trust a word those fucking bastards say ever again"
Well, I couldn't put it better myself!

Colin

A brown engineered personal credit bubble, followed by a national debt bubble

TGF UKIP

BTW, was it just me or did the Labour benches seem very quiet and subdued to other Coffee Housers as well? Even La Balls and Harperson seemed uncomfortable and restrained and even Blinkie Balls was indulging in none of his usual guffawing and Tory baiting. It all made Gordon's forced titters and phoney chuckling seem more weirdly bizarre than ever.

If this gets the caning it deserves in the papers tomorrow it's going to be a question of who breaks ranks first (Charles Clarke? Frank Field?) and if next weekends polls show a decisive shift in the Tory direction, Gordon is going to be back where he was in the Summer - right in it, up to his ears.

Wilhelm

Everytime liebour gets into government they wreck the place, remember 1979 the winter of discontent, you couldnt bury the dead and the rubbish wasnt collected.

Because fundamentally the liebour party are a bunch of communists. Thems the facts.

Wilhelm

Its like a nation heaping up its oen funeral pyre.

Tankus

@TGF UKIP ...Straw looked worried even before Osborne got into his stride.

Be a lot of retirements at the next election methinks !

Cuthbert

According to the US treasury( www.ustreas.gov/tic/mfh.t...) the UK has $338 billion in US T bonds. Why not cash some of these?

Evelyn Guzman

I don't blame you for the concern you expressed on the debt they're now incurring. But you know it's world-wide. You should see what's happening in the US. I would like to know too what Mr. Brown is spending the increased budget cost on. If it is for health care and the good stuff for the middle class, then I will be all for it. Just my two cents.

Evelyn Guzman
http://www.debtchallenges.com (If you want to visit, just click but if it doesn’t work, copy and paste it onto your browser.)

Herbert Thornton

The simile that springs to my mind is a variation of that involving the Titanic and the iceberg.

George Brown is the Captain. He sees the iceberg in the mist a couple of miles ahead. He immediately orders Full Steam Ahead and orders the helmsman to steer directly for it. "I know how to fix icebergs. We're going to RAM the bloody thing!"

hadrian

Let's trust that if Broon succeeds in mesmerising an all too willing public into a further term at No.10 by the time he's oot even he'll not have a decent pension to subsist on!

hadrian

...meanwhile, they still manage to find a 'piddling' £35,000 to fund the National Humanist Society's contribution to the atheist poster bus campaign. Frankly, it's this kind of profligacy that Broon and his statist pals should be hammered for.