The Tories are ramping up their spending cut rhetoric

Tiberius

E glandibus quercus.

Wily Trout

Here's an idea for a spending cut. The Building Schools for the Future process is hugely obstructed by interference from Whitehall exercising central control. Local Authorities spend a fortune on consultants whose job is to tell them how to get round the Whitehall interference. I'm sure someone at Conservative Party HQ can take it from there ...

oldtimer

On Monday Cameron accurately said he needed to take people with him. He also foreshadowed his intention to make series of speeches leading up to the G-20 meeting. I thought that was helpful rather than unimpressive, as you described it.

I see the speech in this context. It does what it says on the tin - it sets out his underlying beliefs and values and elements of a supporting strategy to reduce national debt. Sounds sensible to me.

Its a tricky area because the obvious Labour response is to talk "cuts". His task is to persuade voters that the state needs to tighten its belt, just like the rest of us. As the recession proceeds to deepen and last longer than ministers are ready to admit, that task will become both more necessary and easier to get across.

strapworld

Cameron should forget about Brown and what he and his roten crowd may say.

The public want to know how the Conservative Party will deal with the economic mess Labour have brought upon us all.

Cameron should remind everyone that this mess is Brown's homegrown mess so that he cannot escape blame.

To reduce the Quangocracy will be difficult as most, if not all, are Labour dominated and will squeal like rats!

The NHS should be trimmed. The Regional set ups should be culled if not closed, and each trust become answerable directly to government.

The Labour Government have created level after level so that they can never get the blame! There is always someone other than themselves.

Police Authorities should be locally elected!

NHS Trust Boards should be locally elected!

geoff

If only they werent committed to setting up 2 new quangos. One to run the NHS, the other one to report on the first.

Hawkeye

Now is the time to hammer home the spending cuts message. If it was left until the week before the election it would spook the electorate. Doing it now lets them listen without panicing them.

Hawkeye

Strapworld said: "Cameron should forget about Brown and what he and his roten crowd may say."

In general I agree with you. Certainly Cameron should stop attempting to score points directly on Brown and go for a slightly more oblique approach. By simply laying out issues as seem from a tory persepctive Brown will react to them with his usual levels of vitriol and scorn and thus make himself look bad or foolish.

For instance if Cameron mentioned that the tories would have to trim bureaucracy back because government incompetence had let it spiral out of control, how do you Brown would reply? If Cameron stated that there WILL be an immigration quota system, do you think that Gordon would agree? More likely the left would aim the term "racist" at the tories - and the left could then be portrayed as importing foreigners when we do not have enough jobs for our own workers.

I'm even coming to the (to me) controversial opinion that if the BNP take Labour votes then they should be encouraged. If the tories take a firm stance on immigration after the election then the raison d'etre of the BNP is removed and they will largely fall away, but only after causing Labour enormous problems in the run up to the election.

We need to destroy Labour so that they can never again abuse our country and bring it to its knees the way they have done in these last 12 years.

Adrienne Wilde

Brown just can't live within his means and so he doesn't believe anyone else can. He's a role model for those economic incontinents who've spent to the limit on all their credit cards and are having flog off what's left of their valuables to settle their bills. Except in Brown's case its our valuables he's flogging off.
I'd rather take Cameron on trust that he can make a little go a long way than have him tell me the details so that Gordon and pinch them.

Trevors Den

The NHS is already being trimmed. Look at the govts spending projections. There is already 37 billion of cuts in the pipeline. The NHS will be hit hard - look at the figures.

You are all stark raving bonkers.

a- you are cheerleading the tories into an election where, if you are followed, they will be labelled as cutters in public services.

b- It is enormously difficult to cut spending. It will take years. The various wheezes all the usual suspect come up with may be very desirable in themselves. Cutting QUANGOS. But the savings are overstated.

I would cut NICE. We managed without it before - its sole purpose is to ration health care (at arms length) - but any savings will be small.

Just keep your big gobs shut. Once in power the likely dire circumstances will give ample opportunity and reason for cuts. Pretty much the same cuts that an incoming labour govt would have to make, no matter what its pre election rhetoric might have been.

The key issue is creating a stable growing energetic enterprise led economy that will create REAL growth and a steady rise in sustainable tax revenues.

Cameron has given us the dog whistle so 'SIT' ... 'STAY' !!

MOC

At PMQ's each week DC should concentrate on highlighting all the wasted billions on Labour project that have failed to materialise, including the waste on quangoes and consultants. Pick 6 examples for each question and don't get into a debate with Brown ...state FACTS on the money wasted.

Verity

Hawkeye - I agree that Labour - the most vicious, malign, hate-filled, greedy political party ever endured by Britain - needs to be killed stone dead, never to rise again.

As Cameron is signed up to much of its agenda, it won't be happening under any Conservative government he heads up.

Every last quango should be shut down. They are money sucking leeches that contribute nothing that could not be accomplished by private companies.

The NHS must be privatised. It's a monster. If not privatised, then made to compete with the private sector. That means people could direct their NI payments to be credited to a healthcare provider of their choosing.

The NHS is an instrument through which the socialists control much of life. They can demand that costs of alcohol be doubled under the guise of being prudent guardians of the NHS purse and excessive alcohol consumption causes expensive damage. Same with fatty foods. Same with sugar. They can ban any aspect of people's private lives and their right to make their own decisions by citing "costs to the NHS". It's not a service, it's a weapon. A crude club wielded by socialist thugs.

Dump it. Or make it compete for the taxpayer pound with other, private and therefore much more efficient, companies. My guess, the NHS will end up treating illegal immigrants and the career unemployed, on taxpayer charity, and the private healthcare sector will thrive.

Charles Stuart-Hunt

I've come to think that New Labour became drunk on power and their ability to spend our money. Profligate in other words. The Tories have always been more conservative and know how to hold their drink. That is why I will never trust Labour's spending plans and will always vote Conservative.

Bernard O'Reilley

"Every last quango should be shut down.....contribute nothing that could not be accomplished by private companies."

It shouldn't be a money-making exercise for private sleazebags. Shut the quangoes down and don't replace them with anything. We don't need all these layers upon layers of waste of space middlemen in any form.

Verity

Bernard O'Reilly - OK. I could go with that.

Rodders

Don't let's lose sight of the fact that cuts in public spending need to be made for their own sakes, not just because Brown has bankrupted us.

Bravo, Hawkeye.

Jim

The debt is now increasing exponentially, along with the money supply, so we are nearly at the point where sterling completely collapses. This looks like it will happen before the end of the year. I hope you are all ready for hyper-inflation. It is quite possible that government salaries and pensions won't be paid for a while.
There is so much waste though that the opportunity for cuts in spending is enormous, we spend more on Quangos than on the military.

Paul B

Verity, I have never thought of the NHS as weapon before, but what you describe makes perfect sense. They- those nanny state, freedom denying, controlling socialist thugs- do use it as a weapon to bash the Great British Public with, its crude tool used to morally blackmail us all. The Chief Mediacl Officer Donaldson is a perfect example, with his calls for increased alcohol prices, although the socialists have rowed away from him at this time. The moral blackmailers even murmered in their sleep with the unfortunate death of Natasha Richardson, with more calls for crash helmets to be worn in allsorts of activities. It stinks.

Hysteria

I think LPUK did some work on the costs of quangos - annual cost found to be = total annual income tax take.

Potatoe Marketing Board? Milk ditto? Regional Development - the list goes on..........

Just stop it - please !!!!

Verity

Paul B - I've been referring to the NHS as a heavy club with which to beat British civil society for quite some time. It must be killed off or made to compete with private enterprise.

As long as it has a monopoly on NI deductions, it can pose as a "guardian of the public purse", and slip MPs the word to ban anything that makes life joyful. In other words, it is a weapon of control of the population and it is an in-yer-face challenge. As in, "We're going to ban sweet things because to much sugar can lead to diabetes and we are responsible guardians of the public purse." And, "The middle classes are secret obsessive drinkers and will get liver disease if we don't save them from themselves with new laws about the pricing of alcohol."

Etc. Etc. Etc. It's a blunt weapon, but who can argue when they claim to be being prudent with your taxes by guarding against future diseases?

They are in total control because everything comes down to life and death, after all. It's perfect.

Blow them out of the water and let in the fresh air of private enterprise. Let NI contributions be directed to a private provider of the salary-earner's choice. The assessors in those companies are competent to determine the amount of contributions - and deductibles - from people who smoke, drink, engage in dangerous sports, eat lots of chocolate, live on junk food, etc. It's none of the government's bloody business.

PC

Another big quango to cull: Cancel the Olympics. Spend the money on improving London directly, not by trickle-down. It would be a sound lesson to the IOC. Lock up the folks who put in the London Olympic bid for deliberately understating the cost -- they deserve the same fate as bankers. The Olympics look set to cost 1 billion a day. 2 weeks and it's all gone. Nothing left but white-elephant stadia.