The terms of debate have changed

NorthernJohn

Apologies for going completely off topic, but what's happened to Ken Boston and Balls' shameless bullshitting. Don't let that one slide.

William Blake's Ghost

“not just mad but dangerous.”

Surely Cooper is reflecting on the policies of her own Government rather than those of any other party?

Labour are dying. We just need the chance to put them out of their and most importantly our misery!

Andrew K

I'm afraid I read the interview as Sarah Notaclue doing what the BBC has done for the past dozen years or more - holding the Conservatives to account, in or out of office.

London Calling

The Budget was a Fudge it. The 50p a sting. Making something out of nothing was always going to be the challenge when you don’t have five fish and five loafs to feed the financial thousands.

David Cameron's strategy has relied more on his bark than his bite,
I just wish Mr Angry eyes would
show more substance, including
other party leaders such as Nick Clegg etc.

Its going to be a long hot Summer, and time to revaluate
the following:

Is Westminster fit for purpose?,
if so, reform the constitution
and remove any doubt from the publics point of view that Politics is working for the people and not just for Politicians and their PR machine.

Punch and Judy got boring, everyone’s fed up with the in- fighting in Westminster whilst the county sinks ever further into the abyss. There is a serious disconnection between what needs to be done and what isn’t being done to get Britain up and running again.

We may have run out of Money, but we haven’t surely run out of ideas also?

PS...
I don’t know about a Ping pong
contest between Boris and David,
but David’s head may have been more apt on the tray Boris is carrying on this months issue of The Spectator.

Maybe Boris and David Davies should get together and give Davis Cameron the wake up call
he so desperately needs.....may the best man
win.

William

He didn't say the 50p tax rate would be cut - at least, not immediately. He made it clear it would not be a priority of a Conservative Government.

Curiouser and curiouser.

Alex

James - you need to remember:

The BBC interrogate Conservatives and they ask Labour questions

The BBC are Labour.

Thrasymachus

Potential areas for cost-cutting that are vote winners:
1. Scrapping the ID card scheme,
2. Concerted restriciton of RIPA powers: it all costs,
3. A minimalist 2012 Olympics (it's never going to be as striking as Beijing),
3. Our national fiscal emergency must take prescedence over our military commitments in Iraq and Afghanistan. We've done our bit: time for others to step up,
4. Scrapping SATS,
5. Downsizing the H&SE,
6. Revised legislation on compensation (for 1st parliament),
7. Restricted budgets for Quangos across the board: from the Arts Council to the Carbon Trust,
8. Simplified financial legislation intended to target offshore banking: to clawback money from PFI firms,
9. Abandoning the 50% University target, moreover, closing or radically overhauling a number of Universities,
10. Restricting immigrant access to social security benefits i.e. if you haven't paid in you can't take out. EU nationals should be encouraged to seek benefits in their countries of origin.

DM

William - If Cameron comes straight out and says he will get rid of the 50p tax at the first opportunity, then that will make the headlines and the news agenda and make the less informed public think that he is only concerned about the rich and not those on 20,000.
He knows how the media are looking for headlines and soundbites from every interview, and he is playing the 50p tax proposal perfectly sensibly.
We all know it doesn't add up, and he knows he will get rid of it when he can, but he is not going to get sidelined into one aspect of the budget when there are many other parts of the economic crisis to be interviewed about (and headlined about.)

DM

And as for Yvette Cooper and the rest of the Treasury team, they should be on public trial for how they've wrecked this country.

NL

Has anyone confirmed that if Darling had used the trend growth rate of ~2.7% gdp, rather than the fantastic 3.5% he did use that the Borrowing numbers (to cover the bigger loss in revenues)over the 5 yr period would not be the unpalatable ~700 Bn but an end of government inducing headline of 1 Trillion - same as the G20 lie for the globe - is that why Darling / Brown have been mendacious and deceiving once again? Am I right or economically stupid? I'm suprised no-one has pointed this out if I am correct.

David

You poor fool. The aim was to try and get Cameron caught with a soundbite Labour could use about cuts. That's why they pushed hard on it.

The Bellman

Yvette Cooper 'in an extremely exposed position'? Ick...

Caroline Flint on the other hand... Mmmmm...

TrevorsDen

1st Q GDP fell by 1.9% - much more than Darling predicted 2 days ago!

Michael

I thought Montague's agenda was to paint the Tories as big spending cutters and expose their plans for Labour to exploit. I long to hear a Labour minister challenged in this way.

Jonathan_T

Cameron was interviewed on 5 Live shortly after The Today Programme.

Mentioned that he would seek to restrain senior BBC pay - good work given the Old Left bias of Radio Bloke. (Unfortunately he didn't mention a BBC subscription funded model, but one step at a time eh...)

Yarnesfromhorsham

Dont forget the "efficiancy savings" - not this year but next. Doh. Whats wrong with this year. Can you imagine a business putting off making savings. Dont get me started!

Tom Pride

Cameron should just say, “we will set a rate of tax consistent with a dynamic wealth creating economy and fiscal prudence”, and leave it at that.

Geoffrey Howe did not preannounce the 83% to 60% cut in The Lady’s first term and nor did Nigel Lawson with the 60% to 40% cut.

The guy deserves our sympathy for having to deal with the puerile partisan antics of the vicious creep on the other of the dispatch box.

dave, surrey

During the paper review on the Today program I hear mention that in the latest poll Gordon Brown is seen as better at running the economy than David Cameron would be (no numbers given). Tucked away at the end is the fact that the tories have a double digit lead (again, no number given). This I think is typical of the low level, almost subversive, pro labour stance of the BBC.

Verity

Thrasymachus - Of paramount importance is the Lisbon Treaty, to which Cameron is wedded, and which will take away the last tattered shreds of freedom this nation once enjoyed by right.

Nicholas

Agree with Northern John - what about Boston and Balls - that one seems to have been buried alive?

David Cameron should promise retrospective legislation to make it a serious criminal offence for government ministers to defraud or mislead the public in any way, including claiming dodgy allowances or publishing dodgy statistics. This would leave him in the clear over any dodgy Tory skeletons but pave the way for going after the worst New Labour culprits post scorched earth when they think they've got away with their troughing, squirreling and pensions. It would also be a divine retribution for New Labour's bossy, nannying, unber-legislative ways. I should love to see McNulty and Smith side by side in the dock at the Old Bailey charged with fraudulently deceiving the British people in order to obtain a pecuniary and political advantage.

David the Tory

Verity, Your extreme, nutjob, anti Cameron diatribes get boring after a while. Cameron pushed very hard to get Broon to honour the Liebour commitment to a referendum on the Lisbon Constitution, But Broon, in his antidemocratic way, steamrollered the thing through. Cameron made it quite clear he would vote against the constitution, but cannot offer any promises post election as the unravelling of a fully ratified treaty would be immensly complex. Any solution short of full withdrawal is going to be very difficult to sort out.

teledu

Thrasymachus, so far so good, but I'd add...
11) leave the EU (after referendum)
12) No cash benefit payments but tokens - not redeemable for fags, booze, betting or Sky/Satellite subscriptions
13) No Public Sector pensions for ANYONE above the average salary. (If you're earning £75k+ working for the state, f&&&ing-well/invest save some of it. If you can't live in retirement on the average wage then you're a prat.)

Cogito Ergosum

Thank you, Thrasymachus, for suggested spending cuts. Here are two of mine.

1. End all this low-carbon green nonsense.

2. Initiate an education policy which recognises that there is a range of ability and teaches to what is there instead of pretending that everyone is a genius.

Both of these mistaken current policies are wasting fortunes of taxpayers' cash.

Further comment on 1. I do not accept that global warming is man-made. There was a tradition in British science of thinking deeply about known facts before rushing to conclusions: Newton, Darwin, and some twentieth century scientists were examples. The global warmers have done the opposite, screaming about their half-baked hypotheses in order to get next year's grant funds from politically motivated sources.

Most of the carbon in the earth's crust and oceans is inorganic, just as most of the oxygen is in silicate rocks. The important carbon cycle is the recycling of the earth's crust by plate tectonics, as opposed to the organic cycle of photosynthesis, animal eating, and bacterial decay. So burning a few million tons of coal or oil will make a negligible difference to the planet.

The best future of the human race will be a high-energy future, not a hair shirt future.

Further comments on 2. Some other time, this rant is long enough.