Two steps forward for the Tories, one step backwards for the Lib Dems

Verityred

Bless the Limp Dim, they are kinda mixed up. Hang on, seen 'em cuddling up to the rotting whale corpse of Labour recently? Damn 'em.

Nick

It would be useful though for Tory candidates to have a list of some of these items of waste for when they are inevitably asked where these £20bn savings come from.

Too often the spokesman gets flustered at this stage and waffles about needing to see the books.

I think the Taxpayers Alliance must have a list of ten egregious sounding examples of waste, from overlapping quangoes to modern art procurent for civil servants offices.

Richard

There is a slight problem here.

This waste cutting measure to fund the NI tax cut.....Cameron admitted today that it would mean cutting jobs (IT and ID cards) not just waste.
So for a NI cut that doesn't come into effect until 2011 april the tories want to cut jobs from March 2010.
The hike in VAT to come once in force will never be removed so the business leaders get to pay 50% tax on earnings 20% VAT on sales. The tax payer has to fund another 5000 more unemployed a year before NI kicks in......some wheeze!
The saving on NI (estimated ar 6.5 billion plus the 1.5 billion for marriage allowance) total 8 billion will be for 4 years = 32 billion of revenue none of which will be going to the deficit reduction.
Couple all this to a promise to cut deeper and slash further than Labour, who are predicting a 27 billion plan year on year means the Tories are going to slash in excess of 35 billion per year. That is very severe and impossible without major job losses while ring-fencing NHS and the aid budgets. Oik needs to tell the people just where this is going to be targeted.

annassasin

The Tories have left the other two with "twisted blood". (George Best quote).Starting off with austerity, labour instinctively go the other way, polls dive in reaction to the idea of cuts, seeing the polls, Lib Dems follow Labour. Labour warn that cuts will damage recovery, Libs follow dropping their earlier zeal for cuts. Osbourne announces NI freeze & cuts. Mandy melts on TV, UK PLC stick the knife into Brown. Vince goes missing.

Browns character gone
cuts verses investment gone
Mandy laughing stock
Osbourne 0 to hero
Vince AWOL
Clegg who

Grayling PRAT "same old tories"

Vapid House

Err except the Lib Dems have said how they'll pay for raising the income tax threshold to £10k whilst the Tories have just said they'll "cut gov waste" to fund NI "cut".

More pointless nonsense from Britain's most pointless political blog.

barnacle bill

annassasin I would not dismiss Grayling as too much of a prat.
Yes it could have been delivered better, but what he was trying to say was that we should have the right of entry to our own homes, not the PC nanny state NuLabor are trying to force us into.
I should here state I do not include hotels, nor guest houses in this, they are run as businesses and as such should abide by the law of the land.
However when we are talking about B&Bs we are talking about people's homes. People use B&Bs to experience the hospitality based on the particular concepts of running that home.
Would you annassasin be happy for the government to tell you who you could and could not invite into your own home?
So yes Grayling delivered the message poorly but it's one the Tories should be using against NuLabor.

JONNY

Which of the Richard Aliases
wrote that one?

Ghengis

We are but a single step from being required to suffer inspection and licencing of our homes before being able to allow their use for any other other ourselves and our children. Only homes that measure up to the standard required by restaurants and hotels will be granted such a licence.

General Zod

Cutting non-jobs is not the same as cutting real jobs, Dickie. Te non- job holder had just been getting super-dole.

Ghengis

barnacle bill: the concept of a "cottage industry" is lost upon control freaks.

JONNY

What worries me much more is that
some B&B owners won't let my dogs in.

Is it PC, or even legal, to discriminate against our dumb and faithful friends I ask?
Something maybe to grill your local parliamentary candidate on.

Scott Mills

where is Richard? oh yes, Labour HQ not at work today!!

Scott Mills

no sorry, Richard is up there with the fairies again. Never mind Richard, only anther month to go until you are put out of your misery.

Major Plonquer

I agree with Richard. The Tories plan to cut £35 billion pounds will COST JOBS we can ill afford to lose.

This is totally unfair to all those Labour Lesbian Bereivement Counsellors and Inclusion and Outreach Advisors who will suddenly find themselves looking for a real job - in the horrible Private Sector where they'll be forced to work like common people.

Labour are only going to cut £27 billion which is a drop in the bucket by comparison. Nobody will lose their jobs.

No. Lesbians up and down the country can pass away knowing their partner will receive appropriate counselling and paedophiles everywhere can relax in the knowledge that Labour will ensure they are kept in close proximity to children as part of the rehabilitation.

This is what New Labour Britain is all about.

Verity

Dear God - all three of them look insane ... It looks like the cast of a horror movie. Three separate putative agenda-wielders set on dominating our country ... not serving the country and the electorate (who pay the taxes that pay their inflated salaries).

When will they ever learn?

The people will take back power from them ... as there are around 30m people (I'm not counting the islamics, the welfare teat-suckers and other undemocratically inclined subverts) and only around 600 MPs (too many, by the way' the Americans have 400 for 103m) and that still gives the indigenes around a 20m majority of actual voters. Which is why the twisted, ugly commies fear an election.

Point No 2 - The American Boston Tea Party was a revolt against the King for taxing the colonialists yet not according them representation. No taxation without representation.

This is equally powerful reversed: No representation without taxation.

In other words, in the words of Las Vegas, if you don't pay, you don't play.

Meaning, for the slow class, if you don't pay in to the Exchequer, you don't get a vote. Meaning, there is no sane justification for the welfare class to have a vote ... given that they have no stake.

Disenfranchisement is such an ugly word ... besides being much too long for most of them to spell.

Richard

@Major Plonker,

You are Upton Park!

look it up it's two stops away from Barking

Flemingcrag

Nick Clegg and the Liberal Democrats have went through a complete month without announcing a single policy, their capabilities have not stretched beyond carping at what either of the other parties have to offer.
This is not the tactics that pick up votes for you, all it does is demonstrate that when it comes to sitting on fences the Liberal Democrats can make themselves comfortable on the sharpest of sticks.

Robert Williams

I see that the image on the Lib Dem "Battle vus" is of St Vince on Cleggy's shoulder. It must be irksome to the extremely self-regarding Huhne.

Liberty

Finding ways to do the same things for less is fine but limited. The really big savings are in simplification, devolution and privatisation. The government takes 50% of national wealth and wastes it. We would be massively more wealthy if half of that money had been left in the productive economy and invested wisely. Just take welfare. There are more than 50 benefits available all means tested. There must be considerable overlap and they are all doing the same five things; compensating people for unemployment, having children, illness, old age or disability. Everything else such as housing, food, clothes, etc can be met by the market. So, pay unemployment benefit for 5 years in a lifetime. Pay a family allowance considering the first two children only and lasting for 15 years from the birth of the second child payable only to the over 21s. In any one year pay nothing for the first week of sickness, oblige employers to pay the second week and anything more than that or while unemployed via NI. A flat rate pension, inflation proofed for all and a separate system for disability run by local authority occupational health departments. All of it non-means tested. Means testing is intrusive, bureaucratic, expensive to administer, dissuades self provision, encourages fraud, is unfair at the margins and creates a poverty trap so abolish it. The cost savings would be huge.