Without growth, Osborne's best-laid schemes will go awry

Dennis Churchill

Spending cuts? Actual reductions in spending in the current year? Would you like to identify them and give us the net figures compared to last year? Adjusted for inflation of course.

Holly ......

Quite funny how we can have a double-dip recession when we are STILL only quarter way through the current one.

I could understand the outrage if it were just the UK going through this.
Looking at the picture across the world, to say we have no manufacturing to speak of, unemployable youths and, the unions causing even more grief...We are NOT doing that bad.

I don't think 2012 will be as hard as 2011 and, I did try to warn you this year WOULD be bad.

kinglear

Of course they do - because they never cut hard enough to start with. Why do governments think they are different from households? Banks will lend to households up to a certain popint, but no further. And the bond markets will lend to countries upt to that point as well - but no further. Mr.Micawber had it absolutely right and until governments and consumers learn that lesson nothing will come right

Paul Danon

The country will have to do what Mr Cameron accidentally said families were doing - recover by paying off (not just down) debt. We need a politician with the courage to say that the teaching-assistants at our school and the ancillary staff at your GP-surgery are going to have to be sacked. Crossrail and lavish motorway goldplating is cancelled. There will be no overseas aid for a while and we're mothballing half the universities.

Olu Ojedokun

Gideon was warned time and time again!

How Quaint

You think Gideon or Dave actually care about any of this? This job is just a touch down point for them and their cliques. Family first old boy.

Bless.

TrevorsDen

You cannot plat sawdust. The world is the way it is and we should not pretend otherwise.
Its pretty fatuous to say that without growth plans go awry. Governments do not invent growth, they can only offer it a chance to flourish and as long as the Eurozone is in confusion there is little chance for confidence to flourish.
As you say the Eurozone may well turn out worse - it is to be hoped that we as a nation are faced with the truth not some dressed up fiction as in the Brown years. If driving down the deficit takes longer so be it. In fact its has surely been the case that it will take 10 years to recover from the last recession.

arnoldo87

Double-Dip recession? Shome Mishtake surely?

This would mean that Ed Balls has been correct all this time, and Osborne wrong.

"Hold on" - I hear some people say - "this situation has been caused not by Osborne's failings, but by world events over which he has no control"

And they may be right. We all know, don't we, that Tory Governments' economic performance, unlike Labour, are allowed to be affected by world events.

Dennis Churchill

TrevorsDen
November 26th, 2011 12:16pm
Unfortunately politically correct cultural Marxism is mainly built on wishful thinking, specifically that human nature does not exist and we are all blank slates.

strapworld

well said Trevors Den, my old pal. I am getting rather tired of all these prophets of doom and gloom.

I notice that nothing is being written about the excellent decision by the House of Lords to have an enquiry into the costs and benefits of being a member of the EU. That is good news, surely?

I am going into the workshop to see if I can plait sawdust.

disenfranchised

charity begins at home.

with the country now deep in the doo-doo, how can these play politicians even begin to think about bunging a billion or so quid to needy countries (but with the odd nuclear weapon, natch) when there are so many people in need, and due to become even needier, at home?

all totally beyond my comprehension.....

TomTom

Forget it. There is nothing to grow. Britain scrapped its industrial base in the 1980s and survived by deregulating Credit and growing by trading existing assets and stimulating weak output growth.

Without Easy Credit Britain goes into Secular Stagnation. It is a defunct economy, a Mezzogiorno saddled with huge external liabilities equal to 500% GDP

Simon Stephenson.

arnoldo87 : 12.20pm

I'm not quite clear what you are suggesting. That governments should be held responsible for events beyond their control? Or that they shouldn't? Or that Labour governments shouldn't but Conservative governments should?

Maybe you're deriving your recommended standards from a tablets-of-stone prejudice, not from an open-minded observation of how things actually are?

wrinkled weasel

What does "recession" mean exactly? Now, I am sure there is a definition beloved of economists but that is not the point is it? The point is, how does recession affect me?

If one element of this is a contraction in the crazy cycle of production and consumption beyond the needs of mortal man then I am happy. Everywhere I see a kind of madness: shoppers frantically running about trying to buy bargains, looters frantically running about trying to nick bargains and a depressing sameness of high-street mania.

I am a consumer, don't get me wrong, but I happened to be in London the other day and thought to myself that I don't need another shirt or another gadget or another pair of socks, even on "sale".

I am sorry of course that my reticence means that people will lose jobs, but the alternative is to continue a bubble of consumerism that will ultimately do serious moral and fiscal harm to the hoi-polloi and their spoiled children.

If you think we are having it tough, remember that a few decades ago you had to buy olive oil from chemists.

Our current economic situation is partially based on a massive Ponzi Scheme. And it might be a good idea to reflect upon the meaning of life.

Simon Stephenson.

One thing that should be taken into account is how much the GDP figures of the past have been window-dressed to appear better than they actually are. Just like company accounts can be artificially improved by overvaluation of the present by underaccruing costs in the future, so national accounts can be mis-stated by overstating the real value of current production.

We've spent at least 25 years focusing on increasing the stated value of production, rather than on increasing the actual value, and I fear that this process is finally at an end, and that the subterfuge of the past has, at last, been rumbled.

Simon Stephenson.

wrinkled weasel : 12.55pm

You are quite correct. The logical flaw into which we have fallen is to extrapolate from the generally-acceptable assertion that "there are circumstances in which an efficient and organised way of producing stuff has advantages over an inefficient and disorganised way" to the present mantra that "a more organised and efficient production process must be preferable to one that is less organised/efficient". We are being myopic not to question the validity of this mantra.

Dennis Churchill

strapworld
November 26th, 2011 12:44pm
Yes as I have written many times on this blog a cost benefit analyses is exactly what is needed with regard to the EU.
It is about time the electorate were treated as adults by our political class who themselves resemble aged student activists.

Woody

I'm sure there can't be another country's media anywhere in the world that talks their country down like this one. I'm absolutely sick of it. Everything is doom and gloom and yet there are some very encouraging signs that things are not as bad as appears.

It's a pity the same media didn't scrutinise Gordon Brown's reckless spending and scorched earth policy and call them to account.

TrevorsDen

yes me old mucker strappy, we have to brave the slings and arrows of circumstance. Good lucj=k to the HoL and their cost benefit analysis - it sounds like you could get whatever answer out of that that you want. myself i do not nthink we would be terribly worse of out of the EU or better off.

But tell me did anybody do a cost benefit analysis into WW1 or WW2 ? The point is strategically we cannot ignore what happens in Europe. Well we can but it would not necessarily lead to a beneficial outcome for us.

You and others want us to be out of the EU - but if we were we could not fail to be influenced by it and as a much more powerful body we would find it very difficult not to comply. We would comply with its standards because we would need to sell there.
If we wanted to be an EFTA type member we would have to agree to its conditions.

It would not bother me if we were out of the EU (I tire if saying this) but we would not be particularly better off or better governed or more independent (or less constrained in our activities).
The EU needs reform and its governing practices get worse not better.
A weak Britain has little hope of achieving much which is why we need a stronger economy.
A Labour Britain will achieve nothing.
The greatest clear and present danger to the UK is the Labour Party. I am strident against those whose blinkered policies would see a return to a labour EU loving government.

arnoldo87

@ Polonius 12.20

"I'm not quite clear what you are suggesting"

That much is obvious.

Julian F

The most recent data for retail sales and manufacturing output are actually quite positive. If there is a slowdown in growth in Q4 it will be the fault of irresponsible strike action.

Simon Stephenson.

arnoldo87 : 3.02pm

No explanation? Go on, give us an answer, if for no other reason than to establish that you're not just up to a bit of hypocritical points-scoring.

TomTom

"But tell me did anybody do a cost benefit analysis into WW1 or WW2 ?"

Should have done, but British politicos are innumerate. How the world's largest creditor nation became a basket case within 4 years is amazing. How Churchill pawned everything when he ran out of Forex in 1940 is how USSR and USA emerged as victors from WWII.

Yes Trevor dear, you can go bust by leaping into the dark. It is all such a jape spending to Oblivion, but Oblivion has a delivery schedule

Occasional Ostrich

arnoldo87 26th, 12:20pm

Weren't you Tony Blackburn's "voice puppet" on radio one, 'way back in the day?

escapedRoger

Obesity sums it all up, peoples bodies and peoples credit debts. Bring back rationing.