Wrestling over cuts

whatawaste

Couple this narrative with the story in the Times today about the dysfunctional and not fit for purpose HMRC regarding amongst other failings the non collection of stamp duty to the tune of £1 billion annually total debt can only rise.

The extra worry about HMRC is that its shortcomings have been known for the best part of a decade and nothing has been done by this or the previous government. The multi-billionaires get away with paying paltry amounts of tax at the expense of the middle and lower paid classes. The cosiness of the head of HMRC with the uber wealthy and corporate hospitality "doing tax deals" would not be tolerated in say the USA where strict guidelines exist.

The counter argument seems to be that if tax law is enforced equally to all and sundry that these billionaires and Russian oil oligarchs would depart these shores and the London restaurant/leisure economy suffer as a result. What is also quite amazing is the equanimity and ambivalence displayed by the political elite (hard left, centre left, centre right and right wings) regarding billionaires paying little tax at the expense to the rest of us.

As you point out the political narrative steers away from hard facts and numbers to obfuscation and distraction. In the past the general public did swallow the tribal political claptrap, but in the last few months more and more have become more questioning about what politicians actually say. In a recent phone in program on the Victoria Derbyshire radio program Ed Balls was taken apart by a caller from Scotland.

My worry is that the UK's deby may still yet rise significantly if the ECB does not buy EZ debt and there is call to the IMF prompting the UK to increase its funding to that organisation.

Simon Stephenson.

I fear that what we have is a population which has been encouraged to become so steeped in unreality that we have become, as a nation, incapable of voluntarily agreeing to do what is necessary. We'll end up with having harsh and severe measures imposed on us from outside, to which the reaction, no doubt, will be to blame the foreigners for forcing us to come out of cloud-cuckoo-land.

Socialism marches on.

perdix

Does Balls actually have a plan? Any "Darling Plan" would have been shredded by a Labour government. The difference in approach and outcomes is that Osborne repeats the case for reform and the markets reward him with low borrowing costs, while Balls would be telling everyone how much he is spending and would be rewarded with high (disastrous?) borrowing costs.

TrevorsDen

well both sides are trapped in pre election rhetoric.

But what in reality would Labour have done after the election if they had won?
would they currently be facing down the unions over pensions? Where would their real spending levels have been? Never mind what Darlings actual figures said - Darling would not have been chancellor. labours real policy would not have entailed the (what I presume you would argue Mr Nelson) the necessary cuts.

an ex-tory voter

Bears and woods come to mind. There will not be a gap between the parties policies until we elect a conservative government. By that I mean a government which does not include any of the present cabinet, be they of the "blue" (hahaha), or the "orange" variety.

Dennis Churchill

Yes, the point I was making on the previous article.
It is smoke and mirrors ,the actual “Cuts” are trivial.
When I hear legal aid is to be stopped for non-EU nationals,checks on eligibility for NHS treatment made before any procedure other than at A & E is authorised, Diversity and Equality courses stopped, Welfare payments capped at a percentage related to the minimum wage, bounty hunters employed on commission to track fine defaulters and seize property...

disenfranchised

and why the country has to rid itself of the failed and blantantly non-differentiable triumvirate.
we desperately need a new party with a proper statesman at it's helm. UKIP is that party. nigel farage is that statesman.....

Millsy

It just suits both parties to exaggerate things. Labour get to drum up support with their core vote and this will keep Miliband in place until the election. And likewise raving Tories on the right want to see big cuts in public spending so this is what Osborne is pretending to do. It might also help to appease the markets (but i'm sure they're more plugged in than that) and also give the government a softer landing if the end point is better than all the hype (but things might be worse anyway!).

Chris Rose

Is it really that difficult to start cutting the deficit and reducing tax rates? How much longer do we have to wait?

Edmund

But what in reality would Labour have done after the election if they had won?

Probably cut the VAT further and ramped up infrastructure spending.

labours real policy would not have entailed the (what I presume you would argue Mr Nelson) the necessary cuts.

As an American liberal - which effectively makes me a Tory - it boggles my mind to see it accepted so broadly, without qualification, that cuts of any kind were necessary. Every argument for it has been incoherent and specious.

Continental borrowing rates have risen because there's a real and profound risk of default. You have your own currency - default is not a possibility unless you choose to do so, which would be stupid. Your interest rates are low not because the markets see a prudent government at work, but because they expect the average short term interest rates over the maturity period of debt to be remarkably low. They expect this because they expect the Bank of England to keep those short term rates low. They expect the Bank of England to keep those short term rates low because they expect growth to be remarkably low, because your government is raising taxes and restricting the growth of spending in the face of a weak private sector and a Eurozone that Merkel is too cowardly or incompetent to save.

So long as this is not understood by the government - so long as they're still putting forth the incoherent and incompatible goals of reducing government deficits and "going for growth" - you'll likely be doomed to an anaemic economy.

Dimoto

God, you are tedious Mr Nelson - how many more times are you going to put up this wholly misleading little graph ?

Shame you can't be equally insistent when lamely refusing to take on Labourites on the box !

Axstane

Does anyone know precisely how many nurses, doctors, ambulance drivers, paramedics, police, firefighters have received redundancy notices?

I suspect the figure is very low indeed. It is my impression that staff reductions in front-line services are almost entirely achieved by natural attrition.

We hear that the Border Force or Border Service whatever it is is short of 4000 pairs of hands. Did this occur by redundancies or by some other means? Was it always short of staff under Labour? Who measures the shortage? Is it actual allotted posts or some measure arrived at by a government opponent?

In the constituency in which I live the cuts are almost invisible. My Town Council did not even have enough applications for grants to equal its budget set aside. It seems almost superfluous to mention that we no Pilgrims leaching off the taxpayer.

Cuts in the MOD are certainly worrying especially since it would seem that front-line troops may be more affected than civil servants and other desk staff. It does seem odd that we have more admirals than ships and pay a host of consulktants. Why does the MOD, supposedly a professional and specialist organitation, need outside consultants? I suspect that the MOD is a runaway train that needs a driver to take the controls.

I also suspect that many departments are much the same judging by what we hear of waste in the NHS and inefficiency in HMRC.

I do remember Reagan saying that the USA had not accrued a huge debt because it taxed too little but because it spent too much.