General Discussion

TORY LIES ??????

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7 Posts

01 Oct 2014 16:10

So many false promises, so many brazen lies. But the biggest lie of all?
"The total mess left by Labour. Labour always bankrupt the Exchequer. They spend more, borrow more and destroy our future by increasing our national debt. Only we Tories can be trusted with the economy."
Oh really?? Lets put this load of rubbish to rest once and for all.
Between the years 2004 and 2008, Labour borrowed a total of £148.8 billion. In 2008/9, the year of the banking crash, Labour borrowed £97.5 billion.
Since being elected in 2010, the Tories have borrowed a staggering £600 billion. George Osborne borrowed more in his first 3 years than Labour borrowed in their entire 13.
This has seen the National debt rise from £0.62 trillion in 2009 to £1.26 trillion in 2014. Labour bankrupted our future? Hmmm.
Between 2004 and 2008, before the banking cris...is, the average deficit under Labour was £43 billion. Since 2010, the average Tory deficit has been 3 times this, at £108 billion. And they tell you with a straight face they have slashed the deficit!
Between 2004 and 2009, average growth in GDP was 2.4%. Since 2010, the average growth has been 1.4%. Even if growth reaches 2.5% per year between now and 2018, GDP will be a miserable 11% higher than it was in 2007. To put this in context, between 1996 and 2007 GDP grew by 43%But this doesn't paint the whole picture of their incompetence.
In the last two years, 4.8 million different people have claimed Jobseeker’s Allowance. This fact tells you how secure peoples jobs are. If unemployment was counted in the same way as it was in 1970, there would be over 6 million people classed as unemployed. To keep these figures down, the number of sanctioned jobseekers with a reduced entitlement to JSA is now running at around 800,000 per annum. In addition, there are now 4.6 million people self employed , 15% of the total workforce. Self-employed people have on average experienced a 22% fall in real pay since 2008-09, with average earnings of £207 a week according to the ONS.
20% of the population, 13 million people, are now classed as living in poverty, of which over 8 million come from families who are IN WORK. Close to eighty per cent of net job creation since June 2010 has taken place in industries where the average wage is less than £7.95 an hour. In 2004, the median wage was £462 a week. Today, it is £427. In addition, in 10 years, inflation has meant that the cost of living has risen by 34%, so that the average disposable income per household is now almost £1,200 a year lower than it was in 2004. Millions are now on zero hour contracts, working part time or on low pay. 913,138 people used food-banks in 2013/14, compared to 346,992 in 2012/13 and 26,000 in 2008/09. There has been a 74% increase in the number of malnutrition-related hospital admissions since 2009, with public health experts warning that the rise of malnutrition in the UK “has all the signs of a public health emergency.”
All this, in one of the richest countries on earth.
Listening to the Tories this week has been like living in the twilight zone. And yet, we still have people who come on here and try to defend these bastards. You know, the ones telling us that the Tories had to fix Labour's mess, Labour always destroy the economy, Labour always spend other peoples money. And that old favourite 'There is no magic money tree.' Well, guess what? By every one of these standards, the Tories have been an unmitigated disaster.
And its about time people knew the truth not my words but copied and pasted from elsewhere

01 Oct 2014 16:26

I don't claim to post my colours to any particular party but I did read a very interesting article about just how much money this country is having to spend on interest payments on the debt racked up over the years (and I'm talking decades and decades, not just either of the last two Governments). Be interesting to know just how much of the money spent has been on interest payments because of previous debt as opposed to new spending on other things.

Frankly I wouldn't wish an election win on ANY party in 2015 because of the mess they are all going to have to sort out because of mistakes created by parties of pretty much all colours over the past decades. And they all look as self serving and untrustworthy as each other to me.

wondering

01 Oct 2014 17:15

Well Roberta your leader Ed ...if he gets in power buy him a 'dont forget' diary lol.

At least Tories remembered to talk about the economy ..how did Ed forget to?

Judith Chalmers

01 Oct 2014 18:28

Not my words either:

Labour didn’t cause the banking crash and it didn’t cause the recession. Neither was caused by government overspending. If it had been, how come the crash and the recession were global events and how come the Tories were promising to match Labour’s spending plans? In 1997, Labour inherited a deficit of 3.9% of GDP and by 2008 it had fallen to 2.1%; so Labour halved the Tories’ deficit. In 1997, Labour inherited a debt of 42% of GDP and by 2008 it had fallen to 35%; so Labour cut the Tories’ debt as well. Over the 18 years of Tory administration to 1997, there was an average budget deficit of 2% of GDP. Over the next 11 years of reckless, profligate, Labour, there was an average surplus of 1%.

But in 2008, the global financial industry brought the global economy to its knees. The UK economy suffered an immediate and devastating loss of economic output and the government not only had to spend hundreds of billions, directly and indirectly, bailing out the banks but also had to take urgent steps to stabilise, and then to stimulate, the economy. VAT was cut, infrastructure projects were brought forward and businesses were given extra time to meet tax bills. Those challenges were faced by every major developed country and were most acute in those, like the UK, with a disproportionately large financial sector.

The economy was saved, but meeting those challenges and taking those steps inevitably, and exponentially, increased both the UK deficit and its overall debt. But we were never a Greece. We were never going to default on our debt. And by the time of the 2010 election the economy was, slowly, growing again. This was, in short, a financial, not a fiscal, crisis.

And that matters because of the use to which the Tories put the crisis. While Labour was spending six months of introspection in electing a new leader, the coalition cemented an unanswered narrative in the voters’ minds that we were on the edge of bankruptcy because of Labour’s reckless spending. And because the problem was too much spending, the answer was to cut that spending to the bone and to impose austerity. The Tories must have thought they were dreaming. They were able to do what they always want to do – slash public spending and cut public services – and were able to blame Labour for it.

And what has austerity brought us? Forget the human cost, the wasted lives, the payday lenders, the food banks, the zero hours contracts and the poverty wages. Judge it on its own terms. It killed economic growth and gave us the weakest recovery in 300 years; Osborne’s promise to eradicate the deficit remains a pipe dream and the government has accumulated more debt in four years than Labour did in thirteen. No recession, still less one this deep with this cause, has ever been solved by austerity. Neither was this one.

Labour made mistakes in government. It should have properly regulated the City and not allowed the banks to gamble with our money. It should have replaced a stock of public housing which had been so depleted by twenty years of council house sales. It allowed tax credits to boost corporate profits by subsidising low wages. It should recognise those mistakes and promise to correct them next time. But never forget that the Tories wanted less, not more, control over the City and still do. They have no interest in building council houses and they have always been opposed to any sort of minimum wage.

This is what Ed should have said and what he and his party should be shouting from the rooftops from now until May 2015. Labour has interesting, constructive, policies on a range of issues. But unless they form part of a coherent, compelling, narrative, and until Labour’s economic credibility is restored, no one will be listening.

Lynne

01 Oct 2014 19:11

But I wish they were mine.

roberta

01 Oct 2014 19:24

and mine

Lynne

01 Oct 2014 19:37

nor are these my words:

"...........the utter cynicism with which Osborne (and Cameron) went about exploiting what was by any measure a global economic crisis for their own ends. Although they now complain of Labour profligacy, one has to pinch oneself to recall that, until the end of 2008, the Tories were signed up to match Labour's spending on the main public servies "pound for pound". They were also rather keen on deregulating the City.

.............Osborne and his pals, with help from their friends in the media, set about pretending that the crisis of 2008 was a purely British phenonemon for which Gordon Brown was solely or mainly to blame. .............much of the debt we are struggling to repay arose from bailing out the bankers".

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