Voting quandry

Yes Eloethan I heard that comment on HIGNFY and I think it's near the mark. For example has anyone noticed the BBC reporting that 3 senior Tory staff have recently left? Special Advisor to Hammond, TMs director of communications, and her press secretary. At a crucial time too, I wonder why?

I think Corbyn has an easy time with the press. He brought traingate on himself by telling fat porkies, he called Hamas his friends but claims he is a pacifist. He made the choice to hsve a new member of his own party to carry out an enquiry into anti semitism in the Labour Party and when she cleared the party he shot her into the Lords, which he is so against . He yelled your harassing me to a reporter who only asked a polite question . Since when has one question on an early election to a party leader been harassment?

In relation to the comment that the media always gives Labour leaders a hard time, I agree. But the treatment of Corbyn has been especially and unceasingly vitriolic. My feeling is that if you replaced Corbyn with someone who had the same views and ideas as him, he or she would also be torn apart by the media - it is really the "idea" that austerity is a short term measure that will cause long term damage which they want to discredit and they do so by trying to discredit the person.

If anyone watched HIGNFY this evening, Ian Hislop said "Are there no questions about the Conservatives at all? Is this the new BBC policy?"

Simoly that we now have a mountain of debt, and Labour have eye watering spending plans and will need to create another mountain of debt to fund them. Spending on a degree of infrastructure is fine, but he intends to go bananas, and on top of that has huge spending plans that have nothing to do with infrastructure. He must be assuming a fantastic rate of growth to pay off all this debt, at a time when Brexit will be working against him. I just think it's a huge gamble which, if it doesn't work out, leaves us with a crippling amount of interest to pay. Not for me.

Fitzy, can you explain why Osborne using QE is not a huge gamble, but McDonnell using PQE is?

Can't do any worse than Osbourne did? That does instill confidence

No it didn't go into infrastructure. I don't say PQE is a daft idea but the magnitude of his plans are dangerous.

But it didn't go into infrastructure, did it? It didn't go into helping the building industry or hospitals or schools, did it?
Can you explain why Osborne had to borrow four times as much as he said he was going to?
Osborne messed up and then ran away. McDonnell can't do any worse than Osborne did.

DJ - you have no idea who invested in those bonds. Certainly huge amounts will have been loaned by UK pension schemes as insurance companies to back UK pension liabilities. As for PQE he is taking a huge gamble.

www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2016/11/25/austerity-is-dreadful-now-is-the-time-for-post-austerity-economics/

McDonnell. Strange how people who don't like him can never spell his name correctly.

McDonnell believes in PQE, creating money and giving it to the builders and workers, so it stays in the economy.
Osborne gave it to the moneymen, who salted it offshore in tax havens, so it never made any difference to the GDP.

Well DJ, O'Donnell will outdo Osborne in terms of borrowing by a country mile so you had better not vote for him

"had he been in the SS in ’43 he would have been arrested for cruelty."

Sigh

Osaborne has ruined the economy by borrowing four times as much as he said he would, all on the back of austerity.
He has then given up his job and gone on the after-dinner speech circuit, making speeches about austerity. Therefore he has made money out of austerity.
It can't be clearer. It's not just out of lectures. It's out of our austerity, not his.

touchstoneblog.org.uk/2016/10/q-george-osborne-borrow-four-times-said/

"I have to say that of all the Tories I have had meddling with my life and making it harder, George Osborne is without peer in terms of how much I hate and resent this creature.

He makes Nero look like a great statesman.

In more enlightened times he would have been prosecuted for his cruelty and his destruction of Government and national wealth.

Had he been a CEO of a company he would have been let go by the board.

To paraphrase Chrissie Hyde – had he been in the SS in ’43 he would have been arrested for cruelty.

When I found out that he was being paid to be make speeches about his ideas I thought that this was the final insult and that maybe there is no such thing as justice in the world at the moment."

On taxresearch

We have an excellent Conservative MP here but I cannot vote conservative so last time I wrote that on my ballot paper that "for the first time I feel disenfranchised-I want to vote for current MP but certainly not his party and although would love a good opposition I don't feel we have one at present and no point in my area voting labour in any event".
I cannot just NOT vote though.
I understand/hope candidates read all spoiled papers.

I do believe it. But it's clearly irrelevant spin. No more relevant to the point I was getting at than any other example of a politician making money from lectures etc.

I tried to answer your question, Fitzy. You just don't believe the answer.

Can we afford to pay back £500 billion ? Will our g grandchildren be lumbered with it, our grandchildren will be

William Hague has been doing the speech circuit for years, I have been told he is an excellent speech maker

Bluecat most people believe Labour will spend more money than we can afford. It's as simple as that. They don't need the Sun to tell them. As to the triple lock, I imagine you were very vociferous in your support of the Tories when they introduced it?
DJ - I can't see that you have really tried to answer my question at all.

I'd call it benefiting from being known to be important past UK politicians. Cos, after all, if they hadn't done austerity they'd have done something else that they could have talked about. Tony Blair has made a mint out of doing speeches too.

Sorry, Fitzy, are you asking how Cameron and Osborne have benefited?
They introduced austerity, then when they lost the power to do so, went round the world giving talks on austerity.
Making a million pounds giving talks on austerity seems to me to be benefiting from it.

I do think the media has enormous influence over people's opinions. (They think so too - remember "It's The Sun what won it"?) The Mail, for instance, has been pushing for years the idea that migrants are either running the country down or blowing it up, and that benefit claimants live a life of luxury. (They should try it sometime...) Now they're doing a very successful hatchet job on Corbyn.

I don't think it is particularly extreme leftism to believe in prioritising the NHS, improving the carers' allowance, increasing the minimum wage to £10 p.h., requiring all rented accommodation to be fit for human habitation, banning zero hours contracts, and so on. Even if I wasn't a socialist, I would vote Labour to protect the triple lock, because I am a pensioner! Do we want to go back to the days of old people dying of the cold because they are forced to choose between buying food and keeping warm?

I would be ashamed to vote for a party which intends to fund anything by taking away allowances from bereaved parents, cutting the benefits of disabled people and obliging women to not only admit but to prove that their child was the result of rape. What a sickening bunch they really are.

news.sky.com/story/ge2017-tony-blair-says-theresa-may-will-win-the-general-election-10852628