Labour La La Land?

varian the Labour Party is now officially neutral , neither leave or remain !

Isn't it strange how people on benefits are scroungers but landlords getting HB from the same place are business people?)
Yes, isn't it?
Some rents are way too high and there needs to be sharp rent control, but landlords have bought the property, decorated and maintained it, with money they have earned, and it is a business from which they earn an income.

Joelsnan the Conservatives brought in austerity measures because that has always been their policy. They believe in a smaller state system with less support for people. The financial crash (which was a banking crash by the way nothing to do with government) simply provided them with the opportunity to sell the programme to the public. The public of course bought it and so we have the terrible consequences, food banks, more homeless, NHS falling to bits.
One of the things a 4 day week might stop is the tremendous absentee rates on a Monday because of hangovers.
I would imagine many of the things being posted here echo what was said when people stopped working Saturdays.

I must say I look back fondly on the Labour Party and remember when I reached voting age being told by my Dad that all I had to do was put my cross against the Labour candidate. Of course these day in Scotland, as nostalgic as they are, are long gone.

I remember that time gallusquine when as sack of potatoes in a red rosette would have been voted in in Scotland.

How times have changed Poll: SNP and Lib Dems set to wipe out Scottish Labour

www.scotsman.com/news/people/poll-snp-and-lib-dems-set-to-wipe-out-scottish-labour-1-5009075

Or will labour once again take the country to the brink of bankruptcy through borrowing

I imagine they will Joelsnan Let us hope the Labour party is unelectable.

Labour do not leave the country in a better state than they found it. And of course, after massive spending sprees and squeezing the taxpayer, the next party in Government will have to do the belt-tightening work - and Labour will scream about 'austerity'.

Does anyone think that aiming to provide good quality education for all, and good healthcare for all - is La-La ambition? Really?

jura2
Does anyone think that aiming to provide good quality education for all, and good healthcare for all - is La-La ambition? Really?

Not at all, it’s just their methodology that’s just a bit LaLa

Trisher
The Monday hangover day would just become the Tuesday hangover day.
The austerity measures have reduced the budget deficit but at a terrible social cost.
I do feel though that as a society some had become too dependant on the social state to the detriment of the ‘just managing’ workers and that did need addressing.
But whoever considered cutting youth and senior care initiatives, the police and other first line services should be stripped of every penny they have and made to live the life they have inflicted on others.

A government with a sovereign currency can quite literally produce money out of thin air. National financial management is not like a household budget. Most money is actually returned to the Treasury, which uses taxation to redistribute it. Money is constantly being recycled. It's the Treasury which decides who should have access to money to buy what they want. The flaw, of course, is if people evade tax and take money out of the system by (for example) banking it offshore.

TBH some of these people, jura2, if they had been around at the time, might well have said the same thing when the NHS was mooted...

The reduction in the deficit is a scam because it's resulted in a much bigger debt. That money is borrowed from people with excess money, who then receive interest on their loans. That's one way the rich have got richer at the expense of those with very little.

humptydumpty
Do you think the politicians of today have the nouse and integrity of such as Nye Bevan?

With regard to education - it is a choice countries can make. In countries with excellent, well-funded state systems- private schools barely exist, if at all.

A choice, an expensive one- but you only need to look at a EDL or BF rally to understand the massive cost of not making the right choice.

Where I grew up, and where I currently live, in the whole valley of a dozen villages, some quite large- I only had 2 friends who were sent away to private boarding school- 1 to a Catholic institution so he would become a Priest (and oh that failed ...) and the other sent by step-dad to get 'rid of him' (tragic). Currently I don't know of a single child at all who goes privately, not one.

You're wrong Day6. The national debt is much bigger than it was in 2010. The country didn't even suffer austerity across the board, which is why the rich have got richer. What we've had is redistribution of resources from the poorer to the richer. Genuine austerity would have taken money out of the system, but that's not what we've had or are experiencing now.

The Circus comes to Brighton.

At this rate, the Hokey Cokey will soon replace the Red Flag as the Party's anthem.

If we can just conjure up money from thin air (with apparently no guarantors) . Why on earth are we paying taxes. Why not quantitive ease all of the country's social needs?

Because if we did that there would be huge amounts of money floating around which would cause inflation. If the state is spending on things like the NHS, education, etc. it is paying out all the time. A huge outflow into people's pockets but what would they do with it once all the available resources had been purchased? It'd be like a burst water main, all gushing out but ultimately going nowhere.. Then we'd be in Venezuela, Zimbabwe territory...

Taxation keeps money circulating, and it also 'destroys' the excess money which would cause inflation. All money returns to the state, sooner or later, via taxation because all money based transactions are taxed, unless it's siphoned off into offshore tax havens.

trisher has explained the reason for 'austerity'.

eazybee It's not always true that landlords have earned the money they've used to buy property. My ex-husband has a very substantial property portfolio, most of which has been bought with borrowed money. He hasn't worked for the last twenty years. The rental income is much higher than the interest he pays on his mortgages and he is able to live a very comfortable life on the income.

Snap Maizie and a much better explanation than mine, which was trying to say the same thing.

I thought the Brexit bus promised £350 million extra a week to the NHS I don't remember anything about life saving medicine shortages. I know people who voted Leave on the basis it would be better for the NHS. The thing is, I was in London as someone who lives in London and under two terms of Boris I'd already sussed he was a shameless liar and a philanderer...now it turns out the budding US porn star got loads of money from the GLA...well over £100k.
We got buses that couldn't negotiate London streets and knocked over and killed pedestrians on the pavement, buses that caught fire, buses that had no windows and got so hot that people passed out in them, an illegal and non-functioning water cannon...oh I could go on...still I suppose we got Boris Bikes...what's that? Ken Livingstone's idea that Boris took the credit for? Well, what a surprise (not that I was a Ken fan, but credit where credit's due).

www.standard.co.uk/news/bendy-buses-the-fatal-facts-6588794.html

www.citylab.com/transportation/2016/07/boris-bus-hot-air/492344/

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-46258584

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santander_Cycles

Eddie Mair was right. Boris is a nasty piece of work.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=uIpa5MioSrY

@growstuff

Thank goodness someone else on this board has a grasp of economic theory

Oops...forgot the budding porn star pic that Boris gave money to without declaring 'an interest' in. When this first emerged we just thought it was yet another Boris Bonk story (that's the Boris that can't even remember how many kids he's got)....didn't know he'd given her Londoners' council tax cash....

The NHS was actually the brainchild of the Liberal MP, Beveridge, and there certainly was opposition. That's why the doctors had to have their "mouths stuffed with gold" by allowing them to continue with private practice. Dentists have never been fully on board. Bevan was tasked with organising the NHS and it's true that his personality won the day, but it wasn't without a cost.

Well, I would hope so Maizie, but seriously it's pretty basic A level macro-economics. I think economics should be compulsory in schools.

UK debt as a %age of GDP 1993 - 2015: