Germanshepherdsmum
vegansrock
AverageObserver
6 hours ago
17
When the next Tory apologist says that Labour 'left a note in 2010...', they need to be informed that the Tories have made that very much worse.
National debt in 2010: 70.0% of GDP
National debt in 2023: 100.3% of GDP
Effect of pandemic?
The 'national debt' figure has been rising steadily over the past 14 years. If people persist in using it as an indicator of economic confidence they are really, IMO, looking in the wrong direction.
The key measure of whether the 'debt' is a serious concern or not is, I think, to ask what it has been spent on. The most concerning thing about the current figure is that there is very little to show it has been spent into the public sector for the benefit of the whole country.
The pandemic 
I have just been reading an extraordinary story on the BBC web site about pandemic spending on PPE.
It concerns government spending on PPE from a completely bona fide and experienced (some 20 yrs+) supplier. It starts off well. The supplier saw early on that PPE would be in short supply so upped its orders, massively early in the pandemic. For its foresight it was 'rewarded' with a £1.78 billion contract to supply PPE.
So far, so good (though one wonders how they got this eyewateringly huge contract when other bona fide suppliers were ignored). But, the BBC have found that some£1.4 billions worth if this PPE has not been used. One has to ask why not?
Some of this unused PPE, 15.5 thousand pallets, was sold to an unnamed buyer by the NHS (one might ask how much they sold it for?), was stored at a farm for a while and was destroyed last year on the instructions of the Environment Agency. Other items were destroyed by the NHS (at a cost to public money, of course.)
This is a staggering story of profligate spending and waste.
(The owners of the PPE company bought themselves a house on Barbados, a house in the UK, a yacht and an equestrian centre with their profit from the contract... which makes me wonder if this PPE was overpriced to start with..)
www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cll476qzm85o
Just one example of where the money comprising the 'national debt' has gone... certainly not for the benefit of the country...