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politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » Methinks that George should have put economics before the politics
The thing that struck me most about Osborne’s spending review statement was how little it had to do with the economics and how much it was about setting the political backcloth for GE2015.
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looks like you are right, Mike, if the gleeful comments at the bottom of this are correct....
If Labour has bought into Osborne's demonisation of those who have just been made unemployed in order to avoid being on what they consider to be the wrong side of a notional dividing line, then shame on them. I hope that is not the case, but would not be surprised if it is.
Politics does not have to be like this. But when you have the treasurer of the JCR debating with his predecessor, undergraduate politicking is what you tend to get. It's all very depressing.
BBC says DCMS cut 35% from 2010 to 2014/15 and then another 15% in 2015/16 (see link).
Yet big chunk is funding free TV licences for over 75s (not cut one single penny) and cuts to arts organisations seem very modest indeed.
So how on earth is DCMS making cuts of a total of approx 50% over this 6 year period?
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-23065106
Not if you believe YouGov's 'who is to blame for the cuts' - its been pretty flat - and firmly Labour - for two years now......at the last year's rate of change the parties will cross over ±2022........
It's no comfort that Ed Balls will be even worse if he ever becomes Chancellor. That just means the chances of ever having a grown-up in charge are as remote as seant going a week without insulting someone.
Surely, all it would take for politics 'not to be like this' would be for labour to say they will immediately reinstate certain benefits if they get into office.
Why don;t they?
He is totally right to keep banging on about the wreck Labour left - voter support is required in 2015 to complete the job.
OGH really means : "I don't like being coalition with the Cons - and am dreading 5 more years".
In my opinion of course.
good summary. The problem the UK faces is we have had political CoEs since 1997 and we really need a reforming one. 16 years of the economy second and it shows.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kFS6JDXpvxM&feature=youtu.be
The way the plans have been put across by Danny Alexander will also help settle nerves within the Lib Dems, as will the emphasis on capital spending. This pulls Alexander (and Clegg) back from being seen to have done a deal on spending for the whole of the next Parliament.
That's what mystifies me about labour's critique. They portray the government as victorian mill owners yet want to keep most of the measures they are bringing in.
How can they revile people and agree with their policies at the same time? its absurd.
"And while we’re at it, we’ll make sure the site of the Battle of Waterloo is restored in time for the 200th anniversary, to commemorate those who died there and to celebrate a great victory of coalition forces over a discredited former regime that had impoverished millions."
http://blogs.spectator.co.uk/coffeehouse/2013/06/george-osbornes-spending-round-2013-speech/
Agreed, so why do labour pretend there is? They aren't the the poor oppressed masses in mufflers and hobnail boots, and the tories aren't a bunch of Mr Bounderby mill owners.
It will be interesting to know how this is going to work. Will all JSA applicants now have to do a written and spoken English test? If not, it will look very discriminatory and the EU will get involved. That may well be the point, of course.
Reminds me of the farcical discussion I had on the doorstep with a Labour canvasser before the 2005 general election. I gave him both barrels about PFI, Iraq, etc, and the poor chap could only agree with me, but argued that "at least it wasn't the Tories".
So major cuts should have been sprung on departments only 9-12 months before they had to be implemented? That doesn't seem very economically sensible.
Also a spending review less than a year before an election and in a coalition government would have dissolved into a dogfight.
https://twitter.com/JohnRentoul/status/349926978125713408/photo/1
Protecting the second richest quintile the most is indefensible (and has only been done because that's where journalists in the main sit).
Balls in HoC:
"More cuts to the police, more cuts to our defence budgets, more cuts to our local services."
a) Was ultimately responsible for setting up the OU (I know it wasn't his idea)
b) Kept us out of the Vietnam War, although he and Johnson (in particular) saw eye to eye on many things.
The cuts, which have not happened, have been cruel and unusual, and we will keep all of them.
The borrowing, which is too high, will be increased.
What could possibly go wrong?
What is Polish for "Learn English for free and get paid for it"?
Indeed, the 2nd richest quintile have gained more in tax cuts than they have lost from cuts in tax credits and benefits. This is incongruous at a time of supposed austerity.
My thoughts exactly. Thought we had passed a milestone with the Sesame St and Rainbow gags today. A good gag is great, but sometimes we need gravitas. Today was one of those occasions and nowhere was it to be seen on the front benches.
When Darling and Tyrie spoke it was a relief.
Most politicians faced with the Herculean task of cleaning up the economic mess left by Labour would have been content to announce their results to Parliament quietly. The plaudits of party and public alike would have been sufficient reward.
Not so for Danny Alexander. The Comprehensive Spending Review was all his own work, but announcing it to the House was simply not enough to keep him interested.
This is why he and George conspired to swap roles this week, so each could take on the additional challenge of knocking out their political opponents.
It might all seem a little odd to us mere mortals but it has served the important task of keeping the twin geniuses of the Treasury fully occupied.
Let us not complain. Just relax and enjoy the show.
I guess that was about the size of the english contingent, most of the brits were irish or scots.
Utter tragedy for the ALP that these two could not make it work together.
As for the politics, of course this matters too. Labour have been getting away with murder, and the election is less than two years away. Voters need to start thinking about real choices, not burying their heads in the sand and pretending those nasty cuts are going to go away. Osborne has very successfully got the two Eds to admit that their position of paying lip-service to financial sanity, whilst opposing virtually every measure required to achieve it, is ludicrous. (In fact, if anything, they've now gone absurdly far in the opposite direction - rushing to embrace every cut Osborne mentions, in full and with indecent haste. It took just three and a half hours for them to accept the 7-day delay on unemployment benefits). As a result, we can now move the debate onto talking about reality, not fairy-dust. That's not like Gordon Brown - who famously flunked a spending review when things got tough - at all.
http://blogs.channel4.com/factcheck/factcheck-osbornes-english-lessons-are-no-threat/13776?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter
"By threatening to take away the benefits of anyone refusing to learn English, George Osborne inferred that there are a slew of people out there who don’t want to speak English, but are happy to live off benefits."
(and gets implied vs inferred wrong too....)
Is it cos Osborne's in charge of Treasury and Tory election machine that he can't do sums? And they wonder why UKIP's on the rise
The latest Nielsen poll, conducted for Fairfax from a sample of 1400, has the Coalition’s lead blowing out to 57-43 after a relatively mild 54-46 last month. The primary votes are 29% for Labor (down three) and 47% for the Coalition (up three). That becomes 50-50 under a Kevin Rudd leadership scenario, with primary votes of 40% for Labor and 42% for the Coalition. The poll also finds Julia Gillard crashing on preferred prime minister from 46-46 to 50-41 in Tony Abbott’s favour.
It looks like a great big distraction from the real choices.
Osborne doesn't want people to talk about the real choices, the tens of billions of pounds of real choices. He wants to distract them with gimmicks. Very much like Brown.
They are referred to in Thomas Gray's poem "Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College" written in 1742.
Here is the relevant verse:
Say, Father Thames, for thou hast seen
Full many a sprightly race
Disporting on thy margent green
The paths of pleasure trace,
Who foremost now delight to cleave
With pliant arm thy glassy wave?
The captive linnet which enthrall?
What idle progeny succeed
To chase the rolling circle's speed,
Or urge the flying ball?
Scholars have argued whether Gray was recounting from memory of his own time at Eton or whether he had derived his poetic scene from a contemporary painting.
Phelps for example glossed the last line as "Referring to school sports: swimming, bird-snaring, hoop-rolling, and trap-ball. Bentley's Print is my authority for swimming instead of rowing, and for trap-ball instead of cricket."
The poem is of course most familiar for its final couplet:
...where ignorance is bliss.
'tis folly to be wise.
What he has done is planned for an annual saving of £11.5 bn in one year, on top of all the other savings already made, and detailed exactly where that saving comes from. Where's the gimmick in that? It's real money.
Anyone who thinks he's got it wrong can propose a different set of measures, or a different total. The silence, though, is deafening, except from those who want him to cut more.
Telling the truth about the state of the finances and making policy to fit would lead to revolt.
One big difference between the political Osborne and the political Brown is that Osborne has the guts to get up there and give one.
Good to see you about - I thought of your tip to back Labor as this mornings events were transpiring. Great entertainment!
I think (for anecdotal reasons) most of the people effected will be in a few particular categories and i don't don't think language lessons would stop them claiming as long as it's only a few hours a week.
The difference is that Brown, on top of his game, was infuriatingly good at this sort of nonsense.
Osbrowne (don't mind do you, Mr Pork?) has always been rubbish. An IHT / non-election one-hit-wonder, who for some reason thinks he's a genius.
I'd be tempted to say he should stick to running the economy, but he's an even worse Chancellor than strategist.
Apparently, it is an elephant trap ! Such a trap that it is visible from outer space !
Riiight, the fact that he was the worse chancellor in living memory is just immaterial then ?
Hence Osbrowne.
The vital difference is that the public and a party don't mind a political chancellor in the good times but if you're just as sh*t at the political master strategies as the economics then you get found out very quickly indeed during the hard times.
Brown kept the illusion going well enough for labour to win three general elections with him as chancellor.
Osbrowne had to be hid and kept away from the cameras as much as possible in 2010 while master strategising the tories failing to win a majority.
His status as a toxic liability has hardly improved since then.
Osbrowne's omnishambles gifted little Ed and labour their lead while his master strategy of banging on about Europe and immigration has gifted the kippers their poll surges.
Meanwhile economically he misses his own AAA targets and has nothing to offer but seemingly endless austerity.
Being up against the likes of Balls should be a tory chancellor's dream come true and it would be if it was anyone but Osbrowne.
The most crucial thing of all however is that he's Cammie's chum and in the chumocracy it really doesn't matter how sh*t you are as long as you are Cammie's chum.
If Osborne has achieved more savings in departmental savings than was envisaged in 2010, but the overall borrowing has been a lot higher, whatever happened to the tax receipts ? And, why ?
He has f**ked the growth, that's why !
UK shale gas lovers: rumour has it that the British Geological Survey is going to release an estimate of UK shale gas potential, with particularly detailed data for the Bowland field. My guess is that they'll confirm the enormous potential, but will also have a laundry list of things the government needs to do to speed up accessing this resource.
DECC is due to release a paper on the structure of the UK electricity market, and - in particular - will focus on capacity payments. This will be a system to 'pay' people so they don't mothball their plants. I would expect that we'll see proposed a system a little like the US's capacity payments scheme, where 'on demand' power (i.e. not renewables) get an annual fee for hanging around just in case. The most interesting question to me is whether they'll allow nuclear power plants to bid for capacity, given the relatively low uptime of the UK nukes.
Do please stop this nonsense about Osborne spending more than Labour.
It is like saying Osborne spent more this year than Harold Wilson did in 1975, when public spending was 49.7 % of GDP.
Any meaningful comparison of annual spending has to be adjusted for inflation.
Quote me any reliable source which shows that Osborne has spent more than Brown in real terms.
Otherwise withdraw your bogus claims.
How long would a claimant be given to learn English? Or do they have to achieve a minimum standard before they can claim. I agree with posters who say that this is only a gimmick.
By the way, if you (as in tim or anyone else) wants to see what *real* austerity looks like, then check out the following government spending charts:
Ireland is genuinely astonishing:
http://www.tradingeconomics.com/ireland/government-spending
Spain is also going through some savage cuts:
http://www.tradingeconomics.com/spain/government-spending
As is Portugal:
http://www.tradingeconomics.com/portugal/government-spending
And even the US is seeing real reductions in spend:
http://www.tradingeconomics.com/united-states/government-spending
Channel 4 News using Osbrowne's toecurllingly embarrassing 'fop burger' staged phototweet.
Another day another PR master strategy.
A result that tight will all depend on the marginals (eg in 1998 Howard won but lost the popular vote very narrowly)
Looks so foreign