Um. Omnium, are you under the impression that PCS is affiliated to the Labour Party? Not only are they not, they've toyed with the idea of putting up candidates against us. PCS subscription contributions to Labour are £0.
I was, and I stand corrected. Thank you. So I guess they do have no influence over Labour policy - I apologise if I suggested they did. I was wrong, sorry.
Well done, not many of us say we were wrong quite as straightforwardly as that! Thanks.
I propose June 26th shall henceforth be known as Ominium Day on PB.
Quite incredible
Yeah, very gracious.
But a pretty basic thing to not know in the first place, let's be honest.
Makes you wonder how many on here simply regurgitate something they "know" to be true, though. Immigrants with cats or whatever.
Haha yes in all honesty most people you meet are aware of the basics in life, such as whether or not the PCS is affiliated to Labour!!
PB is a forum about politics, isn't it?
Haha yes it is...
& betting!
Even then most people wouldn't know about he PCS and Labour affiliation.
Depends how interested they were in politics, I suppose.
Like I said, makes you wonder how many just regurgitate prejudice or spin. Immigrant cats, anyone? I'm not making this up!
Um. Omnium, are you under the impression that PCS is affiliated to the Labour Party? Not only are they not, they've toyed with the idea of putting up candidates against us. PCS subscription contributions to Labour are £0.
I was, and I stand corrected. Thank you. So I guess they do have no influence over Labour policy - I apologise if I suggested they did. I was wrong, sorry.
Well done, not many of us say we were wrong quite as straightforwardly as that! Thanks.
I propose June 26th shall henceforth be known as Ominium Day on PB.
Quite incredible
Yeah, very gracious.
But a pretty basic thing to not know in the first place, let's be honest.
Makes you wonder how many on here simply regurgitate something they "know" to be true, though. Immigrants with cats or whatever.
Haha yes in all honesty most people you meet are aware of the basics in life, such as whether or not the PCS is affiliated to Labour!!
PB is a forum about politics, isn't it?
Haha yes it is...
& betting!
Even then most people wouldn't know about he PCS and Labour affiliation.
Depends how interested they were in politics, I suppose.
Like I said, makes you wonder how many just regurgitate prejudice or spin. Immigrant cats, anyone? I'm not making this up!
I suppose so!
If you think it's basic knowledge, fair enough, I will leave it there
1) UKIP thought we could upgrade existing rail lines to 200mph? Swinging trains at 200mph around bends designed for less than half that speed creates rather a large force. Not an easy engineering option by any means, not to mention the noise and the buildings you'd need to demolish if you're adding capacity.
2) Thinking about the politics of the spending review, I'm more and more puzzled by Labour's positioning. Firstly, it was largely Ed Balls who talked this up in advance as a Big Event. The papers have been going on for weeks about how Labour were repositioning themselves to avoid what they claimed was Osborne's trap. Why didn't Labour play it down rather than play it up? Secondly, even more puzzling has been their response. They've switched from opposing almost every cut to the diametric opposite of accepting every cut, right down to the 7-day delay on unemployment benefit. This item is particularly odd because any saving is not that big; it would have been a nice, clean, and inexpensive dividing line. If voters want Tory policies right down to that level of detail, why not vote Tory, or at least LibDem? Labour look as though they've reluctantly had to admit Osborne was right on everything, having told us until a few weeks ago that he was not only wrong on everything but also motivated by ideological extremism rather than economic need. Whilst it's obvious that they had boxed themselves into a corner from which they needed an exit route, they seem to have decided to run to the opposite end of the room and box themselves into the opposite corner. Very odd indeed.
Which was the perfectly sensible response. You dont slash spending in the immediate aftermath of a financial crisis.
In 2009-10 Brown plugged a £98 bn current account deficit with additional borrowing of £157 bn.
That is not the action of a sensible man.
Remember these figures exclude the amount he borrowed to bail out the banks.
Would you like to know how much that was?
I believe Scotland's Brown and Darling sanctioned a bank rescue package totalling some £500 billion (approximately $850 billion) in 2008 to save the Royal Bank of Scotland and the Bank of Scotland . Apologies if I've underestimated.
You have underestimated, Moniker, but no need to apologise.
Here is the difference between Public Sector Net Debt (excluding "financial interventions") and Public Sector Net Debt at the end of the 2008-9 Fiscal Year. Financial interventions is Brown's euphemism for bank bailouts.
Although a rough and ready calculation this tells us that that the net cost was £1.3 trillion of additional borrowing.
Given our direct stakes in the banks are of an order of magnitude less, presumably this is some other sort of liability?
Yes it is the liabilities of the Public Sector Banking Groups less their liquid assets, with BoE thrown in although it only has a marginal impact,
so shoudn't this be being wound down as the positions turn liquid ?
Absolutely.
Provided, of course, that the impaired assets are correctly valued in the balance sheets, which is a reasonable assumption if we exclude black swan events. And if we allow sufficient time for RBoS Group to be restructured.
In fact PSND has been falling across this parliament meaning that Cameron would be technically correct in claiming that the government has reduced debt. Here are the figures in £'000.
To be fair though, I am not convinced this is what Cameron had in mind when he made the claim.
hmmm. Not exactly dropping like a stone. If you assume a bank normally rotates money on a 3 to 5 year cycle we should be seeing some of these positions unwinding. I can only assume from the static nature of the data the taxpayer is on the hook continuously or there are bigger problems lurking in balance sheets.
The figures include the rising PSND ex debt (100 bn added per year) so the underlying figures for the bank groups are better than the headline figures suggest. Also there are so many counter-intuitive classification rules in the National Accounts for the treatment of financial interventions that the figures don't really do much more than give us an overall snapshot.
Good point on the rest of the debt rising so the underlying on banks is falling but really the numbers should be going down faster.
Maybe I'm missing a trick, but if our banks need c. £25bn to restore their capital to health wouldn't we the nation be better putting it in as equity and removing £1.2trn of contingent liability ?
The banks have all informed the PRA that they will be able to meet the new capital requirements without having to issue new equity and mostly by avoiding CoCos (loan capital convertible to equity in the event of capital falling below regulatory requirements).
The problem is that meeting the new capital requirements out of profits is constraining their business operations. Banks are averse to lending which would disproportionately raise their capital requirements. Hence all the temporary 'pass-through' lending schemes being run by the Treasury and BoE,
The best solution would be for the BoE to buy out large chunks of the mortgage assets (particularly from the RBS-Halifax books). Such mortgages can be run down over term by the government (like the B&B and NR books) and because the central government controlled asset resolution companies are not taking deposits or undertaking new lending they fall outside regulatory capital requirements. The good stuff could even be securitised by the government if it wanted to bring forward cash flow and any residual losses could be charged back to the banks over time.
My guess is that this will be the magic that Carney brings to the BoE and we will be hearing more about it in the autumn.
For people who don't get what this means, the reason the banks are f*cked is they are full of toxic assets which are worth x but everyone is pretending are worth 2x because if they weren't valued at 2x the banks would be technically bankrupt. The banksta plan is to get the public via the BoE to buy all this sh*te from the banks at the nominal value thus offloading all their gambling debts onto the public then over time the toxic sh*te would be slowly marked down so the public take the banks' losses without ever realizing they've been robbed with the full collusion of the political class.
Not "basic" knowledge like 2+2 (or imaginary inverse square roots in the 14th century, in Goveworld).
But something a PB poster might at least want to read up on before posting prejudices.
Anyway, all this talk of Osbrowne's burger has reminded me of a glorious moment, for some reason.
He began to wax lyrical. "I think the last one I bought was from the West Cornwall Pasty Company. I seem to remember I was in Leeds station at the time and the choice was whether to have one of their small ones or one of their large ones. I have got a feeling I opted for the large one, and very good it was too."
The Sun has a laugh at Fop Osborne's common touch attempt.
@suttonnick: Thursday's Sun front page - "Shamburger - Osborne 'fast food' came from posh diner" #tomorrowspaperstoday #bbcpapers http://t.co/lk2RzskmQY
Wonder where it came from? I don't eat beef anymore but could go a nice burger after seeing The Sun front page... Gourmet Burger Kitchen? deliverance?
Byrons I guess. Why he tweeted the photo god only knows, clueless fop must've surely known how fake Dave looks when he tries this man of the people crap.
Ridiculous, it only proves how out of touch they are and what fools they think the working class are
People don't mind genuine toffs, inverse snobbery isn't all that common amongst the working class
It may have been an undignified photo but to make a story out of the cost of his burger (nearly a tenner!) is absurd.
there has been a great deal of talk about austerity in this Parliament but almost no reality.
Wrong.
Wage cuts for British workers deepest since records began, IFS shows
Thinktank says employees have sacrificed pay to keep their jobs during the 'longest and deepest' slump in a century
Britain's workers have suffered more financial pain since 2008 than in any five-year period of the modern age, according to research by a leading tax thinktank that shows employees have sacrificed pay to keep their jobs.
Describing this downturn as the longest and deepest slump in a century, the Institute for Fiscal Studies says workers have suffered unprecedented pay cuts of 6% in real terms over the last five years.
Historically, real wages rise by about 2% a year. This suggests that people are more than 15% worse off than they would have been if the pre-crisis wage trends had continued.
Analysing downturns going back to the great depression, Paul Johnson, director of the IFS, said: "This time really does seem to be different … it has been deeper and longer than those of the 1990s, the 1980s and even the 1930s. It has seen household incomes and spending drop more and stay lower longer.
Today was the day that austerity became real. To dismiss it as mere politics is to seriously misunderstand the situation.
Osbrowne was the one who minimised the impact of his statement with his pointless gimmickery and ludicrous positioning and posturing. If it wasn't the imbecility of a so called 'welfare cap' that is completely unenforceable and doesn't include pensions, it was some half baked tosh about non-english speaking benefit claimants, temperature tests for expat pensioners or delaying benefit payments for a week.
No, that's news to me - looks good from the reviews! Hope he ports it to the PC...
It helps to have some hex based tabletop experience as the rules are not terribly clear, but familiar to those brought up on Napoleons last battles etc.
The Sun has a laugh at Fop Osborne's common touch attempt.
@suttonnick: Thursday's Sun front page - "Shamburger - Osborne 'fast food' came from posh diner" #tomorrowspaperstoday #bbcpapers http://t.co/lk2RzskmQY
Wonder where it came from? I don't eat beef anymore but could go a nice burger after seeing The Sun front page... Gourmet Burger Kitchen? deliverance?
Byrons I guess. Why he tweeted the photo god only knows, clueless fop must've surely known how fake Dave looks when he tries this man of the people crap.
Ridiculous, it only proves how out of touch they are and what fools they think the working class are
People don't mind genuine toffs, inverse snobbery isn't all that common amongst the working class
It may have been an undignified photo but to make a story out of the cost of his burger (nearly a tenner!) is absurd.
there has been a great deal of talk about austerity in this Parliament but almost no reality.
Wrong.
Wage cuts for British workers deepest since records began, IFS shows
Thinktank says employees have sacrificed pay to keep their jobs during the 'longest and deepest' slump in a century
Britain's workers have suffered more financial pain since 2008 than in any five-year period of the modern age, according to research by a leading tax thinktank that shows employees have sacrificed pay to keep their jobs.
Describing this downturn as the longest and deepest slump in a century, the Institute for Fiscal Studies says workers have suffered unprecedented pay cuts of 6% in real terms over the last five years.
Historically, real wages rise by about 2% a year. This suggests that people are more than 15% worse off than they would have been if the pre-crisis wage trends had continued.
Analysing downturns going back to the great depression, Paul Johnson, director of the IFS, said: "This time really does seem to be different … it has been deeper and longer than those of the 1990s, the 1980s and even the 1930s. It has seen household incomes and spending drop more and stay lower longer.
Today was the day that austerity became real. To dismiss it as mere politics is to seriously misunderstand the situation.
Osbrowne was the one who minimised the impact of his statement with his pointless gimmickery and ludicrous positioning and posturing. If it wasn't the imbecility of a so called 'welfare cap' that is completely unenforceable and doesn't include pensions, it was some half baked tosh about non-english speaking benefit claimants, temperature tests for expat pensioners or delaying benefit payments for a week.
Mick you are confusing 2 different things. I was talking about cuts in government spending. They have been modest to date but will be a lot less modest when these announcements come into play.
You are talking about real wages. These have indeed fallen sharply although for most of us in employment the effect has been very substantially offset by reduced mortgage costs which is why consumption has pretty much held up.
The "wage freeze" in the public sector has not stopped wages rising in that sector in real terms, albeit by very small amounts. Private sector wages have taken most of the strain through cuts in bonuses, hours and frozen pay.
How LG and some of the departments are going to even start finding the savings set out today is a mystery to me but wage freezes are not going to do it.
Worth looking at the Spending Review - it shows that Welfare (excluding State Pension and JSA) is being cut significantly in real terms between 2010/11 and 2015/16 - contrary to numerous posts on here.
Good article Mike, Mr Osborne really can't help himself. Enjoyed reading article this morning about the precarious nature of our modern financial system:
there has been a great deal of talk about austerity in this Parliament but almost no reality.
Wrong.
Wage cuts for British workers deepest since records began, IFS shows
Thinktank says employees have sacrificed pay to keep their jobs during the 'longest and deepest' slump in a century
Britain's workers have suffered more financial pain since 2008 than in any five-year period of the modern age, according to research by a leading tax thinktank that shows employees have sacrificed pay to keep their jobs.
Describing this downturn as the longest and deepest slump in a century, the Institute for Fiscal Studies says workers have suffered unprecedented pay cuts of 6% in real terms over the last five years.
Historically, real wages rise by about 2% a year. This suggests that people are more than 15% worse off than they would have been if the pre-crisis wage trends had continued.
Analysing downturns going back to the great depression, Paul Johnson, director of the IFS, said: "This time really does seem to be different … it has been deeper and longer than those of the 1990s, the 1980s and even the 1930s. It has seen household incomes and spending drop more and stay lower longer.
Today was the day that austerity became real. To dismiss it as mere politics is to seriously misunderstand the situation.
Osbrowne was the one who minimised the impact of his statement with his pointless gimmickery and ludicrous positioning and posturing. If it wasn't the imbecility of a so called 'welfare cap' that is completely unenforceable and doesn't include pensions, it was some half baked tosh about non-english speaking benefit claimants, temperature tests for expat pensioners or delaying benefit payments for a week.
Mick you are confusing 2 different things. I was talking about cuts in government spending. They have been modest to date but will be a lot less modest when these announcements come into play.
Austerity is austerity and if Osbrowne or any tories think that it begins and ends with spreadsheets and endless arguments over figures and future projections over cuts then they are going to be in for the shock of their lives come the election campaign.
For those who still don't get it the public really doesn't give a crap about such tedious figure massaging and posturing from either side. The public will judge how much better/worse off they are and the importance of the services they use and value like the NHS, Education etc. in either parties hands.
Nor will endless economic triangulation and positioning on both sides do anything other than turn off the voter and boil the election down to what it was always going to be about.
Trust.
Little Ed and Balls either get trusted with the economy again after labour f***ed it up the last time or they do not.
Cammie and Osbrowne either get trusted to have another chance to manage the economy in the face of seemingly never ending austerity or they do not.
there has been a great deal of talk about austerity in this Parliament but almost no reality.
Wrong.
Wage cuts for British workers deepest since records began, IFS shows
Thinktank says employees have sacrificed pay to keep their jobs during the 'longest and deepest' slump in a century
Britain's workers have suffered more financial pain since 2008 than in any five-year period of the modern age, according to research by a leading tax thinktank that shows employees have sacrificed pay to keep their jobs.
Describing this downturn as the longest and deepest slump in a century, the Institute for Fiscal Studies says workers have suffered unprecedented pay cuts of 6% in real terms over the last five years.
Historically, real wages rise by about 2% a year. This suggests that people are more than 15% worse off than they would have been if the pre-crisis wage trends had continued.
Analysing downturns going back to the great depression, Paul Johnson, director of the IFS, said: "This time really does seem to be different … it has been deeper and longer than those of the 1990s, the 1980s and even the 1930s. It has seen household incomes and spending drop more and stay lower longer.
Today was the day that austerity became real. To dismiss it as mere politics is to seriously misunderstand the situation.
Osbrowne was the one who minimised the impact of his statement with his pointless gimmickery and ludicrous positioning and posturing. If it wasn't the imbecility of a so called 'welfare cap' that is completely unenforceable and doesn't include pensions, it was some half baked tosh about non-english speaking benefit claimants, temperature tests for expat pensioners or delaying benefit payments for a week.
Mick you are confusing 2 different things. I was talking about cuts in government spending. They have been modest to date but will be a lot less modest when these announcements come into play.
Austerity is austerity and if Osbrowne or any tories think that it begins and ends with spreadsheets and endless arguments over figures and future projections over cuts then they are going to be in for the shock of their lives come the election campaign.
For those who still don't get it the public really doesn't give a crap about such tedious figure massaging and posturing from either side. The public will judge how much better/worse off they are and the importance of the services they use and value like the NHS, Education etc. in either parties hands.
Nor will endless economic triangulation and positioning on both sides do anything other than turn off the voter and boil the election down to what it was always going to be about.
Trust.
Little Ed and Balls either get trusted with the economy again after labour f***ed it up the last time or they do not.
Cammie and Osbrowne either get trusted to have another chance to manage the economy in the face of seemingly never ending austerity or they do not.
"Today was the day that austerity became real. To dismiss it as mere politics is to seriously misunderstand the situation."
@DavidL, excellent post. Danny Fink was bang on the money when also making the point of why the politics of today were extremely important when it came to the selling of this economic package to the electorate on Skynews. And this is yet another week where the Government set the agenda by clearly laying our their future plans well in advance of the next GE.
I did warn that anyone looking or expecting Osborne not to learn from the mistakes of last years budget were going to be very disappointed. Clegg's Spads blew it far too early in this Parliament by trying to nail any bad news or screw ups squarely at Osborne's door, no surprise he ain't a big favourite politically or as a Chancellor with his Libdem colleagues. For all the criticism that gets lobbed at Dan Hodges for his views on Ed Miliband from certain quarters, its ironic that these very same critics tend to be absolutely obsessive in their dislike of George Osborne.
Back in 2007 when Brown, Balls, Miliband & Co tried to ramp up their Autumn GE, who blinked first and backed down after Cameron and Osborne played a blinder at the Tory Conference? Brown gave his last budget and played politics with his 10p tax con by trying to tell us that he given middle income earners a tax cut. Brown thought that Blair owed it to him to pass on the Leadership after Blair had the guts to go and steal it from him while Brown didn't after John Smith died. Despite being Howard's favoured choice, Osborne didn't feel he was the right man to run for the Tory Leadership from his faction. But he knew a man who was, and he ran his campaign for him.
Osborne predicted that if the Tories won the last GE they would quickly become very unpopular due to the austerity package that would have to be delivered. He also believed that you had to be honest about it before the GE, as you needed a strong mandate to deliver it in Government. Osborne was a big driver behind the Tory/Libdem Coalition for that reason. Osborne's critics blame his honesty on the need for austerity and tough decisions after the GE for the Tories failing to gain an over all majority. But what they fail to recognise is that by doing so, Osborne had already begun to nail the the long term blame for the need for that austerity right at the feet of the current Labour Opposition party before they even left Office.
And that is why the Labour party lost the next GE even before they left Office last time, and nothing Labour has done since has changed that outcome. We have had Balls 'too far, too fast' strategy. We have had the failed growth meme, we have had the lack of investment one and now we are onto the 'good borrowing' to create growth stick. But best of all, we now have the two Ed's talking about having to tackle the mess being left by this government......sorry, but if that isn't funny enough they propose to fix this by yes, borrowing more and doing it with a kinder political face while refusing to tell us what they would have to cut in specific detail. Well this kind of economic dishonesty worked last time didn't it?
Meantime, Osborne and the UK economy will have move onto to pastures new, and you wonder why Hodges finds it hard to find the two Ed's strategy credible. Austerity is unpopular, but being honest and up front about what you are doing and why earns you some respect. A key point when understanding Thatcher's success in light of the unpopularity of some of her toughest policies. Hodges will yet turn out to be the Labour party's Danny Fink when the Tory Taliban were running the show for far too long in the Conservatives during the early Opposition years.
The public are also growing accustomed to these continual announcements of future cuts and after a week or less all that will be left is the fading memory of the idiot gimmicks Osbrowne announced and Balls postured on.
All that matters is how the public feels about their financial situation and circumstance come the election as well as how they view those public services they value. The endless economic spin is only for the very gullible political anoraks to swallow.
Though for the sake of comedy it will never stop being funny listening to the inept tory spin of those who cheered on Osbrowne's omnishambles and are completely oblivious to just how much of a joke a Blairite clown like Dan Hodges is.
Funniest of all would those utter cretins who rated SLAB PR idiot extraordinaire John McTernan after his hilarious massive PR blunders with the now deposed Julila Gillard.
I certainly wouldn't like to be them right now lest someone reminds them of their incredible predictive powers.
Rudd worth 9% for Labor in QLD, 5% in most states, 2% where Gillard was brought up and represented in SA and VIC. Average 6% or so. So from 57-43 down to 51-49 down. Loses by 5 seats instead of 35.
Though for the sake of comedy it will never stop being funny listening to the inept tory spin of those who cheered on Osbrowne's omnishambles and are completely oblivious to just how much of a joke a Blairite clown like Dan Hodges is.
Funniest of all would those utter cretins who rated SLAB PR idiot extraordinaire John McTernan after his hilarious massive PR blunders with the now deposed Julila Gillard.
I certainly wouldn't like to be them right now lest someone reminds them of their incredible predictive powers.
I rated McTernan initially but he went off the boil. His 457 skilled worker visa as a foreigner doing a job in Oz that locals could not will be rescinded one would imagine! Labor is suffering from the old lipstick on a pig argument in Oz. Not presidential but parliamentary system so upward tick will drop off as initial excitement drops off and same old policies are offered.
After the Rudd-Gillard-Rudd kerfuffle, someone on Twitter asked what other examples there are of a leader being ousted in a coup by another leader, and then re-ousting the same leader to come back again.
The only other example I could think of so far is Milton Obote and Idi Amin Dada in Uganda.
Also the premium fares! Take HS1, the current high-speed rail line from London St Pancras out to Kent
HS1 off-peak day return fare from St Pancras to Chatham (for example): 21.10
Normal off-peak day return fare from Victoria to Chatham: 17.70
Price is undoubtably a factor, but the other part is convenience. The problem of HS2 lines is that they have few intermediate stations, so provide few benefits to those who live near the lines, only those who live near the termini.
A new electrified line through the Chilterns to Birmingham, with stations along the way and good commuter services with WIFI would add to house prices along the route, rather than blight them. The turnaround in support in these areas would be dramatic.
Think through what you are proposing. Firstly, it is a new line, which will require its own route and cause many of the NIMBY problems associated with the HS2 line.
Secondly, where will the stations go? You would have to either place the trains on the existing lines through towns like High Wycombe, Banbury, Leamington Spa, Warwick and Solihiull which does f'all good for pathing and capacity, drive new lines and stations through the centre of the towns at massive cost and blight (good luck with that!), or route the lines outside the towns and have the same issue you describe with HS2.
Any new line has exactly the same problems, whether high-speed or not. And we need new lines to get the most capacity; tweaking the existing network can only go so far.
Comments
Like I said, makes you wonder how many just regurgitate prejudice or spin. Immigrant cats, anyone? I'm not making this up!
I suppose so!
If you think it's basic knowledge, fair enough, I will leave it there
1) UKIP thought we could upgrade existing rail lines to 200mph? Swinging trains at 200mph around bends designed for less than half that speed creates rather a large force. Not an easy engineering option by any means, not to mention the noise and the buildings you'd need to demolish if you're adding capacity.
2) Thinking about the politics of the spending review, I'm more and more puzzled by Labour's positioning. Firstly, it was largely Ed Balls who talked this up in advance as a Big Event. The papers have been going on for weeks about how Labour were repositioning themselves to avoid what they claimed was Osborne's trap. Why didn't Labour play it down rather than play it up? Secondly, even more puzzling has been their response. They've switched from opposing almost every cut to the diametric opposite of accepting every cut, right down to the 7-day delay on unemployment benefit. This item is particularly odd because any saving is not that big; it would have been a nice, clean, and inexpensive dividing line. If voters want Tory policies right down to that level of detail, why not vote Tory, or at least LibDem? Labour look as though they've reluctantly had to admit Osborne was right on everything, having told us until a few weeks ago that he was not only wrong on everything but also motivated by ideological extremism rather than economic need. Whilst it's obvious that they had boxed themselves into a corner from which they needed an exit route, they seem to have decided to run to the opposite end of the room and box themselves into the opposite corner. Very odd indeed.
It's a giant robbery.
Not "basic" knowledge like 2+2 (or imaginary inverse square roots in the 14th century, in Goveworld).
But something a PB poster might at least want to read up on before posting prejudices.
Anyway, all this talk of Osbrowne's burger has reminded me of a glorious moment, for some reason.
He began to wax lyrical. "I think the last one I bought was from the West Cornwall Pasty Company. I seem to remember I was in Leeds station at the time and the choice was whether to have one of their small ones or one of their large ones. I have got a feeling I opted for the large one, and very good it was too."
Wrong.
Nor is Osbrowne announcing cuts for the future anything new.
Osbrowne was the one who minimised the impact of his statement with his pointless gimmickery and ludicrous positioning and posturing. If it wasn't the imbecility of a so called 'welfare cap' that is completely unenforceable and doesn't include pensions, it was some half baked tosh about non-english speaking benefit claimants, temperature tests for expat pensioners or delaying benefit payments for a week.
Don't knock the "temperature test"! It's the best bit of "real politics as satire as real politics as satire" feedback loop in ages!
Brrrr....
The AI is really quite good for solo play.
Osbrowne was the one who minimised the impact of his statement with his pointless gimmickery and ludicrous positioning and posturing. If it wasn't the imbecility of a so called 'welfare cap' that is completely unenforceable and doesn't include pensions, it was some half baked tosh about non-english speaking benefit claimants, temperature tests for expat pensioners or delaying benefit payments for a week.
Mick you are confusing 2 different things. I was talking about cuts in government spending. They have been modest to date but will be a lot less modest when these announcements come into play.
You are talking about real wages. These have indeed fallen sharply although for most of us in employment the effect has been very substantially offset by reduced mortgage costs which is why consumption has pretty much held up.
The "wage freeze" in the public sector has not stopped wages rising in that sector in real terms, albeit by very small amounts. Private sector wages have taken most of the strain through cuts in bonuses, hours and frozen pay.
How LG and some of the departments are going to even start finding the savings set out today is a mystery to me but wage freezes are not going to do it.
And just compare that to the previous 10 years.
Link - see chart 1.4 on 28/68:
https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/209036/spending-round-2013-complete.pdf
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-06-25/some-hard-numbers-western-banking-system
Austerity is austerity and if Osbrowne or any tories think that it begins and ends with spreadsheets and endless arguments over figures and future projections over cuts then they are going to be in for the shock of their lives come the election campaign.
For those who still don't get it the public really doesn't give a crap about such tedious figure massaging and posturing from either side. The public will judge how much better/worse off they are and the importance of the services they use and value like the NHS, Education etc. in either parties hands.
Nor will endless economic triangulation and positioning on both sides do anything other than turn off the voter and boil the election down to what it was always going to be about.
Trust.
Little Ed and Balls either get trusted with the economy again after labour f***ed it up the last time or they do not.
Cammie and Osbrowne either get trusted to have another chance to manage the economy in the face of seemingly never ending austerity or they do not.
But that is what we get.
Austerity for another decade, perhaps longer.
and from all parties.
Is it any wonder the public do not like it?
Austerity is austerity and if Osbrowne or any tories think that it begins and ends with spreadsheets and endless arguments over figures and future projections over cuts then they are going to be in for the shock of their lives come the election campaign.
For those who still don't get it the public really doesn't give a crap about such tedious figure massaging and posturing from either side. The public will judge how much better/worse off they are and the importance of the services they use and value like the NHS, Education etc. in either parties hands.
Nor will endless economic triangulation and positioning on both sides do anything other than turn off the voter and boil the election down to what it was always going to be about.
Trust.
Little Ed and Balls either get trusted with the economy again after labour f***ed it up the last time or they do not.
Cammie and Osbrowne either get trusted to have another chance to manage the economy in the face of seemingly never ending austerity or they do not.
@DavidL, excellent post. Danny Fink was bang on the money when also making the point of why the politics of today were extremely important when it came to the selling of this economic package to the electorate on Skynews. And this is yet another week where the Government set the agenda by clearly laying our their future plans well in advance of the next GE.
Back in 2007 when Brown, Balls, Miliband & Co tried to ramp up their Autumn GE, who blinked first and backed down after Cameron and Osborne played a blinder at the Tory Conference? Brown gave his last budget and played politics with his 10p tax con by trying to tell us that he given middle income earners a tax cut. Brown thought that Blair owed it to him to pass on the Leadership after Blair had the guts to go and steal it from him while Brown didn't after John Smith died. Despite being Howard's favoured choice, Osborne didn't feel he was the right man to run for the Tory Leadership from his faction. But he knew a man who was, and he ran his campaign for him.
Osborne predicted that if the Tories won the last GE they would quickly become very unpopular due to the austerity package that would have to be delivered. He also believed that you had to be honest about it before the GE, as you needed a strong mandate to deliver it in Government. Osborne was a big driver behind the Tory/Libdem Coalition for that reason. Osborne's critics blame his honesty on the need for austerity and tough decisions after the GE for the Tories failing to gain an over all majority. But what they fail to recognise is that by doing so, Osborne had already begun to nail the the long term blame for the need for that austerity right at the feet of the current Labour Opposition party before they even left Office.
And that is why the Labour party lost the next GE even before they left Office last time, and nothing Labour has done since has changed that outcome. We have had Balls 'too far, too fast' strategy. We have had the failed growth meme, we have had the lack of investment one and now we are onto the 'good borrowing' to create growth stick. But best of all, we now have the two Ed's talking about having to tackle the mess being left by this government......sorry, but if that isn't funny enough they propose to fix this by yes, borrowing more and doing it with a kinder political face while refusing to tell us what they would have to cut in specific detail. Well this kind of economic dishonesty worked last time didn't it?
Meantime, Osborne and the UK economy will have move onto to pastures new, and you wonder why Hodges finds it hard to find the two Ed's strategy credible. Austerity is unpopular, but being honest and up front about what you are doing and why earns you some respect. A key point when understanding Thatcher's success in light of the unpopularity of some of her toughest policies. Hodges will yet turn out to be the Labour party's Danny Fink when the Tory Taliban were running the show for far too long in the Conservatives during the early Opposition years.
All that matters is how the public feels about their financial situation and circumstance come the election as well as how they view those public services they value. The endless economic spin is only for the very gullible political anoraks to swallow.
Funniest of all would those utter cretins who rated SLAB PR idiot extraordinaire John McTernan after his hilarious massive PR blunders with the now deposed Julila Gillard.
I certainly wouldn't like to be them right now lest someone reminds them of their incredible predictive powers.
Loses by 5 seats instead of 35.
Labor is suffering from the old lipstick on a pig argument in Oz. Not presidential but parliamentary system so upward tick will drop off as initial excitement drops off and same old policies are offered.
Quinnipiac Ohio 2016
•Chris Christie (R) 42%
•Hillary Clinton (D) 42%
•Hillary Clinton (D) 47%
•Rand Paul (R) 44%
•Chris Christie (R) 50%
•Joe Biden (D) 32%
•Rand Paul (R) 49%
•Joe Biden (D) 40%
The only other example I could think of so far is Milton Obote and Idi Amin Dada in Uganda.
£17.70 for a journey that takes between 49 and 69 minutes from Victoria.
You pay a premium for a faster service.
Secondly, where will the stations go? You would have to either place the trains on the existing lines through towns like High Wycombe, Banbury, Leamington Spa, Warwick and Solihiull which does f'all good for pathing and capacity, drive new lines and stations through the centre of the towns at massive cost and blight (good luck with that!), or route the lines outside the towns and have the same issue you describe with HS2.
Any new line has exactly the same problems, whether high-speed or not. And we need new lines to get the most capacity; tweaking the existing network can only go so far.