General election

Quoted from Maringer

You've (Grim74) completely misunderstood the fullfacts page you're linking to.

This is saying that the claim that the current government (Coalition then Tory) since 2010 will have borrowed more than all previous Labour governments by 2020 is not accurate. However, this is just one government and a 10 year period as compared to the Labour party's 28 years in office (since 1946).

Murphy's figures (which come from the House of Commons Library, not the OBR - my error), show that the Tories have borrowed a lot more every year in office than Labour in current-day prices - around 25% more per year on average - and repaid a fraction of the debt than Labour have in current day prices - less than a fifth.

How does that square with your idea that Labour are profligate spenders and the Tories have fiscal rectitude? It doesn't - it entirely contradicts it, as I'll hope you can agree.

By pretty much every measure, the Thatcher years proved catastrophic for the UK. Despite the fact that Thatcher had a massive windfall from the oil, sold off much of the social housing built by earlier governments (kicking off the problems leading to the ridiculous housing market in the present day) and privatised anything which wasn't nailed down (undervaluing them in every single case, of course, as copied by Hameron & Co with the Royal Mail), poverty increased enormously, from 13.4% of the population in 1979 up to 22.2% in 1990:

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/datablog/2013/apr/08/britain-changed-margaret-thatcher-charts

Economic inequality increased massively as well, something which was never reversed under the Labour-lite Blair governments. Let's not forget that unemployment peaked at almost 12% (higher in impoverished, mostly northern areas) and was over 2 million for every year but 1980 (and over 3 million for four years, 83 to 86) when she had just got started.

Quite interesting that Thatcher is so beloved by the right. She certainly broke the backs of the Unions (with illegal use of the police and army, of course) and they certainly had too much power, but if the Germans can benefit from strong unions, there shouldn't be any reason why

The unemployment came about due to a massive experiment with monetarism which ultimately managed to bring down inflation, but at what cost? Discussion of this here:

https://mainlymacro.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/on-economic-achievements-and-failures.html

Your view of Atlee is somewhat bizarre. Atlee's government implemented the recommendations of the Beveridge Report and reduced the debt to GDP ratio by almost 100% in just 6 years! As I have already noted, subsequent governments continued with similar policies so talk of a return to normal Capitalism is nonsense.

I've pointed out that we're desperately in need of investment in infrastructure, housing, education and so forth and explained why the £500 billion figure was mooted and how it could be worthwhile. You don't seem concerned about the lack of investment and our rubbish infrastructure because you are mostly concerned about immigration. To put it simply, we need immigration because we've got an aging population and need to pay for the triple-locked pensions of the retiring baby boomers who are now retiring in droves, their healthcare and so forth. We also need foreign doctors and nurses to migrate here to treat them because we're not training nearly enough medical staff and haven't for years. The stupid fornicators have even changed nurses bursaries to loans recently because one thing which is guaranteed to attract people to a difficult and poorly-paid job is obviously more debt! We also need lots of other immigrants with skills in many fields because we haven't trained/educated enough people to fulfil these roles due to underinvestment.

Very tough times ahead, regardless of what occurs in the election.

Quoted from ginnywings

This is a point that i was going to make.

Can anyone tell me why Corbyn is a clown and someone you wouldn't trust to run the country? Is it merely because the right wing press tell you this, or do you have any actual evidence? It should be about party politics and policies, not personalities.

Quoted from Grim74

When Corbyn speaks I will admit I sometimes find myself nodding my head in agreement with him and then just before you know it WHAM! A bit stinking turd comes out his mouth and reality hits home he wants to disband the U.K. Armed forces, have unlimited immigration, give up our nuclear deterrent, give the Falklands back to Argentina, Gibraltar back to Spain, allow a SNP referendum, no doubt a Brexit 2nd referendum, backs the IRA, plans to put every adult on benefits, actually believes socialism works, and worst of all he wants Abbot as his deputy PM!  Of course he's a flipping clown.

Quoted from Grim74

When Corbyn speaks I will admit I sometimes find myself nodding my head in agreement with him and then just before you know it WHAM! A bit stinking turd comes out his mouth and reality hits home he wants to disband the U.K. Armed forces, have unlimited immigration, give up our nuclear deterrent, give the Falklands back to Argentina, Gibraltar back to Spain, allow a SNP referendum, no doubt a Brexit 2nd referendum, backs the IRA, plans to put every adult on benefits, actually believes socialism works, and worst of all he wants Abbot as his deputy PM!  Of course he's a flipping clown.

Quoted from Maringer

Firstly, as expected, you apparently haven't accepted the fact that the statistics presented show that historically, the Tories have borrowed more than the Labour governments (approximately 25% more per year on average) and have paid off less than a fifth of the amount that Labour governments have. In fact, you don't seem to have commented on this at all!

Secondly, the Global Financial crisis in 2008 (Global being the operative word) truly knackered the economy which is why the deficit of circa £10 billion in 2008 leapt to more than £50 billion the following year then over £100 billion the year after. As I'm sure you really know, this was nothing to do with Labour profligacy - it was a financial crisis caused by the collapse of the banking system. I'd recommend you watch the movie, "The Big Short". Very well made and entertaining way to describe how the bankers crashed the world economy. Not the Labour Party's fault, obviously.

The deficits run by Thatcher throughout most of 1980s were mostly due to the recession during the early 1980s which wasn't entirely her government's fault, though she takes a lot of the blame for letting unemployment rise to more than 3 million. All this while reaping the rewards of the North Sea oil as well, don't forget - they were still borrowing money, despite the fact that they had tens of billions coming in from oil revenue as well as cutting down the size of the state - how stupid is that, eh?

The deficits run by the Tories throught most of the 1990s were caused by the recession in the early 1990s which again mostly wasn't their fault thought the ERM debacle didn't help.

If you accept these facts about the Tory deficits (i.e. not all their fault), you'll simply have to agree how foolish it is to try and claim that the large deficit following the biggest recession in a century was the fault of the Labour government!

Look, I know you're not going to allow yourself to be convinced here but it's getting to the stage where you're effectively walking around with your fingers in your ears saying "La la la, Can't hear you". If you want to trust the Tories, then that's fair enough, but you need to accept that everything you've been told by the media about so-called Labour profligacy and Tory fiscal rectitude simply isn't true.

P.S. The Brexit you voted for exists only in the minds of those who expect a miracle before breakfast then a couple more after lunch as the ominous economic signs already show. All we can hope for is the least bad option at this stage and I'm not sure that anybody has an idea what this is, least of all May or her useful idiots such as Fox and Johnson.

Quoted from 1739

You have clearly been brainwashed by the daily mail  or the sun or Facebook pages such as 'Britain first'. He believes in negotiating to prevent death by war, to me and seen some of the people it has affected I don't think it's such a stupid idea. But I suppose you only care about the flag and not the people it affects. Give us evidence from the above that any of what you have said is true from a factual source. Murdoch and his pals must be licking their lips at the thought of lower taxes for them if May gets in whilst the elderly and disabled are hit hardest. Why is no one talking about the rise in national debt since the Torres have been back in power, or the rise in austerity and vital services being cut. The owners of  media company's  are totally against Corbyn because he will say and do what he feels (same as trump in someways) compared to previous labour leaders who were puppets on strings to big business.