General Election Predictions

James Harding, head of BBC News and Current Affairs. Former editor of The Times from 2007-2012.

A former Murdoch acolyte leading the 'independent' BBC news arm? What could possibly go wrong?  

Quoted from barralad

Victoria Ayling is definitely not "local" (unless you class living in a mansion in the south of the second biggest county in England local) nor probably a user of public transport.
Proof reading would have been a very good idea as the whole leaflet is riddled with mistakes.

I strongly suspect UKIP are on a damage limitation exercise with their candidate. The Economist came to Grimsby and UKIP wheeled out John Stockton to talk to them...

http://www.economist.com/news/.....ng-votes-tories-view

Reads like propaganda to me.

The problem with that article is that it seems to assume that the wonderful 'recovery' we hear so much of from the Conservative Party actually exists. In actuality, across the country real income per person is still below the levels of 2007. In some areas, people are obviously doing better but it averages out because in other areas such as N.E. Lincs, they aren't seeing any recovery at all. This is why people aren't happy with Osborne's performance. The worst recovery in a century and possibly since the South Sea Bubble.

The article notes that youth unemployment is twice the national average around here but in the same sentence praises Osborne for a surge in jobs!?! If "working-age benefit claims are down by 40%" around here as stated, I wonder how many of those are off the books due to sanctions?

Interesting to read they think that there is going to be £200 million of infrastructure around here. Anybody any idea at all where this money is supposedly being spent?

If you've got a bit of time, here's an interesting (if long) piece from Paul Krugman (Nobel laureate economist) which points out the truth of the economic 'achievements' of the current government:

http://www.theguardian.com/business/ng-interactive/2015/apr/29/the-austerity-delusion

Deserved criticism of Labour in there as well for failing to question the Tory austerity programme or to point out it was nonsensically bad policy.

Quoted from Maringer

Reads like propaganda to me.

The problem with that article is that it seems to assume that the wonderful 'recovery' we hear so much of from the Conservative Party actually exists. In actuality, across the country real income per person is still below the levels of 2007. In some areas, people are obviously doing better but it averages out because in other areas such as N.E. Lincs, they aren't seeing any recovery at all. This is why people aren't happy with Osborne's performance. The worst recovery in a century and possibly since the South Sea Bubble.

The article notes that youth unemployment is twice the national average around here but in the same sentence praises Osborne for a surge in jobs!?! If "working-age benefit claims are down by 40%" around here as stated, I wonder how many of those are off the books due to sanctions?

Interesting to read they think that there is going to be £200 million of infrastructure around here. Anybody any idea at all where this money is supposedly being spent?

Well lets give them some credit , after Labour left us in the worst ressession ever we have yet to see anyone starve and not many lose their homes ect

No, Labour didn't leave us with the 'worst recession ever'. Growth in 2010 when the Tories took over was almost 1.9%, a reasonable enough start to the recovery after a deep recession (which was not caused by the Labour government in any way, shape or form). Unfortunately, the coalition austerity policies nipped this recovery in the bud and almost sent us back into recession. Growth in 2011 was 0.8% and then just 0.2% in 2012. This led to Osborne and Co quietly drop the levels of austerity (without admitting anything!) and 2013 was back up to 1.7% growth. Cumulatively, this failed recovery has cost us at least 5% growth in GDP (using OBR figures) and possibly up to 14%(!):

http://mainlymacro.blogspot.co.uk/2015/02/the-size-of-recent-macro-policy-failure.html

That's at least £1,500 and probably a lot more lost from the economy for every adult and child in the country due to the coalition's austerity. Possibly up to £10,000 per household.

Austerity when the economy is weak is an utterly ridiculous proposition as the Krugman article I linked earlier shows.

Some people have starved to death as well, by the way:

http://www.independent.co.uk/v.....60-more-9942735.html

Oh, and record numbers of people have been evicted:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-26160569

http://www.theguardian.com/money/2014/nov/13/tenant-evicted-record-levels-benefit-cuts-bedroom-tax

But apart from that, the coalition has been great! Yes, that was sarcasm.

Hope everyone manages to get out to vote today. Good weather which should help the turnout.

Hopefully, some folk will have read some of the economic stuff I've posted on here over the last few months which shows the perceived wisdom about the economic 'success' of the coalition is utter bunk.

Hopefully, folk will also ignore the scaremongering about the SNP in the right-wing press over the course of the past week or two. For all the dramatic headlines, you may have noted that these articles/editorials have never quite explained how 50-odd SNP MPs could possibly dictate the policies of a parliament of 650 MPs in total. If you also consider that the Labour party have said they won't do any deals with the SNP (a foolish decision, IMO) and that the SNP have said they would never back a Tory government, you can see why these papers have a reason to promote false scare stories.

I'm sure that everyone realises that the various non-dom billionaires who own these newspapers don't have the country's best interest at heart. Another one added to the mix this week as well as The Independent came out in favour of another Conservative/LibDem coalition. This, despite the fact that the majority of their readership are left-leaning! The reason for this change? Well, you'd have to ask the Russian billionaire owner who allegedly got a journalist from the Evening Standard (another one of his papers) to write the editorial instead of the journalists at the Independent itself. So much for his promises not to influence editorial policy! This will mark the death of the newspaper.

If people want to vote Conservative/LibDem/UKIP based on their Social Policy then that is fine with me. I may disagree with pretty much everything the Tories say in this area (much of it easily disprovable if you want to look at actual research), but that's a personal choice. I'd just hate it if some of these parties won votes due to their lies about their economic success when they would actually have struggled to do much worse in this area.

I shall be going  to vote shortly,

I have said before I live in a very strong Conservative area,

So voting for anybody else but conservative is a wasted vote,

So my wife and I will waste our votes on UKIP,

BECAUSE

We both like Nigel.

Its different in Grimsby,

Vote for UKIP and you might get UKIP.

Maringer, I've personally found your posts on the economy, in particular, very enlightening.  As always with economics there is never a definitive answer, and other economic commentators have had different views, it seems clear to me that growth was stunted in the early part of the last Parliament.  However, I also think the previous Labour government should have managed spending better during the mid Noughties which would have helped make us more resilient when the global economic crisis hit.  They also made a complete pig's ear of our tax legislation, filling it with rushed and badly drafted clauses and not introducing a GAAR.  

I know which way I'll be voting today but more from a least worst option point of view than any great passion for any of the parties' policies.  

I hope everyone gets out and exercises their democratic right.  Btw, I still think we'll see Miliband in Downing Street but probably not for a week or two while all the back room deals go on. I'm guessing we'll have plenty to debate on that front too.    

Oh and the best part of the Election for me, no more Margaret Hodge!

The thing to remember about spending in the mid noughties is that it wasn't really much above trend as the Conservatives would have you believe and, at the time, nobody ever claimed we were in a boom. Not surprising really if you look at the figures because they show that there was no indication whatsoever of a boom because the economy wasn't overheating, other than another usual British housing bubble (one of many). Before the bank crisis in 2008, Osborne had even pledged to match Labour's spending so it is amusing that he has since claimed it was unaffordable! Check out the chart in the post below and you can clearly see that debt levels weren't obviously too high.

http://mainlymacro.blogspot.co.uk/2015/04/mediamacro-myth-2-labour-profligacy.html

Debt levels were in fact much lower than our economic rivals such as Germany, France, Italy etc. Ultimately, it wouldn't have made a blind bit of difference if government debt had been below 30% of GDP, it wouldn't have made any difference in our ability to borrow as necessary. Our debt is currently around 90% of GDP (and rising), yet borrowing costs are unprecedentedly low.

Brown's problem back then was that he increased expenditure by a few percent of GDP each of these years which would have been fine if the growth forecasts had been met but the forecasts were a little too high. Brown expected growth to be around the same level as the increase in investment which would have kept debt flat, but growth fell slightly behind expectations so debt went up slightly. Note, it was still 5% lower just before the recession than when Labour took over from the Major government! Interestingly enough, just about the only good thing that Osborne has done was to set up the OBR to provide independent forecasts. Of course, he's since dismissed some of the OBR's forecasts if they didn't fit in with his narrative and has refused to allow the OBR to assess the proposed budgets of opposing parties! He's a very political animal and has at various times praised or criticised the IMF depending on whether or not they agree with him!

Anyway, back to the noughties, one point which hasn't been noted so much is that during this period, the Labour government did invest a bit more money in capital expenditure, building much-needed schools and hospitals and the like. Unfortunately, some of this was through PFI which is very wasteful, just an unnecessary transfer of funds from government to the private sector. The investment in infrastructure was much needed as the previous Conservative governments had let things start to fall apart and this at the time (1980s and early 1990s) that we had record oil revenues coming in as well as money from the various privitisations of government assets! One thing that a lot of people don't realise is that the levels of public investment in the UK have been low (under all parties) in comparison to most of the top economies in the world for many years now. Here are figures from 2009:

http://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/s.....83a12c30c81a3e1371c2

It has been even lower under the current government, precisely the wrong policy in the recovery from a recession.

Anyway, I'm certainly in agreement that a GAAR would have been a great idea. Following the financial crisis, Brown well and truly bottled setting one of these up and it is clear that the Conservatives would never bring in such a rule. The chance to bring in proper regulation of the financial sector was also missed so we remain open to further crashes once the idiots in the city get back into the swing of things. Let's hope they don't forget what happened back in 2007/2008 too quickly.

For this election, it looks as though Cameron is setting himself up to try and stay in power if they win just a few more seats than Labour. The fact that we are in a parliamentary democracy and not a presidential election has obviously eluded him with the nonsense he has been spouting about legitimacy and Miliband trying to 'con' his way into power. The party which has the confidence of parliament takes power and if he can't pass a Queen's speech but Miliband can then Miliband simply has to become PM.

Wouldn't surprise me if Cameron hangs around for weeks 'squatting' in No. 10 (remember the Sun's headline about Brown 5 years ago?  ) trying to bluff his way back into power. He really is an odious excrement.