The concern should not be the colour of the party in power at the time that the ideaology was introduced, nor for that matter the concern of why all party's seem happy to continue and expand the ideaology, but should be the concern that a privately owned, for-profit business model could be constructed from a process that should be the responsibility of a government department, ie the assesment of criteria to hand out public money from a government department should be well within the capabilities of that department given that it is they who write the specifications in the first place.



When you then introduce a bonus system based on a target of refusals, then you are starting to get insidious, there should be no targets, merely qualifications - with qualifications you have a line in the sand where disability recieves or doesn't recieve support, with targets you have a moveable line that no-one really understands from one month to the next.

Quote JerryChicken="JerryChicken" ... 2. They know exactly what they are doing, they know exactly what they are saying, there is a different agenda to what they are publically stating behind their Plan A.'" This. Mind you, I've thought so for three years now. Quote JerryChicken="Sal Paradise"What would the deficit have been if we had not had any cuts? Would it have actually gone down?'" Not sure if you mean debt, deficit or structural deficit. With growth there would have been more coming-in in tax receipts, so the structural deficit would probably have gone down. Debt as a proportion of GDP (the usual measure of affordability)might well have been coming down now even if it had gone up in empirical cash terms. Also, please don't forget how much of the overall debt is actually worth hard cash when and if we eventually sell-off our shares in the banks. i.e. From the bank bail-out that Osborne opposed but about which he has never said what he would have done instead, preferring to call it Brown's recession, which he has now renamed "the Euro crisis". Quote JerryChicken="JerryChicken"...And of course, those posters in 2010, the ones that promised the NHS was safe in a particular persons hands, he's got to be telling the truth hasn't he ?'" The same chap also promised no top-down re-org of the NHS, so that can't be actually happening either. Quote JerryChicken="samwire"who'd have thought it, the tories want to shrink the state. it's almost like it's their political ideology... '" Glad you agree. Quote JerryChicken="samwire"...and they should be more like the labour party who want to grow the state, then realise they've spent up and decide they should really shrink the state, alan johnson had £70bn of cuts in mind, £35bn from cuts in public services. news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/a ... 786793.stm they should really make up their minds. big state, small state?'" I think you might have missed the point. The state was not "spent-up" until after the banks had been bailed-out, up until then the deficit and debt levels were well within manageable margins by any Western Democratic state's standards.

Quote JerryChicken="JerryChicken" ... 2. They know exactly what they are doing, they know exactly what they are saying, there is a different agenda to what they are publically stating behind their Plan A.'" This. Mind you, I've thought so for three years now. Quote JerryChicken="Sal Paradise"What would the deficit have been if we had not had any cuts? Would it have actually gone down?'" Not sure if you mean debt, deficit or structural deficit. With growth there would have been more coming-in in tax receipts, so the structural deficit would probably have gone down. Debt as a proportion of GDP (the usual measure of affordability)might well have been coming down now even if it had gone up in empirical cash terms. Also, please don't forget how much of the overall debt is actually worth hard cash when and if we eventually sell-off our shares in the banks. i.e. From the bank bail-out that Osborne opposed but about which he has never said what he would have done instead, preferring to call it Brown's recession, which he has now renamed "the Euro crisis". Quote JerryChicken="JerryChicken"...And of course, those posters in 2010, the ones that promised the NHS was safe in a particular persons hands, he's got to be telling the truth hasn't he ?'" The same chap also promised no top-down re-org of the NHS, so that can't be actually happening either. Quote JerryChicken="samwire"who'd have thought it, the tories want to shrink the state. it's almost like it's their political ideology... '" Glad you agree. Quote JerryChicken="samwire"...and they should be more like the labour party who want to grow the state, then realise they've spent up and decide they should really shrink the state, alan johnson had £70bn of cuts in mind, £35bn from cuts in public services. news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/a ... 786793.stm they should really make up their minds. big state, small state?'" I think you might have missed the point. The state was not "spent-up" until after the banks had been bailed-out, up until then the deficit and debt levels were well within manageable margins by any Western Democratic state's standards.

That is the old clause four which hasn't been current for two decades now, i.e. it was replaced when you were still wetting nappies.



Do keep up.

If Red Ed was in office we would have 10% growth, 0 unemployment and a £100 Trillion deficit. Aint that cool.

But why was the debt steadily increasing during boom years?



Was it because Brown was blinded by his own arrogance and seriously believed that he had ended boom and bust?

Brown had his own set of rules, one of which was not to borrow for "everyday" expenditure (the main cause of structural deficit).

Not a bad rule, actually.



Economists are still arguing amongst themselves as to how much of his deficit was structural. (Of course you will know for sure).



Whilst Brown may well have been arrogant in believing he had ended boom and bust, the economic consensus at the time agreed with him as he had given the Bank of England the task of keeping inflation down and he had a firm grip on expenditure (check the graphs if you don't believe me), although many will opine that he did cheat by putting PFI "off balance sheet" but, strictly speaking, where else can you put it?



If you want to see what he meant by boom and bust, you only have to look a little further back to the rollercoaster economics of Lawson and Lamont.



Brown actually paid debt off (unlike Osborne over the last two and a half years) and took the UK out of debt and into surplus ... indeed Tories were criticising him at the time for not dipping into his so-called "war chest".



PFI apart, that was considered to be what you needed for a stable economy but that consensus was blown out of the water by the banking crisis.



You sound to be one of those who think he should have had a "nest egg" put aside for the lean years.

Can you name me one government in the UK that has ever done that?

And how big a nest egg would we have needed to bail out the banks?



How long can you ignore that elephant in the room that everyone else has seen?... i.e. that the banks had to be bailed out.

Can someone on here come up with a realistic solution to the country's indebtedness (public + private)? I doubt it.



We are so indebted it is more than probable the only way out will be through financial collapse, with devestating consequences for all of us, better off and poor alike.



We are in such a mess that policy is aimed at playing for time and hoping something will turn up.

you can keep on saying it, it doesn't make it any more valid than the first time.



the stereotypes i describe where? are you simply making stuff up again?

there are brits who think obama is some socialist god.

so, it's labour ideology to make the sick/disabled suffer? their voters should be ashamed of themselves.



the colour of the party is entirely relevant. the process wasn't set up by the money grabbing, capitalist swine tories it was set up by the sodding labour party. it's exactly the sort of thing the tories would and indeed should do. the fact is the labour party did it. they decided the sick/disabled were screwing the system. what's that word that does the rounds here, oh yeah, the labour party and by association it's voters 'demonise' the sick/disabled.



the government decided the private sector could do it cheaper and quicker.

ah, someone else who thinks 2008-2010 should be erased from the record books. i'm sure the hundreds of thousand who lost their jobs will be pleased. a price worth paying? how very tory of you.

However you look at matters conventional Keynesian economics would suggest a cycle where growth and government debt are linked - when growth occurs debts should fall and visa versa. Under the last government labour the opposite happened, towards the end it was - even to labour - unsustainable and cuts - by their own admission - would have to be made.



Regarding benefits you cannot have a position whereby those who choose not to work are better off than those who do, its immoral. Not giving annual increases to those who choose not to work helps to redress the balance a little, this is a cut I agree with. Benefits should provide a very basic subsistence not cigarettes, Sky TV, beer, holidays etc.



Of the deficit how much is represented by our stake in the banks and the potential revenue we might get from selling them? How long will it be before we do sell our stake?

yes you can. if enough people vote for the party that allows this then that's what happens.