Austerity = Labour lie

Conservatives economy 650

Gordon Brown’s recession (his team, including Ed Miliband and Ed Balls, must take some of the blame) created the deepest UK recession since the war. Manufacturing output declined 7% by the end of 2008, and it affected many sectors including banks and investment firms, with many well known and established businesses having to fold. The unemployment rate rose to 8.1% (2.57m people) in August 2011, the highest level since 1994. Labour, the BBC and their fellow travellers try to blame this on the banks and the hard of thinking believe them, however look at the facts and it is very clear who is to blame, Gordon Brown. Proof here here and here. (Click highlighted text to open document).

The bank “rescue” orchestrated by Brown was abysmal. Under capitalism the shareholders and bondholders pay for a management failure. Under Brown’s cronyism the state paid. A Scottish prime minister throwing (mainly) English taxpayer’s money at Scottish banks to save Scottish jobs. Look at Washington Mutual to see how it should have been done, with assets valued at $327.9 billion, that went bust in 2008 with capitalism sorting out the mess.

Also worth noting is that the headline figure bandied around for the bail out is £500 billion. Another lie. The RBS Group raised £5 billion in preference shares and £15 billion in ordinary shares. HBOS and Lloyds TSB together raised £17 billion, £8.5 billion in preference shares and £8.5 billion of ordinary shares. So £37 billion in total. An amount that was then a little over two weeks of the average spending for the UK government.

And Brown, far from solving the banking problem was actually instrumental in making it far worse. He vetoed Barclay’s proposed rescue of Lehman’s. “We don’t want US problems infecting the UK system” the US government was told. Lehman’s went bust and contagion on both sides of the Atlantic was the result. Labour do not, never have and never will understand business or economics, if they did they wouldn’t be socialists.

hayek-socialists 650

So back to Labour’s austerity lie. And their cost of living crisis, NHS crisis and other assorted crisis lies.

The coalition government with George Osborne as chancellor have followed a clear and well thought out long term economic plan. The IMF and Ed Balls said that it would not work. They were both very, very wrong. It has worked spectacularly, brilliantly well and we now have one of the world’s best performing economies.

Conservative long term economic plan 650

Unemployment has fallen to 1.91 million, its lowest level for more than six years. The UK is creating more new jobs than the whole of the rest of the EU put together. There are now 30.8 million people in work, the most ever in the history of this country. The ONS say wage growth outpaces inflation. In the September to November 2014 period, average earnings were up 1.8% from a year earlier whilst inflation was just 0.5%. So people’s real incomes are increasing. No austerity there.

The UK is the world’s fastest growing advanced economy.  Whilst the US growth was 2.4% in 2014 the UK’s GDP rose by 2.6%, the strongest growth since 2007 and the best performance out of the G7 nations. The UK economy is now 2.9% above the previous peak, and has recouped all of the loss in output recorded in Gordon Brown’s recession. No austerity there.

George Osborne has rapidly increase personal income tax allowances from £6,475 in 2009/10 up to £10,000 now. Massively favouring poor tax payers. Rich people do not get these allowances. Millions of lower paid people no longer pay any income tax at all as a result of this. No austerity there.

The government deficit has been brought down by George Osborne by one third in cash terms or one half as a proportion of the economy. Despite the difficult global economy. Without needing austerity.

As you can see Labour’s claims are a complete lie.

However there are a couple of areas where George Osborne is rebalancing the economy. Which was much needed.

The first was controlling public sector wages. These had grown to become far, far bigger than private sector wages for comparable jobs, despite all the extra benefits that public sector employees enjoy. The was immoral, unjust and unfair. So public sector pay restraint is gradually bringing the two sectors back in line. No fair minded person can complain at that.

The second area is the overall reduction in the size of the state and the increase in the size of the private sector. This is brilliant because it is the private sector which creates all the wealth in our economy, the public sector just spends it. It is obvious that this change will create a more powerful and faster growing economy. Something that has been proven here and here and here. (Click highlighted text to open document). Gordon Brown increased the size of the public sector to 52% of the total British economy. This was fundamentally stupid and did massive harm. Osborne has corrected this to the limits possible by the global economic situation, it is not something that can be changed overnight. In the 2014 budget he announced that he intends to continue doing so till the state is down to 35% of the total economy. This is brilliant and it is not austerity, it is making Britain Great again. The left try to call this austerity, but it isn’t. Austerity is what Attlee did to Great Britain with the whole population on starvation rations for six and a half years till he was voted out.

Conservative road 650

11 Comments


  1. Here here! If only more people read this then we might be certain of a Tory victory in May!

    Reply

  2. If we didn’t have the public sector the poor, disabled and those that need services would not get the help they need. Roads and other infrastructure necessary for the functioning of a countries people would not be done, or it would be done through the private sector which would not be required to open books to show where the spending of taxpayer money actually went. I can see you are against the public sector workers in England and probably other countries but I can tell you this, public sector employees get far less than private sector contractors/consultants doing the same work. They also cannot get raises unless it goes through the leaders of the state and they are not able to work overtime to make more money to help them maintain the cost of living which is on the rise in the U.S. Public Sector workers get a bad rap from people like you that really don’t know all there is to know about wages, benefits, etc. I challenge you to take a deeper look into the actual figures you are claiming for public vs private wages and benefits. You may find it very surprising. Conservatives try to push these beliefs off on the rest of the world because anytime they can get government out of the way by badmouthing, telling lies which most taxpayers don’t even attempt to check out, they win. They soon take over public service duties/jobs and start cutting services, using/abusing taxpayer money. Books are closed, salaries skyrocket, money disappears and no one knows where it goes because they have no requirement to report where they are spending. We have a snake in office here in our state that is all for the same thing. Cutting services, buying judges off so he can get away with illegal doings and no one can find out about it. It’s all bullshit.

    Reply

    1. grace

      “If we didn’t have the public sector the poor, disabled and those that need services would not get the help they need.”
      This is patently untrue. Most societies in most of history, in fact most in the world today, work perfectly well in this area with zero public sector intervention.

      Reply

  3. What a load of bollux – You obviously are a fucking Tory through and through. This is the biggest load of Tory backed shit Ive read this year – and there’s a LOT of shit about. You need stoning with that stinking attitude my friend.

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    1. Ned Kelly,

      Thank you for proving once again that the left are nasty people who resort to abuse instead of educated, civilised debate.

      Reply

  4. I feel you have an identity crisis going on!!
    The left are far, far, far from nasty..and can
    If you think the current financial system, rivven to the core as it is with unsustainable debt and, post 2008, fuelling ever growing inequality, is anything other than a mythical house of cards built on shifting sands then you need to dig a bit deeper.
    There’s a lot more beneath the surface if you just take a look…wisdom is the hallmark of intelligent, ‘educated, civilised debate’!
    Personal attacks are inevitable, I’m afraid, when you spout this sort of crap..
    If you think for yourself, truly truly think for yourself then you think for everybody…
    Thank about it!!!

    Reply

  5. The recession was not caused by Labour? I am certainly no labour voter, but American sub-prime mortgage assets along with a deregulated banking system (which was Thatchers doing if I remember correctly) brought the world into the deepest recession since the Great Depression. Austerity governing is also not great for an economic recovery, a rising GDP after all requires around 30% of the countries product to be government spending. That along with the multiplier affect is effective at growing the economy in the long term.

    Think of how world markets recovered from the Great Depression in the 30s. Many countries governments started on massive infrastructure projects, the George Washington Bridge, Hoover Dam and Empire State Buildings were all examples of this. The multiplier effect means that this can effectively kick start an economy into action, austerity if anything could prolong a recession.

    Reply

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