The debt and borrowing forecasts in the economy are appalling. The announced borrowing of approxiimately $750 billion over five years is already astonishing, but it is predicated on ludicrously inflated economic growth rates.
Nobody outside New Labour believes in the economic growth projections of 1.25% in 2010 and 3.5% in 2011. So in fact the real borrowing figure is likely to be over 1 trillion dollars.
I am poor and I don’t worry too much about money. But if you have any savings, in sterling or invested in something sterling denominated, get out now and get it into euros. The pound is going to fall spectacularly over the next eighteen months.
Just two other points then I’ll forget the budget. For Darling to pretend that 2.5% is a real terms increase for pensioners is a plain lie. Few pensioners pay mortgages, so the large majority do not benefit from the fall in the RPI due to mortgage payment reductions. Food and energy costs feature disproportionately in their budgets, and real inflation for pensioners is well over 2.5%.
The small increase in income tax for the rich is long overdue, but the bastards nearly all have accountants who will help them avoid it.
Nick Clegg is making a very good speech indeed, but nobody is listening. I will post it tomorrow.
Any suggestions as to where to find a good euro-denominated savings account? There are none in the UK, as far as I know (certainly none that bear any interest). Bank of Ireland had a nice one awhile back, but they’re not taking non-Irish deposits anymore.
Nick Clegg made a pathetic speech: just like the government he was concerned about his own party rather than the country. This should not have been an opportunity for pre-election advertising but an honest assessment of the huge problems facing us and a realistic roadmap of how we get out of them.
Your penultimate paragraph is particularly childish. I assume even someone as clearly intellectually challenged as yourself realises full well that this is a political ploy and that not even this government believes it will bring extra revenue. It’s immoral to start with; but the fact that it will make all of us worse off is the really cynical part of it.
Nick Clegg was actually the only one of the main speakers who tried to look at the fundamental causes of the problem and propose radical reform.
I think you will find it does bring some additional income. But I believe in redistribution – I think the expanded gap between rich and poor of the last twenty years is fundamenatally unhealthy to our society.
“I am poor and I don’t worry too much about money.”
Are you sure about this? Not meaning to be picky but just the other day you splashed out on train tickets “which cost over three hundred pounds.”
I think there is a difference between being poor and spending £300 on a train ticket.
Yes, I am sure I am poor. That £300 really, really hurt. I was put in a situation where I had no choice but to pay.
“Inflation”
“CPI down to 2.9%, RPI down to -0.4%”…
tinyurl.com/2b6ftd
This is based on RPI + 1%…
tinyurl.com/3428m6
“euros”
I don’t think paper money in any currency will fair well in this global financial armageddon.
Thanks to Thatcher we no longer have a manufacturing base to speak off.She based it on the “financial” and boy are we going to pay the price.
A common attribute of many conservatives who post here is anger: “childish” and “clearly intellectually challenged” are unhelpful contributions to civil debate, and Craig does well to ignore them. The former is debatable and the latter is substantially contradicted by the flow of reasoned, if sometimes outspoken, posts on this blog.
I also believe that an upper tax bracket will bring some additional extra income; the Blairite rubbish about wealth fleeing overseas will just not happen to the extent that the Right gleefully predicts. But the idea that a redistributive tax policy is immoral is something we will have to disagree on: taking wealth from the obscenely rich and giving it to the obscenely poor is something that is very *moral*, to my mind. I am not religious but note that wealth is shunned by major religions, and charity is praised and rewarded.
“Wealth is shunned by the major religions.”
Tell that to the Pope! Have you seen the Vatican treasures? They would fetch a few bob for the poor in Africa. [Or, better still, condoms.]
Anticant – yes, perhaps my statement is better seen as the theory of religion, not its practise 😉
* Jesus: “It is easier to pass through an eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven”.
* Christian practise of tithing, which required 10% of ones income to be set aside for the poor
* The Islamic rule against usurious banking (forgive me if I am taking that one out of context – it is true AFAIK)
* … I am sure there are plenty of other examples!
The BBC managed to find a couple of people who were worried about “the best talent” going abroad because of the increased 50% tax rate for the rich.
Boris Johnson came on and said much the same sort of thing.
‘Talent’!? The biggest of these big earners (and therefore, presumably, the most ‘talented’) have all but destroyed western civilisation….as will soon be confirmed when the inevitable monetary collapse and hyper-inflation set in.
We should say…Go! From God’s sake go! Take your talent elsewhere.
There must be somewhere else you can find to destroy with your criminal thievery.
However, sadly, while the current international monetary system exists there will always be a welcome for cunning unscrupulous thieves amongst the wealthy paper-shufflers and keyboard-tappers who seem to have found a way of owning everything while producing nothing.
We must destroy the ‘Money as Debt’ system to protect ourselves from the international bankers, whose interests it serves.
Governments always take refuge in the average consumer price index and then preach at the poor.