Monday 12 April 2010

Vat and whatnot

Quote of the day (for yesterday) had to go to Ed Miliband. He's accused the Conservatives of making unaffordable promises. Hey, Ed? Every minute of the day, our national debt goes up by over £300,000.

Even if we ignore or enormous pensions liability which we have no savings for (I'm glad they're still taking National Insurance from my monthly wage slip though), there is still the £780,000,000,000 debt. I think the time when Labour ministers could act indignant over unsustainable spending  is over.

Now, just because he's a massive hypocrite for saying it, doesn't  mean that Ed is wrong. He's correct, but tough, I reckon. Someone should tell him  to look up the laffer curve on wikipedia. It explains how  Reagan was able to lower tax yet continue previous levels of spending. The greater the growth, the more significant the tax returns. Labour could have done that too, except they put up tax when or economy was growing to the point that the treasury  gained an extra one trillion pounds, and yet here we are almost in that much debt still. In short, Ed really should worry more about stopping his party going to the left and being electorally bankrupt for the next 15 years, and less about the party who want the state to shrink from its current behemothic heights.

Incidentally, did anyone see Cable on the Politics Show on Sunday? He got aggressively fucked up. I can't link to it now, I'm on my phone, but I'll add it in later, it's great viewing.

Thursday 8 April 2010

My Prediction

It's well known that no political journalists like to make predictions, because the truth is none of them know what they're talking about half the time, and - despite not being anything close to a political journalist - my ignorance is no less hidden but I have the benefit of having no reputation to secure, so I'm going to go ahead and make my predicition now.

I think that, in a month's time, the Tories will have a 25 seat majority.

There, I said it. If you have one, please comment with it!

Brown's Interview on Today

He got riotously hammered. John Humphrey's is a fantastically well informed interviewer, and I'm absolutely sure that when Cameron gets the sam treatment, he won't come off well either. But it still can't be denied that Brown got well and truly battered today. It can be listened to here:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00rqq45/Today_08_04_2010/

2hrs10 minute mark is where the mony begins.

One thing that a commentor on the Coffee House blog (which is, by the way, absolutely brilliant, and nothing to do with coffee) mentioned is that, whilst Brown mentions that the £27bn apparantly presented by the Tories as savings as equivalent to half the schools budget for the year, he fails to mention that this is also equivalent to half the annual interest of the debt we've been saddled with. The interest. Whilst this puts into stark light the lack of breadth of the cuts being proposed by the Tories, it's worth noting how scornfully flippant Brown's behaviour towards the debt is.