Thetownend.com

If you're poor or need the state to help you survive?  Then bend over and take your kicking.  If you then feel the need to blame someone then it's the Tories, banks, city spivs and Libs in that order.  If you've made a killing under "Blue New Labour" then you can afford to sit back and look smug at the rest of us.
On a more sombre note.  Thatcher is comfortable in hospitable but we live in hope.
One more thing.  I'm a cunt and I know I am.

That doesn't leave many people not to blame. You'ne not earned the "cunt" bit yet but you've made a very good start.

Nabbed off Mex's facebook status: http://www.isthatcherdeadyet.co.uk/

[url width=900 height=621]http://i32.photobucket.com/albums/d35/flammableben/postcardjpgscaled1000.jpg[/url]

Labour have fucked this country raw and any cuts that take place are necessary after the excessive, credit card style spending spree Brown and Blair undertook at our country's expense. We need a kick up the arse and a wakeup call.

If we had someone who ran the country with an ounce of business sense, then we wouldn't be in this fucking state dependent mess. Councils and governmental bodies need to be taught how to save money and cut the fat, then be rewarded accordingly.

As things stand spending is encouraged at all levels and hitting your budget is rewarded. It's disgusting how much money is simply wasted. Cuts are needed, bigtime.

I hope they scrap the project that would mean i will be out of a job in a couple of years.

Wont fucking happen though i suspect. The cunts

Ah I see the Labour types are going down the well trodden route of blaming someone who hasn't been PM for 20 years rather than blaming the fuckwits that were in power for the last 13.

As always, Labour always blame someone else for their own inadequacies.

George Osborne and David Cameron...putting the 'n' in cuts.

That old joke, funny how Labour passed a bill to cut the deficit by half in 4 years. Er...how the fuck were they going to do that without massive cuts. Answers on a postcard please

You can't just blame Labour, some of the blame is with everyone who voted for them. It's not like Labour did something unexpected, increasing public spending is one of their things and they made sure everyone knew they were doing it. Once they spent all the cash they raised taxes, then sold off everything they could, then raised taxes, then borrowed, then raised taxes. When you do that, a downturn in the economy means you're screwed. And we're screwed.

The real problem for me though is that the rich aren't taxed enough and the poor aren't given enough support. You'd have thought Labour would have addressed this but everything I've read suggests the gap has gotten bigger under them. It's a bit sad when a poor person's best chance of getting help is the Tory party.

The one ray of light for me is the coalition government, having the two opposing views on most issues and them having to reach a compromise is the best chance we've got of sorting things out better going forward.

Tetchy fucker.  Im not here for politics arguments.  Just to call people cunts.

Have fun.

What I don't get, is how politicians (and they all do it) manage to say something like the following with a straight face and without their nose growing. It's just ridiculous, why do they bother?

I blame the immigrants and single mothers

This has been a long time coming.  The public sector is about to learn what the private sector has had to endure for the last 3 years.  I take no pleasure at all in thinking of the ½ million public sector workers who are likely to lose their jobs...but it is necessary, unfortunately.

I, for one, do blame Labour for the fiscal mess we're in.  How Miliband and Johnson have the nerve to object while the coalition clears up the mess they created, I'll never know.

With the MoD having to cut the workforce from 85,000 to 60,000 you would think the place would be covered by a cloud of depression today.  However they will be running a voluntary redundancy scheme which could result in a payoff worth 21 months of your salary.

I will be filing my application on the day the scheme opens!

It was a bill to cut the ANNUAL deficit (say from £150bn to £100bn), so in effect the actual deficit will go up further.

Nearer 10 years, starting with the final salary pension schemes, which started to go in 2002 in the private sector.

i remember the tories slating labour for the hidden taxes etc.now they are upping taxes and making countless people unemployed at the same time.
it's all labours fault though......

I'm not the tories biggest fan, but they need to do this to save us from heading further up the creek.

KING OUT!

I believe 2 years ago when Cameron was in opposition his party endorsed Labour's spending plans. Unfortunately this was before the banking crash fucked the world economy, so in order to avoid a catastrophic depression Brown chose to spend, to keep the economy bouyantish.

Now we'll see if that was wise or not, as the possibilty of a double dip recession is very real.

On the pretence that Brown ended boom and bust forever. Oh, wait...

Unemployment is a price worth paying... I'm sure I've heard that one somewhere before.

And I blame the City for the mess we're in, and Labour only for letting it happen on their watch.

That's one of the problems with a situation like this...the language becomes very emotive very quickly.  I broadly support the steps being taken now, but only because I see no other way.  As I said above, I feel desperately sorry for the people who are going to lose their jobs.  Many of them are doing a good job and the country will be a poorer place without them - but the fact is we cannot afford the level of service they provide right now.

Edit: And it's also worth noting that the spending boom that took place during the early years of the last decade was, in large part, funded by tax revenues generated in the City.  So yes - the City was responsible for the bust, but also one of the main sources of funds that Brown used to expand the public sector to unsustainable levels in the years that preceded the bust.  The truth is that, while every public sector redundancy is a personal tragedy, many of the jobs about to be lost in the public sector should not really have been created in the first place.  Brown oversaw both the boom and the bust that followed.  The clear up job is the responsibility of others.

I'm still of the opinion that it was the Tories that sorted the economy out and put it on the right track before Labour came to power in 1997 and that they subsequently just rode the wave, until it started going wrong at which point they just proved what we knew all along - Labour can't manage the economy.

Brown and Labour saying there is nothing they could have done to protect the UK from the financial meltdown is complete and utter bollocks. Whilst better financial regulation might not have prevented it from hitting us, it would have definitely reduced the impact and meant no bank bail out. Plus if they'd have put some money aside during the good years rather than pissing it all away (and borrowing more on top to piss away) we'd have had a cushion to lessen the impact.

To be fair, Labour did increase spending which did a lot of good but they just went way too far, compared to the Tories who didn't go far enough. I really think the coalition will give us the balance between the two that we need and come the next general election we'll all be hoping for the same result again.

To suggest Labour are wholly responsible for the defecit, ignoring the minor effect of a global financial crisis (as Reg points out), is as facile as Labour pretending that they'd have done anything very much different. The impact was the same as it would have been under a Tory govt, the remedy is broadly the same as it would be under a Labour govt.

EDIT: that's not a response to jonny btw, just happened to post straight after him. jonny has it about right IMO

True...but more so in relation to the bust of 2007-08 than the boom of the late 1990s and early/mid 2000s.  Had the Tories been in power during this time, I doubt they would have overspent in quite the same way as Labour.  The structural deficit would not have been as large and the remedy now required not as severe.

[I'm sounding much more Tory Boy here than I'm comfortable with, but fiscally, I think they have it more or less right at the moment.]

Yeah, as I say, certainly not trying to let Labour off the hook. They fucked up royally but from some of the usual suspect Tory Boy posts on here this afternoon (and the idiots I've heard on the radio), you'd think there'd been no global banking crisis at all. It did have quite a big impact.

It remains to be seen of course, how much of the coalition's cuts are actually necessary money-saving measures and how much is ideologically driven slashing the welfare state (kicking the poor) which the Tory right have been moist about for decades. I notice they're very very loud about "welfare cheats" and all the usual suspects (which is good, I no more want to pay for the idle poor to sit on their fat arses than anyone else) but gone awfully quiet about clamping down on tax avoidance. Which costs us far more. Like 4-5 defence review's worth more

I fully agree clamping down on tax avoidance, and close loopholes like 'image rights'(where the person involves pays only 24% instead of 40-50%), but since tax regulation has rocketed over the last 10 years or so, it means rich people can get out of paying 'their fair share' by hiring good tax accountants.

And the fact 'non-doms' only pay a couple of grand when they make millions is scandalous. At the end of the day they should pay their fair whack if they want to live in the UK.

Been going on a lot longer than that and neither party will do anything about it in case they upset their rich donors.

Not while Lords Ashcroft and Rothermere* are alive. It's not just individuals though, companies do it too. Like most of the ones who's CEOs signed that "Slash the benefits" letter the other day, the fucking leaching hypocrites.

* Imagine the outcry in the Daily Mail about a nominally French resident who actually lives over here and enjoys all the benefits of being British etc but refuses to chip in his bit to the tax pot while lecturing everyone else about "scroungers". Except you'll never read that story, not in his paper.

 :Ride On Fatbury's Lovestick:

This was meant to be a joke right?

I hope Council's don't cut the fat.  I have a family to support.  Cut the skinny instead.

I cant understand why people think that changing from Labour to Tory every few years is ever going to change anything. It's obvious (to me anyway) that none of the cunts elected to parliament actually run the fucking country.

Whoever is in government, Labour or Conservative, they inherit the same departments in Whitehall etc that actually do the day to day stuff and effectively run the economy. Very few of them ever change despite who is in power.

Same goes for the staff and officials in No 10 and 11 Downing St etc; Gordon Brown yesterday, David Cameron the next. Down with anything Red, and up with anything Blue. Business as usual while the great unwashed live in hope that the new lot will sort everything out.

Politicians come into power and start talking bollocks on TV and radio about how bad the last lot were and how much pain the public are going to have to take to get things right again, and the public just accept it.

The Torys are giving it the big one now about 13 years of labour incompetence and accusing them of spending money like water, and the public are buying it, yet again. It's just pure fucking theatre designed to keep the powerbase where its always been and where it always will be.

I dont have the answers or an alternative to our adverersarial political system, but hoping that a new era of prosperity is going to happen off the back of politicians talking bollocks is just fucked up.

My advice it to look after yourself and your own in this recession. The government dont give a fuck about you. Never have.

Amen

The more intellectual and aggressive minority will always rule the unintelligent non aggressive majority.
Physically and mentally.

Im bang up for some riots

But it's their turn though. Labour have had 10 years or so of fucking up the country, now the Tories get 10 years or so to fuck it up a bit differently. And they've got their little friends in to help them this time, too. Don't be so mean

Are you French?

I think you're getting rioting confused with striking and/or surrendering.

Haven't they just started rioting (again) because the French government want to raise the retirement age to 62?

That said, they are also good at the things you said, as well as blockading (roads, ports, supermarkets)

No. It's just not an opinion you like or that supports your views. We're all different. ::)

so lehman bors. and the banking system royally fuck the global market, but its ok we can stop incapacity benefit and raise the age of pensions.

Its not a fucking war on poverty we need its a war on greed.

This will probably just be dismissed as propaganda because it's written by a left-wing journalist in The Independent, but fuck it, I think it's worth sharing:

http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/johann-hari/johann-hari-a-colder-crueller-country-ndash-for-no-gain-2112069.html

As for Labour "pissing away" all that money: nice new hospital you've got there in Swindon.

This is surely true....and let's be clear....Labour were re-elected twice.  Of course that is partly because the Tories were in complete meltdown and couldn't have goverened a nursery class in Hartley Wintney; but they also fulfilled a number of their promises for major social reform (e.g the minimum wage) which have made a considerable difference to the lot of some of the poorest - despite all the clamour made by employers.  Increased public spending is part of the raison d'etre of Labour, and if we didn't like it, we could very easily have voted them out, and even when eventually did in 2010, it was hardly decisive!  Having said that, I too wish we could find an alternative to the endless red v blue rubbish - it means practically nothing these days.  I would like to think the Coalition might change things in that sense, but actually at the moment it seems like the Lib Dems are being walked all over where it matters; and up here, where the LDs are very strong, it is all going down like a lead balloon!!

That's everything accounted for then!

Paid for by PFI money, which we're still going to be paying for,for the next 20 years, and smaller than the one it replaced, despite the population increasing substancially.

"The papers keep writing that [my wife, Samantha] comes from a very blue-blooded background", but "she is actually very unconventional. She went to a day school."

Jesus fucking Wept

You'd rather have kept the old one then? Fair enough.

It's rare that I agree with SummerOf69 on these things but he's right about PFI. Fucking stupid way of doing these things. Personally I'd rather they sort out the cleaning, old or new hospital. Ever since the Tories decided outsourcing was the way forward, you've got a better chance of coming out worse than you went in

Here's a good article that explains what the problem is with the majority of the new hospitals that Labour built....

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1532511/PFI-hospitals-will-cost-an-extra-45bn-for-30-years.html

Some examples from the article....

- A Cornwall Partnership NHS Trust hospital cost £10 million to build, by the time the PFI payments are complete it will have cost £113 million.
- A South Manchester University Trust hospital cost £67 million to build, by the time the PFI payments are complete it will have cost £974 million.

It ain't perfect by any stretch, but at least they fucking tried.

Unfortunately orthodox thinking in this country has decided that nothing is worth doing unless someone can make money out of it. How, in that climate, do you get NHS hospitals and state schools built? You either fight the business interests and rich elite who propagate this myth and change orthodox thinking (I wish they had at least tried) or you give some cunt the opportunity to make a fortune out of it.

PFI deals were Gordon's Brown's very own pet project...an accounting wheeze designed to take capital spending off the government's books.  It was and is a deception.

The PFI deal that the London Underground is now saddled with is as serious.  Horrifically complicated and ridiculously expensive...the real winners were the law firms employed to draw up the agreements.  When Metronet, one of the 'PFI partners' finally went bust a few years ago, the tax payer was left to pick up the tab.  You couldn't make it up.

The government are aiming to reduce Jay-Z's problems to 75 by 2015.

Exactly the same scenario in a lot of the PFI schools. There are some that I've worked on that are very close to going under, and they've still got 23 of the 25 year contract to run. As for the lawyers they are basically the only people that have made money out of the BSF project also. The whole project has taken a lot of flak for the length of time and the cost to get schools up and running. But guess where most of the hold ups were and still are caused by?

Yeah, some of us have the first idea about economics and some of us have swallowed and regurgitated the tired old shit that "running a country is the same as running a business" and don't seem to have grasped the concept that what might work for a supermarket chain might just not do the job for an entire economic system.

You know how to run a country do you Lumpy?

Though some businesses are bigger than entire countries. If Wal-Mart were a country they'd be about the #22 biggest by GDP and about 20 businesses would be in the top 50. Obviously there are major differences, but some governments could learn a lot from well run businesses like not over stretching by spending money you don't have.

If public organisations got themselves in order then the country wouldn't piss as much money away. Having been into colleges, NHS trusts and the such, often you get people making decisions or having a big part in running the show which don't have a clue. This is where the public sector could learn from the private sector.

The Government, their departments and organisations receiving funding don't necessarily need to be more stingy, they just need to be more accountable and business minded in their approaches. The correct ethos/mentality isn't their in a lot of cases. I have seen a few organisations which are really good at this and they get more far value out of their funding.

As to the budget, I have mixed feelings. On the one hand I think it's better to recover the defecit quicker, on the other I think it's disgusting things like ESA will be cut for many and this makes me angry.

One question.......exactly who does the country owe these billions.........China?...or fukin Timbukto.

No guessing please.........and no nonsense about bonds.

Bonds and gilts make up the largest proportion of national debt leefer.

Edit: Actually didn't need the nonsense about bonds ;)

Most is owned by insurance and pension companies, then overseas investors (I don't think there is a good record of the split between individual countries anywhere), banks and financial institutions. These make up the bulk of who owns the debt. Some is owned by building societies and the general public.

they should just print loads of £50 notes and pay off the debt that way.then print some more so we dont have to pay any taxes forever.jobs a good un....

That'll be the same private sector that has managed to rush blindly into the Irish property market and found themselves left with around 500,000 empty houses (this in a nation with a population of only about 6.2 million).

Yeah, fucking great decision making there.

Maybe then maybe the Govt could give us a list of these companies and such....after all it is us who are paying them back....let us at least see ware the money is going.

A good example to use is our football club. Years and years of money being pissed up the wall and now we have owners who are seemingly trying to do things the right way. We had a good season last year and this was even after selling our star player at the time. Of course you can pick examples of poor management in the private sector. But if you pick the good examples, lessons can be learnt.

This doesn't mean cutting funding or compromising service, I'm talking about running a tight ship and placing in controls. I'm not pointing out one political party as doing the damage or another as the saviour - from my experience the problems are deep routed in the philosophies of certain organisations.

I was at a college this week which has allowed some students to study free which shouldn't be eligible due to not being a resident here for 3 years or more. A good control would be to ensure the residency status was crystal clear prior to allowing admission to the courses and hence not wasting money.

I went to one organisation where no forecasts or updated budgets had been prepared for a number of months...for a £16m+ project.

At one NHS Trust I asked someone what the £1.2m figure was in one line of a financial reconciliation. The individual had to ask someone to make sure. Now this wouldn't be a problem necessarily, but this was the person who was checking and signing it off. I'd highlighted the amount as it was very high in comparison to other months.

For every one of these examples in the public sector I could note plenty more in the private sector. But the big point to make here is if Joe Bloggs' business goes bust it's of little consequence to me. However if he's using my money to run a business poorly it is. Why should it not be the same for the Government or public sector?

Quite frankly I don't know what your beef is. Nobody has suggested privitisation, just a greater deal of management and control. I don't understand how that can be bad. Perhaps it may have even saved a few jobs along the way too.

But your original post was to say the public sector should learn from the private. That's a massively different proposition to what you've now retreated to which is some sort of "there are examples of good and bad practice in the private sector and there are lessons to be learned from the good".

Well no shit!

Yes but you picked up on one small aspect of my post and ignored the other bit.


Bit highlighted in bold is the point. The aim in the private sector is to make money and profit. You can't do this by pissing money down the drain like the Irish housing market example you gave. Perhaps I should have phrased it 'private sector cost philosophy'.

Translate this to the public sector, if they don't piss money away by mismanagement, they can provide more service or better service to the public for that same cost (instead of making money or profit).

Again it's a case of 'no shit', but I have seen some worrying and consistent themes out in the real world.

Will the tories fund the TEF Christmas party?

I'm sure Summer of 69 will shout you a bottle of cider

3 litre white ace?

Yes, but make sure you drink it all. If you drink only 2 litres then that's all you'll get the following year.

But the example I quoted really exists "in the real world". What I've got a problem with are statements that imply that the public sector is wasteful and inefficient, whilst the private sector is held up as an example of efficiency and financial prudence.

For every example of money being pissed up the wall in the public sector, there are as easily as many in the private.

I've spent over 15 years in the NHS, in audit and service redesign roles, and 5 in the private as a consultant. Believe me I've seen a plenty of the "real world", and I know damned well that there are things that need putting right.

But the idea that inefficiencies in the public sector are what's got us into this shit, and that we need to look to the private to get us out of it is just deluded.

I think the problem is that there are examples of companies being successful and making profits and you can't really have this with the public sector, so in terms of budgetary control it's only the negatives which are picked up on. But the 'lessons' from the private sector aren't in terms of running Walmart or building 500,000 in Ireland, it's more to do with the idea it's ok if you don't spend all your money.

What I would love to see, maybe when the economy is more steady (if it ever happens) is the Government saying: right, you didn't spend all your budget this year. We'll give you the same this year, what can you do in addition to last year? Will you need last year's surplus? Could you possibly put that away for a rainy day when the economy is totally fucked and we have to cut your budgets? Or maybe when the supply of grit gets awfully low in the winter you could use your surplus then.

I realise there are plenty of organisations who do utilise the money in the year and effectively use inter-departmental virements where possible. I probably wouldn't expect a surplus to be made in most places. It'd be interesting to see a change in attitude towards money though.

But nobody really said inefficiencies were the cause for all these cuts and looking to the private sector would have saved us, I think you've picked up on a couple of points and over-reacted as usual.

I've worked in the private sector all my life and my better half in the public sector. We can both cite examples of shocking wastes of money, inefficient management etc. As well as good practice, genuine efficiencies which benefit productivity and so on. In my experience, it's not public vs private, it's large organisations. Any large organisation, whether public or private, will generate a large bureaucracy which will always tend to be inherently wasteful and provides far more places for the inefficiencies and the incompetents who practise them to hide away. It takes extreme rigour and very good management to prevent that and in a large enough organisation even the best management won't be able to root out all of it.

As football fans we should have more experience than most that the mantra of "It would be better if it was run more like a business" is utter shit. No, it would be better if it was run well - there's no exclusive magic potion that comes with the word "business"

Except for pretty much every national newspaper, radio pundit etc etc etc

There was something very sinister this morning when on This Morning, this morning's This Morning presenters - Gordon the Gopher and Holly Willotits - were explaining to this morning's This Morning disabled audience that they had nothing to worry about the cuts as long as they really deserved their benefits.

It was a terrifying this morning.

I don't know what's more impressive: The fact that you could have made that up, were paying enough attention to This Morning this morning to digest what they were saying, you were up early enough this morning to watch this morning's This Morning, or your attempts to tangentise this thread.

Tangentise. I like that made up word. It sounds quite arousing actually.

Do you like to tangentise Ben?

I'll tangentise you anytime babe  :iloveyou: :iloveyou:

I did see it though, didn't last the whole section before turning flicking channels, there was some vaguely recognisable right wing columnist chatting, I quickly had enough.

It was the "If you're innocent, you have nothing to worry about" flavour of it which really stuck out in my memory. I can still picture it now, and it makes me shiver in fear. Fear of the inevitable Murdoch run world when he owns all businesses and ITV and uses his media power to kill the BBC.

We live in scary times.

You didn't say it directly no, but you posted the comment in the middle of a thread about the budget cuts, which commenced with an allegation that the profligate spending of the last government was what got us into the position where they were required.

If you didn't want to imply a causal link between public sector inefficiency and the current situation, then you might have been better starting your own thread.

Oh yeah, and what Paul D said.

Find a quote where I mentioned Labour.

I'll readily admit that I've read back my posts today and a large part of them do seem to be drivel. Sorry about that everyone.

Got to say though Lumps, your posts have more spin than many MPs. You know how to twist someone's words to suit your own left wing fantasies. Oh and fuck off if I'm starting my own thread. There's nothing wrong with having it here, Iit was a continuation of a developing theme.