And now the TED is back I know I can say what a total and utter cunt Alistair Darling is for putting my road tax up from £170 to £260 as of next year.
How the fuck this is fair to retrospectively changes the bands 7 years after the car was new fuck Knows.
Wankey labour, can't wait for them to come canvassing so I can make a few suggestions.
Its the worst budget since I can remember, id say its the final nail in the coffin, cant wait for an election
Those tories will win the next election, which is a bit mental considering how much of a non-party they've become. A lot of the Labour goverment's doings has been pretty much in line with a centre leaning conservative government, which has left them struggling for alternative policies, especially when at the same time they're trying to distant themselves from the slightly more right wing parties like UKIP.
The other problem they have is that they've never really got over the differences of opinion that their members have over Europe. They've gone for the popular line of we're great Britain, referendum la de la. But if it ever came to a proper debate over the subject they'd be in for a bit of party splitage.
They'll struggle horribly if they get into power. The whole economic down turn will leave them with little room to maneuver. It's easy to come up with fun ideas like people having to do a bit of work for their benefits and so on, but sound bite ideas like that aren't just difficult to implement in practice, they don't make much difference economically.
In fact the whole benefit issue is much more complex than the "Grr.. why should I be paying taxes for people to have spending money" line of thought anyway. Benefit money paid out is very quickly re-absorbed into the economy, and it also increases public spending, which simplified means that people can have jobs selling stuff to people on benefits. or something.
Whoever wins the next election is going to struggle. But I don't think this decade long Labour government will be looked back on that badly in a few decades time. Not in the same way as the Tory's last stint anyway. Certainly not domestically anyway. Foreign policy might be a different matter, but the conservatives can hardly claim that they'd have been more moderate.
Your average person now is certainly better off than they were in 1996. Although it has come at a cost. A big one being the huge levels of personal debt that we have. It's been a necessary evil of keeping the country buoyant though. Individuals borrowing money = More Spending = more money going through the system = stronger economy (sort of, simplified).
The trick now will be to keep interest rates low enough not to completely kill off public spending. Although not too low, because the banks are struggling a bit (although they've got other more massive forces at work on them). We've probably hit a point where people are going to borrow less now, whatever the interests rates are, due to the banks being less willing to lend.
If we can keep the level of public debt stable (ie. individual debt levels don't increase too much), some moderately speedy inflation probably isn't a bad thing. It'll hit your average persons buying power pretty hard, but it'll also lessen the real value of their debt, which will give more economy manoeuvrings ability in the longer term.
This all really needs to coincide with a weakening of the pound, it's nice if you go on holiday to America, but the collapsing of the dollar isn't great for the global economy. Unless it falls so badly that the Euro becomes more of a standard, which wouldn't happen over night. Especially when so much of the growing nations rely on exporting to the US. Europe does it's share of importing, but it's not quite there.
So that's badly phrased, probably quite wrong, and horribly simplified economics from ben's head.
Oh the point of quoting was that with a bit of a global struggle on the economics front, we're not facing it too badly. Certainly not compared to America anyway. They're heading in the direction of recession. Oh not that, I mean that it wasn't that bad a budget.
