I’m not sure that immigration is a root cause for the poor being ‘under the thumb’; often the UK unemployed will not do the lowly jobs immigrants ‘take’.

Immigration or immigrant workers as such are not the problem, the problem stems from “gangmaster” type labour force, which exploits both immigrants and local labour.

Even among those who comply with the rules, around where I live many of the farms look like 4th rate caravan sites with workers housed in old static vans or living 9 or more workers in an average 3 bed house. All paying rent and or transport charges to their employer, any local worker applying to any of these companies hasn’t a hope in hell of getting a job.

At times I wonder if some of the employers make their money from their business or as a landlord.

I couldn’t agree more; one of the real problems that faces this country is our balance of payments. I don’t know what the figures are now but the UK PLC has had a negative balance of payments of several billions of pounds a month for decades…

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This may come as a surprise, but totally agree with that statement.

Stepping back in time a little any statement on the economy was always based around the balance of payments, with income from the financial sector regarded as a bonus, but our economy was switched to a position were the financial sector became the main game in town.

Remember those magical days when apparently the country could make “loadsa money” without building or producing a damn thing, that gold mine never truly filtered down and we were on the road to precisely were we are at now.

But how can a public sector salary provide ‘income’ for the government? Think about it, even if (an impossible) 100% of the salary is clawed-back in taxes, National Insurance and VAT the net ‘income’ to the Treasury is zero!

So government expenditure increases.

Your are sat and thinking in your own little bubble, sure taken in isolation anything fully funded by government will increase expenditure, but if you have investment going on, people working, projects moving forward, then you are more likely to see private companies and individuals investing and spending both on projects of their own whether that be building or service.

Look at the problems with the steel industry, announcing lay offs and cut backs, it is estimated that in some communities 1 job in the steel works supports directly or indirectly another 7 outside.

If major industries aren’t working, many other business’ also cease to function, the knock on effect is considerably more expensive than the initial investment cost. I am not suggesting subsidies to industry as a direct answer, but if projects are rolling forward then the supply industry grows.

Of course this does depend on government spending in country, unlike the Bombardier/Siemens rail rolling stock farce, which is looking more and more flawed.

No it wouldn’t! :rolleyes:

What??!? :confused: So the plan is to cut expenditure by raising expenditure?

The only way Labour could ‘keep the country working’ would be to spend public money on public sector jobs; money they’d have to borrow. This doesn’t raise any income. How can it since no part of the public sector makes a profit? So it would only lead to more borrowing.

Yes, spending is going up under the Conservative plan but surely it’d be going up even higher under Labour?

That’s fine if the only measure of success is ‘growth’ but how is that actually being measured? It is no good ‘growing’ the economy by £100billion if the government has had to borrow £120billion to do it…

…that’s a ‘growth’ in the economy of minus £20billion! (Plus interest!) :rolleyes:

At least the bankers will be happy as that is the sort of ‘growth’ that made them all those bonuses!

I didn’t say “to increase expenditure”, I never mentioned public sector either.

I said to keep some expenditure going in order to keep jobs and build the things we need, what is certain is that Osbourne’s abacus, bean counting accountancy, plus slash and burn tactics were always a recipe for disaster.

Think it through, scrap 6,000 jobs, save 6,000 salaries, wrong. For starters any of those jobs being low income, saving would be nil or very little, merely moving the “bill” from one department to another. In the present employment situation most people laid off finish up unemployed, save the salary, lose the service they gave, tax paid, add to the benefits bill, reduce spending in the retail sector, more jobs go, less tax paid, think of this over the country and we are in a spiral to the bottom.

If you have a tree that is overgrown and straggly, you prune it then feed it to make it grow as you want it to, you don’t cut the thing down at the roots, then wonder why it died.

The bulk of the extra borrowing is to cover falling tax revenues, basically we are borrowing more money to keep digging the hole ever deeper.

We continue to hear Tory attacks on benefit claimants, must get the welfare bill down, surely a good start would be to get failed asylum seekers out of the country, that figure has now reached 147,000 all on benefits as they aren’t allowed to work, who knows how many illegal immigrants, when government departments can’t deal with those they know about.

HMRC staff cut and struggling to track down tax evaders never mind checking tax avoiders, here we are talking serious money, but no that’s too difficult we will just chop £10m off the welfare bill, it doesn’t matter if some die of hypothermia, or have to chose between eat or heat.

IMO Osbourne has his priorities wrong, the savings are there to be made, if only some-one, any-one will get to work on it.

Where do we go from here? Goodness only knows. As far as I can see, neither Capitalism, or the Socialist Command Economy work. Does the answer lay perhaps, in an ‘economically engineered’ amalgamation of both

I have have no real knowledge of economics, this is just my take on the subject of the thread. So are the Tories telling lies? Possibly, but aren’t they all?

Best post to date on the subject, like you definitely left of centre, but very disillusioned, would never under any circumstances that I can foresee could I possibly vote Tory, the Lib-Dems have proved to be opportunistic turncoats, but Labour sadly went along for the ride when they were in a position to put right so many of the wrongs perpetrated by Tories.

Thanks to inaction, like yourself I feel that we have finally caught the cold engineered by Thatcher.

The reliance on the financial sector for revenue was always wrong, the financial sector produces nothing, it has in the past declared massive profits, but those profits were bits of paper, or figures on a computer screen, never real.

We are talking about the party which did away with the 10% income tax band, thereby hitting the lower-paid proportionately harder, aren’t we?

I’ve never said that Labour were perfect or infallible, that particular decision bordered on stupidity, should have been accompanied by a raising of the tax threshold, which our present coalition did and scored heavily by doing so.

Put it this way – I have spent the best part of 50 years buying cars as a customer so have met enough “Swiss Tonies” for a lifetime!;) Much to their relief I imagine none of the present Government would need to apply to you for a job!

Been retired for 8 years now, so not applicable.

What I was trying to say, in the main most in the motor trade are (surprisingly to some) remarkably honest, considering their reputation, the present government could probably individually buy me up out of their expense account, but I have not seen the degree of honesty or ability needed for even the average car salesman.

Out of interest, just what is it you think the Labour party would be able to do differently were it to form a government?

Moggy

Sorry for no reply, have been otherwise engaged.

What Labour or any other government would do differently would be pure speculation.

However prior to the last election they maintained that they would set out to cut the deficit at a slower rate than the Tories.

I feel that some if not most projects would have been maintained even if at a slower rate, I am also sure that Labour would not have made those on low incomes their prime target, I would most sincerely hope that they would not have been as totally blinkered as our present hierarchy.

We all accept that we had a deficit problem along with most of the world, solution reduce costs increase income. This will require some cuts in expenditure certainly but income must be maintained or even increased.

The crux is how to maintain income, Labour staked their plans on keeping the country working and the economy growing, this would naturally give increased income without raising individual taxes, Tories put their faith in slashing expenditure and hoping that the private sector would miraculously step in, take over that work and more besides creating a growing economy.

In reality the Tories have cut spending sure, they have also destroyed jobs, confidence, any prospect of growth and an actual fall in income, less people working, fewer companies making profits, less tax paid, increased benefits due to unemployment or low wages for many that are working.

Please don’t start harping about borrowing, currently we are borrowing even more just to stand still or even fall back, at least Labour borrowing was funding projects like urban renewal, jobs and affordable housing return to use, schools and hospital refurb and new build, don’t any-one try to say that we didn’t need, thanks to mainly Tory neglect in the past.

Labour would have needed to make some tough choices, but I am as sure as I can be that they would be more realistic and humane.