The Budget

[Suff]

Sort out the reasons that is not the case. And, if anything, new builds should be taxed to the nth, and then some more.

Well we could ask the Spanish how well that's working out couldn't we? 50% of under 25 out of work. 25% overall out of work. New Builds brought in a boom to end all booms. Then the banks stopped lending. Different kind of boom, like the house falling down.

Banks can't lend. It is as simple as that. The more that the governments insist that banks keep higher capital, the less they can lend. If we want a building industry left, we need to give people the opportunity to buy and spend that hard earned cash making money for the banks. So they can keep it and be "good banks" under the new rules.

It's funny how some simple common sense gets twisted all out of shape when the press get involved.... They loved Brown. That should tell you Every Last Thing you should want to know about Budget coverage from the Press

[cromwell]

I seriously think that at some time in the future democracy will go out of fashion,
and a bloody revolution is on the cards.

I am tempted to believe that organisations such as the EDL, and others, are tolerated in order to avoid such a revolution. They help to deflect anger away from government and the elite and on to society itself - classic divide and rule.

If all of those disaffected parties ever unite no government, of whatever colour, will survive. And you can bet your pension that any attempt(s) to organise will be ruthlessly put down.

I have said many times that if the BNP didn't exist, the other parties would have had to invent them. "No matter how bad we may be, at least we aren't as bad as the loathesome BNP.."

The main three parties and their backers are quite happy with a three horse race - they don't want anybody crashing their party. But as the main three parties all believe more or less the same thing apart from maybe a bit of economics, a large part of the electorate is effectively disenfranchised.

You get the occasional surprise, like the English Democrat Mayor of Doncaster (who, be it noted, has had an unremittingly hostile coverage from the local BBC station), but I think these shocks may start to get more regular.

Look at Italy. Beppe Grillo's 5star party, which has come from nowhere, is the single largest party in Italy after the last elections. NOT the third largest, as the BBC says, because the other two parties are actually coalitions of different parties.
There are many, many people who are sick of politics and politicians, and we need out own Beppe Grillo.

[Workingman]

Building houses and infrastructure is the great myth of the modern economist. It does nothing at all to grow an economy unless that economy is an exporter of goods.

Sure, it will take a few thousand souls off the dole for a while, but the building cannot go on forever, and although those souls will start spending more most of it will be on imported goods.

If we are going to build anything it should be factories where we make things. The S. Korean and Taiwanese models spring to mind - borrow, build, copy and export.

[Suff]

We don't so much have an economic crisis as we have an economy which can't afford to keep paying people for doing nothing. The building industry is quite large and is mainly unskilled. It takes people off DSS and gives them a job. This is something which is important right now.

As for factories to export? Well if we could employ people for the cost of South Korea, it would be good...

Yes we need factories to make things and sell them. But we need factories to make things and sell them outside of the EU. That takes time but is a long term fix. Building jobs are immediate and now. They are something which we can encourage and grow to help the situation. At the same time it gets the housing market moving to a degree and pushes more housing money around the country.

There is no doubt the UK has wealth and a large economy. We just need to make it work for the country and not for those who are now scared to do anything.

Trouncing every step as too little means we will never walk the road at all. Large steps in the economy are usually a disaster. Just ask those who believed the Brown BS....

Go back and review the statements at the last Election, by Labour and the Lib Dems, about how much of a disaster the economy would suffer if the Tories and especially Osborne, got in.

Then go back and read the Economic growth, not the % change month on month but the actual growth, from 2009.

Then discount the hundreds of billions injected by brown and work out who is doing a better job.

[cromwell]

We don't so much have an economic crisis as we have an economy which can't afford to keep paying people for doing nothing.

Yes. There is scope in the welfare budget for cuts, no matter how loud Miliband may squeal.
For an example. I used to work with a man who had been diagnosed with some sort of MS early stage. He could walk still, but got a motability car, a top of the range automatic Volvo estate. Leather, air con, the lot. He paid a small bit towards it, I believe.
But, he and his wife had a combined income of more than £55K, and no kids living at home. He could easily have bought his own car. In fact he was so tight that he'd previously crashed one car and bought it back off the insurers.
There was absolutely no need or justification for the state to be buying him an expensive car.
Similarly paying young girls to have children, never work and allow the GP to be bullied into a false diagnosis of something like ADHD in order to bump the benefits up a bit. Wrong, wrong, wrong.
We have to cap benefits to the average national wage, we have to stop paying young girls to enter the benefits sytem as a career, we have to stop buying cars for people on good wages.
In fact I'd go further. Just announce that in five years time, no more child benefits of any description other than genuine medical need.