Does new economic data show that austerity does not work?

First topic message reminder :

Adding in new economic data shows that the so-called Austerity economic policy alone does not work. It's clear too me that its totally unsustainable as it destroys countries competiveness while draining confidence within business while driving down not only living standers that in turn shrinks demand. Do you believe the Tories will stick with there only economic policy up-to the next GE? if they do, I happen to believe most people will call time on the Tory party.





Growth Forecast downgraded for the Fifth time by (OBR in November 2011
Growth forecast Downgraded for 2nd Time by Bank of England 1.4% August 2011
Growth forecast Downgraded for 3rd Time to 1.7% (Budget 2011)
Growth forecast Downgraded for 3rd Time to by Ernst & Young from1.7% to 0.9% Jan 2012
Growth forecast Downgraded for 2nd Time to by CBI to 1.3% July 2011
Growth forecast Downgraded for 4th Time to by CBI to 1.2% Sept 2011
Growth forecast Downgraded for 4th Time to by CBI to 0.9% Feb 2012
Growth forecast Downgraded for 3rd Time to by I.M.F to 1.3% July 2011
Growth forecast Downgraded for 4th Time to by I.M.F to 0.6% Jan 2012
Growth forecast in the Tory budget down for a 3rd time to 1.7% (Budget 2011
Growth forecast in the City as low as 1.2% 2011
Disposable income has seen its Sharpest fall in 30 years or 1980s (ONS)
Annual Earnings Growth remains at 1.9% in February 2012
GDP The last cycle of robust growth in potential output of 2.9% was 1997 to 2006 (OBR & Oxford Economic)
GDP when the Tory-Liberal coalition come to power ,the UK was growing at an annual rate of 4% (OBR)
GDP sluggish at just 0.5% for April 2011 (OBR)
GDP City Growth forecast for 2012 are 0.3% to 0.4% (FT Sept 2011)
GDP Growth for forecast set by bank of England at 2.0% 2010
GDP Contracted by 0.5% in the Q4 in 2010 (OBR)
GDP is 0.8% lower than in November 2010 (OBR)
GDP IS 0.2% lower than MARCH 2011 (OBR)
GDP Growth Contracted by 0.5% Q4 2010 (OBR)
GDP Growth April 2011 was Q1 0.5% (OBR)
GDP Growth July 2011 was just Q2 0.2% (OBR)
GDP Growth starts Jan Q1 2012 at just 0.2% (OBR)
GDP Growth December 2011 Contracted by 0.2% Q4 (OBR)
GDP April's figures have just clawed back last years 0.5% contraction in 2010 (OBR)
GDP is 1.1% lower than the OBR thought it would be in Sept 2010 (OBR)
GDP Growth is now lower than 1930s, 1970s, 1980s 1990s (OBR)
GDP UK is 3.6% blow its pre-financial crisis 2008 (H.M.Trasury)
National Debt hits £1.03 Trillion for the first Time Jan 2012 (OBR)
National Debt actual debt after repurchase by Bank of England is £650 Billion (Guardian on B of E figures)
National Debt Coalition & Bank of England QE for 2011 was £75 billion (OBR/Bank of England)
National Debt Coalition & Bank of England QE for 2012 was £50 billion (OBR/Bank of England)
National Debt total Quantitative Easing is £325 Billion in February 2012 (OBR/Bank of England)
National Debt private + public sector debt totals some 500% 2011 (OBR & Oxford Economic)
National Debt Tory Party forecast National debt will fall by just £54 Billion by 2015 (Tory party website)
UK Economic Decline is two and half times that of the entire Euro zone (ONS & H.M.Trasury) 2011
UK Economic Decline is 77% of the EU’s decline for 2011 (H.M.Trasury)
UK Economy shrank by 5.0% in 2009 the biggest calendar year fall since 1921 ( NIE)
UK Economy shrank by 6.3% in 2011 the biggest calendar year fall on record by October 2011 ( NIE)
UK Pound exchange rate has fallen by 21.0% against the Dollar 2011 (H.M.Trasury)
UK lose market share accelerated from 2008 to 2010. (Oxford Economic )
Government Borrowing Tory-Liberal coalition come to power stated an additional £111 Billion 2009 (OBR)
Government Borrowing Net borrowing was just £7.3 Billion in 2010 (H.M.Trasury)
Government Borrowing forecast up by £54 Billion (Budget 2011)
Government Borrowing overshot in Q4 by £127 Billion (OBR)
Government Borrowing overshot in Jan 2012 by £157 Billion (ONS)
Government Borrowing topped the £10 billion by just Feb 2011 (OBR)
Government Borrowing to be £10 billion higher every year from 2012 (OBR)
Government Borrowing in Jan 2012 was £13.7 billion for December 2011 overshooting (OBR)
Private Pension deficit up from £24.5 Billion to £31.7 Billion by Sept 2011 (ONS)
Private Pension Deficit £158 billion December 2011 (ONS)
Private Pension deficit £255.2 form £222 billion in Jan 2012 (N.M.A & ONS)
UK 10 Year bonds, the Historical high of 12.84% set in April 1990 (H.M.Trasury)
UK 10 year Bonds, Record low of 1.97% set in Jan 2012 (H.M.Trasury)
UK 10 Year Bonds, Yields decline by 1.47% from 1989 to 2012 (H.M.Trasury)
UK 10 Year Bonds, averaged 6.28% (H.M.Trasury)
Unemployment up to record 17 year high (ONS)
Unemployment record was set in 1981 at 2.6 million or 9.8% of the Workforce
Unemployment for woman rose for the 10th month in a row March 2011 (ONS)
Unemployment increased by 20,000 the highest three month figure since Jan 1997 (ONS)
Unemployment is now 7.7% of economically active population March 2011 (ONS)
Unemployment forecast in the budget set to rise to 8.1% in 2012 (Budget 2011)
Unemployment is was2.6 million in March 2011 (ONS)
Unemployment is now 2.8 million in December 2011 (ONS)
Unemployment Claimants increased by 12,400 in March 2011 to April 2011 (ONS)
Unemployment Woman Claimants increased by 9,300 to 474,400 in March 2011 (ONS)
Unemployment Men Claimants increased by 3,100 to 994,200 in March 2011 (ONS)
Unemployment 16-24 hit 1.043 million in Q3, the highest since records began in 1992. 2011 (ONS)
Unemployment benefit payments rose by 1,200 to 1.6 million by December 2012 (ONS)
Unemployment benefit payments up to 1980s levels (ONS)
Business failures in 2010 was 23,000 (ONS)
Business failures in 2011 was 20,900 or 6.5% (ONS)
Bankers Bonus for £14 billion for 2011 (FT & Guardian & BBC)
Manufacturing was flat Feb 2011 (ONS)
Manufacturing production out put 1.5% decline in April 2011 (ONS)
Manufacturing touted as the engine of the economy fall by 0.3% in July 2011 (ONS)
Manufacturing jobless in Q4 2011 to Jan 2012 was up to 395,000
Manufacturing production Cable & Wireless Communication slumped nearly 17% in 2011 (FT)
BDOs output index dropped from Decembers 91.4% to February 2012 to 91.2%
Exports fell in Jan 2011 (HMCR)
Exports Vs Imports increased by 14.7% in October 2011 (HMCR)
Factory gate prices rose 0.9% between February & March 2011 (ONS)
Factory gate prices rose at an annual rate of 5.3% in May 2011 (ONS)
Factory gate prices in December 2011 to 4.8% (ONS)
Factory gate prices fell in January 2012 to 4.1% (ONS)
Factory gate Producers input price inflation in January 2012 is 7% (ONS)
Mortgage & Credit card debt will soar to £2,126 billion by 2015 (ONS)
Mortgage debt now accounts is around £21,000 per person April 2011 (ONS)
Home repossessions peak set in 1991 at 19,000 homes (council of mortgage lenders)
Home repossession forecast to rise to 45,000 in 2012 (council of mortgage lenders )
Construction industry suffered a 0.5% fall in output from November to January 2012 (ONS)
North sea Oil Tax up by £2 Billion for 2011, with HMCR taking 88% in Tax (ONS)
The Worst squeeze on living standards for 90 years
Consumer spending accounts for 65% of the UK economy April 2011 (OMS)
Consumer spending shows the biggest fell in total sales since the survey began in 1995 (KPMG)
Consumer spending has fallen by 1.7% for four consecutive Q in 2011. (ONS)
Personal Spending shows it first drop in personal spending power since the Thatcher slump in 1980s (KMPG)
Petrol down by 1p with VAT up by 2% in the Budget 2011
Petrol prices average increased by 52% up to March 2010
Food Prices rose 7.4% in the biggest rise since 2009 (ONS)
Food Prices rising at 4.9% rising faster than any other OECD in Jan 2012 member (UBS & OECD)
CPI Inflation increase to 3.3% December 2010 (OBR & Oxford Economic)
CPI has put the cost of living double its target from 4% in Jan 2011 to 4.4% in April 2011 (OBR & Oxford Economic)
CPI September 2011 rises by 5.2% (ONS)
CPI October 2011 fall by just 0.2% to 5.0% (ONS)
CPI January 2012 fell to 4.8% from 5.0% (Bank of England)
RPI has gone from 5.1% to 5.5% the highest since 1991 (ONS)
RPI Jan 2011 leapt to CPI 4% from 3.7% with Market Oracle putting real inflation at 6.6% 2012 .

Nice to see you back Ivanhoe, and reading your good posts as usual.

patakace wrote:

oftenwrong wrote:More bolts for the stable door.

Facts are boring when your beliefs are fanatical . You and Stuart should become Labour Jihadists .

http://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/uknews/isis-publishes-penal-code-listing-amputation-crucifixion-and-stoning-as-punishments-and-vows-to-vigilantly-enforce-it/ar-AA8thvT

Some people have a unique attitude to jokes in poor taste.

Not really OW, just making comments to see if I will react, and therefore get banned, been trying it since their first day.

The Austerity Con

Extracts from an essay by Simon Wren-Lewis:-

"If a recession is caused by consumers saving more and spending less, which in 2009 it was, then the fact that consumers are paying less in taxes and the unemployed are getting welfare benefits is a good thing, because it supports consumer incomes. If governments turn off the automatic stabilisers by cutting spending or raising taxes, they will reduce the income of consumers, who will spend even less, making the recession worse. Just as a fiscal stimulus helps in a recession, a fiscal contraction designed to reduce the deficit will make the recession worse. In his ‘emergency’ budget of June 2010, Osborne announced a permanent increase in VAT along with additional spending cuts.

The OBR estimates, somewhat conservatively, that austerity took 1% off economic growth in both 2010-11 and 2011-12. Osborne is proposing to renew austerity after the election. It is as if his real priority was and still is to cut all forms of government spending, and as if the deficit is a convenient pretext to achieve that goal. A conservative estimate would be that, in total, resources worth around 5% of GDP, about £100 billion, will have been lost for ever by delaying the recovery.

By insisting on cuts in spending and higher taxes that could have been postponed until the recovery from recession was assured, Osborne delayed the recovery by two years. And with the election drawing nearer, it allowed the pace of austerity to slow, while pretending that it hadn’t. Now Osborne is promising to put the country through the same painful and unnecessary process all over again."

For the whole essay:-
http://www.lrb.co.uk/v37/n04/simon-wren-lewis/the-austerity-con

QUOTE: "It is as if his real priority was and still is to cut all forms of government spending, and as if the deficit is a convenient pretext to achieve that goal."

As if ..............................!

Austerity was a political choice. Now it’s starting to look like a bad one

Extracts from an article by Heather Stewart:-

Cameron is “delighted” that MPs backed the Conservatives’ plans for swingeing tax credit cuts. Osborne told the Treasury select committee he was “comfortable” about the “judgment call” he had made. For the families who will receive letters revealing precisely how much they will lose in April – £1,000 a year for more than 3 million households, according to the IFS – that language will seem uncaring, casual even. But the chancellor’s choice of words, in particular, is revealing of something else. Cutting tax credits is not a necessity: it’s a “judgment call” – a deliberate act of policy.

When challenged about the tax credit cuts, Osborne trumpets his new “national living wage”, the extension of free childcare and the planned increase in the personal tax allowance. Yet most of the boost from these measures will not be felt by tax credit recipients. Many already have most of their childcare costs paid for, and the personal tax allowance is already high enough to exclude many lower earners.

Tax credits cuts may yet be the policy that sees Osborne’s carefully constructed political edifice start to crumble. He chose austerity over investment, cutting back the state over taxing the rich, rewarding the comfortable over protecting the needy. And as Heidi Allen’s powerful maiden speech showed, those “judgment calls” may finally have caught up with him, by leading to policies even his own backbenchers are struggling to defend.

For the whole article:-
http://www.theguardian.com/business/2015/oct/25/austerity-political-choice-bad-one-george-osborne

Gideon is just 31 days away from having to reveal his "Autumn Statement", and as we all know, a week can be a long time in Politics.

Stox,                                    Austerity is just a media tag!!

What we are looking at here is an ideological agenda to wipe out all the social reforms built up by the Labour Government after WW2.  
and the Tories are getting away with it.

And it started with Thatcher over 30 years ago, Cameron and Osborne are merely continuing it.

Ivanhoe

As ye sow, then shall ye reap. The Tory Government's gallop away from subsiding will come back to bite them on the bum if, as expected, the Nation's supply of energy proves inadequate in the Winter of 2016-2017. New sources of nuclear power are ten years away, but this government cancelled subsidies for renewables such as wind power and solar panels.

It didn't do Ted Heath much good when he forced Britain onto a 3-day week because of energy blackouts.

Absolutely spot on.

For others like myself who have for the past eight years or so felt rather like passengers on The Titanic, George Monbiot writing in The Guardian provides a detailed explanation of how Neoliberalism, which he labels the zombie doctrine, has driven a wedge of inequality between ordinary people and the very rich.

http://www.monbiot.com/2016/04/15/the-zombie-doctrine/

All too intellectual for me.  This is about a dwindling State for an ideological purpose.  Continued tax cuts for the top, cuts in welfare, and means tested handouts for everybody else, a recipe for a huge rich and poor divide thanks to initially Thatcher, then Blairism, and now Cameron and Osborne.

Stox 16, Austerity is just a media tag. What's been happening since Thatcher is a right wing Agenda to get rid of all the Social improvements built up by the Labour Government after WW2. That's it in a nutshell.!

Ivanhoe

"Self-employed now earning less than in 1995"

Oh well, it must have seemed a good idea at the time to get people off welfare by any means possible.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-37678065

Critics of Tory economic policy often mention the deep recession which began in 1992 under Chancellor Norman Lamont. At one stage 65 British companies A DAY filed for liquidation, and hundreds of homes were repossessed. The nation's finances started to recover in 1996 but the current Tory government has imposed Austerity upon us for seven years already, with the prospect of continuing indefinitely into the future.

They are either useless or malign. But we should leave them "in post" for long enough to take the blame.

It does seem to be turning into the perfect storm for the Tories - anyone who enjoys watching others suffer could well be opening the popcorn about now

We have created an economy where it is more reasonable to spend more on a light fitting in a CEO's office than the amount spent on the safety of a 1000 people in social housing.

We are persevering with an economic system in which, in 20yrs time, it will seem reasonable for a wealthy businessman to spend £20billion, charter a private flight and deliver unto him the last male Panda's testicle sautéed in the sperm of dying dolphins, wrapped up in a £50billion Hirst artwork, whilst the peasants kill one another for food and exist in a twilight world of neglect and danger.

The poor are expendable casualties of minority greed and inhumanity. Our current brand of capitalism is a perversity of capitalism practiced by psychotic perverts who have no empathy for other humans.

I just simply can't believe this government is surviving - it's like the Zombie apocalypse.
It's not even reasonable that people tolerate this level of greed, crookedness and incompetence

One of my mum's friends told her the other day that Theresa May's an excellent Prime Minister - she's just been 'badly advised'

My gob is just smacked

Economic austerity has worked alright for the wealthy, who are paying less tax after the withdrawal of so many benefits for the poor. Public service is a Cinderella, and the Tory government makes no secret of the fact that it doesn't feel responsible for helping those who can't help themselves. More and more functions of running the country are being carried out by private companies for private profit.

Why do we put up with it?

I have to say, personally, as a home owner with a public service pension, the austerity measures have not to date had much of an impact and I suspect many in my age group who were fortunate enough to have secure employment throughout their lives and a decent pension to retire on will have noticed very little impact.
You needed to go out looking for the signs of decay - but it's now becoming very clear to anyone who is really paying attention what the medium term results of Tory policies are - after now, anyone voting for more austerity is either blind, stupid or a billionaire.

Television schedulers are taking full advantage of the availability of cheap programme-fillers using Police recordings of their activities. It's no secret that The Party of Lorandorder doesn't want to pay much for it, and individual filmed police personnel are now using the opportunity to convey their inability to cope due to staff shortages.

The other side of the coin is genuine desperation on the part of poor people denied benefits, who take to burglary in order to eat. In addition, Kids whose poor education seems designed to have set them up for a life of crime feel entitled to share the wealth of people who live in nice houses with several cars on the drive.

That's not likely to change while Britain has a Tory government.

I work in a very small charity providing advice and support for people of working age - advice about benefits, housing rights, employment rights, the benefits of union membership; help with seeking work (CV writing, access to computers and telephones)

A now standard question for each client is 'do you need the food bank?' - and a good half of them do.

Surely there can be little doubt about who is responsible. Grinding the faces of the poor is the first implied promise of any Tory candidate. How much longer can a May government defy gravity?

Pretty much indefinitely, it seems - I'd leave the country if I could.

I hate living in England

"Living in England" has a lot going for it - if only we could neutralise the Tory-Army-of-Occupation. But there's a good chance they'll self-implode before long, so don't give up just yet.

Once they have self-imploded, there's going to be a godawful mess to clear up

boatlady wrote:Once they have self-imploded, there's going to be a godawful mess to clear up

By whom. The Labour Party isn't exactly 'glued together'.

Let's worry about Brexit. Tories are following the publics wishes for 'OUT'. And I personally think the public have got it completely wrong. The Labour Party want in - or out - or part and part - or?

Ooops. Door bell. Got to go.

I trust that if it was those Jehovah’s Witnesses again, you managed to get rid of them quickly. They were in my road again yesterday – for the second time this month – but as I saw them some time before they knocked on my door, I didn’t bother to open it.

As oftenwrong reminded us, austerity works well for the wealthy. When there isn’t so much money around, those who still have some can pick up plenty of bargains, such as houses when their prices start to fall because of mass repossessions (there were 300,000 in four Tory years in the early 1990s). But the other major effect of austerity is that those who suffer look around for someone or something to blame, and incessant lies from right-wing tabloids persuaded many of them to blame the EU instead of the Tories.

I shudder when I read expressions such as “the public’s wishes” or “the will of the people”. It sounds like the language of dictators when they stifle discussion and imply that anyone who disagrees must somehow be “against the people”. There are 65 million individuals in this country, of whom 17.4 million of those who were allowed to vote and did so opted for national suicide. 16.1 million of us expressed a different “will”, and many others weren’t even allowed an opinion. Those aged 16 and 17, who have more of a future than any of us to be ruined by this stupidity, couldn't vote, even though people of that age were allowed to take part in the Scottish referendum of 2014. 700,000 Brits living in the EU weren’t allowed to vote. I know one such lady from Dorset who runs a restaurant in Germany, and she feels aggrieved that she was disenfranchised  (and you can guess how she would have voted). 3 million EU residents living in the UK pay their taxes here but weren’t allowed to vote, yet those from Eire, Malta and Cyprus were.

What about “the public’s wishes” to see £350m more spent on the NHS every week, even though the net cost of our EU membership is only £161m? Many of those who did vote for leave must have soon realised that they’d been sold a pig in a poke.

Cameron proposed the referendum to try to placate the far-right headbangers in the Tory Party. He probably didn’t expect to survive the 2015 election and have to implement his promise. But when he did, he made the rules about who could and couldn’t vote, and how no threshold needed to be passed, in a seriously undemocratic but supposedly ‘advisory’ referendum on an issue with monumental consequences. Strict spending limits were placed on campaign groups, but no limits were placed on tabloid publicity paid for by Britain’s five anti-EU billionaires. Surely the first requirement of a real democracy is a level playing field? And the result – 51.89% leave, 48.11% remain – should have at least been declared too close to call (the 1975 result was 67.2% to stay in), or better still null and void. The whole thing was a shambles and justifies continued opposition to Brexit from those with enough savvy to know that leaving the EU is not in Britain's best interests. It also justifies Ed Miliband’s opposition to the referendum from the start.

https://cuttingedge2.forumotion.co.uk/t837-is-it-undemocratic-to-be-opposed-to-an-eu-referendum

I've no objection to most of your post. I personally voted to stay in - though I had intended at my age to refrain - mainly for the sake of my younger family. There will surely have to be a vote on the terms arrived at. Much of the referendum vote for leaving was based on immigration, and a lack of thought about the actual value immigrants bring to this country. I live in Lincolnshire and know the value of migrant workers in the fields. If these people are stopped, then there will be little fresh produce from Lincolnshire and the Fenland country. And the people will wonder why prices have risen for imported goods. And farmers have gone out of business.
You're right. It makes little sense leaving the EU, and the figure you quote - £161m - doesn't take into account other investment by the EU in UK projects. Things the public don't hear about.

The idea that we will earn enough by trading outside the EU is a huge gamble, and, IMO, unlikely to succeed. We are told that our politicians are out there trying to make trade deals with the weakest hand, in card playing terms, this country has held for decades. In the past our partners in the EU have backed us up with 'trump' cards. Now we are playing single-handedly. And we are facing countries who have their own partnership agreements to adhere to.
What did Noel Coward write 'There are bad times just around the corner'.

Love his songs, by the way.

We’re addicted to debt and headed for a crash. It could be worse than 2007 (Guardian)

http://www.msn.com/en-gb/money/news/we%e2%80%99re-addicted-to-debt-and-headed-for-a-crash-it-could-be-worse-than-2007/ar-AAreKOF?li=BBoPWjQ&ocid=iehp

Britain’s current economic system is not scarred by insecurity. It is based on insecurity. The insecurity that defines the lives of millions of people does not represent a flaw in the system. It is the system.

From the late 1970s, the ideological rationale of the Thatcherite experiment was that British citizens had become mollycoddled by the state, by collectivism, by welfarism, by socialism, by trade unions. By making people less secure – or less dependent, as the Thatcherites would have it – they would work harder and aspire more. Put someone on a treadmill, and they have to run.

The Guardian Owen Jones

http://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/uknews/the-tories-can%e2%80%99t-fix-the-debt-crisis-their-doctrine-caused-it/ar-AAsh2TM?li=BBoPWjQ&ocid=iehp