Re: National Debt
 

I think there is a difference in providing money for people so that they can live (clean water, sanitation etc) and giving larger unemployment benefits so that people can smoke more, drink more, spend more on lottery tickets (not forgetting Sky TV) etc.

Re: National Debt
 

Availability of credit is hardly something you can blame on the/any government. That's down to the privately owned; only worry about the dividend for the shareholder, banks. And if any government did try to step in they would be accused of being a nanny state, interfering with people’s rights.

Majority of this problem originated America, how is that the UK Governments fault? If they didn't prop-up the banks things would be much worse, and people all over the world would find that the life savings account they had tucked away in the private bank vanished when the bank went bust.

Well, I don't suppose we really need nuclear weapons do we? And why does such a small nation have such a big army? OK, more could have been done to put some cash aside, but any government is judged on what it delivers. In a stable healthy economy what government is going to say "No you can't have access to the new cancer drug, were saving for a rainy day". Lets be objective, this government was elected on promises to spend money, not save it. Anyway they would have had to have put aside some serious money to make any sort of dent on this problem, and if they had they would be accused of hording tax payers cash when people are in need of X, Y, or Z.

I don't have full detials of all Danish taxes, but the 50% figure isn't the only tax. Read the bit where I mentioned the cost of motorcycle ownership.

Re: National Debt
 

Borrowing money was actively encouraged by this Governement in order to fuel the false boom which it created. Agreed that the availability is down to the private banking sector, but would the credit have been offered had the Government's spend, spend, spend policy not been in effect I wonder?

Re: National Debt
 

People's rights... Spending money that you havn't earn't isn't a right in my opinion.


What America does is not our problem but what we should have done is made it so our banks cant take silly risks... But then our government was loving the risks as much as the banks, like I said, boosted the economy.

Our armed forces is not big at all. The US's's forces gets 14% of the budget, ours gets 5% of our considerably smaller total spending. We waste money on benefits mostly. N' now debt interest is now more than our spending on the forces... I know which one is the better value for money!

What stable economy? Obviously it was so stable we arnt just about crawling out of a recession because of an unstable economy. :rolleyes: MP's and it seems most people only have an eye for the short term... Look at what we are stuck with now! We have been spending like crazy since about 2007 and then the banks last year... We should have spent what we had not what we could borrow.

To be honest I would guess that moving to any country (or even in our own) would hit the wallet... Its probably more down to the move than the Taxes that he had to get a cheaper ride.

Re: National Debt
 

learn how the economy works boom, bust, boom, bust... guess whats going to come next?
its not efficient, its not the best way to run an economy but every 20 years you get get massive growth, and then a few years in a recession. These recessions only happen when one thing happens, greed is greater than the economical growth.
the national debt is caused by the attempt to grow, think of it as a business does a business save when it needs to grow? no
the growth needs to money injecting into it quickly so it borrows money and pays it back with money from the growth same with the economy, the debt does go down when we are making high economical growth, normally the year before a recession has the highest economical growth.

Re: National Debt
 

There are millions who would argue about that. Part of me actually agrees with you here, but it's the old free country, free market stuff again. For some folk, in certaim circumstances, it's the ony option.

Again I don't exactly disagree, but without global standards it would simply have meant bye bye to the financial sector the UK. Not much of an option in my view.

The British Armed Forces has the fourth highest declared expendature of any military in the world, behind the USA, China and France... We also have the largest Airforce and Navy in the EU. Why? We still seem to have this empire attitude. We don't have an empire any more, we need to remember this and cut our cloth accordingly.

Do you have a mortgage? I couldn't afford to buy a house without one. By the "only spend what you have" arguement none of use would own our homes. It's not such a big leap to extend this concept to government spending.
We are in a recision becuase of a GLABAL banking crisis. One of the joys associated with Capitalism.
As mentioned, do you really think the UK would have been the only major world economy unaffected if there was a different government in charge?

And be fair, this crisis asside, this has probably been the most stable the UK economy has been in living memory. Healthy? Well it's all relative isn't it!

I thought you might say that! It was the cost of ownership. The money he would normally have spent in the UK to put/keep a shiny new fireblade on the road would only allow him to run a third hand SV650.

Re: National Debt
 

You advocate a return to the landower/serfdom system?

Mortgaging property is different, right? :-P

Re: National Debt
 

The coffers aren't full because we are "At War"... in two countries. Everything we've made in the last 10 years in Britain PLC has been spent in a "Hostile takovers" of Iraq PLC and Afghanistan PLC.

I put a motion forward of No confidence in the Borad of Britain PLC!

C

Re: National Debt
 

What makes the current situation so much more serious than ever before is that we now have no means of getting out of the mess.After the war we had our manufacturing base which could be rebuilt and hence the "export or die" mantra of the fifties and sixties.Along came Thatcher who started the trend towards a finance biassed economy away from a manufacturing based one,and the whole restructuring was propped up by huge income from North Sea oil and flogging off anything that wasnt nailed down(privatisation).This disguised the uncomfortable truth that GB plc hasnt been solvent for decades and naw the gravy train has hit the buffers.What is going to prop up the economy for the next thirty years?Anyone who has an answer for that should be made Prime Minister ASAP.

Re: National Debt
 

[QUOTE=sunshine;2224396]learn how the economy works boom, bust, boom, bust... guess whats going to come next?

BOOM! 'cos Brown G will be down the road.