Originally Posted by
neilm
1) He ran the economy for 10 years before becoming PM and that was the time when you could have as much credit as you could fit up yer choofter and it was all very cheap credit, unemployment was low, people were paying less income tax than ever before, when the Tories were last in it was 25%, under labour reduced over the period of their government to 20%.
He has used his experience as chancellor to steer us through the worst recession in decades and things he put in place have probably shortened that recession by 2 years.
When things were going well, Labour and Gogs Broon never tired of telling us how it was all down to his "prudent" approach and masterful handling of the economy. Now it's all gone to shit, it was "a big boy did it and ran away!"
It is easy to run the economy when credit is easily available, creating jobs, minimising unemployment (and the cost of benefits) and generating huge tax income. Remember that, despite the huge amount of cash we've had to give the banks, they paid enormous tax in the good years and probably will again.
However, when individuals, companies or countries depend on borrowed money and low rates you KNOW (or should know) that a day of reckoning will be coming.
He has created an unsustainable Public Sector and allowed their wages and benefits to grow to the point that the rest of us can't afford our own pensions because of the amount of our money that the state needs to fund these people, many (most?) of whom are entirely unproductive, though they may or may not be doing jobs that we want done. And while the rest of us are seeing pay freezes, pay cuts, or loss of employment, many of the public sector staff are seriously threatening to strike for more of our money.
He put policies in place that caused huge house inflation among other things so please don't think for a minute that he was a great chancellor. Or try to persuade me that he was.
The basic rate of income tax has, undoubtedly, reduced under Labour but they have got their hands on our money in lots of other sneaky little ways, some new, some by increasing existing stealth taxes. Overall, we all pay more of our income to the state now than we ever did before.
NI is far higher now than it was and will go higher.
Higher rate tax payers are going to pay 50% - it was only 40% under the Tories.
Council tax up enormously above inflation.
Fuel duty, road tax, first reg fees - all up under Labour.
Airport taxes up.
Passports and driving test/licence fees - all up and going up even more.
I'm afraid I don't believe that some of his "recovery measures" have been anything more than window dressing.
VAT down temporarily to 15%. How much will it go up at the end of the year? At the moment the smart money is saying that it will come into line with Europe at 21%.
Car scrappage - I'll concede that this has been popular and has helped some people sell some cars, but most of these are imported, some would have been sold anyway, and why pretend it was at least partly done for environmental reasons, but have no rules for the car being bought having to be "green" like in France, Germany and the USA.
Quantative Easing (printing money) - I'll be dead before that particular measure is paid off, and my kids kids will still be paying for that measure. What have they done to deserve that?
Oh, and just for the record, I'm not a Tory, Lib Dem or Labourite. They are all shit, it's just that some are more shit than others!