The Politics Thread

[mummywhycantieatcrayons]

I don't want it any way. These numbers, this discussion, would be irrelevant if we didn't have a chancellor fresh from his first at the Mr Micawber School of Economics. Its f*cking nonsense.

The discussion comes from his putting a number forward and the opposition being up in arms about it.

Your take is that they are making a lot off fuss over nothing.

[Prufrock]

I reckon it is possible to have it both ways, for what it's worth. £1m would make the square route of f*ck all difference to the Exchequer. It would make a hell of a lot of difference to me.

[mummywhycantieatcrayons]

I reckon it is possible to have it both ways, for what it's worth. £1m would make the square route of f*ck all difference to the Exchequer. It would make a hell of a lot of difference to me.

No, that's false too. We're talking about your share of the £1million. Do keep up.

[Lord Kangana]

Yes. All of them. The real discussion isn't what we should or shouldn't be paying the unemployed, the feckless, call them what you want. The serious question that nobody wants to discuss is why we're having to have a discussion about whether we raise someone's benefits by 71p, £1.40, some-some-other-insignificant-amount. Its so f*cking mind-numbing that the biggest story in 2013 in this country is about a few pence here-or-there we have to give away because people can't earn it.

[mummywhycantieatcrayons]

If you want to have savings, you have to make lots of small choices.

What can you do if the opposition chooses to engage you in battle over every single one?

[Prufrock]

I reckon it is possible to have it both ways, for what it's worth. £1m would make the square route of f*ck all difference to the Exchequer. It would make a hell of a lot of difference to me.

No, that's false too. We're talking about your share of the £1million. Do keep up.

It's all mine if I'm the only person affected...

I'm taking LK's argument and making it bigger. As it is, I don't think 71p per week is going to make much difference to the people involved, but I'm just challenging your assertion you can't have it both ways. You may be right in this case (I can't get my head around the argument at all, by either side) I'm just saying it isn't as simple as saying 'if it isn't a lot to us, it can't be a lot to you'.

That works the other way as well, which I think is basically the argument in favour of the cut to child benefit: 'The amount you are losing makes little difference to you in the real world, but the combined saving is a serious saving in expenditure.

[Athers]

When we have a structural deficit such things seem eminently sensible to me.

At the same time this is happening we also have:
- The tax free threshold again increasing to benefit workers.
- The child benefit cut and the similarly slow 1% increases of the 40% tax threshold take money away from the middle class in future years.

[Lord Kangana]

But that's simply rearranging the deckchairs if you're not tackling the root cause. They could raise the tax threshold to a bazillion quid, what difference would it make if you haven't got a job to pay tax on?

[mummywhycantieatcrayons]

I'm taking LK's argument and making it bigger. As it is, I don't think 71p per week is going to make much difference to the people involved, but I'm just challenging your assertion you can't have it both ways. You may be right in this case (I can't get my head around the argument at all, by either side) I'm just saying it isn't as simple as saying 'if it isn't a lot to us, it can't be a lot to you'.

Ok, I relent. You're right.

But it's not coherent to say: "It's only 71p per person per week, so why does the Treasury care enough to fight it out?", if you don't then criticise the other side for wanting to shout about the 71p per person for week from the rooftops.

As it is, LK has said that criticises the other side equally, which is something.

Personally I think think the blame for how much discussion time is wasted on what LK sees as a trifling matter lies with the opposition. Oh well.

[Athers]

OK then if you are saying unemployment is the root cause what would you suggest? As it happens the number of unemployed has fallen every month for the last year give or take an exception!

Trying to encourage banks to lend more via looser monetary policy, while keeping inflation under control?
Make it easier to hire and fire workers? (Unfortunately being able to fire someone makes you more likely to hire them)
Infrastructure investment?
Keep telling the Eurozone [and America] to sort their shit out..

All these things are being done to some degree.

In the meantime dealing with the deficit using an approach of about 80% spending cuts and 20% tax rises is recognised as a reasonable approach (compare the Republicans' 100% spending cuts demand). These "1% measures" form part of that. OK by me even if I'm to be affected.

It's always a long painful road back when your recession is caused by a debt crisis, forget deckchairs, we're arguing how to fix the boat when the wind's blowing against us and the water's gone syrupy

[Athers]

Reading that I think I'll be recruited by mummy to join the Party anyday now!

[Lord Kangana]

Given our unique set of circumstances (and lets be clear here, I could write paragraphs) but succinctly, 2 points I think would greatly help our situation. Namely:

1) Stop behaving like a bunch of 5-year olds when it comes to Europe, get stuck in, actually recognise we're part of the team and stop sulking on the sidelines like Sordell, help them to help us.
2) Continue with the stick if you must, but put some carrot in there. Its all well and good capping benefits. It'd be beyond discussion if you had plentiful opportunity."Get a f*cking job and stop scrounging" is easy when it isn't hollow rhetoric. So, in short, invest in capital projects. America, aside from the right-wing lunatics who would bring it down for the sake of dogma, isn't doing too bad for doing it. And for f*cks sake, whatever you do, don't give it to the South East. It doesn't need it. It already got the greatest subsidy any British Government handed out ever when we bailed the banks out.

[mummywhycantieatcrayons]

America has the luxury of printing the world's reserve currency. We don't.

[mummywhycantieatcrayons]

Reading that I think I'll be recruited by mummy to join the Party anyday now!

Yes, I thought all that was very well put.

They're not really tribal points though. They're sensible points whoever makes them.

I'm not cheering the Conservatives from the rooftops, but they do not deserve the inane barrage they get from the left.

[Lord Kangana]

America has the luxury of printing the world's reserve currency. We don't.

If we'd stop f*cking about with Europe, we'd have the luxury of being part of the zone that contains what is considered the second reserve. Its no good the right talking about can-do spirit, if they simply mean can-do only when it suits our agenda. Anyone can do that.

[mummywhycantieatcrayons]

America has the luxury of printing the world's reserve currency. We don't.

If we'd stop f*cking about with Europe, we'd have the luxury of being part of the zone that contains what is considered the second reserve. Its no good the right talking about can-do spirit, if they simply mean can-do only when it suits our agenda. Anyone can do that.

I see. So we'd be better off in the Euro?

Even if we'd been in and strained every sinew to make it work, I think it would still have been a total disaster. The Americans are, simply, a unique case.

As Portillo says - whatever his failings, and they were many, we should build a statue of Gordon Brown for keeping us out of the Euro.

[Lord Kangana]

Sorry, this is a bit like a playground discussion now. America is unique? Why? Other than rhetoric what supports that claim?

[mummywhycantieatcrayons]

Sorry, this is a bit like a playground discussion now. America is unique? Why? Other than rhetoric what supports that claim?

They are in a unique position when it comes to an ability to sell debt at a reasonable rate, because they print the world's reserve currency.

Confidence in the American machine is so different to any other country in the world and when it comes to selling huge amounts of debt without being too worried about what that will do to the rate, they are a unique case.

Even if that's too strong a statement, they are at least not comparable to us and it will not do to say "America is doing X and isn't doing too badly for doing it, therefore so should we".

But you have already said a few posts up that our circumstances are unique. Is it true of us and not them?

Which playground did you last visit?

[Lord Kangana]

So we should try and ape the American system then, no? In what way would we achieve that by not being part of a larger trading zone and larger currency?

[mummywhycantieatcrayons]

So we should try and ape the American system then, no? In what way would we achieve that by not being part of a larger trading zone and larger currency?

In a roundabout fashion, you have hit upon one of the founding French resentments that inspired the single currency: the power that comes with the confidence in the dollar.

It was misguided then and it is misguided now - the nation states of Europe and the states of America are not comparable.

We should ape the American system? When, starting now? If we had agreed years ago that national governments would give up their power to a central body issuing Euro bonds, which would then allocate the funds raised, along with a permanent, structural mechanism to transfer capital to the poorer countries, in return for the role they played in weakening the currency used by the richer countries, then yeah, there might one day have been something in place that attracted the sort of confidence that the dollar does. But it's never been on the table, for all sorts of complex reasons, and it's certainly not something we can consider right now, in the real world that isn't an idealist's fantasy.