Erm...could start here and work down. 'The profits raked in by Britain’s richest 1,000 people over the past 12 months total £77bn – almost as much as the £83bn of public spending that George Osborne has promised to cut'.

http://www.newstatesman.com/blogs/laurie-penny/2010/07/8217-women-8211-g...

Balls is an economic illiterate and, along with his partner-in-crime, Ms Y Cooper, a hypocrit that flipped their home several times to rake in £10,000's in unearned income at the taxpayers expense.

With all due respect to those who have contempt for Ed Balls, enjoy your digs while you can, I think we are in for a surprise come September 25th. I think Ed Balls will be elected the Labour leader, and possibly after the first ballot. He may not be too popular in middle England, but what with his unlimited loyalty to Gordon Brown, he`ll be guaranteed a MASSIVE vote from one of Labour`s biggest heartlands, Scotland.

Arthur Williamson, 84% of the UK population is in England. Infact the Lib Dems get more votes than the entire population of Scotland. If Scotland wants to vote for one of the most insincere and opportunist politicians we have, who played a central role in screwing up the economy, which will no doubt affect Scotland more than England, then Scotland should count itself very luck indeed that its vote won't be a deciding factor in the next election!

On the subject of the Labour leadership debate, the candidates really need to start defending Alistair Darling's actions instead of distancing themselves from it, or Labour will be remembered for the near future, and undoubtedly the next election, as being the party that nearly bankrupted the country, which is not at all true. I noticed Ed Balls has been doing this, but then he gets branded as a Brownite which lessens the effect. The others need to do it more.

As for the bankers and the economy, is it really such a terrible disaster for the best bankers to leave the country if their bonuses are taxed? It seems like the banking sector would suffer, but everyone else would be ok. So we wouldn't have innovative and complicated investing techniques and banking systems, does that actually matter? Even if it does inspire growth, it's the wrong growth for the wrong people.

I don't agree that the credit crunch or recession was caused by bankers.

In my view it was a failure of political economic policy, which allowed the housing market, commercial property market and shares overheat massively.

Bankers only got rich as a by-product of that.

China is rightly taking steps to calm the housing market over there, clearly it has learned from our mistakes.

Sam's right. The politicians' failure does not concern only the bankers but also the availability of credit to individuals and companies too. That too was a political decision.

The other thing that Labour needs to start doing is to respond to the tory attacks on things like deregulation and credit policy.

They need to highlight the fact that they were pilloried for not going far enough in their deregulation by the tories and the city. They need to remind people that a large part of the deficit is because they stepped in to save the banks, and save peoples savings, when the tories would have done nothing.

Sam
"But in the long term, we do have to restructure the public sector as we can't run £155 billion yearly deficit indefinitely."

No, we can't, but then I dont think anyone is saying that we should. Dont forget, that the £155bn, was originally predicted to be £176bn as recently as the pre-budget report in November 09.

I think that what Ed Balls is saying is "Yes, we need to cut, but not as quickly as even the last government planned, and to make sure we cut the right things". Remember the £6bn of efficiency savings the tories said they would make? Well, they turned into cancellation of the future jobs fund, which got young people off the dole - some waste that was!

I am totally sure ther is a better way.

One square mile of London and their cousins are not that powerful surely? Day to day life for the average person is, surely.

John Ruddy - with all due respect to Ed Balls, I can't trust him one bit.

He seems to say anything that will create 'dividing lines' between him and the Tories.

My feeling is that Balls will actively encourage social unrest via the unions, even though many people in this country believe that cuts and pain is a necessary evil.

No doubt he will try to use the slightest 'unrest' to score points, and claim that all would have been rosey under him.

I was under the impression that many of the jobs in the Future Jobs Fund were temporary, so I could understand why the coalition might have thought that it didn't represent sufficient value for money given our desperate situation.

There are alternatives:
tax the rich; stop tax evasion; build more affordable homes that will solve the housing crisis and bring down, yes bring down, house prices. It all a question of supply and demand, house supply has been restricted for far too long - too many vested interests?

There were people complaining about the deficit left by Labour's reckless spending well before the recession.

Stop equating the two problems and pretending to have a degree in economics about matters you clearly don't understand to put down the Conservative government and prop up Labour.

I hate David Cameron but I'm fed up of how Laour have successfully shifted the blame for their reckless spending onto a new government that inherited not created hte problem