@Tuonela: We've sorted the animal question out. We are all animals, the whole human race! Have a little look at the other animals and notice the similarities.

In fact some animals have extraordinary abilities that we don't have. Dogs for instance can look around corners because of their fine sense of smell. And some animals 'know' the future as they can tell when an earthquake is about to happen. How about that!!!! We can't as we're dumber than some animals and we get caught in tidal waves.

I'm quite happy to be called an animal. I want to get right in to my animal instincts, find my deep down animal passion. Sometimes I've got there, and it's wild as. Sometimes the stars in the sky sing to you.

I AM AN ANIMAL

Both are shifting deckchairs. The issue is how to stop the ship (UK economy) from sinking. I do not hear anything from either of them that will prevent a double dip. How will that master of PR (Cameron) explain that away. Still blaming Labour for the deficit.

We've sorted the animal question out. We are all animals, the whole human race! Have a little look at the other animals and notice the similarities.

In fact some animals have extraordinary abilities that we don't have. Dogs for instance can look around corners because of their fine sense of smell. And some animals 'know' the future as they can tell when an earthquake is about to happen. How about that!!!! We can't as we're dumber than some animals and we get caught in tidal waves.

I'm quite happy to be called an animal. I want to get right in to my animal instincts, find my deep down animal passion. Sometimes I've got there, and it's wild as. Sometimes the stars in the sky sing to you.

@ Mr Divine, and what about the 'sub-human' question?

@HappySlayerUK

Thank you. Will do.

Let's see a responsible, coherent alternative. Anything less is a derogation of their duties to the people who support them. It's easy to shout abuse from the sidelines, get some Balls and give people an alternative.
As David Cameron is now finding to his cost. He did quite a lot of yelling from the sidelines when Labour were in power but now the wheels are falling off his awful policies and the public are seeing how he's basically conned everyone to win the election, he now bleating that it's up to Labour to come up with a credible alternative. I'm sorry but he's in the driving seat now and I am still waiting for ONE credible policy from him!

It's beyond me how anyone could use the word "just" in a sentence containing the words "twenty four billion pounds" and not understand the sense of gnawing horror which it engenders in normal people.

anti cuts agenda is inevitable

money becoming worth less as debts hold their value is crazy

Lox
But I'm sure in his head he's still a socialist. Just a very well-off one.
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the very idea that Blair thinks he is a socialist is one even he would laugh at.

Are you part of this new group of right-wing apologists, who are trying to blame socialism for the international meltdown of the past three or four years?

It is b-loody incredible how many times I have heard that socialist states are those in trouble. And that the banking crisis was some storm in a tea cup, and that nationalised banking shares will turn a profit.

They may have led to nations bailing out the system, suffering enormous recessions and falling tax receipts, bailing out the economy by running huge deficits, but the banking sector is surging back because deregulated capitalism is just wonderful, and nothing really went wrong. It didn't, look they still make money and get huge bonuses.

We have a world in which governments are going bust after bailing out lenders through quantitative easing, feeding them yet more money to make profits on.

Also bailing out borrowers through enormous deficits and artificially low interest rates to help them pay down debt, bailing out over-stretched mortgage borrowers thru same low interest rates, while banks refuse to foreclose in fear of impact falling prices would have on their balance sheets. All this is heaping up a massive overhang of unsaleable houses at stupid Alice in Wonderland prices.

Meanwhile, as people now have to afford houses to get a mortgage, very few mortgages are given out as houseowners remain in denial that the market was a bubble. It almost brought civilisation down, and may yet do so, but it was simply fair prices, and underlying "supply and demand".

It is a disgrace that this international crisis is not even being debated. People acting like the three monkeys, and instead blaming spending on the NHS for the world's problems. It is fecking insane.

'...it remains a fact. Cuts are required.'

No. Cuts aren't required. In fact, cuts aren't even required even if you believe the national debt is the key priority at the moment--over jobs, over growth. You can take care of the debt by (a) moderate inflation, and (b) tax rises on the wealthiest. We keep getting told that tax rises on 'wealth earners' will hurt the UK; but what about public sector cuts for everyone else? This will do harm--perhaps irreparable harm--to the vast majority, especially if it results in lower growth and lower job creation, and social dislocation. Or do you think 20 years after Thatcher that the regions most negatively affected by her policies ever recovered?

There's also the wider philosophical question: WHY do we need to finance public spending through public debt? Remember, the UK has its own currency, created by the government, and its liabilities, such as they are, are in its own currency. There is no theoretical limit to the amount of money it can spend to make up for a shortfall in receipts--or to pay off the debt. No, the problem isn't whether the UK will be able to finance itself; it's whether such policies will result in mass inflation if taken too far. But this route is a credible alternative to debt financing. The notion that governments are constrained in their own financing in their own currencies, or beholden to debt in their own currency is simply ludicrous.

There are actual alternatives to the cuts: shifting the pain over to those who can deal most effectively with it, coupled with a few years of higher-than-normal inflation (i.e. in fact at levels only slightly below where the country is now) to reduce the real burden of debt, and in the longer-term moving from an antiquated financing system--one which pretends that countries are contrained in printing currency so as to empower rent-seekers.

All government promises are political plans on political timetables. How could they be otherwise ?

Entire election manifestoes are political promises to be enacted within the next five years.

If Darling had said "we realise that we are running a sizeable deficit and we will deal with it appropriately over the appropriate timeframe" he'd be quite rightly ridiculed.

That doesn't mean there can't be flexibility to tweak your plans as circumstances develop but you at least need to set out a plan.

Hence the equally ludicrous complaints about Osborne being wedded to his economic plans. He's clearly tweaking them as circumstances change.

Don't cut the deficit. Let the national debt increase. Let debt interest costs increase. Less tax money to spend on public goods and services. More debt for the current and next generations to pay. Less investment, less growth etc.

Didn't Darling say that their deficit reduction would be implemented once growth was robust.
Osborne is doing it while the economy is contracting. Suicidal!

Let's see a responsible, coherent alternative. Anything less is a derogation of their duties to the people who support them. It's easy to shout abuse from the sidelines, get some Balls and give people an alternative. http://www.trainingforcnacertification.org/cna-training-in-california/

Don't cut the deficit. Let the national debt increase. Let debt interest costs increase. Less tax money to spend on public goods and services. More debt for the current and next generations to pay. Less investment, less growth etc

'Halving the deficit over four years is a political decision on a political timetable; it has nothing to do with economics.'

What utter rubbish. Have you ever heard of the Bond Market? That's the place where our pension funds make decisions about who to invest in and who to avoid.