Luddite plays with a dolly, the inflatable variety.

matthew fox: Go and play with dolly..

@Matthew fox,...Spot on, iv`e said this in previous posts, the double standards by the tories is pathetic!!, Labour where vilified in 2008, the worlds finances where in total meltdown!!, The tories kept blaming Gordon Brown for his so called reckless spending, even though Flashman and Gideon pledged to match and even increase what Labours spending plans where in 2007!!, selective memory syndrome, me thinks, Now suddenly, because the Tories have stalled the economy, they`re saying it`s a Global Issue!!!, you`ve got to laugh, if it was`nt so serious!, Gideon`s in total denial, his ideology is destroying peoples lives!!, the guy is a total IDIOT!, along with his groupies and apoligists on here!.

@ writeon
the part about left and right being factions, totally with you there. need some real choice. a new party perhaps??
"Whilst Labour is more sceptical about the 'benefits' of boom 'n' bust policies"
It's a fact of nature that cycles exist- they are inescapable, nothing is a staright line, they exist in trends also, but NEITHER should they be so severe that we become super artificially rich e.g.nonsense house prices, nor should a load of peole become unemployed. In other words, it is the AMPLITUDE of the corrections that policy makers need to concern themselves with.Unless people get that itis simply impossible NOT to have boom n busts, the left and right keep making the mistakes-personally i think the right handle the cycles better, see 1990/94, they increased public spending and by 98 we had a surplus- it's not that they like boom n bust, they are not afraid so much, probably because historically tories are richer, so their saving help them weather the downturn better.
agreed, the cupboard isn't bare, it's got a hew iou's in it though...and the waste is a disgrace, it's immoral.
agreed, it's scary to wonder who is going to buy stuff in the high street, especially with cut backs, and I think thats what Lagarde was saying the other day- there can be medium term cuts BUT also growth must be a priority short term. Currently the numbers for growth are barely positive, having recently tumbled, but encouragingly, borrowing was down today- IT'S VERY EARLY and NOTHING can be drawn from that, but maybe if the numbers keep getting worse, osborne might well try and tap the mkts for some more cash, or ebven maintain the borrowing if indeed the trend of increase in private and decrease in public jobs continues, thus extending his projections of cutting the structural deficit- he can't say that because he'd be accused of being undecisive, inconsistent, and that in turn might scare international investors (makes me boil with rage that we are dependant on them, really it angers me that we got to this). however, the markets know he has to win an election, so they may cut him some slack if they like what he's doing at the time.
Lastly, on capitalism- aren't u simply saying that people become greedy and imbalenced, de-sensitised to their fellow humans. Their insecurities in who has the faster, bigger car/house/boat plane mean people become more and more maniacal in their treatment of others? i don't see what capitalism or socialism has to do with any of these phenomena, there were plent of RICH commies in ex red russia... I just woneder if most of these ailments don't simply boil down to greed and a lust for power

p j wall. Our cupboard is bare. That means the services demanded of, and offered by the state will have to be cut back. It is a mystery to me why your supposedly brilliant Gordon Brown didn't understand this obvoius economic fact. Mr Milliband and Ed Balls, the shadow chancellor, were both also advisers to Gordon Brown at the Treasury when Labour's wasteful splurge on public spending was conceived and enacted. A decade of Brownite socialism brought Britain to the point of bankruptcy...

writeon: You will have to do better than that. Didn't we try communism on a few occasions, was it a roaring success? It usually ended with workers face down in a ditch, with a bullet in the back of the neck.

It was always assumed future generations would pick up the bills for this generation party. The lefts ideological enthusiasm for taxation, combined with class-war dogma, and the lefts instinctive suspicion with the nation state and the free market, has after 50 year's undermined the pillars of our economic prosperity and freedoms. No country can borrow it's way out of debt, and back to prosperity, and either can we keep increasing the tax burden on the genuine wealth creators. Tragically, we in Britain are all trapped in this destructive world of self-delusion. The cupboard is empty. In order to spend wealth first we most create wealth. it's not rocket science.

Personally I'm not a big fan of Utopias like communism, or the fantasy of a 'free market', or a democratic utopia for that matter.

Being a product and beneficiary of capitalism, I'd be mad to actually desire its demise, for purely selfish reasons. I enjoy the comfort capitalism provides.

Though I do want capitalism to be intelligent and reigned in, extreme capitalism is, I would argue, a very dangerous beast indeed, one that has a seemingly inbuilt tendency to devour itself, even to the extent of self-destruction.

Just because one uses the word 'capitalism' doesn't mean that one is a socialist or wants to see capitalism vanish. One can actually be a 'conservative' and oppose the excesses of capitalism, if they undermine the very foundations of capitalism and risk destroying everything that's positive about capitalism.

Even Marx saw capitalism as a revolutinary force that was changing the world and sweeping away the old fuedal order, a progressive force; but their was a price involved, which he railed against; massive inequality and the spectre of economic collapse.

It appears that George Osborne is proving ALL his critic's right !

Give it another year and we will all be laughing at George the Economically illiterate boy that has probably never done a hard days work in his life.

"In many third world countries, children walk miles each day to get a basic education if they are lucky enough to be able to get a place in a school. But then there are incentives, if the have some education they might get a job, if they don't, they are likely to starve.
It is time to stop paying benefits to any school leavers who don't have a sufficient level of education on the basis that by failing to attain a suitable level of education, they have made themselves unemployable."

Horrible fuckwit on the Telegraph who has been recommended by 12 people.

We had a global issue in 2008, yet Cameron and Osborne would have none of it.

Osborne killed the recovery and we are seeing the consequences.

The US are spending money on George W Bush's wars, and borrowing on the credit card, to finance his tax cuts.

Governments over the past three decades have become highly adept at disguising the true jobless figures; the official unemployment rate simply bears no resemblance to reality.

Several years ago, whilst on a New Deal "training" programme, the senior tutor let slip that claimants would not appear in the unemployment statistics for the duration of the course (three months). One of the jobless I met on the course is still out of work but forced to live on his life savings after his entitlement to JSA was cancelled after six months. I suspect there are many more like him who have conveniently disappeared from the official statistics.