I agree that i think the cuts went to far to quickly but cutting public spending by £30 billion must be hard fiscal choices for anyone? The Mrs has had to re-apply for her job twice in 10 years so we were right at the sharp end of the cuts. I will never forgot she received a letter on Christmas eve telling her her job was under review and we had not long taken out our mortgage. The Tories have done a decent job on overall employment imo.Sovietmule wrote:I suppose they had to promise spending today on the back of all the talk of 'levelling up' whatever that means.Viduka Hits The Mark wrote:It was always going to be a loosening of the purse strings wasn't it? I mean the Tories have done the hard fiscal work over the last 10 years. Austerity just wasn't a option this time.
Austerity was a political choice last time, driven by the idiocy and ideology of the Chuckle Brothers aka Cameron and Osbourne; nothing more or less. There are two main aims to the policy - 1 to reduce the deficit, 2 to reduce debt. Whilst they may have reduced the deficit to 1.3% or thereabouts of GDP (by cutting public spending by something like 30 billion or so) they have failed miserably in reducing debt - surprise, surprise.
If by 'hard fiscal work' you mean increased the debt then I would agree, as since austerity began they have increased the debt from 65% of GP to 83% (approx) this year. Austerity doesn't work and arguably never has. Mark Blyth is a renowned expert on the subject and has written extensively on the pointlessness of austerity and has some decent videos on youtube too.
So, I suppose we'll see what happens with their spending plans but I'll concede it seems like a political shift.
Levelling up just means spending more money i guess? As i'm a bit older i don't tend to look at Politics has whats in it for me (i did when i was younger) i cast my ear far and wide. A couple of examples. The Mrs works with children in care, the service here in West Lancs is a good one, they cater for a lot of their needs and try and help where they can but the sense of entitlement by the teenagers demanding money is off the scale. They even had a all expenses paid big awards ceremony the other week to really empower the teenagers.
A mate of mine is a support worker. He works 2-1 staff full-time with a guy who does nothing but abuse the staff all day and he gets an allowance of £88.000pa from the state. He has leaning difficulties and his parents own a swanky hotel and they collect his money and decide how much allowance to give the support workers each week. Do we live in a caring society? I like to think so.
I even thought the Social care policy Philip Hammond was going to introduce was a good one. Where people were expected to use their property to pay for care but would be left with £100,000 instead of the current £26,000 after the value had decreased. It didn't fly with Tories.