Six Billion over paid....getting some

[Flat_Eric]

The "buoyant economy" that Grim Gordon likes to take the credit for is all done with smoke and mirrors, WZR.

First off, NuLabour inherited a country "on the up" in 1997 - the UK had gone from being 27th in the world in terms of GDP under "old" Labour to one that in was 5th, and with a vibrant economy.

Secondly, much of this so-called "prosperity" is now based on credit - millions of people and the economy as a whole are living on borrowed time and borrowed cash (as evidenced by the record numbers of bankruptcies in recent years).

Public services? Well despite repeated claims of "record investment", the Blairy Bunch have bolloxed those up as well, with the police undermanned and hamstrung by bureaucracy, and schools and the NHS likewise mired in red tape and obsessed with "league tables" and such like.

Crime? The biggest crime of all is how the crime figures have been massaged to show "falls in overall crime". So while violent crime and drug-related crime have soared under NuLabour, the fact that the drop in things like shoplifting and the theft of garden gnomes has been bigger than the rise in serious crime means that the government can point smugly to "falling overall crime rates". Though given that with the possible exception of North Korea, the fact that the UK is now the world's foremost "surveillance society" (with some 4.2 million CCTV cameras the last time anybody bothered to count) may have something to do with this.

Not to mention all of Browne's "stealth" taxes, which together with income tax, NI contributions etc. mean that your average Joe Soap is now working for the Exchequer up until 1st June every year ("Tax Freedom Day" was still 25th May in 2002 - and just for historical comparison it was 24th April in 1963).

It's all very well a politician saying "we've invested X billion in the NHS / education (or whatever) in the last Y years". But if that "investment" amounts to nothing more than throwing (taxpayers') money willy-nilly at a problem without trying to solving it properly, then that claim is meaningless because all you get is waste.

Look around you: Emergency wards closing, doctors & nurses unable to find work, private contractors moving in on hospitals (more interested in profit figures than patient well-being), NHS dentists rarer than shark-shit ? The list goes on.

And how much taxpayers' money is the Iraq venture costing, one wonders? You can't tell me that's money well spent.

- Eric

[planeterotica]

warren zevon rip wrote:

> planeterotica wrote:
>
> >Brown takes
> > charge and either way a Scotsman will be collecting English
> taxes
>
> British taxes! I pay tax to London too, you know. And Brown,
> as PM will have less responsibility for income tax than he has
> now. Next Chancellor may also be Scots, but so what? We are
> part of the UK, after all.
>
> planeterotica wrote:

Not for much longer i hope England should be run by the English you have your own assembly therefore England should have its own assembly, i demand it !furious!