Let's muck in to sort out debt
PEOPLE have been stopping me and asking what I thought of the budget and the cancellation of the school building project. What else could the Government do?
I understand the headmaster's frustration. We were left with a country buried in debt, even Mandelson had said the Labour Government was spending money it did not have, so it meant to get the country out of debt some unpopular decisions had to be made. What puzzles me though is that people admitted that tough decisions would have to be made, yet as soon as the cuts effect them, they start complaining their projects should be spared.
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Councillor Chippy Lees.
What would our children and grandchildren think of us if we left them a country still buried in debt, because we would not be prepared to make sacrifices?
I would ask people to cast their minds back to Canada a few years ago. The country was millions of dollars in debt. Canada was, to all intent and purposes, bankrupt. Their chancellor bought out the toughest budget the country had ever known.
No section of the community was spared, every building project was cancelled, every person was affected. Inside four years, the Canadian people were enjoying the good life, everyone started to benefit, building projects were started up again.
The Canadian people said it was a price worth paying, so I say to all you good people, let's accept these tough times, let's get the country out of debt, then we can all start to enjoy the good life again.
Let's make our island home the finest part of the world to live in.
Councillor Chippy Lees.
5 Comments
by Art Is Resistance, Tamworth
Friday, August 06 2010, 8:34AM
“Mr Lees,
You're wrong about the decisions taken in Canada.
The first cuts were met with great displeasure by the populace, as they saw them as nothing more than cow-towing to the US (which is frowned upon even more than in this country), and the scale of the cuts was reduced in the face of huge prostestation. What the Canadian government did do was drop their dogmatic following of the Chicago School of Economics Monietarism policies that had brought the global recession on our heads in the first place (deregulation of the banks, high rates of unsecured lending) and turned towards the more sensible and sustainable practices of Keynesian economics - that during times of recession, it is the governments duty to invest in infrastructure building programmes (such as the Building School for Future programme now destroyed by the Tories), as it is on ly by stimulating the economy through investment that you can avoid the recession becoming a depression.
The Tory cuts are not about 'whats best for the country' - they're about dogmatic following of an ideology that has been proven to fail, and all it will do will see this country fall further from your desired place in the world.
Look at the countries who have come out of recession first - Canada, South Korea - both of whom dropped monitarism and embraced Keynesian policies. Even the US, the home of Milton Friedman (the founder of monitarism) has now started to realise that they need to change - Obama wants to invest in infrastructure programmes, instead of cutting!
Osbourne's cuts will see us fall into a depression not seen since the 1920's - is that really where we want to be? He says that these measures are needed to stop us haivng to go to the IMF - in fact, several think tanks (The IFSC, Demos, the LSE) have all stated that the opposite will happen - if he continues to cut, we WILL need to ask for the help of the IMF.
You make a lot of the debt that our children and grandchildren will be left with - the debt is no larger now than it was (in real terms) 20 years ago. Don't forget, it was only at the beginning of 2000 that we finished (as a country) paying of the Lend Lease debt from the Second World War (the one that Dave Cameron thought we were only a junior partner in)!
The cracks are beginning to show in the coalition - the Lib Dems are unhappy at the scale of the cuts, the announcing of policies not discussed with them (the end of life term tenancies, the botched cutting of BSF programmes, the removal of ASBOS) to the point where Clegg will face a mutiny at the conference next month.
The only way this coalition will survive is through Cameron's shameful attempts to circumvent the democratic process through fixed term governments - if it were not for that, I would expect another General Election next year!
Don't be fooled by the Tories - they're no different to the ones that saw us through two recessions in the 80's and 90's!”
by Caledfwlch, Tamworth
Thursday, August 05 2010, 3:35PM
“Chippy, you¿re spouting Tory Twaddle! The rich put us in this mess with their greed. And so the rich should pay to rectify the mess. But this coalition, where the LibDems are getting quieter by the week, are determined, as all Tory administrations are, that the poor should pay for the excesses of the wealthy.
Unfortunately we don¿t have a politician with the guts or the social conscience to say this. We don¿t have a decent politician in shooting distance of any real influence, let alone power. And by ¿decent politician¿ I refer to the likes of Dennis Skinner, not the Closet Tory, Blairite Dangerous Brothers, the Miliband¿s and their ilk.
And if by ¿Let's make our island home the finest part of the world to live in.¿ you mean ¿let¿s go back to the days when omitting to doff one¿s cap to ones betters might result in a beating¿ I don¿t think you¿ve moved on that far anyway!”
by Caledfwlch, Tamworth
Thursday, August 05 2010, 3:22PM
“Chippy, you¿re spouting Tory Twaddle! The rich put us in this mess with their greed. And so the rich should pay to rectify the mess. But this coalition, where the LibDems are getting quieter by the week, are determined, as all Tory administrations are, that the poor should pay for the excesses of the wealthy.
Unfortunately we don¿t have a politician with the guts or the social conscience to say this. We don¿t have a decent politician in shooting distance of any real influence, let alone power. And by ¿decent politician¿ I refer to the likes of Dennis Skinner, not the Closet Tory, Blairite Dangerous Brothers, the Miliband¿s and their ilk.”
by Caledfwlch, Tamworth
Thursday, August 05 2010, 3:21PM
“Chippy, you¿re spouting Tory Twaddle! The rich put us in this mess with their greed. And so the rich should pay to rectify the mess. But this coalition, where the LibDems are getting quieter by the week, are determined, as all Tory administrations are, that the poor should pay for the excesses of the wealthy.
Unfortunately we don¿t have a politician with the guts or the social conscience to say this. We don¿t have a decent politician in shooting distance of any real influence, let alone power. And by ¿decent politician¿ I refer to the likes of Dennis Skinner, not the Closet Tory, Blairite Dangerous Brothers, the Miliband¿s and their ilk.”
by Caledfwlch, Tamworth
Thursday, August 05 2010, 3:20PM
“Chippy, you¿re spouting Tory Twaddle! The rich put us in this mess with their greed. And so the rich should pay to rectify the mess. But this coalition, where the LibDems are getting quieter by the week, are determined, as all Tory administrations are, that the poor should pay for the excesses of the wealthy.
Unfortunately we don¿t have a politician with the guts or the social conscience to say this. We don¿t have a decent politician in shooting distance of any real influence, let alone power. And by ¿decent politician¿ I refer to the likes of Dennis Skinner, not the Closet Tory, Blairite Dangerous Brothers, the Miliband¿s and their ilk.”