With the Local elections (not to mention the AV referendum) approaching in May I think it's a good time to remind ourselves of exactly how bad the financial mess is the previous Labour government left this country in.
I think the graph below shows it best;
As you can see we are currently spending more money servicing Gordon Brown's debts that we are spending on our National Defence, Schools, Police Service, Care for the elderly, and our Justice System.
And the amount we owe is increasing every single day, and will probably continue increasing for the rest of the year until the cuts the coalition government have been forced to make actually begin to take effect and the amount of money this nation spends over and above the amount that it earns starts to diminish.
Even Ed Milliband admits that the previous governments spending plans were not sustainable, he also says that he accepts the need for cuts to deal with the deficit. However he opposes just about every proposed cut without announcing any alternatives.
From now until May the 5th the Labour party will be doing it's best to convince people that the last few years of Labour Government didn't happen and that this debt magically appeared the day David Cameron and Nick Clegg set foot in 10 Downing Street.
Don't let them get away with it.
6 comments:
I'm afraid I can't see any graph!
Works for me (using Firefox and IE7) both under Windows XP and 7.
I'll fix the problem if I can duplicate it ... Care to narrow down the search for me?
It's funny how you thought having a large debt was fine before the general election, before completely changing your mind when the prospect of government arose. Countries need to borrow money to save jobs, as you and Vince Cable argued! Hypocrites...
As a Country we've been living beyond our means for quite some time and I'd like to hear Labours plans to address it rather than just the standard response of "we wouldn't do that" to every change this government makes.
Free money for everyone isn't the answer; Labour need to present concrete, realistic, proposals and this they have failed to do.
Do you have a source for the data? And what are the units of the horizontal axis?
'As a Country we've been living beyond our means for quite some time and I'd like to hear Labours plans to address it rather than just the standard response of "we wouldn't do that" to every change this government makes.
Free money for everyone isn't the answer; Labour need to present concrete, realistic, proposals and this they have failed to do.'
The Lib Dems had a list of spending commitments far longer than Labour's! You wanted to abolish tuition fees, scrap council tax amongst a long list of other commitments. I didn't see you all opposing more investment in the health service or in education, nor did I see you wanting to increase tax above Labour. It's funny how running a public debt and even a deficit was suddenly a bad thing after the election...
And why do you assume I'm a Labour supporter? I can see why you're attacking Labour since lots of people in Cambridge voted Lib Dem thinking mistakenly that you were the left-wing alternative - amusing, in hindsight. But I'm asking you to defend your hypocritical position as a Lib Dem:
why was it fine not to make such deep and rapid cuts before the election, but suddenly so urgent afterwards?
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