March for the Alternative - London - Today

[jam666]

Actually I'd say there are hardly any right-wing members other than me, Dan & Agnostic Bear...certainly in the current affairs forum it seems that the forum is actually very left-wing.

And the thing that gets me is the people marching have no idea of economics or business otherwise they'd realise that the pay cuts are the only way. Bring in Labour and they'll print MORE money, making the £ worthless and sending us into hyperinflation.

Dont forget me .

This march in westminster is absolutely disgraceful and EVERYONE who is there should hang their heads in shame. This is usual of the left and socialist who think marching will achieve anything.. but it wont. They squark and squirm how "everyone agrees with them" but we do NOT.

The unions died in the 80's and quite frankly need to perish into the pits of oblivion as they serve no purpose what-so-ever except to protest against things that need to be done.

Im a Conservative but I don't agree with everything that David Cameron has said or done...

* He didn't give us an EU refferendum
* No reform on british bill of rights
* Inheritence tax chages scrapped

and these are just a few of the things I disagree with..... infact I'd say cuts need to be over 20% for example across the board and nothing less will do.

As for college or uni lecturers they need to get off their high horse and take a cold hard look at them selves. The only reason they are complaining is because their pensions are being brought into line with what the private sector has had for years and just because they wont get their gold plated pensions or pay rises here and there they strike for nothing but purely greed.

Most people are forgetting who caused this mess and the answer is the LABOUR party... You ask most left wing supporters what the alternative is to the cuts and they cant even come up with an answer which renders their silly little protest USELESS!.

In may you know who to vote for and it certainly isnt labour, lib dems or any other left social party including the greens.

Vote Conservative / UKIP.

[Jordy]

What on earth is their alternative?! They couldn't of come up with a more hypocritical and comical name for their march quite frankly.

From what I've seen they're offering two alternatives to the cuts;
1) Spend our way out of debt. Quite obviously this isn't possible, we cannot go on like this and services must be cut back.
2) Tax the banks and bankers. Completely ridiculous idea, the UK is a service economy (80% employed within it, making up 73% of GDP) and we are incredibly reliant on our finance sector. London (along with NY) is the world finance hub and it's our main export. If we begin taxing banks heavily they'll simply move abroad and we get zilch from them then. Without our finance sector, this country would probably be nothing and hardly worth living in.

We had "good times" under Brown as chancellor because he was experiencing the positive effects of the previous Conservative governments attempt to open the UK up to foreign business and making London a world hub. He also borrowed ridiculous amounts of money and increased public sector spending everywhere. We absolutely cannot afford to live like this. Yes it's nice to see enormous investment and spending everywhere but we simply cannot afford it and it was never our money to spend in the first place.

It's essentially like someone earning £20k a year, taking a £1 Million loan from a bank and then refusing to repay it because they've become accustom to living a wealthy lifestyle.

The whole thing is infuriating and nearly impossible to solve. People will try to offer solutions but drastically cutting public spending is the only way, soon enough the cuts will catch up with us and sadly the thing is, once the deficit is cut (Anytime from 2016 onwards), we'll still be in over a lifetime of debt. Pretty grim really, you can thank Gordon Brown's time as Chancellor for this, a man so wonderful he was promoted to Prime Minister and couldn't win an election.

[Chippiewill]

And the thing that gets me is the people marching have no idea of economics or business otherwise they'd realise that the pay cuts are the only way. Bring in Labour and they'll print MORE money, making the £ worthless and sending us into hyperinflation.

That's not the only way, the Americans got out of the previous recession (Back in the 40s) by printing money and encouraging spending and by getting people jobs. What the conservatives are doing is keeping us barely above the recession line.

[Marbian]

No... Because I know they are doing it for a reason. They aren't doing it to **** us over, they are doing it to help the country get back onto it's feet. I'm sure they'd be pushed out of goverment if there doing it to make our country even worse.. seriously.

[jam666]

That's not the only way, the Americans got out of the previous recession (Back in the 40s) by printing money and encouraging spending and by getting people jobs. What the conservatives are doing is keeping us barely above the recession line.

And look where america is now???.. its in a much, much, much worse position than the uk in terms of debt. Quite frankly america is a bubble thats about to burst.

You can quite easily say lets go crazy and print all the money we want.. BUT your living in a fantasy world as doing so would de-value the currency.

[alexxxxx]

I think most people accept that government cuts are necessary. There is just a big divide in how the cuts affect people. There is gross overspend and corruption in the MoD, but of course it's political suicide 'to cut back on our hard-working troops' - when the real issue is that they are paying £9 for lightbulbs and other waste.

Then there's the university cuts, putting a quota on international students, generally destructive as there will be poorer research, poorer graduates, worse in the long term.

The Government aren't doing enough to stimulate private investment with their cuts or spending in the private sector.

[Fez]

I agree with the cuts, to a certain extent, they are necessary and they are brutal and (in a sense) the way Thatcher did it. She did what she had to do and public opinion spun out of control, it was only the Falklands war that stopped the Tories from losing control while they brought Britain into the heart of the modern world.

I think they're necessary, but they haven't been controlled as well. For example, the arts budget has been slashed whereas foreign aid has increased in size. A few weeks back we heard of the massive aid we were given to India, essentially a 'British investment', while every other leader went other there to shake hands and create money, we decided to just hand it to them.

@this whole "left wing", "right wing" argument, I am definitely right wing myself. It's sensible individualism at the end of the day and it's shocking hearing my History teachers promote socialism and Obama-lite 'CHANGE'. People are criticising Obama for putting in $1trn worth of cuts because it's not enough, the truth is it's not enough, it's barely a fraction of the debt. It's the same case over here, as Alex said above, the problem isn't with the 'hard working troops' but with the MoD paying for (what amounts to) waste.

I agree with what the cuts stand for and some of the attempts, but not all of them are sensible in my opinion.

[Jordy]

I think most people accept that government cuts are necessary. There is just a big divide in how the cuts affect people. There is gross overspend and corruption in the MoD, but of course it's political suicide 'to cut back on our hard-working troops' - when the real issue is that they are paying £9 for lightbulbs and other waste.

Then there's the university cuts, putting a quota on international students, generally destructive as there will be poorer research, poorer graduates, worse in the long term.

The Government aren't doing enough to stimulate private investment with their cuts or spending in the private sector.

I think the MoD is one department where the cuts are appropriate. The actual department itself seems to be the problem with ridiculous salaries, pensions and of course the whole £9 lightbulb thing - These do of course need resolving.

However there has been rather a lot of frontline cuts, for instance many of the RAFs planes and Navy's ships have been scrapped early and we now have no aircraft carriers. In 2018 when two come into service, we'll be sharing one with the French and selling the other off. Aircraft orders also seem to be on hold and minimised whilst Trident has also been put on hold. And of course an awful lot of soldiers have been/will be laid off, many who are on active duty right now.

I'm not saying that their cuts have gone too far but we make very good use of our military, not long back they were stretched on two fronts in Iraq and Afghanistan. They're still in Afghanistan and now there's fumbling around in Libya too. So far the forces seem to be coping okay with the cuts but who knows what will happen in the future. History might be very critical of Cameron for his military cuts. If they went any further I suspect they'd be in a lot of trouble, but if they were any less it would be disproportional with other department cuts.

[Chippiewill]

And look where america is now???.. its in a much, much, much worse position than the uk in terms of debt. Quite frankly america is a bubble thats about to burst.

You can quite easily say lets go crazy and print all the money we want.. BUT your living in a fantasy world as doing so would de-value the currency.

It worked back in the 40s for the americans, if you recover the economy before serious damage to the currency is done then you'll be in a better position because you'll actually have an economy going rather than being in exactly the same position in five years time like the Conservatives are doing right now.

[jam666]

It worked back in the 40s for the americans, if you recover the economy before serious damage to the currency is done then you'll be in a better position because you'll actually have an economy going rather than being in exactly the same position in five years time like the Conservatives are doing right now.

Your solution wont work because this situation whilst in essence is similar to previous rescessions its not the same as this was caused by one group of people only and thats Labour.

The pound is already at an all time low against the euro.

The one example if any that we should follow is Canada. They had debt problems like ourselves and cut alot of things including blowing up hospitals because they couldnt afford them. Fast forward a dozen years and Canada is going about its business just fine.

I don't understand why people fail to see a pattern that is very clear and has arised. The pattern being labour spend, then spend some more and continuing spending till there is nothing left. A conservative government is then elected and solves all of our problems and makes the country prosper again. Labour is then elected again and makes the same mistakes of spending everything we have and MORE.. and then we end up with our present conservative / lib dem coalition.

I have no doubts that this pattern will probably happen again but it won't be third time lucky.