Public borrowing still soaring as April figures cast light on those 'cuts'

[-:Undertaker:-]

I'm quite sure the government know what they're doing better than any of us

Like the last government which raised public spending by 50% and thus ran up debts of £7.9tn?

No-one is saying that there should not be some cuts but it is the way they are being done - hitting the less advantaged harder than anything else.

So you would agree with the likes of people such as myself, UKIP, Nigel Farage, Peter Hitchens, Simon Heffer and others that we should be cutting foreign aid, the European Union and so forth? If so, why will you not vote for this?

If the above is not the case, what do you propose to cut instead?

Considering the conservatives are supposed to be the party of business
I am amazed that they have withdrawn a 35 ml grant to Lotus to get the Lotus Esprit marketed again in favour of Toyota for their Espace.

And how many jobs do you think have been lost/not grown around the country as a consquence to the government raising this £35m to bail out a mere 100 jobs which are proving to be unproductive anyway? a good read on government subsidies would do some good, along with a look at the 1970s.

Where do you think this money comes from? it comes from individuals, individuals who know how to invest - unlike the state.

I also saw Peter Hitchens on 'Question Time' the other night and I can now see who writes your scripts almost word for word including if you believe in helping Afghanistan 'you should join up'. LOL Maybe you should try writing them yourself?

Well its true i'm afraid and many conservatives/libertarians raise the point along with the likes of George Galloway that people such as yourself and that young man on Question Time are all for sending our military around the world (it was Libya actually, not Afghanistan) to police the world at great human and financial cost, but you yourself simply refuse to sign up to enforce this 'moral obligation' you state we, the west, have.

Even when I was left wing like yourself back around 2003 opposing the Iraq war I asked myself why it was that the children of the politicians are rarely ever the ones to sign up and take part in these wars, which is a point Michael Moore raises in Farenheit 9/11. After all, would you want your children to sacrafice themselves in Libya or Afghanistan in a fruitless battle of which this country has little or no interest in?

Would appreciate replies to both parts.

Just out of curiosity, how does spending more than we're saving mean that cuts haven't happened? I'm not waving any banners against cuts because it frankly means very little to me personally and I'm selfish like that, but I don't think you can really suggest that there are no cuts just because the government's dishing out more money elsewhere. It's like if I sold my car for £400 and bought some shoes for £600, it doesn't mean I've still got my car

Because government spending is rising, just last months figures showed that the government spent something around £10bn more this April than April 2011.. i'm all for cuts across the board, but its a myth they are occuring.

[FlyingJesus]

You don't seem to understand how this works Dan. Spending can rise, yet certain cuts have still happened and it isn't a myth when the figures have been released and confirmed by the government themselves. What kind of logic are you trying to apply here? I'll try an example that might be easier for you personally this time as you didn't seem to get my last one:

Let's say you currently spend £20 a month on crap indie CDs and £10 a month on haircuts. Now, let's say you were to stop buying so much music and that figure was down to just £5 a month, but instead of saving that money you decided you could afford to go to a more upmarket hairdresser and spent £60 a month on your haircuts. In the new spending schemes you'd be paying out £65 instead of £30 a month, but the cuts (look I put it in bold red so you can't miss it) you'd made on CD expenditure would still be very real. What you are attempting to suggest is that an overall increase in spending negates the fact that cuts (there's that word again) have happened

[-:Undertaker:-]

You don't seem to understand how this works Dan. Spending can rise, yet certain cuts have still happened and it isn't a myth when the figures have been released and confirmed by the government themselves. What kind of logic are you trying to apply here? I'll try an example that might be easier for you personally this time as you didn't seem to get my last one:

Let's say you currently spend £20 a month on crap indie CDs and £10 a month on haircuts. Now, let's say you were to stop buying so much music and that figure was down to just £5 a month, but instead of saving that money you decided you could afford to go to a more upmarket hairdresser and spent £60 a month on your haircuts. In the new spending schemes you'd be paying out £65 instead of £30 a month, but the cuts (look I put it in bold red so you can't miss it) you'd made on CD expenditure would still be very real. What you are attempting to suggest is that an overall increase in spending negates the fact that cuts (there's that word again) have happened

Because of the fact that the government has admitted that its aim is not to get the debt itself down, but the deficit which it is struggling/failing to do- as I stated before, the opposite is happening. In any case that the government is diverting more money to paying the debts, it is not worth the effort due to the fact that the more it continues to borrow the higher its interest payments are climbing (of which they are) therefore its self-defeating. The example you give suggests that they may be moving funding around, thats true as foreign aid and so forth are outgrowing other parts in terms of funding - but as I point out, there is no effort being made to cut the deficit and the debt.

The only way they can get the debt down is either by defaulting or by cutting along with encouraging growth both of which go hand in hand. This government is continuing to overspend even by its own aim (to rid the deficit) and judging by its success in that (unsuccessful) it won't even manage that. By 2015 unless something drastic changes from now to then, the debt will be higher than it was in May 2010. Therefore, you have no 'cuts'. We'd have to get spending down to what we can afford firstly (meaning hefty cuts), then we would have to cut even futher in order to pay off the debts should we choose to do that instead of a default on the debts - this is not happening.

More figures; http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/c...is-rising.html

Next year, the OBR projects that spending will rise to £710 billion while receipts will be £588 billion. The fact that Mr Osborne predicts that annual spending is due to rise over the next four years by £50 billion and our national debt by another £300 billion seems to be one of the best-kept secrets in British politics.

[FlyingJesus]

Cuts in one area + overspending in another = cuts + spending

Does not equal no cuts

[-:Undertaker:-]

Cuts in one area + overspending in another = cuts + spending

Does not equal no cuts

I'm not saying flat out that there haven't been budget cuts in parts of departments, that happened even under Labour yet we don't class that as 'cutting' in terms of how goverment spends as its simply moving government spending around (in the instance of university fees) as government continued to spend more and run up more debts just as this government is and is forecast to continue to do so using their own figures which exclude PFI schemes and so forth.

The figures show that our spending is increasing not decreasing and our debt is to continue to grow.. so what are these 'cuts' to public spending we keep hearing about? they simply do not exist, Britain is still on the road to going bankrupt. When I talk about cuts, I talk about government spending and whether or not this is being cut as is claimed but of which is not happening (see figures I quoted).

[Firehorse]

Our government is stupid, no matter who is in the hotseat.

We give billions to the European Union in Carbon Taxes, seriously wtf. Paying tax for something we manage to keep low in comparison very well anyway and for every coal power station that is shut down in the uk, 100 new ones are built in china.
We give billions in aid to china, when they have now got a stronger economy than we do. (Our money?)
We give billions in aid to india, when most of that money doesn't end up where it's supposed to and the money should be used to take people out of poverty in our own country first. Certainly?
£1bn of aid gets sent to india every year, even though india spends £20bn per year on defence.
The cuts are only small things that will save little money but affect our every day lives so that we can feel like good is being done, even though it isn't. Such as reducing rubbish removals.

The entire european union is a money drain too, all they do for us is let people into the country and impose laws which we otherwise wouldn't have to deal with, such as the law where it is now illegal to provide chinese herbs in capsules - you have to taste them if you take them now thanks to the backhands of cash being passed from the pharmaceutical companies to the corrupt politicians.

The entire thing is **** really. If we stopped giving aid to countries that are richer than us anyway but only have poverty because they're too corrupt to manage their own population propperly then our financial crisis would pretty much be solved. If Britain was a person I'd call them a right idiot.

[Chippiewill]

Oh wonderful, we're now giving £814m away because we're not giving enough away already...

UK Prime Minister David Cameron has pledged £814m to help vaccinate children around the world against preventable diseases like pneumonia.

He made the announcement at a summit in London where countries were being asked to give an extra £2.3bn ($3.7bn) by 2015 for child vaccines.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-13744922

If we're having to borrow money it's not going to be helpful in the long run to give more away MATH MAKES SENSE.