Thanks Austerity indeed.... the 6 years break in unfettered unnecessary wasteful spending that George Osborne imposed after 13 years of Blair/Brown/Darling's spend spend spend regime was just what was needed to stabilise our economy.

Imagine what the deficit would be like now if Balls had been given the green light by Miliband in 2010 - we have definitely dodged a bullet there. Balls was even having discussions with Greek finance ministers FFS.

Now that we've reigned in our spending and steadied the ship maybe now it is time to invest in a modest schedule of works to improve our infrastructure? That's a different proposition than the massive state schemes that Balls was advocating.

As for your last paragraph - what guff.

I wrote that to get a reaction from you and I even telegraphed your exact response to my wife as I hit the send button.

As a person with no children I have no opinions on the merits of punishing them or other methods of parental control.

I do know what presses your buttons though.

Would this be the same George Osborne who earlier this year, while on a trip to the US, admitted to 'austerity' being a mistake?

Buy Litecoin.

Well everyone can blame everything on Brexit for the next decade so it's all a freebie.

The tories did it to help the transistion from local public services to private run for profit public IMHO, austerity was an excuse for ideological slashing of public services.

How do I propose to reduce the national debt? Is questioning me about something quite complex really your argument against the s*** the Tories have put us all in?

Borrow even more, like what hammond has said this week?

Edited by nickgusset (24 Nov 2016 2.02pm)

You say that as if George Osborne isn't the chancellor who borrowed the most in history.

Austerity at that point in the cycle was a mistake. And not only would it have been a mistake anyway, but it failed. It delivered the slowest recovery in modern history and still hasn't produced anywhere near a balanced budget despite the promises.

"It's almost like a moral decision. Except not really cos noone is going to find out," Jez, Peep Show

Eye-watering level of debt according to Hammond the debt that was supposed to be re-paid by the end of the first Tory 5 year govt. in fact thats why they were elected.

Its now nearly 1.7 trillion and in 4 years it will be 1.95 trillion pounds.

Apart from the usual tinkering around its the same policies continued and brexit just to f**k us all up completely add on any number to 122 billions.

The 14 year old girl saying to her gran 'Gran you've ruined my future' what hope for the young saddled with tory debt. 1.95 trillion.

Here's an idea Brexiteers - you wanted it how would you like to pay for it?