Wednesday 15 January 2014

"George Osborne issues 'reform or decline' warning to UK"

From the BBC:

The United Kingdom is falling behind many other European countries, India and China and must reform if it wants to halt the decline, George Osborne has warned.

In a speech the chancellor pointed to the country's spending on welfare-for-the-wealthy and its "competitiveness problem".

"We can't go on like this," he said at a conference organised by two UK-sceptic groups.

It followed the Conservative leadership rejecting a call from 95 of its MPs to allow Parliament to block interest subsidies to banks and the ripping up of planning laws for the benefit of large land-bankers.

Labour said David Cameron's "weakness" regarding his party was preventing reform, while the UK Independence Party said the prime minister had repeatedly "caved in" to horrible young people who wanted more affordable housing.

Earlier this week Home Secretary Theresa May confirmed that the United Kingdom's banking and landowner subsidies would continue to be paid out of taxes levied on all its citizens and other businesses and the Conservative backbench MPs' plan was unworkable.

3 comments:

Tim Almond said...

Spot on.

I'm really not sure who to vote for at the next election, but the Tories are in second to last place ahead of the insane greens.

I always quite liked the more liberal-minded Tories. Not saying they were perfect, but there's a lot of stuff that Thatcher and Major did right. And I think Hague has talent, but sadly shot his bolt too early.

But this lot are old Tories of the noblesse oblige wing - looking after people rather than leaving money in people's pockets to look after themselves and just muddling along not rocking the boat. This talk on the EU is just that. They've had plenty of opportunities to throw spanners into the EU if they'd really wanted to.

The only thing I think they've done right is capping HB, but even that's still at a high level. Raising the income tax threshold was down to the Lib Dems.

At least Labour want to build some houses...

Mark Wadsworth said...

TS, "who to vote for" is easy.

Join YPP and stand as a candidate - then you can a) vote for yourself and b) vote for sensible all round policies.

Job done.

Bayard said...

"But this lot are old Tories of the noblesse oblige wing"

I beg to differ. This lot are new Tories of the "I'm all right Jack" wing. The old "one nation" Tories had at least some idea of looking after those who were never going to vote for them. This current lot couldn't give a shit and are only interested in looking after No 1.