DEM not gonna CON dis NATION: Rolling UK politics in the short-lived Cleggeron era

Entire defence budget to be replaced by £50 donation to Help For Heroes.

Aircraft carriers are now mobile force projection platforms due to lack of aircraft.

fucking joseph heller level shit, this

The final gutting of Social housing looks like being the next manifesto point on which the Lib Dems will roll over. any of them look like having the decency of resigning the whip?

Coalition expects 490,000 public sector jobs will go.
Scale of expected job losses revealed as Danny Alexander "inadvertently" allows two pages of tomorrow's spending review to be photographed:

http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Politics/Pix/pictures/2010/10/19/1287492590644/A-draft-copy-of-the-compr-001.jpg

Still, I'm sure the private sector will magically manage to soak up all of that...

In happier news, it looks like Marmite are about to bring the BNP to the brink of financial ruin.

Marmite, love it or love it.

think i'll emigrate, liking the look of kerguelen

So Murdoch gets what he wanted.

The BBC licence fee is frozen at £145.50 for six years - a 16% cut in real terms, and it is forced to fund the World Service & S4C that will total £340 million of the license fee money.

490,000. Fuck me!

As a currently serving Civil Servant, I can tell you that we're all finding this shit abso-fucking-lutely terrifying. All the comments on the various websites along the lines of "LOL - they'll have to get proper jobs now!" are just totally fucking annoying. We have got proper jobs now, fuckfaces!!! We'd like to keep them. We were busy running your fucking country, and being woefully underpaid for it, while you lot were out spending your copious bonuses on stupidly large mortgages (which most of us don't get paid anywhere near enough to get) and buying all sorts of shit on credit that you couldn't afford.

The framing of the debate along the lines of "they're all massively overpaid!" is pretty galling too. The current pay settlement, which gives pay rises to those earning less than £21k came up with a figure of 58% of current civil servants who'll get pay rises (which includes all of the admin grades and actually includes some members of the lower management grades too), and the average UK income (root mean square iirc) is approx £26k. So even the government's own figures show that we're paid substantially less than average. Then there's the pensions thing; the only decent prospect we had was a good ish) pension at the end of it, which will now be looted to pay the Child Benefit for couples with a household income of up to £80k. btw Large portions of the Civil Service haven't had a final salary pension scheme for nearly 7 years.

The Tories all fucking know this stuff! But they still choose to frame the debate in that way so that it plays to the mouthbreathing Daily Mail reading public who believe that the entire Civil Service is living in the lap of luxury. And the stupid fucking country is dumb enough to fall for it.

Then they spout off all these money saving benefit initiatives, as if they just thought of them, that have been fucking policy for the last 10 years! It's a wonder my head doesn't explode every time I read the news.

Thatcher admitted to hospital by the way. She'd better not die tomorrow and blow the cuts off the front pages.

Unless she dies minutes before they're announced, thus depriving her of the satisfaction of her legacy carrying on.

Oh I think she's had that for a while...

lol @ defence cut related masterchef tonight

Whose idea was it to unveil the defence cuts the day before everything else? It's just getting the public and the media in a cuts-bashing mood a day early...

The framing of the debate along the lines of "they're all massively overpaid!" is pretty galling too. The current pay settlement, which gives pay rises to those earning less than £21k came up with a figure of 58% of current civil servants who'll get pay rises (which includes all of the admin grades and actually includes some members of the lower management grades too), and the average UK income (root mean square iirc) is approx £26k. So even the government's own figures show that we're paid substantially less than average.

otm - when the minimum wage was introduced 30% of our office got a pay rise but all the headlines are about "four times the average wage" and only apply to senior civil servants. The vast majority of jobs lost will be clerical and technical staff earning less than the average wage.

Good to see the LD's falling on their swords for their overlords.

What you will see today is all the things that we had as our priorities in the election reflected in the statement...They will see the Liberal Democrat footprints, if you like, over the announcement. This is not something where the Tories have imposed their will on us.

The more they say that, the more I realise how far I've gone down the line from fury to laughter to just a pathetic shake of the head.

my lib dem mp julian huppert is a fucking douchenozzle (no idea what an actual douchenozzle might be) and even worse the lil scrote was at school with me

recent tweets:

So it's a big day today ... The Comprehensive Spending Review, or, what to do when someone else has spent all the money ...
about 1 hour ago via Echofon

what happened to revenues during the recession? why did the government have to borrow shit tonnes of money? stop being a cunt.

geekofhearts no credit to lib dems whatsoever in @guardian leader on trident cancellation. rapidly losing my respect for the paper.
about 21 hours ago via web
Retweeted by julianhuppert and 5 others

maybe that's because trident hasn't been cancelled you appalling twat.

hypnotic Had a good chat with @julianhuppert earlier. So reassuring to hear the words of commitment to scrapping tuition fees straight from him.
2:06 PM Oct 17th via web
Retweeted by julianhuppert and 3 others

how in the fuck can you tweet this with a straight face?

n e ways, ha bloody ha

I'm now so angry about the "someone else spent all the money" line that every time someone says it I have to shout at the radio/TV/computer "There was a fucking banking crisis you lying cunt!"

By the end of the day I think my shouting will just be reduced to fuck and cunt.

http://www.countdown.org/cover/countdownlogo.jpg

For me, nothing justifies democracy better than a bunch of randomers who don't understand the first fucking thing about economics having a radio debate about economics refereed by Nicky Cunting Campbell.

Wonder if DC will be hanging out with Anna Soubry in Nottingham today as planned despite her constituents taking a petition on council housing cuts to Number 10 yesterday?

Shout outs to all my Lib Dem brothers and sisters who've done so much to water down today's dismemberment of the welfare state.

Your public sector cuts are gonna be fucking grisly. and used to beat us with over here within a new york second.

» First they came for the quangos,
And I did not speak out because they're a bunch of squandering bureaucrats who perform no useful function.
» Then they came for the students,
And I did not speak out because I got through university when it was free so stuff them.
» Then they came for half a million civil servants,
And I did not speak out because there are 172 civil servants who earn more than the Prime Minister and that made me very angry.
» Then they came for the police,
And I did not speak out because I'm looking forward to committing more crimes and not getting caught.
» Then they came for the BBC,
And I did not speak out because Rupert has repeatedly assured me that the BBC are evil leftie wastrels.
» Then they came for the armed services,
And I did not speak out because I never thought they were all heroes anyway.
» Then they came for mummies on child benefit,
And I did not speak out because anyone earning 44K a year can always cut back on au pairs and tapas.
» Then they came for the arts,
And I did not speak out because a couple of DVDs on a Friday night is all the culture I need.
» Then they came for council tenants,
And I did not speak out because only losers live in council houses and I am not a loser.
» Then they came for rail subsidies,
And I did not speak out because I can drive there cheaper.
» Then they came for my pension,
And I did not speak out because I'm not going to be old and poor for ages.
» Then they came for the community centre round the corner,
And I did not speak out, although I'll miss the Spanish evening classes, and the jumble sales they used to run were good, and my nan went there a lot, and I guess they kept those annoying kids off the streets.
» Then they came for the benefit cheats,
And I did not speak out because anyone on benefit is a cheat in my book.
» Then they came for my local hospital,
And I did not speak out because I'm not planning on being ill any time soon.
» Then they came for the bankers,
And I said Oi! No! Bankers perform a crucial role in our economy and their obscene bonuses must be protected at all costs.
» Then they came for my children's future,
And I did not speak out because they can jolly well make their own way in life.
» Then they came for all the projects the last government started,
And I did not speak out because the entire global crisis was Gordon's fault.
» Then they came for the public sector,
And I did not speak out because the private sector can easily absorb half a million unemployed losers on part-time minimum wages.
» Then they came for something fundamental,
And I did not speak out because "we simply can't afford it".
» Then they came for the welfare state,
And I did not speak out because I'd forgotten what life was like before we had one.
» Then they came for my next-door neighbour,
And I did not speak out because cuts aren't a problem when they happen to someone else.
» Then they came for me,
And by then mine was just another livelihood on the bonfire and nobody gave a damn.
» And then they smiled, state rolled back, job done.

t-shirt.

protect the benefit cheats at all costs

Nobody's saying that dude. Obviously if we can stamp out fraud from the benefits system then the economy's saved and we can all have a free Beemer.

But maybe best to privatise the NHS just to be on the safe side.

Wd direct the gentleman to my earlier point that our economy kinda relies upon their being a pool of people on the perma-dole btw.

I'm public sector, i already have a beemer. not as basic, obv, but it's one of my expenses perks so it looks like i'm only earning €400 a week. result!

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/oct/19/osborne-public-wrath-labour-blame-game

Pretty much 100% OTM.

yep

If Labour's spending was so wildly out of control, why did the Tories promise to match their plans, pound for pound, all the way until November 2008? Why didn't Osborne and Cameron howl in protest at the time?

this is it really. there's lots you can say about the massive failures of the last govt, but the idea that spending was wildly out of control* before the recession hit is bollocks.

*let's not mention off-books borrowing etc

Public spending as a percecentage of GDP for Labour up until the banking crisis was on average lower than that of the previous Tory governments:

1981 45.29 Tory
1982 45.56 Tory
1983 43.2 Tory
1984 42.59 Tory
1985 41.71 Tory
1986 40.76 Tory
1987 38.4 Tory
1988 36.28 Tory
1989 34.25 Tory
1990 35.23 Tory
1991 36.45 Tory
1992 37.97 Tory
1993 39.84 Tory
1994 39.9 Tory
1995 40.76 Tory
1996 39.58 Tory
1997 38.35 Labour
1998 36.96 Labour
1999 35.33 Labour
2000 34.75 Labour
2001 35.41 Labour
2002 35.82 Labour
2003 36.43 Labour
2004 37.53 Labour
2005 38.94 Labour
2006 37.91 Labour
2007 38.89 Labour
2008 39.75 Labour
2009 45.23 Labour

Look at how much Thatcher was spending for fucks sake! The idea that Labour was just SPEND SPEND SPEND is complete bullshit.

Love that Niemoller homage you posted Matt.

Some would argue that wasn't necessarily a good thing, incidentally.

The stats misleading anyway, Labour had a long period of "prosperity" and economic growth, Thatcher was spending a shitload on welfare payments because so many people had been made unemployed, while health and education were seriously underspent on during her tenure.

It was still lower than most of the Clarke 'boom' years, mind you..

the ft on the coalition's attitude to cuts causing another downturn:

As one senior Treasury figure put it: "Nobody knows what the outcome is going to be – and that includes the politicians."

Another went further. "Not only does the coalition have no real sense of how the cuts will turn out but in a funny way they don't care."

"funny"

"funny"

was beaten to the punch but thought fuck it anyway.

Plus QUELLE SURP TORY GOVERNMENT NOT MUCH BOTHERED ABOUT CASUALTIES OF TORY ECONOMIC POLICY WHO'D'VE THUNK IT?

oh be fair, give them a chance

(ok i'm actually trolling there)

Pretty sure there are a lot of senior figures in the Treasury who think this is a load of bollocks.

http://i.thisislondon.co.uk/i/pix/2010/10/Osbournehome415.jpg

Obviously cutting back on gym membership.

And a suit that fucking fits him properly.

The suit is big so we can all get in it together.