Warm Banks

Paladin said:
I note you alluded to "some Tories" and "those on the Christian right", and it is important to understand that some Tories don't hold these opinions and there are plenty of Christians who aren't on the right, politically.

I attend a Christian church in South Manchester. We aren't CofE, so we won't be listed by the Diocese of Manchester, but we provide a warm space for people to use in order to save from heating their own homes. We also provide free Wifi, a free meal to anyone who wants one (once a week), free or subsidised food working alongside our local food bank, and refreshments including soup and bread for visitors to our midweek cafe (on a no obligation, voluntary donation basis).

Some of this is funded and provided for by local charities and supermarkets, but the running and heating and lighting is provided by church members, many of whom live on the council estate where the church is, and most of whom are by no means wealthy.

This isn't done to assuage a feeling of guilt, or to affirm our faith per se. There are many verses in the Bible that encourage Christians to carry out charitable works, but all this stems from a heart of genuine concern for the vulnerable and those less fortunate in society.

It's important that we support everyone who gives of their own means, whether financially or in actions, to help those in need.
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You kind-hearted bastards, you're just propping up the Tories by alleviating the misery they cause.
 
metalblue said:
Austerity 1.0* wasn’t a mistake, how the burden was shared almost certainly was - and it went on longer than necessary. Austerity is reducing budget deficits, that is done either by reducing spending, raises taxes, or some of both - austerity in itself is not a bad thing. It’s entirely unfair to place the greatest burden on those least able to cope with it. It’s equally entirely unfair to expect the so called wealthy to pay for everything.

*Being pedantic Austerity 1.0 was right after WW2.
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Yeah, but under that austerity Labour reduced the national debt. The Tories increased it under theirs.
 
metalblue said:
Neither and both. It was due to government spending surpassing tax receipts. But now did that happen? Let’s deal with the common misconception, the bank bailout. Part of that spend is down to the bailout (£122bn in cash) but it’s not a structural debt so doesn’t itself require austerity to resolve. Debt isn’t bad but it creates interest obligations, interest payments are dead money it doesn’t create growth it just disappears but so long as your interest payments and obligations are below tax receipts - it’s all fine (especially when you have growth)

However financial crisis have, as history teaches us, caused deeper and longer recessions than “regular” recessions. This results in significantly lower tax receipts than during a regular “recession”. The Labour government had successfully achieved an optical illusion of no inflation growth during the 2000’s as Gordon Brown cast aside his own golden rule and became a prolific spender - but once that ran into much lower tax receipts this created a structural debt. Now you have financial markets in turmoil, borrowing is harder(especially when hit with the sovereign debt crisis), significantly lower tax receipts, and the government needing to increase its welfare spend. The perfect storm.

Had Gordon Brown not gone on his spending spree in 2000’s we might have weathered the storm - might. Had the banks not gone to shit we would have certainly been just fine with his spending, maybe a little tightening for the usual recessions but nothing like austerity.

Was austerity necessary? Absolutely. Did we need the austerity we got? I don’t think so, it’s given us a lost decade.
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Austerity was a sham based on the false assumptions of two American economists Rogoff and Rienhart. Their model purported to show that if a countries debt to GDP exceeds a certain level then it results in a long term effect on growth. There theory was discredited though as the data they used was wrong. Osborne and Cameron had bought into their nonsense as it gave them as excuse to act politically and shrink the state to approaching US levels of spending. Austerity was ideological not necessary,

Look where it has left us now.
 
Rascal said:
Austerity was a sham based on the false assumptions of two American economists Rogoff and Rienhart. Their model purported to show that if a countries debt to GDP exceeds a certain level then it results in a long term effect on growth. There theory was discredited though as the data they used was wrong. Osborne and Cameron had bought into their nonsense as it gave them as excuse to act politically and shrink the state to approaching US levels of spending. Austerity was ideological not necessary,

Look where it has left us now.
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Austerity is the principle of ensuring your income (tax receipts) don’t exceed your outgoings (public spending). There is nothing ideological about it as a principle, we all try to do it every day.

Where it can become ideological is in its implementation. The left would naturally find their home in austerity being managed through tax increases whilst retaining or expanding public spending (the logic here being less money for poor = worse outcomes for social policy, more government spending = growth), the right would naturally find their home in austerity being managed by decreasing public spending and retaining or reducing taxes - logic here is more money for people to spend = growth and government spending offering diminishing returns on growth. The middle find balance in a bit of both.

The approach Cameron and Osborne took seemed to focused on the solving the structural deficit with existing levers (tax and spend, well actually just spend) and not enough on solving it with growth. This, I believe, is what has given us a decade of stagnated growth. There are two things that erode debt, inflation and growth. When inflation was basically zero so why would you pursue policy that resulted in zero growth - although the OBR did rather optimistically predict growth of 2%+ based on the coalition government’s policy which was probably also a factor in these decisions but at some point someone must have realised they’d got it wrong.
 
kaz7 said:
Food bank collecting in tesco today , she gave me a list to pick one thing off to donate , i brought tinned fruit and soup and added a box of chocolate as a treat for someone
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The more people did this specially in winter the better someone eats over winter, I know someone will say we are subsidising the govt by giving to charity but all we can do as normal people is what we can in the here and now.
 
mexico1970 said:
The more people did this specially in winter the better someone eats over winter, I know someone will say we are subsidising the govt by giving to charity but all we can do as normal people is what we can in the here and now.
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Charities are amazing , i dont have much but it didnt cost much to help somebody out today
 
metalblue said:
...Where it can become ideological is in its implementation. The left would naturally find their home in austerity being managed through tax increases whilst retaining or expanding public spending (the logic here being less money for poor = worse outcomes for social policy, more government spending = growth)...
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Good grief - that's not austerity. That's how to avoid austerity.
 
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