The Election Thread

[sharn]

He says, while scrounging for information.

Go do some research for yourself, you're making this too easy for the "I'm in good health and have a job, the scroungers should try harder" brigade.

I may have missed something but isn't the whole point of a public forum is to discuss/share information that you have found? And you also benefit from information that others have found? I myself wouldnt really call appreciating there being some useful information - on a website you already visit frequently - scrounging? But it's interesting to try and understand others points of view.

As for Mark highlighting and sharing relevant information about current affairs - I think this is great and i have respect for him doing that - I for one appreciate it and feel it's important.

Personally iv'e adopted the 'N.W.O - Everything these people do is in opposition to your best interests ( if indeed you wish to be a Free Human being)' approach - so it's nice and easy for me - i just presume theyre doing everything they can to systematically destabilize and impose their rule upon mankind

Sooner or later we're gona have to stop serving these people.

[Milford Cubicle]

That's also why I'm happy to point these things out because hopefully it might help some people bear in mind what actually goes on in the government rather than seeing the artificially created growth in election years (something that happens time and time again - note the huge drop post election last time when cuts were made, which were then lifted and brought the economy to life again, which appears to be about to happen yet again now) and buying into the hype that the largely right-wing media choose to propagate in the run-up to the election itself (which can be the only reason that benefit fraud and immigration are seen as such huge issues when their effect on the economy, the treasury, the deficit and so on are minimal compared to other more relevant issues).

“A return to growth after austerity has been put on hold is not at all surprising. As I pointed out recently, if this counts as a policy success, why not try repeatedly hitting yourself in the face for a few minutes? After all, it will feel great when you stop.” Paul Krugman

http://www.theguardian.com/business/2015/apr/28/top-economist-attacks-tory-austerity-labours-limp-response-paul-krugman

Edited May 17, 2015 by Milford Cubicle

[Mark W]

In terms of austerity, the first few bullet points in this are pretty enlightening. http://cep.lse.ac.uk/pubs/download/EA020.pdf

The "tl;dr" version:

- At the end of 2014, the UK was 16% poorer than would be expected on pre-crisis trends

- Austerity reduced growth by 1% in both 2010-11 and 2011-12, although that is likely to be an underestimation of the real scale of it

In case you're thinking "1% isn't much", that's 1% of around $2.52trillion. So basically, a f**king lot of money purely on the whim of George Osborne, despite the masses of evidence suggesting that what happened would happen. Austerity was reduced in 2012-2013, and look at the GDP increase - this in spite of saying in early 2012: "Facing mounting pressure to temper spending cuts in the interests of restoring growth, the chancellor, George Osborne, stuck to his guns, saying: "I think we've got the right plan, we've got to stick to it.""

He was demonstrably wrong then, so voting for more harsher austerity than before seems slightly counter-intuitive.

[sharn]

*Mark, you seem to have a finger on the pulse with this.. what do you expect us to see in the next few years here in the u.k?*

*And what do you think this will mean for your average working family?*

*Do you agree with the ideas of some who suggest learning how to make big fireworks go off under the houses of Parliment is a reasonable way to solve these problems?*

(Thats my Day time politics interview voice)