I think there are a few reasons why they sit on their hands and watch from afar whilst collecting what is by most measures an impressive salary and even more impressive expenses and retirement package for a five year contract...



1. If they have an alternative plan then they don't have a "personality" to present it for them, there is no-one in their team with half an ounce of gravitas to make it sound like he knows that his solution is the best - LibDems had one in opposition in Vince Cable, everyone wanted to interview him in opposition but he's been shown to be a sham mouthpiece quoting only theories since being shuffled sideways into a job with no real purpose.



2. They don't have an alternative plan that much is clear, their strategy is to wait for five years, draw the salary and then walk back into power on the back of a disastrous Tory/LibDem term which even a five year old child could shoot down at the election televised debates.



3. There is no plan anywhere in the world that could offer a quick solution, there are people who claim that there is but those people are simply quoting theories, truth is that the whole world economic cycle has been shown and proved to be an impossible dream driven by con-men, shysters, gamblers, smoke and mirrors and some of Sooties magic dust, even last week we saw that the "experts" do not have a clue what is happening when statements were made of GDP figures showing the UK slipping into another recession when in fact they were several points better than the "experts" thought they would be - those self same "experts" would have gambled your pension scheme on their "predictions" last week based on their "expert" knowledge.

What relevence does this have to me highlighting your incorrect interpretation of statistics?

That's the simplistic take on it that the coalition have been pushing all along.

If it were as simple as that no-one would take out a mortgage and no business would borrow to upgrade machinery.

I have seen MPs freely interchanging the terms deficit and debt as though they are the same thing ... which makes one wonder, do they actually know the difference between deficit, structural deficit and debt, and if they do, why are they using one term to mean the other?



Of course, if you have a deficit, then you want to eliminate it at some point, especially if it's structural.

Is a recession the time to do it?

In some ways partly yes, and others no.

If one's family finances are broke, you'd stop buying luxuries but you wouldn't stop buying your travel season ticket that gets you to work.

In a national economy you also have the economy itself to think about ... i.e. GDP ... if you sack loads of people, it costs you in benefit payments and also has a knock-on effect in that other people lose their jobs too, not just the ones you sacked.

That spirals down and down.

And the spin works. People can understand the concept of a maxed out credit card but don't understand how inflation affects debt and what the ability to print money can have on how you manage an economy. In other words the spin is deliberately misleading yet people fall for it.



This government has taken this kind of spin to a new level and my favorite has always been "Why should the postman pay tax towards the students fees?" which implied two things. 1. The postman was paying a significant amount of their taxes that was put toward to block grant. 2. If the block grant was abolished the postman would consequently save a shed load on their taxes.



Neither is true. Due to the progressive nature of taxation if you work out the %'s a postman on a basic postmans salary paid less than £30 [ia year[/i towards the block grant and their income tax didn't change anyway. They are no better off as a result.



What I don't get is what someone else mentioned is that when it's easy to see such obvious things like this is why Labour don't [udirectly challenge the spin[/u. In this example they don't even have to say they are opposed to tuition fee increases (though I wish they would) but to simply point out forcefully that the way the change was being sold was deliberately misleading and deliberately divisive. They would then be able to question the motive for the change. Is it really austerity or the privatisation of higher education?



It's very frustrating the government is being given such an easy ride.

Indeed, I don't know why they don't.

One of Blair's pre-election successes was the so-called "Rebuttal Unit", set up at Millbank to knock-back Conservative accusations of uncosted spending and to challenge/disprove fuzzy promises/predictions/claims of success from the Conservatives.

If set up again, once the press knew of it they'd be phoning it all the time.

Austerity measures mean that over 25% of the working population in Spain is on the dole.



What is the economy of Spain spending on them and their families to stop them from starving?



What is the economy of Spain earning from this 25% of what [icould[/i be productive workers?



What is the economy of Spain earning extra from sales tax etc by reason of these people having a hugely reduced disposable income?



As businesses wither and die for lack of customers with money, what is the economy of Spain earning as this infrastructure collapses in a heap?

But is not all that a direct result of a nation previously living above its productive means? EU subsidiay, piggy backing on Germany's strong currency, artificially high wages, cheap credit, property bubble. Isn't this just the awful reality of all those "good" years coming home to roost? All this talk of a choice between "austerity" and "growth" is utter nonsense.



The so called "growth" strategy of paying people artificially high wages (often to do artificial jobs) and providing them with easy spending power is what lead to the financial crisis. It has been tried and failed on a monumental scale.



People's thinking needs to move beyond the inane and think of how to tackle the reality. That's one of the reasons why Labour will lose the next election - they have no strategy for the UK that will stand up to the public's scrutiny.

And that's where it all falls down. The public, such as they are, are more interested in who the douche from One Direction is shagging at the moment and doesn't Kate look great now she's pregnant etc, than the realities of sorting out the mess the banks left us with. The public's scrutiny will be like the blind leading the blind (if there was any scrutiny worth the name now, Gideon's plans would be toast).

I'm sorry Dally but I've run out of patience with your (probably deliberate) missing of the point.

Apart from a bit about it raining on polling day and Emmerdale and Corry are on so not even bothering to cast a vote anyway, that is pretty spot on.

No.





Great. When will you start?

So, you must be arguing that Spain's "growing" economy was sustainable in its previous form. If that was the case why the austerity now, why isn't it still powering ahead and recruiting unemployed people from other EU member states?