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Listed below are comments made by hants_gw between Monday, 12th October 2009 and Thursday, 26th November 2009.

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• A healthy squeeze (II) 5:50pm on 26 Nov 2009 RE: 5. Michael
  
  "It really would be helpful to know the scale of the spending cuts/tax increases that will be needed to meet the £90 billion structural deficit."
  
  It would, but unfortunately that only scratches the surface of the problem. Bear in mind that Brown's recently announced plan to "halve the deficit within four years" would bring the deficit down to around £90 billion per year in 2013. However, by then we will owe about 90% of GDP or around £1.2 trillion and the debt will still be growing at around 6% of GDP per year.
  
  The savings you are looking for - around £90 billion in either spending cuts or tax rises - represents about 12% of current government spending, and even if implemented instantly would only get us to the point where the accumulated debt stopped growing. We would still owe £1.2 trillion. In reality the structural deficit won't be cut instantly; if it falls at all, it will do so slowly, over a period of years, with the result that the total debt continues to rise, certainly over 100% of GDP, and probably more. Indeed until (or unless) the deficit falls below about £30 billion then the total debt will continue rising relative to GDP - and that assumes that the economy returns to its trend growth of 2% or so per year. By the way, if interest rates are only 3% at that point we will be paying around around £45 billion per year in interest alone. Personally I think Richard Murphy's £47 billion tax rise is a fantasy (and I think he knows it too) but even if it were real, within 5 years it will be barely enough to pay the interest on the total debt.
  
  "It does appear that at present everyone is pushing their own particular proposals in the belief that they will be sufficient to close the entire gaping fiscal hole. I have not yet heard of any proposals that come anywhere near to providing the overall amount of savings we need in a realistic way."
  
  Yes, spot on. My fear is that there isn't a way at all. Certainly it is clear that the Labour party intends the accumulated debt to become permanent and at best they hope to erode the deficit until the total debt stabilises relative to GDP at some point well north of 100%. It's not at all clear what the Conservatives plan to do.
  
• Reasons to be careful 1:02pm on 23 Nov 2009 RE: 23. Fubar_Saunders
  
  "Aint that the truth... and in these hands, these goldfish-memoried minds, we place the future of the nation? The dumbing down is truly working at pace."
  
  I'm coming round to viewing the next election as almost a collective intelligence test for UK voters.
  
  It doesn't require much effort to work out that Brown's economic plans involve running government debt up to at least 100% of GDP and then never paying any of it back. Indeed he probably won't even be able to get borrowing down to the point where the debt remains constant relative to any subsequent GDP growth. That means the debt will be permanent and self-sustaining. New Labour aren't admitting to that yet, but the facts are clear enough. It follows that voting New Labour is a vote for long term economic collapse and hence a rather cruel test of intelligence. It will be interesting to see if we, as a country, pass.
• Plotters, quitters and fighters 5:52pm on 16 Nov 2009 RE: 47. stanblogger
  
  "The Tories have made a tactical mistake by talking up the need for cuts."
  
  So, facing facts is a "tactical mistake". If true, Britain's voters deserve what they will get.
  
  "Labour must make it very clear that under Labour the cuts would not fall on lower and middle income groups. The Chancellor could discover that in order to catch up with the recoveries in Europe and the US, he needs to match the fiscal stimuli that they have applied and actually cut lower and middle income taxes dramatically."
  
  You haven't a clue, have you?
  
  "To pay for this, unfortunately the new 50% rate on high incomes will not be enough, he will need to have an even higher rate for very high incomes, say 60%, on incomes over, say £200k, whether earned at home or abroad."
  
  Sigh. It's just arithmetic. Simple arithmetic. You don't need any fancy economics or econometrics or derivatives or any of that clever stuff - just simple arithmetic. Let me show you.
  
  Let's suppose someone earning £200,000 per year pays 40% tax on all of it. (They won't, thanks to allowances and accountants, so this is a slight over-estimate.) The tax take is then £80,000. Now lets assume your suggestion is implemented and the rate goes up to 60%. The tax take is then £120,000 - yielding an "extra" £40,000.
  
  The current government is borrowing around £180 billion per year. Let's suppose we only want your tax rise to pay for half of that - or just the £90,000,000,000. It would take 2,250,000 - that's 2 million, two hundred and fifty thousand such people to raise it. Are you really fantasising that the UK is home to more than 2 million people earning that much? And that's before we ask how many of them will hang around to watch a proven failure like Gordon Brown squander well over half their earnings on repaying the cost of his incompetence. Oh, and it's also before we pay for the "dramatic" tax cuts that you want for people on lower and middle incomes.
  
  "The Tories will have to oppose this on behalf of their very wealthy supporters, and will not be able to explain how they could match labour increases for most people, allowing Labour to label them as the rich man's party."
  
  No, the Tories won't have to oppose it at all. It is plainly insane. It is a good policy in one respect. It gives the voters a clear choice between a variety of parties that might have some good ideas and a New Labour party that openly advocates national suicide.
• First draft of UK economic history 10:27am on 23 Oct 2009 Round of applause for the linked GDP graph. Honest, clear and informative.
  
  Thank you.
• Map of the Week: Forgotten white working classes 1:50pm on 16 Oct 2009 RE: 115. DisgustedOfMitcham2
  
  "But anyway, let's say for the sake of argument that it's true that rates for building workers have been cut in half."
  
  So, is it the Labour party MP or the Guardian columnist who might be lying?
  
  "That's bad news if you're a builder, ..."
  
  Yes, very. Doubly so, since their earnings probably weren't that great to begin with.
  
  " but it's good news for pretty much anyone else, isn't it?"
  
  Fairly obviously, no it isn't.
  
  "In general, competition is good for a healthy economy."
  
  In this particular case the "good" would include -
  
  1. A big drop in the spending power of the local building workers which is bad for them, their families and the local economy
  
  2. The very real risk that they will be pushed onto benefits - making them a drain on the taxpayer.
  
  3. The possibility that living on benefits may become a way of life (especially for their children) making them a permanent drain on the taxpayer.
  
  The money that is no longer spent on local builders is now either in the hands of immigrant workers or the employer. This leads us on to
  
  4. The employer might spend it on foreign investments, holidays, imported luxury cars and so on, so that the money is lost not just from the local economy but to the whole UK. Given how many UK businesses are now foreign owned this is actually quite likely.
  
  5. The immigrant worker may save the money and eventually go home - so again the money is lost to the UK. Alternatively, they may stay indefinitely and regularly send money back to the old country. These payments are called remittances and according to the BBC are an important source of foreign earnings for several countries ie a significant loss to ours.
  
  Points 2 and 4 combined should be familiar. This is the same trick the banks have pulled where profits and benefits are privatised but costs and burdens are socialised ie pushed off onto the tax payer.
  
  
• Map of the Week: Forgotten white working classes 11:49am on 16 Oct 2009 RE 97. DisgustedOfMitcham2
  
  "My main point, however, still stands. Would you like to tell us, using verifiable evidence, what you think the problem is with immigration and multiculturalism?"
  
  Mass immigration is bad because it damages the life chances of the existing working poor or those who are benefit dependent but who might aspire to be working poor. This is easy to see from basic economic principles but given your aversion to the Daily Mail I'll opt for that well known far right rag the Guardian and its equally xenophobic columnist Polly Toynbee.
  
  "They [immigrants] have few costs and many are willing to sleep on floors to save money."
  
  "Denham [John Denham, MP] says the arrival of 14,000 Poles in Southampton has cut rates for building workers by half."
  
  "London, where migration is greatest, also has the highest unemployment, especially among British-born ethnic minorities."
  
  "Poor families in this most expensive city can't pay for childcare, and compete for jobs with single migrants willing to take less than a living wage. But the rich prosper: restaurants, cleaners and all other services are cheaper because wages are low."
  
  There's lots more like that. Furthermore, she is mostly talking about legal immigration. Since illegals are often willing (or forced) to accept below minimum wage, they make the problem even worse.
  
  As Toynbee says, mass immigration benefits the pampered, middle class but is a disaster for the low-skilled and poorly educated.
• Map of the Week: Forgotten white working classes 12:53pm on 15 Oct 2009 RE: 57. jayfurneaux
  
  "Even if a magic wand was waved and all non-whites vanished from the UK (be honest, that is the aganda of many of the comments above) I doubt the white working classe's core attitudes of blame/victimhood and the expectation that it’s up to someone else to help them (not themselves, oh-no) would change."
  
  No, that's wrong. I have no problem with immigrants taking jobs as television newsreaders, Guardian newspaper columnists or local government chief executives - and thereby driving down the salaries for those jobs, preferably very steeply. Indeed, I would positively welcome it.
  
  The problem comes when immigrants take low-paid jobs, and depress the low salaries even further. You must have heard of the poverty trap? You know, people trapped on benefit because any job they can get pays less than the benefits they lose by working. Immigration makes that problem worse by depressing earnings even further. Read post 30 by LostinBlues - that explains it really well.
  
  Just suppose that a future government, strapped for cash, decides to outsource the BBC's London-based news reading to India. India has lots of well-educated, English speaking workers and a growing technology sector. Modern communications mean that British news programs could easily be sourced from India at a fraction of the cost of doing so in London and suddenly lots of well-paid, metropolitan BBC jobs would just disappear. It's a fantasy, but if it did happen, do you really believe that the BBC would continue to tell us such a one-sided story about the "benefits" of globalisation? Or might we find that newly unemployed (and aggrieved) newsreaders, researchers, producers and so on were suddenly sounding a lot like the inhabitants of New Parks?
• Map of the Week: Forgotten white working classes 09:19am on 15 Oct 2009 Mark,
  
  I'd like to return to a point others have mentioned.
  
  "The issue is really community psychology: the failure by political leaders to convince the people on white working class estates like New Parks that globalisation, multiculturalism and diversity are to their benefit."
  
  Suppose we re-write this as -
  
  "The issue is really metropolitan middle-class psychology: the failure by realists to convince the people in safe, upper middle class jobs like the BBC that globalisation, multiculturalism and diversity are an unmitigated disaster for Britain."
  
  How persuadable are you? In fact, how would you feel to be talked about in this way? If the BBC's enthusiasm for "globalisation, multiculturalism and diversity" is based in fact then wouldn't it be quite annoying to be the target of some government mandated campaign of "persuasion" to convince you that you have completely misunderstood?
  
  I think it's good that you are willing to address this subject. Few other journalists are. However, it would be even better if you could talk about this issue on the assumption that the people of New Parks are describing the reality that they see around them and not simply indulging themselves in a paranoid fantasy.
• Asset sale: Deja vu? 11:20pm on 12 Oct 2009 RE: 110. mrsbloggs13c2
  
  "Which organ, for example, has published, in stark terms, the total size of the current debt and the annual interest payments. Why isn't this repeated?"
  
  I agree with the whole of your note. I'd also like to add a statistic to the list. When the BBC reports changes in house prices it uses a bizarre graph of percentage change year-to-date which is difficult to interpret without careful thought. What we really need is a histogram showing the monthly average property price as an absolute number. That way, it is easy to tell, at a glance, how current prices compare to past prices and what the trend is.
  
  Conspiracy theories about why the BBC favours an incomprehensible graph are left as an exercise for the reader.
  
  
• Asset sale: Deja vu? 8:40pm on 12 Oct 2009 RE: 89. John_from_Hendon
  
  "any argument that uses generics in it as a discriminatory factor is racist and that puts it beyond any further consideration. You must stop this objectionable nonsense."
  
  No. That absolutely will not do.
  
  Use of genetics to "discriminate" ie draw meaningful distinctions between groups - is absolutely essential to rational medical care. Tay-Sachs disease is an inherited genetic disorder that typically kills its victims before they are four years old. The recessive gene in question is much more common among Ashkenazi Jews than in the general population. If we took your raving seriously then simply making that observation would be racist. Happily, the affected population ignored your moralising, recognised that they were a group at risk defined by their shared genes and took effective action to reduce the incidence of Tay-Sachs. The action took the form of discouraging mating between pairs of people who were likely to have Tay-Sachs children. It is a harsh discipline with an obvious emotional cost that is rooted exclusively in genetic discrimination and it works.
  
  The last thing people in that position need is for someone like you to start calling them racists.

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