Meh. Labour and the Tories launched their election campaigns today, marking the start of what promises to be the longest – and on today’s evidence – the most boring campaigns in living memory. Oh and Nick Clegg said something about why coalitions are so great so don’t forget the Lib Dems. Yawn. Five members of the Empire launched a laughably awful ‘dossier’ on Labour’s spending plans. Here they are:
The dossier is about ‘Labour’s unfunded spending plans’, which is literally what every single governing party does with their opponents plans at every election. I was watching a discussion on Channel 4 News tonight between world’s most boring drone Matthew Hancock and Labour’s Chris Leslie, and incredibly, Labour seemed to be rattled by this piss weak attack, so to compensate, Ed Balls made it clear that Labour is definitely not on the side of the people with most reason to despise the Coalition. “Vote Labour! – You’ll get nothing from us.” Not the best election slogan.
I want to know what big ideas the parties have for the country, and what specific policies they have for the country that will improve all our lives and address some of the very real problems we face, but instead we’re just getting sums that politicians have plucked out of their arses. “We’ll spend an extra 50p on the NHS, but before we can do that, we must tax an extra 50p from the banks”, or “We’re going to take £27bn out of the welfare budget, so we can cut taxes for people who probably don’t need them cutting. Oh and the deficit”. “Unfunded spending commitments!” “Black holes!” “How are you going to pay for it!” Somebody make it stop.
And it’s only day 1… roll on May!
alittleecon 
Reblogged this on HUMAN RIGHTS & THE SIEGE OF BRITAIN POLITICAL JOURNAL.
Until we get politicians giving the actual answer to the question – which is that the money to fund government spending comes from spending the money – we will never get onto the real issues.
Which is to get everybody to explain what the A&E nurse is going to do in the private sector that is so much more important than being an A&E nurse and where the private sector entity is that has an employment contract and open chequebook to do the hiring.
Start asking the real questions about the actual value of alternative uses of real resources and funnily enough you will run into a deficit of actual answers.
Which is the deficit we should be interested in.
I find it hard to understand, how the government can borrow ~£219Bn more than planned and predicted over this parliament and the same people talk about the evils of “unfunded spending”.
By definition this has been unfunded spending over the ‘rigorously costed’ spending plans of 2010. The nation is clearly not bankrupted, indeed the economy is described by the government as being in a better position now, one has to conclude as a result of “unfunded spending”.