Donate SIGN UP

Osborne's "we Are Borrowing Less" Turns Out To Be Untrue

Avatar Image
Gromit | 16:01 Fri 21st Jun 2013 | News
33 Answers
New figures reveal public borrow rose last year. This was despite a windfall from Switzland and £billions of Quantatitive Easing coming into the Chancellors coffers.

// Changes to accounting methods also meant the Office for National Statistics (ONS) revised down UK borrowing by £0.1bn to £118.8bn for the year to April 2013, and £2.4bn in the previous year to £118.5bn, meaning underlying public borrowing rose in the 2012-2013 fiscal year.

Chancellor George Osborne had previously said that annual borrowing was coming down, although the data are volatile and subject to further revisions.

The figures also showed that Britain's total net public debt, excluding bank bail-outs, is at a record high of £1.19 trillion, or 75.2pc of GDP. //

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/economics/10134093/UK-public-finances-boosted-by-Swiss-tax-windfall-but-blow-for-Osborne-as-revision-shows-borrowing-rose-last-year.html

they were election on their promise to repay the deficit. How badly have they failed?
Gravatar

Answers

1 to 20 of 33rss feed

1 2 Next Last

Best Answer

No best answer has yet been selected by Gromit. Once a best answer has been selected, it will be shown here.

For more on marking an answer as the "Best Answer", please visit our FAQ.
Question Author
For the record, when Labour power with the Debt of GDP ratio was 53.1 per cent.

In the two and a half years of the Coalition, that has risen to 75.2% of GDP

That's a 22.3% increase. That far exceeds the rise during the whole 13 years of the previous Labour governments.
Question Author
Should be, when Labour left power.
never mind, when Labour get back in we can all stick the knives in, Ed Balls said they would have no choice but to borrow, there you go..
Question Author
Em10

Every Government borrows.
This lot said they were going to borrow LESS.
When in fact, they are borrowing MORE.
at least we are not Greece.. nor have we the euro...
Question Author
From 2008 to 2010 (During the fanancial crisis) Labour increased the national debt by £0.23billion

Since the Coalition came to power they have increased the national debt by another £0.34trillion.
/That's a 22.3% increase./

gromit, you could argue it's worse than that

it's gone up 22.1 percentage points

but going from 53% to 75% is a 41.6% increase in debt/GDP
were you not advocating a keynsian approach the other week? be careful what you wish for!
I've no objection to borrowing to stimulate an economy in the doldrums, when one hasn't had the foresight to ensure enough in the coffers to not need loans, but it has to be spent wisely, not wasted. If this comes as a surprise then it suggests it's leaking away rather than being targeted properly.
te economy's being stimulated? How long has this been going on? Why wasn't I informed?
I'm utterly unsurprised. I agree with OG - borrowing is wholly defensible for the right purposes, but this just seems to have funded politically-motivated cuts to public services and social spending.
Gromit.......yes you are correct. Borrowing is about the same......
why is it so difficult to create work? Thats what the economy needs, we all know, yet with all the best brains in country no one comes up with the answer.
If the balance between benefits and working a full week on minimum wage are about the same, surely creating work doing anything, like manufacturing cheap washing machines, and all other useful items etc. would be a step in the right direction, open up factories, make these goods, get the unemployed off of the dole, sounds a bit communistic, but something like that has to be done.
The issue is that the Tories fundamentally believe in small government with a minimum of services coming from the public purse.

So the strategy was to ditch hundreds of government jobs so they could say look at our savings

As they were showing us the savings they were quietly paying redundancy payments, dole and other benefits to the people thrown out of work.

If someone's worked for 10 years at £40,000 and is say 50 they'll get over £6 grand redundancy add that to benefits loss of tax revenue the government got from taxing their income and spending and you can see why good old George is up the creek without a paddle.

If instead of being so bull headed and spent all that redundancy money on capital projects whilst transferring jobs if needed through natural losses and retraining we might not be in the mess we're in now.

Maybe the next Chancellor could have a background in economics

Wouldn't that be a radical idea!

Question Author
Annieigma

If you were to make cheap everything with a workforce being paid £75 a week, you would kill the market. All the other competitors would go out of business. And no one would be able to buy anything because they would have no dispisable income out of £75 a week.

It is easy to create growth, but it can not be created at no cost. The Government could stimulate a greatly needed building programme. But they are not prepared to put any money into making it happen. It would create many jobs and put spending money into a lot of people's pockets.
surely there are big brains who can sit and do the maths? This government just set up another mob of people to teach people how to write a CV?? what for, where are the jobs? does this occupy their time usefully? The government must get to grips with this. Perhaps we need a think tank that is not paid by the government, has no personal money making motives, who's ideas are transparent, not edited before they are made public.
Question Author
we cannot make cheap goods, our labour market rules, rates of pay, regulations would not permit it, besides wouldn't the unions have something to say, not to mention half the country up in arms about cheap labour...
Question Author
Em10

The problem with cheap labour is that the workers have no money to spend so we stagnate. What we really need is lots of good jobs, like construction jobs. And make lots of people confident to spend again. In the last two years wages have gone down, working hours have reduced, and people are fearful about their jobs. So they hang on to their money rather than it lubricating the economy.
we have had endless projects with good jobs, many of which seemed to have either been given or taken by foreign workers, notably the Olympic Park. Crossrail is currently under construction,, this is a massive and very long project, how many British working on it, no idea, but it should be the bulk, have no way to show the make up of it's work force.
other projects in the capital are the same, building sites you hear foreign workers, polish perhaps certainly Eastern European, who's fault for hiring foreign labour when we have so many people out of work here, is it workshy British or simply the foreign work force will work for less, i honestly don't know or have the answer. But i do know this, some people of my acquaintance, who worked in countryside factories and on the farms were replaced by cheaper labour, how can you factor that.

1 to 20 of 33rss feed

1 2 Next Last

Do you know the answer?

Osborne's "we Are Borrowing Less" Turns Out To Be Untrue

Answer Question >>

Related Questions

Sorry, we can't find any related questions. Try using the search bar at the top of the page to search for some keywords, or choose a topic and submit your own question.