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Howard - envy and spite seeps out of so much that has been said in this thread so yes it is very relevant.
In that I even I ignore Axelander - I can't believe that he is really as stupid as to actually believe what he said in #16.
DT1 - make no mistake, I do believe that it is necessary to have public spending but it must, absolutely must, be at a sustainable level that does not do damage to the economy. Our present level of public spending, in cash terms, would be OK, fine, if our economy was twice its present size. The point is that to help the less well off, to spend on education, health, roads etc you have to have an economy that is healthy and generating that wealth. By simply increasing public spending, as the last government did, with no regard to sustainability is just a cruel deception done purely for political reasons. Indeed I would say that public spending prior to 1997 was still too high as a proportion of GDP.
To get more spending on these things like health and education we must remove the impediments for business to generate the wealth needed. Businesses need less interference from government, less red tape like that appalling 'Equality Bill', more sensible and balanced Health and Safety and a much lower state spending burden.
The problem we have now is to get the country off the drug of the State spending as a high proportion of GDP. To get higher long term state spending we need cuts to present spending as well as other growth policies to make life easier for business. Over time the aim must be to reduce State Spending to under 30% of GDP with a law to make it illegal for any government to spend higher than that level. That does not mean less spending in cash terms (eventually - though it must fall in the short term) but it does mean growing the economy and the private sector before spending money.
Jimmy - you cannot know very many people or you have a very limited social circle... I have many times explained the many errors Brown and Labour made in economic management and I am not going to list them now. Suffice to say that they are addicted to high spending and high taxation and it just does not work.