Why they call the Tories "the nasty party"

Steve Hilton, UK Prime Minister David Cameron's "strategy guru" has a cure for the sluggish British economy: temporarily abolishing all maternity rights and consumer protection laws. He's not interested in proposals for lowering executive pay in publicly backed financial institutions that drove the world's economy off a cliff, or for increasing transparency in the executive compensation packages offered to the heads of publicly traded companies.

I write books. My latest is a YA science fiction novel called Homeland (it's the sequel to Little Brother). More books: Rapture of the Nerds (a novel, with Charlie Stross); With a Little Help (short stories); and The Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow (novella and nonfic). I speak all over the place and I tweet and tumble, too.

MORE: corporatism • plutocracy • politics • uk

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vivtek

But austerity measures always work! And if they don’t, you just haven’t implemented enough of them!
http://twitter.com/SwindleApe Dan G Swindles

Agreed with vivtek, look at Greece, austerity measures almost worked, but misfired a bit and crippled economic growth, solution, even more austerity measures :-)
As_expected

This barely scratches the surface of the lunacy that infects British politics, and has done for thirty years. Not just the Tories, either, though they are the main torch-bearers for inequality and cruelty.

By the way, Mr D, congratulations on becoming a subject of Her Majesty.
LordBlagger

It’s very simple. The companies paying bonuses haven’t got a problem with their accounts.

The government has. As a result it has to stop spending so much.

It is spending 21% more than it receives.

It has run up debts of 6,800 billion. The official figure has just gone over 2,000 billion, but when you look at the details, there is no state pension, no civil service pensions, no state second pension, … in the list of things owed to people.

Even that ignores the 50% of people in the UK who have less than 5,000 in savings. They will want bailing out in their retirement.

5K for housing benefit
2K for the NHS (average spend, ignoring elderly being the largest consumers)
7K for a MIG (minimum income guarantee)
1K for no council tax and all the other perks, free prescriptions, glasses, bus passes, TV licences, dental, …

Free care homes, for a significant proportion.
Free burial

…..

All tax free, for millions of people 15K a year tax free, at a minimum

Add that up and the forced liabiltiies come to 20,000 billion, increasing in line with inflation.

Government income 5-600 bn. 14 to 40 times geared.

How many are you going to support Cory? What services are you not going to get as a result?

Oh, and you’re still going to have to pay the tax (the price) for those services even though you are denied them.

How many are you going
- atimoshenko
  
  So all of the bailouts, monetary loosening, and tax breaks were never necessary then? If the companies do not have problems with their accounts…
  
  In any case, the government is not some separate entity – it is a representation of the people. The government cannot go broke before the citizens do. As a result, it is just a matter of people figuring out what shared projects they do and do not want to undertake…and then paying for the ones they choose. Thus, ONCE the shared projects are chose, any government account problems are not on the spending side, but on the revenue side.
  
  The argument, therefore, should never be “the government should spend less, so let’s find something to cut”, but always “I believe that programmes A, B, and C are less cost effective than alternative ways of spending that money”. For instance:
  
  “I believe it is more cost effective to pay Sir Fred Goodwin’s pension than it is to pay 140 women their maternity benefits…”
Fnordius

Ah, proof once more that the Tories are properly named. (“toraighe” being Gaelic for “Bandit” or “Scumbag”).
starfish and coffee

Temporarily abolish consumer protection laws?
So everyone will just hold their non-essential purchases until the laws are reimplemented. How is that gonna help anyone?
The removal of maternity right doesn’t even warrant criticism. A new low point for the nasty party.
http://www.facebook.com/marc.dauncey Marc Dauncey

Lordblagger, you are spouting the usual right wing idelogical nonsense.

The reason we are in the shit right now is simple – BANKS and IRAQ / AFGHANISTAN. Bailing out those businesses you love so much and prosecuting two decade long wars. Iraq by itself has cost over 3 trillion – enough to pay off a huge chunk of the deficit.

And the idea of targetting maternity rights before we tax the bankers, and all the other scumbag tax avoiding companies, such as vodafone says it all about the tories. Morally bankrupt as well as broke in the other sense. It’s simple mate. People need to pay their damn taxes and stop whining.
LordBlagger

“I believe it is more cost effective to pay Sir Fred Goodwin’s pension than it is to pay 140 women their maternity benefits…”
============

Youv’e missed the point.

RBS isn’t the government. So the people who pay Godwin are not the people who pay maternity benefits.

The reason we are in the shit right now is simple – BANKS and IRAQ / AFGHANISTAN.

Is it heck.

Iraq by itself has cost over 3 trillion – enough to pay off a huge chunk of the deficit.

The UK hasn’t spent it. Think about it. The entire government tax take in the UK is between 500 and 600 bn. Do you think they have spent 3 trillion on soldiers?

The US might have done, but that’s the US. Nothing to do with the UK debts.

So what are the scale of the debts and where did they originate?

The banking crisis has costs the government 50-60 bn. Losses on Gordon’s share trading, and expected losses on the guarantees. Easily researchable bar the latter. (It’s hidden on page 100-103 of the BoE accounts).

People need to pay their damn taxes and stop whining.

Deficit is 150 billion. Tax take is 5-600 billion.

So you have to raise all taxes by another 21% for the government to break even.

Now, there is an obvious question. If you think this is a good idea, how much extra money did you give the government last year to spend? Zero.
- rhodian
  
  “RBS isn’t the government” – both true and not the whole picture. i don’t know the current figures but various sources over the last few years have the public stake in RBS as between 58% and 84%, most say 70%.
  
  i don’t think anyone is trying to say that there is an infinite source of money which should be doled out to everyone, just that we don’t need to actively attack the most vulnerable in our search for greater efficiency.
- Scurra
  
  Now, there is an obvious question. If you think this is a good idea, how much extra money did you give the government last year to spend? Zero.
  
  Technically that’s true since last year was 2010. But I have been giving them 2.5% more on pretty much everything I have bought since January.
  (Meanwhile, they also actually cut corporate tax levels because those all-knowing economists keep telling us that this is the single factor that is stopping the economy from recovery as it promotes investment, new employment and entrepreneurial spirit. Remind me how that’s going again.)
- http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=647746555 Simon Sanchez Lazarou Parnell
  
  The cost of the bank bail out is estimated at 1.6 trillion. This comes from the Tory parties own economic projections
  
  This more than covers the deficit
  - http://twitter.com/leightonevans Leighton Evans
    
    Correct. Although the Tory troll won’t see it that way.
Alex Ball

I find it amazing that no-one is pointing out that the wars in the middle east, and the counter terrorism culture being generated as a result, are doing to the European and American economies what we did to Soviet Russia in the 1980′s.
The difference is that we don’t have huge oil and gas reserves to bail us out when this all blows over.
- ocker3
  
  The Vietnamese had no chance of beating the USA in standard warfare, so they bled them of men and money for Years until we all left. And unless we can find ways to clean things up in Iraq/Afganistan, it’s going to Keep happening. If we’d all been willing to spend a few (tens of?) million dollars in Afganistan after the Soviets left, the Taliban would have found it Much harder to take over, and the 9/11 attacks may never have happened.
http://nelc.livejournal.com/ NelC

I don’t call the Tories ‘the nasty party’; I prefer something shorter, begins with ‘c’, ends in ‘unts’.
- bjacques
  
  Jeremies?
professor

Every time Cameron opens his mouth to speak, the entire British economy gets that “Just Dropped the Soap in the Prison Shower” moment… and wonders how much it will hurt this time
http://twitter.com/mnsmirnoff Manuel Smirnoff

A country that does not look out for ALL of its people, not just the wealthy, deserves to be overthrown, and will be, eventually. It’s only a matter of how much the people will take before they have had enough.
- Blaze Curry
  
  You are a little naive I think, dood. You over estimate “The People”‘s will to fight. Sure, there will be some conflict, but without a figurehead to like the che or an intelligent leader like castro, it just won’t happen. Most will not fight an evil that isn’t in plain sight, with a face to punch.
  Look at the ‘states, right? everything they believe in is being eroded and then flushed away and yet they all still go to their malls and shop.
prentiz

I’d be a bit careful about the accuracy of this story (not that will stop some). There’s no direct quotes and the story seems to have run in the Financial Times first. It has all the hallmarks of someone doing a political number on Steve Hilton, either from the political side of Downing Street, or the Civil Service.
rwmj

Where is the evidence for this? The article offers no actual evidence that Steve Hilton said any such thing, and it could just be a slur made up by Guardian journalists or informants.
MikeRich

Fortunately any move to abolish either consumer rights or maternity entitlements would immediately fall foul of EC law and expose the government to unlimited fines. Not even this group of weirdoes, god botherers and creeps would be that stupid.

Compare our government with that of Norway – it’s like being run by a malicious kindergarten in the UK.
http://twitter.com/Drabula Count Drabula

I have 2 years before I can apply for UK citizenship. Coming from America I sometimes feel like all I’m doing is scrambling up a rickety ladder trying to escape an ever growing sea of shit.
Baldhead

Both the US and the UK hav the same problem, and want to try the same solution- a solution which hasn’t made a dent so far since giving corporations tax breaks at the moment translates in their brains as “hey free money! let’s buy boats!”
howaboutthisdangit

Be careful. I suspect those changes will be as “temporary” as the US tax cuts for the wealthy were, during the reign of Bush II. The people who benefit from those tax cuts are fighting tooth and nail to make them permanent, and they have the clout to make it happen.
jtegnell

This is how things work in the US, too. Conservatives create a financial crisis, then use the crisis to destroy the social safety net and cement policies that favor the rich. Lather, rinse, repeat.

In the US, though, the “populists” and the proles also support this approach.
- t3kna2007
  
  > In the US, though, the “populists” and the proles also support this approach.
  
  Seriously, yes. In the U.S., many people grow up believing they too can be president, and they too can be rich some day. Leading to a big eye-opener later in life when they realize that “anyone can” is not the same as “everyone will”, and even “anyone can” is a bit of a stretch.
jtegnell

> In the U.S., many people grow up believing they too…can be rich some day.

There’s that, as well as the idea that if we let rich people pay no taxes, and if we have no (or toothless) regulation for their businesses, they’ll reward us all with fabulous jobs. After trying this for quite some time, I’m sure you’ll agree it’s worked splendidly.

And there’s also the I-work-hard-for-my-money-and-I-don’t-want-to-share-it-with-lazy-darkies-and-wetbacks attitude among the proles. And this has also been working out quite well.
Jonathan Saunders

All from a party we didn’t even elect … gotta love where the country is going.