RIGHT POLICY, WRONG PARTY!

"Now't to do with us, it's the bloody Tories!"

'Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it whether it exists or not, diagnosing it incorrectly, and applying the wrong remedy.' – If ever a quote was ‘Taylor’ made, this must be it!

Week on week, Cllr John Taylor tells us, in his own inimitable way that it is this ‘Tory led Government’s policy to reduce borrowing’ that is causing the council to cut costs. What he and others in his party will not tell you is during the last days of the disastrous Labour Government, whilst Alastair Darling was still Chancellor, he got a bill passed. It was this

 http://services.parliament.uk/bills/2009-10/fiscalresponsibility.html

 

To save you looking it up, it says that Government borrowing must decrease year on year, by law.

In a nutshell, the Bill imposes a statutory duty on the Treasury to meet specific targets for the reduction of Government borrowing and debt. The then Labour Government believed that by introducing this last minute legislation, it demonstrated their commitment to ensuring the sustainability of the public finances. 

The Bill requires the Treasury to make sure that:

Government borrowing in each financial year between 2010/11 and 2015/16 is lower than the previous year, measured as a percentage of GDP. 

So, Councillor, if I’m wrong I’m sure your next letter will put me right, However if I’m right, then I think you owe the people of Tameside an apology for misleading them, because the policy to reduce public spending; which you keep telling us is the reason you are cutting public services, was in fact, Labours!

"No more boom and Bust!"

What the vociferous councillor also fails to mention is the fact that the UK pays the EU £30million every day and spends £50 million every 9 hours on debt interest payments as a result of the economic incompetence of Gordon Brown’s Government—a Government which councillor Taylor, was a proud supporter.

The prosaic councillor then invited us to wonder down another of his well-trodden paths were he attempted to justify Labours spending, specifically on ‘investment in school building’ where he told us “This country had the money to invest in our schools and we did!” That being the case, perhaps the councillor could explain why Labour felt it necessary to borrow the funds from Private Investment Companies (PFI) which has mortgaged those schools and created a massive 30year multi-billion debt for the taxpayer and created vast profits for private companies?

"We might be at the bottom, but It's all a matter of semantics!"

And as recent results have shown, gleaming, new school buildings don't equate to  gleaming, new standards, with Tameside Schools languishing at 145^th out of England's 150 Local Education Authority regions!

No one should be surprised when a Labour councillor blames all the nation’s ills on the Coalition Governments policies, but it would appear that none of our political parties have grasped the basics that borrowing money cannot raise the country out of the mire. If the taxes that the government collect, which are gargantuan, cannot meet the bills then the bills must be reduced. 

We can no longer afford the ambitions of our politicians.