The TUC March for the Alternative - Saturday 26th March 2011

[tech_guy]

Well, I'm off to get ready for the march. If I get Blair Peached tomorrow it's been nice knowing you all

[somabc]

An English assembly would be a good thing too - it really annoys me that Scots, NI and now Welsh MPs will be able to vote on things such as the university fees and some of the cuts that do not affect them, and yet the English MPs cannot vote in their assemblies.

 

Scots, NI, and Welsh MP's cannot vote on devolved matters only the members of the respective parliaments can vote on those issues. If we had a Federal system we could avoid non-English MP's voting on purely English matters but nobody seems to want it.

 

The West Lothian question could be easily solved by Westminster but no one has the stomach to make the changes.

Edited March 25, 2011 by somabc

[Martin]

It sounds like the soap-dodgers are going to be stirring up trouble...

 

Resist26! is an autonomous group of individuals who aims to support resistance on March 26th in London

 

mb

[Butters]

Same types at the last demonstrations who never really quite say what they are standing against other than 'capitalism' and the usual.

 

Any reason to the adrenaline pumping and random annoyed groups will pop up.

[beeswax]

I hate to play devils advocate here, but surely the cuts are a given becuase the areas being 'cut' are those in which tax money is spent. This money is then going to be used to pay of the HUGE mountain of debt racked up by the previous govt, which stangely enough the TUC had no qualms about it doing. The tax generating areas i.e. the private sector (very little of the public sector actually generates any cash whatsoever) is still as it was and left to actually bring in the money that the country relies on whilst some areas of the public sector carry on being 'slef-licking-lollipops'. however, I do draw the line at how local authorities manage these cuts, and I do hope a great deal of tought goes into the what, where and when of them, although my experience of working in local govt does not fill me full of hope.

 

"...the Osbornian criticism of his inheritance [from Labour] has been willfully overdone. I have pointed out before that, despite Brown's trial separation from Prudence, Britain encountered the global financial storm with net public debt at a relatively low level historically, and that even now, at 58% of gross domestic product, the ratio is far below the almost 250% of earlier "golden" years.Osborne complains that the "structural" deficit – that is, that part of the deficit not explained by cyclical fluctuations – was the worst in the Group of Seven in 2007, having been the second best in 2000.

Well, so what? For a start, there is much professional dispute about how one distinguishes between "cyclical" and "structural" elements. So-called "structural" deficits can easily disappear in a period of rapid growth. Indeed, the 2007 structural deficit of which Osborne complains – 3.5% of GDP, according to the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development – compares with OECD-measured structural deficits of 5.2% in 1992, 6.6% in 1993, 6.2% in 1994, 5.6% in 1995 and 4% in 1996, under – guess what? – the last Conservative government."

 

Full article here - A resurgent Treasury seems all too ready to make cuts | Business | The Observer