Tom – check your facts.

The ratio of debt to GDP went up overnight by 30%, solely due to the greed, mismanagement and in some cases apparently, fraud of private sector bankers. The public sector also had to take responsibility for 250,000 ex-private sector banking jobs. so your assertion that the deficit was ‘created by Labour’ is to say the least facile.

Why should workers in the public sector be held responsible for private sector greed and incompetence?

I’m not in agreement with Whitney that we need more ocuncil jobs, but any cuts need to be carefully managed to avoid damage to essential services (and that includes a wide range of essential services – not just police, NHS etc.).

Previous experience has shown that the Tories would cut on the basis of dogma, rather than necessity – and we should avoid that possibility or it will cost us all dear in the long run.

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Tom,

I think all politicians with the benefit of 20/20 hindsight would have liked to have seen better regulation – though with the nature of the current crisis, I believe that would have needed to have been globally agreed regulation which is much more difficult to put in place.

There seems to be a view put about by some Tories that they would have had better regulation in place, but I can see no evidence for that – they had their own financial regulation crisis when they were in power with the mis-selling of pensions and endowments you’ll doubtless recall.

Labour have spent a lot – but you can’t deny that our schools no longer have leaking roofs, class sizes have reduced, and in the NHS, whilst there is always more to be spent, we no longer see the horrendous waiting lists for routine operations we saw in the 80s. All of that costs money to achieve.

If your local surrounding area has a lot of unemployment and run-down infrastructure, then it’s hardly surprising that the council tax has gone up – areas like that inevitably have more demand placed upon already stretched services – I don’t see how further cuts can help improve the area – clearly in such areas we need continued careful investment in public services.

Westminster Council in London always has one of the lowest Council tax rates – why? Because it’s full of wealthy people who have little need of public services. The current council tax system doesn’t spread that local burden evenly enough, and in the end it serves to help the poor protect the wealthy.

Finally, I do like government – in fact I woory about parties who tell us we need less government, when in fact they mean we need less support for the weakest in society and a ‘Devil take the hindmost’ attitude to anyone less wealthy than themselves.

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Well it may be my opinion, however go on all the paper websites and the posters do not seem to be agreeing with the papaers they read.

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