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Comprehensive Spending Review and Autumn Statement

Lord Tyrion said:
George has bottled it on tax credits and scrapped scrapping them. That is a major u-turn.
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Doon frae Troon said:
Pretty massive U turn on a high profile bill.
I wonder if Gideon will recover from this loss of credibility.
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SwingsitlikeHogan said:
Agree - just makes it seem like he didn't care enough to bother.
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Which just goes to prove that no matter what he does there will always be some on here and in public that are looking for a reason to have a pop at him. If he had stuck to his policy to push through the tax credit cuts there would have been howls of outrage from the very same people that are now slagging him for making a U turn. You only have to look at some of the comments on the "Reform of the Tax Credits" thread. He was getting slated on there for pushing ahead with it and now is getting slated on here for not pushing ahead with it.
 
SwingsitlikeHogan said:
Agree - just makes it seem like he didn't care enough to bother.
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You criticised him for changing the tax credits to the point you started a thread on it

And now you appear to slate him for changing his mind and not going through with the changes ?!?
 
ColchesterFC said:
Which just goes to prove that no matter what he does there will always be some on here and in public that are looking for a reason to have a pop at him. If he had stuck to his policy to push through the tax credit cuts there would have been howls of outrage from the very same people that are now slagging him for making a U turn. You only have to look at some of the comments on the "Reform of the Tax Credits" thread. He was getting slated on there for pushing ahead with it and now is getting slated on here for not pushing ahead with it.
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Of course, the same could be said for just about every leading politician in the UK for the past 40 years. People are partisan and will look for any excuse to criticise someone they don't like, whatever side of the political spectrum.

Besides, the cuts are still coming. They've just been delayed for a few years until the Universal Credit is introduced. All he has done is provide a "lead story" that the media organisations can latch onto, whilst missing some of the real juice that is now hidden from view. The removal of grants from Nurse training being a major one.
 
3% stamp duty on second properties. THREE BLOODY PERCENT?

I bet the BTLers are quaking in their boots at the least effective tax increase on earth, ever
 
Old Skier said:
We have fresh figures today over the level of deaths in the NHS over the weekend period. This time infant mortality. How without a 7 day NHS can we rectify this?
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I see you just read the Daily Mail headline. If you actually read down, the authors say there was no relationship between staffing and outcomes. Funny enough, the authors of the other 7 day outcome study said the same. Jeremy Hunt chose to ignore both.

What they did was what is known in stats as data dredging. In short, if you look at enough different data points, some of them will show something. They ignore others which show that certain outcomes are improved at the weekend. They also obscured the differences between different weekdays as those undermine the theory.

Even if it was true that there was a weekend effect, it is completely unclear what the cause is, and how to rectify it without simply moving it to another part of the week. to properly make a 7 day NHS so that Sunday has the same cover as Tuesday, would cost £20 billion a year. The promise of a 7 day NHS is a sham and a con, really intended to set things up better for private companies who want to sweat the assets.
 
ColchesterFC said:
Which just goes to prove that no matter what he does there will always be some on here and in public that are looking for a reason to have a pop at him. If he had stuck to his policy to push through the tax credit cuts there would have been howls of outrage from the very same people that are now slagging him for making a U turn. You only have to look at some of the comments on the "Reform of the Tax Credits" thread. He was getting slated on there for pushing ahead with it and now is getting slated on here for not pushing ahead with it.
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Sorry but I miss your point completely.
I was just pointing out the bleeding obvious not 'slagging him off'.

As for having a 'pop at him'.
His bill was widely criticised, even by members of his own party. Ruth Davidson told him he was making a big mistake.
Do you include the leader of the Scottish Conservatives in your summary?
 
Doon frae Troon said:
Sorry but I miss your point completely.
I was just pointing out the bleeding obvious not 'slagging him off'.

As for having a 'pop at him'.
His bill was widely criticised, even by members of his own party. Ruth Davidson told him he was making a big mistake.
Do you include the leader of the Scottish Conservatives in your summary?
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Your choice of wording made it obvious what you were doing. "Massive u-turn" and "recover from this loss of credibility". How about "I can't believe we have a politician that is willing to listen to criticism and then accept he was wrong and change the plans. Fair play to him for being man enough to accept he was wrong"

As for Ruth Davidson perhaps you can provide link to where she has been crowing about a massive u turn or loss of credibility.

I look forward to your response once Wings over Scotland has told you what you should be thinking.
 
Ethan said:
I see you just read the Daily Mail headline. If you actually read down, the authors say there was no relationship between staffing and outcomes. Funny enough, the authors of the other 7 day outcome study said the same. Jeremy Hunt chose to ignore both.

What they did was what is known in stats as data dredging. In short, if you look at enough different data points, some of them will show something. They ignore others which show that certain outcomes are improved at the weekend. They also obscured the differences between different weekdays as those undermine the theory.

Even if it was true that there was a weekend effect, it is completely unclear what the cause is, and how to rectify it without simply moving it to another part of the week. to properly make a 7 day NHS so that Sunday has the same cover as Tuesday, would cost £20 billion a year. The promise of a 7 day NHS is a sham and a con, really intended to set things up better for private companies who want to sweat the assets.
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OK, calm down Dr Ben Goldacre with your sensible analysis of newspapers completely misinterpreting statistics in medical stories ;)
 
ColchesterFC said:
Your choice of wording made it obvious what you were doing. "Massive u-turn" and "recover from this loss of credibility". How about "I can't believe we have a politician that is willing to listen to criticism and then accept he was wrong and change the plans. Fair play to him for being man enough to accept he was wrong"

As for Ruth Davidson perhaps you can provide link to where she has been crowing about a massive u turn or loss of credibility.

I look forward to your response once Wings over Scotland has told you what you should be thinking.
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You sound very bitter that the Chancellor was unable to put many 'hardworking families' into serious poverty.
 
Doon frae Troon said:
You sound very bitter that the Chancellor was unable to put many 'hardworking families' into serious poverty.
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Where exactly are you getting that sort of judgement from ?

I noticed you are silent about the money being invested into Scottish ship building from the uk government - is that because wings can't find anything negative about it ?
 
Doon frae Troon said:
You sound very bitter that the Chancellor was unable to put many 'hardworking families' into serious poverty.
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Not at all. Even as someone with right of centre views I thought it was a bad policy and am glad that it has been reversed. I agree with the aims of the policy which was to move to a higher wage society and remove some of the burden from the tax payer but I don't think the way it was planned to be done was right.

As soon as the policy was announced it was a win/win situation for people like you. If they have gone ahead with it we would have had the usual howls of the nasty Tory party hurting the poorest in society. Now that it's been scrapped instead of applauding the correct decision being made you can use your usual anti English and anti Tory views to shout about a u turn and loss of credibility.

You give credence to the suggestion that a well balanced Scotsman is one with a chip on both shoulders.
 
We do all appreciate that the cuts haven't been scrapped, don't we? They've merely been delayed for a couple of years till the Universal Credit is introduced. Not scrapped. Delayed....
 
Rooter said:
Or maybe he listed to the people, had a review of the policy and decided the people were right? I would say only a fool would have conviction to stick to his guns when everyone is telling you not to.. but i know nowt about politics!
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This huge U-turn is nothing to do with listening - if he'd had his way the measures for cutting tax credits would be on their way through the Commons and he wouldn't have stopped them. He has been lucky and been throw a lifeline with the OBRs forecast. It's only delaying the pain in any case - that will come in on the back of Universal Credit. He never did have to bring in the changes to Tax Credits in the time scales - he just chose to.

Osborne is all over the place - being blown this way and that by the wind of public opinion and the most recent economic forecast. Pretends that his measures to NOT cut police funding is defending the police when it was HE who was going to be attacking their budget. And he puts on his 'I'm in control' facade.

And don't the Tories really know how to attract young folk into nursing - not. They want a 7-day NHS and so will need a lot more nurses - and so they cancel payment of nursing degree fees and maintenance and convert that all to loans - and at the same time clamp down on nurses from overseas.

He's clueless. He's a joke.
 
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SwingsitlikeHogan said:
This huge U-turn is nothing to do with listening - if he'd had his way the measures for cutting tax credits would be on their way through the Commons and he wouldn't have stopped them. He has been lucky and been throw a lifeline with the OBRs forecast. It's only delaying the pain in any case - that will come in on the back of Universal Credit. He never did have to bring in the changes to Tax Credits in the time scales - he just chose to.

Osborne is all over the place - being blown this way and that by the wind of public opinion and the most recent economic forecast. Pretends that his measures to NOT cut police funding is defending the police when it was HE who was going to be attacking their budget. And he puts on his 'I'm in control' facade.

And don't the Tories really know how to attract young folk into nursing - not. They want a 7-day NHS and so will need a lot more nurses - and so they cancel payment of nursing degree fees and maintenance and convert that all to loans - and at the same time clamp down on nurses from overseas.

He's clueless. He's a joke.
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So you slagged him off when he put forward and idea to cut tax credits

And now you continue to slag him off despite the tax credits not being changed right now

Seems doesn't matter what he does you will slag him off
 
Liverpoolphil said:
So you slagged him off when he put forward and idea to cut tax credits

And now you continue to slag him off despite the tax credits not being changed right now

Seems doesn't matter what he does you will slag him off
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I didn't even bother replying. Some that wear the red rosette will vote red whatever...
 
Hobbit said:
I didn't even bother replying. Some that wear the red rosette will vote red whatever...
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And those that wear blue rosettes..................actually might vote UKIP instead.

I think that kind of sums up the slight pointlessness of these kind of arguments in threads like this as they are much like the phone in on 5 live where you get 2 people with completely opposing views who will never agree in a month of Sundays. No matter how tenuous their argument is at that point in time, either way.
 
Liverpoolphil said:
So you slagged him off when he put forward and idea to cut tax credits

And now you continue to slag him off despite the tax credits not being changed right now

Seems doesn't matter what he does you will slag him off
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Not slagging him off for making his U-turn on the policy - but it's not a U-turn of his own doing. He would have known exactly what impact the tax credit changes would have had on the lower paid - pretending otherwise is disingenuous (at best) - and the changes would have be well on there way to being implemented if he had got his way. But thankfully he didn;t and he has been forced into the U-turn. Even although they'll still come in in 2017 under UC. If he was really listening to the concerns over the impact the changes would have had he'll say he'll change his plans for UC that will completely remove the impact on the lower paid. But he won't.
 
ColchesterFC said:
Not at all. Even as someone with right of centre views I thought it was a bad policy and am glad that it has been reversed. I agree with the aims of the policy which was to move to a higher wage society and remove some of the burden from the tax payer but I don't think the way it was planned to be done was right.

As soon as the policy was announced it was a win/win situation for people like you. If they have gone ahead with it we would have had the usual howls of the nasty Tory party hurting the poorest in society. Now that it's been scrapped instead of applauding the correct decision being made you can use your usual anti English and anti Tory views to shout about a u turn and loss of credibility.

You give credence to the suggestion that a well balanced Scotsman is one with a chip on both shoulders.
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Completely agree with you on first paragraph. Once again the Tories come up with a good idea but are completely clueless about how to implement it in a fair and just manner [Poll Tax etc]

Disagree on second para.

Third para is just you being lazily rude [again]
 
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