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EL , give up smoking that funny stuff mate , your last post is too silly for words. The tories have cut the welfare budget to ribbons for one, as well as the police budget. The only thing they haven't cut is NHS spending but have made up for that by completely ballsing it up with a top down reorganisation.

No, Tony Blair stood up in the House and said that Labour had abolished recessions.

Really? I would have thought that Blair was far too much of a PR guy to fall into that trap. I do recall Brown saying that Labour had banished "boom and bust".

"What austerity measures? This line is continually trolled out but the Tories are spending more than Labour ever did. "

The thing to get, Mr Essex Lad is that austerity alongside an increased deficit is not a contradiction in terms.

As Paul Krugman pointed out "Your spending is my income, and my spending is your income.? I become poorer because you spend less; you become poorer because I?m spending less, and so the debt grows."

Osborne's austerity cuts have thrown hundreds of thousands of public sector workers on the dole as Number 6 points out. THe result of which is that without a job they struggle to borrow money which typically has fuelled the service economy. As a result we have seen a bloodbath in retail resulting in more people on the dole with the income support, housing benefits etc. bill rising.

Even in an environment in which employment is apparently increasing substantially, the tax take is decreasing. What the country needs is reasonably well paid, secure jobs rather than the hundreds of thousands of self employed or zero hour contracts on minimum wage currently being created.

Easier said than done, but with a continuance of the austerity and in fact, an increase in that austerity which Osborne is planning, if the Tories get into power they will be even more unsuccessful at meeting their targets for deficit reduction than they were in this parliament.

David Johnson wrote:

> Really? I would have thought that Blair was far too much of a
> PR guy to fall into that trap. I do recall Brown saying that
> Labour had banished "boom and bust".

I think you have misunderstood this article.

Earlier in the thread you stated "Tony Blair stood up in the House and said that Labour had abolished recessions."

In the article you provide a link to, Blair says "As the Two Ronnies would say, it's goodbye from Mr Boom and it's goodbye from Mr Bust."

He is not talking about the Labour government's actions here. He was saying "goodbye" to Hague who's last PMQs as Shadow Leader this was and "goodbye" to Portillo who was quitting. He called them Mr Boom and Mr Bust, because Hague had been an assistant to Duncan Lamont during the ERM disaster and Portillo had spent time as Chief Secretary to the Treasury under Major.

I am not discounting that Blair might well have said that the Labour government had abolished boom and bust but only that I would be surprised. This link certainly does not provide evidence that he did say this. It is a pisstake of two Tories.

Duncan Lamont?

Norman Lamont.