And yet again, you'll be able to show that there are decent jobs for everyone who is unemployed. The unemployment are a myth – and have been for 20-30 years.

I was once unemployed and it was a dismal period of my life ... I felt useless, impotent, frustrated, unwanted, stupid, cast aside and outdated ... until I got back into work.

But, whilst I was unemployed, the likes of you would have added "workshy and feckless" to my list of attributes.

Well done for understanding.

I've been unemployed too – and it's soul-destroying.

I've also worked for pennies in a tea shop. And for £60 a week, managing a shop, taking orders, dealing with customers, looking after the float at my own home, locking and opening up etc. I lost my home as a result.

I left the place that I lived in, where I had all my friends, and moved south to start all over again. I've slogged around streets selling things to people in their offices, sometimes barely taking enough home to cover my transport into London from where I was living in Reading with my parents – itself far from a pleasurable experience in my mid twenties.

I've actually been accepted for a job – and then find someone higher up has withdrawn the offer. I've lost a job on the basis of not being good at something that I was not interviewed and employed to be good at.

I've sat at home and tried to write and sell stuff, when I couldn't be out actually trying to get work, more than once to be told that I was 'over-qualified'.

People who fall for the idea that the unemployed are, per se, workshy, are, at the very best, incredibly naive.

George Osborne couldn't run a tap properly and this doofus is the Chancellor ? He's a joke like the rest of them in the Coalition.

The pertinent point to make, every time, is that they all applied for the job, ALL of the political party's stood at the last election, none of them withdrew their candidates stating that the economic recovery was too difficult a problem to fix, ALL of them had a plan that they thought would fix the thing - and the current incumbents DID think that they were applying a fix.

Or did they ?

There are those who tout the opinion that this is a political party shielding themselves behind a bad world economic cycle to impose their own very severe political ideology upon a country, a sort of "crash and burn" where they get one chance in 100 years to blame everyone else for the effects of pulling the plugs out on any social responsibilities that they may have been forced to support in the good times.

That would be very evil.


the more I look at them and the longer this goes on the more confused I am as to which of the two options it is, are they totally bereft of ideas or totally full of ideology, or indeed just totally self interested at the expense of everything else ?

Goalposts on wheels. Neat trick.

So are you confident that the Q1 2013 growth figures will positive, yes or no? Otherwise we will be in a triple dip, despite your insistence that we're not.

I don't think there is any doubt at all regarding the motives of the tories. They are seizing the opportunity to shrink the state by as much and wherever they can. Gifting prime contracts to their ultimate paymasters without any real tangible, long-term savings. They've even entered territory that Thatcher and Major daren't ever tread.

I don't blame Labour or the Tories for that matter for the circumstances in which I live. I blame a faulty gene that I more than likely inheritated but couldn't have been detected at my inception.

I have paid my income tax and National Insurance on the understanding that if I became unemployed or ill or both I would have my basic needs taken care of, just like I understood that when I paid my income tax and National Insurance while I was working that I was paying for other peoples children to be educated and OAP's state pension.

What a delightfully Christian response.

Care to tax your brain by actually coming up with a reasoned explanation of why those comments are so risible?

They all appear to reprising the [url=http://www.montypython.net/scripts/dinosaur.phpAnne Elk sketch[/url

It will be due to "one off factors" - the snow.

And Osborne will say the triple dip means its even more crucial than ever to stick to his plan.

[url=http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-21199253Danny Alexander on Daily Politics[/url

A graphic example of the Anne Elk effect

Excellent, its always someone elses fault.

Neil actually asks the question that I raised last night - "You knew what the problems were when you formed the coalition..."

The answer ? "We relied on forecasts by economists which were wrong"

Not, "We're making this up as we go along but really there is only this one idea of what to do"

And of course you can always rely on "We inherited the biggest ...."


Still they struggle for ways to explain that as fresh faced graduates who haven't even started to shave yet they shouldn't have applied for the job in the first place, but hey, its good money...

"Do you accept that the deficit will be higher this year than last ?"

"Its all the OBR's fault..."

"Why don't you fire the OBR ?"

The one good thing Osborne has done IMO is bringing in the OBR to be an independent body that makes economic forecasts. However, the line of "well the forecast was wrong" is a cheap one because you have to understand any economic forecast of the future in the context it is made: it is based on making a model out of past information, with all the information available to the forecasters at the time. You know there will be events in the future ('random shocks') that you can't foresee, that will affect the economy for better or for worse - so a forecast aims to make it so the prediction isn't biased either on the upside or the downside, ie there is as much chance of a positive random shock, as a negative random shock.

If a forecaster is doing their job well, then over time, they should get it wrong as much by overestimating, as by underestimating. If they are persistently overestimating, then they aren't estimating accurately, there is something wrong in their model.

But also some people have unrealistic expectations of an economic forecast. You can no more see into the future than Mystic Meg - all you can do is give a best projection based on all the information available at the current time, so that it can guide policymakers. Firms do the same when they forecast their sales and margins through the year - if a firm was to forecast £10 million profits for the year, and then two months down the line, a scandal breaks where their product is shown to be unsafe, their profits will be smashed....but there would be no point blaming the forecasters for getting it wrong, they should blame the product control unit.

The OBR made its first forecast in June 2010 just after the election, and their view in the light of all the information available at the time, was that the UK economy would grow 2.6% in 2011 and 2.8% in 2012. The actual growth rates were 0.9% in 2011 and 0.0% in 2012.

The government's spin can be "well the forecasters got it wrong" but if they actually believe the OBR to be unfit for purpose they should close it down and stop spending tax payers money on it. The alternative explanation is that, the UK's performance should have been more in line with that forecast by the OBR in 2010, and the government's policy decisions are related to why it has been so disappointing.

Possibly the most sensible post I've read on here.....Adding to it, you can use the farmer's field analogy to the situation.

If somebody is given a large empty field and a large bag of seeds with the potential to grow 2,000 cabbages, then its entirely acceptable that a forecaster, taking in factors like weather and overall management, can make a prediction that the farmer should be able to grow 2,000 cabbages - If 12 months down the line, the farmer only harvests 1,000 cabbages then, of course, he can try to make excuses like bad weather or bad growing conditions, but the one thing he can't blame is the original forecast.

I think what's quite apparent at present is that the Government really haven't the foggiest how to kickstart the economy, without doing a complete U-turn on their 'austerity' policy - Sadly, no politician seems to have the balls to stand up and admit they are wrong and to begin afresh with a new policy.

Yes that analogy is exactly right. Another observation from underachieving on those forecasts is that it shows the problem is one of demand in the economy and not supply. Those forecasts were based on an estimate of the 'output gap', ie what the UK economy is currently producing and consuming, compared to what it could produce and consume if all its resources were being used. If the problem was one of supply, ie we were not able to produce enough to meet the things people demanded, then you would see high inflation, as all the firms trying to meet the demand were fighting over having enough workers, access to capital, land etc and would be bidding each other up and driving up the prices of all those input resources. But inflation has this last year been fairly low, 2.7%. The reality is we could easily absorb a stimulus to demand and start producing more just by using unutilised resources. But its a chicken and egg situation: firms see consumers aren't spending so they are worried about investing to expand production, in case there isn't enough demand for their products. Even if they do want to take the risk and expand production, they probably need access to finance and the banks see the situation the same way and are anxious about lending. Once there was a kickstart to the economy though it becomes self-maintaining as those problems would be released once firms saw evidence of some demand. This is where government can make a difference as the first mover - some carefully targeted infrastructure spends that would increase demand for private sector goods and services, would start giving the economy some momentum. Also note that Jim O'Neill from Goldman Sachs has come out and said Osborne faces sending the UK into a lost decade. Note - not a left wing commentator, but a senior investment banker: www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2013 ... -austerity

Yes that analogy is exactly right. Another observation from underachieving on those forecasts is that it shows the problem is one of demand in the economy and not supply. Those forecasts were based on an estimate of the 'output gap', ie what the UK economy is currently producing and consuming, compared to what it could produce and consume if all its resources were being used. If the problem was one of supply, ie we were not able to produce enough to meet the things people demanded, then you would see high inflation, as all the firms trying to meet the demand were fighting over having enough workers, access to capital, land etc and would be bidding each other up and driving up the prices of all those input resources. But inflation has this last year been fairly low, 2.7%. The reality is we could easily absorb a stimulus to demand and start producing more just by using unutilised resources. But its a chicken and egg situation: firms see consumers aren't spending so they are worried about investing to expand production, in case there isn't enough demand for their products. Even if they do want to take the risk and expand production, they probably need access to finance and the banks see the situation the same way and are anxious about lending. Once there was a kickstart to the economy though it becomes self-maintaining as those problems would be released once firms saw evidence of some demand. This is where government can make a difference as the first mover - some carefully targeted infrastructure spends that would increase demand for private sector goods and services, would start giving the economy some momentum. Also note that Jim O'Neill from Goldman Sachs has come out and said Osborne faces sending the UK into a lost decade. Note - not a left wing commentator, but a senior investment banker: www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2013 ... -austerity

Quote ="sally cinnamon"Yes that analogy is exactly right. Another observation from underachieving on those forecasts is that it shows the problem is one of demand in the economy and not supply. Those forecasts were based on an estimate of the 'output gap', ie what the UK economy is currently producing and consuming, compared to what it could produce and consume if all its resources were being used. If the problem was one of supply, ie we were not able to produce enough to meet the things people demanded, then you would see high inflation, as all the firms trying to meet the demand were fighting over having enough workers, access to capital, land etc and would be bidding each other up and driving up the prices of all those input resources. But inflation has this last year been fairly low, 2.7%. The reality is we could easily absorb a stimulus to demand and start producing more just by using unutilised resources. But its a chicken and egg situation: firms see consumers aren't spending so they are worried about investing to expand production, in case there isn't enough demand for their products. Even if they do want to take the risk and expand production, they probably need access to finance and the banks see the situation the same way and are anxious about lending. Once there was a kickstart to the economy though it becomes self-maintaining as those problems would be released once firms saw evidence of some demand. This is where government can make a difference as the first mover - some carefully targeted infrastructure spends that would increase demand for private sector goods and services, would start giving the economy some momentum. Also note that Jim O'Neill from Goldman Sachs has come out and said Osborne faces sending the UK into a lost decade. Note - not a left wing commentator, but a senior investment banker: www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2013 ... -austerity'" What would you suggest to be a suitable infrastructure projects? please don't say build some houses or roads!!

Quote ="sally cinnamon"Yes that analogy is exactly right. Another observation from underachieving on those forecasts is that it shows the problem is one of demand in the economy and not supply. Those forecasts were based on an estimate of the 'output gap', ie what the UK economy is currently producing and consuming, compared to what it could produce and consume if all its resources were being used. If the problem was one of supply, ie we were not able to produce enough to meet the things people demanded, then you would see high inflation, as all the firms trying to meet the demand were fighting over having enough workers, access to capital, land etc and would be bidding each other up and driving up the prices of all those input resources. But inflation has this last year been fairly low, 2.7%. The reality is we could easily absorb a stimulus to demand and start producing more just by using unutilised resources. But its a chicken and egg situation: firms see consumers aren't spending so they are worried about investing to expand production, in case there isn't enough demand for their products. Even if they do want to take the risk and expand production, they probably need access to finance and the banks see the situation the same way and are anxious about lending. Once there was a kickstart to the economy though it becomes self-maintaining as those problems would be released once firms saw evidence of some demand. This is where government can make a difference as the first mover - some carefully targeted infrastructure spends that would increase demand for private sector goods and services, would start giving the economy some momentum. Also note that Jim O'Neill from Goldman Sachs has come out and said Osborne faces sending the UK into a lost decade. Note - not a left wing commentator, but a senior investment banker: www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2013 ... -austerity'" What would you suggest to be a suitable infrastructure projects? please don't say build some houses or roads!!

What's wrong with building more houses? There is obviously a massive demand for truly affordable housing

I've previously sketched out a way to build affordable rented homes that would cost rhe exchequer precisely buggerall and would then lead to stimulus in employment and a reduction in housing benefit.

and yet, people vote for 'em time after time. i know, just look at capita, fingers in so many public sector pies, their website is a feast of the great work they're doing in the public sector. all down to that fella aldridge (he builds schools too, well academies). but it's all a swizz, he gave pots of cash to the tories...oh, wait, sorry, it wasn't the tories, but blair and his chums. i must have been thinking of bernie ecclestone and the whole peddling cancer for cash affair....no, wait, he was giving cash to the labour party too.

i'm sure which ever marginal political party you give your vote to has firm views on this sort of thing, and i'm sure you'll agree that anyone decrying the tories for being in bed with big business while voting labour is nothing more than a hypocritical oaf.

Its exactly what is needed actually and it was a solution that The Thatcher employed from European money in the late 1970s, I should know, the company Iwas working for as a surveyor virtually built the whole of Washington New Town on European money, plus the Tyneside Metro, one involved several phases of private and council house building (and you thought the Tories never built council houses) plus a huge network of roads, and the other one of the biggest public transport infrastucture spends in our lifetime.

The building trades still involve large numbers of manual workers, skilled and unskilled, there are no machines that build houses or lay roads while one or two people stand machine minding and any decent house building project will involve dozens of private companies employing hundreds of workers, on each site, all of them taking home income, paying tax and spending money in shops.

I can't think of a quicker way to get government investment into employment and into increased retail spending within the UK economy, and end up with substantial infrastructure benefits.

The only investment that government would be required to make, in my housebuilding scenario, is time and will. No money ever need change hands. It may require government guarantees but it wouldn't necessarily cost them a single brass farthing.

In fact the only thing that I can think of that's preventing them from initiating such a scheme is that no f[iu[/icker will get rich from doing it

How is anyone going to get the money to buy them - banks are requiring deposits that are beyond what most first time buyers especially those looking to buy 'affordable' houses can muster.

Or are you suggesting these as an alternative local authority housing?

How many additional people with this employ? The government needs to find a way of stimulating manufacturing - turn raw materials into finished product is both people hungry and if run properly very profitable.

Roads don't use huge numbers of people - the majority is done by large machines - houses yes but it is a long term investment that takes years to see any benefit. The demand for affordable housing is mainly in and around London an area of dense population - where is the money going to come from? The government will have borrow huge amounts if you believe in Keynesian theory.