Funny how non-Tory chancellors who pile on the debt to fund spending programmes are foolhardy gamblers who risk the UK's economic ruin, while Phillip Hammond is some sort of pragmatic genius for doing the exact same thing.

Laughable in the extreme, like his government's claims to still be on the side of those "just about managing".

Thanks Austerity indeed.... the 6 years break in unfettered unnecessary wasteful spending that George Osborne imposed after 13 years of Blair/Brown/Darling's spend spend spend regime was just what was needed to stabilise our economy.

Imagine what the deficit would be like now if Balls had been given the green light by Miliband in 2010 - we have definitely dodged a bullet there. Balls was even having discussions with Greek finance ministers FFS.

Now that we've reigned in our spending and steadied the ship maybe now it is time to invest in a modest schedule of works to improve our infrastructure? That's a different proposition than the massive state schemes that Balls was advocating.

As for your last paragraph - what guff.

I wrote that to get a reaction from you and I even telegraphed your exact response to my wife as I hit the send button.

As a person with no children I have no opinions on the merits of punishing them or other methods of parental control.

I do know what presses your buttons though.

So you now admit to trolling. Good work.

Around the time you were trumpeting how austerity and cutting vital services was the only way forward. You can't argue against that . Now it's becoming clear that austerity was a facile project that's just put the country up s*** creek further. Your excuse that balls in charge would mean a worse deficit is a) unanswerable nonsense - how do you know that would happen? You are using something that hasn't actually happened to justify something that has happened and is s*** but you don't want to admit it.
b)Nonsense because I was referring to debt being over 90% of gdp not reduction of deficit. What do you think of debt rising to 90%of gdp?

Edited by nickgusset (24 Nov 2016 1.49pm)

Well everyone can blame everything on Brexit for the next decade so it's all a freebie.

Yeah, the Tories just did it to wind up the electorate.

So how do you propose to reduce the national debt?

On wait, you are Labour, you will just put your head in the sand and borrow even more.

Eye-watering level of debt according to Hammond the debt that was supposed to be re-paid by the end of the first Tory 5 year govt. in fact thats why they were elected.

Its now nearly 1.7 trillion and in 4 years it will be 1.95 trillion pounds.

Apart from the usual tinkering around its the same policies continued and brexit just to f**k us all up completely add on any number to 122 billions.

The 14 year old girl saying to her gran 'Gran you've ruined my future' what hope for the young saddled with tory debt. 1.95 trillion.

Here's an idea Brexiteers - you wanted it how would you like to pay for it?

Our childrens futures?

Kids futures are to repeat the same pattern of pointless egocentric delusion that their parents suffered from, before becoming parental units for the next generation of egocentric delusional idiots. Their future, is monotony, child birth, 'noble self sacrifice' and either a tragic or painful decent into death, whilst achieving nothing more than self replication to ensure the machine that is 'humanity' chugs onwards into an increasingly bleak and terrible future.

Even the minority who achieve some kernel of greatness or achievement, will only become the fading/vague caricature of a memory in the minds of generations of doomed, insignificant lives.

That 14 years olds future was never ruined by the Tories or debt, it was ruined the moment a sperm successfully over came unbelievable odds just in order to trigger a futile and pointless cycle of cellular entropy.

Blimey Jamie.
Have you considered a career as a motivational speaker?