Larry Elliott, writing in the Guardian this morning, has picked up on my research on seventy years of party spending in the UK and that it shows, to my surprise, that the Conservatives spent more and repaid less national debt on average by year in office, and that this finding survives in whatever reasonable way you cut and splice the data.
I am pleased one national newspaper has done so.
You might ask, with good reason, why so few have.
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There is some hope for the Guardian after all.
But I don’t hear Labour enthusing about it. At the moment Richard, the most effective opposition to HM Government seems to be YOU!
Hi Richard,
I was really impressed with your research and data and decided to build an interactive visualisation of it.
You can see it here: http://codepen.io/chris_is_phillips/full/NNbaEr/
I hope I got the facts right.
Thanks,
Chris
Thanks
I will take a look
Good stuff, Chris. With such a straightforward graphic now in the public domain it would be good to see other media outlets pick up on this research – but somehow I doubt they will, and particularly not on a day when our dear Chancellor continues to reiterate and reinforce the fantasy economics that has become his forte.
I completely agree with the comment by PSR – Richard Murphy is the most insightful hard edged opposition to this extreme government and the Labour party should employ him as a spokesperson to make up for the feeble opposition they are currently offering. Serious and long term damage is being inflicted on the social fabric and institutions of this country, the latest being the proposed privatisation of the education sector and yet the Labour Party is embroiled in its own troubles. We are running out of time.Soon there will be little or nothing to defend
“You might ask, with good reason, why so few have.”
That’s the important question -what do journalists do these days-wait for someone else to do the work?
Most journalists are courtiers fawning or feigning at the court of political masters. Few have the courage to reach for independence of thought or action – perhaps because journalistic opportunities are diminuishing. I think more and more the public have to think that they themselves will expose the problems. But we have to persuade these courtiers to report it properly – or sometimes to report it at all.
In Scotland a significant section of the population have simply bypassed these fops and are ignoring them. Preferring instead to go the DIY route when it comes to disseminating news and analysing everyday events. The breadth of alternative web sources is inspiring and there does appear the occasional ray of light, such as this blog and off guardian south of the wall.
Hi,
I suspect most papers/media owners are in the 1% if not the 0.1% and this would be most unwelcome and might stop them becoming the 0.01%
Those are great figures Richard but I’m not sure why you were surprised by them. They are pretty much consistent with the known but “counter-intuitive” figures showing that Govt. as a Percentage of GDP is usually as big or bigger under Tory administrations. Allocation is another matter entirely.
In this one see how the Tory years in recent decades compare with the Labour years
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1OJrUcDV0vxhB3JYLc01O2u9agmL0EG8-aTRfm2_JdxU/edit?pref=2&pli=1#gid=0
That table by the way can be found here:
http://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2010/apr/25/uk-public-spending-1963
It seems the same holds true in the United States . Democrats do better than the Republicans.
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2012/10/gop-presidents-have-been-the-worst-contributors-to-the-federal-debt/264193/
Thanks for the link. I had seen this and even commented upon it on another thread, which was one of the reasons I thought that it was more likely than not that the UK figures turned out to be similar. I would like to add my congratulations again to Richard. We need effective opposition. I thought Richard was very effective on Jazz FM; but we got the usual garbage from a Treasury spokesperson and frankly insulting comments towards Richard. Any time I hear such “Ad Hominem”comments I think the argument is lost.
Happy St Patrick’s day to all. Murphy is a good Irish name!
If all insults are all they can offer I am doing OK