shurlock

Anything above £25m for Schneiderlin will be good business; anything below £20m will be disappointing. Meh to anything in between.

Ultimately government debt and deficit are sideshows and miss the bigger picture: that over the past 40 years, leverage in the total economy (households, governments, corporations, financial and external) has ballooned monstrously. The baton has been passed to different actors at different times -thus, for all we know, the accumulation of borrowing under Labour may have prevented an even greater acceleration in household debt. But the overall result has been the same: successive credit booms have led to a huge debt overhang and more or more credit seems necessary just to sustain moderate levels of growth with implications for financial stability. For all the talk about government austerity, let's not forget that this process is likely to shift debt back to households (the OBR predicts it will reach 182% of GDP in 2019, up from 169% in 2008 ). If not, demand will fall away, plunging the economy back into recession. This should be the starting point for the conversation and how to respond. Obsessing about "the deficit" in isolation, not least because government is uniquely capable of taking on debt, backstopping the system and handling crises, is propaganda that does more to obscure than it does to enlighten.

I have no great fondness for Labour; but it is simple hindsight to claim that finances were on the road to ruin. The UK had the second lowest level of debt in the G7, though I am the first to admit that it fared worse on other measures. But the question remains: it finances were so unsustainable why did the Tories, of all parties, pledge to match and exceed Labour's spending plans? The answer is that they were perceived to be sustainable. Nearly every mainstream party and policymaker failed to anticipate the crisis and the consequent collapse in growth and revenues. Perhaps more could have been saved while the sun was shining, accepting the costs in terms of lower quality and quantity public services. But these efforts would still have been dwarfed by the scale and severity of the crash, the worst recession since WWII. So rather than play a futile game of hindsight, why don't you look forward, something which can be influenced to some extent. After all, virtually the same assumptions about growth and the sources of growth that got us into this mess continue to be made, this time with unconventional (reckless) monetary policy and cheap credit. Why don't you aim your sights at this -rather than gush about the Tory-led recovery. After all, it is storing up a host of problems which, I am happy to bet, will ultimately have to be met through more aggressive fiscal policy. Or is it easier to claim omniscience after the fact?

Not sure what your point is.

You mean outsourcing services to Serco, G4S and Capita;) It didn't help that one of the main architects of the big society -steve hilton- threw in the towel and left government in 2012. Scarily remember meeting him in no.10, attention span of a gnat. It also didn't help that many of the organisations envisioned with delivering it simply don't have the necessary scale, resource, competence and capacity.

Wrong. Labour ran a slight deficit - one reason the supposedly frugal Tories opted to match and exceed Labour's spending plans in some areas. On the eve of the crisis, the public finances were in a stronger position than they had been when Labour came to power in 1997. Even though more was being spent on investment in 2007–08 than in 1996–97 -in theory a good thing- the growth of revenues meant that a deficit of 2.7% of national income in 1996–97 fell to a deficit of just 0.3% of national income in 2007–08. Meanwhile, public sector net debt fell from 42.5% of national income to 36.5%, as the UK economy grew faster than new borrowing. It is fair to say that other major economies were doing more at the time to strengthen their public finances; but this doesn't change the fact UK's finances were in pretty good shape, better than they had inherited from the Tories - never mind that borrowing was used, in theory, to fund productive investments in health, education and infrastructure. So, yes, the story is about a fall in revenues. And the real elephant in the room is that the overall structure of UK economy had become imbalanced and growth was built increasingly on sand due to debt-fuelled consumption, unsustainable rises in asset prices and an overreliance on one or two sectors or parts of the country, a consensus that no mainstream party questioned (Vince Cable was pretty outspoken but he was a lone voice). More perversely, many of these trends and quick fixes are back in force today, even as the Tories slap themselves on the back over what is by historical standards a feeble recovery.

The Tories were promising exactly the same thing. On the eve of the financial crisis, Cameron and Osborne had promised to match Labour’s spending plans until 2010/11 - to "share the proceeds of growth". Indeed, they actually committed to a real terms increase in public spending (2% iirc), especially on health. In short, nobody, not least the Tories who were simulataneously clamouring for more financial deregulation, saw that the economy and its revenue base were built on sand.

Yep, the squeaky manc.

My mate at the IFS actually did an interview for the Beeb on the subject - there is large amount of uncertainty around how much revenue abolition would generate, though that doesn't mean Labour's projections are wholly implausible.

That'll be it. My mistake. The pub I went into was all ground level. Alas my phone battery was dead.

Old dear, Les, you silly plonker. Getting Laffer's views on the impact of higher marginal tax rates is like asking Brendan Rodgers to assess Kevin Friend's refereeing performance. In other words, dead impartial. Really.

Passed through borough market on the way to another appointment. Battery was dead and the place was heaving, thought, so decided against it. But will make an effort next time by which I hope to have cloned an army of shurlocks just for Jeff Alas wouldn't mind somewhere quieter. By the way, London Saints AGM is on May 19 -in case anyone wants to launch a putsch and overthrow the place from within...

Bless your little cotton socks, Les. A brilliant, gravity-defying leap of logic there. So because Miliband believes that anyone who effectively lives in the UK should pay tax in the same way necessarily means he should support the same rate of tax for all

With Rodriguez out, we would have probably brought in a 'pacier' player like Mane - regardless whether we sold Lallana. And in all likelihood, we could have funded it from the proceeds of other player sales. Ultimately, its moot though.

Pal, you don't write like a Japanese person - in terms of syntax and expression. And I've drunk but never seen 'sake' used as a surname before. Two pretty handy accessories for a decent windup.

Reckon Benteke would cost around £18-20m.

Perhaps he might have scored a pen or from a free-kick.

A Sissoko type player, a powerful and direct box-to-box midfielder. Think he's chronically wasted at Newcastle.

Unless we're reducing political views to lifestyle choices, of course, they're relevant. Especially as they're not a million miles from the perception and some of the positions held by the man today.

Schneiderlin would do a better job than JWP in the no.10 position but we would lose more than we would gain by moving him from his natural position, especially with some of the others available. Wouldn't mind seeing more Djuriric - thought he was very good when he started against Palace.

Most pros and expros talk absolute s**t about the game. The few that don't are on a completely different level and are brilliantly insightful. Btw do you actually think the pundits in question watched the entire 90mins of the Everton game

In isolation, we played pretty well. We absolutely bossed midfield. But that's all the rent-a-quote coasters on MOTD look at. To do anything else is too much hard work. The problem is that the game was a carbon copy of so many other games this season. Yet we don't seem to have made much progress in learning from or responding to such shortcomings.

Sure to get a fair bit of this. Over and over.

Don't be too harsh on the old boy. He's equally capable of change. Having once derided Les Reed as the chief architect of the whole failed southampton way and as having the cushiest job in football, he's now his number one fan. Times change, pal.

Conceding early goals in recent away games has been a killer - you'd expect home teams to come out a bit more and be positive, allowing us to play. But the early goals have effectively meant they can play like away sides.