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Feedie, humour a simpleton like me.
Are the current UK government estimated to be in over 2 trillion quids worth of debt, Covid-19 has probably upped that number?
Did they balance the books through their austerity measures?
Did GDP fall during austerity?
Hasn’t Brexit further fuucked the economy?
If we are in 2 trillion quid over our heads where all this money from Laaaandaaan Town going? It’s not ending up in Perthcelyn.
I may be wrong but I understood the government funded its Covid spending (and much else besides) by printing more money. The effect of that is not to add to the debt but to fuel inflation. Inflation that will hit the poor harder than the rich.
That hasn't stopped most of the main client journalists (Peston, Kuenssberg, Rigby etc) repeating the line that Sunak has been borrowing like it's going out of fashion - people before pennies! - and in promoting that lie they are happily preparing the ground for the next round of austerity (to reduce the debt!).
Sunak will turn into Osbourne II in about a year whether he is Prime Minister by then or still Chancellor.
Thought I'd dip back in after my response to Sludge's comments yesterday.
Mark Drakeford probably has the highest profile of any Welsh politician since devolution and he can thank his handling of the pandemic for that.
I think it's good for Wales that the public have recognised that we can make some of our own choices and will start the take the Wales' Government seriously.
I voted for Eluned and will do again when MD stands down if reelected of course. I am acquainted with her and her family, and I can guarantee she is committed to Wales.
I'm taking the 5th
probably nearer £2.2trn.
prior to Covid19 this government were getting towards balancing the books, which wasn't a bad effort overall. However there were social costs involved in doing this[/quote]
GDP hit £3.1trn prior to Brexit, then it has fallen and is forecast to be around £2.6trn this year.
yes, quite considerably. Who knew!
Wales currently benefits from around £15bn in fiscal transfers each year. That is £5k for every man woman and child. We are not going to make those numbers up by selling water to the English or by developing green energy for sale. Wales' topography does not lend itself to a modern day economy, and as such we need to be careful about what we truly want from independence, if that is the goal. Because economically, we'd be a lot worse off than we are now.
If people genuinely believe the United Kingdom is a equally treated union is kidding themselves, I think everybody would prefer that but it hasn't happened in the past 500 years so it isn't in the next.
I believe people had a big wake up call when the UK government rejected the request for extended furlough for Welsh workers only to extend it a week later when England needed it, if this doesn't show the position Wales is in in the list then nothing will.
Also people saying Wales would be too poor is like a broken record, if you made a country and gave it the best possible chance to be a rich country you would give it highly sought after resources, Wales had coal, copper, slate at the best possible times and now it looks set to have an abundance of renewable energy potential and insane amounts of water in an emerging climate crisis, yet has some of the poorest regions in Europe?
All this after 500 years in the worlds "best" union, so I'm voting Plaid, the only party who will truly care about Wales and maximising it's potential. Labour voter's are flipping to Plaid as Adam Price is clearly well educated and experienced and as it's a good protest vote against Labour as Plaid won't be able to get a majority but won't destroy democracy like the right wing parties.
We have heard this plaid are getting stronger in Wales before
That they are taking labour votes
Plaid had a disastrous general election , as did Labour and it was the tories in Wales who gained seats
From what I have seen via the opinion polls Labour have toughened up a bit but will lose seats to the tories and plaid won't be doing anything much than they normally do
Wales has a population of 3m, England has a population of 55m. Why do you think things should be equal?
given England (London) is paying for furlough, you can understand them wanting a say in when and where it is put nto place. Furthermore, the reason Wales needed earlier furlough was the disastrous start to the pandemic we had due to Drakeford and some of his policies.
Wales may have had those resources but they did not have the manpower or the capital to exploit them. The labour came from the midlands and Ireland, the capital from Scotland and Yorkshire.
As for renewable energy, we aren't going to create a sustainable economy from this alone. Wales currently has a fiscal deficit of £15bn per annum, and if we taxed all economic activity at 40% of GDP in the way the UK does, we would need to increase our GDP by £37.5bn just to cover existing public spending. Our current GDP is £70bn so we'd have to increase economic activity by over 50% overnight.
Wales also has around 1 in 4 workers in the public sector compared to 1 in 5 for the UK. If we have the same amount of funding then around 75k public sector jobs will be lost as we won't have the money to pay for them. That's 5% of the workforce. If we don't want to lose these jobs then we have to increase taxation, on one of the already poorest regions. Inward investment would dry up and would simply locate over the border.
Plaid only care about making Wales Welsh speaking, they really don't care about much else.
I'm not totally against the idea of Independence but I would rather see some sort of federal system in the UK, with England having it's own parliament as well.
I know you have reservations but the Welsh language is important and I am very much in favour of our children and grandchildren being taught it.
If I was pressed the only alternative party I would seriously consider are the Greens. The environment is definitely the biggest issue going forward.