You can not compare Greece’s fiscal disaster with the UK’s relatively stable

Comment on General Election 2010 Poll Results by David.

You can not compare Greece’s fiscal disaster with the UK’s relatively stable financial state.

You do talk utter rubbish at times Jamie, the problems been a government that managed everything badly, with the biggest issue being Greece’s government debt. It has nothing to do with socialism per se.

Please take a read of https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/rankorder/2186rank.html

Greece 113.40% of GDP
Japan 192.10% of GDP
Italy 115.20% of GDP
France 79.70% of GDP
Germany 77.20% of GDP
UK 68.50% of GDP

The above is 2009 figures for government debt as a % of the countries GDP.

You will note Greece and Italy have a debt level over 100% (so their debt is higher than the money the country makes in a year!).

The reason why their debt level is so high now is because they’ve run at a much higher level of debt historically than our Labour government and the Conservative government before.

During Labour’s 13 years our debt level has remained relatively low near the 40% level up until the bank crisis, if you compare our debt over the last 13 years to the debt of Germany over the last 13 years you’ll find we had a lower level of debt than Germany.

Many believe the Conservatives had us out of debt and Labour took power and started borrowing. Nope, the Conservatives on their best year had the debt level at 27% of GDP (1990-1991), but between 91 and 97 government debt increased to around 45% when Labour took power in 1997. Basically both Labour and the Conservatives ran our country at a debt level around 40-50% GDP historically and apparently that’s an affordable/reasonable level.

I’m not an economists so don’t understand why we run with debt as a matter of course, but pretty much all countries like ours run with a level of debt: I assume it’s like us have a mortgage, we borrow now so we can buy something now and pay for it later. Actually thinking about it, the debt has probably paid for the Iraq and Afghan wars!

Greece and Italy ran at a much higher level of debt than Germany and the UK and that’s why when the banking crisis hit and we all had a credit crunch and recession, when Italy and Greece had to bail out their banks etc… it pushed their debt levels to a point where it was no longer affordable.

And that is why Greece is in the s##t financially right now and there’s the possibility Italy will be next. It is highly unlikely Germany, France and the UK will be in trouble like Greece is because we can afford to pay our debt back.

It really irritates me when people suggest the UK is in really bad trouble, bankrupt Britain sort of stuff, because it’s not true, but if enough people say this sort of stuff (especially the media and opposing politicians) it will damage our countries economy as it scares off foreign investment which is extremely important right now!

David