Indeed, add to that some stores are totally automated, it is no surprise theft is rife.
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“No government since 1945 has really known how to cut spending enough to ever really cut the national debt”.
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It’s our future pensions they are gambling with
I’m not going to argue with that statement.
But I thought the underpinning goal of the government is to create growth and sufficient growth to allow more spending, not less. Indeed, the article you shared highlights that the party of high borrowing are the Tories, not Labour. So I’m confused by the article title. It does not align with content of the article when you click through.
Historically both parties are high borrowers
If you read the article shared you may wish to slightly modify your claim. Labour have been better than Conservative in lower borrowing and paying back when possible:
“Labour do walk the talk: they repay national debt much more often in absolute and percentage terms than the Conservatives. In fact, one in four Labour years saw debt repaid. That was true in less than one in ten Conservative years.”
So yes, both parties have been high borrowers. That bit is correct. But it misses important differences.
taxresearch.org. uk/Blog/2021/06/24
However, there are increasing noises being made about austerity and the need to ‘repay the debt’, even though it is very apparent that politicians have no clue how to do this, and have no track record in doing so. Why are they in that case claiming the need to do something that has never happened, and likely never will? What is this wholly unnecessary distraction about? And why do we need to suffer austerity in the forlorn hope that debt might be repaid when it is apparent that not doing so has not caused harm, but the attempt to make repayment has?
Surely it is time for some politicians to call this out and say the claim that debt repayment is a priority is simply wrong, because the evidence shows that to be the case.
Wouldn’t it be nice to have a clear honest answer to that.
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My dad use to me “show me a politician and i will show you a lair” How right he was
Apparently the interest on the debt will never be paid off Cinders, and that’s even before anything comes off the amount.
And why, if we are such debt are we spending so much on wars in foreign countries, giving aid to countries who don’t really need it, Taking on silly projects lake HS2 and trying to store CO2 in underground storage units? Have you ever heard of anything so daft… 
I wonder how it’s going to help the planet if the UK goes bankrupt or gets destroyed by Putin for meddling in affairs that don’t concern us. I do feel sorry for the Ukrainians and have no problem looking after their refugees. At least they are proper refugees. .
I read recently that the loans to pay compensation to slave owners in 1835 were only fully paid off in 2015. At the time this was the largest debt ever taken on by the UK - they borrowed £20m to pay the compensation (5% of the countries GDP).
I also read recently that the last payment for the WW2 loans from the US was paid in 2009. So a global conflict was more affordable than paying off slave owners?
Anyway, it seems that some debts can be paid off. Eventually.
Extra money allowed for contingencies, incidental expense.
Labour haven’t been on power for quite as many years as Tories. They are also traditionally the party of high taxation. My experience of labour aside from Blair is one of them running the country into the ground. The country of my childhood was one of failed labour policies, strikes, rubbish mounting up, the army coming in green goddesses, massive inflation, no jobs.
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So you decided not to read the article…
Yep, miners strikes, 3 day week, rubbish not being collected. All under Ted Heath’s tory government.
I’m not saying that Labour’s record on such matters is any better. But the article shared confirms that the Conservative governments borrowed more and paid back less. Even if allowing for additional time in power. So worth reading.
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There were some bad times back then aswell 
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Indeed, is does and it has. A freight haulage company not far from my location has put its remaining 6 contracted directly employed drivers on notice that either they become self-employed owner-drivers or its goodbye. The only good thing about this decision is that all will be offered good preferential prices if they do decide to buy the rigs they are now driving. The majority of rigs are run by owner-drivers, so this action will now produce all contracted rigs for the company’s nationwide haulage contracts.
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Ah yes. The "“winter of discontent” and Jim “crisis? what crisis?” Callaghan. I remember it well. Some people forget the mess Maggie Thatcher had to deal with.
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We as voters keep them both in power, their combined failures in our lifetime along with the shortcomings of FPTP. Why are people surprised about Reform success. Don’t know about Puerto Rico but UK [politically] is a “floating island of garbage”. imo
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Yes Cinders, ever since we stopped making stuff and stopped training our young people to do proper jobs.
Too much globalism and paying foreign countries to make what we should be making.
I was describing Callaghan’s Winter of discontent and the disruption around that period. Harold Wilson preceded him. I don’t know much of Heath’s premiership as I was too young to see the effects on the economy, but it was Labour’s government that changed the entire character of the area when I was growing, buying up properties to create council houses by converting a number of houses to flats in our previously quiet residential street. A sense of greyness settled over the land for a decade. I’m not sure how much they could have hedged against the major global economic turbulence of that decade, but we ended up with a much reduced manufacturing sector by the end.
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Looks like Kemi has won the Tory leadership. I look forward to some interesting PM question debates.