Yes

Unfortunately, most people look at the fiscal budget the same way they look at their personal domestic budget. Osborne relies on us doing just that because it’s a guaranteed way of making ‘budget surplus’ look like a good thing.

To have a government surplus we would have to push debt into the private sector and that will hurt growth and increase our personal debt.

Playing with words. There are always borrowers and lenders. For the prosperity of the country, you run at a surplus. Anything else is pure codswallop

How do you think they get to that surplus? Do you have any links you are reading that I haven't managed to find? Creating a surplus means a fall in your net assets and will create huge private sector deficits. Government budget surplus has to equal private Sector deficit.
............Private/ Government/ Total
Income... £1000/ £100/ £1100
Spending... £1100/ £0/ £1100
Balance... -£100/ +£100/ £0

:laugh: which one? if it's JSA then how can that show a rise in employment if 4000 have claimed this benefit?

Vid by McDonnell on the subject on here ...
http://www.theguardian.com/politics/...te-live-debate

'Labour’s Jonathan Reynolds says this fiscal charter is “moronic’. It would stop the government borrowing to invest. That is why no sensible economist backs it.

McDonnell says he could not have put that better himself.'

You can earn up to £6,000 and still get JSA

Thanks Kizzy, this is an interesting link :)

James Cleverly, a Conservative MP, says the wording of the charter has not changed in the last two weeks. What changed? Had McDonnell not read the charter two weeks ago?

McDonnell says, before an MP intervenes in a debate, it is best to have listened to it first, so that one can be sure one is adding something to the sum of human knowledge.

Jacob Rees-Mogg, a Conservative, says McDonnell says he wants to eliminate the deficit. But he opposes all cuts. So how could that happen?

McDonnell says he will get to that in his speech. (I'm so looking forward to this!)

He then went on to say: The Tories have persuaded the public that the crash was caused by Labour spending. That has been one of the most successful attempts to rewrite history in recent times. He will correct that tonight. The Tories backed Labour spending until Northern Rock. And it was not hiring doctors and nurses that caused the crash. The deficit was not the cause of the crash. It was the consequence of it.

Lets get the fireworks out!!

Idk if anyone has seen this, but a quick google will find it..

George Osbourne was fiercly opposed to Labour originally intending to introduce a bill like this in 2010 near the end of their term.. quite funny it's the same arguments used too

Ah right, I thought any job paid or unpaid saw you hauled off JSA to keep the figures low.

George Osborne has used a 90-minute debate on the charter for budget responsibility, committing the government to running a permanent budget surplus in normal times after 2019, to attack Labour as a party of “fiscal irresponsibility”. In his first parliamentary outing against Osborne, John McDonnell, the shadow chancellor, rejected this claim, saying Labour was committed to reducing the deficit in a way that was fair. McDonnell was mocked for his U-turn on this issue this week, but he insisted that he had only changed his mind on tactics not policy. As I write, the full voting figures are not available, but Labour says fewer than 30 MPs chose to abstain rather than to support the party line and vote against the government. That represents a blow to Jeremy Corbyn’s authority, but a relatively minor one because, in parliamentary terms, an abstention does not normally count as a proper rebellion.

Yes the nation is in debt, big deal... Ethical economists would be looking for a way to balance the books with the least impact on the welfare of citizens.
It depends on what your interpretation of fiscal irresponsibility is as to which party is guilty of it.

Its alarming that our national debt has soured up by £850 billion in the last five and a half years. That's significantly more than Blair and Brown added in 11 years.

What frightens me is, the government are now going to start squeezing money out of its population.

What do these new budget rules actually mean to the population of Britain?

Just into the 20s was the figure Kizzy and had they not done so this bill would still have got passed comfortably.
Where everyone else was is a mystery to me.
Labour and the SNP alone have nearly 290 MPs, yet only 258 voted against this bill.

It is simply a wrong policy at this time and I am yet to be convinced this govt will be running at any surplus by the time 2019 comes around anyway.
If anything they have presided over worse than what they took over in 2010.

Hence why they came crawling back in 2015 needing, they say, the same time to do the same things to achieve the same targets set in 2010 but failed to reach.
It would not surprise me to hear that argument again in 2020.

I'm really annoyed thinking about it with Milliband, for not getting angrier and highlighting any of this during the election, he should've been shining a torch on all the dark recesses that the tories like to keep hidden. Corbyn comes across like a deputy headmaster at PMQs, it's better than it was but I really want him to go for the jugular.
I don't know what they mean, nobody seems to know what they mean that's the odd thing. Osborne raved on that voting against showed 'fiscal irresponsibility' what did voting for show? social irresponsibility as far as I can see.
I have a theory as to why this money is being clawed together in this manner, I think we're going to war.

In 2010 Labour brought in the Fiscal Responsibility Act which promised to halve the deficit by the end of 2014. This was repealed in 2011. Here is what Osborne had to say

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GbLMccuA6P0
Instead of an opposition bench, they should just have a tv monitor playing back what he said in the past.

I feel your frustration Kizzy because I know exactly what you mean!

My husband said exactly that to me this morning...about war that is :sad: