I think you've being listening to too many Labour spin doctors.
Quite wrong I'm afraid. I have never voted Labour and do not follow their dogma and spin. My observations are of someone who lives in the UK and understands the economic situation quite well. I guess I'm a glass half full kinda person rather than a half empty glass bloke who then throws it at the wall crying.
3 bed semis in major cities selling for less than 100k - not very encouraging.
No doubt if you tried hard enough you'd find a skanky rundown semi for £100k in a city, but it wouldn't be anything I'd buy. A quick review of sold prices in my postcode show that the last semi sold a few months back for over £230k
Not bad for a town with a poor reputation in the UK (Luton).
Not what my sources living in UK say. UK has been hit very hard with redundancy. The job market in midlands and north is non-existant - even min. wage jobs.
Yes there have been lots of people been made redundant, I'm not denying it. People have been made redundant in every western economy. What I have said is many have taken pay freezes/cuts instead of redundancy. It is very common. I personally know several people who have lost their jobs and found other employment fairly quickly. Yes there will be more unemployment and redundancies in the economy, but I think the worst has already happened.
UK is a net importer. Significant hikes in consumer good prices i.e. electrical goods, cars, clothes etc. over the coming months will hit the ordinary punter. A devalued currency also means the price of imported fossils fuels will be higher.
The ordinary punter will switch to goods/products made in the UK to offest the lowering of the currency. A good example would be many more people holidaying at home this year instead of going abroad. Many imports are so called luxury items which will simply not be purchased at all.
There is a major problem with this statement. Uk does not have much scope to increase direct taxes. Those on minimum wage are already in the tax net. Compare it with Ireland where 40% are outside the tax net, so you can raise revenue by expanding the tax net to include everyone. UK does not have this option. Brown borrowing a load of money to bail out the banks was a panic move that the UK will pay for for years to come. The money did not alter confidence in british banking and so was wasted. The amounts borrowed are 10ks per taxpayer. How can they pay this back, particularly with a lot of the workforce on low wages?
I did say the increases in public spending will result in a hangover. By a hangover I meant that we'll be paying for this later when the economy improves. Taxes will rise in the future to pay for all of this. There is always scope for raising more taxable income in an improving economy.
The fiscal policies they have implemented won't create miracles overnight, you'll have several months leadtime for interest rates alone making an impact, let alone quantitive easing or toxic loan guarantees. To say the policies have been a waste of time is facile. The average UK wage BTW is in the region of £33k, hardly low wages.
Of course the UK is in a weak position, everyone knows that. But tell me a Eurozone country which is in a very good position in these times? I still say the UK will be one of the first European economies to pull out of recession.