Politicians are not interested in the long term, when has that ever kept them in power? No, it's reactionary and short term flash measures that they want to secure their place with.

We haven't had anyone truly great in parliament since the likes of Churchill and I have no doubts that we ever will again.

UK economy in double-dip recession

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-17836624

Prime Minister David Cameron said the figures were "very, very disappointing"

/cue large number of voices shouting 'I told you so!'

When was it a good idea to cripple your economy so you can't pay it back?

People in work generate money and pay the bills - those not in work cost.

France is very different to the UK and not really comparable. They have the Euro and we don't. The only way to compare is to have two worlds, one voted Conservative/Liberal at the last election, the other retaining Labour. Then you might have a system that you can compare the results.

We were out of the recession problem, had we just continued everything would have gone a lot better than at present.

And I agree, we can't go on trying to spend our way out of trouble forever - it has to be done at the right point and kept going, otherwise the chance is wasted. OTOH putting taxes up excessively when the country is already in a very bad way is asking for recession.

It's a comparison between chalk and cheese. They are DIFFERENT.

We haven't had anyone truly great in parliament since the likes of Churchill...

And even he was an incompetent tosser, tbh...

Hmm yeah they are diffetent, it's a reasonable enough fit for this comparison.

Chalk and cheese - nah more like chedda and Edam - whilst you can point out the obvious, that one is orange and has a wax layer it doesn't negate the fact that leaving one unwrapped and outside the fridge will have a noticeable effect as the impact of that action is significant enough.

There are many differences such as the kind of party and economics. While UK Labour might be regarded as 'left wing' the actual running of the country was moderate conservative under them. Similarly a French government deciding to splurge money and hope for the best can't be compared to a British one being far more prudent in it's spending.

Remember also that it was THE BANKS who got us into the mess in the first case - not the political parties. Much of the money that ended up being owed by the government was because they bailed out the banks, not because the government spending was excessive.

Labour warned the coalition they were making a huge gamble, the political pundits warned they were taking a huge gamble, and guess what? They took the huge gamble and got snake eyes.

George Osborne comes from a family of gamblers. So far it has paid off for them personally. It looks like it didn't for anyone else though.

There are many differences such as the kind of party and economics. While UK Labour might be regarded as 'left wing' the actual running of the country was moderate conservative under them.

erm yeah, under a center right Blairite regime... current Labour opposition is a bit of a mixed bag really with some Blarite relics the current Leader doesn't really have the 'Balls' to remove, as highlighted by Livingstone yesterday - obviously they'll oppose the coalition but who's to say what they would have done - there is a reasonable chance that, if in power, they wouldn't have been too different. Anyway its completely irrelevant as we're interested here in comparing two clearly different philosophies not guesstimating what sort of half baked ideas might have been tried here had the other side got in...

Similarly a French government deciding to splurge money and hope for the best can't be compared to a British one being far more prudent in it's spending.

Not a comparison but rather a contrast - if one significantly under performs vs the other then we will get a fairly strong confirmation re: which side took the correct approach with austerity over here vs debt fueled spending over there.