Time for Osbourne to go?

[jake-the-peg]

What qualifies this man to be chancellor of the exchequer?

His degree in History?

The fact that he was a member of the same upper class dining club at Oxford as Cameron?

Even the Telegraph commenators today have said he's out of his depth.

Do people think he should go and if so does Cameron have the killer instinct to sack a friend?

[jake-the-peg]

Obviously politicians don't come up with stuff themselves they take advice.

Brown took advice and Osbourne took ... well it's been rather quiet hasn't it?

I still haven't heard anybody actually stand up for him and say anything he did or said!

Still as Tom said there's time enough maybe he's a late developer

[R1Geezer]

So Gromit, they lay of 10000 public sector workers. One might ask what jobs they do that can be dispensed with, I think we know that they are just a small percentage of the 700,000 public sector non jobs that have been given to labour voters since 1997. Times are hard so we can lay off a diversity consultant or 2, and what about those 5 a day officers I mean do we really need someone to tell us to eat fruit and veg?

[Gromit]

Hindsight is a wonderful thing, but it is worth reading this Cameron/Osborne double act to see how they would have acted.

http://conservativehome.blogs.com/torydiary/20 08/02/live-blog-camer.html

This quote from Cameron, could be turned onto his own Shadow Chancellor...

"...there is no use in sticking with a Chancellor who has lost the nation's confidence. There is no point waiting any longer. The Prime Minister must fire his Chancellor and reconstruct his Government."

[ludwig]

It's starting to look a bit desparate when Labour supporters are campaigning to get the Tories out before they've even got in.

They support the governments plan, so that makes them clueless tw&ts. If they opposed it, that would make them..er let me guess, clueless tw&ts?

[rov1200]

Putting any politician in charge of the economy is like putting an academic in charge of the government. They should not have to learn from an apprenticeship where experience is only gained from failure, theres or there predecessors.

[Tom Braider]

R1 is showing a faulty appreciation of the facts again. See here for details of civil service numbers. http://www.civilservant.org.uk/numbers.pdf

Note this bit: "Gordon Brown announced in 2004 that he intended to cut about 84,150 posts..."

There are now about 500,000 white-collar civil servants, 71,000 fewer than in 1977 and 38,000 fewer than in 2004 - although 21,000 more than in 1999.

[R1Geezer]

Tom I'm talking about the "public sector" not just the civil service, what a plonker!

[Kromovaracun]

All the work is done by the humble functionaries in the Civil Service. They come up with the ideas and their political masters choose the one that best suits their dogma, sign the papers and then go on telly to tell everybody how wonderful they all are and how they�ve saved the world.

It tends to be a good deal more complicated than that, actually...

Politicians generally provide the idea or the 'direction' of the policy, while the civil servants (in this case in the treasury) work out the details and exact mechanations, then normally present it back to whichever politician is responsible for scrutiny. The balance between them really varies between the individual politicians and how they work.

I think you need to bear in mind that the view of politicians you have is an almost comical stereotype - and like all stereotypes there's kernel of truth in it, but there's also lots of cases where it doesn't apply.