parklane1
Vic Buckingham
(1) Now i see it all, the reason Cameron was unable to win a election against a party who was washed up, its all the voters fault :ross:
(2) I can't dance with that, as i have said all partys are weak at the moment.
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The Budget
- Thread starter southstand1882
- Start date
(1) Now i see it all, the reason Cameron was unable to win a election against a party who was washed up, its all the voters fault :ross:
(2) I can't dance with that, as i have said all partys are weak at the moment.
southstand1882
Mitchell Thomas
Between 1991 and 1997 - 800,000 public sector jobs were removed - over 1.5 million private sector jobs were created.
Between 2000 and 2009 - 850,000 public sector jobs were created
Labour created an army of Labour voters
And we wonder why we're in the brick
parklane1
Vic Buckingham
Between 1991 and 1997 - 800,000 public sector jobs were removed - over 1.5 million private sector jobs were created.
Between 2000 and 2009 - 850,000 public sector jobs were created
Labour created an army of Labour voters
And we wonder why we're in the brick
Do you really believe that is why Cameron did not get a majority, if so why did Labour not get re elected and and does that mean the Tories will never win another election.
southstand1882
Mitchell Thomas
parklane1
Vic Buckingham
You know what...I'm not sure.
Really, so i guess its because he is a loser then,because if it was not for Clegg saving his arse the Tories would have another leader by now.
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southstand1882
Mitchell Thomas
Can somebody please translate?
The Moonlit Knight
Banned
It's mainly because our voting system is ridiculous.
Labour will win the next election though, I am sure of it. They were clever in their last couple of years in charge. They realised what they had done but rather than reverse their economic stupidity they sped up the countries fiscal disaster, thus ensuring that the next government (which they knew wouldn't be theirs) would have to make some extremely unpopular decisions and therefore be pretty much unelectable next time around.
parklane1
Vic Buckingham
You may have a good point there, the coalition has made a mess of running the Country and the voters will let them know that. The problem is Miliband is a bit of a dead horse and may put people off. It really is a sad state of affairs that we do not seem to have a party that is capable of running the country and getting us up and running again.
The Moonlit Knight
Banned
Not sure I agree with that. They never stood a chance with the current economic woes. But they haven't helped themselves either by being too cautious. They should've been brutal and aggressive with the public sector and the welfare state, and should've slashed as much tax when they first got in as possible. The most important thing any government can do right now is encourage investment from big business and make sure that the UK is the place to be in the world for anyone with money.
parklane1
Vic Buckingham
I think the biggest problem they have is the disagreements that are being made public all the time, one of the reasons they may be too cautious is they can not agree on much.I just can not see them convincing the public that they are doing a good job.
nayimfromthehalfwayline
Andy Thompson
Exactly the sort of thing King would be able to do.
fudge politics - someone sensible take over!
Changes to economic policy always take at least two years to show the true effect that's why we're in the brick now, we're sufferi9ng from the last year or so of Labour rule.
As for them winning next time round I wouldn't be surprised, they were clever enough to make boundry changes to the constituencies that moved Labour voters from safe Labour seats into marginal seats without affecting the majority in the safe seat, thus giving them two safe seats instead of one.
monkeybarry
Ian Walker
thats great in theory and stands up if looking at just the UK - but most of the Western world has gone the same way at the same time, so i think to say its all one big Labou plan is bit far fetched.......although there is certainly a echo of truth
Howard Webb
Clive Wilson
er, tax on hot food now?? WHAT THE fudge.
these clowns have lost the fudging plot.
these clowns have lost the fudging plot.
monkeybarry
Ian Walker
not sure i totally agree with that as you need to guard against people being out of work or too squeezed, otherwise you just create a whole new set of social issues that cost money to sort it and the cycle continues
what i would like to see them do is create some legislation that governs public spending relative to GDP (or something similar) to create and continual and stable public - private country set up
at present we are trying to shoehorn and fasttrack private enterprise to allow the shift from public sector reliance - and we all know Rome wasnt built in a day
my background in public sector/not for profit - but it has always been quite clear you need private sector to sustain an economy and rather than having the see-saw effect that swapping between Lab and Con gvts (like we will see in the next 20yrs IMO), lets set some sustainable rules regarding the general overview of the workforce setup, rules within with the encumbant Govt must work
spursman17
Stephen Kelly
Between 1991 and 1997 - 800,000 public sector jobs were removed - over 1.5 million private sector jobs were created.
Between 2000 and 2009 - 850,000 public sector jobs were created
Labour created an army of Labour voters
And we wonder why we're in the brick
This is one of the main problems in our country. A public sector too big, to a point where now we are limited in our actions of policies.
Public sector workers provide a service to the British people. They do not bring in new money to the economy.
Of course these services are needed but we can only have services that we can afford.
What we should be aiming for is a minimal spend on our expenditure as a country and doing everything we can on igniting the growth in our private sector. It is when we are able to do this that we can then think about providing our people with the desired services we are used to by impacting the cost with the stream of new money coming in.
Currently with such a big public workforce we are spending money on services with no economic return. Public and private sectors require a fine balance in our economy.
If I was in charge I would cut down the number of public sector workers to a minimum. The money saved would then be thrown into policies to support private sector growth. A lot of people will miss out and be hit financially BUT this is how it has to be for the future of the country and for the benefit of the mass majority.
After a few years of financial growth we can then think about increasing the costs of the public sector as we would be able to afford it, something we cannot afford at the moment.
I would also increase the retirement age to 70 over the next few years. People live longer and the proportion of people using the NHS (especially the older generation) will widen while national insurance contributions will not meet the ratio needed to maintain these services in the future on current policies.
I would also invest in IT. Efficiency is key to maintaining large scale services reducing back room staff. Labour should be appalled in allowing billions being spent on an IT service where nothing but POOR planning resulted in the failure. I work in large IT projects and anyone with a brain knows that planning a system on paper and knowing the exact requirements will result in the foundation of a successful build.
When I was younger I worked for a while for the NHS. They were paying people like me ?ú7 an hour (bank staff rate), a job commonly taken up by people of my age group while fellow counterparts were being paid ?ú5 an hour for companies doing similar clerical work.
There is a lot of waste and people are kidding themselves if they think we can sustain our current services in the long run on current policies. Bigger cuts should be made for the better of the country and the sooner people realise that the better it will be for ALL of us.
Leeds Spur
Banned
The regional weighting needs to be bought in. My wife cannot find work for ex public sector staff as they expect a fortune for menial jobs. The public sector in brick areas pushes out entrepreneurs as start ups cannot compete with the wages they pay.
Definitely agree with regional weighting. Last thing we need is a bunch of Northerners thinking they are equal.
southstand1882
Mitchell Thomas
southstand1882
Mitchell Thomas
Good morning everyone, letÔÇÖs start the week with a gentle quiz. By the end of this parliament, will the United KingdomÔÇÖs national debt be a) higher, b) lower, c) about the same, or d) eliminated altogether? Balls, stop peeping at OsborneÔÇÖs notes. Clegg, put away that calculator.
The answer is, of course, a). In just four yearsÔÇÖ time, our state debt will be 40 per cent ÔÇô yes, forty per cent ÔÇô higher than it is today. By 2015-16, thanks in part to the power of compound interest, the Government will owe on our behalf more than ?ú1.4 trillion, compared with just over ?ú1 trillion in 2011-12. For context, the extra ?ú400 billion is equal to one yearÔÇÖs income tax, Vat, corporation tax and national insurance, combined.
Over the past 12 months, the outlook for BritainÔÇÖs liabilities has deteriorated. In his Budget last year, the Chancellor forecast that by the time of the next election national debt would be ?ú1.359 trillion. Now he is predicting ?ú1.437 trillion, some ?ú78 billion more (twice what we spend on defence). Before considering why BritainÔÇÖs debt is increasing at roughly ?ú2 billion a week, hereÔÇÖs part two of the Monday brain-teaser. In the next four years, will our national income grow a) more quickly than the debt or b) more slowly than the debt? Those who answered a) must stay behind and see nurse.
The horror we face is a debt monster, bursting out of its shirt like the Incredible Hulk, while our capacity to deal with the problem expands far too sedately. For those blessed with curiosity and a strong constitution, I recommend the TreasuryÔÇÖs Red Book, a cornucopia of historical data and terrifying estimates. The trick is to ignore the subjective guff at the front, which invites us to believe that government policy will deliver results, and start at the back with the Office for Budget ResponsibilityÔÇÖs selected tables.
Here we learn that BritainÔÇÖs nominal GDP is expected to grow by just 20 per cent between now and 2015-16, whereas debt will increase at twice that pace. If the goal is to stop borrowing and start repaying what we owe, you will not find the tipping point in this yearÔÇÖs Red Book. Its forecasts end at 2016-17, when we will still be spending ?ú21 billion a year more than projected earnings. There is no forecast for what our annual interest bill will be by then, but on the basis of this yearÔÇÖs ?ú50 billion, about ?ú70 billion seems likely. Disgraceful.
How did we get into this mess? Why canÔÇÖt George Osborne rebalance incomings and outgoings more readily? Where is prudence when you need her? In search of some answers, I trawled through more than 25 years of public spending records. What they show is a relentless rise in state largesse, through good times and bad, the upshot of which is institutionalised indulgence: luxuries have become necessities and value for money exists only as a concept. Between 2000 and 2010, UK government real expenditure (inflation adjusted) increased by 53 per cent from ?ú451 billion to ?ú688 billion.
As Dr Tim Morgan, head of research at Tullett Prebon, a City broking house, notes: ÔÇ£No one has yet explained why the British state must spend ?ú700 billion today, having managed perfectly well on ?ú450 billion, at todayÔÇÖs values, 10 years ago.ÔÇØ Well, part of the reason is that injecting funds into one category of expenditure can lead to higher demand for resources in another. For example, itÔÇÖs reasonable to assume that the 140 per cent increase in the health budget between 2000 and 2010 led to some people living longer. This added to the upward pressure on pensions, the bill for which rose by 78 per cent over that period.
As a political proposition, cutting the NHSÔÇÖs outlay in order to kill off our elderly is unlikely to win votes, so we need to look elsewhere for achievable savings. The obvious place is welfare: social security benefits and tax credits. Between them, they will gobble up ?ú209.2 billion in 2012-13, about 30 per cent of all government expenditure, not much less than health and education combined.
Through the 1990s, welfare spending remained more or less constant, according to ukpublicspending.co.uk. But after Gordon Brown decided to open the floodgates in 2002, outgoings increased from a respectable flow to an unseemly torrent. We were quickly turned into a nation of handout addicts, where anyone who dared challenge the merit of rewarding idleness was set upon by the pit bulls of political correctness.
During the so-called boom years, 2002-07, welfare costs shot up by 40 per cent. New benchmarks for state munificence were established and a ruinous culture of entitlements became embedded. We were set on a path that led to some families legally claiming more than the average wage, ?ú26,000, in benefits. In order to justify this obscenity, a new lexicon was created. Old words were given new meanings. This is what Orwell identified as political sophistryÔÇÖs ÔÇ£catalogue of swindles and perversionsÔÇØ: the aim of distorting speech in order to defend the indefensible and consolidate conformity.
Mr Brown used to talk of LabourÔÇÖs ÔÇ£investmentÔÇØ, when he really meant consumption. By contrast, todayÔÇÖs spending cuts are deemed by the Left to be ÔÇ£savageÔÇØ, austerity is never less than ÔÇ£cruelÔÇØ and poverty has been redefined as a relative concept, thus making sure its victims will always be with us. ÔÇ£FairnessÔÇØ is stuck on every act of income redistribution like a supermarket price label. Those who question the recipientsÔÇÖ needs are branded ÔÇ£callousÔÇØ.
Opponents of responsible spending talk of bringing back the 50p tax rate (which raised just ?ú1 billion) and a new bankersÔÇÖ bonus levy (?ú3-4 billion) as if they alone might solve our debt problems. This is ludicrous. To achieve a balanced budget, we need much less spending. We cannot tax our way to prosperity. Does fairness apply only to those at the bottom end of the income ladder?
The top one per cent of BritainÔÇÖs earners account for nearly 30 per cent of all income tax receipts. They pay ?ú45 billion a year. How much must they cough up in order to pass the decency test? 40 per cent? 50 per cent? I put this question to the Shadow Chancellor last week. He would not answer.
ÔÇ£If thought corrupts language,ÔÇØ said Orwell, ÔÇ£language can also corrupt thought.ÔÇØ We seem perilously close to such an outcome.
The answer is, of course, a). In just four yearsÔÇÖ time, our state debt will be 40 per cent ÔÇô yes, forty per cent ÔÇô higher than it is today. By 2015-16, thanks in part to the power of compound interest, the Government will owe on our behalf more than ?ú1.4 trillion, compared with just over ?ú1 trillion in 2011-12. For context, the extra ?ú400 billion is equal to one yearÔÇÖs income tax, Vat, corporation tax and national insurance, combined.
Over the past 12 months, the outlook for BritainÔÇÖs liabilities has deteriorated. In his Budget last year, the Chancellor forecast that by the time of the next election national debt would be ?ú1.359 trillion. Now he is predicting ?ú1.437 trillion, some ?ú78 billion more (twice what we spend on defence). Before considering why BritainÔÇÖs debt is increasing at roughly ?ú2 billion a week, hereÔÇÖs part two of the Monday brain-teaser. In the next four years, will our national income grow a) more quickly than the debt or b) more slowly than the debt? Those who answered a) must stay behind and see nurse.
The horror we face is a debt monster, bursting out of its shirt like the Incredible Hulk, while our capacity to deal with the problem expands far too sedately. For those blessed with curiosity and a strong constitution, I recommend the TreasuryÔÇÖs Red Book, a cornucopia of historical data and terrifying estimates. The trick is to ignore the subjective guff at the front, which invites us to believe that government policy will deliver results, and start at the back with the Office for Budget ResponsibilityÔÇÖs selected tables.
Here we learn that BritainÔÇÖs nominal GDP is expected to grow by just 20 per cent between now and 2015-16, whereas debt will increase at twice that pace. If the goal is to stop borrowing and start repaying what we owe, you will not find the tipping point in this yearÔÇÖs Red Book. Its forecasts end at 2016-17, when we will still be spending ?ú21 billion a year more than projected earnings. There is no forecast for what our annual interest bill will be by then, but on the basis of this yearÔÇÖs ?ú50 billion, about ?ú70 billion seems likely. Disgraceful.
How did we get into this mess? Why canÔÇÖt George Osborne rebalance incomings and outgoings more readily? Where is prudence when you need her? In search of some answers, I trawled through more than 25 years of public spending records. What they show is a relentless rise in state largesse, through good times and bad, the upshot of which is institutionalised indulgence: luxuries have become necessities and value for money exists only as a concept. Between 2000 and 2010, UK government real expenditure (inflation adjusted) increased by 53 per cent from ?ú451 billion to ?ú688 billion.
As Dr Tim Morgan, head of research at Tullett Prebon, a City broking house, notes: ÔÇ£No one has yet explained why the British state must spend ?ú700 billion today, having managed perfectly well on ?ú450 billion, at todayÔÇÖs values, 10 years ago.ÔÇØ Well, part of the reason is that injecting funds into one category of expenditure can lead to higher demand for resources in another. For example, itÔÇÖs reasonable to assume that the 140 per cent increase in the health budget between 2000 and 2010 led to some people living longer. This added to the upward pressure on pensions, the bill for which rose by 78 per cent over that period.
As a political proposition, cutting the NHSÔÇÖs outlay in order to kill off our elderly is unlikely to win votes, so we need to look elsewhere for achievable savings. The obvious place is welfare: social security benefits and tax credits. Between them, they will gobble up ?ú209.2 billion in 2012-13, about 30 per cent of all government expenditure, not much less than health and education combined.
Through the 1990s, welfare spending remained more or less constant, according to ukpublicspending.co.uk. But after Gordon Brown decided to open the floodgates in 2002, outgoings increased from a respectable flow to an unseemly torrent. We were quickly turned into a nation of handout addicts, where anyone who dared challenge the merit of rewarding idleness was set upon by the pit bulls of political correctness.
During the so-called boom years, 2002-07, welfare costs shot up by 40 per cent. New benchmarks for state munificence were established and a ruinous culture of entitlements became embedded. We were set on a path that led to some families legally claiming more than the average wage, ?ú26,000, in benefits. In order to justify this obscenity, a new lexicon was created. Old words were given new meanings. This is what Orwell identified as political sophistryÔÇÖs ÔÇ£catalogue of swindles and perversionsÔÇØ: the aim of distorting speech in order to defend the indefensible and consolidate conformity.
Mr Brown used to talk of LabourÔÇÖs ÔÇ£investmentÔÇØ, when he really meant consumption. By contrast, todayÔÇÖs spending cuts are deemed by the Left to be ÔÇ£savageÔÇØ, austerity is never less than ÔÇ£cruelÔÇØ and poverty has been redefined as a relative concept, thus making sure its victims will always be with us. ÔÇ£FairnessÔÇØ is stuck on every act of income redistribution like a supermarket price label. Those who question the recipientsÔÇÖ needs are branded ÔÇ£callousÔÇØ.
Opponents of responsible spending talk of bringing back the 50p tax rate (which raised just ?ú1 billion) and a new bankersÔÇÖ bonus levy (?ú3-4 billion) as if they alone might solve our debt problems. This is ludicrous. To achieve a balanced budget, we need much less spending. We cannot tax our way to prosperity. Does fairness apply only to those at the bottom end of the income ladder?
The top one per cent of BritainÔÇÖs earners account for nearly 30 per cent of all income tax receipts. They pay ?ú45 billion a year. How much must they cough up in order to pass the decency test? 40 per cent? 50 per cent? I put this question to the Shadow Chancellor last week. He would not answer.
ÔÇ£If thought corrupts language,ÔÇØ said Orwell, ÔÇ£language can also corrupt thought.ÔÇØ We seem perilously close to such an outcome.