The budget

[bigfoot3000]

It will be here in an hour, Its promised to be harsher, tougher and the most difficult in a long time. Am I the only one sitting here nervous? Also any predictions?

[New Judge]

Yes. Everybody will be worse off after today. Some will be considerably worse off than others.

We will all have to pay for 13 years of Labour profligacy. I have now endured four periods of Labour government and, despite thinking they could not possibly be as bad as their predessors, each has been progressively worse. The last two or three years have been the worst I have endured. Each Labour government I have witnessed has treated the paying public as complete idiots, with those making the bulk of the contributions to the economy being treated like cash cows, and fed on stale grass. Meanwhile those sitting on their backsides just see more money and resources poured at them because they are “disadvantaged”. Eventually the government runs out of other people’s money and somebody else has to clear up the mess.

Despite being told by Mr Cameron that we are “all in this together” some of us may find that we are more in it than others. I can see universal benefits such as Tax Credits, and Winter Fuel Payments being means tested, with only the most “disadvantaged” receiving them. I can see the Child Tax Credit payments (which used to be a universal allowance under PAYE before Mr Brown made his “radical” changes) being scaled back only to the “most needy”. Income Tax thresholds, it seems, will be raised (but the advantage will be clawed back - with interest - by other changes).

Until the nation gets to grips with the fact that the total Income Tax revenue is now no longer sufficient to pay the benefits bill, and that the public sector payroll headcount has increased by 6 million in the last 13 years (without much appreciable improvement in services), and we still pay money in overseas aid to China (the fastest growing economy in the world) and India (which has its own space programme) we will continue to flounder.

[rowanwitch]

I think the traditionally protected areas like health are due for a shock, the huge numbers of admin staff employed to feed the DOH requirement for data should be worried, as should the 'research nurses ' who usually get sister level pay for doing a combination of routine data collection and data entry while the medics on the teams get the credit and usually provide the academic credibility anyway....

[Gromit]

VAT 20%

Return to recession

Record unemployment

[ummmm]

Scary stuff..

[ummmm]

Looks like single parents are going to have to look for work as soon as their youngest starts school.

Fine.....but how many jobs are out there from 9am to 3pm?

[bigfoot3000]

Maybe it's about time that the government started this "Flexi-work" we heard about many years ago where the hours are more flexible so parents and others could work around other commitments and maybe put the hours in at a more convenient time.

[mamatwo]

Why can they only work 9 til 3? - loads of great before and after school care available!

[rowanwitch]

Unfortunately 'flexi work means people with children get to cherry pick working hours around their childcare arrangements and that leaves the rest to pick up the rest.... really obvious when I worked in ITU the people with children insisted they could only work their hours week ends and some night shifts when partners were available funnily enough it also meant they could work less hours for the same money due to the enhancements, week ends were quieter generally the work was easier and they didn't have to teach students or attend meetings, and the rest of us lost about £250 per month due to the loss of unsocial hours/night working

Family friendly working is a one way street it seem to me

[New Judge]

And even if not, why should taxpayers continue to fund their chosen lifestyles?

The previous government found it necessary to import (according to which estimate you believe) somewhere between 600,000 and 2.5 million people from abroad to fill vacancies that UK people either could not or (mainly) would not take up. The reason that they would not is because they were better off on benefits, especially if they were “disadvantaged”.

If we find it more convenient to import labour when we have armies of unemployed we cannot expect to live a life of luxury. The trouble is that those living in luxury contribute little or nothing whilst those funding them have to work harder and harder to maintain their chosen lifestyle (i.e. getting up at six in the morning to get to work and getting home just in time to see their children go to bed).

Utter madness!

[ummmm]

mamatwo....they often don't come cheap.

[New Judge]

Yes, rowanwitch is spot on.

For every person working “flexible family friendly” hours there is another poor sod working the inflexible unfriendly hours required to keep the business running.

Not much to do with the budget, though!

[youngmafbog]

Yes Gromit and if that happens the root cause will still be Labours shameful spending

[mamatwo]

Ummmm - Lots of people manage them and they're not that expensive and if they're Offsted registered you can claim back up to 80% of the cost via tax credits in any case.

[ummmm]

That's if tax credits stay the same.

[mamatwo]

Fair point Ummm - looks like they are from MSN live feed. How long that will last with the level of debt though..

[jake-the-peg]

Well it looks as if the country's debt problem isn't bad enough to force capital gains tax to come into line with income tax.

We couldn't have all those fat cats paying 40% income tax on their incentive schemes could we?

And it's no bad enough to raise duty on booze and cigarettes I see

[Gromit]

All very reminiscent of Geoffrey Howe's 1981 budget.

When does the rioting start?

[youngmafbog]

Sour grapes Jake, nothing like the politics of envy is there?

Not much in the budget to affect us, Labour had already put up the booze and fags, this is an emergency budget not the anual grab.

As we all know the amount being spent on the public sector is where the savings will come, it never was about a tax grab.

[jake-the-peg]

Politics of envy?

I don't think so - at least there's a bankers levy - although I doubt we'll get to claw back one percent of what they've cost us plunging us into debt to bail them out

But this isn't about balancing the books it's about small government

Double dip recession here we come