The Budget!

[Fosse Boy]

Well there aren't gonna be many better off are there?

[Tilley]

Well there aren't gonna be many better off are there?

Hardly 'fucked' are we?!

[Guest Bilo]

I worry about how easy the obligatory GCSE Maths 'Calculate the VAT on a computer that costs £500' question is going to be now. Obviously that's the main concern with booze and petrol duty not going up.

[Fosse Boy]

Hardly 'fucked' are we?!

I'm way too cool to put anything in rational terms.

I worry about how easy the obligatory GCSE Maths 'Calculate the VAT on a computer that costs £500' question is going to be now. Obviously that's the main concern with booze and petrol duty not going up.

[Guest Bilo]

In all fairness, the Budget could have been a hell of a lot worse.

The old targets, road tax, petrol, beer and cigarettes were unaffected and the rise in the Income Tax threshold is a welcome one, especially for low earners. Overall, of course most of us are going to be worse off but if you didn't know that was going to happen you must have been living in a cave. We all knew it was going to be hurt and cost us, the question was always going to be how much it was going to hurt and cost. The VAT rise to 20% isn't the most welcome development, and I worry about the impact that will have on the high street come January. The fall in the VAT rate earlier this year helped to kickstart the high street and this rise could well have the opposite effect if we're not careful. The most brutal cuts seem to have been reserved for the benefits system and this could be divisive as many on the right will be singing in the streets and many on the left decry it as making the most vulnerable in our society suffer. The measures aren't that extreme though and some of them appear to be common sense as much as anything else. The fact that many have seen benefits as an alternative option to a job over the years has hardly helped the country's coffers and a less generous benefits system may encourage more to find a job, hopefully tying in with the coalition's plan to raise employment. Not a popular view I expect, but this economic situation is a major problem and radical solutions are required. The downside to this is that those who can't work suffer almost as much, and this should not have been the case.

So it's going to cost us, many are going to be worse off but the comparisons with the bad old days of the 1980s as many Labour supporters have immediately made are perhaps a bit strong. The economy is buggered. Something needs to be done to rectify this situation and unfortunately we'll all have to pick up the tab. All the government can do is do it fairly and with as little pain as possible to those who can least afford it, let's hope this is as bad as it gets.

[davieG]

Osbourne has second thoughts as he adopts Labours's budget suggestion.

From the Daily Mash - http://www.thedailymash.co.uk/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=2840&Itemid=28

OSBORNE TO SACK COVENTRY

22-06-10CHANCELLOR George Osborne is to throw everyone in Coventry out of work after a brilliant suggestion from Harriet Harman.

Coventry. Brilliant.

Mr Osborne had spent an hour setting out a hard-hitting budget but then immediately withdrew it after Ms Harman said it would have the same impact as taking the axe to the West Midlands hellhole.

The chancellor said: "That is just a stunningly good idea. Does anyone really object? I mean really? And don't just disagree for the sake of it. Let's think about this for a minute."

Holding aloft a copy of the Budget, he added: "This is horribly complicated. Tax rates, allowances, thresholds, family credits and stuff. It takes ages to read and, I'll be perfectly honest with you, I don't really understand any of it.

"Sacking Coventry is fair, simple and should only take me about 20 minutes.

"Now some will no doubt say 'what about all the people in Coventry? What are they supposed to do?'. But I don't care about them and neither does anyone else.

"We can protect welfare support for the rest of the country and make sure that middle class families continue to receive the annual increases in child benefit that they need to buy really good chorizo.

"Mr Deputy Speaker - Coventry. fooked. I commend it to the House."

A Treasury spokesman said the imminent de-Coventrisation of the UK replicated the key aims of the Budget perfectly by targeting around 300,000 indolent scroungers with ghastly regional accents.

He added: "We will however be pressing ahead with the VAT increase, but to those on low incomes who are concerned we would simply say, why not spend the money on fresh fruit and vegetables for a change instead of yet another enormous television that you can't afford anyway and will only make you even more fat and stupid, as if that was actually possible?

"Don't poor people make you sick?"

[James.]

Take away child tax credits with one hand give back cider with the other.

Osborne is a hero.

[Jon the Hat]

It is not as simple as those on welfare suffer most. Clearly the less you have the more impacted you are going to be by any change, but this is not an argument in itself. There have clearly been some anomalies in the system which needed ironing out.

1) Why is disabiliy living allowance higher than job seekers? Fair enough for those who are actually disabled, but people who don;t work for a bad back don't have additional costs, they have less as they are not actively looking for work. Either shift all but the actually diasbled needing additional care back on JSA or create a new category.

2) Cap of £400 on housing benefit. Seriously, this is still too high. I just don't buy the argument that "I live in an expensive Borough and rent is very expensive. Bloody move somewhere cheaper then! You cannot afford to be where you are.

3) Change in benefits indexation to CPI instead of RPI. Long overdue.

4) Linking of Pensions to hgher of earnings or CPI. About time. People who worked thier whole lives are getting less than people who have never worked. It is not right.

[BoneDog]

My Mrs can't walk anymore due to Rheumatoid Arthritis (she is only 30) and I dread to think how she will live in the future if I die. After paying bills she would have hardly anything if I didn't bring some money home. I'm sure these cuts are just a sign of things to come. If they start cutting the budget for carers and I am gone what would she do? I have never claimed anything off the government/council even though I think I'm entitled to around £15 a week.

The government gets us all in a mess because of their dodgy schemes and fook-ups and people are happy to start giving them even more money even though we are highly taxed on almost everything already (apart from oxygen, but that will come one day ). I don't understand why we accept all these tax hikes when we already pay through the roof. I think it's a blummin disgrace.

But I suppose that they do have their plans of militarizing space and all that business which costs a bomb and we wouldn't want to stop that hey, so whatever

[FoxyPV]

It is not as simple as those on welfare suffer most. Clearly the less you have the more impacted you are going to be by any change, but this is not an argument in itself. There have clearly been some anomalies in the system which needed ironing out.

1) Why is disabiliy living allowance higher than job seekers? Fair enough for those who are actually disabled, but people who don;t work for a bad back don't have additional costs, they have less as they are not actively looking for work. Either shift all but the actually diasbled needing additional care back on JSA or create a new category.

2) Cap of £400 on housing benefit. Seriously, this is still too high. I just don't buy the argument that "I live in an expensive Borough and rent is very expensive. Bloody move somewhere cheaper then! You cannot afford to be where you are

1) this is a problem with GPs just signing off sick notes and DLA without fully evaluating the patient before them . I think DLA should be scaled back because it is highly abused (seen it first hand) with people claiming for all sorts of spurious reasons.

2) the problem lies with rackrenting landlords not the areas nor the benefit - for a 1 bedroom flat in Newington (a shithole in the shittiest part of town) the rent is £450 p/m. Friends claim Housing Benefit and they get £200 p/m so they have to use the rest of their benefit (£90 p/fortnight) to subsidise this. There should social housing available to all who need it and because there isn't people have to rent privately and then get fooked over

[DJ Barry Hammond]

I know this is a labour stance, but the more and more I look into the current economic situation, the more I think we're in danger of constricting business growth as people in this doom and gloom and raised tax situation will naturally become more and more warry about spending.

Without people spending, business will then find it hard, and will in turn have to cut costs, possibly including jobs and then this brings the country into a vicisous cycle. If that scenario does happen this would surely result in tax receipts being lower and in turn make reducing the deficite that much harder?

Is there not an argument here in actually bringing in budget constraints but with slightly LOWER taxes designed to bring in more receipts and encourege growth would have been better? After all, I thought it was the conservatives that believed in the low tax ecomeny?

[Benji]

I know this is a labour stance, but the more and more I look into the current economic situation, the more I think we're in danger of constricting business growth as people in this doom and gloom and raised tax situation will naturally become more and more warry about spending.

Without people spending, business will then find it hard, and will in turn have to cut costs, possibly including jobs and then this brings the country into a vicisous cycle. If that scenario does happen this would surely result in tax receipts being lower and in turn make reducing the deficite that much harder?

Is there not an argument here in actually bringing in budget constraints but with slightly LOWER taxes designed to bring in more receipts and encourege growth would have been better? After all, I thought it was the conservatives that believed in the low tax ecomeny?

To be honest the longer this talk all goes on the more I just think its such a circular argument.

There isn't a right or wrong answer, both sides of the argument could be right and both labour and conservative approaches will eventually take us to another boom, the only thing is whatever happens, one side will use hindsight to say how great and right they were.

[DANGEROUS TIGER]

Really happy with the way things are being handled by the government. Restrict immigration, and hit the bloody scroungers.

[FoxyPV]

Really happy with the way things are being handled by the government. Restrict immigration, and hit the bloody scroungers.

[l444ry]

Don't worry. When the cuts start hitting nearer to home and there are no police on the streets to deal with the demontrations, those who are falling for Cameron and the media whores propaganda will realise what idiots they must be to have been so easily duped.

[breadandcheese]

Don't worry. When the cuts start hitting nearer to home and there are no police on the streets to deal with the demontrations, those who are falling for Cameron and the media whores propaganda will realise what idiots they must be to have been so easily duped.

What cuts would Labour have made differently?

Labour's argument was always about the timing rather than the substance. This insistence by labour politicians that they had a deficit reduction plan was never properly explained, with cuts pencilled in that were not wholly explained. It was Alastair Darling himself (one of the few politicians who deserves any respect) who said cuts under his plan would be more severe than Thatcher.

So the only thing Labour can really attack the coalition for is the timing of the cuts.

[l444ry]

What cuts would Labour have made differently?

Labour's argument was always about the timing rather than the substance. This insistence by labour politicians that they had a deficit reduction plan was never properly explained, with cuts pencilled in that were not wholly explained. It was Alastair Darling himself (one of the few politicians who deserves any respect) who said cuts under his plan would be more severe than Thatcher.

So the only thing Labour can really attack the coalition for is the timing of the cuts.

And the timing is important!! When the Tories start their mass cutting, the recent rise in unemployment of 23,000 will be like a walk in the park.

To them the unemployment figure will be proof of their policies working. The more unemployed, the better they are performing as they will have cut public sector jobs by the hundreds of thousands. They say this will help reduce the deficit. What it doesn't tell you is that these people will then need benefits, they may need training....who pays for this?

The knock on effect to the private sector cannot be stopped. If the hundreds of thousands of public sector workers lose their jobs, they then stop spending, stop using services and cut back themselves, which means the private sector is hit badly. The private sector then starts shedding jobs and both go hand in hand towards that historic figure of 3.2 million.

The question now is not if but when. The more serious question is when government goes into unemployment overdrive, will the country then go back into recession, and like Finland, hit the double dip?

[Jon the Hat]

Damn right timing is important. Off the back of the budget, the pound hit a 19 month high against the euro, so the smart money is behind the Government.

Labour would have done the same cuts only they would have caved left right and centre to the Unions leaving us in a bigger mess.

[FoxyPV]

Hmmmmm?

[l444ry]

They most startling thing of it all is the fact that in that leaked document, they are saying that they expect the economy to be in recovery, so these figures are on the back of what they expect to be a recovered economy. These figures are their best case scenario. If, like most economists think, the UK economy will either stall or enter a double dip recession in main because of Osbornes budget, just how high will the unemployment figures really be......it really is turning into nightmare proportions.

[Jon the Hat]

They most startling thing of it all is the fact that in that leaked document, they are saying that they expect the economy to be in recovery, so these figures are on the back of what they expect to be a recovered economy. These figures are their best case scenario. If, like most economists think, the UK economy will either stall or enter a double dip recession in main because of Osbornes budget, just how high will the unemployment figures really be......it really is turning into nightmare proportions.

Can you actually read? Did you get as far as the paragraph where it said "The Treasury is assuming that growth in the private sector will create 2.5m jobs in the next five years to compensate for the spending squeeze" So a net increase of 1.2M jobs is expected over the parliament. Or are you so blinded by your partisan hatred that your brain simply skipped over that paragraph?

[l444ry]

Can you actually read? Did you get as far as the paragraph where it said "The Treasury is assuming that growth in the private sector will create 2.5m jobs in the next five years to compensate for the spending squeeze" So a net increase of 1.2M jobs is expected over the parliament. Or are you so blinded by your partisan hatred that your brain simply skipped over that paragraph?

I suggest you re-read it Jon, after a trip to Specsavers...... unless the 1.2m jobs you happily refer to are to be created when we are not in recovery.

[Jon the Hat]

I suggest you re-read it Jon, after a trip to Specsavers...... unless the 1.2m jobs you happily refer to are to be created when we are not in recovery.

Even if the 1.2M upside doesn't happen we will have the same level of unemployment as now. What is your point exactly? Cutting public spending is exactly what will drive the recovery. Confidence is the key. Low interest rates = confidence. Future tax cuts for business = confidence. Stable economic policy - confidence. Not having a bunch of overtly populist fools in charge = confidence.

[breadandcheese]

If we didn't cut now, the resulting higher interest rates would be even more damaging.

[DANGEROUS TIGER]

Don't worry. When the cuts start hitting nearer to home and there are no police on the streets to deal with the demontrations, those who are falling for Cameron and the media whores propaganda will realise what idiots they must be to have been so easily duped.

You really are a jerk off!