Government Cuts - How angry are you?

[cambridgefox]

My wife gets the figure of her bank bonus in the morning! Happy days!

[Jon the Hat]

Valid, I see what you was trying to say now, I read it in a more accusatory way than it was meant.

No problem, easily done!

My wife gets the figure of her bank bonus in the morning! Happy days!

Well? Are you minted and quaffing champagne???

[cambridgefox]

postponed news of bonus until the morning,but between you and me!!!people on here think they all get huge bonuses.They dont.Its also making me laugh reading some posts when they talk about the banks crisis,who to blame ,why they were bailed out etc etcA lack of facts and blinkered vision springs to mind.

[z-layrex]

Wouldn't be in this position if the lefties hadn't nearly bankrupted the country.

[Flynny]

Labour was running a deficit of about 2.5%. Our deficit ended up at over 11%. Didn't help, of course, but to suggest that it was all Labour's fault is a bit weak given that barely anyone saw this coming. It was a bit their fault, sure.

Also regarding the Welfare bill - it did increase quite a bit, but once you strip out deliberate rises it's not very much at all. Increases to pensions and child tax credit and the like all sound very worthy. 'Increasing the welfare bill' somehow says the same thing but with more negative connotations.

[FoxyPV]

postponed news of bonus until the morning,but between you and me!!!people on here think they all get huge bonuses.They dont.Its also making me laugh reading some posts when they talk about the banks crisis,who to blame ,why they were bailed out etc etcA lack of facts and blinkered vision springs to mind.

MONEY FIGHT!!!

[Webbo]

Labour was running a deficit of about 2.5%. Our deficit ended up at over 11%. Didn't help, of course, but to suggest that it was all Labour's fault is a bit weak given that barely anyone saw this coming. It was a bit their fault, sure.

Also regarding the Welfare bill - it did increase quite a bit, but once you strip out deliberate rises it's not very much at all. Increases to pensions and child tax credit and the like all sound very worthy. 'Increasing the welfare bill' somehow says the same thing but with more negative connotations.

Saying nobody saw this coming is a bit weak too. Bust always follows boom it's part of the cycle. Sensible govts cut spending and pay off debt during a boom so that they can increase spending during the downturn. Countries like Canada, Australia and the Scandinavian countries did this and they're not in the shit we are.

Unfortunately for us Gordon Brown believed his own publicity and thought he had eradicated boom and bust. He thought he could carry on increasing spending for ever. The downturn would have happened no matter who was in charge, the severity of it is mainly down to Labour.

[Guest BlueBrett]

Worked in the private sector most of my life, up until the last year, and most of the people I know also work in the private sector. Most of them have pretty secure jobs, didn't really bat an eyelid at all through the recession.

The last twelve months in the public sector, however? Heh. Cut, cut, cut, review, review, review, don't know many people that haven't had to apply for their own job, quite a few who have lost theirs or been down graded or cast aside. Moreover, it's not really "finished", most of these people know it's probably coming again in the summer and it's immensely distressing.

It's not about being "privileged," don't sit there and finger point at the public sector as if it's full of overly pampered lay-abouts who want some sort of easy ride because that's absolutely miles from the truth.

Obviously there are people in the private sector whose jobs are secure. However, job security in the private sector is dependant upon there being demand and upon ones ability to be competitive. Public sector jobs and workers have not been subject to such pressures and in many cases that results in massive inefficiencies and complacency. Also wages for similar jobs have been consistently higher in the public sector for years and public sector workers have benefited from much, much better deals on pensions.

The picture you have painted of the last twelve months, whilst no doubt distressing for the individuals affected, is ultimately the way it should be. None of it would be necessary if we hadn't allowed the public sector to become so bloated in the first place but unfortunately we did so it is. People who lose their jobs may well get pissed off and start shouting about how unfair everything is but they should at least try to look at the bigger picture and ask themselves 'was I really performing a vital function?, was my department or whatever really as efficient as could be and providing the tax payer with value for money? and am I pissed off because I feel that the country will be worse off without the service I provided or just because I have been deemed surplus to requirements and an individual symptom of the nation's inefficient affliction?'

The onus should be on each individual to demonstrate their value and justify their position, just as it is in the private sector. If you can't do that then I don't really think you have a right to complain when your job gets taken away and what's more, I don't really think anybody can rationally argue against that.

[davieG]

Obviously there are people in the private sector whose jobs are secure. However, job security in the private sector is dependant upon there being demand and upon ones ability to be competitive. Public sector jobs and workers have not been subject to such pressures and in many cases that results in massive inefficiencies and complacency. Also wages for similar jobs have been consistently higher in the public sector for years and public sector workers have benefited from much, much better deals on pensions.

The picture you have painted of the last twelve months, whilst no doubt distressing for the individuals affected, is ultimately the way it should be. None of it would be necessary if we hadn't allowed the public sector to become so bloated in the first place but unfortunately we did so it is. People who lose their jobs may well get pissed off and start shouting about how unfair everything is but they should at least try to look at the bigger picture and ask themselves 'was I really performing a vital function?, was my department or whatever really as efficient as could be and providing the tax payer with value for money? and am I pissed off because I feel that the country will be worse off without the service I provided or just because I have been deemed surplus to requirements and an individual symptom of the nation's inefficient affliction?'

The onus should be on each individual to demonstrate their value and justify their position, just as it is in the private sector. If you can't do that then I don't really think you have a right to complain when your job gets taken away and what's more, I don't really think anybody can rationally argue against that.

Much of what you say is true but it wasn't the central government that forced local government to become 'fat' that was the people in charge both the politicians and Senior Local Government Officers, a few politicians may have lost their positions but those running local government are still there running it and earning well in excess of the Prime Minister in many cases.

Unfortunately much of this stripping out of local government employees hits the wrong people. Council leaders cry crocodile tears at the severity of these cuts but remain in place.

[Guest BlueBrett]

I agree with you there.

Not really sure what can be done about it either. Nobody can get rid of these people or even force them to take reasonable pay cuts. I'm not even sure if central government has the authority to put a cap on their salaries? It makes me laugh because these are the very people who would make the loudest claims to have the best interests of the country/the population at heart and yet they are just milking the lot of us. We'll just have to hope that the next lot are a bit more conscientious. I wont be holding my breath.

[Webbo]

Much of what you say is true but it wasn't the central government that forced local government to become 'fat'

You're partly right but Labour did Invent a lot of new rules and regulations that needed people to enforce/monitor them.

[davieG]

You're partly right but Labour did Invent a lot of new rules and regulations that needed people to enforce/monitor them.

Again true, however in my relatively short spell, less than 5 years working at CH we were subject to many many restructurings such that the desk I worked at was relocated 9 times and I had several different managers I reported to including at one time 2 of them and yet my role hardly changed at all, just one example of the way money was spent.

[Webbo]

I know someone who is quite high up at CH. She found her daughter a job there doing some filing (I don't know if it was a genuine vacancy or whether she invented it specially). Her 17 year old daughter with no experience or qualifications started on £7.50 ph, that's more than my wife earns. Surely they could have started her at min wage and then put up her wages as and when appropriate.

[Flynny]

Saying nobody saw this coming is a bit weak too. Bust always follows boom it's part of the cycle. Sensible govts cut spending and pay off debt during a boom so that they can increase spending during the downturn. Countries like Canada, Australia and the Scandinavian countries did this and they're not in the shit we are.

Unfortunately for us Gordon Brown believed his own publicity and thought he had eradicated boom and bust. He thought he could carry on increasing spending for ever. The downturn would have happened no matter who was in charge, the severity of it is mainly down to Labour.

Are you saying debt wasn't paid down? Of course it was. In the last 20 years the UK budget has been in surplus twice, once under the Conservatives and again in 2001 (I think - might have been 2000). The UK didn't run a significant deficit at all until Gordon Brown decided it was time to borrow to invest - about a year or two before the recession hit.

Governments don't tend to run surpluses because when they have money to spend, they want the popularity that comes with using it or cutting taxes. It came at a bad time for us and Labour shouldn't have been running a deficit - that's fair to say. But the relatively small deficit that they were running was a deliberate act that went awry. The consequences wouldn't have been significantly different had they not taken those actions.

Additionally, the money we were borrowing at that time was borrowed under favourable terms over relatively long time-frames, not to patch up short-term losses, and so has had perhaps even less impact than is actually appreciated.

[Webbo]

Gordon Brown decided it was time to borrow to invest -

Labour were using that slogan in 1997, it certainly didn't start 2 years before the recession.

It depends how you define the word 'invest'. Most of the new schools and hospitals built by the last govt were built on Public Finance Initiatives. I don't think that they show on the borrowing figures.

The massive increase in spending is mainly down to the 900,000 extra public sector jobs created under labour.

[Phube]

*In 4 pages late:

No half as angry as I am with the mess Labour left the finances in!

[FoxyPV]

Esther Addley guardian.co.uk, Friday 25 March 2011 20.18 GMT Article history

MC NxtGen and his track, which has proved a huge hit on Twitter and YouTube Three years ago, when he was 19, a young rapper calling himself MC NxtGen hoped he was on the verge of the big time. Performing at a "battle" at a nightclub in central London, he rapped: "To be found you gotta be loud and have a different sound, step out from the crowd, just rise from the underground!"

The crowd liked him but the title of Britain's Next Urban Superstar was not to be his. He failed to make the final, and returned home to his dreams of superstardom and his job as a binman in Loughborough.

This week, however, Britain might just have been offered a second chance to turn NxtGen into a star, in the very unlikeliest of circumstances. The rapper, real name Sean Donnelly, has found himself a viral YouTube and Twitter celebrity after recording a track that certainly offers a "different sound". Eschewing the traditional hiphop themes of bling, booty and babes, Donnelly has recorded a caustic three-minute rap about the Department of Health's white paper "Equity and Excellence: Liberating the NHS", and dedicated it personally – highly personally, one might say – to the health minister himself.

"Andrew Lansley, greedy! Andrew Lansley, tosser!" runs the refrain, repeated throughout the song, over a sample taken from The House of the Rising Sun. "The NHS is not for sale, you grey-haired manky codger!" But if Donnelly is far from polite in his political protest, he has certainly done his research.

"So the budget of the PCTs, he wants to hand to the GPs / Oh please. Dumb geeks are gonna buy from any willing provider, / Get care from private companies."

Later, he offers a helpful parse of the white paper, saying Lansley's plans are that "we'll become more like the US / and care will be farmed out to private companies, / who will sell their service to the NHS via the GPs / who will have more to do with service purchase arrangements / than anything to do with seeing their patients."

MC NxtGen (real name Sean Donnelly). Photograph: Fabio De Paola Finishing his shift on the bins on Friday ("I don't think this is really anyone's career choice"), Donnelly said he'd been overwhelmed by the response, which had seen his Facebook, Twitter and YouTube pages "going crazy" and even contact from TV companies. "I didn't really plan for it all to be about me," he says. "I just did it basically so I could speak to the youth."

The song came about, Donnelly, now 22, told the Guardian, because he has "close family and friends" – his girlfriend is one – "who want to work in the NHS in the future hopefully, but they're worried about the cuts. So I researched it on the internet and I just did the song. I feel for the people that are ill in hospital. If they were privatised they wouldn't be able to afford it." And why focus on Lansley in particular? "Because I'm peed off with the guy."

He insists he'd rather rap about "truth" than money, fast cars or sex. "That's what sells, but I'm just not like that."

Donnelly started MC-ing when he was 11 or 12, he says, when he first saw Eminem, whose wit he immediately loved. "It was just the funniness and this complete truth at the same time." The Detroit rapper's influence might be detected in the video to Andrew Lansley – which has been viewed on YouTube more than 30,000 times in 24 hours – in which he enlists shoppers in his home town to wave placards, wear David Cameron and Nick Clegg masks and mouth "Tosser!" and "greedy!" at the camera at apposite points in the song.

At one point, railing against Lansley's involvement of the fast food industry in formulating health policy, Donnelly dons a mask of the health secretary and throws crisps at his face.

He even riffs on the health secretary's expenses record, and – in what has a reasonable claim to be the unlikeliest rap lyric ever – on the controversial donation to Lansley's office by the chairman of a private health company. "He's been given cash / by John Nash / chairman of Care UK, / a private healthcare provider, / who, if they have their own way, / will be the biggest beneficiaries / of Conservative Lib-Dem policies / to privatise healthcare, pull apart the welfare state …" It's some distance from 2 Live Crew's Me So Horny.

He is now trying to release the track on iTunes – "I've had so many people saying, 'Let's get it to number one!'". Then he'd love to quit his job on the bins. "The older I've got the more I've been worried, thinking I'm not going to make it."

He's made a wider impact now. By Friday night the viral video had infected the Department of Health, and Lansley himself was moved to comment. "We will never privatise the NHS," he told the Guardian. "But I'm impressed that he's managed to get lyrics about GP commissioning into a rap."

Artists against the cuts

A recent campaign against cuts to arts funding opened with an animation by the Macclesfield-born, Glasgow-based artist David Shrigley. "The arts employ a lot of people, and they bring folk in from all over the world to this country," a farmer tells his son in the short film. "The arts are to Britain what the sun is to Spain."

Nicky Wire

The Manic Street Preachers' guitarist, consistent with the band's political songwriting over more than two decades, has been outspoken in defence of "the soul of the country" – libraries, the subject of the band's song A Design for Life, and which he called "the soul of the country. "The closure of libraries in conjunction with tuition fees, the sell-off of our forests and radical reorganisation of the NHS are symbolic of the blatant power grab of this fiasco of a government," he wrote in this newspaper.

Mark Wallinger, who won the Turner prize in 2007 for a recreation of campaigner Brian Haw's political banners, produced a new work last year based around an image of Turner's painting The Fighting Temeraire with a large slash in the canvas, and the text "25% cut". It even comes already captioned: "If 25% were slashed from arts funding the loss would be immeasurable."

Dozens of well known actors and theatre directors, including Jeremy Irons, Mike Leigh, Helen Mirren and Kenneth Branagh, wrote to the Observer this month expressing their concern about arts cuts, including the abolition of the UK Film Council. "Before the last election the government promised to usher in a 'golden age' for the arts. The reality couldn't be further from this... We are currently facing the biggest threat to funding the arts and culture have experienced in decades."

Thumbs up for NHS

The health secretary has caved into pressure and published survey results showing record satisfaction with the NHS after claims that the figures would undermine his case for sweeping reforms. Lansley faced criticism this week over his failure to publish the results of an Ipsos Mori study documenting satisfaction ratings with the NHS, after accusations from Labour that the government was trying to "bury good news" in order to make the case for its radical health reforms.

The report, dated December 2010, found that 72% of people polled said they were satisfied with the NHS – up from 63% when the poll was last published in 2007. It said: "Satisfaction with the running of the NHS remains high at 72% … suggesting that there has been a decisive positive shift in the public's perceptions of the NHS."

"Pride in the NHS also continues to climb and is at its highest recorded level; 71% agree Britain's National Health Service is one of the best in the world. However, the government do not appear to be getting credit for these positive perceptions."

An aide to Lansley said the survey was published after it was discovered that it had already been released it into the public domain when an MP requested it in parliament last December. She said: "He wanted time to consider the reports before they were published. These are polls from the Labour government that were not published by them. The government would not benefit from suppressing these."

[Jon the Hat]

Has anyone said the NHS is not mostly delivering the service people want? The point is it needs to do it more efficiently in order to fund the massive increase in costs it will have to bear as the population gets older, and the increasing cost of new drugs and technologies.

On another note, most people who are asked will never have experienced any alternative system, so are comparing it to what exactly? Well if they are comparing it to how it used to be then clearly it has improved. If you are comparing with private care? There is still a very large gulf in many places (but not all - we have some world class facilities).

[Bob Weasel Fox]

WTF - whatever political persuasion anybody is from the current cuts are shite . . . . . . mostly necessary but shite all the same