The “What does the government spend our money on?” quiz results/discussion

sjaypink

when talking about the ££££s the welfare bill costs, i have to admit i never gave a thought about pensions?!

do tax credits come under this as well?

would anyone be kind enough to link to a breakdown of the £169 bn?

i have tried googling but lost patience searching!

RTR_Bloke

So what is the definition of 'Social protection' ?
Interesting to note that defence / MOD was 3rd from bottom on that list contrary to many peoples belief :cool:

sjaypink

after some digging it appears that tax credits isnt included.

child benefit, disability benefits, income support, jsa are.

as is pensions and things such as winter fuel allowance, which (hope i read it right) costs £1.9 bn per year (the fuel allowance that is, not pensions).

£12.4 bn is incapacity

£840 million of income support and jsa is wrongly paid through fraud or error.

this £840 m is 6.4% of the total is/ jsa payments made annually. (you do the maths :rotfl: )

£6 bn is to cover the dwp's administration.

trencherpilot

Where's the NONE OF THE ABOVE selection?

Nibzy_2

Debt interest £31B (taken off the expenditure breakdown)

Hmmmm, whats the original loan?

Martin, looks like the government need your assistance.

Jay1b

Its labour what do you expect? They borrow so much every year... Bring back Maggie.. - or clone her otherwise she'd be a bit old ! lol

teddyco

£169,000,000,000 is being spent on social services?

No wonder so many immigrants are risking their lives to come to 'Treasure Island'.

Mr_Mumble

This polling is scary, seriously scary. People give around 43% of their earnings to the government every year and most don't seem to have a clue how its spent!

Martin,

It would be really interesting to have a follow-up poll to know where people get their opinions on state spending from (politicians, teachers/lecturers, friends, family, BBC, commercial media, etc.)

lotruss

does anybody know how much all these inquiries we keep hearing about cost the country because i believe a bit more common sense within the civil service could save us millions if not billions in the long run.?

Hobbin_Rood

For the welfare budget my understanding is the biggest chunk is for pensions (and quite rightly so). Then it's the working/family tax credits - which is disgraceful. This effectively means companies who don't pay people enough are allowed to do so while the government has to top their income up to give employees a living wage. And then on to disabled benefits etc etc with unemployment benefits at the bottom of the spending table.

I don't understand why some people are so furious - we should be using some of the wealth of this country to help the worst off, be they pensioners or disabled people or the unemployed.

Frankly there's not enough done to help them. Anyway, more important is less money on corporate welfare and more cracking down on corporate tax avoidance and fraud. Let's highlight the people at the top a bit more, they shouldn't be allowed to get away with their greater levels of greed.

For example some people think that avoidance of tax by corporations could be costing the treasury up to £150 billion pounds a year. And think of the way multi-national corporations use the resources of this country. Who's the real spongers?

Good article in the independent:
"To put this another way, the Government admits that tax avoidance last year was somewhere between £97bn and £150bn, whereas benefit fraud amounted to less than one billion pounds".

http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/mark-steel/mark-steel-who-wants-to-be-a-billionaire-444160.html