£100 BILLION Bankrupt Britain Report

donaldtramp

http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/economics/article5734129.ece

Britain faces £100bn cut in spending according to 'Bankrupt Britain' report

David Smith and Robert Watts BRITAIN faces years of painful adjustment as a result of the debt the government has taken on in the financial crisis, a report says.
Bankrupt Britain, written by City experts, says taxes will have to rise and the level of public spending will have to be cut by as much as £100 billion to put the government’s finances back into shape.
Its author, Malcolm Offord, a City fund manager with more than 20 years’ experience with Charterhouse, looked at the UK economy from the perspective of an investor considering putting money into a company.
Working with colleagues, he calculates that in the absence of government action, the national debt will balloon to more than 150% of gross domestic product over the next 10 years, compared with Labour’s “ceiling”, now breached, of 40%. The priority, he says, is to reverse the “profligate” spending that gave Britain an unacceptably big budget deficit at the start of the recession.
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Reducing debt, the paper says, will require cutting the level of public spending by £60 billion by 2014 and £100 billion by 2020. Public spending is £623 billion this year, with a third going on social security.
Tax rises would also be needed, the paper says, focusing on an increase in the top rate of tax to 50%. But raising taxes too much would be self-defeating, hitting economic growth.
A poll for The Sunday Times today shows the Conservatives have maintained a 12-point lead over Labour as doubts about the government’s handling of the economic crisis grow. The poll details are bad for Gordon Brown. His approval rating has slumped 22 points since November, with only 31% of people thinking he has done a good job as prime minister.
Nearly half, 48%, fear that they or a member of their close family will lose their job, while slightly more think David Cameron and George Osborne would do a better job handling the crisis than Brown and Alistair Darling.
Other experts warn that the public finances are facing an immediate black hole, with the equivalent to tax rises of up to 12p in the pound on income tax needed to close the gap.
Martin Weale, director of the National Institute of Economic and Social Research, said: “We see a shortfall of £60 billion relative to [the chancellor’s] numbers.”
On Wednesday the Office for National Statistics will publish analysis of how the government’s finances performed during January.
Jonathan Loynes, chief European economist at Capital Economics, said: “We’re running out of adjectives to describe the state of the public finances, but suffice to say that things are still getting much worse.”

Good grief.
The last possible date for the next general election is Thursday 3 June 2010.
Will we have a country left by the time Labour packs up???

A third of spending this year going on Social benefits??? £208 BILLION!!! That absolutely sickens me.
Time to make a move. Anyone suggest a decent country?

This country is toast.

Cleaver

donaldtramp wrote: »

Good grief.
The last possible date for the next general election is Thursday 3 June 2010.
Will we have a country left by the time Labour packs up???

A third of spending this year going on Social benefits??? £208 BILLION!!! That absolutely sickens me.
Time to make a move. Anyone suggest a decent country?

You could move to Iran, Zimbabwe, North Korea, Angola, Albania, Congo, Honduras or Sierra Leone.

A good dose of real suffering for a while might give you a sense of needed perspective and you may realise that if the worst thing about your country is that they spend a lot on social welfare, maybe things aren't so bad.

donaldtramp

You could move to Iran, Zimbabwe, North Korea, Angola, Albania, Congo, Honduras or Sierra Leone.
A good dose of real suffering for a while might give you a sense of needed perspective and you may realise that if the worst thing about your country is that they spend a lot on social welfare, maybe things aren't so bad.

Yup thought I'd get the usual tripe thrown back at me.
It's easy to quote a list of 5 or 6 of the WORST countries in the world.
I don't stay in any of them. I stay in Britain and it's rapidly going down the pan.
It's easy to see what the world thinks of our economy, look at the drop in value of the pound.
The key thing is Countries that are about a similar status to ours (at the moment, we're rapidly falling down many of the indices that measure quality of life) are doing much better than us due to the mismanagement of our economy.

I'm all for social welfare, it was a great idea when introduced, unfortunately it has now changed into a lifestyle choice for hundreds of thousands of people.
It was introduced as a safety net NOT a lifestyle choice.
So my perspective is entirely correct and I am sickened that all this money is being wasted on people wasting away their lives. Signing your name once a fortnight is not a life.

Cleaver

donaldtramp wrote: »

Yup thought I'd get the usual tripe thrown back at me.
It's easy to quote a list of 5 or 6 of the WORST countries in the world.
I don't stay in any of them. I stay in Britain and it's rapidly going down the pan.
It's easy to see what the world thinks of our economy, look at the drop in value of the pound.
The key thing is Countries that are about a similar status to ours (at the moment, we're rapidly falling down many of the indices that measure quality of life) are doing much better than us due to the mismanagement of our economy.

Really? Which countries would you say are doing 'much better than us' at handling the economy? I ask out of curiousity rather than to provoke.

brightonman123

is it posible for the oposition parties to force an election? ( call of vote of no confidence etc), or could a big enough petition on the number10 website make them take notice?

Cleaver

donaldtramp wrote: »

So my perspective is entirely correct and I am sickened that all this money is being wasted on people wasting away their lives. Signing your name once a fortnight is not a life.

Oh, well, at least that's that sorted then. Saves us debating it back and forward like a pair of gormless fools in some cyber no-man's land.

stevetodd

Cleaver wrote: »

Really? Which countries would you say are doing 'much better than us' at handling the economy? I ask out of curiousity rather than to provoke.

Yes I am very keen to learn where these countries are too, I can't imagine where they are?

donaldtramp

The European commission stated that Britain is facing a deeper recession than any other major European community or the US or Japan.
So most countries are doing better in the sense that they are not doing as badly as Britain. Mind you it aint hard to better than us!

donaldtramp

From the asses mouth,

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/financetopics/financialcrisis/3792449/Britain-to-suffer-more-from-economic-downturn-Alistair-Darling-warns.html

stevetodd

donaldtramp wrote: »

From the asses mouth,

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/financetopics/financialcrisis/3792449/Britain-to-suffer-more-from-economic-downturn-Alistair-Darling-warns.html

That link is 2 months old!

donaldtramp

That link is 2 months old!

So what?
Do you think our finances have miraculously improved in 2 months after a decade of being run into the ground?