National Debt

mambury

surely Mr Brown can ask the nice Mr King to make some more pretty paper money and bingo............problem solved :rolleyes:

vivatifosi

ninky wrote: »

So if we're doing a DFW style SOA for Credit Crunch Britian, which areas of non essential spending would you cut back on?

War in Afghanistan?
Bankers bonuses?
Overseas aid?
Renewing trident?
Spending on prisoners?

Good question ninky, worth starting a separate thread on. I always thought that the illegal war in Iraq was a waste of money, though the waste of lives was worse. Now it seems there's so much money being flushed down the toilet its hard to know where to start. ID cards? Databases that contravene privacy and human rights conventions?

BlondeHeadOn

ninky wrote: »

So if we're doing a DFW style SOA for Credit Crunch Britian, which areas of non essential spending would you cut back on?

War in Afghanistan?
Bankers bonuses?
Overseas aid?
Renewing trident?
Spending on prisoners?

All of the above except for spending on prisoners - I think we might need those prisons, come the revolution!

(NB Only joking about the revolution....)

ninky_2

BlondeHeadOn wrote: »

All of the above except for spending on prisoners - I think we might need those prisons, come the revolution!

(NB Only joking about the revolution....)

but what about maintaining the lifestyle in prisons? (gyms, tellies, internet access etc). this is what i meant.

i've always thought prisons really should be about punishment and not about rehabilitation. rehabilitation should come after prison (as an extension after prison time served)

this is different to thinking that everyone in prison deserves to be there (i don't think this). but if we are putting people in prison because of a lack of opportunity in life, we need to address that seperately.

kennyboy66_2

Generali wrote: »

It looks likely that Government debt is going to top £1,000,000,000,000 within the next three years, if the Chancellor's predictions are correct.

It will cost between £50,000,000,000 and £100,000,000,000 per year just to pay interest on this amount. That works out at between £200 and £400 per month per household in tax just to service the debt (ie not paying any of it off).

What do you think of this?

I would think that a large portion of this debt (£614 million at March 2008) will incur an interest rate at significantly lower than 10%.

To put it in context Government interest payments were £25,000,000,000 after John Majors government had doubled the Government in 5 years.

As a proportion of Government spending, this would be broadly similar to your £50,000,000,000 number.

Taxes should go up and spending should be cut.

There is no alternative!

mrposhman

ninky wrote: »

So if we're doing a DFW style SOA for Credit Crunch Britian, which areas of non essential spending would you cut back on?

War in Afghanistan?
Bankers bonuses?
Overseas aid?
Renewing trident?
Spending on prisoners?

Jeez, stop it with the bonuses. Any bonuses will be paid out of profits made by the banks not additional payments by HMG.

Agree with some of the others especially spending on prisoners. I heard recently, that it costs the country more to have a prisoner in prison for a night than sending them to the ritz or a night. Frankly thats ridiculous.

Remember the assets that the government have in the banks will be worth a fair amount in the future. Take the £15.6bn that isn't borrowed money, its basically free money that LBG have provided for the government to secure assets that may or may not go bad. HMG may never have to pay a penny to write this debt off and therefore the shares are free issue. When they are converted at £1.15 when the SP hits £1.50 then automatically HMG have assets worth over £20bn and they may never have spent any money on this part. Add that to the other 43% they own in the bank and LBG could well provide a significant return for HMG.

Likewise, the same can be said for RBS.

I don't doubt that spending will have to be reduced and taxation will go up but personally for the former to happen, we need a change in government. Labour have never proven to be good downsizes and regularly inflate the size of both local and central government and I think the tories will need to come in to create these efficiency savings we require.