If you were PM... where would you cut back?

hamstercheeks_2

Lum wrote: »

I think the problem a lot of people have with benefits is not those who have fallen on hard times, lost their jobs in the recession, or have a genuine illness, but the people who play with the system for their own gains.

Sometimes I've heard the term "the non-working class" to describe such people. The career single mums whose main reason for having a kid is some extra cash and to get bumped to the top of the council house queue. The chavs who know how to play the system while putting in the mimimum effort and have no intention of actually getting any of the jobs they apply for. It's these people that bring the whole system into disrepute.

The problem is coming up with a reliable way of distinguising between the two, and even if you can identify the scroungers what to do about them.

well said:T:T

MrTomato

This is what I'd do. Coming from a naive 17 year who is yet to see the world. This isn't just spending cuts, but also where I'd raise funds. You may see these are fairly radical, but I have just been thinking about this for the past 30 minutes or so, and they haven't exactly been thought through in their entirety.

Education
1) Raise tuition fees to ~£6-7 thousand, therefore reducing Government subsidies.
2) Raise international fees even more. I do not think it is fair the Government is subsidising international students who then return home, so their degree is not benefitting the UK.
3)Lower the amount of university places. The current target of 50% is ridiculous, especially considering many degrees are not essential and can easily be taught 'on the job'. We shouldn't have more people with photography degrees graduating each year than there is a demand for in the whole EU.
4) Allow universities to become private if they choose
5) Reduce the upper limit of EMA from £30 to £20
3) Reduce the LSC funding. Maths and English education is important. Card crafts less so.


Healthcare
1) Introduce a system where nurses are a first point of call at a GP surgery. They can diagnose small things like flu and colds without a GP needed to spend wasted time on telling someone antibiotics won't work. Similar to the current walk in centres.
2) Introduce a prescription fee for contraception, which is currently free
3) Increase taxes on drug companies/reduce tax if they reduce prices, who rip off the NHS because they still have exclusivity on new drugs.
4) Reduce the amount of IVF paid for on the NHS
5) Make prescription charges equal across the whole UK

Government
1) Reduce the number of MPs, MSPs and AMs
2) Give local Government more power to deal with their areas

Transport
1) Re-nationalise the railways
2) Stop subsidising private bus operators

Taxation
1) Increase the amount you can earn before paying tax
2) Increase the current 50% tax rate for high earners to about 55-57%
3) Raise the current 5% VAT rate to 7%
4) Raise the 15% VAT rate to the proposed 18%
5) Raise the current tobacco duty by ~20%

Welfare
1) For those living on income support for more than a certain time (I haven't thought of what), they must then take part in public sector tasks (e.g. park maintenance, admin duties, cleaning) to encourage them to go and find work. Unless they have explicit reasons for being unable to work.
2) Increase the basic state pension
3) Increase child benefit

Aid
1) Reduce the foreign aid budget. If the Government is struggling with its balance, aid should be one of the first things to be reduced.

Defence
1) Reduce the salaries of the top Generals, Brigadiers, Admirals and Marshals
2) Decrease the number of Eurofighter orders. 160 is too many. But try and sell more elsewhere
3) Reduce funding on state parades (e.g. Queen's Birthday Celebrations)

Justice
1) Abolish the 'wage' that prisoners receive
2) Teach police officers how not to crash a car (more than 1 a week written off up here)
3) Reduce Police spending on high performance, luxury cars. Cheaper manufacturers make equal standard cars


That is all for now. I'm tired.

foxxymynx

Gavin83 wrote: »

I do agree with this in theory but it just means that more businesses will go bankcrupt and those who are ok will just employ less people.




Terrible idea. It just means that many companies will deem the UK to expensive to trade in and therefore simply wont bother. Therefore the public in the UK will be unable to buy a number of goods that our European and American counterparts can. Think of all the companies based elsewhere who this will apply to.



With all due respect the inability to have a family isn't a direct medical issue. Anything that affects your quality of life should be dealt with on the NHS, anything that doesn't shouldn't.

You can argue that not having children affects your quality of life but it's not quite the same as being in constant pain or needing drug treatment.

I really don't think IVF should be on the NHS either.

How can reproductive organs not working properly not be a medical issue? If it isn't a medical issue, why is it a doctor that treats it?

harryhound

Good posting - what are you proposing for your life in the next 10 years?

Healthy and Solvent are probably the limits of my ambitions now:D

I'll just flick through your suggestions and only comment if I really think I disagree.

MrTomato wrote: »

This is what I'd do. Coming from a naive 17 year who is yet to see the world. This isn't just spending cuts, but also where I'd raise funds. You may see these are fairly radical, but I have just been thinking about this for the past 30 minutes or so, and they haven't exactly been thought through in their entirety.

Education
1) Raise tuition fees to ~£6-7 thousand, therefore reducing Government subsidies.
But what about those trying to break out of the cycle of poverty that has blighted their parent and grand parents' generation.
(I would like to think that students could work their way through college, as has been the case in USA - this is now increasingly difficult as we are getting
to the stage where "there is no wage where an unskilled man with a shovel can compete with a steam shovel" that is a quote from about 100 years ago and it is becoming increasingly true - the world is full of unemployables.
My son managed to fund his time at college partly with holiday jobs that evolved naturally from his scientific course - eg programming mobile 'phones for network builders. He is now debt free.)
2) Raise international fees even more. I do not think it is fair the Government is subsidising international students who then return home, so their degree is not benefiting the UK.
3)Lower the amount of university places. The current target of 50% is ridiculous, especially considering many degrees are not essential and can easily be taught 'on the job'. We shouldn't have more people with photography degrees graduating each year than there is a demand for in the whole EU.
4) Allow universities to become private if they choose
5) Reduce the upper limit of EMA from £30 to £20
3) Reduce the LSC funding. Maths and English education is important. Card crafts less so.


Healthcare
1) Introduce a system where nurses are a first point of call at a GP surgery. They can diagnose small things like flu and colds without a GP needed to spend wasted time on telling someone antibiotics won't work. Similar to the current walk in centres.
2) Introduce a prescription fee for contraception, which is currently free
3) Increase taxes on drug companies/reduce tax if they reduce prices, who rip off the NHS because they still have exclusivity on new drugs.
How do you do that to a multi-national large company?
4) Reduce the amount of IVF paid for on the NHS
5) Make prescription charges equal across the whole UK

Government
1) Reduce the number of MPs, MSPs and AMs
2) Give local Government more power to deal with their areas

Transport
1) Re-nationalise the railways Why?
2) Stop subsidising private bus operators. Airlines are untaxable, so make public transport tax free too especially where fuel is concerned, while we work out how to tax jet fuel on an international basis.

Taxation
1) Increase the amount you can earn before paying tax
2) Increase the current 50% tax rate for high earners to about 55-57%
3) Raise the current 5% VAT rate to 7%
4) Raise the 15% VAT rate to the proposed 18%
5) Raise the current tobacco duty by ~20%
Alcohol ?

Welfare
1) For those living on income support for more than a certain time (I haven't thought of what), they must then take part in public sector tasks (e.g. park maintenance, admin duties, cleaning) to encourage them to go and find work. Unless they have explicit reasons for being unable to work.
2) Increase the basic state pension
Very expensive open ended commitment which includes "Sir Fred" probably the single individual to directly destroy the most greatest amount of wealth in this country. I Think us pensioners will have to keep working
3) Increase child benefit Ditto

Aid
1) Reduce the foreign aid budget. If the Government is struggling with its balance, aid should be one of the first things to be reduced.

Defence
1) Reduce the salaries of the top Generals, Brigadiers, Admirals and Marshals
2) Decrease the number of Eurofighter orders. 160 is too many. But try and sell more elsewhere
3) Reduce funding on state parades (e.g. Queen's Birthday Celebrations)

Justice
1) Abolish the 'wage' that prisoners receive Even prisoners need some sort of reward for effort and it trains them to accept a future of work. I would offer EXTRA parole to those who earned enough to buy it. It is the prospect of things getting better that keep most of us going.
2) Teach police officers how not to crash a car (more than 1 a week written off up here)
3) Reduce Police spending on high performance, luxury cars. Cheaper manufacturers make equal standard cars.
Horses for courses; they also love the eye in the sky helicopter; however high tech. criminals demand hi tech. control and I'm not technically able to comment on value for money. The police service is too matcho. More effort needs to be put into the world's largest and still growing crime of FRAUD, to gether with corruption this is much more of a threat to society than almost anything else except (perhaps) drug addiction which is responsible for the majority of break ins. etc.


That is all for now. I'm tired.

MrTomato

harryhound wrote: »

Good posting - what are you proposing for your life in the next 10 years?

Healthy and Solvent are probably the limits of my ambitions now:D

I'll just flick through your suggestions and only comment if I really think I disagree.

Firstly, to go through the things you have bolded in my piece, I'll explain them.

Regarding university fees. I am currently applying to go to university, and I will be the first person in my family to ever go. I will be relying fully on state/Government/university/EU funding for my fees and living costs. My family couldn't afford to support me. So at current fee rates, on a 4 year course, in England, I'm looking at ~£20-30 thousand pounds of debt. A bit less if I go to Scotland.

I still however, feel fees should be raised. Current Government ideas about this are interesting. I don't think the Government should be funding vocational courses as much as they do, or encouraging people to go to university, just because they have set stupid targets. If fees were higher, this would make people consider more about whether or not they see it as essential to go to university. Whether or not they want to get into the debt at the end of it. It shouldn't be the case that people are only going to university to have a laugh.

There would obviously still have to be Government support, because I don't think students should be forking out £7k of their own money, when they still have to pay to live.


It may be difficult to tax a multi-national. But take GlaxoSmithKline, they are a British based company and NHS buy heavily from them. If legislation was introduced to offer tax incentives to pharmaceutical industry, in terms of lower corporation tax, then this might encourage them to lower their prices, obviously I don't know enough to do any sums to see what level this would need to be.

I think railways should be renationalised for a few reasons. Look at GNER, they failed. National Express East Coast are failing. They can't meet their franchise payments, so the Government is losing out. Then the Government needs to come in and support them further. This problem wouldn't have occured in public ownership.

If you look across Europe, you see many of the most efficient railways are Government owned. Trenitalia, SNCF, Deutsche Bahn etc. These countries have managed to update their lines to true high speed lines. Like the TGV and the Frecciarossa. We still lack behind in this aspect by a massive degree.

International taxing of airlines couldn't, in my opinion, be workable. There would be too much conflict between state owned and privately owned airlines, and those which are partly public. One of the world's biggest airlines, Emirates, is wholly owned by the UAE Government. This would lead to corruption somewhere, because the UN would need to make this decision, and on the UN, are representatives from each nation. So the point of view of a UAE delegate is going to conflict with a Swedish delegate, where Scandinavian Airlines System is 50% Government owned (even then across 3 countries), and his point of view will conflict with that of the American delegate where American Airlines amongst others, are wholly privately owned.

Then there is the matter of where these international taxes go. To the UN? The nations where the airlines are headquatered? The nations where they're flying to and from?

Then you have to consider fuel prices around the world for planes. Due to duty already on this, prices differ considerably, so some airlines may well still be a lot cheaper than their rivals, leading to a few firms dominating too much of the market.

Internation Pollution Permits are hard to police, and this idea is probably equally different to work with.


I say tobacco duty should be raised, and not mentioning alcohol. This is a bit of bias on my part. I detest cigarettes. I don't hate the people who smoke them, I just hate them. I hate their look, their smell, everything about them. Also I said tobacco because it appears (again I have no evidence) that more money is spent on stop smoking adverts than those for reduced alcohol consumption. All the adverts on TV about the NHS help service etc. And then the labels put on the actual packets. It appears these are more common than the alcohol awareness ones.

We need to change tobacco duty from a revenue raising tax (there is no denying it is one in my opinion) to an expenditure switching one.


I disagree prisoners need a reward. Why should they be rewarded for living in a prison, without having to pay bills, rent and food costs? Taking away from the fact its a punishment, I would say its quite a comfortable life. It doesn't take prison to teach someone they need to work for money, and do so legally. The rest of the population know this. And I don't see the point in paying people on life sentances either. They won't be getting a job outside etc.

Now the Police. I was suggesting that instead of Police forces buying a BMW M3/4/whatever, they could buy a Ford Focus RS or similar for a lot less, and these have very similar performance. Most of these expensive cars are used on traffic police, which usually, in pursuits will be on motorways, so high speed, but easy roads to drive on. You only need a car with good top speed and acceleration to catch someone, and as long as it is a popular car, parts are readily available. The Volvo cars some police use are probably very similar, but the Police probably end up paying more for the luxury brands.

Even with their discounts it could be a lot cheaper.



Now pensions and child benefit. Increasing these does a few things. Stimulates more spending, and shuts people up. More spending means more Government funding through the likes of VAT and corporation tax. And if you raise them, it will satisfyce, not satisfy, a number of people. I feel cuts elsewhere could help fund this, and in a way, increasing these helps pay for them to an extent.


Now to what I qouted you on. I'm not sure if you're intending to be sarcastic or not, or whatever else. But either way I am intending on going to university next year. I have no plans for what happens after that.

bumpoowee

MrTomato wrote: »

Education
1) Raise tuition fees to ~£6-7 thousand, therefore reducing Government subsidies.
2) Raise international fees even more. I do not think it is fair the Government is subsidising international students who then return home, so their degree is not benefitting the UK.
3)Lower the amount of university places. The current target of 50% is ridiculous, especially considering many degrees are not essential and can easily be taught 'on the job'. We shouldn't have more people with photography degrees graduating each year than there is a demand for in the whole EU.
4) Allow universities to become private if they choose
5) Reduce the upper limit of EMA from £30 to £20
3) Reduce the LSC funding. Maths and English education is important. Card crafts less so.

I agree completely with point 3, and think the target of 50% needs to be really hammered to be more like 5-10%, but I don't see where you are coming from with the idea students should pay MORE?

I went to uni before top up fees and left with a student debt of £9k, which after 4 years in a well paid job I still have more than half left to pay. Students and the younger generation have been well and truly shafted over the last decade or so, and this only increases the inequality they are suffering compared to their parents generation.

I pay around £1k in various forms of direct taxation a month and then another hundred or two in student loan/tax. Then I pay all the other taxes (council, tv license, VAT ectc.) and must pay over half what I earn in tax. I'd say this more than justifies getting a bit of a subsidy while I was studying. I wouldn't be in my current job without a degree, so if I was peeling spuds for £5 an hour the government wouldn't be getting anything like the return in tax if I hadn't had a subsidy to go to uni.

EMA should be abolished. It didn't exist when I went to college and I never heard anyone complain they couldn't afford to go to college - they all lived at home and I believe their parents still got child benefit anyway. My parents, despite being well off, never gave me any money, but I actually got off my backside and got a job, there is no reason why anyone else can't do the same.

mapcr77

MrTomato wrote: »

Education
1) Raise tuition fees to ~£6-7 thousand, therefore reducing Government subsidies.
2) Raise international fees even more. I do not think it is fair the Government is subsidising international students who then return home, so their degree is not benefitting the UK.
3)Lower the amount of university places. The current target of 50% is ridiculous, especially considering many degrees are not essential and can easily be taught 'on the job'. We shouldn't have more people with photography degrees graduating each year than there is a demand for in the whole EU.

I think its the other way around. Foreign students subsidise British and EU students, as they pay rates of 10k-25k (yes, ludicrous as that looks, some degrees, specially lab based PhD's can charge that much per year to foreign students).

If anything, I'd say why do British universities have to educate EU students at the same cost as British ones? Set up a quota and ensure reciprocity with other European universities, as there arent as many British students going elsewhere to the EU to get educated as the other way around.

MrTomato

mapcr77 wrote: »

I think its the other way around. Foreign students subsidise British and EU students, as they pay rates of 10k-25k (yes, ludicrous as that looks, some degrees, specially lab based PhD's can charge that much per year to foreign students).

If anything, I'd say why do British universities have to educate EU students at the same cost as British ones? Set up a quota and ensure reciprocity with other European universities, as there arent as many British students going elsewhere to the EU to get educated as the other way around.

The Government do subsidise internationals. For example, it was quoted by a university a few years ago it costs £250,000 to put a student through a 5 year Medicine course. Now, at Newcastle, for medicine, a non EU student must pay £13,360 per year, and £24,735 for each clinical year.

Even if the course was £24,735 every year, there is still a short fall on the actual cost of the course.

You can't charge different university fees across the EU, due to EU law. Just like how if I went to Ireland, I'd only pay about €1000 per year. Or if I went to Sweden it would be free. And then if any EU student comes here, they pay the English fee, or get it free in Scotland.

(Scotland get around EU law and are able to make Welsh and English students pay)

The only way around it is to leave the EU. I think you may be underestimating the number of UK students going to the EU. Many countries teach their courses in English, and then you have British universities with a site in France.

rpiechocki

So everyone thinks that footballers 150k per week(same as GP's per year) & film stars(one film would pay for a new school) should carry on gettting what they do.Add all that up would come to good amount.What i'm saying that this type of profession should be capped.

Also models ie Katie Price worth 40million, for what while we have hard working people across all disciplines getting a fraction of this & work 10 times as hard.

Defence - so if we reduce this, it would be ok for this country to be invaded without any problem due to the lack of secuity.It needs to be increased & pay more to our soldiers!!

weejimmys

yes that is fine as its paid for by private companies and dose not take money away from you or anyone else.

ie footballer.
paid by the club,
club gets money from tv / sponsers / ticket sales / merchidise.
if you want any of these you buy them and they use your money.
if you dont you dont buy them and they dont use your money.

wheres the issue?

defence increase the money, they need it,

social take it away, or have a maximum 24 months you can claim any time in your life etc. unless you need /deserve it.

throw out the goverment and start again but instead of geting people you went to university with you to do the job get business minded people who have done it before in real life.