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

mcgazz

harryhound wrote: »

Most of this Civil Servants ideas I agree with - good stuff.

Would you also agree with:

Increase the Civil Service retirement age to 67.
Reduce the paid holidays to 4 weeks - perhaps an extra week for those with long service?
Do you think the Common Agricultural Policy - now paid on pony paddocks etc is a "good thing"?

Do you think that now government spending is now approaching 50% of GDP (ie those of us in the private sector that actually produces goods and services and can earn exports, now work for six months of the year for the government before getting a chance to work for ourselves and our families) might be getting a bit out of balance.

Not sure if this is directed at me or not, but if it is:

1. Why just the Civil Service retirement age? You want me to work for less *and* for longer? I think the national retirement age should be raised *for new entrants into the job market*. The Government should have had a bit more forward planning and brought this in years ago. Another option would be a flexible retirement age of 65-70.

2. Workers in Britain already only get 20 days paid holiday (and temp agency workers get even fewer). Anyway, there's a strong correlation between shorter holidays and lower productivity - France has the longest holidays in the EU and one of the highest productivity rates, Latvia has the fewest and one of the lowest productivity rates - so reducing holidays is a false economy.

3. The Common Agricultural Policy isn't something I know an awful lot about, but I gather that there are some serious problems with it and it needs replaced with something a bit less one-size-fits-all. CAP reform wouldn't directly affect the UK Government's budget, though.

As for spending making up a high proportion of GDP - it all depends on the circumstances. Government spending was over 60% of GDP during the war, but for good reason. We're a post-industrial economy in the middle of a massive banking-led recession - if there's a peacetime situation when high spending is a justified, this is it.

rag31

Jeez, I've never read such a bunch of over-generalising pie in the sky twaddle on this site before.

I agree with the poster above - have I slipped into the paranoid ill-informed Daily Mail forums? I can't even get started on how offensive most of the comments above are.

Anyone coming here who is on a low income struggling to make ends meet and claiming benefits probably would never come back, and who can blame them if they think that all the users are like this!

We are on a low income, and don't: own a plasma screen, live in a council house, smoke, drink, watch Jeremy Kyle, laze about or do any of those other things - and neither does anyone else I know in this situation. The tabloids print the odd story of some layabout scroungers and the ill-informed think this is what the majority are like not the absolute tiny minority of people in this situation.

Why the hell everyone isn't voting to get rid of trident is beyond me.

JimmyTheWig

WelshGandalf wrote: »

The vast majority of benefits should be means-tested...

If anything, the last 5 years has brought more benefits & more complicated ways of earning/paying them - employing more people in teh process and sometimes getting them wrong anyway (haven't billions been over-paid in tax credits in past years?)

Surely this is self-contradictory?
Why not make all benefits non-means tested, then tax the people who can afford it?
Would reduce beaurocracy (sp?) and so save money, put pay to the benefits trap and make things fairer for everyone.

vaillant_2

Cutting benefits is the easy option in this poll - unless you've ever needed to claim them :rolleyes:

We seem to have created a very handy (for politicians) image of a sub-human, unworthy underclass 'choosing a life on benefits'.

I worked in the benefits agency for a while and then as a nurse in the NHS. The reality I saw was a complex one - often of unexpected and unavoidable events tipping ordinary people into an abyss that only the welfare state saved them (and their families) from.

If you fancy cutting benefits - ask yourself if you're happy to see your family ripped apart and to spend the rest of your days in the workhouse?

"It'll never happen to me" - that's what everyone on benefits once said

happyinflorida

Cutting benefits and pensions is so wrong. The amounts given to both are so low as to be ridiculous, you can bearly have enough to live on for the basic necessities. These should be put up, not reduced. Why is it, when someone becomes unemployed, they can claim rent payments but not money towards their mortgage (something like 39 weeks has to go by first, so by the time you get the payments for mortgages you'd be so far behind in your payments that you'd be in the process of being repossessed) - this is not good for anyone.

One thing I'd definitely do in our hospitals is to reduce the number of managers. There are practically as many managers as essential staff - those who make appointments, etc - the managers are usually on around £50K!!!! This is way too much and they're allowed cars, including 4X4's - which is not healthy!! Please help to cut down the number of managers in hospitals as there are far too many and they don't do much, just have constant useless meetings about unimportant things!

zygurat789

Originally Posted by zygurat789 Social protection presumeably includes the money paid to the idle in their subsidised social housing so that they can watch their wall sized plasma TVs, drive their MPVs to see their boyfriends in prison in Devon (you don't go there for nowt) and take frequent trips (presumeably self-financing) to Spain.
What an ignorant eejit.

In reply I can only say this everything here IS factual from a colleague of my wife's whose life was made a misery (broken windows, keyed car, personal harrassment of all her family) and no one, police, council and MP could do nothing to help. She was almosy destroyed but she managed to move.

You need to know what you are talking about in order not to be an ignorant eejit!!!!!

zygurat789

How do I open the "quote message reply" box?

harryhound

Andy_Davies wrote: »

Where's the vote for things like this - http://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/14060/response/37012/attach/html/3/Response%20Ltr.FOI3122.doc.html

This is hugely over-priced...

I must confess I did not really understand this posting - it appears to be an attempt by Birmingham council to avoid answering a question.
[I know the feeling, I once asked what alternative sites my local council had considered before building a gypsy site behind the swimming pool and playing fields. (Quite a reasonable place for it actually, given that it was the third of three such sites).
In spite of having admitted that 4 other alternative had been investigated my council managed to find a way not to answer the question].

However the Birmingham money pit, which probably gets a whole lot fewer users than MSE, got a mention on the BBC this lunch time.
It seems that a web site called:
http://helpmeinvestigate.com
was used to tease out the reality.

http://www.birminghampost.net/news/politics-news/2009/08/04/cost-of-new-birmingham-city-council-website-spirals-to-2-8m-65233-24307674/

zygurat789

I think most people want benefits to go to those who need and deserve them. This is patently not the case at the moment.
This also applies to our health service. Again I am told by a reliable source, a doctor, that another GP has gone to work in a hospital because Pakistanis were bringing their whole extended family over here for free health treatment. And he, judging by his name, was of Pakistani origin

rag31

zygurat789 wrote: »

In reply I can only say this everything here IS factual from a colleague of my wife's whose life was made a misery (broken windows, keyed car, personal harrassment of all her family) and no one, police, council and MP could do nothing to help. She was almosy destroyed but she managed to move.

You need to know what you are talking about in order not to be an ignorant eejit!!!!!

Not really. I only need to know that anyone who takes 1 isolated case and assumes it represents the majority of cases is.... well.... an eejit.

And sorry for singling you out, it was the first comment I came to - I didn't realise the thread would be full of them! You're not alone, sadly, it seems in eejitness.

Becky