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

rag31

zygurat789 wrote: »

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

Oh and especially if that person follows up their assertion with a quote like this.

Becky

DKLS

Cut back on defence, Irag and Afghanistan was never a threat to us in any way what so ever.

The WMD issue was a joke, want to know what weapons Iraq had, mmmm easy just check the sales invoices of what we and the US flogged them.

Also independtly audit all councils and slash budgets accordingly, they are cash wasting machines at the highest level.

zygurat789

mcgazz wrote: »

Blimey, it's all gone a bit Daily Mail in here. We've had "plasma TVs in council houses", "scroungers", "non-jobs in councils", "gold-plated civil service pensions" and "having kids to get benefits". I just need a reference to "the f3ckless" and I'll have a full house.

Sorry for the ranty nature of what follows...

> gold-plated copper-bottom pension schemes

I work in the Civil Service. Like an awful lot of government employees, I don't earn very much. The pension is one of the few perks we get that's supposed to make up for that. However, if it's still there when I retire, mine will actually be worth very little.

I find it depressing that people would like to see others have their entitlements removed, rather than demand the same things for themselves. I'm in my 30s, educated up to postgraduate level, do an intellectually demanding job in the science/academic sector and earn less than £20K a year. I'm happy enough with my lot, but I'm sick of hearing from people who earn 2 or 3 times what I do telling me what a charmed life I lead. Anyone who wants my apparently "gold-plated" *and* "copper bottomed" pension can contact me and we'll arrange to swap jobs ;-)

It's regularly claimed that it's socialists who want to "create equality by bringing everyone down to the lowest level", but I find that it's right-wing/conservative people who're guilty of that. I'm sick of hearing from people who work in the private sector moaning that, as they haven't had a pay rise for 3 years, no one else should get one either. Rather than moan about public sector unions - why not form your own unions and get a better deal for yourself?


> The vast majority of benefits should be means-tested

The vast majority of benefits *are* means-tested, or have very strict qualifying criteria (and are often conditional on NI contributions). Child Benefit isn't, and it could easily be scrapped and replaced by something more targeted.


> I'd reduce benefits, and turn them from cash into vouchers.

Ignoring the heartless inhumanity of treating people who've, through no fault of their own, lost their jobs like prisoners, administrating a voucher scheme would cost more, not less.


> subsidised social housing

Social housing (of which there is less and less these days, as the Labour Government has carried on the Tories' work privatising it and shifting it to voluntary sector trusts) is *not* subisdised. Rents are charged pretty much at market rates and council housing departments have to balance their books. Rent increases by more than inflation every year.


> drive their MPVs

This is real cloud cuckoo land stuff. Find me a single unemployed person who drives an MPV.


> A very large percentage of crime is committed by a very small percentage of individuals. Build more prisons, give them realistic jail terms (at least 10 yrs for violence, bring back the death penalty, no community service, no probation. Pay for the prisons by sacking the parole board and the excessive number of police are no longer required. The courts will be empty so savings on the CPS and overaged overpaid sleepyheads in the wigs.

What you've described is quite similar to North Korea. You'd like it there.


> I would look at all the quangos

The issue with quangos is that they're unaccountable, not that they're a waste of money. Most (I won't go so far as to say all) quangos do necessary work, which would have to be done elsewhere if they were scrapped, so it wouldn't really save any money. Talking about scrapping quangos is a rhetorical trick politicians use now and again to impress the public, as we're conditioned by the media to have negative associations with the word 'quango'. The most recent person to do this was David Cameron - the Tories announcing around the same time that they actually wanted to create at least one new quango.


> Recently found out NHS workers get 6 months full pay + 6 months half pay on maternity leave

And rather than think "everyone should get that", you thought "I want their rights reduced"? If everyone thought like that, we'd still be working 12 hours a day, 6 days a week for starvation wages with no holidays and no employment rights.


> The local councils un-necessarily give people council houses when in fact, these people are a couple who are both in full time employment and I believe that they in fact can afford a place of their own!

The way social housing allocation works now is that people register with the council, are allocated a priority band and then bid on properties as they become available. The bidder with the highest priority gets it (if there's more than one in the same priority band, it goes to the one who's been waiting the longest). The only way a couple, both working, would get a council house is if no one who was a higher priority bid for it. It can happen. Contrary to what you might read in the papers, no one is handed anything automatically.


> Too cushy flogging the Big Issue in the sunshine whilst drinking a cappuccino

Have I been accidentally forwarded to the Daily Mail website?


What would I do? I don't believe in the 'government as grocer' metaphor beloved of Thatcher and now Cameron - it's the Government's job to spend counter-cyclically to reinflate the economy and then claw back the cash when everyone's better off.

Also, I'd make changes on the revenue side as well. I'd tax unearned income (savings interest, share dividends, capital gains and inheritances) at the same rate (at least) as earned income. I'd increase the council tax on second homes. I'd legalise cannabis and tax it at the same rate as tobacco.

But, if I was going to make savings, I do the following.

DEFENCE
Cancel the replacement for Trident. Scrap the fourth, unnecessary, Trident sub and one of the proposed aircraft carriers. Switch to F-35 aircraft instead of the Eurofighter, and have fewer of them. Instigate much stricter auditing of the MOD (the amount of money they've wasted over the years is staggering).

EDUCATION
Stop wasting money on PFI contracts, which have been proven to lead to poorer services at an increased cost. Scrap SATs and other pointless, overly bureaucratic nonsense like school league tables and Contactpoint.

INDUSTRY, AGRICULTURE, EMPLOYMENT & TRAINING
Stop subsidising banks!
Charge larger businesses and especially employment agencies to place adverts in Jobcentres (a Jobcentre is, after all, a subsidised recruitment service for the private sector, and many agencies 'earn' their money by putting adverts in the Jobcentre knowing full well that the DWP aren't allowed to tell the employer that's what they're doing).

HEALTH
End the failed neoliberal experiment that is the NHS 'internal market'. Reduce the amount paid to GPs. Cut back on the money black hole that is the NHS IT programme. Use the NHS' purchasing power more aggressively to buy drugs more cheaply and reduce the amount of taxpayers' money that goes to big drug companies. Reduce the amount spent on health promotion - disseminating information is fine, but telling people how to live their lives isn't.

PUBLIC ORDER/SAFETY
Scrap ID cards and the National Identity Database - along with numerous other 'Big Brother' databases the Government has.

SOCIAL PROTECTION
Scrap child benefit and the tax credits system, and increase the personal allowance instead. Any specific subsidies to low-income families, etc, could be done by HMRC through different tax codes.

TRANSPORT
No new motorway schemes - repairs and maintenance only.

I'd also link MPs pay rises to the rest of the civil service (if they want the likes of me to get 1.5%, they can make do with the same) and reduce the number of Westminster MPs (to around 400) and councillors (surely my metropolitan borough doesn't need 3 councillors for every ward?). Scrap the TV licencing system and collect the money via income tax instead.

The reference to pension schemes was specically for MPs. and I have already got access to a government pension scheme by buying added years through my wife, the best buy ever and she earns the same as you.

You may be a government employee but are you a "civil servant" ?
The benefits for government employees may not be good, but they are an awful lot better than in the private sector.

It sounds to me as if you are hiding your god given talents under a stone
and you really could earn a lot more in the private sector or would this not be worth your while?

And as for prisoners losing their job through no fault of their own - PLEASE

Drive there MPVs - FACTUAL see above.

With regard to crime not North Korea the UK when I was younger

In fact you are talking through your lower orifice I rely on Facts

zygurat789

rag31 wrote: »

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

Your beginning to see your the odd one out and I'm glad to see you admit you don't know what you are talking about.
And if something like this happens once then it is once to often you are behaving like the police, council, MP and Pontius Pilate.

zygurat789

I believe in benefits, paid to the deserving but £Billions of tax credits were paid out fraudulently rumour had it that it was done by the Russsian !!!!!.

zygurat789

rag31 wrote: »

Oh and especially if that person follows up their assertion with a quote like this.

Becky

Again not an assertion but from a GP

zygurat789

rag31 wrote: »

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.

This is an assertion of over generalisational proportions. You may be good and true but I KNOW others who are NOT

harryhound

mcgazz wrote: »

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.
I agree with the "flexibility" idea.
But forgive me, don't Civil Servants retire at 60?
"Ordinary" private sector workers are being pushed towards 67.

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.
I don't think you really can compare France and Latvia and I think you are comparing productivity per hour worked in larger scale industries where such statistics can be collected. France retires it's public sector workers at 50. I think. That gives 15+ years of no productivity that someone has to finance. France receives a massive transfer subsidy for Germany and the UK via the CAP.
Meanwhile Latvia was until recently a communist country where almost everyone worked for the state. Since the war, the first world war, its rate of capital investment has been minimal and ineffective.
The motto was "You pretend to pay us and we pretend to work".


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.

Yes it would. Every time we buy or sell something 2.5% (I think) goes into the Brussels gravy train via VAT. It costs every family in the county 10's of pounds per week.
http://www.farmsubsidy.org/
Result: European farming has failed to rationalise and increase productivity as much as it might have.

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.
I expect Evita said something like that when she was the power behind the presidency in Argentina. The Peronist policies did not serve well what had once been the World's third richest country

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Harry,

PS I see China's currency is now becoming convertible with Argentina's; I wonder what Argentina has that 1.5 billion Chinese might need - thinks they live in a country that has problems feeding its people - sound familiar?

gb57

The whole Welfare/Benefits system, which is costing the country so much, needs to be reviewed and overhauled. Benefits should be a safety net, not a way of life. Genuinely disabled people are in a different category, but criteria should be stringent and cases reviewed every few years (disabled people's needs change over time). When I was a child being "on the dole" was a shameful thing, and you tried to get a new job as quickly as possible. Many still do, but there is a hard core who don't.

Some things like universal child benefit made sense in 1948, but do not now; the complicated tax credit system brought in by GB needs to be scrapped. Tax allowances should go up so that the lower paid keep more of their own money. Taxes need to be fair. The whole system needs to be comprehensively overhauled, but it will NEVER happen as it will lose votes.

Pensions are NOT a benefit if you have worked all your life and paid NI, they are an earned right. However, if you have not worked for most of your life and lived off benefits (discount disabled, see above), you have NOT earned a pension and should get lower benefits than a pensioner who has paid into the system.

NHS - we must make sure that we go back to being a National Health Service, not an International one, as happens at present. We are under no obligation to care for sick people who are "health tourists". This is a massive unacknowledged problem. Scrap "targets" and start putting patients first again.

All public services to be overhauled to make sure there are not layers of unnecessary staff.

The pension age for public servants to be raised to be the same as the rest of us! That is, at present 65 for men, with the age for women being iincrementally raised from 60 to 65, I think within 5 years will be 65. After that the age for all is being incrementally raised to 67. How come civil servants can retire at 60? Police and fire service pensions are also incredibly generous, not only with the amount paid but also allowing early retirement. I agree you can't have 60 year olds shinning up ladders fighting fires, but they could do admin work, perhaps(?)

Overlong maternity leave and stuff like paternity leave are a huge drain on small and medium sized business, which actually make up most of the employers in this country.

Bit worried now in case I get accused of being a rabid, right-wing Daily Mail reader!:D

zygurat789

Quote Harryhound

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.

And the almost inevitable inflation completes the stop/go cycle.

1970/80s here we come again