Half of new jobs are created by the state

StevieJ

PasturesNew wrote: »

Ah, but if you had a budget of £10k this year to repair roads - and £10k next year to repair roads... if you could keep this years until next year, then if it costs £10k to do 1 mile this year and £10k to do a mile next year, you'd find that for £20k you could actually get 2.5 miles done in less time and with less disruption. Economy of scale comes into play.

Provided the resources are available after you have wrecked the civil engineering industry by depriving them of work and income for a year :eek: Diseconomies of unevenscale

The_White_Horse

it works like this - give the public sector GBP100k - they will spend it all. The next year, give them 400k, they will spend it all. Give them 189m they will spend it all.

the public sector is only there to spend money!!!! it creates nothing. it adds no value to anything.

it is a giant tumour that feeds on more and more money.

Graham_Devon

StevieJ wrote: »

People on here don't appear to understand the concept of a budget :eek: The chances are that if budgets have not been spent the work has not been done e.g. roads have not been repaired.

No it's not.

A budget is what you have to spend.

If I have a budget for £1000 for fuel, it doesn't mean if I have spent £600 on fuel in 11 months, I have to go driving round for the sake of using another £400 worth of fuel.

Same with roads. If they don't need repairing, you don't have to repair them!

chucky

Graham_Devon wrote: »

No it's not.

A budget is what you have to spend.

not it's not - well not in the economic sense, which is what stevie is kindly trying to explain to you.

Definition: A budget is a description of a financial plan. It is a list of estimates of revenues to and expenditures by an agent for a stated period of time. Normally a budget describes a period in the future not the past.

http://economics.about.com/cs/economicsglossary/g/budget.htm

there is a difference using the word budget as a noun or a verb - the verb is what you're trying to describe

StevieJ

Graham_Devon wrote: »

No it's not.

A budget is what you have to spend.

If I have a budget for £1000 for fuel, it doesn't mean if I have spent £600 on fuel in 11 months, I have to go driving round for the sake of using another £400 worth of fuel.

Same with roads. If they don't need repairing, you don't have to repair them!

As I have said budgets are allocations of resources to allow a business to guesstimate valid future requirements and calls on expenditure, I am not discussing fraud here. I am sure you could think up more ingenious ways of using up your budget than driving around unnessarily BTW I think there are enough roads in need of repair without them inventing any.

Graham_Devon

Yes exactly. Not sure what you are disagreeing with here in all honesty.

I have a budget of £100. That means I can spend up to £100.

Therefore £100 is what I have to spend.

StevieJ

Graham_Devon wrote: »

Yes exactly. Not sure what you are disagreeing with here in all honesty.

I have a budget of £100. That means I can spend up to £100.

Therefore £100 is what I have to spend.

So you will put off doing an important job because you have spent your budget ?

The_White_Horse

StevieJ wrote: »

So you will put off doing an important job because you have spent your budget ?

yes, because in the real world, once you have spent your budget, there is no more money.

public sector people really are thick.

Kohoutek

Whether a budget is defined as what you will spend or what you have available to spend is irrelevant in the current fiscal climate. The government currently has -£178 billion available to spend.

To put that in perspective, if the government abolished the NHS and the armed forces and made everyone redundant, then we would still have a deficit of £40 billion, and that doesn't even include the loss of taxation revenue from making those redundancies.

A decade of austerity and massive public sector cuts are inevitable. It's time people stopped deluding themselves about how bad the state of this country is.

lemonjelly

Graham_Devon wrote: »

Nope not changing.

One simple rule change would help though. Don't make them spend their budgets so they get the same next year.

Set a budget, let them keep any excess.

Councils etc become richer, money is not wasted. Money the council holds can always be used for other projects later on.

Making them spend all the money is simply daft.

I'm quite in agreement with Graham here.

Problem is, whichever agency/authority is given the budget, if it isn't spent, it will be argued by the treasury that there never was the need for it, therefore they'll get a reduction next year.

In example. Council A is given £1million to spend on play areas for children.

Because council A uses resources well, & bargains hard with builders, they only spend £600k of the million.

When next years budget is calculated, treasury say "how did you do?" Council say "we saved £400k!" Treasury say "Aha! what you need per year is actually only £600k! That is your budget for next year! & seeing as you still have £400k, we'll knock that off the £600k we were gonna give you."

which means that council A's budget gets reduced by £800k. Through good management.

Bizarre.