What Goverment spending would you cut? poll discussion

centurian

We were only ever asked to vote for or against a "Common Market", and this is why people feel they were hoodwinked. I voted against the "Common Market" on the basis that we would be ditching many of our Commonwealth Countries, like New Zealand, Australia and Canada who had fought side by side with us throughout the 2cnd World War, to trade with Europe instead.

Diesel_Princess

We should pull together as a country and start looking after number one, the citizens of the UK. Lets stop all aid abroad and concentrate on reducing the debt. Instill more discipline in the schools and bring back some sort of national service to young people, leaving more jobs for those that are on the dole and at the same time bring back respect for others. Those that do not wish to work should not be provided with handouts including one parent families. They should be forced to contribute in some way for their money. If you can't afford children you shouldn't have them. Obviously there are exceptions to the rule and these should be treated on an individual basis.

Send back all illigal immigrants and activily seek to find and deport them. Gone are the days when we can afford to give refuge to those from abroad.

I feel that over 30% of Civil Servants could be axed without any loss to services and lets start at the very top level of
bureaucrats.

PrinceGaz

I voted for defence. We're in no danger of invasion from anyone, the only real threat to this country is an economic one and the easiest way to solve that is to cut worthless spending, and defence has to be high on that list.

I'd also cut foreign aid as the reason we give it is because we can afford to help out poorer countries-- except that we can no longer afford to help them out, well unless we have our debt written off like many third-world countries have had done

I'd also cut some benefits, specifically by making them all means-tested-- why give money to people who have children in the form of Child Benefit even if they are already quite wealthy. Benefits are meant to help people in need, and wealthy people clearly do not need them. I'd also make child benefit for the second child only half of that for the first child, and no payment at all for the third or more children to prevent scroungers from receiving loads of handouts by having lots of sprogs.

neil_runkel

I would first cut the tax payers subsidy of private education through charitable status of public schools.

the government is trying to abrogate its responsibility by getting us to tell them what to do so that they can't be blamed.

yorkshireman99_2

One not on the original list. Paying for foreign students to go to British Universities. Student has British nationality through father who was born in UK but has worked overseas for many years and does not intend to return to the UK. Has been accepted at UK university, but by using grandparents UK address as their 'permanent address' only pays tuition fees, and presumably also qualifies for a student loan (which may, or may not, be repaid eventually. Foreign students normally pay much higher fees. Why should we, the taxpayer, subsidise these foreign students.

weedy_2

I would cut the new administrative posts in the NHS.
I speak as an ex senior manager in the NHS. The idea that there has to be a cost associated with every admission seems ludicrous.
Sure we ought to know the relative costs of different hospitals, but how much money do we want to spend on that?

XRAT

I'm surprised how many want to cut defence, compared to how few who want to cut law and order.
Both categories are essential to allow us to keep what little we have.

XRAT

yorkshireman99 wrote: »

One not on the original list. Paying for foreign students to go to British Universities. Student has British nationality through father who was born in UK but has worked overseas for many years and does not intend to return to the UK. Has been accepted at UK university, but by using grandparents UK address as their 'permanent address' only pays tuition fees, and presumably also qualifies for a student loan (which may, or may not, be repaid eventually. Foreign students normally pay much higher fees. Why should we, the taxpayer, subsidise these foreign students.

Sounds like fraud to me, it's up to someone who knows about it to notify the authority.., or live with their concience.

heather8

I use to work for HMRC until I took redundancy, so I know for a fact that there is loads of waste there.

For a start they need to get rid of lean working, it wastes staffs time having daily meetings, managers time having at least 2 daily meetings and senior managers time, well they spend all day in lean meetings. There are also loads of pay band C2 who spend time on lean too. Plus all the consultant costs. Get rid of it, the staff who do the actual work will have more time to do it and get more done, and it will free up more resources elsewhere to help customers.

Now they also want to look a the siaze of the senior managers, II'm taking at senior civil service level here. Ever since IR and cusoms merged there seems to have been more and more senior civil servants taken on.

I would also suggest scrapping the head of HMRC too, as she does not bring value for money and since she came, staff moral has dropped, as has the level of service to customers, so why does she still have a job. If she was in the private sector, she wouldn't.

It really upsets me when I see how shambolic it has become there, I'm glad I left. I was no longer proud to be working for them.

I wouldn't say I was a negative person, I just hated to see what had happened to a department that had once been a fantastic place to work for and something to be proud of.

Also scrap child benefit for those with income over 100,000. Scrap child tax credit and working tax credit and have the allowance put back into code numbers, no more overpayments will be made. It will also encourage more people to work if its attached to the tax code as an allowance, they'll have to declare income if they are self employed too.

Gallovidian

bjemblem wrote: »

How sad that the most popular budget to cut is Overseas Aid. We're in trouble, but we still have enough to share a little.

We give India £1,900,000,000.00 a year in aid. They have a space programme, nuclear weapons, aircraft carriers and we give them aid. Please explain why? Anyone? Anyone at all?