What Goverment spending would you cut? poll discussion

wiltskeith

(1) Cut NHS spending. Improve hospital oversight and management. Cut waste. Stop NHS being a political football and allow hospital managers and trusts to eradicate waste and make hospitals more efficient. NHS cannot have a blank cheque.

(2) Cut Pensions by raising retirement age. This has already been mooted by conservatives to raise age of retirment for men to 66. Retirement age for women should be raised immeditately to run in parallel to men. This would save billions per year. There has been some talk of having parity between men and women by 2020 but I can see no reason to wait, implement this now.

iudtuvm

Overseas aid definitely.

Much of it ends up in the pockets of people who certainly don't need it and they use it further oppress those below them.

PS There are alternatives to aid such as trade (fair trade) or microfinancing

jpwhittle

CUT BENEFITS

I get seriously annoyed that people can tell us we are stupid for being a hard working family and that on benefits you can get more money than my husband does for doing nothing, plus spend mmore time with your kids, why should my husband be made to feel guilty for going to work. Housing benefits are ridiculous in most case (not all) again the likes of my brother (im willing to give out his name as its family stopping me reporting him) telling us hes claiming £500 a month housing benefits despite being self employed and working and hes sticking it away to get a posh 5 bed house ( dont know how you define posh in leigh or wigan but heyho).
Tax credits should be means tested and only go to the poorer families, and yes i would be willing to give mine up, my husband works for our children.
Get rid of the child trust fund scheme, people might not like it but right now this contry cant afford them, £250 a child then more later, sorry but i never had a trust fund and we do just fine, might not have much in kids bank accounts but hoping to sttart saving for them myself soon. So a family with 5 kids shouldnt recieve £1250 all that could make a big difference to our econimy.

Andy burnham needs shooting he would oppose cutting benfits he used to be from the chavviest town around (and i can comment i used to live there myself, and have the smug benefit cheating brother still there).

I do agree with cutting down some on giving to other countries when we are in a mess ourselves, maybe we could help by letting their debts that they have payed of many times over go so that they can help themselves now?

Sorry rant over

voiceofreason

Brilliant stuff - good to see that the level of yesterday's high-calibre, reasoned, intellectually-convincing arguments is being kept up today......

Northants_Simon

There are savings to be made everywhere.

I was recently sat in a hospital for a few hours, I noticed lights are switched on in all of the rooms, including those not in use. I would think this happens in many public buildings. The saving might be small, but over all the public buildings in the country it adds up. I'm sure money could be cut from the NHS budget without reducing services, cutting managers would be a start.

I voted for benefits, it gets on my nerves that many are better off than myself because they have a large family and rely on hand outs from the state. These people are also least bothered by the recession as it makes little difference to them, they still get the same money and as they don't work they don't have to worry about job security.

The thing I wouldn't like to see is higher income taxes, that just punishes people for working hard. Also I don't want to see an increase in VAT, that hurt everybody and risks a double dip recession as people start to cut back on spending.

MrGreen44

Simple answer cuts will not solve anything other than create more problems

You need someone with financial expertise to get this country back on its feet

Not left to MPs with no idea what is going on in the real world

Its not about saving money its about spending less

MrG

mykan

Send back all illegal immigrants and actively 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.[/Quote]



We can't afford to sack 'em - but we could re-deploy them to catch the illegals!

mykan

We can't afford to sack 'em - but we could re-deploy them to catch the illegals!

Alantheaged

Why only the one vote for the one area we would most like to see cut? I believe it would have been much better if we could have ranked each on a scale of 1 to 5 or maybe 10 to highlight ALL the things which concern us - that would have revealed the real stinkers and the total depth of feeling and concern we all have right across the patch. Any chance of a rerun on those lines, Martin? - this issue isn't going to go away in the short term and the more as well as more informative Questionnaire responses that can be mustered, the better for us all (Except the benefit hangers on and one or two others!! - see below and the many related messages from earlier).

On that basis whilst I voted for social "protection" (which now seems to be social engineering gone mad) as the most I would wish to see cut, I would also have voted at a similar level for targeting Overseas Aid (are we really giving India a ton of money in "aid" whilst they are using internal money for developing nuclear weapons. Oh and when are we going to get our EC rebate increased at least back to Maggie Thatcher levels as we are now the most indebted country in the EC and shoudn't be paying for French farmers and the like), NHS and Education by reducing the huge management waste of money - though its OK if the government decided to divert some or all of the money saved into providing proper care (or teaching) such as abolishing NICE and using the huge amount of money saved to provide the people who need them with the drugs that NICE have denied them like in the recent cancer drugs fiasco - absolutely unbelievable the way that group operate, and Law and Order - again the waste is there for all to see on the paperwork side meaning where we are using highly trained Police Officers to fill in mainly useless forms, preventing them from actually policing.

Note on Social Engineering: in my world, the people who really need the benefits would be OK as long as it was shown they do really need it - see the recent run for cover by a huge number of people when the government actually began to introduce properish checks for disability benefit! - in addition, I have experience of one or two complete hypochondriacs who, I am convinced, were after the free money they would get if they pretended and whinged enough to be labelled long term sick. The doctors presumably give them that label just to get the whingers off their backs as they waste so much of the docs time - so they would need to be weeded out as well.

I would also limit Child Benefit to the first two children - the recent press report of one family on £40k plus from benefits plus a big house which they said was too small (and wasn't it dreadful the council hadn't yet arranged a bigger one for them!) cos they had 6 or 7 children made my blood boil even more, especially when the lady of the house was quoted as saying they were going to keep going as no-one was going to tell HER how many children she could have! OK - if you pay for them lady, you carry on - but don't expect the rest of us to fork out for them as well as your people carrier, second car, X-boxes, mobile phones, Plasma TVs etc etc oh and central heating, council tax, free prescriptions, etc. etc!

On top of that, again in my world, the "single" mothers (and fathers if they are on free housing and benefits) who are allowed to demand and receive a flat at our expense would go to single mother/father hostels. This would be enormously cheaper as old hotels could be fairly easily and economically converted, it would release council property for the more deserving - I do not believe the huge increase in single mothers is anything more than them seeing the free housing and then living off the rest of us and are therefore completely undeserving especially when we see/hear of the cases of them living "alone" but their boy friends stay every night! - and enable warden supervision so that boyfriends could be noted and the real fraudsters stopped in their tracks. I think it would also act to deter significantly the single mother culture, though I can hear Battie Hatties screams of rage for anyone daring to deny the single mothers the right to be so - but again, I don't mind as long as I don't end up paying for it.

I didn't believe I could rant as much as this - maybe I (and others judging by the other messages above) are actually becoming motivated to complain loudly believing that improvements may actually happen under the new government, whilst under the old government we were more concerned that some politically correct person would find some way of prosecuting us for daring to publicise the home truths along with nabbing us for putting rubbish in our bins. Maybe common sense will now start to return.

daisiemaetulip

prisoner "rehab" as an example my sisters boy(19) has done nothing but cause trouble all his teenage life including stealing,robbing,vandalism you name it he's tried it.. my son(24) good as gold.. desperate to get into the building trade but cannot afford the college fees van etc, cousin however is now in a college of sorts learning carpentry, he has had every ounce of help thrown at him, money for work clothes, financial advice and assistance in anything he needs or wants, he feels a little depressed well now lets get you moved to an open prison where you can have your own room, your own ps3 your own colour tv .. it just beggars belief.. the other day i heard he is being offered driving lessons on release at a greatly reduced charge so he can get a better job, and a nice new flat away from trouble.. screaaaaammmm!
oh anss i do agree with a lot on here that we should definately cut back on overseas aid at least til we are stable.. people who want to be involved will continue to do so and rich folk who dont know what to do with thier money will still donate.. we could always cap footballer and actors wages with the above capped amount earned going back into our economy! now theres a thought!