Its tough, it will get better and guess what its freezing brrrrr!

delicious_2

I'm sitting here really annoyed. I listened to the Chancellor's speech, i'm worried, I'm scared but I hoping to goodness it works. Many many many people are going to be forced into financial breakdown, ours was last year and it's horrible. We lost our home for goodness sakes.. those people in that 'room' are grinning, smirking, point scoring, laughing, nit picking, making cheap quips. Excuse me - our lives are being discussed here, take your games outside!

Am I being pathetic?

MummyOfTwo

i cant bear that either, laughing away with our home, families and livelihoods.

ceridwen

mardatha wrote: »

Forced to eat my whole stash of jellybabies to calm my nerves here ....

:rotfl::rotfl::rotfl:

errr...well I've been "forced" to throw my booze stash down my throat to steady my nerves. Several glasses of wine later...hic...hic....pardonez moi...and I sorta took in what he was saying (at intervals)...hic...

So - I've heard snippets...in between preparing lunch and what promises to be some RATHER nice carrot and oatmeal muffins:). My take on it SO FAR is that we might reach totally different verdicts about how well/badly this suits us PERSONALLY and what we think the effect will be on the country as a whole.

I've got about enough sense left later - hic...after those "nervous" glasses of wine to think "So far - so good" personally and rate the changes as purely neutral personally and ...say...minus 2 for Society as a whole. I'll come back and review that later - in a more sober frame of mind....takes last sip of wine and heaves huge (personal) sigh of relief.

NOW - one thought I've been having is whether peeps might like to all start up blogs (or secondary blogs if you have one already) on a "Gladrags and Bags" theme - ie its gladrags if you're celebrating and bags if you're upset (bags = bagladies - geddit it??). We all fear becoming a baglady. So - how are we all doing on the "gladrags" versus "bags" front?

Personally - I rather like the idea of us all personally having blogs - in which we list exactly what our financial position is right now (ie how much income is coming in and from what source/s and how much is going out for accommodation and bills) and our feelings about the position we are in (good or bad). There were Mass Observation Diaries started up when it became clear that World War 2 was imminent - and many of us have followed what the reaction was from people to this. Maybe its time for a 21st century version of this????? Personally - I find Blogger the easiest free blogger application to use (and believe me - if I can manage it - then anyone can......). Whaddya think?

alec_eiffel

delicious wrote: »

I'm sitting here really annoyed. I listened to the Chancellor's speech, i'm worried, I'm scared but I hoping to goodness it works. Many many many people are going to be forced into financial breakdown, ours was last year and it's horrible. We lost our home for goodness sakes.. those people in that 'room' are grinning, smirking, point scoring, laughing, nit picking, making cheap quips. Excuse me - our lives are being discussed here, take your games outside!

Am I being pathetic?

No, you're not being pathetic, this is our lives and not a laughing matter. The Radio 5 coverage is usually pretty good at explaining this type of thing so if anyone wants to try to understand things I would recommend listening to their coverage now if you can. John Pienaar is good to listen to.

ceridwen

Okays....just poodled off to get the link if anyone fancies the idea of creating a blog/another blog:

https://www.blogger.com/start

There ya' go.

Primrose

parsonswife8 wrote: »

I'm sat here watching this live houseof commons broadcast and comforting myself with a small pork pie for my lunch.:o

Parsonswife We're all in this together! Can I have a bite of your pork pie please? :rotfl:

Actually, I suspect that for many who were fearful of the results of this review it may not turn out to be as bad as feared. Child benefit for those over 16 has been retained and so have free prescriptions, free bus passes, & Winter Fuel Allowances. TV licences fees frozen for 6 years. We'll undoubtedly know in more detail when local councils publish their budgets now they know what their cuts in grants will be.

mambury

Well..... the one thing that was really worrying me was the education budget. I am a school governor at a very small rural school (16 pupils) and the finance for the school worried me a lot. I don't believe the increase will have much of an effect, and I am concerned about the pupil premium. For example Devon county used to fund broadband at a set rate per school, this changed last year (ish) to a set amount per pupil so our school looses out (bb fees remain the same, but less coming in!) whereas a larger school (150+ pupils) 5 miles away gained because their bb charge was the same but they ended up with more money because they had more pupils..... I can see a lot more of this happening in the years to come.

As far as the cuts directly affecting me?? I can't see it will have much effect at the moment other than the ridiculous decision to let councils have direct control over their budget. I live 5 miles from the nearest village, 15 from the nearest town and the only services we get are waste collection, schools, roads (they only get repaired for the tourists!), library (library bus is going, and the only decent library is 25 miles away) and leisure facilities such as swimming pools..... I really fear that giving my local council total control over their own budget will mean cuts in these services. Once the cuts start to really bite nationally with redundancies in the public sector I can see in the future tax rises (to fund the benefits for these 500k people with no work), reduced NHS care (which is pretty shocking here anyway), less schools (bigger school to be built), less transport for school children (I don't currently receive this as the school is only 1.5 miles away, but if it closes who knows where I might have to travel), prices in shops will have to increase as people will not have the money in their pockets....

I really think the change in social housing has been dealt with badly. I agree that council houses for life needed changing, that it is very unfair that people earning a good wage should not be eligible for reduced rents (via council houses) BUT is it fair that someone who needs social housing is now (in the near future) expected to pay 80/90% of the market rate when the market rate is high because of a lack of properties available to rent??? There we go Mr Osbourne, another cost for you.... added housing benefit to pay for the short fall of people rent.

*shakes head in disbelief*

Hugs for those that are directly affected!

katholicos

So ESA is to be subject to a 12 month claim limitation. What happens at the stroke of midnight on the last day of the twelvth month, do those of us who are unable to work due to poor health, suddenly become well enough to work? What a load of carp. I wonder how many suicides there will be when the conservative spending review gets into its full swing?

jackieglasgow

I think for a lot of people, personally it doesn't sound too horrendous, again I will say that I am wondering where the money to finance the increase of half a million people onto the dole/benefits system is going to come from in amongst his cuts. It sounds like he's still robbing peter to pay paul but this time peter is on the dole queue, one step ahead of paul.

I will need to see the figures in black and white before I decide what I really think. He made it sound very reasonable but Alan Johnston (who was fabulous BTW) made some very good points about the figures. For example, the Labour government took control with a budget debt of 10% of tax income, George Osborne's taking over a debt of 8.5% of tax income, so why the need for cuts to any essential services, why not implement a strict spending curb on non essentials without forced redundancy, and similar audit of spending practices similar to the one that Philip Green has recently undertaken on Whitehall spending? Trim the budget for non essentials and then see what you can do with the rest, I rather worry he has just thrown the baby out with the bathwater.

MummyOfTwo

long as me and hubby can keep some £££ coming in, we will get through ok i *think*... need to knuckle down and get through the next year or so.