UK Coalition Government Comprehensive Spending Review - Oct 20th 2010

Sir_Humphrey

Generali wrote: »

I guess if he went through the lot he'd be standing there until the next time he had to give the speech!

I hope you don't lose your job BTW. Unfortunately lots of your colleagues will and I know exactly how tough it is when you lose your job and your chosen industry isn't hiring.

I know a lot more about what is going on than I can reveal on this message board.

The 47% hike in "international development" spending is crazy.

I would expect most of it to go on providing export opportunities for British firms.

WISHIWASRICH_2

A good day I think

As long as you're not on benefits or working in the public sector (outside health & Education).

HAMISH_MCTAVISH

Blacklight wrote: »

Complete 106 page document of the review

Summary:

Home office down 23% over 4 years

Health up 1.3%

Local govt grant cut by 26% over 4 years

Welfare 7 billion a year cut on top of existing 11 billion cut

employment support to be time limited saving 4.5 billion a year

child benefit to save 2.5 billion a year

rail fares up by 3% above inflation

dori2o

WISHIWASRICH wrote: »

A good day I think

As long as you're not on benefits or working in the public sector (outside health & Education).

It's a great day if your earning over £100k. Nothing has changed for those higher earners

Tax the poor to feed the rich.

Blacklight

WISHIWASRICH wrote: »

A good day I think

As long as you're not on benefits or working in the public sector (outside health & Education).

It's sinking in a bit now I've read some of the detail. Overall I think it is pretty good.

No major reasons to panic unless you're claiming more benefit than you should be or were planning to retire at 55 on a full final salary pension.

I certainly don't think it spells disaster for homeowners.

Perhaps now we can all get on with our lives.

lemonjelly

Excellent initial assessment from s Flanders, courtesy bbc

We found out this week that the gap in life expectancy between the richest and parts of the UK has risen to 13 years. The gap between the North and the South is at least seven years. Which is where judging the economic impact of these cuts overlaps with the assessment of its fairness. We have been promised - for the first time ever - a Treasury assessment of the distributional impact of today's decisions. Since the document has not been released, I don't know what is included in that calculation - and what is left out. But, at first glance, the cuts to the welfare benefit are regressive, in the most basic sense of costing families in the lower half of the income distribution more, as a share of their income (and often in cash terms as well) than families in the upper half.
That could have an economic downside. As the IMF noted in that same report, poorer families, are more cash-constrained (you don't need an economist to tell you that. A lack of cash is rather what it means to be poor). If you cut their benefits they tend to cut their spending more than richer households do. They do not necessarily have the same capacity to complain.
But here is what seems to me to be the ticking time bomb in the government's plans - which will have economic implications as well as political ones. That is the likely impact on the demand and supply for housing.
With the housing benefit cuts, the cuts in social investment, and the re-definition of "affordable" housing to include rent that is 80% of the going market rate, the government is surely ensuring a massive rise in the demand for social housing, and only a modest increase in supply. When you consider that local authorities have also been told that they do not have to stick with the targets for private house building which were imposed on them by the previous government, this is a big gamble with the bottom end of the UK housing market.

Regressive is right - & that seemed to be agreed by commentators.

The poorest are clearly hardest hit.

This bit is right on the button

Taking child benefit from higher-rate tax-payers is going to raise a bit more than he thought - £2.5bn. But clearly the government were so spooked by the response to that change that they decided they couldn't do any more.
There will be an extra £7bn from the means-tested part of the welfare budget. This will overwhelmingly affect families in the lower half of the income distribution. I cannot see how to avoid that conclusion - even with the increase in the child element of the working tax credit, which enables the government to say that child poverty is not directly increased by these changes.

quantic

Can someone explain why welfare being means-tested could possibly be seen as a bad thing? (Serious question, can someone expand)

HAMISH_MCTAVISH

Blacklight wrote: »

Overall I think it is pretty good.

No major reasons to panic unless you're claiming more benefit than you should be or we planning to retire at 55 on a full final salary pension.

I certainly don't think it spells disaster for homeowners.

Perhaps now we can all get on with our lives.

Indeed.

Talk about expectation management!!!!

All that hype about "austerity". And then we get this damp squib.:eek:

The doomers will be gutted though.

Blacklight

lemonjelly wrote: »

Excellent initial assessment from s Flanders, courtesy bbc


Regressive is right - & that seemed to be agreed by commentators.

The poorest are clearly hardest hit.

This bit is right on the button

Typical lefty drivel from the Labour party bicycle.

StevieJ

Wheezy wrote: »

I'm still upset StevieJ is getting a bridge. :mad:

If he wants a bridge he can pay for it himself. Bloodsucking scum all of them

Unfortunately it looks like we are (Toll).