Where will the cuts fall

kabayiri

"Where will the cuts fall?"

In my view, it should be *everywhere*.

I'm not convinced we have been serious about tackling the growing debt mountain facing the UK yet.

Ringfencing things like the NHS and Education is stupid. These are massive areas of spend; there is opportunity to save money there.

Having one level of allowance on pension credit; ie scrapping the higher rate; is another area of serious saving. Not long back a spokesman from L&G said on the radio that this alone would save £8bn a year.

Large numbers of immigrants show a continuing desire to come to the UK for a better life. I think there is opportunity to make money off them too.

GunJack

Easy win - scrap the foreign aid budget completely... I'm not xenophobic, but while this country needs the dosh, why are we sending it overseas???

Loughton_Monkey

kabayiri wrote: »

"Where will the cuts fall?"

In my view, it should be *everywhere*.

I'm not convinced we have been serious about tackling the growing debt mountain facing the UK yet.......

Of course you are right, but......

The head of a household, facing a sharp fall in wages, would be stupid not to rein in household spending. Perhaps sell the second car. Cut out the eating out for Sunday Lunch.....

The boss of an ailing company facing lower demand would be stupid not to cut a few staff, reduce bonuses, maybe freeze the wages.....

The difference is that neither the head of household, nor the boss, needs to win a popularity contest every 5 years.

Dave is probably weeping into his kitchen sink, looking back, crying to Samantha that if only he'd done the obvious thing in May 2010 and frozen everything. Benefits, Pensions, Public Salaries, Departmental Budgets....... The deficit would have been cleared and he would have sailed back to No 10 this time round.

Generali

GunJack wrote: »

Easy win - scrap the foreign aid budget completely... I'm not xenophobic, but while this country needs the dosh, why are we sending it overseas???

It's just too little to make a difference.

In 2013 the UK Government spent £720,000,000,000 of which about £10,000,000,000 is foreign aid.

By comparison, £388,000,000,000 was spent on welfare including health & 'personal social services' and £97,000,000,000 was spent on education. If you're looking to spend less then it really has to come from that £485,000,000,000. Nothing else is a big enough number to bit into the £108,000,000,000 in a significant way.

GunJack

Generali wrote: »

It's just too little to make a difference.

In 2013 the UK Government spent £720,000,000,000 of which about £10,000,000,000 is foreign aid.

By comparison, £388,000,000,000 was spent on welfare including health & 'personal social services' and £97,000,000,000 was spent on education. If you're looking to spend less then it really has to come from that £485,000,000,000. Nothing else is a big enough number to bit into the £108,000,000,000 in a significant way.

appreciated it's small beer, but it's most of the "initial" 12bn .....

kabayiri

Loughton_Monkey wrote: »

Of course you are right, but......

The head of a household, facing a sharp fall in wages, would be stupid not to rein in household spending. Perhaps sell the second car. Cut out the eating out for Sunday Lunch.....
...

Indeed, it's a challenge.

But we need a complete culture change.

Why on earth do you need a iPhone 4 then 5 then 6 then 7...
Surely we can make something which lasts a few years.

The household might start spending more on local farm produce which is cheaper; they might get their car serviced and maintained more instead of buying that shiny piece of Korean wheels; they might think of taking more holidays in Blighty. Money spent on giving jobs to people here (a novel concept I admit).

GunJack

kabayiri wrote: »

But we need a complete culture change.

Why on earth do you need a iPhone 4 then 5 then 6 then 7...
Surely we can make something which lasts a few years.

couldn't agree more, unfortunately modern capitalism seems to like the throwaway, upgraded, not-last-more-than-a-year-or-so culture as it makes them more money so guess which way they push??

kabayiri

Generali wrote: »

It's just too little to make a difference.

In 2013 the UK Government spent £720,000,000,000 of which about £10,000,000,000 is foreign aid.

By comparison, £388,000,000,000 was spent on welfare including health & 'personal social services' and £97,000,000,000 was spent on education. If you're looking to spend less then it really has to come from that £485,000,000,000. Nothing else is a big enough number to bit into the £108,000,000,000 in a significant way.

Yep, 97 billion on education and yet businesses like call centres still complain about having to train new recruits in the basics, like wreadin and ritin.

I know of a head of department at a school. Earns more than an MP charged with running the country.

Go figure.

Loughton_Monkey

kabayiri wrote: »

......I know of a head of department at a school. Earns more than an MP charged with running the country.

Go figure.

There's quite a lot to 'figure' there.

MP's don't run the country. Theoretically they have a chance to if and when they are appointed to ministerial duties, but even then, most would argue that "Sir Humphrey" and his mob actually 'run' the country.

Maybe being an MP should be a voluntary job. You are only there to 'represent' your constituents. That means listening to them, writing things down, then doing nothing about it.

Let's have 650 "Robotic Vote Capture" machines. Every time there's an 'issue' - let's say the PM wants to give us pensioners a bigger heating allowance. So you flash that up on the TV during Eastenders, with 30 minutes for everyone to press the red button for "Aye" or the blue button for "Nay".

An animated version of John Burcow can then come on between programmes to give us the result. [This would only be marginally more irritating than the Confused.com robot.]

Pure democracy!

Now turning to schools, how big is a school? 1,200 pupils? that's about 40 teachers at 30 per class. How many subjects? Long time since I went but I can think of at least 10. So that's 4 per subject. So 4 teachers constitute a "Department"? What about the fringe subjects. Do 2 teachers constitute a "Department"?

I strongly suspect that when there is only one (say) Home Economics teacher at a school, then he or she qualifies as a department of 1 and gets "Head of Department" salary? That's how public services seem to work......

How long before they recruit a "Head of Division" to manage the Science, Arts, Humanities, etc.?

cells

Generali wrote: »

It's just too little to make a difference.

In 2013 the UK Government spent £720,000,000,000 of which about £10,000,000,000 is foreign aid.

By comparison, £388,000,000,000 was spent on welfare including health & 'personal social services' and £97,000,000,000 was spent on education. If you're looking to spend less then it really has to come from that £485,000,000,000. Nothing else is a big enough number to bit into the £108,000,000,000 in a significant way.

Is there really a need to get the deficit down to zero?

If the economy was growing at say 3% then running a 3% deficit would keep debt to gdp flat.

3% of UK GDP is some £50B