Where will the cuts fall

Cyberman60

Thrugelmir wrote: »

For many in the public sector it's now a full time job. Restructuring is a slow long winded process. You'd be shocked at the waste, lack of productivity, abuse etc that exists. Unfortunately cutting headcount is an expensive business. As redundancy terms are extremely generous. So the payback takes some years to filter through.

Change the annual state pension increase to CPI. Would have a significant impact. Particularly if we enter a period of Japanese style stagnation.

So if CPI hits 10% we give pensioners a 10% rise. Lovely !! :rotfl:

... and no, I would not be shocked at the waste in the public sector as I have experience of it having worked for BA before privatisation !!

N1AK

CLAPTON wrote: »

indeed so but doesn't seem consistent with your previous position

It's entirely consistent. If you have the same education environment and people making decisions then spending £900 per kid on education will get you worse outcomes than spending £1,000.

Anything you do to improve the polices etc that makes things better for education at £900 per student, would also make it better at £1,000 per student.

N1AK

Thrugelmir wrote: »

For many in the public sector it's now a full time job. Restructuring is a slow long winded process. You'd be shocked at the waste, lack of productivity, abuse etc that exists. Unfortunately cutting headcount is an expensive business. As redundancy terms are extremely generous. So the payback takes some years to filter through.

Any of which can be true but it still doesn't make your position realistic. They cannot know they can protect pensioner spending, know they will cut £12 billion, and yet not have any idea of which other benefits they might cut.

CLAPTON

N1AK wrote: »

It's entirely consistent. If you have the same education environment and people making decisions then spending £900 per kid on education will get you worse outcomes than spending £1,000.

Anything you do to improve the polices etc that makes things better for education at £900 per student, would also make it better at £1,000 per student.

it is certainly consistent with my previous post

what proven relationship is there between spending and educational outcomes.
In fact most of the innovations over the last 20 years have shown not improvement in outcomes : just a waste of money.

Thrugelmir

N1AK wrote: »

Any of which can be true but it still doesn't make your position realistic. They cannot know they can protect pensioner spending, know they will cut £12 billion, and yet not have any idea of which other benefits they might cut.

I can easily see £3 to £4 billion per annum coming off the public sector wage bill (that's all employment costs) in the longer term. With potential to go much much further. Yet still delivering a good quality service. With reduced headcount comes all the savings that go with employing people.

Central Government procurement is still in it's infancy in terms of buying at best prices etc.

Drive to use new technologies better and more efficiently. Central Government could learn a lot from the outsourcing providers. Arguably the work could then be retained in house. Rather than contracting out.

antrobus

N1AK wrote: »

Not at all. You'd have to cut more over the next decade; but that does not require cuts to be made faster as the current cuts are heavily front loaded. Policies like, for example, removing the pension triple lock, and replacing with a cost of living increase, would save comparatively little in the next 3 years but would have a big impact on spending over 10 years.

Perhaps I should have said cut 'more'.

Nevertheless, the fact remains that your statement that "I believe we need to get our national debt down to below 50% of GDP before 2025" is actually proposing a more "aggressive target" than that set by the current Conservative chancellor, who doesn't propose getting it down to that level until 2035.

N1AK

Cyberman60 wrote: »

So if CPI hits 10% we give pensioners a 10% rise. Lovely !! :rotfl:

We already would; Anyone remotely informed knows that inflation is one of the three things the triple lock refers to.

N1AK

antrobus wrote: »

Perhaps I should have said cut 'more'.

If you had said more, then I would have agreed with you because it would have been true. I never suggested that the current target for the national debt in 2025/2030 was aggressive, and it should be pretty obvious that if my preference is for a lower national debt at a point in the future it would require more cuts and/or more taxation in total.

antrobus

N1AK wrote: »

If you had said more, then I would have agreed with you because it would have been true. I never suggested that the current target for the national debt in 2025/2030 was aggressive, and it should be pretty obvious that if my preference is for a lower national debt at a point in the future it would require more cuts and/or more taxation in total.

What you actually said was this;

N1AK wrote: »

...I've never fully bought into the Conservative rhetoric on how fast we need to cut. I believe we need to get our national debt down to below 50% of GDP before 2025. This isn't an aggressive target, and a lot of it can be done by allowing economic growth to shrink the debt in relative terms, but you need to get the deficit down to nothing (or near as damn it) for this to happen fast enough.

The point is that your target is "aggressive" when compared to current plans and would require cuts that were both faster and deeper than those currently envisaged.

I strongly suspect that you actually had no idea of what the numbers for UK's fiscal outlook were, and were simply guessing that a 'bit of growth' would make things look OK within a few years. The truth is that you have absolutely no chance of getting debt down to 50% of GDP by 2025, unless you do something really, really, drastic. You are talking about a hit in the order of a £30bn+ year.

Generali

cells wrote: »

Why is it unsustainable its been going on for the best part of 200 years

It hasn't been going on for 200 years.

The UK has had debts excluding unfunded liabilities at current levels twice. The first time the money was used to defeat Napoleon and build an empire. The cash flow from trade with that empire was then used to repay a large part of the debt.

The second time was after WW2. The UK defaulted on the debt and simply never repaid a large part of it and forced people to take a lower rate of interest on the rest.

As the UK doesn't seem to be building an empire, history tells us that if the debt continues to rise then default is the most likely next step.