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The Effects of Conservative Cuts 2015-2020
Comments
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ruggedtoast wrote: »70% of welfare is pensions.
100% of state pensions are below the minimum wage0 -
Sabrina2000 wrote: »Now is the time for action? Simple, bring in the cuts say goodbye to the recovery.
What will happen is lots of talk about cuts but in reality spending will increase just like last time there was all the talk about cuts. Growth caused only by the government over-borrowing and over-spending is the only kind of growth we will get, look at America.
See my comments above re crowding out.0 -
Does anyone else think they are daft to commit to significant spending increases in the NHS?
The NHS is one of these creations which would drain the UK of money and still want more.
Well until the British electorate will vote for a party which pledges to stop just mindlessly shovelling money into the black hole, politicians are going to keep pledging to increase NHS spending. political suicide to do otherwise. The tories are perceived to be a danger to the NHS even when they keep piling money in - they are hardly going to stop!0 -
Cameron missed the biggest trick of them all.
The day after coming to power, he should have frozen everything that could be termed 'welfare'. Pensions, Unemployment, All Benefits. Even all public sector wages.
This would have been a legitimate thing to do at the time of "economic crisis". People would have understood and accepted it. "All in it together" and all that.
In the event, he took around 2 years to do anything, and even then is was pegging rises to 1% or something, but not taking state pensions away.
18 months of total freeze, followed by a cautious and selective move towards modest increases would have had the deficit paid down by now. Especially given the cumulative effect over 5 years.
His trouble, now, is that he will get all the 'blame' for further 'cuts' and it will not do him any good.
But stand by, now, for child benefit/child tax credit reductions. Both in amount, and in the number of kids who can qualitfy. Stand by, also, for much tougher qualification for Housing Benefit. They already anounced the reduction of the £25K maximum household benefit amount. To £23K?
Although it sounds emotive, there is (as far as I am told) quite a bit of scope in disability benefits. Why, for example, does someone injured at work receive £1.8 million in compensation [which includes extra care/nursing costs, special needs etc in the 'specific damages' part] and then get quite large handouts from the taxpayer? It's double counting.
What about the woman I heard on a radio phone-in a year or so back? She was phoning because she though she was a 'criminal' and not entitiled to it. But her kid was so badly disabled that he had recently been moved to a residential home. She 'complained' that his bank account was amassing at an alarming rate with unemployment benefits, disability/mobility allowances. The kid's needs were fully catered for and couldn't spend a penny of it! In addition, she herself got some rather large benefit (carers, or attendance whatever - I can't recall). The phone-in confirmed she was entitled to it even though she didn't have to lift a finger other than visit the kid anytime she wanted to....
She was 'gobsmacked' to say the least, that everything was 'fine', and ended with the remark that 'it must be true then. No wonder all the other mothers in a similar situation with kids in the same home were buying second homes in Marbella with all the money....'0 -
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the proposition was that benefits (in this case for the sake of argument, a state pension ) should be less than a wage.
some might argue that a state pension had been earned but that's a different argument.
For years I have tried to divide my annual state pension by the number of hours I work [which is zero] and never found a calculater to give me a valid answer. I think, however, it's above minimum wage.
I would never argue that it has been "earned". I would perhaps argue it has been 'paid for' or 'qualified for' by virtue of paying tax and NI.0 -
Loughton_Monkey wrote: »Cameron missed the biggest trick of them all.
The day after coming to power, he should have frozen everything that could be termed 'welfare'. Pensions, Unemployment, All Benefits. Even all public sector wages.
This would have been a legitimate thing to do at the time of "economic crisis". People would have understood and accepted it. "All in it together" and all that.0 -
But that's the problem isn't it? Freezing public wages and benefits would make the lie 'all in it together' even more insidious. I don't see those cretins who caused the recession in the first place suffering too much. I am of course referring to the bankers.
What should be done about all those people that borrowed money and didn't pay it back?0 -
What should be done about all those people that borrowed money and didn't pay it back?
They should have their wrists slapped and be told that they were very naughty, and if they do it again it has to be with another limited company (not the one that they originally did it with). That'll show them.Chuck Norris can kill two stones with one birdThe only time Chuck Norris was wrong was when he thought he had made a mistakeChuck Norris puts the "laughter" in "manslaughter".I've started running again, after several injuries had forced me to stop0
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