What Goverment spending would you cut? poll discussion

I'd seriously look at the Police... Not because we don't need them but whether they actually operate in a cost effective way or basically just look after themselves?
I've experienced multiple situations where there are far far more officers sent to an incident than is necessary and as far as is my experience they just stand around waiting and being generally 'superior' and quite unhelpful. A friend is a Crime Scene Investigator and has loads of free time to 'pop home' or 'pop to the shops' etc whilst getting paid; on an 'afters' shift they have a rule that they don't go out to jobs less than two hours before the shift ends in case they can't clock off on time so they spend their time surfing the internet! On a night shift they all stop for breakfast at 5am and moan if anything urgent comes in and spoils it, and then they all get paid overtime if they have to stay on! At their admittance it's a doddle of a job and whilst I obviously don't want to see my friend personally affected, it grates big time that the rest of us are working hard and paying taxes for these people to have an easy life with a very good salary, pension and various other perks!
Unpopular I suspect, but I can only speak from personal experience and I firmly beleive that if the Police (and councils etc for that matter) were a private company, in my opinion they'd go bust!

NorthWalesGraham wrote: »

Stop single parents on benefit from being given more money every time they have another child.

Why just single parents. If neither parent is working and contributing to society this should equally apply to them.

In my opinion

• Overseas aid should be cut completely.
• We should get out of the EU we are paying £6.4 billion this year which is double that paid of 2008 and £7.9 billion next year FOR WHAT? :mad::mad:
• Anyone with a household income of over £40,000 p.a should not get Child Benefit or Child Tax Credits.
• Get rid of the child trust fund it is acomplete waste of time and money
• Get rid of translation services - if you live here you MUST speak and read English
• Sorry but if you are not born in this country and haven't worked here for at least five years you should not be entitled to free health care, education, being top of the list for housing or benefits of any kind including pensions, CTC, CB etc. How can you benefit from something you have never contributed to? This should help with immigration numbers as well. No discrimination on this whether you come from outside the EU or within the EU
• Cut Beauracracy in Schools, Health, and Social Services and cut overpaid management staff in these areas.
• Cut Quangos
• All councils should have a Government audit to see where money is being wasted
• Cut the amount of consultants used in local government.
• Scotland and Wales should have to pay for prescriptions why do we have to subsidise them when we are paying £7.50 per item :mad: make everyone pay £7.50 per prescription not item would be much fairer no matter how many items are on there.
• Get rid of NICE
• Income Tax and NI should go up by 1p in the pound

Some of these measures might be attacked by the pc brigade but I feel it is the only way to reduce the black hole this country finds itself in

bill-r wrote: »

I have not only visited but worked in many of the third world countrie that the government gives aid to. Anyone who believes that this aid manages to filter down through the governments of these countries to the poor people is living in cloud cuckoo land

I so agree with you bill-r it gets milked off by warlords and corrupt governments

My biggest bugbear is giving aid to overseas as I agree that most of it, is filtered off before it ever gets to the people who really need it. In a lot of the countries, the governments are living in luxury whilst the ordinary people live in poverty.
We are actually contributing to the people who have, rather than the people who haven't.
I would like to be given the choice of who I want to have my money (charity). Charity begins at home and if we are struggling, then sort our country out first.
If the government insist on giving overseas aid, maybe it should come as an added tax for people who are earning above a certain amount or optional if people on lower incomes choose to pay it and only the money raised with this tax should be used, then everyone would have the choice?