BS: UK budget

Subject: BS: UK budget
From: GUEST,Kampervan
Date: 09 Jul 15 - 01:08 PM

How on earth can George Osbourne look at himself in the mirror?

Subject: RE: BS: UK budget
From: Nigel Parsons
Date: 09 Jul 15 - 01:33 PM

"George Osbourne"? Who he?

Subject: RE: BS: UK budget
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 09 Jul 15 - 01:35 PM

Do you think that when he does, he notices that his nose looks like a penis?

Subject: RE: BS: UK budget
From: GUEST,Kampervan
Date: 09 Jul 15 - 01:55 PM

OK got his name wrong - Osborne - by any other spelling has still ruined many lives.

Subject: RE: BS: UK budget
From: GUEST
Date: 09 Jul 15 - 02:29 PM

Wrong again. Osborn.

What in particular has he done? The budget was about as good as Labour could have delivered if they had won. In fact, according to Nick Robinson, over half of it was in the Labour manifesto.

Some bad bits. A few pump priming bits. A couple of wiping away messy bits. Interestingly, as a rather high earner with income from investments too, I stand to be £23k worse off next year, given the same taxable income. That's a lot. Ok, I can afford it but still, I may have voted Labour but this is the taxation I expected under Labour, not the Tories. The lower business rate is welcomed by those trying to create jobs but for me, the changes to dividend tax is crippling. Live with it I suppose. The quid quo pro of lowering the income tax burden on the vast majority of working people is far more important than keeping me in beer. I'm a non executive director of a brewery anyway.

I reckon once the bluster is over and done with, the areas of shame are market rents for a single mother full time nurse on band 7 pay, which will cripple them, removing student grants for poorer families which places more young graduates in debt not less when they begin their career and making buy to let less attractive as the costs will merely be passed on to the tenants.

We have a Tory government. It could have been far worse. It ironically places him on the left of the party. Even Ken Clarke agreed with most of it...

Subject: RE: BS: UK budget
From: GUEST,Kampervan
Date: 09 Jul 15 - 03:34 PM

Guest

It's Osborne.
and have a look at the analysis from the IFS.


http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-33463864

Subject: RE: BS: UK budget
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 09 Jul 15 - 03:41 PM

"The budget was about as good as Labour could have delivered if they had won"
Tweedldum and Tweedledee
The budget is about appeasing the middle classes at the expense of the poor - an economist has just been on the news saying exactly that.
The fact that Tory Blair's party would have done the same is pretty immatrial - they're all a bunch of shysters.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: UK budget
From: GUEST
Date: 09 Jul 15 - 07:01 PM

Subject: RE: BS: UK budget
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 09 Jul 15 - 08:17 PM

Come off it. He's doing away with working people's tax credits. Three million of the poorest families will be around a grand a year worse off. He's abolishing student grants. He's abolishing housing benefit for under-21s. He's lowering taxes for higher rate taxpayers. He's making it easy for rich bastards to pass on their wealth to the kids who haven't worked for it. After years of having their pay and pension arrangements nobbled, he's screwing public sector workers for another four years. He's doing bugger all about bankers' bonuses, non-doms and tax evaders/avoiders. Yep, we have the Tories. Enjoy!

Subject: RE: BS: UK budget
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 09 Jul 15 - 08:28 PM

Just watched Question Time
The Conservative argued that even though the already appalling education burden for students would increase even further, this would not mean less people going to University - doesn't matter whose bums go on the seats as long as they are full.
Strange programme - the people to make any sense of Greece were the Scots Nat, and Ukip, the Journalist and the audience - Labour and conservative nearly broke their ankles trying to crawl into each other's pockets - can't believe I was once proud to cast my first vote for Labour
"Don't vote - it only encourages them" makes more and more sense nowadays
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: UK budget
From: GUEST,Musket sans all sorts
Date: 10 Jul 15 - 02:53 AM

Mixed opinion even in my own head.

Agree with the points Steve makes but also know that the only way to give long term economic prosperity is to become a productive country again.

Gorgeous George is often seen wearing a high vis jacket and helmet to show his commitment to that very point, which to be fair isn't a political point but common sense. Lowering corporation tax whilst increasing dividend tax is perhaps the best thing he has done as it makes business investment a better proposition whilst making it harder to cream off profits. That's almost a socialist idea.

My concern is that you can balance the books by spending less or by putting more in. His approach of doing both begs the question of how much of a society safety net do you want in the first place? Yes, rescue the balance sheet but at the expense of not doing what we trust government to provide for?

Subject: RE: BS: UK budget
From: GUEST
Date: 10 Jul 15 - 06:38 AM

Despite the way it all adds up for the low paid, do the minumum wage changes suggest they have taken to the idea of paying people properly and so making us pay a bit more for the goods and services they provide ? Rather than keeping stuff cheap and making the top-ups look like a hand-out.

I suspect that the international trade angle means that has to be done slowly.

Subject: RE: BS: UK budget
From: GUEST,Kampervan
Date: 10 Jul 15 - 07:36 AM

I agree that doing away with very low pay is the right thing to do. The country should not be subsidising low pay for employees.

But the amount of benefits that have has been clawed back far exceeds the extra that increasing the minimum wage has given to people.

The government has got to get more money from somewhere, but why take it from the poorest paid sectors, whereas somebody like me, a pensioner on a reasonable company pension, topped up with state pension will be slightly better off, and the Uber-rich are hardly touched at all.

I used to be a tory supporter, but there's no way that I cold vote for them now. Their approach is just so cynical; even introducing the 'living wage' is a sham. Its like giving someone a blood transfusion but slitting their wrist at the same time. Alright, that's abit melodramatic but you get the gist.

Subject: RE: BS: UK budget
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 10 Jul 15 - 07:41 AM

Sniffin' Gideon has proven that he is innumerate as well as economically illiterate.

His assertion that the "living wage" (actually, allowing for inflation, just the same as the minimum wage with another name) will compensate for the loss of in-work benefits is simply a lie.

His tax increases fall mostly on the poor (although there is a bit of a bite at the super-super-rich).

The changes to inheritance tax benefit only married couples (or civil partners). A bit of a shit if your spouse died a while back. But I don't really approve of the change anyway.

The combination of benefit (universal credit) and tax changes will mean that some who move into work will actually be poorer.

And those unable to work get stamped on again, despite the fact that the vast preponderance of those on DLA are genuinely incapable of work, even if there was any to find.

The self employed below the income tax threshold - kicked in the guts again.

Reform of stamp duty to catch foreign billionaires with houses in Mayfair registered to foreign trusts - silence. The last attempt was out-lawyered within about 10 minutes using leases in stead of assignments.

A proper general anti-avoidance provision (even though tax dodging costs over 70 billion a year, maybe as much as 200 billion a year) no sign - and no more staff chasing tax dodgers, hardly surprising considering where Dodgy Dave's and Sniffin' Gideon's families made their money.

All against the background of the HUGE subsidies to companies, more than they pay in taxes - some to companies that pay no UK taxes - which the con-servatives kept hidden but academic research has quantified.

And as for Irritable Duncan Syndrome revelling in the assault on the poor -

Oh and where is any concerted opposition, as dear Liz Kendal tries to out-tory (this is not a term of praise) the self-servatives?


Loathsome, the bunch of them.



If, as I hope, Corbyn gets to lead Labour, and to give it some principles and spine, he will find it all too easy to do good where these smug inbred animal-torturing retards have only done evil.

Subject: RE: BS: UK budget
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 10 Jul 15 - 09:54 AM

The Tories claim to have created, what was it, two million new jobs. Yet our productivity is still scraping along the bottom. Wanna know why? Because the alleged job creation is bogus, that's why. It's next to impossible to claim out-of-work benefits, even if you're sick, so the unemployment figures don't half look good. Thousands of people have been forced to declare themselves "self-employed". Thousands of young people have been forced on to useless "apprenticeships" on £2.79 per hour. Millions of people can't find enough working hours to make ends meet or are stuck with seasonal work. Almost a million are in zero-hours contracts. Welcome to the Tory world of "job creation" and continue to wonder why our productivity refuses to go up.