Allotments 4 All
General => The Shed => Topic started by: rosebud on June 22, 2010, 18:27:18
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What do we all think of the budget. Only printable comments please ;D ;D.
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I am trying to find out how it effects me as a pensioner. So far vat on some of my shopping.
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Haven't had time to hear the details yet, too busy visiting an old friend who I haven't seen for 2 years then home and had to get the hose pipe out. I guess with the state of the country we expected a pretty harsh one.
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Haha, we could do a poll "Are you better or worse off"... but it would only need one button!
Based on what I've seen so far, I think it's pretty fair although also pretty harsh. At least there are a couple of concessions for the very worst off in society. Nice nod to pensions with index linking, step in the right direction for CGT, without upsetting the "entrepreneurs" in society... I think it's a budget most of us can all live with - a belt-tightening, not noose tightening budget!
What is annoying me, is Labour moaning about how the government are attempting to fix the mess they were left with! (and yes, I was one of many who voted New Labour in all those years ago. What a betrayal!).
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What is annoying me, is Labour moaning about how the government are attempting to fix the mess they were left with! (and yes, I was one of many who voted New Labour in all those years ago. What a betrayal!).
I know how you feel. I have voted Lib/Dem for years, well now we shall see whether they're worth it.
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It's not the budget that frightens me but other announcements such as getting rid of NHS targets. It frightens me that we may return to 1996 when I had to wait 18 months to see a consultant about my extremely painful knee and another 7 months for a scan. In 2007 it was 2 weeks waiting to see the consultant for the other knee.
If the last Government hadn't propped the banks up there would be money in the public purse but several of us would have seen our savings and current accounts frozen as banks went into liquidation. What would you have preferred?
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I quite agree Pauline.
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All seems pretty reasonable to me. Though 20% VAT is disproportionately hitting the lower paid. There should be a 'more money than sense' rate of VAT on some products. Like 75%.
They should have gone further and axed child benefit altogether, and just raised the tax limit so anyone earning less than £20k doesnt pay a penny. Raise the minimum wage and introduce a maximum wage. Anyone who doesnt like it.. here's your one way ticket!
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The real worry and the bit getting little coverage is the plan to cut public spending by 25%. Ouch!
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It's not the budget that frightens me but other announcements such as getting rid of NHS targets.
There is one I am glad to see scraped, the 2 days to see your GP.
Why? Well if I phone the surgery on Monday, and ask for an appointment on Friday, that say I will have to phone on Wednesday. If you ask why, thay just say 'thats the way it is', but the truth is if they gave me the appointment, it don't count in the targets.
Anyway, so I have to phone Wednesday, between 8am and 8:30am, any later and all the appointments have gone.
Tony Blair was on a live talk show where he was asked about this. He said he was shocked by it, would look into it straight away and fix it.... Years later, and nothing has changed.
With the last goverment it was all about targets, and if their targets were met on paper, thay did not seem to care if it made any real difference.
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But it made a lot of difference to hospital waiting lists, Chrispy. The waiting list for orthopaedic surgery in Salisbury was well over 2 years when Labour took over from the Conservatives in 1997. It took them a few years to get it down by pouring more money into the NHS and paying for people to have their operations done at a private hospital. They got rid of the long wait though. People should never have to wait this long when they are in extreme pain.
I never want to go through that again. I was on the highest dose of opiates that was allowable and my GP would not give me anything stronger, such as morphine. At this time too I was a full time carer for my Mother who had Alzheimer's. The pain was so bad that I was contemplating taking a knife to my knee or throwing myself down the stairs so that I would have to be admitted to hospital as an emergency patient and perhaps then they would have to sort out my knee.
Eventually I was sent to the Nuffield in Bournemouth to have my knee replacement operation to cut down the waiting times. The consultant who operated said the knee was one of the worst he had ever seen.
For me and many other elderly people, the most important thing in life is health, yet I can see things going back already to how they were.
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On the face of it I am better off by approx £100 a year.
I do feel child benefit should either have been scrapped or means tested. The rise in basic allowance before taxation is my main benefit but it's wiped out by national insurance changes.
Regarding my parents, both retired, the rise in basic allowance sounds great but because it means they get more income it's immediately taken off their benefits so they are no better off.
What the government giveth, the government taketh!!!
CC
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I think amphibian hit the nail on the head.
25 % cut in public spending - this has never been done in this country. Even under Thatcher we didn't get anything like this.
If you rely on public services (and we all do to some extent) then life is going to get a lot harder..
The devil will be in the details but imagine 25% less being spent on the police, on our border agency etc. If you remember the pain of the early 80s then get ready for a much harsher rerun..
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I`m annoyed by the contant pokes a public sector workers.
I have recently taken a £235 a month pay cut (yes you read that right) and a 10 hr a week increase in my hours under a reorganisation scheme.
There is no prospect of a salary increase next year. That was the situation before the budget.
Last week i arrived at work early every day, worked through coffee breaks and lunch breaks, brought work home and worked from half ten til midnight every night.
I was repeated hit in the face, and kicked in the face and the back of the head,
gouged and scratched on the hands and arms.
I have a niggling pain in my left hand after a crushing injury, I`ve recently had a other long term, more serious injuries.
My colleague is leaving, staff will not be retained at these salary levels, in a few years there will be no-one to take care of the people I work with. Poking by people who couldn`t and wouldn`t do what I do doesn`t really help. My wife is a local governemnt worker she has her own stories. Col, now I gotta go to work, love it ;D
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Its always been a Tory principle that anyone who works in the 'public' sector is a burden and therefore expendable. This was true under Thatcher and its true today.
They are going to deliberately make several hundred thousand public sector workers redundant in a so-called bid to save money. Then when these people are drawing unemployment benefits they will call them scroungers living off the state!
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But it made a lot of difference to hospital waiting lists,
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For me and many other elderly people, the most important thing in life is health, yet I can see things going back already to how they were.
Now that is scary. Orthopaedic waiting times here are excessive now.
My 18 year old son has been waiting since December for an op to fix his shoulder - had to give up work, leave college and is in a lot of pain. They haven't even finished investigating the problem to decide how to fix it yet, but the 25+ week wait doesn't affect the targets because he isn't on the waiting list for surgery yet. It took a formal complaint to get them to give an appointment for the next test, almost 4 months after they last saw him.
Waiting time is still ridiculous, they lie to manipulate the figures, the poor kid still hasn't been treated, and it's going to get worse.
Sally
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My daughter is a nurse in Whiston hospital, they've just moved into a fantastic new building, the top 5 wards have now been taken over by private wards and all the staff laid off, she now has a 2 yr wage freeze, no overtime, no bank nurses and they're messing with pensions, she has 2 children, her husband works too so no more tax credits..what's next..we're all doomed, Mr Mannering :-\ ;D
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Columbus, this isn't a pop at front line staff, but I had to "manage" ( yeah right) quite a number of middle management and technical back office staff who had been TUPE's into our company at various tiems from various public sector divisions. Athough there were some who recognised the change and got on with it, I was appalled at the attitude of most of them. People worked to the letter of their contracts, turned up, did only what they were required to do by their precise job description and then went home, on time every day. I don't know of anyone in the private sector on £30k+ who does that. I then had to put up with moaning about not getting pay rises they were "entitled to" - in the private sector we do pay for performance, not for turning up, an dwhen we lost one of the contracts, one guy refused to travel half an hour to work at another office unless we - wait for it - bought him a car, because he hadn't needed one before as he could walk to work. Don't get me started on the pension or redundancy packages!!!!
Ok, maybe they were the worst of the bunch & for my sins I got them in my team as I was an experienced manager who did activley manage my teams, but it really coloured my view of public sector middle level staff. If those people have to work harder or take a pay cut, then I think it brings them into line with what the rest of us have to live with as standard & if I'm paying my taxes for them to work for me ( as a public servant) I want them to experience what I've had to deal with for the last 15 years.
Rant over, lying down in a darkened room till my blood pressure reduces..
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My daughter is a nurse in Whiston hospital, they've just moved into a fantastic new building, the top 5 wards have now been taken over by private wards and all the staff laid off, she now has a 2 yr wage freeze, no overtime, no bank nurses and they're messing with pensions, she has 2 children, her husband works too so no more tax credits..what's next..we're all doomed, Mr Mannering :-\ ;D
No overtime, no bank nurses. Wonder what they do when the're short staff :o
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What gets me is that those greedy morons from the banks have got away with it, They still getting high pay and still are playing with out money and taking risks. If I did what they did I would be in prison by now. They should have all their assets taken off them and used that to help us get out of the mess that they created. If this happened in Russia they would have been shot .
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What with the rises in VAT and NI and tax band changes, as a household we will be at least £1400 worse off next year >:(
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Based on what I've seen so far, I think it's pretty fair although also pretty harsh. At least there are a couple of concessions for the very worst off in society........ I think it's a budget most of us can all live with - a belt-tightening, not noose tightening budget!
I agree with Ollie. The budget is not as harsh as I was expecting but still enough for us to be worse off.
The 25% reduction is not all from current spending. It includes future projected spending plans too. You cannot say you have lost money when you have never had it in the first place. Some managers who have been quite liberal with the public purse will now need to spend more wisely instead of willy nilly.
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My daughter is a nurse in Whiston hospital, they've just moved into a fantastic new building, the top 5 wards have now been taken over by private wards and all the staff laid off, she now has a 2 yr wage freeze, no overtime, no bank nurses and they're messing with pensions, she has 2 children, her husband works too so no more tax credits..what's next..we're all doomed, Mr Mannering :-\ ;D
2 hours unpaid overtime today to make sure 2 seriously ill people were ok before she came home >:(
No overtime, no bank nurses. Wonder what they do when the're short staff :o
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I can understand you being concerned at the abolition of targets in the NHS paulines7, but I think some targets are making treatment for patients worse.
Take for example the Mid-Staffs hospital crisis. That was created purely by meeting targets to become a foundation trust hospital. It was 'tick all the right boxes and bugger the patients'. A lot of people died there unneccessarily in squalid conditions with little or no nursing care.
That said, the last people I would blame for that are the nurses and doctors. Having worked in the NHS in the 60's and 70's, one thing managers were good at was 'empire building'. They would appoint their mates to jobs round them, and it would be a you make sure my backside is covered and I'll look after you. It's one reason why there are so few whistle blowers in the NHS.
The NHS is the last nationalised industry in the UK, and it needs looking at thoroughly. Not the nurses, doctors, ancillary staff, etc, but the management. There are a lot of people on overblown salaries in non-jobs, depriving the NHS of money.
Rant over. I've just got to go and lie down in a darkened room with a large G&T. ;D ;D
valmarg
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PS And one way the NHS could save a lot of money is by turning down the thermostat on the central heating in Winter by at least five degrees. We've been to hospit for OP appointments this very cold Winter, dressed for the weather, only needing to strip off in the outpatients waiting area because it was so hot in there. The clerical staff were dressed in short sleeved blouses. It was unbelievably hot.
The other thing would be to switch the heating off earlier. The last time we went was the end of May. Lovely warm spell, and the heating blasting out.
A simple remedy, not going to save an awful lot of money, but then, it would be money saved.
valmarg
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I am not sure I understand quite what the effects of this 25% cut in spending is going to actually involve. But I feel it is important to match income and expenditure. Apart from our mortgage we have never bought anything we did not save for first. I do have a credit card but only because it provides for security for certain types of transactions.
The increase in the personal allowance and increase in the pensions sound good and these were matched by the increase in VAT. I expect that the increase in VAT will prove to be higher than the the increase in income.
I am pleased by the increase in Capital Gains tax, I have always thought it was unfair that if you could reschedule part of your income as a capital gain you could have another personal allowance and a lower rate of tax. But most of our income goes in food, council tax and energy.
The hospital waiting list situation is a bit fluid. My OH has a problem with his knee and he spent months with pain killers, physiotherapy (over the phone) and a number of other time wasting methods before he got to see the consultant. When he finally got to the top of the waiting list they persuaded him not to go ahead with it on the understanding that he could just contact his GP and get straight back onto the list. But the GP refuses to send him back to the consultant. I think that the whole situation is a post code lottery. Unfortunately people decided to retire to the cotswolds so we have a huge percentage of older people. Rant over.
I am all for people being expected to work rather than simply being paid benefits but when they also say that unemployment is expected to rise I simply do not understand where those labelled as the scroungers are expected to find the jobs. I also think that in some jobs people are treated in a most unpleasant manner.
I also do not understand why we encourage people to move to this country when we should be ensuring we have jobs for the people who are already here. I just do not understand why we do not train our young people to have the skills necessary to fill the jobs that are available.
Then we are increasing the age of retirement but not having enough jobs for young people.
My daughter worked for the NHS at one stage and was horrified about the waste. One thing which annoyed her was paying the taxi fares of doctors to attend interviews. Apparently left to their own devices they were unable to find the hospital, She decided they should have given the bus fare and if they could not manage to get to the hospital they should not be employed.
Hospitals seem to be full of two sets of people, one set seem to be tirelessly rushing round and while the others seem to do very little and wander about vaguely or endlessly attending meetings. There was a point that my OH was in hospital and there were supposed to be five staff on duty on the ward yet it was impossible to find more than a couple of them most of the time.
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Take out the Labour changes which the Tories dare not touch and the red book says that over the period of the next parliament the poor will bare much more of the burden of these premature cuts than the rich will do. This is what the Liberal liars signed up to. Typical Tory feathering the nest of the rich at the expense of the poor and risking plunging the country back into recession. Throwing people out of work whilst professing to want to cut welfare reform - I suppose the people they sack will become the 'scroungers' of the future. There was no need for drastic cuts yet. Allow the economy to recover then rein back spending whilst the receipts increase. The receipts are likely to reduce now >:(
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What gets me is that those greedy morons from the banks have got away with it, They still getting high pay and still are playing with out money and taking risks. If I did what they did I would be in prison by now. They should have all their assets taken off them and used that to help us get out of the mess that they created. If this happened in Russia they would have been shot .
And no-one even seems to have thought of the idea of asking the banks to compensate us for the mess they caused or even pay back the money gifted them by the state.
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hello all I was pleased with one thing they have put the tax threshold by £1000 so I wont have to pay any tax HOORAH but then theres the VAT increase BOO. Good job laughter is free. They should get these tax evaders to pay up why is it alright for people like that to get away scot free.If they were to pay we wouldnt have to go through all of this Enough of this moaning
KEEP SMILING Lorraine
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Well I know of a few people who could not believe their luck that they could claim child tax benefits even though they were on a decent income.
They thought it was a mistake and banked the mney expecting to be asked to repay it.
I have watched severall General Election over the decades and the remarks made to date are simply 'history repeating it's self'
The blame for the '''big hole''''could well be due to Socialist solutions
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We are not a third world country and I am all for people being able to have a good standard of living and if this is with the help of Government then so be it.
Was it Redwood that said we should turn down our thermostats and eat more veg??where would we be without their priceless advice ::) ::) ::)
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This isn't simply a UK issue - it's happening all over Europe where it appears we have been living on borrowed money for years. The bank crisis has simply made the markets so jittery that they are looking for where the next crisis is coming from. Countries with huge debt = dodgy currency and the UK, without the measures being introduced by the government, might well have been following in Greece's footsteps since we have one of the highest debt levels in Europe. We need to start living within our income.
I'm sure too that we have all seen waste and laziness, bullying and corruption in the workplace. There are so many ways we could economise costs by simply being fair and honest and doing the job we are paid for. By making things work efficiently. Small economies could soon add up to a big deal.
The welfare state was about supporting people in need - nowadays there are loads of folk who opt in to being needy by their life choices. Don't get me wrong - I firmly believe in the welfare state but it was never designed to deal with all it is coping with now. It was designed to support the many genuine people who through no fault of their own were unable to support themselves and their families. Now I don't like what's happening in the banks and elsewhere in the private sector with huge bonuses still being paid, I believe that very rich people should contribute more but I also think people abusing the benefits system are reprehensible too.
I'll go with fairness all round but I'll be watching closely to see if it is delivered. I don't think it will be pleasant, I doubt whether anyone will be better off, but the alternative is unthinkable.
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What with the rises in VAT and NI and tax band changes, as a household we will be at least £1400 worse off next year >:(
With the greatest respect, you can't really complain. Using the BBC calculator, and assuming you spend a high proportion of your income on VATable items, you must be on at least £100K. Most people would regard that as high enough that you can easily afford to contribute a thousand or two.
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I am not at all bothered about the budget!
I have just become a pensioner but I still continue to work as well as drawing a pension. I will be marginally better off.
I am delighted that these two parties seem to understand what a lot of us have been moaning about for ages ie the benefit culture etc. I am glad that they have stopped giving babies a lump sum with a further lump sum when they are however old they needed to be. I am happy with most of the ideas. I think that we need to recover to a degree although I didn't hear anything about big bank bonuses being capped!
I won't suffer dramatically from the rise in VAT as - and we all do this here on this site - we grow our own food and generally will provide our own meals rather than pay restaurants etc.
I don't think that if you are buying something big in the electrical line that the 2 and a half percent rise in VAT is going to hurt that much. What would it be on a £300 item - £7.50 - that isn't really a huge "ouch"!!
I will notice it marginally on diesel - but hey - I don't "have" to have a car - I "choose" to drive a car!
I also have my bike which I will use more frequently so probably negating the increase in fuel price!
I am happy generally - I will not see any huge increase in costs or decrease in purchase power - unless I buy convenience foods/buy loads of clothes and consummables.
Old Bird
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Well said OB! Labour threw so much money around where it wasn't needed. We got the child trust fund allowance for both kids because it was there - it will make no difference to their future, or ours. We get child benefit which is nice but we really don't need it & again, it doesn't actually make any difference to our lives. I get all my prescriptions for free (even totally unrelated things) because of my cancer a year ago - I don't need them to be free. All of these things are just giving us back what we've paid in taxes anyway. The welfare state should be there to get people out of the poo, not to give people money that is nice but not needed.
And now, because they threw money around like it was all free, we have a sodding great bill to pay. The Lib Dems have helped the budget to be fair across the board, not just for the benefit of the rich or poor. It's a budget that we can all cope with, it still helps the poorest and apart from the slightly increased risk of a double-dip, it shows the global financial markets that we are capable of financial restraint.
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I am happy with most of the ideas. I think that we need to recover to a degree although I didn't hear anything about big bank bonuses being capped!
Old Bird
I don't know what the government could really do about this in any case, Barclays and HSBC aren't government owned so you couldn't cap those. Lloyds and RBS are but what happens if the greedy piggies don't like having their pay dictated by the government and they bugger off elsewhere. You could say good riddance but then who's going to work for the government banks and get paid less than the self-owned ones, and keep them in profit to pay back the money that WE loaned them to stop them going under.
Maybe they should've gone under, and the government guarantees our savings? But then what would happen to all the companies that rely on these banks for credit etc... surely they would go under as well?
Jon
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Wasn't going to comment on any of this, but couldn't resist eventually.
PS And one way the NHS could save a lot of money is by turning down the thermostat on the central heating .... It was unbelievably hot......
valmarg
I am SO glad you mentioned this valmarg, it's one of the things that drives me crazy about hospitals, have been in them frequently with elderly relatives recently.
I haven't sussed out the impact of the budget on me yet - on a very low income, the raising of the tax threshold is welcome, but pretty useless when it comes to really helping the low paid AND saving money.
How anyone in their right mind can justify taking tax at such a low level of earnings, then at the same operating a system of tax credits (and paying thousands to administer the system) that gives low paid workers money back, I have no idea.
People that don't claim tax credits have no idea of the immense bureaucracy that administers this system. I tried once. What really threw me was finding out that the folk that work to sort out your income tax do not have any contact (it seems) with the folk that sort out tax credits. So there seem to be 2 totally separate departments, doing the same work. Certainly they seem to want the same information from you, and the tax credit people said they didn't have access to the information already filed for income tax purposes. That's one rant over.
How to solve the debt problem? There won't be a solution until we all realise that the financial systems primarily operate gambling.
Would you give money to a gambler - the immediate reaction is no, of course not.
But we all merrily go along with them, cos they know best, cos it's all so complicated (you ever tried to suss out pensions?) because they know how to make our money work for us. Well they obviously don't.
Some education is needed here I think. I feel that money doesn't actually DO anything.
Money should just be a reward for work, rather than an object in itself.
I believe that people who do work are the only producers of anything, not people who WE allow to play with bits of paper, gambling with what we've produced.
You can still have a system that cover social needs, without allowing power crazed people to mis-use what we've produced.
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I was talking to someone recently on working tax & family tax credit & she said that there is child care element to cover for child care in the school holidays which is paid monthly. Her parents look after the children in school holidays as do others locally who claim it or the older children do it. Couldn't this be claimed when it is needed. After all they wouldn't give you an allowance for gas unless they new you actually used gas, IYKWIM ;).
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[quote author=
I don't think that if you are buying something big in the electrical line that the 2 and a half percent rise in VAT is going to hurt that much. What would it be on a £300 item - £7.50 - that isn't really a huge "ouch"!!
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Sorry to jump in here, I know I'm a bit of a newbie............ but this isn't correct.
If your item was £300, it is £255.31 + £44.69 VAT
20% Vat on the original price of £255.31 = £ 51.06
So your item has gone up by £ 6.37
(Fingers crossed that I've got the maths right, but hopefully you get my drift.)
A rough guide makes something for a tenner an extra 22p (approx).
Sorry to be a pedant, I'll run away and hide for a while ;D ;D ;D
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[quote author=
I don't think that if you are buying something big in the electrical line that the 2 and a half percent rise in VAT is going to hurt that much. What would it be on a £300 item - £7.50 - that isn't really a huge "ouch"!!
Sorry to jump in here, I know I'm a bit of a newbie............ but this isn't correct.
If your item was £300, it is £255.31 + £44.69 VAT
20% Vat on the original price of £255.31 = £ 51.06
So your item has gone up by £ 6.37
(Fingers crossed that I've got the maths right, but hopefully you get my drift.)
A rough guide makes something for a tenner an extra 22p (approx).
Sorry to be a pedant, I'll run away and hide for a while ;D ;D ;D
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even less of a ouch then!! do I understand that the rise isn't coming in till january? that could mean a 6 months spending spree
marg
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Hmm, that could be intentional couldn't it? I'm sure it would be good for business if we all go out and spend.
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Well, we need to change the car (for a used, not for a brand new one), and we also need a new fridge freezer.
It is concentrating the mind wonderfully to get both before 4th January 2011. ??? ;D
valmarg
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I was talking to someone recently on working tax & family tax credit & she said that there is child care element to cover for child care in the school holidays which is paid monthly. Her parents look after the children in school holidays as do others locally who claim it or the older children do it. Couldn't this be claimed when it is needed. After all they wouldn't give you an allowance for gas unless they new you actually used gas, IYKWIM ;).
The child care element is ONLY payable to registered child care, such as registered childminders, nurseries, after-school clubs etc. Claiming it when grandparents look after your children is not correct, and could be construed as being a benefit cheat.
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The budget seemed pretty fair to me. Face it, the country's £150G in debt, our standard of living has to fall. I welcome a 25% reduction in the size of the state. If central government is run as inefficiently as my Town Council then a 25% saving will be utterly painless. If it was me though, I'd cancel Trident and slash the defence budget too.