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UK Politics: Oh Darling, look at that budget
Zwa
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
So what are people's thoughts on today's budget?
I'm fairly happy with it... 50% tax rate for earnings over £150,000 is great news, as well as the cut in pension tax relief for them. I doubt it'll have any of the negative effect that the newspapers and bankers will say it will though. Can't wait to see how the Tories respond to it... They're pretty much fucked either way: Either they piss of every Tory by supporting it, or they piss off every non-Tory by getting rid of it.
Crazy high deficit and debt is obviously not great, but there isn't exactly anyway to avoid it; the public won't stand for real cuts in services and the media are already going to throw a fit over the high earners raise, anything more taxes would just make it worse.
Other fairly standard budget stuff in there too... lots of green measures, and duty raises on alcohol, tobacco and fuel. As someone who doesn't drink much, smoke or drive I can definitely get behind them. ISA limit increase is a nice incentive to save a bit more each year, although saving is pretty much worthless at the moment.
I'd probably have liked him to go harder on the banking sector and high earners and done more to end child poverty, but that's just my inner socialist speaking.
Any other bits catch your eye? What should he have done differently? Are you getting fucked over by this... or is it good news for you?
I'm fairly happy with it... 50% tax rate for earnings over £150,000 is great news, as well as the cut in pension tax relief for them. I doubt it'll have any of the negative effect that the newspapers and bankers will say it will though. Can't wait to see how the Tories respond to it... They're pretty much fucked either way: Either they piss of every Tory by supporting it, or they piss off every non-Tory by getting rid of it.
Crazy high deficit and debt is obviously not great, but there isn't exactly anyway to avoid it; the public won't stand for real cuts in services and the media are already going to throw a fit over the high earners raise, anything more taxes would just make it worse.
Other fairly standard budget stuff in there too... lots of green measures, and duty raises on alcohol, tobacco and fuel. As someone who doesn't drink much, smoke or drive I can definitely get behind them. ISA limit increase is a nice incentive to save a bit more each year, although saving is pretty much worthless at the moment.
I'd probably have liked him to go harder on the banking sector and high earners and done more to end child poverty, but that's just my inner socialist speaking.
Any other bits catch your eye? What should he have done differently? Are you getting fucked over by this... or is it good news for you?
Zwa on
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I presume this means that they will be taxed 50% on earnings over £150,000, not on all earnings if you earn more than £150,000 (so if you earn £150,001 you only pay 50% on £1 and less on the rest of your earnings). If that's the case, I also presume that a lot of people that really should no better considering the size of their income will throw a fit like they did in the US at this news.
My dad will be slapping his forehead right about now. They've just bought a new Volvo estate and he gave his Peugeot 505 (which must have been maybe 15 - 20 years old by now) to his farm manager's son.
That's nice, although I thought they wanted people to spend, not save? Not that I'm complaining. I spend quite enough already, thank you.
Yep, that how the tax brackets work - you only pay the given rate on income within that bracket. Doesn't stop 50% of people from not understand this though...
That's what I figured, although I don't entirely understand this bit:
So that means that once you hit £113,000 you no longer get that £2000 tax-free earning at the bottom end or something?
Also, as predicted. Choicest cut "It doesn't encourage people to make much money does it? The rich are always going to get slammed". Yeah, those poor rich people.
Florida's Governor Charlie Crist to burn down the University of Central Florida to balance budget. More at 11.
EDIT: and to put in some more thoughts...
Darling seems to be seriously overestimating economic recovery compared to most independent sources, 1.25% in 2010 compared to 0.5% and 3.5% from 2011, and while I understand the need to be optimistic, I wonder how this effects long term government plans. Also, there are a lot of measures mentioned, but I'm not entirely sure where he's getting the money from. Yes there's a tax rise on salaries over £150,000, 2p on fuel, 1p per pint, and 7p on fags, but this doesn't seem to me to be enough to cover all the initiatives he talks about, and all the taxes which would bring in the mega-bucks have remained largely untouched.
It's not all the government's fault, there is a massive economic downturn, but this seems to be more a budget to stay in Government than one to actually help people, and I'm worried about the number of those initiatives which will not happen, and how the level of debt may increase given that spending seems to have increased but not at the level of the expected increased revenue.
Yeah and in America we're seeing more and more Brits.
The "welfare queens popping out kids" phenomenon is largely a myth created by the right-wing. Not saying these people don't exist, but they certainly don't in any kind of significant numbers.
Really, really don't. I don't understand this idea that the main way to save money is to "fix" the benefits system. Personally, my feeling is that to "fix" the benefits system would involve giving people more money and reducing the number of stupid, pointless hoops people have to jump through to get them. But that's for another day.
you've obviously never read the British right-wing excuses for newspapers...
Yeah, as some who pays 40% tax on around 50% of their income, I really don't have a huge issue with the benefit system at present except that it seems too difficult for people to get money out of it. Which implies to me that a lot of my taxes are being wasted with bullshit bureaucracy probably introduced to mollify the right-wing idiots who think that benefits only benefit lay-abouts and junkies. Presumably a better idea would be to not give the needy barely enough to money to pay for essential food and heating and let them fill up our hospitals instead?
Think of it as government willpower aid.
i'm not sure the laffer curve applies to smokes, but holy hot god damn that's a lot.
You give them a benefits card that works like a debit card, can be used in stores to buy things but NOT to get access to cold hard cash that can be used for non essential means, i.e. drugs and booze they can afford because while claiming benefits they're selling drugs and booze.
They are not that rare, I've come across more than I'd like to have known. Fuck, watch Road Wars, guy there hadn't worked in 10 years, was claiming benefits and had a huge wide screen tv from the profits of identity fraud he was commiting under several fake names. I'm not saying that everyone on benefits is doing that but theres a lot of money being wasted there and instead of trying to get people back into work the money is an incentive not to.
If I work my basic contract which can happen I end up worse off than someone on benefits.
Hell, we had a few weeks regarding an erroneous expense claim for pay-per-view porn.
What was the bill to the taxpayer? £5. Ohnoes, my economies!
Of course, now the bill to the taxpayer has probably run to hundreds of thousands of pounds what with all the enquiries and meetings and god knows what other shit the government has done in reaction to the news.
Its not the cost its the abuse of the system. Not that it justifies the bloated investigations and wasteful spending. Just fucking punish her ffs.
I'm not sure we should base welfare policy on Some Guy from "Road Wars"
Show me figures, not one guy from Road Wars. Show me how they compare to actual crime figures. Show me how they compare to how many people the benefits system actually helps. Show me how they compare to projected costs to the taxpayer if the benefits system didn't exist. Show me how much it's going to cost me to introduce this debit card system and how much money it will actually save considering the example you've offered was someone who was committing fraud anyway. And don't spend a single penny of my taxes in the quest to find these figures.
It requires updated technology and investment but at least it would have some beneficial outcome. I'd use it in anything, so when that punk at the side of the road gives a false name they just scan his fingerprint and are able to fine him appropriately.
But they can just keep wailing on terrorists and the Internet instead, waste money that way.
EDIT: Not that I'm implying the current or any of the current alternatives are competent enough to implement such a system.
"debit card" system sounds scarily close to the whole "vouchers for asylum seekers" thing, which is possibly the most stupid and demeaning system I ever saw. Seriously, when you are having a whip-round your mates so that the girl whose family have escaped from a terror regime can have a cup of coffee in-between classes (because they don't have any cash), you start to think about what kind of people put forward the stupid scheme in the first place. And that's what this "debit card" would do, it would generally say "sorry that the company you worked for closed and you were made unemployed. Here, have this piece of plastic and become a second-class citizen."
Do you get all your opinions from the Sun or the Daily Mail or something.
You're arguing as if every single person on benefits is a drunken criminal spending every penny on heroin. The cost of all these schemes is greater that any amount they would save.
How? Its not a voucher, you use it just like a debit card which means you can use it basically anywhere, hell you could make it capable of allowing a £10 hard cash withdrawal per payment for loose change.
No I'm not arguing that, the system is there to help people on hard times but not subsidise people for life who just cant be assed working. As I said its an investment, itd probably be more effective as a single nationwide database, you could use it for extra security on your bank card usage and all manner of things, the benefit system being able to use it would just be a plus.
A pack of 20 cigarettes is about £4.00 to approx £5.50, depending on brand.
The duty increase is about 7 pence (£0.07) per packet.
It's not how it works that the problem, it's what it is. Whether it's a card or vouchers it identifies a person as unemployed, and thus people will treat them as 2nd class citizens, or assume they're drug addicts/drunks/criminals/lazy.
Such a thing would probably be done in association with a bank or several banks, essentially you're just creating a bank account with certain restrictions on it, theres no reason they could'nt just have a Barclay card or whatever. Noone would ever know a thing apart from the bank, we're not painting scarlet letters on them here, thats a simple problem that can be worked around.
Really, where the hell is all the money coming from for all of this?
This is out of date (he managed to quit).
Fags are now from about £4.70 to £6.00 depending on brand
I would give it two weeks before you would see signs in 3 out of 5 retail outlets to the effect that they do not accept this 'dole card'.
Didn't it say they were borrowing another 175 billion?
Read my edited post.
So...this prevents them spending money on things you don't want them too how exactly? Because to me it pretty much just sounds like a debit card which most people I know who claim benefits actually already have.
I've only got down the first few pages. I really don't like them putting us further into debt. urgh.
I mean they're saying we will be, on average £10 a month better off, but what kind of problems are we creating for the future?
It lets you spend it in places with debit card machines, so food, drink, etc. Itd be hard to stop them buying booze and junk without invading privacy too much but it stops them getting hold of cash (again not all just the dregs) who would use it on stuff definitely not intended to be bought with benefit cash.
They have to spend on this stuff to make it look like they're doing something positive, plus they're trying to scupper any party that follows them.
"Common sense" policies are nearly always a poorly thought out populist joke. The reason our laws aren't based on "common sense" is that in order to work they generally need to have a little more thought put into them than the gut feeling of white van man.
Alternatively you would see retailers accepting them for the things you were trying to restrict people from purchasing, since such a scheme would rely on the goodwill of retailers to enforce.
Yes, unfortunately, when you actually apply any common sense to anything you've suggested so far you quickly realise your ideas are all patently ludicrous.