The New UK Spending Cuts

[gallaetha_matt]

There's something seriously wrong with a system, where the more money you have, you less you have to pay for. Still drives me nuts that the only way to get celebs to showbiz events, where they get free food and drink and get to publicise themselves, is to give them a free 'goodie bag' full of £1000s of free stuff. Similar concept with only the rich being able to afford the accountants skilled enough to help them avoid paying tax.

They had ways of handling the rich in France between the years of 1789 and 1799. They would drag their rich and pampered nobles out of their lush homes and cut their fucking heads off.

In France.

I'm just saying. Maybe life would be better off if we start cutting the heads off of rich people.

if you think i believe for one millisecond that the reason a Tory, any tory, wants to get into political power is to serve the public good then i can only guess you've misread the jist of my political outlook.

Cameron took a pay cut for appearance

i was here the last time around. i came out of school into thatchers Britain and unlike many it seems i haven't forgot.

anyone remember the scenes of riots on the TV seen during V for Vendetta ?
that's news footage from the 80s...

If things continue as they are then we're going to have many more riots to come.

History seems to be repeating itself.

 

[oliver.begg]

i don't live in the UK (I'm in New Zealand = Britain on the other side of the world

but my question is poised as a devil's advocate, if the retirement age drops or even remains the same who pays for the baby boomers going onto the pension, over tax the rich and they leave, increase the tax on the middle class and they stop working because they make as much bludgeon the system as they do working after tax.

Also with socilesd medicine pensioners live longer, therefore draw more from the system.

This isn't an anti socialism rant but it a general issues with any nation with an aging population there will be more people on the pension then there are paying for it and the money has to come from some where.

point above can also be said for welfare states, replace pension with benifit and aging population with welfare.

New Zealand has a similar problem just on a far smaller scale

 

[Ickorus]

Ultimately, I'm coming to the conclusion that the Tories are rubbish, although not *quite* as rubbish as Labour was (Iraq war, mainly). Lib Dems remain no-hopers, so I'm rapidly coming to the conclusion of: don't vote and take it on the chin.

I don't get how you can say labour is worse for going to war to bring down a genocidal maniac, who cares about what their actual plan was (oil?) they still did that country and the rest of the world a massive favour by removing that man from existence.

About everyone blaming labour for the recession, look around, the rest of the world has been hit by it too and in retrospect maybe selling off a load of our gold supplies was a bad idea but that is in retrospect, I doubt anyone could have guessed a recession was about to hit us when that gold was sold.

 

[Ilikemilkshake]

I say that though, but this time I fell for Nick Clegg's line of rhetoric. I watched the debates and thought 'this guy knows what he's talking about!' so I voted Lib Dem for the first time in my life. Then I watched that vote get perverted into a vote for the conservatives, a party I swore I'd never allow into power within my lifetime.

So I'm just as much to blame for all this as anyone else, I guess.

Im actually glad (for once) that im only 17, and there for could not vote. I watched the debates and even read the lib dem manifesto, and i would have voted for them and felt completely betrayed when they joined the tories.
Although it is comedy gold watching newsnight or question time with a lib dem on, defending tory policies which during the election those very same lib dem MPs where saying were completely retarded and would severely damage our country.

 

[Ilikemilkshake]

Shit, does that mean we're gonna have even more old Poms retiring on the Gold Coast?

no it means less because the more they raise the retirement age the more people die before reaching it (its not a straightline graph either)

and it's 18 billion in "welfare" cuts btw not 7

11 billion was pre announced.

I live in glasgow, and there are one or two area's not far from me where the retirement age is already higher than the avg. life expectancy.

 

[Duol]

When will people realise that austerity is the only way to avoid becoming the next Greece. It's gonna hurt but that's what happens when the state is so large. European wellfare is on the one hand one of the greatest inventions but at the same time a massive burden. The economy will not collapse simply because you cut wellfare. What will destroy it and the entire Euro economy is speculation and that's what happens when its seen that you aren't managing your debt.
The government is brave. It is likely they will not be re-elected for a long time, but at least they will get the job done.
On a side issue: All the people who say they voted lib dem and are outraged because they aren't voting against the tories and fighting this out need to realize that a coalition government does not work this way.

 

[Kinguendo]

I say that though, but this time I fell for Nick Clegg's line of rhetoric. I watched the debates and thought 'this guy knows what he's talking about!' so I voted Lib Dem for the first time in my life. Then I watched that vote get perverted into a vote for the conservatives, a party I swore I'd never allow into power within my lifetime.

So I'm just as much to blame for all this as anyone else, I guess.

I am a Progressive Liberal anyway and I was going to vote for the Libs until I started hearing the stories about Clegg joining with the Cons, I predicted my vote would turn out to be a vote for the Cons and that I was not going to do so I did not vote. All that can be verified with my mother as that is who I was talking to about it at the time.

 

[Ickorus]

*snip*

What I can't understand, unless my own conspiracy theory is true, is why the Conservatives get voted in, they're for the rich and against the poor, and there's so many more poor voters than rich ones. I think the Lib Dems made a stupid mistake by going in with Cameron, I think if they'd left the Tories to it, they'd have walked into power easily in 2014.

I think it's the poor people who want to feel like rich people so they vote conservative because it makes them feel like a rich person at least until they get screwed over by the very people they voted for.

Seriously, I have met and I know these people, a friend from college always used to go on about how good the conservatives were and how bad labour was and how he would vote conservatives in the elections. His family makes about as much money as mine does. (Hint: Not much)

Big surprise: He doesn't like the conservatives much any more.

 

[Verlander]

EDIT: Gonna talk to my buddies about starting up a business because we damn sure arent going to get anything out of this cock up. We should be able to come up with some good ideas.

Seems the cuts are having some of the desired effect. Although I do wonder who you'll be selling stuff to.

Illegal things to undesirable types in order to bring ruin and chaos to... wait, no sorry. I am not starting a bank.

Like I said, we will bat a couple of ideas around. We already had the plan to start up a business back in school a couple of years ago, we have all taken business classes and such. The hope being that we will be doing something we enjoy whilst hanging out with friends, who doesnt want to get paid to do that?

To be fair man, with the cuts to the police budget, you can do what you like.

Hang on, that's an idea. Get everyone to riot, just so the police have to rapidly hire, and then we all can get jobs with the old bill

 

[Verlander]

Yeah, I'll just call him now

 

[Kinguendo]

To be fair man, with the cuts to the police budget, you can do what you like.

Hang on, that's an idea. Get everyone to riot, just so the police have to rapidly hire, and then we all can get jobs with the old bill

I know that you are joking but I wouldnt support increasing the police force just for a job... I was scared of the idea of a police state long before I even knew much about politics. Learning history before politics will do that to you.

 

[Ilikemilkshake]

ye cause they are gonna be hiring 5 million coppers -.-

PS someone ask Baron Osborne how you cut the benefits budget by putting 1/2 million people on the dole pls...

apparantly over a million private sector jobs will magic themselves into existance to fill the gap...

 

[gallaetha_matt]

When will people realise that austerity is the only way to avoid becoming the next Greece. It's gonna hurt but that's what happens when the state is so large. European wellfare is on the one hand one of the greatest inventions but at the same time a massive burden. The economy will not collapse simply because you cut wellfare. What will destroy it and the entire Euro economy is speculation and that's what happens when its seen that you aren't managing your debt.
The government is brave. It is likely they will not be re-elected for a long time, but at least they will get the job done.
On a side issue: All the people who say they voted lib dem and are outraged because they aren't voting against the tories and fighting this out need to realize that a coalition government does not work this way.

A lot of the welfare cuts aren't just hitting benefits you know. They're also going to damage training programmes and resources that are designed to put people back into work. We're going to get let less dole money as a consequence, but we're also going to be unable to find work again anyway (what with the job cuts to the public sector, the increase to the retirement age and the cut to welfare departments). The tories are also planning to raise VAT (http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2009/oct/08/tories-raise-vat-emergency-budget) and are passing on more money to banks (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-11593370).

So the working classes are going to be paying for the excesses of the rich, essentially. The very people who put us in this recession in the first place, I might add.

 

[Verlander]

Well, Tories want to privatise public transport etc, so I'm sure it's not long before they start privatising the police force...

(yes I am taking the piss, although I can still vividly imagine it)

 

[Kinguendo]

Well chaps, looks like we need to dust off the old whooping stick and maybe crack a few skulls.

They have political power and have been living comfortably despite their dirty dealings for decades know, every once in a while your government needs to remember what actual power is.

 

[gallaetha_matt]

I say that though, but this time I fell for Nick Clegg's line of rhetoric. I watched the debates and thought 'this guy knows what he's talking about!' so I voted Lib Dem for the first time in my life. Then I watched that vote get perverted into a vote for the conservatives, a party I swore I'd never allow into power within my lifetime.

So I'm just as much to blame for all this as anyone else, I guess.

I am a Progressive Liberal anyway and I was going to vote for the Libs until I started hearing the stories about Clegg joining with the Cons, I predicted my vote would turn out to be a vote for the Cons and that I was not going to do so I did not vote. All that can be verified with my mother as that is who I was talking to about it at the time.

I wish I'd figured this out beforehand. I would've cast my vote in a completely different direction. I've always voted Labour, but I've always wanted to vote for the lib dems because in the past they've proposed the sort of policies I'd like to see in effect. When I saw Nick Clegg arguing for these policies with intelligent, well thought out points, I thought "Now's my chance to vote Lib Dem, at last! Change is coming!"

But I had a crisis of conscience when I was in the polling station. I really, really wanted to vote for Labour - because I knew what I'd be getting. I had to remind myself that the Lib Dems had always offered exciting, Liberal reforms and with Nick Clegg debating so eloquently they were finally likely to get into a position of power. I really had to push myself to cross that box.

Then they joined up with the tories and I thought "Oh bums."

I feel kind of insulted by the Lib Dem's now. I think it's probably a good thing they're there to reign the tories in, I reckon it was them who stopped the Tories from completely gutting the NHS and cutting school budgets in this round of spending cuts. But they're too weak to offer more than token resistance to all the other Tory bullshit.

Your avatar also really fits the thread. Every time you've posted I've imagined Randy Marsh yelling "We didn't listen! WE DIDN'T LISTEN!"

Because we didn't.

 

[7moreDead_v1legacy]

I've been saying for awhile this country is going to the dogs...I ain't too happy that I will be retiring at the age of 68 (possibly higher if they up it the 31 years it's going to take to raise it).

My generation (Children of the boomers) is fucked from either side...Elder we got the boomers, younger we've Slackers and young parents (read mothers) spawning ill disciplined yobs.

I mean all the way during the election speeches The blues were preaching about saving and what not. I felt like screaming at the telly saying I do save but my savings always end up on out goings...It's OK if your earning average income (20-25k+) - My guess that is boosted by the big earners, since most people I know are on 13-18k.

So if you're the real average your outgoings will creep over you income if you decide to enjoy live...

I lost my job 3-4 months ago...And only now are they saying they may be able to help me pay my mortgage - Oh and JSA is the only money coming in that I can get...To pay my Car (and all of its other stuff), food, housing also serving my loans...Basically it comes to one week of pay from my last job for a month. And with all these cuts and what not there are more and more unemployed and less and less jobs. Basically any and all savings have now run dry.

I've tried getting out of the country but my qualifications don't seem to be wanted - Anywhere.

Fucking hate scrounging...Plus the defence cuts seemingly suggest it may be harder to get a role in the armed forces that isn't an infantry one.

What gets me as well is the big arse companies have been posting profits/record profits...I've another story about that but this has already gone on long enough - Hooray for privatization.

*Edit* It already cost the same/more to take a bus or train to get to the job centre than it is to drive...and they want to up it.

I'd riot but I fear the voice will fall on deaf ears.