ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ

Sad to find the nice Mr Peston moving into tabloid "whose got the bestest superlative ever then" about a boring budget.

I rather thank that world economics are in such a sorry state of repair that the fluidity outside the UK may have more import than a piece of Tory rhetoric from a Chancellor who may well wish he wasn't one (if not now then soon). Perhaps we need to wait and see what happens in Europe where so many machinations have yet to work there way to the surface.

Still Georgie can still have another "biggest emergency ever" in a few months time. By then, Mr Peston, I hope you have no superlatives left.

I doubt it will be as progressive as some would like it to be. A lot of people on the breadline will get badly hit while the better off will be slightly worse off and the rich will be ever so slightly less rich. These things are all relative.

It would be nice to see something bold - thinking outside the box but unlikely. More likely to be the same old tried and tested methods of getting the little people to pay for the mistakes of the rich.

That's what it all boils down to. Can't let Fred and buddies lose a few million - better to let all the plebs lose a few thousand each. Privatising the profits and socialising the losses.

"Finally there's the important issue of unexpected consequences - and it would be extraordinary if there were none of those."

Ah, would that be the impending great recession of 2010, on the back of the spending cuts. Which no doubt will come as a "surprise" to much of the media, but not to many of the bloggers. As I see it George is on a looser no matter what he does. The public coffers are empty, and the stimulus has not worked. Now come the cutbacks which will cause a further drop in spending, and probably a depression. The hope for growth is totally depending on exporting to markets who are also in the same boat. If George doesn't cut the spending we have Greese mark 2. Glad I'm not in his shoes.

Austerity measures do not tackle the underlying structural flaws in our economy.

Will Hutton's piece for Channel 4 last week was a timely reminder of how the banks still have our economy (and Gvt?) in a stranglehold:

"Austerity measures do not tackle the underlying structural flaws in our economy.

Will Hutton's piece for Channel 4 last week was a timely reminder of how the banks still have our economy (and Gvt?) in a stranglehold:



Much check that out sometime. An uncle of mine who died many years ago, worked in the banking system, told me that the policians/government have very little influence over the economy and merely tinker at the edges. We shall see if he's proved right.

The essential problem that George has is that for a company to make a profit hey have to get back more money
than they paid out and for consumers to spend more money than they a were paid, they have to go into debt
(or the government needs to go into debt on their behalf). This is shown using numbers from the National Accounts. [Unsuitable/Broken URL removed by Moderator]
So if George 'reduces debt' then profits will fall unless consumers go into more debt - Until he changes the system
he's just following a bump in the carpet - squash debt problem down here we get a profit crisis here...
This a basic maths game and won't get fixed till we use a modern system like NEFS

The job is a tough one and as you say cobbled togther in a hurry. The rumours might explain the queues I have seen at some petrol stations recently.

Rebalancing the economy is going to take more than one budget: it is going to take several.

Weaning the British public from an easy life living off other peoples' money and the hard graft of others is going to be the real tough one. We can expect the usual knee-jerk ritual nonsense from the conservative Left who want to retain their privileges - sorry, hard won rights.

To my way of thinking the measure of this budget will be about how austere it really is. How readily it will bring us back to a regime of real money, real investment and added value? How quickly can the fantasy economics of debt conflated on debt be put to bed?

Credit always was the enemy of the working class and now all can see why. Oh sorry, I forgot we are all middle class now according to J. Prescott Esq. Speak for yourself, John, some of us haven't forgotten who we are and where we came from. Work is the only salvation and that is Osborne's test.

Maybe so. Big yes, calamitous NO!
Yes there will be losers - just as those that benefited so much when Labour threw money at benefits, quangos and of course businesses desperate to exploit the green sector - so what?

No Government is going to rock the boat too much - there is far too much to lose! Let's face it, they need all of us - banks, estate agents, journalists, civil servants, the military, the unemployed and retired - to pay off the debt, through spending or as PAYE "slaves"!

Wonder if TAX exemptions for share bonuses 'gifted' will disappear and maybe VAT could go on share transactions - stamp duty is bit low - that might raise a few extra quid!

#5. Averagejoe wrote:

"An uncle of mine who died many years ago, worked in the banking system, told me that the politicians/government have very little influence over the economy and merely tinker at the edges. We shall see if he's proved right."

My guess is that he was right and is right. The basic problem is that we have let the bankers exercise a 100% security from the people. Mostly because of defective regulatory activities created and caused by the idea that the markets will always sort things out and therefore regulation is not required. Quite right, the markets have sorted things out 'for their own benefit' - they worked this out and bet that all government could be hoodwinked into bailing them out using the peoples money. In a way, it is our fault (and the fault of those politicians who took us down the road of bad/no regulation - Mrs Thatcher and her fellow banker placemen.)

But we are where we are. We have been hoodwinked into borrowing far too much, both at a government and a personal level - and we now have to cut back to repay our debts. There never was a free lunch and only the bankers have made money from us - bankers do not loan money out of the kindness of their hearts - they do it for narrow self interest and personal profit. The other great con is that money is worthless. Bankers have managed to and are continuing to 'defraud' savers and investors. This is another part of the 'great crime' of the bankers!

One way or another the deficit has to be brought under control. With an annual deficit of over Β£150bn we need to cut that much from the public budget (through whatever combination of cuts and tax rises) just to stop the national debt (of some Β£850bn) from continuing to grow.

Even if we manage to cut Β£150bn from our budgets overnight we will still owe Β£850bn - to pay this back within 20 years would still require, in very crude terms, a further Β£30-40bn to be cut.

So how did we get into this mess? Well, we might ask the government who were in charge for the last 13 years.

I had to chuckle at the Budget Calculator your colleagues have so kindly provided. It's clear the ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ doesn't want to see cuts to the welfare budget, as the "equivalent" is worded in terms of cutting the state pension.

Instead of putting things in such emotive terms to suggest the entire welfare budget is sacred, I wonder how it would look if instead of "equivalent to cutting Β£2/week from the state pension" it said "equivalent to forcing 500,000 workshy layabouts to work or lose their handouts" or even "equivalent to stopping benefits to 250,000 fraudulent claimants"? Let's not pretend that 100% of the Β£190,000,000,000 budget is spent on people who deserve the money, or even people who are entitled to it.

"he could have a reason for pushing up the VAT" - "The retail and consumer sector would, of course, go "ouch". Funny because when vat was dropped by 2.5% the retail sector dissed this as being insignificant.

For the retailers it almost serves them right for playing politics.

The problem with vat as taxation is that its burden is greater for the poor than the rich. The reason i am not as excited about the budget as RP is that i fear its affects will be felt much more by those who can't afford it than those who can.

Never mind the unintended or unexpected consequences it is the intended but stealthily delivered cuts to public services that will happen. Local Government are developing a mastery in this endeavour - including Labour councils who should know better. Osborne's pledge to not hit front-line services is at best naive rhetoric.

The choice we face is simply whether we take the long path or the short path to hell. Labour opted for the former - i.e. keep spending on the erroneous assumption that the economy will somehow pick up and the subsidy can then be withdrawn; whilst the ConDems have gone for the latter - i.e. pull the plug now, take the pain and the economy will then recover. Both fail to grasp the fact that there will be no recovery because the world economy is insolvent.

We created lifestyles and expectations that were entirely dependent on ever more borrowing to sustain it. The banks were the means lending out as much as 50 times as much as they have on deposit (Source: Will Hutton's Despatches programme on Channel 4).

All parties are therefore operating under a delusion, namely that at some point the dead patient, i.e. the real economy outside of the public sector, will somehow kick into life and it is just a matter of creating the right conditions for this to happen. This is nonsense. The reason why the public sector grew was to compensate for the collapse of the private sector.

As The ConDems withdraw their support and raise taxes, the economy will go into a major tailspin. As people in the public sector lose their jobs, they will default on their debts, lose their homes, cut back on their spending, which will cause the private sector to lose jobs, default on debts, lose their homes, cut back on their spending etc. It is a vicious spiral.

It is rather like saying we need to turn off the life support machine of a brain-dead patient, but somehow expect him to come back to life. It ain't gonna happen.

As they say, the road to hell is paved with good intentions...

#10 Thought Crime
we will still owe Β£850bn- So how did we get into this mess? Well, we might ask the government who were in charge for the last 13 years.

Debt to GDP today is 53.5% 13 years ago it was 43.6%. imo the blame everything on the last govt is not going to work

RP: "There have been many big Budgets in the post-war era. Within my living memory, there've been the important crisis Budgets in response to recessions in the mid 1970s, early 1980s, and early 1990s."

So we all know that recession comes around every ten years or so. Even the optimistic seem agreed that it will take twenty years or more to sort out the present situation but how can this be with the likelihood of a minimum of two recessions during that time?

We are deep in debt and have just come off a government that has appeared to be in denial about this issue. Yet,somehow we keep reading spin on the ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ forums that we cant afford to address the debt problem but should keep on digging ourselves into a hole ?? Do the forum moderators ever check to see how many posters are linked to party offices and think they can influence voters by spouting more spin than ever ? We have a problem,deal with it and things can only get better,thats the political reality.

#5. Averagejoe wrote:

"An uncle of mine who died many years ago, worked in the banking system, told me that the politicians/government have very little influence over the economy and merely tinker at the edges. We shall see if he's proved right."

Your uncle was right for a very simple, but often under appreciated point. Govts cannot make you spend money, companies invest, bankers lend, govts can only do two things spend money (which they love doing) and putting in place the structures to allow real people and companies to make decisions which are more likely to result in growth. Structures might be economic structures such as changes in tax, they might be legal changes to simplify for example planning permissions or they might be physical structures such as roads and railways. The problem is that putting in place structures is hard, slow and does not get as many headlines as spending money. So not surprisingly politicians prefer the easy option and spend money. It is not govt that gets us out of a rescession it is real people and companies.

As for Will Hutton he is a left wing idealist who cannot understand why communism collapsed (sorry, yes he can it is all the fault of the USA). He is terminally incapable of accepting or even understanding any facts or evidence that does not fit his left wing view point and if he were to run a company he would be out inside a month - not that he would run a company because that would mean he was exploiting the workers.

ThoughtCrime

I have to say i found Number 11 more judgemental rubbish than no 10. where does the figure 250k fraudulent claims come from. The reality is for every Β£1k fraudulently claimed there is Β£8 to Β£9k of benefit not being paid out in the UK.
Why should there also be a further 500,000 (workshy lazy) people in the uk today than 12 months ago.
Its very easy to be smug when you have hundred of thousands to invest in property or be the person who has the job rather than the one who has lost theirs. The reality is that the jobs are not out there to be had

11. At 10:00am on 22 Jun 2010, ThoughtCrime wrote:


I had to chuckle at the Budget Calculator your colleagues have so kindly provided. It's clear the ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ doesn't want to see cuts to the welfare budget, as the "equivalent" is worded in terms of cutting the state pension.
..................................

It gets better, a 30% cut in health will cause all hospitals to close for 300 days a year. God know what the other 70% is spent on then. The ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ budget calculator is a ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ political statement.

It has already been made clear that the main aim will be to impress the City, the real needs of the economy will come a very poor second.

Speculation against the pound is the main threat. It would be sensible for the Chancellor to introduce measures to control this. An especially heavy tax on short term capital gains might help.

18. At 10:31am on 22 Jun 2010, Justin150 wrote:

As for Will Hutton he is a left wing idealist who cannot understand why communism collapsed (sorry, yes he can it is all the fault of the USA). He is terminally incapable of accepting or even understanding any facts or evidence that does not fit his left wing view point
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

I saw the TV programme in question, and consider it well argued. Your post does not address any of the issues raised, but is simply an "Ad Hominem" attack on this Hutton person, based on your own political prejudices. I don't know anything about Hutton, so I will judge his work on its merits, thanks very much.

I tend to agree with some of the earlier posters Robert that you have tended towards hyperbole in your article today. Also when you were stretching for unintended consequences there were plenty of example from the last government such as the 10p tax rate, you did not need to go back to the 1980s!
As to tax changes for today I notice that a poster in the Nick Robinson section quoted from the notayesmanseconomics web blog and in particular his view that we should target the "poverty-trap".
"This is because not only might they be paying income tax but β€œmeans-testing” can take benefits away at the same time. the rates at which this can happen can leave what are quite poor people with effective tax rates of up to 90%. I wish also to add that not only is it bad economics but it is to my mind a national disgrace that the interaction of the benefit and taxation systems can leave people who are often quite poor with marginal tax rates in the region of 90%. Our political leaders and previous governments should be ashamed of this."

This strikes me as a better use of money that giving an increased personal allowance to all basic rate taxpayers, should that leak turn out to be true.

20. At 10:41am on 22 Jun 2010, Uphios wrote:
11. At 10:00am on 22 Jun 2010, ThoughtCrime wrote:

"I had to chuckle at the Budget Calculator your colleagues have so kindly provided. It's clear the ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ doesn't want to see cuts to the welfare budget, as the "equivalent" is worded in terms of cutting the state pension."

Is it really that simple? According to the ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ budget calculator, I increased VAT to 30%, cut other budgets to 30% but then came the ace up the sleeve, cut the transport budget by 30% which resulted in an extra 210 miles of motorway being constructed at a saving of Β£6.6bn.

So there you have it. According to the ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ, the entire transport department is useless and we should cut their budget by 30%. Well lets cut it by more and build even more roads. What about railways? Does this have the same effect? We could literally build roads all over the UK and literally drive ourselves out of this recession. Seems obvious to me....

#15 Kudospeter

Too many people have been fooled into think that anything as a percentage of GDP is OK.

1997 UK debt was 298 billion (source UK Debt Management Office Report)

2009/2010 financial year it is 850 billion

It matters not a jot what the percentage of GDP is, the monetary value has increased by over Β£500,000,000,000.

That increase has to be paid for. At 4.5% thats an extra 22.5 billion in interest charges per annum. Unfortunately, the current debt payments of about 40 billion per annum can't be cut.

Even with a cut in the deficit of 50% the debt is currently predicted to increase by another Β£500 billion. That's another 22.5 billion per year in interest charges.

#10. ThoughtCrime wrote: ... just to stop the national debt (of some Β£850bn) from continuing to grow.

The Sky ticker is showing it at Β£925 Billion. In six months it will be a Trillion. I don't think anything announced today will do anything to stop it reaching between Β£1.3/Β£1.4 Trillion by 2014/15.

I think we need to consider this budget alongside the creation of so-called independent forecasting bodies and macro-prudential "regulators". Whatever is in the Budget will be guided by an increasingly growing section of unaccountable central bankers. Once the budget policies are set, we will have the Bank of England's grandly named Financial Policy Committee directing banks as to how limited credit is distributed between favoured sectors and/or deterring lending to others.So, the BoE will have its own influence on growth. There is an accountability/democratic issue here and I hope the Lib Dems will not let Osborne have a free reign on the terms of reference.

I have to say the Labour Party did a fantastic job in managing to get people to genuinely believe the economic issue is the banks fault and NOT the incredible mis-management of the Labour Party(at every level; foreign policy, immigration, local authority, health, schooling, judicial, housing). They acquired what was considered to be one of the healthiest ecomomies that any incoming goverment ever inherited.

13 years on it shows that they wrecklessly spent the countries money and claimed that it was for all of our benefits.
If I steal the Christmas Savings fund and buy every one a drink with it does it make me a charitable person or a crook?
All the "good" done by the spending on the NHS will be undone by the fact that we cannot afford that level of spending on an ongoing basis.
But the power crazed muppets of the previous government genuinely thought that "flashing" our cash was the way to our hearts.
Today we will start paying. And we will continue to pay for the next 30+ years.
The Banking crisis is a zero sum game. It's contribution to our current woes only being; it is not making quite as much money for the economy as it used to.
The real issue is that we have current liabilities of Β£900 BILLION (Pensions for public service staff that we never needed or could not afford, PFI that was opportunity to hood wink the public accounts, public debt). We hope to save Β£6.5 over next 4 years... do the maths!

One day people will sit down and say "How did we let the Labout Party in the door? What sane thinking person could ever have thought they had the wherewithall to run a tea shop let alone the country?"

Roll on the bad times... and it's going to get worse.

18. At 10:31am on 22 Jun 2010, Justin150 wrote:
....As for Will Hutton he is a left wing idealist who cannot understand why communism collapsed (sorry, yes he can it is all the fault of the USA).
----------------------------------------------
He may be left wing but then he was appointed to lead an inquiry into cutting top public sector pay by Prime Minister David Cameron, so I imagine some of his thinking is taken seriously accross the normal political divisions.

VAT up to tax the lazy consumer and not the WORKING-HARD CLASS.

Can't see the budget being that bad. I mean THAT, and England losing tomorrow.

Would make Thursday the new 'Monday'('Idontlike)...

The budget calculator is interesting - as long as you ignore the emotive language. Clearly a 5% defence cut (Β£2000m) will not cost 43000 servicemen their jobs. Instead it will have to be funded by other means - reducing personnel in Iraq and Afghanistan. Possibly closing some overseas stations: Cyprus and Germany? Reduction in training budget, so less training in Borneo etc, less practise flights etc. Some cuts will be found in reducing the civil servant numbers. Substantial savings could come from increasing the number of years service required to receive the full pesnion rights.

I was able to accrue about Β£83000m without too much guilt.

There is a fundamental flaw in the thinking of most people about economic growth. They equate it with GDP. The simple fact of the matter is that GDP does not measure growth in any way shape or form. It measures spending, and nothing else. If retailers are buying cheap goods from China and selling them on to people who use credit to acquire them, the spending will be reflected in the GDP. But what has grown? Spending has grown and that is all. There is no economic growth from this sort of activity.

So let's get realistic and start looking at what Britain makes and sells, and the services (other than those that are government funded) that are provided at home and abroad. Look at manufacturing output. Look at services output. Look at the banlance of trade figures. But do stop deluding yourself that GDP is a measure of economic growth.

As far as the budget is concerned there is a certain reality that should function at Government level. It is a very simple reality, and it is that if a government spends more than it collects in taxes it will without fail go into debt. When that debt becomes unsustainable, as at the present time, the Chancellor should make a very simple calculation:

(1) Total income expected from taxation.
(2) Total expenditure on government services, and debt repayment.

If (2) is greater than (1) THEN 2 MUST BE CUT.

We can debate where the axe should fall but NOT whether it should fall. Everyone has an opinion. Quot homines tot sententiae (or in the case of Greece, six Greeks, seven opinions). And we have decided that so much must be ringfenced and so many sacred cows must be preserved that there is every likelihoood that (2) will be greater than (1). We then have to contemplate the unthinkable: take down the ring fences and butcher the sacred cows.

There are those who keep saying that if the economy grows all will be well and savage cuts will be unnecessary. But they are basing their thinking on GDP, the nature of which is such that there might be apparent, but completely unreal, "growth", and that it may all be financed out of borrowings. That is a recipe for disaster.

I do not envy the Chancellor his job. He must do things most will not understand, if he acts credibly. And for most of it he will be hated and reviled. The Tories were streaking along the high ground in August last year with a 20% lead in Opinion Polls. Then young George made the fatal mistake of telling the truth, and said there would be an era of unprecedented austerity after the election. The Tory lead evaporated over night. The people of this country do not like the truth. They do not want to hear it. They live in a dream in which they can have whatever they want and "the government must pay". It's a shame, but there it is. Poor, poor George. Poor David Cameron. Poor Nick Clegg. You are all making the mistake of telling the truth. The British will hate you for it.

This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the house rules. Explain.

ROBERT PESTON

"I am expecting big stuff"

momentous changes?
significant and radical changes?


The loquacity of the man!

"the mother of all unsustainable house-price booms."

Labour's unsustainable house-price boom was bigger. They just postponed the crash by bailing out the reckless. (to be honest the comment was too transparently pro-Labour, even for you)

"The Banking crisis is a zero sum game. It's contribution to our current woes only being; it is not making quite as much money for the economy as it used to."
Really. I think you will find many on this blog are of the view that excessive lending by the banking system led to a unsustainable boom that popped. The credit crunch that led to the recession, that led to the sovereign debt crisis and the massive deficit. The government, which there is no doubt failed to put the brakes on in the boom, and I would be most surprised if any colour of government would have, had very little influence on what happened. Now the new government are trying to make the best of what is a loose loose scenario.

#2 - What a great sound bite - 'Privatising the profits and socialising the losses.'
Worst of all of course is that the plebs are as usual letting them get away with this travesty.
Here are some sound bites of my own - Plagiarised or just slightly plagiarised
'Never has so much been owed by so many to so few'
'This time the moles really have created a mountain'
'Some day my son all this debt will be yours'
And finally
'They can because they think they can' - Virgil

"The choice we face is simply whether we take the long path or the short path to hell. Labour opted for the former - i.e. keep spending on the erroneous assumption that the economy will somehow pick up and the subsidy can then be withdrawn; whilst the ConDems have gone for the latter - i.e. pull the plug now, take the pain and the economy will then recover. Both fail to grasp the fact that there will be no recovery because the world economy is insolvent.

We created lifestyles and expectations that were entirely dependent on ever more borrowing to sustain it. The banks were the means lending out as much as 50 times as much as they have on deposit (Source: Will Hutton's Despatches programme on Channel 4).

All parties are therefore operating under a delusion, namely that at some point the dead patient, i.e. the real economy outside of the public sector, will somehow kick into life and it is just a matter of creating the right conditions for this to happen. This is nonsense. The reason why the public sector grew was to compensate for the collapse of the private sector.

As The ConDems withdraw their support and raise taxes, the economy will go into a major tailspin. As people in the public sector lose their jobs, they will default on their debts, lose their homes, cut back on their spending, which will cause the private sector to lose jobs, default on debts, lose their homes, cut back on their spending etc. It is a vicious spiral.

It is rather like saying we need to turn off the life support machine of a brain-dead patient, but somehow expect him to come back to life. It ain't gonna happen.

As they say, the road to hell is paved with good intentions... "
Depressing as it is, I would say this is a fair summary of our position. I'm of the view that this is proof that the existing monetary system is no longer fit for purpose. We need to focus our minds on creating a new system that is better suited to our modern needs.

I am not expecting "big stuff". When the dust settles, I think that most people will wonder what the fuss was about.

I don't think that the real imbalances in the British economy will be tackled, because the government is in hock to the City, which is the root cause of them. Britain is not Iceland, but we have similar imbalances, if less extreme. Addressing these issues would alienate much of the electoral base of this government.

@4 Hawkeye - thanks for the link. My point precisely. Every week I think back to what Alexander Curzon used to say: that is that the failing banks should have been allowed to die. Perhaps something better could then have beeen created from the ashes. Now we have made private gambling debts into sovereign debt, and finance, rather than manufacturing, is still king.

There are couple of fallacies about the government debt. First is that is somehow a burden. When government borrows, who does it borrow from? The answer is us, the people. Government is the collective of the people. So if we borrow money from ourselves, is that a burden?

What happens when government runs a deficit is that, government takes in less money in a form of taxes every year, than it spends in to a existence. Every year, citizens get new money, by the amount of deficit, which they deposit at the bank. The bank then buys government issued bonds to earn interest which it uses to pay interest to depositors. So you see, government debt becomes asset to the private sector, and interest payments become money transfers to the savers. The more government owns, the wealthier private sector gets. Government debt is not a debt at all, it's an accounting identity. It should be renamed as "net private sector wealth created" to avoid confusions.

Second fallacy stems directly from the first one. It is that some day, government has to repay these debts. Governments don't repay their debts, they roll them over and for a good reason: doing so would destroy private sectors assets. It would make us all poorer. In fact, inadequate levels of "public debt" are already making us poorer. And when we are poor, we don't spend. And when we don't spend, well that is exactly the problem we have with the economy.

I dont want to be poor. The sale of my grandmother is looking like a good bet for some additional income. Vat up, benifits down. Lets build work houses. It will kickstart private investment and help the construction sector. The poor will have something to do during the day and the middle classes can get cheap domestic help, cheaper even than eastern europe.

Has anyone tried to find a 4 bed house for Β£400/week inside the M25? I just have and I found just 23. I wonder what we will find in the small print for all other housing benifit allowances? It would be nice if the government had a stock of suitable housing for these failytale prices.

Is it me or has Yvette Cooper morphed into Charlie Drake?

42. At 1:31pm on 22 Jun 2010, Seer wrote:

Has anyone tried to find a 4 bed house for Β£400/week inside the M25? I just have and I found just 23. I wonder what we will find in the small print for all other housing benifit allowances? It would be nice if the government had a stock of suitable housing for these failytale prices.
...............................................

Guess you didn't try too hard then. Right move within 5 miles of Croydon has 184. Can't imagine how many if you included the whole country.

I can understand the need to impose some restriction on the public sector but when Osborne talks about public sector pay and pensions is that going to include MPs and top Civil Servants? Or are we going to have the usual, where council workers have their pay frozen and their pensions cut, while MPs vote themselves an inflation busting pay rise and continue with, arguably, the best pension arrangements outside the merchant banks?

#19 the figures of fraudulent claims were simply pulled out of the air as examples.

The point being, if you could see past your own political ideologies, that a cut in the welfare budget doesn't automatically translate into grannies freezing in the winter. If we stopped paying people disability benefits to keep them off the unemployment register, stopped paying people because they can't be bothered to work, and cut out the fraud in the system we could save billions while not taking a penny away from those who truly need it.

The government estimated benefit fraud at Β£5-6bn annually, some years back. If the government (of any persuasion) is open about Β£5bn being lost to fraud the figure is probably at least double that.

#20, "It gets better, a 30% cut in health will cause all hospitals to close for 300 days a year. God know what the other 70% is spent on then. The ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ budget calculator is a ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ political statement."

It does indeed. So if a 30% cut means hospitals close for 300 days each year let's cut the other 70% and let hospitals only close for 65 days each year.

Then it should be a small matter of increasing the health budget by 20% from it's slashed level to get hospitals open all year.

No. 5, Ave Joe: "An uncle of mine who died many years ago, worked in the banking system, told me that the policians/government have very little influence over the economy and merely tinker at the edges. We shall see if he's proved right."

Aye, and an uncle of mine told me that once you establish the identity of the very small "family" group who actually control the banks and the Federal Reserve, you will find out who really runs the world. You won't have to look too far from home.

Can anyone explain to me why cutting the public sector stimulates growth in the private sector.

Just as I thought before and during the election campaign by both of the unscrupulous parties who now govern the country.

Say a lot of nice thing s to the electorate (tax threshold minimum to be raisd to Β£10k and no increase in VAT) then as soon as you get into power do a complete uturn and think it's OK.

The Β£1k rise in the threshold will be eaten up by the VAT increase and any other bits they can add on later. How can this possibly be of benefit to the economy when all that will happen is a lot of people a going to earn less and will therefore have less to spend and others will refrain from buying or replacing certain items because of the VAT increase.

Just the same old same old - and hey ho the British taxpayer gets to suffer as usual.

As for the cuts in the public sector the private sector will be rubbing its hand with glee. The rich will get richer and the poor poorer.

Not much of a change from Thatcher.

This budget is an act of desperation in the face of the intentions of the worlds financial demagogues.The money men are the ones who are really dictating the future of Britain,Europe and the rest of the world.The default position of these phoney pharohs of the worlds economies,is one of complete and unquestionable control over markets and financial indexes.The worlds populations are about to find out what the "unexpected"consequences really are,more debt shackling all nations to their multi-country unions,less employment for ever more unemployed,less and less service provision,higher costs and taxes,more wars,more division within societies,less tolerance(if that is possible) and a removal of any mechanisms for meaningful change.Osborne has no real experience and is merely a puppet of vested interests,none of which will ever be acknowledged by Robert or anyone else that values their job in the media.So,keep searching for that elusive economic rainbow and its mythical pot of gold,its a living,I guess......but for how much longer?