Give us your suggestion - big or small - of where public money could be saved

Jolly, not directed at you, sorry if you thought it was. Although TBH reading your posts again your views "seem" to be of a right wing/tory bent.

my dad has free travel, he just can't wait to catch the bus to the next town that looks identical to his own

Newwave are you suggesting I am Tory?

I have not political allegiance. If you or anyone else thinks that what I have said does not make sense please persuade me. I would like to vote for the 'common sense' party. Where do I sign?

In Wales, stop iving all prescriptions for free.

On the whole, those who need them to be free had them anyway

"Last sentence aside, broadly - yes I agree. It certainly isn't the sole domain of the Tories though. Labour were just as bad for exactly the same reasons"

I agree although NewLabour was a "light" version of the tory party. One of the biggest disappointments of my life was how Blair turned out. I still remember how euphoric I felt when NewLabour won their first election, an end (i thought) to the "evil" of Thatcherism, never happened of course. We live and learn.

And now we are back to real Thatcherism in all it's gore.

There is nothing wrong with tax avoidence, ISA, pension contributions, trusts etc. I come back to my main point. Don't give benefits to anyone that already pays tax. It doesn't help. It just takes money out of the productive economy. We do needs to make working better than benefits. You need to stop taxing excessively so that I hire more people.

"Question for you, would you agree that the government make far less effort to eradicate tax avoidence and evasion than they do to stop benefit fraud and also dont shame and demonise tax avoiders/evaders to anything like the same degree. Do you think this is because the evaders/avoiders are natural tory supporters."

Last sentence aside, broadly - yes I agree. It certainly isn't the sole domain of the Tories though. Labour were just as bad for exactly the same reasons.

scrap free public transport for children/elderly/disabled and replace it with a standard 10p fare for them all - that wouldn't price those people out of travel but would save some of the subsidy that goes towards funding free travel

likewise scrap blanket free prescriptions for children and oaps - exemptions could be allocated for particular medicines (rather than patients) iyswim

free/academy schools

LookTo, my fault, badly put.

Lets make action against tax avoidence retrospective after the legislation to close the loopholes has been enabled.

Question for you, would you agree that the government make far less effort to eradicate tax avoidence and evasion than they do to stop benefit fraud and also dont shame and demonise tax avoiders/evaders to anything like the same degree. Do you think this is because the evaders/avoiders are natural tory supporters.

BikeRunSki,in business if I can swap and unknown every increasing cost for a fixed known cost then I would do it. This is why in the private sector final salaries have stopped. They costs were too high and they were unknown burden on future profits.

Set a target date for an end to a standing army (note: NOT throwing all forces personnel on the dole queue tomorrow), beginning with a moratorium on all recruitment. Commensurate reduction in weapons spending. Possible increase in TA, plus university fees paid for any school leaver who spends a year in the Gap Year Reserve Training Scheme.

Tax costs jobs loopholes or not. Every public sector worker has to be paid by the private sector. I am happy to pay tax but excessive tax costs jobs. We actually need these cuts.

BikeRunSki

So would you swap your current salary for an extra £5k before tax (£3k after tax) in exchange for swapping your final salary pension for a defined benefit one?

Personally working in the private sector I'd happy see my salary reduced 5k in exchange for switching to a final salary pension.

I think they're planning to remove a lot of loopholes.

Littlepossum thank you for not thinking me mad (as many people on here do)

My point is if you earn enough to pay tax why are we giving benefits to you? Stop the bureaucracy. We then don't need some many people to sort out the admin, we then don't have to pay so much tax, I can then hire more staff as I am not paying so much tax and so it goes on.

"Make tax evasion not approved by the government illegal."

It already is.

Tax avoidance on the other hand by it's very definition is legal - if the government sees a loop hole being exploited then they need to close the hole. You can't blame someone for minimising the tax they pay if they can - the onus is on Government to close any tax holes that are against the "spirit" of the tax regime.

If we had a simpler tax system then we wouldn't need all of these byzantine tax laws anyway.

Jollydiane

Thats seems a really good idea. It never has made sense to me that people on anything up to £58k/year could get benefits. Why tax them to give them money back as child-benefit or tax credits? You simply create a additional loop of bureaucracy that serves no purpose.

I don't see any reason why people on more than the average wage (25k or so) should get any benefits at all. Surely there are more worthy targets for that money or perhaps we can just use it to reduce the deficit.

Littlepossum - as a public sector worker I would happily give up some of my pension, if my salary were bought into line with the private sector too. I earn around £5K/year less than I would in private sector.

LookTo, fair point as i do have ISA'a and a pension to come.

Make tax evasion not approved by the government illegal. Wont happen as Clegg for one does it using offshore means.

I want smaller government. Stop interferring and increasing tax and let small businesses make profits and exband so I hire more staff. I am one of the few people on here who agrees with the stopping to chid benefit for higher rate tax payers. It was maddnes that I pay tax only to be given tax back. The bureaucracy involved in that never made sense to me.

So in summary don't give benefits to people that already pay tax, just reduce the tax in the first place. Any other way and its just churning money, which costs money.

An easy cut that would bring a huge reduction over the long term surely would be to switch all public sector workers forthwith from defined benefit (final-salary) pensions to defined contribution. This just puts them on an even keel with private sector workers.

DLA and ESP should be means tested.

I went to one this year that was humungous and totally free. Previous year I went to the big one near us - humungous, same atmosphere but there was an entry fee.
Which made it seem not like rocket science to me.

That's a hard one Grimma as it is very hard to work out the savings from reduced injury due to fewer back garden displays, and the greater social cohesion and knock-on reduction in public disorder.

It could be anything from nothing at all to more than the cost of the fireworks.