All-round Budget thread

The feckless poor took out mortgages they couldn't afford. Now you could argue the law shouldn't allow that sale (and yes I know those loans were repackaged and sold on by banks and that that may have caused some of the trouble) but the people who took out what they could not pay arguably could be blamed as much as those who sold them products they wanted.

Anyway we have always had booms and busts. I was reading my grandparents' letters from the 1920s crash. Plus ca change except it's not so bad now as then and people tend now to be fed. Markets works in cycles and have some difficulties isn't always morally bad for people particularly if they had got a bit too much interested only in matters material and had become a bit too consumeristic.

Anyway no party is prepared to make the level of cuts the country needs so we'll all just have to continue paying back the £18k a year national debt interest each person in the UK is now saddled with, lucky us....

Exactly right. We've had property busts since the beginning of time and they don't collapse the entire system. Those poor people they film in Atlanta aren't thick at all. They were hard working families, mothers holding down two jobs. Those disgraceful empty boarded up estates represented their dreams. When you see the mothers crying as the bailiffs take everything they own, don't you realise who is to blame? These people believed their governments, they believed the people in the sharp suits and the snazzy shoes, they believed in the American dream. They worked hard and did everything they were told, only to see it all end up in flames. Then the corporate crowd go back to interview them and make programmes telling us that it was them to blame. Someone, somewhere should feel shame.

Quite. I can't quite comprehend how it is even possible that as you say, financial global economic systems tethered upon the poor of atlanta, Detroit, st. Louis et all falling behind on mortgages for let's face it - comparatively cheap housing. Even to date with 2.97 US homes in foreclosure at the end of 2010, the figures involved come nowhere near the fall-out figures for AIG and all the others.

It had nothing to do with the poor in the US taking out mortgages. That is the spin of the bankers. Do you think that the whole world's financial system teetered on the edge of ruin because some poor people decided to accept the bankers' munificence? That's the bankers shifting the blame, ignoring how they played the game. Those million dollar bonuses weren't earned due to clever mortgage sales people. They were earned by derivative gamblers from London, Tokyo to Hong Kong. They make documentaries where they film the poor in America, point the finger at them and say they are the ones to blame. The truth is they were all in it together, except the poor in America, and they all got out of it together, except the poor the world over, whose governments bailed out the bankers.

Wasn't just the US though Xenia, there were thousands of sub prime here on 125% mortgages et al.
Couple that with a Govt. completely incapable of living within its means and hey presto, here we are.

There is not a huge lot of difference between Labour's 20% and the Coalition's 25% cuts and neither goes far enough so we've a lot more pain to come.

As for who caused the recession I thought iwas the feckless over spending poor in the US who took out mortgages they coudl not afford in the sub prime market. You can as easily blame them as the people who made loans available to them but no one likes to say that because they are poor and thick so of course are not responsible for their own actions and need big brother state to protect them.

'handed' the country over? Like anyone else has ever really run it in any significant numbers.....

i just think it's a bit much that we've handed the country over to the care of a bunch of rich kids, ex-Bullingdon club members, who don't have an ounce of reality in their experience. They're there because 80% of their campaign funding came from the wankers bankers, and just because they've 'let us off' a penny on fuel, a little nip here and a little tuck there, just doesn't cut the mustard.
You can bet your bottom penny that whatever they've given will be taken away and more - as others have said, the £600 a year will be taken up by the extra VAT/higher gas and electricity prices/higher food prices. Inflation is already blooming upwards, so it won't be long before we see an interest rate rise and hence the mortgages will go up. Landlords will use any excuse to raise rents, so they'll go up too, and all the time, employers will claim the economy downturn as an excuse to pay less and get more out of the employee.
Smoke and mirrors.

Well according to the budget calculator, I'll be around £50 a month better off, and as a single parent with a not very well paid job and a car needed to do my job it will be very welcome!

Oh no, not the tap water thing again.

how comes everyone else seems to be better off from April 2011? According to thesalarycalculator, I shall take home about £26 less every month due to the lowering of the HRT band and the 1% increase in NI fromApril. Am I missing something?

you don't become rich by spending it Xenia

wm, some of us still use things until they wear out in 2011 actually. I would never replace a television unless it were irretrievably broken and buy Tesco value chickens etc. Just drink tap water etc and I'm not poor.

MrsOtter we're not rich, not by a long shot!

I've frequently walked around the local fruit and veg market a dozen times, just to make sure I'm getting the best possible deal on each individual item. Those pennies add up and when you have to account for every penny, it really matters. I've learnt to eke 12 plus meals out of 400g of minced beef. I just focus on what we have, rather than what we don't.

I'm not saying it's easy but so long as you're fed and warm and loved, then everything else is just a bonus.

Wubbly some of us have always lived that way, we've had no option.

But what happens when you simply can't cut back anymore?

It's difficult to take a second job when you're already working 60 hours a week of course.

The other option is cutting back on what you spend and, obviously, that is easier to do the more you earn. I know, we reduced our income by 50% and we manage. We do without lots of things, but we have a roof over our heads and food to eat.

Swimming and dancing, whilst lovely, are hardly necessary. Organic and free range food is wonderful, but if you were really on the bones of your arse you'd manage a basics carrot, I'm sure.

We don't need half the shite we spend our money on. Can you imagine our parents and grandparents buying a new TV just because there was a newer model available? You made do with what you had and when it broke you had it fixed!

There will always be people better and worse off than all of us. People get used to what they have and when they have less that's harder. They can always try to take second jobs though or set up a business if it's hard to make ends meet. It's amazing how much you can do if you really put your mind to it.

(There's no chance of a flat tax in the UK)

I'd happily swap with someone paying HRT, would be fine losing CB if I earned that much and I would help DD at Uni. I do work but am not valuable enough to earn a high salary.

Everyone has had to tighten their belts and are being hit, does anyone want to swap with me btw.

(waves at Xenia - fancy making this about flat tax and the benefits it would have for the economy ? )

I like that 50% tax isn't here to stay.

Pippy is right. I'm in a situ now where it would make more sense for us to live where DP works (styx) 160 miles away from London but I just wouldn't be able to get a job there in the field I work in so we have much higher living costs plus no London weighting on his public sector. Obviously it wouldn't be measurable but tax on disposable income would seem fairer.

Wish he'd backtracked on the Child Benefit - am not looking forward to the hit when it all goes (the higher rate taxpayer bashing is really grating when we will lose CB because of DH's salary but if we each earned half his salary we'd still get it...)

Chil1234 - I don't spend money like water, we have a large mortgage because that's pretty much the going rate round here, and prices were high when we first bought a house. We don't have any other borrowing. I never envisaged child benefit going in one hit rather than ever being phased out gradually, so can you blame me for having factored it into our "lifestyle choices" (which extends to swimming for one child and dancing for the others, nothing out of the ordinary)? Looking at our accounts, the majority of our disposable income goes on food and petrol, and the amount we spend has increased significantly in the last year.

The budget was much as predicted. If it does help the economy that is probably the material way in which it will help most people.

Serious question for anyone paying 20k a year childcare. Why don't you employ one of these young people desperate for a decent job? You could get someone with childcare qualifications, double what some shirt nursery pays them and still be quid in.