20% VAT wow!

Yes, probably too difficult a habit to kick. It was certainly in place 25+ years ago in local government and I bet it is rife in every government department.

I wonder how many staff are employed in central government departments ? Maybe they should build a set of offices and carry on parliament remotely from say Milton Keynes (fairly fast rail link) so all the support staff are out of London, along with the government ministries, and all that 'London Weighting' money can be saved !

well, there's the much-touted Danish model, easy-hire easy-fire but with handsome benefits that hopefully you're not on for long... epeople say it wouldn't work here, though, I can't remember why.

NetworkGuy, can you imagine how much better things would be now if that were allowed... I suspect the "use it or lose it" mentality would still remain ingrained, though ("don't save it, because they WILL cut it")

"we had to buy new ones just to use up the IT budget before the year end"

Yes, that "use it or lose it" problem with budgets needs an overhaul. There should be some form of recognition that if part of the budget is saved, that organisation / department is allowed to ask for it in a future year, and it goes into some sort of interest-growing account.

Encourage a department to save a portion, if it can be done, and after a number of years, when some new technology would really benefit them, they have 'earned' the opportunity to reclaim that which had been saved for it, over and above any current budget they are working in.

Hypocrisy was rife in the last government and it certainly finished off Brown. Mandelson, Blair, all the Millibands and the rest of those totally ordinary blokes looked like they'd have needed a bath in Hibiscrub if they'd ever been forced into contact with a 'hard working family'.

What annoys me most is that they chipped away at the middle-income earners to finance their vision of Utopia whilst being successfully love-bombed by the banking sector and the uber-wealthy to 'leave us to it'. They should have had genuine Labour types like Prescott breathing down bankers' necks over the RBS Fred Goodwin payoff rather than Lord "Sixteen Mil Sounds Pretty Reasonable To Me" Myners.

And the rest....

Chil, yes, Labour were happy to have capital gains tax at 18% weren't they - they put up income tax to 50% so it would look good, but were happy to leave the back door for their friends open at 18%...

It's largely the unions that are making 25% cost savings equate to 25% job cuts at the moment. Which suggests that 'wages' makes up 100% of the budget. They've rubbished the e-mail that's gone out asking public sector workers where savings could be made and are clearly not planning to be cooperative - which is a pity

When a friend worked for the housing department at her local council she was surprised to be offered a nearly-new laptop for next to nothing. "There's nothing wrong with them but we had to buy new ones just to use up the IT budget before the year end," was the explanation. 50 new but unnecessary computers at £1000 a pop is a few people's wages... Can't be the only example.

The welfare state will have to pay out a lot more when 25% of public sector workers are made unemployed. There won't suddenly be more jobs out there for them in the private sector. Instead of them doing a service for the public, they will be stuck at home, suffering depression and stress from financial dificulties, and still a drain on the public purse.

Many of these people aren't much better off working than on benefits in a financial sense, anyway, myself included as a TA. But, as I said already, at least I am doing something for my money, whereas, if they lay me off, I will just be another welfare scrounger.

I am happy that someone is at last doing something about the deficit, and I think we have to take the long view.

It is no good spouting about investment - there was nothing left to invest with. The welfare state is out of control; the public sector is bloated, and I say that as an ex public sector worker, and one whose husband is public sector too.

If this had all been done by tax rises, then those who create wealth would choose to move away. Those who pay 40% tax will also have an NI increase next year and pay more in VAT, and as Chil says they don't benefit from the increased tax threshold, as the higher rate threshold has been lowered to ensure that they don't.

I'm waiting for the other boot to fall for us, with the public sector pension review and the SDSR; dh may not have a job in 6 months; however, it could not carry on as it was.

I read the other day that in reality these cuts are only 5% on top of what Labour would have made had they stayed in power anyway, so go figure. One way or another, we were going to pay.

"now the Torydems are here to ConDem the nation!"

A pat phrase doesn't make an argument. The 'people at the bottom' as you patronisingly put it were not being raised up. They were being held down, trapped in a cycle of welfare dependency, poor educational opportunities and low social mobility. It was the Labour party that blithely lowered CTG to 18% enabling thousands of super-wealthy people to dodge paying income tax at the proper rate whilst at the same time abolishing the 10% tax band without thinking it through. Not surprising from an ex-Chancellor/PM that was so uncomfortable with ordinary working-class people that he called them 'bigoted' when he thought no-one was listening.

If you 'know' that the gap between rich and poor widened over the last 13 years then you also 'know' that the Labour government failed the people it claimed to want to help the most. They were exposed as fakes. We certainly did get the government we voted for and, to borrow another pat phrase,it was 'ABL'.... 'Anyone But Labour'

"the main difference is it is going to hit EVERYONE"

VAT is a tax on consumption and as such affects those on low incomes disproportionately if they are big consumers. But those on low incomes are also being protected from wage-freezes, they're getting extra on the CTC, more personal tax allowance (not available to better-off people), they're not paying more in NI and income tax ... and this goes some way to offsetting the imbalance.

For example, many people on these forums have checked the budget calculators and found that they will be prima facie better off in terms of tax, NI and CTC. The middle-high income earners are worse off with that initial calculation ... and then they have to pay the extra VAT on top in addition.

So it's a bit of a dumb-down to say the coalition are attacking the poor and protecting the super wealthy... and it's also not borne out by the numbers.

but it wouldn't happen, would it (the deficit reduction, I mean). you can't reduce that sort of deficit just through ordinary growth. The interest payments would just get worse and worse and worse.

better that than massive unemployment and all round doom.

fathersday, would the UK really emerge from a recession just like that in the knowledge that it still has that sort of deficit hanging over it? and growth would then be enough to reduce the humungous deficit all by itself? It has to be tackled.

investment not cuts is the answer. cuts means less jobs means less people with enough money to spend which means businesses go bust which means more people unemployed which means and on and on we go. we have seen this before from the thatcherites - rich people got extremely rich, poor people even poorer, massive increases in crime and unemployment, we had JUST started to see a redressing of this - though I know the gap between rich and poor widened, the people at the bottom were nonetheless being raised up - and now the Torydems are here to ConDem the nation! well - we get the government we vote for and i hope everyone who voted tory and libdem will be happy with this over the next however long it lasts, but i know there will be plenty of people without enough money to get by who are really really going to suffer.

Proud to be doing something about the economic situation. Not proud of all the items in the budget, though.

totally agree ginger and lisa. hope the libdems are proud of their disgusting sell out.

Where are the big businesses now attacking Labour before the election?! Don't they think increasing VAT will harm consumption, therefore their revenues? Or are they just too happy with their peerages... [disgusted]

Define 'super rich' please. Some might argue that £22,000 is a low income as well. The NI rise would not have raised enough to reduce the deficit built up over the past 13 years, hence the VAT rise.

It hits everyone, and it can be avoided as it not there on children's clothes or shoes, or on none luxury foodstuffs.

I was bored with you before the election Lisa; you are still boring now. Either make your point in an adult fashion (remembering that those who post here do have brains), and that we don't need the capital letters. We understand that you work for, or are affiliated with, the Opposition and don't like the Government.

Taking the VAT from 17.5 to 20% may not seem a small jump, the main difference is it is going to hit EVERYONE wheras the N.I rise would have only affected those earning over £22,000 thus preotecting those on a low income. Said it before i'll say it again...The CONservatives...defending the super rich and attacking the poor since 1678.

Hey all these people saying ah its not that bad its only X amount extra..ok....lets just raise it to 30%..hey..it wont matter.

21% on non-food and 6% on some food - if you ever shop at Colryut it tells you on the bill.

I wish I could persuade ds to like tuna....

I think they think I'm strange in Carrefour - if there's a reduced chicken there, I'll buy two and freeze them!

VAT is 21% in Belgium I believe!

scary - the cost of food here is indeed painful. I look at these "feed your family for 30 quid a week" threads and feel slightly faint!

It's the food it hurts on here Chil; and I don't buy clothes or books out here because they are so expensive.

I bought a 1.4 kg chicken (large by Belgian standards) in Carrefour on Monday, and it was 9 euro 50. I walk round Waitrose when I'm home, marvelling at the size and cost of the chickens and wishing we had a freezer in the car so I could take some home with me!