How miserable are you that the Tories are in power?

[sundayrose10]

I feel tense and twitchy. I used to enjoy reading the politic section/ other political forums, but I fear if I keep on going there and reading more and more about Tory plans, I will give myself a heart attack.

I loath them but worst I fear them. I am anxious for this country and the ordinary man and woman.

Dave makes me feel insane with hatred.

I have a colleague who is in love with the Tories. I don't share biscuits with him any more.

Dave makes me itch. All over.

It almost makes you think some of it is deliberate, even 'ideological'.

Some of the cuts are in completely the wrong areas though.

In your opinion that is. The problem is that we all have different opinions as to which cuts are fair. Fair is relative.

Personally I dont mind about libraries getting their funding slashed....others do and passionately too. I think the CB cuts are unfair.....others will also disagree and think they are fair.

I can't think of a single cut which everyone agrees is valid. Yet we all know that cuts are needed.

'I can't think of a single cut which everyone agrees is valid.'

MPs expenses?

I live in one of these "socialist ideal" countries that you some of the lefties get all excited about. I'm taxed a hideous amount - but I live in a nice country - trade-off. The "welfare bludgers" get approximately 1100 per family basic welfare to include housing/bills/food/clothes/etc. Does that sound like social utopia? You'd be better off working!

You cut MP's expenses, you'll lose many decent working and lower middle class MP's and be left with only the independently wealthy.

No one else will be able to afford to be an MP. One of the reasons that so many ARE wealthy with high earning partners is that they can afford to take the lower salary ( and it IS low compared with other very high laddered careers).

Any idea what local government bloody hospitality cost?
Hopefully that'll have gone.
I have serious doubts about my local authority though. They're cutting adult social care, so disabled people who need home help may not have a service, whilst at the same time paying out hundreds of thousands of pounds to a yacht club that the Chair of the County Council is a member of!!!!!

Forget MPs expenses, abolish IPSA and we'd save hundreds of thousands. The bureaucracy is mind bending.

How about cutting MP's Gold plated pensions?

They receive well over £20K of tax payer funded contributions every year to their already generous pension scheme.

I would cut the deficit in one easy fell swoop.

Get Wednesday's Guardian, turn to the jobs pages and make redundant every Suppport worker for men who have sex with men ( WTF?) on £30K, every Traveller Education Outreach worker ( they know where school is, same as the rest of us ), every Circus Skills Development leader ( Gordy the Clown has left the building after being unable to juggle the finances, doncha know!) and all the other Loony Leftie Non jobs.

"Forget MPs expenses, abolish IPSA and we'd save hundreds of thousands. The bureaucracy is mind bending."

So you're saying we should forget cutting MP's expenses, and instead abolish the only body dedicated to keeping an eye on MP's expenses? For the sake of hundreds of thousands of pounds?

from what I've heard it needs reforming as it's pretty inefficient but not sure abolishing it would be that productive.

I rest my case......

"I would cut the deficit in one easy fell swoop.

Wednesday's Guardian, turn to the jobs pages and make redundant every Suppport worker for men who have sex with men ( WTF?) on £30K, every Traveller Education Outreach worker ( they know where school is, same as the rest of us ), every Circus Skills Development leader ( Gordy the Clown has left the building after being unable to juggle the finances, doncha know!) and all the other Loony Leftie Non jobs."

That sounds like Daily Mail esque sound bite posturing rather than any meaningful solution to large scale deficit reduction.

I don't deny there are no doubt loads of insanely titled non jobs in the public sector and that they need to be culled, but I think they are by a long chalk the exception and not the rule. Make them all redundant but if you think it'll really make a huge dent in the £143 billion deficit then I'm not sure we agree.

Every little helps, but I do hate it when people use these ludicrous non jobs to paint a picture of the entire public sector sector work force as in some way disposable (btw I'm not including you in that retrohousewife). It's just another stick people use to beat the public sector with, and a bit of a self inflicted one at that.

I refer to something one of my bosses said to my team a while back when we were talking costs for a project.

"What i need is a Mini. You guys are building me a Rolls Royce. I don't want a rolls royce. I can't afford a Rolls Royce, I want a Mini."

The same applies here. What people want is an all singing all dancing welfare system which looks after every person. What people want is an all singing, all dancing NHS system. A first class education system which churns out graduates to be reckoned with.

Unfortunately we can't afford that system.

"Unfortunately we can't afford that system."

agreed, altho I think a lot of the problems facing public services are systemic rather than purely budgetary; making better use of the resources we have would make a huge difference.

IPSA (I pay sod all) is awful, it takes so many man hours from MPs researchers and the MPs themselves, it often rejects valid claims and the MPs are then named and shamed wrongly, it is universally unpopular across Parliament. MPs should have an online bank account from which they can spend what they like (legitimate claims), this should be put online so the public can see exactly what they're spending.

This might be a time to repeat the oft-quoted observation that Britain wants a Scandinavian society, while paying American taxes. Ain't gonna happen.

But I still think the banks should be made to pay back their "loans" instead of paying themselves.

That looks like a really good idea, chubs!

I spend a lot of time plotting the demise of ipsa

That looks like a really good idea, chubs!

+1

do you have some kind of dealings with IPSA that have inspired your plotting?

Yeah I work in Parliament. Ipsa is my nemesis.

I'm with chen. My DH has twice closed down (profitable) divisions in software companies selling to the UK government. He wanted his government teams selling to the private sector. Government procurement was slow, inefficient and often bought the wrong products. Billions wasted annually on IT alone.

But who is a vunerable person. Is it:

1. Someone who looks after a disabled person full time? Yes
2. Someone who is under 16 and living away from home? Yes
3. The genuinely homeless? Yes
4. A young person who intentionally gets pregnant to get a house and then claims everything going? No
5. A woman who has child after child with some waste of space who contributes nothing? No but offer child and parent units. Hostels where they can live. In my view it would soon stop the feckless and irresponsible from having children with no thought to how they can afford them.
6. Bring back proper apprenticeships, where you can learn a trade and profession. Have you ever tried to get a good plumber of electrican in the Home Counties?
7. Have hostels (not massive houses) for people fleeing from abroad. Is it right that an Afgan family can claim a house where the rent costs £12k per month!!!!
8. Take away the Human Rights Act from people who are in jail.
9. Allow schools to have more rights to exclude problem children. Put them all in a special school where they can be dealt with seperately. Do not let them spoil it for others. Ban mobile phones from school - full stop

10. Stop classing every young burgler or person who is violent as having anger management issues.

You need to cut where the biggest costs are. If we cannot have a universal credit for all and no benefits or pensions, then we need to work out where the true waste is. In the private sector it's usually found in tiers of pointless middle management and that might well be so in the public sector.

I suspect most women (but probably not most men) would be happy with much tougher armed forces cuts. A lot of foreign aid is wasted and Cameron i s also under pressure in Europe to pay more. We're no in the Euro and I think we'd manage if Greece and the others had difficulties rather than doing better if we support them.

rocky, who is going to be employed to make the decision to punish the types of people you want to target (presumably for deficit reduction, but it sounds more like you just want to have a go at the 'scroungers')?

All this Daily Fail rubbish about Afghan families in £12k per month houses is pure Murdoch-generated crap. He's a liar, you know...it's official.

Would the removal of the Human Rights Act from prisoners (hard to see how you would do that, since the Human Rights Act a. applies to humans, not selected humans b. is already restricted according to proportionate individual state requirements) actually save any money??? You are probably going to come back with some exaggerated DM story about compensation payments. A mere drop in the ocean compared to Trident, Libya and the Pakistan aid package.
I can't even face tackling the rest of your nasty little list....

yep, the abolition of the term 'anger management' will really save a bundle of money, eh.

allegra you appear confused. Never mind.

For anyone interested in 'entitlements', you are allowed to demand that your local council release their figures about how much they're spending on hb and to which groups etc.

12k a month woman is true allegra, even if you don't wish to believe it.