if the 12bn welfare cuts were released pre-election the result would have been different?

[Toffeelatteplease]

I spoiled my ballot. As a lone parent to two "not working" as caring for a son with special needs, I was pretty sure we would be hit hard by a conservative government.

As it happens no change. except it probably will be harder to get DS the therapy and help and support at school because sadly I think all his front line care providers will be amongst the worse hit.

However I can think of a few very vocal conservative voters who I think are probably hit quite hard. I found the why should we support those who can't support themselves rhetoric very difficult and I "lost" a few friends in the year run up to the election.

AIBU to wonder whether the divide and conquer rhetoric led a lot of people to think that the cuts wouldn't hit them when they were going to, and had they known to wonder whether the election result might have been different

or that they haven't actually realised what the tax credit implications are as many seem not to have.

This over and over.
The impression I'm getting from many Tory voters on lower income is that they think it's just about the 2 child "rule" and haven't a clue that their own tax credits are going to be affected.

We had the biggest deficit and as a country we need to live within our means. I don't want cuts, but money has to be saved somewhere to pay off our colusical debt. Difficult and unpopular decisions have to be made by whoever is in power.

Perhaps if Starbucks, Amazon et al paid proper tax for trading on our shores.......

The budget has introduced a diverted profits

www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-31942639

Hopefully Amazon et al will pay their rightful share of tax.

Deciding to make cuts is a financial decision, deciding where to make the cuts isn't, it's an ideological one.

Deciding to do it in such a way that the poorest working families will lose income and to do it in a way that means that it'll happen before any wage rises can make up for it definitely isn't a financial decision.

I might be talking rubbish here, but surely this money being taken away from TC claimants usually goes straight back into the economy. I would imagine it doesn't go into savings accounts, or gets spent overseas.
So the government may save 8 billion or whatever, but that's 8 billion that isn't being spent in shops etc.

www.economicshelp.org/blog/334/uk-economy/uk-national-debt/

At the moment our national debt is roughly 80% of our gross national product. At moment a significant proportion of our taxation just goes on paying interest of our debt.

What is interesting was that our national debt as a proportion of GDP was higher after the Second World War than it is now, but we set up the nhs, welfare state and introduced universal secondary education. May austerity is not the best way forward.

thanks for the link Really

TBH no I don'the think it would have made a difference. They did say that there would be a 12bn cut plus Labour were also going to make cuts.

We are going to be worse off

I am saddened at the number of people who have believed the propaganda that Labour 'bankrupted' the country and that we have an out of control deficit. They didn't, we don't. Arguably the Coalition and then the Tory's austerity has slowed down recovery, compared to the invest to recover policies of other nations, such as the US.

And as for our 'welfare' bill (when it is stop being social security?), most of it goes on pensions.

The Tories are using the opportunity to go small state as quickly and as thoroughly as they can. They are adroit politicians who are able to set interest group against interest group. "First they came for..."

Issa - the state pension is not payable unless you have paid in. Unlike benefits. You get them whether you have contributed or not.

But people can get NI stamps for claiming relevant benefits, benefits you don't necessarily need to have paid in to get. It's been that way for a while now. Additionally, pensioners below a certain income ie those who've not paid enough in to get the full pension get pension credit. A good chunk of the pensions slice of the welfare pie is paid whether a person has contributed or not.

Some of the [i]Labour is the party of benefits is true[/i]. But, it doesn't have to be so. A benefit doesn't have to be a hand out. Rationing in WWII wasn't a handout. Free universal education and the welfare state are benefits. But, they're not handouts. Some of the problem is simply the language of benefits, not what benefits actually achieve. That's merely cosmetic and easy to fix.

Did some relatively poor benefit claimants vote Tory and are now having some of their benefits taken away? Yes, I'm sure they did. Would they have voted differently had they known it would happen? Possibly. They were warned. So, overall, no. I don't think it would have made any difference. But, I do think it shows that voting Tory is a daft thing for many people to do. But, perhaps, all that says is that lots of people aren't all that bright.

A benefit doesn't have to be a hand out. Rationing in WWII wasn't a handout.

Indeed it wasn't. If you didn't have the money to purchase the goods you had coupons for, you couldn't have them. I'm not sure quite what point you're making.

Can someone explain how cutting tax credits because people should be motivated to better themselves and freezing public sector wages which are already in fixed pay terms go hand in hand? As a nurse, my only way to increase my earnings is to work more hours, get a promotion or dump the NHS and go agency. A private sector worker can negotiate terms and conditions.

We've had nationwide distribution systems in the past, and we have one now, the NHS. Labour has the challenge of turning the one which gives out food and shelter into something viewed positively, something which contributes to the nation, rather than detracts from it. Put simply, they have to persuade the nation that it's a public good.

Rationing was not a benefit, it stopped rich people buying all the goods which were in short supply and enabled all to buy them. You also had to pay for them.
Nationwide distribution systems which give out food and shelter have been tried in many countries and they fail everyone miserably.

I don't see any objections to free KS1 meals in schools or food and shelter in hospitals. So, I think, the objection isn't to the principle of giving away food and shelter, but to the extent of it and its conditions. We're willing to support it, provided that it's doing us good.

Rationing was also brought back after the war, when it could be argued that it wasn't needed. That was to help rebuild Europe. There was more to it than wartime logistics.

We've had nationwide distribution systems in the past

When?

Rationing was also brought back after the war, when it could be argued that it wasn't needed. That was to help rebuild Europe.

No it wasn't. Attlee saw rationing as a mechanism of social policy, and wanted to build socialism-lite by using wartime controls in a peacetime economy. The shipping of grain to Germany in 1948 was a side-show.

So rationing was maintained (and increased: bread was not rationed during the war, but was afterwards) in parallel with a vast system of subsidy for foodstuffs which decoupled prices from costs. The 1950 general election had rationing front and centre; Labour lost 78 seats and the Tories gained 85, leaving Labour with a tiny majority of 12. The following year, Churchill was back in office and Labour were out for fifteen years. It's handily forgotten that the party that introduced the NHS was out of office because it wanted to maintain food rationing on a permanent basis.

"I don't see any objections to free KS1 meals in schools"

There was plenty of objection to it, I object to if for starters.

FSM are hugely important to some children, but giving them universally is far from a cost effective way of ensuring those children receive them.

The KS1 thing causes a bunfight pretty much whenever it comes up.

also children are at school at lunchtime and patients are in hospital. Do we build canteens across the country and we troupe in in shifts for 3 healthy government sanctioned meals a day?

Did anyone see dispatches about the LOBO loans. It was scandalous, basically councils (up and down the country) have loans with banks. Newham for instance have a £500 million pound loan at 7% interest!!!!!!!!!! The banks royally stitched them up, the interest can go up but not down, if they try and get out of it they have to pay a hefty penalty. the banks mis-sold them to the councils, why the hell have they not been held to account? That's costing the tax payers millions

I would like universal free school meals for all under 16s in most deprived areas to make sure that extreme austerity policies do not prevent children from eating at least one meal a day. I don't under the logic of only providing free school meals for key stage 1. Either children need to eat or they dont.

Issy That's the biggest load of tosh I have read in a long while. 'Welfare' became handouts and ceased being social security the moment the country could no longer fund if from the National Insurance contributions made by workers. The moment it was decided that no-one needed to work and everyone should be allowed to live for free, it because a welfare system, not a social security system.

In regard to the maths, you are woefully mistaken. No amount of socialist whitewashing of history and economics can make the maths work. Every single developed nation on the planet has the same problem. No amount of rhetoric from the left wing media will add value to our economy, and anyone who has every run a household knows that you cannot ever get out of debt by taking on more and more debt.