Chancellor’s spring statement

[Cheesecakeandwineinasuitcase]

AIBU to think that today we are about to be hugely disappointed by what Rishi says in his spring statement and just to realise just how out of touch he is with the grim reality that normal people (I.e. not millionaire politicians) in the Uk face?

My prediction is that he won’t back down on the 1.25% increase in NI contributions that he is making people pay from April. There will be a paltry reduction in fuel duty (maybe a few pence if we are lucky - but that will easily be cancelled out within a few days as prices increase to compensate). Maybe he will reduce the duty on champagne this time or some other gimmicky sweetener (wasn’t it Prosecco last time?). He might raise the threshold from which people have to start paying tax but for most working families that won’t make a jot of difference.

So it feels like we are sitting ducks and that as time goes by more and more people end up really struggling.

@EvilPea labour were in power for years after selling iff the council houses, plenty of time for them to of rebuilt 1000's of houses
Selling council houses has allowed many to actually own their own home and many were sold as they reached an age where lots of work needed.
Selling them and allowing some to have a house was never the issue
Not building more to replace was
And labour are as guilty of that if not more so as they were in power and hardly any were built
They are all as bad as one another
I personally living in a council house dh working with two little kids was worse off under a labour goverment , we struggled to buy food and relied on family as food banks didn't exsist , they were needed but just were not there
So they are all just as bad

@worriedatthistime just because you personally perceived yourself to be worse off under the last Labour government it doesn't mean that most people were.

Prepare for the collapse of private pensions, when people start to pull money out of their tracker isa's for living expenses. Its not only housing that is a ponzi scheme.

@ilovesooty well it wasn't just me people around me were too
I was surrounded by poor people due to where i lived
Don't assume because you were ok everyone else was as well
No real social media to share it then , no food banks to speak off
But i and many could of done with them
My point is they are all as bad as one another

Also tax credits were not all they cracked up to be , when you have a £1000 bill land on your doorstop
A couple of years later because if the way it was worked out so we needed the benefits then get a better job 6 months in , declare it all straight away yet later on have a huge bill
Turn down extra work as actually would be worse off
UC is better in that way by a long shot as its worked out in real time

They're not "all as bad as one another"

And I was very much not OK then, thank you, but it wasn't the fault of the government in power at the time.

They are all as bad as one another
In that case, you may as well vote Labour next time instead of for this fucking shower.

[quote Zilla1]@Becca19962014 Thank you. I'd hate my whimsy to cause offence to the unintended.

I'm genuinely sad at the desperation I'm seeing.

That said, Ive seen many who've lived in desperate straits for year before who have faced unsympathetic people but that doesn't mean more people becoming desperate is a good thing.

I might be mis-remembering but I think the uplift to UC during COVID and later down-grade caused legitimate surprise when others had had to live on the non-uplifted benefit prior to all the new UC previously working claimants making a claim and facing the wait.

Hard times.[/quote]
@Zilla1

I never got the uplift, I didn’t qualify for it.

Unlike others I didn’t fall for the pressure to transfer to UC from older pre-UC benefits for the extra money only to then see it taken away. I know of several vulnerable people who were tricked into doing that and didn’t understand it was temporary, especially as it was extended at least once. It was horrible to see people suddenly realising they were losing that money and, whilst I didn’t, I did see others on my social media feed telling those who were on UC to be grateful they got anything as others didn’t.

Struggling to make ends meet is struggling.

I still maintain using the uplift to manipulate people who were struggling to move over to UC early was a dreadful thing to do. It should have been for everyone is my opinion.

This bad as each other nonsense makes me so angry. The only period of my adult life when we had properly funded public services was 1997 to 2010. The NHS was well funded, waiting times were short and it was easy to get a GP appointment.

The difference in child poverty since 2010 is massive. Look here to see how much worse it is now.

cpag.org.uk/recent-history-uk-child-poverty

We didn’t have foodbanks under a Labour government because there was very little need for them @worriedatthistime.

We’re also being taxed at the highest level for over 30 years. The lowest tax band was 10% in 2009. The first thing Cameron’s government did was abolish it, so the tax bill of the poorest doubled.

All the same, my arse.

I would like to see labour in power & see what they achieve. I was a teen in the 90s & just remember hope & excitement in the air. Maybe it's because zI was a teen but i work with teens now & they don't feel this

@worriedatthistime

Also tax credits were not all they cracked up to be , when you have a £1000 bill land on your doorstop A couple of years later because if the way it was worked out so we needed the benefits then get a better job 6 months in , declare it all straight away yet later on have a huge bill Turn down extra work as actually would be worse off UC is better in that way by a long shot as its worked out in real time

I had that, it was HARD. They stopped the tax credit and then I had to pay back the money. So I was so much worse off than if id never had the bloody money.

[quote worriedatthistime]@EvilPea labour were in power for years after selling iff the council houses, plenty of time for them to of rebuilt 1000's of houses
Selling council houses has allowed many to actually own their own home and many were sold as they reached an age where lots of work needed.
Selling them and allowing some to have a house was never the issue
Not building more to replace was
And labour are as guilty of that if not more so as they were in power and hardly any were built
They are all as bad as one another
I personally living in a council house dh working with two little kids was worse off under a labour goverment , we struggled to buy food and relied on family as food banks didn't exsist , they were needed but just were not there
So they are all just as bad [/quote]
If memory serves me correctly Labour introduced housing benefit going on private rental started the massive BTL bubble as well.

It was all so short sighted. I can’t help thinking 4 years in power causes that. However, I can’t stomach 5 more minutes with the honey monster in power let alone longer.

Lol at honey monster.

@Lifeisaminestrone

What do you expect him to do. The UK has high levels of debt. There’s not a magic money tree. Printing more money = greater inflation (it’s already high).

The Government can’t afford to bail out people anymore. We generally had a good Keynesian approach during lockdowns, but it is unsustainable.

There was a money tree when Theresa May had to find £1BN to go in with the DNP when she didn't have a majority.....

To be fair to Theresa, she was fighting an alection she didn't call... She had to shake the magic money tree that doesn't exist, Schrodinger's money tree perhaps?, to save the country from the ruin of Labour who would have run the magic money tree that doesn't exist ragged. Poor Theresa. So misunderstood. She faced such a 'hostile environment' in the House of Commons.

@Becca19962014 I remember the issue of legacy benefits and the uplift. Did the recent court case fall?

I think I heard DWP start to flag in adverts that the move early from legacy benefits is one that the claimant should receive independent advice, presumably to prevent claims when they corporately know claimants would be worse off.

My clumsy point about the uplift was the issue that UC was supposedly sufficient when the benefit claimants weren't ones the government wanted to favour. Once more 'professional' non disabled non-traditional benefit claimants (the wrong word but I don't have the intelligence to express it better) wanted to claim and realised how little the amount was, it was increased then reduced when they returned to work. I never heard a satisfactory explanation why it then became enough for a decent life. And those levels were when energy and food prices were lower. Terrible.

@Whelmed

The thing is that if there was an election this summer the Tories would win, not because they've done a great job but because we're convinced that everyone else is worse. So they don't really need to try that hard at this point.

This makes me so mad because you're right., some people will still vote for them...we really have nothing better than this shower of arseholes? A prime minister who embarrasses our country in front of every other nation, a whole party who are beyond corrupt, thousands of people dead because they've mismanaged the covid response and who think its ok to party when people have lost loved ones, are more interested in photo opportunities than dealing with real issues like Ukraine and the cost of living.... We have nothing better than this? My hatred for this party is absolutely visceral.

@Zilla1

To be fair to Theresa, she was fighting an alection she didn't call... She had to shake the magic money tree that doesn't exist, Schrodinger's money tree perhaps?, to save the country from the ruin of Labour who would have run the magic money tree that doesn't exist ragged. Poor Theresa. So misunderstood. She faced such a 'hostile environment' in the House of Commons.

I keep forgetting your penchant for irony @Zilla1 and start trying to argue with you. 😂

@Zilla1 the court case is ongoing I believe. Like a lot of cases people have bought against the dwp I’m sure it’ll take years to resolve. I don’t see how legally it can be justified not giving it to everyone, legacy benefit or not.

No food banks to speak of... @worriedatthistime you sound like that pensioner who thought it was a good thing that they were so prevalent not realising we didn't actually need them before.

@Mistygreyeyes you miss the point I did need one as did many around me

Fair enough but they weren't introduced by the government but because of their policies

@Mistygreyeyes do you really think this is the only time i history we have needed food banks
I went without so my kids ate no foodbanks to be referred to or we relied on family buying us a little food or giving us things they didn't like etc
Just because they were not around it doesn't mean many couldn't of done with them

@Mistygreyeyes and previous goverments people also struggled but we have more social media and ways to show it now rather than then , people notice it now
You yourself just implied they were mot needed then as though everyone could afford everything
How do you know about them now ? Because its on places like here , social media etc

@Mistygreyeyes im fully award they are not provided by the goverment i am not stupid