AIBU to wonder what on earth the government is doing with our money?

[Lapland123]

So we have higher taxes than ever

yet we have all public services at an all time low, with everyone involved striking due to poor pay, which is causing a vicious circle in terms of recruitment of new staff and retention of existing staff

Teachers, firefighters, criminal law barristers, doctors, nurses, university staff etc all striking

What on earth has the government done with all the money we give them?

Aside from the blatant theft such as the PPE scandal, how are they draining the taxpayers money?

Because the one thing we are sure is that it isn’t reaching the workers delivering public services we all need.

I should say income tax as obviously anyone who buys anything pays tax.

Furlough!

Poor boundaries!

QUEER ideology wasting money on training and changing back and forth of provisikns like toilets and waste of time court cases on the irrational luxury beliefs of 20% of the vocal forceful woke population.

After all the follow the science during lockdown it's abandoned for a 20 year old who who obtained an honourary theology degree not a science degree for her stance on issuss like men being women and her other ideas on science as a child.

Over concern with the borders of other countries and not our own.

If we'd locked down earlier it would have been shorter. Bojo kept dithering because he wants to be popular (see 'saving Christmas' every year.

If only we had the courage the French have and went to the streets !

Stayed in the EU?

This.
A lot of people and organisations don't seem to know the difference between NEEDS and WANTS.

I know a pensioner who keeps talking about a pot they paid into that is now paying out their state pension. I tell them they paid for others pensions when they worked and there are lots of old people and not many young, there is not big pot sitting around that young people today fund her pension, she can't seem to grasp this and tells me old people aren't a drain on taxation. I don't resent them getting a pension, I would like them to acknowledge the situation, stop being nasty and lie.

Half the NHS funding goes on salaries.

I suggest people tell this to those who refuse to pay Child maintenance and others enabling it.

The people who can't sort their own relationships out be they an employer or abusive patent (financial abusers who dknt pay child maintenance to violent ones, are likely personality disordered.

Mental health seem to be inept and I don't see them fix anyone. Prince Hrry has the best access to Mental health care and seems worse than ever. The NHS is gaslighting everyone with Annexe B and telling us all men are women, then making permanent pre pubessant bodies, they don't seem to be very competent, just a job creation scheme for a cult funded ny the taxpayers with anti science, anti safeguarding, irrational luxury beliefs.

I firmly believe that essential services (transport/water/gas/electricity/telecoms) should be publicly owned. As soon as you bring profit into it companies are more concerned with their shareholders than their customers. The water thing makes me crazy.
It was supposed to encourage competition but they seem to all get together and fix prices.
If Keir Starmer had any balls he would re-nationalise utilities. We are being fleeced for profits.
It's insane to me that my electricity company is French and local trains are owned by the Dutch. Not so much taking back control as giving it away.
We have voted to make ourselves poorer.

https://www.personneltoday.com/hr/uk-households-poorer-than-french-and-german-equivalents/

Plus, a lot of people work in the public sector. I am not badly paid at all and pay about, what, 6 or 7k a year in tax? So you need several of me to pay for one nurse or one teacher.

You do know that public sector workers pay tax too? Considerably more than you in some cases.

Did you think the Covid payments letting people stay home not working were going to be free from some magic money pot?

There's a thread about Bereavement Allowance. Apparently, if someone dies you get a load of free money to, I don't know, make yourself feel a bit better.

Well said

Well yes@Jaxhog and creating a whole new level of bureaucracy because of brexit didn't help.

Yes, I do know that public sector workers pay tax too funnily enough; I work in the public sector.

And you've totally missed my point.

Although it's also worth pointing out that the income tax they pay is effectively the government paying itself the same money, given their gross salaries come out of government budgets...

I think the main criticism of the tax rise is that the additional taxes are being used to fund social care for the elderly. So, oversimplifying a bit:

The main complaint of elderly people is that they shouldn’t have to pay the full cost of their own care because that means that they might have to sell their houses which would leave them with no property to pass to their children. So you can see why some younger people are upset at why they should have to pay higher taxes so that older Middle Class people can pass a larger inheritance to their children.

It’s not a complaint among people I know. My parents both went into residential care and their next door neighbour said what a pity it was that everything they worked for would be used to pay for their care. My crisp and breezy response was that they saved for a rainy day which had arrived and it was time to put the umbrella up.

If either of us need residential care and the house has to be sold, that’s fine. Our kids will do very well with or without an inheritance. The beauty of self funding is choice, you don’t have to end your days in whatever shithole social services deems appropriate.

I’m happy to pay higher taxes to fund decent universal healthcare and education and other public services. I’m furious that our hard earned money is being given to the government’s mates and funding a charlatan ex PM’s legal defence to save his skin.

Furlough
Defending Democracy in Ukraine
Energy help

I'm addition to many things mentioned

What on earth has the government done with all the money we give them?

The government has £40bn a year less money than they would have had if Brexit had not happened (measuring from 2020 as that was end of transition when Brexit actually hit). The reports all show tax receipts as a function of % of GDP to obfuscate this drastic drop in government money as Brexit, but mostly the pandemic, caused our economy to contract and GDP to dramatically drop.

• Boris Johnson's legal bills
• bonkers schemes like the Rwanda asylum ''processing'' centre
• pay rises for MPs
• pensions, subsided lunches, transport and housing for MPs and ministers
• track and trace fiasco and Dido Harding's salary
• furlough fraud.

Beyond that I have no idea where the money has gone/goes as the country is a complete mess.

£ spent supporting Ukraine. Wars are expensive.

Wasting it on totally the wrong problems.

Combatting immigration: we need more immigrants not fewer! We have an ageing population and it can't be supported without immigration.

Punishing people for being on benefits: punitive, unsupportive benefit systems that treat everyone as a lazy, lying scumbag cost a lot in terms of desitution and poor mental and physical health, and don't help anyone get work. I mean, it's literally been shown by research a few years ago that government support to find a job achieves less than no intervention at all.

And so on.

Do you mean something like this @Reluctantadult ?

Government spending pie chart

Paying off massive debt due to the borrowing of the previous government and this one and paying for missiles, for a war that has nothing to do with us and is a war between the USA and Russia, in all but name