I'm unbelievably ill informed and stupid.

[Lola247]

Can anyone explain the budget to me in simple terms please?

The Tories set the NHS into crisis with their strongarm tactics against junior doctors years ago. Something now has to give if anything will be fixed.

Public sector workers also deserve pay rises.

I would actually love to work in the public sector but make far more money in the private sector and can't afford the pay cut. (Slightly edited)

I do not blame Labour for not making everything good yet, it will take more than 5 years just to decide where we want the NHS to go. It needs a full reform, with huge upheaval and reform. These funding increases are buying very large sticking plasters to keep it going in the short term.

i do blame Labour for being deceitful (assuming it’s not incompetence) before and after the election.

All parties in opposition are taken through the country finances/budgets by the civil servants, to make them aware of the current state of affairs. So why were they not aware of the state of things? Most of the so-called black hole was well known by journalists and think tanks … but they didn’t know.
They are including the much greater than expected pay rises for doctors, teachers et al. As part of the black hole.
They are including the uncosted, extra spending for extra costs (food banks) and extra fuel help given because of the situation in the Middle East and Ukraine.
They are including the extra funding to Ukraine.

I, sitting in my kitchen at home, knew that these were extras - why didn’t they?

of course , they did. It is just a political excuse (lie) to justify NOT keeping election pledges.

I don’t think any of the above expenses are unjustified decisions - by either party. They were known about and Labour would have known - and should have taken the known expenses Into consideration.

They did the same role play under the Blair/Brown first budgets.

I don’t think they are too far off re the spending plans, but I wish they wouldn’t lie about it. Especially when they made such a fuss about clarity, honesty etc.

i think the NI raise will cause huge problems along the road, as will IHT on farm land. Just as Gordon Brown’s taxation of pension fund income killed nearly all the final salary pensions in the private sector - it made non public sector pensioners much poorer and more vulnerable in future years.

After 14 years. That’s how long the Tory shitshow as you so elegantly put it lasted.

It's not a 'tax raid' though is it? Just look around - the country is in a total mess. Crumbling hospitals, shit schools, roads like a warzone, high streets like somehting out of a zombie film. The Tories spent all our money on their mates, and now the country is fucked. It's not free to fix it. The Budget has actually been pretty fair in putting the responsibility for fixing it onto those most able to afford it - most of the money is being raised through the NI hike and changes to inheritance and capital gains tax, which principally affect high worth individuals.

I didn't mention rich people.
There is a lot of space between people who are actually poor and millionaires who avoid tax.
Labour won't target the former and thats right but they don't have the balls to go after the latter so they go for the easy targets in the middle.
And before anyone trots out the "Bitter Tory" nonsense I last voted Conservative in 2010.
Its that sort of crappy attitude born purely from jealousy thats the problem. I hope Labour might be different these days but I was wrong.
The poor SHOULD be helped and should take priority but yet again The Middle are the ones with "broad shoulders" because its too difficult to target rich people who can afford the best legal and financial advice to avoid tax

If we're going to talk about "breaking it even more" someone might want to mention Liz Truss.....

My mum has said that as she has lost the winter fuel allowance, she will just have to cut down on the heating, absolute madness from someone claiming a final salary pension. I do understand it comes from having to live frugally growing up and tbh into early adulthood, actually I wonder if sitting down with her and doing a budget would help, so she can see shes comfortable and can have the heating on 24/7 if desired.

@Fightingfat I sincerely would like to know! How else should the money be raised?

I thought the budget was reasonably measured and sensible. The one area I would question is farms and inheritance tax. I’m afraid a lot of family farms will be no more and be absorbed by conglomerates.

And, frankly, the markets like it, which is better than the Truss debacle.

Yes, never give anyone in the public sector a pay rise even for inflation or increased cost of living in two decades, and then you'll save loads of money and it won't cause any problems at all.

Our healthcare workers get paid the lowest of any developed country, which is why they're all emigrating to Australia and Canada where they can get double the pay and half the stress for less workload because the services are properly funded. The UK isn't even ranked in the top 10 for healthcare worldwide.

Did you even watch the documentary about how close our hospitals were to collapse in covid? Healthcare workers wore adult nappies and used patient commodes because they couldn't even go to the toilets.

Both parties blame their predecessors when they take office. They are generally stretching the truth.

Was there a hole in the public finances? Yes.

Was it £22bn? No. Almost half of that is down to the size of pay rise Labour has chosen to give public sector workers. The Conservatives would probably have had to go beyond the amount they had budgeted for this (2%), but it isn't clear that Labour had to go as high as they did.

Note that I am not saying Labour were wrong to give these pay rises, but counting that as part of an inherited black hole is pushing it a bit.

Yes, yet I bet you are calling people who are against mass immigration racists? What is your view on how immigration is impacting public services and communities?

How much more money do you think the NHS actually needs? Do you think there is anything AT ALL that could be done that doesn't involve a massive huge injection of cash via our taxes? Would a 'proof of concept' be appropriate to demand before more and more money is tipped into the NHS via our taxes - one that shows that more money might actually solve it? I am absolutely skeptical 100% that more money will solve the current situation in the NHS.

Stupid takes from the Tories on here, we haven’t all forgotten the Kwasi/Truss budget you know!

Evidence of that pls?

I love how people are arguing an unwinnable point. You do know it won't get you anywhere.

It’s not worse for me except for the tax on wine and I could drink less wine (I won’t). I
thi a lot of well off people thought the cushioned existence that the Tory government let them lead would continue under Labour. Ha.

Likely at about the same point that tory fans stopped blaming labour for everything during the last parliament, i.e. never. Good of you to acknowledge the tory shitshow that was and is austerity.

Evidence of what? If you mean evidence that a large part of the black hole was caused by these pay rises, Rachel Reeves herself said that these cost £9.4billion in addition to the 2% pay rises budgeted. That figure was included in the black hole.

We can all see why there's a massive hole in public finances - from uncosted things that the Tories did in office, the national insurance cut for example - as well as spunking billions during the pandemic on wasted piles of PPE (AKA money to their mates), and vanity projects like HS2. Not to mention the Liz Truss disaster. Frankly I'm surprised the black hole they've left is only £22 bn.

Public sector workers have had pay freezes for years. Why the hell do they deserve that? Private sector pay increases, why do they have to suffer? It's bad for the economy to keep pay levels artificially low, it leads to poor productivity and non-existent growth. As the saying goes, you have to speculate to accumulate.

Reeves said herself during the election campaign that the existence of the independent Office for Budget Responsibility meant it was not necessary to win an election to find out about the state of public finances.

An important part of getting older is ensuring that your relationship with money remains healthy.

My Mum was determined that not a penny would go to the government in inheritance tax, to the point that she got noticeably anxious when the value of her investments approached the threshold. She was an intelligent woman who understood allowances and marginal tax rates, so she knew that if she was £10k over the threshold we (her DC) would only have to pay £2k and we'd have £8k more net, but it was a stubborn principle of hers. I think it was because her own parents had not done their succession planning well and they had lost quite a lot to IHT.

Please see my later post on this.

It is a whole different thread but it worth saying that something incredibly scary happened with the Truss fiasco.

The democratically elected person, Truss, was brought down by unelected institutions in the city who didn't like her low taxation and low regulation budget.

Just think about that for more than 5 seconds. The unelected institutions crashed the economy to get her out. Because they didn't like it.

Unelected.

Are you actually OK with that?

That’s not a lie. Why should money you’ve saved in another way be subject to IHT but not money in pensions which has already not been taxed as much? The pension is for your income and comfort in retirement. If you pass it down a generation, then taxing it is fair.
Plus they’ll only have to pay tax on anything over £1million, whoch seems a pretty generous amount.

NB: doing something you don’t like which they didn’t have in the manifesto isn’t a lie.

'skeptical.' So you're an American commenting on the British economy?

This is a discussion about the Budget, not immigration.