Absolutely rinsed in this budget - almost £1k a year worse off.

[Mushroo]

Honestly in despair at this government. On a very high level calc, we are so much worse off!

We both pay a lot into pensions, so the NI change is about £700 a year worse off.

We have an EV car, so based on our 4k a year mileage, it’s about £120 a year. (Although how it will be enforced I have no idea).

Stagnating tax thresholds, probably about £100 a year between us.

Council tax F house (4 bed end terrace, not a mansion, needs renovating). So risk of revaluation after having paid a fortune in stamp duty. We didn’t get first time buyer stamp duty relief because we bought about 2 years too early, and we moved before Covid so no relief there either. So overall we’ve paid about £30k in stamp duty already over our lifetime.

Weve already had the private school hit (which is a separate debate and we’ve accepted that) but wow, we are just being kicked on all sides.

We are classic ‘middle earners’ - earn about £70k each, but have mahoosive mortgage and pay over £2k a month in nursery fees already.

Every measure just seems to have a negative effect on our lifestyle, which is ‘comfortable’ but increasingly squeezed.

That is incredibly sobering.

A combined income of 140k does not make you ‘middle’.

It would be if it was true. It’s actually five million of working age.

5 -10 million both numbers are far too high

Are we getting overwhelmed by big numbers again on this thread? You can knock a bit over a million off that 5 mill to take into account people who are stay at home parents. Then there are 10 million disabled people of working age in the UK, its not difficult to understand a percentage of those won't be able to work. Then there are a million mature students in the UK not all of them will be working. I'm sure there are also some lazy feckless people like you are implying but 5 million isn't bad really considering all the reasons people may not be working.

Stay at home parents and students won’t be claiming benefits.

Depending on the circumstances they can claim UC.

It’s the stay at home parents or part time parents who claim benefits that need to go back to work

Despite your snarky remarks, i ll try again....

Welfare spend is across a huge range, you want pensions frozen? UC frozen? CB frozen triple lock gone? etc etc.

I hope you were in full support of Labours original WFA plans???

The pool of people in work is at record highs, the amount of tax taken is also at record highs.

These are the facts.

On forecasts, my point is that say she uses the 4bn one, then next month OBR turn around and say "oops, got that wrong, its 6bn blackhole...."

You d be the first to say "Why didn't she have more fiscal headroom?, she should resign!"

£4bn, in a 2 trillion economy and the uncertainty in todays world, is nothing at all.

In case anyone still believes all the Telegraph rubbish about people being better off on benefits here's an explanation;

https://benefitsinthefuture.com/lies-damned-lies-and-the-telegraph/

They've basically compared a working family without kids and where no-one is disabled to one where a parent is severely disabled and has three kids.

If the working family also had three kids and a disabled parent they would be quite a lot better off - ie if you actually compared like with like.

In most western countries, yes, it does. It doesn't in the UK bc the wages are shockingly low and people just accept a bad standard of living. Low wages, high taxes, high CoL.

Well that's just bollocks isn't it? It's not the case in Australia, America, Canada or most of Europe.

Maybe Switzerland, their median income is about £90k for a couple so £140k might be classed as middle earning at a push

Which countries were you thinking of?

None of those facts.

The fact is that she lied.

she didn’t use the latest forecast and lied about the blackhole.

And welfare bill has never been higher, the number of people on benefits has never been higher. The number of net takers from the system has never been higher. And the amount of tax paid by the lowest share of net contributors has never been higher.

All equals more people doing less and taking from those who are productive. Orchestrated by a liar who tells lies about economic forecasts.

The fact is that she lied. she didn’t use the latest forecast and lied about the blackhole.

It’s rather more nuanced than that as this article shows. Make sure to read to the end.

https://www.thetimes.com/article/1787b523-a591-411d-a183-e2b5d64f2f5c?shareToken=4734a40b0888d514911f51a1f723e861

So the OBR inadvertently leaked this budget. Just like it inadvertently leaked the March budget, only someone noticed that one in time.

Hmmm 🤔

Reading that, it appears as if Hughes saw his role as making life as difficult as possible for the Chancellor.

Sure be independent but its not the OBRs role to deliberately try and mess up Govt's economic plans.

@GentleOlive You re pretty much fanatical in your hatred of this Labour Govt, so there isn't much point answering your inaccurate statements, you're not open to dialog.

Have you looked at the latest opinion pole on Labours performance?

You are trying really hard.

But fluff doesn’t equate to nuance. It’s still just fluff.

She lied. You may find that hard to accept because of some misplaced loyalty to Labour, the rest of us can see what’s right in front of us.

Sorry you are struggling to accept that she lied. No one can help you with that.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/czj0ngnkl2vo

I don't think she did and neither does the OBR, i think she was economical with the truth but i'd rather that than Gilt yields rise.

We are all entitled to our opinions, i'm just a bit more balanced than you are & don't go in for the snarky little comments

What sort of "pole" is that then? flag pole?

I saw the Sky one, 1 in 3 think she is doing an awful job, 2/3rd s are either indifferent or think she is doing ok.

But who cares? they won the last poll and the next one is in 2029.

You know what I meant but I hope it makes you feel better to point out predictive text took over. One thing is for sure Labour will be out the next election then who knows what will happen

i know but its cold and it made me laugh!

Labour have gone from winning an election to 18% in the polls, inside 16months, so who knows what the next 3.5 years will bring?

Chaos probably and I really don’t think Kier will be leading them. They are done for a generation