What's coming on 20th Oct

[Brollyflower]

So go on then all knowledgable MNetters... if the big slashes are yet to come, what will they be?

Are we talking tax rises or what? People keep saying no part of peoples lives will be untouched and the savings needed are massive, so can we please have some examples of what might actually be cut?

I don't disagree that labour handled our finances less than brilliantly.

However their ethos was fairer and more humane.

There is no point suggesting what the tories ought to do, because their whole aim is to keep the rich happy and make the poor suffer.

That's their ideology. It's what they base every piece of legislation on.

Flight that isn't right is it, look at the latest CB cut. That hits higher rate earners, (granted there is an issue with it still). But if you think that they want to keep the rich rich then they would have 1) stopped it for the over 16's, 2) said they were only going to pay for say the first 2 children.

I agree the richer have to 'pay their' way but if they continuously hammer them then 1) more will leave the country thereby reducing the amount of money in the country 2) they won't be able to afford additional spend which will hit the economy and a number of occupations like private schools etc etc.

I know people say that children shouldn't need to to go to private school but if these were done away with a lot more people would be out of work.

It's a difficult balancing act.

Yes flight.

Feels to me that they are probably quite relieved that they get to "solve" the deficit - gives them a good excuse to get very quickly to where they would like to be ideologically.

Just say, that they wipe the deficit in 5 years (HA!). Then just say that they get in again at the next election (HA!). None of these cuts will be reversed. This is the way that they really want things to be.

tootles there is speculation that this initial cut is strategic.

I don't for one minute believe it reflects a change in their ideology.

on October 20th we will start to see the bigger picture.

As for private schools, I fail to see why the same schools and the teachers who work there couldn't become public sector. But that's not really the issue here.

Surely they wont do anything with Nursery places because they just changed them from 12.5 to 15 hours. I think they might up the minimum age though.

I think they will actually.

Agree about the huge mortgage thing. I have no sympathy for anyone who says, 'well i have a huge mortgage to pay...'.

Yes, Mizu - almost like saying 'well, I have a very large car to run, it's very expensive with a straight 8 engine, you know, so I don't have any disposable income'

People do make choices but it doesn't mean everyone can have everything. Only a few people can be rich and it is at the cost of everyone else, those who take the menial jobs, because they don't feel entitled to a massive wage- they just want to live and work and have enough to eat and keep warm.

The rich don't support the poor, it's the other way round. If nobody was rich nobody would have to be poor.

I don't think they will touch child benefit again will they, though, ie lower cut off age? agree ema might go.

Re: huge mortgage. South East, 4 kids, state schools (no benefits except child benefit, factored into mortgage). Stuck here for job. Zero chance of assisted housing. Rent about the same as mortgage payments. I think the inequality argument is too complicated to get into - even if you levelled everybody out, some people would find a way to get more money than others. If you have no prospect of higher earnings, then you kill aspiration - the very thing they want to encourage with the whole everyone to uni / make all schools fantastic/ etc thing. If we get squeezed much more, we will go under. Simple fact. So I feel that there are a lot of us around, and we can't keep getting hit. If we lose nursery funding, which I am praying for in January I will leave work as I currently pay half in child care, and the other half in petrol.

I also think that nobody is right. It's really only possible to see things from your own perspective or experiences, which is why putting a childless millionaire in charge of the purse strings worries me.

I reckon they'll take out the ESA part about mental illness.

What is ESA?

Grumpy, we are in the SE too. I disagree on this:

'If you have no prospect of higher earnings, then you kill aspiration'

I don't think that's true at all. You might kill financial aspiration, but not the other sort which is about having a job you love and enough money to live on.

If everyone needed huge financial rewards there would be no nurses, no one to drive ambulances, no teachers.

Not everyone WANTS to earn £75,000 a year, believe it or not!

I know, but the high earners also drive society by employing cleaners, nannies etc (we don't) (FWIW I earn v little working p/t for a charity - I get doing a job you love).

Employment and Support Allowance (used to be incapacity benefit)

Thanks, Spooky.

People who choose to have a big car and mortgage assumed so on the basis they earned enough to be able to afford to pay for it.

It's about taking responsibility for the choices you make and sorry but whilst I fully support a lot of the cost cutting measures they have to do something to the welfare to system to support the disabled, special needs and those that genuinely fall on hard times.
Others who have children to get more money or expect the state to support them have to be stopped, as why should the higher paid support them in higher taxes etc?
Finally, people should not be worse off by working so they should get more to work whilst being supplemented but those who say no it's not enough should get less.

I don't buy the oft trotted out argument that if you tax the rich then they will leave the country.

It smells like blackmail and bollocks to me. I don't think that they will. There are already cheaper places to live than England. If that was so important, they they would have gone already.

Do you seriously think people will want to work 50 - 60 hours per week and then give over half of it to the state to pay for others who won't work!?

Plenty of people work 60 hours a week and don't make the higher rate tax band.

I don't see why anyone should have to work that hard.

riven the state pension is paid through national insurance payments made during a persons earlier years so why should people have to work for things that they have already worked and paid for.

The other benfits that pensioners are entitled to cost very little compared to other items of welfare expenditure such as housing benefit or tax credits.

The breakdown of the welfare budget is availible here:www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2010/jun/02/liberal-conservative-coalition-welfare

The 3 biggest pieces of welfare expenditure are tax credits, housing benfit and child benefit.

Disability Living Allowance and Incapacity Benefit are also large expenditures