George Osborne's Autumn Statement - your reactions please!

[CatherineHMumsnet]

The Chancellor George Osborne will begin making his Autumn Statement in Parliament today at 12.30. Thought we should start up a thread so Mumsnetters can comment as it happens.

Rise in personal allowance is good, but how on earth can he afford to do that??

VivienneMary, I think the personal allowance will be £10000 by the time of teh next election. He can't do it all in one go. He needs to reach teh headline figure by the election date. It is moving in the right direction and I am sure there will be more good news over teh next two years.

What good news are you expecting Claig? Osborne's resignation?

It will be something like £9100 which means a married couple could earn nearly 20,000 without paying a penny of tax.

Did i hear right that pensioners get 2%increase?

Also had no idea what drawback thing is assume its something to do with savings accounts and isas.

I was in building soceity other day paying in a measly £10 into child account.

The pensioner infront of me was asking how much more he could add to his isa.

The lady informed him his current isa up to its limit.

she reccomended a new isa with £5000 min deposit.

to which he said sounds good and wrote a cheque from his current account for 5grands.

we all in this together.

'What good news are you expecting Claig? Osborne's resignation?'

Certainly not!
Why should a man in full control of his brief resign?

I am hoping that all of the talk is not just jot air. I am hoping that what Nick Boles said about building on an extra 3% of land in order to meet housing expectations will actually happen. I hope that very soon they will actually invest hugely in growth and infrastructure. There are only a few years left until the election, so if it is going to happen, then it will have to happen soon.

mam29, that pensioner has worked all his life. I am pleased that he has managed to accumulate savings over a lifetime.

I love the "better than 50% chance" statement - he means he hasn't a clue

Ed Balls didn't have anything to say, because there is nothing to say.
It was a good speech. good measures, good all round.

I wish they would introduce "pay as you drive" on the major raods - to stop people living 300 miles away from where they work.
Then those who use roads the most pay for the repairs.

The personal allowance will rise to £9,440 from April 2013. That's a further £235 on previous announcements. Worth about £1 per week to a basic rate tax payer.

The fuel duty rise has been scrapped, which is also worth about £1 per week for the average motorist.

Although small for individuals, the two together cost around £2.6bn per annum to the Exchequer. They're being paid for by more tax collected from UK residents hiding money in Switzerland .

The only Chancellor in the course of British history to spend his way into a double possibly triple dip recession. What a cruel, ineffectual and incompetent man he is. General Election NOW please!

Pensioners, as a group, have been the most protected from spending cuts by some margin (the IFS did an interesting study proving it). Whether that's an appropriate policy is a separate matter.

Miggsie, they will unfortunately do that. People live miles away and commute in because they can't afford to live in cities like London. They can't flip their homes.

Dilivery companies, hauliers and commuters drive to work. Penalising drivers, penalises business. It is the type of thing that anti-growth greens welcome, but it is pro toffs, who can afford to drive on empty roads, and anti the people who need to drive to make a living.

'Pensioners, as a group, have been the most protected from spending cuts by some margin'

But what is the average income of pensioners?
They can't increase their earnings and have to pay huge care costs etc.

Well I don't begrudge pensioners the extra. A lot of them will have had quite poor childhoods and may have grown up during the war and suffered deprivation. From what I've heard from older people we don't know the meaning of poverty these days.

Oh, I agree Claig and Viviennemary. I'm merely stating as a fact that pensioners have been protected so far.

I dont know I dident asked the pensioners how he earnt his money.

What bugs is

child benefit can be mean tested

yet fuel allowance /free bus passes too expensive so therefore go wealthy pensioners.

In addition to that their state pension goes up, some have private pensions too back in the day when they had full and final salary.
Unclue works for royal mail as postman and due a very good pension when he retires.

They had lower retirement age then working people now.
lower housing costs.My inlaws brought their house for 3grand.

im not saying they dont work hard.

But everyone I know right now is working hard and gets a lot less.

some pensioners are poor and in need.

just none round my way they all live in huge houses and have expensive cars.

just dont think focussed very well on need.

but pensioners vote and we have aging population with rising nhs /care costs.

I don't know why we are all surprised. He is just tinkering and the whole thing is just a joke. He is a bit of a tit, isn't he?

I think labour are useless.

I dont think theres much they could offer we have no money, growth is slow.

Im hoping some of the measures that attract business may eventually pay off.

The eurozone is still a mess and they main trading partner so we will be affected and usas due another downturn despite their huge stimulus and their is no welfare state there/safety net not like osbournes trying to replicate usa and have 99weeks jsa only then thats it and we have free healthcare and other benefits.

I think when people watch budget they wonder how it will affect them.
child benefit rise -not even inline inflation at 1% but pleased we got to keep ours but lost tax credits in april.

Income tax allowance mere £235 a year not much difference.

Petrol no increase-good but still blooming expensive.

no change vat.

I dont particuarly warm to osbourne but unsure what else could have done.

What osbourne could have done was sort out all those pensioners who live abroad and get winter fuel payments or state pensions.
Osbourne is a smug smug fool.

mrscogon34thestreet:

This is something we could do (North Sea gas), alas EU rules don't allow it - which party is it again that love the EU? Oh yes, Labour! So hypocritical!

Do you have any more info/links on this? Genuinely interested as I had no idea that EU rules prevented the UK from harvesting gas in the North Sea.

Hmm. Well, I'm a Labour voter but on the whole I think he's doing a reasonable job in a very, very tough gig.

I think the cuts announced and implemented are too harsh - my economics are more Keynsian than his - but who can tell whether I'm more right than he is? Maybe if I were in charge we'd be in even deeper shit with massively increased interest rates on our national debt because we weren't seen as a safe economy.

Whoever was Chancellor has some horrendous decisions to make.

North sea oil and gas producers pay an additional tax on top of the normal corporation tax - their effective tax rate is something like 60%.

I thought it was only £235 up on what it is now which is about £8,100 I think. So it's good that he has raised it more. On the whole I think it was a fair budget. And no disability benefits to be cut which is also good.