The budget: thumbs up or thumbs down?

[policywonk]

Interested in seeing what the MN consensus is (if we can reach such a thing)

For me: thumbs up, on balance, despite not enough Hot Low-Carbon Action

Could it be that under the german scheme, you are allowed to buy a new car or a second hand one up to 12 months old?

apart from that, its fairly simple. Old car has to be taxed & Tuv'd (MoT), and over 10 yrs old.

Noo... sorry, it's gone. I was only half-listening.

Greenpeace are pointing out that there should at least be a condition that the new car must be a low-emissions one.

I'm sure the German scheme would b simple.. I'm sure the technical cobblers will be in the British scheme.

Well its car country here. But I heard in february that the Polo production line will be closing for a few months after April, even with the boost from the exchange scheme. (may be out of date by now)
there is great moral pressure to buy a car made locally.

That means all the Brits will have to buy... Jaguars? What's still made here?

But isn't Germany suffering from the Law of Unintended Consequences?
Because of the scrappage scheme, people are rushing out to buy cars which is keeping the motor industry happy. But it means that the money is spoken for, and the knock-on effect is that they are not buying other things - so now it is the turn of the white goods manufacturers etc to complain about lack of sales.

I was pretty much horrified by this budget.The thought of all that debt is just shocking.Our DC's will be paying for this government's incompetence for years.

I earn fairly low wages,but was stuffed by the rise in NI last year,and resent paying taxes to see them wasted on ID cards,MP's expenses ect.

I can still remember the mess Labour got us in in the 70's and evidently they learnt nothing from that debacle.

Roll on the election-my chickens could probably run the country better than this lot.

Ride on lawnmowers, policy?

purits, could be true. I do not wish to bolster the white goods sector right now, I must admit. We narrowly escaped having to buy a dishwasher, after dds 1 & 2 had one of their little tussles, and fell on the open door. Fortunately, a little hammering seems to have done the trick.

But most peoples cars are new anyway (and big and black and shiny), so they arent affected. My car was the smallest and oldest in our development - and Ive got hte most children

oh come on george, surely encouraging bankers to be stupid and greedy has been government policy for years, whatever the colour of the day?

Of course - ride-on lawnmowers! There's a lawnmower shop at the end of my street (really).

Furious - the UK's debt levels are still low, in international terms. This particular point has been overplayed.

one daft thing seems to be the increase in redundancy pay weekly limit from £350 to £380. If it went up to £500 or more, fair enough, but this will make very little difference - why bother? is that just to say we did something about the pathetic level of redundancy pay in the Budget.

interesting thread policywonk, thanks. re the ebay and car scrappage question, you have to have owned your car for more than 12 months and as the scheme runs til March 2010 if you don't already own said car you won't be able to benefit. it is a daft scheme though.

I'm a bit Budgeted out having spent all afternoon working on analysis of it, but agree it is far from dull.

oh, and the car scheme has a £300m fund and is being matched by the car manufacturing industry. I think that cash could be better spent elsewhere.

Aw, tell us what you think of it Bocci.

Tiger - that would still be an extra £120 pcm though - better than a slap in the face with a wet fish?

doesn't work like that, though, Policy (not on a pcm basis) - you get basically a week's redundancy pay per full year of service, 1.5 for the years over 41. So if you're 35, say, and have 5 years' service you'd get a redundancy payment of £1,350. when the new rate comes in, you'd get £1,500. If you earn less than £350 a week it's based on actual earnings. So, yes, a bit more money of course and who would turn it down, but my point is the whole redundancy pay scheme is so out of date - I think it first came in in the 60s and at the time represented a significant portion of earnings. I don't know what the original "week's pay" was, but I bet it was a good deal more than £350 in today's money.

There have been calls to put this up a lot, and this looks like being slipped in on a "good/bad/whatever news day" to me.

Ah right, I see, tiger. That does seem pretty pointless.

oh okay then! overall thumbs down from me, mainly because the forecasts are so utterly unbelievable, and also because the vast majority of the red book consists of reiterating PBR and Budget 08 commitments.

the 50% tax rate is an overtly political move aimed at garnering support from within the old labour movement and at trying to paint the Tories into a corner but is largely meaningless as it will barely raise any extra revenue, so rather devalued imo.

on the plus side the green concepts are at least making a move in the right direction, and there is a nod towards the poor old savers out there with the new ISA allowances.

Policy - So how is debt low then? What measures are you using? All I have heard today is that we're in the most debt we've been in for 300 yrs and that no other countries (inc. Argentina ffs) are in as bad a position as us. As far as I can see we're in a dreadful situation and all New labour can do is think of the next but one election - and yes, before the scales fell from my eyes I was a life-long Labour supporter. Just think they're playing to their own interests rather than doing what is best for the country..and in a rather unimaginative way at that.

Nighbynight - are most people's cars new? Really? In that case what the hell is everyone squealing about. Obviously most people are absolutely loaded. We run a car that's more than 10 years old and we can't even afford a car that's new to us, let alone a new one, so we won't be partaking in the scheme.

PW: "the UK's debt levels are still low, in international terms. This particular point has been overplayed."

GB, when he still believed in 'golden rules', said that the public debt should be around 40% of GDP. The Chancellor is now predicting a figure of double that -yes, 80% - but commentators are saying that it may turn out to be even worse than that because AD's estimate is calculated from ridiculously over-optomistic forecasts.

taxing the rich could end up losing the government, and the country money. because what happens when the rich decide to leave the country and go and work somewhere where the tax is low? and anyone who thinks that won't happen is naive imo - people that earn that kind of money generally have a skill they could transfer to another country and could take their tax, all of it, with them as they go.

And some will take their companies with them and with the companies relocating that will mean increased job losses further down the line.

As I said on another thread, rather than hitting 1% of the population, the government should be looking to hit the self employed, most of whom don't even pay basic income tax. Close the loopholes that allow businesses to put everything against tax and avoid it, and ensure that everyone is paying their rightful amount of tax before heaping additional tax on those who are already paying more than the majority.

Debt: the UK's public sector debt levels are at around 50 per cent of GDP.

Japan has a national debt of 194%, Italy's is over 100%. The US national debt is close to 71% of GDP. After Second World War, the UK's debt level was over 150% of GDP.

I repeat: this point is being wildly overplayed.

Yes, I know that our MD, a man with get-up-and-go, is thinking of ... erm ... getting up and going. It isn't the 50% tax rate that prompted this but the generally awful state of the economy. He is looking elsewhere in the EU (somewhere with a sunnier climate too!)

Here's a table of other countries' national debts

Here's the ONS debt statistics for March.

So next time someone bleats about Africa's debt and asks me to write it off, I can say that the concern is 'overplayed'?