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

Oh dear, I'm squelching around in the boggy moral quagmire Please feel free to diss ignore wording, but vote anyway.

LeninGrad - if it makes you feel any better there is a filthy capitalist over here who is quite a bit worse off

Well it's a mixed bag. We're better off because of the tax credits and I actually like the idea of the rich being taxed highly. The wealth of this country is so unevenly distributed and the rich/poor divide is getting greater.

However I'm not impressed by the debt. We're not economists, dh and I, but we were predicting they'd be a huge slump sooner or later. People couldn't keep borrowing to that extent and we knew that the banks would have lent out so much, should something happen they'd all crash. And they did. If we could see that, what the hell was the then Chancellor of the Exchequer doing? Too busy with his tongue up Blair's arse trying to get his foot into No.10.

I think the French had it right all the time. I agree with everything Sarkozy has said about the recession.

Seema ok. Fairly sensible infact

Seems ok.

Thumbs down for me. The reason is that Darling's sum were rather scary and they were built upon the assumption that we will come out of recession at the end of this year. Then in the next three years growth will pick up at a brisk pace.

Sorry, I do not believe we will be out of it so soon. Therefore his borrowing and debt forecasts (scary though they are) will seem remarkably optimistic in a year's time.

Labour will lose the next election, and I think that many in this administration will be quite glad to be out of power while the repurcussions of their spending decade start to emerge.

The 50% tax bracket will raise very little cash for the treasury. It was purely a political gesture, to try to reassure the electorate that Labour is being hard on fat cats, after they have spent so much of tax payers money on bank bailouts. It will put the tories in a difficult position, damned if they support it, damned if they don't. That is its only purpose.

Doest thou taketh mine name in vain?

As a user of the NHS and state schools I do fear for a Tory govt, but I fear for another labour one slightly more.

I am a member of the Vince Cable appreciation society, but he is the only LibDem I have any time for.

twinkle - read my post - thats exactly our situation if we were in the uk too ....come to germany

what i am quite interested to read from mumsnetters collectively that none of us mto think we have benefited from the last 10 years of boom, and that for some reason we arent at all culpable for this mess.. didnt any of us borrow over the 2.5/3 income multiples, have credit cards, personal loans....??

"That's why students are mostly left wing. It's a no-brainer to want to share everything equally when you have nothing."

I think that we may be in for a step-change or some such political cliche. Students (and other tenagers and twentysomethings) have realised that they will be the suckers who have to pay off the debt incurred by this Govt and are, not surprisingly, not best pleased. I think that Labour might have just alienated a whole generation of voters.

I'm a thumbs up... I wasn't sure until I put my household numbers into the calculator on BBC news website and it told me that due to the budget we as a household would be better off.

Its worth trying out the calculator to see how it balances.. although we are losing money in some areas we are gaining in others.

Professionally I think this budget is a nightmare. The economic forecasts assume , a rapid end to the recession and well above trend growth from 2011-2014. This is barking. Using these assumptions he proposes to balance the books by 2018. The reality will be years later. I reckon my children will spend the first five years of their careers paying for this government's imbecility.

The corporate tax stuff is drop-in-the-ocean sops to investment and regeneration.

Personally I shall be worse off. I'm resigned to everyone thinking that this is a very Good Thing.

Very scary post on Paul Mason's very good blog. Yikes.

I'm not operating at full numerical and logical efficiency, but doesn't the info in that blog mean that the over-confident forecasts in the budget will render the 'quantitative easing' stuff pointless?

womble, our mortgage is 2 x dh's salary (feels holy), our one and only credit card has the full balance paid off every month by direct debit (still feels holy), but we do have a small loan. (£5,000 left to pay, but we are expecting a little lump sum of the same amount later this summer which will clear it in one hit)
So no, not feeling too culpable

I think so, Kay, yes.

Nobody seems prepared to spell out exactly what might happen if it all does go tits up...

I'm still finding it hard to shake the feeling that these clowns couldn't organize an eyebrow shave in a barber's shop, tbh.

Policywonk - lots of people have been talking about the way New Labour have been sepnding our way to oblivion but with your column to write I suppose you must be too busy to read that sort of stuff - You are Polly Toynbee (or maybe Peter Mandelson) and I claim my £5

Have just read your Paul Mason thread - this has been common thinking re. consequences among a fair few. Entirely predictable - can we have a thread on gilt/bond sales failing/ collapse of sterling. I think things will be looking grim by June onwards. I wouldn't hate the feckers as much as I do if they would just be honest about what deep shit we are in. It's the lies and spin that really get me but they just can't stop it...oh and all those 'initiatives' that are either old spending re-advertised or that never happen. Aa good e.g. of this is all the housing support stuff. What's happening with all the PFI debt are we adding that in yet or is it still "off the table"?

There is no option for 'meh, same old crap' though

Seriously, the country is bankrupt, our children are going to face some serious hardship and it's not something that has happened over the last five or ten years either but the way we have created an expectant culture where we expect to have everything provided for us and that we have the right to credit/money/consumer goods IMHO.

Although I strangely think Alistair Darling might be right about the growth for next year.