All-round Budget thread

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i just think it's a bit much that we've handed the country over to the care of a bunch of rich kids, ex-Bullingdon club members, who don't have an ounce of reality in their experience. They're there because 80% of their campaign funding came from the wankers bankers, and just because they've 'let us off' a penny on fuel, a little nip here and a little tuck there, just doesn't cut the mustard.
You can bet your bottom penny that whatever they've given will be taken away and more - as others have said, the £600 a year will be taken up by the extra VAT/higher gas and electricity prices/higher food prices. Inflation is already blooming upwards, so it won't be long before we see an interest rate rise and hence the mortgages will go up. Landlords will use any excuse to raise rents, so they'll go up too, and all the time, employers will claim the economy downturn as an excuse to pay less and get more out of the employee.
Smoke and mirrors.

'handed' the country over? Like anyone else has ever really run it in any significant numbers.....

There is not a huge lot of difference between Labour's 20% and the Coalition's 25% cuts and neither goes far enough so we've a lot more pain to come.

As for who caused the recession I thought iwas the feckless over spending poor in the US who took out mortgages they coudl not afford in the sub prime market. You can as easily blame them as the people who made loans available to them but no one likes to say that because they are poor and thick so of course are not responsible for their own actions and need big brother state to protect them.

Wasn't just the US though Xenia, there were thousands of sub prime here on 125% mortgages et al.
Couple that with a Govt. completely incapable of living within its means and hey presto, here we are.

It had nothing to do with the poor in the US taking out mortgages. That is the spin of the bankers. Do you think that the whole world's financial system teetered on the edge of ruin because some poor people decided to accept the bankers' munificence? That's the bankers shifting the blame, ignoring how they played the game. Those million dollar bonuses weren't earned due to clever mortgage sales people. They were earned by derivative gamblers from London, Tokyo to Hong Kong. They make documentaries where they film the poor in America, point the finger at them and say they are the ones to blame. The truth is they were all in it together, except the poor in America, and they all got out of it together, except the poor the world over, whose governments bailed out the bankers.

Quite. I can't quite comprehend how it is even possible that as you say, financial global economic systems tethered upon the poor of atlanta, Detroit, st. Louis et all falling behind on mortgages for let's face it - comparatively cheap housing. Even to date with 2.97 US homes in foreclosure at the end of 2010, the figures involved come nowhere near the fall-out figures for AIG and all the others.

Exactly right. We've had property busts since the beginning of time and they don't collapse the entire system. Those poor people they film in Atlanta aren't thick at all. They were hard working families, mothers holding down two jobs. Those disgraceful empty boarded up estates represented their dreams. When you see the mothers crying as the bailiffs take everything they own, don't you realise who is to blame? These people believed their governments, they believed the people in the sharp suits and the snazzy shoes, they believed in the American dream. They worked hard and did everything they were told, only to see it all end up in flames. Then the corporate crowd go back to interview them and make programmes telling us that it was them to blame. Someone, somewhere should feel shame.

The feckless poor took out mortgages they couldn't afford. Now you could argue the law shouldn't allow that sale (and yes I know those loans were repackaged and sold on by banks and that that may have caused some of the trouble) but the people who took out what they could not pay arguably could be blamed as much as those who sold them products they wanted.

Anyway we have always had booms and busts. I was reading my grandparents' letters from the 1920s crash. Plus ca change except it's not so bad now as then and people tend now to be fed. Markets works in cycles and have some difficulties isn't always morally bad for people particularly if they had got a bit too much interested only in matters material and had become a bit too consumeristic.

Anyway no party is prepared to make the level of cuts the country needs so we'll all just have to continue paying back the £18k a year national debt interest each person in the UK is now saddled with, lucky us....

But their mortgages are peanuts in the grand scheme of things. The billions and billions pumped in to save the banks are nothing to do with these mortgages. Just the bombing of Libya could pay for all their mortgages ten times over.

Those poor people aren't feckless, that's what the media is telling you. Spend 24 hours with those poor people in Atlanta and you will see it is all a lie. While those people work 12 hour jobs on low pay, the fat cats drink champagne, smoke cigars, and eat the fat of the hog. Who are the truly feckless? Who are the truly immoral? Who really bears the blame?

i just think it's a bit much that we've handed the country over to the care of a bunch of rich kids, ex-Bullingdon club members, who don't have an ounce of reality in their experience.

Would you rather hand over running the country to a bunch of dole sponging, Jezza Kyle types? They have a lot of experience of "reality" don't they?

Those poor people were even still making payments on their homes, they just got over-stretched as the rates went up. But the banks didn't help them, they didn't extend their loans, they didn't cut them any slack. The government (the people) bailed out the banks, but the banks didn't bail out the people. They cut them loose and said they were to blame. Obama bailed out banks with billions and billions because they were "too big to fail", but he never bailed out the poor people of Atlanta, which would have cost peanuts, because they are "too small to count", they are described as thick and feckless, so they deserve everything they get.

But the tax payer is going to get it's money back with knobs on for the investment in the banks. It wasn't cash handed as a gift.

Anyway the budget is not massively radical and most of it was already predicted or even set 12 months ago so no big shocks or changes there.

Immorality? Some people work hard and do well. That shouldbn't be cause for jealously. If you turn to your bible or other religious works they would say envy is a sin. The rich thankfully in the West tend to look after the poor reasonably well, better than in many countries which is why people flock here. Most of us do support the UK welfare state although we might tweak it a bit. There is nothing immoral about some people having more than others. Having more doesn't equal happiness.

The government will get its money back, but the poor of Atlanta won't. It won't go back to the people, and in the meantime it is too late, many people will have already been wiped out, when it wasn't necessary at all.

No one is jealous of people who work hard, no one is envious of them. No one is jealous of nurses who work two shifts, no one is jealous of people who put in extra. But the Bible talks of sin, there are some banksters and gangsters and thieves. They are immoral, they are not happy, and they bring misery to millions.

Wow claig you're spoting like a socialist! Whence the Damascene conversion? Welcome to the fold.

Even "spouting" like a socialist.

Even though spote could be a new verb.

This is what is happening in this country. 60,000 people relying on food banks to survive. They aren't thick, they aren't feckless, they are the backbone of this country. You won't hear much about it on the media, because they are "too small to count", instead you'll hear about Lord this and Lord that, and Sir this and Sir that. These people are suffering the result of what has been inflicted on them by the banksters and the bigwigs, the "people who worked hard and did well".

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1369002/Rents-waived-food-parcels-How-Okehampton-Devon-pull-UK-recession.html

glasnost, I have always thought that, as has that great newspaper of the people, the Daily Mail.

I think "spote" should be included in the mn Politics vocabulary on a regular basis. Is it also a noun? As in "Fine spote there claig" or "I loved your spote, you spoke for me too".

leninology.blogspot.com/2011/03/working-class-tory-is-something-to.html

Just for you claig. Now spote away.

But that article is nothing new. Of course there are more unemployed in Labour areas than Tory areas, because the cuts will always fall disproportionately on the poor, on those "too small to count". But I don't believe Labour. It was under their watch that it happened. Caroline Flint told the unemployed "work or lose your homes". Many people put their faith in Labour, only to be disappointed again and again. Labour do lots of acting, lots of spoting, lots of charging at windwills, but the result is always the same. Put down your false messiahs, close up your Leninologies, open up your Daily Mails.

As you know I'm no fan of New Labour. But you also know the tories are equally mired in hypocrisy, spin, smoke, mirrors and mendacity. Mainstream parties are all in thrall to big business. That fact's not gonna go away and this budget is a mere compounding of that fact.

We don't have a party who will make people work for benefits. Nor do we have a party who will make work pay - the proposed plans for that won't work. There is not much difference between the various parties.

I do think asd it takes a while for benefits to come through which is when food parcels can help people should try now, those of us in work, if at all possible to put aside money in case at some stage they are in difficult circumstances so they can buy emergency food even if they can only achieve that by just drinking tap water as I do and not drinking and smoking.

If the rich and the squeezed middle weren't generating taxes the poor would starve to death.

Yes there isn't much difference between them. I think the others are worse, I think the others are false prophets. We can only hope for the best. I support the demonstrations, because they are a demonstration that the people need help. I hope they will be listened to.