Well done George Osborne - stonking budget

[claig]

Tax free Allowance rising to £11000
40% tax threshold rising to £43000
Corporation Tax falling to 19% and then 18%
National Living Wage will reach £9 by 2020, will start at £7.20

If they carry on like this, Labour are finished and poor old UKIP and Farage won't stand a chance of getting a look in. But credit where credit is due - well done Osborne!

'even the Conservatives admit this, so how do they do it with such high tax rates?'

Investment and education. They are not dominated by the City and the bankers. They still have manufacturing and production which makes them the first or second exporting nation on the planet.

A low CT rate mean companies will put headquarters here as in the Irish model but they are likely to do it by US companies taking over UK companies in order to benefit from lower tax rates.

Not necessarily a good thing.

We can't afford the maintenance grant for poor students, but we can afford 30 hours of free childcare for families who can afford to pay for it.

Sod degrees, lets make kids start FT education at 3 instead (not for the kids of course, but those lazy parents need to work - who do they think they are, having children when they should be working). And anyway, those students could afford to go to uni if they weren't so poor and lazy. They just need to work harder

It makes me angry and depressed all at the same time.

I have said I was wrong about the budget. I was taken in by the headlines. I don't promote the budget. I have backed away from my original view that is was a good budget. I have changed my analysis. I like Farage, not Nick Clegg, and I was glad that Farage wiped the floor with him.

Selfina, I agree with you.

"You promote the budget and then seem to back away from your own analysis"

That's kind of unfair given that claig has actually said she's changed her position after looking at it, you get way too many threads where people argue their position dogmatically no matter what anyone says or whatever the facts of something are, especially on political threads.

Our politicians act in their own best interests, and even so soon after an election are already trying to win votes for the next one. It was all about clever wordplay, the subtle redefinition of things and taking the piss out of the Labour party, whilst making things good for them and their friends.

The general public weren't even an afterthought.

That is why these threads are good. With free speech, we can all learn stuff we didn't know or realise and change our positions. I was wrong about this budget and I have learned.

'the subtle redefinition of things and taking the piss out of the Labour party'

Yes, it was tricks like appropriating the term "Living Wage" so that Labour can no longer use it to any effect. Whatever Labour say now about it, most people won't listen.

I'm watching the Daily Politics on BBC2 just now

The Conservative Rebecca Dow, has explained the tax credits cut this way..

She had a single mother in her constituency come up to her and say "why is it fair I get nothing and the mother next to me doesn't work and is topped up by tax credits?"

she is the MP for Taughton Dean

Rebecca said thats why tax credits are being cut, someone out working shouldn't be getting the same as someone who doesn't work..

she just doesn't get the fact that the single mother who doesn't claim tax credits earns enough not to have to claim and the other mother claims but doesn't work at all

I was almost screaming at the tv that its the WORKING POOR who are having their tax credits cut, the WORKERS, not the unemployed, not the mother who doesnt go out to work, but the mother who finds the childcare, spends money on work clothes, goes in and out of her daily job as she knows there is no credible alternative, SHE is the one losing the money!!

This Rebecca Dow says its only fair what they are doing.

I GIVE UP!!!!!

If the MP's dont get the difference, what the hell chance have we got??

sorry, meant Rebecca Pow MP

I don't do twitter, but if any of you do, please could you let her know the difference

she's patronising the interviewer there as well, telling her she doesnt have the figures for something but shes sure the interviewer has researchers in the BBC who could give her a few notes

christ, this is the type choosing our futures.

utterly, utterly depressing.

Hannahouse .... Re Germany vs the UK, Corporate Tax is just ONE cost/concern to small, medium and large businesses, the costs of several went UP under Labour, I don't know about Germany.

I find it interesting that in the leadership contest Mrs Cooper mentions her concern for UK manufacturing, which is right as Labour nearly halved the manufacturing contribution to our economy from 1997 to 2010, most of which were lost by 2005, 2-years before the financial crash began

www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/million-factory-jobs-lost-under-labour-6150418.html

It's all missing the point though isn't it? "She has more than me so I want her to have less" rather than "I deserve higher wages". And neither of those two people are gaining anything, but the person who doesn't claim tax credits feel like she has gained something, but it only seems like that because the other has lost something.

I'm not even sure that makes sense really - we (as in society in general) are celebrating that some people now have less, without realising that we are no better off than we were even though we feel better.

(Disclaimer - I know most of us on this thread aren't like ^that, but I had to use 'we' or it made even less sense than it does now)

the some people who now (or will) have less are the strivers the gov go on about

YY

ssd ... I'd say what Mrs Dow, Pow, Wow (whoever) was trying to say, was that people are fed up with people on benefits who could work, receiving more than those in work clear net after tax.

There are only a few Labour MP's I have any time for their opinions, and Frank Field also on the show , is one.

I have not looked through the math, but I trust Frank to get it right, and it does appear that Osborne has got the in work Tax Credit part wrong.

However, we wouldn't have had a few million new private sector jobs under Labour who were putting up National Insurance (a jobs tax) in their last year in power, so were clearly clueless what to do to KEEP the private sector jobs we had, never mind create new ones - and MUCH of Osbornes Budget was creating the conditions for a few million more jobs - while reducing the Labour annual Budget deficit, now down to around £69 billion (from £153 billion in 2010).

isitme, people who receive tax credits and work dont get more than people who work and dont need tax credits

if you work and earn enough not to be entitled to tax credits then you earn more than someone who works and gets tax credits to top up your wage

Seffina ... may I suggest that OTHERS are "missing the point:"

Under Labour, tax after tax went up e.g. Council Tax up an average of 110% over 13-years.
www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-389284/The-80-tax-rises-Labour.html

The Welfare/Benefits bill shot up faster than anywhere else, as government spending in 'real' terms rose more than anywhere else in Europe, as the Public Sector also grew in size e.g. 1 million new employees.
www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/10574376/Graphic-Britain-outstrips-Europe-on-welfare-spending.html

So ordinary tax paying citizens were getting hit to pay for a larger State, that as a country model was going to fall apart at the first major recession, as those tax providers due to unemployment became far less, while the tax receivers costs REMAINED THE SAME up to 2010 - hence our £153 billion annual overspend.
www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/personalfinance/pensions/10698432/Final-salary-pensions-10-times-more-common-in-public-sector.html

The thing is, it is widely thought that in 'the good times' putting the country on Welfare/Benefits dependency, did many who thought it did not pay to work, no favours at all as a few million new citizens found jobs.

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1245080/Embarrassment-Brown-major-report-reveals-inequality-increased-Labour.html

So something had to be done to rebalance the economy to a more sustainable footing, while reducing the £153 billion annual overspend Labour left.

isitmebut, you seem to have your own agenda and won't listen to anyone else.

Also, lifting quotes from the Torygraph and the Daily Mail says it all.

ssd .... as I conceded, if Mr Field is correct, 'I agree with Frank' (and Osborne may end up having to corrects it), but based on the Labour shitheap he inherited, Osborne has done a lot right including raising the start rate of tax which was what, around £8k in 2010, with a over £12k target - so there may be more measures to come to make work pay and shift the balance from a State sub, to higher wages/lower taxes.

As I said earlier, it is all about rebalancing Labour's mistakes, which may have been find if economies had perpetual 'booms', but they don't, and we have to understand recessions tend to hit every several years, and we experienced 'the mother' of recessions, the worst for 80 odd years.

Wouldn't it have been nice if our problems were addressed closer to 2008, when our GDP was to FALL nearly 7% and our earnings, in REAL terms, began to decline.

But Osborne had to start from scratch, and whether 2010 or 2015, the only concrete plan by other parties to correct those imbalances, was MORE National Debt beyond 2020, while they both thought about it and grew electoral balls to propose non populist policies.

ssd... as opposed to YOUR ignorance/propaganda?????

Please tell me what YOU disagree with, from the FACTS I have posted, whether they appear in non Daily Mirror papers, including the Beano????

Osborne had a massive job, as the economy in 2010 was NOTHING like the one the Tories handed over in 1997, so the constant whining of a few policies versus the big picture direction of travel versus the rest of Europe's performance, does get on ones tits.