You 2 need to get a room

BTW, I don't drive for the sake of it, I need to get to work and the car is the most efficient use of my money and time to get here. Food is another issue. I suppose we could always shop at Aldi/Lidl/Netto and the like. I don't buy sandwiches every day and always bring my own. Thankfully it's summer and we don't have to heat our homes. I'm not looking forward to the fuel bill at the end of this winter!

 

I agree with that.

Les

 

You'll just have to chose "greener" options PB

 

 

Seems the govt. are in more trouble than we thought, I see on the news they need more money so it's tax or borrow, neither of which they should be doing (cutting unneccesaries/expenditure is what they should be doing, that's what they're asking us to do after all!!!)

 

Well the need X amount, and the tax take has dropped - So you need to replace it. And that means either raise taxes or borrow more.

I agree that they should look to try and cut wasteage, but I'm not sure cutting public services is necessarily the way to go.

 

Cutting public expenditure doesn't have to result in cutting public services though. There's a LOT of duplication and inefficiencies and overspend.

Ultimately, you can't spend what you don't have. Like the rest of us, they will have to cut what they don't need. i.e. we can't cut fuel or food, but we can cut holidays, plasma tvs etc.

The govt. trying to tax or borrow more is the equivalent of us asking our boss for a pay rise, something that the govt. is strongly telling us NOT to do. The hypocracy here is quite something.

 

Id n't know what the duplicates and inefficiencies are, or how much there is to save there - it could be million, it could be pennies. I'm certainly not going to take any newspapers word for what the figure is.

However, I completely agree, given recent comments about cutting wasteage, and playrises to be kept under inflation, the first place the government should be looking is where they can save money.

Regardless, I think the rule change has to happen ; we are entering a period of uncertainty, and its better to be prepared for it, than bury our heads in the sand. If we need to borrow more money to ride it out, then so be it.

 

I think doing that will make the long term situation worse, not better.

What happens to members of the public who borrow too much....the same will happen to the govt if they follow this line.

The rules were put there (by them) for a reason and now they're breaking them.

I have two mates who work for the civil service and there IS a LOT of wastage, quite a few non-jobs where there should really be redundancies but the govt. has no ***** and the unions would never "allow" it.

 

Well the theory goes that you tax take reduces in the slow time, and increases in the good time - The "golden" rule, the rule that hasn't changed, is that at the end of an economic cycle, you end with a balanced sheet.

The rule they want to review is the rule on the amount as a percentage of GDP you can borrow.

Remember our borrowing is far less than it was under the Tories, so we have a ways to go before things are "really" bad.

 

Personally I don't care what the tories did in the past, better or worse. It's irrelevant now.

If we really want to look to the past, then labour are repeating themselves (tax rising, fuel rising, umemployment rising, inflation rising, interest rates rising, overemployment by the state, striking civil service workers etc.). Anyway, that's another discussion about the past and doesn't really matter.

I care about what's gonna happen in the future. Either way, this is not a positive for the public or the govt. and I reckon things are gonna get worse (probably a lot worse). If people think they're struggling now, it'll be a lot worse in a years time. The "real" inflation is a lot higher than figures suggest, fuel/food/gas/leccy etc. are rising about 4/5/6 times the published "rate of inflation". these are essentials, unlike many things keeping the rate artificially low (electronic goods etc.).

 

Well no not really. If you are saying borrowing more is a bad thing, then why is it irrelevant that we are borrowing less than we did 20 years ago?
Tax isn't rising. The average tax burden is thae same as it was in '86. Its been faily consistant for the last 25 years.

Inflation is on average far lower than it was under the Tories, as are interest rates. I mean that isn't opinion, its fact.

Where is the evidence of overemployment by the state? Other than anecdotal evidence of a couple of mates?

As for strikes, nothing, nothing has come close to the Miners strikes.

I don't mean to be confrontational, it just amazes me when people look back on Tory rule as being some shangri-la. Especially the period between '88-95.

The CPI is calculated by taking the cost of around 600 goods. With hundreds of entries for food. Electornic good make up a tiny proportion of the "standard basket" certainly not enough to skew it significantly.

However, I agree, we need a basic "cost of survival" rate. to show just what the rises are.

The alternative to borrowing is tax rises, and given you rightly say that thigns are going to get worse, I don't think anyone is in a position for that.

 

Office of national statistics:
"From June (Q2) 1998 it[public sector employment] rose every year to 5,846,000 in June (Q2) 2005. This was 680,000 higher than in June (Q2) 1998"

so that's nearly 700,000 more state workers then when labour took over.

 

Right, but that doesn say "680,00 more non jobs and over employment"" does it. It just says there ar emor epeople employed by the state.

That could be Nurses, Doctors, police, teachers, as well as Executive advertising assistants for lesbian single parents.

But I take your point, there is probably some fat to be trimmed.

 

Of course, some will be genuine jobs that are needed. many not though and that doesn't include the amount of non-jobs there before all the rises!

300,000 are nhs.

128,000 in public "administration".

5.5 million employed by the state (well, the taxpayers as the money to pay for the state workers has to come from somewhere).

The rest is on the ONS site.

Incidentally, state employment has been falling (albeit slightly) over the last 6 months, I suspect that's natural drop (retirements) and no new people employed. Problem, is people are not retiring quickly enough and once retired they are still paid for by the state! :

 

You are quite right to highlight those figures - interesting stuff.

Of cours ein any private firm, "administration" would be the first area where redundancies would happen.

Of course I wouldn't wish redundancy on anyone, but being public secotr does not equate to being immune from the pressures of the economy (or shouldn't any way)


Indeed!

At some point, and god knows which Government is going to try and do it (certainly not this one), final salary pensions are going to have to be looked at in the same way as they have been in the private sector. I.e everyone moving to defined contributions rather than defined benefits.

 

Pete,

There is an enormously top heavy structure which has been built up to oversee all these public services. These managers' chief job is to create and monitor targets which the authorities say must be achieved or else! Any organisation which needs to run the manpower by setting targets demonstrates that it is incapable of running a workforce efficiently and trust them to do their jobs anyway. The targets automatically become fiddled to look right and so the statistics are good for the authorities to quote to us even though the real work has been skimped or not done properly. People get fed up of not being trusted to do their jobs so they lose pride in their work.

The number of extra civil servants and advisors which have been employed by the authorities is immense, expensive, and unecessary. Flash said at the beginning of NL that he would get rid of all Quango's. They have actually increased in number and we have some 1100 now being paid vast sums for nothing very useful. A lot of votes being bought incidentally with all this extra bureaucracy..

There is an enormous amount of waste in this respect which can be chopped away without cutting public services and the savings would be quite amazing.

Les