UK PLC... DOWN THE SH*TTER?!
 

No doubt you've all heard on the news, the UK is in debt to the tune of £1,000,000,000,000 (a trillion!), and counting... :eek:

To get a handle on it, that's apparently £16,400 for every man, woman and child currently residing on this, so called, sceptered Isle :cry: (septic, more like). :mad:

And we are set to borrow another £124 billion this year:thumb:

well I got 50 quid due on the credit card, so it ain't me

I thought you said this was news?

Ha. Fair point.

Just that it got past a trill - some kind of, ahem, 'milestone'. :rolleyes:

We shouldn't be in debt, Governments don't need to borrow money.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YGAaPjqdbgQ

I could understand this if we had some fantastic new infrastructure that has been built over the last 15 years.
We haven't.
Loads of new hospitals then? Nope.
Loads of new roads? Nope.
Lots of new railweay lines, or trains bought by the state?
Nope, not that either.
A couple of new airports? Nope again.

So where the FCUK has all the money gone?

Into the pockets of the private shareholders & board members of the companies that have taken over from the state .

^^^ This is what makes the debt sickening.... Effectively nothing whatsoever to show for it, longterm. It's hugely depressing.

Exactly

And yet other countries in the same position as us, excluding the USA, have far more to show....

I'm really angered by it lol

All you have to do is look around you to see where the money is being pi55ed away.

My Aunty is registered as disabled (whether she is or not is debatable), my grandad is her full time carer. They get around £1200+ a month, that does not include the rent, council tax, heating, medication etc being paid for.

My uncle is registered disabled (definitely nothing wrong with him, just workshy), his wife is his full time carer. She spends most of the day out and about providing an unofficial taxi service for school kids, elderly neighbours shopping etc for cash. Between them they get over £1300 handed out to them a month plus rent, heating, medication cost etc.

Both of the above have been claiming since before I was born, I am now 29.

Another uncle and his mrs have 6 kids, he works 50+ hours a week and only declares around 16 hours. I have no idea how much they get in child benefits and working tax credits, but it's bound to be well over £1000 a month. They recently bought a £180K house, are now looking to purchase a second property and have a son who is travelling around the globe on a gap year with no debts!!

My brother works in a full time job and supports his mrs. They have just had a baby, straight away they start getting £540 a month in tax credits and child benefit. He pays around £250 a month in tax from his wages.

I'm single and work full time, pay around £800 a month in tax and National Insurance.

As a family (including all of the above),

We pay around £1300 a month in income tax, national insurance. Pay out from benefits is well over £4000 a month into the bank, on top of the additional medical costs etc.


Now I could go on to list the neighbours who also play the system, but it may be easier to post screen shots of the local roads with all the painted disabled bays :lol1:.

It doesn't half piss me off getting up at 4 am for morning shifts and getting back at 2 am when on late shifts to find these people are just as well off and have a better quality of life.

Before anyone pipes up with 'you should report them', I have done a couple of times and F all has been done.



Then there's the money being given away to private firms to provide well over priced products and services.
Compensation to our poor prison inmates who have to put up with substandard breakfast that may be served warm as opposed to hot.
Cash we give away to the EU
MP's, Lord's, council, Civil service etc expenses....
Billions to private consultation companies to tell us some scheme or other is not worth doing, in some cases the consultation costs more than it would have done to complete the whole job.

The list just goes on and on.......:mad:

I am pretty sure that the debt was much more than 1 trillion when things like pfi are included.

I don`t worry about things I have no control over.

My point goes far beyond the 'milestone' of a trillion. The passing of that milestone lies in the luxury of history many years ago.

The unfunded liability in the UK of national debt, pensions and social welfare is probably somewhere between £4 and 5bn. The last figures I saw were in late 2010 at £4.8bn.

It is not as bad as the US at 10 times GDP, but it still 3 times UK GDP that isn't growing - not a great scenario.

Yes every govt dept wastes so much money
They spent 1.2 million on a fantastic recycling centre near where I live took 6 months to get the signs put up on the highway so was sitting unused ,but staff to pay now 130 car loads a day use it as people know its there and they are going to close it expecting people to drive 40-60 mile drive to the next one which is full to capacity and say there will be no fly tipping

Our Xmas lights bill is 12k for the council aproved electricians to fix them to the lamp posts as our local guy who could do it for a few hundred is not aproved by the council

It took me 18 months for a grit bin to be delivered and installed ( put on the grass ) and cost nearly a grand true cost about a hundred quid

Every govt dept and quango wastes millions on admin ,procedure and have blank cheque books
NHS spend £350 to put a shelf up in a office for plants
We only know the half of what goes on

Let's face it this country is f####d

The last one to leave please switch off the lights although the man with the clipboard and yellow jacket says leave it on incase someone gets injured so we has better do a £10k H&S study to discuss the findings first then pass it on to a consultant to make a decision as. The local elected Councillors are frightened to make a decision incase the public boot them out

Yes, it's just the way things are now. Money - or wasting it - is nothing to these politicians. It's probably always been like that but now seems to be so much more acceptable. Look at the Edinburgh tram project: supposed to be getting on for a billion when it's finished. A BILLION! Seems like nothing to the debt, but think about where else that money could be spent, like in hospitals etc, and the benefit it would give. With the trams, it's as if they've just pissed all that money up the wall, and it's sickening. It will be for little or no benefit to anyone or anything apart from the councillors' egos.

Spending and entitlements need cut right down, but the political will isn't there to do it. Living standards right now so much depend on borrowed govt money that they'd be severely affected by large-scale cuts.

The unfortunate truth, whether it's worth repeating on here again or not :D, is that there's just no chance this will be sorted before it's too late. It already is too late.

I got as far as 9/11 and RFID chips :rolleyes:

Gotta love the conspiracists!!

Lucrative industry.

It's the illuminati at work. The Rothschilds, or the queen, or something. A subterranean lizard race was another possibility.

I got as far as seeing Alex Jones's face.

Same here. He's a cnut. :)

I'd go with the idea that this is a form of Swiftian satire to keep people watching and questioning; rather clever in the way that it captures the imagination. There you go, a conspiracy theory about a conspiracy theorist.

Stick this on your list if you want to explore the idea further:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/aw/d/0230..._d_detail?pd=1

I don't think Icke is as mad as people think: He sells a fcuk load of books that's for sure.

I have to ask myself why this country has such an enormous national debt when NL inherited a strong economy when they won power all those years ago.

Les

Les, while NL didn't help by any means they are not solely responsible here. Just about the whole of Europe and the US is in the same boat and as far as I know NL's jurisdiction did not extend over there.

The problem was we (as in the West) were living a credit fuelled boom that for some reason all these financial 'experts' though could never end. Now we're all f**ked apart from those financial 'experts' and of course the politicians who are still very happy thank you!

Yes I agree with what you are saying. But why could they not see where all that borrowing was going. Did they have no sense of responsibility for the country? They were shifting the problem down the line to saddle someone else with the debt problem in the future. Surely they can't be that stupid or have that little respect for this country?

Les

The PM and the Chancellor can't control global markets - we need to be looking at the system. I tried to go through this with you a while back when you'd been repeating the same thing week in week out, but I think you broadly dismissed it. I'll dig it out.

https://www.scoobynet.com/881175-whe...billion-2.html

ETA: #51 onwards.

Back and fourth, back and fourth, back and fourth only this time we over-cooked it. And the major beneficiaries? Those who understand the markets - not people who can't see past a pathetic savings account and 45 years of hard labour.

That does look interesting. Not long either - I might even be able to get round to it!

I don't see any need to change what I said. Global markets aside,and bankers fiddling in order to expand their bonuses etc. to the cost of this country, overborrowing month after month after month as they did has put this country into immense debt which will doubtless be felt by our grandchildren, together with the PFI debts, and all to artificially make the economy look good thus buying votes as I said at the time!

Look at the gutbustingly huge interest payments now due on the National Debt, we seem to be having to borrow now as much as anything to service that debt!

What do you suggest now to get off that particular hook? Do you think it is a healthy position for this country financially? Should we not be making any cuts but continue on towards a £2 trillion National Debt? What would you do if your own personal accounts were in such a comparatively parlous state?

Do you not think that this country would be in a far better postion to withstand world economic problems if the previous bunch of clowns had maintained our economy in a decent state as it was in when they took power instead of throwing it all away?

Please tell us the answer to it all without trying to obfuscate the real problems by quoting global markets etc!

Les

Global markets, Leslie. It's just how it is. And just because that doesn't suit you, it doesn't stop it being so. Yes, Labour overspent, but the reality is that even if the Torys had been in power the GLOBAL credit crunch would still have occurred and we'd still be in the shít. This doesn't mean I don't respect the fact that you were in the RAF.

https://www.scoobynet.com/showpost.p...0&postcount=14