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Rachel Reeves
- Topic starter The Dolphin
- Start date
Nice to know that there is jam on the menu rather than Austerity for the poor and champagne for the rich,a good spot my old badger,i take it like myself you flew through the 11+.
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Actually I failed it. I didn't gain any "form" until the 3rd year at senior school, and even that is debatable. 😀
I was thinking the 11 in your moniker was obviously not your age so i took a guess.
I would not have had a number in Badger but somebody had beaten me to it.
That's a fair comment but there are exemptions for the very small businesses - up to 4 employees i think.
I think this was partly brought in as some companies were limiting hours of part time workers to get around this - some i know only offer up to 15 hours per week for part timers. At min. wage this kept them below the £9.1k threshold.
For an average full time worker on say £40k the total increase in employer NI is from £4,264 to now £5,250.
This £986 p.a increase is equivalent to just over 2% of their total salary.
Yes it is a reasonable increase but as i said earlier the average private sector wage increase given to employees is currently 5.8% so it's not as if staff costs are not increasing.
I noticed, for example that Brexit supporting Wetherspoon's Tim Martin has said the impact is £1,500 per pub per week. I'm not disputing this figure bit i strongly suspect the largest part of this increase is the min.wage increase, especially the 18 to 20 age level which went up by c10%. Also, how does that compare with say business rates, utilities costs etc.
Ultimately the govt has got limited areas where they can get more tax in - they have said they won't increase personal tax (PAYE) which is surely a positive and as was mentioned in her statement today the annual cost of servicing our national debt is £105bn a year. This has more than doubled in the last 10 years. Imagine what you could do with an extra £50bn.
Other than increasing capital gains for higher rate payers - it is currently 24% - there are only scraps like the welfare budget to go after.
Maybe the pension triple lock and/or a wealth tax will be looked at next if we are to significantly increase defence spending
cryrst
Member
- Location
- The garden of England
- Country
England
It’s a weirdo wind up troll who is my first ignore. Wissie doesnt get close compared to this idiot !
ASCPFC
Member
- Location
- Pro-Cathedral/caravan park
- Country
Ireland
Cucking Funt had Badgers 1-10.
Damn I thought Badger was paying homage to Wilf 😁
Living In Hope
Member
- Location
- Petersfield
- Country
-
England
You are misinterpreting my remarks. Of course changing culture alone is not going to change our economic fortunes, but it is an important contributor to the productivity improvement (ie what we produce per person) which is the only route to a more prosperous nation. If we do not produce more (economically speaking) per person, then factually there is no more to share around, and the country's economy cannot improve. Of course there is an argument that we don't need a better economy, we just need to redistribute what we have got more evenly. But that redistribution will largely be from wealth creators to those who don't create wealth, causing a disincentive which will steadily make all of us poorer.
So something like the 4 day week might sound great to some people as a means of improving work-life balance, but it is completely incompatible with, for example, improving essential public services, which is only affordable in the medium term by greater economic prosperity.
And perpetuating a culture where many expect to be looked after by others, rather than looking after themselves when they can, will drive productivity downwards instead, and make us all poorer.
Ultimately the policies which will make a significant improvement to our economy are those which drive productivity, and I could write another (equally boring) essay on that.
Living In Hope
Member
- Location
- Petersfield
- Country
-
England
I have to disagree with this as a blanket generalisation. It depends entirely on the nature of your business. If you have a business where people are a significant proportion of your costs, your margins are low, and customer demand is sensitive to price, this policy is extremely difficult to deal with. So for many retail and hospitality businesses this is a nightmare, and it isn't to do with inadequate strategy, but to do with market dynamics (unless the strategy is simply get out of physical retail and hospitality so there are no shops, restaurants and bars left). For businesses with low proportionate people costs, higher margins, and customer demand not so responsive to price changes, it's not that difficult to manage.
A lot of words and bluster signifying very little. The economy was not great when Labour came in and their ideological policies making it worse.
Covid and the energy crisis did damage that no govt could have easily repaired.
Now emerges that parts of the benefits system totally out of control and farcical under last Govt, the motorbility scams all coming out, payments to foreign nationals overseas etc etc
Whilst I think Reeves and Starmer are not competent they did not create the fiscal shambles, they just embellished it by the fictional black hole
Head for the lifeboats while you can.
Covid and the energy crisis did damage that no govt could have easily repaired.
Now emerges that parts of the benefits system totally out of control and farcical under last Govt, the motorbility scams all coming out, payments to foreign nationals overseas etc etc
Whilst I think Reeves and Starmer are not competent they did not create the fiscal shambles, they just embellished it by the fictional black hole
Head for the lifeboats while you can.
I see that the OBR has quietly said that they cannot include the impact of Angela Raynor's new employment bill in their growth forecasts as they have insufficient data.
The OBR is pretty rubbish anyway so don't be surprised if things turn out worse than expected.
The OBR is pretty rubbish anyway so don't be surprised if things turn out worse than expected.
This echos what I posted the other day. Big talk from Labour but very little effective action.
Allister Heath
Sunday Telegraph Editor
This must have been the most disingenuous fiscal statement of all time, delivered by one of our worst ever chancellors. Rachel Reeves’s speech was an exercise in make-believe, a painful collection of cliches and distortions, a grotesque attempt at pretending that all is well as the economy careens into the abyss.
The entire premise of her Spring Statement was false. Reeves’s conceit was that the world has changed, and that she is responding by embracing dramatic cuts to welfare and the Civil Service as well as pro-growth policies.
It is fantasy. There is no plan for change. The country remains on auto-pilot. Reeves is only pretending to have shifted course: her language was radical, but her actions trivial. Spending is still rising, including on welfare, as are taxes and red tape. Her Civil Service reductions are unlikely to materialise. Britain’s drift to socialism and middle class pauperisation continues unabated.
Broken Britain is in desperate need of shock therapy, but we were offered only tinkering. Her policy changes were driven by the need to game arbitrary fiscal targets and placate the OBR, rather than any sort of intellectual realisation that her October Budget was a calamity, or that her entire ideological superstructure must be torn down. She remains a Left-wing technocrat, and reality has yet to mug her.
Her supposedly massive cuts are equivalent to a fifth of the spending splurge she originally unveiled in October. This is not even close to the austerity the British state so desperately requires, and welfare spending continues to spiral out of control. Working age health and disability related welfare expenditure is due to rise by £15.4 billion between 2024-25 and 2029-30, an increase that would ordinarily be seen as explosive. Yes, some claimants will be worse off, a point that is being highlighted by the Left, but overall spending on these kinds of benefits is still surging.
This is symptomatic of one of Britain’s most disgraceful national failings: the pathologisation of swathes of the country, the pseudo-medicalisation of many who could and should work, the disgraceful trapping of millions into benefit dependency, ruining their life chances and those of their children.
Poverty, correctly understood, can only truly be defeated by work and a strengthening of the family and civil society, not by transfers. Tories and Labour alike (with some noble exceptions) have found it too politically tough to tackle the epidemic of worklessness and anomie created by our dysfunctional welfare state: it is still easier to import hundreds of thousands of foreign workers.
Britain’s welfare state continues to live beyond its means. Reeves’s restored fiscal head room is a statistical illusion that will not survive contact with reality. Hideous tax rises will almost certainly be necessary, either as early as this winter or next year. The worst is yet to come.
Allister Heath
Sunday Telegraph Editor
This must have been the most disingenuous fiscal statement of all time, delivered by one of our worst ever chancellors. Rachel Reeves’s speech was an exercise in make-believe, a painful collection of cliches and distortions, a grotesque attempt at pretending that all is well as the economy careens into the abyss.
The entire premise of her Spring Statement was false. Reeves’s conceit was that the world has changed, and that she is responding by embracing dramatic cuts to welfare and the Civil Service as well as pro-growth policies.
It is fantasy. There is no plan for change. The country remains on auto-pilot. Reeves is only pretending to have shifted course: her language was radical, but her actions trivial. Spending is still rising, including on welfare, as are taxes and red tape. Her Civil Service reductions are unlikely to materialise. Britain’s drift to socialism and middle class pauperisation continues unabated.
Broken Britain is in desperate need of shock therapy, but we were offered only tinkering. Her policy changes were driven by the need to game arbitrary fiscal targets and placate the OBR, rather than any sort of intellectual realisation that her October Budget was a calamity, or that her entire ideological superstructure must be torn down. She remains a Left-wing technocrat, and reality has yet to mug her.
Her supposedly massive cuts are equivalent to a fifth of the spending splurge she originally unveiled in October. This is not even close to the austerity the British state so desperately requires, and welfare spending continues to spiral out of control. Working age health and disability related welfare expenditure is due to rise by £15.4 billion between 2024-25 and 2029-30, an increase that would ordinarily be seen as explosive. Yes, some claimants will be worse off, a point that is being highlighted by the Left, but overall spending on these kinds of benefits is still surging.
This is symptomatic of one of Britain’s most disgraceful national failings: the pathologisation of swathes of the country, the pseudo-medicalisation of many who could and should work, the disgraceful trapping of millions into benefit dependency, ruining their life chances and those of their children.
Poverty, correctly understood, can only truly be defeated by work and a strengthening of the family and civil society, not by transfers. Tories and Labour alike (with some noble exceptions) have found it too politically tough to tackle the epidemic of worklessness and anomie created by our dysfunctional welfare state: it is still easier to import hundreds of thousands of foreign workers.
Britain’s welfare state continues to live beyond its means. Reeves’s restored fiscal head room is a statistical illusion that will not survive contact with reality. Hideous tax rises will almost certainly be necessary, either as early as this winter or next year. The worst is yet to come.
I wish you would precis posts of that length, I haven't read it as i get a migraine after an hour of reading it, As soon as I saw Torygraph i knew it was codswallop. I don't read Stirlings typical 42 chapter epics either.
So you don't agree with the basic argument that Rachel has done very little in terms of cuts and what little she has done will be phased in over the next 5 years. Hardly a radial budget to fix an urgent problem.
presumably someone reads it to you
steeleye20
Member
- Location
- Croydon
- Country
-
England
The BOE does not want economic growth, they scuppered the Kwasi mini-budget the day before by announcing their quantitive tightening bond sell off, effectively making the govt plans redundant.
The high base rate policy will now continue until 2030 to the detriment of the domestic economy, business mortgage payers and savers.
They think that hot money and foreign ownership will keep them going and stuff anybody else.
It's a continuation of flawed neo-liberalism that has failed but the UK does not seem capable of ending.
It's sad but do people in the UK actually care about those less fortunate than themselves? Pain for a few, for a few pennies, it's nonsense economics.
The BOE has a banking chancellor and does it show, not even a mention of brexit or interest rates.
Another bad day for Britain, with no reprieve in sight.
😎
The high base rate policy will now continue until 2030 to the detriment of the domestic economy, business mortgage payers and savers.
They think that hot money and foreign ownership will keep them going and stuff anybody else.
It's a continuation of flawed neo-liberalism that has failed but the UK does not seem capable of ending.
It's sad but do people in the UK actually care about those less fortunate than themselves? Pain for a few, for a few pennies, it's nonsense economics.
The BOE has a banking chancellor and does it show, not even a mention of brexit or interest rates.
Another bad day for Britain, with no reprieve in sight.
😎