Budget: The One Shining Light

As a pensioner Who does not pay tax, (as my pension is not high enough to attract the beast I can earn another 3 and a half grand before this kick in I wish, I retired at the age of 63 after having a major operation) I think this budget is an insult to anyone's intellegence, they intend to link pensions to pay (Ha Ha)pay is to be frozen for two years, (No raise there then), they have raised vat to 20% (I call that a pay cut, which ever way you look at it)
They want the industrial base to make and export more, WHO destroyed the industry in this country, or have they forgotten (Margaret Thatcher, Of The TORY party).
And they are still trying to blame Labour for the deficit, and not the idiots who bought sub prime morgages, and nearly brought the country to its knees

M McAlister
OAP
Rotherham

Al politicians are liars and opportunists who feather their own nests at our expence. Both parties have kicked pensioners in the teeth . Pensioners are the main savers and rely on interest to pay the bills. Whilst middle class
pocket liners benefit from cheap mortgages.
The best thing is to stuff your cash under you mattress and claim benefits. Like the rest of the work shy scum of this fair land.

Following on from margaretmac's and chat01's comments, yes, manufacturing did decline during Margaret Thatcher's years in office, since she reused to bail out the lame ducks - famously, Rolls-Royce - which had previously relied on State help to make up for antiquated machinery, old-fashioned work practices, etc. Our competitors, principally West Germany and Japan, had benefitted from largely US help to rebuild their war-shattered industries with modern machinery.
Also, our industries suffered from the unions, who insisted on out-of-date work practices and high wage increases, and would strike at the drop of a hat to win their arguments, in order to 'protect' the interests of their members.
All of this meant that our industries were over-manned and inflexible, with largely shoddy goods turned out - ie, totally uncompetitive.
With more and more manufacturing going to Asia, the principal difference remains labour costs. Chinese or Indian workers work for greatly reduced wages compared to their Western counterparts.

I am getting increasingly fed up with the staff writers here kicking the majority of their readers in the teeth by gloating over a policy of artificially cheap money.

Don't these schmucks realise that the majority of us are older, traditionally minded, thrifty people who have finished paying off the mortgage (I never had one), avoid overdrafts, abominate credit cards and usury... and who SAVE, more than they punt on high yield shares or anything else?

Recalibrate your priorities, TMF, and stop breathing noisy sighs of relief every month the MPC lets deadbeats off the hook. This country is drowning in debt; the sooner deleveraging begins in earnest and the housing bubble goes pop, the better for the larger economy in which our children and grandchildren will have to survive. A fine legacy of fecklessness the Boomers have bequeathed to them!

It was the private financial sector that caused the current financial malaise though Labour's over-spending certainly exacerbated it. It will again be the hard working people in the public sector paying for the mess made by the high flyers in the private financial sector, paying with their taxes and pensions for the prosperity of the few. These austerity measures may be needed to some extent but such is the ideological zeal that they are being applied and likely to be copied by other like minded governments that never mind avoiding a double-dip recession we could plunge into a depression far worst than the 1930's - and believe me we won't all share in its pain - those that caused it will still be luxuriously ensconced in their gilded homes. The so called Flash Crash in the US was no such thing - no internal technical causes have been found - and indeed its lower levels were surpassed several weeks later - it happened on May 5 when Wall Street at last digested the full horror of a Conservative Liberal coalition with fiscal and monetary policies sure to doom the global economy - it has been queasy since and when the UK budget was confirmed this week it lurched down again.

UpHillAllTheWay, i'm with you on the national debt situation, I'm not Thatcherite but I think Maggie sorted out the undemocratic overbearing unions (who were again raising their collective ugly head at the end of the last Labour administration) but when you say:

- 'The reason why banks ran into the mess where they found themselves was because the environment allowed them to - and the parameters of the environment are set by government, or by organisations (eg. the FSA) that are set up by government.'

are you saying that the banks were not in fact led by greed but were instead the unfortunate dupes of the government and the FSA?


Drunsfleet - you mention 'It will again be the hard working people in the public sector paying for the mess made by the high flyers in the private financial sector' - ok, but it's actually the taxes generated by the private sector that pay for the entire public sector, which is essentially one massive cost base that the last government was increasing and paying ever more by borrowing: these cuts would have to come eventually when either the cost of borrowing went up, the UK was downgraded or the UK economy crashed or indeed a mixture of all three. Governments, like individuals, can't live on credit forever, sooner or later the debts have to be paid off.

I agree with most of what you say Billyboy - my concern is the timing. The point of government spending at this time is not to solve debt with more debt but that unlike individuals and businesses governments with their own currency can print more of it and keep spending when all else are reigning in - to keep the fragile economy kindled - when it then shows signs of becoming more robust and self-sufficient then you remove the artificial government stimuli - do this too soon and the recovery stalls to a halt - this austerity now policy of the current UK Coalition is what prolonged the Great Depression?

And I am not making a party political point - Labour were at the steering wheel and part and parcel of the croney capitalist system that led to this crisis - a worrying fusion of government and high finance with little concern for the wider society - and the ongoing moral hazard of privatized gain and socialized loss....

margaretmac - Are pensions not linked to the higher of salaries (inc private), inflation and 2.5%? I think that's pretty generous really.

tigerroach- Cry me a river. Yes, I'm 'selfish' enough to expect a decent rate of interest on savings from taxed income instead of the lowest for three centuries, and I was also stupid enough never to have borrowed money in my life. I paid cash for my home, after saving for nearly 20 years. If others cannot afford to pay a proper rate for mortgage loans, let 'em be evicted and serve them right for overreaching at my expense.

BillyBy, I'm probably a bit late on the scene with this response for you to ever read it, but I'd like to defend myself.

You asked "are you saying that the banks were not in fact led by greed but were instead the unfortunate dupes of the government and the FSA?"

My answer is that that is not at all what I was saying. We all know the banks were led by their drive for profits - call it greed if you will - but that is surely predictable. We can predict that very few people in high corporate positions will be led by anything other than the dog-eat-dog, hard-nosed desire to win, whether they be in politics or business - but especially in finance. Businesses will make more and more profit at any price. It is down to the regulators to predict the price and curb business verve by setting the parameters of the environment in which they operate. Regulators surely know what drives business - it's common knowledge.