Although I am not a fan of HS2 Tegan I do think you make some really valid points on infrastructure spending.
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Britain's National Debt - equivalent to £65K per household
(123 Posts)How much do you think Britain’s national debt has risen in the last year?
I’ll tell you…
It’s an eye-watering… £128.5 billion!
In fact, our national debt is up over £2 billion in the last month alone.
That equates to an average debt of £65,000 per household.
Last month, the Office for Budgetary Responsibility (OBR) – Britain’s fiscal watchdog – produced its first ever Fiscal Risks Report.
It warned that Britain’s public finances are now in far worse shape to withstand a recession than they were on the eve of the last financial crisis, a decade ago.
And, as we face the twin threat of Brexit and a downturn… even the smallest decline in Britain’s growth rate could have a monumental impact on our debt burden:
“If GDP and receipts grew just 0.1 percentage points more slowly than projected over the next 50 years, but spending growth was unchanged, the debt-to-GDP would end up around 50 percentage points higher.”
Right now, there’s a black hole in our nation’s finances. And our entire system is teetering on the brink of a huge reset.
Spending is going up… our national debt is going up… our interest payments are going up.
It can’t continue… but it is.
Because no one in Westminster has a plan to get our public spending under control, or manage our burden of debt effectively.
Britain is broke.
And there’s a reckoning coming – maybe far sooner than most people realise.
It has doubled since 2010 when austerity started so whilst the last Labour government did leave a mess the present lot instead of clearing it up has made it a lot worse.
Brexit makes it harder but the real fault lies in years of overspending on welfare and low taxation. Under Edward Heath the highest level of income tax was 83%. Something has to give and more will have to give if we leave the EU. Which ever way we go things have to change. Most of those changes we won't like.
Over History in many countries governments have tried to avoid such crisis situations usually caused by overspending on both a national and an individual level. You can control your personal debt and conserve your assets. However you have little say over the national debt or how the government decides to try and manage it. To manage their debt they have to use your money by taxing you more and giving you less. Consider Argentina and Greece both once prosperous, Britain was once the wealthiest country in the world yet it has been lurching from crisis to crisis since the 1960's.
HS2 was never intended to carry freight Tegan so that statement you quote is misleading at best and dishonest at worst. Neither is it about capacity; it will serve few stops, few areas of the country, and only the wealthy will be able to afford to use it.
I think it is not only a vanity project but quite frankly a gravy train. The contracts that have been put out for the last few years have amounted to millions before a single piece of track has been laid. I would like to see how many politicians of all colours have a vested interest in some of these companies.
Britain spent £1.3billion on foreign aid in 2015 to the 20 most corrupt countries in the world Devongirl. Do you consider that money well spent?
I believe that NanaandGrampy are right in suggesting we should halt this waste. Certainly in cases of emergency such as earthquakes and famine we should rally round but why oh why does the government dole out your and my hard earned cash to countries like Pakistan, China and India who have vibrant economies, nuclear weapons, nuclear submarines and in the case of China and India space programmes.
We have enough people in our own country who need aid and are not getting it.
I do realise that £1.3 billion sounds like a lot of money, but it's such a small amount of the annual government spend and an even tinier amount of the national debt. For this year, the government will spend around £814 billion.
To put it in a perspective, for government spending, it's just over 20p of a standard weekly pension of £155.60.
Some of the foreign aid may well be misused, however for some others I'm sure it's a lifeline.
Just reading my post and I don't think I was clear.
Not saying pensions could go up if we spent nothing on aid - it's the equivalent of you spending 20p a week on something if you're on a regular pension.
Primrose, my granny always said (and I paraphrase) "if the government look after the odd £1.3 billion then the National Debt will look after itself"
Just read that the convicted Rochdale paedophiles have had £1 million of our money spent on their legal aid to prevent their deportation, as according to the Europaen Courts this country is depriving them of their human rights.
We need a strong government which will stand up and say no to this type of madness.
Where have you read that, Esspee?
MaizieD, The figures were released under the freedom of information act. Articles currently running in The Sun and the Daily Mail. Can't see anything in the broadsheets yet.
Never say die. KBO. We will be fine.
Better to dump Hinkley C - we could supply all the backup needed from batteries if 10% of that money was invested now and advantage taken of the free wind, waves & Sun!! Just think what could be one with the other 90%!
Why is the Government so slow to react to observable changes?
We are wasting money all the time and borrowing it to do so.
Foreign aid is ridiculous at its current level when we have to borrow the money, disaster emergencies need help but other than that charities can help and people can use their own money, then and monitor where it goes.
Legal aid for convicted child abusers to remain in the country is hardly good housekeeping. Many of the awards paid out to criminals are money wasted in my opinion.
Immigration is costing a fortune, people who come need housing and health care and education it all seems to come at a premium cost due to high need and language difficulties. Not to mention the top up benefits that larger families need when in low paid work. The NHS bill for interpreters is millions, and then there are the health tourists...........
The BBC is over paying people and could be run for profit if it were properly managed, making us money abroad instead of costing us money.
£330.000 it cost North Devon College to re brand itself, for absolutely nothing additional in the education line.
Until we get a grip on spending and that means austerity, we won't be able to pay down the debt, only hand it down to our children to pay.
As the 5th largest economy I can't see that the UK is broken. US CHINA JAPAN GERMANY ( with no defence forces of course) then the UK ahead of France and India. The IMF still project growth of between 1.5-1.9%. If you travel widely you will recognise what real poverty is and how great our services are.However we cannot keep spending in the public sector which has no income or profit to pay for all of these services. I work in a Senior position in the NHS previously in the private sector for most of my career . Believe me I have never ever seen such huge sums of money i.e. Multi millions being given out , as I have seen year on year to the NHS. So much more needs to be demanded of clinicians and managers to make improvents in processes and systems at a high standard and with reliable methods. Too many clinicians work to their own methods rather than looking at what is safe effective and productive. IT has to be invested in also to change practice. More importantly we cannot in any public service whether housing education police fire etc etc keep just giving away millions of pounds from the tax payer. Change has to take place with Different and difficult responses to demands being made. We are too state dependent and a certain political party would like us to be more so at ridiculous cost. Then it would be broken Britain! We need to stop putting the UK down and work cross party to make change improvements but of course then pigs may fly!
Even more crucifying austerity = even more (in and out of work) dependent on foodbanks.
There's something wrong with this equation, clearly.
And why, if we're "all in this together", does it have to be jam maybe tomorrow for ordinary folks but endless jam today, tomorrow and forever for those at the top (who probably had to do a fair bit of back-stabbing and casino-banking to get there!)
Re foreign aid, in some cases, I believe we pay these countries so they will buy stuff from us. It's a kind of bribe....
The only way to sort it out is to make the pie bigger. Export more and import less. We are addicted to imports. We need to do more ourselves and then sell it to the rest of the world. Privatisation and globalisation have been great but just for just a few at the top and a disaster for everyone else. It starts with educating our population well for a good future and encouraging small businesses.
Well said jeffm.
U r quite right Blink o almost 100 per cent of foreign aid is recouped by trade deals
I believe that almost every country in the world has debt. Tho not at UK level! We should definitely cancel Hinckley and HS 2.
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This is pure scaremongering. You seem to have all the answers why aren't you running the country?
In 2006 Gordon Brown's government finally paid our financial WWII debt to America and Canada:
www.politics.co.uk/news/2006/12/29/britain-finally-pays-off-wwii-debt
As you can see we took several repayment "holidays". And this was only part of our debt.
Before we dump Hinckley C we had better figure out how we are going to charge all our electric vehicles overnight after 2040 (just 17 years away) when all sales of new petrol, diesel and hybrid vehicles are outlawed.
This warning creates fear - we are not broke. However we do have a serious problem with our finances. There are two matters to consider: annually we are still spending more than we earn, otherwise known as the fiscal deficit. Until that is overturned we cannot start to reduce the long term borrowing which increases year from the fiscal debt.
Austerity - so called but nothing like real austerity - has not brought about the reduction in fiscal debt that government wishes. Take a look at Venezuela - Jeremy Corbyn's example of how to (NOT) do it - to see what real austerity could be like.
We have continued on our present line because interest rates are so low and government can borrow at ridiculously low rates. When those rates go up we must then have a better plan. Even at low rates our interest costs are eye watering. So we need to impress every MP with the need to address this urgently. Our finances and Brexit are the only two matters they should be concentrating on now,
Tegan2 Britain does not "need" HS2, it will not offer any solution to the problem of transporting goods around the country.
The current approach that will see this take 20 years to build, simply means that Birmingham will be another commuter station for London - and to arrive in either place 20 minutes earlier than today is not an incentive to justify the cost.
The ditching of spend on rail infrastructure improvements in the North of England is an economic disaster and stifles growth and innovation.
On top of the current facile plans, trains will likely be operated by private companies - possibly the same company ties who today receive government/taxpayer subsidies to remain in business.
Some of the other points made around National Debt to GDP ratio over the years, fail to take account of the decimation of core industries and loss of technological advantage the UK possessed before the 1980s/90s. We have little or no industrial policies or strategy that will enable the same growth that was possible in the 1950s/60s.
Just by way of comparison, London to Liverpool and Manchester and then on to Glasgow was begun in 1960, and completed in 1974 - including the rebuilding of London Euston, Birmingham New Street and Manchester Piccadilly stations. A far bigger undertaking than HS2.
I do agree with most posters on this thread, the economic outlook is quite poor, and from a transport perspective, economically foolhardy.
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