The Budget - will it make any difference ?

Dinahmo

Really think that it's about time that people started to forget the actions of the LibDems during the coalition years. If you don't we will have more years of Tories in power after the next GE despite them losing support at the moment.

Doesn't really apply in Scotland.

Heigh ho.

Pensioners have lost the triple lock when we most need it. 8% of a paltry pension under £7k is still less thsn 4% of £15 pa. We are not sitting pretty on the labour of people at work

Susie42

After this budget I feel totally disenfranchised by this government as I don't think I could even consider voting for them, Labour are even more keen on spending other people's money, LibDems are a nasty, devious bunch, Greens will bankrupt us before the Tories with their harebrained schemes, and the rest are a waste of space.

The government is not spending other people’s money, they’re spending our money. They are supposed to represent the people in a democracy, ensuring a fair society.

As you can see from my last post I would like to see our government’s spending our taxes on making life better for everyone, with access to public services for all. Those that have more, imo should contribute more.

Big corporations should also be paying a larger amount in taxes instead of shipping their profits off-shore to tax havens.

Susie42

After this budget I feel totally disenfranchised by this government as I don't think I could even consider voting for them, Labour are even more keen on spending other people's money, LibDems are a nasty, devious bunch, Greens will bankrupt us before the Tories with their harebrained schemes, and the rest are a waste of space.

But unless you vote for one party we will be stuck with this government and their priority will always be the wealthy and privileged. The whole point of a government is to spend other people’s money but at least the Labour party will do it in a more equitable way. If we endorse the Tory party for another term they will be even harsher with their policies.

Nothing that makes any meaningful difference to me. Already driving less so 5p would only make at most 30p a week difference. On pension so NI not relevant. Cash to local authorites will be spent on anything but locals who need it (if anything in past to go by) so thanks Rishi but who was this aimed at? Not pensioners or those on Universal credit that's for sure.

Only way that it will help me is if it means that food will drop in price and my bus fair doesn't go up!
Otherwise, it is absolutely no help to me whatever

I wasn't asking you to "believe" anything vover. What you think is up to you, just as what I think is up to me. The fact that I started my reply to Paddyannes post "They didn't lose my trust ..." was a clear flag that I was talking about my personal opinion, not suggesting anyone else shared it - although I know actual people that do.

We have seen polling that suggests that many people would vote Liberal Democrat if it removed the Tories. That doesn't seem in any way contentious.

All parties get things wrong. Paddyanne's post read as if she believed everyone agreed with her view of the LDs. I was simply explaining that I for one, don't.

I am not going to be voting in Scotland. Telling me someone is a "waste of space" tells me nothing. It is common for posters in Scotland, on this forum, to talk as if those in other parts of the country are not allowed to even think about what happens there - so I wasn't.

He and his cohort will do nothing. The rich will grow ever richer the rest of us, not just those on low income, will continue to get less well off!

He certainly shouldn’t boast about 5p off fuel tax when that simply makes the rises slightly less There will be nothing for us normal average joes other than fuel rises and inflation and interest rate rises

Not even mentioned was heating oil. Tens of thousands of us heat with oil, the price has gone up 110% this last month.

Lots of garages haven’t reduced their prices - the 5p will just be extra profit for the oil companies. Sunak really is the peoples’ billionaire.

Tizliz

Not even mentioned was heating oil. Tens of thousands of us heat with oil, the price has gone up 110% this last month.

I know thank goodness the weather is getting better

Coco51

Pensioners have lost the triple lock when we most need it. 8% of a paltry pension under £7k is still less thsn 4% of £15 pa. We are not sitting pretty on the labour of people at work

We have the New Right economics at work here. There will certainly be a group in government who think there should be no such thing as a state pension. They will want everyone to buy their own and limit SP to a level of a benefit that very few can claim.

The one thing the LDs did get through in the coalition was a pension that meant no one with a full contribution would need to claim Pension Credit as it would be included in the basic pension. The idea of the triple lock was to bring the pension past all income-related payments. This government seems to be attempting to reverse the idea of the basic pension you can live that the Lib Dems sacrificed some of their other priorities to put in place.

JaneJudge

Tizliz

Not even mentioned was heating oil. Tens of thousands of us heat with oil, the price has gone up 110% this last month.

I know thank goodness the weather is getting better

And it is difficult deciding when and how much to buy. I usually only buy 500 litres at this time of year and fill up in the summer when it is cheaper but I decided to buy 1000 last month and got it at 64p. I shall be really annoyed if the price drops in the summer and I have no room for a top up. ?

The Liberals did not lay down their lives but they risked their party's power in the future and their careers for what we were told would give us all stable government.

This is what you wrote DaisyAnne You were telling us that your point of view is that the Liberals entering into a pact with the Tories was done for altruistic reasons to save the country. I do not believe that this is the case. Maybe others do. But I don’t.

Also, my MSP is, IMO, a waste of space who has presided over a party that has lost so much support in Scotland that they have only 4 MSPs, the smallest representation of any party in the Scottish Parliament. His main contribution to the elections last year seems to have been a karate lesson and getting his picture taken in a giant deck chair. Can’t tell you about my MP because I haven’t seen her do anything in Parliament, appear in any Committees, even speak at a debate. Maybe I missed it.

Sunak has no idea at all about living on a very low budget. How can he? He has more wealth and property than he knows what to do with. Why do we end up with people who have no idea how the majority juggle their money to try to survive. (As a comment I reckon sunak’s tailor needs to speak a few home truths as his trousers and jackets are far too short in my opinion anyway).

volver

Dinahmo

Really think that it's about time that people started to forget the actions of the LibDems during the coalition years. If you don't we will have more years of Tories in power after the next GE despite them losing support at the moment.

Doesn't really apply in Scotland.

Heigh ho.

I know that. Possibly I could blame those Scots who previously voted Labour and switched to SNP?

Blame who you like for the rUK electorate voting a Tory government into power.

It'll still be the rUK electorate who did it.

volver

*MaizieD*, where are you? We need you

Oooooh, it's nice to be needed

Do you want me to give my boring and usually totally ignored little explanation of how the government issues our money and doesn't depend on taxation to fund spending, therefore all these tax increases that are tipping people into poverty are not necessary; that the chancellor would be better advised to tax excess profits and wealth (more as a distributive measure, because they don't face any real hardship from inflation rather than because the government needs the money). And that removing money from the people who have to spend it into the domestic economy will, as GG13 pointed out, badly affect the SMEs that are the lifeblood of that economy. Not to mention not increasing funding to the public services which contribute to the domestic economy by procuring from private enterprises and paying wages which are spent in the domestic economy and which will be hit hard by increased energy costs and inflation generally...

Pause for breath...

No?

But the post wasn't addressed to you volver. No one, particularly not me, is suggesting anyone else believe's anything they don't want to. The suggestion that we all believed the same thing was the very reason why I replied to Paddyanne's post.

This thread is about the budget and I won't be part of taking it off thread to argue your own personal issues any more - unless they are about the budget

Oh, sorry, pardon me for reading and commenting on something I'm interested in when it's posted on an open forum.

Dinahmo

Really think that it's about time that people started to forget the actions of the LibDems during the coalition years. If you don't we will have more years of Tories in power after the next GE despite them losing support at the moment.

As you might imagine from what I have said elsewhere, I agree. However, like so much of politics, it is too easy just to shout the odds and some will always do just that.

volver

Oh, sorry, pardon me for reading and commenting on something I'm interested in when it's posted on an open forum.

Really?

DaisyAnne

Dinahmo

Really think that it's about time that people started to forget the actions of the LibDems during the coalition years. If you don't we will have more years of Tories in power after the next GE despite them losing support at the moment.

As you might imagine from what I have said elsewhere, I agree. However, like so much of politics, it is too easy just to shout the odds and some will always do just that.

OK, no shouting to be inferred, please.

The people who are in the Lib Dem Party today are generally the same people who were in it when they entered into government with Cameron's Tories. Not all of them, for sure, but many of them. There were promises about things like Student Loans which were all cast aside when the prospect of power was dangled in front of them. They were only able to delay the ravages that the Tory Party were to wreak on this country, they didn't prevent them. If they did enter into the power sharing arrangement for the good of the country, they were unable to convince the electorate that this was the case, and so the electorate abandoned them. They've got a long way to go before I trust that they have enough political nous to enter into a serious government.

My current Lib Dem MP replaced an MP who had extensive experience in overseas politics, something that could have been useful to us right now. I have not seen her at any event in our constituency or commenting on anything in the House. Our constituency is, I believe, no longer as well served by our Lib Dem MP s it was by our previous SNP MP.

So, no Lib Dems for me, thanks.

Snap YouGov Poll found that 69 per cent of people don’t think the Chancellor did enough yesterday to address the cost of living crisis, and 66 per cent say the Chancellor’s announcements today will not benefit people like them much.

Only 6% thought he had done enough and 25% didn't know.

We have the New Right economics at work here. There will certainly be a group in government who think there should be no such thing as a state pension. They will want everyone to buy their own and limit SP to a level of a benefit that very few can claim.

This - which should come as a surprise to no-one - is exactly what a free-market, libertarian, small-state, government wants. And this is the government we have got.

It should be trumpeted loud and clear to those who think that, in the interests of 'fairness' Sunak should have done this or that to limit the effects of inflation on the poor. The poor (for whatever reason) are a burden on the state purse and the government doesn't do anything to alleviate their impoverishment, because it doesn't believe in state intervention in the economy, nor in state provision, which means it doesn't believe in the provision of a national health service free at the point of need, nor the provision of a state pension. What it believes is that these services are a commodity which people should purchase and others make a profit from.

It's just unfortunate for this government that it cannot overnight remove all these state-funded services because even in our apathetic nation, people just might revolt against them. So they are doing it slowly, by stealth. But the ultimate aim is the same. You need health care? Buy it. You want a pension? Purchase a policy. Can't afford it? Well get another job - on top of the one you already have, even if it means working 14 / 16 hour-days. Of course, there will be a low-slung 'safety net'... but only the virtually destitute will be able to access it. And they are already at rock bottom.

I wish people would understand that this is the direction in which this government is taking us - with or without Johnson.