letting the people decide !

[cbbc]

There is a poll on my local on-line news paper asking people to vote on where they would like the government to make the cuts.

Here is what we are up against and its only been running for a day.

Health 4%, Armed forces 18%, Pensions 4%, Education 5%, Transport 12% and BENEFITS 57%.

This is what the average person in the street thinks. We dont stand much of a chance do we?

The government have been brain washing people nicley and this is the result, now their talking about letting uninformed people have a say.

[honeybee13]

Hi cbbc. Maybe they should be asking them which type of benefits they think should be stopped, among the myriad that there are. Which ones are the people who genuinely see lots of money and don't deserve it receiving, I wonder? I doubt if it's IB, ESA or JSA for instance.

 

HB x

[Simon7685]

Benefits are always going to be high on the agenda for any government when they are talking about making cuts. It is after all where a vast proportion of public money goes every year. Having said that I doubt if you carried out a straw poll, that people would be in favour of cutting the likes of IB, ESA, DLA and other related sickness or disability benefits.

 

You would I believe find that people are more concerned about ending the culture of youth unemployment, where a great number of 18 - 20+ year olds have never worked and do not want to work but instead are happy to live on benefit and make extra money on the side where they can. Also the teenage get pregnant, get benefits, get a flat for free culture, which is also very prevelant in society today. Having said that there are a good many young people who do work and do the right thing in society, they are not all bad but many of the youngsters today believe that they are entitled to be supported by our welfare system and do not want to work.

 

Obviously there are going to be cuts made that affect everyone on any type of benefit, with the national debt where it is, that has to be unavoidable. The hope I think has to be that those who are genuinely in need of benefits because they are sick or disabled are not hit too hard.

 

The problem is the national debt and the amount of money that has been borrowed over the last 13 years to get us into the position we are now in. In effect every man, woman and child in the country borrowed £2500 last year to keep the country afloat and there is no way that can continue or we will be bankrupt within the next few years. The cuts have to come and we just have to hope that we can get through it.

[honeybee13]

I agree, Simon. It's criminal that Gordon Brown got away with it for so long.

 

HB

[scaredtodeath]

I just went through, 18 months of investigation for benefit fraud. got charged with 2 counts and was fined £85 each. mine was the lowest scale following prosecution and would only ever have been a fine or community order. so, 18 months of investigation, passed to their solicitor then to cps. plus my legal aid which I don't know how much. i get fined £170, how much does the prosecution process cost? my solicitor told me on the day that it was F***ing ridiculous that I was there and it should be the government in court for all the thousands they have stolen, including David laws 40k which had only just been found out. I'm not in any way shape or form saying i shouldn't have been punished but surely there's a better more cost effective way? while their talking about unnecessary spending.

[loan_ranger]

It makes me angry to think that the lions share of government borrowing was used to bail out the banks, the greedy "investment bankers" (not intentional cockney rhyming slang) aren't in the dole queue because statistics show no significant increase in them becoming unemployed. And how have they thanked us for our funding their job security? Royal Bank of Scotland, 84% owned by the taxpayer is part of the syndicate which provided the loan to US food giant 'Kraft' for the purchase of Cadbury. Subsequently Kraft announced the closure in 2011 of a Cadbury factory in Somerdale, near Bristol, with the loss of 400 workers.

Edited June 9, 2010 by loan_ranger

[Simon7685]

You are quite right about bailing out the banks but the banks only amounts to the massive borrowing in the last year. In the first 3 years of the Labour government, they opted to stick with the spending plans of the previous government. Statistically they were the years that borrowing was under control and at a far lower rate of GDP. From then onwards the Labour government borrowed more and more every year and the deficit grew and grew. In their 13 years in power they have single handedly trippled our national debt, which is why we face the massive cuts we do now. Don't get me wrong, the tories aren't all sweetness and light but at least they do seem to be acting to try and bring government borrowing under some sort of control, while we still can.

[honeybee13]

Slightly off beam this, and I apologise. Maybe I should slope off to the Bear Garden after this .

 

When Gordon was sticking to the Tories' old spending plans, he imposed a stealth tax on company pensions that had a lot to do with knackering them and closing a huge percentage of them in the last few years. [sorry if I swore there and it gets edited.] Meanwhile, MPs' and some/many other public sector pension schemes are way out of kilter with the real world and are costing the rest of us a fortune.

 

And the way Gordon, sorry Alistair the puppet chancellor, bailed out the banks seemed pathetic to me. Where in the deal did it say they had to pay back the taxpayer, or did I miss something?

 

Rant over, sorry chaps.

 

HB x

[Simon7685]

I think a lot of people do not fully understand how much Gordon Brown has to answer for. He has held the purse strings for 13 years, as you rightly say HB Alistair D was a puppet chancellor, although I think towards the end he had more influence on what was spent where and how, he still could not even fart without Gordons approval.

 

The most ironic thing about it all is, somewhere in the next 10 years he will end up with a peerage!

[davina2]

Well I am on benefits and I think some of the benefits schemes should be cut.

 

One of the main ones that should be cut is the extensive housing benefit i.e paying of the thousands of pounds per week to a single family to unable them to live in a certain property.

 

I do not understand why this is been allowed at all when for the same money they can house 10 families.

 

Although this was shown in the papers as people abusing benefit system the tenants actually have very little benefit out of this scheme, the money goes to the landlord and the landlord in this case is the rich one, who can afford to have a luxury property in a rich area.

 

I bet, among all of the cuts the government is not going to get rid of this policy, as they are going to be lobbied by these rich landlords and this is actually putting the tax payers money into the rich landlords pocket and it has nothing to do with the poor tenants abusing the system.