Anyone watching the Budget?

Hmm, is he a second hand car dealer?

Oh look, he is.

hurrah for whisky.

xp

I don't care. I need some.

excellent. keeping the massive subsidy on air fuel tho :( (or did i mishear that?)

* I meet quite a few through work, in case you were wondering.

(I *think* my car is currently in the lowest band. In which case, woo!)

(xpost)

Mail will see it as rich people in big cars being made to pay for workshy layabouts in little ones, no doubt.

(Band A is if you pay £75 diesel or £65 petrol for 12 months tax currently)

The BBC Have Your Say thing is full of hillarious excuses why people "need" a 4x4

xpost

Ken C OTM

(the BBC is now mirroring the full Budget Report pdf, if you care)

a lone parent with 2 children, working 16 hours a week at the National Minimum Wage, will be at least £315 per week better off.

what band is a VW polo?

Go here: http://www.vcacarfueldata.org.uk/ved/index.asp

You need to know the CO2 emission figure, as printed on your registration certificate. Then, the page http://www.dvla.gov.uk/vehicles/taxation.htm tells you what band it falls into.

maybe i should get myself an "A"

i often think about this as i walk around sheffield watching them tear down the old industrial buildings and replace them with crud

feed://newsforums.bbc.co.uk/nol/rss/rssmessages.jspa?threadID=1383

tax on fhp = smelly women = less sexing = less unwanted pregnancies and/or stds

and thus is complementary to the 'no tax on condoms' philosophy.

I don't object to no tax on condoms, but I think it's strange to abolish it on them, but still tax FHPs. People can chose not to have sex, but women don't get much choice when it comes to menstruation, and while there are more green, cost saving alternatives, they don't suit everyone. There's no income tax on razor blades....

This could be interesting...

Budget to reveal depth of gloom

Thanks BBC :(

It could be interesting but DArling is so uninspriring I suspect it will be quite dull. Duller even than watching Brown deliver it, which was never exactly exciting.

you can watch his eyebrows i guess.

TS Darling's eyebrows vs Brown's jaw drops

And we're off...

Gordon's dozed off already...
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3517/3464738785_ef885b69c4.jpg

http://www.lookyou.co.uk/Brown09.1.jpg

-3.5% growth which will be reversed by end of year.

did i hear that right?

Economy expected to grow by 1.25% in a year so can't be fully reversed.

Lots of laughter and heckling at 3.5% prediction for 2011.

haha ned beat me to brown pic
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v356/kenjuggle3/budget2009.jpg

This is so dull I've stopped listening. I'll read the important bits later.

Don't say I didn't warn you. And anyway don't stop now he's onto second-hand cars...

On the BBC rolling commentary they have helpfully added a small picture of a car to help you more fully understand the text. Something we might all find useful. http://www.carleasingshop.co.uk/generalimages/asleep%20at%20desk.jpg

Fooking 'ell they're gonna tax the rich...sort of.

lol BBC

1306 Sorry to those of you who have not refreshed the page recently - the estimate of government borrowing for this year is £175bn - NOT £275bn - sorry - the perils of live text!

Cameron is on his feet...and gets stuck in with a dick gag...
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3653/3464814661_84c3485242.jpg

The Budget:

"Anyone watching the Budgie?"

http://www.geocities.com/jade_stone_/sylvester_tweety2.jpg

The Tory leader says the Budget is "completely inadequate" at addressing long-term problems. He says Labour has broken a manifesto commitment not to raise taxes on the rich.

Yeah, what cunts.

Budget needs annotation from David Pleat

sidebar: during the first world war, whom were we borrowing the money *from*?

wiki has the answer:

All nations had increases in the government's share of GDP, surpassing fifty percent in both Germany and France and nearly reaching fifty percent in Britain. To pay for purchases in the United States, Britain cashed in its massive investments in American railroads and then began borrowing heavily on Wall Street. President Wilson was on the verge of cutting off the loans in late 1916, but allowed a massive increase in U.S. government lending to the Allies. After 1919, the U.S. demanded repayment of these loans, which, in part, were funded by German reparations, which, in turn, were supported by American loans to Germany. This circular system collapsed in 1931 and the loans were never repaid.

woah. nice find. im guessing we borrowed from the 'mericans once again in ww2. and it was the ww2 that really ended the depression. donald sutherland was right.

lol people talking amongst themselves during nick cleggs.

Have we had any exciting celebs threaten to leave the country yet cos of evil tax increase? If not, I propose a sweep.

xxpost I thought that the Brit's had finally paid back the WWI loans a couple of years ago. WWII loans have been quietly forgotten about.

yes noodle. i support your proposal to sweep the celebs from the country.

although tbh they're presumably all "lol the tories'll reverse it in a year and i'll be getting a fat rebate"

xxxpost - no, we paid off the WW2 debt (Lend-Lease), but we stopped paying back on the WW1 debt in 1934, so it's still technically outstanding.

car scrapping scheme - £2000 for buying new car.

say if i have a car that i may as well get rid of (it's due MOT and probably will cost £500 to fix), if i just buy a new car now and get £2000 discount, then sell it off straight away as brand new, do you think i can make a profit here?

oh crap it needs valid MOT lol

still.....

Who's going to buy your nearly new car for full price when they can just acquire an old car and use that to get the discount themselves?

Don't you need to have proof that you've owned it for 12 months?

I've no idea. I was thinking when I typed that that it'd be better if you had to have owned the car for a certain length of time.

This could have been a useful lever to move us towards more fuel efficient cars, but AFAIK you can trade in for anything, just as long as it's new and shiny. Where's the joined up thinking?

Indeed. They could either dress it up as that, or as some sort of job protection thing which meant you can only buy cars that are built in Britain have a larger proportion of British labour somewhere in the design and manufacture process. I was under the impression you could easily get 2 grand off the list price of a new car these days anyway, so it's probably not going to make much difference.

bloke from hyundai on radio 4 this morning said that half the discount was from the government and half was from the car company. and that hyundai wouldn't take it out of current discounts and, indeed, may be tempted to discount more.

but, yes, car pricing is so opaque and so changeable that 2k isn't that much of an incentive.

> buy cars that are built in Britain have a larger proportion of British labour somewhere in the design and manufacture process.

hyundai bloke also pointed out that the car sellers, not just the manufacturers, will benefit.

The fate of the car dealer isn't really something I could get all that excited either way, hyundai bloke.

In fact he can go suck a minstrel for all I care.

http://conservativehome.blogs.com/.a/6a00d83451b31c69e201156f479c9f970c-500wi

I'd vote for the genius who came up with the 'spent' / 'change' pun.

Now For Change? Lame.

Britain needs change, so long as you're not asking the rich to put their hands in their pockets.

So, I've been reading the budget. The actual thing. It's quite good.

http://www.hm-treasury.gov.uk/bud_bud09_repindex.htm

Lots of things:

All the public finance predictions are actually based on lower growth forecasts than their central ones, just to be safe. So -3.75% this year, 1% next and 3.25% next year - still well above consensus for the next two years, but interesting that no-one seems to have picked that up.

Also, there seems to have been no discussion about the cost of the financial sector intervention in the public debt assumptions. The ONS now publish two versions of the national debt, one including it (50.9% of GDP at end-March 2009) and one without it (41.7% of GDP). There's a really good blog post here about why it makes more sense to look at the figure excluding it http://viva-freemania.blogspot.com/2009/03/plato-on-national-debt.html

But the liabilities taken in to public sector net debt are something else. They are amounts of money that the state would, in theory, have to pay in the event of: all the nationalised/bailed-out banks going bust; all of their borrowers defaulting on all of their debts; all the prices of all the properties on which such mortgages are secured dropping to zero; and all the assets of those banks – from deposits in savings accounts to the little chains with the pens on the end – becoming utterly worthless.

It’s an apocalyptic worst-case scenario, and it will not come to pass.

So looking at the budget (page 20 if you can be remotely arsed), the debt figures - 80% of GDP by 2014 are a sort of half-way house of a conservative assumption of unrealised losses that falls between the two figures.

Although that makes sense, it seems overly gloomy. If we hang on to the nationalised banks for long enough (gaining returns on them whenever they do make profits), then sell them when the time is right (whenever we have a proper recovery), surely we can make a HUGE profit. The danger of course is the ideologically driven need to return them to the private sector as soon as possible, which would probably afflict both parties.

This isn't from the budget, but did you know that unemployment, either by the claimant count OR the ILO measure as a % of the workforce is STILL lower than in ALL 18 years of Tory government. Even after the Lawson boom, or the mid 90s recovery. Astonishing. I don't know why Labour don't make more of that, but I guess it's because it's not going to be true much longer. Still the Tory record on jobs was SO bad, it seems an easy argument to make.

But generally, 50% top rate? Hell, yeah!

The Tory response is pathetic, as well. They are so keen to hammer home their "narratives" of Labour's debt crisis, and Brown's boom and bust not being ended that they say stuff that makes absolutely no sense all the time (A revenue-neutral fiscal stimulus. You WHAT?) while not actually addressing any of the real issues.

And he's such a bad speaker, Cameron.

As of today, any claim they have ever made to economic competence is dead. Over. Finished.

So his multiple tautology actually lessens the impact of the statement, while reinforcing the impression that he has NOTHING to say. He's such a vacuous fop, with all this confected anger the whole time.

And as for that twat, Clegg. Can you actually remember a less impressive two opposition leaders?

srsly i was hoping it'd be 90% tax for top rack rate

saw george osborne on ITV today. fuck he made alastair darling sound like a genius.

it was like "zomg what horror breaking a pledge and taxing people" "so what would you have done instead?" "save money on public services" "how?" "well, have to adjust public sector pay in line with growth" "oh so you will cut wages for doctors nurses teachers so that those who earn more than £150,000 can pay less tax?" "mmmmmm.. err... no"

Picked up the Metro on the bus today, first 9 pages were all about what a disaster the Budget was and how we're all fucking doomed and then on the 10th page they had one of those graphics that showed what effect the budget will have on YOU, and, errrrrr, everyone was better off.

Yeah. I noticed that too.

I've just realised that blog I quoted falls into the "absolute nonsense" category too, though. Money in bank accounts are a liability, not an asset, but his general point stands.

The 50% rate IS a political trap as well, but it's a good one. I can't see the Tories committing to repealing in the next parliament, although they'll probably retain that as an "aspiration", so hopefully their grassroots will tear holes in them.

They're still going to win, though, aren't they?

And with a ready-made justification to slash and burn through anything worthwhile. Pretty grim.

And with a ready-made justification to slash and burn through anything worthwhile.

This is the worrying bit. But hey, if Labour hadn't squandered a decade in power maybe they'd have built up more that couldn't be quickly torn down.

New Labour not Labour

Has any newspaper pointed out that this 50% tax rate affects only the 2% of people who earn 10 times more than the rest of us, or did they just use it as another thing to bash Gordon Clown over the head with?

The interesting thing about a Cameron government will be the extent to which it is beholden to and tied into what the Obama administration wants, and what's already been agreed. It's difficult to imagine a Prime Minister entering office with less power than Cameron will have, even if there's a big majority.

I'm still thinking one-term PM.

Don't let it be said that David Cameron doesn't have any real policies.

i think he'll be fine cos he can blame everything on 12 years of labour or whatever like tony blair did with tories?

i dunno i can imagine Labour going into Tories 2000 mode and failing to establish a replacement for Brown able to combat Cameron effectively (not because Cameron will have to work particularly hard on that front). surely not Miliband...

Should have set up a "Winter of Discontent" count. I think I even heard it used yesterday in a programme about British pop music!

band names aren't what they used to be

The Dead Went Unburied <--------- emo department

Three Day Week recently turned down v lucrative offer to reform

This is the worrying bit. But hey, if Labour hadn't squandered a decade in power maybe they'd have built up more that couldn't be quickly torn down.

We've argued about Labour's legacy before, but one thing that I think we'd agree they HAD achieved, building all those schools and hospitals and the Decent Homes thing (whatever we think about PFI etc.) fortunately can't be torn down.

But we can look forward to the gradual deterioration of our public infrastructure again.

Cameron used "the dead went unburied" in his reply to the Budget! The equivalent of Dennis Healey bringing up Neville Chamberlain's Munich speech in 1975 or sumthin'

And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Unburied Dead...

There won't be a 1997 style wave of euphoria for Cameron though, no matter how despised New Labour are. It took something like three years for the shine to come off the Blair brand, Cameron will be coming to power in infinitely more difficult circumstances.

However Labour in opposition won't be able to attack them on the economy. The Tories only became electable when they had a leader who was untainted by previous governments and Labour may take at least a term to get to that point. They should have made a better fist of losing the 2005 election.

Is there still time for them to rush through introducing proportional representation ahead of the next election?

There won't be a 1997 style wave of euphoria for Cameron though

OTM, nobody is that enthusiastic about Cameron

PR:

I don't think there's any appetite for it, but Labour should fuck consensus and pass some really partial legislation on donations and impose savage election spending limits.

next election too depressing to want to be here to witness (not even for the result itself but the gloomy process, media idiocy, the 'having their say')

so going travelling...

^^^ threatening to leave the country when the Tories get into power

Also if by some miracle Labour were to win the next election they would have to cut massively across the public sector. They won't admit it because it would be politically suicidal and also rob them of one of the sticks they'll have to beat the Tories, both ahead of the election and when they're in opposition.

well, a few months before, most likely. i'll probably run out of cash and have to canoe back just as the results are being announced. then i'll be mistaken for an illegal immigrant and slaughtered on the beach. xp

then i'll be mistaken for an illegal immigrant and slaughtered on the beach given a detached 4-bedroom house and £120,000 in benefits

fixed 'have your say' style

i'll probably run out of cash and have to canoe back

You can't canoe all the way back from Panama

you lot are mental

Jamie - the recent IMF report seems to think that we'll come out reasonably okay as well (the infamous page 44) http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/gfsr/2009/01/pdf/text.pdf

Thanks Carson - I'll have a look at that.

Also if by some miracle Labour were to win the next election they would have to cut massively across the public sector. They won't admit it because it would be politically suicidal and also rob them of one of the sticks they'll have to beat the Tories, both ahead of the election and when they're in opposition.

I hadn't realised, but the budget actually does do this. The 0.7% real current spending growth is way harsher than Thatch in the early 80s, apparently. And cuts in capital spending mean that there will be zero spending growth from 2013.

This is being explained as another political trap - if the Tories go under this, it would mean real cuts - but it is a) grim and b) undermines the previous attack on the Tories, that increasing spending by less than GDP amounts to cuts.

However, if they were to be elected, presumably they would actually increase taxes rather than be that harsh. I imagine the Tories would increase VAT if they got in, too.

Also if by some miracle Labour were to win the next election they would have to cut massively across the public sector. They won't admit it because it would be politically suicidal and also rob them of one of the sticks they'll have to beat the Tories, both ahead of the election and when they're in opposition.

― Enormous Epic (Matt DC), Thursday, April 23, 2009 2:05 PM (55 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

yep, in other words exactly like the end of the last labour government.

You haven't mentioned Winter of Discontent yet

according to the Beebs online budget calculator I'm £126 better off now

You could buy a canoe for that.

no, the winter of discontent is how the right look at the end of the last labour government -- and the left too, a bit, because they can laught at the tories and say they were exaggerating. they'd rather not look at the massive, proto-thatcherite cuts the callaghan government had to impose in the '77 budget.

xp

I hope no one's confusing canoes and kayaks.

£110.76 better off

You're laughing then

i can get the Archibald GX Lite model and still have change for a Fair Trade McFlurry

Do we get £2000 if we trade in our old canoe?

Come on Mr Darling, sometimes canoes need bailing out too.

Mrs T.
+£265.03
Me
+£707.5

Which can't be right.

The hole in that canoe will shrink by 30% in the next financial year.

Get one of these.
http://www.popgadget.net/images/transparent%20canoe%202.jpg
(woman not included)

nice view. for the fish.

(woman not included)

Typical New Labour stealth tax

Handy for the sharks to see if they like the look of you or not.

£92 better off. Let's all go down the pub.

But Matt, beer just went up by £93 a pint :(

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K0K5mHHhVU4

George is ready...
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_1zLNV2F_hRE/SQGOizHsBVI/AAAAAAAAA4o/7dGmiYU7loI/s400/George_Osborne_Cocaine_Prostitution.jpg

Why is that caterpillar circled?

NOT A CATERPILLAR.

GOOD LUCK BRITAIN.

gonna need it

http://images.icnetwork.co.uk/upl/icwales2/feb2009/8/2/job_centre_plus_796617432.jpg

THEY'RE READY

ready with reduced opening hours and less staff

well ther are less jobs out there tbf

lol

I'm kind of eagerly anticipating the backlash but I think having gone "oooh this will be tough" for a few months then they'll be more timid than expected with the really harsh cuts.

"It's going to be eye-watering," says BBC political editor Nick Robinson. "[The government] will try to say that all suffer equally," he says, adding that for the first time the Treasury has prepared a document showing the Budget's effects on the population by income group - with the highest earners hit hardest.

Interesting.

unbelievable

That too.

Not that it makes much difference because even if proportionally they are being hit hardest they will feel it far less. What they cut is more important to me than what they raise, banking levy notwithstanding.

"the highest earners hit hardest."

well what matt said, but yes, "£1000" is a leetle bit more to some1 on ten grand than it is to some1 on forty.

the £1000 is kind of cool until i realise that the £200 it saves me is all going to go on booze duty and VAT :|

I'm stoked for losing any child credits or allowances I receive (I've actually no idea what these are but some money goes into the bank every month), having my pay frozen, having my pension cut & having my "bonus" cancelled.

I think we need a huge cut in booze duty to ease the pain of the rest of this budget.

oh yeah my pay is being frozen too.

v takehome pay cut by about 13% this past 12 months v btwn pension levies and other measures v

Osborne says he does not want anyone to doubt Britain's ability to pay its debts. That's why he has made a brisk start to cutting the deficit.

report back when it makes sense

momentarily forgot the modern use of "that's why"

OK, I tried watching it but three minutes of Osbourne talking is already too much (and it's going to go on for an hour says the beeb). Back to watching it by text with the sound down.

Get on with it!

What he hasn't explained is how bond markets would react to a double-dip recession and subsequent widening of the deficit. My guess is they would be more likely to freak out, if anything.

exackly

also no-one was like "britain is going to default" except the tory party

are you doomed?

Quickfire UK Budget Poll: How will it go for you?

I'll be retreating into my inner happy place for the next few years if anybody wants me.

gonna make a quickfire poll of NV's display names after the tourney

lol @ faces on the Liberals as the Euro is officially binned

Oh god IDS on the front row, something's gone terribly wrong.

All those people taking notes in the second row trying to look studious and catch teacher's eye.

Got my NHS funded bike already thank god.

Wonder if putting Douglas Alexander next to England's Brave George Osbourne is a ploy to make the Chancellor look like less of a schoolboy.

Civil list frozen - Queen only has £350m to live on this year.

That's Danny not Dougie.

budgets in non-protected departments will fall by 25% over four years.

that's a lotta dough

Cameron staying well out of shot

Yeah I noticed that, stick two LibDems on either side to make it look nicer.

Stop fucking nodding Clegg!

1% cut in corporation tax per year for four years. Fuck off.

oh hey i don't earn enough to get my pay frozen, go me.

reblaance the economy away from paying baby tax credits, housing benefit, disability allowance. Christ, the Tories really are back.

Very much looking forward to my corporation tax going down 1%. Where is that on my payslip?

oh ned, you're so naive. your employer will pass it along to you in your salary.

who said ideology was dead???!!

the way ye carry on, you always assume the tories don't have your best interest at heart, when really all that's holding you guys back is failure to acknowledge your place in the trickle down economy.

once i grow up and become a corporation i will enjoy my lower tax rate

£2bn doesn't seem like very much to raise from a banking levy.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7749195.stm
David Cameron claims leaked documents show Gordon Brown is secretly planning a future VAT "tax bombshell".

also
http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2010/04/08/article-1264531-090C4EBB000005DC-86_468x286.jpg

I mean let's face it, the one part of society that really deserves a bigger piece of the pie in 2010 is corporations. Preferably that piece will come in a form that can be instantly taken out of the economy and used to beef up their balance sheets.

Haha, just going to post that! xp

Leader Nick Clegg, on the campaign trail in Scotland, insisted the Tories would have to raise VAT to 20.5 per cent if they were elected to fund their 'tax bribes'.
He joined in the assault on the Tories' economic plans as Labour accused David Cameron and George Osborne of 'reckless opportunism'.
Mr Clegg claimed the Tories will have to hike taxes elsewhere to pay for £13.5billion in tax breaks and unveiled a new campaign poster focusing on VAT.
But William Hague insisted his party has 'no plans' to raise the tax and are in exactly the same position as the Lib Dems.

8th April 2010

plans change people change

shit happens

You make a budget with the plans you have, not the plans you wish you had or the plans you might have once had a few weeks ago.

ahem, a whole few weeks ago, i'm sure you mean

Yes, that long ago!

"'we don't have any plans to increase VAT. I think the Liberal Democrats can pipe down about this now,' the shadow foreign secretary said."

1321 There will be no new increases in duties on alcohol

small concessions mean a lot (unless you live in Scotland where they're trying to bring in minimum alcohol pricing)

CGT 10% for "entrepreneurs" goes from first £2bn to first £5bn. This is venture capital, isn't it? cunts.

small concessions mean a lot
gonna dissolve in the 20%. VAT's regressive as hell.

I saw some ridiculous bullshit opinion piece in the Evening Standard the other day (yeah I know lol etc) claiming raising VAT is good and fair for the poor because they can't afford to buy anything anyway.

There will be no new increases in duties on alcohol

The Sun is preparing it's headline right now. OSBONUS! OSBOON!
(or something)

vat up, corporation tax down sort of says it all really

but 25% departmental budget cuts is like woah

Harman doing pretty well here, not that it matters.

say vince has gone from leon trotsky to alan b'stard, go on do it

fuck these shit-sucking mud fuckers, go on say it

nice to see they focused on socially progressive taxation systems like vat to help crisis economy.

From the Twitter of some dude the BBC quoted:

VAT to be 20%. Wise choice as it still makes the tax NON-REGRESSIVE. You have a choice to spend.

lol

So essentially you get an incentive to set up a small business EXCEPT in the South East where most of the public service redundancies will be?

CGT 10% for "entrepreneurs" goes from first £2bn to first £5bn. This is venture capital, isn't it? cunts.

small concessions mean a lot
gonna dissolve in the 20%. VAT's regressive as hell.

― stet, Tuesday, 22 June 2010 07:35 (1 hour ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

This would be fine if it were restricted to venture capital but it will extend across all private equity and I didn't notice anything about the egregious practice of allowing buyout shops of charging ridiculous fees to portfolio companies and investors and being able to treat them as CG rather than income. There should be an incentive for making high risk investments, however I think that the taper relief should be tied to job creation and genuinely new economic activity.

I also think that it should be targeted as a tool of industrial policy, currently this applies equally to someone who builds a restaurant or estate agents business, which is fine, but if we are going to genuinely grow out of this recession we need to target industries that actually generate value, are export focussed or, at the very least, keep the fruits of the investment in this country.

I would be quite prepared to see CGT taper to zero or see the ceiling rise to $10 million if there was a concerted effort to use it as a tool of industrial policy. However an industrial policy from a UK government of any colour is about as likely to come about as me suddenly being able to crap diamonds.

Needless to say I think this is a terrible budget, the OBR has this halving growth with is going to hit tax receipts and make more people dependent on the state. Labour were bang on about this, we need sustainable growth this year and cuts next year. (However fairly sure that healthy, massaged growth figures would have led them to bottle the cuts next year). It's not going to take a lot, one minor economic shock, for things to turn out worse than the OBR forecast; our primary export markets are depressed, the shell game is broken, the only glimmer of hope is an appreciating yuan (and other east asian currencies) and rising Asian wages, hopefully we will be able to afford less in terms of imports and sell what little industrial product and engineering skill we have left to the chinese.

The other worry is that as this happens, our inflation rate will start to look ominous and I hope the MPC will hold its nerve and not increase rates too much, although stagflation beckons as well.

If I were being paid in pounds I might be looking at opening a chinese bank account.

^ dude's been thinking quick

about as likely to come about as me suddenly being able to crap diamond

Never give up on yr dreamz.

Burn poop = poop is carbon = compress carbon like how they do with those creepy stones made of 'cremains' = VOILA, DIAMONDS.

^bad materials science, this is why we don't make anything any more.

I'm sure with all the new tech you're rocking you can find a way to make the poop into SOMETHING.

At least I know how much I'm gonna get paid for the next two years. Will probably get the old heave ho before long anyhow.

in the Housing Benefit plan:

Capping housing allowance rates at £250 a week for a one-bedroom flat, £290 for a two bed, £340 for a three bed and £400 a week for a four-bedroom property.

what the fuck? Figures evidently drawn up by someone who's never had to find low cost housing in a city. I live in a decrepit bedsit with no heating in a small city and it costs me £280 a month, and is pretty much as cheap as I can get. So, what the fuck?

wait, per WEEK? I am guessing that's a typo?

okay I see that inner London rates approach £250 per week. I'll zip me lip now. The general 'fuck you George Osborne' stance stands, though.

Not a typo.

OK, xpost

Yeah the housing benefit caps aren't too bad, I think this measure is aimed at tackling the "big bunch of brown people living in benefit luxury in £2m mansion" Daily Mail stories.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/10335476.stm

BBC budget calculator says the increase in the tax threshold will give me £400 a year while the cut in child tax credits will cost me £410 and with NI changes I'll be £13.50 better off. Doesn't seem to take into account that my pay has been frozen while inflation is rising and pretty much everything I buy will cost 2.5% more come January but hey thanks for the £13.50.

if I wasn't losing my job next week due to council cuts I'd apparently be £285 a year better off. Good to know!

You've never almost had it so good

So despite what Robert Peston said yesterday Lloyds look like they may actually benefit from the budget.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-06-23/lloyds-banking-may-benefit-from-budget-s-corporation-tax-cut-redburn-says.html
And the markets agree, Lloyds up this morning.

I haven't heard or read any criticism of the budget from any LibDems. They are showing remarkable loyalty to their dark overlords partners.

i will be £506.75 better off. Thank you, Lord Gideon Wallpaper.

oh i forgot that then VAT goes up in January and that all goes up in smoke.

Don't understand these calculations according to the BBC we'll be £2000 worse off, but according to the Guardian we'll be £5.63 better off. Again I'll be clobbered by the pay freeze and VAT increase so would expect to be a good deal worse off.

Bob Russell, LD MP for Colchester says he's not going to vote for the budget. So that's 1.

Intensely depressing listening to the likes of Simon Hughes and Shirley Williams defending this budget. Watching Shirley Williams on Newsnight last night sitting alongside Nigel Lawson and agreeing with him on virtually everything was vomit-inducing. Still, Liberals fucked for all time, that's one good thing.

this isn't directed against ne1 itt, but all the talk of being "better off" in terms of individual/family income is slightly missing the olden idea -- which, yes, probably had some problems -- of the social wage.

in terms of pure income, there are predictions to be made, fine. but what are 25% cuts going to look like? it's a big number.

^

I don't see anyone claiming that they'll be anything close to 25% better off, so really it's still money being taken from users of public service either at source or when you need the service

lol gay mafia

http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1386/4726985851_e6f46e476c_b.jpg

ed milliband on right, no?

Feels like we get a Budget every couple of months now. Missed this one entirely but from a glance it doesn't look like there's much of significance compared to the last couple, save the usual "cut corporation taxes and hope for the best". Prepared to be proven totally wrong on that.

nothing earth shattering. as you say, all the big stuff came with the CSR whenever that was. there are big announcements every week.

the fuel tax thing probably means something to drivers.

the income tax change 'vindicates' the lib dems a bit i guess.

and yes they have cut corporation tax in place of a growth plan iirc.

something about 'technical colleges' that i half-missed could be interesting.

some kind of sinister pro-charity stuff. they like charity more than the public sector.

Of course they fucking do.

(Not watching, btw, my fragile state of mind can't handle it today.)

goin after non-doms by whacking them with a non-dom tax.... of up to £50,000 i think

which most non-doms could lost in the street and not even realise it

i think they've tied a bow round it now

my fragile state of mind can't handle it today for the next 8-10 years tbh

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