Thursday 23 April 2009

The Budget

Laura Sandys press release,

The Chancellor described the worst recession, fastest rising unemployment, and the worst public finances since the War, but could not describe a credible solution.


On the Government’s figures:
- Over the next two years the Government will borrow £348bn - more than all governments up to 1997
- We will be borrowing £703bn over the next five years
- The national debt will double again to £1.4trillion
- Every baby will now be born owing £22,500
- Interest costs have risen again to £43bn a year – more than the schools budget.
- IMF say our budget deficit will be the worst in the G20 next year – 11% of GDP compared to 9% in United States


Britain cannot afford another five years of Labour's economic incompetence.
- Labour's answer is tax hikes on the many
- On average we have £1000 tax rises per family between now and 2012. £310 tax rise on fuel
- Unemployment one million higher in 2010 from the Government’s last forecast
- Labour cuts planned for AFTER the next election

o £2.3bn off the NHS capital budget next year
o £0.6bn off the Schools department capital budget next year
o £0.3bn off Universities and Skills capital budget next year

- In reaction long term interest rates on Government debt rose and the pound fell.

The CBI have said the Budget takes “big risks”. Richard Lambert said: “The key question for this Budget was whether it set out a credible and rigorous path for restoring the public finances to health. The CBI’s preliminary judgement must be that it does not.”


Conservatives offer a change from an economy built on debt to an economy that saves and invests

- Conservatives favour spending restraint over tax rises
- We would start that spending restraint now to pay for the recession measures and start reducing borrowing in the recovery from 2010
- Our priority is to avoid Labour's tax rises that affect the many not the few, like the increase in National Insurance which is a tax on jobs

2 comments:

  1. On TV today George Osborne was asked where he would cut spending and he would not or could not answer.
    I guess in a little while we will find out ... schools building, college and university building, children centres building, road building, grants that enabled the Turner centre and the likes to be built, New hospitals and NHS spending, new rails links, grants to Thanet and other areas for regenation and back to work schemes. Take your pick which ones will get the chop and how they will affect Thanet.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I have concluded that we are going to borrow our way out of the situation by borrowing the money from countries that produce more than they consume.

    I think the problem with our economy is that real money is only generated by those who produce goods and services and this applies both in the public and private sector, all of this hangs on tangible production of goods and services produced in the private sector.

    The base of all of this is agriculture and manufacturing and we simply don’t have enough of this, these unhappy thoughts leave me wondering if there is any long term solution to this counties financial problems.

    ReplyDelete

Comments, since I started writing this blog in 2007 the way the internet works has changed a lot, comments and dialogue here were once viable in an open and anonymous sense. Now if you comment here I will only allow the comment if it seems to make sense and be related to what the post is about. I link the majority of my posts to the main local Facebook groups and to my Facebook account, “Michael Child” I guess the main Ramsgate Facebook group is We Love Ramsgate. For the most part the comments and dialogue related to the posts here goes on there. As for the rest of it, well this blog handles images better than Facebook, which is why I don’t post directly to my Facebook account, although if I take a lot of photos I am so lazy that I paste them directly from my camera card to my bookshop website and put a link on this blog.