Politics at Westminster | BREAKING: UKIP

Jippy said:
They've raised the income tax threshold meaningfully for lower earners and stuff like the lifetime Isa should help younger income poor. We're all in this together and all that.
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They have and it's a start. But they're still intent on building these extra railways at great expense whilst public services are falling apart. If your budget is constrained you spend what money you have on necessities, not luxuries, as any sensible family will tell you.
 
Red Defence said:
They have and it's a start. But they're still intent on building these extra railways at great expense whilst public services are falling apart. If your budget is constrained you spend what money you have on necessities, not luxuries, as any sensible family will tell you.
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The budget isn't constrained in any sense though, public services are being reduced because they wish to shrink the state. It's what they were voted in on. Doesn't mean they can't promise investment from capital spending.

The one I can't get my head around and it surely is a luxury give away is the constant and substantial uplift in ISA subscription limits as well as removing the split. This only aids a very small number of wealthier individuals as so few reach anywhere near maximum contribution.
 
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Smores said:
The budget isn't constrained in any sense though, public services are being reduced because they wish to shrink the state. It's what they were voted in on. Doesn't mean they can't promise investment from capital spending.

The one I can't get my head around and it surely is a luxury give away is the constant and substantial uplift in ISA subscription limits as well as removing the split. This only aids a very small number of wealthier individuals as so few reach anywhere near maximum contribution.
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Cumulatively there's a huge number of tax-breaks, put out every budget with a feel-good spin as ostensibly to help the average person, but in practice mainly taken up by the well-off with spare cash. I'm beginning to come round to the flat tax idea for it's honesty. Want to help the poor? Raise thresholds. Country needs more tax? Raise basic rate. Or lower it. Either way, do it simply and honestly.

It would feck up a lot of 'advisers' though, so I don't expect it to be popular on here.
 
Smores said:
The budget isn't constrained in any sense though, public services are being reduced because they wish to shrink the state. It's what they were voted in on. Doesn't mean they can't promise investment from capital spending.

The one I can't get my head around and it surely is a luxury give away is the constant and substantial uplift in ISA subscription limits as well as removing the split. This only aids a very small number of wealthier individuals as so few reach anywhere near maximum contribution.
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You don't need to be 'wealthy' per se to save £50 a month into an ISA. For the super-wealthy, do you really think that ISA wrappers are a massive deal? Yeah they'll max out their allowances, but a £10k ISA is small beans if you're a company director facing CGT on your millions of quid's worth of share options.
 
Jippy said:
You don't need to be 'wealthy' per se to save £50 a month into an ISA. For the super-wealthy, do you really think that ISA wrappers are a massive deal? Yeah they'll max out their allowances, but a £10k ISA is small beans if you're a company director facing CGT on your millions of quid's worth of share options.
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Of course they're not which makes it even more insignificant. The last average pa contribution I saw was around 6k with most of that made up from cash ISA and that cash tends to be withdrawn frequently as it's lower income.

It's only in the middle income brackets that it becomes properly used as an investment vehicle and maximum contributions are only hit with any significant frequency in the upper say 100k+ bracket. It just seems very odd to even bother raising it if not for political spin as it's not really helping anyone.

Perhaps he just likes to tinker with policy, given the amount of change over the years
 
Smores said:
Of course they're not which makes it even more insignificant. The last average pa contribution I saw was around 6k with most of that made up from cash ISA and that cash tends to be withdrawn frequently as it's lower income.

It's only in the middle income brackets that it becomes properly used as an investment vehicle and maximum contributions are only hit with any significant frequency in the upper say 100k+ bracket. It just seems very odd to even bother raising it if not for political spin as it's not really helping anyone.

Perhaps he just likes to tinker with policy, given the amount of change over the years
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I get your point, but my missus did take out ISAs even when a low earner- bloody Asian saving mentality putting me to shame. I guess they want to be seen as the tax-lite party, raising it incrementally, albeit meaninglessly.
Not totally read up on the lifetime ISA yet, given I'm on holiday, but christ, ridiculous number of ISA types now, given they were designed to be a simple savings wrapper.

You're in financial services? What aspect? I write about it for a living. Managed to miss the last three Budgets being on hols for my birthday.
 
712 said:
You've kind of reinforced Smores' point Jips. £50 a month is indeed affordable by average bod, it's only £1200 pa. But that's a long way from £20k pa, which isn't.
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Ah, OK. Was thinking more of the Lifetime ISA and its £4k limit. Still some way off the max, admittedly.
 
sun_tzu said:
All schools to be academies by the end of the parliament might not go down too well with some
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How that this been swept under the rug?

Osborne's effectively announced the end of the publicly owned and managed education system ... and the media aren't covering it. Bullshit.
 
ThierryHenry said:
How that this been swept under the rug?

Osborne's effectively announced the end of the publicly owned and managed education system ... and the media aren't covering it. Bullshit.
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in fairness it has been heavily trailed in the run up... I suspect we will see some teacher strikes at some point - though to be honest thats pointless as people just think - you are stopping educating my child and making me take a day off work - I don't care what your point is just do your job.
I'm in favour of it in many ways - the summerborn thing is an example where the government announced a policy and basically most labour run councils made it hard / expensive for parents to take up the opportunity and most constevative made it easy... if labour had been in power and announced exactly the same thing the opposite would have happened

So anything that can take some of the tribalism out of education policy is in my opinion probably a good thing overall - that said as with any big change there will be difficulties in putting it into practice and inevitably it will be our kids that suffer because of it
 
2/3 of schools have already become academies haven't they? This has been inevitable for a while. The school I went to became an Academy while I was there and went from being a horrible shithole to being a well-built chav estate. That said, my year was the last one where less than half the pupils got at least 5 A-C's, so there was some improvement. People who've got good local schools should be feeling pissed off about it though.
 
IFS: 50/50 whether Osborne will hit surplus target

Institute for Fiscal Studies director Paul Johnson warned that Mr Osborne would be forced to find "genuinely big" tax rises or spending cuts if there was any further downgrade in the public finances, in order to meet his target of delivering a budget surplus by the end of the parliament.

"Within his very tight rule he will probably get away with this this time round. But there's only about a 50-50 shot that he's going to get there," Mr Johnson told the BBC Radio 4's Today programme.

Paul Johnson, head of IFSPaul Johnson, head of IFS

"If things change again, if the OBR downgrades its forecasts again, I don't think he will be able to get away with anything like this. I think he will be forced to put some proper tax increases in or possibly find some yet further proper spending cuts.

"I think this is going to be the last chance he gets to move things around like this without doing anything genuinely big to the public finances."

- Telegraph
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Now that the dust has settled, even nominally friendly newspapers are leading on such headlines as:

Osborne warned he only has a '50/50 shot' at hitting Budget surplus target as he comes under fire over £55bn black hole

And elsewhere...

Disability benefit cut: Tory backbenchers call for rethink
 
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What the hell is all this outrage surrounding Therese May? A bit of skin and people are behaving like a troop of IS enforcing female dress codes.

This country sometimes...:rolleyes:
 
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Nick 0208 Ldn said:
Or the Commons could set a positive rather than discriminatory example. I didn't even know there was a ban in place.
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In fairness I wouldn't want my baby exposed to those politicians
But generally speaking I cant see why a woman cant breast feed wherever she wants... my wife would think nothing of feeding our child on a train or in any public space and if anybody had an issue with it that would be there issue and they would be welcome to do one - but yes you would like to think the commons would be ahead of the curve on things like this.
 
sun_tzu said:
In fairness I wouldn't want my baby exposed to those politicians
But generally speaking I cant see why a woman cant breast feed wherever she wants... my wife would think nothing of feeding our child on a train or in any public space and if anybody had an issue with it that would be there issue and they would be welcome to do one - but yes you would like to think the commons would be ahead of the curve on things like this.
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Might help if the people we elected weren't complete pricks. It's little wonder their policies aren't of the decade when they've not even entered the century yet.
 
That article only confirms my scepticism about him succeeding van Gaal.
 
Jippy said:
Me neither, but not really practical to have a load of screaming babies in the chamber when you're trying to debate the running of the country.
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Very good. :)

Parliament is going to be refurbished soon, perhaps they could turn the Commons chamber into the country's largest ball pit.


berbatrick said:
http://www.theguardian.com/commenti...-secretary-cleavage-budget-sexism-westminster
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Save for the prudish sort and debutantes, this would have drawn nary a mention in 1816 let alone 2016.

3930.jpg

If i were Boris or Labour and campaigning against Osborne, a a caricature of him as a vampire or a Romulan might find ground with the electorate (esp that picture).
 


Whilst i have sympathy for the local initiatives behind the establishment of academies (with local/central Gov't having proven to be unreliable), i fear that we are now taking what was a reasonable idea and ruining it to no purpose. How many of these schools are likely to maintain the link with parents if it is now a matter of choice?

The nw inspection regime sounds awfully lax too, but then Ofsted and the rules by which it operates are a laughing stock anyway.
 
Plans in the Budget to cut disability benefits, which have sparked threats of a Tory revolt, are "a suggestion", cabinet minister Nicky Morgan has said.
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-35839282

Back peddling already, although Giddy doesn't have the guts to deal with it himself so he once again sends someone else to explain it. To be fair though I seriously detest the man so the story could be "Osborne ends world poverty" and I would still think that he was an arse.
 
Mr Duncan Smith said the cuts were "not defensible" within a Budget that "benefits higher earning taxpayers".
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Fair play, that gets to the point pretty bluntly. Didn't expect that.
 
You know it's bad when IDS reckons you've gone too far in stamping down on the poor and needy.

Anyways, this is just political manoeuvring. I doubt he actually does care about those with disabilities that much considering his history.
 
Think we can say bye to Osborne's PM chances as well. Though that would actually be to the Tories' benefit.
 
Jippy said:
No, he's just trying to feck the government ahead of the EU referendum, given his 'out' stance.
This is the man who visibly orgasmed over planned benefit cuts in the last Budget.
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Yes. Can't remember the exact line, but didn't he say people can live on 7 a day? The guy is evil.
 
Jippy said:
No, he's just trying to feck the government ahead of the EU referendum, given his 'out' stance.
This is the man who visibly orgasmed over planned benefit cuts in the last Budget.
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So the guy who said the disabled should work their way out of poverty, claimed he could live on £53 a week (while claiming £39 for breakfast) and punched the air when Cameron announced a tax cut for the highest band has just noticed that he's a cnut?

Yeah, right.
 
Great news. Wonder when he realised that we were never in it together.
 
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