Spending Cuts To Send 'shockwave' Through Whitehall

[jammo]

Like the way Darling appeared on the Beeb saying they should be more specific about the cuts. As if he ever had the balls to do it. His job was only ever to throw our money on the bonfire.

[Kazuya]

£6bn cuts only?

That's like having a bout of diarrhea and using a pea-sized tissue paper to wipe your behind with!

[stormymonday_2011]

No, we're getting 20% cuts in everything by the autumn. Whether its announced next month or they wait a bit and call it the Comprehensive Spending Review is just a question of timing (same difference), the same consultancy firms were offering the same advice and planning for all three main political parties before the election. Given this is what Labour were going to do so I can't see Coalition doing anything different, just moreso perhaps.

Precisely.

The current announcements are purely window dressing for the consumption of the financial markets.

The new government want to give the impression they are doing something when in reality they have just hit the pause button on spending scheduled for the current round but not yet implemented.

The reality is that government now runs on three year spending cycles and most of the cash scheduled for the current round which ran from 2008-2011 has already been put through the books. The real cut backs were always planned for the next spending review for the period from 2011-2014 and they would have been implemented in slightly varying formats by whoever won the election whether they were Labour, Tory or Liberal Democrat.

The problem for the government is that the great financial unravelling may well happen long before they can get their spending plans onto the books.

BTW some of the first people who are going to get hit by the cuts are not public sector workers but the private companies who supply the government with goods and services.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/supportservices/7760829/Support-companies-on-offensive-over-George-Osbornes-spending-cuts.html

Edited May 24, 2010 by realcrookswearsuits

[Oh Dear]

where are the salary cuts?

I suggest anything over 25K is halved.

today.

What, a headteacher getting 35k for what they do? a doctor taking 25-40k wage cut? don't think it is going to work. Perhaps we would be better getting rid of half of the workforce and paying the remaining ones what they are worth- do this by saying 20% cut in every department budget. Redundancy payments would be the only problem.

Cut all benefits by 25% as of tomorrow. Remove a load of them in another couple of months and make the rest means tested. Combine income tax and national insurance- it is the same thing. We have to suffer some demand destruction to get back to some kind of meritocracy where effort, skills and production are rewarded. If the price for that is a worsening recession, then so be it.

[Guest sillybear2]

BTW some of the first people who are going to get hit by the cuts are not public sector workers but the private companies who supply the government with goods and services.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/supportservices/7760829/Support-companies-on-offensive-over-George-Osbornes-spending-cuts.html

A private company that solely exists by sucking the teet of state is a public sector organisation in all but name. That applies to our banking sector too, they could not exist without the protection of the state.

[Guest sillybear2]

JSA is not the only cost. Add Housing Benefit, add higher Health costs, add lost tax revenue. A much closer calculation and unemployment does no good to anyone.

Employing people also costs more than their salaries, cuts mean you save on office space, IT, pension contributions and various other ancillary things that can easily add up to x2 their basic salary.

The government should never have created over 1m new public sector posts to begin with, they were doomed by their largess, so it's a cruel turn of events when you consider many of these people could now be in successful careers in the private sector, instead of being at the whim of some apparatchik.

Being dependent on the state is not a good thing for either party.

Edited May 24, 2010 by sillybear2

[Guest The Relaxation Suite]

They're jusy hitting Whitehall first so when they start slashing the local health care centre and primary schools they can say "we took the first hit". Phase One underway.