The budget

[SydneyRover]

Off topic wouldn't be the same without a regular chat about the NHS.

Sunak allocating £5.9bn to NHS for new facilities and equipment, will this and the money from the increased NI cover all the problems.

In 2020 it was estimated that £6bn would be required to catch up with maintenance.

[ridgewoodrover]

The wife’s just had some great treatment from the NHS which required her to have crutches and a walking frame.
For some reason they don’t want this equipment back.
Seems a waste of money if they do that all the time

[normal rules]

Rishi Sunak has declared on the Andrew Marr show morning that a person earning 24 k only pays £180 tax a year. Slightly concerning given he is the chancellor.

[BillyStubbsTears]

Back in the day, a Chancellor was expected to resign if he gave so much as a hint to the public about what was going to be in the Budget before it was announced to Parliament. Sunak and the Cabinet have been leaking this Budget across the media for the past week.

[Filo]

Rishi Sunak has declared on the Andrew Marr show morning that a person earning 24 k only pays £180 tax a year. Slightly concerning given he is the chancellor.

He’s the richest man in parliament, most of his wealth is offshore avoiding tax and he complains about the average working mans tax liabilities

[big fat yorkshire pudding]

Extra NHS funding, big rise in living wage (too much in one hit I would say given it's a mix of private/public cost and small businesses can't afford it), additional other funding.  What's the catch?  Got to be some cost to it and he's known to be quite keen on managing the cost.  They've already done the NI increase so they won't be pushing income taxes upwards. 

We will see the full package ultimately.  I suspect there will be some changes to the way certain things are calculated to magically have found room in the finances....

[normal rules]

I Expect an increase in CGT.

[ravenrover]

Rishi Sunak has declared on the Andrew Marr show morning that a person earning 24 k only pays £180 tax a year. Slightly concerning given he is the chancellor.

I think he was referring to the extra that would be paid with NI increase as opposed to a higher amount if income tax was raised

[drfchound]

Rishi Sunak has declared on the Andrew Marr show morning that a person earning 24 k only pays £180 tax a year. Slightly concerning given he is the chancellor.

I think he was referring to the extra that would be paid with NI increase as opposed to a higher amount if income tax was raised

Selective hearing perhaps.
Probably from someone on Twitter who got his facts wrong.

[Colemans Left Hook]

Rishi Sunak has declared on the Andrew Marr show morning that a person earning 24 k only pays £180 tax a year. Slightly concerning given he is the chancellor.

He’s the richest man in parliament, most of his wealth is offshore avoiding tax and he complains about the average working mans tax liabilities

On reading this decided to check his pedigree etc out ...he has the "type of brains "  The encumbent PM hasn't got ....

And his brains are above his belt....as opposed to ....



Yes married into a family worth billions ...now onto the subject of off shore investments

Is steve bruce goingto pay full tax on his alleged £8 million pay off (barcelona manager gets 18 million euros if he is sacked

Rashford is said to earn £10.4 million a year  of course his financial advisers have never heard of the phrase "off shore"

Colemans first rule of football bigotry states :-

Criticise a politicians "financial management"  but never  a footballers

[DonnyOsmond]

Public sector workers set for payrise.

[SydneyRover]

And the national living wage by 6.62%

[BillyStubbsTears]

Fascinating media management going on here.

I heard Sunak on the radio the other day saying he can afford these extras because the economy is doing better than expected.

But he knows what the ONS is going to be saying about how "well" the economy is doing and he knows that information is going to be published tomorrow. It's going to say broadly what the IMF is currently saying - that Britain's economy has suffered a worse hit in the past two years than any other G7 country.


What you will hear tomorrow is a lot of crowing about how our economy is growing at record rates THIS year. And it is. But only because it shrank at even greater record rates last year. We ARE growing faster than most other countries this year, but that's a natural consequence of SOME of the damage of last year, when we had the worst hit of any G7 country, unwinding. It's like saying the fact that your body would bounce off the floor twice as high if you fell from a 10th floor window compared to falling from a 5th floor window is something to boast about. And the real problems then set in after that. Our growth is forecast to collapse down to historically low levels again from 2022 onwards.

So what is the solution? The obvious thing is to do what the Americans are doing. Keep on borrowing heavily. Keep on pumping money into the economy to get growth boosted. But Sunak is ideologically against that. He's going to be saying a lot about debt and deficit and how we have to pay it all back and why we have to cut our cloth and a load of economcally illiterate bullshit like that.

Even the IMF which normally supports balanced budgets is screaming at Sunak not to be stupid. It's just said in a report:

"Arresting momentum in the recovery could also risk a larger permanent output loss, given the stronger link between scarring and the speed of the recovery...for now, we think policy should err on the side of providing more rather than less support. With monetary policy space also heavily constrained, policy must now plan for fiscal capacity to play a greater role in macroeconomic stabilisation. "

In layman's terms, that means "For f**k's sake, do NOT make the mistake that we made in 2010, of obsessing about the deficit and cutting Govt spending. You MUST keep borrowing and spending if you are going to stop the economy tanking."

Sunak will not so that. And he doesn't want that to  be the theme of Budget discussions. Which is why he's distracting everyon with carefully planned leaks of all the little bits of good news, while he hides the longer term plans to rein in spending in the weeds of his speech tomorrow.

Clever politicians. Shite Chancellor.

[BillyStubbsTears]

Budget Bingo.

Watch out for this one as Sunak's justification for the swingeing cuts in public spending that are coming.

"A 1% rise in interest rates would add £25bn to interest payments on Govt debt."

If he says that, it means he's learned zero from the catastrophe of Austerity and he's prioritising the deficit uber alles again.

[big fat yorkshire pudding]

Anyone want to count references to levelling up?

A few of the announced policies seem quite sensible, the devil will be in the detail as ever.

[BillyStubbsTears]

In the big scheme of things, there's only one issue that matters.

Is this Govt going to prioritise helping the economy out of COVID by continuing to borrow heavily and invest (in particular in the infrastructure we need for a net zero economy) or are we going to repeat the disaster of Austerity and prioritise the debt.

Everything else is secondary. Get that decision wrong and we are on a permanently poorer and weaker path.

[DonnyOsmond]

Sunak's a Commie.

[BillyStubbsTears]

The GDP growth projections were quickly glossed over, but they are horrific.

Once the immediate bounce back is out of the way, growth for 2023-2025 is projected to be 2.1%, 1.2% and 1.6%.

That compares with the long term average from 1950, right up until Austerity f**ked us over, of 2.3%.

We've just given up and accepted that sluggish economic growth is the norm now. By 2025, we will have had 15 years of below trend growth. The result is that by then, the economy will be producing £200bn per year less than it would have done if the earlier growth rate had continued.

The scale of these mistakes is so big, it's almost impossible to take in.

[Glyn_Wigley]

Where were the actual figures for the past years so we could compare them against what was 'projected' in previous budgets?

[Glyn_Wigley]

Lots of hoo-ha about 'simplifying' alcohol duty - which sounded just as complicated as it is at the moment - yet nothing about any 'simplification' of the just-as-convoluted tobacco duty. Presumably because he wouldn't have been able to make out he was making cuts.

[big fat yorkshire pudding]

The GDP growth projections were quickly glossed over, but they are horrific.

Once the immediate bounce back is out of the way, growth for 2023-2025 is projected to be 2.1%, 1.2% and 1.6%.

That compares with the long term average from 1950, right up until Austerity f**ked us over, of 2.3%.

We've just given up and accepted that sluggish economic growth is the norm now. By 2025, we will have had 15 years of below trend growth. The result is that by then, the economy will be producing £200bn per year less than it would have done if the earlier growth rate had continued.

The scale of these mistakes is so big, it's almost impossible to take in.

All that despite very high spending I'd say which is what you called for.  It will be interesting to see the remainder of the full details but seamt very high spending for a Tory chancellor.

[KeithMyath]

Got to say Rachel Reeves was absolutely fantastic in her reply. Maybe Labour isn’t quite dead and buried. The next Labour leader? ….

[Bentley Bullet]

She may well be the next leader of the opposition, but I reckon there's more chance of Sunak being the next Prime Minister.

[Glyn_Wigley]

Of course Sunak has more chance of being the next leader of the Conservative party. He's the only credible contender.

[normal rules]

Public sector workers set for payrise.

Which will be wiped out by predicted 4% inflation.

[normal rules]

What’s is the diff between long haul and ultra long haul flights?

[KeithMyath]

She may well be the next leader of the opposition, but I reckon there's more chance of Sunak being the next Prime Minister.

Agree completely, and as one wise man once said….   

“Democracy gives every man the right to be his own oppressor”

[Bentley Bullet]

Of course Sunak has more chance of being the next leader of the Conservative party. He's the only credible contender.

I specifically said Prime Minister, of course.

[Glyn_Wigley]

Of course Sunak has more chance of being the next leader of the Conservative party. He's the only credible contender.

I specifically said Prime Minister, of course.

Probably before the next election so I'd agree.

[Bentley Bullet]

Of course Sunak has more chance of being the next leader of the Conservative party. He's the only credible contender.

I specifically said Prime Minister, of course.

Probably before the next election so I'd agree.

I'd go further and say probably after the next election also.