Thread: If you were PM... where would you cut back?

Originally Posted by FrankCastle

1)
3)Slash and burn the Benefits: only people physically incapable of doing ANY work, i.e. parapalegic, to get Benefits for doing nothing. Everyone else gets three months to find a job on full benefits. After that, they have to do hard, demeaning work, for example scraping chewing-gum of the streets.

4)And this includes Child Support etc. NO Benefits for single mothers; either pay for the little b@stard yourself or keep your legs closed. No more free housing for the nighbourhood bike.

:

Take my neighbours, nice enough people but they don't do 'work'.

Neither of the parents have worked in a decade. Both receive full SS benefits and mobilty allowance, both are somewhat obese. Their house is not some shithole either, well kept and a nice garden with patio and all the trimmings.

They have 4 kids, all grown up. The three girls are all on relationship umpteen with between 3 and 6 kids. None of the mothers ever worked, all have council houses, all on benefits with transitory 'baby fathers' coming and going. Most of the kids are diagnosed with 'ADHD' and they receive extra benefits for them. The youngest, their son, is doing time for armed robbery to pay for his drug habit and he also gets extra benefits as he's got assorted mental issues. The eldest girl grandchild, age 15, has just had her first kid, two of the teenage grandsons are baby fathers too.

So we have three generations where living on benefits is now the norm, not one of the extended family has been in employment for a decade, and the cycle is being repeated with the current teenage generation.


Now some ones paying for that extended families benefits that must be into the hundreds of thousands a year and that some one is the shrinking workforce. We can't go on like this.

I think the MOD could lop MILLIONS off its own budget if it really wanted to, lots of fat to trim. Think of all those staff cars, drivers, cooks, cleaners, gardeners, official entertaining - and that is before any other questionable expenditure. Are we much better than MPs ?

In answer to the thread's question:

Approximately in the middle of the throats of:

Brown; Mandelson; Harman; Hewitt; Hodge; Hain - most definitely; Milliband x 2; Prescott; Straw; Blears; Mr. Taylor of Warwick and Bliar (Mr and Mrs).

I wonder if you take away all the spin and smokescreening by the government how close are we to being in complete ruin? well not complete ruin but shitestate? perhaps starting afresh is not such a bad idea.

I think the basis of a successful working country is there it just has been riddled by mis-management/fatcats/corrupt governments for so long that they are a shadow of what they are supposed to be (the nhs and armed forces off the top of me head )

How much money would we save by cutting back the unneccesary fat on all parts of the public services and organisations? billions maybe.
Enough for a few chinooks anyways.

There's a simple point here. The Military are public servants. We are paid by the Taxpayer to do jobs. (And pay taxes ourselves)

The legions of benefits claimants are ALSO public servants, paid by the taxpayer to do.... Feck all.

The Taxpayer (i.e, me) has a claim on the benefit recipient. He/She /It gets my cash. I don't mind, I've signed on myself in the past. What I want and expect is that the State extracts some sort of work for the cash. I don't care if its cleaning ditches, building roads, cleaning Sellafield with a toothbrush... If they don't like being at the State's becak and call... Find a job elsewhere.

No workee, no payee.

Originally Posted by HectortheInspector

No workee, no payee.

If only!

Originally Posted by Burning Our Money Blog

Let's remind ourselves how much of our cash MoD spends. This year it will be £48bn - about 13 pence on the standard rate of income tax - of which £9bn will be spent on capital procurement.

And let's also remind ourself of how they spend that money. In particular, let's recall how few actual fighting men they employ.

According to the latest official stats, total MoD employment is 283,000 (Sept 2008, full-time equivalents). But of that total, the number of people available to fight our wars - the real ones we actually face, like Afghanistan - is no more than about 30,000 (see this blog). Which leaves about 250,000 people who are doing something else. Like running the dysfunctional procurement system.

But can anything be done?

Because whereas we can see how to make education, health, law and order, and various other public services work better - by removing central government right away from the action - with defence it's difficult to see what we can do. We can't privatise it, and while the idea of directly elected generals has some appeal, we're not entirely convinced.

Government has to run defence, and somehow we have to find some way of making them do it more efficiently.

Yes, we should slash the number of desk jocks, and yes, we should insist they buy more off-the-shelf kit from the yanks, and yes, we should scrap all the Cold War kit we're still buying (including the full Trident replacement). But beyond that, it's tricky. Very tricky.

The simple fact is, the King really can't get things done as cheap as other men.

Which is precisely why the King should not be involved in anything beyond law and war.

My bold. It's relatively simple, but massively painful. We need to fundamentally reassess the role of Government, and accept that there are things it should either not do at all, or do to a lesser extent.

Defence is not one of those. It is an essential role of the State.

The downside is that no politician has the balls to do something as career limiting as that.

The people who hand out millions to asylum seekers.

Sell all old uk businesses to european/indian owners for a song.
Allow any fecker in to the uk - including convicted pregnant drug mules.
Turn the uk into a chav ridden filthy doss house.
Let the uk become a floating prison.

Ang on a sec........I'm too late.

Foreign aid - Charity begins at home

Benefits - Get to work you bone idle cnut

MP's expenses - Flat wage. End of discussion

Defence - The Ministry of, not the three uniformed branches

ACPO - We have 40 odd chief cons as it is

Just to name a few off the top of my head. Priorities for the government in order:

1. The Recession - We're skint
2. Defence - We're at war
3. Health Care - Hospitals are bursting
4. Law and Order - Crime is up
5. Education - The newest generation is thick

Originally Posted by Closet_Jibber

1. The Recession - We're skint - Gordon has saved us! Boom and plenty is just around the corner!

2. Defence - We're at war - Get with the programme! We're 'nation building', not war fighting.

3. Health Care - Hospitals are bursting - The NHS has never been better! The Government says so.

4. Law and Order - Crime is up - Government says it's down, but Hazel seems to have had a bit of a hiccup this morning.

5. Education - The newest generation is thick - Balls says they are cleverer than ever!

Black is white, white is black. Off to the re-education camp for you young man!


But seriously for a minute. Can anyone remember the old Russian english language propaganda broadcasts back in the 70's and 80's? The ones were they were always telling us how productivity and quality of life was up month on month in the USSR and how badly off we were in the West, (Yes I know, but it passed the time when you were on watch).

Notice how similar the governments utterings are sounding to them these days?

Originally Posted by Oil_Slick

Originally Posted by Closet_Jibber

1. The Recession - We're skint - Gordon has saved us! Boom and plenty is just around the corner!

2. Defence - We're at war - Get with the programme! We're 'nation building', not war fighting.

3. Health Care - Hospitals are bursting - The NHS has never been better! The Government says so.

4. Law and Order - Crime is up - Government says it's down, but Hazel seems to have had a bit of a hiccup this morning.

5. Education - The newest generation is thick - Balls says they are cleverer than ever!

Black is white, white is black. Off to the re-education camp for you young man!


But seriously for a minute. Can anyone remember the old Russian english language propaganda broadcasts back in the 70's and 80's? The ones were they were always telling us how productivity and quality of life was up month on month in the USSR and how badly off we were in the West, (Yes I know, but it passed the time when you were on watch).

Notice how similar the governments utterings are sounding to them these days?

What else do you expect? They're both communist governments.

I'd slash the NHS to the point of providing only life saving (cancer treatment etc) and emergency care in hospitals.

GPS could refer patients straight into the private sector for everything else, paid for by the government, and it would work out cheaper I reckon; the private sector is run as a business, and the hundreds of thousands of "managerial" roles in the NHS would be surplus to requirements. And they'd see the same doctors!

Originally Posted by Hobo-Ken

Originally Posted by CrownImperial

Not only can the country afford more

The problem is that you are wrong. It can't.

The other cuts you propose would be a good start, but any idea that the money will go anywhere other than towards paying off our now MASSIVE debt is cloud-cuckoo-land.

It's the new reality, my friend. Time to get used to it: there will be no more money for Defence from Lab, Con, Lib Dem, or anyone else. And probably a lot less.

Like it or lump it, I'm afraid.

If we can afford 60Billion to Europe, and >12billion for the Olympics, we can afford more money for the forces.

Originally Posted by CrownImperial

Originally Posted by Hobo-Ken

Originally Posted by CrownImperial

Not only can the country afford more

The problem is that you are wrong. It can't.

The other cuts you propose would be a good start, but any idea that the money will go anywhere other than towards paying off our now MASSIVE debt is cloud-cuckoo-land.

It's the new reality, my friend. Time to get used to it: there will be no more money for Defence from Lab, Con, Lib Dem, or anyone else. And probably a lot less.

Like it or lump it, I'm afraid.

If we can afford 60Billion to Europe, and >12billion for the Olympics, we can afford more money for the forces.

Spot on. We can't afford those either. But you STILL need to get real and accept that the "expensive gucci kit" fairy is not going to be visiting any time soon.

Sorry - but that's just the way it is. Sign off if you can't face the facts.