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

Make long-term investment in gas chambers, associated rail links and infrastructure - then wait for the welfare and crime to plummit.

ok lets begin,

stop all overseas aid, I dont remember the last time I got anything off any other country,

make prisioners grow there own food,
also sterilize criminal familys, were son follows father ect.

pull all troops from overseas,except for training, secure our boarders,

leave the eu, but keep trade links, like norway.

leave NATO our kick the countrys that dont pull there weight, whats the point in being in an aliance, with countrys that hide there troops in safe areas.

make people who use casualty ever friday or saturday when they are drunk pay.

death sentance for Heroine dealers, kiddie fiddlers and cop killers.

allow people to smoke cannabis, there gonna need it living in a country with my laws.

national service for anyone umemployed for over 6 months and not in higher education are with illness.

double prison terms for corrupt Police, politicians, pop stars footballers doing drugs , being like joey barton ect, they should all lead by example.

no helicopers to play golf for the Royal family.

scrap id cards,

nationalize energy companys, that are robbing, yes robbing, the general population.

deport any person seeking asylum, whos passed though one other safe europeon country to reach the uk, if i was running for my life i would stop at the next safe place.

make muslims wear top hats, after all there make our news reporters wear scarfs ect, this ones just for my own fun.

make saint georges day a national holiday, and no ive nothing to do with the bnp,

scrap road tax and put it on fuel,

make prison more like us jails, also sentencing, ever watch them cop shows were they get 20 years and for the same crime here 3 months.

scrap the tv license fee, the bbc can encrypt there programs like sky, or else die a death.

this has taken me 5 mins to do, imagine what damage I could do giving more.

If Ive upset some people then sorry, I'LL try harder to upset the rest next time. :D

National Health Service

One: Its a financial black hole withered by bureaucracy and short-term'ism

Two: The problems of an aging population with long-term chronic illnesses, and high levels of obesity will not go away.

Its time for a new social contract between State and Citizen

Basic health care should be a right; but advanced health care under a new social insurance payment is required to stem the rot

Originally Posted by Hobo-Ken

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.

Yeah but my point is, we are still going to be footing these bills despite our debt, and it's thoroughly likely defense will suffer instead of these.

Just on the order or priorities as to where cuts should be made before defense, there are hundreds of other places to make savings, the forces have existed on a constant atmosphere of thrift since WWII, and thus we have an amazingly good value set up in terms of the Three forces.

Can't remember where I read it, but it was said the forces are a victim of our own 'can-do' attitude. Because after every swing of the axe, we adapt and overcome instead of imploding as lesser departments would, ministers are able to point out that we don't need the money, and we can constantly make do with less. Imagine this situation being applied to the NHS, or the Police? Sorry, we've done with thrift for long enough and we can't take much more, cut the money from somewhere else.

How about do away with the Scottish Parliament, Welsh Assembly (and the N Ireland Assembly) and devolve most powers that can be devolved down to County / Borough council level.

Pay for it ? .... Local income tax, then it will be local (yeah, I know) politicians who set the level of service and charge for it, efficiently or not.

This would sort out local politics, get the electorate interested in the local polls, voting in good people, and firing the shambles that are in our town halls today...Maybe be an improvement on the current bollix, who knows?

Central government should then be responsible for NATIONAL affairs... Defence, National Security (inc intelligence), Foreign Policy, Law, etc.

And again - Pay for it ? We already pay the Westminster crowd / Devolved Govt. to fcuk up local affairs so we should pay LESS in national income tax.

Strangely enough it used to work that way

My take.

Give prisoners an education and training in those skills we are short of - in one stroke cut recidivism. That way we won't have to pay so much on the prison service.

Decriminalise heroin but make addicts take their hits in centres or, if a small town, pharmacys. Take the thieving out of addiction and costs will fall.

Lose Trident, we can't afford it.

Lose ID cards.

Good point made just now - lose ID cards ( know how easy it is - cost me a lot when I lost mine....)

Seriously, ID cards are dead in the water - does anyone seriously believe they will have any effect on crime or terrorism? Even more pertinently, why should we actually trust the Local Council and others with that info?

If you do, read this:

"The government must be quietly grateful to the distractions of August. Only Computer Weekly noticed that nine local authority workers have been sacked for accessing the personal records of celebrities, and their acquaintances held on the core database of the government's ID scheme.

This is a significant story because government ministers have always dismissed campaigners' claims that once all personal information is stored in a single database it will become vulnerable to abuse by those with access to the system. Ministers have repeatedly insisted that security will be absolute and that severe penalties will deter anyone tempted to read files illegally.

Not true. The magazine's website reported that the nine fired were among 34 people who illegally accessed information. Some were reprimanded, some resigned and some were sacked but none was prosecuted. Using a freedom of information request, Computer Weekly found that Cardiff and Glasgow Councils sacked people who had looked up celebrities in the customer information system (CIS) which is run by the Department of Work and Pensions (DWP) and contains 90 million records. Various other councils sacked people for looking up their friends, their own details and in one instance, a girlfriends.

The really important point is that these cases come from sample checks, this raises the prospect that the security of CIS is in fact much more regularly breached. "Over 200,000 government officials have access to the database," says the website, "including 480 local authorities, and numerous government departments, including the Department of Work and Pensions, HM Revenue & Customs, and the Courts Service. The Child Support Agency uses the CIS to trace missing parents." "

And this from The Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisf...atabase-breach

So a random check revealed this lot of scumbags - think what a full check would do............

bin the arts council
I don't subsidize people who want to go watch football.
they don;t subsidize my laughable attempts at rock climbing or my fondness for crap sci fi.
why should non opera/ballet/theater goers pay for it.

and as for the "dead soldier type artist" why

I would reallocate 50% of the budget for the Royal Air Force to the Army.

Originally Posted by duffdike

I would reallocate 50% of the budget for the Royal Air Force to the Army.

Yeah that would help them buy more chinooks. Good plan!

Originally Posted by duffdike

I would reallocate 50% of the budget for the Royal Air Force to the Army.

Snatching money off other forces is not the way forward, infighting only reduces the pressure on the gov. to up our gross budget.

We just need more money.

Originally Posted by CrownImperial

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

Where does this figure of £60 billion come from? Is it a total of all the gross contributions, net contributions or annual contributions to the EU?

In 2000 Britain contributed £11billion to the budget compared with Germany (21billion or 25% of the EU budget that year)
http://www.politics.co.uk/briefings-guides/issue-briefs/foreign-policy/british-contributions-to-the-eu-budget-$366699.htm
Furthermore if we take Government Spending and net EU budget contributions:
Government spending 2008-09: £623bn, net EU contribution: £3bn
Government spending 2009/10: £671bn, net EU contribution: £4.1bn (i.e. 0.6% of total government spending)
http://wantagelibdems.org.uk/news/00...es_budget.html

Wiki puts it at £13billion or so
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Union_statistics
Even the Telegraph know that £60billion per year is ball-cocks
Net contribution 2008/9: c. £2billion
Net contribution 2010/11: c. £6.5billion

The 2009 EU budget is: €116.096 billion, (£99.6724billion) with commitments of €134.845billion (£115.773billion)
http://www.europarl.europa.eu/sides/...081217IPR45133

Fair enough we make a yearly net contribution but not in the sums you suggest, which would only be applicable with regards to a period of at least a decade, probably two decades.

Are you suggesting we paid nearly 2/3s of this years budget???????????

I am not sure. The fixed share MOD budget has bedevilled us for years. More should go to the sharp end.

£48 million...but the Red Book says different ?

http://www.ukpublicspending.co.uk/uk...et_2009_3.html

The Boxheads, Frogs and half of Europe have been hiding behind the generosity of our UK taxpayers defence spending for 64 years because we want a seat on the Security Council to 'punch above our weight' - why ?

In the meantime they have built excellent infrastructures, have old age pensions, schools, hospitals, roads, railways to put ours to shame, we have bred an ungrateful feral youth whose parents do not care for them properly because they are too busy chasing two jobs just to pay overpriced houses and living expenses.

I can't see the package my elderly parents (who worked & paid taxes ALL their lives) bearing comparison with other European countries ..........who on the war & who were the mugs ?

Originally Posted by duffdike

I would reallocate 50% of the budget for the Royal Air Force to the Army.

So how do we get about?

Tickets on BA for trooping, DHL for freight and Bristows for helicopter support?