back to article Osborne details painful cuts for UK

After months of phoney war, George Osborne has detailed the coalition's battle plan to beat Britain's £109bn deficit, confirming hundreds of thousands of casualties across the public sector. The Chancellor also announced sweeping reforms to the welfare system, saying "fairness" is the government's guiding principle. Osborne …

COMMENTS

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  1. Kerry Hoskin
    Thumb Up

    could have been worse

    at least the science budget isn't being cut. Wish they had got rid of the bleedy old person "Free" bus pass. Our buses are so full of old duffers that paying passengers can't even get on! There are several on the bus I catch using their pass to get to work on! grrrrrrr The cost of the thing is around £1Bn a year, and don't get me started on the disabled entitlement to a pass, dyslexia for instance!

    1. Anonymous Coward
      WTF?

      Presumably then.....

      ....you don't object to people being given a pass when they have a life-threatening condition that precludes them ever obtaining a driving licence?

      I hope not....

  2. Ralph B
    IT Angle

    The Olympics?

    The London Olympic Games in 2012 haven't been cancelled then?

    Oh, super.

  3. Magnus_Pym

    Two questions

    Does a 25% cut in Foreign office equate to the shifting the world service to BBC?

    how much of this funded by the unknown quantity 'tax fraud reduction'?

    1. Adam Williamson 1

      not even close

      don't have the numbers to hand, but I think the answer is 'not even close'. the World Service is pretty cheap. it's mostly just talking heads in studios.

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    "An extra £900m to be spent pursuing tax evaders"

    Only to let just one company off of paying back £6 billion?

    /me looks at Vodaphone.

    Maybe Cameron should take a look closer to home, specifically at some of the people he has chosen to sit on his business council.

    1. irish donkey
      Thumb Up

      A subscription to Private Eye

      Only costs £28.00 per year. Value in anybodies pocket!

      Ensure all TAX inspectors receive a free copy and that will tell you who has avoided billions in Tax. And I sure after all that they would be plenty of change left over from £900m.

      I wonder who they are going to hire to investigate these Tax avoidance schemes. Oh yes that right the same tax experts and crooks that are using them. So how will that work. Use our TAX Service and we will ensure you NEVER get investigated!

      Good old Tories……

  5. Gideon 1

    Gideon

    Do know what the name Gideon means?

  6. Code Monkey

    Cameron

    Putting the "n" in "cuts" (nicked off the News Quiz and repeated endlessly).

    1. Jimmy 1

      "Cuts" and nodding donkeys.

      In the spirit of national sacrifice that we are being asked to endure what are the chances that these self-same euphemistic "cuts" will be prepared to step up to the mark and offer a few sacrifices of their own?

      Lots of scope for economies with their expenses, constituency allowances, travel allowances, extended holidays and wholly unearned salaries, so lets be hearing it for "The Big Society" from the people (all parties) who wrecked the society we had with their lunatic free-markets and deregulation of the greediest sector within that society.

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Train fare cap raised?

    We are already giving money away to the train companies, why not pay them less - or better still make them deliver more for the money rather than shift the burden sideways.

  8. Anonymous Coward
    Grenade

    Hillariously

    The taxpayer gets raped and the ones making the decisions which lead to the deficit get a pat on the back...

  9. JosiahB
    FAIL

    Up to £1bn to be invested in a carbon capture pilot project.

    Yeah... money well spent there George, investment in a wonderful untested technology which we can't actually even be sure will provide a meaningful return if it does work.... Genius!

    1. MD Rackham
      WTF?

      Pilot Project = Testing

      If you're not willing to test untested technology, then how are you ever going to get new technology?

      Carbon capture has been tested on a small scale, it's just that such testing doesn't tell you whether it will scale up properly. Hence the "pilot project" to see if it does.

      Or are you one of those people who think that engineering consists of always succeeding (i.e., you work in marketing)?

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Unhappy

      Totally Agree!

      Utter Bollox of an idea! Unless 'they', in parallel, develop aerobic bacterial that can work in the dark at high pressure to convert the CO2 into 'something useful' then all that is happening is more energy is being used to capture pollution for later atmospheric release. Insane! But it becomes somebody else's problem - our great grand-children's?

      Maybe the bacterial is what 'they' will spend the science money on?

      And before you start!: Yes, there are much more effective and proven renewable energy technologies available with UK patents on them that can be deployed now. They just aren't owned by the big boys and need substantial capital to deploy them. So, that's and end to that then, in this uncertain financial world, isn't it?

  10. cannon
    Stop

    Tax Fraud

    so will these scum politicians be pursuing themselves?

    a must watch: Dispatches; Monday 18 Oct 2010 8pm on Channel 4:

    How the Rich Beat the Taxman

    FTA: "How do the rich avoid paying tax and protect their fortunes? Dispatches reveals the clever devices they use.

    With more than 20 millionaires in the cabinet, reporter Antony Barnett examines the financial affairs of some ministers and others who have helped the coalition.

    George Osborne says 'we're all in this together' but are ministers and top Tories paying the same rates of tax as the rest of us?

    Barnett visits a number of offshore tax havens around the world still under control of Britain, including the Cayman Islands and the British Virgin Islands, to find out more about tax avoidance ploys."

    WATCH HERE: http://www.channel4.com/programmes/dispatches/episode-guide/series-72/episode-1

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Flame

      Re: Tax Fraud

      "Barnett visits a number of offshore tax havens around the world still under control of Britain, including the Cayman Islands and the British Virgin Islands, to find out more about tax avoidance ploys."

      You'd have thought that there'd be an appetite for abolishing the various bizarre "personal property of the Crown" territories, especially after people lost money in the Isle of Man (where the Iranians register their ships, apparently) during the Icelandic banking fiasco, but I guess these havens are necessary for the corrupt "elite" to stash their backhanders from industry and/or pretend that they're not liable to Britain for tax whilst still hanging out in Britain and moaning about "prohibitive taxes on businesses".

  11. Aristotles slow and dimwitted horse
    Stop

    Seems fairly rational to me.

    Now get those lazy benefit cheats out mowing lawns and pruning hedges and the like.

    I've never seen a Gideon put a bible in a drawer. Where are they from... Gidea?

  12. Eddie 4
    Thumb Down

    Feckin tory shites!

    Screw the poor, protect the rich - same old, same old Thatcherite bollox. And when we've hit the bottom of the next depression, they'll still be sitting sweet.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      WTF?

      define rich and define poor

      Yeah definately right.. the "rich" who work hard should pay all their money to the "poor" so the "poor" can sit around watching sky sports all day on their 40" plasma tvs, in their cheap subsidised house for life with their 8 kids being used as revenue generators (aka child benefit)

      Perhaps you should look at it more on the basis that the "poor" have more quality time with their kids, which at the end of the day is worth more than a fat wage. Meanwhile the "rich" guy is working all the hours and never gets to see their kids, only a dirty great tax bill...

      1. blackworx
        FAIL

        The poor rich guy

        "Meanwhile the "rich" guy is working all the hours and never gets to see their kids, only a dirty great tax bill."

        Shouldn't be too difficult to sort that problem.

        On a sidenote, you _both_ really do believe all that twaddle you just spouted, don't you?

  13. Anonymous Coward
    FAIL

    ORLY?

    Looks like Mr. Murdoch is getting value for his money, anyway.

  14. Jan 0 Silver badge
    Joke

    Prisons

    Well, not building a new prison is just a notional saving, let's get radical and make all prisons self funding. If university students have to take out loans, why not prison inmates? That'll be £40,000 per prisoner, per year served IIRC.

    1. bobbles31
      Joke

      You joke....

      but I think that is brilliant.

      If you think about it, we force students who ultimately benefit society to pay for their services and let crooks who hinder society get their services for free.

      ....or am I?

  15. Gerrit Hoekstra
    Stop

    Read: HMRC to get extra £900m to fix rubbish systems

    ...so that it might stop abusing our privacy, loosing our data, ignoring the crimms, pursuing the innocent, and getting their sums in a muddle.

    Surely HMRC should, like the rest of Labour's fat children, benefit from the application of a sparse financial diet in order to get its house in order, reduce the number of overlapping systems, de-duplicate its data, and remove the number of bored and incompetent job's-worths who spend their working lives on ciggy breaks?

    1. Ralph B
      FAIL

      Loser.

      I stopped reading at "loosing our data".

      It's "losing" not "loosing", you loser

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Well

        If it gets out, its on the loose.

  16. Anonymous Coward
    Joke

    I know...

    Just cut one random department or project with an annual/project lifetime budget of £1 billion plus and don't replace it.

    I'm sure they can make up some excuse for any given cut,and even turn it into something positive.

  17. Chris Priest
    FAIL

    Nice to see

    That the big ole fat cats got a paycut.....not.............

  18. breakfast Silver badge
    Paris Hilton

    That money we used to have...

    We are going to get that money we loaned to the banks back, aren't we?

    And, as we own them, we're going to move them out of the tax havens they are based in so they can pay fair taxes on their earnings, aren't we?

    After all, we do own them.

  19. Boris the Cockroach Silver badge

    Heres a radical idea

    get rid of all the consultants hired by the various government departments, after all they are brought in by civil servants because the civil servant responsible has'nt got the management or technical ability to do his/her job properly... which begs another question as to why the civil servant was given the job in the first place?

    Why not just hire the consultant?

    Or is it because its easier to find someone to blame when the project goes tits up when you hire a consultant?

    But then if you did something even more radical such as shifting the government out of London and to say Liverpool, imagine the cost savings for not having to pay London weightings....

  20. John Smith 19 Gold badge
    Thumb Up

    It seems cutting child supprt from couples with salaries over c42k saved 2.5x expected £1bn

    *That* should have happened *decades* ago.

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    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Magic word - "Could"

      Not "will", but "could"

      From the article "Last night it was not clear how much of the £200m Crown Estate profits the monarch would be entitled to each year."

      And wouldn't the richest kings in British history have been the ones who had near unfettered control and access to the kingdom's wealth - such as despots like Henry VIII/

  22. Anonymous Coward
    Paris Hilton

    Don't worry too much (!?)

    Premise: don't worry too much

    Basis: the Tories aim to win the next general election.

    Often overlooked: the Tories have incredible informal influence in the private sector and that same private sector also prefers a Tory win in the next general election.

    For why?: politics silly!

  23. frobnicate
    Headmaster

    490,000 civil service jobs slashed

    Even Sir Humphrey would need an awful lot of tea-ladies to handle that.

  24. This post has been deleted by its author

  25. MyHeadIsSpinning
    Thumb Up

    An extra £900m to be spent pursuing tax evaders

    No need, Panorama has identified Lord Ashcroft; and as Cannon said, Dispatches has done a similar job re some of the others.

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