Britain's deficit

[Lazy Lob]

HMRC is going to love my VAT return. And the local council cvnts trying to close me down.


From Times Online
February 18, 2010
Britain's deficit to be 'higher than Greek deficit'

Sterling dived as investors digested the ballooning deficit figures
Grainne Gilmore
The Government is on course to run up a higher budget deficit this year than Greece after dire figures on the public finances today showed that it borrowed £4.3 billion more than it received in taxes in January, the first time this has happened.

January is usually a bumper month for tax receipts as people submit their tax returns and corporation tax payments fall due.

However, a steep decline in income tax and capital gains tax payments, coupled with a sharp rise in interest payments to cover the Government's debts, forced the Treasury to borrow money to balance its books.

The dire data confounded economists' expectations of a surplus of £2.8 billion, and falls far short of the £5.3 billion surplus recorded in January last year.

It is the first January deficit since records began in 1993.

Jonathan Loynes, chief European economist for Capital Economics, said: "Extrapolating the trend forward now points to a full-year borrowing figure of about £180 billion, some £10 billion higher than the Chancellor’s Pre-Budget Report forecast of £170 billion on this borrowing measure.

"This would be the equivalent of around 12.8 per cent of GDP, just in excess of Greece’s 2009 deficit of 12.7 per cent.

"January’s UK public finances figures have further underlined the need for more decisive action to improve the fiscal position when the economy is strong enough to withstand it."

However, the country's total debt, which climbed to £848 billion, or 59.9 per cent of GDP, is still far below Greece's total debt, which is running at about 130 per cent of GDP.

Sterling dived as investors digested the data, with the pound sliding 0.4 per cent against the dollar to $1.5601 after falling to a session low of $1.5575.

This came as new figures from the Council of Mortgage Lenders (CML) showed that gross mortgage lending dropped by nearly a third to to £9.1 billion in January, down 21 per cent from January last year.

This is the lowest level of mortgage lending since February 2000 and represents a fall from £11.5 billion in January 2009, according to the CML.http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/economics/article7031896.ece

[Wahnsinn]

I'm getting pissed off at all the MP's procrastinating about how to cut our debt, they need to just get on and do it.

[Lazy Lob]

How about this FFS:


Councils afraid to say how much they pay chiefs
Council chiefs in England and Wales have refused to disclose the salaries of thousands of senior staff, claiming it would lead to a public outcry.

By Christopher Hope, Whitehall Editor
Published: 10:00PM GMT 17 Feb 2010

Councils have been criticised for granting pay rises to officials at a time when householders face increasing council tax bills Photo: ***** IMAGES
The Government had ordered local authorities to disclose the earnings of all executives after concerns were raised about the size of pay increases granted to council officers.
But local authorities claimed that the pay disclosures would leave their staff vulnerable to reprisals from taxpayers. They argued that officers would be subjected to “personalised attacks and mischief making”.

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They said family members might be threatened and officials’ children bullied at school. One local authority even said the proposals represented “a gross invasion of privacy”.
The TaxPayers’ Alliance, which uncovered the exchange after a Freedom of Information request, accused council chiefs of resorting to “emotional blackmail” and “scare-mongering”.
Council bosses were expected to list the names and salaries, as well as pensions, perks and pay-offs, of everyone paid more than £50,000 a year. They have since persuaded ministers that they should only have to disclose the full details of staff earning in excess of £150,000 a year. They will list the number of staff and the job titles of those employees earning more than £50,000, but no further details.
Rather than tens of thousands of local authority workers having their salaries published, just 114 council staff, most of them chief executives, will have to disclose their pay.
Councils have been criticised for granting pay rises to officials at a time when householders face increasing council tax bills and, in many cases, poor quality services.
Since 1997-98, the council tax bill for a typical band D property in England and Wales has increased from £688 to £1,414.
Last year it was disclosed that Andrea Hill, the chief executive of Suffolk county council, was paid £218,000 a year while John Foster, the chief executive of Islington council was paid £210,000.
There are thousands of other local authority employees below the most senior level on large salaries.
Gordon Brown has described the increasingly generous remuneration of council executives as “unacceptable”. He said money that should be spent on public services was “going on excessive salaries and unjustified bonuses”.
Last summer the Government announced plans to publish the names and salaries of “senior employees” at public bodies who earn more than £50,000 a year. In all thousands of staff across all councils were set to be named in England and Wales.
The proposals were also designed to cover local fire and police services. But, during a 12-week consultation, the Government encountered determined opposition from local authorities.
The Association of Council Secretaries and Solicitors said key staff could be “personally targeted by less stable persons in the community”.
Wandsworth borough council, a flagship Tory local authority, warned that “families could be at risk of abuse and children of bullying due to press misrepresentation of data”. Forest Heath district council in Suffolk said: “The concern here is the potential misuse of this information for personalised attacks and mischief making.”
West Devon borough council said that the proposals were “a gross invasion of privacy”.
Mark Wallace, the campaign director of the TaxPayers’ Alliance, said it was “pure emotional blackmail to claim that anyone’s children could be threatened by improved pay transparency in local government”.
He added: “That is a low tactic and it should have been dismissed out of hand as scaremongering.
“It seems that some council officers don’t feel confident that taxpayers will approve of their pay and perks, and so they mounted a desperate attempt to keep them secret.”
Caroline Spelman, the Tory spokesman on local government, said: “Residents have a right to know how their council tax is being spent.”
A spokesman for the Communities and Local Government Department said last night: “We believe the rules strike the right balance between naming all those employed by councils earning over £150,000, whose salaries, pay and perks will be of greatest public interest, and identifying the posts of all other senior staff earning more than £50,000.”

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/7259289/Councils-afraid-to-say-how-much-they-pay-chiefs.html

[Mr Gently Benevolent]

Wandsworth borough council, a flagship Tory local authority, warned that “families could be at risk of abuse and children of bullying due to press misrepresentation of data”. Forest Heath district council in Suffolk said: “The concern here is the potential misuse of this information for personalised attacks and mischief making.”Thats classic; under worked, overstaffed, overpaid and sucking the life blood out of the community and they want f*ckin protection. Our local council has more managers than the sanitation dept has staff in total. Never mind keeping the place clean and vermin free what about hiring more media wonks to help the council spin their way out budget shortfalls.

[CMNot]

The blind are leading the apathetic. Truly a grisly combination.

[rgjbloke]

People in Britain don't realise just how middle class the local government structure is in the vast majority of Councils across Britain. And the middle class like to keep it like that. It guarantees them the best jobs and the best money etc. Some departmental directors and chief officers are now taking home salaries that you might think were grabbed out of a telephone book in terms of the number of digits in them. People further down the scale love it because it gives them reasons to look at their own situation and talk about evaluation and regradings etc. They use various policies, some of them official, some of them un-official to keep other parts of society away from what they see as their birthright. I'm not talking about the dustmen and the more junior admin staff. I'm talking about the junior management staff going up the scale. It comes as no surprise to me that they now want to hide the salary figures for these people. They will be worried about the bubble bursting one day I'm sure even if it has been going on for hundreds of years.

[Mr Gently Benevolent]

People in Britain don't realise just how middle class the local government structure is in the vast majority of Councils across Britain. And the middle class like to keep it like that. It guarantees them the best jobs and the best money etc. Some departmental directors and chief officers are now taking home salaries that you might think were grabbed out of a telephone book in terms of the number of digits in them. People further down the scale love it because it gives them reasons to look at their own situation and talk about evaluation and regradings etc. They use various policies, some of them official, some of them un-official to keep other parts of society away from what they see as their birthright. I'm not talking about the dustmen and the more junior admin staff. I'm talking about the junior management staff going up the scale. It comes as no surprise to me that they now want to hide the salary figures for these people. They will be worried about the bubble bursting one day I'm sure even if it has been going on for hundreds of years.You have nailed it rjibloke for all their equality and ethics policies your local council is a protected habitat for the bureaucratic and management class, the post-war ideal of promotion through achievemnet and merit has long died and now its an impossible feat for a working class family to put a child through university even if all three are working.

[martinexsquaddie]

We could just hide it in the US debt its probalby only a days worth of expenditure its not like your ever going to pay it off:(.
Unlike greece we are a proper economy so will be able to pay it off eventually :(
A lot of council managers are a bit like bankers and some CEO's (NOT ALL) convinced they have god like brilliance while the results speak for themselves :(

[EsoognomEhT]

I need to get a job at the council methinks...

[Blackcatnursery]

I'm getting pissed off at all the MP's procrastinating about how to cut our debt, they need to just get on and do it.
True

First time in recorded history that there was no surplus in January.

Delaying now will just double the pain later, election cannot come soon enough

[Ssandro]

I think the worse problem is the NHS. I was shocked at the way the NHS wastes amounts of money on stuff like management consultancy. My friend worked for a consultancy project for the NHS and had access to the NHS consultancy database on his computer server, with the fees for each project listed - on the database you could see that hundreds of times over the NHS spend like £700,000 on a consultancy project. The consultancy company spends maybe three weeks compiling a report for them in return. And what the NHS essentially gets for its money is basically a thirty page essay, written in nonsensical management jargon, telling them about how they need to improve x efficiency and re-structure management blah blah blah etc. But some consultants were getting incredibly rich from it - it's really a good racket to work in

[happyslapper]

Completely agree Ssandro. I'm generally quie left-leaning on NHS issues, simply because I think health is something everyone should have max support on, regardless of circumstance. However, that notion in iteself is threatened a) by massive wastage in the way the NHS is run, and b) by people with either self-inflicted (i.e. obese, certain types of cancer etc) and 'niche' conditions taking up such a massive amount of the budget as to prejudice those with normal, treatable illnesses.
The result is that we actually save/improve fewer lives.

However, for me the main area of Government mis-spending is social welfare. Hands down.

[CMNot]

The NHS needs to be restructured. But that is not going to happen. Granted it is better than the wastage Stateside, but Christ alive it is destroyed in terms of efficiency by Scandinavian and West European models of healthcare. And it is far more expensive than any of the latter.

But it is also a sacred cow. Sadly.

Social welfare needs the cut.

DfID needs to be abolished. TWICE the budget of the FCO, and it's role is...giving money away.

Defense, health both need cutting. DWP needs a kick in the cornhole. The Olympics could do with being fired into space.

Higher Edumacation is already getting cut, education could do with being reformed backwards (Ed Balls, chief amongst the very worst of a long list of ineffectual ministers).

Overall, we need to burn income tax and burn public spending. Neither however is going to happen. Sadly.

We need a politician with balls, who has the humility to upset everyone for the greater good of the nation. None of them around that I've noticed.

[Ssandro]

yes the most classic idea is Blair's New Deal. They spend billions on it, mainly hiring bureaucrats


Need a job? Build a nice big paper tower

john.morgan@cambridge-news.co.uk

A JOBSEEKER said he felt humiliated after attending a training course for the unemployed which involved watching DVDs, walks in the park and making models out of newspaper.

The man, who asked to remain anonymous, was told to take a course at YMCA Training, a national charity with a centre on St Andrew's Street, Cambridge, as part of the New Deal programme, which is funded by the taxpayer.

He believed the course would offer immediate work placements that could lead to a permanent job. But he said the course, which runs from 9.30am-5pm five days a week, involves tutors showing films such as Die Hard, setting contests to build towers from old newspapers, and taking course members on walks around Christ's Pieces and the Fitzwilliam Museum.

The man, who has been searching for a job through Cambridge JobCentre since being laid off two years ago, said he felt "humiliated and degraded" by the activities.

YMCA Training is a contractor for the New Deal in Cambridge. A spokeswoman for the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) said: "YMCA Training helps people break down their barriers to work - this involves developing a range of skills including teamwork and confidence building and healthy living."

The spokeswoman said a period of four weeks in the centre "is usual before a participant is ready to move on to a work placement".

YMCA Training said that as the jobseeker wished to remain anonymous, it was unable to find which programme he was enrolled on. It said the Cambridge centre had not received a formal complaint.

The disappointed jobseeker walked out one day last week.

He said: "We were divided into two groups on two tables by this woman. On these tables she put two piles of old newspapers, a ball of string and a role of Sellotape. She said: 'I want you to construct as big a tower as you can and we will see who is the winner.'

"I stood up and said: 'You must be joking. I should have come here in a pair of short trousers sucking on a lollipop, because I am being treated like a child'."

The New Deal is for jobseekers aged over 25 who have been claiming Jobseekers' Allowance for 18 months.

The DWP spokeswoman confirmed that YMCA Training is funded by the DWP for the course and that benefit can be affected if those told to attend fail to do so.

She said: "If a New Deal participant feels that their training is inappropriate they should inform their JobCentre Plus adviser."

http://www.cambridge-news.co.uk/cn_news_cambridge/displayarticle.asp?id=348697


Imagine how much the government spends on websites like: http://www.jobcentreplus.gov.uk/JCP/Customers/outofworkhelplookingforwork/inspire/index.html
They hire people to write pdf magazines sdfsdhgjhg

[Lazy Lob]

I tried to hire some people through their site. You have the option of doing it without registering. Two weeks later I got a call from them trying to wrap me in red tape and problems. I told them, politely to sod off.

Same goes for Royal Mail. They live in the 70's. Fill things in in duplicate and all in writing. Turnaround for a leaflet drop is around 3 months IF you can get a slot and you are lucky after filling in streams of "paper". If not it 6 months. I told them where to go as well.

This is all mind boggling. I want to work and pay taxes but the government is doing its best to stop me.

[Mr Gently Benevolent]

I tried to hire some people through their site. You have the option of doing it without registering. Two weeks later I got a call from them trying to wrap me in red tape and problems. I told them, politely to sod off.

Same goes for Royal Mail. They live in the 70's. Fill things in in duplicate and all in writing. Turnaround for a leaflet drop is around 3 months IF you can get a slot and you are lucky after filling in streams of "paper". If not it 6 months. I told them where to go as well.

This is all mind boggling. I want to work and pay taxes but the government is doing its best to stop me.I used Jobcentreplus last year and they actually easy to deal with and I got a few keepers, I tried using them before around 1999 and they were a nightmare though.

[AmandlaEwetu]

Last week we were told to submitt bids to finance as we had a £70000 surplus in our funds and if we dont use it we lose it.So we submitted for 6 black wheeled chairs that cost about <£50 each in Staples-but we can only buy from "approved" home office endorsed suppliers -cost of chairs £350 each....crazy

[gazell]

I admit, I did work for the council once. Good luck, LL! You need it, I know.

Facktards, the lot of them.

[Corrupt]

You have nailed it rjibloke for all their equality and ethics policies your local council is a protected habitat for the bureaucratic and management class, the post-war ideal of promotion through achievemnet and merit has long died and now its an impossible feat for a working class family to put a child through university even if all three are working.

You say that, but one of my good mates at uni has two minimum wage parents, and of me and my friends he is by far the best off thanks to various grants and loans (Many of which he doesnt have to pay back)
I meanwhile have accrued about 10k debt and Im in the second year of my four year course since I have to repay every single penny and dont get money off everything in addition to my parents being required by law to provide me with a minimum income.. Which is a bit annoying, but there we go. Whats more annoying is am now classed as unemplyoed and a drain on society because Im between 18 and 30 and still financially dependant on my parents, despite the reason for this being that I'm studying Engineering (which we're so short of we're having raido adverts to encourage kids to stick with maths and science)

Its not all brilliant for the middle class...

[Lazy Lob]

I admit, I did work for the council once. Good luck, LL! You need it, I know.

Facktards, the lot of them.

Thank you..

[Lazy Lob]

I just built up a head of steam last night:


Council parasites' salaries must not be concealed from their employers – the taxpayers

By Gerald Warner Politics Last updated: February 19th, 2010

Why did beleaguered MPs with their snouts in the expenses trough not think of this excuse? The excuse being peddled by local authorities to prevent the Government publishing the details of council fat cats’ bloated salaries, that is. They fear that, if the remuneration of these public servants were to be made public, it “could lead to personal attacks” on council officials and “families could be at risk of abuse and children of bullying”.

Pause for a moment to consider the admission implicit in those claims. They are admitting that council salaries are so indefensible that, if revealed to the taxpayers, they could provoke public disorder. So, clearly those salaries must be drastically reduced; and so should the number of council jobsworths. Instead, the Government has reneged on its original commitment to publish full details of the salaries and perks of the top 2,500 local authority officials in England and Wales. It now proposes to publish only the details of the 114 employees who earn more than £150,000 a year.

Whatever happened to the principle of public accountability? If those knights of the shire having their duck houses maintained and their moats cleaned at public expense had thought of this argument, presumably we should be as much in the dark about their finances as we were before. The most outrageous claim by the defenders of local officials’ greed is that publication would be an invasion of privacy.

Since when was an employee’s remuneration kept private from his employer? For the council taxpayers are the employers of these parasites and have every right to know what they are paying them. The individuals in town halls or public offices who sign salary cheques are only the middlemen: the employers are the taxpayers. The pensioner who is forced to switch off the remaining bar on her electric fire in winter because of the challenge of paying her council tax bill may run the risk of death from hypothermia; but she does so in the worthwhile cause of keeping council leeches in the style to which they have grown accustomed.

The plea against invasion of privacy comes implausibly from local authorities that have outrageously extended their powers of intrusion into citizens’ lives. Not long ago a council snooper in Aberdeenshire, claiming that a householder had put the wrong kind of rubbish into her dustbin, ordered her to show him the passports of everyone living in the house. Rubbish collections have been reduced, PC aggressions against citizens increased. It is time council personnel, both elected and employed, were reminded that they are public servants and that the taxpayers are not their subjects but their masters.
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/geraldwarner/100026619/council-parasites-salaries-must-not-be-concealed-from-their-employers-the-taxpayers/

Hahahhahahhaha