UK Debt - Where did all the money go?

iDroid84 said:
The UK shouldn't have borrowed money in the first place. Trillions of pounds, my god. The UK is no more.

I find it discusting that people can get more money than a worker and play the system. It's wrong, Humans are going to on a wipe out mission are we? Greed is all I can say, pure greed. All businesses is there for is to rip every single one of us off and to put more money into the governments pockets.

All you people borrowing money, I bet theres a lot of it on these forums!

Don't get credit just to buy PCs, theres more to life than this.
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Wow, someone else who doesn't understand economics.
 
Iceman said:
Sending millions to other countries wont help. Charity begins at home unless you live in the UK.
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generally foreign aid is actually profitable to us it's just 'secondary' profit.

We don't dole it out for free. British companies get petrol contracts, building contracts, lower tariffs on trade, arms deals and airspace rights, gas pipelines, intelligence, etc etc etc ...

Politically we also don't do it for free. We tend to support British-friendly governments (or at least foreign government that instil policies we like the sound of). So in it's simplest form an anti-British government gets in, suddenly all the aid is gone - people start starving - people think 'My life is awful since the 'kill the British' government appeared', and after a while they're booted out and replaced with the 'we like the british' party. So the theory goes (!)

international aid is critical until a 'world police force' exists that is effective at stopping all countries doling out money for favours .. anyone that doesn't do it is going to get screwed ..
 
Greebo said:
Problem is the Government borrowed on one of those short term "have the loan in your account within 10 minutes and pay back on pay day"

They didn't realise the APR was 2986%.:p
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I can see it now.

" Good morning, Wonga.com. "

" Hello, this is George Osborne. I would like to borrow 20 billion pounds please. "

" And the purpose of the loan sir ? "

" Two aircraft carriers, dole money, a respray for HMS Astute, 400 million extra the EU is demanding, foreign aid for several corrupt regimes abroad and marble bog seats, gold tiles and saffron talc for the Commons bathrooms. "
 
Borrowing basically falls into good and bad borrowing.
Borrow as a country to fund investment in schools, NHS, transport etc = good it all adds to longerterm prosperity (better education, healthier workforce, ability to conduct business etc)
Borrow to fund overly generous benefits system for example = bad. Its giving you no return but your paying for it, possibly many times over at a later date.

I may be wrong but I believe the last time we seriously paid back debt was under the thatcher government. We were paying off some of the warships from the Napolean conflict afaik.

Its nothing new, as long as interest rates arent terrible and you are using it for investment its no issue.

Goverments cant turn the tap on and off in an instant, if tax revenues are expected to be £100, £110, £120 over 3 years and they decide to have a balance budget and commit today to spend those amounts. Then the arse falls out of the economy and they revise the numbers to £80, £80, £80 they may be able to affect the spend to some extent but assuming they cant you suddenly have £90 you have to borrow.
Its a double whammy since you get less revenue coming in, and suddenly have to support more.

Last night on the news they said we spent £20Billion on housing benefit, I was completely and utterly stunned. Limiting the amounts people can claim seems reasonable, what I don't understand is why we aren't forcing people to move out of expensive areas to less expensive ones after say 6 months on benefits. If we are paying for joe bloggs to sit on his arse in a house then rather than in London send them up't north where its cheaper ;)
 
robskinner said:
what I don't understand is why we aren't forcing people to move out of expensive areas to less expensive ones after say 6 months on benefits.
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Because 'force' literally would mean 'force' - not 'write a sharply worded letter'!

So you're hiring big and butch men to kick doors in and smash windows and drag people out.

1) Looks very bad on the news ('Look, here's 63 year old Doris being dragged down the stairs by her hair even though she's lived in her family home for 3 generations and lost a leg in the war. This comes after last month 59 year old Derek suffered a fatal heart attack during his 'forced eviction'. He'd been applying for 25 jobs a day, the government was moving him from an area with 4% unemployment to an area with 81% unemployment. Oh, and he's moving away from his son, who has helped him move aroud with his busted hip for 18 years ... now lets see some footage of him weeping and begging before he had the heart attack ..')

2) The fitter, younger people you do this to tend to get to their new house, get on the train, go back to their old house, force their way in, kick in anyone else living there, and require extracting again 2 weeks later. And again. Then a prison term. Then again. hold on, it's cost the tax payer £153,000 so far to move this bloke ..

3) Makes worst areas even worse and better areas even better. People trying to big-up their currently worse areas get this constant inbound 'forced to be there and hating it' drip of unemployed scum, fair?

:(
 
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I think its just as simple as oil shortages dont forget the UK, USA is purchasing oil abroad at extortionate prices while the 3rd world profits from it makes sense as we only have a few decades left of oil available
 
"Lastly I never racked up this debt so why should I care, it's not my debt? "

You underwrite it as a tax paying citizen, I presume.

Regardless if you care or benefit.

I don't want trident, where's my refund on that?
 
britboy4321 said:
Because 'force' literally would mean 'force' - not 'write a sharply worded letter'!

So you're hiring big and butch men to kick doors in and smash windows and drag people out.

1) Looks very bad on the news ('Look, here's 63 year old Doris being dragged down the stairs by her hair even though she's lived in her family home for 3 generations and lost a leg in the war. This comes after last month 59 year old Derek suffered a fatal heart attack during his 'forced eviction'. He'd been applying for 25 jobs a day, the government was moving him from an area with 4% unemployment to an area with 81% unemployment. Oh, and he's moving away from his son, who has helped him move aroud with his busted hip for 18 years ... now lets see some footage of him weeping and begging before he had the heart attack ..')

2) The fitter, younger people you do this to tend to get to their new house, get on the train, go back to their old house, force their way in, kick in anyone else living there, and require extracting again 2 weeks later. And again. Then a prison term. Then again. hold on, it's cost the tax payer £153,000 so far to move this bloke ..

3) Makes worst areas even worse and better areas even better. People trying to big-up their currently worse areas get this constant inbound 'forced to be there and hating it' drip of unemployed scum, fair?

:(
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to force something to happen doesn't have to mean literally pulling people out of their houses. It could quite easily be done by cutting/scaling down benefits based on location. It would be a lot more involving than that, you'd need to encourage businesses to move operations. I could see it actually working in the long run, but I don't know how the balance sheets would look initially.
 
Abraham said:
to force something to happen doesn't have to mean literally pulling people out of their houses. It could quite easily be done by cutting/scaling down benefits based on location. It would be a lot more involving than that, you'd need to encourage businesses to move operations. I could see it actually working in the long run, but I don't know how the balance sheets would look initially.
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Yeap thats basically what I mean't.

Think about the numbers if its costing £30,000 a year for some of these houses to be paid for, and they are dropping shock horror to £20,000 because of the £400 a week! cap then they are paying £575 per week to rent a 4 bed house. Thats just bonkers, how the hell are you expecting these people to get a job when they need to earn about £40k to cover that lost benefit alone, thats the whole frikkin issue right there. Are you seriously telling me that these people are looking for jobs when thats what they are given.
Its just plain daft. Ok Bury St Edmunds isnt the most expensive place in world, but you can rent a 4 bed house here, and I mean a nice one, for £800 a month. A cheaper one can be 700 the best about 1300 (ok there are a few way more than that but sticking to normalish houses). Theres more chance of someone getting a job and being able to support that level of expense than a £60k+ job to pay for a £575 per week house.

Personally i dont think its unreasonable to say look we will pay for this 4 bed house for 6 months but then your cap goes to £250 so you need to start considering how your going to handle that. Moving / downsizing etc
 
kgi said:
Government bonds of a AAA nation is probably the safest investment ever.
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partly true ;) you are forgetting money markets, ie if currency is devalued then your bonds will lose a lot of their worth. in the long term stock market will yield a better roi provided you invested in a diversified portfolio of blue chip companies.
 
Oxy said:
Lastly I never racked up this debt so why should I care, it's not my debt?
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Problem with Britain today, in one sentence.

Not aiming at you directly Oxy, because I'm in the same boat. I've got no REAL debt (other than a mortgage and student loan, which really is technically debt and has contributed to the situation but you know what I mean).

I make all my payments. Never defaulted on any bills, work hard, don't claim any benefit whatsoever, etc.

I realise that times are currently hard and buckling down and being cautious with money is a wise option to take. Someone is going to get shafted more so than others, and you can bet it's your average upstanding citizen and not the scroungers who take the hit.
 
lunarwolf said:
partly true ;) you are forgetting money markets, ie if currency is devalued then your bonds will lose a lot of their worth. in the long term stock market will yield a better roi provided you invested in a diversified portfolio of blue chip companies.
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ROI isn't what you're after when you invest in government bonds.
 
LCD TVs, Land Rover Freelanders, new conservatories and 5 bedroom detached houses priced at 6 times the annual household income.
 
I don't owe anyone anything, I have a £15 mobile phone monthly contract and that's it...

Why did we need to spend billions invading Iraqi? They never did anything to harm this nation, yet we invaded.

Why has billions been wasted on child tax credits?

How can we stop this from happening again?
 
Oxy said:
Why did we need to spend billions invading Iraqi? They never did anything to harm this nation, yet we invaded.
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For the same reason that you should go out of your way to stop someone beating up an old lady even though that person never did anything to harm you.

Morals shouldn't stop at international level ..
 
britboy4321 said:
the NHS and the benefits system have accounted for a fair percentage.

Before Labour, there used to be just about every night horror stories about the NHS, which was a right shambles (yes, compared to now).

There will be plenty on this board who remember the '14 month+ waiting lists'. Hang around for 14 MONTHS ok I know you're in constant pain. Yes with a broken hip. That has to be rebroken when you finally get to surgery because it's healed wrong? 14 months mate now bugger off home after you've bought yourself a wheelchair. And yes, younger readers, it was like that. A first world country. You fall off your bike and end up with a spoke through your leg. 'Have some pain killers, we'll pull the thing out with dirty pliars, then sort out the mess in 16 months ok fella until then enjoy your life and don't mind the pain eh :/'?



benefits will always be controversial, but what can't be argued is rightly or wrongly the standard of life for the very, very poorest was dragged up from the gutter. Which cost shedloads! It's just a pity the very very poorest also include a lot of less savoury characters.



Finally declaring bankrupcy would be a disaster as we couldn't get funding again. Remember if we borrow money in at 5% because of our AAA+ credit rating, then lend it out to a 'B' credit rating at 10% - that's money for free coming into England although less savvy people may scream 'OMG look how much we're in debt' ..
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You're missing the point, there were long waiting lists because, thats how life is.

Now you get disproportionate care, we started spending beyond our means, we paid to send people off to other healthcare systems to be treated, thats not an improvement of our healthcare, but it takes people off our waiting lists at a pretty huge expense.

Likewise we simply stopped classifying many things as urgent.

IE 10 years ago you might get a hip replacement much earlier while leads to a more active life and less pain, because the severity of the problem before you got the op was low, lots of people had it, long queues, now we set it up so people don't get the operation until its a lot worse, which means less people get that fair, less people having ops and shorter waiting lists, that doesn't take into account more people are now forced to live with more pain to make the waiting lists look good.

There are CONSTANT horror stories in the NHS, look through any thread here, in the past couple years just for members on this board there has been shocking treatment of people here or their familes, cancers missed/ignored with obvious symptoms till too late.

Anyone who says the NHS is fixed, way better than it was, simply doesn't know what they are talking about.

Not least because an incredibly , frankly, disgusting proportion of the increased workforce and spending has been on none front line personel.

IE for every million extra spent, you've probably found 700k of that going on people who are not required, don't treat patients and don't improve patient care at all.


Area's of the NHS have improved dramatically, and a lot of waiting lists have come down anyway, they always would/will have, operations get easier, thats life, more complex surgeries become simpler and quicker with less recovery time, thats how technology works. With decreased spending in the past 20 years many operations that previous required your entire chest or leg or back or whatever sliced open, have become simple arthroscopic procedures, but Labour wouldn't ever mention the simple improving of techniques and technology are massively responsible for quicker turn around, no, because they how would they take the credit.


Even despite all that, its NOT a good thing to spend yourself a trillion into debt with a good NHS, why, because at some stage you pay that back, meaning massive cut backs, meaning good NHS followed by fantastic NHS for 10 years, followed by awful NHS while the country tries to claw itself out of debt. The other alternative was at the same cost a constantly improving NHS long term without significant spending, and no cycle of awful NHS when the cash runs out.

Its not disimilar to me living in a 200k flat, deciding to take out 50 credit cards, buying a 1million penthouse sweet in central London, living the high life for a year, then the mortage is called in by the bank, the credit card companies are after me and I spend the next 20 years living in a 30k council flat while I pay off debt, I'd have been better off in the 200k flat the whole time.

Labour want the 1 million penthouse "uk life" but don't realise they can't afford it, go ahead anyway and plunge the country into 20 years of woeful economic mess.


As for where the money went, well, take 4-5 million private sector workers, who generate billions in tax along with the companies who employed them. Get greedy, overspend, raise taxes to cope with increased spending, the raise taxes puts those companies and those 4-5 million out of business/jobs, then rehire those people in the public sector to hide unemployment.

THe problem is you went from those people paying billions in tax, to being GIVEN billions in tax money in the form of benefits/public sector wages.

So you don't lose just the several billion in income, because after you've started paying them with tax earnings, you've lost out twice.

EDIT;- just as an example I forgot, a decade ago I had two knee surgeries, I got seen/refered quickly(after it being missed for several months in the first place) to a specialist, I saw him a couple weeks later, but the first surgery appointment was like 3 months later.

This year I need another surgery, this time I can get the surgery in only 6 weeks........ but this time I have to wait 3 months to see the specialist........... yippee, how Labour has massively improved waiting lists, by you know adding a new longer one infront of them with a different name.

EDIT;- the 1.4trillion is the quoted amount of debt Labour planned to be in after another 4 year term, and they thought this was fantastic as earlier projections of their current levels of increased spending had the debt forecast at 1.6billion or so, they thought only being in 1.4trillion in debt in 4 years was a brilliant achievement. The fact that Labour can't seem to grasp that our debt increasing 50% in 4 years is firstly, going to cause a MASSIVE problems in the country.
 
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