Autumn Budget 2022

BBC said:

Divided political scene could undermine efforts to restore credibility - Moody's​

Rating agency Moody's has said the chancellor's plan goes some way to restoring the country's economic credibility.
However, it said that risks remain due to the tough outlook, warning that the divided political scene risks undermining the government's efforts to deliver.
Moody’s vice president said that what was presented today demonstrates the UK's "commitment to fiscal prudence" after the disastrous mini-budget set out by the Truss government in September.
But Moody's pointed out that "the polarised domestic political environment and heightened policy unpredictability may undermine efforts to deliver on fiscal consolidation, particularly in light of strong social and political pressures on government spending."
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I wonder what they could mean?? :D

 
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Worthy said:
What? Why are we even talking about the people on benefits who are on them because they are lazy and don't want to work? They should be treated as second class citizens and made to live close to the breadline as a motivator to get into work.

For people who cannot work due to disability, then yes, they should be adequately supported by the state.

Can I ask you a personal question? Are you currently on benefits, or are you in work?
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I did not bring up the whole "too lazy to work", I was responding to another poster who (correctly imo) claimed that those who are fraudulently claiming should not get anything.

However that is a problem for assessments / testing to determine whether or not a person meets the requirements and should be entitled to benefits or not.

But the solution isn't "pay 100% of benefit recipients too little, in order to try and prevent the 1% who are taking the **** out of the system" though, surely?


To answer your personal question :- Yes I am currently on Universal Credit and have been for a few years now due to physical injuries and ongoing heart problems that are (unfortunately) taking forever to be investigated / resolved (However I did receive confirmation of my referral to cardiology recently, so fingers crossed)
 
Devilman said:
While energy costs may well have increased massively, The government put in place the energy price cap etc... to attempt to help deal with this.

What's your excuse for the hike in Universal Credit during Furlough / Lockdown? There was no war then, there was no 300% increase in energy prices, so what was the reason for the government to "artificially" inflate Universal Credit ONLY for the period when more "average working joe's" were on Universal Credit due to Lockdown / Furlough?

The reason is simple.... It was a lame attempt to "disguise / hide" just how little the average person on Universal Credit has to live on from the masses. As soon as "the masses" went back to work, they took that money away again.

Also, the 2 "Cost of living payments" we have received have been nothing to do with energy prices, but the rising cost of ALL bills, including food etc.. which while it may be a knock-on effect of the energy problem it demonstrates a deeper underlying issue.... Those unable to work are simply not paid enough to do anything beyond survival.
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Worthy said:
What? Why are we even talking about the people on benefits who are on them because they are lazy and don't want to work? They should be treated as second class citizens and made to live close to the breadline as a motivator to get into work.

For people who cannot work due to disability, then yes, they should be adequately supported by the state.

Can I ask you a personal question? Are you currently on benefits, or are you in work?
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I believe he is
 
Trouble is less you have, those on benefits included, means more you spend on essentials as a percentage of your income. We do need to help those people. Benefits should give you an ability to not be cold and to eat. It doesn’t at the moment.
Something something insulation grant.
Goodie said:
I remember coming across this when my hit three and found it utterly bonkers.
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Whilst that outcome is bonkers, we really shouldn’t be having free childcare for those in the top 97% (earning over 102k = top 97% based on 19-20 stats). Though we recently had the absurd discussion that £100k wasn’t much to earn.
 
Devilman said:
But the solution isn't "pay 100% of benefit recipients too little, in order to try and prevent the 1% who are taking the **** out of the system" though, surely?


To answer your personal question :- Yes I am currently on Universal Credit and have been for a few years now due to physical injuries and ongoing heart problems that are (unfortunately) taking forever to be investigated / resolved (However I did receive confirmation of my referral to cardiology recently, so fingers crossed)
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The 1% figure will be nowhere near close to being true. How can it be? I live in one of those areas that was historically very deprived, it's an ex-mining area with a lot of council estates and due to where I grew up, I know hundreds of them that claim benefits and I know for a fact they're perfectly able to work - so how can the fraud figures be accurate? They're only counted against the fraud statistics when they're outed as fraudulent, anything else just goes against the legitimate claim column.

The fact of the matter is that it's incredibly easy to talk your way into constant benefits when you're perfectly able to work.

I know this post was a little off-topic, but it isn't as clear cut as you're making out, the real figure will be much higher and grates especially hard on people such as myself who know x amount of people who do game the system and always come out on top, like a nice 10% payrise.

I don't think anyone in this thread would genuinely want to see legitimate benefit claimants made to suffer more than they already do.
 
Worthy said:
The 1% figure will be nowhere near close to being true. How can it be? I live in one of those areas that was historically very deprived, it's an ex-mining area with a lot of council estates and due to where I grew up, I know hundreds of them that claim benefits and I know for a fact they're perfectly able to work - so how can the fraud figures be accurate? They're only counted against the fraud statistics when they're outed as fraudulent, anything else just goes against the legitimate claim column.

The fact of the matter is that it's incredibly easy to talk your way into constant benefits when you're perfectly able to work.

I know this post was a little off-topic, but it isn't as clear cut as you're making out, the real figure will be much higher and grates especially hard on people such as myself who know x amount of people who do game the system and always come out on top, like a nice 10% payrise.

I don't think anyone in this thread would genuinely want to see legitimate benefit claimants made to suffer more than they already do.
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Trouble is, where are the jobs they can work? Can they get there or is the public transport situation in such a mess due to austerity and cuts that it’s not viable to transport the workers to the work? It’s easy saying they can work, but it’s another thing if the jobs are there and then if they can even do the job.
 
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Demon said:
Yep..

There is a lot of tax inequality because of this or a lot of lost tax revenue if you look at it that way..

Simplistically:
If both of you earn £50k, your net household annual income is £76044
If one of you earns £100k, and the other £0, your net household annual income is £67049

Or, you could both earn £43k PA and your net household income would be the same as someone earning a single salary of £100k

£9K difference, or £750 a month..
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That’s because they want two little cogs in their corporate machine and not one.

None of the mainstream parties care about families, all they care about is ‘the economy’. Stay at home parents aren’t good for the economy so they’ll disincentivise them as much as they can. The corporate machine is more important than peoples family lives.
 
Ahleckz said:
Trouble is, where are the jobs they can work? Can they get there or is the public transport situation in such a mess due to austerity and cuts that it’s not viable to transport the workers to the work? It’s easy saying they can work, but it’s another thing if the jobs are there and then if they can even do the job.
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There's a train station on the actual estate :D
 
Freakbro said:
What they promise is lots of lovely unicorns just around the corner with easily digestible soundbites. What you'd get is Lettuce Liz's and Kamikwazis budget on steroids

They are the party for the terminally gullible.
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I don't know too much about them, but I suspect their version of "Reform" is a bit like Hitler's "Reforms" but in a half cut estuary accent?
 
Worthy said:
The 1% figure will be nowhere near close to being true. How can it be? I live in one of those areas that was historically very deprived, it's an ex-mining area with a lot of council estates and due to where I grew up, I know hundreds of them that claim benefits and I know for a fact they're perfectly able to work - so how can the fraud figures be accurate? They're only counted against the fraud statistics when they're outed as fraudulent, anything else just goes against the legitimate claim column.

The fact of the matter is that it's incredibly easy to talk your way into constant benefits when you're perfectly able to work.

I know this post was a little off-topic, but it isn't as clear cut as you're making out, the real figure will be much higher and grates especially hard on people such as myself who know x amount of people who do game the system and always come out on top, like a nice 10% payrise.

I don't think anyone in this thread would genuinely want to see legitimate benefit claimants made to suffer more than they already do.
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It came from the government's own statistics / data on the matter, so while I cannot speak to the veracity of the data itself the Government (as mentioned previously) has been padding out the data in recent years you'd imagine that if they real figure was much higher they would gladly represent it as such?

I don't disagree with you to be honest, initially (at least until your first "assessment" for capacity to work) getting onto benefits is indeed quite easy and simple... however surely that is a good thing no?
Still better to make it simple and easily accessible to the 99% who need it, than make it excessively difficult or complicated for everyone just to try and stop 1%?

The issue comes when people have these assessments for capacity to work... The level of dishonesty that occurs on behalf of the assessors at times is shocking, combined with the methodology for assessing a person is deeply flawed imo.
(not saying it's commonplace or everywhere, but you have no doubt seen the news articles in the past of people who clearly needed the help / support being denied / thrown off benefits and in extreme cases, causing suicide)

Again I agree with what you're saying, in my younger years I could think of quite a few people who would match your description of those who were "gaming the system" and it used to annoy me too when I was heading out for a nightshift on a cold miserable December night, but I came to realize and still whole-heartedly believe that the solution to that is not found by "punishing" or "demonizing" the 90% of people who genuinely need the help / support (Let's say we agree that the real figure for people taking the **** is closer to 10%?)

The issue is that with the way the system works and what a lot of people are advocating ("stop giving inflation-tracking rises to benefits" )in order to try and prevent those are are "gaming the system" from doing so / being enticed to do so would have a significant negative effect on the 90% of genuine claimants / recipients.
It feels like one of those "cutting off your nose to spite your face" situations except in this case, you'd be cutting off your face to spite your nose :p :D
 
LabR@t said:
Mean testing pensions.

What is the point in saving towards a private pension?
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This.

There is a small subset of people who right now should not save for a pension. They will be on pensions credit and that will be reduced by the amount of the pension they receive privately.
As they will be badly paid they are better off just using the money now.

If you start to feed in means testing to the state pension you potentially move that up, significantly.
Messing about with the guaranteed entitlement is a very very risky strategy that could make it worse not better for the government, as such they are probably better advised to keep well away!

I would like to see the option to opt out, problem is that relies on the person being a "good actor", and as such you would be needing to be completely ruthless potentially on someone who claimed to have opted out to invest it elsewhere but in reality hit retirement with no provision at all.
 
Devilman said:
While energy costs may well have increased massively, The government put in place the energy price cap etc... to attempt to help deal with this.

What's your excuse for the hike in Universal Credit during Furlough / Lockdown? There was no war then, there was no 300% increase in energy prices, so what was the reason for the government to "artificially" inflate Universal Credit ONLY for the period when more "average working joe's" were on Universal Credit due to Lockdown / Furlough?

The reason is simple.... It was a lame attempt to "disguise / hide" just how little the average person on Universal Credit has to live on from the masses. As soon as "the masses" went back to work, they took that money away again.

Also, the 2 "Cost of living payments" we have received have been nothing to do with energy prices, but the rising cost of ALL bills, including food etc.. which while it may be a knock-on effect of the energy problem it demonstrates a deeper underlying issue.... Those unable to work are simply not paid enough to do anything beyond survival.
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It wasn't at all

"The rationale for the increase was described by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) as taking the amount up to the same level as statutory sick pay, so that people were not forced to choose between them, and was explained by the chancellor of the exchequer as strengthening the safety net."
 
Have I missed something here - what about the NI cut/cancel/cut? Does that remain do we know? It's worth "the sameish" each month to counteract the higher rate threshold drop.
 
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