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Graham, Tom and Ian
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What were the local issues four decades ago?
Cheadle and Gatley Lib Dems are moving
Cheadle and Gatley Lib Dems are moving
What were the local issues four decades ago?
Cheadle and Gatley Lib Dems are moving
How much do you pay each day Government?
by Lib Dem team on 27 March, 2013
This chart shows how much each UK taxpayer – on average – pays towards different elements of Government spending.
It doesn’t give any answers but it shows some of the problems the Government faces. For every pound we pay for education, we pay nearly 50p towards the interest on our national debt, which is why politicians are so keen to stop that debt growing too much larger.
It also shows the challenge facing anyone wanting to make significant cuts to Government spending.
The Coalition has decided so far not to cut spending on schools or the NHS but to make savings in the welfare budget (and other budgets too). This chart shows what would happen if someone chose not to make cuts to welfare, the NHS or to schools. You could totally eliminate all other spending – 100% cuts on transport infrastructure, industry, housing, administration, defence, overseas aid and the EU and it still wouldn’t result in the savings needed to balance the budget.
This doesn’t show, of course, whether any particular solution is right or wrong. But it does show the challenge facing any government. If you want to make savings, you have to tackle the big spending areas.
If you don’t want to make savings, you have to live with those public sector debt interest payments getting bigger and bigger. Each of us currently pays £1.13 every day that goes to banks to service the national debt (more than we pay for defence).
Note: Welfare spending includes old age pensions, winter fuel allowance and other benefits for the elderly. If – as all main parties currently say – this portion of welfare spending should be maintained, the cuts needed to benefits for working age people have to be even higher to make the numbers add up. Again, this isn’t saying one solution is right or wrong, just pointing out the maths of it all.
7 Comments
The HMRC have an App that will allow you to put in your own salary and give you figures for what you’re contributing toward each area of spending.
Cut back on overseas aid,we are not a rich country, when we have loads of debt, you don’t feed others when your own family are hungry.
Schools and the NHS are ring fenced from cuts. Overseas aid is not just ring fenced but is getting a very significant real terms increase this coming financial year to over 11B GBP. All of this money is being borrowed by our Government and as its sent abroad it does not help UK domestic demand but swells our current account deficit (53B GBP last year).
This is a very significant sum and would make a real difference to our domestic economy and jobs here in the UK.
The only major party that wants oversea aid cut is UKIP so ,maybe its no wonder they are doing well.
As usual the majority in this country are completely ignored on this and other “sensitive” issues by the political elites. Do we have to go completely bust before we get some sense on the public finances.
Bob, don’t be so mean spirited. If you contribute much to the overseas aid budget you will not be in a hungry family. Using the HMRC app mentioned above by Andrew, someone on £192 a week will contribute around £0.11p a week.
LES, maybe so, but collectively that money could much help the homeless and hungry in our own country, overseas aid is a continuing bottomless pit, and all the aid does not end up where it should anyway,
Bob, there is plenty of money in this country to help the homeless and hungry. The trouble is that the wrong people have it and hide much of it from the tax man.
Put an immediate end to the £0.08 we give to the EU today!
In that chart it looks so small. We are net contributors to the unjustifiable EU to the tune of a reported £9Bn, that’s £9,000,000,000 it does not look so small now does it?
Think what we could spend our hard earned money on, better schools, the NHS, (reducing council tax?)and the list goes on.
If we want to keep paying the bloated eurocrats their inflated salaries & benefits, like pigs in a trough, then it’s our own collective daft fault for not voting for a party that will kick the EU into touch.
How much was Mr Mandelson paid when he left his EU commissioners post? Ummm, let me see, I believe it was £1,000,000 of OUR hard earned cash and that’s to a man who had to resign from his elevated ministerial positions several times when he was an MP, only to be given (note we, the people have NO say in appointing the EU commissions) a nice fatcat position as an EU commissioner. There’s something wrong, something rotten, in our political system that allows such things to go on.
Even now the EU wants to increase spending and thus make us pay even more! It’s obscene. If it was not so serious it would make a great farce to put on at the theatre.
It would also mean we can escape the obscenity of, how long now, 17 or 18 years since the EU’s accountants last signed the accounts off? Any company director who went a tiny fraction of that time would have been put in gaol long ago! No doubt the usual excuses will be trotted out, it’s not the EU it’s the member states… well, it’s down to the EU to control that and ensure that spending is accounted for!
For my money the EU represents a cabal of the political elite who want £0.08 off millions & millions of hard working people so that they can cream a portion for themselves, in fatcat salaries and ridiculous benefits that we the people could never, if we worked for hundreds of years, aspire to.
Grrr, it makes my blood boil!