Your Money and How They Spend It bbc2 now

[0a]

A programme on government spending, quite interesting, bbc2 right now.

[johnfm]

why put yourself through this?

It must be a piss boiler- thus I am steering clear.

[Megaflow]

£6k per year per family in tax for social security?

Jesus Titty Christ...

Credit to Peter Stringfellow for handing back his winter fuel allowance. Ken Clarke openly admitting he dones't need it or use it, but he is keeping it. Along with his bus pass.

Edited by Megaflow on Wednesday 23 November 23:08

[0a]

I did like how Ken Clarke stated he saw the winter fuel allowance as a "tax rebate" though to justify it!

I'm getting through it because it's not too biased and I'm tootling around the web at the same time.

Reminder that all meaningful spending rises came through labour, historically unmatched.

[Ozzie Osmond]

Megaflow said:

Credit to Peterstring fellow....

No. Just no.

[Deva Link]

Megaflow said:

£6k per year per family in tax for social security?

Most families get social security of one sort or another.

[XTR2Turbo]

Actually for once a factual programme that said it how it is.

That is - Governments of all parties have been spending beyond their means for too long and political ideals have pent up even more problems for the future.

Nice bit of clarity on Gordon fiasco too.

Also some interesting charts on the BBC website.

Hope this finally causes some proper debate on what's needed. Also highlights how deeply structurally flawed most of the European economies really are.

David

[SpeedMattersNot]

I'll get round to watching it, but within the first few minutes they took a breifcase of £22,000 and showed it to families who didn't look like your typical millionaires and claimed "this is how much the government is spending a year, of your money". Hmm..

I'll watch the rest in a bit. But reminds me already of that doc. about "Britains Trillion Pound Debt" a while back. It's like watching Top Gear...entertaining, but bullst.

[0a]

SpeedMattersNot said:

I'll get round to watching it, but within the first few minutes they took a breifcase of £22,000 and showed it to families who didn't look like your typical millionaires and claimed "this is how much the government is spending a year, of your money". Hmm..

I'll watch the rest in a bit. But reminds me already of that doc. about "Britains Trillion Pound Debt" a while back. It's like watching Top Gear...entertaining, but bullst.

You're right - no doubt far, far more than the £22k will be spent on the families shown but it won't be their money.

The point was, I think a good one. Government spending per family is astoundingly high, and people can't understand in the abstract how much it is but start to on the per family level.

[Liokault]

0a said:

SpeedMattersNot said:

I'll get round to watching it, but within the first few minutes they took a breifcase of £22,000 and showed it to families who didn't look like your typical millionaires and claimed "this is how much the government is spending a year, of your money". Hmm..

I'll watch the rest in a bit. But reminds me already of that doc. about "Britains Trillion Pound Debt" a while back. It's like watching Top Gear...entertaining, but bullst.

You're right - no doubt far, far more than the £22k will be spent on the families shown but it won't be their money.

The point was, I think a good one. Government spending per family is astoundingly high, and people can't understand in the abstract how much it is but start to on the per family level.

Why won't it be their money? If the government taxes a bank and gets £1 billion (say) that’s "our" money, not the governments. Why would that £22k have to only come in the form of income tax to be theirs? (Or am I missing something?)

[Eric Mc]

It doesn't only come in the form of Income Tax. Income tax equates to about 1/3 of government taxation income.

[Megaflow]

But all government income is tax, be it income tax, national insurance, duty, vat, etc, it is all tax. And it is all paid for by us.

[Eric Mc]

Megaflow said:

But all government income is tax, be it income tax, national insurance, duty, vat, etc, it is all tax. And it is all paid for by us.

Most, but not all. Some government departments have commercial wings and they can also sell off government owned assets - which is obviously something with a limited life span.

[TonyHetherington]

I wonder if there will be a programme on Channel 4;

The BBC: Your Money and how they spend it.

[Liokault]

Eric Mc said:

Megaflow said:

But all government income is tax, be it income tax, national insurance, duty, vat, etc, it is all tax. And it is all paid for by us.

Most, but not all. Some government departments have commercial wings and they can also sell off government owned assets - which is obviously something with a limited life span.

Well, a great deal of it is paid by corporations etc, rather than by "us", but my point is that more money goes into the system than necessarily comes out of an individual’s pocket, and all of that money belongs to "us" as a nation, not to the government as an entity.

[Eric Mc]

TonyHetherington said:

I wonder if there will be a programme on Channel 4;

The BBC: Your Money and how they spend it.

Or "Channel 4 - How it Uses Government Subsidies".

[SpeedMattersNot]

I've still not watched it yet.

But just before the company I worked for went into administration, we took on 2 HiQ mobile tyre fitting franchises. We got the Beds police contract and even on their panda cop cars, if one tyre was low and you didn't have in stock the same tyre - you had to go out and fit 4 new tyres to the whole car - often replacing tyres that were perfectly good!

I know police cars are driven hard but I only once did a blue-light call out that resulted in just 1 tyre being fitted. All others at least meant fitting same axle - even for punctures.

Chronic waste of money IMO.

[scenario8]

Sounds like they beat down the price your (now bankrupt) company would accept.

[sadoksevoli]

The real pissboiler is that this programme is at least a decade late and the damage is well and truly done.

[SpeedMattersNot]

scenario8 said:

Sounds like they beat down the price your (now bankrupt) company would accept.

Definately...like the time I had to go to the Luton MoD (kids army) to do 7 tyres on a couple of ancient land rovers. Still only get the 1 call out charge