UK Govt defecit.

[Welshbeef]

Does anyone know exactly how many billions in interest the UK Govt pay on the Govt borrowed funds p.a.?

Im just thinking outside of the box here about say taking 1 year off of any additional spending/spending cuts and how much interest that could save.

MOD - clearly we need to service all the vehicles/guns etc & pay our troops & replace any ammo used. Now if we pulled out of Iraq & Afgan fully and didnt buy any new vehicles etc for 1 year how many billions could we save?

Roads - say we stopped road repairs for 1 year - basically switched from a preventative repairs to reactive repairs how much could we save? - Guess a lot of this would be council tax over Central Govt?


Where else could cuts be realistically made without that much change to the service level we receive?

[elster]

Well neither of those would be a good start.

How about civil servants, I am pretty sure I can cull half of them and no one would notice.

NHS, private medical care instead.

[hornetrider]

Welshbeef said:

Roads - say we stopped road repairs for 1 year - basically switched from a preventative repairs to reactive repairs how much could we save? - Guess a lot of this would be council tax over Central Govt?

That is all very well but those 'savings' you are making is effectively putting people on the dole, with all the associated costs of benefits etc.

[Welshbeef]

I think to make a decision we'd need to see a breakdown of how the defecit has built up where has the spending come from whats driving the defecit?

Or quickly look at the current budget and see the big % spend areas. Then cutting spending in those areas will yeild the highest £ reduction.

Schools/NHS - hmm without really knowing how the £ is spent I'd not want to impact our future OR our healthcare.

Milatry - well we dont really need to spend a penny more than we currently do. We dont need nuke subs to replace trident.

We need Police & Firemen - higher spend possibly.

[meloe]

I know at the moment current interest payment is over £30 billion a year, more than the defence budget. God knows what it'll be after all this extra borrowing

[rabw]

Stop subsidising public transport.
Cut all crap schemes like ID cards.
Remove 50% of public servants.
Cancel recycling.
Charge road tax to foreigners like they do in Switzerland.
Stop giving money to the EU.
Take back our bits of sea from the EU for the UK fishing industry.
Cut all green funding.
Cancel the Olympics.
Cut all ridiculous housing benefits - re home people in cheap concrete units.
Introduce curfews for troubled housing estates to save on police time.
Other benefits largely reduced & replaced with tokens that can be exchanged for Tesco value products.

[elster]

Welshbeef said:

I think to make a decision we'd need to see a breakdown of how the defecit has built up where has the spending come from whats driving the defecit?

Or quickly look at the current budget and see the big % spend areas. Then cutting spending in those areas will yeild the highest £ reduction.

Schools/NHS - hmm without really knowing how the £ is spent I'd not want to impact our future OR our healthcare.

Milatry - well we dont really need to spend a penny more than we currently do. We dont need nuke subs to replace trident.

We need Police & Firemen - higher spend possibly.

The NHS is one of the biggest employers in the world. The rest of the world seem to manage just fine without a Nationalised Health Service. Would be easy to make private.

We don't really need policemen, more than Army. Get rid of all the non policemen, use Army as police.

[Welshbeef]

meloe said:

I know at the moment current interest payment is over £30 billion a year, more than the defence budget. God knows what it'll be after all this extra borrowing

So £30 billion a year.
There are 60million people in the UK so per person thats £500 per person per year!!!

[Dracoro]

elster said:

The NHS is one of the biggest employers in the world. The rest of the world seem to manage just fine without a Nationalised Health Service. Would be easy to make private.

LOL Probably the HARDEST thing to make private more like!

elster said:

How about civil servants, I am pretty sure I can cull half of them and no one would notice.

Apart from the social security payments. Sack half of the civil service, they have to go somewhere after.....

If they're employed by the govt. at least they're doing something for the country in their job, they do nothing sitting on their ar$es at home....

However, I agree that in the long term we could drastically reduce the size of the civil service but it would need to be done carefully. They've started to a certain point, a mate works in the immigration dept (name I can't remember, they keep changing it, borders and something now I think) and someone senior wants a cut of 25% and no-one has any idea where he plucked this number from, thin air is the latest offering. Anyway, they're no longer replacing staff who retire which is a start.

What is needed is investment in infrastructure (in all it's forms) and so on so that private industry can flourish so that the sacked civil servants have jobs to get. In many cases, publicly funded employment is not "real" but the change can't happen overnight, it needs the right thinking of those in charge............ Oh well, it was a nice plan while it lasted