Summer Budget 2015

Enki

Myles Bradbury, disgusting individual.

raduv1

Hey watta you know , a budget where my wife and myself will end up better off in the long term. Now they don't come around often for us I have to say.

BISHI

So, it seems to me to be a little wishful thinking number juggling on the Chancellors part-
Working tax credits was a noble idea initially but has simply become a corporate profit subsidy enabling employers to pay sh*t wages and expect the tax payer to top up the rest to make the working poor more compliant ( outrage in the states at this has forced the likes of Walmart to increase their wages to a sufficient level at the apparent expense of profit - in reality I suspect employment numbers reduced).
It is not the states role to subsidise corporate profit and GO is justified in following what happened over the pond, but there will certainly be consequences.
His 'sweetener' with reductions to corporate tax and NI to encourage employers to pay his ' living wage' will, I suspect, not cover this additional wage bill and employees will either be let go or offered fewer hours. Profit margins will certainly not be allowed to fall. A rise in tax thresholds may salve the transition somewhat for those higher up the pay scale but I doubt there will be any benefit at all for the working poorest.
For those small scale employers  these changes will be far harder to absorb and I suspect many will go to the wall or significantly scale back, I expect employment figures to at least atrophy or at worst fall, and under employment levels to significantly rise.
In all probability this is the correct thing to do but it can only realistically succeed with a rapidly expanding economy and its associated demand for labour. I would like to believe the figures of between 2 and 3 per cent growth but, with the current circumstances globally and in particular within Europe, I doubt this is going to be possible.

Given the circumstances I have to say ( with gritted teeth ) that this budget is not what I expected and is more reasonable and far less ideological than I expected. Furthermore ( and to quote a chap from the Today programme), ' George Osbourne has parked his tank on Labours Lawn' ......... and I think it will be there for a while.  I've never liked the chap TBH but he has played a blinder here, I suspect this, and every subsequent budget if this is anything to go by, will more than trump Michael Gove's effort for the declared leadership vacancy in 5 years time and as a teacher I can at least be grateful for that. The next labour leader's job just got that much harder.

Ruperts slippers

Never really considered it, but the costs taper off as they get older, in Sept the eldest starts school which will save £45 a week and the littleun will be 3 at xmas which will mean she qualifies for 15 free hrs saving a further £34..

We pay £40 per day just for the childminder to drop them off and pick them up and give them breakfast and dinner.

It is expensive, but the regulations and admin just to run a nursery and even become a childminder keep costs high... They follow the Early Years Foundation Stage which is a documented learning program, which I feel is a load of bollox but we love form filling and micromanaging everyone in this country..

Bureaucracy, economic exigence and fractured families have pushed childcare costs sky high..

Enki

Same here, apparently. Though no doubt it will disappear in rising costs of everything. Still glad I'm not 18 and not on the poorer end of the UK, as they are not liked.

Enki

Just checked back on my accounts, we paid £900 per month in child care for our eldest back in the 90s.  By the time the youngest came along I was in the posistion to tell people when I worked, so our costs dropped significantly.  Still, our economic policy will create lots of work in health and social sciences.

IronGiant

I think there was an element of mutual misunderstanding there, hopefully past.

tapzilla2k

It's still a pretty poor budget for the under 25's. Restricting housing benefit will probably lead to more homelessness (especially amongst those who leave care and fall off the radar). Turning bursary's for poorer students into loans will likely put some off and increase the likelihood of the student loans debt defaulting at some point in the future.

There appears to be no concrete help for those wanting to go college, I know somebody who works at a college and says there just isn't enough money around for places to be taken up. She thinks it might lead to students having to take a student loan out. It's a pretty poor show for the Economy. The budget is ideological in parts and a political masterstroke in others. That's as long as the wheels don't fall off the Economy. The interest rates going up will probably be a test of how strong the recovery is. I'll not be surprised if the under 25's get angry and protest in large numbers once the measures really take hold. It's not something I want to see, but given the Government appears disinterested in the young it's perhaps inevitable. At least the water cannon the met has in it's possession might be put to some use.

pragmatic

You can't default on student loans.

Ruperts slippers

What's wrong with apprenticeships..