We really ought to be used to it by now Munky. Have you heard anything constructive from his party so far? All you get is don't vote Labour because Salmond will write the budget/Miliband knifed his Brother in the back/you can't believe anything they say/they bankrupted the Country last time despite the truth being that it was due to the Banks/Miliband can't eat a bacon sandwich properly etc etc. No mention of where the Tories will make massive cuts in Public and welfare spending or how they will fund the extra money needed for the NHS especially as their target for ' massive efficiency savings ' is real fantasy according to all independent experts on the subject. To the person or people on here who say they hate Labour I will let you into a secret - there are lots of others who hate the Tories with a f----ing vengeance and I am one of them. Ding dong the witch is dead - although unfortunately some of her unfair policies continue to re-emerge.
To flesh out the IFS statement that "the Tories need to spell out substantially more detail of how they will deliver the overall fiscal targets they have set themselves": It's a £30bn 'black-hole'. They'd have to make £30bn of cuts even if they succeed in raising £5bn from tax avoidance measures and £10bn from welfare cuts. On the other hand, Labour’s less aggressive deficit-cutting targets would require “a mere £1bn” in further spending cuts over the next parliament, if Ed Balls can achieve his aim of raising an extra £7.5bn through tax avoidance measures. Instead of aiming for an overall budget surplus, like the Conservatives, Balls will allow himself to borrow in order to fund investment. However, Labour have been “considerably more vague about how much they would want to borrow”. As for the SNP, seems they're not, in actual fact, an anti-austerity party.
Can you please tell me where Labour are going to find all the cuts they have promised to meet their deficit reduction targets or did I miss that part?
The same place the Tories are going to need to find to fill the £30bn 'black hole'. Vote Labo... err... Tor... ummm... I dunno.
Do you mean the whole £1bn mentioned by the IFS? Notice you find that more difficult to achieve than the £30bn cuts and £10bn cuts in welfare needed by the Tories plan. I'm not Ed Balls but let me think - remove free perks to pensioners paying higher rates of tax - would that raise £1bn? My own personal idea would be to Parish Councils and other low ranking Councils - that would cut £1bn surely? Not too hard to find £1bn but perhaps you could suggest the answer to finding overall cuts of £40bn or is not raising taxes another Tory porkie?
What Labour have come up with is a very small drop in a very deep Ocean! They would have us believe that a Tax on Bankers Bonuses will be the answer to all of our fiscal problems!
I would ask you directly, Warky, in the interest of fairness, to tell me where you think the Tories will get the £30bn - £40bn from. However, I fear I would experience as much 'question-dodging' as Tory MPs have been guilty of. Therefore, I doubt there is any point in me asking.
Don't see that as an answer to anything I or the IFS have said or asked but then what did I expect. Anyway I find taxing bankers bonuses more acceptable than taking money off the poor and/or disabled.
By the way these are the three things seen as absolute priorities for my local Tory MP Nice to see he's got his finger on the pulse and is concentrating on the issues your average man on the street cares about. Austerity, the 'threat' of terrorism and the EU referendum - not a single positive thing that would make my life any better. It's a Tory stronghold round my way so he clearly doesn't feel he needs to put any effort it, ****er.
The richest 1% pay a Third of all personal Taxes which I believe is fair enough! We tried Taxing them out of existence back in 70s and just look how well that turned out!
Here we go again with another twisted argument. Who, apart from the Greens, has suggested taxing the rich out of existence. We all know that it has never worked here or anywhere else in the world as the rich and their money are far too mobile. There is a lot of difference between that and getting extra from the bastards who caused the problems in the first place by taxing banks and bankers bonuses. Still waiting to hear where your lot are going to get £40bn from.
Anyway.... A friend of mine recently went to an immigration debate hosted by the Royal Statistical Society, and there were a lot of interesting bits of information: Immigrants have a net positive effect on the nation's finances Immigrants are on average more skilled than natives Despite this, immigrants, when they start work, can be found mostly among the very low earners, or, less pronouncedly, among the very high earners, but not so much in the middle After a while that distribution normalises a bit Immigrants have barely any noticeable effect on wages: if there is some effect, then for the absolute bottom earners (10% percentile) it's slightly negative, and for the rest it's slightly positive Only 6% of immigrants are refugees (whereas the British public thinks most of them are)
What about the impact on infrastructure such as Housing, Schools, Hospitals and other Public Services?
I was just reading an article on the BBC news website and apparently, DC has 12 days I think it is to form a 'rainbow alliance' of some sort and with Labour looking likely to lose most of their Scottish seats, I don't honestly see how Ed and Ed will be moving into 10 and 11 Downing Street anytime soon!!!!
European immigrants to the UK have paid more in taxes than they received in benefits, helping to relieve the fiscal burden on UK-born workers and contributing to the financing of public services – according to new research by the UCL Centre for Research and Analysis of Migration (CReAM). European immigrants who arrived in the UK since 2000 have contributed more than £20bn to UK public finances between 2001 and 2011. Moreover, they have endowed the country with productive human capital that would have cost the UK £6.8bn in spending on education. Over the period from 2001 to 2011, European immigrants from the EU-15 countries contributed 64% more in taxes than they received in benefits. Immigrants from the Central and East European ‘accession’ countries (the ‘A10’) contributed 12% more than they received. Immigration to the UK since 2000 has been of substantial net fiscal benefit, with immigrants contributing more than they have received in benefits and transfers. This is true for immigrants from Central and Eastern Europe as well as the rest of the EU. Immigrants who arrived since 2000 were 43% less likely than natives to receive state benefits or tax credits. They were also 7% less likely to live in social housing. The value of the education of immigrants in the UK labour market who arrived since 2000 and that has been paid for in the immigrants’ origin countries amounts to £6.8bn over the period between 2000 and 2011. By contributing to ‘pure’ public goods (such as defence or basic research), immigrants arriving since 2000 have saved the UK taxpayer an additional £8.5bn over the same period. Considering all immigrants who were living in the UK over the years between 1995 and 2011, a period over which the net fiscal contribution of natives was negative (and accumulated to about £591bn), EEA immigrants contributed 10% more than natives (in relative terms), while non-EEA immigrants’ contributions were almost 9% lower. Over the same period from 1995 to 2011, immigrants who lived in the UK endowed the UK labour market with human capital that would have cost about £49bn if it were produced through the UK education system, and contributed about £82bn to fixed or ‘pure’ public goods. I think these figures answer the question, given the money that comes in to fund public services,.
I can copy and paste stuff as well but I have supplied a link to Migration Watch instead. http://www.migrationwatchuk.org/what-is-the-problem
