Spending Review Thoughts...

[russdev]

So as no one has started a thread views on the spending review..

 

Russ

[jsnetman]

Well I fired up google news when I got home and was very disappointed by the lack of criticism, looks like they have not been as tough as one expected, and looks like they will be doing the cuts in a more devious manor. I guess we need wait a couple of years to see the full impact. Edited October 20, 2010 by jsnetman

[broc]

It's too depressing.....

[mattx]

So as no one has started a thread views on the spending review..

 

Russ

 

What's the point - it's a Tory run country with Tory run values - screw the poor to feed the rich.

[tech_guy]

Time to protest, shout and have a bit of civil unrest. Half a million people losing their jobs is totally wrong.

[PiqueABoo]

It's apparently already been happening i.e. there are some stats somewhere (couldn't quickly find the link again sorry) that say public sector jobs decreased by ~40,000 in the first half of this year. Times that rate by the timescale and you're 3/4 of the way there[1]

 

---

 

I did late lunch and watched it - the most interesting bit of course is that schools are approximately "safe" i.e. although there may be a bit of Peter & Paul going on re. the alleged budget increase, when you factor in pupil numbers and so on. The devil & the detail.

 

Have resolved to encourage Sprogette to be a rocket scientist when she grows up. Only flaw with that plan is: a) I know a couple of science folk working for a household name who got made redundant recently, b) T'other half is a Creative[tm] so there will be a bit of a tug of war.

 

[1] Plus, not sure whether this counts here, but apparently everyone working for *those* banks has been included in the "public sector" employees total and it was a massive number. Undo that at some future point and...

Edited October 20, 2010 by PiqueABoo
Plus..

[Robz]

Time to protest, shout and have a bit of civil unrest. Half a million people losing their jobs is totally wrong.

 

that's half a million compared to everyone if this country falls on its bum and can't get up. If you read the actual detail a majority of those half million will be posts that are left naturally (retirement) and won't be filled again. For the rest, over 4 years it's not too bad, 178000 jobs were created this year so it'll balance out and gradually improve.

Edited October 21, 2010 by Robz

[torledo]

it's clear the coalishun bottled out of making any truly tough decisions and addressing the problems of allocation of spend, instead relying on politiking to get one up on the opposition with the ridiculous '19% on average cuts instead of labours 20%' while at the same time effectively mimicking the opposition strategy of sparing the sacred cows the type of pain that will instead fall disproportionately on depts. with already smaller budgets, not to mention picking the usual easy targets within our benefits system.

 

and all for what ? to address a self-created bogeyman, namely the 'structural deficit'.

 

as for the figures re public sector job losses, it seems to me these will be concentrated in some areas, particularly the civil service with all the 'efficiency' savings that need to be made, and the local authorities which are seeing a 7.1% real terms cuts. For a while though it appears these losses will come ostensibly through 'natural wastage'.

 

all in all i don't think the decisions made yesterday to draw out the next period of spending are the 'risk' to the economy that some of the press are suggesting. it's certainly been a missed opportunity, for me the spending review should have been more than just a numbers game to balance the books.

Edited October 21, 2010 by torledo

[GrumbleDook]

The Coalition has already done some of the major changes they wanted to do with the emergency budget, the culling of QANGOs, decentralising some stuff and so on ... the CSR is the start of the mopping up of it all and forcing departments to get strategies written and published. Only then will we see what direction things are going in.

 

Education will see some pain at school level, but a lot of pain at HE. Perhaps the goals of getting 50% of all youngsters into uni will go and it will become harder to get in, harder to fund ad the people which come out of it will have real qualifications that mean something in the real world and not just be media studies specialising in The Jetsons (if it was The Simpson they would be able to get away with it!) ... off to get my Daily Mail now.

[torledo]

The Coalition has already done some of the major changes they wanted to do with the emergency budget, the culling of QANGOs, decentralising some stuff and so on ... the CSR is the start of the mopping up of it all and forcing departments to get strategies written and published. Only then will we see what direction things are going in.

 

but i'm confused as to what impact there is on the actual DfE budget, is there no change because the education quango's that are going or going to be merged constitute the 'cuts' ? What of the departments capital spending ? I can't believe there wasn't scope to make cuts covering the next spending period while still protecting schools budgets.

Edited October 21, 2010 by torledo

[mattx]

... off to get my Daily Mail now.

 

Run out of toilet paper have you ?

[flyinghaggis]

Ive just realised that my pension retirement age has now been raised to 68 !!!! It seems to go up by a year every decade. I'm genuinely wondering if I'll be able to retire before 70 at this rate!

 

Maybe France have the right idea..........

 

Edited October 21, 2010 by flyinghaggis

[somabc]

The news for Education is not as bad as I expected. School Budget rising, University Research (Science Budget) frozen, University Teaching Budget cut (but Fee's raised to make up the difference so overall probably no net change).

[Rydra]

I've got mixed reviews on these. Firstly, I'm curious what will happen to support staff within schools or tied to working in education. As is frequently pointed out, we are not Teachers or on teachers contracts, so I can see there being some cuts in this area in places, but not widespread.

 

There is one simple reason for all of these redundancies that the government want to do.

 

A person on unemployment benefits while they cannot find a job is cheaper to pay than someone who is earning a half decent wage.

The tipping point, comes when the number of unemployed (who don't pay taxes on income and some other things) and the reduced payments as a result start to outweigh the income normally obtained by working people paying taxes.

 

The risk they are taking, is to lay off people and hope the private sector can take up the slack. The process of redundancies needs to be carefully managed. The last problem, is converting public sector jobs into private sector ones. There are many roles in the civil service that are not easily transferrable to private sector, where the people doing that job have either a specialist qualification, or just done the job for 10-20 years.

 

My mother took voluntary early retirement/redundancy about 2-3 years ago now from the pension service, did some contract work for the local council in a similar role, and now works in a high school doing support work such as exam invigilating, Helping on trips etc. My father is waiting to hear how much of his dept is being made redundant and who, and as a database analyst, work is not exactly easy to come by. And I have a few friends who work elsewhere in civil service, such as the 14-19 provision, all of which have been axed.

 

The rumours of university fees and places worrys me greatly. So many people struggle with the debt of university already, so the proposed hike of £3000 up to £7000 per year in fee's will see to it that only the richest will be able to afford university, and cutting the government funding for 40% of their places will make this even worse.

 

Plus how dare they scrap the Ark Royal and the Harriers... Two of Britains most Iconic items of war, our aircraft carriers and our harrier jumpjets, and they are being mothballed.

 

It's not like you can park the Ark Royal on the Thames and turn it into a museam like the HMS Belfast!

[somabc]

that's half a million compared to everyone if this country falls on its bum and can't get up. If you read the actual detail a majority of those half million will be posts that are left naturally (retirement) and won't be filled again. For the rest, over 4 years it's not too bad, 178000 jobs were created this year so it'll balance out and gradually improve.

 

Er no it won't balance out. The public sector jobs going are high paid, high skilled (well highly qualified anyway) as most of the low level public jobs have already been farmed off to the private sector but new private sector jobs are normally low paid, low skilled.

[gl3nnym]

Our LA are proposing a pay freeze for the next 4 years but will ensure all jobs are safe. I am not affected as I already am at the top of my scale.

[Robz]

Er no it won't balance out. The public sector jobs going are high paid, high skilled (well highly qualified anyway) as most of the low level public jobs have already been farmed off to the private sector but new private sector jobs are normally low paid, low skilled.

 

yes but they are still JOBS, regardless of what qualifications/skill level, if the rate of job opportunities stays the same each year then it will effectively work like a one-in one-out system. One public sector job lost, one private sector job available. And as the number of jobs available each year is higher than those who will forcefully lose their jobs (not naturally lose (retirement)) the actual unemployment number will begin to drop.

[PiqueABoo]

the local authorities which are seeing a 7.1% real terms cuts.

 

Every year. A bit of smoke & mirror going on and ditto for the police. For LAs that's a 25.5% cut phased over four years... that's just me quickly with a calculator, some folk who have apparently looked harder at what was said have it at 28%.

 

Here the council have already said it needs to cut at least 1 in 10 (non-school workforce) jobs and a quarter of managers.

[TheCrust]

BSF been resurrected?

 

Having had a flick through the spending review document, it might appear so but I've posted up in the BSF area about that.

[SpuffMonkey]

yes but they are still JOBS, regardless of what qualifications/skill level, if the rate of job opportunities stays the same each year then it will effectively work like a one-in one-out system. One public sector job lost, one private sector job available. And as the number of jobs available each year is higher than those who will forcefully lose their jobs (not naturally lose (retirement)) the actual unemployment number will begin to drop.

 

Yeah but you're assuming 1:1 - did you see the BBC survey where they called all the companies who'd signed a letter supporting the cuts and asked whether they were hiring people - I think only one firm was taking on people - all the rest were static or laying off...

[featured_spectre]

Ive just realised that my pension retirement age has now been raised to 68 !!!! It seems to go up by a year every decade.

 

I will be 73 in that case!!!

[mjs_mjs]

retirement - lol, i don't think I'll ever retire.

[torledo]

Yeah but you're assuming 1:1 - did you see the BBC survey where they called all the companies who'd signed a letter supporting the cuts and asked whether they were hiring people - I think only one firm was taking on people - all the rest were static or laying off...

 

well, more fool them then. The investments they make = their profits. Unless they're happy to rely more so on govt. handouts and the great public-to-private sector transfer. The profits the private sector want to continue to make can only come about through job creation and/or govt. spending... it's seriously in their interests to create the jobs if they are that relaxed about a big reduction in public sector jobs... i read a report the other day that stated the private sector and households took on average six years to deleverage [that is save and pay down debts] after a banking/credit crisis. this was a result of analysing various credit shocks in recent history around the world...

 

if that does not happen here because of the cuts, the govts. plan to reduce the deficit according to it's current timetable could be pie in the sky....if the deleveraging of the private sector [i'm thinking mainly smb's and households] isn't allowed to happen by govt. insisting on meeting it's deficit targets, all we're doing is storing up a far bigger problem the next time there's a major economic wobble.

[mac_shinobi]

What's the point - it's a Tory run country with Tory run values - screw the poor to feed the rich.

 

Where's Robin hood when ya need him ?

 

Retiring , what's that ??

[somabc]

yes but they are still JOBS, regardless of what qualifications/skill level, if the rate of job opportunities stays the same each year then it will effectively work like a one-in one-out system.

 

So the project manager on £40k a year in the public sector with a mortgage to pay should be grateful they can get one of the new jobs stacking shelfs in Tesco on a zero hour contract. Tell that to his/her family when they are homeless*.

 

* and they will be homeless as housing waiting lists are already full, no new social housing is being built, private rents are rising as there are no first time buyers only buy to let landlords and housing benefit is being slashed.

Edited October 23, 2010 by somabc