Didn’t I hear recently that we will be back at 2008 levels later this summer?

Not sure, but the cuts to state spending were back loaded, so we’ve not seen the bulk of those yet. More council lay-offs, less disposable income being spent in shops etc…..

So, if you don’t buy an annuity what DO you do instead? Just nibble away at the pot itself, or just take the whole lot and invest it somewhere? Sounds like more confusion for Joe Public to me……

Thats just insulting people.

Maybe, but then I’ve met people, and a 20 year career in financial services has taught me that the majority can’t be trusted to make difficult and important decisions about money.

So they are not going to put fuel duty up in Sept as planned.

Are we supposed to be grateful? On the back of the fuel price rises the Treasury have racked in the duty and taxes massively.

Sometimes I think they treat us as though we are apathetic simpletons.

Oh hang on.

Rockape63 – Member

In 2008 we were spending far more than we were earning, which is how we got into this mess.

Not so much.

So, if you don’t buy an annuity what DO you do instead? Just nibble away at the pot itself, or just take the whole lot and invest it somewhere? Sounds like more confusion for Joe Public to me……

keep it invested and live off dividends or interest etc?

“In 2008 we were spending far more than we were earning, which is how we got into this mess.”

whats changed other than its 2014 ?

I said he was a Genius, not a Fortune teller!

I can agree with that. There is something truly genius about claiming that 7.1% unemployment is a great achievement, when Thatcher won the 1979 general election with the slogan “Labour isn’t working” because unemployment at that time was 5.1%

The genius bit is in convincing that their failure represents success.

doesnt mean you cant choose to buy an anuity but it does mean you have a choice – takes the monopoly away from the anutity companys and encourages people to save instead of encouraging the current view of – well ill probably never see half the cash anyway…. thats why my dad has no pension – just property,

whats changed other than its 2014 ?

It’s all completely different now. House prices are rising and people are borrowing against the equity to buy more useless tat. Completely different to before when people were borrowing against equity in their homes and buying useless tat.

There are all sorts of Annuities and the ones that allow you to access the fund when you are dying or dead within 5 yrs of taking out the annuity offer lower rates.

So most people will look at the bottom line and go for the ones with the best returns.

An annuity is basically a gamble, both for the individual and for the Company. One wants to be paid for as long as possible, the other quite the opposite!

The genius bit is in claiming that their failure represents success.

He’s learnt from the best “If you repeat a lie often enough, people will believe it, and you will even come to believe it yourself.”

Everyone has seemed to miss this bit:

“Legislation will be introduced to allow HMRC to recover tax and tax credit debts of £1000 or more directly from taxpayer accounts, subject to rigorous safeguards“

Thought that might give the professionally outraged something to worry about.

Yeah but Footflaps, they never lied about it, they said it would be tough and it was and still is for most of us. They cut the public sector and hoped the private sector would employ them…….and they have!

At least unemployment is coming down and has been for some time now. Who would have thought that a year ago?

TBH I’m surprised that HMRC don’t already have those powers. They have some truly awesome powers which no other gov. dept can really match.

They cut the public sector and hoped the private sector would employ them…….and they have!

Not on the same terms though. Secure job with benefits, pension, holiday etc replaced with zero hour contract in outsource company like Serco who then charge the tax payer more for less (eg tagging prisoners). Hardly a great success.

So, if you don’t buy an annuity what DO you do instead?

Buy another house to rent out

And you think we are in a housing bubble… you haven’t seen anything yet

So, if you don’t buy an annuity what DO you do instead?

Given you could expect to live for another 40 years, you could keep the pot in equities (low to med risk) so the total pot keeps growing…

Pretty typical budget with only one big surprise – the (positive IMO) pension changes. Great to see savers for once being recognised ditto Isas etc. Otherwise positive short term economic news offset by slightly negative longer term projections. Fiscally neutral – give with one hand, take any with the other. A bit of politics – obvious pander to the active “silver” vote and the welfare cap “trap” and finally the hidden skulduggery – “hiding away” interest payments to the BOE (tut, tut).

Otherwise deficit better but still poor and more austerity to come (at best half way through) whoever wins in 2015. Plus ca change……

Great budget for Tory voters. Less good for anyone unemployed or on benefits. It should be noted we are yet to see most of the cuts to public services.

the best thing for the unemployed is more jobs being created, not slightly higher benefits to keep them trapped in poverty. Our economy is now the fastest growing in the developed world – and is still creating jobs faster than women rejoin the workforce from maternity leave / long term childcare or migrant workers come to fill them.

Someone above commented that the unemployment rate was 5% in 1979 but if you look at the actual number of people in work then it was around 26.5m people. Now we have 31m people working – so although the unemployment rate is higher at 7.2% there are only 200,000 more people out of work.

Back to school, robdixon!

5% of 26.5m is 1.325m
7.2% of 31m is 2.232m

Other countries (notably USA) have been growing more or less continuously during the period since 2010. They may be growing slightly slower than the UK in the last 3-6 months, but that’s a heck of a lot of lost growth that the UK has endured.

– We have seen our living standards go down in every one of the 45 months since this current government took office, bar one.
– What anaemic growth there has been is disproportionately going to the top 10% in society.
– Benefit claimants are massively, massively more likely to be the working poor – i.e. not unemployed.

Output, exports and the tax take are still lower than in 2010. That’s right, this government has shrunk the growing economy it inherited.

The mastery is convincing us all that somehow it rescued us from an abyss.

Trying to compare those figures also overlooks underemployment- as well as those who’re unemployed, there’s 1.46 million people who want full time work but can’t get it- a record high. Taken in FTE terms it’s effectively an extra shortfall of half a million positions. And with wage pressure as it is just now that’s a double whammy, real world wages fall, hours available fall.

sbob – Member
Kryton57 – Member
Crikey, me and my 2.4 family will be about £800 better off in fy15/16. Time to go blue?

No, that just makes you selfish.

I’m so sorry for thinking of my family and perhaps not giving a shit about you.

I’m so sorry for thinking of my family and perhaps not giving a shit about you.

excellent Tory values. Good for you.

Ben yep, got me there!

What the rest of your post doesn’t reflect is that wages in the UK grew at a significantly faster rate than Germany over the 10 years to 2010 – largely driven by massive (and it turns out, unaffordable) increases in public sector pay. This resulted in a massive decline of private sector job creation and the loss of 50% of manufacturing output amongst other things.

So while wage growth has been lower over the 5 years since 2010 we are effectively returning to more sustainable pay levels that should help our economy to grow at a stable rate over the long term. What we also need is less borrowing and spending on imported goods – the average british family now spends more on mobile contracts than holidays which says a lot about how “hard up” people really are – it’s relative.

The “cost of living crisis’ we keep being told about doesn’t seem to be reflected in the data – the most recent ONS family spending data shows that when adjusted for inflation, families are spending less on the most commonly purchased goods and services than they were 10 or 5 years ago:

http://www.neighbourhood.statistics.gov.uk/HTMLDocs/dvc140/index.html

And when you say that anaemic growth has only benefited the top 10% did you mean to write the top 10% now pay 60% of all tax which is significantly higher than 5 or 10 years ago? The data doesn’t show they have benefited once you strip out oligarchs and the like who live in britain on a temporary basis – below that the following 9% have not seen significant growth in incomes but pay more tax and have lost things like child benefit etc.

Budget trolling.

https://twitter.com/grantshapps/status/446363611972534272/photo/1

– What anaemic growth there has been is disproportionately going to the top 10% in society.

Possibly the top 0.1%, the vast bulk of the top 10% have seen earnings freeze, spending power eroded by inflation etc like everyone else. You don’t need to earn 6 figures to be in the top 10% e.g. £50k pa gets you in the top 10%, £68,500 in the top 5% and £156k in the top 1%. **

Whereas inequality has risen massively with the very rich (top 0.1%) pulling away faster and faster…

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/britains-five-richest-families-worth-as-much-as-poorest-20-per-cent-says-oxfam-9195914.html

** http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_in_the_United_Kingdom#Percentile_points_for_income_of_individuals_before_tax

Notice just how many purple ties on both front benches and who isn’t a member more importantly? The hidden club more and more brazen by the day.

At least Newsnight mentions the word “productivity” when talking about wages…..

What the rest of your post doesn’t reflect is that wages in the UK grew at a significantly faster rate than Germany over the 10 years to 2010 – largely driven by massive (and it turns out, unaffordable) increases in public sector pay.

I don’t know about Germany but I can’t see a huge rise in wages over the 10 years to 2010. In fact wages as a percentage of GDP were really quite low, certainly lower than the 1970s, when we also had lower unemployment.

Were wages (including things like sick pay, mat leave etc) not higher in Germany already though?
Know a few folk over there and even lower paid jobs seem to be treated better than here..
Off-the books cheap imigrant labour aside obviously..

All been said really, more and more for the political targets elderly and very little for most other people

Know a few folk over there and even lower paid jobs seem to be treated better than here..

It’s a mindset change. Germany see employees as an asset to be invested in, whereas the US/UK mindset is that employees are an undesirable expense, which needs to be minimised at all costs, hence zero hour contracts, outsourcing etc.

Anyone off to the Bingo later?

This is a genuine Tory tweet! Seriously! And some people accuse them of being elitist, and out of touch with real people…

Did anyone catch if he’s planning to reduce the tax on whippets and flat caps too? :What a gaggle of thunder-****s!! 🙄

More info here 🙂

**NSFW**

http://longtermplan.org.uk/

“To help hard working people do more of the things they enjoy”

How can they guarantee that lazy benefit scroungers don’t drink beer and go to bingo ?

Bingo sounds like the sort of thing that people who have nothing better to do go to.

Bingo Posting on STW sounds like the sort of thing that people who have nothing better to do go to.

😉

So they’re helping the low paid/out of work also.

Win!

😉

So they’re helping the low paid/out of work also.

I don’t think I like the sound of that.

I thought both the Tories and Labour agreed that what really matters is “hard working families”.

EDIT :

😉