Be Excellent To Each Other

CIGARETTES AND ALCOHOL

• Alcohol and cigarettes taxes to go up 2% from midnight - one estimate is that it would put 5p on the average pint of beer

• Fuel duty to rise by 2p per litre from September

CAR SCRAPPAGE SCHEME

• From next month until March 2010 motorists to get £2,000 discount on new cars if they trade in cars older than 10 years

TAX

# Income tax for those earning more than £150,000 to rise to 50% from April 2010

# Tax relief on pensions to be reduced for people on more than £150,000 a year

UK ECONOMY

• Economy forecast to shrink 3.5% in 2009

• Growth expected to pick up in 2010, expanding by 1.25%.

• Economy to grow by 3.5% annually from 2011

• Public borrowing to increase to £175bn this year

• Borrowing levels to rise by £173bn, £140bn, £118bn and £97bn in years after

• Consumer price inflation to fall to 1% by end of year.

JOBS AND TRAINING

• Government support for economy to protect 500,000 jobs

• All long-term unemployed under 25s to be offered job or training

• £1.7bn additional resources for Job Centre network

• £250m funding to help people get work experience in growth industries

• Funding to create 54,000 new places in sixth form education

HOUSING

• Scheme to guarantee mortgage backed securities to boost lending

• Stamp duty holiday for homes up to £175,000 to be extended to end of year

• Extra £80m for shared equity mortgage scheme

# £500m to kickstart stalled housing projects

# £100m for local authorities to build energy efficient homes

# £50m to upgrade housing for the armed forces

GOVERNMENT SAVINGS

• An extra £9bn in efficiency savings is planned

• Public spending to be cut from 1.1% next year to 0.7% in 2011-2012

BENEFITS

# Child tax credit to rise by £20 by 2010

# Child trust funds for disabled children to rise by £100 a year, £200 a year for severely disabled children

SAVINGS

# Annual limit for tax-free ISAs to rise to more than £10,000

ENVIRONMENT

# £525m for offshore wind projects

# £435m support for energy efficiency schemes

Oh bugger 10 years on teh car, Mrs C's is only eight years old.

It is about time they invested in the Job Centres, they have been closing them for years.

Some interesting stuff on the higher earners. Of course, it'll raise no money and fuck the country long-term, but you did all vote labour ;-)

Objection!

What's been said about the higher earners? The BBC have nothing on that yet.

Don't make me come over there.

50% tax from next year over £150k - compared to the pre budget where it was going to be 45% the year after. Plus, they can't get tax relief on their pensions now either.

I see big increase in tax planning schemes, and higher earners moving out of the UK 'technically'. They will take less income tax as a result.

What about bikes?

I remain optimistic that coupling this with a real strike on loopholes and tax havens could be a positive move.

# Alcohol and cigarettes taxes to go up 2% from midnight

# Fuel duty to rise by 2p per litre from September

Both much less than I thought.

They spent a shedload of cash on a big revamp less than five years ago. The whole Job Centre Plus thing.

That was to discuise the closing of Job Centres, we do the IT for the JCP.

What does this mean?

It means that Gordon's maxing out his credit cards.

Do you think he has sarted doing the Euro Lottery.

Thank fuck I bought my 86 bottles last week, then. Maybe another last-minute dash now...
I call this the "Fuck you, Sir Fred" clause.

So he's borrowed £175bn this year, and will be borrowing an extra £173bn next year?

I'm pretty sure that's what it means, yeah. Basically he's borrowing to try to encourage us to spend more.

Will he be paying the £175bn back before he borrows the £173bn next year?

I very much doubt it.

Oh dear.

Gngh. I'll hold 'im, you slug 'im Grim.

More seriously, there doesn't seem to be too much 'clear blue thinking' there at first glance, just some tinkering here and there. So much for this being the most important budget for three generations; mind you, it's not as though NuLab can do much now anyway. The coffers are vastly worse than empty; they're utterly, utterly spent up (with our money).

You so funny.

GTFO Gordon. That is NOT PRUDENT.

That is confusing. Surely that's the expected total borrowing, not extra?

Surely you jest; but we'll be paying the interest on it for the next 20+ years though, together with the mountain of debt that's already been accrued, and is yet to be accrued. The collective drag on the UK economy from all this debt will be hideous; so much for prudence, eh. It's a good job for Labour that we all have so much to show for it, otherwise people would be really pissed...

I wonder if the car thing applies to vans too. I have two old T reg vans, maybe they'd actually be worth money to someone now.

New stuff:

BENEFITS

# Child tax credit to rise by £20 by 2010

# Child trust funds for disabled children to rise by £100 a year, £200 a year for severely disabled children

SAVINGS

# Annual limit for tax-free ISAs to rise to more than £10,000

ENVIRONMENT

# £525m for offshore wind projects

# £435m support for energy efficiency schemes

Goodness no. We're currently running at a total public sector debt of around £800bn.

What a waste of fucking time.

What's the point of putting that money into trust funds? Surely the point at which they need the money most is as they are growing up?

Nice, great to see this is being addressed. Does anyone working in Local Authorities aged 50 or lower actually believe that their final salary pension schemes are going to be honoured, unless the pound is grossly devalued to worthless monopoly money?

We're royally screwed.

HELP FOR BUSINESS

# Loss-making companies to be able to reclaim more taxes paid in the last three years

PENSIONERS

# Grandparents of working age who care for their grandchildren will see that work count towards their entitlement for the basic state pension

# Winter fuel allowance to be maintained at higher level - £250 for over 60s and £400 for over-80s - for another year

# The basic state pension will be increased by at least 2.5%, regardless of inflation

Hard to make head or tale of this one. I'd like to see some proper analysis on what is new and what's already been announced / factored into the calculations but on first glance I'm completely 'meh' about the whole thing, it just seemed the recitation of a raft of random initiatives with a narrative hastily applied to it (however this can be claimed to be true for most budgets). With regards to blue sky thinking, this is a politician we are talking about, one in power at that, if you were expecting to hear any of that then you will be waiting a long time.

Initial reaction on the news from one commentator was that the level of borrowing (which is immense) may undermine the confirdence of the money markets and means a run on the pound at worst, or a fall in it. Speaking personally and selfishly, bring it on (thank God I didn't convert my Euros to sterling when I came back to the UK).

I heard that you had to own the car for a year... but I could be wrong.

A lot of the new initiatives seem quite nice, and a fairly reasonable idea - if a little low in impact. What worries me is some of the ways of funding it (besides the scary borrowing):

"An extra £9bn in efficiency savings is planned"

What the hell does that mean? Is that achievable? How much was saved in 'efficiency' in 2008-9?

Sounds like job losses to me.

I wasn't old enough to vote when they got in. I've voted for the Lib Dems each time, since though.

Did you vote Conservative then?

Maybe they are sortign the MPs expences out

... so in other words, we're going to have 3 million plus unemployed just like we did under the Tories in the early 80s recession, much derrided by Labour and their supporters, BUT unlike then we are going into it with record, exponentially rising debt levels in our futile attempts to buck the market and 'buy our way out of recession'. Great!

No details on it in the news yet, so I suspect you might be

Reading on, it does seem like a bit of a daft idea, all in all:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree ... -mandelson

But hey, it'll be those nasty Tories who have to slash services in the coming years.

It was what the car salesman said on Saturday...

... absolutely mate, just like we did back in '79, although to be fair to Callaghan, at least he wasn't persuing a 'scorched earth policy', unlike Brown.

Labour never take the rap for their messes, it's always the Conservatives who have to sort 'em all out. 'Tis the nature of things, unfortunately.

Regrettably however, the TV friendly Blair clone Cameron is no Margaret Thatcher either in visionary or performance terms (let alone courage), so as I say, we're screwed this time.

@kovacs Was his mouth moving at the time he said this?

Urgh. I have 222 pages of technical notes to read

Is it even possible to properly work out the UK National Debt anymore? It's not like we've issued this many bonds, payable by blah like it used to be - all this PFI stuff isn't "debt", but it's a cost we're obliged to pay in the future, and you'd need to buy a bank just to work out how much money we've spent buying banks, and how much assets and liabilities we face. We should probably just give up on numbers, and just replace it with a easy to understand smiley face system:

Current Debt Level :
2010 Projected Debt Level :

No, as we know Car Salesman and Lawyers lie

'Smiley face system'.... chortle.

You're probably right mate; one thing's for sure, assuming the government even know the true and total extent of all this current and future planned debt, taking all into account, they certainly ain't gonna tell the likes of us. You can rest assured that it's " "(tm) compared to even the worst of the 80s recession though; Thatcher didn't believe in buying her way out of recession (neither did Old Labour, come to that).

One point.



Two points.



Three points!

No points for the child benefit theory. Hoorah, though, as that covers my parking costs.