I could *swear* that during the election she made a whole point about how there’d be no nasty surprises in government cos the shadow government has access to the same data the gov has and had planned to hit the ground running
Lopsided_Rush3935 on
There are not billions more to be found outside of taxing the wealthy more. The UK is cooked without at least substantial wealth redistribution because conservatives and Europhobics (primarily) have ran it into a corner and incubated a labour party that is conservative lite.
Edit: The UK has been on a downward spiral since it’s empire was decaying and even several great milestone achievements like the NHS can’t save it from its fate. The weather is depressing and likely to get only more turbulent, the housing is poor quality, the housing is expensive, the architecture is soul destroying by being brutalist (or existing in the long shadow of brutalism) or by being a neogothic construction that the government doesn’t even *really* give a fuck about conserving unless it’s royal property or it can make tourist money. It’s expensive to go literally anywhere. Private transport is normalised at the great expense of basic human liberties like walking and the environmental potential of public transport.
The promises made by economists decades ago that increasing automation and developed nation wealth would result in decreased monotonous labour for the average person never came true because corporate owners were never ever content. They wanted more and more and more, and people lulled into luxury goods more and more to justify it. Capitalism doesn’t *need* unnecessary creation, it *demands* it. The customer doesn’t want what they think they want, they want what they don’t even know exists yet because we’re going to invent it. Most of those luxury goods are now becoming stale and boring.
There’s fuck all to do as an adult even if you are participating well within the supposedly meritocratic framework set out for you. If you don’t want to go to the bar and smell of alcohol or wet dog, your options are to go and walk the fucking supermarket aisles at night or stay at home and watch the same gameshow you’ve been watching for 7 years. The theatres have trouble funding. The cinemas are becoming exorbitant. The bowling alleys are shutting down. The sports clubs are getting more expensive and more decadent in their facilities by the minute.
Public infrastructure is becoming increasingly drivel because the high streets themselves haven’t been repurposed yet even though it’s now clear that online commerce has won. In almost all places, the high street as it was once known is not coming back unless councils lower business rates to allow small, quaint sole traders to breath. They will simply fill out with more barbers, and dodgy looking takeaway spots, and vape shops, and American sweet shops.
An influential number of the population were convinced into throwing a tantrum about EU migrants picking vegetables even though it was obvious that the UK was too divorced from an earlier age, and had far too weak and accessible public transport links, to facilitate having British people pick the crops themselves.
The UK is cooked. It doesn’t have a national purpose but it feels like it really must do as a post-imperial state. Any semblance of traditionalist identity it *did* have to fall back on has effectively been coopted by nationalists or has collapsed into royalist decadence. The UK will not find a purpose again until it can stop viewing itself as the king of the world and start focussing on universal virtues and fitting back into Europe again.
The UK has to answer exactly what it wants from life, but the general public don’t even know their answer to that question because they’ve spent so long living in a state of cultivated pessimism. ‘It could be worse’, right?…
Generals are calling out. They need more men. Where are they all? At home trying to dry clothes in the rain. Who wants to die for this country?…
Much_Educator8883 on
I find it hard to believe that sanctioned russia (which has smaller economy both in terms of nominal total GDP and especially GDP per caita) can throw tens of billions at war without obvious economic damage, and the UK cannot find a reasonable way to balance its budget (or at least avoid imposing unnecessary constraints on itself).
huntsab2090 on
Well the tories/reform could find billions to spunk to their mates so she needs to use the same dodgy methods they did but dont give the billions away to pals/family members.
EdmundTheInsulter on
Has she tried ripping all the old sofas in Whitehall/number 10 to pieces?
I’d recommend something as big as the government to employ an accountant to keep records of where money is, they’ve done a good job with their own spreadsheet, but excel is just a toy really, they need a proper accounts system.
I’d heard that shadow ministers had access to the treasury experts anyway, but labour mustn’t have bothered during the 14 years.
IgneousJam on
We tripled our national debt in the aftermath of 2008. The money was spent bailing out our failing banks. We’ve been fucked ever since.
I’ll bet most people reading this won’t even know that – what does that say about our media?
thinkingisgreat on
I wonder how much they could sell Buckingham palace for ..
DeathDestroyerWorlds on
Well we can save 10 billion quid by not sending free money abroad to *combat* climate change. I suppose however that Labour has to support its own grifters.
highpier on
Tax the super wealthy ❌
Close down 10 schools and cut over time benefits for police ✅
Calling it
pault230 on
The 20% tax bracket needs to be increased to around 25%. You can’t keep going after the high earners. If you compare with Europe people earning up to the equivalent of £50K pay considerably more.
SpringItOnMe on
Let’s see how many lives she can ruin for pennies saved this time
Vdubnub88 on
I hate to say it… but they are goin to raid the working class again. More contributions for NI and Income. Inheritance tax is a sad one for many reasons, shameful to be taxed when sombody dies.
We are goin to be worse off.
Thestickleman on
I’m sure this will be an excuse to crank up the already ridiculous amount of tax we already pay 🙄
xMirabeau on
I think there’s a few quid to be saved by cutting some of the bullshit funded by various government organisations through grants.
(Just to be clear: no, I wouldn’t be happy with taxpayers money being used to pay someone to “research” straight porn either).
Or arts council england funding any old venue putting on a performance with a title that includes the word “Decolonise”.
Or grants to charities that work directly against the governments own policy objectives.
Reductionists will only read “Cut research, arts and charitable causes” from the above, but some of the absolute shite that taxpayers money gets spent on deserves ridicule.
Whatsmyageagain24 on
Why is noone addressing the elephant in the room?
According to this thread, we should stop sending money to tackle climate change, stop housing asylum seekers, get immigrants out and other insane, nonsense right wing rhetoric.
Well, there is one major event which happened in 2016 which has cost the UK economy and absolute fuckton. Funnily enough, that was meant to “solve” the right wings weird obsession with immigration, but it actually increased immigration dramatically lmao. Instead it just made our economy smaller, as predicted.
Is everyone too scared to say it or something? Pathetic.
They can start by stop giving out freebies and benefits to asylum seekers.
uknihilist on
I agree with a lot of what’s being said on this thread but we must deal with the taboo topics too: we need more people in work, a healthier population and less take take take from the state.
crab--person on
Still refusing to even contemplate legalizing and taxing weed? Estimates are that it would rake in £10b a year, and frankly, people are going to keep smoking it whether it’s legal or not anyway. Nah. Let’s just tax the poor a bit more and keep pretending there’s literally nothing else we can do to raise money.
cut mp’s pay and stop using taxpayers money to pay for food and drinks at your meetings and parties would be a start.
twoddle_puddle on
Everything negative that happens under Labour is actually the Conservatives fault! I’m not sure that is the kind of mantra that wins them a second term.
DJToffeebud on
How about taxing the gouging supermarkets a bit more?
GayPlantDog on
A dogmatic lunatic presented to us as a “grown up”. These are pretty dark times.
Delicious_Opposite55 on
I heard energy companies and Tesco asking others made billions in profit by price gouging customers. There’s your billions.
ThunderDaz on
Maybe don’t spend £22 billion on a machine that decarbonises stuff and plant a bunch of trees instead? Not like the UK will make a significant impact on the environment if we have China still building a bunch of coal mines.
Porsche-Turbo on
Said no tax rises, but back tracked. Liars! Bunch of liars! All of them
KingOfPomerania on
Always short term thinking from politicians. There’s never a thought that we must take significant steps to grow the economy in order to avoid the same issue just cropping up 5 years later. Reduce taxes so it’s easier to start up and maintain a business, allow the creation of new industries (e.g. legalising cannabis), stop throttling existing industries (tobacco, alcohol, industry) and invest in the creation of cheaper energy (nuclear, carbon capture from coal etc).
smiggy100 on
Easy, reduce MPs pay. Alot
Stop ALL expenses until spending is on track. No more quality of life perks.
Everyone else is suffering with cost of living so let’s share the load.
b000000b on
Could start by not washing it all through ukraine to the military industrial complex
xmBQWugdxjaA on
But they committed billions to unproven carbon capture…
If they just abolished the planning system and let people build housing, power plants, prisons, and permitted fracking and oil drilling, etc. then private industry would be handing that money to the government.
Grow the pie, rather than stealing more of peoples’ income.
VegetableTotal3799 on
Maybe stop giving tax breaks and investment to billionaires or the fossil fuel lobby would be a start, looking at you Shell and Drax (carbon capture and biomass).
Equalising the tax system on equities and vat.
Stop allowing the equities market to speculate and make money on these negative investments and taxing them would be a start.
Increasing the minimum wage so that people don’t need to rely on in work benefits which subsidise employers not paying fair wages.
There are a few ideas for you Rachel.
Oh and maybe an unconditional 3 billion to prop up a proxy war … that might be another
31 Comments
I could *swear* that during the election she made a whole point about how there’d be no nasty surprises in government cos the shadow government has access to the same data the gov has and had planned to hit the ground running
There are not billions more to be found outside of taxing the wealthy more. The UK is cooked without at least substantial wealth redistribution because conservatives and Europhobics (primarily) have ran it into a corner and incubated a labour party that is conservative lite.
Edit: The UK has been on a downward spiral since it’s empire was decaying and even several great milestone achievements like the NHS can’t save it from its fate. The weather is depressing and likely to get only more turbulent, the housing is poor quality, the housing is expensive, the architecture is soul destroying by being brutalist (or existing in the long shadow of brutalism) or by being a neogothic construction that the government doesn’t even *really* give a fuck about conserving unless it’s royal property or it can make tourist money. It’s expensive to go literally anywhere. Private transport is normalised at the great expense of basic human liberties like walking and the environmental potential of public transport.
The promises made by economists decades ago that increasing automation and developed nation wealth would result in decreased monotonous labour for the average person never came true because corporate owners were never ever content. They wanted more and more and more, and people lulled into luxury goods more and more to justify it. Capitalism doesn’t *need* unnecessary creation, it *demands* it. The customer doesn’t want what they think they want, they want what they don’t even know exists yet because we’re going to invent it. Most of those luxury goods are now becoming stale and boring.
There’s fuck all to do as an adult even if you are participating well within the supposedly meritocratic framework set out for you. If you don’t want to go to the bar and smell of alcohol or wet dog, your options are to go and walk the fucking supermarket aisles at night or stay at home and watch the same gameshow you’ve been watching for 7 years. The theatres have trouble funding. The cinemas are becoming exorbitant. The bowling alleys are shutting down. The sports clubs are getting more expensive and more decadent in their facilities by the minute.
Public infrastructure is becoming increasingly drivel because the high streets themselves haven’t been repurposed yet even though it’s now clear that online commerce has won. In almost all places, the high street as it was once known is not coming back unless councils lower business rates to allow small, quaint sole traders to breath. They will simply fill out with more barbers, and dodgy looking takeaway spots, and vape shops, and American sweet shops.
An influential number of the population were convinced into throwing a tantrum about EU migrants picking vegetables even though it was obvious that the UK was too divorced from an earlier age, and had far too weak and accessible public transport links, to facilitate having British people pick the crops themselves.
The UK is cooked. It doesn’t have a national purpose but it feels like it really must do as a post-imperial state. Any semblance of traditionalist identity it *did* have to fall back on has effectively been coopted by nationalists or has collapsed into royalist decadence. The UK will not find a purpose again until it can stop viewing itself as the king of the world and start focussing on universal virtues and fitting back into Europe again.
The UK has to answer exactly what it wants from life, but the general public don’t even know their answer to that question because they’ve spent so long living in a state of cultivated pessimism. ‘It could be worse’, right?…
Generals are calling out. They need more men. Where are they all? At home trying to dry clothes in the rain. Who wants to die for this country?…
I find it hard to believe that sanctioned russia (which has smaller economy both in terms of nominal total GDP and especially GDP per caita) can throw tens of billions at war without obvious economic damage, and the UK cannot find a reasonable way to balance its budget (or at least avoid imposing unnecessary constraints on itself).
Well the tories/reform could find billions to spunk to their mates so she needs to use the same dodgy methods they did but dont give the billions away to pals/family members.
Has she tried ripping all the old sofas in Whitehall/number 10 to pieces?
I’d recommend something as big as the government to employ an accountant to keep records of where money is, they’ve done a good job with their own spreadsheet, but excel is just a toy really, they need a proper accounts system.
I’d heard that shadow ministers had access to the treasury experts anyway, but labour mustn’t have bothered during the 14 years.
We tripled our national debt in the aftermath of 2008. The money was spent bailing out our failing banks. We’ve been fucked ever since.
I’ll bet most people reading this won’t even know that – what does that say about our media?
I wonder how much they could sell Buckingham palace for ..
Well we can save 10 billion quid by not sending free money abroad to *combat* climate change. I suppose however that Labour has to support its own grifters.
Tax the super wealthy ❌
Close down 10 schools and cut over time benefits for police ✅
Calling it
The 20% tax bracket needs to be increased to around 25%. You can’t keep going after the high earners. If you compare with Europe people earning up to the equivalent of £50K pay considerably more.
Let’s see how many lives she can ruin for pennies saved this time
I hate to say it… but they are goin to raid the working class again. More contributions for NI and Income. Inheritance tax is a sad one for many reasons, shameful to be taxed when sombody dies.
We are goin to be worse off.
I’m sure this will be an excuse to crank up the already ridiculous amount of tax we already pay 🙄
I think there’s a few quid to be saved by cutting some of the bullshit funded by various government organisations through grants.
[https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=AH%2FX004686%2F1](https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=AH%2FX004686%2F1)
(Just to be clear: no, I wouldn’t be happy with taxpayers money being used to pay someone to “research” straight porn either).
Or arts council england funding any old venue putting on a performance with a title that includes the word “Decolonise”.
Or grants to charities that work directly against the governments own policy objectives.
Reductionists will only read “Cut research, arts and charitable causes” from the above, but some of the absolute shite that taxpayers money gets spent on deserves ridicule.
Why is noone addressing the elephant in the room?
According to this thread, we should stop sending money to tackle climate change, stop housing asylum seekers, get immigrants out and other insane, nonsense right wing rhetoric.
Well, there is one major event which happened in 2016 which has cost the UK economy and absolute fuckton. Funnily enough, that was meant to “solve” the right wings weird obsession with immigration, but it actually increased immigration dramatically lmao. Instead it just made our economy smaller, as predicted.
Is everyone too scared to say it or something? Pathetic.
https://www.cnbc.com/2024/02/14/brexit-has-sliced-5percent-off-uk-economic-growth-goldman-sachs-says.html
They can start by stop giving out freebies and benefits to asylum seekers.
I agree with a lot of what’s being said on this thread but we must deal with the taboo topics too: we need more people in work, a healthier population and less take take take from the state.
Still refusing to even contemplate legalizing and taxing weed? Estimates are that it would rake in £10b a year, and frankly, people are going to keep smoking it whether it’s legal or not anyway. Nah. Let’s just tax the poor a bit more and keep pretending there’s literally nothing else we can do to raise money.
Shouldn’t be too tricky, she just needs to [give her old bosses at the BofE a bell](https://neweconomics.org/2024/09/bank-of-englands-quantitative-tightening-could-cost-treasury-over-96bn-over-next-four-years) and then you chaps will call her a genius.
cut mp’s pay and stop using taxpayers money to pay for food and drinks at your meetings and parties would be a start.
Everything negative that happens under Labour is actually the Conservatives fault! I’m not sure that is the kind of mantra that wins them a second term.
How about taxing the gouging supermarkets a bit more?
A dogmatic lunatic presented to us as a “grown up”. These are pretty dark times.
I heard energy companies and Tesco asking others made billions in profit by price gouging customers. There’s your billions.
Maybe don’t spend £22 billion on a machine that decarbonises stuff and plant a bunch of trees instead? Not like the UK will make a significant impact on the environment if we have China still building a bunch of coal mines.
Said no tax rises, but back tracked. Liars! Bunch of liars! All of them
Always short term thinking from politicians. There’s never a thought that we must take significant steps to grow the economy in order to avoid the same issue just cropping up 5 years later. Reduce taxes so it’s easier to start up and maintain a business, allow the creation of new industries (e.g. legalising cannabis), stop throttling existing industries (tobacco, alcohol, industry) and invest in the creation of cheaper energy (nuclear, carbon capture from coal etc).
Easy, reduce MPs pay. Alot
Stop ALL expenses until spending is on track. No more quality of life perks.
Everyone else is suffering with cost of living so let’s share the load.
Could start by not washing it all through ukraine to the military industrial complex
But they committed billions to unproven carbon capture…
If they just abolished the planning system and let people build housing, power plants, prisons, and permitted fracking and oil drilling, etc. then private industry would be handing that money to the government.
Grow the pie, rather than stealing more of peoples’ income.
Maybe stop giving tax breaks and investment to billionaires or the fossil fuel lobby would be a start, looking at you Shell and Drax (carbon capture and biomass).
Equalising the tax system on equities and vat.
Stop allowing the equities market to speculate and make money on these negative investments and taxing them would be a start.
Increasing the minimum wage so that people don’t need to rely on in work benefits which subsidise employers not paying fair wages.
There are a few ideas for you Rachel.
Oh and maybe an unconditional 3 billion to prop up a proxy war … that might be another