So, where does the £60 billion come from?
Spud gives us the spending chart.
Housing and environment is £33 billion. Kill the Town and Country Planning Act, institute Pigou Taxes and that cost disappears entirely.
Industry and agriculture and employment – £70 billion. There should be no industrial nor agricultural subsidies so we can kill a large portion of that. Until what “employment” is defining is clarified dunno about that. But if that’s the trainingandapprenticeanddiversity lark then that can go too. Transport, £51 billion – pay for your own damn buses and trains. Road building can stay, of course.
So, that’s easy enough then, massive tax cuts all around!
Cut foreign aid to zero (we can do it individually if we feel strongly about it) and cancel HS2.
If that makes bribing foreigners too difficult, scrap the laws against bribing foreigners.
I scroll down and see you’ve mentioned those already.
Sell off the Beeb while saving law-abiding citizens £175 per annum. Win win.
Cut schoolteachers pay in acknowledgment of their efforts during the pandemics. (By all means cut the university budgets for the same reason.)
Sell those absurd aircraft carriers.
Oh there’s lots and lots of fat to cut. How about a decimation of civil servants? Sacking them, I mean, rather than killing them. Stop subsidising fake charities.
Repeal the Equality Act and ban any ‘diversity and equality’ advisors from public employment. While they are at it ban the keeping of any public data based on ethnicity.
Repeal the Climate change act and pass a law that issues grandfather rights to any business activity – no future government can ban that activity if you continue in business doing it. Its possible, there were rights to mine aggregates granted (I think) during wartime that overrode all future planning laws.
Don’t sack civil servants, that still leaves the structure in place. Close entire government departments and give them standard redundancy terms like the rest of us plebs get. Start with Education, BEIS and keep going from the most useless upwards.
Keep HM Treasury, Justice and Defence is about all. Foreign office should be shrunk to a small admin team to deal with UK based foreign ambassadors and visits from foreign heads of state, with all other matters devolved to British Embassies in their respective foreign countries.
STEVE’S RULES OF ACQUISITION
Ukraine is costing us billions directly, and many tens to hundreds of billions more indirectly, for a war that just lasts longer the longer we put money into it. So let’s stop sending them cash.
Resettling primitive tribesmen from the mountains of Afghanistan to suburban Britain is expensive and destructive to our society, so let’s reverse that.
I agree with DM, the aircraft carriers aren’t an asset, they’re a liability. The purpose of our aircraft carriers isn’t the defence of Britain (imagine having to even say that out loud, lol). The purpose of the aircraft carriers is to add value to the Special Relationship.
The Special Relationship is another thing we can’t afford. The Washington DC regime wants us to fight their wars, while refusing to give us a trade deal or back us up on Northern Ireland. We’ve gotten into a series of increasingly catastrophic expensive disasters at the behest of the US since 1999 – let’s stop doing that and save our money.
Brexit gives us an opportunity to focus on our strengths: being a liberal, free trading island nation that goes where the money is. We don’t also need to be the world’s junior policeman and chief social worker. We can just have our own country, mind our own business, and live in peace and prosperity instead.
All excellent suggestions. Plus let’s scrap all overseas aid, HS2 and all benefits to anyone who hasn’t paid into the system for at least 5 years. And university subsidies should be limited to academic courses at Russell group universities only.
We can just have our own country, mind our own business, and live in peace and prosperity instead.
And unicorn Jesus will send us butterfly sunbeams of happiness and joy.
Prefer war and penury instead, eh PJF?
Bloke in Callao, do you really believe we can avoid war and penury by making ourselves weak and isolated?
“Do you really believe we can avoid war and penury by making ourselves weak and isolated?”
Switzerland have managed to be neutral and wealthy. I don’t see why we have to follow the US around like a puppy dog.
And unicorn Jesus will send us butterfly sunbeams of happiness and joy.
Sounds good to me.
Though I have a slight inkling you’re being sarcastic.
Though what is the plan for our country?
Allow the US/NATO to drag is into a war in Ukraine against Russia et al?
We barely have any military, or any weaponry/munitions supplies. In recent wargames we ran out of munitions in eight days, FFS.
So unless we start buying loads from the US on a new lend-lease program which we can have the fun of paying for for the next seventy years again, we won’t last long.
Though even if we get a load of stuff at vastly inflated prices from the Americans, who is going to use it? You’d have to train up loads of people from scratch, assuming there would be enough volunteers. And there doesn’t seem to be much stomach for a protracted fight out there when I talk to people, let alone enthusiasm among said people for toddling off to war themselves.
Conscription? Lol.
No thanks. I’ll sit this one out and hope it doesn’t go nuclear.
You’d have to train up loads of people from scratch
As in:-
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11252119/amp/RAF-admits-mistakes-claims-pressured-recruitment-boss-diversity-drive.html
Switzerland have managed to be neutral and wealthy.
Switzerland combines geo-political irrelevance with financial service usefulness. That’s enabled them to wing being mostly left alone since the early 1800s. But lets face it, if the Axis had won WWII the Swiss would have been part of whatever arrangement they set up. Likewise if the Warsaw Pact had swept across Europe, Switzerland would have been part of their empire. As it is, the Swiss are getting more entangled with the EU by dint of the latter being so powerful. Swiss neutrality goes as far as it is tolerated, and like Ireland’s it is rather parasitic.
The UK doesn’t have the option of being geo-politically irrelevant; foreign is interested whether you like it or not.
– Though what is the plan for our country?
– Allow the US/NATO to drag is into a war in Ukraine against Russia et al?
I suspect it’s rather the other way around. European NATO has much more urgent interest in containing Russia than does the US. Finland and Sweden are racing to join NATO rather than continuing to pretend that their pretend neutrality offers them any real security.
– In recent wargames we ran out of munitions in eight days, FFS.
Against what turned out to be an imaginary enemy. Decrepit Ukraine managed to hold out much longer against the actual enemy. And it seems an odd point to bring up since you appear to be advocating that it would be better for us if we would run out of munitions in three days.
Against what turned out to be an imaginary enemy. Decrepit Ukraine managed to hold out much longer against the actual enemy. And it seems an odd point to bring up since you appear to be advocating that it would be better for us if we would run out of munitions in three days.
Decrepit Ukraine only held out for so long because of the generosity (or lend-lease, however it’s been structured) of a lot of other countries, who have handed over considerable amounts of materiels. Without that assistance, they would have crumpled as an effective force long ago.
Not sure where you got the last bit from.
We’d be much better having a home munitions industry and a half decent size military so we can defend ourselves, without having to rely on unreliable allies.
The point I was trying to make is that it seems like our politicos want to drag us into a war we don’t need to be in, that we aren’t prepared for and will likely cost us a lot in terms of money, time and material.
Seems like a bad idea to me…
– Decrepit Ukraine only held out for so long because of the generosity (or lend-lease, however it’s been structured) of a lot of other countries . . .
I was talking about how long they held out by themselves before the aid landed. They did get a little upfront but they were pretty much on their own to start with. Even now the majority of their kit is still the soviet based stuff.
As to the last bit, it’s the context of the thread – cutting back on spending. The defence-cut wet dream is what started this “war” aside. Sorry if I lumped you in with the damp sheets.
PJF – The UK doesn’t have the option of being geo-politically irrelevant
‘Irrelevant’ is a value judgement. Britain will always be relevant to me, because it’s my home*. I think we’ve killed and maimed enough poor people in shithole countries to take a rest from worrying about being ‘relevant’ tho.
As for defence, we have a bloody big moat. Fighting foreign wars is always optional for us.
do you really believe we can avoid war and penury by making ourselves weak and isolated?
What is weakness? What is isolation? Do we need to jump into every passing war (not including the ones we started) or our dicks’ll fall off, or something?
We could be the greatest independent free trading power in the world. That’s not isolation. Our armed forces could be set up to literally defend Britain, rather than act as poorly paid mercenaries for American adventurism and lifeguards for refugees. That’s not weakness.
Our incessant warspunking over the last 23 years has emptied our treasury, indebted our grandchildren, gutted our armed forces and flooded our cities with some of the worst people on the planet. We are hated by most of the world, including our new arrivals, and now we’re seriously debating the possibility of losing electrical power in winter.
Weakness and isolation, you said? “¯\_(ツ)_/¯”
*There’ll always be an England
While there’s a country lane
Wherever there’s a cottage small
Beside a field of grain
“The UK doesn’t have the option of being geo-politically irrelevant; foreign is interested whether you like it or not.”
Why? We’re a little island off Europe. We’re not land locked, we can access the high seas for our imports etc, we aren’t next door to any superpowers (the EU certainly isn’t a superpower…). So why exactly do we need to be drawn into every global shitfest going? Does New Zealand get involved everywhere? Does Chile? Does Japan? No they just get on with running their own countries, for their own benefit. We gave up the Empire 60 years ago, why are we pretending we are still important? The US is going down the tubes at some point in the next 30 years, we’d be well advised to have distanced ourselves from them by the time that happens.
All well and good, Jim, but who is going to be top country in thirty years time and will all the little countries like Japan, Chile, the UK and New Zealand (already an embryonic satellite of Big Blother) be allowed to trade nicely with one another under its beneficient and pacific aegis?
” who is going to be top country in thirty years time”
That I couldn’t say, but I’m prepared to bet that at some point the US and China are going to start tearing lumps out of each other, because thats what happens when a fading superpower is faced with an up and coming rival. There’s a trial of strength and the winner gets the spoils and the loser is either destroyed or has to retreat to its lair to lick its wounds. It rarely happens that one Top Nation voluntarily hands over the reins to its nearest rival. The UK handing over the baton to the US without a fight was probably the only example of that ever happening, and due to the common ancestry of the two nations, coupled with 2 world wars inside 40 years having knocked the stuffing out of us.
And when this bitch fight starts we need to be as far away from it politically as (luckily) we are geographically.
The problem with a fight between USA and China is that they will want to avoid going hot (Nuclear) so we’ll end up with yet another cold war fought between them via Proxies like Korea.
Another point is that it is easy for even the winning superpower to be so drained by the effort to win that they also succumb in the years afterwards due to the effort expended. Again, similar to Great Britain post-WW1/WW2.
There are some fights that can’t be avoided though and likely the Chinese battle for blue-water supremacy over the South China Sea and Western Pacific is such a battle. It won’t be Taiwan that’s the battlefield so much as Indonesia, Borneo and the Philippines.
You could be right John. One does wonder how Oz’ll end up.
I’m thinking of the fuss over the Solomon Islands snuggling up to the Chinese. Some have argued that we should deal with this!!!!
But of course it’s utterly impossible for us to out-bribe the Chinese.
I don’t know. The Chinese economy is a lot weaker than it appears and there’s a lot of overvalued companies and a lot of debt being hidden. I’m guessing that it will take a full-blown global recession to clear that out and it looks like that’s in the works.
China is where the world goes to get stuff manufactured cheap, but rising costs, expectations and worker unhappiness at not getting a fair slice of the cake is having an effect. The phenomenon of “Quiet Quitting” existed before COVID in China and all the COVID theatre is making matters worse economically, even if it is working for Xi politically (since he is targeting his own opponents)
It’ll be interesting to see what happens after Xi gets his 3rd term (and therefore likely “President for Life” kinda deal).
I’ve always thought that the way for us to deal with this was to copy the UK and build our own nukes. One could call this the Jongo approach, as that’s the way North Korea has done it. I even remember reading that they copied the Magnox reactor to produce plutonium, as the data was publicly available.
After all, if some real nuclear power wanted to nuke Oz, they’d then lose some of their own cities. I can’t imagine them thinking that incinerating us would be worth a stubbed toenail, let alone a few million of their own citizens.
The nukes’d also allow us to deal with any conventional invasion. I know they talk about ‘tactical’ nukes, but I’ve always believed that the only thing wrong with massive over-kill is that it uses far too little force. As I think I’ve mentioned before.
So all we’d need’d be some patrol boats, to intercept the illegal immigrants.
I’ve always thought that the way for us to deal with this was to copy the UK and build our own nukes.
Gonna get them young nukems to put all the people and country proper strong one.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JLrz8Ft-GNI
Lolz
Can’t see scrap-the-military, UK isolationist fantasies being a recipe for electoral success. Particularly if it involves handing the Falklands to Argentina, for example. You can’t cling on to the Falklands but also wind down the military while denying that you’re a country with at least some global presence/significance.