BOOM!!!! Financial Meltdown!

[Nijo]

I have a sneaking suspicion that the VAT cut is not really aimed at consumers.

Since it's only temporary most small business won't need the extra hassle of changing prices on everything, so they'll leave everything as is and pocket the extra profit. While the 2.5% won't make much difference to the average consumer it would add up to a decent amount for an average business.

Just a theory.

[EJG1980]

If they wanted to help out the lowest paid then a cut in basic rate tax or raising the personal allowance some more would have been more help. With essentials like food and clothes having no VAT on them anyway, more money in your pocket to help pay for those things would have been more useful.

On a personal note I was able to initiate my Icesave compensation payments today, so I should have my savings back in my bank account by the end of the week

Considering that Icesave went bust on 7th October and the first compensation payouts started on 12th November, I think the FSCS have done an excellent job. You still get lots of miserable buggers on finance forums saying "My life savings may have been saved, but I lost a whole month of interest! It's a disgrace!"

[Nijo]

If they wanted to help out the lowest paid...

Why would they want to do that? If you want to stimulate the economy through increased consumption you need to help the (ex-) credit binging middle class. The lowest paid don't spend enough to be worth helping, plus their votes don't count as much. Let them eat cake.

[EJG1980]

As long as it's exceedingly cheap cake.

[fishbowlhead]

The vat cut doesn't help anyone surly? you still have to pay the stupid F**king tax in the first place.


Nothing the government is doing is going to help us in any way. How many overpaid lazy politicians have lost there job because of the recession? There all still driving about in the gas guzzling cars.


There needs to be drastic changes not just in the economy but our society itself. When there's footballers on 100k a week, and im down to £20 a week for food because ive got no work, something needs to be done, and im not the only one making drastic cutbacks, im sure anyone on here with kids is finding it even harder than me.

[buster_broon]

i've just bought a conservatory

i wonder if its the wrong time

[Zanza]

The VAT change is going to play havok with alot of Ecommerce sites. Web developers definately have their work cut out for them this/next week. Infact VAT hasn't changed since the first Ecommerce sites sprang up so alot of them won't even be designed to handle VAT changes. Even more of a pain will be changing lots of images across sites that have prices on them, like banners for special offers.

[Matt]

Smoke 'n' Mirrors the lot of it.
The pair of them have just bamboozled the nation into accepting more tax rises on NI, tufties, beer, and most importantly petrol. The 2.5% VAT 'windfall' is a farce and they know it, but they needed to announce something they felt the media would see as beneficial to the nation. The BBC fell for it and reported it as 'historic'.

In a years time they'll be at it again, re-instate the VAT and chuck more tax rises in petrol and car-tax into the mix. Re-instating the VAT will actually be a tax increase when it returns.

Then, in a blindingly cynical vote-grabbing gamble they'll lie about the 'recovery' being on-track and will recind the planned increase in the over 150K earner's tax rise to 45%. Breathing a sigh of relief 'middle' Britain will vote Labour back in for saving us from the World recession with their prudent fiscal values.

Bollocks to the pair of them.

Good post.

We wouldn't be in as much **** if they'd actually saved a little while the country was having such a great time. But now, they got even further in to debt during the good times, and now are compounding the problem in the bad times.

[Matt]

That "whole section of the population" (which is still a minority) could include you one day, if you are laid off in a recession and there are no jobs available, if you have a serious health problem develop or have inflicted upon you, or become unemployable through old age, or even retire early. You obviously haven't lived on benefits if you think it's cushy. It's relentless hell and crushing poverty. In this country at least, as by European standards we have quite a punitive and ungenerous welfare state.

Unfortunately, in a previous job I encountered many, many spongers. People who expect to be given everything and never have to work. I'm not saying everyone out of work is that way, I've been unemployed and it's been incredibly stressful. As it happened, during those times I've had very little financial help.

But there are plenty of people who know how to work the system take advantage. I used to visit people on benefits and it was often astonishing - big screen TVs all round! One family had a lounge PCs and Laptops and played WOW all day long, and done nothing else!

As usual in life, nothing is black and white, but there are plenty of people out there taking advantage.

[dataDave]

But there are plenty of people who know how to work the system take advantage. I used to visit people on benefits and it was often astonishing - big screen TVs all round! One family had a lounge PCs and Laptops and played WOW all day long, and done nothing else!

LOL! Nice to know I'm safe if ever I lose my job.

[Grapple Convoy]

Meanwhile, reality calls. Enough of the paranoid fantasies, Chain.

[Matt]

Well, if you want to own your place, you're in trouble - if you have a mortgage, at best you'll get the interest paid and nothing else. If however you just want to leech, you're sorted! Just knock up a 19 year old (or even better, a couple of them) and you'll get a council house, everything paid for, and evidently enough money to afford as much home entertainment gear as you'll need!

Seriously, the WOW Family, as I nicknamed them, were beyond words. I visited them twice, and each time was the same. I'd get there around 11am, when they'd just be getting up. There was a married couple (typical Little Britain, obese, fags in mouths), their 3 children, one a teenage mother, the other two early twenties and apparently as unemployable as their parents, and one of the parents sisters. In the lounge they had a couple of PCs (and a couple in the bedrooms as well) which the two twenty year olds sat at. The parents, sister and the teenage mother plonked on a sofa and armchair, each with a laptop (quite new and good ones). Cables and wifi all over the place, a router, an internet connection, and 6 WOW accounts.

They literally got up, not getting dressed, and logged in. And that happened both times I visited. The house was a ****hole, didn't even have carpet on the floor. Good to see they've got their priorities right.

Alas, this isn't an isolated case either. Welfare is great in theory. In practice, some people take advantage and it encourages a certain segment of the population not to work. And from what I've seen, their offspring, of which there are usually numerous, follow their parents role model.

[Matt]

Meanwhile, reality calls. Enough of the paranoid fantasies, Chain.

Yes right, because people like that don't exist.

"Paranoid"? Man, a lot of people are throwing words around out of context today!

[Spatial]

Last night was a bit of turning point for me when I realised how ugly this is all going to get.

Apparently the private sector and MP's are now getting up in arms about the public sector workers pension schemes. Which, quite frankly, is the only good thing for anyone who has to put up with the utter **** of working in the public sector.

It starting slowly but surely, but it's the creep rot of the envious `have nots` against those who have. We're a nation of keeping up with the Jones' but during the economic boom time that didn't matter. If Mr Jones down the road bought a flash new car with his job as a milkman then it didn't matter because you could also buy one with all the cheap credit being thrown about.

This is what starts to happen when you have a whole generation (if not several) who believe they have a right to everything and to have it now.

[Matt]

"Have it now" is a huge issue for this generation. I know, I used to be the same! I ended up in a right mess financially. Even now, with everything a distant memory, I find myself having to fight the urge to get something NOW; then there's the addiction of spending that literally everyone I can think of suffers from. Consumerism is a disease.

We've been raised on a barrage of advertisements and a "buy now, pay later" mentality. TBH, if this crisis makes the population reappraise that mentality and revert to the more frugal mindset of previous generations, ultimately that will be a good thing.

It's difficult to really know how far this is going to go. We don't really get decent media coverage. On one hand, we've the generic scare mongering press (both print and on TV) that like to keep the population scared (and subjugated); on the other hand we get overly optimistic politicians saying how great a position our country is in to deal with this crisis (ahem, you just wait, this debt will catch up with us and economically we won't be so attractive to investors).

This is a bad combination of lack of international regulations, and governmental mismanagement on the national level. Compounded with, as you say, a population of Have Nows who believe they're entitled to whatever they want.

Let's see where we are in 6 months time (he says as his property value plummets).