Forums Forums National News Budget 2021

Good , bad or indifferent ???

I don’t fully understand everything with budgets, but I think in view of the terrible time with the Plague(COVID-19) it doesn’t seem too bad…One of the things I seem to get from it is trying to encourage the work ethic. All these jobs that we have at the moment in hospitality, driving etc need to be taken up and please bring back proper apprenticeships for the youngsters. I know it’s not as easy as I’m making out but a lot of young people think getting benefits is a career. You’ve got to do whatever to earn a crust as was done in the old days .

Not a great budget for the lower paid who will be quite a bit worse off even with the change to tapering. Income tax payers will be hit badly too after March and this budget's increases .Some experts are saying we will be at the highest tax rates since 1950. Of course some of the major changes had been announced earlier. Inflation is now forecast to to got to 4% or higher next year.
I see the chancellor was in Bury market today but thought he was in Burnley.

Amazing budget re-enforcing their "levelling-up" propaganda, the £1.7bn promised that will mostly go to developers and financiers, the old knock a building down and build another and stick a clown on a roundabout to increase community spirit.

Where is the support for the young generation, the very people we should be giving opportunity to.

Also as I predicted some time ago, the massive expansion of Universities will come crashing down, the Government's development and financial buddies have made their money out of the large amount of construction and now Universities funds are to be cut making their expanded Universities unsustainable. Those areas will be slums again in a few years.

Cuts to airfares ..... why?

Cuts to bank taxes ..... why?

Where is the investment in a sustainable electric economy?

Where is the investment in increasing exports? We can't carry on relying on gambling to maintain our economy, we need to produce.

Not forgetting that yet again the Tories have been the biggest borrowers and failed to deliver their "low tax" economy they always promise.

Has a Tory Government ever achieved even one of their election or manifesto promises? It didn't take us long to find out that the document that Boris signed was far from being a Brexit.

Have a look at Boris' six "Guarantees" in 2019 https://www.conservatives.com/our-plan

The bank tax ... more money the banks keep the more they can invest in businesses and the more they can loan . That would surely be beneficial to the growth of the country and individuals ?

Flights ... I would think that's in preparation for the fuel price soaring, thus keeping the cost to passengers lower. I doubt they can interfere in international companies and flights.

So far as universities are concerned.. many were once 'Colleges of Further Education' which were granted University status, and in my opinion, rather than spending 3 yrs partying it might be a better option for training in an industry . But, that's just my opinion. Government have spent a fortune on University accommodation (education, education,education, )over the last 20 yrs, some of that could have built affordable homes/rentals for families.
Are we any better off for education, education,education,.. ? Are the jobs there ? There still seems to be a lot of nepotism !

Banks aren't short of investment capital, this was demonstrated when banks were aided by the Government to give loans to businesses and the banks didn't bother doing anything extra. Most investment comes from pension funds and they certainly aren't short of capital. It has even been the same with mortgages, Government subsidise the Mortgages and still the banks won't give more mortgages. The banks prefer to play the money markets, they aren't investing they are trading investments purely with an aim to extract money not ensure company growth.

Bumper year again for the banks, despite a lot companies struggling the banks have managed to extract a lot of money.

Banks prefer to give loans than directly invest, loans give them a lot more power for less money and virtually guarantee they can extract money from the company.

You are always cautious of the control George Soros has over a lot of finance and investment but BlackRock is far more powerful than him (one hundred times more money to throw around) and are very manipulate often having controlling interest in companies (and banks) that are supposed to be competing against each other. There is a statement that almost every person on earth has some direct financial link with BlackRock whether they are aware of it or not.

A few years ago we were concerned about the amount of UK commercial loans that were funded by Chinese banks - guess who in turn is funding China .... BlackRock.

BlackRock is into everything, along with a few more . George Soros almost managed to bring about the collapse of the Bank of England and made £1 biilion in the process.

There's a whole lot more going on, but I believe our UK banks have invested more in development just recently than in the past. I recall seeing a chart, could be wrong though.

Black Wednesday was caused by us handcuffing ourselves in the ERM whose value was based on Germany (not the EU as a whole) and made a whole bagful of silly assumptions - like that interest rates would always remain low.

Our interest rates were high and when our currency should have moved in one direction to reduce our interest rates it got pulled the in other by the ERM, it was obviously not sustainable and eventually we pulled out the ERM which is what we should have done almost immediately instead of trying to throw money away in a pitiful attempt to outspend the whole of the world's currency investors - it wasn't just Soros that made a pretty penny out of that fiasco. This had a massive knock on effect to other EU countries which effectively carried on going round in circles with currency investors swinging different markets in turn.

The ERM didn't learn its lesson, we pulled out and the currency investors turned their sights back onto Italy and almost exactly the same thing happened to them, then after Italy it was Portugal. It took over two years for the ERM to realise it was defenceless against large swings in currency investments against countries that did not have interest rates close to Germany's, the whole thing should have been suspended before we pulled out ..... but of course it wasn't having a negative effect on Germany who were running the show.

This is my argument against the Euro, if your Country's currency is getting dragged in the wrong direction you are getting into a bigger mess and there is absolutely nothing you can do about it except lose more money in an escalating manner. Spain has the fourth biggest economy in the EU but has no positive influence on the Euro for themselves because the top three have over 50% of the economy of the EU. So the top three do very well because of the value of the Euro is in their favour, the rest lose out. By rights, Spain are doing exceedingly well at the moment but because they are tied to the Euro, they aren't doing anywhere as well as they should be.

Back to 2021 ....

The Government started the UK Infrastructure Bank which is maybe what you are thinking off, they are hoping it will enable £40bn of investments by issuing £10bn of guarantees as well as its own investments. This will probably go the same way as the UK Green Bank and be sold off abroad eventually. It is an unnecessary middleman but will have more than its fair share of Etonians drawing wages a tad above the Living Wage and being paid far more than they would have got in the equivalent Government Departments who should be doing these functions.

Interesting post DD.

This is what I was thinking about. It seems a good idea to me .

Dated Nov 2020

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-11-20/sunak-draws-up-plans-for-new-u-k-development-bank

The U.K. is drawing up plans for a state development bank to help fund infrastructure projects as part of Boris Johnson’s mission to boost economically neglected regions of the country.

Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak will unveil tens of billions of pounds of infrastructure spending next week as part of a five-year, 600-billion pound ($800 billion) plan he announced in his budget in March. On Friday night, he confirmed Bloomberg’s earlier report that the state bank will be created to accelerate investment in these projects.
“Infrastructure investment will be a key driver for the U.K. to build back better and greener from the pandemic,” the chancellor said in an emailed statement. “Through improving connections across the country to supporting innovative green technology, the new national infrastructure bank will turbo-charge investment in the projects that need it most.”

Details of the allocations and the publication of a national infrastructure strategy will come alongside the government’s spending review on Nov. 25, the Treasury said.

The proposed investment bank would use public money to leverage additional private finance for projects from roads to wind farms, helping Johnson deliver on an electoral pledge to invest 100 billion pounds in infrastructure over five years.........

More on the link.

Sounds fantastic doesn't it, but its just a bag of words.

All of those expenditures are normal Government functions, there is nothing new, not even the money (because they normally spend it on those projects anyway), why create a middle-man other than to divert some of this money away from where it should be going?

The Tories have been doing this propaganda exercise ready for the next election for some time now.

How come when Corbyn came up with new projects that would benefit society he was ridiculed and yet Boris & Co come up with a bunch of meaningless words and everybody thinks its great. Now who is the popularist and who isn't?

Because his projects - such as free broadband and re-nationalising everything - were unworkable.

That was a good soundbyte by many a newspaper and Tory politicians, but nobody explained why they were unworkable. Corbyn had fully costed everything and had it independently audited - something the Tories have never done with their "promises".

Don't you think the country's infrastructure and manufacturing industries should be made resilient, you certainly can't rely on private industry to do that.

Look at our mobile network, it started 36 years ago and despite all the promises, it has never been completed.

Look at the disaster that is our sewage network.

Look at our water network.

Look at our rail network.

Look at our energy industries.

Look at our steel industry.

Look at our shipyards.

Look at our car manufacturing.

How can it make sense to be importing Chinese cranes to Liverpool's docks, especially when some of the metal in those cranes was sitting as scrap on Liverpool docks a few years beforehand.

How can it make sense to import coal from Australia to the UK when it is sitting beneath our feet?

We need to manufacture, we need to balance our trade, we can't rely on gambling in the money markets to maintain our income.

Look at the value of our main NET exports in 2020

Aircraft, spacecraft: £3.8 billion
Collector items, art, antiques: £3.4 billion
Organic chemicals: £1.8 billion
Ships, boats: £1.2 billion
Iron, steel: £1.0 billion
Tanning, dyes, paints, varnishes, ink: £0.8 billion
Books, newspapers, pictures: £0.7 billion
Other chemical goods: £264 million
Beverages, spirits, vinegar: £216 million
Arms, ammunition: £182 million

That's less than £13,5bn, do you think that is sustainable when our GDP is around £2000bn and our national debt is £2200bn, it doesn't even pay the interest on our debt. We need to stop paying foreign companies to do things we can do ourselves and export more.