Budget
So, yesterday was Budget Day over here in the UK, which meant that Gordon Brown got to whip out his Big Red Box and wave it all around at everyone.
Budget 2006
- Money will be taken away from 'failing' college courses? Oh, you mean courses which aren't directly vocational, so that in about ten years time courses like straight History, English Lit and Geography will have gone the way of the dodo, because they aren't 'cost-effective'.
- £200m for international peacekeeping... and £600m for sports. Yeah, guys? You might want to look into your priorities there.
- Apparently to be better off in this country it's becoming more and more necessary to have kids...
- I don't doubt that 160,000 homes were built last year, but around 100 have been demolished in my nearby area in the past 6 months, and nothing's been done with the land...
- Free off-peak bus travel for pensioners and disabled people by 2008 sounds like a great thing... except that pensioners already have free off-peak travel, it's almost impossible to prove yourself disabled enough for a free bus pass (and even then, most people who are disabled enough to need one have other means of transportation) and the next general election's coming up before 2008.
- Nothing for the health services. Round here, the North Staffs Trust is going to have to cut 1,000 jobs because of a £15m budget deficit, which as you might imagine is filling me with dread because they're already bad enough at the moment, and they're not the only Trust with problems. I'm assuming this is part of some long-term plan of the Labour Party's to decrease the strain on things like the benefits system and the NHS in general... by gradually killing those of us who rely upon them off.
The BBC's "Have Your Say" board is full of people complaining too - about half of them are complaining about the new Road Taxes (which I admit are getting silly as well) and that they're not better off, and the other half complaining that they're still having to support all the 'scroungers' (ie. people like myself who have the misfortune of being unable to work due to disability and therefore have to claim Incapacity Benefit or similar). There's also an interesting little side debate over whether people are being punished for not having children (Gordon Brown is getting a bit of a rep for overdoing it on stuff like Child Tax credits, new parent payments and things like that, which started around the time his first kid was born), whether they should just get down to having kids to keep the country going (after all, someone's going to have to fund all those bloody pensioners in 30 or so years!), or whether they're all just feckless baby-making machines. You know, the usual.
Budget 2006
- Money will be taken away from 'failing' college courses? Oh, you mean courses which aren't directly vocational, so that in about ten years time courses like straight History, English Lit and Geography will have gone the way of the dodo, because they aren't 'cost-effective'.
- £200m for international peacekeeping... and £600m for sports. Yeah, guys? You might want to look into your priorities there.
- Apparently to be better off in this country it's becoming more and more necessary to have kids...
- I don't doubt that 160,000 homes were built last year, but around 100 have been demolished in my nearby area in the past 6 months, and nothing's been done with the land...
- Free off-peak bus travel for pensioners and disabled people by 2008 sounds like a great thing... except that pensioners already have free off-peak travel, it's almost impossible to prove yourself disabled enough for a free bus pass (and even then, most people who are disabled enough to need one have other means of transportation) and the next general election's coming up before 2008.
- Nothing for the health services. Round here, the North Staffs Trust is going to have to cut 1,000 jobs because of a £15m budget deficit, which as you might imagine is filling me with dread because they're already bad enough at the moment, and they're not the only Trust with problems. I'm assuming this is part of some long-term plan of the Labour Party's to decrease the strain on things like the benefits system and the NHS in general... by gradually killing those of us who rely upon them off.
The BBC's "Have Your Say" board is full of people complaining too - about half of them are complaining about the new Road Taxes (which I admit are getting silly as well) and that they're not better off, and the other half complaining that they're still having to support all the 'scroungers' (ie. people like myself who have the misfortune of being unable to work due to disability and therefore have to claim Incapacity Benefit or similar). There's also an interesting little side debate over whether people are being punished for not having children (Gordon Brown is getting a bit of a rep for overdoing it on stuff like Child Tax credits, new parent payments and things like that, which started around the time his first kid was born), whether they should just get down to having kids to keep the country going (after all, someone's going to have to fund all those bloody pensioners in 30 or so years!), or whether they're all just feckless baby-making machines. You know, the usual.