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United Kingdom Budget Visualization

uk.wikibudgets.org

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Re: United Kingdom Budget Visualization

#131

Post by DanBC »

fergie wrote: post #74
gutnor wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's actually a good point and well said ... 3 years ago. However, today you cannot make that argument with a straight face when Boris is a PM with a very weak democratic mandate, actively undermining the democratically elected Parliament, doubling down on the lies made by the campaigns, pushing for highly damaging (according to the Government own assessment) economic measure. From the Cambridge Analytica scandal w…

(Lets call him "Johnson". "Boris" is either patronising or affectionate, and neither is appropriate for a head of state.) No Conservative government has served an entire term with an outright majority since Thatcher in the 1980s. Johnson is in a sense "unelected", but his premiership is no less legitimate than that of Cameron or Major. Like it or not, Johnson was the "biggest" voice behind the successful Brexit campa…

> No Conservative government has served an entire term with an outright majority since Thatcher in the 1980s

I don't understand what you're saying about John Major.

Here's the 1992 election: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1992_United_Kingdom_general_el...

336 seats, out of 651, with 326 needed for a majority.

Current conservatives have 288 seats out of 650.

Re: United Kingdom Budget Visualization

#133

Post by barryfandango »

Spare_account wrote: post #116
barryfandango wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Shameless plug colon my company does this for cities. http://burlington.openbook.questica.com/

Did you use voice-to-text to type this comment?

That is an unfounded accusation exclamation point

Re: United Kingdom Budget Visualization

#134

Post by pjc50 »

ackshually wrote: post #128
drcongo wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

UK MEPs have only ever voted _against_ 2% of laws introduced by the EU (laws about human rights and closing corporate tax loopholes), they have voted _with_ 95% of the time. There's a reason for this, they took part in the shaping of those laws. Now we have no way of shaping laws throughout the continent we're a part of. We've thrown it all out the window because someone told you that the EU is trying to stop us from…

First paragraph: We can choose to take on and add similar laws to our own government from outside the EU, including HR and tax loopholes, without having to worry about getting suckered in to things like the EU army (the latter of which is the reason why members of the armed forces overwhelmingly voted to leave.) Second paragraph: Bit disegenuous to throw a "you voted leave because XYZ" at me when I specifically poste…

The "EU army" has been rather oversold, but why do people object to it when they don't object to NATO? Is this rooted in the actual structure of the EU army or is it based on what people read in the Brexit press?

Re: United Kingdom Budget Visualization

#135

Post by ackshually »

onlingyding wrote: post #43
ackshually wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't vote leave because of the money. I voted leave because I was dubious about the control the elected and unelected officials and secretaries in brussels had over British politics, and the rats nest of well paid jobs with crazy benefits waiting for british politicians in brussels when they retire from british politics, so long as they play nice with the EU and go along with the will of the government in Brussel…

There was however a significant amount of misinformation coming from the leave campaign which are hard to ignore and given our current situation are fairly relevant. For example it was repeatedly stated that a vote to leave didn't mean a vote to leave the single market or that Turkey was joining the EU which will 'flood' the UK with Turkish immigrants. The leave campaign was extremely successful because it targeted d…

Didn't intend to imply that the Leave campaign was performed wholly in good faith, I'm not so naive as to think that there are not parties that benefit from the weakness of the pound and instability that the unprepared government has caused scrambling to react to a referendum the majority of MPs were sure would come up remain.

However your point on the leave campaign is only one side of the story; The BBC's coverage of the lead up to the referendum was overwhelmingly pro-remain, the figures I've seen (though I don't have them to hand) were 80% pro-remain coverage.

Additionally, the remain campaign had full overt government backing; Every single household in England recieved a flyer explaining why David Cameron and his cronies thought that the UK should remain, which is much more penetration than any slogan on a bus could get.

Thanks for your reply, it's nice to have a reasonable debate with people with differing opinions on this matter, usually I just get called racist for voting leave and have trouble explaining my views after that.

Re: United Kingdom Budget Visualization

#136

Post by 666lumberjack »

treerock wrote: post #115
666lumberjack wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

UK state pensions obey the so-called 'Triple Lock' rule where they increase in payout yearly according to the greatest of: 1. the growth in national average earnings; 2. the growth in retail prices as measured by the Consumer Price Index; 3. 2.5 per cent. This causes an additional increase in pension costs over time on top of the effect of the country's aging population and is a source of resentment among some young…

That's got to be offset by the increasing pension age? Apparently accelerating the changes saved around £215bn (between 2011 and 2026). https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-49917315

In the short term maybe? A forward shift in age threshold is essentially a one-time reduction to expected future pension expenditures, whereas the triple lock and increasing post-retirement life expectancy are continuous increases.

Re: United Kingdom Budget Visualization

#137

Post by gutnor »

ackshually wrote: post #123
gutnor wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's actually a good point and well said ... 3 years ago. However, today you cannot make that argument with a straight face when Boris is a PM with a very weak democratic mandate, actively undermining the democratically elected Parliament, doubling down on the lies made by the campaigns, pushing for highly damaging (according to the Government own assessment) economic measure. From the Cambridge Analytica scandal w…

Yes, the current government does not have a majority, but this was due to internal strife caused by the leaver/remainer dynamic within the halls of power. Fair enough, the UK government is rotten to the core and the lot deserve to be thrown out and strung up. But they won't be, because the UK population is frustrated, but misinformed and distracted. The problem with your argument is this; Brexit was not a vote on the…

> The fact that a 80% remain parliment is supposed to represent a 52% leave population is ridiculous.

Come on now. 544/650 MP ran for a party that had Leave as a Manifesto promise in the 2017 GE.

Yes individual MP could disagree with their party and defy the whip, but that is an overwhelming cross-party majority in favour of leaving.

In comparison, no party ran with a "Remain" outright manifesto, rather with a "Let run the deal against Remain" in a confirmation referendum. Only in the last weeks, Labour has sided with the confirmation referendum, and rejected last week to campaign for remain in that referendum.

> The fact that the supreme court were permitted to make walking away from the negotiation table illegal

That's nonsense. The supreme judged the suspension of Parliament by the PM illegal. It is loosely related to No Deal.

> thereby making it not a negotiation but a discussion of the UK's servitude from this point onward, is a disgrace. > Your discussing the terms of your slavery.

That's appeal to emotion territory here.

International negotiation like leaving the EU do not have the information asymmetry where leaving the table is a real asset. As advanced economies, the threat of instability or uncertainty is enough to keep both the EU and UK in search of a win-win agreement. In addition, the UK is an important contributor to the EU budget and the USA would only too happy to step in, so it is clearly in a position of strenght ... relative to its geopolical and economic size. A good deal is achievable, just not the cakist deal that was promised.

Re: United Kingdom Budget Visualization

#139

Post by MagnumOpus »

ackshually wrote: post #128
drcongo wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

UK MEPs have only ever voted _against_ 2% of laws introduced by the EU (laws about human rights and closing corporate tax loopholes), they have voted _with_ 95% of the time. There's a reason for this, they took part in the shaping of those laws. Now we have no way of shaping laws throughout the continent we're a part of. We've thrown it all out the window because someone told you that the EU is trying to stop us from…

First paragraph: We can choose to take on and add similar laws to our own government from outside the EU, including HR and tax loopholes, without having to worry about getting suckered in to things like the EU army (the latter of which is the reason why members of the armed forces overwhelmingly voted to leave.) Second paragraph: Bit disegenuous to throw a "you voted leave because XYZ" at me when I specifically poste…

> worry about getting suckered in to things like the EU army

There is a veto right in the EU on everything defense related, nobody is getting suckered into anything.* I know that, you know that, why do you perpetuate the lie?

*Except for the UK military into the Iraq war because their so-called "representatives" didn't and don't represent them. But that's another story.

Re: United Kingdom Budget Visualization

#140

Post by virgilp »

jon-wood wrote: post #48
virgilp wrote: post #8

Nice visualisation. But why is "VAT refunds" an income? And why is "Petroleum revenue tax" an expenditure? (2.2B, coming out at the top of the 241B "Taxes on income and wealth")

I can't say this with certainty, but my assumption here is that the UK government buys products and services from the EU, for which it then reclaims the VAT in the same way a business would. Petroleum revenue tax just sent me down a bit of a rabbit hole - according to https://www.gov.uk/guidance/oil-gas-and-mining-petroleum-rev... PRT is effectively zero rated for any field approved after March 1993, but because of g…

You're telling me that VAT refunds are greater than contribution to the EU? So basically UK has an immediate net loss from brexit?
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