Autumn Statement : Brexit Edition

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-38068358

Autumn statement today. So far the following has been released to the press.

Originally Posted by The BBC

Among the measures to be announced are:

• Reducing the rate at which benefits are withdrawn from people when they start work
• Banning upfront fees imposed by lettings agents in England
• Increasing the National Living Wage to £7.50 an hour from April 2017
• £1.4bn aimed at delivering 40,000 new affordable homes in England

Obviously Brexit is going to be the main theme of the budget. The Guardian is speculating that there will be one more big announcement which will be either positive, fuel duty cut or faster personal allowance increase, or negative relating to Brexit which would be why they've released so much of it ahead of time.

Wasn't too scary and a definite change in tack for the government .Increased borrowing for major infrastructure projects and what appears to be a curtailing of austerity .I'm not bothered about the extra borrowing needed ,extra borrowing always been an alternative to austerity .

Does make the last few years a bit of a waste. Especially when they spent so long rubbishing Labour's 2015 economic plan.

---------- Post added at 07:36 ---------- Previous post was at 07:25 ----------

They raised NI http://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/na...bb4e456d42c484

They also raised IPT, which is a tax on the prudent, and disproportionately hits the young and those who have already had bad luck.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-38090977

The outlook for family finances is a "grim picture" with little respite from measures announced in the Autumn Statement, a think tank has said.
The biggest losers between now and 2020 are lower income families, with the poorest third likely to see incomes drop, the Resolution Foundation said.
That could mean the squeeze on living standards could be worse during this Parliament than between 2010 and 2015.
Treasury documents confirm the poorest and the very richest will be hit.

[denphone]

And real wage growth will be the worst in 70 years says IFS.

UK households are facing their worst period for earnings growth for 70 years after a sharp downgrade in the economic outlook, a leading think-tank has warned.

Mr Johnson said: "One cannot stress enough how dreadful that is - more than a decade without real earnings growth.

http://news.sky.com/story/real-wage-...s-ifs-10670075

Stagnating wages is a big part of the cost of living crisis and anger in general. This could cause more issues in the future. No one is even discussing how automation might make matters considerably worse.

[denphone]

l was talking to my parents the other day who are retired praise be to god and we were talking about how difficult its going to be for those who are much younger compared to my parents when then were of working age as they are quite well off now with several nice pensions coming in each and no mortgage anymore to pay as they retired at a earlier age as well compared to what will be the state retirement age now and into the future and add everything else on top of that and it is certainly much harder now and looking into the future for the younger generations.

[Mr K]

Originally Posted by denphone

l was talking to my parents the other day who are retired praise be to god and we were talking about how difficult its going to be for those who are much younger compared to my parents when then were of working age as they are quite well off now with several nice pensions coming in each and no mortgage anymore to pay as they retired at a earlier age as well compared to what will be the state retirement age now and into the future and add everything else on top of that and it is certainly much harder now and looking into the future for the younger generations.

It's appalling for young people now. Housing, wages, pensions... Society is so skewed to to the older 'voting ' generation - free buses, free tv licences - do wealthy pensioners really need these? Will the youngsters get this when they get old ? Will they even ever be able to afford to retire or afford a house? Will they *******. But they still are subsidising those that don't need the money, who lived it up large in the 60's and continue to do so. To top it all, the older generation have taken us out of Europe to further screw up the future of the next generation

The next generation will continue to get shafted by politicians for as long as they persist in demanding democracy by tweet.

The ballot box is there to be used. They have only to put their smartphones down long enough to use them.

[Mr K]

Originally Posted by Chris

The next generation will continue to get shafted by politicians for as long as they persist in demanding democracy by tweet.

The ballot box is there to be used. They have only to put their smartphones down long enough to use them.

Yes it is an issue but the Govt. haven't exactly moved with the times on voting . That, plus making registration less straightforward, anyone would think they don't want the young to vote.

Originally Posted by Mr K

Yes it is an issue but the Govt. haven't exactly moved with the times on voting . That, plus making registration less straightforward, anyone would think they don't want the young to vote.

How the hell is voter registration less straightforward ,i presume that because the teenager is responsible for registering themselves instead of relying on daddy to do it that makes it complicated and not straight forward .Any teenager thinking that does not deserve the right to have a vote.It's more complicated registering for facebook

[Mr K]

Originally Posted by martyh

How the hell is voter registration less straightforward ,i presume that because the teenager is responsible for registering themselves instead of relying on daddy to do it that makes it complicated and not straight forward .Any teenager thinking that does not deserve the right to have a vote.It's more complicated registering for facebook

Whatever, the net result has been 800k dropping off the register. Not good for democracy.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk...-a6845796.html

[denphone]

While there might be some that have dropped off the register Mr K there are quite a lot who are just too lazy and can't be bothered to register for voting so there are no excuses for them not to register as all its takes is a few minutes of their precious time.

Originally Posted by Mr K

Yes it is an issue but the Govt. haven't exactly moved with the times on voting . That, plus making registration less straightforward, anyone would think they don't want the young to vote.

It's not hard to do too. I am deeply unhappy about the way generational inequality has been reinforced over time.

But it isn't hard to vote. There is a Holier-than-thou attitude towards voting where people proudly abstain from voting for 'the lesser of two evils'. I remember in 2015 they talked to some 'young people'* and there was one guy who was complaining that although he liked some things about Miliband there were other things he didn't like and so was abstaining.

Nobody in life gets everything they thought they were going to get and no one is going to give you everything you want but for some reason many people believe this is what they're entitled too. It's fashionable to celebrate cynicism in politics but I think a lot of it is people are given unrealistic expectations of what politicians can deliver. Politics is about compromise and building coalitions of different groups of people to enact change and getting what you can. But you look around and everyone seems to go to uncompromising politicians who claim they can deliver what they specifically want, such as Corbyn.

Drives me mad.

*incidentally these groups always seem weird. Most young people don't go around proclaiming themselves to be the voice of young people. For some reason news companies only seem to attract odd balls to those kind of things.