The Budget

[Blue Ray]

Most food of a kind used for human consumption is ZERO rated for VAT.

Except:
* ice cream, similar products, and mixes for making them – see 3.5;
* confectionery, apart from cakes and some biscuits, – see 3.6;
* alcoholic beverages, – see 3.7;
* other beverages, and preparations for making them – see 3.7;
* potato crisps, roasted or salted nuts and some other savoury snack products – see 3.8 and;
* products for home brewing and wine making – see 3.7.

And:
Food supplied in the course of catering
You must always standard-rate food supplied in the course of catering, including hot take-away food.


So anyone (DAVEK) saying food is going to go up, especially your home bill - are telling you LIES.

As the ZERO rate exemptions for VAT remain under this budget, they haven't been touched.

So is there no VAT on Diesel?

 

[davek]

Only foods which are effectively "preprepared" - i.e. a SERVICE applied to them like Sandwiches etc.


The food in the supermarkets. NADA.

You're the idiot DAVEK. LYING LIKE GORDON BROWN to people.

Is there any graph on Wikipedia you can give me on this?

 

[Matt Damon]

Is there any graph on Wikipedia you can give me on this?

Check HMRC Davek - if you know what that means.

And Blue Ray.

FUEL DUTY IS FROZEN on DIESEL. (FIRST TIME IN YEARS).


VAT for the major supermarket suppliers delivering food from port to depot to market, doesn't really apply - as they claim it back anyway.

So unless the supermarkets pass on a cost - they're not actually - incurring then you've nothing to worry about.

 

[Neiler]

This was a global financial crisis caused by a financial class. It's ridiculous laying this at their door. If Labour hadn't have stepped in to fill the void of private sector job losses in the wake of that crisis from autumn 08, mass unemployment would be on us now. None of that's to deny Labour's accomodation with the financial sector, by the way.

As for the Tories and their puppet figures from the Lib Dem leadership: they're taking great delight in cutting back quickly and placing all the emphasis on hitting the welfare state and public sector employees. They see this as an opportunity to roll back the state. It's not a cleaning up operation in the wake of another government's 'mess' as you like to portray it.

And this will all backfire as the country goes into another economic dip and a social crisis. These are very early days. When this package starts hitting home come back on here and tell me that you think the Tories will win the next election.

No mate i said Labour will win the next election, due to the fact that the Lib Dems/Torries need to make cuts to get the deficit down - the severity of the cuts - will largely be based on Labours decision not to act on reducing the deficit before the election.

So you have a situation in the UK similar to Greece where the financial crisis was ignored - meaning its a lot of pain in a very short space of time on the way - yet nothing on the scale of Greece it has to be said. This will be difficult no doubt and i wouldnt dispute your opinion of cival unrest, yet the action in nessacary and has happened or is begining to happen in every economy in the western world.

Im sure the decisions that will be taken by the coalition will be unpopular and really hurt people and this is never good for the ordinary man in the street. But objecitively you have to look at Labours inability to respond to the deficit as being a major contributor to the pain about to be dished out in short sapce of time.

Like i say, these tough decisons by the coalition will make them unpopular (see your first post) and foster support for Labour, but they are necessary in the long term for the countries wellbeing! However eventually the pain of the necessary decisons taken by the coalition will usher Labour back into power - sad really as its immensely wrong to play politics with peoples lives the way Labour has. Make no mistake about it their inability to respond to the situation 18 months ago and make the necessary cuts are prob the biggest contributing factor to the pain in my opinion about to be felt over there and i very much hope im wrong in that.

Labour i imagine are absolutley chuffed they are not in power presently, the elction couldnt of gone any better for them.

 

[davek]

No mate i said Labour will win the next election, due to the fact that the Lib Dems/Torries need to make cuts to get the deficit down - the severity of the cuts - will largely be based on Labours decision not to act on reducing the deficit before the election.

So you have a situation in the UK similar to Greece where the financial crisis was ignored - meaning its a lot of pain in a very short space of time on the way - yet nothing on the scale of Greece it has to be said. This will be difficult no doubt and i wouldnt dispute your opinion of cival unrest, yet the action in nessacary and has happened or is begining to happen in every economy in the western world.

Im sure the decisions that will be taken by the coalition will be unpopular and really hurt people and this is never good for the ordinary man in the street. But objecitively you have to look at Labours inability to respond to the deficit as being a major contributor to the pain about to be dished out in short sapce of time.

Like i say, these tough decisons by the coalition will make them unpopular (see your first post) and foster support for Labour, but they are necessary in the long term for the countries wellbeing! However eventually the pain of the necessary decisons taken by the coalition will usher Labour back into power - sad really as its immensely wrong to play politics with peoples lives the way Labour has. Make no mistake about it their inability to respond to the situation 18 months ago and make the necessary cuts are prob the biggest contributing factor to the pain in my opinion about to be felt over there and i very much hope im wrong in that.

Labour i imagine are absolutley chuffed they are not in power presently, the elction couldnt of gone any better for them.

Oh, I didn't know you meant Labour would win the next election.

You're wrong, though, if you believe Labour had no strategy to get on top of the debt mountain. They did, it's just different to the Tory/Lib Dem careerists in that it was going to be cushioned by an upturn in growth in the economy and tax increases. Growth and progressive taxation would have meant coffers into the treasury to balance the books rather than the Tories plan to cut huge chunks out of curent spending with relatively little in the way of progressive taxation (CGT aside) and not waiting for the economic turnaround.

You can go on all day about Labour not dealing with the crisis immediately. Their hands were tied trying to stop the savings of people being wiiped out and massive job cuts. That was phase one of their strategy (stabilisation) with phase two to come (as outlined above). It's not right for you or anyone else to portray what the Tories are doing as inevitable or (even worse) right.

 

[Matt Damon]

Oh, I didn't know you meant Labour would win the next election.

You're wrong, though, if you believe Labour had no strategy to get on top of the debt mountain. They did, it's just different to the Tory/Lib Dem careerists in that it was going to be cushioned by an upturn in growth in the economy and tax increases. Growth and progressive taxation would have meant coffers into the treasury to balance the books rather than the Tories plan to cut huge chunks out of curent spending with relatively little in the way of progressive taxation (CGT aside) and not waiting for the economic turnaround.

You can go on all day about Labour not dealing with the crisis immediately. Their hands were tied trying to stop the savings of people being wiiped out and massive job cuts. That was phase one of their strategy (stabilisation) with phase two to come (as outlined above). It's not right for you or anyone else to portray what the Tories are doing as inevitable or (even worse) right.

Davek's just continued the mistake of the 1970's in thinking that the bond markets would go on and on and on in buying the government debt over the next four years.

He's also conveniently forgotten that such a policy COSTS US MORE in the long term - massively.

This is the same Labour who massively over estimated the growth forecasts and had Mandleson going round the country cashing cheques his body couldn't cash, promising people money that as one Labour minister put it to his successor:

"its all gone".

Davek keeps using the word "PROGRESSIVE" as some sort of shield. There's NOTHING progressive whatsoever about Labour economic policy (or history)

 

[davek]

Davek's just continued the mistake of the 1970's in thinking that the bond markets would go on and on and on in buying the government debt over the next four years.

He's also conveniently forgotten that such a policy COSTS US MORE in the long term - massively.

This is the same Labour who massively over estimated the growth forecasts and had Mandleson going round the country cashing cheques his body couldn't cash, promising people money that as one Labour minister put it to his successor:

"its all gone".

Davek keeps using the word "PROGRESSIVE" as some sort of shield. There's NOTHING progressive whatsoever about Labour economic policy (or history)

Britain's AAA rating: when has this ever been placed in serious question?

 

[Matt Damon]

Britain's AAA rating: when has this ever been placed in serious question?

Are you seriously saying the markets weren't beginning to question it under Labour??


This is the same Davek that didn't even know that Food has a 0% rate of VAT.

 

[chicoazul]

Going to enjoy laughing at Tory voting folk bemoaning their decision in the next few years.

 

[Sres]

This budget was tame compared to what could have been done.

On one hand if you work and pay taxes you've just had £170 on average put back in your pocket. If you earn less than 7.4k a year you've just been taken out of the income tax loop.

The increase in VAT from 17.5% to 20% in percentage wise in real terms terms went up more this January than it will next.

For the first time in years the fuel tax hasn't risen, which is the single biggest problem issue.

Across the board people are saying that this is a hard budget, but also had enough sweeteners, it is a budget that helped small business plan, it helps the unemployed get back into the private sector without fiddling the books by creating unnecessary jobs in the public sector to cook the unemployment books.

I think you'll find less jobs being lost over the next few months than you will in the autumn when the gov start slashing the public sector.

My favourite part was the slash on housing benefit...

 

[Matt Damon]

This budget was tame compared to what could have been done.

On one hand if you work and pay taxes you've just had £170 on average put back in your pocket. If you earn less than 7.4k a year you've just been taken out of the income tax loop.

The increase in VAT from 17.5% to 20% in percentage wise in real terms terms went up more this January than it will next.

For the first time in years the fuel tax hasn't risen, which is the single biggest problem issue.

Across the board people are saying that this is a hard budget, but also had enough sweeteners, it is a budget that helped small business plan, it helps the unemployed get back into the private sector without fiddling the books by creating unnecessary jobs in the public sector to cook the unemployment books.

I think you'll find less jobs being lost over the next few months than you will in the autumn when the gov start slashing the public sector.

My favourite part was the slash on housing benefit...

THIS!!! with a passion.

The guy above knows what he's talking about.

The Fuel Duty escalator was the thing putting food and other goods prices up MASSIVELY especially for low incomes. 2p every 6 months!

No distinction between that and greener fuels either - so its BOLLOCKS Labour were ever adopting the "polluter pays principle" !


I also agree, housing benefits have been frankly one of THE major holes in the welfare system (thats there to protect the poorest) but which has been used by economic migrants to take the piss out of us all - thanks to Labour.

A nice limit of £400 /pm is quite enough thanks.

But Mr Sres got it all in a nutshell as far as I'm concerned.

 

[davek]

This budget was tame compared to what could have been done.

On one hand if you work and pay taxes you've just had £170 on average put back in your pocket. If you earn less than 7.4k a year you've just been taken out of the income tax loop.

The increase in VAT from 17.5% to 20% in percentage wise in real terms terms went up more this January than it will next.

For the first time in years the fuel tax hasn't risen, which is the single biggest problem issue.

Across the board people are saying that this is a hard budget, but also had enough sweeteners, it is a budget that helped small business plan, it helps the unemployed get back into the private sector without fiddling the books by creating unnecessary jobs in the public sector to cook the unemployment books.

I think you'll find less jobs being lost over the next few months than you will in the autumn when the gov start slashing the public sector.

My favourite part was the slash on housing benefit...

Welcome to the board Milton Friedman.

 

[davek]

Are you seriously saying the markets weren't beginning to question it under Labour??


This is the same Davek that didn't even know that Food has a 0% rate of VAT.

You agreed with me (in this thread!) that VAT goes on some food and drink. Are you hard of learning?

 

[Matt Damon]

You agreed with me (in this thread!) that VAT goes on some food and drink. Are you hard of learning?

Only when a service is applied.

Not when you buy from the supermarket.

Its you who doesn't know your VAT from your HMRC Davek. Yet again.

You're like Gordon Brown. Full of substance. That substance being [Poor language removed].

 

[davek]

Dave Prentis, leader of the public sector union Unison, says members expected cuts but the Budget went further than expected. "The City has got off very lightly and who's paying the price? It's teachers, nurses, community support officers..."


Dot Gibson, from the National Pensioners Convention, says her organisation has been fighting for the state pension to be pegged to earnings for 31 years but Mr Osborne's restoration of the link is "still not good enough". The convention wants it to be set above the poverty level - 60% of median population income. "There are billions for bankers and peanuts for pensioners," she says.


British Retail Consortium director-general Stephen Robertson says his members did not want a VAT increase. "It'll hit jobs, consumer spending, the pace of recovery and add to inflation,"


former Bank of England economist Rachel Reeves says George Osborne has "chosen to ignore the harsh lessons from history" from Japan in the 1990s and the US in the 1930s. "Despite his talk of a plan for growth, we are now facing... the very real prospects of a double-dip recession," she adds


Anne Longfield, of family charity 4Children, says it's a mixed bag. Some will be relieved that child benefit is staying, but there are "blows" too - like for families on more than £40,000, she says, who are not affluent.


The public sector pay freeze will be seen as a pay cut by midwives, says Jon Skewes, director of employment relations at the Royal College of Midwives. And it will do nothing to encourage more people into the career, he argues.


Robert Chote, director of the Institute for Fiscal Studies, says the great uncertainty is the quality of public services we are going to get once the spending cuts have been imposed.