How Will the Budget Affect You, Thoughtful Gardeners?

Meh, it's politics. Won't discuss this on a GARDENING forum

 

Well, the wealthy will be shaking in their boots about having to cough up a bit more passenger duty for their private jet trips ... not. I would have made it a charge per mile, large enough to offset the damage to the planet.

I noticed Reeves dropped in a half sentence on allowing the DWP to take money directly from people's bank accounts. That is a hugely significant change in my view and one that could lead to a real abuse of gov power down the line. It is very different from subtracting part of a debt from a payment as it is made.

 

We are very middle-of-the-road financially speaking, so with most budgets what they give us with one hand, they take away with the other. The Guardian's calculator says I'll be £2.27 worse off next year and that's the duty on a couple of glasses of wine per week (on average). I could do without that if I needed to! I may of course get a lower pay rise next year because my employer will have to pay more NI, but they're pretty decent generally so we'll see.

We won't miss winter fuel allowance because we never had it (not quite old enough yet). It's disappointing that the freeze on the tax allowance doesn't get lifted for several more years, but at least they didn't penalise our habit of saving what we can for our retirement/older years.

 

Slightly misplaced perhaps?

 

I would never resent paying taxes, I would always resent seeing them mis-spent!
As RowlandsCastle writes:

To take just one example, a 22 bn injection into the heart of the NHS sounds therapeutic enough, but let’s see if the beneficiaries make good use of it, streamline their cumbersome bureaucracy and avoid being ripped off blind by badly administered human resources and vastly overpriced medications and equipment.

Sad to see the aged unnecessarily targeted, and the beleaguered farmers scuppered by Starmer’s mechanical minister; the tireless cultivators hardly needed what can only be, after Brexit’s hammer blows, a double whammy of unexpected woes. We gardeners must now prioritise the vegetable patch.

Like truffle hunters, tax collectors are taken to where their noses lead them; we must bite the bullet and distance ourselves from the It’s got to come from somewhere as long as it’s not us! culture; we’ll live in hope and try to trust, but it is regrettable that the new governance, having first set themselves on an oh-so-worthy pedestal, should already have lowered their standards by being oh-so-Swift to take on the bribes and advantages of privilege, as well as renege on some of their promises.

From a purely personal standpoint, the LawnAndOrders have been left reasonably unscathed; they had lived in terror that the chancellor would be taxing lawns, but she obviously realised that lawns are taxing enough!

 

It doesn't affect us as we don't live in the UK but I think the farming community is going to need to find innovative ways of keeping their farms in the family thru trusts and the like. The NFY needs to move quickly to find and offer effective solutions.

I don't see how increasing the cost of employing people is going to lead to greater emloyment and prosperity for workers at any level. If anything it will drive investment in robotics and other forms of mechanisation so the government needs to improve education starting with pre-school and going on to mature learning in order to havve a skilled workforce.

 

In fairness to Rachel Reeves, the axe was not entirely wielded de gaieté de coeur, you can hear from her delivery that half of it sticks in her throat. Unless she be AI (do not read angel of integrity), although AI would probably be and sound more flexible and less artificial.

 

I believe you meant to type The NFU ?
This organisation is not a trade union but a industry body which represents its sponsors and members; not a true representative of working family farms, rather that of the industrial suppliers and processors and supermarket corporates.

 

Yes I did @infradig . Maybe the Young Farmers then.

It's worked for ever for the Duke of Westminster's family so why not for ordinary folk too?

 

I had a similar letter telling me they were going to send me a bowel cancer screening kit. I don't see the point of an advance-warning letter if they're going to send it anyway, particularly when it's not your first one. There wasn't an option to decline being sent the kit so it wasn't to save money sending out kits that people had no intention of sending back.

 

Exactly once you reach a certain age the NHS tries to dump you, they did that with my Mother, she had a camera job done every two years, after one, at 80, she was told you dont need to have this done anymore, she was really pleased, she thought it meant that it was not necessary anymore, she died of bowel cancer a few years later.

 

@shiney I guess you're supposed to wait for your second childhood. Then you'll be excited about ordering a kit to play with poo!