nickle

I know people will disagree with me for agreeing with you, but I do to a certain extent.

I do not wish people to suffer, but once we can AFFORD wonderful welfare state and wonderful public servants we should have them (plus a nice shiny new aircraft carrier instead of having to borrow one off the French or steal their's if we go back to war with them).

The problem is that, for now, we can't AFFORD to get further and further into debt.

nickle, as you said we don't have to use the private sector but we have to pay for the public sector whether we use all of it or not.

I feel sorry for civil servants who honestly believe that they gave up the possibility of higher salaries in the private sector in return for an inflation proof pension, but i also feel even more sorry for those in the private sector who earn far less than civil servants and have at most a basic state pension to maybe look forward to.

I know the occasional civil servant gets the sack but this happens far less than in the private sector where workers are employed under mostly far worse working conditions and the average civil servan't '9 to 5' job would be luxury for many others who work far more hours and at more unsociable times.

The private sector suffers, the country suffers and it only fair that those non wealth creating members of society also suffer when times are hard; when we can't afford to pay you more for doing less than we do you'll just have to accept it or get a real job in the real world.

I was, in a sense, also a public servant - a member of the UK's Armed Forces paid for at taxpayers expense; and the Armed Forces have suffered greatly reduced numbers over time while other public servants seem to have a life of their own but ALL public servants are paid for by the WEALTH creating tax payers and if we can't afford a single aircraft carrier we also can't afford so many civil servants enjoying a relatively risk free job whilst most others are not cushioned from the economic realities of life.

To reduce our debt we need to CUT both EXPENDITURE & TAXES - and to reduce expenditure we'll have to do without the luxury of many of our present civil servants; cutting taxes will allow some ex civil servants to be retrained and employed [and sacked] like the rest of the working population.

When the economy recovers AND debt is reduced we can maybe afford the luxury of a huge welfare state once again.

GREECE is similar to us, not the same but definitely similar and we have been travelling down the same path of unrepayable debt; let Greece be a warning to us of what could happen if we don't dramatically change our ways.

Maybe we should also follow Ireland and reduce corporation tax to encourage more inward investment to our green with envy pleasant land?

But nickie, we have all been forced to pay for bankers errors albeit through the government, this is a large part of the debt you cite.

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No its not. It's 1%. Even for the 1% the vast majority is down to Brown and his insurance scheme and share trading in failed banks.

70 bn losses on the banks. 7,000 bn in government debts (pensions etc. included)

On the cost of supporting the banks:

Fortunately, the National Audit Office has looked into this - with a report out in July this year. It shows the level of financial support given by the government to the Banks since 2009. The report tries to make an assessment of how much they still owe us now, after repayments, fees and interest. The headline figure is £456.33bn, down from £612.58bn in March 2010. The peak was a mighty £1.162 trillion

Actually the cost of bailing out the banks was NOT 1% of the current debt - more like MINUS 1% or even more negative. You see the losses made by the banks were far far more than the bailout, which only covered the shortfalls after some banks could not absorb the entire loss. But the money they lost went into the economy and was spent, creating jobs, more spending and more jobs. And each time someone spent they paid tax. And each time someone was employed they paid 40% tax and NI (or 60% if "higher paid)". Some of the money went on imports, but most would have ended up in Brown's coffers. Had he saved this then he would have paid for the bailout and more. But he took the rising GDP based on this spending of other peoples' money as "prosperity" so he spent it all and more. So you can see that he spent the bailout fund and more which makes the cost of the bailout NEGATIVE in terms of the debt !!!

The REAL losers were the shareholders - your pension funds - and insurance companies so your premiums go up.

Few people work this one out as it does not suit their beliefs :-)

I think you have to type a message, uncheck the box and submit, if you just navigate away after checking/unchecking the box nothing is submitted. It would nice to be able to opt out of emails without submitting a message.
A bit like this......