Thought Id start this one going because its rather dead on this board at the moment and I suppose all my usual muckers are either at the Stella tennis event watching Dim Tim (lose again) or at Henly Regatta eating cucumber sandwiches (they wish,...NOT).

Anyway please feel free to just talk to yourself blast away and let it go on any company or subject you wish. Just wish Id thought of this one before.

cheers GF.

WELFARE BENEFITS
wherever these are set, there will always be people who are on the fringes who get squeezed
however, the culture where people will opt NOT to work because they get more from benefits assuredly needs to be stopped insofar as it is possible

Osborne may scrap maintenance grants for students and turn them into loans.

no idea of the budget details, though the market seems to approve

if the uk leave the eu . then countries in the eu will go bankrupt without the uk pot
the uk is keeping the eu alive . cut the rope and let it drift

BUDGET
to my mind, the most important and far-reaching clause is

:: Commitment to new National Living Wage £9 per hour by 2020. Starts next April at £7.20 per hour. "Britain deserves a pay rise and is getting a pay rise." OBR predicts "fractional" affect on jobs. National Insurance contributions cut to help small firms.

only allowed to claim for two children from 2017 it should be from next april

a done deal with Greece as been done but will announce it over the weekend

Doesn't sound like it. They are still talking in generalities.

WELFARE CUTS
women disproportionately hit?
not sure that this is 100% true, as many couples will work out how many hours each should work and similar so as to avoid losing benefits
i may be wrong, but i think children "attach" to the woman, so it may well be better for her to work the fewer hours

He must have been a real catch at Eton!

A real tory character.

.

the budget was to soft it should of been from next year not 2017
get the lazy out of bed

clearly you were never unlucky enough to have to try and try and try and try to get a job

my "young chap" who is not the brightest spark, admits that he f'ed up his schooling and then had his leg smashed has been trying for a job for about 3 years ....... thank goodness, through perseverance and also from the enforced courses for english, maths and IT skills, he has at long last managed to get a part-time job with argos, which with luck and further hard work will eventually evolve into full time

laziness was never any part of the equation ....... indeed, at the w/e he used to coach football to youngsters at his local club for which he received nothing at all

BUDGET REACTION
a quick whizz through FT and even most of the Guardian hails the budget as imaginative etc etc

it was however, really good to see just the one vituperative hard-left response in the Guardian, with which i am afraid i got got very bored after the first couple of paras ...... the author of this article - perhaps it was fred - plainly does not understand at all that one of the reasons labour was humiliated at the election was exactly because the public is fed up with the huge welfare bill that has been growing and growing over the years

yes, it does indeed mean that, as i posted yesterday, there is a point at which the poorest will be worse off, but there is always that level, wherever benefit limits are set

New Vehicle Excise Duty (VED) bands are to be introduced, with revenues eventually going towards a new Roads Fund, the chancellor has announced.
For cars registered after 1 April 2017, VED will be transformed into three bands - zero, standard and premium.
George Osborne said the "standard" charge of £140 would cover 95% of all cars. Revenues will be paid into the Roads Fund from 2020-21
================================

So am i right in thinking that in the future all small city cars that run on petrol will now pay £140 as they pay about £30 at the moment i think .

Re: Car Tax in 2015 Budget
Chart on BBC website indicates that Ist Year will be different from subsequent years and that Cars with list price over £40K face additional annual charge of £310 for 5 years. See link below:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-33447106