The emergency budget review.

[Tricky]

It makes me laugh how whipped up some people are getting, including friends of mine, and how they cant take any criticism of their beloved Labour party despite the glaring failures of their time in power. Nobody on benefits is going to starve to death, people are just going to have to reign in their spending, stop relying on benefits to fund a certain lifestyle, & become realistic about living within their means. The selfish "me me me" culture of entitlement this country has fallen into needs to stop, its like everyone thinks they are entitled to live middle/upper class lives without having to work hard and achieve it, which is what destroyed the Roman empire in the end. The fact that most of the big UK business leaders, and the IMF, are fully supporting the cuts speaks volumes, and they are far more gifted/educated financial minds than any of the "armchair financial experts" I've seen commenting on news stories online, including myself.

[Publius]

Ah but we have a rather large garrison on the falklands now as opposed to '81, as well as Navy frigates patrolling the area which are not going to be cut, if the argies attempted to take the falklands now, we would very much be able to defend them without the need to send a task force The Argies army is also worse now than it was then, they'd get battered again Both true. I wouldn't have used that emoticon if Argentina were a serious threat. The point is really that it's difficult to determine in advance what kind of conventional threats are likely to pop up over the next several years, and it's difficult to quickly build up the capacity to respond to them. The Falklands invasion was in 1982. Few thought that such an occurrence was likely only the previous year, when the government decided to pull the HMS Endurance out of the South Atlantic in the 1981 defence review. What threats could the current UK government be overlooking in the same way today?

[Mike70]

Ah but we have a rather large garrison on the falklands now as opposed to '81, as well as Navy frigates patrolling the area which are not going to be cut, if the argies attempted to take the falklands now, we would very much be able to defend them without the need to send a task force the two new, much larger aircraft carriers are still going to built right? at least that is how i understand the defense section of these cuts. the type 45 destroyers are going to go ahead too (correct me if i'm wrong). last i checked 3 are completed with 2 in service already with 3 more planned. oh by the way, HMS Daring (a type 45) is a fucking sweet looking ship.

[Tricky]

the two new, much larger aircraft carriers are still going to built right? at least that is how i understand the defense section of these cuts. the type 45 destroyers are going to go ahead too (correct me if i'm wrong). last i checked 3 are completed with 2 in service already with 3 more planned. oh by the way, HMS Daring (a type 45) is a fucking sweet looking ship. They are being built, however they wont have any jets on them for quite a while as the harrier jump jet is being axed (sad day for my grandad, he worked on the first prototypes) and I think one of the carriers is going to be sold on once its built, the only reason they werent axed before completion was to safeguard the jobs of those working on them. thats not to say they wont have capability, they'll just have helicopter gunships on rather than jets for now. Tornado & the typhoon will still be operational too so its not like we're without airpower to defend the UK if needed. HMS Ark Royal is being sold or scrapped too. The problem with these new carriers is the sheer expense, and Gordon Brown wrote a lot of cheques he knew he'd never have to cash as prime minister. Lots of our MBT's & large artillery pieces are being mothballed too (but will be put in storage rather than scrapped) & the army are being phased out of Germany now. I think we'll be out of Afghan by 2015 too from what I've read!

[MinionZombie]

And the insane thing is it'd cost more money not to build them, than build them and not have any jets to go on them. Such is the preposterous fallout from Labour's 13 years of economic misrule.

[Tricky]

Heres a thing - as UK folks will know, Take That (shitty ballady 90's boy band) have announced a new tour, to which girls all over are desperate for tickets. A girl who is a friend of a friend added me on facebook a while back, neither she or her boyfriend work and have about 4 kids, yet she's spent all morning trying to get tickets which are £60 - £70, and when I clicked on her page her previous updates mention loads of other gigs she goes to (bon jovi, rihanna, shit like that) which also mean hotel stays overnight in various UK cities. All her photos on Facebook are of nights out she has with her mates every weekend, and other status updates mention her boyfriends Xbox and singstar etc. The point is I get out of bed every day to go to work for what is nationally a below average wage, I cant afford to move out of my parents & I cant afford to go to all the gigs & events that I'd like to, I dont live a bad life but I aspire to do better and earn more money for myself to fund the life I want. Yet people like them get to live what appears to be a carefree life with their own house and plenty of cash to spend both on their kids and themselves, funded by the tax that gets cut off my wages every month! Thats why I totally agree that benefits are getting cut & I hope she feels the pinch of it very soon

[Legion2213]

It's interesting to see how "the loony left" are responding to the cuts, jabbering on about 'going back to the 1800s' and other such total bollocks ... what is really stunning though is that hypocritical champagne socialist arse Polly Toynbee. http://order-order.com/2010/10/26/cu...sed-community/ 'Order of the OTT' indeed. This would be the same Polly Toynbee who spent the run up to the election urging her readers to vote for the Limp-Dems... ...be careful what you wish for eh, Polly?

[MinionZombie]

The woman is a total arse, and when confronted about it on a BBC Radio Show (I heard the clip via a blog) she fobbed it off in a weak sauce appology as "a slip of the pen" ... eh? A slip of the pen is an unfortunate spelling mistake, say, inserting an "n" into the word "cuts" - but with computers you don't have such things, neither do you have that with newspaper proof-readers and editors, nor with personal good grace and common sense. But then the rabidly left are so deft and easy at whipping out the hatred of anyone who doesn't agree with them or has different ideas. Furthermore, the talk of 'going back to Victorian workhouses', or 'Kosovo' (that one from Conservative London Mayor Boris Johnson ... no doubt trying to distract attention from the fact he was thrown out by his wife) or 'social cleansing' ... they never seem to grasp that some bugger working and earning the average wage of £26,000 could never afford in their fucking life a yearly rent of £21,000 (to think that it was more than that before these cuts!). How is that fair, eh? The rents in London, for example, in the houses that 'will be cleansed of the poor' (poor?! with £21,000 in rent paid for them?!) are surely that price because the owners can charge that much - if they can get it, they'll charge for it. Surely it's a distinct possibility that rents will decrease in accordance with the cut in housing benefit? It's been suggested that if tennants had to stump up a bit of cash to fill the gap between their rent and their housing benefit, it'd be £10 or £20 a month. Now, that's not a bank breaker surely? If you're a smoker, for example, cut out a couple of packets worth a month and you'll be there and you'll be a smidge healthier. Benefits should be a helping hand up, not a freebie for life - not a trap, not an excuse to do nothing. This frothy mouthed "omfgodzorz, it's social nazi cleansing, those baby eating tory bastards" stuff is nothing short of the worst kind of asinine.