Royal Mail stake to be sold off

[Still Waters]

The government's remaining 30% stake in the Royal Mail is to be sold and £3bn cut from government spending this year, George Osborne has said.

The chancellor said the Royal Mail shares money - valued at £1.5bn - would be used to pay down the national debt.

The £3bn in cuts come ahead of further reductions to be announced in July.

The NHS, schools and overseas aid are protected from cuts - but other departments such as the Home Office and MoD will have to find savings.

http://www.bbc.co.uk...litics-33004664

[stevewinn]

A deal to be had with Royal Mail. As for cutting down the debt.

Its absolutely bonkers that the Foreign Aid budget is protected from cuts - The Foreign aid budget was £11.7 Billion last year. This is the price we are paying for party politics. when the Tory party done a deal with the Lib Dems. in order to get a Tory vote through parliment the Lib Dems demanded in exchange for their backing (votes) the Foreign Aid Budget to be protected in Law. SO now we're cutting the likes of Defence, when we live in uncertain times. while foreign aid is left alone.

The Government is looking for £30Billion in cuts this year. easily solved if the political will was there - EU membership £19.2Billion (2014) Foreign Aid Budget 11.7Billion (2014) = £30.9Billion. two areas we could save money and here at home we'd face no further cuts. three years of this, and government would be running a surplus. meaning the government would be spending less than it receives. end of the deficit. - though National debt would still need paying.

We the British people must be absolutely stupid for putting up with the crap.

[Duke Wellington]

The government's remaining 30% stake in the Royal Mail is to be sold and £3bn cut from government spending this year, George Osborne has said.

The chancellor said the Royal Mail shares money - valued at £1.5bn - would be used to pay down the national debt.

The £3bn in cuts come ahead of further reductions to be announced in July.

The NHS, schools and overseas aid are protected from cuts - but other departments such as the Home Office and MoD will have to find savings.

http://www.bbc.co.uk...litics-33004664

The private sector are just as capable of delivering parcels and letters so I think its about time the whole industry was privatised. There is slack to be removed from the education system too. A-levels are virtually useless as employers either want GCSEs or degrees and only a small number of positions actually require the applicant to have letters after their names. While I think hard working and intelligent youngsters getting straight A's at high school (or near enough) should get the free trip then due to the short availability of skilled positions everybody else should have to pay. Currently only the kids from well off families have to pay the full £9000 a year university fees. It's not like a graduate is doing anything with it if they only come out with a third or plain degree, and with the short availability of positions most aren't doing anything with a 2.2 or 2.1 either except working in retail wondering why they didn't get the position they studied hard for.

I'm against leaving the EU at this time. We need to restructure our economy away from its over-reliance on services first otherwise our exit will hit us hard. We could cut the prison budget by executing serious offenders and forcing the others to do hard labour for the length of their sentences in mines, in quarries, in fields, etc. For no wage just their food, water and beds in their cells.

Cutting slack which doesn't drive demand in the economy (like the above examples) is good. Suspending foreign aid is another one. For those factors which drive demand we need to actually spend more so we get more back in taxes. That means carefully selecting where to spend money in the economy so most of it comes back into the treasury one way or another. We should do it by giving the unemployed a wage rise to £220 per week but only provide £50 of that in cash. The rest should be in vouchers. The government should force a selection of retailers to accept those vouchers and force them to hand over all the revenue (minus their costs) back to HMRC. Meanwhile those unemployed can be forced to work for their £220 a week. The result is higher GDP, a higher workforce and we pay our national debt off a lot faster.

As regards the foreign aid why are we handing over £12 a year? Why not say here is £6 billion Glasgow. Setup a car manufacturing plant and supply third world countries with free cars. Setup up a chip plant next to it and supply them with free computers. Here's £6 billion Birmingham setup a 3D printing facility to provide free consumer goods to the third world. Then year after year - here you go such and such a place set this up or continue doing this. The result is we use that foreign aid to boost production, create jobs here in the UK, create industries we are missing, restructure our economy so we can exit the EU and when all these new industries are established they can have their funding removed and let fly from the nest to compete in world markets for profit.

Not rocker science Mr Osbourne, its your own incompetence.

[Still Waters]

Only to be expected I suppose -

But unions yesterday warned of industrial action by thousands of staff unless pay and conditions are protected when the firm is fully privatised.

http://www.dailymail...Royal-Mail.html

[Border Collie]

Only to be expected I suppose -

http://www.dailymail...Royal-Mail.html

How would you feel?

[skookum]

How would you feel?

Yeah having to work hard and achieve profitability must be a terrifying thought without the tax payer to prop up your business and jobs. Welcome to the real world Royal Mail.