Public to Be Consulted Over Drastic Government Spending Cuts

In an unprecedented move, according to the BBC News, the new Coalition Government in the UK announced today that the British Public will be consulted as to how to make the necessary drastic spending cuts.

On Monday, the Prime Minister, David Cameron, said that "the country must prepare itself for painful and unavoidable cuts which will affect our whole way of life".

The Labour Government under Gordon Brown and previously Tony Blair, increased Public Spending to such a level, that only drastic cuts over the next three years will help to bring this under control.

The idea to involve the British Public in deciding where to make the cuts has been borrowed from the Canadians, who successfully used this strategy in the 1990's to cut unnecessary costs, and it is hoped that this will also work in the UK.

Whatever decisions are taken, the Prime Minister has said that it is going to be painful, and will affect everyone in the country.

Hopefully, with the Public in mind, the cuts will be relevant, and will not do anything to lose jobs but to create new ones, especially in the Private Sector.

David Cameron did announce that there are likely to be pay cuts as well as job losses in the Public Sector, so Local Government employees are already fearful for their jobs as well as their earnings.

However, if cuts are not made, the Billions of debt that the UK currently has, will just spiral out of control even further.

David Cameron said on Monday that the state of the public finances was "even worse than we thought", and suggested the UK could be paying £70 Billion in debt interest within five years. This is more than it spent on schools in England, tackling climate change and transport, added together.

Right now, it was stated, 10 pence (15cents) of every tax payer's contribution is going to just pay off interest on the rising debt, and that is a terrible waste of hard earned income, with taxes being used to pay off debts rather than being spent on Public Services.

Like it or not, the British Public is aware that these cuts are necessary, but wherever they come, nobody wants it to affect them of course.

One of the areas of prime concern to the Government is the estimated 8 Million people living in the UK who do not work and who are claiming benefits.

While many of these are legitimately out of work, there is a rapidly growing number of people who have never worked, and have no intention to work. Many of these come from families who live in housing paid for by Government handouts, have benefits to cover food and other living expenses, child support, and often their whole family does not work.

It is these people that the Government needs to target, as living off benefits instead of working has become a way of life for these groups, which are growing in number every year.

Not only are the costs of providing benefits for these families increasing yearly, a number of these either belong to gangs, deal drugs, are involved in other crimes, or hang around the streets causing trouble and damaging property.

The sad thing is that in the UK, if you do not work, you can claim significant benefits, but if you do work, even for a small amount of income, many of those benefits are taken away, and therefore you are better off by not working at all. There is something obviously wrong in this logic, since many employers cannot find people who want to work for minimum wage, yet there are plenty of people that are out of work.

If the benefits system could be completely overhauled, it ought to be possible to get many of these people out to work, filling lower paid vacancies, and reducing the benefit payments dramatically.

For those who have lost their jobs, like I personally did last year, a system is needed like in the USA, where unemployment benefit is paid for 6 months, and no more. After that period, a person needs to qualify for unemployment benefits, either by doing community service, undertaking further education, or working at a lower paid job, with benefits being paid to compensate for the difference between what they earned and the benefit that they would have been paid.

It's time to stop giving lazy people a free ride in the UK.

This includes the people that fake disabilities to get out of doing work. These are frequently seen going into the benefits office to collect their payment, then as soon as they exit the building and cross the road, their limp miraculously disappears.

Get the lazy people off the streets, stop them playing their X-Boxes all day or doing petty crimes, get them out to work, and maybe then they will appreciate a little that it's working people that have to fund their life of leisure.

For those who genuinely want to work and who have sadly lost their jobs, I can't see them sitting down doing nothing. Most of these people will I am sure be pleased to do some form of community service, whether this is improving the look of their neighbourhoods, or helping out in other ways.

The UK can't continue to fund the growing generations of lazy people, and some form of child benefit reform is also necessary to stop these people from having children purely so that they can claim extra benefits. It's a sad fact that in today's society in the UK, there are many people who have a number of children by multiple partners, and these children are not properly looked after, often ending up in care as a result.

Not only do these families who don't work cost a fortune in benefits, the children from these families who are in school see no point in studying for exams, since they have no intention of ever having a job. When they leave school they are just going to sign on for benefits like the rest of their family.

Many of these children also have emotional and behavioural problems, both as the result of poor parenting as well as drug and alcohol abuse and lifestyle or their parents. Many come from single parent families, and this also not only causes major disruptions in the classroom, whole departments in the Educational Sector are needed to try and help these children who are not capable of being in a regular classroom.

Well there you have the sorrowful situation of life in the UK today, with a rapidly rising debt crisis, and a social system that needs to be rapidly turned around, to get people back to work, and to eradicate the new society of spongers and petty criminals.