Budget expected to result in 1.3 million job losses

I wonder what anyone thinks would happen if the government decided instead to go on spending money it hasn't got at the current prodigious rate set by Gordon Brown. And before anyone says it was a global financial crisis, just remind me who set up our system of regulation and how long he'd been running a deficit for before the crisis!

That transfer of wealth from the public to the private sector has been a real Dick Turpin job on us and it needs to be reversed - it's unfair and unsustainable, too. The massive public debt is a drag on growth - and that will come from the private sector.

Whether private or public sector we are all the same people who at the end of the day have to keep up with the cost of daily living. We need our nurses, doctors, police force, and so on. What our country DOES NOT need are scroungers of the state. These are the people who should be impacted upon - why allow them to have money for them to smoke and drink and all the other luxuries we hard workers struggle to afford.

Gentlemen, I have worked in FS for over 28yrs and was recently made redundant for the first time. Luckily, I have got another job and will start again on July 5th. During my period of unemployment I did sign on for JSA as I did not want to be anonymous when it came to unemployment figures.

I am saddened by Anonymous 2 comments. Are you really saying that if a nurse or policeman or long serving civil servant is made redundant that, to use your words they will believe they " have money to smoke and drink and have all the other luxuries we hard workers struggle to afford." and somehow consider JSA a windfall ?

Remember it is from amongst those 1.3 million where our industry has found clients previously so do not start to create divisions in society by labelling all unemployed people as "scroungers". I believe there are some who consider their existence to be reliant on state benefits but by no means will it be a majority of those new to the jobs "market".

My worry is that whilst there needs to be spending cuts, are they cuts which will reduce the deficit whilst also giving people hope to find work. It is very worrying that IDS announced his plans to move people to where work is, when patently from the above headline jobs will be difficult to find anywhere, and there is no magical oasis of employment anywhere.

Lastly, if we consider that the majority of people who will be put out of work will have families with children at schools and a friend and support network near them, it is very shortsighted to believe that by moving people around the country they will be able to survive the additional pressure that this move may bring.

Let government, give additional benefits to companies who want to move their businesses to where the unemployed are or we will waste a lot of money on a ridiculous initiative which owes its theme to a time of politics which I for one hope has passed.

Whilst I agree with the overall sentiment, just how many of the "unemployed" are actually scroungers and why haven't we been told by any Govt in the past ?

For the "non-scrounger unemployed", society has to make sure they can at least afford the basics for survival . . . food and shelter. Otherwise they will do what they have to . . . . . leading to, in the worst case scenario, much higher crime and possibly even anarchy, especially if the rest of us don't force the Govt to increase our police force.

I agree, stop the scroungers, but be aware of what they might do if they lose benefits, and how we would handle that, bearing in mind they might be concentrated into fairly small, largely urban areas

As far as I'm aware, nobody's advocating slashing the numbers of nurses or doctors or police, but there's little doubt the UK has a chronically bloated and money guzzling public sector. What about all the doctors who work three days for the NHS, two days private and clean up with £250,000 p.a? Or the police who get a full, unreduced, fully index linked lifetime pension after 30 years service, perhaps from as young an age as 48 (ever had a conversation with a policeman that didn't somehow include mention of his pension?) Or all the totally phoney yet incredibly generous and expensive "redundancy early retirement" packages, followed by two months on a world cruise before the lucky recipient is called back on a "consultancy" basis being paid more than s/he was before having retired? That's blatant tax payer fraud and it's rife.

A good friend of mine has recently started working for the NHS after a career entirely in the private sector. She reports that about half her new colleagues are committed to their jobs and work hard and diligently. The other half are a waste of space (and thus public money).

Go figure.

Is it not better to pay someone to do something, not pay them at all?