UK growth forecasts could be revised again, says Sir Alan Budd

Elephant in the room - ignore it!

Raising retirement age and cutting benefits to get people back to work -pah! There will never be more jobs than people ever again so why pretend. These measures are, in fact, just ways of spending less on the poor.

You are obviously true to your name and you are acting with the herd. This government inherited from the "Champions of the Poor" a staggering borrowing bill that has to be re-paid. If you think that soley taxing the "so called rich" is the way out of it, then think again. These are the very people who are best able to avoid an unfair tax regime and they will simply move.

As for all the hoo-ha surrounding the VAT increase, this will have little effect on the responsible, rich or poor. Fresh Food is free of VAT and smoking, drinking and that new state of the art TV are all discretionery purchases. Perhaps scaling back the SKY subscription might help! As for the Child alowance, perhaps if this was spent on the child (remember no VAT on children's clothes) rather than on beer and fags, then this would be a positive. Who knows, if we eat a little less processed food, leave the packet of biscuits on the supermarket shelf and walk occasionally, we might all become a littel fitter and leave a little more cash in the National Health Service as a result.

And before you retort with "the bankers got our money" anthem, just bear in mind that the balance of payments deficit does not reflect one penny of the bailout money which will be paid back by the banks in anycase.

In conclusion, why not spread the pain equally with the poor too? This way, we might in future learn to pay a bit more attention to how the government of the day spends our money and we might all start getting behind the country all the time rather than when X Factor or the World Cup is on the telly!

Thank you Fred and a little effort is required by them that is swigging away having only lifted the finger to pull the ring tag and we will save bringing in more bodies for hospital care and education places to be found, as well as the child allowances and housing benefits, requiring yet more buildings.

With that influx we do get a crim element, and more prison places required and then benefits thereafter.

As I said yesterday, forget the bankers, because they were a small part of the problem, with the feckless borrowers, we need to make the benefit uncomfortable enough for the idle to be incentivised to get into work, and to discourage unsupported breeding. I am of that generation that if you bred, you needed to have the wherewithal to support your issue, not rely on the state for their upkeep and maintenance.

PS, still getting, regularly the "Server Error in '/' Application." and on a reloading, having posted, my original message in the box. The IT people clearly didn't earn their money, in fact should pay us for the waste of time.

Of course VAT is discretionary, never mind that cooker or pots and pans etc just cook on a fire n the back yard then eat with your fingers.

Don't bother replacing that broken fridge it'll soon be cold outside again an you can keep things out there.

Washing machine kaput, get yourself down to the river with a couple of big rocks

Need some new clothes? just go naked.

I'm with Fred, not need to waste money when the essentials in life are VAT free.