How would you tackle the deficit?

[Paul]

I would certainly seriously consider a withdrawal from the EU. It is worth remembering our farmers managed very well before we joined the Common Market and money was not wasted on quotas with surpluses being sold off cheap to the Russians! Membership is costly and leaving would free us to make our own laws and choose which regulations work best for our own businesses. The latter being vital to our economic recovery.

Ditch the social engineering in our education system and return to stringent teaching in an ordered environment because only when the system educates our own children to the standard required of employers will we not have to bring in immigrants to do the jobs many of our people can't, or won't. So bring back the work ethic too.

Foreign aid is something we can ill-afford. This aid is going to many countries who are clearly able to manage without it.

Prune the NHS back to being a genuine 'if the bough breaks' service for British people rather than the mollycoddling 'available to anyone who cares to ask' branch of social services it has become.

Hopefully the Government will overturn the reckless and disingenuous House of Lords defeat over its welfare reform plans. These are long overdue and it's high time those like the pathetic hand-wringing bishops moaning on and on about 'child poverty' were given the contempt they deserve: many hard-working families can only wish they received £26K after tax and other deductions. THEY have to live in a house commensurate with their means, and THEY sometimes have to move because of circumstances, and THEIR children often have to share a bedroom.

This is all about state money: our money: taxpayer's money. Only pruning the expenditure of this source can tackle the deficit which is reduced by curtailing borrowing because of the interest payment that have to be made.

The idea of taxing the 'rich' always gets the left excited and licking their lips, but I'm not sure that I can see the justification of on one hand encouraging entrepeneurs who start off taking huge risks, and then when those who don't come a serious cropper succeed, punish them with more taxation.
50% is probably about right in my view.

As to whther these policies would cost more than they raise, I obviously do not believe they would otherwise I couldn't really proffer them as suggestions for takling the deficit.

On the whole though I think the coalition is doing reasonably well.