Cuts – time to vote

Earlier this week we asked all 175,000 38 Degrees members to come to the blog and the Facebook page to suggest ideas for what 38 Degrees should do about the cuts. We saw a huge response. It was our most commented blog ever and the Facebook page was deluged with suggestions, comments and “likes”.

Some issues, like Trident, bankers bonuses, cracking down on tax dodgers and making sure the cuts don’t hit the poorest hardest came up a lot.

There were lots of comments about Trident. Christopher. W said “completely with you on Trident. We are cutting all our government departments but loading more money into nuclear weapons. It’s just ridiculous.” The planned spending cuts directed at the NHS and frontline services will hit all sectors hard which lots of us disagree with, as Anthony. M puts it: “As for Trident, I can’t perceive a scenario when I would like my government to use it.”

Another idea that was very popular was making sure that bankers pay their fair share.  Tina. C wants to see the government “Firstly get the money back from the bankers that we paid out of our taxes to bail them out.” The Robin Hood Tax was supported by Vicky. R who thinks we should “have a Robin Hood Tax and no bonuses for bankers and ensure the rich pay the tax they should be paying.”

Many of us gave examples of how potential cuts will end up hurting the poorest most  as Helen. L said “Min wage needs to be bigger in both sectors; a pluralist society is where all sectors work together.” Many of us are angry that the curts will end up hitting the most vulnerable hard,  Rebecca. A said “unless prices are allowed to drop or social housing is reinstated accommodation is going to remain a big problem for the poor.”

Cracking down on tax dodgers created lots of interest too, Peter. W said “I would increase HMRCs powers to detect tax dodgers.” Along with Aaron. M who thinks the government should “clamp down hard on tax dodgers, and privatise the benefit fraud agencies – that way more people will be caught and for less cost to the public.”

It’s been fantastic to see such a lively debate. Now we need to decide what we should campaign on. We’ve tallied up the most popular suggestions so now you can vote on what you think 38 Degrees should campaign on. Click here to place your vote now.

Update: We’ve made a wordle of all the comments we received on the blog and Facebook. It’s quite interesting and shows what most of us were talking about. The more times a word is mentioned in the comments and suggestions the bigger the word shows in the wordle.  Here it is: