[wdmmg-discuss] Plugging the deficit gap: first stab at a live visualization

Thu Jun 17 09:52:40 UTC 2010

Great!

Some comments...

* It says that "Increase state pension age by a year" will save 10
billion. This doesn't make sense to me, as I thought when the state
pension age was increased it usually only come into effect a few
decades time (so people have enough notice of the change to plan their
lives). So an immediate increase by a year will have no difference for
a while? (Which doesn't mean it isn't worth doing, just it isn't

* It will definitely need more, short, well written plain English
descriptions, along with links to more complex resources on other
sites. e.g. I have no idea what the "attendance allowance" is, or
anything about it, so I can hardly decide whether to cut it or not. 

I've searched now to find out. I would not even call it AA (the
direct.gov website doesn't!), and would say "Means-test Attendance
Allowance" then in small (or a javascript annotation when you click a
link) something like:
    "A benefit paid to people aged 65 or over who need someone to help
    look after them because they are physically or mentally disabled.
    The current rate is either £47 and £71 per week depending on
    the disability. X million people receive this benefit. The proposed
    cut is to only pay it to people who earn less than £Y,000, so only
    Z million people would receive it"

And then add a link to here, or some better resource if you can find
one:
    http://www.direct.gov.uk/en/disabledpeople/financialsupport/dg_10012425

Really it needs a link to a more critical resource, which describes
what we know about who benefits from the allowance, and lets you get
a feel for the consequences of removing it. I can imagine linking
also to a journalistic resource, with some stories about poor people who
receive the benefit, or about rich people who receive it.

A quick search of the Daily Mail finds quite a few interesting
and complex articles about it. 
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1229267/Millions-pensioners-lose-3-400-benefits-year-Labours-plans-elderly-care.html
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1229366/Disabled-Labour-MP-heads-campaign-Government-plan-end-benefits-needy-pensioners.html

But yes, it doesn't need *all* the above information thrown at the
user. But it *does* need someone knowledgeable to have read it all,
and factored it into a carefully worded sentence or two, and one or
two very well selected further reading links.

Francis

On Thu, Jun 17, 2010 at 12:24:22AM +0100, Rufus Pollock wrote:
> <http://www.wheredoesmymoneygo.org/v/cuts.html>
> 
> Running off source data prepared by Tim and Lisa (making heavy uses of
> Gemma's IFS data!):
> 
> <https://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=0Ah8UkI7xG7eWdDJfM2gyZDVaSlJ3dHZzR1JJWF9tekE&hl=en&output=html>
> 
> This is very much a v0.1 and the main thing we're currently missing is
> the ability for people to select the cuts (from the table) used to
> fill in the treemap (at the moment I've got a crude greedy algorithm).
> 
> If people want to hack on the code it is here:
> 
> <http://bitbucket.org/okfn/exp/src/tip/jquery/src/cuts.html>
> 
> Rufus
> 
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