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

Thu Jun 17 11:38:29 UTC 2010

On 17 June 2010 10:52, Francis Irving <francis at flourish.org> wrote:
> Great!

Thanks.

> 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

I completely agree. Yesterday Tim, Lisa and I scratched our heads over
this one (it comes from the IFS publication but we may have
misunderstood). Perhaps Gemma may be able to enlighten us ...

> 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

I agree. £10bn seems way too high ...

> * 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.

Completely agree. Maybe we want an additional "details" column and
descriptions could definitely be improved. I've made sure the main
spreadsheet world editable so you (and others can amend as necessary).

> 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 Ł47 and Ł71 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 ŁY,000, so only
>    Z million people would receive it"

Perfect. I've added a details column for this sort of thing.

> 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.

Completely agreed on all points. We can all dig in and see what we can add.

Rufus

> 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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>>
>

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