Thanks El Loro

A llive link to the announcement

Can someone give him a cough sweet....

The constant little coughs are annoying.

So far though its not been the spending massacre we were promised.

glad I'm not the only one 

I've got a better cure:

I have updated my links above to include the BBC summary of the key announcements and also the complete Government paper on its spending review. This is not light reading but probably contains much more detail than you will find elsewhere. It also attempts to try to quantify the financial effect on people's net income by what they call decile. In English this means they have split the effect on those in the lowest 10% of next income, then the next 10% etc. The figures do take into account the measures announced in the budget such as the tax credit changes.

In the Government spending review paper (link at the top), details is given on the effect for each department. For those who have a particular interest in a specific department, this is a list of the page numbers in the report where you can find the detail.

Education page 41
Health page 43
Transport page 44
Communities & Local Government page 47
Local Government page 49
Business Innovation and Skills page 51
Home Office page 54
Justice page 55
Law Officers page 56
Defence page 57
Foreign & Commonwealth page 58
International Development page 60
Energy & Climate Change page 61
Environment Food & Rural Affairs page 64
Culture Media and Sport page 65
Work & Pensions page 66
Devolved Administrations page 70
HM Revenue & Customs page 71
HM Treasury page 72
Cabinet Office page 74
Single Intelligence Account page 75

The main surprise in today's announcement was this:

From the BBC:

The state pension age will now rise to 66 by 2020 for both men and women, the Chancellor, George Osborne, has said.

The plan brings forward by six years the plan that the previous Labour government had put in place.

Mr Osborne told MPs that the increase from 65 to 66 would be phased in from 2018.

This will also accelerate the existing plan under which women's pension age would have been equalised with men at age 65, by 2020.

Mr Osborne said the new policy would eventually save the government £5bn a year by the end of the next parliament.

"Raising the state pension age is what many countries are now doing, and will by the end of the next parliament save over £5bn a year - money which will be used to provide a more generous basic state pension as we manage demographic pressures," Mr Osborne said.

In 2007, the Labour government followed the recommendations of Lord Turner's Pensions Commission.

It decided that the state pension age should rise: to 66 by 2026, to 67 by 2036 and to 68 by 2046.

During the summer, the new coalition government held a public consultation on bringing forward the first element of this plan because of the widespread evidence that people are continuing to live longer.

The government said at the time that leaving the state pension age at 65 "was not an option" and raising it would contribute to making the state pension more affordable as pensioners spent longer in retirement.

Public sector pensions

Following the recent initial recommendations of Lord Hutton's independent commission, the government will seek to raise the contributions that public servants make to their pension schemes.

Mr Osborne said that any increases should be "staggered and progressive", with the lowest paid and members of the armed forces being protected.

But those who gained the highest pensions from final-salary schemes should be expected to pay the most, Mr Osborne said

Although no detailed decision will be taken until Lord Hutton's full report is delivered next spring, Mr Osborne said he expected changes to save the government £1.8bn a year by 2014-15.

He also said that the final-salary scheme for MPs, though not formally part of Lord Hutton's review, would have to end in its current form

My opening post has now been amended to include links to the official press releases, the press releases for each region and the announcement for compensation to the Equitable Life policyholders.