You want a welfare state?

You want a free NHS?

You gotta pay for it.

We have paid for it. Several times over. The fact successive Governments have wasted most of our money on lots of other rubbish isn't our problem, it's theirs. That 'free' NHS cost us £130billion last year by the way.

Even if we accepted your argument, why is it always the motorist who has to pay? You seem to think the only revenue source is petrol and it has to reach £7 a litre to pay for all this stuff, well that's pathetic. You forget the higher the price goes; the less petrol gets sold.

Forgive me but you seem to have no grasp of basic economics; the more people spend on petrol, the less they can spend on everything else which is hardly beneficial to the economy or tax revenues. If people end up driving less, turning down better jobs to take close-to-home employment then the overall economy only contracts. Raising an extra £4.56 from fuel tax doesn't help you.

Everything else pales into insignificance.

Wonder how much we've spent on Afghanistan and Iraq over the last 13 years?

When you add up the other stuff it sure adds up.

First thing you do is stop giving £11billion to the European Union every year, second thing is scrap the £9billion Foreign Aid bill. That's 20% of your £100b target saved before we've even done anything. Out of the EU we then save plenty of wonga by not having MEP's with their entourage and pensions. Reputable studies reckon EU regulation costs British business £50billion every year, so lets scrap most of those regs and get that money circulating rather than feeding the dead hand.

Next thing you do is cut the size of Government. Scrap 250 MPs, enlarge constituencies to bring the total number down to 400. Scrap many councils and force them to serve larger areas, on my drive to work I travel through 3 different Council juristictions which surely can't be necessary. Keeping melting pensioners alive longer than reasonable costs us a fortune, they should be encouraged to hurry up and die.

Third thing we do is stop throwing billions at stupid windmills which don't work. Of course a quarter-trillion pound social security bill needs reducing (more than 50% of which is pensions) and scrapping Child Benefit (£11b a year) is a decent start.

In my experience the only way to stop civil servants spending money is simply to take it away from them and give them no choice. If you give them the chance to raise taxes 1%, they'll increase spending 5%

Civil servants are like children. You either explain the pitfalls of overspending on your credit card or you just take their money away.