How the Government Spent £1,286,400,000,000 of Your Taxes Last Year
Oct 15, 2026 · 20 min · 15 segments
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Oct 15, 2026 · 20 min · 15 segments
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Yearly loss in the value of public buildings, depreciation, if you will.
Updating estimates for public sector pensions and their values and recognizing student loans that will never be repaid.
They're also used to remove double counted money that moves within government departments so that the overall headline spending number isn't inflated.
I just wanna point it out because it's big and there's a lot going on there, but it's not really fair to say that that's money going out the door, so we're just gonna move it to one side Now debt interest on the other hand, that certainly is money out the door, or all over the kitchen floor maybe.
124.7 billion a year.
In 2020, this figure was 42 billion.
This wasn't even a top five figure in 2010.
Honestly, if you wanna look for a reason as to why the UK feels a bit crap at the minute, I would say debt interest is the place you should start.
It's all this extra money just being put into something that doesn't do anything for frontline services at all.
10%, £1 in every 10, of your tax money that you pay goes to servicing this debt.
I guess the tempting suggestion is, well, let's just not pay it then.
But that would likely destroy our ability to borrow any more money, and we currently continue to borrow every year at a massive rate.
It would also destroy our international reputation, cause havoc in the financial markets, and collapse the value of pension funds, your pension fund, which holds a lot of this government debt.
Okay, let's fire some of these out.
Education, 118 billion.
Defense, 63 billion.
Public order and safety, 51.4 billion.
Hmm, this is getting harder.
I'm looking at farming, fisheries, and forestry down there, wondering how the hell I'm gonna pour out 6.3 milliliters.
Yearly loss in the value of public buildings, depreciation, if you will.
Updating estimates for public sector pensions and their values and recognizing student loans that will never be repaid.
They're also used to remove double counted money that moves within government departments so that the overall headline spending number isn't inflated.
I just wanna point it out because it's big and there's a lot going on there, but it's not really fair to say that that's money going out the door, so we're just gonna move it to one side Now debt interest on the other hand, that certainly is money out the door, or all over the kitchen floor maybe.
124.7 billion a year.
In 2020, this figure was 42 billion.
This wasn't even a top five figure in 2010.
Honestly, if you wanna look for a reason as to why the UK feels a bit crap at the minute, I would say debt interest is the place you should start.
It's all this extra money just being put into something that doesn't do anything for frontline services at all.
10%, £1 in every 10, of your tax money that you pay goes to servicing this debt.
I guess the tempting suggestion is, well, let's just not pay it then.
But that would likely destroy our ability to borrow any more money, and we currently continue to borrow every year at a massive rate.
It would also destroy our international reputation, cause havoc in the financial markets, and collapse the value of pension funds, your pension fund, which holds a lot of this government debt.
Okay, let's fire some of these out.
Education, 118 billion.
Defense, 63 billion.
Public order and safety, 51.4 billion.
Hmm, this is getting harder.
I'm looking at farming, fisheries, and forestry down there, wondering how the hell I'm gonna pour out 6.3 milliliters.
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