Off Topic Great Britain General Election May 7th 2015.

Agree with it all
Spot on about it not being Brown's fault, it was actually the Tory cronies that created the bubble and kept blowing it up till it went pop, banks giving loans to anything with a face created the boom, when that faucet was turned off the whole rotting thing fell like a hourse of cards.

Capitalism is boom and bust, the bust is supposed to weed out the weak, but instead we bail the weak(and criminal) ones out now, it's not capitalism any more when corporations are not allowed to fail.

 

Absolutely correct.. Tories are going to be disliked by ordinary people if the try to use it to their advantage.

 

I'm not nor wasn't praising "Degsy" the best dressed communist on the planet at the time, but John Hamilton et al were men that believed strongly they were doing what was best for their city and showing that they were the epitome of what the Labour Party was all about(in their opinion)

Neil Kinnock's Labour Party by comparison was nothing more than a leftist version of the Liberal Party.

 

if you are going to reduce the size of the welfare state then it is always going to be the ones that rely on it that bare the brunt of it, how can it be any other way.

 

I could be wrong but from what I have read and seen ( dont remember that much) Hatton was a bit like Ronaldo is now in that they are very effective but it is always more about them than the team.

 

Exactly the welfare state exists to serve the poorest of people and whoever has fallen into unemployment. Labour wasnt to blame for the recession but they are certainly to blame for the bloated government we have, the middle management, large projects and quangos. If they had saved during the growth period rather than increasing their expenditure then the cuts wouldn't have been so harsh now

 

General election 2015
What will the new Tory government do?
David Cameron’s first priorities will be an effort to reinforce the union, drafting the EU in/out referendum bill and bringing in further cuts to tackle the deficit

please log in to view this image

The door of 10 Downing Street. Photograph: Anthony Devlin/PA
Alan Travis Home affairs editor
Friday 8 May 2015 11.10 BST Last modified on Friday 8 May 2015 15.26 BST

Even before the final results of the general election are announced, David Cameron has made clear his first priorities of a majority Conservative government: an effort to reinforce the union, immediate work to draft the EU in/out referendum bill and getting the “rollercoaster” £30bn cuts programme under way to tackle the deficit.
Scotland bill
The pledge to introduce a Scotland bill in the Queen’s speech on 27 May does not appear in Cameron’s key Sunday Telegraph article outlining his priorities for the next 100 days but it does appear in the Conservative manifesto.
That Scotland bill will “honour in full our commitments to Scotland to devolve extensive new powers” including giving the Scottish parliament the right to set its own levels of income tax.
High on the list, he said: “We will draft a European referendum bill, start the process of renegotiating in Europe on changes to welfare that will reduce immigration, and take the first steps to introduce a seven-day NHS”.
Cameron has promised that the referendum on Britain’s membership will take place by 2017 with the vote taking place after an attempt has been made to renegotiate the terms, including restricting access of EU migrants to welfare benefits for their first four years, and on elements of free movement.
Cameron will want to get on with the legislation to avoid the kind of endless internal party warfare over Europe suffered by John Major at the hands of the Eurosceptic “bastards”. “We will legislate in the first session of the next parliament for an in/out referendum to be held on Britain’s membership of the EU before the end of 2017,” says the manifesto on this crucial point.
A majority will also help him get the referendum bill through a likely hostile House of Lords, which under the Salisbury convention cannot reject a manifesto commitment. The 2017 date had been fixed in anticipation that as a minority government or coalition he might have to use the Parliament Act and take two terms to get it through the upper house.


Cuts
All eyes will also be on a budget and spending review, which will set the spending limits of government departments over the next four years to reduce the deficit. Keeping his promise to maintain health spending will mean deeper cuts in other unprotected departments, including £12bn in so far unspecified welfare cuts.
The Office of Budget Responsibility has described the profile of the £30bn planned cuts in this five-year parliament as a public spending “rollercoaster ride’. The OBR has said that the Conservative plans imply cuts of more than 5% implied in 2016-17 and in 2017-18 - twice the size of any year’s cuts over the last five years – to be followed by a pre-election increase in spending in 2019/20. Leaked DWP papers showed options included scrapping several benefits and taxing disability benefits.
The other bills Cameron promised in the Queen’s speech later this month include:
• Reducing the annual benefits cap by £3,000 to £23,000 and removing housing benefit from under-21s on jobseeker’s allowance.
• Taking out of income tax anyone working 30 hours a week on minimum wage by linking the personal allowance to the national minimum wage.
• New education bill to “force coasting schools to accept new leadership”.
• A housing bill to extend the right to buy to 1.3 million housing association tenants.
• A bill to double free childcare for working parents of three- and four-year-olds.
Talks with the Democratic Unionists to secure a working Commons majority are not only likely to include proposals for increased infrastructure spending in Northern Ireland. But watch out also for a specific pledge to devolve corporation tax powers to Belfast that is in the Tory manifesto. The DUP wants to match the kind of rock-bottom rates offered by Dublin that has attracted international names such as Apple.

 

People shouldn't be unemployed. There are jobs out there.. People are just too proud to take them at times.

 

Some people would like a particular type of work, for example if they have to wake up early in the morning or work weekend
or unsocial hours they are not having it !.

 

Tough... You take it while you attempt to get something you'd prefer.

Nwed to make it so people aren't better on benefits than if they were working a job on minimum wage.

Reduce benefits and increase minimum wage. Force people to do work, not everyone loves their job but to earn a living people go in and do it

 

Built loads around Mab Lane, St Luke's and the old Closie's farm too.

 

I know mate, do you remember Degsy getting investigated for selling Dovey boards(transport club)off on the cheap to his mate?

 

But why attack the welfare state when tax evasion by rich individuals and corporations cost the country far more than can be realistically clawed back from people who have sod all in the first place?
The answer to that is fairly obvious, which is the easier target.

 

Think it is a far more philosophical standpoint than that, cons either "big C or small c" believe in a smaller state overall and that those that have sod all as you put it should do more themselves ( and family /church/ social groupings etc). Not saying its right as I see daily where the system falls down but also understand that I and prob most people do not think the state should be responsible for supporting people who choose not to support themselves.

 

I understand that point, but surely the vast majority of welfare spending is on legitimate causes of one type or another?
The idea that anyone who has any sort of benefit is one of the work-shy scroungers is a false one, but one they would like us to believe.

Anyway, we've been through all this before and I can't be bothered banging on about it. I'd just like to point something out, in case anyone makes any false assumptions.
I was born to a poor(ish) working -class family. Both my parents worked, even though it was rare for mothers in those days. I left school at 16 and have worked continually for over 40 years (self employed for more than half of that).
My attitude to matters of social responsibility are just the way I feel. I have never expected the State to provide for me, but I know a few people who have no alternative.
I have no intention to retire, but what if ill health or something forces me to? I will have worked for 50 years or more, paying all my taxes along the way, and I would seriously resent being accused of being a parasite because I wanted some of it back.

A real distinction needs to be drawn between those who make their contribution to society when they can and those who never have any intention of doing so. The latter, though given a high profile by the media and politicians, are in reality a small minority.

 

The majority of the benefit budget is pensions.

Ideally I would like any government that is in power to clamp down on tax avoiders, whether individuals or companies, whilst at the same time clamping down on benefit fraud. This combination should result in there being more money for those who genuinely need help.

 

The problem for me is we supposedly operate a free market system yet the benefits system both in work and out of work but especially housing benefit totally fook that system up. As I said earlier I also see daily people who through no fault of their own cannot survive without those benefits in place. Don't know what the answer is but I do know a couple of things:
1: benefits system now encourages/supports state dependency in many
2.: we will always need some form of safety net
3: any possible solutions will upset a large percentage of people.

 

Surely nobody from any political standpoint could disagree with this.

 

The wefare state when you strip away things like state and public sector pension is a fraction of the government spend (about 7%-10% GDP). There are much better ways of reducing the debt than targetting benefit cuts.

And that's not all. They dont just target benefits, they've targeted valuable public services and either scrapped services or passed the costs for them onto us.

All in all the tories love the recession and are using the national deficit to make the cuts they always aim to bcos it's in their DNA. There are far easier ways of raising more money by targetting the fckers who got us into this mess AND those fckers who use loopholes to avoid having to contribute sufficiently to help get us out of this mess.

 

think we'll be going back to this soon, with call centres and Poundland shops on zero-hours contracts replacing the mills and the pits (except for UIR in Burnley, that is).