I know I didn't make it clear, but the point I was trying to make was that if people think they are scum then that word has to be applied equally at the other end of the scale. I don't think it's a helpful word in either scenario.
The issue is that the poor ones get ten times as much media coverage as the rich ones, even though they cost the taxpayer a fraction of the amount that's being dodged at the top.
So you're somewhere in the middle yet you live out the struggle? You Sir may never be one with reality.
Wouldn't that just result in the contractors making redundancies and the council getting worse value for money through a less skilled and less efficient/productive workforce? Seems counter productive in some way since there is something to be said for introducing competition in to these kinds of tasks. Those jobs already exist so you are essentially moving the work from one person to another. What is needed, surely, is the creation of actual new jobs which I assume can only really be achieved if we get businesses started or brought in to actually make stuff and sell it (or through providing services)? The government needs to take a global view and realise that we need to subsidise our higher labour costs (and within the UK higher transport costs of having production in the north east, for example) through offering other benefits to foreign companies to make us an attractive place to invest in. If this had started happening 30 years ago we wouldn't be on 2nd and 3rd generation unemployed where a life on benefits has become such a widespread lifestyle choice and a 'habit' that is going to be very difficult to break now it is so ingrained in the culture.
Think its very difficult to deal with individual taxation at top end. You raise the rate too high - they have resources to move overseas and will do. By all means throw the book at twats who put money into tax dodging fake investment schemes like Jimmy Carr. The Corporate tax dodgers Google. Apple, Vodaphone - who use fake transfer charges from oveseas entities in lower tax-regimes to lower profit in UK are the ones we really need to be going after but unfortunately goverment are too scared of losing them. Just tell them there is a limit on the transfer charges as a percentage of revenue.
It's ironic that we are in the top tier in one field and have people desperate to invest in the country and bring money into the country - but we won't let them. Despite years of neglect and underfunding, our universities are still seen as some of the best in the world. Foreign students are desperate to study here - and while here they would pay VAT and support local business - and have compulsory health insurance so wouldn't be a drain on the NHS. And yet every year it gets harder for international students to study here. This just highlights that some problems are ideological ones and not financial ones. In this case it is a soft target to cut immigration numbers - even though visiting students shouldn't really be included in those figures anyway. Even with the NHS it is an ideological choice not to invest more. An extra 15-20 billion a year would make a massive difference to the NHS ability to provide the healthcare we need. Yes that's a lot of money, It's as much money as the extra £350 million a week some people were promising. But even without 'that' £350 million it is only 2.5% of our total public expenditure - and some of it would lead to increased revenue in taxation from income tax, VAT etc, as well as increased spending through wages. It will cost more than that to upgrade Trident and we can find the money for that - even though anyone who actually works on it will tell you it is a huge white elephant. It suits some arms companies though even though it is ineffective. We need to start spending our money better in ways that will put jobs and money back into the economy and improve our essential infrastructure. We also need to start putting the countries needs before ideological concerns.
You are right to an extent but I think the problem is that private companies purpose is to make profit whereas the councils shouldnt be. If the private companies are doing it cheaper by reducing salaries etc then its not benefitting the country as a whole. Its very hard to build a manufacturing base as we cannot compete with Asian countries in terms of costs. Short of raising import tariffs against WTO rules - there is not much you can do. One possibility is to only charge VAT on imported products but again not sure if that breaks WTO rules.
A problem with foreign students is simply that a fair number are using it to enter and stay illegally, one reason why it is being made harder for foreign students to come here, NHS an extra 15-20 billion has to come from somewhere, either spending cuts in other services or increases in taxation, the problem though is that like the public sector as a whole more spending does not necessarily increase productivity or improve services, budgets are there to be spent rather than costs being controlled. The other problem with the NHS is in how people expect it to perform, I sat in an A&E several times over the last 16 months in the early hours and watched people waiting to get plasters to cover a cut that they could have done themselves if they could be bothered to buy them, people who only needed some painkillers, a girl who had a splinter in a finger that a pair of tweezers could have got out, tons of drunks bought in by police and dumped, they used to be locked up by police and done for D&D or D&I. Spending more money on any area of the public sector does not lead to any increased revenue in taxation from Vat or income tax, the money that people in the public sector get as salary is tax from the private sector in the first place, without a private sector you don't have the revenue for a public sector, certainly not the system we are used to, you could try the Soviet Socialist model but that was not very successful.
Maybe badly worded by me, but the increase in tax revenue was simply meant to mean that with some of the extra cost of employing more people, which I know would only be a small part of any increased spending, would be offset with savings from paying less benefits to those people and getting some of it back in income Tax, NI and the VAT on the goods they spend their wages on. The point I was making about increasing spending on the NHS was that it is an ideological choice how we spend the money we already spend. Some of that money is spent very badly, such as paying for a trident upgrade. I'm not even particularly anti-nuclear. I Just grew up in a naval area where I saw and heard of many examples of complete waste connected with a scheme that hardly ever works properly. I think the money could be better spent elsewhere - though that is in turn an ideological position on my part. Completely agree with your point about how we use the NHS. It won't survive if we don't treat it right and use it right. Not just A&E but GP surgeries too. We should be using far more common sense. Use pharmacies more, do basic common sense stuff at home and leave the GP's and hospitals to do what they are meant to do.
