Just been on a course about new benefit system

Josephine that is the bloody point,, why are you and others only happy if people have shit lives with poor pay, why cannot they have decent lives, decent hope, something good to aim for. If jobs were paid more more people would choose to work, more kids would demand a better education, this country would have to invest in science and industry, we would stop churning out factory fodder because we had people who want to work.

I am sorry Garlic I did not mean to distress you my deepest apologies. I only asked indeed I only joined this battle as I saw you fighting a tide of ignorance singlehanded. I hope we are pushing back the reason of the insane but I fear we both have our own demons much closer to home.

Do not give up my friend, no joy can come from you letting them win. others like me and many many others share the places you have been and will go. What is that quotation, something about not going quietly in to the night, I may well go but it will be far from tranquil.

Orwellian: Again go do some reading, what you are saying is almost without argument what people agree with. Yes shock horror even disabled people agree, in fact disabled people organisations have never, ever said that disabled people DO NOT want to work but wallow at home with no purpose. However what is being done will in NO WAY alter what you say is the problem. It will however make it even more unlikely that long term unemployed, sick and disabled, people with short term periods of ill health or unemployment will ever get a job.

Taking benefits away and saying people will either work or starve is cod psychology. Many people will do the latter having been sent round in circles in a system that is paid by how many people they process not by how many they actually get in to sustainable work

I didn't read your links, Leith, because I am a potential 'benefits suicide'. I prefer not to dwell on this fact. I already know the content of your other link, the one about aggregated losses. Why did you choose to ask me if I'd read them?

But there wouldn't be nearly as many jobs.

And what josephine?

Perhaps our education system would then HAVE to improve.
Perhaps right whingers would stop going on about people caught in the benefit trap as no one would be
Perhaps Other companies would follow suit and we could have a better paid more motivated workforce in Britain where no one felt they were being over worked and under payed.

Now that would be good hmmm

But nobody is advocating ending the welfare state altogether, they are merely saying it needs to be cut down which is true. Even if we were not in debt, why is it a good idea to pay people to have more children or to pay people not to work for over 10 years? The current welfare state is not only financially incompetent, it is also socially incompetent.

The welfare state should provide excellent provision for the disabled and excellent short-term benefits to those who have been made redundant. This can only be done by reducing all the waste of benefits that are not needed so that more can be given to those genuinely in need.

Yes, Leith. Still reading.

If Tesco had to pay all it's staff £10 an hour, they would adjust their business to eliminate most of the unskilled roles.

As a matter of interest and I am addressing Grlicbutter, did you have a look at either of the links I posted? Did anyone?

Exactly Mrs D! Where oh where will we put all these homeless, people that we have just created by turning them in to burdens on their families or on charities. After all we cannot have people stepping over them on the way out of the Opera can we now.

The name of the care establishment that was featured on the panorama show, the one with the members of staff beating the shit out of the residents with Learning difficulties is an example of the poor house that we have coming.

So now where is me bingo card, I know I had just one to tick off for a full house? Ah yes casual dismissing of facts by person who knows nothing about what they speak, thank you Jupiter. I think the last part of your name sums you up pretty well.

You're right, KKK, I don't read children's literature.

Why have you avoided my comments about Switzerland, which you previously tried to dismiss by talking about EU trading rules? Boots, Cadbury (Kraft), Walkers and other bigh High Street names are based in Zug.

Since HMRC is some way through a process of closing the loopholes that rely on outdated laws applying to Luxembourg and the Netherlands, they presumably disagree with your statement that they aren't loopholes.

I am certain we'd disagree over the principle that money earned in the UK should be taxed in the UK. I believe the same rules should apply to corporate entities as to wage-earning individuals. The reasons why they don't are extremely outmoded.

Returning to my point, which is not about capitalism-bashing: It is insane to look ONLY at how to reduce expenditure when there are opportunities to increase income.

Really?
So when we withdraw community care, benefits to offset the cost of being disabled, housing benefits and the other things that allow vulnerable people to remain in their own homes...

What is left jupiter?

Because I worked in a long stay hospital in the 80s.
The people who lived in it were not a different breed of disabled and elderly people with MH issues.

They people with the very same disabilities and MH issues that people have today who use their benefits to stay in the community.

When they are gone, when parents are no longer supported to care for their disabled children what do you think is going to happen?

OOh, someone mentioned workhouses!

crosses it off Hysterical Leftie Speak bingo card

KarlosKKrinkelbeim is the fish in The Cat in the Hat, garlic. Your knoweldge of children's literature is as poor as your geography. You complained about British companies re-locating to friendlier tax regimes, among them the Netherlands, which is in the EU. No doubt you are trying to insinuate I am racist. Defamation, incidentally, is also against the law.
If the Government were to take steps to prevent them doing this, it would not be "closing a tax loophole." It would be acting contrary to EU law, unless an exception were made for other memberstates. It would also, I think, be unenforceable more generally; you'd need legislation to force previously UK-domiciled companies to disclose and pay tax on assets located in other jurisdictions. The US is trying something like this at the moment; they can get away with it, probably, although most US lawyers I have spoken to about it acknowledge that it's unwise politically. I doubt we can.

well read enough to justify poverty and death, let's see if it is like my dad's subjective hearing when he is asked to do the washing up, does your reading fail you when it becomes unpalatable as it contradicts your views, looking at niceguy et al.

I will say that is is a report put together by Sheffield Hallam University and it does nothing more than bring together in one place all the different stats produced by the condems about how many and who will be hit by the cuts.
www.shu.ac.uk/_assets/pdf/cresr-final-incapacity-benefit-reform.pdf

ok I lied here is one little nugget, these are your family, friends, neighbours. The cuts will hit whole families not just individuals

"Nearly 600,000 incapacity claimants will be pushed out of the benefits system entirely, either because they will fall foul of the time-limit on non-means tested entitlement or because they fail to qualify for other means-tested benefits."

xposted and have run out of time. can't wait to catch up later

Forget the similies

I've just looked up Tesco's UK market share. It fell below 30% for the first time in six years this year, so let's call it 25%.
The grocery market was worth £156.8bn for the calendar year 2011. (53p in the consumer £1, if anyone's interested.)
Tesco owns more than a quarter of this market: over £19,000,000,000.
The group makes about two thirds of its sales and profits in Britain. 2012 revenue from the UK rose 5.8% to £21.2bn.
Its UK trading profits, which exclude property gains and overseas, were £2.5bn.

Do you really think a company will walk away from a quarter share in a £156,800,000,000 market just because of a tax increase?
Do you think it will sacrifice £2,500 million a year profit if it is asked to cut that down to, say, £1,500 million?
What's more, the hit would be significantly less to them overall because my data only depict day-to-day grocery trading in the UK.

You'd have to be some kind of brain-dead wimp to think an international giant, responsible to its shareholders, would sacrifice its biggest revenue stream out of spite.

How many times have I seen people like niceguy2 saying "We have no alternative" Well we do and here is one example:
pcs.org.uk/en/campaigns/campaign-resources/austerity-isnt-working-there-is-an-alternative.cfm#Conclusion

Just because you do not like it, is not the point, the point is you have bought hook line and sinker the fairy tale that the condems want to tell you. Well unlike fairy tales this will not end happily, you will get your reductions because people have and will continue to die. As a result of neglect, or by their own hand. The trouble is people would rather think about numbers than humans, austerity rather than dignity, their life than those who have very little life and very little ways to improve their life.

Daily Mail
The Sun
The Times
BBC
The Telegraph
ITV
Have all had stories in the last week about how "Austerity" is leading to death and impoverishment, the return of workhouses, the culling of the sick and disabled. Go do your reading and come back and justify on a case by case basis why no alternative is on offer, oh and yes you must argue case by case to do other wise would be to say loud and clear that some people just deserve to die or be written off.

And before anyone carps crows or mimics any other type of life form I have just filled in my12 page claim form for my ESA for my disability that I was born with, so do keep in mind I am likely to be a statistic quite soon.

... That was a very poor similie! More like cutting out the veg while continuing to pay for your rich cousin's vegetable farm.

Tesco pays shop & warehouse staff £7 an hour, I think, excluding the staff it doesn't pay. The 'poverty wage' in the UK is about £10/hr. This means that a large proportion of the 200,000 or so staff it underpays will be getting supplements paid from public funds. Creating more jobs like this will not help our economy - added to which, they aren't creating jobs.

I haven't said getting tax money from corporate giants will create more jobs. I've said it will bring more money into the UK economy.

Looking ONLY at how to reduce expenditure is insane when there are opportunities to increase income. It's like cutting out fresh veg because you can't afford them, while there's a stack of bullion in the cellar.

They may not be creating as many jobs as you like Garlic but all these large corporations do employ lots of people.

And are you seriously saying that the answer to the companies not creating enough jobs is to raise their corporation tax?

I do agree though that we have to stop subsidising companies. Subsidies rarely work. Tax credits was designed with the best of intentions but just introduced in a shambolic way.

That idea looks useful, Tilly. It should certainly improve the employment situation and lighten the benefits burden. You'd have to take it up to much higher thresholds, though. It would be great to see Tesco, Sainsbury's & co being incentivised more directly to create jobs ... oh, wait, they don't pay corporation tax anyway.

I obv meant corporations that 'live' elsewhere, as well as humans.

to improve the corporation tax take, we need to encourage SMEs as they are less likely to move outside the UK. this is what germany does.

By increasing corporation tax we make it harder for companies to create jobs YES. this years profits determine how much i want to invest in the year ahead.

ideally corp tax should be determined by how many people you employ in the UK and at what wage.

employ 100 people on salaries well above the average should = a lower tax rate than 100 people on NMW (many of whom will need top up benefits).