How miserable are you that the Tories are in power?

[sundayrose10]

I feel tense and twitchy. I used to enjoy reading the politic section/ other political forums, but I fear if I keep on going there and reading more and more about Tory plans, I will give myself a heart attack.

I loath them but worst I fear them. I am anxious for this country and the ordinary man and woman.

Dave makes me feel insane with hatred.

I have a colleague who is in love with the Tories. I don't share biscuits with him any more.

Dave makes me itch. All over.

Anyone remember that fantastic Spitting Image sketch with Neil Kinnock?

He was patting people on the head and saying, " Lovely, lovely poor people, lovely , lovely black people, lovely single mothers".

To me, even though it is almost thirty years old, it sums up beautifully the patronising and disempowering views of the chattering wealthy Leftie elite like Red Ed who patronise and disenfranchise people by trapping them in benefit poverty rather than helping and supporting them to better themselves.

Don't mention MIL's Retro - will swop you any day.

One of the national newspapers recently printed what Kinnock and his missis were getting from the EU in terms of wages, pensions etc. It truly was obscene. It was criminal. It was corrupt. And paid for by...us.
He and his like are hypocritical cunts of the highest order.

There's blame to be laid at the door of both sides, but I find it interesting how much bile and invective is laid at the door of 'parasites' (imo not a nice way to refer to a fellow human being btw, however feckless)

Would be interested to see how much of the problems we find ourselves facing today are the result of those who abuse the benefits system (a group which I agree pose an undeniable problem in the UK) and how much can be attributed to tax dodging bankers (not many of whom are ardent lefties) who seemingly did their utmost best to bring the entire global economy to it's knee's with their greed and incompetence before coming crawling to the tax payer for their own parasitical hand out.

Not particularly miserable. It was going to be a shitty five years whoever was in power, and I'd had it up to the back teeth with Labour's horrible, profligate social micromanaging.

Why would bankers "do their utmost best to bring the global economy to it's knees"?

How much tax do bankers pay compared to people on benefits?

As long as people continue to blame "tax dodgers" and are not prepared to take resonsibility for themselves, this country will continue to slide down the pan. There has never been a time when everyone has paid every penny that the government says they should pay in tax. There never will be a time when everyone pays every penny they should owe. Nor should there be. It sets a dangerous precedent when a government can dictate to people how much money they are allowed to have.

Chen, the banker bailout was grim and could have been avoided. But most of that has been repaid and it was a one off.

The annual welfare bill is MORE than the entire UK income tax revenue EVERY SINGLE YEAR.

I do wish people would quit with the bankers stuff. The cash we bailed them out with is a mere drop in the ocean compared to the bloated Welfare state.

And I'll call my vile MIL WTF I like. Parasite is the least of it, believe you me.

Can someone please explain what they mean by tax dodging?

Do you mean tax avoidance? Which is completely legal and means paying 28% ( I think!) tax on dividends after paying income tax at normal rates.

The number of people evading tax is miniscule and yeah, we need to pursue them but it is nothing, not a fleck on the welfare and public sector obscenities.

Some people seem to want us to get to a situation where we have a few workers paying the majority of their wages in tax supporting the idle masses. This is not a good idea, for any number of reasons.

Indeed, The Falcon.

Heaven forbid someone should actually up their hours to full time and claim fewer TC or even get a job at all.

"Chen, the banker bailout was grim and could have been avoided. But most of that has been repaid and it was a one off."

Has it really?

I was under the impression we were still on the hook for several billions, Mervyn King himself said we'd be paying back the cost of the bail out for generations.

And I presume you're also ignoring the lost outputs and tax revenues which we face for many years to come caused by the resultant recession.

As Mervyn King said

"The research makes it clear that the impact of these crises lasts for many years. It is not like an ordinary recession, where you lose output and get it back quickly. We may not get the lost output back for very many years, if ever

The price of this financial crisis is being borne by people who absolutely did not cause it, now is the period when the cost is being paid, I'm surprised that the degree of public anger has not been greater than it has."

Me too Merv.

"Why would bankers "do their utmost best to bring the global economy to it's knees"?"

I was being sarcastic (kind of), and I said seemingly as I can see no other reason why such apparently capable people took such insane risks and played such a short term game. I blame socialists and single mums myself.

The welfare bill was unsustainable regardless of whether we had a banking crisis or not.

Or do you consider it a perfectly feasible situation to have generations of people who have never worked, an annual bill greater than the IT revenue and people not working better off than those that do?

The thing is, the banking crisis happened and there is nothing that can be done about it. We need banks, we need bankers, we need traders. Gunning for them might make people feel better but will actually help nobody.
Welfare is something we can address and should have been addressing for years. It's ridiculous that things have been allowed to slide so far.

"The welfare bill was unsustainable regardless of whether we had a banking crisis or not.

Or do you consider it a perfectly feasible situation to have generations of people who have never worked, an annual bill greater than the IT revenue and people not working better off than those that do?"

Yes, of course that's exactly what I think (except of course it's not).

And I can see how you got that from what I wrote (except of course I can't because it's a load of old nonsense).

I'm merely saying it's discomfiting to see all the problems we face now being laid at the door of Benefits claimants, the majority of whom are (imo) making legitimate claims. I agree we urgently need to address the problem of the billions that are pissed down the drain by fraudulent and wasteful claims but I'm not kidding myself that they are the cause of all our ills.

YANBU. I feel alarmed and nervous most of the time. I did not vote for these people and they do not speak for me. I feel frightened and totally unrepresented.

It's not just fraudulent claims that are the problem, it's the system is the problem, the fact that people can be unemployed for years on end, without making any effort whatsoever to make themselves employable.

It's tricky though. You could argue that the welfare bill is, at root, a legacy of the Industrial Revolution. Once people began to leave subsistence farming and go to work in cities, there arose the much increased risk that if they couldn't earn they'd starve. So something began to be done about that, first in the form of workhouses and then in the 20th century the welfare state. And finally we get to where we are - a post-industrial economy, trying to work out what the hell to do with a large chunk of the workforce that neither has factories to work in, nor land to grow its own food on.

Where next? Not everyone is equipped to do desk-jockey jobs. Arguably the only way to get right to the root of the matter would be to decimate the population (say, to about 10 million) and reverse the Enclosure Acts. But that's hardly going to happen, is it? Meanwhile the situation is pretty intractable.

"YANBU. I feel alarmed and nervous most of the time. I did not vote for these people and they do not speak for me. I feel frightened and totally unrepresented."
How do you think us hard-working people felt under 13 years of Labour misrule?

well it seems to me Falcon that you 'hard working people' think you are the only hard working people out there, which is BS.

"It's not just fraudulent claims that are the problem, it's the system is the problem, the fact that people can be unemployed for years on end, without making any effort whatsoever to make themselves employable."

Which is what I meant by wasteful claims, I probably should have said illegitimate claims. I agree the problem within the welfare state is systemic and it badly needs reforming, sadly I can't see anyone I'd trust to do it in a fair and just way right now so I'm sure we'll end up with another total dog's dinner.

Ok, right wing bunch.
Do you think it is acceptable that welfare reform designed to get those who have never worked a day with no real reason is also meaning that people with disabilities and their carers that are UNABLE to work are left with nothing?

People who genuinely are in need are being caught up. In some cases targetted directly. They're trying to remove the right to appeal if the DWP gets it wrong.

If this is allowed to continue (and disability charities are currently mounting a legal challenge) you WILL see people with disabilities living on the streets.

I don't think that's right, I don't think that's fair.

I don't think there is an endless pot of money, probably why I am infuriated that despite bleating there's no money there was around £70 million A DAY spent on bombing Libya. There are millions going out to support schools in Pakistan yet they cannot provide sustenance to the vulnerable in this country?

It takes the piss. Cuts had to happen yet there is still obscene financial mismanagement going on. Because funding for vulnerable people was not ring fenced at local authority level basic standards of care are going out of the window in favour of (in my locality) loony recycling schemes!!!!

Socialism doesn't work? Nor does Capitalism. Greed in the form of an inflated housing market, utility companies hiking prices despite publishing obscene profits less than six months ago whilst the average working family in this country are struggling to meet their housing, fuel and food bills is DISGUSTING.

The economy is stagnating. People can't even afford the basics and there is no industry in this country to speak of. Spending needs to start again and due to people's desperate greed for profit it just won't happen.

I also wish that the right wing bunch on here would see that the deep rooted issues with our economy is more than a welfare situation.

Money has been mismanaged for years under labour, not just on welfare.

"Chen, the banker bailout was grim and could have been avoided. But most of that has been repaid and it was a one off."

btw as well as not having been paid off I'm not convinced it will be a one off unless further meaningful reforms are put in place to stop another crisis happening again.

I'm inclined to side with Vince Cable and Mervyn King on this, both of whom are of the opinion that further drastic reforms are needed in order to prevent the whole sorry mess being repeated; and they're not alone in that, there's a broad group of economists and even some bankers who think so too.

Why would Central Government ringfence local government budgets, thats a bit of a kick in the teeth for local democracy. Local Governments exists so they can make policies that suit the local area, to have central Government say they've got to spend X on this and Y on that compromises this. If you want more spent on the vulnerable at local Government level then lobby your local councillor.
The action in Libya is being taken to prevent a potential genocide and is being funded out of the treasury reserves and foreign aid has been increased as the Government feels that development in countries such as Pakistan will reduce the threat of terrorism.

My local government is being taken to court because they are completely ignoring the needs of the vulnerable. That's why ringfencing needs to happen, otherwise local authorities are perfectly happy to not meet their statutory obligations.

So, it's acceptable to blow large wads of cash abroad and let people in this country suffer? Defensive rather than offensive action is so much better, how much money did Blair waste on his warmongering?