To think that being Tory doesn't make you thick?

[RainbowSheep]

Ok, my family are all very liberal (I mean my parents, aunts & uncles, who incidently have all had lots of money & opportunities throughout their lives). Their parents (who were poor working class) were more conservative as are me and my brother, who are both pretty poor. We recently had a family get together where I was told by my uncle (university lecturer) that Tories were unitelligent and I was beginning to sound like an idiot for having conservative views... I don't think I am particularly right wing.

No,because UC will cover housing too. And if you are saying to do away with all state help - surely Housing Benefit comes under that banner too??

And, actually, anyone on NMW working FT DOES NOT get council Tax benefit, even now. Not a penny. I still had to pay every penny of my council tax even when I was only working PART TIME, MoreBeta.

And even if I do include the money I would have spent on housing - it STILL doesn't cover the extortionate cost of childcare, even without worrying about transport to work, clothing and FOOD.

It would STILL only leave £133 a week. When you consider that Nursery fees here are £52 a day...

AND even on Housing Benefit - if you are working FT for NMW, you DON'T get your whole rent covered. Maybe PART of your rent. When Ex-P was living here, and working FT for £16.8k - we got £12 a week of £120 paid. (rounded up/down). When I last worked PT for NMW - I got £60 out of £120 paid, and I only worked 22.5hrs. And the percentage they pay has gone DOWN since then...

HuntyCat - no I would not do away with HB. I am reasonably aware of how the benefits system operates.

If the Government really want working to always be "pay", as opposed to being on benefits, then they need to initiate an honest, open debate on the cost of living, especially housing and childcare. I don't see them going that way (understatement).

Instead, they are continuing to push the unsustainable aim of everyone becoming a homeowner, ensuring that mortgages and rents are kept cripplingly high.

I don't just blame the present Govt for this though;-it's a nettle that previous govts have failed to grasp, preferring to allow house prices to stay high as a perceived driver of prosperity, even though it's caused widespread misery.

Yep, if we had: a subsidised state childcare system

                  a realistic NMW

                  some form of rent/ property price control

very few people in work would need to claim tax credits.

(sits back whistling, waiting for hell to freeze over).

Always "pay". Drinking and posting- I told myself not to do it....

I don't know if thick is the right word. Cuntish, though, definitely.

After seeing what the Tories did in the 80s in this country, I don't know how anyone can vote for them.

I suppose, in Utopia, that would happen - but it doesn't happen now even, MoreBeta. I see what you are saying - but if they aren't even covering the full costs of those NOW and the Government is adamant about reducing the cost of these things to the State - how does that jibe with them starting to cover the whole cost for a whole new section of people, AND raising the Income Tax threshold TOO, thus getting LESS Income from taxation?

The only way to do that would be to balance the books by either 1) Increasing borrowing, or 2) Higher taxes on the rich.

Neither of which are inherently Tory principles, are they, MoreBeta.

While in theory, I would love to live in a Society like the one you are suggesting, I fail to see how doing that would match with the deficit reduction plans...

To my mind, the only real options are to 1) Leave the benefits system largely as it currently is, and reduce the deficit in other ways, like raising taxation on the top 1% of people in the country, taxing bankers bonusses, and chasing Tax evaders and having a complete overhaul of the TAX system to prevent tax evasion, or 2) Change it so that people are actually left homeless and starving, and the poor and vulnerable in society are not given any help.

Which is the better option in the 21st Century?

It will be a cold day in hell before anything is doen about the REAL issues causing poverty in this country.

Watch it SWC. That's twice I've agreed with you.

"I don't know if thick is the right word. Cuntish, though, definitely."

That can't be a considered opinion. It just can't be. Really? Like everyone working for a better world who happens to be to the right-of-centre is cuntish?

What word would you use to describe people who have an underdeveloped or unsophisiticated understanding of modern politics? Would they be 'cuntish' too?

i agreed tory = cuntish

FFS. Makes me ashamed to be a lefty if the best my peers can come up with re. the opposition is "cuntish".

Exactly how old are you blackout and yellowrc? In what way are you contributing or making any kind of sense whatsoever?

Pathetic, and not even on a par with the level of debate in my Lower VI Form Debating Society.

HuntyCat - there are people on the right of politics giving serious thought to the sorts of things I have been saying. The reason they are doing that is because they have realised that a deeply divided society where people earn less than a living wage while other earn millions is not good for social cohesion. In fact, we know from history that it causes revolutions and that is very bad for business indeed.

I do actually think that something like what I suggest will happen as a response to the deep divison we have in society. A lot of Tory voters really do not feel comfortable with the top business people and bankers earning so much more than the average worker.

A high transferable Personal Tax Allowance and a flat 50% tax rate above that rate would make for a much flatter and 'fairer' society. Very well off people paying thgeir fare share of taxes combined with a stronger incentive for people on benefits to go out to work would solve a lot of social tensions.

What the divisive education system in this country has done over the years is pit one person against the other. Either you are a winner or you are a loser. You get the education, you get the job, you get the home in the nice area with the nice schools and the nice doctors.

If you don't get the education you get walked over and treated like scum.

In Germany (for instance), regardless of whatever type of education you get, when you go out in the workplace, whether as a plumber or as a university lecturer, you get a decent wage and decent security. When women have children their parents are treated as though they are doing a job. They are not treated like they are Jeremy Kyle lard-arsed scum, they are given enough money to do the important job that they do.

And in fact that's what it used to be like here. The tradesman or skilled worker was as valued by society as the white collar worker. They may have hated each other and gone to different schools, but they got a decent wage, decent housing and job security.

Margaret Thatcher started all this pushing and poking people into one corner or another with her market forces economics. It was short-sighted and it was thick.

'A high transferable Personal Tax Allowance and a flat 50% tax rate above that rate would make for a much flatter and 'fairer' society. Very well off people paying thgeir fare share of taxes combined with a stronger incentive for people on benefits to go out to work would solve a lot of social tensions.'

I broadly agree with this statement, MoreBeta. I just have a few issues. A transferable Personal Tax Allowance will not work when there is only one adult in a family. Either through relationship breakdown or death. Not everyone can stay in their relationships, for various reasons - be it cheating, physical, emotional or financial abuse, or even other reasons. It is unfair to penalise, say, a Lone Parent by them having less Personal Tax Allowance than a couple with the same amount of children, especially if she is a Lone Parent because of either some form of abuse or her ex-H/P cheating. Or should she just put up with it so that she isn't financially penalised?

And would that transferable Personal Tax Allowance be dependant on marriage rather than cohabitation? Because not everyone feels that marriage is the right thing to do, and would rather cohabit. If a Personal Tax Allowance is only accessible through marriage, then it is stripping away personal choice to cohabit.

And at what point would that line be set, where no tax gives way to 50% tax? And when you cross that line, would your whole income be taxed, or just the portion OVER that set line?

Ihatebabyhake wrote a fantastic post a few light years back, setting this whole debate in the context of global economics.

In summary: as the emerging economies get richer, we will get relatively poorer. It's happening all over the West. We have become accustomed to a lifestyle our governments increasingly can't afford to help us sustain, and have been variously encouraging financial services Ponzi schemes and getting into unmanageable debt to try and dodge the inevitable decline.

All this left and right wing business is just tribal chanting and tinkering with the details if it ignores the context.

pretendhousewife Germany is not the Utopia you like to think it is. There is plenty of low paid and people living in poverty in Germany.

www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1900649,00.html

I would like to know how you can claim everyone gets a decent wage when they dont even have a minimum wage in Germany.

There are some incredibly poor people in Germany who don't get any kind of state support.
And very little sympathy either.

I didn't think that to answer a post in AIBU we had to be up for reasoned debate at all times.

Seems to be ok to insinuate people are thick if they don't want to do anything other than debate the finer points of everything though.

Yes whilst their number of millonaires is at an all time high. Ranked 5th in the international list.

Social inequality is a growing problem in Germany and no real plans to readdress the balance.

Also, I don't see cuntish as misogynist, the same way calling someone a cock isn't misandrist.

I never said I was progressive anyway, as far as I know.