The Tories and their new hoops for the working poor to jump through.

[HelenaDove]

If you are not working enough hours or cant get enough hours you will apparently be sanctioned. Unbelievable I cant see some employers being happy with this either although they should be paying a living wage in the first place. Because ppl who have been sanctioned are hardly going to be able to get to work are they?

Ridiculous and vindictive.

www.newstatesman.com/politics/2015/02/ministers-are-reaching-beyond-scroungers-and-aiming-britain-s-working-poor

Morthan I have pm'd you

Because Dreaming, rich closed minded and judgmental folk like Carol can only stsnd up to the poor and their innocent children!... Typical Tory behavior...
Put rich tax avoiders and bankers (who got us into this abysmal state). The politicians who claimed expenses for duck ponds ect, against them. It would seem they're not so assertive.
Would why that is..... Oh yeah... The rich can fight back, can't they.

My point was at least £6.9bn of the 'tax gap' is made up of cash in hand workers and cigarette/alcohol smuggling. The majority of this is 'poor' people, so closing the gap would hurt the poor.
Only £3.9bn is corporation tax, so 'poor' people are casuing more tax loss than multi-national companies.

ilive - it could be argued that the labour gov got us into this state, by relaxing the finacial rules that allowed the bankers to do what they did. if they had been properly regulated it wouldn't have happened.

i'm still not convinced that only poor people do cash in hand or smuggle alcohol. i know lots of poor people and none have been smugglers.

Its massive criminal gangs who smuggle for a living not your average person on JSA.

While im on the subject there is no provision for a domestic violence exemption on the JSA online form.

carol posted on another thread how she doesnt believe in carbon monoxide alarms or gas safety checks because she "likes to live dangerously" I dont know if her neighbours feel the same.

So its a bit fucking rich coming on to threads like these and saying that poor people should take more responsibility.

dreamingof Most cash in hand work is done by lower earners and the gangs may smuggle, but the buyers tend to be poorer people in pubs

helena Nowhere did I say i do not believe in smoke alarms or CO2 detectors, I said I did not have any.

40 people die a year from co2 poisoning here
350 die a year from house fire here
1,713 pedestrians are killed a year here

So me sitting in my house, with no detectors, is 4 times more responsibile than walking to the shops

Carol, there is a difference between part time employees who don't earn enough to pay tax or ni and get paid weekly in cash and people who should pay tax but don't

needsa totally agree - most people who get cash are not avoiding tax, but also most people who avoid tax by getting paid in cash are not high earners

it could be argued that the labour gov got us into this state, by relaxing the finacial rules that allowed the bankers to do what they did

The labour party are responsible for a world wide phenomenon??

The smoke alarm/cm alarm thing is ridiculous.

You can't avoid walking to the shops or taking a car journey. Although these are higher risk they are necessary to get on with normal life.

You can quite easily stick a couple of smoke detectors up as a pp pointed out they can save neighbours lives as well as your own. A fire might be relatively low risk but small steps can make the outcome better.

Much like wearing a seatbelt or using the proper crossing.

How is the Co2 detector relevant to this thread? In any case, surely it's one's own choice to install them (or not). They're certainly not saving lives in droves.

judge the financial crisis was not a worldwide phenomena, despite what the Labour party would have you believe. It only occurred in the UK, US, Ireland, Spain and Iceland. Other European countries and the rest of the world had no such issues, although were hit by the fallout. It was driven by very lax controls on banks, started in the UK when Gordon Brown split the banking regulators and in the US by government mortgage guarantees offered to the low waged. It suited the Labour party to allow it to continue as it increased house prices, making the middle class feel wealthier, so they would continue to support Labour and creating 'mark to market' illusionary profits in the banks, which raised tax revenue. They were also 'intensely relaxed about people getting filthy rich'

It was Thatcher who deregulated the banks.

It was Gordon brown who set up the tripartite regulation system which is what allowed the banks to behave as they did here