to think that 6000 per month is excessive for the government to take off my pay for tax?

[tootaxed]

Surely there should be a maximum limit that each person has to pay as tax? Six grand per month in tax is just excessive imo. And that is before NI contributions etc. If the government set a maximum tax limit they would take more care over how they spent their central funds. And I wouldn't have to work so many hours away from my DCs only to have 72 bloody grand a year taken off my income to fund their mis-spending.

I am glad that the UK has a welfare state and an NHS. It is hard to find the balance between looking after the sick and vunerable without Joe Taxpayer being taken for a ride.

I would like to see more support for those on a low wage. The problem with going to work is that it costs money in transport, childcare, better clothes than being at home. I think that people should be able to earn more than do at the moment before their benefits are cut. Ie. working tax credit should be more generous.

Once you are in a job its usually easier to get another. It is very hard to go from being long term unemployed to a high wage earner.

For example I had an job as an exam invigilator that led me to a job doing IT that was a four hour a week contract. The experience gained from that job got me present full time job. My plan is when my son is 11 years old is to move into the private sector where there are some extremely well paid IT jobs.

Even a job as simple as being a dinner lady can lead to other things. Yet I know several people whose children are at school who would not consider such a job worth the hassle.

riven,
I don't think you are work shy. Children with special needs are hard work. I don't think the governant does enough to help families of people with disablities or people with disablities in general. I think that special schools should have after school care at a sensible price.

People with hidden disablites like autism really suffer. Also some people with brain problems aren't necessarily wheelchair bound but are hyperactive and can have the cognitive ablities of a toddler but the strength of a full grown man.

I think its disgusting that the governant got rid of Remploy. Remploy was a scheme to help disabled people into work or sheltered work schemes. The problem is that the governant felt it was cheaper to have disabled people rotting away on benfits being depressed.

It is easy to think that having a child with a disablity can not happen to you. One of Xenia's children (gawd forbid) could because severely disabled due to an accident or mengentitis.

My annoyance is with those who are fit and healthy and with fit and healthy families who claim benefits.

Few people realise how hard it is for anyone who has had a disability to find proper work.

My sister has suffered mental illness from her 20s and has only just secured a job after over 10 years on disability benefit. She has OCD among other things and is terribly bright but has found it impossible to find work basically because she has been so far from functioning enough to work. Employers want reliable robust adults.

Any way because she had a great education and is so bright, her husband helped her through the maze of securing an administrative job under some scheme to get those on long term disability benefit back to work. It was extremely hard and a mountain of paperwork to even be considered but she now has a good secure job. But she's been off work for weeks now with all sorts of hypochondriac upsets that are really real for her.

Basically even she,with all her advantages, is finding it incredibly hard to hold down a relatively unchallenging job. How much harder for someone with greater challenges? The work place does not welcome the struggler!

Most the unemployed on benefits do not have disabilities and could do some work for their benefits particularly if group childcare were provided perhaps by some of the parents who need it whilst the others are doing their 4 hoursa day graffiti cleaning or chatting to the elderly in old people's homes or whatever work we find for them. It also helps people get back into work, learn the discipline of getting up on time, socialising with others in a work place etc too so actually you benefit them as well as society.

I don't employ anyone so don't employ anyone with a disability either. I don't think this is a disability thread really. Some people with disabilities can find work but most find it hard despite the law that says big employers must have a quote of x% or something. I do know a professional with cerebral palsy and I know it's much harder to get jobs, of course it is. That's why compulsory workfare for those who have ability to do some work but are discriminated by employers on grounds of disability is a good thing as they're imposed on the employer to some extent who then gets the chance to see actually they can do the work perfectly well.

If only it was that simple for people with disablites. Remploy used to provide sheltered employment for people with disablities. The problem was that it cost 20K per employee with the employee getting about half.

In the past there were more jobs that could be done by people with learning difficulties. However many employers prefer to employ a Pole with reasonable intelligence (and limited English) than someone with an IQ of 80. Also the number of jobs you can do without being able to read has fallen to virtually zero.

However there are a lot of very low paid jobs which are available. Its just that lot of long term unemployed see these jobs as beneath them. For example the school I work at has great problems recruiting cleaners at £6 per hour.

Part of the problem is that they are excessively strict about CRB checks. I think someone should be able to work without a CRB check after school hours when there are no kids about.

It is quite common (although not universal) for Thatcherites to characterise those in receipt of benefits as ?the other?. Such people often think of benefit-users with disdain or digust. It would be interesting to make a study of such people and try to work out what lies at the root of their fear; it might help them to address the subject more rationally, which would be to everyone?s benefit (no pun intended).

Schemes such as compulsory workfare serve only to stigmatise benefit-users and give Thatcherites the illusion of social stability in a society that is actually dangerously divided. Thankfully, most people are rational enough to realise that it is a very thin and porous boundary between affluence and poverty, and that it takes only one catastrophe to propel the average citizen from one to the other.

I don't think you need to worry about people like me. We have no power. Neither party really supports our views. We are disenfranchised in a sense, as there are just two middle of road parties in the UK. SO there is nothing to be gained in understanding us. But I don't agree I see benefit users with disdain or disgust. I think there are plenty of people who live in very poor areas of the country where there is very little work. Benefits are very low anyway and we have many many fewer out of work than in the days when we had posters saying "labour isn't working". Because of the reduction of top tax rate to 40% and the other economic changes we made in the last few years we are in a reasonably strong position to maintain keeping current levels of people on benefits so I am certainly not as concerned about it as when unemployment was double current levels.

Workfare is very good for people and helps to level out the resentment those working full time for £13k a year feel to those who do nothing and get more. It also helps the idle to get back into work again. However there is no political will in this country for it so it's not going to happen. We will tinker at the edges, make single parents on benefits with 13 - 16 year olds attent pointless interviews, we will pay consultants a lot of money to talk about the problem and then we will continue as now having pretended to do something about the issue. We will also do the same on incapacity benefit - pay huge sums to newly set up consultancies to assess people and then continue as before.

A lot of people in the next 2 years will see how thin the line is between affluence and poverty, moving from in work to out of work, just about keeping up with the mortgage to not. Bankruptcies will continue to rise and repossessions will be on the increase. It will be interesting times but we've seen it all before and most people will weather the storm. One difference now is that Brown has borrowed very very heavily whereas the Tories were paying back national debt so to that extent things are worse.

We certainly need simpler systems and 20% and 40% tax rates are simpler than having 10% too (two rates are a move to the previous conservative simplicity by the way) but there is no political will for any simplicity such as merging NI and tax, having a single person allowance of £10, having a flat tax and abolishing tax reliefs. There are too many vested interests in keeping things as they are.

Most people probably see other people who aren't like them as "the other" to some extent even if it's just people with a different religion or accent or skin colour or whatever. I don't think benefit claimants are any more an "other" as any other people who differ from us.

I think you'd give Maggie a run for her money, Xenia. I like the 'we have done this' and 'we have done that'....

Don't think that 'we' includes the poor and uneployed somehow, and I'm not sure how your claim that you don't view benefit recipients with disdain accords with your comments about 'sitting on the sofa all day eating chips' and wanting to poke out eyes with a red hot poker...?

I meant we, the nation. I have kept out of politics. It's quite low paid, even as prime minister compared to some things, unless you can use it to get business for your company I suppose and then it's worth being involved. But not the easiest way to get ahead, unpredictable, seats are lost and you have to have a fairly unblemished private life or happy to stand the flack when all your dark and dirty secrets come out.

I suggested some of the less well off people on this thread were jealous of people who pay £6k a month in tax. I think the thread shows that that is so. The green eyed monster is may be what we need to tackle rather than the differences in income.

I'm interested in that as an idea, and have been mulling it over. I personally don't belive it to be true, though of course that doesn't mean you are wrong.

I don't feel jealous of people who have a lot of money for several reasons, and I suspect that is the case for many people.

The reasons being:

1. There is no point! Jealousy is a totally negative emotion - not a conscious choice -just an instinctive one.

1. I know that to be very rich I would need to concentrate on work to the exclusion of other things that are important to me.

1. I don't equate having a lot of money with happiness. My rich friends don't seem a lot happier than my poorer ones.

If I had to guess at antipathy from poor people to rich it would be more along the lines of 'You have no idea how difficult it can be sometimes without much money' (Not necessarily less happy, just more difficult.)

I think the poor are also sensitive to being looked down upon by the rich - (comments to the effect that they might be less intelligent would be the kind of thing )

I hope this helps, because your 'hot poker' comment troubled me, and more for your sake that you think the rich are really that hated. Maybe by SWP members, but not by the less well off part of the population in general.

Thatcherites (or neo-cons) have almost all the national-level power in the UK, and in most developed countries. They also control most of the IFIs and multinational corporations, thus jack-booting their way across the globe. And yet they continually bleat that they want more power. There is a tendency within neoconservatism towards totalitarianism; this explains the trend (seen in all countries that have adopted neo-con policies, including the UK and the US) towards the concentration of power in a single figure (PM in the UK, President in the USA).

Well I wish they'd use it better in making benefit claimants work and reducing taxes then. I certainly agree that some areas of power are not in the hands of Government or politicians at all although tax setting powers is surely one that is.

Twenty or thirty years ago, it was pretty universally accepted that to care only about money, or to prioritise profit above human welfare, or to judge people on the basis of their income, is not just vulgar but also inhumane. The fact that the expression of such opinions is now socially acceptable just shows how far Thatcherism has corroded civilised values and allowed the moral dregs the capture political and economic power. I would be absolutely mortified to hear my sons expressing some of the unutterable bilge that has been voiced on this thread.

hear hear policyw. well said.

Pwonk - 'or to judge people on the basis of their income, is not just vulgar but also inhumane'

Well said.

And I think that works both ways. I have been sickened by the lack of compassion (on the whole) that has been shown towards the OP on this thread - simply because (as far as i can tell), she has put peoples backs up with the amount she earns.

Time and time again I read threads from people on benefits saying they hate being judged. How are the unhelpful comments on this thread towards the OP any different?

i too am a pinko and defy anyone top prove they need these huge incomes. its daft everybody does their bit and we need everybody to run society. who remembers the dustman strikes of the late 70s? wasn't it awful and dont we need them. etc etc
there is no definition of absolute poverty in the UK. poverty is generally taken as a percentage of social security benefits - anyone fancy doing a matthew parrish and living on beenfots for a week (with genuine apols to any MNers who actually do have to do this) it's dire and inhuman and humiliating and that is why the levels are so low. if you want to know what poverty is like in the UK today in the 21st century take alook at cpag's website and publications
i thank god my children dont have the life i had as a child when i lived in real poverty

ok so a salary of 200,000.00 would be taxed 5957 per month leaving after NI as well 10,300 a month take home (can you tell I'm an accountant ) - All I can say is it must be one big old house and some massive expenses to be spending that amount a month on!

I think people paying enormous taxes would all feel better about them if they didn't feel that so much tax money was wasted. Like endless management consultations which state the obvious.
Horrendous billions waster on NHS computer systems which don't work.

Need I say ID cards?

Need I say Iraq?

Need I say more?

MPs keeping their hooray Henry sons on the gravy train for doing NADA - it stinks!

So I do believe in the welfare state completely but I would like to have more faith in this gov's ability to spend our money wisely.

'I'm guessing wealthy people don't see this stuff as they drive everywhere and don't live near impoverished communities that benefit from it'

what another boring and sweeping judgemental statement about 'wealthy' people.

Oh do get off your soapboxes.

I'm sorry dal, but that's not actually a very judgemental statement.