Soo.. what proportion of Boots retail staff claim benefits and use the NHS?

[vinegarandbrownpaper]

Sick of 'business leaders' with businesses propped up by tax breaks, working tax credits and people propping up contracts with benefits when there is no work.. making sure those workers can still come back despite zero hours. Pay your staff properly before you complain about a supportive society you dolt.

Family credit was administered by the DHSS, it was not linked to the tax system
so employers had no idea who was on it or not

Talk there was only a brief window of time when Tac Credits were administered/visible via payroll (WFTC). Maybe three or four years?

Otherwise, they do continue in the tradition on Family Credit, which itself replaced the Family Income Supplement (introduced 1970). So that's 45 years of low wages being propped up. What GB did was expand the whole thing to better tackle child poverty. Big business has taken the opportunity to take the mickey more than ever.

vinegar the university issue is not a put up job.

The universities in the UK, as a group, have been lobbying and discussing this for moths and had thought that Labour had quietly dropped their proposals, or would confirm that the money would be found from elesewhere.

But EM insists on pushing ahead and has given no confirmation as to where the money will come from.

Maybe if Boots didn't avoid £1.2billion in tax there wouldn't be a need for higher taxes on businesses under Labour.

How they can come out and say Labour will be bad for the economy knowing they are not paying their way, along with others, is way, way beyond me and it really makes me angry.

Boots moving headquarters to a tax haven does put me off shopping there.

Their boss is the last person I would trust to advise me on what is best way for this nation to vote.

If the tories asked him to do this they are stupid.

Thefairycaravan, thanks for thart link.

I knew they'd shifted to Switzerland but didn't know all the rest. Definitely off to Lloyds instead!

vinegarandbrownpaper …. Regarding the following of yours;
”These are all put-up jobs. Conservative central office have been asking business, and probably university leaders to make anti-labour statements”

Look at the list of taxes all small, medium and large businesses have to consider when employing in the UK, can you find ONE that did not go up under Labour from 1997 to 2010?????

To paraphrase ‘Catchphrase’, he is just saying what he saw and while Labour fails to tell businesses prior to General Elections what taxes are going to go up AFTER to finance their spending plans, businesses will be wary of a labour government.

Alliance Boots has its corporate headquarters in Switzerland, where Alliance was based in 2006 when they merged with Boots – so WHY ON EARTH WOULD ALL TAXES OF THE GROUP BE PAID TO THE UK GOVERNMENT????
www.managementtoday.co.uk/go/allianceboots/

By 2005/6 due to the strong level of Sterling, with the higher business costs of red tape and new taxes, many businesses were taking drastic action e.g. we lost 1 million manufacturing jobs between 1997 and 2005. Maybe Boots got into trouble in the first place due to Labour’s economic incompetence through a (then) global boom.
www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-389284/The-80-tax-rises-Labour.html

www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/news/article-1541302/Business-pays-16315bn-red-tape-bill.html
“THE TIDE of red tape introduced by Labour has cost business more than £15bn. Firms have spent more than £3bn a year implementing the thousands of regulations brought in since Tony Blair won power in 1997, the British Chambers of Commerce said on Monday.”

But don't let the facts get in the way of a good rant, Miliband don't.

Er could you list the number of taxes that went up under the tories and the loss of manufacturing, retail, technical and financial jobs that closed or were bought by overseas multinationals? Extra points if you include the thatcher-major years.

(and also compare job gains before the crash, and how about understanding why 'manufacturing' jobs seemed to fall (hint: reclassification of outsourced service components eg canteens, hr, building ownership etc)

Vinegarandbrownpaper …. Taking your points as they came, in 1979 Labour passed to the Conservatives a lower income tax of 32%. higher income tax rates 60-80% if memory serves, the tax on unearned income (a buy to let?) was over 90% in the Pound, and Corporate Tax at 50p – and although they did not all fall in a straight line from 1979 to 1997, do your own homework what was PASSED BACK to Labour in 1997, but all substantially lower.

During the 1970’s, manufacturing/industry fell from around 29% of our economy annually to around 22% when Thatcher took over, and if Britain was in such great shaped prior to 1979, why did Labour call into the UK the IMF in 1976 to bail us out? The 22% of manufacturing/industry under the Conservatives remained at a similar level as the heavy manufacturing that was decimated BEFORE Thatcher came in, moved to more specialised industries e.g. optics.

Labour in 1997 inheriting a far more sustainable economy than the one passed to Thatcher in 1979, then took that 22-23% share of manufacturing the Conservatives passed over, AND (LABOUR) HANDED BACK an economy in 2010 with a 12% share of manufacturing, many jobs decimated BEFORE the crash began (see the 2005 link below)
www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/million-factory-jobs-lost-under-labour-6150418.html

The problem was, while Brown was taxing higher and concentrating on ‘creating’ £170 billion worth of government quangos and local authority ‘non jobs’, he failed to REACT TO A HUGE PROBLEM OF A VERY STRONG POUND ON EXPORTERS, as he failed to react to tens of thousands of high street shops closing, by LOWERING taxes, as even in 2010 Labour were putting taxes on jobs UP.
www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/labour/7539343/Labours-planned-National-Insurance-increase-will-cost-jobs-Alistair-Darling-admits.html

You see Labour is INCAPABLE of helping businesses to create jobs, as seen in all their anti business rhetoric. Any Labour Miliband/Balls Murphy economic speech blurts out over 2 seconds ‘we need to create jobs’, then spends the rest of the time throwing out red meat to the faithful, telling core voters which businesses need ‘controls’ or will be taxed.

A government CANNOT tax an economy to sustainable growth, especially if funding a bloated Sate with the proceeds - but businesses know Labour will try.

As for multinationals buying UK companies (like Boots who were struggling with 70,000 plus employees in the UK), I’d say two things;

Firstly how many foreign companies are now owned by British companies, as it is a two way process?

And secondly, at least Boots jobs were secured with foreign money in 2006, back in the 1970’s, after a income/inflation/prices upward spiral around 20%, penal taxes and militant trade unions – there was SOD ALL LEFT FOR FOREIGNERS TO BUY, yet all those German and Japanese brand names back then, with none of the above, are still around – and this, with a decimated industrial base, was what Thatcher inherited from Labour.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winter_of_Discontent

So for YOUR ‘extra points’; in 1979, 1997, 2010 and again in 2015, which party keeps handing over an economic train crash, and which one hands it back in far better shape than received??????

'expand the whole thing better to tackle child poverty'

Brown made it so that people on £50k could claim tax credits. That wasn't tackling child poverty or subsiding meagre wages. Now wonder the country went bust

Brown made it so that people on £50k could claim tax credits

It was supposed to be one unified, gentle-taper system that smoothed the way into waork and up the pay-scales, that topped up part time, minimum wages at the bottom and acted as a tax allowance for familes at the top end.

And the poor man genuinely believed 'no more boom and bust', I think.

So you are confirming that labour manages the economy in periods of growth and boom, and conservatives are place-holders until the next boom

As I said the drop in 'manufacturing' under labour was due to reclassification of jobs formerly called 'manufacturing' like work canteen workers, cleaning staff, retail parts workshops sales functions and advertising departments etc that became increasingly outsourced as separate companies. Similar amounts of jobs, but because of the classification are read as increase in service industries v manufacturing.
The conservatives typically have a dramatic increase in unemployment austerity, increased costs of living, higher proportion of salaries spent on food alone, foodbanks and inappropriate benefits reduction ... then galloping interest rates.

Of course interest rates are being kept down for the election. Lets just see..

The government isn't in control of interest rates. They are historically low the world over, not just in the UK. The Euro zone can't drop rates further so they're going in for quantitative easing and that will have a knock on effect to our exports. If anything, I think the government would like rates to go up

Labour rarely manages periods of growth and boom... Labour are like the guy who inherits a lush rhubarb patch, digs up all the plants, invites all their friends to a great big Rhubarb Crumble Party and then wonders why there is no rhubarb the following year.

And after all that, Labour have the cheek to shout "rhubarb" at a man who is determined to sort the whole mess they made out. I mean, of course, Nigel Farage.

So you are confirming that labour manages the economy in periods of growth and boom, and conservatives are place-holders until the next boom

How far back is that pattern supposed to hold true for?

Farage supporters should be forced to watch 'The Nazis, A Warning From History' on continuous loop....

Vinegarandbrownpaper …. Re your ”So you are confirming that labour manages the economy in periods of growth and boom, and conservatives are place-holders until the next boom”.

Ha ha ha, nooooooooooo, history confirms quite the opposite, for a start, when a Labour government inherits a BALANCED economy with manufacturing/industry 23% of the economy as in 1997, and hands back to the Conservatives in 2010 an UNBALANCED (and £157 billion annual budget economy) where it is 12%, I’d suggest there was more afoot there than factory reorganisations, as the link provided informs you.

Labour policies CAN NEVER get them (and the country) out of their own mess, as it means rebalancing economies they are ideologically/economically stunted, to make. What if Brown had inherited the Labour legacy of 1979, massive taxes on all, the post IMF bailout industry crashing, 20% inflation/interest rates and many millions of man days of ‘growf’ lost due to strikes each year???

Well Brown didn’t inherit 1979 business unfriendly Britain with penal taxes and 20% interest rates, he inherited an economy ripe for his tax raids and a banking sector he could encourage to over lend, while GLOBAL inflation and interest rates were falling; the fact the UK had higher interest rates to the EU for most of the Labour administration was neither here nor there, but it was the Labour CRISIS that saw the lowest UK Base Rate in over 300 years, when the Bank of England was formed.

In 2010, Labour after 13-years in power once again HAD NO CLUE what to do, about the then fall in real UK earnings, their £157 billion annual budget deficit, how to create private sector tax paying jobs – if you don’t believe me, tell me what they did PRIOR to the General Election or what was in their manifesto – and the only difference on extra taxes to 1979, was back then the UK electorate and businesses had SEEN how high they’d be, whereas Brown told us they’d come AFTER the election.

So dishonest Labour, with no 2010 solutions of their own and afraid to cut the overspend of their bloated State, have in opposition OPPOSED every Coalition policy to fix their screw ups, so god knows what would have happened if Labour had won in 2010, as with a larger annual deficit than the likes if Italy and France, we’d be in a bigger mess than them.

So a dishonest and economically illiterate Labour government in 2015, will not inherit the Labour mess in 1979, or 2010, with most of the tough decisions the likes of Balls, didn’t have the balls to make e.g. on their £157 billion overspend socialists everywhere still call ‘austerity’ – still pretending as in 2010, that they have ‘a different way’, they'll tell you AFTER the general election.

You are still saying that conservative governments are times of hardship, inequity and unemployment, which is what I said before. Underlining your opinions doesn't make them true. I can't understand how if labour are as self-evidently bad as you assert a. They are ever voted in and b. Why there have been long sustained periods of economic stability, technology growth and increasing personal expenditure, but when the conservatives are in there are redundancies, empty high streets, disproportionately fragile work contracts for women and low paid staff and tax cuts only for the already rich?.

I had a good job, a vastly improved home, flew abroad regularly, had a good lifestyle, but since the conservatives have been in I have been as hard up as hell( as I was under thatcher/major) and several of my friends have slipped onto benefits and then into sanctions and foodbanks.. again like the thatcher/major years.

Working tax credits fucked the economy by artificially inflating it to an unsustainable level.

A 'food on the table' sort of level?

If you couldn't put food on the table earning 45k a year then you were doing something wrong.

What amount of WTC do you think a joint income of £45k entitles you to? Nothing now. A distinctly small annual sum at one point maybe, if you had enough children.