The "debate" thread

[Ed Doe]

Put a cap on bankers bonus's aswell, should help the interest rates and will be easier on first time buyers for houses

I agree to a certain extent, but you can't reduce the incentive on massively stressful, long hours, high paid jobs, or people wont want to do them. People think bankers just roll from golf course to executive lunch all day and occasionally casually check the shares inbetween glasses of expensive bubbly. The reality is most of them spend less than 4hours of their day outside their offices. They then do market forecasting etc over the weekends in some cases to make sure they're ready for the trading during the day. The whole work ethic is turned up to about 15 for the types of baker who we all assume are sitting back 'raking in the big bucks'. If you remove the incentive, it removes that drive for the few of us who can push that hard to make it to to the top... and as much as everyone overlooks it, we do need the bankers....

[Dicky]

50% more tax on veg oil.

100% more...

I hope you 2 are both being ironic and trying to troll the stupid......




..........but just in case.....












.....You do know that there isn't a single penny of tax paid on veg oil, not even VAT so even if you tax it 1,000,000,000% more it'll still cost the same cos 1,000,000,000% of f*ck all is still f*ck all.

I was thinking the same...

[Niall]

Oooh this is going to be a fun one!

Right. f*ck off out of the EU. We need to be independent. Despite the fact that most people jump on the bandwagon of "this shit government is letting to many immigrants in", what they dont realise is this is partly down to the EU as is ALOT of rules. The only way we can start going back to Great Britain is independence.

Higher NI rates for smokers and drinkers. I dont care if you are a responsible smoker or not, the fact is, most smokers and heavy drinkers end up having to use the NHS for some sort of related issue in their life time. The money going to that is coming away from the people who need that operation badly but have to wait longer due to funding etc.

When was the last time you bought something and it said "made in Britain" on it? thought so. We need to bring industry back to the UK. Unfortunately most have been pushed out due to EU regs on pollution when in reality, modern industry is very clean anyway with the exception of things like batteries and chemicals (which we never did anyway).

More help for farmers. I think its sad that the majority of people just buy any old meat or veg from the supermarket when in reality, we should be keeping that money in the UK with local farmers instead of sending it to other countries.

Education. Compulsory schooling should be toughened right up on both the teachers and students. Its not on that all the teachers care about is getting their figures up instead of helping that one student who might be behind the others. Also, wack Uni prices up. Labour decided it would be a good idea for uni to be for every man and its job. Look where that got us! We now have a nation of young people who think they are too good to work in a "lower end" job because they have a degree in sociology or some bollocks like that. As silly as it sounds, we need people not to go to uni. We need more people to come out of school and go into things like apprenticeships (which there should be more funding for)

[Ed Doe]

Education. Compulsory schooling should be toughened right up on both the teachers and students. Its not on that all the teachers care about is getting their figures up instead of helping that one student who might be behind the others. Also, wack Uni prices up. Labour decided it would be a good idea for uni to be for every man and its job. Look where that got us! We now have a nation of young people who think they are too good to work in a "lower end" job because they have a degree in sociology or some bollocks like that. As silly as it sounds, we need people not to go to uni. We need more people to come out of school and go into things like apprenticeships (which there should be more funding for)

Couldn't agree more. Part of the issue is the labour-bred 'no one can fail' policy. Improving pass-rates for GCSE's & A-levels, and increasing numbers going to universities does not create a raft of more intelligent people. It creates a reciprocating circle of dumbing the exams and courses down to get everyone through.

And all this thing about uni prices currently. Sorry, but on my salary now, my student loan is something like £60 a month. Taken pre-tax as part of payroll. I don't even see it, and to say £60 a month could impact on your average graduate on enough money to start repaying (20k+ for my year) is laughable.
With the new system, yes it's a lot more expensive, but the minimum earning threshold is higher (25k+ iirc, instead of 20k+ as it is for me), and it will hopefully make people who are just going to uni 'for the experience' and to spend 3 more years hiding from the big bad world think twice about accruing that debt without making bloody sure they come out the otherside with a good, worth-while degree, so they can start contributing back to the society that paid for it, and so that loan starts getting repaid.


I completely agree with your thoughts on apprenticeships too (see my opinion further up the page! )

[Niall]

Agreed on the pricing. If you reach a yearly wage of 25k, you are taking home roughly £1800 a month. Tell me how £60 a month is going to break the bank? And if it does, you should of taken this into account before you went to uni. If you say you cant afford it, you knew it was coming so your living outside of your means.

[vlj]

Education. Compulsory schooling should be toughened right up on both the teachers and students. Its not on that all the teachers care about is getting their figures up instead of helping that one student who might be behind the others. Also, wack Uni prices up. Labour decided it would be a good idea for uni to be for every man and its job. Look where that got us! We now have a nation of young people who think they are too good to work in a "lower end" job because they have a degree in sociology or some bollocks like that. As silly as it sounds, we need people not to go to uni. We need more people to come out of school and go into things like apprenticeships (which there should be more funding for)

Couldn't agree more. Part of the issue is the labour-bred 'no one can fail' policy. Improving pass-rates for GCSE's & A-levels, and increasing numbers going to universities does not create a raft of more intelligent people. It creates a reciprocating circle of dumbing the exams and courses down to get everyone through.

And all this thing about uni prices currently. Sorry, but on my salary now, my student loan is something like £60 a month. Taken pre-tax as part of payroll. I don't even see it, and to say £60 a month could impact on your average graduate on enough money to start repaying (20k+ for my year) is laughable.
With the new system, yes it's a lot more expensive, but the minimum earning threshold is higher (25k+ iirc, instead of 20k+ as it is for me), and it will hopefully make people who are just going to uni 'for the experience' and to spend 3 more years hiding from the big bad world think twice about accruing that debt without making bloody sure they come out the otherside with a good, worth-while degree, so they can start contributing back to the society that paid for it, and so that loan starts getting repaid.


I completely agree with your thoughts on apprenticeships too (see my opinion further up the page! )

Degrees in some cases get you nowhere anyway!
I've been very close friends with 9 other guys since primary school, and out of 10 of us, 2 didn't go to uni (1 being me).
They all finished either this year or last year with a plethora of different degrees taken up.
One of my friends who has just come out with a degree in Film Production is starting work next week in a supermarket.... working for me. How many times did I get mocked for working there? Many. 3 years of working there and I'm a fresh food area trainer... and I don't have a massive overdraft to pay off.

However on the flip side, another of my friends was recruited straight into IBM on 29k basic salary for the first year.. so it does depend massively on your specialist subject and how hard you try. If you come out with honours, you are going to be recognised by your employer more than the next guy who's sailed through the course and barely managed a pass.

Uni is very much pushed on you by colleges and sixth forms like it is the only way to go in life, and sadly it's so far from true.

[Niall]

Education. Compulsory schooling should be toughened right up on both the teachers and students. Its not on that all the teachers care about is getting their figures up instead of helping that one student who might be behind the others. Also, wack Uni prices up. Labour decided it would be a good idea for uni to be for every man and its job. Look where that got us! We now have a nation of young people who think they are too good to work in a "lower end" job because they have a degree in sociology or some bollocks like that. As silly as it sounds, we need people not to go to uni. We need more people to come out of school and go into things like apprenticeships (which there should be more funding for)

Couldn't agree more. Part of the issue is the labour-bred 'no one can fail' policy. Improving pass-rates for GCSE's & A-levels, and increasing numbers going to universities does not create a raft of more intelligent people. It creates a reciprocating circle of dumbing the exams and courses down to get everyone through.

And all this thing about uni prices currently. Sorry, but on my salary now, my student loan is something like £60 a month. Taken pre-tax as part of payroll. I don't even see it, and to say £60 a month could impact on your average graduate on enough money to start repaying (20k+ for my year) is laughable.
With the new system, yes it's a lot more expensive, but the minimum earning threshold is higher (25k+ iirc, instead of 20k+ as it is for me), and it will hopefully make people who are just going to uni 'for the experience' and to spend 3 more years hiding from the big bad world think twice about accruing that debt without making bloody sure they come out the otherside with a good, worth-while degree, so they can start contributing back to the society that paid for it, and so that loan starts getting repaid.


I completely agree with your thoughts on apprenticeships too (see my opinion further up the page! )

Degrees in some cases get you nowhere anyway!
I've been very close friends with 9 other guys since primary school, and out of 10 of us, 2 didn't go to uni (1 being me).
They all finished either this year or last year with a plethora of different degrees taken up.
One of my friends who has just come out with a degree in Film Production is starting work next week in a supermarket.... working for me. How many times did I get mocked for working there? Many. 3 years of working there and I'm a fresh food area trainer... and I don't have a massive overdraft to pay off.

However on the flip side, another of my friends was recruited straight into IBM on 29k basic salary for the first year.. so it does depend massively on your specialist subject and how hard you try. If you come out with honours, you are going to be recognised by your employer more than the next guy who's sailed through the course and barely managed a pass.

Uni is very much pushed on you by colleges and sixth forms like it is the only way to go in life, and sadly it's so far from true.

IMO, getting these jobs is about you as a person. I have always believed its not what you know, its who you know.
Ive been in the same situation. Left school at 16 and went straight to work. all my mates went to uni. 2 have carried on for another year and the others are still job hunting. One has been turned down by mcdonnalds and another got a job as a cleaner at a marketing company (funny really, she studied marketing at uni lol)

[kentiiboii]

Me personally I think that benifits need to be sorted majorly... my dad come out of work 2 years after doing his back in. In this time his mrs took the opertunity to go back to uni to further into her career as a midwife. My dad stays at home to look after the kids on benefits. He has 5 kids living with him. 1s adhd and 1s autistic so they get extra money for them 2. He went job center as they said he needs to look for work. They figured he needs to earn £13 a hour to match what hes on. He says when shes finished at uni and earning hell go back into work again.

I agree with the housing benefits cut for people under 25 to a point. It does make people think twice about having kids without working when they left school. But I think the age should be changed to 21 so people like me and my fiancee who work part time. I was looking for another job but ive been offered a promotion which short term isnt very good but in 5 years time I can be managing my own shop which will sort us for life. But luckily to my promotion and her extra hours shes gained we can cope just enough without benefits.

When I was 18 I left my first job becuase it was agency and they wasnt paying my correct wages. They knew they wasnt and was hiding it. I had one anount of hours noted. Warehouse had another (I wasnt allowed to look as my hours are confidential information). The agency had a completely different amount and this was happening each week so I refused to be there. The job centre agreed which is why I was allowed on jsa and it went further. 3 weeks later I got another job. But that time I had people in the office asking what jobs have I pretended to write down so they can copy to get there money. Also a few people told me they wrote anything.

Immigrants need to all be kicked out. If theyre pregnant when they come over they shouldn't be allowed. Even if there kid is born in this country it still wrong for their nationailty to be english. Should go by their paraents not where they're born.

Alcholics shouldn't get a penny or voucher.

I can keep going but shouldn't... its just wrong when you see people who dont work drive cars and wear superdry tops and shit with there 3 kids and 4 bedroom house and heres us working and cant afford shit.
Me and mrs and getting married and atm our marital house is down as her parents. Really dont want it to be but atm cant see any other way. I want to get another job but I cant give up the opportunity.
Want to try bar work at weekends but no experience.


Sorry if there mistakes still getting use ti android

[Shea]

Ive not read all of this but my oppinions and thoughts are:

JSA: Instead of giving someone the cash outright and saying there you go theres the money for gass, eleccy and food (which then USUALLY goes on fags booze and drugs) give tokens such as pre paid elecy/gas cards, food vouchers... personally if someone is on JSA and claming money then they dont need the money for fuel ect....

International trade: Personally this country could never stand up to the manufacture of china ect, we have more standards for workers and the tax inplace on products are too much to effectively compete with china ect. But i do belive that we need to increase the amount of british trade and british made products.

Fuel Tax: alot of companies are being massively effected by the fuel tax, mass haulage and lorry firms are using less and less british routes to transport goods, due to the fact that the fuel costs outweights the cost of shipping ect.

local buisness: major companies like tesco ect are effecting the trade of local buisnesses thus putting farms and raw goods traders out of buisness.

Reform the way taxes are spent: currently each person will pay:
- road tax
- fuel tax
- national insurance
- tax on earnings
- Tax on food
- Tax on purchases
- heritage tax

The amount of tax we pay is not distributed in the right way, and alot of it does not go back into the country at all.
i believe the amount of tax could be changed lower if the taxes were distibuted right.

Imigration: im not against imigration at all, but i do belive that the people we allow to imigrate into the country should bring something into it, i.e. instead of giving someone complete citizenship straight away they would need to live and work in this country for a year, hold down a job in that year and should have a clause in the citizenship that states imigrants must work and contribute to the system.

Bankers and banks : the banks should be encouraged to lend money and should have the bonus's capped in relation to how much the bank has lent/put back into the system.

Income tax: i belive income tax should be changed, instead of how much one person earns it should relate to how much the household earns. for example a couple living together have an income of £29,999 each will both pay the lower 20% tax rates, household income = £49,998. single parent bringing in £60,000 will pay 40% tax leaving the household income at £42,857 so although the single parent has the job that pays more they still effectively bring in alot less

[Dum-Dum]

Agreed on the pricing. If you reach a yearly wage of 25k, you are taking home roughly £1800 a month. Tell me how £60 a month is going to break the bank? And if it does, you should of taken this into account before you went to uni. If you say you cant afford it, you knew it was coming so your living outside of your means.

Dude your maths is terrible.

I earn about 35k pa and my monthly basic take home is only 1900 so theres no way 25 gives a take home of 1800

[Marcus1991]

Reduction in fuel duty, thus more driving, this more spending in shops etc
Deport illegal immigrants
Get out the EU
Tell supermarkets to stop being b*stards and let the farmers have a decent profit
Get rid of the ambulance chasing, no win no fee companies (or be tougher on compensation claims)

---

And have a caretaker for each hospital, to do general maintenance paid £20k instead of having to spend £200 changing a light bulb etc etc etc

[Niall]

Agreed on the pricing. If you reach a yearly wage of 25k, you are taking home roughly £1800 a month. Tell me how £60 a month is going to break the bank? And if it does, you should of taken this into account before you went to uni. If you say you cant afford it, you knew it was coming so your living outside of your means.

Dude your maths is terrible.

I earn about 35k pa and my monthly basic take home is only 1900 so theres no way 25 gives a take home of 1800

unlucky. Mine isnt far off that with a week of on call on top of it and im no where near 35k. Think your being stiffed on tax mate!

Marcus, we dont want more driving. There is already too many cars on the road as it is!

[vlj]

Agreed on the pricing. If you reach a yearly wage of 25k, you are taking home roughly £1800 a month. Tell me how £60 a month is going to break the bank? And if it does, you should of taken this into account before you went to uni. If you say you cant afford it, you knew it was coming so your living outside of your means.

Dude your maths is terrible.

I earn about 35k pa and my monthly basic take home is only 1900 so theres no way 25 gives a take home of 1800

£35k hits the 40% tax band doesn't it though?

[C.A.R.]

No don't think so, Niall wasn't far off with his original guess, out by about £140 actually

[Shea]

Agreed on the pricing. If you reach a yearly wage of 25k, you are taking home roughly £1800 a month. Tell me how £60 a month is going to break the bank? And if it does, you should of taken this into account before you went to uni. If you say you cant afford it, you knew it was coming so your living outside of your means.

Dude your maths is terrible.

I earn about 35k pa and my monthly basic take home is only 1900 so theres no way 25 gives a take home of 1800

I was just using a rough amount of x amount pays the lower band y amount pays higher

[declantg]

Definitely some interesting points in this thread

[Shea]

Agreed on the pricing. If you reach a yearly wage of 25k, you are taking home roughly £1800 a month. Tell me how £60 a month is going to break the bank? And if it does, you should of taken this into account before you went to uni. If you say you cant afford it, you knew it was coming so your living outside of your means.

Dude your maths is terrible.

I earn about 35k pa and my monthly basic take home is only 1900 so theres no way 25 gives a take home of 1800

£35k hits the 40% tax band doesn't it though?

I thought the 40% band started at 30k so 35k would take home 2,000pm 25kpa after tax so my maths is about right

[the milkman]

Can't wait till andy finds this thread...........

[Poodle]

I think this thread goes a long way towards highlighting the fact that the quickest way to fix the country would be to invest in better education...




















I was going to write a lot more, but I'm tired and grumpy and liable to say unpleasant things, so will leave this point for now. However, tomorrow I shall do my best to do lots of shouting for your collective amusement.


EDIT: Chris you work for the government, so i suspect a fair portion of your wages goes into things like pension schemes and other future investments.

[Y444TES]

40% tax starts at any earning over £40,000 but you only get taxed 40% on earnings over £40,000

[burnmw]

Something that I've not seen (although I might have missed it) is to correct the prison system. I know somebody mentioned US style sentencing, and I agree but that's only part of it.

For instance, if someone comes to this country from country A, and commits a crime, we send them back to country A. Why should we pay for that person to stay here in a UK prison? Send them back to where ever they came from. If things were so bad in the country they came from then they would have thought twice about coming here and committing a crime.

And those who do end up in a UK prison, why the f*ck should they get TV/games rooms/gyms etc? There are people who would love to have access to those things, and work their arses off to keep these prisoners in the lap of luxury. Feck'em I say. Get them peeling potatoes for 14 hours a day, or breaking boulders, or some other meaningless task. We could in fact get them cooking for the homeless, or mending clothes for them or something. That way it would discourage people from committing crime, and would mean more useful members of society, and less of a drain on the economy.

Oh, and of course the sentencing needs to be a hell of a lot tougher! None of this out for good behaviour, if you're in for 5 years, you serve 5 years.

[MrsMidnight]

Ignore me.

[Niall]

Something that I've not seen (although I might have missed it) is to correct the prison system. I know somebody mentioned US style sentencing, and I agree but that's only part of it.

For instance, if someone comes to this country from country A, and commits a crime, we send them back to country A. Why should we pay for that person to stay here in a UK prison? Send them back to where ever they came from. If things were so bad in the country they came from then they would have thought twice about coming here and committing a crime.

And those who do end up in a UK prison, why the f*ck should they get TV/games rooms/gyms etc? There are people who would love to have access to those things, and work their arses off to keep these prisoners in the lap of luxury. Feck'em I say. Get them peeling potatoes for 14 hours a day, or breaking boulders, or some other meaningless task. We could in fact get them cooking for the homeless, or mending clothes for them or something. That way it would discourage people from committing crime, and would mean more useful members of society, and less of a drain on the economy.

Oh, and of course the sentencing needs to be a hell of a lot tougher! None of this out for good behaviour, if you're in for 5 years, you serve 5 years.

I think part of fixing the prison service starts with the education service. Schooling isnt just to teach kids to add up or spell England well good but it should be to prepare you to start in the real world and this includes seeing what is and right and why we have laws. I do genuinely believe that a lot of these people about my age and younger who genuinely have no fear of the justice system dont have because of the way they were brought up. Education should be stricter and you should also be allowed to slap your own children (and misses when needed e.g leaving the kitchen). When it comes down to it, young children are like animals. They dont understand the gravity of their wrong doings through words but everyone regardless of age realises pain.

[Eeyore]

READ THIS!

My main gripe is the privatisation of public services. For anyone who doesnt know privatisation is when a government owned body is either sold or closed in order to be run not by the government but by private companies. A government public service exists just for the good of the people and doesnt have to make a profit, however once it becomes privatised i.e. a business its goal changes from providing a service to making money.

For example... the railways in our country used to be epic where as now it is privatised and nothing works and its all expensive. What makes it worse is that the companies them complain they dont have enough money to fix the railways and the government has to then pay for the repairs just to keep the service from failing all together. So as a result... we have a failing system and even though it isnt the governments problem... they still pay for it!

So whats next? The NHS. Oh its losing money blah blah blah. it doesnt matter if its losing money. It is a service which everyone pays for in taxes! What you really dont want is for it to be privatised. If it continued to lose money it simply wouldnt exist, if it was made to make money then we would all be paying for it and it would price a lot of people out of operations and other medical treatments!

It is plainly obvious that the government is just privatising things so they dont have to take the debt of it which makes the government look like its not losing as much money. It wont be and you would probably pay less in tax. However now you pay twice as much for a train/bus ticket and you have to pay for your health care! So overall the government is better off but the general public is worse off!

Other things...
Road tax doesnt get spent on roads. All the taxes go into a big pot and get spent on whatever they are needed for. The main reason for road tax and fuel duty being introduced was to build the road infrastructure years ago and now its been built it should have been reduced however in reality is a massive earner for the government to spend on anything they want.

The prison system shouldnt be americanised but they should have xboxs and tvs. its prison for a reason not a bloody playgroup!

One which always come up at work as my bosses are both UKIP supporteds. The EU. There are reasons for being in the EU and reasons for not being in it. However you need to understand both.

Not in the EU because:
the euro because its a flop of a currency
various EU regulations
HS2 is actually an EU order and not a government choice.

Reasons to be in the EU:
free to trade borders with no tax saves lots of money.
get a vote in the europian parliment which we wouldnt have otherwise.

One that is especially important for me. They set food standards and standards for agriculture. For example lots of farms cant make money from farming because they have to compete with cheaper imports. However the EU subsidises many of our farmers which allows them to continue! If there wasnt subsidies for land set aside then we wouldnt have any farms at all!

Super markets arent a bad thing as who can be bothered to go to lots of little shops. You could just as easily say the internet is killing off highstreet shops (which it is) but nobody says thats a bad thing. The main thing is that super markets should be limited to where they can be built. They shouldnt be allowed to build close to town centres which affects highstreet shops. They need to be out of town for good road access and parking anyway really.

Also another thing that annoys me is the scrappage scheme. It kept car companies going in a resesion and thousands kept their jobs but what happened to all the old cars? Did they get crushed? Nope... they are all sat on an airfield!





and i think as 306 owners many of us can say that a lot of the cars there are better than our own! There should definitely be some form of system where you can swap a worse off car with one of the better ones sitting in that airfield!

Finally. Foreign workers and immigration. There needs to be a cap on immigration and people do need to be sent home if they are causing problems. There shouldnt be any way people should be allowed in and claim benefits without contributing to society. It is shocking that white british is now a minority in our Capital. The problem is that british people simply think they are better than cleaning and other low paid jobs. The reality is that people need to grow the f*ck up and take any job they can get. You cant think youre above a job and then complain about somebody foreign doing it! It simply cant work both ways!

EDIT: Education... some company is trying to buy the university of sussex because it makes money and they have realised it and they want to make the money. Universities shouldnt be businesses. Nobody better start talking about how university is pointless or how my degree is worthless. each to their own! University makes money for the country. You arent paying for my student loan. Im paying it back WITH INTEREST so in total it makes money for the country! Schooling they should just stop messing around and changing it. As much as kids are getting A*s im sure loads are getting shit grades too. it should be harder to get an A* though! Just bloody well standardise the education system and stop messing about.

Also im sick of people saying we shouldnt have a royal family. Its so thick to think that they are worthless and a cost to our country. Its irrelevant that some of our money goes towards them as we get millions a year from tourism just for people visiting and buying the merch surrounding our monarchy! It makes a huge amount of money and gives us a lot of personality and identity as a country. Does anyone know who the president of France of Italy is at the moment? Nope but everyone knows we have a queen!

[Niall]

unfortunately we wont change your last point unless we leave the EU. Its a EU directive that anyone who is a citizen in a european country can travel freely between them but also change residence easily between them. a lot of people bitch about how this country lets immigrants in and say that Labour could do a better job yet labour are big supporters of the EU. Yes it has its pro's but in order for us to start heading back to being great Britain again, we really do need out!

[Eeyore]

Also for anyone complaining about taxes this explains it all. it all comes down to people always being able to complain about something. People should look at their own situation compared to others are realise how fortunate they are!

Suppose that every day, ten men go out for beer and the bill for all ten comes to $100. If they paid their bill the way we pay our taxes, it would go something like this…

The first four men (the poorest) would pay nothing
The fifth would pay $1
The sixth would pay $3
The seventh would pay $7
The eighth would pay $12
The ninth would pay $18
The tenth man (the richest) would pay $59
So, that’s what they decided to do.

The ten men drank in the bar every day and seemed quite happy with the arrangement, until one day, the owner threw them a curve ball.

“Since you are all such good customers,” he said, “I’m going to reduce the cost of your daily beer by $20″. Drinks for the ten men would now cost just $80.

The group still wanted to pay their bill the way we pay our taxes. So the first four men were unaffected. They would still drink for free. But what about the other six men ? How could they divide the $20 windfall so that everyone would get his fair share?

The bar owner suggested that it would be fair to reduce each man’s bill by a higher percentage the poorer he was, to follow the principle of the tax system they had been using, and he proceeded to work out the amounts he suggested that each should now pay.

And so the fifth man, like the first four, now paid nothing (100% saving).
The sixth now paid $2 instead of $3 (33% saving).
The seventh now paid $5 instead of $7 (28% saving).
The eighth now paid $9 instead of $12 (25% saving).
The ninth now paid $14 instead of $18 (22% saving).
The tenth now paid $49 instead of $59 (16% saving).
Each of the six was better off than before. And the first four continued to drink for free. But, once outside the bar, the men began to compare their savings.

“I only got a dollar out of the $20 saving,” declared the sixth man. He pointed to the tenth man,”but he got $10!”

“Yeah, that’s right,” exclaimed the fifth man. “I only saved a dollar too. It’s unfair that he got ten times more benefit than me!”

“That’s true!” shouted the seventh man. “Why should he get $10 back, when I got only $2? The wealthy get all the breaks!”

“Wait a minute,” yelled the first four men in unison, “we didn’t get anything at all. This new tax system exploits the poor!”

The nine men surrounded the tenth and beat him up.

The next night the tenth man didn’t show up for drinks so the nine sat down and had their beers without him. But when it came time to pay the bill, they discovered something important. They didn’t have enough money between all of them for even half of the bill!

And that, boys and girls, journalists and government ministers, is how our tax system works. The people who already pay the highest taxes will naturally get the most benefit from a tax reduction. Tax them too much, attack them for being wealthy, and they just may not show up anymore. In fact, they might start drinking overseas, where the atmosphere is somewhat friendlier.

---

unfortunately we wont change your last point unless we leave the EU. Its a EU directive that anyone who is a citizen in a european country can travel freely between them but also change residence easily between them. a lot of people bitch about how this country lets immigrants in and say that Labour could do a better job yet labour are big supporters of the EU. Yes it has its pro's but in order for us to start heading back to being great Britain again, we really do need out!

yes this is a problem. there are pros and cons. But what if there were no jobs going in the UK. what if everyone were employed? What would be the incentive to come to the UK then? There wouldnt be as much as an incentive and fewer people would come. I agree with you Niall but there are so many different ways of solving problems all which are on such a massive scale they are difficult to solve!

[Andy]

I see people are droning on about tomatoes alcohol and cigarettes affecting people and blah blah...

I myself am a smoker, 10 - 20 a day depending on how pissed off I am for X reason. I'm also a drinker, I do like to go out of a night time and get rather sideways. I now don't eat tomatoes anymore but anyway...
I think smoking and drinking are issues that should be looked at as a very last thing because really they don't affect 'everyone' as Tom said.
Fair enough drink does put a lot of people in hospital from over consumption but personally the government needs to be looking at more pressing matters like the education system, for example I'm a dyslexic, which the teatures that taught me never picked up on, I therefore failed most of my exams on simple things like spelling and writing the wrong letters down etc. This was unbeknownst to me as well.
I don't think the rewards are good enough from passing a college or school exams and kids nowadays are too hooked on snorting coke, stealing cars and mugging old women and stabbing one another.
I mean the kids that are around now are our next generation. To me we stand no hope.
This leads me onto another thing... Punishment.
Our justice system I don't believe is harsh enough on persistent and serious offenders, for example the Venebles kids who comitted that murder are now free (AFAIK) and are living under different names. I believe they should bring back the death penalty (i know some people won't agree but mehh)

There's many more I could bore you with but most have been covered and cannot be arsed to post them up again. The above are just some of my more stronger feelings.

[cpikey316_]

Regarding education, there needs to be more vocational options for 14 year olds.

Let them train to be a plumber/electrician. Lets them appreciate the bits of school they do need (good written English, numeracy) while freeing up classroom space in schools. We are now making pupils stay in education until 18, more vocational/career based courses are needed which don't lead to university.

Would help with the 'everyone needs to go to uni' attitude too

[C2K]

Things like PV will also help, as they can delay or smooth spikes in demand on a house by house basis, rather than the current situation of requiring the top % of the grid to have really short response time, and hence a reliance on Gas (which has the fastest black-start response time of all generation fuels).

Do you even know what a black start is? I fail to see how a power station with the self-contained ability to start to generate from a blackout has any bearing on your argument. Only a handful of power stations in the UK even have black start as our grid is stable (black start is imperative in countries like South Africa). It requires the use of a diesel gen set to support the auxiliaries to enable the gas turbines to fire and synchronise, it's nothing to do with their ability to get on load quickly - that's a whole different kettle of fish.

Put a cap on bankers bonus's aswell, should help the interest rates and will be easier on first time buyers for houses

I agree to a certain extent, but you can't reduce the incentive on massively stressful, long hours, high paid jobs, or people wont want to do them. People think bankers just roll from golf course to executive lunch all day and occasionally casually check the shares inbetween glasses of expensive bubbly. The reality is most of them spend less than 4hours of their day outside their offices. They then do market forecasting etc over the weekends in some cases to make sure they're ready for the trading during the day. The whole work ethic is turned up to about 15 for the types of baker who we all assume are sitting back 'raking in the big bucks'. If you remove the incentive, it removes that drive for the few of us who can push that hard to make it to to the top... and as much as everyone overlooks it, we do need the bankers....

have you even met a banker? My ex girlfriends brother was a banker with ING, he used to get a bonus of more than half his salary which was already obscene enough. He didn't work particularly hard, never did more than 9 hours, wasn't particularly stressed out, quick to flash the cash and reamed his expenses with "entertaining customers" paying for every taxi and meal out for about a 2 year period - like he couldn't afford it. Overworked they are not, and only a fool offers sympathy for them.


As for sorting this country out, get rid of the JSA automatic entitlement unless you have a valid reason such as a debilitating disease. Someone mentioned PAYG, I like that. Needs extreme measures to sort out the third generation dole dossers. Something radical like introduce a license to have children, thus ending people's means to automatic drip feeding off the government by pumping out sprogs. If you can't afford to support the children and give them basic quality of life - no children allowed. f*ck you, why should I pay for them.

All these twats just find ways and means to screw the benefits system. benefits should be capped at £20K a year per household or something.

As for the immigrants - we've caused it ourself. Eastern Europeans are happy to come in and do jobs for 5 quid an hour scrubbing floors because we've brought up entire generations of scum that would rather sit on their ass and get paid double to do so.

Dude your maths is terrible.

I earn about 35k pa and my monthly basic take home is only 1900 so theres no way 25 gives a take home of 1800

Forgive my ignorance, but aren't you a PCSO? When did they start earning 35K a year?

[Toms306]

Somehow they allowed Chris to become a real policeman a few months back!