Shameless labour

Flyboy152

Wookster wrote: »

Just have a look at these articles here:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2010/nov/24/young-british-claim-disability-benefits

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1552073/Disability-benefit-costs-double-as-fraud-soars.html

2.9 Million people on DLA on a population of 70M. That's 4.5% of the population, probably 10% of the working population.

It is absolute madness to think that 10% of the working population can reasonably be unfit to work. Labour had the chance to do something about this, all during I might add, a golden economy time.

Now, because we are broke, tough decisions have to be made and have to be made in a time when its going to be much harder for affected people to find work. Had gordon spent a bit less in the boom time then perhaps the tough choices could have been put off but he went made with the nation's credit card.

Another example of Labour's shameless short sightedness.

You really need to stop posting this rubbish. Have a quick read about what the Disability Living Allowance is for, then come back and apologise to everyone you have just insulted.

IronWolf

lynzpower wrote: »

the whole point was that labours approach would be to work flexibly, responding to differing needs.

Its all quite clear in the bloomberg speech as above.

I think people seem to think that there is "no plan" because the approach set out does not involve, slash and burn in public service, that actually further investment would be needed, including support for businesses to grow.

Slashing peoples entitlements puts people out of work.

It is best to pay down deficits when you have a booming/ growing economy.

Not when your economy is decimated and many many more people are unemployed and consumer confidence ( ie Spending ) low.

I dont get whats so difficult tio get about this.

Surely it is obvious that the more you tax people the less that they have available to spend, which in turn means job losses and further dependence on th state in terms of health, social care, housing, crime etc etc.

Surely it is bonkers to talk as this government have done, for boosting the UKs fortunes by building up a science knolwdge economy, whilst meanwhile pulling most funding for universities. including for IT and psychology- clearly sciences!

Am I missing something here?

No, thats not it at all, there "flexible" crap is just a wishy washy statement to cover the fact they don't have any real policies or alternatives.

In the last Labour budget they had £40bn of planned cuts, but hadn't even allocated them anywhere, what kind of budget is that?

And what are you talking about pulling funding from universities? Theyre doing nothing of the sort.

And they haven't increased taxes by huge amounts, in fact they have purposely not done so.

And you can't "pay down" a deficit, a deficit is in the budget, it has to result from either increased revenue or cuts. The fact that labour think they can carry on spending and tax revenue will magically increase by 20% is ridiculous.

moggylover

IronWolf wrote: »

No, there was no culture of huge financial excess when Thatcher restructured the economy, all that happened under Labour, the tripling of house prices, the debt secured on these overvalued assets, that had nothing to do with the conservatives.

And the conservatives would have allowed those excessive bankers to go under and pay dearly for their mistakes, whereas Labour just transfered responsibility to the tax payer.

What TOTAL rubbish!

The Thatcher years were the start of the Champagne, coke and Porsche set within the city and my own house was bought for £40K in 1987 and sold for £95K in 1989 AFTER the massive crash in prices that occurred during that year. Prior to that crash similar houses on the street had been going for £110/20K.

Graham_Devon

lynzpower wrote: »

You can still spend less money and get the same outcomes. Dont you find it baffling how some of these outsourcers to the UK are paid multi millions for failed it systems or how a school can also cost millions, yet these outsourcers have massive profits and huge bonuses? When private companies charging more for NHS surgeries get given the contracts anyway? Vodaphone didnt pay millions in taxes, yet smoking cessation clinics are being stopped, libraries and nurseries closed? Dont you see something wrong here? Or that the costs of care to older and disabled people get less care in thier own homes? Or that a head teacher can pull in 100k a year, is that not a bit wrong?

Some of the later benefits were over generous and that led to housing inflation costs, simply reducing housing inflation frees up extra money for people to spend.

Amen to that!

Generali

lynzpower wrote: »

the whole point was that labours approach would be to work flexibly, responding to differing needs.

Its all quite clear in the bloomberg speech as above.

I think people seem to think that there is "no plan" because the approach set out does not involve, slash and burn in public service, that actually further investment would be needed, including support for businesses to grow.

Slashing peoples entitlements puts people out of work.

It is best to pay down deficits when you have a booming/ growing economy.

Not when your economy is decimated and many many more people are unemployed and consumer confidence ( ie Spending ) low.

I dont get whats so difficult tio get about this.

Surely it is obvious that the more you tax people the less that they have available to spend, which in turn means job losses and further dependence on th state in terms of health, social care, housing, crime etc etc.

Surely it is bonkers to talk as this government have done, for boosting the UKs fortunes by building up a science knolwdge economy, whilst meanwhile pulling most funding for universities. including for IT and psychology- clearly sciences!

Am I missing something here?

The bit you are missing is that the money to do all of that has to come from somewhere. It looked like markets were possibly becoming slightly more wary of lending to Governments. If you can't borrow the money and can't get it from taxes, where would it come from?

vivatifosi

lynzpower wrote: »

Got every last drop of profi out, yes. Efficiency please do me a favour. Some of these companies do work time and again to get paid by the tyaxpayer time and again. So knowing this we pass the NHS to these very companies? Or housing management to these companies knowing damn well that they have been and still do arguably operate cartels to rip the taxpayer off.

As someone who's worked in the public sector for the last couple of years but not before I never cease to be amazed at the poor levels of service that can be seen as acceptable, nor at the extras that the public sector pay for that the private sector would negotiate as free. This does need to change.

The private sector needs to stop taking the p!ss on some of its contracts and the public sector needs to grow a pair when negotiating. I know that there's been work done in this area by the government to negotiate framework contracts, but much more is needed. Having said that, I know that newer contracts are far less of a free-ride for companies as tighter budgets do drive a need for more forceful negotiation.

StevieJ

vivatifosi wrote: »

The private sector needs to stop taking the p!ss on some of its contracts and the public sector needs to grow a pair when negotiating.

Are you saying that we probably pay Dev too much

StevieJ

IronWolf wrote: »

And what are you talking about pulling funding from universities? Theyre doing nothing of the sort.

.

So why are student fees increasing to replace the shortfall?

vivatifosi

StevieJ wrote: »

Are you saying that we probably pay Dev too much

What is it that ministers say when asked a question like that? Oh yes "I cannot comment on individual cases."

AndyGuil

Universities are not losing funding. Those that personally benefit are paying for it.