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What do you want to cut?


Lexander
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• keep childe benefits univursal for all but only the first 3 children.

- why keep it univursal? Becouse a 30k limite is not high enofe and is thath 30k for each family or each parent? And whath if you got two parentes making minimum wage at 15k a year each shouldent they Get childe benefits? And means test childe benefits would be to costely and 30k a year in Liverpool might be a good wage but when you come to London is nothing.

 

I'm sorry but if you're earning 30k as a family the miniscule amount that child benefit adds to that will make absolutely no difference to your ability to raise your child given that the standard(ish) cost of raising a child until the age of 18 is about £20k. £30k is a good wage where ever you live if you're living within your means and as far as I can see trying to plead that middle class parents need the same extra assistance as low income parents (or low income single parents) is ridiculous. Continuing universal child benefit really isn't acceptable in a time of severe cuts to everything else and screams of elitism rather than allocating public money to services/people based on need.

 

• abolish council homes, turn existing council homes in to co-op homes with a state funded houcing bank to support it.

- exampel council home valued at £100.000 set a price of £120.000 to buy the houce, the houce would be financed true the houcing bank at 5% fixed inttrest. So total intres payment would be £6000 a year i would propose thath the co-op only charge the homeholder £3000 and the other £3000 is added to the morgadge so when ever the homeholder got spear cash he can pay down the morgadge more if he want it to. This would give more pepole ownership of there home for a lower cost and it would enchurage saving. Since allot og the council homes inn britain was build many years ago this council homes dont got debt conected to it and as soon as homeholders start paying back the money can be reinvested in to new homes, or to takeover emty homes thath have been left emty for more then 12 months and the ownere of the property have not startes work on the property or tryef to rent it out or sell it.

 

Again, where is the money for this state run housing bank going to come from? The saving on housing benefit? Some it may be but what about the rest? What about the costs of transforming existing council housing or abandoned houses into these co-ops - who/what funds that?

 

Also what about the interim period where there are more people than council houses/abandoned properties?

 

• i would like the goverment to put JSA and houcing benefits in to a emergency fund.

- exampel you get ill or become unemplyed, then you can go to the job center/ benefits office and there would be a person who will go tru your finance with you to see where you can save money, and to help you get a job. The emergency fund will for 4 months provide you with houcing cost within reason and heating cost. They wil allso provide you with a food budget and a bus pass for transport if you live in a area where public transport is avaible. If not they give some form of petrol money. In theys 4 months you have to prove thath you are looking for work and thath you dont for saving over £10.000. When the four mounths Are finnished you have to have got a job, if you have not been sucsesfull in getting a job a minimum wage job for a public works program will be provided for you, if you then refuse the public works program all benefits will be stoped, if you live in goverment controled houcing you will be asked to leave and be given a room at the shelter.

--- yes a public works program will cost money and it will be adminstartive but the idea is from the new deal sutring the great depresion and is to give pepole work experiance and give goverment cheap labour.

 

Why 4 months? Why do you deem 4 months to be reasonable for someone who may have an illness that has lead to unemployment? What if their treatment takes longer than 4 months? What if they have a degenerative disease that worsens over time rather than improves? What do you mean by within reason re: housing/heating costs? How does this sort of individual assessment save the public any money with a rising number of people out of work (soon to rise even more when the cuts hit)?

 

Also, how do you expect people to 'prove' they've been looking for work? Unless you're intent on stalking them or tagging them there's no real way to 100% know that person X has been looking for work.

 

Can you explain the saving £10,000 bit please? How on earth do you expect someone who is out of work to save £10,000 in 4 months? Most of those who do work would struggle to come up with that in 4 years never mind 4 months!

 

I'm intrigued as to where you envisage this sound rush of available jobs across all skill levels to come from? Given that in the coming months every man and his dog will be clinging desperately to their job (if they don't get cut that is) then I don't see where these extra jobs will come from. It also seems (to me) that you're working on the basis that everyone who needs JSA is of a similar skill level and thus everyone will have an equal playing field. That's simply not the case and it's unreasonable to expect that those of a lower skill level can successfully compete with those of a medium/high skill level for the same opportunities and means that it will be those with the lower skill level or the least experience who are left jobless at the end of your arbitrary 4 months. How does forcing graduates with skills but less experience into menial labour encourage people to aspire to higher education or give those graduates a chance to use their skills & knowledge to make something of themselves? In short, it doesn't - it leads to many graduates becoming stuck in minimum wage work and the SLC having to write off their debts (at public expense).

 

Ultimately I think that your 4 month cut off is dependent on far too many uncontrolled factors to work and I think it penalises people at both the high and low end of the skills scale and those with minimal work experience (due to age). I also dislike the cheap labour idea as I think it has far too much potential to lead to a reduction in the minimum wage to reduce public spending in future times of bust.

 

• i say it agein a flat tax system is needed will save billions in admin cost for govermemt and business. And if we set the tax at 25% for individules and 10% for bussiness with no deductions and loop holes. This woulde result in thath the cleaner at your local school wouldent pay a higger tax % then the supper rich, just becouse she cant hire a smart accountant.

 

I'm sorry, what? Why shouldn't someone earning 50k or 100k or 200k pay more tax than someone earning 8k? How is that even vaguely fair to the person earning 8k who has far less take home pay than the person on 50k but not necessarily a proportional reduction in living costs? On 8k a year at 25% tax you would be taking home roughly £500 a month to cover all of your living costs. On 50k a year at 25% tax you would be taking home roughly £3k a month to cover your living costs - that's 6 times more, how on earth is that fair to the person with £500 when there's no way you can assume their living costs are 6 times less than the person with £3k (particularly not if they can't claim any benefits as you're proposing).

 

That sort of thinking *only* favours those on middle-high incomes and yet again penalises those on low incomes.

 

• re introduce national service and change the millitary in to two units one national and one innternational force. A more stream lined international military force with combine all the current branches of the millitary in to one highely trained and better supported unit.

 

Disagree with this entirely - why should I be forced to do national service when I'm a pacifist? Why should anyone be forced to do so if they don't want to or believe in non-violence? What about their right to make the choice for themselves?

 

I would like public service to be provided by goverment owned corperations where the public can allso play a rolle. The bigest mistake thath have happens in the last 30 years are the selling of goverment owned companys, part privitasion is okay but when you sell out all of the control. What do you got left? You got left with a cash sum thath will not generate money a goverment owned company will year after year give out divdence and it can allso investe aboroad to creat more wealth for Britain in the long run.

So if I controled the country NO privtisation of royal mail. Yes to naturlaisation of the rail network and the water and sewage. Yes to investing in to green technology but use goverment money for goverment controled companys why make the switish or Danish or german companys rich and let they have the jobs when we got te resources.

 

Can you clarify this bit as I'm struggling a bit - as I'm currently reading it you seem to be suggesting that an authoritarian state be set up which controls all business & development and that it should be an insular one with no co-operation with European partners?

 

I'm entirely against the idea of an authoritarian state in control of everything and there's 2 main reasons for that: 1) it doesn't work (as has been proved time & again) because there are always those who want more than their equal share of the power & the profits and 2) it completely removes the civil liberties of the individual to make choices for themself about a whole range of things from national service to who they get their electric from. Capitalism as it stands - is pretty much the best of a bad bunch of systems out there and I'd be very very reluctant to support any drastic moves toward mass state ownership & authoritarianism*. I'd much rather see the current system being regulated better and modified to follow something like the current German system which involves workers more to produce a fairer version of capitalism.

 

*Although I do think the NHS should remain the public domain, as should education and I would support the re-nationalisation the rail & postal services. Beyond that I have no particular beef with properly regulated capitalism for other services/businesses.

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given that the standard(ish) cost of raising a child until the age of 18 is about £20k

That works out to be roughly £1111 per year. or £3 per day. Wish my children were that cheap to 'run'. :?

 

I did say standard(ish) and to be fair that was based on figures that I'd heard rather than personal experience.* Either way the current rate of child benefit isn't going to make any difference in those costs to middle class families and insisting on continuing at a universal level for all (including those families with over £30k) is still an unacceptable argument when everything else is being cut.

 

*Which is a rather roundabout way of saying, thank you for the correction ;)

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Just one finnal note I do consider myself to the left of the political world.

Bwhaaa-ha-ha-ha!

 

That's the best joke I've seen on Shetlink for ages. The stuff you've outlined above is further right wing than the US rethuglican party. I'd hate to see what you would consider right wing.

 

You are pulling the piss, aren't you?

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Just one finnal note I do consider myself to the left of the political world.

Bwhaaa-ha-ha-ha!

 

That's the best joke I've seen on Shetlink for ages. The stuff you've outlined above is further right wing than the US rethuglican party. I'd hate to see what you would consider right wing.

 

You are pulling the piss, aren't you?

 

you must be joking is no way thath it is right wing to have a goverment run bank to help pepole get on the houcing ladder, hopfully a british copy of the Norwegian state houcing banken.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norwegian_State_Housing_Bank

 

and thath I wish thath the goverment still owned o2,bt, British gas and the water companys in England is more of a socialstic belife then rightwing.

 

Atleast I got some ideas what ideas do you got?

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^^^ (somewhere too far back for me with flu to quote from but ...) blimey, stating £30k salary is nothing in London is nothing - it blooming well was a good salary in London! I stand by what I said in cutting child benefits to "high" earners - anyone else remember their folks telling them they would only have the children they could afford?

 

Someone mentioned scrapping housing benefit and council/social housing and making peeps live in hostels - good grief, whilst even I acknowledge some form of cuts to be a necessity right now, even I would not advocate to bring back "workhouses". Whilst not being a lover/fan of Labour, I do recall reading some while back that they did intend to cap housing benefit to stop so-called greedy private Landlords charging extortionate rents.

 

Ah, that is part of the problem. Said Landlords charge the going market rate which, many a time, is regarded as being extortionate. However, if housing market was to be capped, would this result in bringing the average market rent down? Perhaps so, but it would take a while to bring the rents within the private sector down.

 

Cuts can often be confused with efficiency measures. For example, many Court fines go uncollected which beggars the question why fine someone in the first place if the system is not going to collect the said fines?

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Lexander - are you going to address the points I raised in response to your proposals then? I have to admit that whilst you may be left leaning in terms of your views on the state having control over businesses & development (much like the old Soviet system), it is rather undone by your overwhelming authoritarian stance and your overwhelming dislike of those who are poor or in need. I, as one of those hippy-dippy leftie liberal types, hope that the current administration certainly do not employ your suggestions otherwise there will be a lot of very poor people who are very very stuck for generations to come.

 

^^^ (somewhere too far back for me with flu to quote from but ...) blimey, stating £30k salary is nothing in London is nothing - it blooming well was a good salary in London! I stand by what I said in cutting child benefits to "high" earners - anyone else remember their folks telling them they would only have the children they could afford?

 

Someone mentioned scrapping housing benefit and council/social housing and making peeps live in hostels - good grief, whilst even I acknowledge some form of cuts to be a necessity right now, even I would not advocate to bring back "workhouses". Whilst not being a lover/fan of Labour, I do recall reading some while back that they did intend to cap housing benefit to stop so-called greedy private Landlords charging extortionate rents.

 

Ah, that is part of the problem. Said Landlords charge the going market rate which, many a time, is regarded as being extortionate. However, if housing market was to be capped, would this result in bringing the average market rent down? Perhaps so, but it would take a while to bring the rents within the private sector down.

 

Cuts can often be confused with efficiency measures. For example, many Court fines go uncollected which beggars the question why fine someone in the first place if the system is not going to collect the said fines?

 

You make quite a lot of good points here actually, unlinkedstudent, particularly with reference to the child benefit part and private landlords.

 

As someone else who also isn't a Labour fan (or a Tory fan for that matter), I agree with much of what you've said and you raise an interesting question about efficiency measurse vs cuts.

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lorelei"]Lexander - are you going to address the points I raised in response to your proposals then? I have to admit that whilst you may be left leaning in terms of your views on the state having control over businesses & development (much like the old Soviet system), it is rather undone by your overwhelming authoritarian stance and your overwhelming dislike of those who are poor or in need. I, as one of those hippy-dippy leftie liberal types, hope that the current administration certainly do not employ your suggestions otherwise there will be a lot of very poor people who are very very stuck for generations to come. 

 

soviet system? more like a scandinavian system and i must say it seams to be working weary well over there if must say. and dont come and say it just becouse of the oil money becouse that is not relevante when you take in to consideraton finland and sweden which dont got any oil and denmark only got a small amount of oil.

 

 

 

 

so you say 30k for a houcehold is middelclass. what place on earth are you living on that is working class a houceholde will make more then that if both are working fulltime and still only are on minimumwage. childe tax credit are not a big amount but it is there as a helping hand and i belive no mather about how much you make you shold be allowed to get it.

 

 

and the part of 4 months to get a job that is a exampel it have to disucsed by pepole that knows more then me to decide. but i belive it should be some form of time limit and if you cant find somthing by then. then goverment should put you in a public work program so that you work for your handout and still can kepp your houce and food on the tabel.

forcing pepole out of there houce if they cant pay the bill beocuse they refuse to take up work or join on a public works program i think is fair. why should hard working pepole be on houcing list while there is some who refuse work get a home.

 

 

I'm sorry, what? Why shouldn't someone earning 50k or 100k or 200k pay more tax than someone earning 8k? How is that even vaguely fair to the person earning 8k who has far less take home pay than the person on 50k but not necessarily a proportional reduction in living costs? On 8k a year at 25% tax you would be taking home roughly £500 a month to cover all of your living costs. On 50k a year at 25% tax you would be taking home roughly £3k a month to cover your living costs - that's 6 times more, how on earth is that fair to the person with £500 when there's no way you can assume their living costs are 6 times less than the person with £3k (particularly not if they can't claim any benefits as you're proposing).

 

yeah but it would be more fair then the present tax sytem in where some one working as a cleaner pay a hire % of tax then some one who is a ceo of a bank is that fair. why cant we all pay a equale prosentage of tax no mather what we earn why allways atack the rich when we all know it dont work becouse they got all theys loopholes and tax breaks that are not wellknowen for the normal man. and when did it become a crime to be a high earner the country needs more high earners insted of all this low wage jobs that are around.

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Here's an example of how a council can cut its expenditure

 

Suffolk County Council to outsource most services

 

A county council has agreed to slash its £1.1bn budget by 30% by outsourcing almost all its services.

 

The decision by Suffolk County Council could be seen as model for other councils to follow.

 

Under the New Strategic Direction almost all council services will be offloaded to social enterprises or companies over the next few years.

 

Unions have warned the plan puts a huge number of the council's 27,000 jobs at risk.

 

The aim is to turn the authority from one which provides public services itself, to an enabling council which commissions other to carry out the services.

 

It could eventually see the council's workforce slimmed down to just a few hundred people who would manage the contracts.

 

Outsourcing by councils is nothing new.

 

In fact, a whole new private industry has been created over the past two decades delivering vital services, like rubbish collection and recycling, on behalf of local authorities.

 

What's different about Suffolk County Council is the scale of the proposed change - even sensitive services like child protection could be privatised - and the speed: Divestment is expected to be completed within four years.

 

The main public concern will be one of accountability. Councillors will no longer be directly responsible for the delivery of public services to the community which elected them.

 

Thirty years ago a Conservative minister Nicholas Ridley praised the style of local authorities in the American Mid-West where they "met once a year to award all the council service contracts to private firms".

 

Today, Suffolk County Council has brought that vision a little bit closer.

 

As far as I know the only time a major outsourcing happened in Shetland was when Sodexho took over catering at the GBH. Initially it was a total disaster.

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Lexander,

 

Before I really get into a response to your last post, let me absolutely crystal clear about one thing:

 

I am not attacking high earners and do not think that being a high earner is any way a crime or unsavoury. If people have managed either through skill, entrepreunership, or a combination of both managed to get themselves into a position where they're earning a high wage, then good for them I say - no doubt the majority of them deserve it and have worked their arses off to get it too.

 

However, that still doesn't answer/resolve the following issues that I have with your proposals:

 

1) Universal child benefit for all. You argue that a 30k cut off for this is too low and asked why I said this was a middle class salary. To answer the latter part of that, I stated it was a middle class salary because it is above the mean average salary in the UK (which is 26k) and also the median average salary (which is 22-25k). Your argument that 30k is too low a cut off leads directly into my next point, so I shall address it there.

 

Given that we keep being told that we are in a time of severe financial hardship & debt, how can you justify the state giving money to households/individuals earning 30k or more?

 

2) With regard to child benefit you argue that 30k is too low a cut off point and that 30k is not enough money for a couple (or an individual) to raise a child with. However, at the same time as arguing this, you also state that you want to abolish housing benefit - a benefit which is only paid to those who earn 10k or less - because (and I quote):

 

I would also scrap houcing benefits if you cant pay the rent the council should make hostels with bunkbeeds and have pepole who can pay move in to there houce.

 

So how exactly do you reconcile these 2 lines of argument? Either you think that 30k is a low salary and thus everyone on 30k or less should be eligible for some sort of financial assistance from the state or you don't. You can't argue that those at the very bottom end of the income scale should have their housing benefit taken away from them - a benefit which could in very real terms make the difference between an individual/household being able to pay their rent & basic living costs & still be able to provide an adequate standard of care for their child - but at the same time argue that those who sit in the middle or above the middle of the income scale need extra assistance to meet their living costs. Either people earning 30k (or less) need extra help to have an above the poverty line standard of living or they don't.

 

Personally I would argue that even if it's a household income of 30k or more you don't need (and that is the key word here after all) child benefit. I'm not saying that child benefit is of no value to these people, but there is a huge difference between need and something that is an added extra.

 

What evidence do you have that households/individuals earning 30k or more need child benefit?

 

3) You've still not explained how you expect someone who has recently lost their job to raise £10k in savings in the space of 4 months. Nor have you explained how you expect someone who has been out of work for a prolonged period of time (whether through genuine circumstances or not) to raise £10k in savings in 4 months.

 

As I stated originally, many of those who work and who have always worked would struggle to raise that sort of saving in 4 years, never mind 4 months. To use myself as an example here - I have been in work (to one degree or another) since the age of 16 and have been working full time since the age of 19, however if you were to turn around to me and tell me that I had until 24 January to raise £10k in savings I would think that you'd lost your mind!

 

4) You have not explained where the finance for the state housing bank will come from and nor have you addressed the issue of where the money to transform abandoned buildings into the co-ops you proposed will come from? How will you ensure that the funding for both these projects does not come from the public purse?

 

You've also not explained how you would deal with the inevitable interim period where there will be more people than there are spaces in new-style co-ops available? What would you do with these groups of people? Where would you house them (given that you've already turfed them out of their existing homes)?

 

5) You've not really explained any of this:

 

Why 4 months? Why do you deem 4 months to be reasonable for someone who may have an illness that has lead to unemployment? What if their treatment takes longer than 4 months? What if they have a degenerative disease that worsens over time rather than improves? What do you mean by within reason re: housing/heating costs? How does this sort of individual assessment save the public any money with a rising number of people out of work (soon to rise even more when the cuts hit)?

 

Or in fact how you would judge where this arbritary cut off would fall (if it weren't to be 4 months). Nor have you explained how this takes individual circumstances - such as illness with a 6 month plus treatment programme, disability or degenerative diseases - into account to ensure that people are not thrown out on to the street for things they have no control over.

 

How would you deal with situations where someone may not be able to join the public works programme (which from the sounds of it will be manual labour, if you're basing it on Roosevelt's New Deal) because of disability or illness?

 

6) How will your proposals deal with the fact that in the not very distant future unemployment will rise faster than jobs will become available?

 

How will your proposals deal with any of the following scenarios:

 

Scenario A: N is in the final year of his biology degree and wishes to go on to do a Masters degree. He applies but does not get any funding to cover the £12k cost of the Masters. He knows that neither he nor his parents can afford this cost, so refuses his offer of a place and tries to find a graduate job instead. He is unlucky and does not find a graduate job, but continues to apply for science jobs as well as other work as and when it comes up. He still fails to get a science job because either he lacks the Masters/PhD required for them or because he does not have the work experience. He begins to apply for more and more minimum wage jobs, but finds himself competing against a huge number of other people doing the same and is viewed as a liability by employers because of his degree. They don't see him as a worthy investment because they think that he will leave as soon as something better comes along.

 

N has now been out of education and without work for 3.5 months, he knows that 4 months is the cut off before the public works becomes his only option and he knows he has no other choices left to him now and he has also failed to save up the required £10k that may have been able to help him keep going. He takes a job on the public works, but every month he spends work there the more remote his chances of a science job become and now even the minimum wage jobs have gone because employers know that those on the public works are the ones who have been rejected from multiple jobs in the past. N becomes depressed and starts drinking to cope with it.

 

What in your proposed system prevents this from happening?

 

Scenario B: F is made redundant from his job as a middle manager in children's services at Xby council due to the spending cuts. He knows he cannot afford to be lazy about looking for work as he has a mortgage to pay and a family to care for. He also knows that even with his wife's wage & his benefits combined, they cannot save the required £10k in 4 months and still pay all their bills.

 

F starts applying for jobs in the private sector, but finds that interviews are few & far between because of the influx in other candidates brought on by the council cuts. When he does get interviews, he is unsuccessful due to his lack of a commercial or sales background. F changes tactics and starts applying for lower paid jobs because any job is better than none. Again, he is unsuccessful because he is deemed as over qualified or too old for the lower paid job. Four months have passed - he knows that he cannot refuse a position on the public works, so takes one so that he can help to support his family. He also knows that in taking this position, his chances of getting back into a job on the same level of pay, responsibility & seniority as his old job is becoming more & more remote and the private sector won't even consider him now because they see him as a failure as an older former manager on the public works.

 

How would your proposals help F? How would you ensure that there were enough jobs at all levels to cope with redundancies across the board (from low paid workers to managers)? How would you prevent stigma being attached to the public works?

 

Scenario C: S is young and trying her best to climb the career ladder before she has a family. She currently works in a university as a research administrator, after 2 years in her job she starts to experience the first signs of MS and this makes it more and more difficult for her to continue with her work. Her MS symptoms are increasing in severity fast and 18months after the first symptoms, she finds that she is unable to continue working at the university.

 

She starts applying for jobs and attends interviews as and when her symptoms are under control enough for her to do so.....but life is hard, and jobs that are flexible enough for her to do whilst she is ill are few and far between. Four months have almost passed and she has not been able to find a job that she can make work with her illness, she has also missed several interviews on days when her symptoms have been particularly bad and she is penalised for this. S knows that her symptoms prevent her from joining the public works and the cost of her hospital visits & medication on top of her living costs has stopped her saving the required 10k. She is stuck and the new welfare system (Lexander's ideas) means that she has 1 week until her benefits are stopped and she is evicted. Her family live 200 miles away and she can no longer drive. She has no where to go and next to no chance of finding a job in the next 7 days.

 

What happens to S? Is she just abandoned to rot in the street? Is she shoved into a shelter for the homeless where she may be surrounded by drug addicts and where the chances that she will be able to get the extra assistance she needs to cope with her illness are very small indeed?

 

Scenario D: L leaves school at 16 because she sees no point in continuing her education if she doesn't have to. Getting a degree didn't help her mum who graduated in 2011 without a graduate job and who failed to find a job within the governments new 4 month cut off period. L's mum has spent her whole life working on the public works and so has her dad - life has been hard and L still remembers when they were living in the homeless hostel when she was wee and the government were still building their new co-ops.

 

L doesn't even bother applying for private sector jobs because she knows that they don't take people like her, not these days where even the bottom rung jobs ask for graduates. Instead she joins the first public works programme that she can and uses the money she earns to help her family move into a slightly better co-op in the city. L meets a nice young man who is also on the works programme and who has grown up similar to her. They marry & she moves in with his family in their co-op where they have a child, R. They decide to do all they can to encourage R into the public works so that he will never end up on the street like so many of their parent's friends did when they couldn't find private sector work and when R comes home from school age 12 excitedly talking about university and wanting to do a degree in History, they tell him not to bother because university isn't for people like them.

 

How would your proposals stop this inevitable cycle of low aspirations from arising? How would your proposals enable social mobility?

 

6) How is a flat tax of 25% fairer on low earners when you cannot prove that their living costs are in proportion to their earnings? If anything it is unfair to them but fair to high earners because it gives high earners even more money to cover their living costs (which we can safely assume they're already able to cover adequately) and to pay for luxuries. It is unfair to low earners because it does not account for the fact that their living costs are not necessarily significantly lower than the high earners living costs, so they do not benefit at all from this shift.

 

NB: When I say living costs I mean the basics - rent, council tax, gas, electric, water, basic food - rather than the extras (cars, holidays, television, mobile phones etc - and whilst I realise that in Shetland, a car may come under the former category, in the majority of the country it is an extra).

 

Also, not everyone who is high earner is fiddling the system and I find it ironic that you're accusing me of attacking high earners when you seem to be assuming that all high earners are trying to swindle the tax man! Some do try and do this, there's no denying that, but it's quite hard to get away with and the HMRC (recent failings aside) do work bloody hard to prevent it and make those that do repay what they owe.

 

7) You seem to have ignored this:

 

Disagree with this entirely - why should I be forced to do national service when I'm a pacifist? Why should anyone be forced to do so if they don't want to or believe in non-violence? What about their right to make the choice for themselves?

 

Finally, I only mentioned the Soviet states because they were the nearest reference point that I had some knowledge of - I know little about the Scandanavian system and will freely admit that. However, my point about the authoritarianism of your proposals still stands and I would not want to live in a place where my civil liberties have been removed in the way that you're suggesting. I'd venture a guess that many others feel the same way given the uproar that many of Labour's policies were met with because they impinged on people's freedom & civil liberties.

 

I will be interested to come back later to read your answers to my questions - particularly in response the 4 scenarios that I've laid out in point six.

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so you say 30k for a houcehold is middelclass. what place on earth are you living on that is working class a houceholde will make more then that if both are working fulltime and still only are on minimumwage.

 

There's no way you can divide salaries into classes. For instance, builders and plumbers and engineers are traditionally working class jobs, but they may well earn more than nurses or office workers, which are traditionally more middle class.

 

Someone on minimum wage (£5.93/h) working full time (35 hours a week) will only earn about £10,000 a year, so you're not really accurate there Lexander. The average UK household earns just over £30,000 a year I think, so there will be many, many people earning less.

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I wonder what people think of this list leaked to the Telegraph today:

 

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/politics/8021739/Quango-cuts-177-bodies-to-be-scrapped-under-coalition-plans.html

 

I find it somewhat interesting that so many of those being culled are ones relating to disability, health, environment & food. I'd be interested to hear what any crofters on here think of the agricultural bodies that are being cut.

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... engineers are traditionally working class jobs,

Eh? I think not.

 

Have to agree with EM - engineers are usually classed as skilled labour as far as I know.

 

Also I don't think I ever said that 30k was middle class, much as Lexander might want to put the words in my mouth. I did say that 30k was a good income and that it would put an individual/household in the middle income bracket rather than the low income bracket.

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