Have UK Conservatives Waged A War Against The Poor?

The BBC is saying 400,000 people have had their benefits stopped since last year. These people won't appear on the government's unemployment figures until they have an active JSA claim again.

Meanwhile, they're mandating people to work full time for free at places like Argos and Tesco. If they refuse they have their benefit stopped or are even banned from claiming for up to 3 years. These people do of course show up in the government statistics as employed, even though they are still on JSA.

Where do you stand on this? For me, it's absolutely outrageous. We are making these people do community service now? It's a crime to be unemployed?

Surely even Thatcher would never have gone this far?

Any thoughts?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-24829866

http://www.boycottworkfare.org/?page_id=31

 

Well this is what happens when you put your life in the hands of the government they do what they like for what ever reason.

I believe that the welfare state should be removed, the NHS removed, public education removed and state Pensions removed. Allowing everybody to spend much of their own money and creating increased choice and economy growth which will create more jobs. Jobs that will not be made because of the taking of one persons money to give it to someone else through taxation. Rather peoples own abilities and innovation. So my overall point is if people don't like how the government treats them, why do they vote for parties which support the government having more control over them. It is their own fault.

 

Hello, and thanks for the reply.

I certainly don't believe taxation is a good idea, and I applaud you for recognising this, but the harsh reality is that the public needs to pay tax in our present system because the government has to borrow all of its money and then pay it back with interest. It is very similar in America. The government (or indeed society) can never pay its debt back at any given moment because the capital plus interest is always greater than the funds in circulation. Thus they must keep taxing you.

I do not believe that it is possible to minimise government intervention within an economic hierarchy such as capitalism, simply because government serves to protect the private property of those few whom capitalism has most benefited. It is necessary to stop the dissent of the majority taking back what was been accumulated by the minority.

Don't get me wrong: I don't think government (at least in its current incarnation) is necessarily a good thing, but I believe corporations and banks are just the other side of the coin. They are even more ruthless because they have nothing else to satisfy other than the profit incentive. The only solution I see is the complete and total abandonment of capitalism, but of course there has been such a generational adaptation to it, that it would be like having our eyes removed for years afterwards.

 

Welcome to neoliberal Europe .
It is a class war .

 

We need taxes yes to pay down the debt, but we also need to cut to get the deficit down. We aren't cutting anywhere near enough from the 3 main parts of government spending NHS, Pensions and Education. We are cutting from welfare which I agree with, however I think the way the government is cutting is bad. They aren't giving up power or keeping people on welfare, rather forcing people to give the government to get welfare, which in my view should be illegal.

We don't have capitalism, we have a mixed economy or socialism. It is possible to minimise government, but you need to minimise it's power which means government passing laws to minimise itself or local government having more powers. I think the latter would work better. So police and road could be done by local government.

Ok the government caused the banks to have all this power and lose all this money because the government covered their risk at the tax payer expense and then blamed everything on the banks, not government which caused the problem. So if you want to correct what the banks have done, you need to remove government laws, regulations and protections. The profit incentive means the banks will be more careful than government because if they lose money they go out of business, if the government loses money they raise taxes.

We need to remove socialism, not freedom, choice, equality of opportunity that comes with free market, free trade capitalism within the rule of law.

 

There's nothing socialist about the UK economy. We have always wanted to be like the United States, not mainland Europe.

This is a fair point, I think. But ultimately it fails to address that the recession was caused by the banks, not the government. If anything, it was lack of adequate government intervention into the banking system that permitted the 2008 crisis to happen.

 

When the government has a near monopoly on the Healthcare, Pensions, Benefits and Education, with regulations and laws saying people must get paid atleast this amount of money, people can't work longer than this amount of time. You can't call that country capitalist. I would say mixed economy, rather than Socialist, but by no means capitalist.

No the direct cause of the banks being willing and able to make the loans that did which went bad is because of the US and UK government wanting the poor to get housing for political reasons. Then the FED and Bank of England lowering interests rates making it more cost effective to loan money to buy a house, than save money. Then the UK and US government gave the banks cheap loans which they used to bet with. So the cause was the UK and US government, with massive help from their central banks. You can blame the banks for their part, but the cause was government. As to the more regulation argument, it doesn't work other than to lead to more regulations. I have noticed this in argument with people, they bring up a point where they say government regulation worked, just for me to do the research and find out that the government regulation they like was a reaction to earlier government regulations which failed.

 

I think there is a whole set of policies here, some good, some with potential but poorly managed and some fundamentally flawed.

I've no problem with the rules and punishments for people on JSA, though there is evidence that they're being pushed too strictly. It shouldn't be allowed to impact official unemployment figures but that's a side point as far as the individuals involved are concerned. The workfare scheme was a mess. Not an entirely unreasonable idea for some people but taken too far with some clearly ulterior motives.

I think a major problem is expectation, fed by the media. On one hand they publish articles about how much money is "given" to people on benefits and how they're all lazy and living off the state but when government tries to do something about it, the same hacks publish stories spinning as much negativity as they can out of that. I've no doubt that reality is much more complex and nuanced than even the BBC gives space for (certainly more than the tabloids do), because significantly, it's more complex and nuanced than most of us would care to read about. Politicians don't help of course, with their own spin and twisting of statistics, which the media will happily publish one day so they can rip them apart the next. That's all about selling papers and getting votes, nothing to do with helping anyone.

I think, as with so many things, a question of quick fix over real solution here. Nobody - government, media or taxpayer - are actually willing to allow a system to develop that actually seeks to solve the root problems here, because that takes time and costs money. In the long term it would be beneficial for everyone involved but nobody does long term any more. Politicians only think to the next election, editors to the next headline and taxpayers to the next paycheque.

 

Maybe, despite all the moaning and specific complaints, deep down people overall recognise that our governments don't do an entirely terrible job and any alternative such as your proposal would be, in practice, an absolute disaster by comparison?

 

What a load of rubbish, government is a copout so people don't have to take responsability for their actions and choices. I don't want to be able to choose my healthcare or hospital because if I get it wrong and something happens I will feel bad. Or if I send my son to a poor school I will feel it is my fault. So for this they force limited choice on everybody else, taking away their freedom and increasing the power of the commons so it has the same powers as the Queen or King had. What I want is freedom, choice and equality of opportunity through that freedom to choose. I am what many would call a Libertarian, however I call myself a post-modern Conservative. I believe that everybody is born with rights, the law should be step up to protected those right from government, which then protects those rights from other people or foreign nations. What I want made Britain rich, free and powerful for 200 years. In practice what we have now is a disaster by comparison.

 

The descendants of all the foreign conquerors (mostly of 'England') support the tory party because it hates the British people and always uses any excuse to try to kill them off, or at least make them very poor and hungry.

 

Where do you get this tosh from?

 

I think it's more complex than that and I don't agree with you that a corporate monopoly would be any more beneficial than a government one. You say the government has a monopoly on healthcare but what about BUPA?, and AXA? You say it has a monopoly on education but there are plenty of private schools. You say it has a monopoly on pensions, but what about private pension schemes? You say it has a monopoly on benefits, but what about company sick pay?

Your premise here is incorrect. Truer to say that the government has a monopoly on providing these things for the poor, since they are generally jobless or in low-paid employment and cannot afford the more expensive private schemes. I'll certainly grant you that there are socialist ideas at play in Britain, but most of those are only grudgingly accepted because of pressure from the EU (human rights laws being a good example). Look, I think this argument is entirely relative. If you compare Britain to the US, you could contend it has a mixed economy. Compare it to Sweden and it's diehard capitalist.

You are right that the US and UK governments wanted more housing, but you are not right that the government loaned the banks money. That's not how the game works. Banks print money, they loan money, and they decide what the interest and inflation rates are. Governments have no money of their own because they always owe more in interest than they can claw back in tax. When the banks got bailed out, it was effectively a government advance which true enough on paper must be paid back, but no money will ever change hands. The deficit will be written off against the government's loan repayments.

You certainly raise a fair point about the government's push for more people to own their own homes. But you are not right to blame the government for the bank's reaction to that request. They obviously twisted it into something they believed was a cash cow in subprime lending, and began giving loans to people they were fully aware would not be able to pay them back. It was a win/win for them because any money loaned was leveraged against property. The banks were making money hand over fist from subprime lending because when a mortgage holder defaulted, they'd just repossess and resell, and all the money they'd previously collected became profit. They were able to do this in theory an unlimited amount of times with each property.

No, the recession was absolutely the fault of the banks. I believe this to be irrefutable. Granted, government has exacerbated the problem, and still is doing so, but the banks caused the crash. They are demonstrably and factually a parasite suckling on the fat teat of other people's hard work.

 

An interesting theory but I believe it is love for themselves rather than hatred for others which drives these people to do the things they do.

 

How inhumain sick and thoughtless people can be!

Your people are starving! Is this the best you sick bas7ards can offer? You're people are going hungry there children are going hungry and you aren't bothered! Aye.... Your in a Christian country! Pity you reprobates aren't educated enough to the meaning of Christianity or basic humanity.
Karma!

Highlander

 

I don't agree with the new rules about people who have come through the back-to-work program. In fact, I think it constitutes outright fascism. Our courts make people work for free when they've been convicted of crime, and that's effectively what the government is now forcing these people to do. I think it's barbaric and even worse when it's done under threat of potential starvation. That is literally what is happening.

That said, I do see your perspective. Unequivocally, some people need kicking up the backside and are clearly taking the p!ss. I think these people are a vast minority though, and we should be careful not to fall for the government's pot-stirring about them living off taxpayer's money because the reality is people who claim JSA are not living well. They are some of the poorest people in Western Europe. The government clearly does not want people on benefits, so it tries its best to give them just a little less than they need to live on, and makes them jump through hoops like circus animals to get it. Believe me, I have been on JSA: it is no picnic. It's a very hard life.

Don't mean to be confrontational, btw. Most of your post I completely agree with, but I think the new rules are just insane.

Playing one side off against the other. Absolutely fair point. Though the government frequently does this too.

Brilliantly put. And quite right.

 

Look up the backgrounds of your masters, man. 'Came over with the Conqueror' - any old conqueror - is their proudest boast. They are Germans, Danes, Normans, French, Dutch, you name it. Anything but British.

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Like everyone, they are mixed. They need some of us alive to live off, like other lice, who also love themselves but do us little good.

 

Everything I have learned from Thomas Sowell, Milton Friedman and Peter Schiff tells me I am correct to say the government and central banks caused the banking crash, the banks are to blame yes, but they didn't cause the problem, they just did what anyone would do if you basically had a unlimited support of money from government backed by tax payers.

I said the government has a near monopoly and the rest of the market is regulated by the government. So that is a monopoly in my book. You will fine it almost impossible to have a monopoly in a free market, free trade capitalist system within the rule of law. So you wouldn't be swapping one monopoly for another.

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To be British you must be white, protestant and english speaking with a British accent. I am Norman.

 

To be British is not to identify with nasty conquering minorities who came here on the make and continue so.

 

I don't think the poor are helped by these programs by government, otherwise why is the gap increasing between the Richest and poorest? Because the government stops trade and innovation with taxes and regulations, making it much harder for people to better thenselves which freedom, choice and equality of opportunity.

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Well the Welsh shouldn't have asked the Danish to come and help the defeat the Scottish then should they? It was their own fault.

 

Then that is your issue. Consider your sources. Look at who these people work for; who they are funded by. Ask yourself why their opinion is important enough to infiltrate the media. Is it because they're right? Or is it because they agree to argue only within the false parameters of the dominant ideology? I think you will find, upon investigation, that it is the latter.

 

Eh? Do Normans drink Scotch? I think you should go home and drink black coffee over fifteen history books.

 

I have watched liberal, progressive and leftwing things on yotube for years, but never agreed with them. Then I came across some Thomas Sowell interview and it blew me away, what he said about the minimum wage and banking crash makes perfect sense, compared to what the other things I had watched and read were saying. I am one of those people who actually listens to what people are saying before agreeing with them and the only person on British TV I agree with in some way is Peter Hitchens, but there is no capitalist person I have came across in Britain. Then from Thomas Sowell I found some Milton Friedman videos which I think are great the way his just puts people down with his arguments always makes me laugh. Peter Schiff, knows what he is talking about and isn't false or funded by anyone, he is rich himself.

 

I believe there are two separate things here. The new rules regarding JSA are about requiring people to be actively seeking work, attend meetings and the like, with the risk of loosing payments for a period of time. It appears there were similar rules previously but these are just a little tougher and maybe being implemented more strictly. That's the thing I didn't object to in principle.

The program of people effectively working for free is separate and that I agree has much more significant issues. Work experience can have it's place in some cases but it seems it was being grossly abused.

 

Tesco pays no tax!
Voda phone pays no tax!
Top shop pays no tax!
This is but three of the majority who don't pay any tax!

If your going to look for any change in corrupt practices thievery, stealing other people's pensions and assets, start at the top and work down.

No point at looking at a baby to judge it's potential, look at the parents.

Highlander