So who recognises Britain as it is today?

surrey_commuter

Ballysmate wrote:

An earlier post of mine outlining a similar experience to that in Mamba's post.

Re: EU Referendum - In/Out or will we even get one?
Postby Ballysmate » Wed Oct 05, 2016 12:41 pm

I was talking to a company director last week who had relocated a factory to I think Maldon in Essex. The company went through over 600 staff in 2 years, filling 200 vacancies until the workforce settled down with a high proportion of foreign workers. His experience, and I admit it is a sample of 1, was that a lot of UK unemployed attended because they were forced to by the job centres and deliberately made themselves unsuitable.
I would hope that such people are in for a rude awakening post Brexit.

whilst not throwing them in the workhouse they have to be noticeably worse off than somebody who gets out of bed in the morning and goes to work.

dinyull

Coopster the 1st wrote:

rjsterry wrote:

Coopster the 1st wrote:

Surrey Commuter wrote:

Rolf F wrote:

Surrey Commuter wrote:

Personally I would remove as many benefits as possible and use the savings to increase the tax free allowance. This would reduce admin costs which would free up more money and reduce disincentives to work.

Have you done the maths on this or is it just one of those ideas that sounds superficially ingenious but would be basically disastrous? Eg the amount of money saved would be a fairly small benefit to low income workers but the very worst off would be massively penalised (as they'd be paying for it).

pension tax relief is anywhere between £35-50bn so plenty of room there. When I say benefits I am eyeing this up as well as Married mans allowance, child benefit (£11bn) , tax credits (£30bn), housing benefit (£26bn). Oh and stop paying heating allowance and free bus passes and TV licences to every pensioner (£5bn)

You lift loads out of the tax net and stop many universal benefits to replace them with new schemes to target money where it is needed.

We have similar thinking around benefits so I have no problem with agreeing with you. It gives balance.

I'm not sure about Pension tax relief, the less relief the less saved via pension, and that long term leads to higher state pension requirements. I do agree it can be trimmed at the top end but not sure how much that would yield.

Child benefit should be for 2 children only so there is scope there.

Agree on tax credits as above, same for housing benefit but any immediate savings on HB should be put into a state run house building company.

I agree that pensioner benefits should be means tested so not sure how much of that £5bn you would see

The biggest problem with any of the above is having the balls to actually go through with implementing it against the noise created

Much as the country needs more investment in social housing, flooding the housing market would require a fairly suicidal government.

If aimed at reducing the HB bill, I think a lot of people would support this if it fed through to lower taxes which after a few years the option would be there.

It's quite clear the private sector does not want to step up to solve the housing issues this country has.

The private sector are very interested, but only on their terms.

Our work crosses over into house building and the house builders are only interested in building 4 and 5 bed houses on greenbelt land. Despite masses of brownfield sites being readily available any house built on green belt generates much more profit. Again, 5 bed homes aimed at professionals generate more profit than 2 and 3 bed affordable homes.

Govt. could do a whole lot worse than setup it's own company building what is needed.

Stevo_666

mamba80 wrote:

Anecdotally. a mate of mine, a Pole working as a factory manager in wales, says the uk workers who he interviewed are fine to work day shifts, the problem is w/e and night shifts, they dont want to do them, so they predominately employ EU workers

Mamba, most people have a price in terms of what they would be willing to do job-wise. Surely it is the case in your example that UK workers are not willing to do evenings or weekends for the pay that is on offer? So logically this factory, in the absence of enough EU workers to fill the vacancies, would need to up their rates of pay to attract UK workers. End result = workers get paid more, business owner ends up with less. Apart from the fact that it would represent the market and law of supply and demand in action, I'm not clear why you are objecting to that scenario?

pblakeney

Dinyull wrote:

Govt. could do a whole lot worse than setup it's own company building what is needed.

Indeed. In fact, could Councils not do this on a smaller, more local scale and collect rent?
Now, what could we call the houses built by Councils?

DeVlaeminck

Surrey Commuter wrote:

whilst not throwing them in the workhouse they have to be noticeably worse off than somebody who gets out of bed in the morning and goes to work.

Yes you mean make work pay better, open up opportunities to advance and better yourself? Or do you favour cutting benefits? Are people really surprised that voters are becoming increasingly disillusioned with the establishment when they see the wealthy increasingly better off whilst their own prospects and consequently those of their children diminish? If people don't feel they have a stake in society why would they give a toss about that society?

rolf_f

Dinyull wrote:

Our work crosses over into house building and the house builders are only interested in building 4 and 5 bed houses on greenbelt land. Despite masses of brownfield sites being readily available any house built on green belt generates much more profit. Again, 5 bed homes aimed at professionals generate more profit than 2 and 3 bed affordable homes..

When you look at a pair of semis costing less than a single 5 bed house this becomes very obvious.

surrey_commuter

Dinyull wrote:

Coopster the 1st wrote:

rjsterry wrote:

Coopster the 1st wrote:

Surrey Commuter wrote:

Rolf F wrote:

Surrey Commuter wrote:

Personally I would remove as many benefits as possible and use the savings to increase the tax free allowance. This would reduce admin costs which would free up more money and reduce disincentives to work.

Have you done the maths on this or is it just one of those ideas that sounds superficially ingenious but would be basically disastrous? Eg the amount of money saved would be a fairly small benefit to low income workers but the very worst off would be massively penalised (as they'd be paying for it).

pension tax relief is anywhere between £35-50bn so plenty of room there. When I say benefits I am eyeing this up as well as Married mans allowance, child benefit (£11bn) , tax credits (£30bn), housing benefit (£26bn). Oh and stop paying heating allowance and free bus passes and TV licences to every pensioner (£5bn)

You lift loads out of the tax net and stop many universal benefits to replace them with new schemes to target money where it is needed.

We have similar thinking around benefits so I have no problem with agreeing with you. It gives balance.

I'm not sure about Pension tax relief, the less relief the less saved via pension, and that long term leads to higher state pension requirements. I do agree it can be trimmed at the top end but not sure how much that would yield.

Child benefit should be for 2 children only so there is scope there.

Agree on tax credits as above, same for housing benefit but any immediate savings on HB should be put into a state run house building company.

I agree that pensioner benefits should be means tested so not sure how much of that £5bn you would see

The biggest problem with any of the above is having the balls to actually go through with implementing it against the noise created

Much as the country needs more investment in social housing, flooding the housing market would require a fairly suicidal government.

If aimed at reducing the HB bill, I think a lot of people would support this if it fed through to lower taxes which after a few years the option would be there.

It's quite clear the private sector does not want to step up to solve the housing issues this country has.

The private sector are very interested, but only on their terms.

Our work crosses over into house building and the house builders are only interested in building 4 and 5 bed houses on greenbelt land. Despite masses of brownfield sites being readily available any house built on green belt generates much more profit. Again, 5 bed homes aimed at professionals generate more profit than 2 and 3 bed affordable homes.

Govt. could do a whole lot worse than setup it's own company building what is needed.

Developing brownfield sites attracts VAT - easy enough to cut that if the political will was there.

dinyull

Surrey Commuter wrote:

Dinyull wrote:

Coopster the 1st wrote:

rjsterry wrote:

Coopster the 1st wrote:

Surrey Commuter wrote:

Rolf F wrote:

Surrey Commuter wrote:

Personally I would remove as many benefits as possible and use the savings to increase the tax free allowance. This would reduce admin costs which would free up more money and reduce disincentives to work.

Have you done the maths on this or is it just one of those ideas that sounds superficially ingenious but would be basically disastrous? Eg the amount of money saved would be a fairly small benefit to low income workers but the very worst off would be massively penalised (as they'd be paying for it).

pension tax relief is anywhere between £35-50bn so plenty of room there. When I say benefits I am eyeing this up as well as Married mans allowance, child benefit (£11bn) , tax credits (£30bn), housing benefit (£26bn). Oh and stop paying heating allowance and free bus passes and TV licences to every pensioner (£5bn)

You lift loads out of the tax net and stop many universal benefits to replace them with new schemes to target money where it is needed.

We have similar thinking around benefits so I have no problem with agreeing with you. It gives balance.

I'm not sure about Pension tax relief, the less relief the less saved via pension, and that long term leads to higher state pension requirements. I do agree it can be trimmed at the top end but not sure how much that would yield.

Child benefit should be for 2 children only so there is scope there.

Agree on tax credits as above, same for housing benefit but any immediate savings on HB should be put into a state run house building company.

I agree that pensioner benefits should be means tested so not sure how much of that £5bn you would see

The biggest problem with any of the above is having the balls to actually go through with implementing it against the noise created

Much as the country needs more investment in social housing, flooding the housing market would require a fairly suicidal government.

If aimed at reducing the HB bill, I think a lot of people would support this if it fed through to lower taxes which after a few years the option would be there.

It's quite clear the private sector does not want to step up to solve the housing issues this country has.

The private sector are very interested, but only on their terms.

Our work crosses over into house building and the house builders are only interested in building 4 and 5 bed houses on greenbelt land. Despite masses of brownfield sites being readily available any house built on green belt generates much more profit. Again, 5 bed homes aimed at professionals generate more profit than 2 and 3 bed affordable homes.

Govt. could do a whole lot worse than setup it's own company building what is needed.

Developing brownfield sites attracts VAT - easy enough to cut that if the political will was there.

Mate works as a land buyer at a big house builder up here, he's been told to not even consider brown field as they can't use it as pr/marketing for the company.

He also said that they can get around building the % required of affordable housing by paying a fee into the councils pot of money for affordable housing.

bompington

Dinyull wrote:

Our work crosses over into house building and the house builders are only interested in building 4 and 5 bed houses on greenbelt land. Despite masses of brownfield sites being readily available any house built on green belt generates much more profit. Again, 5 bed homes aimed at professionals generate more profit than 2 and 3 bed affordable homes..

It's been quite depressing to see the countryside around Dundee (pop. 150,000 or so, with lots of derelict industrial land) fill up with thousands of identihutches in soulless estates with no amenities, character or heart. This actually includes a staggeringly high proportion of Scotland's tiny acreage of category 1 agricultural land.
I'm sure it's the same up and down the country. You would really think that it would be in everyone's interests to find some incentive for brownfield.

bobmcstuff

mamba80 wrote:

from the end of ww2 until the late 1970's the rate was around the 1.5 to 2% mark and remember, no long term sick or kids in "training schemes" had they been applied the rate would have been even lower.
1.6m unemployed, who are classed as fit and actively seeking work... yet we have net immigration rates of 300k per year? many of whom are coming here to work!!!

Ultra low unemployment is inflationary, therefore not necessarily a good thing.

Also at that time the government was artificially propping up a lot of the industries which were employing those people.

Unemployment rates of 1 or 2 % isn't really healthy (although of course you want your 4 or 5% unemployed to be transient unemployed rather than long term).

rolf_f

The big housing developments around mine are mostly Brownfield. Mostly they are amusingly dependent on traffic clogged roads crossing the River Aire. How on earth the residents are going to get out of their estates in the mornings I have no idea as the roads are generally gridlocked without their contribution.

pinno

bompington wrote:

Dinyull wrote:

Our ...homes..

It's been quite depressing to see the countryside around Dundee (pop. 150,000 or so, with lots of derelict industrial land) fill up with thousands of identihutches in soulless estates with no amenities, character or heart. This actually includes a staggeringly high proportion of Scotland's tiny acreage of category 1 agricultural land.
I'm sure it's the same up and down the country. You would really think that it would be in everyone's interests to find some incentive for brownfield.

You haven't been to Swindon have you?

finchy

Pinno wrote:

bompington wrote:

Dinyull wrote:

Our ...homes..

It's been quite depressing to see the countryside around Dundee (pop. 150,000 or so, with lots of derelict industrial land) fill up with thousands of identihutches in soulless estates with no amenities, character or heart. This actually includes a staggeringly high proportion of Scotland's tiny acreage of category 1 agricultural land.
I'm sure it's the same up and down the country. You would really think that it would be in everyone's interests to find some incentive for brownfield.

You haven't been to Swindon have you?

Funnily enough, I bought my boy a picture dictionary last week. The entry for "sh1thole" was illustrate by a photo of Swindon.

bobmcstuff

Speaking of training it seems the government is determined to make things harder for young people:

Martin Lewis wrote:

If you sign a contract, both sides should keep to it. If you advertise a loan, the lender should be held to the terms it was sold under. Thankfully in the UK we have laws and regulations to ensure this happens. With one exception — student loan contracts. Millions of students and parents have been told and sold a lie, and we need the law changed to stop it happening again.

A year ago, George Osborne talked about students in his Autumn Statement. Yet there was one thing he didn’t have the balls to mention, instead just burying it in the notes. It stated the government would breach a promise it had made to the millions of English students who started university since 2012 — and in doing so, retrospectively increase the cost of their loans by thousands of pounds.

Student loans are designed to be repaid only once you leave university. You pay back 9 per cent of everything earned above £21,000 a year. When the new, much-criticised 2012 system of £9,000 maximum annual tuition fees was launched, the government repeatedly promised and confirmed that from April 2017, this £21,000 figure would be uprated each year in line with average earnings.

Indeed, I even have a copy of the letter sent to parents by former universities minister David Willetts, unambiguously, without caveats, confirming this would happen.

Last year, despite a flaccid consultation, in which 84 per cent of respondents warned against it, the government went ahead and performed a u-turn, freezing this threshold at £21,000 for at least five years.

Graduates will pay more each month because of it. The threshold should have risen to £25,000 but is stuck at £21,000, so everyone over this level repays an extra £360 a year.

This is a regressive change. Lower and middle-earning graduates won’t clear what they owe within the 30 years before repayments are wiped, so they will repay thousands more over the life of their loans. Yet high-earning graduates, who clear them within that time limit, will see their total payments reduced, because repaying more means they clear them quicker, accruing less interest.

Martin Lewis wrote:

No commercial lender could make a change to its loans in this way. It is wrong for the government to do so. Retrospective changes are bad governance

Martin Lewis, writing in the FT: https://www.ft.com/content/0d434316-aa7 ... 378e4fef24

It really annoys me that the government seems to be loading the system further against young people and getting away with it.

Something needs to change - the reason they're doing this is because young people don't vote as much so there's no impediment to treating them badly compared to doing something which affects older people (like scrapping the pensions triple lock, which at the moment guarantees pensioners income to rise above inflation and salaries)

BelgianBeerGeek

finchy wrote:

Pinno wrote:

bompington wrote:

Dinyull wrote:

Our ...homes..

It's been quite depressing to see the countryside around Dundee (pop. 150,000 or so, with lots of derelict industrial land) fill up with thousands of identihutches in soulless estates with no amenities, character or heart. This actually includes a staggeringly high proportion of Scotland's tiny acreage of category 1 agricultural land.
I'm sure it's the same up and down the country. You would really think that it would be in everyone's interests to find some incentive for brownfield.

You haven't been to Swindon have you?

Funnily enough, I bought my boy a picture dictionary last week. The entry for "sh1thole" was illustrate by a photo of Swindon.

Used to be Alsager. Like the idea of a kids picture dictionary that has attempted to define "sh1th0le".

pinno

The only good thing about Swindon is the fact that it is a stone's throw from the M4. You can see that mind crushing, crammed clonebox estate from the A419.

Matthewfalle

BelgianBeerGeek wrote:

finchy wrote:

Pinno wrote:

bompington wrote:

Dinyull wrote:

Our ...homes..

It's been quite depressing to see the countryside around Dundee (pop. 150,000 or so, with lots of derelict industrial land) fill up with thousands of identihutches in soulless estates with no amenities, character or heart. This actually includes a staggeringly high proportion of Scotland's tiny acreage of category 1 agricultural land.
I'm sure it's the same up and down the country. You would really think that it would be in everyone's interests to find some incentive for brownfield.

You haven't been to Swindon have you?

Funnily enough, I bought my boy a picture dictionary last week. The entry for "sh1thole" was illustrate by a photo of Swindon.

Used to be Alsager. Like the idea of a kids picture dictionary that has attempted to define "sh1th0le".

It still is Alsager.

We had a briefing at work about Aleppo and all the stuff going on there and at the end the Hereford dude finished with the word s: "but remember, it's not as bad as Alsager. Now that's a shiiiiithole".

I joke you not.

Matthewfalle

I shouldn't put this on here as it's a bit hush - hush squeaky sneaky squirrel, but I don't care.

5 sent us a load of piccies taken from a spy satellite of places around the world to avoid - essentially the biggest shiiiiitholes you could find (Syria, Afghan, Bogota, Mogadishu, Guernsey - that sort of thing).

This was the one for Alsager https://www.google.je/search?q=blocked+ ... Cmq1MpM%3A

don't say I didn't warn you ..........

ballysmate

Matthewfalle wrote:

I shouldn't put this on here as it's a bit hush - hush squeaky sneaky squirrel, but I don't care.

5 sent us a load of piccies taken from a spy satellite of places around the world to avoid - essentially the biggest shiiiiitholes you could find (Syria, Afghan, Bogota, Mogadishu, Guernsey - that sort of thing).

This was the one for Alsager https://www.google.je/search?q=blocked+ ... Cmq1MpM%3A

don't say I didn't warn you ..........

I know there are some on here that love the place, but perhaps Dubai should be added to that list.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world ... 22326.html

pinno

Ballysmate wrote:

Matthewfalle wrote:

I shouldn't put this on here as it's a bit hush - hush squeaky sneaky squirrel, but I don't care.

5 sent us a load of piccies taken from a spy satellite of places around the world to avoid - essentially the biggest shiiiiitholes you could find (Syria, Afghan, Bogota, Mogadishu, Guernsey - that sort of thing).

This was the one for Alsager https://www.google.je/search?q=blocked+ ... Cmq1MpM%3A

don't say I didn't warn you ..........

I know there are some on here that love the place, but perhaps Dubai should be added to that list.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world ... 22326.html

Open season for budding rapists? B4stards.

Matthewfalle

Pinno wrote:

Ballysmate wrote:

Matthewfalle wrote:

I shouldn't put this on here as it's a bit hush - hush squeaky sneaky squirrel, but I don't care.

5 sent us a load of piccies taken from a spy satellite of places around the world to avoid - essentially the biggest shiiiiitholes you could find (Syria, Afghan, Bogota, Mogadishu, Guernsey - that sort of thing).

This was the one for Alsager https://www.google.je/search?q=blocked+ ... Cmq1MpM%3A

don't say I didn't warn you ..........

I know there are some on here that love the place, but perhaps Dubai should be added to that list.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world ... 22326.html

Open season for budding rapists? B4stards.

Funnily enough, it's a lesser known fact every rapist and/or paedophile in the whole world comes from Alsager. They breed them there in pools of toxic fetid miasma before exporting them.

Someone tried to warn them that Brexit would stuff up the export market but buggered if they would listen.

Matthewfalle

The racists known as Trump and Farage are also both from Alsager.

Say no more.

pinno

Get some sleep mate and go easy on the Japanese food.

verylonglegs

Matthewfalle wrote:

The racists known as Trump and Farage are also both from Alsager.

Say no more.

Christ that's shocking news, I can't believe I just read that...Trump and Farage are racists?