Austerity has hardened the nation's heart

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Short answer: governments are not households.

That is true. Governments are armed to the teeth and those in government have no qualms about taking the money of other people by force. They call it taxation and compassion.

ruveyn

Poor you.

Governments charge for the services they provide. Most people are perfectly happy to pay for services.

I know I couldn't live without said services. I challenge even the most strident Randite to prove he or she could get on without government services.

-Bill, otherwise known as Kraichgauer

Ok, I'll have a crack at addressing the bits of this that I can make sense of. You 'don't think' that the South East is doing okay, or that it attracts more investment than other areas. I point you at the massive high tech corridors filled with modern manufacturing and corporate headquarters, radiating out from the M25 towards Cambridge and up the Thames Valley. Also the geographical bulk of the South East sits within the London travel to work area - and London, taking two thirds of the total population of the South East, does attract massively, massively more investment and capital spending than anywhere else in the country - disproportionately in property. Industry has been run down everywhere, including the South East - I'm sure it is the worst performing sector. But at least there are many others there, due to its well-funded infrastructure and proximity to London. Thus a person living in, say, Buckinghamshire, has a much lower chance of being unable to find work than a person living in Ebbw Vale or Burnley has, and a much higher chance of the available work being adequately paid due to the broader economic base - my point about the industrial factory jobs which provided the backbone of employment in industrial regions being replaced, so far as it goes, with insecure and poorly paid retail, warehouse and call centre jobs which require top ups from the state in order to be a living wage. (i.e. tax credits - I really don't get what you are on about regarding 'self-induced tax payers topping up their minimum wages besides the fact they seem to be doing okay' - you do understand how the tax credit system works right? It's basically a subsidy to the employer; the extra money that the worker needs to have a decent income is paid as a tax credit - by the state - in with the wages in order to top up poverty pay, so that pay rates can be kept low. That shouldn't be okay.) If you don't believe me, feel free to compare the statistics showing relative household income and unemployment rates for the South East versus most of the rest of the country. I won't deny there are pockets of the South East which have not shared in the relative prosperity of the region, e.g. parts of North Kent, Luton, however these reflect that much of the region did not depend on traditional manufacturing for its livelihood prior to deindustrialisation, whereas the reverse is the case elsewhere so you see islands of prosperity instead, and whole counties which struggle like Thanet.

The second part I really struggled to make clear what you were talking about. Immigration? British working class people being too lazy to take poorly paid jobs, or simply being crowded out? Environmental issues? Something to do with global competition? I'm sorry, I really don't understand what points you are trying to say here - I might even agree with some of it but I'm not sure what you're driving at. Hence my initial 'pathetic' 'huh?' response.

There you are. I've highlighted the areas you should look at again. When you speak about manual labour, make sure you have all the correct facts. For starters, if industries were receiving the amount of hard capital you were speaking of, then why are there so many full-time workers being made redundant, including my dad 7 years ago, which at that point he mananged to get another job just as the factories were drying up all English speaking vacancies. He now is working with a ton of Bulgarian and polish workers and Lithuanians who cannot speak a word of the native tongue without looking like someone else has cocked up the era of their ways so badly they've jeopardised health and safety in the long term. So how are you speaking about capital returning when you haven't even weighed up the pros and cons of the argument, like mansion tax and bedroom tax hitting the south like a wind turbine fast forwarding the trouble we see today. The margins do not stack up, its state capital that is non-existent now and what sector would you honestly say has the most outgrown number of paid over-skilled workers?
Even though the work is manual I don't see management getting up off of their backsides and giving safe lectures, the sensible solution in their eyes, is to chuck half the growing working population out of Britain and import non-paying tax E.u workers when half the time they shouldn't even be allowed to hibernate here. They are the growing concern for the rapid decline in industry as were the debates for more foreign enterprise from the E.u summit, and if we didn't have the eu blown up in our faces all the time and they'd stuck with their own currency I doubt there would be so many homeless and poor people out of a job today.

I understand now - you are arguing against points I haven't made. I'll elaborate a bit (I did jot down a response but accidentally deleted it. Bugger )

You misunderstand me. Industry is only one (neglected) sector of the economy in which companies, banks, venture capitalists etc can invest. Industry has declined in the South East, as well as in the rest of the UK, as you clearly know from your own experiences. I wasn't arguing that capital was being diverted to industry in the South East; merely to the South East in general - which has a much broader economic base than the traditional industrial regions of the country, so providing far more attractive investment opportunities. Hence my previous comment regarding a need for incentives to entice investors to look at other regions - without a good reason there are much safer bets in the South. It isn't 'coming back' - its already there, what there is of it.



See above.



See above.

Thanks for clarifying the rest of your first post, I get it now - it was primarily immigration you were referring to (the business about ecosystems, toothbrushes and the Queen threw me a little).

With this I agree - EU migration has been a disaster for British working class people - it should never have been allowed to happen at the speed and scale that it did. Employers may have benefited from the flow of cheap flexible labour, but folk relying on agency and casual work, small contractors and labourers certainly didn't. We should get out of the EU, now.



This bit isn't accurate though; mansion tax hasn't happened (and if it does come to pass, only those with properties worth over £2 million will be affected). Bedroom tax hits all of us across the country - in fact, there are far more underoccupied social homes in Northern areas, due to council and housing association policies of allocating a spare bedroom to tenants, as land was cheaper and more available here - so there are very few one bedroom properties available for people to downsize into. So this isn't really relevant. The benefit cap, however, is - that will have much more impact in London and the South East due to higher rents - there are families in London already who now have no money for food due to the cap, as much of their allowed income goes in housing benefit, straight to the landlord.

I bet you would.
Then I could sit around and whine all day about how unfair the world is and how butthurt I am that no one cares about me. NOT!


If given a choice of the two I'd much rather be "Mr. Macho Self-Sufficient Tough Guy" than you.


/\ Personal attack.

And you probably thought I forgot about you.

I wouldn't be surprised if nobody cared about you.

Well, you're neither. You're a taxpayer leach. At least the paycheck of the single welfare moms you so despise goes to raising children.


No. Merely a blunt observation (in the words of Dox47). If you chose to use your brain when replying to people my observation would cease to apply.

If you can only infer from my earlier post that I think the solution to the lack of jobs is to throw all the unemployed on welfare ( rather than pay people to do something useful, like fixing our decrepit third world infrastructure so bridges don't collapse and kill people. ), I can only infer that you've chosen not to use your brain.

And I wouldn't care. Hell, I doubt that I'd even notice.

Raising children they can't afford to eventually give our cops, courts, and corrections system something to deal with.


Eventually something has to pay for the welfare. Unlike the left, when we see spending we want to know where the money will come from.

We should switch to a black and white public television service so the taxpayers can save money.

Is there still such a thing as black & white TV?

There will be black and white televisions as soon as we impose a luxury tax on color televisions

[img][800:720]http://i1326.photobucket.com/albums/u660/2lucky4snuffy/4bb1d208be103bfa6e2a9eadd43f9bfd_zpsc81024e3.jpg[/img]

People should be encouraged to till up their yards and plant food,like the Victory gardens of WW ll.I planted this wheat in my field, I can eat it or the deer can fatten on it.More public gardens for food in urban areas.If people planted tomatoes and other edible stuff in their yard it would cut down on the expense of mowing,and less use of lawn chemicals.I see all these big barren yards where people could at least plant some fruit trees.Some apartment dwellers that have decks with sun can grow lots of things in containers.This is a good way to help yourself out,healthy food and gardening is good exercise.

So that explains you. You probably don't care about anyone else either.


Because some a**hole knocked them up and dumped them. I'm sure kicking them both out onto the street or taking the child away from the mother will lead to a better outcome. I know you probably oppose abortion but it's okay if the mother locks the baby in the closet while she goes to flip burgers 12 hours a day. Maybe that's what happened to you.


Learn to read kid. My solution isn't to put the unemployed on welfare. Unless you consider every government and/or government contracted job "welfare" in which case you are a recipient.