Ex Lion Tamer

Anyone willing to own up to any of the top 10 misconceptions? http://www.rssenews.org.uk/2013/07/rss-commission-new-research-into-public-perceptions-of-statistics/?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=Autotweets Teenage pregnancy: on average, we think teenage pregnancy is 25 times higher than official estimates: we think that 15% of girls under16 get pregnant each year, when official figures suggest it is around 0.6%. Crime: 58% do not believe that crime is falling, when the Crime Survey for England and Wales shows that incidents of crime were 19% lower in 2012 than in 2006/07 and 53% lower than in 1995. 51% think violent crime is rising, when it has fallen from almost 2.5 million incidents in 2006/07 to under 2 million in 2012. Job-seekers allowance: 29% of people think we spend more on JSA than pensions, when in fact we spend 15 times more on pensions (£4.9bn vs £74.2bn). Benefit fraud: people estimate that 34 times more benefit money is claimed fraudulently than official estimates: the public think that £24 out of every £100 spent on benefits is claimed fraudulently, compared with official estimates of £0.70 per £100. Foreign aid: 26% of people think foreign aid is one of the top 2-3 items government spends most money on, when it actually made up 1.1% of expenditure (£7.9bn) in the 2011/12 financial year. More people select this as a top item of expenditure than pensions (which cost nearly ten times as much, £74bn) and education in the UK (£51.5bn). Religion: we greatly overestimate the proportion of the population who are Muslims: on average we say 24%, compared with 5% in England and Wales. And we underestimate the proportion of Christians: we estimate 34% on average, compared with the actual proportion of 59% in England and Wales. Immigration and ethnicity: the public think that 31% of the population are immigrants, when the official figures are 13%. Even estimates that attempt to account for illegal immigration suggest a figure closer to 15%. There are similar misperceptions on ethnicity: the average estimate is that black and Asian people make up 30% of the population, when it is actually 11% (or 14% if we include mixed and other non-white ethnic groups). Age: we think the population is much older than it actually is – the average estimate is that 36% of the population are 65+, when only 16% are. Benefit bill: people are most likely to think that capping benefits at £26,000 per household will save most money from a list provided (33% pick this option), over twice the level that select raising the pension age to 66 for both men and women or stopping child benefit when someone in the household earns £50k+. In fact, capping household benefits is estimated to save £290m, compared with £5bn for raising the pension age and £1.7bn for stopping child benefit for wealthier households. Voting: we underestimate the proportion of people who voted in the last general election – our average guess is 43%, when 65% actually did.

Tax may not be quite the correct term but the point is that there is a shortage of 1-bedroom properties, so people are finding themselves having to pay more but unable to move. http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2013/mar/08/bedroom-tax-shortage-small-homes It also doesn't account for people with special needs who may require the extra space for equipment etc.

Obviously I can't speak for everyone, but I think most people on the left would acknowledge that the economy is now starting to pick up. Indeed it was some people on the right who argued that stagnation is 'the new normal' and that we had to cut our cloth accordingly. The key thing is that cutting too deep and refusing to put in place Keynesian stimulus when the economy was weak led to to three years of stagnation when we could potentially have achieved a similar result in terms of debt as % of GDP by encouraging growth. At the least we would have avoided some of the human suffering caused by unemployment/under-employment/benefit cuts/stagnant wages. The other issue is that growth will again be hindered when the next tranche of cuts come into play. Let's hope underlying growth is strong enough to counteract it. Certainly the government's infrastructure stimulus should not be scheduled so late. Whoever heard of cutting during a recession and then providing Keynsian stimulus once the economy is recovered/recovering?

Michu was the top scoring midfielder in La Liga, one of the best leagues in the world. Bony has an admittedly excellent scoring record in a league where Mateja Kezman scored 105 goals in 122 games. Bony may be great but you can never be sure when players come from Holland.

I think it's too early to be concerned about our transfer activity but I do wonder whether Cortese will decide to go on his summer holidays at a critical time in August again this year.

QT is a joke in that the left always ends up being represented by someone like Brand. It's because they are keen to have celebrities for the ratings, and most celebrities are left wing, so the non-politician spot gets taken up by them. As a result, intelligent left wing commentators are ignored

Not to mention appalling levels of poverty and inequality as a result

If free enterprise is stifled at somewhere approaching 50% then shouldn't we go for 40% or so? Why do we have to go all the way down to 20%, and go without all the benefits that government spending can bring?

Because it's beneficial to our economy to have fresh supplies of labour and skills from elsewhere in the world? And because when people are unfortunate enough to be born into countries with terrible poverty or wars the nice thing to do is let some of then get away from it and start a life here? Ultimately, why should people have to accept the hand they're dealt? The capitalist system is such that some countries with resources or which managed to get ahead hundreds of years ago have built up massive financial strength and it's very hard for other countries to catch up. Sure, we can say tough luck to poorer countries, but it's nicer to try and let some people come and share our wealth. People who write off multi culruralism are taking too short term a view. Yes there will be teething problems is the short term, but if we keep embracing different cultures, then over the next hundreds years or so these issues will cease to be relevant

And hand power to labour because elections are won on the middle ground. Although I would love the tories to return to the failed right wing policies that lost consecutive elections to Tony Blair...

Spoiling the ballot is a legitimate position but you also have to think that if none of the candidate are good enough then shouldn't you stand yourself if you think you could do better? These are all people who are trying to make a difference and ultimately no one is going to be able to exactly match your views, because everyone is different

But equally you can't have the state indefinitely propping up unprofitable businesses, they have to be allowed to fail if they really can't make enough money to pay staff enough to live. I would suspect that, in fact, even if these companies aren't making a profit, the directors are still taking home a tidy salary. But of course it's the low paid who have to make all the sacrifices

I think that bit is overly generous to Cameron and contradicts the rest of the article to be honest. So I just quoted the bit that had proper facts in it.

"Britain has control over its monetary policy in the way Greece, as a member of the European single currency, does not. As economist Giles Wilkes has previously highlighted, as Britain borrows in its own currency it could effectively print more money to pay its debts if required. Indeed, the Bank of England’s programme of Quantitative Easing has already done this – using some of the £200 billion it has injected into the UK economy to buy government bonds. The key indicator of investor confidence in buying sovereign debt lies in the price of government bonds. Although Britain and Greece have similar deficit levels, markets are prepared to lend to Britain at a much lower interest rate than that offered to Greece. Comparing ten year bond yields suggest that while the UK can borrow at around 4 per cent; Greece is facing commercial borrowing rates of over 9 per cent. Greece faces a debt crisis. Britain has a very large deficit also, but the structure of the British economy is different and our freedom of action to address the debt problem is far greater. It is clear that the markets do not consider the UK to be facing the same perilous situation as Greece; if they did, prices would reflect that fear." http://fullfact.org/blog/is_it_economically_illiterate_to_compare_greece_to_the_uk-2262

I'm tired now and can't take both you and Duckhunter on so am going to give in. But I just explained why we can't compare ourselves to Greece, please read it again. When the government compared us to Greece it was actually being pretty irresponsible (or it really is stupid). The Euro is also the reason why you can't compare us to Spain, Italy, Ireland and Portugal.

I accept that there are differences of opinion and it is impossible to get a conclusive answer. But what you've done there is pick out the only one with a low figure and ignored all the others

- The 75% tax rate in France hasn't even been implemented yet as it was struck down by the courts, so I don't know where you get the idea that everyone has moved away. And even if they did it would show that they had decided to move elsewhere to make more money, not that they wouldn't have the incentive to work if they had stayed. You're confusing incentive to work with an inability to compete internationally, the latter of which I acknowledged above. - The 50% tax rate in the UK didn't raise much money because rich people shifted their earnings to either before or after it was in force. If the government had left it in place they wouldn't have been able to do this. I haven't seen any evidence that it drove people away but you are welcome to show me some - Greece hasn't carried on spending, it has made massive cuts. It's also completely wrong to compare Greece with the UK as their debt has a much shorter repayment time and their membership of the Euro means they don't have the flexibility we have to adjust our currency - Mick Philpott is one bad example that should have been be prevented but that does not mean the entire welfare state is bad. Most people on welfare in the UK are working.

Whatever it takes to get the economy growing. Then we can start paying off the debt. I dispute your belief that taxing people takes away their incentive to work. You really think people are just going to sit around all day because half of the money they earn will go to tax? They will still want to work in order to increase their 50%. In fact, although it is difficult to calculate, research suggests that governments can go up to 70% tax without affecting people's willingness to work or losing revenue (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laffer_curve). The bigger problem is losing business overseas so I wouldn't suggest going that high. But we can't just keep bringing tax rates down and down because then it becomes a race to the bottom, and no countries can afford to pay for roads, police, etc. I suspect we differ on this but the welfare state does actually have important business functions such keeping workers healthy and productive, and preventing poverty-related crime. We need tax revenue to maintain a healthy environment for business.

Ah yes, ok, fair play!

Generate wealth for who? The US is one of the wealthiest countries in the world but also has terrible levels of poverty. You didn't answer whether you have a mortgage. I agree that there has been a shift in wealth to the east but that doesn't mean we are doomed. We need to invest in our infrastructure, education etc to compete and get the economy growing. Given how much money China has lent us they need us to be healthy enough to pay it back, and they need us to be able to afford to buy their products.

Of course Labour was in power at the time so it bears some of the blame, but this article conveniently ignores the fact that the Tories were not opposing this stuff and would probably have deregulated further given the chance. The problem was that Labour went along with the prevailing culture of neo-liberalism which went right back to Thatcher. And it did so because it felt it had to move to the right in order to get elected and stay there.

To balance some of the articles above from right wing publications, here is a properly evidenced report which shows that 'the culture of worklessness' is a myth http://www.jrf.org.uk/sites/files/jrf/worklessness-families-employment-summary.pdf

This bit is idiotic. So his policy is self-defeating and cruel but he should be praised for doing it anyway?

Don't give up. Society has moved on impressively in the last 100 years and can do again. On tax, we have already seen Starbucks offering to pay more tax because it was worried about the bad publicity. And the G20 seems to be making genuine plans to tackle tax avoidance: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-21481932

They still have to work hard to prove to their funders that the work they are doing is worthwhile. This article is a good summary of how left and right wing think tanks are funded: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/sep/12/thinktanks-crushing-democracy-pr-agenices