Sir Ralph

Again you ignore the main point but that’s just you. From this I take you agree with welfare spending being in excess of education. What a guy!

Send me a photo of your bookshelf again. Meant to say increased “to”. Not like you to pick up on a single wording error but miss the main point. So you support welfare spending in excess of education spending then. Ok. Of course I googled the welfare budget figure, like I have that stashed in my brain.

Thats a “wel-fare” comment

I agree that’s one of the ways you reduce the budget. The thresholds for claiming disability and health benefits are, in my experience, too low with more and more people taking advantage. Possibly not therefore all fraudulent claims

Welfare spending increased by £334 billion this year! Some of the reasons for this include disability benefits and increases in universal credit and working age support. Circa 12% of government spending is on working age benefits. 10% of government spending is on eduction. Just think about that for a minute and what that says about our priorities as a country 1. Reduce disability claims in particular an increase in young people claiming benefits for health and disability related matters. I believe the threshold for claiming such benefits is too low. People go into GPs and say that they have ADHD or alike, get a GP sign off and get hundreds of pounds a month. I know people who could easily do desk based jobs who have lived very well off the welfare state for years without lifting a finger. The government have acknowledged this as a concern but it needs to be addressed. The threshold for obtaining benefits for having a disability are too low and the GP tests should be more rigorous. 2. The recent increase in the two child cap should be restored. People that can’t afford more than two children shouldn’t have them. I know people that don’t have two kids or more cause they can’t afford them and are responsible people. Why should they work hard, pay tax and not have the extra kids they would like to have whereas other people can because the state will cover them 3. I would also remove the triple lock to reduce the pension liability. Lastly, as I understand it, in some circumstances if you refuse work your benefits can be reduced. There are some people on benefits that aren’t in work. What I don’t understand is why there isn’t a government programme for these people to do work in the local community to justify their welfare payments. Even if the programme was cost neutral at least it would give those people structure within some form of working environment. Maybe this is a naive suggestion for legal reasons…. Heres another idea - cut the welfare budget and use it to give tax breaks to firms who employ more younger people who were otherwise unemployed. Again whilst possobly cost neutral up front those young people are more likely to become tax payers in the future rather than state reliant. I often hear from certain people on this forum cries of anguish whenever welfare cuts are mentioned but rarely an acknowledgment that this is possible. Maybe they think we should spend more on working age benefits than education of kids that would lift them into employment and out of poverty - a proactive rather than reactive system

So what about reducing the welfare budget to reduce abuse of it and reduce the number of people that get assistance that don’t need it is “vile”. Shaming people who have different political views from lefties is an old tradition that has now been called out so that’s unfortunate. You now have to answer with real reasons not stupid and unfounded accusations.

You always get so angry when I mention about reducing the welfare budget. What is your objection to it? Do you not think there is abuse and wastage or is this objection more from a self interest perspective? Its useful to understand as the constant objection with no explanation (a typical trait of yours) is boring.

HMRC are already putting measures in place for tax evasion and have increased spending and officers to do so (and rightly so). As this is an issue the government have increased spending to address it. I’m not an expert in this so I don’t know exactly how they will do this. I’m more concerned with increasing welfare spending. Unlike tax evasion which they addressed by increasing spending, with welfare, despite abuse of the system and too much spending, they increased the welfare budget!. Whilst the usual crowd on here suggest I’m some sort of extremist, back in the real world of working people this is a commonly held view. Rather than change the angle of the discussion do you think welfare spending is excessive and should not have been increased?

Out of interest, who did you vote for in the last election?

Agree with you - that’s also about education as I think that people that may be more educated on the surface aren’t aware of the real damage they are doing to themselves. Maybe if more money was spent on education it might reduce costs, who knows. The upside is the younger generation seem to be more aware of the impacts of excessive alcohol consumption

I agree - isn’t this related to education and the populations understanding of how to look after themselves, get involved in sport, eating properly etc?

I’ll leave it to others to work out who has a brain or not. The wording I used in my post was specific. Im surprised you understood my post in that way but to drip feed you, what I’m saying a party that doesn’t pander to the requirement of these people and doesn’t worry about their vote. Instead a party that focuses on those who contribute to the system. I assume you agree with increased welfare spending based on your previous posts, even higher than the current rate?

It often appears that those who contribute the least are those that use / abuse it the most. I have a family member who works in the NHS in London and regularly talks about the abuse of the system. To make it sustainable and accessible for those who work and pay into the system, there needs to be some sort of control of this type of overuse and abuse.

It’s a reflection of a society that expects government and taxpayers to solve their own problems. As @Dr. Kucho said it needs a party who will make hard decisions and, in my opinion, ignore the votes of those in society who are unreasonably reliant on the state. The question is which party is going to do that?

I agree the Tories economic record towards the end of their time in government was poor. They prioritised infighting and politics over the general good. They were criticised and rightly voted out as a result. I had enough of them. I thought Labour was going to improve the economy though rather than match the performance of the back end of a poor Tory government. The general decline in employment and hiring would start to suggest an unfortunate trajectory. Bringing it back to the point. It appears that high unemployment, specifically youth unemployment, has been exacerbated by government policy. They often end up harming those they are trying to help.

The only year the Tories were fully in charge after Covid bounce back was 2023. You want to make the case that Labour has higher economic growth than 2023, that’s fine. Not sure what this shows though as it’s a one year sample in the context of the Ukraine war starting I don’t know why 16/17 year olds appear to have higher employment. I haven’t researched this in depth (as I doubt you have) but the ONS appears to be concluding that the increased minimum wage is partly to blame. I recall saying this on this forum and being told I was some sort of evil capitalist not supporting minimum wage hikes. Oh well.

An extract from the BBC” The Office for National Statistics (ONS) says the figures reflect "weak hiring activity". Chancellor Rachel Reeves' 2024 Budget hiked employer National Insurance contributions and saw a rise in the minimum wage, leading some businesses to slow down hiring and replace outgoing workers.”. So yes it is a factor. Anyone who has ever run a business would put two and two together. When referring to economic growth I assume you are referring to GDP growth. In 2021 it was circa 7.4% and 2022 was circa 4.3%. The Labour government is nowhere near this.

Glad to see I’m still living rent free 🤣

My 5 year old could have told the treasury this would happen. Welcome to a Labour government. Big increase in youth unemployment - as I was mocked on here before for saying, linked to minimum wage increase. You increase your costs for struggling businesses and guess what, they reduce the workforce! Just a reminder before the 5 year period was Covid19 shutdown so at least they haven’t matched that (yet). Good to see public sector pay growth more than doubling private sector pay. So basically, more unemployment and people on welfare (higher tax burden) and significant public sector pay increases (higher tax burden) and lower growth predictions. This is all very predictable. “Growing the economy day by day” 🤣 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/c62756plrp6t

Welfare helps some people that need it, such as the example you referred to, but it’s gone too far and supports people who abuse it and don’t want to work. The increase in welfare benefit is a move in the wrong direction. In this forum my view may be in the minority but in normal circles it is well publicised so not a controversial one and an approach that a number of well supported political parties will be promoting as they are voted for by hard working tax payers. A successful economy does not allow welfare reliance for certain parts of society to occur to this extent, hence the reference to decline in this respect. Obviously it’s fine for us to disagree on his point.

I didn’t mention Labour. You said that. I made a non political party statement. The decline is also not just business related in my personal opinion This is a cross party failure over the past twenty years. I agree that Labour are trying to reduce regulation to encourage business in part but have contradicted themselves in other parts by increasing taxes on business and business owners to fund increased state and welfare spending, thereby increasing the attractiveness for investment and reducing it in other parts. As I said, I didn’t mention Labour speciifically it’s a cross party failure that has allowed the decline

Being tolerant is again in principle a good thing. Being tolerant of certain ideologies is, in my opinion, naive and damaging, particularly where discourse about the acceptablility of those ideologies is shut down. This is where tolerance has been taken to an extreme. This is where we may diverge but that’s fine.

Like I said there are some things to be proud of but what I perceive to be the decline over the last 20 years which is what my concern is and what I am becoming less proud of. Do you think the country has declined in the last 20 years or so? i also agree we should count our blessing and how lucky we are in some respects. However I don’t want my kids to be raised in a country that has declined over recent years. It’s incumbent on us to make sure they have similar opportunities

In principle it’s needed but in my opinion nowhere near the extent that it is now. It’s created in some a mentality of reliance on the state which is not healthy for them or tax payers and negatively impacts overall productivity

I suppose if you benefit from a ballooning state and welfare budget this is the type of comment you would make.