Hey Guv can you lend us a fiver?

[MrGongGong]

What is very worrying indeed for those of us connected to people with disabilities is the way in which this government have successfully managed to connect in peoples minds the idea of people claiming benefits because they are disabled with people who are fiddling the system. What happens when one discusses the options that young disabled people have (for example) is that someone will always bring up the issue of benefit fraud. Its an old technique as used on people seeking asylum from terrible situations and illegal immigration....... connect them up enough times and the majority of people will always link the two !

It's shameful and Cameron as the parent of a disabled child should know better but he and his fellow travellers couldn't give a toss and deserve nothing but contempt !

What is worse IMV than the Tories behaving like this (I never expected them to be any different !) is the shameful way that Clegg has sold his party and is complicit in this sort thing ............

[handsomefortune]

What happens when one discusses the options that young disabled people have (for example) is that someone will always bring up the issue of benefit fraud.

yes, very sad to see really young kids on 'the hardest hit' london march, earlier in the year in this context. already batting off the usual accusations ...although to their credit, i witnissed their pov becasue kids were 'allowed' to present (rehearsed) speeches at 'speakers corner'.....from their wheelchairs, and were given a mic so everyone could hear. shame they didn't 'deserve' a stage, raised platform in the cirumstances. coincidentally, m gove crossed the road near by - and pretended no one existed, (a couple of thousand present) whilst a tramp welcomed newcomers to the march, with a grubby handshake and a lovely smile. whereas gove ran away asap...... what a coward.

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

i find this aspect of the coalition quite despicable, but they are not alone in the ordure; my niece who has been confined to a wheelchair all her 48 years and has quite severe cerebral palsy has had to undergo these charades from time to time under Labour Thatcher NuLab and now this lot .... they all do it .... when you know and love the person affected it is a truly indecent act .... the job lot of quacks and buffoons they get to do it are just following quotas ... btw one of the major manipulations of sickness benefit was orchestrated by Thatcher to get all the miners off the unemployment figures


there was an absolutely riveting blood boiler of a documentary on bbc 2 tonight ... Inside Job ... here it is on iPlayer

beware your gore will rise, blood boil fists clench and rage will be upon you ... that said it is a clinical forensic analysis without the least hyperbole or hysteria

[Serial_Apologist]

there was an absolutely riveting blood boiler of a documentary on bbc 2 tonight ... Inside Job ... here it is on iPlayer

beware your gore will rise, blood boil fists clench and rage will be upon you ... that said it is a clinical forensic analysis without the least hyperbole or hysteria

Thanks calum - my eye went automatically to the Frozen Planet

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

Chief Exec pay rises 1200% over 25 years

average total pay among FTSE 100 chief executives has grown thirteenfold from £300,000 in 1987 to £4m today, after adjusting for inflation, with boardrooms adopting "herd-like behaviour" in setting remuneration.

income for the other 99% grew but not by so much ..... this is indispensable work on incomes by the IFS ....

In little more than a generation, low- to middle-income households have seen a
major shift in the sources of their income, while the richest households have seen
little change. The key dynamic has been one of diversification; having been
dominated by the earnings of a (generally male) main earner, LMI households
today receive large portions of their income from female employment and from
the benefit and tax credit system. This greater diversity of income sources may
reduce the risk of negative income shocks. But these changes mean that LMI
households are now more dependent on external support, whether directly
(through the generosity of the benefit and tax credit system) or indirectly
(through the availability of services, such as childcare, that make dual earning, or
lone-parent working, possible).
Looking forwards, these trends carry one inescapable implication for the
prospects of future growth in LMI household income. Because wages now make
up less of LMI household income, wage growth – even if it is flat across the
household income distribution – does less to raise the income of this group than
it does to raise the income of households higher up the distribution. ....

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

no sh*t sherlock

[teamsaint]

there are some simple answers to these problems.........but the folks in charge are hardly likely to have their parliamentary poodles implement them.

The article also mentions what we might call the "deserving rich".........jk rowling and Dyson,.

It does b g the question how much money does anyone need.
I really don't have a problem with limiting/taxing those people at levels that allows them to live well off their efforts, whilst making sure others earn enough to live decently.

Guess i am just old fashioned.

Anyway at least we can rely on millipede and balls- up from the workers party to protect workers pensions and not implement public sector pay cuts.................OH !!

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

taxing the deserving rich is a drawback we could all live with i think, not taxing the plutocrats is unbearable

[teamsaint]

taxing the deserving rich is a drawback we could all live with i think, not taxing the plutocrats is unbearable

ah, but if they have to pay the same marginal rate of tax as us mortals, they will all leave in a huff apparently...so it would be goodbye investment bankers, monarchy, man citeh footballers, The rolling Stones, russian squillionaires who stole their country's capital, drug barons, arms dealers, etc etc.
Life will hardly be worth living !!
Still, we could give it a try, and see how we get on, I suppose. We could always ask them nicely to come back.

[Serial_Apologist]

ah, but if they have to pay the same marginal rate of tax as us mortals, they will all leave in a huff apparently...so it would be goodbye investment bankers, monarchy, man citeh footballers, The rolling Stones, russian squillionaires who stole their country's capital, drug barons, arms dealers, etc etc.
Life will hardly be worth living !!
Still, we could give it a try, and see how we get on, I suppose. We could always ask them nicely to come back.

America and the the UK are the only countries acquiescing to this self-serving plutocratic top layer and its threats to jump ship, it is said - so, where would they go? Let America have them!

(All this avoids the issue that capitalism's problems are systemically inbuilt rather than to do with greed at top or bottom, however).

[teamsaint]

America and the the UK are the only countries acquiescing to this self-serving plutocratic top layer and its threats to jump ship, it is said - so, where would they go? Let America have them!

(All this avoids the issue that capitalism's problems are systemically inbuilt rather than to do with greed at top or bottom, however).

fair point. The problems are surely rooted in the fact that the banks own and run everything.........the rest (as you suggest) is noisy distraction, including politics.
the fact that the banks have been allowed to build an economic system that is the equivalent of a house built on sand is really coming home to roost.
Oh I love sounding off in mixed metaphors !!

[Serial_Apologist]

fair point. The problems are surely rooted in the fact that the banks own and run everything.........the rest (as you suggest) is noisy distraction, including politics.
the fact that the banks have been allowed to build an economic system that is the equivalent of a house built on sand is really coming home to roost.
Oh I love sounding off in mixed metaphors !!

The banks are just a symptom

[teamsaint]

The banks are just a symptom

I think we disagree then !!
I think the banks are deep at the heart of our problems.

We have central banks who seem to answer to no one, who control money, and are responsible for the the cycle of cheap easy credit/credit crunch.
One layer down, we have the deregulated investment banks whose sole function is to suck every last penny of value out of businesses, letting potentially sound businesses (EG Peacocks) go, quite unnecessarily, to the wall as a result.
And another layer down we have a population that is deliberately, systematically made indebted (starting with student debt), and of whom most never escape the banks clutches.

But whether I am right, or you are, the banks are a big part of the problem.
.

[Serial_Apologist]

I think we disagree then !!
I think the banks are deep at the heart of our problems.

We have central banks who seem to answer to no one, who control money, and are responsible for the the cycle of cheap easy credit/credit crunch.
One layer down, we have the deregulated investment banks whose sole function is to suck every last penny of value out of businesses, letting potentially sound businesses (EG Peacocks) go, quite unnecessarily, to the wall as a result.
And another layer down we have a population that is deliberately, systematically made indebted (starting with student debt), and of whom most never escape the banks clutches.

But whether I am right, or you are, the banks are a big part of the problem.
.

My view fwiw is that banks are *part* of the problem, but the core problem giving rise to that part is systemic to capitalism as an intrinsically unstable, unsustainable system.

It was not always thus.

The private property mode of accumulation represented by capitalism increased the productivity of labour in the first instance, created the working class, and in the process increased the overall total expansion of wealth - but did it in an uneven, haphazard way which eventually led to monopoly and the self-destruction of the Adam Smith model of perfect equilibrium. A dialect of class conflict was created; governments in hoc to the wealthy class soon had to invigilate between the competing interests and, in order to propitiate the former in times of overproduction (recession) and unemployment, find scapegoats, and turn from an increasingly masked measurable process of work time-based value to injecting money for purposes of keeping the system going, while using anti-working class measures to preempt revolution. At which point the banks come in.

[teamsaint]

My view fwiw is that banks are *part* of the problem, but the core problem giving rise to that part is systemic to capitalism as an intrinsically unstable, unsustainable system.

It was not always thus.

The private property mode of accumulation represented by capitalism increased the productivity of labour in the first instance, created the working class, and in the process increased the overall total expansion of wealth - but did it in an uneven, haphazard way which eventually led to monopoly and the self-destruction of the Adam Smith model of perfect equilibrium. A dialect of class conflict was created; governments in hoc to the wealthy class soon had to invigilate between the competing interests and, in order to propitiate the former in times of overproduction (recession) and unemployment, find scapegoats, and turn from an increasingly masked measurable process of work time-based value to injecting money for purposes of keeping the system going, while using anti-working class measures to preempt revolution. At which point the banks come in.

.............And took over !! so we agree really !!
need to re read my early economic history.