Fyi, the vast majority of the "welfare budget" is spent on pensions.

 

Exactly, pensions need to be ringfenced

 

Which means out of work benefits, in work benefits and child benefit need radical reform

 

1) Only pay child benefit for 1 child

2) No child benefit for anyone earning over 26k (the average wage)

3) Capping welfare payments at a maximum of someone earning minimum wage

4) Ban on immigrants claiming benefits till they have paid 3 years NI

5) Hostels instead of social housing for unemployed people

6) Time limiting JSA to a maximum of 3 years

 

These measures would save billions

The only things that will get the deficit down are :

 

1) Increased tax revenues

2) Heavy reductions in the welfare budget

 

Job creation, something we are doing very well atm at will help with 1 and make some progress in 2

 

If we heavily reduce the tax burden on the well paid this will increase tax revenues as fewer need to resort to tax avoidance

 

And if we heavily slash welfare this will get the budget down on welfare.

 

The welfare cap should be bought in at what a person on full time minimum wage would earn before tax, about £15,000, the cap is far too high still, bringing in measures like restricting child benefit to 1 child would reduce welfare too

 

Only the tories can rein in welfare and create jobs, labour would just write a blank cheque to serial baby breeders

Tax avoidance isn't so large that reducing the tax burden will increase tax revenues. There comes a point where you're taxing the people who ARE paying less than you're gaining from the few who do start paying tax - if they've already figured out a way to avoid, why would they bother start paying just because they're paying five percent less on income over 150K? It isn't a magic bullet - reducing tax doesn't always lead to increased tax revenues. That much should be bloody obvious by basic mathematics.

 

And hostels for the unemployed? Fuck me you're a terrible person. Wonderful, you're unemployed. Let's kick you out of your house and have you living in shared bedrooms with people you don't know with barely any living space all to save a couple of billion. The deficit's £110bn by the way - increased tax receipts is how you cut that, not by treating everyone unemployed like animals. Housing benefit is £17bn and it doesn't all go to the unemployed, so you're probably saving a couple of billion there, barely denting the deficit, and ruining thousands of lives for the sake of that.

 

And the ridiculous short-termism of barring child benefit to any child past the first and to anybody earning over 26k...who exactly do you expect to be paying for the big rise in state pensions Craig? It's going to have to be either immigrants or more children, so stop this crap about 'STOP CHILD BENEFIT BECAUSE IT ALL GOES TO CHAV BABIES/I HATE KIDS'. And JSA is time-limited to six months anyway, so brilliant money-saving research there Craig.

Tax avoidance isn't so large that reducing the tax burden will increase tax revenues. There comes a point where you're taxing the people who ARE paying less than you're gaining from the few who do start paying tax - if they've already figured out a way to avoid, why would they bother start paying just because they're paying five percent less on income over 150K? It isn't a magic bullet - reducing tax doesn't always lead to increased tax revenues. That much should be bloody obvious by basic mathematics.

 

And hostels for the unemployed? Fuck me you're a terrible person. Wonderful, you're unemployed. Let's kick you out of your house and have you living in shared bedrooms with people you don't know with barely any living space all to save a couple of billion. The deficit's £110bn by the way - increased tax receipts is how you cut that, not by treating everyone unemployed like animals. Housing benefit is £17bn and it doesn't all go to the unemployed, so you're probably saving a couple of billion there, barely denting the deficit, and ruining thousands of lives for the sake of that.

 

And the ridiculous short-termism of barring child benefit to any child past the first and to anybody earning over 26k...who exactly do you expect to be paying for the big rise in state pensions Craig? It's going to have to be either immigrants or more children, so stop this crap about 'STOP CHILD BENEFIT BECAUSE IT ALL GOES TO CHAV BABIES/I HATE KIDS'. And JSA is time-limited to six months anyway, so brilliant money-saving research there Craig.

 

Will comment on the rest tomorrow as have to go in a sec but JSA does not end at 6 months, they simply go to income based JSA, I regularly read on DS of people being on JSA for years

They go onto the Single Work Programme, which is a scheme specifically dedicated to getting people back into work.

Edited December 11, 201311 yr by Cassandra

Exactly, pensions need to be ringfenced

Then how are you going to save this vast sum of money you're talking about?

 

Your wacky hostels idea, even ignoring the fact it won't save a great deal as Tirren said, would hardly be cheap to implement either - as well as being a dehumanising logistical nightmare.

 

Although in fairness you have at least inadvertently hinted at the missing piece in all of this - we need a lot more houses.

Tax avoidance isn't so large that reducing the tax burden will increase tax revenues. There comes a point where you're taxing the people who ARE paying less than you're gaining from the few who do start paying tax - if they've already figured out a way to avoid, why would they bother start paying just because they're paying five percent less on income over 150K? It isn't a magic bullet - reducing tax doesn't always lead to increased tax revenues. That much should be bloody obvious by basic mathematics.

 

And hostels for the unemployed? Fuck me you're a terrible person. Wonderful, you're unemployed. Let's kick you out of your house and have you living in shared bedrooms with people you don't know with barely any living space all to save a couple of billion. The deficit's £110bn by the way - increased tax receipts is how you cut that, not by treating everyone unemployed like animals. Housing benefit is £17bn and it doesn't all go to the unemployed, so you're probably saving a couple of billion there, barely denting the deficit, and ruining thousands of lives for the sake of that.

 

And the ridiculous short-termism of barring child benefit to any child past the first and to anybody earning over 26k...who exactly do you expect to be paying for the big rise in state pensions Craig? It's going to have to be either immigrants or more children, so stop this crap about 'STOP CHILD BENEFIT BECAUSE IT ALL GOES TO CHAV BABIES/I HATE KIDS'. And JSA is time-limited to six months anyway, so brilliant money-saving research there Craig.

 

Re tax - We are attracting more and more foreigners into this country, we are the country of choice for Chinese, Hong Kong, Singapore, France high earners to move to, the Sunday Times said the other week that London is France's 4th biggest city in terms of population and the reason for this is our tax rates, if we lower tax even more then even more high earning foreigners will come here to live and set up businesses, these people were attracted by lower taxes so do pay tax

 

Re hostels - I don't think unemployed should be entitled to social housing, we need to incentivise work and convince the unemployed that work is the solution to life so they should not be entitled to private rents or social housing imho, with hostels they can have computer rooms for them to do job search, wifi in the rooms, there can be a canteen set up on site where they are getting food, they could have their own room no need to share 10 to a room, it would be basic Blackpool B+B standard accomodation, it is not about treating them like animals but about convincing them work is the answer, if we pay for them to rent in the private sector what incentive is there for them to get a job?

 

Re kids - We need kids in the UK but we need the right type of kids, by funding the breeding programs of chavs and their feral brats we are eroding the social and moral fabric of our society, we need kids being born but decent well grounded kids from working families who are going to be taught morals and a work ethic, by subsidising chavs to breed feral brats with no limits we are going to pay for it later in the way of more crime, i want middle class kids to be born to hard working families who are going to be considerate and hard working, I fully support eugenics, the right type of kids need to be born not ones who will be on Jeremy Kyle in a few years, eugenics is the way forward, stop funding chavs to breed and bring in more and more middle class babies who will be bought up with positive traits

 

By restricting child benefit to one kid we are taking away the incentive for chavs to breed a kid that will be bought up on benefits and will likely end up on benefits itself, and by restricting child benefit we would be having mums who can afford to bring up a kid hence the right type of kids

Edited December 12, 201311 yr by Sandro Raniere

Then how are you going to save this vast sum of money you're talking about?

 

Your wacky hostels idea, even ignoring the fact it won't save a great deal as Tirren said, would hardly be cheap to implement either - as well as being a dehumanising logistical nightmare.

 

Although in fairness you have at least inadvertently hinted at the missing piece in all of this - we need a lot more houses.

 

The age in which pensions can be activated will need to go up, to around 70, instead of 65

 

Indeed, by taking unemployed people out of private rents and social housing we are freeing up properties for working people be it private rents or social housing, helps free up more housing

They go onto the Single Work Programme, which is a scheme specifically dedicated to getting people back into work.

 

The work programme has been a massive flop, haven't like a single figure % got jobs since going on it?

 

You can take a horse to water, but you cant make it drink...

 

If someone doesn't want to work it does not matter what programmes you put them on, but after 3 years if you tell them they can work or starve they would be knocking on every single office/shop/factory door in their town asking for work

The national debt needs to be vastly reduced. Paying out huge sums in interest on borrowed money is insane and unsustainable.

 

That means either raising taxes, lowering wages or cutting social benefits, or a mixture of all 3. Wages have been lowered for most for the last 5 years and thats not really helped at all. Raising taxes is unpopular and a vote loser as everyone will be even worse off in employment and it favours those not in employment (who are indebted to those working on their behalf, unless they have already spent a lifetime working and paying into the system to get something out of it is only fair).

 

There seems to be a general attitude, in this generation where even the permanently unemployed have comfortable lifestyles, to expect something for nothing. Society can't function if everyone holds that attitude. Benefits are there to support the genuinely needy, those who are incapable of working, or those unfortunate in circumstance. To blanket deny that people aren't using the system to their own benefit is to see things in black & white terms. People do use the system, cash in hand on benefits, lodgers in the house while on benefits, choosing not to work because they get more money on benefits than doing fairly menial jobs (which non-UK people tend to do instead), and having children while single is especially helpful in terms of getting to the top of the housing list and income. Everyone makes a mistake, and being a single mother isn't a crime. Making the same mistake again and again, when you don't have the means of supporting your family is a choice, not a mistake. For those already born, it's not fair that they should suffer for their parents choices, but it might be worth considering drawing a line in the sand and saying for example, from 2016 child care benefits only for the first child. Doubt it would save much, but would force people to consider consequences of actions more and less expecting something for nothing.

 

Just by way of comparison, though, it's worth pointing out that poverty, as it's seen in 2013 in the UK, is not the same thing as poverty in 1963. The lifestyle of those on benefits is luxury in comparison to my upbringing. Makes me sound old, but it's a fact, both my parents worked and we still had very little most wages went on food, clothes and coal and a TV. The current young generation are the luckiest generation in history in well-being terms. Not perfect by any means, but certainly not in real poverty, everyone has their internet phones, and flatscreen tv's and the like...

 

The elderly, in contrast, get by on less than £100 a week. After paying in to the system for all their life, presumably. How annoying that they haven't done the decent thing and just died at 65....

The national debt needs to be vastly reduced. Paying out huge sums in interest on borrowed money is insane and unsustainable.

 

That means either raising taxes, lowering wages or cutting social benefits, or a mixture of all 3. Wages have been lowered for most for the last 5 years and thats not really helped at all. Raising taxes is unpopular and a vote loser as everyone will be even worse off in employment and it favours those not in employment (who are indebted to those working on their behalf, unless they have already spent a lifetime working and paying into the system to get something out of it is only fair).

 

There seems to be a general attitude, in this generation where even the permanently unemployed have comfortable lifestyles, to expect something for nothing. Society can't function if everyone holds that attitude. Benefits are there to support the genuinely needy, those who are incapable of working, or those unfortunate in circumstance. To blanket deny that people aren't using the system to their own benefit is to see things in black & white terms. People do use the system, cash in hand on benefits, lodgers in the house while on benefits, choosing not to work because they get more money on benefits than doing fairly menial jobs (which non-UK people tend to do instead), and having children while single is especially helpful in terms of getting to the top of the housing list and income. Everyone makes a mistake, and being a single mother isn't a crime. Making the same mistake again and again, when you don't have the means of supporting your family is a choice, not a mistake. For those already born, it's not fair that they should suffer for their parents choices, but it might be worth considering drawing a line in the sand and saying for example, from 2016 child care benefits only for the first child. Doubt it would save much, but would force people to consider consequences of actions more and less expecting something for nothing.

 

Just by way of comparison, though, it's worth pointing out that poverty, as it's seen in 2013 in the UK, is not the same thing as poverty in 1963. The lifestyle of those on benefits is luxury in comparison to my upbringing. Makes me sound old, but it's a fact, both my parents worked and we still had very little most wages went on food, clothes and coal and a TV. The current young generation are the luckiest generation in history in well-being terms. Not perfect by any means, but certainly not in real poverty, everyone has their internet phones, and flatscreen tv's and the like...

 

The elderly, in contrast, get by on less than £100 a week. After paying in to the system for all their life, presumably. How annoying that they haven't done the decent thing and just died at 65....

 

I agree with most of this

 

There is no real reason in this country for an able bodied person to be out of work for a long time, 2 years or more, if they are then they are either working on the side cash in hand, are not interested in working, are not trying hard enough or are being too picky in their choices.

 

If an immigrant with basic or no grasp of our language can come thousands of miles and get a job in the UK there is no reason for an able bodied born and bred Brit to be long term unemployed, the long term unemployed need a sharp dose of reality, be it harsh benefit cuts, full time workfare till they get a job or no benefits of any sort paid after a certain cut off point

 

What i would do is give someone 2 years to get a job, if they do not then slash all of their benefits by 50% and if by the end of the next year they have still not got a job then stop all benefits completely, work or starve, they would work then.

 

Britain is too soft

 

The age in which pensions can be activated will need to go up, to around 70, instead of 65

 

Indeed, by taking unemployed people out of private rents and social housing we are freeing up properties for working people be it private rents or social housing, helps free up more housing

Retirement age does need to be raised, but because life expectancy is rising - it's only compensating for having more people being eligible for pensions, it's not reducing the number of pensioners. In areas of many of our cities life expectancy is still in the low 70s, so to lift retirement age uniformly is going to stop working if inequality keeps rising.

 

What do you suggest for the family of someone who becomes unemployed? Do they go with them? What about dual earner households? You clearly haven't thought this through in the slightest. Especially given the costs of building and maintaining these hostels, which would be far more efficiently spent building houses.

 

The single greatest inefficiency in this country's housing is spare bedrooms, not in social housing but in houses owned by old people. Despite our housing deficit we actually have a room surplus, it's just very inefficiently utilised.

Retirement age does need to be raised, but because life expectancy is rising - it's only compensating for having more people being eligible for pensions, it's not reducing the number of pensioners. In areas of many of our cities life expectancy is still in the low 70s, so to lift retirement age uniformly is going to stop working if inequality keeps rising.

 

What do you suggest for the family of someone who becomes unemployed? Do they go with them? What about dual earner households? You clearly haven't thought this through in the slightest. Especially given the costs of building and maintaining these hostels, which would be far more efficiently spent building houses.

 

The single greatest inefficiency in this country's housing is spare bedrooms, not in social housing but in houses owned by old people. Despite our housing deficit we actually have a room surplus, it's just very inefficiently utilised.

 

or alternatively they hang on to their own property that they have paid for and own on the offchance that other members of their family look after them in their old age, or visit them part-time, or have a lodger to help financially, rather than bundle them off into a care home to die quietly while the state takes their home in lieu of payment.

 

Nothing to do with efficiency (and in any case this is a democracy not a "lets force the elderly to do what the young folk want" situation), it's to do with the last Labour Government and the current one doing everything they can to avoid building (or just keeping) social housing instead of selling them off on the cheap - or increasing the private housing stock at the expense of the public rather than just encouraging NIMBY's to just shut up and stop being selfish when it comes to new housing. That would also allow houses to cost realistic prices and avoid the bank/debt problems that have caused the crisis. If there are enough houses they cease to become an alternative to savings interest rates that pays out big time (then ruin you when it goes wrong).

 

I still see no party with a mass-house-building policy being promoted for the next election (probably because it would kill the banks, produce negative equity for all the over-stretched mortgage idiots and all the rich folk dependant on the status quo being maintained, and all the voters who'd moan about it). Much easier to hit savers (mostly, let's be honest, the elderly. Again)

 

 

 

Article from ComRes on how Tories are being over-optimistic by expecting "swingback" from Labour (because there's been hardly any swing from 2010 Tory voters over to Labour in the first place), and how there's hardly any traditional "swing voters" up for grabs for either main party:

 

 

Where have all the swing voters gone?

 

Once a staple in the lexicon of every budding politico, a copy of Philip Gould’s The Unfinished Revolution tucked firmly under the arm, today the term “swing voter” appears only infrequently. Actually coming across a “traditional” swing voter (i.e. someone switching between the two main parties) appears to happen even less often.

 

The importance of swing voters

 

“Traditional” swing voters still represent a vital part of the electorate though. Quite simply, because they are worth double.

 

Let’s say at a General Election, the Conservatives receive 40% and Labour receive 30% of the vote. At the following election, if Labour wins 1% more of the total vote share, taking it from people who voted for the Liberal Democrats first time around, it takes them to 31%, leaving them 9 points behind the Tories (who remain on 40%).

 

But if instead, they win 1 percentage point from people who voted Conservative in the first election, it takes Labour to 31%, the Conservatives to 39% and the gap between them to 8 points. In other words, even though Labour only increases its own share of the vote by 1 point, the lead against them is reduced by 2.

 

This is sometimes compared to the “six pointer” games that you get in football when teams at the top of the league play against each other. A win can be worth six points – the three they gain from the win, and the three their opponents miss out on from losing.

 

Labour swing voters

 

With this in mind, and Labour searching for the votes to get them over the finish line, it is worth looking at the effect this type of swing voters is having.

 

The graph below shows, over the course of this Parliament, the change in the proportion of those who say they voted for the Conservatives at the last election saying they would for Labour next time around.

 

As can be seen, the proportion of 2010 Conservatives swinging to Labour rose slightly in 2011, and then more drastically in 2012, around the time of the Omnishambles Budget, to between 4-8%.

 

Based on the Tories winning 37% of the vote in 2010, and 5% switching their vote to Labour next time, this would see the Conservatives’ overall headline figure reducing by just under 2 points, and Labour’s increasing by the same amount (5% of 37% = 1.85%).

 

But this year, the number of Tory to Labour switchers has slowly eroded to just below 2011 levels. The question is, where have these swing voters gone?

 

Destination unknown?

 

One theory is that people are simply demonstrating “false recall”. As the last General Election has moved further into the past, Conservative voters who are now saying they would vote Labour have either forgotten how they actually voted last time or are embarrassed to admit it.

 

This may have some merit, but is by no means certain. A roughly similar number of people said they voted Conservative at the last election in our telephone poll in July 2013 (204) as did in July 2012 (201). But the 2013 poll showed one of the smallest numbers of Conservative to Labour switchers (1%), while the 2012 poll showed one of the highest (7%).

 

Instead, there seems to be another factor driving the decline in Conservatives to Labour switchers.

 

Below is another version of the above graph. But the purple line has been added to include the proportion of 2010 Conservative voters saying they would vote UKIP next time.

 

As can be seen, the decline in Labour swingers this year coincides with the dramatic rise of previous Conservative voters switching to UKIP.

 

There has been much debate about what effect the rise of UKIP is having and who it is taking votes from. Our polling shows that the party is taking much more support from past Conservative voters than past Labour voters (according to our latest online poll, UKIP took 19% of 2010 Tories, but just 7% of 2010 Labour voters).

 

However, the graph above shows that UKIP is affecting Labour’s vote share by pulling away potential new voters who previously sided with the Tories, and that once upon a time, in a two-party past, might have switched to them when frustrated with the governing party midterm.

 

Swing voters and 2015

 

This has a number of effects. The first is that while UKIP are performing well, it is likely to bring down the ceiling of Labour’s potential vote share, something that should worry the Opposition as it searches for a majority.

 

But the second is that the narrowing of the polls in favour of the governing party as the election approaches, which has happened to varying extents in the past, may be less dramatic this time around. Again, “traditional” swing voters are worth double: people registering a “protest” opinion mid-Parliament may well still return to the governing party at the time of the election. But this time the Tories’ vote share would be topped up with current UKIP supporters, and thus voters returning to their fold would not have the multiple effect of reducing Labour’s vote share. This would cause the poll gap to narrow at half the pace as would happen in a two-party pattern.

 

Traditional binary swing voters are still vitally important – to both parties. But their relative decline in a multi-party system may cause the dynamics of the next election to behave in a slightly different way from how they have in the past.

 

Both teams at the top of the league are choosing to focus their efforts on thrashing much weaker opponents, which may well provide a healthy goal difference at the end of the season. But as some pointed out when England got their difficult World Cup draw last week: to be the best, you often need to beat the best.

Re tax - We are attracting more and more foreigners into this country, we are the country of choice for Chinese, Hong Kong, Singapore, France high earners to move to, the Sunday Times said the other week that London is France's 4th biggest city in terms of population and the reason for this is our tax rates, if we lower tax even more then even more high earning foreigners will come here to live and set up businesses, these people were attracted by lower taxes so do pay tax

 

Re hostels - I don't think unemployed should be entitled to social housing, we need to incentivise work and convince the unemployed that work is the solution to life so they should not be entitled to private rents or social housing imho, with hostels they can have computer rooms for them to do job search, wifi in the rooms, there can be a canteen set up on site where they are getting food, they could have their own room no need to share 10 to a room, it would be basic Blackpool B+B standard accomodation, it is not about treating them like animals but about convincing them work is the answer, if we pay for them to rent in the private sector what incentive is there for them to get a job?

 

Re kids - We need kids in the UK but we need the right type of kids, by funding the breeding programs of chavs and their feral brats we are eroding the social and moral fabric of our society, we need kids being born but decent well grounded kids from working families who are going to be taught morals and a work ethic, by subsidising chavs to breed feral brats with no limits we are going to pay for it later in the way of more crime, i want middle class kids to be born to hard working families who are going to be considerate and hard working, I fully support eugenics, the right type of kids need to be born not ones who will be on Jeremy Kyle in a few years, eugenics is the way forward, stop funding chavs to breed and bring in more and more middle class babies who will be bought up with positive traits

 

By restricting child benefit to one kid we are taking away the incentive for chavs to breed a kid that will be bought up on benefits and will likely end up on benefits itself, and by restricting child benefit we would be having mums who can afford to bring up a kid hence the right type of kids

Middle class kids are the right type of kids. Jesus Christ Craig...what the fuck are you on? Have you never met a middle class tosser? A middle class lazy person? Have you never met someone with loads of siblings from a poor background who was a hard worker with loads of drive? This is generalising toss.

 

At the very least, the fact that we have 2.5 million unemployed in this country (and most of them not 'feral brats') out of a workforce of about 32 million (i.e. 7% unemployment) should tell you that the vast majority of children born this country end up in a job and paying tax - i.e. that more children being born is pretty much always a net gain to tax intake, as the 95% balance out the 5%. The 'right type of kids' as you so delightfully call it are the vast majority of those being born. You're proposing to base government policy on a few Daily Mail scare stories which, as we tell you TIME AND TIME AGAIN, are the EXCEPTION (i.e. NOT WHAT HAPPEN MOST OF THE TIME. It feels like we tell you this enough that I'm having to be patronising enough to tell you what an EXCEPTION is.). The number of children born in this country would almost certainly end up going down by at least a bit if we restricted child benefit, at which point it would become more difficult to pay for the growing pensions bill.

 

Do you actually understand logic Craig? Because you propose policy CONSTANTLY which attempts to stop the exceptions ('immigrant scroungers'/'feral chav kids'/'rapists living the easy life' etc) but which would hit the positives that you frequently acknowledge are to be desired (hardworking immigrants/children/reformed prisoners). Almost all of your proposals do bugger all to combat the negatives and would hit the positive cases the hardest. Thank Christ you're not in charge of anything.

 

I agree with most of this

 

There is no real reason in this country for an able bodied person to be out of work for a long time, 2 years or more, if they are then they are either working on the side cash in hand, are not interested in working, are not trying hard enough or are being too picky in their choices.

 

If an immigrant with basic or no grasp of our language can come thousands of miles and get a job in the UK there is no reason for an able bodied born and bred Brit to be long term unemployed, the long term unemployed need a sharp dose of reality, be it harsh benefit cuts, full time workfare till they get a job or no benefits of any sort paid after a certain cut off point

 

What i would do is give someone 2 years to get a job, if they do not then slash all of their benefits by 50% and if by the end of the next year they have still not got a job then stop all benefits completely, work or starve, they would work then.

 

Britain is too soft

There are 545,000 job vacancies and 2.5 million unemployed people currently in the UK. That should be enough to tell you that, yes, there very much is a real reason someone in this country can be out of work for a long time, especially as the majority of those vacancies will likely be jobs that someone would need specific training/experience/a specialised degree for.

Edited December 12, 201311 yr by Cassandra

or alternatively they hang on to their own property that they have paid for and own on the offchance that other members of their family look after them in their old age, or visit them part-time, or have a lodger to help financially, rather than bundle them off into a care home to die quietly while the state takes their home in lieu of payment.

 

Nothing to do with efficiency (and in any case this is a democracy not a "lets force the elderly to do what the young folk want" situation), it's to do with the last Labour Government and the current one doing everything they can to avoid building (or just keeping) social housing instead of selling them off on the cheap - or increasing the private housing stock at the expense of the public rather than just encouraging NIMBY's to just shut up and stop being selfish when it comes to new housing. That would also allow houses to cost realistic prices and avoid the bank/debt problems that have caused the crisis. If there are enough houses they cease to become an alternative to savings interest rates that pays out big time (then ruin you when it goes wrong).

 

I still see no party with a mass-house-building policy being promoted for the next election (probably because it would kill the banks, produce negative equity for all the over-stretched mortgage idiots and all the rich folk dependant on the status quo being maintained, and all the voters who'd moan about it). Much easier to hit savers (mostly, let's be honest, the elderly. Again)

It's everything to do with efficiency, as I already said we have enough rooms. I wasn't suggesting forcing the elderly out of their houses at all, so thanks for putting words in my mouth there. A start would be a National Care Service with decent elderly accommodation available to all rather those who can afford private - carrot rather than the stick innit.

 

Also, I'm not sure how "doing everything they can to avoid building" works when the last Labour government introduced housing targets for local authorities including a proportion of affordable stock. I really hate to be partisan but it was the coalition who then scrapped the targets on the assumption that the private sector would build more without being told where to put it, and since housebuilding has gone down because it turns out the planners actually do know something after all. Oops.

Latest YouGov poll have the Labour lead down to 2% :D

 

With 16 months to go till the election it is clear more and more people are feeling good about their finances and the state of the economy

 

There is going to be a lot of tears for the cleaners of Labour HQ to mop up in the morning

Meanwhile, the latest Populus poll has the lead at 7% :D

 

And a new batch of opinion polls in specific marginal seats shows very bad results for the Conservatives, including Crewe where Labour have a 13% lead, even though that seat is only 87th on their target list (i.e. beyond what they need to get a majority) :D

Latest YouGov poll have the Labour lead down to 2% :D

 

With 16 months to go till the election it is clear more and more people are feeling good about their finances and the state of the economy

 

There is going to be a lot of tears for the cleaners of Labour HQ to mop up in the morning

And one just over a week ago had the Labour lead at 12, which should tell you all about the idiocy of cherry picking polls by their best/worst results for a party. Individual polls mean nothing - it's the trend that matters.

And even in this one (most likely rogue) poll, Labour are still as high as 38%, which is pretty much in line with other polls - it's just the Tories getting an unusually high score (36%) that's made the lead so small.

I always find it really amusing how in one breath Craig insists that Labour have stitched up the electoral system and drags out hyperbolic claims that 'Mugabe would be proud!!!!', yet in the next is hilariously overconfident about a Tory majority based on things as irrelevant as Commons performances in Autumn Statements/rogue polls.

 

Labour don't really need to be worrying about anything so long as they're over 35% of the vote - which would imply being six points up on average from the last election and would ensure a load of gains on 2010, so long as it wasn't all concentrated in seats we already hold. Not a single poll has had Labour consistently below 37%, and the Tories can't expect the recovery to start bagging them these voters as former Tory voters make up few of the voters Labour has in its current leads (as Danny has mentioned before). For the Tories to start denting the Labour percentage there, it would require them to start winning voters who stuck with Labour in 2010 or who went Lib Dem -> Labour since (or to expand the electorate and win over non-voters, but I think even Craig in his wildest meth dreams wouldn't start implying that the recovery will turn Cameron into Obama c. 2008. Actually, I probably shouldn't have given him the idea...). There's more chance of Craig being elected World's Greatest Sex Machine 2013.

Edited December 17, 201311 yr by Cassandra