I ❤ JustinBieber

Injured first game :o

They will take time to gel but in a month they will be near on unplayable, with Milner and Balotelli and by all accounts Suarez to come into the team they will be hard to stop this season

Nice start by us Getting a draw against the probable champions and we would have beaten them 3-0 but for Hart being in WORLD CLASS form

According to official figures there is 2.6m people claiming incapacity benefit, excluding school kids, uni students, retired people that is probably around 1 in 8 people of working age. I am anything but convinced that someone depressed for example is incapable of work, work would surely give them a stimulus (being around people, getting out of the house, doing something productive), someone who is depressed IMHO is capable of admin work, of computer related employment etc The only people that have a strong case to be unavailable for work are people who are blind, people who are mentally retarded, people who are quadraplegic, they all have valid reasons why they can't be productive members of the workforce. Others are capable of admin work IMHO

Yeah but I could quit my work tomorrow, fake a bad back or fake depression or pretend to be agrophobic and within a week or 2 I am rolling in free money when in reality there is nothing wrong with me with 2 years to work on how I am going to fake the next medical These medicals should be every 3 months or even better random on the spot visits by a DWP doctor to the persons house where they have had no time to prepare for faking.

There is nothing to stop someone who is poor becoming wealthy or at the very least have a comfortable middle class lifestyle. You can buy a company off the shelf for less than £30, all you need is a bit of drive and determination and you can run your own business The poor are largely poor because they don't have the ambition to break out of poverty and instead are happy to live in their taxpayer funded comfort zone

God no wonder most on incapacity benefit are fraudsters or exaggerating their conditions All someone has to do is sponge in good health for 2 years and then once every 2 years hobble into a GP surgery, pretend they are in agony and hey presto lots of free money for another 2 years The system is pathetic <_< :rolleyes:

On top of that these hedge fund managers are buying companies that are employing thousands of people, thousands who would otherwise be a burden on the taxpayer. We should be grateful to these types as they are putting people in work The left love sneering at the likes of Branson, Sugar, Green etc, sure none of them pay much in the way of tax but they are employing between them 350,000 people in this country who are off the dole queue as a result of their efforts so I am not too fussed about them not paying full whack tax wise

What is happening there is totally legal though, whether it should be is another argument but the fact is that it is legal, benefit fraud/claiming benefits you should not really be entitled to is obtaining money by deception which is a criminal offence Can't compare the 2

There is the problem in a nutshell, so many people are lying to their doctors so that they can get signed off JSA and onto incapacity benefit which only requires a medical note a year or something and they don't have to look for work. There are so many that fake or exaggerate back problems, leg problems, addictions, depression etc that tougher laws have had to be bought in, sadly some genuine cases will lose out but the blame should be with the liars and cheats that have bought everyone under suspicion in the first place

You are what ? 37/38 something like that, so I would guess your mum is late 50's or 60's so she is not the type of person I am talking about. Surgery can be done for sciatica that post surgery can lead to someone leading a normal life, my aunt had an op to reconstruct the area that was putting pressure on the sciatic nerve and leads a very active life now and she is 72 so someone say 40's or 50's could easily have an op for sciatica and then do a job that does not involve heavy lifting etc, an admin role or something. I still maintain that there is some type of work available for most types of people, sure someone who has back or leg problems couldn't work on a building site or be a landscape gardener but there is no reason why most on incapacity benefit couldn't do an admin job or a PC based job

If there were not so many people fiddling the sytem then genuine cases would not be tarred with the same brush, my opinion is that at least 1/2 on incapacity benefit are trying it on and that 90% of claimants are capable of some form of work so genuine cases get inconvenienced because of the chancers. Presumably your mum will be moved to Job Seekers Allowance though as opposed to losing all money though ? My personal opinion is that anyone who is not a full blown re**** or quadraplegic is capable of some sort of work. I read every day cases of people being put on incapacity benefit because they have bad legs or a bad back for example but why can't someone with bad legs do a computer job for instance ? same as someone in a wheelchair, why can't they do a home based computer job for example ?

Disagree, a job is a job, should not be sneered at just because it is part time

It still means they are earning as opposed to sponging though. Even if it is part time it is good to see some of the unemployed getting off their backsides and doing something positive

I notice that the lefties/liberals have kept very quiet about the MASSIVE fall in unemployment with over 50,000 off the dole queue, just about the single biggest fall since records began and a further sign after the 1.2% growth that the private sector is booming. But hey doesn't suit your agendas of talking Britain down ;)

Fascinating stuff Ricky but what happens with the BUSINESS accounts ? Do they get the full amount back ? if so from who ? do they get nothing ? are they limited to 50k ? explain what happens with business accounts under your proposals I have a Lloyds TSB business account for my company and there is not a seperate trading arm for business accounts, they go bust tomorrow the business accounts do too

RBS Group hold around 1 in 3 business accounts and corporate accounts in the UK, there are in the region of 4m+ registered companies in the UK so we are talking about roughly 1.5m company accounts held by RBS Group. Leaving 1.5m companies with just 50k left is the most ludicrous thing I have ever read on this board, you are talking about in the region of 1m companies wiped out overnight, you are talking about companies not with RBS that rely on RBS business customers for orders so every supply chain in this country is affected, you are talking about the effective liquidation of many FTSE 100 companies if they are just left with 50k each, your crackpot proposals would put probably 8-10m people out of work on top of what is out of work now. You are an intelligent guy on the whole Ricky but you have not thought this through one bit, it is beyond ludicrous what you were suggesting

Can't give a detailed answer as am off for a pub quiz and a few games of pool but it is totally right to balance out the boundaries, it takes a lot less votes to elect a Labour MP than it does a Tory MP and it is right to balance that out and have near enough equal constituencies, of course it will benefit the Tories and rightly so but Labour had it too good for too long with a fundamentally flawed system AV will never be voted in favour of by the public IMHO

Tipsy ;) but I have work tomorrow and don't work well with hangovers so not getting drunk :teresa:

Hope Victor is chosen, he my fave BB contestant ever

It is not just the one bank though Ricky Suppose people get wind that RBS is closing down, this would lead to chaos and panic at EVERY bank across the land as 50m people descend onto the banks demanding to withdraw their money, this would lead to chaos in the banking system, riots, civil disorder, thousands dead in stampedes and the collapse of other banks too, the idea that people will think "aah its only RBS my money in Lloyds is safe" and sit calmly infront of their tv, won't happen mate Letting RBS die would kill other banks too Not to mention the stock market collapse that would come with the collapse of a major bank, not to mention the run on the pound, we would become a near banana republic.

So you think it would be ok for people who have worked hard and saved hard all their lives to lose everything over 50k ? pensioners who saved for retirement, business owners who worked 14 hr days, people who have just sold their house and are in the process of buying another one, and what about business account holders ? most business accounts would have more than 50k in, you are talking with someone like the RBS of probably a million businesses losing everyhing over 50k, thats millions thrown out of work, utter madness. You are one of the most sensible people on this forum usually but I do wonder if you gave Crazy Chris your password after a few drinks -_-

Xmas 2008 and 2009 were due to severe discounting by retailers having a price war before xmas, many of the big chains started their sales in December as opposed to after xmas/jan, I think the VAT cut had little effect really, more retail price wars did. Yeah VAT was working out at 2.5% saving but retailers were slashing prices by 10 times that to try get business.

I was opposed to it too, it was pointless, waste of time, did nothing 2.5% cut in VAT meant someone saving £25 off a £1000 plasma tv, if someone has £1000 to spend on a tv then £25 off the asking price isn't going to be a deal breaker. What we should have done is what the Australians did and give cash to everyone (think it was about £250 each) to spend in the High St's to keep the retail market strong, thanks to that Australia wethered the storm recession wise, we should have done that here instead of a pointless gimmick like a VAT cut. I was opposed to the stimulus because it was the wrong type.

Agree with the first bit, a bank collapse especially a high profile one would have lead to riots in the streets from savers and account holders, a complete collapse in the stock market and a run on the pound that would make black wednesday seem like nothing and mass panic in the streets as savers in other banks withdraw all their money for fear of same happening to their bank. Letting a bank die was a non starter.