I ❤ JustinBieber

The welfare state is a monster that is totally out of control, a rampant beast that is eating away at the financials of this country and eating away at the morals of this country, the monster needs taking down It has become a way of life, a career option for many and that is utterly wrong and unacceptable to me. The welfare state should be there to help the elderly and the disabled and offer a temporary safety net to those who have fallen upon hard times because of losing their job, a safety net to stop the person starving until he has found a job Instead it is a haven for fraudsters, career spongers who see welfare as a career, feckless chavs and housing benefit fraudsters, the whole system needs overhauling. I think pensioners should get MORE money, I think that the genuinely physically and mentally handicapped should get MORE but that means ripping out the welfare state from top to bottom and weeding out the career scroungers, feckless chavs, fraudsters etc. Welfare should not be a way of life or a career for able bodied people of working age it should be a temporary safety net.

China is only now starting to develop as an economic powerhouse, give it 5 years the greed is good culture will spread through China like wildfire and the top bankers will be on salaries that would make American's envious, China is a developing economic powerhouse, capitalism will be rampant through China before too long. In terms of your other point maybe not but I doubt basic salary has risen by 12 times in that time, share options, performance related pay, profit sharing etc have all boosted what CEO's are taking home.

But things are cheaper and the cost of living so much cheaper in China than in America/UK

With my example of the surgeon, the surgeon who did my knee earns in the region of £350,000 a year through NHS and private work, if you make him earn 6 times more than say a guy working in McDonalds getting £200 a week then you are effectively telling that surgeon that he has to earn £60k a year instead of £350k which is unfair on the surgeon

That is all the well and good but why should an unskilled person for example earn similar to or on the scale of a surgeon who studied for 7 years at medical school or an entrepreneur who took out a 2nd mortgage to start a business etc ? I believe in input=output, you get out of life what you put into it, if I studied for years and years to get qualified in a profession or started a business with all the risks involved I would feel very browned off if someone who didn't study hard or didn't take risks was earning similar to me.

I am in favour of automatic prison sentences for tax fraud too yes, fraud is fraud be it a benefit cheat who claims benefit and works on the side or pretends to be disabled or a rich guy filling in false claims, I don't condone fraud if you mean businessmen that exploit loopholes then that is legal, am I in favour of loopholes being closed ? yes, should they be punished for exploiting them ? no

Aah didn't know about the 10% thing cheers for the article, that is for those that are out of work for more than a year though and it doesn't happen for another 3 years and in this day and age there is no real excuse for an able bodied person to be out of work for 12 months, there are jobs out there, lots of them, they may not all be well paid but if I was out of work I would take ANYTHING, keeps one busy, gives one self respect and someone who is out of work has no real reason to be out of work for a year tbh. I was down in Devon this last week, lovely area, went out for dinner every night, 5 different places, in only 1 of those places was I served by someone English, I was served by Australians, Romanians, Poles and a Frenchman, they all came into this country and got work, not glamourous work, not well paid work but work all the same, if they can then our unemployed have no real excuse not to get a job inside 12 months. This 10% cut will only affect those that are not trying hard enough.

My manifesto for welfare reform 1) Child benefit only payable for the first child and only available to households earning less than £30,000 a year 2) Automatic prison sentences for benefit cheats and fraudsters 3) Housing benefit capped at 400 p/w for London/SE and 250 p/w nationally 4) No benefits for any immigrant until they have paid taxes for 5 years 5) Unemployment related benefits only paid on a 1 years tax = 1 months benefit basis, claimants get a months benefit for every year they have paid tax 6) Life ban from welfare for anyone caught faking a disability or mental illness 7) Charities take over providing assistance to unemployed once their qualifying period for benefits (see 5) is over

Do you have any links about these 10% cuts ? I have read nothing about this in my absence nor can I find anything about it online, the only thing I remember Osborne saying last month is that benefits will RISE at a slightly lower scale prices index so over 2 years the most that benefits will fall buy will be about 1%, nothing like 10% unless of course you can show me the evidence. Housing benefit capped at £400 a week = £1600 a month, no one needs to go out and rent a property at those sort of prices, if they do then they can pay the extra themselves Actually yes I have, while I have never claimed benefits I have been bankrupt and know what it is like to be chased up by debt collectors. I know what it is like to lose near enough everything thank you. The poor are not forced to be poor, they can go out and make something of their lives, make sacrifices, put in effort, start businesses, get a job, if they want to sit around feeling sorry for themselves and wanting pity as opposed to fighting to break out of poverty then they deserve to be poor. I was born on a council estate, I lived my school years on a council estate, I am not some old Etonian born with a silver spoon in his mouth, I know what it is like to share a bedroom with 3 or 4 people, taking it in turns to sleep on floor so each of us would get a bed for 2 or 3 nights in the week, I know what it is like to have to walk miles an miles across snow drifted fields to work as we didn't have a car, I know what it is like to be poor, you know what ? it was the best thing that ever happened to me because it gave me the drive and determination to break out from those surroundings, others don't want to do that that is not my problem

Yeah just realised I was confusing him with Jack Collison of West Ham :o

Pretty sure he is out for a good while with injury unless I am confusing him with someone else :unsure:

We are not super fit athletes like he is though, he is meant to keep himself in shape and getting drunk and puffing away on cigs is not going to keep him in shape, look at Ronaldinho now Rooney will go the same way if he don't stay in shape. I wouldn't drop him but he is a prize dick doing what he did

Aah for some reason I thought he was 31/32 :o That aside though I do think England need to build for the future and get rid of most of the senior players and blood in a big group of guys in their early 20's who will peak at the next world cup I would certainly get rid of Terry, Lampard, Barry, Gerrard has to stay as he is skipper and Cashley is probably the best LB in the world much as he is a repulsive creature so he should stay.

Defoe is injured, not fit to play or am sure he would have been in the squad Bit of a disappointing squad tbh, it was a good chance to totally rebuild from scratch and instead it has failures like Lampard, Terry and Barry from the world cup (all should be dropped as they are too old now for the future) and donkey's like Zamora and Carthorse I would have gone 1. Hart 2. Johnson G 3. Cole 4. Shawcross 5. Dawson 6. Huddlestone 7. Lennon 8. Milner 9. Rooney 10. Gerrard 11. Johnson A

The Dark Destroyer was not a bad rapper Bought this at the time :o

Mixed feelings about the guy, quality voice but his Reload stuff onwards was a bit sad tbh, nothing is more embarrassing than a man in his 60's trying to pretend he is 17 again by singing with loads of trendy artists and doing EMF and Prince covers etc, bit of a mid life crisis job I think even if some of the songs were quite good. Tom Jones doing duets with artists popular with youngsters is a bit like a teenage lad taking his grandad to a rave.

Neither Labour or the Lib Dems had any money to fight another election, they were both skint after this one, had talks broken down and another election called it would have bankrupted both parties so neither had any real aces to play

Brain fade, Early morning dear boy, not woken up fully yet after consuming a fair old amount of alcohol last night :teresa:

edited original post :)

I of course exclude the elderly and physically handicapped and genuinely mentally handicapped from that, they are the people the welfare state should be providing for but welfare should not be a career option or a lifestyle choice for the able bodied and below retirement age. I would bring in a 1 for 1 system in terms of welfare, for every year someone has paid NI contributions they get 1 months benefits, therefore those that have worked and contributed the most get state help, never paid into the system ? sat on your arse all your life ? come over from abroad for a bit of free money ? tough you get nothing, go visit a charity for help/assistance. Worked for 20 years and paid into the system ? great you get entitled to benefit for 20 months, that is how I would do it. Welfare should not be a career option

The welfare cuts are in housing benefit where fraud and sponging is rife, the £400 a week cap is the best thing that has been bought in in years in welfare, it should be even lower, I would have lowered it to £250, you may want to see spongers like that Somalian bus driver living in plush mansions but the majority of tax payers rightly want that kind of thing stopped, the budget also targeted those that are milking the system in disability benefit, the majority of disability claimants are trying it on, it is good sense to get them off disability benefit and onto job seekers allowance, pure common sense. JSA an pensions are not being cut, the rate of disability benefit is not being cut, the money you referred to is coming from stopping people defrauding the system by living in mansions and from moving people capable of work off to the lower paid job seekers allowance. Both are excellent measures. It is right that the poor should face the highest burden, the middle class and the rich are the people who keep the High St alive so the less burden they face the better as the economy and service industry is dependent on them spending, the poor not spending much is something I can live with, as long as they have running water and are not dying of starvation or dysentry then I see nothing wrong in them shouldering the biggest burden of the debt repayment. Cut the money supply to the middle classes and the rich you risk strangling the service sector, not a good idea

I don't know any MP's so can't speak for them or their motives for voting for it but for even a brief time I was suckered into believing it when it was talked about missiles being able to target us in 45 mins etc but being the cynic and conspiracy theorist that I am that didn't last long but a lot of people believed it including I am sure whole swathes of MP's

The government have been very firm with banks, penalties if they don't lend money to businesses, penalties if they give excessive bonuses, windfall tax on banks, banks have got off anything but scot free from Osborne. And it is right that EVERYONE including the working class and poor should pick up the tab, no sector of society should get off scot free, we are all in this together, it was the working class and poor who voted in the ruinous Labour administration that near bankrupted this country so they should not be immune from picking up the tab. Everyone pays the same price for a tin of beans or a pint of beer or whatever, the rich don't pay more so it is right that everyone pay something towards clearing up the mess Labour created.

Maybe so but they did so based on the information given to them by Blair and Bush, had the real truth come out at the time the result would be very different.

Regardless of any personal feelings of disappointment some possibly many might have that my suspension period has lapsed I think that even the most ardent critic would grudgingly accept that this section of the board has not been the same in the last 60 days and that serious cross party debate has been near as damn non existent, whatever I did wrong is done, no pont dwelling on it, I think my return benefits this part of the board. Sorry if that sounds arrogant but its true :)