reckon they should increase for people on the dole? food,gas,electric is going up in price. worrying times ahead.....or should they get a bleedin job!

They should get a job, people with jobs are gonna have their elec and gas put up as well and also need to eat.....

see your point.

According to the BBC today inflation is just over 3% - I reckon the govt is frigging the figures here - Petrol/Diesel has gone up about 25p a litre in the last 12 months (over 25%) gas/elec have had big increases, food going up all the time

Won't be long before they are fighting wage inflation - don't think most workers are going to be happy with under 3% wage rises this year - I certainly wouldn't be

Still - looking on the bright side could spell the end for Gordon Brown & his cronies

Anytime owt goes up they just take it out of the equation.


Do you seriously reckon that if they'd put Council Tax in the equation, you'd get 2% inflation?? Of course not they put it up 12% TWICE!! How about fuel then?? Three times it's gone up by 15% And that doesn't take into consideration tax increases.

The RPI is a nice cosy little basket of groceries like fig rolls, sugar, tea bags, bread, pile ointment, Rola Cola and bog roll that everyone buys and which never goes up.

Yes folks, it's another giant con.

Was at a Climate Change Conference today and they are expecting the cost of fuel and enery to double come 2010. It's looking very grim this energy thing. They were adamant it was not 'scare mongering' but the facts, also in 2010, a rise of 2 meters of the sea will be devastating the costal towns, never mind the 82m expected in 2100!!!!!!!!!

Looking bad, and all this is down to CO2 emmissions and people not giving a flying fook! Slowly destroying the world, but im not going to stop using the car and motorbike im affraid!

GoGreen. Hmmmm and I have to market and advertise this.

Please Please Stop....my sides have just split!!!!

Climate change

What a pile of spunk! climate does change, it's a NATURAL event!!!!

As for benefits, send people job offers through the post, if they reject them then take their money off them. Disability benefits I can understand, and the same for genuine single parents. The rest can fook right off and get a job cause there's plenty about

Coming out of work this afternoon and a gang of lads....in their 20's, scruffy as f***and being a real chew,forever chavs. The same old faces, never went to school, never done a days work, and never will, because they are unemployable and thick and a giro keeps them in the style to which they are accustomed. The towns full of them, all migrating around like fookin wildebeest with a pack of stella or Fosters on their shoulders looking for somewhere drink themselves into a higher mental state

The 'someone in authority' will only cut the benefits or try stop giving benefits, to those who've actually worked and paid into the system..... the never worked, never will work and won't work have their claim forms filled in as they are waiting for the midwife to cut their umbilical cord.

What are genuine single parents? Disability benefits also need to be stricter in my opinion too many spongers when there feck all wrong with them.

jobcentre staff couldnt care. first priority is the constant paperwork.

The ones who have really had the father disappear and can't work because they've been left with the kids. The ones I see more often than not are the ones where they still live there but put down on the forms that they've done one.

Me and our lass put it into the calculator thing as if she was single and they offered about the same money as I earn to her, even though she works part time too. The system is designed to be abused and rewards those that do so.

The only way to stop climate problems is to USE NUCLEAR ENERGY FFS

We supply 3% of the UK's electricity. Nuclear power is clean and won't run out for fucking ages.

I know there's nuclear waste but come on, just build a fucking well or something. As long as it isn't harming anything, it's not an issue.

Cows cause more damage to the environment than every motor vehicle on Earth. It's all bollocks - it's never gonna be solved because the biggest offenders will never change.

Very sensible as usual.

What is the climate problem? Weather has always been unpredictable hasn't it?

Not in Manchester it hasn't

That's too logical...if we try to build a nuclear power station, you get endless 'protests' by assorted eco loons, dungaree clad Worzel Gummidge clones who delay every move with their objections yet usually live in a comfy house with all the electric gadgets going....hypocrites who think covering the entire country and now the seas with fooking wind turbines will will solve our problems ...these people give off such a warm glow of self satisfaction, that we should should use them as solar panels.

Left with the kids? Thats why there are after school clubs etc nowadays, there may be genuine cases etc of people who have no family to babysit for various reasons but FFS where i live i know no genuine ones. Majority of the problem now is the youth see there parents sponging off the state and see this as ok and follow suit.

Maybe more emphasis should be put on employers to supply free or cheap childcare for its workforce then there wuld be no excuses for people with kids not to work.

Same where I like, it's chavs that take advantage of it all. I hate the fact so much of our pay goes out as tax yet these people have never contributed in any way. Makes me sick

The single parent demonisation has always puzzled me a bit, as there is a generation of many thousands (possibly hundreds of thousands) who grew up in single parent families when their mam or dad was killed in WW2.

The 50's are often portrayed as some kind of moral 'golden age', but there must have been more kids from single parent families around then than at any other time (including now).

When single parents officially became vermin about 20 years ago, I never understood why there was never more media representation of this generation, but I suppose it wouldn't sell papers.

There were quite a few kids without one or the other of their parents, or even both, in the fifties. Kids were looked after by their grandparents, aunties and uncles and even neighbours.
The 'Dunkirk Spirit' was still prevailant then and people tended to look after each other more than they do now.
The first Television appeared in our immediate area in 1955. That year there was what felt like hundreds of people crammed into the front room of this house to watch the cup final on a fourteen inch black and white phenomonon. There was more sharing in those days. You may have heard people say that none of the doors were locked in the street...............that's because nobody had anything worth pinching. Nowadays you can live in a street and not get a peep from your neighbours for years.
Different times and different values. Scrounging off the state was frowned upon as was getting pregnant out of wedlock. Although people had nothing and struggled to make ends meet, they had fierce pride and sense of community spirit. Every time my Mam baked, which was very often as she never bought anything that she could make herself, one of us was sent to Mrs so and so's with a pie or a bit of cake or some biscuits. There was a lot of sharing. We could do with some of those working class values today.