Iain Wright gets it wrong ( again )

Bearded Beast · **Joined:** Tue Apr 02, 2013 7:21 pm **Posts:** 362

He has to come out and say this. It's a vote winner.

Don't forget, the majority of our town is seemingly full of lazy , good for nothing, lifetime career professional dole rats.

Ruffle their hair and make them feel badly done to and they might have the semblance of cognitive thought to mark his box at the next election.

loyal blue · **Joined:** Thu Feb 28, 2008 1:53 pm **Posts:** 1912

they should be made to do all three of those proposals not just one ffs. if they are only doing 30 hours a week over 5 days, in my book that is between an extra 8-15 hours less than the full time working folk. so sorrycommunity service 4 days a week, sign on, one morning say 9am. free by 9.30 and straight to the classroom for 6 hours teaching. I'm sure fookers would soon start working for a living.

KateST73 · **Joined:** Sun Aug 04, 2013 11:24 am **Posts:** 97

You will almost certainly find a good proportion of the towns unemployed are working cash in hand. This includes not only people collecting Jobseekers Allowance but also people claiming to be ill.
Blame the greedy firms, a lot in the building/roofing trade who are responsible for this.

loyal blue · **Joined:** Thu Feb 28, 2008 1:53 pm **Posts:** 1912

i'm not against people doing the odd job cash in hand - guvvies as we know them for friends and family. But if you are saying people are doing this as a permanent job then they deserve all they get and should not be claiming job seekers etc as they are working and should be self-employed, also paying the appropriate taxes.

KateST73 · **Joined:** Sun Aug 04, 2013 11:24 am **Posts:** 97

That is why Mr Blue I support what the government are attempting to do.

offshorepoolie · **Joined:** Wed Oct 14, 2009 7:32 pm **Posts:** 6011

Great idea lets put all the road sweepers on the dole and replace them with long term unemployed. Long term unemployed should "WORK" at looking for jobs continuously each day 8 till 5 at the job centre not take jobs off others.... Myopic Daily Mail politics at its best..

alienlife · **Posted:** Wed Oct 02, 2013 8:15 am

Mr Wright is the worst politician this town has ever elected & he isn't even a decent bloke who is just crap at his job.

He's delivered nothing for the town and in typical Labour style will not speak out if that means breaking the party line.

I'd love to see a well funded and utterly non political ordinary bloke from the town stand against him for election and beat him. It won't happen the people in the town are morons when it comes to elections (they scrapped the mayoral system FFS).

As for the Tory proposals I like the idea but I don't trust them to implement them well enough. But we need something in this country to stop benefits being more than a safety net for so many people.

Hangem · **Posted:** Wed Oct 02, 2013 9:38 am

What about self employed who work but claim they earn very little (cough) and still get benefits to top up there wages?

KateST73 · **Joined:** Sun Aug 04, 2013 11:24 am **Posts:** 97

Yes Mr Hangem, unfortunately it seems the whole country is on the fiddle, including tax dodgers, people claiming to be single but having a working partner living with them and the obvious disability claimants.
The ones who will suffer the most are those hit by the bedroom tax and those disability claimants who are genuinely in need.
Unfortunately the latter are who the government will target because they are the easiest to sanction.

offshorepoolie · **Joined:** Wed Oct 14, 2009 7:32 pm **Posts:** 6011

Don't forget all these multinationals and the banks .. they fiddle far more money than anyone you see on the streets of Hartlepool.

alienlife · **Posted:** Wed Oct 02, 2013 10:07 am

It's like a Daily Mail conference in here this morning.

The bedroom tax is not a fucking tax and anyone who refers to it as such should go back and take a primary school comprehension test. The vast majority of disability claimants are genuine and it seems to be the ones who are playing the system are avoiding the ATOS bullet.

Tax dodging is sadly done legally because HMRC are one of the most slow witted government departments in the world ever (unless it comes to trying to fine people for late tax returns that don't need submitting). As for people claiming to be single or claiming to earn less than they do the flaws again are systemic failures to administer benefits properly and the fact that the benefits system is so complex that its perfectly possible to claim for resident children that don't even exist.

There are a number of solutions to the countries welfare bills, but the short term impact on those who have known nothing but benefits will be huge and it will take a government with much bigger plums than any of the current lot (in power or opposition) to implement any of them.

offshorepoolie · **Joined:** Wed Oct 14, 2009 7:32 pm **Posts:** 6011

Its far easier to go after the small man than the big corporations FACT .. If they directed their resources in a more focused way at teh right culprits they'll benefit from greater returns.

derwent · **Joined:** Wed Jun 24, 2009 7:59 pm **Posts:** 12470

I've always liked the idea of people who won't work or won't even look for work being given "tasks" to earn at least a part of their benefits but I'm a bit sceptical as, like Mr Offshore, the scheme needs to be administered correctly and monitored.
After all these proposals come from a government who recently gave people earning a million quid a year a £50,000 tax handback.
If the government showed any sort of will to gather in the taxes that are being "avoided" by their mates and supporters they would get my credibility towards them in a flash.
I include the next government in this and the one after that and so on, whatever political colour they are.
As for politicians towing the party line, what's new about that???
They've got a cushy number and they are human ( nearly), therefore they are looking after number one, just like most people do.
Put a monkey in a red suit in Hartlepool and it gets elected. Similarly put a monkey in a blue suit in leafy Surrey and the same happens.
It has always been thus.
Shirkers on benefit and tax evading shirkers are one and the same to me. Both categories burden the rest of us. So if we're gonna put a stop to "hard working people", as the latest buzz slogan blasts out, paying for shirkers of any variety, let's go the whole hog.

alienlife · **Posted:** Wed Oct 02, 2013 10:41 am

offshorepoolie wrote:

Its far easier to go after the small man than the big corporations FACT .. If they directed their resources in a more focused way at teh right culprits they'll benefit from greater returns.

Of course the trouble is that these corporations provide lots of employment to people who pay income tax. Their power makes them able to threaten to pull out of the UK if they're pushed too hard to pay more taxes.

born toulouse · **Posted:** Wed Oct 02, 2013 10:53 am

Most of the benefit bill is money spent on people in work- falling wages, zero hours contracts and so on see to that. Standard Tory bollocks aimed at keeping the faithful happy- give them some poor, feckless dole-ites to hate and they might not notice the shit job you're doing. They might as well just shout, "Kill the poor!" at the end of their speeches- it would get the same hearty applause from their few remaining members who haven't legged it to UKIP.

PS Labour are also just a bunch of knobs but in a slightly different way- they pretend to be nice while wrecking the place.

MFR · **Posted:** Wed Oct 02, 2013 6:20 pm

Not disagreeing that cleaning the place up wouldnt be a good thing, but this is just the usual headline grabbing, attention re-focusing bilge from the Tories. Point the finger of blame at the poorest in society, trot out the usual wank re benefit bill size whilst ignoring the fact the the vast majority of it is pensions, never EVER identify the amount of money that will be saved in these knee-jerk policies as a percentile of overall benefit bill - ie miniscule. For fucks sake, they'll lose more than this just mis-managing a medium size IT project. All just to appease the Daily Wail types, get them salivating over their morning tea whilst surreptitiously glancing at the all the side boob shots of some Z list celeb. not nice people - the lot of them.

KateST73 · **Joined:** Sun Aug 04, 2013 11:24 am **Posts:** 97

Mr Fireball as I said earlier, the folk in the under occupied properties are the easy targets. If they attempt to take away benefits from under 25s I think there would be massive unrest.
You would think this government wants to win the next election but it just keeps shooting itself in the foot nearly every time it speaks.

Spender · **Posted:** Wed Oct 02, 2013 7:53 pm

It is indeed the 'black economy' that is the problem, but it's been alive since history began and there isn't anyone in the world than can sort it out because of the nature of it. The harder they try, the worse they will fail.

Try a fairer tax system. Every tax payer in Britain has paid 1000 snots ((c) Salty) for failed civil service IT systems.

alienlife · **Posted:** Wed Oct 02, 2013 8:54 pm

I'm not sure the black economy is a problem, punitive tax systems and the way things like local authority housing is in such short supply are huge factors. If there were more state owned places to live rents could be lower and less people would rely on handouts to pay for them.

alienlife · **Posted:** Wed Oct 02, 2013 10:45 pm

I'm sure that is one of the reasons.

If councils had sold stuff off and then used the money to build more that could have been win-win but as is typical when you let politicians do stuff they only thought short term.

I know of loads of people who would still be renting without right to buy, and I'll never begrudge anyone making a legitimate profit by selling their house on but it ruins areas when certain landlords get hold of a lot of properties.

alienlife · **Posted:** Wed Oct 02, 2013 10:48 pm

Then again the Germans are a nation of renters and their economy isn't fucked...

alienlife · **Posted:** Wed Oct 02, 2013 11:43 pm

That's the scary thing, change benefits, scrap benefits, chuck millions into regeneration schemes, make education compulsory till 18, force people to do community work etc.

But no matter what you do (even throwing 10,000 jobs for people who have long term ties to the town only) unless you can sustain the work for 20-30 years you'll never change the values and mindset of all the people.

Funnily though all the streets that have been pulled down or are being pulled down are ones that were alright for years and then got filled with the kind of people the council evicted from their houses years ago. Its sad that on one hand we can blame those in charge but at the same time those who see a life on benefits as free stuff are just as bad.

If its possible to be on both sides of an argument at once I think thats where I need to put myself.

parmo · **Posted:** Thu Oct 03, 2013 9:24 am

Chip Fireball wrote:

Its ( bedroom tax ) crazy legislation geared towards lining the pockets of private landlords who are probably Tory voters. People who thought they would buy up cheap properties then rent them out to doleys and make a killing.

So for instance I got a 3 bedroom council gaff on the Central. Its a nice enough house but its not exactly Mayfair. I got 3 bed house initially as I had 2 kids. I lived there 10 year and looked after the place and get on well with me neighbours.

Think the rent is about 80 bar a week. Say I got made redundant cos one of the kids has grown up and left , they would tell me I had to move to 2 bedroom place to get me full housing benefit. I would then rent a nice 2 bed flat down the Marina for about 150 bar a week.

Me an the family would lose the home we lived in for ten year, the taxpayer would be 70 quid a week worse off and the neighbours would probably get lumbered with a ASBO family from hell who would trash the gaff within about 10 minutes.

How the fuck is that good legislation for anyone other than the private landlords ?

They would have been much better off putting a cap on the amount you could claim- so saying if you is family with one kid you can rent whatever size property you want as long as it dont cost taxpayer more than 100 quid a week.

that is far too sensible !!!!

Iain Wright gets it wrong ( again )

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