http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/p ... 823344.ece

If you don't want to read it, here's the interestingest bits:

'The government has introduced dozens of taxes in the past decade, with the total tax take soaring by £215 billion since Labour came to power in 1997. It now stands at an estimated £530.7 billion, compared with £315.7 billion in 1997.'

'According to research based on official government figures, the average household in Britain pays £668,000 in direct and indirect tax over a person’s lifetime.'

'The four heaviest taxes over a lifetime are income tax, Vat, National Insurance contributions and council tax. Average taxpayers have to work almost half the year — 176 days — to pay their share of the cost of Gordon Brown’s administration.'

Mind, you do get free schools'n'ospitals.

AND they've introduced so much new legislation that now you can get fined for farting in public or sex in any other position than missionary.

I made that last bit up.

I've always advocated tax evasion for the working classes anyway - good luck to people with second jobs, cash in hand etc - the only people it's robbing are the political bureaucrats. It's silly to believe in so-called public spiritidness, there's no such thing!!!!
Bollocks to anyone who diagrees with me!!!!

Income tax was introduced to pay for the Napoleonic wars.

Must have been quite some damage if we're still paying.

People have short fcking memories!

Let that Tory shower of shiite back in, and watch what happens to your NHS, Education standards, and Public services in general.

MRSA, security guards in schools, and clamping??

Chips in your bin and taps on your phone?? One camera for every 400 of you??

Heaven forfend............

Don't forget though Allez, recessions and poverty under the Tories where noble, weren't they

I'd really love to live in the alternate Hartlepool some of the posters grew up in, it seems a million miles from the I knew!

Aye T.A., in Tory recessions we were called 'Moaning Minnies' and told to get 'on our bikes' and go to the paradise that is London Town to seek our fortunes with a stick and a knotted hankie to carry our worldly possessions in.

We just don't know our place these days, do we?

Whereas the peoples party have always produced a paradise.

Why is it that the Tories always have to clear up the shit left by Labour? Why is it that Labout typically inherit a healthy economy only to piss it up the wall?

So the sleaze-ridden shitpit left by the Tories in '97 was 'healthy' was it?

This downturn was created by the bankers for the bankers.
And people now want to put their party back into government?

Last one out, turn the lights off

Financially it was a hell of a lot better than it is now. Brown took over a very healthy economy from Major and spent it all on quangos and spin. As for sleaze......... you're on very thin ice there; which would you prefer to talk about? Labour party bribes or expenses?

Points of order there Mr I: Brown didn't take over anything, remember.

For right or wrong, Blair was elected by the biggest landslide in our electoral history.
'Things can only get better' etc...

Brown was then foisted on to the people without any mandate being given at all.

Also, not being a politician, I am on no variety of 'ice' whatsoever over sleaze.
They've ALL been exposed as the shysters they are over the Telegraph investigation.
What will happen as a result?

Fuck all. There's what. Turkeys will never vote for Christmas. Bonsoir.

So Brown didn't take over the economy in 1997 then ? He wasn't chancellor throughout Blair's Prime Ministership?

I must have dream't it then, I stand corrected.

..... so if they've ALL been exposed as shysters, why are you bothering to promote one party over another...? Hardly a reasoned argument is it...?

Education standards really couldn't be any worse, many people leave school without the ability to read or even have conversation in some cases. Exams are fiddled, schools / colleges focus all their efforts on getting the grades rather than educating and developing which is why you get thick kids getting A and B's.

And as for the NHS, it is failing, it won't work long term, it is an unfair system based around postcodes rather than contribution...!!

POST OF THE WEEK!

Thats an ambitious claim for half 8 on a monday ripper!

Yep, but I'm feeling confident.

The scary thing about the stats is when these schools are trumpeting 92% pass rate A to C they fail to tell you that this figure doesn't include MATHS and ENGLISH (and is it did it would fall to about 60%)!! I'm sure this may explain Mr Ripper's problems with the young graduates today...

The NHS ... even the big bad Tories wouldn't have dared shut down our local hospital. But when the Labour Party does it, it's called a world class health service...pity it falls down on the fact that if you don't have a car you have to spend hours on various buses trying to reach the distant hospital.

Thats ok ripper doesnt like people without cars so it will probably cause a lot of them to snuff it and reduce their numbers

Although I've never actually said that I do like your thinking.

it might have been grave

the nhs was better when they had matrons on the wards, they were spotless and everyone knew there place.

I never said anything of the sort!!!!!!

Frivolous, then?

No, I never said 'frivolous' either

I don't buy the Express but someone had it at work so I was flicking through at the weekend and there was an interesting article about a brother and sister who were at opposite ends of the working spectrum. The sister was ambitious, hard working and earnt her crust whilst the brother sat on his arse playing his computer all day with the usual attitude of 'I can't earn this money if I get a job so why should I bother'. He has 4 kids between him and his partner from her previous relationship, neither of them work.

This country would be a far better place if people like this were sterilised, if you can support yourself then you shouldn't be allowed to have kids. These kids don't have a chance in life and they'll more than likely follow (like most of us do) in similar footsteps to our parents. There are 2 tossers in that family at the moment, in a few years there is likely to be at least 6 and this problem is more than common in a lot of houses throughout the country meaning the problem is only going to get worse. Sadly I think any Government is going to sit back and watch the problem get worse.

couldnt agree more, my cousin is a prime example of what you were saying. She used to work in kwick save in stockton, got married to a Bloke who lied about going to uni everyday when he sat round his mates house getting pissed (sponged off my aunt and nana for the wedding).

Is now living rent free in my auntys house, as she lives with my grandad to look after him, anyway she got pregenant could afford it really, and has since knocked out another kid and is pregenant again all in the space of 5 years, funny how she becomes pregenant again when she is due to go back to work. He husband is a git and although works doesnt pay my aunty anything for the morgage or bills on the house he is living in, all the while claiming more money off the government for his ugly kids.

I read that at the old girls, was in full agreement with the dude on this.

oy spender / kev, whats the tax like over there

You agreed with the blokes stance?

I didn't agree with his stance not too work, but i could understand his situation, he would need to earn about 20k a year to keep up the standard of life he has at the moment.

He's just applying for the money he's allowed on the current benefit system.

He has an excellent relationship with his kids too who he sees a hell of a lot compared to some dads.

About 10 years my dad had the opportunity to return to work after being off sick for a bit, it would work out that he was going to be £12 per month better off, whats the point?

Simple answer then is to slash the benefits so that people are encouraged to work.

Pay the lazy cnts in vouchers too- fuel vouchers for the gas and electric, food vouchers for Lidl, no vouchers for pubs...

Agreed, the benefit system favours people who dont work n have kids, it's easier for them to stay on them and not work, they can have a much better and profitable life.

agree but wouldnt say they have better life sitting in all day must do head in? would me like

...all depends on the school you went to, tends to colour your views.

Spot on.

When I left the UK the Dept of Work and Pensions told me I didn't have to make anymore contributions to my state pension because I'd gotten my 30 years in. Yet if I still worked in the UK, I woud have to carry on contributing. Why? To keep the lazy feckers who won't work in the style to which they have become accustomed.

Very valid point.

The schools aren't worse, but the end product is not very robust.

Which leads to the conclusion ...you went to a shit school. and you are guilty of...'generalising from self'..."I went to a shit school, therefore I assume all schools were shit"...

By the way Chip, 'this government' did not descend from a shaft of celestial sunlight and bring knowledge as its gift. I wonder just how we did cope before 'this government'.... came down from heaven to save us.
My enduring experience of the education system which finally ended last year, is that it does a good PR job now.
Do you vote Labour?

Eggs-fkin-actly.

My school was canny, and even the kids who didn't even go to 6th form had better English and Maths skills than some of the divvys who graduate from universities nowadays.

Step aside ripper, post of the week by mr fireball!!

I never mentioned political parties - I only championed tax evasion for the working classes!!!

Just a few points...

More kids are going to uni BUT Kids in general are doing silly subjects at uni, how many sociaologists are needed?

Exams aren't hard anymore because schools are too focussed on league tables or points systems, there was a time were the content of an exam was a bit of a surprise, but it doesn't happen these days.

People talk about nurses like they are ALL brilliant when the vast majority are bone idol and over paid.

New Labour have well outstayed their welcome.

Every year at 6th form we get 40 kids studying to be P E teachers and child care and thats just 1 college were are all these jobs for these young people.

Which roughly translated means ... You are not used to having to contend with opposing viewpoints and have a problem with this.. Tough... and as this board hasn't been re-designated the 'Chip-board', you're just going to put up with a different viewpoint.
Why not organise a poll next and I'll go into exile if it goea against me and leave the board to all you 'youngsters' ...

Reading posts like this is what taught me yawn with my mouth closed.

I did work there and have also worked at quite a few other places in my life and am now quite comfortably off thank you. Are you implying that humble people like myself are incapable of understanding the workings and nuances of the English Language because I never went to Uni .. is the English language's delights restricted to the educated classes and people like me should be wringing our caps and knowing our place?
if we applied your logic, people like Shakespeare and his ilk would be condemned as uneducated oafs from the sticks and you'd be singing the praises of the resident poet at the University of Daz who has a Masters Degree in Post Modern Poetry and scrawls three line odes to motroways that no one can comprehend... but he has a degree. What more can one desire in life.
i remain sir, your humble consience.

p.s Those metaphors I write in, they're called conceptual metaphors.

sorry to but in but just because snowy may or may not work at the baths means he must be too thick for anything else does it.
have you thought that some people are in a job different to what they are originally trained for.through circumstances beyond their control.
you patronising twat