£42,000 a year benefits

Do you not understand how the concept of a living wage works? The idea is you set a minimum wage that must be paid by businesses and then set a minimum annual income that's required to meet all the necessities of living. If someone doesn't earn enough to meet the living wage then the government tops up their income to that level.

The minimum wage is a failure because it fails to account for part time and seasonal workers as well as ignoring regional differences in living costs (especially in London).

As it stands, the majority of businesses can afford to stomach a £1 increase in the minimum wage. Opposition is mostly being headed by the large businesses who stand to lose the most money, not because their income will decline but because the executives will have to tolerate reductions in expenses and bonuses. That so many people are willing to cheat themselves out of a better life because of the hideous propaganda and talking points pushed out by the Tories and the rich is just depressing.

Just to add, foreign companies call our country the money pit cos they make all their profits here while paying peanuts to the poor souls manufacturing their products for them, import duty would sort that out, bring back trade here and we could become more self sufficient.

Vote BNP/IPUK anyone but the main 3 if you want this to change.

Originally Posted by specialone

Im not talking about large companies, im talking about small ones, with 20 or so employees, i have a friend with an engineering company, whose order book has almost gone due to customers all buggering off to foreign countries.
He pays more than minimum wage but is struggling and with the national insurance being talked about going up it could mean the difference between staying afloat.
Are you an employee by any chance???
Do you think its a good idea that all our trade has buggered off to be made cheaper in other countries?? where do you think it will end???
Dont you think its a coincendence that all the manufacturing has gone that the number of jobs thats available has fallen.

You're going to have to source your claim that jobs have declined since the fall of manufacturing in the UK because everything I've seen has shown the opposite. Manufacturing in the UK has not died because it's too expensive here but because it's cheaper elsewhere, thanks to other countries having lower costs of living (which is not a product of taxation levels).

If you increase import duties then it won't spur a resurgence of manufacturing in the UK because you've managed to increase the cost of raw materials that manufacturers need. On top of that, it encourages retaliatory tariffs overseas and throttles global trade, which is, funnily enough, what tipped a recession into depression in the 20s.

More to the point, why do we need a rise in manufacturing industries in the UK? They actually earn less money than service-based industries and contribute less to the GDP. Just accept it - Britain has, like most of the developed world, transitioned from a manufacturing to a service economy.

[Messie]

Originally Posted by ranathari

The story is complete nonsense and anyone who thinks anything the Daily Mail publish is in any way truthful and accurate is an idiot.

The reason why they're apparently well off is that they're funding their lifestyles via debt and topping it up with welfare payments. They've been shopping their story round the papers for a while now to try and get more money to pay off their credit card and loan debts.

More to the point, stories like this shouldn't prompt you to say that the welfare state should be cut back in any way. The minimum wage should be increased to the point where it becomes preferable to be in work as opposed to out of it or, ideally, we'd have a national living wage rather than a minimum wage.

edit: forgot to mention that he's probably lying about his reasons for quitting work. Currently the bailiffs/creditors cannot claim any debts owed via your welfare payments if you are unemployed so it's more likely that he quit work to avoid having to repay his debts. The minute he gets back into employment they'll come after him for the money and he'll be screwed.

There's also the fact that most councils have sold off their larger properties to the private sector thanks to that mad bitch in the 80s so if he were to work then they'd lose their housing payments and have to pay commercial rates, which are impossible to meet for a family with that many children.

Absolutely agree. And your explanation of the living wage makes sense too.

Originally Posted by Zombie Jesus

1) Impose breeding resistrictions for fat, stupid, or socially irresponsible people.
2) Failure to comply with breeding restrictions incurs forced sterilisation after 2 children.
3) Welfare provided in the shape of trailer parks and food rations provided to meet minimum nutritional and calorific requirements.
4) Problem solved.

I think you're living in the wrong country hun. At least, please could you take your views to another country

Originally Posted by ranathari

Do The idea is you set a minimum wage that must be paid by businesses.....

For so long as they employ people. Lay people off = no wages. Simples.

It also means, no output, no income and no company. This leads to unemployment, more benfits being paid for by less people in work via the tax system. And so on.

The minimum wage was a great idea in prosperous times.

You also need to remember that the majority of people in work at the moment are employed in SMEs...... the very companies that are struggling to stay afloat at the moment.

[L3nny]

Originally Posted by thefallenangel

Vote BNP/IPUK anyone but the main 3 if you want this to change.

The only problem with that is most of their party members are racists nutters.

Shame really as a lot of their proposed policies I agree with, although I am not silly enough to believe they are not a friendly front for their real agendas.

The story is an advert for a lady-brain-rot pink-top magazine. It's meant to rile you.

£42k for 10 people is a pretty dire situation, never mind having a munter of a wife.

[Biker Biggles]

If British manufacturing has been written off as not economicly feasable in the modern world why is it that Germany,France and even Italy still have their huge manufacturing base and many other European countries do too?They tend to have a higher standard of living than us too,and strong trade unions and better healthcare.What went wrong here?

Originally Posted by Jabba

For so long as they employ people. Lay people off = no wages. Simples.

It also means, no output, no income and no company. This leads to unemployment, more benfits being paid for by less people in work via the tax system. And so on.

The minimum wage was a great idea in prosperous times.

You also need to remember that the majority of people in work at the moment are employed in SMEs...... the very companies that are struggling to stay afloat at the moment.

SMEs are the minority of employers. Currently the majority of people in the UK are employed by the private sector, followed by multinationals and then large UK employers.

Also your argument that increasing the minimum wage results in job losses has been disproven time and time again by history. The only small employers that lose out when the minimum wage goes up are those that were on the verge of being financially unsustainable and would have eventually gone out of business with a rise in inflation anyway.

Originally Posted by Biker Biggles

If British manufacturing has been written off as not economicly feasable in the modern world why is it that Germany,France and even Italy still have their huge manufacturing base and many other European countries do too?They tend to have a higher standard of living than us too,and strong trade unions and better healthcare.What went wrong here?

Thatcher. Pretty much any ****ty policy or trend in modern Britain can be traced back to her or her ideology. Even the current financial problems stem from her ardent deregulation of the financial industry 20 years ago.