What is your vote based on?

[john444 10]

I refuse to vote, as there's no-one who represents my views.

 

I believe it is to be expected that no party really represents one's view, but even if no party is even close to one's view -- is it not still better to know which parties one does not want at all and by voting for one of the others at least help a little to prevent those?

 

Personally I am constantly disappointed with the party I disapprove least of, but I still vote for them, simply because I disapprove of the others a lot more!

[DeathAxe 10]

We need to ban any EU citizens from being able to claim benefits at all. They are there for the British, not the whole of Europe. They come in, bring kids, multiply, getting 40K. I barley earn enough to get by. It is a disgrace.

 

That is from an inside standpoint, before anyone accuses me of anything. I see it day in day out.

[Mister M 1,625]

We need to ban any EU citizens from being able to claim benefits at all. They are there for the British, not the whole of Europe. They come in, bring kids, multiply, getting 40K. I barley earn enough to get by. It is a disgrace.

 

That is from an inside standpoint, before anyone accuses me of anything. I see it day in day out.

 

Do you work for the DWP?

[tzijlstra 11]

We need to ban any EU citizens from being able to claim benefits at all. They are there for the British, not the whole of Europe. They come in, bring kids, multiply, getting 40K. I barley earn enough to get by. It is a disgrace.

 

That is from an inside standpoint, before anyone accuses me of anything. I see it day in day out.

 

I find your point more indicative that we need to change the benefit system. These benefit claims are exactly the same for EU citizens as they are for UK citizens, they do not get more on the grounds of being foreign (a very popular misconception).

 

People should be made to work, if they can't find employment themselves than they have to work for the government to earn their benefits.

[L00b 441]

I find your point more indicative that we need to change the benefit system.

A simple way (which has probably been discussed to death already, in fairness) might be reciprocal identity: any EU migrant coming in the UK only gets the same amount of benefits (if any), as a British citizen in the same situation would get in their country of origin.

 

e.g. Portuguese migrant comes to UK, gets only the same benefits as a British migrant would get in Portugal.

 

Would have to be implemented with parity of qualifying criteria and tests, e.g. if a Brit doesn't get benefits in Portugal because he's purple with green dots, then a purple Portguese with green dots doesn't get benefits in the UK.

 

Simples, seems the fairest/most equitable King Solomon-like approach to me, and would certainly discourage a sizeable amount of benefit tourism overnight...

 

...But I'm sure EU legislation prevents that in one way or another already

People should be made to work, if they can't find employment themselves than they have to work for the government to earn their benefits.

That'll likely earn you some flak on here shortly

 

Not from me, mind. But it will

Edited April 14, 2014 by L00b

[DeathAxe 10]

Do you work for the DWP?

 

Sub contractor.

[francypants 441]

I'd vote for UKIP because in my opinion Nigel F is the only one who talks any sense and is prepared to stand by what he says.

[El Cid 218]

 

People should be made to work, if they can't find employment themselves than they have to work for the government to earn their benefits.

 

Isnt that communism, whereby the Government give people work?

[L00b 441]

Isnt that communism, whereby the Government give people work?

Not quite.

 

In communist states, the Government gives work to all the people.

 

Here, the Government gives work to unemployed & work-capable people only.

 

So, more like liberal socialism

Edited April 14, 2014 by L00b

[john444 10]

We need to ban any EU citizens from being able to claim benefits at all. They are there for the British, not the whole of Europe. They come in, bring kids, multiply, getting 40K. I barley earn enough to get by. It is a disgrace.

 

That is from an inside standpoint, before anyone accuses me of anything. I see it day in day out.

 

I think this topic has been abused enormously by both the yellow press and some politicians who want to spread Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt in order to get voter support.

 

I seriously doubt that anyone, of British nationality or EU citizen, would get 40K (can you point to actual statistics about this, not maybe one or two isolated cases of fraud?). Apart from this, the UK simply has to follow the same rules as all other countries in the EU (though, if you look at the contracts, the UK is already the country which has got the most exceptions and the most concessions). So this is purely a matter of whether the UK wants to remain in the EU or not and whether it feels that remaining in he EU would be an advantage or not. I think the advantages by far outweigh the problems, but once we make the decision to stay, we have to play by the same rules as anyone else.

 

What always amazes me is how especially the poor people or people in the lower income ranges are more outraged by anything where other poor people get tax payer's money than by all those things where money is thrown in the billions at, e.g., nuclear submarines, banks, surveillance that would have made Orwell's big brother envious and tons of other things.

 

Politicians will be happy if their voters worry about a few Bulgarians coming to the UK rather than about the real issues, because it easy to fake activity when it comes to migration (throw a couple of people out, if that is not legal, blame the EU), rather than actually do something about all the rather complex things that are going wrong about the economy, the banking system, and many other things.

 

But if we really worry about the future of the UK, our kids and our own pensions, worrying about migration that way will not help at all. On the contrary: if you look at actual scientific studies by economists, the only chance for economies like the UK, with millions of baby-boomers retiring in the coming years and with increasing costs of health-care, the only way is to get as much immigration of child-bearing people as you can manage and give them as good and cheap an education as you can. Because unless they will produce the GDP for our pensions, nobody else will.

 

---------- Post added 14-04-2014 at 15:11 ----------

 

People should be made to work, if they can't find employment themselves than they have to work for the government to earn their benefits.

 

Isn't that easier said than done? I can understand the frustration of hard-working people (I am one) about people on benefits, but just talk to these people (I have): the vast majority of them feels embarrassed, frustrated and bad about being on benefits. But for many of them, there simply is no work available, and this will get worse.

 

If you are an elderly person, you may remember the utopia of the 60ies: progress will abolish the need to work and robots will serve our every need.

The problem is that, to a large extend, that utopia has become a reality, but it turned into a dystopia: production is increasingly possible without a work force, especially in the UK, GDP is generated even without production, simply by financial transactions. We do not need these people to work, and progress will make that we need them less and less. We have solved the technology, but no-one has figured out the economy.

 

And there is another problem: we increasingly only need highly skilled people. Everyone else will have to compete with more and more people for badly paid jobs for people with low qualifications. Unless we radically change things, companies will just force peope into a kind of near-slavery as we already see it being done with 0-hours contracts and the like.

 

We should not let the CEOs, the rich people and the priviledged people (Murdoch anyone?) try to play the losing middle class against the ones who already have fallen out of the middle class. Let us be smart about this and see how to really fix what is broken at entirely different levels.

And let us look at history as a guidance for which kind of politics actually resulted in an improvement of well-being for the majority of people.

 

I doubt that constantly pointing the finger at the have-nots, have-littles and soon-will-have-less is not going to help.

[El Cid 218]

Not quite.

 

In communist states, the Government gives work to all the people.

 

 

The state already employs loads of people via local councils, councils are generally the largest employers.

So not all the population, but adding another 5% is not the way to go.

[L00b 441]

The state already employs loads of people via local councils, councils are generally the largest employers.

and decentralised ministerial departments (topically for this forum, DFEE, DWP), as well as other public services (of which, non-trivially, the NHS) so let's not forget them

 

Not a dig, most of them are needed in a modern state running a reasonably-liberal economy.

So not all the population, but adding another 5% is not the way to go.

Well, technically speaking, and I may well be continuing to put words in tzijlstra's mouth here, those 5% (assumed you refer to work-capable but not in work) are added from the time of their first claim anyway...just not providing any measurable GDP output in return.

 

By all means, keep nudging...but your communist analogy won't get any more valid for it