Re: What cost economic recovery
 

My bank does that fast payment thing from yours.
£276 quid just flies in at my end :)

Re: What cost economic recovery
 

Carers and those on DLA will get the full percentage increase, but..... wait for it..... if you receive Income Support as well, the "ammount you need to live on" is capped at 1%, so you end up with only 1% more overall as Carer's Allowance is deducted from Income Support.

Smoke and mirrors again.... unless they decide to prevent this :(

Re: What cost economic recovery
 

So those too ill to work will get more than 1%. What about ESA, those in the support group?

Re: What cost economic recovery
 

DLA is not counted as income for benefits, so they won't hit the ceiling of I.S. because of it.

ESA is, and I can't find a concrete answer to whether they are stuck with 1% from April or not.

Incidentally the benefits cap reported as not including those on DLA, but elsewhere I have seen it reported as those CHILDREN on DLA.

https://www.gov.uk/benefit-cap

Re: What cost economic recovery
 

I think what is happening is what will always happen when there are such divisive political ideals as we have in this country .We have the Labour party who's main ideology is that the state provides for as much as possible, and completely the opposite from the conservatives ,it is imo as simple as that and while there are two such politically opposite ideologies it is what we always will have .There are elements of both ideologies that will work in tandem with each other but we lack politicians with enough commitment to bring the two ideologies together for the betterment of society .

It must be said also that the general public of all levels in society are still firmly entrenched in the class system .For some god forsaken reason bettering yourself and making money is frowned upon by a large section of the "working class" who feel that being working class is something to be proud of and should be every mans dream .Personally if i could make a million and drag my ass out of the council house i live in i would and i wouldn't have any qualms about leaving my "working class"chums to wallow in their pride propped against the bar in the WMC .

You are right that there is a change in the air ,but i don't think it is because of the economic crisis ,i think that was just the catalyst .When the crash happened people where living well beyond their pay grade ,financial institutions where making paper money hand over fist everything was good ,but then reality sets in and people realise it all has to be paid for and when they realise that the money isn't there to pay for it we(and i mean all of society)started looking to blame anybody but themselves .We(the working class) blame those who have money ,conveniently forgetting that a few years before we where aspiring to be "rich people" on credit .We blame the politicians ,conveniently forgetting we put them in power and couldn't be arsed getting rid of them because we where too busy having 3 holidays a year ,mortgages we couldn't afford and driving round in £40,000 cars renewed every 3 yrs all on money we didn't have and hadn't earned.
The rich people blame us for wanting to be like them ,after all someones has to make the goods ,someone has to sweep the roads ,they allowed banks to lend us the money because that is what we wanted ,the politicians gave us welfare far beyond the original intent of what it is meant to be because that is what we said we wanted .

Maybe now the general public will start paying a bit more interest in who runs the country and how they do it instead of making sure the holidays are booked and the new 4x4 is on order .

Re: What cost economic recovery
 

There have always been people that lived beyond their means but what we didn't have before were such irresponsible financial institutions that threw money at people many of whom they knew couldn't repay. We also never had politicians before so in love with an idea that idea being that one section of the economy could provide all the coubtries needs that they sat right back relaxed oversight and failed to properly regulate. I remember way back when I went to get a loan and had to have a co signatory to the loan and to provide verifiable proof I was earning enough to make the repayments.

Some of the public were completely irresponsible in how they handled their finances but even that wasn't enough to bring about the collapse. Most of the blame does kie squarely at the door of the bankers and politicians two groups that never take responsibility let alone pay for their mistakes. In some ways 2008 was the ultimate financial perfect storm and no one had any idea how to deal with speed of the collapse. None of that makes the current situation on the burden of the economic situation correct though or excuses the groups paying heaviest to sort it out.

Recently through my brother I have heard a number of affluent people who do not feel they are bearing their fair share and could easily contribute more. This government is not interested in distributing the pain evenly they seem to have a set number of groups in their sights and are repeatedly hitting those groups.

Re: What cost economic recovery
 

Far too many, I fear, will still vote for those who tell them what they want to hear as opposed to those who tell it like it is...

---------- Post added at 11:53 ---------- Previous post was at 11:18 ----------

Govt. tax and benefits policy aside, if these people (or anyone else) feels that they can and should be contributing more they can easily do so by donating directly to the causes they feel concerned about. Everyone with the means and the will is free to do that if they're really so concerned about paying their fair share. ;)