Re: TUC Day of Action - 26th March
 

He's a bit of a kno.. div isn't he.

using Martin Luther King too.

Re: TUC Day of Action - 26th March
 

really looked like they were protesting - "i just found this crowbar laying around officer, wasn't going to use it................honest".



the police are damned if they do and damned if they don't.

Re: TUC Day of Action - 26th March
 

Best time to cause a maximum impact I would have thought.Very kind of them to give the poor commuters a kind thought in that case.;)

Re: TUC Day of Action - 26th March
 

lets hope that is the case ,but companies needing to lose staff will obviously rather use people retiring and rightly so imo

my point about being self sufficient was directed at the 800,000 retiring .How many of those will have adequate pensions ,or any pension at all so they aren't getting benefits ?.What worries me if people are retiring and taking benefit because of a lack of pension funds then that puts a increased strain on tax revenue which would be falling because less people are working and fewer companies are paying tax to the treasury because they have either gone out of business or moved abroad (i hope i am making sense here :)).It would be possible to fall into a cycle of paying more tax revenue to welfare whilst recieving less tax revenue wouldn't it ? which obviously is the point of cutting the welfare bill ,but wouldn't that be pointless if new jobs are not being created to pay tax back into the system at a higher ratio than money paid out

apologies if my ramblings don't make much sense but i know what i mean :dunce:

Re: TUC Day of Action - 26th March
 

Gordon Brown wanted everyone to rely on welfare during their retirement, that's why he plundered 12 figures from people's pensions.

Re: TUC Day of Action - 26th March
 

so that means the pension black hole will compound the problem of a downward spiral of less tax revenue and more going out in welfare unless more tax revenue is raised ?

What we need are real jobs created that will contribute a meaningful amount of tax without being subsidised by welfare payments because of low wages

Re: TUC Day of Action - 26th March
 

Quite. And by 'real jobs' we can immediately discount the public sector, which has to be paid for out of taxation and therefore isn't really contributing meaningful tax at all.

You know, I have the strangest feeling that a good number of today's marchers were public sector workers.

Re: TUC Day of Action - 26th March
 

Chris,from the reports I read online I'd wager your feeling to be a certainty...

Re: TUC Day of Action - 26th March
 

as do i ,it seems quite obvious now(if it wasn't before) that the last government used recruitment into the civil service as a way of keeping unemployment numbers down by creating non-jobs in Whitehall and the the town halls now the cuts have to be made the true numbers of created non jobs will become apparent .Now we will be in a position where the tax payer having funded wages for these jobs will now have to fund redundancy payments and benefit payments for the people losing their jobs .
Top priority must be to get new companies up and running ,encourage companies to move here and rebuild a manufacturing base in this country .What we don't want ,after giving the subject much thought and taking the opinions of more knowledgeable posters than i into consideration ,is the unions trying force the government into keeping the non-jobs and being an unnecessary burden on the tax bill .Yes it is a shame for those losing their jobs ,and i am suffering as well ,but if this action (the cuts in progress at the moment) is halted then the downward spiral of less tax revenue and more welfare will get to a stage where it won't be possible to undo it without going the way of Ireland and Portugal

that is the honest opinion of a manual self employed worker who is suffering from the cuts but thinks the nasty tasting medicine will be better for him in the long run

Re: TUC Day of Action - 26th March
 

It's absolutely ridiculous, I agree, and one of the most annoying things about today's march is the "me too!" politics of Labour, which has been hanging on the coat tails of today's march despite knowing that what the TUC really wants is for the country to keep borrowing and spending its way out of trouble. The loony left's anti-cuts manifesto is one that even Labour at its most profligate knows it cannot possibly sign up to.

On the subject of getting people onto the State payroll, yes, this is something Gordon Brown was sadly very good at. The other thing he was very good at was getting the middle classes hooked on benefits in the form of tax credits, all safe and fluffy and administered almost (but not quite) as if it were a tax refund, just to make sure we all went for it without feeling as if we were having to deal with the dole office.

Hence we now have many thousands of public sector workers who have just found out that Labour's profligacy has serious consequences but who are prepared to shoot the messenger rather than direct their ire at the muppets who actually caused the mess, who were marching along with them this afternoon, and many thousands of middle class Grauniad readers who are seriously hacked off about having to give up their annual gîte holiday because the decimation of their tax credits means they can't afford the flights any more.

Re: TUC Day of Action - 26th March
 

I was watching a bit earlier and saw Ed Balls asked outright what the alternative they were crowing about was.

When it became clear he didn't have an answer other than moaning about the current plans he made a swift exit.

Re: TUC Day of Action - 26th March
 

on the subject of the march itself i notice that the usual anarchical brigade have shown their prescence in the name of anti-capitalism ,do they not realise that it was anti capitalist ideas that got us in this mess in the first place

Re: TUC Day of Action - 26th March
 

I wouldn't call light-touch regulation in the banking sector anti-capitalist.

Re: TUC Day of Action - 26th March
 

i take your point but thats how confusing blair/brown where to me anyway ;)

Re: TUC Day of Action - 26th March
 

I'm not sure I understand?

The reality is that lots of countries have to go through drastic cuts brought about by an international wanking crisis. Our situation may be worse than for others, but to claim that the previous government is singularly to blame for it is just madness.

The more I think about it, the more I hate this wretched two-party system that is geared towards blaming the other party for electoral gain rather than thinking about what's good for the country.

Edit: Oh. The W-word survived to swear filter. Nice.. :tu: :)