Anyone who's income is little more than £10,500 is very likely to be in dire straits, whether they're a pensioner or not.

Thats the natural order of things particularly with huge manufacturing plants owned by international company's who often move production around the world to suit different political and economic pressures - thats a given.

What is galling is the way in which a spurious number of "newly" created vacancies are trumpeted in the press literally minutes after a budget has been announced and pinned entirely on the fact that said budget has now created the conditions that such international company's can work with - its sheer bollax and I am insulted that both the government and GSK can think that anyone would think otherwise - I don't for one minute think that the CEO of GSK sat with his little radio under the desk in some far-flung corner of the empire listening to the budget on Wednesday and then immediately reached for the phone and ordered three new plants for the UK on the strength of what he heard.

...and conveniently forgot to add that he'd slashed the UK workforce in a pretty vicious manner just a matter of a few short years ago anyway.

Spot on their mate. Weve got a van on Far Grange Skipsea and they are already struggling to sell new vans. Apparently a £30,000 van will now cost £36,000. Its like a double wammy from this shower as they know peaple cant afford the holidays abroad and just wanting a caravan holiday., and wont be able to afford the rental of one.

Interesting graphic from the OECD on rates of corporation taxhttp://images.newstatesman.com/corporation-tax.JPG" >

Gideon wants us to rush to the bottom, he still seems enamoured with the Irish Tiger model. Has someone told him yet that they've just gone back into recession?

Fair points.

Glad to see Nissan and Land Rover announcing similar investments in weeks leading up to the budget. I'm sure everyone would agree that these investments are more than welcome. GSK is one company - there are others prepared to invest and not even just after the budget. The company I work for couldn't give a rat's about budget timing I can assure you - nor were their investments even reported except at a local level.

Once again, purely apolitically, I hope there are many more companies just like these. Confidence will take time to improve to allow cash to be re invested. If it doesn't happen then the country has more to be concerned about than anyone making political points on here.

In my work I see lots of manufacturing businesses from north to south of the country and I hear confident stories of businesses being busy again, I've been in two food production factories this week, both with full production lines going and talking of reintroducing night shifts, and night shifts are to be avoided until your day shifts can't squeeze any more production out (its more expensive to run a night line).

The only down side to all of this is that both of those businesses, and its a common feature, are expanding their production by using agency labour and the one I was in yesterday isn't even using permanent agency labour, the employees are literally told the day before whether or not they have a shift tomorrow. Its good that there are now tighter regulations on the Agencies to provide sick pay and holidays etc etc, but its far from desirable to be telling 18 and 20 year olds that this is the way your life will work from now on, tomorrow you turn up here and we might give you work, but then again we might not, or you might turn up at 6am and we'll ask you to go home and come back at 2pm - and the rest of your working life is going to be like this.

Its how the mill workers used to run things in 1880.

No need to go that far back.

That's also how the docks used to work before decasualisation and that was well within my lifetime. To see grown men physically fighting for the right to a day's labour is a sight no one wants to return to

Well, most people don't want that to return. A few in government would be fairly happy to see it return. The only way to incentivise the low paid is to reduce wages and conditions. Keeps them on their toes y'see, and then will be grateful for the scraps of work provided to them by benevolent private sector owners.
Alternatively the highly paid can only be incentivised by more money.

Timings.

It would appear the timing of the minimum pricing of alcohol was a little odd. Perhaps they didn't want the main attention over the weekend for the government to be on the granny tax and supporting the very rich.

I don't think Cameron and Osborne really expected quite such negative press, they even reverted to trying to blame the lib dems at one point.

I'm not sure what point you're trying to make here. Nobody on this thread has said that the investment by GSK, or more jobs in general, is a bad thing. Regardless of their political stance.

The minimum price announcement was brought forward to Friday for precisely that reason. Yvette Cooper accused Cameron & Gideon of using Theresa May as a human shield to deflect attention away from the budget. Fortunately it appears to have had only a limited mitigating effect and most commentators are still referencing the "granny tax"

Channel 4's Factcheck makes an interesting analysis of rlthe effects of alcohol minimum pricing on healthrl

There were three points raised during the Jeremy Vine show yesterday, and whilst its often "Outraged of The Mail" who calls in to that show I did find myself agreeing with all of them...

1. Beers that are retailed today have a higher alcohol content than, say, 30 years ago, mild beers are non existant outside of individual micro-brewers.

2. 5pm opening and 11pm closing times actually did limit alcohol consumption and while you'd get one in when last orders were called and maybe finish with a spirit, generally speaking there wasn't a culture of getting as much beer down your neck as possible because they are closing at 11pm - borne out by the fact that NO pubs had the need for doormen when I was 30 years old.

3. Alcohol in the home was for polite sipping when your auntie came around and if you were going out on a Saturday it would be early sat evening (not 10pm) and you wouldn't "load up" on wine and spirits BEFORE you went out.


If making alcohol more expensive prevents (3) from happening then maybe it will do some good, (1) and (2) can only be solved by legislation.

We could help by not paying alcoholics extra benefits for being on long term sick, it only goes on more White Lightening, or they move up the quality scale a bit.

It strikes me that the government want the prices to increase due to............................More VAT.
as an example.
20% on a £1 can of beer is 20p
20% on a £2 can of beer is 40p