I'd rather it wasn't spent on sending our soldiers to far off places to die.

3 questions.

How many have incomes of £300k?

You want to give childcare vouchers to parents who stay at home? You want to PAY people to look after their own kids?

One Answer, I want it to be[i fair[/i but the Tories wouldn't know fair if it slapped them in the face with a wet haddock.

The Daily Mail is hopping mad about this too. But it seems to me the government's logic is very simple - why do mum's who look after their own children at home need childcare vouchers!!!?

And why do households who have an income of £300,000 need vouchers?

Well there won't be that many - just like the number of benefits "scroungers" living in £10 million houses, etc.

Means testing would be pointlessly expensive.

It is better for all to maintain the universailty of benefits where possible - otherwise the well-off start saying, "why should I pay if I get nothing back?"

No, what you want is what you class as fair.

Still, you want to pay people to look after their own children? There's a Chris Rock sketch in there somewhere.

I live in a world where capitalism, in a particularly rampant way, is everywhere and really rather difficult to avoid. It is particularly difficult to avoid when your trade means that you have little choice but to use certain technologies, and where the 'choice' is technologies that are produced in a similarly ethically dubious manner.

I make efforts to mitigate some of that, but to pretend it is entirely possible would be stupid.

You, on the other hand, freely admit to not caring about anything that does not directly impact on you. Thus your comments about sweatshop/child labour are nothing other than crocodile tears.

Now, I've cleaned this thread up.

Let's cut the extremes of abuse – and if you don't feel that you can do that, then simply don't feed the troll.

Aah, the 'I have to use it for my job, everyone's doing it', defence. Get a new job that doesn't use child labour to make those oh so pretty laptops. What I don't do is bleat about how hard up the average worker is and the exploitations that befall them, while tippy tappying on a keyboard built by exploited workers. It makes any point being tried to be made redundant. But, yes, they're very, very pretty things.

Ah, there you go again, he doesn't agree with whatever I say, TROOOOLLLL!

Show me where I said I want parents paid to look after their own child?

Pay attention, darling, and do so with a modicum of care.

Your previous identity is still banned. I am entirely happy to ban this one too, since I know who you are.

It's up to you.

If you want to contribute genuine debating points to this forum, then do so. Let's see if you can learn from experience.

At present, you're not suggesting that you can.

By the way, it's really rather cute that you were so desperate to be back on this forum; that you missed it/us. So if you were that desperate, try to make an effort. There's a good chap.

You show me any post I've made that's trolling?

Over to you.

*sigh*

Come on Minty, spill the beans, who was he?

No.

That would be in breech of data protection etc.

However, this ID is no more.

I didn't say they [ishould[/i get money too, did I? I asked why should any household that has an income of £300,00 get something and a household that a parent stays at home get nothing. {{Sigh}}

[url=http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/katie-hopkins/zero-hours-contracts_b_3704860.htmlAn endorsement of the benefits of zero hours contracts from Katie Hopkins[/url is sufficient reason to outlaw them totally

The vacuous Louise Mensch argument.

What you actually don't do is care about anyone but yourself.
You're "fine with that" as long as you don't pay more tax.

The ultimate Tory, happy as long as it doesn't affect you personally.

To quote from the deluded womans article ...

[iA zero hours contract reduces a number of employment provisions; notice periods and unfair dismissal can be avoided. Wages are driven down, pension and sickness benefits are limited.

Meanwhile the company can maintain an on call workforce that take nothing for granted and understand their next shift is dependent on their performance at their last.

I am always amazed by the resilience of my self employed colleagues: recognising they cannot take a holiday without paying the price, forever on call, always saying yes to work, working weekends, anti social hours, always charming, polite, gracious. [/i



A couple of points - I had my own business for 23 years, I employed staff, and after the business ceased trading I always said, and still say, that I would not employ another person in another venture, so some of this may seem hypocritical - so be it.

The attitude of the woman in the quote is simply rubbish and despite her self written Wiki article I cannot find any mention of what sort of business she is involved in, judging by the Wiki article she is a mouthpiece who seeks attention from morning TV chat shows by finding controversial subjects and being controversial on them - that isn't really a business, its earning money through being a tw*t on TV, but its not really a business and the fact that she then goes on to describe one of her "staff" as a self employed make-up artist who prepares her for TV interviews makes me think that actually, I don't think she she is anything like the "business woman" in the intro title block of her Guardian article - there is no business dear, its you trolling the media.


Given that, its pretty pointless reacting to her words, they were only generated for publicity and repeated by a media desperate for characters like her.

I think she probably missed a bit out, along the lines of "... [iand, whilst I obviously wouldn't do it myself, it's great for minions[/i ... "

Indeed.

If proof of income is required as it is for renting privately then yes they can't access that accommodation just as they can't get a mortgage. Where do they go then? The answer is obvious, local authority provided accommodation but that assumes they qualify in the first place over people with greater needs for a very small pool of social housing stock. They could be put up in a B&B by the council but that then increases the cost to the local authority so is a further drain on the council tax budget.



Then you ought to be able to work out something else has got to give which I mentioned in my previous post and alluded to above. The services you get will suffer. Freezing the council tax and taking less in income tax means cuts in services. You may not at this point have had to make use of any of the services affected be they local services or national services such as the NHS but you will one day. You will then probably complain they should be run privately only to find they already are and because they are, cost the councils and government even more from their ever diminishing budgets.

On the child care vouchers, when I've been to a lecture where a tax specialist explained how he and his wife (also works for their company, wink, wink) are using them to help pay for their children's private tuition fees, there's something wrong IMO.

This chimes in with what I've been thinking about these vouchers when given to people who can earn up to £150,000 each (so, potentially £300,00 per couple) receiving vouchers at 20% of the total cost, up to a maximum of £1,200 per child p.a.
At that end of the scale, it's a nanny subsidy, not a back-to-work incentive.