I agree, but we won't, simply because its just another excuse for the Daily Mail and its gormless, racist readership to vilify the Muslim population of the UK, the majority of which are probably as disgusted by these actions as you and I.

Totally agree with the senitment but in reallity is any govenment going to have the polictical balls to say to somebody..."there's a job there, so what if its £20 per week than you get for sitting on your , take it or lose out". The leftwingers will then jump on the bandwagon stating that such measure will harm the most vulnerable and lowest incoem households, forgetting that for the last 15 years is the middle incoem average joes that have been suffered whilst succesive government have come up with handout after handout.

Well this thread was about making work pay, but on the Celtic fans demonstration, it's hardly surprising that in the Irish Catholic community there is hostility towards the British army and anything that represents them. If they had a minutes silence at Ibrox for the IRA who died or were kneecapped fighting for Irish freedom, you would have heard "No surrender" being sung. There are two sides in every war and everybody thinks that their side is just and the others are terrorists. I'm not saying a remembrance service for fallen soldiers is an appropriate place to voice a protest but I can see why in Celtic Park it was going to be contentious.

On making work pay we've heard this same rhetoric at the start of every government. Margaret Thatcher said that we had to change the culture of people expecting the state to look after them, and take individual responsibility, but we saw the largest ever increase in long term dole claimants under Thatcher's government that there has ever been since the welfare state was set up. Then when Labour came in in 1997, the buzzwords were "a hand up, not a hand out" and "if you want to work, we will make work pay", that's why Labour brought in the tax credits. For the first 10 years of Labour's time, they got overall unemployment down, but they didn't get on top of long term unemployment and neither will the Tories.

The problem everyone misses is, when you've got people who are long term unemployed, have no education or skills and have just been on the dole and supplementing their income with crime....these people don't have any skills, so it's not a case of giving them an incentive to work, it's who the heck is going to employ them. Every time you hear somebody complaining about long term dossers ask them the question "would you employ them?" Would they heck. No business wants to employ them because they're not productive and you just have to keep an eye on them that they haven't got their hands in the till. I think it's fair enough if the government forces them to do some compulsory training scheme in order to keep getting their benefits, train them in some sort of trade or whatever so that then they can at least get a job, but sending them on some scheme to sweep the streets is not going to encourage any employer to sign them up.

Where all of this will fall down is not on the incentive or otherwise of the workshy to work, but it's on the incentive of employers to hire them. People say they could be waiting tables or working in bars or cafes but you still need an element of common sense and interpersonal skills to work here.....there are loads of graduates who can't get jobs so if you were hiring for these, why would you hire someone who has been on the dole for the last decade, when you can hire an enthusiastic young unemployed graduate for the same (minimum) wage. Who's going to do a better job?

The government hasn't got any job creation scheme. They've got a redunancy scheme in the public sector which will end up with hundreds of thousands of jobs being lost, but they aren't creating jobs.

Every time you go to a job centre there are jobs advertised, so people think "what are the unemployed complaining about - there are jobs there waiting for them", but for every one of those jobs being advertised, there's at least 5 or 6 people on the dole, and there will be applications going in from decent people who have recent work experience, good education and work skills, and have maybe been made redundant, going for them. The employers will hire these, they won't hire the long term job shy.

Whilst there are going to be problems faced by the "workforce" over coming years with rising unemployment etc, what IDS was actually getting at is not those people who have just been made redundant, not those people who dont have the skills to gte jobs BUT those people who cant be d looking for work because the system is such that they get "paid" more in benefits than they would earn in work. Now it may be that the issue is one of job creation but there also has to be an issue of ...perhaps these people are getting too much in benefits.

In relation to gaining skills, I believe in Jersey and areas of the US, people "work" on community projects for a number of horus per week to earn their benefits. Some people do jobs they did when in employment but some people do this to obtain new skills. With some many things that cant be done due to a lack of resources for labour (many of which dont need specialist skills) why not introduce something similiar in the UK.

The Irish want their country to be their own, thats fine and fair enough and you can understand where theyre coming from.

Breaking it all down, Osama Bin Laden kicked this whole thing off by declaring "war on the west" because of how our way of life is "wrong". Since then, all the nutjob clerics have BRAINWASHED (to use your wording) a proportion of general Muslims into extremists, and ramming their extreme views down peoples throats. Hence all these protests, banners and effigy fires etc.

In playground terms... They started it!!

I think everyones aware why were in iraq / Afghanistan, its for Oil and Heroin. Why did we take Ireland? I dont know. So i can see where Celtic fans are coming from, whereas these noobs i cant. They dont like our way of life then sod off.

You say that nobody has tried to influence you, the whole war is about a big bloody influence.... heres the early start to it. Broaden your mind lol www.guardian.co.uk/world/2002/nov/24/theobserver

You say that nobody has tried to influence you, the whole war is about a big bloody influence.... heres the early start to it. Broaden your mind lol www.guardian.co.uk/world/2002/nov/24/theobserver

And for those who cba reading the whole letter from Bin Laden to America / the west...

b) It is the religion whose book - the Quran - will remained preserved and unchanged, after the other Divine books and messages have been changed. The Quran is the miracle until the Day of Judgment. Allah has challenged anyone to bring a book like the Quran or even ten verses like it.

(2) The second thing we call you to, is to stop your oppression, lies, immorality and debauchery that has spread among you.

(a) We call you to be a people of manners, principles, honour, and purity; to reject the immoral acts of fornication, homosexuality, intoxicants, gambling's, and trading with interest.

So because they have oil and heroin that we can pilfer, then invading their country is fine and dandy???...

Personally, I think their gripe is as valid and as legitimate as the Irish, even if their method of protest leaves a little to be desired.

To be honest, I reckon you should just stop taking your Daily Mail too seriously.....Those few who did the poppy burning are no more a threat to our way of life than Griffin and his posse of nutters who want to drag us back into the dark ages.

Why did we take Ireland? Who knows; Guiness and potatoes probably. Although I guess it was to do with all the food (wheat I think) that was imported from there into England whilst the local population starved due to consecutive failures of the potato crop.

I would love to here your view on the Falklands War or the "Stake A Claim For Antartic Mineral Rights" War as I like to call it.

Well the reality is that in all these cases, most of the protesters, aren't doing it because they were directly affected, they just identify with a group and want to protest and get some attention. I doubt many of those Celtic fans were directly affected by the British occupation, they have just grown up being told that the British army are scum, so its programmed in them that anything to do with the British army, they have to react by opposing it. Same with the Muslims, they have everybody calling them terrorists and have the British army bombing their homelands, so it's programmed in them (and encouraged by nutjob clerics) to oppose everything the British army stands for.

And then you get students throwing fire extinguishers off buildings and smashing up buildings over fees that they aren't going to have to pay, they have just latched onto a cause and used it as an excuse to fight.