Well, they said they wouldn't be able to cap unemployment related benefits, they allegedly are not going to cap welfare for the most vulnerable / disabled and so I am struggling to see who that leaves given scroungers are apparently such a miniscule proprtion of the whole? Could it be pensioners?

I read that the Tories reckon only 1 in 17 of current claimants if "sickness" benefits will be not be considered fit for work within a couple of years. Bad backs, asthma, many disabilities, etc won't count. The daft thing is that just because someone can be "fit for work" does not mean they are "employable". People with autism for example don't tend to last long in jobs. People with chronic sickness will get sacked for taking too much time off. When the unemployment figures start going through the roof, I wonder whether the government of the day will come up with another one of their ideas to massage them - like allowing people to claim some form of disability / sickness benefit rather than being classed as unemployed? Or, is the proposal to allow people to become so desperate they have nothing to lose and so start rioting?

I have no objection to paying more tax as long as it is used for the common good, such as new schools and hospital (as labour did). I find it abhorrent that they are now funding job losses and cuts in tax for millionaires.

Labour has said they will keep the year on year increase in basic state pension which is 2.5% or one of the measures of inflation (whichever is higher).

What they have said they will cut is winter fuel allowance and free TV licences for the top 5% of pensioners whatever that means. The coalition is considering this anyway so you are damned who you vote for in that sense if you are one of the affected pensioners. As with any means tested benefit those on the boundary will be hit hardest but all he is suggesting is these specific benefits are capped not the basic state pension itself.

Politically Balls screwed up because this is not how its being trailed by the Tories. In fact I think it was a tweet from the treasury that claimed Balls was going to cap pensions. So much for our impartial civil service!

He is basically saying pensioners should not be immune from austerity and certain specific benefits will be the target not pension themselves but all that does is mean yet more ordinary people who didn't cause the crisis are going to pay for it. So actually coming clean and saying what cuts he will make won't win Balls any votes because people will think he will cap pensions and also because he will be seen as getting ordinary folk to pay for the bankers follies. He should have learned by now it is better to spring those on the electorate after you have conned your way into power.

He is also wrong IMO to include pensions in the mix anyway. Yes they are a huge cost but unlike welfare the state pension is for most people contributory either directly when earning on via credits when not for various reasons.

All putting pensions in to the mix will do, given they are committed to the yearly increase, is set the bar higher if you see what I mean. So if the welfare budget minus pensions was £100bn and he wanted to cap it at £80bn then if adding pensions in made the grand total £200bn then he'd be capping it at £180bn.

I read the other day that since the onset of the financial crisis the better off elements of society have paid disproportionately more of the costs than others and been the hardest hit. We have just reached the turning ppoint and the less well off will pick up the tab over the next 5+ years as austerity starts to take hold.

Depends what you mean by "better off".
Depends what you mean by "hardest hit".
Biggest payment doesn't mean "hurts most".
Especially when your tax goes down from 50% to 45%.

And I the last 30-plus years, the incomes of the majority have declined and only those of the financial elite have increased - and increased considerably.

I asked, a week or so ago, what, if The Spirit Level is correct, and the wider the income gap, the greater the social problems (which therefore detrimentally impact on us all), should be done? And if The Spirit Level is NOT circa, then can people provide the concrete data to show that.

Nobody, that I recall, responded. So the questions remains open and is entirely relevant here too.

Actually, one of the biggest contributors to income inequality is working women. c. 80% are still doing jobs that they do at home and don't get paid for at low wages - care, catering, etc. The others are in well-paid professional jobs and they tend to marry men in similar jobs. So we end up with a society in which the better paid jobs and professions support well-off dual income families and at the other end of the scale working single parents in low-paid jobs. As I have said many times, so many things that are wrong in our society could be solved if women got married, stayed married and stayed at home.

Even better if they married other women, eh?

And as has been explained to you before, working-class households have long – LONG! – had women working as well as men.

It wasn't blokes who manned those 19th century cotton and wool mills, for instance.

So get down off your misogynist horse and try harder.