These ba[is[/itards are looking to send us back to 1873

What makes me particularly sick to the stomach about these people is that the majority of them will be drawing huge pensions that make an average OAP's pittance look like peanuts, much of it extracted from the taxpayer. Not least the scumbag [url=http://hat4uk.wordpress.com/2012/10/24/peer-who-wants-the-retired-to-work-for-their-pensions-is-a-sir-humphrey-retired-on-120k-a-year/"Lord" Bichard[/url who used to run the DWP and floated the "make pensioners work or cut pensions" idea, and who is ironically is already on a taxpayer-funded pension is estimated to be £120,000, having been obscenely overpaid in the first place, and having retired from the civil service at just 53. So since he jacked that job in, we've already paid him one and a quarter million pounds for absolutely nothing (as he works for a private organisation, and as he's no doubt trousered a few grand for House of Lords appearances and expenses too.



If there is to be any talk of means testing pensioners, then until we start with former politicians and functionaries who have whacking great private funds and private pensions becoming disentitled to [iany[/i income from public funds, they should all shut the feck up, the hypocritical s.



Some people have quoted figures indicating that 12% of the UK’s debt liability is down to [url=http://hat4uk.wordpress.com/2010/08/22/exclusive-senior-treasury-source-alleges-ballooning-civil-service-pension-cost-deliberately-hidden/600,000 Whitehall civil service pensions[/url, and that the figures have been cynically and deliberately massaged and hidden.



But I suppose stealing the odd twenty quid from 80 year olds on subsistence income will help to balance the books.

You can't use facts to attack politicians anymore, they got their beasting during the expenses row, everything that has come since has been their retribution, with hindsight we should have let them continue to build their duckhouses, employ their wives and rent out their parents houses and none of this would have happened, its like when Flashman thrashed the whole of the first form because they squealed on him to the head.



Its just like that in their heads actually.

The fact they accept them isn't the point. Far from it. There are plenty of people who take a view of "Why should I pay for...." when they do not directly benefit from whatever payment the government is making.



The government itself uses this argument all the time, for example as justification for putting up tuition fees. "Why should the postman pay for the university students education?" was what David Willets never tired of saying and once you get society as whole thinking like that you are on a road to ruin IMO. I am sure the very rich can live without child benefit but I think you underestimate the impact of actually receiving something from the government has on the way people think whether they need it or not. That is what lies behind the principle (as well as more mundane things like it being cheaper to administer a universal benefit than means test it).

Oh there are plenty of them here too.

i'm sure there are, i bet there's also plenty of people who take the view 'i'm entitled to...' 'i need...' . people are inherently selfish, but it doesn't mean they're wrong and in an ideal world they cancel each other out.





was this the justification for labour introducing tuition fees? therefore, was it labour who set us on this road to ruin?

as it happens, the answer is, if the postman gets ill he'll need a doctor. however, i study a part time chemistry degree at mmu, and to be honest the standard of maths in particular of the full time first years is shocking. i watched one student try and multiply 47x34 without the use of a calculator. his 'effort' consisted of (30x40) + (4x7). he should have been booted off the course there and then, but because i'm not paying for him, he can do what he likes.



well, i don't think i do.

FFS, can you not get out of the if you don't support the Tories you must support Labour argument? Most of the ideology behind the last administration was born of Thatcherite thinking.

Thats the problem, they can't, its football supporter politics and they'll never shake it off while the actual politicians behave like petulant kids in debates and in leadership.



If you brought out a new footbal style shirt every year for the parliamentary party's the fools would buy them...

FFS will you please refrain from giving Gideon tips to kick-start the economy

It'll come, and they'll change the design every six months.

Indeed.



As it is 2013, three years since a Labour government, it will be interesting to see who the Tory supporters blame for the current state of the economy.



We know how much they like to go on about the Labour government that replaced Ted Heath in 1974, and had to go cap in hand to the IMF two years later in 1976, as a warning of what happens when you get a Labour government. Of course Ted Heath's Tory government would have had nothing to do with this.



On the other hand I've noticed another pattern.



Margaret Thatcher comes into office in 1979, we have a recession from 1980-81.

John Major comes into office in 1990, we have a recession from 1990-91.

David Cameron comes into office in 2010. Guess what happened from 2011-12.

Strange how it's only 'footballer supporter politics' when it's people defending Tories and attacking Labour. Not the other way round.