The Politics Thread

[thebish]

^ won't affect me until I earn another £17,000 per annum... this forum is full of rich kids!!

[BWFC_Insane]

It's been lowered over the years which when you take inflation into account is some major fiscal drag, plus I'll be a few hundred quid better off as a result. However, I would rather he kept it if it meant not cutting the disability benefit by £30 a week.

This. My personal gain will make absolutely no tangible difference to my life. Yes I may have a bit more money. But I didn't have it before and daresay I won't notice.

But cutting disability benefit will have a real and noticeable impact on some people's lives.

[Hoboh]

It's been lowered over the years which when you take inflation into account is some major fiscal drag, plus I'll be a few hundred quid better off as a result. However, I would rather he kept it if it meant not cutting the disability benefit by £30 a week.

This. My personal gain will make absolutely no tangible difference to my life. Yes I may have a bit more money. But I didn't have it before and daresay I won't notice.

But cutting disability benefit will have a real and noticeable impact on some people's lives.

Scandalous attacking the disabled whilst google and co get away with low/no tax.

What would be interesting would be this 'sugar' tax if TTIP was in place, no doubt the multinational soft drinks companies would be falling over lawyers suing the Gov for an unfair practise affecting their trade.

[Worthy4England]

It's been lowered over the years which when you take inflation into account is some major fiscal drag, plus I'll be a few hundred quid better off as a result. However, I would rather he kept it if it meant not cutting the disability benefit by £30 a week.

This. My personal gain will make absolutely no tangible difference to my life. Yes I may have a bit more money. But I didn't have it before and daresay I won't notice.

But cutting disability benefit will have a real and noticeable impact on some people's lives.

Scandalous attacking the disabled whilst google and co get away with low/no tax.

What would be interesting would be this 'sugar' tax if TTIP was in place, no doubt the multinational soft drinks companies would be falling over lawyers suing the Gov for an unfair practise affecting their trade.

How is this different than the duty we put on fuel, tobacco, alcohol etc. etc.? It's not a "new" concept...

[Enoch]

It's been lowered over the years which when you take inflation into account is some major fiscal drag, plus I'll be a few hundred quid better off as a result. However, I would rather he kept it if it meant not cutting the disability benefit by £30 a week.

This. My personal gain will make absolutely no tangible difference to my life. Yes I may have a bit more money. But I didn't have it before and daresay I won't notice.

But cutting disability benefit will have a real and noticeable impact on some people's lives.

Scandalous attacking the disabled whilst google and co get away with low/no tax.

What would be interesting would be this 'sugar' tax if TTIP was in place, no doubt the multinational soft drinks companies would be falling over lawyers suing the Gov for an unfair practise affecting their trade.

How is this different than the duty we put on fuel, tobacco, alcohol etc. etc.? It's not a "new" concept...

I fancy TTIP is the new concept.

[Worthy4England]

It sounds a bit scary - should I put this in the category of scaremongering or just ignore it?

[Enoch]

It sounds a bit scary - should I put this in the category of scaremongering or just ignore it?

Depends how your scale is calibrated. For my money it's highly undesirable yet inevitable as we slip inexorably toward the brave new world.

At my age I'm not much fussed.

[KeyserSoze]

Best bit when the sugar levy was announced was Tate & Lyle's stock plummeting before people found out they'd actually sold their sugar business seven years ago, leading it to spike again.

Someone got a clip around the head for that one.

[Bruce Rioja]

The sugar tax gives manufacturers two years to sort themselves out. I'm not sure why the disabled, specifically, are worth an extra £30 a week.

[Harry Genshaw]

The sugar tax gives manufacturers two years to sort themselves out. I'm not sure why the disabled, specifically, are worth an extra £30 a week.

The sugar tax already has the appearance of some badly thought out legislation that probably won't make a blind bit of difference, but gets a few headlines. I think the concern re the disabled isn't that they're worth anything extra, but should they be worth less? A budget that reduces capital gains tax and increases the TTR at the same time as cutting PIP's looks particularly cruel to me

[bobo the clown]

Apparently Tate & Lyle shares plummeted for a time yesterday .... until someone clocked that T&L got out of sugar years ago.

[KeyserSoze]

Apparently Tate & Lyle shares plummeted for a time yesterday .... until someone clocked that T&L got out of sugar years ago.

just four posts above, pal.

[Lord Kangana]

C*nts budget for the benefit of c*nts. Expectations met. Welcome to the new world order - ive half a mind to vote to leave the EU just to give them a shock. Won't be more than temporary, but it might be funny just to see their panicked faces.

[bobo the clown]

Apparently Tate & Lyle shares plummeted for a time yesterday .... until someone clocked that T&L got out of sugar years ago.

just four posts above, pal.

[thebish]

long way to go and polls can be badly wrong etc. - but not many were predicting this at this stage...

Latest YouGov / Times poll puts Labour ahead, 34% to the Conservatives' 33%.

(IIRC - there was one last week that had them neck and neck...)

[BWFC_Insane]

The sugar tax gives manufacturers two years to sort themselves out. I'm not sure why the disabled, specifically, are worth an extra £30 a week.

If we are going to determine everything by worth then it is an incredibly sad society that we'll be living in.

Old people are a huge drain and worth feck all. Lets just burn the bastards at retirement age and use them as an alternative and entirely renewable fuel source.

Why are folk that already own their own houses, have more than secure incomes and more than comfortable lifestyles deserving or worthy of anything more? We're already lucky to have a great lifestyle, without in most cases having to perform life shortening manual labour like tasks. We have cars and houses and holidays and pretty much everything we can ask for. Why, do we need a few hundred more quid? At the expense of disabled people?

It makes feck all difference. Putting a few quid extra in people's pockets who were surviving perfectly nicely before. No issue with that in itself, but to take away from people who clearly do not in many cases have anything like the same comfort in life, often through no fault of their own is an absolute c*nts move.

To then ask what those people are worth is absolutely mind blowingly awful, to me at least.

[Bruce Rioja]

The sugar tax gives manufacturers two years to sort themselves out. I'm not sure why the disabled, specifically, are worth an extra £30 a week.

If we are going to determine everything by worth then it is an incredibly sad society that we'll be living in.

Isn't that exactly the same judgement that folk are making when they're crying 'boo hoo, the nasty Tories are taking £30 a week off of the disabled'? My ex Mrs had a pal who had a bit of a limp - she was on every benefit going and used to (probably still does) fleece the system for all its worth. You can't just lump the disabled under one heading.

[Beefheart]

The sugar tax gives manufacturers two years to sort themselves out. I'm not sure why the disabled, specifically, are worth an extra £30 a week.

If we are going to determine everything by worth then it is an incredibly sad society that we'll be living in.

Isn't that exactly the same judgement that folk are making when they're crying 'boo hoo, the nasty Tories are taking £30 a week off of the disabled'? My ex Mrs had a pal who had a bit of a limp - she was on every benefit going and used to (probably still does) fleece the system for all its worth. You can't just lump the disabled under one heading.

Yeah, let's punish terminally ill cancer patients because of your ex's mate with a bit of a limp. You can't just lump the disabled under one heading. If there's people cheating the system, then stop them cheating the system - I doubt cutting the benefit by £30 is actually going to stop them from doing it but there would be a lot of people in genuine need around £3.5k worse off.

Even the Tories think the Tories have gone too Tory this time http://conservativedisabilitygroup.org.uk/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[Bruce Rioja]

The sugar tax gives manufacturers two years to sort themselves out. I'm not sure why the disabled, specifically, are worth an extra £30 a week.

If we are going to determine everything by worth then it is an incredibly sad society that we'll be living in.

Isn't that exactly the same judgement that folk are making when they're crying 'boo hoo, the nasty Tories are taking £30 a week off of the disabled'? My ex Mrs had a pal who had a bit of a limp - she was on every benefit going and used to (probably still does) fleece the system for all its worth. You can't just lump the disabled under one heading.

Yeah, let's punish terminally ill cancer patients because of your ex's mate with a bit of a limp. You can't just lump the disabled under one heading. If there's people cheating the system, then stop them cheating the system - I doubt cutting the benefit by £30 is actually going to stop them from doing it but there would be a lot of people in genuine need around £3.5k worse off.

Even the Tories think the Tories have gone too Tory this time http://conservativedisabilitygroup.org.uk/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

And you've just made exactly the same mistake.

[BWFC_Insane]

The sugar tax gives manufacturers two years to sort themselves out. I'm not sure why the disabled, specifically, are worth an extra £30 a week.

If we are going to determine everything by worth then it is an incredibly sad society that we'll be living in.

Isn't that exactly the same judgement that folk are making when they're crying 'boo hoo, the nasty Tories are taking £30 a week off of the disabled'? My ex Mrs had a pal who had a bit of a limp - she was on every benefit going and used to (probably still does) fleece the system for all its worth. You can't just lump the disabled under one heading.

I don't think it is the same. Nobody is arguing "give them back the £30" because they are worth it. They are simply saying there isn't a justification for taking money off what are in many cases the most vulnerable people in society to give it to people who, categorically do not NEED it.

Ultimately if we start to judge what people are worth to society (and that doesn't mean their jobs, we get paid for what we are worth our employers but that isn't the issue here) I suspect we may not like the answers all that much.

EDIT: And also the judgemental nature of "X isn't really disabled" is silly. You don't know how much pain they are in, how their lives are affected. See the lady with severe crohns disease who was genuinely classed as disabled but clearly didn't have a wheelchair or seem disabled in an obvious way getting a hate note for parking in a disabled bay recently.