lower benefits for Northerners and longer school days

Locky said:
Having a dig at the Northerners and also a one way ticket to not winning the next election.

Where would the line be drawn to what is northern?

anything above the m25?
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Londoners should really be complaining that northerners currently have far more disposable income on benefits than they do.... They don't because it's how it is.
 
Glaucus said:
Yo
People on benefits in such areas are paid comparatively more, and even closer to how much working people in that area are paid, closing the gap between benefits and pay is not a good thing, there should be a substantial gap. It should always be better to work, than live on benefits.
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I whole hartedly agree.
My brother worked 38 hours a week untill 3-4 weeks ago and he has now got more disposable income than when he was working. That said he has been offerd a job that he has accepted and starts in 2 weeks but thats probably because the way we were brought up. He will be better off with the new job but its full time and he will gain less than £50 per week and a lot of people wont do it thats what needs to be stopped.

Why cant we have a benefit time limit? 6 months = half benefit 12 = months nothing.
 
Rroff said:
Find quite a lot of these changes quite sickening and out of touch and almost certainly from someone(s) who has had a privileged life. Coming down hard on those with less money and having less impact (i.e. changes to retirement age) on those from wealth.

Increasing school hours will take away a lot of what it means to be young and personally I find it appalling even callus to suggest it - I would be behind measures tho to provide more extra-curricular support for 1-2 hours after the normal closing time for gifted students, those with an interest in specific subjects outside of whats feasible for mainstream teaching, etc. might have changed from when I was young but there used to be very little in that regard i.e. my IT teacher noticed myself and a couple of others had an interest in computing above anything the school could provide and took it on himself to provide us with extra access to the computer labs, bit of an introduction to programming, networking, etc. none of which the school could support itself and came out of his own time and pocket.
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You have a small minded view on the world...
 
People need to get over the whole anti-north thing, this would apply to all areas with a reduced cost of living, be it the south-west, west, north, or even a cheaper-than-average area of the south-east.
 
kitch9 said:
Londoners should really be complaining that northerners currently have far more disposable income on benefits than they do.... They don't because it's how it is.
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Northerners should complain that a lot of there tax ends up in london.
 
Cupra said:
I
Why cant we have a benefit time limit? 6 months = half benefit 12 = months nothing.
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Then what happens?
On the street?

Personally I like the idea of forced labour, like the back to work scheme after 6months.
But why not take money off people? Along with health and pensions, current benefits are not sustainable.
As long as people have enough to live, that is all they should get.
And while we are at it, make it more like private rent, with large amounts of shared housing.
 
Glaucus said:
Then what happens?
On the street?

Personally I like the idea of forced labour, like the back to work scheme after 6months.
But why not take money off people? Along with health and pensions, current benefits are not sustainable.
As long as people have enough to live, that is all they should get.
And while we are at it, make it more like private rent, with large amounts of shared housing.
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I remember getting suspended from this forum for personal insults for telling someone that because there on benefits they shouldnt have anything. She was a single mother with no intentions of working she had sky tv,broadband internet, house phone, mobile phone ect this is one of the biggest problems people on benefits shouldnt be allowed to blow the money on non essentials. I loved the idea of food coupons ect
 
Tunney said:
Do you have any evidence of that? Did the unemployment rate increase significantly after the minimum wage was brought in?
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Unemployment generally went down from about 1995 to 2000, however this doesn't really prove anything. There are so many factors involved in the causation of unemployment that it's next to impossible to say what causes them. It's mainly linked to the economy though, 95 is just coming off the 1990 recession hence the continued drop, then it sky rocketed come the 2007 global recession. It's quite hard to actually see any impact from the 98 min wage act in the historical employment figures
 
Rroff said:
Find quite a lot of these changes quite sickening and out of touch and almost certainly from someone(s) who has had a privileged life. Coming down hard on those with less money and having less impact (i.e. changes to retirement age)
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Are you sure you read it correctly? The way I read it is that they are scrapping the retirement age which is a good thing. There are plenty of people that are forced to retire because of the retirement age despite them actually wanting to carry on working.

Scrapping the retirement age doesn't mean scrapping retirement. Changing the retirement age is unfortunately necessary.
 
Seems a bit silly to reduce benefits in one place because the cost of living is higher elsewhere, they should be moving the people on benefits out of the high living cost areas if they are unable to afford to live there instead.

Regarding school hours, 3 hours is too much, maybe 2 extra hours under the condition that there is absolutely no homework set, most working people don't carry on doing their job once they get home, if they want children to get used to working hours then the same needs to apply to them. They also need to take into consideration the research that showed that children learn better if the school day starts later (ie at 10), i am guessing with this 3 hour proposal that they actually want to go against this and have the poor kids starting at 7 or 8 in the morning.
 
Locky said:
No, the percentage and threshold of tax is still the same, I will be clear in saying that higher earners that live in the north pay less tax too?
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By that comment I assume you would be an advocate of decreasing the 40% tax band in the north then, say to £35k?

That's only fair right?

If I earn £34,999 "up north" I could have a mortgage on a nice house, have a fairly nice car and pay less for food and going out. If I earn £34,999 in London I could just about afford to rent a room in a slightly higher than student quality house, probably not afford the cost of a car after bills and have significantly more outgoings for the same situations as "up north".
 
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Kotu said:
Seems a bit silly to reduce benefits in one place because the cost of living is higher elsewhere, they should be moving the people on benefits out of the high living cost areas if they are unable to afford to live there instead.
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Relocate the poor? Why not go one better? We could just create camps specifically built for people on benefits. We could call them ghettos! What a brilliant idea :o
 
desires said:
Relocate the poor? Why not go one better? We could just create camps specifically built for people on benefits. We could call them ghettos! What a brilliant idea :o
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Did you think I was thinking of moving them all into tents or something? They could probably be moved into an equal sized house somewhere out of london, big reduction in living costs but they would hardly be moving into ghettos, unless you think anywhere outside london is just a ghetto?
 
Mark A said:
Are you guys sure supermarkets are more expensive in the south? I would have thought they would charge the same. When people post up deals on HotUk deals they are the same price for everyone...
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I live outside London and work in London and there is a fair difference in price just within commuting difference in places like Tesco. You're probably talking in the region of 5-10% and that is within 20-30 miles of each other. Don't forget even places like Tesco will have to pay substantially more rent in central London than in a shopping district in Hull (for example). They have to recoup that somehow. They probably also pay higher wages (london living wage rather than NMW for example).


Cupra said:
Does that mean people up north would be able to pay less tax as less of there money would be going to benefits in the area?

People up north get stiffed enough as it is we pay into the tax pot and get very little back compared to other parts of the country.
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Council tax is generally cheaper up north is it not?

Currently London subsidises a significant part of the rest of England. Even transport wise London gets much smaller subsidies than the rest of the country. Things like train fare rises are higher in London than anywhere else.
 
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Tunney said:
Do you have any evidence of that? Did the unemployment rate increase significantly after the minimum wage was brought in?
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One thing that comes to mind is self service checkouts, if it costs £10.00 hour run a manual checkout and the same for the self service checkout the the shops will likely use both, however if you bump the min wage by say £5.00 I doubt the bigger retailers would have any manual checkouts at all, if the min wage was cut they would me more inclined to employ more staff or at least less machines.

Where I am it's mostly students, people on their fist job and retired people staffing the tills and for some of the retired it's not just a job it's time out the house.

Not saying thats a fact I'm just making an example but if I've thought about it then the management and those responsible for the financial heath of the company will certainly have it in mind.
 
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