Cameron considers big cuts to benefits!
Discussion
davepoth said:
There isn't actually a great deal wrong with a North/South divide, so long as the cost of living and the available wages match up.
We herd sheep in Cumbria because the low costs of doing so mean it's possible to do it and live on the the proceeds, and we buy lions from Harrods in Knightsbridge because London is full of fools with more money than sense.
Most countries have poorer and richer areas, but they use them to their advantage by placing lower profitability industries into those areas, so that they can still be profitable. The regional weighting of benefits in that respect makes sense.
Well that's a fair point but the problem is we're currently not herding sheep in Cumbria. A North/South divide in theory isn't problematic, look at the United States for instance, the minimum wage in Washington is nearly twice as much as Wyoming. The difference is Wyoming has industries in it which work for Wyoming and people go to work there, which proves your point. Wyoming is 90% rural so you could hardly put New York's financial centre there. But right now the divide in the UK is so stark you wonder what to do about it, the difference is simply the south has jobs and the north doesn't. I feel Britain's economy has become far too focussed on service industries such as IT and banking; two areas which are strong. We don't put the right business up north, we've heard about empty business parks and the like on here before.We herd sheep in Cumbria because the low costs of doing so mean it's possible to do it and live on the the proceeds, and we buy lions from Harrods in Knightsbridge because London is full of fools with more money than sense.
Most countries have poorer and richer areas, but they use them to their advantage by placing lower profitability industries into those areas, so that they can still be profitable. The regional weighting of benefits in that respect makes sense.
Part of the problem is certain industries are now difficult to make profitable in this country because taxation on business is so high, partly to pay for the housing benefit and tax credits to subsidise the aforementioned London worker, low paying employers and high charging landlords who all need to charge what they charge for themselves to survive in this economic system. To use Washington and Wyoming as an example again, both of those states have different tax rates on most things - Wyoming has no state income tax or inheritance tax for instance and Washington taxes business at different rates depending on the type of industry - where as employers NI is the same in Middlesbrough as in London.
davepoth said:
Of course if the benefits are aiming to push people into work, there has to be work to push people into - and we haven't heard anything on those measures as yet.
Well that's the one area where Cameron is leaving himself wide open in a political battle. Labour can still peddle 'jobs and growth' because Cameron still has no answer to it. We already know there's a jobs shortage, people cannot go and find work just because IDS tells them to and people can't do work that's not there. The problem is the Government cannot create the jobs because it costs money they don't have, they can't give massive tax cuts to businesses because they'd need to borrow more to plug the short term gap and they can't raise taxes because the economy isn't moving fast enough to generate money to tax.As far as the politics goes I think Cameron is playing a risky game, headlines like 'Cameron to cut benefits for the North' are not the end of the world but hardly helpful. The North generally votes Labour, partly because it relies more heavily on big Government than the South does and I wonder if Cameron is considering abandoning the northern vote and 'disaffected Labour voters' as he goes after shoring up the Tory centre-right. He'll need virtually every right sided vote and even that might not be enough if the Lib Dems truly drop out entirely as their votes transfer to Labour. Risky strategy.
Edited by martin84 on Tuesday 26th June 03:24
Puggit said:
I suspect it will also require all the human rights lawyers to stop working.
I don't think anybody wants them to stop working, it's just that we want the law to reflect some common sense so that they have fewer cases to work on, and to limit the funding to cases involving EU citizens so that the cost can be minimised.A number of people in the legal profession have got extremely rich on the back of badly written laws, a far bigger deal than the topic of the week - Jimmy Carr's tax avoidance schemes.
ViperPict said:
thinfourth2 said:
powerstroke said:
More spin and bluster... will never happen
Yep its a headline grab nothing more
king love Scameron though? 
He's not a dreaded SOCIALIST at least. Although I think, deep down, he kinda is... More so than Blair ever was anyway...
Now p
s off back to your fantasy thread you wee trollthinfourth2 said:
ViperPict said:
thinfourth2 said:
powerstroke said:
More spin and bluster... will never happen
Yep its a headline grab nothing moreking love Scameron though? He's not a dreaded SOCIALIST at least. Although I think, deep down, he kinda is... More so than Blair ever was anyway...
Now p
s off back to your fantasy thread you wee troll
Well, there is quite a bit of infrastructure that needs designing and building up north.
Gas, coal and nuclear power stations, some LNG storage and distribution, shale gas fields etc.
None of these need to be built in the south (transmission loss considerations notwithstanding).
Some forward, joined up think might look at our power needs and conclude that investing in developing the intellectual know how here and the requisite manufacturing skills here might be a good long term bet- considering Africa, China, India, Brazil etc will need power generation technology over the next 100+ years.
I guess we just let the US, Germans and French win all that business instead, while we fanny about with windmills.
Gas, coal and nuclear power stations, some LNG storage and distribution, shale gas fields etc.
None of these need to be built in the south (transmission loss considerations notwithstanding).
Some forward, joined up think might look at our power needs and conclude that investing in developing the intellectual know how here and the requisite manufacturing skills here might be a good long term bet- considering Africa, China, India, Brazil etc will need power generation technology over the next 100+ years.
I guess we just let the US, Germans and French win all that business instead, while we fanny about with windmills.
johnfm said:
Well, there is quite a bit of infrastructure that needs designing and building up north.
100% agree.Primarily though, if we want to be able to 'share the wealth' about, we need transport, of all types; air, road, rail, to be dragged out of the state of perpetual under-investment and given the capacity that the population size and density dictates.
thinfourth2 said:
ViperPict said:
Hmmm, let's compare our post count before throwing 'troll' accusations about....
Ah so i have more posts therefore i must be a trollmartin84 said:
davepoth said:
There isn't actually a great deal wrong with a North/South divide, so long as the cost of living and the available wages match up.
We herd sheep in Cumbria because the low costs of doing so mean it's possible to do it and live on the the proceeds, and we buy lions from Harrods in Knightsbridge because London is full of fools with more money than sense.
Most countries have poorer and richer areas, but they use them to their advantage by placing lower profitability industries into those areas, so that they can still be profitable. The regional weighting of benefits in that respect makes sense.
Well that's a fair point but the problem is we're currently not herding sheep in Cumbria. A North/South divide in theory isn't problematic, look at the United States for instance, the minimum wage in Washington is nearly twice as much as Wyoming. The difference is Wyoming has industries in it which work for Wyoming and people go to work there, which proves your point. Wyoming is 90% rural so you could hardly put New York's financial centre there. But right now the divide in the UK is so stark you wonder what to do about it, the difference is simply the south has jobs and the north doesn't. I feel Britain's economy has become far too focussed on service industries such as IT and banking; two areas which are strong. We don't put the right business up north, we've heard about empty business parks and the like on here before.We herd sheep in Cumbria because the low costs of doing so mean it's possible to do it and live on the the proceeds, and we buy lions from Harrods in Knightsbridge because London is full of fools with more money than sense.
Most countries have poorer and richer areas, but they use them to their advantage by placing lower profitability industries into those areas, so that they can still be profitable. The regional weighting of benefits in that respect makes sense.
Part of the problem is certain industries are now difficult to make profitable in this country because taxation on business is so high, partly to pay for the housing benefit and tax credits to subsidise the aforementioned London worker, low paying employers and high charging landlords who all need to charge what they charge for themselves to survive in this economic system. To use Washington and Wyoming as an example again, both of those states have different tax rates on most things - Wyoming has no state income tax or inheritance tax for instance and Washington taxes business at different rates depending on the type of industry - where as employers NI is the same in Middlesbrough as in London.
davepoth said:
Of course if the benefits are aiming to push people into work, there has to be work to push people into - and we haven't heard anything on those measures as yet.
Well that's the one area where Cameron is leaving himself wide open in a political battle. Labour can still peddle 'jobs and growth' because Cameron still has no answer to it. We already know there's a jobs shortage, people cannot go and find work just because IDS tells them to and people can't do work that's not there. The problem is the Government cannot create the jobs because it costs money they don't have, they can't give massive tax cuts to businesses because they'd need to borrow more to plug the short term gap and they can't raise taxes because the economy isn't moving fast enough to generate money to tax.As far as the politics goes I think Cameron is playing a risky game, headlines like 'Cameron to cut benefits for the North' are not the end of the world but hardly helpful. The North generally votes Labour, partly because it relies more heavily on big Government than the South does and I wonder if Cameron is considering abandoning the northern vote and 'disaffected Labour voters' as he goes after shoring up the Tory centre-right. He'll need virtually every right sided vote and even that might not be enough if the Lib Dems truly drop out entirely as their votes transfer to Labour. Risky strategy.
Edited by martin84 on Tuesday 26th June 03:24
Large swathes of the county also vote Conservative, too. It also houses the Lake District, where many of the lion buyers have their second or fifty fourth homes.
Maybe Harrods should open a Lion emporium in Bowness?
PH as a tiny % of the British population has all these ideas that are drawn from a range of professional working experiences both domestic and international. Why are the politicians and the policy makers not even close to 10% of our level of ambition and thinking?
Think about it.
north/south divide = low wage large scale industries in north vs high paid technical industries in the south. As long as wages are good enough to live comfortably, 30k in the south and 20k in the north are perfectly fine to take care of local cost of living.
Education/technical investment = highly educated domestic work force coming out of top institutions that are the envy of the world. Use this work force to invest and develop modern and futuristic industries that we can sell to the world. eg. video gaming, renewable energy, agriculture, animal husbandry, media technology etc.
Infrastructure investment = invest in modern transportation, energy, telecom, computer networks, construction, storage and distribution systems. This will help us to be more competitive on the world stage and create a reputation which will bring in technology and construction exports to the developing nations.
This will not happen in 5 years...we are talking a 15 yr plan here. If the politicians come up with credible plan that is simple in principle, funding mechanism, final result in social and financial terms, why wont the people support it? I would.
Think about it.
north/south divide = low wage large scale industries in north vs high paid technical industries in the south. As long as wages are good enough to live comfortably, 30k in the south and 20k in the north are perfectly fine to take care of local cost of living.
Education/technical investment = highly educated domestic work force coming out of top institutions that are the envy of the world. Use this work force to invest and develop modern and futuristic industries that we can sell to the world. eg. video gaming, renewable energy, agriculture, animal husbandry, media technology etc.
Infrastructure investment = invest in modern transportation, energy, telecom, computer networks, construction, storage and distribution systems. This will help us to be more competitive on the world stage and create a reputation which will bring in technology and construction exports to the developing nations.
This will not happen in 5 years...we are talking a 15 yr plan here. If the politicians come up with credible plan that is simple in principle, funding mechanism, final result in social and financial terms, why wont the people support it? I would.
bobbylondonuk said:
This will not happen in 5 years...we are talking a 15 yr plan here. If the politicians come up with credible plan that is simple in principle, funding mechanism, final result in social and financial terms, why wont the people support it? I would.
I'm sure most reasonable people would support such a plan, but 15 years is just too long a timeframe whilst we have the "want it now!" entitlement culture and politics driven by soundbite. Depressing really.hornet said:
I'm sure most reasonable people would support such a plan, but 15 years is just too long a timeframe whilst we have the "want it now!" entitlement culture and politics driven by soundbite. Depressing really.
Moreover when your typical term in office is just 5yrs. They are not going to gear themselves for something that will only bear fruit 10yrs after they've been booted out. Localwoman said:
I don't always agree or disagree with Mr Cameron but the things that really worries me is that he has never fully convinced me that he actually knows what he's doing.
You were right to be cautious. Cameron is a publicity man. He has no interest in any principle other than getting power, not unlike Tony Bliar with whom he is a blood brother. I would not expect anything of him except that he will always be at the top of the pile.That is his abiding principle.
Steffan said:
You were right to be cautious. Cameron is a publicity man. He has no interest in any principle other than getting power, not unlike Tony Bliar with whom he is a blood brother. I would not expect anything of him except that he will always be at the top of the pile.
That is his abiding principle.
The comparison with Blair is an interesting one. Odious he may well be, but I think it's fair to say he knew what he wanted and was very good at getting it. Of course, what he wanted wasn't what the country actually needed, but that's another matter.That is his abiding principle.
Populus poll with sample size over 2000.
http://www.populus.co.uk/uploads/OmWelfare_Reform....
Overall it looks like Cameron's position has strong public support.
http://www.populus.co.uk/uploads/OmWelfare_Reform....
Overall it looks like Cameron's position has strong public support.
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