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YOu appear to be thrashing around for an argument that fits i.e. supports your view that workers should not get any state benefits.

So end of the tube line. Let's say somewhere like Lewisham or Upminster. Nice room in a flat -?500 a month rent, council tax, gas, electricity share, travel to central London each day on the tube at peak times, clothing, food etc etc.

Let's see your costings on how that would pan out for a cleaner working in central London, 40 hours a week. Let's say ?7 an hour - 14K a year before tax and insurance. 6K has already disappeared for your rent.

Over to you, Essex Lad.

Just to clarify are you renting the property? Only asking as if you're paying a mortgage chances are your paying less in mortgage than you would be in rent.

Essex Lad wrote:


> I don't understand why there is a belief that people should
> live near their work. If someone working in central London
> cannot afford to live in London, then live somewhere else and
> commute. That's what millions of people do every day. I'd like
> to live in Mayfair but I can't afford it so I spend 90 mins
> each morning travelling into London. Under your system I should
> get housing benefit so I can live in Mayfair... If you cannot
> afford to live somewhere then move but don't expect the rest of
> us to help with your rent.
>

Ultimately of course anybody should be able to choose where they live and work.

However I think far too many people are travelling too far too often which is why train overcrowding and road congestion has increased so much over the last 25 years in an era when we are trying to reduce pollution and the use of energy derived from non-replenishable resources.

Personally I would not want to waste 15 hours of my time every week as well as the cost travelling.
As it is my commute is 12 miles / 20 minutes which at 40p/mile is ?9.60/day, ?48/week, ?2250 a year allowing for holiday. Even if it was cheaper public transport is not practical as it would take at least 90 minutes each way due to the route the buses take.
If I could get a job within a 20 minute walk away but ?3000pa gross salary less I would be no worse off.

David,

No I don't think there is no alternative but I also think the UK alone, which like it or not is part of the worldwide economy, can significantly increase the minimum wage for no return as we will simply be even less competitive.

The issue, as you posted here and here, is the decline in jobs and particularly the manufacturing sector that pay a living wage.

Several years ago JCB stated
' 30 years ago 90% of our components were UK sourced, now it is 36% '.
Before privatisation all railway rolling stock was UK built, since much has been built by Siemens, some by Hitachi and the Chinese are trying to get a foothold. Traditionally Eire always bought from the UK but their newest trains were built in Korea.
All commercial vehicles are now imports from Volvo, Scania etc. Nearly all bus and coach chassis are imports too. Bus bodies are still mainly UK built but most coach bodies are imports.

Food is another area where we could do better, why do we need to import so much chicken and pork from Holland and Germany?
Note that Lidl, despite being a German company, source within the UK.

However neither of the main political groups care.
Remember LDV vans pleadings for government support were ignored but Northern Rock and other banks were supported.

I would like to see HS2 scrapped and the estimated ?30bn, that will no doubt turn out to be more, spent creating real employment that can pay a living wage in the north-west and north-east where so many jobs have been lost in the last 30 years rather than allow those who can afford it it to get to London quicker.

That assumes that everyone lives on their own or only one person in each household works.

"That assumes that everyone lives on their own or only one person in each household works."

Start off with a single person. Then you can give me the two person scenario if you wish.

Over to you.

Not sure what you want me to say ? not everyone can live where they want and shouldn't live on the state to do so. Get over it...

"Not sure what you want me to say ? not everyone can live where they want and shouldn't live on the state to do so. Get over it..."

It is absolutely clear what I want you to say. And the amount of wriggling you do on the subject will not muddy the waters however much you try.

1. You made the statement.

"People who work should not be receiving any benefits and those not in work should not be receiving benefits equal to even the lowest salary or what is the incentive to find a job?"

2. I wanted you to think about the implications of what you were saying re. a low paid cleaner working in central London in terms of affordability taking into account rent etc etc without benefits. First you said, that the cleaner shouldn't live in London. Then I pointed out that annual train fares into central London from the Home Counties are exorbitant. And then with your back against the wall, you changed tack and said the cleaner should live at the end of a tube line.

3. I challenged you to give me a breakdown of living costs of someone living in a rented room travelling into central London to back up your view that no-one in work should get benefits. To keep the maths simple I gave an example of someone living alone.

4. WIth your back against the wall for the second time, you wriggled again by stating "That assumes that everyone lives on their own or only one person in each household works"

5. THe bottom line Essex Lad is that you are like a lot of people in Britain today. You make all-encompassing statements like no-one working should get benefits, without giving any thought whatsoever as to the implications of implementing this change without radical changes to rent, travel and hourly rates. So when you are challenged to provide a cost breakdown of how this would impact on the low paid, you appear a bit of an empty vessel on the subject. And refuse to answer.

6. In short, the implication of your statement that working people should not get benefits is that the entire hospital infrastructure in Central London, for example, would collapse because it was unable to get staff to do low paid but essential jobs like cleaning, portering etc.

This is my last post to you on this thread as amusing as your wriggling has been.

"but I also think the UK alone, which like it or not is part of the worldwide economy, can significantly increase the minimum wage for no return as we will simply be even less competitive."

I take it that you are stating we cannot significantly increase the minimum wage for no return as the UK or we will simply be even less competitive.

I think before this point is answered, we need to understand who are the UK's competitors.

Most of the industries I mentioned like shipbuilding, steel production, much of manufacturing. mills etc etc. have gone because we couldn't compete with Asian competition. The bottom line is we can never compete on price with Asia whether it be China, India, Bangladesh etc etc. until their societies are totally revolutionised and wages and standards of living in those countries soar to European levels. Raising or keeping the minimum wage at its current level will have next to no impact on that competitiveness.

Our main competitors are in the EU - the likes of Germany, for example. I believe that the main reason we sometimes struggle to compete with Germany is because we have a completely different economic mode. Germany has much more of a focus on skills training that industry requires. THey have workers on the board so that there is much more of a collaborative approach between workers and senior management in Germany than there is in the UK. Companies on the whole are smaller in the UK and there is much less of the short termism in germany than what is seen in the UK. In the UK it is all about the stock market and maximising profits to keep the money markets happy. In Germany there is much more planning for the future in industry.

SO in short, I see the secret to competitiveness with countries like Germany has nothing to do with the rate of the minimum wage (the gap between rich and poor is much smaller in Germany than the UK) but more to do with fundamental differences in the economic approach followed.

Britain cannot possibly afford its welfare state for much longer. Most people do not realise that state handouts (?207 billion a year) mop up every penny we pay in income tax (?155 billion a year).

Everything else, the NHS, schools, transport, police, defence, interest on the debt (nearly ?50 billion a year, by the way) must be paid for by other taxes, including the vast sums raked in by so-called ?National Insurance?, or by more borrowing.

As we are more or less bankrupt as a country, such generosity is not noble but plain idiotic. Yet we will not stop doing it. Change is politically impossible.

Last week?s fuss about supposed cuts in benefits was a sign of the swamp we are in.

There were, as usual, no actual cuts. A hesitant plan to cap future increases was met with angry hostility by many in politics and the media.

Emotions were immediately engaged and slammed into top gear. That is because this immense and unaffordable attempt to substitute the State for the married family is at the heart of the political revolution which began 50 years ago and is now reaching its sad and bankrupt end.

The very idea that people should provide for themselves has become a horrible heresy, a barbaric view that no civilised person can hold. We?ll see.

My own guess is that a hurricane of inflation will, over the next ten years, rip the welfare state up by the roots and leave us impoverished, diminished and baffled, wondering what happened to us.

Here?s what we spend.

One wholly justifiable payment is the old-age pension, which is startlingly mean but still takes up almost ?80 billion a year, more than a third of the welfare budget.

Disability Living Allowance (3.38 million recipients) costs ?13.43 billion.

Housing Benefit (5.04 million recipients) costs ?23 billion; its close cousin Council Tax Benefit (5.9 million recipients) costs ?4.92 billion.

Incapacity Benefit costs ?3.22 billion; Income Support costs ?5.3 billion. Jobseeker?s Allowance costs ?5.26 billion.

I might add, because I continue to believe that this particular form of welfare very often hurts those to whom it is offered, that there are now 567,000 fatherless households being subsidised by the taxpayer.

Look at these figures and gasp. Where is the cash to come from? Think what else we might do with it.

I am sure a lot of welfare money goes to people who need and deserve it, whose problems are no fault of their own.

But I am just as sure that a lot of it goes to people who do not deserve it.

And on top of that, I know from my letters and emails how many people there are who have worked and saved all their lives, and who are therefore excluded from the most important benefits, when they need them most.

The working poor, who live next door to people whom they know to be cheating, are the most outraged by these abuses, and the most powerless to change them.

The new political elite, who hope to buy votes and power through handing out other people?s money, will not stop doing so until that money runs out.

And so we ramble merrily towards the edge of the abyss, making lemmings look responsible and far-sighted.