The Future Of The UK, Uneducated & Chav Populated

There's a Facebook group of this name, who say;

The key is two government policies which are totally messed up, namely the cut in child benefit and the cut in unviersity places and funding.

That would be "is that there are two government policies"

If you are not familiar with these cuts, they propose that families who earn over £44,000 per year will no longer receive Child Benefit where as lower income families will continue to receive it. University funding will also be cut forcing a reduction in the amount of available places for students wishing to go to university.

I was fairly certain the policy was if there was ONE person earning over £44k there'd be no Child Benefit, rather than families earning over £44k.

It seems that the fact some families can earn nearly £88k and still get Child Benefit when others - where say the mother stays at home and the father earns £45k - won't get Child Benefit is where the actual arguments have started.

So if you put this into reality this will create a society where people who are higher earners will think twice about having a child, as the cost of the upbringing will have to be covered solely be them, where as a lower income family will not think twice about having another child as the cost of its upbringing will be met by the government in the form of child benefit and tax credit payments.

I think that the latter part of your suggested future is already happening.

If a single woman has more than one child, she is moved higher up the Council Housing ladder. You may also be interested in reading about these women who get quite substantial amounts of Child Benefit.

Also, if I were part of a family of higher income tax payers, just how much difference would my £20.30 (for first or only child, £13.40 thereafter) really make in my decision to have a child?

So what does this mean for the future of the UK, simple. The UK will end up being an uneducated, underachieving nation.

As opposed to now?

I ask you has the government never here the term "spend money to make money", if you increase university places, you get more educated people, who in term get better jobs, earn money money and pay more taxes, likewise if higher earners continue to propogate they will, in most cases, produce children who will also go on to be high earners and again pay more taxes.

Hell of a sentence there fella, you might want to start using full stops. Oh and "here the term" should be "heard the term" and then put a question mark after "money", okay?

If you increase University places, you do not necessarily get more educated people. If you apply a reasonable entrance requirement, you could easily end up with less people doing degrees. However, for the sake of argument, let's assume that increasing University places will increase the number of people with degrees.

If you increase the supply of something, without increasing the demand, the price of that object will fall. This is basic economic theory. If you increase the number of University graduates without increasing the number of jobs specifically aimed at University graduates, then the graduates will not get a higher salary than someone without a degree.

What you may do is make a degree a requirement for the most menial of jobs, as employers can pick and choose, meaning that graduates actually get paid less as a result of increasing University places. People without degrees - as people whose skill level is worth less than the minimum wage currently - will not be employed. The higher the entry requirements to work, the more people will be unemployed, the higher the tax burden on those with jobs to pay for them.

But I think the UK will end up being a CHAV populated benefit run society.

Which is, I think, where we were headed under Labour.

And I speak as someone who is unemployed, old enough to remember the horror of living under some of Thatcher's regime, and lived in the North of England when everything was shut down. I'm what was called a traditional Labour voter. Then NuLabour came in and frankly destroyed the country. While I don't agree with some of the Coalition's policies - nor the actual way in which this one is being rolled out - I do not agree with anything you have written. And I'm not going to join your Facebook group either.

BBC Having A Laugh, Again

The BBC initially headlined that today's report by the Charity Commission into the Smith Institute had cleared them of too many connections to the Labour Party. Bloomberg had a slightly different slant on that report. The BBC have now amended the headline, probably because the original one wasn't entirely true. And you wonder why some people think the BBC is a bit biased towards Labour...

Now, on the Magazine page, there's an article saying that there are "Reasons to be Cheerful" in the current economic climate.

1. HOUSE PRICES ARE UP
2. EMPLOYMENT RATE IS HIGH
3. INFLATION HAS FALLEN
4. LOWER EARNINGS ARE GOOD
5. WE'RE LIVING LONGER

I have responded to said article with the following:

Good grief, was this written for you by a Government minister?

The elderly are getting wealthier are they? I'm sure the many pensioners in fuel poverty would be delighted to hear that. As well as the ones unable to pay the ever-increasing Council Tax.

The employment figures quoted are from May and obviously won't take into account the people made redundant in the building industry over what is normally their busiest times.

The RPI isn't weighted very well and puts too much emphasis on consumer electronics (not regular purchases) when the more major increases have taken place on food and fuel. Consumer electronics have always come down in price over time. Also how can it go down if house prices are still going up as you contend in the first point?

While there has been some over stating of the downturn in the economy, this article is diabolical.

Although I wish I'd asked them how tractor production was going. Or the war with Eurasia, come to that.

Fucking bastards.

Lying Bastards

Not content with being a general shower of bastards (as mentioned below) the Government have endeared themselves to me even more by this splendid bit of double-speak with regard to the current truckers' protest.

A Treasury spokesman said the government understood business and families were "feeling the pressure from high fuel prices". But they said the "immediate priority" was to encourage oil-producing countries to increase output, that a 2p-per-litre fuel duty increase had been put back from April to October and fuel duty was "still 11% below its 1999 level, in real terms".

Hmm. Really? Do you have, you know, figures to back that up? And what difference exactly would increasing output actually achieve? The majority of the cost of petrol and diesel at the pumps is Duty. And the Government sets the level of Duty. Instead of hand-wringing to OPEC, how about doing something constructive that would benefit the country?

Justice Secretary Jack Straw told the BBC he "fully understood" the hauliers' concerns, but "government revenues have to come from somewhere".

Ah, and that would be the real reason why the Government are more than happy to keep Duty at the present levels. Rather than doing what they're forcing the entire fucking country to do - cut expenditure because income is low - the Government are insisting that they can't control their spending, so we have to keep bailing the bastards out.

The Tories propose anyone under 21 who is unemployed for three months would be sent for an intensive programme of work-related activity. If they were still jobless after a year they would be moved to a full-time 12-month community work programme, with those who turn down a job losing their benefits. Which would be a start, eh?

Or maybe cutting down on profligacy in Government, as more than £325m a year is being wasted by government departments through inefficient use of office space, MPs have said. The Commons public accounts committee (as in MPs themselves, never the harshest critics of their own white elephants) recommended more civil servants should be relocated from London to cut costs. Amusingly, the committee said the Treasury was spending the most on employees' workspace and urged it to "set a better example".

Yet the Government take the "we need more money, so fuck you all" approach instead. And by doing this, show the short termist mentality you'd normally find in investment banks. By not reducing fuel duty for hauliers, the Government risks losing all tax income from that industry. Foreign hauliers, buying fuel on mainland Europe, can come over to the UK and offer their services at a greatly reduced price. No income tax, no VAT, as the theme tune to Only Fools & Horses says, failing to add, no fuel duty, no vehicle excise duty etc, etc, etc.

Fuck the Government, before they fuck you. Join the Revolution.

I am the Revolution, and I want my fucking country back.

Evanomics

Nice piece today from Evan Davies about the seemingly cyclical problem with the housing markets.

I was most amused that he's managed to start with reference to Homer Simpson and end it with a reference to Flanders! Unfortunately the Flanders he's on about isn't Ned (or "Stupid" as Homer calls him) but Stephanie Flanders, who is to be Evan's replacement as Economics Editor.

Evan himself will be moving to presenting Today on Radio 4. Have fun with the early morning starts Evan!