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They would presumably be able to afford bus fares using the money they save by not driving?
Are they not allowed to drive as punishment, or for medical reasons?
If it's punishment, then no, they shouldn't get free travel.
What a load of rubbish. If they've got to pay, so should everyone else.
Whowhere - I'm talking about the people who can't drive for medical reasons.
If you can't drive and have ten grand in the bank account, and you earn £30,000 a year, then of course you should have to pay. If you can't legally drive because of a medical condition and you're on income support or working tax credit then it should be free.
Driving is not a right. Free travel should be given to those who financially need it, not those who are medically denied the opportunity to drive.
In any case, I see no resignation why the glove puppet at No. 11 needs to quit. The person who's really to blame for the Northern Rock fiasco is Gordon Brown. He's the one who put in place a system where the responsibility for dealing with it is split three ways. He's the one who ran the economy for 10 years, yet now attempts to pretend he only first appeared on the political scene on June 27th, 2007. If Northern Rock fails, it's Gordon Brown's head I will want to see rolling. And I for one, will be more than happy to dance on his political grave.
In the meantime... what would I do with £50billion? Simple. I'd give people massive tax cuts. I'd sack the legions of useless people doing non-jobs such as smoking cessation officers, five-a-day-co ordinators. I'd sack those overpaid NHS executives who have failed miserably to deal with MRSA. I'd reduce the size of government by at least half, starting with a reduction in the number of MPs - 200 will be sufficient. There would be fewer MPs for Wales, whom has an Assembly, and even fewer for Scotland, who have a proper Parliament instead of the talking shop the Welsh voted for. Hundreds of quangos would be abolished... I could go on, but I won't.
By the time I'd be finished with my reforms, people would be paying very little tax. Vote Stargalaxy!
This will make or break Gordon Brown's premiership. If he succeeds, history will remember him kindly. If he fails, he'll look like one of the worst Prime Ministers that Britain has ever seen. And Blair certainly set the standard appallingly low as it was.
Simple. The NHS would end up doing less. For example, I don't think the NHS should be doing IVF treatment. The education system is already well-funded, it's just the system itself that's a sham. Public services... well, people pay a fortune in taxes at the moment and where has the money gone? The amount of money that Gordon Brown has shoved into the NHS doesn't even begin to reflect the modest improvements made. (I should know about paying too much tax - I received a tax refund earlier this week!)
Though doubtless if the bank fails, we'll hear news sources like the BBC saying it's actually the fault of the last Conservative government...
Who gave you a monopoly on what the NHS does? Unless you become dictator of course.
Well funded from taxes, yes. It's simple, less taxes means less funding. The government just doesn't have money growing from trees outside Westminster ya know?
Part of the problem is the privatisation or semi-privatisation of these industries. Instead off competeing and improving conditions, these companies have neglected their duties.
He made a decision months ago.
Don't be silly. In fact, the economic policies of the last few years of the Tories actually helped set up the growing economy we've had under Labour. I'll be the first to say that.
And for the record, Brown has been brilliant at running the economy. Better than all the Tory chancellors of the last 100 years put together, in fact.
He was absolutely terrible at the job. The economy was doing well despite Gordon Brown, not because of him. He was useless as the country's Chancellor, and he's even more useless as Prime Minister. The sooner that we've gotten rid of him, the better.
You read that in The Sun the other day, tell the truth now?
Not too long ago, under the Tories, interest rates were in double figures you know...
The people giving out the loans werent silly at all, just greedy, they knew the people wernt going to pay them back, but they didnt care because the loans were being sold straight onto the market and they had no risk.
If anyone is to blame its the economist PHD egg heads who thought up this fantastic idea of parcelling up debt and selling it on the market with no real tie to the house secured against it.
On Wednesday, David Cameron described Gordon Brown as "that strange man in Downing Street". Lefties decried the fact he was getting personal - before making their own personal attacks on Cameron, natually. Personally, I think that describing Gordon as "strange" is being extremely kind on him. I can think of far more appropriate, but less printable words.
All those things you mentioned are beyond the control of Labour, do you think it's Labour's fault that oil is running out all over the world? No, of course not so why mention an oil crisis? If you look at economic growth on it's own, objectively then you'll see that Gordon Brown has done more in 10 years than any Tory government ever. Fact.
Nothing to do Brown's management of the economy.
Yeah that's Brown fault as well. He should have had a word with God and ensure plenty more forests and dinosaurs had been buried all those hundreds of millions of years ago so we would have plenty more oil reserves.
Really? There was me thinking Britain was better prepared than most...
Why should tax payers pay for benefits to people who can't work and then the council pay for bus passes for them? And what's wrong with them walking instead?
Free travel isn't a right either. It means for people like me who need to travel everywhere (as walking just isn't safe) we can do without having to spend a fortune on doing so.
Surely cutting taxes = cutting services?
The fact that some smoking cessation officer or five-a-day co-ordinator would end up getting sacked because of cuts in services does not bother me in the slightest.
That's using the assumption that the current market downfalls can be cured by simply taxing a bit less. But part of the problem is all about debt. And bad debts. A lot of the economy runs on speculation, when it looks like we've all got a lot of money and a lot of credit is going round, all is good. But when some of the debts aren't paid - more than expected - everyone realises the economy isn't worth as much as it should be. So companies start pulling in debts, and stop giving out credit.
Unfortunately, the organisation in the UK worst placed by all of this, is the government - since most private organisations run their books *fairly* tidily (with some exceptions i.e. northern rock who didn't have enough liquidity) - the government has been working on the principle that it can borrow money to invest because it will pay back more than it costs the country to borrow. But in doing so, there's a massive debt sheet which we assumed we'd pay off 'one day', but now the debt companies need the money back, and the investments - with the global economy heading towards recession - aren't going to pay out. If we just print more money it will cause inflation to spiral out of control. No doubt you'll soon see adds to buy government bonds or some such on the telly.
I mean, no doubt we'll be fine, it will be tough for a while. America are in a far worse position than us, with much larger levels of speculative borrowing on the government's part. It's in a 'boom' when organisations make poor decisions regarding the risk and expected return that causes them to lose so much money. In our cases, it's the government.
The best way of the situation is to tighten up public spending massively, and start repaying as much of the debt as you can. Otherwise you could end up like Argentina did in their recession, when the government couldn't afford to pay back it's debts and everyone lost faith in the economy. Everyone pulled their money out in a panic and the economy collapsed from the inside out. I would expect a similar effect if on smaller scales to occur in the US, which means us who are so closely linked want to avoid the fallout we can't just keep smiling and handing out cash hoping we can spend the problem away - we need to pay back our debt now and restore confidence in the UK economy.
I agree that debt needs to be paid back quickly. I also happen to think that debt should never have been taken on in the first place.
So £10bn of these projects come out of taxation money. It's going to give back to society value of £20bn though, so we're all happy. Whether it's doctors, police, public projects or whatever. Broadly speaking everyones chuffed that they've got a doctor for the tax they pay.
However, we've still got loads of projects left, maybe giving value back of £1.5 for £1 spent, but we've run out of money. So we can start borrowing money, because even when we pay it back we'll still be quids in. So those new computers in schools - they didn't come from taxpayers, the government borrowed the money from lenders because we'll pay back in 20 years when the students have all got IT skills giving them bigger incomes so they can pay back more... get it?
Unfortuantely, when you get carried away with the process, at some point you start agreeing to projects that are reasonably close to the line. As soon as the economic climate shifts (which has happened pretty quickly from boom to bust - in about 1 - 2 years from when US bad debts started to northern rock going down the pan to now) the value of these projects plummets and the price increases, and the cost of lending money goes up as well. All in all you've suddenly made big commitments that are quite bad.
The US government's policy all along has been to keep throwing money at people. Theoretically, if they spend more then they will keep the economy thriving, lots of wealth and money going round, everything is good. But that just temporarily covers up the problem, as inflation kicks in and actually then makes the problem worse than it was.
Economically the sound route is to tell everyone it's going to be tough and pay back the debt. Politically that's suicide and everyone whose just invested money into the economy will be jumping off a bridge - telling them the economy is bloated and due for a downturn. No PM or President would survive politically by increasing taxes and paying back debt, even if it is necessary.
To see the worst circumstances when this spirals out of control, look at countries in eastern europe that were borrowing 15-20% of their economic spend a year, with inflation as high as 50%.
How reassuring.