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Govt vs. Benefit Claimants
Former Member
Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
Just as the Govt are due to announce thousands of civil servants (and other public sector employees) are going to be made redundant, after changing their pension and redundancy rights, they also announce that they are "going after" benefit claimants. Okay, maybe I'm taking the aim a little personal, but there does seem to be an agenda here, non?
Whether that's their attack on incapacity benefits claimants, or those on housing benefits. Or the, £1.5bn "fraudulent" claims which as this article shows, is actually just 1% of the benefits bill and is tiny in comparison to the amount which goes unclaimed.
In other news, MPs to apologise for "fraudulently" claiming expenses and tax loopholes to remain open.
Same old Govt.
Whether that's their attack on incapacity benefits claimants, or those on housing benefits. Or the, £1.5bn "fraudulent" claims which as this article shows, is actually just 1% of the benefits bill and is tiny in comparison to the amount which goes unclaimed.
In other news, MPs to apologise for "fraudulently" claiming expenses and tax loopholes to remain open.
Same old Govt.
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Comments
But as a civil servant I simply cannot defend our redundancy provisions, they are extremely generous and unaffordable. Unfortunately too many people in the public sector think that they are there to waited on hand and foot by the rest of the country, well we're not and we shouldn't be protected in hard times.
Yes £1.5bn is a small part of the benefits bill, but its not an insigificant amount and its hard to tell people to tighten their belt and cut public services when the Government is just ignoring waste and fraud.
3 MPs and a Lord are currently facing trial for fraudulent expenses. yes, the expenses system was lax, but its been tightened up so much now its possibly unworkable. It should also be noted what people term loopholes, often aren't but ar deliberately in the system (ie to encourage investment overseas and hence to help our balance of payments you only get taxed once - either by the host country or the UK, or to encourage charitable giving there are tax exemptions). Other loopholes aren't loopholes at all, but are criminal and are actively investigated by HMRC
As for the rest, we're apparently sending credit agencies (at what cost?) after a small amount, doing nothing about the fact that the vast majority of the £5bn quoted in the papers is errors. We're doing nothing about the £10bn that goes unclaimed by people who don't realise that they are entitled to it (which may actually be the reason for some of the £1.5bn fraud).
At the same time there are huge tax loopholes which only those with accountants can afford to take advantage of, and we also have hundreds (not just four!) MPs and Lords who, whilst earning or worth a fortune, fraudulently claimed massive amounts in expenses. Yet all they had to do was say sorry.
You can see why I think that one sector of the population is being targeted.
Also note I didn't blame any political party for this. Labour were as bad.
There seems to be a relentless attack on people on benefits which I presume takes peoples eye of the real issues and the real culprits regarding the shit this country is in.
The whole western world are now in hock in perpetuity to a handful of international bankers.
Thats not a conspiracy rant it's the reality.
It's not the fault of one government.
For the western world to all end up in the same debt to the same people all at the same time would suggest a plan to me.
Poor you. Not only do I not have to pay anything into my pension my redundancy costs are also about five times as great as the statutory minimum. It's lucky the Health Service is ringfenced or else there's some really cheap redundancies to be made there
Well I assume they'll also reduce errors and will take a percentage of the savings (that's how I'd do it). The £6-10bn unclaimed is a different issue. There's various things we're entitled to which I'd be happy to drop if we could (its sadly impossible to convince the DWP that with a combined income of xx we don't need child benefit). I suspect a lot of that is similar
Yes, because they're mainly aimed at specific behaviour that only impact on the wealthy. I mean how much of your income is from your investments in Belize and the USA? And why should you be doubled taxed on it
Which sector? You mention at least two sectors the public sector and the benefit claimants.
You don't mention the changes in capital gains tax or the income tax changes for under 10%, nor the changes to stop the increasingly wealthy sponging scarce housing resources. It depends what you mention and what you spin
48% management costs reduction. When the DoH say "management costs" they mean people and not buildings/overheads.
Ring fenced budget, not jobs.
You're doing as well as the rest of us then (except we're also loosing a third or so of our capital budget as well as between a third and fifty percent of our operating costs)*
* all this is what we're hearing from the newspapers as we won't know how bad/good it is until October and the spending review
That's almost 15% of the all money we lose every year, up to an eye watering £13bn in fact, to tax avodiing schemes by fucking greedy cunts (sorry, companies trying to be 'tax efficient').
But who needs to chase billionaire greedy bastards for a miniscule amount of their wealth when you can chase people on benefits to recoup a far smaller amount for the taxpayer?
We wouldn't want to upset the likes of Tesco and News International, at the end of the day...
Would you consider ANYONE receiving tax free benefits as a participant in tax avoidance ?
Factually.
Directed at Aladdin.
Hopefully you too can look and learn *hug*
Why not ?
Those of you who keep up with my posts will know I expressed a very similar view about Labour's shameful abolition of the 10p tax band. For several months, Gordon Brown lied and lied again about this, saying the change would not hurt the poorest in society. Eventually, he was forced to come clean amidst a political furore which almost cost him his job. I said at the time this was something that should keep Labour on the opposition benches for the next 20 years. I stand by that. A similar analogy can be applied here. David Cameron, along with his partner in crime Nick Clegg, is currently telling everyone that the cuts they're making in the next few months won't hurt the poor, that they will be protected. Call Me Dave as it again only yesterday, in a bizarre interview where he called himself a member of the middle-class. There's more middle-class blood in the Queen than there is in him. Such is his scale of delusion about himself.
Either they are both terminally stupid, or they're both lying. It doesn't speak well of them either way. If they get away with making such changes to DLA, it will be a shameful indictment of how useless our political system is at holding those in power to account. In the past, we could have relied on Labour - which used to be the party which represented workers, a party which had the right beliefs but completely the wrong ways of implementing them - to put a stop to this. They'll try now as well, only that we know the reasons they will be doing it are patently dishonest. They are the party which transformed public sector into a scheme to get people to vote for themselves, being as they are, the puppets of the unions.
The answer to all this is so simple, nobody has bothered to think of it in our political system. Cut taxes to such a level that people get to keep more of their own money, and that companies no longer have an incentive to start dodging taxes through various legal loopholes. They won't do it if it costs them more than they'd save, after all. It'll make working worthwhile in the process. Whilst they're at it, ensure nobody has to pay income tax if they earn less than £20,000 per year and start it at a rate of 10% afterwards, rising slightly as earnings go up. I believe the rich should pay more in tax, but not so much they start devising ways to avoid it.
Still, I'll have a good laugh the Guardian talks about how these nasty companies are not paying their taxes. The Grauniad doesn't either, as it happens...
Because they're different things.
Why is an either or. You can go after both benefit fraud and tax evasion.
The 15% you claim we loose is actually very dodgy as its mainly income earnt in other countries, which would otherwise be doubled taxed. The trouble is if we start double taxing UK firms won't invest abroad with an impact on our balance of payments and also less profit and so less income throuigh tax. To say nothing of our relationship with other countries who might take exception to the UK trying to deprive them of their legitimate tax revenues.
No private central banks means interest free money.
Does things refer to the actions ?
Is that the sound of heckling from the cheap seats ?
The people responsible for crimes on a grand scale resulting in economic chaos and the current media onslaught on a few benefit fiddlers ...
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article26187.htm
MIDDLE class families face no longer being able to use child benefit to buy wine, it emerged last night.
Ministers have spent two months searching desperately for ways to cut the UK's soaring welfare bill before finally realising they should just stop giving money to people who obviously don't need it.
A senior source said: "We looked into who would be adversely affected by scrapping the £87 a month child benefit for middle class families and realised pretty quickly that it was Oddbins and Majestic.
"We may as well have been paying them directly, so all people would have had to do was .....
http://www.thedailymash.co.uk/news/society/middle-class-could-be-forced-to-pay-for-things-they-can-afford-201008183010/
"But Helen Archer, a woman who doesn't know what a job is from Grantham, said: 'I use my child benefit for Oliver's trombone lessons. Two years and he's still absolutely fucking shit. Thank Christ it's not my money.'"