chrisp65

local footy flash: last year's prolific goal scorer TJ is back......and scores in 7 minutes! up the town! In other news, Cossi is also back. First game of the season I commented he had a 'lazy' second half, later turned out he'd broken his ribs. Footballers today!

30 plus years old, still got the original cellophane on it absolutely storming album, currently receiving some excessive volume

I don't think there's any winning or losing of arguments here to be fair. It's just the testing and tweeking of ideas by exposure to peer review! I guess there are people that live in Sandwell that need more money. But what they should do, is accept the benefit cuts and just move on, literally, just move to Solihull get a better job and earn more money. I presume the people of Malvern, Cheltenham, Evesham etc., are ok with 2.4 million affordable new homes being built in the nice places and are waiting to recruit ex Yodel van drivers and redundant Remploy workers into middle management. Simples.

I suspect that having a low paid low hours job isn't absolutely always a lifestyle choice. It is for some, it was for a neighbour I used to have. But there is a chance here of slipping into presuming low pay or no pay means scrounger. These will be the same scroungers that previously worked in coal, BP, on the docks, Powell Dyffryn, Dow Corning etc., or who's fathers would have worked there, before they were all closed. Even when they do get a desk job answering phones for the AA or Admiral Insurance, it doesn't pay like being a docker did. Literally getting on your bicycle and cycling 9 miles to a basic office job whilst the missus cleans the local leisure centre (if, the man with her zero hours contract texts her to come in) is not lazy. It shouldn't be punished. We are all one redundancy, one error away from that scenario. I don't think it's as straightforward as simply upping your income by working as hard as the Chinese. Ask a steelworker.

Tony, the sums pan out that for somebody working a job and getting, say, £8,000 to £9,000 then net effect of all the changes is that between now and the year 2020 they will be worse off. The withdrawal of benefits is happening much faster than the boosting of pay and raising of thresholds. There is a 5 year lag in the full effects of the 'good' bits. Ahh, beaten to it and put better!

Methodist roots, Quaker sympathies. No need to get too ostentatious.

I've only ever truly desired three or four cars in my life. As a nipper, I couldn't wait to be able to drive so I could buy a Jensen Interceptor (little concept of insurance and maintenance budgets as an 11 year old). In to my twenties I almost had a VW Karmann Ghia a couple of times and it never quite came off. If I ever win the lottery that I don't do as it's for chavs, I shall immediately purchase a 60's / 70's east european spy film genre Mercedes saloon and a shiny new Maserati. One for the supermarket shopping trips, one for those european city breaks.

It's an interesting one. I only offered myself as an example to try and fend off accusations of jealousy. I wasn't grandstanding (much). I would like more money, I'd like a Maserati. I've already made it clear in work I'm expecting a proper bonus at Christmas. Effort, fees earned, arses kissed. Whatever metric they use, I'm due the biggest bonus. I'm not shy in asking for reward. I can be a little bit alpha when it matters. If Osbourne wants to promote, money for workers nothing for shirkers, that's one thing. I haven't heard him say that. I've heard him say we can't bail out the poor because we don't have any money. Well, that's patently not true is it. He's just given me a wadge. I suspect that the Vote o matic GX 200 in conservative central office guessed I was a tory and that poor people largely aren't. No more complicated than that.

You might want to google Capel Celyn.

I would say that someone who even gets suspicious when they get a tax-break, has lost faith in government. Out of interest, do you genuinely not see why I would question some getting tax breaks whilst others lower down the financial well being scale are getting penalised? A real question. If you really don't see it I'll have another go at getting my hazy reasoning through beyond my often garbled wenglish.

Trouble is Tony, with most of the stuff in politics, it's your hot air opinion versus my hot air opinion. It's only chatter and good fun too. The difference with this one, without being overly melodramatic, I lived through it and experienced it first hand in a town dependent upon coal, dock trade and heavy industry. I am not a fan.

'new' releases out tomorrow: LEE PERRY Babylon A Fall: The Best Of [2CD on Trojan] £6.99LEE PERRY & The Upsetters Ape-Ology [2CD on Trojan] £6.99LEE PERRY & The Upsetters Dub Triptych [2CD on Trojan] £6.99LEE PERRY Dubstrumentals [2CD on Trojan] £6.99THE UPSETTERS Scratch The Upsetters Again [Trojan] £6.99 HOT 8 BRASS BAND Vicennial: 20Years Of [Tru Thoughts] £9.99GREGORY ISAACS Slum In Dub [Burning Sounds] DILLINGER vs TRINITY Clash [Burning Sounds] not heard of Hot 8 Brass Band but saw them mentioned elsewhere so thought I'd chuck the coincidence in here

Mooney, probably stating the obvious but challenge it via both Morrisons and the parking firm. Very often they get waived if someone protests, They don't want the risk of pensioners getting scared of shopping there when negative parking stories start appearing in the local free paper. I'm sure you already knew that.

Could you quote or source where in the 2015 Labour Manifesto it says they will remove winter fuel allowance altogether, please. It doesn't say that on the version I've found, but perhaps you have seen a different page? On the version I have, it says it will remove WFA from the richest. Vague and waffly as you'd expect. But definitely not 'all' as you've been arguing. Hopefully you weren't just sound biting from stuff you've read in the Mail?

Oh that's promising then, candidate could be a socialist. (wrong arm Len, wrong arm)

Again you are kind of missing the point - to a point where I now wonder if it's deliberate to see if I go pop. Why would changing a tax system to the detriment of the poorest workers in society be a higher priority than other taxes that benefit people that are either rich, or don't even live here, or both?* Seriously, that's weird isn't it? As a point, under my benevolent dictatorship, I would remove winter heating allowance from people of any income that weren't actually in the UK. I would remove winter heating allowance from all millionaires, regardless of their location. If this cost more money than it saved, I'd up the tax on something posh people buy until the cost was covered. Swans maybe, or pigs' heads, or holiday homes in Rock. *my own personal experience: due to the way I work / get income, a small unnoticed change in the last budget means that my car / travel tax and expense is no longer calculated in the same way. To cut some very dry accounting short, I'm now better off by a three figure sum every month. Why do that? Where was the clamour for that terrible injustice on people that travel around with their job ever championed? Personally, I shall obviously now spend my extra money on some very good things that interest me. But perhaps, just perhaps, if the government had kept it, then people that earn £8,000 p.a. wouldn't be facing a real drop in their earnings. Cruel for the sake of being cruel, wrapped up and sold as financial necessity.

Who gets to pick the next Labour candidate? I guess it's local party with the London party leaning in heavily? Or someone gets parachuted in from central casting? Tory finished behind UKIP at the last election, will be interesting to see how that minor placings battle turns out.

see this is part of the problem ..it's every pensioner that gets the winter allowance , millionaire or not .. Yer retired honest hard working man retired in Thailand gets it even though he doesn't need it or deserve it anymore than the millionaire pensioner living in Switzerland or England for that matter .... I'm guessing the individual can refuse it or give it back if they are so inclined , no doubt the working man as he probably voted labour all his life (before defecting to the BNP ) in Thailand sent his back or donated it to an orphanage whilst millionaire man spent on a bath of champagne in your book though but regardless , that was a policy that a Labour government introduced in 97 / 98 ? hardly a stick to beat Osborne with ... How much would it cost to means test every person for the heating allowance would be the question your should be asking and could Osborne implement this , as he indeed did with Child support money ( I'm sure your praise for him for this was registered on the thread Blandy sent to internet heaven ) Incidentally in labour 2015 election manifesto they pledged to remove the winter heating allowance completely , partly it seems in an attempt to convince voters it could be trusted to manage the public finances ... so that's votes before lives ... remind us again who the nasty party are ? I don't think you can blame 1997 Labour for a current tax can you? But again, perhaps I need it as a sig at the bottom, I don't vote Labour anyway and see only a little difference between them. If it is a wrong tax, or crudely enforced I'd have thought Georgie would have changed it or scrapped it? They've managed that for tax credits - which was my point. I don't have anything specific against people in Switzerland or Thailand that get my tax shipped out as benefits. But I'd have thought Cameron and Osbourne would want to turn off that tap before they start upping the pressure on people in this country, with a job, earning less than £10,000 p.a.. Do you not agree with that? As for the Labour 2015 election manifesto, I wouldn't wipe my morally superior arse with it.

Yep, I'd agree with Xann. My student days are long behind me, so I now realise that most every politician gets consumed by the system and there is little difference between them. Other than some intend to do good and some do (for me) genuinely appear to get off on deliberately causing misery. I think (hope) that Hunt telling us to work harder like the Chinese was a lazy thick day on his part. I suspect May is genuinely nasty inside. I suspect that many tory MP's and a good number of their voters would happily make a thousand lives worse, if it meant their life was a tiny bit better. You know where I'm going with this. Osbourne reminds me of Tebbitt and Thatcher. He looks like he might cum every time he cuts some benefit or other. Nasty for the pleasure of it. There are good reasons to change the benefits and tax regime in this country. Good sensible urgent need. He's taken that, and cut the benefits of people that earn £3,800 a year. Millionaire UK pensioners that live in Switzerland get the UK winter heating allowance. He's not very nice.

yeah I was being 'funny' The missus still went along, and took half the **** tins out of the cupboard. Due to work and travel commitments my 'caring' boils down largely to funding my wife's good works and winning the internet with my awesome intellect.