Trouble on the horizon

Verityred

The Mail is the most unpleasant bundle of spite in the British media, despite making some valid points. Which is quite a feat given that the existance of the comedy Pravda that is the Daily Mirror. It is run by a grade one loon and peddles fear and despair.

TrevorsDen

Oh come on - are you saying that say Balls and anyone else who might be in power is not remote from reality? Balls and his wife are more than well enough off to separate him from the rest of us

The relative wealth of our leaders is meaningless.

Where is the money?

Who has it? Its always been the case that if govts want money it comes from the middle classes because they are the only ones in any numbers whom have it.

The great sad reality is that thanks to browns spending spree we need to find so much of it in the first place

oldtimer

We will only know the implications of the 50p rate when the treasury publishes the sources of its tax receipts next year. If, as many including your editor and myself, this proves to have been a self defeating measure, then that will provide a good reason for abolishing it and reverting to a 40p top rate.

Simplification of, and cutting, income tax rates and benefits are necessary reforms. They will help cut costs and provide a needed stimulus to a flagging economy.

Nickle

Pay all the tax, get nothing back.

Would you go to a shop where the cost of what you buy is 20, 30 times the real cost?

What would you do if you are forced to buy theses services with threats?

Peter From Maidstone

The Middle Classes will not mind at all receiving less benefits as long as they see that the non-Working Classes are not receiving any either. I know too many people who don't work and won't work. If the Government stops funding their lifestyle choices with my taxes then I don't mind receiving fewer benefits myself.

Scott

who have the middle class got to vote for if they get stung by all parties. I don't mind paying tax but am I rich on £40k a year? Taxes keep going up, and prices too, and yet I have to accept I will get hit whatever. Something isn't fair, I deserve my income too.

BigAl

Not much trouble if Millibabana's performance on Sky News is anything to go on! He has picked up where GB left and must now have the book of 'tractor production' statistics along with the propensity for 'Brownies' (or should they be 'Millies' now)?

normanc

Agree with Peter, I don't mind losing the one direct benefit I get (Child Benefit) but what I don't want is for my taxes to go up.

I thought that for the middle classes the raising of the tax threshold was going to be neutral as we'd be getting hit further up on the 40% tax?

The 50% rate should go as soon as possible - a rising tide lifts all ships.

Verity

Again, the non-contributors (save OAPs, who contributed all their lives) should have to share the suffering. If they are to continue to be passengers on other people's labour, they should be required to tighten their belts accordingly, meaning, council flats only for OAPs and people who can pay some rent. (Not rent recycled out of benefits.)

As I've said before, there is no conceivable reason why non-contributors should be housed in comfort and be given pocket money for ciggies, alcohol, lottery tickets and petrol.

They should be houses in hostels. Bedrooms only, and three or four communal bathrooms down the hall on each floor. And a common room with a tv in it on each floor. And a canteen.

Any food or supplies they buy to be paid for with food stamps or hygeine tokens. Beer, ciggies, lottery tickets a distant memory.

Keep them alive and healthy and motivate them to go out and find employment.

I cannot imagine what the West, and particularly Britain, is doing financing comfortable lifestyles for these individuals.

And Gordon Brown's destructive allowing of three extra "wives" being elegible for benefits has to be binned. Anyone claiming for more than one wife should be prosecuted for bigamy and the tinpot pasha heading up this harem should be imprisoned. The three surplus women should be returned to wherever they came from without any hearing. Bigamy is illegal - for all - in Britain. Apart from the moral aspect, we should not be facilitating the breeding of warriors for allah, which is what this four-wife gig is all about, as stated in the q'ran.

Right. Time for my second cup of tea and my toast.

Ross

"The necessity of keeping the Lib Dems happy, means that the Tories haven’t pointed out how much raising the income tax threshold to £10,000..."

Actually, this policy comes from the Lib Dem manifesto, and was discussed extensively amongst Lib Dems during the election.

Rhoda Klapp

Face it, they all get their money from the 'middle class', because that is where it is. The poor haven't got enoughm and the rich have it so concentrated and controlled that it is hard to get at, and if you frighten them they will leave.

It is evident that the middle class pay for everything. Increase VAT? The middle class are the ones with the spending power. Tax corporations? They raise prices, and the middle class pay. Tax energy? You guessed it, prices up, middle class pay. The poor pay too? Yes, but they have their benefits raised to suit, for which the middle class pay. We pay because we are the ones with the great mass of liquid money.

Maggie

Which bit of the middle classes are we talking about? The lower middle class, the middle middle class or the upper middle class? If its all of them then that's exactly what Thatcher did. The wealthy were entirely unaffected and the working class (now reinvented as the "poor") were entirely unaffected and the middle classes were absolutely hammered and had to pay for it all. The LibDems must be Thatcherites.

Mike Thomas

Why for the love of God should the Middle Class get Welfare?

I have something that might be lost on Stephen Glover. I have pride. Five letters. P. R. I. D. E. that I can stand on my own two feet.

I do not want Government to give me some of my money back and in return as an act of deference I will not complain.

I want Government to take less of my money, spend it far more wisely and preach of message that engenders a work ethic amongst the idle.

The middle class should not get Welfare, it is meant as a hand up not used as a tawdry bribe for votes.

David Lindsay

Middle-class benefits are right, just and necessary. The median household income in this country is £23,000. That is the middle.

Ninety-three per cent of children attend state schools, and every business is dependent on them, as it is to some extent on the public transport used by everyone from time to time, and on the National Health Service. Indeed, hardly anyone has private health insurance, and a large proportion of those who do, have it through their trade unions. And so on.

In the present state of affairs, extremely few are those who could do without their Child Benefit, or their tax credits, or their state pensions, or their winter fuel payments, or their free bus travel, or their free prescriptions, or their free eye and dental treatment, or their free television licenses.

David Cameron, George Osborne and Nick Clegg simply do not begin to understand these realities.

Maggie

When Nick Clegg talks about social mobility, he means downward mobility for workers in order to achieve upward mobility for non-workers.

Iconoclast

Just how far in your cheek was your tongue when you wrote this;

"The problem for the coalition is that because it is committed to protecting the poorest and the most vulnerable, the cuts will have to be concentrated further up the income scale"..

Are you serious? Do you honestly believe "we're all in this together"? Did you not listen to the emergency budget and spot the extra loopholes created?

John Richardson

Rhoda Klapp & Maggie (x2)

Yes, but please recognise you are in a battle for survival.
The ruling class & their Welfare hoards do not want more of what you have; THEY WANT IT ALL.
There is zero boundary they will not transgress. It suits them BOTH to see you debased, desperate and in debt.

Example.

A friend of mine on honeymoon in Cuba (I'd never visit there myself), was served in a small scruffy non-hotel restaurant by a Doctor, who had to moonlight every night if she wanted life's basics.
There is NOTHING the Cubans will not sell for just a few dollars; AIDS being less of a problem than other places.
This is the future for Britain's 'middle class'. Worse for the children.
You/we are being financially 'raped' by the corrupt party system.
There are no cuts in Welfare.
It's a cover story so idiots accept increased taxes.

Your poverty and powerlessness IS THE POLICY.

Fight or flight ?

Richard of York

Verity is right bring back the workhouses and to hell with the middleclass benefits. Too many middleclass mothers using the child benefit to stock up the wine rack.
OAP's with inflation proof pensions should burn the floor boards before accepting a hand out. Scum thats what they are scroungers and spongers. Let the Rich keep their tax avoiding investments and let the poor soak up the countries loose change but don't give the working family a break.
Verity for the next PM......all those in favour say Aye!.

Verity

Richard of York, Idiotic.

Richard of York

Verity it is bad form to vote for yourself.

Olaf Rye

One fundamental point we must bear in mind is that those paying tax expect something for their money. If the middle classes are about to lose services, they may justifiably wonder why they bother to support the state through taxation. Indeed, I wonder about this myself. We cannot all be expected to be squeezed for money to support the amorphous group called the 'vulnerable'. How many of these people are there and how can they consume so much of our money and still remain vulnerable and poor ? The reality is that much of this goes to bureaucracy and middle class civil service. We could render so many of these people redundant and still get better services. I am hoping that the government will come to grips with this sordid state of affairs and start issuing redundancy slips to these sycophants. After all, Labour's great employment strategy seemed to have been nothing more than expanding the civil service so they could snoop on us and inculcate the queerest ethics and ideas into all of us. The sooner I see them begging on the streets, the better.

Hysteria

let's get real. There are two ways out of the economic mess we are in ("We" means the Western democracies - not just the UK)

1 - complete debt forgiveness and re-issuance of currency

2 - massive reduction in tax and in benefits

the only way out is for the private sector to grow and the state to shrink.

And you can blame all governments post 1950 for this mess.

John Richardson

Olaf Rye.

100% totally correct.
The whole coming system is designed to soak & destroy the mc.

If enough people see things clearly, as you have, the mc can save themselves, otherwise it's genteel poverty for them all.
Though if they ever vote 'pink' Conservative again, they deserve the fate planned for them.....