Thought Id start this one going because its rather dead on this board at the moment and I suppose all my usual muckers are either at the Stella tennis event watching Dim Tim (lose again) or at Henly Regatta eating cucumber sandwiches (they wish,...NOT).

Anyway please feel free to just talk to yourself blast away and let it go on any company or subject you wish. Just wish Id thought of this one before.

cheers GF.

whose poll and which newspaper? ..... confess i'm, shall we say, taking a rather cynical view of that report :-)

British Social Attitudes Survey published by the King’s Fund think-tank. Overall and despite the fall in approval in 2011, the satisfaction levels for the NHS were still the third highest since the poll began in 1983.

hmm - an unknown source with unknown affiliations

The King's fund is a charity set up IN 1897 to improve the NHS. They have no affiliations and comment on the NHS. The social attitudes survey has been reporting their results since 1983. The survey was conducted by NatCen, an independent survey organisation. They have questions about UK social attitudes sponsored by various bodies. The NHS questions are paid for by the King's Fund.

i looked it up too, but confess i find the findings a bit too convenient for comfort ..... it feels rather like a drugs company sponsoring a survey into the efficacy of one of its products ..... from where does this fund receive most of its money? ..... no answer required, but you readily see the angle from which i am coming

I can see your queries. The survey has shown major falls in satisfaction with the NHS previously during a variety of different governments. The results are available historically and have a range of charts since 1983.

Please sign the Petition.................

https://www.change.org/en-GB/petitions/iain-duncan-smith-iain-duncan-smith-to-live-on-53-a-week

I like Ian Duncan Smith. The petition is just a ploy by left wing activists and supporters of the Very Silly Party (Labour). The Silly Party is the Liberals.

Why? It's a pathetic petition, brought about by scroungers who want something for nothing!

Kevin Maguire‏@Kevin_Maguire

Vile Product of Welfare UK: axeman IDS takes £135,000 from TAXPAYERS, gets a CHAUFFEUR and lives FREE in wife's £2m

and the guy who raised the question is on £156 pw .... and i bet HMRC and benefits office will be putting him under the microscope too

what other notional benefits, if any, would attach to this notional £56 pw?
housing? .... if so, that would include council tax

i'm 90%+ sure i could feed myself pretty well for £20 pw and that includes tea, bread, milk etc

I D Smith a drain on tax payers receipts.

Dont forget the person who set up the petition is a self employed striver, in fact a self employed trader who votes conservative but believes IDS is hitting the disabled and worthy poor and is a man who lives of his wife Betsy welfare.

IDS takes £135,000 from TAXPAYERS, gets a CHAUFFEUR and lives FREE in wife's £2m
why should he not?
please advise for what he receives his £135k .... it sounds like more than just ministerial pay.
as a minister, he'll assuredly be entitled to a chauffeur - it goes with the job
why should he not live free in his wife's house, its value being totally irrelevant


sticky - you're losing the plot

IDS gets a chauffer because he is a government minister. Where he lives is his own business.

I smell the rancid odour of the politics of envy once again.

Cynic you ass, the £53 quid is after council tax and any housing benefit. You would have to find money for your energy bills, TV, insurance, ground rent, leases,telephone,transport, stationary, medical bills, care bills, etc etc and then find money for food.

Its OK saying I can do this for a week, could you do it for 52 weeks or more and dont forget the social exclusion that would come about because of your position.

By the way Ive got haystack and hilary filtered and have for about 3 months. Neither of them genuine people to my mind.

leases, ground rent, medical bills

Lost the plot

Just love being filtered. It stops stupid replies to my posts from lefties.

Cynic, come on now get your facts right.....

The MP, who earns £134,565 a year as a Cabinet minister, insisted he could live on £53 a week after a 51-year-old market trader told the BBC that he gets by on the meagre sum.

The CHAUFFEUR is allowable expenses but is frowned upon by Tory big wigs who put pressure on minister Simon Burns to use the train rather than a CHAUFFEUR before xmas.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/9964767/Iain-Duncan-Smith-I-could-live-on-53-per-week.html

A DRAIN ON TAX PAYERS along with other MPs from both parties who screwed the system only a year or so ago.

When will theTory idiots of the right learn.

Probably at the local elections next month when they get Annihilated.