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.

Latest YouGov / The Sun results 17th July - Con 31%, Lab 37%, LD 12%, UKIP 13%;

Just as I thought and have been posting here what really was going on... check this out. ..............................

http://www.cityam.com/blog/one-chart-shows-failure-osbornes-funding-lending-scheme

England 28 for 3!

My kids have tickets for the 5th day, but it may not go on that long.

gold was in paris the weekend its like a third world shit hole full of parasites
seating on the door steps scum lazy good for nothings most immigrants want one thing a free ticket to benefits .
we need to get out of this hell hole called Europe

but alas 20 tory MPs get millions in pay outs from the tax payers would you want a vote on the eu
its certain that CAMERON will not have a vote on in or out .
he is a liar on all counts

i'm actually watching the golf on my box in the office .... the cricket I keep up with on the pc!

and has for the torys talking about the unions .
he does not run the country is backers tell him what to do and
if you ask him a question he will not give one till he as a word with the backers
the tory mafia run the uk he is just a dimwit

having spoken to union members at the local cc about funding the labour party
they said that is why we vote labour its our party and happy to pay

and I am a tory not lab so nothing to gain .
now going to vote UKIP UKIP UKIP

cynic . if a self employed person becomes ill he is open to claim income support
and they are very helpful to assist them

I do not want the labour party back in power
but I certainly do not want this scum back in at any cost

TANKER - 18 Jul 2013 12:09 - 27404 of 27405

cynic . if a self employed person becomes ill he is open to claim income support
and they are very helpful to assist them ...............

TANKER....Its now called Employment Support Allowance.... work related element.

That thick t-at Haystack argued and argued saying it wasnt last night. He then denied it when I caught him out telling lies, but of course we know hes a coward who cant say 'sorry I got it wrong'.

He sits behind his keyboard thinking hes being clever. I tell you this though he wouldnt dare say what he said last night to me face to face.

Anyway Ive filtered both him and his idiot side kick for life now. Im afraid of what Id do physicaly if i took it any further. Best to avoid the temptation.

By the way I agree with you what you say about France and Paris apparently Brussels is the same Im told.

A self employed person can claim ESA, although it is not specifically for self employed. It is universal and applies to everyone. However a self employed person has a raft of benefits that can be claimed. It is those that we were talking about. Sickness was never mentioned. A self employed person can claim pretty much all the same benefits as an employed person. Goldfinger was just trying to muddy the waters as he usually does when he is found to be wrong.

Guardian Newspaper.


Welfare cuts: rich pickings ahead for the loan sharks

The shift to "cashless" local crisis welfare provision has turned social security entitlements into foodbank handouts, and will push low income families to high credit lenders, a study finds


Will the abolition of the Social Fund, the source of emergency crisis support for most vulnerable families, push more people into the arms of loan sharks?

The short answer is, we don't know yet for sure, though comprehensive new research from The Children's Society suggests key elements are in place to ensure this is precisely what will happen.

As I've reported before, the replacement of the social fund with 150 local authority-led "local welfare asssistance" schemes in April marks a huge shift in emphasis from entitlement to cash welfare (in the form of crisis loans and grants) to discretionary "in-kind" support, in the form of food stamps, food bank referrals and charity clothes and furniture.

There were two elements to the social fund: crisis loans, which were typically small £50 loans repayable against future benefit payments; and the community grant, which offered emergency grants of around £1,000 to vulnerable people to buy beds, cookers and other essentials.

These cash-based supports have now largely disappeared under local welfare. The Children's Society survey found that 62% of English councils were no longer providing interest free cash loans. In addition, two-thirds state that no cash assistance is available, and 15% say cash help (in the form of grants) will only be offered in exceptional circumstances.

A huge irony, given the Government's professed desire to target social security support on "hard working families" is that in many cases low income households, who may have previously accessed crisis loans (perhaps because of delays in being paid by their employer) will be now unable to access support.

According to the Children's Society, 25% of local authority welfare schemes now exclude families where an adult is in work. The society's policy advisor, Dr Sam Royston, explained:


Working families are really pummelled by this. And they are the ones most likely to be going to high interest lenders


But its not just the working poor. Here's an example of a typical crisis loan applicant, provided in a 2011 report by the Department of Work and Pensions:


Mr G is a 43 year old married Jobseeker, and he has an 18 month old son. He applied for a crisis loan of £50 to help him buy food and pay for fuel for 4 days. He had received his usual fortnightly Jobseeker's Allowance but 4 days before his next payment of benefit was due his son had become unwell suddenly and had to go into hospital. Mr G lives in a semi-rural area with no car and as there was no public transport, and the hospital was unwilling to provide hospital transport, Mr G had to pay for a taxi to and from the hospital. This spent the final £50 of his benefit, which the family would normally expect to have lasted them for food until the next benefit payday.


Under most new local welfare schemes, Mr G - who you might agree appears to have a very sound case for emergency social security support - will be now most likely reliant on charity. He may recieve a referral to a food bank, or food voucher, in lieu of his families nutritional needs. But in the absence of cash, there appears to be no facility to help him put petrol in the car to get him to the hospital. This again, perhaps, is where the loan shark steps in.

Here's another example, this time a real life one, which I wrote about last month. A homeless 62-year old woman, Dawn Martin, was refused help to find housing by Isle of Wight council. It passed her on to the local welfare assistance scheme. Although what she needed was a cash loan to put down as a deposit on a room, the council was unable to help. Instead it offered her a voucher with which she could buy:


A tent


The council subsequently relented after a local media outcry, and Martin now has somewhere to live. But the absurdity of offering a tent is enshrined in the policy, and again, the likelihood of vulnerable recipients becoming reliant on high cost credit lenders increases.

This example demonstrates a profound problem with cashless welfare: it is hugely inflexible. It makes it very difficult to meet the actual needs of those who require it, and it can be hugely stigmatising.

The Children's Society notes:


It is a concern that in many cases a system of cash loans for households in need have become hand-outs of food or second hand furniture. Whilst in some circumstances such "in-kind" support may be very helpful, this fundamentally changes the nature of the support offered, taking it from a means of accessing interest free loans and community grants, to something closer to charitable hand-outs.


The Children's Society reports that the majority of authorities will still offer support for rent in advance, but many won't. This creates a postcode lottery. But even if your council does provide rent advances you may not qualify, even if you are in poverty and acute crisis, if the council considers that you can borrow the money from family, friends or get a grant from a local hardship charity.

It is easy to blame councils for the absurdities of the system. To be fair to them, they had very little time to draw up local welfare schemes and received only a fraction of the money previously available for crisis help. The Children's Society points out that funding for emergency support has reduced by 46% since 2010. Local welfare is, we must remind ourselves, a Coalition vision.

Ministers appears to think the local welfare schemes are working well, three months in. The work and pensions minister Lord Freud recently declared that the schemes had "landed well," though he did not elucidate on what he meant by this, or the evidence for this assertion.

The society has drawn up a list of recomendations to improve the system. As it stands, the risk is that local welfare may increase debt, hardship, and relaince on loan sharks. The timing could not be worse. As Matthew Reed, the society's chief executive, says:


Families are at risk of becoming the casualties of government changes to the social fund. These could blight the lives of the most vulnerable and come at a time when other major reforms to the welfare system risk making families more reliant on emergency support.



http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/patrick-butler-cuts-blog/2013/jul/18/local-welfare-cuts-rich-pickings-for-loan-sharks

Britain needs millions more immigrants to reduce strain of ageing population

Britain may need millions more immigrants over the next 50 years to reduce the "unsustainable" pressure that the ageing population is putting on the economy, the official forecaster has said.




By Steven Swinford, Senior Political Correspondent
1:19PM BST 17 Jul 2013
Comments1157 Comments
The Office for Budget Responsibility said that spending on the state pension, social care and healthcare will rise from 14 per cent of Britain's GDP to almost a fifth.

The report found that allowing more than 140,000 immigrants into Britain a year, equivalent to 6million people, would help increase the overall number of people who are in work and improve public finances.

Its analysis suggests that Britain's borrowing as a propotion of GDP would rise to 99 per cent if there is a steady flow of immigrants. If there was a complete ban on immigrants, borrowing would rise to 174 per cent of GDP.

David Cameron has pledged to reduce the levels of immigration into Britain to "tens of thousands" during this Parliament. Last year the number of immigrants dropped by 89,000 to 153,000.

The report says: "Our analysis shows that overall migration has a positive impact on the sustainability of the public finances over our 50 year horizon.


more: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/immigration/10185342/Britain-needs-millions-more-immigrants-to-reduce-strain-of-ageing-population.html

Proof Here

goldfinger- 17 Jul 2013 20:07 - 27353 of 27408

Hays posted.......

Haystack - 17 Jul 2013 19:41 - 27351 of 27357
ESA has nothing to do with being self employed.............ends.

Hes lied through his teeth. Its their above for EVERYONE to see, he says "ESA (Employment Support Allowance) has nothing to do with being self employed.

Now lets have him either apologise or leave the thread in disgrace. It couldnt be clearer. Hes lied and betrayed the trust of posters on here who take for granted a certain amount of honesty from fellow posters.

He is nothing more than a scumster liar.

Leave the thread, go elsewhere liar.

Caught out red handed.

Proof above Haystack

ESA has nothing to do with self employed. It is a benefit that applies to ALL people.

From 27 October 2008 Employment and Support Allowance replaced Incapacity Benefit and Income Support paid on incapacity grounds for new customers.

As you can see the change was made under Labour and NOT by IDS as good finger suggested.

Gf
wrong again as usual. Post 27407 is still there. Maybe you have filtered it. Here it is

Haystack- 18 Jul 2013 12:46 - 27407 of 27412

A self employed person can claim ESA, although it is not specifically for self employed. It is universal and applies to everyone. However a self employed person has a raft of benefits that can be claimed. It is those that we were talking about. Sickness was never mentioned. A self employed person can claim pretty much all the same benefits as an employed person. Goldfinger was just trying to muddy the waters as he usually does when he is found to be wrong.