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.

That articular shows how low that writer and people who post it would go, to use that visit to score political points .

Welcome to the Labour Party alders!

it is a salutary and necessary reminder for all of all ages to visit the WW1 battlefields and cemetries, so too with the concentration camps

thus, to try to make some sort of political capital out of DC's visit to auschwitz is pretty appalling .... shame on you sticky for promoting that with your bit of c+p

Chris how did you know I was blonde?

TANKER just look at this..........

Shock New Figures: UK Spends Less On Healthcare, Benefits and Pensions Per Head Than Any Other Northern European Country11/12/2014



The UK spends less on social security benefits, pensions and healthcare combined per head than any other northern European country figures released by the Office for National Statistics reveal.

In news which has sent the Daily Mail spinning out of control, the UK’s spending on ‘social protection’ is lower than France, Germany, the Netherlands, Ireland and in fact every country in Northern Europe, as well as Italy. These figures are based on spending per person from 2012, before many of the benefit cuts were implemented. With even more savage cuts to social security threatened, then the UK could soon slip even further down the ranking behind the beleagured economies of Greece and Spain.

Social protection covers a wide range of spending including benefits, pensions, healthcare and social exclusion. In a worrying trend the Daily Mail has decided to lump all thse vital services under the banner of ‘welfare’ suggesting that pensioners and people who use the NHS may be next in line to face being smeared as scroungers by the right wing press.

Almost half (47%) of the UK’s social protection spend goes on pensions. Just 2.5% of the total is spent on unemployment, just over half the European average, The UK also spends less as a proportion of the budget on disabled people and families with children. Subsidies for landlords remain healthy however with 5.5% of the spend going towards housing costs reflecting the ever growing Housing Benefit bill.

Social protection spending works out at £6,959 per head each year but that doesn’t mean that’s how much it costs you as the Daily Mail implies. It is how much you get. People on lower incomes will pay considerably less than that, whilst corporation and other business taxes also contribute. Depending on how long you live you will receive much if not all of what you have paid out back in your penson. At least for now. On top of that comes a comprehensive (for now) system of healthcare alongside now sadly less than adequate income protection insurance in the event of illness, accident or unemployment. The welfare state is still good value though for everybody except the very rich and were it to disappear then we would be paying a lot more to line the pockets of insurance company spivs. And it would be the rich who get the tax cuts were that to happen. Don’t get mugged by the Daily Mail into thinking otherwise.

You can view the figures on the ONS website.

TANKER.....print a few copies off and take it to your club so you can show your mates, and ask them to photocopy it and send it round your village.

That is because other countries spend too much. France is a good example. Their benefits culture is crippling the country.

sleaze sleaze sleaze sleaze sleaze, Hays is nothing but........... SLEAZE.

Hays its not benefits that are crippling France, its Tax you birk.

SO HAYS WANTS LESS SPENDING ON PENSIONS AND HEALTHCARE.........TYPICAL TORY SCUM.

Have you seen that TANKER......Hays comment.


He'd and his like would have you in the workhouse/poorhouse.

They are taxing so high to pay for the adsurd benefits. It is the same with all socialist countries.

gf - Fred told me :0)

Oil falling again. Now $58.94

And DB told me you had a saggy arse.

money spent on unemployment
ah, but what % in spain, greece and even france and germany are drawing on that fund?
one might ask also if their free health system is even half as effective and encompassing as our own fractured system

there's much more to it than just that of course, but as always with statistics .....

Hays so its all about benefits and you wont take responsibility for pensions and health care.

Shame on you shame on you.

Sleaze sleaze sleaze sleaze. Tory sleaze.

I'm told that gf has a selfie on his Twitter profile and he is a "pretty boy" blonde!:-)

Benefits include pensions.

i'm told he's the image of one of the carp for which he fishes, puffy and puffing around the gills and all that :-)

Oh yes, gf fishes. That's the moral equivalent of fox hunting. Torturing fish for his pleasure.