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.

GF,

The changes introduced and being introduced in the "Welfare System" have been callous carried out by IDS in the name of the coalition government.

Many of the alterations have left the physically and mentally incapacitated in a state of limbo with no financial support for months.

The changes have been made in the form of obstacles, hoops and fences to prevent often the less able to get what should be the their entitlement in a decent society.

I have awareness of the difficulties that this self orientated insensitive tory cabal have created for the above groups of people.

I would like to see some IDS and mates, subjected to their own rules.

Also, to see those who claimed falsely for allowances they claimed as MPs. before the courts. (Whichever party they belonged to.)

Yep Fred I remember last year when IDS was asked could he live on £56 per week and he immediatly said yes but when challenged chickened out like his boss Chubby Dave.

Surprised you have time to post here gf as you seem to be carrying on your usual vendettas with various posters across the road. Highly amusing!

Revealed: Why millions WON'T get the £155 new state pension they're expecting
By TONY HAZELL FOR THE DAILY MAIL


As many as four in five older workers could miss out on the full flat-rate state pension of £155 a week when it is introduced in 2016.
And millions face losing thousands of pounds in inflation-linked increases on company pensions.
The devastating blows, which throw into chaos the plans of those within two years of retirement, have been revealed in a Money Mail investigation into the small print of the new flat-rate pension.
A major pledge of the new pension was that everyone who had paid all their National Insurance contributions would be guaranteed to get £155 a week.
But we have uncovered a series of nasty surprises that are highly complex and technical. And they are likely to mean that many who expected to get the new £155 payout could get far less — and, disturbingly, not even the Government has calculated how much less.
Under the current system, these workers would qualify for the full basic state pension of £113.10 a week.
But under the new regime they would have their payout docked.
The problem affects employees, who, at some point in their working life, were members of a final-salary scheme.
Because these pensions were so generous, employees were allowed to opt-out of receiving extra benefits such as the State Second Pension. In exchange, they were allowed to pay a reduced rate of National Insurance.

Now the Government has decided that because they paid lower contributions, these workers should lose some of their new state pension.
Malcolm McLean, a consultant from actuaries Barnett Waddingham, warns: ‘The new flat-rate pension is not a more generous scheme than the current state pension. Middle to higher earners will be worse off in the longer term.’
The current state pension of £113.10 is paid to everyone who has 30 years’ National Insurance contributions.
On top of this, workers can earn extra benefits, called the State Second Pension (which used to be called the State Earnings Related Pension, or Serps), which boosts their payout in retirement.
Historically, workers in final-salary schemes were opted out of these extra benefits by their employer because their company pension was so good.

This was known as ‘contracting out’. In return, though, they paid a lower rate of National Insurance of 10.6 per cent, instead of the normal 12 per cent.
Government figures show that 80 per cent of older workers at some point contracted out in this way.
The level for the new pension has yet to be set, but it’s expected to be £155 a week when it starts in April 2016. Just like the current pension, what you get is based on National Insurance contributions - though you’ll need 35 years instead of 30 to get the full payout.
> New state pension ages: Do you know when you're going to retire?
In an attempt to make the system simpler, all additional benefits, such as the State Second Pension and Pension Credit, are being scrapped.
Initially, though, working out what you’ll get won’t be simple.
From April 2016 the Government will perform a complicated calculation to establish a ‘Foundation’ amount of state pension it thinks you are entitled to.


This is worked out from the years of basic state pension you’ve accrued, plus the amount of additional state pension earned. If the figure is less than £155 a week, then the payout will be boosted to this amount for those with 35 years of contributions.
But Money Mail has discovered the Government will then reduce a worker’s pension for every year they were contracted out, to reflect the lower National Insurance contributions that they paid in this period. Officials have not said how much they will take away — leaving people who are just 23 months from retirement with no idea how much state pension they will receive.
Some may get only the basic state pension — currently £113.10 per week — leaving them with £2,000 a year less income than they may have expected and casting a shadow over their retirement planning.
On top of this, we have discovered a further sting in these changes for private sector employees who were contracted out of Serps between 1978 and 1998.
At that time, final-salary schemes had to provide a so-called guaranteed minimum pension that promised at least the same benefits as Serps.
Changes: The new flat-rate state pension will be introduced in April 2016 in what is the biggest shake-up of the system in decades.
Changes: The new flat-rate state pension will be introduced in April 2016 in what is the biggest shake-up of the system in decades.
The inflation increases on this guaranteed part of their pension were partly or wholly funded by the Government.
But for those retiring after April 5, 2016, the Government will no longer pay these increases. Assuming someone started with a guaranteed pension of £100 a week, over a 20-year retirement, this person could be left £16,000 worse off.
This assumes their pension would have risen at a modest rate of inflation of 2.2 per cent.
The inflation changes are complex, but they mean that guaranteed minimum pension accumulated between 1978 and 1988 won’t increase at all in the future.
That earned between 1988 and 1997 may only receive part of any inflation increase.
When Money Mail contacted the Department for Work and Pensions, it claimed it had never actually paid these inflation increases and the belief stems from ‘an over-simplification’. Yet we have obtained Government statements and leaflets published over many years which state time and time again that it does pay these inflation increases.
Pensions expert Ros Altmann says: ‘When people contracted out they knew they were giving up rights to an additional state pension.
‘But now the rules are being retrospectively changed to remove inflation protection, decades after they made the decision — and, in some cases, not long before they retire.’
And this is not the end of the nasty surprises.
The Government is also ending a National Insurance rebate — worth 3.4 per cent — for employers who ran final- salary schemes.


In return, these schemes will be allowed to cut benefits or increase employee contributions without consulting their trustees. Employees in these schemes will see their National Insurance increase by an average £23 per week in 2016 as they start to pay the full 12 per cent rate.
Any change to their occupational pension would be a double blow.
Public sector employees will pay more National Insurance, but are protected from changes to their pensions for 25 years under a deal struck with the Government.
In response to questions about how the new flat-rate pension will be implemented, the Department for Work and Pensions confirmed that some workers will be denied the full £155 a week payment.
In a statement, it says: ‘It is therefore possible that someone might have 35 qualifying years when the new state pension is implemented and not receive the full single-tier amount.’

According to BBC news just 45% will get the £155.

Tories at it again....... sleaze, sleaze, sleaze.

You just cant trust this lot.

Why is France sending 5000 troops to defend 717 Jewish schools in the area? I'm lost I was under the impression that the attack wasn't directed at the Jewish population there...

Me too??????????

Pressure!

More crookery from the bunch of Crooks party/Government G/F?.. Oh surely not.

Just found this; ok makes more sense now...

France is home to around half a million Jews and five million Muslims—the largest in Europe for both religions.

Tensions between Israel and the Palestinians in the Middle East often spill over onto the streets of France. Last year, synagogues were attacked and Jewish-owned shops were set on fire during the conflict in the Gaza Strip.

French President François Hollande called for unity in the face of anti-Semitism in a televised address after police raids put an end to the grocery standoff and another north of Paris, where two gunmen who attacked the offices of a satirical magazine on Wednesday had holed up.

“It was obviously a horrible anti-Semitic act that was committed,” he said in reference to the targeting of the kosher store.

A man identifying himself as the alleged gunman, Amedy Coulibaly, 32, called the French news channel BFM TV after storming the store, Hyper Cacher. When the broadcaster asked him why he had decided to attack that particular supermarket, he replied he wanted to target “some Jews,” the channel reported after Mr. Coulibaly was killed in a police assault.

http://www.wsj.com/articles/frances-jews-shudder-over-being-targeted-for-attackagain-1420850789

On that principle all the news paper bureaus and distributors should have armed guards.

They probably already do have the above.

======

But what is does point to is to have a resolution to the the Israel/Palestine/Lebanon problems.

=======

Balfour has left a legacy!

According to I think SKY yesterday , there was a Jogger shot dead on the Wednesday . The bullets that were used were the same as that Coulibali used and they think he also shot the Jogger . So much for the we don't kill civilians thing.

Somebody has been on about Birmingham being a no-go area apparently ......I've never been there....(apart from the motor show)....reminds me almost of a Wham song...nearly....

Never been to Birmingham? you haven't lived RF -):

Let me guess, you live in or near the South East of the Country?

amazing Stan....

I wonder why we don't feed these terrorist's Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here , Eastenders Coronation St etc down the Internet . Just think if we could get them gripped by it all . we could save the World . It's got to be tried.

Whats amazing RF... Birmingham? It ain't that good -):

No... you guessing where I live.....Victim....I could provide a list of names to add to that of some delightful people......I mean... we could feed the terrorists...

What if the terrorists were Christian?

To understand how to respond to the Charlie Hebdo atrocity, we only have to imagine what would happen if the situation was reversed




They are Charlie - but are we in Britain? Photo: REUTERS/Charles Platiau



By Dan Hodges

12:51PM GMT 12 Jan 2015



We weren’t Charlie for long. In France they marched in numbers not seen since Liberation Day. But here, the whispers have already begun.


Yes, we do have the right to free speech. But should we really be exercising it? In this way? At this time? After all, we do need to find a way of reaching an accommodation with moderate Islam. Maybe those who claimed the cartoonists of Charlie Hebdo were excessively offensive have a point.


And anyway, aren’t we getting this all out of proportion? Yes, what happened in Paris was terrible. But we have seen attacks like this before. Isn’t a huge public outcry precisely what the terrorists want? We saw off the Luftwaffe, for goodness sake. We can see off a couple of misfits with second-hand Kalashnikovs.


Plus, isn’t there something a touch hypocritical in our reaction? We didn’t get all this when Anders Breivik carried out his murderous rampage in Norway. There were no demands there for Christians to condemn his crimes because they were committed in Christianity’s name. Breivik was dismissed as a madman. Aren’t the guys who have been rampaging across Paris just madmen too?


These are all legitimate questions and assertions. Over the past couple of days, I have seen each of them put forward by people who I respect and admire. So I’d like to respond with a question of my own.


More:http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/religion/11340029/What-if-the-terrorists-were-Christian.html



Quote:

" Yesterday France marched for Charlie. Here, in Britain, we are already trying to turn our back on him. But we can’t. Because even if we don’t see ourselves as Charlie, our enemies do.

A Rubicon has been crossed. Like it or not, we are all Charlie now. "

Anybody watch Foyles Law last night.

Quite reflective on the period we are in and the problems of the 45s and 50s and relationships with M.E. problems.

Worth a watch!