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Ding dong the Witch is dead
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wouldn't be keen on average and slightly incompetent people running the country's electricity
Because the state needs someone to have children - and individuals having them are already bearing the vast majority of the costs of filling that need.
And you think somehow it changed? we now generate electricity using gas! and are dependent upon Russia and France for our power. Considering we are an island virtually made of coal, and surrounded by oil and gas I would suggest that Thatchers initial sqaundering of those valuable resources in the first instance has been matched by those currently holding the reins in those industries. The rest of Europe is laughing at us still.
Our utilities ending up in foreign hands wasn't the intention. However issuing shares via privatisation lent them the opportunity. And they took it. And can now hold us to ransom.
Thatcher thought that 'competition' would make us more efficient. Well efficiency might be a byproduct of that competition. But,
If she had any notion of what competition was; like in sport, she'd have realized that competition was about winners and losers.
Politicians continue to import people from afar because they have money and skills without appreciating they are just increasing the level of competition.
🙂
Instead of privitisation.....she could have put her influence and powers into making those organisations more efficient.....it could have been done without the privitisation.......
hard work yes.....most organisations inlcuding hopsitals and councils etc were way too inefficient..........
and when taking the mines and manufacturing away left high unemployment.......why on earth wasn't money thrown into the schools.......
11 out of 130 plus children in my yearl obtained 5 o'levels or more........we were sharing books between 3 and 4 pupils....and those were so old they were out of date...
Looking at we she did pre-privitisation of the Electricity industry I'm not so sure, hse made the UK industry dependent upon foreign coal before the event which meant selling it off to foreign interests was always on the cards.
The country needs us to have children to replenish the population as we die off. Two ways to encourage us to do things the state wants us to do is to use the taxation and welfare systems - child tax credits and child benefit in this case.
Another factor is universality - a universal benefit paid to everyone regardless of need helps the well-off think they have a stake in the system.
Personally I would have kept child benefit universal but capped it at the first two kids barring multiple births, but the govt went about it differently.
muttley...to keep the population from falling then it would have to be at 3 kids to make up for those who choose not to have any.......
with an ageing population who are going to be alive much longer and needeing more and more care........
then children are needed to pay the taxes when everyone here retires........no taxes.no state........and these children are going to be needed to do the millions of care jobs that will be needed in the country by then........
care will be the growing indusrty
But the population is increasing rapidly, seren - mostly due to immigration and also to the fact that immigrants often have more kids.
I am disturbed by the suggestion that people should have children, possibly the most major and significant thing that they ever do, to service the needs of the state.
That, it seems to me, puts us right at the extreme end of the "authoritarian" scale (as in that other thread about political compass).
I suggest the state should serve our needs, not ask us to have children to meet its needs.
No Mike, nobody's telling us to have children. Just encouraging and rewarding us. Most of us will have kids anyway for reasons other than because the state wants us to.
the state recognises that they are needed.so encourage it.........
only problem is that the state has also made people think that caring is for the weak......and so isn't a desirable job for youngsters....
Exactly... most people will do it anyway ... so why child benefit?
And the authoritarian idea is still implicit in what you say: Benefits should be used to encourage us to have children, for the reason, several people said, that it meets the needs of the state
Haha, nice try Mike but it's all about the context in which things are written. Womble was suggesting that there was no logic to the state contributing to the cost of having kids - the point being made in reply is that as the state is benefitting it is not a case of parents getting something for nothing.
I said above that the tax and welfare systems are used to encourage us to do things. And just one of the many ways available. It would be authoritarian if it were the only use of tax and welfare but it isn't.
Child benefit is the govt saying thank you for producing future citizens, and here's a few quid in recognition. Nothing more than that. People think it's meant to pay for kids but it isn't.
I was not, (and I don't think Womble was), suggesting anything about "something for nothing". I have no objection to giving people something for nothing. That seems to be clearly established as something the state does,
What I was objecting to was the statement several people made that people should be encouraged to have children.
The idea that, if our demographic curve is top heavy with elderly people, the solution is to encourage people to have more children, seems unwise. Where does that take us, projected a few hundred years into the future? It's kind of been tried, in India. It hasn't made them all well-off.
I object in principle to the state trying to influence such a major decisiion in people's lives.
But the state influences so many of our decisions every day. Do you object to taxation of tobacco, for example, to discourage smoking? Or to lower taxes on small cars to reduce emissions? Or to tax breaks to encourage us to build up pension pots?
I don't understand what your objection is to because it's something the govt does all the time to all of us. The key question is when we are penalized for not doing what the state wants us to.
There, I think, you have a good point, Muttley. Something has to be taxed, it might as well be smoking. Part of me thinks even that is undesirable government interference in peoples private lives, but hey, on balance, yes, tax smoking, since you have to tax something.
But encourgage people to have children? Really?
Is anyone seriously suggesting that people have kids, which are hellishly expensive, in order to get child benefit (about 50-something quid a month)? Madness.
I know, it's ludicrous isn't it!
Yes, although inadvertently. The new Govt proposal to remove a percentage of benefit for anyone with a spare room is an incentive towards this.
Put yourself in this position, single arent family one child in a three bedroom house, you just lost a chunk of money. have another Child and you will get additional Child benefit, and the return of your Chunk of money for the spare room.
Hey presto Badly thought out proposal, equals wrong incentive, which in urn equals wrong behaviour
Interesting ... so the bedroom tax is logically similar to child benefit? Ie more money if you have another child?
That makes sense, I am against the bedroom tax.
I don't suppose it's meant that way but if you're a single parent with no chance to make any more money, basically ina dead end position the incentive is to have that second child which they are going to consider anyway at soem point. Just a poorly thought proposal with consequences that mean the people stuck in the rut will take the wrong option.
I myself don't believe that anyone would make that calculation. Having a child is, among other things, painful, potentially dangerous, expensive and lifestyle-changing. I think this is up there with people having children to get council houses on the Daily Mail crackpot scale.
People do have children to get Council houses, i come from an area where it has been happening for years, my daughter is working hard and buying her own house, but she is years behind some of her school friends who have done just that. First child gets you the house second child gets you the money, her old school friend is on £420 per week with two children. She has already said that she won't work until she's in her 30s.
So please don't tell me it doesn't happen, it does, and it is a result of poorly thought out policies
Well EKGO, seems you're famous, sort of.
Your title for this thread made the news as soon as it was posted.
The song is in the charts.
🙂
you can't comnpare us to India though because they do not have the same projected age population as us.....many of them will die before 60.....
in this country the4 numbers of people living over 100 is going to be massive soon........many of those will not be able to look after themselves and will need constant care.........
also medicine can keep many people alive with dementia etc who can not do anything for themselves or communicat much.......this will become more common as the population ages...
families in this country do not generally look after their aged like in india..
so how on earth are we going to look after a million people who can do nothing for themselves....and pay for it all