The sort of benefits that would replaced, now being covered by seperate parts of the Welfare State would include Job Seekers Allowance, Housing Benefit and the State Pension. Other benefits might also be covered by the CI

How could this be paid for? Well, there are a numbe of ways, some of which are:

1 The Citizen’s income itself will replace, almost entirely the bureaucracy of the current welfare
system.That means that most of the buildings and staff who currently administer the various
benefit payments would no longer be needed. The staff who would lose their jobs would be
covered and protected by the CI payments everyone else would get.
2 National Insurance. Everyone in work would continue to pay their National Insurance
contributions exactly as they do now.
3 Tax. The tax system would be streamlined such that everyone pays a fair amount of tax and is
therefore seen to be contributing, financially, to the economy. CI would be taxable at a low rate
of, say 1 or 2% so as not to penalise the least well off unfairly. On top of this everyone would
pay a flat rate income tax of let’s say 5% of their total income from any source. This way we all
pay a fair share of tax based on ability to pay. A high earner would pay more in cash terms but
i terms of actual income he or she will be paying the same proportionally to income as a low
earner.
4 Business controbutions. A levy will be payable by businesses again based on thier size and
profits. The conttibution would be reduced for those companies who employ British workers
rather than offshoring staff to India, China or elsewhere. This will create an incentive to employ
British workers instead of foreign labour. Companies could still choose to “offshore” but they will
have to pay the Government here a greater contribution should they choose the offshoreing
option in order to compensate the British workers who they have made unemployed. All of a
sudden the practice of “offshoreng” will become very unprofitable and cease. O course, a
business could choose to move abroad entirely but in this case the question must be asked do
we need that sort of employer anyway?

It might be arguef that the CI will encourage people who do not want to work to be lazy. This may be true and it is true under the current benefits system as well. However, under the CI, unlike the current Job Seekers Allowance an individual could take any job they wish for as many hours as they wish. Under the current Job Seekers Allowance you may work for up to 16 hours per week after which all benefits cease entirely.The trouble is that most jobs are advertised at at least 18 to 20 hours per week which means that someone on Job Seekers Allowance cannot afford to take the postion as they could not then afford to live. However, if we changed to a CI system instead then the currently jobless individual could certainly afford to take the job and would actually be better off if he or she did so even though more tax would now have to be paid.

Alternatiely the individual could choose some other form of legitamate activity such as Voluntary work which betters society as a whole or could go down the education route, perhaps with a view to getting a better paid job. The state might be able to provide some help in the latter case if it is clear that the training course will help give the iindividual a better chance in the labou market and does not have sufficient income to meet the costs of the course. That would be means tested.

Help and careers advice would be made available to the citizen. What is left of the current Job Centres would be tasked to do this. although most of the administrative staff would have been made redundent a proportion of the staff would be retained and would be trained to provide help in job seeking activities, educational and training courses (including associated sources of funding) and more general careers advice at all levels whether the individual is someone who is a professional, a graduate or who left school with few or no qualifications. Such an adivser would have to be a very knowlegble, well trained and flexible person. Since there would be no compulsion to attend such advice anf guidance sessions the system would have to provide timely, effective and relevant help to the job seeker ot that person might choose to obtain help elsewhere.

Will such a system ever be put into practice. Well, I hope so as it could be just what is needed to start getting us out of the current economic downturn. Unemployed people under the current Welfare System do not go out and spend much money because they cannot afford to do so. If you were on £60 per week after you pay rent/mortagage but before you pay other nills you could not affotd to do very much at all either.

Under the current Welfare System the more poople we have in this postion the worse things get for everyone as fewer people will be spending and therefore business profit margins will narrow ever more dangerously. And so companies will make more staff redundant. Tjhis in turn will create another vicious downward spiral of unemployment, homelessness, social discontent and growing desperation.

This in turn will lead to a growth in political extremism. Think of it this way. In Germany in the year 1929 there was a small, insignificant and seemingly unelectable party called the Nazi party under the leadership of a certain Adolf Hitler. Five Years and a Great Depression later, in 1933 that party was the party of government in Germany. As history tells us that party went on to start a World War that killed over 50million people and probably much more. Including the genocide in the Nazi Death camps which killed at least 6 million.

And you don’t think a party like that could take power in Britian? Or that we might not have a revolution like the French in 1789 that led to the deaths of millions (and that was just those killed by the French Revolution itself, not the soldiers who died in the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars tjhat were fought out over the next 20 years?

Well, if you make people desperte enough as you will if we continue on the current route then something like the above might very welll happen.

Either that or the Government and the People need to work together to deliver the social, political and economic challenges our society now faces. If the Government and current political elite do not do this then there may come a time when they will regret it. And the people also will suffer the consequences.

The Duke of Westminster & his sponging ilk, the hedge-fund parasites, arms dealers etc = scrotes who don’t contribute to society and, further, are dysfunctional to the common good (but you won’t hear that from Cameron as they’re his mates).

Karen Matthews & the ASBO crew (not working class) = scrotes who don’t contribute to society &, further, are dysfunctional to the common good (but you won’t hear that from middle-of-the-road liberals because of misplaced good intentions).

Owen’s lecture in the Ragged-Trousered Philanthropists gives a good socialist perspective on this when he describes – & I paraphrase as I don’t have the book in front of me – “bishops, dukes, vagabonds, earls, burglars & other layabouts – all that class who have no intention of ever doing an honest day’s work”.

Nothing in the Magna Carts justified Derek Conway’s behaviour either – I’m not sure if that’s an argument to justify tearing down the Parliamentary system. Is it?

Brilliant — 100 years have passed since Lloyd George’s People’s Budget but an advisor, with no background in sociology or psychology, can fix the problems after three weeks of study… Whilst sharing Freud’s lack of academic qualifications in the field, I’ll raise one idea.

Welfare (defined as support for those in need) should be separated from “what do we do about the failed underclass?”. They need to be two discrete policy making decisions. The budget debate about how much money should be provided to needy families would be conducted over one or two days. Discussion about dependency culture would be off-topic. Bringing people into the jobs culture is for next week’s debate.

The only info I can find on Bowie’s politics is a donation to the NAACP and his refusal of a knighthood. Doesn’t sound particularly right-wing either. Besides, all those groups are pretty old now, so not much evidence you are winning a cultural war right now.

Your comments suggest you have no idea why people hate James Blunt.

The Beveredge Report hoped to fight idleness, squalor and ignorance. Can you explain why someone who survived the convoys; fought in the Battle of Britain; served in Bomber Command and flew over occupied Europe; served in the Chindits or served in the Commandos or Special Forces risking torture and execution pay taxes to subsidise Karen Matthews lifestyle? Could you also point out any passage in the Beveredge Report which justifies Karen Matthews lifestyle. The neighbours were horrified at the filthy state of Sharon Matthews. There are no excuses why a child should not be brought up in a clean and orderly home- go to bed an a reasonable hour,have a nutritious breakfast , wear clean clothes to school,be washed once a day, have a nutritious meal in the evening, and have a parent listen to their reading every night. As the Kids Company points out please explain why any mother should not be criticised for allowing any man into her home who would harm her children in any way.

After 63 years of the Welfare State there is no excuse for idleness, squalor and ignorance. If someone is unemployed there is no reason why they cannot keep a home clean and orderly, their appearance clean and well kept, take exercise within their capability and use such facilities as the local library and adult education service to keep their minds occupied. Unemployed people can also undertake useful work in the voluntary sector. The question is of will power. If the British people had shown the same level of ignorance and idleness as Sharon Matthews and people like her, we would have never carried on fighting after the fall of France.

I attach great importance to this cultural battle and the fact it is finally going my way is hugely interesting

I have a special category for people who don’t understand what everyone else hates about James Blunt, and I can’t tell you how much it delights me to find out you’re one of them.

We’re getting way off the point, though, which is that it’s silly to complain about artists being given airtime to “promote their political views”, because the alternative is a ridiculous level of censorship. If there were talented and popular right-wing comedians or musicians they’d get airtime too (as Jim Davidson in fact did 20 years ago when people still thought he was funny/relevant).

I cannot imagine a public sector band , know one ?

I wouldn’t place Frankie Boyle’s act anywhere on a political scale, but if I had to guess I’d say he votes Labour.

Please name me some right-of-centre bands. Other than Slayer (who’ve been around a while now so you can’t have been referring to them), the Spice Girls (who hardly qualify as musically talented), and the odd white-supremacy band, I can’t think of any. And I listen to a lot of music.

Hold on a minute, what are you suggesting here? That comedians shouldn’t be able to include political material? That musicians shouldn’t be allowed to write political lyrics? Or should the state censor them and insist they can’t mention politics except behind closed doors?

It’s not the fault of Labour or lefties more generally that people who are talented musically happen to have left-wing views. And it’s not the fault of Labour that comedians who people find actually funny have left-wing views. There are comedians (not as many, granted) who are right-wing, eg Jim Davidson, Roy Chubby Brown etc. The trouble is that most people (of my generation at least) just don’t think they’re funny (regardless of the content).

I won’t disagree with you on how New Labour has managed its relationship with the BBC. The Greg Dyke affair is one of New Labour’s lowest moments.

But then though, get real. What relevance has Billy Bragg got on society? I mean, man, yours are the words of someone who has nothing else to clutch at! Who wields more power, Billy Bragg or the Sun? The Daily Mail or The Enemy? Come on…

On tax. Stealth tax, alas, exist all over the world. Again, in several countries V.A.T. is higher than Britain. And corporate tax too. Belgium, the Scandinavians, Italy and Spain all have higher corporate tax than the UK. I will agree though that the council tax is a British aberration. I know for a fact that its rough equivalent in France, Italy and Spain is a tiny fraction of what people pay in the UK.
However, you will concede that the council tax hits the lower classes disproportionally as it’s not AT ALL a progressive tax. So you have OAPs on the breadline in parts of the country paying less council tax than the Prime Minister.

It’s reasonable to expect such a person to organise their lives around the management of their illness. Anyone in the mental health field will say that one of the things they should do to this end is to “avoid vexatious persons” (as the Desiderata puts it).

One thing you can be sure of is that the workplace will contain at least one such vexatious person. They may have a resentment couched in terms of “identity politics”; they may think your job doesn’t really exist and the bit of it that does could be better done by themselves, with a pay rise; or you may remind them of someone else who has seriously hacked them off in the past – or they may just be bent and fear you’ll expose them (all of which have happened to me at one time or another).

Dealing with such people requires a good deal of energy and life-skills which, I think we can safely assume, our hypothetical claimant won’t have. Of course, politicians, who by definition thrive on conflict with the vexatious – because they almost all are themselves – are hardly likely to give this line of thought the time of day.

Meanwhile, back in the real world, why should people already in work be subjected to new colleagues with a history of mental illness? Does the government perhaps secretly think that work is too easy and should be made more difficult? There is, after all, a management theory – and for all any of us know David Freud subscribes to it – that if someone is performing their job well all that proves is that the expectations of their boss are too low.

That is of course ignoring all the taxes that Labour have introduced by stealth, so that “useful idiots” can perpetuate the lie that our tax contributions have remained low.

I would not label the Times left or right. Compared to the Guardian, its comment section is very small. It has previously supported Labour at general elections. The influence of newspapers over voters is small when compared to the broadcast news. Newspaper sales are declining and even most actual readers will only browse through their paper. Politicians are aware that headlines are all important, especially on broadcast news. Most people will be exposed to headlines on TV or radio during the day. If you notice the BBC now does hourly bulletins on TV and on, Radio 5, its every 15 mins. When you watch the BBC news, they will announce the headlines and then 10mis later announce the headlines of “what’s coming up”, then 10 mins later do the same. At the close of the programme they will announce the headlines once again. The Labour Party links at the BBC is well documented and it is the State broadcaster.

New Labour and their taxpayer-funded propaganda machine have exploited the influential headline grabber concept to the extreme. They feed the Media endless press releases, regurgitate the same announcements over and over again, their quangos have their own press departments and the countless Govt funded reports and inquiries feed the Media the same New Labour lines.

The power of indoctrination is evident on this blog when so many left-wing posters contributions are limited to repeating bland anti-Tory diatribes that they’ve been fed for most of their short lives.

Then there is the influence of our powerful luvvie community. The Arts are full of Labour voting, middle-class ponces, many of whom are reliant on State handouts to survive. From Billy (hypocrite) Bragg to Mark Thomas they are given airtime to promote their left-wing agenda.

Labour have politicised virtually every public organisation in the past 10 years, by appointing their own people to their Board. Their favourite technique is to feed the Media a negative story about the organisation, often using the deplorable ethnic under-representation complaint (the whiff of racism is enough to prevent any proper examination of the facts). They then initiate a report or investigation from yet more cronies. The final outcome sees that organisation forced to adopt New Labour influence or/and one of their appointees. Just look at how the previously independent Football Association has come under their control with Lord Triesman’s appointment to their board. Look how English heritage now monitors the colour of skin of people who visit its properties.

‘The top level of tax take in the UK seems to be around 36 per cent of GDP. Labour has never managed to nudge above that level for more than a year. Again and again it overestimated tax revenue even though growth came in on target. You can add all sorts of new taxes but the money simply does not seem to come in. The Institute for Fiscal Studies reckons that the proposed 45 per cent top tax rate will bring in no additional revenue at all.”

This remember has been during a period of puffed up growth dependent on global factors and debt. It is like in the future that the disincentive to get out of bed taxation causes would be more pronounced as it was prior to the extraordinary period of affluence we have just squandered

On the possibilties of redistributive taxation
According to the Institute for Fiscal Studies, since 1997 the people ranked as the “top 10 per cent” of earners have seen their income grow by 17 per cent in real terms. The bottom five per cent’s income has risen by 13.5 per cent – again, in real terms.
… Institute for Fiscal Studies .. The IFS calculated that the Government would maximise the revenue it collects from those earning over £100,000 by imposing a marginal rate – the additional tax paid on each pound of increased income – of 55.6 per cent. This, however, is perilously close to the current marginal rate of 53 per cent charged when income tax, national insurance contributions and indirect taxes are all included.” The IFS concluded that “there is not a powerful case for increasing the income tax rate on the very highest earners, even on redistributive grounds.”
As far as tax bolt holes are concerned I suspect other will, be quick to fill in the lucrative business even if I thought you had access to reliable information on the subject which I seriously doubt .
The BBC employed one Polly Toynbee as editor of social affairs for many years in the 90s . What I would like to focus on is not so much the flabbergasting bias this entails , but the fact it did not even occur to this public funded body to question the wisdom of such an appointment . If you are looking for better evidence I would direct you to the Wilson report which tracked the BBC reporting on the EU finding overwhelmingly biased in favour The tabloids broadly reflect the views of their readers. In an open market you have zero cause for complaint . The New Statesman ( which I quite like ) only gets by as rich man’s toy now that is a warp to the market .

We briefly talked about it last Sunday on our Hagley Road blog here:
http://mymarilyn.blogspot.com/2008/12/this-week.html

For what it’s worth here’s what my colleague John had written about Cameron’s editorial: “Taking it out on the benefit system only is like blaming paracetamol for the pisshead’s hangover”.

Barclay brothers tell Sark: you didn’t vote for us, so we’ll take our money elsewhere:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2008/dec/12/barclay-brothers-sark-democratic-election

It is kind of tough in the 21st century to put up with this sort of shit, is it not?