h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Live and learn! I never knew they were such altruists. I wonder where they get the money from to run their organisations?

To coin a phrase two names.

I coined the phrase, you plagarised it. Thus proving one of my central points.



Now go on, tell me how you can't possibly be stupid because you have kids older than me.

Just popping in to curse Ben for that styleshake link. Between that and trying to design the perfect Pandora bracelet to budget, a group present for a friend's 40th, I have wasted the whole day.

Wrong blinking thread, please return to your usual programming

This 'ere is a link to a .pdf flyer, written by a bunch of lefties.

I agree with 'em.

http://www.conventionoftheleft.org/resources/Cut-alternative.pdf

It's a serious point I'm making, AB. Accepting that public spending has to be cut, you are suggesting that a good place to start is to subcontract the benefits system to a credit card company. I accept that 'efficiency savings' are a good idea, and doubtless the public sector has much to learn from the private in terms of minimising service delivery costs. After all, the latter have a strong motive to reduce costs/ maximise profits/ remain competitive.

Two things to note, however:
a) Efficiency savings are relatively small beer compared to the cost of services themselves.
b) The private sector's motivation for cost reduction is competition. I'm slightly scared that contracting service delivery to the lowest bidder will cause as many problems as it solves. It has in the past. The problems are of various kinds but broadly relate to the contractor's continued need to turn a profit.

You do seem to havr a bee in your bonnet about credit cards. You've started more than one thread on them. Perhaps they're just another topic on which you'll have to remain a Misunderstood Genius.

Accepting, for the sake of debate, that swingeing cuts need to be made and tax rises to be instituted - are there any sacred cows that are untouchable.

For instance, would the following be steps too far:

1) End all unemployment benefits for the able-bodied after three months of claims

2) Introduce a new NHS tax - ringfenced to purely finance the NHS

3) Privatising the motorways and allowing tolls to be charged in return for funding public transport

4) Simplifying tax collection by instituting flat taxes

5) Slash the armed forces to the size of local defence forces, keeping Trident as the ultimate deterrent but taking no further part in foreign wars of adventure.

6) Massively increase taxes on alcohol to at least Scandinavian levels.

7) Abandon public sector pensions entirely. Hand over a lump sum equivalent to employee contributions (after tax).

Any more?

Give someone a hundred pounds cash and you have no record of how it is spent. Give them a credit card with a hundred pound allowance and you get a detailed record of expenditure. If everyone is to be given a bank account and the cheque book is on the way out then plastic money is the future.

Will de Beast
Anything is possible.
Why not let the Public Sector have its own currency.

So now, AB, you seem to be saying that our economic problems are (partly? largely? wholly?) down to whether individual benefits claimants are spending on X rather than Y.

Why?

1. ridiculous idea, assumes there is a job for everyone and those out of work are just lazy. manifestly untrue some people try and cant get jobs. Logical conculsion of this is more crime, begging, and starvation on our streets.

2. Sounds sensible to me, this is kinda what they do in France.

3. Hell to the yeah.

4. Not for me, I beleive that in principal those who earn more should pay proportionately more. My view is that the whole society is better if we address income inequality and the taxation system should help to do this.

5. My heart says yes, but my head perhaps says no.

6. My heart says no, but my head says yes!

7. Not sure I believe a race to the bottom, in which we all abandon ideas of decent retirement income, is a desirable thing. Personally I would introduce punitive measures on companies over a certain size that do not give pension provision to employees thus removing the competitive advantage businesses get from saving on their pension contributions.

FB

"Give someone a hundred pounds cash and you have no record of how it is spent. Give them a credit card with a hundred pound allowance and you get a detailed record of expenditure. If everyone is to be given a bank account and the cheque book is on the way out then plastic money is the future."

This is surely a half hearted measure that does not go far enough.

I say people in receipt of benefits should as a condition of getting the money have a webcam surgically implanted into their forehead to transmit everything they see. As well as reducing crime we could hand the data over to google ad sense who could mine it appropriately and it would be an earner for the state.

FB

How about the Swedish system of a very low basic welfare payment topped up by voluntary employment insurance as an alternative to 1)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unemployment_benefits_in_Sweden

Two names
I just love the way you develop what I say and turn it into a question.
Letting Visa handle benefits would give detailed records of expenditure, help ensure that child benefit was spent on children, heating allowances were spent on heating, need I go on. It could also give the beneficiary some form of social conscience.

when a politicain is elected all his assets should be liquidated and deposited in the treasury

if the ecomomy works they come out of a term in office with a profit

if the economy fails they lose their shirt as well

parliment should buy a medium sized hotel with enough rooms for every MP, then do away with allowances and slash MP wages

lead by example and start the cuts at the top

Will de Beast
In war time we had the British Restaurant. We could introduce Benefit Restaurants and Stores and reduce benefit payout accordingly.

Ancient Brit, what will you do about all the possible civil unrest and riots ensuing if your ideas are put into practice?

Three people died today in Greece during riots about public service cuts. I mean we know we Brits are a relatively well behaved lot on the whole..but when really pushed..look at the miners' strike or the poll tax riots...the Jarrow marches? the siege of Sidney street? Football hooloigans?

Things might turn really nasty.

We may need to pump extra money into the police..or maybe even create special units, just to deal with protests against what are perceived as draconian measures, in terms of your suggestions?

And that'll cost money.

More prisons as well..or we could do what the BNP suggest, and cart stroppy sorts off to the south Atlantic?

Effers - flying ants
Yes the situation is indeed frightening. As is the situation throughout the world. Other events you mention are history. If history repeats itself then everything that has been done either before or after has been a waste of time. The UK needs to stand back and put it's own house in order.
How do you satisfy/curb peoples insatiable appetites once they have tasted the appetiser and simply see it as their 'right' to be considered equal in all things. Consider that in todays situation most of the unruly would have mobile phones.
At the end of the day everything has to be paid for in one way or another. Regarding Greece 'Where should the public spending cuts fall'