With news that Red Ed is falling quicker than a brick in the so called opinion polls, what amazes me is that Labour still have a rating in the opinion
polls.
Now I know that government is there to simply serve their central bank masters, primarily and that secondary to that is down to ideology, but
Labour's ideology is nothing short of regressive at best, destructive at worst.
Successive Labour governments and to a lesser extent Conservative governments have succeeded in turning Britain effectively into a nation of
scroungers, where the most extreme manifestation of which are the millions who can work but as a life style choice choose not to work, which has
contributed towards literally millions of immigrants arriving over the the past decade or so, an estimated number that is 20X the number forecast by
the politicians and their academic statisticians, resulting in record high employment numbers whilst high unemployment numbers persist.
Now I'm not blaming every unemployed person, just those who choose it as a choice, but there is work out there. When I lost my job, I ended up doing
three totally unrelated part time jobs to make ends meat. If you want to work, there is work out there. However, I am aware that there are
circumstances that come in to play, such as someone I know who never went to school because she had to look after her younger sister and her mother
was a prostitute, she has never had a job and the Job Centre is next to useless in helping her go on to courses, so there are exceptions to the rule,
but there aren't millions of exceptions.
The net effect of the benefits culture is that for MOST working families, at the time of the last election it was far, far better to park themselves
onto benefits than to work, the resulting £230 billion total benefits bill of which at least £40 billion is out and out fraud as a consequence of
those that could work making a life style choice to instead become baby making factories to maximise benefits without consequences for the impact of
having children that they have little intentions of actually looking after has on wider society.
One such manifestation of the rampant benefits fraud is Labour's Support for Mortgage Interest (SMI), which the Labour government introduced as a
bribe to create approx 240,000 additional vested interest voters.
The public spin on SMI was that it supports those who become unemployed, paying the interest on mortgages for upto 2 years of upto £200,000 at a flat
rate of 6.08% which translated into a maximum benefit of £12,160 per year on top of ALL other benefits. This despite the fact that the policy of zero
interest rates had long since pushed mortgage interest rates to about HALF the amount of benefit being paid out! So the tax payer had been effectively
paying Interest AND Capital on typical mortgages at rates of 3%, this covering interest on a mortgage of upto £400,000!
The Collation Government eventually cut the interest paid from 6% to 3.63% which still amounts to an annual benefits payment of mortgage interest to a
maximum of £7,260 for what amounts to a life-time of mortgage interest payments.
The effect of the SMI benefit is at least four fold -
1. Those through no fault of their own who lose their jobs with sizable mortgages, are going to be LESS likely to take on similarly paid employment in
the future again due to the impact of this mortgage benefit i.e. a family of 5 (2+3) on benefits would need to earn an estimated gross income of more
than £32,000 to over come the total amount of benefits that they are likely to be in receipt.
2. It encourages benefits fraud in terms of staying on benefits for life whilst encouraging under-declaring work i.e. as self-employed cash in hand so
as to maximise benefits, as it is relatively easy for benefits fraudsters to overcome the 2 year time limit such as switching to claim income support
for low income and working less than 16 hour work weeks or claiming that they have a disability.
3. The benefit is not only available to those of working age but also to pensioners upto a £100k mortgage, this defeats that whole purpose of what
the benefit was said to be for, i.e. as a temporary support for those who become unemployed, when more than half the claimants are pensioners, which
effectively means that the tax payer is paying for the next generations inheritance rather than prompting the downsizing and freeing up the housing
stock which the likes of the bedroom tax encourages.
4. It encourages systematic benefits fraud in terms of citizens and also acts as a beacon to attract immigrants who have already mapped out how they
will proceed to defraud the system and achieve their goal of obtaining a property with an over £200k mortgage so as to maximise benefits income
potential whilst engaging in undeclared work as the state supports their children whom they live with but don't live with to further maximise
benefits. This is one of the reason's why immigration to the UK has been about TEN Times that the last labour government promised it would be.
The above are just 4 examples as there are many more variations to this fraudulent benefit such as paying for second homes i.e. towards buy to let
property portfolios.
The coalition government is desperately attempting to unwind labour's benefit for life culture through several mechanisms including introducing a
£25,000 benefits cap and the bedroom tax, thought both of these are repeatedly watered down to dilute savings on the annual benefits bill or to
entice those that could work to actually start to contemplate working (legally).
The above is just one such example of Labour's total incompetence at balancing books and running a country, other than in to the ground. The effect
of their 13 year war on everything British, every British worker and everything progressive, is a British landscape, economically, culturally and
socially that has changed forever and not for the better. They are not toally to blame, but my God, they fired more nails in to the country's coffin
than anyone ever did. The coalition has been blamed for so much, without people realising that it was Labour who set the course for the hack and slash
that the Tories had to carry out. It is the same story whenever Labour have been in power.
So, out of curiosity, is there anyone here who will still vote Labour in the next election?
I for one will be voting UKIP, I don't think they will do any good, but at least its a change from the blue and red.
edit on 20-8-2013 by SecretFace because: (no reason given)
edit on 20-8-2013 by SecretFace because: (no reason given)