What is the point of labour ?

[coprolite]

40 minutes ago, Bonksy+HisChristianParade said:

Wrong. It’s better described as a tax that pays for various benefits for people today, including pensions and a large chunk towards the NHS. You actually don’t even need to pay any NIC to qualify for the state pension. For example, carers, people claiming benefits like JSA, child benefit etc. aren’t ’paying into their pension’, yet can still gain a qualifying year. You would’ve gained qualifying years between the ages of 16-18 when you were in school (and not in employment) as well. This has since been removed. This mechanism for qualification for the benefit is clearly different to ‘paying into a pension’.

 

If people who pay NIC and qualify for a state pension as a result want to think of themselves as "paying in to a pension" then i'm fine with that. No amount of "ackshuallys" from pedantic know alls is going to change that. 

[Mr Waldo]

8 hours ago, GTee said:

Would getting rid of nuclear weapons solve the financial 'black hole'

Just the warheads, the missiles, the submarines?

I see this quite a lot but 'scrapping Trindent' would save between a little and zero.

[Bonksy+HisChristianParade]

7 minutes ago, coprolite said:

If people who pay NIC and qualify for a state pension as a result want to think of themselves as "paying in to a pension" then i'm fine with that. No amount of "ackshuallys" from pedantic know alls is going to change that. 

Me explaining to you how things actually work makes me a pedantic know all? It would be more dignified if you just accepted you were wrong. Wouldn’t expect anything else from a Libra though.

[aDONisSheep]

As part of my survey of my brain, pre election, the most common terms used to describe Sir Kier were.

 

Dishonest

Duplicitous 

Kvnt 

Spineless

Zionist stooge

And weirdly; DuplicitousDishonestSpinelessKvnt!  

 

Did a similar survey today and only change was the addition of;

Child starving, snivelling, zionist, genocide appeasing kvnt!

 

So he's still more popular than David Lammy and Lisa Nandy.

Yours

aDONis

 

[Suspect Device]

 

Seems that Sir Keir picked a good time to plan a holiday.

 

[doulikefish]

41 minutes ago, Suspect Device said:

 

Seems that Sir Keir picked a good time to plan a holiday.

 

Hull?

[SandyCromarty]

On 03/08/2024 at 00:59, GTee said:

Would getting rid of nuclear weapons solve the financial 'black hole'

The new Trident missile system is now heading towards £40 Billion and it is basically a leased system from the USA, as the UK military cannot service the missile guidance system,that has to go back to a USA naval base for servicing.

A Puppet State at the beck and call of the USA.

[GTG_03]

5 hours ago, SandyCromarty said:

The new Trident missile system is now heading towards £40 Billion and it is basically a leased system from the USA, as the UK military cannot service the missile guidance system,that has to go back to a USA naval base for servicing.

A Puppet State at the beck and call of the USA.

Special relationship is the preferred term I believe.

Some Brits actually believe it to be on an equal footing.

[O'Kelly Isley III]

4 minutes ago, GTG_03 said:

Special relationship is the preferred term I believe.

Some Brits actually believe it to be on an equal footing.

Indeed.  A special relationship of the kind a dog has with a lamp-post.

[carpetmonster]

9 minutes ago, GTG_03 said:

Special relationship is the preferred term I believe.

Some Brits actually believe it to be on an equal footing.

If it wasn’t for royal weddings and repeats of Are You Being Served? the average American would have no clue of Britain’s existence. 

[GTee]

'Punching above our weight on the World stage' 

No thanks. 

[GTG_03]

30 minutes ago, O'Kelly Isley III said:

Indeed.  A special relationship of the kind a dog has with a lamp-post.

 

22 minutes ago, carpetmonster said:

If it wasn’t for royal weddings and repeats of Are You Being Served? the average American would have no clue of Britain’s existence. 

Aye but it's sold over here as equal. Most Americans couldn't point out Britain on a map.

Our PM usually goes begging over to any new president to get a mention of the special relationship.

I mind BBC commentators almost creaming themselves when Obama got in and they took great pride in conveying that the British pm was one of the first calls he took. Utter losers.

[carpetmonster]

2 minutes ago, GTG_03 said:

 

Aye but it's sold over here as equal. Most Americans couldn't point out Britain on a map.

Our PM usually goes begging over to any new president to get a mention of the special relationship.

I mind BBC commentators almost creaming themselves when Obama got in and they took great pride in conveying that the British pm was one of the first calls he took. Utter losers.

It’s always fun with a Scottish accent in Chicago. There’s enough Irish here that they know you’re not, but they ask you if you are anyway, with a pained look on their face because they think they’re wrong. Once you say you’re Scottish they get really apologetic, so you have to say ‘no, it’s less distance from Glasgow to Dublin than it is from here to Indianapolis, it’s an easy mistake’ so it doesn’t get excruciatingly awkward. 
 

Although I have been known to respond with the neighborhood I live in if asked ‘where are you from’ which confuses them tremendously. 

[Mr Waldo]

5 hours ago, SandyCromarty said:

The new Trident missile system is now heading towards £40 Billion and it is basically a leased system from the USA, as the UK military cannot service the missile guidance system,that has to go back to a USA naval base for servicing.

A Puppet State at the beck and call of the USA.

Yes, the missiles come from a 'communal pool'. They are serviced in the US. It saves a money. I suppose the US could stop servicing our missiles but we'd still have usable ones for years.

The 'guidance' is decided by whoever launches.  The launch, targets etc is solely UK. But, obviously we liase with our allies to avoid duplication. The weapons do not have permission active link control which basically means if the  Prime Minister says launch, they launch. Technically, we could fire on the USA.

Slightly interestingly, no one has really answered, how would scrapping Trident (and by that do you mean, warheads, missiles and/or the Dreadnought submarines) solve the financial back hole?

 

 

 

 

 

 

[SandyCromarty]

7 hours ago, Mr Waldo said:

Yes, the missiles come from a 'communal pool'. They are serviced in the US. It saves a money. I suppose the US could stop servicing our missiles but we'd still have usable ones for years.

The 'guidance' is decided by whoever launches.  The launch, targets etc is solely UK. But, obviously we liase with our allies to avoid duplication. The weapons do not have permission active link control which basically means if the  Prime Minister says launch, they launch. Technically, we could fire on the USA.

Slightly interestingly, no one has really answered, how would scrapping Trident (and by that do you mean, warheads, missiles and/or the Dreadnought submarines) solve the financial back hole?

 

 

 

 

 

 

The warheads are serviced in Berkshire so why not the guidance systems? and there is no money saved in the USA Military servicing the guidance systems as they backcharge the transport and servicing in Virginia to the UK Government.

Of course there would be massive savings if we scrapped Trident and all of the Infrastructure Inc the Subs.

At present the UK system is absolutely aligned with American foreign and military policy, the USA relies heavily on Faslane for servicing and strategic positioning in Western Europe so they could maintain the nuclear stability without the UKs involvement, at the end of the day what threat does our small sub fleet present compared to the massive US sub fleet throughout western European waters.

 

Norway, Denmark Sweden and Germany eg do not have operational nuclear submarines but are aligned with the US, if a German economy, far bigger than ours, does not have a Trident or similar sub missile system why do we??????

It is empirical posturing that we cannot afford, the money would be far better spent on the NHS.

 

[SandyCromarty]

Tokyo Stock Market in freefall this morning.

[A Diamond For Me]

15 hours ago, GTee said:

'Punching above our weight on the World stage' 

No thanks. 

Yep. I don't see going around punching people as something to aspire to.

[Billy Jean King]

On 01/08/2024 at 17:28, Bonksy+HisChristianParade said:

Oh no. People pay tax all the time for things they don’t get the benefit of. It’s called living in a fair society. 

Will I get access to the same level of state pension at the same age as people retiring today? If not, why not, given I’ve paid the requisite amount to legitimately have this pension paid to me? My generation’s life expectancy isn’t expected to be higher than my parents’.

House worth a million quid that you can’t afford to service? Sell it. 

Giving 12k a year to millionaires isn’t my priority, frankly. Scrapping millionaires receiving £40 odd billion in benefits per annum could actually help redistribute some wealth in this country. But nah, let’s cut public services instead! 
 

 

 

You do realise if the pension was means tested the value of their property wouldn't be taken into account and hence many, many of the "millionaires" these articles refer to become nothing of the sort. It's totally flawed rhetoric. 

[Bonksy+HisChristianParade]

43 minutes ago, Billy Jean King said:

You do realise if the pension was means tested the value of their property wouldn't be taken into account and hence many, many of the "millionaires" these articles refer to become nothing of the sort. It's totally flawed rhetoric. 

Laughing at you using inverted commas as if owning property over the value of £1m doesn’t actually make you a millionaire.

In my entirely realistic policy there will be no capital that will be disregarded. 

I do find it interesting that not paying benefits to very, very rich people is met with such anguish from self-proclaimed left wing people. Reasoning being of course, that they’ve paid into the pension pot (lol). 

Given that I’ll also have paid into the pension pot my whole life, my generation should expect the same state pension, shouldn’t we? And yet the age cut off is continually creeping up, despite there not being an increase in life expectancy, effectively cutting billions from the pensions of young people today. But I thought we’d all paid into the pension pot (lol) so we’d surely be entitled to the same?

Standard boomer pulling up the ladder.

[Billy Jean King]

15 minutes ago, Bonksy+HisChristianParade said:

Laughing at you using inverted commas as if owning property over the value of £1m doesn’t actually make you a millionaire.

In my entirely realistic policy there will be no capital that will be disregarded. 

I do find it interesting that not paying benefits to very, very rich people is met with such anguish from self-proclaimed left wing people. Reasoning being of course, that they’ve paid into the pension pot (lol). 

Given that I’ll also have paid into the pension pot my whole life, my generation should expect the same state pension, shouldn’t we? And yet the age cut off is continually creeping up, despite there not being an increase in life expectancy, effectively cutting billions from the pensions of young people today. But I thought we’d all paid into the pension pot (lol) so we’d surely be entitled to the same?

Standard boomer pulling up the ladder.

You said it yourself it's your policy, it's not how means tested entitlement works with regards to UK benefits though so it's as I said, YOUR empty rhetoric