Are our views always entrenched?

Meant to ask a question about the suggestion that the entrepreneurs and financiers would simply walk away from UK if the taxes got too high and then the country would lose out. That is how I understood the post.

That sounds pretty much like 'holding the government to ransom' which is what the Trades Unions were always accused of doing and so they were demonised but it seems the view is that we should not upset the bankers and moneymakers..do they have us by the short and curlies... ??

Again, agreed. And yet - we have to stop tax fraud and evasion, close those loopholes - but at the same time cannot tax entrepreneurs, etc, fairly. We cannot just keep putting up taxes for the better-off in a way that will stifle business and scare people away. Not an easy balance - I am fully aware.

In this global economy, there are plenty to countries like Hong Kong, Singapour, and many more who would be VERY happy to welcome UK businesses and banks, etc. I know many young people who are working so hard, and feel that whatever they gain by the sacrifices they make in many ways, are just wiped out by more tax.

I go back to a previous point I have made on another thread..if key industries had not been nationalised but run efficiently by and for the government then we would have had an income that is now owned by private companies!

I guess you may be a business person granjura so I ask your opinion of why a private company would want to run a state school ( ie Academy) What is in it for them? I can only assume it is profit.

If there is money to be made out of state education why is it going to private companies and not the schools?? I really do not see why the government is allowing state money to make private profit!

nanaej - me a business person? I've been a teacher all my life, teaching in multicultural comprehensives! I am totally against privatising any part of the education system- I would personally abolish all faith schools and academies - and take away the charitable status and tax relief for private and 'public' schools.

And I would have never privatised key services like water, electricity, railways, etc. Never. But it is hard not to agree that the Unions had got a strangle hold over the country, and that something had to be done. Again, because of the extreme left and right factions in the UK, the first past the post election system, etc, it was very difficult to find solutions. But privatising was NOT the way to go. I am btw not a Conservative, and never will be - but that does not mean that I cannot see that the benefit system does need reforming in some ways, and that solutions for housing for families have to be found, in the short and the long term, with sensitivity and creativity- but needs must.

Heard on BBC News tonight - 1 in 6 of council tenants in London earns more than £60.000!!! And social housing in London = 25%.

The Government is looking at charging more realistic rents for people in social housing with salaries over 50.000 - so they can build 3000 new homes for families. A taxi driver who earns 60.000 said it would not work, as it 'would not incentivise him to work hard'. So my daughter, who is a business woman, with 2 children, and goes to work at 5.30 am 2 mornings a week, and returns home at 9pm or later twice a week - commutes and has to pay a nanny- screams when she hears this. Are we to be surprised that 'middle-class' young people with families are totally fed up with working their guts out to pay for others. They believe in fairness, they spend their week-ends supporting their community despite working so hard all week - support their local school- and again and again they have to organise events, fetes, fund-raising - whilst other parents who do not work and with many in social housing and with benefits of all kinds - do not do anything to help.

I share your frustration, granjura. My daughter is in a similar position to yours, yet is supposed (by some) to feel compassion towards her neighbour, who has never worked, has no disability and has everything provided for her and her children by the council (i.e. the taxpayer).

If those figures are correct that is truly shocking Granjura

Ana, some will say that what I said makes me a raving and uncaring Tory.
The funny thing is, because of the diversity of our family and friends, most of them think I am a raving socialist. This is one thing I always found difficult in the UK, is that people are so often either one, or the other- and that anything proposed by one group is automatically rejected by the other, and vice versa- with no hope of ever finding solutions for the great majority of people. If people like my daughter, who have so much to offer, the only woman partner in her firm, and one of the only ones in her field- one day decide to leave the uk because they have had enough to be seen as the permanent milking cows of uk society- I am not sure I could blame her, and others like her. She would be paid twice as much or more here.

Aka - on the BBC news tonight - not my figures.

But it did not say how much the other 5/6 earned!

I agree that if someone can afford to rent privately or buy then it would be the right thing to do and if the household income is £60k + they should be able to though not buy in many areas of London.

I remember years ago having a debate with a communist friend who did not want to buy a house even though the family could afford to do so because he did not believe in private ownership of property. It took a lot of debate to get him to accept that in England he was using up a property that another less well off family could have. He did buy a house eventually!

I don't agree completely with your last statement though! I have seen loads of hard work to support schools from families who have to rely on benefits. Often some poorer families felt intimidated by the better off families who wanted everything at the school fair etc to be more 'middle class' and trendy so they felt their contribution less welcome. It took a lot of work on the part of staff to ensure everyone had an opportunity to contribute and to feel equal.

My daughter runs her own consultancy and lives a very busy working life too. She cannot afford a nanny so she has to do a large amount of her work in the evening, sandwiching around childcare. My other daughter's partner runs his own business so I am aware of the hard work that is involved.

It is frustrating if you live close by to someone who makes an active choice to undermine the welfare system but these are the minority (1/6 vs 5/6) and most people reliant on benefits are doing so out of necessity and not by choice.

The point made by the news was not that those people should buy, but they should be charged a more realistic rent, so funds would be available to build 3000 news houses for families. But as said, the reaction was 'oh can't be bothered to work hard if I have to pay more rent' which is the kind of attitude that makes people like my daughter want to scream.

As far as the 'middle class' overbearing attitudes for school fairs/fetes - yes I can see that it may well happen. But I can also see that people who are very short of time and energy because their work so hard and have experience in organising, would want to choose to get things done quickly and efficiently, because they just do not have the time or energy to have 20 meetings. But I can see your point totally.

I think this point has been made before so I apologise for stating it again. House prices in the SE are not representative of the rest of the country. A salary of £50,000 in London won't go very far in paying for a mortgage. If you look at house prices around this country, you will see that in northern cities you can still buy a sound three bedroom house with a garden for under £100,000 (in some cases, for less than £80,000). Rents in these areas reflect the sale values. In my part of the country, £500,000 will get you a five bedroom solid Victorian or Edwardian pile in a very 'nice' area or a modern architect designed house on a small select development. Where one of my DS and his family live, £500,000 will get you a small terrace, probably needing some work. But there are more jobs in the SE so that's where a lot of people need to live. And, as several people have said, there just aren't the single bedroom flats and houses available for people in social housing to move into.

Council tenants are being demonised again.

It is not a fact that while 1 in 6 are highly paid the other 5 are swinging the lead and being supported on benefits by those who have bought or are buying their houses. The vast majority of people in social housing (which is not a term I like because it sounds like charity) are somewhere between those two extremes.

They work at all kinds of jobs, at all kinds of pay, they come back from work to homes and gardens in varying states of neatness, some of their children are perfect angels who work hard in school and are polite at home and in the street, some are not.

Some tenants spend their spare time slouched in front of a telly with a canny, others play active sports, practise DIY, decorate and repair their own homes (they don't all wait for someone to come and change every lightbulb) and more than you would imagine run scouts and guides and sports clubs for the children around them.

Why should they not be proud of and attached to the home they have made and brought up their children in, and enjoy living among neighbours they have known for years. why should they leave because the children are now not living permanently at home? I say permanently because very often they are there temporarily, on visits or when they are without their own accommodation for one reason or another.

And what will be the social result of making people move from an area they know to one among strangers? It will cost more to provide people with the kind of support they had from friends and neighbours.

Well said, elegran.

Your last para voices my worry too – the worry of treating people like cattle to be shifted around as suits politicians with a problem to solve – a problem of the politicians' own making.

What happened to the old idea of employers building accommodatiion for their workers? I'm thinking of New Lanark, of farm estate cottages, of railway workers' cottages, and so on.

One taxi driver - just the kind of spokesperson a right wing tabloid might find!
My sister is, I suppose, one of the undeserving poor. She has never worked outside the home and her only contribution to society has been to raise four sons, all of whom have contributed a good amount, and three of whom she supported whilst they did their degrees, allowing them to live at home and pay her very little in board and lodging. Her deceased husband was a business man, but lost everything when he developed lung cancer/brain cancer. He had failed to pay the mortgage for several months during his terminal illness and the house was repossessed, leaving her nothing but debts. She and the four boys were given a council house - not a generously sized one, but they managed by having bunk beds in both bedrooms. She slept in the tiny boxroom.

I am intrigued by the idea that she could be forced to move away (where? there are no smaller units anywhere in her area?) or take in a lodger. Her house which is now owned by a housing association, is a mid-terraced little box, with one open-plan living/dining/kitchen and a small hall downstairs, and the two bedrooms, neither of them large, and the boxroom upstairs. There is one bathroom/toilet. Because of her many health problems, she needs to use the toilet often, sometimes urgently. She is a very private person and easily embarrassed.
Where would this lodger spend their evenings? With her in the only living room, watching her TV and listening to her private phone calls? Or confined to their bedroom? What if they proved difficult, noisy, dirty...she is not well enough to deal with evicting somebody. And I am not sure that the Housing Association would allow sub-letting.
At the moment, she is allowed to stay in her home of 28 years because she is 76, but she lives in fear that yet another round of cuts might see this monstrous, cruel scheme extended.
Are only retired successful career women to be accorded privacy and respect?
It is not her fault that successive governments failed to build enough social housing or that Thatcher sold off so much of it.

Council tenants have aspirations, too. I have been in many a council property that has been turned into a palace and sympathised with tenants who have been told the kitchens they have upgraded themselves are to be ripped out because the whole road is being renovated.

My son and his girlfriend are mature nursing students on bursaries, working NHS Bank shifts on basic pay to top up their income, and they qualify for a small amount of housing benefit and council tax relief. Their rent uses up more than half of their joint monthly income, for a little 2-bed terrace. They will be in their forties before they can put a deposit on a house. Their political views shift further to the left on a weekly basis, and remind me of students in the 60s and early 70s, who have become so angry with the establishment, they would welcome a revolution.

Bags you raise a good point. There are streets of houses within the boundaries of several hospitals in Manchester, the majority of them empty or used to house workmen's tools. In the park where I live in what was a tied cottage, there is a delightful row of cottages within the horticultural centre - all empty. There are so many companies using converted mill warehouses that could give over whole floors to housing, and there are outbuildings that could be converted or knocked down to build accommodation for local workers.

And you raise a good point that not all hard-working people are well paid.

For the purpose of clarity - nowhere have I said that I am against businesses, large or small - that is what I meant by saying my post had been misrepresented.

i've never understood the need for some people to knock other people's political views. if you are so sure you're right why do you feel the need to justify it? do i detect a slight doubt in there somewher? i think you pointed it out "under the labour party ..."

Hi littlelynne have you just joined? If so, welcome. Don't remember seeing you on here before

Hi littlelynne, I don't recognise your name, so welcome to G'net. I make no apology for expressing (very) left-of-centre views, and mostly I am in favour of 'live and let live' but if I perceive opposing views as being inimical to social justice, then I will attack them on those grounds.