'We are all in it together.....'

Whitewave - I agree with most of your post, but I am very concerned about what happens to the poorest, as they are the least able to fight for themselves. The mark of a civilised society is how it cares for the most vulnerable. It would be a sad day if we only showed concern when our own welfare was threatened. There is nothing that the UK government can do to affect my life, other than freeze my pension, but I still care desperately about what this ghastly government is doing.

It would be interesting to read what each of you would do to get the country back on track. I think we can all talk about what should not be cut but what we need is good ideas about what can be cut. If we took the whole salaries of the people at the top it would only be a drop in the ocean.

I think we would all agree that we do need most of the people who run large companies and entrepreneurs and they do need to be paid well, but more importantly fairly, perhaps by some multiplier of the average salary within their company? This might then dispel the myth that they and the bankers are responsible for all the country's ills.

I do agree that the tax loopholes should be closed but for everyone, not just the rich. I include self-employed temps who work long term in the same company but are paid into their private companies to reduce their tax and the civil servants who also work this system.

I too feel totally disenfranchised and it is a great relief to me that I shall be living in another country by the time of the next general election in the UK.

And the more people get fed up with state health and education, the more they will turn to profit-making organisations to provide them.
Some things are so basic to a reasonable life, that the profit motive should never have been allowed to creep in - I include health, education, prisons, children's homes, care homes, water, transport and fuel. It would not be so bad if the businesses had delivered fair and efficient services. When the big 'outsourcing' started, it is true that many local authority services were very inefficient, but surely the answer was to improve them, rather than just give up and hand over to the contractor offering the lowest tender, usually because they were employing poorly qualified and paid staff and cutting corners.
I could have a postal vote in British elections for another few years, but I feel totally disenfranchised and disillusioned - but I remember my dad, a lifelong socialist, saying that not voting was just handing control to the enemy. But how could I choose ? The Greens? Or an Independent candidate, if I could find one?

What absolutely puzzles me is why there is not more active protest at what is happening to the NHS. It seems to me that if the Drs. are worried, and they are not known for their radical tendencies than shouldn't we all be very concerned indeed? We need more examples of what is happening in the USA to be able to decide what it is we want from a health service, and to show what may happen to the poor in our "we are all in this together" society. The really worrying thing is that it may well not stop at the poorest, and that many on an average income will be adversely affected.

Greatnan Don't give them ideas. It's not just the welfare state, but the NHS and education system (up to and including tertiary education) that are being not just dismantled but irretrievably wrecked.

Quite, Greatnan. That is why I am severing my connections with what is now neither a Liberal nor Social Democrat Party. What I heard of Osborne's speech yesterday made my blood run cold.

I am sorry that there is not more interest in politics amongst our members. I feel very angry about the way the welfare state is being dismantled, even though it has no direct effect on myself. Theresa May said the Conservatives were seen as the nasty party. How right she was.
Cutting employees rights, slashing benefits, being in cahoots with big business (look at the register of members' interests) - I am waiting for the suggestion that workhouses be reintroduced.

One of the annoying things is that they give "business" and "management" a bad name. When it is only a few big companies in the financial sector and a very small group of other Uk companies where the senior execs get paid like this. To talk to some people in the private sector, you'd think everyone who worked in the private sector was raking it in.

CEO's don't have pay or salaries. They have a compensation package with bonuses and tax cuts and all sorts of other goodies because it is so hard to be a CEO compared with being a midwife, a cleaner, a teacher, a call centre operative, etc. etc. who just gets paid (flat rate) for what they do.

And our dear chancellor is talking about taking housing benefit from younger vulnerable people. (who may well be working.) How dare he assume they have parents who are able to house them. But he might save a million or two there.
And demonising the feckless poor that who have too many children. A pretty rare breed these days, people having a large brood. Still he could save a few thousand by limiting their benefits. Never mind about the kids.
But where George are you going to find cuts of billions of welfare payments? Not by these examples.
And just to make matters worse, they are talking about merging the tax credit and benefit systems. This is a huge and difficult project. Some of us will have families who have suffered with the child tax credit system which struggled to cope with incomes that changed from month to month.

Nop they see it as their money and the state having no right to take it from them - forgetting that it is the ordinary folk who police their streets, nurse the sick, help the government forge policy, protect their homes from flooding, etc. etc. and when these folk are sick or elderly or become unemployed for one reason or another need a safety net. You will find little compassion, or empathy amongst those who have it all.