Are The Greens the new Raving Loony Party!

How is anything paid for in Cloud Cuckoo Land? Barter?

Don't worry, ana we will all be going back to the Good Life in our large Surbiton gardens

I've claimed benefits in the past, when I was a working single parent. The top-up to my pay was vital to enable me to support my family and pay the bills. I think I got about £20 a week extra.

But reducing the amount of benefit a family can claim from £26,000 p.a. to £23,000 seems reasonable to me. Most families I know where both parents work don't earn anything like that amount.

I'd like to know how the Green Party's proposal to pay everyone £71 a week regardless of their assets is going to help the economy - how are they going to pay for it?

Having watched the Positive Money clip. I went and read the Positive Money document.
2joz611prdme3eogq61h5p3gr08.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/Creating_a_Sovereign_Monetary_System_Web20130615.pdf I think all those enthusiastic about Positive Money would be less so if they did the same.

Here is the bad news: The Positive Money scheme proposes that:
1) All current accounts will be interest free
2) The depositor protection on saving accounts is removed. If your bank/building society goes bust, bang go all your savings
3) The end of all Instant Access accounts
4) If you want to save money and earn interest you must trust your money to the bank for a fixed term with limited access. You will have to make a decision to invest it into a specific industrial or other sector of your choice and your investment and income will depend on the success of your choice. No more broad brush savings accounts with a stated rate of interest tied to Bank Rate.

This scheme completely ignores the needs and requirements of ordinary savers. Our needs and requirements are not even mentioned or considered anywhere in the document.

The first paragraph of the document states that the plans for Positive Money are based on ideas espoused and promulgated by Milton Friedman. Remember him? He was the high priest of Thatcherism, the monetarist guru whose policies led to the decimation of our industrial base andwas the cause of the high unemployment of the 1980s. The bad news listed above is classic monetarist policy.

You may want to return to the 1980s. I most emphatically do not.

Well I will be honest and say that yes, we have had to live on benefits so I can speak from experience. Even when we have worked we have had to keep our belts tight.

I will come out and say that the benefit system needs a good shakeup; there will always be people who deserve our help and help them we most certainly should. However, there will always be the workshy and as long as the workshy can have a comfortable life at someone else's expense they will continue in their cosy rut.

btw some people don't post what they think because of the responses they then get which makes them reluctant to post or disappear from GN altogether.

It's not so much the Green Party - I have respect for the articulate and persuasive Caroline Lucas, but Natalie Bennett is a different kettle of fish altogether and will do the Greens' credibility no good at all.

Well, if there are lots of Gransnetters out there who think it's a good idea to cut benefits, and - as has been reported recently - to cut them yet again, why don't they have the courage of their convictions and come out and argue their case. It would make a change from characterising the Green Party as air headed "tree huggers" and making petty comments about the accent, appearance and general capability of Natalie Bennett.

Those on here who oppose the cuts to welfare feel strongly enough to put forward the reasons why they feel as they do. I suspect that at least some of them are not on benefits and have never received them. Speaking personally, I count myself fortunate that I have never needed to claim benefits - others, for a number of reasons, haven't been so fortunate.

Very true!

Yes. And those for them don't post at all.

It was one of those polls ana - you know the sort, me and A. N. Other.
No, just a general feeling from some threads.
Or perhaps those against cuts just post more on some threads.

Have you conducted a scientific survey to bring you to that conclusion, rosequartz? I don't recall being polled...

The bulk of the electorate may want the welfare bill cut, roses but not the majority of Gransnetters

Talking about economics, has anyone else signed up to this?

taxdodgingbill.org.uk/

Though Mr Rosesarered did admire Nicola's shapely pins on the Andrew Marr show.

Or Nicola Sturgeon without 2 pounds of wallop on her face?

Has anyone ever seen Natalie Bennett without a scarf?

If Miliband gets in at the next election, he and his party will continue with the welfare cuts, wait and see.

It's not that Cameron wants to get the welfare programme [amount of spending] down [although it will help with the deficit, ]but it's mainly the bulk of the electorate who want it and have been moaning about it for years.

Churchill once famously said 'The best arguement against democracy is to spend 5 minutes with the average voter' Ha-ha, did he mean us?

And then Cameron went into PR, so hasn't actually used the economics until he became PM.
He has now said today that he will decrease the amount of benefits any family can claim from £26,000 to £23,000 if he is elected, to ensure that those claiming benefits go to work. Where is the sense in that considering half the people on benefits are in work? He obviously does not care about the working poor.

Got the book, grannyactivist. Read it, and it is now my bible and go-to book for quotes.

Back tracking to your comment Ana one of my DD bought me a twin cassette tape version and hard back of the Queen and I by Sue Townsend set just after the 1992 General Election in the story the suggested fate of the Royals has happened. Oh my I have laughed over the years definitely not at their fate but the tapes are so funny hilarious in fact and I still listen to them now they are a sobering reminder of political years gone by. The book is good but the tapes are priceless well worth a listen.

Thanks grannyactivist - the article was interesting and I'll try and get the book.

Coming up to Christmas, there were lots of worries being expressed in the media as to whether retail profits might fall. There was even a suggestion that it was "patriotic" to keep spending so as to prop up the economy, and the introduction from the US of the Black Friday scrum to encourage people to rush out (or stay in) and buy stuff.

Then on 3 January in the Guardian came the headline "£1,250,000,000: Amount of extra debt added in November - more than any month since credit crunch of 2008" and the first sentence reads "Consumer helplines have sounded a warning after Britons ran up their highest level of new debt in November for nearly seven years ..."

So, on top of those people who are struggling because of unemployment, low pay or reduced hours who are having to borrow to pay for necessities, we had people being encouraged to think that spending money you haven't got on something you don't really need is somehow a form of saving.

The article said the peak in unsecured lending was reached in September 2008 and over the next four years consumers started to pay off more than they borrowed, and banks placed tough restrictions on borrowing. However, there has over the last two years been an acceleration in lending with "Banks and credit card companies jostling for business .... The £150 billion credit card industry is to come under investigation this month by the Financial Conduct Authority over accusations of aggressive marketing ..."

This is surely a crazy way to run a country's economy?

Enough is Enough:Building a Sustainable Economy in a World of Finite Resources is the title of a book that outlines why the current strategy for continuous growth is an unworkable system. It really is well worth borrowing it from your library (if you still have one) or shelling out £11.99 to buy it if you can afford to. If reading the book is too much then one of the co-authors has written this (much shorter, but interesting) article.

grannyactivist Thanks for the Positive Money links. I wonder if those of you who keep criticising people and parties who challenge the way our finance system operates have watched the videos.

As I've said before, Universities are continuing to teach a traditional and discredited form of economics that does not equip its students to analyse or deal with problems in the real world.

From an article in the Guardian:

"Michael Joffe, professor of economics at Imperial College, London, said he was disturbed by the way economics textbooks continued to discuss concepts and models as facts when they were debunked decades ago.

............"I asked a textbook author recently why a theory that is known to be wrong is still appearing in his book he said to me that his publisher would expect it to be there."

"The profession has been criticised for its adherence to models of a free market that claim to show demand and supply continually rebalancing over relatively short periods of time – in contrast to the decade-long mismatches that came ahead of the banking crash in key markets such as housing and exotic derivatives, where asset bubbles ballooned."

To imagine that there is presently such a thing as "sound economics", is I think wishful thinking.

grumppa has already raised the point about David Cameron of course.

No.

If studying economics is a point in question! Natalie Bennett took degrees in Agricultural Science, Bachelor of Arts in Asian Studies, Master of Arts Mass Communication. She had a career in journalism and joined The Greens in 2006. I believe!

Whereas Ed Balls did study economics so I guess it's not fool proof .