Everything is wrong in this country

chestnut of course there will always be people on benefits who try to play the system, just as there are tax dodgers at the other end.

But the point is that governments should not make policy on the actions of a tiny minority.
Post war governments were wise enough to recognised this.

The rhetoric from this government tells us differently.

And another thing (very funny) is that, when they moan about the lazy lot on benefits, they totally forget to include themselves. If you receive a state pension, you are on benefits!

We are all mongrels of varied mixtures in our family - very proud to be. Non mongrel to me sounds a bit 'inbred' ;)

My grand-daughter is very blond and blue eyed- and grandson has Irish-Scottish looks. They both have 3 races, and about 11 nationalities running in their blood in last few generations. Nothing pejorative about that from me, for sure.

Just been listening to Daily Politics and a reference to the 2015 election when the Tories proposed that benefits should be capped at two children. Luckily it didn't happen.

In the near future it will have to be recognised that there isn't enough work for everyone to do when the robots are brought in.
There has to be a Universal Basic Income paid for everyone.
And why not?

Ever since the Enclosures Act it has been impossible to stay alive without paid employment.
In fact the Tory b*st*rds who took the land should pay out a basic wage to all.

As well as the need to start taking care of the planet it is time to stop judging the poor as un-deserving and instead give everyone enough to survive.
Then those who prefer to work and have a creative, meaningful life can do so without needing to attack those whose ambitions remain low.
The children of the unemployed deserve to be given the education and opportunity to make their own lives better. Not fed from food banks and ridiculed as feckless because of their parents.

Luckily it didn't happen.

I think you will find it did Dinahmo. Not in 2015 but 2017. The Labour Party have said they will ditch it. It's a wicked policy. I feel quite concerned that you were so unaware you put something on here that is misleading.

Tory two-child benefit limit 'will put 266,000 more kids in poverty this year

www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/tory-two-child-benefit-limit-20798633

I agree that UBI will have its day. Let's just hope we are not under a Tory government as we will be well behind the curve when other countries have done it.

A bit of information concerning compensating the wealthy.

I was at a dinner party over the weekend, and the talk turned to the way successive governments have looked after the very wealthy, and one utterly astounding thing is the fact that compensation for the ownership of slaves was paid to “property ownership”. The final payment was made in 2015, which made that descendants of this “property” were paying the slave owners.

I find that utterly incredible and quite frankly sick. Presumably there are people in this country who were receiving money from the government up until 4 years ago.

How can they live with themselves?

Everything is stacked in favour of the wealthy

Do you have a source for that?

University College, London has done a huge amount of research on the people who were compensated for freeing their slaves. My understanding was that the payments were completed in the mid nineteenth century. The taxpayer paid for them and the amount was huge. (I can't remember the exact details). Some of the taxpayers were, of course, the same people who were compensated.

www.ucl.ac.uk/lbs//

UCL has also done research on what happened to the money. Much of it stayed in the UK and can be traced to all sorts of people today. Some of the people who were compensated "owned" slaves, just as people own stocks and shares.

Some of the money was used to fund the industrial revolution and some of was spent on philanthropy. One of the ancestors of the TV chef, Ainsley Harriot, was compensated.

There are certainly people today who can trace family wealth to compensation for slave ownership, but I'm interested to know how anybody was still receiving payments four years ago.

Oh yes I do I’ll have to re look. I read so much I forget where I see stuff.

The one immediately is an article in the Mirror and David Olusoga. I can’t do links. Dated Feb. 2018.

I have seen something more academic but can’t find it yet. I’ll keep looking.

Some huge % of the national income ( half or more I think) was used to compensate slave owners when the emancipation act was passed- the owners made a huge fuss about how they’d all be ruined by the ending of slavery and the government ( many of whom were beneficiaries) gave them massive payouts. A lot of our stately homes were built by the proceeds.

Ah! I think I know where the 2015 date came from. Apparently, the money the government borrowed in 1833 to compensate the slave-owners was finally paid off in 2015.

www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/feb/12/treasury-tweet-slavery-compensate-slave-owners

Oh I see. I must have misunderstood as there were 10 of us around the table, and my friend is a college lecturer, and I assumed I’d heard correctly. But presumably the principle still stands about the tax payer?

I assume I can stop looking now?

Indeed they were. The UCL database has information about the stately homes which were built. Much of the money was also used to fund the building of railways.

David Olusoga is one of the people pushing for the British government to compensate countries in the West Indies and elsewhere. He certainly knows a lot about slave ownership.

It was a huge stain on the UK's history and we owe an awful lot to slavery (especially the building of railways). The slaves themselves were treated appallingly. Even after emancipation, they still weren't properly free and many suffered discrimination. Their descendants still do, of course. You'd honestly think that the government would have learnt a few lessons and treated the Windrush generation more sensitively and humanely.

I went to a talk about it a couple of years ago, presented by one of the researchers from UCL. I'm still wracking my brain about who exactly should pay and whom should be compensated nearly 200 years later

Yes, you can go and have a cuppa. I wasn't disputing what you said. I was just curious about what you meant.

I guess tax payers were still paying in 2015 because they were still paying off government debt, but I think the people with an interest in slave ownership (whether as owners or shareholders) were paid off in 1833. Apparently, it was 40% of the Treasury's income that year, so would have had to take out a loan to pay.

Cheers grow

Apparently David Cameron's ancestors were slave owners and were in receipt of the compensation you refer to.

A lot of the slave compensation money wasn't paid to the slave 'owners' at all. The sugar trade was declining badly by the 1830s and many of the plantation owners were so heavily in debt that the 'compensation' payments went straight to their creditors. Who could have been people who'd never set foot in the West Indies or owned any property out there.

Just a bit of an aside...

Must have helped keep them afloat and out of debtors prison though

My point was really that it wasn't just slave owners who benefited from compensation. The money was spread much wider.

Yes, it may have kept some put of debtors prison; I suspect they mostly stayed in the West Indies in supervisory roles with diminished status. I haven't researched that far...

OK - still think the principle stands though.

This link shows the cuts to be made in individual areas.

My surgery is due to have cuts of £65000, which equates to a doctor or two nurses. The regional funding loss is eyewatering!

nhscuts.org.uk/