moosebreath

Is withdrawing from society considered a good way to combat depression, then? Is there any evidence that being productive and engaging with the world makes depression worse? Certainly not on both counts to my knowledge.

Oh the old 'I disagree with you therefore you must not know what you're talking about' argument.

Makes me laugh how people earning just over £40k are being described as "rich". You can barely afford to buy an average house with that. In the South East you'd be living in a shoe box. And believe it or not most of us do have to pay for our housing out of our own pockets.

The increase in the higher rate tax threshold affects people earning about £40k. That's your average successful tradesman or bog standard professional. Far from being the super rich out to make a quick buck, these are people who have worked hard over many years to build their careers, they're the everyday people whose everyday toil runs this country. Why shouldn't they be allowed to keep a bit more of what they earn?

I think that lots of people suffering from mental illnesses such as depression would seriously benefit from getting out into the world and being productive. The last thing these people need is to be given an excuse to completely give up engaging with the world. That will just make them worse.

I think that almost everyone is capable of providing for themselves, and would be fundamentally happier doing so than living on hand outs. I think a healthier, more productive society is better for everyone. Anything we can do to promote personal responsibility is a good thing. Bringing up generations to rely on hand outs does nobody any good at all.

I didn't ignore that at all, I acknowledged that there are people who "genuinely need" welfare.

There is certainly a balance to be found between providing welfare for those who genuinely need it and not making welfare so easy to access and so comfortable to live on that perfectly able people choose to go on welfare as a lifestyle choice. That's if we're looking at welfare state as being 'clean' and uncorrupted. The reality is that labour have been using it to buy votes for many years, so it is now a long, long way from being the safety net it was originally intended to be. We need to get tough on benefits to flush out all of the cheats and the feckless. That might mean a very small number of genuine claimants get caught in the crossfire, but it has gone so far in the wrong direction that these occasional unfortunate circumstances are preferable to continuing to bankrupt the country to pay for swathes of people to spend all day down the boozer drinking beer and smoking fags.

I'm not saying they shouldn't be allowed anything else. They should be allowed whatever they want in life, they just have to earn it and pay for it themselves like everybody else.

I believe in rationing because I believe the welfare state should be a safety net and not a lifestyle choice. I believe that life on hand outs should be plain and joyless, so as to serve as an appropriate incentive towards getting people back into work, back earning money, feeling good about themselves and enjoying their lives. In that way I do feel rationing is benevolent albeit indirectly. Long term it's certainly going to have a lot more positive impact on people's lives than trapping them into perpetual dependency which is all left wing welfare policies are ever going to achieve.

Yes and he changed his mind and put it through. Here we have a PM willing to listen to and act upon alternative viewpoints. Personally I find it amazing that they've managed to cut spending while reducing the tax burden on millions and grow the economy while creating an unprecedented number of jobs. It's incredible how well this government has done.

Remind me what point you wanted me to address and I will.

Because the statistics on average wage don't break down into salary bands, otherwise I'd love to.

I'll take that as an admission of defeat.

You're going to pretend you missed the whole Rotherham debacle?

Average wages increases are behind inflation but that's mainly because most of the new jobs are low paid as those previously paid by labour to be down the boozer all day are actually having to work under this government, and since labour didn't care about these people's long term prospects, most of them are low skilled, hence low paid, hence average wages staying low. I'd bet good money that wages for skilled workers has been increasing rapidly in the last 18 months, the average is being held down due to the slack in the Labour market created intentionally by labour now being taken up. Also pension auto-enrolment was effectively a 1% pay rise for a lot of people, which if reflected in the average wage figures would mean they are now smashing inflation, and things will logically only get better as long as we allow the current government to continue their superb track record of repairing and growing the economy.

Good question, my guess would be that it would get a resounding no from pretty much everyone. It certainly would from me.

How about the millions of people on low to medium who have benefited from unprecedented increases in the level of the tax free allowance? In one stroke that policy did more for those on low to mid salaries than labour did in their entire time in office. These modern tories are pretty socialist for a supposed right wing party, aren't they?

Child brothels on expenses by the tories? Lol. Ironic given what we now know about how labour councils sanction mass child rape and how a labour government presided over the largest pilfering of expenses scandal in history.

Labour will just use my hard earned cash to buy votes from poor people while simultaneously trapping them into welfare dependency causing long term social and economic problems. None of the fringe parties are credible, especially not the greens who would run this country into the ground. So I'm left with the conservatives, and I suppose the government that has dragged us out of the gutter into becoming the fastest growing economy in the developed world is not a bad option to have.

The average person doesn't require a masters before they start getting opportunities. I think providing funding in the form of cheap loans and grants up to undergraduate level already provides for the majority who want to go down that route. A masters is extra, I would expect it to be funded either by the individual or commonly by an employers, just like your average post degree professional qualification.

I wasn't talking about masters level. They are usually unnecessary so I can see why they don't attract as much funding as undergrad.

No, that's not what I said. Anyway, I've got to get off to sleep. Another long and busy day at work awaits.

I've met some left wingers who are capable of appreciating that the country does not have an unlimited supply of money that can be used to indulge every whim of every person in the land, but rather a limited supply that needs to be apportioned carefully to provide maximum possible value, and therefore benefit, for the whole country. Apparently they don't post on here though.

Always the way, I don't think I've ever had an online conversation with a leftist/socialist crowd where they haven't become very spiteful and aggressive as soon as they are challenged. I've always thought it's probably a case of the truth hurting and the old true colours, shining through. Personally I just try to rise above all the childish insults and keep the debate on track.