Dutch King Willem-Alexander declares the end of the welfare state

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Such an important story with one of the most weirdest pictures ever seen.  Little man sat in huge chair, not the leather 'footy' chair but the 'granny' knitting chair complete with samples, next to the annual plastic flower tree.

By welfare they include pension?

Coming to a country near you?

Does this mean the end of his own 'scrounging' days?

Double Dutch?

The participation society, how close to PAFC is this?

If we were allowed to participate in the banking scams, rip offs, high taxation then we would have the money to provide for ourselves. My pension as we speak is being mullered by management fees, it's a free for all on all our money by rich wankers who bankrupt the country then people that work hard all their lives to make the rich richer have to die in poverty, revolution NOW!

I can just about abide 'the Royals' so long as they keep schtum and know their place.


It's not that 'the Royals' are the problem of today's society per se, but they can very quickly become emblematic of the problem. If Charles came out with a comment of similar ilk I'd be feckin fuming.

1) Create a situation where the banks that have invested YOUR money go tits up.

2) Use more of YOUR money to bail out the banks.

3) Create a severely bad economy so that jobs can be lost and with it the little money that YOU had, YOU lose.

4) Then when YOU are in deep financial shitzo take the things away that YOU have spent all your life investing in such as a pensions, health care etc.

5) Finally, when YOU are searching through the gutter for yesterdays Herald they take away from YOU the little that YOU get from the investment that YOU have spent all YOUR working life investing in, the Benefit system. PLEASE NOTE: To do this effectively a smear campaign should be had against the one in a thousand families that abuse the Benefit System to justify the removal of the Benefit System.

On the bright side, the one thing that was designed to even out the playing field, Income Tax, is low. So the money that YOU have worked hard for goes indirectly directly into the pockets of those that have considerably more than YOU!


And yes, our present government would love to do this in this country!

Welcome to instant anarchy!

Mock Cuncher wrote:

I can just about abide 'the Royals' so long as they keep schtum and know their place.


It's not that 'the Royals' are the problem of today's society per se, but they can very quickly become emblematic of the problem. If Charles came out with a comment of similar ilk I'd be feckin fuming.

I thought it was a state opening of Parliament type of thing. I doubt the our  spends her waking hours dreaming up ever more inventive ways to impoverish the peasants...

there again  

GOB wrote:

1) Create a situation where the banks that have invested YOUR money go tits up.

2) Use more of YOUR money to bail out the banks.

3) Create a severely bad economy so that jobs can be lost and with it the little money that YOU had, YOU lose.

4) Then when YOU are in deep financial shitzo take the things away that YOU have spent all your life investing in such as a pensions, health care etc.

5) Finally, when YOU are searching through the gutter for yesterdays Herald they take away from YOU the little that YOU get from the investment that YOU have spent all YOUR working life investing in, the Benefit system. PLEASE NOTE: To do this effectively a smear campaign should be had against the one in a thousand families that abuse the Benefit System to justify the removal of the Benefit System.


On the bright side, the one thing that was designed to even out the playing field, Income Tax, is low. So the money that YOU have worked hard for goes indirectly directly into the pockets of those that have considerably more than YOU!


And yes, our present government would love to do this in this country!

Welcome to instant anarchy!

The whole Benefit Scrounger schtick really grips my shit. Ok it's wrong. They shouldn't do it. It's immoral and illegal. All of that. It's a slam dunk. Nothing to argue against.

But it is such a small issue it is almost an irrelevance for any number of reasons not least of which is far more benefit to which people are actually entitled goes unclaimed than is scammed by the scroungers.

Then there is the payments to scrounging types. Vastly more is paid out to people via pension payments and tax credits to low paid workers than is paid out to the chavvy types we see on Jeremy Kyle widely seen as the face of benefit scrounging.

Back to those tax credits for a moment. They subsidise zero hour contracts and low pay paid by, mostly, big companies (many of whom are major contributors to the Conservative Party such as Tesco) and who often avoid paying their fair share of tax too.

The amount of money scammed by Benefit scroungers is so miniscule that the incessant focus on it, wrong though it is as I have acknowledged, is not justified.

What is really happening here is the eradication of state support for everybody so just make sure that you have your pile of readies sorted before you get old, ill, disabled or unemployed because if you don't there's not a hope in hell that any sort of Tory government will even think of helping you.

And here's a final thought. Maybe, just maybe if benefit payment levels were higher and got somewhere near what people need to survive Jeremy Kyle's chavvy types might feel less inclination to claim fraudulently. In fact park that stereotype completely. Maybe it's just desperate people doing desperate things simply to survive?

Just let the lazy, unwilling, uneducated, useless people sit around doing feck all all day because they'd only half-heartedly do a job for while before they screwed it up anyway. Then the keen, willing, educated, useful people could get the very same jobs to the benefit of themselves, the greater benefit of those who employ them and the greater benefit of the country as a whole.

We have a government that ignores evidence, defies common sense and blunders on regardless at present driven by an ideology that is desperately trying to turn the UK into the first European Bangladesh as fast as it can.

And don't get me started on cnuts like the banks, Starbucks, Amazon, Google etc because then I might just lose it completely!

Sir Francis Drake wrote:

And don't get me started on cnuts like the banks, Starbucks, Amazon, Google etc because then I might just lose it completely!

So, what have they done wrong then?

Precisely, Sir. In the past - in the early 80s, say - there was generally sympathy for people who found themselves out of work, and understanding of the need for benefits. Now, we've had years of us and them crap about 'chavs' (Owen Jones' book Chavs: the demonisation of the working class is brilliant) leading to this constant drip drip of how 'we' are paying for 'them' to sit around doing nothing. When the truth is as you've said - benefits are being used to subsidise low-paying employers, and even to provide free, forced labour for them, while the rich get ever richer - bonuses anyone? - and an apparent blind eye's turned to tax evasion on a grand scale by companies like the ones you name.

One of the blokes who wrote the Wire has got a new book out in America about the drugs trade. Basically, he says that deindustrialisation has left the States with this massive unwanted working class, and that the drugs industry has become a useful way of keeping them busy and killing a lot of them, while allowing the rest of the population to to ignore them because they're worthless. There's a strong parallel here with the way politicians and the mainstream media treat 'chavs': if 'we' think people are subhuman 'we' won't care what happens to them.

Oh, and while I'm on one about all this ... When the council properties round here were first being demolished and replaced, there were hardly any subsidies for building one-bedroom places, so the housing associations built two-bed homes and rehoused single people in them, all perfectly lawfully. Now any of those people who need housing benefit are being told they've got to pay more of their rent because of the second bedroom room, and no doubt a lot of them are getting into arrears and could end up homeless - and there's not a lot of help available for single homeless people, especially men. But, of course, 'we' are paying for 'them' so 'we' are glad to have them off our backs. Sick doesn't begin to describe this inhumanity.

Just the same here in Germany Peggy.

I meet a lot of people here, from the rich to the "Hartz IV".

Germany is not the role model it's made out to be!

Some good comments lads & lasses.

I'd hate to think my 32 years of NI contributions could be wiped out but I'm coming to the conclusion this will happen.

The Bedroom Tax is very similar to the wider job situation. Just as there is no housing to move to so there are no jobs to be paid for. Well not enough anyway. We have roughly 2.5m unemployed and well under 1m unfilled jobs. That leaves 1.5m people with nowhere to go. I've no idea what the housing figures are but there's loads more 2 bedroom (and bigger) than there is 1 bedroom for them to downsize to.

I actually agree with the need to utilise our housing stock more efficiently. We have far too many empty properties or rarely used second homes or old biddies living in huge houses and far too many homeless people desperate for a roof, any roof, over their heads.

Just recently I enjoyed a lovely evening out at Maritimo on The Hoe. A really nice evening out with great food and company and it was a lovely evening. As we left and headed back to the Barbican we passed a gaggle of people, mostly but not all young people in hoodies (hoods up, of course), just before we got as far as The Dome. They looked like a dodgy bunch but caused us no hassle at all. Before we'd gone 20 yards a van pulled up and they all headed towards it. Unknown to us we'd hit a stop on the soup kitchen route. And a sobering moment it was too. Full of bon homie as we were it was very hard not feel a little guilty.

And we're the 7th richest country on the planet. And we have people with nowhere to live, no job to do and no food to eat. And nothing anybody will ever say to me will make me think that that is acceptable. Or getting better.

Our politicians, all of them, should hang their heads in shame because it is not a price worth paying for any reason and if my income tax had to rise by 1 or 2% to stop it then I'd gladly pay.

And if you wouldn't then I pity you for your lack of human compassion.

Coxside_Green wrote:

Some good comments lads & lasses.

I'd hate to think my 32 years of NI contributions could be wiped out but I'm coming to the conclusion this will happen.

Today's NI contributions pay those eligible today. Your 32 years of contributions have been paid out already. They are gone.

NI should be scrapped and incorporated into the general tax system anyway, which would be far more efficient, because the idea that it pays for pensions and the NHS is a complete non-starter now anyway. It doesn't.

Sir Francis Drake wrote:

Coxside_Green wrote:

Some good comments lads & lasses.

I'd hate to think my 32 years of NI contributions could be wiped out but I'm coming to the conclusion this will happen.

Today's NI contributions pay those eligible today. Your 32 years of contributions have been paid out already. They are gone.

NI should be scrapped and incorporated into the general tax system anyway, which would be far more efficient, because the idea that it pays for pensions and the NHS is a complete non-starter now anyway. It doesn't.

I've no doubt my 32 years have already been 'spent'.  Not exactly my fault.

Will they pay me when I reach pension age or not?  I can only go by the paperwork which suggests I'm entitled to part 35ths.  

I could leave the country tomorrow, do my own thing.  Once I'm retirement age I should fully expect those 32/35 years I paid in?

I've no chance (I'm too far away from retirement).

I am of course speaking if UK follows the Dutch experiment.

Was there a reason Holland was chosen for this experiment?

You can easily survive if you deal in human trafficking or open a drug cafe, or so it seems.