Quote:
Originally Posted by Guinness
Would that be the good old days of rickets, polio and smallpox? Where children were sent up chimneys and a working week consisted of six days and you died from a minor illness because you couldn't afford a doctor?
I think you will find that it was a conservative government (under thatcher), that massaged the unemployment figures year after year by encouraging people to go long term sick and pushed early retirement.
Yes welfare has to be paid for...but economically speaking, if a government specifies a rate that I should pay so that I can be supported at the end of my working life and I do so...pray tell why I should have to rely on family or my personal savings to supplement my basic needs?
Oh and if this government stopped cutting funding to county councils and thus allowed them to pay decent wages to carers, the wheat could easily be separated from the chaff and MargaretR wouldn't be losing her carers to Aldi.
Kinda sucks that Camerons version of 'big society' values people more for sitting at a checkout than providing for a decent quality of life to those who paid their taxes and national insurance throughout their lives, expecting to be comfortable in their twilight years  |
No, I am talking about the days when I was growing up.
I do not remember anyone with Rickets.....we got free cod liver oil(yuk) and orange juice(yum).
Yes there was polio.....we got a vaccine on a sugar lump to prevent it.
None of my peers were shoved up chimneys....nor did we do half time in the mills from the age of twelve.
The NHS came into being the year I was born, so none of us were denied access to medical care.
I am quite well aware of governments massaging figures.....all of them still do it.
As for asking you to pay more for your retirement.....I can just imagine the howls of pain there would be at that suggestion.....and previous governments would have been hard pressed to predict the burgeoning welfare state, and get enough in their coffers to ensure that they could remain solvent. The position we are in was caused by governments spending money they did not have......not a sensible economic policy because someone has to pay it back
Perhaps if some previous government had had the cojones to plug the loopholes which allow companies and individuals to avoid paying their share of dues, there would be enough to fund all welfare needs....but none of them have....not one of them, of any persuasion.
Politicians do not have to worry about being old and infirm because the make sure they have enough money(courtesy of us) to ensure a comfortable life out of office.
None of them care about you and your needs, or me and mine...they look out for themselves.