Rachel Reeves, Labour Response

Are you saying that businesses and their owners expect that their workers (and by default) their families survive on poverty pay and top ups from the state (Universal Credit). In this instance, I’m sorry that businesses like this don’t deserve employees or the ability to thrive. Most claimants are the working poor, not the unemployed.

It’s hard to fund much else - including the NHS - when business is taking so much from the public purse. Corporate tax evasion & cuts. Fiddles on R&D allowances. Grants. Apprenticeship schemes. Statutory sick pay (when employers should be looking after their people - but instead they nudge it back on the state). Etc.

Take a windfall tax from the energy suppliers. Europe is. Don’t put it on the public purse. Maybe then, you get some fiscal headroom.

Nationalise the utilities. Create a sovereign fund. Sell only a proportion of North Sea Oil & Gas to world markets. Instead of selling it ‘oil’ - all (ha, ha) then buying it back for inflated costs from wholesalers.

Stop privatisation of the NHS, to prevent ‘profits’ being skimmed off, rather than budgeting on the actual cost of contract services and private management . Maybe then, there can be a non-profit expansion of services and facilities, that are currently being thwarted by profiteers.

Doubling med school places? **** it - quadruple it!

That’s just a start. Not the whole solution. But get it going. We might have a chance. Rant over.

 

They've paid £650 to attend enall.

 

All this.

 

No matter how it's easily discredited by the worldly experts of the BBS..haha yeah. just a difference of opinion, which people are entitled to have. chancellor even quoted reading the country wrong and the public opinion on this one in his last interview.

 

But not...

which was the point we disagreed with you on

 

No, I'm just saying it could push small businesses into cutting staff, simple as. It's not big greedy corporate giants, it's the small businesses that would be biggest hit. But if you think small businesses who pay minimum wage don't deserve to be in business then so be it.

 

Do you believe that a business that can't make a profit and pay their staff a living wage is actually a business? Because I'd say it was a state subsidised enterprise.

And don't fool yourself, most people on minimum wage or require state top ups work for very large employers.

 

If you can’t afford to pay a liveable wage then you don’t have a viable business. That’s harsh but true.

Having said that I can see the rationale behind say businesses of less than 20 employees receiving sone support.

 

How do we land in a time where some people from a working class town think that if a business can only afford starvation wages then we should treat that business with respect but the workers as ‘scroungers’.

if a human being works full time, their labour should be worth enough for them to live a reasonable life. Pay rent, buy groceries, have a social life and a holiday.

Only in England is that considered a radical view.

 

I'm not sure that the Labour party had much to do with it. More to do with news outlets actually reporting it, even the Tory media.

 

I agree with you on nationalisation but on oil, we should be rapidly phasing it out and replacing it with free wind and solar power. Leave the oil under the ground where it beongs.