Labour predicted to win Stafford in May 2015 General Election by .03% Majority

[biccies]

Well I remember back in the late 80's the consensus was that the population had peaked and that lower birth rate was going to see a population decrease.
Why has the birth rate gone up during the past 25 years?

I'm not sure what point you're trying to make or whether that is an actual question?

Before I made my initial post I did a quick lookup to see what the figures were like for births and immigration. It would appear that birth rates have decreased in the last few years. Admittedly, I've not looked into too much so you may well be correct in saying it's gone up overall over 25 years but the last couple of years have seen a decrease.

 

[andy w]

I did a quick search and found this which was published February 2014 http://www.independent.co.uk/news/u...rth-rate-leaps-by-18-in-a-decade-9107483.html
Well worth reading the article that shows an increase in the birth rate and some of the reasons behind the rise.

 

[PeterD]

Personally and you can look back over my posts, perhaps it will come as no surprise I have no issue with immigration, again personally I havent seen it being a detriment to my life. For every negative I see an equal positive. I have argued with some of the more right wing members of the board here about multiculturalism and I am all for it.
I am concerned of the normalisation of the far right, thats a real concern for me, but by the same token I am excited by this election as it has real potential for huge change.

 

[John Marwood]

Britain is populated with older and old people

The balance required to pay for our ageing population through the taxation of the working is not being met by our resident population

We need an influx of younger people to restore the taxed versus benefit books

The alternative is to export our pensioners

 

[1JKz]

blah blah blah

So, Stafford MP and the councillors in your area, who you voting for?

 

[Hetairoi]

Personally and you can look back over my posts, perhaps it will come as no surprise I have no issue with immigration, again personally I havent seen it being a detriment to my life. For every negative I see an equal positive. I have argued with some of the more right wing members of the board here about multiculturalism and I am all for it.
I am concerned of the normalisation of the far right, thats a real concern for me, but by the same token I am excited by this election as it has real potential for huge change.

UKIP are not the Far Right they are just Right Wing Tories and if you think that is Far Right you must be so far to the Left that you are almost Right Wing!

 

[John Marwood]

blah blah blah

So, Stafford MP and the councillors in your area, who you voting for?

Wasn't that a hit for Trio in 1982?

 

[John Marwood]

UKIP are not the Far Right they are just Right Wing Tories and if you think that is Far Right you must be so far to the Left that you are almost Right Wing!

Everyone thinks they are the moderate middle ground

Even Breivik

What you just said has considerable accuracy - The Tories are a collection of extremists who were restrained only by their lack of MP's . If they had/get a majority they will be a Far Right group, Ukip in Blue

 

[Hetairoi]

Britain is populated with older and old people

The balance required to pay for our ageing population through the taxation of the working is not being met by our resident population

We need an influx of younger people to restore the taxed versus benefit books

The alternative is to export our pensioners

That is what we do at the moment, the nursing home is called Spain!

The Government intend to raise the retirement age to 70 in the near future so your argument is redundant.

We need a thorough restructure of our education system to make sure our children are trained to do the jobs that are available, we wouldn't need to import doctors and nurses if we trained enough of our own.

We need less people in this country not more, it would help solve a lot of this countries problems and anyone who can not see that is just blinded by their own political prejudicies.

 

[John Marwood]

That is what we do at the moment, the nursing home is called Spain!

The Government intend to raise the retirement age to 70 in the near future so your argument is redundant.

We need a thorough restructure of our education system to make sure our children are trained to do the jobs that are available, we wouldn't need to import doctors and nurses if we trained enough of our own.

We need less people in this country not more, it would help solve a lot of this countries problems and anyone who can not see that is just blinded by their own political prejudicies.

Ehem..

Raising the retirement age to 70 does not in any way help the financial imbalance we need to address now

The tax we pay today only funds ( or rather fails to fund ) the pension costs of pensioners right now

The money you, I, or anyone pays into the tax system does not get put aside for your, mine or anyone else's pension

The UK needs a whole lot more young people, in work, paying tax - Fact

 

[Hetairoi]

Everyone thinks they are the moderate middle ground

Even Breivik

What you just said has considerable accuracy - The Tories are a collection of extremists who were restrained only by their lack of MP's . If they had/get a majority they will be a Far Right group, Ukip in Blue

That all depends where you stand on the political spectrum, to me UKIP are not tough enough on immigration and therefore by your definition not right wing enough.

My views on immigration and the EU are the only ones that you would consider right wing the rest of my opinions are considered left wing, if the Labour Party really represented the working class I would vote for them but they have become the left wing of the Tory party who we all know do not give a toss about the working man.

 

[Hetairoi]

Ehem..

Raising the retirement age to 70 does not in any way help the financial imbalance we need to address now

The tax we pay today only funds ( or rather fails to fund ) the pension costs of pensioners right now

The money you, I, or anyone pays into the tax system does not get put aside for your, mine or anyone else's pension

The UK needs a whole lot more young people, in work, paying tax - Fact

We need everyone who is capable of working in this country to have a job first, what is the point of importing labour when we are paying unemployment benefit to people who are already here.

 

[tek-monkey]

Whoever gets in to number 10 will be a twat - fact.

I grew up under the tories, they were twats. I was ecstatic when Labour got in, but they turned into twats too. Now we've had 5 years of vaguely subdued twattishness, but twattishness all the same, simply because one lot of twats don't outnumber the others by as much as they'd hoped.

All the finger pointing and blaming the current situation on the previous lot fails to address the fact that the current lot have had 5 years to make changes. If they haven't already then its their fault too, and in most cases they haven't. All I know is in the last 5 years we've lost our hospital and our university, we are a county town about to expand massively and we've lost some pretty essential services. I don't know if the others will fix this, but I know the current lot made it worse so they can feck off.

Just for complete transparancy I don't know who to vote for yet, but it won't be red blue or purple.

 

[John Marwood]

We need everyone who is capable of working in this country to have a job first, what is the point of importing labour when we are paying unemployment benefit to people who are already here.

Having a rant is fine

Forums are great for that, it usually means we don't thump anyone, just let off steam

But this has been discussed in detail before, and the ONS holds the definitive figures,which for information is that immigrant workers proportionally pay more in tax than the resident population.

But that won't stop the Daily Mail readership shaking sticks at 'foreigners'

 

[tek-monkey]

We need everyone who is capable of working in this country to have a job first, what is the point of importing labour when we are paying unemployment benefit to people who are already here.

Whats the point in having a job if it doesn't pay enough to live on and you still need benefits regardless of working a 40 hour week? And then there are zero hour contracts, until that bullshit is addressed why work if you can get more sat on your arse?

 

[Hetairoi]

Whats the point in having a job if it doesn't pay enough to live on and you still need benefits regardless of working a 40 hour week? And then there are zero hour contracts, until that bullshit is addressed why work if you can get more sat on your arse?

Agreed, so what is the answer?

Import more labour who will work for peanuts or reduce the amount of labour available so the employers have to pay a decent wage to attract workers?

I would rather go for the second option.

 

[Laurie61]

Britain may have a debt crisis brewing, with an ageing population draining future pension and health care budgets, but there is more than £29bn sitting untouched in a fund that is supposedly earmarked for those very purposes. This mysterious pot of money started to accrue in 1911. Its name: the National Insurance Fund.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/.../National-Insurance-the-12pc-stealth-tax.html

 

[John Marwood]

Britain may have a debt crisis brewing, with an ageing population draining future pension and health care budgets, but there is more than £29bn sitting untouched in a fund that is supposedly earmarked for those very purposes. This mysterious pot of money started to accrue in 1911. Its name: the National Insurance Fund.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/.../National-Insurance-the-12pc-stealth-tax.html

"In 2010 the National Insurance fund surplus stood at £51 billion. It is now £29 billion.
A reduction of £22 billion in four years.

This money was transferred to help cover the Coalition's cost of privatising the NHS so that private companies found it more attractive, at taxpayer cost, to exploit the taxpayer, and those needing NHS services."

Colin

 

[tek-monkey]

Agreed, so what is the answer?

Import more labour who will work for peanuts or reduce the amount of labour available so the employers have to pay a decent wage to attract workers?

I would rather go for the second option.

Kill the old? Logans run kinda style.

 

[Gramaisc]

Import more labour who will work for peanuts or reduce the amount of labour available so the employers have to pay a decent wage to attract workers?

I would rather go for the second option.

You can achieve that effect immediately, without any effort, just by increasing the minimum wage. I don't expect that to happen.