Will this current goverment unleash new 'poll tax' style protests?

[BatteredFish]

The Govt is giving councils control over council tax rebate at the same time as slashing their budgets is a licence to drive the poor out of town. One of the main drivers of the poll tax protest was middle-class couples getting two bills. Monstrous unfairness is all very well when it's happening to other folk, but when it hits the middle classes in their pockets there's hell to pay.

Old IDS said 'get on the bus' to Cardiff. Trouble is there are 39,000 unemployed in Cardiff already chasing just below 1,800 job vacancies.

The often quoted available jobs figure given by the Govt is 500,000 . This is utter, utter bollocks and any politican who uses it is a liar. Most of those 500,000 jobs are just turnover. By which I mean one person is fired another is hired (if you look at the numbers of temporary staff in something like the warehousing sector you will see a huge volumes of staff turnover). Only a fraction of these 5000,000 jobs are long term, unfilled vacancies and of those that are I suspect most require skills the UK have not trained the unemployed in this country to do.

The unemployed will be lucky they can up to 25k a year AFTER TAX. That is an experienced teachers, qualified nurses yearly wage. Their are people earning less than 25k a year who are barely covering their bills.

Fact is, a little side is necessary for anyone claiming: Women who clean for yummy mummies; men who labour, do painting and decorating or gardening for the middle classes; couples who grow and sell weed; blokes who fix cars, or sell them, do mini-cabbing; illegal child minding etc you name it.

Are you protesting yet?

 

[It'shimagain]

Like most Brits I'm only at the 'Watching the news and having strong opinions' phase.

Sometimes I think protesting is not enough. The media report the protests but not the message.

Maybe we should think about arming ourselves.

 

[zed]

is there a protest left in the robots of britain ?

btw i have a friend who got a job in Cardiff recently.

within a week of arriving there. (non british)

britain has to sober up first of all.

employers want subjects not objects.

then you may see decent wages.

thats what you should be fighting for.

not sat on your butts in front of "the telly"

with "cans" from tescos bought in their pyjamas.

at 1130 am on a weekday with five kids.

and not voting while some right wing little fart waltzes in.

pay peanuts get monkeys.

drunk monkeys.

 

[finecity_boy]

Who knows. Maybe we're all scared of getting asbos, or in the case of g20 Ian Tomlinson, being murdered, even though he wasn't marching. I bet the usual papers will scare us silly with 'what will happen', and how 'more observant' the Uk is with c.c.t.v and the like.
If only the middle class, or whoever claims they are left the UK altogether.

 

[Backtothedrawingboard]

I'd be frankly surprised to see Greek or French style protests on our streets. David Cameron is a shrewed political operator who is pulling all the populist buttons for electability. The truth is that we are still a relatively rich country and no government policies either Labour or Coalition are going to make a great deal of difference, either way we are going to be far from the type of starvation that inspired the radicalism of say the 1930s, and as stoic Britons we will put up with all the degrees of unfairness you have listed, the alternative is socialism, shock horror.

We have lived with 5% unemployment for a while and now we buy the rhetoric of a government that tries to tell us that unemployment is the fault of the workshy and not of successive governments that have deliberately wound down jobs, and taking advantage of anti-trade union legislation from the Thatcher years apparently has no problem with using non-union labour, I'm not a racist but this could include insecure migrant labour.

The tragedy is that our so called Labour opposition is mealy mouthed and want to be liked and elected at any cost, and their opposition is likely to be to support Tory policies but with "the devil in the detail".

I don't know where it's going but you seem a little more realistic than most. We please the Mail and Telegraph readers by withdrawing benefits and shrinking the welfare state, then do we get as the neo cons would want us believe an expansion of the genuine tax paying legitimate work based economy, or an expansion of the grey economy. I tend to think the latter. Economists apparently are divided asmong themselves about where it's going as well, so it might just be time for politics to take the heart in as well as the head.

 

[ArthurW]

I doubt it. The people who are being shafted are Middle England - hard working families with children and responsibilities and dedicated civil servants. Not the type of person who would riot over £100.
People on benefits are beign protected and are even able to claim £400pw housing benefit.
It's 1.6m jobs that are expected to be lost according to latest data on BBC business include 725,000 public service jobs and it's not turnover as the questionaire is suggesting but real jobs by dedicated long serving staff.