birch-chorley

Fag packet but I think secondary schools cost £40bn a year to run for 5m kids so £8k a year per child? So 1 parent on a salary of £40k would cover that in tax and NI, 2 parents on £25k. Clearly, if both parents have lost their job because of the ridiculous Covid restrictions then neither will contribute fuck all in tax towards their child’s education whilst also requiring tens of thousands more in benefits each year. However they will get £1,000 per person more per year this year in UC vs last year, that’s the biggest single increase ever! Yet this government received no credit for that increase, which I don’t think is fair given the stick they got for not spending a much smaller sum on the same group To be fair on the berating bit, I think it was @Winchester White who used the term ‘underclass of cunts’ at the top of this page. I took the tone of his note to mean a small % of overall UC’s claimants fit into that bracket as they have no interest in working, just taking out the system, which I think is fair. That group will be getting £1,000 more per person this year despite not having been impacted financially by the pandemic

I fully understand the restrictions put in place to fight Covid have made life really difficult for many, I’ve been one saying that the restrictions have gone too far and the economy needs to take priority over healthcare Would the situation have been better or worse had the government not increased universal credit by the biggest % of any previous government ever? I’m sure they would have been much worse, yet they got little credit for that increase The point still stands, nobody expected them to spend the extra £8bn on UC this year. Yet the got hammered for initially not spending another £800m on the same group in the way of FSM in the holidays

Nobody ever does anything in January anyway

Their death rate per 100,000 is still considerably better than ours, their economy has performed multiple times better than ours also I wonder what that king would make of our numbers

A lot of the counters have gone to save costs the only way internet grocery shopping can become more profitable is if you have dark stores (for .com customers only, no walk ins) with automation doing large parts of it Paying someone to go round picking peoples shopping for the customers is expensive

20% of Tesco is now through the web site (C&C or delivery) Not 20% of customers mind, over index with the big baskets. Predominantly high affluence families, and both high / low affluence post families Problem is it costs a fortune to service, prices will need to increase to cover it long term

Aye, wouldn’t make a lot of sense starving 60m to death in order to save 500k from dying of Covid

Surely In that case they are breaking the rules anyway? So it doesn’t really matter what the government say the rules are if some are going to do what they want anyway 🤔

Let’s see Even Uni kids who stay away, I doubt they are observing bubbles living away at Uni, they are likely mixing with many more people than they will do going back home to see their parents for a few days

I agree on the kids bit, However of the 12m kids in education, 10m of them are in Nursery, Primary, secondary and 6th form education. Their potential for transmission should dramatically reduce for the 2 weeks over Xmas as they are at home The other 2m are in higher education, some living at home anyway, others living away. Whilst the ones living away travelling home could bring Covid with them that should be more than off set by the 10m+ who are now at a vastly reduced risk of transmission as they aren’t in school

Hardly tier 0 is it Literally nothing is fucking open for two days Folk are carrying on like meeting a few extra people is like one big party

I don’t think your logic holds water Its literally a couple of days where a hell of a lot of points of transmission will be closed, it should more than off set the additional transmission in home by a couple of bubbles merging It’s a sample of 1 but in my bubble me and the wife work from home, our two kids go into nursery every day and mix with 50 others without any social distancing (under 4 you have no chance). Our support bubble includes my Mum and sister (live together), both teaching assistants at different schools mixing with hundreds of kids every day. For 4 days over Xmas we will mix with another bubble. On the whole our interactions are massively reduced as schools and nursery’s are closed. If you apply the same thinking I’m sure many households will be in the same boat, especially if kids are involved.

I don’t think anyone is losing sleep on it Just needs some credit where it’s due, the government put it through back in March yet it barely got a mention despite being the biggest % increase in the benefit ever (through various Labour and Conservative governments) The increase costs £8bn a year, yet they have been hammered for then refusing to spend another £800m a year providing FSM in the holidays, which is essentially just saving someone on UC money. I don’t think that the balance of criticism is right in this instance I’m not sure that we should be blaming this government for not spending money, they have sprayed unimaginable amounts of it all over the place

Might be wrong but I think you can work up to 16 hours a week as well without it impacting your claim. That might have been how it used to work though I think it’s a reasonable system, although it could do with a tweak. Think we spend about £70bn a year on it, roughly half the cost of the NHS

£8bn upping UC for the year £1bn free school meals in the holidays £1bn on ventilators that haven’t been used £70bn Furlough £70bn Business grants The list goes on In context, bailing out the banks in 2008 cost us £137bn, of which we’ve had back £120bn thus far from selling the shares we bought during the bailout (the rest likely to be clawed back over the next few years, you’ll never claw back the Covid costs)

£12bn quid? We’ve done that on PPE alone £400bn and counting (year one), job losses and long term impact on the economy likely to see the total cost get close to £1tn For context the NHS costs £130bn a year to run

Having traded with them for a couple of companies i’d disagree. They are on the whole cheaper than the market on that day Example would be, if a deep deal goes live in Tesco, that same day Costco are on the phone saying they will move to be 10% cheaper (pro rata per serve / KG) all be it on a bigger pack, expecting the supplier to fund it (if you don’t fund it then your out). I’ve never been pulled by another retailer looking at Costco pricing (as it’s membership only) so they get away with it Generally Costco promise that the shopper saves more in % terms than they make in margin. So if the shopper saves 10% vs the best price across all supermarkets then Costco are only making 9% profit (Supermarkets will want to make a minimum 20% on a deep deal, 30%+ normally, ALDI 20%+ normally as they have a lower cost model) Costco make their money on scale / basket size being 4 or even 5 times that of supermarkets

The underclass of cunts will have received more despite not being impacted by Covid (yet still likely have a good moan they didn’t get FSM in the summer holidays) Its the poor folk who have lost their jobs through no fault of their own that I feel sorry for in all this, millions of them, heartbreaking really UC does need amending for me, I don’t see why you only get housing benefit if you rent? I appreciate mortgage holders have been able to take payment holidays but still, a system where your mortgage gets frozen and housing benefit is used to pay the interest (up to a ceiling figure of course) should be in place Also, many European countries also base job seekers on your contributions. If you’ve been working for 20 years earning £50k a year and paying £15k a year in tax you’d get a bit more than if you’d been on £30k a year paying £7.5k in tax (as your outgoings are likely higher). I think that would be a sensible approach

When the shit really hits the fan economically. When taxes are going up left right and centre to start to pay for it all The day will come when a witch hunt begins for all those bastards who have taken out (beyond what’s reasonable) From the scumbags claiming loans when they don’t have a business to the PPE contracts handed to ‘friends’ It will be time to tar and feather the dick heads I think they will give them an amnesty to hand it back, after that the hunt begins

That’s not all of it though, is it? housing benefit, council tax benefit, childcare costs, FSM in term time etc. It’s not meant to be ‘a life’ it’s meant to be a safety net The fact is, in this discussion, the benefit has been increased this year by a bigger % than any previous government has ever risen it (by some distance) That increase has cost the government £8bn this year, the FSM in the school holidays costs less than £1bn for a full year Point being, nobody expected them to increase UC by a bigger % than any other government ever, they got barely any credit for that. Yet they have been hammered for not spending about 10% of that cost providing FSM to the same group in school holidays It’s pure spin and politics for me

Thanks pal Will have them round in a few weeks when they have been vaccinated so they can see the kids

When I say UC, it’s a lot broader now as it covers all benefits (I think) But basically the job seekers element has gone up. Think it used to be £70 a week, they upped it by £20 to £90 a week Calls for it to be increased on a permanent basis... https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2020/dec/14/peers-call-for-universal-credit-boost-to-be-made-permanent in answer to your question, if your in some of the hit sectors then you’d hopefully have benefitted from furlough. If you had been let go (think 1m have) then they are getting more than they would have If you were getting it anyway before Covid, then your getting more now even though you haven’t been impacted by losing your job (although a new job may have been harder to come by)

They don’t give a shit about Covid to be fair, they’ve got bigger worries health wise To be fair, when I speak to most of the people I know, they tell me that their elderly relatives aren’t really that worried about Covid either. They have lived through plenty and had a decent innings as it is, my other nan has literally been waiting to die for about 5 years now Edit - my old man is going to be with them for Xmas. To be fair he is over 60 and has had a heart attack but he lives on his own so has kept himself to himself for most of this. Makes sense for him to go with them and others in the family to get together

Both 80+ Both not in great condition for one reason or another (both in and out of hospital - non Covid) If Covid doesn’t get them then I’d be very surprised if they see the decade out Still, I’m not going to kill them just because of a bit of Turkey Will spend a few days with a slightly larger group of fit and healthy non vulnerable

Does thanksgiving in the US really disagree? How long were the kids off school? How long were businesses shut? What were they restricted to, 3 bubbles or more? I genuinely don’t know but I’m sure Black Friday follows Thanksgiving Thursday and that’s a free for all Besides, I was of the impression that America hasn’t had similar lockdowns so how much was a 1 day holiday and how much was down to the general lighter restrictions over the past 6-8 weeks vs the U.K.