Give these guys a rise.......

[R1Geezer]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-13555162
and take it out of the massive workshy scum budget. Why are we cutting a few pounds from front line heroes when we pay for snout and white lightning for the dregs?

[Ankou]

its an annual bonus for jumping out of a plane.

i sympathise with these underpaid chaps i really do, but if they don't jump out of a plane in a year, why get a bonus ?

[R1Geezer]

Not enough money......apart from the 120billion we give out in benefits, the entire military budget is 1 third of that. The NHS gets 80billion, the waste is incredible. If we streamline the big things we get the biggest savings but know we'd rather cut a few quid where there won't be any moaning.

[Ankou]

yes, thats pretty much what tiamaria said above.

[flip_flop]

...but many are Tiamaria.

Those who can't work deserve our help. Those that choose not to work do not.

[youngmafbog]

The figures alone show that there are too many taking benefit instead of working. Whenever a disabilty benefit investigation is done many suddenly are fine. Benefits should be a saftey net and not a way of living.

It should be changed. We shoudl apporach the likes of Lidel to create food packages, no money whatsoever. If people can have cars on/flat screens/playstations etc then it is too much. The first 6 months after someone is out of work then fine, then cut it until 18 months when you go to food parcels.

On top of that the NHS is a disgrace and I see the BMA are trying to protect it Gawd help us.

And dont get me started on the billions going on foreign aid.

[Gromit]

The Libya Adventure is costing an extra £1billion.

The Coalition's fantasies of paying off the deficit are a con, they won't do it. April was a record month for public borrowing, even dwarfing anything Labour did in 13 years.

It is the usual Tory policy, pay people not to work, lose all their tax revenues and then run out of money for services (including parachuting cooks).

[R1Geezer]

where as labour pay people to do jobs that don;t exist at twice the price, yeah great idea Gromit!

[Gromit]

Then they take a big dollop of tax off them but leave enough for them to spend and keep the economy healthy.

Or you cut jobs, lose their tax paying potential and you get stagnation, inflation and your debts get worse instead of better.

// Public borrowing excluding the bank bail-outs – the key measure of the budget deficit – widened to £9.95bn in April from £7.25bn for the same month last year. The sharp rise was down to a fall in tax receipts and a rise in expenditure despite the spending cuts. //

http://www.telegraph....-April-on-record.html

[R1Geezer]

Let's see, pay them 10k in benefits or 40k to be a lesbian outreach worker against the bomb! mmmm tricky one!

[Gromit]

Ask the Chancellor if he would rather have no tax from 10K or 30% of 40K.

Ask the local shops and businesses if they would rather their customers had no money to spend, or a few £thousand.

[Ellipsis]

Gromit, if somebody is paid £40K from the public purse to work in the state sector and then taxed 30% on it, the public purse is £27K down. If instead they're paid £10K in benefits from the public purse, then the public purse is only £10K down.

R1Geezer, I agree that all our forces deserve our respect and admiration and to be paid fairly - but I don't see why the Paras should be paid more just for being Paras, especially when they haven't been deployed in that capacity since Suez. If they're worth that £180 per month extra then let's pay it to them, but to say they're all being paid it because their training is being maintained (also at a cost to us) for a situation that hasn't cropped up in 55 years isn't sustainable. The decision to reduce capacity in the Paras seems entirely sensible to me, if a shame ...

[Coobeastie]

It mentions cooks and quartermasters...can't see why they'd need to be paying them extra to maintain the ability to jump out of planes especially as the regiment hasn't been called upon to make an operational jump since 1956.

[anotheoldgit]

Gromit has obviously high-jacked this thread to get over his anti-Tory rhetoric.

Going down this line all political parties have their faults but perhaps he should first look at his own party (the party that put us in this mess) before he criticises others.

Getting back on track, before the coalition government starts bleeding our heroes dry, perhaps they should first cream some off the bonuses of the paper shuffling Civil Servants at the Ministery of Defence?

[modeller]

coobeastie You are right as far as I remember from my army days. You do your para training and you are paid extra but you then return to your regiment and may never jump ever again.
If you were called upon to do a refresher course you were paid extra during the course only.
Nowadays I believe Paras are not used. by any army . Helicopters are far more safe and efficient .

[rov1100]

They should ask for demob and get a job as a lowly bank clerk who are overpaid and many of them thick to boot..

[Quizmonster]

Of course the public purse isn't £27 K down in these circumstances, Ellipsis...at least not unless the worker fails to spend a single penny of it...and how is he going to manage that?
If he buys a pint for three quid, a barman/maid will have served it to him, draymen will have delivered it, brewmen will have made it and all of them will pay tax on their earnings. The brewery will pay corporation tax etc as long as the £27k man - and all the other drinkers - keep chipping in to their profits.
Similar returns to the Treasury will apply in different ways to all the OTHER pounds he spends, too...fuel tax, tobacco tax, VAT. I'll leave it at that.

[ludwig]

If only the government would employ everyone. Then there'd be no unemployment, we'd all have a job for life and retire at 55 with a huge pension. The massive amounts of of tax revenue they'd get back would mean they could bring in more even people from abroad and employ them too - thus generating yet more revenue.

[Answerprancer]

"Not everyone on benefits or receive some benefits are workshy scum".
Good luck with that one Tiamaria, people (myself included) have tried telling this many times to no avail
Anyway AB's small contingent of fascists are now uniting to back him up in this thread so expect lots of terms like "hand wringing lefties" "ooman rights" and "END OF".