£220 per year to park you car at work, the joys of the NHS.

[workhard]

What do you call lower paid as opposed to low paid. It is all relative so I can't see what you are comparing it to.

I regard, for instance, what my son is paid or thereabouts as "low paid"; he gets the state minimum wage. In saying "lower paid" I'm comparing what I earn now to what I used to earn when commuting to and working in London.

Sometimes the situation is such that you can only go down one path and it doesn't only apply to countries other than the UK in 2008.

We will have to agree to differ on that point, clearly your experience of this is different to mine. Both of us may well be right.

[hubgearfreak]

the geographical redistribution idea suggested by Hubbers, then he's right ... but ... its going to take years (poss decades) before the equalisation has taken its course.

thanks. the fuel price escalator introduced under Major & Selwyn Gummer and sadly dropped by New Labour after a dozen lorries drove slowly on the motorway would have brought the time of sense forward.

which is exactly the point workhard made . . . .

they will claim, as some do already, that the state must then intervene and assist them or bail them out and reduce fuel and other taxes, provide subsidies, nationalise the bankrupt banks, etc., etc..

[pigman]

The big problem trying to argue the £5/litre issue is that it creeps up. So if its an increase of 10p this week, you arent going to make massive lifestyle changes this saturday. Same next, and the next. If on the other hand it jumped to £5 or £10 this week, then you might. Until we reach breaking point, people in general arent going to anything. maybe they should, but commitments mean that people will firefight till theyre broken. At break point you have 2 options
1. Stay in your current job and move house - highly emotive
2. Live where you are and find local employment - highly costly

why not...

3. Change your job/career and move house - highly effective

or is that not a real choice?

It is a real choice, should be considered. Ive been there/done it (well the career bit). But it was relatively easy. It was a career that never really suited me, so wasnt an intrinsic part of life, we had both earned good money and arent materialistic and we bought property before the boom, so mortgage is low and we had kids fairly late in life. What I said was, it isnt always an easy decision and depending on who it directly affects, its harder. Personally, I feel "hats off" to him whos done it , "hats back on" when that person smugly tells everyone else how easy it is and can and should be done with immediate effect.

My fear is thousands will firefight until well beyond the point where their futures are broken beyond fixing but then they will claim, as some do already, that the state must then intervene and assist them or bail them out and reduce fuel and other taxes, provide subsidies, nationalise the bankrupt banks, etc., etc..

youre right there, no arguments

It seems many are happy to live according to the market on the upswing but want the state to intervene or control things on the downswing

right again, no argument

[workhard]

Personally, I feel "hats off" to him whos done it , "hats back on" when that person smugly tells everyone else how easy it is and can and should be done with immediate effect.

Not my intention to be smug or self satisified or tell everyone anything about the facts of their lives. I'm simply trying to radically challenge, in a fairly closed forum, a mindset of "got no freedom of choice" being articulated by a few people in the context of a debate over employee's t's & c's being unilaterally changed. I'm not saying anyone should change their job and/or location but rather they could if they chose to. The worse thing IMO about the way ecomomics and politics have gone in UK since 1979 to present day is the way many, many of our people now feel trapped and afraid of the future, and are utterly convinced they cannot change their circumstances whoever unsatisfactory they find them to be.

Specifically if your employer tries to screw you over and treats you unfairly join a trade union, fight them, find another employer or simply accept that you are complicit in the screwing.

btw would it be regarded it smug if someone posted on here "I've taken up cycling after a 5 year break and as a result have lost 3 stone, hurrah, you can do it too"?

[pigman]

Not my intention to be smug or self satisified or tell everyone anything about the facts of their lives.

hey, I never said it was you. The point I was trying to make was that it was becoming very polarised. On one hand we had (or so it appeared to me) those saying "do it tomorrow, its a no brainer" and the other half saying "no choice, cant be done".

I'm simply trying to radically challenge, in a fairly closed forum, a mindset of "got no freedom of choice" being articulated by a few people in the context of a debate over employee's t's & c's being unilaterally changed. I'm not saying anyone should change their job and/or location but rather they could if they chose to.

in truth youre right - it is an option. Someone (dont know who) said "your probably always right - if you say you cant, then you cant, if you say you can, then you can"

btw would it be regarded it smug if someone posted on here "I've taken up cycling after a 5 year break and as a result have lost 3 stone, hurrah, you can do it too"?

well its a much easier decision for one - £50 for a bike from the local rag, and youre a goer. And it really doesnt affect anyone else or how theyre going to run their lives. In terms of smugness, it depends on how its articulated and to whom. If you posted it simply like that on an open forum then most would applaud you. If you sanctimoniously told every overweight person you saw that they didnt have to be like that and to follow your example then possibly yes. If you then tried to tell a disabled person to ignore their problems and just ride, then again, youd be unpopular.

[workhard]

Pigman - good points well made. Let's be happy about the stuff we agree on and agree to disagree amicably about the stuff we don't.

[glueman]

My wife works in a large institution of several hundred employees. There used to be three provider car parks within a ten minute walk as well as the (almost impossible to get on) one adjacent to the work place. They've sold off all but one car park.
Although it inconveniences her it's hard to argue with the logic with land values being so high. One thing that would make life easier for everyone is a dedicated minibus service. Most employees live within certain areas and a shuttle would cost a modest amount to run, on a fare per trip basis, and do away with the hassle of finding parking, hanging around at bus stops and free up the local roads.

Salaries are high enough to support the initiative and only a handful of senior management are provided with parking spots. If it were costed I'm sure it would make sense, give less-stressed employees and be environmentally beneficial.
Re. the hospital point when my wife went into labour I was prepared to dump the car anywhere but was fortunate enough to find a place - a miracle in itself. The duty nurse assured me the clamping signs were hot air and the hospital wouldn't risk being sued in emergency cases anyway!

[CJ]

For the best part of half a century, UK taxation has promoted home ownership over renting, and as house prices have risen into higher stamp duty brackets, Britain has gotten itself a geographically sticky working population. At the same time we've ended the job-for-life and promoted the idea of a mobile workforce with lax, business-friendly labour laws. This astounding lack of joined-up thinking has given our country, one of the most densely populated in Europe, the longest average commuting distances!

Solution: waive stamp duty, give grants even, when a household's main earner moves closer to and not more than 5 miles from their place of employment. Finance this with a punitive rate of stamp duty on house puchases that are more than 10 miles from the place of employment of any member of the household.

For most of my life I've tried to do the right things. For 30 years I travelled by bike and train rather than car, but by 2004 motoring had become 11% cheaper whilst trains were 70% more expensive and could no longer be relied upon to carry my bike. I got the message society was telling me - and a car. But government had another message. It levies heavy annual charges on owning a car, the cost of which is reduced the more I drive it. So rather than use the expensive trains (that stop within a few yards of my house) I do that. Even with fuel at £1.30 a litre, the marginal cost of driving is a fraction of the fare.

Solution: Scrap VED and provide free third party insurance and annual MOT test, financed by raising fuel duty to a level that is tax-neutral for the average motorist. This will nevertheless raise a surplus, due to elimination of costs of VED collection and evasion (10% have no tax or insurance or MOT, but they can't avoid buying fuel!) which should subsidise low-cost, bike-friendly, trains. People will not give up their cars, so the only way to persuade them to drive less is to shift the costs from ownership to use.

All solutions must be tax neutral, or else they'll be electoral suicide and politicians don't do that. But I'm not very hopeful that they'll do these things either, since the media is run by people who willfully misrepresent any challenge to their weekend cottages and high mileage lifestyle as a threat to Joe Public too.

[pigman]

Pigman - good points well made. Let's be happy about the stuff we agree on and agree to disagree amicably about the stuff we don't.

happily, when it comes down to it, I dont think we disagree on much. Its probably just semantics. So Im happy to park it for the mo (unless of course someone (anyone) touches a nerve)

[pigman]

CJ comes up with some good stuff, especially shifting the cost from fixed charges to use. But the free 3rd party insurance would never work. At the moment, the no claims bonus acts as as a sort of regulator to ensure good driving. This would no longer matter. And imagine the number of bogus claims to get new wings/bumpers etc.

Also the house ownership uptake is much more than tax policy. its ingrained in our culture back from the feudal middle ages when land ownership equalled status/power/wealth. Cliches like "an englishman's home is his castle" were never more true.

[fatboy]

The house owning issue also comes about because of spiralling house prices relative to earnings. People buy homes earlier on in their lives, tying themselves down geographically because if they don't it now they might not afford the one next up the ladder.

I couldn't actually afford to buy /pay the mortgage on the house I live in. Even when I bought it 6+ years ago this was the case but since I already owned a flat which had appreciated in value I could afford the family home that we needed. The value of my house has in rough terms gone up by about 75% (may not be quite as much at the moment) whereas in the same time my salary has gone up by about 8%! Crazy! Apparently inflation is bad but house inflation is good according to economists. Mind you they asked the "public" what they thought and generally they didn't care. Before you go there I was in negative equaty for most of the 90s living in a pokey flat that I couldn't sell so house prices going down isn't good all round either.

I probably couldn't afford to rent my house either. Mind you owning a house is only really good because at some point you won't have to pay anyone to live in it.

[workhard]

CJ drives a CAR

Crikey what else has changed since I let my CTC membership lapse....

[pigman]

CJ drives a CAR

Crikey what else has changed since I let my CTC membership lapse....

yeah I was as surprised as you. He sneaked that one in

Now I'm guessing ... 6 litre hummer?, 1 litre corsa?, Prius hybid?

[thirdcrank]

If you look back, you will find that CJ has posted before on how had come to buy a car after a lifetime of avoiding doing so.

[Sares]

My comment about mortgages & renting probably did sound horribly smug. Sorry, it wasn't really meant to, and wasn't really in comparison to ianr's situation either. He obviously has other factors constraining his choices. It's mostly relief compared to the situation of my friends and co-workers my age, who either still live with their parents, or struggle under mortgage payments that they can't afford.

I was curious this morning, so I checked what we would pay if we bought the house we currently rent. We could probably just about get a mortgage for it, but it would cost in monthly payments nearly twice what we pay in rent. So it would be a lot harder to manage financially. I don't know what the tax implications would be, though.

I don't mean to suggest that anyone ought to go and do the same thing, or that it's easy.