Didnt realise they were in England at the time and were trying to influence us to become Muslims...



Not to mention their cause is completely different.

Whilst there are going to be problems faced by the "workforce" over coming years with rising unemployment etc, what IDS was actually getting at is not those people who have just been made redundant, not those people who dont have the skills to gte jobs BUT those people who cant be d looking for work because the system is such that they get "paid" more in benefits than they would earn in work. Now it may be that the issue is one of job creation but there also has to be an issue of ...perhaps these people are getting too much in benefits.

In relation to gaining skills, I believe in Jersey and areas of the US, people "work" on community projects for a number of horus per week to earn their benefits. Some people do jobs they did when in employment but some people do this to obtain new skills. With some many things that cant be done due to a lack of resources for labour (many of which dont need specialist skills) why not introduce something similiar in the UK.

....I can see the Daily Mail has brainwashed you!!

Could you just explain how they are trying to 'influence us to become Muslims'??......Personally, I've not had anybody try to influence me....Nobody supporting Islam has ever knocked on my door (unlike Jehovah's, Mormon, various Christian groups).

Has for their 'cause'?....What are you on about?....The Irish catholics complain of illegal English invasion into their country, which is what most of these Muslim extremists seem to be complaining about too....

The Irish want their country to be their own, thats fine and fair enough and you can understand where theyre coming from.

Breaking it all down, Osama Bin Laden kicked this whole thing off by declaring "war on the west" because of how our way of life is "wrong". Since then, all the nutjob clerics have BRAINWASHED (to use your wording) a proportion of general Muslims into extremists, and ramming their extreme views down peoples throats. Hence all these protests, banners and effigy fires etc.

In playground terms... They started it!!



I think everyones aware why were in iraq / Afghanistan, its for Oil and Heroin. Why did we take Ireland? I dont know. So i can see where Celtic fans are coming from, whereas these noobs i cant. They dont like our way of life then sod off.

You say that nobody has tried to influence you, the whole war is about a big bloody influence.... heres the early start to it. Broaden your mind lol www.guardian.co.uk/world/2002/nov/24/theobserver

You say that nobody has tried to influence you, the whole war is about a big bloody influence.... heres the early start to it. Broaden your mind lol www.guardian.co.uk/world/2002/nov/24/theobserver

And for those who cba reading the whole letter from Bin Laden to America / the west...

b) It is the religion whose book - the Quran - will remained preserved and unchanged, after the other Divine books and messages have been changed. The Quran is the miracle until the Day of Judgment. Allah has challenged anyone to bring a book like the Quran or even ten verses like it.

(2) The second thing we call you to, is to stop your oppression, lies, immorality and debauchery that has spread among you.

(a) We call you to be a people of manners, principles, honour, and purity; to reject the immoral acts of fornication, homosexuality, intoxicants, gambling's, and trading with interest.

So because they have oil and heroin that we can pilfer, then invading their country is fine and dandy???...



Personally, I think their gripe is as valid and as legitimate as the Irish, even if their method of protest leaves a little to be desired.

To be honest, I reckon you should just stop taking your Daily Mail too seriously.....Those few who did the poppy burning are no more a threat to our way of life than Griffin and his posse of nutters who want to drag us back into the dark ages.

Why did we take Ireland? Who knows; Guiness and potatoes probably. Although I guess it was to do with all the food (wheat I think) that was imported from there into England whilst the local population starved due to consecutive failures of the potato crop.

I would love to here your view on the Falklands War or the "Stake A Claim For Antartic Mineral Rights" War as I like to call it.

Well the reality is that in all these cases, most of the protesters, aren't doing it because they were directly affected, they just identify with a group and want to protest and get some attention. I doubt many of those Celtic fans were directly affected by the British occupation, they have just grown up being told that the British army are scum, so its programmed in them that anything to do with the British army, they have to react by opposing it. Same with the Muslims, they have everybody calling them terrorists and have the British army bombing their homelands, so it's programmed in them (and encouraged by nutjob clerics) to oppose everything the British army stands for.

And then you get students throwing fire extinguishers off buildings and smashing up buildings over fees that they aren't going to have to pay, they have just latched onto a cause and used it as an excuse to fight.

must be a sense of pride amongst the Irish the way they fought Germany in that first world war....

I suppose offending 40,000 dead Irish soldiers is acceptable if your insulting 680,000 English Scottish and Welsh dead Soldiers.

Celtic fans they havent got a clue

The Falklands War has been misinterpreted through history. The levels of mineral reserves were based on speculation and in the years leading up to the war, we were trying to find ways of negotiating away the Falklands without losing face.

When Galtieri invaded, the general view from the British government, the military and the establishment was that the Falklands wasn't worth it, the odds of success in a military campaign were slim, any financial benefits from holding the Falklands were uncertain and would be many years away, the country was in the middle of a recession and this was an expense we couldn't afford with very little chance of success and Mrs Thatcher was taking a huge political gamble in taking us into what could be a hugely embarrassing defeat. The Americans were friends with Galtieri just like every right wing dictator who persecuted communists so they were dead against us going to war.

Thatcher fought that war on principle and she was in the minority of her own Government and advisors in going to conflict. With hindsight people say she fought that war to get her popularity up, but at the time the military feared that we couldn't possibly sustain a war against Argentina, fought on such a distance with a limited fleet. In fact had it not been for the Argentinian air force getting the wrong fuses so most of their bombs didn't activate when they hit our ships, they could have destroyed our fleet.

I wont say fine and dandy, but in a round about way, the answer is yes. Without Oil the whole Western world would crumble. I think (without researching) theres enough oil in the world to last another 30 years at the current rate of consumption, so the stocks of oil they have access to over there we need to control, because if we dont, and they hike costs / access, we are knackered.

Feel free to correct me if im wrong.

I only wish the British and American government would come out and say " Look guys, it aint a war on terror, if we dont do this now were buggered in the near future". Then all the anti war brigade will have to just swallow the pill that it is our livelihoods that are going to be directly affected unless we act now, as we are doing.

For the record, i dont read the daily mail either. I base my opinions from a range of sources, be that News, newspapers, Al Jazeera, whatever, and choose whether to believe some stories and take others not so seriously.

Dont get me started on whether 9/11 was a consiracy too

lol

If you think the 'Extremist Muslims' only came about when Osama Bin Laden turned up then you're more ignorant than I thought. And as for brainwashed...

If you read my post i said a proportion.

EDIT and the topic is the modern governments changes and im highlighting whats going on right here right now, not the foundation of extremist muslims, as surely they would date back to when the Koran was written

Breaking it all down. You kicked it off by saying.

Yeh the recent war. What you tryna get at mate? Its pretty clear that this topic aint a history of muslim extremists! Be constructive, stop trying to find fault in peoples posts when even the local village idiot can tell it is on about recent events, ie modern government, post 9/11 shenanigans et al! Bloody hell dude

DERAILTASTIC.
This thread was about IDS's mission (cause that's what he's been doing since he lost the Tory leadership) to get the majority of the unemployed (who can work) back to work, now it's become a morallistic "football" re Ireland/Bin Laden/Maggie-Falklands/Muslim extremists. It's beginning to become as sanctimonious as some of the "debates" the RLFANS "hierarchy" have on The Sin Bin.

Back on subject. Great. Get ALL of the DON'T WORK, WONT WORK (because they DO exist, no matter what the apologists say) back into jobs, menial tasks or not. NO-ONE has the given right to sponge of the state for n number of years.

So who employs them? Would you hire them and pay the minimum wage, plus all the employers national insurance contributions, to do a 'menial task'?

The government can't command private companies to hire these people. They have the pick of the market now, there's hundreds of thousands of recently redundant people who want to work, and have a track record of getting out of bed and working, so when companies need to hire people even for low level jobs, they are going to hire these people not the long term dossers.

The only way you can get the long term unemployed into work is if the state employs them, in socialist societies you get the state making everybody work and providing menial jobs that don't really need doing, for the sake of making people do something with their lives. However even if you paid these people low wages, the costs of this are expensive because you end up paying them more than you are currently paying them on the dole, and you have to hire people to manage them and supervise them, on higher wages, and it becomes a government job creation scheme which the Tory government won't do because it's trying to cut public sector jobs not increase them.

The Tory government is hoping that it can force these people into 'jobs' but it can't force the people hiring, to hire them, they will just hire other people who actually want to work and aren't total losers.

So what do we do then, Sal, with these people. Just because the private sector will have (admitted) reluctance to take the workshy on ( I DO see exactly where you're coming from), do we, as a society, simply allow them to sit on their lazy "bottoms" and watch their equivalents on Jeremy Kyle/Trisha every day, or do we "shake them up" and get them to actually contribute to society, and not take all the time.

I've done some time on the dole, during my time of working age, due to redundancies/site closures/end of contracts, and it aint a nice place to be, yet to SOME, it's a way of life, and it's usually the shell suit wearing "herbert" who just "doen't give one" about working.

I think IDS for all his uselesness, is the nearest thing we'll get to a compassionate Tory, so we better get used to it.

Logging off for the weekend now....ahh Guinness, real ale and Shiraz, but not on the same night....what a hangover that'd be.

The jobs vs candidates available debate is interesting because there will never be enough jobs to get everyone employed and there is a fair argument in your claims Sally.

But let's not forget that this "scheme" is aimed at putting a halt to those people who openly and continously "turn down" offers of employment in an effort to remain state funded. We are not talking about penalising those who genuinely cannot get work because they are under or non-skilled. That's a different issue entirely. This is geared towards the type of people who I mentioned at the start of the topic who refuse to work because they know that JSA plus any additional state benefits will pay more divedends collectively than a full time job on min wage - and the peachy extra on top is that they get to sit on their s all day too. Add a brat or two to the household and your laughing. The whole notion of which is so fundamentally wrong it's not even funny.

Feasability issues aside, and theoretically speaking, it would be interesting if the government could set up free training centres for the non-skilled jobless leading to PROPER industry recognised qualifications, with a view to a university style loan which would be paid back once working and being paid X £p.a. It would at least perhaps give some people who did want to work a sense of belonging and pride. I understand however that cost implications and success rates would almost certainly make this a non starter.

FLFANs at its sweeping generalisation-tastic best.

I've read all of the posts on this topic and responding to the original question -

Fortunately I've never been unemployed, am educated and have a reasonable standard of living.

I do think that there is a strong argument for getting people on benefit to contribute in some way in order to recieve them - especially those who are quite happy with 'a life on the dole' and have no incentive to do anything.
In my view (and supported by independant research) people must have some structure and objective in their lives - and getting them to get up at a decent time for work, do something productive for the community is one way of attempting to do that, or by getting training etc to support them back to work.

One of the things I do have a concern with though is that people who go before the courts and are convicted of a crime are often handed 'community service' as a punishment.

So what then is the difference between a criminal doing community service and an unemployed person doing community service?

I really think this sends out the wrong message.
Unemployed perople are not (generally) criminals and the system shouldn't be set up to put the 2 in the same bracket.

There needs to be a clear differentiation here.

I have no time for criminals. They should face punishment (and in selective cases rehabilitation).
I have no time for people who are work-shy, lazy or think the state owes them a living, but they are not criminals, but they do need to realise that they are not going to be given 'money for nothing'.
I have a lot of time for those made unemployed through no fault of their own and who look to get back into work by actively seeking employment or getting training. They deserve support.

I was discussing this today at work with a few Asians that I employ. Although they are embarrased & disgusted by the actions of the poppy burners none of us could recall see'ing any examples of Muslim Clerics or community leaders condemming them ?

What would happen to a Christian in a Muslim country if they & openly & purposely destroyed the Koran for example as a means of protest against Al'Queda attacks ? I'm pretty confident they wouldn't even get the right to protest, let alone Police protection. They'd more than likely get stoned to death (which would be deemed as legal under Shairia law).

The PC brigade in this country have got it all wrong. Protect the minorities.... screw the majority.

There are 5,000,000 people who do not work in this country and approx 500,000 jobs unfilled. Until that gap dramatically closes, and it ain't going to happen in the next few years, we have to accept a level of mass unemployment. The Tories 'bash the workshy' rhetoric is aimed at trying to introduce popular polices during tough economic times. No more no less. By all means introduce schemes to improve the environment using previously 'unemployable' people, but do this in a way that can be sustained and that can give people skills for the future.

If recent policies are meant to save money then again, don't be fooled. Taxes on financial transactions and [ireal [/iattempts to take more from the rich (and that ain't anybody earning 40 odd grand a year), will save 10 times the amount than under current proposals. The 0.04% ' banking tax' recently introduced was pathetic. Absolutely pathetic. If we really are all in this together, then surely these are acceptable ways to help cut the deficit ??

Well, ramble over. Get the Stella out.

So we should adopt the same policies you are criticising?