The truth about 'Road Pricing'...
- Thread starter ellal
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megawatt said:
I think your use of the word extreme is misleading, but I would agree I have become less patient with certain posters. I had a bad day yesterday and I think that showed in my posts. I was not meaning to get personal and none of my comments were meant in that way, they were more attempts to be sarcastic..perhaps that simply does not work on a forum.
megawatt said:
Totally agree with that statement. That is what makes a democrasy great, despite the failing of government, everyone is entitled to their own opinion ans we don't have to agree.
megawatt said:A piece of advice from an uninformed observer ... Don't take up politics ... You'd starve
I may not agree with you there, however rest assured I have no plans to throw my morals down the drain and join the lowest profession man has ever created.
masona said:
Actually Masona the apology should come from me. Yes I did say that, but were I failed was in explaining the crime they should prevent. Obviously they will never prevent murder, bank robberies etc, but they would significantly reduce credit/debit card fraud, ID theft and certainly all the huge amount of unreported crime, such as tax evasion and related activities. I apologise for the confusion and for being lazy and not going back and readin my earlier post.
masona said:
Masona, the UN survey on crime rates was based on official figures and peoples perception of crime. I realise that there is a gulf of difference between reported crime and recorded crime and the amount of crime that actually occurs, but this problem exists in all nations. As a result we can only realistically use the reported crime figures from each nation in order to evaluate the rate of crime in a given nation state and thus make reasonably accurate, per head of population, comparisons.
Note from the Telegraph article:
The UN has been blasted for this type of figure manipulation in the past, they do it in many areas. According to this survey the US has a lower crime figure than the UK, however if you go to the US official website for the year this survey pertains too , then you find that in 2002 the number of citizens sent to prison in the UK was 22,178, however in the US the figure was 267,541, or 12.06 times the UK number, however when you make a per head of population calculation (UK 59.5 Million, USA 262.7 Million), the actual crime rate is three times the UK as the population of the US is only 4.4 times the UK.
I accept that figures such as these are not as accurate as we would like, but the reality of crime in the UK is that it is lower than many industrialised nations when calculated per head of population. Of course there is more crime here than in say Canada or Australia as they have far lower populations too, however crime in many nations goes unreported, so any figure we put on such a topic will always be inaccurate and can always be manipulated to suit a given political ideology.
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100% agree, at the end of the day we all know a high crime rate is happening but what is the answer? I can't see any other way than having more police & building more prison. The problem is, the politicians knew about this 30 yrs ago that this would happen, the same old story, let the next government sort it out! The Labour government are letting out over 25,000 prisoners out to make room in prisons so they are most likely to re-offend again!Stulz said:
ellal said:
Ellal, if you have an ID card, whether mandatory to carry or not, certain crimes can be significantly reduced by their use. Take Debit/Credit card fraud, something like 60% of reported crime in the UK, according to Police figures last year, is of this type. If, when you present such a card, the store keeper/assistant asked to see your ID card, this would prevent their use except by the person whose card it is. Of course it would be reliant on people asking and checking, and so is not infallible, but it would certainly make in roads. The lack of ID cards has actually been highlighted as to the reason why fraudulent us of Debit/Credit cards is worse in the UK than anywhere else in the industrialised nations, although I accept that this is oversimplifying the matter.
Tax evasion.
Employer A hirers a person who is legally allowed to work in the UK, he has seen their ID card or similar proof and registered them for Tax and National Insurance Payments. He pays them the national minimum wage say and he too makes the tax and NI contributions that an employer is supposed to make for that wage. It's all legal and above board.
Employer B is in competition with Employer A. He hirers a person who he knows is illegal in the country or not allowed to work whilst here. He fails to pay them the Minimum wage, he fails to register them for Tax and NI contributions, he does not pay his employers tax and NI contributions and he fails to buy mandatory Employers Liability Insurance.
Employer B saves say £100 a week in wages, the tax and NI system looses say £100 a week and on top of that he is harming the business of Employer A who simply cannot compete with the lower operational costs of Employer B, thus he loses business, pays less Corporation Tax as a result and may even cease trading, thus his staff lose their jobs and perhaps end up claiming benefits and thus become a burden on the economy rather than adding to it.
If you estimate that Employer B has 6 staff (say it's a fast food restaurant) and he saves something like £6000 a year on each one, and the tax system is down say £3500 per employee, so the exchequer loses a total of about £21,000 per year.
Now if ID cards are introduced, and details of their ID card must be recorded by employers and registered, then these details can be checked. Obviously it may not stop all such practices, but it would certainly reduce a heck of a lot, that would mean more money into the tax system. Lets not also forget that if these people that work legally are paid properly, they are also paying tax on their money in purchases, as they will be earning more they will be spending more and thus even more money into the exchequer. I accept it is not as simplistic as I made that sound there!
Remember that every time someone employs a person "cash in hand" they are committing the crime of Tax evasion, and that they are stealing from every law abiding person in the country is in no doubt. Police Intelligence units have given evidence to the Government that shows that the majority of people involved in this type of activity are usually also involved in other forms of crime, in some instances this will involve drug traffiking, people traffiking, terrorism, fraud, ID theft and many related and organised crimes.
This is not some made up fantasy, this is a cold hard fact, and one of the weapons in combating it is, whether we like it or not, a national ID card system. On it's own an ID system will not prevent a crime taking place, but they will reduce a lot of what is called "low level crime" that is often the foundation for higher and organised crimes.
Further, the only weapon the security services have in combating Illegal Immigrants in this country at the moment is information from the public, which is as rare as rocking horse droppings and often as useful as a chocolate fireguard. If an ID card was introduced and made mandatory for a short period with random stops, then those here illegally could be identified and removed. I am not saying such a system is a panacea, but it will help to significantly reduce the scale of the problem and as such reduce crime overall. If crime is reduced, then perhaps the Police will have more time to address the types of crime that many people currently feel they do not care about, such as burglary etc.
Please do take into account this is not the be all and end all of the issues, this is a brief post to answer your questions. I accept that many people have concerns over such a system, but to be honest this is one system that i feel must be introduced in order to keep the freedoms we all enjoy. Without it I can see future governments introducing legislation that will allow the security services have more powers of investigation that may truly impede our freedoms in a stealthy way.
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The government, if it wanted to, could just about wipe out illegal immigration at the stroke of a pen. The illegal immigrants are here to work the black economy. Go behind the scenes at just about any big hotel or restaurant in London and you'll find them.
If the government introduced a team of on-the-spot inspectors to check the credentials of every employee in industries known to use illegal labour, and fined employers £20,000 for every illegal immigrant working illegally - then the practice would cease overnight.
However, with an estimated one million illegals working the black economy, you would suddenly find that you've got a million people on the streets with no money and nowhere to live. So crime would simply explode!
Not only that, the work the illegals were doing would no longer get done and the place would just about grind to a halt.
The bottom line is that the government actually WANTS illegal immigrants in the system as they keep wages suppressed and they contribute their labour to our economy without adding to inflation which suits the government just fine and dandy.
If the government introduced a team of on-the-spot inspectors to check the credentials of every employee in industries known to use illegal labour, and fined employers £20,000 for every illegal immigrant working illegally - then the practice would cease overnight.
However, with an estimated one million illegals working the black economy, you would suddenly find that you've got a million people on the streets with no money and nowhere to live. So crime would simply explode!
Not only that, the work the illegals were doing would no longer get done and the place would just about grind to a halt.
The bottom line is that the government actually WANTS illegal immigrants in the system as they keep wages suppressed and they contribute their labour to our economy without adding to inflation which suits the government just fine and dandy.
megawatt said:The many people, like me, who fear the long term consequences and potential abuses of an ID card will never accept that its use in the fight against crime or terror is justified ... Just accept that and move on
Hardly a rational explanation mega.. One possible outcome is no reason to bury your head in the sand. This is a demorcrasy, and so your comment is rather dictatorial. I don't like it so go away!! Very mature.
If we didn't do something to fight crime because it might be abused by a minority at some later point, then there would be no laws to combat crime and criminal behaviour. My personal feeling is that you are unable to counter the logical and economic arguments so you simply post a silly comment, which does you no justice what so ever.
joe-90 said:
And that argument is not born out by the economics of the problem either, And that is the opinion of the Government, Immigration groups, The Police and other Security Services and several economic think tanks.
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