Ian-S

Balls has said if he get's in he'll follow Osbourne's idea, whether he means that or not is another thing.
Tax credits are complicated, but they're for everybody, working or not, infact some tax credits are not available to the unemployed.
However I do agree with you, Sky, mobiles, internet, 42" TV's, iPads etc are not a necessity to live and it pisses he off no end to see people apparently spending their £70 a week on that, but there is often more to this than meets the eye, a person could have bought the TV long before becoming unemployed, or has bought t on credit (which is another conversation all together).
We have a problem in this country where the jump between being unemployed and the benefit of being employed is not a big enough financial gap, so it is very often better for a person financially to sign on than it is work full time, this was made worse when the social housing cap was scrapped, meaning new tenants had to find 3x as much to rent their flat than their neighbour.
I won't go into specifics either but I often work with people who are so near the bottom of the barrel they cannot see daylight, and I can assure you they don't have TV's, mobiles or sky and living on £70 a week is a struggle, especially if they get sanctioned for 3 months due to arriving 2 minutes late for their assessment thanks to the bus arriving late, IDS has done a very good job of painting a picture of the country being bought to it's knees and it's simply not true (but there are some bad apples as you say).
IMHO the whole system needs scrapping and starting again, the Governement needs to stop privatising off everything and neglecting all the bits they are responsible for, and get out of Europe, not that we can, even if there was a 100% turnout and 99% voted to leave, we couldn't action it.

No you didn't, I just didn't make myself clear, I have a half decent smartphone and it costs me about a quid to run a month, but then I'm not on the phone all day every day - Internet is a little different, there are oftn hidden charges, like the need to rent a phone line at £15 a month on top, I guess you could say this is what library is for. But as you say, £40 a month contract phones are not necessary, it was those I was talking about.
You highlight a good issue, money management, the number of people I come across that have no idea of their outgoings is astronomical, and a fair percentage of these are NOT unemployed, it should be taught in schools from a very young age IMHO.

On my day / overnight visits to Chessington I have bought diesel from the Petrol Station going to the M25, used the M&S as well.  Got Pizza from Pizza Hut, used the Tesco Express and off licence from further down the road.  Gone to a few pubs in the area.
 
So looking at it, I contribute a lot to the local area, which if Chessington wasn't there, I wouldn't.

Osborne said he would wipe out the deficit by 2015 when he came to office, thankfully the Lib Dems stopped him, although he blames the EU for it.
 

Labour did increase spending (on public services like the NHS and Schools) but the £4 for £1 figure also takes into account the £500 billion they used to bail out the banks, as I said before, had the Conservatives been in power at the time, they would have had to bail out the banks too.
Having said that, Labour did do some seriously dumb stuff during their tenure.
 

Labour didn't cause the recession or make it worse, the banks did that all by themselves.
Also don't forget that in the mid-2000's when Labour wanted to loosen up the Banking Regulations, the Conservatives wanted much looser regs, essentially making the Banking Industry be self policing. Imagine how bad the recession would have been had the Conservatives got their way...
 

That figure from Dave is based on 14 month old data, a lot has changed since 2013, another Government Dept (can't remember the name of it) estimates it to be more like 1 in every 19.
 

No they're not, this is a myth.
Wages only rise (in real terms) if the % level they increase is greater than inflation.
From Jan 2009 to Dec 2014 inflation increased at a higher rate than wages, in "real terms" most people had wage reductions during this period:
Inflation:
2014 1.5%
2013 2.5%
2012 2.8%
2011 4.5%
2010 3.3%
2009 2.2%
Average: 2.8%
The average wage rise over the same period is 1.4% according to the ONS. This means that in "real terms" we've all suffered at least a 1.4% pay cut since 2009. Wages only increased more than inflation in March and April of this year and given that was mostly thanks to Sanctions against Russia reducing the cost of Oil, there's no guarantee it will continue.
 

Only if they earn enough to take advantage of the cut.
Increasing the tax threshold from £10k to £12k, doesn't make anybody earning less than £10k any better off.
 

Agreed, but we won't be any better off under the Conservatives either.
Matt Creek Party, now that's a manifesto....

Not if you vote monster raving loonies. It'll be a necessity for all civilians in the UK to have access to a nuclear bomb so if a robot ever did come along, us boot weilding beardy men on unicorns can wipe them off the face off the earth!

That is not true. Setting up new schools is still possible.As a warning our green council took out a £36m loan for a 138m tall observation tower, stopped subsadising the buses, scrapped our park and ride, raised parking fees to put people off from going into town, raised council tax for businesses so now only cloths shops survive, introduced 20mph speed limit everywhere despite lots of evidence to say its made things worse, cut pay for bin men and other essentials to pay for more social workers, illegally built hockey pitchs, ignored 2 votes of no confidence, raised council tax for residents 2% every year despite being told to freeze them (the only reason they didnt raise it more is becuase otherwise there would have been a local referendum) and has failed to set a budget every year. There is atleast 10 other points I could make in detail about how bad they have been. Also at work 20 of us were asked to name one good policy the green council has introduced of which the entire room could not come up with a single reason.

I work in schools.
After dealing with Gove for 4 years, the Tories can do one.
This education spending "increase" has gone on vanity projects like academies and free schools...

Nigel Farage would probably blame immigrants if his car broke down/his dog died/the supermarket ran out of organic milk

Fanboys complain about car park coasters, but then when a coaster is surrounded by landscaping they also complain...
 
Personally the idea of swinging through the trees with no idea where I'm going appeals a lot more than bare ground

https://www.facebook.com/hayley.marie.33865/activity/10155415693140313

Queue times, we can complain about those too.....

Yup, it's slightly ironic that the vast majority of people who get offended aren't even black nowadays.
Any of you with an evil streak that have younger siblings or family under 6 or so, point to Niger on a map and ask them to pronounce it, sit back and wait form the **** to hit the fan.
Like most words it's only offensive depending on the context of it's use, the word fat can be deeply offensive to some people, but you don't see supermarkerts using an alternative on their packaging.

They also said something about the wheel will only turn while a car is being pulled up the lift hill, and it'll stop again once the car is released, or something like that.

Wow, I can't believe someone actually took her post seriously.

The concept art for Saw was way better than what we got in my opinion. Also the hate on Merlin is perfectly justified. Merlin isn't this wonderful perfect company. The huge amount of hate they are getting should be a clear sign of that.

anyone who forces extremist feminist views gives a bad name to feminism itself so good on you for standing up for yourself and angering her, even though I do put myself into the feminist equal rights blah blah group I cannot STAND people who are aggressive when forcing views upon others. Also using derogatory terms against people of colour? Is she ok?? Does she need some assistance??

Thorpe replied to my comment on Facebook stating that summer nights only tickets will be available and are coming soon

Based on our experience I'd say electricBill is correct, the article states they phoned in advance and were given a list of the rides he could go on (21 in total) and nobody told them anything about this 'three steps' rule.
The un-answered question here is this, she does not state whether the mother was riding with him, and I think this is the absolute key to any discrimination claim she tries to bring, if she was riding then yes, she has a case for discrimination, if not, then she doesn't...
Now why is this key? Because it's Merlin rules that any disabled guest under 18, no matter their disability, must be accompanied by an adult onto the ride, having attended Thorpe with my cousin who's wheelchair bound, this was made very clear to me, they cannot ride alone. It is the able bodied person's responsibility to do loading/unloading in the event of a breakdown, in essence, you must be capable of taking the disabled guests off the ride yourself without help.
So if they were trying to ride with his sister and mummy sat on the sidelines watching, then this would be why he was refused entry to the ride, because there's no way his sister would be capable of carrying him off the ride in the event of a breakdown and he cannot evacuate himself. If mummy was riding, then they have a strong case because a persons ability to access the ride cannot determined their ability to use it (that's the law). I've seen plenty of wheelchair bound users on rides at both Chessie and Thorpe, the only time they need to walk on, is if riding alone.
I suspect given the description of the ride operators reactions, mummy wasn't riding with him like she should have been.

I haven't heard of any of these...  Does this mean I've become a boring old fart out-of-touch with the kids already? :/

So Busch are supposedly building a new coaster, meant to be a Mack coaster going by rumours so construction walls are up and let's just say they've had fun with these.

This is what we all look like peaking at WC16 when it's just mud.

And this is what the Chessington animals would be like... if they ever built anything worth watching.

Normally I'd agree with you but sonny wanted to stay in the hotel and Grandad was willing to pay for it, so it was a no brainer for us

We will be at the park on a family trip that weekend anyway, but if I see any faces I know, I'll try say hi if I'm not spending my time chasing after my son or begging the wife to go on a ride....
Just FYI, the alton hotel has a discount code going ATM, it covers that particular Friday night, and depending how you play things, you could get a really cheap b&b rate, 1-2 people, £99, 3 people £114 (£38 each), 4 people £129 (£32.25 each), 5 people £144 (£28.8 each). Booking more than 6 adults sends the rate through the roof, I don't know about sleeping arrangements, depends how friendly you all are with each other (hey don't be prudish, I slept in a hotel bathtub once) but it might offer a good alternative to the travel lodge or driving to the park on Saturday morning.
Code doesn't work for Saturday nights, just weeknights, the code is BIG6

when its built and looks like this I will be excited 

Strange that they haven't drawn the wastelands of Tilbury in the background of any of them!

Pretty drawings.
Let's see how the place looks in 5 years time before getting exited though.