I did not like that comment either. Personally I blame the two main parties for ignoring the working class and those on low working wages who have been most effected by immigration and low wages. These people are the sort who have been targeted by the BNP. The Tories are not helping by letting the minimum wage whither. That will drive even more to the BNP.

Nick Griffin came out of it about as I expected, but it was great to see Jack Straw squirm. He probably thought it was going to be an easy ride with Griffin there to soak up the abuse and instead found himself flapping about like a landed fish.

No argument from me there. They would be voting for "The Labour Party" if there was such a thing. Sadly, they're nothing more than an incompetent version of the old Tory party.


Actually, I think the minimum wage is far to high. I have a university education and 20 years experience in a highly skilled and valued sector, but I'm only taking home 50% more than an uneducated 18 year old on minimum wage.

Our minimum wage is over 9000% higher than most people earn. There are people just as clever as me who work twice as hard and only earn £0.40 an hour. Some of them work for Dell. If I was one of them, I'd want to come here and take my job.

But much of the headway that the BNP has made has come about because Labour has abandoned its core supporters.

Nick Griffin is my new hero.

While the minimum wage might be high compared to second and third world nations. it is barely enough to live on in the UK. I would like to see a bigger difference between the minimum wage and unemployment benefit, with a simpler benefits system that makes it much simpler for people to work out if they are better to take the job at the minimum wage or stay on unemployment benefit. Other than that someone who is unskilled and under a certain age gets less than the minimum wage. Add in the cost of rent and many people struggle to find anywhere suitable to live on minimum wage and raise a family. If there were a lot more social housing then yes it may be easier. The problem overall is that the share of the national cake is even more in the hands of the rich than ever before with fewer and fewer scraps for the rest of the employees. Cutting minimum wage will not end that problem.

That is 100% purely due to inflate housing costs.

In most countries, food accounts for the largest part of household expenditure. In this country, food hardly even registers on the scale!

I could easily live on £15 a week if I didn't have to pay tax and housing.

I was at the Job Centre today, so naturally I had a poke around the 'job point' computer terminals. I scanned through around 300 jobs and half of them simply said 'meets National Minimum Wage' in the salary box. I also noticed that nobody was running off prints for those jobs, probably because the majority of people on benefits would be worse off in one of those roles.

On that evidence, Amnesia10 has a point.

I too would like to see a simpler benefit system, as someone newly unemployed, I cannot believe the number of people I've had to contact to try and understand what I'm entitled to whilst looking for another job.

I would want to question the BBC's audience choice, lets be honest - are 40-50% of people in the UK coloured... no and are 99% of them under 30... no again. The last one is my major gripe, the views of today are not the views of yesterday.

Apart from that, Id say that from the outset Jack Straw was not having a good day, after the comment on his father in WW2. (not that we should hold that against him, but it went down from there).

I assume you're including gas leccy and phone/broadband as part of the housing cost.

I understand your point, but that claim is simply ridiculous.

Just food costs then? Because that's not nearly enough to actually enjoy life.

Ridiculous how? I stand by my guestimate.

If I lived rent and tax free, then my clothing and food costs would be about £10 a week. I think it's obvious that phone and broadband are not exactly life essentials. FFS I've only had them for less than 20% of my life!

I don't want to live on £15 a week, but I easily could if I had somewhere to cook, sleep and do toilet duties. Common land would do nicely. That's a lot of rice/bread/tacos, even at today's prices.

You sir, are a victim of capitalism. Life is not a PS3. Life is Love and Good Company, and enjoying a good hot meal and plenty of ale when you can.

I see what you did there.

Old meme is old, oldfag