Give these guys a rise.......

[R1Geezer]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-13555162
and take it out of the massive workshy scum budget. Why are we cutting a few pounds from front line heroes when we pay for snout and white lightning for the dregs?

[McMouse]

In my day members of the SBS were all trained 'frogmen' but only received diving pay if actually engaged in a qualifying number of hours per month under water. It seems crazy that parachute trained personnel should get paid extra if engaged in admin or other non-parachuting activity.

[Answerprancer]

... "people like you", "am I not allowed an opinion?" and ultimately when you get exasperated from the futility of it all and let slip some mild insult, that will be used as the ultimate trump card against any of your conflicting views.

[Ellipsis]

> Of course the public purse isn't £27 K down in these circumstances, Ellipsis

Fully aware of that QuizMonster but, as you found, it's quite a long-winded and mostly off-topic response. I was responding to Gromit in the same quick vein as he posted ...

> Ask the Chancellor if he would rather have no tax from 10K or 30% of 40K.

BTW, there are lots of ways of spending £27K without paying much in the way of tax to the UK Government. Spending it outside the UK, for a start ...

[R1Geezer]

no Gromit he'd rather have 100% of 40k as it's public money, geddit?

[Quizmonster]

I'm puzzled, Ellipsis; if you're "fully aware" that what you wrote is incorrect, why write it?
As regards "spending it outside the UK", I understood we were discussing a British public sector employee. So, which particular Government department would be paying him £27K after tax to be permanently absent from his work IN the UK? Yes, he might spend some time and money annually on a short foreign holiday, but even to achieve that, he would probably have contributed to the employment level - and hence income tax etc as already shown - for people in the travel, airline etc games.

In general terms, yes we have workshy people here and it would be good if they were obliged to take employment...were it available...but they are no more "scum" than the worldwide casino bankers who really got us into the financial mess we're in. Each group is intent on rooking us of every penny they can...and getting away with it.

[Ellipsis]

Your puzzlement, Quizmonster, comes from reading something I didn't write ...

> I'm puzzled, Ellipsis; if you're "fully aware" that what you wrote is incorrect, why write it?

I didn't write that I thought it was incorrect. I wrote that, once income tax had been paid, I'm fully aware that further tax might have been paid on what was left. However, when Gromit wrote "Ask the Chancellor if he would rather have no tax from 10K or 30% of 40K", he was clearly talking about the income tax, not the ongoing tax. And that's what I was talking about in my reply.

> So, which particular Government department would be paying him £27K after tax to be permanently absent from his work IN the UK

That's a straw man argument. I never said they would be permanently absent from the UK. But there are plenty of scenarios in which the money could be spent abroad. Suppose, for example, that a parent was working to put their child through university in the States. All of their income could be sent to the child, while both parents lived off the other parent's income.

> In general terms, yes we have workshy people here and it would be good if they were obliged to take employment...were it available...but they are no more "scum" than the worldwide casino bankers who really got us into the financial mess we're in. Each group is intent on rooking us of every penny they can...and getting away with it.

Agreed ...

[Quizmonster]

I was thinking more of R1G's "lesbian outreach worker", someone for whom the question of being the parent of a student in the USA would scarcely apply. Neither, obviously, did I account for ANOTHER parent who would be paying all the bills in the UK. You've created an entire family there that I didn't know were under consideration or even existed...a straw man AND a straw child!
But what the hey! At least we agree on something in the final analysis.