Old man you are confusing anecdote with evidence there. Of course everything is possible, but you also have to remember that if everyone around you had done what you did then you would just be one of many over qualified people out there.

Comfortable for me is paying my bills, not flash cars,bikes,holidays or anyform of bling.

Other people may not view that as comfortable, depends on what you want.

27 hours, half a shift up North…

I have ABSOLUTELY no doubt that things are harder for those at the bottom of the pile, and the cards are stacked heavily in the favour of the wealthy. That doesn’t mean opportunities aren’t there for all.

Let’s be honest, large swathes of the country will never get off their arses and graft, or support their kids through education.

You don’t need to go via Eton & Cambridge, to a city hedge fund to make a success of your life.

Degree level education opens up huge opportunities to decent jobs. Trades and apprenticeships are available to anybody with good attitude. All my builder/plumber/electrician mates struggle to find reliable apprentices – no lack of opportunities, but definately a lack of attitude.

Setting a business up in the UK is really very easy- anyone tried this in France?

yup, done both, not much difference in the current systems. In France you register and then pay 25% of turnover to URSSAF once every three months for which you get health cover and a pension. Not sure how it could be made easier. Depending on the type of business and the place you live you might have to pay “taxe professionelle foncière”, for junior’s ski instructing it’s free but for being a landlord it cost me 465e a year.

25% of turnover not profit…. there in lies the French business problem

Autoentrepenur helps but starting a proper business in France that employs people is very very expensive.

The 25% turnover tax destroys the chance of starting a business for most por people, compared to the UKs limited company tax/accounting structure in which you can off set costs against tax etc i know where i would rather start a business.

Let’s be honest, large swathes of the country will never get off their arses and graft,

Got any proof for that beyond the Daily Mail?

25% of turnover? Are they nuts? I mean that is ok for some sorts of businesses, but ridiculous for others.

Localised proof
Mate with groundworks business
Mate with joinery business
Local farmer
Local pub

All can not get people, all pay above mimimum wage

Mate with groundworks pays £10 an hour supplys all the gear, guarantees 50 hours a week – most young lads last a week.

oldmanmtb

So do you understand how the student loans/graduate tax works? Why is this a problem to poor students (the support is still greater for those with less cash?)

I’ll field this one, since it’s my actual job.

1) Straight away the debt affects poorer students more than well off/rich students because the latter are less likely to incur it at all due to parental support.

2) The lending available may not cover all your expenses in which case again, parental support makes the difference between having to work while studying to pay the bills, and not- which is a big additiional stress and distraction from uni work. Getting into uni isn’t the end of it, financial problems are a major reason for dropping out (more common than standalone academic failure in most institutions) and are naturally suffered far more by kids from low income backgrounds.

2a) Students not having to work to pay the bills have better access to placements and career-focused work experience which gives a massive change in outcomes. (needless to say they’re way less likely to do an overseas year)

3) The biggy, attitudes to debt. If you come from a middle class family and grew up in a mortgaged house with a car on a lease and all that, then £50000 debt is still a big number but something you’ve got a yardstick for. If you grew up in a council house and your family lived month to month then it’s a pretty much unimaginable number.

4) Impact on mobility- kids from lower incomes are massively more likely to study in their local university- affecting choice and access to top quality courses of course but also having complicated negative effects on outcome due to the life experience side of uni.

The counters. There’s a sort of meme that goes around that says that the tuition fee regime hasn’t had the impact on low income applications that wsa expected. And it’s sort of true- but only because we could see it coming and invested massive amounts of money and effort into countering it. As a result, we’ve more or less managed to prevent it from being a problem- but it’s still pretty much stopped the trend of improving access and now it takes more effort to stand still. The same resource would have been lifechanging for tens of thousands of kids otherwise, rather than just levelling the playing field.

Also, kids are more demanding of their uni- definitely true, and a good thing. This was happening anyway but it’s pretty much the one good outcome.

Lastly, can’t talk about tuition fees without mentioning that it is ALL TOTAL HORSESHIT. The increase to £9000 fees costs the taxpayer money compared to the previous cheaper regime. The repayment rate is now so low that we get less money back from that £9000 than we would have got from the previous £3300. Literally all it does, is hide some of the national debt, in the pockets of kids.

Mate with groundworks pays £10 an hour supplys all the gear, guarantees 50 hours a week – most young lads last a week.

I was a setting out engineer for 15 years and spent 5 years with a groundwork contractor. If your mate works as a subbie and he is typical of others then 50 hours will quickly turn into 70+ as a project deadline approaches not including lengthy travel time to site, 6 or 7 days a week. I work hard, but 15 years lumping steel road pins and GPS kit around site or taking survey shots on live sewers in the pi$$ing rain was enough for me, hence a change of career.

Site based work can be a demoralizing place to work for many. I know this through bitter experience.

If youngsters have a life and a family and can get other work for £1 or £2 less an hour then good luck to them.

Mate with groundworks business
Mate with joinery business
Local farmer
Local pub

All can not get people, all pay above mimimum wage

Ok but why? Why would you assume that it’s because ‘large swathes’ of the country are lazy? You know they don’t let you say no to jobs you can otherwise do, don’t you?

Mikewsmith i agree that if everyone pursued hard work and education i would be one of many, my point is i run into people ( one mate i particular) who claim to be part of the “left behinds” who to be blunt “expects” to be paid a £35k for driving a forklift. You dont need to go to University but it helps, i know lads in their 20s round me who are time served joiners/plumbers and making a lot more than £40k.

Its all about attitude, brexit will test this attitude like never before as those nasty foreigners who stole their jobs have left. I have hospitality clients with their head in their hands over this- because indigenous brits do not apply for jobs.

because indigenous brits do not apply for jobs

Maybe they already have jobs? Maybe they have all the nicer jobs because if the immigrants apply for them they don’t get them, because of xenophobia?

I don’t know if that’s true but it would not surprise me if it were. Lots of evidence to say that ‘black’ or Asian sounding names get passed over, so seems plausible that Eastern European ones might too.

Maybe they already have jobs? Maybe they have all the nicer jobs 

Uk unemployment is currently 4.1% so probably true to some extent. And plenty of those 4.1% just wouldn’t be up to site work physically or mentally, it’s bloody hard. The country isn’t full of workshy layabouts. There’s some but statistically very few.

All fair points, so post brexit how do we service and grow our economy? How do we encourage people to be better educated and gain skills we will need?

All fair points, so post brexit how do we service and grow our economy? How do we encourage people to be better educated and gain skills we will need?

We don’t stop low skilled immigration for a start and only let people in if they are skilled and earn over £30k as that will have the opposite effect. And better educated and gaining skills are not linked. It is a recent thing where it is assumed you have to go to university to be able to do any job.

Keep low skilled jobs for British workers! During the Blitz we all dug our own cabbages.

Education to the highest levels is available to all and dont anyone whine about student loans.

Can’t argue with this. Anyone with an internet connection and something to view information on has at their fingertips more learning resources than anyone else ever has at any other point in time. Free of charge as well if so inclined, so you don’t need to go to univeristy to get a great education if debt is a worry. Plenty of companies out there will take people on as a degree apprentice, work and earn whilst you learn. Government grants given out to employers to send their employees off to training courses. Just need to think a bit about the options that area ctually out there and stop with the mentality that leaving school and straight into university is the default.

You don’t need to go via Eton & Cambridge, to a city hedge fund to make a success of your life.

True, but its much **** easier and more likely to happen if you start off at Eton.

How do we encourage people to be better educated and gain skills we will need?

Make sure less kids grow up in poverty, reverse cuts to things like sure start, reverse cuts in schools and not charge a **** shit load of money to go to uni.

Anyone with an internet connection and something to view information on has at their fingertips more learning resources than anyone else ever has at any other point in time.

I teach plenty of kids without the internet at home.

Plenty of companies out there will take people on as a degree apprentice, work and earn whilst you learn

Define “plenty” and compare it to those that want graduates and then look at earning rates 5 years after graduation, then maybe 10 compared to those with no degree.

Autoentrepenur helps but starting a proper business in France that employs people is very very expensive.

Done that too. 10 years with an SARL with up to 9 employees. We made a profit in the first year and every year thereafter. I’d rather have a business in France than the UK, more chance of being paid and less chance of being taken down by some cliunt deliberately bankrupting his business having syphoned off the cash into some bank account in Malta/Gibralta/IOM.

I teach plenty of kids without the internet at home.

No, all poor people are spending all their cash on iPhones all round, everyone knows that!

So you think 25% tax on turnover makes sense?

France has very few “new” small businesses, most French graduates wander off to other parts of the world.

Hmmmm – looks like Tommy’s march (sorry UKIP’s No Brexit betrayal or whatever it was called) fell a bit short of 700 000…

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-46495595

I really wish we could get a an accurate estimate of how many turned up. I’m also bit disappointed ol’ Moggster or Boris didn’t turn up to receive the adulation of the crowds 🙂

If a Norway plus deal was achieved would we notice any difference in our day to day life compared to what we have now?
Would the multinational companies still look to relocate to the mainland?
Would EU workers still be able to work in our hospitals and pick our food?
Could I move to Majorca and use their hospitals?
Will goods be held up at the ports?
Can I still buy stuff tax free from the mainland?

most French graduates wander off to other parts of the world

Could you show your working out on that?

I used to work for a big employer offering degree apprenticeships – we’d stop taking applications when we reached 100 applicants for every job because we knew that 6/10 were good enough candidates – there simply aren’t enough about.
The problem is we have many big employers e.g. retail and hospitality who abuse the system, offering minimum wage / zero hours contracts for maximum 16 hours/ week and expect people to claim benefits to top-up and yet pay big dividends to their shareholders every year.
But hey, when we’ve driven all the foreign tourists away from our xenophobic cul-de-sec they won’t be spending their money here either, never mind come here to work.
The skilled migrant thing is nonsense as we have a chronic shortage of NHS staff who don’t qualify and we continue to charge student loans for nursing.
I’m predicting another retail disaster in the New Year – consumers aren’t spending right now because of all the economic uncertainty.

Anagallis just search on google… the city has a very large young French community. They are also learning chinese as a second language.

Dovebiker i agree retail, hospitaility and restaurants are in big trouble.

This situation as it stands can easily spiral into something truly serious.

Anyone still wondering why the labour party are still hesitant to jump on the 2nd vote bandwagon?

“En 2017, 591 000 entreprises ont été créées en France”

I think a 25% tax on turnover is a fine idea that allows people to get started and know exactly how much they have to pay. It clearly works better for services than selling goods but it allows people to get started and then chose the legal status that best fits their business as turnover grows.

Junior is also self-employed in Germany for work he does there as well as being self-employed in France. It’s a similar system but about 17% there but, big BUT, he would have to pay an expensive health insurance if he weren’t covered by his French health insurance. Next year he’ll have to go fully native in Germany and it’ll be a lot more than 25%.

Oh so it’s a bandwagon now then. I see.

Today, one out of four French university graduates wants to emigrate, “and this rises to 80 per cent or 90 per cent in the case of marketable degrees”, says economics professor Jacques Régniez, who teaches at both the Sorbonne and the University of New York in Prague. “In one of my finance seminars, every single French student intends to go abroad

I walk out into the Cairngorms for a coupe of nights tomorrow. What’s the odds that when I take my phone out of flight mode on Wednesday lunchtime that our nation will be without a Prime minister?

You’re getting closer to reality now Oldmanmtb. Now ask the same question at the LSE or even on this forum. Lots of people dream of emigrating and “want to”. Have a look at the recent New Zealand thread on here. Some do, some just dream. I’ve worked in the UK, Germany, Spain and France (where I’ve spent most of my life). Different places, different cultures, different rules, choose your pleasure/poison. Turn it around FFS, who would dream of spending their entire working life in one country?

most French graduates wander off to other parts of the world

Today, one out of four French university graduates wants to emigrate, “

Maths not a strong point of yours and thats before we think about what they want rather than what they do.

When I graduated, only 3 or 4 of my year went abroad, and I am the only one who stayed after a few years. French likes to think it is better abroad but when it comes to it they like their home.

So edukator..

France
Start up costs €5000
First three months turnover €15000 Gross profit (a guess) €7500 net profit (a guess)€1500

Tax after 3 months €3750

So gross profit + net profit (€16500) less investment (€5000) and tax bill (€3750) = €7750 / by 3 months to run your business pay wages, rent and a salary for yourself and all the above assumes you make a healthy profit on your first three months….

A year one tax bill of €15000… on turn over, in the real world most business ventures make no money in year one.

In the UK you have been able to claim tax relief on both investment and operating costs if you were fortunate enough to make a profit. So in year one you would NOT have a €15000 bill to pay.

There is no comparison between the UK and France. The personal risk in France in respect to starting a business that employs people is exponentially greater than the UK.

25% tax on turnover is nuts. I don’t see how small businesses likes cafes could do it.