Well when socialism, or any other system, comes up with a viable, VIABLE alternative, maybe they will get voted out. That is to say - one that doesn't bankrupt anyone not in the baby boomer generation and that includes generations to come, by borrowing and spending stupidly (eg: closure of wards in NHS but plenty of money for new cohorts of NHS managers and management consultants) and chucking money at the unworking, public sector north of England to keep them sweet and voting labour. "The Tories, we may be evil, rich, countryside loving b as****5, but at least that's obvious and we are not pretending to look after the working class whilst being a bunch of privileged, wasteful, private school and oxbridge educated Millipedes" Grrrr. Im equally as cross at people who want to get rid of the monarchy as they think they are privileged and that isnt fair My three reasons they are wrong: a) there are lots of privileged people, go to the square mile, they would trample on anyone to make money, at least the Queen brings in the tourists b) what would the replacement be? a president? great! Branson, Blair or Sugar - take your pick. It would be ****. Id rather a benign old granmother who likes gin, dogs and horses and is generally benign and her offspring than a media tycoon mega-b as**** c) Putin, Bush, Belusconi, Dominic Strauss-Khan or the Queen
you do know even Thatcher didnt want to , and regarded it as a mistake , to privatise British Rail......
It hasnt. PPI hospitals are **** money holes. £250 to change a light bulb, most of the profit going to shareholders. the Torys will stay until an effective opposition option is available. The Tories arent the only ones to privatise or send business abroad. Gordon Brown over saw EDF (a french company with his brother as a very well paid advisor) taking over from English energy companies.
but privatisation always stagnates under labour and we get growth (even if that growth isnt sustainable) , and accelerates massivley each time the Tories get in , with no discernible benefit other than to the rich few , and the many get shafted over and over again , and just so happens unemployment jumps by hundreds of thousands each time they get in as well..
It just depends who you hate. If you are working class then the royal family and the Tories are easy targets as they are comic mockeries of themselves (Cf spitting image), if the actual people who have power can get you to focus on mythical snobby rich kids then you forget the gits who own all the property, land and money and dont do a jot of work and believe me labour or tory they dont give a **** they win either way
Unemployment as a direct consequence of labour's policies for the last 10 or so years. Maybe if Brown hadnt sold the national gold reserve at a historic low then we could have kept some public sector jobs. I used to be socialist but they betrayed us. Still let's bash the tories as its easy and what we are expected to do.
to be fair , these days , labour are blue anyway , have been since `97 , i am aware they started the practice of asking private companies to tender for NHS work , but to think that scrapping the 50p tax band and come up with this crazy `mansion tax` , is to show the rich boys must think were all imbeciles , 50p tax band doenst bring in that much , granted , but is it not better than persercuting asset rich , cash poor pensioners?!?
They make it easy to do so when all of (cabinet) are millonaires bar none! , the mess they were left with suits their purpose and their ideaology anyway! shrink the state
Layton you seem a good guy. But if I may, dont buy the left wing propaganda, as much as you should avoid that from the right. Pensioners. a very emotive term. We imagine old dears with little money. probably with no money and heat in winter but todays pensioners are the Beatles generation. lets examine this a little. 65 so born in 1947 (some might retire earlier, some later). Missed the war, didnt fight in that. Have a 3-4 bed house, kids have moved out. Have experienced the greatest rise in living conditions ever. probably 2 holidays a year. Will live to a fine old age thanks to modern medicine, will probably go senile and require care which costs a lot of money. these pensioners bought their houses for what 2-6K, about 2-3 times there yearly wage! could we do that now? does the average twenty year old not now have to wait til their 40s to get their first deposit and house? how is that fair? Mansion tax sounds good to me. Im fed up of subsidising anyone older than me who got more than me. and believe me their healthcare bill alone will cripple this country. let them sell one of their big houses to pay these bills and let young families move in. and yes maggie started this with her buy up of council houses. regarding 50p tax rate. the tories are evil and will do this, cant stop them. its wrong though. a caveat to the above: these same pensioners may well be our parents and may have lead good christian lives giving all they can to their children and not taking more than they needed. But many, many didnt and are now making even more money as landlords and shareholders
Ill give an analogy Layton: labour are Watford fans and the Torys Luton town. If we let the Torys run our club we would expect them to screw us over. But labour did the same, they betrayed their own, that is a lot worse. And while there maybe good , non-millionaires, in both parties the executive of the labour party, millipedes and balls etc are all careerist, privileged and as bad as Cameron/Osbourne
Dropping it to 40p seems like a good idea to me. We'll get more in tax revenue that can be invested in the NHS or the economy ultimately benefitting working class people, or reducing the defecit. Only a fool would wish the treasurey to have less money.
Experts say that by dropping it to 40 or 45 as it was leaked today i think, will result in a higher tax revenue and a boost to the economy. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-scotland-business-17221941
"experts" let's believe that then with no recourse to finding out who they are or what bias they might have. The rich will always avoid tax, that is why they pay lawyers and accoutants I am sure experts told Germans to put people on trains to polish camps or for English soldiers to sit 5 miles from a nuclear bomb test
The institute of directors Scotland. hmmmm. no vested interests there. certainly not a bunch of rich company executives who would beneift from paying less tax, oh wait, that is EXACTLY what they are
I draw you attention to the appropriate daily mash article: http://www.thedailymash.co.uk/news/...sperate-to-abolish-50p-tax-rate-201202234928/
Shush Layton, you know that it is now illegal to question liberal economics. The right wing police will be round to label you a socialist and a waster of taxpayer money.
So you're for the government punishing the rich for being rich at the expense of the economy and the working classes?
There are two options, which are fact not dichotomy. Either you support taxing the rich at 50p and damaging the economy purely for populist reasons, or at 40p and supporting it and gaining extra tax revenue to be invested in other areas or used to reduce the defecit. 40p is the optimal figure, the closer you get to it the more tax revnue you recieve. It was heavily debated on question time 2 weeks ago. The general feeling was that people just oppose it blindly without rationally looking at the figures, and oppose it just as a populist front against the tories.
Jeez. Or maybe, these arent the only options? Either you support taxing the rich at 50p and helping the economy, or at 40p reducing extra tax revenue to be invested in other areas or used to reduce the defecit That could well be an opposing opinion, neither of us are able to look into the future and the majority of "experts" with an opinion on either side have vested interests. Also economic experts dont really have a lot of credibility at the moment do they
Well read my edit, wanted to add a bit. We can't predict the future but we can use estimates to give us the best prediction we can get and judge our policy according to it, and the intrests of the people. It is in the public interest to lower it to 40p.
"40p is the optimal figure, the closer you get to it the more tax revnue you recieve. It was heavily debated on question time 2 weeks ago. The general feeling was that people just oppose it blindly without rationally looking at the figures, and oppose it just as a populist front against the tories." Why is 40p the optimal figure? who says so? what is the evidence? what proof do they have that this is true and will remain true? People blindly oppose most change, doesnt make any difference to whether they are right or wrong. your argument that 40p is optimal and your faith in experts IS as blind, if not blinder than those who oppose change.
It was the cabinet minister, who was quoting official figures set to be released with the budget on wednesday I believe. You can iig back through question time if you want the figures. I believe because any lower and tax revenue is decreased, and any higher it damagers foreign investment, and encourages people to take their money to offshore tax havens. I'm not an economist but it doesn't take a genius to work out that if you tax the rich they'll leave and take their money elsewhere damaging the rest of us.
OK , scrap the 50p tax rate , regardless of wether it does , or does not , bring in extra revenue , but at the same time , why on god green earth isnt child benefit income related , how on ****ing earth does ANYONE on 44k between them or each need £80 a month for their first kid and £53 each for the rest ??? if nothing gives other than the 50p tax rate lowered it will only ever look to most people like the millonaire tories looking out for their mates, as ****ing always - *notes the vile meeting between murdoch and thatcher years ago
Can't be bothered to challenge your neo-liberal assumptions. The idea that privatisation and neo-liberalism in general has succeeded whereas 'socialism' (Do you class Keynesian economics as socialism by the way?) has failed in that clear dichotomy is just false. But thought I would go for this one: I hate the royal family, they are antithetical of what a society should be about: Equality. Everyone should theoretically be born equal with the same rights and the same laws applicable to them. With the queen this isn't true- yes there are lots of privileged people but they are all theoretically tied to the rule of law and aren't privileged in terms of rights. They have to pay tax-the Queen doesn't. They all 'earned' to get their jobs (I know we don't live in a meritocracy in practice but in theory we do.) The Queen hasn't, nor can anyone become a monarch and the head of state through action. Why do we need anyone to be a hereditary head of state? Someone I voted in and was given an option too. Yes please! Bush over Queen any day, he was voted in. People consented to him ruling-I nor anyone I know off has consented to being a 'subject'.
