Scottish independence

[Bill Walker]

Personally, I couldn't give a toss.

It will be an absolute, complete, total and unmitigated disaster for Scotland if they vote yes, a mere temporary minor inconvenience for the rest of the UK, at worst.

In short, Scotland will lurch further to the left, spend even more money they don't have on welfare bollocks, and their economy will spiral down to sub Greece levels. The UK, freed of the burden of theses malingering lefties will rebound positively, with a 50 MP swing to the right.

And Scots will lose the pound. The fat dunce Salmond is too thick to understand that you can't share a currency without having the same interest rates, same fiscal policies and a common central bank. So the twat can't have independence and a shared currency. Having a shared currency means not being independent. The entry requirement for the Euro was convergence remember, not divergence. And look what a disaster it's been for Greece et al with economies that were not well converged. So, independence = no pound.

They can have their "Scottish Pound" or "Scottish Dinar" or "Scottish Peseta" or what the fuck the twit wants to call it, but it can't be a UK pound. Their dismal new currency will plummet on the currency markets as anyone with half an ounce of brain and a quarter of an ounce of wealth moves their money out into the safety of Euros or Dollars or Pounds. I mean, you'd need shit for brains to leave your life savings in Scottish Dinars wouldn't you, watching them spiral down into the dirt. As their currency plummets, their exports will bizarrely do OK, but since that only means haggis and Clan Dew, so fucking what. They will have galloping inflation as the cost of imports and raw materials soar. It's a self fulfilling prophecy if ever there was one.

Do I care? Not a fucking jot. We should erect a fucking great big wall and barbed wire fence and make them need a visa to visit. If we can tow the country a few hundred miles north, even better. The Scottish MP's who have enjoyed fucking over our economy for the last 100 years should be tarred, feathered and sent packing north at soonest opportunity. Good riddance to them. That would be a huge positive for sure.

And when the Scottish economy has bottomed out and they have their 50% unemployment and national debt at 200% of GDP and interest rates of 30%, don't DARE come cap in hand to the rest of the UK to bail them out.

Independence? Good luck with that.

Wow. I have to say for one who "couldn't give a toss", you do possess a number of strong views on this situation. And extremely resentful ones if I may say so.
If, as you so eloquently wrote in your post, you really don't care about Scottish independence, why go to the trouble of writing such a post? Instead of feeling sorry for the Scots and your perceived future of an independent Scotland, you choose to belittle them for having the temerity to even think about trying to run their own country independently from Westminster. If they do, however, it is their problem, not the rest of the UK's.
I sincerely hope that this post was meant as a light-hearted reaction to the never-ending media and political circus of which I am also extremely tired, otherwise I can only congratulate you on your extensive and well-researched knowledge of Scottish MPs over the last century, your borderline racist comments, and the feeling you give the reader of this 'situation' troubling you a lot more than you would like us to believe.

good post mate

Im not Scottish but I say good luck to them, theres no shame in wanting to rule yourself

maybe the country would be stirred to do great things economically

Its hardly mentioned here in Oz so were a bit sheltered from all the rhetoric

 

[FromPollockToSilva]

No mate. I believe deeply, passionately, that in order to have the best public services, the best healthcare, the best welfare, transport and everything else, you need wealth. Wealthy economies can have these things. Poor economies cannot. To have these things, first you need a wealthy economy. So priorities need to be wealth creation, followed by wealth creation and after that wealth creation.

So how do you do that? You do it by lowering taxation, encouraging entrepreneurialism and getting the state off everyone's back. You do everything you can to get the private sector to thrive, with real, not made up jobs. Get businesses more competitive with their now lower cost base and get exports booming. Get profits soaring and with that, employment increasing and tax revenues rising.

Then and only then can you invest in the best social welfare and public services, because then you can afford it. This is not the politics and policies the evil Tories, it is common sense, logical and it is correct. You cannot spend money you do not have and spending it early in the hope of wealth later can never work.

That's not how the Scandinavian countries went about it, and they have some of the best public services in the world. And of course you can spend money you don't have; the entire economy is predicated on the assumption that everyone (governments, businesses, individuals) will do just that. If everyone paid back their debt the world economy would collapse.

 

[Citizen of Legoland]

Im not Scottish but I say good luck to them, theres no shame in wanting to rule yourself

maybe the country would be stirred to do great things economically

Its hardly mentioned here in Oz so were a bit sheltered from all the rhetoric

To be fair it has only just really took off in the rest of the UK since that one poll showed a lead for the Ayes. Before then it was like when the football results are read out on a Saturday teatime, you listen to the top 4 divisions' results, then go and make a cuppa.

 

[mcfcinprague]

Reminds me of this Ealing comedy - Passport to Pimlico

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ZvLqZ4-8-M

 

[carlos tevez is a blue]

Is it wrong to feel a bit of respect for George Galloway ?

I normally don't care for him at all, apart from the time he made fools of the American senate.

You do know he's Saddam's pal don't you?


He's a corrupt cat ****.

 

[Chippy_boy]

You do an awful lot of typing for someone who "doesn't care" and "doesn't give a toss". Go on, release those inner demons and admit it: you secretly envy the Scots and the balls they're showing to the vermin Tories of Westminster. Let. It. Go.

No mate. I believe deeply, passionately, that in order to have the best public services, the best healthcare, the best welfare, transport and everything else, you need wealth. Wealthy economies can have these things. Poor economies cannot. To have these things, first you need a wealthy economy. So priorities need to be wealth creation, followed by wealth creation and after that wealth creation.

So how do you do that? You do it by lowering taxation, encouraging entrepreneurialism and getting the state off everyone's back. You do everything you can to get the private sector to thrive, with real, not made up jobs. Get businesses more competitive with their now lower cost base and get exports booming. Get profits soaring and with that, employment increasing and tax revenues rising.

Then and only then can you invest in the best social welfare and public services, because then you can afford it. This is not the politics and policies the evil Tories, it is common sense, logical and it is correct. You cannot spend money you do not have and spending it early in the hope of wealth later can never work.

Salmond doesn't get it. I'll add it to the list of the many things he and his lefty cohorts don't get. They've never got it and probably will go to their graves not getting it. They advocate spending the money you haven't got first, and borrowing and taxing everyone even more to pay for it. Burden businesses even more and thereby stifle investment. Make them ever less competitive. As they struggle, drive up unemployment, not employment. In short, wreck the economy. Like every Labour and pseudo Labour Party has always done. This is the politics of Labour, the politics of failure and ruin. This is Salmond's politics. He fools himself with shit about "investing in Scotland" by which he means spending the state's money on crap, to create fake jobs, but never stop to think that the state doesn't have any money. It's all YOUR and MY money, and every pound the state has, they took off us and wasted 90p of it on bureaucracy in the process. And these fake jobs and public sector jobs don't create any wealth anyway, they are just a cost burden. You could not contrive a more wasteful, more deluded, more doomed approach if you really tried.

This is why socialism has never worked, will never work, can never work. It is superficially appealing to the have-nots who are promised a quick fix to their woes and who are unwilling or unable to engage their brains to understand why it can never work. Socialism is advocated by a principled but deluded well off few, and voted for by an impoverished and jealous many. It is in large part the politics of resentment and envy, and it can never succeed.

Why would you want public sector jobs to create wealth? How about we have jobs that serve the common-good? Nurses? Teachers/ Policemen? Binmen? All very, very worthy professions that serve to create a society based on welfare - caring for one another, living together. But hey, if you believe wealth to be the Mammon to deliver us all to the land of hope and glory, good luck to you. I'll be here to bail out your capitalist Nirvana. Just as I/we have every time the rapacious cult of business falls flat on its dog eat dog arse.

What, incidentally, are these "made up jobs" that you seem to equate with the Socialist state? Not like your Zero Hours jobs that so epitomise the capitalist cunts that want to fuck the poorest over are they? Off to feather now bud, so we'll have to agree to disagree. Cheers.

Public sector jobs don't create wealth, they consume it.

The jobs are all very worthy and indeed necessary and the people doing them need in no way feel unworthy of course - they are highly valued. But they don't create wealth. Apart from the rare circumstances where some of these people are generating income by selling products or services, but this is so minimal as to be inconsequential.

And no-one wants to "fuck the poorest over" mate. Everyone wants the same thing and that is a decent lifestyle and decent public services and infrastructure for all. The question is how to get it. Some people want to be generous to the underprivileged by giving them money we don't have, or taking even more money off the wealthy and also off the not wealthy. I don't subscribe to that approach because in the long run, it just doesn't work. There are too many needy and not enough wealthy.

In broad terms, we have 30 million people in employment in the UK. Of these, 50% are in public sector jobs. The vast majority of these and are being funded by state. But the state gets all its money from taxing the other 50%. (Yes it gets tax from the public sector workers, but that just means getting some of the money back that the state gave them in the first place.). The vast majority of the actual money available to the state comes from the 15m working in the private sector.

But we have a population of 60 million people. The 15 million private sector workers are already paying the wages of the public sector 15 million. But they also have to pay for state pensions and income support and disability benefits and attendance allowance and prescriptions and hospitals and everything else from a seemingly endless list, for EVERYBODY. 15 million people are carrying all the costs of a population of 60 million.

And remember, these 15 million are not "rich", they are just "in work". They include waiters at Nando's and window cleaners and fruit pickers. These people have no "spare" money and are probably net recipients of benefits, not net contributors. There are only 2 million who have incomes greater than around £40,000 and who pay higher rates of tax. And these people - 1 person in every 30 - are already giving up to 50% of their money over to the state to support the rest. We cannot continue with this model, burdening the working people more and more and more. It's just not sustainable.

Yes there are a few very rich, but there aren't many of them. And if you earn £1m a year, you are already contributing around 460,000 in tax. This compares to around £6,000 for someone on average pay. That's 77x as much. Someone earning 33x average is already contributing 77x the tax, yet people still clamour for them to pay more, to pay their fair share. How is 77x an average contribution not "a fair share". It's already WAY too much.

So none of this is sustainable. It's propped up by ever increased borrowing and ever increased tax burden. It is the sure as fire road to ruin, the only question being how long the road is.

 

[pirate]

No mate. I believe deeply, passionately, that in order to have the best public services, the best healthcare, the best welfare, transport and everything else, you need wealth. Wealthy economies can have these things. Poor economies cannot. To have these things, first you need a wealthy economy. So priorities need to be wealth creation, followed by wealth creation and after that wealth creation.

So how do you do that? You do it by lowering taxation, encouraging entrepreneurialism and getting the state off everyone's back. You do everything you can to get the private sector to thrive, with real, not made up jobs. Get businesses more competitive with their now lower cost base and get exports booming. Get profits soaring and with that, employment increasing and tax revenues rising.

Then and only then can you invest in the best social welfare and public services, because then you can afford it. This is not the politics and policies the evil Tories, it is common sense, logical and it is correct. You cannot spend money you do not have and spending it early in the hope of wealth later can never work.

Salmond doesn't get it. I'll add it to the list of the many things he and his lefty cohorts don't get. They've never got it and probably will go to their graves not getting it. They advocate spending the money you haven't got first, and borrowing and taxing everyone even more to pay for it. Burden businesses even more and thereby stifle investment. Make them ever less competitive. As they struggle, drive up unemployment, not employment. In short, wreck the economy. Like every Labour and pseudo Labour Party has always done. This is the politics of Labour, the politics of failure and ruin. This is Salmond's politics. He fools himself with shit about "investing in Scotland" by which he means spending the state's money on crap, to create fake jobs, but never stop to think that the state doesn't have any money. It's all YOUR and MY money, and every pound the state has, they took off us and wasted 90p of it on bureaucracy in the process. And these fake jobs and public sector jobs don't create any wealth anyway, they are just a cost burden. You could not contrive a more wasteful, more deluded, more doomed approach if you really tried.

This is why socialism has never worked, will never work, can never work. It is superficially appealing to the have-nots who are promised a quick fix to their woes and who are unwilling or unable to engage their brains to understand why it can never work. Socialism is advocated by a principled but deluded well off few, and voted for by an impoverished and jealous many. It is in large part the politics of resentment and envy, and it can never succeed.

Why would you want public sector jobs to create wealth? How about we have jobs that serve the common-good? Nurses? Teachers/ Policemen? Binmen? All very, very worthy professions that serve to create a society based on welfare - caring for one another, living together. But hey, if you believe wealth to be the Mammon to deliver us all to the land of hope and glory, good luck to you. I'll be here to bail out your capitalist Nirvana. Just as I/we have every time the rapacious cult of business falls flat on its dog eat dog arse.

What, incidentally, are these "made up jobs" that you seem to equate with the Socialist state? Not like your Zero Hours jobs that so epitomise the capitalist c**ts that want to fuck the poorest over are they? Off to feather now bud, so we'll have to agree to disagree. Cheers.

Public sector jobs don't create wealth, they consume it.

The jobs are all very worthy and indeed necessary and the people doing them need in no way feel unworthy of course - they are highly valued. But they don't create wealth. Apart from the rare circumstances where some of these people are generating income by selling products or services, but this is so minimal as to be inconsequential.

And no-one wants to "fuck the poorest over" mate. Everyone wants the same thing and that is a decent lifestyle and decent public services and infrastructure for all. The question is how to get it. Some people want to be generous to the underprivileged by giving them money we don't have, or taking even more money off the wealthy and also off the not wealthy. I don't subscribe to that approach because in the long run, it just doesn't work. There are too many needy and not enough wealthy.

In broad terms, we have 30 million people in employment in the UK. Of these, 50% are in public sector jobs. The vast majority of these and are being funded by state. But the state gets all its money from taxing the other 50%. (Yes it gets tax from the public sector workers, but that just means getting some of the money back that the state gave them in the first place.). The vast majority of the actual money available to the state comes from the 15m working in the private sector.

But we have a population of 60 million people. The 15 million private sector workers are already paying the wages of the public sector 15 million. But they also have to pay for state pensions and income support and disability benefits and attendance allowance and prescriptions and hospitals and everything else from a seemingly endless list, for EVERYBODY. 15 million people are carrying all the costs of a population of 60 million.

And remember, these 15 million are not "rich", they are just "in work". They include waiters at Nando's and window cleaners and fruit pickers. These people have no "spare" money and are probably net recipients of benefits, not net contributors. There are only 2 million who have incomes greater than around £40,000 and who pay higher rates of tax. And these people - 1 person in every 30 - are already giving up to 50% of their money over to the state to support the rest. We cannot continue with this model, burdening the working people more and more and more. It's just not sustainable.

Yes there are a few very rich, but there aren't many of them. And if you earn £1m a year, you are already contributing around 460,000 in tax. This compares to around £6,000 for someone on average pay. That's 77x as much. Someone earning 30x average is already contributing 77x the tax, yet people still clamour for them to pay more, to pay their fair share. How is 77x an average contribution not "a fair share". It's already WAY too much.

So none of this is sustainable. It's propped up by ever increased borrowing and ever increased tax burden. It is the sure as fire road to ruin, the only question being how long the road is.

you missed a very important bit of your analysis.

corporation tax.

add that in and stop the fuckers avoiding it and it all becomes so much more sustainable

 

[without a dream]

No mate. I believe deeply, passionately, that in order to have the best public services, the best healthcare, the best welfare, transport and everything else, you need wealth. Wealthy economies can have these things. Poor economies cannot. To have these things, first you need a wealthy economy. So priorities need to be wealth creation, followed by wealth creation and after that wealth creation.

So how do you do that? You do it by lowering taxation, encouraging entrepreneurialism and getting the state off everyone's back. You do everything you can to get the private sector to thrive, with real, not made up jobs. Get businesses more competitive with their now lower cost base and get exports booming. Get profits soaring and with that, employment increasing and tax revenues rising.

Then and only then can you invest in the best social welfare and public services, because then you can afford it. This is not the politics and policies the evil Tories, it is common sense, logical and it is correct. You cannot spend money you do not have and spending it early in the hope of wealth later can never work.

Salmond doesn't get it. I'll add it to the list of the many things he and his lefty cohorts don't get. They've never got it and probably will go to their graves not getting it. They advocate spending the money you haven't got first, and borrowing and taxing everyone even more to pay for it. Burden businesses even more and thereby stifle investment. Make them ever less competitive. As they struggle, drive up unemployment, not employment. In short, wreck the economy. Like every Labour and pseudo Labour Party has always done. This is the politics of Labour, the politics of failure and ruin. This is Salmond's politics. He fools himself with shit about "investing in Scotland" by which he means spending the state's money on crap, to create fake jobs, but never stop to think that the state doesn't have any money. It's all YOUR and MY money, and every pound the state has, they took off us and wasted 90p of it on bureaucracy in the process. And these fake jobs and public sector jobs don't create any wealth anyway, they are just a cost burden. You could not contrive a more wasteful, more deluded, more doomed approach if you really tried.

This is why socialism has never worked, will never work, can never work. It is superficially appealing to the have-nots who are promised a quick fix to their woes and who are unwilling or unable to engage their brains to understand why it can never work. Socialism is advocated by a principled but deluded well off few, and voted for by an impoverished and jealous many. It is in large part the politics of resentment and envy, and it can never succeed.

Why would you want public sector jobs to create wealth? How about we have jobs that serve the common-good? Nurses? Teachers/ Policemen? Binmen? All very, very worthy professions that serve to create a society based on welfare - caring for one another, living together. But hey, if you believe wealth to be the Mammon to deliver us all to the land of hope and glory, good luck to you. I'll be here to bail out your capitalist Nirvana. Just as I/we have every time the rapacious cult of business falls flat on its dog eat dog arse.

What, incidentally, are these "made up jobs" that you seem to equate with the Socialist state? Not like your Zero Hours jobs that so epitomise the capitalist cunts that want to fuck the poorest over are they? Off to feather now bud, so we'll have to agree to disagree. Cheers.

Public sector jobs don't create wealth, they consume it.

The jobs are all very worthy and indeed necessary and the people doing them need in no way feel unworthy of course - they are highly valued. But they don't create wealth. Apart from the rare circumstances where some of these people are generating income by selling products or services, but this is so minimal as to be inconsequential.

And no-one wants to "fuck the poorest over" mate. Everyone wants the same thing and that is a decent lifestyle and decent public services and infrastructure for all. The question is how to get it. Some people want to be generous to the underprivileged by giving them money we don't have, or taking even more money off the wealthy and also off the not wealthy. I don't subscribe to that approach because in the long run, it just doesn't work. There are too many needy and not enough wealthy.

In broad terms, we have 30 million people in employment in the UK. Of these, 50% are in public sector jobs. The vast majority of these and are being funded by state. But the state gets all its money from taxing the other 50%. (Yes it gets tax from the public sector workers, but that just means getting some of the money back that the state gave them in the first place.). The vast majority of the actual money available to the state comes from the 15m working in the private sector.

But we have a population of 60 million people. The 15 million private sector workers are already paying the wages of the public sector 15 million. But they also have to pay for state pensions and income support and disability benefits and attendance allowance and prescriptions and hospitals and everything else from a seemingly endless list, for EVERYBODY. 15 million people are carrying all the costs of a population of 60 million.

And remember, these 15 million are not "rich", they are just "in work". They include waiters at Nando's and window cleaners and fruit pickers. These people have no "spare" money and are probably net recipients of benefits, not net contributors. There are only 2 million who have incomes greater than around £40,000 and who pay higher rates of tax. And these people - 1 person in every 30 - are already giving up to 50% of their money over to the state to support the rest. We cannot continue with this model, burdening the working people more and more and more. It's just not sustainable.

Yes there are a few very rich, but there aren't many of them. And if you earn £1m a year, you are already contributing around 460,000 in tax. This compares to around £6,000 for someone on average pay. That's 77x as much. Someone earning 33x average is already contributing 77x the tax, yet people still clamour for them to pay more, to pay their fair share. How is 77x an average contribution not "a fair share". It's already WAY too much.

So none of this is sustainable. It's propped up by ever increased borrowing and ever increased tax burden. It is the sure as fire road to ruin, the only question being how long the road is.

In vastly incorrect terms.

 

[jared]

Personally, I couldn't give a toss.

It will be an absolute, complete, total and unmitigated disaster for Scotland if they vote yes, a mere temporary minor inconvenience for the rest of the UK, at worst.

In short, Scotland will lurch further to the left, spend even more money they don't have on welfare bollocks, and their economy will spiral down to sub Greece levels. The UK, freed of the burden of theses malingering lefties will rebound positively, with a 50 MP swing to the right.

And Scots will lose the pound. The fat dunce Salmond is too thick to understand that you can't share a currency without having the same interest rates, same fiscal policies and a common central bank. So the twat can't have independence and a shared currency. Having a shared currency means not being independent. The entry requirement for the Euro was convergence remember, not divergence. And look what a disaster it's been for Greece et al with economies that were not well converged. So, independence = no pound.

They can have their "Scottish Pound" or "Scottish Dinar" or "Scottish Peseta" or what the fuck the twit wants to call it, but it can't be a UK pound. Their dismal new currency will plummet on the currency markets as anyone with half an ounce of brain and a quarter of an ounce of wealth moves their money out into the safety of Euros or Dollars or Pounds. I mean, you'd need shit for brains to leave your life savings in Scottish Dinars wouldn't you, watching them spiral down into the dirt. As their currency plummets, their exports will bizarrely do OK, but since that only means haggis and Clan Dew, so fucking what. They will have galloping inflation as the cost of imports and raw materials soar. It's a self fulfilling prophecy if ever there was one.

Do I care? Not a fucking jot. We should erect a fucking great big wall and barbed wire fence and make them need a visa to visit. If we can tow the country a few hundred miles north, even better. The Scottish MP's who have enjoyed fucking over our economy for the last 100 years should be tarred, feathered and sent packing north at soonest opportunity. Good riddance to them. That would be a huge positive for sure.

And when the Scottish economy has bottomed out and they have their 50% unemployment and national debt at 200% of GDP and interest rates of 30%, don't DARE come cap in hand to the rest of the UK to bail them out.

Independence? Good luck with that.

Wow. I have to say for one who "couldn't give a toss", you do possess a number of strong views on this situation. And extremely resentful ones if I may say so.
If, as you so eloquently wrote in your post, you really don't care about Scottish independence, why go to the trouble of writing such a post? Instead of feeling sorry for the Scots and your perceived future of an independent Scotland, you choose to belittle them for having the temerity to even think about trying to run their own country independently from Westminster. If they do, however, it is their problem, not the rest of the UK's.
I sincerely hope that this post was meant as a light-hearted reaction to the never-ending media and political circus of which I am also extremely tired, otherwise I can only congratulate you on your extensive and well-researched knowledge of Scottish MPs over the last century, your borderline racist comments, and the feeling you give the reader of this 'situation' troubling you a lot more than you would like us to believe.

Turns out it wasn't a light hearted reaction at all.


Anyway, whether the outcome will be a yes or not, the wheels have been turned and will keep on on turning even if Scotland stays with the uk this time. In the next 20 years, my feeling is they will have their independence. What the future holds for them nobody truly knows for certain unless he has done some kind of time traveling device I'm not aware of that is in existence. Certainly I doubt anyone would be listening to rants from nobodies on an internet football forum. But that's just my 2 cents

 

[Chippy_boy]

Why would you want public sector jobs to create wealth? How about we have jobs that serve the common-good? Nurses? Teachers/ Policemen? Binmen? All very, very worthy professions that serve to create a society based on welfare - caring for one another, living together. But hey, if you believe wealth to be the Mammon to deliver us all to the land of hope and glory, good luck to you. I'll be here to bail out your capitalist Nirvana. Just as I/we have every time the rapacious cult of business falls flat on its dog eat dog arse.

What, incidentally, are these "made up jobs" that you seem to equate with the Socialist state? Not like your Zero Hours jobs that so epitomise the capitalist c**ts that want to fuck the poorest over are they? Off to feather now bud, so we'll have to agree to disagree. Cheers.

Public sector jobs don't create wealth, they consume it.

The jobs are all very worthy and indeed necessary and the people doing them need in no way feel unworthy of course - they are highly valued. But they don't create wealth. Apart from the rare circumstances where some of these people are generating income by selling products or services, but this is so minimal as to be inconsequential.

And no-one wants to "fuck the poorest over" mate. Everyone wants the same thing and that is a decent lifestyle and decent public services and infrastructure for all. The question is how to get it. Some people want to be generous to the underprivileged by giving them money we don't have, or taking even more money off the wealthy and also off the not wealthy. I don't subscribe to that approach because in the long run, it just doesn't work. There are too many needy and not enough wealthy.

In broad terms, we have 30 million people in employment in the UK. Of these, 50% are in public sector jobs. The vast majority of these and are being funded by state. But the state gets all its money from taxing the other 50%. (Yes it gets tax from the public sector workers, but that just means getting some of the money back that the state gave them in the first place.). The vast majority of the actual money available to the state comes from the 15m working in the private sector.

But we have a population of 60 million people. The 15 million private sector workers are already paying the wages of the public sector 15 million. But they also have to pay for state pensions and income support and disability benefits and attendance allowance and prescriptions and hospitals and everything else from a seemingly endless list, for EVERYBODY. 15 million people are carrying all the costs of a population of 60 million.

And remember, these 15 million are not "rich", they are just "in work". They include waiters at Nando's and window cleaners and fruit pickers. These people have no "spare" money and are probably net recipients of benefits, not net contributors. There are only 2 million who have incomes greater than around £40,000 and who pay higher rates of tax. And these people - 1 person in every 30 - are already giving up to 50% of their money over to the state to support the rest. We cannot continue with this model, burdening the working people more and more and more. It's just not sustainable.

Yes there are a few very rich, but there aren't many of them. And if you earn £1m a year, you are already contributing around 460,000 in tax. This compares to around £6,000 for someone on average pay. That's 77x as much. Someone earning 30x average is already contributing 77x the tax, yet people still clamour for them to pay more, to pay their fair share. How is 77x an average contribution not "a fair share". It's already WAY too much.

So none of this is sustainable. It's propped up by ever increased borrowing and ever increased tax burden. It is the sure as fire road to ruin, the only question being how long the road is.

you missed a very important bit of your analysis.

corporation tax.

add that in and stop the fuckers avoiding it and it all becomes so much more sustainable

True in part, but I had waffled enough. But corporation tax is only 6% of the government's income. Borrowing - pushing us further and further into debt - is 18%. Even if you doubled Corporation tax, it wouldn't come close to plugging the gap.

And whereas we don't want companies dodging paying it as some have done, equally we don't want to further burden those businesses that are paying it. Think about it, if we taxed businesses LESS and taxed employees LESS, then employers could lower their costs. This would make their goods and services cheaper for everyone. They would be more competitive and would win business abroad and our exports would grow. These companies, now more successful could employ more people and grow even further.

You get a positive upward spiral with more people in work, more tax being paid and a more wealthy society. You do this by cutting taxes. Increasing taxes does the exact opposite.