The Labour Government

[hilts]

Not a bad day for me. No wealth tax would touch me at all. I just think they are a terrible idea, financially, politically and morally..They don't raise much money; they hugely discourage rich people from coming to the UK with a big fat "Beware!" sign hanging over the country; And it's a retrospective tax, changing the rules AFTER people have made their lifestyle choices, which is not on. A bit like saying to jumior doctors (say), we're adjusting your pay for the years 2010 to 2015 so you owe us £10k each.

Also I happen to think "the rich" are taxed enough already. It doesn't mean I am rich. Something people on here seem to struggle to get their heads around.

If Thieves wants to raise more tax she should put up the basic rate 2p and then everyone can chip in.

What lifestyle choices would someone over the £10 million have to make?

 

[BigJoe#1]

The fact you think someone should be on a 'side' is probably the biggest problem we have, why should anybody fit in a box and all their views fit into a convenient pattern of left or right. The reason this board has so much nonsense is posters being constantly in defence mode for the ideology they think they belong to.

100% this. Well said.

 

[Chippy_boy]

From my viewpoint, 14 years of austerity and right wing propaganda from the press has reduced this country into an abyss of political populism that has nothing to do with improving the lives of the general population, but more concerned with making the lives of other sections of society worse.

And of course the financial crisis of 2008 and the fiscal aftermath, Brexit, COVID and the inflation and huge energy price hikes due to Ukraine, all have nothing to do with it. No, just the Tory's fault all of it.

Of course we will never know, but does it ever occur to you (seriously) that in fact had Labour been in power all that time, things might actually have been worse? Or do you think the periods when e.g. Harold Wilson or James Callaghan were in charge were a raging success?

Things may have appeared better when Blair took over, but you have to consider several important factors (if you are to be honest with yourself):

1. Blair was not handed a note saying "There's no money left - we've spent all of it". He took over an economy in very good shape, and on an upward trajectory. He had a lot of scope to tax and borrow more and spend on public services. A luxury neither the Tories since 2010 nor the current Labour government have had. Of course things looked better after he spent more.

2. He was in power during a period a strong global growth, which always benefits our domestic economy, irrespective of who is in power.

3. He - and to a certain extent Brown -were not very "Labour". They didn't repeat all the mistakes of old Labour governments.

4. They fucked it up in the end. Even before the 2008 crash they had raised taxes so many times and overburdened the economy with such a huge public sector, the wheels were falling off. 2008 just finished it off.

It would be bloody marvellous if we had a time machine and could give Labour the helm in 2010 and see just how well or badly they might have done.

Not that I think the Tories did a brilliant job, BTW. On the contrary, I think they have been bloody awful. I just don't think Labour would have been remotely better.

 

[Chippy_boy]

What lifestyle choices would someone over the £10 million have to make?

Not the point. I am opposed to any taxes imposed after the event. If a chancellor wants to make a tax change going forward then fine. People can plan and adjust and do whatever they want to in the light of what's coming. You cannot change what's already happened, so it is unfair to tax someone on what happened previously, like accumulating your wealth.

Suppose family A and family B earn the same and have the same number of kids, houses, costs etc. Family A decides to save as hard as they can, spend little and after 20 years have amassed a modest pot of savings. Family B does the opposite - spends everything they earn, goes on posh holidays, eat out all the time etc and after 20 years have nothing.

Would you say it is fair to then take 2% of what family A has off them, and give it family B? I would hope you would not.

So having agreed the principle, the financial cut off becomes irrelevant. It may be financially and practically expedient for the chancellor, but it is morally wrong.

What if family A decided to risk everything on a business venture and as a result of their entrepreneurship, working all hours and countless sacrifices, they are now worth £10m? Had they been told 20 years earlier, "Beware, if you are successful, the state will take x% off you", they may have decided to not risk everything.

Apart from anything else, we already have a high rate of wealth tax, called IHT which takes 40% of rich peoples' estate off them every 30 years or so.

 

[inbetween]

There's been Jewish courts since the 1700 s and Catholic courts since the middle ages ... but you aint moaning about them

If indeed they exist then those sort of courts should be controlled or even banned as well, I have no problem with that.

I mention it because my niece is a Muslim and she married a Muslim at 20 purely because they weren't allowed to see each other otherwise. They couldn't share a hotel room and they couldn't do much really without an escort until they were married.

I attended their Nikah and my niece barely attended because she was 'given away' by her father in the day ceremony although obviously she consented. It's a bizarre one to watch, the men attend the ceremony and women attend in a different room. She basically just turned up for the night do and that was it which we found quite sad for her.

They've since broken up and she needs to get a divorce but she can't do it so easily because he has to grant it and then I can only presume that they'll have to petition it to the Sharia court and who knows what that involves.

They didn't legally marry so she also has no marriage rights in UK law and alongside the breakup the whole thing is causing her massive amounts of stress and embarassment. She's basically treated like a pariah within that element of the community who knows his family.

This is the reality for Muslim women. It's obviously their choice but sometimes I'm not so sure because as with all religions it's enforced and indoctrinated upon young people, especially socially. Again I get it's their choice but it's just very alien to everything I believe in.

 

[metalblue]

No.

As for public services I would suggest we abolish freedom of movement and impose border controls for the home nations otherwise services will collapse under the strain of huge swathes of the British people moving around the country. Sounds dumb, huh? That’s how you post sounds to me.

I have to commend this thread as a whole for its breathtaking display of ignorance, absent of facts and total misunderstanding on…well, pretty much everything really. I would say it’s been a pleasure debating you all, but alas, I am obliged to conclude that single cell pond life would have done a better job than most of you on here.

No offence.

Nah, I’m kidding.

I meant it.

This post is a bit rich coming from someone who is struggling to post a coherent position.

You said “no”… so explain it because from what I can see you are all over the place and resorting to insults as some sort of balaclava to mask your own tenuous position.

 

[metalblue]

Chippy or Brewsters ?

Tax rises are always popular with those who don’t pay them.

 

[M18CTID]

What lifestyle choices would someone over the £10 million have to make?

I wish I was in a position where I had over £10 million and the government were going to put my taxes up ;)

 

[metalblue]

The fact you think someone should be on a 'side' is probably the biggest problem we have, why should anybody fit in a box and all their views fit into a convenient pattern of left or right. The reason this board has so much nonsense is posters being constantly in defence mode for the ideology they think they belong to.

Along with use of hyperbolic language.

 

[M18CTID]

Not a bad day for me. No wealth tax would touch me at all. I just think they are a terrible idea, financially, politically and morally..They don't raise much money; they hugely discourage rich people from coming to the UK with a big fat "Beware!" sign hanging over the country; And it's a retrospective tax, changing the rules AFTER people have made their lifestyle choices, which is not on. A bit like saying to jumior doctors (say), we're adjusting your pay for the years 2010 to 2015 so you owe us £10k each.

Also I happen to think "the rich" are taxed enough already. It doesn't mean I am rich. Something people on here seem to struggle to get their heads around.

If Thieves wants to raise more tax she should put up the basic rate 2p and then everyone can chip in.

Swings and roundabouts. While the rich do pay more tax in percentage terms, their wealth opens up all sorts of opportunities with regards to tax avoidance. People who aren't rich don't have that luxury.

 

[inbetween]

And of course the financial crisis of 2008 and the fiscal aftermath, Brexit, COVID and the inflation and huge energy price hikes due to Ukraine, all have nothing to do with it. No, just the Tory's fault all of it.

Of course we will never know, but does it ever occur to you (seriously) that in fact had Labour been in power all that time, things might actually have been worse? Or do you think the periods when e.g. Harold Wilson or James Callaghan were in charge were a raging success?

Things may have appeared better when Blair took over, but you have to consider several important factors (if you are to be honest with yourself):

1. Blair was not handed a note saying "There's no money left - we've spent all of it". He took over an economy in very good shape, and on an upward trajectory. He had a lot of scope to tax and borrow more and spend on public services. A luxury neither the Tories since 2010 nor the current Labour government have had. Of course things looked better after he spent more.

2. He was in power during a period a strong global growth, which always benefits our domestic economy, irrespective of who is in power.

3. He - and to a certain extent Brown -were not very "Labour". They didn't repeat all the mistakes of old Labour governments.

4. They fucked it up in the end. Even before the 2008 crash they had raised taxes so many times and overburdened the economy with such a huge public sector, the wheels were falling off. 2008 just finished it off.

It would be bloody marvellous if we had a time machine and could give Labour the helm in 2010 and see just how well or badly they might have done.

Not that I think the Tories did a brilliant job, BTW. On the contrary, I think they have been bloody awful. I just don't think Labour would have been remotely better.

The unimaginable cost of COVID is worthy of a discussion alone. We talk of 2008 but COVID was 10x worse and yet sometimes people seem to talk as though it never happened and the world is the same as 2019.

COVID supposedly cost us around £400bn, that's nearly £10k per household and how many households are paying £10k extra in tax?

There is then the cost to mental health, general health, the wellbeing of young people... Forget austerity, COVID has certainly left a much bigger scar than we would admit.

 

[domalino]

they hugely discourage rich people from coming to the UK with a big fat "Beware!" sign hanging over the country;

Millionaire spend a lot of money threatening to leave whenever they think they might get taxed more, and then...they don't go anywhere.

Millionaire exodus did not occur, study reveals - Tax Justice Network

The number of millionaires widely reported in the news to be leaving countries in "exodus" represented near-0% of all millionaires.

taxjustice.net

The fact that the Telegraph and co. are all relying on the same study (already completely disproven above) to scare people into thinking millionaires will leave over a wealth tax says everything to be honest, there's just no evidence at all that these people will leave.


There's actually more evidence in terms of research and studies based on previous wealth taxes that a wealth tax incentivises very wealthy people to spend their money rather than sit on it, which is exactly what the general public should want (that's certainly not proven, the point is one potential outcome has been magnified as much as possible based on 1 incredibly flawed study by a biased company, while a positive outcome has barely been mentioned at all by the traditional broadsheets)

 

[BlueHammer85]

There's clearly more urgency to tackle the boat crossings more than the last 5/6 years of the Tories aside the failed Rwanda gimmick.
Finally we have a PM able to sensibly liaise with EU leaders and Macron to tackle this issue - Immigration numbers halved, cracking down on illegal migrants found working and speeding up the process on applications.
Labour and Starmer deserve a lot of credit on all the above yet Farage will keep spouting rubbish and his cult followers will ignore any signs of progress and keep waving the flag for Reform.

 

[stonerblue]

Good faith questions.

When you say I don't want our high streets to look like Pakistan what do you actually mean?
What is it you are specifically anxious about?

I lived for a while in Sparkhill in the late 80's around about when the white population had become a minority. The shops were reflective of the local community and the fact that more of the pakistani and indian community were more into running shops, food outlets and small businesses. The percentage of pakistani origin people has gone up quite a bit since then but the place looks broadly the same to me, maybe a higher density of shops, new swimming pool next to the old library which is still there and a fairly new Gurdwara on the other side of the library. Definitely more mosques than churches but hardly surprising given the local population and the fact hardly anyone goes to church these days.

It really didn't and doesn't look like a highstreet in Pakistan or India, which for a million reasons look really quite different to ours. It looks like what it is - a british highstreet, lots of redbrick victorian and edwardian buildings, it just so happens the shops in them are selling stuff that serves the predominantly ethnic community. It looks a bit run down in parts because the overall level of investment in the area hasn't been that high but not really any different from many other urban areas. So my point is the area has looked roughly like it does now for quite a long time and the world hasn't fallen apart. I do absolutely acknowledge there are parts of the country where there are very high concentrations of people of pakistani origin mostly in areas of the three big cities of England and then in maybe 5 - 10 towns around the country. They might change the flavour of a specific area in the way I've described but not of the country in any material way.

You talk about thousands of years of culture, history and tradition being tossed away but who's doing that? For example, Christian churches have disappeared because the indigenous population has decided it doesn't believe in God anymore, some of the older churches I know are only viable because of immigrants breathing new life into them. We have a poor record of preserving our heritage but that's got nothing to do with asian shopkeepers. We stuck our industry very close to or inside our cities (which for instance the italians typically didn't), that and a much less discriminating approach by the Luftwaffe did quite a good job of getting rid of chunks of our history in WWII and then we've just never prioritised it since, preferring to indulge in some pretty dubious postwar urban planning. We binned off our small retail culture in favour of huge supermarket chains and online shopping, ironically the only people keeping what was our traditional shop culture going are immigrants many of whom still understand the value of food that tastes of something.

So I'm struggling to understand what aspects of our culture being tossed away (which I have some sympathy with) has anything to do with the Pakistani community? Which brings me back to my second question which I would genuinely in good faith like to understand.

During the late 70's and early 80's the only people opening small business' in my town were Chinese, Indian and Pakistani. Without the corner shops, restaurants, take aways, and taxis there would have been nothing but pubs. the immigrants 'saved' the town but sadly, that bastion of 'Britishness' the local boozer has all but disappeared..

 

[maxwellblue]

There's clearly more urgency to tackle the boat crossings more than the last 5/6 years of the Tories aside the failed Rwanda gimmick.
Finally we have a PM able to sensibly liaise with EU leaders and Macron to tackle this issue - Immigration numbers halved, cracking down on illegal migrants found working and speeding up the process on applications.
Labour and Starmer deserve a lot of credit on all the above yet Farage will keep spouting rubbish and his cult followers will ignore any signs of progress and keep waving the flag for Reform.

Absolutely deluded

 

[M18CTID]

Because I don't believe it should be relevant mate.
Why should anyone who wishes to express concerns about the any aspect of immigration somehow after justify that first by providing some evidence that they are not a racist.
It is not racist to be concerned and people should be able to speak freely, if people had spoken freely these last 20 years and our politicians had listened we would have a better integrated society and Reform would be a fringe party.

I totally agree that we need a proper discussion about immigration. What I don't buy is that Reform would be on the fringes if we'd had that discussion down the years. That's an overly simplistic view IMO. The Tories and Labour have tried to address the issue of small boats by arguably lurching further to the right than one would expect in terms of rhetoric and proposed solutions, yet some people still aren't happy. It also doesn't help that millions of people were bullshitted into voting for Brexit by Farage's lies but haven't woken up to that fact and are allowing themselves to be bullshitted again by him, aided and abetted by compliant media outlets.

Oh, and I'll also argue that because Farage got his wish with Brexit that that is the main reason why small boat crossings increased in the first place.

 

[threespires]

Spot on.

Similar mental gymnastics when Farage was put on the spot when asked how would he define a Welsh person (having previously committed to prioritising benefits such as housing for Welsh people over immigrants).

He squirmed a bit and then can out with, "So it's got to be someone who has lived and settled in Wales, paid taxes, obeyed the law, and if someone has done that for a 5 or 10 years period, then we've every right to say that they are fully part of the Welsh community".

So his definition has nothing to do with history, traditions or ancestry or anything like that. It's all about whether you've lived there for 5 or 10 years and paid some tax.

How utterly ridiculous. As a white English person, if I lived and worked in Saudi for 5 years would anyone say I was an Arab? Of course not. I am English. It's intrinsic to what I am. That is my ethnicity. You cannot change your ethnicity by moving from one country to another.

By Farage's idiotic definition the immigrant Uber Eats drivers whizzing around Cardiff are as Welsh as Taffy from the valleys. What absolute nonsense. They are not Welsh, they can never be Welsh. They are immigrants living in Wales.

I get that but personally I'm still confused on what people mean when they talk about lost history and traditions with respect to England in particular. I think one of the issues is we've been so successful at establishing, maintaining and exporting aspects of our culture and history that people simply take it for granted.

Language is an important part of history and culture, the reality is English has been exported around the planet and it's global importance means not only has it thrived in the UK but it's shaped the world in many ways. Similarly, our legal and political systems, our cultural exports and even our sports have influenced and continue to influence large parts of the world. England in modern history has never had to fight for it's cultural survival in a way other countries have so our traditions and culture are understated and have been taken as a given. Until recently at least. However, people seem to be misdiagnosing where the pressure comes from. We have obviously lost influence in the world since WWII and there is a diminution on the global stage that contrasts sharply with America's hegemony.

The irony is that English culture helped give rise to the modern capitalist world but now the globalised American led form of it has eroded and threatens to flatten various aspects of our way of life. That's not to be anti-American it's simply a comment about issues of scale and dominance, which we once benefited from but no longer do.

Think about the things we have lost and it's almost always either because we (a) have chosen to give them up or (b) they've been replaced by an American driven alternative either with or without our consent. Even where we've chosen to give things up like the Christian faith I'd argue rampant consumerism and materialism has replaced it rather than we've just set it aside. Consumer culture, media and entertainment, language and branding, technology, labour practices, cultural norms and political discourse are all heavily influenced and controlled by the USA.

We do have an issue protecting our culture but it's not the one people seem to think it is. I can easily avoid listening to Bhangra if I want to but it's a lot harder to avoid Taylor bloody Swift, who last time I looked was not from the Punjab.

So putting aside the history and culture elements, that leaves the ethnicity bit but what does that then really mean in practical terms? For example, ignoring any moral or ethical dimensions for a moment, a white english ethnostate (btw not suggesting you are proposing that) would be an economic catastrophe. You'd possibly get some short term relief in the housing market but everything else would go to rat shit pdq. Similarly net zero immigration wouldn't be quite as catastrophic but would create way more problems than it solved. So I'm left struggling to understand what would be the meaning and/or benefit of asserting some form of white ethnic primacy, when it doesn't solve anything it probably makes it worse?

 

[hampshireblue]

Or they could tax the big companies that use the system to avoid paying their fair share of taxes? But that would involve some balls and ignoring significant pressure.

I agree but there would be an outcry that those companies may leave entirely.

 

[BrianW]

In my view, Covid expenditure should be treated like a World War and paid off over 100-200 years. Like the Napoleonic Wars, WW1, WW2 and comp for slave owners. If this means we can't afford WW3, so much the better.

 

[hampshireblue]

Hasn't the Labour Government taken the stance that they will NOT be entering into any negotiations with the BMA....? interesting times ahead.

I thought we were assured by people on here that Labour had managed to get it all sorted.... more like they've set a precedent and made a rod for their own back.

Morning Joe, even by your standards this is a bizarre post mixing up a queston about freedom to move around the UK and resident doctors.

Back to the ignore step for you I'm afraid.