The Labour Government

[Chippy_boy]

I just heard that Starmer earned circa £404k last year and paid £99k in tax.

Plugging £400k into Martin Lewis' income tax calculator, you get this:



He's paid circa £70,000 less than any other highly paid employee. So presumably he's benefitted from various tax dodges about which he has at the same time been critical. Honestly I cannot think of a politician I loathe more than this man.

 

[gordondaviesmoustache]

I just heard that Starmer earned circa £404k last year and paid £99k in tax.

Plugging £400k into Martin Lewis' income tax calculator, you get this:

View attachment 132250

He's paid circa £70,000 less than any other highly paid employee. So presumably he's benefitted from various tax dodges about which he has at the same time been critical. Honestly I cannot think of a politician I loathe more than this man.

Heard where?

 

[Big Joe Corrigan]

I just heard that Starmer earned circa £404k last year and paid £99k in tax.

Plugging £400k into Martin Lewis' income tax calculator, you get this:

View attachment 132250

He's paid circa £70,000 less than any other highly paid employee. So presumably he's benefitted from various tax dodges about which he has at the same time been critical. Honestly I cannot think of a politician I loathe more than this man.

I can think of plenty.

 

[inbetween]

I tend to agree with you.

However, I think probably the majority of MPs on both sides are decent, fair-minded, hard working people who genuinely went into politics to try to make things better. My guess 500+ at least fall into that category.

The problem is that to get anywhere up the greasy pole, you have to throw away your principles and try to defend indefensible bollocks or else you will never get a look in for promotion ever again. There's hardly any free votes in the commons and MPs are expected to obey the whips or else.

Perhaps an good improvement to our democratic processes would be to get rid of the whips altogether and make everything a free vote. If that was the case, I am pretty sure even with Labour's humungous majority, the reprehensible WFA vote would never have passed.

I actually totally disagree with your assessment of MP's. I view many of them exactly the same as I view car salesmen, they're often sleezy gobby types who mostly see this as a cushty career or a title for their CV. That doesn't apply to all but I certainly don't subscribe to the 500+ figure. Otherwise good things would get done due to a majority of good but nothing really good has happened over the last 20 years.

My brother worked for a backbench Tory MP only a few years ago. Her only daily interest was around getting photo opportunities and PR to better herself and funnily enough she was booted out at the last election. She now will no doubt have already found her non-executive directorship to earn money as a lobbyist.

Party politics is the sole problem with everything. I think they should double MP salaries, reduce the stupid expense loopholes, forbid secondary work and maybe then they'd get a better character of person. Do the people of Clacton really believe that Nigel Farage is the person to best serve Clacton? The system of MP's is utterly pointless if within the party system they are not able to act in the interest of constituents first.

I'm actually far more in favour of a technocracy because god forbid we put people in charge of things who know what they're doing. Imagine there's a pandemic and you need somebody to lead the response. Would you pick an economics/politics graduate yesman or would you pick a health boss and his own team of health experts? Guess which option our political system produced for COVID? And we wonder why it always ends in tears.

 

[meltonblue]

I just heard that Starmer earned circa £404k last year and paid £99k in tax.

Plugging £400k into Martin Lewis' income tax calculator, you get this:

View attachment 132250

He's paid circa £70,000 less than any other highly paid employee. So presumably he's benefitted from various tax dodges about which he has at the same time been critical. Honestly I cannot think of a politician I loathe more than this man.

Going a bit far here, he didn’t earn a salary of 400k. The majority of his earnings was from the sale of a field that he’d have paid capital gains tax on.

 

[blue by birth]

What do you think the Tories biggest blunder was?

Probably losing the election

 

[hcblue95]

I just heard that Starmer earned circa £404k last year and paid £99k in tax.

Plugging £400k into Martin Lewis' income tax calculator, you get this:

View attachment 132250

He's paid circa £70,000 less than any other highly paid employee. So presumably he's benefitted from various tax dodges about which he has at the same time been critical. Honestly I cannot think of a politician I loathe more than this man.

Wait until you hear about your pals Boris Johnson and Rishi.

 

[inbetween]

Sooner we have driverless trains the better.

I also agree with this. Modernisation of the rail network is key and trains are by nature the perfect target for automation. They need to start putting passengers first and passengers do not care about who is driving the train.

The biggest benefit of driverless trains is they're safer, the driver works for free and he'll always turn up on time.

 

[metalblue]

This thread has more cryptofascists than my local!

One of the darkest parts of fascism, and perhaps least understood, is its disdain for freezing the pensioner cohort and a joy of calling out freeloaders. It’s why these cryptofascist operate in the shadows.

 

[gordondaviesmoustache]

It’s why these cryptofascist operate in the shadows.

The clue is in the word ‘crypto’.

 

[metalblue]

I spent more than 19 pages calling Sunak a rat-faced ****.

Shakespearean

It was a contribution, that I fear, didn’t get the recognition it deserved. Many wordsmiths are only truly appreciated when they are gone and I hope, sire, such a fate does not befall you and we see your work on the stage whilst breath still fills your lungs so your ears can be soothed with the praise that is rightfully yours.

 

[metalblue]

The clue is in the word ‘crypto’.

Indeed. For fear of being labelled a fascist I feel unable to say that I shall turn my heating off this winter so a pensioner shall not be saddened by my flue puffing out in all its glory.

Dark times my friend, dark times.

 

[gordondaviesmoustache]

It was a contribution, that I fear, didn’t get the recognition it deserved.

Disagree. It got plenty of likes whenever I played it to the gallery!

 

[gordondaviesmoustache]

Indeed. For fear of being labelled a fascist I feel unable to say that I shall turn my heating off this winter so a pensioner shall not be saddened by my flue puffing out in all its glory.

Dark times my friend, dark times.

Got a (very mild) bollocking from my girlfriend at the weekend for having mine on already!

 

[metalblue]

Got a (very mild) bollocking from my girlfriend at the weekend for having mine on already!

It was a bit nippy mate.

 

[Mr Kobayashi]

I just heard that Starmer earned circa £404k last year and paid £99k in tax.

Plugging £400k into Martin Lewis' income tax calculator, you get this:

View attachment 132250

He's paid circa £70,000 less than any other highly paid employee. So presumably he's benefitted from various tax dodges about which he has at the same time been critical. Honestly I cannot think of a politician I loathe more than this man.

I thought you didn't believe in tax?

 

[gordondaviesmoustache]

It was a bit nippy mate.

That’s exactly what I said, plus these 18th century cottages don’t heat themselves!

 

[metalblue]

I actually totally disagree with your assessment of MP's. I view many of them exactly the same as I view car salesmen, they're often sleezy gobby types who mostly see this as a cushty career or a title for their CV. That doesn't apply to all but I certainly don't subscribe to the 500+ figure. Otherwise good things would get done due to a majority of good but nothing really good has happened over the last 20 years.

My brother worked for a backbench Tory MP only a few years ago. Her only daily interest was around getting photo opportunities and PR to better herself and funnily enough she was booted out at the last election. She now will no doubt have already found her non-executive directorship to earn money as a lobbyist.

Party politics is the sole problem with everything. I think they should double MP salaries, reduce the stupid expense loopholes, forbid secondary work and maybe then they'd get a better character of person. Do the people of Clacton really believe that Nigel Farage is the person to best serve Clacton? The system of MP's is utterly pointless if within the party system they are not able to act in the interest of constituents first.

I'm actually far more in favour of a technocracy because god forbid we put people in charge of things who know what they're doing. Imagine there's a pandemic and you need somebody to lead the response. Would you pick an economics/politics graduate yesman or would you pick a health boss and his own team of health experts? Guess which option our political system produced for COVID? And we wonder why it always ends in tears.

A technocracy is communism but without killing people. It’s a no from me.

I don’t think many people enter politics with anything other than pure intentions. Of course power corrupts and it broadly corrupts all to some degree who stick around long enough. What I think is becoming more apparent is the uncovering of how much power civil servants actually wield. Cummings was probably right in that regard.

Be interesting to see how Starmer - being the control freak he is - deals with it all. Labour have entered office with an obvious desire to want to do well, they will either fight the civil service or go meekly to their political graves. If Starmer is able to break through the bureaucracy he may leave a legacy not seen but greater than most other PMs.

 

[Kompany Car]

I actually totally disagree with your assessment of MP's. I view many of them exactly the same as I view car salesmen, they're often sleezy gobby types who mostly see this as a cushty career or a title for their CV. That doesn't apply to all but I certainly don't subscribe to the 500+ figure. Otherwise good things would get done due to a majority of good but nothing really good has happened over the last 20 years.

My brother worked for a backbench Tory MP only a few years ago. Her only daily interest was around getting photo opportunities and PR to better herself and funnily enough she was booted out at the last election. She now will no doubt have already found her non-executive directorship to earn money as a lobbyist.

Party politics is the sole problem with everything. I think they should double MP salaries, reduce the stupid expense loopholes, forbid secondary work and maybe then they'd get a better character of person. Do the people of Clacton really believe that Nigel Farage is the person to best serve Clacton? The system of MP's is utterly pointless if within the party system they are not able to act in the interest of constituents first.

I'm actually far more in favour of a technocracy because god forbid we put people in charge of things who know what they're doing. Imagine there's a pandemic and you need somebody to lead the response. Would you pick an economics/politics graduate yesman or would you pick a health boss and his own team of health experts? Guess which option our political system produced for COVID? And we wonder why it always ends in tears.

My limited experience of dealing with politicians is that they are on the whole as thick as mince. I had the displeasure of being part of a working group which reported into Oliver Letwin an MP who allegedly was well educated with a PhD from Cambridge.

The number of times we had to explain simple (GCSE/O level) physics was unbelievable for someone who was understood to be educated.

 

[TinFoilHat]

I also agree with this. Modernisation of the rail network is key and trains are by nature the perfect target for automation. They need to start putting passengers first and passengers do not care about who is driving the train.

The biggest benefit of driverless trains is they're safer, the driver works for free and he'll always turn up on time.

How do you propose paying for the nationwide technology required to run driverless trains? It would require the whole UK rail infrastructure to be ripped up. Signals/platforms/track/trains.

It isn't feasible on safety grounds either.