The Labour Government

Uncle Wally One Ball said:
Me, for one. £8.5k in tax since November. We were all bemoaning the benefits and PIP wankers being out on the piss all the time in the cricket club on the weekend. A pair of self employed 60yr olds, one a carpet fitter and the other builder, both laughed out loud and said they hadnt paid that much tax in their whole working lives. And proudly so. Go and get some tax off these cheeky bastards would be a good start
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Ah the good old salt of the earth types, nice lads, real grafters, will do it cash in hand for a good price... The type who say why tax me, why not take it off the rich. By rich they mean PAYE higher and additional rate tax payers who have considerably less than them in their pockets after tax because they've actually paid what's due.

£46.8Bn missing in tax receipts (known as the tax gap), 60% of which is attributable to small businesses, with 12% to large businesses, 9% criminals and 5% the wealthy, the remainder to others.
 
Kompany Car said:
Ah the good old salt of the earth types, nice lads, real grafters, will do it cash in hand for a good price... The type who say why tax me, why not take it off the rich. By rich they mean PAYE higher and additional rate tax payers who have considerably less than them in their pockets after tax because they've actually paid what's due.

£46.8Bn missing in tax receipts (known as the tax gap), 60% of which is attributable to small businesses, with 12% to large businesses, 9% criminals and 5% the wealthy, the remainder to others.
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If your inference is that all self employed are taking the puss, let me be the first to say you’re wrong
 
Kompany Car said:
Ah the good old salt of the earth types, nice lads, real grafters, will do it cash in hand for a good price... The type who say why tax me, why not take it off the rich. By rich they mean PAYE higher and additional rate tax payers who have considerably less than them in their pockets after tax because they've actually paid what's due.

£46.8Bn missing in tax receipts (known as the tax gap), 60% of which is attributable to small businesses, with 12% to large businesses, 9% criminals and 5% the wealthy, the remainder to others.
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Spot on. And if any of us can genuinely look in the mirror and say we have NEVER paid someone cash in hand for a job then I'd be surprised. I have in the past but not in the last 20 years or so. I read an article suggesting the tax gap is nearer to £60bn.
 
Vic said:
I'm sorry for using the word "prejudice" (though I've no idea why union membership is proof of not being prejudiced).

But you've repeated the reason why I dismissed "the list" (of where asylum seekers put an added strain on public services). I'm objecting to the implication that this is true of all asylum seekers. And a lot of things on the list are political choices, e.g. that an asylum seeker can't work while their application is being considered so has to "put a strain" on public services rather than working and paying tax, especially when there are jobs that they would do that Brits won't.

I will test your basic attitude though. Which asylum seekers do you like?

www.independent.co.uk

The new shepherds of Spain: African migrants take up a neglected rural trade

A government program in Spain is training African migrants as shepherds to tackle rural depopulation and job shortages
www.independent.co.uk www.independent.co.uk
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I mentioned my family's union activism of nearly a century because we are pretty much indicative of what a Labour voting family used to be.
Not anymore though. As long as the ideology is on track and adhered to like a cult they (Labour) dont seem to care.
Plus the seemingly never ending division....that isnt just the right, its the left too. The rush to misspell "quotes" that are anticipated/fabricated from certain sections of society. Like it's all a good laugh that people are uneducated. Those people probably voted Labour as a matter of course just a generation ago. They were happy to have those votes , and those people weren't laughed at then.
Thatcher decimated certain areas but successive governments have added to that in different ways.
And you're not in a position to "test" me on anything so please cut that shit out.
 
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We've got Guardiola said:
Asylum seekers cost the UK economy around £5-10bn. That's < 0.1% of total GDP, 0.33% of total government spending.

We will collectively spend more money this year laying a single mile of track for HS2 than we will on asylum seekers.

I'm not in favour of asylum or the cost but honestly you are blaming the wrong thing and the wrong people.
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It's one factor of many. But it IS a factor.
I'm quite happy to also rail against subsidised wages too, which I have posted about previously. It's scandalous.
 
threespires said:
I think these are valid points but they have to be placed in context. The UK already has one of the highest asylum rejection rates in Europe and it's mostly an inefficient processing system that inflates the costs not the volume of people.

With an efficient system the cost of asylum seekers based on our current numbers would be maybe £1-2 billion now that's a lot of money but to put it in context...

The tax avoidance of about half a dozen big US tech firms costs us about £2 billion

About 60% of small businesses in the UK dodge some tax and that costs us at least £4 billion

Trade barriers with the EU are costing us about £35 billion a year

Not equalising taxes on capital gains with working is costing us about £13-14 billion a year

That's before you consider that AI could either hugely improve or destroy the UK economy depending on strategy and policies.

That's just to name a few of probably a dozen or more bigger issues but my point is that as a nation we've become obsessed with discussing one of the smaller issues we have, at the expense of much much bigger issues.

Improving the efficiency of the asylum system should be a priority and that should be got on with, cause it was previously left in an absolute state.

But we as a population need to get our heads up and discuss the bigger things that might actually help fix the country.
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Thank you for the detailed reply.

I agree with much of it to be honest. There are multiple factors involved in the whole shitshow.
However, youth unemployment is where my job focuses on and Milburns recent report on the effect of non EU migration on the NEETs was an eye opener.
People say that Brits dont want to work. Some do, some swing the lead. Always have done. Like many other nationalities there is no "one size fits all" when it comes to who claims benefits and how they act.
Yet here we are, as a country, neglecting our young and denying them entry level jobs because of other issues. That needs to stop.
 
Vic said:
From Attila the Stockbroker

Today Southern Rail, Thameslink, Gatwick Express and Northern Rail come back into public ownership - at least the track operation does, I believe the trains themselves are still privately owned, which is bollocks, but it’s a start.

It is a hugely popular measure, which is why the billionaire media haven’t mentioned it, in the same way that if a government minister gets free football tickets it’s all over the media but when Farage gets a £5m bung there’s tumbleweed. The kind of government I want to see would end such biased nonsense once and for all.

It is completely ridiculous for any infrastructure essential to the efficient functioning of human society to be run on a for-profit basis by the super-rich.

Public transport should be in public hands. Council houses should be built by councils. Water and sewage services should be run by central government. Information sources (newspapers, news websites, etc) should not be owned by private individuals , but by co-operatives and trusts, like the newspaper I write for is.

There can be no political democracy without economic democracy.
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The Government is paying the ROSCOs to rent their trains to run on GBR.

Naturally the greedy bastards have just increased their rental prices and are trying to negotiate the government cover maintenance costs for the rebranding,refurbishment and repairs of the trains.

There's a lot of issues with outdated air conditioning systems causing train cancellations in hot weather. Despite owing the trains they expect the government and the privately run services to pay for the upgrades. Naturally the private ones have decided rather than fix them a small bottle of water issued to passengers on stations is cheaper...

Nationalisation is BS. The hedge funds are running it all whilst the DFT try to implement the same staffing/service cuts we beat the Tories over in our last national strike.

We're heading for national industrial action again. Which won't help anyone.
 
mosssideblue said:
Is that the fault of the contractor or customer?
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It's a mutual arrangement where both parties benefit. I think the last time I paid cash in hand was for a fence and my "incentive" was I wasn't being charged VAT so a saving of 20% or whatever the rate was back then. It was offered by the company Of course, I have no idea if the contractor then put the transaction through his books so his "saving" could well have been even more than mine. With hindsight I suspect the treasury may well have missed out at both ends of the deal. Now multiply that millions of times over across the economy and you can see how the treasury, and ultimately all of us, suffer to a degree.
 
mackenzie said:
Thank you for the detailed reply.

I agree with much of it to be honest. There are multiple factors involved in the whole shitshow.
However, youth unemployment is where my job focuses on and Milburns recent report on the effect of non EU migration on the NEETs was an eye opener.
People say that Brits dont want to work. Some do, some swing the lead. Always have done. Like many other nationalities there is no "one size fits all" when it comes to who claims benefits and how they act.
Yet here we are, as a country, neglecting our young and denying them entry level jobs because of other issues. That needs to stop.
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What would you consider to be the top 5 "entry level" jobs nowadays?

I don't know the answer to the NEETS issue but I do get annoyed when employers quote NI as a factor for the very young when no NI is payable for any employee under 21 and none for those under 25 on an apprenticeship.
 
hampshireblue said:
What would you consider to be the top 5 "entry level" jobs nowadays?

I don't know the answer to the NEETS issue but I do get annoyed when employers quote NI as a factor for the very young when no NI is payable for any employee under 21 and none for those under 25 on an apprenticeship.
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I can only speak from my efforts to help young people into work and what I see advertised to perhaps 15 years ago or even 40 years ago. Things have changed considerably since the Pandemic and have got much worse recently.
My role isnt to engage with employers as such, we have specific staff for that.

The retail and hospitality industries were always the short term answer for young people looking for their first job, even if it then meant still applying for something else that was their long term career aim.
Not anymore. They can't get them (in the main) because its an "employer market" and many dont want kids where time and money might be needed to invest in training. Kids being an unknown quantity puts them off and many employers prefer an applicant with at least 1-2 years experience. Not all employers by any means, but its there.

In the last 18 months I have also had to deal with something I had never experienced before in 40 years; 4 newly qualified nurses looking for nursing work and not finding any. All Asian British girls with no barriers and perfectly suitable applicants.
It took a few months and we got there in the end but I'd never seen nurses claiming before.

So, for me, there is something very wrong out there at the minute.
 
mosssideblue said:
Is that the fault of the contractor or customer?
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The onus from an HMRC point of view is for the tradesman or company to pay the correct amount of tax. Purely asking for cash and the tradesman offer it at a cheaper price is only an offence by the tradesman. If you jointly enter into a contract on the basis that paying cash is there to avoid tax on behalf of either party, then that is an offence by both.

That said its not unreasonable for businesses to prefer cash for small transactions to avoid bank processing fees.
 
mosssideblue said:
If your inference is that all self employed are taking the puss, let me be the first to say you’re wrong
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I didnt say that did I, my wife is self employed with her own small business and pays her taxes. Does she make use of the legal tax reliefs, of course, but she pays every other penny that's due.

The problem is that whilst some play by the rules there are too many that don't and the government data supports this.
 
mackenzie said:
I can only speak from my efforts to help young people into work and what I see advertised to perhaps 15 years ago or even 40 years ago. Things have changed considerably since the Pandemic and have got much worse recently.
My role isnt to engage with employers as such, we have specific staff for that.

The retail and hospitality industries were always the short term answer for young people looking for their first job, even if it then meant still applying for something else that was their long term career aim.
Not anymore. They can't get them (in the main) because its an "employer market" and many dont want kids where time and money might be needed to invest in training. Kids being an unknown quantity puts them off and many employers prefer an applicant with at least 1-2 years experience. Not all employers by any means, but its there.

In the last 18 months I have also had to deal with something I had never experienced before in 40 years; 4 newly qualified nurses looking for nursing work and not finding any. All Asian British girls with no barriers and perfectly suitable applicants.
It took a few months and we got there in the end but I'd never seen nurses claiming before.

So, for me, there is something very wrong out there at the minute.
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Doesn't that put to bed this (and other) Government's aim to get disabled people back into work rhetoric?
 
mackenzie said:
Thank you for the detailed reply.

I agree with much of it to be honest. There are multiple factors involved in the whole shitshow.
However, youth unemployment is where my job focuses on and Milburns recent report on the effect of non EU migration on the NEETs was an eye opener.
People say that Brits dont want to work. Some do, some swing the lead. Always have done. Like many other nationalities there is no "one size fits all" when it comes to who claims benefits and how they act.
Yet here we are, as a country, neglecting our young and denying them entry level jobs because of other issues. That needs to stop.
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No mention anywhere in the National Media that increasing the retirement age to 67 is impacting on youngsters trying to find employment (its all the immigrants fault obviously )

Which is strange 'cos they can't be stealing all the jobs whilst simultaneously claiming all the benefits.
 
Vic said:
From Attila the Stockbroker

Today Southern Rail, Thameslink, Gatwick Express and Northern Rail come back into public ownership - at least the track operation does, I believe the trains themselves are still privately owned, which is bollocks, but it’s a start.

It is a hugely popular measure, which is why the billionaire media haven’t mentioned it, in the same way that if a government minister gets free football tickets it’s all over the media but when Farage gets a £5m bung there’s tumbleweed. The kind of government I want to see would end such biased nonsense once and for all.

It is completely ridiculous for any infrastructure essential to the efficient functioning of human society to be run on a for-profit basis by the super-rich.

Public transport should be in public hands. Council houses should be built by councils. Water and sewage services should be run by central government. Information sources (newspapers, news websites, etc) should not be owned by private individuals , but by co-operatives and trusts, like the newspaper I write for is.

There can be no political democracy without economic democracy.
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Come back when you've done it.
 
hampshireblue said:
Spot on. And if any of us can genuinely look in the mirror and say we have NEVER paid someone cash in hand for a job then I'd be surprised. I have in the past but not in the last 20 years or so. I read an article suggesting the tax gap is nearer to £60bn.
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Paying cash in hand is fine, some places insist, its up to the recipient and/or the tax man to see it taxed correctly. Personally I would make cash payments pretty much defunct and all payments without a receipt illegal and fine both the firm and the buyer. Also there should also be an anonymous snitch line.
 
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