Current Affairs The Conservative Party

[Rita_Poon]

For me the bigger issue is that we have the biggest tax take as a % of GDP since the 1940s, yet it feels like public services are on their knees. It feels like something is fundamentally wrong or broken.

feels like?

 

[Daveysgingerlovechild]

For me the bigger issue is that we have the biggest tax take as a % of GDP since the 1940s, yet it feels like public services are on their knees. It feels like something is fundamentally wrong or broken.

Indeed. I've no problem paying tax but i expect things to function well and for there to be tangible public benefits. Which we're not seeing. Or at least not to the standard of that tax take.

 

[mightymoyes]

I mean I'm not advocating turning to complete cretins for the answer

we've already had/have our complete cretins! lol

 

[Nightman]

Radical pipe dream I know, but as 'inheritance' is one of the main drivers of maintaining social inequality, it really needs binning off entirely. 100% tax rate on estates. Kids in wealthy families already profit from stable environments and far more opportunities as they grow up, and then are in line for a huge cash injection later in life too? Just plough all that money into the state for the rest of us and let these wealthy families lose their entrenched status and have to get by on merit like everyone else.

I see it as the complete opposite. Me and my mates never really had a chance to buy houses in the UK, save etc. like my parents generation and the generation before. Inheritance will give us some breathing room later in life. It's a different world - and not a good one.

I mean, my grandfather was a blue collar worker and sits on an £800k house. 90% of that is utterly luck. Not hard graft - just luck. My mother sits on two houses at £1m. She didn't have a job until she was 38. Again sheer luck.

That 'luck' doesn't exist anymore and no amount of 'hard work' 'working harder' is ever going to give me these opportunities.

 

[Daveysgingerlovechild]

I see it as the complete opposite. Me and my mates never really had a chance to buy houses in the UK, save etc. like my parents generation and the generation before. Inheritance will give us some breathing room later in life. It's a different world - and not a good one.

I mean, my grandfather was a blue collar worker and sits on an £800k house. 90% of that is utterly luck. Not hard graft - just luck. My mother sits on two houses at £1m. She didn't have a job until she was 38. Again sheer luck.

That 'luck' doesn't exist anymore and no amount of 'hard work' 'working harder' is ever going to give me these opportunities.

That, I suspect, just encapsulates the problem with our insane housing market.

First, the values you mention are presumably because once affordable and standard houses have ended up worth eye-watering amounts. The same forces are the ones preventing folk buying because they're now unaffordable to most.

 

[Bruce Wayne]

Is Britain’s plan to send asylum-seekers to Rwanda salvageable?

Spoiler alert: almost certainly not

www.economist.com

I do wonder if deep down they knew it would fail but it gives them something else to use in their absurd "culture wars".

 

[mahermi1]

Indeed. I've no problem paying tax but i expect things to function well and for there to be tangible public benefits. Which we're not seeing. Or at least not to the standard of that tax take.

He has switched the tax from the poorer people getting a fairer share with sir annual allowance getting froze and giving a nice little earner to the richer people of our nation, y'know that 2p in the pound.
Disgrace but the Tory meatheads will love it.

 

[Daveysgingerlovechild]

He has switched the tax from the poorer people getting a fairer share with sir annual allowance getting froze and giving a nice little earner to the richer people of our nation, y'know that 2p in the pound.
Disgrace but the Tory meatheads will love it.

That might actually not be such a good move - a lot of folk are getting pulled into the 40% bracket who never historically were. I would not be surprised to see an announcement at the next budget in March 24 about increasing thresholds or another fake giveaway.

 

[orchard]

Is Britain’s plan to send asylum-seekers to Rwanda salvageable?

Spoiler alert: almost certainly not

www.economist.com

I do wonder if deep down they knew it would fail but it gives them something else to use in their absurd "culture wars".

Yeah, it's just another more expensive sharks/big hairdryers in the channel to distract core voters from the fact they're letting loads of people in anyway. The bonus to this hustle is undermining selected institutions that restrict their autocratic ambition.

 

[Xizor]

I see it as the complete opposite. Me and my mates never really had a chance to buy houses in the UK, save etc. like my parents generation and the generation before. Inheritance will give us some breathing room later in life. It's a different world - and not a good one.

I mean, my grandfather was a blue collar worker and sits on an £800k house. 90% of that is utterly luck. Not hard graft - just luck. My mother sits on two houses at £1m. She didn't have a job until she was 38. Again sheer luck.

That 'luck' doesn't exist anymore and no amount of 'hard work' 'working harder' is ever going to give me these opportunities.

I understand the view completely, but the systemic inequality that's causing you to look forward to the inheritance windfall just for breathing room is the same one that's put you in the situation in the first place, and so you're left supporting the system that impoverishes you.

As more of the country's wealth gets pumped up into the 10%, (or the 1%), more property gets hoovered up by private landlords, and then we take a light touch to their estates when they die, and their family carry on pumping more wealth out of the poor to enrich themselves. This isn't the only way that the gap between richest and poorest are growing, but it's an insidious one that is happening every single day to millions of people as they pay ever higher rents to professional private landlords with growing portfolios.

People support the system because they may get a few nourishing crumbs from the table as they enter middle age (typically), but wealthy property owners want to use the exact same system to make sure they're keeping themselves in cake their entire lives.

 

[peteblue]

Indeed. I've no problem paying tax but i expect things to function well and for there to be tangible public benefits. Which we're not seeing. Or at least not to the standard of that tax take.

The money gets wasted. How much has been wasted on HS2, how much gets wasted on NHS management or by the MoD, how big is the Civil Service, why is it over 100,000 larger than in 2016, how much got wasted on Track and Trace…the list goes on and on

 

[Daveysgingerlovechild]

The money gets wasted. How much has been wasted on HS2, how much gets wasted on NHS management or by the MoD, how big is the Civil Service, why is it over 100,000 larger than in 2016, how much got wasted on Track and Trace…the list goes on and on

The civil service expanded hugely to deal with the disaster known as Brexit, so self inflicted government idiocy. Hs2 again, Tory waste. Test and trace, again Tory waste/corruption. Furlough fraud etc.

This is despite Austerity in the public sector.

And apparently Labour were wasteful?

C'est incroyable!

 

[Rita_Poon]

water failed
energy failed
education failed
law and order failed
councils failed

green light to the banking sector (remember them!) for uncapped bonuses.

tory britain.

 

[Nightman]

I understand the view completely, but the systemic inequality that's causing you to look forward to the inheritance windfall just for breathing room is the same one that's put you in the situation in the first place, and so you're left supporting the system that impoverishes you.

As more of the country's wealth gets pumped up into the 10%, (or the 1%), more property gets hoovered up by private landlords, and then we take a light touch to their estates when they die, and their family carry on pumping more wealth out of the poor to enrich themselves. This isn't the only way that the gap between richest and poorest are growing, but it's an insidious one that is happening every single day to millions of people as they pay ever higher rents to professional private landlords with growing portfolios.

People support the system because they may get a few nourishing crumbs from the table as they enter middle age (typically), but wealthy property owners want to use the exact same system to make sure they're keeping themselves in cake their entire lives.

I agree with everything you say, mate. I really do.

But you can't be putting people's inheritance into a pot for the Tory to mis-approppiate/spunk.

The system we currently suffer under is not for the betterment of society, nor the people - as you say.

 

[Daveysgingerlovechild]

water failed
energy failed
education failed
law and order failed
councils failed

green light to the banking sector (remember them!) for uncapped bonuses.

tory britain.

Evan Davis on Radio 4 absolutely had off some treasury minister yesterday when they were boasting about apparent record investment in the NHS and schools.

Simply, politely, asked them why so many things were falling apart including the criminal justice system due to lack of spaces in jails for rapists and the like.

The reply was "splutter splutter waffle waffle" with a side dish of panic.

They literally have no answers.