Camila Tominey says you can just add Reform and Tory votes together. Tory majority forever!
Do people pay for this insight?
So, with Reform largely "sitting out" the local and PCC elections, that implies that whatever the Tories get in those elections, the results will flatter them?
Yes. However, I think there is a heavy cross-over between Reform votes and the votes for Ind and Localist candidates. So there is a degree of dilution especially at the district level.
Camila Tominey said the education system is indoctrinating young people to be left wing and she worries that they will not become conservative or have conservative values.
Could it be perhaps that the Tories are just a bit...crap?
If the education was indoctrinating youth to the right I am sure you would complain. The educators should not be pushing kids either way they should be teaching neutrally and teaching kids to make their own minds up
It's been indoctrinating them since 2010 since we've had Tory Governments that entire time! Why don't the Tories sort it out if it is such an issue?
If the education system was indoctrinating children, then they would at least know how to use an apostrophe.
Camila Tominey said the education system is indoctrinating young people to be left wing and she worries that they will not become conservative or have conservative values.
Could it be perhaps that the Tories are just a bit...crap?
Given that anyone currently at school has had the entirety of their education under a Conservative Prime Minister, clearly so.
Point of order
In Wales it is under a labour government with a worse performance of all the UK
Leaving aside the possibility that it was a bit of light whimsy, it's still the case that most British children are English and experience education under a Conservative-run government. And what with academisation, The Telegraph can't even blame lefty councils any more.
Me, if I had any indoctrination energy, I'd use it to indoctrinate pupils to write down their workings when they do calculations.
I'm not Bart, but it's a different context, so it can't possibly be the gotcha you want it to be.
And certainly some people might argue it was very low compared to what was possible and desirable.
The fanatics will never be appeased. That is for certain. It could be 90% and it would not be enough.
To listen to the climate extremists you would think we had done nothing and taken no action on the environment.
To that end some fringe youth eco offshoot of Just Stop Oil plans to bring the tube to a halt. Something to do with the enviroment and Palestine now, natch.
"The spokesman said: “New oil and gas licencing is ultimately a genocide, a man-made death. That is the same mentality with the situation in Palestine. It is essential to think of them together and not think of them as individual missions.”"
What they don't seem to realize is that their approach makes climate change more, rather than less, of a danger, because they provoke an enormous reaction.
If you make the necessary changes gradually, and you get buy in from the majority of the population at every stage, and you ensure that people keep getting richer... well, then you'll stop climate change. If you want people to wear hair shirts and be poorer, then you won't get 50.1% of people supporting you, or indeed, any potential action.
Humankind has done an extraordinary job of implementing measures to reduce climate change - and we're just getting started. Ten years ago, I had a Tesla Model S... and that was pretty much it for electric cars on the road. Now some places - like Norway - are 85% electric for new vehicles! Back then China's new coal electricity generation capacity outstripped wind and solar 1,000,000-1. Now, there's far more solar and wind - like 20x - being deployed in China than coal. We've found new ways to heat and cool homes than are dramatically more energy efficient than anything in the past.
All we need - as humanity - is to keep doing what we're doing. Keep electrifying. Keep installing batteries. Keep looking for the million and one marginal improvements. And if we do that, we can keep all getting richer, we can minimize our dependence on parts of the world that hate us, we can improve our balance of payments, and we can keep making the world a cleaner, better place.
I suppose the counter-argument is that the only reason we have taken such measures is because climate activists have kicked up a fuss.
Car manufacturers have been more than happy to continue making ICE vehicles, even while we have understood the greenhouse effect since the 1960s. Musk isn't investing all that time and cash into Tesla out of the goodness of his heart - he's taking advantage of a market created by Greta Thunberg.
Because the technology hasn't existed to wipe out ICE in one step. It still isn't there yet.
Greta Thunberg did nothing to create the market, Musk created his firm before anyone had ever heard of Thunberg. Indeed Thunberg wasn't even born when this began.
It was about 35 years ago that Thatcher spoke about the problems with emissions and cutting emissions became government policy.
Humanity has been working on changing emissions for 35 years, JSO/Thunberg etc have jumped on the bandwagon not the other way around.
Musk didn't create Tesla. He has been responsible for much of its success. But he was not a founder.
That's just another of his many lies...
Well indeed, though Musk did help make it what it is today, if you want to look even further back that just adds to my point.
Tesla was founded in the same year Thunberg was born, so if she was responsible for it then that's seriously impressive.
Thunberg has saved the world. But the main story is true - Tesla's genius/luck was to take advantage of a market disrupted by climate change policy.
Not sure that Thunberg has had that big an effect - part of the campaign, sure. But claims of saving the world are over the top.
Tesla was about realising that the car modding outfits in LA could custom convert a car to EV for $250k and could get serious performance.
Scale it up and each time the costs go down. Then attack battery costs by mass production.
The US government as already offering tax credits for ZEVs - that the big companies weren’t using. There was a demand for EVs that no one was bothering with.
Previously, there had been various pushes for ZEVs - including hydrogen. At one point, around 2000, Shell was planning on helping Iceland become the first zero emission country. That plan fell through, due to the non appearance of the hydrogen fuel cells required.
Greta Thunberg seems to be a troubled young person and I hope she gets the help she needs.
Assuming that the paradigm of "human emissions = global climate changing for the worse" is accepted as fact, I still don't see how her campaigns can be said to have 'saved' anything, given that the non-Western world seems strangely immune to her sententious chastisements.
She is certainly part of the movement toward the Western world surrendering its global economic leadership, and therefore its leadership full stop, in favour of BRICs. Most here don't seem to want that to happen, but there's a peculiar failure to join the dots. Perhaps it's all the PB shrewdies wanting to prove how clever they are by being so moderate, see OnlyLivingBoy.
"he Western world surrendering its global economic leadership"
I see it very differently. There are great potential economic opportunities in going green. Whether we grasp those opportunities is another matter.
But I have to point out: your comment about BRICS is downright weird, and one I'd expect from someone who reads rather anti-western stuff.
(IMV BRICS might well end up like the CTSO...)
I used it as shorthand for countries (including China and India) who seem fairly determined to cooperate economically (and perhaps in the end militarily) outside of Western power structures. I'm not making a judgement about that, and as you know, I am far more comfortable with the idea of a multi-polar world and Britain's ability to thrive as part of it than 99% of people here. Most here seem to want a US-led Western alliance to prevail, and for Britain to be a strong part of that.
Despite that, I see zero objection here when (for example) we surrender our ability to make virgin steel (the only steel that can be used for armaments production) and all that happens is a load of massive blast furnaces open in India. I see a shade more, but still fairly minimal support for the idea of getting more of our own gas out of the sea (and none for fracking it out of the ground), so as to make us less dependent on the whims of Putin or the Saudis.
Whilst most here will happily jump down my throat and call me 'comrade' for daring to diminish 'PB morale', they are actually the ones who are materially anti-Western, for insisting that the UK must be the poster-child for Net Zero despite its manifold and growingly obvious economic and security downsides. I am more pro-Western in the logical outworkings of my ideas than most of the 'smart moderates' in this corner of the internet.
Bullshit, comrade.
Let us take one example: we are using much less gas to generate power than we were, thanks to the increased amounts of wind and solar. This has been costly. But I saw some figures a while back showing how much money had been saved in generation in 2022/3 because of our consequent smaller reliance on gas when the prices spiked. And it was a lot. (I shall try to find it somewhere...)
As another example, we have moved to a large amount of 'green' power in the UK without too much pain. I am staggered that this has happened and remains generally unremarked.
I quite like the modern world we live in. True, it has problems, but I'd rather live now than (say) in 1900 - especially as I'm not a baby, and am getting towards an older age. And one of the reasons there has been a myriad of improvements is technological and social change.
If there are economic opportunities in going green - and I think there are, and so do other countries (including China), then we need to grasp them - even if it causes slight temporary pain.
If only Liz Truss had had the courage of her convictions on refusing to subsidise gas, the market signals would have been more effective.
Do you think it’s high time for TRUSS to stage a return to the helm, this time with a purer package of policies?
Is it her time? Is the time NOW?
TRUSS.
Indeed, this is no time for a novice. Truss's extensive experience in the top job makes her the obvious choice to sail the good ship Britannia into warmer waters.
Camila Tominey said the education system is indoctrinating young people to be left wing and she worries that they will not become conservative or have conservative values.
Could it be perhaps that the Tories are just a bit...crap?
If the education was indoctrinating youth to the right I am sure you would complain. The educators should not be pushing kids either way they should be teaching neutrally and teaching kids to make their own minds up
The notion that education can be somehow apolitical and free of ideology is free fantasy. I am telling you that as an educator. The fact that there is even such a thing as an education is a political decision. There is no such thing as apolitical and ideology free knowledge is impossible. Lets skip past obvious subjects like history and literature or sociology. Even mathematics departments are embedded in institutions and funding mechanism that are informed by ideology. And even the most basic findings in mathematics, such as Gödel's incompleteness theorems have profound implications for the critique of politics and ideology. Your "neutral" approach to education is for the birds.
Making some assumptions, it appears 41% think taxes will go up whoever wins the election, but 8% think they will only if Labour win. The next question would be whether that 8% think taxes should go up or not! Presuming they don't, then that's 8% for the Tories... yeah, they're not gonna win on 8%.
I assume you are joking because, of course, many of the 41% who think taxes will go up think that taxes should NOT go up.
This will come as a massive shock to you but a lot of people think taxes SHOULD go up. People who recognise the needs to pay one's way and balance the books, people who think that public services are crap and need to improve, people who believe we should invest for the future.
A lot of people do indeed taxes should go up, a lot of those people also assume it won't apply to them. If the state fully funded everything it does I doubt even adding 5% to every tax rate would cover it. The simple fact is when people say just tax the rich they don't realise there aren't enough of them to cover the cost and basic rate tax will also need to rise significantly....those people struggling, having to claim tax credits and use food banks will see more of their pay go on tax
It could definitely be done without raising basic rate taxes (or indeed freezing personal allowances). The question is, a) will the government be brave enough, and b) would the impact on the rich be manageable?
I happen to think the deficit could be closed, or public services be boosted, or some combination of the two achieved by raising wealth taxes. The rich will squeal, they will threaten to quit the country (99% won't), they will plead poverty, but ultimately they would suck it up. (For 'they' I should put 'we' as I'm in my own target.)
Camila Tominey said the education system is indoctrinating young people to be left wing and she worries that they will not become conservative or have conservative values.
Could it be perhaps that the Tories are just a bit...crap?
Absolutely not.
Today's Tories are not remotely "a bit" crap.
I think it is fair to say that the education system emphasises the need for empathy, kindness, basic social skills, public service, altruism etc. which tends to encourage kids to dislike "don't give a shit about anyone else laissez faire populists".
There's absolutely no reason those values of empathy, kindness, basic social skills, public service, altruism etc. shouldn't be embodied in Conservatism (as indeed I felt they were/should be when I was a Tory; just with a different means of expression).
But they aren't in the modern Tory party. The fact that a Tory commentator has basically conceded all of that to "Labour" is something of a horror show.
There's no reason why empathy, kindness, basic social skills etc are incompatible with laissez-faire.
Many on the right and the left have the same objectives, it's the methodology is different.
I think that people are better off, financially, physically, mentally and more if they are able to support themselves. And that people are better able to support themselves if taxes on earned incomes are flatter and lower.
Which is why I support cutting real taxes especially on the poorest who face real marginal tax rates of 70% plus, real tax rates the likes of Sunak will never face.
Nigel Farage thinks postal votes need to be scrapped because they create fraud.
And he doesn't think the American election was stolen but Biden won because of "legal" corrupt postal votes
The two points are connected. The Blessed Nigel is focusing on postal votes because US Republicans and especially Trump are fixated on them. If the Blessed Nigel is to profit from the Trump campaign and a possible Trump second tierm then he has to dance to the Orange One's tune.
Camila Tominey said the education system is indoctrinating young people to be left wing and she worries that they will not become conservative or have conservative values.
Could it be perhaps that the Tories are just a bit...crap?
If the education was indoctrinating youth to the right I am sure you would complain. The educators should not be pushing kids either way they should be teaching neutrally and teaching kids to make their own minds up
The notion that education can be somehow apolitical and free of ideology is free fantasy. I am telling you that as an educator. The fact that there is even such a thing as an education is a political decision. There is no such thing as apolitical and ideology free knowledge is impossible. Lets skip past obvious subjects like history and literature or sociology. Even mathematics departments are embedded in institutions and funding mechanism that are informed by ideology. And even the most basic findings in mathematics, such as Gödel's incompleteness theorems have profound implications for the critique of politics and ideology. Your "neutral" approach to education is for the birds.
Camila Tominey said the education system is indoctrinating young people to be left wing and she worries that they will not become conservative or have conservative values.
Could it be perhaps that the Tories are just a bit...crap?
If the education was indoctrinating youth to the right I am sure you would complain. The educators should not be pushing kids either way they should be teaching neutrally and teaching kids to make their own minds up
It's been indoctrinating them since 2010 since we've had Tory Governments that entire time! Why don't the Tories sort it out if it is such an issue?
If the education system was indoctrinating children, then they would at least know how to use an apostrophe.
[Searches the conversation in vain for apostrophial misuse.]
Camila Tominey said the education system is indoctrinating young people to be left wing and she worries that they will not become conservative or have conservative values.
Could it be perhaps that the Tories are just a bit...crap?
Absolutely not.
Today's Tories are not remotely "a bit" crap.
I think it is fair to say that the education system emphasises the need for empathy, kindness, basic social skills, public service, altruism etc. which tends to encourage kids to dislike "don't give a shit about anyone else laissez faire populists".
There's absolutely no reason those values of empathy, kindness, basic social skills, public service, altruism etc. shouldn't be embodied in Conservatism (as indeed I felt they were/should be when I was a Tory; just with a different means of expression).
But they aren't in the modern Tory party. The fact that a Tory commentator has basically conceded all of that to "Labour" is something of a horror show.
There's no reason why empathy, kindness, basic social skills etc are incompatible with laissez-faire.
Many on the right and the left have the same objectives, it's the methodology is different.
I think that people are better off, financially, physically, mentally and more if they are able to support themselves. And that people are better able to support themselves if taxes on earned incomes are flatter and lower.
Which is why I support cutting real taxes especially on the poorest who face real marginal tax rates of 70% plus, real tax rates the likes of Sunak will never face.
I partially withdraw "laissez faire" if it is interpreted as you suggest - I meant it in the sense of 'ideological adherence to the removal of all curbs, boundaries or regulation imposed by the state'. Not in the sense of "a lower, flatter, simpler system of taxation".
Because I agree with you in this sense: once I felt that my aims aligned with those of the Tory party, and that the policies proposed were broadly likely to achieve some or all of those aims. These days, the Tories and I are wildly divergent in both aspects, and I haven't changed all that much.
Making some assumptions, it appears 41% think taxes will go up whoever wins the election, but 8% think they will only if Labour win. The next question would be whether that 8% think taxes should go up or not! Presuming they don't, then that's 8% for the Tories... yeah, they're not gonna win on 8%.
I assume you are joking because, of course, many of the 41% who think taxes will go up think that taxes should NOT go up.
This will come as a massive shock to you but a lot of people think taxes SHOULD go up. People who recognise the needs to pay one's way and balance the books, people who think that public services are crap and need to improve, people who believe we should invest for the future.
A lot of people do indeed taxes should go up, a lot of those people also assume it won't apply to them. If the state fully funded everything it does I doubt even adding 5% to every tax rate would cover it. The simple fact is when people say just tax the rich they don't realise there aren't enough of them to cover the cost and basic rate tax will also need to rise significantly....those people struggling, having to claim tax credits and use food banks will see more of their pay go on tax
It could definitely be done without raising basic rate taxes (or indeed freezing personal allowances). The question is, a) will the government be brave enough, and b) would the impact on the rich be manageable?
I happen to think the deficit could be closed, or public services be boosted, or some combination of the two achieved by raising wealth taxes. The rich will squeal, they will threaten to quit the country (99% won't), they will plead poverty, but ultimately they would suck it up. (For 'they' I should put 'we' as I'm in my own target.)
Apart from every country that has already tried it has found it raises next to nothing and has pretty much abandoned it. So no wealth taxes will only work if you hit ordinary people with ordinary pension funds and living in ordinary houses....to make public services work with out deficit with what the state does we are probably looking to raise tax revenue by 300 to 400 billion a year. You are not going to get that from just taxing the rich
Camila Tominey said the education system is indoctrinating young people to be left wing and she worries that they will not become conservative or have conservative values.
Could it be perhaps that the Tories are just a bit...crap?
Absolutely not.
Today's Tories are not remotely "a bit" crap.
I think it is fair to say that the education system emphasises the need for empathy, kindness, basic social skills, public service, altruism etc. which tends to encourage kids to dislike "don't give a shit about anyone else laissez faire populists".
There's absolutely no reason those values of empathy, kindness, basic social skills, public service, altruism etc. shouldn't be embodied in Conservatism (as indeed I felt they were/should be when I was a Tory; just with a different means of expression).
But they aren't in the modern Tory party. The fact that a Tory commentator has basically conceded all of that to "Labour" is something of a horror show.
There's no reason why empathy, kindness, basic social skills etc are incompatible with laissez-faire.
Many on the right and the left have the same objectives, it's the methodology is different.
I think that people are better off, financially, physically, mentally and more if they are able to support themselves. And that people are better able to support themselves if taxes on earned incomes are flatter and lower.
Which is why I support cutting real taxes especially on the poorest who face real marginal tax rates of 70% plus, real tax rates the likes of Sunak will never face.
I partially withdraw "laissez faire" if it is interpreted as you suggest - I meant it in the sense of 'ideological adherence to the removal of all curbs, boundaries or regulation imposed by the state'. Not in the sense of "a lower, flatter, simpler system of taxation".
Removal of all curbs isn't laissez-faire it's anarchy.
I'm not Bart, but it's a different context, so it can't possibly be the gotcha you want it to be.
And certainly some people might argue it was very low compared to what was possible and desirable.
The fanatics will never be appeased. That is for certain. It could be 90% and it would not be enough.
To listen to the climate extremists you would think we had done nothing and taken no action on the environment.
To that end some fringe youth eco offshoot of Just Stop Oil plans to bring the tube to a halt. Something to do with the enviroment and Palestine now, natch.
"The spokesman said: “New oil and gas licencing is ultimately a genocide, a man-made death. That is the same mentality with the situation in Palestine. It is essential to think of them together and not think of them as individual missions.”"
What they don't seem to realize is that their approach makes climate change more, rather than less, of a danger, because they provoke an enormous reaction.
If you make the necessary changes gradually, and you get buy in from the majority of the population at every stage, and you ensure that people keep getting richer... well, then you'll stop climate change. If you want people to wear hair shirts and be poorer, then you won't get 50.1% of people supporting you, or indeed, any potential action.
Humankind has done an extraordinary job of implementing measures to reduce climate change - and we're just getting started. Ten years ago, I had a Tesla Model S... and that was pretty much it for electric cars on the road. Now some places - like Norway - are 85% electric for new vehicles! Back then China's new coal electricity generation capacity outstripped wind and solar 1,000,000-1. Now, there's far more solar and wind - like 20x - being deployed in China than coal. We've found new ways to heat and cool homes than are dramatically more energy efficient than anything in the past.
All we need - as humanity - is to keep doing what we're doing. Keep electrifying. Keep installing batteries. Keep looking for the million and one marginal improvements. And if we do that, we can keep all getting richer, we can minimize our dependence on parts of the world that hate us, we can improve our balance of payments, and we can keep making the world a cleaner, better place.
I suppose the counter-argument is that the only reason we have taken such measures is because climate activists have kicked up a fuss.
Car manufacturers have been more than happy to continue making ICE vehicles, even while we have understood the greenhouse effect since the 1960s. Musk isn't investing all that time and cash into Tesla out of the goodness of his heart - he's taking advantage of a market created by Greta Thunberg.
Because the technology hasn't existed to wipe out ICE in one step. It still isn't there yet.
Greta Thunberg did nothing to create the market, Musk created his firm before anyone had ever heard of Thunberg. Indeed Thunberg wasn't even born when this began.
It was about 35 years ago that Thatcher spoke about the problems with emissions and cutting emissions became government policy.
Humanity has been working on changing emissions for 35 years, JSO/Thunberg etc have jumped on the bandwagon not the other way around.
Musk didn't create Tesla. He has been responsible for much of its success. But he was not a founder.
That's just another of his many lies...
Well indeed, though Musk did help make it what it is today, if you want to look even further back that just adds to my point.
Tesla was founded in the same year Thunberg was born, so if she was responsible for it then that's seriously impressive.
Thunberg has saved the world. But the main story is true - Tesla's genius/luck was to take advantage of a market disrupted by climate change policy.
Not sure that Thunberg has had that big an effect - part of the campaign, sure. But claims of saving the world are over the top.
Tesla was about realising that the car modding outfits in LA could custom convert a car to EV for $250k and could get serious performance.
Scale it up and each time the costs go down. Then attack battery costs by mass production.
The US government as already offering tax credits for ZEVs - that the big companies weren’t using. There was a demand for EVs that no one was bothering with.
Previously, there had been various pushes for ZEVs - including hydrogen. At one point, around 2000, Shell was planning on helping Iceland become the first zero emission country. That plan fell through, due to the non appearance of the hydrogen fuel cells required.
Greta Thunberg seems to be a troubled young person and I hope she gets the help she needs.
Assuming that the paradigm of "human emissions = global climate changing for the worse" is accepted as fact, I still don't see how her campaigns can be said to have 'saved' anything, given that the non-Western world seems strangely immune to her sententious chastisements.
She is certainly part of the movement toward the Western world surrendering its global economic leadership, and therefore its leadership full stop, in favour of BRICs. Most here don't seem to want that to happen, but there's a peculiar failure to join the dots. Perhaps it's all the PB shrewdies wanting to prove how clever they are by being so moderate, see OnlyLivingBoy.
"he Western world surrendering its global economic leadership"
I see it very differently. There are great potential economic opportunities in going green. Whether we grasp those opportunities is another matter.
But I have to point out: your comment about BRICS is downright weird, and one I'd expect from someone who reads rather anti-western stuff.
(IMV BRICS might well end up like the CTSO...)
I used it as shorthand for countries (including China and India) who seem fairly determined to cooperate economically (and perhaps in the end militarily) outside of Western power structures. I'm not making a judgement about that, and as you know, I am far more comfortable with the idea of a multi-polar world and Britain's ability to thrive as part of it than 99% of people here. Most here seem to want a US-led Western alliance to prevail, and for Britain to be a strong part of that.
Despite that, I see zero objection here when (for example) we surrender our ability to make virgin steel (the only steel that can be used for armaments production) and all that happens is a load of massive blast furnaces open in India. I see a shade more, but still fairly minimal support for the idea of getting more of our own gas out of the sea (and none for fracking it out of the ground), so as to make us less dependent on the whims of Putin or the Saudis.
Whilst most here will happily jump down my throat and call me 'comrade' for daring to diminish 'PB morale', they are actually the ones who are materially anti-Western, for insisting that the UK must be the poster-child for Net Zero despite its manifold and growingly obvious economic and security downsides. I am more pro-Western in the logical outworkings of my ideas than most of the 'smart moderates' in this corner of the internet.
Bullshit, comrade.
Let us take one example: we are using much less gas to generate power than we were, thanks to the increased amounts of wind and solar. This has been costly. But I saw some figures a while back showing how much money had been saved in generation in 2022/3 because of our consequent smaller reliance on gas when the prices spiked. And it was a lot. (I shall try to find it somewhere...)
As another example, we have moved to a large amount of 'green' power in the UK without too much pain. I am staggered that this has happened and remains generally unremarked.
I quite like the modern world we live in. True, it has problems, but I'd rather live now than (say) in 1900 - especially as I'm not a baby, and am getting towards an older age. And one of the reasons there has been a myriad of improvements is technological and social change.
If there are economic opportunities in going green - and I think there are, and so do other countries (including China), then we need to grasp them - even if it causes slight temporary pain.
If only Liz Truss had had the courage of her convictions on refusing to subsidise gas, the market signals would have been more effective.
Do you think it’s high time for TRUSS to stage a return to the helm, this time with a purer package of policies?
Is it her time? Is the time NOW?
TRUSS.
Well Rishi is polling as low as she did
The longer CON are stringing this Parliament out, the worse their position is getting...
Redfield & Wilton Strategies @RedfieldWilton Tied lowest % for Conservatives under Sunak.
Highest ever % for Reform.
Westminster Voting Intention (7 April):
Labour 44% (-2) Conservative 21% (-1) Reform 15% (+1) Liberal Democrat 10% (–) Green 6% (+1) SNP 2% (-1) Other 1% (-1)
Changes +/- 31 March
Just for laughs: Electoral Calculus gives Lab 489 seats, Con 55, LD 55, SNP 28, PC 3, Green 2, Ref 0, Others (NI) 18
Who becomes official opposition if both Con and LDs are on 55? Must be the LDs turn, surely?
Month and month about?
I happen to think that in such a situation the LDs should bow to their PR principles and let the Cons be the Official Opposition, applying vote share as the tiebreak.
They'd only have to wait month or two anyway before one of the 55 Tory MPs lost the whip for inappropriate behaviour, and the LDs became the undisputed OO.
Nigel Farage thinks postal votes need to be scrapped because they create fraud.
And he doesn't think the American election was stolen but Biden won because of "legal" corrupt postal votes
The two points are connected. The Blessed Nigel is focusing on postal votes because US Republicans and especially Trump are fixated on them. If the Blessed Nigel is to profit from the Trump campaign and a possible Trump second tierm then he has to dance to the Orange One's tune.
I’ve got a postal vote. Poor old chap, can’t get down to the polling station without a wheelchair.
Redfield & Wilton Strategies @RedfieldWilton Tied lowest % for Conservatives under Sunak.
Highest ever % for Reform.
Westminster Voting Intention (7 April):
Labour 44% (-2) Conservative 21% (-1) Reform 15% (+1) Liberal Democrat 10% (–) Green 6% (+1) SNP 2% (-1) Other 1% (-1)
Changes +/- 31 March
Just for laughs: Electoral Calculus gives Lab 489 seats, Con 55, LD 55, SNP 28, PC 3, Green 2, Ref 0, Others (NI) 18
Who becomes official opposition if both Con and LDs are on 55? Must be the LDs turn, surely?
Month and month about?
I happen to think that in such a situation the LDs should bow to their PR principles and let the Cons be the Official Opposition, applying vote share as the tiebreak.
They'd only have to wait month or two anyway before one of the 55 Tory MPs lost the whip for inappropriate behaviour, and the LDs became the undisputed OO.
LD's will have nowhere near 30 mps let alone 50....I still am confident of the seat predictions I immed you
Making some assumptions, it appears 41% think taxes will go up whoever wins the election, but 8% think they will only if Labour win. The next question would be whether that 8% think taxes should go up or not! Presuming they don't, then that's 8% for the Tories... yeah, they're not gonna win on 8%.
I assume you are joking because, of course, many of the 41% who think taxes will go up think that taxes should NOT go up.
This will come as a massive shock to you but a lot of people think taxes SHOULD go up. People who recognise the needs to pay one's way and balance the books, people who think that public services are crap and need to improve, people who believe we should invest for the future.
A lot of people do indeed taxes should go up, a lot of those people also assume it won't apply to them. If the state fully funded everything it does I doubt even adding 5% to every tax rate would cover it. The simple fact is when people say just tax the rich they don't realise there aren't enough of them to cover the cost and basic rate tax will also need to rise significantly....those people struggling, having to claim tax credits and use food banks will see more of their pay go on tax
It could definitely be done without raising basic rate taxes (or indeed freezing personal allowances). The question is, a) will the government be brave enough, and b) would the impact on the rich be manageable?
I happen to think the deficit could be closed, or public services be boosted, or some combination of the two achieved by raising wealth taxes. The rich will squeal, they will threaten to quit the country (99% won't), they will plead poverty, but ultimately they would suck it up. (For 'they' I should put 'we' as I'm in my own target.)
Apart from every country that has already tried it has found it raises next to nothing and has pretty much abandoned it. So no wealth taxes will only work if you hit ordinary people with ordinary pension funds and living in ordinary houses....to make public services work with out deficit with what the state does we are probably looking to raise tax revenue by 300 to 400 billion a year. You are not going to get that from just taxing the rich
It depends what you mean by wealth taxes.
If you mean taxing wealth like shares etc that can be easily moved abroad, of course it doesn't work.
If you mean taxing land, then that's a perfectly liberal tax to support which almost every country on the planet has. Including the USA.
That we don't tax land ownership and expect tenants to pay instead is quite unusual and extreme.
Camila Tominey said the education system is indoctrinating young people to be left wing and she worries that they will not become conservative or have conservative values.
Could it be perhaps that the Tories are just a bit...crap?
If the education was indoctrinating youth to the right I am sure you would complain. The educators should not be pushing kids either way they should be teaching neutrally and teaching kids to make their own minds up
It's been indoctrinating them since 2010 since we've had Tory Governments that entire time! Why don't the Tories sort it out if it is such an issue?
If the education system was indoctrinating children, then they would at least know how to use an apostrophe.
[Searches the conversation in vain for apostrophial misuse.]
Er, 'apostrophic', isn't it, the adjectival form? Strophe becomes strophic, so ...?
Camila Tominey said the education system is indoctrinating young people to be left wing and she worries that they will not become conservative or have conservative values.
Could it be perhaps that the Tories are just a bit...crap?
If the education was indoctrinating youth to the right I am sure you would complain. The educators should not be pushing kids either way they should be teaching neutrally and teaching kids to make their own minds up
The notion that education can be somehow apolitical and free of ideology is free fantasy. I am telling you that as an educator. The fact that there is even such a thing as an education is a political decision. There is no such thing as apolitical and ideology free knowledge is impossible. Lets skip past obvious subjects like history and literature or sociology. Even mathematics departments are embedded in institutions and funding mechanism that are informed by ideology. And even the most basic findings in mathematics, such as Gödel's incompleteness theorems have profound implications for the critique of politics and ideology. Your "neutral" approach to education is for the birds.
See you are the problem
🤣🤣🤣🤣 Ok, give me an example of ideology free teaching
Camila Tominey said the education system is indoctrinating young people to be left wing and she worries that they will not become conservative or have conservative values.
Could it be perhaps that the Tories are just a bit...crap?
Absolutely not.
Today's Tories are not remotely "a bit" crap.
I think it is fair to say that the education system emphasises the need for empathy, kindness, basic social skills, public service, altruism etc. which tends to encourage kids to dislike "don't give a shit about anyone else laissez faire populists".
There's absolutely no reason those values of empathy, kindness, basic social skills, public service, altruism etc. shouldn't be embodied in Conservatism (as indeed I felt they were/should be when I was a Tory; just with a different means of expression).
But they aren't in the modern Tory party. The fact that a Tory commentator has basically conceded all of that to "Labour" is something of a horror show.
There's no reason why empathy, kindness, basic social skills etc are incompatible with laissez-faire.
Many on the right and the left have the same objectives, it's the methodology is different.
I think that people are better off, financially, physically, mentally and more if they are able to support themselves. And that people are better able to support themselves if taxes on earned incomes are flatter and lower.
Which is why I support cutting real taxes especially on the poorest who face real marginal tax rates of 70% plus, real tax rates the likes of Sunak will never face.
I partially withdraw "laissez faire" if it is interpreted as you suggest - I meant it in the sense of 'ideological adherence to the removal of all curbs, boundaries or regulation imposed by the state'. Not in the sense of "a lower, flatter, simpler system of taxation".
Removal of all curbs isn't laissez-faire it's anarchy.
Well, laissez-faire advocates "minimal governmental interference" and assumes government to be a brake on economic groth, and anarchy advocates cooperative establishment of the rules without hierarchical government, not the removal of all rules.
Making some assumptions, it appears 41% think taxes will go up whoever wins the election, but 8% think they will only if Labour win. The next question would be whether that 8% think taxes should go up or not! Presuming they don't, then that's 8% for the Tories... yeah, they're not gonna win on 8%.
I assume you are joking because, of course, many of the 41% who think taxes will go up think that taxes should NOT go up.
This will come as a massive shock to you but a lot of people think taxes SHOULD go up. People who recognise the needs to pay one's way and balance the books, people who think that public services are crap and need to improve, people who believe we should invest for the future.
A lot of people do indeed taxes should go up, a lot of those people also assume it won't apply to them. If the state fully funded everything it does I doubt even adding 5% to every tax rate would cover it. The simple fact is when people say just tax the rich they don't realise there aren't enough of them to cover the cost and basic rate tax will also need to rise significantly....those people struggling, having to claim tax credits and use food banks will see more of their pay go on tax
It could definitely be done without raising basic rate taxes (or indeed freezing personal allowances). The question is, a) will the government be brave enough, and b) would the impact on the rich be manageable?
I happen to think the deficit could be closed, or public services be boosted, or some combination of the two achieved by raising wealth taxes. The rich will squeal, they will threaten to quit the country (99% won't), they will plead poverty, but ultimately they would suck it up. (For 'they' I should put 'we' as I'm in my own target.)
Apart from every country that has already tried it has found it raises next to nothing and has pretty much abandoned it. So no wealth taxes will only work if you hit ordinary people with ordinary pension funds and living in ordinary houses....to make public services work with out deficit with what the state does we are probably looking to raise tax revenue by 300 to 400 billion a year. You are not going to get that from just taxing the rich
It depends what you mean by wealth taxes.
If you mean taxing wealth like shares etc that can be easily moved abroad, of course it doesn't work.
If you mean taxing land, then that's a perfectly liberal tax to support which almost every country on the planet has. Including the USA.
That we don't tax land ownership and expect tenants to pay instead is quite unusual and extreme.
Even if you tax land making 300 to 400 billion from it is going to cripple plenty of ordinary people. This is my problem with a wealth tax, the people who think it will fund everything and then denying it will hit those that aren't what anyone would describe as wealthy
Camila Tominey said the education system is indoctrinating young people to be left wing and she worries that they will not become conservative or have conservative values.
Could it be perhaps that the Tories are just a bit...crap?
Absolutely not.
Today's Tories are not remotely "a bit" crap.
I think it is fair to say that the education system emphasises the need for empathy, kindness, basic social skills, public service, altruism etc. which tends to encourage kids to dislike "don't give a shit about anyone else laissez faire populists".
There's absolutely no reason those values of empathy, kindness, basic social skills, public service, altruism etc. shouldn't be embodied in Conservatism (as indeed I felt they were/should be when I was a Tory; just with a different means of expression).
But they aren't in the modern Tory party. The fact that a Tory commentator has basically conceded all of that to "Labour" is something of a horror show.
There's no reason why empathy, kindness, basic social skills etc are incompatible with laissez-faire.
Many on the right and the left have the same objectives, it's the methodology is different.
I think that people are better off, financially, physically, mentally and more if they are able to support themselves. And that people are better able to support themselves if taxes on earned incomes are flatter and lower.
Which is why I support cutting real taxes especially on the poorest who face real marginal tax rates of 70% plus, real tax rates the likes of Sunak will never face.
I partially withdraw "laissez faire" if it is interpreted as you suggest - I meant it in the sense of 'ideological adherence to the removal of all curbs, boundaries or regulation imposed by the state'. Not in the sense of "a lower, flatter, simpler system of taxation".
Removal of all curbs isn't laissez-faire it's anarchy.
Well, laissez-faire advocates "minimal governmental interference" and assumes government to be a brake on economic groth, and anarchy advocates cooperative establishment of the rules without hierarchical government, not the removal of all rules.
Democracy advocates a cooperative establishment of the rules, that's what we have today.
Anarchy does not, it means that the strongest get to enforce whatever rules they want on the weakest.
Camila Tominey said the education system is indoctrinating young people to be left wing and she worries that they will not become conservative or have conservative values.
Could it be perhaps that the Tories are just a bit...crap?
If the education was indoctrinating youth to the right I am sure you would complain. The educators should not be pushing kids either way they should be teaching neutrally and teaching kids to make their own minds up
The notion that education can be somehow apolitical and free of ideology is free fantasy. I am telling you that as an educator. The fact that there is even such a thing as an education is a political decision. There is no such thing as apolitical and ideology free knowledge is impossible. Lets skip past obvious subjects like history and literature or sociology. Even mathematics departments are embedded in institutions and funding mechanism that are informed by ideology. And even the most basic findings in mathematics, such as Gödel's incompleteness theorems have profound implications for the critique of politics and ideology. Your "neutral" approach to education is for the birds.
See you are the problem
🤣🤣🤣🤣 Ok, give me an example of ideology free teaching
I was at school in the 70's and 80's politics never came up in lessons whatsoever if you cant teach without bring politics into the classroom then as I said you are the problem and should quit and do something more useful like sleeping in shop doorways because you certainly are not doing those pupils any favours with your brain washing
Making some assumptions, it appears 41% think taxes will go up whoever wins the election, but 8% think they will only if Labour win. The next question would be whether that 8% think taxes should go up or not! Presuming they don't, then that's 8% for the Tories... yeah, they're not gonna win on 8%.
I assume you are joking because, of course, many of the 41% who think taxes will go up think that taxes should NOT go up.
This will come as a massive shock to you but a lot of people think taxes SHOULD go up. People who recognise the needs to pay one's way and balance the books, people who think that public services are crap and need to improve, people who believe we should invest for the future.
A lot of people do indeed taxes should go up, a lot of those people also assume it won't apply to them. If the state fully funded everything it does I doubt even adding 5% to every tax rate would cover it. The simple fact is when people say just tax the rich they don't realise there aren't enough of them to cover the cost and basic rate tax will also need to rise significantly....those people struggling, having to claim tax credits and use food banks will see more of their pay go on tax
It could definitely be done without raising basic rate taxes (or indeed freezing personal allowances). The question is, a) will the government be brave enough, and b) would the impact on the rich be manageable?
I happen to think the deficit could be closed, or public services be boosted, or some combination of the two achieved by raising wealth taxes. The rich will squeal, they will threaten to quit the country (99% won't), they will plead poverty, but ultimately they would suck it up. (For 'they' I should put 'we' as I'm in my own target.)
Apart from every country that has already tried it has found it raises next to nothing and has pretty much abandoned it. So no wealth taxes will only work if you hit ordinary people with ordinary pension funds and living in ordinary houses....to make public services work with out deficit with what the state does we are probably looking to raise tax revenue by 300 to 400 billion a year. You are not going to get that from just taxing the rich
It depends what you mean by wealth taxes.
If you mean taxing wealth like shares etc that can be easily moved abroad, of course it doesn't work.
If you mean taxing land, then that's a perfectly liberal tax to support which almost every country on the planet has. Including the USA.
That we don't tax land ownership and expect tenants to pay instead is quite unusual and extreme.
Even if you tax land making 300 to 400 billion from it is going to cripple plenty of ordinary people. This is my problem with a wealth tax, the people who think it will fund everything and then denying it will hit those that aren't what anyone would describe as wealthy
I am not actually opposed to a land tax, just the view of some that it will allow us to fully fund everything
Camila Tominey said the education system is indoctrinating young people to be left wing and she worries that they will not become conservative or have conservative values.
Could it be perhaps that the Tories are just a bit...crap?
Absolutely not.
Today's Tories are not remotely "a bit" crap.
I think it is fair to say that the education system emphasises the need for empathy, kindness, basic social skills, public service, altruism etc. which tends to encourage kids to dislike "don't give a shit about anyone else laissez faire populists".
There's absolutely no reason those values of empathy, kindness, basic social skills, public service, altruism etc. shouldn't be embodied in Conservatism (as indeed I felt they were/should be when I was a Tory; just with a different means of expression).
But they aren't in the modern Tory party. The fact that a Tory commentator has basically conceded all of that to "Labour" is something of a horror show.
There's no reason why empathy, kindness, basic social skills etc are incompatible with laissez-faire.
Many on the right and the left have the same objectives, it's the methodology is different.
I think that people are better off, financially, physically, mentally and more if they are able to support themselves. And that people are better able to support themselves if taxes on earned incomes are flatter and lower.
Which is why I support cutting real taxes especially on the poorest who face real marginal tax rates of 70% plus, real tax rates the likes of Sunak will never face.
I partially withdraw "laissez faire" if it is interpreted as you suggest - I meant it in the sense of 'ideological adherence to the removal of all curbs, boundaries or regulation imposed by the state'. Not in the sense of "a lower, flatter, simpler system of taxation".
Removal of all curbs isn't laissez-faire it's anarchy.
Well, laissez-faire advocates "minimal governmental interference" and assumes government to be a brake on economic groth, and anarchy advocates cooperative establishment of the rules without hierarchical government, not the removal of all rules.
Democracy advocates a cooperative establishment of the rules, that's what we have today.
Anarchy does not, it means that the strongest get to enforce whatever rules they want on the weakest.
Anarchy is more hierarchical than democracy.
You can have democracy in an anarchist system. Just as you can have autocracy with a hierarchical government. (But this is excessively theoretical! Practically, we know that it is all a big mess whatever you choose to call your system. )
Making some assumptions, it appears 41% think taxes will go up whoever wins the election, but 8% think they will only if Labour win. The next question would be whether that 8% think taxes should go up or not! Presuming they don't, then that's 8% for the Tories... yeah, they're not gonna win on 8%.
I assume you are joking because, of course, many of the 41% who think taxes will go up think that taxes should NOT go up.
This will come as a massive shock to you but a lot of people think taxes SHOULD go up. People who recognise the needs to pay one's way and balance the books, people who think that public services are crap and need to improve, people who believe we should invest for the future.
A lot of people do indeed taxes should go up, a lot of those people also assume it won't apply to them. If the state fully funded everything it does I doubt even adding 5% to every tax rate would cover it. The simple fact is when people say just tax the rich they don't realise there aren't enough of them to cover the cost and basic rate tax will also need to rise significantly....those people struggling, having to claim tax credits and use food banks will see more of their pay go on tax
It could definitely be done without raising basic rate taxes (or indeed freezing personal allowances). The question is, a) will the government be brave enough, and b) would the impact on the rich be manageable?
I happen to think the deficit could be closed, or public services be boosted, or some combination of the two achieved by raising wealth taxes. The rich will squeal, they will threaten to quit the country (99% won't), they will plead poverty, but ultimately they would suck it up. (For 'they' I should put 'we' as I'm in my own target.)
Apart from every country that has already tried it has found it raises next to nothing and has pretty much abandoned it. So no wealth taxes will only work if you hit ordinary people with ordinary pension funds and living in ordinary houses....to make public services work with out deficit with what the state does we are probably looking to raise tax revenue by 300 to 400 billion a year. You are not going to get that from just taxing the rich
It depends what you mean by wealth taxes.
If you mean taxing wealth like shares etc that can be easily moved abroad, of course it doesn't work.
If you mean taxing land, then that's a perfectly liberal tax to support which almost every country on the planet has. Including the USA.
That we don't tax land ownership and expect tenants to pay instead is quite unusual and extreme.
Even if you tax land making 300 to 400 billion from it is going to cripple plenty of ordinary people. This is my problem with a wealth tax, the people who think it will fund everything and then denying it will hit those that aren't what anyone would describe as wealthy
Not sure where 300 to 400bn is coming from.
But I'd put taxes on land up and lower taxes on work in response, so it's revenue neutral but means work pays more so people will be more able to benefit from the fruits of their own labours and there's less reason not to work.
Camila Tominey said the education system is indoctrinating young people to be left wing and she worries that they will not become conservative or have conservative values.
Could it be perhaps that the Tories are just a bit...crap?
Absolutely not.
Today's Tories are not remotely "a bit" crap.
I think it is fair to say that the education system emphasises the need for empathy, kindness, basic social skills, public service, altruism etc. which tends to encourage kids to dislike "don't give a shit about anyone else laissez faire populists".
There's absolutely no reason those values of empathy, kindness, basic social skills, public service, altruism etc. shouldn't be embodied in Conservatism (as indeed I felt they were/should be when I was a Tory; just with a different means of expression).
But they aren't in the modern Tory party. The fact that a Tory commentator has basically conceded all of that to "Labour" is something of a horror show.
There's no reason why empathy, kindness, basic social skills etc are incompatible with laissez-faire.
Many on the right and the left have the same objectives, it's the methodology is different.
I think that people are better off, financially, physically, mentally and more if they are able to support themselves. And that people are better able to support themselves if taxes on earned incomes are flatter and lower.
Which is why I support cutting real taxes especially on the poorest who face real marginal tax rates of 70% plus, real tax rates the likes of Sunak will never face.
I partially withdraw "laissez faire" if it is interpreted as you suggest - I meant it in the sense of 'ideological adherence to the removal of all curbs, boundaries or regulation imposed by the state'. Not in the sense of "a lower, flatter, simpler system of taxation".
Removal of all curbs isn't laissez-faire it's anarchy.
Well, laissez-faire advocates "minimal governmental interference" and assumes government to be a brake on economic groth, and anarchy advocates cooperative establishment of the rules without hierarchical government, not the removal of all rules.
Democracy advocates a cooperative establishment of the rules, that's what we have today.
Anarchy does not, it means that the strongest get to enforce whatever rules they want on the weakest.
Anarchy is more hierarchical than democracy.
You can have democracy in an anarchist system. Just as you can have autocracy with a hierarchical government.
No you can't, the two mean different things.
If you are democratically setting rules then it's not anarchy anymore.
Camila Tominey said the education system is indoctrinating young people to be left wing and she worries that they will not become conservative or have conservative values.
Could it be perhaps that the Tories are just a bit...crap?
Absolutely not.
Today's Tories are not remotely "a bit" crap.
I think it is fair to say that the education system emphasises the need for empathy, kindness, basic social skills, public service, altruism etc. which tends to encourage kids to dislike "don't give a shit about anyone else laissez faire populists".
There's absolutely no reason those values of empathy, kindness, basic social skills, public service, altruism etc. shouldn't be embodied in Conservatism (as indeed I felt they were/should be when I was a Tory; just with a different means of expression).
But they aren't in the modern Tory party. The fact that a Tory commentator has basically conceded all of that to "Labour" is something of a horror show.
There's no reason why empathy, kindness, basic social skills etc are incompatible with laissez-faire.
Many on the right and the left have the same objectives, it's the methodology is different.
I think that people are better off, financially, physically, mentally and more if they are able to support themselves. And that people are better able to support themselves if taxes on earned incomes are flatter and lower.
Which is why I support cutting real taxes especially on the poorest who face real marginal tax rates of 70% plus, real tax rates the likes of Sunak will never face.
I partially withdraw "laissez faire" if it is interpreted as you suggest - I meant it in the sense of 'ideological adherence to the removal of all curbs, boundaries or regulation imposed by the state'. Not in the sense of "a lower, flatter, simpler system of taxation".
Removal of all curbs isn't laissez-faire it's anarchy.
Well, laissez-faire advocates "minimal governmental interference" and assumes government to be a brake on economic groth, and anarchy advocates cooperative establishment of the rules without hierarchical government, not the removal of all rules.
Democracy advocates a cooperative establishment of the rules, that's what we have today.
Anarchy does not, it means that the strongest get to enforce whatever rules they want on the weakest.
Anarchy is more hierarchical than democracy.
You can have democracy in an anarchist system. Just as you can have autocracy with a hierarchical government.
No you can't, the two mean different things.
If you are democratically setting rules then it's not anarchy anymore.
I don't think you are talking about "anarchism" the political philosophy.
I think you are meaning: "a state of disorder due to absence or non-recognition of authority or other controlling systems" rather than "the organization of society on the basis of voluntary cooperation, without political institutions or hierarchical government"
(Which I agree is a fantasy, rather like the fantasy of a truly laissez-faire market economy.)
[ETA: Though of course there are plenty of historical strains of anarchist philosophy which think "democracy" as we describe it today is an artefact of a capitalist/market economy]
Making some assumptions, it appears 41% think taxes will go up whoever wins the election, but 8% think they will only if Labour win. The next question would be whether that 8% think taxes should go up or not! Presuming they don't, then that's 8% for the Tories... yeah, they're not gonna win on 8%.
I assume you are joking because, of course, many of the 41% who think taxes will go up think that taxes should NOT go up.
This will come as a massive shock to you but a lot of people think taxes SHOULD go up. People who recognise the needs to pay one's way and balance the books, people who think that public services are crap and need to improve, people who believe we should invest for the future.
A lot of people do indeed taxes should go up, a lot of those people also assume it won't apply to them. If the state fully funded everything it does I doubt even adding 5% to every tax rate would cover it. The simple fact is when people say just tax the rich they don't realise there aren't enough of them to cover the cost and basic rate tax will also need to rise significantly....those people struggling, having to claim tax credits and use food banks will see more of their pay go on tax
It could definitely be done without raising basic rate taxes (or indeed freezing personal allowances). The question is, a) will the government be brave enough, and b) would the impact on the rich be manageable?
I happen to think the deficit could be closed, or public services be boosted, or some combination of the two achieved by raising wealth taxes. The rich will squeal, they will threaten to quit the country (99% won't), they will plead poverty, but ultimately they would suck it up. (For 'they' I should put 'we' as I'm in my own target.)
Apart from every country that has already tried it has found it raises next to nothing and has pretty much abandoned it. So no wealth taxes will only work if you hit ordinary people with ordinary pension funds and living in ordinary houses....to make public services work with out deficit with what the state does we are probably looking to raise tax revenue by 300 to 400 billion a year. You are not going to get that from just taxing the rich
It depends what you mean by wealth taxes.
If you mean taxing wealth like shares etc that can be easily moved abroad, of course it doesn't work.
If you mean taxing land, then that's a perfectly liberal tax to support which almost every country on the planet has. Including the USA.
That we don't tax land ownership and expect tenants to pay instead is quite unusual and extreme.
Even if you tax land making 300 to 400 billion from it is going to cripple plenty of ordinary people. This is my problem with a wealth tax, the people who think it will fund everything and then denying it will hit those that aren't what anyone would describe as wealthy
Not sure where 300 to 400bn is coming from.
But I'd put taxes on land up and lower taxes on work in response, so it's revenue neutral but means work pays more so people will be more able to benefit from the fruits of their own labours and there's less reason not to work.
Land is there either way. Work is not.
Well for a start we have a 100bn deficit to get rid of then we need to increase spending on education, local services, social care, NHS, justice system, the police, defence etc....300 to 400bn is an estimate with no study to back it up I freely admit because I don't think anyone has done one on the total figures but every area people say we need to put in another 20 to 30bn to get them working properly, some like social care even more. It is a finger in the air estimate for all that and if anything I suspect I am lowballing it
Camila Tominey said the education system is indoctrinating young people to be left wing and she worries that they will not become conservative or have conservative values.
Could it be perhaps that the Tories are just a bit...crap?
Absolutely not.
Today's Tories are not remotely "a bit" crap.
I think it is fair to say that the education system emphasises the need for empathy, kindness, basic social skills, public service, altruism etc. which tends to encourage kids to dislike "don't give a shit about anyone else laissez faire populists".
There's absolutely no reason those values of empathy, kindness, basic social skills, public service, altruism etc. shouldn't be embodied in Conservatism (as indeed I felt they were/should be when I was a Tory; just with a different means of expression).
But they aren't in the modern Tory party. The fact that a Tory commentator has basically conceded all of that to "Labour" is something of a horror show.
There's no reason why empathy, kindness, basic social skills etc are incompatible with laissez-faire.
Many on the right and the left have the same objectives, it's the methodology is different.
I think that people are better off, financially, physically, mentally and more if they are able to support themselves. And that people are better able to support themselves if taxes on earned incomes are flatter and lower.
Which is why I support cutting real taxes especially on the poorest who face real marginal tax rates of 70% plus, real tax rates the likes of Sunak will never face.
I partially withdraw "laissez faire" if it is interpreted as you suggest - I meant it in the sense of 'ideological adherence to the removal of all curbs, boundaries or regulation imposed by the state'. Not in the sense of "a lower, flatter, simpler system of taxation".
Removal of all curbs isn't laissez-faire it's anarchy.
Well, laissez-faire advocates "minimal governmental interference" and assumes government to be a brake on economic groth, and anarchy advocates cooperative establishment of the rules without hierarchical government, not the removal of all rules.
Democracy advocates a cooperative establishment of the rules, that's what we have today.
Anarchy does not, it means that the strongest get to enforce whatever rules they want on the weakest.
Anarchy is more hierarchical than democracy.
You can have democracy in an anarchist system. Just as you can have autocracy with a hierarchical government.
No you can't, the two mean different things.
If you are democratically setting rules then it's not anarchy anymore.
I don't think you are talking about "anarchism" the political philosophy.
I think you are meaning: "a state of disorder due to absence or non-recognition of authority or other controlling systems" rather than "the organization of society on the basis of voluntary cooperation, without political institutions or hierarchical government"
Without political institutions etc you have the former.
Which generates a hierarchical government as those who are powerful seize power from the weak.
If you are democratically enforcing rules then that requires political institutions or hierarchical government to enforce that.
Making some assumptions, it appears 41% think taxes will go up whoever wins the election, but 8% think they will only if Labour win. The next question would be whether that 8% think taxes should go up or not! Presuming they don't, then that's 8% for the Tories... yeah, they're not gonna win on 8%.
I assume you are joking because, of course, many of the 41% who think taxes will go up think that taxes should NOT go up.
This will come as a massive shock to you but a lot of people think taxes SHOULD go up. People who recognise the needs to pay one's way and balance the books, people who think that public services are crap and need to improve, people who believe we should invest for the future.
A lot of people do indeed taxes should go up, a lot of those people also assume it won't apply to them. If the state fully funded everything it does I doubt even adding 5% to every tax rate would cover it. The simple fact is when people say just tax the rich they don't realise there aren't enough of them to cover the cost and basic rate tax will also need to rise significantly....those people struggling, having to claim tax credits and use food banks will see more of their pay go on tax
It could definitely be done without raising basic rate taxes (or indeed freezing personal allowances). The question is, a) will the government be brave enough, and b) would the impact on the rich be manageable?
I happen to think the deficit could be closed, or public services be boosted, or some combination of the two achieved by raising wealth taxes. The rich will squeal, they will threaten to quit the country (99% won't), they will plead poverty, but ultimately they would suck it up. (For 'they' I should put 'we' as I'm in my own target.)
Apart from every country that has already tried it has found it raises next to nothing and has pretty much abandoned it. So no wealth taxes will only work if you hit ordinary people with ordinary pension funds and living in ordinary houses....to make public services work with out deficit with what the state does we are probably looking to raise tax revenue by 300 to 400 billion a year. You are not going to get that from just taxing the rich
It depends what you mean by wealth taxes.
If you mean taxing wealth like shares etc that can be easily moved abroad, of course it doesn't work.
If you mean taxing land, then that's a perfectly liberal tax to support which almost every country on the planet has. Including the USA.
That we don't tax land ownership and expect tenants to pay instead is quite unusual and extreme.
Even if you tax land making 300 to 400 billion from it is going to cripple plenty of ordinary people. This is my problem with a wealth tax, the people who think it will fund everything and then denying it will hit those that aren't what anyone would describe as wealthy
I am not actually opposed to a land tax, just the view of some that it will allow us to fully fund everything
This is absolutely correct: the total amount of tax that can be raised is a function of economic output. In aggregate, you can't tax what isn't being produced.
It's why those numbers bandied around by activists about how a small tax on financial transactions would fund everything is so wrong: simply, transaction volumes would collapse.
GDP was originally designed as a measure of understanding how much activity there was to tax, and it remains helpful for that reason. Extracting more than half of the value of all economic activity is tough take for anyone.
That said, I fully support a land tax.
Why?
Because the tax system should encourage the efficient allocation of scarce resources. And there are few things more scarce than housing and land. We want to discourage people from sitting on land that could be developed for housing. And we want to discourage people - particularly overseas "investors" - from buying up apartments that sit empty. (Or indeed homes that are hardly used.)
I would propose a small annual levy on undeveloped land, and a small annual levy on any properties that are occupied for less than 180 days per year. This second one would negatively impact me, as I have a flat in Central London, but it would make people really think "this is now much more expensive than it was... shall I just AirBnB in future?"
Making some assumptions, it appears 41% think taxes will go up whoever wins the election, but 8% think they will only if Labour win. The next question would be whether that 8% think taxes should go up or not! Presuming they don't, then that's 8% for the Tories... yeah, they're not gonna win on 8%.
I assume you are joking because, of course, many of the 41% who think taxes will go up think that taxes should NOT go up.
This will come as a massive shock to you but a lot of people think taxes SHOULD go up. People who recognise the needs to pay one's way and balance the books, people who think that public services are crap and need to improve, people who believe we should invest for the future.
A lot of people do indeed taxes should go up, a lot of those people also assume it won't apply to them. If the state fully funded everything it does I doubt even adding 5% to every tax rate would cover it. The simple fact is when people say just tax the rich they don't realise there aren't enough of them to cover the cost and basic rate tax will also need to rise significantly....those people struggling, having to claim tax credits and use food banks will see more of their pay go on tax
It could definitely be done without raising basic rate taxes (or indeed freezing personal allowances). The question is, a) will the government be brave enough, and b) would the impact on the rich be manageable?
I happen to think the deficit could be closed, or public services be boosted, or some combination of the two achieved by raising wealth taxes. The rich will squeal, they will threaten to quit the country (99% won't), they will plead poverty, but ultimately they would suck it up. (For 'they' I should put 'we' as I'm in my own target.)
Apart from every country that has already tried it has found it raises next to nothing and has pretty much abandoned it. So no wealth taxes will only work if you hit ordinary people with ordinary pension funds and living in ordinary houses....to make public services work with out deficit with what the state does we are probably looking to raise tax revenue by 300 to 400 billion a year. You are not going to get that from just taxing the rich
It depends what you mean by wealth taxes.
If you mean taxing wealth like shares etc that can be easily moved abroad, of course it doesn't work.
If you mean taxing land, then that's a perfectly liberal tax to support which almost every country on the planet has. Including the USA.
That we don't tax land ownership and expect tenants to pay instead is quite unusual and extreme.
Even if you tax land making 300 to 400 billion from it is going to cripple plenty of ordinary people. This is my problem with a wealth tax, the people who think it will fund everything and then denying it will hit those that aren't what anyone would describe as wealthy
I am not actually opposed to a land tax, just the view of some that it will allow us to fully fund everything
This is absolutely correct: the total amount of tax that can be raised is a function of economic output. In aggregate, you can't tax what isn't being produced.
It's why those numbers bandied around by activists about how a small tax on financial transactions would fund everything is so wrong: simply, transaction volumes would collapse.
GDP was originally designed as a measure of understanding how much activity there was to tax, and it remains helpful for that reason. Extracting more than half of the value of all economic activity is tough take for anyone.
That said, I fully support a land tax.
Why?
Because the tax system should encourage the efficient allocation of scarce resources. And there are few things more scarce than housing and land. We want to discourage people from sitting on land that could be developed for housing. And we want to discourage people - particularly overseas "investors" - from buying up apartments that sit empty. (Or indeed homes that are hardly used.)
I would propose a small annual levy on undeveloped land, and a small annual levy on any properties that are occupied for less than 180 days per year. This second one would negatively impact me, as I have a flat in Central London, but it would make people really think "this is now much more expensive than it was... shall I just AirBnB in future?"
Nods as I said I am not opposed to a land tax being imposed as an alternative to council tax in fact I find it a good idea, I just reject the idea some seem to have formed that it will solve the funding gap and it won't hit the poorest in anyway. For example the idea than landlords wont just pass it on to renters just like they did for council tax
On a lighter note my wife has just informed me that less than 4% of marriages celebrate their diamond wedding anniversary (60 years)
In 6 weeks we will do just that and I did remind her that at the altar in St Geraldine's Church in Lossiemouth in May 1964 in front of over 200 witnesses she promised to 'love, honour and obey'
She responded by informing me she had a 'wee' word with the Good Lord and rescinded the 'obey' bit !!!!!!!
I'm not Bart, but it's a different context, so it can't possibly be the gotcha you want it to be.
And certainly some people might argue it was very low compared to what was possible and desirable.
The fanatics will never be appeased. That is for certain. It could be 90% and it would not be enough.
To listen to the climate extremists you would think we had done nothing and taken no action on the environment.
To that end some fringe youth eco offshoot of Just Stop Oil plans to bring the tube to a halt. Something to do with the enviroment and Palestine now, natch.
"The spokesman said: “New oil and gas licencing is ultimately a genocide, a man-made death. That is the same mentality with the situation in Palestine. It is essential to think of them together and not think of them as individual missions.”"
What they don't seem to realize is that their approach makes climate change more, rather than less, of a danger, because they provoke an enormous reaction.
If you make the necessary changes gradually, and you get buy in from the majority of the population at every stage, and you ensure that people keep getting richer... well, then you'll stop climate change. If you want people to wear hair shirts and be poorer, then you won't get 50.1% of people supporting you, or indeed, any potential action.
Humankind has done an extraordinary job of implementing measures to reduce climate change - and we're just getting started. Ten years ago, I had a Tesla Model S... and that was pretty much it for electric cars on the road. Now some places - like Norway - are 85% electric for new vehicles! Back then China's new coal electricity generation capacity outstripped wind and solar 1,000,000-1. Now, there's far more solar and wind - like 20x - being deployed in China than coal. We've found new ways to heat and cool homes than are dramatically more energy efficient than anything in the past.
All we need - as humanity - is to keep doing what we're doing. Keep electrifying. Keep installing batteries. Keep looking for the million and one marginal improvements. And if we do that, we can keep all getting richer, we can minimize our dependence on parts of the world that hate us, we can improve our balance of payments, and we can keep making the world a cleaner, better place.
I suppose the counter-argument is that the only reason we have taken such measures is because climate activists have kicked up a fuss.
Car manufacturers have been more than happy to continue making ICE vehicles, even while we have understood the greenhouse effect since the 1960s. Musk isn't investing all that time and cash into Tesla out of the goodness of his heart - he's taking advantage of a market created by Greta Thunberg.
Because the technology hasn't existed to wipe out ICE in one step. It still isn't there yet.
Greta Thunberg did nothing to create the market, Musk created his firm before anyone had ever heard of Thunberg. Indeed Thunberg wasn't even born when this began.
It was about 35 years ago that Thatcher spoke about the problems with emissions and cutting emissions became government policy.
Humanity has been working on changing emissions for 35 years, JSO/Thunberg etc have jumped on the bandwagon not the other way around.
Musk didn't create Tesla. He has been responsible for much of its success. But he was not a founder.
That's just another of his many lies...
Well indeed, though Musk did help make it what it is today, if you want to look even further back that just adds to my point.
Tesla was founded in the same year Thunberg was born, so if she was responsible for it then that's seriously impressive.
Thunberg has saved the world. But the main story is true - Tesla's genius/luck was to take advantage of a market disrupted by climate change policy.
Not sure that Thunberg has had that big an effect - part of the campaign, sure. But claims of saving the world are over the top.
Tesla was about realising that the car modding outfits in LA could custom convert a car to EV for $250k and could get serious performance.
Scale it up and each time the costs go down. Then attack battery costs by mass production.
The US government as already offering tax credits for ZEVs - that the big companies weren’t using. There was a demand for EVs that no one was bothering with.
Previously, there had been various pushes for ZEVs - including hydrogen. At one point, around 2000, Shell was planning on helping Iceland become the first zero emission country. That plan fell through, due to the non appearance of the hydrogen fuel cells required.
Greta Thunberg seems to be a troubled young person and I hope she gets the help she needs.
Assuming that the paradigm of "human emissions = global climate changing for the worse" is accepted as fact, I still don't see how her campaigns can be said to have 'saved' anything, given that the non-Western world seems strangely immune to her sententious chastisements.
She is certainly part of the movement toward the Western world surrendering its global economic leadership, and therefore its leadership full stop, in favour of BRICs. Most here don't seem to want that to happen, but there's a peculiar failure to join the dots. Perhaps it's all the PB shrewdies wanting to prove how clever they are by being so moderate, see OnlyLivingBoy.
"he Western world surrendering its global economic leadership"
I see it very differently. There are great potential economic opportunities in going green. Whether we grasp those opportunities is another matter.
But I have to point out: your comment about BRICS is downright weird, and one I'd expect from someone who reads rather anti-western stuff.
(IMV BRICS might well end up like the CTSO...)
I used it as shorthand for countries (including China and India) who seem fairly determined to cooperate economically (and perhaps in the end militarily) outside of Western power structures. I'm not making a judgement about that, and as you know, I am far more comfortable with the idea of a multi-polar world and Britain's ability to thrive as part of it than 99% of people here. Most here seem to want a US-led Western alliance to prevail, and for Britain to be a strong part of that.
Despite that, I see zero objection here when (for example) we surrender our ability to make virgin steel (the only steel that can be used for armaments production) and all that happens is a load of massive blast furnaces open in India. I see a shade more, but still fairly minimal support for the idea of getting more of our own gas out of the sea (and none for fracking it out of the ground), so as to make us less dependent on the whims of Putin or the Saudis.
Whilst most here will happily jump down my throat and call me 'comrade' for daring to diminish 'PB morale', they are actually the ones who are materially anti-Western, for insisting that the UK must be the poster-child for Net Zero despite its manifold and growingly obvious economic and security downsides. I am more pro-Western in the logical outworkings of my ideas than most of the 'smart moderates' in this corner of the internet.
Bullshit, comrade.
Let us take one example: we are using much less gas to generate power than we were, thanks to the increased amounts of wind and solar. This has been costly. But I saw some figures a while back showing how much money had been saved in generation in 2022/3 because of our consequent smaller reliance on gas when the prices spiked. And it was a lot. (I shall try to find it somewhere...)
As another example, we have moved to a large amount of 'green' power in the UK without too much pain. I am staggered that this has happened and remains generally unremarked.
I quite like the modern world we live in. True, it has problems, but I'd rather live now than (say) in 1900 - especially as I'm not a baby, and am getting towards an older age. And one of the reasons there has been a myriad of improvements is technological and social change.
If there are economic opportunities in going green - and I think there are, and so do other countries (including China), then we need to grasp them - even if it causes slight temporary pain.
If only Liz Truss had had the courage of her convictions on refusing to subsidise gas, the market signals would have been more effective.
Do you think it’s high time for TRUSS to stage a return to the helm, this time with a purer package of policies?
Is it her time? Is the time NOW?
TRUSS.
Well Rishi is polling as low as she did
The longer CON are stringing this Parliament out, the worse their position is getting...
Which is exactly what most of us on here predicted.
On a lighter note my wife has just informed me that less than 4% of marriages celebrate their diamond wedding anniversary (60 years)
In 6 weeks we will do just that and I did remind her that at the altar in St Geraldine's Church in Lossiemouth in May 1964 in front of over 200 witnesses she promised to 'love, honour and obey'
She responded by informing me she had a 'wee' word with the Good Lord and rescinded the 'obey' bit !!!!!!!
Congratulations, while not the marrying kind myself it obviously brought you both pleasure
Camila Tominey said the education system is indoctrinating young people to be left wing and she worries that they will not become conservative or have conservative values.
Could it be perhaps that the Tories are just a bit...crap?
Absolutely not.
Today's Tories are not remotely "a bit" crap.
I think it is fair to say that the education system emphasises the need for empathy, kindness, basic social skills, public service, altruism etc. which tends to encourage kids to dislike "don't give a shit about anyone else laissez faire populists".
There's absolutely no reason those values of empathy, kindness, basic social skills, public service, altruism etc. shouldn't be embodied in Conservatism (as indeed I felt they were/should be when I was a Tory; just with a different means of expression).
But they aren't in the modern Tory party. The fact that a Tory commentator has basically conceded all of that to "Labour" is something of a horror show.
There's no reason why empathy, kindness, basic social skills etc are incompatible with laissez-faire.
Many on the right and the left have the same objectives, it's the methodology is different.
I think that people are better off, financially, physically, mentally and more if they are able to support themselves. And that people are better able to support themselves if taxes on earned incomes are flatter and lower.
Which is why I support cutting real taxes especially on the poorest who face real marginal tax rates of 70% plus, real tax rates the likes of Sunak will never face.
I partially withdraw "laissez faire" if it is interpreted as you suggest - I meant it in the sense of 'ideological adherence to the removal of all curbs, boundaries or regulation imposed by the state'. Not in the sense of "a lower, flatter, simpler system of taxation".
Removal of all curbs isn't laissez-faire it's anarchy.
Well, laissez-faire advocates "minimal governmental interference" and assumes government to be a brake on economic groth, and anarchy advocates cooperative establishment of the rules without hierarchical government, not the removal of all rules.
Democracy advocates a cooperative establishment of the rules, that's what we have today.
Anarchy does not, it means that the strongest get to enforce whatever rules they want on the weakest.
Anarchy is more hierarchical than democracy.
You can have democracy in an anarchist system. Just as you can have autocracy with a hierarchical government.
No you can't, the two mean different things.
If you are democratically setting rules then it's not anarchy anymore.
I don't think you are talking about "anarchism" the political philosophy.
I think you are meaning: "a state of disorder due to absence or non-recognition of authority or other controlling systems" rather than "the organization of society on the basis of voluntary cooperation, without political institutions or hierarchical government"
Without political institutions etc you have the former.
Which generates a hierarchical government as those who are powerful seize power from the weak.
If you are democratically enforcing rules then that requires political institutions or hierarchical government to enforce that.
On a lighter note my wife has just informed me that less than 4% of marriages celebrate their diamond wedding anniversary (60 years)
In 6 weeks we will do just that and I did remind her that at the altar in St Geraldine's Church in Lossiemouth in May 1964 in front of over 200 witnesses she promised to 'love, honour and obey'
She responded by informing me she had a 'wee' word with the Good Lord and rescinded the 'obey' bit !!!!!!!
I should think so to. Congratulations. I have to live to 100 to match that. Fingers crossed.
On a lighter note my wife has just informed me that less than 4% of marriages celebrate their diamond wedding anniversary (60 years)
In 6 weeks we will do just that and I did remind her that at the altar in St Geraldine's Church in Lossiemouth in May 1964 in front of over 200 witnesses she promised to 'love, honour and obey'
She responded by informing me she had a 'wee' word with the Good Lord and rescinded the 'obey' bit !!!!!!!
Congratulations, while not the marrying kind myself it obviously brought you both pleasure
Thank you and indeed with 3 children and 5 grandchildren, and apart from our eldest son and his wife who live in Vancouver, the rest of the family including all our grandchildren live close by
Camila Tominey said the education system is indoctrinating young people to be left wing and she worries that they will not become conservative or have conservative values.
Could it be perhaps that the Tories are just a bit...crap?
Absolutely not.
Today's Tories are not remotely "a bit" crap.
I think it is fair to say that the education system emphasises the need for empathy, kindness, basic social skills, public service, altruism etc. which tends to encourage kids to dislike "don't give a shit about anyone else laissez faire populists".
There's absolutely no reason those values of empathy, kindness, basic social skills, public service, altruism etc. shouldn't be embodied in Conservatism (as indeed I felt they were/should be when I was a Tory; just with a different means of expression).
But they aren't in the modern Tory party. The fact that a Tory commentator has basically conceded all of that to "Labour" is something of a horror show.
There's no reason why empathy, kindness, basic social skills etc are incompatible with laissez-faire.
Many on the right and the left have the same objectives, it's the methodology is different.
I think that people are better off, financially, physically, mentally and more if they are able to support themselves. And that people are better able to support themselves if taxes on earned incomes are flatter and lower.
Which is why I support cutting real taxes especially on the poorest who face real marginal tax rates of 70% plus, real tax rates the likes of Sunak will never face.
I partially withdraw "laissez faire" if it is interpreted as you suggest - I meant it in the sense of 'ideological adherence to the removal of all curbs, boundaries or regulation imposed by the state'. Not in the sense of "a lower, flatter, simpler system of taxation".
Removal of all curbs isn't laissez-faire it's anarchy.
Well, laissez-faire advocates "minimal governmental interference" and assumes government to be a brake on economic groth, and anarchy advocates cooperative establishment of the rules without hierarchical government, not the removal of all rules.
Democracy advocates a cooperative establishment of the rules, that's what we have today.
Anarchy does not, it means that the strongest get to enforce whatever rules they want on the weakest.
Anarchy is more hierarchical than democracy.
You can have democracy in an anarchist system. Just as you can have autocracy with a hierarchical government.
No you can't, the two mean different things.
If you are democratically setting rules then it's not anarchy anymore.
I don't think you are talking about "anarchism" the political philosophy.
I think you are meaning: "a state of disorder due to absence or non-recognition of authority or other controlling systems" rather than "the organization of society on the basis of voluntary cooperation, without political institutions or hierarchical government"
Without political institutions etc you have the former.
Which generates a hierarchical government as those who are powerful seize power from the weak.
If you are democratically enforcing rules then that requires political institutions or hierarchical government to enforce that.
I'm not Bart, but it's a different context, so it can't possibly be the gotcha you want it to be.
And certainly some people might argue it was very low compared to what was possible and desirable.
The fanatics will never be appeased. That is for certain. It could be 90% and it would not be enough.
To listen to the climate extremists you would think we had done nothing and taken no action on the environment.
To that end some fringe youth eco offshoot of Just Stop Oil plans to bring the tube to a halt. Something to do with the enviroment and Palestine now, natch.
"The spokesman said: “New oil and gas licencing is ultimately a genocide, a man-made death. That is the same mentality with the situation in Palestine. It is essential to think of them together and not think of them as individual missions.”"
What they don't seem to realize is that their approach makes climate change more, rather than less, of a danger, because they provoke an enormous reaction.
If you make the necessary changes gradually, and you get buy in from the majority of the population at every stage, and you ensure that people keep getting richer... well, then you'll stop climate change. If you want people to wear hair shirts and be poorer, then you won't get 50.1% of people supporting you, or indeed, any potential action.
Humankind has done an extraordinary job of implementing measures to reduce climate change - and we're just getting started. Ten years ago, I had a Tesla Model S... and that was pretty much it for electric cars on the road. Now some places - like Norway - are 85% electric for new vehicles! Back then China's new coal electricity generation capacity outstripped wind and solar 1,000,000-1. Now, there's far more solar and wind - like 20x - being deployed in China than coal. We've found new ways to heat and cool homes than are dramatically more energy efficient than anything in the past.
All we need - as humanity - is to keep doing what we're doing. Keep electrifying. Keep installing batteries. Keep looking for the million and one marginal improvements. And if we do that, we can keep all getting richer, we can minimize our dependence on parts of the world that hate us, we can improve our balance of payments, and we can keep making the world a cleaner, better place.
I suppose the counter-argument is that the only reason we have taken such measures is because climate activists have kicked up a fuss.
Car manufacturers have been more than happy to continue making ICE vehicles, even while we have understood the greenhouse effect since the 1960s. Musk isn't investing all that time and cash into Tesla out of the goodness of his heart - he's taking advantage of a market created by Greta Thunberg.
Because the technology hasn't existed to wipe out ICE in one step. It still isn't there yet.
Greta Thunberg did nothing to create the market, Musk created his firm before anyone had ever heard of Thunberg. Indeed Thunberg wasn't even born when this began.
It was about 35 years ago that Thatcher spoke about the problems with emissions and cutting emissions became government policy.
Humanity has been working on changing emissions for 35 years, JSO/Thunberg etc have jumped on the bandwagon not the other way around.
Musk didn't create Tesla. He has been responsible for much of its success. But he was not a founder.
That's just another of his many lies...
Well indeed, though Musk did help make it what it is today, if you want to look even further back that just adds to my point.
Tesla was founded in the same year Thunberg was born, so if she was responsible for it then that's seriously impressive.
Thunberg has saved the world. But the main story is true - Tesla's genius/luck was to take advantage of a market disrupted by climate change policy.
Not sure that Thunberg has had that big an effect - part of the campaign, sure. But claims of saving the world are over the top.
Tesla was about realising that the car modding outfits in LA could custom convert a car to EV for $250k and could get serious performance.
Scale it up and each time the costs go down. Then attack battery costs by mass production.
The US government as already offering tax credits for ZEVs - that the big companies weren’t using. There was a demand for EVs that no one was bothering with.
Previously, there had been various pushes for ZEVs - including hydrogen. At one point, around 2000, Shell was planning on helping Iceland become the first zero emission country. That plan fell through, due to the non appearance of the hydrogen fuel cells required.
Greta Thunberg seems to be a troubled young person and I hope she gets the help she needs.
Assuming that the paradigm of "human emissions = global climate changing for the worse" is accepted as fact, I still don't see how her campaigns can be said to have 'saved' anything, given that the non-Western world seems strangely immune to her sententious chastisements.
She is certainly part of the movement toward the Western world surrendering its global economic leadership, and therefore its leadership full stop, in favour of BRICs. Most here don't seem to want that to happen, but there's a peculiar failure to join the dots. Perhaps it's all the PB shrewdies wanting to prove how clever they are by being so moderate, see OnlyLivingBoy.
"he Western world surrendering its global economic leadership"
I see it very differently. There are great potential economic opportunities in going green. Whether we grasp those opportunities is another matter.
But I have to point out: your comment about BRICS is downright weird, and one I'd expect from someone who reads rather anti-western stuff.
(IMV BRICS might well end up like the CTSO...)
I used it as shorthand for countries (including China and India) who seem fairly determined to cooperate economically (and perhaps in the end militarily) outside of Western power structures. I'm not making a judgement about that, and as you know, I am far more comfortable with the idea of a multi-polar world and Britain's ability to thrive as part of it than 99% of people here. Most here seem to want a US-led Western alliance to prevail, and for Britain to be a strong part of that.
Despite that, I see zero objection here when (for example) we surrender our ability to make virgin steel (the only steel that can be used for armaments production) and all that happens is a load of massive blast furnaces open in India. I see a shade more, but still fairly minimal support for the idea of getting more of our own gas out of the sea (and none for fracking it out of the ground), so as to make us less dependent on the whims of Putin or the Saudis.
Whilst most here will happily jump down my throat and call me 'comrade' for daring to diminish 'PB morale', they are actually the ones who are materially anti-Western, for insisting that the UK must be the poster-child for Net Zero despite its manifold and growingly obvious economic and security downsides. I am more pro-Western in the logical outworkings of my ideas than most of the 'smart moderates' in this corner of the internet.
Bullshit, comrade.
Let us take one example: we are using much less gas to generate power than we were, thanks to the increased amounts of wind and solar. This has been costly. But I saw some figures a while back showing how much money had been saved in generation in 2022/3 because of our consequent smaller reliance on gas when the prices spiked. And it was a lot. (I shall try to find it somewhere...)
As another example, we have moved to a large amount of 'green' power in the UK without too much pain. I am staggered that this has happened and remains generally unremarked.
I quite like the modern world we live in. True, it has problems, but I'd rather live now than (say) in 1900 - especially as I'm not a baby, and am getting towards an older age. And one of the reasons there has been a myriad of improvements is technological and social change.
If there are economic opportunities in going green - and I think there are, and so do other countries (including China), then we need to grasp them - even if it causes slight temporary pain.
If only Liz Truss had had the courage of her convictions on refusing to subsidise gas, the market signals would have been more effective.
Do you think it’s high time for TRUSS to stage a return to the helm, this time with a purer package of policies?
Is it her time? Is the time NOW?
TRUSS.
Well Rishi is polling as low as she did
The longer CON are stringing this Parliament out, the worse their position is getting...
Should have gone in May '23.
Wonder why? Was it that the acute crisis of winter 2022/3 had been survived, but the ongoing chronic meh-ness of life in Sunak's Britain hadn't really come to light?
Yes, the voters have made up their minds it seems that they want a change of government.
Until Labour go into government and have to deal the economy and potentially put up taxes, the Conservatives are unlikely to see much improvement in their poll rating
Yes, the voters have made up their minds it seems that they want a change of government.
Until Labour go into government and have to deal the economy and potentially put up taxes, the Conservatives are unlikely to see much improvement in their poll rating
Making some assumptions, it appears 41% think taxes will go up whoever wins the election, but 8% think they will only if Labour win. The next question would be whether that 8% think taxes should go up or not! Presuming they don't, then that's 8% for the Tories... yeah, they're not gonna win on 8%.
I assume you are joking because, of course, many of the 41% who think taxes will go up think that taxes should NOT go up.
This will come as a massive shock to you but a lot of people think taxes SHOULD go up. People who recognise the needs to pay one's way and balance the books, people who think that public services are crap and need to improve, people who believe we should invest for the future.
A lot of people do indeed taxes should go up, a lot of those people also assume it won't apply to them. If the state fully funded everything it does I doubt even adding 5% to every tax rate would cover it. The simple fact is when people say just tax the rich they don't realise there aren't enough of them to cover the cost and basic rate tax will also need to rise significantly....those people struggling, having to claim tax credits and use food banks will see more of their pay go on tax
It could definitely be done without raising basic rate taxes (or indeed freezing personal allowances). The question is, a) will the government be brave enough, and b) would the impact on the rich be manageable?
I happen to think the deficit could be closed, or public services be boosted, or some combination of the two achieved by raising wealth taxes. The rich will squeal, they will threaten to quit the country (99% won't), they will plead poverty, but ultimately they would suck it up. (For 'they' I should put 'we' as I'm in my own target.)
Apart from every country that has already tried it has found it raises next to nothing and has pretty much abandoned it. So no wealth taxes will only work if you hit ordinary people with ordinary pension funds and living in ordinary houses....to make public services work with out deficit with what the state does we are probably looking to raise tax revenue by 300 to 400 billion a year. You are not going to get that from just taxing the rich
It depends what you mean by wealth taxes.
If you mean taxing wealth like shares etc that can be easily moved abroad, of course it doesn't work.
If you mean taxing land, then that's a perfectly liberal tax to support which almost every country on the planet has. Including the USA.
That we don't tax land ownership and expect tenants to pay instead is quite unusual and extreme.
Even if you tax land making 300 to 400 billion from it is going to cripple plenty of ordinary people. This is my problem with a wealth tax, the people who think it will fund everything and then denying it will hit those that aren't what anyone would describe as wealthy
I am not actually opposed to a land tax, just the view of some that it will allow us to fully fund everything
This is absolutely correct: the total amount of tax that can be raised is a function of economic output. In aggregate, you can't tax what isn't being produced.
It's why those numbers bandied around by activists about how a small tax on financial transactions would fund everything is so wrong: simply, transaction volumes would collapse.
GDP was originally designed as a measure of understanding how much activity there was to tax, and it remains helpful for that reason. Extracting more than half of the value of all economic activity is tough take for anyone.
That said, I fully support a land tax.
Why?
Because the tax system should encourage the efficient allocation of scarce resources. And there are few things more scarce than housing and land. We want to discourage people from sitting on land that could be developed for housing. And we want to discourage people - particularly overseas "investors" - from buying up apartments that sit empty. (Or indeed homes that are hardly used.)
I would propose a small annual levy on undeveloped land, and a small annual levy on any properties that are occupied for less than 180 days per year. This second one would negatively impact me, as I have a flat in Central London, but it would make people really think "this is now much more expensive than it was... shall I just AirBnB in future?"
Nods as I said I am not opposed to a land tax being imposed as an alternative to council tax in fact I find it a good idea, I just reject the idea some seem to have formed that it will solve the funding gap and it won't hit the poorest in anyway. For example the idea than landlords wont just pass it on to renters just like they did for council tax
It couldn't be used as alternative to Council Tax without absolutely screwing the poorest. In London, prices are high and therefore land tax would only need to be (say) 0.1% to cover council expenses. Whereas in -say- Knowsley land prices are very low, and you would need to charge something like 5% to cover council expenses. It would absolutely shaft poor areas at the expense of rich.
I would implement it at a national level, and use the money received as (effectively) the pool that is used for local government grants.
Yes, the voters have made up their minds it seems that they want a change of government.
Until Labour go into government and have to deal the economy and potentially put up taxes, the Conservatives are unlikely to see much improvement in their poll rating
Time for change is the overwhelming factor
Sadly there will be no change even if they vote in labour or lib dems.
I used the analogy before....we have 3 main parties....one insists on north, one northwest and one north east....however travelling northwards is what go us here. We need someone to say hey here is a different direction
Making some assumptions, it appears 41% think taxes will go up whoever wins the election, but 8% think they will only if Labour win. The next question would be whether that 8% think taxes should go up or not! Presuming they don't, then that's 8% for the Tories... yeah, they're not gonna win on 8%.
I assume you are joking because, of course, many of the 41% who think taxes will go up think that taxes should NOT go up.
This will come as a massive shock to you but a lot of people think taxes SHOULD go up. People who recognise the needs to pay one's way and balance the books, people who think that public services are crap and need to improve, people who believe we should invest for the future.
A lot of people do indeed taxes should go up, a lot of those people also assume it won't apply to them. If the state fully funded everything it does I doubt even adding 5% to every tax rate would cover it. The simple fact is when people say just tax the rich they don't realise there aren't enough of them to cover the cost and basic rate tax will also need to rise significantly....those people struggling, having to claim tax credits and use food banks will see more of their pay go on tax
It could definitely be done without raising basic rate taxes (or indeed freezing personal allowances). The question is, a) will the government be brave enough, and b) would the impact on the rich be manageable?
I happen to think the deficit could be closed, or public services be boosted, or some combination of the two achieved by raising wealth taxes. The rich will squeal, they will threaten to quit the country (99% won't), they will plead poverty, but ultimately they would suck it up. (For 'they' I should put 'we' as I'm in my own target.)
Apart from every country that has already tried it has found it raises next to nothing and has pretty much abandoned it. So no wealth taxes will only work if you hit ordinary people with ordinary pension funds and living in ordinary houses....to make public services work with out deficit with what the state does we are probably looking to raise tax revenue by 300 to 400 billion a year. You are not going to get that from just taxing the rich
It depends what you mean by wealth taxes.
If you mean taxing wealth like shares etc that can be easily moved abroad, of course it doesn't work.
If you mean taxing land, then that's a perfectly liberal tax to support which almost every country on the planet has. Including the USA.
That we don't tax land ownership and expect tenants to pay instead is quite unusual and extreme.
Even if you tax land making 300 to 400 billion from it is going to cripple plenty of ordinary people. This is my problem with a wealth tax, the people who think it will fund everything and then denying it will hit those that aren't what anyone would describe as wealthy
I am not actually opposed to a land tax, just the view of some that it will allow us to fully fund everything
This is absolutely correct: the total amount of tax that can be raised is a function of economic output. In aggregate, you can't tax what isn't being produced.
It's why those numbers bandied around by activists about how a small tax on financial transactions would fund everything is so wrong: simply, transaction volumes would collapse.
GDP was originally designed as a measure of understanding how much activity there was to tax, and it remains helpful for that reason. Extracting more than half of the value of all economic activity is tough take for anyone.
That said, I fully support a land tax.
Why?
Because the tax system should encourage the efficient allocation of scarce resources. And there are few things more scarce than housing and land. We want to discourage people from sitting on land that could be developed for housing. And we want to discourage people - particularly overseas "investors" - from buying up apartments that sit empty. (Or indeed homes that are hardly used.)
I would propose a small annual levy on undeveloped land, and a small annual levy on any properties that are occupied for less than 180 days per year. This second one would negatively impact me, as I have a flat in Central London, but it would make people really think "this is now much more expensive than it was... shall I just AirBnB in future?"
Nods as I said I am not opposed to a land tax being imposed as an alternative to council tax in fact I find it a good idea, I just reject the idea some seem to have formed that it will solve the funding gap and it won't hit the poorest in anyway. For example the idea than landlords wont just pass it on to renters just like they did for council tax
It couldn't be used as alternative to Council Tax without absolutely screwing the poorest. In London, prices are high and therefore land tax would only need to be (say) 0.1% to cover council expenses. Whereas in -say- Knowsley land prices are very low, and you would need to charge something like 5% to cover council expenses. It would absolutely shaft poor areas at the expense of rich.
I would implement it at a national level, and use the money received as (effectively) the pool that is used for local government grants.
I would abolish Council Tax and replace it with LVT, with the LVT raised centrally at say 0.7% of a properties value.
Yes that means Councils wouldn't have a say in tax rates and would just debate how to spend money raised centrally, but I don't have a problem with that.
Especially since most Council operations are mandated centrally anyway.
Yes, the voters have made up their minds it seems that they want a change of government.
Until Labour go into government and have to deal the economy and potentially put up taxes, the Conservatives are unlikely to see much improvement in their poll rating
Time for change is the overwhelming factor
Sadly there will be no change even if they vote in labour or lib dems.
I used the analogy before....we have 3 main parties....one insists on north, one northwest and one north east....however travelling northwards is what go us here. We need someone to say hey here is a different direction
Making some assumptions, it appears 41% think taxes will go up whoever wins the election, but 8% think they will only if Labour win. The next question would be whether that 8% think taxes should go up or not! Presuming they don't, then that's 8% for the Tories... yeah, they're not gonna win on 8%.
I assume you are joking because, of course, many of the 41% who think taxes will go up think that taxes should NOT go up.
This will come as a massive shock to you but a lot of people think taxes SHOULD go up. People who recognise the needs to pay one's way and balance the books, people who think that public services are crap and need to improve, people who believe we should invest for the future.
A lot of people do indeed taxes should go up, a lot of those people also assume it won't apply to them. If the state fully funded everything it does I doubt even adding 5% to every tax rate would cover it. The simple fact is when people say just tax the rich they don't realise there aren't enough of them to cover the cost and basic rate tax will also need to rise significantly....those people struggling, having to claim tax credits and use food banks will see more of their pay go on tax
It could definitely be done without raising basic rate taxes (or indeed freezing personal allowances). The question is, a) will the government be brave enough, and b) would the impact on the rich be manageable?
I happen to think the deficit could be closed, or public services be boosted, or some combination of the two achieved by raising wealth taxes. The rich will squeal, they will threaten to quit the country (99% won't), they will plead poverty, but ultimately they would suck it up. (For 'they' I should put 'we' as I'm in my own target.)
Apart from every country that has already tried it has found it raises next to nothing and has pretty much abandoned it. So no wealth taxes will only work if you hit ordinary people with ordinary pension funds and living in ordinary houses....to make public services work with out deficit with what the state does we are probably looking to raise tax revenue by 300 to 400 billion a year. You are not going to get that from just taxing the rich
It depends what you mean by wealth taxes.
If you mean taxing wealth like shares etc that can be easily moved abroad, of course it doesn't work.
If you mean taxing land, then that's a perfectly liberal tax to support which almost every country on the planet has. Including the USA.
That we don't tax land ownership and expect tenants to pay instead is quite unusual and extreme.
Even if you tax land making 300 to 400 billion from it is going to cripple plenty of ordinary people. This is my problem with a wealth tax, the people who think it will fund everything and then denying it will hit those that aren't what anyone would describe as wealthy
I am not actually opposed to a land tax, just the view of some that it will allow us to fully fund everything
This is absolutely correct: the total amount of tax that can be raised is a function of economic output. In aggregate, you can't tax what isn't being produced.
It's why those numbers bandied around by activists about how a small tax on financial transactions would fund everything is so wrong: simply, transaction volumes would collapse.
GDP was originally designed as a measure of understanding how much activity there was to tax, and it remains helpful for that reason. Extracting more than half of the value of all economic activity is tough take for anyone.
That said, I fully support a land tax.
Why?
Because the tax system should encourage the efficient allocation of scarce resources. And there are few things more scarce than housing and land. We want to discourage people from sitting on land that could be developed for housing. And we want to discourage people - particularly overseas "investors" - from buying up apartments that sit empty. (Or indeed homes that are hardly used.)
I would propose a small annual levy on undeveloped land, and a small annual levy on any properties that are occupied for less than 180 days per year. This second one would negatively impact me, as I have a flat in Central London, but it would make people really think "this is now much more expensive than it was... shall I just AirBnB in future?"
Nods as I said I am not opposed to a land tax being imposed as an alternative to council tax in fact I find it a good idea, I just reject the idea some seem to have formed that it will solve the funding gap and it won't hit the poorest in anyway. For example the idea than landlords wont just pass it on to renters just like they did for council tax
It couldn't be used as alternative to Council Tax without absolutely screwing the poorest. In London, prices are high and therefore land tax would only need to be (say) 0.1% to cover council expenses. Whereas in -say- Knowsley land prices are very low, and you would need to charge something like 5% to cover council expenses. It would absolutely shaft poor areas at the expense of rich.
I would implement it at a national level, and use the money received as (effectively) the pool that is used for local government grants.
If you don't replace council tax with it there are going to be even more people going effectively I can no longer afford to live. Even in london. For example if a house in london attracts 2400 land tax, the couple renting it will find their landlord raising their rent by at least 200 a month
I'm not Bart, but it's a different context, so it can't possibly be the gotcha you want it to be.
And certainly some people might argue it was very low compared to what was possible and desirable.
The fanatics will never be appeased. That is for certain. It could be 90% and it would not be enough.
To listen to the climate extremists you would think we had done nothing and taken no action on the environment.
To that end some fringe youth eco offshoot of Just Stop Oil plans to bring the tube to a halt. Something to do with the enviroment and Palestine now, natch.
"The spokesman said: “New oil and gas licencing is ultimately a genocide, a man-made death. That is the same mentality with the situation in Palestine. It is essential to think of them together and not think of them as individual missions.”"
What they don't seem to realize is that their approach makes climate change more, rather than less, of a danger, because they provoke an enormous reaction.
If you make the necessary changes gradually, and you get buy in from the majority of the population at every stage, and you ensure that people keep getting richer... well, then you'll stop climate change. If you want people to wear hair shirts and be poorer, then you won't get 50.1% of people supporting you, or indeed, any potential action.
Humankind has done an extraordinary job of implementing measures to reduce climate change - and we're just getting started. Ten years ago, I had a Tesla Model S... and that was pretty much it for electric cars on the road. Now some places - like Norway - are 85% electric for new vehicles! Back then China's new coal electricity generation capacity outstripped wind and solar 1,000,000-1. Now, there's far more solar and wind - like 20x - being deployed in China than coal. We've found new ways to heat and cool homes than are dramatically more energy efficient than anything in the past.
All we need - as humanity - is to keep doing what we're doing. Keep electrifying. Keep installing batteries. Keep looking for the million and one marginal improvements. And if we do that, we can keep all getting richer, we can minimize our dependence on parts of the world that hate us, we can improve our balance of payments, and we can keep making the world a cleaner, better place.
I suppose the counter-argument is that the only reason we have taken such measures is because climate activists have kicked up a fuss.
Car manufacturers have been more than happy to continue making ICE vehicles, even while we have understood the greenhouse effect since the 1960s. Musk isn't investing all that time and cash into Tesla out of the goodness of his heart - he's taking advantage of a market created by Greta Thunberg.
Because the technology hasn't existed to wipe out ICE in one step. It still isn't there yet.
Greta Thunberg did nothing to create the market, Musk created his firm before anyone had ever heard of Thunberg. Indeed Thunberg wasn't even born when this began.
It was about 35 years ago that Thatcher spoke about the problems with emissions and cutting emissions became government policy.
Humanity has been working on changing emissions for 35 years, JSO/Thunberg etc have jumped on the bandwagon not the other way around.
Musk didn't create Tesla. He has been responsible for much of its success. But he was not a founder.
That's just another of his many lies...
Well indeed, though Musk did help make it what it is today, if you want to look even further back that just adds to my point.
Tesla was founded in the same year Thunberg was born, so if she was responsible for it then that's seriously impressive.
Thunberg has saved the world. But the main story is true - Tesla's genius/luck was to take advantage of a market disrupted by climate change policy.
Not sure that Thunberg has had that big an effect - part of the campaign, sure. But claims of saving the world are over the top.
Tesla was about realising that the car modding outfits in LA could custom convert a car to EV for $250k and could get serious performance.
Scale it up and each time the costs go down. Then attack battery costs by mass production.
The US government as already offering tax credits for ZEVs - that the big companies weren’t using. There was a demand for EVs that no one was bothering with.
Previously, there had been various pushes for ZEVs - including hydrogen. At one point, around 2000, Shell was planning on helping Iceland become the first zero emission country. That plan fell through, due to the non appearance of the hydrogen fuel cells required.
Greta Thunberg seems to be a troubled young person and I hope she gets the help she needs.
Assuming that the paradigm of "human emissions = global climate changing for the worse" is accepted as fact, I still don't see how her campaigns can be said to have 'saved' anything, given that the non-Western world seems strangely immune to her sententious chastisements.
She is certainly part of the movement toward the Western world surrendering its global economic leadership, and therefore its leadership full stop, in favour of BRICs. Most here don't seem to want that to happen, but there's a peculiar failure to join the dots. Perhaps it's all the PB shrewdies wanting to prove how clever they are by being so moderate, see OnlyLivingBoy.
"he Western world surrendering its global economic leadership"
I see it very differently. There are great potential economic opportunities in going green. Whether we grasp those opportunities is another matter.
But I have to point out: your comment about BRICS is downright weird, and one I'd expect from someone who reads rather anti-western stuff.
(IMV BRICS might well end up like the CTSO...)
I used it as shorthand for countries (including China and India) who seem fairly determined to cooperate economically (and perhaps in the end militarily) outside of Western power structures. I'm not making a judgement about that, and as you know, I am far more comfortable with the idea of a multi-polar world and Britain's ability to thrive as part of it than 99% of people here. Most here seem to want a US-led Western alliance to prevail, and for Britain to be a strong part of that.
Despite that, I see zero objection here when (for example) we surrender our ability to make virgin steel (the only steel that can be used for armaments production) and all that happens is a load of massive blast furnaces open in India. I see a shade more, but still fairly minimal support for the idea of getting more of our own gas out of the sea (and none for fracking it out of the ground), so as to make us less dependent on the whims of Putin or the Saudis.
Whilst most here will happily jump down my throat and call me 'comrade' for daring to diminish 'PB morale', they are actually the ones who are materially anti-Western, for insisting that the UK must be the poster-child for Net Zero despite its manifold and growingly obvious economic and security downsides. I am more pro-Western in the logical outworkings of my ideas than most of the 'smart moderates' in this corner of the internet.
Bullshit, comrade.
Let us take one example: we are using much less gas to generate power than we were, thanks to the increased amounts of wind and solar. This has been costly. But I saw some figures a while back showing how much money had been saved in generation in 2022/3 because of our consequent smaller reliance on gas when the prices spiked. And it was a lot. (I shall try to find it somewhere...)
As another example, we have moved to a large amount of 'green' power in the UK without too much pain. I am staggered that this has happened and remains generally unremarked.
I quite like the modern world we live in. True, it has problems, but I'd rather live now than (say) in 1900 - especially as I'm not a baby, and am getting towards an older age. And one of the reasons there has been a myriad of improvements is technological and social change.
If there are economic opportunities in going green - and I think there are, and so do other countries (including China), then we need to grasp them - even if it causes slight temporary pain.
If only Liz Truss had had the courage of her convictions on refusing to subsidise gas, the market signals would have been more effective.
Do you think it’s high time for TRUSS to stage a return to the helm, this time with a purer package of policies?
Is it her time? Is the time NOW?
TRUSS.
Indeed, this is no time for a novice. Truss's extensive experience in the top job makes her the obvious choice to sail the good ship Britannia into warmer waters.
You make a cogent case.
I wonder if, someday soon, we will all be talking of The Second Coming.
Making some assumptions, it appears 41% think taxes will go up whoever wins the election, but 8% think they will only if Labour win. The next question would be whether that 8% think taxes should go up or not! Presuming they don't, then that's 8% for the Tories... yeah, they're not gonna win on 8%.
I assume you are joking because, of course, many of the 41% who think taxes will go up think that taxes should NOT go up.
This will come as a massive shock to you but a lot of people think taxes SHOULD go up. People who recognise the needs to pay one's way and balance the books, people who think that public services are crap and need to improve, people who believe we should invest for the future.
A lot of people do indeed taxes should go up, a lot of those people also assume it won't apply to them. If the state fully funded everything it does I doubt even adding 5% to every tax rate would cover it. The simple fact is when people say just tax the rich they don't realise there aren't enough of them to cover the cost and basic rate tax will also need to rise significantly....those people struggling, having to claim tax credits and use food banks will see more of their pay go on tax
It could definitely be done without raising basic rate taxes (or indeed freezing personal allowances). The question is, a) will the government be brave enough, and b) would the impact on the rich be manageable?
I happen to think the deficit could be closed, or public services be boosted, or some combination of the two achieved by raising wealth taxes. The rich will squeal, they will threaten to quit the country (99% won't), they will plead poverty, but ultimately they would suck it up. (For 'they' I should put 'we' as I'm in my own target.)
Apart from every country that has already tried it has found it raises next to nothing and has pretty much abandoned it. So no wealth taxes will only work if you hit ordinary people with ordinary pension funds and living in ordinary houses....to make public services work with out deficit with what the state does we are probably looking to raise tax revenue by 300 to 400 billion a year. You are not going to get that from just taxing the rich
It depends what you mean by wealth taxes.
If you mean taxing wealth like shares etc that can be easily moved abroad, of course it doesn't work.
If you mean taxing land, then that's a perfectly liberal tax to support which almost every country on the planet has. Including the USA.
That we don't tax land ownership and expect tenants to pay instead is quite unusual and extreme.
Even if you tax land making 300 to 400 billion from it is going to cripple plenty of ordinary people. This is my problem with a wealth tax, the people who think it will fund everything and then denying it will hit those that aren't what anyone would describe as wealthy
I am not actually opposed to a land tax, just the view of some that it will allow us to fully fund everything
This is absolutely correct: the total amount of tax that can be raised is a function of economic output. In aggregate, you can't tax what isn't being produced.
It's why those numbers bandied around by activists about how a small tax on financial transactions would fund everything is so wrong: simply, transaction volumes would collapse.
GDP was originally designed as a measure of understanding how much activity there was to tax, and it remains helpful for that reason. Extracting more than half of the value of all economic activity is tough take for anyone.
That said, I fully support a land tax.
Why?
Because the tax system should encourage the efficient allocation of scarce resources. And there are few things more scarce than housing and land. We want to discourage people from sitting on land that could be developed for housing. And we want to discourage people - particularly overseas "investors" - from buying up apartments that sit empty. (Or indeed homes that are hardly used.)
I would propose a small annual levy on undeveloped land, and a small annual levy on any properties that are occupied for less than 180 days per year. This second one would negatively impact me, as I have a flat in Central London, but it would make people really think "this is now much more expensive than it was... shall I just AirBnB in future?"
I don't think there's an intellectual or economic case for land being privately owned at all, and should instead be owned by the community or the State. Individuals and incorporations can pay the community for exploitation rights over a medium or long term as appropriate with the proceeds being used for community benefit.
Socialisation of land is clearly never going to happen, so land tax is a (very) second best.
Making some assumptions, it appears 41% think taxes will go up whoever wins the election, but 8% think they will only if Labour win. The next question would be whether that 8% think taxes should go up or not! Presuming they don't, then that's 8% for the Tories... yeah, they're not gonna win on 8%.
I assume you are joking because, of course, many of the 41% who think taxes will go up think that taxes should NOT go up.
This will come as a massive shock to you but a lot of people think taxes SHOULD go up. People who recognise the needs to pay one's way and balance the books, people who think that public services are crap and need to improve, people who believe we should invest for the future.
A lot of people do indeed taxes should go up, a lot of those people also assume it won't apply to them. If the state fully funded everything it does I doubt even adding 5% to every tax rate would cover it. The simple fact is when people say just tax the rich they don't realise there aren't enough of them to cover the cost and basic rate tax will also need to rise significantly....those people struggling, having to claim tax credits and use food banks will see more of their pay go on tax
It could definitely be done without raising basic rate taxes (or indeed freezing personal allowances). The question is, a) will the government be brave enough, and b) would the impact on the rich be manageable?
I happen to think the deficit could be closed, or public services be boosted, or some combination of the two achieved by raising wealth taxes. The rich will squeal, they will threaten to quit the country (99% won't), they will plead poverty, but ultimately they would suck it up. (For 'they' I should put 'we' as I'm in my own target.)
Apart from every country that has already tried it has found it raises next to nothing and has pretty much abandoned it. So no wealth taxes will only work if you hit ordinary people with ordinary pension funds and living in ordinary houses....to make public services work with out deficit with what the state does we are probably looking to raise tax revenue by 300 to 400 billion a year. You are not going to get that from just taxing the rich
It depends what you mean by wealth taxes.
If you mean taxing wealth like shares etc that can be easily moved abroad, of course it doesn't work.
If you mean taxing land, then that's a perfectly liberal tax to support which almost every country on the planet has. Including the USA.
That we don't tax land ownership and expect tenants to pay instead is quite unusual and extreme.
Even if you tax land making 300 to 400 billion from it is going to cripple plenty of ordinary people. This is my problem with a wealth tax, the people who think it will fund everything and then denying it will hit those that aren't what anyone would describe as wealthy
I am not actually opposed to a land tax, just the view of some that it will allow us to fully fund everything
This is absolutely correct: the total amount of tax that can be raised is a function of economic output. In aggregate, you can't tax what isn't being produced.
It's why those numbers bandied around by activists about how a small tax on financial transactions would fund everything is so wrong: simply, transaction volumes would collapse.
GDP was originally designed as a measure of understanding how much activity there was to tax, and it remains helpful for that reason. Extracting more than half of the value of all economic activity is tough take for anyone.
That said, I fully support a land tax.
Why?
Because the tax system should encourage the efficient allocation of scarce resources. And there are few things more scarce than housing and land. We want to discourage people from sitting on land that could be developed for housing. And we want to discourage people - particularly overseas "investors" - from buying up apartments that sit empty. (Or indeed homes that are hardly used.)
I would propose a small annual levy on undeveloped land, and a small annual levy on any properties that are occupied for less than 180 days per year. This second one would negatively impact me, as I have a flat in Central London, but it would make people really think "this is now much more expensive than it was... shall I just AirBnB in future?"
Nods as I said I am not opposed to a land tax being imposed as an alternative to council tax in fact I find it a good idea, I just reject the idea some seem to have formed that it will solve the funding gap and it won't hit the poorest in anyway. For example the idea than landlords wont just pass it on to renters just like they did for council tax
Point of order: Council Tax has always fallen on the occupier rather than the landlord - it's not been 'passed on'.
You make a valid point about landlords seeking to pass on a land tax to tenants but that's mainly due to the broken housing market. The next government needs to find a way to build more homes and introduce rent controls in the meantime.
Finally, It's undoubtedly true that taxes on the rich alone could close the funding gap if the government has sufficient will but you are right to be cynical about whether any government will have the balls to see that through.
In the absence of such will we do of course remain in the descent spiral where the funding gap is covered by government borrowing, the servicing of which adds to the funding gap, which is covered by more borrowing...
Making some assumptions, it appears 41% think taxes will go up whoever wins the election, but 8% think they will only if Labour win. The next question would be whether that 8% think taxes should go up or not! Presuming they don't, then that's 8% for the Tories... yeah, they're not gonna win on 8%.
I assume you are joking because, of course, many of the 41% who think taxes will go up think that taxes should NOT go up.
This will come as a massive shock to you but a lot of people think taxes SHOULD go up. People who recognise the needs to pay one's way and balance the books, people who think that public services are crap and need to improve, people who believe we should invest for the future.
A lot of people do indeed taxes should go up, a lot of those people also assume it won't apply to them. If the state fully funded everything it does I doubt even adding 5% to every tax rate would cover it. The simple fact is when people say just tax the rich they don't realise there aren't enough of them to cover the cost and basic rate tax will also need to rise significantly....those people struggling, having to claim tax credits and use food banks will see more of their pay go on tax
It could definitely be done without raising basic rate taxes (or indeed freezing personal allowances). The question is, a) will the government be brave enough, and b) would the impact on the rich be manageable?
I happen to think the deficit could be closed, or public services be boosted, or some combination of the two achieved by raising wealth taxes. The rich will squeal, they will threaten to quit the country (99% won't), they will plead poverty, but ultimately they would suck it up. (For 'they' I should put 'we' as I'm in my own target.)
Apart from every country that has already tried it has found it raises next to nothing and has pretty much abandoned it. So no wealth taxes will only work if you hit ordinary people with ordinary pension funds and living in ordinary houses....to make public services work with out deficit with what the state does we are probably looking to raise tax revenue by 300 to 400 billion a year. You are not going to get that from just taxing the rich
It depends what you mean by wealth taxes.
If you mean taxing wealth like shares etc that can be easily moved abroad, of course it doesn't work.
If you mean taxing land, then that's a perfectly liberal tax to support which almost every country on the planet has. Including the USA.
That we don't tax land ownership and expect tenants to pay instead is quite unusual and extreme.
Even if you tax land making 300 to 400 billion from it is going to cripple plenty of ordinary people. This is my problem with a wealth tax, the people who think it will fund everything and then denying it will hit those that aren't what anyone would describe as wealthy
I am not actually opposed to a land tax, just the view of some that it will allow us to fully fund everything
This is absolutely correct: the total amount of tax that can be raised is a function of economic output. In aggregate, you can't tax what isn't being produced.
It's why those numbers bandied around by activists about how a small tax on financial transactions would fund everything is so wrong: simply, transaction volumes would collapse.
GDP was originally designed as a measure of understanding how much activity there was to tax, and it remains helpful for that reason. Extracting more than half of the value of all economic activity is tough take for anyone.
That said, I fully support a land tax.
Why?
Because the tax system should encourage the efficient allocation of scarce resources. And there are few things more scarce than housing and land. We want to discourage people from sitting on land that could be developed for housing. And we want to discourage people - particularly overseas "investors" - from buying up apartments that sit empty. (Or indeed homes that are hardly used.)
I would propose a small annual levy on undeveloped land, and a small annual levy on any properties that are occupied for less than 180 days per year. This second one would negatively impact me, as I have a flat in Central London, but it would make people really think "this is now much more expensive than it was... shall I just AirBnB in future?"
Nods as I said I am not opposed to a land tax being imposed as an alternative to council tax in fact I find it a good idea, I just reject the idea some seem to have formed that it will solve the funding gap and it won't hit the poorest in anyway. For example the idea than landlords wont just pass it on to renters just like they did for council tax
Point of order: Council Tax has always fallen on the occupier rather than the landlord - it's not been 'passed on'.
You make a valid point about landlords seeking to pass on a land tax to tenants but that's mainly due to the broken housing market. The next government needs to find a way to build more homes and introduce rent controls in the meantime.
Finally, It's undoubtedly true that taxes on the rich alone could close the funding gap if the government has sufficient will but you are right to be cynical about whether any government will have the balls to see that through.
As with wealth tax rent controls have never worked wherever they have been tried
Nigel Farage thinks postal votes need to be scrapped because they create fraud.
And he doesn't think the American election was stolen but Biden won because of "legal" corrupt postal votes
The two points are connected. The Blessed Nigel is focusing on postal votes because US Republicans and especially Trump are fixated on them. If the Blessed Nigel is to profit from the Trump campaign and a possible Trump second tierm then he has to dance to the Orange One's tune.
I’ve got a postal vote. Poor old chap, can’t get down to the polling station without a wheelchair.
Care to join in with my (prospective) law suit? In the USA would be a class (in one sense anyway) action.
Making some assumptions, it appears 41% think taxes will go up whoever wins the election, but 8% think they will only if Labour win. The next question would be whether that 8% think taxes should go up or not! Presuming they don't, then that's 8% for the Tories... yeah, they're not gonna win on 8%.
I assume you are joking because, of course, many of the 41% who think taxes will go up think that taxes should NOT go up.
This will come as a massive shock to you but a lot of people think taxes SHOULD go up. People who recognise the needs to pay one's way and balance the books, people who think that public services are crap and need to improve, people who believe we should invest for the future.
A lot of people do indeed taxes should go up, a lot of those people also assume it won't apply to them. If the state fully funded everything it does I doubt even adding 5% to every tax rate would cover it. The simple fact is when people say just tax the rich they don't realise there aren't enough of them to cover the cost and basic rate tax will also need to rise significantly....those people struggling, having to claim tax credits and use food banks will see more of their pay go on tax
It could definitely be done without raising basic rate taxes (or indeed freezing personal allowances). The question is, a) will the government be brave enough, and b) would the impact on the rich be manageable?
I happen to think the deficit could be closed, or public services be boosted, or some combination of the two achieved by raising wealth taxes. The rich will squeal, they will threaten to quit the country (99% won't), they will plead poverty, but ultimately they would suck it up. (For 'they' I should put 'we' as I'm in my own target.)
Apart from every country that has already tried it has found it raises next to nothing and has pretty much abandoned it. So no wealth taxes will only work if you hit ordinary people with ordinary pension funds and living in ordinary houses....to make public services work with out deficit with what the state does we are probably looking to raise tax revenue by 300 to 400 billion a year. You are not going to get that from just taxing the rich
It depends what you mean by wealth taxes.
If you mean taxing wealth like shares etc that can be easily moved abroad, of course it doesn't work.
If you mean taxing land, then that's a perfectly liberal tax to support which almost every country on the planet has. Including the USA.
That we don't tax land ownership and expect tenants to pay instead is quite unusual and extreme.
Even if you tax land making 300 to 400 billion from it is going to cripple plenty of ordinary people. This is my problem with a wealth tax, the people who think it will fund everything and then denying it will hit those that aren't what anyone would describe as wealthy
I am not actually opposed to a land tax, just the view of some that it will allow us to fully fund everything
This is absolutely correct: the total amount of tax that can be raised is a function of economic output. In aggregate, you can't tax what isn't being produced.
It's why those numbers bandied around by activists about how a small tax on financial transactions would fund everything is so wrong: simply, transaction volumes would collapse.
GDP was originally designed as a measure of understanding how much activity there was to tax, and it remains helpful for that reason. Extracting more than half of the value of all economic activity is tough take for anyone.
That said, I fully support a land tax.
Why?
Because the tax system should encourage the efficient allocation of scarce resources. And there are few things more scarce than housing and land. We want to discourage people from sitting on land that could be developed for housing. And we want to discourage people - particularly overseas "investors" - from buying up apartments that sit empty. (Or indeed homes that are hardly used.)
I would propose a small annual levy on undeveloped land, and a small annual levy on any properties that are occupied for less than 180 days per year. This second one would negatively impact me, as I have a flat in Central London, but it would make people really think "this is now much more expensive than it was... shall I just AirBnB in future?"
Nods as I said I am not opposed to a land tax being imposed as an alternative to council tax in fact I find it a good idea, I just reject the idea some seem to have formed that it will solve the funding gap and it won't hit the poorest in anyway. For example the idea than landlords wont just pass it on to renters just like they did for council tax
It couldn't be used as alternative to Council Tax without absolutely screwing the poorest. In London, prices are high and therefore land tax would only need to be (say) 0.1% to cover council expenses. Whereas in -say- Knowsley land prices are very low, and you would need to charge something like 5% to cover council expenses. It would absolutely shaft poor areas at the expense of rich.
I would implement it at a national level, and use the money received as (effectively) the pool that is used for local government grants.
If you don't replace council tax with it there are going to be even more people going effectively I can no longer afford to live. Even in london. For example if a house in london attracts 2400 land tax, the couple renting it will find their landlord raising their rent by at least 200 a month
The landlord can only pass on the tax if they have a tenant.
Implement this properly and abolish our planning system and suddenly more people will find themselves sitting on land they owe tax on, but have no tenants in that land. So they'll be encouraged to build houses or sell the land, so the tenants have more choice.
Why pay the full £200 extra to the landlord if a rival landlord is only asking for £170?
Competition works at driving down costs, if the state doesn't block competition as it does currently with our planning system.
On a lighter note my wife has just informed me that less than 4% of marriages celebrate their diamond wedding anniversary (60 years)
In 6 weeks we will do just that and I did remind her that at the altar in St Geraldine's Church in Lossiemouth in May 1964 in front of over 200 witnesses she promised to 'love, honour and obey'
She responded by informing me she had a 'wee' word with the Good Lord and rescinded the 'obey' bit !!!!!!!
Making some assumptions, it appears 41% think taxes will go up whoever wins the election, but 8% think they will only if Labour win. The next question would be whether that 8% think taxes should go up or not! Presuming they don't, then that's 8% for the Tories... yeah, they're not gonna win on 8%.
I assume you are joking because, of course, many of the 41% who think taxes will go up think that taxes should NOT go up.
This will come as a massive shock to you but a lot of people think taxes SHOULD go up. People who recognise the needs to pay one's way and balance the books, people who think that public services are crap and need to improve, people who believe we should invest for the future.
A lot of people do indeed taxes should go up, a lot of those people also assume it won't apply to them. If the state fully funded everything it does I doubt even adding 5% to every tax rate would cover it. The simple fact is when people say just tax the rich they don't realise there aren't enough of them to cover the cost and basic rate tax will also need to rise significantly....those people struggling, having to claim tax credits and use food banks will see more of their pay go on tax
It could definitely be done without raising basic rate taxes (or indeed freezing personal allowances). The question is, a) will the government be brave enough, and b) would the impact on the rich be manageable?
I happen to think the deficit could be closed, or public services be boosted, or some combination of the two achieved by raising wealth taxes. The rich will squeal, they will threaten to quit the country (99% won't), they will plead poverty, but ultimately they would suck it up. (For 'they' I should put 'we' as I'm in my own target.)
Apart from every country that has already tried it has found it raises next to nothing and has pretty much abandoned it. So no wealth taxes will only work if you hit ordinary people with ordinary pension funds and living in ordinary houses....to make public services work with out deficit with what the state does we are probably looking to raise tax revenue by 300 to 400 billion a year. You are not going to get that from just taxing the rich
It depends what you mean by wealth taxes.
If you mean taxing wealth like shares etc that can be easily moved abroad, of course it doesn't work.
If you mean taxing land, then that's a perfectly liberal tax to support which almost every country on the planet has. Including the USA.
That we don't tax land ownership and expect tenants to pay instead is quite unusual and extreme.
Even if you tax land making 300 to 400 billion from it is going to cripple plenty of ordinary people. This is my problem with a wealth tax, the people who think it will fund everything and then denying it will hit those that aren't what anyone would describe as wealthy
I am not actually opposed to a land tax, just the view of some that it will allow us to fully fund everything
This is absolutely correct: the total amount of tax that can be raised is a function of economic output. In aggregate, you can't tax what isn't being produced.
It's why those numbers bandied around by activists about how a small tax on financial transactions would fund everything is so wrong: simply, transaction volumes would collapse.
GDP was originally designed as a measure of understanding how much activity there was to tax, and it remains helpful for that reason. Extracting more than half of the value of all economic activity is tough take for anyone.
That said, I fully support a land tax.
Why?
Because the tax system should encourage the efficient allocation of scarce resources. And there are few things more scarce than housing and land. We want to discourage people from sitting on land that could be developed for housing. And we want to discourage people - particularly overseas "investors" - from buying up apartments that sit empty. (Or indeed homes that are hardly used.)
I would propose a small annual levy on undeveloped land, and a small annual levy on any properties that are occupied for less than 180 days per year. This second one would negatively impact me, as I have a flat in Central London, but it would make people really think "this is now much more expensive than it was... shall I just AirBnB in future?"
Nods as I said I am not opposed to a land tax being imposed as an alternative to council tax in fact I find it a good idea, I just reject the idea some seem to have formed that it will solve the funding gap and it won't hit the poorest in anyway. For example the idea than landlords wont just pass it on to renters just like they did for council tax
It couldn't be used as alternative to Council Tax without absolutely screwing the poorest. In London, prices are high and therefore land tax would only need to be (say) 0.1% to cover council expenses. Whereas in -say- Knowsley land prices are very low, and you would need to charge something like 5% to cover council expenses. It would absolutely shaft poor areas at the expense of rich.
I would implement it at a national level, and use the money received as (effectively) the pool that is used for local government grants.
If you don't replace council tax with it there are going to be even more people going effectively I can no longer afford to live. Even in london. For example if a house in london attracts 2400 land tax, the couple renting it will find their landlord raising their rent by at least 200 a month
The landlord can only pass on the tax if they have a tenant.
Implement this properly and abolish our planning system and suddenly more people will find themselves sitting on land they owe tax on, but have no tenants in that land. So they'll be encouraged to build houses or sell the land, so the tenants have more choice.
Why pay the full £200 extra to the landlord if a rival landlord is only asking for £170?
Competition works at driving down costs, if the state doesn't block competition as it does currently with our planning system.
Because finding somewhere to rent currently is a sellers market sadly. When I went for my last flat I was one of 20 that said yes we will take it
John Curtice says the economy wasn’t enough to save John Major, and this economy isn’t even any good.
The Tories need a ‘Boris Mk II’ apparently… and there isn’t one
''The fate of this government was sealed in two six-week periods… Boris Johnson's interpretation of the covid regulations and the Liz Truss fiscal event.''
Conservatives need a well-proven, effective campaigner who could change this 'near-impossible situation',@JohnCurticeOnTV tells #TimesRadio
Making some assumptions, it appears 41% think taxes will go up whoever wins the election, but 8% think they will only if Labour win. The next question would be whether that 8% think taxes should go up or not! Presuming they don't, then that's 8% for the Tories... yeah, they're not gonna win on 8%.
I assume you are joking because, of course, many of the 41% who think taxes will go up think that taxes should NOT go up.
This will come as a massive shock to you but a lot of people think taxes SHOULD go up. People who recognise the needs to pay one's way and balance the books, people who think that public services are crap and need to improve, people who believe we should invest for the future.
A lot of people do indeed taxes should go up, a lot of those people also assume it won't apply to them. If the state fully funded everything it does I doubt even adding 5% to every tax rate would cover it. The simple fact is when people say just tax the rich they don't realise there aren't enough of them to cover the cost and basic rate tax will also need to rise significantly....those people struggling, having to claim tax credits and use food banks will see more of their pay go on tax
It could definitely be done without raising basic rate taxes (or indeed freezing personal allowances). The question is, a) will the government be brave enough, and b) would the impact on the rich be manageable?
I happen to think the deficit could be closed, or public services be boosted, or some combination of the two achieved by raising wealth taxes. The rich will squeal, they will threaten to quit the country (99% won't), they will plead poverty, but ultimately they would suck it up. (For 'they' I should put 'we' as I'm in my own target.)
Apart from every country that has already tried it has found it raises next to nothing and has pretty much abandoned it. So no wealth taxes will only work if you hit ordinary people with ordinary pension funds and living in ordinary houses....to make public services work with out deficit with what the state does we are probably looking to raise tax revenue by 300 to 400 billion a year. You are not going to get that from just taxing the rich
It depends what you mean by wealth taxes.
If you mean taxing wealth like shares etc that can be easily moved abroad, of course it doesn't work.
If you mean taxing land, then that's a perfectly liberal tax to support which almost every country on the planet has. Including the USA.
That we don't tax land ownership and expect tenants to pay instead is quite unusual and extreme.
Even if you tax land making 300 to 400 billion from it is going to cripple plenty of ordinary people. This is my problem with a wealth tax, the people who think it will fund everything and then denying it will hit those that aren't what anyone would describe as wealthy
I am not actually opposed to a land tax, just the view of some that it will allow us to fully fund everything
This is absolutely correct: the total amount of tax that can be raised is a function of economic output. In aggregate, you can't tax what isn't being produced.
It's why those numbers bandied around by activists about how a small tax on financial transactions would fund everything is so wrong: simply, transaction volumes would collapse.
GDP was originally designed as a measure of understanding how much activity there was to tax, and it remains helpful for that reason. Extracting more than half of the value of all economic activity is tough take for anyone.
That said, I fully support a land tax.
Why?
Because the tax system should encourage the efficient allocation of scarce resources. And there are few things more scarce than housing and land. We want to discourage people from sitting on land that could be developed for housing. And we want to discourage people - particularly overseas "investors" - from buying up apartments that sit empty. (Or indeed homes that are hardly used.)
I would propose a small annual levy on undeveloped land, and a small annual levy on any properties that are occupied for less than 180 days per year. This second one would negatively impact me, as I have a flat in Central London, but it would make people really think "this is now much more expensive than it was... shall I just AirBnB in future?"
Nods as I said I am not opposed to a land tax being imposed as an alternative to council tax in fact I find it a good idea, I just reject the idea some seem to have formed that it will solve the funding gap and it won't hit the poorest in anyway. For example the idea than landlords wont just pass it on to renters just like they did for council tax
It couldn't be used as alternative to Council Tax without absolutely screwing the poorest. In London, prices are high and therefore land tax would only need to be (say) 0.1% to cover council expenses. Whereas in -say- Knowsley land prices are very low, and you would need to charge something like 5% to cover council expenses. It would absolutely shaft poor areas at the expense of rich.
I would implement it at a national level, and use the money received as (effectively) the pool that is used for local government grants.
If you don't replace council tax with it there are going to be even more people going effectively I can no longer afford to live. Even in london. For example if a house in london attracts 2400 land tax, the couple renting it will find their landlord raising their rent by at least 200 a month
The landlord can only pass on the tax if they have a tenant.
Implement this properly and abolish our planning system and suddenly more people will find themselves sitting on land they owe tax on, but have no tenants in that land. So they'll be encouraged to build houses or sell the land, so the tenants have more choice.
Why pay the full £200 extra to the landlord if a rival landlord is only asking for £170?
Competition works at driving down costs, if the state doesn't block competition as it does currently with our planning system.
Because finding somewhere to rent currently is a sellers market sadly. When I went for my last flat I was one of 20 that said yes we will take it
Camila Tominey said the education system is indoctrinating young people to be left wing and she worries that they will not become conservative or have conservative values.
Could it be perhaps that the Tories are just a bit...crap?
If the education was indoctrinating youth to the right I am sure you would complain. The educators should not be pushing kids either way they should be teaching neutrally and teaching kids to make their own minds up
The notion that education can be somehow apolitical and free of ideology is free fantasy. I am telling you that as an educator. The fact that there is even such a thing as an education is a political decision. There is no such thing as apolitical and ideology free knowledge is impossible. Lets skip past obvious subjects like history and literature or sociology. Even mathematics departments are embedded in institutions and funding mechanism that are informed by ideology. And even the most basic findings in mathematics, such as Gödel's incompleteness theorems have profound implications for the critique of politics and ideology. Your "neutral" approach to education is for the birds.
See you are the problem
🤣🤣🤣🤣 Ok, give me an example of ideology free teaching
I was at school in the 70's and 80's politics never came up in lessons whatsoever if you cant teach without bring politics into the classroom then as I said you are the problem and should quit and do something more useful like sleeping in shop doorways because you certainly are not doing those pupils any favours with your brain washing
1) if you don't teach about ideology, then the kids will be unable to "make up their own minds" as they won't be able to assess manipulation, bad reasoning, fallacies etc. I think removing ideology would have the exact opposite effect of what you are looking for.
2) ideology is in fact most powerful when it is tacit and unquestioned and therefore often manifests in HOW a subject is taught and assessed, rather than what is taught. Do the students sit individually or in groups, do they do group course work or individual exams. Is teaching about collective recitation and rote learning or individual creativity. Does the teacher lecture and transmit information one directionally or is there dialogue and negotiation. Timetables, recess, holidays, the architecture of the buildings, how we observe, control, monitor and punish and reward and why.... all that stuff disciplines students into unquestioning practices about what is "natural" and "obvious" and instills a sentiment and orientation into kids that shapes their political orientation. Even assumptions about how to correctly structure an essay: is it a syllogism, contextualisation etc hahaha there are so many ways to shape kids and it has nothing to do with the content of the class.
I'm not Bart, but it's a different context, so it can't possibly be the gotcha you want it to be.
And certainly some people might argue it was very low compared to what was possible and desirable.
The fanatics will never be appeased. That is for certain. It could be 90% and it would not be enough.
To listen to the climate extremists you would think we had done nothing and taken no action on the environment.
To that end some fringe youth eco offshoot of Just Stop Oil plans to bring the tube to a halt. Something to do with the enviroment and Palestine now, natch.
"The spokesman said: “New oil and gas licencing is ultimately a genocide, a man-made death. That is the same mentality with the situation in Palestine. It is essential to think of them together and not think of them as individual missions.”"
What they don't seem to realize is that their approach makes climate change more, rather than less, of a danger, because they provoke an enormous reaction.
If you make the necessary changes gradually, and you get buy in from the majority of the population at every stage, and you ensure that people keep getting richer... well, then you'll stop climate change. If you want people to wear hair shirts and be poorer, then you won't get 50.1% of people supporting you, or indeed, any potential action.
Humankind has done an extraordinary job of implementing measures to reduce climate change - and we're just getting started. Ten years ago, I had a Tesla Model S... and that was pretty much it for electric cars on the road. Now some places - like Norway - are 85% electric for new vehicles! Back then China's new coal electricity generation capacity outstripped wind and solar 1,000,000-1. Now, there's far more solar and wind - like 20x - being deployed in China than coal. We've found new ways to heat and cool homes than are dramatically more energy efficient than anything in the past.
All we need - as humanity - is to keep doing what we're doing. Keep electrifying. Keep installing batteries. Keep looking for the million and one marginal improvements. And if we do that, we can keep all getting richer, we can minimize our dependence on parts of the world that hate us, we can improve our balance of payments, and we can keep making the world a cleaner, better place.
I suppose the counter-argument is that the only reason we have taken such measures is because climate activists have kicked up a fuss.
Car manufacturers have been more than happy to continue making ICE vehicles, even while we have understood the greenhouse effect since the 1960s. Musk isn't investing all that time and cash into Tesla out of the goodness of his heart - he's taking advantage of a market created by Greta Thunberg.
Because the technology hasn't existed to wipe out ICE in one step. It still isn't there yet.
Greta Thunberg did nothing to create the market, Musk created his firm before anyone had ever heard of Thunberg. Indeed Thunberg wasn't even born when this began.
It was about 35 years ago that Thatcher spoke about the problems with emissions and cutting emissions became government policy.
Humanity has been working on changing emissions for 35 years, JSO/Thunberg etc have jumped on the bandwagon not the other way around.
Musk didn't create Tesla. He has been responsible for much of its success. But he was not a founder.
That's just another of his many lies...
Well indeed, though Musk did help make it what it is today, if you want to look even further back that just adds to my point.
Tesla was founded in the same year Thunberg was born, so if she was responsible for it then that's seriously impressive.
Thunberg has saved the world. But the main story is true - Tesla's genius/luck was to take advantage of a market disrupted by climate change policy.
Not sure that Thunberg has had that big an effect - part of the campaign, sure. But claims of saving the world are over the top.
Tesla was about realising that the car modding outfits in LA could custom convert a car to EV for $250k and could get serious performance.
Scale it up and each time the costs go down. Then attack battery costs by mass production.
The US government as already offering tax credits for ZEVs - that the big companies weren’t using. There was a demand for EVs that no one was bothering with.
Previously, there had been various pushes for ZEVs - including hydrogen. At one point, around 2000, Shell was planning on helping Iceland become the first zero emission country. That plan fell through, due to the non appearance of the hydrogen fuel cells required.
Greta Thunberg seems to be a troubled young person and I hope she gets the help she needs.
Assuming that the paradigm of "human emissions = global climate changing for the worse" is accepted as fact, I still don't see how her campaigns can be said to have 'saved' anything, given that the non-Western world seems strangely immune to her sententious chastisements.
She is certainly part of the movement toward the Western world surrendering its global economic leadership, and therefore its leadership full stop, in favour of BRICs. Most here don't seem to want that to happen, but there's a peculiar failure to join the dots. Perhaps it's all the PB shrewdies wanting to prove how clever they are by being so moderate, see OnlyLivingBoy.
"he Western world surrendering its global economic leadership"
I see it very differently. There are great potential economic opportunities in going green. Whether we grasp those opportunities is another matter.
But I have to point out: your comment about BRICS is downright weird, and one I'd expect from someone who reads rather anti-western stuff.
(IMV BRICS might well end up like the CTSO...)
I used it as shorthand for countries (including China and India) who seem fairly determined to cooperate economically (and perhaps in the end militarily) outside of Western power structures. I'm not making a judgement about that, and as you know, I am far more comfortable with the idea of a multi-polar world and Britain's ability to thrive as part of it than 99% of people here. Most here seem to want a US-led Western alliance to prevail, and for Britain to be a strong part of that.
Despite that, I see zero objection here when (for example) we surrender our ability to make virgin steel (the only steel that can be used for armaments production) and all that happens is a load of massive blast furnaces open in India. I see a shade more, but still fairly minimal support for the idea of getting more of our own gas out of the sea (and none for fracking it out of the ground), so as to make us less dependent on the whims of Putin or the Saudis.
Whilst most here will happily jump down my throat and call me 'comrade' for daring to diminish 'PB morale', they are actually the ones who are materially anti-Western, for insisting that the UK must be the poster-child for Net Zero despite its manifold and growingly obvious economic and security downsides. I am more pro-Western in the logical outworkings of my ideas than most of the 'smart moderates' in this corner of the internet.
Bullshit, comrade.
Let us take one example: we are using much less gas to generate power than we were, thanks to the increased amounts of wind and solar. This has been costly. But I saw some figures a while back showing how much money had been saved in generation in 2022/3 because of our consequent smaller reliance on gas when the prices spiked. And it was a lot. (I shall try to find it somewhere...)
As another example, we have moved to a large amount of 'green' power in the UK without too much pain. I am staggered that this has happened and remains generally unremarked.
I quite like the modern world we live in. True, it has problems, but I'd rather live now than (say) in 1900 - especially as I'm not a baby, and am getting towards an older age. And one of the reasons there has been a myriad of improvements is technological and social change.
If there are economic opportunities in going green - and I think there are, and so do other countries (including China), then we need to grasp them - even if it causes slight temporary pain.
If only Liz Truss had had the courage of her convictions on refusing to subsidise gas, the market signals would have been more effective.
Do you think it’s high time for TRUSS to stage a return to the helm, this time with a purer package of policies?
Is it her time? Is the time NOW?
TRUSS.
Well Rishi is polling as low as she did
The longer CON are stringing this Parliament out, the worse their position is getting...
Should have gone in May '23.
Wonder why? Was it that the acute crisis of winter 2022/3 had been survived, but the ongoing chronic meh-ness of life in Sunak's Britain hadn't really come to light?
Relatively speaking, you're right of course.
But in May 2023 the Tories were 15 points behind, facing near certain defeat, and preferred to wait for 'something to come up'. Hahaha.
Camila Tominey said the education system is indoctrinating young people to be left wing and she worries that they will not become conservative or have conservative values.
Could it be perhaps that the Tories are just a bit...crap?
If the education was indoctrinating youth to the right I am sure you would complain. The educators should not be pushing kids either way they should be teaching neutrally and teaching kids to make their own minds up
The notion that education can be somehow apolitical and free of ideology is free fantasy. I am telling you that as an educator. The fact that there is even such a thing as an education is a political decision. There is no such thing as apolitical and ideology free knowledge is impossible. Lets skip past obvious subjects like history and literature or sociology. Even mathematics departments are embedded in institutions and funding mechanism that are informed by ideology. And even the most basic findings in mathematics, such as Gödel's incompleteness theorems have profound implications for the critique of politics and ideology. Your "neutral" approach to education is for the birds.
See you are the problem
🤣🤣🤣🤣 Ok, give me an example of ideology free teaching
I was at school in the 70's and 80's politics never came up in lessons whatsoever if you cant teach without bring politics into the classroom then as I said you are the problem and should quit and do something more useful like sleeping in shop doorways because you certainly are not doing those pupils any favours with your brain washing
1) if you don't teach about ideology, then the kids will be unable to "make up their own minds" as they won't be able to assess manipulation, bad reasoning, fallacies etc. I think removing ideology would have the exact opposite effect of what you are looking for.
2) ideology is in fact most powerful when it is tacit and unquestioned and therefore often manifests in HOW a subject is taught and assessed, rather than what is taught. Do the students sit individually or in groups, do they do group course work or individual exams. Is teaching about collective recitation and rote learning or individual creativity. Does the teacher lecture and transmit information one directionally or is there dialogue and negotiation. Timetables, recess, holidays, the architecture of the buildings, how we observe, control, monitor and punish and reward and why.... all that stuff disciplines students into unquestioning practices about what is "natural" and "obvious" and instills a sentiment and orientation into kids that shapes their political orientation. Even assumptions about how to correctly structure an essay: is it a syllogism, contextualisation etc hahaha there are so many ways to shape kids and it has nothing to do with the content of the class.
Because when ideology is taught it is usually taught by someone with an opinion. For example my son who was in the school in the 90's. He was fed the upsides of socialism by some teachers and the downsides of capitalism.
If you present the pluses and minuses of all ideologies that is neutral. I suspect however you don't
On a lighter note my wife has just informed me that less than 4% of marriages celebrate their diamond wedding anniversary (60 years)
In 6 weeks we will do just that and I did remind her that at the altar in St Geraldine's Church in Lossiemouth in May 1964 in front of over 200 witnesses she promised to 'love, honour and obey'
She responded by informing me she had a 'wee' word with the Good Lord and rescinded the 'obey' bit !!!!!!!
I should think so to. Congratulations. I have to live to 100 to match that. Fingers crossed.
Suggest that you head to your local chippie and pig (or rather fish) out!
AP (via Seattle Times) - The world’s oldest man says the secret to his longevity is luck, plus regular fish and chips
. . . . Englishman John Alfred Tinniswood, 111, has been confirmed as the new holder of the title by Guinness World Records. It follows the death of the Venezuelan record-holder, Juan Vicente Pérez, this month at the age of 114. Gisaburo Sonobe from Japan, who was next longest-lived, died March 31 at 112. . . .
Born in Liverpool on Aug. 26, 1912, a few months after the sinking of the Titanic, Tinniswood lived through two world wars, serving in the British Army Pay Corps in World War II.
The retired accountant and great-grandfather said moderation was key to a healthy life. He never smokes, rarely drinks and follows no special diet, apart from a fish and chip supper once a week.
“If you drink too much or you eat too much or you walk too much — if you do too much of anything — you’re going to suffer eventually,” Tinniswood told Guinness World Records.
But ultimately, he said, “it’s pure luck. You either live long or you live short, and you can’t do much about it.”
The world’s oldest woman, and oldest living person, is 117-year-old Maria Branyas Morera of Spain.
SSI - Wonder IF the Señora is also on an equally "fishy" diet?
John Curtice says the economy wasn’t enough to save John Major, and this economy isn’t even any good.
The Tories need a ‘Boris Mk II’ apparently… and there isn’t one
''The fate of this government was sealed in two six-week periods… Boris Johnson's interpretation of the covid regulations and the Liz Truss fiscal event.''
Conservatives need a well-proven, effective campaigner who could change this 'near-impossible situation',@JohnCurticeOnTV tells #TimesRadio
John Curtice says the economy wasn’t enough to save John Major, and this economy isn’t even any good.
The Tories need a ‘Boris Mk II’ apparently… and there isn’t one
''The fate of this government was sealed in two six-week periods… Boris Johnson's interpretation of the covid regulations and the Liz Truss fiscal event.''
Conservatives need a well-proven, effective campaigner who could change this 'near-impossible situation',@JohnCurticeOnTV tells #TimesRadio
There always seems to be one defining moment before a government loses power - A point of no return where the public just says "times up" even if the next election is years away.
I'm not Bart, but it's a different context, so it can't possibly be the gotcha you want it to be.
And certainly some people might argue it was very low compared to what was possible and desirable.
The fanatics will never be appeased. That is for certain. It could be 90% and it would not be enough.
To listen to the climate extremists you would think we had done nothing and taken no action on the environment.
To that end some fringe youth eco offshoot of Just Stop Oil plans to bring the tube to a halt. Something to do with the enviroment and Palestine now, natch.
"The spokesman said: “New oil and gas licencing is ultimately a genocide, a man-made death. That is the same mentality with the situation in Palestine. It is essential to think of them together and not think of them as individual missions.”"
What they don't seem to realize is that their approach makes climate change more, rather than less, of a danger, because they provoke an enormous reaction.
If you make the necessary changes gradually, and you get buy in from the majority of the population at every stage, and you ensure that people keep getting richer... well, then you'll stop climate change. If you want people to wear hair shirts and be poorer, then you won't get 50.1% of people supporting you, or indeed, any potential action.
Humankind has done an extraordinary job of implementing measures to reduce climate change - and we're just getting started. Ten years ago, I had a Tesla Model S... and that was pretty much it for electric cars on the road. Now some places - like Norway - are 85% electric for new vehicles! Back then China's new coal electricity generation capacity outstripped wind and solar 1,000,000-1. Now, there's far more solar and wind - like 20x - being deployed in China than coal. We've found new ways to heat and cool homes than are dramatically more energy efficient than anything in the past.
All we need - as humanity - is to keep doing what we're doing. Keep electrifying. Keep installing batteries. Keep looking for the million and one marginal improvements. And if we do that, we can keep all getting richer, we can minimize our dependence on parts of the world that hate us, we can improve our balance of payments, and we can keep making the world a cleaner, better place.
I suppose the counter-argument is that the only reason we have taken such measures is because climate activists have kicked up a fuss.
Car manufacturers have been more than happy to continue making ICE vehicles, even while we have understood the greenhouse effect since the 1960s. Musk isn't investing all that time and cash into Tesla out of the goodness of his heart - he's taking advantage of a market created by Greta Thunberg.
Because the technology hasn't existed to wipe out ICE in one step. It still isn't there yet.
Greta Thunberg did nothing to create the market, Musk created his firm before anyone had ever heard of Thunberg. Indeed Thunberg wasn't even born when this began.
It was about 35 years ago that Thatcher spoke about the problems with emissions and cutting emissions became government policy.
Humanity has been working on changing emissions for 35 years, JSO/Thunberg etc have jumped on the bandwagon not the other way around.
Musk didn't create Tesla. He has been responsible for much of its success. But he was not a founder.
That's just another of his many lies...
Well indeed, though Musk did help make it what it is today, if you want to look even further back that just adds to my point.
Tesla was founded in the same year Thunberg was born, so if she was responsible for it then that's seriously impressive.
Thunberg has saved the world. But the main story is true - Tesla's genius/luck was to take advantage of a market disrupted by climate change policy.
Not sure that Thunberg has had that big an effect - part of the campaign, sure. But claims of saving the world are over the top.
Tesla was about realising that the car modding outfits in LA could custom convert a car to EV for $250k and could get serious performance.
Scale it up and each time the costs go down. Then attack battery costs by mass production.
The US government as already offering tax credits for ZEVs - that the big companies weren’t using. There was a demand for EVs that no one was bothering with.
Previously, there had been various pushes for ZEVs - including hydrogen. At one point, around 2000, Shell was planning on helping Iceland become the first zero emission country. That plan fell through, due to the non appearance of the hydrogen fuel cells required.
Greta Thunberg seems to be a troubled young person and I hope she gets the help she needs.
Assuming that the paradigm of "human emissions = global climate changing for the worse" is accepted as fact, I still don't see how her campaigns can be said to have 'saved' anything, given that the non-Western world seems strangely immune to her sententious chastisements.
She is certainly part of the movement toward the Western world surrendering its global economic leadership, and therefore its leadership full stop, in favour of BRICs. Most here don't seem to want that to happen, but there's a peculiar failure to join the dots. Perhaps it's all the PB shrewdies wanting to prove how clever they are by being so moderate, see OnlyLivingBoy.
"he Western world surrendering its global economic leadership"
I see it very differently. There are great potential economic opportunities in going green. Whether we grasp those opportunities is another matter.
But I have to point out: your comment about BRICS is downright weird, and one I'd expect from someone who reads rather anti-western stuff.
(IMV BRICS might well end up like the CTSO...)
I used it as shorthand for countries (including China and India) who seem fairly determined to cooperate economically (and perhaps in the end militarily) outside of Western power structures. I'm not making a judgement about that, and as you know, I am far more comfortable with the idea of a multi-polar world and Britain's ability to thrive as part of it than 99% of people here. Most here seem to want a US-led Western alliance to prevail, and for Britain to be a strong part of that.
Despite that, I see zero objection here when (for example) we surrender our ability to make virgin steel (the only steel that can be used for armaments production) and all that happens is a load of massive blast furnaces open in India. I see a shade more, but still fairly minimal support for the idea of getting more of our own gas out of the sea (and none for fracking it out of the ground), so as to make us less dependent on the whims of Putin or the Saudis.
Whilst most here will happily jump down my throat and call me 'comrade' for daring to diminish 'PB morale', they are actually the ones who are materially anti-Western, for insisting that the UK must be the poster-child for Net Zero despite its manifold and growingly obvious economic and security downsides. I am more pro-Western in the logical outworkings of my ideas than most of the 'smart moderates' in this corner of the internet.
Bullshit, comrade.
Let us take one example: we are using much less gas to generate power than we were, thanks to the increased amounts of wind and solar. This has been costly. But I saw some figures a while back showing how much money had been saved in generation in 2022/3 because of our consequent smaller reliance on gas when the prices spiked. And it was a lot. (I shall try to find it somewhere...)
As another example, we have moved to a large amount of 'green' power in the UK without too much pain. I am staggered that this has happened and remains generally unremarked.
I quite like the modern world we live in. True, it has problems, but I'd rather live now than (say) in 1900 - especially as I'm not a baby, and am getting towards an older age. And one of the reasons there has been a myriad of improvements is technological and social change.
If there are economic opportunities in going green - and I think there are, and so do other countries (including China), then we need to grasp them - even if it causes slight temporary pain.
A turgid load of old shite that has absolutely nothing to do with what I argued, but thanks anyway.
You see the truth as a 'turgid load of old shite'? Explains why you shilled for Putin over MH17 then.
You mentioned Greta and the Western world surrendering its global economic leadership; I'm simply pointing out why you're wrong. There are potentially great economic advantages in going green, some of which we may already have seen.
Making some assumptions, it appears 41% think taxes will go up whoever wins the election, but 8% think they will only if Labour win. The next question would be whether that 8% think taxes should go up or not! Presuming they don't, then that's 8% for the Tories... yeah, they're not gonna win on 8%.
I assume you are joking because, of course, many of the 41% who think taxes will go up think that taxes should NOT go up.
This will come as a massive shock to you but a lot of people think taxes SHOULD go up. People who recognise the needs to pay one's way and balance the books, people who think that public services are crap and need to improve, people who believe we should invest for the future.
A lot of people do indeed taxes should go up, a lot of those people also assume it won't apply to them. If the state fully funded everything it does I doubt even adding 5% to every tax rate would cover it. The simple fact is when people say just tax the rich they don't realise there aren't enough of them to cover the cost and basic rate tax will also need to rise significantly....those people struggling, having to claim tax credits and use food banks will see more of their pay go on tax
It could definitely be done without raising basic rate taxes (or indeed freezing personal allowances). The question is, a) will the government be brave enough, and b) would the impact on the rich be manageable?
I happen to think the deficit could be closed, or public services be boosted, or some combination of the two achieved by raising wealth taxes. The rich will squeal, they will threaten to quit the country (99% won't), they will plead poverty, but ultimately they would suck it up. (For 'they' I should put 'we' as I'm in my own target.)
Apart from every country that has already tried it has found it raises next to nothing and has pretty much abandoned it. So no wealth taxes will only work if you hit ordinary people with ordinary pension funds and living in ordinary houses....to make public services work with out deficit with what the state does we are probably looking to raise tax revenue by 300 to 400 billion a year. You are not going to get that from just taxing the rich
It depends what you mean by wealth taxes.
If you mean taxing wealth like shares etc that can be easily moved abroad, of course it doesn't work.
If you mean taxing land, then that's a perfectly liberal tax to support which almost every country on the planet has. Including the USA.
That we don't tax land ownership and expect tenants to pay instead is quite unusual and extreme.
Even if you tax land making 300 to 400 billion from it is going to cripple plenty of ordinary people. This is my problem with a wealth tax, the people who think it will fund everything and then denying it will hit those that aren't what anyone would describe as wealthy
I am not actually opposed to a land tax, just the view of some that it will allow us to fully fund everything
This is absolutely correct: the total amount of tax that can be raised is a function of economic output. In aggregate, you can't tax what isn't being produced.
It's why those numbers bandied around by activists about how a small tax on financial transactions would fund everything is so wrong: simply, transaction volumes would collapse.
GDP was originally designed as a measure of understanding how much activity there was to tax, and it remains helpful for that reason. Extracting more than half of the value of all economic activity is tough take for anyone.
That said, I fully support a land tax.
Why?
Because the tax system should encourage the efficient allocation of scarce resources. And there are few things more scarce than housing and land. We want to discourage people from sitting on land that could be developed for housing. And we want to discourage people - particularly overseas "investors" - from buying up apartments that sit empty. (Or indeed homes that are hardly used.)
I would propose a small annual levy on undeveloped land, and a small annual levy on any properties that are occupied for less than 180 days per year. This second one would negatively impact me, as I have a flat in Central London, but it would make people really think "this is now much more expensive than it was... shall I just AirBnB in future?"
Nods as I said I am not opposed to a land tax being imposed as an alternative to council tax in fact I find it a good idea, I just reject the idea some seem to have formed that it will solve the funding gap and it won't hit the poorest in anyway. For example the idea than landlords wont just pass it on to renters just like they did for council tax
Point of order: Council Tax has always fallen on the occupier rather than the landlord - it's not been 'passed on'.
You make a valid point about landlords seeking to pass on a land tax to tenants but that's mainly due to the broken housing market. The next government needs to find a way to build more homes and introduce rent controls in the meantime.
Finally, It's undoubtedly true that taxes on the rich alone could close the funding gap if the government has sufficient will but you are right to be cynical about whether any government will have the balls to see that through.
As with wealth tax rent controls have never worked wherever they have been tried
Making some assumptions, it appears 41% think taxes will go up whoever wins the election, but 8% think they will only if Labour win. The next question would be whether that 8% think taxes should go up or not! Presuming they don't, then that's 8% for the Tories... yeah, they're not gonna win on 8%.
I assume you are joking because, of course, many of the 41% who think taxes will go up think that taxes should NOT go up.
This will come as a massive shock to you but a lot of people think taxes SHOULD go up. People who recognise the needs to pay one's way and balance the books, people who think that public services are crap and need to improve, people who believe we should invest for the future.
A lot of people do indeed taxes should go up, a lot of those people also assume it won't apply to them. If the state fully funded everything it does I doubt even adding 5% to every tax rate would cover it. The simple fact is when people say just tax the rich they don't realise there aren't enough of them to cover the cost and basic rate tax will also need to rise significantly....those people struggling, having to claim tax credits and use food banks will see more of their pay go on tax
It could definitely be done without raising basic rate taxes (or indeed freezing personal allowances). The question is, a) will the government be brave enough, and b) would the impact on the rich be manageable?
I happen to think the deficit could be closed, or public services be boosted, or some combination of the two achieved by raising wealth taxes. The rich will squeal, they will threaten to quit the country (99% won't), they will plead poverty, but ultimately they would suck it up. (For 'they' I should put 'we' as I'm in my own target.)
Apart from every country that has already tried it has found it raises next to nothing and has pretty much abandoned it. So no wealth taxes will only work if you hit ordinary people with ordinary pension funds and living in ordinary houses....to make public services work with out deficit with what the state does we are probably looking to raise tax revenue by 300 to 400 billion a year. You are not going to get that from just taxing the rich
It depends what you mean by wealth taxes.
If you mean taxing wealth like shares etc that can be easily moved abroad, of course it doesn't work.
If you mean taxing land, then that's a perfectly liberal tax to support which almost every country on the planet has. Including the USA.
That we don't tax land ownership and expect tenants to pay instead is quite unusual and extreme.
Even if you tax land making 300 to 400 billion from it is going to cripple plenty of ordinary people. This is my problem with a wealth tax, the people who think it will fund everything and then denying it will hit those that aren't what anyone would describe as wealthy
I am not actually opposed to a land tax, just the view of some that it will allow us to fully fund everything
This is absolutely correct: the total amount of tax that can be raised is a function of economic output. In aggregate, you can't tax what isn't being produced.
It's why those numbers bandied around by activists about how a small tax on financial transactions would fund everything is so wrong: simply, transaction volumes would collapse.
GDP was originally designed as a measure of understanding how much activity there was to tax, and it remains helpful for that reason. Extracting more than half of the value of all economic activity is tough take for anyone.
That said, I fully support a land tax.
Why?
Because the tax system should encourage the efficient allocation of scarce resources. And there are few things more scarce than housing and land. We want to discourage people from sitting on land that could be developed for housing. And we want to discourage people - particularly overseas "investors" - from buying up apartments that sit empty. (Or indeed homes that are hardly used.)
I would propose a small annual levy on undeveloped land, and a small annual levy on any properties that are occupied for less than 180 days per year. This second one would negatively impact me, as I have a flat in Central London, but it would make people really think "this is now much more expensive than it was... shall I just AirBnB in future?"
Nods as I said I am not opposed to a land tax being imposed as an alternative to council tax in fact I find it a good idea, I just reject the idea some seem to have formed that it will solve the funding gap and it won't hit the poorest in anyway. For example the idea than landlords wont just pass it on to renters just like they did for council tax
Point of order: Council Tax has always fallen on the occupier rather than the landlord - it's not been 'passed on'.
You make a valid point about landlords seeking to pass on a land tax to tenants but that's mainly due to the broken housing market. The next government needs to find a way to build more homes and introduce rent controls in the meantime.
Finally, It's undoubtedly true that taxes on the rich alone could close the funding gap if the government has sufficient will but you are right to be cynical about whether any government will have the balls to see that through.
As with wealth tax rent controls have never worked wherever they have been tried
Seems to work ok in Germany.
Talk to renters in Berlin where they have rent controls, they dont think so
John Curtice says the economy wasn’t enough to save John Major, and this economy isn’t even any good.
The Tories need a ‘Boris Mk II’ apparently… and there isn’t one
''The fate of this government was sealed in two six-week periods… Boris Johnson's interpretation of the covid regulations and the Liz Truss fiscal event.''
Conservatives need a well-proven, effective campaigner who could change this 'near-impossible situation',@JohnCurticeOnTV tells #TimesRadio
There always seems to be one defining moment before a government loses power - A point of no return where the public just says "times up" even if the next election is years away.
September 1992 (ERM)
October 2007 (bottled election)
October 2022 (TRUSS)
2007 - bottled election was a missed opportunity but the GFC was what really did for Brown.
Camila Tominey said the education system is indoctrinating young people to be left wing and she worries that they will not become conservative or have conservative values.
Could it be perhaps that the Tories are just a bit...crap?
If the education was indoctrinating youth to the right I am sure you would complain. The educators should not be pushing kids either way they should be teaching neutrally and teaching kids to make their own minds up
The notion that education can be somehow apolitical and free of ideology is free fantasy. I am telling you that as an educator. The fact that there is even such a thing as an education is a political decision. There is no such thing as apolitical and ideology free knowledge is impossible. Lets skip past obvious subjects like history and literature or sociology. Even mathematics departments are embedded in institutions and funding mechanism that are informed by ideology. And even the most basic findings in mathematics, such as Gödel's incompleteness theorems have profound implications for the critique of politics and ideology. Your "neutral" approach to education is for the birds.
See you are the problem
🤣🤣🤣🤣 Ok, give me an example of ideology free teaching
I was at school in the 70's and 80's politics never came up in lessons whatsoever if you cant teach without bring politics into the classroom then as I said you are the problem and should quit and do something more useful like sleeping in shop doorways because you certainly are not doing those pupils any favours with your brain washing
1) if you don't teach about ideology, then the kids will be unable to "make up their own minds" as they won't be able to assess manipulation, bad reasoning, fallacies etc. I think removing ideology would have the exact opposite effect of what you are looking for.
2) ideology is in fact most powerful when it is tacit and unquestioned and therefore often manifests in HOW a subject is taught and assessed, rather than what is taught. Do the students sit individually or in groups, do they do group course work or individual exams. Is teaching about collective recitation and rote learning or individual creativity. Does the teacher lecture and transmit information one directionally or is there dialogue and negotiation. Timetables, recess, holidays, the architecture of the buildings, how we observe, control, monitor and punish and reward and why.... all that stuff disciplines students into unquestioning practices about what is "natural" and "obvious" and instills a sentiment and orientation into kids that shapes their political orientation. Even assumptions about how to correctly structure an essay: is it a syllogism, contextualisation etc hahaha there are so many ways to shape kids and it has nothing to do with the content of the class.
The choices made by government in setting a "national curriculum" are of course ideological too.
I think Pagan is imagining that England's classrooms are hotbeds of socialist indoctrination, which is just silly. (Though you will find the odd teacher who advocates for particular political views.)
John Curtice says the economy wasn’t enough to save John Major, and this economy isn’t even any good.
The Tories need a ‘Boris Mk II’ apparently… and there isn’t one
''The fate of this government was sealed in two six-week periods… Boris Johnson's interpretation of the covid regulations and the Liz Truss fiscal event.''
Conservatives need a well-proven, effective campaigner who could change this 'near-impossible situation',@JohnCurticeOnTV tells #TimesRadio
On a lighter note my wife has just informed me that less than 4% of marriages celebrate their diamond wedding anniversary (60 years)
In 6 weeks we will do just that and I did remind her that at the altar in St Geraldine's Church in Lossiemouth in May 1964 in front of over 200 witnesses she promised to 'love, honour and obey'
She responded by informing me she had a 'wee' word with the Good Lord and rescinded the 'obey' bit !!!!!!!
I should think so to. Congratulations. I have to live to 100 to match that. Fingers crossed.
Suggest that you head to your local chippie and pig (or rather fish) out!
AP (via Seattle Times) - The world’s oldest man says the secret to his longevity is luck, plus regular fish and chips
. . . . Englishman John Alfred Tinniswood, 111, has been confirmed as the new holder of the title by Guinness World Records. It follows the death of the Venezuelan record-holder, Juan Vicente Pérez, this month at the age of 114. Gisaburo Sonobe from Japan, who was next longest-lived, died March 31 at 112. . . .
Born in Liverpool on Aug. 26, 1912, a few months after the sinking of the Titanic, Tinniswood lived through two world wars, serving in the British Army Pay Corps in World War II.
The retired accountant and great-grandfather said moderation was key to a healthy life. He never smokes, rarely drinks and follows no special diet, apart from a fish and chip supper once a week.
“If you drink too much or you eat too much or you walk too much — if you do too much of anything — you’re going to suffer eventually,” Tinniswood told Guinness World Records.
But ultimately, he said, “it’s pure luck. You either live long or you live short, and you can’t do much about it.”
The world’s oldest woman, and oldest living person, is 117-year-old Maria Branyas Morera of Spain.
SSI - Wonder IF the Señora is also on an equally "fishy" diet?
I've got the genes for it. My dad lived to 96, but one needs to have a word with my wife to prevent her from leaving me or popping her clogs in the next 30 years also. I suspect leaving me would be the most likely. I would.
Nigel Farage thinks postal votes need to be scrapped because they create fraud.
And he doesn't think the American election was stolen but Biden won because of "legal" corrupt postal votes
The two points are connected. The Blessed Nigel is focusing on postal votes because US Republicans and especially Trump are fixated on them. If the Blessed Nigel is to profit from the Trump campaign and a possible Trump second tierm then he has to dance to the Orange One's tune.
I’ve got a postal vote. Poor old chap, can’t get down to the polling station without a wheelchair.
Care to join in with my (prospective) law suit? In the USA would be a class (in one sense anyway) action.
What’s the problem in the USA? Over this, I mean. There are lots of other problems around elections in your country.
John Curtice says the economy wasn’t enough to save John Major, and this economy isn’t even any good.
The Tories need a ‘Boris Mk II’ apparently… and there isn’t one
''The fate of this government was sealed in two six-week periods… Boris Johnson's interpretation of the covid regulations and the Liz Truss fiscal event.''
Conservatives need a well-proven, effective campaigner who could change this 'near-impossible situation',@JohnCurticeOnTV tells #TimesRadio
On the solar eclipse: I remember a partial one (perhaps in the 1990s) where my dad brought home a welder's visor to watch it through. except he'd brought one with the highest shade, which meant you could see virtually nothing of the sun anyway...
Incidentally, one invention I've only recently heard of is auto-darkening LCD welder's visors. The moment it detects light, the visor's opacity increases. This prevents the annoying old head-nodding of the old-style visors in order to see what you're working on, then forgetting to put it back down...
Republicans against Trump @RpsAgainstTrump · 4h Donald Trump: “Democrats are the radical ones on this position because they support abortion up to and even beyond the ninth month
John Curtice says the economy wasn’t enough to save John Major, and this economy isn’t even any good.
The Tories need a ‘Boris Mk II’ apparently… and there isn’t one
''The fate of this government was sealed in two six-week periods… Boris Johnson's interpretation of the covid regulations and the Liz Truss fiscal event.''
Conservatives need a well-proven, effective campaigner who could change this 'near-impossible situation',@JohnCurticeOnTV tells #TimesRadio
John Curtice says the economy wasn’t enough to save John Major, and this economy isn’t even any good.
The Tories need a ‘Boris Mk II’ apparently… and there isn’t one
''The fate of this government was sealed in two six-week periods… Boris Johnson's interpretation of the covid regulations and the Liz Truss fiscal event.''
Conservatives need a well-proven, effective campaigner who could change this 'near-impossible situation',@JohnCurticeOnTV tells #TimesRadio
There always seems to be one defining moment before a government loses power - A point of no return where the public just says "times up" even if the next election is years away.
September 1992 (ERM)
October 2007 (bottled election)
October 2022 (TRUSS)
2007 - bottled election was a missed opportunity but the GFC was what really did for Brown.
I don't know, Labour's poll rating went on a stead downward trajectory from October 2007 onwards and GFC actually allowed Brown to display some of better qualities.
On the solar eclipse: I remember a partial one (perhaps in the 1990s) where my dad brought home a welder's visor to watch it through. except he'd brought one with the highest shade, which meant you could see virtually nothing of the sun anyway...
Incidentally, one invention I've only recently heard of is auto-darkening LCD welder's visors. The moment it detects light, the visor's opacity increases. This prevents the annoying old head-nodding of the old-style visors in order to see what you're working on, then forgetting to put it back down...
Blooming brilliant!
Even the cheapo £40 welding helmets have auto-darkening now with a switching time of 0.003sec
Making some assumptions, it appears 41% think taxes will go up whoever wins the election, but 8% think they will only if Labour win. The next question would be whether that 8% think taxes should go up or not! Presuming they don't, then that's 8% for the Tories... yeah, they're not gonna win on 8%.
I assume you are joking because, of course, many of the 41% who think taxes will go up think that taxes should NOT go up.
This will come as a massive shock to you but a lot of people think taxes SHOULD go up. People who recognise the needs to pay one's way and balance the books, people who think that public services are crap and need to improve, people who believe we should invest for the future.
A lot of people do indeed taxes should go up, a lot of those people also assume it won't apply to them. If the state fully funded everything it does I doubt even adding 5% to every tax rate would cover it. The simple fact is when people say just tax the rich they don't realise there aren't enough of them to cover the cost and basic rate tax will also need to rise significantly....those people struggling, having to claim tax credits and use food banks will see more of their pay go on tax
It could definitely be done without raising basic rate taxes (or indeed freezing personal allowances). The question is, a) will the government be brave enough, and b) would the impact on the rich be manageable?
I happen to think the deficit could be closed, or public services be boosted, or some combination of the two achieved by raising wealth taxes. The rich will squeal, they will threaten to quit the country (99% won't), they will plead poverty, but ultimately they would suck it up. (For 'they' I should put 'we' as I'm in my own target.)
Apart from every country that has already tried it has found it raises next to nothing and has pretty much abandoned it. So no wealth taxes will only work if you hit ordinary people with ordinary pension funds and living in ordinary houses....to make public services work with out deficit with what the state does we are probably looking to raise tax revenue by 300 to 400 billion a year. You are not going to get that from just taxing the rich
It depends what you mean by wealth taxes.
If you mean taxing wealth like shares etc that can be easily moved abroad, of course it doesn't work.
If you mean taxing land, then that's a perfectly liberal tax to support which almost every country on the planet has. Including the USA.
That we don't tax land ownership and expect tenants to pay instead is quite unusual and extreme.
Even if you tax land making 300 to 400 billion from it is going to cripple plenty of ordinary people. This is my problem with a wealth tax, the people who think it will fund everything and then denying it will hit those that aren't what anyone would describe as wealthy
I am not actually opposed to a land tax, just the view of some that it will allow us to fully fund everything
This is absolutely correct: the total amount of tax that can be raised is a function of economic output. In aggregate, you can't tax what isn't being produced.
It's why those numbers bandied around by activists about how a small tax on financial transactions would fund everything is so wrong: simply, transaction volumes would collapse.
GDP was originally designed as a measure of understanding how much activity there was to tax, and it remains helpful for that reason. Extracting more than half of the value of all economic activity is tough take for anyone.
That said, I fully support a land tax.
Why?
Because the tax system should encourage the efficient allocation of scarce resources. And there are few things more scarce than housing and land. We want to discourage people from sitting on land that could be developed for housing. And we want to discourage people - particularly overseas "investors" - from buying up apartments that sit empty. (Or indeed homes that are hardly used.)
I would propose a small annual levy on undeveloped land, and a small annual levy on any properties that are occupied for less than 180 days per year. This second one would negatively impact me, as I have a flat in Central London, but it would make people really think "this is now much more expensive than it was... shall I just AirBnB in future?"
Nods as I said I am not opposed to a land tax being imposed as an alternative to council tax in fact I find it a good idea, I just reject the idea some seem to have formed that it will solve the funding gap and it won't hit the poorest in anyway. For example the idea than landlords wont just pass it on to renters just like they did for council tax
It couldn't be used as alternative to Council Tax without absolutely screwing the poorest. In London, prices are high and therefore land tax would only need to be (say) 0.1% to cover council expenses. Whereas in -say- Knowsley land prices are very low, and you would need to charge something like 5% to cover council expenses. It would absolutely shaft poor areas at the expense of rich.
I would implement it at a national level, and use the money received as (effectively) the pool that is used for local government grants.
If you don't replace council tax with it there are going to be even more people going effectively I can no longer afford to live. Even in london. For example if a house in london attracts 2400 land tax, the couple renting it will find their landlord raising their rent by at least 200 a month
The landlord can only pass on the tax if they have a tenant.
Implement this properly and abolish our planning system and suddenly more people will find themselves sitting on land they owe tax on, but have no tenants in that land. So they'll be encouraged to build houses or sell the land, so the tenants have more choice.
Why pay the full £200 extra to the landlord if a rival landlord is only asking for £170?
Competition works at driving down costs, if the state doesn't block competition as it does currently with our planning system.
Because finding somewhere to rent currently is a sellers market sadly. When I went for my last flat I was one of 20 that said yes we will take it
Because of our planning system.
Are you sure you meant to use the words “planning” and “system” in the same sentence?
Also the idea that teaching in the 1970s was ideology free, or even 'neutral' is laughable.
Education involves choices, as Cleitophon notes.
Back then schooling was to create labour for industrial society which doesn't exist anymore. Now we live in a service and information society.
This reminds me of Foucault who in "Discipline and Punish" points out that all modern institutions from hospitals, schools, factories, offices etc, are all modeled on the prison. Their architectural capacity for surveillance and habitation of the "inmates". 🤣🤣🤣
Making some assumptions, it appears 41% think taxes will go up whoever wins the election, but 8% think they will only if Labour win. The next question would be whether that 8% think taxes should go up or not! Presuming they don't, then that's 8% for the Tories... yeah, they're not gonna win on 8%.
I assume you are joking because, of course, many of the 41% who think taxes will go up think that taxes should NOT go up.
This will come as a massive shock to you but a lot of people think taxes SHOULD go up. People who recognise the needs to pay one's way and balance the books, people who think that public services are crap and need to improve, people who believe we should invest for the future.
A lot of people do indeed taxes should go up, a lot of those people also assume it won't apply to them. If the state fully funded everything it does I doubt even adding 5% to every tax rate would cover it. The simple fact is when people say just tax the rich they don't realise there aren't enough of them to cover the cost and basic rate tax will also need to rise significantly....those people struggling, having to claim tax credits and use food banks will see more of their pay go on tax
It could definitely be done without raising basic rate taxes (or indeed freezing personal allowances). The question is, a) will the government be brave enough, and b) would the impact on the rich be manageable?
I happen to think the deficit could be closed, or public services be boosted, or some combination of the two achieved by raising wealth taxes. The rich will squeal, they will threaten to quit the country (99% won't), they will plead poverty, but ultimately they would suck it up. (For 'they' I should put 'we' as I'm in my own target.)
Apart from every country that has already tried it has found it raises next to nothing and has pretty much abandoned it. So no wealth taxes will only work if you hit ordinary people with ordinary pension funds and living in ordinary houses....to make public services work with out deficit with what the state does we are probably looking to raise tax revenue by 300 to 400 billion a year. You are not going to get that from just taxing the rich
It depends what you mean by wealth taxes.
If you mean taxing wealth like shares etc that can be easily moved abroad, of course it doesn't work.
If you mean taxing land, then that's a perfectly liberal tax to support which almost every country on the planet has. Including the USA.
That we don't tax land ownership and expect tenants to pay instead is quite unusual and extreme.
Even if you tax land making 300 to 400 billion from it is going to cripple plenty of ordinary people. This is my problem with a wealth tax, the people who think it will fund everything and then denying it will hit those that aren't what anyone would describe as wealthy
I am not actually opposed to a land tax, just the view of some that it will allow us to fully fund everything
This is absolutely correct: the total amount of tax that can be raised is a function of economic output. In aggregate, you can't tax what isn't being produced.
It's why those numbers bandied around by activists about how a small tax on financial transactions would fund everything is so wrong: simply, transaction volumes would collapse.
GDP was originally designed as a measure of understanding how much activity there was to tax, and it remains helpful for that reason. Extracting more than half of the value of all economic activity is tough take for anyone.
That said, I fully support a land tax.
Why?
Because the tax system should encourage the efficient allocation of scarce resources. And there are few things more scarce than housing and land. We want to discourage people from sitting on land that could be developed for housing. And we want to discourage people - particularly overseas "investors" - from buying up apartments that sit empty. (Or indeed homes that are hardly used.)
I would propose a small annual levy on undeveloped land, and a small annual levy on any properties that are occupied for less than 180 days per year. This second one would negatively impact me, as I have a flat in Central London, but it would make people really think "this is now much more expensive than it was... shall I just AirBnB in future?"
Nods as I said I am not opposed to a land tax being imposed as an alternative to council tax in fact I find it a good idea, I just reject the idea some seem to have formed that it will solve the funding gap and it won't hit the poorest in anyway. For example the idea than landlords wont just pass it on to renters just like they did for council tax
It couldn't be used as alternative to Council Tax without absolutely screwing the poorest. In London, prices are high and therefore land tax would only need to be (say) 0.1% to cover council expenses. Whereas in -say- Knowsley land prices are very low, and you would need to charge something like 5% to cover council expenses. It would absolutely shaft poor areas at the expense of rich.
I would implement it at a national level, and use the money received as (effectively) the pool that is used for local government grants.
If you don't replace council tax with it there are going to be even more people going effectively I can no longer afford to live. Even in london. For example if a house in london attracts 2400 land tax, the couple renting it will find their landlord raising their rent by at least 200 a month
The landlord can only pass on the tax if they have a tenant.
Implement this properly and abolish our planning system and suddenly more people will find themselves sitting on land they owe tax on, but have no tenants in that land. So they'll be encouraged to build houses or sell the land, so the tenants have more choice.
Why pay the full £200 extra to the landlord if a rival landlord is only asking for £170?
Competition works at driving down costs, if the state doesn't block competition as it does currently with our planning system.
Because finding somewhere to rent currently is a sellers market sadly. When I went for my last flat I was one of 20 that said yes we will take it
Because of our planning system.
As usual, it's nothing to do with the planning "system" to which some on here seem to have a particular aversion.
The Conservatives want home ownership because home owners are or become Conservative voters. The onus is therefore on the provision of new accommodation for outright ownership.
In many parts of the country and I cite my part of London as one, the real need is housing for rent. An active well regulated rental sector would be a huge benefit to this country and that means providing good quality accommodation for singles, couples and families who either cannot or do not want to take on full ownership.
Unfortunately, inadequate regulation has created a new generation of urban slums whether they be homes unfit for human habitation via damp or other issues or multiple occupation of semi detached houses as well as dwellings in gardens, sheds or wherever where I suspect many are rutlessly exploited by landlords.
Proper regulation of private landlords, proper regulation of HMOs and above all the revival of the public rented sector would all be beneficial as well as taking the profit motive out of housebuilding which is such a big part of the problem of supply (as is getting professional tradespeople in at the critical points of the build).
John Curtice says the economy wasn’t enough to save John Major, and this economy isn’t even any good.
The Tories need a ‘Boris Mk II’ apparently… and there isn’t one
''The fate of this government was sealed in two six-week periods… Boris Johnson's interpretation of the covid regulations and the Liz Truss fiscal event.''
Conservatives need a well-proven, effective campaigner who could change this 'near-impossible situation',@JohnCurticeOnTV tells #TimesRadio
John Curtice says the economy wasn’t enough to save John Major, and this economy isn’t even any good.
The Tories need a ‘Boris Mk II’ apparently… and there isn’t one
''The fate of this government was sealed in two six-week periods… Boris Johnson's interpretation of the covid regulations and the Liz Truss fiscal event.''
Conservatives need a well-proven, effective campaigner who could change this 'near-impossible situation',@JohnCurticeOnTV tells #TimesRadio
Also the idea that teaching in the 1970s was ideology free, or even 'neutral' is laughable.
Education involves choices, as Cleitophon notes.
Back then schooling was to create labour for industrial society which doesn't exist anymore. Now we live in a service and information society.
This reminds me of Foucault who in "Discipline and Punish" points out that all modern institutions from hospitals, schools, factories, offices etc, are all modeled on the prison. Their architectural capacity for surveillance and habitation of the "inmates". 🤣🤣🤣
Which is small difference to the society of the ussr or communist china, we moved on they didn't but you feel your ideology should be pushed on them and take them back to poverty?
Nigel Farage thinks postal votes need to be scrapped because they create fraud.
And he doesn't think the American election was stolen but Biden won because of "legal" corrupt postal votes
The two points are connected. The Blessed Nigel is focusing on postal votes because US Republicans and especially Trump are fixated on them. If the Blessed Nigel is to profit from the Trump campaign and a possible Trump second tierm then he has to dance to the Orange One's tune.
I’ve got a postal vote. Poor old chap, can’t get down to the polling station without a wheelchair.
Care to join in with my (prospective) law suit? In the USA would be a class (in one sense anyway) action.
What’s the problem in the USA? Over this, I mean. There are lots of other problems around elections in your country.
Am talking about my proposed legal action, accusing Nigel Farrage with defamation, against the likes of you, me and fellow postal voters, by accusing us of being "corrupt". (see up thread)
Nigel Farage thinks postal votes need to be scrapped because they create fraud.
And he doesn't think the American election was stolen but Biden won because of "legal" corrupt postal votes
The two points are connected. The Blessed Nigel is focusing on postal votes because US Republicans and especially Trump are fixated on them. If the Blessed Nigel is to profit from the Trump campaign and a possible Trump second tierm then he has to dance to the Orange One's tune.
I’ve got a postal vote. Poor old chap, can’t get down to the polling station without a wheelchair.
Care to join in with my (prospective) law suit? In the USA would be a class (in one sense anyway) action.
What’s the problem in the USA? Over this, I mean. There are lots of other problems around elections in your country.
Am talking about my proposed legal action, accusing Nigel Farrage with defamation, against the likes of you, me and fellow postal voters, by accusing us of being "corrupt". (see up thread)
Aren't you american? That means corrupt is a given its only to work how how corrupt
Also the idea that teaching in the 1970s was ideology free, or even 'neutral' is laughable.
I didn't say teachers didn't have ideology but they did at least tell both sides
Did they ? There's no 'both sides' in a curriculum - it's a set thing. Similarly with the prevailing social attitudes of the time - that is ideology.
I think you mean party politics perhaps, rather than 'ideology' ?
I would be in favour of unconscious bias training for teachers. Don't know if that's a thing Camilla Tomeney could buy into but it could help outcomes.
Also the idea that teaching in the 1970s was ideology free, or even 'neutral' is laughable.
I didn't say teachers didn't have ideology but they did at least tell both sides
Did they ? There's no 'both sides' in a curriculum - it's a set thing. Similarly with the prevailing social attitudes of the time - that is ideology.
I think you mean party politics perhaps, rather than 'ideology' ?
My teachers didn't go with the mantra socialism good capitlism bad which my sons did
My children’s teachers certainly did no such thing. I think you’re judging a whole system from your own experience.
What other experience can I have? My own lack of education and my sons....and the schools reaction to my raising a complaint about the teachers feeding him one sided bollocks
"BURNING AT PIER-SIDE: At the Russian naval station at Baltiysk in Kaliningrad, the Project 21631 Buyan-M class missile corvette Surpukhov has suffered a major fire. The blaze damaged the ship's main control and Combat Information Center (CIC)"
This is in Kaliningrad, and the Ukrainians are claiming responsibility. Hmmm....
Comments
Me, if I had any indoctrination energy, I'd use it to indoctrinate pupils to write down their workings when they do calculations.
I happen to think the deficit could be closed, or public services be boosted, or some combination of the two achieved by raising wealth taxes. The rich will squeal, they will threaten to quit the country (99% won't), they will plead poverty, but ultimately they would suck it up. (For 'they' I should put 'we' as I'm in my own target.)
Many on the right and the left have the same objectives, it's the methodology is different.
I think that people are better off, financially, physically, mentally and more if they are able to support themselves. And that people are better able to support themselves if taxes on earned incomes are flatter and lower.
Which is why I support cutting real taxes especially on the poorest who face real marginal tax rates of 70% plus, real tax rates the likes of Sunak will never face.
Because I agree with you in this sense: once I felt that my aims aligned with those of the Tory party, and that the policies proposed were broadly likely to achieve some or all of those aims. These days, the Tories and I are wildly divergent in both aspects, and I haven't changed all that much.
Jesus: Feed them bread and fishes for a day.
Sensible right: Teach a man to fish and you feed him for the rest of his life.
Extreme right: Set a man on fire and you keep him warm for the rest of his life.
They'd only have to wait month or two anyway before one of the 55 Tory MPs lost the whip for inappropriate behaviour, and the LDs became the undisputed OO.
If you mean taxing wealth like shares etc that can be easily moved abroad, of course it doesn't work.
If you mean taxing land, then that's a perfectly liberal tax to support which almost every country on the planet has. Including the USA.
That we don't tax land ownership and expect tenants to pay instead is quite unusual and extreme.
We should tax land more, and work less.
Ok, give me an example of ideology free teaching
Anarchy does not, it means that the strongest get to enforce whatever rules they want on the weakest.
Anarchy is more hierarchical than democracy.
But I'd put taxes on land up and lower taxes on work in response, so it's revenue neutral but means work pays more so people will be more able to benefit from the fruits of their own labours and there's less reason not to work.
Land is there either way. Work is not.
If you are democratically setting rules then it's not anarchy anymore.
I think you are meaning: "a state of disorder due to absence or non-recognition of authority or other controlling systems" rather than "the organization of society on the basis of voluntary cooperation, without political institutions or hierarchical government"
(Which I agree is a fantasy, rather like the fantasy of a truly laissez-faire market economy.)
[ETA: Though of course there are plenty of historical strains of anarchist philosophy which think "democracy" as we describe it today is an artefact of a capitalist/market economy]
Which generates a hierarchical government as those who are powerful seize power from the weak.
If you are democratically enforcing rules then that requires political institutions or hierarchical government to enforce that.
It's why those numbers bandied around by activists about how a small tax on financial transactions would fund everything is so wrong: simply, transaction volumes would collapse.
GDP was originally designed as a measure of understanding how much activity there was to tax, and it remains helpful for that reason. Extracting more than half of the value of all economic activity is tough take for anyone.
That said, I fully support a land tax.
Why?
Because the tax system should encourage the efficient allocation of scarce resources. And there are few things more scarce than housing and land. We want to discourage people from sitting on land that could be developed for housing. And we want to discourage people - particularly overseas "investors" - from buying up apartments that sit empty. (Or indeed homes that are hardly used.)
I would propose a small annual levy on undeveloped land, and a small annual levy on any properties that are occupied for less than 180 days per year. This second one would negatively impact me, as I have a flat in Central London, but it would make people really think "this is now much more expensive than it was... shall I just AirBnB in future?"
In 6 weeks we will do just that and I did remind her that at the altar in St Geraldine's Church in Lossiemouth in May 1964 in front of over 200 witnesses she promised to 'love, honour and obey'
She responded by informing me she had a 'wee' word with the Good Lord and rescinded the 'obey' bit !!!!!!!
Wonder why? Was it that the acute crisis of winter 2022/3 had been survived, but the ongoing chronic meh-ness of life in Sunak's Britain hadn't really come to light?
Until Labour go into government and have to deal the economy and potentially put up taxes, the Conservatives are unlikely to see much improvement in their poll rating
I would implement it at a national level, and use the money received as (effectively) the pool that is used for local government grants.
I used the analogy before....we have 3 main parties....one insists on north, one northwest and one north east....however travelling northwards is what go us here. We need someone to say hey here is a different direction
Yes that means Councils wouldn't have a say in tax rates and would just debate how to spend money raised centrally, but I don't have a problem with that.
Especially since most Council operations are mandated centrally anyway.
I wonder if, someday soon, we will all be talking of The Second Coming.
MS MARY ELIZABETH TRUSS, hear your nation’s call.
TRUSS.
Socialisation of land is clearly never going to happen, so land tax is a (very) second best.
You make a valid point about landlords seeking to pass on a land tax to tenants but that's mainly due to the broken housing market. The next government needs to find a way to build more homes and introduce rent controls in the meantime.
Finally, It's undoubtedly true that taxes on the rich alone could close the funding gap if the government has sufficient will but you are right to be cynical about whether any government will have the balls to see that through.
In the absence of such will we do of course remain in the descent spiral where the funding gap is covered by government borrowing, the servicing of which adds to the funding gap, which is covered by more borrowing...
Implement this properly and abolish our planning system and suddenly more people will find themselves sitting on land they owe tax on, but have no tenants in that land. So they'll be encouraged to build houses or sell the land, so the tenants have more choice.
Why pay the full £200 extra to the landlord if a rival landlord is only asking for £170?
Competition works at driving down costs, if the state doesn't block competition as it does currently with our planning system.
Congratulations to you both!
The Tories need a ‘Boris Mk II’ apparently… and there isn’t one
''The fate of this government was sealed in two six-week periods… Boris Johnson's interpretation of the covid regulations and the Liz Truss fiscal event.''
Conservatives need a well-proven, effective campaigner who could change this 'near-impossible situation',@JohnCurticeOnTV tells #TimesRadio
https://x.com/timesradio/status/1777369717956563372?s=46&t=CW4pL-mMpTqsJXCdjW0Z6Q
2) ideology is in fact most powerful when it is tacit and unquestioned and therefore often manifests in HOW a subject is taught and assessed, rather than what is taught. Do the students sit individually or in groups, do they do group course work or individual exams. Is teaching about collective recitation and rote learning or individual creativity. Does the teacher lecture and transmit information one directionally or is there dialogue and negotiation. Timetables, recess, holidays, the architecture of the buildings, how we observe, control, monitor and punish and reward and why.... all that stuff disciplines students into unquestioning practices about what is "natural" and "obvious" and instills a sentiment and orientation into kids that shapes their political orientation. Even assumptions about how to correctly structure an essay: is it a syllogism, contextualisation etc hahaha there are so many ways to shape kids and it has nothing to do with the content of the class.
But in May 2023 the Tories were 15 points behind, facing near certain defeat, and preferred to wait for 'something to come up'. Hahaha.
If you present the pluses and minuses of all ideologies that is neutral. I suspect however you don't
AP (via Seattle Times) - The world’s oldest man says the secret to his longevity is luck, plus regular fish and chips
. . . . Englishman John Alfred Tinniswood, 111, has been confirmed as the new holder of the title by Guinness World Records. It follows the death of the Venezuelan record-holder, Juan Vicente Pérez, this month at the age of 114. Gisaburo Sonobe from Japan, who was next longest-lived, died March 31 at 112. . . .
Born in Liverpool on Aug. 26, 1912, a few months after the sinking of the Titanic, Tinniswood lived through two world wars, serving in the British Army Pay Corps in World War II.
The retired accountant and great-grandfather said moderation was key to a healthy life. He never smokes, rarely drinks and follows no special diet, apart from a fish and chip supper once a week.
“If you drink too much or you eat too much or you walk too much — if you do too much of anything — you’re going to suffer eventually,” Tinniswood told Guinness World Records.
But ultimately, he said, “it’s pure luck. You either live long or you live short, and you can’t do much about it.”
The world’s oldest woman, and oldest living person, is 117-year-old Maria Branyas Morera of Spain.
SSI - Wonder IF the Señora is also on an equally "fishy" diet?
They could do worse - choosing any of the current Tory leader contenders for example.
September 1992 (ERM)
October 2007 (bottled election)
October 2022 (TRUSS)
You mentioned Greta and the Western world surrendering its global economic leadership; I'm simply pointing out why you're wrong. There are potentially great economic advantages in going green, some of which we may already have seen.
I think Pagan is imagining that England's classrooms are hotbeds of socialist indoctrination, which is just silly.
(Though you will find the odd teacher who advocates for particular political views.)
Education involves choices, as Cleitophon notes.
Incidentally, one invention I've only recently heard of is auto-darkening LCD welder's visors. The moment it detects light, the visor's opacity increases. This prevents the annoying old head-nodding of the old-style visors in order to see what you're working on, then forgetting to put it back down...
Blooming brilliant!
There's no 'both sides' in a curriculum - it's a set thing. Similarly with the prevailing social attitudes of the time - that is ideology.
I think you mean party politics perhaps, rather than 'ideology' ?
@RpsAgainstTrump
·
4h
Donald Trump: “Democrats are the radical ones on this position because they support abortion up to and even beyond the ninth month
https://twitter.com/RpsAgainstTrump/status/1777321785421083116
https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/stephen-breyer-wants-us-all-just-to-get-along/
The anger and contempt sears off the page. Just magnificent.
This reminds me of Foucault who in "Discipline and Punish" points out that all modern institutions from hospitals, schools, factories, offices etc, are all modeled on the prison. Their architectural capacity for surveillance and habitation of the "inmates". 🤣🤣🤣
The Conservatives want home ownership because home owners are or become Conservative voters. The onus is therefore on the provision of new accommodation for outright ownership.
In many parts of the country and I cite my part of London as one, the real need is housing for rent. An active well regulated rental sector would be a huge benefit to this country and that means providing good quality accommodation for singles, couples and families who either cannot or do not want to take on full ownership.
Unfortunately, inadequate regulation has created a new generation of urban slums whether they be homes unfit for human habitation via damp or other issues or multiple occupation of semi detached houses as well as dwellings in gardens, sheds or wherever where I suspect many are rutlessly exploited by landlords.
Proper regulation of private landlords, proper regulation of HMOs and above all the revival of the public rented sector would all be beneficial as well as taking the profit motive out of housebuilding which is such a big part of the problem of supply (as is getting professional tradespeople in at the critical points of the build).
I think you’re judging a whole system from your own experience.
This is in Kaliningrad, and the Ukrainians are claiming responsibility. Hmmm....
https://twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1777380441940488663