The guy is dangerous. How could anyone still support him?
He asks a question on whether the crux of that meme is true. Namely, “repeatedly raped a 12 year old girl, 180 community hours, no prison time”.
From the bbc:
"Hamoud Al Soaimi, 21, for three counts of sexual assault and one assault by penetration, jailed for two years suspended for two years with 180 hours unpaid work".
But hey, let’s ban Twitter because he says mean things about Keir Starmer.
But, come, Moonshine, you're a reasonable person, and you surely must know that he's not only doing that.
He's not only accusing Starmer of favouritism to minorities in policing, which no one's succeeded in posting any real evidence of, but seems to be actively willing on social collapse, breakdown and war, in our country, as also the leader of a vast overseas website. You would have to say that Governments all over the world would act in that situation.
Musk is a frequently misunderstood fellow, I have misunderstood him many times. He’s not always right. But I have come to realise his positions are generally (not always) well considered and come with good intentions.
His two tier Keir accusation is not his invention, he is aping an already wide viewpoint. And as others have discussed tonight, it is not true that the evidence slate is clean on that. We are far too soft on serious criminality, both in terms of arrests and sentencing. By the way, any arrests yet for the Southend machete fight or hotel inferno?
I’m looking at this sectarian violence between different components of the British underclass (no offence intended) and wonder indeed if we are now in a similar state to 20th N.Ireland, which by most reasonable definitions was a form of civil war.
I was appalled at some of his statements on Ukraine. But really I do increasingly wonder if he’s right. I don’t think there’s a cigarette paper between the Biden White House and Trump on Ukraine policy. Not really. Neither wants Ukraine to “win”, meaning a return to 2014 borders. And the half hearted support in 2023 makes me wonder whether the White House even wants a return to 2022. Musk is looking at this seeing tens of thousands of death per month on all sides and is saying what’s the f point, if the borders are going to be roughly frozen anyway? My personal view is we’re more not less likely to see nuclear exchange if Putin “wins” in Ukraine, he sees the opposite and seemingly so does the weight of the US security establishment. Perhaps I’m wrong?
Occasionally he likes or retweets inappropriate things out of curiosity or mischief, most likely at time from the karzy. But his vision for Twitter is essentially a global Speakers Corner and that the crowd will sort the sense from the nonsense.
He is very misunderstood by people, often by those that take life too seriously. These calls to ban or expropriate Twitter would be funny if they weren’t so sinister.
What evidence is there for believing the US does not want Ukraine to win? Surely the evidence is that the US administration is held back by the willingness of the Houses of Congress to send money and aid to Ukraine.
I don't think that this administration is wanting Russia to win, the evidence to the contrary is overwhelming. There are, however, a lot of people who are twitchy about the consequences of Russia actually losing. If the Russian army and then the criminal gang in the Kremlin lost control of the situation things could get very hairy indeed.
What I think they want is what they are getting: a Russia that is bled dry but not to the point of total collapse; that has ceased to be a conventional threat to Europe and who will play a much smaller role in the world going forward. And all without an American body bag. That is a real politik result like we haven't seen since the collapse of the Iron curtain.
I think it is more a worry what happens if Russia loses to the point that it is existential for Putin & chums.
Putin is only President for life.
What would Putin & Co *not* do to get 10 minutes more life?
That's why I say people are twitchy and the current bloody stalemate suits the US (and us) very well.
If some Ivan had bothered to connect up that AMRAAMski correctly, then it would have hit the RAF Rivet Joint aircraft, and we’d have been in The Fun Zone
Yes but the next general election is four or five years away. Things that ought to matter, often don't.
Indeed
However isn’t it a political truism that perceptions are crucially formed in the first 100 days of office? And after that they become hard to shift
Starmer has been given a seriously tough test on his second month of office. I don’t envy him. However he came in with baggage that is entirely his own fault - taking the knee AFTER the BLM riots
The British public believe he is making a hash of this major crisis. Pompous but ineffective, hypocritical and bloviating?
He may find this perception hangs around
That said there are exceptions to the rule. Thatcher was massively unpopular at first but became more popular over time
Yes, for me the problem isn't so much the pomposity - hard to disapprove of rioters without sounding pompous - or the ineffectuality - a common failing in the face of rioting - but that he seemed so equivocal about rioting until it was poor white people doing it.
These aren't poor white people. They're violent racists.
Who probably also happen to be poor, white people.
That's disingenuous to us poor white people. Most of us don't riot.
Most men don't rape women either, yet I am assured rape is the fault of all men.
What a silly post. You're better than that 'Tubbs.
I'm not. Its been a long day.
In general I think the danger is that too many are ignoring the left behind of the country, AGAIN. Nothing makes racism right, nor rioting, but its essential to ask why things happen. Too many of my colleagues at Uni could not understand the Brexit vote because 'everyone I know voted remain'. Well yes, you know upper middle class academics.
There are many UK populations. Most are decent, kind folk. Some are not. Some are bitter, twisted, racist thugs. But a lot of people do feel left behind and feel that the country has let in too many immigrants. Thats not my opinion, but if you don't understand that viewpoint (while disagreeing) you will never understand the reasons.
My admonishment was for your "rape" comment.
I am well aware of the "left behind". They have been left behind for generations by the Labour party in Northern, Midlands, Scottish and Welsh s***holes. Hence they voted, SNP, Leave and "lent"their vote to Johnson in 2019, who also left them behind. They lent their vote to Farage in 2024 and probably 2029. He will let them down too.
When the politicians let them down the politicians look for scapegoats. The EU, foreigners, scroungers, illegal immigrants. Scoundrel like Farage buy the easy win, so we are where we are.
You say they are let down - but what exactly do they want and is it achievable?
The problem is that a lot of people want the impossible and don't understand that that is not achievable...
I go back to public funds being corruptly milked by late Labour Councillors like T. Dan Smith instead of funding civic society. Teesport smells similar, and in national government we had the PPE affair.
Teesport is a private company. Teesworks is the issue.
However both Teesworks and PPE are Tory corruption scandals - and neither have anything to do with the things the "left behind" want..
So good attempt to change your narrative but I'll repeat my previous questions
You say they (the "left behind") are let down - but what exactly do they want and is it achievable?
Of course Labour corruption is important over decades. Public funds are hijacked by Labour Councillors. T Dan Smith in Newcastle, Graham Jenkins (Richard Burton's brother) in Port Talbot in the 1970s for example. and not spent benefitted the good burghers of these local authorities.
What do the left behind want? Free stuff that they think is being given to immigrants and scroungers. People like Farage promote the lie that immigrants are given free stuff like houses and cars, not available to them.
Why not ask them instead of projecting your anti working class prejudice onto them.
You are making the grave error of justifying rioting thugs by suggesting that they have legitimate grievances.
Poor white people exist. Many of them are holding down multiple jobs to feed their children and heat their homes. If people like Farage and Yaxley-Lennon tell them they can't heat their homes and feed their children because of foreigners, or the EU some might believe them, but few will go out and riot. The trouble is the people pushing their buttons have less working class credentials that you suggest I have.
You can have a legitimate grievance while still having absolutely no grounds to justify rioting.
But I don't believe 20 year old Liam Grey from Mexborough had a grievance, he was out for a ruck.
Guido is talking about Council tax switching to a proportional system of x %(0.5%) of the current value. I suspect it's going to happen because changing the bands is impossible as even he points out...
I'd say there may be some weasel words in that from Paul Staines. He's quoting a report from the CSJ, which was founded by Iain Duncan Smith, Tim Montgomerie, Mark Florman and Philippa Stroud.
Havnig said that, a switch to 0.5% of market value would be a huge improvement imo, which if it includes an abolition of Stamp Duty as proposed by its main proponents will be in the financial interests of a large majority.
The main thing I'd say for RR and KS is not to be panicked by a bit of rhetoric from the Right.
Council Tax raises £46.7 billion according to the OBR or about 1.7% of national income so not huge in the cosmic scheme of things. Not sure how which Business Rates raises - way back in 2014-15, it was twice as much as Council Tax but that's probably changed with the pamdemic.
The plan, AIUI, is 0.5% on occupied residential property and 2.5% on empty homes based on a revaluation. There are roughly 24 million homes in the UK.
Doing a crude calculation on Stodge Towers it would mean £250 extra per year.
The % of Council Revenue coming from Council Tax has increased, at the same time as funding levels have been restricted.
That is because Councils have been kept on a starvation diet since ~2010, in both England and Scotland. But more so in England. In Scotland (one of our North Britons such as @Eabhal will tell us) I believe they had a freeze in cash terms for 6-7 consecutive years.
If we want effective and capable Councils they need a fairly big funding boost, and it will take time to build capacity.
I'd say that conservatively Local Authorities need a funding boost from current levels of something like a quarter to a third in the short term, just for recovery to 2010 levels.
The 0.5% suggestion is interesting but it seems to me there are a few challenges:
1) Switching to this system would lead to increased tax in London and SE and reduced tax in the North. How do you make sure that each council has enough money to spend? It sounds like more lateral transfers would be required but then it becomes a less local tax. 2) How do you decide how much each property is worth? In the 1990s, the valuations were done by driving by. The fact there were bands meant into didn't matter if the valuations were slightly out. However, if you are charging 0.5% then you need more precise valuations e.g. a 5k value difference is worth £25 a year 3) How often would valuations be updated? Again there could be issues for council budgets as house prices change e.g. 10% rise=extra money to spend, 10% fall=austerity
I think that’s right. Personally I think the banding system is probably the right approach, though the higher bands could perhaps pay a bit more.
The issue with it is that it has never been updated and there’s never been a good time for a government to force a revaluation.
If Labour are smart they’ll get a revaluation through now and then they’ll set up an independent body to conduct the revaluations at ten year intervals, a bit like boundary commissions. It might not stop politicians campaigning to freeze the valuations but it will make it politically harder to do so.
And create an automatic revaluation once a house is extended. That can’t be too difficult to do, just tie it into the building control process.
What do you do about things such as - reworking a property to improve energy efficiency can increase the value substantially
?
I think this is why you can’t be too intricate with the valuation/banding process and why I think it needs to be tied to more “headline” items like bedrooms, size, location. You don’t want to discourage improving the housing stock.
How about hearths?
It’s why a land value tax is by far the best system. You can improve your property as much as you like but pay the same tax.
The trouble with all of these proposals is that anything based on a proportion of value that isn't locally set becomes a giant tax on London and the South East. If Barnet council think they're able to set the tax at a lower rate to deliver services then they should be able to do so. Setting a national rate of 0.5% leaves no flexibility and will either result in redistribution (which shouldn't be done with local government taxes) or waste in local governments as they try to spend money they don't need.
Being blunt - council tax is very poor way of raising local taxes - it probably should be a national tax with a percentage of income tax given to councils
No thanks. At least the councils have some say in this and therefore the residents have some say in it. A nationally set tax and settlement process takes local tax policy out of the hands of local people.
So how about 0.3% set by the council + 0.2% wealth
Nope, all set locally. Otherwise it just becomes another redistribution method from the south to the north. I don't have a problem with the concept of the latter but don't hide it under the guise of local taxation. Raise national taxes and do it from those funds if that's the end goal.
Why do you think I split it into 2 - the first bit is set by the council (and can be adjusted) the second (wealth part) is national…
Then add it onto income tax.
No, wealth needs to be taxed as well as income, or otherwise structural inequality in the country is entrenched.
It’s worth noting that it’s the wealthier right wing posters on here who are now objecting to a wealth tax…
A wealth tax would need to have minimum thresholds and fundamentally is someone who owns a £3m house with a £2.4m mortgage wealthy? Would you tax that person on the whole £3m or just the £0.6m?
It would have to be the net £0.6m, the other £2.4m is held by other people - those who have savings in the building society or bank.
Guido is talking about Council tax switching to a proportional system of x %(0.5%) of the current value. I suspect it's going to happen because changing the bands is impossible as even he points out...
I'd say there may be some weasel words in that from Paul Staines. He's quoting a report from the CSJ, which was founded by Iain Duncan Smith, Tim Montgomerie, Mark Florman and Philippa Stroud.
Havnig said that, a switch to 0.5% of market value would be a huge improvement imo, which if it includes an abolition of Stamp Duty as proposed by its main proponents will be in the financial interests of a large majority.
The main thing I'd say for RR and KS is not to be panicked by a bit of rhetoric from the Right.
Council Tax raises £46.7 billion according to the OBR or about 1.7% of national income so not huge in the cosmic scheme of things. Not sure how which Business Rates raises - way back in 2014-15, it was twice as much as Council Tax but that's probably changed with the pamdemic.
The plan, AIUI, is 0.5% on occupied residential property and 2.5% on empty homes based on a revaluation. There are roughly 24 million homes in the UK.
Doing a crude calculation on Stodge Towers it would mean £250 extra per year.
The % of Council Revenue coming from Council Tax has increased, at the same time as funding levels have been restricted.
That is because Councils have been kept on a starvation diet since ~2010, in both England and Scotland. But more so in England. In Scotland (one of our North Britons such as @Eabhal will tell us) I believe they had a freeze in cash terms for 6-7 consecutive years.
If we want effective and capable Councils they need a fairly big funding boost, and it will take time to build capacity.
I'd say that conservatively Local Authorities need a funding boost from current levels of something like a quarter to a third in the short term, just for recovery to 2010 levels.
The 0.5% suggestion is interesting but it seems to me there are a few challenges:
1) Switching to this system would lead to increased tax in London and SE and reduced tax in the North. How do you make sure that each council has enough money to spend? It sounds like more lateral transfers would be required but then it becomes a less local tax. 2) How do you decide how much each property is worth? In the 1990s, the valuations were done by driving by. The fact there were bands meant into didn't matter if the valuations were slightly out. However, if you are charging 0.5% then you need more precise valuations e.g. a 5k value difference is worth £25 a year 3) How often would valuations be updated? Again there could be issues for council budgets as house prices change e.g. 10% rise=extra money to spend, 10% fall=austerity
I think that’s right. Personally I think the banding system is probably the right approach, though the higher bands could perhaps pay a bit more.
The issue with it is that it has never been updated and there’s never been a good time for a government to force a revaluation.
If Labour are smart they’ll get a revaluation through now and then they’ll set up an independent body to conduct the revaluations at ten year intervals, a bit like boundary commissions. It might not stop politicians campaigning to freeze the valuations but it will make it politically harder to do so.
And create an automatic revaluation once a house is extended. That can’t be too difficult to do, just tie it into the building control process.
What do you do about things such as - reworking a property to improve energy efficiency can increase the value substantially
?
I think this is why you can’t be too intricate with the valuation/banding process and why I think it needs to be tied to more “headline” items like bedrooms, size, location. You don’t want to discourage improving the housing stock.
How about hearths?
It’s why a land value tax is by far the best system. You can improve your property as much as you like but pay the same tax.
The trouble with all of these proposals is that anything based on a proportion of value that isn't locally set becomes a giant tax on London and the South East. If Barnet council think they're able to set the tax at a lower rate to deliver services then they should be able to do so. Setting a national rate of 0.5% leaves no flexibility and will either result in redistribution (which shouldn't be done with local government taxes) or waste in local governments as they try to spend money they don't need.
Being blunt - council tax is very poor way of raising local taxes - it probably should be a national tax with a percentage of income tax given to councils
No thanks. At least the councils have some say in this and therefore the residents have some say in it. A nationally set tax and settlement process takes local tax policy out of the hands of local people.
So how about 0.3% set by the council + 0.2% wealth
Nope, all set locally. Otherwise it just becomes another redistribution method from the south to the north. I don't have a problem with the concept of the latter but don't hide it under the guise of local taxation. Raise national taxes and do it from those funds if that's the end goal.
Why do you think I split it into 2 - the first bit is set by the council (and can be adjusted) the second (wealth part) is national…
Then add it onto income tax.
No, wealth needs to be taxed as well as income, or otherwise structural inequality in the country is entrenched.
I support taxing property more but how do you define other wealth ?
For example I have far more wealth in my DC pension pots than I do in my property.
Do you include those as wealth to be taxed ? If so then how do you include the equivalent in DB pensions ?
The guy is dangerous. How could anyone still support him?
He asks a question on whether the crux of that meme is true. Namely, “repeatedly raped a 12 year old girl, 180 community hours, no prison time”.
From the bbc:
"Hamoud Al Soaimi, 21, for three counts of sexual assault and one assault by penetration, jailed for two years suspended for two years with 180 hours unpaid work".
But hey, let’s ban Twitter because he says mean things about Keir Starmer.
But, come, Moonshine, you're a reasonable person, and you surely must know that he's not only doing that.
He's not only accusing Starmer of favouritism to minorities in policing, which no one's succeeded in posting any real evidence of, but seems to be actively willing on social collapse, breakdown and war, in our country, as also the leader of a vast overseas website. You would have to say that Governments all over the world would act in that situation.
Musk is a frequently misunderstood fellow, I have misunderstood him many times. He’s not always right. But I have come to realise his positions are generally (not always) well considered and come with good intentions.
His two tier Keir accusation is not his invention, he is aping an already wide viewpoint. And as others have discussed tonight, it is not true that the evidence slate is clean on that. We are far too soft on serious criminality, both in terms of arrests and sentencing. By the way, any arrests yet for the Southend machete fight or hotel inferno?
I’m looking at this sectarian violence between different components of the British underclass (no offence intended) and wonder indeed if we are now in a similar state to 20th N.Ireland, which by most reasonable definitions was a form of civil war.
I was appalled at some of his statements on Ukraine. But really I do increasingly wonder if he’s right. I don’t think there’s a cigarette paper between the Biden White House and Trump on Ukraine policy. Not really. Neither wants Ukraine to “win”, meaning a return to 2014 borders. And the half hearted support in 2023 makes me wonder whether the White House even wants a return to 2022. Musk is looking at this seeing tens of thousands of death per month on all sides and is saying what’s the f point, if the borders are going to be roughly frozen anyway? My personal view is we’re more not less likely to see nuclear exchange if Putin “wins” in Ukraine, he sees the opposite and seemingly so does the weight of the US security establishment. Perhaps I’m wrong?
Occasionally he likes or retweets inappropriate things out of curiosity or mischief, most likely at time from the karzy. But his vision for Twitter is essentially a global Speakers Corner and that the crowd will sort the sense from the nonsense.
He is very misunderstood by people, often by those that take life too seriously. These calls to ban or expropriate Twitter would be funny if they weren’t so sinister.
I suggest you read the account he linked to and then maybe you might change that view. Probably some of the worst anti semitism possible. See @viewcode comments. Pure Nazism. Not even oblique, but straight out there hatred. Look at the Jewish cartoons, the glorification of Hitler, the video abusing a bastard Jew. This is what Musk is linking to.
He linked to a meme that was not anti semetic, pro Hitler / Nazi or whatever you want to call it. But actually made a fairly perceptive point about the uk criminal justice system. Why do you suppose he read back through the past posts of that meme poster?
It really is quite silly to think Elon Musk supports the glorification of Hitler and the destruction of the Jews but you believe whatever you want.
A month into a new government: this forum is debating the advantages of Chinese-style censorship and @Roger posts something like this (on the previous thread).
"Harris/Walz works well. It has notes of Vienna and an elegant pre war Europe
Harris /Shapiro is a little too Board of Deputies"
Guido is talking about Council tax switching to a proportional system of x %(0.5%) of the current value. I suspect it's going to happen because changing the bands is impossible as even he points out...
I'd say there may be some weasel words in that from Paul Staines. He's quoting a report from the CSJ, which was founded by Iain Duncan Smith, Tim Montgomerie, Mark Florman and Philippa Stroud.
Havnig said that, a switch to 0.5% of market value would be a huge improvement imo, which if it includes an abolition of Stamp Duty as proposed by its main proponents will be in the financial interests of a large majority.
The main thing I'd say for RR and KS is not to be panicked by a bit of rhetoric from the Right.
Council Tax raises £46.7 billion according to the OBR or about 1.7% of national income so not huge in the cosmic scheme of things. Not sure how which Business Rates raises - way back in 2014-15, it was twice as much as Council Tax but that's probably changed with the pamdemic.
The plan, AIUI, is 0.5% on occupied residential property and 2.5% on empty homes based on a revaluation. There are roughly 24 million homes in the UK.
Doing a crude calculation on Stodge Towers it would mean £250 extra per year.
The % of Council Revenue coming from Council Tax has increased, at the same time as funding levels have been restricted.
That is because Councils have been kept on a starvation diet since ~2010, in both England and Scotland. But more so in England. In Scotland (one of our North Britons such as @Eabhal will tell us) I believe they had a freeze in cash terms for 6-7 consecutive years.
If we want effective and capable Councils they need a fairly big funding boost, and it will take time to build capacity.
I'd say that conservatively Local Authorities need a funding boost from current levels of something like a quarter to a third in the short term, just for recovery to 2010 levels.
The 0.5% suggestion is interesting but it seems to me there are a few challenges:
1) Switching to this system would lead to increased tax in London and SE and reduced tax in the North. How do you make sure that each council has enough money to spend? It sounds like more lateral transfers would be required but then it becomes a less local tax. 2) How do you decide how much each property is worth? In the 1990s, the valuations were done by driving by. The fact there were bands meant into didn't matter if the valuations were slightly out. However, if you are charging 0.5% then you need more precise valuations e.g. a 5k value difference is worth £25 a year 3) How often would valuations be updated? Again there could be issues for council budgets as house prices change e.g. 10% rise=extra money to spend, 10% fall=austerity
I think that’s right. Personally I think the banding system is probably the right approach, though the higher bands could perhaps pay a bit more.
The issue with it is that it has never been updated and there’s never been a good time for a government to force a revaluation.
If Labour are smart they’ll get a revaluation through now and then they’ll set up an independent body to conduct the revaluations at ten year intervals, a bit like boundary commissions. It might not stop politicians campaigning to freeze the valuations but it will make it politically harder to do so.
And create an automatic revaluation once a house is extended. That can’t be too difficult to do, just tie it into the building control process.
What do you do about things such as - reworking a property to improve energy efficiency can increase the value substantially
?
I think this is why you can’t be too intricate with the valuation/banding process and why I think it needs to be tied to more “headline” items like bedrooms, size, location. You don’t want to discourage improving the housing stock.
How about hearths?
It’s why a land value tax is by far the best system. You can improve your property as much as you like but pay the same tax.
The trouble with all of these proposals is that anything based on a proportion of value that isn't locally set becomes a giant tax on London and the South East. If Barnet council think they're able to set the tax at a lower rate to deliver services then they should be able to do so. Setting a national rate of 0.5% leaves no flexibility and will either result in redistribution (which shouldn't be done with local government taxes) or waste in local governments as they try to spend money they don't need.
Being blunt - council tax is very poor way of raising local taxes - it probably should be a national tax with a percentage of income tax given to councils
No thanks. At least the councils have some say in this and therefore the residents have some say in it. A nationally set tax and settlement process takes local tax policy out of the hands of local people.
So how about 0.3% set by the council + 0.2% wealth
Nope, all set locally. Otherwise it just becomes another redistribution method from the south to the north. I don't have a problem with the concept of the latter but don't hide it under the guise of local taxation. Raise national taxes and do it from those funds if that's the end goal.
Why do you think I split it into 2 - the first bit is set by the council (and can be adjusted) the second (wealth part) is national…
Then add it onto income tax.
No, wealth needs to be taxed as well as income, or otherwise structural inequality in the country is entrenched.
It’s worth noting that it’s the wealthier right wing posters on here who are now objecting to a wealth tax…
A wealth tax would need to have minimum thresholds and fundamentally is someone who owns a £3m house with a £2.4m mortgage wealthy? Would you tax that person on the whole £3m or just the £0.6m?
It would have to be the net £0.6m, the other £2.4m is held by other people - those who have savings in the building society or bank.
But what seems to be being proposed is a flat 0.5% tax on property values, not net wealth, which is crackers.
Yes but the next general election is four or five years away. Things that ought to matter, often don't.
Indeed
However isn’t it a political truism that perceptions are crucially formed in the first 100 days of office? And after that they become hard to shift
Starmer has been given a seriously tough test on his second month of office. I don’t envy him. However he came in with baggage that is entirely his own fault - taking the knee AFTER the BLM riots
The British public believe he is making a hash of this major crisis. Pompous but ineffective, hypocritical and bloviating?
He may find this perception hangs around
That said there are exceptions to the rule. Thatcher was massively unpopular at first but became more popular over time
Yes, for me the problem isn't so much the pomposity - hard to disapprove of rioters without sounding pompous - or the ineffectuality - a common failing in the face of rioting - but that he seemed so equivocal about rioting until it was poor white people doing it.
These aren't poor white people. They're violent racists.
These things, sadly, are not mutually exclusive
Sure. But the poorness and whiteness isn't what's causing the problem. It's the racially aggravated violence. You'll see this when cases get to court. Nobody is going to be charged with being poor and white.
There is a clear link between the Brexit vote, the Reform vote in 2024 and these riots. Yes the riots are being inflated by bad actors on socials, but those being whipped up are the same ones who thought Brexit would fix their ills (it didn't), that Reform would fix their ills (it won't) and that immigration and immigrants are part of the problem (possibly a small part is true - if you move a million more people into a country, housing becomes scarcer and services harder to access). But rioting won't fix that.*
*Except it might fix YOUR housing for a while, at His Majesties Pleasure...
There's usually a socioeconomic context to public disorder and this is no exception. But I'm talking about the people leading and avidly participating in racially targeted violence. Attacks on Mosques, Asylum Seekers etc. These people have no legitimate cause or context for their actions. It awards them an unmerited gravitas to suggest otherwise.
Yes. I find it utterly astonishing that folk can equate seeking to burn down hotels, knowing that there are residents and staff in them, with any other form of protest that I've witnessed over the last 50 years.
It's attempted mass murder, and for all the wrongdoing witnessed on other 'protests' I've never seen anything as wicked.
I was at the BLM riots in Trafalgar Sq in 2020 and I saw multiple beatings of white people which, if the coppers hadn’t leapt in and saved the victim, would have likely turned into murder
That’s what I saw. I was there
Two days later, Starmer took the knee
Yet you still claim to have voted for Starmer last month, and not, say, for RefUK...
Do you know I don't altogether believe you.
Doesn't quite scan, does it.
I don't have any problem believing it. @Leon loves winners, whether they are despots, crooks like Trump or psychopaths like Putin. In contrast he despise losers and Sunak was a loser. He finds losing a moral flaw, evidence of weakness. Starmer was obviously going to be the winner. Who cares what he actually stands for?
lol. There is a absolutely something in that (tho your slurs about Trump and Putin are unfair, I revile both)
But, yes, one of the less important reasons I voted for Starmer was the psychological feeling that, for the one and surely only time in my life, I would be voting for the winner, THE winner. The actual prime minister. Kir Royale Starmer
Turns out he’s rubbish but hey
This is comedy gold.
@TSE@rcs1000 I think that @Babbage9 might, just might, be the artist formerly known as...take your pick. Can we have a ruling?
It could just be someone who's paying homage?
Like Oasis with the Beatles as it were?
Ah hello!
Should we settle our £20 bet then?
Yes - congrats!
Let me know how you'd like to go about settling it.
Well we said charity or site funds. I've just done some site funds so let's say charity.
Shelter?
Yes that would be fine - do you want to give me an email address or something (suitably disguised if on here) so I can send a receipt conf if available?
Will be by the weekend if that's ok.
No receipt required. I trust you'll do it. Cheers.
Guido is talking about Council tax switching to a proportional system of x %(0.5%) of the current value. I suspect it's going to happen because changing the bands is impossible as even he points out...
I'd say there may be some weasel words in that from Paul Staines. He's quoting a report from the CSJ, which was founded by Iain Duncan Smith, Tim Montgomerie, Mark Florman and Philippa Stroud.
Havnig said that, a switch to 0.5% of market value would be a huge improvement imo, which if it includes an abolition of Stamp Duty as proposed by its main proponents will be in the financial interests of a large majority.
The main thing I'd say for RR and KS is not to be panicked by a bit of rhetoric from the Right.
Council Tax raises £46.7 billion according to the OBR or about 1.7% of national income so not huge in the cosmic scheme of things. Not sure how which Business Rates raises - way back in 2014-15, it was twice as much as Council Tax but that's probably changed with the pamdemic.
The plan, AIUI, is 0.5% on occupied residential property and 2.5% on empty homes based on a revaluation. There are roughly 24 million homes in the UK.
Doing a crude calculation on Stodge Towers it would mean £250 extra per year.
The % of Council Revenue coming from Council Tax has increased, at the same time as funding levels have been restricted.
That is because Councils have been kept on a starvation diet since ~2010, in both England and Scotland. But more so in England. In Scotland (one of our North Britons such as @Eabhal will tell us) I believe they had a freeze in cash terms for 6-7 consecutive years.
If we want effective and capable Councils they need a fairly big funding boost, and it will take time to build capacity.
I'd say that conservatively Local Authorities need a funding boost from current levels of something like a quarter to a third in the short term, just for recovery to 2010 levels.
The 0.5% suggestion is interesting but it seems to me there are a few challenges:
1) Switching to this system would lead to increased tax in London and SE and reduced tax in the North. How do you make sure that each council has enough money to spend? It sounds like more lateral transfers would be required but then it becomes a less local tax. 2) How do you decide how much each property is worth? In the 1990s, the valuations were done by driving by. The fact there were bands meant into didn't matter if the valuations were slightly out. However, if you are charging 0.5% then you need more precise valuations e.g. a 5k value difference is worth £25 a year 3) How often would valuations be updated? Again there could be issues for council budgets as house prices change e.g. 10% rise=extra money to spend, 10% fall=austerity
I think that’s right. Personally I think the banding system is probably the right approach, though the higher bands could perhaps pay a bit more.
The issue with it is that it has never been updated and there’s never been a good time for a government to force a revaluation.
If Labour are smart they’ll get a revaluation through now and then they’ll set up an independent body to conduct the revaluations at ten year intervals, a bit like boundary commissions. It might not stop politicians campaigning to freeze the valuations but it will make it politically harder to do so.
And create an automatic revaluation once a house is extended. That can’t be too difficult to do, just tie it into the building control process.
What do you do about things such as - reworking a property to improve energy efficiency can increase the value substantially
?
I think this is why you can’t be too intricate with the valuation/banding process and why I think it needs to be tied to more “headline” items like bedrooms, size, location. You don’t want to discourage improving the housing stock.
How about hearths?
It’s why a land value tax is by far the best system. You can improve your property as much as you like but pay the same tax.
The trouble with all of these proposals is that anything based on a proportion of value that isn't locally set becomes a giant tax on London and the South East. If Barnet council think they're able to set the tax at a lower rate to deliver services then they should be able to do so. Setting a national rate of 0.5% leaves no flexibility and will either result in redistribution (which shouldn't be done with local government taxes) or waste in local governments as they try to spend money they don't need.
Being blunt - council tax is very poor way of raising local taxes - it probably should be a national tax with a percentage of income tax given to councils
No thanks. At least the councils have some say in this and therefore the residents have some say in it. A nationally set tax and settlement process takes local tax policy out of the hands of local people.
So how about 0.3% set by the council + 0.2% wealth
Nope, all set locally. Otherwise it just becomes another redistribution method from the south to the north. I don't have a problem with the concept of the latter but don't hide it under the guise of local taxation. Raise national taxes and do it from those funds if that's the end goal.
Why do you think I split it into 2 - the first bit is set by the council (and can be adjusted) the second (wealth part) is national…
Then add it onto income tax.
No, wealth needs to be taxed as well as income, or otherwise structural inequality in the country is entrenched.
It’s worth noting that it’s the wealthier right wing posters on here who are now objecting to a wealth tax…
A wealth tax would need to have minimum thresholds and fundamentally is someone who owns a £3m house with a £2.4m mortgage wealthy? Would you tax that person on the whole £3m or just the £0.6m?
They live in a £3m house - if they can afford a £2.4m mortgage at 4.5% interest they can afford a 0.5% tax bill
Guido is talking about Council tax switching to a proportional system of x %(0.5%) of the current value. I suspect it's going to happen because changing the bands is impossible as even he points out...
I'd say there may be some weasel words in that from Paul Staines. He's quoting a report from the CSJ, which was founded by Iain Duncan Smith, Tim Montgomerie, Mark Florman and Philippa Stroud.
Havnig said that, a switch to 0.5% of market value would be a huge improvement imo, which if it includes an abolition of Stamp Duty as proposed by its main proponents will be in the financial interests of a large majority.
The main thing I'd say for RR and KS is not to be panicked by a bit of rhetoric from the Right.
Council Tax raises £46.7 billion according to the OBR or about 1.7% of national income so not huge in the cosmic scheme of things. Not sure how which Business Rates raises - way back in 2014-15, it was twice as much as Council Tax but that's probably changed with the pamdemic.
The plan, AIUI, is 0.5% on occupied residential property and 2.5% on empty homes based on a revaluation. There are roughly 24 million homes in the UK.
Doing a crude calculation on Stodge Towers it would mean £250 extra per year.
The % of Council Revenue coming from Council Tax has increased, at the same time as funding levels have been restricted.
That is because Councils have been kept on a starvation diet since ~2010, in both England and Scotland. But more so in England. In Scotland (one of our North Britons such as @Eabhal will tell us) I believe they had a freeze in cash terms for 6-7 consecutive years.
If we want effective and capable Councils they need a fairly big funding boost, and it will take time to build capacity.
I'd say that conservatively Local Authorities need a funding boost from current levels of something like a quarter to a third in the short term, just for recovery to 2010 levels.
The 0.5% suggestion is interesting but it seems to me there are a few challenges:
1) Switching to this system would lead to increased tax in London and SE and reduced tax in the North. How do you make sure that each council has enough money to spend? It sounds like more lateral transfers would be required but then it becomes a less local tax. 2) How do you decide how much each property is worth? In the 1990s, the valuations were done by driving by. The fact there were bands meant into didn't matter if the valuations were slightly out. However, if you are charging 0.5% then you need more precise valuations e.g. a 5k value difference is worth £25 a year 3) How often would valuations be updated? Again there could be issues for council budgets as house prices change e.g. 10% rise=extra money to spend, 10% fall=austerity
I think that’s right. Personally I think the banding system is probably the right approach, though the higher bands could perhaps pay a bit more.
The issue with it is that it has never been updated and there’s never been a good time for a government to force a revaluation.
If Labour are smart they’ll get a revaluation through now and then they’ll set up an independent body to conduct the revaluations at ten year intervals, a bit like boundary commissions. It might not stop politicians campaigning to freeze the valuations but it will make it politically harder to do so.
And create an automatic revaluation once a house is extended. That can’t be too difficult to do, just tie it into the building control process.
What do you do about things such as - reworking a property to improve energy efficiency can increase the value substantially
?
I think this is why you can’t be too intricate with the valuation/banding process and why I think it needs to be tied to more “headline” items like bedrooms, size, location. You don’t want to discourage improving the housing stock.
How about hearths?
It’s why a land value tax is by far the best system. You can improve your property as much as you like but pay the same tax.
The trouble with all of these proposals is that anything based on a proportion of value that isn't locally set becomes a giant tax on London and the South East. If Barnet council think they're able to set the tax at a lower rate to deliver services then they should be able to do so. Setting a national rate of 0.5% leaves no flexibility and will either result in redistribution (which shouldn't be done with local government taxes) or waste in local governments as they try to spend money they don't need.
Being blunt - council tax is very poor way of raising local taxes - it probably should be a national tax with a percentage of income tax given to councils
No thanks. At least the councils have some say in this and therefore the residents have some say in it. A nationally set tax and settlement process takes local tax policy out of the hands of local people.
So how about 0.3% set by the council + 0.2% wealth
Nope, all set locally. Otherwise it just becomes another redistribution method from the south to the north. I don't have a problem with the concept of the latter but don't hide it under the guise of local taxation. Raise national taxes and do it from those funds if that's the end goal.
Why do you think I split it into 2 - the first bit is set by the council (and can be adjusted) the second (wealth part) is national…
Then add it onto income tax.
No, wealth needs to be taxed as well as income, or otherwise structural inequality in the country is entrenched.
I support taxing property more but how do you define other wealth ?
For example I have far more wealth in my DC pension pots than I do in my property.
Do you include those as wealth to be taxed ? If so then how do you include the equivalent in DB pensions ?
Property is a pretty good proxy of wealth in the UK, and not mobile or concealable.
It's why I always have opposed the LD proposal of a local income tax.
“West Midlands Police discuss disorder that kicked off after misinformation spread online. The Sky News crew covering the unrest in Birmingham were followed by a man holding a knife and wearing a balaclava after broadcasting live.”
I have to say the police are handling this extremely poorly. I don't understand how they haven't cleared the streets of everyone holding weapons regardless of ethnicity. Threatening anyone with a knife is unacceptable and deserves at least a couple of years locked up. Just because the "community leaders" agreed some kind of plan it doesn't mean everyone will stick to it.
It’s utterly incredible
“Community leaders told us it would be fine so we didn’t bother policing it and anyway there were only 94 people with machetes”
It's a form of indirect rule practiced in colonial times, that we seem to still be quite happy to try on our own shores.
“West Midlands Police discuss disorder that kicked off after misinformation spread online. The Sky News crew covering the unrest in Birmingham were followed by a man holding a knife and wearing a balaclava after broadcasting live.”
I have to say the police are handling this extremely poorly. I don't understand how they haven't cleared the streets of everyone holding weapons regardless of ethnicity. Threatening anyone with a knife is unacceptable and deserves at least a couple of years locked up. Just because the "community leaders" agreed some kind of plan it doesn't mean everyone will stick to it.
It’s utterly incredible
“Community leaders told us it would be fine so we didn’t bother policing it and anyway there were only 94 people with machetes”
The British approach of delegating authority to self appointed community leaders, often with extremely chauvinistic and backwards views, is bananas.
Tell me about it.
In Northern Ireland we have community leaders who are in some danger of evolving as far as opposable thumbs. Very low primates…..
Perhaps we could swap them with some people less violent, bigoted and into the drug trade. Hmmmm…. Taliban might be a good fit?
Guido is talking about Council tax switching to a proportional system of x %(0.5%) of the current value. I suspect it's going to happen because changing the bands is impossible as even he points out...
I'd say there may be some weasel words in that from Paul Staines. He's quoting a report from the CSJ, which was founded by Iain Duncan Smith, Tim Montgomerie, Mark Florman and Philippa Stroud.
Havnig said that, a switch to 0.5% of market value would be a huge improvement imo, which if it includes an abolition of Stamp Duty as proposed by its main proponents will be in the financial interests of a large majority.
The main thing I'd say for RR and KS is not to be panicked by a bit of rhetoric from the Right.
Council Tax raises £46.7 billion according to the OBR or about 1.7% of national income so not huge in the cosmic scheme of things. Not sure how which Business Rates raises - way back in 2014-15, it was twice as much as Council Tax but that's probably changed with the pamdemic.
The plan, AIUI, is 0.5% on occupied residential property and 2.5% on empty homes based on a revaluation. There are roughly 24 million homes in the UK.
Doing a crude calculation on Stodge Towers it would mean £250 extra per year.
The % of Council Revenue coming from Council Tax has increased, at the same time as funding levels have been restricted.
That is because Councils have been kept on a starvation diet since ~2010, in both England and Scotland. But more so in England. In Scotland (one of our North Britons such as @Eabhal will tell us) I believe they had a freeze in cash terms for 6-7 consecutive years.
If we want effective and capable Councils they need a fairly big funding boost, and it will take time to build capacity.
I'd say that conservatively Local Authorities need a funding boost from current levels of something like a quarter to a third in the short term, just for recovery to 2010 levels.
The 0.5% suggestion is interesting but it seems to me there are a few challenges:
1) Switching to this system would lead to increased tax in London and SE and reduced tax in the North. How do you make sure that each council has enough money to spend? It sounds like more lateral transfers would be required but then it becomes a less local tax. 2) How do you decide how much each property is worth? In the 1990s, the valuations were done by driving by. The fact there were bands meant into didn't matter if the valuations were slightly out. However, if you are charging 0.5% then you need more precise valuations e.g. a 5k value difference is worth £25 a year 3) How often would valuations be updated? Again there could be issues for council budgets as house prices change e.g. 10% rise=extra money to spend, 10% fall=austerity
I think that’s right. Personally I think the banding system is probably the right approach, though the higher bands could perhaps pay a bit more.
The issue with it is that it has never been updated and there’s never been a good time for a government to force a revaluation.
If Labour are smart they’ll get a revaluation through now and then they’ll set up an independent body to conduct the revaluations at ten year intervals, a bit like boundary commissions. It might not stop politicians campaigning to freeze the valuations but it will make it politically harder to do so.
And create an automatic revaluation once a house is extended. That can’t be too difficult to do, just tie it into the building control process.
What do you do about things such as - reworking a property to improve energy efficiency can increase the value substantially
?
I think this is why you can’t be too intricate with the valuation/banding process and why I think it needs to be tied to more “headline” items like bedrooms, size, location. You don’t want to discourage improving the housing stock.
How about hearths?
It’s why a land value tax is by far the best system. You can improve your property as much as you like but pay the same tax.
The trouble with all of these proposals is that anything based on a proportion of value that isn't locally set becomes a giant tax on London and the South East. If Barnet council think they're able to set the tax at a lower rate to deliver services then they should be able to do so. Setting a national rate of 0.5% leaves no flexibility and will either result in redistribution (which shouldn't be done with local government taxes) or waste in local governments as they try to spend money they don't need.
Being blunt - council tax is very poor way of raising local taxes - it probably should be a national tax with a percentage of income tax given to councils
No thanks. At least the councils have some say in this and therefore the residents have some say in it. A nationally set tax and settlement process takes local tax policy out of the hands of local people.
So how about 0.3% set by the council + 0.2% wealth
Nope, all set locally. Otherwise it just becomes another redistribution method from the south to the north. I don't have a problem with the concept of the latter but don't hide it under the guise of local taxation. Raise national taxes and do it from those funds if that's the end goal.
Why do you think I split it into 2 - the first bit is set by the council (and can be adjusted) the second (wealth part) is national…
Then add it onto income tax.
No, wealth needs to be taxed as well as income, or otherwise structural inequality in the country is entrenched.
It’s worth noting that it’s the wealthier right wing posters on here who are now objecting to a wealth tax…
A wealth tax would need to have minimum thresholds and fundamentally is someone who owns a £3m house with a £2.4m mortgage wealthy? Would you tax that person on the whole £3m or just the £0.6m?
They live in a £3m house - if they can afford a £2.4m mortgage at 4.5% interest they can afford a 0.5% tax bill
So it's not a wealth tax then because that person doesn't have £3m in wealth, they have £0.6m in wealth.
Walz has two great advantages as a politician: He is not a lawyer -- and he is a winning football coach. (Most Americans dislike lawyers -- and love winning coaches, especially football coaches.) "After returning, Walz took a job teaching and coaching in Alliance, Nebraska, where he met his wife, Gwen Whipple, a fellow teacher.[11] He and Gwen married in 1994, and moved two years later to Mankato in Minnesota, his wife's home state,[11] where he worked as a geography teacher and coach at Mankato West High School.[10] He coached the football team to its first state championship in 1999." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim_Walz
And, then there is this: "Walz was ranked the 7th-most bipartisan House member during the 114th Congress (and the most bipartisan member from Minnesota) in the Bipartisan Index created by The Lugar Center and the McCourt School of Public Policy, which ranks members of Congress by measuring how often their bills attract co-sponsors from the opposite party and how often they co-sponsor bills by members of the opposite party."
Good comment. Neither part of the "liberal elitist" tag is going to stick.
Early signs are that the Trump campaign is already flailing around, trying to find an effective attack.
I quite like the "first non-lawyer on a Democratic ticket since Jimmy Carter" line.
Average blood pressure in the posh bit of Sheffield increases a little.
It isn't a good idea for Dems to mention Jimmy Carter.
It’s almost universally agreed that he’s America’s best former President, doing much better work after he left office than he did in office. His reputation has definitely solid, even amongst Republicans -
Guido is talking about Council tax switching to a proportional system of x %(0.5%) of the current value. I suspect it's going to happen because changing the bands is impossible as even he points out...
I'd say there may be some weasel words in that from Paul Staines. He's quoting a report from the CSJ, which was founded by Iain Duncan Smith, Tim Montgomerie, Mark Florman and Philippa Stroud.
Havnig said that, a switch to 0.5% of market value would be a huge improvement imo, which if it includes an abolition of Stamp Duty as proposed by its main proponents will be in the financial interests of a large majority.
The main thing I'd say for RR and KS is not to be panicked by a bit of rhetoric from the Right.
Council Tax raises £46.7 billion according to the OBR or about 1.7% of national income so not huge in the cosmic scheme of things. Not sure how which Business Rates raises - way back in 2014-15, it was twice as much as Council Tax but that's probably changed with the pamdemic.
The plan, AIUI, is 0.5% on occupied residential property and 2.5% on empty homes based on a revaluation. There are roughly 24 million homes in the UK.
Doing a crude calculation on Stodge Towers it would mean £250 extra per year.
The % of Council Revenue coming from Council Tax has increased, at the same time as funding levels have been restricted.
That is because Councils have been kept on a starvation diet since ~2010, in both England and Scotland. But more so in England. In Scotland (one of our North Britons such as @Eabhal will tell us) I believe they had a freeze in cash terms for 6-7 consecutive years.
If we want effective and capable Councils they need a fairly big funding boost, and it will take time to build capacity.
I'd say that conservatively Local Authorities need a funding boost from current levels of something like a quarter to a third in the short term, just for recovery to 2010 levels.
The 0.5% suggestion is interesting but it seems to me there are a few challenges:
1) Switching to this system would lead to increased tax in London and SE and reduced tax in the North. How do you make sure that each council has enough money to spend? It sounds like more lateral transfers would be required but then it becomes a less local tax. 2) How do you decide how much each property is worth? In the 1990s, the valuations were done by driving by. The fact there were bands meant into didn't matter if the valuations were slightly out. However, if you are charging 0.5% then you need more precise valuations e.g. a 5k value difference is worth £25 a year 3) How often would valuations be updated? Again there could be issues for council budgets as house prices change e.g. 10% rise=extra money to spend, 10% fall=austerity
I think that’s right. Personally I think the banding system is probably the right approach, though the higher bands could perhaps pay a bit more.
The issue with it is that it has never been updated and there’s never been a good time for a government to force a revaluation.
If Labour are smart they’ll get a revaluation through now and then they’ll set up an independent body to conduct the revaluations at ten year intervals, a bit like boundary commissions. It might not stop politicians campaigning to freeze the valuations but it will make it politically harder to do so.
And create an automatic revaluation once a house is extended. That can’t be too difficult to do, just tie it into the building control process.
What do you do about things such as - reworking a property to improve energy efficiency can increase the value substantially
?
I think this is why you can’t be too intricate with the valuation/banding process and why I think it needs to be tied to more “headline” items like bedrooms, size, location. You don’t want to discourage improving the housing stock.
How about hearths?
It’s why a land value tax is by far the best system. You can improve your property as much as you like but pay the same tax.
The trouble with all of these proposals is that anything based on a proportion of value that isn't locally set becomes a giant tax on London and the South East. If Barnet council think they're able to set the tax at a lower rate to deliver services then they should be able to do so. Setting a national rate of 0.5% leaves no flexibility and will either result in redistribution (which shouldn't be done with local government taxes) or waste in local governments as they try to spend money they don't need.
Being blunt - council tax is very poor way of raising local taxes - it probably should be a national tax with a percentage of income tax given to councils
No thanks. At least the councils have some say in this and therefore the residents have some say in it. A nationally set tax and settlement process takes local tax policy out of the hands of local people.
So how about 0.3% set by the council + 0.2% wealth
Nope, all set locally. Otherwise it just becomes another redistribution method from the south to the north. I don't have a problem with the concept of the latter but don't hide it under the guise of local taxation. Raise national taxes and do it from those funds if that's the end goal.
Why do you think I split it into 2 - the first bit is set by the council (and can be adjusted) the second (wealth part) is national…
Then add it onto income tax.
No, wealth needs to be taxed as well as income, or otherwise structural inequality in the country is entrenched.
It’s worth noting that it’s the wealthier right wing posters on here who are now objecting to a wealth tax…
A wealth tax would need to have minimum thresholds and fundamentally is someone who owns a £3m house with a £2.4m mortgage wealthy? Would you tax that person on the whole £3m or just the £0.6m?
It would have to be the net £0.6m, the other £2.4m is held by other people - those who have savings in the building society or bank.
But what seems to be being proposed is a flat 0.5% tax on property values, not net wealth, which is crackers.
If you are arguing it’s crackers because it won’t raise as much as council tax currently does I agree.
If you are arguing it’s crackers because some people in the South East / London will pay more than additional bands (the other solution) is going to create the same issue.
My problem is that the banding of houses in 1990 was done badly and even ignoring that in a lot of areas many houses that are Band E/F are now worth less than band C/D houses in other parts of the town that have improved.
Allie Hodgkins-Brown @AllieHBNews · 2m Wednesday’s Daily TELEGRAPH: “Rioters face terror charges, warns DPP”
Throw the book at them. No mercy.
Mein Kampf?
I think you will find that it was the readers of Mein Kampf who beat people up in the street, smashed up their shops and tried to burn their houses and places of worship.
Guido is talking about Council tax switching to a proportional system of x %(0.5%) of the current value. I suspect it's going to happen because changing the bands is impossible as even he points out...
I'd say there may be some weasel words in that from Paul Staines. He's quoting a report from the CSJ, which was founded by Iain Duncan Smith, Tim Montgomerie, Mark Florman and Philippa Stroud.
Havnig said that, a switch to 0.5% of market value would be a huge improvement imo, which if it includes an abolition of Stamp Duty as proposed by its main proponents will be in the financial interests of a large majority.
The main thing I'd say for RR and KS is not to be panicked by a bit of rhetoric from the Right.
Council Tax raises £46.7 billion according to the OBR or about 1.7% of national income so not huge in the cosmic scheme of things. Not sure how which Business Rates raises - way back in 2014-15, it was twice as much as Council Tax but that's probably changed with the pamdemic.
The plan, AIUI, is 0.5% on occupied residential property and 2.5% on empty homes based on a revaluation. There are roughly 24 million homes in the UK.
Doing a crude calculation on Stodge Towers it would mean £250 extra per year.
The % of Council Revenue coming from Council Tax has increased, at the same time as funding levels have been restricted.
That is because Councils have been kept on a starvation diet since ~2010, in both England and Scotland. But more so in England. In Scotland (one of our North Britons such as @Eabhal will tell us) I believe they had a freeze in cash terms for 6-7 consecutive years.
If we want effective and capable Councils they need a fairly big funding boost, and it will take time to build capacity.
I'd say that conservatively Local Authorities need a funding boost from current levels of something like a quarter to a third in the short term, just for recovery to 2010 levels.
The 0.5% suggestion is interesting but it seems to me there are a few challenges:
1) Switching to this system would lead to increased tax in London and SE and reduced tax in the North. How do you make sure that each council has enough money to spend? It sounds like more lateral transfers would be required but then it becomes a less local tax. 2) How do you decide how much each property is worth? In the 1990s, the valuations were done by driving by. The fact there were bands meant into didn't matter if the valuations were slightly out. However, if you are charging 0.5% then you need more precise valuations e.g. a 5k value difference is worth £25 a year 3) How often would valuations be updated? Again there could be issues for council budgets as house prices change e.g. 10% rise=extra money to spend, 10% fall=austerity
I think that’s right. Personally I think the banding system is probably the right approach, though the higher bands could perhaps pay a bit more.
The issue with it is that it has never been updated and there’s never been a good time for a government to force a revaluation.
If Labour are smart they’ll get a revaluation through now and then they’ll set up an independent body to conduct the revaluations at ten year intervals, a bit like boundary commissions. It might not stop politicians campaigning to freeze the valuations but it will make it politically harder to do so.
And create an automatic revaluation once a house is extended. That can’t be too difficult to do, just tie it into the building control process.
What do you do about things such as - reworking a property to improve energy efficiency can increase the value substantially
?
I think this is why you can’t be too intricate with the valuation/banding process and why I think it needs to be tied to more “headline” items like bedrooms, size, location. You don’t want to discourage improving the housing stock.
How about hearths?
It’s why a land value tax is by far the best system. You can improve your property as much as you like but pay the same tax.
The trouble with all of these proposals is that anything based on a proportion of value that isn't locally set becomes a giant tax on London and the South East. If Barnet council think they're able to set the tax at a lower rate to deliver services then they should be able to do so. Setting a national rate of 0.5% leaves no flexibility and will either result in redistribution (which shouldn't be done with local government taxes) or waste in local governments as they try to spend money they don't need.
Being blunt - council tax is very poor way of raising local taxes - it probably should be a national tax with a percentage of income tax given to councils
No thanks. At least the councils have some say in this and therefore the residents have some say in it. A nationally set tax and settlement process takes local tax policy out of the hands of local people.
So how about 0.3% set by the council + 0.2% wealth
Nope, all set locally. Otherwise it just becomes another redistribution method from the south to the north. I don't have a problem with the concept of the latter but don't hide it under the guise of local taxation. Raise national taxes and do it from those funds if that's the end goal.
Why do you think I split it into 2 - the first bit is set by the council (and can be adjusted) the second (wealth part) is national…
Then add it onto income tax.
No, wealth needs to be taxed as well as income, or otherwise structural inequality in the country is entrenched.
It’s worth noting that it’s the wealthier right wing posters on here who are now objecting to a wealth tax…
A wealth tax would need to have minimum thresholds and fundamentally is someone who owns a £3m house with a £2.4m mortgage wealthy? Would you tax that person on the whole £3m or just the £0.6m?
They live in a £3m house - if they can afford a £2.4m mortgage at 4.5% interest they can afford a 0.5% tax bill
The challenge with switching to a wealth tax is evasion. Income tax and NI are hard to evade if you are on PAYE; likewise council tax is hard to evade. A wealth tax though is hard for the Revenue to fully enforce - you would presumably be relying on some form of self-declaration and then there is a lot of subjectivity - how much is that painting worth or shares in the family firm? And it becomes easier for people to hide cash in the mattress or buy gold bars.
Yes but the next general election is four or five years away. Things that ought to matter, often don't.
Indeed
However isn’t it a political truism that perceptions are crucially formed in the first 100 days of office? And after that they become hard to shift
Starmer has been given a seriously tough test on his second month of office. I don’t envy him. However he came in with baggage that is entirely his own fault - taking the knee AFTER the BLM riots
The British public believe he is making a hash of this major crisis. Pompous but ineffective, hypocritical and bloviating?
He may find this perception hangs around
That said there are exceptions to the rule. Thatcher was massively unpopular at first but became more popular over time
Yes, for me the problem isn't so much the pomposity - hard to disapprove of rioters without sounding pompous - or the ineffectuality - a common failing in the face of rioting - but that he seemed so equivocal about rioting until it was poor white people doing it.
These aren't poor white people. They're violent racists.
Who probably also happen to be poor, white people.
That's disingenuous to us poor white people. Most of us don't riot.
Most men don't rape women either, yet I am assured rape is the fault of all men.
What a silly post. You're better than that 'Tubbs.
I'm not. Its been a long day.
In general I think the danger is that too many are ignoring the left behind of the country, AGAIN. Nothing makes racism right, nor rioting, but its essential to ask why things happen. Too many of my colleagues at Uni could not understand the Brexit vote because 'everyone I know voted remain'. Well yes, you know upper middle class academics.
There are many UK populations. Most are decent, kind folk. Some are not. Some are bitter, twisted, racist thugs. But a lot of people do feel left behind and feel that the country has let in too many immigrants. Thats not my opinion, but if you don't understand that viewpoint (while disagreeing) you will never understand the reasons.
My admonishment was for your "rape" comment.
I am well aware of the "left behind". They have been left behind for generations by the Labour party in Northern, Midlands, Scottish and Welsh s***holes. Hence they voted, SNP, Leave and "lent"their vote to Johnson in 2019, who also left them behind. They lent their vote to Farage in 2024 and probably 2029. He will let them down too.
When the politicians let them down the politicians look for scapegoats. The EU, foreigners, scroungers, illegal immigrants. Scoundrel like Farage buy the easy win, so we are where we are.
You say they are let down - but what exactly do they want and is it achievable?
The problem is that a lot of people want the impossible and don't understand that that is not achievable...
I go back to public funds being corruptly milked by late Labour Councillors like T. Dan Smith instead of funding civic society. Teesport smells similar, and in national government we had the PPE affair.
Teesport is a private company. Teesworks is the issue.
However both Teesworks and PPE are Tory corruption scandals - and neither have anything to do with the things the "left behind" want..
So good attempt to change your narrative but I'll repeat my previous questions
You say they (the "left behind") are let down - but what exactly do they want and is it achievable?
Of course Labour corruption is important over decades. Public funds are hijacked by Labour Councillors. T Dan Smith in Newcastle, Graham Jenkins (Richard Burton's brother) in Port Talbot in the 1970s for example. and not spent benefitted the good burghers of these local authorities.
What do the left behind want? Free stuff that they think is being given to immigrants and scroungers. People like Farage promote the lie that immigrants are given free stuff like houses and cars, not available to them.
Why not ask them instead of projecting your anti working class prejudice onto them.
You are making the grave error of justifying rioting thugs by suggesting that they have legitimate grievances.
Poor white people exist. Many of them are holding down multiple jobs to feed their children and heat their homes. If people like Farage and Yaxley-Lennon tell them they can't heat their homes and feed their children because of foreigners, or the EU some might believe them, but few will go out and riot. The trouble is the people pushing their buttons have less working class credentials that you suggest I have.
You can have a legitimate grievance while still having absolutely no grounds to justify rioting.
But I don't believe 20 year old Liam Grey from Mexborough had a grievance, he was out for a ruck.
People from Mexborough wont like that description - he's actually from Kilnhurst.
You can get a three bed semi in his street for about £140k.
As you say he was out for a ruck, in an earlier generation he would have got it at a football match, a picket line or a Friday night.
It wasn't the lack of opportunities or lifelong poverty.
Trump is value here. I'd vote for Kamala over the orange one, but I'm aware the market is wish-casting.
I think what it will come down to is the economy. Most Americans have become poorer as a result of the madcap inflation of the last few years. And Trump is really sensitive to those working class stiffs who are worse off, hence his no tax on tips policy.
Irrespective of one's ideology, parties in power during massive economic downturns, such as we've seen in every western nation post Covid and Ukraine, don't tend to do well.
Dispassionately, my money remains on Trump. As it would almost any other candidate not in government for the last four years.
Walz has two great advantages as a politician: He is not a lawyer -- and he is a winning football coach. (Most Americans dislike lawyers -- and love winning coaches, especially football coaches.) "After returning, Walz took a job teaching and coaching in Alliance, Nebraska, where he met his wife, Gwen Whipple, a fellow teacher.[11] He and Gwen married in 1994, and moved two years later to Mankato in Minnesota, his wife's home state,[11] where he worked as a geography teacher and coach at Mankato West High School.[10] He coached the football team to its first state championship in 1999." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim_Walz
And, then there is this: "Walz was ranked the 7th-most bipartisan House member during the 114th Congress (and the most bipartisan member from Minnesota) in the Bipartisan Index created by The Lugar Center and the McCourt School of Public Policy, which ranks members of Congress by measuring how often their bills attract co-sponsors from the opposite party and how often they co-sponsor bills by members of the opposite party."
Good comment. Neither part of the "liberal elitist" tag is going to stick.
Early signs are that the Trump campaign is already flailing around, trying to find an effective attack.
I quite like the "first non-lawyer on a Democratic ticket since Jimmy Carter" line.
Average blood pressure in the posh bit of Sheffield increases a little.
It isn't a good idea for Dems to mention Jimmy Carter.
It’s almost universally agreed that he’s America’s best former President, doing much better work after he left office than he did in office. His reputation has definitely solid, even amongst Republicans -
Guido is talking about Council tax switching to a proportional system of x %(0.5%) of the current value. I suspect it's going to happen because changing the bands is impossible as even he points out...
I'd say there may be some weasel words in that from Paul Staines. He's quoting a report from the CSJ, which was founded by Iain Duncan Smith, Tim Montgomerie, Mark Florman and Philippa Stroud.
Havnig said that, a switch to 0.5% of market value would be a huge improvement imo, which if it includes an abolition of Stamp Duty as proposed by its main proponents will be in the financial interests of a large majority.
The main thing I'd say for RR and KS is not to be panicked by a bit of rhetoric from the Right.
Council Tax raises £46.7 billion according to the OBR or about 1.7% of national income so not huge in the cosmic scheme of things. Not sure how which Business Rates raises - way back in 2014-15, it was twice as much as Council Tax but that's probably changed with the pamdemic.
The plan, AIUI, is 0.5% on occupied residential property and 2.5% on empty homes based on a revaluation. There are roughly 24 million homes in the UK.
Doing a crude calculation on Stodge Towers it would mean £250 extra per year.
The % of Council Revenue coming from Council Tax has increased, at the same time as funding levels have been restricted.
That is because Councils have been kept on a starvation diet since ~2010, in both England and Scotland. But more so in England. In Scotland (one of our North Britons such as @Eabhal will tell us) I believe they had a freeze in cash terms for 6-7 consecutive years.
If we want effective and capable Councils they need a fairly big funding boost, and it will take time to build capacity.
I'd say that conservatively Local Authorities need a funding boost from current levels of something like a quarter to a third in the short term, just for recovery to 2010 levels.
The 0.5% suggestion is interesting but it seems to me there are a few challenges:
1) Switching to this system would lead to increased tax in London and SE and reduced tax in the North. How do you make sure that each council has enough money to spend? It sounds like more lateral transfers would be required but then it becomes a less local tax. 2) How do you decide how much each property is worth? In the 1990s, the valuations were done by driving by. The fact there were bands meant into didn't matter if the valuations were slightly out. However, if you are charging 0.5% then you need more precise valuations e.g. a 5k value difference is worth £25 a year 3) How often would valuations be updated? Again there could be issues for council budgets as house prices change e.g. 10% rise=extra money to spend, 10% fall=austerity
I think that’s right. Personally I think the banding system is probably the right approach, though the higher bands could perhaps pay a bit more.
The issue with it is that it has never been updated and there’s never been a good time for a government to force a revaluation.
If Labour are smart they’ll get a revaluation through now and then they’ll set up an independent body to conduct the revaluations at ten year intervals, a bit like boundary commissions. It might not stop politicians campaigning to freeze the valuations but it will make it politically harder to do so.
And create an automatic revaluation once a house is extended. That can’t be too difficult to do, just tie it into the building control process.
What do you do about things such as - reworking a property to improve energy efficiency can increase the value substantially
?
I think this is why you can’t be too intricate with the valuation/banding process and why I think it needs to be tied to more “headline” items like bedrooms, size, location. You don’t want to discourage improving the housing stock.
How about hearths?
It’s why a land value tax is by far the best system. You can improve your property as much as you like but pay the same tax.
The trouble with all of these proposals is that anything based on a proportion of value that isn't locally set becomes a giant tax on London and the South East. If Barnet council think they're able to set the tax at a lower rate to deliver services then they should be able to do so. Setting a national rate of 0.5% leaves no flexibility and will either result in redistribution (which shouldn't be done with local government taxes) or waste in local governments as they try to spend money they don't need.
Being blunt - council tax is very poor way of raising local taxes - it probably should be a national tax with a percentage of income tax given to councils
No thanks. At least the councils have some say in this and therefore the residents have some say in it. A nationally set tax and settlement process takes local tax policy out of the hands of local people.
So how about 0.3% set by the council + 0.2% wealth
Nope, all set locally. Otherwise it just becomes another redistribution method from the south to the north. I don't have a problem with the concept of the latter but don't hide it under the guise of local taxation. Raise national taxes and do it from those funds if that's the end goal.
Why do you think I split it into 2 - the first bit is set by the council (and can be adjusted) the second (wealth part) is national…
Then add it onto income tax.
No, wealth needs to be taxed as well as income, or otherwise structural inequality in the country is entrenched.
It’s worth noting that it’s the wealthier right wing posters on here who are now objecting to a wealth tax…
A wealth tax would need to have minimum thresholds and fundamentally is someone who owns a £3m house with a £2.4m mortgage wealthy? Would you tax that person on the whole £3m or just the £0.6m?
They live in a £3m house - if they can afford a £2.4m mortgage at 4.5% interest they can afford a 0.5% tax bill
The challenge with switching to a wealth tax is evasion. Income tax and NI are hard to evade if you are on PAYE; likewise council tax is hard to evade. A wealth tax though is hard for the Revenue to fully enforce - you would presumably be relying on some form of self-declaration and then there is a lot of subjectivity - how much is that painting worth or shares in the family firm? And it becomes easier for people to hide cash in the mattress or buy gold bars.
Which is why every time we’ve looked at the idea on this site we end up using houses as a proxy for wealth.
And the advantage there is if you wish to move to a cheaper house, your wealth would likely be shifted into productive purposes (investment in the stock market / a business) to generate a return.
Guido is talking about Council tax switching to a proportional system of x %(0.5%) of the current value. I suspect it's going to happen because changing the bands is impossible as even he points out...
I'd say there may be some weasel words in that from Paul Staines. He's quoting a report from the CSJ, which was founded by Iain Duncan Smith, Tim Montgomerie, Mark Florman and Philippa Stroud.
Havnig said that, a switch to 0.5% of market value would be a huge improvement imo, which if it includes an abolition of Stamp Duty as proposed by its main proponents will be in the financial interests of a large majority.
The main thing I'd say for RR and KS is not to be panicked by a bit of rhetoric from the Right.
Council Tax raises £46.7 billion according to the OBR or about 1.7% of national income so not huge in the cosmic scheme of things. Not sure how which Business Rates raises - way back in 2014-15, it was twice as much as Council Tax but that's probably changed with the pamdemic.
The plan, AIUI, is 0.5% on occupied residential property and 2.5% on empty homes based on a revaluation. There are roughly 24 million homes in the UK.
Doing a crude calculation on Stodge Towers it would mean £250 extra per year.
The % of Council Revenue coming from Council Tax has increased, at the same time as funding levels have been restricted.
That is because Councils have been kept on a starvation diet since ~2010, in both England and Scotland. But more so in England. In Scotland (one of our North Britons such as @Eabhal will tell us) I believe they had a freeze in cash terms for 6-7 consecutive years.
If we want effective and capable Councils they need a fairly big funding boost, and it will take time to build capacity.
I'd say that conservatively Local Authorities need a funding boost from current levels of something like a quarter to a third in the short term, just for recovery to 2010 levels.
The 0.5% suggestion is interesting but it seems to me there are a few challenges:
1) Switching to this system would lead to increased tax in London and SE and reduced tax in the North. How do you make sure that each council has enough money to spend? It sounds like more lateral transfers would be required but then it becomes a less local tax. 2) How do you decide how much each property is worth? In the 1990s, the valuations were done by driving by. The fact there were bands meant into didn't matter if the valuations were slightly out. However, if you are charging 0.5% then you need more precise valuations e.g. a 5k value difference is worth £25 a year 3) How often would valuations be updated? Again there could be issues for council budgets as house prices change e.g. 10% rise=extra money to spend, 10% fall=austerity
I think that’s right. Personally I think the banding system is probably the right approach, though the higher bands could perhaps pay a bit more.
The issue with it is that it has never been updated and there’s never been a good time for a government to force a revaluation.
If Labour are smart they’ll get a revaluation through now and then they’ll set up an independent body to conduct the revaluations at ten year intervals, a bit like boundary commissions. It might not stop politicians campaigning to freeze the valuations but it will make it politically harder to do so.
And create an automatic revaluation once a house is extended. That can’t be too difficult to do, just tie it into the building control process.
What do you do about things such as - reworking a property to improve energy efficiency can increase the value substantially
?
I think this is why you can’t be too intricate with the valuation/banding process and why I think it needs to be tied to more “headline” items like bedrooms, size, location. You don’t want to discourage improving the housing stock.
How about hearths?
It’s why a land value tax is by far the best system. You can improve your property as much as you like but pay the same tax.
The trouble with all of these proposals is that anything based on a proportion of value that isn't locally set becomes a giant tax on London and the South East. If Barnet council think they're able to set the tax at a lower rate to deliver services then they should be able to do so. Setting a national rate of 0.5% leaves no flexibility and will either result in redistribution (which shouldn't be done with local government taxes) or waste in local governments as they try to spend money they don't need.
Being blunt - council tax is very poor way of raising local taxes - it probably should be a national tax with a percentage of income tax given to councils
No thanks. At least the councils have some say in this and therefore the residents have some say in it. A nationally set tax and settlement process takes local tax policy out of the hands of local people.
So how about 0.3% set by the council + 0.2% wealth
Nope, all set locally. Otherwise it just becomes another redistribution method from the south to the north. I don't have a problem with the concept of the latter but don't hide it under the guise of local taxation. Raise national taxes and do it from those funds if that's the end goal.
Why do you think I split it into 2 - the first bit is set by the council (and can be adjusted) the second (wealth part) is national…
Then add it onto income tax.
No, wealth needs to be taxed as well as income, or otherwise structural inequality in the country is entrenched.
It’s worth noting that it’s the wealthier right wing posters on here who are now objecting to a wealth tax…
A wealth tax would need to have minimum thresholds and fundamentally is someone who owns a £3m house with a £2.4m mortgage wealthy? Would you tax that person on the whole £3m or just the £0.6m?
They live in a £3m house - if they can afford a £2.4m mortgage at 4.5% interest they can afford a 0.5% tax bill
So it's not a wealth tax then because that person doesn't have £3m in wealth, they have £0.6m in wealth.
Correct. A bit like council tax.
It's just council tax with a formula. It's not perfect. There will be weird distortions. A land value tax is probably better. But unlike all other forms of tax/wealth/land tax, it's possible.
Farage can go fxck himself . He’s thrown petrol onto the flames .
These riots have been enabled by the toxic discourse of those in government these last 5 years.
These riots have been enabled by 25 years of stratospheric immigration levels.
The other, and probably better explanation, is the utter failure of levelling up (or whatever you want to call it). It the economic prospects of the poorest WWC had improved, you probably wouldn’t be seeing this, anlmost irrespective of immigration levels.
Guido is talking about Council tax switching to a proportional system of x %(0.5%) of the current value. I suspect it's going to happen because changing the bands is impossible as even he points out...
I'd say there may be some weasel words in that from Paul Staines. He's quoting a report from the CSJ, which was founded by Iain Duncan Smith, Tim Montgomerie, Mark Florman and Philippa Stroud.
Havnig said that, a switch to 0.5% of market value would be a huge improvement imo, which if it includes an abolition of Stamp Duty as proposed by its main proponents will be in the financial interests of a large majority.
The main thing I'd say for RR and KS is not to be panicked by a bit of rhetoric from the Right.
Council Tax raises £46.7 billion according to the OBR or about 1.7% of national income so not huge in the cosmic scheme of things. Not sure how which Business Rates raises - way back in 2014-15, it was twice as much as Council Tax but that's probably changed with the pamdemic.
The plan, AIUI, is 0.5% on occupied residential property and 2.5% on empty homes based on a revaluation. There are roughly 24 million homes in the UK.
Doing a crude calculation on Stodge Towers it would mean £250 extra per year.
The % of Council Revenue coming from Council Tax has increased, at the same time as funding levels have been restricted.
That is because Councils have been kept on a starvation diet since ~2010, in both England and Scotland. But more so in England. In Scotland (one of our North Britons such as @Eabhal will tell us) I believe they had a freeze in cash terms for 6-7 consecutive years.
If we want effective and capable Councils they need a fairly big funding boost, and it will take time to build capacity.
I'd say that conservatively Local Authorities need a funding boost from current levels of something like a quarter to a third in the short term, just for recovery to 2010 levels.
The 0.5% suggestion is interesting but it seems to me there are a few challenges:
1) Switching to this system would lead to increased tax in London and SE and reduced tax in the North. How do you make sure that each council has enough money to spend? It sounds like more lateral transfers would be required but then it becomes a less local tax. 2) How do you decide how much each property is worth? In the 1990s, the valuations were done by driving by. The fact there were bands meant into didn't matter if the valuations were slightly out. However, if you are charging 0.5% then you need more precise valuations e.g. a 5k value difference is worth £25 a year 3) How often would valuations be updated? Again there could be issues for council budgets as house prices change e.g. 10% rise=extra money to spend, 10% fall=austerity
I think that’s right. Personally I think the banding system is probably the right approach, though the higher bands could perhaps pay a bit more.
The issue with it is that it has never been updated and there’s never been a good time for a government to force a revaluation.
If Labour are smart they’ll get a revaluation through now and then they’ll set up an independent body to conduct the revaluations at ten year intervals, a bit like boundary commissions. It might not stop politicians campaigning to freeze the valuations but it will make it politically harder to do so.
And create an automatic revaluation once a house is extended. That can’t be too difficult to do, just tie it into the building control process.
What do you do about things such as - reworking a property to improve energy efficiency can increase the value substantially
?
I think this is why you can’t be too intricate with the valuation/banding process and why I think it needs to be tied to more “headline” items like bedrooms, size, location. You don’t want to discourage improving the housing stock.
How about hearths?
It’s why a land value tax is by far the best system. You can improve your property as much as you like but pay the same tax.
The trouble with all of these proposals is that anything based on a proportion of value that isn't locally set becomes a giant tax on London and the South East. If Barnet council think they're able to set the tax at a lower rate to deliver services then they should be able to do so. Setting a national rate of 0.5% leaves no flexibility and will either result in redistribution (which shouldn't be done with local government taxes) or waste in local governments as they try to spend money they don't need.
Being blunt - council tax is very poor way of raising local taxes - it probably should be a national tax with a percentage of income tax given to councils
No thanks. At least the councils have some say in this and therefore the residents have some say in it. A nationally set tax and settlement process takes local tax policy out of the hands of local people.
So how about 0.3% set by the council + 0.2% wealth
Nope, all set locally. Otherwise it just becomes another redistribution method from the south to the north. I don't have a problem with the concept of the latter but don't hide it under the guise of local taxation. Raise national taxes and do it from those funds if that's the end goal.
Why do you think I split it into 2 - the first bit is set by the council (and can be adjusted) the second (wealth part) is national…
Then add it onto income tax.
No, wealth needs to be taxed as well as income, or otherwise structural inequality in the country is entrenched.
It’s worth noting that it’s the wealthier right wing posters on here who are now objecting to a wealth tax…
A wealth tax would need to have minimum thresholds and fundamentally is someone who owns a £3m house with a £2.4m mortgage wealthy? Would you tax that person on the whole £3m or just the £0.6m?
They live in a £3m house - if they can afford a £2.4m mortgage at 4.5% interest they can afford a 0.5% tax bill
So it's not a wealth tax then because that person doesn't have £3m in wealth, they have £0.6m in wealth.
If Labour seriously tries to impose a property tax remotely like the one proposed you'll know they're actively trying to lose the next election. They'd alienate virtually anyone of any influence in the country, lose London for a generation and please only their core vote and most of them only slightly.
Guido is talking about Council tax switching to a proportional system of x %(0.5%) of the current value. I suspect it's going to happen because changing the bands is impossible as even he points out...
I'd say there may be some weasel words in that from Paul Staines. He's quoting a report from the CSJ, which was founded by Iain Duncan Smith, Tim Montgomerie, Mark Florman and Philippa Stroud.
Havnig said that, a switch to 0.5% of market value would be a huge improvement imo, which if it includes an abolition of Stamp Duty as proposed by its main proponents will be in the financial interests of a large majority.
The main thing I'd say for RR and KS is not to be panicked by a bit of rhetoric from the Right.
Council Tax raises £46.7 billion according to the OBR or about 1.7% of national income so not huge in the cosmic scheme of things. Not sure how which Business Rates raises - way back in 2014-15, it was twice as much as Council Tax but that's probably changed with the pamdemic.
The plan, AIUI, is 0.5% on occupied residential property and 2.5% on empty homes based on a revaluation. There are roughly 24 million homes in the UK.
Doing a crude calculation on Stodge Towers it would mean £250 extra per year.
The % of Council Revenue coming from Council Tax has increased, at the same time as funding levels have been restricted.
That is because Councils have been kept on a starvation diet since ~2010, in both England and Scotland. But more so in England. In Scotland (one of our North Britons such as @Eabhal will tell us) I believe they had a freeze in cash terms for 6-7 consecutive years.
If we want effective and capable Councils they need a fairly big funding boost, and it will take time to build capacity.
I'd say that conservatively Local Authorities need a funding boost from current levels of something like a quarter to a third in the short term, just for recovery to 2010 levels.
The 0.5% suggestion is interesting but it seems to me there are a few challenges:
1) Switching to this system would lead to increased tax in London and SE and reduced tax in the North. How do you make sure that each council has enough money to spend? It sounds like more lateral transfers would be required but then it becomes a less local tax. 2) How do you decide how much each property is worth? In the 1990s, the valuations were done by driving by. The fact there were bands meant into didn't matter if the valuations were slightly out. However, if you are charging 0.5% then you need more precise valuations e.g. a 5k value difference is worth £25 a year 3) How often would valuations be updated? Again there could be issues for council budgets as house prices change e.g. 10% rise=extra money to spend, 10% fall=austerity
I think that’s right. Personally I think the banding system is probably the right approach, though the higher bands could perhaps pay a bit more.
The issue with it is that it has never been updated and there’s never been a good time for a government to force a revaluation.
If Labour are smart they’ll get a revaluation through now and then they’ll set up an independent body to conduct the revaluations at ten year intervals, a bit like boundary commissions. It might not stop politicians campaigning to freeze the valuations but it will make it politically harder to do so.
And create an automatic revaluation once a house is extended. That can’t be too difficult to do, just tie it into the building control process.
What do you do about things such as - reworking a property to improve energy efficiency can increase the value substantially
?
I think this is why you can’t be too intricate with the valuation/banding process and why I think it needs to be tied to more “headline” items like bedrooms, size, location. You don’t want to discourage improving the housing stock.
How about hearths?
It’s why a land value tax is by far the best system. You can improve your property as much as you like but pay the same tax.
The trouble with all of these proposals is that anything based on a proportion of value that isn't locally set becomes a giant tax on London and the South East. If Barnet council think they're able to set the tax at a lower rate to deliver services then they should be able to do so. Setting a national rate of 0.5% leaves no flexibility and will either result in redistribution (which shouldn't be done with local government taxes) or waste in local governments as they try to spend money they don't need.
Being blunt - council tax is very poor way of raising local taxes - it probably should be a national tax with a percentage of income tax given to councils
No thanks. At least the councils have some say in this and therefore the residents have some say in it. A nationally set tax and settlement process takes local tax policy out of the hands of local people.
So how about 0.3% set by the council + 0.2% wealth
Nope, all set locally. Otherwise it just becomes another redistribution method from the south to the north. I don't have a problem with the concept of the latter but don't hide it under the guise of local taxation. Raise national taxes and do it from those funds if that's the end goal.
Why do you think I split it into 2 - the first bit is set by the council (and can be adjusted) the second (wealth part) is national…
Then add it onto income tax.
No, wealth needs to be taxed as well as income, or otherwise structural inequality in the country is entrenched.
It’s worth noting that it’s the wealthier right wing posters on here who are now objecting to a wealth tax…
A wealth tax would need to have minimum thresholds and fundamentally is someone who owns a £3m house with a £2.4m mortgage wealthy? Would you tax that person on the whole £3m or just the £0.6m?
They live in a £3m house - if they can afford a £2.4m mortgage at 4.5% interest they can afford a 0.5% tax bill
The challenge with switching to a wealth tax is evasion. Income tax and NI are hard to evade if you are on PAYE; likewise council tax is hard to evade. A wealth tax though is hard for the Revenue to fully enforce - you would presumably be relying on some form of self-declaration and then there is a lot of subjectivity - how much is that painting worth or shares in the family firm? And it becomes easier for people to hide cash in the mattress or buy gold bars.
If you hid cash in the mattress you would have lost about 10% bank interest over the last two years, more if comparing to investments. Why not just pay the much lower wealth tax? Also if it is in the hundreds of thousands or millions that a wealth tax targets you would also really struggle to ever spend it or put it back in the system.
Guido is talking about Council tax switching to a proportional system of x %(0.5%) of the current value. I suspect it's going to happen because changing the bands is impossible as even he points out...
I'd say there may be some weasel words in that from Paul Staines. He's quoting a report from the CSJ, which was founded by Iain Duncan Smith, Tim Montgomerie, Mark Florman and Philippa Stroud.
Havnig said that, a switch to 0.5% of market value would be a huge improvement imo, which if it includes an abolition of Stamp Duty as proposed by its main proponents will be in the financial interests of a large majority.
The main thing I'd say for RR and KS is not to be panicked by a bit of rhetoric from the Right.
Council Tax raises £46.7 billion according to the OBR or about 1.7% of national income so not huge in the cosmic scheme of things. Not sure how which Business Rates raises - way back in 2014-15, it was twice as much as Council Tax but that's probably changed with the pamdemic.
The plan, AIUI, is 0.5% on occupied residential property and 2.5% on empty homes based on a revaluation. There are roughly 24 million homes in the UK.
Doing a crude calculation on Stodge Towers it would mean £250 extra per year.
The % of Council Revenue coming from Council Tax has increased, at the same time as funding levels have been restricted.
That is because Councils have been kept on a starvation diet since ~2010, in both England and Scotland. But more so in England. In Scotland (one of our North Britons such as @Eabhal will tell us) I believe they had a freeze in cash terms for 6-7 consecutive years.
If we want effective and capable Councils they need a fairly big funding boost, and it will take time to build capacity.
I'd say that conservatively Local Authorities need a funding boost from current levels of something like a quarter to a third in the short term, just for recovery to 2010 levels.
The 0.5% suggestion is interesting but it seems to me there are a few challenges:
1) Switching to this system would lead to increased tax in London and SE and reduced tax in the North. How do you make sure that each council has enough money to spend? It sounds like more lateral transfers would be required but then it becomes a less local tax. 2) How do you decide how much each property is worth? In the 1990s, the valuations were done by driving by. The fact there were bands meant into didn't matter if the valuations were slightly out. However, if you are charging 0.5% then you need more precise valuations e.g. a 5k value difference is worth £25 a year 3) How often would valuations be updated? Again there could be issues for council budgets as house prices change e.g. 10% rise=extra money to spend, 10% fall=austerity
I think that’s right. Personally I think the banding system is probably the right approach, though the higher bands could perhaps pay a bit more.
The issue with it is that it has never been updated and there’s never been a good time for a government to force a revaluation.
If Labour are smart they’ll get a revaluation through now and then they’ll set up an independent body to conduct the revaluations at ten year intervals, a bit like boundary commissions. It might not stop politicians campaigning to freeze the valuations but it will make it politically harder to do so.
And create an automatic revaluation once a house is extended. That can’t be too difficult to do, just tie it into the building control process.
What do you do about things such as - reworking a property to improve energy efficiency can increase the value substantially
?
I think this is why you can’t be too intricate with the valuation/banding process and why I think it needs to be tied to more “headline” items like bedrooms, size, location. You don’t want to discourage improving the housing stock.
How about hearths?
It’s why a land value tax is by far the best system. You can improve your property as much as you like but pay the same tax.
The trouble with all of these proposals is that anything based on a proportion of value that isn't locally set becomes a giant tax on London and the South East. If Barnet council think they're able to set the tax at a lower rate to deliver services then they should be able to do so. Setting a national rate of 0.5% leaves no flexibility and will either result in redistribution (which shouldn't be done with local government taxes) or waste in local governments as they try to spend money they don't need.
Being blunt - council tax is very poor way of raising local taxes - it probably should be a national tax with a percentage of income tax given to councils
No thanks. At least the councils have some say in this and therefore the residents have some say in it. A nationally set tax and settlement process takes local tax policy out of the hands of local people.
So how about 0.3% set by the council + 0.2% wealth
Nope, all set locally. Otherwise it just becomes another redistribution method from the south to the north. I don't have a problem with the concept of the latter but don't hide it under the guise of local taxation. Raise national taxes and do it from those funds if that's the end goal.
Why do you think I split it into 2 - the first bit is set by the council (and can be adjusted) the second (wealth part) is national…
Then add it onto income tax.
No, wealth needs to be taxed as well as income, or otherwise structural inequality in the country is entrenched.
It’s worth noting that it’s the wealthier right wing posters on here who are now objecting to a wealth tax…
A wealth tax would need to have minimum thresholds and fundamentally is someone who owns a £3m house with a £2.4m mortgage wealthy? Would you tax that person on the whole £3m or just the £0.6m?
They live in a £3m house - if they can afford a £2.4m mortgage at 4.5% interest they can afford a 0.5% tax bill
So it's not a wealth tax then because that person doesn't have £3m in wealth, they have £0.6m in wealth.
If Labour seriously tries to impose a property tax remotely like the one proposed you'll know they're actively trying to lose the next election. They'd alienate virtually anyone of any influence in the country, lose London for a generation and please only their core vote and most of them only slightly.
The point of doing it now is that it could be implemented in April 2026 (heck you could actually do it in 2025 at a push) leaving plenty of time for it to be running before the next election.
And many people in Labour areas would be better off ..
Yes but the next general election is four or five years away. Things that ought to matter, often don't.
Indeed
However isn’t it a political truism that perceptions are crucially formed in the first 100 days of office? And after that they become hard to shift
Starmer has been given a seriously tough test on his second month of office. I don’t envy him. However he came in with baggage that is entirely his own fault - taking the knee AFTER the BLM riots
The British public believe he is making a hash of this major crisis. Pompous but ineffective, hypocritical and bloviating?
He may find this perception hangs around
That said there are exceptions to the rule. Thatcher was massively unpopular at first but became more popular over time
Yes, for me the problem isn't so much the pomposity - hard to disapprove of rioters without sounding pompous - or the ineffectuality - a common failing in the face of rioting - but that he seemed so equivocal about rioting until it was poor white people doing it.
These aren't poor white people. They're violent racists.
Who probably also happen to be poor, white people.
That's disingenuous to us poor white people. Most of us don't riot.
Most men don't rape women either, yet I am assured rape is the fault of all men.
What a silly post. You're better than that 'Tubbs.
I'm not. Its been a long day.
In general I think the danger is that too many are ignoring the left behind of the country, AGAIN. Nothing makes racism right, nor rioting, but its essential to ask why things happen. Too many of my colleagues at Uni could not understand the Brexit vote because 'everyone I know voted remain'. Well yes, you know upper middle class academics.
There are many UK populations. Most are decent, kind folk. Some are not. Some are bitter, twisted, racist thugs. But a lot of people do feel left behind and feel that the country has let in too many immigrants. Thats not my opinion, but if you don't understand that viewpoint (while disagreeing) you will never understand the reasons.
My admonishment was for your "rape" comment.
I am well aware of the "left behind". They have been left behind for generations by the Labour party in Northern, Midlands, Scottish and Welsh s***holes. Hence they voted, SNP, Leave and "lent"their vote to Johnson in 2019, who also left them behind. They lent their vote to Farage in 2024 and probably 2029. He will let them down too.
When the politicians let them down the politicians look for scapegoats. The EU, foreigners, scroungers, illegal immigrants. Scoundrel like Farage buy the easy win, so we are where we are.
You say they are let down - but what exactly do they want and is it achievable?
The problem is that a lot of people want the impossible and don't understand that that is not achievable...
I go back to public funds being corruptly milked by late Labour Councillors like T. Dan Smith instead of funding civic society. Teesport smells similar, and in national government we had the PPE affair.
Teesport is a private company. Teesworks is the issue.
However both Teesworks and PPE are Tory corruption scandals - and neither have anything to do with the things the "left behind" want..
So good attempt to change your narrative but I'll repeat my previous questions
You say they (the "left behind") are let down - but what exactly do they want and is it achievable?
Of course Labour corruption is important over decades. Public funds are hijacked by Labour Councillors. T Dan Smith in Newcastle, Graham Jenkins (Richard Burton's brother) in Port Talbot in the 1970s for example. and not spent benefitted the good burghers of these local authorities.
What do the left behind want? Free stuff that they think is being given to immigrants and scroungers. People like Farage promote the lie that immigrants are given free stuff like houses and cars, not available to them.
Why not ask them instead of projecting your anti working class prejudice onto them.
You are making the grave error of justifying rioting thugs by suggesting that they have legitimate grievances.
Poor white people exist. Many of them are holding down multiple jobs to feed their children and heat their homes. If people like Farage and Yaxley-Lennon tell them they can't heat their homes and feed their children because of foreigners, or the EU some might believe them, but few will go out and riot. The trouble is the people pushing their buttons have less working class credentials that you suggest I have.
You can have a legitimate grievance while still having absolutely no grounds to justify rioting.
But I don't believe 20 year old Liam Grey from Mexborough had a grievance, he was out for a ruck.
"Sick of being left behind by globalisation and the knowledge economy. I'm going to burn down a Mosque."
Guido is talking about Council tax switching to a proportional system of x %(0.5%) of the current value. I suspect it's going to happen because changing the bands is impossible as even he points out...
I'd say there may be some weasel words in that from Paul Staines. He's quoting a report from the CSJ, which was founded by Iain Duncan Smith, Tim Montgomerie, Mark Florman and Philippa Stroud.
Havnig said that, a switch to 0.5% of market value would be a huge improvement imo, which if it includes an abolition of Stamp Duty as proposed by its main proponents will be in the financial interests of a large majority.
The main thing I'd say for RR and KS is not to be panicked by a bit of rhetoric from the Right.
Council Tax raises £46.7 billion according to the OBR or about 1.7% of national income so not huge in the cosmic scheme of things. Not sure how which Business Rates raises - way back in 2014-15, it was twice as much as Council Tax but that's probably changed with the pamdemic.
The plan, AIUI, is 0.5% on occupied residential property and 2.5% on empty homes based on a revaluation. There are roughly 24 million homes in the UK.
Doing a crude calculation on Stodge Towers it would mean £250 extra per year.
The % of Council Revenue coming from Council Tax has increased, at the same time as funding levels have been restricted.
That is because Councils have been kept on a starvation diet since ~2010, in both England and Scotland. But more so in England. In Scotland (one of our North Britons such as @Eabhal will tell us) I believe they had a freeze in cash terms for 6-7 consecutive years.
If we want effective and capable Councils they need a fairly big funding boost, and it will take time to build capacity.
I'd say that conservatively Local Authorities need a funding boost from current levels of something like a quarter to a third in the short term, just for recovery to 2010 levels.
The 0.5% suggestion is interesting but it seems to me there are a few challenges:
1) Switching to this system would lead to increased tax in London and SE and reduced tax in the North. How do you make sure that each council has enough money to spend? It sounds like more lateral transfers would be required but then it becomes a less local tax. 2) How do you decide how much each property is worth? In the 1990s, the valuations were done by driving by. The fact there were bands meant into didn't matter if the valuations were slightly out. However, if you are charging 0.5% then you need more precise valuations e.g. a 5k value difference is worth £25 a year 3) How often would valuations be updated? Again there could be issues for council budgets as house prices change e.g. 10% rise=extra money to spend, 10% fall=austerity
I think that’s right. Personally I think the banding system is probably the right approach, though the higher bands could perhaps pay a bit more.
The issue with it is that it has never been updated and there’s never been a good time for a government to force a revaluation.
If Labour are smart they’ll get a revaluation through now and then they’ll set up an independent body to conduct the revaluations at ten year intervals, a bit like boundary commissions. It might not stop politicians campaigning to freeze the valuations but it will make it politically harder to do so.
And create an automatic revaluation once a house is extended. That can’t be too difficult to do, just tie it into the building control process.
What do you do about things such as - reworking a property to improve energy efficiency can increase the value substantially
?
I think this is why you can’t be too intricate with the valuation/banding process and why I think it needs to be tied to more “headline” items like bedrooms, size, location. You don’t want to discourage improving the housing stock.
How about hearths?
It’s why a land value tax is by far the best system. You can improve your property as much as you like but pay the same tax.
The trouble with all of these proposals is that anything based on a proportion of value that isn't locally set becomes a giant tax on London and the South East. If Barnet council think they're able to set the tax at a lower rate to deliver services then they should be able to do so. Setting a national rate of 0.5% leaves no flexibility and will either result in redistribution (which shouldn't be done with local government taxes) or waste in local governments as they try to spend money they don't need.
Being blunt - council tax is very poor way of raising local taxes - it probably should be a national tax with a percentage of income tax given to councils
No thanks. At least the councils have some say in this and therefore the residents have some say in it. A nationally set tax and settlement process takes local tax policy out of the hands of local people.
So how about 0.3% set by the council + 0.2% wealth
Nope, all set locally. Otherwise it just becomes another redistribution method from the south to the north. I don't have a problem with the concept of the latter but don't hide it under the guise of local taxation. Raise national taxes and do it from those funds if that's the end goal.
Why do you think I split it into 2 - the first bit is set by the council (and can be adjusted) the second (wealth part) is national…
Then add it onto income tax.
No, wealth needs to be taxed as well as income, or otherwise structural inequality in the country is entrenched.
It’s worth noting that it’s the wealthier right wing posters on here who are now objecting to a wealth tax…
A wealth tax would need to have minimum thresholds and fundamentally is someone who owns a £3m house with a £2.4m mortgage wealthy? Would you tax that person on the whole £3m or just the £0.6m?
They live in a £3m house - if they can afford a £2.4m mortgage at 4.5% interest they can afford a 0.5% tax bill
So it's not a wealth tax then because that person doesn't have £3m in wealth, they have £0.6m in wealth.
If Labour seriously tries to impose a property tax remotely like the one proposed you'll know they're actively trying to lose the next election. They'd alienate virtually anyone of any influence in the country, lose London for a generation and please only their core vote and most of them only slightly.
Well they'd be suddenly landing people in pretty ordinary terraced houses bills of £7-10k across big swathes of London if it was on gross value rather than net value. Imagine telling a family in London that they're going to pay £500-700 per month for their new council tax so that potholes in Sunderland get fixed.
Olympics: certainly a difficult few days for Britain with lots of gold opportunities not being converted. But we are still Top 5 in the table.
Still a chance for us to beat France or more realistically Australia if we can get maybe 4 or 5 in the cycling plus we need to pick up a few others eg as correctly identified by @MaxPB, KJH who has been consistently excellent for years and I really hope she wins!
From my perspective it looks like France 3 as they will continue to win across wide range of events, GB 4 and Aus 5 as their main strength is in swimming which is finished.
Clearly USA and China 1 and 2 no idea which order.
Guido is talking about Council tax switching to a proportional system of x %(0.5%) of the current value. I suspect it's going to happen because changing the bands is impossible as even he points out...
I'd say there may be some weasel words in that from Paul Staines. He's quoting a report from the CSJ, which was founded by Iain Duncan Smith, Tim Montgomerie, Mark Florman and Philippa Stroud.
Havnig said that, a switch to 0.5% of market value would be a huge improvement imo, which if it includes an abolition of Stamp Duty as proposed by its main proponents will be in the financial interests of a large majority.
The main thing I'd say for RR and KS is not to be panicked by a bit of rhetoric from the Right.
Council Tax raises £46.7 billion according to the OBR or about 1.7% of national income so not huge in the cosmic scheme of things. Not sure how which Business Rates raises - way back in 2014-15, it was twice as much as Council Tax but that's probably changed with the pamdemic.
The plan, AIUI, is 0.5% on occupied residential property and 2.5% on empty homes based on a revaluation. There are roughly 24 million homes in the UK.
Doing a crude calculation on Stodge Towers it would mean £250 extra per year.
The % of Council Revenue coming from Council Tax has increased, at the same time as funding levels have been restricted.
That is because Councils have been kept on a starvation diet since ~2010, in both England and Scotland. But more so in England. In Scotland (one of our North Britons such as @Eabhal will tell us) I believe they had a freeze in cash terms for 6-7 consecutive years.
If we want effective and capable Councils they need a fairly big funding boost, and it will take time to build capacity.
I'd say that conservatively Local Authorities need a funding boost from current levels of something like a quarter to a third in the short term, just for recovery to 2010 levels.
The 0.5% suggestion is interesting but it seems to me there are a few challenges:
1) Switching to this system would lead to increased tax in London and SE and reduced tax in the North. How do you make sure that each council has enough money to spend? It sounds like more lateral transfers would be required but then it becomes a less local tax. 2) How do you decide how much each property is worth? In the 1990s, the valuations were done by driving by. The fact there were bands meant into didn't matter if the valuations were slightly out. However, if you are charging 0.5% then you need more precise valuations e.g. a 5k value difference is worth £25 a year 3) How often would valuations be updated? Again there could be issues for council budgets as house prices change e.g. 10% rise=extra money to spend, 10% fall=austerity
I think that’s right. Personally I think the banding system is probably the right approach, though the higher bands could perhaps pay a bit more.
The issue with it is that it has never been updated and there’s never been a good time for a government to force a revaluation.
If Labour are smart they’ll get a revaluation through now and then they’ll set up an independent body to conduct the revaluations at ten year intervals, a bit like boundary commissions. It might not stop politicians campaigning to freeze the valuations but it will make it politically harder to do so.
And create an automatic revaluation once a house is extended. That can’t be too difficult to do, just tie it into the building control process.
What do you do about things such as - reworking a property to improve energy efficiency can increase the value substantially
?
I think this is why you can’t be too intricate with the valuation/banding process and why I think it needs to be tied to more “headline” items like bedrooms, size, location. You don’t want to discourage improving the housing stock.
How about hearths?
It’s why a land value tax is by far the best system. You can improve your property as much as you like but pay the same tax.
The trouble with all of these proposals is that anything based on a proportion of value that isn't locally set becomes a giant tax on London and the South East. If Barnet council think they're able to set the tax at a lower rate to deliver services then they should be able to do so. Setting a national rate of 0.5% leaves no flexibility and will either result in redistribution (which shouldn't be done with local government taxes) or waste in local governments as they try to spend money they don't need.
Being blunt - council tax is very poor way of raising local taxes - it probably should be a national tax with a percentage of income tax given to councils
No thanks. At least the councils have some say in this and therefore the residents have some say in it. A nationally set tax and settlement process takes local tax policy out of the hands of local people.
So how about 0.3% set by the council + 0.2% wealth
Nope, all set locally. Otherwise it just becomes another redistribution method from the south to the north. I don't have a problem with the concept of the latter but don't hide it under the guise of local taxation. Raise national taxes and do it from those funds if that's the end goal.
Why do you think I split it into 2 - the first bit is set by the council (and can be adjusted) the second (wealth part) is national…
Then add it onto income tax.
No, wealth needs to be taxed as well as income, or otherwise structural inequality in the country is entrenched.
It’s worth noting that it’s the wealthier right wing posters on here who are now objecting to a wealth tax…
A wealth tax would need to have minimum thresholds and fundamentally is someone who owns a £3m house with a £2.4m mortgage wealthy? Would you tax that person on the whole £3m or just the £0.6m?
They live in a £3m house - if they can afford a £2.4m mortgage at 4.5% interest they can afford a 0.5% tax bill
So it's not a wealth tax then because that person doesn't have £3m in wealth, they have £0.6m in wealth.
If Labour seriously tries to impose a property tax remotely like the one proposed you'll know they're actively trying to lose the next election. They'd alienate virtually anyone of any influence in the country, lose London for a generation and please only their core vote and most of them only slightly.
The point of doing it now is that it could be implemented in April 2026 (heck you could actually do it in 2025 at a push) leaving plenty of time for it to be running before the next election.
And many people in Labour areas would be better off ..
They'd lose the entirety of the South East and London for more than a generation and big parts of the East and South West. Plus some of the posher bits of the North.
Guido is talking about Council tax switching to a proportional system of x %(0.5%) of the current value. I suspect it's going to happen because changing the bands is impossible as even he points out...
I'd say there may be some weasel words in that from Paul Staines. He's quoting a report from the CSJ, which was founded by Iain Duncan Smith, Tim Montgomerie, Mark Florman and Philippa Stroud.
Havnig said that, a switch to 0.5% of market value would be a huge improvement imo, which if it includes an abolition of Stamp Duty as proposed by its main proponents will be in the financial interests of a large majority.
The main thing I'd say for RR and KS is not to be panicked by a bit of rhetoric from the Right.
Council Tax raises £46.7 billion according to the OBR or about 1.7% of national income so not huge in the cosmic scheme of things. Not sure how which Business Rates raises - way back in 2014-15, it was twice as much as Council Tax but that's probably changed with the pamdemic.
The plan, AIUI, is 0.5% on occupied residential property and 2.5% on empty homes based on a revaluation. There are roughly 24 million homes in the UK.
Doing a crude calculation on Stodge Towers it would mean £250 extra per year.
The % of Council Revenue coming from Council Tax has increased, at the same time as funding levels have been restricted.
That is because Councils have been kept on a starvation diet since ~2010, in both England and Scotland. But more so in England. In Scotland (one of our North Britons such as @Eabhal will tell us) I believe they had a freeze in cash terms for 6-7 consecutive years.
If we want effective and capable Councils they need a fairly big funding boost, and it will take time to build capacity.
I'd say that conservatively Local Authorities need a funding boost from current levels of something like a quarter to a third in the short term, just for recovery to 2010 levels.
The 0.5% suggestion is interesting but it seems to me there are a few challenges:
1) Switching to this system would lead to increased tax in London and SE and reduced tax in the North. How do you make sure that each council has enough money to spend? It sounds like more lateral transfers would be required but then it becomes a less local tax. 2) How do you decide how much each property is worth? In the 1990s, the valuations were done by driving by. The fact there were bands meant into didn't matter if the valuations were slightly out. However, if you are charging 0.5% then you need more precise valuations e.g. a 5k value difference is worth £25 a year 3) How often would valuations be updated? Again there could be issues for council budgets as house prices change e.g. 10% rise=extra money to spend, 10% fall=austerity
I think that’s right. Personally I think the banding system is probably the right approach, though the higher bands could perhaps pay a bit more.
The issue with it is that it has never been updated and there’s never been a good time for a government to force a revaluation.
If Labour are smart they’ll get a revaluation through now and then they’ll set up an independent body to conduct the revaluations at ten year intervals, a bit like boundary commissions. It might not stop politicians campaigning to freeze the valuations but it will make it politically harder to do so.
And create an automatic revaluation once a house is extended. That can’t be too difficult to do, just tie it into the building control process.
What do you do about things such as - reworking a property to improve energy efficiency can increase the value substantially
?
I think this is why you can’t be too intricate with the valuation/banding process and why I think it needs to be tied to more “headline” items like bedrooms, size, location. You don’t want to discourage improving the housing stock.
How about hearths?
It’s why a land value tax is by far the best system. You can improve your property as much as you like but pay the same tax.
The trouble with all of these proposals is that anything based on a proportion of value that isn't locally set becomes a giant tax on London and the South East. If Barnet council think they're able to set the tax at a lower rate to deliver services then they should be able to do so. Setting a national rate of 0.5% leaves no flexibility and will either result in redistribution (which shouldn't be done with local government taxes) or waste in local governments as they try to spend money they don't need.
Being blunt - council tax is very poor way of raising local taxes - it probably should be a national tax with a percentage of income tax given to councils
No thanks. At least the councils have some say in this and therefore the residents have some say in it. A nationally set tax and settlement process takes local tax policy out of the hands of local people.
So how about 0.3% set by the council + 0.2% wealth
Nope, all set locally. Otherwise it just becomes another redistribution method from the south to the north. I don't have a problem with the concept of the latter but don't hide it under the guise of local taxation. Raise national taxes and do it from those funds if that's the end goal.
Why do you think I split it into 2 - the first bit is set by the council (and can be adjusted) the second (wealth part) is national…
Then add it onto income tax.
No, wealth needs to be taxed as well as income, or otherwise structural inequality in the country is entrenched.
It’s worth noting that it’s the wealthier right wing posters on here who are now objecting to a wealth tax…
A wealth tax would need to have minimum thresholds and fundamentally is someone who owns a £3m house with a £2.4m mortgage wealthy? Would you tax that person on the whole £3m or just the £0.6m?
They live in a £3m house - if they can afford a £2.4m mortgage at 4.5% interest they can afford a 0.5% tax bill
So it's not a wealth tax then because that person doesn't have £3m in wealth, they have £0.6m in wealth.
If Labour seriously tries to impose a property tax remotely like the one proposed you'll know they're actively trying to lose the next election. They'd alienate virtually anyone of any influence in the country, lose London for a generation and please only their core vote and most of them only slightly.
Well they'd be suddenly landing people in pretty ordinary terraced houses bills of £7-10k across big swathes of London if it was on gross value rather than net value. Imagine telling a family in London that they're going to pay £500-700 per month for their new council tax so that potholes in Sunderland get fixed.
Guido is talking about Council tax switching to a proportional system of x %(0.5%) of the current value. I suspect it's going to happen because changing the bands is impossible as even he points out...
I'd say there may be some weasel words in that from Paul Staines. He's quoting a report from the CSJ, which was founded by Iain Duncan Smith, Tim Montgomerie, Mark Florman and Philippa Stroud.
Havnig said that, a switch to 0.5% of market value would be a huge improvement imo, which if it includes an abolition of Stamp Duty as proposed by its main proponents will be in the financial interests of a large majority.
The main thing I'd say for RR and KS is not to be panicked by a bit of rhetoric from the Right.
Council Tax raises £46.7 billion according to the OBR or about 1.7% of national income so not huge in the cosmic scheme of things. Not sure how which Business Rates raises - way back in 2014-15, it was twice as much as Council Tax but that's probably changed with the pamdemic.
The plan, AIUI, is 0.5% on occupied residential property and 2.5% on empty homes based on a revaluation. There are roughly 24 million homes in the UK.
Doing a crude calculation on Stodge Towers it would mean £250 extra per year.
The % of Council Revenue coming from Council Tax has increased, at the same time as funding levels have been restricted.
That is because Councils have been kept on a starvation diet since ~2010, in both England and Scotland. But more so in England. In Scotland (one of our North Britons such as @Eabhal will tell us) I believe they had a freeze in cash terms for 6-7 consecutive years.
If we want effective and capable Councils they need a fairly big funding boost, and it will take time to build capacity.
I'd say that conservatively Local Authorities need a funding boost from current levels of something like a quarter to a third in the short term, just for recovery to 2010 levels.
The 0.5% suggestion is interesting but it seems to me there are a few challenges:
1) Switching to this system would lead to increased tax in London and SE and reduced tax in the North. How do you make sure that each council has enough money to spend? It sounds like more lateral transfers would be required but then it becomes a less local tax. 2) How do you decide how much each property is worth? In the 1990s, the valuations were done by driving by. The fact there were bands meant into didn't matter if the valuations were slightly out. However, if you are charging 0.5% then you need more precise valuations e.g. a 5k value difference is worth £25 a year 3) How often would valuations be updated? Again there could be issues for council budgets as house prices change e.g. 10% rise=extra money to spend, 10% fall=austerity
I think that’s right. Personally I think the banding system is probably the right approach, though the higher bands could perhaps pay a bit more.
The issue with it is that it has never been updated and there’s never been a good time for a government to force a revaluation.
If Labour are smart they’ll get a revaluation through now and then they’ll set up an independent body to conduct the revaluations at ten year intervals, a bit like boundary commissions. It might not stop politicians campaigning to freeze the valuations but it will make it politically harder to do so.
And create an automatic revaluation once a house is extended. That can’t be too difficult to do, just tie it into the building control process.
What do you do about things such as - reworking a property to improve energy efficiency can increase the value substantially
?
I think this is why you can’t be too intricate with the valuation/banding process and why I think it needs to be tied to more “headline” items like bedrooms, size, location. You don’t want to discourage improving the housing stock.
How about hearths?
It’s why a land value tax is by far the best system. You can improve your property as much as you like but pay the same tax.
The trouble with all of these proposals is that anything based on a proportion of value that isn't locally set becomes a giant tax on London and the South East. If Barnet council think they're able to set the tax at a lower rate to deliver services then they should be able to do so. Setting a national rate of 0.5% leaves no flexibility and will either result in redistribution (which shouldn't be done with local government taxes) or waste in local governments as they try to spend money they don't need.
Being blunt - council tax is very poor way of raising local taxes - it probably should be a national tax with a percentage of income tax given to councils
No thanks. At least the councils have some say in this and therefore the residents have some say in it. A nationally set tax and settlement process takes local tax policy out of the hands of local people.
So how about 0.3% set by the council + 0.2% wealth
Nope, all set locally. Otherwise it just becomes another redistribution method from the south to the north. I don't have a problem with the concept of the latter but don't hide it under the guise of local taxation. Raise national taxes and do it from those funds if that's the end goal.
Why do you think I split it into 2 - the first bit is set by the council (and can be adjusted) the second (wealth part) is national…
Then add it onto income tax.
No, wealth needs to be taxed as well as income, or otherwise structural inequality in the country is entrenched.
It’s worth noting that it’s the wealthier right wing posters on here who are now objecting to a wealth tax…
A wealth tax would need to have minimum thresholds and fundamentally is someone who owns a £3m house with a £2.4m mortgage wealthy? Would you tax that person on the whole £3m or just the £0.6m?
They live in a £3m house - if they can afford a £2.4m mortgage at 4.5% interest they can afford a 0.5% tax bill
So it's not a wealth tax then because that person doesn't have £3m in wealth, they have £0.6m in wealth.
If Labour seriously tries to impose a property tax remotely like the one proposed you'll know they're actively trying to lose the next election. They'd alienate virtually anyone of any influence in the country, lose London for a generation and please only their core vote and most of them only slightly.
Well they'd be suddenly landing people in pretty ordinary terraced houses bills of £7-10k across big swathes of London if it was on gross value rather than net value. Imagine telling a family in London that they're going to pay £500-700 per month for their new council tax so that potholes in Sunderland get fixed.
Likely to go down very well in Sunderland though.
I have no doubt, yet I don't see it as an election winning strategy. As I said before, Labour are never going to do it, the furthest we might go is a new valuation for council tax and new upper bands up to O or P.
Guido is talking about Council tax switching to a proportional system of x %(0.5%) of the current value. I suspect it's going to happen because changing the bands is impossible as even he points out...
I'd say there may be some weasel words in that from Paul Staines. He's quoting a report from the CSJ, which was founded by Iain Duncan Smith, Tim Montgomerie, Mark Florman and Philippa Stroud.
Havnig said that, a switch to 0.5% of market value would be a huge improvement imo, which if it includes an abolition of Stamp Duty as proposed by its main proponents will be in the financial interests of a large majority.
The main thing I'd say for RR and KS is not to be panicked by a bit of rhetoric from the Right.
Council Tax raises £46.7 billion according to the OBR or about 1.7% of national income so not huge in the cosmic scheme of things. Not sure how which Business Rates raises - way back in 2014-15, it was twice as much as Council Tax but that's probably changed with the pamdemic.
The plan, AIUI, is 0.5% on occupied residential property and 2.5% on empty homes based on a revaluation. There are roughly 24 million homes in the UK.
Doing a crude calculation on Stodge Towers it would mean £250 extra per year.
The % of Council Revenue coming from Council Tax has increased, at the same time as funding levels have been restricted.
That is because Councils have been kept on a starvation diet since ~2010, in both England and Scotland. But more so in England. In Scotland (one of our North Britons such as @Eabhal will tell us) I believe they had a freeze in cash terms for 6-7 consecutive years.
If we want effective and capable Councils they need a fairly big funding boost, and it will take time to build capacity.
I'd say that conservatively Local Authorities need a funding boost from current levels of something like a quarter to a third in the short term, just for recovery to 2010 levels.
The 0.5% suggestion is interesting but it seems to me there are a few challenges:
1) Switching to this system would lead to increased tax in London and SE and reduced tax in the North. How do you make sure that each council has enough money to spend? It sounds like more lateral transfers would be required but then it becomes a less local tax. 2) How do you decide how much each property is worth? In the 1990s, the valuations were done by driving by. The fact there were bands meant into didn't matter if the valuations were slightly out. However, if you are charging 0.5% then you need more precise valuations e.g. a 5k value difference is worth £25 a year 3) How often would valuations be updated? Again there could be issues for council budgets as house prices change e.g. 10% rise=extra money to spend, 10% fall=austerity
I think that’s right. Personally I think the banding system is probably the right approach, though the higher bands could perhaps pay a bit more.
The issue with it is that it has never been updated and there’s never been a good time for a government to force a revaluation.
If Labour are smart they’ll get a revaluation through now and then they’ll set up an independent body to conduct the revaluations at ten year intervals, a bit like boundary commissions. It might not stop politicians campaigning to freeze the valuations but it will make it politically harder to do so.
And create an automatic revaluation once a house is extended. That can’t be too difficult to do, just tie it into the building control process.
What do you do about things such as - reworking a property to improve energy efficiency can increase the value substantially
?
I think this is why you can’t be too intricate with the valuation/banding process and why I think it needs to be tied to more “headline” items like bedrooms, size, location. You don’t want to discourage improving the housing stock.
How about hearths?
It’s why a land value tax is by far the best system. You can improve your property as much as you like but pay the same tax.
The trouble with all of these proposals is that anything based on a proportion of value that isn't locally set becomes a giant tax on London and the South East. If Barnet council think they're able to set the tax at a lower rate to deliver services then they should be able to do so. Setting a national rate of 0.5% leaves no flexibility and will either result in redistribution (which shouldn't be done with local government taxes) or waste in local governments as they try to spend money they don't need.
Being blunt - council tax is very poor way of raising local taxes - it probably should be a national tax with a percentage of income tax given to councils
No thanks. At least the councils have some say in this and therefore the residents have some say in it. A nationally set tax and settlement process takes local tax policy out of the hands of local people.
So how about 0.3% set by the council + 0.2% wealth
Nope, all set locally. Otherwise it just becomes another redistribution method from the south to the north. I don't have a problem with the concept of the latter but don't hide it under the guise of local taxation. Raise national taxes and do it from those funds if that's the end goal.
Why do you think I split it into 2 - the first bit is set by the council (and can be adjusted) the second (wealth part) is national…
Then add it onto income tax.
No, wealth needs to be taxed as well as income, or otherwise structural inequality in the country is entrenched.
It’s worth noting that it’s the wealthier right wing posters on here who are now objecting to a wealth tax…
A wealth tax would need to have minimum thresholds and fundamentally is someone who owns a £3m house with a £2.4m mortgage wealthy? Would you tax that person on the whole £3m or just the £0.6m?
They live in a £3m house - if they can afford a £2.4m mortgage at 4.5% interest they can afford a 0.5% tax bill
So it's not a wealth tax then because that person doesn't have £3m in wealth, they have £0.6m in wealth.
If Labour seriously tries to impose a property tax remotely like the one proposed you'll know they're actively trying to lose the next election. They'd alienate virtually anyone of any influence in the country, lose London for a generation and please only their core vote and most of them only slightly.
The point of doing it now is that it could be implemented in April 2026 (heck you could actually do it in 2025 at a push) leaving plenty of time for it to be running before the next election.
And many people in Labour areas would be better off ..
They'd lose the entirety of the South East and London for more than a generation and big parts of the East and South West. Plus some of the posher bits of the North.
And so we reach the point why council tax hasn’t changed in 30+ years the political cost is too much so it can only be done on the first few months after an election because otherwise it’s too late.
Worse it them takes 2-3 years to calculate the appropriate rates so that it can’t be implement before year 3/4 of the Parliament just as the next election comes round.
That’s why it’s going to be a percentage of house price, because that can be implemented quickly hopefully providing enough time that people get used to it
Guido is talking about Council tax switching to a proportional system of x %(0.5%) of the current value. I suspect it's going to happen because changing the bands is impossible as even he points out...
I'd say there may be some weasel words in that from Paul Staines. He's quoting a report from the CSJ, which was founded by Iain Duncan Smith, Tim Montgomerie, Mark Florman and Philippa Stroud.
Havnig said that, a switch to 0.5% of market value would be a huge improvement imo, which if it includes an abolition of Stamp Duty as proposed by its main proponents will be in the financial interests of a large majority.
The main thing I'd say for RR and KS is not to be panicked by a bit of rhetoric from the Right.
Council Tax raises £46.7 billion according to the OBR or about 1.7% of national income so not huge in the cosmic scheme of things. Not sure how which Business Rates raises - way back in 2014-15, it was twice as much as Council Tax but that's probably changed with the pamdemic.
The plan, AIUI, is 0.5% on occupied residential property and 2.5% on empty homes based on a revaluation. There are roughly 24 million homes in the UK.
Doing a crude calculation on Stodge Towers it would mean £250 extra per year.
The % of Council Revenue coming from Council Tax has increased, at the same time as funding levels have been restricted.
That is because Councils have been kept on a starvation diet since ~2010, in both England and Scotland. But more so in England. In Scotland (one of our North Britons such as @Eabhal will tell us) I believe they had a freeze in cash terms for 6-7 consecutive years.
If we want effective and capable Councils they need a fairly big funding boost, and it will take time to build capacity.
I'd say that conservatively Local Authorities need a funding boost from current levels of something like a quarter to a third in the short term, just for recovery to 2010 levels.
The 0.5% suggestion is interesting but it seems to me there are a few challenges:
1) Switching to this system would lead to increased tax in London and SE and reduced tax in the North. How do you make sure that each council has enough money to spend? It sounds like more lateral transfers would be required but then it becomes a less local tax. 2) How do you decide how much each property is worth? In the 1990s, the valuations were done by driving by. The fact there were bands meant into didn't matter if the valuations were slightly out. However, if you are charging 0.5% then you need more precise valuations e.g. a 5k value difference is worth £25 a year 3) How often would valuations be updated? Again there could be issues for council budgets as house prices change e.g. 10% rise=extra money to spend, 10% fall=austerity
I think that’s right. Personally I think the banding system is probably the right approach, though the higher bands could perhaps pay a bit more.
The issue with it is that it has never been updated and there’s never been a good time for a government to force a revaluation.
If Labour are smart they’ll get a revaluation through now and then they’ll set up an independent body to conduct the revaluations at ten year intervals, a bit like boundary commissions. It might not stop politicians campaigning to freeze the valuations but it will make it politically harder to do so.
And create an automatic revaluation once a house is extended. That can’t be too difficult to do, just tie it into the building control process.
What do you do about things such as - reworking a property to improve energy efficiency can increase the value substantially
?
I think this is why you can’t be too intricate with the valuation/banding process and why I think it needs to be tied to more “headline” items like bedrooms, size, location. You don’t want to discourage improving the housing stock.
How about hearths?
It’s why a land value tax is by far the best system. You can improve your property as much as you like but pay the same tax.
The trouble with all of these proposals is that anything based on a proportion of value that isn't locally set becomes a giant tax on London and the South East. If Barnet council think they're able to set the tax at a lower rate to deliver services then they should be able to do so. Setting a national rate of 0.5% leaves no flexibility and will either result in redistribution (which shouldn't be done with local government taxes) or waste in local governments as they try to spend money they don't need.
Being blunt - council tax is very poor way of raising local taxes - it probably should be a national tax with a percentage of income tax given to councils
No thanks. At least the councils have some say in this and therefore the residents have some say in it. A nationally set tax and settlement process takes local tax policy out of the hands of local people.
So how about 0.3% set by the council + 0.2% wealth
Nope, all set locally. Otherwise it just becomes another redistribution method from the south to the north. I don't have a problem with the concept of the latter but don't hide it under the guise of local taxation. Raise national taxes and do it from those funds if that's the end goal.
Why do you think I split it into 2 - the first bit is set by the council (and can be adjusted) the second (wealth part) is national…
Then add it onto income tax.
No, wealth needs to be taxed as well as income, or otherwise structural inequality in the country is entrenched.
It’s worth noting that it’s the wealthier right wing posters on here who are now objecting to a wealth tax…
A wealth tax would need to have minimum thresholds and fundamentally is someone who owns a £3m house with a £2.4m mortgage wealthy? Would you tax that person on the whole £3m or just the £0.6m?
They live in a £3m house - if they can afford a £2.4m mortgage at 4.5% interest they can afford a 0.5% tax bill
So it's not a wealth tax then because that person doesn't have £3m in wealth, they have £0.6m in wealth.
If Labour seriously tries to impose a property tax remotely like the one proposed you'll know they're actively trying to lose the next election. They'd alienate virtually anyone of any influence in the country, lose London for a generation and please only their core vote and most of them only slightly.
The point of doing it now is that it could be implemented in April 2026 (heck you could actually do it in 2025 at a push) leaving plenty of time for it to be running before the next election.
And many people in Labour areas would be better off ..
They'd lose the entirety of the South East and London for more than a generation and big parts of the East and South West. Plus some of the posher bits of the North.
And so we reach the point why council tax hasn’t changed in 30+ years the political cost is too much so it can only be done on the first few months after an election because otherwise it’s too late.
Worse it them takes 2-3 years to calculate the appropriate rates so that it can’t be implement before year 3/4 of the Parliament just as the next election comes round.
That’s why it’s going to be a percentage of house price, because that can be implemented quickly hopefully providing enough time that people get used to it
I think you're deluding yourself if you think Labour will ever introduce a property tax on gross value but 🤷♂️
The reality of the situation is that Labour will probably do precisely zero on council tax.
Kamala Harris @KamalaHarris I am proud to announce that I've asked @Tim_Walz to be my running mate. As a governor, a coach, a teacher, and a veteran, he's delivered for working families like his. It's great to have him on the team. Now let’s get to work. Join us:
It's a pity that they feel the need to do it in such a schmaltzy way with a camera on each of them and then try to make it sound spontaneous. I know it's the American way but I'm sure we're hoping she'll be different
Good grief, BBC. Can you not interview any Americans on the US election who aren’t Republicans ? WTF is Frank fucking Lunz - long time GOP propagandist - the go to guy on analysing Harris’s VP pick ? And presented as some sort of objective commentator.
Guido is talking about Council tax switching to a proportional system of x %(0.5%) of the current value. I suspect it's going to happen because changing the bands is impossible as even he points out...
I'd say there may be some weasel words in that from Paul Staines. He's quoting a report from the CSJ, which was founded by Iain Duncan Smith, Tim Montgomerie, Mark Florman and Philippa Stroud.
Havnig said that, a switch to 0.5% of market value would be a huge improvement imo, which if it includes an abolition of Stamp Duty as proposed by its main proponents will be in the financial interests of a large majority.
The main thing I'd say for RR and KS is not to be panicked by a bit of rhetoric from the Right.
Council Tax raises £46.7 billion according to the OBR or about 1.7% of national income so not huge in the cosmic scheme of things. Not sure how which Business Rates raises - way back in 2014-15, it was twice as much as Council Tax but that's probably changed with the pamdemic.
The plan, AIUI, is 0.5% on occupied residential property and 2.5% on empty homes based on a revaluation. There are roughly 24 million homes in the UK.
Doing a crude calculation on Stodge Towers it would mean £250 extra per year.
The % of Council Revenue coming from Council Tax has increased, at the same time as funding levels have been restricted.
That is because Councils have been kept on a starvation diet since ~2010, in both England and Scotland. But more so in England. In Scotland (one of our North Britons such as @Eabhal will tell us) I believe they had a freeze in cash terms for 6-7 consecutive years.
If we want effective and capable Councils they need a fairly big funding boost, and it will take time to build capacity.
I'd say that conservatively Local Authorities need a funding boost from current levels of something like a quarter to a third in the short term, just for recovery to 2010 levels.
The 0.5% suggestion is interesting but it seems to me there are a few challenges:
1) Switching to this system would lead to increased tax in London and SE and reduced tax in the North. How do you make sure that each council has enough money to spend? It sounds like more lateral transfers would be required but then it becomes a less local tax. 2) How do you decide how much each property is worth? In the 1990s, the valuations were done by driving by. The fact there were bands meant into didn't matter if the valuations were slightly out. However, if you are charging 0.5% then you need more precise valuations e.g. a 5k value difference is worth £25 a year 3) How often would valuations be updated? Again there could be issues for council budgets as house prices change e.g. 10% rise=extra money to spend, 10% fall=austerity
I think that’s right. Personally I think the banding system is probably the right approach, though the higher bands could perhaps pay a bit more.
The issue with it is that it has never been updated and there’s never been a good time for a government to force a revaluation.
If Labour are smart they’ll get a revaluation through now and then they’ll set up an independent body to conduct the revaluations at ten year intervals, a bit like boundary commissions. It might not stop politicians campaigning to freeze the valuations but it will make it politically harder to do so.
And create an automatic revaluation once a house is extended. That can’t be too difficult to do, just tie it into the building control process.
What do you do about things such as - reworking a property to improve energy efficiency can increase the value substantially
?
I think this is why you can’t be too intricate with the valuation/banding process and why I think it needs to be tied to more “headline” items like bedrooms, size, location. You don’t want to discourage improving the housing stock.
How about hearths?
It’s why a land value tax is by far the best system. You can improve your property as much as you like but pay the same tax.
The trouble with all of these proposals is that anything based on a proportion of value that isn't locally set becomes a giant tax on London and the South East. If Barnet council think they're able to set the tax at a lower rate to deliver services then they should be able to do so. Setting a national rate of 0.5% leaves no flexibility and will either result in redistribution (which shouldn't be done with local government taxes) or waste in local governments as they try to spend money they don't need.
Being blunt - council tax is very poor way of raising local taxes - it probably should be a national tax with a percentage of income tax given to councils
No thanks. At least the councils have some say in this and therefore the residents have some say in it. A nationally set tax and settlement process takes local tax policy out of the hands of local people.
So how about 0.3% set by the council + 0.2% wealth
Nope, all set locally. Otherwise it just becomes another redistribution method from the south to the north. I don't have a problem with the concept of the latter but don't hide it under the guise of local taxation. Raise national taxes and do it from those funds if that's the end goal.
Why do you think I split it into 2 - the first bit is set by the council (and can be adjusted) the second (wealth part) is national…
Then add it onto income tax.
No, wealth needs to be taxed as well as income, or otherwise structural inequality in the country is entrenched.
It’s worth noting that it’s the wealthier right wing posters on here who are now objecting to a wealth tax…
A wealth tax would need to have minimum thresholds and fundamentally is someone who owns a £3m house with a £2.4m mortgage wealthy? Would you tax that person on the whole £3m or just the £0.6m?
They live in a £3m house - if they can afford a £2.4m mortgage at 4.5% interest they can afford a 0.5% tax bill
The challenge with switching to a wealth tax is evasion. Income tax and NI are hard to evade if you are on PAYE; likewise council tax is hard to evade. A wealth tax though is hard for the Revenue to fully enforce - you would presumably be relying on some form of self-declaration and then there is a lot of subjectivity - how much is that painting worth or shares in the family firm? And it becomes easier for people to hide cash in the mattress or buy gold bars.
If you hid cash in the mattress you would have lost about 10% bank interest over the last two years, more if comparing to investments. Why not just pay the much lower wealth tax? Also if it is in the hundreds of thousands or millions that a wealth tax targets you would also really struggle to ever spend it or put it back in the system.
There's still the practicality of it. What should the tax be paid on? Home equity? Investments? Car? Furniture? Do I need to try and work out what my 2 year old TV is worth? And again if it is self-declaration, how do the Revenue check for fiddling? Do they send inspectors to visit people's houses looking for undeclared antiques? And what about overseas assets?
And then the other side of the coin is debt. As I have a large mortgage, my total debt exceeds my total assets. Should the government pay me a refund for that? I
If such a tax was brought in, it would have a massive distorting effect on the economy, as it would encourage people not to spend on anything that could be an asset or increase the value of an asset e.g. new car, house extension. Instead, it would either encourage people to spend money on non-assets e.g. foreign holiday or to put all their money into debt repayment. This would have a devastating impact on several sectors of the economy and would also lead to falling asset values across the board as people chose to/had to sell.
Guido is talking about Council tax switching to a proportional system of x %(0.5%) of the current value. I suspect it's going to happen because changing the bands is impossible as even he points out...
I'd say there may be some weasel words in that from Paul Staines. He's quoting a report from the CSJ, which was founded by Iain Duncan Smith, Tim Montgomerie, Mark Florman and Philippa Stroud.
Havnig said that, a switch to 0.5% of market value would be a huge improvement imo, which if it includes an abolition of Stamp Duty as proposed by its main proponents will be in the financial interests of a large majority.
The main thing I'd say for RR and KS is not to be panicked by a bit of rhetoric from the Right.
Council Tax raises £46.7 billion according to the OBR or about 1.7% of national income so not huge in the cosmic scheme of things. Not sure how which Business Rates raises - way back in 2014-15, it was twice as much as Council Tax but that's probably changed with the pamdemic.
The plan, AIUI, is 0.5% on occupied residential property and 2.5% on empty homes based on a revaluation. There are roughly 24 million homes in the UK.
Doing a crude calculation on Stodge Towers it would mean £250 extra per year.
The % of Council Revenue coming from Council Tax has increased, at the same time as funding levels have been restricted.
That is because Councils have been kept on a starvation diet since ~2010, in both England and Scotland. But more so in England. In Scotland (one of our North Britons such as @Eabhal will tell us) I believe they had a freeze in cash terms for 6-7 consecutive years.
If we want effective and capable Councils they need a fairly big funding boost, and it will take time to build capacity.
I'd say that conservatively Local Authorities need a funding boost from current levels of something like a quarter to a third in the short term, just for recovery to 2010 levels.
The 0.5% suggestion is interesting but it seems to me there are a few challenges:
1) Switching to this system would lead to increased tax in London and SE and reduced tax in the North. How do you make sure that each council has enough money to spend? It sounds like more lateral transfers would be required but then it becomes a less local tax. 2) How do you decide how much each property is worth? In the 1990s, the valuations were done by driving by. The fact there were bands meant into didn't matter if the valuations were slightly out. However, if you are charging 0.5% then you need more precise valuations e.g. a 5k value difference is worth £25 a year 3) How often would valuations be updated? Again there could be issues for council budgets as house prices change e.g. 10% rise=extra money to spend, 10% fall=austerity
I think that’s right. Personally I think the banding system is probably the right approach, though the higher bands could perhaps pay a bit more.
The issue with it is that it has never been updated and there’s never been a good time for a government to force a revaluation.
If Labour are smart they’ll get a revaluation through now and then they’ll set up an independent body to conduct the revaluations at ten year intervals, a bit like boundary commissions. It might not stop politicians campaigning to freeze the valuations but it will make it politically harder to do so.
And create an automatic revaluation once a house is extended. That can’t be too difficult to do, just tie it into the building control process.
What do you do about things such as - reworking a property to improve energy efficiency can increase the value substantially
?
I think this is why you can’t be too intricate with the valuation/banding process and why I think it needs to be tied to more “headline” items like bedrooms, size, location. You don’t want to discourage improving the housing stock.
How about hearths?
It’s why a land value tax is by far the best system. You can improve your property as much as you like but pay the same tax.
The trouble with all of these proposals is that anything based on a proportion of value that isn't locally set becomes a giant tax on London and the South East. If Barnet council think they're able to set the tax at a lower rate to deliver services then they should be able to do so. Setting a national rate of 0.5% leaves no flexibility and will either result in redistribution (which shouldn't be done with local government taxes) or waste in local governments as they try to spend money they don't need.
Being blunt - council tax is very poor way of raising local taxes - it probably should be a national tax with a percentage of income tax given to councils
No thanks. At least the councils have some say in this and therefore the residents have some say in it. A nationally set tax and settlement process takes local tax policy out of the hands of local people.
So how about 0.3% set by the council + 0.2% wealth
Nope, all set locally. Otherwise it just becomes another redistribution method from the south to the north. I don't have a problem with the concept of the latter but don't hide it under the guise of local taxation. Raise national taxes and do it from those funds if that's the end goal.
Why do you think I split it into 2 - the first bit is set by the council (and can be adjusted) the second (wealth part) is national…
Then add it onto income tax.
No, wealth needs to be taxed as well as income, or otherwise structural inequality in the country is entrenched.
It’s worth noting that it’s the wealthier right wing posters on here who are now objecting to a wealth tax…
A wealth tax would need to have minimum thresholds and fundamentally is someone who owns a £3m house with a £2.4m mortgage wealthy? Would you tax that person on the whole £3m or just the £0.6m?
They live in a £3m house - if they can afford a £2.4m mortgage at 4.5% interest they can afford a 0.5% tax bill
So it's not a wealth tax then because that person doesn't have £3m in wealth, they have £0.6m in wealth.
If Labour seriously tries to impose a property tax remotely like the one proposed you'll know they're actively trying to lose the next election. They'd alienate virtually anyone of any influence in the country, lose London for a generation and please only their core vote and most of them only slightly.
The point of doing it now is that it could be implemented in April 2026 (heck you could actually do it in 2025 at a push) leaving plenty of time for it to be running before the next election.
And many people in Labour areas would be better off ..
They'd lose the entirety of the South East and London for more than a generation and big parts of the East and South West. Plus some of the posher bits of the North.
And so we reach the point why council tax hasn’t changed in 30+ years the political cost is too much so it can only be done on the first few months after an election because otherwise it’s too late.
Worse it them takes 2-3 years to calculate the appropriate rates so that it can’t be implement before year 3/4 of the Parliament just as the next election comes round.
That’s why it’s going to be a percentage of house price, because that can be implemented quickly hopefully providing enough time that people get used to it
I think you're deluding yourself if you think Labour will ever introduce a property tax on gross value but 🤷♂️
The reality of the situation is that Labour will probably do precisely zero on council tax.
The government needs to raise tax revenue and there isn’t many (any) places left where additional revenue can be generated.
It’s why you end up looking at council tax because there isn’t much left that isn’t taxed to the hilt or is untouchable due to election commitments
Yes but the next general election is four or five years away. Things that ought to matter, often don't.
Indeed
However isn’t it a political truism that perceptions are crucially formed in the first 100 days of office? And after that they become hard to shift
Starmer has been given a seriously tough test on his second month of office. I don’t envy him. However he came in with baggage that is entirely his own fault - taking the knee AFTER the BLM riots
The British public believe he is making a hash of this major crisis. Pompous but ineffective, hypocritical and bloviating?
He may find this perception hangs around
That said there are exceptions to the rule. Thatcher was massively unpopular at first but became more popular over time
Yes, for me the problem isn't so much the pomposity - hard to disapprove of rioters without sounding pompous - or the ineffectuality - a common failing in the face of rioting - but that he seemed so equivocal about rioting until it was poor white people doing it.
These aren't poor white people. They're violent racists.
Who probably also happen to be poor, white people.
That's disingenuous to us poor white people. Most of us don't riot.
Most men don't rape women either, yet I am assured rape is the fault of all men.
What a silly post. You're better than that 'Tubbs.
I'm not. Its been a long day.
In general I think the danger is that too many are ignoring the left behind of the country, AGAIN. Nothing makes racism right, nor rioting, but its essential to ask why things happen. Too many of my colleagues at Uni could not understand the Brexit vote because 'everyone I know voted remain'. Well yes, you know upper middle class academics.
There are many UK populations. Most are decent, kind folk. Some are not. Some are bitter, twisted, racist thugs. But a lot of people do feel left behind and feel that the country has let in too many immigrants. Thats not my opinion, but if you don't understand that viewpoint (while disagreeing) you will never understand the reasons.
My admonishment was for your "rape" comment.
I am well aware of the "left behind". They have been left behind for generations by the Labour party in Northern, Midlands, Scottish and Welsh s***holes. Hence they voted, SNP, Leave and "lent"their vote to Johnson in 2019, who also left them behind. They lent their vote to Farage in 2024 and probably 2029. He will let them down too.
When the politicians let them down the politicians look for scapegoats. The EU, foreigners, scroungers, illegal immigrants. Scoundrel like Farage buy the easy win, so we are where we are.
You say they are let down - but what exactly do they want and is it achievable?
The problem is that a lot of people want the impossible and don't understand that that is not achievable...
I go back to public funds being corruptly milked by late Labour Councillors like T. Dan Smith instead of funding civic society. Teesport smells similar, and in national government we had the PPE affair.
Teesport is a private company. Teesworks is the issue.
However both Teesworks and PPE are Tory corruption scandals - and neither have anything to do with the things the "left behind" want..
So good attempt to change your narrative but I'll repeat my previous questions
You say they (the "left behind") are let down - but what exactly do they want and is it achievable?
Of course Labour corruption is important over decades. Public funds are hijacked by Labour Councillors. T Dan Smith in Newcastle, Graham Jenkins (Richard Burton's brother) in Port Talbot in the 1970s for example. and not spent benefitted the good burghers of these local authorities.
What do the left behind want? Free stuff that they think is being given to immigrants and scroungers. People like Farage promote the lie that immigrants are given free stuff like houses and cars, not available to them.
Why not ask them instead of projecting your anti working class prejudice onto them.
You are making the grave error of justifying rioting thugs by suggesting that they have legitimate grievances.
Poor white people exist. Many of them are holding down multiple jobs to feed their children and heat their homes. If people like Farage and Yaxley-Lennon tell them they can't heat their homes and feed their children because of foreigners, or the EU some might believe them, but few will go out and riot. The trouble is the people pushing their buttons have less working class credentials that you suggest I have.
You can have a legitimate grievance while still having absolutely no grounds to justify rioting.
But I don't believe 20 year old Liam Grey from Mexborough had a grievance, he was out for a ruck.
"Sick of being left behind by globalisation and the knowledge economy. I'm going to burn down a Mosque."
Guido is talking about Council tax switching to a proportional system of x %(0.5%) of the current value. I suspect it's going to happen because changing the bands is impossible as even he points out...
I'd say there may be some weasel words in that from Paul Staines. He's quoting a report from the CSJ, which was founded by Iain Duncan Smith, Tim Montgomerie, Mark Florman and Philippa Stroud.
Havnig said that, a switch to 0.5% of market value would be a huge improvement imo, which if it includes an abolition of Stamp Duty as proposed by its main proponents will be in the financial interests of a large majority.
The main thing I'd say for RR and KS is not to be panicked by a bit of rhetoric from the Right.
Council Tax raises £46.7 billion according to the OBR or about 1.7% of national income so not huge in the cosmic scheme of things. Not sure how which Business Rates raises - way back in 2014-15, it was twice as much as Council Tax but that's probably changed with the pamdemic.
The plan, AIUI, is 0.5% on occupied residential property and 2.5% on empty homes based on a revaluation. There are roughly 24 million homes in the UK.
Doing a crude calculation on Stodge Towers it would mean £250 extra per year.
The % of Council Revenue coming from Council Tax has increased, at the same time as funding levels have been restricted.
That is because Councils have been kept on a starvation diet since ~2010, in both England and Scotland. But more so in England. In Scotland (one of our North Britons such as @Eabhal will tell us) I believe they had a freeze in cash terms for 6-7 consecutive years.
If we want effective and capable Councils they need a fairly big funding boost, and it will take time to build capacity.
I'd say that conservatively Local Authorities need a funding boost from current levels of something like a quarter to a third in the short term, just for recovery to 2010 levels.
The 0.5% suggestion is interesting but it seems to me there are a few challenges:
1) Switching to this system would lead to increased tax in London and SE and reduced tax in the North. How do you make sure that each council has enough money to spend? It sounds like more lateral transfers would be required but then it becomes a less local tax. 2) How do you decide how much each property is worth? In the 1990s, the valuations were done by driving by. The fact there were bands meant into didn't matter if the valuations were slightly out. However, if you are charging 0.5% then you need more precise valuations e.g. a 5k value difference is worth £25 a year 3) How often would valuations be updated? Again there could be issues for council budgets as house prices change e.g. 10% rise=extra money to spend, 10% fall=austerity
I think that’s right. Personally I think the banding system is probably the right approach, though the higher bands could perhaps pay a bit more.
The issue with it is that it has never been updated and there’s never been a good time for a government to force a revaluation.
If Labour are smart they’ll get a revaluation through now and then they’ll set up an independent body to conduct the revaluations at ten year intervals, a bit like boundary commissions. It might not stop politicians campaigning to freeze the valuations but it will make it politically harder to do so.
And create an automatic revaluation once a house is extended. That can’t be too difficult to do, just tie it into the building control process.
What do you do about things such as - reworking a property to improve energy efficiency can increase the value substantially
?
I think this is why you can’t be too intricate with the valuation/banding process and why I think it needs to be tied to more “headline” items like bedrooms, size, location. You don’t want to discourage improving the housing stock.
How about hearths?
It’s why a land value tax is by far the best system. You can improve your property as much as you like but pay the same tax.
The trouble with all of these proposals is that anything based on a proportion of value that isn't locally set becomes a giant tax on London and the South East. If Barnet council think they're able to set the tax at a lower rate to deliver services then they should be able to do so. Setting a national rate of 0.5% leaves no flexibility and will either result in redistribution (which shouldn't be done with local government taxes) or waste in local governments as they try to spend money they don't need.
Being blunt - council tax is very poor way of raising local taxes - it probably should be a national tax with a percentage of income tax given to councils
No thanks. At least the councils have some say in this and therefore the residents have some say in it. A nationally set tax and settlement process takes local tax policy out of the hands of local people.
So how about 0.3% set by the council + 0.2% wealth
Nope, all set locally. Otherwise it just becomes another redistribution method from the south to the north. I don't have a problem with the concept of the latter but don't hide it under the guise of local taxation. Raise national taxes and do it from those funds if that's the end goal.
Why do you think I split it into 2 - the first bit is set by the council (and can be adjusted) the second (wealth part) is national…
Then add it onto income tax.
No, wealth needs to be taxed as well as income, or otherwise structural inequality in the country is entrenched.
It’s worth noting that it’s the wealthier right wing posters on here who are now objecting to a wealth tax…
A wealth tax would need to have minimum thresholds and fundamentally is someone who owns a £3m house with a £2.4m mortgage wealthy? Would you tax that person on the whole £3m or just the £0.6m?
They live in a £3m house - if they can afford a £2.4m mortgage at 4.5% interest they can afford a 0.5% tax bill
So it's not a wealth tax then because that person doesn't have £3m in wealth, they have £0.6m in wealth.
If Labour seriously tries to impose a property tax remotely like the one proposed you'll know they're actively trying to lose the next election. They'd alienate virtually anyone of any influence in the country, lose London for a generation and please only their core vote and most of them only slightly.
Well they'd be suddenly landing people in pretty ordinary terraced houses bills of £7-10k across big swathes of London if it was on gross value rather than net value. Imagine telling a family in London that they're going to pay £500-700 per month for their new council tax so that potholes in Sunderland get fixed.
And, of course, house prices would collapse because of the embodied tax liability, so a lot of recent purchasers would find themselves in negative equity.
Guido is talking about Council tax switching to a proportional system of x %(0.5%) of the current value. I suspect it's going to happen because changing the bands is impossible as even he points out...
I'd say there may be some weasel words in that from Paul Staines. He's quoting a report from the CSJ, which was founded by Iain Duncan Smith, Tim Montgomerie, Mark Florman and Philippa Stroud.
Havnig said that, a switch to 0.5% of market value would be a huge improvement imo, which if it includes an abolition of Stamp Duty as proposed by its main proponents will be in the financial interests of a large majority.
The main thing I'd say for RR and KS is not to be panicked by a bit of rhetoric from the Right.
Council Tax raises £46.7 billion according to the OBR or about 1.7% of national income so not huge in the cosmic scheme of things. Not sure how which Business Rates raises - way back in 2014-15, it was twice as much as Council Tax but that's probably changed with the pamdemic.
The plan, AIUI, is 0.5% on occupied residential property and 2.5% on empty homes based on a revaluation. There are roughly 24 million homes in the UK.
Doing a crude calculation on Stodge Towers it would mean £250 extra per year.
The % of Council Revenue coming from Council Tax has increased, at the same time as funding levels have been restricted.
That is because Councils have been kept on a starvation diet since ~2010, in both England and Scotland. But more so in England. In Scotland (one of our North Britons such as @Eabhal will tell us) I believe they had a freeze in cash terms for 6-7 consecutive years.
If we want effective and capable Councils they need a fairly big funding boost, and it will take time to build capacity.
I'd say that conservatively Local Authorities need a funding boost from current levels of something like a quarter to a third in the short term, just for recovery to 2010 levels.
The 0.5% suggestion is interesting but it seems to me there are a few challenges:
1) Switching to this system would lead to increased tax in London and SE and reduced tax in the North. How do you make sure that each council has enough money to spend? It sounds like more lateral transfers would be required but then it becomes a less local tax. 2) How do you decide how much each property is worth? In the 1990s, the valuations were done by driving by. The fact there were bands meant into didn't matter if the valuations were slightly out. However, if you are charging 0.5% then you need more precise valuations e.g. a 5k value difference is worth £25 a year 3) How often would valuations be updated? Again there could be issues for council budgets as house prices change e.g. 10% rise=extra money to spend, 10% fall=austerity
I think that’s right. Personally I think the banding system is probably the right approach, though the higher bands could perhaps pay a bit more.
The issue with it is that it has never been updated and there’s never been a good time for a government to force a revaluation.
If Labour are smart they’ll get a revaluation through now and then they’ll set up an independent body to conduct the revaluations at ten year intervals, a bit like boundary commissions. It might not stop politicians campaigning to freeze the valuations but it will make it politically harder to do so.
And create an automatic revaluation once a house is extended. That can’t be too difficult to do, just tie it into the building control process.
What do you do about things such as - reworking a property to improve energy efficiency can increase the value substantially
?
I think this is why you can’t be too intricate with the valuation/banding process and why I think it needs to be tied to more “headline” items like bedrooms, size, location. You don’t want to discourage improving the housing stock.
How about hearths?
It’s why a land value tax is by far the best system. You can improve your property as much as you like but pay the same tax.
The trouble with all of these proposals is that anything based on a proportion of value that isn't locally set becomes a giant tax on London and the South East. If Barnet council think they're able to set the tax at a lower rate to deliver services then they should be able to do so. Setting a national rate of 0.5% leaves no flexibility and will either result in redistribution (which shouldn't be done with local government taxes) or waste in local governments as they try to spend money they don't need.
Being blunt - council tax is very poor way of raising local taxes - it probably should be a national tax with a percentage of income tax given to councils
No thanks. At least the councils have some say in this and therefore the residents have some say in it. A nationally set tax and settlement process takes local tax policy out of the hands of local people.
So how about 0.3% set by the council + 0.2% wealth
Nope, all set locally. Otherwise it just becomes another redistribution method from the south to the north. I don't have a problem with the concept of the latter but don't hide it under the guise of local taxation. Raise national taxes and do it from those funds if that's the end goal.
Why do you think I split it into 2 - the first bit is set by the council (and can be adjusted) the second (wealth part) is national…
Then add it onto income tax.
No, wealth needs to be taxed as well as income, or otherwise structural inequality in the country is entrenched.
It’s worth noting that it’s the wealthier right wing posters on here who are now objecting to a wealth tax…
A wealth tax would need to have minimum thresholds and fundamentally is someone who owns a £3m house with a £2.4m mortgage wealthy? Would you tax that person on the whole £3m or just the £0.6m?
They live in a £3m house - if they can afford a £2.4m mortgage at 4.5% interest they can afford a 0.5% tax bill
So it's not a wealth tax then because that person doesn't have £3m in wealth, they have £0.6m in wealth.
If Labour seriously tries to impose a property tax remotely like the one proposed you'll know they're actively trying to lose the next election. They'd alienate virtually anyone of any influence in the country, lose London for a generation and please only their core vote and most of them only slightly.
Well they'd be suddenly landing people in pretty ordinary terraced houses bills of £7-10k across big swathes of London if it was on gross value rather than net value. Imagine telling a family in London that they're going to pay £500-700 per month for their new council tax so that potholes in Sunderland get fixed.
And, of course, house prices would collapse because of the embodied tax liability, so a lot of recent purchasers would find themselves in negative equity.
For recent purchasers the impact would be far less than the impact Trussonomics had on those who bought from 2018 onwards and have had to remortgage since 2022.
Farage can go fxck himself . He’s thrown petrol onto the flames .
These riots have been enabled by the toxic discourse of those in government these last 5 years.
These riots have been enabled by 25 years of stratospheric immigration levels.
The other, and probably better explanation, is the utter failure of levelling up (or whatever you want to call it). It the economic prospects of the poorest WWC had improved, you probably wouldn’t be seeing this, anlmost irrespective of immigration levels.
Their prospects have improved.
But, in all societies, there are going to be the underclass dregs who cause trouble and accept no responsibilities.
Trump is value here. I'd vote for Kamala over the orange one, but I'm aware the market is wish-casting.
I think what it will come down to is the economy. Most Americans have become poorer as a result of the madcap inflation of the last few years. And Trump is really sensitive to those working class stiffs who are worse off, hence his no tax on tips policy.
Irrespective of one's ideology, parties in power during massive economic downturns, such as we've seen in every western nation post Covid and Ukraine, don't tend to do well.
Dispassionately, my money remains on Trump. As it would almost any other candidate not in government for the last four years.
I see it the other way. I actually think the market is being too cautious here. The trend and direction of travel has all been in Harris’ favour. What’s more, the Harris “bounce” looks to be sustaining itself right now. And it has longer to run. She’ll get decent coverage from the Walz pick (generally seems to have gone down well - these things can unravel but it seems OK so far), then she’s got the convention.
I think it’s entirely possible she’s polling 3-5 points ahead by the end of August. Not an insurmountable lead for Trump to overcome by any means, but he hasn’t reacted well to the shift in the race, and he needs to get his act together.
Guido is talking about Council tax switching to a proportional system of x %(0.5%) of the current value. I suspect it's going to happen because changing the bands is impossible as even he points out...
I'd say there may be some weasel words in that from Paul Staines. He's quoting a report from the CSJ, which was founded by Iain Duncan Smith, Tim Montgomerie, Mark Florman and Philippa Stroud.
Havnig said that, a switch to 0.5% of market value would be a huge improvement imo, which if it includes an abolition of Stamp Duty as proposed by its main proponents will be in the financial interests of a large majority.
The main thing I'd say for RR and KS is not to be panicked by a bit of rhetoric from the Right.
Council Tax raises £46.7 billion according to the OBR or about 1.7% of national income so not huge in the cosmic scheme of things. Not sure how which Business Rates raises - way back in 2014-15, it was twice as much as Council Tax but that's probably changed with the pamdemic.
The plan, AIUI, is 0.5% on occupied residential property and 2.5% on empty homes based on a revaluation. There are roughly 24 million homes in the UK.
Doing a crude calculation on Stodge Towers it would mean £250 extra per year.
The % of Council Revenue coming from Council Tax has increased, at the same time as funding levels have been restricted.
That is because Councils have been kept on a starvation diet since ~2010, in both England and Scotland. But more so in England. In Scotland (one of our North Britons such as @Eabhal will tell us) I believe they had a freeze in cash terms for 6-7 consecutive years.
If we want effective and capable Councils they need a fairly big funding boost, and it will take time to build capacity.
I'd say that conservatively Local Authorities need a funding boost from current levels of something like a quarter to a third in the short term, just for recovery to 2010 levels.
The 0.5% suggestion is interesting but it seems to me there are a few challenges:
1) Switching to this system would lead to increased tax in London and SE and reduced tax in the North. How do you make sure that each council has enough money to spend? It sounds like more lateral transfers would be required but then it becomes a less local tax. 2) How do you decide how much each property is worth? In the 1990s, the valuations were done by driving by. The fact there were bands meant into didn't matter if the valuations were slightly out. However, if you are charging 0.5% then you need more precise valuations e.g. a 5k value difference is worth £25 a year 3) How often would valuations be updated? Again there could be issues for council budgets as house prices change e.g. 10% rise=extra money to spend, 10% fall=austerity
I think that’s right. Personally I think the banding system is probably the right approach, though the higher bands could perhaps pay a bit more.
The issue with it is that it has never been updated and there’s never been a good time for a government to force a revaluation.
If Labour are smart they’ll get a revaluation through now and then they’ll set up an independent body to conduct the revaluations at ten year intervals, a bit like boundary commissions. It might not stop politicians campaigning to freeze the valuations but it will make it politically harder to do so.
And create an automatic revaluation once a house is extended. That can’t be too difficult to do, just tie it into the building control process.
What do you do about things such as - reworking a property to improve energy efficiency can increase the value substantially
?
I think this is why you can’t be too intricate with the valuation/banding process and why I think it needs to be tied to more “headline” items like bedrooms, size, location. You don’t want to discourage improving the housing stock.
How about hearths?
It’s why a land value tax is by far the best system. You can improve your property as much as you like but pay the same tax.
The trouble with all of these proposals is that anything based on a proportion of value that isn't locally set becomes a giant tax on London and the South East. If Barnet council think they're able to set the tax at a lower rate to deliver services then they should be able to do so. Setting a national rate of 0.5% leaves no flexibility and will either result in redistribution (which shouldn't be done with local government taxes) or waste in local governments as they try to spend money they don't need.
Being blunt - council tax is very poor way of raising local taxes - it probably should be a national tax with a percentage of income tax given to councils
No thanks. At least the councils have some say in this and therefore the residents have some say in it. A nationally set tax and settlement process takes local tax policy out of the hands of local people.
So how about 0.3% set by the council + 0.2% wealth
Nope, all set locally. Otherwise it just becomes another redistribution method from the south to the north. I don't have a problem with the concept of the latter but don't hide it under the guise of local taxation. Raise national taxes and do it from those funds if that's the end goal.
Why do you think I split it into 2 - the first bit is set by the council (and can be adjusted) the second (wealth part) is national…
Then add it onto income tax.
No, wealth needs to be taxed as well as income, or otherwise structural inequality in the country is entrenched.
It’s worth noting that it’s the wealthier right wing posters on here who are now objecting to a wealth tax…
A wealth tax would need to have minimum thresholds and fundamentally is someone who owns a £3m house with a £2.4m mortgage wealthy? Would you tax that person on the whole £3m or just the £0.6m?
They live in a £3m house - if they can afford a £2.4m mortgage at 4.5% interest they can afford a 0.5% tax bill
So it's not a wealth tax then because that person doesn't have £3m in wealth, they have £0.6m in wealth.
If Labour seriously tries to impose a property tax remotely like the one proposed you'll know they're actively trying to lose the next election. They'd alienate virtually anyone of any influence in the country, lose London for a generation and please only their core vote and most of them only slightly.
The point of doing it now is that it could be implemented in April 2026 (heck you could actually do it in 2025 at a push) leaving plenty of time for it to be running before the next election.
And many people in Labour areas would be better off ..
They'd lose the entirety of the South East and London for more than a generation and big parts of the East and South West. Plus some of the posher bits of the North.
Far more constituencies 0.5% would be a big cut, I'd guess probably 90% maybe.
Farage can go fxck himself . He’s thrown petrol onto the flames .
These riots have been enabled by the toxic discourse of those in government these last 5 years.
These riots have been enabled by 25 years of stratospheric immigration levels.
The other, and probably better explanation, is the utter failure of levelling up (or whatever you want to call it). It the economic prospects of the poorest WWC had improved, you probably wouldn’t be seeing this, anlmost irrespective of immigration levels.
Their prospects have improved.
But, in all societies, there are going to be the underclass dregs who cause trouble and accept no responsibilities.
The dregs causing trouble and accepting no responsibilities in this case is 100% Nigel Farage.
The guy is dangerous. How could anyone still support him?
He asks a question on whether the crux of that meme is true. Namely, “repeatedly raped a 12 year old girl, 180 community hours, no prison time”.
From the bbc:
"Hamoud Al Soaimi, 21, for three counts of sexual assault and one assault by penetration, jailed for two years suspended for two years with 180 hours unpaid work".
But hey, let’s ban Twitter because he says mean things about Keir Starmer.
But, come, Moonshine, you're a reasonable person, and you surely must know that he's not only doing that.
He's not only accusing Starmer of favouritism to minorities in policing, which no one's succeeded in posting any real evidence of, but seems to be actively willing on social collapse, breakdown and war, in our country, as also the leader of a vast overseas website. You would have to say that Governments all over the world would act in that situation.
Musk is a frequently misunderstood fellow, I have misunderstood him many times. He’s not always right. But I have come to realise his positions are generally (not always) well considered and come with good intentions.
His two tier Keir accusation is not his invention, he is aping an already wide viewpoint. And as others have discussed tonight, it is not true that the evidence slate is clean on that. We are far too soft on serious criminality, both in terms of arrests and sentencing. By the way, any arrests yet for the Southend machete fight or hotel inferno?
I’m looking at this sectarian violence between different components of the British underclass (no offence intended) and wonder indeed if we are now in a similar state to 20th N.Ireland, which by most reasonable definitions was a form of civil war.
I was appalled at some of his statements on Ukraine. But really I do increasingly wonder if he’s right. I don’t think there’s a cigarette paper between the Biden White House and Trump on Ukraine policy. Not really. Neither wants Ukraine to “win”, meaning a return to 2014 borders. And the half hearted support in 2023 makes me wonder whether the White House even wants a return to 2022. Musk is looking at this seeing tens of thousands of death per month on all sides and is saying what’s the f point, if the borders are going to be roughly frozen anyway? My personal view is we’re more not less likely to see nuclear exchange if Putin “wins” in Ukraine, he sees the opposite and seemingly so does the weight of the US security establishment. Perhaps I’m wrong?
Occasionally he likes or retweets inappropriate things out of curiosity or mischief, most likely at time from the karzy. But his vision for Twitter is essentially a global Speakers Corner and that the crowd will sort the sense from the nonsense.
He is very misunderstood by people, often by those that take life too seriously. These calls to ban or expropriate Twitter would be funny if they weren’t so sinister.
I suggest you read the account he linked to and then maybe you might change that view. Probably some of the worst anti semitism possible. See @viewcode comments. Pure Nazism. Not even oblique, but straight out there hatred. Look at the Jewish cartoons, the glorification of Hitler, the video abusing a bastard Jew. This is what Musk is linking to.
He linked to a meme that was not anti semetic, pro Hitler / Nazi or whatever you want to call it. But actually made a fairly perceptive point about the uk criminal justice system. Why do you suppose he read back through the past posts of that meme poster?
It really is quite silly to think Elon Musk supports the glorification of Hitler and the destruction of the Jews but you believe whatever you want.
You don't have to read back far down the history of the meme poster, just a few flicks down. It took me a second to realise what was happening.
Trump is value here. I'd vote for Kamala over the orange one, but I'm aware the market is wish-casting.
I think what it will come down to is the economy. Most Americans have become poorer as a result of the madcap inflation of the last few years. And Trump is really sensitive to those working class stiffs who are worse off, hence his no tax on tips policy.
Irrespective of one's ideology, parties in power during massive economic downturns, such as we've seen in every western nation post Covid and Ukraine, don't tend to do well.
Dispassionately, my money remains on Trump. As it would almost any other candidate not in government for the last four years.
Its not so much as to whether they're worse off its often more if they think they're worse off.
And at a further step whether they think they're worse off than they think they deserve to be.
Some mixture of reality versus memories and perceived reality versus self-entitled expectations.
Good grief, BBC. Can you not interview any Americans on the US election who aren’t Republicans ? WTF is Frank fucking Lunz - long time GOP propagandist - the go to guy on analysing Harris’s VP pick ? And presented as some sort of objective commentator.
They were all Democrats on Newsnight and BBC1, even Luntz said Harris was favourite in his view. Not a single Republican on there!
Olympics: certainly a difficult few days for Britain with lots of gold opportunities not being converted. But we are still Top 5 in the table.
Still a chance for us to beat France or more realistically Australia if we can get maybe 4 or 5 in the cycling plus we need to pick up a few others eg as correctly identified by @MaxPB, KJH who has been consistently excellent for years and I really hope she wins!
From my perspective it looks like France 3 as they will continue to win across wide range of events, GB 4 and Aus 5 as their main strength is in swimming which is finished.
Clearly USA and China 1 and 2 no idea which order.
I assume you mean KJT although I am willing to give the heptathlon ago, but I'm not sure of the sex change.
Trump is value here. I'd vote for Kamala over the orange one, but I'm aware the market is wish-casting.
I think what it will come down to is the economy. Most Americans have become poorer as a result of the madcap inflation of the last few years. And Trump is really sensitive to those working class stiffs who are worse off, hence his no tax on tips policy.
Irrespective of one's ideology, parties in power during massive economic downturns, such as we've seen in every western nation post Covid and Ukraine, don't tend to do well.
Dispassionately, my money remains on Trump. As it would almost any other candidate not in government for the last four years.
I see it the other way. I actually think the market is being too cautious here. The trend and direction of travel has all been in Harris’ favour. What’s more, the Harris “bounce” looks to be sustaining itself right now. And it has longer to run. She’ll get decent coverage from the Walz pick (generally seems to have gone down well - these things can unravel but it seems OK so far), then she’s got the convention.
I think it’s entirely possible she’s polling 3-5 points ahead by the end of August. Not an insurmountable lead for Trump to overcome by any means, but he hasn’t reacted well to the shift in the race, and he needs to get his act together.
At the moment I think we could see the first Republican presidential election win in the popular vote and EC since Bush beat Kerry 20 years ago in 2004. Harris-Walz is the most leftwing Democratic ticket since McGovern-Shriver in 1972
Guido is talking about Council tax switching to a proportional system of x %(0.5%) of the current value. I suspect it's going to happen because changing the bands is impossible as even he points out...
I'd say there may be some weasel words in that from Paul Staines. He's quoting a report from the CSJ, which was founded by Iain Duncan Smith, Tim Montgomerie, Mark Florman and Philippa Stroud.
Havnig said that, a switch to 0.5% of market value would be a huge improvement imo, which if it includes an abolition of Stamp Duty as proposed by its main proponents will be in the financial interests of a large majority.
The main thing I'd say for RR and KS is not to be panicked by a bit of rhetoric from the Right.
Council Tax raises £46.7 billion according to the OBR or about 1.7% of national income so not huge in the cosmic scheme of things. Not sure how which Business Rates raises - way back in 2014-15, it was twice as much as Council Tax but that's probably changed with the pamdemic.
The plan, AIUI, is 0.5% on occupied residential property and 2.5% on empty homes based on a revaluation. There are roughly 24 million homes in the UK.
Doing a crude calculation on Stodge Towers it would mean £250 extra per year.
The % of Council Revenue coming from Council Tax has increased, at the same time as funding levels have been restricted.
That is because Councils have been kept on a starvation diet since ~2010, in both England and Scotland. But more so in England. In Scotland (one of our North Britons such as @Eabhal will tell us) I believe they had a freeze in cash terms for 6-7 consecutive years.
If we want effective and capable Councils they need a fairly big funding boost, and it will take time to build capacity.
I'd say that conservatively Local Authorities need a funding boost from current levels of something like a quarter to a third in the short term, just for recovery to 2010 levels.
The 0.5% suggestion is interesting but it seems to me there are a few challenges:
1) Switching to this system would lead to increased tax in London and SE and reduced tax in the North. How do you make sure that each council has enough money to spend? It sounds like more lateral transfers would be required but then it becomes a less local tax. 2) How do you decide how much each property is worth? In the 1990s, the valuations were done by driving by. The fact there were bands meant into didn't matter if the valuations were slightly out. However, if you are charging 0.5% then you need more precise valuations e.g. a 5k value difference is worth £25 a year 3) How often would valuations be updated? Again there could be issues for council budgets as house prices change e.g. 10% rise=extra money to spend, 10% fall=austerity
I think that’s right. Personally I think the banding system is probably the right approach, though the higher bands could perhaps pay a bit more.
The issue with it is that it has never been updated and there’s never been a good time for a government to force a revaluation.
If Labour are smart they’ll get a revaluation through now and then they’ll set up an independent body to conduct the revaluations at ten year intervals, a bit like boundary commissions. It might not stop politicians campaigning to freeze the valuations but it will make it politically harder to do so.
And create an automatic revaluation once a house is extended. That can’t be too difficult to do, just tie it into the building control process.
What do you do about things such as - reworking a property to improve energy efficiency can increase the value substantially
?
I think this is why you can’t be too intricate with the valuation/banding process and why I think it needs to be tied to more “headline” items like bedrooms, size, location. You don’t want to discourage improving the housing stock.
How about hearths?
It’s why a land value tax is by far the best system. You can improve your property as much as you like but pay the same tax.
The trouble with all of these proposals is that anything based on a proportion of value that isn't locally set becomes a giant tax on London and the South East. If Barnet council think they're able to set the tax at a lower rate to deliver services then they should be able to do so. Setting a national rate of 0.5% leaves no flexibility and will either result in redistribution (which shouldn't be done with local government taxes) or waste in local governments as they try to spend money they don't need.
Being blunt - council tax is very poor way of raising local taxes - it probably should be a national tax with a percentage of income tax given to councils
No thanks. At least the councils have some say in this and therefore the residents have some say in it. A nationally set tax and settlement process takes local tax policy out of the hands of local people.
So how about 0.3% set by the council + 0.2% wealth
Nope, all set locally. Otherwise it just becomes another redistribution method from the south to the north. I don't have a problem with the concept of the latter but don't hide it under the guise of local taxation. Raise national taxes and do it from those funds if that's the end goal.
Why do you think I split it into 2 - the first bit is set by the council (and can be adjusted) the second (wealth part) is national…
Then add it onto income tax.
No, wealth needs to be taxed as well as income, or otherwise structural inequality in the country is entrenched.
It’s worth noting that it’s the wealthier right wing posters on here who are now objecting to a wealth tax…
A wealth tax would need to have minimum thresholds and fundamentally is someone who owns a £3m house with a £2.4m mortgage wealthy? Would you tax that person on the whole £3m or just the £0.6m?
They live in a £3m house - if they can afford a £2.4m mortgage at 4.5% interest they can afford a 0.5% tax bill
So it's not a wealth tax then because that person doesn't have £3m in wealth, they have £0.6m in wealth.
If Labour seriously tries to impose a property tax remotely like the one proposed you'll know they're actively trying to lose the next election. They'd alienate virtually anyone of any influence in the country, lose London for a generation and please only their core vote and most of them only slightly.
Well they'd be suddenly landing people in pretty ordinary terraced houses bills of £7-10k across big swathes of London if it was on gross value rather than net value. Imagine telling a family in London that they're going to pay £500-700 per month for their new council tax so that potholes in Sunderland get fixed.
And, of course, house prices would collapse because of the embodied tax liability, so a lot of recent purchasers would find themselves in negative equity.
For recent purchasers the impact would be far less than the impact Trussonomics had on those who bought from 2018 onwards and have had to remortgage since 2022.
Then you don't understand interest rates properly, the moron premium from Truss unwound a few weeks after Rishi and Hunt settled everything down. This would cause structurally higher tax for everyone in London and the South East and big chunks of the rest of the country.
It's much more likely that the chancellor will do some accounting tricks to make it look like the deficit is falling than actually raise tax or move to a suicidal property taxation system.
Guido is talking about Council tax switching to a proportional system of x %(0.5%) of the current value. I suspect it's going to happen because changing the bands is impossible as even he points out...
I'd say there may be some weasel words in that from Paul Staines. He's quoting a report from the CSJ, which was founded by Iain Duncan Smith, Tim Montgomerie, Mark Florman and Philippa Stroud.
Havnig said that, a switch to 0.5% of market value would be a huge improvement imo, which if it includes an abolition of Stamp Duty as proposed by its main proponents will be in the financial interests of a large majority.
The main thing I'd say for RR and KS is not to be panicked by a bit of rhetoric from the Right.
Council Tax raises £46.7 billion according to the OBR or about 1.7% of national income so not huge in the cosmic scheme of things. Not sure how which Business Rates raises - way back in 2014-15, it was twice as much as Council Tax but that's probably changed with the pamdemic.
The plan, AIUI, is 0.5% on occupied residential property and 2.5% on empty homes based on a revaluation. There are roughly 24 million homes in the UK.
Doing a crude calculation on Stodge Towers it would mean £250 extra per year.
The % of Council Revenue coming from Council Tax has increased, at the same time as funding levels have been restricted.
That is because Councils have been kept on a starvation diet since ~2010, in both England and Scotland. But more so in England. In Scotland (one of our North Britons such as @Eabhal will tell us) I believe they had a freeze in cash terms for 6-7 consecutive years.
If we want effective and capable Councils they need a fairly big funding boost, and it will take time to build capacity.
I'd say that conservatively Local Authorities need a funding boost from current levels of something like a quarter to a third in the short term, just for recovery to 2010 levels.
The 0.5% suggestion is interesting but it seems to me there are a few challenges:
1) Switching to this system would lead to increased tax in London and SE and reduced tax in the North. How do you make sure that each council has enough money to spend? It sounds like more lateral transfers would be required but then it becomes a less local tax. 2) How do you decide how much each property is worth? In the 1990s, the valuations were done by driving by. The fact there were bands meant into didn't matter if the valuations were slightly out. However, if you are charging 0.5% then you need more precise valuations e.g. a 5k value difference is worth £25 a year 3) How often would valuations be updated? Again there could be issues for council budgets as house prices change e.g. 10% rise=extra money to spend, 10% fall=austerity
I think that’s right. Personally I think the banding system is probably the right approach, though the higher bands could perhaps pay a bit more.
The issue with it is that it has never been updated and there’s never been a good time for a government to force a revaluation.
If Labour are smart they’ll get a revaluation through now and then they’ll set up an independent body to conduct the revaluations at ten year intervals, a bit like boundary commissions. It might not stop politicians campaigning to freeze the valuations but it will make it politically harder to do so.
And create an automatic revaluation once a house is extended. That can’t be too difficult to do, just tie it into the building control process.
What do you do about things such as - reworking a property to improve energy efficiency can increase the value substantially
?
I think this is why you can’t be too intricate with the valuation/banding process and why I think it needs to be tied to more “headline” items like bedrooms, size, location. You don’t want to discourage improving the housing stock.
How about hearths?
It’s why a land value tax is by far the best system. You can improve your property as much as you like but pay the same tax.
The trouble with all of these proposals is that anything based on a proportion of value that isn't locally set becomes a giant tax on London and the South East. If Barnet council think they're able to set the tax at a lower rate to deliver services then they should be able to do so. Setting a national rate of 0.5% leaves no flexibility and will either result in redistribution (which shouldn't be done with local government taxes) or waste in local governments as they try to spend money they don't need.
Being blunt - council tax is very poor way of raising local taxes - it probably should be a national tax with a percentage of income tax given to councils
No thanks. At least the councils have some say in this and therefore the residents have some say in it. A nationally set tax and settlement process takes local tax policy out of the hands of local people.
So how about 0.3% set by the council + 0.2% wealth
Nope, all set locally. Otherwise it just becomes another redistribution method from the south to the north. I don't have a problem with the concept of the latter but don't hide it under the guise of local taxation. Raise national taxes and do it from those funds if that's the end goal.
Why do you think I split it into 2 - the first bit is set by the council (and can be adjusted) the second (wealth part) is national…
Then add it onto income tax.
No, wealth needs to be taxed as well as income, or otherwise structural inequality in the country is entrenched.
It’s worth noting that it’s the wealthier right wing posters on here who are now objecting to a wealth tax…
A wealth tax would need to have minimum thresholds and fundamentally is someone who owns a £3m house with a £2.4m mortgage wealthy? Would you tax that person on the whole £3m or just the £0.6m?
They live in a £3m house - if they can afford a £2.4m mortgage at 4.5% interest they can afford a 0.5% tax bill
So it's not a wealth tax then because that person doesn't have £3m in wealth, they have £0.6m in wealth.
If Labour seriously tries to impose a property tax remotely like the one proposed you'll know they're actively trying to lose the next election. They'd alienate virtually anyone of any influence in the country, lose London for a generation and please only their core vote and most of them only slightly.
The point of doing it now is that it could be implemented in April 2026 (heck you could actually do it in 2025 at a push) leaving plenty of time for it to be running before the next election.
And many people in Labour areas would be better off ..
They'd lose the entirety of the South East and London for more than a generation and big parts of the East and South West. Plus some of the posher bits of the North.
And so we reach the point why council tax hasn’t changed in 30+ years the political cost is too much so it can only be done on the first few months after an election because otherwise it’s too late.
Worse it them takes 2-3 years to calculate the appropriate rates so that it can’t be implement before year 3/4 of the Parliament just as the next election comes round.
That’s why it’s going to be a percentage of house price, because that can be implemented quickly hopefully providing enough time that people get used to it
I think you're deluding yourself if you think Labour will ever introduce a property tax on gross value but 🤷♂️
The reality of the situation is that Labour will probably do precisely zero on council tax.
The government needs to raise tax revenue and there isn’t many (any) places left where additional revenue can be generated.
It’s why you end up looking at council tax because there isn’t much left that isn’t taxed to the hilt or is untouchable due to election commitments
Council tax should be set by local councils accountable to their local voters for it, not central government
Trump is value here. I'd vote for Kamala over the orange one, but I'm aware the market is wish-casting.
I think what it will come down to is the economy. Most Americans have become poorer as a result of the madcap inflation of the last few years. And Trump is really sensitive to those working class stiffs who are worse off, hence his no tax on tips policy.
Irrespective of one's ideology, parties in power during massive economic downturns, such as we've seen in every western nation post Covid and Ukraine, don't tend to do well.
Dispassionately, my money remains on Trump. As it would almost any other candidate not in government for the last four years.
I see it the other way. I actually think the market is being too cautious here. The trend and direction of travel has all been in Harris’ favour. What’s more, the Harris “bounce” looks to be sustaining itself right now. And it has longer to run. She’ll get decent coverage from the Walz pick (generally seems to have gone down well - these things can unravel but it seems OK so far), then she’s got the convention.
I think it’s entirely possible she’s polling 3-5 points ahead by the end of August. Not an insurmountable lead for Trump to overcome by any means, but he hasn’t reacted well to the shift in the race, and he needs to get his act together.
At the moment I think we could see the first Republican presidential election win in the popular vote and EC since Bush beat Kerry 20 years ago in 2004. Harris-Walz is the most leftwing Democratic ticket since McGovern-Shriver in 1972
The GOP haven't come within 2.5m of the popular vote since 2004, that is a very bold prediction indeed.
Guido is talking about Council tax switching to a proportional system of x %(0.5%) of the current value. I suspect it's going to happen because changing the bands is impossible as even he points out...
I'd say there may be some weasel words in that from Paul Staines. He's quoting a report from the CSJ, which was founded by Iain Duncan Smith, Tim Montgomerie, Mark Florman and Philippa Stroud.
Havnig said that, a switch to 0.5% of market value would be a huge improvement imo, which if it includes an abolition of Stamp Duty as proposed by its main proponents will be in the financial interests of a large majority.
The main thing I'd say for RR and KS is not to be panicked by a bit of rhetoric from the Right.
Council Tax raises £46.7 billion according to the OBR or about 1.7% of national income so not huge in the cosmic scheme of things. Not sure how which Business Rates raises - way back in 2014-15, it was twice as much as Council Tax but that's probably changed with the pamdemic.
The plan, AIUI, is 0.5% on occupied residential property and 2.5% on empty homes based on a revaluation. There are roughly 24 million homes in the UK.
Doing a crude calculation on Stodge Towers it would mean £250 extra per year.
The % of Council Revenue coming from Council Tax has increased, at the same time as funding levels have been restricted.
That is because Councils have been kept on a starvation diet since ~2010, in both England and Scotland. But more so in England. In Scotland (one of our North Britons such as @Eabhal will tell us) I believe they had a freeze in cash terms for 6-7 consecutive years.
If we want effective and capable Councils they need a fairly big funding boost, and it will take time to build capacity.
I'd say that conservatively Local Authorities need a funding boost from current levels of something like a quarter to a third in the short term, just for recovery to 2010 levels.
The 0.5% suggestion is interesting but it seems to me there are a few challenges:
1) Switching to this system would lead to increased tax in London and SE and reduced tax in the North. How do you make sure that each council has enough money to spend? It sounds like more lateral transfers would be required but then it becomes a less local tax. 2) How do you decide how much each property is worth? In the 1990s, the valuations were done by driving by. The fact there were bands meant into didn't matter if the valuations were slightly out. However, if you are charging 0.5% then you need more precise valuations e.g. a 5k value difference is worth £25 a year 3) How often would valuations be updated? Again there could be issues for council budgets as house prices change e.g. 10% rise=extra money to spend, 10% fall=austerity
I think that’s right. Personally I think the banding system is probably the right approach, though the higher bands could perhaps pay a bit more.
The issue with it is that it has never been updated and there’s never been a good time for a government to force a revaluation.
If Labour are smart they’ll get a revaluation through now and then they’ll set up an independent body to conduct the revaluations at ten year intervals, a bit like boundary commissions. It might not stop politicians campaigning to freeze the valuations but it will make it politically harder to do so.
And create an automatic revaluation once a house is extended. That can’t be too difficult to do, just tie it into the building control process.
What do you do about things such as - reworking a property to improve energy efficiency can increase the value substantially
?
I think this is why you can’t be too intricate with the valuation/banding process and why I think it needs to be tied to more “headline” items like bedrooms, size, location. You don’t want to discourage improving the housing stock.
How about hearths?
It’s why a land value tax is by far the best system. You can improve your property as much as you like but pay the same tax.
The trouble with all of these proposals is that anything based on a proportion of value that isn't locally set becomes a giant tax on London and the South East. If Barnet council think they're able to set the tax at a lower rate to deliver services then they should be able to do so. Setting a national rate of 0.5% leaves no flexibility and will either result in redistribution (which shouldn't be done with local government taxes) or waste in local governments as they try to spend money they don't need.
Being blunt - council tax is very poor way of raising local taxes - it probably should be a national tax with a percentage of income tax given to councils
No thanks. At least the councils have some say in this and therefore the residents have some say in it. A nationally set tax and settlement process takes local tax policy out of the hands of local people.
So how about 0.3% set by the council + 0.2% wealth
Nope, all set locally. Otherwise it just becomes another redistribution method from the south to the north. I don't have a problem with the concept of the latter but don't hide it under the guise of local taxation. Raise national taxes and do it from those funds if that's the end goal.
Why do you think I split it into 2 - the first bit is set by the council (and can be adjusted) the second (wealth part) is national…
Then add it onto income tax.
No, wealth needs to be taxed as well as income, or otherwise structural inequality in the country is entrenched.
It’s worth noting that it’s the wealthier right wing posters on here who are now objecting to a wealth tax…
A wealth tax would need to have minimum thresholds and fundamentally is someone who owns a £3m house with a £2.4m mortgage wealthy? Would you tax that person on the whole £3m or just the £0.6m?
They live in a £3m house - if they can afford a £2.4m mortgage at 4.5% interest they can afford a 0.5% tax bill
So it's not a wealth tax then because that person doesn't have £3m in wealth, they have £0.6m in wealth.
If Labour seriously tries to impose a property tax remotely like the one proposed you'll know they're actively trying to lose the next election. They'd alienate virtually anyone of any influence in the country, lose London for a generation and please only their core vote and most of them only slightly.
The point of doing it now is that it could be implemented in April 2026 (heck you could actually do it in 2025 at a push) leaving plenty of time for it to be running before the next election.
And many people in Labour areas would be better off ..
They'd lose the entirety of the South East and London for more than a generation and big parts of the East and South West. Plus some of the posher bits of the North.
And so we reach the point why council tax hasn’t changed in 30+ years the political cost is too much so it can only be done on the first few months after an election because otherwise it’s too late.
Worse it them takes 2-3 years to calculate the appropriate rates so that it can’t be implement before year 3/4 of the Parliament just as the next election comes round.
That’s why it’s going to be a percentage of house price, because that can be implemented quickly hopefully providing enough time that people get used to it
I think you're deluding yourself if you think Labour will ever introduce a property tax on gross value but 🤷♂️
The reality of the situation is that Labour will probably do precisely zero on council tax.
The government needs to raise tax revenue and there isn’t many (any) places left where additional revenue can be generated.
It’s why you end up looking at council tax because there isn’t much left that isn’t taxed to the hilt or is untouchable due to election commitments
Council tax should be set by local councils accountable to their local voters for it, not central government
The government can do precisely that by uncapping council tax bands. A local % property tax would be another option.
Good grief, BBC. Can you not interview any Americans on the US election who aren’t Republicans ? WTF is Frank fucking Lunz - long time GOP propagandist - the go to guy on analysing Harris’s VP pick ? And presented as some sort of objective commentator.
They were all Democrats on Newsnight and BBC1, even Luntz said Harris was favourite in his view. Not a single Republican on there!
Posters on here post now and again that Lunz is a GOP propagandist.
Farage can go fxck himself . He’s thrown petrol onto the flames .
These riots have been enabled by the toxic discourse of those in government these last 5 years.
These riots have been enabled by 25 years of stratospheric immigration levels.
The other, and probably better explanation, is the utter failure of levelling up (or whatever you want to call it). It the economic prospects of the poorest WWC had improved, you probably wouldn’t be seeing this, anlmost irrespective of immigration levels.
Their prospects have improved.
But, in all societies, there are going to be the underclass dregs who cause trouble and accept no responsibilities.
That’s the point. There are large numbers of folk whose prospects have not improved - despite the political promises of the last decade.
And dismissing them all as “dregs” is pretty contemptible.
According to Yougov's fame and popularity rankings, Tommy Robinson unsurprisingly has a net negative rating but at -21% it is actually better than Sunak at -42%, Starmer at -38%, Jeremy Hunt at -35% and Priti Patel at -22%. Farage at -14% is not that much higher than him either and 70% have heard of Robinson.
I guess the BBC will now have to respond by putting him on QT for six weeks in a row as soon as it is next on.
Allie Hodgkins-Brown @AllieHBNews · 1m Wednesday’s Daily EXPRESS: “Farage Warns: Britain Is At ‘Quite Perilous Point’ “. #TomorrowsPapersToday
To balance things out they could reduce their mentions of him from every second news item to every third? Maybe fill in that slot with Lee Anderson, for even more balance?
Olympics: certainly a difficult few days for Britain with lots of gold opportunities not being converted. But we are still Top 5 in the table.
Still a chance for us to beat France or more realistically Australia if we can get maybe 4 or 5 in the cycling plus we need to pick up a few others eg as correctly identified by @MaxPB, KJH who has been consistently excellent for years and I really hope she wins!
From my perspective it looks like France 3 as they will continue to win across wide range of events, GB 4 and Aus 5 as their main strength is in swimming which is finished.
Clearly USA and China 1 and 2 no idea which order.
I assume you mean KJT although I am willing to give the heptathlon ago, but I'm not sure of the sex change.
Guido is talking about Council tax switching to a proportional system of x %(0.5%) of the current value. I suspect it's going to happen because changing the bands is impossible as even he points out...
I'd say there may be some weasel words in that from Paul Staines. He's quoting a report from the CSJ, which was founded by Iain Duncan Smith, Tim Montgomerie, Mark Florman and Philippa Stroud.
Havnig said that, a switch to 0.5% of market value would be a huge improvement imo, which if it includes an abolition of Stamp Duty as proposed by its main proponents will be in the financial interests of a large majority.
The main thing I'd say for RR and KS is not to be panicked by a bit of rhetoric from the Right.
Council Tax raises £46.7 billion according to the OBR or about 1.7% of national income so not huge in the cosmic scheme of things. Not sure how which Business Rates raises - way back in 2014-15, it was twice as much as Council Tax but that's probably changed with the pamdemic.
The plan, AIUI, is 0.5% on occupied residential property and 2.5% on empty homes based on a revaluation. There are roughly 24 million homes in the UK.
Doing a crude calculation on Stodge Towers it would mean £250 extra per year.
The % of Council Revenue coming from Council Tax has increased, at the same time as funding levels have been restricted.
That is because Councils have been kept on a starvation diet since ~2010, in both England and Scotland. But more so in England. In Scotland (one of our North Britons such as @Eabhal will tell us) I believe they had a freeze in cash terms for 6-7 consecutive years.
If we want effective and capable Councils they need a fairly big funding boost, and it will take time to build capacity.
I'd say that conservatively Local Authorities need a funding boost from current levels of something like a quarter to a third in the short term, just for recovery to 2010 levels.
The 0.5% suggestion is interesting but it seems to me there are a few challenges:
1) Switching to this system would lead to increased tax in London and SE and reduced tax in the North. How do you make sure that each council has enough money to spend? It sounds like more lateral transfers would be required but then it becomes a less local tax. 2) How do you decide how much each property is worth? In the 1990s, the valuations were done by driving by. The fact there were bands meant into didn't matter if the valuations were slightly out. However, if you are charging 0.5% then you need more precise valuations e.g. a 5k value difference is worth £25 a year 3) How often would valuations be updated? Again there could be issues for council budgets as house prices change e.g. 10% rise=extra money to spend, 10% fall=austerity
I think that’s right. Personally I think the banding system is probably the right approach, though the higher bands could perhaps pay a bit more.
The issue with it is that it has never been updated and there’s never been a good time for a government to force a revaluation.
If Labour are smart they’ll get a revaluation through now and then they’ll set up an independent body to conduct the revaluations at ten year intervals, a bit like boundary commissions. It might not stop politicians campaigning to freeze the valuations but it will make it politically harder to do so.
And create an automatic revaluation once a house is extended. That can’t be too difficult to do, just tie it into the building control process.
What do you do about things such as - reworking a property to improve energy efficiency can increase the value substantially
?
I think this is why you can’t be too intricate with the valuation/banding process and why I think it needs to be tied to more “headline” items like bedrooms, size, location. You don’t want to discourage improving the housing stock.
How about hearths?
It’s why a land value tax is by far the best system. You can improve your property as much as you like but pay the same tax.
The trouble with all of these proposals is that anything based on a proportion of value that isn't locally set becomes a giant tax on London and the South East. If Barnet council think they're able to set the tax at a lower rate to deliver services then they should be able to do so. Setting a national rate of 0.5% leaves no flexibility and will either result in redistribution (which shouldn't be done with local government taxes) or waste in local governments as they try to spend money they don't need.
Being blunt - council tax is very poor way of raising local taxes - it probably should be a national tax with a percentage of income tax given to councils
No thanks. At least the councils have some say in this and therefore the residents have some say in it. A nationally set tax and settlement process takes local tax policy out of the hands of local people.
So how about 0.3% set by the council + 0.2% wealth
Nope, all set locally. Otherwise it just becomes another redistribution method from the south to the north. I don't have a problem with the concept of the latter but don't hide it under the guise of local taxation. Raise national taxes and do it from those funds if that's the end goal.
Why do you think I split it into 2 - the first bit is set by the council (and can be adjusted) the second (wealth part) is national…
Then add it onto income tax.
No, wealth needs to be taxed as well as income, or otherwise structural inequality in the country is entrenched.
It’s worth noting that it’s the wealthier right wing posters on here who are now objecting to a wealth tax…
A wealth tax would need to have minimum thresholds and fundamentally is someone who owns a £3m house with a £2.4m mortgage wealthy? Would you tax that person on the whole £3m or just the £0.6m?
They live in a £3m house - if they can afford a £2.4m mortgage at 4.5% interest they can afford a 0.5% tax bill
So it's not a wealth tax then because that person doesn't have £3m in wealth, they have £0.6m in wealth.
Correct. A bit like council tax.
It's just council tax with a formula. It's not perfect. There will be weird distortions. A land value tax is probably better. But unlike all other forms of tax/wealth/land tax, it's possible.
Like with the removal of winter fuel allowance for most pensioners. As discussed on here, Labour did it quickly and rapidly in the most and, in this case, only efficient way possible, without adding to expensive bureaucracy (or simply adding to the backlog without adding more civil servants).
Guido is talking about Council tax switching to a proportional system of x %(0.5%) of the current value. I suspect it's going to happen because changing the bands is impossible as even he points out...
I'd say there may be some weasel words in that from Paul Staines. He's quoting a report from the CSJ, which was founded by Iain Duncan Smith, Tim Montgomerie, Mark Florman and Philippa Stroud.
Havnig said that, a switch to 0.5% of market value would be a huge improvement imo, which if it includes an abolition of Stamp Duty as proposed by its main proponents will be in the financial interests of a large majority.
The main thing I'd say for RR and KS is not to be panicked by a bit of rhetoric from the Right.
Council Tax raises £46.7 billion according to the OBR or about 1.7% of national income so not huge in the cosmic scheme of things. Not sure how which Business Rates raises - way back in 2014-15, it was twice as much as Council Tax but that's probably changed with the pamdemic.
The plan, AIUI, is 0.5% on occupied residential property and 2.5% on empty homes based on a revaluation. There are roughly 24 million homes in the UK.
Doing a crude calculation on Stodge Towers it would mean £250 extra per year.
The % of Council Revenue coming from Council Tax has increased, at the same time as funding levels have been restricted.
That is because Councils have been kept on a starvation diet since ~2010, in both England and Scotland. But more so in England. In Scotland (one of our North Britons such as @Eabhal will tell us) I believe they had a freeze in cash terms for 6-7 consecutive years.
If we want effective and capable Councils they need a fairly big funding boost, and it will take time to build capacity.
I'd say that conservatively Local Authorities need a funding boost from current levels of something like a quarter to a third in the short term, just for recovery to 2010 levels.
The 0.5% suggestion is interesting but it seems to me there are a few challenges:
1) Switching to this system would lead to increased tax in London and SE and reduced tax in the North. How do you make sure that each council has enough money to spend? It sounds like more lateral transfers would be required but then it becomes a less local tax. 2) How do you decide how much each property is worth? In the 1990s, the valuations were done by driving by. The fact there were bands meant into didn't matter if the valuations were slightly out. However, if you are charging 0.5% then you need more precise valuations e.g. a 5k value difference is worth £25 a year 3) How often would valuations be updated? Again there could be issues for council budgets as house prices change e.g. 10% rise=extra money to spend, 10% fall=austerity
I think that’s right. Personally I think the banding system is probably the right approach, though the higher bands could perhaps pay a bit more.
The issue with it is that it has never been updated and there’s never been a good time for a government to force a revaluation.
If Labour are smart they’ll get a revaluation through now and then they’ll set up an independent body to conduct the revaluations at ten year intervals, a bit like boundary commissions. It might not stop politicians campaigning to freeze the valuations but it will make it politically harder to do so.
And create an automatic revaluation once a house is extended. That can’t be too difficult to do, just tie it into the building control process.
What do you do about things such as - reworking a property to improve energy efficiency can increase the value substantially
?
I think this is why you can’t be too intricate with the valuation/banding process and why I think it needs to be tied to more “headline” items like bedrooms, size, location. You don’t want to discourage improving the housing stock.
How about hearths?
It’s why a land value tax is by far the best system. You can improve your property as much as you like but pay the same tax.
The trouble with all of these proposals is that anything based on a proportion of value that isn't locally set becomes a giant tax on London and the South East. If Barnet council think they're able to set the tax at a lower rate to deliver services then they should be able to do so. Setting a national rate of 0.5% leaves no flexibility and will either result in redistribution (which shouldn't be done with local government taxes) or waste in local governments as they try to spend money they don't need.
Being blunt - council tax is very poor way of raising local taxes - it probably should be a national tax with a percentage of income tax given to councils
No thanks. At least the councils have some say in this and therefore the residents have some say in it. A nationally set tax and settlement process takes local tax policy out of the hands of local people.
So how about 0.3% set by the council + 0.2% wealth
Nope, all set locally. Otherwise it just becomes another redistribution method from the south to the north. I don't have a problem with the concept of the latter but don't hide it under the guise of local taxation. Raise national taxes and do it from those funds if that's the end goal.
Why do you think I split it into 2 - the first bit is set by the council (and can be adjusted) the second (wealth part) is national…
Then add it onto income tax.
No, wealth needs to be taxed as well as income, or otherwise structural inequality in the country is entrenched.
It’s worth noting that it’s the wealthier right wing posters on here who are now objecting to a wealth tax…
A wealth tax would need to have minimum thresholds and fundamentally is someone who owns a £3m house with a £2.4m mortgage wealthy? Would you tax that person on the whole £3m or just the £0.6m?
They live in a £3m house - if they can afford a £2.4m mortgage at 4.5% interest they can afford a 0.5% tax bill
So it's not a wealth tax then because that person doesn't have £3m in wealth, they have £0.6m in wealth.
If Labour seriously tries to impose a property tax remotely like the one proposed you'll know they're actively trying to lose the next election. They'd alienate virtually anyone of any influence in the country, lose London for a generation and please only their core vote and most of them only slightly.
Well they'd be suddenly landing people in pretty ordinary terraced houses bills of £7-10k across big swathes of London if it was on gross value rather than net value. Imagine telling a family in London that they're going to pay £500-700 per month for their new council tax so that potholes in Sunderland get fixed.
And, of course, house prices would collapse because of the embodied tax liability, so a lot of recent purchasers would find themselves in negative equity.
For recent purchasers the impact would be far less than the impact Trussonomics had on those who bought from 2018 onwards and have had to remortgage since 2022.
Then you don't understand interest rates properly, the moron premium from Truss unwound a few weeks after Rishi and Hunt settled everything down. This would cause structurally higher tax for everyone in London and the South East and big chunks of the rest of the country.
It's much more likely that the chancellor will do some accounting tricks to make it look like the deficit is falling than actually raise tax or move to a suicidal property taxation system.
So 5 year fix mortgage rates in say February 2022 weren’t 2.4% compared to the 4.3% they were this February and the 4.5% they were today when I looked
Granted calling the reason behind the increase Trussonomics was a tad unfair but it’s a useful shortcut to show that since 2021 mortgage rates have increased significantly far more than 0.5%
The guy is dangerous. How could anyone still support him?
He asks a question on whether the crux of that meme is true. Namely, “repeatedly raped a 12 year old girl, 180 community hours, no prison time”.
From the bbc:
"Hamoud Al Soaimi, 21, for three counts of sexual assault and one assault by penetration, jailed for two years suspended for two years with 180 hours unpaid work".
But hey, let’s ban Twitter because he says mean things about Keir Starmer.
But, come, Moonshine, you're a reasonable person, and you surely must know that he's not only doing that.
He's not only accusing Starmer of favouritism to minorities in policing, which no one's succeeded in posting any real evidence of, but seems to be actively willing on social collapse, breakdown and war, in our country, as also the leader of a vast overseas website. You would have to say that Governments all over the world would act in that situation.
Musk is a frequently misunderstood fellow, I have misunderstood him many times. He’s not always right. But I have come to realise his positions are generally (not always) well considered and come with good intentions.
His two tier Keir accusation is not his invention, he is aping an already wide viewpoint. And as others have discussed tonight, it is not true that the evidence slate is clean on that. We are far too soft on serious criminality, both in terms of arrests and sentencing. By the way, any arrests yet for the Southend machete fight or hotel inferno?
I’m looking at this sectarian violence between different components of the British underclass (no offence intended) and wonder indeed if we are now in a similar state to 20th N.Ireland, which by most reasonable definitions was a form of civil war.
I was appalled at some of his statements on Ukraine. But really I do increasingly wonder if he’s right. I don’t think there’s a cigarette paper between the Biden White House and Trump on Ukraine policy. Not really. Neither wants Ukraine to “win”, meaning a return to 2014 borders. And the half hearted support in 2023 makes me wonder whether the White House even wants a return to 2022. Musk is looking at this seeing tens of thousands of death per month on all sides and is saying what’s the f point, if the borders are going to be roughly frozen anyway? My personal view is we’re more not less likely to see nuclear exchange if Putin “wins” in Ukraine, he sees the opposite and seemingly so does the weight of the US security establishment. Perhaps I’m wrong?
Occasionally he likes or retweets inappropriate things out of curiosity or mischief, most likely at time from the karzy. But his vision for Twitter is essentially a global Speakers Corner and that the crowd will sort the sense from the nonsense.
He is very misunderstood by people, often by those that take life too seriously. These calls to ban or expropriate Twitter would be funny if they weren’t so sinister.
I suggest you read the account he linked to and then maybe you might change that view. Probably some of the worst anti semitism possible. See @viewcode comments. Pure Nazism. Not even oblique, but straight out there hatred. Look at the Jewish cartoons, the glorification of Hitler, the video abusing a bastard Jew. This is what Musk is linking to.
He linked to a meme that was not anti semetic, pro Hitler / Nazi or whatever you want to call it. But actually made a fairly perceptive point about the uk criminal justice system. Why do you suppose he read back through the past posts of that meme poster?
It really is quite silly to think Elon Musk supports the glorification of Hitler and the destruction of the Jews but you believe whatever you want.
What? He just stumbles upon it does he? He doesn't look to see what he is linking to either? Are you for real? Have you actually looked at what this person posts. It's vile. It is disgusting and it is up front. You have to be an idiot of the first order not to see it and I'm sure Musk isn't an idiot. How do you think I saw it? I only saw it because I saw Musk's post. How did Musk not see it? Don't be an idiot by defending this.
Guido is talking about Council tax switching to a proportional system of x %(0.5%) of the current value. I suspect it's going to happen because changing the bands is impossible as even he points out...
I'd say there may be some weasel words in that from Paul Staines. He's quoting a report from the CSJ, which was founded by Iain Duncan Smith, Tim Montgomerie, Mark Florman and Philippa Stroud.
Havnig said that, a switch to 0.5% of market value would be a huge improvement imo, which if it includes an abolition of Stamp Duty as proposed by its main proponents will be in the financial interests of a large majority.
The main thing I'd say for RR and KS is not to be panicked by a bit of rhetoric from the Right.
Council Tax raises £46.7 billion according to the OBR or about 1.7% of national income so not huge in the cosmic scheme of things. Not sure how which Business Rates raises - way back in 2014-15, it was twice as much as Council Tax but that's probably changed with the pamdemic.
The plan, AIUI, is 0.5% on occupied residential property and 2.5% on empty homes based on a revaluation. There are roughly 24 million homes in the UK.
Doing a crude calculation on Stodge Towers it would mean £250 extra per year.
The % of Council Revenue coming from Council Tax has increased, at the same time as funding levels have been restricted.
That is because Councils have been kept on a starvation diet since ~2010, in both England and Scotland. But more so in England. In Scotland (one of our North Britons such as @Eabhal will tell us) I believe they had a freeze in cash terms for 6-7 consecutive years.
If we want effective and capable Councils they need a fairly big funding boost, and it will take time to build capacity.
I'd say that conservatively Local Authorities need a funding boost from current levels of something like a quarter to a third in the short term, just for recovery to 2010 levels.
The 0.5% suggestion is interesting but it seems to me there are a few challenges:
1) Switching to this system would lead to increased tax in London and SE and reduced tax in the North. How do you make sure that each council has enough money to spend? It sounds like more lateral transfers would be required but then it becomes a less local tax. 2) How do you decide how much each property is worth? In the 1990s, the valuations were done by driving by. The fact there were bands meant into didn't matter if the valuations were slightly out. However, if you are charging 0.5% then you need more precise valuations e.g. a 5k value difference is worth £25 a year 3) How often would valuations be updated? Again there could be issues for council budgets as house prices change e.g. 10% rise=extra money to spend, 10% fall=austerity
I think that’s right. Personally I think the banding system is probably the right approach, though the higher bands could perhaps pay a bit more.
The issue with it is that it has never been updated and there’s never been a good time for a government to force a revaluation.
If Labour are smart they’ll get a revaluation through now and then they’ll set up an independent body to conduct the revaluations at ten year intervals, a bit like boundary commissions. It might not stop politicians campaigning to freeze the valuations but it will make it politically harder to do so.
And create an automatic revaluation once a house is extended. That can’t be too difficult to do, just tie it into the building control process.
What do you do about things such as - reworking a property to improve energy efficiency can increase the value substantially
?
I think this is why you can’t be too intricate with the valuation/banding process and why I think it needs to be tied to more “headline” items like bedrooms, size, location. You don’t want to discourage improving the housing stock.
How about hearths?
It’s why a land value tax is by far the best system. You can improve your property as much as you like but pay the same tax.
The trouble with all of these proposals is that anything based on a proportion of value that isn't locally set becomes a giant tax on London and the South East. If Barnet council think they're able to set the tax at a lower rate to deliver services then they should be able to do so. Setting a national rate of 0.5% leaves no flexibility and will either result in redistribution (which shouldn't be done with local government taxes) or waste in local governments as they try to spend money they don't need.
Being blunt - council tax is very poor way of raising local taxes - it probably should be a national tax with a percentage of income tax given to councils
No thanks. At least the councils have some say in this and therefore the residents have some say in it. A nationally set tax and settlement process takes local tax policy out of the hands of local people.
So how about 0.3% set by the council + 0.2% wealth
Nope, all set locally. Otherwise it just becomes another redistribution method from the south to the north. I don't have a problem with the concept of the latter but don't hide it under the guise of local taxation. Raise national taxes and do it from those funds if that's the end goal.
Why do you think I split it into 2 - the first bit is set by the council (and can be adjusted) the second (wealth part) is national…
Then add it onto income tax.
No, wealth needs to be taxed as well as income, or otherwise structural inequality in the country is entrenched.
It’s worth noting that it’s the wealthier right wing posters on here who are now objecting to a wealth tax…
A wealth tax would need to have minimum thresholds and fundamentally is someone who owns a £3m house with a £2.4m mortgage wealthy? Would you tax that person on the whole £3m or just the £0.6m?
They live in a £3m house - if they can afford a £2.4m mortgage at 4.5% interest they can afford a 0.5% tax bill
So it's not a wealth tax then because that person doesn't have £3m in wealth, they have £0.6m in wealth.
If Labour seriously tries to impose a property tax remotely like the one proposed you'll know they're actively trying to lose the next election. They'd alienate virtually anyone of any influence in the country, lose London for a generation and please only their core vote and most of them only slightly.
Well they'd be suddenly landing people in pretty ordinary terraced houses bills of £7-10k across big swathes of London if it was on gross value rather than net value. Imagine telling a family in London that they're going to pay £500-700 per month for their new council tax so that potholes in Sunderland get fixed.
And, of course, house prices would collapse because of the embodied tax liability, so a lot of recent purchasers would find themselves in negative equity.
For recent purchasers the impact would be far less than the impact Trussonomics had on those who bought from 2018 onwards and have had to remortgage since 2022.
Then you don't understand interest rates properly, the moron premium from Truss unwound a few weeks after Rishi and Hunt settled everything down. This would cause structurally higher tax for everyone in London and the South East and big chunks of the rest of the country.
It's much more likely that the chancellor will do some accounting tricks to make it look like the deficit is falling than actually raise tax or move to a suicidal property taxation system.
So 5 year fix mortgage rates in say February 2022 weren’t 2.4% compared to the 4.3% they were this February and the 4.5% they were today when I looked
But that's not because of Liz Truss, that's because interest rates went up all over the world. Or do you really think we could have held rates down at 0.5% while inflation was running at 13%?
Farage can go fxck himself . He’s thrown petrol onto the flames .
These riots have been enabled by the toxic discourse of those in government these last 5 years.
These riots have been enabled by 25 years of stratospheric immigration levels.
The other, and probably better explanation, is the utter failure of levelling up (or whatever you want to call it). It the economic prospects of the poorest WWC had improved, you probably wouldn’t be seeing this, anlmost irrespective of immigration levels.
Their prospects have improved.
But, in all societies, there are going to be the underclass dregs who cause trouble and accept no responsibilities.
That’s the point. There are large numbers of folk whose prospects have not improved - despite the political promises of the last decade.
And dismissing them all as “dregs” is pretty contemptible.
Smashing up hotels, being violent, and attacking the police and ethnic minorities. I'm happy to call the people doing this dregs.
Good grief, BBC. Can you not interview any Americans on the US election who aren’t Republicans ? WTF is Frank fucking Lunz - long time GOP propagandist - the go to guy on analysing Harris’s VP pick ? And presented as some sort of objective commentator.
They were all Democrats on Newsnight and BBC1, even Luntz said Harris was favourite in his view. Not a single Republican on there!
Posters on here post now and again that Lunz is a GOP propagandist.
I just don't see that.
Frank Ian Luntz (born February 23, 1962) is an American political and communications consultant and pollster,[1][2] best known for developing talking points and other messaging for Republican causes… https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Luntz
Olympics: certainly a difficult few days for Britain with lots of gold opportunities not being converted. But we are still Top 5 in the table.
Still a chance for us to beat France or more realistically Australia if we can get maybe 4 or 5 in the cycling plus we need to pick up a few others eg as correctly identified by @MaxPB, KJH who has been consistently excellent for years and I really hope she wins!
From my perspective it looks like France 3 as they will continue to win across wide range of events, GB 4 and Aus 5 as their main strength is in swimming which is finished.
Clearly USA and China 1 and 2 no idea which order.
I assume you mean KJT although I am willing to give the heptathlon ago, but I'm not sure of the sex change.
Yes sorry too much time on here 😃😃😃
No need to apologise as it gave me the opportunity for (he says modestly) a good joke. You set it up beautifully for me.
Guido is talking about Council tax switching to a proportional system of x %(0.5%) of the current value. I suspect it's going to happen because changing the bands is impossible as even he points out...
I'd say there may be some weasel words in that from Paul Staines. He's quoting a report from the CSJ, which was founded by Iain Duncan Smith, Tim Montgomerie, Mark Florman and Philippa Stroud.
Havnig said that, a switch to 0.5% of market value would be a huge improvement imo, which if it includes an abolition of Stamp Duty as proposed by its main proponents will be in the financial interests of a large majority.
The main thing I'd say for RR and KS is not to be panicked by a bit of rhetoric from the Right.
Council Tax raises £46.7 billion according to the OBR or about 1.7% of national income so not huge in the cosmic scheme of things. Not sure how which Business Rates raises - way back in 2014-15, it was twice as much as Council Tax but that's probably changed with the pamdemic.
The plan, AIUI, is 0.5% on occupied residential property and 2.5% on empty homes based on a revaluation. There are roughly 24 million homes in the UK.
Doing a crude calculation on Stodge Towers it would mean £250 extra per year.
The % of Council Revenue coming from Council Tax has increased, at the same time as funding levels have been restricted.
That is because Councils have been kept on a starvation diet since ~2010, in both England and Scotland. But more so in England. In Scotland (one of our North Britons such as @Eabhal will tell us) I believe they had a freeze in cash terms for 6-7 consecutive years.
If we want effective and capable Councils they need a fairly big funding boost, and it will take time to build capacity.
I'd say that conservatively Local Authorities need a funding boost from current levels of something like a quarter to a third in the short term, just for recovery to 2010 levels.
The 0.5% suggestion is interesting but it seems to me there are a few challenges:
1) Switching to this system would lead to increased tax in London and SE and reduced tax in the North. How do you make sure that each council has enough money to spend? It sounds like more lateral transfers would be required but then it becomes a less local tax. 2) How do you decide how much each property is worth? In the 1990s, the valuations were done by driving by. The fact there were bands meant into didn't matter if the valuations were slightly out. However, if you are charging 0.5% then you need more precise valuations e.g. a 5k value difference is worth £25 a year 3) How often would valuations be updated? Again there could be issues for council budgets as house prices change e.g. 10% rise=extra money to spend, 10% fall=austerity
I think that’s right. Personally I think the banding system is probably the right approach, though the higher bands could perhaps pay a bit more.
The issue with it is that it has never been updated and there’s never been a good time for a government to force a revaluation.
If Labour are smart they’ll get a revaluation through now and then they’ll set up an independent body to conduct the revaluations at ten year intervals, a bit like boundary commissions. It might not stop politicians campaigning to freeze the valuations but it will make it politically harder to do so.
And create an automatic revaluation once a house is extended. That can’t be too difficult to do, just tie it into the building control process.
What do you do about things such as - reworking a property to improve energy efficiency can increase the value substantially
?
I think this is why you can’t be too intricate with the valuation/banding process and why I think it needs to be tied to more “headline” items like bedrooms, size, location. You don’t want to discourage improving the housing stock.
How about hearths?
It’s why a land value tax is by far the best system. You can improve your property as much as you like but pay the same tax.
The trouble with all of these proposals is that anything based on a proportion of value that isn't locally set becomes a giant tax on London and the South East. If Barnet council think they're able to set the tax at a lower rate to deliver services then they should be able to do so. Setting a national rate of 0.5% leaves no flexibility and will either result in redistribution (which shouldn't be done with local government taxes) or waste in local governments as they try to spend money they don't need.
Being blunt - council tax is very poor way of raising local taxes - it probably should be a national tax with a percentage of income tax given to councils
No thanks. At least the councils have some say in this and therefore the residents have some say in it. A nationally set tax and settlement process takes local tax policy out of the hands of local people.
So how about 0.3% set by the council + 0.2% wealth
Nope, all set locally. Otherwise it just becomes another redistribution method from the south to the north. I don't have a problem with the concept of the latter but don't hide it under the guise of local taxation. Raise national taxes and do it from those funds if that's the end goal.
Why do you think I split it into 2 - the first bit is set by the council (and can be adjusted) the second (wealth part) is national…
Then add it onto income tax.
No, wealth needs to be taxed as well as income, or otherwise structural inequality in the country is entrenched.
It’s worth noting that it’s the wealthier right wing posters on here who are now objecting to a wealth tax…
A wealth tax would need to have minimum thresholds and fundamentally is someone who owns a £3m house with a £2.4m mortgage wealthy? Would you tax that person on the whole £3m or just the £0.6m?
They live in a £3m house - if they can afford a £2.4m mortgage at 4.5% interest they can afford a 0.5% tax bill
So it's not a wealth tax then because that person doesn't have £3m in wealth, they have £0.6m in wealth.
If Labour seriously tries to impose a property tax remotely like the one proposed you'll know they're actively trying to lose the next election. They'd alienate virtually anyone of any influence in the country, lose London for a generation and please only their core vote and most of them only slightly.
The point of doing it now is that it could be implemented in April 2026 (heck you could actually do it in 2025 at a push) leaving plenty of time for it to be running before the next election.
And many people in Labour areas would be better off ..
They'd lose the entirety of the South East and London for more than a generation and big parts of the East and South West. Plus some of the posher bits of the North.
And so we reach the point why council tax hasn’t changed in 30+ years the political cost is too much so it can only be done on the first few months after an election because otherwise it’s too late.
Worse it them takes 2-3 years to calculate the appropriate rates so that it can’t be implement before year 3/4 of the Parliament just as the next election comes round.
That’s why it’s going to be a percentage of house price, because that can be implemented quickly hopefully providing enough time that people get used to it
I think you're deluding yourself if you think Labour will ever introduce a property tax on gross value but 🤷♂️
The reality of the situation is that Labour will probably do precisely zero on council tax.
The government needs to raise tax revenue and there isn’t many (any) places left where additional revenue can be generated.
It’s why you end up looking at council tax because there isn’t much left that isn’t taxed to the hilt or is untouchable due to election commitments
Council tax should be set by local councils accountable to their local voters for it, not central government
The government can do precisely that by uncapping council tax bands. A local % property tax would be another option.
Probably worth looking at it from the other direction - London will be paying more but surely @dixiedean shouldnt be paying the equivalent of 4% tax a year on what I suspect is a small house / flat
This also strongly implies the people of the Tas Tepeler had writing, how else could they do all this. I’ve been suggesting this for years
6000 years before Sumer
If you want an interesting GPT/Claude discussion - ask it about the bronze age collapse and the rise of monotheism. Chatting to it with idea about The Flood is also quite interesting.
Good grief, BBC. Can you not interview any Americans on the US election who aren’t Republicans ? WTF is Frank fucking Lunz - long time GOP propagandist - the go to guy on analysing Harris’s VP pick ? And presented as some sort of objective commentator.
They were all Democrats on Newsnight and BBC1, even Luntz said Harris was favourite in his view. Not a single Republican on there!
Posters on here post now and again that Lunz is a GOP propagandist.
I just don't see that.
Frank Ian Luntz (born February 23, 1962) is an American political and communications consultant and pollster,[1][2] best known for developing talking points and other messaging for Republican causes… https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Luntz
I’m hoping you’re being sarcastic.
He is generally objective and also close to David Cameron, hardly MAGA
Good grief, BBC. Can you not interview any Americans on the US election who aren’t Republicans ? WTF is Frank fucking Lunz - long time GOP propagandist - the go to guy on analysing Harris’s VP pick ? And presented as some sort of objective commentator.
They were all Democrats on Newsnight and BBC1, even Luntz said Harris was favourite in his view. Not a single Republican on there!
Posters on here post now and again that Lunz is a GOP propagandist.
I just don't see that.
Frank Ian Luntz (born February 23, 1962) is an American political and communications consultant and pollster,[1][2] best known for developing talking points and other messaging for Republican causes… https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Luntz
I’m hoping you’re being sarcastic.
I think there is a spectrum from obvious partisan to actual propagandist. I'm sure I've seen him say occasionally critical things about the GOP, or at least be measured, which the full on propagandists would never do.
Farage can go fxck himself . He’s thrown petrol onto the flames .
These riots have been enabled by the toxic discourse of those in government these last 5 years.
These riots have been enabled by 25 years of stratospheric immigration levels.
The other, and probably better explanation, is the utter failure of levelling up (or whatever you want to call it). It the economic prospects of the poorest WWC had improved, you probably wouldn’t be seeing this, anlmost irrespective of immigration levels.
Their prospects have improved.
But, in all societies, there are going to be the underclass dregs who cause trouble and accept no responsibilities.
The dregs causing trouble and accepting no responsibilities in this case is 100% Nigel Farage.
Trump is value here. I'd vote for Kamala over the orange one, but I'm aware the market is wish-casting.
I think what it will come down to is the economy. Most Americans have become poorer as a result of the madcap inflation of the last few years. And Trump is really sensitive to those working class stiffs who are worse off, hence his no tax on tips policy.
Irrespective of one's ideology, parties in power during massive economic downturns, such as we've seen in every western nation post Covid and Ukraine, don't tend to do well.
Dispassionately, my money remains on Trump. As it would almost any other candidate not in government for the last four years.
I see it the other way. I actually think the market is being too cautious here. The trend and direction of travel has all been in Harris’ favour. What’s more, the Harris “bounce” looks to be sustaining itself right now. And it has longer to run. She’ll get decent coverage from the Walz pick (generally seems to have gone down well - these things can unravel but it seems OK so far), then she’s got the convention.
I think it’s entirely possible she’s polling 3-5 points ahead by the end of August. Not an insurmountable lead for Trump to overcome by any means, but he hasn’t reacted well to the shift in the race, and he needs to get his act together.
At the moment I think we could see the first Republican presidential election win in the popular vote and EC since Bush beat Kerry 20 years ago in 2004. Harris-Walz is the most leftwing Democratic ticket since McGovern-Shriver in 1972
The GOP haven't come within 2.5m of the popular vote since 2004, that is a very bold prediction indeed.
The GOP haven't faced a ticket as liberal left as this since 2004 either and even Kerry picked Edwards, a moderate Southerner from North Carolina (despite his later zipper problem)
The guy is dangerous. How could anyone still support him?
He asks a question on whether the crux of that meme is true. Namely, “repeatedly raped a 12 year old girl, 180 community hours, no prison time”.
From the bbc:
"Hamoud Al Soaimi, 21, for three counts of sexual assault and one assault by penetration, jailed for two years suspended for two years with 180 hours unpaid work".
But hey, let’s ban Twitter because he says mean things about Keir Starmer.
But, come, Moonshine, you're a reasonable person, and you surely must know that he's not only doing that.
He's not only accusing Starmer of favouritism to minorities in policing, which no one's succeeded in posting any real evidence of, but seems to be actively willing on social collapse, breakdown and war, in our country, as also the leader of a vast overseas website. You would have to say that Governments all over the world would act in that situation.
Musk is a frequently misunderstood fellow, I have misunderstood him many times. He’s not always right. But I have come to realise his positions are generally (not always) well considered and come with good intentions.
His two tier Keir accusation is not his invention, he is aping an already wide viewpoint. And as others have discussed tonight, it is not true that the evidence slate is clean on that. We are far too soft on serious criminality, both in terms of arrests and sentencing. By the way, any arrests yet for the Southend machete fight or hotel inferno?
I’m looking at this sectarian violence between different components of the British underclass (no offence intended) and wonder indeed if we are now in a similar state to 20th N.Ireland, which by most reasonable definitions was a form of civil war.
I was appalled at some of his statements on Ukraine. But really I do increasingly wonder if he’s right. I don’t think there’s a cigarette paper between the Biden White House and Trump on Ukraine policy. Not really. Neither wants Ukraine to “win”, meaning a return to 2014 borders. And the half hearted support in 2023 makes me wonder whether the White House even wants a return to 2022. Musk is looking at this seeing tens of thousands of death per month on all sides and is saying what’s the f point, if the borders are going to be roughly frozen anyway? My personal view is we’re more not less likely to see nuclear exchange if Putin “wins” in Ukraine, he sees the opposite and seemingly so does the weight of the US security establishment. Perhaps I’m wrong?
Occasionally he likes or retweets inappropriate things out of curiosity or mischief, most likely at time from the karzy. But his vision for Twitter is essentially a global Speakers Corner and that the crowd will sort the sense from the nonsense.
He is very misunderstood by people, often by those that take life too seriously. These calls to ban or expropriate Twitter would be funny if they weren’t so sinister.
I suggest you read the account he linked to and then maybe you might change that view. Probably some of the worst anti semitism possible. See @viewcode comments. Pure Nazism. Not even oblique, but straight out there hatred. Look at the Jewish cartoons, the glorification of Hitler, the video abusing a bastard Jew. This is what Musk is linking to.
He linked to a meme that was not anti semetic, pro Hitler / Nazi or whatever you want to call it. But actually made a fairly perceptive point about the uk criminal justice system. Why do you suppose he read back through the past posts of that meme poster?
It really is quite silly to think Elon Musk supports the glorification of Hitler and the destruction of the Jews but you believe whatever you want.
What? He just stumbles upon it does he? He doesn't look to see what he is linking to either? Are you for real? Have you actually looked at what this person posts. It's vile. It is disgusting and it is up front. You have to be an idiot of the first order not to see it and I'm sure Musk isn't an idiot. How do you think I saw it? I only saw it because I saw Musk's post. How did Musk not see it? Don't be an idiot by defending this.
Whilst people can be very intelligent in some ways and very dumb in others, when someone's public persona is in part based around proclaiming how bloody smart they are, it reduces their ability to use the tried and tested 'I'm an idiot/I didn't know' defences. See also Trump, Donald, and Bankman-Fried, Sam.
Trump is value here. I'd vote for Kamala over the orange one, but I'm aware the market is wish-casting.
I think what it will come down to is the economy. Most Americans have become poorer as a result of the madcap inflation of the last few years. And Trump is really sensitive to those working class stiffs who are worse off, hence his no tax on tips policy.
Irrespective of one's ideology, parties in power during massive economic downturns, such as we've seen in every western nation post Covid and Ukraine, don't tend to do well.
Dispassionately, my money remains on Trump. As it would almost any other candidate not in government for the last four years.
I see it the other way. I actually think the market is being too cautious here. The trend and direction of travel has all been in Harris’ favour. What’s more, the Harris “bounce” looks to be sustaining itself right now. And it has longer to run. She’ll get decent coverage from the Walz pick (generally seems to have gone down well - these things can unravel but it seems OK so far), then she’s got the convention.
I think it’s entirely possible she’s polling 3-5 points ahead by the end of August. Not an insurmountable lead for Trump to overcome by any means, but he hasn’t reacted well to the shift in the race, and he needs to get his act together.
Yes, I don't think people are quite clocking what a weak candidate Trump is. Without the gift of an opponent too frail to campaign he's going to struggle.
Guido is talking about Council tax switching to a proportional system of x %(0.5%) of the current value. I suspect it's going to happen because changing the bands is impossible as even he points out...
I'd say there may be some weasel words in that from Paul Staines. He's quoting a report from the CSJ, which was founded by Iain Duncan Smith, Tim Montgomerie, Mark Florman and Philippa Stroud.
Havnig said that, a switch to 0.5% of market value would be a huge improvement imo, which if it includes an abolition of Stamp Duty as proposed by its main proponents will be in the financial interests of a large majority.
The main thing I'd say for RR and KS is not to be panicked by a bit of rhetoric from the Right.
Council Tax raises £46.7 billion according to the OBR or about 1.7% of national income so not huge in the cosmic scheme of things. Not sure how which Business Rates raises - way back in 2014-15, it was twice as much as Council Tax but that's probably changed with the pamdemic.
The plan, AIUI, is 0.5% on occupied residential property and 2.5% on empty homes based on a revaluation. There are roughly 24 million homes in the UK.
Doing a crude calculation on Stodge Towers it would mean £250 extra per year.
The % of Council Revenue coming from Council Tax has increased, at the same time as funding levels have been restricted.
That is because Councils have been kept on a starvation diet since ~2010, in both England and Scotland. But more so in England. In Scotland (one of our North Britons such as @Eabhal will tell us) I believe they had a freeze in cash terms for 6-7 consecutive years.
If we want effective and capable Councils they need a fairly big funding boost, and it will take time to build capacity.
I'd say that conservatively Local Authorities need a funding boost from current levels of something like a quarter to a third in the short term, just for recovery to 2010 levels.
The 0.5% suggestion is interesting but it seems to me there are a few challenges:
1) Switching to this system would lead to increased tax in London and SE and reduced tax in the North. How do you make sure that each council has enough money to spend? It sounds like more lateral transfers would be required but then it becomes a less local tax. 2) How do you decide how much each property is worth? In the 1990s, the valuations were done by driving by. The fact there were bands meant into didn't matter if the valuations were slightly out. However, if you are charging 0.5% then you need more precise valuations e.g. a 5k value difference is worth £25 a year 3) How often would valuations be updated? Again there could be issues for council budgets as house prices change e.g. 10% rise=extra money to spend, 10% fall=austerity
I think that’s right. Personally I think the banding system is probably the right approach, though the higher bands could perhaps pay a bit more.
The issue with it is that it has never been updated and there’s never been a good time for a government to force a revaluation.
If Labour are smart they’ll get a revaluation through now and then they’ll set up an independent body to conduct the revaluations at ten year intervals, a bit like boundary commissions. It might not stop politicians campaigning to freeze the valuations but it will make it politically harder to do so.
And create an automatic revaluation once a house is extended. That can’t be too difficult to do, just tie it into the building control process.
What do you do about things such as - reworking a property to improve energy efficiency can increase the value substantially
?
I think this is why you can’t be too intricate with the valuation/banding process and why I think it needs to be tied to more “headline” items like bedrooms, size, location. You don’t want to discourage improving the housing stock.
How about hearths?
It’s why a land value tax is by far the best system. You can improve your property as much as you like but pay the same tax.
The trouble with all of these proposals is that anything based on a proportion of value that isn't locally set becomes a giant tax on London and the South East. If Barnet council think they're able to set the tax at a lower rate to deliver services then they should be able to do so. Setting a national rate of 0.5% leaves no flexibility and will either result in redistribution (which shouldn't be done with local government taxes) or waste in local governments as they try to spend money they don't need.
Being blunt - council tax is very poor way of raising local taxes - it probably should be a national tax with a percentage of income tax given to councils
No thanks. At least the councils have some say in this and therefore the residents have some say in it. A nationally set tax and settlement process takes local tax policy out of the hands of local people.
So how about 0.3% set by the council + 0.2% wealth
Nope, all set locally. Otherwise it just becomes another redistribution method from the south to the north. I don't have a problem with the concept of the latter but don't hide it under the guise of local taxation. Raise national taxes and do it from those funds if that's the end goal.
Why do you think I split it into 2 - the first bit is set by the council (and can be adjusted) the second (wealth part) is national…
Then add it onto income tax.
No, wealth needs to be taxed as well as income, or otherwise structural inequality in the country is entrenched.
It’s worth noting that it’s the wealthier right wing posters on here who are now objecting to a wealth tax…
A wealth tax would need to have minimum thresholds and fundamentally is someone who owns a £3m house with a £2.4m mortgage wealthy? Would you tax that person on the whole £3m or just the £0.6m?
They live in a £3m house - if they can afford a £2.4m mortgage at 4.5% interest they can afford a 0.5% tax bill
So it's not a wealth tax then because that person doesn't have £3m in wealth, they have £0.6m in wealth.
If Labour seriously tries to impose a property tax remotely like the one proposed you'll know they're actively trying to lose the next election. They'd alienate virtually anyone of any influence in the country, lose London for a generation and please only their core vote and most of them only slightly.
The point of doing it now is that it could be implemented in April 2026 (heck you could actually do it in 2025 at a push) leaving plenty of time for it to be running before the next election.
And many people in Labour areas would be better off ..
They'd lose the entirety of the South East and London for more than a generation and big parts of the East and South West. Plus some of the posher bits of the North.
And so we reach the point why council tax hasn’t changed in 30+ years the political cost is too much so it can only be done on the first few months after an election because otherwise it’s too late.
Worse it them takes 2-3 years to calculate the appropriate rates so that it can’t be implement before year 3/4 of the Parliament just as the next election comes round.
That’s why it’s going to be a percentage of house price, because that can be implemented quickly hopefully providing enough time that people get used to it
I think you're deluding yourself if you think Labour will ever introduce a property tax on gross value but 🤷♂️
The reality of the situation is that Labour will probably do precisely zero on council tax.
The government needs to raise tax revenue and there isn’t many (any) places left where additional revenue can be generated.
It’s why you end up looking at council tax because there isn’t much left that isn’t taxed to the hilt or is untouchable due to election commitments
Council tax should be set by local councils accountable to their local voters for it, not central government
The government can do precisely that by uncapping council tax bands. A local % property tax would be another option.
Probably worth looking at it from the other direction - London will be paying more but surely @dixiedean shouldnt be paying the equivalent of 4% tax a year on what I suspect is a small house / flat
That's a feature not a bug, from the Tories trying to keep the poll tax element.
Good grief, BBC. Can you not interview any Americans on the US election who aren’t Republicans ? WTF is Frank fucking Lunz - long time GOP propagandist - the go to guy on analysing Harris’s VP pick ? And presented as some sort of objective commentator.
They were all Democrats on Newsnight and BBC1, even Luntz said Harris was favourite in his view. Not a single Republican on there!
Posters on here post now and again that Lunz is a GOP propagandist.
I just don't see that.
Frank Ian Luntz (born February 23, 1962) is an American political and communications consultant and pollster,[1][2] best known for developing talking points and other messaging for Republican causes… https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Luntz
I’m hoping you’re being sarcastic.
I think there is a spectrum from obvious partisan to actual propagandist. I'm sure I've seen him say occasionally critical things about the GOP, or at least be measured, which the full on propagandists would never do.
He is often measured. Often just reports on his focus groups.
Comments
@mikeysmith
STORY
Mel Stride is the first Tory leadership contender to explicitly rule out a deal with
@Nigel_Farage - branding him "irresponsible" over riots.
https://x.com/mikeysmith/status/1820927927376052567
For example I have far more wealth in my DC pension pots than I do in my property.
Do you include those as wealth to be taxed ? If so then how do you include the equivalent in DB pensions ?
It really is quite silly to think Elon Musk supports the glorification of Hitler and the destruction of the Jews but you believe whatever you want.
"Harris/Walz works well. It has notes of Vienna and an elegant pre war Europe
Harris /Shapiro is a little too Board of Deputies"
Extraordinary.
Has anyone noticed Elon is an anagram of Leon?
@DoubleCarpet
It's why I always have opposed the LD proposal of a local income tax.
Pensions are taxed when taken.
@ElieNYC
My dude wanted to run against Biden so badly that he is now producing fanfic
https://x.com/ElieNYC/status/1820924424880578604
In Northern Ireland we have community leaders who are in some danger of evolving as far as opposable thumbs. Very low primates…..
Perhaps we could swap them with some people less violent, bigoted and into the drug trade. Hmmmm…. Taliban might be a good fit?
If you are arguing it’s crackers because some people in the South East / London will pay more than additional bands (the other solution) is going to create the same issue.
My problem is that the banding of houses in 1990 was done badly and even ignoring that in a lot of areas many houses that are Band E/F are now worth less than band C/D houses in other parts of the town that have improved.
You can get a three bed semi in his street for about £140k.
As you say he was out for a ruck, in an earlier generation he would have got it at a football match, a picket line or a Friday night.
It wasn't the lack of opportunities or lifelong poverty.
I think what it will come down to is the economy. Most Americans have become poorer as a result of the madcap inflation of the last few years. And Trump is really sensitive to those working class stiffs who are worse off, hence his no tax on tips policy.
Irrespective of one's ideology, parties in power during massive economic downturns, such as we've seen in every western nation post Covid and Ukraine, don't tend to do well.
Dispassionately, my money remains on Trump. As it would almost any other candidate not in government for the last four years.
And the advantage there is if you wish to move to a cheaper house, your wealth would likely be shifted into productive purposes (investment in the stock market / a business) to generate a return.
It's just council tax with a formula. It's not perfect. There will be weird distortions. A land value tax is probably better. But unlike all other forms of tax/wealth/land tax, it's possible.
It the economic prospects of the poorest WWC had improved, you probably wouldn’t be seeing this, anlmost irrespective of immigration levels.
And many people in Labour areas would be better off ..
Still a chance for us to beat France or more realistically Australia if we can get maybe 4 or 5 in the cycling plus we need to pick up a few others eg as correctly identified by @MaxPB, KJH who has been consistently excellent for years and I really hope she wins!
From my perspective it looks like France 3 as they will continue to win across wide range of events, GB 4 and Aus 5 as their main strength is in swimming which is finished.
Clearly USA and China 1 and 2 no idea which order.
Worse it them takes 2-3 years to calculate the appropriate rates so that it can’t be implement before year 3/4 of the Parliament just as the next election comes round.
That’s why it’s going to be a percentage of house price, because that can be implemented quickly hopefully providing enough time that people get used to it
The reality of the situation is that Labour will probably do precisely zero on council tax.
WTF is Frank fucking Lunz - long time GOP propagandist - the go to guy on analysing Harris’s VP pick ? And presented as some sort of objective commentator.
And then the other side of the coin is debt. As I have a large mortgage, my total debt exceeds my total assets. Should the government pay me a refund for that? I
If such a tax was brought in, it would have a massive distorting effect on the economy, as it would encourage people not to spend on anything that could be an asset or increase the value of an asset e.g. new car, house extension. Instead, it would either encourage people to spend money on non-assets e.g. foreign holiday or to put all their money into debt repayment. This would have a devastating impact on several sectors of the economy and would also lead to falling asset values across the board as people chose to/had to sell.
It’s why you end up looking at council tax because there isn’t much left that isn’t taxed to the hilt or is untouchable due to election commitments
University of Edinburgh on Gobekli Tepe, giving credence to Graham Hancock!
https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/1053218
Not Elon Musk's paranoid demented fantasies.
https://x.com/jdpoc/status/1820809699882684827
But, in all societies, there are going to be the underclass dregs who cause trouble and accept no responsibilities.
https://grahamhancock.com/drsunilatlantis/
I think it’s entirely possible she’s polling 3-5 points ahead by the end of August. Not an insurmountable lead for Trump to overcome by any means, but he hasn’t reacted well to the shift in the race, and he needs to get his act together.
Harris 2.18
https://www.betfair.com/exchange/plus/politics/market/1.176878927
And at a further step whether they think they're worse off than they think they deserve to be.
Some mixture of reality versus memories and perceived reality versus self-entitled expectations.
It's much more likely that the chancellor will do some accounting tricks to make it look like the deficit is falling than actually raise tax or move to a suicidal property taxation system.
This also strongly implies the people of the Tas Tepeler had writing, how else could they do all this. I’ve been suggesting this for years
6000 years before Sumer
I just don't see that.
https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2019/02/26/698057356/if-a-wealth-tax-is-such-a-good-idea-why-did-europe-kill-theirs
And dismissing them all as “dregs” is pretty contemptible.
I guess the BBC will now have to respond by putting him on QT for six weeks in a row as soon as it is next on.
Allie Hodgkins-Brown
@AllieHBNews
·
1m
Wednesday’s Daily EXPRESS: “Farage Warns: Britain Is At ‘Quite Perilous Point’ “. #TomorrowsPapersToday
Tugendhat is at +7% and Badenoch at +11% so would likely give the Tories a boost if elected new Tory leader. Jenrick is also only at -3%
https://yougov.co.uk/topics/international/explore/public_figure/Tommy_Robinson
https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/explore/public_figure/Rishi_Sunak
https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/explore/public_figure/Keir_Starmer
https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/explore/public_figure/Jeremy_Hunt
https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/explore/public_figure/Priti_Patel
https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/explore/public_figure/Nigel_Farage
https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/explore/public_figure/Tom_Tugendhat
https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/explore/public_figure/Kemi_Badenoch
https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/explore/public_figure/Robert_Jenrick
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cqxjjvdq7eyo
https://rationanalytics.com/uk/mortgage-rates-5-year
Granted calling the reason behind the increase Trussonomics was a tad unfair but it’s a useful shortcut to show that since 2021 mortgage rates have increased significantly far more than 0.5%
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Luntz
I’m hoping you’re being sarcastic.
He's a factor, undoubtedly, but the "Cause" ?
"100%" ?
I don't buy it.