Seems to me if Labour really are serious about cost saving in government, forgot 5% reduction in salary, why the f##k do we have 100+ ministers? There is absolutely no need for that many ministers. The Tories are just as bad on this and SPADs etc.
With UK parliament, Scottish Parliament, Welsh Assembly and if now calls from some within Labour to resurrect regional assemblies, the cost of democracy just keeps going up and can anybody honestly say we are better governed, by more talented individuals?
5 mins listening to the likes of Rachel Reeves not having a clue if it was night or day earlier on answers that question and she is supposedly one of the smarter ones.
Politically Evel seems to me to be a complete blind alley for the Tories.
Constitutional issues are too esoteric for the vast majority of the English public, most of whom do not care even if they understand them. If you ask people should only English MPs vote on English laws they will no doubt say yes, but the issue is never going to be salient.
As usual ScottP confuses support for an idea with salience. It just looks like a nerdish sideshow a few months from a GE.
Politically Evel seems to me to be a complete blind alley for the Tories.
Constitutional issues are too esoteric for the vast majority of the English public, most of whom do not care even if they understand them. If you ask people should only English MPs vote on English laws they will no doubt say yes, but the issue is never going to be salient.
As usual ScottP confuses support for an idea with salience. It just looks like a nerdish sideshow a few months from a GE.
Not content with Stamp Duty and Council Tax, Labour rush around trying to find a new way of grabbing headlines. In tomorrow's news, The Two Eds show how it is possible to piss into the wind.
I thought the mansion tax had already been earmarked for other stuff.
At this rate it will need to be applied to every house worth more than c. £100k which I'm sure will be very popular.
To be fair, you need to add the qualifier of a narrow no.
But it wasn't narrow.
Oh yes it was - till the Vow. Else why panic, run round in circles, and emit that Vow?
The vote was on Thursday 18th - and it wasn't narrow.
The vow was before then - and that is the time frame I am talking about. A fair proportion of No voters were influenced by it - I have seen figures f something like a quarter but not the original source. The margin would have been considerably narrower if that were so.
Do please post them.
Ashcroft showed among No voters decision was on: Day itself: 3 Last few days: 3 Last week: 3
If mansion tax is tied* to requirement of NHS shortfall, wont be very long until like stamp duty, it is just another tax on basically everybody.
* I am not suggesting Labour are going to tie this in law...but lets look at road tax, how much of that is spent on roads these days? It is now just another pot of money to raid.
Once you set up a new kitty and dipping into the kitty and you find the kitty isn't big enough, well you have already softened people up to make the kitty a bit bigger.
I can never understand why poor PB Tories want the rich to get even richer whilst never utter a word of sympathy with those forced into food banks
The rich will always get richer. The trick is to try and make more of them, to enhance social mobility, make wealth and power less concentrated in the hands of an international elite. No part of this can be acheived by raising taxes on them.
Not content with Stamp Duty and Council Tax, Labour rush around trying to find a new way of grabbing headlines. In tomorrow's news, The Two Eds show how it is possible to piss into the wind.
I thought the mansion tax had already been earmarked for other stuff.
At this rate it will need to be applied to every house worth more than c. £100k which I'm sure will be very popular.
Its ok they can make up with using the bank bonus tax for the 700th time.
To be fair, you need to add the qualifier of a narrow no.
But it wasn't narrow.
Oh yes it was - till the Vow. Else why panic, run round in circles, and emit that Vow?
The vote was on Thursday 18th - and it wasn't narrow.
The vow was before then - and that is the time frame I am talking about. A fair proportion of No voters were influenced by it - I have seen figures f something like a quarter but not the original source. The margin would have been considerably narrower if that were so.
Why didn't Eck come up with a vow - a vow to have a Plan B - then he might have done better.
Scotsman this morning summed it up - some aspects of the Yes campaign were totally inept.
"The Yes campaign only needed to neutralise the economic arguments and it could then go on to win – instead it lived in an unreal world and fought a ridiculous battle like the Black Knight from Monty Python’s Holy Grail."
The reason for these strategic flaws in the Yes campaign is not hard to identify: it was the hubris of Alex Salmond and Nicola Sturgeon – the belief that they could not be wrong or at least not be seen to be wrong.
" He remains in denial, for Salmond resignation is nothing other than a manoeuvre designed to preserve the career of his chief accomplice, Sturgeon."
No-one likes a sore loser and in saying at the weekend that No voters had been tricked, Salmond showed arrogant disrespect for the judgement of more than two million Scots. "
Mr Monteith is entitled to his opinion. He is well known for his opinions.
But I am not talking about the Yes campaign. I am talking about the No campaign and te leaders' vow which presumably they had good reason at th time, or jus before, to consider necessary. It generally considered to have a significant impact on the result, so that a - presumably - narrow margin was converted to a larger one. And if that shift was even just a few percentage points, then we're talking of a lead of just several points which is reasonably called narrow. For instance, 45/55 could have been 48/52 before the Vow, say.
Which brings us back to Mr @Rottenborough's point that Labour did not seem to have thought through the implications of a No victory - and I was merely qualifying that with the suggestion that a broad No victory would not have caused problems.
Politically Evel seems to me to be a complete blind alley for the Tories.
Constitutional issues are too esoteric for the vast majority of the English public, most of whom do not care even if they understand them. If you ask people should only English MPs vote on English laws they will no doubt say yes, but the issue is never going to be salient.
As usual ScottP confuses support for an idea with salience. It just looks like a nerdish sideshow a few months from a GE.
Whats 'esoteric' about English MPs having the final say on laws affecting England?
Strictly speaking Labour does not need to spell out what tax rise will pay for more NHS spending, since it is proposing to borrow more than is allowable under the coalition's economic plans. The IFS recently estimated that it could spend as much as £28bn per year more and still stick to its deficit reduction targets.
NHS finances are dire needs to be a priority for any incoming Government.
Getting the rich to pay for part of this will be popular with the electorate. Any PB Tory not think that will be the case?
Mr. Owls, food banks began in this country during the boom of the early 2000s. They have increased every single year since. Supply has never met demand, so claiming more of them is a sign the Coalition is a 'bad' government is a nonsense (it also implies the same was true of the Labour Government).
So Labour are going to resort to consuming people's assets (capital) to fund the state's recurring expenditure, sound economics there.
Will the tax be levied on the owner or the occupier? What if the owner is non-resident? If it is levied on the occupier, then I look forward to Messrs Miliband and Balls paying the tax due on 10 & 11 Downing Street, both properties must be worth a fair penny, or will they exempt themselves from the taxes that they expect their fellow citizens to pay?
Politically Evel seems to me to be a complete blind alley for the Tories.
Constitutional issues are too esoteric for the vast majority of the English public, most of whom do not care even if they understand them. If you ask people should only English MPs vote on English laws they will no doubt say yes, but the issue is never going to be salient.
As usual ScottP confuses support for an idea with salience. It just looks like a nerdish sideshow a few months from a GE.
Evening Reggie!
Lol.
Just for the record so you and your fellow travellers might do something else with your evenings than obsess about posters being other posters, I have over the years sometimes used other logins. Some of those I have been accused of using are correct, others are laughably, embarrassingly wrong.
I'm not going to delve any further other than to say that you spend far too much of your time obsessing about anonymous posters using anonymous handles. As you yourself are anonymous who gives a f if you post as Davina, Jack or Ahmed? I certainly do not care.
Post about something else, you are boring and no doubt making the thread dull for everyone else and putting off new posters with your dreary, repetitive submissions.
Put up or shut up: either button it or else file an official complaint about it to the mods. It's boring.
Not content with Stamp Duty and Council Tax, Labour rush around trying to find a new way of grabbing headlines. In tomorrow's news, The Two Eds show how it is possible to piss into the wind.
I thought the mansion tax had already been earmarked for other stuff.
At this rate it will need to be applied to every house worth more than c. £100k which I'm sure will be very popular.
I wonder how many of the Cities and English Regions so favoured by Ed M and the Lab Party have no houses worth over £2m. Looks like a policy dreamt up over a few beers, and jotted down onto the back of a beer mat.
Ed Miliband has made a bold policy grab by announcing Labour will back a mansion tax aimed at homes worth more than £2m, with the money raised used to restore the 10p tax rate abolished by Gordon Brown in 2007.
Politically Evel seems to me to be a complete blind alley for the Tories.
Constitutional issues are too esoteric for the vast majority of the English public, most of whom do not care even if they understand them. If you ask people should only English MPs vote on English laws they will no doubt say yes, but the issue is never going to be salient.
As usual ScottP confuses support for an idea with salience. It just looks like a nerdish sideshow a few months from a GE.
Whats 'esoteric' about English MPs having the final say on laws affecting England?
What laws would these be then? How would you define them?.... (See where this line of questioning might take us?)
To be fair, you need to add the qualifier of a narrow no.
But it wasn't narrow.
Oh yes it was - till the Vow. Else why panic, run round in circles, and emit that Vow?
The vote was on Thursday 18th - and it wasn't narrow.
The vow was before then - and that is the time frame I am talking about. A fair proportion of No voters were influenced by it - I have seen figures f something like a quarter but not the original source. The margin would have been considerably narrower if that were so.
Do please post them.
Ashcroft showed among No voters decision was on: Day itself: 3 Last few days: 3 Last week: 3
To be fair, you need to add the qualifier of a narrow no.
But it wasn't narrow.
Oh yes it was - till the Vow. Else why panic, run round in circles, and emit that Vow?
The vote was on Thursday 18th - and it wasn't narrow.
The vow was before then - and that is the time frame I am talking about. A fair proportion of No voters were influenced by it - I have seen figures f something like a quarter but not the original source. The margin would have been considerably narrower if that were so.
Do please post them.
Ashcroft showed among No voters decision was on: Day itself: 3 Last few days: 3 Last week: 3
Thanks. If I read the table rightly, that shows that 9% of all No voters made up their mind in the last "week" - =9% of 55% poll result so about 5 percentage points of the poll result, i.e. equivalent to the 11% margin (though some would have voted No of course). So the vow could have impacted much of that group - depending on the accuracy of their recall of timing. Anyway, that would certainly allow the vow to have a small but in the circumstances significant effect, of the same order of magnitude as I suggest below, but without a more specific survey of the kind I seem to recall (where, I cannot recall) one can't be sure.
If mansion tax is tied* to requirement of NHS shortfall, wont be very long until like stamp duty, it is just another tax on basically everybody.
* I am not suggesting Labour are going to tie this in law...but lets look at road tax, how much of that is spent on roads these days? It is now just another pot of money to raid.
Once you set up a new kitty and dipping into the kitty and you find the kitty isn't big enough, well you have already softened people up to make the kitty a bit bigger.
Indeed, which is why the mansion tax will end up being charged at a much lower rate than the £2 million currently being bandied about. If you set it at ca. £300,000 you would probably exclude most of the country bar London and the South East and if you set it at £2 million you simply wouldn't raise anything like enough money.
Much like the 40p tax rate, it will very quickly end up being charged on modest houses and paid by far more people than those thought of as "rich" and, therefore, undeserving.
If mansion tax is tied* to requirement of NHS shortfall, wont be very long until like stamp duty, it is just another tax on basically everybody.
* I am not suggesting Labour are going to tie this in law...but lets look at road tax, how much of that is spent on roads these days? It is now just another pot of money to raid.
Once you set up a new kitty and dipping into the kitty and you find the kitty isn't big enough, well you have already softened people up to make the kitty a bit bigger.
Vehicle duty (it's currently linked to cars pollution rates) wasn't originally set aside for use on roads, and while it was ring-fenced for a while that ended 80 years ago or so.
To be fair, you need to add the qualifier of a narrow no.
But it wasn't narrow.
Oh yes it was - till the Vow. Else why panic, run round in circles, and emit that Vow?
The vote was on Thursday 18th - and it wasn't narrow.
The vow was before then - and that is the time frame I am talking about. A fair proportion of No voters were influenced by it - I have seen figures f something like a quarter but not the original source. The margin would have been considerably narrower if that were so.
Why didn't Eck come up with a vow - a vow to have a Plan B - then he might have done better.
Scotsman this morning summed it up - some aspects of the Yes campaign were totally inept.
"The Yes campaign only needed to neutralise the economic arguments and it could then go on to win – instead it lived in an unreal world and fought a ridiculous battle like the Black Knight from Monty Python’s Holy Grail."
The reason for these strategic flaws in the Yes campaign is not hard to identify: it was the hubris of Alex Salmond and Nicola Sturgeon – the belief that they could not be wrong or at least not be seen to be wrong.
" He remains in denial, for Salmond resignation is nothing other than a manoeuvre designed to preserve the career of his chief accomplice, Sturgeon."
No-one likes a sore loser and in saying at the weekend that No voters had been tricked, Salmond showed arrogant disrespect for the judgement of more than two million Scots. "
But I am not talking about the Yes campaign. I am talking about the No campaign and te leaders' vow which presumably they had good reason at th time, or jus before, to consider necessary. It generally considered to have a significant impact on the result
Apart from among the 91% of No voters who had decided how they would vote before it was made........
Not content with Stamp Duty and Council Tax, Labour rush around trying to find a new way of grabbing headlines. In tomorrow's news, The Two Eds show how it is possible to piss into the wind.
I thought the mansion tax had already been earmarked for other stuff.
At this rate it will need to be applied to every house worth more than c. £100k which I'm sure will be very popular.
Tenants in common is an immediate and obvious area to consider. As I said though, don't expect difficult questions. Do expect this to be the thin end of the wedge.
Politically Evel seems to me to be a complete blind alley for the Tories.
Constitutional issues are too esoteric for the vast majority of the English public, most of whom do not care even if they understand them. If you ask people should only English MPs vote on English laws they will no doubt say yes, but the issue is never going to be salient.
As usual ScottP confuses support for an idea with salience. It just looks like a nerdish sideshow a few months from a GE.
Whats 'esoteric' about English MPs having the final say on laws affecting England?
What laws would these be then? How would you define them?.... (See where this line of questioning might take us?)
Not really. The Scottish Parliament seems to have been fine introducing and voting on legislation for Scotland. I dont see the difference.
Mr. Owls, food banks began in this country during the boom of the early 2000s. They have increased every single year since. Supply has never met demand, so claiming more of them is a sign the Coalition is a 'bad' government is a nonsense (it also implies the same was true of the Labour Government).
Mr Dancer these are the numbers from the Trussell Trust . I happen to think the current Government is particularly bad in this respect and worse doesnt appear to care. Up from 50k to 1m?
@paulwaugh: Ed Balls, asked for "21st time", if unfair or fair ScotsMPs vote on Eng matters:"some things are more complicated than simple binary choice"
To be fair, you need to add the qualifier of a narrow no.
But it wasn't narrow.
Oh yes it was - till the Vow. Else why panic, run round in circles, and emit that Vow?
The vote was on Thursday 18th - and it wasn't narrow.
The vow was before then - and that is the time frame I am talking about. A fair proportion of No voters were influenced by it - I have seen figures f something like a quarter but not the original source. The margin would have been considerably narrower if that were so.
Why didn't Eck come up with a vow - a vow to have a Plan B - then he might have done better.
Scotsman this morning summed it up - some aspects of the Yes campaign were totally inept.
"The Yes campaign only needed to neutralise the economic arguments and it could then go on to win – instead it lived in an unreal world and fought a ridiculous battle like the Black Knight from Monty Python’s Holy Grail."
The reason for these strategic flaws in the Yes campaign is not hard to identify: it was the hubris of Alex Salmond and Nicola Sturgeon – the belief that they could not be wrong or at least not be seen to be wrong.
" He remains in denial, for Salmond resignation is nothing other than a manoeuvre designed to preserve the career of his chief accomplice, Sturgeon."
No-one likes a sore loser and in saying at the weekend that No voters had been tricked, Salmond showed arrogant disrespect for the judgement of more than two million Scots. "
But I am not talking about the Yes campaign. I am talking about the No campaign and te leaders' vow which presumably they had good reason at th time, or jus before, to consider necessary. It generally considered to have a significant impact on the result
Apart from among the 91% of No voters who had decided how they would vote before it was made........
Quite, but that is about 50-51% final polling points. Which is the point, surely.
If mansion tax is tied* to requirement of NHS shortfall, wont be very long until like stamp duty, it is just another tax on basically everybody.
* I am not suggesting Labour are going to tie this in law...but lets look at road tax, how much of that is spent on roads these days? It is now just another pot of money to raid.
Once you set up a new kitty and dipping into the kitty and you find the kitty isn't big enough, well you have already softened people up to make the kitty a bit bigger.
Vehicle duty (it's currently linked to cars pollution rates) wasn't originally set aside for use on roads, and while it was ring-fenced for a while that ended 80 years ago or so.
The point was it started as a tax to fund exclusively new road building, actually to help top up the funds for road building. Today I think less than 1/3 is spent on anything to do with roads, it is just another kitty to dip into (and I seemed to remember Tony Blair saying so a few years ago).
Ed Miliband has made a bold policy grab by announcing Labour will back a mansion tax aimed at homes worth more than £2m, with the money raised used to restore the 10p tax rate abolished by Gordon Brown in 2007.
Perhaps some interviewer could ask EdM or Balls or even Reeves that question.
Either the tax will have to be very much greater and/or charged on very many more people or it simply won't raise enough and there will still be a hole in the budget.
I do think, though, that there is scope for adding several more council tax bands at the top end. Is this any party's policy?
Mr. Owls, during Labour's time it went from zero to 50,000 (an infinity percent rise, if one wanted to be silly with stats). The numbers would be much the same if Labour had won in 2010, if the blues had an outright majority, or if Screaming Lord Sutch had been resurrected to assume his rightful place as PM.
But it's convenient to attack the evil Tories. So people do.
Food banks are a symptom. The cause is what counts. I suspect massive immigration, which has helped the wealthy and harmed the poor, is partly to blame.
@paulwaugh: Ed Balls, asked for "21st time", if unfair or fair ScotsMPs vote on Eng matters:"some things are more complicated than simple binary choice"
He's right though. Some things are more complex than a binary choice. What's your view on the matter Scott? As usual, you don't say, preferring to retweet other people's drivel
Strictly speaking Labour does not need to spell out what tax rise will pay for more NHS spending, since it is proposing to borrow more than is allowable under the coalition's economic plans.
No they haven't. Ed Balls foolishly reiterated today that Labour want a surplus - hence, yet more big cuts. They've utterly tied themselves into knots, and just come across as a complete mess who have no idea what they're for. Interviews like the one with Rachel Reeves are going to be very common in the election campaign, because of the sheer incoherence and inconsistency of the platform ("the Tories' policies have led to disgraceful inequality and dire public services, yet we're still going to carry on with the policies that have led to those problems").
Miss Cyclefree, maybe it's a quantum policy. The money raised will be used to theoretically fund two separate and mutually exclusive spending commitments, up until the point someone observes this, at which point it will only be able to fund a single spending commitment.
If you have a mansion simply draw a huge phallus on the front thus reducing the value and avoiding the YEARLY tax.
4 years wait for this - bravo Ed.
It's the window tax all over again. All you do is incentivise people to live in the dark.
Or split your house in half - give one to your wife. Hey presto 2 x £1M houses.
Nice one. Might as well split it into four and give two bits to the kids conditional on you retaining full use of it until you kark it.
But the house would still be valued at £2million, so you would each have to pay a 1/4 of the tax, surely?
Not if you registered each individually with the land registry. A one off fee to avoid year on year taxes from Labour.
Govt would lose out when sold too as stamp duty thresholds not met
I think you'd find you'd have to pay stamp duty if splitting a house up in that way.
What is absolutely clear is that the tax would eventually be levied on almost every house via fiscal drag, in the same way Brown tried to make 40% the basic rate of tax by not revising thresholds.
Ed Miliband has made a bold policy grab by announcing Labour will back a mansion tax aimed at homes worth more than £2m, with the money raised used to restore the 10p tax rate abolished by Gordon Brown in 2007.
Perhaps some interviewer could ask EdM or Balls or even Reeves that question.
Either the tax will have to be very much greater and/or charged on very many more people or it simply won't raise enough and there will still be a hole in the budget.
I do think, though, that there is scope for adding several more council tax bands at the top end. Is this any party's policy?
Can a Lib Dem supporter tell me whatever happened to the Lib Dem's idea of a local income tax? It used to be a key part of their proposals for a fairer taxation system.
I seem to believe even the Mansion Tax started off as an idea to provide a stepping stone, while local income tax could be set up.
To be fair, you need to add the qualifier of a narrow no.
But it wasn't narrow.
Oh yes it was - till the Vow. Else why panic, run round in circles, and emit that Vow?
The vote was on Thursday 18th - and it wasn't narrow.
The vow was before then - and that is the time frame I am talking about. A fair proportion of No voters were influenced by it - I have seen figures f something like a quarter but not the original source. The margin would have been considerably narrower if that were so.
Why didn't Eck come up with a vow - a vow to have a Plan B - then he might have done better.
Scotsman this morning summed it up - some aspects of the Yes campaign were totally inept.
"The Yes campaign only needed to neutralise the economic arguments and it could then go on to win – instead it lived in an unreal world and fought a ridiculous battle like the Black Knight from Monty Python’s Holy Grail."
The reason for these strategic flaws in the Yes campaign is not hard to identify: it was the hubris of Alex Salmond and Nicola Sturgeon – the belief that they could not be wrong or at least not be seen to be wrong.
" He remains in denial, for Salmond resignation is nothing other than a manoeuvre designed to preserve the career of his chief accomplice, Sturgeon."
No-one likes a sore loser and in saying at the weekend that No voters had been tricked, Salmond showed arrogant disrespect for the judgement of more than two million Scots. "
But I am not talking about the Yes campaign. I am talking about the No campaign and te leaders' vow which presumably they had good reason at th time, or jus before, to consider necessary. It generally considered to have a significant impact on the result
Apart from among the 91% of No voters who had decided how they would vote before it was made........
PS Checked, it does seem to be an Ashcroft poll which gave considerable credit to the Vow (and remember that we need to consider those No voters which never changed to Yes, to be logical). But I don't know where it is.
Edit: just realised it must be the tables you adduce. Have a look at Table 9 and 10, under 'A No vote would still mean extra powers ...' and though I can't make sense of the timing percentages, it does seem non-trivial.
To be fair, you need to add the qualifier of a narrow no.
But it wasn't narrow.
Oh yes it was - till the Vow. Else why panic, run round in circles, and emit that Vow?
The vote was on Thursday 18th - and it wasn't narrow.
The vow was before then - and that is the time frame I am talking about. A fair proportion of No voters were influenced by it - I have seen figures f something like a quarter but not the original source. The margin would have been considerably narrower if that were so.
Do please post them.
Ashcroft showed among No voters decision was on: Day itself: 3 Last few days: 3 Last week: 3
Thanks. If I read the table rightly, that shows that 9% of all No voters made up their mind in the last "week" - =9% of 55% poll result so about 5 percentage points of the poll result, i.e. equivalent to the 11% margin (though some would have voted No of course). So the vow could have impacted much of that group - depending on the accuracy of their recall of timing. Anyway, that would certainly allow the vow to have a small but in the circumstances significant effect, of the same order of magnitude as I suggest below, but without a more specific survey of the kind I seem to recall (where, I cannot recall) one can't be sure.
No, of those who voted "No" only 36% cited "more powers within UK" as the reason for their vote - behind the 43% who expressed attachment to the UK.
As the SNP tries to rewrite history it would be helpful if you could link to the poll showing "a quarter of No voters" rather than 36% of 9% as Ashcroft seems to suggest.
If mansion tax is tied* to requirement of NHS shortfall, wont be very long until like stamp duty, it is just another tax on basically everybody.
* I am not suggesting Labour are going to tie this in law...but lets look at road tax, how much of that is spent on roads these days? It is now just another pot of money to raid.
Once you set up a new kitty and dipping into the kitty and you find the kitty isn't big enough, well you have already softened people up to make the kitty a bit bigger.
Vehicle duty (it's currently linked to cars pollution rates) wasn't originally set aside for use on roads, and while it was ring-fenced for a while that ended 80 years ago or so.
The point was it started as a tax to fund exclusively new road building, actually to help top up the funds for road building. Today I think less than 1/3 is spent on anything to do with roads, it is just another kitty to dip into (and I seemed to remember Tony Blair saying so a few years ago).
I don't think it did start as that.
Today iirc it just goes into the general pot, it isn't a separate kitty at all.
To be fair, you need to add the qualifier of a narrow no.
But it wasn't narrow.
Oh yes it was - till the Vow. Else why panic, run round in circles, and emit that Vow?
The vote was on Thursday 18th - and it wasn't narrow.
The vow was before then - and that is the time frame I am talking about. A fair proportion of No voters were influenced by it - I have seen figures f something like a quarter but not the original source. The margin would have been considerably narrower if that were so.
Why didn't Eck come up with a vow - a vow to have a Plan B - then he might have done better.
Scotsman this morning summed it up - some aspects of the Yes campaign were totally inept.
"The Yes campaign only needed to neutralise the economic arguments and it could then go on to win – instead it lived in an unreal world and fought a ridiculous battle like the Black Knight from Monty Python’s Holy Grail."
The reason for these strategic flaws in the Yes campaign is not hard to identify: it was the hubris of Alex Salmond and Nicola Sturgeon – the belief that they could not be wrong or at least not be seen to be wrong.
" He remains in denial, for Salmond resignation is nothing other than a manoeuvre designed to preserve the career of his chief accomplice, Sturgeon."
No-one likes a sore loser and in saying at the weekend that No voters had been tricked, Salmond showed arrogant disrespect for the judgement of more than two million Scots. "
But I am not talking about the Yes campaign. I am talking about the No campaign and te leaders' vow which presumably they had good reason at th time, or jus before, to consider necessary. It generally considered to have a significant impact on the result
Apart from among the 91% of No voters who had decided how they would vote before it was made........
PS Checked, it does seem to be an Ashcroft poll which gave considerable credit to the Vow (and remember that we need to consider those No voters which never changed to Yes, to be logical). But I don't know where it is.
If mansion tax is tied* to requirement of NHS shortfall, wont be very long until like stamp duty, it is just another tax on basically everybody.
* I am not suggesting Labour are going to tie this in law...but lets look at road tax, how much of that is spent on roads these days? It is now just another pot of money to raid.
Once you set up a new kitty and dipping into the kitty and you find the kitty isn't big enough, well you have already softened people up to make the kitty a bit bigger.
Vehicle duty (it's currently linked to cars pollution rates) wasn't originally set aside for use on roads, and while it was ring-fenced for a while that ended 80 years ago or so.
The point was it started as a tax to fund exclusively new road building, actually to help top up the funds for road building. Today I think less than 1/3 is spent on anything to do with roads, it is just another kitty to dip into (and I seemed to remember Tony Blair saying so a few years ago).
I don't think it did start as that.
Today iirc it just goes into the general pot, it isn't a separate kitty at all.
Vehicle tax was introduced in the 1888 budget and the current system of excise duty applying specifically to motor vehicles was introduced in 1920. This excise duty was ring-fenced (earmarked) for road construction and was paid directly into a special Road Fund from 1920 until 1937 after which it was treated as general taxation[1] Even during this period the majority of the cost of road building and improvement came from general and local taxation due to the tax being too low for the upkeep of the roads[2]
[2] Plowden, William (1971). The Motor Car And Politics 1896–1970.
"Today iirc it just goes into the general pot, it isn't a separate kitty at all."
Yes I know. I was talking about historically. Also, Labour's proposal today isn't to make a separate "kitty", it was a turn of phrase, there is another theoretical pot that you can keep dipping into, expanding etc. I wasn't suggesting that Osborne gets a big comedy cheque each month with "Road Tax" on it, that he nips down RBS to deposit.
Mr. Owls, during Labour's time it went from zero to 50,000 (an infinity percent rise, if one wanted to be silly with stats). The numbers would be much the same if Labour had won in 2010, if the blues had an outright majority, or if Screaming Lord Sutch had been resurrected to assume his rightful place as PM.
But it's convenient to attack the evil Tories. So people do.
Food banks are a symptom. The cause is what counts. I suspect massive immigration, which has helped the wealthy and harmed the poor, is partly to blame.
Mr Dancer the people who know about these things ie the Trussel Trust seem to think the bedroom tax is mainly responsible for the extra 950k people. Only a Tory Govt would introduce such a thing IMO
In my view Devo-max sets off a chain of events that inexorably leads to independence. The Scots rejected independence and therefore Devo-max is undemocratic. The logical steps are as follows:
1. The referendum and the vow of Devo-max (or something close to it) raise the profile of the WLQ so that it is no longer an 'esoteric southern English complaint' (as was suggested in the Guardian) so that means EV4EL cannot simply be ignored.
2. Devo-max (the vow) diminishes the role of Scottish MPs as they would no longer be able to vote on income tax laws, housing benefit laws etc. that affect Scotland.
3. There is no appetite for devolution of the same kind of powers to regions or assemblies within England.
4. Under these circumstances EV4EL sounds superficially, simple to understand and implement, logical, fair and democratic. The perception is that the English have had a raw deal because they didn't vote in the referendum (and because of the Barnett formula) so it will be impossible to resist implementing it whatever the timescale may be.
5. EV4EL will further diminish the role of Scottish MPs perhaps making it difficult to justify their salaries. The potential career path of a Scottish MPs would be altered with it being increasingly difficult for them to become a cabinet minister. New talented Scottish politicians would most likely prefer to be MSPs.
6. The result is a de facto English (and Welsh) parliament since the majority of votes taken at Westminister would not impact Scotland.
7. Such a parliament would need to be headed up by an English 1st minister, the leader of the party that wins England regardless of whether that party wins the UK as a whole.
8. There is unlikely to be appetite for a UK prime minister to be a different person from the English 1st minister partly because it would be unclear which of the two people would wield most power. Therefore the UK prime minister would have to be the English 1st minister.
9. The Scots would not tolerate the UK Prime Minister always being English and therefore would push again for independence. This time they would succeed.
If you have a mansion simply draw a huge phallus on the front thus reducing the value and avoiding the YEARLY tax.
4 years wait for this - bravo Ed.
It's the window tax all over again. All you do is incentivise people to live in the dark.
Or split your house in half - give one to your wife. Hey presto 2 x £1M houses.
Nice one. Might as well split it into four and give two bits to the kids conditional on you retaining full use of it until you kark it.
But the house would still be valued at £2million, so you would each have to pay a 1/4 of the tax, surely?
Not if you registered each individually with the land registry. A one off fee to avoid year on year taxes from Labour.
Govt would lose out when sold too as stamp duty thresholds not met
I think you'd find you'd have to pay stamp duty if splitting a house up in that way.
What is absolutely clear is that the tax would eventually be levied on almost every house via fiscal drag, in the same way Brown tried to make 40% the basic rate of tax by not revising thresholds.
If mansion tax is tied* to requirement of NHS shortfall, wont be very long until like stamp duty, it is just another tax on basically everybody.
* I am not suggesting Labour are going to tie this in law...but lets look at road tax, how much of that is spent on roads these days? It is now just another pot of money to raid.
Once you set up a new kitty and dipping into the kitty and you find the kitty isn't big enough, well you have already softened people up to make the kitty a bit bigger.
Vehicle duty (it's currently linked to cars pollution rates) wasn't originally set aside for use on roads, and while it was ring-fenced for a while that ended 80 years ago or so.
The point was it started as a tax to fund exclusively new road building, actually to help top up the funds for road building. Today I think less than 1/3 is spent on anything to do with roads, it is just another kitty to dip into (and I seemed to remember Tony Blair saying so a few years ago).
I don't think it did start as that.
Today iirc it just goes into the general pot, it isn't a separate kitty at all.
Vehicle tax was introduced in the 1888 budget and the current system of excise duty applying specifically to motor vehicles was introduced in 1920. This excise duty was ring-fenced (earmarked) for road construction and was paid directly into a special Road Fund from 1920 until 1937 after which it was treated as general taxation[1] Even during this period the majority of the cost of road building and improvement came from general and local taxation due to the tax being too low for the upkeep of the roads[2]
[2] Plowden, William (1971). The Motor Car And Politics 1896–1970.
"Today iirc it just goes into the general pot, it isn't a separate kitty at all."
Yes I know. I was talking about historically. Labour proposal today isn't to make a separate "kitty", it was a turn of phrase, there is another theoretical pot that you can keep dipping into.
Yes, so it was started as contributing to general taxation, same as it is now.
Mr. Owls, during Labour's time it went from zero to 50,000 (an infinity percent rise, if one wanted to be silly with stats). The numbers would be much the same if Labour had won in 2010, if the blues had an outright majority, or if Screaming Lord Sutch had been resurrected to assume his rightful place as PM.
But it's convenient to attack the evil Tories. So people do.
Food banks are a symptom. The cause is what counts. I suspect massive immigration, which has helped the wealthy and harmed the poor, is partly to blame.
Mr Dancer the people who know about these things ie the Trussel Trust seem to think the bedroom tax is mainly responsible for the extra 950k people. Only a Tory Govt would introduce such a thing IMO
IDS's disastrous benefit "reforms" are largely to blame for foodbank queues.
You are right though, only a Tory Government would have deliberately targeted the poor and disabled like this.
In point of fact we have a Coalition. Labour introduced the exact measure, I am given to understand, for the private sector. Why is it a just measure for the private sector and a vile wickedness for the public?
If mansion tax is tied* to requirement of NHS shortfall, wont be very long until like stamp duty, it is just another tax on basically everybody.
* I am not suggesting Labour are going to tie this in law...but lets look at road tax, how much of that is spent on roads these days? It is now just another pot of money to raid.
Once you set up a new kitty and dipping into the kitty and you find the kitty isn't big enough, well you have already softened people up to make the kitty a bit bigger.
Vehicle duty (it's currently linked to cars pollution rates) wasn't originally set aside for use on roads, and while it was ring-fenced for a while that ended 80 years ago or so.
The point was it started as a tax to fund exclusively new road building, actually to help top up the funds for road building. Today I think less than 1/3 is spent on anything to do with roads, it is just another kitty to dip into (and I seemed to remember Tony Blair saying so a few years ago).
I don't think it did start as that.
Today iirc it just goes into the general pot, it isn't a separate kitty at all.
Vehicle tax was introduced in the 1888 budget and the current system of excise duty applying specifically to motor vehicles was introduced in 1920. This excise duty was ring-fenced (earmarked) for road construction and was paid directly into a special Road Fund from 1920 until 1937 after which it was treated as general taxation[1] Even during this period the majority of the cost of road building and improvement came from general and local taxation due to the tax being too low for the upkeep of the roads[2]
[2] Plowden, William (1971). The Motor Car And Politics 1896–1970.
"Today iirc it just goes into the general pot, it isn't a separate kitty at all."
Yes I know. I was talking about historically. Labour proposal today isn't to make a separate "kitty", it was a turn of phrase, there is another theoretical pot that you can keep dipping into.
Yes, so it was started as contributing to general taxation, same as it is now.
Well we can argue the semantics, that the 1920 act was the FIRST specifically for motor vehicles was for only road construction. But fair enough. Point still stands, new tax came in with pot of money ring fenced for road building didn't last very long, even though it wasn't even providing enough money for the job it was introduced to do.
And now we are talking about only about 1/3 of the money getting anyway near a road.
Quite a few (70,000 according to the LibDems), which is why the IFS thought it would raise £1.7bn/year when the LibDems floated it, though we'll need to see details here to value it accurately. Obviously it's not enough to address all that needs to be done on its own, but it's a useful start. The Tory equivalent appears to be some more benefit cuts.
Of course it can be avoided if you decide to give away half your £3 million home to save £10,000. I wouldn't, and doubt if many would.
If you have a mansion simply draw a huge phallus on the front thus reducing the value and avoiding the YEARLY tax.
4 years wait for this - bravo Ed.
It's the window tax all over again. All you do is incentivise people to live in the dark.
Or split your house in half - give one to your wife. Hey presto 2 x £1M houses.
Nice one. Might as well split it into four and give two bits to the kids conditional on you retaining full use of it until you kark it.
But the house would still be valued at £2million, so you would each have to pay a 1/4 of the tax, surely?
Not if you registered each individually with the land registry. A one off fee to avoid year on year taxes from Labour.
Govt would lose out when sold too as stamp duty thresholds not met
I think you'd find you'd have to pay stamp duty if splitting a house up in that way.
What is absolutely clear is that the tax would eventually be levied on almost every house via fiscal drag, in the same way Brown tried to make 40% the basic rate of tax by not revising thresholds.
And the reason the speeches have been policy-lite, as well as ensuring that the only story from the whole conference is a big speech announcement from Ed Miliband, is that the party thinks it has already produced enough policy. What it needs to do now is to create a narrative and weave its policies and arguments together in something it can sell to the electorate.
Sounds about right. Labour and Ed M have shown an effective grasp of what is 'just good enough' so far, that they are probably right, even if it will worry some in their ranks.
Quite a few (70,000 according to the LibDems), which is why the IFS thought it would raise £1.7bn/year when the LibDems floated it, though we'll need to see details here to value it accurately. Obviously it's not enough to address all that needs to be done on its own, but it's a useful start. The Tory equivalent appears to be some more benefit cuts.
Of course it can be avoided if you decide to give away half your £3 million home to save £10,000. I wouldn't, and doubt if many would.
To save £10k A YEAR...not exactly chump change. And we know with 50p tax rate, people came you with a variety of ways to save that kind of money from the tax man.
We also know that it can be the nudge to make people explore "opportunities" e.g. Gordo's badly thought out arts tax give-away, got all sorts of people exploring schemes to save some tax. Amazing how many people got interested in investing in films.
Just because you wouldn't, doesn't mean other wont think twice about dividing up their home (especially in London). Sensible folk already do standard IHT planning in relation to their homes.
Shadow cabinet limited to 700 word speeches, and no policy talk as they've done enough of that already...
Isabel Hardman (@IsabelHardman) 22/09/2014 19:02 Why is Labour's shadow cabinet saying so little? Here's what my sources have been telling me specc.ie/XXA5vN #Lab14
Quite a few (70,000 according to the LibDems), which is why the IFS thought it would raise £1.7bn/year when the LibDems floated it, though we'll need to see details here to value it accurately. Obviously it's not enough to address all that needs to be done on its own, but it's a useful start. The Tory equivalent appears to be some more benefit cuts.
Of course it can be avoided if you decide to give away half your £3 million home to save £10,000. I wouldn't, and doubt if many would.
So, Ed's basically written about a Lib Dem idea on his blank sheet of paper.
Mr. Owls, during Labour's time it went from zero to 50,000 (an infinity percent rise, if one wanted to be silly with stats). The numbers would be much the same if Labour had won in 2010, if the blues had an outright majority, or if Screaming Lord Sutch had been resurrected to assume his rightful place as PM.
But it's convenient to attack the evil Tories. So people do.
Food banks are a symptom. The cause is what counts. I suspect massive immigration, which has helped the wealthy and harmed the poor, is partly to blame.
Mr Dancer the people who know about these things ie the Trussel Trust seem to think the bedroom tax is mainly responsible for the extra 950k people. Only a Tory Govt would introduce such a thing IMO
Sadly for you, the bedroom tax was introduced by Labour, but as it was on private tennents, you didn't seem to notice. Why is that?
Mr. Owls, during Labour's time it went from zero to 50,000 (an infinity percent rise, if one wanted to be silly with stats). The numbers would be much the same if Labour had won in 2010, if the blues had an outright majority, or if Screaming Lord Sutch had been resurrected to assume his rightful place as PM.
But it's convenient to attack the evil Tories. So people do.
Food banks are a symptom. The cause is what counts. I suspect massive immigration, which has helped the wealthy and harmed the poor, is partly to blame.
Mr Dancer the people who know about these things ie the Trussel Trust seem to think the bedroom tax is mainly responsible for the extra 950k people. Only a Tory Govt would introduce such a thing IMO
Sadly for you, the bedroom tax was introduced by Labour, but as it was on private tennents, you didn't seem to notice. Why is that?
Not content with Stamp Duty and Council Tax, Labour rush around trying to find a new way of grabbing headlines. In tomorrow's news, The Two Eds show how it is possible to piss into the wind.
I thought the mansion tax had already been earmarked for other stuff.
At this rate it will need to be applied to every house worth more than c. £100k which I'm sure will be very popular.
Tenants in common is an immediate and obvious area to consider. As I said though, don't expect difficult questions. Do expect this to be the thin end of the wedge.
Oh I do. And anyone thinking only the stinking rich will be affected needs to think again.
Whichever party wins will have cut more and increase taxes if they'e going to eliminate the deficit. Labour, I fear, will do so in a way which prejudices rather than enhances the growth we are now finally seeing and in a way designed to punish groups for some perceived failing, which usually leads to bad and economically innumerate legislation. There will be little fairness around.
There will be a lot of angst over how valuations are done: will a surveyor come and assess each house individually or is this done by street or on the basis of Land Registry records or what? What about appeals etc?
Mr. Owls, during Labour's time it went from zero to 50,000 (an infinity percent rise, if one wanted to be silly with stats). The numbers would be much the same if Labour had won in 2010, if the blues had an outright majority, or if Screaming Lord Sutch had been resurrected to assume his rightful place as PM.
But it's convenient to attack the evil Tories. So people do.
Food banks are a symptom. The cause is what counts. I suspect massive immigration, which has helped the wealthy and harmed the poor, is partly to blame.
Mr Dancer the people who know about these things ie the Trussel Trust seem to think the bedroom tax is mainly responsible for the extra 950k people. Only a Tory Govt would introduce such a thing IMO
Sadly for you, the bedroom tax was introduced by Labour, but as it was on private tennents, you didn't seem to notice. Why is that?
Mr Dancer the people who know about these things ie the Trussel Trust seem to think the bedroom tax is mainly responsible for the extra 950k people. Only a Tory Govt would introduce such a thing IMO
The first part of that is garbage, but it may be true that only a Tory-led government would seek to address the long-standing disgrace of certain tenants who don't need extra bedroom being subsidised, at a time when hundreds of thousands of families are stuck in over-crowded accommodation. Labour seems to think this perfectly OK, desirable in fact, despite it being manifestly unfair as well as extraordinarily wasteful. I've no idea why you, and other Labour supporters, don't care a toss about the unfairness or the waste of public money.
@WikiGuido: Mili in 2012: "[Hollande and I] in agreement in seeking that new way" MT @paulwaugh Balls: "I don't think Hollande's France is a role model"
Not really. The Scottish Parliament seems to have been fine introducing and voting on legislation for Scotland. I dont see the difference.
The Scottish Parliament has a legislative competence defined by section 29 of the Scotland Act 1998. If a Law Officer considers that a Bill of the Scottish Parliament is outside that competence, he may refer it to the Supreme Court for a determination of the issue. If an Act of the Scottish Parliament is outside its legislative competence, a court may declare that it is not law and restrain its enforcement. The problem with "English votes for English laws" is that it would transfer from the courts to the Speaker of the House of Commons decisions about whether legislation fell within the devolved competence of a legislative assembly, a question of law which the Speaker is not qualified to make. Furthermore, as the Speaker's decision would be incapable of being challenged under article IX of the Bill of Rights 1689, Scottish MPs could be excluded from voting on a Bill which they had every right to vote on, yet that Bill could still become law, and would remain law, even if it later emerged that the Speaker had fallen into an error of law.
Mr Dancer the people who know about these things ie the Trussel Trust seem to think the bedroom tax is mainly responsible for the extra 950k people. Only a Tory Govt would introduce such a thing IMO
The first part of that is garbage, but it may be true that only a Tory-led government would seek to address the long-standing disgrace of certain tenants who don't need extra bedroom being subsidised, at a time when hundreds of thousands of families are stuck in over-crowded accommodation. Labour seems to think this perfectly OK, desirable in fact, despite it being manifestly unfair as well as extraordinarily wasteful. I've no idea why you, and other Labour supporters, don't care a toss about the unfairness or the waste of public money.
Of course, the Tories have never objected to subsidising people seeking to buy council houses with more bedrooms than they need, so depriving families that need them of their use. Go figure.
No, of those who voted "No" only 36% cited "more powers within UK" as the reason for their vote - behind the 43% who expressed attachment to the UK.
As the SNP tries to rewrite history it would be helpful if you could link to the poll showing "a quarter of No voters" rather than 36% of 9% as Ashcroft seems to suggest.
Okay, let's see. I read the tables rather differetly, as showing that we do indeed have 25% of No voters who gave the "better powers plus staying in UK" vow-style option, as their most important reason .
But we also have 38% giving it as as the second, and 36% as the third, from a slate of the offered three reasons.
Those have to be weighted for timing, of course.
Of that 25% of first optioners, about 12% (36 of 282) decided it in the timing in question, as you rightly said before, so that's about 2.8 percentage points in the final poll which can be assumed to have been at least markedly influenced by the vow. That doesn't include those also but less strongly influenced, who put that issue as 2nd and 3rd options. And those who might have but did not switch to Yes, or abstain.
That 45/55 gap equates to 5 percentage points of that type: under twice the figure above.
It's not absolute but does suggest rather roughly that the Vow made a non-trivial difference to the result.
Mr. Owls, during Labour's time it went from zero to 50,000 (an infinity percent rise, if one wanted to be silly with stats). The numbers would be much the same if Labour had won in 2010, if the blues had an outright majority, or if Screaming Lord Sutch had been resurrected to assume his rightful place as PM.
But it's convenient to attack the evil Tories. So people do.
Food banks are a symptom. The cause is what counts. I suspect massive immigration, which has helped the wealthy and harmed the poor, is partly to blame.
Mr Dancer the people who know about these things ie the Trussel Trust seem to think the bedroom tax is mainly responsible for the extra 950k people. Only a Tory Govt would introduce such a thing IMO
Sadly for you, the bedroom tax was introduced by Labour, but as it was on private tennents, you didn't seem to notice. Why is that?
The Labour tax was not retrospective so did not affect people already living in their homes.
Mr. Owls, during Labour's time it went from zero to 50,000 (an infinity percent rise, if one wanted to be silly with stats). The numbers would be much the same if Labour had won in 2010, if the blues had an outright majority, or if Screaming Lord Sutch had been resurrected to assume his rightful place as PM.
But it's convenient to attack the evil Tories. So people do.
Food banks are a symptom. The cause is what counts. I suspect massive immigration, which has helped the wealthy and harmed the poor, is partly to blame.
Mr Dancer the people who know about these things ie the Trussel Trust seem to think the bedroom tax is mainly responsible for the extra 950k people. Only a Tory Govt would introduce such a thing IMO
Sadly for you, the bedroom tax was introduced by Labour, but as it was on private tennents, you didn't seem to notice. Why is that?
The Labour tax was not retrospective so did not affect people already living in their homes.
My guess re Ed M's big offer tomorrow might not be the tricky mansion tax but more readily limiting pension tax relief to the normal rate - 20%.
This would likely increase tax revenues by many billions of pounds and would provide a lot of 'new money' towards vote winning ideas... far more material than the manion tax option...
It would of course be another nail in pensions but hey ho, this is Labour and they don't do pensions other than the public sector ones!
Tony Blair really is a warmongering c0@#, isn't he? He seems sadder and madder, everytime I see him promoting peace in the middle east from some big meeting or other.
The Labour tax was not retrospective so did not affect people already living in their homes.
Yes, Labour the party of vested interests. Bad luck if you're a young family desperately in need of large accomodation.
The funny thing is that Labour likes to think of itself as progressive and even radical. Here it is making a huge fuss about protecting an unfair status quo.
Mr. Owls, during Labour's time it went from zero to 50,000 (an infinity percent rise, if one wanted to be silly with stats). The numbers would be much the same if Labour had won in 2010, if the blues had an outright majority, or if Screaming Lord Sutch had been resurrected to assume his rightful place as PM.
But it's convenient to attack the evil Tories. So people do.
Food banks are a symptom. The cause is what counts. I suspect massive immigration, which has helped the wealthy and harmed the poor, is partly to blame.
Mr Dancer the people who know about these things ie the Trussel Trust seem to think the bedroom tax is mainly responsible for the extra 950k people. Only a Tory Govt would introduce such a thing IMO
Sadly for you, the bedroom tax was introduced by Labour, but as it was on private tennents, you didn't seem to notice. Why is that?
The Labour tax was not retrospective so did not affect people already living in their homes.
Did they introduce it? Is BJO wrong?
He is wrong to claim that it was introduced in the form that it was introduced by the Tories. And the reason it did not create the uproar the Tory tax has done is precisely because it was not retrospective.
Tony Blair really is a warmongering c0@#, isn't he? He seems sadder and madder, everytime I see him promoting peace in the middle east from some big meeting or other.
It's unclear whether Blair should be arrested or sectioned, but he's certainly a public menace.
Mr. Owls, during Labour's time it went from zero to 50,000 (an infinity percent rise, if one wanted to be silly with stats). The numbers would be much the same if Labour had won in 2010, if the blues had an outright majority, or if Screaming Lord Sutch had been resurrected to assume his rightful place as PM.
But it's convenient to attack the evil Tories. So people do.
Food banks are a symptom. The cause is what counts. I suspect massive immigration, which has helped the wealthy and harmed the poor, is partly to blame.
Mr Dancer the people who know about these things ie the Trussel Trust seem to think the bedroom tax is mainly responsible for the extra 950k people. Only a Tory Govt would introduce such a thing IMO
Sadly for you, the bedroom tax was introduced by Labour, but as it was on private tennents, you didn't seem to notice. Why is that?
The Labour tax was not retrospective so did not affect people already living in their homes.
Did they introduce it? Is BJO wrong?
Lab are certainly introducing one big style on homes over £2m
Need to reintroduce 50p rate as well though so i hope this is still on the cards
Tony Blair really is a warmongering c0@#, isn't he? He seems sadder and madder, everytime I see him promoting peace in the middle east from some big meeting or other.
The Labour tax was not retrospective so did not affect people already living in their homes.
Yes, Labour the party of vested interests. Bad luck if you're a young family desperately in need of large accomodation.
The funny thing is that Labour likes to think of itself as progressive and even radical. Here it is making a huge fuss about protecting an unfair status quo.
Unfair in that you chuck families out of a place in which they are settled, because you made the policy change retroactive? Or unfair on the children who have to move schools? Unfair how?
Tony Blair really is a warmongering c0@#, isn't he? He seems sadder and madder, everytime I see him promoting peace in the middle east from some big meeting or other.
It's unclear whether Blair should be arrested or sectioned, but he's certainly a public menace.
Agree I would like to see nasty things happen to him like the Toffs Tax or worse
The Labour tax was not retrospective so did not affect people already living in their homes.
Yes, Labour the party of vested interests. Bad luck if you're a young family desperately in need of large accomodation.
The funny thing is that Labour likes to think of itself as progressive and even radical. Here it is making a huge fuss about protecting an unfair status quo.
That would be as opposed to subsidising people to buy council homes with more bedrooms than they need. That, of course, is not unfair and does not deprive young families.
I guess only a Tory would describe vulnerable people thrown out of homes they have lived in for years as a vested interest.
In my view Devo-max sets off a chain of events that inexorably leads to independence. The Scots rejected independence and therefore Devo-max is undemocratic. The logical steps are as follows:
1. The referendum and the vow of Devo-max (or something close to it) raise the profile of the WLQ so that it is no longer an 'esoteric southern English complaint' (as was suggested in the Guardian) so that means EV4EL cannot simply be ignored.
2. Devo-max (the vow) diminishes the role of Scottish MPs as they would no longer be able to vote on income tax laws, housing benefit laws etc. that affect Scotland.
3. There is no appetite for devolution of the same kind of powers to regions or assemblies within England.
4. Under these circumstances EV4EL sounds superficially, simple to understand and implement, logical, fair and democratic. The perception is that the English have had a raw deal because they didn't vote in the referendum (and because of the Barnett formula) so it will be impossible to resist implementing it whatever the timescale may be.
5. EV4EL will further diminish the role of Scottish MPs perhaps making it difficult to justify their salaries. The potential career path of a Scottish MPs would be altered with it being increasingly difficult for them to become a cabinet minister. New talented Scottish politicians would most likely prefer to be MSPs.
6. The result is a de facto English (and Welsh) parliament since the majority of votes taken at Westminister would not impact Scotland.
7. Such a parliament would need to be headed up by an English 1st minister, the leader of the party that wins England regardless of whether that party wins the UK as a whole.
8. There is unlikely to be appetite for a UK prime minister to be a different person from the English 1st minister partly because it would be unclear which of the two people would wield most power. Therefore the UK prime minister would have to be the English 1st minister.
9. The Scots would not tolerate the UK Prime Minister always being English and therefore would push again for independence. This time they would succeed.
I have moved from supporting EV4EL to an English parliament for exactly these reasons. We can't have a dual administration at Westminster. It won't work.
Mr. Owls, during Labour's time it went from zero to 50,000 (an infinity percent rise, if one wanted to be silly with stats). The numbers would be much the same if Labour had won in 2010, if the blues had an outright majority, or if Screaming Lord Sutch had been resurrected to assume his rightful place as PM.
But it's convenient to attack the evil Tories. So people do.
Food banks are a symptom. The cause is what counts. I suspect massive immigration, which has helped the wealthy and harmed the poor, is partly to blame.
Mr Dancer the people who know about these things ie the Trussel Trust seem to think the bedroom tax is mainly responsible for the extra 950k people. Only a Tory Govt would introduce such a thing IMO
Sadly for you, the bedroom tax was introduced by Labour, but as it was on private tennents, you didn't seem to notice. Why is that?
The Labour tax was not retrospective so did not affect people already living in their homes.
Did they introduce it? Is BJO wrong?
He is wrong to claim that it was introduced in the form that it was introduced by the Tories. And the reason it did not create the uproar the Tory tax has done is precisely because it was not retrospective.
Sorry, should have realised that exactly the same principle when introduced by Labour was fluffy and loved by all, but when extended to include public sector renting was nasty and vindictive. Because there's no way that following its introduction in the private sector people moved out of the family home leaving a room empty.
Miss Cyclefree, maybe it's a quantum policy. The money raised will be used to theoretically fund two separate and mutually exclusive spending commitments, up until the point someone observes this, at which point it will only be able to fund a single spending commitment.
Comments
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2765407/Miliband-SACK-1-5-frontbenchers-wins-election-rules-stop-wasting-public-money-ministers.html
Seems to me if Labour really are serious about cost saving in government, forgot 5% reduction in salary, why the f##k do we have 100+ ministers? There is absolutely no need for that many ministers. The Tories are just as bad on this and SPADs etc.
With UK parliament, Scottish Parliament, Welsh Assembly and if now calls from some within Labour to resurrect regional assemblies, the cost of democracy just keeps going up and can anybody honestly say we are better governed, by more talented individuals?
5 mins listening to the likes of Rachel Reeves not having a clue if it was night or day earlier on answers that question and she is supposedly one of the smarter ones.
Constitutional issues are too esoteric for the vast majority of the English public, most of whom do not care even if they understand them. If you ask people should only English MPs vote on English laws they will no doubt say yes, but the issue is never going to be salient.
As usual ScottP confuses support for an idea with salience. It just looks like a nerdish sideshow a few months from a GE.
There are no words...
At this rate it will need to be applied to every house worth more than c. £100k which I'm sure will be very popular.
Ashcroft showed among No voters decision was on:
Day itself: 3
Last few days: 3
Last week: 3
I make that 9%......
http://lordashcroftpolls.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/Scotland-Post-Referendum-poll-Full-tables-1409191.pdf
* I am not suggesting Labour are going to tie this in law...but lets look at road tax, how much of that is spent on roads these days? It is now just another pot of money to raid.
Once you set up a new kitty and dipping into the kitty and you find the kitty isn't big enough, well you have already softened people up to make the kitty a bit bigger.
But I am not talking about the Yes campaign. I am talking about the No campaign and te leaders' vow which presumably they had good reason at th time, or jus before, to consider necessary. It generally considered to have a significant impact on the result, so that a - presumably - narrow margin was converted to a larger one. And if that shift was even just a few percentage points, then we're talking of a lead of just several points which is reasonably called narrow. For instance, 45/55 could have been 48/52 before the Vow, say.
Which brings us back to Mr @Rottenborough's point that Labour did not seem to have thought through the implications of a No victory - and I was merely qualifying that with the suggestion that a broad No victory would not have caused problems.
I'd go for Humza Yousaf as possible deputy.
NHS finances are dire needs to be a priority for any incoming Government.
Getting the rich to pay for part of this will be popular with the electorate. Any PB Tory not think that will be the case?
Will the tax be levied on the owner or the occupier? What if the owner is non-resident? If it is levied on the occupier, then I look forward to Messrs Miliband and Balls paying the tax due on 10 & 11 Downing Street, both properties must be worth a fair penny, or will they exempt themselves from the taxes that they expect their fellow citizens to pay?
Just for the record so you and your fellow travellers might do something else with your evenings than obsess about posters being other posters, I have over the years sometimes used other logins. Some of those I have been accused of using are correct, others are laughably, embarrassingly wrong.
I'm not going to delve any further other than to say that you spend far too much of your time obsessing about anonymous posters using anonymous handles. As you yourself are anonymous who gives a f if you post as Davina, Jack or Ahmed? I certainly do not care.
Post about something else, you are boring and no doubt making the thread dull for everyone else and putting off new posters with your dreary, repetitive submissions.
Put up or shut up: either button it or else file an official complaint about it to the mods. It's boring.
http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2013/feb/14/ed-miliband-mansion-tax
So is that off the table now?
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-scotland-politics-29303968
@joeyjonessky: Not the headlines @ed_miliband was after monday morning. what happened to that minimum wage announcement? http://t.co/mVahhOkkhP
I suppose the concept of voluntarily giving up office is a strange concept to a New Labourite.
Thanks. If I read the table rightly, that shows that 9% of all No voters made up their mind in the last "week" - =9% of 55% poll result so about 5 percentage points of the poll result, i.e. equivalent to the 11% margin (though some would have voted No of course). So the vow could have impacted much of that group - depending on the accuracy of their recall of timing. Anyway, that would certainly allow the vow to have a small but in the circumstances significant effect, of the same order of magnitude as I suggest below, but without a more specific survey of the kind I seem to recall (where, I cannot recall) one can't be sure.
Much like the 40p tax rate, it will very quickly end up being charged on modest houses and paid by far more people than those thought of as "rich" and, therefore, undeserving.
http://labourlist.org/2014/04/nearly-one-million-people-forced-to-use-food-banks-in-the-last-year/
@paulwaugh: Ed Balls, asked for "21st time", if unfair or fair ScotsMPs vote on Eng matters:"some things are more complicated than simple binary choice"
Either the tax will have to be very much greater and/or charged on very many more people or it simply won't raise enough and there will still be a hole in the budget.
I do think, though, that there is scope for adding several more council tax bands at the top end. Is this any party's policy?
But it's convenient to attack the evil Tories. So people do.
Food banks are a symptom. The cause is what counts. I suspect massive immigration, which has helped the wealthy and harmed the poor, is partly to blame.
What is absolutely clear is that the tax would eventually be levied on almost every house via fiscal drag, in the same way Brown tried to make 40% the basic rate of tax by not revising thresholds.
I seem to believe even the Mansion Tax started off as an idea to provide a stepping stone, while local income tax could be set up.
Edit: just realised it must be the tables you adduce. Have a look at Table 9 and 10, under 'A No vote would still mean extra powers ...' and though I can't make sense of the timing percentages, it does seem non-trivial.
As the SNP tries to rewrite history it would be helpful if you could link to the poll showing "a quarter of No voters" rather than 36% of 9% as Ashcroft seems to suggest.
Today iirc it just goes into the general pot, it isn't a separate kitty at all.
http://lordashcroftpolls.com
Of course, perhaps someone misquoted the data....
[1] "Vehicle Excise Duties". Parliament Briefing Paper.
[2] Plowden, William (1971). The Motor Car And Politics 1896–1970.
"Today iirc it just goes into the general pot, it isn't a separate kitty at all."
Yes I know. I was talking about historically. Also, Labour's proposal today isn't to make a separate "kitty", it was a turn of phrase, there is another theoretical pot that you can keep dipping into, expanding etc. I wasn't suggesting that Osborne gets a big comedy cheque each month with "Road Tax" on it, that he nips down RBS to deposit.
In my view Devo-max sets off a chain of events that inexorably leads to independence. The Scots rejected independence and therefore Devo-max is undemocratic. The logical steps are as follows:
1. The referendum and the vow of Devo-max (or something close to it) raise the profile of the WLQ so that it is no longer an 'esoteric southern English complaint' (as was suggested in the Guardian) so that means EV4EL cannot simply be ignored.
2. Devo-max (the vow) diminishes the role of Scottish MPs as they would no longer be able to vote on income tax laws, housing benefit laws etc. that affect Scotland.
3. There is no appetite for devolution of the same kind of powers to regions or assemblies within England.
4. Under these circumstances EV4EL sounds superficially, simple to understand and implement, logical, fair and democratic. The perception is that the English have had a raw deal because they didn't vote in the referendum (and because of the Barnett formula) so it will be impossible to resist implementing it whatever the timescale may be.
5. EV4EL will further diminish the role of Scottish MPs perhaps making it difficult to justify their salaries. The potential career path of a Scottish MPs would be altered with it being increasingly difficult for them to become a cabinet minister. New talented Scottish politicians would most likely prefer to be MSPs.
6. The result is a de facto English (and Welsh) parliament since the majority of votes taken at Westminister would not impact Scotland.
7. Such a parliament would need to be headed up by an English 1st minister, the leader of the party that wins England regardless of whether that party wins the UK as a whole.
8. There is unlikely to be appetite for a UK prime minister to be a different person from the English 1st minister partly because it would be unclear which of the two people would wield most power. Therefore the UK prime minister would have to be the English 1st minister.
9. The Scots would not tolerate the UK Prime Minister always being English and therefore would push again for independence. This time they would succeed.
You are right though, only a Tory Government would have deliberately targeted the poor and disabled like this.
In point of fact we have a Coalition. Labour introduced the exact measure, I am given to understand, for the private sector. Why is it a just measure for the private sector and a vile wickedness for the public?
And now we are talking about only about 1/3 of the money getting anyway near a road.
Labour Can't Play the 'UKIP Are Racist' Card In the Heywood By-Election. Here's Why... http://bit.ly/1x0Jnq1 via @BreitbartNews
Of course it can be avoided if you decide to give away half your £3 million home to save £10,000. I wouldn't, and doubt if many would.
How surprising.
Sounds about right. Labour and Ed M have shown an effective grasp of what is 'just good enough' so far, that they are probably right, even if it will worry some in their ranks.
We also know that it can be the nudge to make people explore "opportunities" e.g. Gordo's badly thought out arts tax give-away, got all sorts of people exploring schemes to save some tax. Amazing how many people got interested in investing in films.
Just because you wouldn't, doesn't mean other wont think twice about dividing up their home (especially in London). Sensible folk already do standard IHT planning in relation to their homes.
Isabel Hardman (@IsabelHardman)
22/09/2014 19:02
Why is Labour's shadow cabinet saying so little? Here's what my sources have been telling me specc.ie/XXA5vN #Lab14
Download the official Twitter app
It's a start I suppose.
Gerry Hassan @GerryHassan 24 secs
#SNP becomes the UK's third party as it passes the #LibDems. Now on 43,664 members v. Lib Dems 43,451.
@faisalislam: Of course leading labour London MPs are dead set against the mansion tax including potential mayoral candidates... #lab14
1. Has he told the other Ed?
2. No 50p rate then?
Whichever party wins will have cut more and increase taxes if they'e going to eliminate the deficit. Labour, I fear, will do so in a way which prejudices rather than enhances the growth we are now finally seeing and in a way designed to punish groups for some perceived failing, which usually leads to bad and economically innumerate legislation. There will be little fairness around.
There will be a lot of angst over how valuations are done: will a surveyor come and assess each house individually or is this done by street or on the basis of Land Registry records or what? What about appeals etc?
You can lay over £800 at an average of under 5/2... Surprisingly short I thought
http://lordashcroftpolls.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/Scotland-Post-Referendum-poll-Full-tables-1409191.pdf
But we also have 38% giving it as as the second, and 36% as the third, from a slate of the offered three reasons.
Those have to be weighted for timing, of course.
Of that 25% of first optioners, about 12% (36 of 282) decided it in the timing in question, as you rightly said before, so that's about 2.8 percentage points in the final poll which can be assumed to have been at least markedly influenced by the vow. That doesn't include those also but less strongly influenced, who put that issue as 2nd and 3rd options. And those who might have but did not switch to Yes, or abstain.
That 45/55 gap equates to 5 percentage points of that type: under twice the figure above.
It's not absolute but does suggest rather roughly that the Vow made a non-trivial difference to the result.
This would likely increase tax revenues by many billions of pounds and would provide a lot of 'new money' towards vote winning ideas... far more material than the manion tax option...
It would of course be another nail in pensions but hey ho, this is Labour and they don't do pensions other than the public sector ones!
The funny thing is that Labour likes to think of itself as progressive and even radical. Here it is making a huge fuss about protecting an unfair status quo.
Need to reintroduce 50p rate as well though so i hope this is still on the cards
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/tony-blair/11112782/Tony-Blair-People-should-listen-to-my-advice-on-Isis-as-I-have-been-to-war-in-Iraq-before.html
I guess only a Tory would describe vulnerable people thrown out of homes they have lived in for years as a vested interest.