Labour have collapsed in Scotland because they have treated the place as their own little fiefdom for far too long. Now they're doing the same in London: it's a cash cow for which wealth can be extracted to pay for campaign promises to the resentful Scots. London has higher poverty, more congested infrastructure, a greater school place shortage and longer waiting times for GP appointments. Why should they face a London & home counties specific tax for the money to go elsewhere?
The fact that Scottish Labour are openly boasting they're getting freebies off the English is even worse. It's clear at this point that Labour are simply an anti-English party: no English parliament, Scots and Welsh with one-way influence on English laws, not counted as a nation in Labour's new Senate, and special taxes for the English given to the Scots. And from a party leader who idolises a father that had sheer contempt for the "rabid nationalists" that gave him everything he had.
Miliband hasn't even been willing to criticise his father's comments. It's because he shares the same contempt for the English people.
The real vulnerability for Labour on the "mansion tax" isn't the people who are worried it will hit them. It's the people in London and the home counties who feel that revenue raised almost entirely on their localities being unhappy that it's sent out of the area to pay for electoral bribes elsewhere. It's not like income tax where the South East pays a bit more than elsewhere - this is 95% a tax on the South East, and housing taxes are supposed to go to local authorities. With London having a poverty rate higher than Scotland, a lot of people will be angry that the money isn't being spent here. Especially given that the NHS in London is under a lot more pressure the NHS in Scotland.
The killer for Labour is when their opponents conflate the two - fears that Labour will HAVE to tax much lower priced houses in order to meet their obligations to Scotland (to try and save their electoral arses).
This campaign has the makings of a perfect storm for Labour. Good job they have such a top captain on the bridge....
The killer for Labour is when they can only get the measure through on Scottish votes.
Scottish votes for London taxes. What could possibly go wrong....?
Are you not a Unionist.
20000 Extra nurses message is popular no matter hoe loud Tory press and PBers squeal.
18000 in England 1000 in Wales 1000 in Scotland
All paid for by people with mansions
Only on PB is that a disaster for Ed in the real world 72% support
Why is more nurses good, more foodbanks bad ?
Both are a free resource for those in need...
If you dont know the answer to that your party is fooked.
BBC Breaking News @BBCBreaking 25s26 seconds ago UK police have dropped an investigation into rape claims against Conservative MP Mark Pritchard, Met says http://bbc.in/1xNkijQ
London needs to understand that basing an economy on financial speculation; encouraging billionaires and venture capitalists to buy up its property at the expense of local people; live off subsidies from poorer parts of the country for multi-billion transport projects, spending on government departments and vanities like the Olympics; and despite its wealth not address issues of poverty and equality is not a road to economic and political sustainability.
Apologies if mentioned before but there was another methodological change with YouGov
For fans of Scottish subsamples
The first is a rationalisation of our sampling frame to produce a sample that better reflects the distribution of party support around Britain. Our overall demographic targets for Great Britain and the targets we use for our weighting remain unchanged, so these changes should not make any difference to our headline figures.
However we are controlling our sampling in London and Scotland more carefully, so anyone who regularly studies our crossbreaks may notice a difference within them. Most importantly, we have started including controls on ethnicity in our London sampling, an important factor in driving voting intention.
London needs to understand that basing an economy on financial speculation; encouraging billionaires and venture capitalists to buy up its property at the expense of local people; live off subsidies from poorer parts of the country for multi-billion transport projects, spending on government departments and vanities like the Olympics; and despite its wealth not address issues of poverty and equality is not a road to economic and political sustainability.
How are we to "address issues of poverty and equality" with our wealth, if that wealth is to be taken out of the city to spend on Scotland?
Will be interesting to see if the South East cash for Scottish subsidies policy has a bigger impact in Scotland or the South East; Ed has clearly gambled on the incremental seat holds in Scotland being greater than the incremental seat losses in the South.
Once people find out that the level was actually a lie, and its going to be a much higher rate, that start much lower down the market in value, then people are going to get pissed off, and it will have an effect, but by then its too late. In order to raise the 1.2bn he wants to raise he would have to start around £1m, or as it is otherwise known, a three bedroom semi in a mediocre area of London like Barnet, then a lot of people will be annoyed, and a lot more of them are likely to be Labour voters.
Do people who live in £1 Million houses in Barnet really vote Labour anyway?
says there are 17 million privately owned UK homes.
Grossing up, it seems that 1.2 of 17 million homes trade per year. If that ratio applies borough-wise across Barnet, there would be about 2,300 3-bed semis worth over a million in Barnet and 77,000 properties in total worth over a million in Barnet.
Those figures sound a bit high when we figure that there are about 100,000 electors in Barnet but it does give an idea of how many people will be affected when the lie about "mansions" is exposed and it turns out to be a second property tax mainly on Tory constituencies.
A fairer second tax would be one based on square footage versus occupancy, as this would dissuade people from over-housing themselves regardless of where in the country they lived. A couple in a 5,000 square foot house in Accrington would pay, a couple in a 1,200 square foot house in Barnet would not. Of course fairness is not a genuine Labour goal; "fair" in Labourspeak means exactly the same as "spite" in normal use.
London needs to understand that basing an economy on financial speculation; encouraging billionaires and venture capitalists to buy up its property at the expense of local people; live off subsidies from poorer parts of the country for multi-billion transport projects, spending on government departments and vanities like the Olympics; and despite its wealth not address issues of poverty and equality is not a road to economic and political sustainability.
How are we to "address issues of poverty and equality" with our wealth, if that wealth is to be taken out of the city to spend on Scotland?
Firstly, wealth is still being taken out of Scotland to spend on London (though not as much as when the oil price was higher, and not as much as is being bled out of Wales and the north of England), and secondly, if Scotland had full fiscal autonomy or independence, we wouldn't need to have this discussion.
And thirdly, if London had a fair system of local taxation, such as land value tax, that would go a long way to addressing poverty and inequality.
My hunch is that some on here may be ever so slightly overestimating the potential mansion tax downside for Labour.
As for Murphy and SLAB, surely they are just illustrating the potential redistributive benefits that Scotland derives from the Union and that we all know about anyway. The SNP can't deliver on that front, the Tories won't. Labour says the MT will deliver extra nurses across the UK. Some of these will be in Scotland. That doesn't look like a huge own goal to me. But maybe it is. We'll see.
We'd rather keep our own money in the first place! But more immediately the SLAB proposal is completely wrong-headed as SLAB cannot determine Scottish health spending decisions unless they are elected in a completely different election in 2016 - and those decisions are moreover devolved and irrelevant to this coming election. But it is routine for SLAB to complain about the SNP not doing a, b and c even when those are not devolved matters. They must have no worries that this confounds the public and destroys reasoned public debate.
A Labour government in Westminster can make the money available. If an SNP government in Holyrood does not want it, that's its decision to make.
I had wrongly supposed Labour were embarking on this campaign without a coherent strategy. It's now day three and out of the haze of last years incoherence something very clear seems to have taken shape .
It is going to be all about 'THEM' and 'US'
'US' are the party of the underprivileged the hard working and public service. 'THEM' are the party of the rich the privileged and the destroyers of public service.
I could never make sense of the dogs breakfast that was the mansion tax. Why £2,000,000? Why not incremental? Why not increase the top rates of the community charge?
But if the plan is to create a THEM and US it makes perfect sense. What's important is that the 100,000 who own these houses make a noise about it and the 58,990,000 who don't hear that noise.
It has all the simplicity of Michael Howards 'Are you thinking.....' but in my opinion it's better judged.
Another Murphy/SLAB own goal which got lost yesterday was his claim that 190,000 Scots voters have the power to decide who forms the next UK government. Seemingly SLAB's research shows they are older men living within 25 miles of Glasgow. Link to article below, as it is behind the Herald pay wall I've pasted in the relevant extract below.
"In his speech today, Mr Murphy will reach out to 190,000 Scots he describes as "the most important voters in the UK".
The group voted Labour in the 2010 Westminster election but failed to turn out for the following year's Holyrood poll which the SNP won by a landslide.
They voted Yes in the referendum and most, according to Labour's research are older men living within 25 miles of Glasgow.
Addressing supporters at Edinburgh's Our Dynamic Earth museum, Mr Murphy will say: "They voted yes largely because they wanted rid of the Tories and wanted change.
"Now they can decide whether to vote Labour to get rid of the Tories or to vote SNP and keep the status quo.
"At the General Election these will be the most important voters in the UK.
"They will decide whether to hand David Cameron his P45."
The new Scottish Labour leader will devote a large section of his speech to discussing global insecurity and economic uncertainty, in a coded message that independence would not cure Scotland's ills.
The 190,000 target voters will each be sent personal letters during a "January offensive" to win them over."
UNS is rendered obsolete with the Green vote,a pointless argument.
How?
The big thing in the key marginals is the gap between LAB & CON and if the former seeps more votes to the Green than the latter then that is good for the Tories. Unfortunately the blues are seeping more votes to UKIP than LAB and this is currently on a bigger scale.
Some of the wealthiest people I've met were way to the left of me. They will certainly be cheering on the mansion tax.
Somehow that isnt a huge surprise, when you are drowning in cash having to pay a bit more of it to the tax man isn't much of a hardship (assuming their accountants haven't found away to make it a tax on other people - a remarkable number of lefties still employ quite aggressive accounting methods considering their views). Conversely the middle aged couple with a mortgage and two teenage kids is going to notice a drop in their living standards from even a modest tax rise, so they probably aren't going to vote Labour.
Indeed. Only the very very wealthy can afford to live under a Labour government.
London needs to understand that basing an economy on financial speculation; encouraging billionaires and venture capitalists to buy up its property at the expense of local people; live off subsidies from poorer parts of the country for multi-billion transport projects, spending on government departments and vanities like the Olympics; and despite its wealth not address issues of poverty and equality is not a road to economic and political sustainability.
How are we to "address issues of poverty and equality" with our wealth, if that wealth is to be taken out of the city to spend on Scotland?
Firstly, wealth is still being taken out of Scotland to spend on London (though not as much as when the oil price was higher, and not as much as is being bled out of Wales and the north of England), and secondly, if Scotland had full fiscal autonomy or independence, we wouldn't need to have this discussion.
And thirdly, if London had a fair system of local taxation, such as land value tax, that would go a long way to addressing poverty and inequality.
FTT is a no-brainer for me,taxing the speculative bankers and the coke-fuelled,high speed traders,only a very tiny amount,and we could start to reverse the heartless incompetence of this government.There are huge savings to be made,too,from the Abolition of the House of Lords.The House of Lords is totally unaffordable.
My hunch is that some on here may be ever so slightly overestimating the potential mansion tax downside for Labour.
As for Murphy and SLAB, surely they are just illustrating the potential redistributive benefits that Scotland derives from the Union and that we all know about anyway. The SNP can't deliver on that front, the Tories won't. Labour says the MT will deliver extra nurses across the UK. Some of these will be in Scotland. That doesn't look like a huge own goal to me. But maybe it is. We'll see.
We'd rather keep our own money in the first place! But more immediately the SLAB proposal is completely wrong-headed as SLAB cannot determine Scottish health spending decisions unless they are elected in a completely different election in 2016 - and those decisions are moreover devolved and irrelevant to this coming election. But it is routine for SLAB to complain about the SNP not doing a, b and c even when those are not devolved matters. They must have no worries that this confounds the public and destroys reasoned public debate.
A Labour government in Westminster can make the money available. If an SNP government in Holyrood does not want it, that's its decision to make.
Then they can't guarantee it. Which makes a mockery of the line that "Only Labour can deliver this pledge." They can't deliver it.
I know what the mechanics are underpinning the statement (Scotlnd's budget will rise by £250m due to a proportional share of the Mansion Tax) but that is not how they have chosen to phrase it.
They have chosen to phrase it in terms of a policy they cannot implement funded by a raid on the English.
Words matter. Scottish Laour has chosen some terrible words.
I think many people are slightly missing the point about the SLAB politics-of-envy tweet. This was the text:
We will fund #1000Nurses using money Scotland gets from a mansion tax across UK. 95% will be levied in the South East of UK.
If it had just been the first sentence, it would have been unremarkable - just a standard Labour claim, albeit one which doesn't actually add up, but nothing more than that. Indeed from a unionist point of view, the first sentence is fair enough: Scotland allegedly benefiting from being part of the UK. So far, so good.
It's the second sentence which is the absolute killer. Has raw, naked, ugly, selfish spite-driven envy been used so brazenly even by Labour at any time since Healey's "Squeeze the rich until the pips squeak"? In fact this one is even worse, adding in anti-English, anti-South East prejudice into the mix. Not only is it profoundly offensive, it also smacks of a quite remarkable degree of desperation. Clearly Scottish Labour are in a major panic.
Downgraded George Osborne can celebrate the drop in gilt yields following the much softer Services PMI this morning.
Oh, er, wait...
Are you a BBC employee? headlines on this:
UK services sector sees slowest growth for 19 months
The UK services sector lost momentum at the end of the year, growing at its slowest rate for a year-and-a-half, an influential survey suggests.
However the quote is
Markit chief economist Chris Williamson said it would fuel concerns that the UK economy is "too fragile", but said it was too early to be worried.
"The latest PMI reading is still strong, merely down from unusually high levels earlier in the year and in line with the average seen in the years leading up to the financial crisis," he added.
London needs to understand that basing an economy on financial speculation; encouraging billionaires and venture capitalists to buy up its property at the expense of local people; live off subsidies from poorer parts of the country for multi-billion transport projects, spending on government departments and vanities like the Olympics; and despite its wealth not address issues of poverty and equality is not a road to economic and political sustainability.
How are we to "address issues of poverty and equality" with our wealth, if that wealth is to be taken out of the city to spend on Scotland?
Firstly, wealth is still being taken out of Scotland to spend on London (though not as much as when the oil price was higher, and not as much as is being bled out of Wales and the north of England), and secondly, if Scotland had full fiscal autonomy or independence, we wouldn't need to have this discussion.
And thirdly, if London had a fair system of local taxation, such as land value tax, that would go a long way to addressing poverty and inequality.
As with all Labour Uncut pieces - too optimistic on Tory performance, too pessimistic about Labour, all based on assumptions about a fall in UKIP and rise in Lib Dem share that shows no sign of occurring.
'US' are the party of the underprivileged the hard working and public service. 'THEM' are the party of the rich the privileged and the destroyers of public service.
Your "Us" group are all mutually exclusive, Roger, and your "them" group simply describes the Labour party.
This point will be made very very clear over and over again over the next few months.
I don't think Jim Murphy gets this at all. Why would Scotland want money from London taxes when it would be able to make much better decisions for itself, without antagonising its neighbour, with full fiscal autonomy? He's thinks that people voted for independence because they want to get one over English people rather than make decisions for themselves: it's probably because of his Westminister bubblitis.
In any case, the mansion tax is not particularly progressive, and a land value tax, or even extra bands on council tax, would be a far more positive step.
With oil at $55 a barrel the rest of the UK will be subsidising Scotland for a while - unless the Scottish government makes significant spending cuts, which I don't think have been proposed as yet.
London needs to understand that basing an economy on financial speculation; encouraging billionaires and venture capitalists to buy up its property at the expense of local people; live off subsidies from poorer parts of the country for multi-billion transport projects, spending on government departments and vanities like the Olympics; and despite its wealth not address issues of poverty and equality is not a road to economic and political sustainability.
How are we to "address issues of poverty and equality" with our wealth, if that wealth is to be taken out of the city to spend on Scotland?
Firstly, wealth is still being taken out of Scotland to spend on London (though not as much as when the oil price was higher, and not as much as is being bled out of Wales and the north of England), and secondly, if Scotland had full fiscal autonomy or independence, we wouldn't need to have this discussion.
And thirdly, if London had a fair system of local taxation, such as land value tax, that would go a long way to addressing poverty and inequality.
coke-fuelled,high speed traders,
When did computers start snorting lines?
They don't, he just envies and hates people more intelligent and successful than himself. There's an electoral franchise for envious sanctimonious losers over which Labour and UKIP are currently squabbling.
Firstly, wealth is still being taken out of Scotland to spend on London (though not as much as when the oil price was higher, and not as much as is being bled out of Wales and the north of England)
This is utterly, demonstrably false. London is a huge net contributor to the exchequer. Wales, Scotland and Northern England are all net takers.
London needs to understand that basing an economy on financial speculation; encouraging billionaires and venture capitalists to buy up its property at the expense of local people; live off subsidies from poorer parts of the country for multi-billion transport projects, spending on government departments and vanities like the Olympics; and despite its wealth not address issues of poverty and equality is not a road to economic and political sustainability.
How dependent is the Scottish economy on one natural resource whose value has halved in four months?
It's the second sentence which is the absolute killer. Has raw, naked, ugly, selfish spite-driven envy been used so brazenly even by Labour at any time since Healey's "Squeeze the rich until the pips squeak"? In fact this one is even worse, adding in anti-English, anti-South East prejudice into the mix. Not only is it profoundly offensive, it also smacks of a quite remarkable degree of desperation. Clearly Scottish Labour are in a major panic.
It's all about the second sentence. It really is quite vile.
London needs to understand that basing an economy on financial speculation; encouraging billionaires and venture capitalists to buy up its property at the expense of local people; live off subsidies from poorer parts of the country for multi-billion transport projects, spending on government departments and vanities like the Olympics; and despite its wealth not address issues of poverty and equality is not a road to economic and political sustainability.
How are we to "address issues of poverty and equality" with our wealth, if that wealth is to be taken out of the city to spend on Scotland?
Firstly, wealth is still being taken out of Scotland to spend on London (though not as much as when the oil price was higher, and not as much as is being bled out of Wales and the north of England), and secondly, if Scotland had full fiscal autonomy or independence, we wouldn't need to have this discussion.
And thirdly, if London had a fair system of local taxation, such as land value tax, that would go a long way to addressing poverty and inequality.
coke-fuelled,high speed traders,
When did computers start snorting lines?
Coke as in low-impurity coal. Presumably bank computers are so evil they must use the nastiest, most-polluting fuel to generate their power.
I don't think Jim Murphy gets this at all. Why would Scotland want money from London taxes when it would be able to make much better decisions for itself, without antagonising its neighbour, with full fiscal autonomy? He's thinks that people voted for independence because they want to get one over English people rather than make decisions for themselves: it's probably because of his Westminister bubblitis.
In any case, the mansion tax is not particularly progressive, and a land value tax, or even extra bands on council tax, would be a far more positive step.
FTT is a no-brainer for me,taxing the speculative bankers and the coke-fuelled,high speed traders,only a very tiny amount,and we could start to reverse the heartless incompetence of this government.There are huge savings to be made,too,from the Abolition of the House of Lords.The House of Lords is totally unaffordable.
Given that high-speed trading is done electronically by computer programs, it's absurd to talk of them being "coke-fuelled traders". Given that your understanding of finance is so limited you don't even know this, I'm not surprised you think a disastrous FTT is a "no brainer".
So we can have sitcoms about the Second World War but not about the Irish Famine? Eejits.
By the Second World War are you referring to, say, Dad's Army and Allo, Allo?
I think, for example, that there would be a difference between a sitcom set in the British Home Front/Occupied France and a sitcom set in Auschwitz. So it's a bit hard to compare WWII with the Irish Famine in this context.
Not that I think the petition is a good idea, but I don't think your argument against it is sound.
I had wrongly supposed Labour were embarking on this campaign without a coherent strategy. It's now day three and out of the haze of last years incoherence something very clear seems to have taken shape .
Oh well, maybe we should wait a couple of years then...
"the historical Government Expenditure and Revenue Scotland Reports (GERS) show that every year, for the last 32 years Scotland has generated more tax per head than the average for the UK. This quashes the oil volatility myth because a low oil price has never seen Scottish tax revenues, per head, go below that of the UK average."
"It's the second sentence which is the absolute killer. Has raw, naked, ugly, selfish spite-driven envy been used so brazenly even by Labour at any time since Healey's "Squeeze the rich until the pips squeak"? In fact this one is even worse, adding in anti-English, anti-South East prejudice into the mix."
In that case it strikes me he has his fellow UK citizen to a tee. If the mean spiritedness of this nation was ever in doubt just look at the rise of UKIP or the way hundred's of thousands use twitter to ensure a footballer never gets another job.
So we can have sitcoms about the Second World War but not about the Irish Famine? Eejits.
By the Second World War are you referring to, say, Dad's Army and Allo, Allo?
I think, for example, that there would be a difference between a sitcom set in the British Home Front/Occupied France and a sitcom set in Auschwitz. So it's a bit hard to compare WWII with the Irish Famine in this context.
Not that I think the petition is a good idea, but I don't think your argument against it is sound.
Herr Flick: hilarious member of the Gestapo. Great bunch of lads, the Gestapo, always up for a bit of banter and a pint.
So we can have sitcoms about the Second World War but not about the Irish Famine? Eejits.
By the Second World War are you referring to, say, Dad's Army and Allo, Allo?
I think, for example, that there would be a difference between a sitcom set in the British Home Front/Occupied France and a sitcom set in Auschwitz. So it's a bit hard to compare WWII with the Irish Famine in this context.
Not that I think the petition is a good idea, but I don't think your argument against it is sound.
How about Blackadder Goes Forth, which was set in the trenches of the First World War, where hundreds of thousands of young men got mowed down by machine guns, including in the final scene of the sitcom?
As for the comparison between people being deliberately exterminated in ovens, versus people dying of hunger due to a crop failure... well, that's just absurd.
Oh well, maybe we should wait a couple of years then...
"the historical Government Expenditure and Revenue Scotland Reports (GERS) show that every year, for the last 32 years Scotland has generated more tax per head than the average for the UK. This quashes the oil volatility myth because a low oil price has never seen Scottish tax revenues, per head, go below that of the UK average."
Close examination of Business for Scotland’s declared member list shows that the group has only a tiny handful of members who employ significant numbers of Scots, and literally none with a substantial cross-border trade. In other words, it could scarcely be less representative of the industries that provide the majority of Scotland’s private-sector jobs and which, according to the No campaign, are at risk from a Yes vote.
Oh well, maybe we should wait a couple of years then...
"the historical Government Expenditure and Revenue Scotland Reports (GERS) show that every year, for the last 32 years Scotland has generated more tax per head than the average for the UK. This quashes the oil volatility myth because a low oil price has never seen Scottish tax revenues, per head, go below that of the UK average."
Conveniently making the comparison to to the "average for the UK", thus including the huge net drains of Northern Ireland and Wales, and of course, Scotland itself!
Oh well, maybe we should wait a couple of years then...
"the historical Government Expenditure and Revenue Scotland Reports (GERS) show that every year, for the last 32 years Scotland has generated more tax per head than the average for the UK. This quashes the oil volatility myth because a low oil price has never seen Scottish tax revenues, per head, go below that of the UK average."
Conveniently making the comparison to to the "average for the UK", thus including the huge net drains of Northern Ireland and Wales, and of course, Scotland itself!
Oh well, maybe we should wait a couple of years then...
"the historical Government Expenditure and Revenue Scotland Reports (GERS) show that every year, for the last 32 years Scotland has generated more tax per head than the average for the UK. This quashes the oil volatility myth because a low oil price has never seen Scottish tax revenues, per head, go below that of the UK average."
Close examination of Business for Scotland’s declared member list shows that the group has only a tiny handful of members who employ significant numbers of Scots, and literally none with a substantial cross-border trade. In other words, it could scarcely be less representative of the industries that provide the majority of Scotland’s private-sector jobs and which, according to the No campaign, are at risk from a Yes vote.
And are Government Expenditure and Revenue Scotland Reports (GERS) made up as well? Does the Telegraph (or someone else) have evidence of that? If not, what does the composition of an organisation have to do with the research it publishes?
So we can have sitcoms about the Second World War but not about the Irish Famine? Eejits.
By the Second World War are you referring to, say, Dad's Army and Allo, Allo?
I think, for example, that there would be a difference between a sitcom set in the British Home Front/Occupied France and a sitcom set in Auschwitz. So it's a bit hard to compare WWII with the Irish Famine in this context.
Not that I think the petition is a good idea, but I don't think your argument against it is sound.
How about Blackadder Goes Forth, which was set in the trenches of the First World War, where hundreds of thousands of young men got mowed down by machine guns, including in the final scene of the sitcom?
As for the comparison between people being deliberately exterminated in ovens, versus people dying of hunger due to a crop failure... well, that's just absurd.
I am not completely up on the Famine, but weren't the vast majority if the deaths entirely preventable? Food could have been provided to the hungry, but it wasn't.
Greater London contributes £16 billion to public finances. The South East another £16 billion. Scotland takes £2 billion. Clearly the right policy is to add an extra tax to London and the South East to pay for more Scottish nurses.
I think many people are slightly missing the point about the SLAB politics-of-envy tweet. This was the text:
We will fund #1000Nurses using money Scotland gets from a mansion tax across UK. 95% will be levied in the South East of UK.
If it had just been the first sentence, it would have been unremarkable - just a standard Labour claim, albeit one which doesn't actually add up, but nothing more than that. Indeed from a unionist point of view, the first sentence is fair enough: Scotland allegedly benefiting from being part of the UK. So far, so good.
It's the second sentence which is the absolute killer. Has raw, naked, ugly, selfish spite-driven envy been used so brazenly even by Labour at any time since Healey's "Squeeze the rich until the pips squeak"? In fact this one is even worse, adding in anti-English, anti-South East prejudice into the mix. Not only is it profoundly offensive, it also smacks of a quite remarkable degree of desperation. Clearly Scottish Labour are in a major panic.
Labour confirming that they're unfit for government. Shouldn't Police Scotland be investigating this offensive anti-English movement ?
Conveniently making the comparison to to the "average for the UK", thus including the huge net drains of Northern Ireland and Wales, and of course, Scotland itself!
More to the point, the original claim was "wealth is still being taken out of Scotland to spend on London". One has to admire the exuberant looniness of the claim.
Oh well, maybe we should wait a couple of years then...
"the historical Government Expenditure and Revenue Scotland Reports (GERS) show that every year, for the last 32 years Scotland has generated more tax per head than the average for the UK. This quashes the oil volatility myth because a low oil price has never seen Scottish tax revenues, per head, go below that of the UK average."
Close examination of Business for Scotland’s declared member list shows that the group has only a tiny handful of members who employ significant numbers of Scots, and literally none with a substantial cross-border trade. In other words, it could scarcely be less representative of the industries that provide the majority of Scotland’s private-sector jobs and which, according to the No campaign, are at risk from a Yes vote.
And are Government Expenditure and Revenue Scotland Reports (GERS) made up as well? Does the Telegraph (or someone else) have evidence of that? If not, what does the composition of an organisation have to do with the research it publishes?
As Socrates points out, framing things in terms of the average is the giveaway. It's agenda driven research, not disintetested research.
My hunch is that some on here may be ever so slightly overestimating the potential mansion tax downside for Labour.
As for Murphy and SLAB, surely they are just illustrating the potential redistributive benefits that Scotland derives from the Union and that we all know about anyway. The SNP can't deliver on that front, the Tories won't. Labour says the MT will deliver extra nurses across the UK. Some of these will be in Scotland. That doesn't look like a huge own goal to me. But maybe it is. We'll see.
We'd rather keep our own money in the first place! But more immediately the SLAB proposal is completely wrong-headed as SLAB cannot determine Scottish health spending decisions unless they are elected in a completely different election in 2016 - and those decisions are moreover devolved and irrelevant to this coming election. But it is routine for SLAB to complain about the SNP not doing a, b and c even when those are not devolved matters. They must have no worries that this confounds the public and destroys reasoned public debate.
A Labour government in Westminster can make the money available. If an SNP government in Holyrood does not want it, that's its decision to make.
Of course they will take it, but they can then use it for whatever they want. That 250m could be used to redecorate Holyrood if the SNP feels like it and there is nothing SLAB or EdM could do about it.
FTT is a no-brainer for me,taxing the speculative bankers and the coke-fuelled,high speed traders,only a very tiny amount,and we could start to reverse the heartless incompetence of this government.There are huge savings to be made,too,from the Abolition of the House of Lords.The House of Lords is totally unaffordable.
Given that high-speed trading is done electronically by computer programs, it's absurd to talk of them being "coke-fuelled traders". Given that your understanding of finance is so limited you don't even know this, I'm not surprised you think a disastrous FTT is a "no brainer".
The HFT boys are more likely to be fans of real ale than cocaine.
So we can have sitcoms about the Second World War but not about the Irish Famine? Eejits.
By the Second World War are you referring to, say, Dad's Army and Allo, Allo?
I think, for example, that there would be a difference between a sitcom set in the British Home Front/Occupied France and a sitcom set in Auschwitz. So it's a bit hard to compare WWII with the Irish Famine in this context.
Not that I think the petition is a good idea, but I don't think your argument against it is sound.
How about Blackadder Goes Forth, which was set in the trenches of the First World War, where hundreds of thousands of young men got mowed down by machine guns, including in the final scene of the sitcom?
As for the comparison between people being deliberately exterminated in ovens, versus people dying of hunger due to a crop failure... well, that's just absurd.
I am not completely up on the Famine, but weren't the vast majority if the deaths entirely preventable? Food could have been provided to the hungry, but it wasn't.
The deaths from going over the top in the First World War could have been preventable also. Think of the Somme! But failing to prevent deaths is hardly the same as deliberately exterminating people!
So we can have sitcoms about the Second World War but not about the Irish Famine? Eejits.
By the Second World War are you referring to, say, Dad's Army and Allo, Allo?
I think, for example, that there would be a difference between a sitcom set in the British Home Front/Occupied France and a sitcom set in Auschwitz. So it's a bit hard to compare WWII with the Irish Famine in this context.
Not that I think the petition is a good idea, but I don't think your argument against it is sound.
How about Blackadder Goes Forth, which was set in the trenches of the First World War, where hundreds of thousands of young men got mowed down by machine guns, including in the final scene of the sitcom?
As for the comparison between people being deliberately exterminated in ovens, versus people dying of hunger due to a crop failure... well, that's just absurd.
I am not completely up on the Famine, but weren't the vast majority if the deaths entirely preventable? Food could have been provided to the hungry, but it wasn't.
It has been twenty years since I studied the Famine, but from what I recall, it was entirely preventable.
But because the laws prevented Irish Catholics owning the land, the land was owned by Englishmen. There was other food sources available in Ireland, as Ireland was still a net exporter of food during the potato blight.
However rather than use that food to feed the local population, it was decided it was better to sell that food, as it would earn more money, for the owners of the land who weren't Irish Catholics.
I think many people are slightly missing the point about the SLAB politics-of-envy tweet. This was the text:
We will fund #1000Nurses using money Scotland gets from a mansion tax across UK. 95% will be levied in the South East of UK.
If it had just been the first sentence, it would have been unremarkable - just a standard Labour claim, albeit one which doesn't actually add up, but nothing more than that. Indeed from a unionist point of view, the first sentence is fair enough: Scotland allegedly benefiting from being part of the UK. So far, so good.
It's the second sentence which is the absolute killer. Has raw, naked, ugly, selfish spite-driven envy been used so brazenly even by Labour at any time since Healey's "Squeeze the rich until the pips squeak"? In fact this one is even worse, adding in anti-English, anti-South East prejudice into the mix. Not only is it profoundly offensive, it also smacks of a quite remarkable degree of desperation. Clearly Scottish Labour are in a major panic.
Labour confirming that they're unfit for government. Shouldn't Police Scotland be investigating this offensive anti-English movement ?
"The company’s latest annual report shows it cost Tesco £542m in the last financial year to service the pension scheme and that its obligations under the defined benefit pension scheme are more than £11b"
So we can have sitcoms about the Second World War but not about the Irish Famine? Eejits.
By the Second World War are you referring to, say, Dad's Army and Allo, Allo?
I think, for example, that there would be a difference between a sitcom set in the British Home Front/Occupied France and a sitcom set in Auschwitz. So it's a bit hard to compare WWII with the Irish Famine in this context.
Not that I think the petition is a good idea, but I don't think your argument against it is sound.
How about Blackadder Goes Forth, which was set in the trenches of the First World War, where hundreds of thousands of young men got mowed down by machine guns, including in the final scene of the sitcom?
As for the comparison between people being deliberately exterminated in ovens, versus people dying of hunger due to a crop failure... well, that's just absurd.
I am not completely up on the Famine, but weren't the vast majority if the deaths entirely preventable? Food could have been provided to the hungry, but it wasn't.
The deaths from going over the top in the First World War could have been preventable also. Think of the Somme! But failing to prevent deaths is hardly the same as deliberately exterminating people!
Sure, but neither was the Famine the Somme. There was no war. The British government could have alleviated the effects of crop failure, but chose not to knowing full well what the consequences would be. Providing food to the starving would not have compromised national security or aided a hostile power. But it would have cost some money. That was deemed more important than saving lives.
I think many people are slightly missing the point about the SLAB politics-of-envy tweet. This was the text:
We will fund #1000Nurses using money Scotland gets from a mansion tax across UK. 95% will be levied in the South East of UK.
If it had just been the first sentence, it would have been unremarkable - just a standard Labour claim, albeit one which doesn't actually add up, but nothing more than that. Indeed from a unionist point of view, the first sentence is fair enough: Scotland allegedly benefiting from being part of the UK. So far, so good.
It's the second sentence which is the absolute killer. Has raw, naked, ugly, selfish spite-driven envy been used so brazenly even by Labour at any time since Healey's "Squeeze the rich until the pips squeak"? In fact this one is even worse, adding in anti-English, anti-South East prejudice into the mix. Not only is it profoundly offensive, it also smacks of a quite remarkable degree of desperation. Clearly Scottish Labour are in a major panic.
Labour confirming that they're unfit for government. Shouldn't Police Scotland be investigating this offensive anti-English movement ?
One Nation Labour.
Tax one nation and use it to bribe another.
It's ok: they're rabid nationalists you see - probably the most nationalistic people in the world.
(Yes, that's talking about the English, not the Scots!)
Tesco canning it's defined benefits pension scheme.
time for the public sector to smell the coffee ?
It's considering closing it to new entrants. We've discussed why we cant afford to close the unfunded public sector pension schemes many times before. I know you're only pretending not to understand.
So we can have sitcoms about the Second World War but not about the Irish Famine? Eejits.
By the Second World War are you referring to, say, Dad's Army and Allo, Allo?
I think, for example, that there would be a difference between a sitcom set in the British Home Front/Occupied France and a sitcom set in Auschwitz. So it's a bit hard to compare WWII with the Irish Famine in this context.
Not that I think the petition is a good idea, but I don't think your argument against it is sound.
How about Blackadder Goes Forth, which was set in the trenches of the First World War, where hundreds of thousands of young men got mowed down by machine guns, including in the final scene of the sitcom?
As for the comparison between people being deliberately exterminated in ovens, versus people dying of hunger due to a crop failure... well, that's just absurd.
I am not completely up on the Famine, but weren't the vast majority if the deaths entirely preventable? Food could have been provided to the hungry, but it wasn't.
It has been twenty years since I studied the Famine, but from what I recall, it was entirely preventable.
But because the laws prevented Irish Catholics owning the land, the land was owned by Englishmen. There was other food sources available in Ireland, as Ireland was still a net exporter of food during the potato blight.
However rather than use that food to feed the local population, it was decided it was better to sell that food, as it would earn more money, for the owners of the land who weren't Irish Catholics.
@JeremyBrowneMP: The Liberal Democrats will cut more than Labour and borrow more than the Conservatives.
This is true. It's unclear whether he thinks this is a selling point for his party or not.
It's a bit odd anyway. If Labour follow Conservative cuts as Balls has said they will do (I am sure they will be nicer, but they will still be followed) then that means the LDs will cut more than the Conservatives or Labour. If Labour is planning to raise taxes rather than borrow more, and ends up borrowing pretty much what the Conservatives would, the LDs could be borrowing the most as well. What he is very quiet about are their tax plans, perhaps they are going for the hat-trick!
Comments
The MT et al provides 20k extra nurses 18k for England 1k each for Scotland and Wales.
Its relevance is that it sharply contrasts with top rate tax cuts which only one party prioritises.
The choice as set out by EICIPM is more of the same ie pain for the majority whilst the top few prosper or a fairer way forward.
The fact that Scottish Labour are openly boasting they're getting freebies off the English is even worse. It's clear at this point that Labour are simply an anti-English party: no English parliament, Scots and Welsh with one-way influence on English laws, not counted as a nation in Labour's new Senate, and special taxes for the English given to the Scots. And from a party leader who idolises a father that had sheer contempt for the "rabid nationalists" that gave him everything he had.
Miliband hasn't even been willing to criticise his father's comments. It's because he shares the same contempt for the English people.
https://twitter.com/search?q=irony alert tory leaflet attacks&src=typd
No charges for Mark Pritchard
UK police have dropped an investigation into rape claims against Conservative MP Mark Pritchard, Met says http://bbc.in/1xNkijQ
Tory squealing over MT making EICIPMs job easier.
Better wake up soon or will require the removals van on in 141 days time
It was Osborne's IHT policy in 2007 stopped the election that never was.
And increase the top end of tax to 75% a la Hollande.
According to you they are "popular" - go for it..
For fans of Scottish subsamples
The first is a rationalisation of our sampling frame to produce a sample that better reflects the distribution of party support around Britain. Our overall demographic targets for Great Britain and the targets we use for our weighting remain unchanged, so these changes should not make any difference to our headline figures.
However we are controlling our sampling in London and Scotland more carefully, so anyone who regularly studies our crossbreaks may notice a difference within them. Most importantly, we have started including controls on ethnicity in our London sampling, an important factor in driving voting intention.
https://yougov.co.uk/news/2015/01/06/labour-lead-3/
http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/general-election-2015-british-public-back-ed-milibands-mansion-tax-plan-1466934
Newspeak - You know it makes sense......
Back for tonights EICIPM polling
http://www.independent.ie/entertainment/television/tv-news/more-than-20000-sign-petition-against-channel-4-sitcom-on-great-famine-30880975.html
So we can have sitcoms about the Second World War but not about the Irish Famine? Eejits.
http://www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/find.html?locationIdentifier=REGION^93929&minPrice=1000000&maxBedrooms=3&displayPropertyType=houses&oldDisplayPropertyType=houses&googleAnalyticsChannel=buying
and 443 offered over that price of any size. So the canonical 3-bed semi is alive and well and much in evidence in Barnet.
I've tried to get to a fag-packet estimate of how many there are in total by comparing transaction numbers with total number of houses.
https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/monthly-property-transactions-completed-in-the-uk-with-value-40000-or-above
says there are ~ 1.2 million residential property transactions a year in the UK.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/spl/hi/guides/456900/456991/html/
says there are 17 million privately owned UK homes.
Grossing up, it seems that 1.2 of 17 million homes trade per year. If that ratio applies borough-wise across Barnet, there would be about 2,300 3-bed semis worth over a million in Barnet and 77,000 properties in total worth over a million in Barnet.
Those figures sound a bit high when we figure that there are about 100,000 electors in Barnet but it does give an idea of how many people will be affected when the lie about "mansions" is exposed and it turns out to be a second property tax mainly on Tory constituencies.
A fairer second tax would be one based on square footage versus occupancy, as this would dissuade people from over-housing themselves regardless of where in the country they lived. A couple in a 5,000 square foot house in Accrington would pay, a couple in a 1,200 square foot house in Barnet would not. Of course fairness is not a genuine Labour goal; "fair" in Labourspeak means exactly the same as "spite" in normal use.
Oh, er, wait...
And thirdly, if London had a fair system of local taxation, such as land value tax, that would go a long way to addressing poverty and inequality.
It is going to be all about 'THEM' and 'US'
'US' are the party of the underprivileged the hard working and public service. 'THEM' are the party of the rich the privileged and the destroyers of public service.
I could never make sense of the dogs breakfast that was the mansion tax. Why £2,000,000? Why not incremental? Why not increase the top rates of the community charge?
But if the plan is to create a THEM and US it makes perfect sense. What's important is that the 100,000 who own these houses make a noise about it and the 58,990,000 who don't hear that noise.
It has all the simplicity of Michael Howards 'Are you thinking.....' but in my opinion it's better judged.
http://www.heraldscotland.com/politics/scottish-politics/gloves-come-off-in-the-battle-to-win-over-200000-scots-who-could-decide-t.115483291
"In his speech today, Mr Murphy will reach out to 190,000 Scots he describes as "the most important voters in the UK".
The group voted Labour in the 2010 Westminster election but failed to turn out for the following year's Holyrood poll which the SNP won by a landslide.
They voted Yes in the referendum and most, according to Labour's research are older men living within 25 miles of Glasgow.
Addressing supporters at Edinburgh's Our Dynamic Earth museum, Mr Murphy will say: "They voted yes largely because they wanted rid of the Tories and wanted change.
"Now they can decide whether to vote Labour to get rid of the Tories or to vote SNP and keep the status quo.
"At the General Election these will be the most important voters in the UK.
"They will decide whether to hand David Cameron his P45."
The new Scottish Labour leader will devote a large section of his speech to discussing global insecurity and economic uncertainty, in a coded message that independence would not cure Scotland's ills.
The 190,000 target voters will each be sent personal letters during a "January offensive" to win them over."
The big thing in the key marginals is the gap between LAB & CON and if the former seeps more votes to the Green than the latter then that is good for the Tories. Unfortunately the blues are seeping more votes to UKIP than LAB and this is currently on a bigger scale.
I know what the mechanics are underpinning the statement (Scotlnd's budget will rise by £250m due to a proportional share of the Mansion Tax) but that is not how they have chosen to phrase it.
They have chosen to phrase it in terms of a policy they cannot implement funded by a raid on the English.
Words matter. Scottish Laour has chosen some terrible words.
We will fund #1000Nurses using money Scotland gets from a mansion tax across UK. 95% will be levied in the South East of UK.
If it had just been the first sentence, it would have been unremarkable - just a standard Labour claim, albeit one which doesn't actually add up, but nothing more than that. Indeed from a unionist point of view, the first sentence is fair enough: Scotland allegedly benefiting from being part of the UK. So far, so good.
It's the second sentence which is the absolute killer. Has raw, naked, ugly, selfish spite-driven envy been used so brazenly even by Labour at any time since Healey's "Squeeze the rich until the pips squeak"? In fact this one is even worse, adding in anti-English, anti-South East prejudice into the mix. Not only is it profoundly offensive, it also smacks of a quite remarkable degree of desperation. Clearly Scottish Labour are in a major panic.
UK services sector sees slowest growth for 19 months
The UK services sector lost momentum at the end of the year, growing at its slowest rate for a year-and-a-half, an influential survey suggests.
However the quote is
Markit chief economist Chris Williamson said it would fuel concerns that the UK economy is "too fragile", but said it was too early to be worried.
"The latest PMI reading is still strong, merely down from unusually high levels earlier in the year and in line with the average seen in the years leading up to the financial crisis," he added.
http://labour-uncut.co.uk/2015/01/06/some-gloomy-general-election-predictions/
As with all Labour Uncut pieces - too optimistic on Tory performance, too pessimistic about Labour, all based on assumptions about a fall in UKIP and rise in Lib Dem share that shows no sign of occurring.
This point will be made very very clear over and over again over the next few months.
Coking coal is far less polluting than lignite
I think, for example, that there would be a difference between a sitcom set in the British Home Front/Occupied France and a sitcom set in Auschwitz. So it's a bit hard to compare WWII with the Irish Famine in this context.
Not that I think the petition is a good idea, but I don't think your argument against it is sound.
"the historical Government Expenditure and Revenue Scotland Reports (GERS) show that every year, for the last 32 years Scotland has generated more tax per head than the average for the UK. This quashes the oil volatility myth because a low oil price has never seen Scottish tax revenues, per head, go below that of the UK average."
http://www.businessforscotland.co.uk/scotlands-century-of-lost-wealth/
"It's the second sentence which is the absolute killer. Has raw, naked, ugly, selfish spite-driven envy been used so brazenly even by Labour at any time since Healey's "Squeeze the rich until the pips squeak"? In fact this one is even worse, adding in anti-English, anti-South East prejudice into the mix."
In that case it strikes me he has his fellow UK citizen to a tee. If the mean spiritedness of this nation was ever in doubt just look at the rise of UKIP or the way hundred's of thousands use twitter to ensure a footballer never gets another job.
As for the comparison between people being deliberately exterminated in ovens, versus people dying of hunger due to a crop failure... well, that's just absurd.
If you were that worried about pollution, we could have used our deep coal reserves.
Close examination of Business for Scotland’s declared member list shows that the group has only a tiny handful of members who employ significant numbers of Scots, and literally none with a substantial cross-border trade. In other words, it could scarcely be less representative of the industries that provide the majority of Scotland’s private-sector jobs and which, according to the No campaign, are at risk from a Yes vote.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/scottish-independence/11065467/Small-firms-making-big-claims-for-Scottish-independence.html
The other factor re the Tories regaining Rochester, is I'm taking a six week sabbatical in April and May.
Some of those six weeks, I'll be spending in Rochester and Strood campaigning and canvassing for Kelly.
I was there for one day in November, and made sure Reckless' majority was less than the polls said it would be.
Just think what I'll be able to do if I'm there for say three weeks.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/scottish-independence/11065467/Small-firms-making-big-claims-for-Scottish-independence.html
Yes, slow this morning, I blame caffeine depletion.
http://www.isitfair.co.uk/reports/public/oe ukpublicfinance.pdf
Greater London contributes £16 billion to public finances. The South East another £16 billion. Scotland takes £2 billion. Clearly the right policy is to add an extra tax to London and the South East to pay for more Scottish nurses.
Lathyrus linifolius if you don't mind? better than that imported foreign stuff.
But because the laws prevented Irish Catholics owning the land, the land was owned by Englishmen. There was other food sources available in Ireland, as Ireland was still a net exporter of food during the potato blight.
However rather than use that food to feed the local population, it was decided it was better to sell that food, as it would earn more money, for the owners of the land who weren't Irish Catholics.
Tax one nation and use it to bribe another.
Yes, a good selling point for the Liberal Democrats.
time for the public sector to smell the coffee ?
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/retailandconsumer/11326223/Tesco-could-close-pension-scheme.html
"The company’s latest annual report shows it cost Tesco £542m in the last financial year to service the pension scheme and that its obligations under the defined benefit pension scheme are more than £11b"
(Yes, that's talking about the English, not the Scots!)
It it fair to say he is no fan of Nick Clegg
http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/jan/06/boris-johnson-labour-mugging-london-mansion-tax-scotland-votes
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/scotland/11327230/Boris-Johnson-Labours-mansion-tax-bribe-to-fund-Scottish-nurses-is-vindictive-to-South-East.html
Scotland has consistently produced a higher percentage of tax take than population.
Scotland also takes a lower percentage of tax credits than population.