They can afford it. What you mean is you don't like the consequences of such a tax, which would be to force them to either sell or take on debt to pay for it.
However, exempting the elderly would just be another bung to them. Why should working families have to move if they can't afford the mortgage on a property but the non-working be allowed to stay when they couldn't afford the taxes without exemption?
Property is an excellent thing to tax because it is simple to do so and is a good proxy for income.
As an aside, "if an old retired individual has a property that is nominally worth a lot but which they paid for decades ago", fate or judgement has given them a tremendous windfall. Why shouldn't that be taxed?
So how would you deal with those who live in rented property? If you are moving from an income based to a property based tax system then should those who have high incomes but live in rented accommodation end up paying no tax? After all they don't have the asset to sell.
Edit. And to answer your last question just move the requirement for the payment of stamp duty or its equivalent from the purchaser to the seller. That way the owner is taxed if they choose to liquidate their asset but not before.
I wouldn't do away with income-based taxes. They're still an important part of the a broad tax regime.
I'm not that keen on using stamp duty in the way you suggest. That would hit people harder who buy or sell more often. It's probably been pushed up too high already. By contrast, current council tax rates are trivial for higher-value properties and have considerable scope for increase. I'd support some rebalancing there.
Re those who rent, you could have the tax based either way. Although those renting don't benefit financially from the property, they do benefit (or suffer) from the fact of it i.e. they get to live in a spacious property in a pleasant location / slum in a hellhole (delete as appropriate). On the other hand, if the owner has to pay, then that will have a knock-on effect on the rent, so the occupier will pay either way.
I tend to think that the mess over gay marriage is purely a confection designed by the international elite to mobilise the gay community and it's supporters against Christians, and perhaps vice versa. As long as we're fighting each other in our little trenches over what is essentially an issue of semantics, we're not concentrating on those who would steal all of our wealth, our freedoms, and our health.
There was no long term groundswell of protest and agitation for gay marriage (as there was for civil partnerships), but nevertheless it has simultaneously appeared all over the western world. I don't say it's a bad idea, but I do say it's a top down enforcement not a natural evolution from the way things have been.
The obvious solution has been stated here before - civil marriage should be open to all couples, same sex and different sex, and Religious marriage should be completely separate, not have a legal status, and be provided by whatever sacred or Religious venue, open to those weddings that accord to the set of beliefs by which it operates. No problem, no conflict, no controversy. Which is why it hasn't happened.
That's exactly what's happening in the UK. Gay marriages are provided in the typical civil arena. There is no obligation for religious institutions to perform gay marriages unless they want to (and some have said they do).
Didn't he have a preference for old English words like 'free' over French derived 'liberty' for example too?
Yes. IIRC, the whole of the most famous section of the "fight them on the beaches" speech (i.e. that bit), is wholly built out ofshort, Anglo-Saxon-derived words with one exception: "surrender".
I guess having 'surrender' from the French was appropriate......
Why? What would we have done different from the French, but for the geographic accident of the Channel?
I doubt we'd have surrendered to 'save the beauty of London' (as the French did, Paris) but looked on it as one bloody great tank trap.....and also our experience with invasion was somewhat different to the French - their most recent a couple of decades before, ours nigh on a millennium....
Would we ?
Given the disgrace of Singapore I have my doubts.
Of course if there had ever been a serious threat of invasion then British land forces and defences would have been much stronger so its all hypothetical.
The German Navy were appalled at the prospect of trying to cross the English Channel with the Royal Navy defending the home islands - and some of this may have fed through to Hitler, who had never intended it invade - as Churchill observed, he knew Britain would now have his neck, or perish in the attempt......
According to Labour luvvie fronted Time Team, HMG war-gamed a German invasion after the war. [Health warning: this is from memory and may be unreliable.] The starting point was the RAF had been destroyed and the North Sea heavily mined by the Germans to keep the Home Fleet in Scapa Flow. They concluded that after a few days, the Germans would have been cut off, since once the Royal Navy had got through the mines, battleships versus invasion barges is not a fair fight, and the British Army (back home since Dunkirk) would have turned back the Germans somewhere between Bristol and Liverpool.
Tbh I'm surprised the telly historians haven't looked into this. It seems an obvious subject for a documentary series. (Unless there's been one and I missed it.)
I wonder if perhaps your interest and inclination to cast aspersions on the SNP is blinding you to what is actually happening with the public narrative. The memo only states one thing, that the recording of a fourth hand account was made in good faith. At no point does it confirm what was said, in fact it confirms that it has doubts about the veracity of the situation. Re-reporting of the Telegraph's desperate attempts to cover its own poor journalistic standards and failure to do basic fact checking doesn't help your cause.
The exact same re-reporting failures appear to have occurred over the "Alex Salmond briefing against Nicola Sturgeon" which stems from an unsourced, unreliable opinion piece by Iain Martin on Cap-X which was then re-reported without any further fact checking by other elements of the media.
But there is a wider problem. People aren't listening any more. When you continually repeat slurs which fail basic reasonableness tests, you turn the audience off and hand the SNP both the moral high ground and immunity from any other criticism.
When you then try to incorporate genuinely accurate criticism it fails to find an audience. The SNP decision to continue with the Labour-developed Curriculum for Excellence has almost certainly been a mistake. But the valid criticism of their failing on this issue is washing over the audience it is trying to reach. Not because the criticism is badly framed or inaccurate but because those putting forward the message are not being listened to and probably never will till their entire approach changes.
SNP Bad does not work. It has not worked at any time in recent memory and it is casting a shroud over what the SNP actually does to the extent where their immunity from criticism is not based on the SNP or the electorate but on the utter complete failing of critics to be reasonable in their criticism.
Excellent post. That is at the root of the problem of SLAB, the Scottish media, and the London commentators all at once.
As well as the Scotland hating emigrants like Carlotta and TGOHF, they just cannot see past their bitterness of the country they left. One wonders what tragedy forced them to flee their country.
You vowed to emigrate in the event of a tragic No vote in the referendum. Sadly your word is worthless.
Of course you're allowed to criticise, who said you're not. I'm allowed to disagree with your criticism too aren't I? Free speech is reciprocal. This governments made some mistakes, but its also done some things right and I find it odd when the things I view as being done right are those being criticised, especially a better direction of travel on energy and far better management of the roads.
I'm not defending the carbon tax as I have no intention of doing so as its a horribly messy grey area for me. But since you've asked: We have a major deficit right now and in an ideal world carbon taxes could be lower, but in reality I would rather other taxes get cut first. If I was Chancellor for the day and able to deal with any tax then I'd like to see Employers NI abolished, it is a horrid case of double-taxation and is a pure tax on jobs rather than a tax on income.
Fair enough.
My priorities would be tax simplification. Abolishing NI and incorporating it into income tax. Shifting the burden of taxation from wealth creation to wealth consumption. Shifting the burden of taxation from work to property.
I agree with all of that except for the caveat on what you mean by the last one. If you mean eg so called mansion taxes etc I worry about that as for example if an old retired individual has a property that is nominally worth a lot but which they paid for decades ago I don't like the idea the government should suddenly burden them with taxes they can't afford because of that.
Taxing income means we sort-of know it can be afforded, there is by definition an income to pay for it. Taxing property not so much.
They can afford it. What you mean is you don't like the consequences of such a tax, which would be to force them to either sell or take on debt to pay for it.
However, exempting the elderly would just be another bung to them. Why should working families have to move if they can't afford the mortgage on a property but the non-working be allowed to stay when they couldn't afford the taxes without exemption?
Property is an excellent thing to tax because it is simple to do so and is a good proxy for income.
As an aside, "if an old retired individual has a property that is nominally worth a lot but which they paid for decades ago", fate or judgement has given them a tremendous windfall. Why shouldn't that be taxed?
Of course you're allowed to criticise, who said you're not. I'm allowed to disagree with your criticism too aren't I? Free speech is reciprocal. This governments made some mistakes, but its also done some things right and I find it odd when the things I view as being done right are those being criticised, especially a better direction of travel on energy and far better management of the roads.
I'm not defending the carbon tax as I have no intention of doing so as its a horribly messy grey area for me. But since you've asked: We have a major deficit right now and in an ideal world carbon taxes could be lower, but in reality I would rather other taxes get cut first. If I was Chancellor for the day and able to deal with any tax then I'd like to see Employers NI abolished, it is a horrid case of double-taxation and is a pure tax on jobs rather than a tax on income.
Fair enough.
My priorities would be tax simplification. Abolishing NI and incorporating it into income tax. Shifting the burden of taxation from wealth creation to wealth consumption. Shifting the burden of taxation from work to property.
I agree with all of that except for the caveat on what you mean by the last one. If you mean eg so called mansion taxes etc I worry about that as for example if an old retired individual has a property that is nominally worth a lot but which they paid for decades ago I don't like the idea the government should suddenly burden them with taxes they can't afford because of that.
Taxing income means we sort-of know it can be afforded, there is by definition an income to pay for it. Taxing property not so much.
They can afford it. What you mean is you don't like the consequences of such a tax, which would be to force them to either sell or take on debt to pay for it.
However, exempting the elderly would just be another bung to them. Why should working families have to move if they can't afford the mortgage on a property but the non-working be allowed to stay when they couldn't afford the taxes without exemption?
Property is an excellent thing to tax because it is simple to do so and is a good proxy for income.
As an aside, "if an old retired individual has a property that is nominally worth a lot but which they paid for decades ago", fate or judgement has given them a tremendous windfall. Why shouldn't that be taxed?
Indeed.
So you see no issue with changing the rules considerably after someone has retired and so forcing them out of their home?
To win the argument, you have to make sense to the voters. Saying that running a deficit during boom times doesn't do that. You can't take out an insurance policy against a bust, you have to be prepared.. 'Ah, but we're investing for the future' doesn't work when it's going on welfare payments or PFI.
'Ah, but we're a big country and we can afford it' doesn't make sense wither when we're not even paying the interest on the loan. A house owner knows that only too well.
Labour didn't try to justify it, because the argument lacked common sense and would fail.
It is because it is counter to "common sense" (which is wrong) that the case must be made.
Since 1979, Britain has run a budget deficit every year apart from two when John Major was Chancellor, and four years under Gordon Brown.
Does it not strike you as odd that the deficit hawks care only about Labour deficits and not Conservative ones, despite Labour having the better record on their chosen criterion?
The proper way of looking at things is to consider government debt as a percentage of GDP:
Note that there was no increase in government debt percentage because of the 1980 recession, an increase in government debt percentage of about 15% because of the 1990 recession and an increase in government debt percentage of over 40% because of the 2008 recession.
Indicative of a country now living well beyond its means.
But when Harold Macmillan informed the country in 1957 that it 'had never had it so good' the Debt /GDP ratio was 105%. Despite that he did not pursue a policy of Austerity - which had been abandoned five years earlier when the same ratio was well in excess of 200%. On that basis , the figures of recent years appear relatively benign.
Debt was run up to over 200% to fight two world wars not to buy imported consumer tat and take foreign holidays.
Debt then fell ie was improving.
Now compare that to the debt trend of the last decade and ask what we've got to show for all that extra borrowing.
"Property is an excellent thing to tax because it is simple to do so and is a good proxy for income."
It might be easy to tax but there is no general correlation between the value of a piece of property and the income of its owner. Suppose a person buys a house and lives in it for twenty odd years, the value of the house may have increased by a great deal, possibly several hundred percent, but the person's income may not, indeed probably will not have increased by anything like that amount, indeed it may actually have gone down. For example when I retired my income dropped by about 50%, the value of my house which I bought in 1991, did not go down.
It will be a brave politician who campaigns in the idea that someone must be cast into debt or forced to sell their home and move, with all the resultant costs and social upheaval, in order to pay taxes.
The issue of people who live in rented accommodation has already been mentioned.
I tend to think that the mess over gay marriage is purely a confection designed by the international elite to mobilise the gay community and it's supporters against Christians, and perhaps vice versa. As long as we're fighting each other in our little trenches over what is essentially an issue of semantics, we're not concentrating on those who would steal all of our wealth, our freedoms, and our health.
There was no long term groundswell of protest and agitation for gay marriage (as there was for civil partnerships), but nevertheless it has simultaneously appeared all over the western world. I don't say it's a bad idea, but I do say it's a top down enforcement not a natural evolution from the way things have been.
The obvious solution has been stated here before - civil marriage should be open to all couples, same sex and different sex, and Religious marriage should be completely separate, not have a legal status, and be provided by whatever sacred or Religious venue, open to those weddings that accord to the set of beliefs by which it operates. No problem, no conflict, no controversy. Which is why it hasn't happened.
No it hasn't happened because it would entail the disestablishment of the Church in England and additionally would signify a reduction in power and influence of religion over state matters. As such, the block to such a move comes from the religious side not the secular.
That seems odd. The Chruch of Scotland can confer the status of marriage, as can the Free Kirks and other Presbyterians, Methodists, Episcopalians and RCs, etc., yet none are established in Scotland (and most aren't in England).
Mind you, some elements in the Kirk (ie the main Presbyterian one) were so unhappy with the evolution of marriage policy that they were seriously considering pulling out of the marriage business completely in the sense of conferring the civil status of marriage, and severing Kirk from State in this respect. Which would be pretty much Mr Luckyguy's position.
Most religious marriages are legally binding in all common law juristictions, regardless of whether or not they are performed by an established Church.
I got married in Lindsey Park Baptist Church, for example.
My priorities would be tax simplification. Abolishing NI and incorporating it into income tax. Shifting the burden of taxation from wealth creation to wealth consumption. Shifting the burden of taxation from work to property.
I agree with all of that except for the caveat on what you mean by the last one. If you mean eg so called mansion taxes etc I worry about that as for example if an old retired individual has a property that is nominally worth a lot but which they paid for decades ago I don't like the idea the government should suddenly burden them with taxes they can't afford because of that.
Taxing income means we sort-of know it can be afforded, there is by definition an income to pay for it. Taxing property not so much.
They can afford it. What you mean is you don't like the consequences of such a tax, which would be to force them to either sell or take on debt to pay for it.
However, exempting the elderly would just be another bung to them. Why should working families have to move if they can't afford the mortgage on a property but the non-working be allowed to stay when they couldn't afford the taxes without exemption?
Property is an excellent thing to tax because it is simple to do so and is a good proxy for income.
As an aside, "if an old retired individual has a property that is nominally worth a lot but which they paid for decades ago", fate or judgement has given them a tremendous windfall. Why shouldn't that be taxed?
Indeed.
So you see no issue with changing the rules considerably after someone has retired and so forcing them out of their home?
Rules change all the time. At the margins, it's likely that many of those changes force at least some of the people out of their homes (or enable them to stay in when they couldn't otherwise have done).
You could make the same argument about not increasing any tax on the retired. In any case, circumstance such as infirmity often forces the retired out of their homes. No-one has an inalienable right to property.
That said, where there is a big change, a sensible government will provide transitional arrangements.
My priorities would be tax simplification. Abolishing NI and incorporating it into income tax. Shifting the burden of taxation from wealth creation to wealth consumption. Shifting the burden of taxation from work to property.
I agree with all of that except for the caveat on what you mean by the last one. If you mean eg so called mansion taxes etc I worry about that as for example if an old retired individual has a property that is nominally worth a lot but which they paid for decades ago I don't like the idea the government should suddenly burden them with taxes they can't afford because of that.
Taxing income means we sort-of know it can be afforded, there is by definition an income to pay for it. Taxing property not so much.
They can afford it. What you mean is you don't like the consequences of such a tax, which would be to force them to either sell or take on debt to pay for it.
However, exempting the elderly would just be another bung to them. Why should working families have to move if they can't afford the mortgage on a property but the non-working be allowed to stay when they couldn't afford the taxes without exemption?
Property is an excellent thing to tax because it is simple to do so and is a good proxy for income.
As an aside, "if an old retired individual has a property that is nominally worth a lot but which they paid for decades ago", fate or judgement has given them a tremendous windfall. Why shouldn't that be taxed?
Indeed.
So you see no issue with changing the rules considerably after someone has retired and so forcing them out of their home?
How many people with million pound assets are going to be 'forced out of their home' ?
And generally people don't have a right to live in a big house in a nice area if they can't afford it.
This pandering to people who have made huge capital gains through property ownership (and I have made them as well) baffles me.
All good background, for what its worth I posted the following on 6th April:
"As Rennie was one of the first to react, I wouldn't be surprised if it turns out to be the work of a Carmichael SPAD, as SPAD's are quasi civil servants. SLAB did jump on it early on, but backpedalled once the Milliband not PM material "quote" sunk in. Anyway this will be an interesting test of Sturgeon's popularity, I don't think it will have much impact, as this is just a Westminster bubble story."
If I could get to the bottom of this with no inside knowledge, why it took 7 weeks and £1.4 million to reach my conclusion beggers belief. Yet again the Tories and SLID are playing the Scottish population as being a bunch of numpties. I think Rennie is being given a soft ride by the MSM, he lost 10 out of 11 seats and has failed to resign, his knowing or unknowing involvement in this turgid affair should finish him as leader.
How could it take £200K a week for 7 weeks to check the absolute turnip had used his official phone to do the smearing. To think that these dunderheids were running the country not long ago is scary.
It appears that until the Cabinet Office picked up on the phone used that Carmichael & co were being obstructive to the investigation, which really adds insult to injury. If Carmichael had picked up the phone to Jeremy H and explained himself that would have cost 14p not £1.4 million.
My priorities would be tax simplification. Abolishing NI and incorporating it into income tax. Shifting the burden of taxation from wealth creation to wealth consumption. Shifting the burden of taxation from work to property.
I agree with all of that except for the caveat on what you mean by the last one. If you mean eg so called mansion taxes etc I worry about that as for example if an old retired individual has a property that is nominally worth a lot but which they paid for decades ago I don't like the idea the government should suddenly burden them with taxes they can't afford because of that.
Taxing income means we sort-of know it can be afforded, there is by definition an income to pay for it. Taxing property not so much.
They can afford it. What you mean is you don't like the consequences of such a tax, which would be to force them to either sell or take on debt to pay for it.
However, exempting the elderly would just be another bung to them. Why should working families have to move if they can't afford the mortgage on a property but the non-working be allowed to stay when they couldn't afford the taxes without exemption?
Property is an excellent thing to tax because it is simple to do so and is a good proxy for income.
As an aside, "if an old retired individual has a property that is nominally worth a lot but which they paid for decades ago", fate or judgement has given them a tremendous windfall. Why shouldn't that be taxed?
Indeed.
So you see no issue with changing the rules considerably after someone has retired and so forcing them out of their home?
How many people with million pound assets are going to be 'forced out of their home' ?
And generally people don't have a right to live in a big house in a nice area if they can't afford it.
This pandering to people who have made huge capital gains through property ownership (and I have made them as well) baffles me.
Nobody makes capital gains until they sell. Why you think someone should be taxed on a non-existent gain baffles me.
I wonder if perhaps your interest and inclination to cast aspersions on the SNP is blinding you to what is actually happening with the public narrative. The memo only states one thing, that the recording of a fourth hand account was made in good faith. At no point does it confirm what was said, in fact it confirms that it has doubts about the veracity of the situation. Re-reporting of the Telegraph's desperate attempts to cover its own poor journalistic standards and failure to do basic fact checking doesn't help your cause.
The exact same re-reporting failures appear to have occurred over the "Alex Salmond briefing against Nicola Sturgeon" which stems from an unsourced, unreliable opinion piece by Iain Martin on Cap-X which was then re-reported without any further fact checking by other elements of the media.
But there is a wider problem. People aren't listening any more. When you continually repeat slurs which fail basic reasonableness tests, you turn the audience off and hand the SNP both the moral high ground and immunity from any other criticism.
When you then try to incorporate genuinely accurate criticism it fails to find an audience. The SNP decision to continue with the Labour-developed Curriculum for Excellence has almost certainly been a mistake. But the valid criticism of their failing on this issue is washing over the audience it is trying to reach. Not because the criticism is badly framed or inaccurate but because those putting forward the message are not being listened to and probably never will till their entire approach changes.
SNP Bad does not work. It has not worked at any time in recent memory and it is casting a shroud over what the SNP actually does to the extent where their immunity from criticism is not based on the SNP or the electorate but on the utter complete failing of critics to be reasonable in their criticism.
Excellent post. That is at the root of the problem of SLAB, the Scottish media, and the London commentators all at once.
As well as the Scotland hating emigrants like Carlotta and TGOHF, they just cannot see past their bitterness of the country they left. One wonders what tragedy forced them to flee their country.
You vowed to emigrate in the event of a tragic No vote in the referendum. Sadly your word is worthless.
Another serial liar , do you never have misgivings about your lying.
Add me to the list of people who believes in property being taxed more. It is absurd that we target high earmers (many of whom are not asset rich) and ignore those who are living off assets rather than income.
It is because it is counter to "common sense" (which is wrong) that the case must be made.
Since 1979, Britain has run a budget deficit every year apart from two when John Major was Chancellor, and four years under Gordon Brown.
Does it not strike you as odd that the deficit hawks care only about Labour deficits and not Conservative ones, despite Labour having the better record on their chosen criterion?
The proper way of looking at things is to consider government debt as a percentage of GDP:
Note that there was no increase in government debt percentage because of the 1980 recession, an increase in government debt percentage of about 15% because of the 1990 recession and an increase in government debt percentage of over 40% because of the 2008 recession.
Indicative of a country now living well beyond its means.
'But when Harold Macmillan informed the country in 1957 that it 'had never had it so good' the Debt /GDP ratio was 105%. Despite that he did not pursue a policy of Austerity - which had been abandoned five years earlier when the same ratio was well in excess of 200%. On that basis , the figures of recent years appear relatively benign.'
'Debt was run up to over 200% to fight two world wars not to buy imported consumer tat and take foreign holidays.
Debt then fell ie was improving.
Now compare that to the debt trend of the last decade and ask what we've got to show for all that extra borrowing.'
The point is though that the very high debt burden of those years was bearable - regardless of why it had been incurred.Macmillan did not make reducing Debt as a % of GDP a key plank of Macroeconomic policy nor did he seek to implore the British people not to pass the burden on to later generations. Had he adopted the Osborne neoliberal view and pursued austerity he would not have triumphed at the 1959 election.
I see the LDs - the party of liberal values, honesty and integrity are dealing with their MP Alistair Carmichael by taking no action against him - at all. Why am I not surprised? The only mistake the voters made the other week was by electing 10 of them.
So you see no issue with changing the rules considerably after someone has retired and so forcing them out of their home?
How many people with million pound assets are going to be 'forced out of their home' ?
And generally people don't have a right to live in a big house in a nice area if they can't afford it.
This pandering to people who have made huge capital gains through property ownership (and I have made them as well) baffles me.
Capital gains tax already applies on capital gains. When you sell, because then you've made a gain. If you buy half a dozen buy to lets and then sell them on, CGT will apply to all of them.
CGT doesn't apply when you sell your own home, it certainly could be argued that exemption should be removed. I'm not so sure, but still that applies only on sales. There is no gain before a sale occurs.
As for whether they "can't afford it", someone who has worked and paid for their mortgage before they retired could afford it and has already paid for it. They paid their dues already. They paid tax when they earned their income and any relevant taxes when they paid for their property - if you reduce taxes on income and start taxing property are you planning to repay the historical income taxes they've already paid in order to have a mortgage-free property?
Pretty brutal coming from Eric. I note the Scottish MSM has started to realise that they have an opportunity to recoup some of their lost credibility by going after this story with appropriate vigour e.g. the Herald:
On a related note, interesting to see that it is the Daily Telegraph and the Independent who still seem to want to cling to this story were the two papers that persisted with the Ruth Davidson "burly men" story for most of the election day, even though the story had been completely debunked. The MSM should hold Ruth to account on this - did she make it up, rely on 3rd party account without checking etc - unanswered questions.
Why is it concerning? I agree it is potentially concerning but there are not enough details there. Sixty years ago, we had compulsory education up to the age of 14, so the 3Rs were being taught then, so it is not clear why we'd expect any great change. Are the international comparisons with countries who had large populations of innumerate, uneducated peasants back in the 1950s?
But if there is a real problem here, then why didn't academies help? Is the problem with teaching rather than the bureaucratic organisation of schools that has obsessed Labour and Conservative ministers alike?
Politics -- there is a hidden story there if you read the article, which shows why I describe George Osborne as heir-to-Brown. Osborne, like Brown, is tempted to meddle in other departments' business. There is a perfectly serviceable SoS for Education and another for Skills, but like Gordon, George wants to run the whole show.
That seems odd. The Chruch of Scotland can confer the status of marriage, as can the Free Kirks and other Presbyterians, Methodists, Episcopalians and RCs, etc., yet none are established in Scotland (and most aren't in England).
Mind you, some elements in the Kirk (ie the main Presbyterian one) were so unhappy with the evolution of marriage policy that they were seriously considering pulling out of the marriage business completely in the sense of conferring the civil status of marriage, and severing Kirk from State in this respect. Which would be pretty much Mr Luckyguy's position.
Most religious marriages are legally binding in all common law juristictions, regardless of whether or not they are performed by an established Church.
I got married in Lindsey Park Baptist Church, for example. That's because who performs the marriage service is a means of practicality (which choice of religion or secular depending upon your choice) while the state of being married and its legal effects is what the government is involved in. It would be silly to require two services in order to get to the same status, it is more effective to let people chose how they conduct the service.
The problem in this debate sometimes is people confusing the marriage service or wedding with marriage, as in the state of being married.
"The point is though that the very high debt burden of those years was bearable - regardless of why it had been incurred.Macmillan did not make reducing Debt as a % of GDP a key plank of Macroeconomic policy nor did he seek to implore the British people not to pass the burden on to later generations. Had he adopted the Osborne neoliberal view and pursued austerity he would not have triumphed at the 1959 election."
How much do we currently fork out on debt interest? How much more can we afford? At what point does the debt burden become unbearable? I would argue that we are rapidly approaching that point, you may disagree. What is certain is that continually taking on more debt will reach the point at which it is unbearable and then we will have to introduce real austerity and not the trimming around the edges we have seen so far. This is not, or at least should not be, a matter of party politics.
We must stop this endless casting around to tax everything and everybody..The spending must reduce or otherwise what is the point of doing anything other than live in rented accommodation, state supplied, and draw ever diminishing benefits before we descend into armed anarchy when the money does actually run out... Mad Max is coming to a town near you...could even be yours.
Add me to the list of people who believes in property being taxed more. It is absurd that we target high earmers (many of whom are not asset rich) and ignore those who are living off assets rather than income.
Those who are living off assets will have been taxed when they earned those assets already. Either through income tax or inheritance tax or capital gains tax or some other tax. Any income gained through those assets is also taxed.
It is more affordable for the individual to get taxed when you earn it, it is also quicker for the government and more effective for the government to tax income at source than to delay taxation until later on.
Add me to the list of people who believes in property being taxed more. It is absurd that we target high earmers (many of whom are not asset rich) and ignore those who are living off assets rather than income.
There are some basic discrepancies that should be addressed before looking again at the way property is taxed. The most glaring is the way National Insurance effectively means that earned income is taxed more heavily than unearned income.
"The only mistake the voters made the other week was by electing 10 of them."
I am glad to say that only 8 Lib Dems were elected-though it looks as if Question Time will still give them far more air time than the SNP.
Still "exposure" does not always help, as Carmichael can testify.
Oops my mistake. What particularly irks me though is the sheer brass neck hypocrisy this betrays. A complete failure of the party to apply to itself anything remotely resembling the standards of behaviour it demands from others. I suppose we saw it earlier with their dreadful treatment of women in the party but it makes my blood boil when they send the likes of Ashdown around the TV studios lecturing us on moral rectitude.
The point is though that the very high debt burden of those years was bearable - regardless of why it had been incurred.Macmillan did not make reducing Debt as a % of GDP a key plank of Macroeconomic policy nor did he seek to implore the British people not to pass the burden on to later generations. Had he adopted the Osborne neoliberal view and pursued austerity he would not have triumphed at the 1959 election.
The country in the 50s and 60s was still booming from the aftermath of the World War and the arrival of the Baby Boomers.
We're now heading the opposite direction. The Baby Boomers are approaching retirement and not joining the workforce. It would be utterly crazy to not act accordingly, we need to cut our cloth to what we can afford.
They can afford it. What you mean is you don't like the consequences of such a tax, which would be to force them to either sell or take on debt to pay for it.
However, exempting the elderly would just be another bung to them. Why should working families have to move if they can't afford the mortgage on a property but the non-working be allowed to stay when they couldn't afford the taxes without exemption?
Property is an excellent thing to tax because it is simple to do so and is a good proxy for income.
As an aside, "if an old retired individual has a property that is nominally worth a lot but which they paid for decades ago", fate or judgement has given them a tremendous windfall. Why shouldn't that be taxed?
Indeed.
So you see no issue with changing the rules considerably after someone has retired and so forcing them out of their home?
How many people with million pound assets are going to be 'forced out of their home' ?
And generally people don't have a right to live in a big house in a nice area if they can't afford it.
This pandering to people who have made huge capital gains through property ownership (and I have made them as well) baffles me.
Nobody makes capital gains until they sell. Why you think someone should be taxed on a non-existent gain baffles me.
To claim it's a non-existent gain is like claiming that paper money has no inherent value.
What matters with both is what you can do with it. There is a reason why a million-pound property has its price: its desirability. Either it is in a sought-after location or it offers the occupier a luxurious living space, or some combination of both. These are very definite benefits.
Think of it the other way round. Suppose someone buys a three-bed semi in a predominantly C2 neighbourhood, where most households have jobs and where a sense of community exists. Over the course of the next twenty years, demographic change causes the neighbourhood to go downhill and local house prices with it. The community breaks down, crime increases, vacant property numbers increase, shops close and so on. Compared to what that person moved into, have they not suffered a loss?
We must stop this endless casting around to tax everything and everybody..The spending must reduce or otherwise what is the point of doing anything other than live in rented accommodation, state supplied, and draw ever diminishing benefits before we descend into armed anarchy when the money does actually run out... Mad Max is coming to a town near you...could even be yours.
Nobody makes capital gains until they sell. Why you think someone should be taxed on a non-existent gain baffles me.
To claim it's a non-existent gain is like claiming that paper money has no inherent value.
What matters with both is what you can do with it. There is a reason why a million-pound property has its price: its desirability. Either it is in a sought-after location or it offers the occupier a luxurious living space, or some combination of both. These are very definite benefits.
Think of it the other way round. Suppose someone buys a three-bed semi in a predominantly C2 neighbourhood, where most households have jobs and where a sense of community exists. Over the course of the next twenty years, demographic change causes the neighbourhood to go downhill and local house prices with it. The community breaks down, crime increases, vacant property numbers increase, shops close and so on. Compared to what that person moved into, have they not suffered a loss?
Paper money has no inherent value unless it can be converted into real money or accepted as it. In that instance should the government start paying compensation for that loss? Because it doesn't currently.
A gain is only a gain once realised. That is an important concept with all CGT law, if we change that for property should we change that for all other CGT related assets? Make people sell their businesses prematurely because they've got a tax bill for having developed something they weren't ready to sell yet?
Its only real once its sold because then the money exists to pay for it.
Plus how do we get all these valuations? Income tax on income works because we know what the income is. Capital gains tax on capital gains works because we know what the capital gain is. Should we hire an army of bureaucrats to inspect everyone's house every year to work out what this years capital gain is and send a bill? Same for privately own limited companies?
"The point is though that the very high debt burden of those years was bearable - regardless of why it had been incurred.Macmillan did not make reducing Debt as a % of GDP a key plank of Macroeconomic policy nor did he seek to implore the British people not to pass the burden on to later generations. Had he adopted the Osborne neoliberal view and pursued austerity he would not have triumphed at the 1959 election."
How much do we currently fork out on debt interest? How much more can we afford? At what point does the debt burden become unbearable? I would argue that we are rapidly approaching that point, you may disagree. What is certain is that continually taking on more debt will reach the point at which it is unbearable and then we will have to introduce real austerity and not the trimming around the edges we have seen so far. This is not, or at least should not be, a matter of party politics.
Worth pointing out that private debt was far lower in the 1950s than it is now. Also that the national debt, while high, was consistently falling as a proportion of GDP even while the government ran deficits.
According to Labour luvvie fronted Time Team, HMG war-gamed a German invasion after the war. [Health warning: this is from memory and may be unreliable.] The starting point was the RAF had been destroyed and the North Sea heavily mined by the Germans to keep the Home Fleet in Scapa Flow. They concluded that after a few days, the Germans would have been cut off, since once the Royal Navy had got through the mines, battleships versus invasion barges is not a fair fight, and the British Army (back home since Dunkirk) would have turned back the Germans somewhere between Bristol and Liverpool.
Tbh I'm surprised the telly historians haven't looked into this. It seems an obvious subject for a documentary series. (Unless there's been one and I missed it.)
Stodge, Andy Cooke, David Herdson, myself and a few other PBers are members of www.alternatehistory.com/discussion/ where such stories are told. It's been mentioned a few times on here but newer members of this site might enjoy the stroll across there.
Some of the stories have made it to book format and a series along the lines you describe can only be a matter of time.
"The only mistake the voters made the other week was by electing 10 of them."
I am glad to say that only 8 Lib Dems were elected-though it looks as if Question Time will still give them far more air time than the SNP.
Still "exposure" does not always help, as Carmichael can testify.
Oops my mistake. What particularly irks me though is the sheer brass neck hypocrisy this betrays. A complete failure of the party to apply to itself anything remotely resembling the standards of behaviour it demands from others. I suppose we saw it earlier with their dreadful treatment of women in the party but it makes my blood boil when they send the likes of Ashdown around the TV studios lecturing us on moral rectitude.
I believe the LDs regard Carmichael as innocent (in the legal sense) until proven otherwise and will only act, if a party member has been convicted in a court of law. – The Lord Rennard, debacle was a case in point, where any company with in-house rules on impropriety would have dismissed him forthwith, the LDs did not.
They can afford it. What you mean is you don't like the consequences of such a tax, which would be to force them to either sell or take on debt to pay for it.
However, exempting the elderly would just be another bung to them. Why should working families have to move if they can't afford the mortgage on a property but the non-working be allowed to stay when they couldn't afford the taxes without exemption?
Property is an excellent thing to tax because it is simple to do so and is a good proxy for income.
As an aside, "if an old retired individual has a property that is nominally worth a lot but which they paid for decades ago", fate or judgement has given them a tremendous windfall. Why shouldn't that be taxed?
Indeed.
So you see no issue with changing the rules considerably after someone has retired and so forcing them out of their home?
How many people with million pound assets are going to be 'forced out of their home' ?
And generally people don't have a right to live in a big house in a nice area if they can't afford it.
This pandering to people who have made huge capital gains through property ownership (and I have made them as well) baffles me.
Nobody makes capital gains until they sell. Why you think someone should be taxed on a non-existent gain baffles me.
To claim it's a non-existent gain is like claiming that paper money has no inherent value.
What matters with both is what you can do with it. There is a reason why a million-pound property has its price: its desirability. Either it is in a sought-after location or it offers the occupier a luxurious living space, or some combination of both. These are very definite benefits.
Think of it the other way round. Suppose someone buys a three-bed semi in a predominantly C2 neighbourhood, where most households have jobs and where a sense of community exists. Over the course of the next twenty years, demographic change causes the neighbourhood to go downhill and local house prices with it. The community breaks down, crime increases, vacant property numbers increase, shops close and so on. Compared to what that person moved into, have they not suffered a loss?
Where is my gain? I have lived in the same house for many years, it has not made a penny for me. There is a theoretical gain if I sell, but until then it is an expense not an income. As I said below my income has decreased, yet in your world I can afford to pay more tax because my house is, on paper, worth more.
"The point is though that the very high debt burden of those years was bearable - regardless of why it had been incurred.Macmillan did not make reducing Debt as a % of GDP a key plank of Macroeconomic policy nor did he seek to implore the British people not to pass the burden on to later generations. Had he adopted the Osborne neoliberal view and pursued austerity he would not have triumphed at the 1959 election."
How much do we currently fork out on debt interest? How much more can we afford? At what point does the debt burden become unbearable? I would argue that we are rapidly approaching that point, you may disagree. What is certain is that continually taking on more debt will reach the point at which it is unbearable and then we will have to introduce real austerity and not the trimming around the edges we have seen so far. This is not, or at least should not be, a matter of party politics.
With respect if the current Debt to GDP ratio of 80% is 'unbearable' that was even more true of the 105% ratio in 1957 and the over 200% ratio of five years earlier.! Despite that fact the Tory Government of the day did not impose austerity on us. Given that we have coped well with such significantly heavier debt burdens in the past why the hysteria and masochism - or maybe sadism- of recent years?
We must stop this endless casting around to tax everything and everybody..The spending must reduce or otherwise what is the point of doing anything other than live in rented accommodation, state supplied, and draw ever diminishing benefits before we descend into armed anarchy when the money does actually run out... Mad Max is coming to a town near you...could even be yours.
Taxation is the price of a civilised society. Afghanistan or Haiti must be very low tax countries ... you'd like to live there?
I wonder if perhaps your interest and inclination to cast aspersions on the SNP is blinding you to what is actually happening with the public narrative. The memo only states one thing, that the recording of a fourth hand account was made in good faith. At no point does it confirm what was said, in fact it confirms that it has doubts about the veracity of the situation. Re-reporting of the Telegraph's desperate attempts to cover its own poor journalistic standards and failure to do basic fact checking doesn't help your cause.
The exact same re-reporting failures appear to have occurred over the "Alex Salmond briefing against Nicola Sturgeon" which stems from an unsourced, unreliable opinion piece by Iain Martin on Cap-X which was then re-reported without any further fact checking by other elements of the media.
But there is a wider problem. People aren't listening any more. When you continually repeat slurs which fail basic reasonableness tests, you turn the audience off and hand the SNP both the moral high ground and immunity from any other criticism.
When you then try to incorporate genuinely accurate criticism it fails to find an audience. The SNP decision to continue with the Labour-developed Curriculum for Excellence has almost certainly been a mistake. But the valid criticism of their failing on this issue is washing over the audience it is trying to reach. Not because the criticism is badly framed or inaccurate but because those putting forward the message are not being listened to and probably never will till their entire approach changes.
SNP Bad does not work. It has not worked at any time in recent memory and it is casting a shroud over what the SNP actually does to the extent where their immunity from criticism is not based on the SNP or the electorate but on the utter complete failing of critics to be reasonable in their criticism.
Excellent post. That is at the root of the problem of SLAB, the Scottish media, and the London commentators all at once.
One wonders what tragedy forced them to flee their country.
Greater opportunity abroad - and that's Scotland's tragedy - not mine.
"The point is though that the very high debt burden of those years was bearable - regardless of why it had been incurred.Macmillan did not make reducing Debt as a % of GDP a key plank of Macroeconomic policy nor did he seek to implore the British people not to pass the burden on to later generations. Had he adopted the Osborne neoliberal view and pursued austerity he would not have triumphed at the 1959 election."
How much do we currently fork out on debt interest? How much more can we afford? At what point does the debt burden become unbearable? I would argue that we are rapidly approaching that point, you may disagree. What is certain is that continually taking on more debt will reach the point at which it is unbearable and then we will have to introduce real austerity and not the trimming around the edges we have seen so far. This is not, or at least should not be, a matter of party politics.
With respect if the current Debt to GDP ratio of 80% is 'unbearable' that was even more true of the 105% ratio in 1957 and the over 200% ratio of five years earlier.! Despite that fact the Tory Government of the day did not impose austerity on us. Given that we have coped well with such significantly heavier debt burdens in the past why the hysteria and masochism - or maybe sadism- of recent years?
Because in the 50's GDP was growing faster than the deficit, so debt was coming down relative to GDP. The opposite is true now.
In the 50's we had growing potential to grow as well. The arrival of baby boomers to the workforce meant there were more people working and able to take a smaller share each of the debts of the past. The retirement of the boomers now means the opposite is the case, we have not just the debt of the past but also higher costs associated with the retired. And fewer working people to pay for those costs.
Taxation at the levels we are at now is fast approaching criminality ...when we can blithely discuss forcing people to move out of their homes ,to take their money to give to someone else..We have lost all sense of common decency and respect for other peoples property.
How can that be true when the UK had 20 years of improving exam grades.
You didn't believe those Labour fibs did you?
The plain truth is that people near retiring had a far better education that do most pupils today. Teaching was still valued as a vocation and not just a job and had not been messed around with by theoretical, academic educationalists.
Schools had the tools to keep discipline, teachers had a good command of their subject and were good communicators and there was an aspiration for all pupils to achieve their best - whatever their ability.
Today there is so much liberal thinking that local authorities believe that an average mark is good enough - might be for the UK but not if you are competing for your job against global competition.
We can only start to get out of this trough if rigid educational and teaching standards are taken away from local authorities (who mostly have proved their lack of capability and competence) and are set by Westminster.
"The point is though that the very high debt burden of those years was bearable - regardless of why it had been incurred.Macmillan did not make reducing Debt as a % of GDP a key plank of Macroeconomic policy nor did he seek to implore the British people not to pass the burden on to later generations. Had he adopted the Osborne neoliberal view and pursued austerity he would not have triumphed at the 1959 election."
How much do we currently fork out on debt interest? How much more can we afford? At what point does the debt burden become unbearable? I would argue that we are rapidly approaching that point, you may disagree. What is certain is that continually taking on more debt will reach the point at which it is unbearable and then we will have to introduce real austerity and not the trimming around the edges we have seen so far. This is not, or at least should not be, a matter of party politics.
Worth pointing out that private debt was far lower in the 1950s than it is now. Also that the national debt, while high, was consistently falling as a proportion of GDP even while the government ran deficits.
Whilst that is true, it is already clear that the Debt/GDP ratio will peak well below the levels of the 1950s before turning downwards.
A gain is only a gain once realised. That is an important concept with all CGT law, if we change that for property should we change that for all other CGT related assets? Make people sell their businesses prematurely because they've got a tax bill for having developed something they weren't ready to sell yet?
Its only real once its sold because then the money exists to pay for it.
Plus how do we get all these valuations? Income tax on income works because we know what the income is. Capital gains tax on capital gains works because we know what the capital gain is. Should we hire an army of bureaucrats to inspect everyone's house every year to work out what this years capital gain is and send a bill? Same for privately own limited companies?
Taxes on land are among of the oldest established tax bases in the country, dating back at least into the 17th century. There would be no new principle involved in, say, increasing the number of, and the range of, council tax bands. Nor would there be any new principle in taxing property at x% of its registered value.
There's a lot of Red Herringry in your post. The difference between property and items assessed for CGT is that you get a benefit from your property before realising any capital gains on sale, which is presumably why an individual's primary property is exempt from CGT (which itself demonstrates an established view that it's not comparable).
As for valuation, transaction sales are recorded by the government. One method would be to use any actual price paid for the first five years after a sale and then uprate in line with local prices thereafter, with a provision for homeowners to challenge as they can at present over Council Tax banding.
"The point is though that the very high debt burden of those years was bearable - regardless of why it had been incurred.Macmillan did not make reducing Debt as a % of GDP a key plank of Macroeconomic policy nor did he seek to implore the British people not to pass the burden on to later generations. Had he adopted the Osborne neoliberal view and pursued austerity he would not have triumphed at the 1959 election."
How much do we currently fork out on debt interest? How much more can we afford? At what point does the debt burden become unbearable? I would argue that we are rapidly approaching that point, you may disagree. What is certain is that continually taking on more debt will reach the point at which it is unbearable and then we will have to introduce real austerity and not the trimming around the edges we have seen so far. This is not, or at least should not be, a matter of party politics.
Worth pointing out that private debt was far lower in the 1950s than it is now. Also that the national debt, while high, was consistently falling as a proportion of GDP even while the government ran deficits.
Whilst that is true, it is already clear that the Debt/GDP ratio will peak well below the levels of the 1950s before turning downwards.
Because Osborne took action to prevent it continuing to spiral out of control, yes.
But that is utterly irrelevant when we don't have 1950's demographics. Which you're repeatedly ignoring.
"The point is though that the very high debt burden of those years was bearable - regardless of why it had been incurred.Macmillan did not make reducing Debt as a % of GDP a key plank of Macroeconomic policy nor did he seek to implore the British people not to pass the burden on to later generations. Had he adopted the Osborne neoliberal view and pursued austerity he would not have triumphed at the 1959 election."
How much do we currently fork out on debt interest? How much more can we afford? At what point does the debt burden become unbearable? I would argue that we are rapidly approaching that point, you may disagree. What is certain is that continually taking on more debt will reach the point at which it is unbearable and then we will have to introduce real austerity and not the trimming around the edges we have seen so far. This is not, or at least should not be, a matter of party politics.
With respect if the current Debt to GDP ratio of 80% is 'unbearable' that was even more true of the 105% ratio in 1957 and the over 200% ratio of five years earlier.! Despite that fact the Tory Government of the day did not impose austerity on us. Given that we have coped well with such significantly heavier debt burdens in the past why the hysteria and masochism - or maybe sadism- of recent years?
From memory we are currently paying £43bn a year in debt interest, that's about 3% of GDP. That figure is increasing every year. I don't think it hysterical to suggest that continuing to increase the debt interest payments will at some point lead to a big crunch. So at some point HMG will have to run a budget surplus, or at the very least a balanced budget. My view is that it will be less painful to do that sooner rather than later.
"The point is though that the very high debt burden of those years was bearable - regardless of why it had been incurred.Macmillan did not make reducing Debt as a % of GDP a key plank of Macroeconomic policy nor did he seek to implore the British people not to pass the burden on to later generations. Had he adopted the Osborne neoliberal view and pursued austerity he would not have triumphed at the 1959 election."
How much do we currently fork out on debt interest? How much more can we afford? At what point does the debt burden become unbearable? I would argue that we are rapidly approaching that point, you may disagree. What is certain is that continually taking on more debt will reach the point at which it is unbearable and then we will have to introduce real austerity and not the trimming around the edges we have seen so far. This is not, or at least should not be, a matter of party politics.
With respect if the current Debt to GDP ratio of 80% is 'unbearable' that was even more true of the 105% ratio in 1957 and the over 200% ratio of five years earlier.! Despite that fact the Tory Government of the day did not impose austerity on us. Given that we have coped well with such significantly heavier debt burdens in the past why the hysteria and masochism - or maybe sadism- of recent years?
Because in the 50's GDP was growing faster than the deficit, so debt was coming down relative to GDP. The opposite is true now.
In the 50's we had growing potential to grow as well. The arrival of baby boomers to the workforce meant there were more people working and able to take a smaller share each of the debts of the past. The retirement of the boomers now means the opposite is the case, we have not just the debt of the past but also higher costs associated with the retired. And fewer working people to pay for those costs.
The population appears to be growing more rapidly than in the 1950s which should expand the tax base in future decades.As far as higher retirement costs are concerned, the current government has been highly irresponsible in exempting such people from the economic pain by bribing them for reasons of pure electoral self-interest.
So you see no issue with changing the rules considerably after someone has retired and so forcing them out of their home?
How many people with million pound assets are going to be 'forced out of their home' ?
And generally people don't have a right to live in a big house in a nice area if they can't afford it.
This pandering to people who have made huge capital gains through property ownership (and I have made them as well) baffles me.
Nobody makes capital gains until they sell. Why you think someone should be taxed on a non-existent gain baffles me.
To claim it's a non-existent gain is like claiming that paper money has no inherent value.
What matters with both is what you can do with it. There is a reason why a million-pound property has its price: its desirability. Either it is in a sought-after location or it offers the occupier a luxurious living space, or some combination of both. These are very definite benefits.
Think of it the other way round. Suppose someone buys a three-bed semi in a predominantly C2 neighbourhood, where most households have jobs and where a sense of community exists. Over the course of the next twenty years, demographic change causes the neighbourhood to go downhill and local house prices with it. The community breaks down, crime increases, vacant property numbers increase, shops close and so on. Compared to what that person moved into, have they not suffered a loss?
Where is my gain? I have lived in the same house for many years, it has not made a penny for me. There is a theoretical gain if I sell, but until then it is an expense not an income. As I said below my income has decreased, yet in your world I can afford to pay more tax because my house is, on paper, worth more.
I never said you could afford to pay more; I said that people living in areas that experience an above-average increase in prices should see their property tax rise.
If you have been lucky or astute enough to be in such a position then the benefit comes from the non-financial benefits that have driven the prices up in the first place.
A gain is only a gain once realised. That is an important concept with all CGT law, if we change that for property should we change that for all other CGT related assets? Make people sell their businesses prematurely because they've got a tax bill for having developed something they weren't ready to sell yet?
Its only real once its sold because then the money exists to pay for it.
Plus how do we get all these valuations? Income tax on income works because we know what the income is. Capital gains tax on capital gains works because we know what the capital gain is. Should we hire an army of bureaucrats to inspect everyone's house every year to work out what this years capital gain is and send a bill? Same for privately own limited companies?
Taxes on land are among of the oldest established tax bases in the country, dating back at least into the 17th century. There would be no new principle involved in, say, increasing the number of, and the range of, council tax bands. Nor would there be any new principle in taxing property at x% of its registered value.
There's a lot of Red Herringry in your post. The difference between property and items assessed for CGT is that you get a benefit from your property before realising any capital gains on sale, which is presumably why an individual's primary property is exempt from CGT (which itself demonstrates an established view that it's not comparable).
As for valuation, transaction sales are recorded by the government. One method would be to use any actual price paid for the first five years after a sale and then uprate in line with local prices thereafter, with a provision for homeowners to challenge as they can at present over Council Tax banding.
As you say, we already have Council Tax.
If I have a property then I get the benefit of my property yes, which is why I paid for it from taxed income and why I paid stamp duty and why I pay all my other taxes. What I do not get a single penny of benefit from is some non-existent artificial uprating of capital gains. That only arrives once the property is sold, in which case it is then taxed according to our existing laws.
Capital gains is a fiction until it is sold, yet your tax would be real - where do you propose people find the money to pay for this fictional gain prior to any sale happening?
According to Labour luvvie fronted Time Team, HMG war-gamed a German invasion after the war. [Health warning: this is from memory and may be unreliable.] The starting point was the RAF had been destroyed and the North Sea heavily mined by the Germans to keep the Home Fleet in Scapa Flow. They concluded that after a few days, the Germans would have been cut off, since once the Royal Navy had got through the mines, battleships versus invasion barges is not a fair fight, and the British Army (back home since Dunkirk) would have turned back the Germans somewhere between Bristol and Liverpool.
Tbh I'm surprised the telly historians haven't looked into this. It seems an obvious subject for a documentary series. (Unless there's been one and I missed it.)
It was a joint UK/German effort, and saw the Germans being utterly trounced.
All in all it seems a reasonable conclusion; if they had really wanted to invade, they should have built proper landing craft instead of the bastardised Rhine barges.
As someone mentioned below, various alternative histories have been written where Sealion went ahead, for instance 'Invasion' by Kevin Macksey. ''The Last Ditch; by David Lampe features some of Germany's plans, and our own to defeat them.
The paucity of German plans could be seen by the arguments about Sealion between the German Army and the Kriegsmarine: the ormer wanted a massively wide front along the south coast, whilst the latter said they could only provide a relatively small bridgehead.
"The point is though that the very high debt burden of those years was bearable - regardless of why it had been incurred.Macmillan did not make reducing Debt as a % of GDP a key plank of Macroeconomic policy nor did he seek to implore the British people not to pass the burden on to later generations. Had he adopted the Osborne neoliberal view and pursued austerity he would not have triumphed at the 1959 election."
How much do we currently fork out on debt interest? How much more can we afford? At what point does the debt burden become unbearable? I would argue that we are rapidly approaching that point, you may disagree. What is certain is that continually taking on more debt will reach the point at which it is unbearable and then we will have to introduce real austerity and not the trimming around the edges we have seen so far. This is not, or at least should not be, a matter of party politics.
Worth pointing out that private debt was far lower in the 1950s than it is now. Also that the national debt, while high, was consistently falling as a proportion of GDP even while the government ran deficits.
Whilst that is true, it is already clear that the Debt/GDP ratio will peak well below the levels of the 1950s before turning downwards.
Although not if you take the total national debt burden - that of individuals, corporations and the state collectively.
"The point is though that the very high debt burden of those years was bearable - regardless of why it had been incurred.Macmillan did not make reducing Debt as a % of GDP a key plank of Macroeconomic policy nor did he seek to implore the British people not to pass the burden on to later generations. Had he adopted the Osborne neoliberal view and pursued austerity he would not have triumphed at the 1959 election."
How much do we currently fork out on debt interest? How much more can we afford? At what point does the debt burden become unbearable? I would argue that we are rapidly approaching that point, you may disagree. What is certain is that continually taking on more debt will reach the point at which it is unbearable and then we will have to introduce real austerity and not the trimming around the edges we have seen so far. This is not, or at least should not be, a matter of party politics.
With respect if the current Debt to GDP ratio of 80% is 'unbearable' that was even more true of the 105% ratio in 1957 and the over 200% ratio of five years earlier.! Despite that fact the Tory Government of the day did not impose austerity on us. Given that we have coped well with such significantly heavier debt burdens in the past why the hysteria and masochism - or maybe sadism- of recent years?
From memory we are currently paying £43bn a year in debt interest, that's about 3% of GDP. That figure is increasing every year. I don't think it hysterical to suggest that continuing to increase the debt interest payments will at some point lead to a big crunch. So at some point HMG will have to run a budget surplus, or at the very least a balanced budget. My view is that it will be less painful to do that sooner rather than later.
It really is a matter of simple arithmetic.If we today had the same Debt to GDP burden of the 1950s - ie 105% rather than 80% - our debt interest payments would be much higher. Yet we were able to cope perfectly well with such a burden at the time despite the fact that interest rates were much higher.
One wonders what tragedy forced them to flee their country.
Greater opportunity abroad - and that's Scotland's tragedy - not mine.
So you are saying that after 300 years in the Union, in the 21st century, the best opportunities for aspirational and talented Scots lie in leaving Scotland?
Glad to see you are now backing the Independence movement. That's what we've been saying all along.
"Stodge, Andy Cooke, David Herdson, myself and a few other PBers are members of www.alternatehistory.com/discussion/ where such stories are told."
Interesting. My e-book, A Ever Rolling Stream published a few months back by Wild Wolf, and available from Amazon, looked at the events a hundred years after the Cuban Missile Crisis turned nasty. I envisaged a different world in 2062 but people's character remained the same.
I'll have a look at that website, if I may. Always interesting to see others' views and we know there's never a correct view.
A gain is only a gain once realised. That is an important concept with all CGT law, if we change that for property should we change that for all other CGT related assets? Make people sell their businesses prematurely because they've got a tax bill for having developed something they weren't ready to sell yet?
Its only real once its sold because then the money exists to pay for it.
Plus how do we get all these valuations? Income tax on income works because we know what the income is. Capital gains tax on capital gains works because we know what the capital gain is. Should we hire an army of bureaucrats to inspect everyone's house every year to work out what this years capital gain is and send a bill? Same for privately own limited companies?
Taxes on land are among of the oldest established tax bases in the country, dating back at least into the 17th century. There would be no new principle involved in, say, increasing the number of, and the range of, council tax bands. Nor would there be any new principle in taxing property at x% of its registered value.
There's a lot of Red Herringry in your post. The difference between property and items assessed for CGT is that you get a benefit from your property before realising any capital gains on sale, which is presumably why an individual's primary property is exempt from CGT (which itself demonstrates an established view that it's not comparable).
As for valuation, transaction sales are recorded by the government. One method would be to use any actual price paid for the first five years after a sale and then uprate in line with local prices thereafter, with a provision for homeowners to challenge as they can at present over Council Tax banding.
As you say, we already have Council Tax.
If I have a property then I get the benefit of my property yes, which is why I paid for it from taxed income and why I paid stamp duty and why I pay all my other taxes. What I do not get a single penny of benefit from is some non-existent artificial uprating of capital gains. That only arrives once the property is sold, in which case it is then taxed according to our existing laws.
Capital gains is a fiction until it is sold, yet your tax would be real - where do you propose people find the money to pay for this fictional gain prior to any sale happening?
I wouldn't support an increase in the overall national tax burden. Increases in one place should be offset by reductions elsewhere.
Ref Council Tax, the most valuable properties in the country are levied only three times as much as the cheapest, which is an absurdly disproportionate system.
According to Labour luvvie fronted Time Team, HMG war-gamed a German invasion after the war. [Health warning: this is from memory and may be unreliable.] The starting point was the RAF had been destroyed and the North Sea heavily mined by the Germans to keep the Home Fleet in Scapa Flow. They concluded that after a few days, the Germans would have been cut off, since once the Royal Navy had got through the mines, battleships versus invasion barges is not a fair fight, and the British Army (back home since Dunkirk) would have turned back the Germans somewhere between Bristol and Liverpool.
Tbh I'm surprised the telly historians haven't looked into this. It seems an obvious subject for a documentary series. (Unless there's been one and I missed it.)
It was a joint UK/German effort, and saw the Germans being utterly trounced.
All in all it seems a reasonable conclusion; if they had really wanted to invade, they should have built proper landing craft instead of the bastardised Rhine barges.
As someone mentioned below, various alternative histories have been written where Sealion went ahead, for instance 'Invasion' by Kevin Macksey. ''The Last Ditch; by David Lampe features some of Germany's plans, and our own to defeat them.
The paucity of German plans could be seen by the arguments about Sealion between the German Army and the Kriegsmarine: the ormer wanted a massively wide front along the south coast, whilst the latter said they could only provide a relatively small bridgehead.
There are a number of books and board wargame simulations about this, e.g. http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Seelowe-SPI-Wargames-Operation-Sealion-WW2-German-Invasion-UNPRESSED-NEW-/181638753934 is quite a good one. The general consensus is that Sea Lion would only have worked with total German air dominance, which in principle could have held off the Royal Navy while substantial forces got across. There isn't any doubt that the German army at that point would have won if they'd been able to get a large chunk of their available forces ashore AND supplied, but without air dominance (and in the absence of sufficient naval force as a substitute), that wouldn't have happened.
"The point is though that the very high debt burden of those years was bearable - regardless of why it had been incurred.Macmillan did not make reducing Debt as a % of GDP a key plank of Macroeconomic policy nor did he seek to implore the British people not to pass the burden on to later generations. Had he adopted the Osborne neoliberal view and pursued austerity he would not have triumphed at the 1959 election."
How much do we currently fork out on debt interest? How much more can we afford? At what point does the debt burden become unbearable? I would argue that we are rapidly approaching that point, you may disagree. What is certain is that continually taking on more debt will reach the point at which it is unbearable and then we will have to introduce real austerity and not the trimming around the edges we have seen so far. This is not, or at least should not be, a matter of party politics.
Worth pointing out that private debt was far lower in the 1950s than it is now. Also that the national debt, while high, was consistently falling as a proportion of GDP even while the government ran deficits.
Whilst that is true, it is already clear that the Debt/GDP ratio will peak well below the levels of the 1950s before turning downwards.
Although not if you take the total national debt burden - that of individuals, corporations and the state collectively.
I understand that , but surely it is a reason for discouraging personal/corporate debt rather than simply relying curbing the debt of the Government sector. Far from doing so the government has actively been encouraging an increase in personal debt -doubtless because only sustained consumer debt and dissaving is keeping the economy afloat and out of recession. Very little sign of a sensible rebalancing of the economy there at all. I wonder whether Osborne will still be at the Treasury when the chickens come home to roost?
According to Labour luvvie fronted Time Team, HMG war-gamed a German invasion after the war. [Health warning: this is from memory and may be unreliable.] The starting point was the RAF had been destroyed and the North Sea heavily mined by the Germans to keep the Home Fleet in Scapa Flow. They concluded that after a few days, the Germans would have been cut off, since once the Royal Navy had got through the mines, battleships versus invasion barges is not a fair fight, and the British Army (back home since Dunkirk) would have turned back the Germans somewhere between Bristol and Liverpool.
Tbh I'm surprised the telly historians haven't looked into this. It seems an obvious subject for a documentary series. (Unless there's been one and I missed it.)
Stodge, Andy Cooke, David Herdson, myself and a few other PBers are members of www.alternatehistory.com/discussion/ where such stories are told. It's been mentioned a few times on here but newer members of this site might enjoy the stroll across there.
Some of the stories have made it to book format and a series along the lines you describe can only be a matter of time.
On which subject, that's an excellent prompt for me to vacate this board for today and do some other writing.
"Stodge, Andy Cooke, David Herdson, myself and a few other PBers are members of www.alternatehistory.com/discussion/ where such stories are told."
Interesting. My e-book, A Ever Rolling Stream published a few months back by Wild Wolf, and available from Amazon, looked at the events a hundred years after the Cuban Missile Crisis turned nasty. I envisaged a different world in 2062 but people's character remained the same.
I'll have a look at that website, if I may. Always interesting to see others' views and we know there's never a correct view.
Speaking of history - I've just got my hands on the BBC Radio version of This Sceptred Isle, if you missed it - well worth getting a copy. The book is excellent, but the audio is perfect bite sized stuff for the car etc.
One wonders what tragedy forced them to flee their country.
Greater opportunity abroad - and that's Scotland's tragedy - not mine.
So you are saying that after 300 years in the Union, in the 21st century, the best opportunities for aspirational and talented Scots lie in leaving Scotland?
Glad to see you are now backing the Independence movement. That's what we've been saying all along.
Or 17 years after devolution the best opportunities for talent Scots lie after leaving Scotland.
I wouldn't support an increase in the overall national tax burden. Increases in one place should be offset by reductions elsewhere.
Ref Council Tax, the most valuable properties in the country are levied only three times as much as the cheapest, which is an absurdly disproportionate system.
Why is it disproportionate? Do the valuable properties get their bins collected three times as often? Do the children who live their get three times as much spent on their schooling? Do the people living there have three times the ability to pay?
Everyone here seems remarkably interested in balancing the books, until it comes to their own affairs...
That's always going to be the situation when lunatics believe that we can maintain current spending levels or even - insanely - spend more. And always using someone else's money.
Comments
I'm not that keen on using stamp duty in the way you suggest. That would hit people harder who buy or sell more often. It's probably been pushed up too high already. By contrast, current council tax rates are trivial for higher-value properties and have considerable scope for increase. I'd support some rebalancing there.
Re those who rent, you could have the tax based either way. Although those renting don't benefit financially from the property, they do benefit (or suffer) from the fact of it i.e. they get to live in a spacious property in a pleasant location / slum in a hellhole (delete as appropriate). On the other hand, if the owner has to pay, then that will have a knock-on effect on the rent, so the occupier will pay either way.
Tbh I'm surprised the telly historians haven't looked into this. It seems an obvious subject for a documentary series. (Unless there's been one and I missed it.)
Debt then fell ie was improving.
Now compare that to the debt trend of the last decade and ask what we've got to show for all that extra borrowing.
It might be easy to tax but there is no general correlation between the value of a piece of property and the income of its owner. Suppose a person buys a house and lives in it for twenty odd years, the value of the house may have increased by a great deal, possibly several hundred percent, but the person's income may not, indeed probably will not have increased by anything like that amount, indeed it may actually have gone down. For example when I retired my income dropped by about 50%, the value of my house which I bought in 1991, did not go down.
It will be a brave politician who campaigns in the idea that someone must be cast into debt or forced to sell their home and move, with all the resultant costs and social upheaval, in order to pay taxes.
The issue of people who live in rented accommodation has already been mentioned.
I got married in Lindsey Park Baptist Church, for example.
You could make the same argument about not increasing any tax on the retired. In any case, circumstance such as infirmity often forces the retired out of their homes. No-one has an inalienable right to property.
That said, where there is a big change, a sensible government will provide transitional arrangements.
And generally people don't have a right to live in a big house in a nice area if they can't afford it.
This pandering to people who have made huge capital gains through property ownership (and I have made them as well) baffles me.
It is because it is counter to "common sense" (which is wrong) that the case must be made.
Since 1979, Britain has run a budget deficit every year apart from two when John Major was Chancellor, and four years under Gordon Brown.
Does it not strike you as odd that the deficit hawks care only about Labour deficits and not Conservative ones, despite Labour having the better record on their chosen criterion?
The proper way of looking at things is to consider government debt as a percentage of GDP:
http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/datasets-and-tables/data-selector.html?cdid=HF6X&dataset=pusf&table-id=PSA1
1975 55.8
1976 56.5
1977 54.8
1978 50.8
1979 49.0
1980 45.0
1981 45.6
1982 45.3
1983 43.9
1984 43.6
1985 44.3
1986 41.7
1987 40.1
1988 35.6
1989 29.3
1990 26.2
1991 24.2
1992 25.2
1993 29.0
1994 33.9
1995 37.5
1996 39.2
1997 39.9
1998 39.3
1999 37.5
2000 34.6
2001 30.1
2002 29.3
2003 30.3
2004 31.7
2005 34.3
2006 35.4
2007 36.0
2008 36.7
2009 49.0
2010 62.0
2011 68.1
2012 72.3
2013 76.7
2014 79.1
2015 80.4
Note that there was no increase in government debt percentage because of the 1980 recession, an increase in government debt percentage of about 15% because of the 1990 recession and an increase in government debt percentage of over 40% because of the 2008 recession.
Indicative of a country now living well beyond its means.
'But when Harold Macmillan informed the country in 1957 that it 'had never had it so good'
the Debt /GDP ratio was 105%. Despite that he did not pursue a policy of Austerity - which had been abandoned five years earlier when the same ratio was well in excess of 200%. On that basis , the figures of recent years appear relatively benign.'
'Debt was run up to over 200% to fight two world wars not to buy imported consumer tat and take foreign holidays.
Debt then fell ie was improving.
Now compare that to the debt trend of the last decade and ask what we've got to show for all that extra borrowing.'
The point is though that the very high debt burden of those years was bearable - regardless of why it had been incurred.Macmillan did not make reducing Debt as a % of GDP a key plank of Macroeconomic policy nor did he seek to implore the British people not to pass the burden on to later generations. Had he adopted the Osborne neoliberal view and pursued austerity he would not have triumphed at the 1959 election.
CGT doesn't apply when you sell your own home, it certainly could be argued that exemption should be removed. I'm not so sure, but still that applies only on sales. There is no gain before a sale occurs.
As for whether they "can't afford it", someone who has worked and paid for their mortgage before they retired could afford it and has already paid for it. They paid their dues already. They paid tax when they earned their income and any relevant taxes when they paid for their property - if you reduce taxes on income and start taxing property are you planning to repay the historical income taxes they've already paid in order to have a mortgage-free property?
http://www.heraldscotland.com/mobile/comment/herald-view/mps-actions-appear-impossible-to-defend.126949190
On a related note, interesting to see that it is the Daily Telegraph and the Independent who still seem to want to cling to this story were the two papers that persisted with the Ruth Davidson "burly men" story for most of the election day, even though the story had been completely debunked. The MSM should hold Ruth to account on this - did she make it up, rely on 3rd party account without checking etc - unanswered questions.
But if there is a real problem here, then why didn't academies help? Is the problem with teaching rather than the bureaucratic organisation of schools that has obsessed Labour and Conservative ministers alike?
Politics -- there is a hidden story there if you read the article, which shows why I describe George Osborne as heir-to-Brown. Osborne, like Brown, is tempted to meddle in other departments' business. There is a perfectly serviceable SoS for Education and another for Skills, but like Gordon, George wants to run the whole show.
"The only mistake the voters made the other week was by electing 10 of them."
I am glad to say that only 8 Lib Dems were elected-though it looks as if Question Time will still give them far more air time than the SNP.
Still "exposure" does not always help, as Carmichael can testify.
I got married in Lindsey Park Baptist Church, for example. That's because who performs the marriage service is a means of practicality (which choice of religion or secular depending upon your choice) while the state of being married and its legal effects is what the government is involved in. It would be silly to require two services in order to get to the same status, it is more effective to let people chose how they conduct the service.
The problem in this debate sometimes is people confusing the marriage service or wedding with marriage, as in the state of being married.
"The point is though that the very high debt burden of those years was bearable - regardless of why it had been incurred.Macmillan did not make reducing Debt as a % of GDP a key plank of Macroeconomic policy nor did he seek to implore the British people not to pass the burden on to later generations. Had he adopted the Osborne neoliberal view and pursued austerity he would not have triumphed at the 1959 election."
How much do we currently fork out on debt interest? How much more can we afford? At what point does the debt burden become unbearable? I would argue that we are rapidly approaching that point, you may disagree. What is certain is that continually taking on more debt will reach the point at which it is unbearable and then we will have to introduce real austerity and not the trimming around the edges we have seen so far. This is not, or at least should not be, a matter of party politics.
It is more affordable for the individual to get taxed when you earn it, it is also quicker for the government and more effective for the government to tax income at source than to delay taxation until later on.
We're now heading the opposite direction. The Baby Boomers are approaching retirement and not joining the workforce. It would be utterly crazy to not act accordingly, we need to cut our cloth to what we can afford.
What matters with both is what you can do with it. There is a reason why a million-pound property has its price: its desirability. Either it is in a sought-after location or it offers the occupier a luxurious living space, or some combination of both. These are very definite benefits.
Think of it the other way round. Suppose someone buys a three-bed semi in a predominantly C2 neighbourhood, where most households have jobs and where a sense of community exists. Over the course of the next twenty years, demographic change causes the neighbourhood to go downhill and local house prices with it. The community breaks down, crime increases, vacant property numbers increase, shops close and so on. Compared to what that person moved into, have they not suffered a loss?
"..... it makes my blood boil when they send the likes of Ashdown around the TV studios lecturing us on moral rectitude."
It did make me laugh when he came a cropper over the exit poll-naturally he didn't really eat his hat :-)
I have also been disgusted with his attempts to imply that any "break up" of the UK could in some way be as dangerous as the break up of Yugoslavia.
A gain is only a gain once realised. That is an important concept with all CGT law, if we change that for property should we change that for all other CGT related assets? Make people sell their businesses prematurely because they've got a tax bill for having developed something they weren't ready to sell yet?
Its only real once its sold because then the money exists to pay for it.
Plus how do we get all these valuations? Income tax on income works because we know what the income is. Capital gains tax on capital gains works because we know what the capital gain is. Should we hire an army of bureaucrats to inspect everyone's house every year to work out what this years capital gain is and send a bill? Same for privately own limited companies?
Some of the stories have made it to book format and a series along the lines you describe can only be a matter of time.
"You vowed to emigrate in the event of a tragic No vote in the referendum. Sadly your word is worthless.
Another serial liar , do you never have misgivings about your lying.
Perhaps it was simply "lost in translation". *cough*
In the 50's we had growing potential to grow as well. The arrival of baby boomers to the workforce meant there were more people working and able to take a smaller share each of the debts of the past. The retirement of the boomers now means the opposite is the case, we have not just the debt of the past but also higher costs associated with the retired. And fewer working people to pay for those costs.
The plain truth is that people near retiring had a far better education that do most pupils today. Teaching was still valued as a vocation and not just a job and had not been messed around with by theoretical, academic educationalists.
Schools had the tools to keep discipline, teachers had a good command of their subject and were good communicators and there was an aspiration for all pupils to achieve their best - whatever their ability.
Today there is so much liberal thinking that local authorities believe that an average mark is good enough - might be for the UK but not if you are competing for your job against global competition.
We can only start to get out of this trough if rigid educational and teaching standards are taken away from local authorities (who mostly have proved their lack of capability and competence) and are set by Westminster.
There's a lot of Red Herringry in your post. The difference between property and items assessed for CGT is that you get a benefit from your property before realising any capital gains on sale, which is presumably why an individual's primary property is exempt from CGT (which itself demonstrates an established view that it's not comparable).
As for valuation, transaction sales are recorded by the government. One method would be to use any actual price paid for the first five years after a sale and then uprate in line with local prices thereafter, with a provision for homeowners to challenge as they can at present over Council Tax banding.
But that is utterly irrelevant when we don't have 1950's demographics. Which you're repeatedly ignoring.
If you have been lucky or astute enough to be in such a position then the benefit comes from the non-financial benefits that have driven the prices up in the first place.
If I have a property then I get the benefit of my property yes, which is why I paid for it from taxed income and why I paid stamp duty and why I pay all my other taxes. What I do not get a single penny of benefit from is some non-existent artificial uprating of capital gains. That only arrives once the property is sold, in which case it is then taxed according to our existing laws.
Capital gains is a fiction until it is sold, yet your tax would be real - where do you propose people find the money to pay for this fictional gain prior to any sale happening?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Sea_Lion_(wargame)
It was a joint UK/German effort, and saw the Germans being utterly trounced.
All in all it seems a reasonable conclusion; if they had really wanted to invade, they should have built proper landing craft instead of the bastardised Rhine barges.
And the following has more info:
http://mr-home.staff.shef.ac.uk/hobbies/seelowe.txt
As someone mentioned below, various alternative histories have been written where Sealion went ahead, for instance 'Invasion' by Kevin Macksey. ''The Last Ditch; by David Lampe features some of Germany's plans, and our own to defeat them.
The paucity of German plans could be seen by the arguments about Sealion between the German Army and the Kriegsmarine: the ormer wanted a massively wide front along the south coast, whilst the latter said they could only provide a relatively small bridgehead.
Glad to see you are now backing the Independence movement. That's what we've been saying all along.
"Stodge, Andy Cooke, David Herdson, myself and a few other PBers are members of www.alternatehistory.com/discussion/ where such stories are told."
Interesting. My e-book, A Ever Rolling Stream published a few months back by Wild Wolf, and available from Amazon, looked at the events a hundred years after the Cuban Missile Crisis turned nasty. I envisaged a different world in 2062 but people's character remained the same.
I'll have a look at that website, if I may. Always interesting to see others' views and we know there's never a correct view.
Ref Council Tax, the most valuable properties in the country are levied only three times as much as the cheapest, which is an absurdly disproportionate system.
is quite a good one. The general consensus is that Sea Lion would only have worked with total German air dominance, which in principle could have held off the Royal Navy while substantial forces got across. There isn't any doubt that the German army at that point would have won if they'd been able to get a large chunk of their available forces ashore AND supplied, but without air dominance (and in the absence of sufficient naval force as a substitute), that wouldn't have happened.
Have a good Bank Holiday Saturday, all.