[Closed] Should I forgive the Conservatives?

Why not, they gave you a referendum so you could kick the motherland in the teeth, but thankfully the majority of you saw sense 😉

As one of the oldest colony you should be thankful that your destiny is changing ... 😆

You should be an independent country by the time of first UK President and the last King.

I say forget the past and forgive.

Simply judge them on their policies and how nice Dave appears to be.

I say fight them to the grave!

I say do whatever you can to make sure ed balls doesn't get his hands on the nations finances

Forgive the Tories?

Possibly. But never, ever forget.

I'll forgive them shortly I've seen all their heads paraded through the streets, on spikes

no.

</thread> 😆

No

They have a long history of not being very nice

They have a long history of behaving exactly like Tories. Except for about three decades after the War when they behaved a bit like socialists, before reverting back to being proper Tories again.

A sufficient amount of people voting Conservative gets you a Tory government, no one need be in any doubt about that - they don't try to hide what they are. If you don't like that then blame the people who vote them.

I don't blame the Conservatives for behaving like I would expect them to behave.

In contrast I do blame the Labour Party and I have no intention of forgiving them, not least because they are completely unrepentant.

In contrast I do blame the Labour Party and I have no intention of forgiving them, not least because they are completely unrepentant.

Sadly, this.

Iraq, the love affair with Thatcherism, endless spin, doublespeak spouting MPs who don't even bother to hide their cynicism (Harriet Harman) and their complete lack of will to connect with their core voters killed any prospect of me voting for them.

I question their relevance and commitment.

I'm Scottish too, what's a Tory?

Forgive the Tories?

Possibly. But never, ever forget.

+1

one of the problems of the last parliament was that Labour for every £1 collected in income tax, they borrowed another and then spend £2.

Their new spending plans have £15B of additional taxes and another £30B of spending - the 2:1 ratio is predictably familiar and still unsustainable.

With this kind of thinking (see the tweet and Channel4 fact check response) it's not too hard to see what kind of problems the country will most likely be facing in 18 months time:

http://order-order.com/2015/03/24/rachel-reeves-finally-admits-bedroom-tax-is-not-a-tax/

surroundedbyhills - Member
I'm Scottish too, what's a Tory?

Plenty of them in scotland.

and their complete lack of will to connect with their core voters killed any prospect of me voting for them.

I think the mistake is to think that the Labour Party has any interest in the working classes. All parties core voter's are now the middle classes, no one cares about or bothers with anything else. Tony Blair was right about one thing, elections are fought and won on the middle ground.

Their new spending plans have £15B of additional taxes and another £30B of spending - the 2:1 ratio is predictably familiar and still unsustainable.

There are various figures bandied around to quantify the loss to the exchequer from tax avoidance. The Guardian reckon £35bn a year, the New Statesman say £69.9bn. To put that into perspective, £35bn a year is roughly our annual defence budget.

If the various corporates and wealthy individuals who can afford to exploit the loopholes in our tax system actually coughed up then we'd have more money collected to actually pay for things...like, you know, the NHS, transport, schools, potholes and maybe even some cycle routes?

...and back in the real world how do you suggest funding the gap?

Rachel Reeves is an odd one. Very well educated (PPE Oxford and MSC at LSE), has actually worked (Bank of England and in NY) and yet (like Balls) feels compelled to pretend that none of this actually happened, preferring the BS of party politics. God help the BoE if their economists cant understand what a tax is!

I wonder when she goes home, if she bangs her head against a brick wall saying, why do I let myself get drawn into such BS???? why am I wasting such a good education. The bloody chancellor is a historian FFS! why not me????? 😉

one of the problems of the last parliament was that Labour for every £1 collected in income tax, they borrowed another and then spend £2.

Not sure where you got these figures from, please quote sources.

From the ONS, tax recipts ( all tax) in 2009/10 was 522.4bn, expenditure 671.6 bn
For comparison Tax recipts 2013/4 573.5 bn, expenditure 719.9 bn

The Guardian reckon £35bn a year,

I imagine that this is the HMRC figure for the tax gap of £34 bn, of which £3.1 bn is down to avoidance. £10 bn is evasion, £5 bn is crime, £7 billion is error, £4 bn is loss due to insolvency etc and £4.5 bn is down to "honest" tax disputes.

If the various corporates and wealthy individuals who can afford to exploit the loopholes in our tax system actually coughed up then we'd have more money collected to actually pay for things"

What, like the top 1% now paying 30% of all tax and the top 14% of earners now paying 62% of tax?

Top earners are paying substantially more now in real terms than they ever did under Labour...

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/personalfinance/tax/10368203/Top-earners-to-pay-third-of-all-income-tax-despite-rate-cut.html

And top earners are paying around 58% of income in tax. How many people are motivated to work harder or create businesses when they will have to give up 60% of what they earn in tax?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-26327114

What do you need to forgive them for? They haven't done anything they didn't say they would,so forgive them and vote for them if you fancy. Still the adage about Pandas and Embra zoo and tory MP's will need changing come May I suspect.

But income tax is not the only tax burden on individuals, less than 26% of govt. revenue is from income tax.
If you include all taxes and duties, in particular VAT and fuel duties, the poorest 10% of the country pay 43% of their income in taxes, the richest 35%.
http://www.theguardian.com/money/2014/jun/16/british-public-wrong-rich-poor-tax-research

..and back in the real world how do you suggest funding the gap?

Don't understand the point you're making here.

But income tax is not the only tax burden on individuals, less than 26% of govt. revenue is from income tax.
If you include all taxes and duties, in particular VAT and fuel duties, the poorest 10% of the country pay 43% of their income in taxes, the richest 35%.

This. It's not helping wealth inequality one bit. Sadly, the rich can afford a better lobby group.

What do you need to forgive them for? They haven't done anything they didn't say they would

Well.. off the top of my head there the top down reorganisation of the NHS that Dave specifically stated they wouldn't be doing, that they then did. And George Osbourne promising they wouldn't be raising VAT, which was almost the first thing he did on getting the keys to number 11.

I'm sure it wouldn't be too hard to come up with plenty more examples

Bedroom tax, stoking hatred towards the poor, disabled and unemployed. Stoking more hatred, IDS, Universal benefits / tax credit fiasco (ongoing), Terresa May, etc

The list is pretty long....

[img] [/img]

less than 26% of govt. revenue is from income tax.

They have a long history of not being very nice

Good, I wouldnt want political parties to be nice, if they were nice you would like them and then they would really take the pish !!

[img] [/img]

I suspect the increasing fraction of Tax collected from the top 1% has a lot more to do with rising inequality than it does with draconian measures coming from government.

If they domiciled elsewhere for tax purposes the government would lose a big chunk of tax.

I doubt they would as they'd have to live somewhere else and if you're rich, London is a very nice place to live.

I suspect the increasing fraction of Tax collected from the top 1% has a lot more to do with rising inequality than it does with draconian measures coming from government.

Spooky, I was about to post an almost identical point

What do you need to forgive them for? They haven't done anything they didn't say they would,

Relaxed austerity measures?

I suspect the increasing fraction of Tax collected from the top 1% has a lot more to do with rising inequality than it does with draconian measures coming from government.

To OP's point, I thought the Conservatives where anonymous in Scotland so how can they have been nasty ? Obviously you have all those nasty nuclear missiles up there but that's common policy between Labour, Lib Dem and Conservative and the local population is quite keen on the employment too (plus small issue that the subs are at sea most of the time so the nukes are far away). You have your own parliament to sort your own affairs and the rest of the UK (England really) makes a big net contribution to Scotland's finances. London BTW pays out £34bn more in taxes pa than is spent locally.

Anyway if you want to penalise the Tories you should vote Labour and not SNP for Westminster.

I can't forgive the Tories.
Overrated anyway, forgiveness.

Still not fully processed the scale of Blair's betrayal, it's just beyond comprehension.
I can't even think of the whole thing all at once, I have to break it down into individual, small bouts of disgust.

Relaxed austerity measures?

Just as well they did do a U turn otherwise the recovery would have been even slower. Still, we lost 2 years growth thanks to Gideons' stupidity with his initial austerity, so I can hold that against him.

Still not fully processed the scale of Blair's betrayal, it's just beyond comprehention.

You're so incensed you've forgotten how to spell!

Austerity = living within your means. People don't seem to able to grasp the extent we where outspending our earnings under Labour. It's quite scary how much people believe that was normal and to cut spending from those levels is austerity.

I know. 😀

Busted edit, innit?

How many people are motivated to work harder or create businesses when they will have to give up 60% of what they earn in tax?

I just don't get this argument at all. If I was on £50k a year, had the opportunity to go for a £150k a year job, because I'd 'only' get an extra £40k a year in my pocket, would I say no? Would I hell. You still get more money - just not all of it.

I used to work with a bloke who didn't bother playing the Lottery any more because £3m wasn't worth bothering with 🙄

Austerity = living within your means

Not quite that simple, really. Austerity means making cuts to balance the budget rather than creating and then banking on future growth. Both can work (in government and business) but they have different consequences.

And of course you knew that, cos you're not stupid - you're just being disingenuous to back up your pre-existing beliefs. As most people do, so don't take that as an insult.

NO!

Overrated anyway, forgiveness.

It also requires the application of pre-paid santimony 😆

People don't seem to able to grasp the extent we where outspending our earnings under Labour.

Who is we ?
poor use of where/were there Jambers 😆

Anyway - to answer the OP - I'd forgive the Tories if they stopped being Tories. I'm compassionate like that.

Google income and substitution effects then mol....

The explanation in the Mirlees Report is well worth reading as this relates these effects to (re)distribution too. compared with a lot of economics, tax design is actually quite interesting especially the behavioural aspects

Some will not like his explanation of how a flat rate tax can be progressive but never mind - teach a man to fish....

People don't seem to able to grasp the extent we where outspending our earnings under Labour. It's quite scary how much people believe that was normal and to cut spending from those levels is austerity.

[url= http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/6975536.stm ]Osbourne agreeing to match Labour spending plans pre crash[/url]

Nice attempt to re write history

The economy collapse caused the mess and no one foresaw it. Most folks think that to have balanced the books would have done more harm than good, hence the slow cut [ and even the tories doing it slower than they said they would] rather than a slash and burn approach to balance the books.

Some still use it as a stick,for entirely political motives, to beat labour

Austerity = living within your means

is it living within your means to have a mortgage or is it reckless borrowing to live outside ones means?

Google income and substitution effects then mol

I have.. still not sure what you're getting at though.

ernie_lynch - Member

I don't blame the Conservatives for behaving like I would expect them to behave.

I edited the post with the link - these effects explain how people react/what happens when you change the tax rate. How they balance and how they need to be taken into account when thinking about redistribution of income and tax design. joking apart, it is actually very interesting as is working out the optimum marginal rate of tax. (its not 50% BTW)

Hmm.. but does it take into account people's perception of the value for money they get from taxation?

Austerity was designed to address other things.

Austerity [b]in itself[/b] is unlikely to increase growth, why? Because it involves cutting spending and/or raising taxes both of which are withdrawals from the economy. They both reduce aggregate demand.

No (at least not directly, yes indirectly) they relate to the supply of labour and the change in the tax rate.

just5minutes - Member

What, like the top 1% now paying 30% of all tax and the top 14% of earners now paying 62% of tax?

Top earners are paying substantially more now in real terms than they ever did under Labour...

https://fullfact.org/factchecks/income_tax_are_the_top_1_really_paying_more-29302

According to this- while the top 1% are paying more tax, their actual proportion of tax is unchanged since the 1980s. In other words, if correct, the increase in tax they pay is because they're richer, not because they're paying proportionally more tax.

The top 1% pay 30% of income tax, but the bottom 50% pay 10%. The top 1% have average earnings of £248,000. The bottom 50% have average earnings of, I think, about £17000. (*) So the top 1% pays proportionally 3 times more income tax on average while earning 14.5 times more on average

(* I've little confidence in this number. So let's run it again with a dependable number. The 5th percentile income is about £22000. The average of the bottom 50% can only be lower than this, but it gives you 11 times instead of 14.5. The actual figure may well be worse than 14.5; it can't be better than 11)

Anyone see any issues with these numbers? Strikes me as a much more reasonable way to look at this than "1% pays 30%" which ignores actual incomes and take-homes.

Dont you be bringing facts into this NW remember the rich are what we depend on as they are admirable creators of wealth and if we try to tax them these noble folk will just leave and/or avoid tax 😕

Remember unequal income distributions are natural and normal

High rates of tax are both unfair [ they [pay so much already] and will get you less money

[i]I just don't get this argument at all. If I was on £50k a year, had the opportunity to go for a £150k a year job, because I'd 'only' get an extra £40k a year in my pocket, would I say no? Would I hell. You still get more money - just not all of it.[/i]

Not quite as simple as that. No one is going to offer you three times more to do the same job, you would need to be taking on potentially: more responsibility/more stress/more hours/more grief. Some would say they'd rather have a considerably easier life on £40k less. (Ask Junky!)

NW - don't forget that they are not the same people!

How many people are motivated to work harder or create businesses when they will have to give up 60% of what they earn in tax?

Apparently, to get the wealthy to work more, you have to give them more, and to get the poor to work more, you have to give them less.

That is the Tory way. The tories and their voters are an affront to Human decency.

Watching IDS on Andrew Marr re-enforced my hatred of all things Conservative. Sometimes watching Davieboys matey bonhomie its possible to forget just what a bunch of heartless shitehawks the majority of them are.

Their heartlessness is neatly summed up by the Bedroom Tax in three easy steps
1. Penalise social housing tenants for living in houses larger than they need when no smaller houses are available.
2.Introduce a policy that causes hardship and anxiety for hundreds of thousands of people that saves virtually no money
3. Don't build any new social housing

A fabulous wheeze I'm sure you will agree, no doubt the further £12bn in welfare cuts will involve some more jolly japes. Although like the loveable joker he is IDS wasn't willing to spoil the joke by telling us what his actual plans were

From the ONS

•Before taxes and benefits the richest fifth of households had an average income of £81,300 in 2012/13, almost 15 times greater than the poorest fifth who had an average income of £5,500.

•Overall, taxes and benefits lead to income being shared more equally between households. After all taxes and benefits are taken into account the ratio between the average incomes of the top and the bottom fifth of households (£59,900 and £15,600 per year respectively) is reduced to four-to-one.

•Fifty-two per cent of households received more in benefits (including in-kind benefits such as education) than they paid in taxes in 2012/13. This is equivalent to 13.8 million households.

•The average disposable income in 2012/13 was unchanged from 2011/12, but it remains lower than at the start of the economic downturn, with equivalised disposable income falling by £1,200 since 2007/08 in real terms. The fall in income has been largest for the richest fifth of households (5.2%). In contrast, after accounting for inflation and household composition, the average income for the poorest fifth has grown over this period (3.5%).

•There was a slight increase in income inequality between 2011/12 and 2012/13, based on some inequality measures. Despite this, income inequality is broadly unchanged from other recent years.

edit: the bedroom what?

I'm intrugued to find out where Jeremy Hunt thinks he's going to find more than £22bn in efficiency savings in the NHS...

edit: the bedroom what?

[img] [/img]

edit: the bedroom what?

You can call it the "abolition of spare room subsidy" if you like.

The point still stands unchallenged

No wonder the SNP have such an easy time of things, if folk fall for that! Nice new mirror BTW!

THM - what are your thoughts on the living wage?

Just increased all my interns up to it, why?

I'm just interested to know what you think of the living wage.

richmtb - as well as the thing they love more than anything - punishing the poor for being poor, theres also the delightful wheeze of punishing the disabled for being disabled. Another ideologically driven piece of nonsense that has caused untold misery to some of the most disadvantaged people in society. It was meant to save billions. Its actually saved the some total of * all.

Mrs Binners works with disabled charities, and its absolutely scandalous what the Tories have done. The whole ATOS evaluation thing was expressly designed to get genuinely disabled and sick people off benefits, with not a care as to what impact that would have on their lives! While the whole process has been a massive farce, Its had a massively detrimental effect on some of the most vulnerable member s of our society, who are being forced to jump through increasing numbers of hoops just to live.

I *ing loath IDS and his (typically Tory) lofty, uncaring arrogance. A truly vile human being!

[quote=PJM1974 ]

..and back in the real world how do you suggest funding the gap?

I presumed you were suggesting funding the gap between income and expenditure by stopping people avoiding tax - apologies if that wasn't the case and your mention of tax avoidance was nothing to do with the post you quoted.

Depends on at what level it is set and the elasticity of demand and supply for labour. So need a little bit more info....

You cannot answer yes/no, like/dislike etc

[quote=binners said]The whole ATOS evaluation thing was designed to get genuinely disabled and sick people off benefits, with not a care as to what impact that would have on their lives!

The ATOS evaluation thing that New Labour introduced ?

[quote=Northwind ]The top 1% pay 30% of income tax, but the bottom 50% pay 10%. The top 1% have average earnings of £248,000. The bottom 50% have average earnings of, I think, about £17000. (*) So the top 1% pays proportionally 3 times more income tax on average while earning 14.5 times more on average

Well there are 50 times as many people in the bottom 50% as in the top 1%, so cumulatively the top 1% earn 0.3 times what the bottom 50% do, yet pay 3 times as much tax. Nothing wrong with that, but it shows that the point you seem to be trying to make is incorrect. If I've understood correctly the point you're trying to make - which may not be the case!

It seems that on the first day of electioneering, the tories have been a bit fast and loose with their claims, at least according to the IFS
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/david-camerons-claim-that-labour-would-raise-taxes-by-3000-is-not-sensible-says-the-ifs-10144367.html

But then, when has telling the truth ever been a priority for Mr. Shapps. Apparently when challenged on the figure of £3000 he admitted it was a guess " because Labour hadn't been specific about their plans'"!

Mr Shapps being a bit "over firm" again? I will not forgive him for his abuse of english for a start

Depends on at what level it is set and the elasticity of demand and supply for labour.

I'm not an economist, so you're going to have to explain that to me.

You would have more chance getting a factual answer from an alchemist than an economist.

Well based on MSP's, I wont bother. Other than repeating what I said - you cannot make a comment about the living wage without knowing other facts. But why do you ask?

well worth reading as this relates these effects to (re)distribution too. compared with a lot of economics, tax design is actually quite interesting especially the behavioural aspects

Interesting - possibly. Convincing - not so much. If economists could actually understand complicated non-linear systems they would have figured out how to ruin the country properly. Which they clearly haven't.

DrJ - Member
Interesting - possibly. Convincing - not so much

you decide, its one of the most authoritative studies on Uk tax published recently - your shout.

If economists could actually understand complicated non-linear systems they would have figured out how to ruin the country properly. Which they clearly haven't.

well that's a relief, why would you want them to ruin the country?

plenty of economists saw what was coming (including within the BoE) and many made lots of money as a result

The ATOS evaluation thing that New Labour introduced ?

It was a bad policy by nu labour, but the tories really turned the screw.