I really have difficulty working out what planet fox is on.
Sadly he is on our planet.
Back onto more-or-less topic. We've been here before of course. Back in the eighties, where a vicously right-wing govt got away with it because the 'Labour' movement was too timid and ineffective. What happened? Despite everything, Thatcher won three terms, yes three ****en terms (as did NuLab later on...) proof that you can be utter b'stards, and be re-elected despite that, or because you ARE utter b'stards, and large sections of the great british moronic X-factor electorate don't think you're being b'stard enough...
Attract business to this country by not requiring them to pay any tax? But if all the companies don't pay any tax, then who pays for the NHS, education, the benefits system?
The corporate tax take is responsible for approx 10% of the total tax take, the theory is by reducing it you encourage more companies to come here and this creates more employment. The tax these new employees pay far outweighs the corporate tax given up.
If you look the first half of the "Irish Miracle" they did very well out of such a strategy, unfortunately the second half was dependent upon a massive property bubble which exploded thus wiping out many of the gains.
Personally I am not convinced this is a great idea, as our problem seems to be generating jobs where the biggest unemployment is. A regional corporate tax holiday would therefore may a lot of sense in theory. However, I am not too sure how practical it would be to police.
The problems of the poor won't be solved by giving more money to the rich.
One man's "ahead" is another's "behind".
An "absolute" popularity scale would be more revealing. It might reveal that people still hate Labour, but they now hate the ConDems even more.
buzz-lightyear - Member
One man's "ahead" is another's "behind".An "absolute" popularity scale would be more revealing. It might reveal that people still hate Labour, but they now hate the ConDems even more.
IIRC that's the situation regarding the leaders in opinion polls, all on negative points but Milliband less negative than the other 1.5.
Can we not just do away with this democracy lark once and for all? Its clearly failed. If we're going to outsource - and it seems both parties think thats the way forward - can we not just outsource the running of the country to Tesco or someone?
At least, minus the idiot politicians, they'd sort the logistics out. And if looking at it from a purely business point of view, they'd surely put a stop to massive pointless vanity projects, aircraft carriers with no aircraft, and £20 billion computer systems that never work
Naive I know, but I had great hopes in the run up to the last election that between a combination of the expenses scandal and 3 unelectable parties, that the mould might just get broken and a new politics emerge from the ashes of the corrupt and flawed system that we have now. I needn't have bothered, it should have been plain that the old boy network would belch into action and maintain the status quo. How else can you explain the fiasco of the elctoral reform referendum? Nick Clegg basically floored the minor parties for the foreseeable future with that one, and with it any hope of real change.
