MegaSack DRAW - This year's winner is user - rgwb
We will be in touch
Teachers again to be tasked with fixing broken society....but don't worry a whopping £20 million is going to be used to train all 600 000 of us to stop mysogny. ...first lesson, spelling it ... misogyny misogyny misogyny...good saved .gov some cash already
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c9qednjzwv1o
Again… perhaps the Australians have it right with their social media ban for kids? What’s the point of teachers paying whack-a-mole with an increasing number of wannabe Andrew Tates if society isn’t prepared to cut them off from the source? Not a silver bullet though when they still get to see “piggy” grab ‘em by the pussy Trump acting out the dream on the TV news.
I definitely think the Australians have it right although it is going to take 10 years to see the evidence I suppose as children never exposed to it can be compared to those that have recently been living with it. Hope they have collected a lot of data on current population to compare over the years...
Last minute confused adjustment spineroo on the farm inheritance tax threshold?
Really? Why now?
Look, it's not as of these stupid tax ideas really touch the sides (300million of potential re-distribution over several years) - they're doing nothing in terms of revenue - random acts of taxation that make little sense in the grand scheme of things.
But.
A last minute out of nowhere watering down of a threshold on a flagship tax reform?
What the hell signal does this send out - sure it appeases some farmers/land owners but then why do it in the first place? Why make such a stink and cause a rod for your own back?
It proves yet again that having no economic plan and no understanding of what tax is for - can cause chaos if you build your taxation system from a broken model, tip-toeing along the wonky arc of black-holes v phoney cash grab.
Reeves sure is not going to hit any of her targets. There will be hard choices again and virtually zero growth.
The economic planning is awful here. You can't build as system reacting to angry farmers.
rone, surely the point of the inheritance tax on farms was to close the loophole that allowed greedy ****s like Clarkson so pass his wealth on to his offspring with no financial penalty? The lack of understanding on that point, and blatant mis-information from the National Farmers Union, meant that every man and his pig thought they were being shafted.
rone, surely the point of the inheritance tax on farms was to close the loophole that allowed greedy ****s like Clarkson so pass his wealth on to his offspring with no financial penalty? The lack of understanding on that point, and blatant mis-information from the National Farmers Union, meant that every man and his pig thought they were being shafted.
If that's the case why such a last minute watering down?
(Clarkson is primarily wealthy through broadcasting - let's be clear. )
The farm thing is secondary to being paid for a show. I think that goes unnoticed and sure he's got very clever accountants who realised that putting his money into this set-up was a win-win.
I'm deffo not against inheritance tax (not being a benefactor myself 😁) but not for the reasons expressed. We need inheritance tax because the people who benefit just own more and more stuff at the expense of everyone else.
The whole idea that they're being taxed twice is utter crap. Every movement on money outside inheritance gets constantly taxed. That argument needs demolishing. Pretending you get money and it only gets taxed once is utterly bonkers.
And on top of that these people benefit from doing nothing whilst assets increase in value so it absolutely has to be taxed.
What I'm saying is the Labour strategy was random - and the watering down at this stage proves it to be. The issue is here the farmers have won politically - they made the argument that they provide the nation's food. Labour didn't think through the debate which is why I assume they've slackened off.
As I've said time and time again there's no appetite for large tax rises. No government wants to go near it.
So pretending we can tax to get money is a busted flush anyway. The system needs rewiring from a 'spend first' - tax later perspective. Labour don't have the balls to tax the wealthy enough as proven here. So by there own 'rules' they will be short at the exchequer. The wealthy want it all ways - that's the battle.
It's a big fail.
We really needed a radical government.
Farmers say no.
Bond market says no .
OBR says no.
Fiscal rules say no .
Everyone apart from the people that need the money the most are stopping a weak government from doing anything remotely life-changing. It's a sham of a democracy, and in the process killing off Centrism as a limp wristed solution - which is a good but volatile thing to do.
Got to say Tim Stanley and Ash Sarker are absolutely models at understanding the state of current politics.
I agree with much of both of their perspectives.
It's quite obvious how farmers with collective power can dictate the economic terms to the government but the BMA are juvenile delinquents.
What I'm saying is the Labour strategy was random - and the watering down at this stage proves it to be
Yep, you can’t argue with that.
Agreed, it was a stupid pointless u turn. Unfortunately it seems to be the governments MO. They've already had the negative publicity, making changes now won't undo any of that. And the principle was fine, why should family businesses that produce food be any different to any other family business passed on through the family.
And Rone, you missed the point about Clarkson et al, yes they made their money through other means, investing in a farm as an asset was a good way to pass it on without incurring inheritance tax. The next generation weren't going to be farmers, they would just liquidate the asset later having avoided inheritance tax. Exac5ly the sort of wealth hoarding you don't like.
The economic planning is awful here. You can't build as system reacting to angry farmers.
Labour created the ‘angry farmer’ problem so they’ve had to reverse their bad policy.
A policy that showed the massive disconnect between career politicians and a farming industry they had no clue about.
But the ‘angry farmer’ problem, I would argue, was of their own making (you’ve just said that!). Had they come out and said they were after the millionaires that are investing in farms as a tax loophole and not after actual proper farmers, then it might have made a difference. Bad comms, and mis-truths by the NFU according to Richard Murphy (I can’t find the clip, but it’s on YouTube somewhere) left them in a pickle!
Oh, and I enjoyed that edition of Newsnight. I don’t often watch, or indeed listen, to Mr O’Connell as we have history, but that was very interesting and grownup.
And the principle was fine, why should family businesses that produce food be any different to any other family business passed on through the family.
Exactly, and it should have been sold as that in as much as why are farmers businesses getting special treatment, combined with the obvious wealthy playing the system side of it as well.
Either all businesses should be inheritance tax free or none at all
Labour have handled it as they seem to handle everything, without a ****ing clue.
Labour didn't create the angry farmer, they've been angry and vocal for years. They hated the EU, they moaned when subsidies were cut post Brexit, they don't like environmental protection etc. The bottom line is most family farms don't work financially without subsidies and special treatment. The food production capacity won't disappear, it'll be absorbed into bigger more commercially viable farms.
This U turn just helps cement farmers belief they are somehow special.
clarcksons farm is worth £12m (he bought it for 8m - as a tax dodge), the new cap is 2.5m? so he will be taxed when passing it on
(obviously the daily mail are out to save him from paying any tax)
this number seems a sensible compromise, but obviously should have been thought out long before rolling out
https://bsky.app/profile/danneidle.bsky.social/post/3manvi2b24k2i
Your occasional reminder that many farmers rent their farmland from families who have kept their land tax free for many, many generations. This uturn is helping landowners keep more of their wealth in the family than Labour had planned. Plenty of young farmers will now find it harder to buy land, because there is less pressure for rich landowners to sell off parcels of their land, and in addition small farms, and parts of small farms, that do go on the market will continue to be bought by people after a tax dodge (a five million pound estate is quite a thing to be able to hand on tax free to your kids).
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A lot of landowners pretending to be farmers. A lot of farmers being told they're gonna be taxed like multimillionaire landlords!