anyone on here voting tory. why?

even when we continue to spend more than we earn? interesting….

So you wouldn’t care if there were beggars on the street and slums all around? You’d just avoid them and carry on with life? If that’s really true then you are selfish, and selfishness is bad.

Would it be possible to walk around the outside of these hypothetical slums?

even when we continue to spend more than we earn? interesting….

Who was that aimed at?

They’ve a history of really screwing it up for the children (not talking about teachers here) and if you thought Gove was a meddling twonk, you’ve obviously forgotten how much worse it can be under a bureaucratic, authoritarian, left wing version.

Gove was trying to introduce a “…bureaucratic, authoritarian…” system. Ex-military teachers anyone?

I live with a teacher. My old man’s a teacher. Two of my best friends are teachers. They have all worked under both Labour and Tory governments.

Your statement, sir, is utter crud.

” even when we continue to spend more than we earn? interesting….”

Who was that aimed at?

I suspect that THM might have been thinking out loud after reading this comment in his beloved FT today:

“The time has surely come to shift the focus from the obsession with fiscal deficits and debt. These were neither the cause of the crisis nor the solution”. [/b]

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/3249930a-f27c-11e4-892a-00144feab7de.html

They increased VAT, the rich pay much more VAT.

http://www.equalitytrust.org.uk/sites/default/files/attachments/resources/Unfair%20and%20Unclear_0.pdf

Just saying. 🙂

Thanks but as usual Ernie, you are wide of the mark. Stick to voicing your own opinions rather than speculating on other people’s please.

Good to see you reading a quality paper though.

The financial crises was one where too much debt caught up with a lot of people/businesses/countries. The fact our debt levels where pretty high due to large budget deficits run up under Labour meant we had little flexibility in how we dealt with the crises. Spending our way out simply wasn’t an option.

The fact our debt levels where pretty high due to large budget deficits run up under Labour

Hindsight is great of course.

I’m not saying they were blameless, but I think they were trying to undo previous under-investment no?

It’s always more complicated than you think.

Would it be possible to walk around the outside of these hypothetical slums?

why would you want to? surely you’d be lapping up the sights that remind you of your own superiority over these low life scum whilst you mentally compose your next opus magnus to the daily mail

The fact our debt levels where pretty high due to large budget deficits run up under Labour

In a normal world the budget deficit run up to invest in schools, hospitals and other public infrastructure would have been perfectly manageable. As with the bloody gold, if labour are guilty of anything, it’s of not being able to predict the future. And much as I don’t want to repeat myself for the nth time, nothing would have been any different had the tories been in power at the time.

The fact our debt levels where pretty high due to large budget deficits run up under Labour meant we had little flexibility in how we dealt with the crises.

Shame they wasted the Major surplus they inherited eh 😆
Nicely ignored 😆

what molly and daz said the global crises was not their fault nor were the consequences

in a normal world the budget deficit run up to invest in schools, hospitals and other public infrastructure would have been perfectly manageable.

If the budget deficit had been run up by investing in schools, hospitals etc. then there wouldn’t be a bloody problem

In fact it was run up employing hundreds of thousands of civil servants pushing around pointless paperwork (ever filled in a tax credits form?) diversity officers, Millenium domes, hosting the Olympics and invading other countries!

@Pipmaster reading that now, thanks for the link. Organisations like the Equality Trust love to talk about “percentages of income” and “indirect” taxes. Here are some numbers I posted up a while ago.

On VAT (page 20) they don’t say that much other to show a chart that says the bottom 10% pay 11.6% of their income on VAT and the top 10% pay 4.39% in VAT

So using £25k gross as a proxy for bottom 10% household income. Post income tax and NI that’s £20k pa. 11.6% of that is £2,300 which would mean they would have to be spending £11,600 pa on VAT-able items. Now rent, food and utilities are all low/zero rated – the numbers just don’t work as they’d be spending just £8,400 on rent, food and utilities and £11,600 on “luxuries” ie VAT rated items. It does not compute, the numbers just don’t stack up unless they are living in a shoe box and eating hardly anything whilst living it up on VAT-able items.

This is also where we get back to portions of income, the better off save more for example so of course it doesn’t attract tax on a portion of income basis. What you need to do to make a reasonable comparison is look at the absolute amount of taxes paid and compare that to the portion of society that pays them.

If the budget deficit had been run up by investing in schools, hospitals etc. then there wouldn’t be a bloody problem

So all the new schools and hospitals didn’t cost money?

@molgrips yes agreed always more complicated than we’d like

@JY I posted up an 😳 earlier. Labour had the reigns and a chancellor who announced the end of boom and bust, they are gong to have to carry the can electorially as did pretty much every government apart from the Germans who co-incidentally had the a good budget surplus and low debt levels. I said the Labour policies gave the UK far less room to manouver post crises. We are also overly reliant and thus exposed to financial services, 13 years of Labour didn’t change that much either – they where happy to take the taxes and economic benefits.

So all the new schools and hospitals didn’t cost money?

No, but like he said, they’re an investment that (if run well) will pay back in the long term

Pointless make-work for civil servants isn’t!

Another post on VAT as a regressive tax – or not, bear with me 😐

So using my table above at the 25k gross = £20,088 net and £100k gross and £65,328 net points as an example

Making assumptions for food/rent I estimate the £25k pa household spends £5k pa on VAT-able items so pays £1k a year or 5% of their income on VAT. The £100k household I estimate spends £26k on VATable items (they save money also as well as spending more on rent/mortgage/food) so that generates £5+k in VAT or 8% of their net income.

So the £25k earner pays a lower rate of VAT, whilst the higher earner pays a higher rate and 5 times the total amount. Using income tax, NI and VAT the £25k earner pays a total tax take of 25% whereas the £100k earner pays 43% – getting on for double the tax rate and would certainly be more than double if you include employers national insurance.

Our deficit was run up, in part, Greek style with the borrowing used to pay state sector wages and benefits. We don’t build £90bn £40 billion worth of roads, schools and hospitals EVERY year, the deficit doesn’t represent investment.

EDIT: I edited £90bn above to £40bn to exclude national debt interest

So all the new schools and hospitals didn’t cost money?

Yes, but not money included in the figures is financed by PFI as you have replaced financial gearing with operational gearing.

@JY I posted up an earlier.

Ah fair enough I missed it
Here have one back
😳
We all make mistakes
Re equality Trust report

It does not compute, the numbers just don’t stack up unless they are living in a shoe box

the figures come from the ONS _ I suspect they are correct but I agree there is nothing in the way of explanation.
This is the best i can find
http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/household-income/the-effects-of-taxes-and-benefits-on-household-income/2012-13/info-taxes.html

I assume the source is in here somewhere
http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/household-income/the-effects-of-taxes-and-benefits-on-household-income/index.html

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.

How easily we forget!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-14974552

JY the poorest fifth cannot have an income of 5k pa, thje chart shows that how much they pay in taxes. Also you cannot discount benefits/tax credits, they make a huge difference to the income of the poorest. Also that post talks about “equivilised” whatever that means, I think it’s a way of saying poor families tend to be larger so they need more money.

JY, two posts together ?

😉

How easily we forget!

Indeed, I have a few friends in IT who have made some very good money working on various failed government IT projects, eg around the NHS

It will never catch on @allthepies 😉

It was done as a deliberate homage

Please feel free to write to the ONS and explain to them what they have done wrong and why their figures are wrong. I feel certain they will change it based on your calculations and objections on here

As for equaivalised it said big families need more money than smaller families to have the same standard of living. It makes no mention nor assumption of where they lie on the income distribution scale [ Do I really need to explain why?] . I am sure this comes a shock to you and you can do some quick calculations to negate this out of the box thinking 😕

http://www.ifs.org.uk/wheredoyoufitin/about.php

here is a explanation for you

it might 😛

If a household has two earners and posts about 360 quid in income tax then each one pays about 180 quid suggesting they earn very slightly more than the personal allowance limit, ie about 10k each. Alternatively if there is only one earner they still only earn a bit more than the 10k mark. That’s my wild speculation anyway.

as you are to lazy to click on the link 😉

The income that a household needs to attain a given standard of living will depend on its size and composition. For example, a couple with dependent children will need a higher income than a single person with no children to attain the same material living standards. “Equivalisation” means adjusting a household’s income for size and composition so that we can look at the incomes of all households on a comparable basis. Official income statistics use the ‘Modified OECD’ equivalence scale, in which an adult couple with no dependent children is taken as the benchmark with an equivalence scale of one. The equivalence scales for other types of households can be calculated by adding together the implied contributions of each household member from the table below.

Modified OECD Equivalence Scale

Head 0.67
Subsequent adults 0.33
Each child aged 0-13 0.20
Each child aged 14-18 0.33

For example, a household consisting of a single adult will have an equivalence scale of 0.67 – in other words he or she can typically attain the same standard of living as a childless couple on only 67 percent of its income. In a household consisting of a couple with one child aged three, the head of the household would contribute 0.67, the spouse 0.33, and the child 0.20, giving a total equivalence scale of 1.20. In other words this household would need an income 20 percent higher than a childless couple to attain the same standard of living. To gauge where you are in the income distribution, we ascertain the equivalence scale of your household and then calculate where you would lie if the rest of the population lived in households of the same type.

Not too lazy. Just too slow to type my post before you posted the link 🙂

Jambas – of course you don’t analyse this data pre tax and benefits alone – unless of course

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.

(A progressive system?)

•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.

Etc

The actual research on VAT which should be measure differently (since it is not a tax on income and needs to be considered over the lifetime) is actually progressive in the sense that this term is used.

Of course, this stuff gets misused/abused to make false statements as we see on a regular basis

Indeed, I have a few friends in IT who have made some very good money working on various failed government IT projects, eg around the NHS

Aah.. well that’s an interesing one.

The reason these projects fail is because of the way they’re run. Government agencies have to use these big IT companies like Accenture etc, and whilst they do their best they are under pressure to reduce their own costs to a minimum, which can impact quality, and they are not integrated into the Agency for whom they are working.

The latter of those points is a huge issue. They expect the agency to be able to give them requirements for a solution, but the agencies are staffed with civil servants who know their legislation and business but have no idea how to express that to IT companies, but they need to keep the boundaries for some reason so that the IT companies cannot really place people to sort things out. Basically, it’s like when Homer Simpson designs a car. They don’t really have any idea what they are asking for.

For example, one govt agency I worked for, traditionally you sent them a form to change an address or some detail etc. Lots of different forms you could send in. So when it came to implementing the system they made a system that processed these forms, with lots of code specific to validating each one. Why? Why not make a website where you can log on and just type in your new details? They couldn’t change the way they work.

Then I worked for another agency that again made you send in paper forms. They also needed validating, so I wrote almost the exact same code twice for two different agencies.

But that’s the Tory way – we outsource everything regardless of the results. Much of the profit is going overseas because most of the companies are foreign. What we really need is a government IT agency that keeps core skills and pays well; then we need to give them the power to run the projects.

Current rules even have different companies working on different bits of large solutions, and they end up not talkign to each other and spending millions trying to determine the boundaries between each company’s area and figuring out how to get the bits to communicate. It’s a disaster.

A progressive system?)

Yes it is but that does not mean VAT is progressive and you need to take it up with the ONS who will be delighted to change their description of it as a regressive tax based on your observation as they will be unable to defend your false statement charge.

Current rules even have different companies working on different bits of large solutions, and they end up not talkign to each other and spending millions trying to determine the boundaries between each company’s area and figuring out how to get the bits to communicate. It’s a disaster.

To say nothing of the time and energy spent on not finding a solution but listening to the various “contributors” to the system pointing the finger and blaming each other. Put that much effort into getting it right and we might just end up with something that works.

The latter of those points is a huge issue. They expect the agency to be able to give them requirements for a solution, but the agencies are staffed with civil servants who know their legislation and business but have no idea how to express that to IT companies, but they need to keep the boundaries for some reason so that the IT companies cannot really place people to sort things out. Basically, it’s like when Homer Simpson designs a car. They don’t really have any idea what they are asking for.

They also change their minds frequently and have daft contracts in place. There have been some good ones based on value based deals but equally some really bad ones based on time and materials. When someone decides that they want something added or the scope changes the cost goes through the roof. As the civil service is managed by committees and not individuals prepared to stick their necks out and be accountable it all tends to drag on and the scope creeps.

I don’t consider myself to be Tory by any means, but every time in my lifetime that labour has been in power they’ve left the country in a mess. Brown & Blair, spent billions on tax credits buying middle class votes, subsidising scrooge employers and getting people hooked on state handouts.. it was Brown that put vat on gas and electricity – fuel poverty anyone? It was Brown that robbed billions from pension funds making us all poorer. They then took us to a needless war and gave us public private initiative that will take decades to pay off. All this whilst borrowing beyond our means.
I don’t like much of what the Tories do but I’d take them over Ed Balls any day.

I am by no means an expert in government procurement of IT but the last government’s approach would appear to be starting to address some of the issues outlined.

See here

Maude has been one of the most effective ministers in the last government.

Vote Vader..