Life is hard living on £120k a year.

What is this ‘bobbins’ – lots of mention in this thread!

I see what you did there!

dantsw13 – Member

Back to the original issue on school fees – the country can’t afford to school all it’s children.

This is utter mince. But,

dantsw13 – Member

If all Private schools closed, the parents of those kids would save a fortune in school fees, but the cost would be born by general taxation, meaning that low wage earners would then be subsidising the education of the middle classes.

This is true.

But I’m not sure what your point is? Yes there are people that believe private schools should all be closed but they’re a pretty extreme minority. The point here is, I think, that you can’t really choose to send your kids to private school- and a particularily expensive one at that- then complain about your higher-end-of-the-first-world problem, and not be the subject of a righteous pisstaking.

I’ve got a reasonable income, I use it largely to buy ridiculously expensive pushbikes and everything that comes with it. And that’s fine, it’s my choice to spend money on that and not other things- as long as I don’t go around complaining that life is hard because I could only buy one set of £500 suspension forks this month and I just sold one of my titanium frames. If I ever do, I reckon y’all may have the right to throw bricks at me.

I’ve been thinking about some of what’s not said in the article.

The fact that they state they’re not taking city breaks anymore implies that they’re still going on other holiday(s).

By the way – bear in mind that this guy was quite possibly stitched up by the journalist to get a shock story.

By the way – bear in mind that this guy was quite possibly stitched up by the journalist to get a shock story.

The article includes this:

A survey by Nutmeg, an online savings and investment management service aimed at professionals, recently revealed that around 72 per cent of UK adults across the socio-economic spectrum have had to cut back every day expenditure due to the rising cost of their monthly bills.

The chap featured, Guy Jackson, works for Nutmeg. (Isn’t LinkedIn wonderful for stalking people?)

I reckon a PR firm wrote this for a set of clients which include Nutmeg, and passed it on to the journalist.

Wikipedia tells me 7% of kids are in private schools.

The DFE spends about £2bn per year. Assuming all of that gets to the kids, which it doesn’t, you’re talking about an extra £140m per year if all those privately educated kids went state educated instead.

That’s a lot of money – it’s a bit more than what 1100 financial compliance bods earn – but in terms of government spending it’s not a lot.

Erm – DfE budget is £57.6Billion

Add in the capital expenditure required to build an extra million school spaces, I would say it’s quite considerable.

A well thought out, articulate and intelligent statement.

You consistently come across as selfish, shallow, money/status-obsessed, grasping, blinkered and un-self-aware. Does that help flesh it out a bit for you? 😉

A little, all it really proves is that you found a thesaurus.

There’s a handy catch-all word for that Grum.

Tory 😀

Oh… And you forgot patronising

Missing ten pages.

If you’re on 120k and everyone else in your vicinity is on 250k, you would be “struggling”.

Im on 14k. I know people on 28,56,100k. Everybody struggles to get by: I can’t afford a meal out, they can’t afford a holiday home.

Everybody’s got their own shit, having a decent salary doesn’t automatically make you a dick.

The idea that we couldnt afford to educate all the children in the country is idiotic. Obviously some changes to the tax system might be needed but it could easily be done. I reckon mr 120k would be happy to spend 10k more on tax if he saved 45k on private education. That would leave him 35k to spend on coke and…… well you know.

He works in compliance AA, it’s not the wolf of Wall Street!

Everybody’s got their own shit, having a decent salary doesn’t automatically make you a dick.

I think that sums it up perfectly, let’s wrap it up there shall we.

I think that sums it up perfectly, let’s wrap it up there shall we.

You’re new here aren’t you.

You’re new here aren’t you.

sadly not, forever the optimist.

He works in compliance AA, it’s not the wolf of Wall Street!

He’s only doing a maternity cover too.

oh please don’t mention the wolf! we will start a whole new debate about rights of dwarfs and how bankers take advantage of them!

Erm – DfE budget is £57.6Billion

Add in the capital expenditure required to build an extra million school spaces, I would say it’s quite considerable.

You’re right, hasty Googling. That means an extra £4bn for Education spending if we were educating those privately educated kids too. Which is a lot, but it’s a drop in the ocean in government spending terms.

Instead of the Telegraph chap spending £45k to send his kids to private 6th form, he’d only be paying an extra £8k in tax so he’d be quids in.

a drop in the ocean

1% on the VAT rate is a drop in the ocean, I am sure all shoppers will agree with you.

I million places looks wrong, google suggests there’s under 10 million kids in school in total in the UK, so 7% of that gets you 700000 not 1 million.

Also, the basic funding info is wrong too, yes the DfE’s total budget is 57.6bn but a decent chunk of that goes on tertiary education, some of it will be central services, standards, inspections etc. Can’t find an actual split down to primary and secondary pupil costs but it’s going to be considerably lower.

Tertiary education is in the BIS budget now isn’t it?

Only the Grauniad could spin a story about people moving into self employment as being a negative thing. Oh you’re self employed, poor you. Things must be dreadful.

More data on the self employed:

http://www.rsablogs.org.uk/2014/enterprise/selfemployed-unhappy-gripe

What is this ‘bobbins’ – lots of mention in this thread!

It’s a phrase poor people use. 😉

Oh… And you forgot patronising

Classic pack behaviour. Good one.

Everybody’s got their own shit, having a decent salary doesn’t automatically make you a dick.

This.

Tory

Not quite, fiscally republican, socially democratic.

@aa if I may say you’ve fallen into the trap of suggesting that the extra funding required to educate the private school kids would come from an adjustment to the tax system, the good old tax the rich (ie not me).

As you know I’ve spent most of the last year in France where all the best schools are state run, there is the small matter that taxes for everyone are in the 40% range (at least). Make no mistake I’d love to see a top notch state system with class sizes capped at 25 but I cannot see us getting there. When the Labour party significantly increased funding for the NHS the staff took most of it in wages, good for them but no benefit for the patients.

The Self Employed. Be. Very careful about trying to interpret these stats. Being self employed gives you big tax advantages, extreme example being Greece where most Doctors are self employed so they can fiddle every which way. Set that against the fact that many people can’t find traditional work so they go self employed. It’s a hard one to decipher.

mefty – Member

Tertiary education is in the BIS budget now isn’t it?

Hmm, it figures in the 2013 budget figures for the DfE, is that a recent change?

LHS – Member
A little, all it really proves is that you found a thesaurus.

No thesaurus here – and I didn’t even go to a private school!

I imagined more UKIP than Tory binners.

Northwind – Member

Hmm, it figures in the 2013 budget figures for the DfE, is that a recent change?

Depends what you mean by tertiary

Further education is DfE and Higher education is BIS both are classed as tertiary I think.

Hmm, actually that looks like the explanation- we use tertiary as a shorthand for “everything between school and university” but it turns out we’re just omitting universities because they’re not relevant to us when we’re talking about this stuff! So yep, my bad on the terminology.

Being self employed gives you big tax advantages

Really? If you are honest about your earnings and expenditure, then no, it doesn’t really.

I have a business income that is 100% declared. Against that, I offset only genuine business expenses. The difference is my gross income, upon which I pay the same rate of tax and NI as somebody on PAYE.

Registering my business with Companies House and becoming a salaried Director on PAYE – now that will give me bigger tax advantages.

@aa if I may say you’ve fallen into the trap of suggesting that the extra funding required to educate the private school kids would come from an adjustment to the tax system, the good old tax the rich (ie not me).

Yeah **** it tax the poor more the dirty useless **** and cut their benefits the scrounging parasitic ****

@aa – tax everyone, that should be the test, will the broad population pay for it ? If you want to see increased expenditure are you personally willing to pay for it ? Without the tax paid by the 1% everyone else would be paying 30% more tax as I’ve posted numerous times, “taxing the rich” to pay for the latest budget increase isn’t a viable strategy, you can’t keep going to that well. The 50% rate showed that, the tax take went down. So if we want an increased education budget (which I do) it should be funded by a 1% increase in all tax rates or better still a 1% increase in VAT

The whole concept of wealth redistribution via tax policy is deeply flawed

Really? If you are honest about your earnings and expenditure, then no, it doesn’t really

@TheArtist – there you have it, see that word “if”

Also as a simple minimum a self employed person can pay earning 50% to his/her spouse thus having the benefit of two £10,000 tax free allowances.

The whole idea of basing policy on the fact that people will worm their way out of paying tax is deeply flawed. What other laws do we make on that basis? ‘Rape is very difficult to prosecute, so let’s not bother trying.’

The 50% rate showed that, the tax take went down.

I think that’s been strongly contested.

“taxing the rich” to pay for the latest budget increase isn’t a viable strategy, you can’t keep going to that well

Why not? It’s the deepest one after all.

better still a 1% increase in VAT

What? How is that better?

The whole concept of wealth redistribution via tax policy is deeply flawed

Why?

A well thought out, articulate and intelligent statement.

That’s Robin Hood, widely regarded to be a good guy. So where’s your argument?

Also as a simple minimum a self employed person can pay earning 50% to his/her spouse thus having the benefit of two £10,000 tax free allowances.

Assuming the partner does not work – income tax is cumulative.