the fact that lib and labour are both left of centre and are more similiar to eah other than they are to the Tories.

I don't view the Left / Right metaphor as helpful at all. We have Labour talking about a nation of shareholders in their manifesto!

As an example, this is the first of 4 key policies mentioned in the Lib Dem manifesto:
First £10k of earnings is to be tax free, and the closure of tax loopholes. Not at all dissimilar to Flat Tax which has been discussed by the more progressive elements of the Tory party but is absolute anathema to Labour, who like to offer centrally controlled tax credits.

Edit: Doublepost.

I haven't read all of this, but for anyone that thinks it is out of order for Clegg to hold all the cards with so few seats just remember it isn't necessarily Lib Dem "plying" the other tow – you could just as easily say that the other two are courting Lib Dem

Clegg could easily sit back and respect the votes that he has got and pursue Lib Dem policies from opposition – that way he would at least be using my vote in the way that I cast it.

rightplacerighttime, I can find very little to disagree with there.

That's the nicest thing anyone here has ever said to me 😳

tron – Member

the fact that lib and labour are both left of centre and are more similiar to eah other than they are to the Tories.

I don't view the Left / Right metaphor as helpful at all

ok but they both describe themselves as left of centre and the tories describe themselves as right of centre so take it up with them.

D you really want to try and claim that the liberal tax policies are similiar to the Tories 😯 …you cannot be serious…they are more left wing, redistributive and higher taxing for the rich than are labour. The tories and labour are closer together on taxation than the libs and the Tories. Sil

plus possibly scrapping/reducing the minimum wage?

True but again, I think that's exactly the kind of thing that would stand a good chance of breaking up a ConLib coalition.

From the Conservative Manifesto:

We need to make work pay, so we will keep the minimum wage and work to reduce the very high marginal tax rates faced by many people on low incomes who want to return to work or increase their earnings.

we can no longer justify paying tax credits to households earning more than £50,000.

raise the stamp duty threshold to £250,000 for first-time buyers, meaning nine out of ten of them will pay no tax on their first home purchase.

cut government contributions to Child Trust Funds for all but the poorest third of families and families with disabled children

Seven out of ten working people – those earning between £7,100 and £45,400 – and almost every employer will save up to £150 a year per person compared to under Labour. Lower earners will get the greatest benefit as a percentage of their earnings.

Look at the horrible toffs, just queuing up to give tax breaks to those on low income, and decrease handouts to the well off.

I sometimes wonder if people recieve party's policies via some kind of ethereal message from the spirit world – they certainly don't seem to read the manifestos or listen to what the politicians are saying.

what about higher rates of tax and inheritance tax …you seem to have bene very slective in which parts of their tax plans you have shown. Perhaps you are now suggesting the Tories belief in redistributing wealth via taxation and helping the poor rather than business?

tron – extremely selective quoting there. Inheritance tax cut is a huge tax cut for the well off. As I've said before – I would gain considerably from it but I still think it's wrong.

Under the last Tory government the gap between rich and poor increased at an enormous rate – Labour have slowed that rate considerably but failed to reduce it.

ok but they both describe themselves as left of centre and the tories describe themselves as right of centre so take it up with them.

D you really want to try and claim that the liberal tax policies are similiar to the Tories …you cannot be serious…they are more left wing, redistributive and higher taxing for the rich than are labour. The tories and labour are closer together on taxation than the libs and the Tories. Sil

I do. The Lib Dems and Tories are on the same kind of wavelength – reducing tax for the poorest, simplifying taxation and giving people personal freedoms.

Labour, on the other hand, are all about benefits and tax credits – and there's a good reason for that – a great deal of benefits go unclaimed (15-23% in 2009), so it's very easy to say "I'm making XYZ groups better off, giving them £PRQ billion" without actually having to fork out £PRQ billion. The most infuriating thing is that every hardcore lefty knows this, which is why they always used to fight for non-means tested benefits.

There's a big difference in the end result and the intention.

I sometimes wonder if people recieve party's policies via some kind of ethereal message from the spirit world – they certainly don't seem to read the manifestos or listen to what the politicians are saying.

To be fair, all parties manifestos are 99% bollocks, so its fairly reasonable to completely ignore them 🙂

I voted against a capitalist ideology, rather than for a particular manifesto.

Perhaps you are now suggesting the Tories belief in redistributing wealth via taxation and helping the poor rather than business?

I don't think anyone in mainstream politics seriously believes we can redistribute wealth via taxation. The moderately & very rich simply will not pay punitive taxes. Certainly a lot of people were paid 2 or 3 years wages in advance as soon as the 50% tax rate was on its way. The only way to collect tax from the very rich is to have a simple tax code (so they can't wriggle out of paying it) and charge reasonable rates of tax.

The fact is that most rich people are like the rest of us – their kids are settled in school, they quite like Britain, and they have friends and family here. They will leave if you charge horrendous rates of tax, but will equally stand reasonable amounts of tax and stick around. It's a case of deciding if you want to have chicken for tea tonight, or eggs for the forseeable future.

As for inheritance tax, it is really a tax break for the moderately well off. The real rich find ways around it.

I sometimes wonder if people recieve party's policies via some kind of ethereal message from the spirit world – they certainly don't seem to read the manifestos or listen to what the politicians are saying.

Or they have had their heads in the sand.

To be fair, all parties manifestos are 99% bollocks, so its fairly reasonable to completely ignore them

I voted against a capitalist ideology, rather than for a particular manifesto.

An example of a voter with their head in the sand!

Tron – outragously selective quoting there and what blue tinted glasses.

the tories are against redistribution of wealth. Tory and Lib dem tax policies are miles apart. Two parties argue for redistribution ( lab and lib dem) as a principle and one for tax cuts for the rich. Inheritance tax cut is a massive tax cut for the rich. 3% of estates last year would gain from the cut and the richest few by millions.

Really
*shakes head in disbelief*

wot Tim said

anyone who believes a specific pledge from a politician is a fool

especially when we have the 'special circumstances' of an global economic crisis

as evidenced by the last 13 years of labour (allthough FOI, minimum wage and fox hunting ban!?! made it through)

and callmedave was making fantastical promises even before he was in power… cast iron garuantee on a lisbon treaty referendum anyone?

anyone who believes a specific pledge from a politician is a fool

Yes, so why do they bother ever opening their mouths?

Why did we have those live debates betweens the three main leaders?

Why did any party bother with a manifesto?

I guess the system is broken then.

Interesting bit on the guardian website;
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2010/may/11/general-election-2010-live-blog

And this is from a senior Labour MP:

I'm not in favour of Lib-Labbery, full stop. I think they are our political enemy. There is a massive problem with their attitude to the trade unions.

yes indeed time for an overhaul…..PR it is then 😀

cast iron garuantee on a lisbon treaty referendum anyone?

Lisbon is done and dusted, what would be the point of a referendum on it now?

As I said before, the richest simply do not pay a great deal of IHT at the moment. And don't forget that the IHT cut is paid for by levying non-doms.

And really, nobody seriously thinks they are going to redistribute wealth in this day and age. Not in the leftist class war sense.

porter i was refering to dave making that pledge a while back

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/politics/6488240/David-Cameron-to-tell-voters-no-vote-on-Lisbon-Treaty.html

which was all bollox because it was signed months ago

kimbers – this is a pointless aside, but I don't know what you are trying to say. Conservatives were never going to have a referendum on a treaty once it had passed into law, it would be pointless. Only UKIP headbangers thought that would be sensible.

Lib Dems and Conservatives have different views on Europe and the EU, but as there aren't any treaties coming up, it won't be a problem, they can simply agree to differ.

And really, nobody seriously thinks they are going to redistribute wealth in this day and age. Not in the leftist class war sense.

Do you think a widening gap between rich and poor is a good thing? Again, at least Labour managed to slow down the rise.

Do you think a widening gap between rich and poor is a good thing?

No, which is why I think we should have grammar schools, incentives to work (ie, lower tax for low paid workers, a functioning benefits system) and a proper implementation of SureStart (highly focussed intervention for the families who NEED help bringing up their children), rather than the half arsed sop to the middle classes that it currently is. If you look at social mobility in historical terms, grammar schools made a huge difference.

I've been unemployed myself, and I know people who have been long term unemployed, and the current system is just not helpful in getting people back into work. It actually encourages benefit dependency, which of course means that people get left behind.

Why did Gordon Brown remove the cap on the maximum pension allowance?

We used to have pension regulations, which for many decades had included something called "The Pensions Cap"
The pensions cap set a limit on how much pension any scheme member (including directors) could get from an occupational pension scheme,
irrespective of how high their earnings were.
It was there to protect the ordinary members pensions. To prevent Directors paying themselves obscene salaries and then draining the pension funds with huge pensions.

Then Gordon Brown's banker friends said that they wanted the pensions cap removing so that they could get pensions related to their obscene earnings.
(The whole Pensions industry gave him warnings of the effects it would have. Even the Inland revenue put forward objections)

BUT GORDON SAID OK
Because Gordon never likes to disappoint his banker friends

So Gordon took away the Pensions Cap in 2005 and then some of his friends were able to leave their boardroom positions with huge pensions!!!
For example Fred Goodwin was apparently entitled to a pension of over £700,000
If Gordon had left the pensions cap in place that would have been a mere £125,000
Well done Fred and your mates!!!

(The Superannuation's Division of the Inland Revenue have kept a record of what it should be, in readiness for when we get a new chancellor who sees fit to re-instate it. George Osborn has pledged to do that). The record of Pensions Cap limits are available to view on the Revenue's website

The result of this is that along with Gordon's "Tax Raid" on pension funds starting July 1997, over four thousand UK company pension scheme's have closed their doors to new members and many of them have had to close down altogether, leaving millions of workers without any pension provision.

So Gordon Brown is looking more like a capaitalist to me!

But don't worry about what politicians say, just keep your head in the sand and vote for the party who's ideals that once accorded with your views.

Tron -Grammar schools help entrench the divide. Very clear that this is so. Stoill anyone who believes that the tories want to redistribute wealth is deluded for sure.

You really do have blue tinted glasses on.

JESUS H CHRIST! I don't believe that ANYBODY in mainstream politics today actually wants to redistribute wealth!

My value of mainstream does not include the likes of Dennis Skinner, for example.

Spongebob – the taxation of pension funds which is actually removing a subsidy to the rich is not the reason for the closing of the pension funds – the main reason is the pension holidays taken i the 80s / early 90s.

Tax free pensions are a massive subsidy to the rich. we still subsidise private pensions 7 times as much as we subsidise the public serctor pensions that you get so excited about.

Thats right – for every £ the state puts into public sector pensions they state puts £7 into private pensions.

Traon – redistribution of wealth is one of the cornerstones of labour policy and one of their great but unsung successes this time around. Tax credits are the main way it has been done.

The Lib Dems believe in redistribution of wealth as well – is a basic cornerstone of their tax and benefit policies

So everyone with a private pension is "rich"..? You obviously haven't seen my pension statement.

I don't hear them saying that TJ. I don't hear any of this "tax the rich, give to the poor" business outside of the Socialist Worker.

Of course, tax credits are a great success. It's not as if any of the poorest in society have been reduced to tears by incredibly arcane forms and the prospect of being asked to give back money they haven't got, after all.

Ultimately, that's the key dividing line between the parties for me.

Labour want to take your money from you, skim a bit off, and give you some back, so that you're reliant on them. At the extreme end of the spectrum, they create areas with massive numbers of public jobs, virtually guaranteeing themselves votes.

The Lib Dems and the Conservatives realise it's actually more productive just to let you keep it in the first place.

You wouldn't hear them saying it as they get slaughtered in the right wing press. It is however a fundamental part of both labour and Lib dem policy.

Tax credits have been an enormous success in lifting people out of poverty and helping people back into work. I know 3 lots of families for whom the tax credits made it worthwhile working and who know are out the poverty trap as a result. Tax credits are complex but they really have worked and have worked well in encouraging people to return to work.

Y

pedalhead – no not everyone with a private pension is rich – but the tax subsidy goes greatly to the rich peoples private pensions and indeed private pension holders are richer than average on the whole

Actually here's a brilliant idea. Lifted from that Grauniad blog linked a few posts back:

3.01pm: At Left Foot Forward, Will Straw is now arguing that the best outcome for progressives would be a Conservative minority government. He explains his reasoning here, but to understand his argument in full you also need to read this post he wrote this morning. Straw proposes a five-point way ahead for progressives which concludes with this:

Labour announces that it will stand aside in 60 Tory-Lib Dem marginal seats. In return, the Liberal Democrats announce that they will give Labour a free run in 30 seats where they are in third place or below.

I think that is a brilliant loaded gun to hold to the head of the Tories if they piss about re' PR – threaten them with Lib/Lab cooperation at the next election!

Do you think a widening gap between rich and poor is a good thing?

A lot less important than the bottom line starts – would you rather see the poor poorer, as long as it meant that the rich were less rich?

Grammar schools help entrench the divide

Would that be why so many of our Prime ministers were educated at grammar schools? – social mobility in action – its the question of would you rather see opportunities to better oneself taken away from the most driven, by creating less chances for everyone.

Comprehensive schooling is best for those with least opportunity – proven time and a time again. |Its called equality of opportunity

Is it best or just equally bad? (I went to a comp)

Best – children for poorer less motivated backgrounds get better results under a comprehensive system. Its due to the flexibility – no one shot 11+ but instead far more flexibility.

Comprehensive education presents those with least opportunity the chance to disrupt those who wish to better themselves. Education to the lowest common denominator…

Comprehensive schooling is best for those with least opportunity

Thanks for speaking on our behalf but you are wrong.

I come from a very ordinairy working class background, went to a comprehensive having passed entrance for private grammar school but not getting quite high enough for a scholarship, left comprehensive with absolutely nothing.

Its called equality of opportunity

Equality is achieved at comprehensives by pulling the top down not by elevating the bottom up.

Wish it was different but it isn't. Comprehensives hinder the disadvantaged not help them , well, that's my own experience anyhow.

I'm afraid to say that Zokes' comment is what I experienced…

porter , my cast iron dave comment was an example on politicians being dishonest, in this case cameron- the fact it was about lisbon is irelevant

and spongebob the real damage to pensions in this country are pension holidays, started by lawson, then lamont,(clarke and major didnt) then brown

the labservative attitude towards finance and the city has been the same for the past 25 years regardless of red or blue government its just been about deregulation and tax breaks for the middle class