Should I forgive the Conservatives?

I’m based in Scotland. They have a long history of not being very nice, but I’m a tolerant kind of guy so should I forgive the Conservatives?

Why not, they gave you a referendum so you could kick the motherland in the teeth, but thankfully the majority of you saw sense 😉

As one of the oldest colony you should be thankful that your destiny is changing … 😆

You should be an independent country by the time of first UK President and the last King.

I say forget the past and forgive.

Simply judge them on their policies and how nice Dave appears to be.

I say fight them to the grave!

I say do whatever you can to make sure ed balls doesn’t get his hands on the nations finances

Forgive the Tories?

Possibly. But never, ever forget.

I’ll forgive them shortly I’ve seen all their heads paraded through the streets, on spikes

no.

</thread> 😆

No

They have a long history of not being very nice

They have a long history of behaving exactly like Tories. Except for about three decades after the War when they behaved a bit like socialists, before reverting back to being proper Tories again.

A sufficient amount of people voting Conservative gets you a Tory government, no one need be in any doubt about that – they don’t try to hide what they are. If you don’t like that then blame the people who vote them.

I don’t blame the Conservatives for behaving like I would expect them to behave.

In contrast I do blame the Labour Party and I have no intention of forgiving them, not least because they are completely unrepentant.

In contrast I do blame the Labour Party and I have no intention of forgiving them, not least because they are completely unrepentant.

Sadly, this.

Iraq, the love affair with Thatcherism, endless spin, doublespeak spouting MPs who don’t even bother to hide their cynicism (Harriet Harman) and their complete lack of will to connect with their core voters killed any prospect of me voting for them.

I question their relevance and commitment.

I’m Scottish too, what’s a Tory?

Forgive the Tories?

Possibly. But never, ever forget.

+1

one of the problems of the last parliament was that Labour for every £1 collected in income tax, they borrowed another and then spend £2.

Their new spending plans have £15B of additional taxes and another £30B of spending – the 2:1 ratio is predictably familiar and still unsustainable.

With this kind of thinking (see the tweet and Channel4 fact check response) it’s not too hard to see what kind of problems the country will most likely be facing in 18 months time:

Rachel Reeves Finally Admits Bedroom Tax is Not a Tax

surroundedbyhills – Member
I’m Scottish too, what’s a Tory?

Plenty of them in scotland.

and their complete lack of will to connect with their core voters killed any prospect of me voting for them.

I think the mistake is to think that the Labour Party has any interest in the working classes. All parties core voter’s are now the middle classes, no one cares about or bothers with anything else. Tony Blair was right about one thing, elections are fought and won on the middle ground.

Their new spending plans have £15B of additional taxes and another £30B of spending – the 2:1 ratio is predictably familiar and still unsustainable.

There are various figures bandied around to quantify the loss to the exchequer from tax avoidance. The Guardian reckon £35bn a year, the New Statesman say £69.9bn. To put that into perspective, £35bn a year is roughly our annual defence budget.

If the various corporates and wealthy individuals who can afford to exploit the loopholes in our tax system actually coughed up then we’d have more money collected to actually pay for things…like, you know, the NHS, transport, schools, potholes and maybe even some cycle routes?

…and back in the real world how do you suggest funding the gap?

Rachel Reeves is an odd one. Very well educated (PPE Oxford and MSC at LSE), has actually worked (Bank of England and in NY) and yet (like Balls) feels compelled to pretend that none of this actually happened, preferring the BS of party politics. God help the BoE if their economists cant understand what a tax is!

I wonder when she goes home, if she bangs her head against a brick wall saying, why do I let myself get drawn into such BS???? why am I wasting such a good education. The bloody chancellor is a historian FFS! why not me????? 😉

one of the problems of the last parliament was that Labour for every £1 collected in income tax, they borrowed another and then spend £2.

Not sure where you got these figures from, please quote sources.

From the ONS, tax recipts ( all tax) in 2009/10 was 522.4bn, expenditure 671.6 bn
For comparison Tax recipts 2013/4 573.5 bn, expenditure 719.9 bn

The Guardian reckon £35bn a year,

I imagine that this is the HMRC figure for the tax gap of £34 bn, of which £3.1 bn is down to avoidance. £10 bn is evasion, £5 bn is crime, £7 billion is error, £4 bn is loss due to insolvency etc and £4.5 bn is down to “honest” tax disputes.

If the various corporates and wealthy individuals who can afford to exploit the loopholes in our tax system actually coughed up then we’d have more money collected to actually pay for things”

What, like the top 1% now paying 30% of all tax and the top 14% of earners now paying 62% of tax?

Top earners are paying substantially more now in real terms than they ever did under Labour…

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/personalfinance/tax/10368203/Top-earners-to-pay-third-of-all-income-tax-despite-rate-cut.html

And top earners are paying around 58% of income in tax. How many people are motivated to work harder or create businesses when they will have to give up 60% of what they earn in tax?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-26327114

What do you need to forgive them for? They haven’t done anything they didn’t say they would,so forgive them and vote for them if you fancy. Still the adage about Pandas and Embra zoo and tory MP’s will need changing come May I suspect.

But income tax is not the only tax burden on individuals, less than 26% of govt. revenue is from income tax.
If you include all taxes and duties, in particular VAT and fuel duties, the poorest 10% of the country pay 43% of their income in taxes, the richest 35%.
http://www.theguardian.com/money/2014/jun/16/british-public-wrong-rich-poor-tax-research

..and back in the real world how do you suggest funding the gap?

Don’t understand the point you’re making here.

But income tax is not the only tax burden on individuals, less than 26% of govt. revenue is from income tax.
If you include all taxes and duties, in particular VAT and fuel duties, the poorest 10% of the country pay 43% of their income in taxes, the richest 35%.

This. It’s not helping wealth inequality one bit. Sadly, the rich can afford a better lobby group.

What do you need to forgive them for? They haven’t done anything they didn’t say they would

Well.. off the top of my head there the top down reorganisation of the NHS that Dave specifically stated they wouldn’t be doing, that they then did. And George Osbourne promising they wouldn’t be raising VAT, which was almost the first thing he did on getting the keys to number 11.

I’m sure it wouldn’t be too hard to come up with plenty more examples

Bedroom tax, stoking hatred towards the poor, disabled and unemployed. Stoking more hatred, IDS, Universal benefits / tax credit fiasco (ongoing), Terresa May, etc

The list is pretty long….

less than 26% of govt. revenue is from income tax.

And the top 1% of earners pay a 29.8% of the total income tax revenue take,up from 20% in 1997.Apparently people who earn more than £1?million a year will contribute 11.8 per cent of all tax.
I suspect that many of these could switch their tax liabilities elsewhere (as only the rich and big corporations can ) which sort of explains why successive governments appear to approach them with a “light touch” when it comes to taxation.If they domiciled elsewhere for tax purposes the government would lose a big chunk of tax.

They have a long history of not being very nice

Good, I wouldnt want political parties to be nice, if they were nice you would like them and then they would really take the pish !!

I suspect the increasing fraction of Tax collected from the top 1% has a lot more to do with rising inequality than it does with draconian measures coming from government.

If they domiciled elsewhere for tax purposes the government would lose a big chunk of tax.

I doubt they would as they’d have to live somewhere else and if you’re rich, London is a very nice place to live.

I suspect the increasing fraction of Tax collected from the top 1% has a lot more to do with rising inequality than it does with draconian measures coming from government.

Spooky, I was about to post an almost identical point

What do you need to forgive them for? They haven’t done anything they didn’t say they would,

Relaxed austerity measures?

I suspect the increasing fraction of Tax collected from the top 1% has a lot more to do with rising inequality than it does with draconian measures coming from government.

The cut in top rate of tax/NI from 52 (50+2) to 47 (45+2) would have lead to an increase in the tax take (common behaviour observed when top rates of tax are cut, more people actually pay / arrange their affairs to take increased payments). Also wages at the lower end are being undercut by cheap foreign labour coming to the UK and increasing offshoring as people in the lower/middle income bands are now under job competition from much cheaper locations (eg India and Asia). Top 1% now pay close to 30% of income taxes. If you adjust tax policy to somehow try and re-distribute / reduce earning inequality you’ll just see the business funders/leaders go elsewhere, in many cases a lot of the staff/production are already abroad.

To OP’s point, I thought the Conservatives where anonymous in Scotland so how can they have been nasty ? Obviously you have all those nasty nuclear missiles up there but that’s common policy between Labour, Lib Dem and Conservative and the local population is quite keen on the employment too (plus small issue that the subs are at sea most of the time so the nukes are far away). You have your own parliament to sort your own affairs and the rest of the UK (England really) makes a big net contribution to Scotland’s finances. London BTW pays out £34bn more in taxes pa than is spent locally.

Anyway if you want to penalise the Tories you should vote Labour and not SNP for Westminster.

I can’t forgive the Tories.
Overrated anyway, forgiveness.

Still not fully processed the scale of Blair’s betrayal, it’s just beyond comprehension.
I can’t even think of the whole thing all at once, I have to break it down into individual, small bouts of disgust.

Relaxed austerity measures?

Just as well they did do a U turn otherwise the recovery would have been even slower. Still, we lost 2 years growth thanks to Gideons’ stupidity with his initial austerity, so I can hold that against him.

Still not fully processed the scale of Blair’s betrayal, it’s just beyond comprehention.

You’re so incensed you’ve forgotten how to spell!

Austerity = living within your means. People don’t seem to able to grasp the extent we where outspending our earnings under Labour. It’s quite scary how much people believe that was normal and to cut spending from those levels is austerity.