[Archived] The General Election 2015

[jim mk2]

If Ed gets in though, can't see him following through on it as described pre election.

Some of the consequences of Labour getting in with support/coalition with the SNP are frightening for the UK as a whole,

I might have to move back to France!

Minority Conservative govt with Ukip support and Cameron having to bow to extreme right-wing of his party. Now that's frightening.

The socialist govt of M Hollande will welcome you back I'm sure.

[Gav]

It was in jest as you twigged,

If Ed gets in though, can't see him following through on it as described pre election.

Some of the consequences of Labour getting in with support/coalition with the SNP are frightening for the UK as a whole,

I might have to move back to France!

The Tories and UKIP equally as frightening if you ask me.

As I said earlier in the thread they're all as bad as each other, but I cannot understand or accept people in the North mainly having to rely on food banks to get by, thats just disgusting in my book and I make no apologies for keep bringing it up.

[yoda]

Minority Conservative govt with Ukip support and Cameron having to bow to extreme right-wing of his party. Now that's frightening.

The socialist govt of M Hollande will welcome you back I'm sure.

I am sure they would seeing as how they are bankrupt,

They are not socialists in France by the way, they are commies with a socialist name tag.

[Andyblue2]

Me a socialist

I don't know you, but you seem to have socialist tendencies.

how would you describe your political views?

Thatcher used to say the same - and it's standard right wing claptrap.

It's your net income after tax that you own; the rest very definitely belongs to the government.

Only you could try and blame the Tories for the very existence of income tax. But I suppose as a staunch labour chap you probably don't have much an income to tax.

[yoda]

I don't know you, but you seem to have socialist tendencies.

how would you describe your political views?

Only you could try and blame the Tories for the very existence of income tax. But I suppose as a staunch labour chap you probably don't have much an income to tax.

You have got that wrong, champagne socialist is our jimbo

[Andyblue2]

Really? Good old Jimbo, always looking out for others not so fortunate as him

[Steve Kean's Hypnotoad]

Thatcher used to say the same - and it's standard right wing claptrap.

If you think it's your money go and ask for your share of the money back. I think you'll find there is not any part of the government's money that is earmarked as yours. That, of course, is because none is.

Then try not paying what the government thinks you owe it and see what happens. If there are any staff still in the relevant HMRC office not hit by cutbacks, you will find they will take a dim view of your approach and will then begin legal proceedings to recover the sum you owe.

It's your net income after tax that you own; the rest very definitely belongs to the government.

Can you ever make any political comment without including an insult along the way? Its pathetic. Calling someone right wing does not win an argument (and is highly offensive), neither does calling something claptrap. If you disagree with something, explain the reason why and leave it at that. Obviously everyone (including me) indulges in a bit more than that sometimes when they get passionate about something, but you do it every single political post and frankly it makes you come across as a prat. If your starting assumption in politics is that you have discovered the ultimate truth and everyone else is an idiot then I doubt very many people listen to anything you have to say, just as I haven't bothered with the rest of your post.

Quite aside from the fact that its a very pompous, elitist, arrogant and frankly right-wing view to insult every opinion other than your own. I find myself struggling to find a liberal liberal these days.

[jim mk2]

Ad hominem attack. My point is proven and your argument demolished. .

[Gav]

I don't know you, but you seem to have socialist tendencies.

how would you describe your political views?

If I thought it would trigger some decent debate with you Andy I'd be more than happy to share that information, but sadly i can't see that happening, so I won't bother.

[yoda]

Can you ever make any political comment without including an insult along the way? Its pathetic. Calling someone right wing does not win an argument (and is highly offensive), neither does calling something claptrap. If you disagree with something, explain the reason why and leave it at that. Obviously everyone (including me) indulges in a bit more than that sometimes when they get passionate about something, but you do it every single political post and frankly it makes you come across as a prat. If your starting assumption in politics is that you have discovered the ultimate truth and everyone else is an idiot then I doubt very many people listen to anything you have to say, just as I haven't bothered with the rest of your post.

Quite aside from the fact that its a very pompous, elitist, arrogant and frankly right-wing view to insult every opinion other than your own. I find myself struggling to find a liberal liberal these days.

Perhaps if you realised that there is no such thing as an average person it might help, we are all different.

Ad hominem attack. My point is proven and your argument demolished. .

There you go again

[Steve Kean's Hypnotoad]

Ad hominem attack. My point is proven and your argument demolished. .

Not in the slightest, I just prefer not to have debates (however heated) with someone who's starting point is that every single thing they have to say on the issue is correct. Its pointless.

But seeing as I'm pretty bored:

Just because there is a systematic way of collecting taxes, doesn't remove the fundamental truth underlying it. People work, they get paid by their companies, they give money to government, the government spends it (or should spend it) on benefiting society.

Let me guess, former public sector worker? It makes life much easier for all the striking teachers and NHS staff to think of it in terms of the government has loads of money and isn't giving it to us. Far messier to consider, actually its the person next door who works in the private sector and doesn't even have a pension and has barely even heard of incremental pay rises, its his/her money that I want some more of so I can go back to the good old days under Labour where the economy got ruined and thousands of businesses went under.

As I said, I'm not for doing away with anything. There should be the NHS, but it shouldn't have thousands of useless middle management types. There should be education funding, but it shouldn't guarantee teachers double the average wage round here. There should be jobseekers, but not for the permanently lazy. This is people's money, and it should be spent carefully, or people will get sick of trying to make it. And we can't have whole country full of teachers and nurses, someone has to pay them.

[Gav]

Teachers on average earn around 25k SKH, sorry to pull just that bit from your post but I've got enough debates going on in this thread, so Id just like to point that out.

[jim mk2]

Let me guess, former public sector worker? It makes life much easier for all the striking teachers and NHS staff to think of it in terms of the government has loads of money and isn't giving it to us. Far messier to consider, actually its the person next door who works in the private sector and doesn't even have a pension and has barely even heard of incremental pay rises, its his/her money that I want some more of so I can go back to the good old days under Labour where the economy got ruined and thousands of businesses went under.

As I said, I'm not for doing away with anything. There should be the NHS, but it shouldn't have thousands of useless middle management types. There should be education funding, but it shouldn't guarantee teachers double the average wage round here. There should be jobseekers, but not for the permanently lazy.

This is people's money, and it should be spent carefully, or people will get sick of trying to make it. And we can't have whole country full of teachers and nurses, someone has to pay them.

The 1st and 2nd paragraphs are right wing claptrap. Could you not really do better than that?.

As for the sentence in bold you only have a legal entitlement to your income (and any other property you own, come to that) after the tax due as a result of the process of acquiring or owning or using it has been paid. It's your net income after tax that you own; the rest very definitely belongs to the government.

[Baz]

This may not be exactly correct but here goes just to make a start

10k a year = no tax/week or no tax/year

20k a year = £38.50/week or £2,002/year

40k a year = £115.40/week or £6,000.80 tax/year

60k a year = £269.30/week or £14,003.60 tax/year

120k a year =£730.80/week or £38,001.60 tax/year

How much in actuality do the top 1 and 10% contribute in tax as a % of their income?

[Steve Kean's Hypnotoad]

Teachers on average earn around 25k SKH, sorry to pull just that bit from your post but I've got enough debates going on in this thread, so Id just like to point that out.

http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/article-2067258/Best-paid-jobs-2011-Tables-official-figures-UK-salaries.html

£42,263 according to this link, and that was in 2011. 27th best paid job out of a list of 422.

[Steve Kean's Hypnotoad]

The 1st and 2nd paragraphs are right wing claptrap. Could you not really do better than that?.

As for the sentence in bold you only have a legal entitlement to your income (and any other property you own, come to that) after the tax due as a result of the process of acquiring or owning or using it has been paid. It's your net income after tax that you own; the rest very definitely belongs to the government.

Listen Stalin, just because anything that falls to the right of your communist bull**** classes as right-wing in your fairyland world of nonsensical idiocy, doesn't mean its actually true. So I don't have to do better than anything, I've given up trying to reason with Britain's answer to ******* Che Guevara. I'm absolutely convinced now you're a former public sector worker cause I used to hear this brainwashed garbage from all the dossers when I worked at the council. You look after your own kind like I'm sure you've always done, but 5 minutes listening to you and it'll be a cold day in hell when I look after them too.

[Baz]

Listen Stalin, just because anything that falls to the right of your communist bull**** classes as right-wing in your fairyland world of nonsensical idiocy, doesn't mean its actually true. So I don't have to do better than anything, I've given up trying to reason with Britain's answer to ******* Che Guevara. I'm absolutely convinced now you're a former public sector worker cause I used to hear this brainwashed garbage from all the dossers when I worked at the council. You look after your own kind like I'm sure you've always done, but 5 minutes listening to you and it'll be a cold day in hell when I look after them too.

Well he's not a former or current public sector worker....

[den]

As for the sentence in bold you only have a legal entitlement to your income (and any other property you own, come to that) after the tax due as a result of the process of acquiring or owning or using it has been paid. It's your net income after tax that you own; the rest very definitely belongs to the government.

Correct.

At the moment Cameron and Osborne are by far the most powerful people in the country and two of the most powerful people in the world. They have given themselves five unopposed years to take as much of our money as they like and push it in the direction that they like. I'm afraid if anyone thinks they're just a couple of nice guys who want to share and share alike, they're badly mistaken. They're here to make sure they and the people they truly represent i.e. the people in posession of great wealth, "conserve" that position. They're here to make sure those people don't lose what they have. They're not concerned about the have-nots. Government is all about the priority that's given to the wealth distribution. No matter what the upper tax rate was before they came in, they've demonstrated their priorities by hitting everyday working people, - (the grossly unfair bedroom for example) while giving tax breaks to millionnairres. That's what this government is about and sad to say, some every day, ordinary decent working class people believe this is in their best interests.

[thenodrog]

As I said earlier in the thread they're all as bad as each other, but I cannot understand or accept people in the North mainly having to rely on food banks to get by, thats just disgusting in my book and I make no apologies for keep bringing it up.

Bring em up as much as you want gav. Unfortunately and most misleadingly you make it sound as if the entire North of the country needs them to survive. Food Banks have been going for just a couple of years and imo in couple of years they could well be consigned to the history books. If there were no Food Banks people would still get by simply because they did just that for thousands of years.

[scotchrover]

Not in the slightest, I just prefer not to have debates (however heated) with someone who's starting point is that every single thing they have to say on the issue is correct. Its pointless.

But seeing as I'm pretty bored:

Just because there is a systematic way of collecting taxes, doesn't remove the fundamental truth underlying it. People work, they get paid by their companies, they give money to government, the government spends it (or should spend it) on benefiting society.

1)Let me guess, former public sector worker? It makes life much easier for all the striking teachers and NHS staff to think of it in terms of the government has loads of money and isn't giving it to us. (2)Far messier to consider, actually its the person next door who works in the private sector and doesn't even have a pension and has barely even heard of incremental pay rises, its his/her money that I want some more of so I can go back to the (3)good old days under Labour where the economy got ruined and thousands of businesses went under.

As I said, I'm not for doing away with anything. There should be the NHS, but it shouldn't have thousands of useless middle management types. There should be education funding, but it shouldn't guarantee teachers double the average wage round here. There should be jobseekers, but not for the permanently lazy. This is people's money, and it should be spent carefully, or people will get sick of trying to make it. And we can't have whole country full of teachers and nurses, someone has to pay them.

1) As a teacher, can I just say we strike because we can't beat it! I absolutely love it the way we go give up a day's pay because we think the government has gold mine hidden somewhere!

As a teacher, it annoys me enough when children miss a day off through illness.

A child missing a day through illness/ school being closed= a child not learning about a certain method of multiplication (example).

A child not learning about multiplication= a child probably not going to have a clue when it come to one of his 3 yearly tests, assessing his progress.

A child not making the expected progress of 1 sub level= a teacher, like myself, being asked why?

As I'm sure you're aware, a child has to make 2 sub-levels progress each year (3 in some cases, such as my last school, because English isn't a first language). Each day involves teaching something different, such as multiplication by grid method on one day, then multiplication by the vertical method, the following day. However, we love a good strike, just for the sake of it, just so a every child can fall behind and ruin our assessment results ( I usually end up making the child stay behind at 3:30-4:30 to make sure they understand the method, before anyone moans!)

2) People in the private sector can choose to move to another job. For example, an I.T. specialist can move to another company if they feel the rate of pay is unacceptable. The term 'choice', which any good Thatcherite loves, does not apply to those people qualified to work as a doctor, teacher or nurse. We have to stick the public sector! Yes I could teach privately, but there's very few jobs with regards to that.)

Anyone who attacks state employees needs to take a step back! Teachers are there to help educate the youngsters of today, fill the jobs of tomorrow. Doctors and nurses care for those people who are in great need, in life threatening conditions. Social workers all across our nation are doing their best to stop vulnerable people from being abused. The fire, police and armed services are out there saving and protecting innocent people's lives. At the end of all, how dare we ask for pay rise? Get real!

3)Does the start of Thatcher's era ring any bells with this? The start of that era caused the state to become nearly half the size of the economy, despite the fact there'd been massive cuts to the public sector!

http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/article-2067258/Best-paid-jobs-2011-Tables-official-figures-UK-salaries.html

£42,263 according to this link, and that was in 2011. 27th best paid job out of a list of 422.

It'll be lower than this now on the league table, but why is this so bad? Without a teacher, the 1-26 jobs wouldn't even exist in a professional capacity. Why shouldn't a teacher who gets a child in the last year of primary school, who starts the academic year not being able to speak a word of English, obtain a level 4 in English, maths and science (what's expected of an White, British child, who's been in English education, all in their life)?

[Paul]

Just because there is a systematic way of collecting taxes, doesn't remove the fundamental truth underlying it. People work, they get paid by their companies, they give money to government, the government spends it (or should spend it) on benefiting society.

Do we though give it to the government? We all live in the UK, it could be said the is where we chose to live as we all have s huge freedom to move around in the modern world.

For me taxes are the price we pay for the society we chose to live in. And by the "price we pay" I mean it in the sense of buying a service. This is what taxes do, it's what they are, the purchase price of ever service and individual needs to live in a modern society. Overall it's a very, very good deal, too good as the "business" which supplies those services, that is the country as a whole, is in a terrible financial state - it doesn't charge the going rate.

The choices are these, cut the cost of providing the services or increase the price of the service, that is increased taxation, to a sustainable level.

It's impossible to run a modern country without taxation and as the customers we should pay the going rate rather than constantly look for lower prices. I feel the central issue is we are not prepared to pay the going rate for the level of service as consumers we demand.

The one thing I would love to see happen, and I have no idea if it is financially viable or if it makes any fiscal sense is investment in the country.

Historically government debt arose through borrowing for capital investment. Today we borrow to cover the running costs which is very bad news. It's the same approach as a mortgage and buying food on a credit card, one an investment the other not so.

Why is it we cannot make enormous capital investment in our housing stock, infrastructure, landscape? Borrow the money to invest in countrywide regeneration to really bring the country up to scratch. Surely this would create real jobs, real wealth and real taxes while hugely improving our everyday lives.

As just one example investment in our roads to repair years of neglect. Even the M6 is crumbling away with new potholes appearing every day. Crazy.

Ultimately as consumers we have to pay for products and services. At present we don't and won't pay the real price for the very good value we receive.

Just try living without the things taxation provides.

[thenodrog]

1) As a teacher, can I just say we strike because we can't beat it! I absolutely love it the way we go give up a day's pay because we think the government has gold mine hidden somewhere!

As a teacher, it annoys me enough when children miss a day off through illness.

A child missing a day through illness/ school being closed= a child not learning about a certain method of multiplication (example).

A child not learning about multiplication= a child probably not going to have a clue when it come to one of his 3 yearly tests, assessing his progress.

A child not making the expected progress of 1 sub level= a teacher, like myself, being asked why?

As I'm sure you're aware, a child has to make 2 sub-levels progress each year (3 in some cases, such as my last school, because English isn't a first language). Each day involves teaching something different, such as multiplication by grid method on one day, then multiplication by the vertical method, the following day. However, we love a good strike, just for the sake of it, just so a every child can fall behind and ruin our assessment results ( I usually end up making the child stay behind at 3:30-4:30 to make sure they understand the method, before anyone moans!)

2) People in the private sector can choose to move to another job. For example, an I.T. specialist can move to another company if they feel the rate of pay is unacceptable. The term 'choice', which any good Thatcherite loves, does not apply to those people qualified to work as a doctor, teacher or nurse. We have to stick the public sector! Yes I could teach privately, but there's very few jobs with regards to that.)

Anyone who attacks state employees needs to take a step back! Teachers are there to help educate the youngsters of today, fill the jobs of tomorrow. Doctors and nurses care for those people who are in great need, in life threatening conditions. Social workers all across our nation are doing their best to stop vulnerable people from being abused. The fire, police and armed services are out there saving and protecting innocent people's lives. At the end of all, how dare we ask for pay rise? Get real!

3)Does the start of Thatcher's era ring any bells with this? The start of that era caused the state to become nearly half the size of the economy, despite the fact there'd been massive cuts to the public sector!

It'll be lower than this now on the league table, but why is this so bad? Without a teacher, the 1-26 jobs wouldn't even exist in a professional capacity. Why shouldn't a teacher who gets a child in the last year of primary school, who starts the academic year not being able to speak a word of English, obtain a level 4 in English, maths and science (what's expected of an White, British child, who's been in English education, all in their life)?

1. Surely you knew about the terms and conditions of when you chose your career? If you don't like it do something else asap because this life is not a rehearsal. This is it and it's no good getting to an embittered state in middle age with regrets.

2. All those professions are valued around the world. Get on yer bike if you want more money. You can be anywhere on the planet in a day.

3. Not really sure how you can compare Teachers with Doctors. To study medicine requires very high grades at A Level and intense study over 5/6 years. Many people I went through school with ended up as teachers when they didn't get the A' Level grades required to study their first choice career. Not only that but knowing some recently graduated teachers I'm quite amazed that they are even let loose on teaching our next generation. However the dramatic drop in standards of education in the last 50 years is another subject entirely.

[thenodrog]

As just one example investment in our roads to repair years of neglect. Even the M6 is crumbling away with new potholes appearing every day. Crazy.

The roads are so bad paul that I've come to the conclusion that the dreadful state of our roads is an intentional move to calm/slow traffic down. I'm also of the opinion that the authorities consider any cyclist / motorcyclist who hits a pothole and goes over the handlebars and under a car is just peripheral damage.

[thenodrog]

Historically government debt arose through borrowing for capital investment. Today we borrow to cover the running costs which is very bad news. It's the same approach as a mortgage and buying food on a credit card, one an investment the other not so.

Why is it we cannot make enormous capital investment in our housing stock, infrastructure, landscape? Borrow the money to invest in countrywide regeneration to really bring the country up to scratch. Surely this would create real jobs, real wealth and real taxes while hugely improving our everyday lives.

It's not taxation that I object to it's the unfair way it is imposed on the most successful, hard working members of society.

Also 'regeneration of the countryside' should be carried out by the army of fit and healthy people who are on unemployment benefit. I see walls, crumbling, verges overgrown, paint flaking, cemetaries and parks in poor state whilst far far too many in our town are sat on their arses with their hands out (hence the popularity of food banks). Such individuals take money raised by taxation on the rest of society so lets have them give something back whilst they are on state hand outs. Cut benefits on any that won't participate and give that money to the ones who will 'volunteer' for this type of work.

[Gav]

http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/article-2067258/Best-paid-jobs-2011-Tables-official-figures-UK-salaries.html

£42,263 according to this link, and that was in 2011. 27th best paid job out of a list of 422.

I've got friends and relatives that are teachers, and not 1 of them is on over 30k, but the holidays are fantastic!

The figure you quote is more likely to be deputy heads or in this area actual head teachers.