General Election 2019 - AND IT’S LIVE!

[The_Kincardine]

43 minutes ago, gaz5 said:

The point that someone paying tax on a salary of £25k a year can be significantly "richer" then someone paying tax on a salary of £80k+ a year is 100% a valid one and I would wager far more common than a lot of people think.

This is only true if property costs and investments are excluded.  Otherwise it's bollocks.

[Malky3]

10 hours ago, Granny Danger said:

The real life impact of Universal Credit.  This will get worse after the GE and lots of people simply won’t give a f**k.

https://news.sky.com/story/shredding-lives-the-reality-of-universal-credit-in-blackpool-11866821

Being honest I'm not sure I've got a lot of sympathy with the plight of the guy in the article. 

I don't know what has led to his situation where the kids mother is no longer around and he can't count on any support from either set of grandparents, but regardless of his situation sitting around waiting on a government to fix it for him is utterly pointless. There are literally loads of things he could do to better his situation but it reads to me like he's decided there are no jobs available in Blackpool so as a result he should just get benefits and rely on charity to help feed his kids. 

To cite one example, one of my youngest sons friends found himself in a bad situation when his young wife died months after giving birth to his baby daughter. His parents were working but he was able initially to do night shifts at Tesco whilst his parents looked after his daughter through the night and to try to make a bit more money he decided to start making some candles that he could sell to friends and family. Within 6 months he was doing well enough with the candles that he was able to give up the night shift job and now five years on his products are retailing in Garden Centres as well as selling well online. 

Going back further I know of one single mother who went into production creating bags of sauces and mixes of spices that she sells at markets as well as online and another single mother who went into production making a toffee vodka so she could spend more time with her kids. 

Even my Purple Bricks Estate Agent who helped me sell my house last year worked with his daughter in tow during school holidays. His daughter would just stay in his car while he conducted viewings etc. 

 

[welshbairn]

10 minutes ago, MixuFixit said:

 

 

U wot
 

 

It's fair enough, if you've gambled up to your oxters in the UK dropping in value after a hard Brexit your disposable  income could take a hard hit after a Labour win.

[Malky3]

34 minutes ago, pandarilla said:

He in the top 5% of earners but he doesn't feel like he's one of the super-rich because he's not.

It's not easy to get their fair share off them though, as they're hiring a team of accountants to avoid it (although I'm sure Corbyn and McDonnell will be trying their best).

The Labour panelist should've explained it better, and worked out what the guy was on about much sooner.

I agree with this but Richard Burgon didn't look anywhere near on top of his brief. He'd come armed with soundbites and struggled when it came to facts. 

The pounding the guy asking the question is getting on Social Media and in some of the news outlets is ridiculous though. As I said to some extent he made a relevant point. Labour had made a great deal of play talking about how they were going to get all of this money they were going to spend by taxing "only the rich" extra money. But when you see how low the threshold would be there's plenty of people who will have been thinking that this won't affect them, who will now be aware that they are in Corbyns Crosshairs. 

[gaz5]

U wot

Read the whole post and don't quote it in isolation. [emoji846]

I mean someone paying tax on a salary of £25k who is actually bringing in significantly more than that, that isn't taxed, versus someone bringing in £80k but only through one source and all in scope for HMRC. Not someone who is actually on £25k in total all through PAYE.

For example:

Person A is a programmer working for Company X as an employee. Their Salary is £80k and they pay the appropriate levels of tax on that salary, meaning they are in scope for these new proposals to pay more tax.

Person B is a programmer working for Company X but as a contractor through his own personal services company (PSC) on a day rate of £500 (a fairly common day rate for that role). Their company is paid by Company X for 220 days (standard contractor calculation) = £110k per year. Their company pays business rates on that (lower than PAYE, ~20% or some such on the full figure) then they pay themselves a low personal wage to cover National Insurance (paying PAYE on that say £25k) then take dividends from their company which aren't taxed at anywhere near the PAYE level on the rest.

So on paper, one person earns £80k and is in scope for these changes, the other earns £25k as far as tax is concerned so isn't. But the person earning £25k in reality is taking home far more, before we talk about VAT breaks etc.

Now I know the new IR35 laws are aimed at stopping that sort of thing, but it's only one example of what I meant by saying that looking at what someone pays tax on alone is no guide to whether they are "rich" or not.

And for this tax policy, the only people likely to be impacted are not the "rich", but the "honest" middle class earners in certain fields (IT, Doctors, Head Teachers etc.), rather than business owners, CEO's and others who people think this is aimed at and might actually fall into the "rich" category.

I am in favour of progressive taxation and personally if I end up getting anywhere near those figures won't mind paying a bit extra, but I certainly wouldn't consider myself "rich" at £80k.

In reality, that we are talking about that sort of figure being "rich" just shows how fucked we are not being able to manage our own affairs.

[Romeo]

Just watched Richard Leonard launch the manifesto on the news there.

Is there a duller, more boring, sleep inducing, vanilla politician?

[pandarilla]

The boy deserves the grief on social media for the way he made his point alone.

If he's asked it as a question and said he didn't feel like he was in the top 5% then it would be a completely reasonable point. But he was such a bell-end about it, calling the Labour guy a liar with all the finger jabbing. He was so adamant that he wasn't in the top 5% that he deserves everything he gets.

[D Angelo Barksdale]

Someone earning 80 grand would pay an extra 96p a week.

[Joey Jo Jo Junior Shabadoo]

9 minutes ago, Henderson to deliver ..... said:

Someone earning 80 grand would pay an extra 96p a week.

Tiny if true.

[BawWatchin]

2 minutes ago, Henderson to deliver ..... said:

Someone earning 80 grand would pay an extra 96p a week.

U WOT M8?!

[Paco]

Some wonderful whataboutery on here. I was hit ‘harder’, not in percentage terms but in sheer cash, by the SNP tax changes than someone earning £85k will be by Labour’s - and I earn absolutely nowhere near £85k.

If you earn £90k a year - ninety thousand pounds - you’ll pay £500 more per year in income tax, or £41 a month. That is not a lot of money for someone who takes home £5000 - five thousand pounds!! - each month.

If you earn that amount and you’d rather keep the £41 a month, that’s fine. Your prerogative. People earning around or even below the national median crying about it? I find it absolutely astonishing. Genuinely mental.

[dorlomin]

If you believe that Brexit will damage the economy in the medium term and that austerity unnecessarily harms those on low incomes then your priories should be to demand parties present as electable a platform as possible, to win tough marginal constituencies and win back voters who have voted for other parties in recent elections. 

I have yet to see anyone credible suggest Labours manifesto is anything of the sort. Its a self indulgent wish list to appeal to those already committed to the hard left swing Labour is currently taking. 

Most on this thread are in a state of absolute denial as to the world outside their echo chamber. Labour has significant credibilty issues on areas such as running the economy. "Promising" to raise £10 billions in tax (whether they can are not is another story), then spend that same amount of nearly everything out of the far left wishlist for the past 39 years, may give the hard liners on this thread a sense of smug validation. 

On top of that there is crap like this:

https://www.politicshome.com/news/uk/political-parties/labour-party/john-mcdonnell/news/108132/labour-would-allow-sympathy

It is self indulgence not fighting for marginal votes. 

That is not looking at other significant issues with the current Labour leadership (indulging its 3 and a half years of blundering and uturns on Brexit).

The Lib Dems have run a piss poor campaign that seems to be a mini version of the Tories "Maybot" effort in 2017, so there is not likely to be as many seats coming from that direction as was once hoped.

Buckle up.  

 

[welshbairn]

Bet there's loads of people in Conservative Association social clubs pretending they'll be really hard hit by this.

Edited November 22, 2019 by welshbairn

[Ross.]

5 minutes ago, welshbairn said:

Bet there's loads of people in Conservative Association social clubs pretending they'll be really hard hit by this.

While bemoaning the fact they are “Subsidising those bloody Scottish students who get it all for nothing”.

[O'Kelly Isley III]

Just watched Richard Leonard launch the manifesto on the news there.

Is there a duller, more boring, sleep inducing, vanilla politician?

James Kelly, come on down.

[Ross.]

2 hours ago, gaz5 said:

The proper "rich", who these kinds of policies claim to target, won't pay a single penny more in tax as s result because they're not daft enough to allow themselves to hit that level of PAYE in the first place. This isn't a tax on the rich, it's a tax on well paid middle class workers in certain fields.

Introduce a wealth tax. That will absolutely target the actual rich.

[Pet Jeden]

1 hour ago, MixuFixit said:

Why did you pick those two?

Because they are the countries with the high level of public services and social welfare that people in the UK would want to emulate. But Hendo's graph is just about spending, not about ability to pay the bill. It's a bit like somebody on a Debt Management Plan complaining that they are not spending any more than the neighbours! Once you add in our £300bn  hidden PFI debt, there's probably only Greece, Italy, Portugal, Cyprus and Belgium that have higher debt to GDP ratios in Europe. Which one of them do fancy being?

[Ross.]

42 minutes ago, Pet Jeden said:

Because they are the countries with the high level of public services and social welfare that people in the UK would want to emulate. But Hendo's graph is just about spending, not about ability to pay the bill. It's a bit like somebody on a Debt Management Plan complaining that they are not spending any more than the neighbours! Once you add in our £300bn  hidden PFI debt, there's probably only Greece, Italy, Portugal, Cyprus and Belgium that have higher debt to GDP ratios in Europe. Which one of them do fancy being?

Surprised about Belgium(i guess bailing out their banks played a huge role) but the other 4 have a lot in common with the UK, in that those who have absolutely resent the prospect of paying any more tax than they can get away with.

[gaz5]

Introduce a wealth tax. That will absolutely target the actual rich.

Agreed.

Not sure what it would look like, but it would surely be a better gauge of "rich" than just what people declare as taxable salary.

[Fullerene]

1 hour ago, pandarilla said:

The boy deserves the grief on social media for the way he made his point alone.

If he's asked it as a question and said he didn't feel like he was in the top 5% then it would be a completely reasonable point. But he was such a bell-end about it, calling the Labour guy a liar with all the finger jabbing. He was so adamant that he wasn't in the top 5% that he deserves everything he gets.

For me Question Time is almost unwatchable now.  Very similar to the Jeremy Kyle show - if you got something to say then adopt an outraged tone before you say it.  Depressing.