Is the recession really Brown's fault?

cogito

Thatcher put up VAT from 8% to 15%,

Howe insisted on increasing it to 15%. Thatcher wanted it capped at 12.5%. At the same time, rates of income tax were slashed so the effect was broadly neutral. I'm sure it just slipped your mind.

nickmason

Rochdale_Pioneers wrote: »

Its also worth making the point that the Tories managed their finances so badly with the Poll Tax that when it was replaced by the Community Charge ....

hang on - the poll tax was the unofficial name for the community charge wasn't it?

Generali

nickmason wrote: »

hang on - the poll tax was the unofficial name for the community charge wasn't it?

Community Charge (aka Poll Tax) replaced rates. My parents' house was 'worth' about GBP300 the last time rates were set in the early 90s.

Poll tax was replaced by the system we now have - Council Tax.

JayScottGreenspan

Rochdale_Pioneers wrote: »

As all things politics is the art of compromise. I frankly despise several leading members of the Labour Party, went on the Iraq War march, have had blazing rows with other party members on a variety of topics and fundamentally disagree with the government on a swathe of issues.

And yet I am Labour. I have friends who are Tories who have the same thing with their party. In fact the Tory party has for the last 20 years been a party tent for loathing, mutiny and back-stabbing. The LibDems have a schizm over whether to be economic Liberals or not.

We're all tribal, instinctively drawn to our chosen party. And like all families we row and fight. Why is this concept so hard for some of you to understand?

Very eloquent post.

The tribal bit is interesting because it definitely exists. It's like at a critical age in a person's development they are randomly and permanently allocated an allegiance based on:
1) Who the people around them support;
2) Which bunch of muppets are curently in charge and messing things up.

It all seems so arbitrary.

nickmason

Rochdale_Pioneers wrote: »

And for those hard right nutters who favour a flat rate of income tax, not how well it worked at local government level.

Not sure if you mean that.

The poll tax wasn't a flat rate of income tax, it was a flat fee (with reductions for "the poor", I can't remember the details).

Council tax remains pretty flat in absolute terms, such that although it's linked to wealth, if you want to look at it as a rate, it's almost certainly negatively sloped.

Rates were linked to rental value, which is closer to income (if both are paid by the resident) than either of the above - so that was the closest approximation to a flat rate.

The lib-dem local income tax is in fact a flat rate.

Anyhow I'll get off this soapbox before I go off on another of my "why can't we sort out local government funding" rants! Thankfully the conservatives are going to do it once elected.

nickmason

JayScottGreenspan wrote: »

Very eloquent post.

The tribal bit is interesting because it definitely exists. It's like at a critical age in a person's development they are randomly and permanently allocated an allegiance based on:
1) Who the people around them support;
2) Which bunch of muppets are curently in charge and messing things up.

It all seems so arbitrary.

I agree - "some of my best friends are labour" *
I have always been frustrated that most of the bad labour eggs (at least in the old sense of them being far left) are just well-meaning nutters, whereas the bad tories are really unpleasant. This has something in common with the "hero worship" of left wing b*****ds as opposed to their right wing equivalents. I know we've done that discussion to death here! But there's no reason why that means that moderate right-minded people are any less good than moderate left-minded people. Reading from the extremes to the moderate is not appropriate.

Interestingly about tribes I was talking to a senior policeman in Northern Ireland, and we were musing about why there's so much political apathy here - his answer was that "you try and start people too old; in NI I've seen babies dressed up in paramilitary gear, they're off marching as soon as they can walk, etc" I'm not advocating it, by the way.

* and most of my best lovers. Not that you needed to know that.

Cannon_Fodder

The arguments against Community Charge seemed to consist mostly of envy.

"why does that old lady get to live in that big house and pay the same as each adult next-door..."

No thought for the fact the old lady's husband slogged himself for 40 years to buy the house, then died leaving her alone and desperately hanging onto the house long enough for the sale of it to pay for her retirement care-home.

The "poll tax" tag was useful to the left-wing militants who hired rent-a-mob, seen in the earlier pictures.


Facilities are used by the number of people concerned. Pay for them. Too simple?

Maybe if everyone had been forced to pay Community Charge, even through Labour's time, then the little rabbits would have learnt it was expensive to breed, and would not have created the underclass of unempoyable, benefit-squandering chavs we now see in every town.

nickmason

of course the poll tax had one other benefit that it didn't require an army of assessors/valuers. Efficient local charges for local services? Value for money for taaxpayers. Couldn't have that, could we. :rolleyes:

Rochdale_Pioneers

nickmason wrote: »

I agree - "some of my best friends are labour" *
I have always been frustrated that most of the bad labour eggs (at least in the old sense of them being far left) are just well-meaning nutters, whereas the bad tories are really unpleasant. This has something in common with the "hero worship" of left wing b*****ds as opposed to their right wing equivalents. I know we've done that discussion to death here! But there's no reason why that means that moderate right-minded people are any less good than moderate left-minded people. Reading from the extremes to the moderate is not appropriate.

Some people seem to be blinded with loathing towards the opposition. I can listen to members of my party who think Tories are all inbred plutocrats cackling over the demise of teh working man. I read various Tories on here who think Socialism = Communazism.

Ultimately we all are human and British, we share common values (mostly) and we want to see Britain do well. I don't know any politician who sets out to maliciously destroy either the country or its infrastructure, yet to listen to loonies on both sides the opposition are out to smash things up.

As for me I have a huge amount of time and respect for a great many Tories of the one nation flavour. We might disagree on some things but broadly there's not that much difference between Labour and Tory on a whole heap of policies. Its only when the two sides swing to the extremes that we see massive differences - Thatcher vs Foot for example.

The rest of the time there is little to fear of the opposition winning. Much moaning from Tories that the NHS hasn't improved under Labour and is poor - thats an acceptance that it was also rubbish under 18 years of the tories. Similarly hardcore Labourites opposed privatisation on ideological grounds, yet nationalisation had become an utter disaster with communist unions trying to invoke a revolution. There's less between us than sometimes we let on.

StevieJ

Rochdale_Pioneers wrote: »

Its also worth making the point that the Tories managed their finances so badly with the Poll Tax that when it was replaced by the Community Charge there was a vast hole in local authority funding. Lamont filled this hole by increasing VAT from 15% to 17.5% (source John major's autobiography). Did VAT ever go back down?

And why was Cameron flapping so much about the alleged 1% increase to 18.5% being proposed apparently for 2010? Thatcher put up VAT from 8% to 15%, his old boss put it up to 17.5%. If 1% would be so cataclysmic and unfair now as he suggests, then how does he live with himself having jacked it up in 1991 to cover a hole created by the Poll Tax Disaster?

And for those hard right nutters who favour a flat rate of income tax, not how well it worked at local government level.

Lamont filled this hole by increasing VAT from 15% to 17.5% (source John major's autobiography). Did VAT ever go back down?

Yes, the other week :beer: