Outrage - Tory Tax Dodger costs Taxpayers Millions - The Times

BACKFRMTHEEDGE

ukcarper wrote: »

Do people on PAYE subsidise everybody else?

Excellent point. I think we do. Most trades people work in a non taxed cash environment from what I've observed. The rich and the poor pay no tax and that just leaves the rest of us.....

BACKFRMTHEEDGE

Out,_Vile_Jelly wrote: »

If Goldman was paying tax on his immense fortune, it wouldn't exactly leave him destitute, would it? He and his family will never have to work or worry about finances. When you have a certain level of wealth it sort of becomes immaterial. The difference between 20 million and 25 million of free inherited money is not the same as someone's salary increasing from £20k to £25k. I suppose this is what makes me a lefty, but I genuinely don't see the point in obsessively hoarding money when you and your loved ones have no wants in life.

In the unlikely event of my becoming super-rich, once I'd ensured my family and friends were sorted and I had enough to indulge in some hobbies (a string of racehorses with rude names, my own cocktail bar inventing drinks with even ruder names for example) I would have no problem with paying taxes with the aim of making my country a fair and decent place to live. It would perhaps make me more involved in local politics to ensure they were spent properly though.

I suppose this is what makes him unsuitable to be an MP. The fact that he doesn't think the way you discribe above. He doesn't give two hoots about anyone else until there is something in it for him "I'll pay taxes now - I want to be in Parliament":rolleyes:

BACKFRMTHEEDGE

LizEstelle wrote: »

Oh, I see... any occasional headline from the the non-feudal press which shows Tories up to their usual troughing is 'misleading' whereas the daily, toxic, nonstop pouring of bile upon the government by the Sunmail comics goes without comment..?

I'm afraid that deserves a 'misleading' repeat:

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/top-stories/2009/11/25/old-pals-tax-115875-21848294/

I loathe the way the Tory Press whips people up into hate.

BACKFRMTHEEDGE

whathavewedone wrote: »

I'm more and more inclined to think that Labour will get a fourth term - not with a working majority and possibly in coalition with the Libdems. I actually think this would be a good thing because a lot of chickens will come home to roost after the election and it should be Labour who has to deal with it. Hopefully there would be a vote of no confidence in a matter of months and Labour would be out of power for a long long time. A far better scenario than the tories getting in for 4 years, having to make unpopular decisions to clear up the mess and letting Labour back in.

I actually think this would be a good thing too but a different reason. Labour will put less people on the dole. Simples.

BACKFRMTHEEDGE

kabayiri wrote: »

I want the stoopid extreme cases of HB excess to be knocked on the head. It's a waste of money.

I want more tax money from the rich people too. Many of them will have done very well over the recent credit bubble, so they can spare a reasonable chunk. I dont discriminate here between rich Tories or rich NuLab types. Both can pay.

I want the large corporations to pay their share of Corporation Tax too. If a small enterprise can succeed whilst paying it's share, then so can you BARCLAYS, with your 300+ offshore companies (and rising).

But the real reason I want more money from all the above?
It's because if they don't cough up, Joe Middleman here, will be squeezed even more, until the pips squeak.

Ain't that the truth! It's madness.

Eric_Pisch

LizEstelle wrote: »

And just in case anyone thinks that Tory tax self-interest is confined to one guy:

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/top-stories/2009/11/25/old-pals-tax-115875-21848294/

Just as many nulabore will earn from this, blair and his 20 mill in houses, the sith lord mandelson and his 30 times salary mortgage etc

whathavewedone

What a patronising thing to say.

I should get my husband (born in a council house in an area of South East London where Harriet Harman has been MP since the year dot) on here. He started working after school from the age of about 10 and hasn't stopped working since. Mending videos that were broken on the floor after the market had finished, taking them home and mending them and selling them at school. Just because you're poor it doesn't mean you can't be resourceful or have ambition.

His parents got out of the poverty trap by buying and then selling their council house. Now they live in a nice part of Kent in a 5 bedroom house, his sister's kids are going to an excellent primary school and will have a stab at least of going to grammar school which is an opportunity they wouldn't have had on the Walworth Road.

BACKFRMTHEEDGE

whathavewedone wrote: »

What a patronising thing to say.

I should get my husband (born in a council house in an area of South East London where Harriet Harman has been MP since the year dot) on here. He started working after school from the age of about 10 and hasn't stopped working since. Mending videos that were broken on the floor after the market had finished, taking them home and mending them and selling them at school. Just because you're poor it doesn't mean you can't be resourceful or have ambition.

His parents got out of the poverty trap by buying and then selling their council house. Now they live in a nice part of Kent in a 5 bedroom house, his sister's kids are going to an excellent primary school and will have a stab at least of going to grammar school which is an opportunity they wouldn't have had on the Walworth Road.

I wasn't being patronising I don't think. I don't think it is easy to get yourself out of poverty.

There is considerable mobility of income from one year to the next, with people moving into and out of poverty. However, most do not move far up or down the income distribution scale.

However, most income mobility takes place over a relatively short scale and there is considerable persistence in poverty among some groups of people. Those most at risk of persistent poverty are children, older people, lone parents, social housing tenants, adults with no educational qualifications and workless households.

http://www.jrf.org.uk/publications/routes-out-poverty
Joseph Rowntree Foundation - "Route out of Poverty"

lostinrates

BACKFRMTHEEDGE wrote: »

True. But why do people get angrier about benefits than toffs paying zilch in tax when they clearly are resident in the UK?

I don't think they really do, (many suggest tax at what would be punitive levels for the rich.) in your question, its clear, for example, that you have no symaothy for he rich, most of whom don't actually pay ''zilch'' (although avoid to a massive degree, I agree) and many of whome are not ''toffs''. But I think, whn most of us think our personal finance we aspire to increase income (akin to getting more through tax from the rich) but we can, with immeadiacy reduce our outgoings and I think its possibly a similar mentality when scaled up.

In reality I see a greater income, and as importantly, involvement in the country behind the fiscal investment, from ''encouraging'' (carrot) a tax that is not set at a punitive rate that we can ''convince'' (stick) all ''the rich'' to pay. Not all of us who are to the right and in (possibility) favour of an idealogy which includes reduced taxation see this as a route to lower national wealth and oppertunity.

LizEstelle

whathavewedone wrote: »

What are you ranting about? You have the BBC (which most people perceive to be unbiased and take seriously unlike the Sun or the much maligned Daily Mail) to ramp up anything that shows Brown and the Labour party in a less dire light, either spin or ignore a lot of the bad stuff and massively ramp up the smallest anti tory story.

If the tories were in power they would have been forced by the BBC to call an election by now. Take expenses, Radio 2 played Anthony Steen over and over again, went on and on about duck houses and moats but when it came to Labour's awful weeks the phone in asked "If you had the opportunity to fiddle your expenses would you do it?". No nasty reminders about the events of the week, claims for mortgages paid off long ago etc. At the end of the phone in, Jeremy Vine remarked in amazement how strange it was that when they put the question that way, MPs got a much less hostile response.

Similarly, the Julie Kirkbride thing got maximum airtime on the Beeb yet the scandal with Baroness Scotland was played down. If it was down to the Beeb you'd be forgiven for thinking that Draper/Mcbride wasn't a big deal. I'm sure they would have brushed Ghurkagate under the carpet too if it wasn't for Joanna Lumley making it absolutely impossible.

I'm more and more inclined to think that Labour will get a fourth term - not with a working majority and possibly in coalition with the Libdems. I actually think this would be a good thing because a lot of chickens will come home to roost after the election and it should be Labour who has to deal with it. Hopefully there would be a vote of no confidence in a matter of months and Labour would be out of power for a long long time. A far better scenario than the tories getting in for 4 years, having to make unpopular decisions to clear up the mess and letting Labour back in.

Absolute and utter rightist blue rinse.

This ongoing diatribe by the ranting righties about the Beeb, which is the one, true, independent voice in UK journalism, merely shows a dislike of this independence and the possibility of a middle view of matters distracting from the preferred, Sunmailite poison stream.

Of course it isn't perfect - nothing devised by humans ever is...

... but what you characterise as 'left wing bias' is only, in effect, the unvarnished truth being told, a matter which has enraged the intolerant tendency whether in Goebbels or Stalin skins.

Examine your motives, if such an operation is remotely possible.