Time to change Stamp Duty Levels?

grizzly1911

Thrugelmir wrote: »

Bold items are the key drivers. Where savings are clearly achievable.

What kind of magnitude are the potential savings in reality not just arms and legs. What percentage saving does this constitute against the budget? What will the severance costs be in relation?

Are the technology integration, reformation projects fixed price or open ended? What confidence is there that the actual benefits will be realised in reality, rather than the ministerial speak. How long is the work scheduled to take and when will it finish? What progress against plan (the original one) has been made to date? Is the program on time, on budget and delivering all that was promised against original plans?

wotsthat

Graham_Devon wrote: »

Is it not because you were doing this initally to myself that you find yourself in this position?

What? Asking you to consider why there's an assumption that for any reduction in one tax there has to be an equal and opposite increase in another? Or asking why it is that everyone on this forum knows how unhappy you are with spending in Devon but no one at the council knows?

I'm sorry if your feelings were hurt.

N1AK

wotsthat wrote: »

My position is perfectly clear - I think government need to improve their efficiency of spending, spend less on 'non-essentials' and interfere less.

Your position was, as it appears to be anything close to clear now, that the government should cut taxes (stamp duty) by cutting spending and that this would be achieved by removing inefficiency.

The point I, and others, made was it is a fantasy to think that if government spending was cut by £7 billion now then it would only come from eliminating 'waste'; and that the cuts would impact on critical services.

You have repeatedly opposed this position, which leaves you defending the bizarre position that there is lots of government waste but if we took away lots of money then the same people wasting lots of it would magically make decisions that ruthlessly cut that waste :rotfl:

wotsthat wrote: »

Your confused position is that cuts in spending would have to lead to cuts in vital services whilst crying 'straw man'

You cried strawman; though admittedly it seems it might have been some kind of debating tourettes as you clearly didn't know what it meant.

I have no interest in debating whether what I said was a strawman or not. I know what it was, and that what you were trying to claim it was was a false analogy. Why would I want to debate it with someone who made the obvious error to begin with.

Graham_Devon

wotsthat wrote: »

I'm sorry if your feelings were hurt.

They weren't.

I'm sorry you feel putting pointless ankle biting snippets like this at the end of your posts enhances anything you have said, or indeed, the debate.

wotsthat

N1AK wrote: »

The point I, and others, made was it is a fantasy to think that if government spending was cut by £7 billion now then it would only come from eliminating 'waste'; and that the cuts would impact on critical services.

You have repeatedly opposed this position, which leaves you defending the bizarre position that there is lots of government waste but if we took away lots of money then the same people wasting lots of it would magically make decisions that ruthlessly cut that waste :rotfl:

Where's the incentive to reduce spending when the default position of many is that for every penny of tax reduction there must be an equal and opposite increase in taxation? In some cases this even extends to the type of tax i.e. if stamp duty is scrapped there must be an equal and opposite increase in tax AND that tax should be housing related.

This 'equal and opposite' argument also happens in reverse - the politicians first instinct when realising a saving is to spend it on something else.

There's nothing bizarre about suggesting £7bn of spending cuts can be found without impacting critical services and I'm not suggesting this happens 'magically' or 'at the click of a finger' either. Not all spending goes on critical services - if government had to spend less but prioritised non-critical spending over critical that's because they're crap. I tend to think we should be doing something about crap government rather than saying it's all too difficult because the government are crap.

wotsthat

Graham_Devon wrote: »

They weren't.

I'm sorry you feel putting pointless ankle biting snippets like this at the end of your posts enhances anything you have said, or indeed, the debate.

You love the ankle biting snippets - they give you the opportunity to clamber up the moral high ground whilst ignoring the rest of the post.

Graham_Devon

Wotsthat. You are taking FAR too much from a couple of sentences.

You have laid into me 3 times now about "how unhappy I am with spending in Devon" and that I "haven't let the council know".

Firstly, I never said I was unhappy with spending in Devon and don't think I even implied that. I stated that the country has been battered with storms and understand that resources must go to those places first. I stated that right at the start. I also stated "up and down the country" in reference to my roads thing. I also stated that I do not want roads to suffer further in order to remove a tax from houses. Roads were just an example, as were youth clubs which you suggested was a "kneejerk reaction". It seems any example would have you jumping up and down, though without examples, you'd be questioning....

You've then go on about hurting my feelings.

You've gone from strawman to strawman, then shouted "strawman" in response to another poster when it wasn't even a strawman argument!

You are trying too hard to disagree with posters. Making things up and attaching it to posters in order than you can create your next point to argue against.

No ones stated that any removal of stamp duty HAS TO be made up by taxing houses elsewhere. It was a mere suggestion.....to which you have gone off one against creating a position whereby you argue that the original poster stated something had to be done in a very specific way.

It's all a nonsense.