Who will win the UK election ?

Sapphire

Well, you've completely missed the points mentioned in my several posts. I don't have contempt for these people just based on this, but also on people I know now as well – and their hypocrisy. This includes one or two family members as well as people I meet in publishing. And why is it 'dumb', according to you, to consider it hypocritical to be incredibly wealthy, yet also be an extreme leftie? If you truly believed in 'socialist principles', you would share out your wealth, not sit on it like a great fat …., making pronouncements about your leftie views to all and sundry.

The views of the 'twonks' you mention (who were allegedly part of the 'liberal intelligentsia', or fancied themselves as such) are exactly like the views of many affluent 'lefties' I continue to come across nowadays. Largely uninformed/blind hot air…

I have far more respect for humanitarians who actually try to actively help others, and for environmentalists who are working to attempt to save the planet, than for the above types who generally help no one but themselves.

N1AK wrote: »

So you have contempt for anyone wealthy who believes in socialism based on some twonks you knew a couple of decades or more ago? Way to keep with the times...

It's an incredibly dumb position to hold to consider it hypocritical to have wealth, and also believe in socialist policies. It's just as dumb as hating all wealthy conservatives because you've known a couple who blindly believe that everything they've earned is entirely down to their hard work and that the state deserves no credit for it.

BobQ

Loughton_Monkey wrote: »

So vote Labour this time, and they'll give it you back, won't they?

Having no children, I am perfectly happy with this. Believe me, the money is far better spent giving vulnerable pensioners like Mrs LM and I embarrasingly high interest rates on our Granny Bonds. The only thing wrong is that they limit it to only £20K, which is pretty much 'small change' to us boomers.

I do wonder the degree to which Margaret Thatcher is spinning in her grave about Cameron. What would she make of him? My own view is that she'd have him marked down as a soft public schoolboy and so damned wet she would never have put him into any ministerial role.

She would have had the debt down to zero by now. Complete abolition of child benefit. Tuition Fees for 5 to 18 year olds [starting at £2K, escalating to £8K at age 18], just to get them 'used to it'. National Service for all unemployed adults. Corporation Tax down to 15% to attract thousand more businesses to base themselves here.

Britain would be booming again.

... large gin & tonics all round... :rotfl:

Of course the impact of the revolution in this scenario, as the new poor riot on the streets of places like Loughton would go unnoticed it your gin palace:)

padington

I reckon Balls and Osbawn will have spent quality time candidly speculating possible outcomes. If unity comes from anywhere, I imagine it will come from those two.

Generali

Sapphire wrote: »

generally help no one but themselves.

The taxes of rich people pay for the welfare state. Most of the bottom half of earners don't pay any tax at all, net.

Voltaire7

Generali wrote: »

The taxes of rich people pay for the welfare state. Most of the bottom half of earners don't pay any tax at all, net.

Do you think this imbalance needs to be addressed?

Sapphire

Although I've heard it said that rich people (of all persuasions) are prone to practising tax avoidance, being able to pay accountants who can help them to do this in a variety of imaginative ways.

Generali wrote: »

The taxes of rich people pay for the welfare state. Most of the bottom half of earners don't pay any tax at all, net.

Generali

Sapphire wrote: »

Although I've heard it said that rich people (of all persuasions) are prone to practising tax avoidance, being able to pay accountants who can help them to do this in a variety of imaginative ways.

That's what people say. The reality is that if you earn below the median income in the UK you are probably taking more out of the system than you put in.

The top 1% pay much of the tax in the UK, the top 10% the vast majority.

I've looked all this out before. As an example, these are the numbers on income tax the numbers are pukka and come from the Treasury via the ONS:

https://fullfact.org/factchecks/tax-28258

In 2009-10, the top 1% of Income Tax payers were responsible for 13.9% of declared income before tax. Conversely, the same group paid some 26.5% of the money taken by HMRC in Income Tax.

The article makes the rather bizarre conclusion that because HMRC don't take into account IHT and CGT that the poor might pay a large share of taxes. It seems unlikely that poor people are paying huge amounts of these taxes. CGT I always see as a rather nice problem to have as I on;y pay it if I make a profit!

vivatifosi

Generali wrote: »

Put it another way. If you ran the majority group in Parliament, would you choose to deal with a regional nationalist party whose members have almost no experience in politics let alone running the UK or a group fresh out of Government with whom you agree on many of the Big Picture things?

It does also raise questions about the 2020 election, assuming that a Lab/SNP coalition is formed this time round. How will voters feel in that election, if SNP consistently meddle in English affairs, would it not build resentment?

Similarly, one of the successes of the previous government is that the Lib Dems as centrists, tempered some of the more right wing elements. Although this has led to some loss of support to UKIP, the party is pretty much in tact, but a lurch to the right in coalition with said party would lose them some of the valuable middle ground that floating voters tend to inhabit.

Strange times... although whoever won the last election was taking over a,poisoned chalice, this time around the winner stands to experience a true Pyrrhic victory in terms of the future of their party if they get it wrong. High stakes poker.

Generali

Voltaire7 wrote: »

Do you think this imbalance needs to be addressed?

It's hard to see how you can really. I think it's a problem as there are a huge number of people who have a direct interest in screwing ever more money out of a small group of people. Doing something about it is a different matter of course.

I guess that the Laffer Curve effectively takes care of the problem: if you raise taxes too high then rich people just earn less and so pay less tax, e.g. they work less hard.

Generali

vivatifosi wrote: »

It does also raise questions about the 2020 election, assuming that a Lab/SNP coalition is formed this time round. How will voters feel in that election, if SNP consistently meddle in English affairs, would it not build resentment?

Similarly, one of the successes of the previous government is that the Lib Dems as centrists, tempered some of the more right wing elements. Although this has led to some loss of support to UKIP, the party is pretty much in tact, but a lurch to the right in coalition with said party would lose them some of the valuable middle ground that floating voters tend to inhabit.

Strange times... although whoever won the last election was taking over a,poisoned chalice, this time around the winner stands to experience a true Pyrrhic victory in terms of the future of their party if they get it wrong. High stakes poker.

TBH I don't think that having the SNP in government is a problem per se: after all they are just a bunch of politicians that Scottish voters have sent to London and in that they are no different to Scottish Labour or Tory MPs.

The problem comes if the SNP want to start to punch above their weight. Even if the SNP get 50% of the vote in Scotland they'll have ~2% of the UK vote and are highly unlikely to get more than the 6th largest block of votes. I can see a potential scenario where every Bill ends up being 'pork barrelled' through Parliament, that is every Bill ends up with extra spending for Scottish interests attached to it to ensure the support of the SNP.

Scotland already gets more spending per head than England. If the English/Scottish spending gap grows in a very visible way, the Tories have a very easy stick to beat Labour with: they've bought power by giving English money to Scottish people. Granny had to wait for her hip op? They get free meds in Scotland you know.

I guess the other fear is that the whole thing just descends into chaos. There are a lot of people who look likely to gain power who have never held any political office at all and many others that have served on a council for a couple of years. It's a pretty big step up to go from that to deciding on how a £700,000,0000,000 budget is spent and on whether to send troops to Yemen to fight against Iran's proxies when you're fighting alongside them in Iraq.

Hopefully this is all moot. The latest prdictions I see would allow a Lib/Lab coalition to govern. Given the huge number of votes minor parties will get, I also suspect the time is ripe for electoral reform: how come the SNP get 40-50 seats with 2% of the vote and the Greens get 1 seat at most with ~10% and UKIP 2-3 with 15%? If politics really isn't a two horse race any more, the rules need to change and I think people will recognise that.