The Great Big Homelessness/Capitalism/Socialism Thread

Jack_Johnson_the_acorn

westernpromise wrote: »

Evade, none, because that's by definition illegal.

Avoid? All of them.

I say evade / avoid because I was asking in a moral, not legal sense.

Why is it ok to avoid tax? I pay into a pension but if I didn't the state would potentially have to support me in old age. So whilst I'm avoiding tax it's clearly not immoral IMO.

What I'm asking is, if you're wealthy enough that paying tax is of little to no inconvenience, does it then become immoral to avoid tax when there are so many people suffering from homelessness, mental health problems etc?

Cakeguts

Jack_Johnson_the_acorn wrote: »

Shelter are lobbying the government in an attempt to defeat the root cause of homelessness. You'd rather they just "fire fight" for lack of a better term.

Anyway why are you so upset. It's not like they've tricked anybody into donating and you don't donate, this does seem like a personal vendetta against shelter.

It is a total waste of time to do this by telling lies. If you want to change something you have to be truthful otherwise the person you are lobbying can drive a coach and horses through your half truths and lies.

I would argue that if Shelter can't find the information that they need to back up their argument other then by statistics that are not based on fact then perhaps either there is no need for them to do what they think they are paying themselves to do or it is already covered by other agencies in which case they can stop.

I think it is more a case of the people who work for Shelter and get paid to work for this "charity" don't want to lose their jobs so they do something to fill in the time. I am really not into giving money for people to time fill I would rather my donations of items and time went to the acual people who need the help not to someone who is filling time to collect their salary by making up pretend statistics based on nothing.

As I said the help line is great but everything else they do is waste of time.

westernpromise

Jack_Johnson_the_acorn wrote: »

I say evade / avoid because I was asking in a moral, not legal sense.

Why is it ok to avoid tax? I pay into a pension but if I didn't the state would potentially have to support me in old age. So whilst I'm avoiding tax it's clearly not immoral IMO.

“No man in this country is under the smallest obligation, moral or other, so as to arrange his legal relations to his business or to his property as to enable the Inland Revenue to put the largest possible shovel into his stores. The Inland Revenue is not slow – and quite rightly – to take every advantage which is open to it under the taxing statutes for the purpose of depleting the taxpayer’s pocket. And the taxpayer is, in like manner, entitled to be astute to prevent, so far as he honestly can, the depletion of his means by the Inland Revenue.”

- Lord Clyde in Ayrshire Pullman v CIR (1929)

What I'm asking is, if you're wealthy enough that paying tax is of little to no inconvenience, does it then become immoral to avoid tax when there are so many people suffering from homelessness, mental health problems etc?

Straw man argument. If the state doesn't have enough money, from the colossal quantity it extracts with menaces, to attend to "people suffering from homelessness, mental health problems etc", then what it should do is not squander so much elsewhere and prioritise those.

The idea that if there is a shortage of funds, it has to be the mentally ill who lose out, rather than lesbian outreach co-ordinators and diversity commissars, is a nasty little I'm-all-right-Jack threat that it would only occur to the left to utter.

Jack_Johnson_the_acorn

westernpromise wrote: »

“No man in this country is under the smallest obligation, moral or other, so as to arrange his legal relations to his business or to his property as to enable the Inland Revenue to put the largest possible shovel into his stores. The Inland Revenue is not slow – and quite rightly – to take every advantage which is open to it under the taxing statutes for the purpose of depleting the taxpayer’s pocket. And the taxpayer is, in like manner, entitled to be astute to prevent, so far as he honestly can, the depletion of his means by the Inland Revenue.”

- Lord Clyde in Ayrshire Pullman v CIR (1929)



Straw man argument. If the state doesn't have enough money, from the colossal quantity it extracts with menaces, to attend to "people suffering from homelessness, mental health problems etc", then what it should do is not squander so much elsewhere and prioritise those.

The idea that if there is a shortage of funds, it has to be the mentally ill who lose out, rather than lesbian outreach co-ordinators and diversity commissars, is a nasty little I'm-all-right-Jack threat that it would only occur to the left to utter.

It's not a straw man argument, it's a question, I'm not making your argument or arguing against a point you haven't made. I really don't understand why you're so offended by the question. I don't affiliate with any of the political sides and I'm certainly not being nasty. It's telling that you think I'm trying to be nasty by merely asking a question.

Ok,so if the state wasn't squandering any money (we probably couldn't agree on worthy causes) and there was still a significant number of homeless people and an underfunded NHS, would it then be immoral to avoid tax if paying that tax is to have little or no impact on your life?

Moby

westernpromise wrote: »

What? I don't think you've understood the thread.

I dont think you do actually. The inability of charities to sometimes fulfill their role is a direct response to the withdrawal of the state in public services due to this Govmts austerity agenda and the complete failure of Camerons 'Big Society' to do anything meaningful.

http://www.charitytimes.com/ct/Government_cuts%20_devastated_Big_Society_says_think-tank..php

Cuts have undermined the ‘Big Society’ - without state support and facing rising demand, charities and voluntary organisations are being squeezed by spending cuts, weakening their ability to pursue the ‘Big Society’ agenda.

Also I have no problem whatsoever if charities like Shelter point out the failures of our community towards the vulnerable. That's a political role I'm perfectly at ease with especially if it shines a light on the activities of the Rachman landlords. Such 'types' are all over London. They buy up properties, turn them into pokey little 'studio flats' and charge a grand a month. Of course the Rachmans are usually creaming off their fellow tax payers because the rent comes from housing benefit. When charities like Shelter shine a light on this dysfunction, (there you go Great Ape....yet another way of using the term), pressure groups whose own interests are at risk will always bleat:-

https://www.lettingagenttoday.co.uk/news_features/Agents-call-for-Shelter-to-be-probed-by-Charity-Commission

.....but of course anyone who is not 100% driven by the motive to protect their own interests would understand.......... From the Charity Commission's own guidance: -

"Charities can campaign for a change in the law, policy or decisions... where such change would support the charity’s purposes. Charities can also campaign to ensure that existing laws are observed."

The idea that the state continually squanders the taxation taken from the rich is a trope which is having less political traction as time passes. More and more people are beginning to see such arguments as a deflection from the fact that those who 'have' have done pretty well for a long time now and that their time is up.:eek:

westernpromise

Let's just remind ourselves that if Labour hadn't - yet again - wrecked the economy and the public finances, we wouldn't need any austerity. Thanks, Gordon, thanks, Tony. You didn’t just kill hundreds of thousands of unimportant foreign people in Iraq; you also wrecked the charity industry.

And you have indeed misunderstood the thread, probably deliberately. I don't give a monkey's what the Charities Commission or the charities sinecure industry thinks is perfectly fine. I'm sure they've all reviewed each other and they’re all very happy with the great job they’re doing. What I am pointing out, to embarrass this nauseating self-regarding little Mr.Bumble-the-Beadle coterie, is how pitifully little these comfortably fat, lazy so-called charities actually really do.

I am not at all surprised that this makes the left uncomfortable; good. This is partly because of the reflexive narcissistic self-regard of the left, but mostly because you're just unused to it. We never ever see on the BBC an expos! of the environmental industry, or of the charities jobs-for-the-boys bandwagon, or of trade union corruption, for example. The left considers itself and its clients above reproach and above suspicion, and reacts with squeaking outrage when anyone has the bad manners to bring up its abject moral incompetence.

That there are so-called "housing charities" that create absolutely no new housing and have never provided a single home ever is an embarrassment, an affront, and a scandal. It needn't be that way. There are genuine housing charities that do something worthwhile. There is, for example, the Langley House Trust, which provides actual housing for ex-offenders:
http://www.langleyhousetrust.org/about-us/services/housing/
It doesn't just point at the benefits office and at a rental down the road, and say "go there to get free money to rent that". Unlike the virtue signalers of Shelter, it actually does something. So that's a housing charity.

However, charities set up to collect funds to actually do something about housing are remarkably thin on the ground. It's clearly a lot easier for a lazy self-regarding leftist to set up, collect other people’s money and spend it on paying yourself to demand that someone else does the difficult costly stuff that you CBA to do, like acquiring homes and making them fit for habitation.

You get to call yourself a charity, you get a lovely warm feeling of self approval, you get to signal your virtue, you are exempt from criticism, you do naff all actual work but you make six figures off the suckers, er, oops I mean the donors! How lovely to be a leftie! A life of fat unproductive indolence and you get to give yourself a big round of applause every day!

Herzlos

Is Shelter a "housing" charity by your definition? Does it claim to do "housing" by your definition?

Here's what Shelter says it does (from here)

What we do

Shelter helps millions of people every year struggling with bad housing or homelessness through our advice, support and legal services. And we campaign to make sure that, one day, no one will have to turn to us for help.

Do you get this upset at Apple not selling fruit? Do you think your rage at Shelter is because you don't understand what they set out to do? Have they hurt you in some way?

There are ways to help with housing beyond building and providing housing, and there are charities that do that (like Langley, Social Bite, etc). Providing housing directly is pretty expensive, and in addition to that people still need help and advice to avoid becoming homeless in the first place (like Shelter does), or to avoid being taken advantage of by landlords (like Shelter does). That it doesn't do what you think it should is not it's problem, not does it make it a scam. It just means it doesn't do what you think it does / should, based on, as far as I can tell, the name.

westernpromise wrote: »

Let's just remind ourselves that if Labour hadn't - yet again - wrecked the economy and the public finances, we wouldn't need any austerity. Thanks, Gordon, thanks, Tony. You didn’t just kill hundreds of thousands of unimportant foreign people in Iraq; you also wrecked the charity industry.

I don't think that's entirely Labours fault.

I also don't think austerity actually works. But that's for another time.

I do agree that the austerity drives an increased need to offload stuff onto the charity sector, whilst the poor economic state means people have less money to donate to charity.

Jack_Johnson_the_acorn

westernpromise wrote: »

Let's just remind ourselves that if Labour hadn't - yet again - wrecked the economy and the public finances, we wouldn't need any austerity. Thanks, Gordon, thanks, Tony. You didn’t just kill hundreds of thousands of unimportant foreign people in Iraq; you also wrecked the charity industry.

Snip!

So are you going to answer my questions or just rant on about something else completely unconnected to the conversation?

Moby

westernpromise wrote: »

Let's just remind ourselves that if Labour hadn't - yet again - wrecked the economy and the public finances, we wouldn't need any austerity. Thanks, Gordon, thanks, Tony. You didn’t just kill hundreds of thousands of unimportant foreign people in Iraq; you also wrecked the charity industry.

And you have indeed misunderstood the thread, probably deliberately. I don't give a monkey's what the Charities Commission or the charities sinecure industry thinks is perfectly fine. I'm sure they've all reviewed each other and they’re all very happy with the great job they’re doing. What I am pointing out, to embarrass this nauseating self-regarding little Mr.Bumble-the-Beadle coterie, is how pitifully little these comfortably fat, lazy so-called charities actually really do.

I am not at all surprised that this makes the left uncomfortable; good. This is partly because of the reflexive narcissistic self-regard of the left, but mostly because you're just unused to it. We never ever see on the BBC an expos! of the environmental industry, or of the charities jobs-for-the-boys bandwagon, or of trade union corruption, for example. The left considers itself and its clients above reproach and above suspicion, and reacts with squeaking outrage when anyone has the bad manners to bring up its abject moral incompetence.

That there are so-called "housing charities" that create absolutely no new housing and have never provided a single home ever is an embarrassment, an affront, and a scandal. It needn't be that way. There are genuine housing charities that do something worthwhile. There is, for example, the Langley House Trust, which provides actual housing for ex-offenders:
http://www.langleyhousetrust.org/about-us/services/housing/
It doesn't just point at the benefits office and at a rental down the road, and say "go there to get free money to rent that". Unlike the virtue signalers of Shelter, it actually does something. So that's a housing charity.

However, charities set up to collect funds to actually do something about housing are remarkably thin on the ground. It's clearly a lot easier for a lazy self-regarding leftist to set up, collect other people’s money and spend it on paying yourself to demand that someone else does the difficult costly stuff that you CBA to do, like acquiring homes and making them fit for habitation.

You get to call yourself a charity, you get a lovely warm feeling of self approval, you get to signal your virtue, you are exempt from criticism, you do naff all actual work but you make six figures off the suckers, er, oops I mean the donors! How lovely to be a leftie! A life of fat unproductive indolence and you get to give yourself a big round of applause every day!

Your sweeping generalisations and cynicism blinds you to much good work and makes you seem very bitter. You will always find corruption and incompetence in every field of human endeavour if you go looking for it. All you seem to do however in your posts is concentrate on that corruption or incompetence that provides evidence that reinforces your pre-existing views, eg that your tax is being misused. You lack any balance and I think you hate the left because it's idealism, (although sometimes misplaced granted) exposes human selfishness and tries to aspire to a better world. Labour was not responsible for a crash that happened internationally. In fact Gordon Brown's response to it led the way and was regarded as providing good leadership. As individuals we have a choice.......either to view our fellow humans with contempt and cynicism and attribute negative motives to them or look for the positives........... Imo looking for the positives makes us better people. I've often repeated on here this country was on it's knees after six years of war.....returning soldiers had put their lives at risk and wanted something better in their services and housing etc than what the elite governing class had offered them before the war. That's why Churchill was voted out despite his war leadership....then look at what the Atlee Govmt managed to achieve. It was transformative.

Malthusian

Jack_Johnson_the_acorn wrote: »

Why is it ok to avoid tax? I pay into a pension but if I didn't the state would potentially have to support me in old age. So whilst I'm avoiding tax it's clearly not immoral IMO.

If you have enough NI contributions to qualify for a full State Pension, then the Government wouldn't have to give you any means-tested benefits, whether you avoided tax by paying pension contributions or not.

So your justification makes no sense. I assume you will now be making a voluntary tax contribution equivalent to all the tax relief you have unfairly taken by making pension contributions.