Politics Today

[Alistair20000]

Its one aspect of what I fear about all this Coronavirus micro management. Once authority gets a taste of petty officialdom, it finds it very difficult to let go.

Yes and most of this control and micro management has been ceded with no Parliamentary debate or approval.

I called the last Parliament the Disgraceful Parliament. Tavy calls it the Rotten Parliament. Equally apt.

This one is the Supinely Anonymous Parliament.

 

[Alistair20000]

• Compulsory that everyone has a pension fund.
• Base contribution from the Government 3% of GDP obtained by printing money plus the proceeds of Capital Gains Tax.
• Those in work pay a minimum percentage of their wage into a fund. The level determinded by the needs of the economy.
• Abolish tax relief on borowing whilst simultaneously abolishing tax on dividend income.

Thank you for setting out your thoughts.

An element of compulsion already exists of course.

Otherwise interesting but unfortunately rather flawed.

Hypothecation has never worked. Think Road Fund Licence and National Insurance Contributions. Governments will dip in when they run out of cash. CGT raises relative peanuts in the grand scheme of things and cannot begin to fill the pensions black hole. Printing money on any long term basis is fools gold.

Pension contributions should be determined on the basis of creating a fund for the worker. The words “needs of the economy” are too vague to comment.

Given that interest rates are so low tax relief on borrowing is not very large either.

Why abolish tax on dividends ? The wealthy would love that to bits and the dividend tax was primarily introduced to block family companies from avoiding NIC by paying dividends instead of wages. There is an allowance for small savers. I know the dividend tax that we have now was brought in by the wicked Tories but it is not in itself a bad tax in the context of the tax system that we have.

The real problem is that very few people want to save money now into pension schemes and the money needed to fund them adequately is frighteningly large. Most folk would prefer to enjoy their money and spend it now.

 

[lamrobhero]

Thank you for setting out your thoughts.

An element of compulsion already exists of course.

Otherwise interesting but unfortunately rather flawed.

Hypothecation has never worked. Think Road Fund Licence and National Insurance Contributions. Governments will dip in when they run out of cash. CGT raises relative peanuts in the grand scheme of things and cannot begin to fill the pensions black hole. Printing money on any long term basis is fools gold.

Pension contributions should be determined on the basis of creating a fund for the worker. The words “needs of the economy” are too vague to comment.

Given that interest rates are so low tax relief on borrowing is not very large either.

Why abolish tax on dividends ? The wealthy would love that to bits and the dividend tax was primarily introduced to block family companies from avoiding NIC by paying dividends instead of wages. There is an allowance for small savers. I know the dividend tax that we have now was brought in by the wicked Tories but it is not in itself a bad tax in the context of the tax system that we have.

The real problem is that very few people want to save money now into pension schemes and the money needed to fund them adequately is frighteningly large. Most folk would prefer to enjoy their money and spend it now.

Hypothecation - Governements don't dip into people's pension funds at the moment because it isn't the Governments money (if I have understood hypothecation correctly).
Printing money is fools gold - I deliberately chose a level which commensurate with typical economy expansion rates
"needs of the economy" - perhaps I should have said level of investment for a healthy economy, what that level is I don't know but we have been told that the British disease is under investment - perhaps balance of trade / exchange rate might be indicators?
I have read that the current taxation system unfairly favours debt over equity and since I want "the people" to own the means of production rather than be indebted to it, I want to address that imbalance.
Re CGT I want to make it politically acceptable and move towards a flat rate Inome / CGT tax.

For me the motivation behind compulsory pension schemes is to provide the investment that the country's economy needs and that "the people" own the means of production. It is NOT to provide for them in their old age, which may be a by-product.

 

[IndoMike]

Revealed: pro-Trump activists plotted violence ahead of Portland rallies

Patriots Coalition members suggested political assassinations and said ‘laws will be broken, people will get hurt’, leaked chats show

www.theguardian.com

As I suspected and stated at the time, the violence in Portland was caused by pro-Trump infiltrators and NOT the Black Lives Matter peaceful demonstrators. Perhaps some of our Politics thread posters will eat humble pie for naively jumping to false conclusions and for denigrating BLM.
But no, that won't happen.....they'll be on to the next RW rant...

 

[IndoMike]

Yes and most of this control and micro management has been ceded with no Parliamentary debate or approval.

I called the last Parliament the Disgraceful Parliament. Tavy calls it the Rotten Parliament. Equally apt.

This one is the Supinely Anonymous Parliament.

Well yeah. .....Governments who lose control and can't convince the people of their argument resort to authoritarianism. It's the only resort left to them. They use power
to stifle dissent, not reason.
Some of us have been banging on for ages about this and about the overall incompetence of this Johnson government.
Thankfully some of the apologists are starting to see the light. It took a while. It's not a question of "I told you so", it's the fact that we wasted so much bloody time and energy arguing about something that was blatantly obvious from the start.
There are several examples of Johnson (aka Cummings) manipulating, circumventing, and downright ignoring democratic procedures and institutions.
It's straight out of the Bannon and Trump playbook. Is that what we aspire to - to be a Little America?

By the way, the response from Trump to the highlighted sentence would be "You hate the UK". I guess if someone said they thought Taylor was doing a bad job the response would be
"You hate Exeter City". This is a Trump tactic taken up by Johnson. Starmer quite rightly does his duty as opposition leader by pointing out the deficiencies of the Governments handling of Covid and Johnson retorts by saying "Look at him. He's criticising our nurses and doctors/the NhS / the track and tracers who are are doing a wonderful job". It's a cheap shot, a lie and a deflection which hopefully the average voter clearly understands, if anyone bothers to listen to Johnson any more.
In Trump's world if you criticise Trump for all the felonies that he has committed you are anti-American. Johnson seems to be taking the same route, albeit gradually and not so blatantly.
People are still gullible enough to go along with that carp.

 

[IndoMike]

Some good news !

UK universities are on course to recruit record numbers of international students during the global pandemic, defying predictions of financial disaster, the latest admissions figures reveal.

The Universities and Colleges Admissions Service (Ucas) said UK universities enjoyed a 9% increase in the number of undergraduate students from outside the UK and the EU starting their studies this autumn, rising to a new record total of 44,300.

 

[IndoMike]

From John Crace..

"The longer PMQs went on the more staccato Boris’s sentences became. He would be delivering 500,000 tests a day by the end of October – a figure not even he and Typhoid Dido believe – even though he had just said that test and trace was a complete waste of time. He yet again blamed the opposition for daring to oppose, rather than delivering praise for his achievements".

 

[lamrobhero]

More excellent coverage from MSNBC - outlines the fundamental issue in the Breonna Taylor case - 4:12 long

Joy Reid: Grand Jury Charges 'Entirely Delete' Killing Of Breonna Taylor | MSNBC

 

[elginCity]

Unless we have no deal, agreed something has to give.......

"Either you move towards me, or I'll walk! "

 

[tavyred]

"Either you move towards me, or I'll walk! "

German hubris writ large?
I bet their predecessors thought the same when Britain gave them the ultimatum in 1939.