Labour Leadership Contest

[Section_31]

Are people really that arsed about tax? I don't think I've ever heard anyone personally raise it as an issue.

 

Most people in my experience don't look closely into policies, they get an 'impression' of parties and characters, like a brief imprint.

 

Tories are harsh but necessary, labour are 'shit', lib dems are 'fucked', farage is 'the kind of bloke you could go for a pint with' but ultimately they're 'all the same so what's the point'.

[VladimirIlyich]

Are people really that arsed about tax? I don't think I've ever heard anyone personally raise it as an issue.

 

Most people in my experience don't look closely into policies, they get an 'impression' of parties and characters, like a brief imprint.

 

Tories are harsh but necessary, labour are 'shit', lib dems are 'fucked', farage is 'the kind of bloke you could go for a pint with' but ultimately they're 'all the same so what's the point'.

I think the truth is that they dont really know much about it and swallow the media bullshit hook,line and sinker.

I have always said I am willing to pay more tax if it means better equipped hospitals and schools and this should be the way the non tory parties should phrase it,simply.

[Anny Road]

The problem with tax and peoples fear of it, I believe, is rooted in the aspirational middle class. Those that earn a reasonable wage have a semi detached and the Audi A3. All on finance mortgaged to the tits, cards maxed out but they live in the bubble that they are striving to be successful.

Few pence on tax, few percent on interest rates and the bubble bursts. Even the suggestion that a socialist will get in and change the agenda is enough. There are millions of these people. Years ago they would not have got the finance and gone to work on the bus.

[Strontium]

This comment under that Freedland article made me smile, mainly because it's true.

 

 

 

I think there must be some missing because I, and indeed, most people I know, don't seem to fit into any of those categories.

[Strontium]

Are people really that arsed about tax? I don't think I've ever heard anyone personally raise it as an issue.

 

I hear people mention it fairly often. Ironically, it seems to be those on low/middle incomes who mention it more often. Perhaps those on higher incomes don't moan because they're able to avoid it. I am certainly noticing that I am paying less tax now due to the raising of the basic threshold.

 

Most people in my experience don't look closely into policies, they get an 'impression' of parties and characters, like a brief imprint.

 

Tories are harsh but necessary, labour are 'shit', lib dems are 'fucked', farage is 'the kind of bloke you could go for a pint with' but ultimately they're 'all the same so what's the point'.

 

With the unshackled Tories moving rapidly rightwards, and a Corbyn-led Labour Party, at least it would be much more difficult for anyone to claim that they're "all the same".

[Anubis]

I think there must be some missing because I, and indeed, most people I know, don't seem to fit into any of those categories.

Oh you're in a catagory all of your own.

[dennis tooth]

People on higher incomes moan less about tax than those on lower incomes?

Can you just clarify for my records Are you a real living person from planet earth?

[Teasmaid]

I hear people mention it fairly often. Ironically, it seems to be those on low/middle incomes who mention it more often. Perhaps those on higher incomes don't moan because they're able to avoid it".

In a nutshell. If you're on a low/middle income, you pay tax. If you're a high earner, you're offered ways around it. In my last job, I was offered the chance to take a low salary and have the remainder paid as dividends to avoid paying 40% tax. I told them I'd take it all as salary - if I've earned it, I pay tax on it. They thought I was a mental communist, and it was made clear that it 'wasn't the norm' for people 'of that level'. Dividends, expenses and obscene amounts in pension funds are the main ways people dodge taxes, and they're all sickeningly legal. Wealthy people don't have to worry about taxes, because they barely fucking pay any.

[Spy Bee]

In a nutshell. If you're on a low/middle income, you pay tax. If you're a high earner, you're offered ways around it. In my last job, I was offered the chance to take a low salary and have the remainder paid as dividends to avoid paying 40% tax. I told them I'd take it all as salary - if I've earned it, I pay tax on it. They thought I was a mental communist, and it was made clear that it 'wasn't the norm' for people 'of that level'. Dividends, expenses and obscene amounts in pension funds are the main ways people dodge taxes, and they're all sickeningly legal. Wealthy people don't have to worry about taxes, because they barely fucking pay any.

Anything you earn over the higher tax threshold is taxed at 40% whether it is taken as a dividend or as a salary, or as a benefit in kind (like a car for example). I don't know how someone was planning for you to avoid tax in this situation, but I'm pretty sure it would have been illegal. The only way you can avoid tax by being paid in dividends is below the upper threshold. 

[AngryOfTuebrook]

I think the truth is that they dont really know much about it and swallow the media bullshit hook,line and sinker.

I have always said I am willing to pay more tax if it means better equipped hospitals and schools and this should be the way the non tory parties should phrase it,simply.

Didn't the Lib Dems basically campaign on that a few elections ago?  If I remember rightly (and I'm happy to be corrected if I'm misremembering) they did and it didn't hurt them. 

[AngryOfTuebrook]

In a nutshell. If you're on a low/middle income, you pay tax. If you're a high earner, you're offered ways around it. In my last job, I was offered the chance to take a low salary and have the remainder paid as dividends to avoid paying 40% tax. I told them I'd take it all as salary - if I've earned it, I pay tax on it. They thought I was a mental communist, and it was made clear that it 'wasn't the norm' for people 'of that level'. Dividends, expenses and obscene amounts in pension funds are the main ways people dodge taxes, and they're all sickeningly legal. Wealthy people don't have to worry about taxes, because they barely fucking pay any.

Gandhi rep!

 

[AngryOfTuebrook]

I hear people mention it fairly often. Ironically, it seems to be those on low/middle incomes who mention it more often. Perhaps those on higher incomes don't moan because they're able to avoid it. I am certainly noticing that I am paying less tax now due to the raising of the basic threshold.

I'd have to get a magnifying glass out to notice any difference in my take-home pay as a result of that.  I have noticed that my miniscule pay increase has been wiped out by increases in my pension contributions.

[magicrat]

Anything you earn over the higher tax threshold is taxed at 40% whether it is taken as a dividend or as a salary, or as a benefit in kind (like a car for example). I don't know how someone was planning for you to avoid tax in this situation, but I'm pretty sure it would have been illegal. The only way you can avoid tax by being paid in dividends is below the upper threshold. 

 

Correct and it's traditional to have shares to qualify for dividends. If a company dividends  out profits and distributes it to staff in lieu of salary it's tax avoidance. 

[Teasmaid]

Anything you earn over the higher tax threshold is taxed at 40% whether it is taken as a dividend or as a salary, or as a benefit in kind (like a car for example). I don't know how someone was planning for you to avoid tax in this situation, but I'm pretty sure it would have been illegal. The only way you can avoid tax by being paid in dividends is below the upper threshold.

 

That's only if they're on 150K+. Chief Execs will usually put anything above this in a pension, so they don't pay any tax on it. They'll pay nothing in divis to 40K, and 25% in divis up to 150K. Still swerving far more tax than mere mortals.

[Spy Bee]

That's only if they're on 150K+. Chief Execs will usually put anything above this in a pension, so they don't pay any tax on it. They'll pay nothing in divis to 40K, and 25% in divis up to 150K. Still swerving far more tax than mere mortals.

Anything over the £40k (ish) is taxed at 40%.

[Teasmaid]

Anything over the £40k (ish) is taxed at 40%.

No Ad, higher rate dividend tax isn't the same rate as higher rate income tax. Higher divi tax (paid on anything over 42K income) is effectively 22%, as opposed to the 40% you'd pay if it were income tax. Trust me, I'm married to a chartered accountant.

[AngryOfTuebrook]

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/john-wight/left-wing-labour_b_7863132.html?utm_hp_ref=uk-politics&ir=UK+Politics

One of the most enduring and longstanding myths of British politics is that Labour lost the 1983 general election because it was too left wing, fighting the election on amanifesto that ensured it was unelectable. In words that have become engraved in the nation's history, Labour's own Gerald Kaufman described the '83 Labour manifesto as 'the longest suicide note in history', which is how it is still regarded over three decades on.

It is a myth that has been doing the rounds in the context of a Labour leadership campaign that has seen a surge in support and momentum for Jeremy Corbyn on a platform of anti austerity, wealth redistribution, and a vision for the country and the role of government that has succeeded in exciting and energising people who'd long become accustomed to a Labour Party that had surrendered to right wing nostrums on the economy, welfare, and foreign policy.

In 1983 Labour put forward a manifesto that drew inspiration and direct lineage from the transformational programme of the 1945 Labour government, the most ambitiuous of any Labour government ever. Back then, despite the parlous state of an economy exhausted after the Second World War, Labour came to power committed to governing in the interests of the majority of its people. The welfare state, NHS, and a commitment to full employment laid the foundations of the most sustained period of economic stability and prosperity in the nation's history. It combined investment, planning, and intervention in a radical departure from thelaissez faire policies that had led directly to the depression of the 1930s, condemning millions of working families to penury and poverty with little if any prospect of escape.

Likewise, by 1983 working families and communities had suffered the consequences of four years of Thatcherism. The country was mired in recession with unemployment reaching a record 3.2 million as Thatcher set about decimating the nation's industrial base in favour of a deregulated banking and financial sector as the motor of the economy, in the process ensuring the transferance of wealth from the poor to the rich. The result was a spike in inequality, crime, and public spending on welfare as tax cuts added further downward pressure on public funds.

In this context, Labour with a manifesto pledging investment in industry, eduation, council housing, jobs, the NHS, and an increase in child benefit and pensions presented a progressive and radical alternative. It would be funded by an increase in government borrowing rather than tax increases, on the argument that borrowing to invest in the economy is more productive than borrowing to pay for an over-inflated welfare budget given the record rate of unemployment. This would involve the renationalisation of those state assets that had already been sold off and privatised under the Tories.

The scandal of poverty wages would also be tackled through the strengthening of the Equal Pay Act in consultation and cooperation with the unions. Currency controls would be reintroduced in order to counter currency speculation, thereby guaranteeing the stability of sterling and interest rates.

Rather than focus on the budget deficit a priority would be placed on tackling the nation's trade deficit, which under Thatcher had regressed to the point where Britain, once the workshop of the world, had become a net importer for the first time in history, a direct result of the destruction of British industry. Labour's plan of placing controls on imports and bolstering exports via investment in industry and manufacturing was designed to reverse this trend, creating jobs in the process.

The expansion of democracy was also planned, especially at the local level, which had suffered under the government's policy of reducing the role and power of local government in its determination to railroad through its structural adjustment of the economy and, with it, British society with minimal opposition.

On defence unilateral nuclear disarmament was a bold initiative designed to tackle the scourge of weapons of mass destruction on the understanding their use could never be countenanced and were a crushing waste of public funds that could be better spent and invested elsewhere. The objective of the government's foreign policy, as set out, would be based on

the urgent need to restore détente and dialogue between the states and the peoples of the world. We will actively pursue dialogue with the Soviet Union and China, and will urge the American government to do so. We will work consistently for peace and disarmament, and devote all our efforts to pulling the world back from the nuclear abyss. Labour will dedicate some of the resources currently wasted on armaments to projects designed to promote both security and human development.

An essential difference between the Labour and the Tory approach is that we have a foreign policy that will help liberate the peoples of the world from oppression, want and fear. We seek to find ways in which social and political progress can be achieved and to identify the role that Britain can play in this process.

 

 

So why, given the aforementioned, did Labour lose?

There are two key reasons: i) the bounce in personal popularity enjoyed by Margaret Thatcher in the aftermath of the Faklands War the previous year, and ii) the split in Labour's vote by the breakaway SDP faction.

Mention must also be made of the campaign of demonisation that was carried out against Labour leader, Michael Foot, a decent and principled man who was treated disgracefully and venomously by a tabloid press that had fallen behind Thatcher and extended itself in fanning the flames of jingoism that had swept the land. Here it is worth noting that Labour intended to place controls on press ownership, understanding the danger posed by the concentration of newspaper ownership in the hands of a few rich media barons to democracy, thus inviting their enmity. In an era when social media and the internet was a distant dream, this aspect of British society was key in shaping public attitudes and opinion.

Taken in the round, the 1983 Labour Party manifesto offered a progressive, redistributive, intelligent, and eminently realisable alternative to the cruel and desolate reality of Tory Britain. Defeat in 1983 not only meant another four years of Thatcher, it set in train the process of turning Labour into the Tory-lite party it became.

Jeremy Corbyn in 2015 represents not only a change in direction for Labour but for the country as a whole. It is why they fear him, and why the forces of hell have been unleashed to try and stem the groundswell of support his campaign has unleashed.

Where Tony Blair is the poster child of Labour's loss of principles and integrity, Corbyn offers the chance of making it a party and an institution to be proud of again, thereby reigniting belief in a politics shorn of callous indifference to suffering and injustice.

[Dr Nowt]

As the snake pops his head up and spits poison at Corbyn - a man who opposed his disgusting and disastrous attack on Iraq - a timely reminder of what someone who was given the same "loony left" treatment over many years had to say in advance of it:

 

 

Remember who you are, Labour.  And who you should be.

 

* NB: I'm not suggesting for a second he was the only person of such views, or who spoke up in parliament, before the party political one-upmanship bullshit cranks into action.  This is about the Labour party, and who they are, and how Corbyn is being presented; often by snides who should remember how correct the likes of him were on crucial milestones in recent history where they were abjectly wrong, continue to be wrong, profit obscenely from having been wrong, refuse to concede how they went about covering up being wrong, and still lie about it all to this day.

 

What world do we live in when the man who claims the least in expenses each year, one year only claiming under £10 for an ink cartridge, is so derided, and where that level of principle and ethics leads to being called "bonkers" to his face on the BBC by that fucking goblin Andrew Marr?

[Creator Supreme]

I'm getting the feeling that Corbyn is going to quit the race and ultimately the Labour party! The brickbats are coming thick and fast, Alan Milburn the latest shitbag to have a go.

 

I think Corbyn is getting to the point where he's thinking 'why bother?'!

[Jairzinho]

I want my fucking three quid back if he quits.

[RedKnight]

They really need to think about renaming the Labour Party. Popular marketing conventions say they could be called 'Diet-Tory', 'Tory-Lite', 'I can't believe it's not Tory' and so on. Nearly every Labour politician comes across as snide, not interested in the best interests of the party and not even aware of what the party is meant to stand for. Career politicians rather than people of principle.

[Creator Supreme]

He's swimming against such a tide of right wing bullshit it may be for the best.

[Jairzinho]

They really need to think about renaming the Labour Party. Popular marketing conventions say they could be called 'Diet-Tory', 'Tory-Lite', 'I can't believe it's not Tory' and so on. Nearly every Labour politician comes across as snide, not interested in the best interests of the party and not even aware of what the party is meant to stand for. Career politicians rather than people of principle.

 

Sadly most of those with any principles are so back bench they've almost fallen off. One slightly encouraging sign is that 19 of the 48 MPs that voted against that Welfare Bill were new MPs. Maybe they'll be successfully Blaired in time, hopefully not, obviously. Hopefully there is something of a new breed that rejects where Blair has taken the party. Clive Lewis (Norwich), for example, looks a fucking class MP in the making. I think we're going to find out quite a lot about the Labour Party once the leadership campaign is over. 

 

Probably three options -

 

1. Corbyn wins, and is allowed to create a Labour Party that gives a fuck about people that aren't rich. Engaging a generation of people (18-35 ish) that have been fucking stiffed by this, and previous, governments. Giving them a mainstream platform to rally round. 

 

2. One of the three Tories wins. Greens increase their vote. UKIP increase their vote. SNP increase their vote. Plaid increase their vote. Labour still lose the next election as nobody on the left votes for them, and turbo cunts decide to stick with brand Tory rather than Tesco Value Tory. Young people either remain completely disengaged with politics, or focus entirely on direct action.

 

3. Corbyn wins, then is the victim of an internal coup. Probably results in the above.

 

Whatever, I think we're going to find out quite a bit about the party soon.

[TheBitch]

I want my fucking three quid back if he quits.

Gimme my Corbyn money back you cunts.

[dennis tooth]

I'm getting the feeling that Corbyn is going to quit the race and ultimately the Labour party! The brickbats are coming thick and fast, Alan Milburn the latest shitbag to have a go.

I think Corbyn is getting to the point where he's thinking 'why bother?'!

Sleep amongst dogs get flea bitten etc