Separate Moan Thread About The Election

How about a small additional percentage of tax? Each year, you get a list like a voting slip and you tick off 3+/- items on which you wish this tax to be spent

 

If they stopped the Twenty cigarettes a day they would not need them either
Trouble with food banks is they are free, and when it is free some people jump on the wagon
The note from a Dr or carer for just three visits, is utter rubbish, they go three or four times a week

 

The difference is that Labour have never pretended to be a low-tax party, the tories make a big thing of it and yet taxes have gone up and up while they've been in power.

But yes, its going to be a massive challenge for an incoming government that's for sure. They are going to have to upset a lot of people in order to achieve any real change. And anything they're planning could become irrelevant if some major unexpected international crisis were to unfold (like it did in Blair's tenure with 9/11).

 

Yeah I definitely didn't like them being endorsed by Rupert Murdoch.

I just hope they're smart enough to make things that may be unpopular sound like worthwhile sacrifices. Thats why they use spin doctors rather than throwing words like "nationalisation" around (which turns a lot of people off).

I can't imagine the Blair government's national minimum wage, smoking ban or devolution were initially popular with the moneyed elite, but some people are very persuasive and manage to make a good case.

 

The big advantage of the UK’s “The first pasts the post” is that we commonly end up with a 1 party government. If that would be changed, it would be devastating. These multi-parties coalitions in Europe don’t get a foot on the ground.
Labour didn’t really say upfront what they plan to do, which is normally a sign of “if I tell them the truth, we will not be elected”. Topics like finances that have an impact on the entire country or over a longer period of time are always shared between the parties. At least we can give Reeves credit that she is not trying to lie, when she said yesterday there isn’t much money left. In Germany they would say, “we had a look into the books and much to our surprise, it’s worse than we anticipated and we can’t change anything but increase taxes”
I remember when Cameron took over in 2015 that there was no money left at all, and how upset people were with Osbourn and the LibDems. It’s in the nature of left governments that they have no interests in saving money, and so I wonder if the higher taxes that we will have to pay are used for limiting the national debts or are thrown out of the windows to feed Labour cronies and wokery. I wonder how many committees, commissions with quality experts they need to tell us that they have found out that they can't change anything but have to make even more debts.

@ViewAhead Sewage is a world-wide issue. The main reason is not that water companies use profits to pay dividends rather than building bigger sewage clearance systems but the failed idea of collecting all water including rain water that comes down onto sealed surfaces (pavement, roads, buildings) which happens in towns where here e.g. 80% of the population lives. Solving that requires a completely new approach and requires a change in infrastructure.
Building "wed meadows" in sealed towns that collect the roof water seems to be the current way out.

 

I'm not sure of the exact details (Ian Hislop could tell you as he ran through what had happened on one episode of HIGNFY), but somehow the water companies borrowed money to go on infrastructure, did not use it for infrastructure, but at the same time managed generous dividends for shareholders. It may have been some sleight of hand over how they defined "profits". The upshot is shareholders have gained and users have lost out and the companies are now in huge debt and consumers' bills will rise as shareholders have declined to invest extra.

 

Yes, you are probably right.

The philantrocapitalism model so beloved by the elite left (Bill Gates et al) enables the very wealthy to decide what their money goes on ... and make huge profits in the process of then providing that service through their own companies or investments in certain areas and getting tax relief on their "donations". A voluntary wealth tax would mean the money could be used instead on things the gov chose, which is how funds should be spent in a democracy. With a voluntary wealth tax, I just thought giving them an element of choice might make it more palatable. Obviously they would not profit financially from their donation, as they wouldn't be able to choose something that they then provided, charging the gov for doing so.

 

Do you have your own currency?

 

They haven’t. There will be more to come.

 

And me.

Maybe other systems don't work, but this one definitely doesn't, there has to be one that's a bit more democratic than this archaic one we are stuck with.
I'll say no more, promise.

 

So 4 out of 5 people did not vote Labour?