buctootim

So has he still got (some of) it ala Giggs and Scholes or another Michael Owen?

Hate to state the obvious but the Riverside Stadium is next to the river, its a couple of miles from the sea, and rivers flow downhill. Still cant see how they get 51 feet though

Exactly this. If hijabs and turbans are acceptable then Christian paraphenalia should be too. If however something is part of your job, either do it or find a different one.

You've been working out a lot.

You got to change every year - companies dont reward loyal customers any more - they rip them off instead. My renewal more than doubled this year to over £1,000 but have just signed up with quote me happy for £406 through moneysupermarket.com

All you've done to make your sums work is take the top 10% out of the 'middle class' bracket where they belong and put them with 'the rich'. 98% of Americans earn less than $250,000 pa - ie the same or less than a hospital consultant or lawyer in the UK. The top 1% in the US control almost 35% of the wealth. Edward N. Wolff at New York University (2010) but a gradually reducing proportion in tax. As I said the majority are having to pay more because the wealthy and companies are paying less. The graph below demonstrates only what proportion of their declared income they are paying - not their wealth. Their wealth is far greater due to offshoring and the reclassification of income as company investments or capital gains. Indeed as the former Chief Economist at McKinsey's found the wealthy are hiding c$22 trillion in assets in offshore accounts - the equuivalent of the GDP of US and Japan combined. The effective taxation rate for the rich is in the mid 20s percentages http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2011/09/buffett-rule-rorschach-7-000-millionaires-paid-no-income-taxes-in-2011/245469/ http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2011/jul/12/timothy-geithner/geithner-says-top-1-percent-have-tax-rate-low-20s/ http://www.dailyfinance.com/2011/08/24/why-taxing-the-rich-is-good-for-america/ and many avoid it all together

You sound like the suporters of the now discredited Tea Party in the US. Whats been happening in both the US and UK over the past 20 years or so is that wealthy people and companies have found increasingly aggressive ways to avoid paying tax. As a result individual taxpayers from the 'working class' to the 'upper middle class' have had to pay a far greater share of the tax burden. That enabled people like the Tea Party and you to claim we all need to be more right wing, business like and if we just cut the mythical, magical waste in the public sector everyone could be happy and richer. Its lie brought to you by wealthy politicans with self interest. What is really needed is international effort to clamp down on offshoring and artifical tax domiciles. Its not that the tax take is too high, its that its become unfairly spread.

Desmond Tutu has a past of his own, ask Johnnyboy.

You've killed the thread with bad taste.

Better a tough start than a tough run in.

Lawrenson's job is as a pundit - to give an opinion, interpret events and make people think. Regardless of whether people think he's a **** or not it a bit pathetic for fans to demand apologies everytime an opinion turns out not to be accurate. Thats what happened in politics and the result is that we now have spineless individuals who only say what people want to hear.

Can you not follow perfectly good diagrams? You're supposed to back pedal, just as the )) on the feet and knee show.

I've got Madeleine McCann's nightdress.

Underneath somewhere

An outstanding transfer window for midfield and attack. Would have been happier with another prem quality CB and having a 35 year old GK backed up by two 20 year olds who have never played above lg2 worries me - so Alpine is right to a degree. .

You mean fuzzy

Who's @MTFergie?

As I said in an earlier post, you will always have people who can successfully avoid most income tax - just as many companies do with corporation tax. The result is an increasing tax burden on the middle class - because the underclass cant pay and many of the wealthy dont pay. Its an imperfect system but one of the few levers to redress that balance is to tax assets - land, houses and shares. Its not about having the current payers pay more nor increasing the total tax burden its about catching those who can pay but dont.

Are you implying tax is only levied on earnings - or that it sould only be levied on earnings? No council tax, VAT etc then. Whilst were at it we could could have an engaging apologists debate in what consitutes earnings and whether company dividends, capital gains and offshored income should count.

Fishing for a reaction.

Nah, I'm still not getting it Anyway how come the guy even further away than Davis (behind him) looks taller. We've been sold a pup.

So you agree with me that the owners of 21% of the wealth should be paying 21% of the tax, not 7%. Goodo.

Davis looks about 4'6'' and 6 stone in that pic.

You can have a principles rather than the current rules based approach to tax colection though - clever tax lawyers can circumvent rules. That said it will always be worth some companies and people offshoring. Its not a perfect solution but imo more focus on assets would capture some of that avoided tax. Council tax should be levied at something like 0.5% of a properties value for example, land similalrly.

This is the whole point though. Its not about income taxation rates - I wouldnt increase them, 40% is about right to me. Its about the whole raft of tax avoidance measures available which enable the top 1% to avoid paying the large majority of income tax otherwise due. If the tax code were simplified to cut out many of the legal dodges, in return for lower income tax rates I'd be happy.