saintfully

It is a great country no doubt but it could be sooo much better. FWIW maybe the reason that it is a great country is that we're never satisfied? Moaning brings improvement - dialectic basically.

Still at least another 2500 till I reach your esteemed level, but I'm sorry you're alarmed at my increasing post count. Perhaps you should lay off the internets for a while, it seems to be making you angry? Meantime, I'm off for a glass of champagne, a caviar biscotte and a massage, whilst contemplating the overthrow of our antique Queen. Have a nice day x

Not really, I haven't got your address.

Thats a relief, I didn't want to upset anyone. Least of all a man who has over 3000 posts on an internet message board - surely someone to be respected!

Manu Ticket - sign him up, hes great on FM. Expansive holding midfielder with muscular defensive powers.

Just being provocative - I was curious to see who'd bite to be honest. Everyday I see the usual wind-up merchants from the right spout preposterous ******, so wanted to see what would happen from the other direction. Turns out that you can write anything on the internet and it will be taken seriously. An interesting experiment - I now undestand a little what someone with no life/job/personality gets out of spending hours/weeks winding up strangers on the internet.

If it winds-up the middle-brow monarchist no-hopers then I'll object with gusto - simply on the basis that the £80 million could be spent on better things. For example, permanent 'sites with rights' for romany people and the irish travelling community.

What went wrong?

This is one of the most tragic threads I have ever seen... ...I mean seriously, its really embarrassing.

Interesting You Gov poll data out today on the back of the Under 25's HB thing: Voting intentions for 18-24 yr olds: Con - 9, Lab 71, Libs (who fu.cking cares) (All ages: Con 31, Lab 45)

That would be people like me then.

Hehe - I was wondering (hoping) whether you'd read that and respond, hence the question mark. I guess we have, at least partly, had the same experience. For my part seeing the price of lab reagents/consumables/equipment rocket and for you the price of enacting PFI, let alone sustaining it. Do you think the spiralling costs/charges could have been fought/handled better on the NHS side, or do you think that it was inevitable that private companies would put their prices up? (Especially given that many of the services/goods purchased are so specialised that they don't really exist in a proper market?).

Sad to say, but a lot of the money went on the huge and rapid inflationary response in the private sector feeding into the NHS (the cost of products and services). 'Sad to say', because it was entirely predictable - dodgy NHS procurement?

Erm I think you'll find if you think hard enough, that 50,000 people isn't the same as 1 person... its 50,000. As for the accountants comment.... oh dear. That is a consequence of having a huge financial services sector, grown up as a consequence of consecutive governments deciding that it could be the goose that lays the golden egg and supplant manufacturing. Our army of accountants are not sitting around analysing the tax-code for hard-pressed tax-avoiding UK citizens, they're managing the tax-code for the city.

It is certainly true that hypocrisy is present in both cases. However, I would argue that it is possible to make a distinction between massive pi.ss-taking hypocrisy and the smalltime example you offer. I think you agree unless you really believe that paying a builder in cash is the moral equivalent of a multi-millionaire paying 1% income tax? Whilst its true that you can't have unimportant or inconsequential murders, that does not apply to tax evasion. For example, I assume you wouldn't apply the same punishment to someone who avoided 10p tax vs someone who avoided £300,000 whilst earning a million??? Or would you? Shariah law anyone??? Is relativism a thing of the past now???

A useful point - but I suspect that all of us can see that there is a difference between getting an ISA and saving ~£150 a year in tax on interest and the offshore 1% tax scam. Do we all agree that tax is necessary? Personally I don't want to have to pay for and select my own private emergency health care provider, my own private security company and my own road maintenance firm - to name but three tax-funded services.

So 'down wiv Labour' cause they voted for Ken and all his tax-dodging ways, but 'up wiv the blues' cause their grass roots don't pretend to care about tax-avoidance???? Sorry, but are you saying that your support is dependent upon which party has the most hypocritical grass roots supporters???

Absolutely - can't stand all these hypocrites with their fake moral outrage. Now real moral outrage, thats something I'm completely happy to be associated with.

If thats an attempt to suggest that the money not given in tax is being spent in the UK economy & thereby generating growth I would humbly suggest that your suggestion is ******. High-end goods and services don't tend to be UK-produced/owned - with the notable exception of property in London, which surprise-surprise has managed to maintain and increase its value throughout the recession. I suggest that is, in general terms, not a good thing.

Erm, don't know where you got the idea that I'm pro-monarchy? If it were down to me I'd confiscate all their loot and make the young ones live off their military wages. Apart from that, I don't know where to start.... how about the Laffer Curve which has been totally discredited - even the guy who invented it says its hopelessly inadequate. As for using the tax system to drive behaviour - all our laws try and do precisely the same thing and people try to avoid those too - if people break them we arrest them. If they need strengthening because antisocial people find a loophole, then we make a new, better law. It's not rocket science. Are you tired?

That argument works with low/flat tax as well as high tax -whats needed is an efficient set of rules to combat that (limits to how much you can gift etc) and to collect tax - which, funnily enough, is precisely what the IMF are forcing on Greece at the mo to try and curb their mass evasion practices. I suggest that the reason why higher earners are not taxed more efficiently has much more to do with the lack of motivation of the authorities than the motivation of the accountants etc., but then I'm a cynic. Either way, IMHO income tax is not the way to go - people do deserve to keep the lions share of what they earn. But passing millions down to your kids/inheriting loads just ain't patriotic. It destroys the competitiveness of the country. Hence my plea to tax 'land' (which, I agree, cannot simply be space/area) and inherited wealth, much more heavily.

Great post which sums up reality for so many people. I was there for about a decade and it's a real slog. For me, the only way out was education, better paid jobs and time.

As I said in my post, I would prefer increased wealth/land tax, not income tax - so your point about the Labout govt of the 70's is moot. I want inherited wealth to be taxed higher so we all have to work a bit harder, not just those of us with waster/unfortunate/profligate parents. I believe in equality of opportunity and so like everyone to start from a level playing field. Inherited wealth distorts that. So, the reason why your father-in-law should be taxed when he dies is that his success has nothing to do with his kids. They deserve the right to succeed on thier own merits and not at the expense of others. If we've learnt anything from this crisis it should be that 'wealth' cannot simply be magic-ed out of thin air. Its finite. Thus, an accumulation of resources by one group is a denial of resources to another. This is fine if they've 'won the game', but it shouldn't happen by birth right. (Which is why I agree with your point about the royals). BTW if he had ****ed it all up and blown the lot, the money would have been recirculated in the economy - which IMHO is a good thing, and better than it being stuck forever in bricks and mortar. I don't think we're that far away from eachothers point of view, but disagree about how big a role the state should play. My view is that the role of the state is to facilitate an equal chance to all - hence my views on inheritance etc.

Except you can't move land out of the country. Tax wealth/land.

Re: cutting expenditure runs into interest groups of public sector/benefits recipients (I summarise). There is another way of cutting expenditure and thats by increasing taxes. Specifically, tax on inherited wealth and land. Let the successful be rewarded, not their feckless offspring.