yip labour are constantly asking ours to stand down. yip and yer man has done nothing technically wrong. not quite leadership material tho isit? today's cartoon.
No it wouldn't. There is not the slightest reason why people from wealthy backgrounds, or who have been successful in their professions, should not be Labour supporters, activists, or politicians. And there is not the slightest reason why Labour politicians have to be poverty-stricken, or should be vilified if they aren't. If someone has been dishonest, or evaded tax, then they deserve to be criticised, or obliged to resign, or maybe prosecuted - but that does not depend even remotely on which political party they support.
He has been attacked, and as a consequence has to chose how to respond, yet his only crime is being rich. I am sure his tax returns will be very boring. But there is the wider issue which is that those at the top are able to employ all kinds of tricks to exploit the loopholes made for their benefit whilst the rest are on PAYE. It is this sense of entitlement and the belief that everyone is doing it so it is OK for me to do it, it is becoming a self fulfilling prophesy. And they they pull up the drawbridge.
god i despair.:smileys: he has been attacked? in a time of austerity and HE has been attacked? are the reports suggesting he was the one blocking EU tax proposals re tax avoidance incorrect?
So is it morally wrong to transfer your wealth to your children (and protect it during your lifetime so that it is still there when the time comes), or should it be confiscated by the state so that it can be passed on to everyone's children? If the latter, why bother having children and why bother accruing and saving money? You may as well blow the lot on yourself as you go and to hell with it or not bother earning it in the first place and rely on other people to feed you. Mr Cameron is a hypocrite for seeking to burnish his government's Left wing credentials by talking up the supposed moral degeneracy of financial planning (now rebranded as tax avoidance) while not surprisingly or unreasonably practising it himself. He's walked into a trap of his own making (something which is becoming a habit with him) but there is a very very slippery slope here. Now commentators are talking about inheritance tax and whether it is "morally acceptable" to transfer wealth, whether by gift or legacy, to the next generation of your family or whether hereditary advantage should be neutralised through the taxation system. Its an extraordinary conversation to be having. You expect such talk from adolescent bedroom revolutionaries but not from intelligent adults. I would have thought it would be morally unacceptable to question the right to bequeath your money, especially when its been taxed at least once already and very often several times. Whose money is it and whose children are they?
i doubt very few pay tax because of morals. a lefty like me dont care how much anyone makes legally. as you said its the hypocrisy that stinks donate to charity if you have morals and arnt happy with the governments direction. Bairns not Bombs.
Indeed. And what is horrifying about modern Britain is that no proper debate can be had because no politician will dare to say what you say here. I heard the oily David Miliband interviewed on R4 this morning. When asked about the Miliband family's inheritance tax planning (entirely legitimate I am sure, but more sophisticated than Mr Cameron receiving a gift from his mother), all that Miliband could say was that it is entirely appropriate for Corbyn to want to review any area of taxation - does he really expect to be a Labour MP again perhaps? He even trotted out the misleading statement that Osborne has enabled people to pass on £1m - which is not true (it's £500K), is not yet in effect, and has strings attached (no good for 'the childless I think).
i am sorry to say thats wrong. plenty of politicians have been questioning tax arrangements in this UK. it just not getting reported. how can a labour press criticize Tory policies and vice versa when they are both as complicit as each other? politics and media is truly doing my box in. find your self a good debunking site. one that can provide links to hansard, spice, unedited interview's.find out who's been voting for what, the commons library its all there. the uk is a truly corrupt ? maybe the wrong word. but certainly we have no right to be pointing fingers at other administration and media around the world. unless there's something more relevant to whats going on in my own back yard i think thats me done with politics on here. if it wasn't so sad it would be hysterical
Corbyn scented blood over David Cameron's father's offshore investments and his mother's £200,000 gift and just couldn't help himself from attacking the "filthy rich", unfortunately David Cameron, desperate to be seen as "call me Dave", felt the need to respond, which was a big mistake. Apparently 1 in 10 pensioners have total assets of over £1,000,000 and last time I looked a married couple could pass on 2x the single allowance of £325,000 without paying inheritance tax. I see nothing wrong with this. What is much more disturbing is that 62 individuals own half of the wealth on the planet, allegedly.
Indeed, the brass neck of the politicians and the sycophancy / incompetence of the media is appalling.
It's a really interesting debate, in fact. It's not that simple. I think that yes, you should be able to pass stuff on to your kids when you snuff it and the state shouldn't just grab it. But then people complain about the rich being a self-perpetuating class, which they largely are. People complain about a landed aristocracy, and about people going to Eton. It's all the same debate, surely? All I expect to see is some consistency in people's viewpoints. Once I have earned my money and paid tax on it, I think I should largely be allowed to do what I want with it - give it away to whoever, or spend it. So in that case, inheritance tax is just wrong. But it would all be a lot more cut and dried if the rich weren't shirking tax in the first place, which they are.
unless there's something more relevant to whats going on in my own back yard i think thats me done with politics on here. if it wasn't so sad it would be hysterical[/QUOTE] but maybe thats what they want me to do? fuck. em i is back!:Hilarious::smileys: latest. heard anything about the Edinbro schools fiasco? built with PPP/PFI funding conceived by the conservatives championed by labour forced on councils by Basher brown and Jack McConnel (while McConnel was sending back 1.5bill of underspend). jerry built. overseen and signed off by lab/lib/con counsels massive profits for construction company's and bankers alike. local authority's and construction company's responsible for inspection and maintenance of PPP/PFI built buildings, scraped for a not for profit scheme in 2007 by new administration (guess who). guess what party is getting monsterd in every publication and repeated by the BBC? accounts for a massive share of uk debt. and guess who ALL the tory/lab press are blaming? the tory thats doing all the shouting said we should have trained school inspectors to check for hidden engineering faults WTF? and repeated on BBC scotlab. just F.R.OFF. right. now i am done.
SOME of them are shirking tax. However, the current witch-hunt has NOT shown this to be the case with Cameron, or any other MPs who have revealed their tax return details as far as I know. We can't say that paying back more than 1/3 of your income, in the case of the PM, as income tax and NI is "shirking", surely?
I agree that the whole question of inheritance from generation to generation is interesting and highly complex. There is no avoiding the way we inherit our genes, whether they give us strength, health, beauty, and intelligence or the opposites. And there is no denying our racial inheritance, with skin colour and all the other characteristics. Beyond that, all else is a question of social convention and ultimately of political decision. In developed countries it has been well-established for over a century that all children, regardless whether their parents are rich or poor, are entitled to free compulsory education; and in the UK since 1948 that all children, regardless whether their parents are rich or poor, are entitled to free healthcare. In modern times these and related principles have gained the status of human rights, at least in Europe, but they should never be taken for granted and may yet be threatened again. We then move into more complex areas. In a free society people are entitled to acquire as much money as they legally can, and to enjoy using that wealth to purchase luxury, privilege, and security for themselves and their families. So far so good, but the wealthy can also use their money to buy power over the jobs, homes, and lives of poorer people, as well as political power to influence government policy and legislation including taxation law. It is a matter of legitimate debate how far this should go, and where it should be stopped. In former times the wealthiest used their influence to establish hereditary titles and hereditary political powers which they could hand down to their children and grandchildren as royalty and aristocracy. Nowadays few people support the creation of hereditary powers of this kind, even in Britain. Debates about inheritance are (at least superficially) focussed on money. It is not the fault of David Cameron or Zac Goldsmith that their parents were wealthy, nor that they have inherited wealth, and that fact does not disqualify them from holding public office. The point is that it does not qualify them either. An owner of great wealth is perfectly entitled to run for election, provided they disclose the extent of it, but they cannot claim as a virtue that they have less need to claim salaries and expenses than others. Above all, it is not legitimate for office-holders to use their political power to enhance the financial positions of themselves and people like them. It is especially objectionable for those with executive powers to enforce tax collection on others whilst exempting themselves.
I absolutely agree, BUT, this is exactly what those at the top have been doing since the emergence of homo sapiens, particularly when you add in the phrase "and people like them" ?
True, but the bizarre thing about the current "Panama" situation with Cameron and others is that they have not been "exempting themselves", as the revelation of their own tax details has shown. They have in fact presided over a period from 2010 in which the tax burden on those with lower incomes has been reduced, and tax take from those with higher incomes has increased. There is of course an elite of "super rich" who continue to do especially nicely, but when you consider those "people at the top" the most obvious example of that ilk might be Tony Blair, not Cameron.
It is legitimate for political leaders to be paid salaries openly for their work, to be reimbursed transparently for their expenses, and to be provided with public pensions for their retirement; that is not what I meant by enhancing their financial positions. Criticizing politicians for this is commonplace but absurd. What I was referring to was their private fortunes, such as shareholdings, lands, and investment positions. Executive decisions (including those about taxation, expenditure, and regulation), often have dramatic consequences for those fortunes. The mischief here is decisions being taken for secret reasons connected to the decision-makers' private fortunes, not for the publicly announced reasons. Historically, rulers' exercising their powers for their own benefit was, of course, universal and normal. In modern societies standards are much higher - but maintaining those higher standards is very difficult.
A Telegraph letter writer pointed out this morning that Jeremy Corbyn, if he is really interested in the morality of wealth should be worrying less about how much tax Mr Cameron pays or does not pay on money given to him by his mother and worrying rather more about where for example, Mr Blair's wealth - however much tax he pays on it - actually comes from. I wonder if he (Blair) will publish his accounts?
