The shame of Austerity Britain

I heard on Sunday that we'd sent aid to a poorer country to the tune of 80 million. The leader of that country then spent 30 million buying a football team. That just galls me.

Lyndie if you are happy with poor services and more food banks that is your choice, but I think the majority are not. Go back to my link about Sweden and Norway, both of which have the quality of public services we can only dream and you will see that they pay considerably more tax than we do.

It is a choice; pay for what we want - or do without. We cannot have our cake and eat it.

M0nica – I certainly DID NOT vote for this government. I am more than willing to pay higher taxes – indeed I think it is my duty, but so many people don’t, and whether you like it or not those small groups and individuals could do a lot to alleviate things if they paid more taxes, or in some cases paid any at all! I try very hard to ‘do something about it’, but it is very difficult with people like Marieeliz burying their head in the sand with an I’m alright Jack attitude!

Speaking of which – Marieeliz – you really, and I mean really need to step out of your gilded cage/blinkered box and look at the world. It has changed immeasurably, some people, quite a lot actually, cannot afford the necessary fuel or equipment to cook, which is why so many rely on rubbish fast food. Those that use foodbanks are often working people who are just crippled by low pay, high rents, uncertain hours of work. I have known several young, hardworking couples who have been completely demoralised and crippled by trying to apply for top up benefit to supplement their low wages. One was made homeless due to ‘mistakes’ by the benefits agencies, who never apologise and are never wrong! My own brother, who is terminally ill and has to rely now on an invalid buggy, and gets worse and worse each day had to fight tooth and nail to keep his PIP payment. He has worked all his life! They were determined to take it before his 65th birthday, as if he still had it then it would be with him for the year or two he may have left. I can remember my own mother crying through lack of money and hiding from bailiffs. We struggled ourselves in the 80s crash and nearly lost our house. It doesn’t mean I think people today are milking it! It many ways I think it is worse. The country isn’t ‘poor’, but the wealth is now distributed in a very skewed way! It is certainly not trickling down.

Labour have no chance of winning an election as things stand - amongst most of my aquantance they are now seen as the anti-Semitic party of benefit claimants and immigrants. I voted Labour until 1997 - never again because Blair opened the floodgates which have never been closed, leaving us like an overpopulated third world country - that's the only part of bring British I'm 'ashamed' of. The Conservatives as they are now are too left wing for my liking as well.

but lets all beecstatic at funding a royal family to the tune of 300 million + a year ..then the extra 30 million for security for THAT wedding that apparently most weren't interested in and didn't watch ...according to the official figures today !

Beau - So Rees Mogg? First decent politician! Really! Hypocrisy over the abortion pill, hypocrisy over Russia and hypocrisy over Brexit. How – just how can you say he is decent? The man is a hypocritical parody of a politician.

Trust me, I am still working full time and I do not want tax at 33p in the pound.
Think of others who work like me and are now only starting to have a decent salary to do the things in life I want to do
I gave my son and daughter a good start but worked and went without.
If p/p does not mind paying that's ok, but I would strongly object.

MOnica. It depends where you are coming from. We pay corporation tax and personal tax. VAT. Council tax. Road tax etc. But we are not rich. Work all hours. We have in the past had 3 jobs between us when the kids were young. I feel worn out and it’s other people’s turn to pay more tax! My husband is past retirement age and works all hours. We support our adult children as much as we can.

What is the option to the present government as they all seem the same.

... but it is still less than people in a similar position in countries like Norway and Sweden are happy to pay for decent services.

Nan99 there are quite a number of party stalwarts on Gransnet. What are they doing to encourage their party's to bite the bullet and admit that good services cost money and that the only way to do this is by increasing taxation. Instead either ducking the issue or obsessively chasing low taxation and to hell with those suffer.

Beau. Labour are not anti semitic - they ARE anti Israel - which is a different thing. And among people of my aquaintance he is seen as the better option than we have now.

I don’t think we would need to pay 33% tax - a much smaller increase would make a big difference. There must be a scale somewhere which tells you how much each extra penny tax raises.
There are lots of reasons people are being paid low wages but at the moment many jobs are now paying thousands less than they were a few years ago - 5-6k in many cases. Rents have not gone down and neither have many other things.
Maybe the people who do not wish to pay more tax could explain why they think that and what they consider would be a viable alternative. Most people are paying less tax now than for many years - one reason being the rise in the personal allowance.

In the 40/50 s people who were buying their houses paid an extra tax - scheduleA -I can remember my father filling in the form for it.

knickas63, I find Rees-Mogg refreshingly blunt and honest, amazingly eloquent and intelligent, mostly a breath of fresh air after the mealy mouthed apologists coming at us from every direction. A lot of his beliefs are his Catholic beliefs and he accepts that they will never be the law in this country. Also I know Labour say they are not anti Semitic and presumably the ghastly Millibands would leave if they thought that was the case but with so many of their members now being of an anti-Jewish religion, as my SIL previously of that faith says 'they know who their supporters are'.

Greed and me first mentality has taken over completely in the higher echelons of power while the rest of us struggle, and worse, accept it's right and proper!
I don't agree that this statement is absolutely true though, knickas.

It is true that the rich avoid tax and should be made to pay their fair share to benefit the whole of society.
It is true that there are people who are struggling and using foodbanks and this is wrong in a so-called 'rich' country.

However, there is a vast swathe of the population who are not struggling - if they were all struggling then who are those who are shopping, visiting restaurants with families, going to theme parks , going on holidays abroad? They are not all so-called 'baby boomers', these are families with children out and about and spending on goods and entertainment.
We are constantly amazed at the numbers of families doing all that - and very pleased to see that they are.

Richard Murphy the economist says:
spending creates the capacity to pay more tax. The reasons should be obvious and yet apparently they are not. New government spending is, of course, someone's income. It is not poured into a black hole to be lost forever more. That means that some comes straight back in tax. And yet more comes back because the recipient of the extra income also spends, and so tax is paid, and so on. It is quite likely that over time new spending pays for itself.
www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/

The economy could be boosted by investing more money into housing building, the NHS, police, fire services. This money creates jobs then those workers spend more which creates more jobs in turn.
A little goes a long way because of the “multiplier effect” in economic jargon.
The initial stimulus would be funded from borrowing (very cheap at the moment) but would soon be more or less paying for itself in bigger tax receipts as the economy grows.
Running the economy is not like running a household budget.

Go back to my link about Sweden and Norway, both of which have the quality of public services we can only dream and you will see that they pay considerably more tax than we do.

Yes, we do need to pay more tax, but I think most people would balk at the thought of 33% as the basic rate.

We now pay more in indirect taxes than previously.

Between 2007–08 and 2015–16, the share of the adult population who pay income tax dropped from 65.7% to 56.2%.9 Within the group of income tax payers, the proportion of total income tax paid by the top 1% of taxpayers (i.e. 0.66% of the adult population in 2007–08 and 0.56% of the population in 2015-2016) increased from 24.4% to 27.5%.
www.ifs.org.uk/uploads/publications/bns/BN_182.pdf
See page 10

That does not mean that those who avoid tax should not be pursued to pay their fair share.

Those of you who cite huge spending by those who lie between the rich and the poor have either forgotten, or don't know, that there is a massive amount of personal debt in the economy. Over £1trillion. Granted that some of that will be mortgages but a lot of it isn't. We could be living on a time bomb.

Yes, but, if you borrow to finance the spending you still have to pay it back and with interest. It doesn't mean it should never be done, but only done with caution.

The other thing is that the economy cannot grow for ever. Sooner or later countries world wide are going to have to decide how to have prosperity without growth.

Many of the problems we now face in this country: overpopulation, housing shortage, public services under strain, are the result of blinkered politicians thinking that the best way to ensure prosperity was the relentless pursuit of growth in the economy regardless of its cost.

As for 33% tax, I referred to that as that is what the standard rate was back in the 1960s when I first started work. And, yes, I was paying it out of the poor salary of a trainee Chartered Accountant, who were paid a fraction of what those in that role get now, even in real terms. I got bored after 6 months and left for pastures new.

maizie most of that is discretionary debt, people spending on things today that are not essential for them rather than wait until they can afford them because interest rates are low.

The next financial crisis is going to be when interest rates go up and all those who overstretched themselves suddenly find they cannot afford the repayments. My sympathies will then be with all those who struggled to get on housing ladders or took on debt at periods of crisis. But no sympathy for those who bought new cars, expensive holidays or maxed their mortgage to get an even bigger better house.

The greedy, self serving ( though aren't all politicians of the same ilk ) Tories have no opposition.
Looking at the labour leadership reminds me of the likes of Scargill, Red Robbo and those clowns who took over Liverpool Council.
Austerity may have affected most of us, but certainly not the politicians, unless you can class reduced fiddling of their allowances as an example.
Out of any of them I would tend to give Rees-Mogg a chance.
A very privileged background and the over the top posh accent but he seems to be his own man who talks sense.

PADDYANN and OP nailed it. Absolutely. they say they care but whenever have they cared , especially regarding north-south divide ! And after Brexshit it will only be worse. !

Mostlyharmlees. First off let me agree that it is wrong that rich countries like ours have such problems and services should be 1st class in 1st world countries. However, while people themselves insist on being drink and drug addicts, there will always be hunger and homelessness. In an ideal world we should be able to help these people but some do not want or accept help and there is often no cure for the majority of mental issues that so many have these days. Of course there should be help available for all those who wish to help themselves, victims of bad luck, job loss etc. But how do we stop the vicious cycle of child neglect, addiction, alcoholism, domestic violence. There are bad, weak, aggressive and lazy people in the world and it is not something we can immunise against. I work with kids in care and my heart is often bruised by the stories I hear but how can we stop feckless parents having kids? There isn't a country in the world without problems and not enough altruistic, genuine politicians to deal with them. Most are in it for the lifestyle and kudos it brings. What more can I say? The most any of us can do is contribute to food banks, volunteer and just do what we can, knowing it will never be enough. Sad but true.

If we pay more tax towards, for example, the NHS or the police, would we get a better service, or might we just end up paying for even more department managers than are already employed. It's difficult to demand higher taxes without the taxed seeing some improvement in services offered.

Every country has a finite pot of money to spend which it raises from taxes or borrowing. The UK has around 10-20 million too many inhabitants to function comfortably but still people are given financial rewards to produce more children and Remainers want to stay in the single market which involves continuing to accept unlimited free movement.

If you are worried about the homeless then take one into your home as your guest or give them a tenner every time you see someone living on the streets if you don't object to your money being spent on fags, booze or drugs.

Labour will bankrupt this country if they ever get in again.