Are we more 'enlightened' now?

I'm not sensitive to names or pictures being revealed now. It's too late for anyone to be hurt. I had an ancestor once who murdered the land agent in Donegal. He went on the run and found a witch on the road who told him to settle down the next place where the sheep were grazing peacefully. He did so in Mayo, and changed his name to Munnelly. We also had a family ancestor who was hung. That's why my mother says I can't stand tight things around my neck.

I have found children in my wider family tree who have been in prison for petty theft and have gone on to industrial.school and ended up living a normal life after that. Some where the whole family spent their lives in and out of jail for poetry offences. Maybe in some situations where children were not well looked after and we're neglected it was the best thing for them. Others whose economic and life situations seemed very similar but didn't end up in jail at all and lived respectable lives.
I'm afraid I do judge those whose actions were wrong then and would be wrong now. Like the great uncle who as a widower married a widow with a couple of children and had other children with her. Then abandoned her, so sad to read. What she wrote on the 21 census return that she had been abandoned 20 years previously and some more stuff , obviously could not get a divorce, so had to bring up her children herself with no support from him. Another whose daughter marries a relative and I was trying to find where the youngest daughter was, and discovered the mother and siblings in foster care earlier and then. Being trained to be servanrs, found that the father had been imprisoned for child cruelty beating the littlest boy, although the mother had died he had a housekeeper. So the children were taken from him, sadly the little bit was in the workhiuse and died yojng. Him I judge

Ah, but the intention was there, regardless of whether it was successful.

It isn't stealing because these schemes are ineffective, so no money is ever shielded from care home fees.

Well, that is what I used as my "proof".
The fact that I have read threads on here about doing just that.
I see it as stealing.

It is just that people use phrases like the well-off without giving any idea about what that means. Does it include the person on pension credit, but owning their house, which may be worth £200,000? Or are you talking about someone with an income of £50, 000 and a house worth £500,000?

You cannot make value judgements, unless the values have been specified. Anyway if the scheme is a scheme that is approved by government and is part of the range of tax exemptions that is included in government fiscal policy it is perfectly reasonable to take benefit from it.

People entering these schemes for putting their money out of the hands of care fees believe and have been told, usually by solicitors, that the schemes proposed are legal, permissible and effective.

I merely point out that while the schemes are entirely legal and permissable and within the government's fiscal regime, they are ineffective and that they are wasting time and money setting them up. They are a form of scam and we are alwaays very active on GN about warning each other about scams.

M0nica

But most of those people (who look for schemes to avoid paying care schemes) are not the well off. They are those on average incomes, most of whose capital (the value of their house), would be swallowed up by care fees, leaving nothing for their children to inherit.

You need to separate the amounts of money the government chooses to exempt from taxation from those that are illegal.

For example every person with any income gets a tax free allowance, currently £12,750. That means everyone is complicit in not paying taxes, if they can avoid them. Any money paid into a pension is tax-free and so on from there. If the government said that they would only take a person's income into account when assessing care charges, not their capital, then no scheme to avoid charges would be necessary. It would be a normal tax exemption like saving for a pension.

Pointing out that schemes set up to enable someone to avoid paying care fees will not work is just stating a fact. I would do the same if someone said they were going to invest in any other scam, whether investing in carbon credits or investing in fine wine.

What I am still not clear is the income level that makes someone well-off and means that if they use any tax exemption allowed by the government, for example saving into a pension, it is distasteful, while for someone with an income below that point it is entirely acceptable.

I'm talking about deprivation of assets, which means that a person has assets to deprive themselves of.
Again, it has been spoken of on here before.

I thought it was quite clear to what I was referring, and you did ask what proof I had.

I have no reason to think people on here are lying when they speak of different schemes or means to squirrel their money away, so I based my "proof' on that.

Of course I wasn't meaning people doing legal, government endorsed things.

Paperbackwriter I've often seen very lenient sentences for brutal crimes, not always murder but where victims have been badly injured or had life changing mental health problems as a result. There have been drunks who run someone over and kill them, they have not had life sentences but in some cases very short sentences.

Chestnut

Yes the punishments for minor transgressions in the past were excessive, and especially for children who seem to have had no rights at all. We have moved on and in many ways things are better, but we seem to have gone too far the other way. When you see such lenient sentences for murder and appallingly brutal crimes it is very upsetting. Some of the judges seem to let people off with a slap on the wrist.

The sentence for murder is always life.

But most of those people (who look for schemes to avoid paying care schemes) are not the well off. They are those on average incomes, most of whose capital (the value of their house), would be swallowed up by care fees, leaving nothing for their children to inherit.

You need to separate the amounts of money the government chooses to exempt from taxation from those that are illegal.

For example every person with any income gets a tax free allowance, currently £12,750. That means everyone is complicit in not paying taxes, if they can avoid them. Any money paid into a pension is tax-free and so on from there. If the government said that they would only take a person's income into account when assessing care charges, not their capital, then no scheme to avoid charges would be necessary. It would be a normal tax exemption like saving for a pension.

Pointing out that schemes set up to enable someone to avoid paying care fees will not work is just stating a fact. I would do the same if someone said they were going to invest in any other scam, whether investing in carbon credits or investing in fine wine.

What I am still not clear is the income level that makes someone well-off and means that if they use any tax exemption allowed by the government, for example saving into a pension, it is distasteful, while for someone with an income below that point it is entirely acceptable.

Oh, and there is,nothing in my sweeping statement to suggest it is everyone.
You must have misconstrued what i said.

Yes, M0nica.
People quite often post on here about different schemes they can use to ensure their money doesn't get swallowed up in care fees.
You are often the person who explains that if this was possible, then everyone would do it.

MissA will correct me if I'm wrong, but I think she is talking about those of the well-off who hide their money, not saying that all well-off people do so.

A bit like the well off, who try to find all sorts of ways to hide their money?

MissAdventure Do I understand you to be saying that everyone who is well off (definition?) always, every single one, finds all sorts of ways to hide their money?

Do you have any evidence to justify this sweeping statement.

Smileless2012

I think it's still the case that a husband or wife can't be compelled to testify against their partner, but I could be wrong.

I thought it was a one-way thing, as only women promised to obey.

I could be wrong too, though. I've never needed to testify against Mr Dog, and I didn't promise obedience anyway .

A bit like the well off, who try to find all sorts of ways to hide their money?
Stealing.
Education really does seem to make little difference to them.

Wealth being shared more equally will not stop crime. Human beings being as they are will always have those who want more than others for less effort. Again education will have little impact. Children already are taught about Citizenship and that seems to fall on deaf ears for a lot given the drug and knife crime amongst the young. What happened to fear of being caught? No fear, given the meaningless penalties. The 10 year old may have stolen something worthless nowadays but it was still stealing.

I wonder if those two boys went on time and time again to commit crime, albeit small crimes. These days there seems to be a badge of honor for being sent down on a regular basis for doing wrong.

I think it's still the case that a husband or wife can't be compelled to testify against their partner, but I could be wrong.

That is an awful story, as the boy would have been caught between the Devil and the deep blue sea.

It used to be the case that women couldn't testify against their husbands as they had promised to obey them at marriage, so there would be a conflict between marriage vows in church and the oath they swore to God in court. The same logic should have applied to cases like the boy and his father, as disobeying him would contradict the ten commandments.

Do you know what happened to the father Hellsbelles?

many adults firmly believe that defauding the Inland Revenue "is not really stealing."

I had a conversation last night with someone who was recommending tradespeople to me to do work on my house, and her main criteria for choosing them was whether they would let her pay in cash so she saved on the VAT and the people would knock off a bit and not declare the job to the taxman. I was unimpressed to say the least. I don't know how anyone who does that can complain about cuts to services, when other people (ie honest taxpayers) are funding them and they are opting out ?.

Also, well said, Grantanow.

Why do we worry about who stole the geese from off the common and ignore who steals common from under the geese?

All this makes me think how important education, council housing and the welfare state has been for people and the taxation to pay for them. The Tories would roll all that back if they could in the name of low taxes and the 'small state' aided by the disgusting Daily Wail and the rest of the gutter press. The attack on Channel 4 and the BBC is a taste of things to come if the right wing if the Tory party get their way.

As a historian I feel bound to say that it is wrong to judge any era of the past entirely by the standards of our time.

The past should always partly be judged by what was considered legal and morally right at specific time we are dealing with.

This does not mean that we have to accept that what the 14th, 15th, or any other century believed to be right was right, soley that we should be able to assess whether the particular person or country's standards were acceptable in the time when the deed was committed. We still have the right to say that sending homosexual men to prision along with conscientious objecters during the First World War was wrong, as was burning those accused of witchcraft in the 16th and 17 th centuries , and any number of other atrocities committed in the past were.

However, it should be remembered that many of our grandparents or great-grandparents probably felt as we do that handing down harsh sentences to children who stole was excessive or wrong.

But they would be equally shocked to know that we their descendents are living in a world where politicians may lie with impunity, where children are not taught at an early age that stealing is wrong and when many adults firmly believe that defauding the Inland Revenue "is not really stealing."