*DURHAMGEN FOR PM ??*

I will not ban the eating of meat, but all animals, fowl etc must be free-range and fed non-GM. Ducks must be given access to water to bathe in!!
I will ban GM food.

Oh I suppose as culture secretary I am treading on the chancellors feet - still collective responsibility and all that!

As Home Secretary I want privatisation of prisons and children's centres back in state control with an independent body with knowledge and experience of prison reform

Don't be so impatient I have started with the revenue as a government is nothing without money to work with. I have simply started with first principles. There are a lot more revenue streams to address. It would be so much more productive if you discussed what I have suggested and put forward your ideas.

I started by saying these are my suggestions and I hope they can be discussed in a democratic way.

Nothing stopping you putting forward your idea for what should be in our manifesto.

Give up Jane not worth it. Such narrow short term thinking is so ingrained which is why the Labour party failed to get in last time. The public saw straight through it.

No point in trying then. Will just sit back and hope for a public service job. Won't bother trying to invest either. No point. Why try to be entrepreneurial or build up businesses which could employ others? Oh well as long as we can tax everybody as much as possible we'll be all right. ...Except we wont!
What are your plans to actually build the economy?

Corporation tax. Companies will be treated as individuals, and are in fact that in law (I think). So corporation tax will reflect the level of profit. There will be bands of corporation tax just as there are for individuals. We understand that this will be argued that this will encourage each company to show a lower profit level. Thus can be addressed at two levels. Share holders will not be happy. Any company showing a consistent lower level of profit or loss commensurate to its activity will be examined in depth and required to submit all papers prepared by the auditors that go to make up the company accounts.

I'm on a roll here?

The NI system will be overhauled and the principles outlined above will be established. The resultant extra revenue will be put towards a dedicated NHS tax which will be reviewed annually by an independent body. Steps will be taken to ensure future governments cannot interfere or change things at will. The NHS will be run by an independent body and changes etc will be done by referendum.

Accusations that the tax system "encourages" active avoidance will be seriously addressed.

We will look firstly at the PAYE system,and NI system. We will operate on the first principal that those with the broadest shoulders bear the bigger burden. Every individual earning will pay a level of tax commensurate to their income. We will introduce a wider level of tax bands. Those on at below or at the living wage level will have their salary raised to a realistic income level allowing them to live in dignity and by taking part in the tax system will have a stake in society. This will in turn relieve the burden on the benefits system, consideration will thus be given to assist small businesses with the extra expense a dignified salary for its employees.
Those unable to work for various reasons will be addressed at the spending part.

We need a manifesto. We can all out forward suggestions to be democratically discussed.

Looking at revenue

My first is to ensure that the pursuit of tax evasion is being carried out with sufficient resources and skill. All results will be published quarterly with all figures published along with those doing the evasion.
My second is to set up an independent team drawn from various expertise to vigorously pursue all aggressive avoidance schemes. To lay these schemes bare and to challenge these schemes at every step.
Before any avoidance scheme is put into place by an accountant/company the scheme must by law be presented to HMRC for scrutiny. Where this may result in a large amount of loss to the revenue the Treasury will be informed in order to consider closing that loophole.
International cooperation to pursue all tax evasion and avoidance will be given top priority.

Got to get up now as the dog is nagging

I've lost the plot. What dos are the velvet bootees worn at?

Jamila I think the main purpose of the slippers was to stop the floors getting marked. Great idea!

In Scandinavia at Christmas they have Tomte who is like a grumpy elf creature and I think he wears red felt slippers. You mustn't wake him up though!

Yes, whitewave, we'll put a stop to that when we are in charge.

The Danes have programmes about Santa's helpers. It's like an advent thing, a story every day until Christmas Eve. They make all sorts of toys, like rocking horses.
They wear red slippers with curly toes.
I wondered if the Finns had the same, Jalima.

Sort of pale fawn with other colours, more like knitted bootees really.
Very fetching.
Red slippers? My name is not Dorothy.

Why would they be red?

you wonder what planet these people are on though. Most of the world can't afford shoes, and they avoid tax -quite legally you understand - to allow them to purchase things like red velvet slippers. Dear oh dear

Were they red, Jalima?

As in how does he pay for them? Not taxpayers money, I hope.

Apparently Cameron and his party friends well the men wear a type of velvet slipper at these dos according to an article I was reading in the Observer this morning. Perhaps we ought to look into that.

Wilma re those slippers
We went to stay with friends in Finland and were offered felt slippers to wear indoors on their wooden floors (saves scratching the floor and dusts it at the same time!).

Suitable reading material for our GN cabinet members, reviewed on Amazon.

"Over on Amazon ‘Hamilton Richardson’ is reviewing Mr Men books and the reviews are worth reading in full, clearly written by a bored parent whose mind started wandering after reading one of these books for the 19th time.

Mr. Uppity
Hargreaves: Bolshevik, or Monarchist?
In the opening few pages of this, the 11th work in the Mr Man series, we are almost led to expect of Hargreaves a foray into dialectical materialism.

We meet Mr Uppity with his top hat and monocle – a clear and overt representation of the bourgeois industrialist. Other arriviste trappings such as his long limousine and imposing townhouse further give the game away.

In a thinly-veiled reference to the oppression of the workers by the ruling class, we are told that Mr Uppity is rude to everyone, and the detail that he has no friends in Bigtown explicitly informs us that the masses are on the brink of revolution. Are we about to bear witness to class war, Hargreaves-style? To see Mr Uppity brought to account by the revolutionary power of the proletariat? Vanquished and overthrown by the party of the workers?

Not so. Mr Uppity is no Marxian analysis, no Leninist prescription for class action. As always, Hargreaves’ inherent and essential conservatism comes to bear. His critique of the bourgeoisie comes not from the proletariat but from the feudal aristocracy. It is the authority of a king that places limits upon Mr Uppity’s excesses, as his usurpation and arbitrary exercise of power has violated ‘the natural order of things’. Hence the protection the masses are dealt in response to this transgression is paternal, and they receive it as subjects not radical agents of change.

Being so staunch a traditionalist, Hargreaves of necessity is a reformer not a revolutionary. The King does not have Mr Uppity executed, imprisoned or even sent into exile. There is no state seizure and collectivization of his wealth, or in fact any redistribution at all. (Despite his pomp and grandeur, the King no longer has such powers – both the outward self-importance and ultimate weakness of his intervention appear little more than a face-saving exercise for his waning hereditary rule.)

Rather, in the end it is the mildest of all regulation that is imposed upon the capitalist class. The ownership of the means of production remains the same, with no fundamental change to the economic base – just some superstructural tinkering to rein-in any overly brutal treading on the small man. The ruling class can do pretty much as it did before, as long as it says ‘please’ and ‘thank you’. The aristocracy is duly appeased.

Hence we arrive at the Britain Hargreaves lived in – a gently regulated capitalism coupled with sham aristocracy, maintained by our own collective nostalgia and a national lack of appetite for mass action."
More reviews at http://www.thepoke.co.uk/2016/03/01/literary-criticism-mr-men-reviews-made-us-laugh-lot/

"It’s not all hardship, though. The prime minister’s own party supports him where necessary, the returns reveal. Expenses met by the Conservative party have varied between £5,105 and £13,149, which have been declared as taxable benefits. They cover travel, clothes and other associated expenses for Cameron and his wife.

When the PM next berates Jeremy Corbyn over a shabby suit, the Labour leader will be able to reply that, unlike Cameron, he isn’t receiving a taxpayer subsidy for it."

No, we're not doing this either. No party money as taxable benefits.
We really do need to think of the people we represent.

wot I've never noticed you do that.

I have to be careful and politically correct because I often put my foot in it ( like when I criticized "tea")

Racist? No, of course not. It never entered my mind. Those slippers did look like a brilliant way to clean the floors - especially wooden ones! Maybe they were a way to be super efficient - not just keeping the floors from getting dirty or marked, but polishing them at the same time. German efficiency for you!