Can the Tories be trusted with OUR National Health Service

www.revenue.ie/en/tax/vat/leaflets/food-and-drink.html
A list of which foods are VAT rated.
They look mostly like junk food, which is presumably to discourage people from buying them.

Not again...

She did visit France, Germany, Ireland and Italy Jalima.

But not India.

Queen Victoria's visit to India as reported on Gransnet has been found to be Fake News.

HM says she never left the Great Britain.

When Queen Victoria went to India to be feted as the Empress of India, there were millions of Indians dying of starvation while she was feasting.
djen I don't think that Queen Victoria ever went to India - in fact I don't think she ever left GB.

And people do tend to forget the fact that, although the British may have exploited India, they also did a lot of good to build up the infrastructure of the country
Drains were dug, water transported to where it was needed
The girders for every bridge, the track for every mile of railway and the vast array of machinery required for India's infrastructure were all carried there by the same ships that helped exploit a land thousands of miles away. The engineers who laid the cornerstones for India's development from Third World nation to burgeoning industrial superpower were British.
(Dr Kartar Lalvani)

There is always another side to the story.

www.somersetlive.co.uk/frome-pensioner-soon-to-be-homeless-owing-thousands-after-medical-care-in-us/story-30124921-detail/story.html

Back to the NHS.

Hard for anyone to dodge VAT other than paying for services in cash. Re IHT, I can see the issue with avoidance but is it really not sufficiently progressive? Zero increasing to 40%? What sort of top rate of capital or income tax donpeople think would be fair?

Not quite sure how the poor manage to dodge paying VAT other than by not buying things they need. It's difficult to avoid paying VAT on food, as some of the simplest things are not VAT free. Do they avoid paying VAT by not buying a bar of chocolate? Are they not allowed any luxuries?
Poor people buy clothes, and have to pay VAT. Perhaps they avoid it by not buying as many as rich people?

Zero, reduced or exempted rates of VAT benefit all income levels and of course the more you spend on food the bigger the benefit of the zero rate so it increases the regressiveness in fact. But food is not the only item poorer people need. And it's not just about VAT - there's all the other forms of revenue raising but VAT is regressive full stop. The fact that some people of any income level might dodge VAT is neither here or there and would not affect the point of overall figures in the linked article. IHT is laughingly and cheaply easy to avoid paying. My guess would be that some of the richest people don't pay it and that if it's paid, it's only on that part of an estate that couldn't be sheltered. My guess would be that the smaller an estate genuinely is, the more likely it is that IHT is paid ( often because of the increased value of a modest house - especially in the SE). The richest man in the UK died last year (?) D of Westminister and the estate paid not a penny in IHT. Personally I'd abolish this tax as it is so avoidable and raise the lost revenue in a more progressive way.

Personally, I accept that VAT is potentially 'regressive' as defined but certain goods, sometimes deemed necessities, are exempt or lower rated so the impact is mitigated or removed.

Food is one such item. It has been argued that the food exemption gives more cash benefit to the wealthy who spend more on food than the poor but, relatively speaking, the hardship of finding extra cash for food would clearly be higher on the poor than the wealthy.

I suspect the poor are as adept as dodging VAT as the wealthy but probably do so for smaller cash amounts.

By the way, Inheritance Tax may seem to some like a voluntary tax but it is due to raise £4.8bn according to the IFS, not so far short of £5.5bn due from Vehicle Excise Tax. Land Stamp Duty is expected to raise a whopping £12.9bn if it doesn't kill the housing market en route.

Rigby - fair enough. But 2%is more than zero and it's phablet on all - uncapped - earnings. In any event I don't see outmr system as particularly unfair overall

And paying 2% instead of 12% is hardly uncapped and certainly not progressive

It's a matter of fact not opinion that our tax system is regressive overall with income tax being the only progressive part. Regressive means paying a larger proportion of your income in tax the poorer you are - it's nothing to do with the actual amount you pay -the figures in this link are a little old but still illustrate the point as there have been no material changes to the underlying system

www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2013/07/11/the-inequality-of-the-uk-tax-system/

Rigby I don't agree that much of our tax system is regressive, which I understand to mean that it decreases as earnings increase. I agree that many are not progressive but I don't think our system is unfair overall. As for NI, the highest earners do pay a 2% charge on all earnings - i.e. uncapped. I'm not suggesting what we have is perfect but it's not grossly unfair. in terms of the NHS Jen responded to my earlier post saying she wouldn't countenance being bounced into privatisation of the NHS. I should say that my idea wasn't meant to imply that. I've said that I think some use of private services can be a good thing, the NHS services must of course always be primarily owned and controlled "in- house".

Getting back to the matter in hand.

I dearly hope that the NHS and what it stands for remains. Hopefully big wig heads will fall as will immigration and drug companies will be made to significantly lower their extortionate prices. Hopefully so will the "private contractors" servicing it be made to do the same.

Greedy private companies have done this.

Really rather random wild sentences there durhamjen

In real life I try to give examples so let me try to give you a very simple example of what I feel has been happening over the last decade.

There is a trilogy of quite recent teen films that I was subjected to and thoroughly enjoyed by the way, called the "Hunger Games" where there was a metropolis and everyone outside this was a peasant. This is what London and the affluent surrounding areas remind me of.

I for one am so glad that the 'working class" now have a voice and a very strong one again.

So it's not true that Jeremy Hunt was in the US last Monday when he should have been in parliament talking about Brexit?
Are you just naive, or blind to the truth?

Service our country? Bloody hell, you are going back a long time. When Queen Victoria went to India to be feted as the Empress of India, there were millions of Indians dying of starvation while she was feasting. I am sure they were delighted to service our country.

Free world trade? Ha,ha ha!
Every country that has said it will trade with the UK says it wants better access for its people in return for that trade agreement.

Why to you keep sending "links" durhamjen? Do you believe these things to be actual truth?

I like her. She's doing what she was put in place for, listening to the "majority" of the people she serves. All "public servants" are just that, they serve the people in this country. Unfortunately over the last decade that has sorely been forgotten.

This is what I voted for:

Border control - unless people are genuinely in danger, or can service our country in jobs that are not being filled (at the moment) by our own labour, then they don't gain access.
Getting out of a dictatorship
Getting out of some ridiculous court that thinks it can overturn our judicial system.
Free world trade.

Many of which have links to Tory MPs, and tax exiles.

Particularly this one.

evolvepolitics.com/hunt-secretively-visits-us-to-meet-pharma-companies-gives-speech-at-conference-sponsored-by-us-healthcare-giants/

Wouldn't trust him to empty my bins.

Anyway, we digress. Back to the NHS which is run by fat cat bureaucrats who sanction greedy private drugs companies.

What are the majority of this country asking for?

Fitzy - much of our taxation system is regressive so is intrinsically unfair. Fairness is not about how much you pay but how it relates to your income. In no way for example, is council tax fair. And as DJ points out, NICs are capped above a certain income.And don't get me started on IHT - the most voluntary of all taxes as its so easy not to pay it.

She had that clout then.