The banker loving, baby-eating Tory party thread (regenerated)

[lapal_fan]

2 minutes ago, Seat68 said:

This is my point, if it is personal then yes, its a very broad 10%, but its not, its per household and although here in Staffordshire this household isnt in that, we arent a million miles away from it.

https://www.gq-magazine.co.uk/article/average-uk-salary  

Average UK salary: £27,271

Before you start celebrating/consoling yourself, this data was taken by the Office For National Statistics from 21,563,000 people's earnings, with averages broken down for each profession. Topping the charts were brokers, who earned £133,677 on average, followed by chief executives and senior officials (£107,703), aircraft pilots and flight engineers (£90,146) and marketing and sales directors (£82,962). At the other end of the scale are retail assistants (£10,296), hairdressers and barbers (£10,019), cleaners (£7,919), waitresses (£7,554) and bar staff (£7,404).

[Davkaus]

To go back to @WhatAboutTheFinish's point about inequality in general..Personally, i'm more interested in looking at the bottom than the top when we talk about inequality.

It's little comfort to someone that works a full time job at minimum wage that the top 10% "only" have a household income of 6 times their income (after tax, by the way...).

When homelessness is on the rise, food bank use is on the rise, salaries continue to stagnate while living costs rise, and even some people in solid careers like nursing and teaching are reliant on charity to survive and in some parts of the country can barely imagine renting their own place, never mind buying it, the top 10% only having a disposable household  income of 90k doesn't nullify their concerns.

[Seat68]

1 minute ago, Davkaus said:

To go back to @WhatAboutTheFinish's point about inequality in general..Personally, i'm more interested in looking at the bottom than the top when we talk about inequality.

It's little comfort to someone that works a full time job at minimum wage that the top 10% "only" have a household income of 6 times their income (after tax, by the way...).

When homelessness is on the rise, food bank use is on the rise, salaries continue to stagnate while living costs rise, and even some people in solid careers like nursing and teaching are reliant on charity to survive and in some parts of the country can barely imagine renting their own place, never mind buying it, the top 10% only having a disposable household  income of 90k doesn't nullify their concerns.

ah disposable, I missed that, admittedly, thats a **** ton

[WhatAboutTheFinish]

6 minutes ago, Davkaus said:

To go back to @WhatAboutTheFinish's point about inequality in general..Personally, i'm more interested in looking at the bottom than the top when we talk about inequality.

It's little comfort to someone that works a full time job at minimum wage that the top 10% "only" have a household income of 6 times their income (after tax, by the way...).

When homelessness is on the rise, food bank use is on the rise, salaries continue to stagnate while living costs rise, and even some people in solid careers like nursing and teaching are reliant on charity to survive and in some parts of the country can barely imagine renting their own place, never mind buying it, the top 10% only having a disposable household  income of 90k doesn't nullify their concerns.

So you’ve identified and listed the concerns. Without looking to the top 10% which you’ve said you don’t want to do, what are the solutions? 

[Davkaus]

23 hours ago, WhatAboutTheFinish said:

So you’ve identified and listed the concerns. Without looking to the top 10% which you’ve said you don’t want to do, what are the solutions? 

**** knows how to solve all of it, I'm not an economist. (Here's where the usual response is to not complain if you don't have a solution, before  it's  pointed out that it's a silly argument).

Besides, you're putting words in my mouth. I didn't say I didn't want to look at the top 10% for the purpose of solutions, what I said was I think the state of the worst off is more indicative of an unequal society than just looking at the top.

You, on the other hand, seem to have made an argument that inequality might not be so much of an issue, on the grounds that the top 10% of households only have a disposable income  of 90k. How much spare cash do you think the 10th percentile needs to have before conceding there might be a problem?

[WhatAboutTheFinish]

22 hours ago, Davkaus said:

**** knows how to solve all of it, I'm not an economist. (Here's where the usual response is to not complain if you don't have a solution, before  it's  pointed out that it's a silly argument).

Besides, you're putting words in my mouth. I didn't say I didn't want to look at the top 10% for the purpose of solutions, what I said was I think the state of the worst off is more indicative of an unequal society than just looking at the top.

You, on the other hand, seem to have made an argument that inequality might not be so much of an issue, on the grounds that the top 10% of households only have a disposable income  of 90k. How much spare cash do you think the 10th percentile needs to have before conceding there might be a problem?

Well now we’re both putting words in each other’s mouths, I’m not saying that there isn’t an issue at the bottom end. 

Admittedly I had misread that the stats quoted previously and hadn’t seen that housing costs had been removed so I was surprised that the average earnings for the top 10% was so low. When we’re talking household incomes at around 90k then we’re talking households that include teachers, doctors, nurses, council workers, middle management...not people that you would consider mega rich. But like I say, I misread the stats so my point has largely been made redundant. 

Having said that, any tax cut is obviously going to favour those earning an income that doesn’t necessarily mean that they are a bad thing. For what it’s worth, I don’t think that anybody earning minimum wage (or less than the living wage even) should be paying any income tax at all. Although I guess that makes me an ideological tax cutting right wing fanatic? 

[snowychap]

7 hours ago, WhatAboutTheFinish said:

If those numbers are correct, and I’ve no reason to believe they are not, it means the top 10% are only earning £90 something k a year on average. That seems surprisingly low to me and perhaps indicates that income isn’t as disproportionately distributed in this country as is sometimes made out.

It's equivalised household income decile after housing costs.

If you use the IFS calculator on this page, you can see how differing compositions of each houshold affect the decile in which a household with the same net income would sit.

Quote

In deciding how rich or poor someone is relative to the rest of the population, we look at their net household equivalised income.

e.g.

a household with net income of £60k (that's about £90k gross) but consisting of just one person is in the top 3%;

a household with the same gross and net income but two adults and two children (still with one working for ease of direct taxes calculations) is in the top 28%.

Those are very rough calculations that I've just wanged in there obviously it doesn't take in to consideration all potential differences.

Edit: That's two teenage dependent children in my example. The household moves further to the right on the graph if the children are younger.

Edited November 8, 2018 by snowychap

[WhatAboutTheFinish]

10 minutes ago, snowychap said:

It's equivalised household income decile after housing costs.

Yeah those, the old equivalised household income deciles...after housing costs of course. 

[peterms]

4 hours ago, WhatAboutTheFinish said:

So you’ve identified and listed the concerns. Without looking to the top 10% which you’ve said you don’t want to do, what are the solutions? 

A full answer would take more time and info than I have, and would exceed most people's attention span.

Let's remember that wealth, not just income, is a crucial determinant of inequality.  Relatively small differences in income can lead to a lot more disposable income, meaning a surplus which fairly quickly translates into accelerating wealth gaps.  Eg people who had enough spare income to buy a second property, and screw rents out of poorer people (this fairly petty exploitation happens at the lower end of the income/wealth divide; the richest can't be arsed with little things like this).  And of course, these outcomes aren't the product of the amount or difficulty or unpleasantness or social value of the work you do, as almost everyone knows.

Within the top 10%, the difference between the top and bottom is far, far greater than the difference between the top 10% average and the bottom 10% across the whole population.  This is the issue of the global elite, and won't touch most people's experience.  But it's not an economic issue, more one of social policy and morality - how much flagrant inequality, and flaunting of wealth, are we prepared to accept?  And why?

Let's also remember that we don't need to raise tax money from some people to redistribute to others.  If we want to fund a health service, or education, or a standard of living that means people don't have to use food banks or beg or dig around in bins in order to eat, it is entirely within our power to do that.  Not doing it is a political choice, not a failure of tax policy or tax collection.  We tax people to contain inflation by rsstricting aggregate demand, and for purposes of social justice, not because we depend on the money raised.

It's always and everywhere a question of morality, and politics, not economics.  By which I mean that if we have people in poverty in a country like ours, it's because we choose to accept it, not because it's some inevitable outcome of mystical "laws" of economics.

So, let's choose not to accept it.

[peterms]

While we are discussing the tories, let's  hear it for their latest nominee to a quango, this one for housing and design.  Ladeez and Gemmun, I give you - ROGER SCROTUM!

 

[peterms]

Where the tory custodianship of public services has brought us: my missus, travelling on the Inverness- Edinburgh train this evening.

"I'm sorry, the lights have failed in carriage one, could all passengers relocate further back in the train".

"I regret to say that we only have one operational toilet on the train this evening".

"And further to that last announcement, I apologise for the fact that the lock on the toilet is not working.  If you are travelling with a companion, perhaps you could ask them to guard the door while you are inside.  If you are travelling alone,  please ask anothwr passenger to assist".

This is the main service between what was recently the fastest growing city  in Europe, amd one of the world heritage cities.

I'm sure it's worse in the outer regions of Gabon, or Mali.

[peterms]

(Continued) followed by "This is Dalwhinnie.  I'm afraid we must ask you to detrain".

So as well as business incompetence, they are launching a flamethrower assault on the English language.

I look forward to an argument between the Scottish and UK governments about eho is to blame here.

[HanoiVillan]

12 hours ago, peterms said:

While we are discussing the tories, let's  hear it for their latest nominee to a quango, this one for housing and design.  Ladeez and Gemmun, I give you - ROGER SCROTUM!

 

I find myself being unreasonably annoyed about this stuff. It's not that he's an idiot - he clearly seems to be respected in the field of academic philosophy - but that he's primarily been a right-wing culture war type for years, and has no obvious qualifications for the position of housing regulator. The easy way to spot that this is a bullshit move is to imagine reversing it: absolutely nobody is saying that being a good regulator is good preparation for a column trolling liberals in the Spectator. Clearly they are completely different jobs with completely different skillsets. 

Though it is fun to imagine the Tories' next move. Jeremy Clarkson on the board of Ofwat?

[tonyh29]

15 hours ago, peterms said:

Where the tory custodianship of public services has brought us: my missus, travelling on the Inverness- Edinburgh train this evening.

"I'm sorry, the lights have failed in carriage one, could all passengers relocate further back in the train".

"I regret to say that we only have one operational toilet on the train this evening".

"And further to that last announcement, I apologise for the fact that the lock on the toilet is not working.  If you are travelling with a companion, perhaps you could ask them to guard the door while you are inside.  If you are travelling alone,  please ask anothwr passenger to assist".

This is the main service between what was recently the fastest growing city  in Europe, amd one of the world heritage cities.

I'm sure it's worse in the outer regions of Gabon, or Mali.

presumably your wife never travelled on a British Rail train where you were lucky if the lights worked in any of the carriages ..that's if it even turned up

 

PS  .. Isn't this in  the wrong thread as Abellio were given the franchise by the SNP  ... who have also been caught massaging figures to avoid having to act on the poor performance of aforementioned company (i.e they could remove the franchise and since 2016 , allow public ownership)

 

Edited November 9, 2018 by tonyh29

[Xann]

50 minutes ago, tonyh29 said:

...that's if it even turned up

The town bound trains on the Reading line didn't this morning.

You might want to ask your local friends that use that South Western line just how good they've been since taking over?

 

Do the the SNP have the powers to merge rail maintenance with the service providers and remove shareholders from the equation?

No they don't. They have a choice of dog shits to pick up. Guess what sort of service gets delivered?

The ball is in Failing Grayling's court. He's incompetence personified and a Tory last time I looked.

 

[tonyh29]

58 minutes ago, Xann said:

The town bound trains on the Reading line didn't this morning.

You might want to ask your local friends that use that South Western line just how good they've been since taking over?

 

Do the the SNP have the powers to merge rail maintenance with the service providers and remove shareholders from the equation?

No they don't. They have a choice of dog shits to pick up. Guess what sort of service gets delivered?

The ball is in Failing Grayling's court. He's incompetence personified and a Tory last time I looked.

 

Yes they do actually  ,  not sure about rail maintenance but that doesn't seem to be related to a light bulb and a dodgy toilet lock

 

Grayling that's been in the job for how many months  ...  v 1997 when it got privatised , Might as well just blame Thatcher and be done

 

 

[bickster]

2 hours ago, tonyh29 said:

..that's if it even turned up

 

You really should have a look at Northern Rail, the company that worked out that it's cheaper to cancel trains and pay the compensation to passengers that claim than it is to pay the fines from the rail regulator for lateness

Trains and the railways should be regarded as national infrastructure, that gets people where they need to be rather than a cash cow for a few shareholders, imo the service levels of most railway companies are shocking in comparison to BR

The rules the rail regulator has to work on are easily manipulated to suit shareholders and don't work in the interests of passengers and therefore inconvenience the individual and all the businesses whose staff rely on the trains to get to work

 

[bickster]

2 minutes ago, tonyh29 said:

Yes they do actually

 

No they don't.  EU Directive 91/440 expressly forbids it

[bickster]

4 minutes ago, tonyh29 said:

Grayling that's been in the job for how many months  ...  v 1997 when it got privatised , Might as well just blame Thatcher and be done

1

The idiot Beeching started the rot and in defence of The Witch, she thought BR was a privatisation too far. Major privatised the railways

[Xann]

2 minutes ago, tonyh29 said:

Yes they do actually

Can't touch til 2025.

Then they'll flush the private turds out the system, unless they've escaped the union by then of course.

7 minutes ago, tonyh29 said:

Grayling that's been in the job for how many months

How could we possibly blame the man that sat on his hands during the Southern fiasco?