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

[Brumstopdogs]

 

 

[Xann]

Quote

When on 12 May the leader of the House Jacob Rees-Mogg pushed for an end to the virtual parliament and an early return of MPs to Westminster, he said the House of Commons needed to get on with “challenging the government and holding them to account”.

It’s deeply ironic that one of the key bills now going through parliament specifically excludes MPs from any meaningful scrutiny.  

The Trade Bill, which has its second reading on 20 May, could have signalled a new start in the UK’s approach to trade negotiations, giving MPs the chance to debate and vote on negotiating objectives, with regular updates during negotiations and a vote on any final deal. In other words, the sort of democratic oversight that members of the European Parliament have long taken for granted.

But instead our post-Brexit trade talks are taking place behind closed doors and in secrecy. The key documents from a US trade deal won’t even be published until five years after the deal has been signed.

This would be bad enough during normal times, but these are not normal times. Despite us being in the middle of a global health crisis, this government is playing a dangerous game of chicken with the EU, recklessly taking us towards the cliff-edge of a no-deal Brexit at the end of this year, while at the same time desperately pursuing a US trade deal on almost any terms. 

New Statesman

Magic.

[snowychap]

 

[HanoiVillan]

51 minutes ago, Xann said:

New Statesman

Magic.

Seems like we're basically left hoping that Democrats in Congress might not want to sign it.

[bannedfromHandV]

It really is scant consolation that at some point in time, our current regime of ruling/senior MP’s will be held up as prime examples of what not to be.

Its just a shame they had to be given the platform on which to shoot themselves in the first place.

[StefanAVFC]

 

[Xann]

12 minutes ago, HanoiVillan said:

Seems like we're basically left hoping that Democrats in Congress might not want to sign it.

Sort of hoping the UK's  f***wits and fantasists realise they've been lead down the garden path by fascists and finance. 

Then the public's response is to give the powers that be something to think about.

Yeah, I know. Who's in Dreamland now  

[StefanAVFC]

Also, 62% of Britons don't understand how tax works.

[bickster]

27 minutes ago, StefanAVFC said:

Also, 62% of Britons don't understand how tax works

Or 62% of Britons are racist

[HanoiVillan]

I kind of hate the implication of those surveys that the British public consider (some) NHS workers to be 'good immigrants' and everybody else to be 'bad immigrants'.

[bickster]

 

[chrisp65]

So, less than half of tory voters think NHS staff that are immigrants shouldn’t have to pay extra ... to use the NHS.

 

Don’t forget to clap and bang your pans tonight.

 

Creeps.

[bannedfromHandV]

48 minutes ago, bickster said:

 

Strong and stable leadership.

Isn't it great to have a PM in place with such conviction in his own beliefs.

[Davkaus]

48 minutes ago, bickster said:

 

I'm on the fence about the policy in general, but this is the current government to a tee. They push the boundaries of distaste, then the PM "steps in" and plays the hero as if he had no say in the policy originally. 

[chrisp65]

To be fair to Johnson, he was probably on leave the day they decided the original policy.

 

[meregreen]

When I was a kid, a long time ago now, I used to think I lived in the greatest country in the world, I really did. Over the last 50 years I’ve watched as that belief has died. Too many complete b********ds now. There are still good people here. But me me me has become the mantra for so many. I look at my Grandkids, and feel both sorrow and anger that this is the country we have bequeathed them.

Edited May 21, 2020 by meregreen

[Davkaus]

Ha, queefed. 

[bannedfromHandV]

Strong and stable leadership.

[Xann]

 

Quote

 

Under cover of capital gains, the hyper-rich have been getting richer than we thought

Ever since 2010, the government has claimed we have been “all in this together” during the lost decade of austerity. Rich and poor alike are taking a hit; that was what they told us.

When anyone complains of “rising inequality” – because that’s how it feels for so many people – the Tories and their commentariat brandish official statistics showing it’s not so. The dial on the Gini coefficient hasn’t shifted for years, they claim. The Gini coefficient is measured between 0 and 100 – with 0 indicating that income is shared equally among all people and rising to 100 in extreme income inequality. The story was that the rich also took a beating in this long period of austerity imposed by successive Tory governments – and they didn’t get richer.

Now we have proof that this tale isn’t true. Who gains?, a report by the Resolution Foundation released on Thursday, with researchers from the LSE and Warwick University, has found missing billions in earnings of the hyper-rich, all disguised as capital gains – profits from selling an asset for more than it was worth when it was acquired. The share of earnings of the top 1% were far greater and grew far faster than previously disclosed.

Capital gains are taxed at just 20%, unlike the 45% income tax rate for top earners. With a deft sleight of hand, wealthy individuals and business managers can take large amounts of their earnings in the form of shares or other assets to avoid it being taxed as income. Andy Summers of the London School of Economics says the line between the two taxes is “very blurred”.

The missing sum of money is enormous – the scale of the switch into capital gains vast. Taxable capital gains in the UK more than doubled between 2012-13 and 2017-18, jumping to £55bn. The top 1% are far richer than we thought, while the earnings of the top 0.1% have grown 50% more from 1996 to 2018 than previously measured. “A lot of capital gains are, in fact, just repackaged income going to the already-rich,” says Summers.

Who is gaining? Just 9,000 people, who made £1m or more in such a manner, accounting for the majority of the UK’s taxable capital gains. Adam Corlett, senior economist at the Resolution Foundation says these figures show “the top 1% account for £1 of every £6 of taxable income received.” The new figures show the top 1% take a massive 16.8% share of national income. He adds, “That scale of inequality should be addressed in post-pandemic Britain.”

But will it be? When polled, people express indignation at the soaraway earnings and wealth of the hyper-rich, but that doesn’t appear to swing elections in this perennially Conservative-voting nation.

Inequality, at its lowest in the late 1970s, shot through the roof in Thatcher’s 1980s, aided by the big bang in the City when deregulation blew the lid off top salaries, and the crushing of union power that strove to keep wages from falling behind in a high-inflation era.

Since the mid 1980s, inequality has plateaued, staying at a shocking high despite Labour raising lowest incomes, lifting a million children and a million pensioners out of poverty. But at least, people were told, inequality wasn’t actually getting any worse. Will it make a difference once people know that what they felt instinctively turns out to be true? Society is being stretched further and further apart across a growing social chasm.

The grotesque facts of Britain’s exceptionally high income inequality should have been enough without this new revelation. The High Pay Centre has clever ways to illuminate the way we live now: the average FTSE 100 CEO earns more in three working days than the average employee in a year. The 1,000 people featured in the 2019 Sunday Times Rich List together earned £771bn: that’s six times the cost of the NHS. There were 151 UK billionaires. To imagine owning a billion, here’s the centre’s best eye-popping fact: if you had earned £1,000 a day since Jesus died and kept it under the mattress, you still wouldn’t have accumulated £1bn.

One bogus justification for outlandish riches is that the wealthy give generously to good causes. Not true. The all-party parliamentary group on philanthropy reports the super-rich, those with over £10m, only give a median of £240 a year.

 

Grauniad

Golly.

[Davkaus]

20 hours ago, chrisp65 said:

So, less than half of tory voters think NHS staff that are immigrants shouldn’t have to pay extra ... to use the NHS.

 

 

The thing that's annoyed me most is how easily people are letting the tories off the hook for the rest of it.

We're billing foreign nationals who live in the UK, have a job, and pay their taxes, so that they can use a service that their taxes pay for. Foreign workers, not in a negative contribution due to their childhood education. Foreign workers who quite possibly will pay NI for years but never claim their pension. Foreign workers who we can just kick out if they're unemployed and can't pay their way.

But it's ok, because Boris is looking after the ones in the NHS. Bollocks to that. NHS workers shouldn't get a discount, anymore than foreign workers in the fire brigade get a discount on their non-British firefighting surcharge. NHS workers should pay the same as everyone else. Through their bloody taxation. The problem isn't that NHS workers weren't excluded, it's that the charge is bollocks and should be scrapped entirely, but people have been far too happy to win a minor battle and lose the war as the tories reframed it to looking after healthcare workers.

Edited May 22, 2020 by Davkaus