f1_fan

iTrader: (9)

Listened to a synopisis of Milliband's mutterings yesterday and here he is once again promising to cut taxes, give out more free childcare etc. etc.

Now in a growing affluent economy I'd be right behind him, but he seems to not realise we are in debt ... a **** load of debt.... when are we going to get a politician who admits (or in Milliband's and Ball's case realises) things have got to get a whole lot more serious at some point very very soon (if it's not too late already).

^Qwerty^

All I've heard is they'll pay for everything by taxing the banks. Won't the banks just up sticks and move to somewhere more attractive, leaving a scene from 28days later around the City and Docklands?

And they are all looking for a get out on HS2, nobody wants to make a decision on a third runway for London/Heathrow, Nuclear power stations or Trident replacement......

Neoscooby

Lets be fair, I don't think that any of them really get it, they're all fiddling while Rome burns.
Of the 650 odd MPs, how many do you really think are there to serve their constituencies?

f1_fan

iTrader: (9)

The only thing I agree with is getting rid of HS2, not that it's necessarily a bad idea, but we all know it will go way way over budget as these things do in the UK and cost the taxpayer even more than the staggering amount already earmarked for it!

f1_fan

iTrader: (9)

Less than .... 1?

alcazar

iTrader: (2)

But how do we ALLOW things to go over budget?

Surely, if you bid to do a job for £x million, get the contract, start work, then come back and say, "It won't get finished unless you give me another £2x million", you got the contract under false pretenses.
The first few CEO's to go to prison might liven up the rest of them.

It's like being given a job paid £30,000, starting it, having excluded others who ALSO wanted the job, then refusing to do it unless the employer gives you £90,000...it's fraud.

f1_fan

iTrader: (9)

Yep couldn't agreee more. I don't get it either! In my opinion a lot of it is corruption on a very high level and it goes completely unchecked! I think it was the Scootish parliament building that came in 11 times over budget and no one has ever explained really where the money went!

^Qwerty^

The MOD could do training courses in that one

Doobie

The Banks will never leave London, London is the capital of finance and it is too institutionalised and so many webs have been woven that it will just not happen.

ReallyReallyGoodMeat

I doubt it's quite like that.

Like most big projects it is often scoped out badly/vaguely at the beginning, so when the client (i.e. the government) realise they forgot to mention in the contract to build that bridge/level that land/change the quality of that concrete, we go back to the contractor, and they say "sure, that'll be £1bn extra"

alcazar

iTrader: (2)

Ah, well if the client wants changes, fair enough, but if the contractor just fails to achieve? Jail him.

Then we have the "boiling frogs" syndrome, where estimates just keep being shoved ever higher, in small increments, with no-one saying whoa, and before you know where you aren't, the job price has doubled.
Railtrack are pretty good at THAT one.

Leslie

He is like the rest of the plonkers.

Sooner or later they all seem to find themselves in the situation where it is all falling through the floor and they cannot think of the next best thing to say!

Les

trails

iTrader: (41)

This^^^ oh and the fact that all the gate\management reviews these projects have to go through in the public sector mean everything is delayed and therefore costs more.

Midlife......

iTrader: (2)

Just read that he is going to freeze energy prices for 20 months................not sure how he can do that to private companies.

Also promises to build 200,000 homes a year to 2020, again not sure how he can promise that.

Good points to win votes though

Shaun

paulr

Throw in a free iphone 5s and he's got my vote.......go Ed !!!

f1_fan

iTrader: (9)

And apparently he is going to give everyone a million quid.... may as well talk sh1te if he is

zip106

Taxing 'rich' high earners into oblivion will also bring in £m's too.

alcazar

iTrader: (2)

Yeah, we saw the French "socialist" guy get in with promises like that.
He's now broken all of them, and is, if anything, MORE hated than Sarko was.

Turbohot

Come on, Milliband has to make up something to attract votes. He's not going to just sit there and mope, is he.

If you were a politician, you'd give out a lot of porkie pies as well. That's the way it works, and that's it.

Martin2005

Given my low expectations, I thought his speech today was really rather good.

That said, there's no way he's PM material

Martin2005

Is it possible to tax someone into oblivion?

Dingdongler

I know politics shouldn't be about personality but he just comes across as the awkward weirdo boy at school who was bad at sport, was into Dr Who and grew pubes after everybody else.

I've just watched the last 30 minutes or so of his speech and it was awful, and I'm not just saying that because my politics are different to his.

He will go down in the history of politics as a massive failure figure

RA Dunk

Lol, brilliant description!

zip106

Well, if you want to be a nasally pedant, then probably not.


But you know what I mean.

But taxing someone at 50% + because they've worked harder than others smacks of jealousy.
Not all 50%ers are super rich business men and bankers you know.

Midlife......

iTrader: (2)

Like the descripition of Mr Ed by Mr Dongler LOL

I have this image of the captains picking their football teams at school (like they did) and he's last because no-one wants him

Shaun

Matteeboy

Plenty of low rate tax payers work their backsides off. The whole "better off people work harder" line is just right wing tosh.

You can set a sliding scale; just up the threshold.

paulr

There was actually a study done in the 80's that concluded if you lower taxes for the top earners, they actually work less. The whole thing about motivating the rich by lowering taxes is tosh. Having said that, if I earns 100k, I'd be pretty miffed to pay nearly half in tax.

On Ed's idea of a energy price freeze, it's amazing how quickly the energy companies get their two penneth in. That Angela Knight, what a bitch saying it could lead to energy shortages. There is NO chance of the lights going out. It's propaganda. Apparently the energy companies are closing power stations due to overcapacity.

zip106

I agree - I'm not a high tax payer and work my **** off, and there aren't enough days in the week in my work to enable me to be a high tax payer!

But plenty I know who are higher earners are simple folk like you and me, but really have and do 'work even harder'

They're not right wing either, far from it!

Dingdongler

Really? Could you kindly provide a link to that study?

Thanks

Gordo

There are a lot more studies that prove that the lower taxes are, the more successful an economy is in the long run. The fallacy of the socialist model is that politicians think that government is better at spending our money than we are - clearly not true as the profligacy of the Blair /Brown era has proven in spades.

People like to talk about "fairness" in respect of the top rate of tax and stupid regressionary taxes like the mansion tax, but they don't understand the net negatve impact it has on the overall tax take. An extra 5% tax has a disproportionate impact on entrpreneurialism as projects become unattractive vs their risk.

Worth wheeling this salutory tale out again

http://people.richland.edu/bhemenwa/...stooltaxes.pdf

Gordo