Baroness Thatcher has died.

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MagicBoy said:
The Poll Tax was a populist name that stuck. I wasn't eligable, being a teenager at the time.

The idea was solid, and I still believe it is. I don't see why someone with a more valuable house should pay more for local services. It's a flawed assumption. Why should 2 adults living in a 4 bed house rather than a 2 bed terrace be charged more? Taking rubbish collection for example - they will broadly create the same amount of rubbish and have the same capacity dustbin. Both households benefit equally from the same streetlights installed in the locality. It's a fair system in principle.

Council Tax is more a halfway house between the community charge and the old rates system.
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Here in lies the problem with what you say, if the Council Tax was used purely for paying for local services that are directly proportional to its population you'd have a point. In reality, very little of your council tax goes towards paying for things like bin collections and street lighting, most of it goes on social housing and paying for local services for the vulnerable.

The council tax ideologically is the same as income tax in that sense. Someone with a more expensive home will (almost always) be richer than someone with a less expensive one, so it's based on ability to pay.

Also, isn't the point of most taxes to act a social security measure rather than payment system? If the argument is houses with bigger populations cost the council more, so they should pay more then why not just scrap the tax altogether and charge everyone directly for the services they use and cut out the middle-man?
 
MrMoonX said:
Stan Collimore sums it up nicely http://www.twitlonger.com/show/n_1rjllua
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Ask him if he enjoyed playing in the Premiership and earning the money he did or if he'd prefer to have stayed with the old division 1 where he'd have had to have worked as a miner in the week to supplement what he earnt from football.

I'm not crediting Maggie with creating the premiership, but the change from being a local, community based (but poorly paid) activity into a product that could be marketed and made millions is quite analogous to Thatcher's changing of the country.
 
estebanrey said:
Also, isn't the point of most taxes to act a social security measure rather than payment system? If the argument is houses with bigger populations cost the council more, so they should pay more then why not just scrap the tax altogether and charge everyone directly for the services they use and cut out the middle-man?
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That's not why taxes were introduced no.
 
Gun9 said:
Margaret Hilda Thatcher was the bovril of politics. Love her or hate her, you couldn't ignore her. My meetings with her were Falklands orientated. She sent us to war, a just war. She seen us as 'her boys' and she attended Falklands veterans events regularly.

These events usually involved an informal get together when she was very frank about the events of the Falklands War and those around her. Once she sat down with a small whisky, always! she talked amongst us openly. I remember one occasion about 2002 when she was vitriloic about John Nott and Francis Pym, she called them 'gutless toffs'.

There was however another side to her. She was open about her dealings with the US when they were sitting on the fence between the UK and the Argentines and said that it was her words when Nicholas Henderson (UK Ambassador to the US) said on American TV; We waited for you from 1915 to 1917. we waited for you from 1939 to 1944. How long will we wait for you this time? A remark that was designed to hit home.

As for the reasons for the war itself; forget oil, forget minerals, it was simply about right and wrong. British people had been invaded by a facist dictatorship. and in her word... "who else could they turn to"? We went and we righted a wrong and in the process left 255 good lads in the mud. I know that Maggie sat and wrote to each and every family personally. These letters were not typed, they were hand writted and I have personally, at close quarters, seen Maggie shed tears over the guys we left behind.

She wasn't perfect and she made mistakes. Theres no point talking about the miners strike or any of the other divisive issues because that discussion has been done to death. She made mistakes over the poll tax, her dealings with the EU, mind you she has been proved right over the Euro. Margaret Hilda Thatcher was my old boss, my hero, my mentor and I am hugely proud to have known her a little. I sit here holding a small whisky in her honour with a tear in my eye. She was a lion in defence of this country. She wasn't really a right wing capitalist, she was an old fashioned moralist. Right and wrong, good or bad.

RIP Baroness, the class of 82 will never forget you. Rest easy, duty done.
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Masterful certainly. Nice anecdote. She sounds almost like a real person, with feelings and stuff, who could even say things. Really genuine when she called you 'her boys', and drank whisky. 'Righted a wrong' - seeds of morality sown in the soils of the ruling castle as usual, planted and left to grow in the fruitful conditions of the programmable clone army minds. I salute you sir, and all you have done for our glorious country.
 
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estebanrey said:
The council tax ideologically is the same as income tax in that sense. Someone with a more expensive home will (almost always) be richer than someone with a less expensive one, so it's based on ability to pay.
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The problem occurs that the tax is a far larger percentage of average income at the lower demographics than the higher.

There is no guaranteed link between home value and income either, the council tax is just as horrid as the poll tax just given another name. A local income tax is a more targetted way of genuinely achieving ability to pay.
 
Biohazard said:
The problem occurs that the tax is a far larger percentage of average income at the lower demographics than the higher.

There is no guaranteed link between home value and income either, the council tax is just as horrid as the poll tax just given another name. A local income tax is a more targetted way of genuinely achieving ability to pay.
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I'm not defending the Council Tax as a perfect tax here, merely arguing that the notion that the poll tax was fair because more people use the council services more is a flawed understanding of how the income generated from it is spent.

Only a fraction of CT is spent on individual costs (bin collections, pot hole repairing, street lighting etc), most of it is spent of local services (libraries, youth clubs, services for the elderly and disabled etc).

I'd actually scrap local taxes altogether and have councils subsidized directly from government, and that is also what Margret Thatcher wanted to do but was told she had to have a local tax because people need to feel they have a direct financial link/interest in their local council.
 
atpbx said:
That's not why taxes were introduced no.
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Well, taxes were invented so that the most powerful person in the country could sponge of people with less wealth. And pay for wars and the like. It was hundreds of years before it became more of a wealth distribution thing. And what taxes were invented for, and what they might be used for now, are not necessarily related.
 
I think that the aftermath of Thatcher's death poses significant problems concerning a fair democratic system, irrespective of ones political outlook.
I have watched a variety of TV News programmes and read newspapers and the internet and am deeply concerned at the uncritical reporting of her years as prime minister. We have tory MPs starting every interview with the phrase "Margret Thatcher was a great Prime Minister"
Tens of millions of people would disagree but the statement is never challenged and the viewer is left to think that the MP is uttering a universal truth, so self evident that no justificatiion is required.

The latest insult to democracy is the non state funeral.
When one thinks of famous state funerals Winston Churchill, Princess Diana and the Queen Mother. Each of these was celebrated for admirable personal qualities:-
Winston Churchill - Wartime leader and strategist - not as a tory MP, one did not have to be a tory to mourn him
Princess Diana - Beautiful, AIDS and Landmines causes, not as a Princess - one did not have to be a royalist to mourn her
Queen Mother - Refused to move from London during the Blitz and visited bomb sites, everybody's grandmother - not as royalty.
The latest insult to democracy is the non state funeral.
It is impossible to split Thatcher from Thatcherism and thus the grand funeral will be seen as a celebration of Thacherism, this time validated by royalty and leaders of all political parties.
It is interesting to note that tory MPs got rid of Thatcher that they have spent the whole time out of power trying to distance themselves form the Thatcher/Major years. This detoxification, to gat rid of the "nasty party" image culminated in the selection of Cameraon, a Blair clone, as leader. Yet today they are all rushing to wrap themselves in her shroud.
I am sure that all of this will have a detramental effect on the forthcoming local elections and yet is is to be paid (partly?) by the government.
For the next two weeks it will be non-stop 24/7 party polictical brainwashing.
The hagiography continues with the obituaries which totally ignore the pain and suffering caused to millions of her population.
 
BBC Scotland are trying their damn hardest to soften the Thatcher legacy on Scotland while simultaneously blaming the SNP for her Government.

Newsnight Scotland last night claimed that her Sermon on the Mound was well recieved. What really happened was it revulsed not only those who would normally oppose her, the poor, but it unified Scots across the class divides. A unification that has outlasted her.

Hilarious if it weren't so bloody obvious. It just makes the news here come across as schizophenic trying to fascilitate two parties who are cynically colluding while making diametrically opposite points, both of which oddly enough end up re-writing Scottish history or blaming the SNP for the electorial result in England which ushered in Thatcher after Callaghan's government fell after the botched devolution referendum.

They've lost the plot. BBC Scotland that is. 'Other' people are starting to notice too.
 
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