What did maggie do?
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Tinders said:Selling off the councill houses destroyed communities in this country, the poorer areas which once had the salt of the earth now have charvers which are there because housing associations bough entire council estates up and filled them with scum.
Maggie contributed massivily to todays selfish society
And who would have housed these charvers if the housing association hadn't ?
Councils.
Think about it.
VIRII said:
No, the private sector. Nobody has a right to housing - if the council cannot provide any (and in my town, to get housing association housing you need to apply through the council, they will not let you apply directly) then you need to find your own in the private sector, and then claim Housing benefit. The council will not do this for you.
Tinders said:Maggie contributed massivily to todays selfish society
The unions selfish greed destroyed the industries that destroyed the communities.
Union demands could not be met ad infinitum could they ?
Loss making industries can not be supported for ever can they ?
The unions and the greed of their members had plunged the country into a deep mess before Maggie came along.
What do you think would have happened if she had not done what she did ?
Do you think those jobs would have survived ? Do you think council houses are a god given right to you ? Sounds like greed to me, give me a house, give me a job and I'll go on strike if I don't like the low pay for it.
Oh yes, I was there, I do remember it.
dirtydog said:
And council tax has resulted in people on low incomes whose house value has risen being faced with council tax bills they can not afford.
Talk about one sided views.
And let us not forget the ream of other taxes the millionaire pays on top of Poll Tax. Why should I pay more for the same services as you ? Why should I subsudise your existence via tax ? Why do I owe you anything at all ?
VIRII said:
Council tax has not undergone a revaluation, so the fact that house values have risen is totally moot isn't it. The fact is that both the poll tax and council tax are inherently flawed and unfair, in my opinion. As I've said before, abolish local taxation entirely and put it all on income tax.
VIRII said:
How much council tax do you think people on the dole pay now? Answer: nothing at all. Pensioners on the other hand, have to pay it in full (although those on low incomes can claim council tax benefit. Apparently 40% who could do, do not do so though)
Only when the council tax was introduced (by Major) wasn't it? They haven't been revalued since the house price boom, as your post seemed to imply.
Hence the proviso I put in the bottom of the bit you quoted.dirtydog said:
I agree there were issues and that certainly it needed fine tuning to address the problems, and there absolutely have to be provisions for the poor (not that pensioners are necessarily poor). But surely the very first decision that has to be made about any tax is whether it is going to be income-based? If so, there are huge problems with assessing and verifying income, and those taxes need a substantian back office system to deal with it. Having got that back office system in the form of the Inland Revenue, it would be daft to reinvent the wheel and do it again. So if you're going to charge the millionaire on the basis of his income, does it not make sense to do it via Income Tax?
I see no problem in pronciple with doing that, and then distributing income from central to local government. But, of course, if you tax high income people too highly, you are taxing exactly the group that is, on average, best equipped to up sticks and emigrate, thereby leaving you with a smaller tax base and, if you aren't careful, a smaller tax revenue. The 'SuperTax' Brain Drain proved that much.
So while a progressive "tax according to income" policy makes sense in pronciple, there are certainly problems with implementation. And, while taxing the pensioner couple more than the millionaire down the road obviously seems inequitable, so does :-
- taxing the pensioner couple on a fixed income the same as the family next door with four, six, even six incomes.
- basing a services tax purely on property value.
After all, if the millionaire moved to a 1 bed bedsit, by that criteria he'll pay more than the typical family in a three bed semi, next door. Similarly, not everybody living in an expensive property has a high income. There are people that inherited the family home, have lived in it all their lives and now, on a fixed income and on their own, have a tax based purely on that property value. Should they be forced to move out of their family home by a tax. After all, that lone person is certainly goingto be using less council or county provided resources than the family of six next door.
The Poll Tax was not perfect, dirtydog. I certainly don't pretend that it was. What tax system is? But, especially compared to what we got in it's place and how it has been used by New Labour, it was in many ways fairer.
Most people care, essentially, about one thing when it comes to tax. How much does it cost me. The rest is icing on the cake. I wonder how many of those people out protesting about the Poll Tax would have been out protesting if they could see how the Council Tax would be used, and what it would cost them?
There's an old adage .... "Be careful for you wish for, because you just might get it". I can't help but feel that the Poll Tax protests were somewhat Faustian.
dirtydog said:
And yet this Govt has managed to redirect funds (ie Govt spending in local areas) to Labour heartlands resulting in ..... cheap labour council taxes as they are massively subsidised and expensive non labour ones as they have zero Govt help.
VIRII said:
The old system of rates, and then the poll tax, and then the council tax under the Tories, all varied widely across different areas of the UK also though? The fact that this still happens is not in itself proof of Labour wrongdoing.
Mulder said:It really frustrates me when people do this. Basically saying;
"im older than you, therefore i'm right"
To me, it just means the argument is over because they cannot think of any valid points or counter arguments
No I didn't say I was older than him.. in fact I believe he's old enough to be my father, if not grandfather
Anyone can have an opinion about anything; however, those who did not live in the UK or who were not born or were young children during Thatcher's reign, cannot expect to have their opinions taken as seriously as the rest of us. I would have thought that was self-evident
Superficially, that seems like a good idea. But there's probems there, too.dirtydog said:
Do you know what will happen if you do that?
I'll tell you what I'd do. I''d simply adjust my investments to produce an adequate income, but otherwise to concentrate on capital growth, not income generation. And I'll therefore pay less tax.
I agree that ability to pay needs to be a factor in determining the structure of a tax system, and an important one, but it isn't the only issue. Firstly, as I said above, if you tax the wealthy at too high a rate, not only do you risk them leaving and the tax take actually going down not up, but you act as a positive disincentive to invest. Any invetment involves an element of risk. If you tax income too highly, why take the risk? Why start that new company? Why employ people?
There has to be balance.
And, of course, it is socially correct, provided you protect those with a genuine inability to pay, that those that use services provided by government (be it central or local) contribute towards their cost. You can't load it all on the wealthy or you encourage scrounging. That's what the Poll Tax sought to do.
Soldato
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VIRII said:
what evaluation bracket are you in? where i live ranges from 824 to over 2500
found these figures on a website
Durham on the left, National Average on the right
Band A £857.33 £809.37
Band B £1,000.22 £944.26
Band C £1,143.11 £1,079.16
Band D £1,286.00 £1,214.05
Band E £1,571.78 £1,483.84
Band F £1,857.56 £1,753.63
Band G £2,143.33 £2,023.42
Band H £2,572.00 £2,428.10
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