CornwallFox

The US is as divided but then it's the US who we're being pushed to follow down the path towards division.

I'm glad you took the time to respond, what I sometimes miss from posters like Tommy - and maybe that's my fault and it is there but I'm not seeing it - is a critique that we can engage with. By which I mean more than something outright dismissive without really looking like any thought beyond 'labour bad' has gone into it. You make some fair points. Unemployment and inactivity seem to have risen and the NI rise is likely to have hada negative effect on business as Tommy alluded to. Labour really do need to do something to get the economy moving. I'd much rather see them borrow more in the short term and use it to try to instigate growth, than I would tax ordinary people more. I'm not so sure about Rishi and Hunt doing a great job. Growth was incredibly weak for years, inflation had come down but it was under the Tories that they lost control. They also did intentionally fail to include a fair number of guaranteed spends on their final budget, producing misleading figures and the infamous black hole (for instance, when inflation was much higher the year before they only gave small pay rises to the public sector pointing at their inability to override the independent panels. Last year they knew what the independent panels had recommended before leaving office, which they would have to pay, but they intentionally set no money aside to try to salt the earth in terms of tax rises being needed to fund them and to try and blame labour for "inflation busting pay rises", even though they'd all been through the process under the Tory watch who then simply sat on them until the election). No government acting like that, just to make life hard for the next lot at the expense of the country, deserves to be treated as if they were economically competent.

If you graduate now, you come out with something like £50k in debt to start with an the interest is something like RPI+3% which is currently 6.2%. it's ridiculous. It's effectively a lifetime 9% tax over £25k ish. Remember how much shouting there was when Corbyn suggested a 5% tax over £80k? But yet we accept a 9% tax over £25k ish. So when you earn that you have income tax, ni, then pension, and then 9% student loan. It's crazy. And we wonder why young people aren't having kids or going out.

Indeed. But I don't understand what it's got to do with the next budget. You think that any tax rise somehow changes the last budget? It's just bizarre. And I notice how yet again you refuse to engage with the rest of what I wrote. It's pointless trying to have a sensible discussion with you as you only deal in pointed comments to support your own agenda and stupid laughing emoji. Why are you so scared of looking at positives in the labour record?

I'll read the whole thing properly later but just in tuition fees, they should be done away with. You can set limits on courses and numbers if you want to do something on those lines. Tuition fees are a net negative to the economy as people paying tuition fees aren't spending that money in the economy. Current tuition fee debt should be bright back to be held by the government, having been sold on with huge interest rates attached so they can't be repaid. The cost of bringing out back should be borne by the government. There should be zero interest for existing debt. If £20k was borrowed, then £20k should be repaid. With inflation that means it'll get easier and easier to repay over time for those with existing debts. That would mean those people can get on with spending that money in the real economy, boosting local businesses.

Why do you keep banging on about the once in a generation thing? The coming budget is no different to any other budget. They'll be tax rises in some areas, tax cuts in some others, closing of loopholes over there, a few freebies and handouts over here. They were left an absolute mess of a country. It's clearly more than a parliament worth of work to fix it for anybody. On the economy there may be own goals in there so far, I'm not particularly for arguing over that, but we can all see across the western world there are fundamental problems in most economies. You can point at the effect of the NI risev as a negative, I could point at relative predicted growth as a positive. There's no black and white in this, it's shades of gray, and I think I've been pretty fair in yes trying to point out where they've been unfairly targeted, but accepting mistakes have come and may again in the coming budget if they do look to raise income tax (I did read somewhere the idea of 2p on income tax and 2p off NI but I've no idea what the net effect would be or if it's just pre budget nonsense). I do wish you could come to the conversation equally prepared to accept they might have done some good things as well as the same few negatives you like to point at constantly.

It would be a very poor move given the manifesto I'd agree. Probably political suicide which is why I hold out some hope maybe they won't but we'll see soon enough. I'm not sure rishi is in much of a position to comment given he had already taken tax to record levels as chancellor. As well as intentionally salting the earth by not setting aside funds for a number of known costs within their last budget, leaving behind the black hole that was very much real when labour took office.

No that's fair enough, as I said, I'm prepared to accept that's the direct line of sight. I'm just saying that the results of government policy aren't usually that linear.

I'm not dismissing that at all and I think it's absolutely fair to raise that. What I think is that realistically there'll be more than one driver for those changes and it's absolutely part of the equation, where the conversation lies is how much is due to that, what other factors were there etc. I'm more than willing to accept it's all due to that if there's an honest debate about it and that turns out to be the case. I just don't like looking at one change in isolation and saying it's solely down to that without the broader view because, let's face it, life isn't that black and white.

Absolutely fair, I'm not going to argue against demonstrable facts.

I'm a very big believer that it's the right setting out to lie to get power at all costs. Right now there's a big belief in the country that Labour lied in their manifesto. Full fact keep a rally of manifesto promises Vs delivery. It can be found at https://fullfact.org/government-tracker/ Currently it shows they've made pretty good progress in a year at keeping to their commitments (shown below). By comparison, in a full parliament the Tories only ever completed around 50% of their manifesto and failed almost all of the big items. They also promised no NI rise which they backtracked on, notably - we'll see soon whether Labour can stick to their very narrow band of promises on not increasing income tax, ni or vat for workers.

Realistically what happened last year was it was a broadly good budget, I'm prepared to accept there's debate to be had over the NI rise for employers, but then right wing rags took 2 or 3 policies in isolation to complain about, completely ignoring all the others. Anybody can pick out 2 or 3 things to complain about out of about 50 contained within the budget.

Agree pretty much with the bold bit. I didn't like Wenger's idea when I saw the diagram somebody else alluded to. Gives advantage to the attacker, will lead to defending deeper, just think it's balanced as it is, I'd just like to see video referring of offsides disused. Leave it to the linesman, make the rule intentionally slightly ambiguous (needs to be clearly offside withb the general rule as now) so that tiny measurements are irrelevant and accept a few mistakes.

When I started watching in the 80s (and I know you're older than me as we have actually met a few years ago, so I defer if the rules went in one direction then back in the other) you were offside if you were in an offside position even if the ball went nowhere near you. I recall arsenal's outside trap under George Graham very effectively creating offsides where players could be on the other side if the pitch to the ball. It was only when the idea of active/non-active players came in, not sure when that was, feels like a fair bit later, that it made a difference if you were near the ball.

The inheritance tax issue was done here a week ago and a poster with more knowledge on the issue than any other I've seen on here explained exactly why it's a non issue. 75% of farms sold last year were sold to investors rather than farmers. People looking to stick their money somewhere good for tax, with no intention of farming anything. The vast majority of farms aren't valued at the thresholds (simplistic numbers of £1m covers machinery and equipment, £3m for land). The average farm has a total value of something like £2.6m. there are then financial instruments that can be used to ensure real farmers won't pay inheritance tax even above those levels. In terms of the land value though, the only reason farmland is valued as highly as it is, is that non farmer investors are buying it to avoid inheritance tax. Farming itself doesn't provide great returns due to low purchase pricing by supermarkets. So the land value for farming isn't really very high, or shouldn't be, as it doesn't return a profit. So by cutting out the investors, land values should fall, taking even more farms out of the tax. The movement against this is led by investors posing as farmers, kicking up trouble in the farming community, which isn't one that is full of accountants and tax experts. They've been told it's bad for them when in reality it's bad for investors trying to avoid tax.

At this point the papers are just out to cause trouble. We'll all have to watch the budget to find out what's in it.

Fairly obviously nonsense I would say.

One of the more right wing posters linked to the treasury saying working people were people earning up to something like £48k, so just under higher tax rate. Presumably getting at the fact that might allow the government to raise the higher rate and claim they haven't touched working people. Tbh there's so much nonsense being put out about the coming budget it's very hard to predict. I'm expecting some surprises on the positive side as well as potential tax rises as they will be keeping it all very heavily under wraps. Rags like the telegraph really need calling out for attempting to scare everybody about what's coming leading to people cashing in pensions early, making investment decisions they otherwise wouldn't etc, all based on nonsense.

Any other recommendations from there if I'm going to place an order?

Well the idea she's done nothing but bad is clearly nonsense isn't it? A little bit of balance wouldn't go amiss. Notice how I'm prepared to accept there's an argument to be had regarding the NI increase on employers. Those of you that like to use laughing emoji and flippant comments very rarely seem to invoke any sense of complexity, nuance or balance. You carry on.

Where did you find this tipple?

Have absolutely no idea what's happened in the last thirty years. Back then blokes listened to guitar music and left the boybands to the girls. Now it's all one horrific mass of crap music and here we've got a forum full of blokes arguing about the best boy band. It's sending me a bit Lee Anderson.

You're easily blinded by your chosen media aren't you? You hate her because she had posters of Gordon Brown? Her first budget was pretty good. There's room for argument about the effect of NI changes, that I'll grant you, but it's hard to ascribe a single cause to continuing economic stagnation. The farmer issue was a non issue blown up by wealthy landowners that aren't farmers. She laid the ground to pump £100bn into capital projects which was much needed and should provide an economic boost in time.

Much as they do with any socialist government around the world, I suspect he'll feel the full force of the American machine in an attempt to destroy him and his kind of politics.

I thought he put a decent shift in TBF