TAX RISES

There is a plan to cap social care costs at £80.000 – why not a percentage instead? The cap will again hit the lower middle classes hardest. The care system is effectively privatised with for profit companies in the majority – is this not morally obscene?

Capital gains Tax is low in this country and could rise, although it will not bring in as much as income tax. A Covid tax of 80% on wealth acquired during the pandemic would seem just?

I was chatting to an entrepreneur the other day – just one, so this is not a case of ‘they all think!” – but we discussed the element of luck in successful businesses. Whilst not decrying hard work and risk taking we agreed that luck played a major element in success. The impact of unpredictable incidents like Covid or bad weather, or even minor incidents can mean break or make for a start up. I state this because I am sure the rich will be bleating that they deserve to keep their “hard earned” cash and pay less tax, forgetting about luck, and I have not mentioned fortuitous birth! I suspect that many nurses have worked longer hours with greater dedication and perseverance than many, if not most, of the directors of FTSE companies who have trousered a million plus this year.

Maybe we should stop talking about right and left wing politics, and more about right and wrong politics. The trouble with politics is that basically it is a talking shop about economics. Economics is a game where the rules can be rewritten by the most successful players at anytime. It is not a science, it has no basic fundamental rules. Supply and demand are distorted daily by taxes and benefits. Social welfare is only raised at election time when voters can be misled by a compliant media.

Someone asked me re entry if the media were still important in influencing public opinion. Not being under 50 years old I cannot really answer this. Sandford has a population I guesstimate at about 1000. The shop sells about 80 papers a day, more at weekends, dominated by the tory trash media. And most to the elderly who have time to read them. The Sun etc. is bought by the younger males who probably just read the sport bit and look for for a nice pair! So about 3/4 of the population does not read/see a newspaper. The BBC must be influential as the Tories hate it, and Channel 4 even more so – how dare they criticise the Worlds Greatest Liar!. I suspect that the majority of folk are too busy surviving, bring up kids, watching Netflix, to give much of a thought to politics. And that is why we are left with the crapiest government since Lord North and Spencer Percival.

Social media tends to reinforce engrained prejudice, People move from being activist in teens and early 20’s to culturally conservative as they get mortgages and jobs requiring long term commitments and eventually references. How people my age get to be so right wing and selfish is beyond me! We have been given everything by society, free university education with grants to boot, free health care, free dental care before evil tories took it away along with the imposition of prescription charges. Rents when I was a student could be fixed fairly. Jobs were generally freely available (debatable) and the unions had a voice in wage level. We lost all that to the hatred of Thatcherism for a caring, sharing type of society.

Now I read that billionaires have increased their wealth by billions and yet no one seems to think this is a travesty of humanity? Poor migrants risking death to cross the English Channel with the right wing baying for them to be thrown overboard to die. Even condemning the charities like the ~RNLI which has the sole purpose of saving lives. People like Piers Morgan and Nigel Farage, have no moral philosophy, just an ego which puts them front, middle and back. At least Ronaldo who has apparently made friend with Morgan is just obsessed by himself and football, rather than himself and power.

I just read that the top 1000 richest people in UK had raised their wealth by £106.5 billion. Guess where I think the taxes to pay for the Governments handouts to cronies, and some good things to, should come from!

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *