SOME TAX CHANGES LABOUR COULD /SHOULD INTRODUCE.
*Equalise the basic income tax and capital gains tax rates (would raise some £14 billion).
*Lower the tax relief rate on pension contributions for high earners down to the standard rate (would raise some £13 billion).
*Sort out the tax and national insurance loopholes in city lawyers’ partnerships (could raise some £8 billion).
*Update council tax, so it is no longer based on property valuations that are over 30 years old. This would take account of the significant north – south disparity in house prices that has developed in those 30 years.
(Material for this Tale was provided by Professor Helen Goodman – a former Minister in the Department covering Work and Pensions).
ECHOES OF THE VICTORIAN DEMONISATION OF THE ‘LOWER ORDERS’.
”The belief that sections of the working class are morally unfit or dangerous, continue to shape social policy. It’s the belief that undergirded Tony Blair’s crusade against “problem families” and George Osborne’s condemnation of “skivers… sleeping off a life on benefits”. It is visible in the two-child benefit cap, which Ian Duncan Smith claimed was necessary to teach the poor that “children cost money”, and in the imprisonment for public protection (IPP) scheme, under which many people committing relatively minor offences were given indefinite prison sentences on the grounds that they posed a danger to society”.
Kenan Malik,
The Observer.
THE MAJOR IMPACT OF COVID ON THE ROLE OF THE STATE AND ON TAX AND SPEND.
*The costs of fighting Covid rocketed to almost 110% of GDP by 2023 – the highest level since the 1950s.
*The pandemic added some £400 billion to the national debt.
*The government is now spending more than £100 billion a year on repaying debt – twice the pre-Covid level.
*Per research by the Institute for Fiscal Studies, the mental health of the UK population has declined since the pandemic.
“NINETEEN EIGHTY-FOUR” WAS A PAST WORK OF FICTION BUT TRUMP IS ALL TOO REAL!
“Marco Rubio, Trump’s obsequious secretary of state, spoke revealingly about his vision of a 21st – century world dominated by the US, Russia and China, and divided into 19th-century geopolitical spheres of influence. It was necessary to rebuild US relations with Moscow, Rubio argued, to maintain this imperious tripartite balance of power.
Such a gobal catastrophe was foretold. In his novel Nineteen Eighty-Four George’s Orwell describes a nightmare world divvied up between three great empires or superstates, Oceana, Eurasia and Eastasia, which deliberately stoke unceasing hostilities. Their shared characteristics : totalitarianism, repression, mass surveillance, immorality, gross in humanity. Sound familiar? “
Simon Tisdall,
The Guardian.
ON THE STREETS OF TURKEY, A LESSON FOR THE WHOLE WORLD.
“Clearly, the conventional political parties, the Democrats in the US and social democrats in Europe have failed to harness the political and moral outrage of the masses, which leaders such as Erdoğan or Donald Trump induce. The masses with their useful enthusiasm, are hesitant to align themselves with worn-out political institutions.
The old-school progressive opposition parties resemble shipwrecks – they are decaying structures. They have lost all that was vital in them over the last five decades after aligning with the neoliberal hegemony, which severed its organic ties to the progressive sectors of society. They are highly bureacratised and, as a result, paralysed giants unable to keep up with the agility of the new far right.
Youth leaders have been delivering speeches at significant party meetings, continually negotiating the guidelines for collaborative action. Their presence irrevocably alters the spirit of the political movement and drives the social democratic party forward towards life. Throughout this process, the young learn to navigate the slow-moving giant while the giant adapts to become nimble and brave enough to counter the ruthless tactics of the regime.
Not only for Turkey but for also for Europe and beyond, but also soon for Europe and beyond, the central question of saving democracy from the rise of authoritarianism will be this: will the youthful energy of the masses be allowed into the wreckage to transform it into a living organism? One that is robust enough to challenge the historical tide bending towards authoritarianism”.
Ece Temelkuran
Turkish journalist and author of
How to Lose a Country:
The 7 Steps from Democracy to Dictatorship,
The Guardian.
(SOME) ROMAN EMPERORS WERE NOT SHORT OF COMMON SENSE.
“Anyone in search of a rainbow has to deal with the rain”.
Augustus.
“Sometimes the art of living is more like wrestling than dancing”
Marcus Aurelius.