On the most recent polls it will not only be a hung parliament but, as John says above the only viable 2-coalition government would be Con-Lab.
All others coalitions would either be:
A minority government (i.e. less seats than all the remaining parties and so vunerable to a no-confidence vote and extremely vunerable to a backbench rebellion by just a handful of MP's)
It is just concievable that the SNP and either Labour or the Conservatives could form a coalition with a majority in the low single figures (and with two of the latest polls this is suggesting a majority of , wait for it, one!), however such a deal would probably be politucal suicide for Labour or the Conservatives.
Who said "The art of taxation consists in so plucking the goose as to obtain the largest amount of feathers with the least possible amount of hissing."
Despite the failures of HMRC I cannot yet detect a significant increase in hissing :(
Why are we giving foreign aid to countries with their own space programmes?
Because the country is still very poor and this is also not a lot of money - if you want to spend this on benefits instead it will lead to, for example a 4p a week rise in the state pension (£70 millon a year to India compared to £183.4 billion a year in social security benefits)
Why are we paying the EU so it can bail out incompetent goat herders in Greece?
We're not - our government is loaning them funds at 5%, which considering it's paying interest at 2% to 3% to borrow this money is actually a pretty good deal (as long as we get repaid of course)
Why are we paying child benefits and tax credits to anyone earning more than the average wage?
Because child benefit is a universal benefit (it changed from being a tax deduction in the 1970's)
Which average anyway, the median?, the mean? and for what area, London?, Devon?.
Also what about people who earn more than the average wage but also have higher costs, such as those with disabled children? or those with 4 children instead of 2 (remember those extra children will be taxed when they grow up to pay for your state pension)
Also the tax credits system encourages people who would otherwise not work at all to get at least a low paid job - which still cuts the amount the government has to spend.
Why are we paying a single penny in benefits to anyone who has never contributed to the system, such as child benefit to polish workers who have been here 5 minutes?
Because if we chose not to then, according to those rules, disabled people who cannot work would starve.
Why do we allow finite NHS resources to be used by those who have never contributed? It should be hand over your credit card before we treat you.
Again because we base it on the need of the recipient not their contributory status.
Under your system would we refuse to treat children because they have not contributed? (what about orphans who have no-one to pay for them, for example)
Why do we have so many MP’s, and exactly how do they justify a pay rise that is more than pensioners are expected to live on?
We have so many in order to not have too many voters being represented by too few MPs - currently they 'represent' around 750,000 adults each.
They don't justify it - an independent commission recommended the level of pay by comparing it with other people doing similar jobs (doctors, solicitors etc)
Because the level of MP's pay always causes a political storm it is never raised high enough - I think it should be closer to £250k for an MP and £400k for a minister, then we might get people who have the level of competence and skills we expect.
Why does any MP warrant a second home at the taxpayers expense?
Because we don't pay them enough - see previous point.
Why are we fighting unwinnable wars? The moment we leave the same barbarians will take over and things will go back to how they were.
Because you don't know if a war is un-winnable until you start and then just leaving can make the alternative is worse, yes the same barbarians may take over in the medium term, but this is what also used to happen in Europe (think Spain, Portugal, Greece) and Latin America as well, now these areas are almost all working democracies. You need to think in terms of decades not years or months.
Also we just up and forgot Afghanistan before (in the early 1990s) as it was costing too much and was too remote - then the country descended into civil war and the Taliban took charge.
Why waste billions of HS2 when fares will be too high for any “normal” person to afford.
I agree with you here, I do think the money would be better spent on less public-relations friendly things like maintaining and upgrading the system we have.
Why do we allow foreign workers to send their earnings out of the country? They earn it here, make them spend it here.
Rubbish - why should we do this when we don't require our citizens to spend their money here either.
Please remember that the foreign workers are paid in Sterling and there is only one place that Sterling can be spent - if they exchange it with others for their home currency then those others are obviously looking to buy our exports or invest in our country so how on earth are we worse off?
Why do HMRC [***] foot around tax evading multinationals? If they don’t pay their taxes, seize their assets. That’s what HMRC would do to your local plumber if he didn’t cough up.
Because the multinationals can hire top lawyers to stop this which your local plumber cannot. Their affairs are also sufficently more complex which can lower the level of legal certainty as to whether tax is due on an activity or not.
I agree this is not fair, however neither is the Universe and all we can hope to achieve is to make it more fair
Why do we pay vast salaries and perks to senior “public servants” who are clearly incompetent and would have been fired years ago in the private sector?
If they were in the private sector would they have been paid at that level (hundreds of thousands of pounds) or would they be more like the people running large companies (paid millions of pounds a year)- I feel that there is a similar issue here to your points 6 & 7.
The current system is corrupt from top to bottom, and the people of Britain are no more free than those in places such as North Korea. The only difference is that they are forced to obey with barbed wire and machine guns, whereas we are conned into obeying by politicians lies.
Quite a lot of exaggeration here - our system is widely recognised as being less corrupt than Italy's a lot less corrupt than Russia's and nowhere near the North Korea you mention.
If you want to make a point please try and stay on Planet Earth otherwise you will just be dismissed.
Most of your points seem to concern the current system not having 'common sense' rather than it being actually corrupt.
But the danger of common sense is that you cannot have rules for it - it has to be decided in each case by a human sitting in judgement (should this Polish worker have access to Child Benefit or not - maybe this one because he is going to be paying £20,000 a year in tax and employing 10 british workers, but not this other one because he will only pay £1,000 a year in tax)
As soon as you have humans deciding things on the basis of 'common sense' then you will see what corruption is all about because people are not perfect!
As far as the current system of free-market democracy we have I feel I should paraphrase Churchill in that it is the worst system - except for all the others we have tried.
@mrme89 Yes we _might_ be able to do these things (although I view the lack of eastern european immigration as a bad thing for Britain in the long run)
But we wouldn't be able to stand up to the trade bullying of nations like the US, China and indeed the EU itself (anyone remember the tariffs slapped on our steel during the 2004 US election - our 'special relationship' counted for nothing but the US backed down when the EU got involved)
Our economy would be far less attractive for inward investment - which would mean that, as multinationals generally have more productive and letter paid staff than home grown companies, we would see livingstonu standards fall even further.
The EU is not perfect, but you should always be wary of Utopia's
What should the UK do if it is not in the EU - we are not going to get a deal like the Swiss (the EU is already regretting that deal and it certainly won't apply to a member who has left) the Norwegian solution is worse than we currently get (still pay into the EU budget and obey the EU rules but get nothing back and have no say in said rules).
Let's face it without the EU Britain's influence in the world would be greatly reduced - and the bigger powers could afford to ignore our wishes at less cost than before.
I think leaving the EU would be leaping out of the frying pan and into the fire.
My answers
On the most recent polls it will not only be a hung parliament but, as John says above the only viable 2-coalition government would be Con-Lab.
All others coalitions would either be:
A minority government (i.e. less seats than all the remaining parties and so vunerable to a no-confidence vote and extremely vunerable to a backbench rebellion by just a handful of MP's)
It is just concievable that the SNP and either Labour or the Conservatives could form a coalition with a majority in the low single figures (and with two of the latest polls this is suggesting a majority of , wait for it, one!), however such a deal would probably be politucal suicide for Labour or the Conservatives.
We have had such a Grand Coalition before: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Second_National_ministry&redirect=no
With reference to something that happened today.
The most annoying question I get from clients is the one I have already answered six times before and he still hasn't got it.
Yes, I have tried six different ways of explaining it :(
I refer you to...
Jean Baptiste Colbert,
Who said "The art of taxation consists in so plucking the goose as to obtain the largest amount of feathers with the least possible amount of hissing."
Despite the failures of HMRC I cannot yet detect a significant increase in hissing :(
To Norstar
From the dealings I have had with HMRC I feel they view returns which are subsequently amended significantly as worse than a return submitted late.
Which gives you the choice of two evils :(
39% sounds impressive until you realise that it is just RPI +3% a year for the period concerned
Now 39% a year would be truly amazing.
Star Accountancy's points
Why are we giving foreign aid to countries with their own space programmes?
Because the country is still very poor and this is also not a lot of money - if you want to spend this on benefits instead it will lead to, for example a 4p a week rise in the state pension (£70 millon a year to India compared to £183.4 billion a year in social security benefits)
Why are we paying the EU so it can bail out incompetent goat herders in Greece?
We're not - our government is loaning them funds at 5%, which considering it's paying interest at 2% to 3% to borrow this money is actually a pretty good deal (as long as we get repaid of course)
Why are we paying child benefits and tax credits to anyone earning more than the average wage?
Because child benefit is a universal benefit (it changed from being a tax deduction in the 1970's)
Which average anyway, the median?, the mean? and for what area, London?, Devon?.
Also what about people who earn more than the average wage but also have higher costs, such as those with disabled children? or those with 4 children instead of 2 (remember those extra children will be taxed when they grow up to pay for your state pension)
Also the tax credits system encourages people who would otherwise not work at all to get at least a low paid job - which still cuts the amount the government has to spend.
Why are we paying a single penny in benefits to anyone who has never contributed to the system, such as child benefit to polish workers who have been here 5 minutes?
Because if we chose not to then, according to those rules, disabled people who cannot work would starve.
Why do we allow finite NHS resources to be used by those who have never contributed? It should be hand over your credit card before we treat you.
Again because we base it on the need of the recipient not their contributory status.
Under your system would we refuse to treat children because they have not contributed? (what about orphans who have no-one to pay for them, for example)
Why do we have so many MP’s, and exactly how do they justify a pay rise that is more than pensioners are expected to live on?
We have so many in order to not have too many voters being represented by too few MPs - currently they 'represent' around 750,000 adults each.
They don't justify it - an independent commission recommended the level of pay by comparing it with other people doing similar jobs (doctors, solicitors etc)
Because the level of MP's pay always causes a political storm it is never raised high enough - I think it should be closer to £250k for an MP and £400k for a minister, then we might get people who have the level of competence and skills we expect.
Why does any MP warrant a second home at the taxpayers expense?
Because we don't pay them enough - see previous point.
Why are we fighting unwinnable wars? The moment we leave the same barbarians will take over and things will go back to how they were.
Because you don't know if a war is un-winnable until you start and then just leaving can make the alternative is worse, yes the same barbarians may take over in the medium term, but this is what also used to happen in Europe (think Spain, Portugal, Greece) and Latin America as well, now these areas are almost all working democracies. You need to think in terms of decades not years or months.
Also we just up and forgot Afghanistan before (in the early 1990s) as it was costing too much and was too remote - then the country descended into civil war and the Taliban took charge.
Why waste billions of HS2 when fares will be too high for any “normal” person to afford.
I agree with you here, I do think the money would be better spent on less public-relations friendly things like maintaining and upgrading the system we have.
Why do we allow foreign workers to send their earnings out of the country? They earn it here, make them spend it here.
Rubbish - why should we do this when we don't require our citizens to spend their money here either.
Please remember that the foreign workers are paid in Sterling and there is only one place that Sterling can be spent - if they exchange it with others for their home currency then those others are obviously looking to buy our exports or invest in our country so how on earth are we worse off?
Why do HMRC [***] foot around tax evading multinationals? If they don’t pay their taxes, seize their assets. That’s what HMRC would do to your local plumber if he didn’t cough up.
Because the multinationals can hire top lawyers to stop this which your local plumber cannot. Their affairs are also sufficently more complex which can lower the level of legal certainty as to whether tax is due on an activity or not.
I agree this is not fair, however neither is the Universe and all we can hope to achieve is to make it more fair
Why do we pay vast salaries and perks to senior “public servants” who are clearly incompetent and would have been fired years ago in the private sector?
If they were in the private sector would they have been paid at that level (hundreds of thousands of pounds) or would they be more like the people running large companies (paid millions of pounds a year) - I feel that there is a similar issue here to your points 6 & 7.
The current system is corrupt from top to bottom, and the people of Britain are no more free than those in places such as North Korea. The only difference is that they are forced to obey with barbed wire and machine guns, whereas we are conned into obeying by politicians lies.
Quite a lot of exaggeration here - our system is widely recognised as being less corrupt than Italy's a lot less corrupt than Russia's and nowhere near the North Korea you mention.
If you want to make a point please try and stay on Planet Earth otherwise you will just be dismissed.
Most of your points seem to concern the current system not having 'common sense' rather than it being actually corrupt.
But the danger of common sense is that you cannot have rules for it - it has to be decided in each case by a human sitting in judgement (should this Polish worker have access to Child Benefit or not - maybe this one because he is going to be paying £20,000 a year in tax and employing 10 british workers, but not this other one because he will only pay £1,000 a year in tax)
As soon as you have humans deciding things on the basis of 'common sense' then you will see what corruption is all about because people are not perfect!
As far as the current system of free-market democracy we have I feel I should paraphrase Churchill in that it is the worst system - except for all the others we have tried.
@mrme89
Yes we _might_ be able to do these things (although I view the lack of eastern european immigration as a bad thing for Britain in the long run)
But we wouldn't be able to stand up to the trade bullying of nations like the US, China and indeed the EU itself (anyone remember the tariffs slapped on our steel during the 2004 US election - our 'special relationship' counted for nothing but the US backed down when the EU got involved)
Our economy would be far less attractive for inward investment - which would mean that, as multinationals generally have more productive and letter paid staff than home grown companies, we would see livingstonu standards fall even further.
Leave the EU and do what exactly?
The EU is not perfect, but you should always be wary of Utopia's
What should the UK do if it is not in the EU - we are not going to get a deal like the Swiss (the EU is already regretting that deal and it certainly won't apply to a member who has left) the Norwegian solution is worse than we currently get (still pay into the EU budget and obey the EU rules but get nothing back and have no say in said rules).
Let's face it without the EU Britain's influence in the world would be greatly reduced - and the bigger powers could afford to ignore our wishes at less cost than before.
I think leaving the EU would be leaping out of the frying pan and into the fire.
Actually for income distributions the median is usually the most informative average
Yes, the French and Germans are more highly taxed overall
I'm sure:
Total government revenue as % of GDP:
UK: 41.4%
Germany: 43.2%
France: 49.7%
(source: OECD economic outlook no 89)