AIBU to want a party to "take on the rich and powerful"

Millions could be put into front line education if these Multi Academy Trusts didn't have large numbers of highly paid managers who aren't in schools.

Yes, and then there's the issue of "taking on"?
Taxing them? Limits to business?
Re-nationalisation?.
I can see that you have clarified some of this, and I agree with your points. The water companies are a good example.

Usually starts at 50k when looking to tax us all to death

I tended to agree with your argument 10 or more years ago. But the tax thresholds have stagnated since 2021/22 and far far more ordinary people are getting caught up in paying the higher tax rates. A £100k plus salary isn’t what is was 10 year ago, for example circa £50k salary takes a worker into the 40% tax bracket today. In 2015 £50k was worth £36k.

So if the threshold continue to stagnate - more or less all lower income families will be dragged into higher tax brackets. Labour have indicated that the thresholds will stay as they are until at least 2028.

I live on the edge of Bristol and fail to see the country you are describing. I now lead a very small life and look at the situation around me as an outsider and see:
A major city with lots of building projects.
A commercial district of office development has been built in the last 20 years revitalising the area around the station.
A city where a huge area of bars and restaurants has been built in the last 15 years and pop up food vans are on many street corners...and they are busy.
My town has lost 2 pubs and gained 7 in the last 25 years and grown by 10k people.
It's also gained 2 chain hotels, 4 supermarkets.
The docks visible from the M5 is basically a huge car park filled with imported new cars.
House prices are rising year on year.
There are lots of high end cars on the road.
Events like the Bristol harbour festival, balloon fiesta and food festivals are rammed.

There clearly a huge amount of disposable income out there. The stock market where the middle class will have their pensions and ISAs has grown over the last 12 months 10%

They can do this without such a huge wealth divide existing. I think some people have no idea what a billion pounds looks like versus a million. If someone is a multi billionare that's a heck of a lot of money and a small increase in tax could do a lot. Ultimately it is the middle class that pays for a lot of the country's infrastructure through high taxes, whilst large corporations pay smaller proportions. We live in a time where people's taxes are going directly to landlords via housing benefit and not back to the state or propping up poor wage growth via benefits. It does not make sense. I'm not anticapitalism, but it's not working in its current form.

Also, lots of people start businesses everyday. Agree we need large companies with great infrastructure to serve our needs, but we also need small and medium businesses too.

Brilliant idea! Wheres the money going to come from? When you've solved that one come back for a chat.

I don't like the term "take on". We already have too much conflict in politics. I'd like to see a more inclusive and cooperative approach. Jeremy Corbyn seems to be doing it for you but it will be a disaster with him taking votes off Labour and letting Farage in.

There are no Labour MP billionaires. The closest they came was Lord Sainsbury, who was never an MP, but sat in the HoL, and whose family is estimated to be worth £1.3bn

He placed 92 million Sainsbury shares in Innotech , a startup trust that pays all dividends to charity.

He is known for his charitable donations to various causes (over £1bn so far) including £18.5m to the Labour party, and does not 'hold on to his riches'.

Take them on how and to achieve what?

You don't think the rich and powerful having all the wealth and power is a sign of social inequality/injustice? Then why on earth do you think they need to be taken on if you're happy with the status quo? Or is that just another brain fart?

Why assume that someone who has a different opinion to you is stupid?

I own my own company with 120 staff. I know how tax works, I have paid a lot over the years (and willingly!). I will not be engaging with corporate tax law on a Friday night 😂

Being ‘told’ what and how to think. About trans, religion, immigration, politics etc etc. the ‘bring kind’ nonsense being spouted by the least kind people imaginable. Woke stuff is insufferable.

And even though some corporation tax is was paid in the 2024 tax year, there is no transparency around how much of the profits are shunted into their loss making subsidiaries abroad. Transparency should be a given for large corporations

Not sure you know much about corporate tax. There are internationally agreed rules that can often require a corporate to "shunt profit into their loss making subsidiaries abroad" and these days there's actually a lot of transparency. If a company isn't making profits, it does not pay income tax. Thats not unfair.

The problem is at the moment we are getting poorer as a country. There isn't enough money and it means hard choices to get us back on track.

But any changes are met with resistance. If we keep on having a huge (and growing) proportion of the population not working due to mental health, we will become a poorer and poorer country.

Some younger people in particular seem to completely lack any grit at all, any challenge is characterised as a mental health crisis, the normal ups and downs of life are too much to cope with. I do really worry that the impact of covid & screens & social media have collided to complete fuck up the development of a whole cohort.

Your word salad makes no sense. Tax is paid on profits at 25%. It’s as simple as that. What does transparency has to do it. Are you saying there was fraud?

Surely this is what George Galloway has been pushing for yonks now. Looks like the latest iteration is the Workers Party of Britain.

What do gooder lefties? Thatcher closed down industry and embraced globalisation in the 80s.

And when we were producers, the mill owners were the rich and powerful....

But we used to be producers - of wool and steel and pottery as well as coal and tin - world-class

We used to produce oil and refine it here but the do gooder lefties decided it’s better to buy it from Saudi and Iran and ship it here

I think you’d have to be rich and powerful yourself if you wanted to ‘take on’ the rich and powerful. You’d certainly not make any impact if you were poor and powerless.

But also I don't think anyone who proposed that re inheritance tax would win, so it would all be a bit pointless.