To not understand how people can justify it

[ijustdontunderstand]

Okay, not a bun fight I just want to understand how those who vote Tory can think the cuts to disability benefits are OK.

This is NOT saying if you vote Tory you're a bad person, at all, I just want to understand. Will you vote them in again knowing?

Exactly DG. We all do simple things to maximize tax efficiency in our finances - from opening an ISA to off-shore savings or setting up a limited company when self-employed. I am sure that applies equally to some of the more sanctimonious posters on this thread. It would be nuts to do otherwise.

I think they estimate legal personal tax avoidance at about £ 3.1 billion which is far less than the corporation tax avoidance etc.

The bloody amount that goes "uncollected" in income tax is about £14 bn which is un fricking believable, as is the 12bn in uncollected VAT.

That's interesting DG. What are the correct stats then?

I agree governments should be made to make evidence based decisions, on strong evidence, rather than opinion based. Works well in Norway.

Also agree that one spouse (let's not add to sexism & assume it's the husband) putting savings in others name to avoid tax is fraud. Just as unethical like other avoidance. But then easy to justify until you need help. Fuzzy laws are designed to allow people loopholes and unfortunately I think legislation should account for those who have dubious morals.

Just heard sanitary products are still taxed as luxury items but beer tax has been frozen. Ho hum ....

Thanks lurked191 that's interesting.

Sorry YoungGirlGrowingOld it was the commenter in the high tax bracket advocating higher welfare spending that confused me.

TeatimeForTheSoul Yes, I agree with you completely. Incidentally I am not partisan in my hopes for change. I simply feel strongly about some injustices and urban myths. You highlighted some beautifully, hence the applause 😊

Cauliflowerbalti
That is what the Tory party has done. Borrowed more.
The narrative that Labour are feckless spendhappies and the Tory party is parsimonious and responsible is a lie.

The Labour party borrowed so much that the Conservatives are having to borrow to meet spending commitments that they inherited. There is a school in Speke, which was built under Labours PIF, which costs £12000 PER DAY even though it was closed by Ofsted in 2013 as it was failing its pupils. That's over £4m per year for an empty building, for the next goodness knows how long.

From the Livepool Echo...
Labour ’s Mayor Anderson hit out at the Lib Dems who signed the PFI contract when they ran Liverpool council .

He said: “The number of pupils was too low and it couldn’t be maintained.

“The PFI deal is a millstone round my neck. I have to set aside £4.3m a year that could be spent on providing services.”

The council has tried to find other organisations to move into the empty building but so far there has been no interest.

It would cost £25m as a lump sum to buy out of the PFI deal, according to Mayor Anderson – an amount the council simply does not have.

He continued: “This is the Lib Dems’ £100m legacy. The rate of interest is just massive.

“It’s going to cost us £100m for a building that’s just lying empty.”

Cllr Richard Kemp , leader of Liverpool’s Lib Dem group, hit back at the mayor, saying PFI deals were encouraged by the Labour government of the day.

He said: “The Labour government’s Building Schools for the Future programme largely employed PFI as a funding mechanism.

“In Liverpool a number of schools and other buildings were built using PFI.

“The decision to fund Parklands through PFI was supported by every member of the council and it was Labour’s funding mechanism that got us into this mess.”

There's no joined up thinking with the tories, which is interesting.

It's all dogma - cut anything that attacks the most poor and underprivileged, the disabled - anyone who they think will never vote for the anyway. And cut at the expense of lots of people, not just their imediate targets (at the moment, that's largely the disabled many of whom can only work because they get DLA/PIP). No logic or joined up thinking. The end of Motability as we knew it will lead to lots of job losses in the ca industry - making, selling, leasing etc. Most major dealers had a Motability specialist in their dealerships. I guess many of the will be unemployed.

Unemployed people and people under attack don't spend money. People who don't spend or have money have nothing to put into the economy. More jobs go. There are more unemployed people. It's either stupidity on their part or just the sheer blinkeredness of being born wealthy, going to Eton and Oxbridge etc - so they have all ended up not caring about millions of people because they don't understand the reality of their lives.

I genuinely don't know how people who voted for them sleep at night.

They refused to detail before the election where the 'cuts' would fall. They made that clear that they refused to tell us. So anyone who voted for them can't have been all that bright.

Usernamealreadytaken,

The tory party have also had to borrow more to pay for the mistakes they made strangling growth in 2010 and 2011, lets not forget this is their 6th year in power and about the 14th time Osborne has made a budget like statement to the house.

You can't go on blaming the other side forever ( oh and John Major's government brought in PFI) :)

You could also say that PFI was also necessary because of the near two decades of neglect that the Thatcher/Major years brought to public services, I remember teaching with decades old textbooks in portacabins because schools were so underfunded and in need of repair.

The tories need to stop blaming the other side, they've been in power long enough for their economic policies to be making a big differences but they aren't and it is a major flaw.

Slow growth, the slowest recovery for well over a century, an ideological destruction of the public services (selling them off to their cronies for profit), the destruction of the post war consensus and blame culture attacking the weakest in our society.

Slow growth, the slowest recovery for well over a century

how many other countries in the world have had better growth than the UK over the last few years?

But how much better would growth be if it hadn't been strangled in 2010/11? There have bee opportunities to create further growth, spelt out clearer by very eminent economists and entrepreneurs, they haven't been taken.

Oh and the US have had better growth, because they took those opportunities.

The EU refused to use any stimulus for ages and are currently paying the price.

Peggy - China, India. Greece is catching up with us...

Greece? seriously don't make me laugh... your deluded.

Greece is a poor comparison, but it was a poor comparison when Gideon was discussing our debt levels too.

I was kidding about catching up with us. But after falling off the face of the earth 2 years ago they showed growth last year and are expected to be back in sustained growth by this year.

So that's Iceland and Greece both falling off a cliff and bouncing back. And us, limping along, held back by the weight of Osborne and co.

Seems the chancellor thinks the economic growth, he has presided over, is so bad that he had to take money from disabled people to pay for a corporation tax cut. He's got the figures so he should know ...

I nearly voted them last election though I never vote. I will vote Corbyn next time just to spite these godforsaken cheating scumbags.

Agree DG, It's really difficult to estimate how much tax is avoided each year, particularly when it's no longer even really clear what tax avoidance means. Collecting evaded tax would involve much more investigation of small businesses and that costs money. Big businesses are more likely to avoid tax within the law, and have the money to make the case that what they are doing is lawful.

Either way, getting hold of however many billions of avoided/evaded tax would not be cheap or easy. Rather than bandying a random large number, politicians should be explaining what they would do to change the law and how that would work on practice.

So much easier to tax people who have so much money they wouldn't miss it anyway. I've never seen anything like this, though - attacking the poor and disabled, and meanwhile the better off, mysteriously have felt no consequences of 'austerity'.

Talk about robbing the poor to give to the rich.

*But after falling off the face of the earth 2 years ago they showed growth last year and are expected to be back in sustained growth by this year.
*

on the face of it that may be the case but the banks in greece are still skint - they are still loosing money. they don't have any money to loan out - the defaulted loans they were sitting on have still not been paid back. there is absolutely no way they will be back in sustained growth, they are already speaking about a 4th bailout.

Joffrey, my dh exactly the same as you regarding motability and the car dealers/mechanics/insurers jot yo mention how much extra the local authority will have to pay to ferry their clients to from college/hospital/etc etc
Unless the Tories are thinking of locking those with disabilities in their homes. How Dickensian
Actually Gideon and weird lip and manner are like a character out of a dickens novel

Oh FFS please drop these fantasies about spendthrift Labour and prudent Tories. It is just a fairy story spun by the newspapers to make us feel better, using carefully cherry-picked numbers taken out of context.

In 6 years the Tories have already borrowed nearly double what Labour borrowed in 13 years! All governments waste money, you've got to look at the big picture to see what's going on.

www.independent.co.uk/voices/behind-all-the-rhetoric-osbornes-budget-is-an-admission-of-failure-without-a-radical-change-there-a6934321.html

In 6 years the Tories have already borrowed nearly double what Labour borrowed in 13 years!

I heard some economics academic making precisely that point on Radio 4 - and that when they looked in great detail at the overall picture, Labour, over many governments, were actually far more sensible and prudent and successful economically than many tory governments. The problem is one of perception and media spin.

Tories are actually terrible at running an economy. And just why are they attacking disabled people and low income families, if they are so rubbish they have to borrow at a HIGHER level than the Labour government has?

many I actually meant any.