About Jeremy Corbyn's campaign launch

[Charmageddon]

The warm up act was Hayley Cropper & she was very good - "Labour give a toss about people" etc.

......and then JC came on......

It was very much like he was imagining the beginnings of his communist utopia.

He's basically declared a personal war on the very people who contribute the most to the tax take & wealth of the country.

I get it that the tax avoidance etc should be tackled & stamped out - but just a blanket 'going after the wealthy' is surely counterproductive?

They'll just leave!
And take their money with them.
Won't they...??!!

At least now with the launch we're getting some meat on the bones for us to properly look at.

On paper, yes, some of the ideas I agree with and are laudable and are precisely what we should be doing. But it seems unbalanced in places. For example, free school meals for all between 4 and 11 yet only an extra £500 for carers.

It's when you start examining how they say it will be paid for that I scratch my head. We already heard about higher tax for those earning over £80k but the IFS has already said that actually won't produce much at all. So what else do they propose?

A 20% tax on private school tuition and on private health insurance.

Hang on. If people are paying to be part of BUPA or whatever, aren't they saving the NHS money, as otherwise we'd be paying for whatever operation or treatment they are having? So, we're going to tax something that is actually saving the NHS money and staff resourcing? Similarly, if people didn't send their kids to private schools, there would be more kids in the state system which would put more pressures on the existing education system. So, again, those people are saving us money in the grand scheme of things. And I suspect a fair few of those sending their kids to private schools will be in that 80% bracket, so we'll clobber them twice.

Reversing the Tory cut in inheritance tax? That won't bring in heaps, but an awful lot of people think it's a damn cheek to tax people for passing on to their loved ones what they earned during their lifetime (and which they've already paid tax on).

I don't pretend to have all the answers but to my mind this doesn't square the circle at all.

Or you could all continue to vote for the smirking shithouse that is Teresa May, a leader so strong and tough to lead us through the tricky Brexit negotiations with some of the toughest people in Europe, yet won't do a simple TV debate with the rest of the candidates. At least she's campaigning to get rid of hospital car park charges for nurses and patients though; but only at her local hospital, whereas JC is campaigning to get it removed from all hospitals, but he's a looney leftie with a beard.

Big companies like Starbucks get sweetheart tax deals, whilst earning millions in profits, but if you're a little business or a PAYE tax payer you don't get that option. If Starbucks (or any of the others) threatens to leave the UK, then cheerio, people will just spend their money at other coffee shops, ones that pay their taxes, so no great loss. Remember the Apple deal with Ireland where they were paying nothing in corporation tax? Did Europe get a good deal on the price of IPhones and Ipads? Did they pass the benefit onto us?

But hey, keep voting Tory if you want, but remember, you get what you vote for; shit public services for instance due to underfunding but did your taxes go down? Housing stock sold off, but did your council tax bill go down? We've had right wing policies since 1979 (Blair's Labour was right wing) and it's a bit shit out there, but fuck it, lets have even harder right wing polices. You do know that we (us, you and me, the taxpayers) still fund the railways to the tune of £5 billion a year, yet we were sold the right wing dream of better services with more competition and therefore lower fares. Yeah right! Electricity - mostly now owned by EDF Energy which is the French nationalised electricity company, so when you pay your bill instead of it going into the British economy, it goes into the French economy, but hey, Jeremy Corbin's a vegetarian so I'm voting Tory. Apologies for the sarcasm, but as someone who's had 1% pay rises since 2010, whilst everything I buy has gone up by much more, then why the hell would I vote Tory for more of the same? And if you ask the question of me, why should I get a bigger pay rise, I'll ask you this question back - why should the companies be able to get a bigger "pay rise" by charging us more for their services?

Well said Bazooka! I'm sick.of all this - we can't afford it crap about labour policies - we can if money is not spent elsewhere like the Tories do. I'm not a particular Corbyn fan but my support for labour goes deeper than that so I will be voting for labour in june.

BazookaJoe90
Ace - I agree.

I'm a leaver, who will be voting Tory this time but I'd prefer Lib Dem as the official opposition than Labour

The opposition is not supposed to be the preferred choice of those supporting the government. Often people who are voting for the current government to stay in power won't like the opposition. That's good, it means there's a real choice to be made.

The top 1 percent pay a 25% of all income tax. You may not like them but if they leave we will all be poorer. Why would we not want people here paying tax. The politics of envy is not attractive.

May has just said she is in favour of restoring fox hunting, so glad she has her priorities straight.

May has just said she is in favour of restoring fox hunting, so glad she has her priorities straight.

Such a stupid thing to say, and just not important given everything else that is going on at the moment. See below to see that there is support within the conservative party to keep the ban

www.politicshome.com/news/uk/sport/news/85808/theresa-may-faces-conservative-backlash-over-fox-hunting-repeal-folly

There was a Tory MP (well, strictly speaking we're in an election situation we don't have any at present) being interviewed on this this morning and he said even if there was another free vote on this subject, it's got absolutely no chance of being repealed and brought back, there is nowhere near enough support. So not quite sure why she's even made the comment.

All Corbyn's £80k tax hike will do is push even more people into reducing their working hours to pay less tax, or push them into other tax "avoidance" schemes such as limited companies, paying into pensions, etc, or even emigrate.

If he increased the tax % on over £80k I would do three things to reduce my income to under that band - 1) buy my full additional 10 day holiday allowance 2) pay higher % into pension and I wouldn't need to do 3) yet but 3) would be to go down to 4 days a week.

Apparently they're going to bump corporation tax up to 26% too.

Start waving cheerio to all the people & businesses.....

Oh so its okay to target the poor and vulnerable. Well yes of course it is,as they can't fight back.

No it's not ok to target the poor & vulnerable.
Of course it's not.
But the poor and vulnerable can only be supported if there's money to do so.

If the businesses shift to Ireland or fold, and the higher earners' accountants get ever more creative then the poor & vulnerable will be completely and utterly fucked - along with the lower & middle income earners.

I think a corporation tax hike would be a serious mistake. We are just about to make ourselves a much less attractive place to do business (by leaving the EU) we can counter that by negotiating good tax treaties but that will take time. A clear message to businesses that the UK is serious about remaining competitive is really important. The low rate of corporation tax encourages people to do business here. That is what we want, thriving businesses that bring with them jobs (income tax) and goods (VAT). We'd be better off having lots of companies that don't pay much tax than few that pay lots.

Sorry my post should read lots of companies that don't pay much corporation tax, than a few that pay lots.

Its an important distinction, because whilst Bazooka would be happy to see the likes of Starbucks leave the UK, I'd be sad. Not because I like their coffee, but they employ lots of people in the UK who now don't have jobs. That costs money in benefits, loss of income tax and the VAT we pay on cups of coffee sold would be lost.

Starbucks won't leave and neither will any of the others because they're making way too much money. Even if they were taxed at 50% (and actually paid it) they would still be making billions. (I think their profits, not turnover but pure profit, last year was something like £3 billion) The locally owned coffee shop have to pay tax so Starbucks can pay theirs too

I think they've got some great ideas which I'd like to see out into practice.
I've no idea, and I fear they have no idea either, of how it will all be funded.

It's such a shame. I've met Jeremy Corbyn a few times-he used to do his surgery in the day room of a care home I used to manage in fact.He's really lovely in person-and I agree with so much of what he thinks fundamentally on so many things-but he comes across as so extreme and so inept-I just don't get it. Who is advising him to behave this way and why??

It's interesting that he chose £80,000, just pounds over an MP's salary. Obviously we wouldn't want anyone thinking they were rich.

I've always voted Labour but I'm so unimpressed by him.

Jupitar
This is how much money Starbucks UK made last year

Pre-tax profits at the US coffee chain slumped to £13.4m in the year to 2 October 2016, down 60% on the £34.2m it made in 2015. Its turnover declined from £405.6m to £379.9m.
www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-39586848

It employs about 7500 people

It made operating income of £3.4billion globally (not in the UK - tax only due on what they make in the UK)
www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-37868620

Mr Corbyn is also planning a tax rise on the locally owned coffee shop

"Smaller firms with profits below £300,000 a year will see more modest rises - up to 21% by 2020-21." from the BBC

Ah fuck it, if all the richest leave, there are many more people to take their place. That's the definition of an upwardly mobile society.