Could Zack Polanski be any more of an obnoxious twat?

[HeadDeskHeadDesk]

Just seen him saying this:

'I am concerned about the rise in antisemitism and we know Jewish communities are saying they feel unsafe. There is a conversation to be had over whether it's a perception that they feel unsafe or whether they are actually unsafe.'

WTAF? Can you imagine if a politician said that to Muslims after a series of absolutely awful targeted attacks where people have died?

Egypt and Jordan made peace with Israel and surprise surprise neither are at war.

Neither offer home to Palestinian's anymore. Jordan learnt a lesson after Palestinians it invited in tried to destabilise Jordan

Exactly.

Estimates vary because the rich are secretive and off shore, hide assets etc. but they are definitely not maxed out tax wise.( off shoring, wealth taxed at lower levels than income etc etc.)

ONS
The richest in our society ie the richest 50 families have the same wealth as the poorest 50% of the population ie 30 million people.

Oxfam
Richest 1% in UK hold more wealth than 70% of Britons
Top 1% hold wealth 1000 times that held by the bottom 50%

The Egyptians don't want the Palestinians that's why they kept the Rafah Gate closed. They'd had enough trouble with the Muslim Brotherhood. As pp have said, the Jordanians don't want them because of problems in the past. Plus if you look at the boundaries of Mandatory Palestine, much of it is in what is now Jordan. Tricky.

Yes, such a difficult problem. The irony is that people like the Greens are making it worse. By creating a hostile environment, they're encouraging Jews to leave Europe and settle in Israel, which will make Israel less willing to compromise as they feel they are backed into a corner.

I saw a thing of some (older) women with placards saying “Jews go home!”. When questioned, they said they should go back where they came from And where’s that, they were asked. “Germany or Hungary” 🤔

I think "logic" isn't something you associate with the Greens! Nor knowledge and understanding of history, it would seem.

Classic. Carrying a placard about which... you know nothing.

He called Hamas and Hezbollah “friends”. They want to eradicate Jews.

The Forde Report found that there was a problem with anti semitism in the party while he was leader.

It would be nice if Corbyn had actually supported Jewish people against fascism in the 21st century, not just what happened in the early 20th at Cable Street.
"Our friends in Hamas" are antisemitic, homophobic, misogynist, anti democratic nihilists. Corbyn chose his side.

Agree. You can't refer to Hamas as "friends" yet somehow claim not to be antisemitic.

He also liked, and supported, a now notorious antisemitic mural which appeared in London.
He since changed his mind and his position on that particular image fortunately. However, it shows at the very least, poor judgement.

According to my DS (early 20s, at university) most of his friends think the Greens are great. When he points out they're really not great at all he jokingly gets called a Reform supporter 😂

He is not a Reform supporter btw, he can just spot a charlatan after years of political discussions growing up.

Also it sounds like he's intelligent and doesn't fall for slogans or simplistic binary thinking.

Carrying placards with that slogan on is truly appalling.

He is. I'm very proud of him for that and all sorts of other reasons 😊

Good, you should be! No knee jerk reaction from him. Unlike the hyper sensitive student my friend teaches, who saw the word "Israel" in a different context and was too "triggered" by the word to carry on with the seminar. I ask you 🙄

I find the whole 'it's triggering me so i have to shut it down' thing very, very worrying because it automatically stops any sort of reconciliation/discourse about opposing ideas.

I hope your friend (sympathetically) introduced the concept of getting a grip to her student 😂

She did! This student, a young middle class white woman, was told to self manage in order to cope if the word "Israel" appeared. The girl said "it's everything they've done, I can't bear it".
She then went to the pastoral team. I hope they pointed her in the direction of Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran et al, for some measure of reality

Institute of Fiscal Studies
The top 1% of earners pay 30% of all tax revenue.

The highest amount in 20 years.

As the Labour government in the 1970s found to their cost, if you tax the rich too heavily, they remove their money from the country and then you get no tax from them.

A balance has to be found - not perpetual calls to ‘tax the rich’ as if that will solve all the problems. At the moment as our benefits bill exceeds the income tax revenue for the first time ever, we have a major economic problem.

I think there would be some value in a widespread ‘get a grip’ training programme. Universities sound like they’d benefit entirely (no offence to the legions of sane and rational young people who just want to get on with an education and are being hampered by the ones in need of ‘a grip’).

But happily HMRC does publish the best estimates of how much ‘the wealthy’ are evading and it’s a tiny TINY frastion of the total evasion, which is mainly driven by small and medium sized enterprises. There is no magic money tree of wealthy tax evaders to shake down. You are stating one of the most commonly stated tax myths there are, and as a tax professional I am cringing for you! Talk about gullible!

Prepare to be told they're "making it up", Flossette - probably by the same people who insist that the numbers "proving" that fraud is a tiny % of the benefits bill really are true

Surely you know by now that all this is the fault of the very wealthy - oh, and Amazon

Yup. Amazon. Myth number two in the commonly quoted big book of tax myths. Wait for it…

Anyone who is really interested in inequality ought to read the 6 year IFS study into it published the other day - the Deaton review. I suggest ZP takes a look. It talks of different sorts of inequality and whether / why it’s a problem and how best to tackle it. It obviously points out why a wealth tax is a non-starter.

But when it comes to wealth, people are wealthy due to a number of reasons. Inherited wealth yes, but also wealth produced by a person’s entrepreneurship (Jim Ratcliffe etc) and artistic talent (JK Rowling, Ed Sheeran etc). Which of these ‘inequalities’ do people have an issue with and why? Do we really want to drive entrepreneurs from the country? And artists who pay a tonne of income tax (like JK Rowling) because we’d be a financially MUCH poorer country if we did.