Please convince me that the Tories WON'T create wider divisions btween the rich and poor and haves and have nots?

[poshsinglemum]

I'm not great at politics but I am under the imptression that things like inheritance tax and tax breaks for married people are going to widen the gap between the rich and poor?

Am, I wrong? Would anyone like to explain how the Tories would improve my lot as a single mum. Would they find me a nice man to marry for example?

oh ok, that might be why I was confused

As a child of the Thatcher years, and picking up some of the points made earlier....I went to state school all the way through, and my education was fine thank you at a comp. I think the standards are less rigorous educationally today and I speak as an examiner.

I received childcare vouchers towards nursery for ds who started full time school in 1995. Afaik, Blair did not get elected until 1997, so that was a Tory policy.

Although the tax credit system may have been altered in the wake of the 10% tax rate debacle, that did not help some pensioners who are just above the level for claiming pension credit, like my Mum.

This government is dishonest in its intentions and it seems to me is all about the removal of opportunity from everyone. They would like to turn the UK into their own little socialist workers paradise, and have bogged it up in the process. They have created an enormous, unsustainable, complex and unaffordable client state that is about to come tumbling down. I note that the HB bill for the UK is greater than the education and defence budgets combined.

I hope to God they call the election soon and put us all out of our misery.

what is the HB bill?

I'd rather hear a few grumbles from pensioners complaining that so and so down the road gets this, that and the other than than seeing queues of elderly folk counting out their pennies to pay for a measly shopping basket to feed them for a week as I frequently did in the 80's.

Or freezing to death in the winter because they were too scared to put on the heating.

I think it is key that at the Fabian conference at the weekend, a Tory MP said that even some nice people are getting poor in the recession.

So, previously, and even now in the main, poor people are not nice. And she saw herself as a moderate.

This government is dishonest in its intentions and it seems to me is all about the removal of opportunity from everyone. They would like to turn the UK into their own little socialist workers paradise, and have bogged it up in the process. They have created an enormous, unsustainable, complex and unaffordable client state that is about to come tumbling down. I note that the HB bill for the UK is greater than the education and defence budgets combined.

Interesting theory since we've already established that the rich have got richer and the gap between rich and poor has got wider under Labour. Is that really consistent with a socialist workers paradise?

Oh, and the same woman (they had got her in so the Labour types that tend to be in the Fabians could see what the alternative is, so kudos to her for being brave) also said that she wanted to make sure women went back to work as soon as possible after having kids. Great. So I would have to go to work wiping someone else's grandmothers arse to pay for someone on the same low wage to wipe my kid's arses. Thanks for that. At the moment I have a choice, I stay at home at the moment, I might decide later on to go to work, either way I get support.

Good post ButterPie. I still remember a tory minister (Lamont?) standing up in Parliament and stating that high unemployment was a price worth paying for a stable economy.

Speaks volumes as to who the tories really represent and it's not the ordinary working man and woman.

Under the Labour government the gap has closed some. The support given to the working poor has helped I think.
And access to health is better, which proportinatley assists the poor.

But we cannot get away from the fact that current levels of spending cannot go on under any administration.
We may not like the idea that the tax credit threshold is raised, or that redundancies have to made in the public sector, but if we don't move soon it will be our children who are left to pick up this mess.

Don't we owe it to them to simply accept that and take the necessary steps?

We need to consider how best to do it while causing the least pain. But pain we will have I'm afraid.

The gap has widened (I heard it firsthand off various ministers and thinktanks on saturday, the left is very worried about it) but only between the very rich and the very poor. The gap between the poor and middle has narrowed. The gap widening is down to our good friends the bankers and their daft salaries (really, what do they spend it on?) not being taxed enough.

IMO Labour needs to stop arsing about with pretending most people are rich, because they just aren't, and tax the rich to fund good basic universal services like Surestart and means tested services like CTC. I was enraged by Broon telling us that he wants more people to be able to afford a car and a foreign holiday. Leaving aside the environmental stuff, how about just making sure everyone has roofs over their heads, food in their bellies and a decent standard of living.

I still passionately believe that Labour is our best chance for getting a fair society. It is just not fair that a child born in one place to rich parents has such better life chances to one born to poorer parents. You should not be able to buy life chances.

But even with tax hikes, the levels of debt are so huge that to reduce them we will have to cut government spending.

Otherwise our children will have no future to look forward to.

Human nature militates against a 'fair' society Butterpie. The USSR tried it and it always looked to me as if everyone is equal but some are more equal than others. What is a 'fair' society anyway? We have publicly funded universal health care, education and access to benefits for those most in need.

A child cannot help to whom it is born; and is it 'fair' to remove the opportunities that the parents who may have worked hard for what they are able to offer their child from that child? How would you even begin to do that, apart from taking away the choices people have?

If you tax the rich too much, they will either leave the UK reducing the tax take; or if they can afford to, will stop working, or work less, also reducing the tax take, therefore reducing the net amount of money available for redistribution and social projects.

Labour do not seem fair to me. As an example, the government mandates that to be in the professions that dh and I follow, we both HAVE to have a degree. It is not possible to do the jobs without this. This means that when my ds applies to uni, he will be discriminated against as he is not the first in the family to go to uni, but we HAVE to have degrees to do our jobs. How is that fair?

Labour need to get to grips with the essentials it seems to me. Instead of having huge quangos, how about paying for more teachers to reduce class sizes and thus raise attainment? Stop teaching Citizenshit (and that is not a typo) and start pushing literacy and maths. Bring back the 3Rs if necessary. Cancel all the bloody quangos and you would have a great deal of money. Better still, cancel all the intrusive and unnecessary databases so beloved of this government and there'd be more money. Make the tax and benefit system less complicated, so the people who administer it understand it (and believe me they don't) and the help might get to where it is needed. People might decide it was worth more to work than not.

The next 5-10 years are going to be painful. I would rather they were painful with the Tories than with this lot who obfuscate and don't have the decency to treat the electorate as if they have any intelligence.

AFM - the HB bill is the Housing Benefit bill.

Scaryteacher said : "If you tax the rich too much, they will either leave the UK reducing the tax take; or if they can afford to, will stop working, or work less, also reducing the tax take, therefore reducing the net amount of money available for redistribution and social projects."

Cushty, does that mean the rest of us who aren't earning mega bucks can apply for their jobs?

I think you might be onto something here ST, get rid of all the tight fisted super rich who begrudge paying their fair share, everyone else moves up a step in the workplace and unemployment drops substantially.

Pure genius

How is 50% of your income in tax and NI not a fair share?

Those that leave the UK will do their jobs abroad as the entire firm will move, (Switzerland is doing very well from this at present) and the lower paid jobs will also disappear as well as the higher paid ones relocating. Less tax take, more unemployment and pay out in benefits.

Who pays 50% of their income in tax? I was under the impression that tax was calculated in bands?

You only pay 50% tax on earnings over £150,000 surely?

If even if the majority of your earnings are over £150,000, ie £300,001, you're still only paying 50% tax on half of your earnings or I am missing something?

So if the Swiss really need over 400 premiership footballers, let 'em go I say.

Don't be daft Wubblybubbly - if I go abroad I take my work and all my money with me. My tax just goes to that country.

I'm not saying I would do that, although my business is completely portable, so there is absolutely nothing to stop me, but it's too simplistic to say someone else would just take my 'job'.

I should also point out that if I did that all the people I emply wpuld also be knackered.

Litchick, well that all depends doesn't it, on what you do and whether you taking your business abroad would leave a gap in the market for some other enterprenial sort to set up in your place?

Given the choice, I'd always give my business to a UK based firm rather than a firm based overseas.

or entrepreneurial even

'We need to consider how best to do it while causing the least pain. But pain we will have I'm afraid.'

But from your posts it shouldn't be born in the form of higher taxes for higher-earners?

How should it be shared out, then?

Where do such high-earners propose to go that doesn't have such high taxes? Many other EU nations tax just as much.

The US? Good luck getting a work visa in there now unless you're really the shit.

I'm a writer.
Where I do it is simply a matter of choice. If I decide to live elsewhere my publisher will still publish my books, Smiths will still put them on the shelves. No gap in the market.

The only thing that would change is that I would pay tax elsehwere and I would spend my money elsewhere.

I'm not saying I would choose to do that, but it's outdated to believe that everyone makes their money in an oldfashioned role based way ie that there is a role that someone fills, rather than that someone makes the role.

If that's so, then why still be here at all, Lit? Some other EU nations, in the Eastern parts, already have lower taxes than you are probably paying in the UK.

For other nations, however, even as a writer, it's considered working and you'd need the relevant visa, but for some nations, like Brazil, this might be easier to obtain.

Ex-pat - my understanding is that even with the proposed tax increases there will still be an enormous gap in income and expenditure, so expenditure must go down.

I think to bridge the gap you'd have to increase taxes in such a way as the seventies and it simply didn't work did it? We had to be bailed out by the IMF.
Even at 98% there wasn't enough tax revenue to support the expenditure.

To be honest I really worry for our chidren. We just can't saddle them with all this debt -it's not fair.