to wonder how much of "broken Britain" Lord Ashcroft's tax contribution might have fixed?

[morningpaper]

Lord Ashcroft reveals: I am a non-dom

So in 2000, when he was made a peer, he promised to "take up permanent residence in the UK again".

But ten years later he somehow hasn't got around to it...

Oooh those Tories and their promises eh?

(And for extra fun, Cameron has confirmed that the Tories WILL reward married couples with tax breaks (which is another way of saying that single parents will be forced into deeper poverty) and the details of this (once they've invented something) will be spelled out in their election manifesto.)

Why will giving married couple a tax break force single parents into deeper poverty? Afaik Tories are not going to be taking benefits etc from single parents.
Also, Labour accepts donations from non-doms so where's the moral high ground?

Great Im gonna have to get married now....DP (thrifty does not even come close to describing him) insists if we'll be better off we'll have to tie the knot.

He's so romantic.....

How exactly will providing a tax break for married couples help mend "broken britain"?

Bizarre

I believe there are quite a few labour non dom donors,too MP.
I don't mind Ashcroft being slated but there are plenty others too.

Yep there are labour non-doms but as far as I know, they are not the deputy chair of the party who promised to take up permanent resident in the UK TEN YEARS AGO

There have been lots of promises from people on both sides of the political divide over the past 10 years.

I'm confused what the married person tax break has to do with this...besides, isn't it just a regurgitation of something that used to be around? I remember my mother talking about it. It isn't taking money from anyone else, just giving some to a different group as well.

OK here's how 8 reportedly non-dom Labour supporters have bankrolled Labour since 2001:

Lord Paul ? £69,250 in donations to Labour, including £45,000 to Gordon Brown?s leadership campaign. A close friend of Gordon Brown and appointed to the Privy Council last summer, he has admitted to being ?non-dom?.
? Lakshmi Mittal - £4.125 million
? Sir Ronald Cohen - £2.55 million.
? Sir Christopher Ondaatje - £1.7 million
? Sir Gulam Noon - £532,826
? William Bollinger - £510,725
? Mahmoud Khayami - £985,000
? Dr David Potter - £90,000

Not sure voters will really see much between these Labour pots and Tory kettles.

But as someone said none of those people are as prominent in the Labour party as Lord A is in the Tory party.

MrsC2010 the money will have to be taken from somewhere, and if the Tories are headlining their support for marriage they can hardly champion single parents too. The Tory view is that marriage helps to create social stability therefore it must (in their view) be preferable to single parenthood.

'The Tory view is that marriage helps to create social stability therefore it must (in their view) be preferable to single parenthood'

So, hippa, you feel political parties should be creating social instability??!!

morningpaper you are obviously worried about a tory government. Labour have non dom peers like Lord Paul who make huge financial contributions to the party and sit unelected in the House of Lords, it is blatant hypocrisy to think Labour are whiter than white. They have had 13 years to clean up politics and things have got far worse under them. Look at Mandelson 2 major disgraces and he is back at no2 in the party, I could go on but there are too many to name. At least Jeffrey Archer has not been bought back into The Tory cabinet, if he was a Labour peer he would have.

LunaticFinge will you give back your married tax allowance then? Maybe you will donate it to charity. It is not a new idea it is an old re-hashed idea that worked in the past. By the way this thread Was about Lord A anyway.

It is wrong to sit in Parliament without paying full UK tax, full stop.

But Labour are disgusting, vile hypocrites. They take far more money from non-doms than the Tories ever have. Gordon Brown made Lord Paul, who funded his personal leadership campaign a privy counsellor - despite Lord Paul having achieved precisely nothing in his political career!

The Lib Dems are hardly any better. Chris Huhne, despite his odious sanctimony, took non-dom money for his personal leadership campaign. And their top donor, who gave over £2m, is a convicted crook who has gone on the run, but the Lib Dems refuse to pay back the money.

Ashcroft also founded CrimeStoppers, and will leave £900m to UK charities when he dies according to this. If he wants to sit in the Lords or fund a political party, he should pay full tax, but he's not Satan reincarnated, as Labour are saying, either.

All the parties are sleazy on donations. The solution is simple. All political donations, individual or corporate or trades union, capped at £5000. That way, we won't have so many mindless billboard campaigns, and smaller parties will get a fairer chance too.

This was proposed by the Tories and Lib Dems ages ago, but Labour disagreed. They didn't want to rid themselves of the trade union bungs.

Hippa I'm not sure why you think you can't support married couples and single parents at the same time? Surely it is a fact that there are significant numbers of both in society - therefore they all need to be supported. Any party in power will have to do it. The Tories can highlight their plans for one section or another but they'll still have to help them all.
Labour doesn't go around saying it is the party of the Single parent - they aren't putting that on posters because it's not a great message - being a single parent is a hill of pain made bearable by kids, friends and family. The fact that the Conservatives have decided that they want to shout about families is about their core voters (my mum and the Daily Mail readers!) and does not mean they will penalise single parents.

OK just to put a different opinion in, you are Lord Ashcroft and the party that you don't represent is in power. You are non-dom not paying tax into a govt that you:
a) don't support
b)don't believe in their policies
c) don't think they will spend wisely or on anything that YOU think will benefit the country.

If the tory's were in govt then yes there would be something to moan about as he isn't contributing to what he believes in - I have more of an issue with the non-dom labour supporters who are doing this. If the Tory's get in and the situation remains the same (i.e he is non-dom still) then we can raise the issue. I think we should discuss the list in olderandwider's post frankly.

Just on an aside - why should married couples be penalised? that makes no sense - I haven't heard that single parents have been penalised.

Trying to paint one party as more honest or less criminal than the others is just stupid.

Labour have had the most outrageous expenses fiddlers - the only MPs to be prosecuted (though a Tory lord is being prosecuted too). They had the most second home flippers. Gordon Brown has abused his expenses more than any of the other party leaders, and is a top 20 trougher, though Cameron and Clegg had to pay back too.

The Tories of course have had scandal after scandal, including Aitken, Archer, Mellor and the rest. They too had loads of second home expenses flippers, and of course the moat and duck house.

The Lib Dems have the Lord Rennard home flipping, the £2m criminal donor, and Mark Oaten and Lembit Opik if you prefer your scandal to be about sex rather than money.

Why take a partisan side in this? Political funding stinks, on all sides. Paying full tax should be a precondition for being a donor, and all the parties are guilty. None of them come up smelling of roses.

Lunatic, that is a take on what Lord Ashcroft is doing - didn't say it was my take! But I notice that it is a problem for a Tory not to pay into it but not a Labour donator during a Labour govt. That is my point.

No, no one has mentioned penalising married couples but there is an argument to say they are currently being penalised. I don't think there is any evidence SO FAR to say that single parents are going to be penalised though.

I think there are several people in this country who would like a refund for what this and previous govts have done, but being realistic if you were Lord Aschroft you probably wouldn't be using the NHS (you'd go private) the school system (again you'd go private) if you own a car then you are going to have to pay road tax, if you own a property you will be paying some form of council tax and if you buy a property then you will have paid stamp duty.

There are also plenty of people who are happy to comment on the govt and how it is badly run who aren't in politics and don't believe in it so become non-doms too. So yes it seems it is ok not to pay up to something if you don't believe in it, and it is fine to not pay into it if it is something you believe in and are a donator to, far more hypocritical!