so is there anyone with the guts to admit they were wrong when they voted tory at the last election??

[ssd]

or are you all proud of yourselves now???

the country is going to hell, except for the well off, thanks to this government

so is anyone going to admit they were wrong?

"but yes, of course, one could raise tax. that would raise revenue. and how would that mean that the treasury get less because the rich can choose whether or not to pay tax how DOES that work?"

In the short term, it would raise more revenue, undoubtedly. MN does seem to credit the UK-resident rich with a massive amount of cunning when it comes to tax avoidance, and actually, fairly unsurprisingly, there are very few tax avoidance loopholes, especially for employees (as opposed to self employed)- the vast majority of taxpayers just pay. If the higher tax rate was increased to 60%, or the 50% band brought downwards, on a 1-2 yr basis it would raise more revenue. BUT, that would be a very short term view to take.

Calculating optimal tax rates/ bands for the medium term is a very complicated exercise in demand/ supply curves where UK income is the product. A higher rate doesnt necessarily equate to higher total income if fewer people are prepared to pay it. The rich tend to be the more geographically mobile sector of society and there are some nice places to live with low tax rates. They could move. You already see this a fair bit- people trying to time their peak earnings years with living/ working in lower tax jurisdictions (non-UK residents dont pay UK tax on foreign earnings). However, more critically, foreign investors don't like high tax jurisdictions generally so high tax rates put companies off investing in the UK because they have to pay people more for them to have the same take home pay.

So, yes, raising taxes short term will raise revenues short term, but at the risk of cutting the head off the Goose that lays the golden egg.

A big insentive to push for a flat rate 20% tax with a higher threshold then!!
Historically you can see that the higher the top rate of tax, the lower the tax gain.
So if you shout "tax the rich more" al that happens is the rich fuck off! A bit pointless.

Also is it so wrong to ask people to earn their own money rather than sit on their arse and hold out their hand?

I am a conservative with a small c.
I dont despise the poor, I am only fractionally above that myself.
I do believe that you make your own luck but also that you can be given a poor hand in life and that counts against you every step of the way.

I get fed up being branded an evil tory by some mnetters just because I dont live up north and vote for Labour.
Life is never that simple IMHE.

I live up north, always have.
I'm not "rich" by any means (currently earning just above the minimum wage, if you calculate the hours I put into my business, against the money I actually make out of it).

I'm disabled, and am in receipt of some benefits. I accept that the govt will want to assess my disabilities again soon, to ensure they are giving everyone elses money away to someone who really needs it. I also recognise that there isn't any money there in the public coffers to support people who won't do anything to earn it. A lot of folk who live on benefits could do some sort of work.

I voted conservative, and would do again tomorrow if the was another election. The former govt inherited a strong economy which had been built by the previous conservative administration. Yes, the years of the Thatcher governments were hard for many of us, but they were necessary to get Britain back to economic strength, and by the end of that administration we were in a good economic place, inflation and unemployment were well under control, and we were a prosperous country again.

Labour rode the crest of that wave for the first 2 years, and then drove us back into the ground over the following 11, undoing all the good work, until we find ourselves here, in the mire once again. And people are now shocked and upset that we have to go thru all the difficulty again, cutting public spending all ways because "there isn't any money".

"Yes, the years of the Thatcher governments were hard for many of us, but they were necessary to get Britain back to economic strength"

hmm that's funnny as it's was the late 80's when my parents moved south, it was 1993 when they were able to buy a house dirt cheap as there were so many homes being repossessed.

Unemployment figures have always been doctored, they always have been, and always will be.

It's amazing whast you can do when you do't include certain benefit recipients as unemployed.......

Markets go up and down as to house prices. It's how they work. However it is certainly true that the higher your tax rates the less tax is recovered and the worse the poor do.

Some people would prefer less money but more of what they see as fairness but I don't agree with that.

I am not sure this government is brave enough to be anything like radical enough but we'll see.

no - you misunderstood me Xenia - the reason they could afford to buy was because there were so many (very cheap - was before the banks had to attempt to get a reasonable price for the house) repossessed homes flooding the market, the "normal" ones up for sale were still way out of price reach.

The only thing that mattered to the Labour Party during the election was clinging onto power. They didn't care about ordinary people, because they had their corrupt little world into which they could retreat while they wasted our money on useless initiatives and time-wasting bureaucracy in the public sector.

I'm talking about frittering away your hard-earned wages on things which actually debilitated our public sector and actually made the NHS, state education and police LESS able to work effectively. They used your money to spend on initiative after initiative simply devised to CONTROL people's behaviour, and haranguing and bullying people over the as yet unproven theories about carbon dioxide emissions is just one tool they have used.
And instead of making it worth people's while to work it was better to get them to rely on state handouts; great, it guarantees them a large section of the public vote, which keeps them in ... power.
The TUC leaders you see on telly are all fatcats with nothing to lose - massive salaries, huge pensions, and they can't wait to put the boot in to the Tories for political reasons more than ideological ones. They've done nothing to protect teachers' jobs and working conditions over the past 13 years and kept noticably schtum over the fact that your children are now being taught by unqualified staff.
It wasn't much of a choice at the election but then it never is. The Coalition has a 6bn+ debt to sort out though - doing Labour's dirty work for them.

Well said Bullethead!

As I say markets go up and down and all Governments have recessions and house price drops over the decades.

What we now have is a huge "state" and massive waste and we're cutting that. Labour were going to cut by 20% and the Tories by 25% which is neither here nor there.

What does concern me is the polls today which seem to show women are being particularly pathetic about this and not accepting necessary cuts which we would have had under either party.

I didn't want the Tories in.

I absolutely didn't want Labour in, not after the abuse they've inflicted on the elderly, families, single women with children.

I couldn't see the LibDems getting in, but I voted for them in any case.

Now I see Nick Clegg in charge when Cameron in out-of-the country. Who would think the senior politician in the country would be a LibDem if there was a crisis?

Having lived in Europe the idea of a coalition government is fine with me. Every government should be a coalition. I would have even accepted a Labour-tory coalition, though that would be impossible.

The state Labour left the country in was appalling, both financially and socially. Education is probably in the worst state, next to social care. I don't think The Coalition will be able to unpick the damage done in the time available.

Now I've seen the LibDems in Government, I wouldn't hesitate voting for them to form their own.

I voted Labour in 1997. I got a war-hungry, neo-con, fascist-like power-crazed mob of xenophobes that was close to The Republican Party during Bush jnrs time, instead of a democrat-socialist government.

I'm happy with the result, and let's not forget, they've not actually started anything substantial yet above and beyond what Labour were contemplating. The difference between the coalition and Labour is the timing; labour knew they would have to impose swingeing cuts, they just didn't fancy saying when they would be imposed. The coalition have said they know they have to impose swingeing cuts - it would be just better to do it now, rather than delay the inevitable and make it worse for the even longer term.

Even the union effort to get strikes going s a non-starter - too many public officials have abused too many members of the public in recent years, and they'll get little support there.

We don't know yet.
There's a lot of scaremongering in the tabloid press. Not sure whether it's substantiated.

All I know is that I keep emailing politicians to try to sway their opinion. Mostly men, they're mostly ignorant about real life so I feel it my duty to inform them. Besides, that's DEMOCRACY.
Here in the UK we're priveleged to have one - or a sort of one, and it's entirely up to us to ensure there IS one at all.
It's very easy to contact ministers and Mps - you just google their contact details. The writing style doesn't have to be anything special, JUST WRITE and tell them what you know. (I've had direct and immediate responses from many politicians)

In the run-up to the election, the Tories were very keen to find out what we think. They invited us to tell them and their communications dept was excellent. I really appreciated that. Now theyr'e in there, we have to keep up the pressure.

Look at From the Fawcett Society, campaigners for equal rights for women. See website: www.fawcettsocity.org.uk, and join up - they need all the support they can get!

this country is broke because of tony blair. brown did the best he could with no money in a short time. i didnt vote for any of the main 3 but i think brown did a good job when everything crashed.

anyone who voted for the tories should feel ashamed

NordicPrincess You are right, in a sense, that the country is broke because of Tony Blair - he didn't do enough to keep Gordon Brown on a spending leash.

I don't know why anyone should be ashamed of voting Tory though. They are doing what is necessary to sort out the economic emergency that Labour left behind.

Labour brought Britain to the brink of bankruptcy. Fixing it will be hard but totally necessary.

I think anyone who votes labour or has voted labour should be embarrassed, the labour party bankrupted this country, took us into an illegal war, TRIED to take away our civil liberties and much worse! I did not vote Tory they are too left wing! Whatever happended to Daftpunk? must find out and get her back on this site.