Direction of travel

[Phil xxkr]

6 minutes ago, Linas.P said:

Yes - the social system we have works on principles of wealth redistribution. But then it is very hard to explain why richest pay the least... As well some services better than others... NHS is mediocre (other countries does it better), schools - mediocre, roads - horrible (objectively). But taxation is relatively high. I honestly can't think of any public service in UK which would be good or excellent.

Taxation should indeed be raised for common good, SHOULD, the problem is that not everyone contributes and "common good" is questionable. It is all good to say that "cyclist" pays income tax and NI already, so we should get of their backs... but wait a second? Motorists do that as well. Even just mentioning as if motorists and cyclists as separate groups just shows how tribalism works and how successful is government divide and rule policy. Cyclist should not be enraged about their infrastructure - motorists literally pay 3.5times over for roads, not counting other taxes and there is enough money to both fix the roads and install separate cycle lanes everywhere. 

Yes our government... done a job, they existed, I would not call that good job. If anything France, Germany and Italy was in way way worse place after WW2. I would argue France and Germany in particular done way better job and even then their governments are far from perfect, so by comparison UK government did poor job. Obviously there are worse governments in the world and "current" (say last 20 years) government is the best government this country ever had, but you giving them way too much credit. I would rank UK government somewhere between acceptable and unacceptable. Not terrible, but not great.

Saying that corruption is low is really hard to accept. Sure it is sometimes hard to divide outright corruption and government waste, but I can point out to at least 10 occasions in last year alone where government was found to have "lost" in excess of £100 million without much of the consequences. And those are only the ones which press got hold off and only the ones where the deal completely fell thought. However there are thousands of examples where we overpay for the service 10 fold, but goods gets delivered and nobody talk about it. This is how NHS works in principle and every NHS order is literally disaster. With some insider knowledge I know that NHS overpays for literally everything from 5 to 10 times... or more. As well it is outright corruption, not even just "waste" - simply said management gets their pockets lined with money, ministers literally sit on boards or have shares in pharmaceutics industry, even GPs get's a cut to promote certain drugs. If one party get's a benefit from ordering inferior or too expensive product using public money - that is definition of corruption. I can give specific examples, but the list would be 10 pages long. It starts from overpaying for every single drug, to pay 10 times more for things like titanium surgical screws, or sterile instruments. In one example MRI was purchased for £7.6 million, where the unit cost was £250k, fair enough they said radiological cabined needed refurbishment, but that was what - £100k extra. How many times is that? 21 times over the price! Sure enough Trust director's wife works as account manager for NHS in Siemens UK. And this is every single thing NHS buys, from basic chemicals to basic drugs. Actually, the cheaper is the thing the more NHS overpays... because it is easier to do it on cheap things. Say paracetamol costs literally like 1p per tablet, but some NHS trusts were found ordering pack of paracetamol with 8 tablets for £4.49... now multiply that by tens of millions of tablets at x56 the cost of what it should and see how much money was lost of generic drug alone. There was another example ordering hand soap and toilet paper, I don't remember the numbers but it was in similar ballpark.

In short - saying that maybe there is little bit of waste here and there... just not true! NHS wastes like 50-70% of their budget. And then at the same time they can't even pay their staff decent salaries. It is literal disaster and on other hand - miracle... that being so inefficient it manages to provide any healthcare service at all. 

A great read Linas with only one contentious point that of WW2. This country borrowed huge amounts to fund the war and only paid off during the nineties if I recall. A substantial amount went into the rebuilding the countries mentioned at the expense of this country's infrastructure. 

[Linas.P]

5 minutes ago, Phil xxkr said:

It did in fact happen Linas, headline - "Repatriated profits total $465 billion after Trump tax cuts - leaving $2.5 trillion overseasPublished: Sept. 19, 2018 at 1:02 p.m. ET" 

But my point is the same, even the $2.5 trn overseas is invested somewhere mainly in sound investments providing predictable returns for pension companies. And yes Apple has 230bn in cash but you fail to mention is has 74bn in long term debt and has committed to investing $430bn in the USA - don't you just love figures? 👍

Not sure what is your point. Fact is - companies generate tons of untaxed cash. They may invest them in pension funds and contribute pennies on pounds in the value of them, so that retiring people will get maybe 5-10% more on their pension pot then they otherwise would. Still it is clear that if they would have paid taxes at the rates they should, we could simply scrap VED and still have money to spare. Or cut income tax for individual by 10%, or spend 300 million more a week on NHS without leaving EU. In fact we main not even need 3rd layer pension schemes at all, because we could pay pensioners decent pensions just from taxes alone.

Let me explain how 74bn debt works... you see you don't have to pay taxes if you don't have profits. Practical example - if crapple uses it's money pot to build new HQ for 1.2bn and if they make 1.2bn profit in that year then they have to pay tax on it and on profits they made, but if they borrow 1.2bn, then they can offload all tax on profits and on the building itself into debt. They can effectively claim they made no profit!

As for commitment to invest 430bn that is nothing more than PR. I can commit to many things, but they are not legally binding and as well... "oh wow"... they committed to reinvest the money they basically stolen from the society ... heroes!

[Linas.P]

18 minutes ago, Phil xxkr said:

A great read Linas with only one contentious point that of WW2. This country borrowed huge amounts to fund the war and only paid off during the nineties if I recall. A substantial amount went into the rebuilding the countries mentioned at the expense of this country's infrastructure. 

Sorry but I don't buy this. The claim that UK got into debt to defend and free the countries mentioned ... is partially true. In reality, UK was first and foremost defending itself and destroying nazis was the way to achieve this. So on this I would say 50/50%. But when it comes to rebuilding France or Germany, or Italy UK has not contributed crap. UK was isolating itself from European trade and counter productively still acted as if it is empire with whole useless Commonwealth project. If anything by 60's France and Germany was already outpacing UK in terms of growth, and by 70's European project was so much ahead that UK really wanted into it (and benefited greatly by joining). Only after joining what was at the time called European Communities, UK finally managed to match the growth and prosperity of other countries. Not to mention that of Germany was occupied and other half still had to pay reparations.

If I would point to any particular reason why UK was so poor, then I would say it was majority fault of Labour social policies, unions made farce of work and productivity was very poor. Then secondly, the Tories contribute as well, by dismantling industries and making millions of workers even poorer. All in all country was very inefficient, didn't have good long term policy, subsequent governments were destroying policy of preceding governments and the disaster capitalists benefited from such mess. The only reason we are not stinking waste swamp is that somehow somebody made good decision by joining EC and overall prosperity of the continent lifted UK out of the mess it was. 

[Malc]

3 hours ago, Mincey said:

moved their European HQ to Switzerland for tax purposes....

for tax purposes or nay it's such a beautiful country to drive around ....... especially in my old Lexus Ls400

Malc

[Malc]

3 hours ago, doog442 said:

it comes from 40 ton HGV's

I suggest maybe the HGVs are super taxed especially at the border where they arrive from the EU .... a super tax to either cover their costs of damage to our BRITISH roads or just to keep the imports down from the EU and elsewhere that arrive by HGV 

Malc

[Malc]

46 minutes ago, Linas.P said:

The only reason we are not stinking waste swamp is that somehow somebody made good decision by joining EC

.................... and an even better decision, by public acclaim, vote,  to leave the EC to enable this wonderful Great British nation of ours to do much much better than ever before 

Bring us your Poor and Needy and they will ensure our country develops into an even more amazing and wonderful place to be  .................  DISCUSS  ( maybe ? ) 

Malc

[Malc]

one could say .......  "  on yer bike Malc "  

Malc

[Linas.P]

19 minutes ago, Malc said:

I suggest maybe the HGVs are super taxed especially at the border where they arrive from the EU .... a super tax to either cover their costs of damage to our BRITISH roads or just to keep the imports down from the EU and elsewhere that arrive by HGV 

They already are - Road User Levy £1000 a year or £10 a day or already higher VED for British trucks. Although probably it is too low compared the cars - trucks maxes out at £850, whereas private vehicles are very close to that, especially with additional luxury car tax.

Most importantly again - tax revenues are more than enough for every person in UK to live like kings, if not for large amount of that revenue being wasted, we would not need any extra tax. Question we need to ask - where our taxes are going and who are responsible for services and infrastructure being so poor.

5 minutes ago, Malc said:

.................... and an even better decision, by public acclaim, vote,  to leave the EC to enable this wonderful Great British nation of ours to do much much better than ever before 

Bring us your Poor and Needy and they will ensure our country develops into an even more amazing and wonderful place to be  .................  DISCUSS  ( maybe ? ) 

That is purely political discussion without anyone being right or wrong. Based purely on economic indicators we know and that is fact that UK has prospered after joining EC and flatlined after leaving EU.

Was it worth it? That is not for me to say, but economic damage is very clear and obvious. And economic benefit was defined and easy to prove.

As well future prosperity promises are just that - promises. So far I have not seen any evidence of it being possible. 

[Malc]

1 minute ago, Linas.P said:

where our taxes are going and who are responsible for services and infrastructure being so poor. 

probably the Civil Servants that govern the way the politicians and the Government runs the country 

                           DISCUSS   ?

Malc

[Bluemarlin]

4 hours ago, Phil xxkr said:

But these arguments are based on the premis that the size of the state in all forms does not decrease but increases over time. Why? Where are the true conservatives arguing for a reduced involvement in people's lives.? 

There aren't any true conservatives Phil, at least not in a real world sense, don't think there ever have been.

Take the US for example, who are further to the right than us. They largely don't get involved in the lives of the poor, they think single payer healthcare is borderline communism, and believe people should sink or swim based on their own effort and abilties. That may sound like conservatism, but it's only practised in one direction.

For the average American, the biggest cause (65%) of personal bankrupcy is healthcare costs. So they, along with other individuals who fail, get to sink. After all, it's not the fault of the wealthy that they got sick or failed, and governments shouldn't interfere in free markets.

On the other hand, how many CEO's of banks or large corporations who fail say ""Hey, we got it wrong, guess it's off to the poor house for us." Suddenly the love of small government conservatism disappears, as ordinary people's tax dollars are demanded to bail them out. They fail, and yet continue to pay themselves huge bonuses, with other people's money.

So, there are no true conservatives. At best there are those who want conservatism whilstever it works for them, and socialism if and when they fail, and those with enough money and power get it.

That said, I'm not especially opposed to the priciples of conservatism and free markets, as long as it's even handed, and I've yet to see that.

[Mincey]

3 hours ago, First_Lexus said:

This is like the opening minutes of Casualty. You know something bad is going to happen, you just aren’t sure exactly when and to whom…😇

And like watching the first five or so minutes of Midsomer Murders, trying to guess which star guest is going to meet a sticky or bloody end.

[Moleman]

2 hours ago, doog442 said:

I think its sad that you want to tax or charge cyclists, hence the emoji, quite simple really. 

So it was personal. That is sad. I did not say I wanted to tax cyclists I said why should they not be part of the discussion. Perhaps you should read the post rather than keep expressing your problem with me and anyone who appears not to fall inline with everything you say. Really sad. 😥 Anyway thanks to just about everyone else who while having many different views on here managed to find areas of agreement without being aggressive.

[Las Palmas]

2 hours ago, Linas.P said:

Sorry but I don't buy this. The claim that UK got into debt to defend and free the countries mentioned ... is partially true. In reality, UK was first and foremost defending itself and destroying nazis was the way to achieve this. So on this I would say 50/50%. But when it comes to rebuilding France or Germany, or Italy UK has not contributed crap. UK was isolating itself from European trade and counter productively still acted as if it is empire with whole useless Commonwealth project. If anything by 60's France and Germany was already outpacing UK in terms of growth, and by 70's European project was so much ahead that UK really wanted into it (and benefited greatly by joining). Only after joining what was at the time called European Communities, UK finally managed to match the growth and prosperity of other countries. Not to mention that of Germany was occupied and other half still had to pay reparations.

If I would point to any particular reason why UK was so poor, then I would say it was majority fault of Labour social policies, unions made farce of work and productivity was very poor. Then secondly, the Tories contribute as well, by dismantling industries and making millions of workers even poorer. All in all country was very inefficient, didn't have good long term policy, subsequent governments were destroying policy of preceding governments and the disaster capitalists benefited from such mess. The only reason we are not stinking waste swamp is that somehow somebody made good decision by joining EC and overall prosperity of the continent lifted UK out of the mess it was. 

You are one of the few in this forum I consider to be better equipped with intelligence and knowledge than, well yes, the vast majority. That some here consider you to be a tinfoil hat is because you do not have the same opinion as them, and that is not something to be sad about. The average IQ should be 100 but is probably closer to 90 (Mensa scale). That is the only explanation I can see that makes so many people believe in all the information that is served to them. Keep writing and tell what you think. That is one of the reasons I'm still reading elsewhere than on the CT200h site.

[Las Palmas]

57 minutes ago, Bluemarlin said:

That said, I'm not especially opposed to the priciples of conservatism and free markets, as long as it's even handed, and I've yet to see that.

Do not believe you will live long enough to see that as it probably will never happen.

[Linas.P]

1 hour ago, Bluemarlin said:

There aren't any true conservatives Phil, at least not in a real world sense, don't think there ever have been.

Take the US for example, who are further to the right than us. They largely don't get involved in the lives of the poor, they think single payer healthcare is borderline communism, and believe people should sink or swim based on their own effort and abilties. That may sound like conservatism, but it's only practised in one direction.

For the average American, the biggest cause (65%) of personal bankrupcy is healthcare costs. So they, along with other individuals who fail, get to sink. After all, it's not the fault of the wealthy that they got sick or failed, and governments shouldn't interfere in free markets.

On the other hand, how many CEO's of banks or large corporations who fail say ""Hey, we got it wrong, guess it's off to the poor house for us." Suddenly the love of small government conservatism disappears, as ordinary people's tax dollars are demanded to bail them out. They fail, and yet continue to pay themselves huge bonuses, with other people's money.

So, there are no true conservatives. At best there are those who want conservatism whilstever it works for them, and socialism if and when they fail, and those with enough money and power get it.

That said, I'm not especially opposed to the priciples of conservatism and free markets, as long as it's even handed, and I've yet to see that.

As well we tend to look into political scare as not only 2 dimensional, but literally lineal from left to right, with centre being sort of most balanced. Yet it is not the case at all - politics and policies are multidimensional thing. Most importantly party politics hurts us all, because it becomes mandatory to follow the party which one believes represents their political goal (be it socialist, liberalist, democrat or conservator) regardless if those parties are corrupt, efficient or even truly represents the ideology. 

More efficient way would be to look into the problem and find most suitable solution for, regardless where it sits on political scales. For example I do believe that best place for healthcare is in hands of centralised government, even if that is as amuricans would call it "communist idea", but at the same time I think that health care should be run efficiently, almost like company, negotiating harshly on all the contracts to get best value for it's customers (that is patients) and shareholders (taxpayers). 

Usually, the people who criticise NHS or social/healthcare are opposed to it not because they don't like the idea, but because they wrongly attribute inefficiency to state ownership. But to be fair it doesn't have to be inefficient - the only reason it is, is due to party politics and corruption. State owned companies can be just as efficient.

The issue again is party politics, because if one identify as socialist, then they can't support private capital, even if that is most rational solution. Conservative can't support state ownership and so on. In the end of the day if they would forget their political agendas and just look into what is the best regardless of where it falls on political spectrum we all would be in better place.

[Las Palmas]

You are politically un-correct. The real name is lobbyism and not corruption.

[Bluemarlin]

Totally agree Linas. It should be about right vs wrong, not left vs right.

[Linas.P]

29 minutes ago, Las Palmas said:

You are politically un-correct. The real name is lobbyism and not corruption.

Often but not always. Politicians are so untouchable (parliament literally sovereign) that they don't shy away from literal corruption. As well different rules for them as it is for us. When they do it it is "lobbyism", but if we do it - then it would be "bribery, fraud and corruption".

Partygate anyone?

[Las Palmas]

Careful, I once wrote that your PM was a jerk and was rebuked by a member of the forum and lectured that he was the best mayor of London and the best and most honest politician in the world.

[ColinBarber]

5 minutes ago, Las Palmas said:

the best and most honest politician in the world

even if true, it's not a high bar to achieve 🤣

[Moleman]

8 minutes ago, Las Palmas said:

Careful, I once wrote that your PM was a jerk and was rebuked by a member of the forum and lectured that he was the best mayor of London and the best and most honest politician in the world.

I wonder if they would say the same today.

[doog442]

2 hours ago, Moleman said:

So it was personal. That is sad. I did not say I wanted to tax cyclists I said why should they not be part of the discussion. Perhaps you should read the post rather than keep expressing your problem with me and anyone who appears not to fall inline with everything you say. Really sad. 😥 Anyway thanks to just about everyone else who while having many different views on here managed to find areas of agreement without being aggressive.

My problem with you ...I had no idea who you were until you started spamming my posts with sad emojis. I think I may have replied to a few of your posts since but certainly don't have an issue with you. You do come over as anti cycling everything, often hanging onto every negative cycling post but hey ho its the internet and as you said people are entitled to their views. 

If you're getting upset over a little emoji (that was in no way aggressive) then there's a very good ignore function that could save you from that future trauma  

[doog442]

3 hours ago, Malc said:

I suggest maybe the HGVs are super taxed especially at the border where they arrive from the EU .... a super tax to either cover their costs of damage to our BRITISH roads or just to keep the imports down from the EU and elsewhere that arrive by HGV 

Malc

Haha, seriously though UK trucks pay a hell of a lot of tax I understand. I feel I'm walking on eggshells on this thread with some but if I offered up an increase in rail freight to help reduce traffic, emissions, stress on roads / buildings and our health then I'd get mullered asking who's going to fill that big fat VED void 

[Mr Vlad]

Wasn't a Saturday rant Phil. Just my honest opinion and a Fact about hospital cleanliness. 🍻

[Phil xxkr]

21 minutes ago, Mr Vlad said:

Wasn't a Saturday rant Phil. Just my honest opinion and a Fact about hospital cleanliness. 🍻

Vlad! Alongside draught Pedigree having a rant is one of the greatest pleasures in life 🥳