"The middle classes...should pay more for a better society" (Charles Kennedy, BBC Radio 4, Today, cited on PA News, 24 September 2003).
Still I sometimes wonder why the Lib Dems ever worry about announcing policy because given the fact they are not going to be in Government and the fact that their Leader says they would never enter into a coalition then it must be quite difficult to discern why you would vote for them.
For the Conservatives the debate now moves on to where you reduce taxation. £4bn is not a lot in national tax terms but it indicates a path a Conservative Government would take. Seems we will have to wait until after the budget for that aspect but it does not stop speculation. For me there are a number of areas worth considering.
- Raise the threshold at which income tax starts to be paid. Seems mad to me that if we have a minimum wage that those on it still pay tax!
- Raise the threshold for inheritance tax. I hate these double tax systems. You pay income tax when you are alive and then you pay tax again on the same money when you die. I would like to see its abolition but that is stretching the £4bn too far.
- Reduce Council tax bills and abolish the payment of Council tax for those households composed of people over the age of retirement.
Well that's a start but I suppose the debate may rage on for a while, at least until the election.
We had a Surbiton neighbourhood planning meeting with an awkward decision about a school car park being placed over a green area after the ned was revealed to be there by the CPZ imposed in the area preventing teacher parking. Tough one.
10 comments:
I definitely think that Pensioners should b exempt from Council tax. They live on fixed incomes, sometimes all their wealth is in the houses they raised their families in to which they are sentimntally attached and may have to sell for nursing home care. This means they get stung for huge out of pocket Council Tax bills which go up and up every year, by much more than the pension. I don't see why Students are exempt from Council Tax, but Pensioners have to cough up.
Also taxing people on minimum wage is totally self defeating.
Ahem... I think the point is that BOTH students and Pensioners should be exempt from Council Tax.
There is a great big Red Herring splashing around in your Swimming Pool Tax idea.
The game is surely spending more by wasting less - not by putting up taxes. If governments just take the easy option and tap the taxpayer whenever they spend £750million on a dome, or parliament building, or 100 thousand civil servants or an efficiency unit, or whatever, then where does it end?
A little bit more here. Just a smidge more there. Oh you won't even notice this. Sooner or later all that hard earned money (whether earned by the hard working rich or the hard working poor), ends up being washed down the plughole of H.M. Treasury's own indoor swimming pool.
Waste less = spend more + a modest tax cut for the poorest
Of course richer people should pay more, but please recognise that you can't have welfare without the wealth to pay for it, and taxing more makes everyone except bureaucrats and paper pushers poorer.
I think I agree. There is no "Magic Money". Every penny the government gets has been given to it by someone who has earned it. The government doesn't create any money, it just spreads around what other people give it, and wastes a lot in the process. You can't let it get out of hand.
I think people paying tax on the minimum wage is just daft. That sort of fact shows you when things have gone to far. Surely they could cut taxes on these poor people, and get better value for money before raising any more taxes at all.
I am totally opposed to the 50% top rate of tax.
Time and again it has been proved that high rates of tax for the rich merely increase the tax avoidance schemes that successive governments can never block. Higher tax always leads to lower tax receipts.
I cannot believe the amount of money I now have to earn just to stand still in parity with 1997.
In any case Charles Kennedy said in the quote I outlined that he wanted to have higher taxes for the middle classes. I know that Local Income Tax will hit them harder because in Kingston it would be about 5%.
The simple reality is there is no need for any more taxation. We are over taxed and over burdened and it is time we started given the people of this nation the right to spend their money the way they want to and not the way the nanny world of Labour and the Lib Dems want to.
Higher taxes does not necessarily mean better public services and there are many in this country who are now of that mind.
I say "power to the people", they know best how to spend their money, not politicians.
What a silly arguement that Kevin makes: the Lib Dems shouldn't make any policy announcements because they won't get into power in 2005. So should the party just keep quiet and have no original ideas- the tories are like a mirror of Labour- keep the council tax, the Iraq war, ID cards. The council elections in recent years have shown that people like the Lib dem message- particularly in Kingston and Surbiton. 22% of the public support it.
And talking of not getting into power; looking at the polls, the experts, the trading markets and the public response to the tories- they have about as much chance as the Lib Dems of winning in May!
Or more saliently ...
Kevin; you were leader of the Royal Borough for more than two years. In that time my council tax rose from £95 a month to £120; yet my pension rose by less than £5.
How am I to believe you are going to cut taxes when you put them up as leader of Kingston Council?
Our last Conservative MP, Mr Lamont, said he wouldn't tax pensioners' fuel, but put VAT at 17.5% on it.
I like many people of my generation no longer trust your party - you cut our pensions, you closed our post offices and made us pay the Council Tax. I'd rather rich people like you paid a bit more so I could live in peace.
Lib Dem policies never stand up to scrutiny and they never do. As ever they also get theri facts wrong. I was Leader of the Administration for 14 months and during that time it was the Lib Dems who pushed through the budget against our objections and our proposals for a lower rate of Council Tax. They even tried to get the auditors to say our budget was illegal when it was not and was proved not to be! In any case the current Liib Dem administartion is saying they are going to put it up next year by three times the rate of inflation and cut services such as parks maintenance, Highway maintenance and the budget for cleaning Tolowrth Broadway and of course they blame the Government. It apparently has nothing to do with them that in 4 years the number of people employed by Kingston has rise 22%!!
Secondly I am not rich. I am an ordinary family man trying to make a living and getting caught by punitive high taxes for cruddy services. Ask yourself why our hospital is so filthy and why have they cancelled all non essential operations because they are overspent? Ask yourself why almost every school in this Borough now runs a school fund on which the parents have the squeeze put on them to contribute to the running costs of the school? All this and we are now paying an average of £6k more tax per year per household and almost every respected economist admits that taxes will rise further if Labour get in again.
As for Post Offices well the Lib Dem record is pretty poor there. The Lib Dem MP tells the press he has this enormous 1700 signature petititon and yet when the Post Office is checked all they have is a 1000 signature one. Couple that with the Lib Dem national policy, which they keep quiet about, to privatise the Post Office and just think where we would be now. I accept the Tory party was all for privatisation but even we could see that would damage the network and rejected it.
I am not an officer of the Association but the Kingston and Surbiton Conservative Association appears fully accountable to me. Elections are held each year to elect those people the members wish to run the association.
Each year the Association, as do all parties, file their accounts with the electoral commission and for the year ending 31.12.03 the association expenditure was £32,724.00.
There is clear accountability.
I would not support any waste of money by any organisation.
However, in regard to Kingston and Surbiton Conservative Association you are asking the wrong person. The Parliamentary candidate has no power within the association, that is left to the elected officers.
As a "member" of the association I have a vote and as yet have not seen last years accounts to form a judgement as to what has or has not been spent.
Post a Comment