The other thing some have overlooked is that this contest was just for the president, next month is for the m.p.'s and given the two traditional parties are still the majority and Le Pen still had a third of the votes, then the m.p. votes could be crucial. He runs a real risk in U.K. terms of electing Tim Farron as prime minister but having no mp's of his own party in the houses. His party was only created last year so as of now, they have no current m.p's
Correct. The French President is a largely symbolic role. Without a majority in Parliament holding the Presidency carries no legislative power. Even if conjours some MPs from somewhere, if he continues the policies of Hollande, which are now utterly discredited, even in France with its bizarre and self-harming addiction to socialism - which he will because he is Hollande's acolyte and placeman - his honeymoon with the public will be short-lived.
you missed Australia :smiley: Corbyn had a good idea today, no honest. He wanted parity with Wales and Scotland and said we should not be charging people car park fee's to visit hospital, I agree with him However when asked how they would fund the loss of income, the old trotsky came back with, you guessed it, no not Tories at Westminster but, tax more. There is a problem here U.K.'s tax rate for those between Band Taxable income Tax rate Personal Allowance Up to £11,500 0% Basic rate £11,501 to £45,000 20% Higher rate £45,001 to £150,000 40% Additional rate over £150,000 45% Lets say you work for a company that pays you £46,000 and within that you also get free bupa You still have to pay your national insurance for the nhs, you are less likely to use nhs resources on the big bill stuff but you are also taxed currently an extra 12% tax on that company health insurance, they now want to increase that to 20% So if you are earning anything over £45, 001 and have company health insurance, you pay 40% tax or your income, another 12% tax on the health insurance, use the nhs less so others without insurance can have more access and now Labour think that you are rich enough to pay an additional 75% increase on the tax you are already paying on your insurance. They say they are taxing the rich, I feel more they are taxing the hell out of the middle class and those who want a better life, god help the self employed
Shouldn't this be in the UK election thread? It's a very valid point though - there simply aren't enough "rich" individuals or corporations (and they are not so easy to extract money from) so the "middle" will always be milked. It's worse than you say though - for a start National Insurance does not to any major extent fund the NHS - it's more linked with the state pension, and it only barely funds that (but at least in a vague way NI contribution record affects state pension entitlement). The NHS is funded out of "general taxation" which means anything they can get, from anyone who they can get it from... and NHS services are provided to anyone who turns up regardless of whether they contribute. As for those income tax contributions, you missed the 60% income tax rate which applies from £100,000-123,000 (because personal allowance is taken away at rate of £1 for every £2 of income above £100K). I laughed when I heard that McDonnell does not rule out having a new 60% rate for earnings above £100K ... assuming he is not bright enough to realise how this all works, then those earning over £100K would then be hit for 80% (or 82% if you include NI). It's odd that the lefties use their favoured word "Progressive" when their policies would take the UK back to the 1970s. I very much doubt that the Conservative party will put any policies in their manifesto which offer radical and practical alternatives, such as: - Tax relief on medical insurance payments (to encourage people to reduce the burden on the NHS) or - Remove the "withdrawal of personal allowance" mechanism (because it is insane) and adjust threshold for 45% tax rate downwards to make up for it. or - Start to move funding of the NHS away from "General taxation" and towards some form of identifiable "state medical insurance contribution" system (not NI, and not something that loads of people will never pay)
Funny how everyone says the Labour party is the party of tax increases, yet its been the Tories who have been doing just that in the last few years. Hitting small business owners and directors very hard indeed and adding red tape here there and everywhere.
BTW tax relief on medical insurance payments would not reduce the burden on the NHS. There are many issues that private health can not or will not cover.
It's entirely true that, in the UK, private medical insurance plans on the whole are only an add-on to the NHS which acts in effect as a state monopoly for all those who don't pay for any additional insurance, or pay one-off private charges when they wish to or are desperate enough to. But that's not the point - clearly any care that is funded by insurance companies does not have to be delivered by the NHS. Therefore, unless you think that tax relief will no have no influence on the amount of insurance sold, I cannot see how you can say it would have no effect on the burden on the NHS. The John McDonnell approach of adding even more extra tax on top of the premiums would inevitably mean that many would say "I'm not paying that" and then they'd forgo the insurance and place extra demand on the NHS. And before you start on the inequality of it all, surely anyone who has enough income to pay for insurance will undoubtedly be paying handsome amounts of taxes of all sorts, so can hardly be said to have "not paid enough tax for the NHS". Don't get me wrong, I'm not really in favour of a system comprising the NHS general-tax-funded-partial-monopoly combined with top-up private services, but if that's what we have to have, it would be helped by tax relief. Alternatives are NOT the hopeless US system, but something more akin to those state-enforced/insurance systems that work in the healthier countries of the world - including many other European countries. In contrast, the approach favoured by the likes of McDonnell or the LibDems is to go on milking tax where they can, and throwing it at the same creaking system.
You would end up with a system whereby having an illness means your insurance cover either sky rockets to cover any future cover or they refuse to cover you at all. I don't have the answer on this one but an add on similar to the private health cover currently offered in the UK would not work. The French healthcare system is I believe very good but not sure how it is funded.
as good as the french system is. the wife waited for several hours with a broken wrist and bone piercing the skin after a snowboarding accident while they waited for proof of insurance, no thanks.
Perhaps it's worth reading up on it then? Health care in France - Wikipedia Israel is another interesting example. Of course we wouldn't want a system like the US where insurance can become unaffordable. I'd have thought the French idea where premiums are based mainly on income would appeal to many.
We could call it something like..........."National Insurance Contributions" That has a great ring to it.
You could, but you'd be silly if you did. That "great ring" that it has to it is a deception. Only about 20% of NI contributions are fed into the NHS which consumes more money than the total NI input, and healthcare receives far more funding from "general taxation" than it does from NI. The primary use of NI is to fund contributory benefits and that's mainly the state pension. NI is only paid by employers and employees (including self-employed of course) so it is not ideal as a way to fund healthcare because so many avoid paying any significant amount - retired people for a start, who take an awful lot out of the NHS but do not pay any NI. OK, so older people pay other taxes, but if we were to increase NI for the NHS, they would get away with paying nothing extra, which would be unfair on those who are younger.
Voted against his party over 600 times and used to express anti EU views. Now he is oblique in his response to Kuenssburg. Probably more out of his dislike for her than addressing and expressing an honest answer to the question. She's been the subject of Momentum bile in recent months. He does ride a red bike among other things. Jeremy Corbyn on whether the UK will definitely leave the EU - BBC News
