Increase tax - if so on whom, would you personally pay more tax ? Cut government spending - if so where ? or Should we print money and continue goverment spending at current levels ?
Stop sending billions of pounds the the doomed euro gravy train for a start! and look after our own interests!
Imola strongly disagree. If euro fails we are all 3rd world country. Over 50% of UK triad is with Euro zone. If that stops ..... First stop sending money to Africa and other X colony's because you feel guilty for old time's sake. Especially that most of that money is taken up by rich and poor stay poor. Cut it and let it tumble as then people at power will not have money to stay at power and will have to change or fall. - Cut number of MP's by 50%. - Let them pay for their own transport if they live with X amount of miles from work. So MP's living in London use tube/bus/taxi who cares as long as they pay for it. - If they have to travel further then value for money. If they have to fly then ryanair. If take a train then second class. Sometimes a bus as it is no longer but cheaper. If car they get paid per mile. - Do more actual work less PR and introduce responsibility for actions. - Stop all way's of rich avoiding tax and introduce simple rule if you mostly live in UK or mostly work in UK you pay taxes to UK full stop. - Lower VAT by 7% in general. Healthy food VAT 1%, normal food VAT 10%, unhealthy food normal VAT rate. Kids clothing VAT that does not cost more then xxx GBP is 1%. Anything over that fixed amount is luxury goods and 15% VAT. Similar for normal clothes for adults. Adult clothing 5% VAT but expensive clothing like Armani 15%. - Any safety clothing or equipment 1% VAT. - New business opening 1% VAT for any equipment needed to start new business. Then 3 months from registering 1% VAT and other low rate to get them going. After 3 months VAT goes back to normal but preferential business rate's stay for 2 years or until they turn x profit. X profit would depend from how big the company is and what is average profit in that industry/how much is average salary in said industry. - Cup on house prices but not monetary cap. Maximum profit on property is 30% over total build cost. - Cap on house rental market. Similar rules as above but based on loan cost not build cost. We know the price of property, check what mortgage would be for it and place can be rented for maximum 30% over monthly mortgage rate. - Build more prisons where prisoners work for their up keep. Some do internal jobs like cooking, cleaning and so on. Rest works making stuff that prison can sell to pay for their up keep. Costs of retraining prisoners that will be beneficial in future. % to police and anything left is paid as salary to prisoners that they get after they get out. When they live they have job skills and possibly some money. Prison then should right reference like any other employer as that should help him get employed legally if it was proper good. - Like in Poland any one taken drunk to hospital pay's for that visit out of his own money. Unless that is accident was not his fault (hit by car for example). It is not that much in practice no more in there sadly but it seems to have worked. There was something called sobriety room and price per night there was more then 5* hotel night for crappy bed, crappy food and medicine. Then obviously price of ambulance/police ride.
Some interesting points there Lucazade but the cuts in VAT you propose will reduce government revenue and increase the deficit not reduce it. I like the simplification of tax and make everybody pay it, but the rich are so few that even applying punitive taxation rates wouldn't significantly increase the tax take and therefore reduce the deficit. The Euro is doomed, unless the Germans agree to the issuance of Eurobonds guaranteed across the whole Eurozone and that implies central budgetary control across the whole of Europe and eternal austerity for the PIIGS and possibly a few more. The deficit is in the region of £10-15 billion pounds per month.
Cranker it is a what if question and that is my solution. Which part you do not agree with then? Johnv let me explain. Lowering VAT will increase sale that will cover a bit of that cut, not all I know. Helping with opening new small companies and helping them stay up will reduce unemployment in turn reducing need for money to pay benefits. That will again partially cover that tax cut. Also after fixed time they would start bringing money to government as low tax time would expire. Drunks paying for treatment when injured due to drinking will reduce stress from NHS. In time you will either have less people drinking to that extend (happened in Poland) or it would become self funding with even profit from it. Rich parents that buy children clothing at Armani would not get VAT discount so that would cover rest of normal people buying sensible children clothing. Stopping big companies and rich people not paying tax in UK would cover the rest. It is all very generic and numbers would need crunching but general rule to apply is like in nature nothing goes to waste. Or scientific way you do not create energy just change it's form. Everything needs to be used to the best which now it surely is not in any country. Finally to those saying why rich are to pay more tax they worked hard for their money. Some did yes but most did not. Money makes money. If you have money from daddy you will quickly make money on your own and you did not work hard. Rich individuals I agree would not be significant increase but huge companies would. They do not pay most of their tax in UK. Look here to what I mean. Then rather then discussing it with them take the f-in money no deals tax is tax. http://www.nordens.co.uk/news_artic...ny___under_scrutiny_over_how_much_tax_it_pays
Remove the germans from the euro out of the top of the pile rather than dump countries out from the bottom of it. Most of the rest are about on a level of competitiveness once you exclude them. Complicated Vat variations based on clothing "type" is unworkable in practice. Pay for hospital visits if you're drunk might be a good idea but wont raise any cash to speak of, perhaps a few million. What happens though when the people that decide what is self inflicted turn their attention to bike riders ? Agree with cutting the number of MP's but that is more social engineering than anything else, this would not save much cash. I would invest in a massive infrastructure building programme while we are able to borrow money at unbelievably low historic rates, one advantage of the current situation. I mean half a million homes. Science/entreprise parks on the edge of every large city. Road, rail and public building rebuild or refurb programme.
Desmoboy most of government loans are revised every few years so higher rate will catch up. Investing in infrastructure by loans is not a way to go. When the project is finished what next another project as all companies involved in building it will not be needed to maintain it. Some of your ideas would be good but only if linked with other action. For example you invest in building new homes but then no one can afford them as cap for prices was not introduced. Science/enterprise parks YES. Sorry but as rail is now private unless gov takes over private companies should maintain it. If they can not sell it as unprofitable business back to government. If you give them more money nothing will change. Now they shout they do not get enough cash but when they were asked to sell back they wanted to sell it as profitable company. So which one is it then? "Complicated" VAT variation works in most countries. It is workable it just has to be over sensible grounds. Kids clothing, anything up to size x is kids clothing done. There will sadly be few that have fast growing kids and will complain. To completely cover it set age limit and if parents want to get discounted kids prices they need to have proof of birth for their child. A form of ID card. ID cards do not infringe your human rigts get it out of your head. It is illegal to lie to police about who you are (name, address, date of birth) so ID card only proves you are not lying.
Reduce the number of politians and their entourage to half the current number And then double their pay, it may attract some business heads capable of running the country Cost of politians would be the same but the cost of their entourage and expenses would be halved
Forgot about your comment re drunks. Well motorbike is a mode of transport just like bicycles, cars, trains and you can have accident in all of them. however they serve useful purpose. You only have a choice between mods of transport as if you want to get somewhere you have to take one. Also sometimes you do not even have a choice in what mode of transport. Drinking on the other hand you have a choice to do it or not. You also have a choice to drink a lot or not. No one is stopping you from drinking or drinking a lot just they introduce responsibility for drinking. Finally not only Poland has a law that makes drunks pay the costs. Many other countries in EU do also, if they choose to enforce it is another matter. In Germany there is a general law where you pay full cost of rescue action if it was down to your negligence. RTA is just that an accident, drinking till you collapse is not.
Popelli is on something there. Reason I said to remove 50% of MP's is to show we are all in it not just us below. I think I would add a twist to Popellis idea. Increase remaining politicians salary by 20% and rest as bonus for good performance. Those that do not perform not only loose it but their bonus goes to those in his department that performed.
3 members like what i posted :wink: I stand by what i posted STOP sending billions of pounds trying to prolonge the demise of the euro and the so called euro zone. Talk about polishing a turd!! Thankfully the last lot in power didn't join the euro! About the only thing labour got right imho.
Just to add... Why are the Car giants giving uk factorys the contracts to build new models ? Because we have a stable currency the good old british pound!
The first thing I would do is to work out how much of this debt was there before the banking crisis of 2008, and then decide if that is a normal and manageable amount. I suspect that we had some kind of debt before it all went tits up and we were managing it somehow. I would work out a national budget to deal with this debt just like under normal conditions. Then I would work out how much of the debt is down to the banks, and I would get the banks to pay it back. Make them pay the interest and the capital repayments. They can afford it, and if that means that some of them return zero profit for years to come then tough. To expect the public to continue to pick up the tab for their stupidity whilst they make profits for shareholders disgusts me. The funny thing is that occasionally I hear numbers bandied around, how many trillion we owe etc, but I have never ever heard one politician come out with a straight figure of how much the banking screw-up has cost. We may get to hear how much we owe, but how much of it was there before the shit hit the fan and how much has it cost us since. I run my own small business. If I make some bad decisions, or the market changes and I don't react properly to it, or I rape my company for cash that it hasn't got, then it will fail. There will be no bail-out, no support from the government. Yet banks are just businesses, with shareholders who control who runs that business. They should have been allowed to fold when they got it wrong. We should have let them pay for their stupidity with their jobs. It would have been cheaper for the tax payer to pick up the pieces of a failed banking sector than it was to bail them out. And what really really sickens me is that here we are, four years on, and still nothing has changed. Labour had a brief opportunity to do something about it and the Tories have had more than long enough to enforce change, but there is absolutely nothing to stop this all happening again tomorrow. The banks should be forced to separate their high street operations from their risky gambling divisions. It's a no-brainer. It's so obvious to simple old me. The government however have paid for expensive reports from experts, and they have come to exactly the same conclusion. So what has been done about it? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. Timescales are discussed, dates set, then regularly moved. It's like the people that we have elected to sort this out are actually scared of upsetting the banks. Spineless fools is what they are.
There is a group of super rich families who have wealth way beyond anything we can imagine. The problem is that they are so wealthy that they are untouchable. Any attempts to get them to pay tax would be futile as they control the people and governments who we need to go after them. Here's one recent report that gives some clue as to the kind of wealth these people possess. theConsultant.eu - Former McKinsey economist finds $21 trillion stashed away in tax havens
Lucozade, I meant social housing in the main but i also think that if a huge number of new houses were built the supply/demand balance changes. This removes the upward pressure on prices. The best time to make huge infrastructure projects is when the cost of doing it is low. True the cost might go up later but surely its better to start when the cost is low and the future is only " it might go up" rather than the cost IS higher . How is that better? The benefit of these projects is that loads of companies have people employed to build them rather than sitting on the dole as ex builders,brickies , sparks etc. Those employed builders then buy a new van, fridge for the missus and go on holiday. Economic activity rises. Some of this investment could be factories building the kind of products that we used to make and currently buy in from the far east. As for bikers in casualty wards, we already know that you are likely to be put to the back of the queue. This demonstrates how the medical world views us today, if someone is looking for a cash cow we are going to be on that list. Finally, i agree with reducing the number of politicians and paying the rest a lot more. The amount they get now is nowhere near enough to attract the best people. This is irrelevant to reducing the countries deficit of course but a good idea non the less.
I think we should kick out all the foreigners and stop giving money to the disabled, sick and elderly. Also I think we should let everyone own a gun and then we could do away with the police.
