He's from Sweden originally so he can bloody well piss off back there if he doesn't like this! <BNP mode>
Besides, he's obviously the kind of person to look for tax shortcuts or he'd stay for the sake of his childrens education, which are obviously more important than having billions of quid. If he's paying £660,000 a year in tax he's going to be minted anyway..
That is a HORRENDOUS attitude to have! I can give you examples of countries that have that policy and attitude and it doesn't make pretty reading! Nothing wrong with being patriotic but that attitude is alarming. ANd this is where I agree with Brown (ouchie lol) - Protectionism is the worst policy we could have!
What you DON'T see OBVIOUSLY is this man probably employs a lot of english workers and may or may not have to lay them of. If not him, others will be!
Ahh yes the evil witch who introduced the poll tax, took as to war in the Falklands and generally could'nt give a toss about you if you were Scottish/Irish/Welsh/or not middle class English. Great move
Serious question, how old are you? Because there are very few people I know who want a return to that government.
Whilst I (shock, horror) agree with you on most things you say here, I think you're completely wrong on this one. Although it's a gross simplification, it's safe to say that a deregulated financial market and phenomenal amounts of greed and short-sightedness in the banking industry are the primary causes of the financial problems.
Anyway, the budget - what a joke. Hugely disappointing.
£15bn of "efficiency savings" in the civil service & public sector? If he can make £15bn of efficiency savings now, why didn't they a decade ago? Or even last year? Or does anyone find themselves reading "£15bn of previous wastage" rather than efficiency savings?
How about openly slashing civil service budgets and freeing the country from the shackled burden of a grotesquely inefficient, wasteful system? How about slashing benefits for the willfully unemployed who refuse to work? How about just resetting the entire damn system so that people know how much things actually cost? There's so many incentives, rebates, tax allowances & credits, and so on, that it's never clear what's what. Of course, if it were simple, we wouldn't need 60,000 staff at the Inland Revenue to work it all out for us.
More fuel duty is a joke. Or to put it another way, petrol is ~29p a litre, plus ~320% tax.
Car scrappage scheme is a joke. You can't artificially sustain an industry producing products that we now can't afford, and it's an environmental disaster.
More tax of fags and booze is no big deal. Too many people already live from paycheque to paycheque, spending every penny inbetween on getting pissed out their minds as soon as they have any money. If it stops more people from doing that, good thing.
50% tax above £150,000 is outrageous. Needless to say it doesn't affect me (I wish!), but if I'd worked hard to be in a position to earn that kind of money, I'd be livid. Half your income going straight to the government! We don't owe the government that much. They waste too much and give too many handouts and serve themselves too much to justify any tax rate like that. It's not just big CEOs and Wall Street type guys that earn that. What about self employed people who have built up a good business? Plenty company directors and senior managers can earn £150k, although now I bet they'll pay themselves £149,999, and good on them.
Over 50s have their ISA cap increased, with everyone else following suit next year. How about just letting everyone do it now? Oh wait, they don't want us to save. Well, they do, because it's us not saving that helped cause the problem, but now they want us to spend to help the economy. Barmy.
It's certainly not safe to say at all. You say de-regulation but there is as much regulation now as their ever had been it's just been the wrong regulation.
The markets will and should regulate themselves but when you set interest rates at 5% and have a fractional reserve banking system then you will always end up in disaster.
Bank A went to the B0E and said can I have borrow some cash... they say yh... the bank then lends it out which expands the money supply hugely (which partly caused the house price bubble).
Bank B decided that it would take a smart approach and not over borrow and over lend. However because Bank A was booming and gaining custom because of the mortgage market Bank B went under.
Yes greed caused this, but to blame some stupid bankers for this whole mess is VERY short-sighted indeed, and as much of an error as their lending policies. History van teach us a lot... just some fail to do so!
If the money supply was more sound and interest rates were 15-20% then you wouldn't have had this borrowing binge. This has nothing to do with regulation. It's to do with money being way too cheap to buy! The only problem was for the Government is raising interest rates would have had them out of office in an instant as it would have gone against public opinion at the time as they were enjoying living a fake lifestyle with their 'expensive' homes! And anyone buying a house in the boom was as dumb as the bankers IMO... even Sarah Beeney said it was a BUBBLE numerous times on her show but people failed to listen!
And as I said it was the FREE MARKET ECONOMISTS who called for this CRASH YEARS AGO! Why would free market economists say this!?
99% of the wealth has always been owned by 1% of the population. This is a long established fact of history, it has only deviated very marginally in hundreds of years.
Correct - well, sorta. Technically I think you meant: "It's to do with money being way too cheap to lend!"
It's nothing to do with the BoE though. Bank A never went to the BoE and caused Bank B to go bust. It's all international. Both Banks A and B were able to take on debt very cheaply courtesy of some countries (like China) having a massive fiscal surplus. They then leant that money to you and I (well, the populace). Then when various insitutions and countries said "hey, we'd like some of this cake we're earning and you're consuming", Bank A & Bank B realised they couldn't repay it because they didn't have it - they had in turn lent it to us to make themselves more money. So the credit taps were turned off, and everyone goes "oh shit".
Dont forget the hike in National Insurance contributions (ANOTHER BLOODY TAX!!!) for the poor sods who earn more than £20k pa (ME!!!!) added to the fuel TAX and the smoking TAX and the booze TAX...I'm surprised Gordon doesnt tax bloody AIR!!!! BTW, did anybody notice the road TAX going up again!!!
All in all, I got hammered by Uncle Gordon and his cronies!
"Mr Darling ordered stores to ban single-use carrier bags by next year or face legislation"
Erm, I don't think I've ever seen a single use carrier bag. I've always been able to re-use the thin plastic ones I pick up at the shops. Perhaps it's just the public that need re-educating to start re-using them?
That's the problem though, if you can't find a job you shouldn't have any choice or pickyness about what you're doing or how much you're being paid to do it.
Look around a bit, plenty of notices for short work on notice boards in local shops and supermarkets, often a couple of days of work pays very well cash in hand no faffing about with interviews and the like. Of course nobody wants to be hunting for short term work like this (although I find it very convenient) but you'll still be better off than spending the day watching TV.
