Friday Rant

Wallace1492

Just for the hell of it.....

People who receive State Benefit should do *something worthwhile for it.

Tax Loopholes should be closed, and all High earners/Corporations forced to pay appropriate tax.

Do not renew Nuclear arms - they had their purpose but are a useless waste of money now.

Ditto with the Aircraft Carriers. How could a contract be entered into with no get out clause? The people responsible for this should be jailed.

Any politicial fiddling expenses should be banned from office for life.

*obvioulsy depending on ability.

Jay dubbleU

Wallace1492 wrote:

Just for the hell of it.....

People who receive State Benefit should do *something worthwhile for it.

Tax Loopholes should be closed, and all High earners/Corporations forced to pay appropriate tax.

Do not renew Nuclear arms - they had their purpose but are a useless waste of money now.

Ditto with the Aircraft Carriers. How could a contract be entered into with no get out clause? The people responsible for this should be jailed.

Any politicial fiddling expenses should be banned from office for life.

*obvioulsy depending on ability.

+10

Wooliferkins

The military contract one is easy.
You leave Uni with a good corporate law degree. Do you,
(a) Go to a high powered corporate law company, get paid commensurate to your skills and results.
(b) Go to the MOD get buggered about from dusk until dawn for peanuts?

You leave Uni with an average to Gentlemans corporate law degree, do you;

(a) Go to a high powered corporate law company, get paid commensurate to your skills and results.
(b) Go to the MOD get buggered about from dusk until dawn for peanuts?

W1

Wallace1492 wrote:

Tax Loopholes should be closed, and all High earners/Corporations forced to pay appropriate tax.

What's appropriate?

What tax loopholes don't you approve of?

What if the high earners and corporates then leave? Hint: 50% of sod all is [ ] whereas 10% of something is [ ].

And there goes duty free shopping....

W1

Wooliferkins wrote:

The military contract one is easy.
You leave Uni with a good corporate law degree. Do you,
(a) Go to a high powered corporate law company, get paid commensurate to your skills and results.
(b) Go to the MOD get buggered about from dusk until dawn for peanuts?

You leave Uni with an average to Gentlemans corporate law degree, do you;

(a) Go to a high powered corporate law company, get paid commensurate to your skills and results.
(b) Go to the MOD get buggered about from dusk until dawn for peanuts?

In the UK there's no such thing as a "corporate" law degree (although I agree with your point).

secretsam

So, the OP would get rid of the C2W scheme, which is, after all, a tax dodge?

wgwarburton

Wallace1492 wrote:

Just for the hell of it.....

People who receive State Benefit should do *something worthwhile for it.

Like look for a job?

Tax Loopholes should be closed, and all High earners/Corporations forced to pay appropriate tax.

Would it to be safe to assume that "high earner" can be defined as "quite a bit more than me"?

Do not renew Nuclear arms - they had their purpose but are a useless waste of money now.

You need to justify that, I think. Even if we restrict the debate to "now", it's probably better to argue that they are poor value, rather than useless. International politics is sufficiently unsophisticated that there's a lot of value in Carrying A Big Stick, and they don't come much bigger than Nukes. Whether that added value warrants the expenditure is a different debate.
Then there's the question of whether they might be valuable in, say, thirty years time... or even, more subtly, whether having had them for those thirty years means we will still be an the happy position of questioning their value then.

Ditto with the Aircraft Carriers. How could a contract be entered into with no get out clause? The people responsible for this should be jailed.

Nope. We should be binning lots of cold war era stuff (tanks, deep bombers etc) and some of the largely irrelevant Frigates and Destroyers in favour of Aircraft Carriers, Helicopter Carriers and similar versatile platforms for projecting power. Oh and planes for them, of course... preferably lots of competent ones (eg F/A-18s) rather than a few hugely expensive state of the art exotics.

Any politicial fiddling expenses should be banned from office for life

Heavy handed... but I won't argue with that one!

Cheers,
W.

W1

SecretSam wrote:

So, the OP would get rid of the C2W scheme, which is, after all, a tax dodge?

Apparently it's not a tax dodge, as it's "allowed" and "on purpose". Same with an ISA. Even though both provide the choice to pay less tax i.e. to avoid paying it. The fact that what many consider to be "loopholes" are also "allowed" by either being left open or ill-drafted by the state isn't enough of an argument. Apparently.

OR

It's not a tax dodge because lots of people on here do it, and therefore it's perfectly fair. Only "other people" should pay more tax.....

Jay dubbleU

SecretSam wrote:

So, the OP would get rid of the C2W scheme, which is, after all, a tax dodge?

C2W scheme is finished anyway at least for the public services

Wallace1492

WGWarburton wrote:

Wallace1492 wrote:

Just for the hell of it.....

People who receive State Benefit should do *something worthwhile for it.

Like look for a job?

Tax Loopholes should be closed, and all High earners/Corporations forced to pay appropriate tax.

Would it to be safe to assume that "high earner" can be defined as "quite a bit more than me"?

Do not renew Nuclear arms - they had their purpose but are a useless waste of money now.

You need to justify that, I think. Even if we restrict the debate to "now", it's probably better to argue that they are poor value, rather than useless. International politics is sufficiently unsophisticated that there's a lot of value in Carrying A Big Stick, and they don't come much bigger than Nukes. Whether that added value warrants the expenditure is a different debate.
Then there's the question of whether they might be valuable in, say, thirty years time... or even, more subtly, whether having had them for those thirty years means we will still be an the happy position of questioning their value then.

Ditto with the Aircraft Carriers. How could a contract be entered into with no get out clause? The people responsible for this should be jailed.

Nope. We should be binning lots of cold war era stuff (tanks, deep bombers etc) and some of the largely irrelevant Frigates and Destroyers in favour of Aircraft Carriers, Helicopter Carriers and similar versatile platforms for projecting power. Oh and planes for them, of course... preferably lots of competent ones (eg F/A-18s) rather than a few hugely expensive state of the art exotics.

Any politicial fiddling expenses should be banned from office for life

Heavy handed... but I won't argue with that one!

Cheers,
W.

Yes, look for a job, do some cleaning, help old folk, be a lollypop person, deliver letters, anything productive for the country.

No, I earn well, and am happy to pay my tax, don't always agree with what we send it on, but hey-ho.

We should no longer think ourselves as a world policeman. We do not need Nukes/Aircraft carriers/Helicopter carriers. We used to have an empire, not now. I would rather have a higher standard of living than be able to project awesome power to some distant land. (We could and should contribute to a NATO/UN peacekeepping force - but that is a whole new debate)

Wallace1492

SecretSam wrote:

So, the OP would get rid of the C2W scheme, which is, after all, a tax dodge?

Yes, yes yes. I have not used the C2W scheme.
I have also seen very senior people in my work use it with abolutely no intention of cycling to work.

I believe in paying my tax, anyone dodging it really annoys me.

AndyOgy

You can't always blame the 'jobseekers'

I got made redundant a couple of years ago. I felt no guilt about claiming JSA as I've worked and paid my taxes ever since I was 16.

Sitting at home all day drove me crazy (literally, I ended up in therapy). But the job centre wouldn't let me do any kind of voluntry work at all. They wouldn't let me do any training, even if I funded it through my own means, unless it was training that they'd offered me. Despite them not offering any training.

They advised me against doing any part time work, as it created too much paperwork. It was all or nothing. Either do no work and claim full benefits, or work and claim no benefits. No halfway house. The 16hrs a week thing is rubbish because nobody at the job centre can be bothered to do the paperwork

In short, the job centre was my biggest hinderance in my quest to get back to work. Even when I did, they wouldn't stop paying my JSA and housing benefit unless I sent them PROOF that I was working again!!!

wgwarburton

Wallace1492 wrote:

....We should no longer think ourselves as a world policeman. We do not need Nukes/Aircraft carriers/Helicopter carriers. We used to have an empire, not now. I would rather have a higher standard of living than be able to project awesome power to some distant land. (We could and should contribute to a NATO/UN peacekeepping force - but that is a whole new debate)

The most valuable contribution we can make to a NATO/UN peacekeeping force is provision of aircraft carriers, amphibious landing capability and the troops and helicopters to follow through. Putting troops on the ground without adequate air cover and access to helicopters is dangerously irresponsible. We need to learn the lessons from the nasty little wars we've been fighting for the last few decades and equip ourselves to fight them.

Cheers,
W.

W1

AndyOgy wrote:

You can't always blame the 'jobseekers'

I got made redundant a couple of years ago. I felt no guilt about claiming JSA as I've worked and paid my taxes ever since I was 16.

Sitting at home all day drove me crazy (literally, I ended up in therapy). But the job centre wouldn't let me do any kind of voluntry work at all. They wouldn't let me do any training, even if I funded it through my own means, unless it was training that they'd offered me. Despite them not offering any training.

They advised me against doing any part time work, as it created too much paperwork. It was all or nothing. Either do no work and claim full benefits, or work and claim no benefits. No halfway house. The 16hrs a week thing is rubbish because nobody at the job centre can be bothered to do the paperwork

In short, the job centre was my biggest hinderance in my quest to get back to work. Even when I did, they wouldn't stop paying my JSA and housing benefit unless I sent them PROOF that I was working again!!!

Interesting insight. It's this sort of thing which you would think would be the first place to look to make savings. Some hope I suppose....

Out of interest how did they "stop" you doing voluntary work? Surely you just don't tell them?

Wallace1492

AndyOgy wrote:

You can't always blame the 'jobseekers'

I got made redundant a couple of years ago. I felt no guilt about claiming JSA as I've worked and paid my taxes ever since I was 16.

Sitting at home all day drove me crazy (literally, I ended up in therapy). But the job centre wouldn't let me do any kind of voluntry work at all. They wouldn't let me do any training, even if I funded it through my own means, unless it was training that they'd offered me. Despite them not offering any training.

They advised me against doing any part time work, as it created too much paperwork. It was all or nothing. Either do no work and claim full benefits, or work and claim no benefits. No halfway house. The 16hrs a week thing is rubbish because nobody at the job centre can be bothered to do the paperwork

In short, the job centre was my biggest hinderance in my quest to get back to work. Even when I did, they wouldn't stop paying my JSA and housing benefit unless I sent them PROOF that I was working again!!!

I am not, and never would blame jobseekers. The system should be changed to allow or maybe force people to do some work for their allowance. Most, like yourself would happily give some time to do good (a higher allowance would be paid). It is the shirkers and scroungers I have a problem with.

AndyOgy

W1: If I'd done voluntary work, and they'd found out, they would have suspended my JSA and housing benefits pending an investigation. As things were, I'd nearly been evicted as it took them 3 months to sort out my claim for housing benefit. Had they suspended payments, I'd have had to apply all over again. I don't think that my landlord would have been so patient a second time around. There was no way that I was going to risk that.

And Wallace, you're right. It's the system that's at fault. The majority of other people signing on were not, as the media would have us believe, work shy layabouts. Sure, there was a small minority doing all that they could to ensure that they'd never work again. But at least 95% of the other people signing on were good people who were desperate to get back to work.

I think that the word 'allow' is more apt than 'force'. There should be a system in place where people can volunteer useful services, in return for something like an extra £20 a week on their JSA. Or maybe vouchers for clothes shops or supermarkets.

Another scandalous experience was when I was around the '5 months of being unemployed' period. Apparently, they get more credit for getting someone, who has been employed for more than 6 months, back to work. They were particularly discouraging about my possibly returning to work after five and a half months.

W1

AndyOgy wrote:

W1: If I'd done voluntary work, and they'd found out, they would have suspended my JSA and housing benefits pending an investigation. As things were, I'd nearly been evicted as it took them 3 months to sort out my claim for housing benefit. Had they suspended payments, I'd have had to apply all over again. I don't think that my landlord would have been so patient a second time around. There was no way that I was going to risk that.

Perfectly understandable, but what an absurd position to be in.

Thanks for the response.

d87heaven

Wallace1492 wrote:

Just for the hell of it.....

People who receive State Benefit should do *something worthwhile for it.


*obvioulsy depending on ability.

Ever seen community service people 'working' ?

My grandfather used be driven to distraction when he supervised them. They may turn up (eventually) but getting them to do anything was another thing.

Was quite funny watching some cutting grass the other week. 2 guys did 3/4 of the cemetry the other 6 did the rest. What was really funny though was watching them fill the mowers up petrol........whilst have a fag :shock:

AndyOgy

Tell me about it.

I've held management positions in the past and interviewed job applicants. If I had a choice between 2 applicants; one of whom hadn't worked in six months and another, who had been doing voluntry work for 6 months......... Hmmmmm, regardless of ability, one of these people already looks a much better prospect than the other.

W1

d87heaven wrote:

Wallace1492 wrote:

Just for the hell of it.....

People who receive State Benefit should do *something worthwhile for it.


*obvioulsy depending on ability.

Ever seen community service people 'working' ?

My grandfather used be driven to distraction when he supervised them. They may turn up (eventually) but getting them to do anything was another thing.

Was quite funny watching some cutting grass the other week. 2 guys did 3/4 of the cemetry the other 6 did the rest. What was really funny though was watching them fill the mowers up petrol........whilst have a fag :shock:

Cattle prods? Or is that against human rights now.

suzyb

WTF this is way too serious for a Friday topic.

d87heaven

W1 wrote:

[attle prods? Or is that against human rights now.

Prob against cattle rights at the very least. Now you have to politely ask the cattle to move whilst being careful not to discriminate aginst those who feel not moving is thier right as they are on benefits. 2 bags of cattle feed doesn't go far when you have 4 illegitimate calves to support.

zanes

WGWarburton wrote:

Wallace1492 wrote:

Tax Loopholes should be closed, and all High earners/Corporations forced to pay appropriate tax.

Would it to be safe to assume that "high earner" can be defined as "quite a bit more than me"?

+1x10^23

W1 wrote:

Apparently it's not a tax dodge, as it's "allowed" and "on purpose". Same with an ISA. Even though both provide the choice to pay less tax i.e. to avoid paying it. The fact that what many consider to be "loopholes" are also "allowed" by either being left open or ill-drafted by the state isn't enough of an argument. Apparently.

OR

It's not a tax dodge because lots of people on here do it, and therefore it's perfectly fair. Only "other people" should pay more tax.....

Tax avoidance vs. Tax evasion, me thinks.

Wallace1492

zanes wrote:

WGWarburton wrote:

Wallace1492 wrote:

Tax Loopholes should be closed, and all High earners/Corporations forced to pay appropriate tax.

Would it to be safe to assume that "high earner" can be defined as "quite a bit more than me"?

+1x10^23

W1 wrote:

Apparently it's not a tax dodge, as it's "allowed" and "on purpose". Same with an ISA. Even though both provide the choice to pay less tax i.e. to avoid paying it. The fact that what many consider to be "loopholes" are also "allowed" by either being left open or ill-drafted by the state isn't enough of an argument. Apparently.

OR

It's not a tax dodge because lots of people on here do it, and therefore it's perfectly fair. Only "other people" should pay more tax.....

Tax avoidance vs. Tax evasion, me thinks.

I am happy to pay tax. I earn a decent income and pay my dues. I have no tax dodgies or scam's, I don't even do the C2W. I am also willing to pay more tax if 1. It is spent properly and 2. Everyone else pays

zanes

Wallace1492 wrote:

I am happy to pay tax. I earn a decent income and pay my dues. I have no tax dodgies or scam's, I don't even do the C2W. I am also willing to pay more tax if 1. It is spent properly and 2. Everyone else pays

I'm not quite sure why you felt the need to point out you don't indulge in tax evasion to me, especially as I wasn't suggesting that you do....

The point I was making to W1 et al was that C2W and ISAs aren't examples of "tolerated" tax dodges, they're classed as tax avoidance (well, more specifically in the UK tax mitigation), which is legal. Tax evasion, however, isn't.

I still stand by WGWarburtons comment.

W1

zanes wrote:

Wallace1492 wrote:

I am happy to pay tax. I earn a decent income and pay my dues. I have no tax dodgies or scam's, I don't even do the C2W. I am also willing to pay more tax if 1. It is spent properly and 2. Everyone else pays

I'm not quite sure why you felt the need to point out you don't indulge in tax evasion to me, especially as I wasn't suggesting that you do....

The point I was making to W1 et al was that C2W and ISAs aren't examples of "tolerated" tax dodges, they're classed as tax avoidance, which is perfectly legal. Tax evasion, however, isn't.

I still stand by WGWarburtons comment.

I wasn't making any comment as to legality and perfectly understand the difference between avoidance and evasion.

If you have "no tax dodgies" then you're voluntarily paying more tax than you need to. I'm surprised you have no ISAs, pensions, duty free shopping, big ticket purchases before the VAT rise etc etc....

zanes

W1 wrote:

I wasn't making any comment as to legality and perfectly understand the difference between avoidance and evasion.

If you have "no tax dodgies" then you're voluntarily paying more tax than you need to. I'm surprised you have no ISAs, pensions, duty free shopping, big ticket purchases before the VAT rise etc etc....

Ah, I had presumed you meant tax dodgies as in tax evasion.... :oops:

Don't tempt me about the VAT rise! There's a rather intriuging looking bike shop opened up recently in Bath... and they stock Williers

Wallace1492

zanes wrote:

I still stand by WGWarburtons comment.

I felt that WGW was suggesting that I was alluding to higher earners being anyone earing more than me. I am not, and just pointing out that. I am by no means a High Earner, but think everyone should pay appropriate tax. Too many tax avoidance "scams" for my liking.

Anyway does no-one alse have any Friday Rants? Get your own rather than tear mine to shreds!!

zanes

Cold feet
Crap university admin
Eating shed loads
Shared house a tip

Better?

Wallace1492

Much....

Wallace1492

Much....