Really, really good piece; mirrors so many of my thoughts. You cover one of my hobby horses too - the horribly asymmetrical relationship between state and individual at the moment. There are so many examples, but yours is a vivid one. Thank you.
I think your last point is spot on, the Conservatives have utterly failed even to keep peoples living standards at the same level they found it. Labour will make it far, far worse. This country unfortunately has much further to fall before the insidious hands of the uniparty can be prised off our throats.
On a side note, should Trading Standards be called in on our political parties? The Conservatives don’t conserve, Labour despises those who labour and the Liberal Democrat’s are neither liberal nor believe in democracy.
I couldn't agree more, but I wish I knew what to do about it. I think I know why half of British adults pay no income tax at all, though. It seems to be because I pay all of it. I'm pretty sure that's the case...
Ha ha Jason. Yes. We all feel like that. And not just once, we’re paying three or four times on money we earned once. It’s not in any sense fair or justifiable.
Reasons why less than 50% pay tax? Maybe they are that poorly paid to begin with? Maybe they are tax dodgers? Maybe they have manipulated pension tax relief? Maybe we should tax children that represent 15% of non tax payers, and move on to students too? Just taking the fallacy of paying tax 3 or 4 times...a basic rate payer puts £100 in a pension, cost £80. Cashes it in, gets £25 tax free, pays 20% tax on the remaining £75 (£15) receives £60, so £85 back for £80 in. Who pays for that largesse? The tax payers that can't afford to contribute/leverage pension tax relief. That's not multiple taxation - that's classic redistribution of wealth
Hi Damien. I think it’s actually working adults. But I don’t have a source to hand.
Pensions are one thing. They have tax breaks to encourage their take up. Although they were made much less generous by Brown and Osborne I believe.
I’m talking about buying a house for example. Wages taxed at source. Any interest earned as you save for a deposit. Taxed. Then you are taxed again for buying the property with stamp duty. And of course there’s VAT to pay on a wide range of your expenses. And of course inflation itself is in effect a form Of taxation. That’s generally what I’m talking about.
But my basic point is that working people are paying for a state which does not spend their money wisely, and treats them like cash machines.
What I’m not saying is that we shouldn’t be helping poor people.
"But my basic point is that working people are paying for a state which does not spend their money wisely, and treats them like cash machines.
What I’m not saying is that we shouldn’t be helping poor people."
That's the diametric opposite of what your post says. And I will break down your response:
Pensions - who benefits most from the tax relief? Those that have the money to best utilise them. More likely to be the richer than the poorer. Who pays? All irrespective of income. A tax on the poor to subsidise the rich.
Savings - for a basic rate tax payer to pay interest on savings, at current rates, they would need £20,000 of savings - savings that someone earning the national AVG wouldn't have.
Vat - the lacklustre, benefit screwing non contributor, contributes a greater proportion of their 'income' through vat, (and behaviour taxes on alcohol/cigarettes), than the chateauneufdePappe striving contributor.
Stamp duty - the national average wage would warrant, at a stretch, a mortgage of £140,000, so to warrant paying stamp duty, suggests the stamp duty payer is doing better than the majority. Earning well in excess of the majority. Why is it so incongruous to share that wellbeing?
As for paying taxes. I have never questioned the amount of tax I've paid. As someone who once relied on taxpayer support (which was the difference between life and death), the more I pay, the more I celebrate how far I've come, my success.
I once said to someone, moaning about their gas bill - I love worrying about paying my gas bill - it means I have the comfort, support, safety and springboard, of a home I can call my own.
Yes, I question the waste of how Governance wastes out taxes - most I question those that bemoan paying it, from a point of comfort that allows it to avoid it.
Too many people don't earn enough to extract pension tax relief.
Too many don't have a home, can't aspire to buying one to pay stamp duty
Too many earn to little to save, and pay tax on their savings.
Too many are moaning about, a taxation on their 'wealth' whilst bemoaning the scroungers who cost less than their pension tax reliefs.
The taxes, you so critique on the richer, are exactly what sustained me to live. To pay an unbroken 35 years of increasing tax contributions. Your tax 35 years ago wasn't a cost - it was an investment paid back many times over. The difference in our perspective on tax, is a difference, that has allowed me to have a quality of life I never could have dreamed of. Given me a life worth living. And it's a meagre life I live. I don't resent that - I do resent being told I'm impacting the quality of lives of others, who have never thought of me, it my ilk.
Don't question taxes. Question how they are spent. Then, I'm 100% behind you.
You have obviously ignored my example above. Fully taxed on encashment, after taxing the tax free lump sum, is a benefit to those able to do so, at the expense of all taxpayers, particularly those unable to do so.
I wish your Substack was on the National Curriculum (not that I agree with there actually being anything so prescriptive as a National Curriculum). It is so funny and true that I think a GCSE in LSOs could un-brainwash the entirety of our youth out of the socialist mindset into which they have been led. Then one day, in the shiny distant future, socialism would be as much an historic disease as the Bubonic Plague.
Thank you so much Bettina. That’s such a lovely image at the end. Socialism is like a chronic complaint isn’t it? We keep thinking it’s in retreat, then it comes back again. ATB
Thank you LSO. Of course we don't need to worry about Labour's achieving growth. We have a "fully costed" spending plan, well for 2028/29 at least. As an accountant, I can tell you right now that I can't do your accounts for 2024/25, if I have no data for 2023/24 and earlier, because I have no opening figures. This basic fact seems to have passed everyone by.
The real joke of course is that these "fully costed" manifestos are not worth the paper they are probably no longer written on. The IMF would be challenged if you asked it to produce growth estimates for June 2024, less than two working days before the end of the month. The idea that anything anyone estimates for 2028/29 is remotely likely to bear any semblance to reality is about as likely as angels magically writing off our £2 trillion plus debt.
This is because nobody has any idea what growth over the next five minutes will be, let alone the next five years, but you can bet Labour's will be wildly optimistic. Their estimate of increased tax take from non-domiciliaries and parents and mythical tax avoiders will be wildly overestimated. And their spending will be wildly underestimated.
The really big issue though is nut zero. Labour let the cat out of the bag over £500 billion of costs, but that's a joke. Net zero was costed in 2020 at £3 trillion in 2020. Think £6 trillion now, and then double that to deal with storage. That's £12 trillion over 26 years. Call it £2 trillion a year. That's four times Labour's estimate every year. But even if it was £500 billion a year, the original estimate by the National Grid, that's still £25,000 per family every year.
Of course the answer is that the private sector will apparently spend all this money, apart from a paltry £8 billion in "Great British Energy", and produce huge growth, no doubt anticipated in 2028/29's figures. But all I see is endless costs, blackouts, and much more cost for far worse heating and electric vehicles that are useless.
I had to laugh at Starmer's definition of "working people" as basically minimum wage earners with no savings. No wonder he proposed no increase in taxes for them. They haven't anything to give. Even Starmer could see that was flogging a dead horse.
Thanks so much for that detailed breakdown Jeremy. It always annoys me when they argue about figures which have simply been conjured up out of thin air, or actively manufactured through data manipulation and ‘modelling’.
The economics of Net Zero are a perfect example. It cannot possibly be achievable. Even if you impoverished the entire country. Because then, obviously, there would be even less money.
I’m all for moving to a ‘sustainable’ future. But we are not heading in that direction, instead we are destroying our tiny economy while the big players sit back, laugh and reap the benefits of our slow suicide.
I was at boarding school, and unfortunately the junior and senior schools were in different zones, so several days a week we walked the mile or so from one to the other at night so we could still do prep (homework).
I’ve read a few articles which suggest that Labour will ‘discover’ there’s no money when they ‘open the books’ on day one in power. And use that as an excuse for ‘unexpected but necessary’ tax hikes. But there are no secret books. Government finances are open for all to see. For a start the OBR scrutinises ‘the books’ continuously and is not shy in sharing its findings .
'mythical tax avoiders '...., there's nothing mythical about them. They aren't just the Amazon's on the world, they are the 6 McDonald franchisee holders, in the northwest. They are a pervasous cancer. They only thing mythical is your ignorance to suches prevelance. Profit of £2 million serving burgers to the Northwest. Salary £18,000, dividend, to your Jersey dominated, (and owned) 'shareholder' of £1.5 mill. Whilst still getting child benefit. Cracking..mythical almost.
That's not tax avoidance. It's tax evasion. It is beyond doubt that these Jersey companies are caught by the transfer of assets abroad legislation that was first devised in the 1930s.
The real tax avoidance comes from schemes to disguise remuneration as loans, which has already been cracked down on to the extent of leading to suicides, and the multinationals who circumvent the rules with ease by relocating profits into tax havens. Collection is not helped by a government and HMRC so afraid of them that they get away with ridiculous deals like the Vodafone one.
I was being kind in suggesting avoidance! Of course it's evasion. It's prevelance isn't just the domain of the Vodafones or Blackstones. It's everywhere.
But when a party says it's going to tackle tax avoidance, they aren't actually talking about what you are, which is illegal evasion. Perhaps I am giving them too much credit that they understand the difference.
Tackling evasion doesn't really happen, and won't happen, because HMRC don't recruit the right people. It is the same with all law enforcement. The talent flocks to the business, not the enforcers, because there's so much money in it. It's the same with the "war on drugs." The franchisees you describe get away with millions, but those charged with taking them down are paid in peanuts.
Thanks Christian. It seems to be a worldwide problem. And their greatest trick is persuading people that they need all this stuff, or else they have a ‘right’ to huge government intervention. Here we’re about to roll out breakfast for every primary school pupil. I thought that was what parents were for…
Thanks for setting out so eloquently what many of us are beginning to realise, as we head towards an archo-tyranny. The law abiding will pay more and more for ever worsening services while the lawless and feckless will do as they please. Our local council will make your life a misery to install the correct drainpipe on a listed building. But no one will check the employment status and tax records of anyone cleaning your car, let alone take any interest in your home being burgled.
Thanks Martin! Exactly. We were putting some new windows in and a bit of building. A man from the council came round and said from the plans, what he did and didn’t like. It so annoyed me. Our original plans weren’t exactly heinous. But this man got to tell us what we could have based on the what he liked. You can’t even see them from the street. And of course we had to kow tow to the petty bureaucracy of it all. Grim.
I have lots more examples from home and work, so don't get me started.
What will also intrigue us, I expect you have the same experience, that you will have the same conversation again and again with your middle class friends. If this comes round to politics, they will agree how awful the Tories are, that Farage is just hideous (likes Putin and Trump), that Starmer is sensible and worth voting for, but they are also tempted to vote LibDem. Who will of course make everything better.
Yes Martin. Somehow someone has managed to change the debate from what works/doesn’t work to who are the good people vs who are the baddies. Obviously emotion has always been a huge part of politics. But now it seems like it is everything.
A lot of depth in that brief response. Is this a reflection of our moving from a traditional (patriarchal) society to a therapeutic (non-patriarchal) one?
That’s interesting. Yes. That could be it. Or how about from a debate based view of politics, to one based on narrative? Maybe that’s just saying what you said Martin, but in a slightly different way.
It wasn't happy reading. It's around two billion per year (rising to four billion in COVID years). £13 million of that was spent preparing for the Mens European Championships (that’s £6.5m per goal). The Mayor of London makes a good case that much of the £500m spent on museums and galleries comes back from tourist revenue but the rest of it doesn’t seem particularly well spent.
As an ex-sailor myself, I am filled with sadness at the depletion of our navy. Maybe I should volunteer to be Director of Submarines. The first thing I would do is get rid of those four black vessels of armageddon that cost us an absolute fortune. We could get eight proper submarines for the same price.
I’d also suggest that we get rid of those expensive aircraft carriers and replace them with a few more frigates and destroyers. We don’t have enough planes to fill the carriers and we don’t have enough warships to escort them. Whose idea was it to buy the carriers anyway?
It strikes me, scanning these colossal credit card bills, that there is very little discussion about the specifics of our spending in the election campaign. When Penny Mordaunt rants off her list of spending that Labour will impose on us all, she seems to be merely listing the money that the Tories have already spent. It wasn’t Keir Starmer who gave £64,000 to the trans bloke for sperm services. It bit of public accounting about our spending would be useful I think.
I do think we should talk more about the specifics and I thank you, Mr LSO, for brining it to our attention.
Good points Ragged. This is the problem isn't it, that people who don't know what they're doing get to tell people who know what they should be doing, what to do! We must all remember absorbing the fact in our youth - that, incredibly, the Minister for Health was never doctor; that the Minister for Education had never been a teacher; that the Home Secretary had never been a policeman etc etc.
That's right, Bettina. It's not just that the Ministers of Health, Education, etc haven't been doctors, teachers, etc. They don't seem to have been anything. In the olden days, it did seem like ministers had done something significant before they became ministers.
Sir Kier has at least run a huge, important bureaucracy already in his life. He didn't just come in with a PPE from Oxford (and his father was a toolmaker!).
I would vote for any party who changed the rules so that Prospective MPs had to have had some sort of real job (political researcher/advisor does not count) before putting their name forward.
I remember the uproar when Barbara Castle who did not drive was made Minister for Transport. Nowadays they change jobs so quickly I doubt half of them know who they are when they wake up in the morning. They have no chance of getting to grips with the job before being moved on.
It’s curious that these spending atrocities came after so many years of austerity. It’s also curious that we are quick to condemn Labour for the colossal deficits in our future when the deficits were so much lower under the last labour government. We even had a surplus, as I recall.
It doesn’t seem fair that Labour gets the blame for Tory spending.
I usually enjoy your writing but there was no enjoyment in this piece, it is much too near the mark. I think we are in for a complete sh**show for the next five years.
I think we are already finished with the Prologue and Act One. The next few Acts will extend the misery to the entire country and end with an Islamic Socialist Republic. Far-fetched? Well, I see no sign of any resistance to these well-embedded trends.
Britain First is running a campaign highlighting the number of Sharia courts operating in this country in parallel to or in opposition to our normal Law Courts. Why is nobody else screaming about this?
Great piece as usual, LSO. I'm with you on the iniquities visited on us motorists, having lost my car some time ago. Reporting it stolen, I never heard a word, except usual crime number letter. One year later, I enquired if anything bad been found - "we have no record of your car being reported" I was told. Marching back with logbook etc plus crime number letter, there were red faces and some faffing on the keyboard - and Lo! My car had in fact been taken by bailiffs for going (accidentally) a couple of yards into the Congestion Charge zone - a fact that I was unaware of. It seems I was sent 4 fine letters to a previous address, as evidenced by the logbook showing my new x 3 years address. "It's been around the auctions a but, hasn't it,", said the desk chappie, quite unashamed. So, my car lost, who to blame? Oh, and my insurance company went bust as well.
I enjoyed this but by the end was left thinking about echo chambers.
You articulate what many of us fear extremely well, but I think there is a danger of exaggerating the case. The last labour government did not make the errors of the 70’s. It made plenty of mistakes but was largely done for by the financial crash, just as the Tories are a shambles but mainly carrying the can for the economic catastrophes of the pandemic and Ukraine war.
I suspect Farage is correct. Starmer will turn out to be the left cheek of the same arse. The level of incompetence will be similar and there will be a lot of irritating stuff on the fringes but the slope of decline won’t visibly steepen for most of us. That it would reverse under the current bunch would be the ultimate triumph of hope over experience.
Wokism metastasised under the Tories. If Labour don’t give it some chemo the route will be open for another ‘super majority’ for a right wing populist next time round.
Let’s see what happens Martin. I think Labour has moved on from Blair just as the Tories have moved on from Thatcher. (Despite what we are told)
Maybe I’m overly worrying, catastrophising even. Fair enough. But I fear that a lurch to the left will leave us all, especially the already hard up and small business people, much worse off, both financially and culturally.
I can only base that prediction on what I have heard and seen the top level Labour people say and do. It’s like the best we can hope for is managed decline as we circle the drain of EU stagnation. (Again. Not something I celebrate)
But these Tories are toast. I’m happy about that at least.
I think Labour have a better shot at rolling back the advances of Woke than the Tories would. It's easy for the woke crowd to dismiss the Tories as racist (except Kemi Badenoch) or transphobes but it's harder to accuse Labour of the same crimes. I think Starmer has already made a bit of progress with this (Men have penises etc) but, as with financial stuff, he gets zero credit for this from the people who care most about it — the folks on the right.
The Tories like to make a lot of noise about Culture War stuff because it gets them Daily Mail Points but they have no intention of fixing anything. I expect we'll be done with woke stuff within a year under Labour for exactly the reasons you mention.
Now there's a thoughtful comment. Stereotypes live for decades after they've stopped being true. Over here we referred to the 'Drunken Irish' long after their rates of alcoholism were no worse than anyone else. We still think of mobsters as Sicilian long after organized crime was taken over by Russians and Latinos.
And we still recite the idea that the Left spends more than the Right, even tho that hasn't been true for decades. In the US, anyway, the Reps have run up the debt more than the Rats. Mind ... Biden is restoring the truth of the stereotype.
> But you can’t enrich the poor by giving them other people’s money.
LSM, you're too smart to use warn out rightist slogans like that one. Or:
> The politics of envy, the sense that it is right and proper to punish people for the temerity of having more than you, has never seemed so popular.
... that one. Let me put on my Che beret (just kidding, dolphins never wear hats, not even at parties, but you get me) -- anyway let me just get my Communist Manifesto out and lecture you a bit:
> But you can’t enrich the poor by giving them other people’s money.
We proles have noticed that the opposite works very well. By creating an artificial shortage of accommodation you CAN enrich the rentiers by giving them other people's money -- my money. If that works so well, I wonder if reversing that transfer might not work too? Rents proportional to the actual cost of building and maintaining a living space?
> The politics of envy, the sense that it is right and proper to punish people for the temerity of having more than you, has never seemed so popular.
I suppose there are enviers out there, but most of us in the despised producing class think that, in the most abstract sense, one should be paid according to one's productivity just like Uncle Karl said. We quite understand that a doctor is paid more than a janitor and we don't envy an engineer, we admire him and want our kids to go into engineering.
But yeah, as the society one lives in has made one's success possible -- there is no such thing as a self-made man, we are *all* the products of our talent, luck, ambition and opportunities -- yes, Jeff B. should pay some taxes, possibly even more taxes than his lowest employee.
But the thing is that one's wealth should come from some actually productive enterprise. Under a Sans Culottes administration Elon would keep his billions cuz he does fun stuff with them. Banksters, senators, lawyers, NGO execs, rentiers ... and the vast mass of people who -- from a proles perspective -- don't really do anything ...
... well, I was going to say 'should be taxed' but even better, they should be fired. Borrowing from comrade Mao, they should be driven into the fields. Yes, the fields, we need harvesters, no? But we do not need DEIB administrators.
See, the thing isn't left vs. right, it's up vs. down. The government can tax every penny I have with my approval IF they spend it on what I want and can do so more efficiently than I can. That's 'IF' meaning 'should it be true' not 'since it is true'. Join the Sans Culottes party!
Both at the same time. When I'm weeding my garlic I don't say. 'This pass, chickweed, next pass dandelions' I pull all the weeds all the time. Of course the government is too big. And the tax code needs an ov ... no, a complete rebuild from scratch. But as I said, it's not so much the Lamborghini as how you got it. I'd propose the monumental task of restoring the entire economy back to an emphasis on the actual production of actual wealth -- that being the actual goods and services that real people actually want. The problem is weeds. Big ones, little ones, deep ones, shallow ones. Some hard to pull some easy.
I propose a new Ministry -- wait, wait, don't kill me -- The Ministry of Efficiency. Which consists of two identical departments because their first task is to keep *each other* efficient.
Ha ha. I love that. Although you forgot the government Ombudsman. We have them in the uk for Communications. Ofcom. One for Energy. Ofgem. So maybe the one for Efficiency could be EffOf.
Speaking for the non-Marxists among us (maybe the Marxists too, who knows?)… I think there's an important distinction between the working poor and the not-working poor. I think sometimes the folks on the right smush the two together when they are complaining. Sometimes the folks on the left do too.
Agreed. But I also don’t like how the right throw around the word ‘scroungers’ for the non working poor. As if these people have not been incentivised to choose (if they ever have a choice) benefits over working by a system which traps them in dependency. This is why Sunak’s recent claims he would ‘reduce the welfare bill’ got my back up. There are so many other areas of waste to tackle, before you start taking money off people on benefits.
> I think there's an important distinction between the working poor and the not-working poor.
Of course. The productive class used to be parasitized almost exclusively from above. Now they are sucked on from both ends. What's interesting is that the parasites above justify much of there sucking by pointing out how much of it they give to the parasites below -- less their ... how to put it? ... 'handling fee' perhaps. But the parasitic poor are a far lesser problem than the parasites above.
I think it's shocking that women aren't allowed pepper spray to defend themselves. It didn't stop me getting my sisters, mum and nieces some when I was abroad.
Thanks Vulkan. I think that would have escalated the situation tbh. She was with some friends, including some big lads, the thieves just swooped in and were gone apparently. I’m glad it didn’t turn into an altercation. I think this is how some very bad things happy. It’s not so much about the phones in one sense. Especially when the youngsters are concerned. Thanks so much for saying that tho.
I imagine that the thieves would have brandished knives if they had been confronted. At least everyone's safe like you said.
As for labour. Hate speech laws. Raising taxes. We all know that when they say working class they mean people on benefits.
The worst thing is trying to stay in power forever by lowering the age limit to vote. I'm old enough to remember the news reports in the early 2010's saying that 16 year old's were under extreme stress due to exams and now they want to add the extra stresses of voting. Nope. It's wrong.
Exactly. They 16 year old thing is vexing. So are they likkle babies who need the state to protect them from the rigours of life like nasty words, or are they big grown ups who can make the big decisions? Even if it was ideologically driven I could maybe accept it, but it’s not, it’s simply gerrymandering.
When I was 18 the voting age was 21 and I don't remember feeling hard done by. I was a member of Young Conservatives so sort of politically aware but wasn't thinking I knew better than the older ones who had a vote.
"Starmer suggested that ‘working people’ means anyone who has no savings, relies on the state for many of life’s basics and holds few, if any assets. (I’m no psephologist but that sounds a lot like a ‘traditional Labour voter’ to me)"
Actually, Starmer's definition suggests these people don't work and presumably could not even be bothered to vote. The average working class person (a real one, one that has a job) is quite conservative and votes Labour out of habit. The other core constituency that Labour has are the millions of state-funded employees in the civil service, local government, education, health, NGOs and charities (yes, they get loads from the taxpayer too). Probably others as well, since the tentacles of the state spread everywhere - oh yes - the media, since they have all been indoctrinated in those wonderful universities of ours, and they only select their own kind. It is a wonder that Labour are ever out of power, though some would argue they are never out of power as Conservatives are just a faction of the same socialist movement.
Problem. How do we feed and house approx 5 million on minimum wage who we totally rely on to make our world go round. Wish l knew answers, it seems food banks and high rents maybe. We should never have sold the council house system.
Hey Tony. Food banks are a poor substitute for actual jobs resulting from a vibrant economy. Supply and demand. We have too many low skilled workers for the amount of low skilled jobs. It depresses wages. Maybe we should not have sold off the council houses, but I think the worse mistake was never building their replacements with the proceeds of those sales. Cheers.
I see another problem, our population is growing very fast. I did my apprenticeship at Vickers Armstrong Weybridge. Some years later l was working in a machine shop and we had a contract to manufacture cast rings, they took approx 2 hours on a conventional lathe, then the boss bought a CNC lathe, within a very short time the rings took 20 mins. So with the advent of super machines we only needed 1 man instead of 6, this was some years ago. Now then if we have more workers and less skilled jobs where do we go from here. I wish l knew.
It’s a good point Tony. The current solution to that problem? Import even more low skilled workers while imposing regulations which make buying the modern equivalent of that new lathe difficult (govt intervention) or uneconomic (high energy costs resulting from Net Zero policies for example).
We already have too many unskilled workers, most of whom would rather be on benefits than going to work.. we certainly do not need any more. Maybe lower the benefits, which ever gov in charge to do that would soon be outed. Somehow we have to educate children from a young age that they have to contribute to society. Lastly, why do people want huge amounts of money, l am in my 80s now, worked till 65, have a modest pension and feel well off. Never wanted for anything, l and my missus can only eat and drink so much each day, no requirement for a million in the bank.
This was all forecast by economists back in the 60s: the replacement of labour by capital. It was assumed that people would work fewer hours (true), that the work force would become more managerial -all those machines - (true), that it would be some sort of workers' paradise because the heavy and dirty work would be a thing of the past (true and false), that those jobs which could not be mechanised would be quite well paid because wage rates would be determined by the competition for labour (false), that a proportion of the workforce would be paid not to work because of their inadequacies (partly true). But no one forecast free movement of labour from all of Europe or, later, Africa and Asia. But, hey, the oversupply of labour - unskilled and skilled - is good for business! It keeps wage costs down. This is especially important for our millionaire business owners who have to compete with low wage costs globally. It's good for politicians, who can point to rising aggregate GDP, and for the people who have reasonably well paid jobs. But it's not good for the millions whose wages are kept low, and its not good for our culture to be ever expanding the population artificially, destroying countryside, villages, towns and cities as more and more have to be accommodated.
Really, really good piece; mirrors so many of my thoughts. You cover one of my hobby horses too - the horribly asymmetrical relationship between state and individual at the moment. There are so many examples, but yours is a vivid one. Thank you.
Thanks Stuart. That’s very kind.
I think your last point is spot on, the Conservatives have utterly failed even to keep peoples living standards at the same level they found it. Labour will make it far, far worse. This country unfortunately has much further to fall before the insidious hands of the uniparty can be prised off our throats.
On a side note, should Trading Standards be called in on our political parties? The Conservatives don’t conserve, Labour despises those who labour and the Liberal Democrat’s are neither liberal nor believe in democracy.
Yes P. And the Greens seem more like the Reds to me.
And they mis sell with the lies in their manifesto
I couldn't agree more, but I wish I knew what to do about it. I think I know why half of British adults pay no income tax at all, though. It seems to be because I pay all of it. I'm pretty sure that's the case...
Ha ha Jason. Yes. We all feel like that. And not just once, we’re paying three or four times on money we earned once. It’s not in any sense fair or justifiable.
Reasons why less than 50% pay tax? Maybe they are that poorly paid to begin with? Maybe they are tax dodgers? Maybe they have manipulated pension tax relief? Maybe we should tax children that represent 15% of non tax payers, and move on to students too? Just taking the fallacy of paying tax 3 or 4 times...a basic rate payer puts £100 in a pension, cost £80. Cashes it in, gets £25 tax free, pays 20% tax on the remaining £75 (£15) receives £60, so £85 back for £80 in. Who pays for that largesse? The tax payers that can't afford to contribute/leverage pension tax relief. That's not multiple taxation - that's classic redistribution of wealth
Hi Damien. I think it’s actually working adults. But I don’t have a source to hand.
Pensions are one thing. They have tax breaks to encourage their take up. Although they were made much less generous by Brown and Osborne I believe.
I’m talking about buying a house for example. Wages taxed at source. Any interest earned as you save for a deposit. Taxed. Then you are taxed again for buying the property with stamp duty. And of course there’s VAT to pay on a wide range of your expenses. And of course inflation itself is in effect a form Of taxation. That’s generally what I’m talking about.
But my basic point is that working people are paying for a state which does not spend their money wisely, and treats them like cash machines.
What I’m not saying is that we shouldn’t be helping poor people.
"But my basic point is that working people are paying for a state which does not spend their money wisely, and treats them like cash machines.
What I’m not saying is that we shouldn’t be helping poor people."
That's the diametric opposite of what your post says. And I will break down your response:
Pensions - who benefits most from the tax relief? Those that have the money to best utilise them. More likely to be the richer than the poorer. Who pays? All irrespective of income. A tax on the poor to subsidise the rich.
Savings - for a basic rate tax payer to pay interest on savings, at current rates, they would need £20,000 of savings - savings that someone earning the national AVG wouldn't have.
Vat - the lacklustre, benefit screwing non contributor, contributes a greater proportion of their 'income' through vat, (and behaviour taxes on alcohol/cigarettes), than the chateauneufdePappe striving contributor.
Stamp duty - the national average wage would warrant, at a stretch, a mortgage of £140,000, so to warrant paying stamp duty, suggests the stamp duty payer is doing better than the majority. Earning well in excess of the majority. Why is it so incongruous to share that wellbeing?
As for paying taxes. I have never questioned the amount of tax I've paid. As someone who once relied on taxpayer support (which was the difference between life and death), the more I pay, the more I celebrate how far I've come, my success.
I once said to someone, moaning about their gas bill - I love worrying about paying my gas bill - it means I have the comfort, support, safety and springboard, of a home I can call my own.
Yes, I question the waste of how Governance wastes out taxes - most I question those that bemoan paying it, from a point of comfort that allows it to avoid it.
Too many people don't earn enough to extract pension tax relief.
Too many don't have a home, can't aspire to buying one to pay stamp duty
Too many earn to little to save, and pay tax on their savings.
Too many are moaning about, a taxation on their 'wealth' whilst bemoaning the scroungers who cost less than their pension tax reliefs.
The taxes, you so critique on the richer, are exactly what sustained me to live. To pay an unbroken 35 years of increasing tax contributions. Your tax 35 years ago wasn't a cost - it was an investment paid back many times over. The difference in our perspective on tax, is a difference, that has allowed me to have a quality of life I never could have dreamed of. Given me a life worth living. And it's a meagre life I live. I don't resent that - I do resent being told I'm impacting the quality of lives of others, who have never thought of me, it my ilk.
Don't question taxes. Question how they are spent. Then, I'm 100% behind you.
Pensions are deferred income taxes (with a 25% tax free lump sum at retirement)
harmful taxes on earnings are VAT, Employer NI, Employee NI, the various bands of income taxes.
Taxes must be always questioned!
You have obviously ignored my example above. Fully taxed on encashment, after taxing the tax free lump sum, is a benefit to those able to do so, at the expense of all taxpayers, particularly those unable to do so.
I wish your Substack was on the National Curriculum (not that I agree with there actually being anything so prescriptive as a National Curriculum). It is so funny and true that I think a GCSE in LSOs could un-brainwash the entirety of our youth out of the socialist mindset into which they have been led. Then one day, in the shiny distant future, socialism would be as much an historic disease as the Bubonic Plague.
Thank you so much Bettina. That’s such a lovely image at the end. Socialism is like a chronic complaint isn’t it? We keep thinking it’s in retreat, then it comes back again. ATB
Like Athlete's Foot....
Ha ha
I've said it before and I'll say it again, "GOVERNMENT DOES NOT HAVE A REVENUE PROBLEM IN THIS COUNTRY, IT HAS A SPENDING PROBLEM!".
(Sorry for shouting...)
Loud and clear Besetting.
Thank you LSO. Of course we don't need to worry about Labour's achieving growth. We have a "fully costed" spending plan, well for 2028/29 at least. As an accountant, I can tell you right now that I can't do your accounts for 2024/25, if I have no data for 2023/24 and earlier, because I have no opening figures. This basic fact seems to have passed everyone by.
The real joke of course is that these "fully costed" manifestos are not worth the paper they are probably no longer written on. The IMF would be challenged if you asked it to produce growth estimates for June 2024, less than two working days before the end of the month. The idea that anything anyone estimates for 2028/29 is remotely likely to bear any semblance to reality is about as likely as angels magically writing off our £2 trillion plus debt.
This is because nobody has any idea what growth over the next five minutes will be, let alone the next five years, but you can bet Labour's will be wildly optimistic. Their estimate of increased tax take from non-domiciliaries and parents and mythical tax avoiders will be wildly overestimated. And their spending will be wildly underestimated.
The really big issue though is nut zero. Labour let the cat out of the bag over £500 billion of costs, but that's a joke. Net zero was costed in 2020 at £3 trillion in 2020. Think £6 trillion now, and then double that to deal with storage. That's £12 trillion over 26 years. Call it £2 trillion a year. That's four times Labour's estimate every year. But even if it was £500 billion a year, the original estimate by the National Grid, that's still £25,000 per family every year.
Of course the answer is that the private sector will apparently spend all this money, apart from a paltry £8 billion in "Great British Energy", and produce huge growth, no doubt anticipated in 2028/29's figures. But all I see is endless costs, blackouts, and much more cost for far worse heating and electric vehicles that are useless.
I had to laugh at Starmer's definition of "working people" as basically minimum wage earners with no savings. No wonder he proposed no increase in taxes for them. They haven't anything to give. Even Starmer could see that was flogging a dead horse.
Thanks so much for that detailed breakdown Jeremy. It always annoys me when they argue about figures which have simply been conjured up out of thin air, or actively manufactured through data manipulation and ‘modelling’.
The economics of Net Zero are a perfect example. It cannot possibly be achievable. Even if you impoverished the entire country. Because then, obviously, there would be even less money.
I’m all for moving to a ‘sustainable’ future. But we are not heading in that direction, instead we are destroying our tiny economy while the big players sit back, laugh and reap the benefits of our slow suicide.
Thanks again.
Kinda looking forward to the blackouts as they should paradoxically make everyone see the light about Labour.
It was fun last time. But then again. I think I was 7.
I was at boarding school, and unfortunately the junior and senior schools were in different zones, so several days a week we walked the mile or so from one to the other at night so we could still do prep (homework).
Cruel.
While you was at boarding school, I was getting kicked, spat on, and solicited. Maybe explains why we are poles apart.
As always, Yes Ministers perfectly captured the mood when Humphrey stayed (I'm paraphrasing, plz forgive)
"The incoming party has all the ideas until they get into power and see the financial sitiation is utterly appalling"
I’ve read a few articles which suggest that Labour will ‘discover’ there’s no money when they ‘open the books’ on day one in power. And use that as an excuse for ‘unexpected but necessary’ tax hikes. But there are no secret books. Government finances are open for all to see. For a start the OBR scrutinises ‘the books’ continuously and is not shy in sharing its findings .
'mythical tax avoiders '...., there's nothing mythical about them. They aren't just the Amazon's on the world, they are the 6 McDonald franchisee holders, in the northwest. They are a pervasous cancer. They only thing mythical is your ignorance to suches prevelance. Profit of £2 million serving burgers to the Northwest. Salary £18,000, dividend, to your Jersey dominated, (and owned) 'shareholder' of £1.5 mill. Whilst still getting child benefit. Cracking..mythical almost.
That's not tax avoidance. It's tax evasion. It is beyond doubt that these Jersey companies are caught by the transfer of assets abroad legislation that was first devised in the 1930s.
The real tax avoidance comes from schemes to disguise remuneration as loans, which has already been cracked down on to the extent of leading to suicides, and the multinationals who circumvent the rules with ease by relocating profits into tax havens. Collection is not helped by a government and HMRC so afraid of them that they get away with ridiculous deals like the Vodafone one.
I was being kind in suggesting avoidance! Of course it's evasion. It's prevelance isn't just the domain of the Vodafones or Blackstones. It's everywhere.
But when a party says it's going to tackle tax avoidance, they aren't actually talking about what you are, which is illegal evasion. Perhaps I am giving them too much credit that they understand the difference.
Tackling evasion doesn't really happen, and won't happen, because HMRC don't recruit the right people. It is the same with all law enforcement. The talent flocks to the business, not the enforcers, because there's so much money in it. It's the same with the "war on drugs." The franchisees you describe get away with millions, but those charged with taking them down are paid in peanuts.
Pretty much the same down under too, with respect to bloated civil service and labour / greens..Glad your daughter is ok.
Thanks Christian. It seems to be a worldwide problem. And their greatest trick is persuading people that they need all this stuff, or else they have a ‘right’ to huge government intervention. Here we’re about to roll out breakfast for every primary school pupil. I thought that was what parents were for…
And we are going to pay our teachers to help the kids clean their teeth. Another parent job, surely?
Thanks for setting out so eloquently what many of us are beginning to realise, as we head towards an archo-tyranny. The law abiding will pay more and more for ever worsening services while the lawless and feckless will do as they please. Our local council will make your life a misery to install the correct drainpipe on a listed building. But no one will check the employment status and tax records of anyone cleaning your car, let alone take any interest in your home being burgled.
Thanks Martin! Exactly. We were putting some new windows in and a bit of building. A man from the council came round and said from the plans, what he did and didn’t like. It so annoyed me. Our original plans weren’t exactly heinous. But this man got to tell us what we could have based on the what he liked. You can’t even see them from the street. And of course we had to kow tow to the petty bureaucracy of it all. Grim.
I have lots more examples from home and work, so don't get me started.
What will also intrigue us, I expect you have the same experience, that you will have the same conversation again and again with your middle class friends. If this comes round to politics, they will agree how awful the Tories are, that Farage is just hideous (likes Putin and Trump), that Starmer is sensible and worth voting for, but they are also tempted to vote LibDem. Who will of course make everything better.
Yes Martin. Somehow someone has managed to change the debate from what works/doesn’t work to who are the good people vs who are the baddies. Obviously emotion has always been a huge part of politics. But now it seems like it is everything.
A lot of depth in that brief response. Is this a reflection of our moving from a traditional (patriarchal) society to a therapeutic (non-patriarchal) one?
That’s interesting. Yes. That could be it. Or how about from a debate based view of politics, to one based on narrative? Maybe that’s just saying what you said Martin, but in a slightly different way.
Lots of different factors at play, all pulling us downwards. It's complicated.
You are a genius, Mr. LSO. I am filled with admiration and despair.
Having been appalled by your twitter tread about spending on woke culture…
https://x.com/charlottecgill/status/1799176733490614342?s=61
… I nipped over to the Ministry of Culture etc to see what else they spend all our money on.
https://www.parliament.uk/globalassets/documents/commons/scrutiny/dcms-slides-2021-22.pdf
It wasn't happy reading. It's around two billion per year (rising to four billion in COVID years). £13 million of that was spent preparing for the Mens European Championships (that’s £6.5m per goal). The Mayor of London makes a good case that much of the £500m spent on museums and galleries comes back from tourist revenue but the rest of it doesn’t seem particularly well spent.
https://www.parliament.uk/globalassets/documents/commons/scrutiny/dcms-slides-2021-22.pdf
As an ex-sailor myself, I am filled with sadness at the depletion of our navy. Maybe I should volunteer to be Director of Submarines. The first thing I would do is get rid of those four black vessels of armageddon that cost us an absolute fortune. We could get eight proper submarines for the same price.
https://raggedclown.substack.com/p/run-silent-run-deep
I’d also suggest that we get rid of those expensive aircraft carriers and replace them with a few more frigates and destroyers. We don’t have enough planes to fill the carriers and we don’t have enough warships to escort them. Whose idea was it to buy the carriers anyway?
It strikes me, scanning these colossal credit card bills, that there is very little discussion about the specifics of our spending in the election campaign. When Penny Mordaunt rants off her list of spending that Labour will impose on us all, she seems to be merely listing the money that the Tories have already spent. It wasn’t Keir Starmer who gave £64,000 to the trans bloke for sperm services. It bit of public accounting about our spending would be useful I think.
I do think we should talk more about the specifics and I thank you, Mr LSO, for brining it to our attention.
Good points Ragged. This is the problem isn't it, that people who don't know what they're doing get to tell people who know what they should be doing, what to do! We must all remember absorbing the fact in our youth - that, incredibly, the Minister for Health was never doctor; that the Minister for Education had never been a teacher; that the Home Secretary had never been a policeman etc etc.
That's right, Bettina. It's not just that the Ministers of Health, Education, etc haven't been doctors, teachers, etc. They don't seem to have been anything. In the olden days, it did seem like ministers had done something significant before they became ministers.
Sir Kier has at least run a huge, important bureaucracy already in his life. He didn't just come in with a PPE from Oxford (and his father was a toolmaker!).
I would vote for any party who changed the rules so that Prospective MPs had to have had some sort of real job (political researcher/advisor does not count) before putting their name forward.
I remember the uproar when Barbara Castle who did not drive was made Minister for Transport. Nowadays they change jobs so quickly I doubt half of them know who they are when they wake up in the morning. They have no chance of getting to grips with the job before being moved on.
Thinking some more.
It’s curious that these spending atrocities came after so many years of austerity. It’s also curious that we are quick to condemn Labour for the colossal deficits in our future when the deficits were so much lower under the last labour government. We even had a surplus, as I recall.
It doesn’t seem fair that Labour gets the blame for Tory spending.
I usually enjoy your writing but there was no enjoyment in this piece, it is much too near the mark. I think we are in for a complete sh**show for the next five years.
Sorry Bill!
I think we are already finished with the Prologue and Act One. The next few Acts will extend the misery to the entire country and end with an Islamic Socialist Republic. Far-fetched? Well, I see no sign of any resistance to these well-embedded trends.
Britain First is running a campaign highlighting the number of Sharia courts operating in this country in parallel to or in opposition to our normal Law Courts. Why is nobody else screaming about this?
Great piece as usual, LSO. I'm with you on the iniquities visited on us motorists, having lost my car some time ago. Reporting it stolen, I never heard a word, except usual crime number letter. One year later, I enquired if anything bad been found - "we have no record of your car being reported" I was told. Marching back with logbook etc plus crime number letter, there were red faces and some faffing on the keyboard - and Lo! My car had in fact been taken by bailiffs for going (accidentally) a couple of yards into the Congestion Charge zone - a fact that I was unaware of. It seems I was sent 4 fine letters to a previous address, as evidenced by the logbook showing my new x 3 years address. "It's been around the auctions a but, hasn't it,", said the desk chappie, quite unashamed. So, my car lost, who to blame? Oh, and my insurance company went bust as well.
Thanks Giulia. What a Kafkaesque story? Did you get it back?
Siery, I went on a rabt there but your column just sturred ne up.m!
And no, I never got the car back, I didn't know how to get justice (plus some bereavement issues).
I did notice more and more police personnel slinking into the room as I described what had happened, as it was quite a tale!
Sorry to hear that Giulia. Good story tho!
I enjoyed this but by the end was left thinking about echo chambers.
You articulate what many of us fear extremely well, but I think there is a danger of exaggerating the case. The last labour government did not make the errors of the 70’s. It made plenty of mistakes but was largely done for by the financial crash, just as the Tories are a shambles but mainly carrying the can for the economic catastrophes of the pandemic and Ukraine war.
I suspect Farage is correct. Starmer will turn out to be the left cheek of the same arse. The level of incompetence will be similar and there will be a lot of irritating stuff on the fringes but the slope of decline won’t visibly steepen for most of us. That it would reverse under the current bunch would be the ultimate triumph of hope over experience.
Wokism metastasised under the Tories. If Labour don’t give it some chemo the route will be open for another ‘super majority’ for a right wing populist next time round.
Sent from my iPhone
Let’s see what happens Martin. I think Labour has moved on from Blair just as the Tories have moved on from Thatcher. (Despite what we are told)
Maybe I’m overly worrying, catastrophising even. Fair enough. But I fear that a lurch to the left will leave us all, especially the already hard up and small business people, much worse off, both financially and culturally.
I can only base that prediction on what I have heard and seen the top level Labour people say and do. It’s like the best we can hope for is managed decline as we circle the drain of EU stagnation. (Again. Not something I celebrate)
But these Tories are toast. I’m happy about that at least.
Great comment.
I think Labour have a better shot at rolling back the advances of Woke than the Tories would. It's easy for the woke crowd to dismiss the Tories as racist (except Kemi Badenoch) or transphobes but it's harder to accuse Labour of the same crimes. I think Starmer has already made a bit of progress with this (Men have penises etc) but, as with financial stuff, he gets zero credit for this from the people who care most about it — the folks on the right.
The Tories like to make a lot of noise about Culture War stuff because it gets them Daily Mail Points but they have no intention of fixing anything. I expect we'll be done with woke stuff within a year under Labour for exactly the reasons you mention.
Now there's a thoughtful comment. Stereotypes live for decades after they've stopped being true. Over here we referred to the 'Drunken Irish' long after their rates of alcoholism were no worse than anyone else. We still think of mobsters as Sicilian long after organized crime was taken over by Russians and Latinos.
And we still recite the idea that the Left spends more than the Right, even tho that hasn't been true for decades. In the US, anyway, the Reps have run up the debt more than the Rats. Mind ... Biden is restoring the truth of the stereotype.
The loyal opposition here:
> But you can’t enrich the poor by giving them other people’s money.
LSM, you're too smart to use warn out rightist slogans like that one. Or:
> The politics of envy, the sense that it is right and proper to punish people for the temerity of having more than you, has never seemed so popular.
... that one. Let me put on my Che beret (just kidding, dolphins never wear hats, not even at parties, but you get me) -- anyway let me just get my Communist Manifesto out and lecture you a bit:
> But you can’t enrich the poor by giving them other people’s money.
We proles have noticed that the opposite works very well. By creating an artificial shortage of accommodation you CAN enrich the rentiers by giving them other people's money -- my money. If that works so well, I wonder if reversing that transfer might not work too? Rents proportional to the actual cost of building and maintaining a living space?
> The politics of envy, the sense that it is right and proper to punish people for the temerity of having more than you, has never seemed so popular.
I suppose there are enviers out there, but most of us in the despised producing class think that, in the most abstract sense, one should be paid according to one's productivity just like Uncle Karl said. We quite understand that a doctor is paid more than a janitor and we don't envy an engineer, we admire him and want our kids to go into engineering.
But yeah, as the society one lives in has made one's success possible -- there is no such thing as a self-made man, we are *all* the products of our talent, luck, ambition and opportunities -- yes, Jeff B. should pay some taxes, possibly even more taxes than his lowest employee.
But the thing is that one's wealth should come from some actually productive enterprise. Under a Sans Culottes administration Elon would keep his billions cuz he does fun stuff with them. Banksters, senators, lawyers, NGO execs, rentiers ... and the vast mass of people who -- from a proles perspective -- don't really do anything ...
... well, I was going to say 'should be taxed' but even better, they should be fired. Borrowing from comrade Mao, they should be driven into the fields. Yes, the fields, we need harvesters, no? But we do not need DEIB administrators.
See, the thing isn't left vs. right, it's up vs. down. The government can tax every penny I have with my approval IF they spend it on what I want and can do so more efficiently than I can. That's 'IF' meaning 'should it be true' not 'since it is true'. Join the Sans Culottes party!
Hey Ray. Lovely to hear from you. Lots there.
The ‘rich’ aren’t taking 45.6% of uk gdp. The government is. Let’s reduce the size of government, and then come after the Lamborghinis maybe.
Both at the same time. When I'm weeding my garlic I don't say. 'This pass, chickweed, next pass dandelions' I pull all the weeds all the time. Of course the government is too big. And the tax code needs an ov ... no, a complete rebuild from scratch. But as I said, it's not so much the Lamborghini as how you got it. I'd propose the monumental task of restoring the entire economy back to an emphasis on the actual production of actual wealth -- that being the actual goods and services that real people actually want. The problem is weeds. Big ones, little ones, deep ones, shallow ones. Some hard to pull some easy.
I propose a new Ministry -- wait, wait, don't kill me -- The Ministry of Efficiency. Which consists of two identical departments because their first task is to keep *each other* efficient.
Ha ha. I love that. Although you forgot the government Ombudsman. We have them in the uk for Communications. Ofcom. One for Energy. Ofgem. So maybe the one for Efficiency could be EffOf.
Speaking for the non-Marxists among us (maybe the Marxists too, who knows?)… I think there's an important distinction between the working poor and the not-working poor. I think sometimes the folks on the right smush the two together when they are complaining. Sometimes the folks on the left do too.
Agreed. But I also don’t like how the right throw around the word ‘scroungers’ for the non working poor. As if these people have not been incentivised to choose (if they ever have a choice) benefits over working by a system which traps them in dependency. This is why Sunak’s recent claims he would ‘reduce the welfare bill’ got my back up. There are so many other areas of waste to tackle, before you start taking money off people on benefits.
> I think there's an important distinction between the working poor and the not-working poor.
Of course. The productive class used to be parasitized almost exclusively from above. Now they are sucked on from both ends. What's interesting is that the parasites above justify much of there sucking by pointing out how much of it they give to the parasites below -- less their ... how to put it? ... 'handling fee' perhaps. But the parasitic poor are a far lesser problem than the parasites above.
Hope your daughter is okay.
I think it's shocking that women aren't allowed pepper spray to defend themselves. It didn't stop me getting my sisters, mum and nieces some when I was abroad.
Thanks Vulkan. I think that would have escalated the situation tbh. She was with some friends, including some big lads, the thieves just swooped in and were gone apparently. I’m glad it didn’t turn into an altercation. I think this is how some very bad things happy. It’s not so much about the phones in one sense. Especially when the youngsters are concerned. Thanks so much for saying that tho.
I imagine that the thieves would have brandished knives if they had been confronted. At least everyone's safe like you said.
As for labour. Hate speech laws. Raising taxes. We all know that when they say working class they mean people on benefits.
The worst thing is trying to stay in power forever by lowering the age limit to vote. I'm old enough to remember the news reports in the early 2010's saying that 16 year old's were under extreme stress due to exams and now they want to add the extra stresses of voting. Nope. It's wrong.
Exactly. They 16 year old thing is vexing. So are they likkle babies who need the state to protect them from the rigours of life like nasty words, or are they big grown ups who can make the big decisions? Even if it was ideologically driven I could maybe accept it, but it’s not, it’s simply gerrymandering.
When I was 18 the voting age was 21 and I don't remember feeling hard done by. I was a member of Young Conservatives so sort of politically aware but wasn't thinking I knew better than the older ones who had a vote.
I'm grasping at straws but this will end up being a round about way to lower the age of various things like smoking/drinking an sex. You just wait.
Some of those maybe. But certainly not others. Again it’s weird. Smoking is outrageous, but puberty blockers are ok.
"Starmer suggested that ‘working people’ means anyone who has no savings, relies on the state for many of life’s basics and holds few, if any assets. (I’m no psephologist but that sounds a lot like a ‘traditional Labour voter’ to me)"
Actually, Starmer's definition suggests these people don't work and presumably could not even be bothered to vote. The average working class person (a real one, one that has a job) is quite conservative and votes Labour out of habit. The other core constituency that Labour has are the millions of state-funded employees in the civil service, local government, education, health, NGOs and charities (yes, they get loads from the taxpayer too). Probably others as well, since the tentacles of the state spread everywhere - oh yes - the media, since they have all been indoctrinated in those wonderful universities of ours, and they only select their own kind. It is a wonder that Labour are ever out of power, though some would argue they are never out of power as Conservatives are just a faction of the same socialist movement.
Fair points Jos. I agree about the Conservatives too.
Problem. How do we feed and house approx 5 million on minimum wage who we totally rely on to make our world go round. Wish l knew answers, it seems food banks and high rents maybe. We should never have sold the council house system.
Hey Tony. Food banks are a poor substitute for actual jobs resulting from a vibrant economy. Supply and demand. We have too many low skilled workers for the amount of low skilled jobs. It depresses wages. Maybe we should not have sold off the council houses, but I think the worse mistake was never building their replacements with the proceeds of those sales. Cheers.
I see another problem, our population is growing very fast. I did my apprenticeship at Vickers Armstrong Weybridge. Some years later l was working in a machine shop and we had a contract to manufacture cast rings, they took approx 2 hours on a conventional lathe, then the boss bought a CNC lathe, within a very short time the rings took 20 mins. So with the advent of super machines we only needed 1 man instead of 6, this was some years ago. Now then if we have more workers and less skilled jobs where do we go from here. I wish l knew.
It’s a good point Tony. The current solution to that problem? Import even more low skilled workers while imposing regulations which make buying the modern equivalent of that new lathe difficult (govt intervention) or uneconomic (high energy costs resulting from Net Zero policies for example).
We already have too many unskilled workers, most of whom would rather be on benefits than going to work.. we certainly do not need any more. Maybe lower the benefits, which ever gov in charge to do that would soon be outed. Somehow we have to educate children from a young age that they have to contribute to society. Lastly, why do people want huge amounts of money, l am in my 80s now, worked till 65, have a modest pension and feel well off. Never wanted for anything, l and my missus can only eat and drink so much each day, no requirement for a million in the bank.
This was all forecast by economists back in the 60s: the replacement of labour by capital. It was assumed that people would work fewer hours (true), that the work force would become more managerial -all those machines - (true), that it would be some sort of workers' paradise because the heavy and dirty work would be a thing of the past (true and false), that those jobs which could not be mechanised would be quite well paid because wage rates would be determined by the competition for labour (false), that a proportion of the workforce would be paid not to work because of their inadequacies (partly true). But no one forecast free movement of labour from all of Europe or, later, Africa and Asia. But, hey, the oversupply of labour - unskilled and skilled - is good for business! It keeps wage costs down. This is especially important for our millionaire business owners who have to compete with low wage costs globally. It's good for politicians, who can point to rising aggregate GDP, and for the people who have reasonably well paid jobs. But it's not good for the millions whose wages are kept low, and its not good for our culture to be ever expanding the population artificially, destroying countryside, villages, towns and cities as more and more have to be accommodated.
Maybe, but why didn't Labour reinstate the council house system when they had ample opportunity to do so?