UK politics thread

[DieselDaisy]

I voted Lib Dem, I then got home and researched who I voted for.

Picture of the stoned guy, anyone?

[Len Cnut]

I voted Lib Dem, I then got home and researched who I voted for.

Oh just come here mate!

*gives him a hug*

Don't ever change, you hear that? You stay exactly as you are man, fuck the world Respect man, you're a legend, proper legend

[Snake-Pit]

I voted Lib Dem, I then got home and researched who I voted for.

Picture of the stoned guy, anyone?

Found out I voted for a black chick, I was like

'Alright!'

There's only 1 white person running.

Labour.

UKIP, Lib Dem, black people

Tory, Indian.

Our UKIP guy was born in Jamaica.

Our Tory was born in India.

[Len Cnut]

Had an oddly political conversation with my Dad this morning, saw him this morning and he's like so who you voting for boy? And I'm like, look, I probably won't bother, can't be bothered, would be Labour by default but i can't fuckin' bring myself to put my money on Milliband, Tory is a no-no flat out, Lib Debs are a bunch of substitute teachers, Green Party I'm expecting to turn into Mutant Ninja Turtles any minute now and Nigel Farage can suck my cock (the latter 3 are my opinion and weren't communicated to my old man ).

Anyway, he threw up an interesting proposition, for a laugh, doing my Harold Steptoe bit, i was like Dad you should really vote Labour, being a working class man and that. Moreso than me, you were like, proper working class. And he's like fuck them, they don't wanna do nothing for working class that are actually working. And i was like what do you mean? And he's like, OK, well 40% inheritance tax. My old man started with nothing, no silver spoon, not even much of an education and today in terms of assests, you could probably strip him and end up with like...2 million, all said and done? The sum of his lifetimes work. And he's like I'm a working class man, i worked for every penny of that money, I've not stolen it or gained it through false pretences, the whole point of me making all that money and doing all that was so I'd have something to leave to my kids, I'm 57 years old now, what do i want with a lot of money, it's basically for my kids, so they'll have a little something to get a head start in life.

Now is it fair if I've been paying taxes anyway on all this money, all my life, for the purposes of knocking it onto my kids, for them to then take 40% of it? And if you don't have that much money to hand they ain't gonna hang on and have it on the weekly, they're gonna make you sell up and hand it over. And it's not like it's someone with 50 million or 100 million where you could afford to lose 40% and still have something left over (though he thought that unreasonable too), you'll more or less nothing of it left. So don't you give me all that bollocks about party of the working class.

As well as 'your generation make me fuckin' laugh, if you did half as much work as you did chat about being working class you might get somewhere, you're all gob, what work have you done in your life?!?'

What do yous make of that? It occured to me that he's right. He is a working class bloke, the fact that he has a few quid now is literally based on graft, i mean he had fuck all as a kid, literally fuck all. So I guess I'm presenting this proposition to those that believe in higher taxation for people with a few quid...what do you make of that, as an idea?

I agree with your dad on this

So then whats the right way approach? Cuz I mean I've always really sided on the Labour end in terms of like, lesser of however many evils. And it occurs to me that, for me to hold that position is a bit bullshittey cuz then it's like 'oh yeah tax the rich...but stop just short of my dues, won't ya?'

Edited May 7, 2015 by Len B'stard

[DieselDaisy]

Croydon North?

[Snake-Pit]

Croydon North?

yes

http://ukpollingreport.co.uk/2015guide/croydonnorth

[DieselDaisy]

This is your UKIP candidate haha,

He is a former boxer.

You couldn't make it up.

[Amir]

And it occurs to me that, for me to hold that position is a bit bullshittey cuz then it's like 'oh yeah tax the rich...but stop just short of my dues, won't ya?'

That's pretty much how everyone feels, even the relatively well-off Funny seeing BBC journos like Jacques Peretti on six-figure salaries complain about excesses of the super-wealthy when they're not doing so badly themselves.

Nobody wants to pay tax, but everyone wants the NHS, free education, etc. I love the NHS and have benefitted massively from them, don't think I've ever had private healthcare. And even though I've been fortunate enough to be privately educated my whole life, I really believe in the value of a good education for all. Not sure I agree with scrapping tuition fees for those who can afford them, though, but that's probably because I think uni is a waste of time for a lot of people, including myself.

So seeing earnings go to the taxman... Yeah I get a bit bummed but every time I go to a free NHS hospital or take a Tube or whatever, I feel like I'm getting my money's worth. Compared to the US where people don't want to get ambulances when they're hurt because each ride is >$2000, and public transport is non-existent, I'll take the higher tax rate.

But maybe it's because I don't plan on having kids so I'm not that fussed about saving

[Snake-Pit]

This is your UKIP candidate haha,

He is a former boxer.

You couldn't make it up.

The sad thing is, I was too cool to knock around with his predecessor!

Now, McKenzie HAD this prominent South London boxing pub in Thornton Heath, that is before the police shut it down because of drugs were found, prostitution and guns...

Needless to say, but given my own unique observations of UKIP and their choice for candidates for Croydon North;

THEY'RE FUCKING CRAZY!

[DieselDaisy]

Now, McKenzie HAD this prominent South London boxing pub in Thornton Heath, that is before the police shut it down because of drugs were found, prostitution and guns...

Of course he had.

What is this place, Croydon haha? It is so multicultural even the UKIP racists are black gangsta bros haha.

[Snake-Pit]

I will not trust anyone who nominates anyone one of us drunken stoned fools into Parliament! is that clear?

and as for McKenzie, he's fucking dodgy too, I don't trust them.

Now, McKenzie HAD this prominent South London boxing pub in Thornton Heath, that is before the police shut it down because of drugs were found, prostitution and guns...

Of course he had.

What is this place, Croydon haha? It is so multicultural even the UKIP racists are black gangsta bros haha.

http://www.croydonguardian.co.uk/news/9915.boxing_brothers_fight_to_keep_pub/

[Len Cnut]

So when do the results come in, when will we have a new PM?

I will not trust anyone who nominates anyone one of us drunken stoned fools into Parliament! is that clear?

and as for McKenzie, he's fucking dodgy too, I don't trust them.

Now, McKenzie HAD this prominent South London boxing pub in Thornton Heath, that is before the police shut it down because of drugs were found, prostitution and guns...

Of course he had.

What is this place, Croydon haha? It is so multicultural even the UKIP racists are black gangsta bros haha.

http://www.croydonguardian.co.uk/news/9915.boxing_brothers_fight_to_keep_pub/

Me and you need to run this country Snakes, we'll make Britain great again!

[Duff27]

UKIP are some serious nut jobs. Lets not forget the UK candidate who wanted to make it mandatory for abortion on all feautus's with Downs Syndrome.

http://www.gravesendreporter.co.uk/news/exclusive_compulsory_abortion_for_down_s_syndrome_foetuses_says_ukip_kent_candidate_1_1745952

[Dazey]

What do yous make of that? It occured to me that he's right. He is a working class bloke, the fact that he has a few quid now is literally based on graft, i mean he had fuck all as a kid, literally fuck all. So I guess I'm presenting this proposition to those that believe in higher taxation for people with a few quid...what do you make of that, as an idea?

Your old man's absolutely spot on as far as I'm concerned. I don't even believe in the higher rate of taxation for higher earners, It's a fucking piss take if you ask me. I mean if you're on £70k a year paying 20% tax then you're already paying much more than somebody on £20k a year even at that rate so what's all this shit with making the poor cunts pay 40% when they hit the upper threshhold? Robbing pikey cunts is what they are!!!

[Len Cnut]

This is your UKIP candidate haha,

He is a former boxer.

You couldn't make it up.

I know him, thats Duke McKenzies brother, what the fuck

[GivenToFly]

Had an oddly political conversation with my Dad this morning, saw him this morning and he's like so who you voting for boy? And I'm like, look, I probably won't bother, can't be bothered, would be Labour by default but i can't fuckin' bring myself to put my money on Milliband, Tory is a no-no flat out, Lib Debs are a bunch of substitute teachers, Green Party I'm expecting to turn into Mutant Ninja Turtles any minute now and Nigel Farage can suck my cock (the latter 3 are my opinion and weren't communicated to my old man ).

Anyway, he threw up an interesting proposition, for a laugh, doing my Harold Steptoe bit, i was like Dad you should really vote Labour, being a working class man and that. Moreso than me, you were like, proper working class. And he's like fuck them, they don't wanna do nothing for working class that are actually working. And i was like what do you mean? And he's like, OK, well 40% inheritance tax. My old man started with nothing, no silver spoon, not even much of an education and today in terms of assests, you could probably strip him and end up with like...2 million, all said and done? The sum of his lifetimes work. And he's like I'm a working class man, i worked for every penny of that money, I've not stolen it or gained it through false pretences, the whole point of me making all that money and doing all that was so I'd have something to leave to my kids, I'm 57 years old now, what do i want with a lot of money, it's basically for my kids, so they'll have a little something to get a head start in life.

Now is it fair if I've been paying taxes anyway on all this money, all my life, for the purposes of knocking it onto my kids, for them to then take 40% of it? And if you don't have that much money to hand they ain't gonna hang on and have it on the weekly, they're gonna make you sell up and hand it over. And it's not like it's someone with 50 million or 100 million where you could afford to lose 40% and still have something left over (though he thought that unreasonable too), you'll more or less nothing of it left. So don't you give me all that bollocks about party of the working class.

As well as 'your generation make me fuckin' laugh, if you did half as much work as you did chat about being working class you might get somewhere, you're all gob, what work have you done in your life?!?'

What do yous make of that? It occured to me that he's right. He is a working class bloke, the fact that he has a few quid now is literally based on graft, i mean he had fuck all as a kid, literally fuck all. So I guess I'm presenting this proposition to those that believe in higher taxation for people with a few quid...what do you make of that, as an idea?

I agree with your dad on this

So then whats the right way approach? Cuz I mean I've always really sided on the Labour end in terms of like, lesser of however many evils. And it occurs to me that, for me to hold that position is a bit bullshittey cuz then it's like 'oh yeah tax the rich...but stop just short of my dues, won't ya?'

I've always disliked seeing taxation discussed as an issue of fairness. I'm strongly in favour of progressive taxation because of a more practical approach. You've got certain things that the state is supposed to do, these cost money, so the money needs to be raised, and you do that by collecting taxes. But paying taxes is never a good thing in itself, it's a necessary evil, it's a burden. I'm for progressive taxation because it spreads that burden such that those who are in a better position to carry the burden carry more of it. If you're a millionaire and I take half your income instead of a quarter of it you'll still be very very comfortable, but if you're barely making rent that difference between 25% and 50% can be the difference between safety and ruin. (And the of course there's everything in between.) I don't care who deserves what, what I care about is the damage done and how you get to doing as little of that damage as possible while still having a functioning public sector.

[magisme]

When your government is essentially a criminal entity beholden to nothing but big money, all taxation is a crime.

[Len Cnut]

If you're a millionaire and I take half your income instead of a quarter of it you'll still be very very comfortable, but if you're barely making rent that difference between 25% and 50% can be the difference between safety and ruin. (And the of course there's everything in between.)

Is that true though? Say a person dies, using my template as an example, 2 million in assets and you have to pay 40% of that...but you don't have it in cash, so essentially if you got a house, which is the home you live in, worked and paid for, by money that has already been taxed anyway, you'd have to sell that house just to raise that 40% and pay em...so whats the fuckin' point in working hard and grafting, thats why people do this shit, to secure a kinda future of some sort for their kids.

I don't care who deserves what

Yeah but it's easy for you to say this cuz, no offence but have you done a days work in your life? Not everybody was raised with the privilege of education and the breadth of spare time to sit around posting about rock bands for a living, some people worked REALLY hard in their life...REALLY REALLY hard, the sort of work that honestly, myself, i don't think I could do it.

So, y'know, it makes you wonder, people are like 'oh it's a something for nothing culture', well I'm not suprised it is if people end up getting done for their money, having worked hard their whole life. You're better off on the fuckin' fiddle really, aren't you?

[sturginho]

UKIP are some serious nut jobs. Lets not forget the UK candidate who wanted to make it mandatory for abortion on all feautus's with Downs Syndrome.

http://www.gravesendreporter.co.uk/news/exclusive_compulsory_abortion_for_down_s_syndrome_foetuses_says_ukip_kent_candidate_1_1745952

Careful, you'll have Diesel on here accusing you of being loony left

[DieselDaisy]

UKIP are some serious nut jobs. Lets not forget the UK candidate who wanted to make it mandatory for abortion on all feautus's with Downs Syndrome.

http://www.gravesendreporter.co.uk/news/exclusive_compulsory_abortion_for_down_s_syndrome_foetuses_says_ukip_kent_candidate_1_1745952

Careful, you'll have Diesel on here accusing you of being loony left

He da man bro.

[sturginho]

Ha

[Facekicker]

I'd vote for Farage just to see him in action against Miliband. He'd probably make him cry.

But then he'd be sorely missed in Europe where he consistently knocks lumps out of the likes of Herman Van Rumpoy and that other buffoon Barroso.

Not sure about the rest of the UKIP party,

There's loons in all the parties though, but the media love to vilify UKIP.

[Graeme]

Yeah but it's easy for you to say this cuz, no offence but have you done a days work in your life? Not everybody was raised with the privilege of education and the breadth of spare time to sit around posting about rock bands for a living, some people worked REALLY hard in their life...REALLY REALLY hard, the sort of work that honestly, myself, i don't think I could do it.

Some people work REALLY REALLY hard all their life and have fuck all to show for it. That kitchen portering job I tried two weeks ago, I left because the circumstances didn't suit (and I am fortunate enough to have the luxury of doing that), but it ran people into the ground, 15 people tried over the last year and a half and couldn't hack the demands it placed on their time and their bodies. At the same time, I worked with a wee guy who'd been doing it for years, averaging 60 hours, 5 days a week of graft and what did he have to show for it? He rented a wee house on the island for a quarter of his monthly earnings and rode to work on a bicycle.

The point that I'm making here is that the argument trotted out self-righteously by the Right in all of this is that the amount of wealth you accrue in this life is directly proportional to the amount of hard work you do, and the thrift with which you treat it, which is absolute bullshit. If it were true then Wee Jimmy would be a millionaire because he's breaking his balls every day in a manner which the management of the hotel certainly weren't doing as they hosted champagne receptions at private functions. And it was a family business, so most of the management shared a surname, I'm not suggesting that none of them could do their jobs, but that was clearly a factor in their selection for the role. Ergo, just in that one example, it was endemic, if you had the good fortune to be born to a certain family then you already had a far greater opportunity to earn a lot more and put in significantly less graft. Luck of the draw, circumstances into which you were born. Right-wingers would say "that's life".

THAT is why redistributive economics is important, it's not about waving a wand and making everyone magically all similarly comfortably off, but it's about doing away with the need for luck and, to the furthest extent possible, giving everybody the same chances to make or break it so that the amount of hard work you do REALLY does matter. It's not a cure-all, but this really does happen to a much greater extent in countries with higher rates of taxation and public spending. That's why I support social democracy, for people who're not like me, people who don't have two degrees but who have to work harder on a regular basis than I ever did to achieve those letters after my name, just because of the circumstances in which they find themselves.

The other way around "trickle-down economics", as seen in the post-Thatcher UK and the U.S. doesn't do anything other than exacerbate the divide between rich and poor. The only way it can be thought of as a good thing is if you're not thinking about society as a whole and instead thinking about what's in it for you. Which is sadly what far too many people think of.

[Len Cnut]

The point that I'm making here is that the argument trotted out self-righteously by the Right in all of this is that the amount of wealth you accrue in this life is directly proportional to the amount of hard work you do, and the thrift with which you treat it, which is absolute bullshit.

But thats not what i was saying at all, i was giving an example of someone that had worked hard and earned money, over a lifetime...and in the end gets screwed out of almost half of it, having already had it taxed to begin with, so it's not like shirking from ones contribution...how is that fair? And then capital gains tax...and it ain't hitting the priveliged or the top end people, cuz as previously stated, they're alright, you can do them out of 40% of their many many millions and they're still alright, the only person you're really shagging are your own, the working class, the ones who pulled themselves up from their bootstraps and made a little bit of something. Quite frankly its just a mild promotion of the status quo, the rich stay rich and the poor stay poor with that shit, as far as my limited thinking takes me, it's a new set of wankers in charge.

I've always, most of my life, sided on the socialist end of thing, cuz my simplistic thinking took me as far as 'Labour = help poor people' and 'Conservatives = shag the poor people'...but really, the conclusions I'm reaching now is that they're pretty much even stevens and have been so, historically.

That argument you're saying the right trot out had nothing to do with what i was saying.

THAT is why redistributive economics is important, it's not about waving a wand and making everyone magically all similarly comfortably off, but it's about doing away with the need for luck and, to the furthest extent possible, giving everybody the same chances to make or break it so that the amount of hard work you do REALLY does matter.

And when you're done, they scarper with the cream, is that how it works?

I've always knew in my heart of hearts that they were all gangsters and it was just a racket but before recently it's always just been intuitive. If I've said something wrong here or chatted shit I'm not that up on politics so please, pull me up on it if i have.

[DieselDaisy]

I've always, most of my life, sided on the socialist end of thing, cuz my simplistic thinking took me as far as 'Labour = help poor people' and 'Conservatives = shag the poor people'...but really, the conclusions I'm reaching now is that they're pretty much even stevens and have been so, historically.

In the mid '90s on the death of John Smith, Brown and Blair had a meeting in an Italian restaurant: the more charismatic Blair would run for party leadership whereas Brown, who was preeminent in the party, would take over the economy - on the understanding that he would succeed Blair. 'New Labour' was born, over a bowl of Tagliatelle and a bottle of Sangiovese. You know they, his Labour compatriots, used to call Blair ''Tory Tony'' because of his admiration of Thatcher. Blair moved Labour to the right, protecting the 'City', the yuppies, clamping down on the unions. The left of Labour, the unions, made a Faustian pact with Blair, merely to get into power again for the first time since the 1970s. Now, Miliband is a Blairite and Ed Balls is to the left of the party. But really, Labour are now a party which are, just (slightly) to the left of Tory. There is not a lot that separates the two. Considering the Tories learnt a lot from Blair, concerning PR and media image. Both parties are not really ideological in the sense that every statement is closely vetted to appeal to a (mythic?) centre ground. If you still believe Labour are the 'working class' party, of unions and socialism, then you must be bloody stupid. I come from the north east which is, staunch Labour, because of the coal mining; these people who automatically vote Labour are all bloody stupid.

Edited May 7, 2015 by DieselDaisy