Though it has been controversial for over a decade, the invasion was actually popular at the time. In 2003, YouGov conducted 21 polls from March to December asking British people whether they thought the decision by the US and the UK to go to war was right or wrong, and on average 54% said it was right.
Of course that does not mean that 46 % thought it was wrong!
In the US the approval was at times around 65%
Source YouGov.
That Colin Powell charade!
Anyway, getting off topic
Although that disbelief was based more than a hunch. I remember an interview with Bill Clinton in which he said that they had identified WMD and destroyed them with missile attacks during his presidency. They hadnât carried out any more attacks because they had no evidence of further weapons. Now absence of evidence is not evidence of absence but the burden of proof is on the accuser not the accused.
Weâve got one of the lowest rates of corporation tax in Europe. It was slashed by the Tories to boost growth and investment, and itâs totally failed. It needs to come back up again. We canât suck ÂŁ60bn out of public services.
Canât we⌠could we sell the NHS?
(sarcasm - just in case itâs not obvious)
We canât sell the NHS. As weâve been doing it for 20 years, obviously nobodyâs buying.
And here we have the heart of our difference. From my point of view, that literally means that the harder I work, the more money I give to those who wonât and youâd like that to be amplified. Cheers mate.
Except that that isnât true. With this government, the harder you work, the more of it goes to Tory cronies, CEOs and shareholders.
To be honest I would recommend to anyone in the UK under 50 to plan for no state pension.
The age will get raised and raised.
Before you know it, you will need to be mid-70s before you can claim. I ignored my work pension for years. Had it on the min contribution on the default scheme. Earnt bugger all in 5 years.
That was dumb. When I started paying attention I was earning 10k a year in growth. Highly recommend people paying in their pension earlier rather than later.
Went to see a pension advisor when I was 18. Worked out a great plan, retire at 65 with a serious wedge and good monthly income. Why the hell did I stop paying into it a month later???
I read recently that during the same period changes were made to corporation tax to widen the base or remove some of the exemptions so that although rates fell some businesses paid more.
Spot-on, as usual, from Mr Monbiot:
Is it just me who thinks she sounds pissed? HATE this woman.
The other way to think of this would by that the more successful your business is, the more it must pay into the society in which it is hosted. Seems fair to me.
Your business isnât going to be doing that well if society is collapsing around it.
I have been paying into a pension for years but in the past 8 months it has dropped 15-20%,not too sure if thatâs the end of it either.For growth(outside of what youâre paying in) of 10k a year you must have been putting a serious amount in or had some very good advice(maybe your own) when investing it.
At the moment in Ireland they are looking into allowing deferring your retirement till 70 and receiving a larger state pension at that time,or alternatively retireing at 66 for what is the normal state pension.
They are also looking at an opt out scheme wherby you put in say pre-tax 3 euro,that is matched by the employer with a further 1 euro added by the government.
I think in years to come it will either see the state pension go or the burden to the state reduced.
Unless you are close to retirement I believe the advice for pensions is to maintain your contributions during bad economies, when the market drops significantly, because all youâre doing is buying good stocks at cheaper prices. Theyâll rebound and your investment will balloon.
When close to retirement move your money out of high yield stocks and into âsaferâ things like bonds which donât really get affected by market turbulence.
Bonds have been a bit of a disaster for quite some time, this turbulence is starting to shift that back to the conventional wisdom.
It already does. Salary, payments to other local business, a hundred and more payments to local shops etc.
Literally just committed to pay a local business ÂŁ800 for advertising. Pays their staff, suppliers etc etc etc.
My bond investments are currently so low that I donât even know how they are performing currently, just that they will probably see less of a hit from a bad economy. I imagine theyâre struggling to beat inflation. My pension is down over 20% this year but I can see much of it is being invested into stocks that should bounce back fairly well (Disney, Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Nestle, Shell etc.) so Iâm not overly vexed about it.