UK Politics Thread (Part 3)

Or it picks up on landlord side housing benefit fraud and fucks up the Tory vote further.

I would certainly welcome a clamp down on tax cheats but you only generally weed out the small fish. What we do have however is large, sorry massive corporations legitimately paying very little to the Exchequer while pulling in huge profits from the cost of living crisis etc. energy companies for example.

Letā€™s also not forget that our own PM only paid something like 22% tax on earnings over Ā£1m last year. Most of that probably came from his PM salary. All legit.

The rules are broken. Iā€™ve even been looking to see if thereā€™s a way my missus can pay less tax through her self employed business. Too small a fish by the looks of things. All good if you earn well over Ā£100k a year for example.

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Thatā€™s actually my point, along with @Mascotā€™s point that itā€™s all performative bullshit.

If we really wanted to clamp down on defrauding the Exchequer from the perspective of investing resources where it yields the most returns, then clamping down on actual tax fraud and closing loopholes is indisputably the best option.

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So itā€™s being reported that the upcoming budget is going to see a vaping tax.
What started off being a stop smoking aid is now just another revenue source.
Cunts

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Since youā€™ve asked 4 times since I last visited the forumā€¦

On LBC radio, Keir Starmer said Israel ā€˜has the rightā€™ to withhold power and water from Gaza, endorsing the collective punishment of 2.2 million civilians ā€” a war crime under Article 33 of the Geneva Convention. Starmer has continued to dismiss any criticism of the indiscriminate and disproportionate killing of Palestinians by repeatedly asserting that ā€˜Israel has a right to defend itselfā€™.

He has rejected calls for a ceasefire or to oppose Israelā€™s illegal ā€˜evacuation orderā€™ of more than 1 million Palestinians, which is also collective punishment, even before they started murdering the civilians they had forced to move.

None of this this theoretical. Itā€™s a genocide unfolding in full view. As with previous genocides people will look back and ask why we let it happen. US and UK will be seen as accomplices, the governments and the so-called oppositions

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What started off as a stop smoking aid was remarketed as the delivery mechanism of choice. I think there should be a tax exemption for vapes that smell and taste like Woodbines.

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Only ever used tobacco flavour liquid myself.
Donā€™t understand why anyone uses watermelon or blueberry crush to name but 2.
Weirdos

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Children. Itā€™s marketed towards children. I think thereā€™s a serious problem where children see it as cool, and the marketing promotes such flavours to lure them in.

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I think this has been talked about for a while, itā€™s no longer seen as a stop smoking aid but a gateway to getting young people to start with the habit.

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And surprise surprise it has also now been proven to pose a health risk.
It is no longer the ā€œhealthy optionā€ it was first marketed as. Slightly boils my piss that they were allowed to do this without, I presume, any testing to back up the claim.

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Itā€™s a stop smoking aid for probably hundreds of thousands.
The fact that kids think itā€™s cool shouldnā€™t be leading the authorities to make it harder for people to stop smoking.

Course itā€™s a health risk, itā€™s inhaling a foreign substance.
Anyone who ever thought otherwise is incredibly dim.
Itā€™s nowhere near as much a health risk as smoking though.

Fuckwits! :rofl:

Why are they fuckwits?

These are the people who are supposed to be doing OK. They got an education, got on the housing ladder, got good jobs etc. When these people feeling squeezed, something is going seriously wrong.

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Having actually read the article, it really is just housing costs that are tipping them over, even though the other expenses do play a part too.

Read it too.
Seems like Scottā€™s mortgage is almost double the average for the area

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A lot of people will buy a house with the largest mortgage that they can obtain. Between the Major and Blair governments the interest rates varied between 5% and 7%. That meant that mortgage repayments at the average rates had +/- 25% variability. After the financial crash of 2008 they went down to 0.25% and should have gone back up once the economy recovered; except that never happened.

There was a period of 14 years where people got used to having very cheap mortgages. However in the last 2 year mortgage rates have gone up to 5.25%. Thatā€™s a 2100% increase. If that was against a typical 2008 mortgage then it would hurt, but house prices (and hence mortgages) have pretty much doubled in that time.

I think there is a certain lack of sympathy for people on higher incomes who have financial difficulties and I do get that. However, these are people who were buying somewhere to live, not just speculating on Bitcoin or NFTs or something.

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Childcare as well, in a lot of cases. Itā€™s interesting that the only people who said they were OK were the double income no kids one.

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