General Election UK, June 8th...

[Brian Peacock]

Seems Mrs May is prepared to gamble on raising personal and purchase taxes to balance the books with reduced corporate and business taxes. A risky strategy, but I guess she figures she's got enough leeway with the electorate, and whatever she chooses to do she can always paint it a the action of a strong and stable government.

In her first long interviews of this election campaign, the prime minister told the BBC’s Andrew Marr Show on Sunday she had “absolutely no plans to increase the level of tax” and an intention to lower taxes on working families.

But pressed about Cameron’s promise not to raise income tax, NI or VAT, she added: “I don’t want to make specific proposals on taxes unless I’m sure I can deliver on those.”

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/20 ... be-ditched

The Tory mantra has always been that they are the party of low taxation, in contrast to Labour who they characterise as a profligate tax-and-spend party. Thus 2 years ago Cameron put clear water between the Conservative and Labour party by promising no hikes in personal and purchase taxes and to guarantee state pension rises of 2% above price inflation. Recently Labour have been making a case for tax increases to support public services, offering a clearish choice between a more regressive tax/diminished public service sector (Tory) and a more progressive tax/maintained public service sector (Labour).

All this is superfluous of course, because the coming election is all about Brexit, not the economy, and as the press have demonstrated, Corbyn rides a chairman Mao style bicycle so the country will vote the Tories in again anyway.

[Alan B]

Raising taxes? Hmmm!

Perhaps it would be prudent to find who is not paying taxes (evading and avoiding) first and 'plug the leak' before forcing the rest of the populace to cover for them.

[Scot Dutchy]

Cant do that as she needs MP's in the Commons.

[Alan B]

And that's probably the root of the problem - too many MPs (on all sides, I suspect) have their fingers in 'shady' tax avoidance schemes (all 'legal', of course) and some in actual tax evasion. Particularly those that are susceptible to bribery, er, I mean lobbying by large corporations with vested interests - the MPs have to stick the lobbying proceeds somewhere...

These MPs will not vote for anything that will affect their 'earnings'. I suspect that if May did the right thing and purged those MPs in her own party, she wouldn't have many left.

[Scot Dutchy]

She would not have a party never mind MP's.

[Brian Peacock]

OK, the Tory election narrative is about 'Strong and Stable government in a time of national transition', but it doesn't have to be. The NHS is a big issue - a massive issue - but as an organisation (let alone as a principle) the NHS is lambasted by the Tories as inefficient, expensive, and staffed by incompetent managers, and truculent doctors, nurses, and ancillary staff who oppose and block reforms for their own selfish reasons. But what do people actually know about the actual state of the NHS today...?



Watch it, then share it.

[Brian Peacock]

Day goodbye to fake news...

Free software to reveal how Facebook election posts are targeted



A tool exposing how voters are targeted with tailored propaganda on Facebook has been launched in response to what is likely to be the most extensive social media campaign in general election history.

Experts in digital campaigning, including an adviser to Labour in 2015, have designed a program to allow voters to shine a light into what they describe as “a dark, unregulated corner of our political campaigns”.

The free software, called Who Targets Me?, can be added to a Google Chrome browser and will allow voters to track how the main parties insert political messages into their Facebook feeds calibrated to appeal on the basis of personal information they have already made public online...

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/ ... _clipboard

[Alan B]

Don't use Facebook. Don't get targeted.

[Alan B]

Good NHS video. Passing it on to my sons.

Just waiting for the venal Tory electioneering cunts to knock on my door...

[Scot Dutchy]

Don't use Facebook. Don't get targeted.

Don't use Facebook. Don't live in Britain. Don't get targeted. Have no vote.

[Forty Two]

You think people who don't pay into society don't have a dog in the hunt of how the world progresses?

Metaphorically speaking, no, they don't. If a person, say, receives money from a system, but does not contribute to it, then that person's view of the system is quite different from the person who pays money in. It's far easier for someone who does not pay taxes to vote for tax increases that will be paid by other people.

Government is just a mechanism for managing society and the world. Everyone has skin in the game of life and surviving. However, young people have far more to lose than old people if shit goes wrong.

Government =/= the game of life. Everyone has an interest in what government does, yes. But having an interest is not the same as having a skin in the game. Skin in the game is a term which originated with situations in which people use their own money to buy stock in the company they are running. If you don't have a skin in the game, your own money is not at stake. That's what I was trying to get at.

[Forty Two]

Britain lost the American colonies because of no taxation without representation.

Well then, imagine if we implemented a system of no representation without taxation. The left would never win an election ever again.

Let's just abolish all income taxation, and collect the taxes from other means. Everybody paying $0 in income tax sounds fair.

[Forty Two]

It could be a good idea. Then the likes of Trump and other 1% wouldn't have a say either..

Let's just make buying influence open and lawful. Give people a per-dollar-paid share of the vote. If a rich guy wants no say, he can pay zero taxes. If he wants to have a lot of say in the outcome of elections, make his share dependent on the amount of money he pays in taxes. Make a game out of it, where nobody knows exactly what their influence will be until all the taxes for the previous year are collected. That would provide an incentive for rich people to keep paying in more, because they'd never be sure that someone else isn't outbidding them....

[Forty Two]

The Guardian

Tory MP drops out of election after telling pupils 'homosexuality is wrong'

A long-serving Conservative MP has said he will not stand in the general election, just hours after A-level students revealed he had told them that he believed “homosexuality is wrong” and “dangerous to society”.

Andrew Turner, who has represented the Isle of Wight since 2001, made the comments during a question and answer session at Christ the King College in Newport. One student describing herself as a “passionate campaigner for LGBT rights” asked her local MP if he was involved in the Isle of Wight’s first ever Pride event.

In a post on Facebook, Esther Poucher said she was shocked to the point of outrage by Turner’s response. “He told us that he’d been invited, but wasn’t intending to go. This is because (and this is a direct quote) he thinks that homosexuality is ‘wrong’ and “dangerous to society’,” she wrote.

“At this answer, I had to leave. It’s terrifying that in this age and point in our development as a society, there are still people that can’t care enough about a person’s wellbeing to just accept who they are. And the most terrifying thing is that we as an island consistently vote him in to represent us.”

One down...

Did he drop out because he figured he was going to lose?

I'm happy that he drops out if his opinions are unpopular and he can't stand the heat coming at him relative to his convictions.

That being said, it is a bit funny, to me, that a person would be "terrified" because someone holds a view which is opposing to their own. The guy thinks homosexuality is "wrong?" This is "terrifying?" What sort of sheltered upbringing do folks like this have? Homosexuality was a crime in the UK until 1967 (for men over 21). It was generally viewed as a psychiatric disorder up into the 1980s. Everyone knows that Catholicism and mainline Protestantism views homosexuality as a sin. So, what can possibly be "terrifying" about a person who holds that view?

[Forty Two]

Time for the Isle of Wight's most famous resident to step up to the plate...

Isle of Wight? More like "Isle of White" - racist buggers! I think the darkest person on the Island is 1/32 Spanish.