march for the alternative, anti-cuts protest

[Lozzer]

London is somewhat crazy. Anti-tax avoidance and anarchists have stormed Oxford Street, invaded The Ritz and besieged some other place. I'm watching BBC live, it's rather entertaining. One reporter on the frontline was verbally assaulted by some activist, and almost punched him. The crowd began chanting "HOW MUCH ARE YOU PAID?". But another guy got kissed, it was awesome.

[Feck]

Last I heard Pensioner and his friends had gone shopping in Fortuum and Masons .

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Last I heard Pensioner and his friends had gone shopping in Fortuum and Masons .

For guns?

[Rum]

It should be a target for the anarchists. Have you seen the prices they charge!? This is just a small cheese sample, but if you really want to know what bankers spend their bonuses on look at some of the other outrageously expensive stuff here.

http://www.fortnumandmason.com/British-Cheese,1207.aspx

[Rum]

Saw this. A very British protest, yes?

[PsychoSerenity]

"careful now"

[egbert]

What's wrong with these people? They should instead be out dancing in the streets in anticipation of the Royal Wedding! It's too bad in these austere times there'll be no cake for the masses, but wot the hell, there's jolly good fun in trying to guess where the secret Royal Bachelor party will be held.
Party on, folks.

[redunderthebed]

What's wrong with these people? They should instead be out dancing in the streets in anticipation of the Royal Wedding! It's too bad in these austere times there'll be no cake for the masses, but wot the hell, there's jolly good fun in trying to guess where the secret Royal Bachelor party will be held.
Party on, folks.

How much are those kraut fuckwits pissing up against the wall for that crap.

[PsychoSerenity]

Well the government so far are saying they're not going to change anything.

200 people have been arrested from the "break off" protest. The TUC are keen to distance themselves from it - despite the fact that UK Uncut are protesting exactly the same thing. It's a TUC report that gives the figure of £25 billion lost in tax avoidance:

The Missing Billions: The UK Tax Gap
This report achieves what many have claimed impossible: it calculates the tax lost to the UK Government from tax avoidance and from tax planning by the very wealthy. Tax avoidance is the process of getting round taxation law without actually breaking it. Tax planning is the use of the opportunities Parliament has provided to citizens to reduce their tax rate.

The result of the calculations set out in this report reveal that the amount of tax lost to avoidance and planning is a number bigger than most might ever imagine. It is estimated here that £25 billion annually is lost from tax avoidance. This is made up of £13 billion p.a. from tax avoidance by individuals and £12 billion p.a. from the 700 largest corporations.

Anyway, the UK Uncut protest seemed pretty peaceful - I'm not sure who was doing the smashing and fighting, but here's the protest that ends with the sit-in at Fortnum and Mason - looks like a fun day out to me:

[AnInconvenientScotsman]

It went fantastically as far as I could tell; even the police (on the march route) seemed to be pleased with it and the handful of them standing where we joined the march occasionally shouted in response to the chants.

Unfortunately the UKUncut events have been blamed (unsurprisingly) in the media for the violence on Oxford St. and in Trafalgar Square. As far as I could tell it was primarily members of a group of 'anarchists' - whatever the fuck they think 'anarchism' is I don't know - called Revolution, in addition to some of the increasingly unpopular occupiers from around Britain.

And for anyone who cares, Ed Miliband was awful once again. He needs to get a new writing staff.

[Seth]

Well the government so far are saying they're not going to change anything.

200 people have been arrested from the "break off" protest. The TUC are keen to distance themselves from it - despite the fact that UK Uncut are protesting exactly the same thing. It's a TUC report that gives the figure of £25 billion lost in tax avoidance:

The Missing Billions: The UK Tax Gap
This report achieves what many have claimed impossible: it calculates the tax lost to the UK Government from tax avoidance and from tax planning by the very wealthy. Tax avoidance is the process of getting round taxation law without actually breaking it. Tax planning is the use of the opportunities Parliament has provided to citizens to reduce their tax rate.

The result of the calculations set out in this report reveal that the amount of tax lost to avoidance and planning is a number bigger than most might ever imagine. It is estimated here that £25 billion annually is lost from tax avoidance. This is made up of £13 billion p.a. from tax avoidance by individuals and £12 billion p.a. from the 700 largest corporations.

Anyway, the UK Uncut protest seemed pretty peaceful - I'm not sure who was doing the smashing and fighting, but here's the protest that ends with the sit-in at Fortnum and Mason - looks like a fun day out to me:

I love how socialists find "tax avoidance" and "tax planning," both of which are simply obeying the letter of the law and constructing one's taxable activities so as to lawfully minimize the amount of taxes due to be something morally reprehensible or unethical.

It's yet another example of the fundamental cognitive disconnect of socialists, who don't actually care what the law is, they just want what the "wealth" have, and will do whatever they must in order to steal if from them, even to the extent of characterizing perfectly legal tax avoidance as a "loss" to the government.

Guess what? The government can't claim a "loss" on something that they were NEVER LEGALLY ENTITLED TO TAKE. If the law does not require the taxpayer to pay a tax, and the taxpayer takes advantage of the tax laws to reduce his tax bill, then the government isn't "losing" anything at all, because it never had the right to call those revenues its own in the first place.

It's pretty typical for liberal politicians to make bloated and unrealistic expectations of tax revenue, and then try to blame others when the revenue projections are not met because the economy doesn't generate the necessary income, or people use the existing laws to their advantage to avoid paying taxes they don't legitimately owe.

Only in the minds of delusional liberals and socialists is the government "entitled" to tax income that never exists and call it a "loss" when budget projections fall short of revenue collections. This is the danger of deficit spending and anticipatory budgeting. To liberals and socialists, budget projections become mandatory contributions by the taxpayers. Idiots.

In a sane world, government would only spend what it collects...AFTER it has collected it, and it would save up for expenses it doesn't have the cash in the bank to meet, or it would cut spending to match what it actually collects.

[Feck]

In a sane world a government would collect tax .

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree ... of-century

http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/news/artic ... _page_id=2

[PsychoSerenity]

Out of all the arrests made the vast majority have been charged with "aggravated trespass", an offence specifically introduced to deal with activists and protesters, as a result of their peaceful sit-in for fuck's sake. As for the people dressed as ninjas actually damaging things, it appears most of them got away based on the statement from the police:

Cdr Broadhurst had a message for those who had caused trouble on Saturday: "You haven't got away with it.
"We will be studying all the CCTV, all the stills photography, we will be interviewing people. We will be coming looking for you.
"If you have committed violence or (caused) damage we will be arresting you fairly soon."

[Seth]

In a sane world a government would collect tax .

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree ... of-century

http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/news/artic ... _page_id=2

In a sane world, government wouldn't NEED to collect taxes, because it would be so small, and so obviously necessary to the function of society that people would voluntarily donate to support its necessary functions.

If you like police protection, donate to the police fund. If you like having a full-time paid fire department, donate to the fire department. If you need a building permit, you pay for it. If you need a driver's license, you pay for it. If you need to drive to the next town, you pay a toll to do so. If you want a public park in your neighborhood, you donate to a fund for that purpose.

Anything that society really needs government to do will be funded by those who need the service, and those who don't won't have to pay for stuff they neither want nor will make use of.

[Seth]

So far it has been a 'phony war'. The cuts regime really kicks in with the new financial year on 1st April. That is when the free nurseries and libraries shut, when projects which keeps kids of the streets and youth crime a bit lower shut, when mental health charities for people who otherwise will find themselves sleeping rough lose their budgets, when the social workers lose their jobs, when preventative services supporting parents before they end up with their kids in the care system lose their funding. It is when your rubbish collection is likely to be reduced and when the pot holes in the roads will start staying there a few months longer before they are filled.

Yup. That's what happens when socialists squander the wealth of society on entitlement programs and destroy the ability of the economy to produce more wealth in order to achieve "social justice." Times get hard, and the amenities go by the wayside, and poor people suffer. Excellent reasons to avoid socialism like the plague.

Your views represent two of the worst aspects of human nature - greed and the devil take the hindmost attitude. Liberal socialism, for want of a better term, attempts to level the playing field and to protect the more vulnerable in society. That seems to me to be a rather more worthy ambition than simply the desire to acquire as much wealth as one can.

Liberal socialism steals from the productive class to support the idle dependent class. Human altruism and charity are perfectly adequate to the task of caring for the truly needy of society, and in fact the less the government takes from people by force, the more likely they are to be willing to donate to charitable organizations who are much more efficient and effective at tending to the genuinely needy.

Liberal socialism is the idle, layabout, lazy dependent class proletarians engaging in selfish class warfare on the hard-working productive class in an orgy of greed and cupidionous self-interest, nothing more.