General politics discussion thread

[The Maestro]

Britain has become a nation of bureaucracy. What we have to offer the world in this day and age is filling out it's paperwork. Sad, but true.

[soretooth]

There's no real reason why the tax should be paid here rather than anywhere else, the money is made all over the world.

 

But there is a reason, the companies making the money are based here in Britain therefore they should pay British taxes. From the article:

At the moment tax law ensures that companies based here, with branches in other countries, don't get taxed twice on the same money. They have to pay only the difference between our rate and that of the other country. If, for example, Dirty Oil plc pays 10% corporation tax on its profits in Oblivia, then shifts the money over here, it should pay a further 18% in the UK, to match our rate of 28%. But under the new proposals, companies will pay nothing at all in this country on money made by their foreign branches.

 

Foreign means anywhere. If these proposals go ahead, the UK will be only the second country in the world to allow money that has passed through tax havens to remain untaxed when it gets here.

 

In what way would be better off if the firms weren't here at all and paying no UK tax at all?

I don't believe that they will leave, I think it's just a hollow threat to draw attention away from the fact that

Almost all the members of the seven committees the government set up "to provide strategic oversight of the development of corporate tax policy" are corporate executives. Among them are representatives of Vodafone, Tesco, BP, British American Tobacco and several of the major banks: HSBC, Santander, Standard Chartered, Citigroup, Schroders, RBS and Barclays.

Of course they want you to think they are going to leave and take away their precious taxes, they are the ones advising the government to make this cut.

 

There's a point at which people simply aren't prepared to pay any more, and you can't force them to do so

I don't get this bit, people are being made to pay more, in VAT. This wipes out the benefit that low earners feel from the income tax cut, as it has been shown that the poorest families spend a greater proportion of their income on VAT than more wealthy families. The problem is that they are changing the rules so mega banks and corps pay LESS tax (which they can afford) and poor people pay MORE tax (which they can't afford).

[Kenny McBride]

Britain already has amongst the lowest rates of corporation tax in the EU. The drop to 24% is impending. We also have one of the lowest rates of income tax of the major European economies. The "competitive edge" argument gets more and more meaningless. If these companies needed a greater edge, they'd already have moved to Bulgaria or somewhere like that. They don't, because Britain provides a country with the skilled workers, the international links, the lingua franca of the world and a lot more besides, before you even get to thinking about our impressively low tax rates. If every other major country was carrying out a similar plan, the "competitive edge" argument might hold water, but it's us and Switzerland. That's it. Not even the USA, home of extremist capitalism, is doing something like this.

[Chest Rockwell]

No country or city is ever ensured as being the centre of anything regardless of history. It's easier than ever today to do business anywhere in the world.

 

We as a country need to start making things again.

 

 

What 'things' would you like us to make?

 

I'd really like to know what you think there is we could do.

[David]

Scotland was always well known for it's steelworks, including the likes of the Ravenscraig in my hometown of Motherwell.

 

Closing that down virtually destroyed the entire area, taking around 70% of the male population out of employment.

[Loki]

There's no point in making things if we can't compete with the prices offered for those goods by other countries. And, essentially, that's why big industry has been in slow decline since WW2, as other countries with less expensive labour and less restrictive labour laws are able to undercut the British manufacturers. There's absolutely nothing we can do about it in the long term. The only thing we CAN do is find specialist areas to be the pioneers in, and have a flexible and qualified workforce that can move from one industry to another as circumstances change.

[Yoghurt]

Scotland was always well known for it's steelworks, including the likes of the Ravenscraig in my hometown of Motherwell.

 

Closing that down virtually destroyed the entire area, taking around 70% of the male population out of employment.

 

The unions constantly on strike destroyed the shipbuilding in this country. Like the Dockers destroyed the fishing industry. They also destroyed the steelworks as why use Scottish labour when you could get it a third of the cost from Italy at the time.

[Kenny McBride]

Yep, we'd still have a super-strong manufacturing base in this country if everyone got third world wages. Fucking unions...

[Chest Rockwell]

So what do you think we should do? What should Britain be producing? (if we don't want to compete in financial services, and don't want to go back to manufacturing).

[Kenny McBride]

So what do you think we should do? What should Britain be producing? (if we don't want to compete in financial services, and don't want to go back to manufacturing).

 

Manufacturing is not out of range. We have/had a number of pretty successful car plants around the country, there was that steelworks in Sheffield that the Tories refused to give a loan to, and there are still a couple of functioning shipyards on the Clyde. We can't focus on mass production stuff any more because places like India can run sweatshops that will do it all at a hundredth of the price. Skilled labour we can do. Higher technology we can do. Focus on high tech, high quality and high complexity - that's where we can have a competitive edge over less developed countries.

 

And I didn't say we shouldn't be competitive on financial services. I just don't think it should be at the expense of everything and everyone else. Our tax rates are already low and we have all the infrastructure in place. Support the infrastructure by all means. Support the industry and the players too, if necessary. Just don't do it when it's so utterly unnecessary and ends up benefitting no-one except a bunch of psychopathic corporations, their shareholders and their top 10% of earners. We can do well competing with the USA, Germany, Japan and other economic powers. Competing with the Cayman Islands and Liechtenstein just doesn't seem like a realistic way forward to me.

[David]

A good article by Lamis Andoni of Al Jazeera on the situation in Egypt;

 

The Egyptian revolution, itself influenced by the Tunisian uprising, has resurrected a new sense of pan-Arabism based on the struggle for social justice and freedom. The overwhelming support for the Egyptian revolutionaries across the Arab world reflects a sense of unity in the rejection of tyrannical, or at least authoritarian, leaders, corruption and the rule of a small financial and political elite.

 

Arab protests in solidarity with the Egyptian people also suggest that there is a strong yearning for the revival of Egypt as a pan-Arab unifier and leader. Photographs of Gamal Abdel Nasser, the former Egyptian president, have been raised in Cairo and across Arab capitals by people who were not even alive when Nasser died in 1970. The scenes are reminiscent of those that swept Arab streets in the 1950s and 1960s.

 

But this is not an exact replica of the pan-Arab nationalism of those days. Then, pan-Arabism was a direct response to Western domination and the 1948 establishment of the state of Israel. Today, it is a reaction to the absence of democratic freedoms and the inequitable distribution of wealth across the Arab world.

 

We are now witnessing the emergence of a movement for democracy that transcends narrow nationalism or even pan-Arab nationalism and which embraces universal human values that echo from north to south and east to west.

 

This is not to say that there is no anti-imperialist element within the current movement. But the protests in Egypt and elsewhere promote a deeper understanding of human emancipation, which forms the real basis for freedom from both repression and foreign domination.

 

Unlike the pan-Arabism of the past, the new movement represents an intrinsic belief that it is freedom from fear and human dignity that enables people to build better societies and to create a future of hope and prosperity. The old "wisdom" of past revolutionaries that liberation from foreign domination precedes the struggle for democracy has fallen.

 

The revolutionaries of Egypt, and before them Tunisia, have exposed through deeds - not merely words - the leaders who are tyrants towards their own people, while humiliatingly subservient to foreign powers. They have shown the impotence of empty slogans that manipulate animosity towards Israel to justify a fake Arab unity, which in turn serves only to mask sustained oppression and the betrayal of Arab societies and the aspirations of the Palestinian people.

 

The era of using the Palestinian cause as a pretext for maintaining martial laws and silencing dissent is over. The Palestinians have been betrayed, not helped, by leaders who practice repression against their own people. It is no longer sufficient for regimes in Syria and Iran to claim support for Palestinian resistance in order to stifle freedom of expression and to shamelessly tread on human rights in their own countries.

 

Equally, it is no longer acceptable for the Palestinian Fatah and Hamas to cite their record in resisting Israel when justifying their suppression of each other and the rest of the Palestinian people. Young Palestinians are responding to the message of the movement and embracing the idea that combatting internal injustice - whether practised by Fatah or Hamas - is a prerequisite for the struggle to end Israeli occupation and not something to be endured for the sake of that struggle.

 

Events in Egypt and Tunisia have revealed that Arab unity against internal repression is stronger than that against a foreign threat - neither the American occupation of Iraq nor the Israeli occupation galvanised the Arab people in the way that a single act by a young Tunisian who chose to set himself alight rather than live in humiliation and poverty has.

 

This does not mean that Arabs do not care about the occupied people of Iraq or Palestine - tens, sometimes hundreds, of thousands have taken to the streets across Arab countries at various times to show solidarity with Iraqis and Palestinians - but it does reflect the realisation that the absence of democratic freedoms has contributed to the continued occupation of those countries.

 

The Arab failure to defend Iraq or liberate Palestine has come to symbolise an Arab impotence that has been perpetuated by the state of fear and paralysis in which the ordinary Arab citizen, marginalised by social injustice and crushed by security apparatus oppression, has existed.

 

When they were allowed to rally in support of Iraqis or Palestinians it was mainly so that their anger might be deflected from their own governments and towards a foreign threat. For so long, they put their own socio-economic grievances aside to voice their support for the occupied, only to wake up the next day shackled by the same chains of repression.

 

All the while, both pro-Western and anti-Western governments continued with business as usual - the first camp relying on US support to consolidate their authoritarian rule and the second on anti-Israel slogans to give legitimacy to their repression of their people.

 

But now people across the region - not only in Egypt and Tunisia - have lost faith in their governments. For make no mistake, when protesters have gathered in Amman or Damascus to express their solidarity with the Egyptian revolutionaries in Tahrir Square, they are actually objecting to their own rulers.

 

In Ramallah, the protesters repeated a slogan calling for the end of internal Palestinian divisions (which, in Arabic, rhymes with the Egyptian call for the end to the regime), as well as demanding an end to negotiations with Israel - sending a clear message that there will be no room left for the Palestinian Authority if it continues to rely on such negotiations.

 

In the 1950s and 1960s, millions of Arabs poured onto the streets determined to continue the liberation of the Arab world from the remnants of colonial domination and the creeping American hegemony. In 2011, millions have poured onto the streets determined not only to ensure their freedom but also to ensure that the mistakes of previous generations are not repeated. Slogans against a foreign enemy - no matter how legitimate - ring hollow if the struggle for democratic freedoms is set aside.

 

The protesters in Cairo and beyond may raise photographs of Gamal Abdel Nasser, because they see him as a symbol of Arab dignity. But, unlike Nasser, the demonstrators are invoking a sense of pan-Arab nationalism that understands that national liberation cannot go hand-in-hand with the suppression of political dissent. For this is a genuine Arab unity galvanised by the common yearning for democratic freedoms.

[Loki]

Good article! The shadow of Nasser falls long across this whole series of events, doesn't it.

 

The references to the Palestinians is particularly interesting - although I think it's wishful thinking to expect the Palestinian people to somehow take a united stance against their own leaders. They are in a struggle for survival, still trying to crawl out of the internment camp ghettoes they've been stuck in for nearly 40 years. To expect them to reject the guys with the guns, is unrealistic.

[Dynamite Duane]

Crimianls may vote - Nigel Farrage video

 

What do you think, should criminals be able to vote?

[Steveo2007]

Crimianls may vote - Nigel Farrage video

 

What do you think, should criminals be able to vote?

Some should be able to. Those on shorter sentences for lesser crimes, but murderers and those who are in for more serious offences, serving longer prison sentences simply shouldn't.

[David]

Some should be able to. Those on shorter sentences for lesser crimes, but murderers and those who are in for more serious offences, serving longer prison sentences simply shouldn't.

The problem that arises there is deciding where you draw the line.