General politics discussion thread

[mikey]

I turned on rich people when somebody my wife knows was in pieces because her father had made a bad deal and lost their house in Chamonix with a private ski slope. "He's past it, he's messing with my inheritance..." etc etc. As if going to the finest schools and universities isn't enough for you, you non-contributing zero. Make your own life, make your own money, you have the connections to do so and that's 90% of the battle.

[Loki]

Just out of interest, how would it work then chaps? Would you kick the billionaire's widow and children out of their home to sell it off? Or are we excluding property from your 100% inheritance tax? What about something for the widow to live on in her old age, or are you expecting her to go back to work now the fee-earner in the family is dead?

 

Anyone who thinks a 100% inheritance tax is either a good idea or even feasible probably hasn't spent more an 2 minutes thinking about it, or mugged up on wills and probate, estate management or any of that.

 

You really want to get more money out of rich people? Start offering MUCH bigger wages to tax specialists to work for the HMRC. My father was a senior partner in a large tax firm, and he explained it to me quite simply. The best minds in tax law can make a lot more money helping rich people avoid tax than they can working for the government to recoup it. For every chap at HMRC thinking up ways of closing a loophole, you've got 10 guys finding new ones. Really rich people can currently pretty much avoid paying ANY inheritance tax by setting up various trusts that are exempt from IHT. And if and when they close that loophole, someone else will work out another.

 

Being really cynical, there's actually no real drive from the political parties to close IHT tax loopholes because those who are clever enough to understand them will probably want to take advantage of them and those that don't probably don't even know they exist.

 

Anyway, back to your knee-jerk ideological mud-slinging match!

[David]

What do you make of this Happ? The immigration problem can't all be blamed on our politicians letting them in it would seem;

 

Fifty million "environmental refugees" will flood into the global north by 2020, fleeing food shortages sparked by climate change, experts warned at a major science conference that ended here Monday.

 

"In 2020, the UN has projected that we will have 50 million environmental refugees," University of California, Los Angeles professor Cristina Tirado said at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).

 

"When people are not living in sustainable conditions, they migrate," she continued, outlining with the other speakers how climate change is impacting both food security and food safety, or the amount of food available and the healthfulness of that food.

 

Southern Europe is already seeing a sharp increase in what has long been a slow but steady flow of migrants from Africa, many of whom risk their lives to cross the Strait of Gibraltar into Spain from Morocco or sail in makeshift vessels to Italy from Libya and Tunisia.

 

The flow recently grew to a flood after a month of protests in Tunisia, set off by food shortages and widespread unemployment and poverty, brought down the government of longtime ruler Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, said Michigan State University professor Ewen Todd, who predicted there will be more of the same.

 

"What we saw in Tunisia -- a change in government and suddenly there are a whole lot of people going to Italy -- this is going to be the pattern," Todd told AFP.

 

"Already, Africans are going in small droves up to Spain, Germany and wherever from different countries in the Mediterranean region, but we're going to see many, many more trying to go north when food stress comes in. And it was food shortages that put the people of Tunisia and Egypt over the top.

 

"In many Middle Eastern and North African countries," he continued, "you have a cocktail of politics, religion and other things, but often it's just poor people saying 'I've got to survive, I've got to eat, I've got to feed my family' that ignites things."

 

Environmental refugees were described in 2001 by Norman Myers of Oxford University as "a new phenomenon" created by climate change.

 

"These are people who can no longer gain a secure livelihood in their homelands because of drought, soil erosion, desertification, deforestation and other environmental problems, together with the associated problems of population pressures and profound poverty," Myers wrote in a journal of Britain's Royal Society in 2001.

 

"In their desperation, these people feel they have no alternative but to seek sanctuary elsewhere, however hazardous the attempt."

 

Monday's panel cited ways in which climate change has impacted food security and safety.

 

Warmer winters allow pests that carry plant diseases to survive over the cold months and attack crops in the spring, soil physicist Ray Knighton of the US Department of Agriculture said.

 

Increased rainfall -- another result of climate change -- when coupled with more fungal pathogens can "dramatically impact crop yield and quality," said Knighton, adding that greenhouse gases and atmospheric pollutants have changed plant structures and reduced crops' defenses to pests and pathogens.

 

Tirado noted that floods caused by heavy precipitation can spread diseases carried in animal waste into the human food chain.

 

The World Health Organization has estimated that 2.2 million deaths in developing countries are caused each year by food and water-borne diseases, said Sandra Hoffmann of the US Department of Agriculture.

 

And yet, the global economic crisis has pushed climate change "down in priority" on governments' to-do lists, said Todd.

 

"If you're suffering economically, climate change is not going to be the first thing you fund.

 

"Any action you take will be costly, be it in terms of prestige, economics, less oil... I think it's going to take a real crisis to get world opinion to change," he added.

Then again, we have some who think that it's all bullshit and there are other reasons why we'll see that many immigrants fleeing their homes. I guess this ties in with your theory that those who aren't in a position to have children shouldn't be doing so;

 

The real reason why 50 million 'refugees' want to come to the First World is simply because of massive and irresponsible Third World overpopulation and not anything else.

 

Responding to the news that professor

[Happ Hazzard]

Anyone who lives in Britain or any other fairly wealthy, developed country, is benefitting from things that people in the past worked for, regardless of whether they were their parents or not.

[Loki]

Look, can we just stick to one stupid idea at a time? It takes me so long to write a logical and well-reasoned refutation that by the time I have you've all moved on to the next one.

[mikey]

I'm not suggesting it's possible. I think in this thread I said that if you instituted a 90% tax rate on earnings over

[Kenny McBride]

I'm not suggesting it's possible. I think in this thread I said that if you instituted a 90% tax rate on earnings over

[mikey]

I'm not suggesting it's possible. I think in this thread I said that if you instituted a 90% tax rate on earnings over

Edited February 24, 2011 by mikey

[Kenny McBride]

They had a song called "Taxman." They were paying their 97.5% tax and still ended up incredibly wealthy before they ever figured out how to avoid paying quite so much. It's sometimes argued that the real reason they got their MBEs was because Brian Epstein encouraged them to dismantle a proposed tax shelter because it was "un-British."

[mikey]

Ah yes, a quick Google suggests it was the supertaxes introduced by MacMillan. Fucking prick. And people accuse Thatcher of breaking Britain. What-fucking-ever.

[The King Of Swing]

More from Libya its looking more and more like Gaddafi has competly lost control of the East..

 

1855: The BBC's Jon Leyne has been describing the atmosphere in the opposition-controlled city of Benghazi: "There are signs everywhere urging people to go back to work. Some people from the city have armed themselves with looted weapons. They're now pushing forward to oust Colonel Gaddafi's forces from their remaining strongholds in the west of the country."

 

1835: S Hamroush, from Manchester, writes: "I've just got hold of a newspaper being published in Benghazi by the anti-government protesters - this is the first newspaper in Libya to be printed that is anti-government since 1969."

 

1813: Jon Leyne is the first BBC reporter to reach Benghazi, which has seen some of the worst violence in the country and is now under opposition control. He says the city is largely calm and being run by a committee of lawyers, judges and respected local people, operating from the court house and urging people to begin restoring the city to normal.

 

1557: The emergence of several privately owned media outlets is reflecting a new reality in eastern Libya, reports BBC Monitoring. The media scene in the eastern cities is starting to change rapidly amid new freedom from Col Gaddafi's control. There have been reports of two medium-wave radio stations broadcasting from eastern Libya and a Benghazi-based newspaper. Citizen journalism pages on Facebook are also recruiting reporters in Benghazi and other cities.

[Carbomb]

From the Independent:

 

Robert Fisk: These are secular popular revolts

[Jonathan Ford]

He's effectively saying the coalition are responsible for the high youth unemployment/disatisfaction due to cuts to public sector jobs and benefits. Ignoring the fact that the jobs that would have been done by school-leavers 10-20 years ago are now largely being done by immigrants.

 

I think you have to be very careful in this area. The fact is, that many people in this country, the disenfranchised people that were discussed earlier, have no interest in working. I suggested months ago that I'd rather go out and work for

[Happ Hazzard]

He's effectively saying the coalition are responsible for the high youth unemployment/disatisfaction due to cuts to public sector jobs and benefits. Ignoring the fact that the jobs that would have been done by school-leavers 10-20 years ago are now largely being done by immigrants.

 

I think you have to be very careful in this area. The fact is, that many people in this country, the disenfranchised people that were discussed earlier, have no interest in working. I suggested months ago that I'd rather go out and work for

[SpursRiot2012]

I have, in general, tried to stay out of this thread but one thing that Happ said is actually true:

 

It's a general politics thread, is it not? Not a mutual leftie back-slapping thread?

 

Honestly, that's what this thread has become. Any deviation from the leftist agenda is generally met with sarky replies or actual ridicule.