Re: Duke Fame to run as Marple Councillor?

[Bowden Guy]

It's quite easy to understand, Dave. When (wealthy) people feel that tax rates are punitive, they use every possible way to avoid paying tax (for example by paying into their pension or by remuneration). When tax rates are lowered there is a lot of evidence to show, from both the UK and US, that the actual tax take from higher-rate payers rises.

If this is incorrect we should, of course, go back to the 83% rate to which Duke has already referred.

[wheels]

The problem is Dave, and I speak as one who lived through it, the dreadful Thatcher Government was a result of the even worse Callaghan Government of the late 70s. Labour must bear much of the responsibility for Thatcher reign of terror.

[Dave]

One of te good thinks Maggie T did was to get more money in tax out of the highest paid. She lowered income tax but the rich not only paid more, but paid a higher share of the total.  Her governments steadily lowered the top rate from 83% (or 98% on investment income) down to 40% and cut the basic rate.  The low rates raised more revenue than the high ones had done as business boomed and the tax base expanded.  The top 10% who had been paying 35% of total income tax saw this rise to 48%.

Yes, thanks for reminding us, Duke.  The Lawson Boom, which caused the 1990 recession and led ultimately to Black Wednesday in 1992.  See http://econ.economicshelp.org/2008/01/lawson-boom-of-late-1980s.html

However, that is an answer to a different question.  Bowden Guy wrote 

The key issue is whether bringing down the tax rate increases the total revenue from those people

...thereby suggesting that top-rate taxpayers enjoying a reduction in the rate to 45% could nevertheless find themselves paying more tax.  I asked how that would work - but I haven't had an answer yet. 

[Duke Fame]

After three years you can only admire Duke's dogged support for his government's economic failure.  No-one doubts that when they took over, the country was in a weak economic state, but this government was elected with a clear mandate to sort it out.  Osborne stood up in Parliament at his emergency budget in June 2010 and promised that he would do so, and he has failed.  And everyone except Duke can see that.  Even Christine Lagarde, the Cruella de Ville of the International Monetary Fund, can see that!    

Christine Lagarde is being a little hypocritical, we borrow at rates 3x lower than Spain, greece etc becuase we have the conomy under some control. By everyone except Duke you mean And everyone except Duke except the markets, except the FT, except the economist, except most economists, in fact, your "everyone" includes you, the Mirror, The guardian and 'change the record' Krugman - Oh and flaps in the wind - lying Ed Balls.

[Duke Fame]

How could it do that?

One of te good thinks Maggie T did was to get more money in tax out of the highest paid. She lowered income tax but the rich not only paid more, but paid a higher share of the total.  Her governments steadily lowered the top rate from 83% (or 98% on investment income) down to 40% and cut the basic rate.  The low rates raised more revenue than the high ones had done as business boomed and the tax base expanded.  The top 10% who had been paying 35% of total income tax saw this rise to 48%.

The alternative, as suggested is to move toward 100% tax.

We need growth in the economy but it has to be real growth. The infrastructure stimulus is getting there but there are coucils sitting on funded schemes which are being held up in planning or even for economic reasons (according to constrution magazine).  The whole of the EU is pretty sick in terms of growth and the only way is to trade out of it.

The alternative is to spend our way out of a recession by inventing public sector services but this never works. In fact, the only time it worked was ehen Gordon Brown managed to spend his way out of a boom - the only chancellor in histort to achieve this.

[Dave]

The key issue is whether bringing down the tax rate increases the total revenue from those people, surely?

How could it do that?

[Bowden Guy]

The key issue is whether bringing down the tax rate increases the total revenue from those people, surely? Only time will tell. (I'm not interested in responding to false dichotomies).

However,  if increasing taxes will obviate the need to cut services, then, presumably, you must be favour of 100% taxation? Why stop at 45% or 50%. Then we wouldn't need to cut any services.........

[Dave]

Everyone agrees that we should be reducing the debt.  The problem is that this government is failing to do it, because it is apparently incapable of restarting any economic growth, and without growth we will not pay off the debt.

Meanwhile, Bowden Guy, do you think it's right that councils are being forced to take away children's swings at a time when the richest people in the country are having their top rate of tax cut from 50% to 45%? 

[Bowden Guy]

Dave, I completely agree that we should not be punishing our children. However, if we do not reduce our ever-growing national debt (increasing by around £120 billion every year) then it will be those very children and their children and their children who will be tasked with paying it off. Is it right to live completely beyond our means at the moment so that our great grandchildren can have a much lower standard of living than we enjoy. Where's the "fairness" there?

[Dave]

Dave, are you fro real. This is the consequences of the previous administration.

After three years you can only admire Duke's dogged support for his government's economic failure.  No-one doubts that when they took over, the country was in a weak economic state, but this government was elected with a clear mandate to sort it out.  Osborne stood up in Parliament at his emergency budget in June 2010 and promised that he would do so, and he has failed.  And everyone except Duke can see that.  Even Christine Lagarde, the Cruella de Ville of the International Monetary Fund, can see that!  

As for the cuts to the parks service, they are disgraceful.  The idea that we should sink so low as to punish our kids by taking their swings away appalls me, and I think the council should find other ways of balancing the budget.  

However, I agree with wheels that the undermining of local government started long before this government came to power.  

[simonesaffron]

The fundamental problem with the Council as a "Council" is twofold.

1/ The people who run it - The Councillors, I hasten to add not all of them, but there are too many of the wrong one's for the right one's to prevail.

2/ The party politics that runs right through the whole process and becomes the dominant force and the reason for supporting/opposing everything.

If you've ever been to a full, public, Council meeting you will witness virtually the whole meeting often (4 hours plus) being taken up by irrelevant questions and pointless motions that usually have no relevance at all to the lives of the people that Councillors represent.

Councillors ask questions of other Councillors the purpose of which is not to gain an answer, often they don't even care what the answer is. The sole purpose of the question is to embarrass the recipient, catch him off guard so that he/she looks foolish and this is just because he/she is in another political party. The questioner is always a member of the opposite political party to the recipient. You never see a Conservative ask a challenging question of another Conservative. 

This is not original but Councillors are stereotypical even their ages are close together. Let's take Marple as an example. I don't know the precise ages of the Marple 6 but they are all well on the way or past retirement age.  Where are the 20, 30 year olds even forty year olds.  They are all Libdem so to be selected in the first place you have to go along and make the right noises to the selection panel and you have to keep making them in order to continue being selected. There is absolutely no individuality whatsoever. When was the last time in Stockport that a Libdem voted against the party and voted with say the Labour party.

Conversely, in the current times Councillors are now having to make decisions, table motions, ask questions that do effect peoples lives. But at a time when they should be working together they will still be party politicking across the length and breadth of the country. 
   

[Duke Fame]

Duke, you can't take some of the Police budget its a totally seperate precept set by a different authority is merely collected by the Council. Just a small example of how difficult you will find this.About 70% of the LA budget is for statuary obligations over which you have no choice/control. just as employment terms and conditions are nationally set so your idea of a 65 hr working week is a non starter. Nor are staff expected to bring their own coal these days.

That is the problem that, the LA needs more autonomy to set it's own employment contracts, why set them nationally? A few more hours work would not hurt for employees, the problem with council employment is once they are in, it;s difficult for them to find an easier number outside the town hall (or any number of council buildings).

I'd privatise SK solutions, NPS etc. Sell off those empty properties the council vacated in order to move into the £12m Sergio Tacchini house, encourage landlords of empty office space to convert into residential flats.

I'd stop advertising the council on billboards and the back of buses, we know we have a council, no need to advertise it.

[Duke Fame]

Maybe they would - we shall never know, because the way the consultations have been framed we have not been given the chance to rank the proposed cuts in any order of preference (or non-preference would be a better word for it!).  In other words, it's not a question of choosing the least painful cuts - the council is proposing to implement all of them. 

Agreed, and I don't think we should blame the council or our councillors for the position they find themselves in - it's the fault of this incompetent government, whose failed economic policies could well lead to the announcement tomorrow that the country is now in its first-ever triple-dip recession.  Well done Gideon!   

Dave, are you fro real. This is the consequences of the previous administration. The Scottish PM and his hideous lying sidekick have a lot to answer for and i dread to think if that latter is ever allowed near the purse strings ever again.

[wheels]

I'm sure it's a balancing act between the priorities of life. I look at what is spent over in Manchester and when their two chaps (over-staffing) claim the cuts are imposed on them yet can spend £1/2m on a concert for council brass & local celebs, I just think there is something up.

I don't know the ins & outs of how the council goes about it's business but the various processes appear very inefficient. I suspect, early on, all I can do is highlight waste. If I were in charge (unlikely I know), I'd make it my business to rid the whole organisation of waste so that before an employee is taken on or money spent, they question whether it is something that the council should be doing.

Don't you think that is already done. There is more rigour in evaluating expenditure in local government than in any other part of the public sector in which I have ever worked and there is certainly more than in the private sector which i currently work in.

[wheels]

Duke, you can't take some of the Police budget its a totally seperate precept set by a different authority is merely collected by the Council. Just a small example of how difficult you will find this.About 70% of the LA budget is for statuary obligations over which you have no choice/control. just as employment terms and conditions are nationally set so your idea of a 65 hr working week is a non starter. Nor are staff expected to bring their own coal these days.