The Weeping Angel wrote: ↑Sat Mar 15, 2025 5:08 pm Not that they'll get any credit for it.Every columnist’s kid takes A Levels, probably traditional academic ones, so they’ll indeed get no thanks. The mad papers have already lined Becky Francis up as some sort of leftist obsessed with inclusion at the expense of quality. Inclusion in this case is likely to involve thinking about white working class boys, you’d think that were positive. But they’ll moan about that too.
Youngian wrote: ↑Sat Mar 15, 2025 1:15 pm For goodness sake open a reception centre where refugee claimants can reach it safely. Reform don't even talk about real illegal immigration (abscondees arriving legally on visas) as it can't provide pictures of 'invading' black men in boats.They don't want a solution. They want scapegoats.
The Weeping Angel wrote: ↑Sun Mar 16, 2025 12:06 pm Fortunately the plans to freeze pip have been dropped.If they ever existed...
The legislation will prevent people receiving health-related benefits from having their entitlements automatically re-assessed if they enter employment.
The move is said to be in response to surveys suggesting disabled people and those with long-term health conditions fear they will not get their benefits back if they try employment, but it does not work out.
A recent Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) survey found 200,000 people receiving health-related or disability benefits were ready to work if the right job or support was available.
Malcolm Armsteen wrote: ↑Sun Mar 16, 2025 2:00 pm This:It’s could have even worse consequences considering you are dealing with quite vulnerable people.
Some might say we should turn to wealth taxes to fund more spending. This forgets that we have already raised taxes on the wealthy: on speculators who have driven up the price of family farms, on private jet users, on non-doms and by changing some inheritance tax rules.Olympic class sophistry there, Dan. If the ultra wealthy were suffering more than the lightest of scuffs, the Telegraph would be doing a lot more than wheeling out him off that motoring programme.
Wealth taxes have a legacy of failure. In the last 25 years, 11 European countries repealed their wealth taxes because they raised trifling amounts, mainly hit the upper middle class and became hugely unpopular.
There are now only three countries in Europe that have such a tax: Norway, Spain and Switzerland. And the only one which raises significant sums is Switzerland (a unique case given that Switzerland has no tax on capital gains or inheritance).
But there are activists pushing a new kind of wealth tax they say is different. It only applies to the very rich, has no loopholes and promises to raise vast sums. Oxfam says a 5 per cent tax on the mega-wealthy could raise $1.5 trillion worldwide. These sums are a fantasy.
Spain recently tried a new wealth tax along these lines, aimed at the super-rich. It raised a derisory €630m. It was full of loopholes. Many wealthy Spanish left and fled to Portugal. Those are the two reasons why wealth taxes keep failing: loopholes and leaving.
All wealth taxes to date have had exemptions which in practice are used as loopholes by the very rich, leaving the upper middle class to carry the can. That reflects how legislation is made in practice, where the complications of the real world ensure that taxes are rarely implemented according to purist blueprints. That means that most taxes are flawed; but for the wealth tax, these flaws undermine the entire point of such a levy.
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