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Reply to "TORY MANIFESTO"

 

I wasn't talking about people on here Baz, I was talking in general and from my own personal experience on social media and in my own area and it's the same from Tory voters. Sorry for the long reply, but I have tried to address everything even though I know  we're never going to agree 

 

Labour under Blair did nothing to rein in the banks, that's true.  However, if we are going to hark back to previous governmental mistakes on why the crash raised our deficit so much, we can go back to Thatcher who started the deregulation of banks process in the UK in the attempt to create a London based financial services economy. In the mid to late 2000's the oil prices started to rise, mortgages defaulted in the USA , where institutions had been lending money willy nilly for houses that should never been mortgaged. Then the came the collapse of the Lehman Brothers Bank and boom. This led to a GLOBAL crash and was not caused by Labour.  They just happened to be in government at the time and had it been the Tories, it would have affected them the same way.  We were never close to being bankrupt.  In fact the deficit was slightly coming down before the coalition in 2010 as the green-shoots of recovery had already started. That is until George Osborne then decided we needed austerity to pay back the deficit.  What were his favourite slogans -  Paying the deficit down, or  We're the Comeback Country etc.  The deficit then was £800 BN approx, half of what it is now under 7 years of austerity.  We have had massive cuts to the poorest, stagnant wages for the lowest paid, A&E centres closed, libraries closed, Care in the Community budgets slashed and where have those savings gone...tax breaks to the rich and not a penny paid off the deficit, in fact it may reach triple by the time we hit the 2020's.  Official figures now put it at £1.73 TN and rising.  Remember, it serves the government well to keep the need for austerity going because they feel they can use it to justify taking so much from the low paid and unwaged (sick and disabled) to give in tax breaks to the rich.  Germany and other European countries baulked at the UK austerity measures, they now have healthier economies than we do, with properly salaried jobs that pay substantially more than we do in wages.  Only Greece fairs worse than us and that's telling.

This is a statement from the Bow Group, the oldest Conservative think tank.


"These proposals will mean that the majority of property owning citizens could be transferring the bulk of their assets to the government upon death for care they have already paid a lifetime of taxes to receive.


It is a tax on death and on inheritance. It will mean that in the end, the government will have taken the lions share of a lifetime earnings in taxes. If enacted, it is likely to represent the biggest stealth tax in history and when people understand that they will be leaving most of their estate to the government, rather than their families, the Conservative Party will experience a dramatic loss of support."

 

Like any equity release scheme (and that's what this scheme is) we are not told what the administration costs are to be.  I'm imagining the government won't run it themselves, they'll as per usual outsource it to a private concern who let's face it won't do it for free.  Is it an annual fee or one off?  What rate will it be? Will these costs to administer it be taken out of the amount over £100K or will it come out of the £100K?  We don't know because the Tories may have costed it, but they aren't telling us.  Therefore, people should be worried there will be another sting in the tail and a scandal similar to PPI and the current equity release schemes.  

Labours manifesto is fully costed,  and the majority of analysts and economists agree it's been costed properly so why not have the richest 5% pay a little bit more?  Very few of us will be able like Hugh Grosvenor, Duke of Westminster, to put what little we have in to tax avoiding trusts to avoid paying the 40% levy that is standard when passing on houses or money as an inheritance.  He managed to protect his £9 BN fortune yet Joe/Josephine Bloggs on the street will be hit twice!  Once by paying NI contributions all their working life and then again when the government comes for your home.  It's not huge amounts  that the top 5% are being asked to pay and cannot even compare to the cuts the poor have had to put up with.  I believe that most of Labour policies will be put in place because we need desperately to reverse the widening gap.  No one is expecting changes overnight,  but rather than let the massive equality gap grow any further, why not try and reverse it for a fairer society.  As for the Tory manifesto, no costings, no figures, no debating...it's not a manifesto, just 60 pledges with nothing to back it up.  Yet they were the loudest in shouting for Labour to cost their manifesto.  How can we compare to see which is the most workable if we don't have all the facts?  

I'm not ignoring the 70's, I'll also never forget Thatcher either or the last 7 years and I hated Tony Blair and still do,  swings and roundabouts Baz 

Dame_Ann_Average
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