Copy of Lib Dem coalition agreement with Tories

[????]

But you can't tell him how he feels...that's what Brendan's arguing....I think?

[mockney piers]

but does he speak for all saffas, and can it gestate in a box?

[silverfox]

I'm not sure you are right david_carnell and Brendan does have a good point about cultural relativism. You can huff and puff and shout from the roof tops until you're blue in the face but that doesn't make you correct. You are simply saying "in my view/opinion xx is wrong".

Perhaps this is one for the drawing room.

[Brendan]

Your liberal western viewpoint may be superior David but go live in the Sudan with the tribesman for a few years first before you pass judgement on his opinions.

And no he doesn?t speak for most saffas. The ability of most South Africans to almost wilfully close their minds and how it is belied by their intelligence and ingenuity in their fields of endeavour infuriates me more than that of my Anglo Saxon cousins.

I?ve read that coalition document and it definitely doesn?t mention Irish, Israelis, Spanish and/or Sudanese

[SeanMacGabhann]

I think we ARE in the Drawing Room silverfox, albeit way off track from the OP. Personally I blame the chair

But mr Carnell ain't wrong. If we are going to play "let's pretend to come from another culture" let's NOT pick the Sudanese tribesman. Let's pick, instead, his daughter - you spend a couple of years in her shoes

THEN come back and tell me how enlightened you are

[silverfox]

She's rich enough to have shoes?

[The Chair]

Apologies for allowing such offtopication, people.

All discussions on such matters now appear to have their own thread. I would kindly ask you all relocate there to let battle commence.

[Trump]

Labour won Southwark - Had you forgotten?

[Ms Smalls]

ouch

[TonyQuinn]

Mr Barber

When you knocked on my door a month or two back, you seemed like a fairly decent person.

And I'm sure you are going through the wringer about all this.

I told you, why would I want to vote Liberal (Nick Cohen in Observer is right, the Social Democratic side of the party has been ignored) when you would back a Tory government.

You dismissed such talk as nonsense! Who's being nonsensical now? The point is your party has betrayed the vast bulk of people who voted for you (everyone I know who voted Liberal did so on the assumption it would help keep the Tories out). The Liberal Party is finished and most of the people who left Labour will go back home. In any case, your party will split soon enough as the full implication of what your leadership has done becomes clear.....the next election will be a straight choice between a Tory government and a Labour government.

BTW I was down at the Dulwich Festival in the park yesterday and there was a book there about the balance of power within the political parties, written in 1954.

In his introduction, the author said he had relegated the Liberal Party to the appendix because they were an irrelevance. Mr Barber, your party is heading that way. The irony of finally getting in bed with the Tories.

As I said on another thread, you and your colleagues have a choice. Resign or defect! Your choice.

I do honestly wish you the best because as I said, and surmised from your intro above, your heart's not in it.

Tony

[Brendan]

This country was heading for a tory government. That was self evident. Thankfully lots of people who would have deserted labour and voted tory found sense and voted for the Lib Dem. Consequently they have managed to use their influence to have a say in the policy of the tory government we were going to get anyway.

And from the outset they have scored some points for electoral reform that were desperately needed and will ultimately benefit everyone in the future.

I?m no fan of the conservatives but all this knee-jerk, reactionary ?We?ve been betrayed? nonsense is just that.

It?s not the best outcome admittedly but it really could have been a lot worse.

[Brendan]

Although it now looks like Cable is going to be very definitely playing second fiddle to whoever it is that tells Osborne what to do. So Bertie Wooster?s in charge and they?ve gagged Jeeves in the one area where this country really, really needs to see sense.

One hopes the bastards live to choke on this one.

[James Barber]

The four main tenets of our national manifesto are part of the coalition agreement. I'd like more to have been agreed of the Lib dem manifesto but we will get more of it that we ever expected for that brief week where we were ahead of the other parties - that was a heady week.

The tories were willing to compromise the most. Labour the very least.

Lib Dem will see more of its policies in place than via any other means.

Politics is the art of the possible. I'm as wistful as the next person but we will see real positive change on so much incliding reducing taxation on the very poorest in our society.

Regards james.

[Mick Mac]

The lib dems might be reducing the tax paid by lower income families james. But they will hammer those who have made provision for the future by making sensible investments. Only lib dems want to increase cgt to 40% and disincentivise people from preparing for the future.

You are clearly the most left wing of the main parties and you will struggle at the next election as your policies are short sighted and demotivating.

[Huguenot]

Tenets, James B ;-)

Boo yakka Mick Mac. You've got to be bloody rich to be worried by Lib Dem CGT reform, and I don't see any policies that will disincentivise people from preparing for the future.

LD will only struggle at the next election because of 'cut your nose off to spite your face' tribalism.

Mainly great policies. Stupid stuff with the 'only a 2 grand bonus' but sometimes you have to be populist.

[Mick Mac]

Its not personal. Its theory. Rich people dont need to invest. Other people should. Political parties should encourage people to invest for the future to ensure they are not a liability to the state later in life. There policies discourage people from doing that. These are short sighted policies. Vince cable is irresponsible.

[Huguenot]

Well if it's investing to prevent being a state liability, the Lib Dems only proposed dropping top rate tax relief on pensions and treating CGT like any other other earnings.

Since the majority of people in the UK are not on top rate tax (and they're the ones who could possibly be a liability) it makes no difference to the pensions of anyone but the rich.

CGT tax mainly hits people with 3 or more houses driving a housing bubble - usually independent buy to let landlords. It doesn't affect people with 2 houses because they'll just put the house in their partner's name and flip residences when they sell.

Personally I think that buy to let landlords are a cancer on the housing market that undermines the very foundation of our society. If we can stop them getting rich off the salaries of starving first time buyers, the better. I'd prefer a law banning multiple domestic housing purchases.

Anyway, Capital Gains Tax hasn't specifically been raised it's been given equivalency with other earnings - thus less wealthy people can now make money through capital gain on investments at a lower rate than they could previously!

So there's now a massive incentive for poor people to invest! Hurrah!

So really your arguments only apply to top rate tax payers or rip-off landlords - and given that they pay a much smaller proportion of their income through taxation, I don't think they should be moaning about that.

[Brendan]

Mick Mac Wrote:

-------------------------------------------------------

> You are clearly the most left wing of the main

> parties

You say that like a bad thing.

Although there are those of us who have thought for decades now that the concepts of left and right wing in politics no longer reflect society and are therefore no longer relevant. They only serve to get people to act along ingrained tribal allegiances but don?t actually correspond with what is really going on in the world.

The taxing of people?s investments is a difficult thing though but what would you rather have, a massive increase on the tax burden of the millions of people in this country who can?t afford investments or perhaps wholesale cuts to the public services those people rely on for survival?

According to the election results 30 odd% of the people in this country may think that their right to keep 100% of the 50K they made on their second home is more important than a baby getting the treatment it needs to survive but with that sort of attitude they aren?t really people.

[Magpie]

"According to the election results 30 odd% of the people in this country may think that their right to keep 100% of the 50K they made on their second home is more important than a baby getting the treatment it needs to survive but with that sort of attitude they aren?t really people."

Oh dear - as if thats really the choice - I see evidence of wasted tax payers money pretty much every day - thats why people who already pay the majority of tax object to further tax increases when it is used to pay for, as an example, monitoring of people who are security risks to this country but can't be deported due to the human rights act.

[Brendan]

Well it is and it isn?t. It?s true that currently a lot of tax payer?s money is wasted on nonsense and we have a right to be annoyed about it. But this comes to the nonsense of people who already earn loads of money complaining about capital gains tax (which we hope will be used to fund public services under our no-doubt fantastically clever and magnanimous conservative lords and masters) when you only need to take a stroll around London to see the deprivation vast swathes of our population live in. Deprivation often exacerbated by the investments of the wealthy.

ps. Don't take all my anti tory jibes completely to heart.

[SeanMacGabhann]

I've never understood OBSESSION with waste.

Obvious and easily addressed waste fair enough but any company or government running multi-billion budgets must have waste built in. That doesn't mean it can't be addressed but saying "not a penny more until ALL waste is stopped" is tilting at windmills

[Brendan]

When there?s lots of money around nobody seems too bothered about waste but it is naturally the first thing we are going to fixate on.

[Brendan]

I think one of the most astute things about this coalition is that the 2 parties both realised that there are things that need to be done that will anger their supporters. So now the conservatives can blame cgt on the liberals and the liberals can blame public sector cuts on the conservatives and neither of them will lose face.

Unless of course they do. Which is very likely.

[Magpie]

Of course there are plenty of areas of deprivation in London, and 50 years of state intervention has failed to change this - hence in my view alternatives to the assumption that more spending will help the poor need to be explored if the coalition does this, and IDS as an example does have some ideas, then it will be a good thing.

[Huguenot]

I don't think anyone has suggested more spending Magpie - that's a frequent misunderstanding.

When the economy dives the tax take dives too. In order to accommodate this the government has to do two things - cut back in services and increase the percentage of GDP taken in taxes.

In fact the tax rises will still generate less spending.

The second question is who carries the cost of those rises. We operate progressive taxation in the UK, which reflects the fact that wealthier people are correspondingly more able to pay tax.

It's recognised that people earning less than 10k are realistically well below the poverty line. It would take a spectacularly Victorian approach to society to try and make up the tax deficit by taking food from their mouths to support the luxury spending binges of people with multiple houses.

However, if those low income households are spending on luxury items, they'll get clobbered with additional VAT.