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"as all the parties acknowledge, we will have a reduced taxpayer base trying to support the pensioner baby boomer generation."
And the solution to this is lower taxes?
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No it isn't. The solution is to encourage people to save prudently for their future and to ensure that satisfactory pension entitlement exists for people.
The present government's major failure has been its repeated raids on everyone's pensions. We've seen the massive reduction in tax relief for pension payments and the government actually increase the way in which the national insurance system is used as a fake tax. They've deliberately created a pensions blackhole to try and pay for their short term extravagant public spending promises.
My complaint is that Labour should either be honest and fund its public spending committments out of tax, or it is should not make those committments. Making committments and then raiding everyone's pensions to pay for them, is dishonest.
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Thats because despite the amount of tax, public services are crap
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A justifiable statement. I read recently that the IMF had issued a report saying that for every extra £1 we pay in tax since 1997, only about 20p goes on front line services. That means that for every £1, 80p is wasted on bureacracy, inefficiency and corruption.
Another scary statistic is that for every extra doctor and nurse, TWO tax collectors have been employed by the government since 1997.
Statistics like this make me angry. I work very hard for my income so learning that 80% of my tax is being wasted is like a kick in the teeth.
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The NHS is crap because we have fairly low taxes.
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This year £90,000,000,000 is being spent on the NHS. So its hardly a lack of expenditure that is causing the NHS to be "crap". On the contrary, its because its run by the government, and as everyone knows, governments are hopelessly bureacratic and inefficient. Hence the reason why private sector medical cover is in real terms actually CHEAPER than the NHS. Private cover per person costs considerably less than the equivalent cost to the state of the NHS per person. For example, assume that there are 60m people in the country. As the government pays £90bn thats equivalent to £1,500 per person. By contrast, my private BUPA covers costs my employer a measly £350 per year and provides a far far better service than the NHS.
I think its an outrage that the state is so inefficient.
In addition, taxes have gone up 66 times since 1997 and Council tax has gone up 70%. 70 whole percent!
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Railways are crap because the Tories privatised them.
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Since privatisation the level of monetary investment in real terms into the railways has increased by more than 400%.
As for Railtrack, since it was "re-nationalised", it has cost the taxpayer more than £1,000,000,000 in re-nationalisation costs than when it was Railtrack. Personally I believe it would have been better to spend that billion on Railtrack's infrastructure than on advisers.
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Is this the Tory government of boom and bust or the coal strikes?
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If you look back at the economic history of the 20th century, you'll find that Labour presided over a recession during almost every one of their terms in office. This is the reason why until New Labour the Tory government was always considered to be the party in whose hands the economy was safe. One of Blair and Brown's greatest achievements for their party has been to reverse this perception.
As for the coal strikes, if the complaint is that the Tory Government tried to break the overweening power of the unions, then my response is to applaud. The Unions HAD to be broken. One only needs to see the Winter of Discontent to see why. We now have the benefit of a balanced legal relationship between employee and employer.
Philip
Cheer if you like bears! Vote Conservative and save the Country!
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