exiledwhite2

I'm talking about real terms spending, I thought I made that quite clear. Not spending as a % of GDP. The actual amount of money we were spending. It's the whole point I'm trying to make to be fair. We should have been spending far less and running a big surplus. It was fairly obvious that we were in the midst of a golden era, economically. We blew it.

It is annoying but some people hardly ever use motorways and you get a licence without ever driving on one (or you did in my day) so its no surprise some people drive scared and just stick to the middle lane. Why that idiot was slamming on though, I don't know.

There have been analyses of the Tory and lib dem manifesto recently and the Tories largely delivered what they said they would, policy wise. It's untrue to say that parties don't do what they say they will. Whether those policies work however...

With all respect you're wrong and a cursory google search would show you how much spending ramped up under labour. It's a fact. The more we generated the more they spent, if they'd not bloated the public sector and benefits so much the crash wouldn't have hit so hard and we would have had a surplus and some money banked to absorb it. We were the family who's income kept on rising so we just developed ever more expensive tastes instead of putting ourselves on a sound financial footing. I say this as somebody who has always voted labour.

Some of the money will go into a fund to prepare brownfield sites for building and build new houses. Hotly disputed by everyone except the Tories, as to whether the sums add up and how much building will actually come to fruition.

Well, they'll be paying small mortgages because they bought at a huge discount, and they get a belting mortgage deal due to the instant large chunk of equity they have. It's people like you who are being mugged off the most by this policy. Even more galling is that your taxes are funding the giveaway.

Was always astonishing how quickly it went up.

Never heard about this, shocking if true. (Link is to a Guardian news story) Bradford fire

Fair enough. So many Tory policies in the manifesto they've launched are just very obvious bribes, no more, no less. Very disappointing.

The theoretical discount from market value when sold to them is capped at £107k in London. Of course, hold onto the place for a few years and that's soon £200k. My sister in law and her partner, a feckless pair if truth be told, have made around £250k on the housing association place they bought in London. She's 40, it's not like they've been in the same place for decades, I reckon they bought it about 10 years ago after 5 years living there. A lot of working people won't have earned that in take home pay in the same period. While their taxes paid for her families benefits. It's a total joke, morally indefensible, and I'm not sure why the Tories are hell bent on it. How many tenants will be EU immigrants? Because they've possibly just been handed a good reason to stick around here for 5 years, occupying social housing, and grab themselves a taxpayer funded windfall. Then fuck off back to Lithuania and buy a whole street, you've gotta laugh really. (Don't know if immigrants will be excluded, can't see it mind you).

That's the plan, sell what they have, and build more. Strikes me that simply building more might be simpler and fairer than giving people £100k windfalls after they've been lucky enough to get a housing association place to begin with.

I don't think that's true, not that I'm an expert, but I think a lot of the policies they announce will come to fruition. These coalitions don't help as their coalition partner gives them an excuse for not sticking to a pledge. Edit - here's how the Tories did against their manifesto of 2010. http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/apr/14/how-much-of-the-conservatives-2010-election-manifesto-was-implemented

Yeah it is a bit rich to have criticised 'austerity' throughout and now to say the deficit is still too high. And yeah, Labour alone is worrying, Labour in thrall to the SNP is potentially disastrous. It's a woeful situation we find ourselves in right now.

Scandalous policy. Tories are really making a hash of what should have been a straightforward campaign.

Yeah I see it like that too, you should only have a Labour government when you can afford one. Don't think we can right now. Tories are running a disastrous campaign so far though. Totally misjudging the public mood with their 'middle England' giveaways. I think they'd have done better to say 'we're staying on the course we've been on for the last term' and focusing on the relative success of our economy.

This really. He's not actually committing to any targets on deficit and debt reduction 'so that he doesn't make false promises' but he's making spending commitments and isn't going to raise income tax ... but is going to cut the deficit year on year. It's hard to hear that and then think 'these guys know what they're doing'. Especially when, other than their household and shady tax returns, they've got very little experience of actually delivering a budget. When you look at it like that it's shocking that we let these people run the country really.

It almost always is. If your partner dies all the wealth is left with the widow/widower (untaxed) and the £325 allowance passed on to them too. The headline for this policy is 'IHT threshold raised to £1m' and that is 2x£500k. Part of which only applies to property. So it's fairly common to use the joint allowance as the 'headline' figure.

The double tax thing doesn't stand up. Loads of our money is taxed multiple times. All of us pay income tax then VAT all the time. Also the tax is paid by the recipient, whichever way you look at it, who is getting a windfall (more than £650k) they haven't earned nor ever paid tax on. Likewise, the hoo-ha about 'I should be able to pass on my wealth' - well, couples can pass on £650k before they have to pay a penny. Let's not pretend it hits joe bloggs in the pocket, or that people are being disallowed from passing on a tidy sum to their kids. Then, there is the fact that anyone with any sense (or a financial adviser) will dodge it anyway by putting their properties in trust etc. Finally, this £1m figure applies in part only to property. It's now going to make investing in property more attractive / downsizing less attractive. Causing more problems in the housing market. I've no problem at all with a tax on inheritance, in theory. It's just executed badly and probably always will be. It should apply to the seriously wealthy but they are exactly the people who will know how to avoid it.

Capri is a tourist trap but a must see IMO, and you don't have to spend any money there Superb part of the world

Just been doing a little bit of investigation and the numbers (and definitions) touted for various places - Bolton and Reading included - vary wildly. Hard to say what the truth is.

The thing is we should have been running a huge surplus throughout the 2000's but Labour ramped up spending in real terms, and when tax revenues dropped, we were fucked.

Good job cos there's plenty about

Do Banks usually open Sundays?

Khan is being mugged off by al haymon IMO They won't give him the big fight with Floyd I also think brook will beat him, but the point is it is a cracking fight, domestic rivalry, big bucks. Makes sense all ends up.

Joshua was a late starter in boxing and has very little amateur experience to be fair