threegee

Was there a Sylvia Curley "in the picture" there Tony? I have memories of that very able lady.

No I don't! HMRC are ruthlessly efficient - certainly compared with other countries. When they do a deal it's genuinely in the public interest. That there's huge tax dodging going on is a myth promoted by the jealousy and envy party. It's a convenient way of explaining away how undeliverable promises of more free stuff to buy votes will be funded. This is not confined to Labour of course, but they are the principal shysters. Conflating avoidance and evasion is their stock in trade. The reality is that multinationals - perfectly legally - get away with murder by transfer pricing, and using the creaky, insane, politics-before-economics, structure of the EU to move profits around. Ukip has the solution - a turnover tax which ignores the creative accounting. Simples! Why won't LibLabCon copy this? Can't you work that out for yourself?

Twas one of my little attempts at humour - or a hedge against Adam pointing out that everything under the sun works better when nationalised - you choose.

I hope the CABs do house calls then - the prospect of their customers catching the #9 bus for that assistance is disturbing! Maybe the Italian system of er... mutual obligation has some good points after all?

As Adam said. The old Bedlington Fire Station - when we had one - was around there too, but that's perhaps beyond living memory now. I think it was originally established by a cooperative of insurance companies. Those were the days when, if you had a policy with the wrong company, they wouldn't turn out. Nowadays, they don't turn out anyway - because they are on strike!

...unless we quit the EU fast, cut foreign aid to those few worthwhile projects in countries where that aid is life or death to poor people, reign in quangos and all the state machinery which provides no direct benefit to ordinary people, and put a stop grandiose projects which make this country even more London-centric, etc. Basically, all the political hobby-horses of a self-aggrandising establishment.

Local councillors? In Italy the local politicos are always offering their services to "fix" things - for obvious reasons. They are the natural go-to. Again, I think it comes back to the nature of the problem. What's at the back of my mind is the huge cuts we are about to face whoever gets in at the GE. There'll likely be nothing safe - even the supposed ring-fenced stuff will suffer at the hands of inflation. That's essentially what Balls said on the NHS, though it went completely over the heads of the LPC audience, who actually applauded his spin on a post-inflationary cut!

I didn't say I'd deleted it Maggie, or that I pressed any buttons to delete it. The reason was purely technical - if you don't count the two glasses of wine. I am still grovelling apologetic though! From what I still remember there were some good points. My point is that if a CAB is really important we should unify on this.

OK, you aren't aware of my normal inherent sarcism then. The apparently we don't need one anyway could have been phrased others seem to believe we don't need one but I suspect dual standards at work there. I'd still like to know what kind of questions a CAB would field. I'm sure things have changed a lot since they were originally devised. I'm also puzzled why local councillors can't help, or is this also politicised to the extent that people don't ask people of the "wrong party"? You don't know if an issue is confidential unless you tactfully and respectfully ask, and at some point that person has to confide in someone. If only I'd known is too frequently heard these days - generally well after a tragic event. The state is very bad at handling such things, and voluntary organisations seem to do much better. I'm suggesting that an ad-hock voluntary organisation consisting just of one, concerned, motivated person - the person being asked about help - could sometimes be the best and most immediate option. People may decide not to take things further and simply give up when all they need is a little encouragement; that sometimes has tragic consequences. =============== It's the moderators job to close off (lock) threads that have come to the end of their useful life, but it's never a good idea to overdo this. I've seen boards moderated to death. Here I'd have split the original topic first to let the discussion run under a new title, then closed off the original thread after a satisfactory answer to the question. That would certainly have applied to other forums, but here I (personally) would have let the thread run. It's always better if you leave someone else to moderate a thread you are actively involved in yourself. I'm not suggesting that anyone here would make a bad call, but it avoids any suspicion that someone has been gagged.

Maggie said: Make a reasoned case for a CAB and everyone here will unite to get you one! It's called democracy, but we haven't seen it for quite some time!

You, more than anyone else here, understands that there will always be loopholes. The only way toward eliminating them is a flat rate tax system without (vote-buying) allowances, incentives and general political tinkering all the time. It's your "law of unseen consequences". I'm all for class war, but it must be the class war of the age, and not tilting at windmills. The class enemy is the EU, the current political establishment, and a large section of the media. All are totally united against the interests of the electorate. Their strategy is divide and conquer - Lab, Lib, Con is a pure sham and a diversion.

You're saying that something which is certainly illegal is morally superior to something which probably isn't? Those MPs are mostly lawyers themselves and they make the laws. Seems to me the public doesn't get value from these people and the most useful talk would be to decide how we replace them. They are doing the constitutional deciding once again, and shouldn't be allowed to get away with it. They rely on the fact that the public can't get its act together, and act with a unified purpose.

This is the Chat forum not the one with specific Town info. Off topic is allowed here, so asking the supplementary question as to WHY anyone would need a CAB should hardly be controversial or stir any emotions. In any case no one has offered any specific example. I can easily see why older folk who aren't net savvy would need help but maybe it's no longer the type of support that CABs provide? I'm trying to determine if something needs to be done in OUR town. How is that remotely political, unless there's some hidden agenda here I'm blissfully unaware of? Lighten up Keith and try to help me here! There are no "sides" here yet Malc, and I'm not at all arguing for impersonalisation of anything - in fact I feel quite the opposite!

I sort of knew no one would offer a figure. I think to most rich is what you want it to be at any given time. It's more that you ever realistically see yourself having, and maybe less than you'd like some newly-discovered relative in Australia to leave you. It's a woolly concept most favoured by the Labour Party to use in their game of capitalising on jealousy and envy in order to make themselves rich. To Red Ed. it's currently having a house valued at £2M (ignore however small or large your other assets and capital). That's because Red Ed's house has recently been valued at circa £1.6M, and on present trends, and given the time-scale of these things, you need to add a bit of slack. I think it's a word most ordinary people should think twice about using, or - like Ed - put an intensely private figure on it. Tax avoidance has never been illegal, and as long as people can exercise their free will never will be. The politicos make all the rules yet they still have to stoop to implying that people organising their own affairs more efficiently are doing highly immoral things. Most of them are trained lawyers and they have thousands of lawyers working for them, and an unlimited number of attempts to get it right, yet still they claim that they need more power and time in office to right claimed wrongs. They try to conflate avoid and evade in the minds of their audience. People should not buy into this sleight of hand. A flat rate tax system without ifs and buts would be better for everyone, but there would be vastly less work for lawyers. A more competitive economy wouldn't need all the tax incentives, and so be far less capable of abuse. Politicians love to tinker, in that tinkering produce their own sets of problems, and are thus able to justify their own existence in the always claimed need to fix them.

It was a question. So what would you go to a CAB about that you couldn't just as easily get the information elsewhere these days? Give me an example? Give me as many examples as you want? Without being intrusive I'd have asked the nature of the problem, and tried to help myself; or does everything have to centre around the state and spending ever more public money? We complain about loss of community, but it seems to me many of us actively connive in the process. It's public money that's being spent, and apparently we don't need one in Bedlington anyway. If they are so valuable we should know why we don't have one and be pressing for one. If they aren't valuable then someone needs the courage to say so in the public interest. "that is what this forum is partly about...communication and finding out things if you are uncertain" - remember?

It's looking increasingly likely that Labour will axe Ed Miliband before the general election, but just supposing he survives? For the Tories that's a dream scenario, he's worth 20 to 60 seats to them. Yes, suppose Ed makes it to the general election as Labour leader. He's in a safe Labour seat with a near 11,000 majority right? Well, times change: North Doncaster Parliamentary Year -- Labour % of Poll =================== 1997 -- 69.8% 2001 -- 63.1% 2005 -- 55.5% Hampstead Ed. bussed in to replace Old Labour Kevin Hughes 2010 -- 47.3% Ed already lost Labour's overall majority, and if Middleton is anything to go by he'll now lose about 35 - 40% of traditional Labour voters this time around. Seeing what happened in Middleton no Tory with an ounce of sense is going to waste their vote on Cameron in this seat of all seats. Those believing that there was nowhere to go but the extremist BNP to restore some sanity on immigration (shockingly almost 3000 there by 2010) now have a rational way to express their disapproval of the ruling elites. So, all that can save Ed is switching LD voters. Chances are that many of those voting LD didn't really swallow all the pro-EU garbage anyway, but we'll get on to that. So, it's more than even odds that Ed is going to pull off the impossible: as prospective prime minister, lose a safe seat for his own party, and so lose a premiership directly at the hands of his own voters! In the process he'll spin off one of the lamest governments in history. Just at the time we'll need strong government to deal with a failing EU, and more and bigger demands for financial support from Brussels. Ed's cohort of psephologists and focus groups have been here for some weeks now. The wake-up call has got through to many in the party, hence the noises off. The disintegration of the Scottish branch of the party was the final straw. Scottish Labour is going to try to distance itself as much as possible from Ed. He stands for everything the Nationalists are recruiting against. So what are those expensive spin doctors telling him? They are telling him that as he can no longer depend on the working class vote, he needs to pick up those sold-on-Europe LD's. So this is exactly what he's going to do. All the empty rhetoric about the EU needing reform is going on the back burner, and he's going to try to appeal to "all" those LD's that are so in love with the EU they won't hear any of the huge downside. What those people with an 'ology in New Labour don't understand is that many former LD voters weren't convinced about the EU and were simply voting for change. A lot of support for the EU comes from the Cameronian wing of the Tory party, and they aren't going to step in and save Ed. It's a bet on a lame horse anyway - even hard core LDs recognise that the Euro they were so hung up on would have been a disaster for our economy. They can even be heard to be muttering essential reform in certain corners - reforms that can never happen! So, here comes the switch! Ed is now going to roll out all the old LD crap. The crap about losing UK jobs (those three million jobs that depend on the EU - remember?). Also, remember those two million Brits who "live and work in the EU" who will have to come home - except that 96% of them are retired; don't actually have jobs; have pensions taxed in Europe and not in the UK. If they really did come home - which they won't - the UK economy would get a further boost. In case you've been asleep for the last week, we are a huge net contributor to the EU. All sane economic projections indicate that we'd be a lot better off out. As it fails we are going to suffer anyway; any dithering in distancing ourself from it is going to cost us dearly. There are only two beneficiaries of the EU. One is big business, as it drives down labour costs, and the second is the political classes who have the divine right to rule - this side of the general election anyway! But, lets wait to hear the cynical switch from Ed himself... Meanwhile an interlude: Oh, look, I never mentioned Ukip - this will do.

There's one here, and we're all far more cost effective than the state one. Maybe I'm wrong, but In this day and age I can't imagine why anyone even vaguely literate would ever need one.

OK Maggie, define rich? What figure have you in mind, and is it income per annum you are factoring, or just total capital assets? If you can't (or won't) put a figure to it then that word has no real meaning. By your grandparents standards it's likely you are very rich. Of course "the rich" would say that they pay more than their fair share, and likely have the tax documents to prove it. It's just not the sort of thing anyone would want to boast about, partly because the left is so woolly and accusative on wealth (many would say for very good reason). Lawyers are the system. Haven't you noticed? Please show me a poor lawyer who's been at law for any length of time, whatever their stated politics.

http://www.bedlington.co.uk/news/_/news/newburn-murder-victim-is-local-r199

Blyth Town Council calling itself a "dysfunctional organisation”! Must be that faint smell of kippers on the breeze.

Sounds just like where we'd have been heading with Arthur Scargill's Stalinist state Sym. Illegals are highly motivated and innovative; customs officers have no incentives, and maybe just a faint vested interest in illegal immigration being a continuing problem which needs ever more money. On benefits, sure the issue is being exploited for political purposes, but that's because working people feel strongly about misuse of their tax money. Whatever the extent of the problem at the moment the history of these things follows human nature, and is a one-way-street. By the time the politicos have recognised and admitted their mistakes problems are generally way beyond reasonable solutions, and they've passed the buck to the next lot. Back to the UCL report: a little more digging reveals that UCL took £52M in funding directly from the EU in the most recent accounts. I wonder how much authority anyone would ascribe to a report on the effects of smoking funded by the tobacco industry? As it is they should hand the money back - they've totally failed to provide the message that their paymasters required of them. I suspect that if you dig back we'd find that their report forecasting those now laughable 13,000 immigrants was also EU funded.

Who do you think you are kidding Mr Obsorne When you say you've halved the bill We are the boys that have twigged your little game When we do the math - the total's ju-st the same 'Cos who do you think you are foolin' Mr Osborne Britons are not quite so dumb! Mr Cam goes off to Sproutland on the aer-o-plane When he gets back to-night - spins the only game 'Cos who do you think you are foolin' Mr Cam'ron The electorate really aren't that dumb! Do you think they noticed? Not sure George, but something stupid Ed will do is bound to save us.

There is real opportunity here, don't you see? This illustrates that cabbages are so important that we need a Euro Directorate of Cabbages. And... another massive edifice to house it - just think of the number of construction jobs. Of course we'll have to ensure that the Cabbage Commissar is sympathetic to British cabbages, so we'll have to employ lots of lobbyists to ensure that the plumb job doesn't go to a Sauercraut.

Reasoning isn't rant Tony. Your "stating a fact" deserves closer examination. Being spoon-fed "facts" is for young kids who have no experience of the real world - you have lots! I'm inviting you to test my ideas so that I can learn from you and from others. Expose what you believe to the examination of others so that we can all get at the real truth. Accept that others can often have more insight than yourself, and try to learn from them. That's how our society has progressed, and why we are no longer living in the stone-age, where things were settled by whoever had the largest club! The alternative is unreasoning tribal loyalty to people with feet of clay - tribes get to live in mud huts!