Cameron on Corbyn

PMQs this afternoon was another session of DC knocking the bowling from Jeremy Corbyn to the boundary in all directions.

It had been suggested in some quarters that a competent opposition leader should have been able to embarrass the government over the Google tax deal. I am not sure I agree, as David Cameron could reasonably have argued that this week a Conservative government finally managed to claw back some of the tax Google should have paid under the last Labour government.

As it was the Labour leadership laid themselves open to this:









The best Labour could do in response was to infer that the use of the word "bunch" in the quote above was racist. Last time I looked "bunch" was not a pejorative term.

It's going to be a long four years and eight months for the Labour party ...

Comments

Jim said…
Personally I have nothing against Google, or Amazon for making use of the tax laws they have found. The tax system is deliberately very complex, in order to Hide the true amount paid by people, the answer I think is to reform it so its simple, not more complex.

I did once do a Hypothetical break down exercise where by I earned £100 for a saturday Job, And spent it on a tank full of of fuel.

If i remember rightly It ended up as something like £20 i spent on fuel, the rest went in tax, be it income/NI/Fuel duty/VAT on Fuel and VAT on fuel duty.

Also Tax evasion is one thing, but this term of "agressive tax avoidance" is daft to me, Its like aggressive sticking to the speed limit.

4:53 pm
Jim said…
I quite like the quote and am not sure who said it, but its Tax evasion is an offence, Tax avoidance is a citizens duty
4:56 pm
Chris Whiteside said…
It should be the aim of government to design the tax system so that it is as simple as possible and has as few loopholes as possible so that "aggressive tax avoidance" ceases to be an issue.

Of course, that is easier said than done ...
5:33 pm
Jim said…
Why is it? why is it easier said than done?

Its just a case of being honest, eliminating some taxes and increasing others. Lets say just put the whole lot on income tax and business rates.

Ok the rate is sky high, and appears to be to, Its transparent and its honest.
6:22 pm
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Nick Herbert on his visit to flood hit areas of Cumbria

Please note that the post below was published more than ten year ago on 21st November 2009 Nick Herbert MP, shadow cabinet member for the Environment, Food, and Rural Affairs, was in Cumbria this morning to see the areas affected by the flooding. He writes on Conservative Home about his visit. Here is an extract. I’ve been in Cumbria today to see the areas affected by the floods. I arrived early in Keswick where I met officials from the Environment Agency. Although the river levels had fallen considerably and homes were no longer flooded, the damage to homes had been done. And the water which had got into houses wasn’t just from the river – it was foul water which had risen from the drains. I talked to fire crews who were pumping flood water back into the river, and discovered that they were from Tyne & Wear and Lancashire. They had been called in at an hours’ notice and had been working on the scene ever since, staying at a local hotel. You cannot fail to be impressed by the
Read more

Quotes of the day 19th August 2020

Image
"Wise men profit more from fools than fools from wise men; for the wise men shun the mistakes of fools, but fools do not imitate the successes of the wise."  ( Cato the Elder , who lived 234 BC - 149 BC, quoted in "Lives" by Plutarch.) There is a similar saying by Germany's Iron Chancellor, Otto von Bismarck: Benjamin Franklin is supposed to have put the same saying in a more humorous form: "Wise men profit by the mistakes of others, while fools will not learn even from their own blunders." See also this thread on the "Quote Investigator" website . Let us all be wise and learn from the events of the last few days.
Read more

Quote of the day 24th July 2020

I was moved to put the passage below forward as a quote today when I saw a horrible post on twitter from someone writing that it was "excellent" that someone who took a different view from her about Brexit had died. I won't write which way round it was so that all the Remain supporters can assume the post was from a Brexit fanatic welcoming the death of a remainer and all the Leavers can assume it was a Remainiac welcoming one less Brexiteer. There's been plenty of nasty stuff on both sides but if you catch anyone of your own viewpoint  posting something like that who might listen to you, please do call them out on it - and point out that they're giving everyone on your side of the argument a bad name. Anyway, here's the quote from John Donne.
Read more