I agree, this vitriol towards Jimmy Carr is ridiculous, don't blame him just because you don't like him, blame the succession of MP's that have not closed this loophole, most probably because they have found it useful themselves!
It does seem to be self righteous doesn't it ? The fact is accountants are there to find loopholes and to write everything off they can do within the law to cut taxes for their clients. If I had the need I would do the same as Carr simply because the loopholes are there and it's legal. Would I feel guilty ? Nope if the government closed the loopholes and did tax collection without all the clauses there would be little argument from me.
Do you really want to pay less? We have to pay to keep everything running. We have to provide for the sick and elderly. We have to have Armed Services. We need roads. Our offspring must be educated. I would pay even more if it would improve how that tax is spent. If life is better provided for, money becomes less relevant.
With respect you totally miss the point! Jimmy Carr has made a great deal of money by ridiculing others for doing exactly what he is doing himself! That is blatant hypocracy!
YES We all pay too much TAX as it is! Every year the average person on average salary works up to the middle of June before they start earning money for themselves! The state is too big and a lot more needs to be cut from state spending and TAX needs to be cut. Under Labour we were borrowing huge amounts of money even when the economy was in surplus and no one seemed to care. Now we have reached the day of reckoning when the bills have to be paid. Labour's answer is that you simply borrow more money to pay down the debt!
I'm sure Ken Dodd did the same thing with no loss of popularity! And Ken Dodd's was evasion, not avoidance!
No,I don't think the point is being missed at all.Jimmy Carr has come clean and admitted that he was wrong.I don't think that the targets of his own satire have actually done that.And now it seems that Cameron has inherited substantial sums from his father who used similar schemes. Now in my mind there is a difference between a stand up comedian and a Prime Minister.The latter being required to adhere to higher standards.So maybe we can look forward to a mea culpa episode from Dave and the repayent of that inheritance.Until that happens I reserve the right to regard him as a hypocritical posh boy,with whom we are most definitely not "In it together"
You need to get the chip of your shoulder about Labour. On one hand you say the state and next its Labour. Your Tory views are well known JWM. I was a socialist but have no time for the current Labour Party. More of them are toffs than the Tories! I believe in more State intervention. In the old days under your mate MacMillan we had plenty of State control and we had never had it so good. Prices and incomes policies. Restrictions on borrowing and foreign currency exchange. Nationalised primary industries such as Energy and the Railways. And I have to admit, it was working and there was full employment. Companies were happy to make a profit only and not sack staff because they didn't make ENOUGH profit. Working people were able to take holidays particularly to foreign climes for the first time and more people were able to buy their own homes and cars. Some industries were chaotic for a time like the car industry as people turned their back, sometimes cowardly, on their right to say no to political motivated Union leaders and industry bosses backed off from solving the problem once and for all. Then Thatcher had the bright idea of making Tories overnight by allowing people to buy their council house for a song and she swept to power. The markets took over and nationalised industries were sold off on the cheap and within 6 months of joe public becoming a shareholder, he had sold those shares to the people who knew they were going to get them in the first place. Now M&S talk of reducing staff levels because profits were down from 700 million to 600 million. More money is lost to the exchequer through tax avoidance and evasion than any work shy benefit bludger. And at the same time as this whole argument started because an unfunny (to me) knobhead finds a way of paying less tax on 3.3M than I do 30K, Cameron announces he is going to save 1.8 billion by taking away housing benefit from young single people. And Miliband has'nt the bottle or the gumption to come up with an attack on the government. Clegg will do anything for a bit of power rather than oppose things that contradict his party's manifesto. Now we have the Archbishop of Canterbury, a bloke who represents people who in the twenty first century believe there is somebody who is a god, sticking his oar in. And who elected that clown? So don't just blame Labour or say that Jimmy Carr is doing anything wrong because he isn't breaking the law. I walk to work each morning and the amount of people who won't respond when I say Morning to them sums up the society we are now living in. I'm alright Jack!
The debts we have been landed with have to be paid it's as simple as that! We can't keep kicking the can down the road for another generation to deal with. All I am saying is that you can't borrow your way out of debt as Labour would have us believe and the biggest problems facing this country are not currently being dealt with. We have a mish-mash government in power that is only interested in appeasing the factions within it. This is no way to run a country and I am totally fed up with Cameron the same as everyone else. He isn't a Tory and never will be, if he was a true Tory with deep convictions he would have won the last election instead of relying on the Lib-dems to prop him up. Our country needs radical reform and yet we are hamstrung with a weak government and an opposition that has no coherent alternative. I was a child growing up with the Thatcher Govt and I was brought up on a tough, rough, council estate in Ipswich with a single mother and a number of offspring that she struggled to support. We managed and I escaped relative poverty through a willingness to learn and to get a decent education. I never accepted that the State owed me a living and I went on to make a decent life for myself. Unfortunatley today there are too many people who are happy to sit back and accept state hand outs and expect the State to bring up their offspring. I despise these people more than those who simply want to limit the amount they pay in Tax. Rant over... We will never agree but this has been a decent discussion and I acknowledge your deeply held views.
I remember growing up in a house that my dad rented for 7/6d a week.When I wasat school a teacher told the class that people used to bath in front of the fire in the living room - we still did. Despite the fact that I always came either top or second in end of term exams I was chosen - yes chosen - not to go to Grammar School.That particular year the 11 + exam was cancelled and the headmaster chose those he considered the top third to go. I don't feel that this handicapped me in any way.I started my own business in 1977 and it has been successful enough for me to maintain as good a lifestyle as I desire.Oddly my view has always been the opposite to JWM and much more in line with redruth's.
My first Grammar School head was class prejudiced! He once gave me six strokes of the cane across my arse, to remind me to get a haircut in two weeks time! Can you imagine that happening today? We just accepted it back then!
I was brought up on a Council Estate, in a freezing cold house in Winter and roasting hot in summer. We were pretty poor as only Mum worked half the time as Dad was a Communist and black balled by most employers in Norwich. And there were no benefits in those days. But his ideas which were not the Soviet party line, but which were based on kindness, sharing and looking out for everyone, not just your family stuck with me. I became a full time union secretary because I believed my members needed a person not consumed with political desire to oust the owners but to represent them as donors. They donated their labour and their employer donated the tools etc to produce in our case, books. I stood in front of 12,000 people and got slaughtered by ultra conservative Communist lackies for not advocating strikes for money but seeking to improve peoples lives by improving their conditions. Shorter hours, healthcare incentives, extra holidays, health and safety awareness and something I am proud of, the first Union to introduce, with our employers agreement, paternity leave which enables fathers to have time off with their wives during and after childbirth. However, I fell out of love with much of socialism when it became a harbour for those who are unwilling to realise that the welfare state is a brilliant concept and an insurance for the unfortunate not a cash cow for the idle. I will not tolerate people taking the piss out of the welfare state just as I will not tolerate those who seek to harm either financially or personally, my neighbours or my family and friends. That is why I started this thread in the first place. People like Jimmy Carr by their actions seek to harm the system by not giving or doing their share. I detest them and their arrogance. And that is my last word on the subject.
Well maybe that explains it.Grandad on my dad's side was a Communist.After service as a machine gunner in the trenchs he was arrested in 1926 for leading an insurrction during the General Strike.I never met him because he died a year before I was born.I do remember as a kid my mother saying when she was annoyed with me "You are just like his old man" and my dad saying "My old man would have loved you boy" whenever I was up to mischief.It's in the genes perhaps.
Don't know if you haven't heard but communism was a bigger failure than capitalism, state ownership of businesses were a disaster and in the world today we must compete with other countries. Wishing for things to be like the old days is just not going to happen. If the government closed the loopholes in the tax area it wouldn't allow such a large hole in the finances, they are as much to blame for people like Carr who are exploiting these tax avoidance schemes, a flat rate of tax of say 30%-35% would help greatly, if things like vat and national insurance were part of that.
Stealing people's money backed with threats of violence/murder is "kindness"? Literally incredible how deluded some people are.
You clearly either didn't read all of what he wrote,or more likely didn't understand it.Soviet Communism was based on theories of societal engineering,and no it didn't work.The ideas of a less structured type of Socialism however dates back to The Chartists with input from groups like the Quakers and thinkers like Morris and Ruskin. Soviet communism was a reaction to the vicious system of Czarist Russia where the serfs were rather worse off than owned slaves.I get the impression that the Tory right would rather enjoy a return to such a system.
