Well I like some of Miliband's policies: Raising minimum wage; Mansion tax to fund NHS; Partially re-nationalisating the Railways; Raising the top rate of tax back to 50%; Cutting Tuition Fees (they are far too high for students now); Regulation in the Energy market (Miliband started the debate on this). So I would rather Ed than Cameron. FLT makes a valid point above, and if other posters don't want Politics being discussed on this thread, then I can understand that. Although, a General Election is quite a big event.
Fantastic finish to WC semi-final between SA and NZ. New Zealand go through with a 6 off the penultimate ball.
Happy for the Kiwi's , but bad luck on South Africa , they batted first and may have been out of sight if they had 50 overs instead of 43 .
My take on this - if we go this route (Mansion Tax, raise top rate to 50%, cut tuition fees .......) we're going to end up like France. Having just come back from a few years working there, I can report that their economy is an absolute disaster. Their government borrowing is incredible (even higher per capita than ours) and they're going to get found out sooner or later. The only thing that keeps them going is that the public continue to buy French, something we can't do. I don't like any of the parties, I think there should be a tax on bankers (and bonkers) bonuses with the money going directly to the NHS (not getting swallowed up in back office "admin"), but I think if we go too far left and "soak the rich" all that will happen is that they'll leave in droves or find new ways of getting around paying taxes. My radical idea would be to raise the threshold for paying income tax to around £20,000 then tax everyone above that at 30% flat rate - closing ALL the tax loopholes. That would make the "rich" pay the same percentage as everyone else and put all the tax specialists out of a job. Stop people buying houses through corporations to avoid stamp duty and make everyone pay their way .......... It won't happen, but it's a nice thought!!
TSS, I don't suspect it's going to get nasty (though I wouldn't bet heavily on it) but what's the harm in having a thread from now until May called "Erwin's election erudition" just so it has its own place? It's a bit different from most subjects on here. Most threads contain coherent, rational, reasoned argument and a number of them change my mind. Nothing at all about the election is going to be discussed rationally and no-one's going to change their minds as a result of anything they see on here. It's also very, very dull listening to people telling you they know a single answer ("vote XXX") to every problem the country has and that politicians are all in it for themselves anyway. Keep the tedium in its own little room and we can choose whether to see it. Vin
Don't ever accuse me of anything to do with UKIP Can't stand them - just need to get rid of all the tax dodges!! I'm going back to keeping my interest in sport ...........
My apologies, but the Government and HMRC need to be better at closing loopholes, and most importantly going after those at the top (HSBC for example), as much as they go over Joe Bloggs on the street.
But by historical standards 2014 was low. please log in to view this image And we're at 98 so far this year (before today) so well below the average. Vin
That graph is flawed as it doesn't take into account the advance in technology and therefore better designed planes. These days, you would expect far fewer crashes than 10, 20 years ago and especially 50+ years ago. Therefore the average is flawed.
Don't know how a graph can be flawed. How would you change it to take into account advances in technology? The trend is downwards from the mid-70's because of the things you mention. Even looking at the years from, say 92 - 14, you can see at a glance that last year wasn't terribly unusual even taking into account the overall decline from 92 - 14. "It's not out of the range of the trendline of typical years since since 92" might have been a better phrase for me to use but it's less snappy. To some extent I felt it was fairly self-explanatory. "Downward trend, 2014 not unusual" perhaps. Here's a more telling graph, IMO. It's the number of commercial crashes year by year, rather than deaths. I must say that I'm probably more interested in how likely I am to crash rather than how many people die with me. 2014 certainly doesn't stand out. please log in to view this image Vin
On a cheerier note, there's a new Fable track coming out today - this one is a bit more commercial, big and epic - I think PL might like it actually too! You're getting it before it officially goes live cos I'm nice (plus it's a free download from Soundcloud if you like it)
