Recently I watched an episode of the long-running BBC television programme 'Panorama'. The particular programme was entitled 'Are You Paying Too Much Tax'. It featured a number of case studies of people sent erroneous and often conflicting information by Her Majesty's Revenue & Customs (HMRC) the part of the civil service responsible for assessing and collecting tax. One couple had been sent 13 different tax codes in the space of a few weeks. The tax code determines how much PAYE (Pay As You Earn) tax you pay. PAYE is the way that most people have tax taken from them, only the self-employed tend to avoid it. Around 40 million people pay tax through PAYE. The PAYE system is simple, most people do not study their tax code in detail and assume their employer is deducting the correct amount of tax. This year due to problems with new software being introduced 1.4 million people had underpaid by a total of £2 billion (€2.28 billion; US$3.44 billion), but 1.8 million had overpaid by a total of £4.3 billion. In total 6 million may have been affected by some errors in the past two years and a total of 18 million people if cases from before 2008 are included.
The key problem was the introduction of the NPS software which was supposed to make tax assessment and collection more accurate and efficient. However, as anyone who has worked with databases at any scale knows, significant errors creep in when moving over to a new database. A classic case of this was when the 1901 census was put online. First the database was populated by prisoners who put 'bastard' or some other derogatory phrase beside anyone listed as a police officer or prison warden. Then it was shipped out to India where in ignorance of British surnames, it was assumed from the lists that 'Ditto' was by far the most common surname in the UK in 1901. These were extreme examples, but always errors creep in because humans especially low-paid data entry clerks, are fallible.
There is also a long history of government departments suffering greatly from failing software. Just this year the £12.7 billion NHS (National Health Service) computerised record system was deemed 'close to imploding'. The project, called the National Programme, has already lasted seven years with failures in software and over-runs in implementation, unsurprisingly numerous companies have pulled out or slashed their bills for the work. You can find articles going back into the early 2000s around failed IT projects in the NHS for a whole variety of activities, often over-running. Partners like Fujitsu seem to come back to work for the NHS only to fail and withdraw again.
Air traffic control in the UK has also suffered a great deal from IT and software errors. Twice in 2000 software 'glitches' shut down British air traffic control for hours. The move of British air traffic control from West Drayton near London to Swanwick near the south coast was supposed to overcome such problems. The move did not occur until 2002, six years later than originally planned and even then software problems continued and even in 2008 they were still suffering disruptions due to the software. It was a similar story at Prestwick which handles Scottish airspace. In 2009 there was another computer failure at Prestwick, preventing cross-Atlantic flights. These are just two examples of how important parts of organisations linked to the government (air traffic control was part privatised with the formation of NATS - National Air Traffic Services in 2001), suffered and continue to suffer from computer and software problems. You could have predicted something similar for the HMRC.
Tax is becoming more complex for individuals because many of us have more than one job at a time or pick up short periods of work which we do not pay PAYE tax on. Since the early 2000s far more people have had to do their own tax returns in the way that everyone seems to in the USA, but at least if you do that then you have an idea of what figures are going in and you can tell quickly if what you are being asked to pay seems wrong.
Now, in January 2010, even before the October cutbacks were even dreamt of ('nightmared of' may be more accurate), the HMRC had announced the closure of 130-200 offices and redundancy for 25,000 staff . The amount of unpaid tax that was going to be written off, i.e. tax the HMRC was no longer going to pursue had already risen from 23% in 2006 to 40% in 2009. It is estimated there is £17 billion owed in unpaid tax and for a sizeable minority of those people, generally rich, self-employed people, they will now not ever be pursued. The amount of current unpaid tax is equivalent to 2% of all government expenditure in 2009 (£631 billion) and more than double what is spent on international development; welfare (excluding pensions) took £97 billion in 2009; defence £42 billion, so though while it would not dent those figures greatly, it is a significant amount. In October it was announced that the budget for HMRC would be cut by £990,000 but it was assumed that £7-8 billion would be recouped in going after unpaid tax, though presumably not the £1.5 billion of the bills that arose from the computers which it now seems to be being written off too, due to popular pressure. If the HMRC recoups less revenue then its funding will effectively fall further. It has seen a 24% reduction in staff since 2004 even under Labour and a further 14% (around 10-12,000 staff) in the next five years; staffing will be 58-60,000 compared to 105,000 back in the early 2000s.
It seems ironic that when we know that there are billions of pounds of unpaid tax and the computer system is worsening the situation, that the part of the civil service which brings in revenue is being cut even further. It clearly has been unable to do the job for the last five years (even 23% tax avoidance seems high) and this will worsen in the future. What is this going to mean to the average tax payer? Well, as anyone who has tried telephoning a UK tax office knows, you are very unlikely to have your phonecall answered. The woman in my house tried for 1 hour per day for 3 days without getting a reply. It is clear that many more of us will get the wrong amount of tax taken off us. Those people who work in a number of jobs or freelance and quite often get over-taxed as each employer charges you at the full rate, will probably never see their overpayments refunded.
Of course, in contrast to ordinary people, the government and their allies will be laughing. The Conservatives have always pushed to reduce tax levels, but it is clear now, that when that is not politically acceptable, they simply let their rich supporters not pay any tax at all or only the amount they wish to pay. Lord Ashcroft former treasurer of the Conservative Party, and David Rowland who was offered the post next but withdrew both went into tax exile or failed to pay taxes in the UK. Ashcroft saved £127 million in taxes by not being resident in the UK.
'The 'Guardian' quoting Robert Peston gives a wonderful illustration of how much Sir Philip Green, an advisor to the Coalition Government avoided paying on a single dividend in 2005: ' ...a tax saving to Sir Philip that has been estimated at £300m. That one dividend payment ... was equivalent to what 54,000 people on average earnings would earn in a year, would build around 10 secondary schools capable of educating some 13,000 young people, or, if paid in an unlikely column of pound coins, would tower 2,350 miles about the Earth's surface.' http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/aug/14/public-spending-philip-green-editorial
Lord Laidlaw a big funder of the Conservative Party and because he was made a lord, a member of the House of Lords, part of the British parliament, stopped funding the party due to questions over the amount of tax he was paying. He is a resident of Monaco, not the UK. Of course, these four are only a miniscule fraction of the 6 million British tax exiles.
These men are just the tip of the iceberg. I think as a sop to people like me, the government says it is going after 'offshore' accounts held by people who owe tax in the UK. Apparently British people have £125 billion in Swiss banks and in an agreement with Swiss authorities £3 billion of unpaid tax on such money will be repatriated; close to £1 billion is supposed to come back from Liechtenstein and another £1 billion from other tax havens around the world, though not the Cayman Islands which apparently has the largest amount of British money held overseas to avoid tax. Even with a larger, better funded HMRC these people have been getting away with massive tax avoidance. How much easier is it going to be for such people now that the HMRC is being shrunk further and its funding reduced? Of course, these people tend to be Conservative voters and particularly supportive of the hard-line New Right policies Cameron has adopted.
Thus, as with so much of the current government policies, the approach to the HMRC means that ordinary people will suffer more. We will get confused statements without explanation, may be under or over charged without our knowledge and then be asked for the money back or have to wait for years for our refund, if it ever comes. I believe I have paid £16,000 too much tax because of confusion over me selling my flat to buy a house (they assumed I owned more than one property at a time, which I never did, I have only owned one property and part of another in my life and never at the same time) but I have no hope that my query will ever be answered. In the meantime, those who have already saved millions in tax will find it even easier to avoid paying any tax and presumably will be freer to reward their friends in the Conservative Party and to spend their money on boosting the income of Monaco or Belize or some other tax haven rather than contributing to the ailing UK economy. Every week it seems there is just yet another area in which the ordinary people of the UK are rapidly and vigorously being shafted so that the privileged can benefit even more than before. Clearly I should set up an IT or software company specifically selling defective systems to government departments, that would keep me in work for 6-7 years and pay me millions even if I produce nothing that works.
Showing posts with label taxation. Show all posts
Showing posts with label taxation. Show all posts
Wednesday, 17 November 2010
Sunday, 5 September 2010
Rooksmoor's Manifesto
Recently, an anonymous commentator said that when discussing political issues I only criticise and never put forward positive suggestions. See: http://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2010/05/dark-days-return.html The person asked where the 'The Rooksmoor Manifesto' was. In fact I put forward lots of suggestions for making Britain a better place, but I recognise that these are spread across numerous postings and it would take even regular readers time to root all of them out from the different postings which include them. I have eschewed the title 'The Rooksmoor Manifesto' despite the wonderfully 17th century feel to it, mainly because it seems too much like the title of a Robert Ludlum novel.
My politics are very simple. I am a democratic Socialist who favours European integration. I know people say Socialism is dead and certainly there is no political party that I can find in the UK at present that embraces the kinds of policies I favour. While I feel that British democracy is ailing, because of the ever-growing resurgence of the ultra-wealthy and the privileged, as yet I have not gone far enough to begin advocating revolution; I believe democracy can work well in the UK it just needs attention.
I take a lot of my lead from former MP and minister, Tony Benn. I never held the anti-EEC/EU views that he did. However, I believe that certainly since the era of the Social Chapter as part of EU's legislation, even he has moved to see the benefits of European states working together and that the EU can be far more of a benefit to ordinary people than the 'capitalists' club' that its predecessor the EEC was seen simply as.
I accept that, since 1974, it has been highly unlikely that any candidate standing on the manifesto I outline below would be elected. The central ground of British politics has moved so far to the right since the advent of the New Right ideas in the mid-1970s. However, I see myself as being in the position right-wing British Conservatives must have felt themselves to be in, in the period, say 1945-72, in perceiving the 'mainstream' of politics as ignoring their concerns. Yet, their time came again, and such views have been in the ascendant in the UK certainly since 1976. There was a brief period 2008-10, when, as regular readers of this blog will know, I had a feeling that the financial crises were bringing politics a little more back to the kind of Attlee Consenus policies that I favour. The UK, the USA and other states seemed to be embracing Keynesianism once again. Under Obama, the USA is likely to stay with such an approach, whereas Britain has rushed headlong into even more virulent New Right/monetarist policies than even Margaret Thatcher was able to pull off. Some commentators have noted that this was aided by the fact that Tony Blair's impetus came very much from the Thatcher Consensus and his support for policies such as private intervention in hospitals and schooling, with increasingly selectivity in education, formed a solid foundation for David Cameron's government's far harsher policies.
Before going into an outline of the policies I would pursue if elected Prime Minister, I would draw your attention to the fact, that, whilst they may appear to be embedded in 'Old' Labour attitudes, many of the policies I outline have actually been put into place in neighbouring European states, quite often under conservative governments. Much of this stuff is not radical, it simply stems from a rational approach to making a country not only function more effectively, but, vitally, having a fair society with opportunities for all, not simply those who are already very wealthy or are privileged. My prime motivation behind all my policies is to create a Britain which is safe for all of its citizens no matter what their background; has a firm economy which all benefit from not just the richest and that is not classless but allows all people to rise by ability rather than by connections. I do not see any political grouping in the UK working to such an agenda. I have no expectations that they will in my lifetime, but I remain an optimist.
The Manifesto
Fiscal and Economic Policies
1) The outline of income tax is presently (using the rates for the 2010/11 tax year, our current one) no tax until you earn £6,475 then you pay 20% on earnings up to £37,400; then 40% on £37,401 to £150,000 and then 50% on everything over £150,000. On dividends you pay 10%/32.5%/42.5%. These rates are a legacy of the Brown government's approach and have not been tweaked by the coalition. From this year on your personal allowance, the part you can earn tax free, will fall by £1 for every £2 you earn over £100,000. So, once you earn above £112,950, you will pay tax on everything you earn. My approach would maintain many of these ideas. I would have a personal tax allowance of £10,000 as proposed by the Liberal Democrats, then a 25% rate on £10,001-£20,000; 28% on £20,001-£30,000 (80% of the population earn below £31,000 per year); 33% on £30,001-£50,000; 43% on £50,001 to £150,000; 53% on 150,001 to £500,000; 63% on anything above £500,000. The personal allowance would be reduced as currently once you earn beyond £50,000 per year. These rates will apply to dividends of these levels too. Given the plans outlined below, the government will need more revenue. These figures are low compared to historic ones. In 1979 the basic rate of tax was 33% and the highest rate was 83% (yet business prospered); in the mid-1960s it rose from 38% to 41%. Rather than hammering people on benefit, greater efforts would be put into chasing down the £17 billion in unpaid tax.
2) Value added tax (VAT) would be at a basic rate of 15%, but higher for specific goods, notably petrol and cigarettes with a graduated extra VAT on alcoholic drinks dependent on their alcoholic content.
3) No boss of a company would be permitted to earn more than 20 times the salary of the lowest paid worker in that company or contracted by that company. If the company has staff on the minimum wage, £5.93 per hour from October 2010, then the highest a boss could earn in that company would be £240,600, still a pretty decent salary. Those bosses who did not feel that such pay was sufficient to keep their 'talents' in the UK could leave, though there would be restrictions on how much capital they could extract from the UK at one time. If this means many ultra-wealthy leaving the UK, then it will be better for the long-term health of the British economy no longer blackmailed by their capriciousness.
4) Bosses would benefit from the fact that the minimum wage would rise to become that defined by the Council of Europe Decency Threshold which is 60% of average net earnings. In the UK the current national average salary is £31,000 (though far less in some regions), giving a minimum salary, on this basis, for full-time work, of £18,600 per year (compared to £12,300 on the current rate) allowing bosses to earn up to £361,200 on the '20 times' rule.
5) In Belgium employees receive 14 pay cheques per year, even in South Africa they get 13. I would make it compulsory that all employees earning less than £40,000 per year would receive 14 pay cheques per year, with doubling up in June and December as in Belgium. This would apply to part-time workers too. This would help in many ways by stimulating consumption, increasing savings and reducing the risk of house repossessions as employees will have been able to put more money aside, compared to now when many individuals and families spend all their monthly income in a month due to high rent, food and utility prices. Of course, for some people having 2 extra pay cheques will lift them above £40,000. This would be permitted for a year and after that period their salary would have to have risen to at least £40,000 and then the extra payments would stop. If their pay is cut then they would again become eligible for the 14 payments per year.
6) Companies will be barred from having more than 10% of their employees on temporary contracts. Temporary employees will receive the same rights as full-time employees after working for the company for 3 months rather than 1 year as at present. Companies would not be permitted to lay off a temporary worker and then put someone else into the same position unless a period of 9 months has passed. This would stop companies simply laying workers off after their initial period so as to avoid having to grant them full employment rights. This happens too often and leads to too much instability for individuals and the economy. In addition, despite what companies think, this constant 'churn' of staff actually damages the efficiency of their business, due to constant training and enculturation of new staff.
7) All companies with more than 5 employees would be compelled to have representatives of the workforce on the company Board or the equivalent in smaller companies. This policy has been in place for fifty years in Germany and has benefited the country's economic growth.
8) There would be a charge on all financial transactions with a rising scale dependent on how risky the activity was. This would be combined with far more stringent regulation of merchant banking.
9) Banks would be compelled to hold the coverage of reserves that they have to in Spain, the success of this has been seen in the prosperity of Santander.
10) The government will have control of the percentage of their bill that credit card users have to repay each month. Since the abolition of hire purchase regulations has the government really had any control over consumption, certainly beyond high-value items as large as houses. Regulation abilities of this kind could have been very useful in the 1990s to slow down consumption and reduce pressure on inflation, let alone heading off personal credit difficulties.
11) The government would not only set the base rate, but also the upper limit of interest charges. Anyone exceeding such charges, such as 'pay-day loan' companies would be treated as loan sharks and face criminal prosecution. Financial support would be given to the establishment of more mutual building societies and credit unions across the whole country, though often on a very local basis. Nationalisation of a bank would occur far sooner than has been the case in the 2000s, for example, Northern Rock would have been nationalised two years earlier than it was in reality.
12) National insurance of 10% would be payable from earnings of £5000 upwards and would have no upper limit on payment.
13) The UK would join the euro immediately and the bulk of the British population will be able to see immediately more easily how much more they pay for food and other essentials compared to citizens of neighbouring countries.
14) Nationalised banks would, in particular, be encouraged to provide low-interest loans to start-up and expanding businesses.
15) Capital Gains Tax would be 10% up to £2,500; 20% £2,501-£10,000; 30% £10,001-£30,000; 40% £30,001-£100,000; 50% £100,001-£500,000 and 60% on £500,001 and above. There would be no 'allowance', so the rate would be imposed on all the money which brought the total above that sum. For example, if you gained £20,000 then you would pay 30% on the entire £20,000 not just on the last £10,000 above £10,000.
16) For UK citizens who keep large sums of money abroad, I would introduce the US system, i.e., if you have above a certain sum, I would say £50,000 (in the USA it is around US$87,000), in a bank in a country where the tax rate is lower than in the UK, then you must pay the difference between that tax rate and the rates prevailing in the UK, to the British Treasury. If your money is in a country with the same or higher tax rate then you pay nothing to the UK. If you do not comply with this rule, then you will be stripped of UK citizenship within 3 years of your money going abroad. This is no different to US policies even under George W. Bush, so cannot be considered to be a radical policy. However, it is estimated that by using tax havens, wealthy British citizens save paying £10 billion in tax. Stripping a person of nationality and making them stateless is usually forbidden but would be permitted for people penalised in this way. Given their wealth they would have no difficulty in getting a new nationality somewhere else.
Housing Policy
1) Stamp duty would be banded in an attempt to slow the apparently inexorable rise in house prices.
2) Limits on rents would be introduced on the basis of the council tax rating of the house. Tenants would be granted greater rights, for example, to be given at least 3 months' notice of the repossession of a property when the owner has defaulted on the morgage. Fixed-term tenancy contracts would be banned, with either the tenant being able to leave or the owner to ask them to leave with 2 months' notice. These policies and the limits on rent rises will help people move more easily to where work is available.
3) All tenants would be permitted to have repair work done to the property themselves, having taken at least 3 quotes, and charge this to the owner, who would be compelled to pay for it.
4) No owner would be permitted to leave a property for longer than 3 months without seeking tenants for it. Empty properties must be kept in a decent state, along the lines of regulations in New York, otherwise the owner will be fined.
5) Like other property owners, banks and building societies will be compelled to rent out or sell repossessed properties within 3 months of taking them back rather than leaving them empty until the local price reaches a set level as they currently often do.
6) Councils and housing authorities would be assisted in building a mix of social/affordable housing, both for direct renting and for shared equity purchase. This would particularly be supported in areas facing depopulation due to high house prices. Access to this housing would be on the basis of economic standing not on age or ethnic grounds.
7) All private housing developments above a certain size, will be compelled to build social housing. The neglect of this often causes problems for those in the more expensive properties anyway, as seen in Milton Keynes where due to local resident opposition to social housing, the supermarkets have to bus in staff from 30Km away. There would be a ratio such as 1 social house per 10 expensive houses built.
8) Companies abandoning a site, will be compelled to demolish any unused retail/industrial buildings and return the site to a standard suitable for housing to be built on it.
9) There would be a nationwide scheme to insulate every house currently with insufficient insulation. Once this was complete, solar panels would be installed on every suitable property, not only residential but also industrial. There would be incentives to assist with this and it would create jobs at this time of employment need.
Social Policy
1) There would be free childcare for all working parents until the child is 16. Those with the money would be free to opt out and use private provision. All childcare would continue to be monitored by OFSTED. Such a policy would free up many parents to work.
2) As currently is the case in Scotland, everyone would be entitled to free residential care once they pass the retirement age, again people are free to opt out and buy private provision if they choose.
3) The retirement age would rise immediately to 70 and stringent anti-ageism policies would be enacted. The SERPS pension approach would be re-introduced and pensions would rise (or fall) with the cost of living.
4) All health care will be free at point of usage. Again, people are free to opt for private care. However, all doctors practising in the UK would be obliged to work for the National Health Service to the number of hours currently required by Belgian health authorities for their doctors.
5) All municipal sports facilities, especially swimming pools, would be free to users. Private sports facilities charging a fee and requiring membership would be permitted. All museums and public galleries will have free entry, though visitors could give donations if they wished.
Constitutional Policy
1) All elections across the UK would be run on the basis of proportional representation as they already are in Northern Ireland. Parties would have to receive at least 5% of the vote to be represented in the Westminster Parliament, the level they have to achieve in Germany.
2) The monarchy will be abolished immediately. Instead, a directly-elected President, accountable to parliament, would be introduced, able to be elected twice for 4-year terms. The powers of the President will be the same as those of the President of Germany.
3) The House of Lords would be abolished and be replaced by a Senate elected by the regional assemblies every five years. Noble titles will remain but grant no powers, they would simply be courtesy titles and rewards, as at present.
4) The Supreme Court recently introduced will remain. It will have the power to prosecute members of parliament, the Senate or the President, if necessary.
5) British regional assemblies would be re-introduced. They would be elected, not appointed as they were before, and their regions would be far smaller than those of the regional assemblies that existed in the UK until 2010. All large cities would have their own assemblies and directly-elected mayor because (despite Boris Johnson) this approach has worked well in London. Taking large cities out of the assemblies of the surrounding countryside would also secure a voice for more rural regions of Britain and those with particular local interests, for example, Cornwall. Any border town that wished to join Scotland or Wales would be permitted to do so following a local referendum.
6) Anyone who wishes to be elected to parliament, the Senate, as President or to the Supreme Court or is to work as an advisor to the government for more than 6 months, must be resident in the UK and pay at least 90% of their total tax bill in the UK. You may say governments need foreign advisors and they will still be able to use them for specific projects or advice, but the bulk of people in all branches of government will be UK domiciled and taxpayers.
7) Local councillors will receive a set salary the way MPs do. This would mean that ordinary people could become councillors in a way in which they cannot do now and this would end the domination of local politics by prosperous business people who have vested interests which are often not beneficial to the local population more broadly.
Infrastructure
1) The railways and all utility companies will be immediately nationalised. State control will not be on the model of previous UK control but like that of France. The fact that the French state-run electricity company, EDF, was until recently, a very successful company in the UK is a good indicator of the benefits.
2) Second or Standard class travel will be abolished, everyone will have the chance to travel first class in so-called Harry Perkins carriages.
3) All freight being carried over 100 Km must be carried by railway. This policy was in place in Germany in the 1980s and enable greater profitability. Heavy goods vehicles could be filled at special depots near the ports to enable this freight to be driven in countries still permitting long distance road haulage.
4) Britain was the leading country for wind power in the 1970s a position it foolishly gave up. To rectify this we must increase wind power to the level seen in Germany if not in Denmark. Brownfield sites, such as along motorways should be used and attention paid to the environment when constructing wind farms elsewhere but it must be recognised that wind farms are far less intrusive than a nuclear, oil or coal-fired power station. As is happening in Scotland now, wave power must be adopted with all vigour.
5) Incentives will be given to increase the use of hybrid and electric vehicles, and new compressed air vehicles with charging/refilling points all over towns.
6) 4x4 vehicles will be banned except for people working in agriculture or specific industries and living in particular areas, certainly not towns and suburbs. The maximum permitted capacity of motorcycles on British roads would be 750cc and of cars, 2 litres. More powerful vehicles would be permitted on race tracks and private land.
7) All drivers must be re-tested every 5 years. HGV drivers have medical tests every 5 years after they pass 45. I am talking about an entire test to ensure they still have the abilities to drive safely. Many car drivers seem to have quickly forgotten the basic requirements of driving and a large part of the Highway Code. The 'P' sticker would be introduced as in other European countries, and drivers would have to have it on their vehicle for the first year after they have passed their first test. Being awarded any penalty points while carrying the P would mean having your licence removed and you wouldhave to sit the test again and start again with your P year from the date you passed that second test. Drivers under the age of 21 would be limited to vehicles of 1 litre capacity or less. No-one under the age of 21 would be permitted to ride a motorcycle of more than 50cc and no-one under the age of 25 would be allowed to ride a motorcycle of more than 125cc.
8) Anyone wishing to drive a rental box van, even for a few minutes, would have to have already passed the CPC test that commercial van drivers have to pass for vehicles of 3.5 tonnes and above. The reason for this is that there are few drivers more hazardous than people who have hired a van for a day and then proceed to drive it as badly as they drive their car and yet with all the added weight and visibility issues.
9) Sat navs already alert drivers to the fact they are exceeding the speed limit for the road they are travelling down. Such systems will be installed in all vehicles in the UK and would remain on at all times when the car is being driven, even if the driver is not using a sat nav to find their way. Cars from overseas coming to the UK would have to install such a device on entry to the UK at the entrance port. Speed limiters are already installed in certain commercial vehicles. These would be compulsory on all road vehicles of any kind driven in the UK. The maximum speed any vehicle could be driven on a UK road would be the same limit that you can drive on a UK motorway, i.e. up to 10% above the 70mph speed limit, that is 77mph. In time, I trust that these two systems could combine so vehicles' speeds would be limited to adjust to the road they are on, i.e. that they could not exceed 33mph in a residential area or 22mph where the 20mph limit is already in force, as in most of Portsmouth. Of course, speeds would now be measure in metric, giving 123 kph, 52 kph and 35 kph as the maximum speed in these three examples.
10) As in parts of Belgium, lorries would not be allowed to overtake other vehicles. I would make an exception if the vehicle was going slower than 10 mph below the speed limit for on A roads or smaller road and 20 mph less than the speed limit of motorways. This would stop the ridiculous 'races' between lorries moving just 1 mph different, which so congest much of the UK's motorways. Of course, with increased rail freighting the numbers of lorries on motorways would be reduced. Vehicles pulling caravans would be restricted to 50mph as they were in the 1970s. Coaches would face the same restrictions as lorries and so would not be permitted to charge along at 70mph and disrupt motorway traffic by regularly overtaking.
11) Anyone charged with using a mobile phone while driving will have the phone seized and destroyed and would be banned from driving for 1 year. Cyclists, skateboarders, roller- and inlineskaters would be barred from wearing headphones of any kind while travelling on the pavement or road, at the risk of an on-the-spot-fine and seizure and destruction of their electrical equipment.
12) The Post Office will remain in/be returned to state control. There will be subsidies for post offices in small villages in which even in this internet age they serve a vital role. Ultimately BT will be renationalised and provide reasonably priced telephone, television and internet connections. Private companies will be permitted to compete with it in all of these areas.
13) There will be state provision of internet connections of the highest speed feasible across the UK. Some regions such as Cornwall, as yet, have very poor broadband provision, just at the stage when other regions are moving to fibre optic provision. Rural regions need excellent internet connections to prevent isolation and allow the development of a range of employment in those locations.
Defence and Foreign Policy
1) All trade, especially arms trade, will cease with dictatorships. This includes China. I accept that this will damage the UK economy, but despite the wishful thinking of the 1990s, China has made no steps towards democracy and still has an appalling human rights record. It has become a neo-imperial power and is supporting unsavoury regimes across the world.
2) The UK would scrap all its nuclear weapons immediately. There has never been any point in having them and they have been an immense drain on the British economy for far too long.
3) The UK will never again be involved in military action which is not sanctioned by the United Nations, except in the case of direct threat to the UK and its dependent territories. The UK military, like that of countries such as Eire and Norway, will be predominantly focused on UN peace-keeping activities and the nature of its forces and equipment will be focused on such work rather than as a nuclear 'Power'. Unless NATO similarly changes, the UK will either leave the organisation dealing with its members on a bilateral basis on defence issues if these should arise.
The Law
1) The permitted level of alcohol or narcotics in the blood while driving will be reduced to 0.
2) There would be no change to the categorisation of drugs. 'Legal' highs would be made illegal if this had not already been done.
3) Anyone killing or injuring someone while driving will face the same terms of imprisonment as a person killing or injuring someone with a blunt instrument.
4) No-one who assists someone in dying who has made a living will requesting such assistance, will be prosecuted.
5) Facilities for the support of rape victims will be increased rather than cut back, as at present. The identity of those accused of rape or physical or sexual harrassment, especially when that person is a teacher, social worker or in a medical/caring profession would be kept strictly secret until the time when they are convicted, if that is the case, and indefinitely if found not guilty.
6) The constabulary system of policing will remain. Watch committees formed from members of the local council will be re-introduced to oversee local policing. Regional assemblies will scrutinise regional police activities. Chief Constables, however, will be appointed by the Minister of Justice.
7) In the case of the death of anyone at the hands of the police or through being run over by a police car, an immediate criminal investigation will be launched. Hopefully such cases will be less common than in recent years, but if not, a specific national Internal Affairs unit will be created.
8) A prison building programme will be launched to provide places for 100,000 prisoners with a limit of one prisoner per cell. Prisons will be constructed, as in the USA, in areas of high unemployment to create jobs. Brownfield sites would be favoured as will the demolition, in stages, of any prison built more than fifty years ago and the construction of a modern prison on that site. All prison services will be taken back from private contractors. Detention camps for asylum seekers will be closed immediately and used instead as low security prisons for criminals.
9) Legislation incompatible with the spirit of human rights legislation, notably introduced supposedly to combat terrorism, would be repealed, in particular the RIPA which has been terribly abused by local authorities. The UK would not extradite anyone to a country with a bad human rights record or the death penalty (including the USA). No evidence acquired by torture is permissible in a UK court and no official from the UK must have any involvement in torture anywhere. Any UK citizen committing torture or being involved in the carrying out of torture anywhere in the world, is liable to be prosecuted by the British legal system.
10) The import, let alone the planting and growth of GM crops or livestock, or the products of these, would be banned in the UK.
11) Steps will be taken to criminalise tobacco. In time, as with other harmful narcotics, it will only be available to addicts in restricted quantities on prescription.
12) The approach to the restriction of alcohol through price rises and limits in terms of availability along the lines of the policy adopted in Sweden will be introduced. Both this and the tobacco measures will not stamp out use of these substances but will reduce the human and financial costs of them.
Education and Society
1) Given that anyone who has attended state school since the mid-1970s, over 22 million people, has learnt metric measurement, we will finally eliminate all imperial measurement from British society.
2) As announced by the previous government, all children are expected to remain in full-time education or training until they 18.
3) The school day will be lengthened, so reducing parental dependence on childcare. The curriculum is already crowded, so additional time at school will permit the extension of sports activities to reduce obesity and greater engagement with cultural activities such as art, music and drama. Despite the longer school day, teachers will have the amount of preparation time within the school day increased, initially back to the level of 1975. With better funding for schools and more teachers trained this will allow a better rotation of teaching staff and more specialist teachers, for example, in modern languages, to be available at all levels of education.
4) SATS tests will be abolished in England as they have been effectively in Scotland and Wales. Pupils are far too heavily examined in Britain especially aged 16-18. The AS qualifications would be scrapped. A levels would be replaced by the International Baccalaureate, which is already popular in parts of the UK, notably Oxfordshire. GSCEs would be adjusted to allow a better feed into the Baccalaureate. The new curriculum being introduced in Scotland would be reviewed with the possibility of it being introduced across the UK as a whole.
5) Fee-paying schools, notably the so-called 'public' schools, will be abolished; their facilities will be turned over to local education authorities to use for the benefit of the community. Selective education on any basis bar religion, will be scrapped. Grammar schools and academies will be compelled to return to being comprehensive schools. All faith schools will have to adopt a liberal selection policy and will be compelled to follow the national curriculum in all aspects outside specific religious practice, notably in terms of PSHE lessons.
6) Universities will be funded by graduates paying a supplementary tax of 1% above the standard rate for their earnings category for the rest of their lives, including if they are on taxable benefits; i.e. paying 26% for earnings £10,001-20,000; 29% for earnings of £20,001-30,000 and so on. Whilst at university, students will have all fees and a subsistence payment, paid by the government. Students wishing to take postgraduate courses will also receive such funding but will incur additional increments of 1% supplementary tax up to a maximum of +5%, for each course they take. Fees will be set by the government on institutional and course basis. Courses in teaching of scarcity areas, in nursing and social work will be free to students, with no tax repayment. Along the lines of policies in the USA, students taking medical degrees can have these funded by the state in return for working where they are needed for five years following graduation.
7) Between 150-180,000 pupils have been turned away from university places for 2010/11, many with very good grades. I am aware that many commentators want a return to more elitist higher education and question the need for jobs such as nursing and police roles to require a degree but the UK has to be aware that it is competing in a global market where degrees are the norm. I would authorise the construction of 6 universities in parts of the UK currently without one. There would be control over who was permitted to run these universities so that we did not see the problems that occurred with academies.
8) A key problem in the UK has been the snobbery against vocational qualifications. It is impossible to legislate against such snobbery and there is a sense that certain professions should not be graduate professions. However, for the benefit of the country we need to raise standards and introducing degree level requirements is an aspect of this. I would advise the revival of BEd. and BA QTS degrees to allow people to go direct into teaching. I would advise the creation of other specialist degrees such as those for nursing. Rather than having all universities chasing after classic subject areas, we should laud the fact that 50 of the staff animating 'Avatar', including the lead animator, were graduates of Bournemouth University, the largest number drawn from any UK or US university. Combined with having technical and working representatives on company boards, slowly we might be able to reduce this unhealthy snobbery against vocational qualifications. It must be noted that they should not become simply training courses for specific companies but allow students who take them to be flexible.
9) No-one would be permitted to own more than one media resource, for example, only 1 newspaper or 1 national radio channel or set of combined radio channels covering Britain or 1 set of television channels if there are 5 or less channels in the set. News International could either own the Sky television channels or one of the newspapers they currently own. Virgin Media, for example, would not be permitted to buy any newspapers. Owners of media resources would preferably be a consortium rather than an individual. Anyone in the consortium could be a foreigner, but they must be resident in the UK and being paying UK tax or have to give up their control of the media resource.
10) The licence fee for the BBC services would continue to rise as it has done over the past decade.
I expect many of these policies will be unpopular with commentators, but they are as legitimate in their conception as the policies being driven through by the current government, which, in my view will harm the UK for decades to come and bring so much suffering to the British people now and in the future. My policies seek a re-balance back towards the rights of ordinary people to live their lives and be judged on their abilities and how they behave not on the basis of what bed they were born in. In addition, I feel, that whilst retaining the identity of Britain, these policies would help it get out of being fixed in the past and instead become a modern country suited to tackling the challenges of the future, rather than constantly harping on peculiarities of the past as if they were glories of today.
My politics are very simple. I am a democratic Socialist who favours European integration. I know people say Socialism is dead and certainly there is no political party that I can find in the UK at present that embraces the kinds of policies I favour. While I feel that British democracy is ailing, because of the ever-growing resurgence of the ultra-wealthy and the privileged, as yet I have not gone far enough to begin advocating revolution; I believe democracy can work well in the UK it just needs attention.
I take a lot of my lead from former MP and minister, Tony Benn. I never held the anti-EEC/EU views that he did. However, I believe that certainly since the era of the Social Chapter as part of EU's legislation, even he has moved to see the benefits of European states working together and that the EU can be far more of a benefit to ordinary people than the 'capitalists' club' that its predecessor the EEC was seen simply as.
I accept that, since 1974, it has been highly unlikely that any candidate standing on the manifesto I outline below would be elected. The central ground of British politics has moved so far to the right since the advent of the New Right ideas in the mid-1970s. However, I see myself as being in the position right-wing British Conservatives must have felt themselves to be in, in the period, say 1945-72, in perceiving the 'mainstream' of politics as ignoring their concerns. Yet, their time came again, and such views have been in the ascendant in the UK certainly since 1976. There was a brief period 2008-10, when, as regular readers of this blog will know, I had a feeling that the financial crises were bringing politics a little more back to the kind of Attlee Consenus policies that I favour. The UK, the USA and other states seemed to be embracing Keynesianism once again. Under Obama, the USA is likely to stay with such an approach, whereas Britain has rushed headlong into even more virulent New Right/monetarist policies than even Margaret Thatcher was able to pull off. Some commentators have noted that this was aided by the fact that Tony Blair's impetus came very much from the Thatcher Consensus and his support for policies such as private intervention in hospitals and schooling, with increasingly selectivity in education, formed a solid foundation for David Cameron's government's far harsher policies.
Before going into an outline of the policies I would pursue if elected Prime Minister, I would draw your attention to the fact, that, whilst they may appear to be embedded in 'Old' Labour attitudes, many of the policies I outline have actually been put into place in neighbouring European states, quite often under conservative governments. Much of this stuff is not radical, it simply stems from a rational approach to making a country not only function more effectively, but, vitally, having a fair society with opportunities for all, not simply those who are already very wealthy or are privileged. My prime motivation behind all my policies is to create a Britain which is safe for all of its citizens no matter what their background; has a firm economy which all benefit from not just the richest and that is not classless but allows all people to rise by ability rather than by connections. I do not see any political grouping in the UK working to such an agenda. I have no expectations that they will in my lifetime, but I remain an optimist.
The Manifesto
Fiscal and Economic Policies
1) The outline of income tax is presently (using the rates for the 2010/11 tax year, our current one) no tax until you earn £6,475 then you pay 20% on earnings up to £37,400; then 40% on £37,401 to £150,000 and then 50% on everything over £150,000. On dividends you pay 10%/32.5%/42.5%. These rates are a legacy of the Brown government's approach and have not been tweaked by the coalition. From this year on your personal allowance, the part you can earn tax free, will fall by £1 for every £2 you earn over £100,000. So, once you earn above £112,950, you will pay tax on everything you earn. My approach would maintain many of these ideas. I would have a personal tax allowance of £10,000 as proposed by the Liberal Democrats, then a 25% rate on £10,001-£20,000; 28% on £20,001-£30,000 (80% of the population earn below £31,000 per year); 33% on £30,001-£50,000; 43% on £50,001 to £150,000; 53% on 150,001 to £500,000; 63% on anything above £500,000. The personal allowance would be reduced as currently once you earn beyond £50,000 per year. These rates will apply to dividends of these levels too. Given the plans outlined below, the government will need more revenue. These figures are low compared to historic ones. In 1979 the basic rate of tax was 33% and the highest rate was 83% (yet business prospered); in the mid-1960s it rose from 38% to 41%. Rather than hammering people on benefit, greater efforts would be put into chasing down the £17 billion in unpaid tax.
2) Value added tax (VAT) would be at a basic rate of 15%, but higher for specific goods, notably petrol and cigarettes with a graduated extra VAT on alcoholic drinks dependent on their alcoholic content.
3) No boss of a company would be permitted to earn more than 20 times the salary of the lowest paid worker in that company or contracted by that company. If the company has staff on the minimum wage, £5.93 per hour from October 2010, then the highest a boss could earn in that company would be £240,600, still a pretty decent salary. Those bosses who did not feel that such pay was sufficient to keep their 'talents' in the UK could leave, though there would be restrictions on how much capital they could extract from the UK at one time. If this means many ultra-wealthy leaving the UK, then it will be better for the long-term health of the British economy no longer blackmailed by their capriciousness.
4) Bosses would benefit from the fact that the minimum wage would rise to become that defined by the Council of Europe Decency Threshold which is 60% of average net earnings. In the UK the current national average salary is £31,000 (though far less in some regions), giving a minimum salary, on this basis, for full-time work, of £18,600 per year (compared to £12,300 on the current rate) allowing bosses to earn up to £361,200 on the '20 times' rule.
5) In Belgium employees receive 14 pay cheques per year, even in South Africa they get 13. I would make it compulsory that all employees earning less than £40,000 per year would receive 14 pay cheques per year, with doubling up in June and December as in Belgium. This would apply to part-time workers too. This would help in many ways by stimulating consumption, increasing savings and reducing the risk of house repossessions as employees will have been able to put more money aside, compared to now when many individuals and families spend all their monthly income in a month due to high rent, food and utility prices. Of course, for some people having 2 extra pay cheques will lift them above £40,000. This would be permitted for a year and after that period their salary would have to have risen to at least £40,000 and then the extra payments would stop. If their pay is cut then they would again become eligible for the 14 payments per year.
6) Companies will be barred from having more than 10% of their employees on temporary contracts. Temporary employees will receive the same rights as full-time employees after working for the company for 3 months rather than 1 year as at present. Companies would not be permitted to lay off a temporary worker and then put someone else into the same position unless a period of 9 months has passed. This would stop companies simply laying workers off after their initial period so as to avoid having to grant them full employment rights. This happens too often and leads to too much instability for individuals and the economy. In addition, despite what companies think, this constant 'churn' of staff actually damages the efficiency of their business, due to constant training and enculturation of new staff.
7) All companies with more than 5 employees would be compelled to have representatives of the workforce on the company Board or the equivalent in smaller companies. This policy has been in place for fifty years in Germany and has benefited the country's economic growth.
8) There would be a charge on all financial transactions with a rising scale dependent on how risky the activity was. This would be combined with far more stringent regulation of merchant banking.
9) Banks would be compelled to hold the coverage of reserves that they have to in Spain, the success of this has been seen in the prosperity of Santander.
10) The government will have control of the percentage of their bill that credit card users have to repay each month. Since the abolition of hire purchase regulations has the government really had any control over consumption, certainly beyond high-value items as large as houses. Regulation abilities of this kind could have been very useful in the 1990s to slow down consumption and reduce pressure on inflation, let alone heading off personal credit difficulties.
11) The government would not only set the base rate, but also the upper limit of interest charges. Anyone exceeding such charges, such as 'pay-day loan' companies would be treated as loan sharks and face criminal prosecution. Financial support would be given to the establishment of more mutual building societies and credit unions across the whole country, though often on a very local basis. Nationalisation of a bank would occur far sooner than has been the case in the 2000s, for example, Northern Rock would have been nationalised two years earlier than it was in reality.
12) National insurance of 10% would be payable from earnings of £5000 upwards and would have no upper limit on payment.
13) The UK would join the euro immediately and the bulk of the British population will be able to see immediately more easily how much more they pay for food and other essentials compared to citizens of neighbouring countries.
14) Nationalised banks would, in particular, be encouraged to provide low-interest loans to start-up and expanding businesses.
15) Capital Gains Tax would be 10% up to £2,500; 20% £2,501-£10,000; 30% £10,001-£30,000; 40% £30,001-£100,000; 50% £100,001-£500,000 and 60% on £500,001 and above. There would be no 'allowance', so the rate would be imposed on all the money which brought the total above that sum. For example, if you gained £20,000 then you would pay 30% on the entire £20,000 not just on the last £10,000 above £10,000.
16) For UK citizens who keep large sums of money abroad, I would introduce the US system, i.e., if you have above a certain sum, I would say £50,000 (in the USA it is around US$87,000), in a bank in a country where the tax rate is lower than in the UK, then you must pay the difference between that tax rate and the rates prevailing in the UK, to the British Treasury. If your money is in a country with the same or higher tax rate then you pay nothing to the UK. If you do not comply with this rule, then you will be stripped of UK citizenship within 3 years of your money going abroad. This is no different to US policies even under George W. Bush, so cannot be considered to be a radical policy. However, it is estimated that by using tax havens, wealthy British citizens save paying £10 billion in tax. Stripping a person of nationality and making them stateless is usually forbidden but would be permitted for people penalised in this way. Given their wealth they would have no difficulty in getting a new nationality somewhere else.
Housing Policy
1) Stamp duty would be banded in an attempt to slow the apparently inexorable rise in house prices.
2) Limits on rents would be introduced on the basis of the council tax rating of the house. Tenants would be granted greater rights, for example, to be given at least 3 months' notice of the repossession of a property when the owner has defaulted on the morgage. Fixed-term tenancy contracts would be banned, with either the tenant being able to leave or the owner to ask them to leave with 2 months' notice. These policies and the limits on rent rises will help people move more easily to where work is available.
3) All tenants would be permitted to have repair work done to the property themselves, having taken at least 3 quotes, and charge this to the owner, who would be compelled to pay for it.
4) No owner would be permitted to leave a property for longer than 3 months without seeking tenants for it. Empty properties must be kept in a decent state, along the lines of regulations in New York, otherwise the owner will be fined.
5) Like other property owners, banks and building societies will be compelled to rent out or sell repossessed properties within 3 months of taking them back rather than leaving them empty until the local price reaches a set level as they currently often do.
6) Councils and housing authorities would be assisted in building a mix of social/affordable housing, both for direct renting and for shared equity purchase. This would particularly be supported in areas facing depopulation due to high house prices. Access to this housing would be on the basis of economic standing not on age or ethnic grounds.
7) All private housing developments above a certain size, will be compelled to build social housing. The neglect of this often causes problems for those in the more expensive properties anyway, as seen in Milton Keynes where due to local resident opposition to social housing, the supermarkets have to bus in staff from 30Km away. There would be a ratio such as 1 social house per 10 expensive houses built.
8) Companies abandoning a site, will be compelled to demolish any unused retail/industrial buildings and return the site to a standard suitable for housing to be built on it.
9) There would be a nationwide scheme to insulate every house currently with insufficient insulation. Once this was complete, solar panels would be installed on every suitable property, not only residential but also industrial. There would be incentives to assist with this and it would create jobs at this time of employment need.
Social Policy
1) There would be free childcare for all working parents until the child is 16. Those with the money would be free to opt out and use private provision. All childcare would continue to be monitored by OFSTED. Such a policy would free up many parents to work.
2) As currently is the case in Scotland, everyone would be entitled to free residential care once they pass the retirement age, again people are free to opt out and buy private provision if they choose.
3) The retirement age would rise immediately to 70 and stringent anti-ageism policies would be enacted. The SERPS pension approach would be re-introduced and pensions would rise (or fall) with the cost of living.
4) All health care will be free at point of usage. Again, people are free to opt for private care. However, all doctors practising in the UK would be obliged to work for the National Health Service to the number of hours currently required by Belgian health authorities for their doctors.
5) All municipal sports facilities, especially swimming pools, would be free to users. Private sports facilities charging a fee and requiring membership would be permitted. All museums and public galleries will have free entry, though visitors could give donations if they wished.
Constitutional Policy
1) All elections across the UK would be run on the basis of proportional representation as they already are in Northern Ireland. Parties would have to receive at least 5% of the vote to be represented in the Westminster Parliament, the level they have to achieve in Germany.
2) The monarchy will be abolished immediately. Instead, a directly-elected President, accountable to parliament, would be introduced, able to be elected twice for 4-year terms. The powers of the President will be the same as those of the President of Germany.
3) The House of Lords would be abolished and be replaced by a Senate elected by the regional assemblies every five years. Noble titles will remain but grant no powers, they would simply be courtesy titles and rewards, as at present.
4) The Supreme Court recently introduced will remain. It will have the power to prosecute members of parliament, the Senate or the President, if necessary.
5) British regional assemblies would be re-introduced. They would be elected, not appointed as they were before, and their regions would be far smaller than those of the regional assemblies that existed in the UK until 2010. All large cities would have their own assemblies and directly-elected mayor because (despite Boris Johnson) this approach has worked well in London. Taking large cities out of the assemblies of the surrounding countryside would also secure a voice for more rural regions of Britain and those with particular local interests, for example, Cornwall. Any border town that wished to join Scotland or Wales would be permitted to do so following a local referendum.
6) Anyone who wishes to be elected to parliament, the Senate, as President or to the Supreme Court or is to work as an advisor to the government for more than 6 months, must be resident in the UK and pay at least 90% of their total tax bill in the UK. You may say governments need foreign advisors and they will still be able to use them for specific projects or advice, but the bulk of people in all branches of government will be UK domiciled and taxpayers.
7) Local councillors will receive a set salary the way MPs do. This would mean that ordinary people could become councillors in a way in which they cannot do now and this would end the domination of local politics by prosperous business people who have vested interests which are often not beneficial to the local population more broadly.
Infrastructure
1) The railways and all utility companies will be immediately nationalised. State control will not be on the model of previous UK control but like that of France. The fact that the French state-run electricity company, EDF, was until recently, a very successful company in the UK is a good indicator of the benefits.
2) Second or Standard class travel will be abolished, everyone will have the chance to travel first class in so-called Harry Perkins carriages.
3) All freight being carried over 100 Km must be carried by railway. This policy was in place in Germany in the 1980s and enable greater profitability. Heavy goods vehicles could be filled at special depots near the ports to enable this freight to be driven in countries still permitting long distance road haulage.
4) Britain was the leading country for wind power in the 1970s a position it foolishly gave up. To rectify this we must increase wind power to the level seen in Germany if not in Denmark. Brownfield sites, such as along motorways should be used and attention paid to the environment when constructing wind farms elsewhere but it must be recognised that wind farms are far less intrusive than a nuclear, oil or coal-fired power station. As is happening in Scotland now, wave power must be adopted with all vigour.
5) Incentives will be given to increase the use of hybrid and electric vehicles, and new compressed air vehicles with charging/refilling points all over towns.
6) 4x4 vehicles will be banned except for people working in agriculture or specific industries and living in particular areas, certainly not towns and suburbs. The maximum permitted capacity of motorcycles on British roads would be 750cc and of cars, 2 litres. More powerful vehicles would be permitted on race tracks and private land.
7) All drivers must be re-tested every 5 years. HGV drivers have medical tests every 5 years after they pass 45. I am talking about an entire test to ensure they still have the abilities to drive safely. Many car drivers seem to have quickly forgotten the basic requirements of driving and a large part of the Highway Code. The 'P' sticker would be introduced as in other European countries, and drivers would have to have it on their vehicle for the first year after they have passed their first test. Being awarded any penalty points while carrying the P would mean having your licence removed and you wouldhave to sit the test again and start again with your P year from the date you passed that second test. Drivers under the age of 21 would be limited to vehicles of 1 litre capacity or less. No-one under the age of 21 would be permitted to ride a motorcycle of more than 50cc and no-one under the age of 25 would be allowed to ride a motorcycle of more than 125cc.
8) Anyone wishing to drive a rental box van, even for a few minutes, would have to have already passed the CPC test that commercial van drivers have to pass for vehicles of 3.5 tonnes and above. The reason for this is that there are few drivers more hazardous than people who have hired a van for a day and then proceed to drive it as badly as they drive their car and yet with all the added weight and visibility issues.
9) Sat navs already alert drivers to the fact they are exceeding the speed limit for the road they are travelling down. Such systems will be installed in all vehicles in the UK and would remain on at all times when the car is being driven, even if the driver is not using a sat nav to find their way. Cars from overseas coming to the UK would have to install such a device on entry to the UK at the entrance port. Speed limiters are already installed in certain commercial vehicles. These would be compulsory on all road vehicles of any kind driven in the UK. The maximum speed any vehicle could be driven on a UK road would be the same limit that you can drive on a UK motorway, i.e. up to 10% above the 70mph speed limit, that is 77mph. In time, I trust that these two systems could combine so vehicles' speeds would be limited to adjust to the road they are on, i.e. that they could not exceed 33mph in a residential area or 22mph where the 20mph limit is already in force, as in most of Portsmouth. Of course, speeds would now be measure in metric, giving 123 kph, 52 kph and 35 kph as the maximum speed in these three examples.
10) As in parts of Belgium, lorries would not be allowed to overtake other vehicles. I would make an exception if the vehicle was going slower than 10 mph below the speed limit for on A roads or smaller road and 20 mph less than the speed limit of motorways. This would stop the ridiculous 'races' between lorries moving just 1 mph different, which so congest much of the UK's motorways. Of course, with increased rail freighting the numbers of lorries on motorways would be reduced. Vehicles pulling caravans would be restricted to 50mph as they were in the 1970s. Coaches would face the same restrictions as lorries and so would not be permitted to charge along at 70mph and disrupt motorway traffic by regularly overtaking.
11) Anyone charged with using a mobile phone while driving will have the phone seized and destroyed and would be banned from driving for 1 year. Cyclists, skateboarders, roller- and inlineskaters would be barred from wearing headphones of any kind while travelling on the pavement or road, at the risk of an on-the-spot-fine and seizure and destruction of their electrical equipment.
12) The Post Office will remain in/be returned to state control. There will be subsidies for post offices in small villages in which even in this internet age they serve a vital role. Ultimately BT will be renationalised and provide reasonably priced telephone, television and internet connections. Private companies will be permitted to compete with it in all of these areas.
13) There will be state provision of internet connections of the highest speed feasible across the UK. Some regions such as Cornwall, as yet, have very poor broadband provision, just at the stage when other regions are moving to fibre optic provision. Rural regions need excellent internet connections to prevent isolation and allow the development of a range of employment in those locations.
Defence and Foreign Policy
1) All trade, especially arms trade, will cease with dictatorships. This includes China. I accept that this will damage the UK economy, but despite the wishful thinking of the 1990s, China has made no steps towards democracy and still has an appalling human rights record. It has become a neo-imperial power and is supporting unsavoury regimes across the world.
2) The UK would scrap all its nuclear weapons immediately. There has never been any point in having them and they have been an immense drain on the British economy for far too long.
3) The UK will never again be involved in military action which is not sanctioned by the United Nations, except in the case of direct threat to the UK and its dependent territories. The UK military, like that of countries such as Eire and Norway, will be predominantly focused on UN peace-keeping activities and the nature of its forces and equipment will be focused on such work rather than as a nuclear 'Power'. Unless NATO similarly changes, the UK will either leave the organisation dealing with its members on a bilateral basis on defence issues if these should arise.
The Law
1) The permitted level of alcohol or narcotics in the blood while driving will be reduced to 0.
2) There would be no change to the categorisation of drugs. 'Legal' highs would be made illegal if this had not already been done.
3) Anyone killing or injuring someone while driving will face the same terms of imprisonment as a person killing or injuring someone with a blunt instrument.
4) No-one who assists someone in dying who has made a living will requesting such assistance, will be prosecuted.
5) Facilities for the support of rape victims will be increased rather than cut back, as at present. The identity of those accused of rape or physical or sexual harrassment, especially when that person is a teacher, social worker or in a medical/caring profession would be kept strictly secret until the time when they are convicted, if that is the case, and indefinitely if found not guilty.
6) The constabulary system of policing will remain. Watch committees formed from members of the local council will be re-introduced to oversee local policing. Regional assemblies will scrutinise regional police activities. Chief Constables, however, will be appointed by the Minister of Justice.
7) In the case of the death of anyone at the hands of the police or through being run over by a police car, an immediate criminal investigation will be launched. Hopefully such cases will be less common than in recent years, but if not, a specific national Internal Affairs unit will be created.
8) A prison building programme will be launched to provide places for 100,000 prisoners with a limit of one prisoner per cell. Prisons will be constructed, as in the USA, in areas of high unemployment to create jobs. Brownfield sites would be favoured as will the demolition, in stages, of any prison built more than fifty years ago and the construction of a modern prison on that site. All prison services will be taken back from private contractors. Detention camps for asylum seekers will be closed immediately and used instead as low security prisons for criminals.
9) Legislation incompatible with the spirit of human rights legislation, notably introduced supposedly to combat terrorism, would be repealed, in particular the RIPA which has been terribly abused by local authorities. The UK would not extradite anyone to a country with a bad human rights record or the death penalty (including the USA). No evidence acquired by torture is permissible in a UK court and no official from the UK must have any involvement in torture anywhere. Any UK citizen committing torture or being involved in the carrying out of torture anywhere in the world, is liable to be prosecuted by the British legal system.
10) The import, let alone the planting and growth of GM crops or livestock, or the products of these, would be banned in the UK.
11) Steps will be taken to criminalise tobacco. In time, as with other harmful narcotics, it will only be available to addicts in restricted quantities on prescription.
12) The approach to the restriction of alcohol through price rises and limits in terms of availability along the lines of the policy adopted in Sweden will be introduced. Both this and the tobacco measures will not stamp out use of these substances but will reduce the human and financial costs of them.
Education and Society
1) Given that anyone who has attended state school since the mid-1970s, over 22 million people, has learnt metric measurement, we will finally eliminate all imperial measurement from British society.
2) As announced by the previous government, all children are expected to remain in full-time education or training until they 18.
3) The school day will be lengthened, so reducing parental dependence on childcare. The curriculum is already crowded, so additional time at school will permit the extension of sports activities to reduce obesity and greater engagement with cultural activities such as art, music and drama. Despite the longer school day, teachers will have the amount of preparation time within the school day increased, initially back to the level of 1975. With better funding for schools and more teachers trained this will allow a better rotation of teaching staff and more specialist teachers, for example, in modern languages, to be available at all levels of education.
4) SATS tests will be abolished in England as they have been effectively in Scotland and Wales. Pupils are far too heavily examined in Britain especially aged 16-18. The AS qualifications would be scrapped. A levels would be replaced by the International Baccalaureate, which is already popular in parts of the UK, notably Oxfordshire. GSCEs would be adjusted to allow a better feed into the Baccalaureate. The new curriculum being introduced in Scotland would be reviewed with the possibility of it being introduced across the UK as a whole.
5) Fee-paying schools, notably the so-called 'public' schools, will be abolished; their facilities will be turned over to local education authorities to use for the benefit of the community. Selective education on any basis bar religion, will be scrapped. Grammar schools and academies will be compelled to return to being comprehensive schools. All faith schools will have to adopt a liberal selection policy and will be compelled to follow the national curriculum in all aspects outside specific religious practice, notably in terms of PSHE lessons.
6) Universities will be funded by graduates paying a supplementary tax of 1% above the standard rate for their earnings category for the rest of their lives, including if they are on taxable benefits; i.e. paying 26% for earnings £10,001-20,000; 29% for earnings of £20,001-30,000 and so on. Whilst at university, students will have all fees and a subsistence payment, paid by the government. Students wishing to take postgraduate courses will also receive such funding but will incur additional increments of 1% supplementary tax up to a maximum of +5%, for each course they take. Fees will be set by the government on institutional and course basis. Courses in teaching of scarcity areas, in nursing and social work will be free to students, with no tax repayment. Along the lines of policies in the USA, students taking medical degrees can have these funded by the state in return for working where they are needed for five years following graduation.
7) Between 150-180,000 pupils have been turned away from university places for 2010/11, many with very good grades. I am aware that many commentators want a return to more elitist higher education and question the need for jobs such as nursing and police roles to require a degree but the UK has to be aware that it is competing in a global market where degrees are the norm. I would authorise the construction of 6 universities in parts of the UK currently without one. There would be control over who was permitted to run these universities so that we did not see the problems that occurred with academies.
8) A key problem in the UK has been the snobbery against vocational qualifications. It is impossible to legislate against such snobbery and there is a sense that certain professions should not be graduate professions. However, for the benefit of the country we need to raise standards and introducing degree level requirements is an aspect of this. I would advise the revival of BEd. and BA QTS degrees to allow people to go direct into teaching. I would advise the creation of other specialist degrees such as those for nursing. Rather than having all universities chasing after classic subject areas, we should laud the fact that 50 of the staff animating 'Avatar', including the lead animator, were graduates of Bournemouth University, the largest number drawn from any UK or US university. Combined with having technical and working representatives on company boards, slowly we might be able to reduce this unhealthy snobbery against vocational qualifications. It must be noted that they should not become simply training courses for specific companies but allow students who take them to be flexible.
9) No-one would be permitted to own more than one media resource, for example, only 1 newspaper or 1 national radio channel or set of combined radio channels covering Britain or 1 set of television channels if there are 5 or less channels in the set. News International could either own the Sky television channels or one of the newspapers they currently own. Virgin Media, for example, would not be permitted to buy any newspapers. Owners of media resources would preferably be a consortium rather than an individual. Anyone in the consortium could be a foreigner, but they must be resident in the UK and being paying UK tax or have to give up their control of the media resource.
10) The licence fee for the BBC services would continue to rise as it has done over the past decade.
I expect many of these policies will be unpopular with commentators, but they are as legitimate in their conception as the policies being driven through by the current government, which, in my view will harm the UK for decades to come and bring so much suffering to the British people now and in the future. My policies seek a re-balance back towards the rights of ordinary people to live their lives and be judged on their abilities and how they behave not on the basis of what bed they were born in. In addition, I feel, that whilst retaining the identity of Britain, these policies would help it get out of being fixed in the past and instead become a modern country suited to tackling the challenges of the future, rather than constantly harping on peculiarities of the past as if they were glories of today.
Friday, 11 September 2009
Visas: Delay, Humiliation, Expense and Economic Suicide
As I was sitting in a taxi yesterday travelling to a job interview, I got the usual diatribe from the driver about how foreigners are coming over to the UK and taking our jobs. Ironically, I always hear this from white taxi drivers who are clearly in work. This one added a new twist to his complaint by going on about how the foreign workers here send all their money home so they bring no benefit to the UK at all. Of course, bigots always jump over the facts to get to the most extreme aspect they can find. For a start the driver forgot that British workers overseas all around the world send money back to the UK and he would be offended if anyone tried to stop that. Secondly, when it comes to foreigners, all bigots somehow think that those people are exempt from all the laws that everyone living in the UK come under. The key one is that the bulk of workers are taxed at source through P.A.Y.E. (Pay As You Earn) taxation so they are contributing to the British economy every time they are paid. Only those working in the grey or black economies do not pay tax and that goes for anyone in that kind of work no matter their nationality. The third thing is that the driver seemed to assume that all migrant workers subsist without food or accommodation. Foreigners pay rent and in fact are often ripped off; they buy food and other consumer items, so in this way contribute to the economy. Of course, these basic facts never penetrate the minds of these bigots.
I suppose facts never got in the way of prejudice, as in the recent headline from the 'Daily Express': 'Immigrant Baby Boom Costs £1bn' with no realisation that the baby boom is actually among British middle class families who now insist on 3 children to fill up their 4 x 4 rather than having 2 children that they would have had 10 years ago. In addition, it forgets, that whilst immigrants do bring families with them, most economic migration is still by single young males. As the return of thousands of Poles to Poland at the start of the recession proved, these are often not people who have come to Britain to settle and raise a family. What we are seeing in terms of rising population is a long period of prosperity and to some extent a fashion. In the past glamorous celebrities would never talk about children or be photographed with them, now the trend is for them to breed or assemble large families and basically what celebrities do, the rest of the population will ape, when they can afford to. Already the recession has slowed the UK's birth rate.
As an aside, I wonder if there will ever be a taxi company that will advertise itself specifically as having non-racist drivers. I would certainly use them as I am getting sick of having to listen to 20 minutes of racist claptrap which stresses me out when I am on my way somewhere important. I would just love to have someone give me some feminist attitudes or some anti-capitalism campaigning when I got in a taxi. (I suddenly have this image of campaigner-comedian Mark Thomas running a taxi firm in which passengers got a blast of liberal ethics every time they travelled!) These days I tire of trying to catch the taxi drivers out by coming out with some line more extreme than theirs; a favourite was that seized heroin should be made available free to old aged pensioners on the National Health Service having the twin benefits of making the elderly happier and keeping down on future care bills. The other one is to revive Jonathan Swift's sharp satirical essay 'A Modest Proposal' (1729) on the consumption of babies to keep down the Irish population. See: http://art-bin.com/art/omodest.html
Holiday Visas
As usual I am wandering away from my chosen theme. To some extent this reflects the way my mind works, one thing sparks another and the posting reflects that. I come to visas, and there are lots of facets to these. I cannot tackle all of them so will focus on a couple of factors. Leaving aside work or study, many countries require visas even if you simply wish to go on holiday. The USA's 'War on Terror' has lifted this to a new level effectively forcing other countries to adopt the biometric approach that the US authorities feel is necessary and to some extent spreading US anti-Arab/anti-South Asian bigotry to other countries by default. When the Cold War ended many East European countries realised they could make good money out of enforcing visas that people had to pay for. This had nothing to do with regulating the movement of people, it was simply a national version of local councils' residents' parking schemes, it raised revenue.
France, which in the past was seen as a country sympathetic to peoples of different races, especially non-whites, now has a rigorous approach for visas even just for holidays. To get a visa for a holiday in France you have to go to the special office in South Kensington and are given a time, this is not the time of your appointment, it is the time when they open the doors to the tens of people waiting each day. Typically you will have to wait 7-8 hours to be processed. There are no facilities in the office, so make sure you take a lot of food, water and entertainment especially for children. The place is filled with sobbing, bored children. I suppose the French authorities do this to try to put off people from applying. Any British/EU friends you might have are barred from entering. Once inside applicants are called for interview. They expect children of 5 years old to attend interviews and from a woman I know who went through this process, she had to fight to be able to go into the interview with her 5-year old son who was naturally terrified of being questioned about his holiday plans by strange people in a formal office. I know this approach has long been used by Israeli authorities when families arrive in Israel on holiday, to check for terrorist intentions of the parents, be prepared many innocent people cannot take this level of questioning especially of their children. The attitude is: if you do not like it, do not try to come to our country.
Also be careful in trying to go to France if you are self-employed. You will be seen as unreliable. They assume that people who have work in another country such as the UK, will want to come back to it, but they seem to assume that any self-employed person will happily uproot their business and seek to establish it in France. Anyone who is self-employed needs a letter from their Chamber of Commerce, which in the UK is a club whereas in France is a regulatory body, but the French authorities seem not to understand national differences in this respect. They do not accept letters from a bank and in the case of the woman I know contested whether the branch she used was a genuine one, which would have enraged the manager who signed the letter, I am sure. Often at the South Kensington office, they will forget that they have actually processed you, so the office may close at the end of the day leaving you without your passport and no visa, again you have to fight often to get the documentation you need. It is quite easy to come away from a day there without your passport and no visa, despite paying for it, and having to make another appointment of the same kind. Once you have gone through all of this you get a 6-month visa. If you need another you have to start again. Clearly France is unhappy at receiving tourists from outside the EU and wants to put as many obstacles in the way as possible. These people are not potential immigrants, they are holidaymakers. When applying from the UK rather than an African, Asian or American state, you can assume they have a life in the UK that they are not going to throw over to move to France, though clearly the French authorities think their country is so wonderful that people would give up their legal right to live in another EU state to move there illegally. My suggestion is, if you are a non-EU citizen who wants to go to France, travel instead to Belgium or the Netherlands and simply drive into France as there are no border checks between these countries, you simply pass the border as you drive along the motorway.
Visas for International Students Coming to the UK
The other aspect about visas which has come to my attention is how much a mess the UK has got into over student visas. The 240,000 international students (i.e. students from anywhere outside the EU) form 14% of the university student population of the UK and even in 2004 this brought £4 billion per year (through paying rent; consumption of food, computers, etc. and fees) to the UK economy. The level rose 60% 1999-2004 and by 2020, it is expected that the number of international students in the UK will reach something like 600-700,000. Many universities are heavily dependent on the fees foreigners pay which are usually three times the level a UK student would pay. Income from fees alone amounted to £1.7 billion in 2008, a rise of 58% since 2003. There are 14 universities that have more than 5000 students from outside the EU and given that the average student body of a UK university is 20-24,000 this shows that they are vital to particular institutions. Given that many universities are shedding staff in their hundreds: Exeter got rid of 330 in 2008; Bournemouth 200 between 2007-8; London Metropolitan will be shedding 550-800 with some departments losing 40% of their teaching staff, it is clear that for many universities to survive needs the income international students bring in.
The UK has long been a popular destination for international students but has always faced competition from the USA and Australia. To some extent, the USA reduced its appeal with its harsh policies towards foreigners after September 2001, but eight years on it is recovering its market share. Even Tony Blair recognised the benefit the university 'industry' had to the UK economy. In 1999 and 2006 he extended rights for international students now to stay up to 2 years after completing postgraduate courses (most international students come for Masters courses, not undergraduate ones) and enabled them and their families to work more. He saw that attracting intelligent people to the UK not only had immediate income benefits but longer developmental benefits too.
Contrast that attitude to what is happening now. Reports show that the UK is facing far stiffer competition from across Europe. Portuguese universities have been compelled by their government to teach courses in English; Germany which is aiming to have 7.2 million international students by 2025 charges equivalent to only £55 for student visas compared to £145-325 for a UK visa and the fees are roughly the same as German students will pay rather than three times as more; French universities charge less for foreign students than domestic ones; courses are being taught in English in institutions as far apart as Belgium and Finland. So, in this competitive marketplace, the Border Agency introduces far more stringent entry requirements for students. Each university now has to sponsor each international student who wants to study with them leading to increased bureaucracy; they are also responsible for getting the Border Agency in to expel failed foreign students. There is the cost of the new visa, but the biggest problem is that even students who have got through all the hurdles are not getting their visas. Students from Sri Lanka have to travel to India to get a visa to the UK, those from Malaysia to the Philippines, where the embassy has admitted they are overloaded. Apparently the backlog is 20%, which by my calculation works out as at least £340 million lost to UK universities in fees this year. In addition, there will be lost custom in subsequent years as students opt for cheaper, more efficient rivals to the UK.
Of course, people will say all of this was necessary because people were coming and attending bogus language schools and in fact then working illegally in the UK. The purge of such bogus institutions has been very thorough and has closed down 124 across the UK. However, in the wave of anti-immigrant hysteria the UK is currently experiencing that was not seen as enough and students were caught up in the procedures really designed to limit the number of builders and waiters coming to the UK from outside the EU. As is typical of UK and US policy, legislation is rushed and then regretted at leisure. People might argue: 'well it is fine, university semesters do not begin until October', not realising that most international university students are compelled to attend pre-sessional courses over the Summer to prepare them to study. Those courses have been running, sometimes already for weeks, with many students missing. Ironically, many potential UK students have been turned away this year because of capping on recruitment. Even if these people were let in you would need three of them to replace every single international student, in terms of fees.
Just at the time when universities are struggling the anti-immigrant hysteria has meant they are being kicked while they are down. This will damage what has effectively become a distinct sector of the British service sector. The Border Agency could not have timed their new approach worse. In addition, as is typical in the UK, they totally under-estimated how involved the process was going to be and how many staff and resources it would use up. They knew how many international students came to the UK in an average year but did not bother to put a machinery in place that could cope with it. It seems that British policy is tearing itself in two directions: to promote international students coming and yet make is far harder than ever to do so. International students are keeping many UK universities afloat especially in the recession and I am sure this blunder will mean some closing or certainly contracting severely. Effectively we are handing this billion pound business to Germany, the Netherlands, USA, Australia, etc. on a plate. With such a fiasco at such a competitive time, the UK may never recapture its market share and thus the UK economy as a whole will suffer. I was told that Portsmouth reckons that simply visits by the parents of international students to the city brings it £26 million each year. I did not hear the figure for how much the students themselves will bring. Portsmouth will lose £5.2 million in missed parental visits this year and probably many millions more in international students who are not there.
I think the lesson of these two examples is, fine have visas, but make sure the operation of them is fit for purpose, otherwise you will be damaging your country's business and will give the income such visitors would have provided for you, right into the hands of your rivals. That is a bad move at any time but is a woeful approach in time of recession.
P.P. 09/10/2009: Interesting to read from the BBC that 5000 students from Pakistan have yet to receive their visas to take up their places at British universities and a further 9000 are awaiting the outcome of appeals against the refusal, not by universities, but by the Border Agency, to give them a visa to study in the UK. The government has said the delays are not the fault of moving the visa office for Pakistanis from Islamabad in Pakistan to Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates (2087 Km; 1297 miles from Islamabad; almost equivalent to having a visa office moved from London to Kiev (a distance of 2131 Km; 1323 miles). The time to process visas has been 60 days, four times the 15-day target and has not been helped by computer failure. Improvements mean that the target should be reached next month, but this is too late for students, who as foreigners, were expected to start vacation classes back in September to begin proper study this month. See: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/8292941.stm
I suppose facts never got in the way of prejudice, as in the recent headline from the 'Daily Express': 'Immigrant Baby Boom Costs £1bn' with no realisation that the baby boom is actually among British middle class families who now insist on 3 children to fill up their 4 x 4 rather than having 2 children that they would have had 10 years ago. In addition, it forgets, that whilst immigrants do bring families with them, most economic migration is still by single young males. As the return of thousands of Poles to Poland at the start of the recession proved, these are often not people who have come to Britain to settle and raise a family. What we are seeing in terms of rising population is a long period of prosperity and to some extent a fashion. In the past glamorous celebrities would never talk about children or be photographed with them, now the trend is for them to breed or assemble large families and basically what celebrities do, the rest of the population will ape, when they can afford to. Already the recession has slowed the UK's birth rate.
As an aside, I wonder if there will ever be a taxi company that will advertise itself specifically as having non-racist drivers. I would certainly use them as I am getting sick of having to listen to 20 minutes of racist claptrap which stresses me out when I am on my way somewhere important. I would just love to have someone give me some feminist attitudes or some anti-capitalism campaigning when I got in a taxi. (I suddenly have this image of campaigner-comedian Mark Thomas running a taxi firm in which passengers got a blast of liberal ethics every time they travelled!) These days I tire of trying to catch the taxi drivers out by coming out with some line more extreme than theirs; a favourite was that seized heroin should be made available free to old aged pensioners on the National Health Service having the twin benefits of making the elderly happier and keeping down on future care bills. The other one is to revive Jonathan Swift's sharp satirical essay 'A Modest Proposal' (1729) on the consumption of babies to keep down the Irish population. See: http://art-bin.com/art/omodest.html
Holiday Visas
As usual I am wandering away from my chosen theme. To some extent this reflects the way my mind works, one thing sparks another and the posting reflects that. I come to visas, and there are lots of facets to these. I cannot tackle all of them so will focus on a couple of factors. Leaving aside work or study, many countries require visas even if you simply wish to go on holiday. The USA's 'War on Terror' has lifted this to a new level effectively forcing other countries to adopt the biometric approach that the US authorities feel is necessary and to some extent spreading US anti-Arab/anti-South Asian bigotry to other countries by default. When the Cold War ended many East European countries realised they could make good money out of enforcing visas that people had to pay for. This had nothing to do with regulating the movement of people, it was simply a national version of local councils' residents' parking schemes, it raised revenue.
France, which in the past was seen as a country sympathetic to peoples of different races, especially non-whites, now has a rigorous approach for visas even just for holidays. To get a visa for a holiday in France you have to go to the special office in South Kensington and are given a time, this is not the time of your appointment, it is the time when they open the doors to the tens of people waiting each day. Typically you will have to wait 7-8 hours to be processed. There are no facilities in the office, so make sure you take a lot of food, water and entertainment especially for children. The place is filled with sobbing, bored children. I suppose the French authorities do this to try to put off people from applying. Any British/EU friends you might have are barred from entering. Once inside applicants are called for interview. They expect children of 5 years old to attend interviews and from a woman I know who went through this process, she had to fight to be able to go into the interview with her 5-year old son who was naturally terrified of being questioned about his holiday plans by strange people in a formal office. I know this approach has long been used by Israeli authorities when families arrive in Israel on holiday, to check for terrorist intentions of the parents, be prepared many innocent people cannot take this level of questioning especially of their children. The attitude is: if you do not like it, do not try to come to our country.
Also be careful in trying to go to France if you are self-employed. You will be seen as unreliable. They assume that people who have work in another country such as the UK, will want to come back to it, but they seem to assume that any self-employed person will happily uproot their business and seek to establish it in France. Anyone who is self-employed needs a letter from their Chamber of Commerce, which in the UK is a club whereas in France is a regulatory body, but the French authorities seem not to understand national differences in this respect. They do not accept letters from a bank and in the case of the woman I know contested whether the branch she used was a genuine one, which would have enraged the manager who signed the letter, I am sure. Often at the South Kensington office, they will forget that they have actually processed you, so the office may close at the end of the day leaving you without your passport and no visa, again you have to fight often to get the documentation you need. It is quite easy to come away from a day there without your passport and no visa, despite paying for it, and having to make another appointment of the same kind. Once you have gone through all of this you get a 6-month visa. If you need another you have to start again. Clearly France is unhappy at receiving tourists from outside the EU and wants to put as many obstacles in the way as possible. These people are not potential immigrants, they are holidaymakers. When applying from the UK rather than an African, Asian or American state, you can assume they have a life in the UK that they are not going to throw over to move to France, though clearly the French authorities think their country is so wonderful that people would give up their legal right to live in another EU state to move there illegally. My suggestion is, if you are a non-EU citizen who wants to go to France, travel instead to Belgium or the Netherlands and simply drive into France as there are no border checks between these countries, you simply pass the border as you drive along the motorway.
Visas for International Students Coming to the UK
The other aspect about visas which has come to my attention is how much a mess the UK has got into over student visas. The 240,000 international students (i.e. students from anywhere outside the EU) form 14% of the university student population of the UK and even in 2004 this brought £4 billion per year (through paying rent; consumption of food, computers, etc. and fees) to the UK economy. The level rose 60% 1999-2004 and by 2020, it is expected that the number of international students in the UK will reach something like 600-700,000. Many universities are heavily dependent on the fees foreigners pay which are usually three times the level a UK student would pay. Income from fees alone amounted to £1.7 billion in 2008, a rise of 58% since 2003. There are 14 universities that have more than 5000 students from outside the EU and given that the average student body of a UK university is 20-24,000 this shows that they are vital to particular institutions. Given that many universities are shedding staff in their hundreds: Exeter got rid of 330 in 2008; Bournemouth 200 between 2007-8; London Metropolitan will be shedding 550-800 with some departments losing 40% of their teaching staff, it is clear that for many universities to survive needs the income international students bring in.
The UK has long been a popular destination for international students but has always faced competition from the USA and Australia. To some extent, the USA reduced its appeal with its harsh policies towards foreigners after September 2001, but eight years on it is recovering its market share. Even Tony Blair recognised the benefit the university 'industry' had to the UK economy. In 1999 and 2006 he extended rights for international students now to stay up to 2 years after completing postgraduate courses (most international students come for Masters courses, not undergraduate ones) and enabled them and their families to work more. He saw that attracting intelligent people to the UK not only had immediate income benefits but longer developmental benefits too.
Contrast that attitude to what is happening now. Reports show that the UK is facing far stiffer competition from across Europe. Portuguese universities have been compelled by their government to teach courses in English; Germany which is aiming to have 7.2 million international students by 2025 charges equivalent to only £55 for student visas compared to £145-325 for a UK visa and the fees are roughly the same as German students will pay rather than three times as more; French universities charge less for foreign students than domestic ones; courses are being taught in English in institutions as far apart as Belgium and Finland. So, in this competitive marketplace, the Border Agency introduces far more stringent entry requirements for students. Each university now has to sponsor each international student who wants to study with them leading to increased bureaucracy; they are also responsible for getting the Border Agency in to expel failed foreign students. There is the cost of the new visa, but the biggest problem is that even students who have got through all the hurdles are not getting their visas. Students from Sri Lanka have to travel to India to get a visa to the UK, those from Malaysia to the Philippines, where the embassy has admitted they are overloaded. Apparently the backlog is 20%, which by my calculation works out as at least £340 million lost to UK universities in fees this year. In addition, there will be lost custom in subsequent years as students opt for cheaper, more efficient rivals to the UK.
Of course, people will say all of this was necessary because people were coming and attending bogus language schools and in fact then working illegally in the UK. The purge of such bogus institutions has been very thorough and has closed down 124 across the UK. However, in the wave of anti-immigrant hysteria the UK is currently experiencing that was not seen as enough and students were caught up in the procedures really designed to limit the number of builders and waiters coming to the UK from outside the EU. As is typical of UK and US policy, legislation is rushed and then regretted at leisure. People might argue: 'well it is fine, university semesters do not begin until October', not realising that most international university students are compelled to attend pre-sessional courses over the Summer to prepare them to study. Those courses have been running, sometimes already for weeks, with many students missing. Ironically, many potential UK students have been turned away this year because of capping on recruitment. Even if these people were let in you would need three of them to replace every single international student, in terms of fees.
Just at the time when universities are struggling the anti-immigrant hysteria has meant they are being kicked while they are down. This will damage what has effectively become a distinct sector of the British service sector. The Border Agency could not have timed their new approach worse. In addition, as is typical in the UK, they totally under-estimated how involved the process was going to be and how many staff and resources it would use up. They knew how many international students came to the UK in an average year but did not bother to put a machinery in place that could cope with it. It seems that British policy is tearing itself in two directions: to promote international students coming and yet make is far harder than ever to do so. International students are keeping many UK universities afloat especially in the recession and I am sure this blunder will mean some closing or certainly contracting severely. Effectively we are handing this billion pound business to Germany, the Netherlands, USA, Australia, etc. on a plate. With such a fiasco at such a competitive time, the UK may never recapture its market share and thus the UK economy as a whole will suffer. I was told that Portsmouth reckons that simply visits by the parents of international students to the city brings it £26 million each year. I did not hear the figure for how much the students themselves will bring. Portsmouth will lose £5.2 million in missed parental visits this year and probably many millions more in international students who are not there.
I think the lesson of these two examples is, fine have visas, but make sure the operation of them is fit for purpose, otherwise you will be damaging your country's business and will give the income such visitors would have provided for you, right into the hands of your rivals. That is a bad move at any time but is a woeful approach in time of recession.
P.P. 09/10/2009: Interesting to read from the BBC that 5000 students from Pakistan have yet to receive their visas to take up their places at British universities and a further 9000 are awaiting the outcome of appeals against the refusal, not by universities, but by the Border Agency, to give them a visa to study in the UK. The government has said the delays are not the fault of moving the visa office for Pakistanis from Islamabad in Pakistan to Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates (2087 Km; 1297 miles from Islamabad; almost equivalent to having a visa office moved from London to Kiev (a distance of 2131 Km; 1323 miles). The time to process visas has been 60 days, four times the 15-day target and has not been helped by computer failure. Improvements mean that the target should be reached next month, but this is too late for students, who as foreigners, were expected to start vacation classes back in September to begin proper study this month. See: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/8292941.stm
Tuesday, 28 April 2009
Are Thatcherite Attitudes Beginning to Fade?
I am not a regular reader of right-wing or tabloid newspapers, in fact I have little time for newspapers anyway as I drive around so much. When I lived in London I used to make a point of picking up newspapers of a different political slant to my own so that I was in touch with how other people saw the World. Travelling on the underground for two hours every day as I did, there were always abandoned newspapers around. Of course the bulk of the British population has always been conservative, and at times even Conservative, though even Margaret Thatcher only ever won a minority of the percentage of the votes, but because of the weird electoral system the UK has this often gave her a large majority of the seats in parliament. The bulk of the UK population is apolitical, often actually anti-political. However, this does not stop most people 'knowing what is right' and often having a far more right-wing list of policies (especially on capital punishment and immigration) than anyone in the Conservative Party would ever dare voice. As a campaign to encourage people to vote a couple of years ago, these people say 'I don't do politics', but in fact spend a lot of time ramming their political message down people's throats, yet because they see it as 'common sense' or 'simply what is right', they do not want it tarred with the brush of 'politics'. I always cringe when someone starts a sentence with 'I'm not a racist but ...' because you know a whole list of racist attitudes will follow.
The right-wing tabloid press, notably 'The Sun' and 'Daily Star' as well as the middle-ranking right-wing newspapers particularly 'Daily Mail' and 'Daily Express' have had an important role in shifting electoral behaviour especially in the 1980s-90s. When Tony Blair became leader of the Labour Party he visited Rupert Murdoch who owns 'The Sun' and the higher-ranking right-wing newspaper, 'The Times' to win his backing before trying to win public support. He knew that Murdoch's scare campaigns especially about the level of taxation that Labour would introduce had severely undermined the party's electoral chances and most certainly lost them the 1992 election which it had, up to the end, appeared that they would win.
We are now in a different world, though politically not that different. The Blair Party, which effectively was what New Labour was, stuck carefully to the Thatcher Consensus, not altering the economic pattern of little public social housing and privatised utilities and transport. The only alteration in this was the minimum wage which was set at a pretty low level, so that even those bosses who whined about it, actually found their pay bill rise minimally and because of the stimulus to consumption in so many households in the UK, domestic demand rose for certain low cost items, notably food, cheap clothing and cheap electrical goods, especially mobile phones. Gordon Brown who built his economic reputation on economic prudence did not move radically from the Thatcherite/Blairite policy, but the economic crisis of late 2008 shook the whole system up. Thatcher would have just let unemployment rocket. As I noted last year, various employers were eager to see the return of the 'whip of unemployment' and their wishes have been granted. Ironically, however, the collapse of banks notably Northern Rock and HBOS led the state to nationalise banks on a scale that would have even startled Clement Attlee the Labour prime minister 1945-51 who oversaw nationalisation of about 20% of the UK economy following the Second World War.
Through the 1990s and 2000s there were complaints about the huge bonuses and large salaries that many bosses were awarding themselves but these tended to be short-lived complaints that led to nothing. The bulk of the UK population clung to the Thatcher illusion that 'everyone can be a millionaire, so everyone's got to try' even though the bulk of the wealthy were a very narrow slice from privileged backgrounds to start off with. The assumption that long persisted was that any constraint on money making was a bad thing. Such an attitude was still around until last year. Fortunately things have changed. People realise that if the state had not stepped in then their mortgage lender in many cases would have simply folded. We have not experienced the recall of debts in the UK in the way we know from the Depression era of the UK, but widespread repossession and forced sales because the bank had collapsed rather than because the borrower had defaulted, would have been an immense trauma in the UK, a country with a society that believes its whole economic stability is based on housing. The arrogant, persistent greed of leading bankers even when they have had to be baled out by the state has slowly penetrated the strong adherence to Thatcherite values.
With house repossessions reaching 40,000 in 2008 and expected to exceed 75,000 in 2009 people have a sense, in contrast to the 1980s, that this was not 'necessary' and actually that with less greed from leading bankers and companies, they could be retaining their houses. For once the blame is being aportioned properly. I think this is due, in part, to this shock coming after years of stability since the end of the last UK economic problems ending in about 1994. When mass unemployment hit in the early 1980s, people had already had a decade of seeing heavy industry finding it hard to adapt to the move to a service economy, which became the dominant form of industry in Britain from 1974 onwards. Combined with that they had seen the impact of rising oil prices and saw an easy scapegoat in the Arab oil-producing countries. The 'War on Terror' including the invasion of Iraq had no impact on the average UK citizen and certainly nothing even approaching the scale of the collapse of the US subprime mortgage market has done.
Perhaps it is unsurprising, as 'The Guardian' highlighted this week that the British public is slowly beginning to shake off the Thatcherite mindset, or at least question some of its easy assumptions. In the budget a new top rate of 50% tax was announced for people earning over £150,000 (€166,500; US$217,500). Currently we have 40% if you earn over £37,400 and 20% for income below that with a varying amount depending on your circumstances but around £6,300 which you can earn tax free. In Sir Geoffrey Howe's first budget in 1979 the standard level of tax was reduced from 33% to 30% and the upper rate from 83% to 60% but he raised VAT (Value Added Tax, tax on purchases) from between 8-12.5% to 15% and petrol duty from 45% to 60% to compensate. Of course the monetarists believed lower taxes would stimulate the economy, though by raising indirect taxes Howe probably helped to accelerate the onset of the 1980s recession by further reducing consumption, though he would have seen such steps as anti-inflationary and one thing monetarists loathe is inflation. So, the introduction of the 50% band is hardly 'a 70s-style raid' as the 'Daily Express' portrayed it nor 'a return to the politics of envy' as the 'Daily Mail' said.
Gordon Brown did try a 'windfall' tax last year on power companies, who as I noted at the time, were making ever larger profits simply by raising prices and blaming the rise in oil prices. The reduction in their charges were very slow and piecemeal when the oil price came down. However, Brown, possibly thinking back to the windfall tax of 1949 introduced by Sir Stafford Cripps. He was unable to pull it off. Cripps and the rest of the Attlee government found they were unable to shift British industry the extent to which the country needed it moved, but they certainly had greater power in altering the economy than Brown has. He was told bluntly that any such tax would simply be passed on to the consumers he was trying to help. Thatcher delivered all power over our energy and its price into the hands of wealthy business people most of whom are from outside the UK, and of course, the French government who own most of EDF.
What is interesting is that surveys show that the right-wing press have got it wrong. You have to be well over 40 to even have a dim memory of the 1970s and a lot has happened in the economy since then. Of course business people always complain tax is too high having no memory for when it was much higher and yet businesses still prospered. There have always been very rich people in the UK even when taxes were far higher than now. Greed persists. However, the public tolerance of it seems to be waning and even readers of the right-wing newspapers that have condemned this move, are actually behind it. To some degree people see it as a fair punitive measure. The economic historian E.P. Thompson (1924-93) despite being a Marxist noted that through history the British people have not sought revolution, but the 'moral economy', i.e. what they see as 'fairness' in terms of prices and pay. He shows examples of bread riots in which the people did not take the bread home and eat it, but set up stalls to sell the looted bread at a fair price. Despite Thatcherism, this basic attitude continues even though it is hidden among all the extreme right-wing complaints about immigrants being to blame for everything. The other thing is how far away the wealthy and ultra-wealthy are from the general public.
Back in 2003, 'The Times' defined a 'Middle Englander' also known as the British yeomanry, and other such phrases as someone earning £60,000 (€66,600; US$87,000 at current exchange rates) per year. Interestingly, 80% of the UK population earns less than the average annual salary which is now around £26,000 (€28,800; US$37,700) the average in London is about £31,000 and that is the highest paid area of the UK. For single people (many of whom are retired), the average is only £16,000 (10.6% of the salary that will get this new level of tax). So this suggests that the 'middle' ranked person of 'The Times' is actually in an elite of around a sixth or seventh of the population. I earn £39,000 now, so I am in the elite of a fifth of the population, but I end the month with £100 in my bank account, minimal savings, a 12-year old car and will probably have my 3-bedroomed semi-detached house repossessed when I am made redundant this Summer. So, even among the broader elite, economic times are hard. There are 350,000 people in the UK earning over £150,000, so it is unsurprising that the 'Daily Mail' has been told despite all its whining that there is not going to be a strong Conservative Party response to the new tax band, though that does not stop buffoons like Boris Johnson, Conservative mayor of London being indignant about it.
For all the assumptions that the Conservatives are easily going to win the next election, they ought to be careful no to be seen as too associated with big business and greedy bankers and opposing the 'fair' penalties imposed on them. I think the assumption of Labour's fall is very lazy and has been being talked up since Brown became prime minister, based on very little. Brown has worked hard to minimise the impact of the recession on ordinary people and it seems they are beginning to notice that. In addition, despite me commenting on this for the past year or so, the Conservatives still have not come forward with any clear policies and certainly no clear way of doing anything about the impact of the recession. Many people are likely to fear they will simply repeat Thatcher's attitude of holding up their hands, saying they can do nothing about it, and even worse, that it is 'good' for the population to go through this. As we have seen since 1873 and 1931 the Conservatives always struggle with any ideas when hard economic times come and ironically, as later Conservative prime minister, Harold Macmillan did in the 1930s start flirting with state-backed initiatives of greater control over the economy.
I am heartened that the British public, in part, is beginning to shake off the easy, nasty assumptions from Thatcherism. Of course, the right-wing elements remain. Driving through rural Dorset recently I heard how antagonism to migrant labourers is rising as unemployment increases. We can expect that alongside the desite for a moral economy will be the less moral attitudes of hunting out scapegoats too.
Just to wrap up, I am always stunned when I start doing research for a posting the extent of madly extreme views I come across, for example someone arguing that the British tax system is far too complex with its different bands and that there should be a single flat percentage of tax for income tax! This is illogical as all of us have to spend a large chunk of our money on the basics like housing and food, so if we become very wealthy we may have a larger house or more houses and more cars, etc., but all of us only actually need one house, so the wealthier have a great deal more 'slack' in their income that morally they should give back to the society they are draining from in order to make their wealth. However, ideas such as a single band of tax show that clearly there are some corners where Thatcherism continues to thrive.
The right-wing tabloid press, notably 'The Sun' and 'Daily Star' as well as the middle-ranking right-wing newspapers particularly 'Daily Mail' and 'Daily Express' have had an important role in shifting electoral behaviour especially in the 1980s-90s. When Tony Blair became leader of the Labour Party he visited Rupert Murdoch who owns 'The Sun' and the higher-ranking right-wing newspaper, 'The Times' to win his backing before trying to win public support. He knew that Murdoch's scare campaigns especially about the level of taxation that Labour would introduce had severely undermined the party's electoral chances and most certainly lost them the 1992 election which it had, up to the end, appeared that they would win.
We are now in a different world, though politically not that different. The Blair Party, which effectively was what New Labour was, stuck carefully to the Thatcher Consensus, not altering the economic pattern of little public social housing and privatised utilities and transport. The only alteration in this was the minimum wage which was set at a pretty low level, so that even those bosses who whined about it, actually found their pay bill rise minimally and because of the stimulus to consumption in so many households in the UK, domestic demand rose for certain low cost items, notably food, cheap clothing and cheap electrical goods, especially mobile phones. Gordon Brown who built his economic reputation on economic prudence did not move radically from the Thatcherite/Blairite policy, but the economic crisis of late 2008 shook the whole system up. Thatcher would have just let unemployment rocket. As I noted last year, various employers were eager to see the return of the 'whip of unemployment' and their wishes have been granted. Ironically, however, the collapse of banks notably Northern Rock and HBOS led the state to nationalise banks on a scale that would have even startled Clement Attlee the Labour prime minister 1945-51 who oversaw nationalisation of about 20% of the UK economy following the Second World War.
Through the 1990s and 2000s there were complaints about the huge bonuses and large salaries that many bosses were awarding themselves but these tended to be short-lived complaints that led to nothing. The bulk of the UK population clung to the Thatcher illusion that 'everyone can be a millionaire, so everyone's got to try' even though the bulk of the wealthy were a very narrow slice from privileged backgrounds to start off with. The assumption that long persisted was that any constraint on money making was a bad thing. Such an attitude was still around until last year. Fortunately things have changed. People realise that if the state had not stepped in then their mortgage lender in many cases would have simply folded. We have not experienced the recall of debts in the UK in the way we know from the Depression era of the UK, but widespread repossession and forced sales because the bank had collapsed rather than because the borrower had defaulted, would have been an immense trauma in the UK, a country with a society that believes its whole economic stability is based on housing. The arrogant, persistent greed of leading bankers even when they have had to be baled out by the state has slowly penetrated the strong adherence to Thatcherite values.
With house repossessions reaching 40,000 in 2008 and expected to exceed 75,000 in 2009 people have a sense, in contrast to the 1980s, that this was not 'necessary' and actually that with less greed from leading bankers and companies, they could be retaining their houses. For once the blame is being aportioned properly. I think this is due, in part, to this shock coming after years of stability since the end of the last UK economic problems ending in about 1994. When mass unemployment hit in the early 1980s, people had already had a decade of seeing heavy industry finding it hard to adapt to the move to a service economy, which became the dominant form of industry in Britain from 1974 onwards. Combined with that they had seen the impact of rising oil prices and saw an easy scapegoat in the Arab oil-producing countries. The 'War on Terror' including the invasion of Iraq had no impact on the average UK citizen and certainly nothing even approaching the scale of the collapse of the US subprime mortgage market has done.
Perhaps it is unsurprising, as 'The Guardian' highlighted this week that the British public is slowly beginning to shake off the Thatcherite mindset, or at least question some of its easy assumptions. In the budget a new top rate of 50% tax was announced for people earning over £150,000 (€166,500; US$217,500). Currently we have 40% if you earn over £37,400 and 20% for income below that with a varying amount depending on your circumstances but around £6,300 which you can earn tax free. In Sir Geoffrey Howe's first budget in 1979 the standard level of tax was reduced from 33% to 30% and the upper rate from 83% to 60% but he raised VAT (Value Added Tax, tax on purchases) from between 8-12.5% to 15% and petrol duty from 45% to 60% to compensate. Of course the monetarists believed lower taxes would stimulate the economy, though by raising indirect taxes Howe probably helped to accelerate the onset of the 1980s recession by further reducing consumption, though he would have seen such steps as anti-inflationary and one thing monetarists loathe is inflation. So, the introduction of the 50% band is hardly 'a 70s-style raid' as the 'Daily Express' portrayed it nor 'a return to the politics of envy' as the 'Daily Mail' said.
Gordon Brown did try a 'windfall' tax last year on power companies, who as I noted at the time, were making ever larger profits simply by raising prices and blaming the rise in oil prices. The reduction in their charges were very slow and piecemeal when the oil price came down. However, Brown, possibly thinking back to the windfall tax of 1949 introduced by Sir Stafford Cripps. He was unable to pull it off. Cripps and the rest of the Attlee government found they were unable to shift British industry the extent to which the country needed it moved, but they certainly had greater power in altering the economy than Brown has. He was told bluntly that any such tax would simply be passed on to the consumers he was trying to help. Thatcher delivered all power over our energy and its price into the hands of wealthy business people most of whom are from outside the UK, and of course, the French government who own most of EDF.
What is interesting is that surveys show that the right-wing press have got it wrong. You have to be well over 40 to even have a dim memory of the 1970s and a lot has happened in the economy since then. Of course business people always complain tax is too high having no memory for when it was much higher and yet businesses still prospered. There have always been very rich people in the UK even when taxes were far higher than now. Greed persists. However, the public tolerance of it seems to be waning and even readers of the right-wing newspapers that have condemned this move, are actually behind it. To some degree people see it as a fair punitive measure. The economic historian E.P. Thompson (1924-93) despite being a Marxist noted that through history the British people have not sought revolution, but the 'moral economy', i.e. what they see as 'fairness' in terms of prices and pay. He shows examples of bread riots in which the people did not take the bread home and eat it, but set up stalls to sell the looted bread at a fair price. Despite Thatcherism, this basic attitude continues even though it is hidden among all the extreme right-wing complaints about immigrants being to blame for everything. The other thing is how far away the wealthy and ultra-wealthy are from the general public.
Back in 2003, 'The Times' defined a 'Middle Englander' also known as the British yeomanry, and other such phrases as someone earning £60,000 (€66,600; US$87,000 at current exchange rates) per year. Interestingly, 80% of the UK population earns less than the average annual salary which is now around £26,000 (€28,800; US$37,700) the average in London is about £31,000 and that is the highest paid area of the UK. For single people (many of whom are retired), the average is only £16,000 (10.6% of the salary that will get this new level of tax). So this suggests that the 'middle' ranked person of 'The Times' is actually in an elite of around a sixth or seventh of the population. I earn £39,000 now, so I am in the elite of a fifth of the population, but I end the month with £100 in my bank account, minimal savings, a 12-year old car and will probably have my 3-bedroomed semi-detached house repossessed when I am made redundant this Summer. So, even among the broader elite, economic times are hard. There are 350,000 people in the UK earning over £150,000, so it is unsurprising that the 'Daily Mail' has been told despite all its whining that there is not going to be a strong Conservative Party response to the new tax band, though that does not stop buffoons like Boris Johnson, Conservative mayor of London being indignant about it.
For all the assumptions that the Conservatives are easily going to win the next election, they ought to be careful no to be seen as too associated with big business and greedy bankers and opposing the 'fair' penalties imposed on them. I think the assumption of Labour's fall is very lazy and has been being talked up since Brown became prime minister, based on very little. Brown has worked hard to minimise the impact of the recession on ordinary people and it seems they are beginning to notice that. In addition, despite me commenting on this for the past year or so, the Conservatives still have not come forward with any clear policies and certainly no clear way of doing anything about the impact of the recession. Many people are likely to fear they will simply repeat Thatcher's attitude of holding up their hands, saying they can do nothing about it, and even worse, that it is 'good' for the population to go through this. As we have seen since 1873 and 1931 the Conservatives always struggle with any ideas when hard economic times come and ironically, as later Conservative prime minister, Harold Macmillan did in the 1930s start flirting with state-backed initiatives of greater control over the economy.
I am heartened that the British public, in part, is beginning to shake off the easy, nasty assumptions from Thatcherism. Of course, the right-wing elements remain. Driving through rural Dorset recently I heard how antagonism to migrant labourers is rising as unemployment increases. We can expect that alongside the desite for a moral economy will be the less moral attitudes of hunting out scapegoats too.
Just to wrap up, I am always stunned when I start doing research for a posting the extent of madly extreme views I come across, for example someone arguing that the British tax system is far too complex with its different bands and that there should be a single flat percentage of tax for income tax! This is illogical as all of us have to spend a large chunk of our money on the basics like housing and food, so if we become very wealthy we may have a larger house or more houses and more cars, etc., but all of us only actually need one house, so the wealthier have a great deal more 'slack' in their income that morally they should give back to the society they are draining from in order to make their wealth. However, ideas such as a single band of tax show that clearly there are some corners where Thatcherism continues to thrive.
Tuesday, 16 September 2008
Property in the UK 11: Overload at the Tax Office
As I have commented before, financially my life is very much on hold at the moment. I expect to be made redundant in August 2009 and to have my house repossessed a couple of months after that. In the meantime I am waiting for a capital gains tax bill. This is because, foolishly, I got work outside London and so instead of selling my flat immediately, I rented it out. This brought huge charges (over £16,500) from Newham Council and so no profit on letting it out. It did rise in value which is one good thing and helped me to buy my current house which otherwise I would not have been able to afford, and so stopped me being constantly kicked out of houses by greedy landlords wanting to play the market by playing with people's lives (this happened to me twice in 2007 losing me thousands of pounds in moving twice and causing a lot of stress).
Selling my 'business' has left me with a capital gains tax bill. I have no real idea how much this might be, something between £3000-£8000, with the best estimate at £6,600 (€8,316; US$11,748) and I have saved up less than half that sum so far. I rang the Revenue & Customs's 'Time to Pay' helpline which simply had a woman telling me how foolish I was not to hold back more money from the sale and that going bankrupt was immoral. Anyway, I dare not buy or plan anything until I know exactly what the final bill is going to be and so whether I need to put the house on the market or try and beg another loan from the bank. So, I asked for all the relevant forms as soon as I could once the financial year ended in April. I was sent the wrong forms twice and on the third occasion the correct form but an out-of-date one, i.e. for 2006-07 rather than 2007-08 which is what I am dealing with. Anyway, after all that, I get my form completed and in at the end of July.
Now, anyone who deals with the Revenue and Customs, which is a lot of people these days since self-assessment for small business tax was introduced in, I think, 1997, anyway, the late 1990s, knows that this year they have reduced all the deadlines. Now you have to submit any paper-based assessment by 31st October and if you want the tax people to do the tax calculations, you must get it in by 30th September. You used to be able to submit up until the end of January and the end of October if you wanted to have it calculated (and for the bulk of us who cannot afford an accountant at £1,200 per month [€1,512; US$2,136,] this is a must; I never got more than £700 per month in rent on my flat and that was before maintenance charges). They are trying to cajole people to submit their forms online. If you do that you can have up until 31st January to do it. However, given the government's appalling record of losing our data, in recent months including information about millions of child benefit claimants, names of prison officers and police applicants amongst others, few of us trust these systems and prefer to stick to paper.
Six weeks having passed since I submitted my form, I rang Revenue and Customs to see if they could tell me my bill. They said that they should be able to, but the tax office that handles my account is totally snowed under with returns brought on by the shortened deadline and that they can give no indication of when the calculation will be complete. I was told also that if I had submitted the form after 30th September then they could not have provided the capital gains tax bill until March even though the due date for payment would be 31st January and as I have been repeatedly told there is no flexibility with that date. As the man pointed out quite blatantly this means I could have been expected to pay a bill before I even knew the sum I was being asked for! Apparently this is totally legal. The trouble is of course is that they assume we all have accountants who can give us a close estimate that we can pay on and top up if we are wrong. As the man indicated, if you pay insufficient, then you get penalty charges imposed, so you might as well clear out your accounts and send it all and I may be compelled to do that if I get no information.
The Revenue and Customs's plan has backfired and they have brought a crisis down on their own heads by cutting the deadline times. They have to recognise that many people distrust online submission of things. Often you encounter poorly designed websites that send you round in circles. Often websites give no indication if the information has gone through or been received so that you have to ring up anyway to check. Then there is the issue of data security which the British government and its civil service seems to have the worst record on in the world. As I have noted before because of debit card cloning, I, like many people in the UK have moved away from using electronic payments and gone back to cash or even cheques.
So, I sit here, hoping that in some office in Manchester they can get through the backlog of forms sent in and then tell me my bill in a reasonable time, so I can start finding out whether the house which I foolishly used this money to buy and is now worth £20,000 less than when I bought it in December 2008, needs to be put on sale in the weak housing market, whether I can borrow the sum needed or whether I have to take the 'immoral' option and go bankrupt. The not knowing, though, I think is the most stressful aspect, and I am angry with Revenue and Customs for them catching me up in the consequences of their misguided experiment.
Selling my 'business' has left me with a capital gains tax bill. I have no real idea how much this might be, something between £3000-£8000, with the best estimate at £6,600 (€8,316; US$11,748) and I have saved up less than half that sum so far. I rang the Revenue & Customs's 'Time to Pay' helpline which simply had a woman telling me how foolish I was not to hold back more money from the sale and that going bankrupt was immoral. Anyway, I dare not buy or plan anything until I know exactly what the final bill is going to be and so whether I need to put the house on the market or try and beg another loan from the bank. So, I asked for all the relevant forms as soon as I could once the financial year ended in April. I was sent the wrong forms twice and on the third occasion the correct form but an out-of-date one, i.e. for 2006-07 rather than 2007-08 which is what I am dealing with. Anyway, after all that, I get my form completed and in at the end of July.
Now, anyone who deals with the Revenue and Customs, which is a lot of people these days since self-assessment for small business tax was introduced in, I think, 1997, anyway, the late 1990s, knows that this year they have reduced all the deadlines. Now you have to submit any paper-based assessment by 31st October and if you want the tax people to do the tax calculations, you must get it in by 30th September. You used to be able to submit up until the end of January and the end of October if you wanted to have it calculated (and for the bulk of us who cannot afford an accountant at £1,200 per month [€1,512; US$2,136,] this is a must; I never got more than £700 per month in rent on my flat and that was before maintenance charges). They are trying to cajole people to submit their forms online. If you do that you can have up until 31st January to do it. However, given the government's appalling record of losing our data, in recent months including information about millions of child benefit claimants, names of prison officers and police applicants amongst others, few of us trust these systems and prefer to stick to paper.
Six weeks having passed since I submitted my form, I rang Revenue and Customs to see if they could tell me my bill. They said that they should be able to, but the tax office that handles my account is totally snowed under with returns brought on by the shortened deadline and that they can give no indication of when the calculation will be complete. I was told also that if I had submitted the form after 30th September then they could not have provided the capital gains tax bill until March even though the due date for payment would be 31st January and as I have been repeatedly told there is no flexibility with that date. As the man pointed out quite blatantly this means I could have been expected to pay a bill before I even knew the sum I was being asked for! Apparently this is totally legal. The trouble is of course is that they assume we all have accountants who can give us a close estimate that we can pay on and top up if we are wrong. As the man indicated, if you pay insufficient, then you get penalty charges imposed, so you might as well clear out your accounts and send it all and I may be compelled to do that if I get no information.
The Revenue and Customs's plan has backfired and they have brought a crisis down on their own heads by cutting the deadline times. They have to recognise that many people distrust online submission of things. Often you encounter poorly designed websites that send you round in circles. Often websites give no indication if the information has gone through or been received so that you have to ring up anyway to check. Then there is the issue of data security which the British government and its civil service seems to have the worst record on in the world. As I have noted before because of debit card cloning, I, like many people in the UK have moved away from using electronic payments and gone back to cash or even cheques.
So, I sit here, hoping that in some office in Manchester they can get through the backlog of forms sent in and then tell me my bill in a reasonable time, so I can start finding out whether the house which I foolishly used this money to buy and is now worth £20,000 less than when I bought it in December 2008, needs to be put on sale in the weak housing market, whether I can borrow the sum needed or whether I have to take the 'immoral' option and go bankrupt. The not knowing, though, I think is the most stressful aspect, and I am angry with Revenue and Customs for them catching me up in the consequences of their misguided experiment.
Thursday, 24 April 2008
The 10p Tax Band
Last year, the then Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown, the man who is now the UK's prime minister announced the abolition of the 10% tax band (it is called the 10p band as you pay 10p (pence) in every £1 that you earn within that band, which is 10%), this abolition is now coming into force and 70 Labour MPs were threatening to vote against the application of the move but have been bought off with concessions on benefits for low earners in terms of fuel and other expenses. Before I launch into why the abolition is so wrong, a quick recap on the British tax system. Basically anything you currently earn up to £5,435 (€7065; US$10870) you pay no tax on. For earnings from £5,436-£7,755 you pay 10%; for £7,755-£36,000 you pay 22% (though only 20% on savings earning this much) and for everything over £36,000 you pay 40%. Remember that the average salary in the UK is £24,400 and 80% of the population earn that amount or less.
The average wage for people working for Tesco, the UK's largest (and richest) supermarket chain was £11,594; it employs 260,000 people in the UK and is the largest non-public employer. Remember too that if the top 1000 richest people in the UK actually paid the amount of tax they are supposed to then the government could reduce the 22% tax band to 17% and still receive the same income. Obviously the 10% band benefits all taxpayers in the UK, but it is disproportionately beneficial to the 6 million people (20% of the workforce) in the UK who earn less than £10,000 (€13000; US$26000) per year.
It is astounding how many websites you see praising the multi-millionaires and conversely saying that the reason why so many people earn less than £10,000 a year is because they are simply lazy and that if they tried they could earn a lot more. Do you really think people like being poor? There are some lazy people, but the majority of people work hard. Do you think those who turn in long hours and multiple shifts working in Tesco stores or petrol stations or factories are lazy? Of course many of the people who earn these salaries work part-time, most typically so they can raise children or look after elderly relatives, taking a burden off the state for which they are not paid. Most poor people work far harder than the rich and yet they continue to be abused. I thought this attitude had died with the 1980s but researching this posting I found that unfortunately it is still all too prevalent. It reminds me of the lyric from the The's 'Infected' album the track 'The Mercy Beat' has the line 'everybody can be a millionaire so everyone has to try'. Of course 99% of the population want to be millionaires and in 2007 there were 471,500 businesses started in the UK alone up from 457,200 in 2006. So there are literally hundreds of thousands of people every year trying to become a success and given that in September 2007 in the UK 835,800 people were claiming jobseekers' allowance for being unemployed, this is equivalent to every one in two unemployed people trying to get a business going. Of course many of these businesses are started by people in work, but many must begin to draw in unemployed people too. Of course setting up a business does not earn you big money, in the UK in 2007 75% of entrepreneurs were making £20,000 or less (so below the average annual salary) and 49% of the total were making £10,000 or less (so in fact would have been better off getting a job at Tesco rather than setting up their own business). Britain is a low salary economy and it is going to get harder to raise yourself out of that rut. Last year it was reported that 100% of the income of new house mortgage holders earning the average annual salary noted above, goes on household expenditure: mortgage, council tax, utility bills the report did not even include food or petrol. Prices in these areas (bar the mortgage at present) continue to rise far slower than salaries so there is no capacity for savings or even disposable income. It is sickening to see people claim that those on low incomes are lazy, in fact the bulk of them are working extremely hard to keep their heads above water. It is not about effort it is about the huge imbalance in British society which has been widening further since the 1970s. The super-rich are in control and making us subsidise their lifestyles. That is simply perverse.
In total 1% of the population owns 34% of the wealth in the UK. The head of Barclays Bank earns £250,000 per year and gets £22 million per year in bonuses; the founder of moneysupermarket.com earned £103 million in a year. You could employ 10,300 people (the number of people that Tesco employs in Northern Ireland) earning £10,000 per year for a year for the same amount of money, is he really worth that much? To the 3 million people who earn more than £100,000 per year a loss of about £230 per year is not going to mean much with the abandonment of the 10% bracket, but for those under £10,000 it can cover the cost of your fuel bill for half the year or your food for a family for a month, it is a big difference. This change will also hit women, who make up more of the workforce, harder as on average they earn 17% of the salary of their male counterparts but remain predominantly the breadwinner in single-parent families, which helps explain why children are over-represented among those people deemed as being in poverty in the UK.
Brown has won over the Labour rebels by promises of compensation for the poorest. Yet, that is not the same as maintaining the 10p tax band. Compensation means control and as I have long stated on this blog this Labour government seeks ever greater control. Everyone is affected by a tax band when they earn sufficient income to enter it, but only people who are targeted or have the time and ability to apply get compensation. This allows the government, as it clearly wishes, to designate money to those it sees as the 'deserving poor' (to use the Victorian phrase) and keep it away from the 'undeserving poor' for whatever reason because of their lifestyle or the choices they make. The government will be equipped with yet another tool to shape people's lives, to go into particular jobs or move to particular areas with the carrot of being offered this compensation or the stick of having it removed if they do not comply. This comes at a time when food and fuel prices are continuing to rise seemingly inexorably (my own grocery bill has risen by 20% in the past year despite growing vegetables in this household to supplement the food we buy) and you are lucky if your salary has risen by 3% when fuel is rising 11% per year at present. This is another step by the government to increase its police state powers.
I am not averse to taxation. I believe people in my income bracket should pay more and should fund better services out of that. In fact I believe in more taxation, but rather than doing what the government is currently doing, i.e. raising taxes for the poorest people in society, I would raise them for the very rich. Back in 1979 the pattern of taxation was very different. That June, the first budget under the Conservatives the basic rate (currently 22%) was lowered from 33% to 30% and the top rate (currently 40%) fell from 83% to 60%. There were very rich people, lots of millionaires in the UK of 1979 and even the Conservatives could stomach such rates of tax which are not exceptional. France has a top tax bracket of 52.75%; Germany 42%. However there is a shift in all of Europe to lower tax rates in the highest category. This is because governments really no longer have any control over their fiscal policies, they are dictated to by the turbo rich who threaten governments into passing policies which favour them otherwise they threaten to take their money elsewhere. Across Europe they are bullying governments into reducing the burden on them and not even properly collecting the taxes that they should be paying. An increase say to 45% for people earning over £100,000 per year and 50% for those over £250,000 would make minimal difference to those earning such large sums but would immediately increase the revenue coming in.
Maybe it is too late. Perhaps Brown is afraid that if he challenges the ultra-rich his government will be brought down by a flood of funds from the UK. These people seem not even to tolerate even minor amendments which in reality they would not even notice. Their agenda seems to move to something like 18th century France where the nobility was exempt for taxation whereas the lowliest peasants had to contribute to the extravagance of the royal court. Of course Brown has a desire for compensation in the place of a lower tax band, not only does it keep the ultra-rich happy but it gives him more control over the masses. How is it that discredited political stances discredited two hundred years ago seem so suitable for present day UK politicians? Brown you are a coward, a bully and seeking to head an authoritarian state. Listen to the backbenchers and change your ways before you wreck British society.
The average wage for people working for Tesco, the UK's largest (and richest) supermarket chain was £11,594; it employs 260,000 people in the UK and is the largest non-public employer. Remember too that if the top 1000 richest people in the UK actually paid the amount of tax they are supposed to then the government could reduce the 22% tax band to 17% and still receive the same income. Obviously the 10% band benefits all taxpayers in the UK, but it is disproportionately beneficial to the 6 million people (20% of the workforce) in the UK who earn less than £10,000 (€13000; US$26000) per year.
It is astounding how many websites you see praising the multi-millionaires and conversely saying that the reason why so many people earn less than £10,000 a year is because they are simply lazy and that if they tried they could earn a lot more. Do you really think people like being poor? There are some lazy people, but the majority of people work hard. Do you think those who turn in long hours and multiple shifts working in Tesco stores or petrol stations or factories are lazy? Of course many of the people who earn these salaries work part-time, most typically so they can raise children or look after elderly relatives, taking a burden off the state for which they are not paid. Most poor people work far harder than the rich and yet they continue to be abused. I thought this attitude had died with the 1980s but researching this posting I found that unfortunately it is still all too prevalent. It reminds me of the lyric from the The's 'Infected' album the track 'The Mercy Beat' has the line 'everybody can be a millionaire so everyone has to try'. Of course 99% of the population want to be millionaires and in 2007 there were 471,500 businesses started in the UK alone up from 457,200 in 2006. So there are literally hundreds of thousands of people every year trying to become a success and given that in September 2007 in the UK 835,800 people were claiming jobseekers' allowance for being unemployed, this is equivalent to every one in two unemployed people trying to get a business going. Of course many of these businesses are started by people in work, but many must begin to draw in unemployed people too. Of course setting up a business does not earn you big money, in the UK in 2007 75% of entrepreneurs were making £20,000 or less (so below the average annual salary) and 49% of the total were making £10,000 or less (so in fact would have been better off getting a job at Tesco rather than setting up their own business). Britain is a low salary economy and it is going to get harder to raise yourself out of that rut. Last year it was reported that 100% of the income of new house mortgage holders earning the average annual salary noted above, goes on household expenditure: mortgage, council tax, utility bills the report did not even include food or petrol. Prices in these areas (bar the mortgage at present) continue to rise far slower than salaries so there is no capacity for savings or even disposable income. It is sickening to see people claim that those on low incomes are lazy, in fact the bulk of them are working extremely hard to keep their heads above water. It is not about effort it is about the huge imbalance in British society which has been widening further since the 1970s. The super-rich are in control and making us subsidise their lifestyles. That is simply perverse.
In total 1% of the population owns 34% of the wealth in the UK. The head of Barclays Bank earns £250,000 per year and gets £22 million per year in bonuses; the founder of moneysupermarket.com earned £103 million in a year. You could employ 10,300 people (the number of people that Tesco employs in Northern Ireland) earning £10,000 per year for a year for the same amount of money, is he really worth that much? To the 3 million people who earn more than £100,000 per year a loss of about £230 per year is not going to mean much with the abandonment of the 10% bracket, but for those under £10,000 it can cover the cost of your fuel bill for half the year or your food for a family for a month, it is a big difference. This change will also hit women, who make up more of the workforce, harder as on average they earn 17% of the salary of their male counterparts but remain predominantly the breadwinner in single-parent families, which helps explain why children are over-represented among those people deemed as being in poverty in the UK.
Brown has won over the Labour rebels by promises of compensation for the poorest. Yet, that is not the same as maintaining the 10p tax band. Compensation means control and as I have long stated on this blog this Labour government seeks ever greater control. Everyone is affected by a tax band when they earn sufficient income to enter it, but only people who are targeted or have the time and ability to apply get compensation. This allows the government, as it clearly wishes, to designate money to those it sees as the 'deserving poor' (to use the Victorian phrase) and keep it away from the 'undeserving poor' for whatever reason because of their lifestyle or the choices they make. The government will be equipped with yet another tool to shape people's lives, to go into particular jobs or move to particular areas with the carrot of being offered this compensation or the stick of having it removed if they do not comply. This comes at a time when food and fuel prices are continuing to rise seemingly inexorably (my own grocery bill has risen by 20% in the past year despite growing vegetables in this household to supplement the food we buy) and you are lucky if your salary has risen by 3% when fuel is rising 11% per year at present. This is another step by the government to increase its police state powers.
I am not averse to taxation. I believe people in my income bracket should pay more and should fund better services out of that. In fact I believe in more taxation, but rather than doing what the government is currently doing, i.e. raising taxes for the poorest people in society, I would raise them for the very rich. Back in 1979 the pattern of taxation was very different. That June, the first budget under the Conservatives the basic rate (currently 22%) was lowered from 33% to 30% and the top rate (currently 40%) fell from 83% to 60%. There were very rich people, lots of millionaires in the UK of 1979 and even the Conservatives could stomach such rates of tax which are not exceptional. France has a top tax bracket of 52.75%; Germany 42%. However there is a shift in all of Europe to lower tax rates in the highest category. This is because governments really no longer have any control over their fiscal policies, they are dictated to by the turbo rich who threaten governments into passing policies which favour them otherwise they threaten to take their money elsewhere. Across Europe they are bullying governments into reducing the burden on them and not even properly collecting the taxes that they should be paying. An increase say to 45% for people earning over £100,000 per year and 50% for those over £250,000 would make minimal difference to those earning such large sums but would immediately increase the revenue coming in.
Maybe it is too late. Perhaps Brown is afraid that if he challenges the ultra-rich his government will be brought down by a flood of funds from the UK. These people seem not even to tolerate even minor amendments which in reality they would not even notice. Their agenda seems to move to something like 18th century France where the nobility was exempt for taxation whereas the lowliest peasants had to contribute to the extravagance of the royal court. Of course Brown has a desire for compensation in the place of a lower tax band, not only does it keep the ultra-rich happy but it gives him more control over the masses. How is it that discredited political stances discredited two hundred years ago seem so suitable for present day UK politicians? Brown you are a coward, a bully and seeking to head an authoritarian state. Listen to the backbenchers and change your ways before you wreck British society.
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