Foamer said:
Kantor said:
Female Cabinet Members - I don't care if there are no female Cabinet members, or one, or five, or ten, or sixteen. I just want them to be chosen based on their political ability, rather than their sexual organs.
Personally I just think it's risible that 50% of the population aren't effectively represented at cabinet level because they have different sexual organs to those who are vastly over-represented. Even Cameron acknowldeged the under-representation of women in parliament by pledging to introduce all-women shortlists. It's hardly a Marxist ideal.
Trade Unionists voted for Ed, rather than his own party, and some Unions pledged to remove support if Dave won.
Which ones? I know if my union (or my wife's) threatened to coerce me into voting in a particular way they'd be torn to shreds by their members and the courts. I'm not sure why you've emphasised Trade Unionists, either. They're fee-paying members of organisations affiliated to the Labour party. Many of them will be Labour party members, the vast majority will not. How is it a bad thing that their individual members have voted for him? They're not exactly raving Trots, you know.
Oh, I'm for giving the banks a good slap in the face. But Gordon Brown was saying he would do this for years, and he was Chancellor and PM for the period with the highest bank bonuses in history. He had the CEO of RBS knighted!
I don't get what your point is here. Brown is no longer leader and what he did or didn't do shouldn't have any bearing on what Milliband will do.
Living Wage - It's a little ambiguous. The fact is, there isn't enough money in the country to pay all minimum wage earners, say, £10 an hour. It would be lovely if everyone could live in comfort, but not everyone can. That should be a long-term goal, rather than a pledge for the current Parliament.
It is a long term goal- “People shouldn’t just be paid a minimum wage of £5.80 an hour. I want to move towards a living wage of more than £7 an hour. You would make a tax cut for business conditional on them paying a living wage.” Funnily enough, that arch-lefty bogeyman Boris Johnson increased the London Living Wage to £7.60 last year.
50p tax rate - This really doesn't need to be there. Chances are, if somebody is making £150,000 a year or more, they've done a fair bit to contribute to society and to the country. Do they need the extra money? No. Do they deserve it? In most cases, yes. The richest of the rich find ways around this, anyway.
That's a very weak argument. There are plenty of people who've done a lot for society and the country who earn nowhere near £150,000. I don't see calls for their tax burden to be reduced. As for finding ways around paying their fair share of tax, if it's OK for benefit claimants to be scruinised so closely, then it should be OK for people dodging paying their fair share of tax to receive the same treatment. After all, the amount of revenue lost through tax avoidance is many times more than the amount lost through benefit fraud. As an aside, the bankers' bonus levy introduced by Campbell was originally slated to raise about £700 million, and a lot of the commentariat suggested that it'd raise far less as people would find a way around it. In the event it raised around £2.5 billion. Makes you wonder whether a lot of the 'it's not worth doing this' received wisdom is a load of bollocks planted by those with most to lose should they actually start paying their fair share.
Graduate tax - I don't believe he's cited a figure for this. But wouldn't you rather get your loans out of the way in a few years (there are student loans now) than pay tax for receiving a higher education every day of your life?
No, because initially I was unemployed or doing low paid work and it was incredibly difficult to meet the repayments. Eventually, I defaulted and ended up with the interest frozen while I paid a debt collection company a much-reduced amount until I got a proper, decently paid job.
Yes, university is government subsidised. But it's provided for the most intelligent youth in the country to get the education they need to really make a difference. It will encourage more people to bypass university and get a job straight away, and it will also encourage university graduates to move abroad. Plus, if you can afford to pay the £20,000 odd that university costs straightaway, then you should have the option to do that, rather than paying several dozen times that amount in taxes over your lifetime. It's not as bad as David, though, who wanted to take away the charity status of private schools and start taxing school fees. Seriously. And he's supposed to be the right wing guy here.
Again, if I'd had the option of paying a couple of extra pence in PAYE until I'd paid off my fees rather than being in hock to banks and debt collectors, I'd have jumped at the chance. There's no need to soak people for years, either- they pay extra until their university fees are paid off, if they're earning more they'll be paying more through general taxation anyway.
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Oh, stop. I'm not calling Ed Miliband a Commie. I'm saying he does represent a lurch left for the Labour party, even if he says he doesn't.
Female Cabinet - Yes, women are underrepresented in Parliament, because not as many women are interested in a career in politics. This has nothing to do with some secret underground oppression of women. Cabinet is supposed to represent the Party and to a lesser extent the House of Commons. Not the people. Also, the Commons should represent people's beliefs, not their ownership or otherwise of a Y chromosome.
Trade Unions - Really, they should have no say in this at all. Those trade unionists who are Labour members should absolutely be able to vote. Those who aren't, shouldn't. I don't like the idea of these towering masses of workers who are rallying behind a single party. Do you see Goldman Sachs employees having votes in the Conservative elections?
Banks - I was just emphasising Labour's tendency to talk a lot and then do nothing.
Living Wage - Working towards it is a good thing. Fining companies for not doing it fast enough...er... And also, Boris raised it by 15p. And clearly, nobody in London is exactly starving to death.
50p Tax - They don't have the tax burden! People who are earning below £150,000 don't pay 50% tax on anything. And think about it: Is somebody who is earning £900,000 a year (for example, the Director-General of the BBC) really going to give £400,000 in tax to the government? There are probably perfectly legal ways around this. Have you considered why Britain has so few billionaires, relative to, say, America? It's because Britain taxes everything above the "rich" limit at 50%, and everyone leaves. As another aside, I'm pretty sure the "300,000" figure is complete bullshit invented by the government, because if you look around, say, London, and count the houses/flats which would definitely be unaffordable to anybody earning below £150,000 a year, you will count a lot more than 300,000. And that's a tenth of the population of the UK.
Graduate Tax - Fine. My main issue with graduate tax isn't actually consistent debt. It's this:
Imagine two students at, say, Cambridge, A and B. Both of them being at Cambridge, they are both very intelligent.
A works hard in university. He genuinely puts in effort through the three years, and finishes with a first. He gets a high-paying job as a barrister. He is, after a few years, earning £400,000 a year. On top of paying 50% tax on the majority of that, he has to give 2.5% back to his university. £10,000 a year. At this rate, he would pay off his university in two years. But he doesn't. He keeps paying. He works for thirty years and pays a total of £300,000 to the university. Or, about 15 times the cost of the degree.
B slacks off. Not a day goes by when he doesn't get wasted. He hardly does any work over the course of the year, and does no revision at all. He graduates, only due to his intelligence, with a third. He gets a rather lower paying job somewhere or other.
Is it then right that A should have to pay extra to fund B for B's slacking off?
Is it right that A should have to pay extra at all, when he's done absolutely nothing wrong, and indeed, everything right?
I mentioned healthcare and main school education earlier as inalienable rights. University education is not a right, or anything close to it. It is a luxury which should be afforded to those who can genuinely take advantage of it.
(Former) Lead Moderator and (Eternal) VGC Detective 
