Overheard at the LFGSS golf club bar

Yeh is shit, I was the first in my family to go due to Blair and could pay my way through by working at a supermarket. Not sure my daughter will go and is a bit crap to think the door has been shut again so quickly.

Because you don't generate that much by taxing a few individuals.

If you look at tax on earners we are far from being a low tax economy.

I have a shitty car

I thought you didn't have a car!

All those Honda Jazz jokes.

it's way more expensive now.

As is everything, yet income for most people hasn't risen to match it.

I wasn't suggesting taxing individuals I was suggesting that if you were to tax individuals then instead of taking money off a 50yo that bought a flat in London in the 80s, maybe focus on the fuckers robbing us blind elsewhere.

Indeed, I missed out on free uni by a couple of years, but the much smaller fees back then were enough to mean I'd have really wanted to go to find a way to afford it, stayed in my now wife's halls for a while so got the fun stuff for free, she had to drop out part way through year 2 though as it also became unaffordable for her, I think the debt is close to being struck off soon. Honestly don't think there's anyway in hell I'll be able to pay for my daughter to go, which is a shame because she's pretty smart and likes learning, although I did too at that age.

free uni

Really? When was that?

I think my first year was the last year of free Uni, because I repeated the first year I then paid fees.

So - a while ago.

If it was their primary residence they wouldn't be stung. I don't see an argument for people who lucked out on an investment property not paying their fair share.

Sep 1998 it started in the UK.

I split my final year over two years so I paid some fees (£800 or so) in that final year.

Because housing is a bad investment - for society and for the individual and it’s mildly obscene that shafting people still working is seen as a valid retirement plan.

Because housing is a bad investment

Is it?

shafting people still working is seen as a valid retirement plan.

All of us paying tax now are paying to care for old people living longer

Send them out into the snow...

We don't have snow because climate change.

Oh we will... we will...

Why not start by taxing companies properly?

Or taxing income from investments at a similar rate to income.

I'm not sure what to contribute to this thread, on this subject.

My mortgage is just under 8% of my take home pay, which without context sounds ridiculous. Context being we bought our flat when house prices were at their lowest due to the financial crash (aka, luck) and bought something that needed a lot of work.

But that's lacking the broader context that I'm 45 and have no kids, so the demands for things like bedrooms and so forth just aren't there - I admit, I'd always thought (when younger) that by this point in my life I'd have two kids and a dog, and live in the countryside, but that never happened.

Which means that I essentially I'm responsible for very little, and everything that I thought I'd have to put in place for my kids has never been required - school trips, outside interests, university and so on, up to help with deposits for their notional first houses.

So! I have, relative to my peers who have 2.4 kids and everything that goes with that, a lot of disposable income, and just do what interests me with very little thought to the future (other than a pension, which I've recently moved to an advised fund, no idea if that was a good idea but it made me feel I'd done something).

Without any dependents I admit I have only minor savings and don't really plan anything, you could fairly accuse me of living a very self-centred and thoughtless existence, in the main.

On the subject of inheritance tax given that the cats are unlikely to outlast me I don't really have a dog in that fight, but my suspicion is that if it were to be made 100% then we'd see an awful lot of property transferred to holding companies, or moved to trusts - basically that the rich would find a way round it that would likely elude the less well off, so it would probably catch out one-man operation farmers but do nothing to tax the Dyson's of this world.

But all the old rich cunts don't have 'income' do they? They've just got a fuckload of properties and cash laying around, no?

salary != wealth

good point

Have we agreed to kill the rich and eat the old yet?

so much content itt to quote in the golf club thread today

Yes.
It’s illiquid, unproductive, inefficient and massively contributes to inequality.

Paying tax that funds pensions and social care is part of a collective responsibility to look after people.

Paying some parasites mortgage off for them plus whatever they want on top to justify their ‘investment’? Fuck off.

Banned from the golf club ^.

User Cozey get back to posting about which garden designer to employ

I was going to clad her office in oak while she is away this week on a business trip.

As kind and thoughtful a gesture this is, it feels like it does belong in here.

Re: Education, I got a maintenance grant from the local council for yr1 of University, no fees then either. Without that I'd have not gone.

I doubt we'll be able to fund our daughter going to uni. By then it might not be a priority the way things are going.