Post by Another JohnPost by The Natural PhilosopherPost by Tim StreaterPost by Another JohnLike all our public services, it used to be ours, now it's not.
It was never ours. Like all nationalised stuff, it belonged to an entity known
as "The Government", which could do what it liked with it. What d'ye mean,
"ours"? Had share certificates, did you?
It is a fallacy the Left use that nationalised services 'belong to the
peepul'. They never did.
They are funded by the peepul but belong to whitehall and the unions.
By "ours" I mean "Us: the Community of the Nation of the United Kingdom".
Part of our Common Wealth, to be run for our benefit by the Government of the
day. (It takes _taxes_ to do this, but successive Governments, for a few
teach) the population thar if taxes are continuously cut, public services will
go down the toilet.
So: privatised public services used to belong to us, but now to whom do they
belong? Giant corporations - all of them foreign - who have never been able to
believe their luck, when the Tories decided that the best way to avoid
squaring the circle of low taxes versus good public services would be to flog
them all off, to whoever would take them, so that _they_ could be blamed when
the railways fell apart, and the bus companies, and the Very Wonderful Private
Energy industry, which does such a great job of keeping prces fair and simple.
Profit - preferably as excessive as you can make it - is all.
I would be less cheesed off about all of this, if the people who run these
"businesses" got paid such astronomical rewards, on the mutual merry-ground of
"top people".
Go ahead.
Taxes are already high. I don't bother with overtime, because I'm not
willing to sacrifice my precious free time, only to have 40% income tax
+ 2% national insurance + another 13.8% (as a contractor I pay both
employee's and employer's NI) taken in tax. Then I am charged 20% VAT
when I spend it. Then there's having to pay into a pension, due to the
UK's pitifully low state pension.
On top of that there's fuel duty, VED, insurance tax, council tax,
councils grabbing every penny by charging high rates for parking,
congestion charges, low emission zone fines, tolls and a whole lot more.
After all that, I am expected to pay £1000 a months for accommodation,
while two of my sons are away at university.
My wife is disabled and so our home needs heating 24 hours a day and the
costs of that are going up and up.
We go out very little. There's little enough left for hobbies to have
some enjoyment in life and there'd be little point to life with even
higher taxes.
Yes, you could tax the highest earners a bit more - but push too much
and, as has been seen lately, they can decide that they are better off
emigrating.
