General Politics Thread

[DMCs]

20 minutes ago, coprolite said:

If the triple lock is reinstated and kept then todays pensioners will benefit a bit but future pensioners will benefit even more. 

It's already been announced that it will be reinstated next financial year. Unfortunate in my view as it was a good opportunity to scrap it but pensioners are a big voting block. 

There is no guarantee that the triple lock will exist in 40-50 years and in fact there is no guarantee that the state pension will exist at all. With the way the demographic pyramid is looking and with the birth rates what they are it's just not sustainable in any way. The Edinburgh metro area has the lowest birth rates of any metro area of over 800k people in Europe.

I'm certainly not including any assumed state pension in my retirement planning and neither would I advise anyone else in my age cohort does as well. I'd rather that working people had more money in their own pockets now so that they can raise a family.

20 minutes ago, coprolite said:

It's a bit short sighted to argue for its removal because some pensioners have more assets than most young people. 

Not just some. The vast, vast majority have more assets than not only what we might consider young people but working age people in general. Not only that but they genuinely have more post housing cost income than working age people at the 20th percentile, the median and the 80th percentile. 

They don't need a large % increase to their benefits in the main. 

Sure some are struggling which is why the best policy would be the elimination of the universal state pension system entirely and simply move to a means tested system.

20 minutes ago, coprolite said:

Raising benefits and wages would help. 

Inflation is the highest it's been since I was born, we're in a global energy crisis that is only going to get worse with the Russian situation, now we are in a global commodity price crisis and we just went £400bn into debt to deal with COVID. The only way we are going to see rising wages is with economic growth and we just raised taxes by £15bn then immediately blew half of that revenue on giving pensioners money that most of them don't really need so that the Tories don't get voted out. It's absurd.

Edited March 30, 2022 by DMCs

[Granny Danger]

1 hour ago, Donathan said:

Is Jamie announcing their intention to transition male to female or that they already transitioned female to male? I’m confused by what pronouns I should be using here. 

Just stick with Tory bástard.  It will cover all options and be factually descriptive.

[101]

1 hour ago, Donathan said:

Is Jamie announcing their intention to transition male to female or that they already transitioned female to male? I’m confused by what pronouns I should be using here. 

They/them seems fair until they say different.

[Donathan]

Just now, 101 said:

They/them seems fair until they say different.

He has now said he will continue to present as a man and wants to be known as he/him until further notice 

[coprolite]

Had a look on Jamie's website there. Jamie's  succeeded in getting the travellers moved on. Tory c**t, whatever the pronoun. 

Edited March 30, 2022 by coprolite

[Lofarl]

Tory p***k is it not?

[Sherrif John Bunnell]

Talking of Tory p***ks/c***s

 

[Granny Danger]

2 hours ago, Sherrif John Bunnell said:

Talking of Tory p***ks/c***s

 

Was just about to post this.

I promise myself not to get wound up by these c***s but it is difficult.  They are genuinely obnoxious people who are totally blind to their lack of humanity.

[Soapy FFC]

9 hours ago, coprolite said:

Here's a pension inequality for you: if you die with unused pension funds, they are outside of inheritance tax. So you can accumulate wealth tax free and pass it on tax free so long as you have enough money to do that. If you're properly rich you can live off your iht estate and not touch your pension.

 

To be pedantic, the pension pot is only untaxed if the person dies before they are 75. Once they are 75 the person receiving the money from the pension pot pays tax on it at their normal rate. There are also other limits on the size of the pot that means if the pot is big enough over the lifetime of the pension, tax will also be paid, so it's not as simple as just saying it gets passed on tax free.

[coprolite]

33 minutes ago, Soapy FFC said:

To be pedantic, the pension pot is only untaxed if the person dies before they are 75. Once they are 75 the person receiving the money from the pension pot pays tax on it at their normal rate. There are also other limits on the size of the pot that means if the pot is big enough over the lifetime of the pension, tax will also be paid, so it's not as simple as just saying it gets passed on tax free.

Being limited to putting £40k in any given year in the pot (or an average of £20k to £25k a year over a working life) is really not going to affect most people. And i'm pretty sure it escapes inheritance tax whatever age you die at. 

It's an excellent tax planning tool for the fairly wealthy, but won't shelter billions. That's what non dom status and crown dependencies are for. 

[Granny Danger]

15 minutes ago, coprolite said:

Being limited to putting £40k in any given year in the pot (or an average of £20k to £25k a year over a working life) is really not going to affect most people. And i'm pretty sure it escapes inheritance tax whatever age you die at. 

It's an excellent tax planning tool for the fairly wealthy, but won't shelter billions. That's what non dom status and crown dependencies are for. 

No Soapy is right regarding the 75 age thing.  That’s twice you’ve been wrong today.

[coprolite]

9 minutes ago, Granny Danger said:

No Soapy is right regarding the 75 age thing.  That’s twice you’ve been wrong today.

Pretty sure it's income tax the recipients pay after 75, not iht. 

And utd are dundee's wee team

[Granny Danger]

8 minutes ago, coprolite said:

Pretty sure it's income tax the recipients pay after 75, not iht. 

And utd are dundee's wee team

It is income tax.  Cove Rangers are Aberdeen’s big team.

[Soapy FFC]

9 minutes ago, coprolite said:

Pretty sure it's income tax the recipients pay after 75, not iht. 

And utd are dundee's wee team

 

1 hour ago, Soapy FFC said:

To be pedantic, the pension pot is only untaxed if the person dies before they are 75. Once they are 75 the person receiving the money from the pension pot pays tax on it at their normal rate. There are also other limits on the size of the pot that means if the pot is big enough over the lifetime of the pension, tax will also be paid, so it's not as simple as just saying it gets passed on tax free.

Sorry if I wasn't clear but that's what I meant.

As for your other comment about people contributing 20-25K a year over their working life, that is far more than most normal people will pay. However just because you don't pay that amount into your pension doesn't mean you you won't end up with a sizeable pension pot. A quick back of the packet spread sheet shows that someone earning £25K now, assuming normal'ish pension contributions from both the employee and employer, an annual pay rise of 1-2% and a conservative pension growth of 3%, means that at the end of their working life (45 years) they would have a pension pot of at least £500K.

My point is people talk about large pension pots as if they are exclusively for the rich, but many many people earning 'normal' wages will end up with large pension pots, on which they they then have to live off for the rest of their lives. So when people talk about the need to tax the 'rich' who are sheltering money in their pensions, all that will happen is the 'normal' person will get hit, as the 'rich' will use other means to shelter money (as there is limit of just over £1m over the lifetime of the pension before other taxes kick in). Remember, of that pot only 25% can be taken out tax free, the rest is subject to normal income tax rules, so if you decide to suddenly withdraw a large amount from your pension, you will get hit with a lot of tax.

 

 

 

[Bairnardo]

Rishi [emoji23][emoji23][emoji23][emoji23]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-60941902

[GNU_Linux]

Viktor Orbán wins 4th term as prime minister

Viktor Orbán has won a fourth successive term as Hungary’s prime minister, capping a campaign dominated by his controversial stance on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine with a speech that appeared to mock Volodymyr Zelenskiy, the Ukrainian leader.

Ecstatic chants of “Viktor, Viktor” greeted Orbán as he addressed supporters of his Fidesz party outside its election headquarters on the banks of the Danube in Budapest as results made the scale of his victory apparent.

With nearly 86% of the vote counted on Sunday night, Fidesz was on course to increase its parliamentary majority by winning 135 seats in the 199-member parliament, crushing a six-party opposition bloc that united to form a common front aimed at unseating Orbán.

Instead, the ruling party has retained its two-thirds super majority, which has enabled it to reshape Hungarian politics and social policy during its 12 years in power.

The popular vote margin was 53.7% for Fidesz to 34.4% for the United for Hungary opposition grouping, fronted by Péter Márki-Zay, who conceded defeat on Sunday night.

“The entire world can see that our brand of Christian democratic, conservative, patriotic politics has won,” a smiling, swaggering Orbán – with members of his cabinet behind him – told the crowd, standing in frigid temperatures. “We are sending Europe a message that this is not the past – this is the future.”

Orbán also made reference to criticism directed at him by Zelenskiy, who has repeatedly challenged the Hungarian leader over a perceived lack of support and an unwillingness to condemn his close ally Vladimir Putin in person for the invasion of Ukraine.

“This victory is one to remember, maybe even for the rest of our lives, because we had the biggest [range of opponents to] overpower. The left at home, the international left, the bureaucrats in Brussels, the money of the Soros empire, the international media and even the Ukrainian president in the end,” he said to laughter from the crowd.

Conceding defeat, Márki-Zay said he was “devastated” and attributed its scale to Fidesz’s gerrymandering methods and other changes to the voting system while in office.

“I don’t want to hide my disappointment and my sadness. We never expected this to be the result,” he said.

“We knew beforehand that this was going to be an imbalanced fight. Yes, they’ve cheated too. But we’ve also said that since there is no democracy in Hungary and they’ve changed the whole system, the districts.”

Orbán’s party has strengthened its hold on office through a favourable media ownership structure and changes to the voting system that critics say renders elections unfair.

Márki-Zay, a 49-year-old economist, has complained bitterly that he was given only five minutes of airtime on public TV to state his case.

The opposition has also complained that Fidesz has a huge advantage in election spending and communication. It said it had about 2,000 election advertising billboards throughout the country to 20,000 for the governing party.

Akos Hadhazy, an opposition MP, said: “Orbán can get any of his lies to Hungarian people. Even if we hire the best communication experts, the government will always win these races because they can get their messages to much more people than we can.”

 

Even before polls closed, opponents called attention to possible voter fraud – the possibility of which prompted the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) to dispatch a 200-strong team of election observers.

The OSCE’s office for democratic institutions and human rights has criticised what it said was blatant gerrymandering in several constituencies. Analysts predicted that gerrymandering would mean United for Hungary needed to win about 5% more of the popular vote than Fidesz to stand a chance of gaining a parliamentary majority.

The Clean Vote Coalition – a grouping of four Hungarian NGOs – said it had received numerous complaints of irregularities. They included electors being offered 10,000 Hungarian forints (£23) for their vote and, in another location, meat being on offer as an inducement. There were also reports of illegal bussing of voters.

Fears of fraud had been fuelled before polling day after a large number of election ballots – most of them said to be for opposition candidates – were reportedly found partly burned in a sack at a landfill site last week in the Romanian region of Transylvania, where many ethnic Hungarians have dual citizenship and voting rights.

Fidesz’s victory came after high voter turnout – a factor experts assessed would help the governing party – despite frigid temperatures and wintery weather.

Orbán’s fourth term, which will become his fifth overall, may also pose a possible conundrum for Nato and the EU amid mounting concerns over Hungary’s attitude to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and whether it is a reliable alliance partner.

Although Orbán has so far not attempted to block sanctions and military responses to the attack, he signalled an unwillingness to contemplate measures that would cut supplies of Russian oil and gas.

He has also refused to allow the supply of weapons to Ukraine or permit military aid to pass through Hungarian territory, angering Nato allies and Zelenskiy, who has branded him Putin’s sole European supporter.

Orbán, who has forged a close relationship with the Russian leader and met him 12 times, retooled his election campaign after the outbreak of war on 24 February to position Fidesz as the “peace” party, vowing to stay out of a conflict that he insisted had nothing to do with Hungary.

He said reducing energy dependency on Russia – which provides an estimated 90% of its gas and 65% of its oil – would wreck Hungary’s economy.

At the same time, he cast Márki-Zay’s opposition bloc, which has called for closer cooperation with the EU and Nato, as “warmongers” who strove to send weapons and Hungarian troops to Ukraine.

There has been speculation that Orbán – who has consistently forged bonds with Russia and China, cast the EU as an enemy, and styled himself in recent years as “illiberal” leader – would pivot to a more pro-western stance after securing his re-election.

However, Daniel Hegedus, a Hungarian analyst with the German Marshall Fund, played down such expectations.

“There may be some realignment towards the west, but in general what he is seeking is a return to business as usual with Russia – both in terms of energy cooperation and economic cooperation,” he said.

Orbán’s stance on the war has left Hungary increasingly isolated among its western allies but has proved popular among voters, especially those in rural areas.

[welshbairn]

5 minutes ago, GNU_Linux said:

Viktor Orbán wins 4th term as prime minister
 

 

It certainly cheered them up in Moscow.

[GNU_Linux]

Disappointed the Hungarian Two Tailed Dog Party failed to win a seat. Calling United For Hungary a broad coalition would be an understatement as at one end you have the Hungarian Socialist Party & at the other Jobbik.

[Detournement]

A BBC reporter today said on air that Melenchon will tell his supporters to vote for Le Pen in the second round. 

Obviously they miss telling daily lies about Corbyn so they are projecting that onto JLM. 

[welshbairn]

17 hours ago, Detournement said:

A BBC reporter today said on air that Melenchon will tell his supporters to vote for Le Pen in the second round. 

Obviously they miss telling daily lies about Corbyn so they are projecting that onto JLM. 

What channel, and roughly what time?