Ahhhhh! Why can we not build anything in this country except ever higher private office developments in London?
Depends which country you mean. The Scots, for some reason which escapes me, seem to be able to do at least some things to budget - or under budget: the new Forth bridge had an "overrun" of ca. minus 55% compared to initial estimates if my mental arithmetic is correct.
Indeed! Neither are at all good advertisements for project management.
Though those were some time ago.
So we need to look closer. The former was at the behest of the Labour Party, then very much managed from London, and the projecyt efectively managed IIRC by the Labour-LD alliance which then dominated Holyrood. It was very much against the recommendations of the SNP, which wanted to reuse the Royal High School.
The trams were imposed by SLAB and other oppsition parties on a minority SNP government very much against its wishes and managed by a Labour-LD alliance.
Fair comment, but doesn't stop the impression that all the investment is going into Central Belt while the rest of Scotland picks up the crumbs and has to make do with crumbling infrastructure, failing hospitals and unseaworthy ferries. SNP will pick up the tab for that, maybe unfairly, because they are in office and have been for the last 12 years.
Folk are making a mistake if they think SNP are going to sweep all before them.
Lib Dems really helped Scotland and their mug voters when they were running the UK with their chums the Tories. Anyone thinking people have forgotten their perfidy is sadly mistaken. They could not run a bath.
If there's anything more calculated to get the UK's clogged & calcifed constitutional (that's enuff alliteration - ed) arteries pumping, it's a letter signed by 3 of yesterday's men (2 of them hardly even today's men in their pomp). It just needs Gordy to sign up for the full quadruple bypass.
What happens to everything that was previously paid for by the missing £200 Billion, the government were not running a surplus?
It's ultra theoretical but for example it could mean -
NHS & Education spending cut by 200 billion.
But the poor have 300 billion extra to go private.
It is too simple thinking and the missing 200 Billion cannot just magic away the 200 Billion. Rich are only 100 billion worse off so poor have to make up the difference. No matter what fairytale you tell me , 200 billion is gone and things cannot be the same and the poor are worse off.
The USA has in effect implemented flat taxes, yet the USA GDP growth rate was considerably higher when rates were higher. I am sure those individuals enjoy their tax cuts, but there is little evidence that there has been a long term boost to the economy. The only thing that has been growing so swiftly is the US national debt. Could they be related?
It shows a comprehensive broadening of the tax base, as all Americans have got richer and the demand for state spending and welfare has increased. The state was much smaller 70 years ago and only the very few at the very top paid for what was there.
It actually shows the relative % amount paid by the 90% percentile - and even the 99% percentile - has increased from sub 20% to about 30% of income. It’s only the top 0.01% or top 400 that have meaningfully dropped.
That’s unfair (and those stratospheric global super duper rich escape a lot) but I’m not convinced that whacking up their tax to 60% - along with whomever else it drags in - would pull anything like an extra $750 billion in each year.
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away the 200 Billion. Rich are only 100 billion worse off so poor have to make up the difference. No matter what fairytale you tell me , 200 billion is gone and things cannot be the same and the poor are worse off.
I’d hope for his own health he’d suspend his campaign and support someone else.
However, he strikes me as the sort of person who’ll carry on regardless of consequence.
It actually shows the relative % amount paid by the 90% percentile - and even the 99% percentile - has increased from sub 20% to about 30% of income. It’s only the top 0.01% or top 400 that have meaningfully dropped.
That’s unfair (and those stratospheric global super duper rich escape a lot) but I’m not convinced that whacking up their tax to 60% - along with whomever else it drags in - would pull anything like an extra $750 billion in each year.