Question Time tonight

[breadandcircuse]

Ah. I haven’t seen those media.

He has been on a lot of news/politics programmes over the last few years, as Shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury/now in the role in government.

 

[danny la rouge]

Regretfully, I’m out.

 

[PTK]

Regretfully, I’m out.

You are out in a regretful fashion?

 

[stavros]

It'll be about 40 minutes of budget stuff, followed by something about the Tory leadership and/or the US election, maybe something about people in the Middle East blowing the fuck out of each other, and then maybe a silly one.

 

[breadandcircuse]

QT is now unwatchable. I used to watch it regularly years ago, but I can't bear it now, especially with Bruce and her pro-Tory bias at the helm.

 

[tommers]

I've had to turn it off.

People moaning that they've had £1.3 million taken out of their profits and now they might have to lose two of their 30 units cos they are unprofitable.

Those are your choices mate. You don't "have to" do anything. Use the profitable units to support the unprofitable ones if you're that bothered.

Lowering the threshold costs £600 / employee. For a full time employee on minimum wage, say £22k a year, then the increase is a difference of £750, which is an increase of about 3% (assuming they have no other benefits and they will cos you need to pay them a pension for a start). That percentage will drop the more you pay your staff. Nobody likes being taxed but all this "I'll need to decide how many of my team to keep" reminds me of "tax me and I'll leave the country" that they always come out with.

 

[stavros]

It's symptom of our political system, whereby any party that gets into government will have to compromise some of what was in their manifesto. If you don't promise the moon on a stick people won't vote for you.

 

[redsquirrel]

Eh, the last general election was marked by nether of the two major parties offering anything more than the most bland beige - as you were - offerings. The fundamental differences between the proposed budgets of the two were in the grand scheme pretty minor, less than 10%.

Rather than offering the moon on a stick both the Tories and Labour offered so little that that voters detested them with their share of the electorate dropping to either the worst (Con) or third lowest post war (Lab).