Comments by "Tony L" (@tlangdon12) on "Richard J Murphy" channel.

  1. Some change was necessary, but dismantling the whole government, in a matter of months, will lead to incredible problems. Surely an intelligent person would have done some research and thought about what needed to change? As Richard points out. Musk is breaking everything as quickly as he can. Mistakes will be made needlessley, and vast amounts of value destroyed. It's a social experiment without parallel. I'm not sure I want to be one of Musk's white mice.
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  2. I disagree. The potential for fraud isn't dictated by policy, but how the policy is implmented. It seems that neither the goverment nor the civil service has been paying attention to the prevelence of fraud, and don't know how to implement policies in a way that prevent fraud from the outset.
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  3. Only if Scotland join the EU! The EU Army will then have the Scottish Regiments, complete with Bagpipes and Kilts. The USA Army will be quaking in their boots, or they should be.
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  4. The US has actually been a very reliable ally to the UK and Europe, only under Trump has this waivered.
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  5. Putin will test this out. Putin is clever. He has been testing Europe with his attacks on undersea cables, and will find other subtle ways to threaten the territory of NATO members, e.g. by invading Norway's northern border. A small incursion, just to see what NATO does if Norway fires shots at the Russians to force them to leave.
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  6. When the benefit rates are so low, it is forcing people either to work or to steal.
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  7. Yes, it's curious how there are no private emergency and accident departments in the UK. I hope that this remains the case.
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  8. Trump has done that most successfully.
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  9. It was uninteresting, and not just because so much of it was trialled before yesterday. Uninteresting is potentially a good thing. The Employers NI rise was only 1.2%, and the increase in the Employment Allowance means that nearly 1 million of the smallest real businesses will not pay any NI. (One man companies will still pay it). The problem with 'uninteresting' is that it means that the fundamental issue of how the effective tax rates on very wealthy people hasn't been addressed. My opinion is that it is too early to expect a Labour government to implement a really well thought out way to increase the effective tax rate, that cannot be got around, but the clock is now ticking.
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  10. No, Trump's plot is disruption, as Richard suggests in the video. We have to show him that he is impotent against the rest of the world.
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  11. Much like with the pandemic, the result of NOT doing anything would have been much worst. If you don't think so, you need to study a bit more.
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  12. Opposite of what is needed. Frauds always rely on speed and the lack of attention to detail that comes with it.
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  13. So Trump wants US voters to be paying $6 a gallon for gasoline (which is what we pay in the UK)! Brilliant. I wonder where all the money will go?
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  14. But it will also destroy a lot of valuable land including Mar-e-lago.
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  15. I'm happy to have some diversity as to how local government is arranged.
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  16. America has oil. Not need Russian oil.
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  17. Reform assumes that everyone who isn't wealthy will rent their home from a Reform MP!
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  18. There isn't any real disquiet about where the aid provided to Ukraine has gone. Even Trump hasn't suggested an investigation (yet). The money has been spent fighting the Russians. In many cases, the 'money' wasn't money at all but military hardware that has been thrown into the fighting. Any investigation would find that most of any cash sent to Ukraine was spent buying drones, food and body armour for the army.
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  19. A really interesting analysis Richard. It's great to see some research and rigour behind the intuition that I have that most wealthy people will not leave the UK if taxes rise a bit, because it's a great place to live compared to the alternatives. Most of the people who say that the UK is dreadful, haven't tried to live in the British Virgin Islands or the Cayman Islands. They might have visited these places, typically on a cruise or behind a high resort wall, but they are insulated from the realities of having to try to live in such places. Thank you for calling out the nonsense of the rich media types who don't want to pay any more tax or live in a society where their might be more equality of wealth.
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  20. @ I believe the UK is extremely resilient and that we will succeed in spite of poor government.
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  21. It should be quite promising for able-bodied people. Much of the green economy requires construction and electrical skills for installations, and will produce on-going needs for maintenance and security responses. The majority of jobs don't require a university degree, but do require intelligence, common sense, adaptability, physical fitness and some basic mathematics.
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  22. This is because the wealthy were not taxed enough to help the poor.
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  23. I am sure you will achieve more working to your own goals than you would if you worked to someone else's. Best wishes to you for 2025.
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  24. Talk about extracting the wealth. It's not surprising that many enterprising parents have bought houses where the son/daughter is attending university to reduce the cost for their child. Once the other rooms are rented out, the exercise is reasonably profitable, especially for the government that gets the CGT on the increase on the price of the house.
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  25. @ No, I’m retired, so I’ve paid all the NI I need to to secure my pension, and continue to pay income tax on my income (and VAT) to pay for everything else.
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  26.  @lestrem11  No, I'm also going to be paying 40% IHT on my pension, which is a lot more than the extra NI any employer will pay per employee (The extra NI is less than £1000 per employee per year, so £40K over a working life). I expect to pay £100,000in IHT, where previously I wouldn't have paid any. I'm not that well off.
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  27. Have you considered self-employment?
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  28. I would much rather pay migth taxes and not have to wait as long to see a GP, especially if that GP is relaxed because there is some slack in their timetable. We need slack in our systems to cope with illnesses, unexpected events, opportunities that present themselves, etc.
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  29. The problem is that education lags behind in the real world. The pace of change has increased and no one is quite sure what the impact of AI will be. So what should our schools be teaching to equip children to thrive in the world they will inhabit? Is it how to light a fire? Or how to interact with a sentient machine?
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  30. He is certainly uncaring, and should not have been given the power to do what he is doing. His mistakes will be Trump's fault and legacy.
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  31. Sounds like a good plan.
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  32. Richard suggested that we would not have a use for oil. This is not correct. Some uses of mineral oil are unlikely to ever be replaced, such as plastics manufacturing, and certain lubricants. These uses don't require the oil to be burned unless we fail to recycle the plastics and burn them carelessly. One interesting question is what will happen to the petrol that is necessarily produced as a by-product of refining crude oil, when we no longer want to burn it as fuel.
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  33. That is because the managers aren't trained properly or incentivised NOT to overlook the human resources at their disposal.
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  34. Except China isn't in the room, and haven't indicated that they want tobe. They know Putin has made a mistake and want to see how it plays out.
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  35.  @thesenate1844  Alternatively, Farage could say he is going to achieve the same great things that Trump is achieving with his chaos.
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  36. You don't know how lucky you are to live in the UK. You have become blind to the many positive benefits of living here. I wish you would leave. All you do is moan! Why don't you get off your a*rse and get involved in improving things? Because you don't want to make it nicer for immigrants? Because you don't want to make it nicer for people who are crippled? Because you don't want to help anyone, not even yourself?
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  37.  @stevencalvert9454  He's a sad mate in reality.
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  38. The commercial entity isn't paying the tax, the owner is. And the benficiary is receiving a whole load of wealth. If I am to be taxed on the property I leave to my children (which is rented out so is providing a home to a family), then farmers should be taxed too.
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  39. While I agree that you should have to pass an exam, you should not have to undertake a training course. If you can pass the exam without studying, you should not need to spend the time attending the training. This is a productivity point that so many of our organisations fail to appreciate.
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  40. The answer seems reasonably clear from Richard's presentation - all the sacked government workers will be available to replace them!
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  41. Actually you can do all of that; not completely, but to some degree. Taxes and Regulations go someway to fixing stupid, curing greed and forcing moral decisions, but only if they are implemented intelligently.
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  42. Maine seceding from the USA and joining Canada might make Trump think!
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  43. That's rubbish. Many European nations, including the UK, have had economic growth and a state that was engaged in the marketplace as a regulator and a provider of finance.
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  44.  @stevehiggins1263  So does the USA, and they have been trying a different model for the last hundred years or so, and they have increased debt and inflation. I'd argue that inflation is mainly caused by the quantative easing employed to rescue the banks in the financial crisis of 2008. As to the cause of debt, you have to look whether governments are borrowing to invest or borrowing to spend day-to-day (or on vanity investment projects that will never produce any sort of return even a non-financial one).
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  45. The government really needs to be looking at the reasons small businesses fail, because the statitics are frightening. Self-employent is another area that schools don't team children about. If you were not allowed to start a self-employed business until you had demonstrated some knowledge and ability to manage such a business, the economy would be saved a vast amount of waste.
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  46. And the logical outcome of quantative tightening is falling asset prices which makes wealthy people feel poorer, and therefore complain about tax rises more than they would do otherwise.
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  47.  @stuartd9741  Only if the legislators allow loopholes. Close the loopholes and everyone has to pay their fair share.
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  48.  @MrAlb3rtazzo  So they aren't leaving to go to low tax envirronments!
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  49.  @refsOnReality  Sel-employment can be a blessing, but starting a business at 18, before you have experience of how businss works, is very risky. Better to start working in another small business and learn what you can from the owner about how to make it work.
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  50. We know that the Market alone does not produce the outcomes that most people want. We have examples such as Thames Water, Royal Mail, the Energy market, private rented housing, railways, banking, etc, etc. Most people want a caring state that provides a counter-balance to market forces, to prevent capitalism from putting all the choices in the hands of the very rich. Not everyone wants to see their neighbour as themselves, because this requires empathy and self-sacrifice. The UK has been following the US model of individual independence for too long, hence the rise of gated-communities. It's not ok that the rich starve everyone else of law and order because they are safe behind their gates! I felt that Tony Blair's government achieved the best political outcomes because they had Gordon Brown making sure the government actually cared and Tony Blair to find that 'third way' that was neither Tory nor Labour, but was a sensible long-term strategy that both parties could live with. Merry Christmas Richard! Thank you for a thought-provoking year.
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