UKIP go from strength to strength

[Arakhor]

Anyone who agitates for abolishing inheritance tax is clearly angling for the rich to get richer. It's populist, especially designed for rich people and those too ignorant to understand what it really means, and is in the same category as flat taxes - just one more way to widen the gulf between rich people and everyone else and would put yet another nail in the coffin of social mobility.

 

[Ajidica]

If UKIP wins or not it doesn't matter.
Britain will still look like a cross between Threads and Quatermass.

 

[Borachio]

That is true. I still haven't got over Labour's 'Oath for Teachers' proposal.

I imagine school teachers already do enough swearing as it is. In camera or sotto voce, as it were.

 

[Tahuti]

Anyone who agitates for abolishing inheritance tax is clearly angling for the rich to get richer. It's populist, especially designed for rich people and those too ignorant to understand what it really means, and is in the same category as flat taxes - just one more way to widen the gulf between rich people and everyone else and would put yet another nail in the coffin of social mobility.

Inheritance taxes disrupts the continuity of families. Such beautiful things like having an ancestral home are more or less impossible with inheritance taxes. They primarily hit middle class families as the super-rich have numerous ways to avoid those. And even when these are supposed the super-rich, the problem is in the taxes they pay while they are alive, not the taxes they pay when they die.

 

[Arakhor]

Whilst I don't disagree with maintaining ancestral homes (I'm a British historical enthusiast, after all), if the excuse for dropping a significant tax is because the rich already know how to avoid it, well then this country is going to the dogs much faster than I thought it was.

 

[Tahuti]

Whilst I don't disagree with maintaining ancestral homes (I'm a British historical enthusiast, after all), if the excuse for dropping a significant tax is because the rich already know how to avoid it, well then this country is going to the dogs much faster than I thought it was.

I could live with an inheritance tax that only targets financial assets, and not immobile assets, for instance.

 

[JollyRoger]

The formal inheritance tax only really hits couples with 10 million or more in assets in the U.S. The informal inheritance tax in the U.S. is disguised as retirement accounts where all assets are taxed as ordinary income when they come out of the account rather than getting favorable capital gains and dividend treatment when much of the account includes such types of income.

 

[luiz]

Here's what I don't get about inheritance taxes: what's the rationale for them being any higher than regular gift taxes?

 

[Tahuti]

Here's what I don't get about inheritance taxes: what's the rationale for them being any higher than regular gift taxes?

In the Netherlands, inheritance taxes are covered under the same laws and rates as gift taxes, if my memory serves me well.

 

[luiz]

In the Netherlands, inheritance taxes are covered under the same laws and rates as gift taxes, if my memory serves me well.

Then it's a fine system (provided the rates are reasonable). I see no reason why it should be taxed at a higher or lower rate (other than pure money-grabbing opportunism, which of course most governments practice).

 

[Arakhor]

I could live with an inheritance tax that only targets financial assets, and not immobile assets, for instance.

That would seem reasonable, I suppose, maybe with a immobile asset top-up limited to (say) £2 million or something. (If it's not obvious, I'm neither an economist nor an estate agent.)

 

[Tahuti]

That would seem reasonable, I suppose, maybe with a immobile asset top-up limited to (say) £2 million or something. (If it's not obvious, I'm neither an economist nor an estate agent.)

Interestingly, Sweden (the supposed paragon of all things Left) abolished all inheritance taxes in response the Southeast Asia tsunami in 2004, since apparently, the large death toll of Swedish nationals during that disaster created several - apparently - insurmountable problems with inheritance taxes.

 

[Truronian]

I'm a big fan of inheritance tax. It certainly need to be reviewed as things currently stand, but if we could get a comprehensive and airtight inheritance tax in place (above a certain threshold) then I think it would do the country the world of good.

 

[Quackers]

Andrew Lawrence, slaps down mainstream comedians and the BBC:

Can't help but notice increasingly, a lot 'political' comedians cracking cheap and easy gags about UKIP, to the extent that it's got hack, boring and lazy very quickly.

Particularly too much moronic, liberal back-slapping on panel shows like Mock The Week where aging, balding, fat men, ethnic comedians and women-posing-as-comedians, sit congratulating themselves on how enlightened they are about the fact that UKIP are ridiculous and pathetic.

Yet the Clacton by-election victory and what looks to be a likely victory in the Rochester by-election goes to show that UKIP have their supporters.

Out of touch, smug, superannuated, overpaid TV comics with their cosy lives in their west-London ivory towers taking a supercilious, moralising tone, pandering to the ever-creeping militant political correctness of the BBC with their frankly surreal diversity targets.

The reason UKIP have resonated with voters is because all the other parties are too spineless to tackle the issue of immigration.

Our elected representatives seeded control of the borders of this country to the EU and it's been catastrophic for us all, an unmitigated disaster. Nothing works. Public transport infrastructure is dysfunctional. Hospitals and Schools are dysfunctional. The housing crisis continues to blight our economic potential and destroy the hopes and dreams of a generation. The benefits system is totally out of control. All because there are far,far too many people living here.

For every wonderful, welcome skilled worker our open borders bring into this country, there are also benefit tourists and criminals. For every person that comes here and contributes richly to our culture, there are those that refuse to assimilate, which breeds distrust and has led to a fractured, broken society, where people have lost all sense of community.

Can't say that I'm a UKIP supporter, but I can see why other people are, and I don't disrespect them for it.

What I don't respect is lazy comedians, who market themselves as 'political' but rather than having the courage of their own convictions jump on the militant liberal bandwagon- which has been the source of so much stand-up over the years- so that they can get TV work and line their own pockets.

There is a deeply ingrained militant liberal politics at every level of the BBC, despite the fact that it's tax-payer funded and supposed to be neutral. It's a biased organisation and the only sorts of political comedians that are welcome within its corridors are those that reflect it's values.

Essentially when we're watching these 'political' comedians cracking their poor UKIP gags on the BBC, I think we need to be aware they are neither engaged nor passionate about their subject- but money-grubbing charlatans, toadying up to the militant liberals that pay their wages, mirroring their own beliefs back at them in an act of false flattery so that they'll feel smug and validated and keep them on the BBC tax-payer funded gravy-train.

I'm not a political comic, my only ambition for my comedy is to make a room full of people laugh. But there are those that disingenuously market themselves as political comics, not out of any genuine conviction, but in an effort to line their own pockets, and I don't like their hypocrisy.

UKIPGASM!!!

 

[Quackers]

 

[Takhisis]

How dare people have their own ethnicity? I share Mr. Quackers' indignation.

Inheritance taxes disrupts the continuity of families. Such beautiful things like having an ancestral home are more or less impossible with inheritance taxes. They primarily hit middle class families as the super-rich have numerous ways to avoid those. And even when these are supposed the super-rich, the problem is in the taxes they pay while they are alive, not the taxes they pay when they die.

But that's the problem: you're defending the nobility, aristocracy, etc. while we pinkos i.e. socialdemocrats want things to be distributed a bit more evenly.

Interestingly, Sweden (the supposed paragon of all things Left) abolished all inheritance taxes in response the Southeast Asia tsunami in 2004, since apparently, the large death toll of Swedish nationals during that disaster created several - apparently - insurmountable problems with inheritance taxes.

'Paragon of all things Left'? What the hell? They're a monarchy, you should be worshipping them.

 

[Senethro]

I'm a far left deep cover crypto-marxist liberal vanguard for the coming SJW revolution because the other side feels the need to point out those ethnics and women as special categories of not-really-comedians.

These groups of people don't cause me to experience fear of the unknowable so when someone "Others" them I give them the sideways look and mentally take a few steps away from them.

 

[Arakhor]

"women-posing-as-comedians..."

So he's above making lazy political gags, but certainly not above cheap and lazy sexism? Right...

Dara Ó Briain apparently responded to Lawrence on Twitter saying, "Hey Andrew, sorry I’m so aging, bald and fat, but as an an immigrant I’ll retain my disdain for anti-immigrant politics."

 

[Ajidica]

"women-posing-as-comedians..."

I find the female comedians on Mock the Week to be just as good as the guest comedians.
ie: Most of the time they are passable, sometimes quite funny, and sometimes slightly painful.

 

[Arakhor]

And why on earth is Farage always photographed with a drink in or near his hand? Is he a borderline alcoholic not even attempting to hide his habit or is he trying desperately to be seen as "one of the lads"?