Wednesday 23 March 2011

Making Allowances

After the pursuit of the oil companies in order to cut the fuel duty, after the plan for a universal pension thanks to Iain Duncan Smith, and after the repeated acceptance of the principle of the maximum multiple by David Cameron, what next?

We need to ensure a permanently higher rate of corporation tax on the banks and the utilities, with the money spent on reimbursing employers’ National Insurance contributions for workers aged 25 or under and 55 or over, and with strict regulation to ensure that no cost is passed on to workers, consumers, communities or the environment.

We need to mutualise the banks and to return the utilities to public ownership, while safeguarding the United Kingdom by opposing any relinquishment, either of central government’s preference share in any corporation that included the Bank of Scotland, or of central government’s controlling interest in the Royal Bank of Scotland.

We need to make the supermarkets fund investment in agriculture and small business, determined in close consultation with the National Farmers’ Union and the Federation of Small Businesses, by means of a windfall tax, to be followed if necessary by a permanently higher flat rate of corporation tax, and in either case accompanied by strict regulation to ensure that the costs were not passed on to suppliers, workers, consumers, communities or the environment.

We need to ban any company from paying any employee more than ten times what it pays any other employee, with the whole public sector (including MPs and Ministers) functioning as one for this purpose, its median wage pegged permanently and by statute at the median wage in the private sector, and with an absolute statutory ban on paying anyone more than the Prime Minister.

We need to require every public limited company to have one non-executive director appointed by the Secretary of State for a fixed term equivalent to that of other directors, and responsible for protecting the interests of workers, small shareholders, consumers, communities and the environment.

We need a unified system of personal tax allowances, benefits, pensions, student funding and minimum wage legislation, so that no one’s tax-free income falls below half national median earnings.

We need to give every household a base of real property from which to resist both over-mighty commercial interests and an over-mighty State.

And we need to abolish non-domicile tax status.

That would be a start, anyway.

6 comments:

  1. Break Dancing Jesus24 March 2011 at 12:17

    Mussolini would be so proud of that entry poco duce.

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  2. New Labour speaks. Even from beyond the grave.

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  3. Break Dancing Jesus24 March 2011 at 16:10

    The policies of Mussolini, the tactics of Boss Tweed, the economic thinking of Amin and the common sense of Nicholas II - that is you that is.

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  4. I am tempted to ask you to set out what you know about each of these figures, but that would be unkind.

    You are a career tea boy for a reason. And it is not only that you lost them a seat that someone else would have held, taking down a much more senior figure with you.

    Now, on topic, please.

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  5. Concerning Northern Ireland likely to get control over corporation tax - what were you saying again about Wales and Northern Ireland not getting control on taxation again?

    Mystic Lindsay strikes again!

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  6. They'll never use it. The Scots never have. In fact, the only thing that seems to be happening in Northern Ireland is that Westminster is going to legislate for a lower rate of corporation tax there. Nothing to do with Stormont, although it might be given some decorative role for dignity's sake.

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