OT: Tax

Correct in all the above. Welcome to rip-off Britain. Go self employed=20 if you can and grab back some of the money.

--=20 Conor

I only please one person per day. Today is not your day. Tomorrow isn't=20 looking good either. - Scott Adams

And buy my own equipment, pay my own sick days, find my own customers, do my own books etc. etc...

You may want to go an have a look at other EU tax rates before churning out the same old tabloid driven 'rip off Britain' line again.

My German colleagues tell me they're significantly better off under our tax system than theirs.... although they're all a tad pissed off about the exchange rate which means they've effectively taken a 1/5th pay cut in the last 6 months.

But, what do they get for their higher taxes? Is the cost of living higher or lower? Are average wages higher or lower? Is the standard of living higher or lower?

I'm not being arsey, I just wonder how it works out. I'm sure that everyone would be happier here with higher taxes, if it was being spent on actually hiring coppers, teachers and nurses/doctors/midwives/cleaners, instead of managers and soldiers and accountants, and wages went up to match the increases too, so we could actually afford to eat and pay taxes, eat or pay taxes.

We aren't quite in that position yet, but I can remember the last recession, where it was a choice of pay mortgage, pay taxes, pay for food. You can't avoid the taxes, you can't not eat for very long, so the house goes. And if you are repossessed or hand it back, the council don't have to re-house you as it was voluntary.

How does that potential upcoming scenario equate to how things are going on in mainland europe.

Average wages lower, cost of living generally lower. Standard of living is a personal thing, though.

Remember that they don't have the same 'must buy a house at all costs' culture that we do.

It's very hard to compare us with mainland Europe because of differing views on home ownership.

But a generalisation of 'rip off Britain' over tax rates is incredibly short-sighted and uneducated.

Just as it is with those complaining about fuel costs / taxation etc.

Germany has bizarrely high taxes, including the bloody iniquitous church tax and "witholding taxes" which means a tax on your savings. However in most EU countries the total tax burden tends to be lower than the UK with it's shedload of stealth taxes.

What about when you combine rising taxes, with new taxes, with rebanded car taxes, with higher=20 council taxes, with higher fuel costs, and rising mortgage rates.

It all makes a difference. Just as an example, not particularly high for the northwest, but our new=20 council tax is in. =A3800 for a 2bed terrace in a not particularly good,=20 nor bad area. Ambulance increase 2 and a bit percent, council tax=20 increase 4 and a bit percent, police charge increase 17%.

I think they have already spent it on a new handheld speedgun. Never=20 seen them use it before, normally use scampart vans, or fixed gatsos=20 (Police enforcement cameras as they call them round these parts). But it=20 was out the other day, about 400 metres after a 40 dual becomes a 30=20 dual.

--=20 Carl Robson Audio stream:

But counter that against the social welfare we have in the UK that doesn't exist to anywhere near the same level in most EU countries.

Now, I'm the first to slate the system for seemingly allowing chavs to breed and exist on taxpayers money, but, on balance, I quite like our system.

Rip off Britain is the figment of a tabloid writers' imagination.

Not necessarily. Set up as a Personal Service Company so you provide=20 your labour to the companies but use their equipment and are covered by=20 their insurances if you word your T&C's properly. Books are a doddle to=20 do.

--=20 Conor

I only please one person per day. Today is not your day. Tomorrow isn't=20 looking good either. - Scott Adams

I don't just look at Europe..

Please enlighten us as to where, in the rest of the world, you can find a very well developed welfare system, a pretty damned decent NHS and tax rates significantly lower than ours?

I think you'll struggle - however, it doesn't take any thought to chant 'rip off Britain' at every opportunity, whereas the above may require a little more brain-power.

Food does seem to be absolutely dirt cheap on the continent.

OTOH in Holland you are given a fixed price at which a house / apartment / whatever can be rented out at according to it's square footage. I assume there is some sort of system of grading by neighbourhood and niceness of the apartment, but it means that rental costs tend to be lower than here. The other thing is that in Continental Europe, you have far more rights as a tenant than you do in the UK. Given that most people's experience of rented accomodation is a landlord that rips you off for a barely liveable house and keeps your deposit whether or not you've damaged the place, I can see why we have an obsession with buying.

I do reckon that housing supply has been deliberately restricted in the UK to provide a rising market allowing people to spend against the value of their homes and keep the economy ticking over too.

It does seem that we are heading towards the mainland europe average for tax take though, without the advantages you get on the continent. Public transport is s**te and expensive. The roads are full of holes. So on and so forth.

It also seems to me that basic essentials are rising higher than you'd ever think from inflation figures. Tax, food, heat and housing are not cheap.

I don't give a shit about a welfare system like ours which does nothing=20 but encourage people to sit at home scrounging off it. I'd rather not=20 have to fund it and the NHS through my taxes and instead find a better=20 way of getting the same services through the private sector.

Take for example, unemployment/sickness. I pay =A340+ per week in=20 national insurance. I'd be lucky to get =A370/week. For =A320 a month, I=20 can get income protection insurace that'd pay three times that. BUPA=20 can provide the same cover as the NHS does for a damned sight less than=20 the =A3140 a month I have left, plus whatever other taxable sources the=20 NHS is funded from that I pay, after paying for income protection=20 insurance. I'd also not have to wait 3 months to see a consultant=20 either so would save money and get a better service.

The only taxes we should have to pay are council tax and let everyone=20 fend for themselves. You'd not find the amount of people on the sick as=20 you do now.

--=20 Conor

I only please one person per day. Today is not your day. Tomorrow isn't=20 looking good either. - Scott Adams

In fact, in terms of *total* taxation, including so-called 'stealth taxes', we're more or less bang on the European average for tax vs GDP.

At around 37%, we're a long way behind, for example, Sweden where the rate is over 50%.

The US comes in at around 30%, but doesn't have proper NHS and welfare state benefits, Japan is just behind the US, but I don't know what benefits they offer.

Just goes to show that 'rip off Britain' is the tabloid myth I always believed it was.

I assume you've also considered going back to living in caves and hitting women over the head with clubs in order to procreate, then?

Why would we need to? The "Welfare State" is comparitively new, having existed for just over 60 years. People managed to survive without living in caves before that.

We live in a developed society - 'f*ck you, Jack, I'm OK' is not an acceptable way of thinking.

I'm sure you'd come around to this way of thinking if you, for whatever reason, were no longer able to work.

Do you really think it would be right and just for a civilised society to have disabled people sat on street corners begging for scraps? - because that appears to be what you're proposing.

Weekly shop Italy, EUR 40. Weekly shop England £90. Everything else cheaper than in the UK as well, even electrical/electronic items where Italy used to be much more expensive than the UK. Still, they're closer to China and the Suez Canal than we are.

You might think RoB doesn't exist, but my experience of living aroudn Europe is that the Brits really are ripped off. There's a dual-level rip off. Firstly the Brits get ripped on the retail price, it's well above the rest of Europe. Secondly they get ripped on quality. Most of the content of British supermarkets would not be served to the dog in the rest of Europe.

Couple of reasons there, neither of which are 'rip off Britain' related

- one is that, on the continent, fruit and veg. which wouldn't even qualify as 'class II' in the UK is considered perfectly acceptable. We live in a market driven by appearance over actual eating quality. The same sort of thing also applies to meat and fish.

Secondly, and this is probably purely a guess, as I can't be arsed to track exchange rates - but the pound has been losing value on the exchange markets for quite a while now, as the Euro has been getting stronger - hence the cheaper price of goods imported from the far East.

Hmmmmm.

It's a very different marketplace and can't be attributed to 'rip off Britain' - we have a strong reliance on supermarkets and pre-prepared foods which just doesn't happen on the continent, where proper markets and local suppliers still exist.

Some may claim this is 'rip off Britain' but it's market forces, rather than policy.