State of the Market

[willendure]

I've come to the conclusion that the best form of government is a benevolent dictator.
The problem there of course is what happens when the next one is not benevolent.

Benevolent or not, dictatorship is the worst form of government for the reason I pointed out - that a country is too big to be run by one person, or one person plus a small echo chamber. Its far too fragile.

You could call this the paradox of communism - capitalism is unfair, so communism has individuals owning nothing and everything collectively owned, but that cannot happen without being centrally enforced, leading to concentration of power in the hands of the very few, who may not "own" everything but effectively do since they have power over everything, so now the concentration of wealth is just more extreme although expressed in terms of power not money. Leading to complete stagnation and collapse.

Stagnation and collapse is what I believe will happen to China over the next few decades. Bad decisions were made by the commies, such as the one child policy, that are dooming them to this outcome.

Its much more robust to have wealth, power and decision making distributed much more evenly amongst everybody. Of course, that means we have to figure out how to make decisions more collectively and have good mechanisms for doing so. I don't worry that the people of the UK would be bad at this, being manipulated into making a bad choice in a single referendum is more a symptom of how our current system is inneficient because it can allow that to happen - there was a lot of money in the pro-brexit campaign that sneaked in via Ulster and was able to bypass spending rules, for example. I think the British people would be very good at making decisions, given the chance to do so and become more involved at the local level.

[willendure]

VAT on private schools is not richly deserved. Do you realise home schooling comes under private schooling? More and more parents are home schooling cos state education is failing them. These are normal working class parents not rich people.

I agree. The super rich aren't even going to blink at the VAT. Someone who can just afford it without the VAT will likely be withdrawing their children, and how does that benefit society?

[sadkingbilly]

[oliverson]

Anybody find Total Jobs a useful resource for contracts?

I started getting emails from them, not sure how that happened, and what they were sending was not right for me. But that led to visiting the site and changing the search params to contracts in my skillset and seeing that there appears to be quite a few on there that are not coming in my jobserve feeds.

For comparison, I currently have 0 ads in Scotland on jobserve, and in the last 1 day, total jobs has 7.

Just makes me wonder, what else I might be missing accross all the various possible platforms for finding job ads.

I discovered this a few weeks ago, a very different set of opportunities compared to JobServe, though the site does have some issues separating contract from perm. Useful though, it may very well lead to landing something.

[Cookielove]

[QUOTE=kingmob;n4313796]

hmmmm actually just over 3 hours, but I think we've established paying attention isnt your strong suit?

Labour may end up being disastrous but trying to get us back in the black was always going to cause some pain in the short term.

Strangely the one farmer i know voted for Brexit, then moaned he struggled to find workers and had lost the EU subsides too. Go figure? Yes, 500 or more farms (per year) may be forced to pay inheritance tax on anything over £1.5 million for a single farmer (£3 million for a married couple) and then only at 20% rather than 40% the rest of us will be expected to pay over the £325,000 allowance, which is a pretty sweet deal, they can also spread the payments over 10 years. There will be farms who have to sell some land for this to work, but it will still be agricultural land so still only for that use.

By the way isnt the lack of inheritance tax the reason Jeremy Clarkson bought a farm in the first place?

Pensioners winter fuel allowance was always contentious as it wasnt means tested, so got paid regardless of any other income. Taking it away for all was going to be a bold move when there are plenty of pensioners who cant afford to heat their homes. How much difference £300 made to them is debatable, but they do have the time to complain.

VAT on Private Schools? Very richly deserved.

Businesses? Well looking at the lack of wage growth in Britain perhaps there needs to be a reset on C-suite pay and Shareholder dividends?

After 13 years of Tory Governments perhaps Labour is the answer?


Away and boil yer heid!!

you are talking utter drivel ….

Labour have it in for anyone trying to better themselves….politics of envy is what they are about. Hence the VAT on private schools …

[Cookielove]

kingmob you’ve not posted since 2016 then crawl out with insults….have you suddenly woken up hey !

[Bluenose]

For a matter of record.

August 2025 is a bust in the UK and EU contract market.

[agentzero]

[QUOTE=Cookielove;n4313832]

hmmmm actually just over 3 hours, but I think we've established paying attention isnt your strong suit?

Labour may end up being disastrous but trying to get us back in the black was always going to cause some pain in the short term.

Strangely the one farmer i know voted for Brexit, then moaned he struggled to find workers and had lost the EU subsides too. Go figure? Yes, 500 or more farms (per year) may be forced to pay inheritance tax on anything over £1.5 million for a single farmer (£3 million for a married couple) and then only at 20% rather than 40% the rest of us will be expected to pay over the £325,000 allowance, which is a pretty sweet deal, they can also spread the payments over 10 years. There will be farms who have to sell some land for this to work, but it will still be agricultural land so still only for that use.

By the way isnt the lack of inheritance tax the reason Jeremy Clarkson bought a farm in the first place?

Pensioners winter fuel allowance was always contentious as it wasnt means tested, so got paid regardless of any other income. Taking it away for all was going to be a bold move when there are plenty of pensioners who cant afford to heat their homes. How much difference £300 made to them is debatable, but they do have the time to complain.

VAT on Private Schools? Very richly deserved.

Businesses? Well looking at the lack of wage growth in Britain perhaps there needs to be a reset on C-suite pay and Shareholder dividends?

After 13 years of Tory Governments perhaps Labour is the answer?


Away and boil yer heid!!

you are talking utter drivel ….

Labour have it in for anyone trying to better themselves….politics of envy is what they are about. Hence the VAT on private schools …

I think you're the one who's off their trolley.

The YouGov polling shows the public were behind the inheritance tax leveling for farmers. It benefited rich farmers overall and targeted legislation for poorer farmers makes sense should they need that instead of us pretending the farmers complaining - Jeremy Clarkson and all the rest, whose primary interest was tax evasion or severe avoidance.

The Tories asset stripped and sold off much more than people usually realise. Outsourced contracts with poor terms and conditions. Public debt and the interest on it are the problem, and that can't be fairly said to be Labour, who have only in power for one year.

Additionally, state schools have been stripped of money and have faced austerity for a long time. Rather than improve equality, you want no VAT on private schooling. No, again, YouGov polling shows the general public are in favour of VAT on private schooling.

It's nice to see England ripping itself up, with people here who are in the top 5% of earners (minimum) complaining and pretending the public support their privileged stance, when the opposite is clearly true.

This thread has become a joke. There is not much market chat to talk about because the market is destroyed. FTC is possible in the public sector within the next 2 years. People look back to the golden days of income splitting with their married partner and paying almost no tax on very high earnings. For obvious reasons those days are gone.

The trend will be towards fairness and equality, not people moaning about taxes above 150-300K+ earnings. Get used to it.

[Cookielove]

agentzero oh wow do get off your high horse …this is getting tedious!!

You are making a heck of a lot of sweeping statements and you know nothing about me ….nothing.

Who is earning those eye watering amounts …I’m not …it’s like you are jealous of those that do/did…well unfortunately I’m not one of them…

It’s dictatorial ….and bizarre! And ending with a “get used to it”…it would be funny if it wasn’t so pathetic ….

I’m not interested in arguing the toss as we clearly have v differing views .

[willendure]

The trend will be towards fairness and equality, not people moaning about taxes above 150-300K+ earnings. Get used to it.

Yeah right. Wages aren't trending down because we are on the edge of some state of utopian equality, so much as that the country is going broke. And Rachel Reeves and the rest of them have their heads so far up their own arses they are completely out of touch with reality. We can debate VAT on schools and minor stuff like that all day, but its the bigger stuff that matters - investment in the country, what we produce, and not selling us out all the time, they just don't get it. Not that the last lot did either.