State of the Market

[Peoplesoft bloke]

Home schooling is classed as private education if you didn't know, so has been hit by the 20% VAT addition.

Eh?

[fakenick]

If you want go private its fine, but you need to cough up the tax to support the ones who lack those options.

Aren’t they already subsidising these services by paying for them (via tax) and not using them?

[gables]

Why is clobbering private schools a good thing? Not everybody who privately educates their kids are rich or even middle class. A lot of people are having to do it because state education often fails kids particularly around bullying. A lot of parents who home school kids do so because they may have kids who have autism or other conditions. Again, they are being failed by state education so have no choice. Home schooling is classed as private education if you didn't know, so has been hit by the 20% VAT addition.
There should be no VAT on school fees and there should be no university fees for anyone other than international students. This to me is bonkers and is the fault of both Tories and Labour.

I wouldn't be sending kids to private schooling to avoid bullying, other reasons maybe*, but not bullying. As an Army brat I was sent to boarding school so talking from experience of what I witnessed.

*not that I could find any so my kids attended the local school even though we could afford private education.

[dx4100]

Why is clobbering private schools a good thing? Not everybody who privately educates their kids are rich or even middle class. A lot of people are having to do it because state education often fails kids particularly around bullying. A lot of parents who home school kids do so because they may have kids who have autism or other conditions. Again, they are being failed by state education so have no choice. Home schooling is classed as private education if you didn't know, so has been hit by the 20% VAT addition.
There should be no VAT on school fees and there should be no university fees for anyone other than international students. This to me is bonkers and is the fault of both Tories and Labour.

A lot of tired arguments there. What about all the kids facing the same issues who don't have the family resources to send their children to private school and have to go to state schools which are starved of funds ? The state sector needs more money to overcome these issues for the rest of the children and not just your privileged offspring.

Its great stuff. You are only being asked to pay 20% VAT on something that only offers value to your children. Exactly why we have VAT.

Next we should be applying VAT to private medical insurance for all the same reasons.

Whatever the sob story don't think others with less resources aren't walking them. If you want go private its fine, but you need to cough up the tax to support the ones who lack those options. Seriously its disgraceful these private businesses can operate as if they are a charity.

[SchumiStars]

Labour, looks like tfl and the train unions will be striking over pay next month. The joy.

[avonleigh]

Very happy with Labour so far...

Clobbering private schools, taking money off pensioners who don't need it, increasing taxes on companies rather than workers and apparently HS2 coming back to life.

The sort of people who moan about this stuff are the very problem in our society and enabled the Tories to run this country into the ground over the last 14 years.

Why is clobbering private schools a good thing? Not everybody who privately educates their kids are rich or even middle class. A lot of people are having to do it because state education often fails kids particularly around bullying. A lot of parents who home school kids do so because they may have kids who have autism or other conditions. Again, they are being failed by state education so have no choice. Home schooling is classed as private education if you didn't know, so has been hit by the 20% VAT addition.
There should be no VAT on school fees and there should be no university fees for anyone other than international students. This to me is bonkers and is the fault of both Tories and Labour.

[dx4100]

I do think after 14 years, a new government at least have the right to be giving a fair hearing. I just see a lot of people who will never be happy with a Labour government whatever they do.

Very happy with Labour so far...

Clobbering private schools, taking money off pensioners who don't need it, increasing taxes on companies rather than workers and apparently HS2 coming back to life.

The sort of people who moan about this stuff are the very problem in our society and enabled the Tories to run this country into the ground over the last 14 years.

[gables]

Also interesting that in the past the LibDems were very vocal about PR, they seem less so now :-)

[coolhandluke]

PR is one of those systems that look good on paper but in practice deliver chaos. We would simply have a coalition with the fringe parties holding the country to ransom.

A few years ago the National Front would have once a large number of seats if PR was in place.

[sreed]

Doesn't really work though does it? The government is usually voted in by around a third of the voting population which isn't a ringing endorsement for them to do anything they want without considering other perspectives.
We get a very limited choice in first past the post - much better would be a proportional system where voters could vote for smaller parties, such as the Greens and where they would have some influence on policy in government.

The Americans are in a similar (or even worse) position with a lot of people holding their noses to vote for Republican policies with a manbaby president.

Absolutely agree with what you've said, but the system is what it is and in that context the elected government (irrespective of party) does what suits its ideology, vested interests and electoral fortunes.

I would prefer a PR/ish system to FPTP any day, but again we had a referendum to move away from FPTP and the electorate rejected it soundly. If Reform was voted into power in July, and they enacted their manifesto, that would've given us PR as well, but that didn't happen.