I thought it worth sharing this video from Prem Sikka, who is an old friend of mine, another Emeritus Professor of Accounting at the University of Sheffield, and someone with whom I have worked on many occasions with regards to tax justice. Prem is now a member of the House of Lords.
The clip is of a question Prem asked with regard to the regressive nature of the UK tax system.
I suspect that you will be more than able to form your own opinion of the feeble answer provided by the designated government minister, which entirely missed the purpose of his question, no doubt deliberately.
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Just one more slice of evidence that this Government does not care at all about inequality. How depressing.
Thank you for speaking for us, Prem Sikka.
And thank you also for proving the need to replace the House of Lords with a People’s Chamber that offers actual democracy instead of the sham we have now.
https://electoral-reform.org.uk/campaigns/elected-house-of-lords/
Prem asks what the government is going to do to address the current situation where the poorest pay a greater percentage of their income in direct and indirect taxes compared to the richest.
And the minister says we have made changes to capital gains tax and inheritance tax and increased the minimum wage. Entirely and deliberately missing the point. The government intends to do nothing to address that structural regressivity.
“This bridge is old and in dangerous disrepair, and people keep falling off it and drowning. What are you going to do about it?”
“We have installed life jackets.”
We have contracted out body recovery for £35mpa, to a lingerie company incorporated yesterday by a scottish peer.
Prem could have asked what time the next #37 bus would go passed, and would have got exactly the same answer.
The minister was reading from a script so he’d been instructed, as a compliant “speak your weight” minister of the Starmer party, that Prem would get the same answer no matter what the question.
What is interesting is that Prem is a Labour peer – of a Labour Party that has long since gone. The minister is an STP robot of Starmer’s ‘Labour’ party. They are planets apart.
How
Prem could have asked what time the next #37 bus would go passed, and would have got exactly the same answer.
The minister was reading from a script so he’d been instructed, as a compliant “speak your weight” minister of the Starmer party, that Prem would get the same answer no matter what the question.
What is interesting is that Prem is a Labour peer – of a Labour Party that has long since gone. The minister is an STP robot of Starmer’s ‘Labour’ party. They are planets apart.
I think the relationship might be decribed as strained.
It should be renamed the House of Bricks because it’s like talking to a brick wall.
It’s another world.
The minister would have been more succinct – and, possibly, truthful – if he had replied thusly:
“The working class can kiss my arse
I’ve got a foreman’s job at last.”
If I understand it correctly the savings by the rich makes up a large part of the government debt.
Yes, correct
I would say this Labour Government is incompetent, but that would be too kind a phrase. It has become quite obvious, in a remarkably short space of time, that they have no empathy with real people, and have no intention whatsoever of altering their behaviour, which in some cases, amounts to downright cruelty to the most vulnerable and disadvantaged in our society.
No government spokesperson is allowed to say anything original – even ‘we have done something, but you are right we need to do more and will come back by xxxx’ .
In this sense – all government spokespersons are nodding donkeys , zombies….
So no one listens
Thanks for sharing these gems, which we busy folk might miss 🙂
Labour! Ugh ! Soul destroying !
Inheritance tax and minimum wage increase blah blah. It’s Labour’s fig leaf to hide their naked lust for power.
And then repeats the lie about a wealth tax as if this was what was being suggested in the question, it wasn’t. Labour could use the existing levers at their disposal to address the corrosion of inequity and inequalty. They won’t.
I never expected Nu Labcon to do anything else than continue the Neoliberal experiment with gusto. Just to prove they can be a bigger, nastier dog than the Tories
Labour and the Tories are 2 cheeks of the same arse, and anyone who’s a Scot knows this defecating arse of the Establishment only too well.