Wight Portal For The Isle of Wight Community

I've had a question thrown at me from Jacy a regular user of the site. She asked what would I do if I was Prime Minister.

If you have read my article 'Election 2010', you will be aware that I am not a fan of the system of politics we have in this country. It seems to me we are only a democratic nation when it suits those who make the rules and as mentioned in that same article this system has changed little since the 1600's when Oliver Cromwell basically invented it, although his vision was for something different to how it has turned out.
The phrase if I was in charge, can be heard in pubs all over, whether it relates to a sports team or the leadership of the country. It's easy to theoretically change stuff. Chop taxes, increase the minimum wage, give more money to pensioners and so on.
How would you fund your ideas?

Being a Prime Minister is the same as being the chief executive of a large company. But unlike other large companies, PLC's and LTD's you can't easily see the accounts and so until you actually get the job you have no idea what the financial situation is.

Economics at school was a boring subject that no one understood, there was talk of assets, liabilities and a load of other long words and phrases that made no sense, when really it's quite easy.

Your business produces a product or provides a service, that you sale. The sales price is made up of all the costs (the money you have spent) that have gone into the making of your product or service, plus a bit more so that you make a profit. If at the end of a trading year you have covered all your costs, the money left in your bank account is profit. Congratulations you're still in business!

Assets and liabilities are or should be seen differently in the business world. There is a very fine line between the two. A house for instance, seen by many as the biggest asset you can have. True, but only if you don't have mortgages or loans set against it and the house is creating money not just having money spent because of it whether through maintenance or utility bills, in which case it is a liability. If however it produces an income that covers both maintenance and the utility bills with a profit then it is an asset.
This is the  golden rule and is easy to comprehend. On a bit of paper make two columns one headed 'Assets', the other 'Liabilities'. Now go through everything you own and see as an asset, by using the golden rule place each in it's correct column.
Which column has won?

If I was PM under the present system and unable to scrap it and start again, what would I do?

Abolish income tax

Income tax was invented so that the Monarch of the day could afford to go forth and conquer other countries. Once the Monarch became just a figure head of the country as is the case now and was replaced by a self appointed leadership of lords who held the majority of the money and land, had to then come up with a way of keeping the taxes but also providing something in return. Today we call them public services.
Up until the Thatcher years local council's employed all their own staff to run the services, whether it be street cleansing, maintenance of their stock of housing and public buildings, or the library service. All these and more have now been sold off by tender to the private sector. It no doubt at the time seemed a good way to save money and it probably did in the short term, but the money saved wasn't invested wisely, as market forces forced the costs of the private sector through the roof they needed to charge more to provide the same service. Taxes increased to compensate.

As you know the country is divided into regions by counties. Here we go under the heading of Hampshire and Isle of Wight, I believe we were separate once but don't quote me.

If income tax was abolished would we lose these services?

If you live hand to mouth like most people do, you take the sum of money that you have and divide it so you cover each commitment, for instance this much for food, this much for the electric bill and so on.
Running a country although you are dealing with a larger amount of money is no different, or so you would of thought.

Just before the recent election I had a letter from the Department of Transport. I'd emailed our local MP to find out why our road tax here on the Island goes to the central pot. Read Genghis's article that fuelled my email. I naively thought that the road fund licence is collected and spent on the UK's road network. How wrong was I? Not since 1937 has there been a direct relationship between vehicle excise duty and road expenditure. It is apparently, 'Applied efficiently and flexibly according to public expenditure priorities'.
So from that example, I'm assuming all taxation, whether it be fuel duty, vat or import duty, it is all treated in the same manner, in which case is it no wonder we are in the mess we are in?

Under my Government your services would be safe, because you'd pay for them the way you do now through local Council Tax.
By abolishing income tax you'll have more money in your pocket to spend on what's left of the stuff that is British made. This will enable businesses to expand, thus employing more people. It will encourage investment in this country in the form of new businesses.

The Welfare State

When this system was introduced just after the war in 1946/7 it was a good idea. Free healthcare for everyone, plus financial help to the poor and needy and give the retired an income. All paid for by a new tax called National Insurance that every working person had to pay. It worked, only because we were rebuilding Britain after major war damage, which lead to at least 70% of the working population being employed and paying into the system.
As it stands now the system hasn't worked for decades. There was no contingency plan in place for the mortality rate to increase long after the age of retirement, so now we have poor pensioners. No one foresaw that there would be so many unemployed or such low paid workers and so the hospitals have suffered.
With income tax gone this system would work again.

As the system stands now, both here on the Island and most places on the mainland people are working for minimum wage £5.93 an hour, I believe it is at the moment. Out of that comes income tax and National Insurance, leaving you without enough to live on. So you apply for tax credits which is part of the welfare state's money that has to cover the free healthcare we all expect because we pay into it.
What prey tell, is the point of taking the money away from you, that incidentally incurs administration costs, just to give it back to you under a different name?

Everyone on this planet is born equal. You bring nothing in, you take nothing when you depart. The bit in the middle should be filled with happiness and riches, not being a slave to money.

In Cromwell's time there were 2 civil wars within years of each other. The so called law of the land had taken the liberty and freedom that everyone is born with, away. Yes there must be rules and regulations and yes rules and regulations are broken. But these same rules and regulations are only broken because we have to chase after the mighty pound that is taken from us by an out of date ill run system.