Ken Livingstone: I favour 75 percent tax

Nick Kaplan

Surely claiming property that rightly belongs to other people has far more to do with leftist morality than Tatcherism, I wonder what Red Ken might have done with that jacket??

David

If I remember rightly, Ken's plans for sorting out our economic mess was to tax people at 50% who earned just a few more thousand than him a year. Don't take him seriously on economic matters, or social matters, or anything...

J H Holloway

Kenneth only ever fought one election in a straight fight - against Boris.

He stole the leadership of the GLC via an internal coupe, he took the safe seat of Brent by hounding Reg Freeson out, he fought against Norris (post Archer) in 2000 and Norris - who was then tied up in the tube and rail problems- in 2004.

He doesn't care much for democracy and elections 'cos they get in the way of his re-ordering of society.

Just like his mate Chavez who's making another attempt to extend his tenure to 2020.

Jeremy

"One other thing stood out for me from the evening. A man got up and said that his son had recently returned from a night out wearing a leather jacket that wasn’t his. He asked his son where he had got it from and his son explained that at the end of the night the jacket had been left at the club and so he had taken it. The father thought that this was all MargaretThatcher’s fault."

What this actually shows is that the son is more honest than the father. The son admitted what he had done and therebye implicitly took responsibility for his actions. However the father's response, in this context, is quite extraordinarily disassociated and surreal. In blaming "Margaret Thatcher" for what his son had done, was he seeking to absolve his son from taking responsibility for his own actions? Or was he seeking to ward off any implicit criticism those actions might have contained of the way in which he had brought his son up? Or was he seeking to absolve them both - at a stroke - of any responsibility for any part of it by blaming the whole episode upon "Margaret Thatcher"? It is quite extraordinary. But what is most extraordinary is that the son should have turned out to be such a relatively straightforward chap when the father is so bizarre. And it also says something about the totemic and utterly irrational status Baroness Thatcher has assumed for the left - like some sort of straw witch upon which anything and everything can be blamed. Didn't Snowdrop assume the same significance in Animal Farm? You know, any failure in the revolution was blamed upon the wicked subversion of an animal who had long since fled.

On a seperate note, I had my first proper leather jacket nicked from a pub/club at Kings Cross in 1985. You don't think it might be the same one, do you? Still in circulation after all these years....well, it was a bit of a classic. I must admit that at the time it never occurred to me that Margaret Thatcher might be to blame. Was she DJ-ing that night? I could have sworn that I never saw her on the premises, but you know how cunning she is....

Lee Jakeman

"Winners take responsibility, losers blame others", as they say. Much easier to blame Thatcher than to confront ones own deficiencies.

Wilhelm

75% tax, why doesnt nutty Ken go the whole hog and have 100 % tax and we can either all live on cabbage soup or emigrate.

Dominic Allkins

Regarding the son taking the jacket that wasn't his and the father blaming Margaret Thatcher.

The first question that springs to my mind is 'How old is the son?'. Let's assume that as he is still living at home he is around 20(ish) at the oldest. That would have made him only two years old when MT was ousted as PM and nine years old when Tony Blair came to power.

I'm more inclined to think that the son's behaviour has been conditioned by the eleven years of Labour misrule than the two years he was alive when MT was still Prime Minister. In that context the father's comment is simply asinine.

I'm not going to comment on KL's tax comment - not worth wasting brain power.

Forlornehope

It was that old Fabian Bernard Shaw who described his profession as "tax collector on two and a half percent commission".

Peter Wilson

Who's Ken, didn't he used to be Mayor or something?

He is, ironically, like Thatcher in one respect, hasn't quite got over the fact he's no longer in power / office.

At least Thatcher had an excuse, it wasn't the voters what dunnit.

John Moss

Ken is bonkers. Like all those on the left and many on the right who think that a "progressive" tax system requires ever higher rates of tax.

It doesn't. It simply requires a generous chunk of tax free income at the bottom and a single rate thereafter. Simple maths will explain.

Average earnigs are £20pa. You are allowed half average earnings tax free. Thereafter, you pay 50%.

I earn £20, I get £10 tax free and pay tax on £10 @ 50%. So, I pay £5 in tax on £20 income. My tax rate is 25%.

You earn £100. You get £10 tax free and pay 50% tax on £90, paying £45 in tax. Your tax rate is 45%.

QED

denis

Those earning £100k+, such as Spectator readers, would no doubt prefer to see the income tax rate reduce with higher earnings—no doubt to give 'incentive'. I'm sure Spectator readers don't know what it's like to have to go without heating.
This has nothing to do with left-wing/right-wing. It has to do with morality, and the fact is that the better off can afford to do with fewer luxuries more than the rest of us can afford to do without essentials.
Nothinh wrong with cabbage soup actually — you might try it some time.

Tim Carpenter LPUK

I think real change IS going to come out of China, just as real change came out of the dropping if Little Boy on Hiroshima.

Why do people think that "change"=good? Maybe this is one of the successes of Comprehensive Education that people accept such pap? Change is meaningless, which is why it is the new term loved by LibLabCon.

How about "improvement" for once?

Don

I want a Ferrari made of gold and chocolate, that isn't going to happen either.

Nick Kaplan

Denis; the rich paying more tax will not make the slightest difference to your heating bill. At 40% we are right on the margins of the laffer curve, any increase in tax rates could have negative revenue effects, if the effects are positive they will be minimal. This isn't about morality it's about the politics of envy.

Why is it that need is defined as wanting other people to have less? Greed is wanting to keep the money you earn? And charity is wanting to spend other peoples money to win votes??

Peter Wilson

Re: Denis, good to see you make generalising assumptions about Spectator readers, although, as you have posted a comment on here, you're one as well, so clearly you don't know what it's like to go without heat either.

Lola

'Ere, that ken Livingstone. 'E's bonkers. Ain't 'e?

TrevorsDen

Dennis is a pillock - I do not earn anything like £100K and my heating is turned down.

Talia

Actually, denis, I’m in the lower tax band bracket and am an avid Speccie reader. I am not envious of or bitter towards those in the productive private sector who earn more and do not believe in raising the tax burden on them. As for the state sector, that’s quite another matter.

Dan

I'm amazed that anyone bothers to listen to anything Livingstone says - as a Londoner i was very happy to see him go - the man's a lunatic and should be ignored.

patently

I'm sure Spectator readers don't know what it's like to have to go without heating.

Actually, I do know what it is like. I also had to go without sufficient food, at one point.

My response to this problem was to note its unpleasantness, and resolve to work harder to ensure it did not happen again. The result of that work, of course, is that I am now taxed in order to pay the fuel bills of both those who cannot work harder, and those who will not work harder. What was your response, denis?

One of those groups gets my sympathy, and is welcome to the money. One does not, and is not.

zachary albion

I understand that one of Red Kens outside income streams is as advisor to Hugo Chavez - the dictator who is systematically destroying all opposition to his regime in Venezuala.

I wonder what working for a brutal dictator pays these days - & is the tax on it paid in Venezuala or London?

Ken Livingstone has destroyed my faith in Britains left wing - I used to see them as the opposite side to the political spectrum to me, a position I could respect & I did trust them with the country when they initially got power.

Now I see them as they really are - the enemy of the British state & people.

biggestaspidistra

Denis was it?: "Those earning £100k+, such as Spectator readers..... I'm sure Spectator readers don't know what it's like to have to go without heating."

Through circumstance and career choice I have lived my life fairly productively below what most would consider the poverty level. I shudder at the craven misguided wastage of this labour government whose righteousness has been a tool to destroy everything (including with Channel 4's help a town square in Castleford, Yorkshire that was offending no one.)

I came to the Spectator when I discovered it to be a thoughtful and intelligent place (sometimes more so for its comments than its journalism) during the mass eviction from the Today programme's site ( for which I contribute through my licence fee). I shall stay here until the labour government find a way to freeze political comment on the internet.

Madasafish

..... I'm sure Spectator readers don't know what it's like to have to go without heating."

As i sit here, myhands are blue. The snow is on teh ground but our heating is off until 5pm - when it comes on for an hour and a half and then goes off. I can't afford any more.

When i was brought up, we had a coal fire. Period NO heating apart from that.

So I do not complain.

People who make comments like taht are moronic.

And they will get nowhere as they think someoen shoudl be TAXED to make them comfortable..

REDNEX

Anyone who thinks extra tax for those earning more than £145K will solve anything are fools. It's merely using the 'politics of envy' to soften up those on middle incomes for the massive necessary tax rises if Labour get in again. It will also be counter-productive as those affected will be using every trick they can to avaoid paying it--even if what they save is swallowed up in accountancy fees. Principle.
Remember also that people on this level of income are, in the main, self-employed and don't get the benefits most employed PAYE workers are entitled to. The simple fact is we should all be on a flat rate of 10 per cent, which would be possible without NULAB'socialism' and the EU draining away billions to no effect other than to make this a shit country.

Mr Angry

Denis@10.11am you're talking rubbish like all those on the left do when it comes to poverty.

Nobody in Labour's wefared up to the eyeballs Britain has to do without genuine essentials or often even the little luxuries either. That is why Labour have introduced the spurious concept of "relative poverty" which seems to revolve around whether or not you can afford to buy £250.00 trainers for your kids or not.

Nobody in Britain, except perhaps for the elderly whose pensions have been stolen by Gordon Brown, needs to be existing on cabbage soup unless they have made a life choice to spend their benefits on something else other than decent food; drink or drugs normally.

It really is time that the nonsense left wing agenda of claiming that genuine poverty and borderline starvation still exists in the UK was properly and robustly challenged.

"Of course the left love the poor, that's why whenever they are in power they make more of them" - Berlusconi

Robert McIntyre

Jeremy,

I don't think the son was honest at all, he was just lying, who would leave without their jacket, especially given the current weather? Plus if it really was a club they have ticketed cloakrooms so why would they give it to him just because it's "been left"?

Bainbridge

Oh dear,

So this is where all the right wing nutjobs hang out. A 75% top band sounds about right to me, as I am of the school of thought that believes in redistribution and that increasing taxation increases government revenue. The laffer curve is of course complete nonsense as the rich know, but the government doenst dare to find out.

Also, anyone on less then 100k who identifies with the Spectator really is deluded, or a lapdog to the rich.

Paul

Somewhere on the internet there is a there is a clip of a rowdy meeting where Ken is asked about the future of the diaspora from the Israeli conflict. "We should throw open our doors to all of them" he says, or something similar, in his capacity as mayor of a city already bursting at the seams.

Does anyone know where to find it?