UK Politics
General Discussion for politics in the UK.
Please don't post to both !uk_politics@feddit.uk and !unitedkingdom@feddit.uk .
Pick the most appropriate, and put it there.
Posts should be related to UK-centric politics, and should be either a link to a reputable news source for news, or a text post on this community.
Opinion pieces are also allowed, provided they are not misleading/misrepresented/drivel, and have proper sources.
If you think "reputable news source" needs some definition, by all means start a meta thread. (These things should be publicly discussed)
Posts should be manually submitted, not by bot. Link titles should not be editorialised.
Disappointing comments will generally be left to fester in ratio, outright horrible comments will be removed.
Message the mods if you feel something really should be removed, or if a user seems to have a pattern of awful comments.
!ukpolitics@lemm.ee appears to have vanished! We can still see cached content from this link, but goodbye I guess! :'(
view the rest of the comments
A tiny amount of tax on the luxury "schools" for the ultra-rich can be used to invest in actual real schools for the education of the entire country.
Well, if it's just a tiny amount, why not instead use a big amount of taxes to improve public schools so private schools have nothing better to offer? And then tax wealth
That would be ideal, yes :)
Why keep open a tax exemption that's purely for rich people who want use their money to get their children the sort of education which means they stay at the top of the socioeconomic pile?
These same people are delighted when general schools funding is at its lowest level per pupil and everyone else's kids don't have enough staff or books in their schools - even more advantage for their kids.
The concept is simple. Education good, no taxes. Education no taxes but some people need to pay them for whatever reason will probably be canceled in court. Just strait up tax wealth for everybody the same rules, then nobody can cry "discrimination"
You have simplified beyond the point of meaning and right into falsehood.
You keep bringing up wealth tax as if it's either this or that. It isn't. I've not seen anyone here argue with taxing wealth. Do both.
Tax unnecessary inequality-perpetuating private education like every other luxury and tax wealth too. Both. Simple.
I agree with arguments 2 and 3, but 4 shows IMHO that taxing things rich parents buy anyway is not enforceable.
No, all 4 shows is that you have to give more government funding per pupil to schools in poorer areas.
It’s not a tiny amount . It’s 20%.
And who are these ultra rich you are talking about ?
I mean the richest 7% of people in the country, who according to the article, actually use these special schools.
That’s a made up number , isn’t it ?
Well, the article says "approximately 93%" go to proper schools, so I suppose it must be very slightly made up?
I also made a slight assumption that 100% minus 93% would leave us with 7% - but I didn't go to Eton, so I assume my maths is likely incorrect.
Anyway, to be fair, I am making an assumption and I'm missing out on those who are home schooled, as well as those in referral units or special education or those who don't go to school at all.
As a side note - do home schoolers and non-schoolers recieve special tax breaks for "not using up a state school space"?
Anyway, it can't affect the numbers that much, as it still shows as "7% actually use these schools" on the government's own website:
gov.uk - Elitism in Britain (2019): "Just 7% of British people are privately educated"
Note that this is your Tory friends from 5 years ago - it's not the current Labour Government who are proposing removing the tax breaks on private schools.
You’ve drawn a false equivalence between the richest 7% and the 7% that use private schools.
You're right actually - I guess all those Boris Johnson and Jacob Rees-Mogg types all have about 12 kids each, so it's likely an even smaller number.
I suppose other than the odd scholarship/inheritance bits here and there, I guess it must generally be somewhere between the top 1% and top 5% using the private schools system.