this post was submitted on 13 Sep 2025
49 points (96.2% liked)

United Kingdom

5379 readers
809 users here now

General community for news/discussion in the UK.

Less serious posts should go in !casualuk@feddit.uk or !andfinally@feddit.uk
More serious politics should go in !uk_politics@feddit.uk.

Try not to spam the same link to multiple feddit.uk communities.
Pick the most appropriate, and put it there.

Posts should be related to UK-centric news, and should be either a link to a reputable source, 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.

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.

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 

Assume every tax rate except for the “personal allowance” was increased by 1% to fund free train travel.

Would you be in favour of this?

I've not done the math for this (though did look up some stats for a Scotland specific post, and it seems to be feasible: https://discuss.tchncs.de/post/44818305). So for the UK it may require a lower or higher increase (and to be fair my Scotland "calculations" were very rough and likely entirely wrong). This is more just a question about whether people would be in favour of something like this in general.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] BananaTrifleViolin@lemmy.world 6 points 19 hours ago* (last edited 19 hours ago)

No, there are other priorities. I want to see reform of the railways for sure, including renationalisation and a proper long term plan. HS2 should have been completed but now it's too far beyond the scrapping to resurrect. But there are still lines that need electrifying and Northern Power House Rail makes economic sense.

I think renationalisation and increased subsidy for the railways is good but not free - people who use the railways should be paying to support it more than other tax payers, and international visitors also use the railways and should be contributing.

If we had a 1% tax rise it'd quickly disappear as we have a national deficit including a large amount of interest going to pay for the national debt.

Rather than income tax rises (which hit ypunger working people more than any other group) I want to see asset taxes that actually hit wealthy people, including the wealthier asset rich elderly who want to pass on their money to their children rather than pay for the expensive services they use (like the NHS). So I'd favour a property tax (that would also encourage people to downsize to houses they need instead of sitting in big family homes), and taxes on shares and other assets. It doesn't have to be punitive, just fair.

Instead younger working people are subsiding the elderly in this country - the elderly are the wealthiest group, who got all the benefits of free university, free Healthcare, cheap housing etc which the younger generation have it tough, paid for university, pay exorbitant prices for rent or home buying. The wealthy elderly hide behind the sympathy people show for the poorer elderly; people who won't be hit by an asset tax as they are asset poor and deserve to be subsidised and supported.