So - still no sign of you (or NotALot) accepting the challenge to find anything wrong with my reasoning, eh?
Meanwhile - Joseph Stiglitz, Nobel prize-winning economist, says a 70% marginal income tax rate + wealth taxes for high earners “would clearly make sense”.
Too right.
Abbott possibly deserves a bit more flak being a Labour politician than average, but I see zero conflict between choosing the best for your own family at the same time as believing that private schools should ultimately be abolished - or, rather the quality of the state provision should be such that fee paying schools can’t compete.
I made the same choice for exactly the reasons Geof outlines. I also would like to see the need for private education disappear (except Eton et al, if close that lot tomorrow).
It’s not reasoning Geof, it’s opinion/belief. I believe that DA was hypocritical in sending her son to private school, you and Billy do not. It’s that simple.
Well, well, well…
Just for fun I looked up the facts about the ‘mansion’ that the marxist Ralph Miliband supposedly avoided tax on. That was the story in all the usual lying crap - Telegraph, Mail, Express…
Turns out it was an ordinary house worth £575,000, which the marxist Ralph Miliband simply passed on to his wife. (Actually even the lying crappers don’t call it a ‘mansion’ - that particular embellishment seems to have been dreamt up here.)
And just to fill in the background on the marxist Ralph Miliband…
He was a working class Belgian lad whose parents had to flee to London in 1940 with next to nothing - they were jewish. Miliband volunteered to be sent back to Belgium to assist the resistance, but was posted to the Royal Navy, in which he served to the end of the war, taking part in the D-Day landings. He subsequently became a British citizen and had a long career as a respected academic. He never owned a mansion, and was never particularly rich.
Nice guy, apparently.
This is the sensible approach. Make state schools so good that fee paying is a waste of money, rather than simply no longer allowing them to function. It may also be that some groups will prefer to educate their children in their own way, and provided they still meet the required standard they should be allowed to do so
It’s only that simple if you deny the difference between a conclusion drawn from evidence and reason and a prejudice with nothing to back it up.
What evidence Geof?
Any good evidence or rational argument, leading to a reasoned conclusion, is different from an ‘opinion/belief’ for which you have no basis in either evidence or reason.
Sometime I feel I’ve wondered into Mr Barnard’s office…
Trouble is, they’d find ways to circumvent it.
So you have no evidence for your ‘reasoned conclusion’ and throw in Monty Python, end of conversation.
Yes to making state schools so good etc etc but level the playing field by removing charitable status.
Can we do religions first? That will probably produce enough cash all on its own to solve all the nation’s issues. It’s remarkable that my US friends look on with envy at the fact that the UK has the Charity Commission with public benefits tests when literally anybody in the US can register a 501(c)(3) organisation there and it’s then up to the IRS to decide you’re not meeting the criteria (which is so vague two of the few times it’s happened were for a Bob Jones university which refused to admit black people, and L Ron Hubbard who just used all the money for his personal benefit), and yet the UKs supposedly much more stringent regulation let’s in all manner of charlatans from religions to personal foundations to private schools and the like, none of which actually to any real good to society, and have horrifically opaque accounts despite the claims that they should be an open book.
Pot, kettle, black there me old mate.
I think you trying to counter Johnson having clobbered the UK with his oven ready Brexit, Hunt having clobbered the NHS, Truss having clobbered the already clobbered economy and Zahawi fraudulently trousering £3.7M, with Diane Abbott sending her kid to a private school is a bit weak 
I think Geof has you bang to rights, tu dis n’importe quoi 
Which is fine, once we all know that’s what’s going on
The main benefit of private school’s charitable status is that they don’t pay business rates. Some have very extensive property portfolios and this, consequently, saves them a good bit of money (eg Eton), smaller independents generally just own the school buildings.
It’s hard to make Eton pay business rates which, arguably, it can afford without making smaller schools do so as well who would have their finances hit quite hard.
State schools, of course do not pay business rates on their school buildings.
Part of the problem is that when you talk about private education in the UK people think of Eton, Harrow, Charter House etc, not the bulk who are actually relatively “normal” schools but with somewhat better resourcing than the state sector.
With apologies to anyone who thinks of themselves as religious or devout, yes please.
Well you could, but you might find they have less money to spend helping look after their communities. All the food banks I know of are run by churches. Churches in Bicester were providing warm spaces in response to the cost of heating crisis.
With respect Geof brought DA into the discussion not me and it was a poor example to use to make his point. All of us will at some time in our lives take decisions out of self interest that we’re not comfortable with but what we probably won’t do is criticise friends/colleagues for doing exactly the same thing.
True, except of course any adverse impact on (your?) Uk pension income…such impact may be positive or negative.
