If you need urgent support, call 999 or go to your nearest A&E. To contact our Crisis Messenger (open 24/7) text THEMIX to 85258.
Read the community guidelines before posting ✨
Options
winter of discontent
Former Member
Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
We all know that this country is in recession and has been for a long time, more companies going into adminstration, the cold spell has set in (weather) but this I found interesting on previous labour control.
The Winter of Discontent was the bursting of a dam, an outburst of feeling over five years of betrayal and disappointment.
That was in 1978 when labour were in power before Maggie Thatcher...do you think that the current labour party have done us any favours and think the same as it was 30 years ago?
I can feel that we are all in for a very long cold spell this time and I quote what did the labour government tell us back in 1997...things will only get better. For Who I question...certainly not me.
The Winter of Discontent was the bursting of a dam, an outburst of feeling over five years of betrayal and disappointment.
That was in 1978 when labour were in power before Maggie Thatcher...do you think that the current labour party have done us any favours and think the same as it was 30 years ago?
I can feel that we are all in for a very long cold spell this time and I quote what did the labour government tell us back in 1997...things will only get better. For Who I question...certainly not me.
0
Comments
Next, the UK was in the hands of the IMF back then - the country was, to all intentions and purposes, bankrupt. The debt the UK has now is massive, but there are several others who have got it even worse than we do. Back then, we had a 3-day working week, we had constant blackouts, rubbish was not being collected - in Liverpool, the dead were being left unburied.
Finally, tax rates in the UK were far higher than they are now. If you earnt anything more than £6,000 per year, you would pay tax at 80%. In other words, 80p of every pound you earnt went to the Government. And if you earnt more than £20,000 per year, you would have had to pay tax at an eye-watering 98%. Taxes may well seem high right now, but it could be a hell of a lot worse.
You're in a happy mood today, aren't you?
Have you got a link with that information detailed?! :eek:
yes sorry .....i am still learning how to use the site...
I will let you have the link in just a sec.
Err - it's ok. I was actually asking SG to post the link as he posted the stats... unless you are one and the same person
However, what I do know is that the 1970s were a brilliant time for one profession - tax accountants. Because of the punishingly high 83% tax rate for high earners, they had a field day. Several tax avoidance devices were actually invented in the 1970s - split-cap trusts being one of them. The one term that's worth remembering here is the Laffer Curve. This is the idea that when you increase taxes, the revenue might not necessarily increase by the same level. Indeed, an 83% rate meant falling tax revenues for the government. Of course, it would have been hopeless trying to explain any of this to the pathetic socialist dinosaurs that ruined this country in the 1970s - they were driven by class envy, not what actually worked.