sjdean on the blog

Now I admit, I'm no fiscal genius. People are furious at Liz Truss for giving rich people more money. How dare she? The rich should pay MORE taxes. Ok. Who are the rich people? Can we put a number on it? How much do you have to earn before you get called "rich"? £150,000? £300,000? £1,000,000? There's a staggering difference between these numbers.  But it's hard to put a finger on this. Because it doesn't say how hard someone has worked to get to that position, or how many savings someone has got to comfortably live off. It doesn't state how much money those people give to charity, or how altruistic they are. And perhaps we shouldn't assume. Those in the £150,000ish bracket, would appear to me to be people like the small business owners. And why do we think they're getting a tax refund? They're already paying 45%, 25% more(ish) than "a poor person".  Give me a 1% tax reduction, I bring home £11 a month extra, which is barely enough in

The Western World has been far too gung ho at various times. We've gone into sovereign countries without request, to establish regime change, thinking that we know best for the country. We are like Team America: World Police. But the current Russia/Ukraine conflict seems to be completely different. For a start, Ukraine are actually requesting our help, and all we're doing is giving the president a standing ovation while Putin bombs hell out of the country. How on earth did we get to this point? I can understand Putin's concerns over NATO, as it has shown itself to be a little bit bigger than a peace keeping defensive alliance. But his concerns fall mostly on deaf ears as I suspect it is just a smoke screen, he didn't want NATO because he can diplomatically chip away around the states of the former Soviet Union. To what purpose though? Land Grab? Resources? Civilisation? I'm not quite sure what his end goal is and his strategy ridiculous. Call me an idealist, anythin