Caution should be used in cancelling PFI deals,says David Nowell, more people could pay more tax, or suggests Susan Reynolds,while Martin Wheatcroft and Tim Worstall warn against printing moneyJohn McDonnell would be better advised to put a levy on PFI contracts held by non-EU tax domiciled companies, rather than design a pledge which could turn out to be as disastrous as university tuition fees were for the Liberal Democrats (McDonnell’s corridor of smoke and mirrors, and 27 September). This tax would design it cheaper to buy out the most intractable and inflexible contracts delivering a rotten public service.
Even in the novel Labour years,taxation in Germany was consistently higher than the UK. In the seven years before the financial crash this gap averaged 2.25% of GDP. Since 2010 this has widened to over 4% of GDP – 75bn a year. Having originally opposed Major’s PFI, this is why, or rather than raising taxes,Blair and Brown gladly signed up for these Ponzi schemes, whose Treasury cost-benefit analysis assumed PFI owners were paying UK taxes, and without this being written into their contracts. Consistently higher taxation is why Germany has no need for a “magischer Geldbaum” (the magic money tree scoffed at by Theresa May). Meanwhile,Britain has ended up with austerity and Brexit.
David Nowell
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Source: theguardian.com