That a block of flats goes up in flames, many burnt to death as it does so, is not something to celebrate. Yet that simple observation also does not mean that we’ve got to sanctify all those who claim to have been harmed by the event. Indeed, given the outpouring of concern we need to be rather more observant about matters than less. Because:
Fifteen members of the same family are being investigated by fraud officers after receiving up to £1million in public funds by claiming they lived in a single flat in Grenfell Tower.
The Naqshbandi family, who are from Afghanistan, have been rehoused in at least three new homes in a luxury development furnished by John Lewis.
Well, yes.
Note that to express concern over this is not to then go on and insist that immigrants can or should be toasted without recompense. Nor even is it to make any comment about immigration at all. We do still need to examine claims of harm caused by the fire though and quite possibly be just a tad more cynical.
What we also don’t need is this sort of guff:
The UK government may have failed to comply with its international human rights obligations over the Grenfell Tower fire, which killed 79 people and left hundreds homeless, the United Nations’ housing investigator has said.
Leilani Farha, the UN special rapporteur on the right to adequate housing, told the Guardian she was concerned that international human rights standards on housing safety may have been breached, and could have been a factor in the causes of the tragedy last June.
She was concerned that residents had told her they had been excluded from decisions about housing safety issues before the fire and had not been engaged “in a meaningful way” by the authorities about their views and needs in its aftermath.
What does look remarkably like a scamster or 15 gains a million quid and this might be a breach of human rights? Perhaps we need to think up some word analagous to Brexit for that happy day when we also leave the United Nations?
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The Naqshbandi family, who are from Afghanistan
Immigration - the gift that keeps on giving.
How many? All of them. Why are we paying for this? We can see our formerly High Trust society turning into a dystopian Low Trust sh!thole before our eyes and we do nothing.
Immigration per se is not the problem. Immigration after being designated a member of a victim class ("refugee") conveys impunity. Immigration under an Diversity Visa (under which the US implicitly admits blame for not admitting enough from your country earlier) obviates assimilation. Immigration through amnesty, on the grounds that enough other people violated the same border at the same time, suggests you can violate other laws. And immigration through the dishonest but cuddly "Dreamers" stereotype means there is not enough moral clarity in your new home nation to hold you to any standard. End all forms of coerced charity, and let's see whether we really have any other significant social problems at all.
The definition of compassion is a feeling of deep sympathy and sorrow for another who is hurting, in pain, or has misfortune and is accompanied by a strong desire to help the suffering. Jesus Christ is the greatest example of someone with true compassion. Not only did Jesus have compassion and heal people from physical suffering, he also showed the greatest compassion for mankind when died on the cross for our sins.
It's not always easy to show compassion, especially when we feel like the person deserves their misfortune. These Bible verses about compassion teach us that it is a true mark of Christian character. Another great example of someone showing compassion and grace is that of the prodigal son. Read the Scripture below that includes how the father showed compassion on his son. Go and do likewise so that you can show the world how Jesus has changed you!
Colossians 3:12
12 Therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience.
Exodus 33:19
19 And the LORD said, “I will cause all my goodness to pass in front of you, and I will proclaim my name, the LORD, in your presence. I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion.
Isaiah 30:18
18 Yet the LORD longs to be gracious to you; therefore he will rise up to show you compassion. For the LORD is a God of justice. Blessed are all who wait for him!
Isaiah 49:10
10 They will neither hunger nor thirst, nor will the desert heat or the sun beat down on them. He who has compassion on them will guide them and lead them beside springs of water.
Isaiah 49:13
13 Shout for joy, you heavens; rejoice, you earth; burst into song, you mountains! For the LORD comforts his people and will have compassion on his afflicted ones.
The news that large companies are enjoying a steady decline in their real rates of tax, revealed by the FT, comes as no great surprise. As I have commented this morning:
The fact is that despite all the efforts to end international tax abuse by multinational corporations a Faustian pact has been made between these entities and governments, including that of the UK. As a result whilst measures have supposedly been taken to tackle abuse, tax rates have come down rapidly.
In this context the Labour Party promise to increase corporation tax from its current 19% for all companies to 21% for small companies and 26% for larger companies if Labour wins the election makes sense. Let's leave probabilities aside and discuss the merits of this idea.
The logic of both proposals is sound. For small companies the case is that it makes no sense at all to have a corporation tax rate below the basic rate of income tax: all that becomes is a blatant invitation to avoid tax. This abuse is already costing up to £4 billion a year according to the Office for Budget Responsibility: I suspect it may be more when the full national insurance impact is taken into account. In that case the 21% rate is almost certainly too low: I would have gone higher to beat abuse and win back more of the lost billions, which is exactly what is required.
Dealing with larger companies (of which there are vastly fewer) the situation is more complex. First, 26% is not high: it is close to the EU and OECD averages when adjusted for our current low rate.
Second, it's not that long ago we had these rates.
Third, there is no evidence at all that cutting the rate has brought jobs, growth or new corporation tax revenues to the UK (the rise in revenues is very largely because of the rise in the number of small companies and broad based recovery in profits from banking and elsewhere and not because of new inward investment driven by tax).
Fourth, we know that business itself did not lobby for the low corporation tax rates now on offer.
Fifth, we know business says tax is low in its considerations when real business is being relocated as opposed to profits being relocated - which is the type of abusive activity Ireland attracts and which has rendered its national accounting meaningless because so much of its GDP is profits simply flowing through the place leaving almost not a trace bar some fees for bankers, lawyers and accountants on the way.
Sixth, and most important, I argue low tax rates and low capital allowance rates are counter productive and rarely help anyone but banks. This needs explaining.
Right now, and I summarise, with a corporation tax rate of 19% and a 20% allowance on capital spending a year a large company in the year that spends £100 on capital equipment gets a cash rebate of £100 x 19% x 20% = £3.80 in the year it spends the money. Tory plans to reduce the corporation tax rate to 17% reduce this to £3.40. That, to be candid, provides no incentive for investing at all. This is a tax system for rentiers and bankers. It does nothing at all to encourage any activity in the real economy where people work and value is created.
Now change the tax rate to 26% and offer 100% first year allowances and the allowance is worth £26, or near enough seven times more.
This will encourage investment.
That will create growth.
The investment will increase productivity.
That increases wages.
And growth, again.
And so future tax revenues as a result.
In other words, increasing the corporation tax rate kickstarts the economy in a way that a corporation tax cut can't. And it pays for itself.
It's time for the debate on corporation tax to move to rates.
And it's time to talk about using an Alternative Minimum Corporation Tax to support that rate.
The game playing has to end.
NB: I am aware some do not agree with the suggestions on 100% capital allowances: behaviourally the evidence is that they work for the businesses that are likely to invest, which are the ones that matter.
http://www.taxresearch.org.uk
So you posted the same bullsh!t cut and paste twice? With some moral preening at the start?
It is not compassion when you do it with other people's money.
The fault is increasingly Tim W's for allowing Twatty to keep playing his game. No need to ban him as Murphy would in a nano-second--just delete the C&P crap he spews and leave his name over the empty space his mind actually is. Or above the two lines of shite that the Twat actually smeared from the shallow well of his native wit.
Unless Tim is Twatty--trying to provoke us to spend time to fisk Murphy's ordure line by line on our own time and unpaid.
No, even leaving his name posted, with its needless obscenity, will induce many visitors from the US Midwest to click away and blacklist the site from their kids' surfing.
This cyber amusement park will not become self-funding if the new visitor encounters vandalism on every single wall.
"will induce many visitors from the US Midwest to click away and blacklist the site from their kids’ surfing."
I'm probably doing that all by myself Spike.
"Labour Party promise to increase corporation tax from its current 19% for all companies to 21% for small companies and 26% for larger companies"
thus proving the national socialists don't really have any idea what they are doing. i don't know who's more naive comrade corbyn or his acolytes.
Oh my! Imagine the American cornucopia if Britain were to enact the direct opposite of the corporate tax cut Trump just pulled off. Aim for America's old 35% rate and listen for that Giant Sucking Sound. There is, suddenly, competition for your best minds.
Why doesn't GreaseMonkey's Idiot Blocker work here? What blogging software are you using, Tim?
Why don't you just block the bell end? Overlong and off-topic is perfectly reasonable grounds for deletion and blocking.
I'm guessing that is is that twat Rickie posting Spud-U-Like's shite in the hope of being banned and throwing another 'poor me' wobbly...?
Ban him and tune out the squeals.
When he checks his links (where traffic is coming from) I'm not convinced that Richard will be too appreciative of the latest addition to his fan club...
Anyway, what many people claim is compassion is in fact moral cowardice. They are scared of making tough judgements because they have a childish need to be seen as 'nice'.
We do not need immigration except in the case of students, high value expat workers and to meet labour shortages. None of those groups need housing or anything more than a working visa.
Any non-working public housing in London and any refugees who enter the country ought to be rehoused in the cheapest possible accommodation possible anywhere in the country and none of this ghetto-forming nonsense about needing to be near your community. This would free up great swathes of London for development.
MC - Not even "to meet labour shortages." (Compare G.W.Bush, "They are only doing the jobs Americans won't do.") On seeing a shortage, allow the pay scale to increase, and the shortage ends itself.
Yes, too, to housing them anywhere. Starting over in a new country should not come with a guarantee of comfort. Those settled in rural areas will get an earful, after any initial excuse-making, about how to become British, that they will certainly not get in London from their fellow "victims" or from tax-fattened social workers.
My theory is that all "refugees" need to go back.
Refugees... there is a moral imperative to rescue fellow humans living in dire circumstances. The social cost of accommodating those refugees is a completely different issue.
Certainly all that were admitted under a superficial criterion such as that they were living in a war zone. The trouble is that any case-by-case analysis will be done by bureaucrats for whom enlarging the welfare caseload is another important goal.
Spike - that's why I'd bypass the lachrymocracy and just kick them all out. Maybe privatise the process, with cash bonuses for every one they successfully put on a plane out of here.
We can't keep letting the Third World dump its useless people on our shores. Mathematically, we literally can't: there's about 6 Billion of them, only 60 million of us, and we're already deeply in debt.
If something can't continue, it won't.
What I'd really like is for the council to check out every flat in the adjacent towers for overcrowding and subletting. Then deal with it, compassion be damned.
I'm surprised there hasn't been more inbound (and lots of melting) - we've seen that the Forbes model does indeed work! I guess too few people around here do stuff like twatface etc..
After the Shek Kip Mei fire in 1953 the Hong Kong government entered the property market to rectify private sector failure, but the blocks put up were specifically capped at seven storeys to make fire-fighting possible - very much in people's minds after the cause of the emergency entrance into housing provision. Looking at pictures of Grenfell fire water doesn't seem to have been able to get above about five floors. As public housing provision, Grenfell is public sector failure, why should we expect the public sector to rectify it?