The Corrupting Influence of Money.

I'm a big fan of money. I wish I had more of it.

But while musing about money, it appeared to me how much money corrupts. Not just in the obvious things but in the not-so-obvious.

For instance in Science. Science these days is money-led, especially in pharmaceuticals. But for instance in climate science, there is no funding for theories that debunk the AGW agenda.  If you want to earn a living out of science, then you have to follow the research where the money is.

Not only that, but then you follow the extra money that we pay on our energy bills, where does it go? Does it go to projects to offset global warming? No silly, it goes to the landowners that allow windfarms on their property, it goes to the big corporations that install and run the wind farms and it goes into the pockets of traders on the stock market trading in carbon credits.

When it comes to legal representation, do you think a poor person and a rich person have equality under the law? Don't be daft! Those expensive lawyers run rings round court appointed ones every time.

Does a poor person have political representation? Well, if you look at the current make up of Parliament, I'd have to say no.

The Tories are supposed to be the party of free enterprise and allowing the small guy to trade on the same terms as the big ones. But more and more the Tories are about increasing tax which has a disproportionate affect of the poorest in society.

Labour are no better. They would increased tax and spending, increasing borrowing so that we are lumped with huge debts in future. Paid for by increased taxation and tough if you are poor.
The Communists that seems to control the Labour party at the moment don't seem to grasp this fact.

By whinging about the corrupting affect of money, as a reader you'd think I was dead against it. But no, money is essential to commerce and life in general. But what I'm really whinging about is the way in which money is being used at the moment. There is very little fairness in the system and the poor seem to pay a disproportionate amount of tax.

There has to be a fairer system. The key elements built into the current tax system do not give the poor a fair crack of the whip.

For instance the HMRC are looking into the gig economy. They want to class these self-employed people as employed for some reason, like they have with dozens of other areas. The important thing about self-employment is you choose to work that way. You choose the freedom to not work when you feel like it, the downside is you don't get paid for it. For HMRC and the courts to start claiming that people working in the gig economy are entitled to holiday pay means that they get classed as employees, paying the full whack of employees and employers tax. Double bonus for the tax people.

Yet large corporations like Amazon and Google can cut a deal to effectively pay no tax whatsoever. How is that fair?

This has to stop. HMRC needs new guidelines to stop blurring the edges of employment and self-employment. There need to be clear cut lines to remove the grey areas which HMRC have manipulated to bully the self-employed, agency workers and small businesses into paying more tax. They also need guidelines in necessary backed up by legislation in order to take on the global corporations.

Government needs to also look more closely at how the tax take affects those least able to pay. I'm sure (for instance) that someone on £70,000 a year won't mind paying a couple of grand on council tax, but for someone on a sub-£20,000 wage, it's quite a different thing.

There needs to be holistic approach to the tax system and how it can be changed to stop the poorer in society losing out.