What drives me up the wall is that Labour clearly see that there are no easy answers, but every time they have to choose, they either pick a delaying tactic OR the option most likely to annoy their own voters (or both!), with the result that they are neither fixing anything properly nor giving themselves any chance of being re-elected. I’m tearing my hair out watching them.

Every small town/village has loads of kids hanging out in supermarket carparks. It is, as you say, bleak.

That is really upsetting! Those old housing estates get a bad rap (sometimes justified), but it’s noticeable that they’re the only inner city neighbourhoods where kids still play outside regularly, precisely because they’re designed with pedestrians rather than cars in mind.

The usual nonsense from the SWP. If you’re a member of one party, you can’t be a member of a different party. That is, in fact, the normal rule and has nothing to do with socialism.

But they’re not! The IfS, for example, says:

The package was skewed towards raising more from those with high incomes.

Thanks for not downvoting me, but I don’t really mind! I always think that if people downvote rather than argue, that means they have nothing to say.

The point is that they’re redistributing wealth: taxing the rich to spend on the poor. Just because they’re not doing it in one of the two ways you’ve cited (they are taxing wealth, through a mansion tax) doesn’t mean they’re not doing it.

I’d also tax people more for having more cars. Like, the more cars you have registered to an address or an individual, the more tax you pay.

Petrol cars pay fuel duty, which is finally going to be unfrozen, so they do effectively get taxed more if they’re driven more. Agree Range Rovers should be taxed more, though!

Yes, exactly. If it turned out that, e.g., Ed Davey was a bit of a dick when he was 14, we’d all say: ‘Yeah, obviously. He was 14.’ But it’s your second and fifth points that make this especially salient: Farage’s childhood nasty racist comments fit perfectly with the adulthood nasty racist policies. He hasn’t changed, he just expresses it differently!

I agree completely: the government still being on there is a huge problem. They need to abandon it ASAP.

This may be true, but I believe it’s still only a small proportion of the population (both can be true!) and a still smaller proportion that spend any length of time on there.

I think if it’s true that he’s a racist - and it is - it’s worth saying it. In addition there are two instrumental reasons we should say it.

First, Farage’s whole schtick has been to say: ‘You can oppose immigration without being a racist’ and the related argument ‘You shouldn’t be called a racist just because you want less immigration’. Proving that he is, himself, a racist makes both arguments deeply suspect.

It also more broadly crystallises what’s evil about him for those of us who already hate him (most people!) and shows exactly why he needs to be kept out of power at all costs. If I’m in a swing seat at the next election (currently safe Labour but will there be anywhere safe by 2029?) this is the kind of thing that will make me go ‘I don’t have to like it - and I don’t - but I’m voting for Lib Dems/Greens/whoever is best placed to beat this guy’.

Encouraging thing to remember here is that hardly anyone uses Twitter, so the bloke you saw at the pub was probably an outlier.

The discouraging thing is that a lot of elite tastemakers and trendsetters do use Twitter, so they’re the ones getting their brains cooked. Even Farage is an example of this: he didn’t use to talk about mass deportations!

And notice that Farage, rather than the person he hurt, is apparently the one who gets to decide what’s hurtful.

Does it say ‘It is forbidden to advise people to read mild disagreements without getting upset’?

I feel I have to return to my earlier point that it would be beneficial to learn to read things, with which you disagree, without becoming upset.

I really didn’t think I’d have to defend the proposition ‘You should actually read things’ today, but here we are.

generalise the entire left movement, and sums up it will achieve very little

No. It says a wealth tax will achieve little. Not that the left will achieve little. Please read… at all. The author is leftwing and obviously does not believe that the characterisation is insulting, or he would be insulting himself!

You are being over-sensitive by letting a generalisation upset you. And, yes, it is upsetting you, because your entire reaction to this has been to hurl insults and imagine ways to be offended. I am doing you a favour by assuming this is not how you behave when you’re not upset.

You’re merely a conspicuously belligerent example of the problem.

So I agree that we should tax wealth. My point (and that of the article) is that there’s no panacea where we tax wealth (or only ‘billionaire wealth’) and thereby achieve a progressive outcome. Billionaires are a tiny fraction of ‘the rich’. Redistribution that only targets that tiny fraction will always be ineffective, not because there isn’t enough money there but because there aren’t enough people. I’m not saying this speculatively: successful redistributive systems always have steep progressive income taxes, with everyone contributing and the richest contributing the most.

You can essentially tax assets through effective taxation of capital gains and rents, which will also discourage rent-seeking behaviour in investors - which is also good.

So, yes, by all means find ways to tax wealth (just sensible council tax banding would be a good start). But on its own this won’t achieve much.