Its nothing to do with what the government was doing 12 months ago, EH?

If you are on a 1% pay rise, and food changes falling in price to raising in price in a trend everyone expects to continue this is a big deal.

You have totally failed to engage with the cited evidence that shows spending power falling for JAMS. I will post the relevant image from that source so its harder for you to ignore:

I'm not going to be dragged off-topic by your usual strawmanning....

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Can't say I disagree with this - quite frankly, I'm amazed VAT isn't changed on private school fees.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-39504339

Wow.

Every post was totally on topic and not remotely close in any galaxy to a strawman.

You said something ignorant of the basic facts, just own that ****, dont try this pathetic kop out.

OIL is traded in dollars + citing drop in living standards are absolute concrete onpoint observations in relation to your "arguments".

Strawman, total utter bollox.

Lolrazor never gonna change.

Labour are now stooping to taxing children's education and you think that is a good idea?

All these children have been removed from the state system and are saving the govt. an absolute fortune. Now you want to tax them for saving the govt. money, ridiculous.

Possibly the weirdest argument in favour of the existence of private schools I have ever come across. Private schools, far from saving money for the public sector, benefit from somewhere between £100m and £200m a year tax subsidy. Yes that's right, at least £225 a year per child I believe. I guess someone has to pay for little Tarquin's new rugger boots.

I don't know anything about the figures involved but are you saying that's the net cost, i.e. over and above what the public sector expenditure would be?

Have no idea what you are on about, but £225 per child wouldn't even cover the public sector teacher's pension cost much less anything else that the private sector child saves the taxpayer.

Then you must have some kind of conservative myopia.

Virtually everyone knows that Eton and Harrow are registered tax-exempt charities, effectively subsidized education for the super-rich.

Where does the subsidy come from? Do you think all charities are "subsidized"?

I'm fairly old and went to a private school in the 70s which was actually subsidized in my early years. It was called "grant aided". This was stopped which was fair enough, but it's nonsense to suggest that private schools these days are subsidized.

If you believe that private schools cause societal problems and shouldn't be permitted, then that is a certainly a debate worth having. I don't particular like religious schools of any kind. Although I think it's impractical to ban them.

Adding VAT to fees is obviously just a mean spirited tax grab and fairly typical of present day Labour. It will not gain one voter and will raise a paltry sum in comparison to serious action on corporate tax evasion.

You do know that a tax rebate is a de facto grant for all practical purposes?

No. I'm trying to shift the terms of the debate away from absurdity to somewhere resembling reality by exposing the utter hypocrisy of the above statement from 'rich dog'. Claiming that private schools deserve state benefits because they save the Government money overall is simply ludicrous. They want to set up on their own, that is, well not fine as such, but if they must then let them fund themselves. It has nothing to do with the universal sector. It is merely another example of the taxpayer bailing out the private sector.

We can't limit the parameters of the debate to this crude perception of what constitutes public and private funds. In the real world we see a more complex picture. Who pays for teacher training? Who pays for the former education of the myriad of individuals involved in the provision of private schooling? Is society so ghettoised that privately educated pupils benefit nothing from the state system? Who paid for the primary education for many children who go on to be privately educated? Etc, etc

The premise of this argument does however prompt an interesting question - should private schools exist at all? If the purpose of them is to save the rest of us money, should we not compare this to the balance we would receive were the state to take them into public ownership? I believe the land owned by these institutions would be worth rather a lot. I also believe the state sector offers far better value for money. Rather than parents forking out extortionate fees, they could pay this in higher taxation which would go much, much further when invested in a fully comprehensive system, to the benefit of ALL, not just the privileged few.

As a side point, I think Labour have education policy on lockdown at present, and this latest proposal is more good news for them.

Ah yes, the sense of entitlement, sneering and ignorance of the privately educated.

Indeed. The question seems to be exactly how much, certainly more than 100m per year which I suspect is very conservative.

I am in favour of both policies taxing private education and providing primary school kids with free school meals but I don't think that the policies should be coupled. Like do both but make the case for doing both without reference to the other.

I'm so glad that my country will be soon be independent of yours with its kippers (in and out of the Tory party) and hopelessly deluded socialists.

Putting VAT on private education isn't really a big deal in the grand scheme of things is it? Seems a fairly reasonable trade off to improve school meals in comprehensives.

Most private schools in London charge around £25,000/year or so - can't see it being a huge dealer breaker people having to fork out £30,000~ instead.

What tax rebate? Are you still talking about vat?

Private secondary education isn't tax deductible but there are a variety of ways to use private education payments to reduce your tax liability

Apart from the fees in advance scheme (which could be ended very easily), none of these ideas are directly connected to school fees ie they could simply be used to save tax.

And F U for duping me into clicking the Daily Mail.

wow apologies I didn't realise that was a mail website, my bad won't happen again.

And you're right with regards those tax loopholes but I was wondering what GBV was referring to being pretty sure that school fees aren't tax deductible

Meh. I think both groups also exist north of the border.

See mention of "tax exempt charity" in thread.

There are many South of the border who feel the same.

Over 1M voted to leave in Scotland - without them Remain would have won.

I'd also point out that the SNP (which is basically a one issue party) is a minority government in Scotland, currently ignoring the wishes of the majority of Scots.

Note how NS always mentions the 'will of the scottish parliament' as opposed to the 'will of the scottish people' which was her mantra during the last referendum on independence.

I'd rather she put effort into the failing economy (scotland likely to go into recession whilst rest of UK is growing at 1.8%), the failing NHS scotland and the failing centralisation of the emergency services.

It'll be no surprise to find I agree with this