In effect, I'm not saying that at all. According to yourself people are worse off than they were 30 years ago, citing foodbanks as a factor yet we've had them for a decade or so in their current guise and before that we had other, less efficient if you will, mechanisms to hand out food or other help.

Unfortunately/fortunately (depending on your viewpoint) it will always be the case that we'll have inequality, for a few reasons, the first one being that people are different. If you take 2/3/4 blokes/women from the same sort of background, train them up to do something, plumbing/mechanic/whatever I will bet all the money in my pockets (£7ish) that over a period of time they will all wind up having had different successes/failures based on luck, work ethic, health etc etc.

Then there's the fact that people are inherently selfish, they like other people to do well as long as it's not too well so it makes them look "inferior". I work for a bloody good company, it's German, the levels of bureaucracy are eye watering, but the overall package is hard to top. Anyway, our "bonus" scheme has been altered for next year and in the meeting to discuss this it became clear that one section were getting 1 rung up the bonus step compared to others, a non exact calculation showed this extra rung gave an extra £125ish before tax, on a "bonus" of £3k! There was no goodwill displayed towards them, they were all bloody bone idle who nothing all day but talk weddings and celebrity jungle (which they do) who only got the job because of how they looked! The people whining have almost no contact with this group, working in a completely different part of the plant.

Then there's MP's, unfortunately they say stupid things and make promises they can't possibly hope to keep, but then history says we should be wise to this so it's our own bloody fault. But I've never, not once heard a mainstream MP talk about equality, simply because there's no votes in it. "Yes, it's terrible that Mr Davis' plumbing business didn't work and mine did. Sorry, what was that, you want to give him some of my money so he can have my lifestyle?"

So, I suppose that's it really there's not enough votes in equality.

Unfortunately, your beautiful nineteen fifties education and mindset didn't enable you to tell the difference between "being" and "been'.

You terribly tedious trolling twerp.

Who are those people?

What are you doing to help people less fortunate than you?

What she is/was saying is that the income gap has widened over ther last 30 years. No one on here is advocating income parity but there should be some redistribution.

You have introduced so many straw men into this discussion, it's looking like a giant haystack. Your mention of harvest festival in comparison to the exponential increase in foodbanks being just one example.

Of course the income gap has widened. People with money tend to be able "earn" more by simply doing nothing other than letting their money accrue interest in a bank. When they start making it work it grows even quicker, unless they invest it idiotically. So, if you don't want income parity, then how much disparity do you want, how much is acceptable? According to recent reports, the highest earning 1% shell out 30% of all income tax. Let's start from that.

I wasn't comparing harvest festivals to foodbanks, as they're basically one in the same thing. A mechanism to distribute food to those who need it. So, that's one straw man I didn't introduce.

Do you know why the top 1% pay 30% of the tax take?

It's because they "earn" more, earnings that have increased at a more rapid rate than those in the 99% bracket. We seem to be entering into a race to the bottom by offering lower rates of taxation to the highest earners both individual and corporate. All that does is then shift th burden even further onto those at the lower end of the earnings scale.

How is that fair in a modern society?

I am not sure your last statement is correct. Personal allowances have been increased significantly by this government - proportionately this benefits the lower paid much more and has the impact of lowering the taxes to the lower paid. Corporate tax decreases should benefit society as a whole - in theory - as more companies will look to domicile in the UK rather than take their affairs overseas.

No, you haven't.

I gave you answers to your stupid little 'questions'. You might not like the answers; you may well not agree with them, but I gave you answers.

I also answered your question about where the evidence on the costs of income inequality comes from.

It's your own stupid fault if you don't want to do some reading up on it, but don't come back pretending that you know anything about it.

Sorry but you are wrong.

The vast majority of the bottom centile are already receiving some form of benefit (tax credits or housing benefit), any increase in personal allowances is immediately cancelled out by a similar reduction in working benefits. So the lowest paid gain buggerall. The main beneficiaries of increasing personal allowances are middle-income earners.

If you seriously believe that any corporation already engaged in offshoring its tax liabilities will suddenly decide to bring everything back under UK tax jurisdiction because we've knocked a couple of points off corporation tax, then you're away with the fairies.

We must as always agree to differ - where is your cut off point of the "bottom centime" I suspect there are significant numbers of individuals who will have benefitted from the increase in personal allowances who are not in receipt of benefits e.g. younger single workers who still live at home of which there will be hundreds of thousands.

On corporate taxation if lower the taxation brings negative financial returns why do it? It quite clearly doesn't but once again you know best!!