You now need to pre-register to be allowed into the troll banning system:
There is, however, in all this a problem for any new commentator who has a genuine desire to post a serious comment on the blog. If you wish to warn me of your intent to do so, please do get in touch. My contact details are on the blog. Tell me who you are, what email address you will be using and give me some serious evidence that you are a real human being. You can still use a short name to post if you wish, but please tell me what that is as well. That will increase the probability of your post getting on.
But be warned that I am well aware that some trolls try to appear to be reasonable people for three or four comments and then reveal their true selves. Anyone playing that game will end up being treated as spam just as much as those who reveal themselves on their first posting end up being treated that way.
Ho Hum.
I do, very much, like this:
The trend is, however, significant and exposes the hypocrisy inherent in what many of these commentators like to claim, which is that my work is completely irrelevant. If it was, they would not be commenting in such numbers.
People disagreeing with me shows that I’m right! And, AND, important!
It will end up as adulatory ping-pong between Capt. Potato and Pilgrim Slight Retard!
I can only presume that the trolls are quite worried about the Taxing Wealth Report 2024. Since I have suggested that it is approaching completion, the volume of troll traffic on here that is not automatically deleted by spam filters has increased significantly and now amounts to almost half of all comments.
Interestingly I am ‘worried’ about it – in that it’s policies could act as the final nail in the coffin of the UK if pursued but the likelihood of even Starmer’s Labour using him as an intellectual source is minimal, especially as he has basically called them fascists in a number of public posts.
Thankfully, most trolls make themselves very easy to spot. As a result, there is no great difficulty in deleting the vast majority of these comments without having to read anything much beyond the first line.
I know I’m in the shit and have nothing beyond bluster to counter the poster’s clear superior understanding of economics and other pertinent topics related to the economy so I’ll resort to name calling in the absence of anything better.
The trend is, however, significant and exposes the hypocrisy inherent in what many of these commentators like to claim, which is that my work is completely irrelevant. If it was, they would not be commenting in such numbers.
I do think he likes to think he is a latter day Gandhi – maybe he wants to liberate Cambridgeshire from the UK?
But be warned that I am well aware that some trolls try to appear to be reasonable people for three or four comments and then reveal their true selves. Anyone playing that game will end up being treated as spam just as much as those who reveal themselves on their first posting end up being treated that way.
I think there’s more than one way to skin a cat – I’m tempted to make up some kind of ‘Titania Mcgrath’ like persona simply to lampoon the fat bastard but whether I can be bothered to spare the time is debatable.
maybe he wants to liberate Cambridgeshire from the UK?
Given where I live, I’d rather Spud was removed from Cambridgeshire. I hear Rockall is currently lacking a professor of economics. (He’d probably end up banning gulls for disagreeing with him.)
His report is worrying because it offers snake-oil salesman solutions which will fool gullible people.
The headline will be £200bn available and people will believe it true – Spud’s farcical “£100bn” tax avoided figure from his 2010 report still floats around the internet despite being thoroughly debunked.
Spud takes the c£70bn contributed to ISAs annually as a source that is ‘available’ without mentioning that vast sums are withdrawn from ISAs each year. In some recent years more was withdrawn than contributed. It’s simply false that this could represent reliable funding for projects. Any attempt to point this out on his blog is deleted. Same with pensions – he refuses to take into account tax paid on pensions paid out and only talks of tax relief given on contributions.
His ‘estimates’ of tax which could be collected by his various changes quickly become facts of amounts which will be collected. Little of this is ‘new’ money anyway. He’s taking from spending and saving he doesn’t like and moving it to spending he does like.
He ignores changes in behavior that would inevitably follow. Every tax change proposed assumes people simply shrug and hand it over. Take scrapping the non-Dom rules. It would be child’s play to transfer current ownership of non-UK income producing assets to non-UK resident companies or Trusts. The income would no longer be ‘arising’ in the hands of any UK resident. He estimates £3bn would be raised by this, Labour recently reduced their estimate on the same measure to £2bn. Since it’s possible that this one will actually happen if/when labour get in, I’m looking forward to seeing how much it actually does bring in.
Potential problems are brushed aside. His scrapping of IHT relief for businesses, for example. A relatively small business worth £2m would face a tax charge of £800k. ‘They could borrow or pay it over time’ he airily announces. As if a business that size could borrow that much or generate sufficient profits to pay a tax bill that size and still support its owners. It would kill the possibility of generational businesses stone dead.
It’s trumpeted as a way of getting tax from ‘the wealthy’ but in reality is an attack on the aspiring middle classes – the super wealthy don’t give a toss about tax relief on pension contributions.
Equally galling is that he is removing so many tax breaks that he has taken advantage of throughout his life, drawing up the ladder behind him – he even includes proposals to get rid of the withdrawal of personal allowances on incomes above £100k and proposes reducing tax on £50k-£75 incomes – two proposals which might actually benefit him!
So, yeah, I’m worried – just as the medical profession was worried by Andrew Wakefield and his claims on the MMR vaccine and autism. Because of the damage such misinformation causes.
I take your points as always on board – didn’t mean to minimise his potential for harm – of course he is the most evil commentator extant in cyberspace. Misinformation and vicious attacks on his enemies are taken as read. I just feel that his personal gain from this is likely to be along the lines of what ‘The Fair Tax Mark’ and ‘Sustainable cost Accounting’ have yielded him – the square root of Sweet FA.
Jeez, this is hilarious! Mike Parr is a regular commentator on Murphy’s blog, so I must assume he is serious and this is not a piss take!
Mike Parr says:
February 9 2024 at 10:05 am
Goodness.
First they ignore you, then when the blog gets traction it’s, ……..drown out serious discussion via trolling.
Which means that they are anti-democratic. The only legitimate view is their view – dissent is not permitted.
A very sad commentary on society.
“Tell me who you are, what email address you will be using and give me some serious evidence that you are a real human being.”
What?
So, after giving him your name and e-mail address, you then say … “and yes, Spud, I am a real human being, honest to God, sir, & Scout’s honour – I am most definitely NOT a penguin” … Or something different? Answers on a post card, aspiring applicants need to know…
If I had the time and inclination, I’d register as [email protected] and direct him to pictures of my cock as proof that I was an upstanding person.
And your address is somewhere in Cockermouth…
This might be good replacement for members of the Stasi and other socialist ne’er-do-wells! There is after all an infinite supply of dick pics on the internet.
I’ve suspected that some of his regular commentators are actually his sock puppets. Five minutes ago the potato was ranting that taxes didn’t pay for spending and anyone who disagreed with his interpretation of mmt was a neoliberal fascist moron. Yay said the usual suspects – you’re the man !
Now it’s we need to tax everybody into destitution and steal their money to pay for spending. Yay said the usual suspects – you’re the man!
Of course i might be wrong and the usual suspects are just as stupid and spiteful as he is – a case of Morons! congregate!
If you consider the the time & trouble he’s going to have to go through to manage his new system, an outstanding win for the “trolls”. A fine case of idle hands do the devil’s work. Now give him some e-mails to read.
he had a similar vetting procedure in place some time ago. Like all his ideas it was shit and after the obligitary blogpost to gain the admiration of his various arselickers it was quietly consigned to history- like most of his ideas except the eternal MOAR TAX.
Assuming the cretin avidly follows this site, probably in some sort of perverse way to feel better than his detractors, perhaps the time has come to ignore him for a few weeks.
He could play with his train set, or study his cash pension status, or visit all the pubs where he’s unwelcome – a little hiatus might just tip him over the edge.
Sad and inadequate as he surely is, a little lack of feedback might help with the self-awareness so obviously required.
100% I’m going to send him a photo of my arse – last time I looked it was vaguely human, so should pass his test, although it also talks more sense so might be considered a troll
Good God. I’ve been doing this for twenty years this year. I’ve had a couple of serious trolls. The real thing, not people who disagree. I dealt with them. I have a fairly simple comments policy that says basically, play nice and it’s fine.
The Fat Controller is running a blog – a little pootling corner of the interwebs, nothing more (the points about his potential for damage made above, notwithstanding). The aggrandising is spectacular to see. So much so they can see his ego from the international space station.