Cycling stalwarts recognised in New Year Honours List

The 662.7million pounds in tax Sir Tim's pubco pays, each year, provides you with funding for government active travel initiatives.

Active Travel England's operational 2023-24 budget was 7.5million.

stonojnr wrote:

The 662.7million pounds in tax Sir Tim's pubco pays, each year, provides you with funding for government active travel initiatives.

Active Travel England's operational 2023-24 budget was 7.5million.

It might... but as the numbers you quote show* - so would spare change and pocket lint from many business suits. I could be wrong but I don't suppose Sir Tim's business would voluntarily pay all that money if it wasn't the law. Although I guess plenty of others have found ways to not pay tax here. So perhaps there's that as "backing Britain"?

A possibly fairer way would be to ensure that motorists pay the full costs of motoring (eg. cover.the "externalities"). However that is extremely unlikely to be a policy of any foreseeable government!

Glad to see they've recognised Dr. Hill anyway, not that the annual gong fest interests me that much.

* Aside - what is important to us? Follow the money. Divide 7.5 million (you could even add in all the other "costs of cycling") by the population of England...

stonojnr wrote:

The 662.7million pounds in tax Sir Tim's pubco pays, each year, provides you with funding for government active travel initiatives.

You can remove 142m of that as it's PAYE, which employees pay. Employers only collect it. And it's unclear how much of the 288m VAT is reclaimed.

It's still a lot of money, though I'd also be tempted to ask what we as a society pay as a result of alcohol abuse, alcohol-fuelled violence etc.

Look me in the eye and tell me Mr Tim* would have got his badge without a combined £450k going to Vote Leave and the Conservatives. He apparently did this without realising what he would get; LBC says

Quote:

The donation made Mr Martin part of the Conservative Leaders Group, giving him access to the-then prime minister and other senior Tories, including at dinners and lunches.

The Wetherspoons boss says he was unaware that such a donation would give him such access. Though having been made aware, he promised to bring 14 pints of Skol to the next one, and anyone buying 2 large glasses of Chateau Farage could have the rest of the bottle free.

Although I read now that he's thinking of voting Labour if they change tax rates to benefit his business. So he's as keen as anything to get that not-exactly-662.7 million down.

*I'm not all that keen on the aristocratic title. Up the workers!

I haven't got much of an opinion on this (don't frequent pubs much, don't know Tim Martin either), and don't really have any political alignment one way or another, but it's worth pointing out that you can't just take one set of published unverified figures and make sweeping assumptions either without a little consideration.

TheBillder wrote:

You can remove 142m of that as it's PAYE, which employees pay. Employers only collect it. And it's unclear how much of the 288m VAT is reclaimed.

That's PAYE and NIC, so a good proportion (around a third IME) of that will be employer NIC, paid by the employer. So not the full £142m, but probably £40-50m. Regarding VAT, that's almost certainly taken from company VAT returns, which will be net, i.e. amount paid to HMRC with input tax already deducted.

TheBillder wrote:

Although I read now that he's thinking of voting Labour if they change tax rates to benefit his business. So he's as keen as anything to get that not-exactly-662.7 million down. *I'm not all that keen on the aristocratic title. Up the workers!

Perhaps he's happy to help out another man-of-the-people, fellow working class knight of the realm, Sir Keir Starmer?!?