[doovd]

businesses yes. But governments abuse public spending - at least in the UK a significant chunk gets funnelled to conservative friends and family...why should I therefore want to fund that?

[cassepipe]

Seems like you need and try to convince people around you to vote for a party that wants high taxes on the rich (that include wealthy politicians), transparency on public expenses, public data on politicians resources, democratic control/revocation of elected representatives/public servants ? And forbid money owned medias by controlling their finances too ? There are only two ways to take down an oligarchy, a revolution and its unavoidable oligarchic backlash with the help of antidemocratic violent forces or use of the Democratic tools that the oligarchy had to concede throughout the accidents of history to divide it further and reinforce democracy. You will find it is quite hard though.

[doovd]

Abuse of taxes is not a party-specific issue. Until laws are passed to prevent this (which is probably a multi-decade lobbying effort), it will re-occur. You are right, it eventually boils down to "it is quite hard".

[CraigJPerry]

Why would a desire to pay less tax on your part influence a government’s misappropriation of the public purse?

That’s what voting is for surely?

[doovd]

Abuse of taxes is not a party-specific issue. Until laws are passed to prevent this (which is probably a multi-decade lobbying effort), it will re-occur. In the meantime, it's probably reasonable to be sour about paying taxes when it's subject to this practice by the receiver.

[Nextgrid]

Voting only works if there are good options out there. If both options are equally crooked, there's no solution.