The general election betting moves to LAB since the arrival of Truss – politicalbetting.com

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The general election betting moves to LAB since the arrival of Truss – politicalbetting.com

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squareroot2

First

DavidL

Too early to say in my opinion. Truss will get credit for having done something about the energy bills and a sense of purpose. We will have a better idea if that is enough in a month.

ydoethur

All the barriers to a Labour majority remain. But given it's very hard to see how the Tories don't lose around 80 seats, I would say if anything the markets are understating the chances of a Labour government.

ydoethur

DavidL said:

Too early to say in my opinion. Truss will get credit for having done something about the energy bills and a sense of purpose. We will have a better idea if that is enough in a month.

I doubt if she will. THe issue is she may have stopped it from being catastrophically worse but they're still very bad. My standing charges, for example, have quadrupled in just five months. That isn't her fault, or even the government's fault (leaving aside questions of whether they bear long term culpability via being obsessed with gas generation ahead of tidal and nuclear) but it would be very normal for her to get the blame for it.

DecrepiterJohnL

On the basis of last night, LizT should not rely on England winning the World Cup in December for an electoral boost.

Pagan2

FPT

algarkirk said:

Pagan2 said:

Still no one addresses the elephant in the room. They complain about services being underfunded and how dare tax be cut.

If all services were properly funded and paid for out of tax we would have the government taking about 90% of gdp as tax.

Time to start asking what the state should be saying no we dont do that anymore. Sadly a conversation no politician seems to want to have.

The answer is not tax more when half the country is struggling to make ends meet as it is. The answer is reduce spending.

The really huge bits of state managed expenditure go on:

pensions
social security
NHS
debt interest
defence
education
justice/police/prisons
local government services.

Debt interest will steadily rise unless we take a North Korean approach to liabilities.

In each other area above there is gigantic pressure massively to increase expenditure. Add social care to the list too. I can't thinkmof a single big area where people are generally saying 'enough' or 'too much'.

Can you (or anyone) suggest where the first, say, £200 bn reductions will be found?

For a start while those area's are high expenditure doesn't mean they should do everything they do now.

Defence for a start we could save a huge amount on procurement by just buying off the shelf stuff rather than creating custom shit just because.

NHS - last night I suggested a cap on lifetime health care expense, would set it at the average to start with and people can take out insurance to cover any over that. Also services such as tattoo removal should not be available. I would also refuse IVF on the NHS, a round of IVF costs about 10k....if you cant afford to save up 10k once a year to pay for it can you really afford the child as raising a child is likely to cost that a year in any case plus we have a lot of kids crying out for adoption.

I am sure others could come up with savings in all the other areas as well

DavidL

ydoethur said:

DavidL said:

Too early to say in my opinion. Truss will get credit for having done something about the energy bills and a sense of purpose. We will have a better idea if that is enough in a month.

I doubt if she will. THe issue is she may have stopped it from being catastrophically worse but they're still very bad. My standing charges, for example, have quadrupled in just five months. That isn't her fault, or even the government's fault (leaving aside questions of whether they bear long term culpability via being obsessed with gas generation ahead of tidal and nuclear) but it would be very normal for her to get the blame for it.

Yes, we have a situation where the government is making a truly massive and frankly unsustainable intervention to reduce the cost of energy and yet people are still going to feel very hard pressed by bills that have risen sharply. It would be a tough situation for any government.

maxh

Pagan2 said:

FPT

algarkirk said:

Pagan2 said:

Still no one addresses the elephant in the room. They complain about services being underfunded and how dare tax be cut.

If all services were properly funded and paid for out of tax we would have the government taking about 90% of gdp as tax.

Time to start asking what the state should be saying no we dont do that anymore. Sadly a conversation no politician seems to want to have.

The answer is not tax more when half the country is struggling to make ends meet as it is. The answer is reduce spending.

The really huge bits of state managed expenditure go on:

pensions
social security
NHS
debt interest
defence
education
justice/police/prisons
local government services.

Debt interest will steadily rise unless we take a North Korean approach to liabilities.

In each other area above there is gigantic pressure massively to increase expenditure. Add social care to the list too. I can't thinkmof a single big area where people are generally saying 'enough' or 'too much'.

Can you (or anyone) suggest where the first, say, £200 bn reductions will be found?

For a start while those area's are high expenditure doesn't mean they should do everything they do now.

Defence for a start we could save a huge amount on procurement by just buying off the shelf stuff rather than creating custom shit just because.

NHS - last night I suggested a cap on lifetime health care expense, would set it at the average to start with and people can take out insurance to cover any over that. Also services such as tattoo removal should not be available. I would also refuse IVF on the NHS, a round of IVF costs about 10k....if you cant afford to save up 10k once a year to pay for it can you really afford the child as raising a child is likely to cost that a year in any case plus we have a lot of kids crying out for adoption.

I am sure others could come up with savings in all the other areas as well

There is some truth in your first post - so many areas of public services are so significantly underfunded right now that redressing the balance is going to be financially really quite tricky.

But your reply to @algarkirk just reinforces their point - defence procurement, tattoo removal, IVF are all tiny nibbles.

If the country was to go down your suggested route, it would need to involve, say, revoking the right to free education entirely. That's the scale we're talking about.

Which is why I suspect the only answer is to muddle on through. Only not in the way Truss and Kwarteng want us to do so.

maxh

maxh said:

Pagan2 said:

FPT

algarkirk said:

Pagan2 said:

Still no one addresses the elephant in the room. They complain about services being underfunded and how dare tax be cut.

If all services were properly funded and paid for out of tax we would have the government taking about 90% of gdp as tax.

Time to start asking what the state should be saying no we dont do that anymore. Sadly a conversation no politician seems to want to have.

The answer is not tax more when half the country is struggling to make ends meet as it is. The answer is reduce spending.

The really huge bits of state managed expenditure go on:

pensions
social security
NHS
debt interest
defence
education
justice/police/prisons
local government services.

Debt interest will steadily rise unless we take a North Korean approach to liabilities.

In each other area above there is gigantic pressure massively to increase expenditure. Add social care to the list too. I can't thinkmof a single big area where people are generally saying 'enough' or 'too much'.

Can you (or anyone) suggest where the first, say, £200 bn reductions will be found?

For a start while those area's are high expenditure doesn't mean they should do everything they do now.

Defence for a start we could save a huge amount on procurement by just buying off the shelf stuff rather than creating custom shit just because.

NHS - last night I suggested a cap on lifetime health care expense, would set it at the average to start with and people can take out insurance to cover any over that. Also services such as tattoo removal should not be available. I would also refuse IVF on the NHS, a round of IVF costs about 10k....if you cant afford to save up 10k once a year to pay for it can you really afford the child as raising a child is likely to cost that a year in any case plus we have a lot of kids crying out for adoption.

I am sure others could come up with savings in all the other areas as well

There is some truth in your first post - so many areas of public services are so significantly underfunded right now that redressing the balance is going to be financially really quite tricky.

But your reply to @algarkirk just reinforces their point - defence procurement, tattoo removal, IVF are all tiny nibbles.

If the country was to go down your suggested route, it would need to involve, say, revoking the right to free education entirely. That's the scale we're talking about.

Which is why I suspect the only answer is to muddle on through. Only not in the way Truss and Kwarteng want us to do so.

Also, finding new forms of taxation that have positive social effects as well as positive income effects, such as a wealth tax.

Pulpstar

maxh said:

Pagan2 said:

FPT

algarkirk said:

Pagan2 said:

Still no one addresses the elephant in the room. They complain about services being underfunded and how dare tax be cut.

If all services were properly funded and paid for out of tax we would have the government taking about 90% of gdp as tax.

Time to start asking what the state should be saying no we dont do that anymore. Sadly a conversation no politician seems to want to have.

The answer is not tax more when half the country is struggling to make ends meet as it is. The answer is reduce spending.

The really huge bits of state managed expenditure go on:

pensions
social security
NHS
debt interest
defence
education
justice/police/prisons
local government services.

Debt interest will steadily rise unless we take a North Korean approach to liabilities.

In each other area above there is gigantic pressure massively to increase expenditure. Add social care to the list too. I can't thinkmof a single big area where people are generally saying 'enough' or 'too much'.

Can you (or anyone) suggest where the first, say, £200 bn reductions will be found?

For a start while those area's are high expenditure doesn't mean they should do everything they do now.

Defence for a start we could save a huge amount on procurement by just buying off the shelf stuff rather than creating custom shit just because.

NHS - last night I suggested a cap on lifetime health care expense, would set it at the average to start with and people can take out insurance to cover any over that. Also services such as tattoo removal should not be available. I would also refuse IVF on the NHS, a round of IVF costs about 10k....if you cant afford to save up 10k once a year to pay for it can you really afford the child as raising a child is likely to cost that a year in any case plus we have a lot of kids crying out for adoption.

I am sure others could come up with savings in all the other areas as well

There is some truth in your first post - so many areas of public services are so significantly underfunded right now that redressing the balance is going to be financially really quite tricky.

But your reply to @algarkirk just reinforces their point - defence procurement, tattoo removal, IVF are all tiny nibbles.

If the country was to go down your suggested route, it would need to involve, say, revoking the right to free education entirely. That's the scale we're talking about.

Which is why I suspect the only answer is to muddle on through. Only not in the way Truss and Kwarteng want us to do so.

This wouldn't save much on it's own is not a good reason to not try and save that cash in the first place.

kinabalu

The budget is obviously dreadful but I'm maybe in a minority in that I think it does make sense politically. To have a chance of winning another term of tory government, with the polls showing a solid Labour lead, Truss has to project her government as fresh and vigorous and above all NEW, ie repeat the trick Johnson managed for GE19. She can't, unlike him, use personality, and she doesn't have Brexit or an electorally toxic Labour opponent going for her, therefore it has to be done on policy. Hence this "new era", "tax cutting", "going for growth", "break with the stale consensus" rhetoric and package.

They know it's reckless and requires magical thinking to believe it'll pay for itself through higher growth. But they also know that "steady as she goes" through this energy crisis, fund the help package via a sensible mix of tax and borrowing, whilst being objectively the correct approach would deliver little political upside. It would leave the game unchanged when they need to kick the table over and force a new deck. Having done so they plan to frame the narrative over the next 2 years as New Era Low Tax Tories vs Same Old Labour Tax & Spenders. Come the GE, to be whispering these dirty words into the ears of the electorate - "Do you really want to pay more tax?"

This is the play, I think. They (Truss, the Tories) have to get their "low tax" mantle back - they can't win an election without that - and this is why they're cutting taxes when the country can’t afford it. It's not because they think it'll boost aspiration, investment and long term sustainable growth. They have no clue whether it'll do that and neither do they really care. They know you can’t audit these things anyway because it’s impossible to strip out causes and effects. And in political time there is no long term, there’s only the election. The reason they are cutting taxes is very simple and it is pure politics – it's so Labour have to say they’d raise them.

ping

Thanks to a combination of;

Me being a pretty frugal person

Living in reasonably energy efficient accommodation

Having a legacy “economy 10” leccy meter, which gives me cheap time between 2-5pm, 9-11pm & 1-6am

My supplier going bust and being transferred to shell, who have put me on their economy 7 tariff.

The government capping energy prices

Shell choosing to up the “day” rate, but leave the “night” rate mostly unchanged.

The government giving me £400 credit.

= my total energy bill, this year, is projected to be….. £185.

£15.41 per month.

Bonkers.

maxh

Pulpstar said:

maxh said:

Pagan2 said:

FPT

algarkirk said:

Pagan2 said:

Still no one addresses the elephant in the room. They complain about services being underfunded and how dare tax be cut.

If all services were properly funded and paid for out of tax we would have the government taking about 90% of gdp as tax.

Time to start asking what the state should be saying no we dont do that anymore. Sadly a conversation no politician seems to want to have.

The answer is not tax more when half the country is struggling to make ends meet as it is. The answer is reduce spending.

The really huge bits of state managed expenditure go on:

pensions
social security
NHS
debt interest
defence
education
justice/police/prisons
local government services.

Debt interest will steadily rise unless we take a North Korean approach to liabilities.

In each other area above there is gigantic pressure massively to increase expenditure. Add social care to the list too. I can't thinkmof a single big area where people are generally saying 'enough' or 'too much'.

Can you (or anyone) suggest where the first, say, £200 bn reductions will be found?

For a start while those area's are high expenditure doesn't mean they should do everything they do now.

Defence for a start we could save a huge amount on procurement by just buying off the shelf stuff rather than creating custom shit just because.

NHS - last night I suggested a cap on lifetime health care expense, would set it at the average to start with and people can take out insurance to cover any over that. Also services such as tattoo removal should not be available. I would also refuse IVF on the NHS, a round of IVF costs about 10k....if you cant afford to save up 10k once a year to pay for it can you really afford the child as raising a child is likely to cost that a year in any case plus we have a lot of kids crying out for adoption.

I am sure others could come up with savings in all the other areas as well

There is some truth in your first post - so many areas of public services are so significantly underfunded right now that redressing the balance is going to be financially really quite tricky.

But your reply to @algarkirk just reinforces their point - defence procurement, tattoo removal, IVF are all tiny nibbles.

If the country was to go down your suggested route, it would need to involve, say, revoking the right to free education entirely. That's the scale we're talking about.

Which is why I suspect the only answer is to muddle on through. Only not in the way Truss and Kwarteng want us to do so.

This wouldn't save much on it's own is not a good reason to not try and save that cash in the first place.

I agree. It just doesn't match the scale @Pagan2 is suggesting we need to work at.

Pagan2

maxh said:

Pagan2 said:

FPT

algarkirk said:

Pagan2 said:

Still no one addresses the elephant in the room. They complain about services being underfunded and how dare tax be cut.

If all services were properly funded and paid for out of tax we would have the government taking about 90% of gdp as tax.

Time to start asking what the state should be saying no we dont do that anymore. Sadly a conversation no politician seems to want to have.

The answer is not tax more when half the country is struggling to make ends meet as it is. The answer is reduce spending.

The really huge bits of state managed expenditure go on:

pensions
social security
NHS
debt interest
defence
education
justice/police/prisons
local government services.

Debt interest will steadily rise unless we take a North Korean approach to liabilities.

In each other area above there is gigantic pressure massively to increase expenditure. Add social care to the list too. I can't thinkmof a single big area where people are generally saying 'enough' or 'too much'.

Can you (or anyone) suggest where the first, say, £200 bn reductions will be found?

For a start while those area's are high expenditure doesn't mean they should do everything they do now.

Defence for a start we could save a huge amount on procurement by just buying off the shelf stuff rather than creating custom shit just because.

NHS - last night I suggested a cap on lifetime health care expense, would set it at the average to start with and people can take out insurance to cover any over that. Also services such as tattoo removal should not be available. I would also refuse IVF on the NHS, a round of IVF costs about 10k....if you cant afford to save up 10k once a year to pay for it can you really afford the child as raising a child is likely to cost that a year in any case plus we have a lot of kids crying out for adoption.

I am sure others could come up with savings in all the other areas as well

There is some truth in your first post - so many areas of public services are so significantly underfunded right now that redressing the balance is going to be financially really quite tricky.

But your reply to @algarkirk just reinforces their point - defence procurement, tattoo removal, IVF are all tiny nibbles.

If the country was to go down your suggested route, it would need to involve, say, revoking the right to free education entirely. That's the scale we're talking about.

Which is why I suspect the only answer is to muddle on through. Only not in the way Truss and Kwarteng want us to do so.

They maybe tiny nibbles but I am sure there are plenty more tiny nibbles we can take and they start to add up. What we can't do is keep adding on things that need money because we are already taxing the majority of the country into the ground and there is no more to squeeze out.

The biggest change that ought to be made is public sector pensions switching from to db to dc and a cap on what the employer contributes. Currently employer contributions average about 20% in the public sector. Yes wouldn't help immediately but in the long term it would. I would also do a clawback on state pensions so for every 5£ you get from other pensions you state pension is reduced by a pound

Pagan2

maxh said:

Pulpstar said:

maxh said:

Pagan2 said:

FPT

algarkirk said:

Pagan2 said:

Still no one addresses the elephant in the room. They complain about services being underfunded and how dare tax be cut.

If all services were properly funded and paid for out of tax we would have the government taking about 90% of gdp as tax.

Time to start asking what the state should be saying no we dont do that anymore. Sadly a conversation no politician seems to want to have.

The answer is not tax more when half the country is struggling to make ends meet as it is. The answer is reduce spending.

The really huge bits of state managed expenditure go on:

pensions
social security
NHS
debt interest
defence
education
justice/police/prisons
local government services.

Debt interest will steadily rise unless we take a North Korean approach to liabilities.

In each other area above there is gigantic pressure massively to increase expenditure. Add social care to the list too. I can't thinkmof a single big area where people are generally saying 'enough' or 'too much'.

Can you (or anyone) suggest where the first, say, £200 bn reductions will be found?

For a start while those area's are high expenditure doesn't mean they should do everything they do now.

Defence for a start we could save a huge amount on procurement by just buying off the shelf stuff rather than creating custom shit just because.

NHS - last night I suggested a cap on lifetime health care expense, would set it at the average to start with and people can take out insurance to cover any over that. Also services such as tattoo removal should not be available. I would also refuse IVF on the NHS, a round of IVF costs about 10k....if you cant afford to save up 10k once a year to pay for it can you really afford the child as raising a child is likely to cost that a year in any case plus we have a lot of kids crying out for adoption.

I am sure others could come up with savings in all the other areas as well

There is some truth in your first post - so many areas of public services are so significantly underfunded right now that redressing the balance is going to be financially really quite tricky.

But your reply to @algarkirk just reinforces their point - defence procurement, tattoo removal, IVF are all tiny nibbles.

If the country was to go down your suggested route, it would need to involve, say, revoking the right to free education entirely. That's the scale we're talking about.

Which is why I suspect the only answer is to muddle on through. Only not in the way Truss and Kwarteng want us to do so.

This wouldn't save much on it's own is not a good reason to not try and save that cash in the first place.

I agree. It just doesn't match the scale @Pagan2 is suggesting we need to work at.

You are however taking my post as this is all we should do rather than just a couple of examples

RobD

ping said:

Thanks to a combination of;

Me being a pretty frugal person

Living in reasonably energy efficient accommodation

Having a legacy “economy 10” leccy meter

My supplier going bust and being transferred to shell, who have put me on their economy 7 tariff.

The government capping energy prices

Shell choosing to up the “day” rate, but leave the “night” rate mostly unchanged.

The government giving me £400 credit.

= my total energy bill, this year, is projected to be….. £185.

£15.41 per month.

Bonkers.

You must be quite far in the tail of the distribution of the average is ten times higher!

Ratters

I think Starmer has nailed it with his attack line:

"Tory casino economics is gambling the mortgages and finances of every family in the country."

Labour will pull further ahead as the Government's plans unravel.

rottenborough

You may well ask Julia:



Julia Hartley-Brewer
@JuliaHB1
·
4h
I'm struggling with this "mini" Budget. I'm largely pro cutting taxes + smaller government, but millions of families and businesses desperately need help thanks to disastrous energy policy + lockdowns.

So why cut taxes for the rich - the only people who don't need the help?

https://twitter.com/JuliaHB1

dixiedean

kinabalu said:

The budget is obviously dreadful but I'm maybe in a minority in that I think it does make sense politically. To have a chance of winning another term of tory government, with the polls showing a solid Labour lead, Truss has to project her government as fresh and vigorous and above all NEW, ie repeat the trick Johnson managed for GE19. She can't, unlike him, use personality, and she doesn't have Brexit or an electorally toxic Labour opponent going for her, therefore it has to be done on policy. Hence this "new era", "tax cutting", "going for growth", "break with the stale consensus" rhetoric and package.

They know it's reckless and requires magical thinking to believe it'll pay for itself through higher growth. But they also know that "steady as she goes" through this energy crisis, fund the help package via a sensible mix of tax and borrowing, whilst being objectively the correct approach would deliver little political upside. It would leave the game unchanged when they need to kick the table over and force a new deck. Having done so they plan to frame the narrative over the next 2 years as New Era Low Tax Tories vs Same Old Labour Tax & Spenders. Come the GE, to be whispering these dirty words into the ears of the electorate - "Do you really want to pay more tax?"

This is the play, I think. They (Truss, the Tories) have to get their "low tax" mantle back - they can't win an election without that - and this is why they're cutting taxes when the country can’t afford it. It's not because they think it'll boost aspiration, investment and long term sustainable growth. They have no clue whether it'll do that and neither do they really care. They know you can’t audit these things anyway because it’s impossible to strip out causes and effects. And in political time there is no long term, there’s only the election. The reason they are cutting taxes is very simple and it is pure politics – it's so Labour have to say they’d raise them.

The just punishment would be a tiny Conservative majority to give them till 2029 to begin to clear up the damage.

dixiedean

Still can't see where this "growth" is coming from.
At best it will prevent a serious recession.

wooliedyed

Pagan2 said:

maxh said:

Pagan2 said:

FPT

algarkirk said:

Pagan2 said:

Still no one addresses the elephant in the room. They complain about services being underfunded and how dare tax be cut.

If all services were properly funded and paid for out of tax we would have the government taking about 90% of gdp as tax.

Time to start asking what the state should be saying no we dont do that anymore. Sadly a conversation no politician seems to want to have.

The answer is not tax more when half the country is struggling to make ends meet as it is. The answer is reduce spending.

The really huge bits of state managed expenditure go on:

pensions
social security
NHS
debt interest
defence
education
justice/police/prisons
local government services.

Debt interest will steadily rise unless we take a North Korean approach to liabilities.

In each other area above there is gigantic pressure massively to increase expenditure. Add social care to the list too. I can't thinkmof a single big area where people are generally saying 'enough' or 'too much'.

Can you (or anyone) suggest where the first, say, £200 bn reductions will be found?

For a start while those area's are high expenditure doesn't mean they should do everything they do now.

Defence for a start we could save a huge amount on procurement by just buying off the shelf stuff rather than creating custom shit just because.

NHS - last night I suggested a cap on lifetime health care expense, would set it at the average to start with and people can take out insurance to cover any over that. Also services such as tattoo removal should not be available. I would also refuse IVF on the NHS, a round of IVF costs about 10k....if you cant afford to save up 10k once a year to pay for it can you really afford the child as raising a child is likely to cost that a year in any case plus we have a lot of kids crying out for adoption.

I am sure others could come up with savings in all the other areas as well

There is some truth in your first post - so many areas of public services are so significantly underfunded right now that redressing the balance is going to be financially really quite tricky.

But your reply to @algarkirk just reinforces their point - defence procurement, tattoo removal, IVF are all tiny nibbles.

If the country was to go down your suggested route, it would need to involve, say, revoking the right to free education entirely. That's the scale we're talking about.

Which is why I suspect the only answer is to muddle on through. Only not in the way Truss and Kwarteng want us to do so.

They maybe tiny nibbles but I am sure there are plenty more tiny nibbles we can take and they start to add up. What we can't do is keep adding on things that need money because we are already taxing the majority of the country into the ground and there is no more to squeeze out.

The biggest change that ought to be made is public sector pensions switching from to db to dc and a cap on what the employer contributes. Currently employer contributions average about 20% in the public sector. Yes wouldn't help immediately but in the long term it would. I would also do a clawback on state pensions so for every 5£ you get from other pensions you state pension is reduced by a pound

The problem with state pension clawback is that many of us have planned retirement based on what we will need over state pension to get by. Is it really practical to say to someone who is expecting 14k a year in retirement (9k state approx plus 5k in his own schemes) that he has to take a 1k cut and live on 13k? Will rental incomes be counted as 'other pensions' for those that bought property as retirement provision?
How would drawdown be handled?

Stuartinromford

rottenborough said:

You may well ask Julia:



Julia Hartley-Brewer
@JuliaHB1
·
4h
I'm struggling with this "mini" Budget. I'm largely pro cutting taxes + smaller government, but millions of families and businesses desperately need help thanks to disastrous energy policy + lockdowns.

So why cut taxes for the rich - the only people who don't need the help?

https://twitter.com/JuliaHB1

Ever get the feeling you've been cheated?

maxh

Pagan2 said:

maxh said:

Pulpstar said:

maxh said:

Pagan2 said:

FPT

algarkirk said:

Pagan2 said:

Still no one addresses the elephant in the room. They complain about services being underfunded and how dare tax be cut.

If all services were properly funded and paid for out of tax we would have the government taking about 90% of gdp as tax.

Time to start asking what the state should be saying no we dont do that anymore. Sadly a conversation no politician seems to want to have.

The answer is not tax more when half the country is struggling to make ends meet as it is. The answer is reduce spending.

The really huge bits of state managed expenditure go on:

pensions
social security
NHS
debt interest
defence
education
justice/police/prisons
local government services.

Debt interest will steadily rise unless we take a North Korean approach to liabilities.

In each other area above there is gigantic pressure massively to increase expenditure. Add social care to the list too. I can't thinkmof a single big area where people are generally saying 'enough' or 'too much'.

Can you (or anyone) suggest where the first, say, £200 bn reductions will be found?

For a start while those area's are high expenditure doesn't mean they should do everything they do now.

Defence for a start we could save a huge amount on procurement by just buying off the shelf stuff rather than creating custom shit just because.

NHS - last night I suggested a cap on lifetime health care expense, would set it at the average to start with and people can take out insurance to cover any over that. Also services such as tattoo removal should not be available. I would also refuse IVF on the NHS, a round of IVF costs about 10k....if you cant afford to save up 10k once a year to pay for it can you really afford the child as raising a child is likely to cost that a year in any case plus we have a lot of kids crying out for adoption.

I am sure others could come up with savings in all the other areas as well

There is some truth in your first post - so many areas of public services are so significantly underfunded right now that redressing the balance is going to be financially really quite tricky.

But your reply to @algarkirk just reinforces their point - defence procurement, tattoo removal, IVF are all tiny nibbles.

If the country was to go down your suggested route, it would need to involve, say, revoking the right to free education entirely. That's the scale we're talking about.

Which is why I suspect the only answer is to muddle on through. Only not in the way Truss and Kwarteng want us to do so.

This wouldn't save much on it's own is not a good reason to not try and save that cash in the first place.

I agree. It just doesn't match the scale @Pagan2 is suggesting we need to work at.

You are however taking my post as this is all we should do rather than just a couple of examples

I'm not taking it that way - what I'm trying to say is that my instinct is that the scale of change needed to solve the problem you identify is so large that however many examples you can identify, they won't add up to anywhere near enough.

That's not to say they aren't worth doing, just that, if we were really having a conversation about the 'elephant in the room' - finding a way to properly fund that which we think is important enough to properly fund, and not doing the rest, we would need to be looking at an entirely dfferent scale.

eek

dixiedean said:

Still can't see where this "growth" is coming from.
At best it will prevent a serious recession.

Trickle down economics - granted it’s not work in 50 years (because the money goes else on Porsches and similar foreign made goodies but this time it’s different

HYUFD

The odds now favour Labour for most seats, a Labour majority absent a major recovery in Scotland however is still some way off

Eabhal

@Theuniondivvie FPT

Scotland already has an issue where lots of people get their free uni education in something like economics or accounting and then head south to London for the graduate job. It was only a last minute job offer + girlfriend that stopped me doing the same.

Scotland has a decent tax position because of O&G + Edinburgh finance, basically. The former is under real pressure at the mo (Aberdeen cheaper than Dundee!) and firms like Abrdn aren't doing great either. Future graduates similar to me (and companies) will head south in increasing numbers if there a long term difference in tax rates. It's much easier to do this than move from London to Frankfurt, for the Brexit comparison.

Spending here is higher than the UK average, hence the "Union dividend". This tax/spend divergence might make retiring to Scotland even more attractive than it already is (see the English populations in Moray, Highland, Orkney etc), further putting pressure on the public finances.

Pagan2

wooliedyed said:

Pagan2 said:

maxh said:

Pagan2 said:

FPT

algarkirk said:

Pagan2 said:

Still no one addresses the elephant in the room. They complain about services being underfunded and how dare tax be cut.

If all services were properly funded and paid for out of tax we would have the government taking about 90% of gdp as tax.

Time to start asking what the state should be saying no we dont do that anymore. Sadly a conversation no politician seems to want to have.

The answer is not tax more when half the country is struggling to make ends meet as it is. The answer is reduce spending.

The really huge bits of state managed expenditure go on:

pensions
social security
NHS
debt interest
defence
education
justice/police/prisons
local government services.

Debt interest will steadily rise unless we take a North Korean approach to liabilities.

In each other area above there is gigantic pressure massively to increase expenditure. Add social care to the list too. I can't thinkmof a single big area where people are generally saying 'enough' or 'too much'.

Can you (or anyone) suggest where the first, say, £200 bn reductions will be found?

For a start while those area's are high expenditure doesn't mean they should do everything they do now.

Defence for a start we could save a huge amount on procurement by just buying off the shelf stuff rather than creating custom shit just because.

NHS - last night I suggested a cap on lifetime health care expense, would set it at the average to start with and people can take out insurance to cover any over that. Also services such as tattoo removal should not be available. I would also refuse IVF on the NHS, a round of IVF costs about 10k....if you cant afford to save up 10k once a year to pay for it can you really afford the child as raising a child is likely to cost that a year in any case plus we have a lot of kids crying out for adoption.

I am sure others could come up with savings in all the other areas as well

There is some truth in your first post - so many areas of public services are so significantly underfunded right now that redressing the balance is going to be financially really quite tricky.

But your reply to @algarkirk just reinforces their point - defence procurement, tattoo removal, IVF are all tiny nibbles.

If the country was to go down your suggested route, it would need to involve, say, revoking the right to free education entirely. That's the scale we're talking about.

Which is why I suspect the only answer is to muddle on through. Only not in the way Truss and Kwarteng want us to do so.

They maybe tiny nibbles but I am sure there are plenty more tiny nibbles we can take and they start to add up. What we can't do is keep adding on things that need money because we are already taxing the majority of the country into the ground and there is no more to squeeze out.

The biggest change that ought to be made is public sector pensions switching from to db to dc and a cap on what the employer contributes. Currently employer contributions average about 20% in the public sector. Yes wouldn't help immediately but in the long term it would. I would also do a clawback on state pensions so for every 5£ you get from other pensions you state pension is reduced by a pound

The problem with state pension clawback is that many of us have planned retirement based on what we will need over state pension to get by. Is it really practical to say to someone who is expecting 14k a year in retirement (9k state approx plus 5k in his own schemes) that he has to take a 1k cut and live on 13k? Will rental incomes be counted as 'other pensions' for those that bought property as retirement provision?
How would drawdown be handled?

Yes other income would be treated as other pensions and we all plan our lives everyday on facts that change over time and when the facts change we have to change our plans. I don't see why pensioners should be any different. If anything people facing clawback are probably in a better place to respond as chances are they have no mortgage or rent if they have significant enough pension. We could also start with a clawback free sum so only applies after first 5000 of additional income. HMRC will already have the figures for additional income so it could be handled via them.

Eabhal

rottenborough said:

You may well ask Julia:



Julia Hartley-Brewer
@JuliaHB1
·
4h
I'm struggling with this "mini" Budget. I'm largely pro cutting taxes + smaller government, but millions of families and businesses desperately need help thanks to disastrous energy policy + lockdowns.

So why cut taxes for the rich - the only people who don't need the help?

https://twitter.com/JuliaHB1

Hahaha 🍿

Pagan2

maxh said:

Pagan2 said:

maxh said:

Pulpstar said:

maxh said:

Pagan2 said:

FPT

algarkirk said:

Pagan2 said:

Still no one addresses the elephant in the room. They complain about services being underfunded and how dare tax be cut.

If all services were properly funded and paid for out of tax we would have the government taking about 90% of gdp as tax.

Time to start asking what the state should be saying no we dont do that anymore. Sadly a conversation no politician seems to want to have.

The answer is not tax more when half the country is struggling to make ends meet as it is. The answer is reduce spending.

The really huge bits of state managed expenditure go on:

pensions
social security
NHS
debt interest
defence
education
justice/police/prisons
local government services.

Debt interest will steadily rise unless we take a North Korean approach to liabilities.

In each other area above there is gigantic pressure massively to increase expenditure. Add social care to the list too. I can't thinkmof a single big area where people are generally saying 'enough' or 'too much'.

Can you (or anyone) suggest where the first, say, £200 bn reductions will be found?

For a start while those area's are high expenditure doesn't mean they should do everything they do now.

Defence for a start we could save a huge amount on procurement by just buying off the shelf stuff rather than creating custom shit just because.

NHS - last night I suggested a cap on lifetime health care expense, would set it at the average to start with and people can take out insurance to cover any over that. Also services such as tattoo removal should not be available. I would also refuse IVF on the NHS, a round of IVF costs about 10k....if you cant afford to save up 10k once a year to pay for it can you really afford the child as raising a child is likely to cost that a year in any case plus we have a lot of kids crying out for adoption.

I am sure others could come up with savings in all the other areas as well

There is some truth in your first post - so many areas of public services are so significantly underfunded right now that redressing the balance is going to be financially really quite tricky.

But your reply to @algarkirk just reinforces their point - defence procurement, tattoo removal, IVF are all tiny nibbles.

If the country was to go down your suggested route, it would need to involve, say, revoking the right to free education entirely. That's the scale we're talking about.

Which is why I suspect the only answer is to muddle on through. Only not in the way Truss and Kwarteng want us to do so.

This wouldn't save much on it's own is not a good reason to not try and save that cash in the first place.

I agree. It just doesn't match the scale @Pagan2 is suggesting we need to work at.

You are however taking my post as this is all we should do rather than just a couple of examples

I'm not taking it that way - what I'm trying to say is that my instinct is that the scale of change needed to solve the problem you identify is so large that however many examples you can identify, they won't add up to anywhere near enough.

That's not to say they aren't worth doing, just that, if we were really having a conversation about the 'elephant in the room' - finding a way to properly fund that which we think is important enough to properly fund, and not doing the rest, we would need to be looking at an entirely dfferent scale.

The way to eat an elephant is in many meals not one gigantic roast dinner

Foxy

Pagan2 said:

FPT

algarkirk said:

Pagan2 said:

Still no one addresses the elephant in the room. They complain about services being underfunded and how dare tax be cut.

If all services were properly funded and paid for out of tax we would have the government taking about 90% of gdp as tax.

Time to start asking what the state should be saying no we dont do that anymore. Sadly a conversation no politician seems to want to have.

The answer is not tax more when half the country is struggling to make ends meet as it is. The answer is reduce spending.

The really huge bits of state managed expenditure go on:

pensions
social security
NHS
debt interest
defence
education
justice/police/prisons
local government services.

Debt interest will steadily rise unless we take a North Korean approach to liabilities.

In each other area above there is gigantic pressure massively to increase expenditure. Add social care to the list too. I can't thinkmof a single big area where people are generally saying 'enough' or 'too much'.

Can you (or anyone) suggest where the first, say, £200 bn reductions will be found?

For a start while those area's are high expenditure doesn't mean they should do everything they do now.

Defence for a start we could save a huge amount on procurement by just buying off the shelf stuff rather than creating custom shit just because.

NHS - last night I suggested a cap on lifetime health care expense, would set it at the average to start with and people can take out insurance to cover any over that. Also services such as tattoo removal should not be available. I would also refuse IVF on the NHS, a round of IVF costs about 10k....if you cant afford to save up 10k once a year to pay for it can you really afford the child as raising a child is likely to cost that a year in any case plus we have a lot of kids crying out for adoption.

I am sure others could come up with savings in all the other areas as well

A round of IVF doesn't cost £10k. Those babies are the tax payers of the future who will look after you in your dotage.

HYUFD

DecrepiterJohnL said:

On the basis of last night, LizT should not rely on England winning the World Cup in December for an electoral boost.

England winning the world cup might boost a Labour government, I doubt it would do much for a Tory government.

Most football supporters still largely support Labour (or the SNP outside of Rangers in Scotland), most Tory voters prefer rugby union or cricket.

It might help Truss a fraction in the redwall but given yesterday's mini budget her target is now more holding the bluewall anyway

ohnotnow

ping said:

Thanks to a combination of;

Me being a pretty frugal person

Living in reasonably energy efficient accommodation

Having a legacy “economy 10” leccy meter, which gives me cheap time between 2-5pm, 9-11pm & 1-6am

My supplier going bust and being transferred to shell, who have put me on their economy 7 tariff.

The government capping energy prices

Shell choosing to up the “day” rate, but leave the “night” rate mostly unchanged.

The government giving me £400 credit.

= my total energy bill, this year, is projected to be….. £185.

£15.41 per month.

Bonkers.

I stay in a draughty old Victorian building and over the depths of winter my monthly bill is going to be just £30 a month. It's quite a bizarre situation, and I suspect more common than we might think from the talk of caps & averages.

pigeon

A tumbling pound is adding £5 to a tank of petrol by cancelling out the benefits of falling oil prices, according to the AA.

Another reminder that the government’s fiscal policy risks fuelling inflation.

https://twitter.com/PaulBrandITV/status/1573624635966558208

Of course, those riding around in Government limos don't have to worry about the cost of filling their tanks up.

IanB2

DavidL said:

Too early to say in my opinion. Truss will get credit for having done something about the energy bills and a sense of purpose. We will have a better idea if that is enough in a month.

Purpose is all very well, until you light upon a purpose where you’d have better off doing nothing.

MarqueeMark

kinabalu said:

The budget is obviously dreadful but I'm maybe in a minority in that I think it does make sense politically. To have a chance of winning another term of tory government, with the polls showing a solid Labour lead, Truss has to project her government as fresh and vigorous and above all NEW, ie repeat the trick Johnson managed for GE19. She can't, unlike him, use personality, and she doesn't have Brexit or an electorally toxic Labour opponent going for her, therefore it has to be done on policy. Hence this "new era", "tax cutting", "going for growth", "break with the stale consensus" rhetoric and package.

They know it's reckless and requires magical thinking to believe it'll pay for itself through higher growth. But they also know that "steady as she goes" through this energy crisis, fund the help package via a sensible mix of tax and borrowing, whilst being objectively the correct approach would deliver little political upside. It would leave the game unchanged when they need to kick the table over and force a new deck. Having done so they plan to frame the narrative over the next 2 years as New Era Low Tax Tories vs Same Old Labour Tax & Spenders. Come the GE, to be whispering these dirty words into the ears of the electorate - "Do you really want to pay more tax?"

This is the play, I think. They (Truss, the Tories) have to get their "low tax" mantle back - they can't win an election without that - and this is why they're cutting taxes when the country can’t afford it. It's not because they think it'll boost aspiration, investment and long term sustainable growth. They have no clue whether it'll do that and neither do they really care. They know you can’t audit these things anyway because it’s impossible to strip out causes and effects. And in political time there is no long term, there’s only the election. The reason they are cutting taxes is very simple and it is pure politics – it's so Labour have to say they’d raise them.

The reason Rishi is not PM is because he did not play to the Party's "low tax mantle". The "not one of us" failure was nothing to do with his colour but everything to do with thinking high taxes were the answer.

He's a very smart guy. I'm sure as a Conservative he only raised taxes because TINA told him he had to. Truss and her Chancellor think there is an alternative. If they are wrong, we are going to be having top rates of income tax north of 50% - and a flight of the rich out the country.

I would like to hear Truss say that she has reduced tax to draw in the wealthy from around the world. I have no problems with them coming here so long as they pay our modest taxes. Thousands more billionaires moving here is frankly the only way to get the NHS funded to the levels it needs to remain free at the point of use. We may have to hold our noses about the nature of some of these folk and how they have made their billions. But as long as they aren't involved in undermining the country, I can live with that.

Pagan2

Foxy said:

Pagan2 said:

FPT

algarkirk said:

Pagan2 said:

Still no one addresses the elephant in the room. They complain about services being underfunded and how dare tax be cut.

If all services were properly funded and paid for out of tax we would have the government taking about 90% of gdp as tax.

Time to start asking what the state should be saying no we dont do that anymore. Sadly a conversation no politician seems to want to have.

The answer is not tax more when half the country is struggling to make ends meet as it is. The answer is reduce spending.

The really huge bits of state managed expenditure go on:

pensions
social security
NHS
debt interest
defence
education
justice/police/prisons
local government services.

Debt interest will steadily rise unless we take a North Korean approach to liabilities.

In each other area above there is gigantic pressure massively to increase expenditure. Add social care to the list too. I can't thinkmof a single big area where people are generally saying 'enough' or 'too much'.

Can you (or anyone) suggest where the first, say, £200 bn reductions will be found?

For a start while those area's are high expenditure doesn't mean they should do everything they do now.

Defence for a start we could save a huge amount on procurement by just buying off the shelf stuff rather than creating custom shit just because.

NHS - last night I suggested a cap on lifetime health care expense, would set it at the average to start with and people can take out insurance to cover any over that. Also services such as tattoo removal should not be available. I would also refuse IVF on the NHS, a round of IVF costs about 10k....if you cant afford to save up 10k once a year to pay for it can you really afford the child as raising a child is likely to cost that a year in any case plus we have a lot of kids crying out for adoption.

I am sure others could come up with savings in all the other areas as well

A round of IVF doesn't cost £10k. Those babies are the tax payers of the future who will look after you in your dotage.

How much is a round of IVF then I have found private ranging from about 5k upwards plus additional costs.

As to the taxpayers of the future there arent enough ivf babies to be more than a rounding blip in the tax payer pool. You also neglect the opportunity cost if they adopt instead as children raised in care statistically underperform in later life compared to children raised in a family

ydoethur

dixiedean said:

kinabalu said:

The budget is obviously dreadful but I'm maybe in a minority in that I think it does make sense politically. To have a chance of winning another term of tory government, with the polls showing a solid Labour lead, Truss has to project her government as fresh and vigorous and above all NEW, ie repeat the trick Johnson managed for GE19. She can't, unlike him, use personality, and she doesn't have Brexit or an electorally toxic Labour opponent going for her, therefore it has to be done on policy. Hence this "new era", "tax cutting", "going for growth", "break with the stale consensus" rhetoric and package.

They know it's reckless and requires magical thinking to believe it'll pay for itself through higher growth. But they also know that "steady as she goes" through this energy crisis, fund the help package via a sensible mix of tax and borrowing, whilst being objectively the correct approach would deliver little political upside. It would leave the game unchanged when they need to kick the table over and force a new deck. Having done so they plan to frame the narrative over the next 2 years as New Era Low Tax Tories vs Same Old Labour Tax & Spenders. Come the GE, to be whispering these dirty words into the ears of the electorate - "Do you really want to pay more tax?"

This is the play, I think. They (Truss, the Tories) have to get their "low tax" mantle back - they can't win an election without that - and this is why they're cutting taxes when the country can’t afford it. It's not because they think it'll boost aspiration, investment and long term sustainable growth. They have no clue whether it'll do that and neither do they really care. They know you can’t audit these things anyway because it’s impossible to strip out causes and effects. And in political time there is no long term, there’s only the election. The reason they are cutting taxes is very simple and it is pure politics – it's so Labour have to say they’d raise them.

The just punishment would be a tiny Conservative majority to give them till 2029 to begin to clear up the damage.

That would probably lead to a weak and chaotic (well, still weaker and more chaotic) that would end up doing much more damage.

TheScreamingEagles

dixiedean said:

Still can't see where this "growth" is coming from.
At best it will prevent a serious recession.

The growth is going to be in the Swiss and Italian economies thanks to this budget.

Foxy

Pagan2 said:

Foxy said:

Pagan2 said:

FPT

algarkirk said:

Pagan2 said:

Still no one addresses the elephant in the room. They complain about services being underfunded and how dare tax be cut.

If all services were properly funded and paid for out of tax we would have the government taking about 90% of gdp as tax.

Time to start asking what the state should be saying no we dont do that anymore. Sadly a conversation no politician seems to want to have.

The answer is not tax more when half the country is struggling to make ends meet as it is. The answer is reduce spending.

The really huge bits of state managed expenditure go on:

pensions
social security
NHS
debt interest
defence
education
justice/police/prisons
local government services.

Debt interest will steadily rise unless we take a North Korean approach to liabilities.

In each other area above there is gigantic pressure massively to increase expenditure. Add social care to the list too. I can't thinkmof a single big area where people are generally saying 'enough' or 'too much'.

Can you (or anyone) suggest where the first, say, £200 bn reductions will be found?

For a start while those area's are high expenditure doesn't mean they should do everything they do now.

Defence for a start we could save a huge amount on procurement by just buying off the shelf stuff rather than creating custom shit just because.

NHS - last night I suggested a cap on lifetime health care expense, would set it at the average to start with and people can take out insurance to cover any over that. Also services such as tattoo removal should not be available. I would also refuse IVF on the NHS, a round of IVF costs about 10k....if you cant afford to save up 10k once a year to pay for it can you really afford the child as raising a child is likely to cost that a year in any case plus we have a lot of kids crying out for adoption.

I am sure others could come up with savings in all the other areas as well

A round of IVF doesn't cost £10k. Those babies are the tax payers of the future who will look after you in your dotage.

How much is a round of IVF then I have found private ranging from about 5k upwards plus additional costs.

As to the taxpayers of the future there arent enough ivf babies to be more than a rounding blip in the tax payer pool. You also neglect the opportunity cost if they adopt instead as children raised in care statistically underperform in later life compared to children raised in a family

All inclusive for £2750 per cycle in Brum.

https://www.abcivf.co.uk/costs?gclid=Cj0KCQjw1bqZBhDXARIsANTjCPKNd0DOc2KRCD89vlsGLfweOv_-P9Ew2o9wPrzw3FvWb16OWZ3UiwAaAlzBEALw_wcB

Pagan2

Pagan2 said:

Foxy said:

Pagan2 said:

FPT

algarkirk said:

Pagan2 said:

Still no one addresses the elephant in the room. They complain about services being underfunded and how dare tax be cut.

If all services were properly funded and paid for out of tax we would have the government taking about 90% of gdp as tax.

Time to start asking what the state should be saying no we dont do that anymore. Sadly a conversation no politician seems to want to have.

The answer is not tax more when half the country is struggling to make ends meet as it is. The answer is reduce spending.

The really huge bits of state managed expenditure go on:

pensions
social security
NHS
debt interest
defence
education
justice/police/prisons
local government services.

Debt interest will steadily rise unless we take a North Korean approach to liabilities.

In each other area above there is gigantic pressure massively to increase expenditure. Add social care to the list too. I can't thinkmof a single big area where people are generally saying 'enough' or 'too much'.

Can you (or anyone) suggest where the first, say, £200 bn reductions will be found?

For a start while those area's are high expenditure doesn't mean they should do everything they do now.

Defence for a start we could save a huge amount on procurement by just buying off the shelf stuff rather than creating custom shit just because.

NHS - last night I suggested a cap on lifetime health care expense, would set it at the average to start with and people can take out insurance to cover any over that. Also services such as tattoo removal should not be available. I would also refuse IVF on the NHS, a round of IVF costs about 10k....if you cant afford to save up 10k once a year to pay for it can you really afford the child as raising a child is likely to cost that a year in any case plus we have a lot of kids crying out for adoption.

I am sure others could come up with savings in all the other areas as well

A round of IVF doesn't cost £10k. Those babies are the tax payers of the future who will look after you in your dotage.

How much is a round of IVF then I have found private ranging from about 5k upwards plus additional costs.

As to the taxpayers of the future there arent enough ivf babies to be more than a rounding blip in the tax payer pool. You also neglect the opportunity cost if they adopt instead as children raised in care statistically underperform in later life compared to children raised in a family

hmmm
https://www.hfea.gov.uk/about-us/news-and-press-releases/2021-news-and-press-releases/ivf-cycles-surpass-1-million-and-uk-fertility-treatment-is-more-successful-than-ever/#:~:text=Over 1.3 million IVF cycles,figures from the HFEA show.

a mere extra 390,000 tax payers from 31 years of ivf...a blip as I said

maxh

Pagan2 said:

maxh said:

Pagan2 said:

maxh said:

Pulpstar said:

maxh said:

Pagan2 said:

FPT

algarkirk said:

Pagan2 said:

Still no one addresses the elephant in the room. They complain about services being underfunded and how dare tax be cut.

If all services were properly funded and paid for out of tax we would have the government taking about 90% of gdp as tax.

Time to start asking what the state should be saying no we dont do that anymore. Sadly a conversation no politician seems to want to have.

The answer is not tax more when half the country is struggling to make ends meet as it is. The answer is reduce spending.

The really huge bits of state managed expenditure go on:

pensions
social security
NHS
debt interest
defence
education
justice/police/prisons
local government services.

Debt interest will steadily rise unless we take a North Korean approach to liabilities.

In each other area above there is gigantic pressure massively to increase expenditure. Add social care to the list too. I can't thinkmof a single big area where people are generally saying 'enough' or 'too much'.

Can you (or anyone) suggest where the first, say, £200 bn reductions will be found?

For a start while those area's are high expenditure doesn't mean they should do everything they do now.

Defence for a start we could save a huge amount on procurement by just buying off the shelf stuff rather than creating custom shit just because.

NHS - last night I suggested a cap on lifetime health care expense, would set it at the average to start with and people can take out insurance to cover any over that. Also services such as tattoo removal should not be available. I would also refuse IVF on the NHS, a round of IVF costs about 10k....if you cant afford to save up 10k once a year to pay for it can you really afford the child as raising a child is likely to cost that a year in any case plus we have a lot of kids crying out for adoption.

I am sure others could come up with savings in all the other areas as well

There is some truth in your first post - so many areas of public services are so significantly underfunded right now that redressing the balance is going to be financially really quite tricky.

But your reply to @algarkirk just reinforces their point - defence procurement, tattoo removal, IVF are all tiny nibbles.

If the country was to go down your suggested route, it would need to involve, say, revoking the right to free education entirely. That's the scale we're talking about.

Which is why I suspect the only answer is to muddle on through. Only not in the way Truss and Kwarteng want us to do so.

This wouldn't save much on it's own is not a good reason to not try and save that cash in the first place.

I agree. It just doesn't match the scale @Pagan2 is suggesting we need to work at.

You are however taking my post as this is all we should do rather than just a couple of examples

I'm not taking it that way - what I'm trying to say is that my instinct is that the scale of change needed to solve the problem you identify is so large that however many examples you can identify, they won't add up to anywhere near enough.

That's not to say they aren't worth doing, just that, if we were really having a conversation about the 'elephant in the room' - finding a way to properly fund that which we think is important enough to properly fund, and not doing the rest, we would need to be looking at an entirely dfferent scale.

The way to eat an elephant is in many meals not one gigantic roast dinner

Not if you die of old age first

williamglenn

dixiedean said:

Still can't see where this "growth" is coming from.
At best it will prevent a serious recession.

There's a long-range Lib Dem coup underway. Agent Truss has successfully infiltrated Downing Street, and Agent Clegg has infiltrated Silicon Valley. Together they will turn Britain into the number one global tech hub.

pigeon

ydoethur said:

dixiedean said:

kinabalu said:

The budget is obviously dreadful but I'm maybe in a minority in that I think it does make sense politically. To have a chance of winning another term of tory government, with the polls showing a solid Labour lead, Truss has to project her government as fresh and vigorous and above all NEW, ie repeat the trick Johnson managed for GE19. She can't, unlike him, use personality, and she doesn't have Brexit or an electorally toxic Labour opponent going for her, therefore it has to be done on policy. Hence this "new era", "tax cutting", "going for growth", "break with the stale consensus" rhetoric and package.

They know it's reckless and requires magical thinking to believe it'll pay for itself through higher growth. But they also know that "steady as she goes" through this energy crisis, fund the help package via a sensible mix of tax and borrowing, whilst being objectively the correct approach would deliver little political upside. It would leave the game unchanged when they need to kick the table over and force a new deck. Having done so they plan to frame the narrative over the next 2 years as New Era Low Tax Tories vs Same Old Labour Tax & Spenders. Come the GE, to be whispering these dirty words into the ears of the electorate - "Do you really want to pay more tax?"

This is the play, I think. They (Truss, the Tories) have to get their "low tax" mantle back - they can't win an election without that - and this is why they're cutting taxes when the country can’t afford it. It's not because they think it'll boost aspiration, investment and long term sustainable growth. They have no clue whether it'll do that and neither do they really care. They know you can’t audit these things anyway because it’s impossible to strip out causes and effects. And in political time there is no long term, there’s only the election. The reason they are cutting taxes is very simple and it is pure politics – it's so Labour have to say they’d raise them.

The just punishment would be a tiny Conservative majority to give them till 2029 to begin to clear up the damage.

That would probably lead to a weak and chaotic (well, still weaker and more chaotic) that would end up doing much more damage.

What we need is for the Conservatives to get beat and then for Starmer to ram PR through Parliament, so that any realistic prospect of them ever ruling the country alone again is removed.

What we'll actually get is a couple of years of Labour flailing about as it's consumed by the enormity of cleaning up the mess, followed by yet more of the Tories carving up the nation's remaining assets and distributing them to the already minted.

TimS

rottenborough said:

You may well ask Julia:



Julia Hartley-Brewer
@JuliaHB1
·
4h
I'm struggling with this "mini" Budget. I'm largely pro cutting taxes + smaller government, but millions of families and businesses desperately need help thanks to disastrous energy policy + lockdowns.

So why cut taxes for the rich - the only people who don't need the help?

https://twitter.com/JuliaHB1

There we go: a “senior journalist” earning between 100 and 150k.

IshmaelZ

kinabalu said:

The budget is obviously dreadful but I'm maybe in a minority in that I think it does make sense politically. To have a chance of winning another term of tory government, with the polls showing a solid Labour lead, Truss has to project her government as fresh and vigorous and above all NEW, ie repeat the trick Johnson managed for GE19. She can't, unlike him, use personality, and she doesn't have Brexit or an electorally toxic Labour opponent going for her, therefore it has to be done on policy. Hence this "new era", "tax cutting", "going for growth", "break with the stale consensus" rhetoric and package.

They know it's reckless and requires magical thinking to believe it'll pay for itself through higher growth. But they also know that "steady as she goes" through this energy crisis, fund the help package via a sensible mix of tax and borrowing, whilst being objectively the correct approach would deliver little political upside. It would leave the game unchanged when they need to kick the table over and force a new deck. Having done so they plan to frame the narrative over the next 2 years as New Era Low Tax Tories vs Same Old Labour Tax & Spenders. Come the GE, to be whispering these dirty words into the ears of the electorate - "Do you really want to pay more tax?"

This is the play, I think. They (Truss, the Tories) have to get their "low tax" mantle back - they can't win an election without that - and this is why they're cutting taxes when the country can’t afford it. It's not because they think it'll boost aspiration, investment and long term sustainable growth. They have no clue whether it'll do that and neither do they really care. They know you can’t audit these things anyway because it’s impossible to strip out causes and effects. And in political time there is no long term, there’s only the election. The reason they are cutting taxes is very simple and it is pure politics – it's so Labour have to say they’d raise them.

They have got £1000 and a drug dealer in the form of the electorate who has promised to murder them if they don't pay him £100 000 by lunchtime (GE 2024). Putting it on a 100/1 shot is the only thing that makes sense to complete shits who put political survival above the public good

ping

I despise what these people have done to my once great nation. To be handed the keys to the treasury is a great privilege. The conservatives have abused that privilege. They are racking up debt on our grandchildren’s credit card at an obscene rate.

Tories out, Labour in, before the country caves in.

wooliedyed

Pagan2 said:

wooliedyed said:

Pagan2 said:

maxh said:

Pagan2 said:

FPT

algarkirk said:

Pagan2 said:

Still no one addresses the elephant in the room. They complain about services being underfunded and how dare tax be cut.

If all services were properly funded and paid for out of tax we would have the government taking about 90% of gdp as tax.

Time to start asking what the state should be saying no we dont do that anymore. Sadly a conversation no politician seems to want to have.

The answer is not tax more when half the country is struggling to make ends meet as it is. The answer is reduce spending.

The really huge bits of state managed expenditure go on:

pensions
social security
NHS
debt interest
defence
education
justice/police/prisons
local government services.

Debt interest will steadily rise unless we take a North Korean approach to liabilities.

In each other area above there is gigantic pressure massively to increase expenditure. Add social care to the list too. I can't thinkmof a single big area where people are generally saying 'enough' or 'too much'.

Can you (or anyone) suggest where the first, say, £200 bn reductions will be found?

For a start while those area's are high expenditure doesn't mean they should do everything they do now.

Defence for a start we could save a huge amount on procurement by just buying off the shelf stuff rather than creating custom shit just because.

NHS - last night I suggested a cap on lifetime health care expense, would set it at the average to start with and people can take out insurance to cover any over that. Also services such as tattoo removal should not be available. I would also refuse IVF on the NHS, a round of IVF costs about 10k....if you cant afford to save up 10k once a year to pay for it can you really afford the child as raising a child is likely to cost that a year in any case plus we have a lot of kids crying out for adoption.

I am sure others could come up with savings in all the other areas as well

There is some truth in your first post - so many areas of public services are so significantly underfunded right now that redressing the balance is going to be financially really quite tricky.

But your reply to @algarkirk just reinforces their point - defence procurement, tattoo removal, IVF are all tiny nibbles.

If the country was to go down your suggested route, it would need to involve, say, revoking the right to free education entirely. That's the scale we're talking about.

Which is why I suspect the only answer is to muddle on through. Only not in the way Truss and Kwarteng want us to do so.

They maybe tiny nibbles but I am sure there are plenty more tiny nibbles we can take and they start to add up. What we can't do is keep adding on things that need money because we are already taxing the majority of the country into the ground and there is no more to squeeze out.

The biggest change that ought to be made is public sector pensions switching from to db to dc and a cap on what the employer contributes. Currently employer contributions average about 20% in the public sector. Yes wouldn't help immediately but in the long term it would. I would also do a clawback on state pensions so for every 5£ you get from other pensions you state pension is reduced by a pound

The problem with state pension clawback is that many of us have planned retirement based on what we will need over state pension to get by. Is it really practical to say to someone who is expecting 14k a year in retirement (9k state approx plus 5k in his own schemes) that he has to take a 1k cut and live on 13k? Will rental incomes be counted as 'other pensions' for those that bought property as retirement provision?
How would drawdown be handled?

Yes other income would be treated as other pensions and we all plan our lives everyday on facts that change over time and when the facts change we have to change our plans. I don't see why pensioners should be any different. If anything people facing clawback are probably in a better place to respond as chances are they have no mortgage or rent if they have significant enough pension. We could also start with a clawback free sum so only applies after first 5000 of additional income. HMRC will already have the figures for additional income so it could be handled via them.

Far far too harsh on low earners. Much higher clawback free amount required. And is this applied to future pensioners or to everyone, now? Will need to be worked out annually so all pensioners to complete tax returns?
Youre basically telling a pensioner on average UK income youre taking 6 grand a year off them, the equivalent of increasing basic rate on an average earner in work to over 45%.

Pagan2

Foxy said:

Pagan2 said:

Foxy said:

Pagan2 said:

FPT

algarkirk said:

Pagan2 said:

Still no one addresses the elephant in the room. They complain about services being underfunded and how dare tax be cut.

If all services were properly funded and paid for out of tax we would have the government taking about 90% of gdp as tax.

Time to start asking what the state should be saying no we dont do that anymore. Sadly a conversation no politician seems to want to have.

The answer is not tax more when half the country is struggling to make ends meet as it is. The answer is reduce spending.

The really huge bits of state managed expenditure go on:

pensions
social security
NHS
debt interest
defence
education
justice/police/prisons
local government services.

Debt interest will steadily rise unless we take a North Korean approach to liabilities.

In each other area above there is gigantic pressure massively to increase expenditure. Add social care to the list too. I can't thinkmof a single big area where people are generally saying 'enough' or 'too much'.

Can you (or anyone) suggest where the first, say, £200 bn reductions will be found?

For a start while those area's are high expenditure doesn't mean they should do everything they do now.

Defence for a start we could save a huge amount on procurement by just buying off the shelf stuff rather than creating custom shit just because.

NHS - last night I suggested a cap on lifetime health care expense, would set it at the average to start with and people can take out insurance to cover any over that. Also services such as tattoo removal should not be available. I would also refuse IVF on the NHS, a round of IVF costs about 10k....if you cant afford to save up 10k once a year to pay for it can you really afford the child as raising a child is likely to cost that a year in any case plus we have a lot of kids crying out for adoption.

I am sure others could come up with savings in all the other areas as well

A round of IVF doesn't cost £10k. Those babies are the tax payers of the future who will look after you in your dotage.

How much is a round of IVF then I have found private ranging from about 5k upwards plus additional costs.

As to the taxpayers of the future there arent enough ivf babies to be more than a rounding blip in the tax payer pool. You also neglect the opportunity cost if they adopt instead as children raised in care statistically underperform in later life compared to children raised in a family

All inclusive for £2750 per cycle in Brum.

https://www.abcivf.co.uk/costs?gclid=Cj0KCQjw1bqZBhDXARIsANTjCPKNd0DOc2KRCD89vlsGLfweOv_-P9Ew2o9wPrzw3FvWb16OWZ3UiwAaAlzBEALw_wcB

so lets see 2750 x 1.3 million cycles....yay joy 3.5 billion to buy us another 390,000 tax payers a lot of whom will be a net drain on the state in any case as statistically only about the top 40% are net contributors

Sandpit

Pagan2 said:

maxh said:

Pagan2 said:

maxh said:

Pulpstar said:

maxh said:

Pagan2 said:

FPT

algarkirk said:

Pagan2 said:

Still no one addresses the elephant in the room. They complain about services being underfunded and how dare tax be cut.

If all services were properly funded and paid for out of tax we would have the government taking about 90% of gdp as tax.

Time to start asking what the state should be saying no we dont do that anymore. Sadly a conversation no politician seems to want to have.

The answer is not tax more when half the country is struggling to make ends meet as it is. The answer is reduce spending.

The really huge bits of state managed expenditure go on:

pensions
social security
NHS
debt interest
defence
education
justice/police/prisons
local government services.

Debt interest will steadily rise unless we take a North Korean approach to liabilities.

In each other area above there is gigantic pressure massively to increase expenditure. Add social care to the list too. I can't thinkmof a single big area where people are generally saying 'enough' or 'too much'.

Can you (or anyone) suggest where the first, say, £200 bn reductions will be found?

For a start while those area's are high expenditure doesn't mean they should do everything they do now.

Defence for a start we could save a huge amount on procurement by just buying off the shelf stuff rather than creating custom shit just because.

NHS - last night I suggested a cap on lifetime health care expense, would set it at the average to start with and people can take out insurance to cover any over that. Also services such as tattoo removal should not be available. I would also refuse IVF on the NHS, a round of IVF costs about 10k....if you cant afford to save up 10k once a year to pay for it can you really afford the child as raising a child is likely to cost that a year in any case plus we have a lot of kids crying out for adoption.

I am sure others could come up with savings in all the other areas as well

There is some truth in your first post - so many areas of public services are so significantly underfunded right now that redressing the balance is going to be financially really quite tricky.

But your reply to @algarkirk just reinforces their point - defence procurement, tattoo removal, IVF are all tiny nibbles.

If the country was to go down your suggested route, it would need to involve, say, revoking the right to free education entirely. That's the scale we're talking about.

Which is why I suspect the only answer is to muddle on through. Only not in the way Truss and Kwarteng want us to do so.

This wouldn't save much on it's own is not a good reason to not try and save that cash in the first place.

I agree. It just doesn't match the scale @Pagan2 is suggesting we need to work at.

You are however taking my post as this is all we should do rather than just a couple of examples

I'm not taking it that way - what I'm trying to say is that my instinct is that the scale of change needed to solve the problem you identify is so large that however many examples you can identify, they won't add up to anywhere near enough.

That's not to say they aren't worth doing, just that, if we were really having a conversation about the 'elephant in the room' - finding a way to properly fund that which we think is important enough to properly fund, and not doing the rest, we would need to be looking at an entirely dfferent scale.

The way to eat an elephant is in many meals not one gigantic roast dinner

Indeed. There should be a zero-based review of spending ahead of the next Budget. It’s not been done properly in decades.

HYUFD

pigeon said:

ydoethur said:

dixiedean said:

kinabalu said:

The budget is obviously dreadful but I'm maybe in a minority in that I think it does make sense politically. To have a chance of winning another term of tory government, with the polls showing a solid Labour lead, Truss has to project her government as fresh and vigorous and above all NEW, ie repeat the trick Johnson managed for GE19. She can't, unlike him, use personality, and she doesn't have Brexit or an electorally toxic Labour opponent going for her, therefore it has to be done on policy. Hence this "new era", "tax cutting", "going for growth", "break with the stale consensus" rhetoric and package.

They know it's reckless and requires magical thinking to believe it'll pay for itself through higher growth. But they also know that "steady as she goes" through this energy crisis, fund the help package via a sensible mix of tax and borrowing, whilst being objectively the correct approach would deliver little political upside. It would leave the game unchanged when they need to kick the table over and force a new deck. Having done so they plan to frame the narrative over the next 2 years as New Era Low Tax Tories vs Same Old Labour Tax & Spenders. Come the GE, to be whispering these dirty words into the ears of the electorate - "Do you really want to pay more tax?"

This is the play, I think. They (Truss, the Tories) have to get their "low tax" mantle back - they can't win an election without that - and this is why they're cutting taxes when the country can’t afford it. It's not because they think it'll boost aspiration, investment and long term sustainable growth. They have no clue whether it'll do that and neither do they really care. They know you can’t audit these things anyway because it’s impossible to strip out causes and effects. And in political time there is no long term, there’s only the election. The reason they are cutting taxes is very simple and it is pure politics – it's so Labour have to say they’d raise them.

The just punishment would be a tiny Conservative majority to give them till 2029 to begin to clear up the damage.

That would probably lead to a weak and chaotic (well, still weaker and more chaotic) that would end up doing much more damage.

What we need is for the Conservatives to get beat and then for Starmer to ram PR through Parliament, so that any realistic prospect of them ever ruling the country alone again is removed.

What we'll actually get is a couple of years of Labour flailing about as it's consumed by the enormity of cleaning up the mess, followed by yet more of the Tories carving up the nation's remaining assets and distributing them to the already minted.

PR would see the Tories govern again, just likely neither Labour nor the Tories would ever win a majority again.

Instead smaller parties like the LDs, Greens and RefUK and SNP would normally hold the balance of power

Pagan2

wooliedyed said:

Pagan2 said:

wooliedyed said:

Pagan2 said:

maxh said:

Pagan2 said:

FPT

algarkirk said:

Pagan2 said:

Still no one addresses the elephant in the room. They complain about services being underfunded and how dare tax be cut.

If all services were properly funded and paid for out of tax we would have the government taking about 90% of gdp as tax.

Time to start asking what the state should be saying no we dont do that anymore. Sadly a conversation no politician seems to want to have.

The answer is not tax more when half the country is struggling to make ends meet as it is. The answer is reduce spending.

The really huge bits of state managed expenditure go on:

pensions
social security
NHS
debt interest
defence
education
justice/police/prisons
local government services.

Debt interest will steadily rise unless we take a North Korean approach to liabilities.

In each other area above there is gigantic pressure massively to increase expenditure. Add social care to the list too. I can't thinkmof a single big area where people are generally saying 'enough' or 'too much'.

Can you (or anyone) suggest where the first, say, £200 bn reductions will be found?

For a start while those area's are high expenditure doesn't mean they should do everything they do now.

Defence for a start we could save a huge amount on procurement by just buying off the shelf stuff rather than creating custom shit just because.

NHS - last night I suggested a cap on lifetime health care expense, would set it at the average to start with and people can take out insurance to cover any over that. Also services such as tattoo removal should not be available. I would also refuse IVF on the NHS, a round of IVF costs about 10k....if you cant afford to save up 10k once a year to pay for it can you really afford the child as raising a child is likely to cost that a year in any case plus we have a lot of kids crying out for adoption.

I am sure others could come up with savings in all the other areas as well

There is some truth in your first post - so many areas of public services are so significantly underfunded right now that redressing the balance is going to be financially really quite tricky.

But your reply to @algarkirk just reinforces their point - defence procurement, tattoo removal, IVF are all tiny nibbles.

If the country was to go down your suggested route, it would need to involve, say, revoking the right to free education entirely. That's the scale we're talking about.

Which is why I suspect the only answer is to muddle on through. Only not in the way Truss and Kwarteng want us to do so.

They maybe tiny nibbles but I am sure there are plenty more tiny nibbles we can take and they start to add up. What we can't do is keep adding on things that need money because we are already taxing the majority of the country into the ground and there is no more to squeeze out.

The biggest change that ought to be made is public sector pensions switching from to db to dc and a cap on what the employer contributes. Currently employer contributions average about 20% in the public sector. Yes wouldn't help immediately but in the long term it would. I would also do a clawback on state pensions so for every 5£ you get from other pensions you state pension is reduced by a pound

The problem with state pension clawback is that many of us have planned retirement based on what we will need over state pension to get by. Is it really practical to say to someone who is expecting 14k a year in retirement (9k state approx plus 5k in his own schemes) that he has to take a 1k cut and live on 13k? Will rental incomes be counted as 'other pensions' for those that bought property as retirement provision?
How would drawdown be handled?

Yes other income would be treated as other pensions and we all plan our lives everyday on facts that change over time and when the facts change we have to change our plans. I don't see why pensioners should be any different. If anything people facing clawback are probably in a better place to respond as chances are they have no mortgage or rent if they have significant enough pension. We could also start with a clawback free sum so only applies after first 5000 of additional income. HMRC will already have the figures for additional income so it could be handled via them.

Far far too harsh on low earners. Much higher clawback free amount required. And is this applied to future pensioners or to everyone, now? Will need to be worked out annually so all pensioners to complete tax returns?
Youre basically telling a pensioner on average UK income youre taking 6 grand a year off them, the equivalent of increasing basic rate on an average earner in work to over 45%.

Most low earners will not be getting anywhere near 5K in additional pension.

HMRC already knows how much pensioners get in total as it taxes them above a certain figure so no tax returns required. Landlords also get taxed pensioner or not.

How do you get to taking 6K off them....for that level of clawback they would need additional income over the state pension of 30K or 35k if you give them the first 5K free of clawback. In my book someone with additional income of 30K doesnt need the state pension

DavidL

Interesting that Nicola is saying she is not going to follow suite on the budget but my understanding that she will have to to a major extent. The elimination of the highest band of 45% (46% in Scotland) means that the gap between the rate in England and Scotland would be 6p in the £1, twice the permitted flexibility. So Nicola can extend the gap to the full 3p but she will still need to cut the rate for the highest earners by 3p in the £1.

And, of course, extending the additional tax to 3p in the £1.00 will not do much for the attractiveness of Scotland for high earners, either.

Foxy

Sandpit said:

Pagan2 said:

maxh said:

Pagan2 said:

maxh said:

Pulpstar said:

maxh said:

Pagan2 said:

FPT

algarkirk said:

Pagan2 said:

Still no one addresses the elephant in the room. They complain about services being underfunded and how dare tax be cut.

If all services were properly funded and paid for out of tax we would have the government taking about 90% of gdp as tax.

Time to start asking what the state should be saying no we dont do that anymore. Sadly a conversation no politician seems to want to have.

The answer is not tax more when half the country is struggling to make ends meet as it is. The answer is reduce spending.

The really huge bits of state managed expenditure go on:

pensions
social security
NHS
debt interest
defence
education
justice/police/prisons
local government services.

Debt interest will steadily rise unless we take a North Korean approach to liabilities.

In each other area above there is gigantic pressure massively to increase expenditure. Add social care to the list too. I can't thinkmof a single big area where people are generally saying 'enough' or 'too much'.

Can you (or anyone) suggest where the first, say, £200 bn reductions will be found?

For a start while those area's are high expenditure doesn't mean they should do everything they do now.

Defence for a start we could save a huge amount on procurement by just buying off the shelf stuff rather than creating custom shit just because.

NHS - last night I suggested a cap on lifetime health care expense, would set it at the average to start with and people can take out insurance to cover any over that. Also services such as tattoo removal should not be available. I would also refuse IVF on the NHS, a round of IVF costs about 10k....if you cant afford to save up 10k once a year to pay for it can you really afford the child as raising a child is likely to cost that a year in any case plus we have a lot of kids crying out for adoption.

I am sure others could come up with savings in all the other areas as well

There is some truth in your first post - so many areas of public services are so significantly underfunded right now that redressing the balance is going to be financially really quite tricky.

But your reply to @algarkirk just reinforces their point - defence procurement, tattoo removal, IVF are all tiny nibbles.

If the country was to go down your suggested route, it would need to involve, say, revoking the right to free education entirely. That's the scale we're talking about.

Which is why I suspect the only answer is to muddle on through. Only not in the way Truss and Kwarteng want us to do so.

This wouldn't save much on it's own is not a good reason to not try and save that cash in the first place.

I agree. It just doesn't match the scale @Pagan2 is suggesting we need to work at.

You are however taking my post as this is all we should do rather than just a couple of examples

I'm not taking it that way - what I'm trying to say is that my instinct is that the scale of change needed to solve the problem you identify is so large that however many examples you can identify, they won't add up to anywhere near enough.

That's not to say they aren't worth doing, just that, if we were really having a conversation about the 'elephant in the room' - finding a way to properly fund that which we think is important enough to properly fund, and not doing the rest, we would need to be looking at an entirely dfferent scale.

The way to eat an elephant is in many meals not one gigantic roast dinner

Indeed. There should be a zero-based review of spending ahead of the next Budget. It’s not been done properly in decades.

We could save £48 billion per annum by disbanding the Army, Navy and RAF. It would also free up thousands of healthy young people for more productive work.

BartholomewRoberts

pigeon said:

A tumbling pound is adding £5 to a tank of petrol by cancelling out the benefits of falling oil prices, according to the AA.

Another reminder that the government’s fiscal policy risks fuelling inflation.

https://twitter.com/PaulBrandITV/status/1573624635966558208

Of course, those riding around in Government limos don't have to worry about the cost of filling their tanks up.

The biggest problem is the Fed being too aggressive in raising rates causing the dollar to rise against every other currency.

The US has a considerably bigger deficit than the UK, but the Fed is jacking up rates by 0.75% a go while the BoE aren't.

BartholomewRoberts

MarqueeMark said:

kinabalu said:

The budget is obviously dreadful but I'm maybe in a minority in that I think it does make sense politically. To have a chance of winning another term of tory government, with the polls showing a solid Labour lead, Truss has to project her government as fresh and vigorous and above all NEW, ie repeat the trick Johnson managed for GE19. She can't, unlike him, use personality, and she doesn't have Brexit or an electorally toxic Labour opponent going for her, therefore it has to be done on policy. Hence this "new era", "tax cutting", "going for growth", "break with the stale consensus" rhetoric and package.

They know it's reckless and requires magical thinking to believe it'll pay for itself through higher growth. But they also know that "steady as she goes" through this energy crisis, fund the help package via a sensible mix of tax and borrowing, whilst being objectively the correct approach would deliver little political upside. It would leave the game unchanged when they need to kick the table over and force a new deck. Having done so they plan to frame the narrative over the next 2 years as New Era Low Tax Tories vs Same Old Labour Tax & Spenders. Come the GE, to be whispering these dirty words into the ears of the electorate - "Do you really want to pay more tax?"

This is the play, I think. They (Truss, the Tories) have to get their "low tax" mantle back - they can't win an election without that - and this is why they're cutting taxes when the country can’t afford it. It's not because they think it'll boost aspiration, investment and long term sustainable growth. They have no clue whether it'll do that and neither do they really care. They know you can’t audit these things anyway because it’s impossible to strip out causes and effects. And in political time there is no long term, there’s only the election. The reason they are cutting taxes is very simple and it is pure politics – it's so Labour have to say they’d raise them.

The reason Rishi is not PM is because he did not play to the Party's "low tax mantle". The "not one of us" failure was nothing to do with his colour but everything to do with thinking high taxes were the answer.

He's a very smart guy. I'm sure as a Conservative he only raised taxes because TINA told him he had to. Truss and her Chancellor think there is an alternative. If they are wrong, we are going to be having top rates of income tax north of 50% - and a flight of the rich out the country.

I would like to hear Truss say that she has reduced tax to draw in the wealthy from around the world. I have no problems with them coming here so long as they pay our modest taxes. Thousands more billionaires moving here is frankly the only way to get the NHS funded to the levels it needs to remain free at the point of use. We may have to hold our noses about the nature of some of these folk and how they have made their billions. But as long as they aren't involved in undermining the country, I can live with that.

Kwasi pretty much said as much during the mini budget statement. Good governance, even if the politics are an issue.

pigeon

HYUFD said:

pigeon said:

ydoethur said:

dixiedean said:

kinabalu said:

The budget is obviously dreadful but I'm maybe in a minority in that I think it does make sense politically. To have a chance of winning another term of tory government, with the polls showing a solid Labour lead, Truss has to project her government as fresh and vigorous and above all NEW, ie repeat the trick Johnson managed for GE19. She can't, unlike him, use personality, and she doesn't have Brexit or an electorally toxic Labour opponent going for her, therefore it has to be done on policy. Hence this "new era", "tax cutting", "going for growth", "break with the stale consensus" rhetoric and package.

They know it's reckless and requires magical thinking to believe it'll pay for itself through higher growth. But they also know that "steady as she goes" through this energy crisis, fund the help package via a sensible mix of tax and borrowing, whilst being objectively the correct approach would deliver little political upside. It would leave the game unchanged when they need to kick the table over and force a new deck. Having done so they plan to frame the narrative over the next 2 years as New Era Low Tax Tories vs Same Old Labour Tax & Spenders. Come the GE, to be whispering these dirty words into the ears of the electorate - "Do you really want to pay more tax?"

This is the play, I think. They (Truss, the Tories) have to get their "low tax" mantle back - they can't win an election without that - and this is why they're cutting taxes when the country can’t afford it. It's not because they think it'll boost aspiration, investment and long term sustainable growth. They have no clue whether it'll do that and neither do they really care. They know you can’t audit these things anyway because it’s impossible to strip out causes and effects. And in political time there is no long term, there’s only the election. The reason they are cutting taxes is very simple and it is pure politics – it's so Labour have to say they’d raise them.

The just punishment would be a tiny Conservative majority to give them till 2029 to begin to clear up the damage.

That would probably lead to a weak and chaotic (well, still weaker and more chaotic) that would end up doing much more damage.

What we need is for the Conservatives to get beat and then for Starmer to ram PR through Parliament, so that any realistic prospect of them ever ruling the country alone again is removed.

What we'll actually get is a couple of years of Labour flailing about as it's consumed by the enormity of cleaning up the mess, followed by yet more of the Tories carving up the nation's remaining assets and distributing them to the already minted.

PR would see the Tories govern again, just likely neither Labour nor the Tories would ever win a majority again.

Instead smaller parties like the LDs, Greens and RefUK and SNP would normally hold the balance of power

That's the entire point. The likes of Farage, Rees-Mogg and Corbyn, who are representative of small but very rich and/or very loud segments of public opinion, could be hived off into extremist sects and properly marginalised. It's obvious to anyone with eyes to see that our current suite of "broad church" political parties has failed utterly.

PR is no guarantor against the capture of the entire political system by loonies, but it would certainly make it a lot less probable.

ping

Foxy said:

Pagan2 said:

Foxy said:

Pagan2 said:

FPT

algarkirk said:

Pagan2 said:

Still no one addresses the elephant in the room. They complain about services being underfunded and how dare tax be cut.

If all services were properly funded and paid for out of tax we would have the government taking about 90% of gdp as tax.

Time to start asking what the state should be saying no we dont do that anymore. Sadly a conversation no politician seems to want to have.

The answer is not tax more when half the country is struggling to make ends meet as it is. The answer is reduce spending.

The really huge bits of state managed expenditure go on:

pensions
social security
NHS
debt interest
defence
education
justice/police/prisons
local government services.

Debt interest will steadily rise unless we take a North Korean approach to liabilities.

In each other area above there is gigantic pressure massively to increase expenditure. Add social care to the list too. I can't thinkmof a single big area where people are generally saying 'enough' or 'too much'.

Can you (or anyone) suggest where the first, say, £200 bn reductions will be found?

For a start while those area's are high expenditure doesn't mean they should do everything they do now.

Defence for a start we could save a huge amount on procurement by just buying off the shelf stuff rather than creating custom shit just because.

NHS - last night I suggested a cap on lifetime health care expense, would set it at the average to start with and people can take out insurance to cover any over that. Also services such as tattoo removal should not be available. I would also refuse IVF on the NHS, a round of IVF costs about 10k....if you cant afford to save up 10k once a year to pay for it can you really afford the child as raising a child is likely to cost that a year in any case plus we have a lot of kids crying out for adoption.

I am sure others could come up with savings in all the other areas as well

A round of IVF doesn't cost £10k. Those babies are the tax payers of the future who will look after you in your dotage.

How much is a round of IVF then I have found private ranging from about 5k upwards plus additional costs.

As to the taxpayers of the future there arent enough ivf babies to be more than a rounding blip in the tax payer pool. You also neglect the opportunity cost if they adopt instead as children raised in care statistically underperform in later life compared to children raised in a family

All inclusive for £2750 per cycle in Brum.

https://www.abcivf.co.uk/costs?gclid=Cj0KCQjw1bqZBhDXARIsANTjCPKNd0DOc2KRCD89vlsGLfweOv_-P9Ew2o9wPrzw3FvWb16OWZ3UiwAaAlzBEALw_wcB

Still, it’s a far from ideal situation. I know it’s a political minefield, but we really do need a strategy to encourage people to be having kids in their 20’s.

ydoethur

Foxy said:

Sandpit said:

Pagan2 said:

maxh said:

Pagan2 said:

maxh said:

Pulpstar said:

maxh said:

Pagan2 said:

FPT

algarkirk said:

Pagan2 said:

Still no one addresses the elephant in the room. They complain about services being underfunded and how dare tax be cut.

If all services were properly funded and paid for out of tax we would have the government taking about 90% of gdp as tax.

Time to start asking what the state should be saying no we dont do that anymore. Sadly a conversation no politician seems to want to have.

The answer is not tax more when half the country is struggling to make ends meet as it is. The answer is reduce spending.

The really huge bits of state managed expenditure go on:

pensions
social security
NHS
debt interest
defence
education
justice/police/prisons
local government services.

Debt interest will steadily rise unless we take a North Korean approach to liabilities.

In each other area above there is gigantic pressure massively to increase expenditure. Add social care to the list too. I can't thinkmof a single big area where people are generally saying 'enough' or 'too much'.

Can you (or anyone) suggest where the first, say, £200 bn reductions will be found?

For a start while those area's are high expenditure doesn't mean they should do everything they do now.

Defence for a start we could save a huge amount on procurement by just buying off the shelf stuff rather than creating custom shit just because.

NHS - last night I suggested a cap on lifetime health care expense, would set it at the average to start with and people can take out insurance to cover any over that. Also services such as tattoo removal should not be available. I would also refuse IVF on the NHS, a round of IVF costs about 10k....if you cant afford to save up 10k once a year to pay for it can you really afford the child as raising a child is likely to cost that a year in any case plus we have a lot of kids crying out for adoption.

I am sure others could come up with savings in all the other areas as well

There is some truth in your first post - so many areas of public services are so significantly underfunded right now that redressing the balance is going to be financially really quite tricky.

But your reply to @algarkirk just reinforces their point - defence procurement, tattoo removal, IVF are all tiny nibbles.

If the country was to go down your suggested route, it would need to involve, say, revoking the right to free education entirely. That's the scale we're talking about.

Which is why I suspect the only answer is to muddle on through. Only not in the way Truss and Kwarteng want us to do so.

This wouldn't save much on it's own is not a good reason to not try and save that cash in the first place.

I agree. It just doesn't match the scale @Pagan2 is suggesting we need to work at.

You are however taking my post as this is all we should do rather than just a couple of examples

I'm not taking it that way - what I'm trying to say is that my instinct is that the scale of change needed to solve the problem you identify is so large that however many examples you can identify, they won't add up to anywhere near enough.

That's not to say they aren't worth doing, just that, if we were really having a conversation about the 'elephant in the room' - finding a way to properly fund that which we think is important enough to properly fund, and not doing the rest, we would need to be looking at an entirely dfferent scale.

The way to eat an elephant is in many meals not one gigantic roast dinner

Indeed. There should be a zero-based review of spending ahead of the next Budget. It’s not been done properly in decades.

We could save £48 billion per annum by disbanding the Army, Navy and RAF. It would also free up thousands of healthy young people for more productive work.

We could save about the same by abandoning the state education system.

The way things are going, they'll only be antedating its disorganised collapse by a few months anyway.

Fairliered

DavidL said:

Interesting that Nicola is saying she is not going to follow suite on the budget but my understanding that she will have to to a major extent. The elimination of the highest band of 45% (46% in Scotland) means that the gap between the rate in England and Scotland would be 6p in the £1, twice the permitted flexibility. So Nicola can extend the gap to the full 3p but she will still need to cut the rate for the highest earners by 3p in the £1.

And, of course, extending the additional tax to 3p in the £1.00 will not do much for the attractiveness of Scotland for high earners, either.

She could refuse to cut the highest band and force a constitutional crisis on the basis of who sets Scottish tax rates. I doubt the tories would get much sympathy, and it would force labour off the fence. It would be interesting to see which side of the fence labour climb down on to.

Sandpit

Mongolia opening doors to people fleeing Russian conscription, especially to ethnic Mongols who appear to have been disproportionately targeted for ‘mobilisation’ to Ukraine.

https://euromaidanpress.com/2022/09/24/president-of-the-world-mongol-federation-says-mongolia-welcomes-everybody-fleeing-mobilization-in-russia-especially-disproportionately-targeted-mongols/

DavidL

BartholomewRoberts said:

pigeon said:

A tumbling pound is adding £5 to a tank of petrol by cancelling out the benefits of falling oil prices, according to the AA.

Another reminder that the government’s fiscal policy risks fuelling inflation.

https://twitter.com/PaulBrandITV/status/1573624635966558208

Of course, those riding around in Government limos don't have to worry about the cost of filling their tanks up.

The biggest problem is the Fed being too aggressive in raising rates causing the dollar to rise against every other currency.

The US has a considerably bigger deficit than the UK, but the Fed is jacking up rates by 0.75% a go while the BoE aren't.

The incompetence of the BoE is really driving me mad. They completely failed to anticipate a fairly obvious rise in inflation, they have failed to protect Sterling by maintaining a sensible interest rate and they have drained liquidity from the bond market by trying to sell off their QE debt when the government is struggling for buyers for the new debt it is issuing.

Given the security situation a degree of dollar strength is inevitable but the Bank could and should have done more earlier and this week to stop us importing yet more inflation.

Pagan2

pigeon said:

HYUFD said:

pigeon said:

ydoethur said:

dixiedean said:

kinabalu said:

The budget is obviously dreadful but I'm maybe in a minority in that I think it does make sense politically. To have a chance of winning another term of tory government, with the polls showing a solid Labour lead, Truss has to project her government as fresh and vigorous and above all NEW, ie repeat the trick Johnson managed for GE19. She can't, unlike him, use personality, and she doesn't have Brexit or an electorally toxic Labour opponent going for her, therefore it has to be done on policy. Hence this "new era", "tax cutting", "going for growth", "break with the stale consensus" rhetoric and package.

They know it's reckless and requires magical thinking to believe it'll pay for itself through higher growth. But they also know that "steady as she goes" through this energy crisis, fund the help package via a sensible mix of tax and borrowing, whilst being objectively the correct approach would deliver little political upside. It would leave the game unchanged when they need to kick the table over and force a new deck. Having done so they plan to frame the narrative over the next 2 years as New Era Low Tax Tories vs Same Old Labour Tax & Spenders. Come the GE, to be whispering these dirty words into the ears of the electorate - "Do you really want to pay more tax?"

This is the play, I think. They (Truss, the Tories) have to get their "low tax" mantle back - they can't win an election without that - and this is why they're cutting taxes when the country can’t afford it. It's not because they think it'll boost aspiration, investment and long term sustainable growth. They have no clue whether it'll do that and neither do they really care. They know you can’t audit these things anyway because it’s impossible to strip out causes and effects. And in political time there is no long term, there’s only the election. The reason they are cutting taxes is very simple and it is pure politics – it's so Labour have to say they’d raise them.

The just punishment would be a tiny Conservative majority to give them till 2029 to begin to clear up the damage.

That would probably lead to a weak and chaotic (well, still weaker and more chaotic) that would end up doing much more damage.

What we need is for the Conservatives to get beat and then for Starmer to ram PR through Parliament, so that any realistic prospect of them ever ruling the country alone again is removed.

What we'll actually get is a couple of years of Labour flailing about as it's consumed by the enormity of cleaning up the mess, followed by yet more of the Tories carving up the nation's remaining assets and distributing them to the already minted.

PR would see the Tories govern again, just likely neither Labour nor the Tories would ever win a majority again.

Instead smaller parties like the LDs, Greens and RefUK and SNP would normally hold the balance of power

That's the entire point. The likes of Farage, Rees-Mogg and Corbyn, who are representative of small but very rich and/or very loud segments of public opinion, could be hived off into extremist sects and properly marginalised. It's obvious to anyone with eyes to see that our current suite of "broad church" political parties has failed utterly.

PR is no guarantor against the capture of the entire political system by loonies, but it would certainly make it a lot less probable.

Points at Germany and Scholz

wooliedyed

Pagan2 said:

wooliedyed said:

Pagan2 said:

wooliedyed said:

Pagan2 said:

maxh said:

Pagan2 said:

FPT

algarkirk said:

Pagan2 said:

Still no one addresses the elephant in the room. They complain about services being underfunded and how dare tax be cut.

If all services were properly funded and paid for out of tax we would have the government taking about 90% of gdp as tax.

Time to start asking what the state should be saying no we dont do that anymore. Sadly a conversation no politician seems to want to have.

The answer is not tax more when half the country is struggling to make ends meet as it is. The answer is reduce spending.

The really huge bits of state managed expenditure go on:

pensions
social security
NHS
debt interest
defence
education
justice/police/prisons
local government services.

Debt interest will steadily rise unless we take a North Korean approach to liabilities.

In each other area above there is gigantic pressure massively to increase expenditure. Add social care to the list too. I can't thinkmof a single big area where people are generally saying 'enough' or 'too much'.

Can you (or anyone) suggest where the first, say, £200 bn reductions will be found?

For a start while those area's are high expenditure doesn't mean they should do everything they do now.

Defence for a start we could save a huge amount on procurement by just buying off the shelf stuff rather than creating custom shit just because.

NHS - last night I suggested a cap on lifetime health care expense, would set it at the average to start with and people can take out insurance to cover any over that. Also services such as tattoo removal should not be available. I would also refuse IVF on the NHS, a round of IVF costs about 10k....if you cant afford to save up 10k once a year to pay for it can you really afford the child as raising a child is likely to cost that a year in any case plus we have a lot of kids crying out for adoption.

I am sure others could come up with savings in all the other areas as well

There is some truth in your first post - so many areas of public services are so significantly underfunded right now that redressing the balance is going to be financially really quite tricky.

But your reply to @algarkirk just reinforces their point - defence procurement, tattoo removal, IVF are all tiny nibbles.

If the country was to go down your suggested route, it would need to involve, say, revoking the right to free education entirely. That's the scale we're talking about.

Which is why I suspect the only answer is to muddle on through. Only not in the way Truss and Kwarteng want us to do so.

They maybe tiny nibbles but I am sure there are plenty more tiny nibbles we can take and they start to add up. What we can't do is keep adding on things that need money because we are already taxing the majority of the country into the ground and there is no more to squeeze out.

The biggest change that ought to be made is public sector pensions switching from to db to dc and a cap on what the employer contributes. Currently employer contributions average about 20% in the public sector. Yes wouldn't help immediately but in the long term it would. I would also do a clawback on state pensions so for every 5£ you get from other pensions you state pension is reduced by a pound

The problem with state pension clawback is that many of us have planned retirement based on what we will need over state pension to get by. Is it really practical to say to someone who is expecting 14k a year in retirement (9k state approx plus 5k in his own schemes) that he has to take a 1k cut and live on 13k? Will rental incomes be counted as 'other pensions' for those that bought property as retirement provision?
How would drawdown be handled?

Yes other income would be treated as other pensions and we all plan our lives everyday on facts that change over time and when the facts change we have to change our plans. I don't see why pensioners should be any different. If anything people facing clawback are probably in a better place to respond as chances are they have no mortgage or rent if they have significant enough pension. We could also start with a clawback free sum so only applies after first 5000 of additional income. HMRC will already have the figures for additional income so it could be handled via them.

Far far too harsh on low earners. Much higher clawback free amount required. And is this applied to future pensioners or to everyone, now? Will need to be worked out annually so all pensioners to complete tax returns?
Youre basically telling a pensioner on average UK income youre taking 6 grand a year off them, the equivalent of increasing basic rate on an average earner in work to over 45%.

Most low earners will not be getting anywhere near 5K in additional pension.

HMRC already knows how much pensioners get in total as it taxes them above a certain figure so no tax returns required. Landlords also get taxed pensioner or not.

How do you get to taking 6K off them....for that level of clawback they would need additional income over the state pension of 30K or 35k if you give them the first 5K free of clawback. In my book someone with additional income of 30K doesnt need the state pension

Well if we give them the 5k allowance we are taking 5k of state pension back, or the equivalent of raising basic rate for an average wage earner to about 40%.
Someone earning 60,000 a year doesn't 'need' the personal allowance.
Why should a pensioner who planned his or her retirement fund some arse who earned 100k a year and pissed it all up the wall rather than saving? Why should income dependant pensioners suffer whilst asset rich ones laugh?
If State pension was lavish, perhaps, but its a pittance in return for a lifetime of work and tax.
I mean we might as well extend it and block access to NHS services for anybody on over average wage.

Sandpit

BartholomewRoberts said:

pigeon said:

A tumbling pound is adding £5 to a tank of petrol by cancelling out the benefits of falling oil prices, according to the AA.

Another reminder that the government’s fiscal policy risks fuelling inflation.

https://twitter.com/PaulBrandITV/status/1573624635966558208

Of course, those riding around in Government limos don't have to worry about the cost of filling their tanks up.

The biggest problem is the Fed being too aggressive in raising rates causing the dollar to rise against every other currency.

The US has a considerably bigger deficit than the UK, but the Fed is jacking up rates by 0.75% a go while the BoE aren't.

Indeed. Many people discussing the fall in the pound and of the London stock market, as a stick with which to beat the UK government, are missing the international picture. The issue is the strong dollar, against pretty much every other currency at the moment, caused mostly by the over-eagerness of the Fed to raise rates.

bondegezou

wooliedyed said:

Pagan2 said:

wooliedyed said:

Pagan2 said:

wooliedyed said:

Pagan2 said:

maxh said:

Pagan2 said:

FPT

algarkirk said:

Pagan2 said:

Still no one addresses the elephant in the room. They complain about services being underfunded and how dare tax be cut.

If all services were properly funded and paid for out of tax we would have the government taking about 90% of gdp as tax.

Time to start asking what the state should be saying no we dont do that anymore. Sadly a conversation no politician seems to want to have.

The answer is not tax more when half the country is struggling to make ends meet as it is. The answer is reduce spending.

The really huge bits of state managed expenditure go on:

pensions
social security
NHS
debt interest
defence
education
justice/police/prisons
local government services.

Debt interest will steadily rise unless we take a North Korean approach to liabilities.

In each other area above there is gigantic pressure massively to increase expenditure. Add social care to the list too. I can't thinkmof a single big area where people are generally saying 'enough' or 'too much'.

Can you (or anyone) suggest where the first, say, £200 bn reductions will be found?

For a start while those area's are high expenditure doesn't mean they should do everything they do now.

Defence for a start we could save a huge amount on procurement by just buying off the shelf stuff rather than creating custom shit just because.

NHS - last night I suggested a cap on lifetime health care expense, would set it at the average to start with and people can take out insurance to cover any over that. Also services such as tattoo removal should not be available. I would also refuse IVF on the NHS, a round of IVF costs about 10k....if you cant afford to save up 10k once a year to pay for it can you really afford the child as raising a child is likely to cost that a year in any case plus we have a lot of kids crying out for adoption.

I am sure others could come up with savings in all the other areas as well

There is some truth in your first post - so many areas of public services are so significantly underfunded right now that redressing the balance is going to be financially really quite tricky.

But your reply to @algarkirk just reinforces their point - defence procurement, tattoo removal, IVF are all tiny nibbles.

If the country was to go down your suggested route, it would need to involve, say, revoking the right to free education entirely. That's the scale we're talking about.

Which is why I suspect the only answer is to muddle on through. Only not in the way Truss and Kwarteng want us to do so.

They maybe tiny nibbles but I am sure there are plenty more tiny nibbles we can take and they start to add up. What we can't do is keep adding on things that need money because we are already taxing the majority of the country into the ground and there is no more to squeeze out.

The biggest change that ought to be made is public sector pensions switching from to db to dc and a cap on what the employer contributes. Currently employer contributions average about 20% in the public sector. Yes wouldn't help immediately but in the long term it would. I would also do a clawback on state pensions so for every 5£ you get from other pensions you state pension is reduced by a pound

The problem with state pension clawback is that many of us have planned retirement based on what we will need over state pension to get by. Is it really practical to say to someone who is expecting 14k a year in retirement (9k state approx plus 5k in his own schemes) that he has to take a 1k cut and live on 13k? Will rental incomes be counted as 'other pensions' for those that bought property as retirement provision?
How would drawdown be handled?

Yes other income would be treated as other pensions and we all plan our lives everyday on facts that change over time and when the facts change we have to change our plans. I don't see why pensioners should be any different. If anything people facing clawback are probably in a better place to respond as chances are they have no mortgage or rent if they have significant enough pension. We could also start with a clawback free sum so only applies after first 5000 of additional income. HMRC will already have the figures for additional income so it could be handled via them.

Far far too harsh on low earners. Much higher clawback free amount required. And is this applied to future pensioners or to everyone, now? Will need to be worked out annually so all pensioners to complete tax returns?
Youre basically telling a pensioner on average UK income youre taking 6 grand a year off them, the equivalent of increasing basic rate on an average earner in work to over 45%.

Most low earners will not be getting anywhere near 5K in additional pension.

HMRC already knows how much pensioners get in total as it taxes them above a certain figure so no tax returns required. Landlords also get taxed pensioner or not.

How do you get to taking 6K off them....for that level of clawback they would need additional income over the state pension of 30K or 35k if you give them the first 5K free of clawback. In my book someone with additional income of 30K doesnt need the state pension

Well if we give them the 5k allowance we are taking 5k of state pension back, or the equivalent of raising basic rate for an average wage earner to about 40%.
Someone earning 60,000 a year doesn't 'need' the personal allowance.
Why should a pensioner who planned his or her retirement fund some arse who earned 100k a year and pissed it all up the wall rather than saving? Why should income dependant pensioners suffer whilst asset rich ones laugh?
If State pension was lavish, perhaps, but its a pittance in return for a lifetime of work and tax.
I mean we might as well extend it and block access to NHS services for anybody on over average wage.

Pagan2 has effectively abolished the NHS already in their other proposals.

Foxy

ydoethur said:

Foxy said:

Sandpit said:

Pagan2 said:

maxh said:

Pagan2 said:

maxh said:

Pulpstar said:

maxh said:

Pagan2 said:

FPT

algarkirk said:

Pagan2 said:

Still no one addresses the elephant in the room. They complain about services being underfunded and how dare tax be cut.

If all services were properly funded and paid for out of tax we would have the government taking about 90% of gdp as tax.

Time to start asking what the state should be saying no we dont do that anymore. Sadly a conversation no politician seems to want to have.

The answer is not tax more when half the country is struggling to make ends meet as it is. The answer is reduce spending.

The really huge bits of state managed expenditure go on:

pensions
social security
NHS
debt interest
defence
education
justice/police/prisons
local government services.

Debt interest will steadily rise unless we take a North Korean approach to liabilities.

In each other area above there is gigantic pressure massively to increase expenditure. Add social care to the list too. I can't thinkmof a single big area where people are generally saying 'enough' or 'too much'.

Can you (or anyone) suggest where the first, say, £200 bn reductions will be found?

For a start while those area's are high expenditure doesn't mean they should do everything they do now.

Defence for a start we could save a huge amount on procurement by just buying off the shelf stuff rather than creating custom shit just because.

NHS - last night I suggested a cap on lifetime health care expense, would set it at the average to start with and people can take out insurance to cover any over that. Also services such as tattoo removal should not be available. I would also refuse IVF on the NHS, a round of IVF costs about 10k....if you cant afford to save up 10k once a year to pay for it can you really afford the child as raising a child is likely to cost that a year in any case plus we have a lot of kids crying out for adoption.

I am sure others could come up with savings in all the other areas as well

There is some truth in your first post - so many areas of public services are so significantly underfunded right now that redressing the balance is going to be financially really quite tricky.

But your reply to @algarkirk just reinforces their point - defence procurement, tattoo removal, IVF are all tiny nibbles.

If the country was to go down your suggested route, it would need to involve, say, revoking the right to free education entirely. That's the scale we're talking about.

Which is why I suspect the only answer is to muddle on through. Only not in the way Truss and Kwarteng want us to do so.

This wouldn't save much on it's own is not a good reason to not try and save that cash in the first place.

I agree. It just doesn't match the scale @Pagan2 is suggesting we need to work at.

You are however taking my post as this is all we should do rather than just a couple of examples

I'm not taking it that way - what I'm trying to say is that my instinct is that the scale of change needed to solve the problem you identify is so large that however many examples you can identify, they won't add up to anywhere near enough.

That's not to say they aren't worth doing, just that, if we were really having a conversation about the 'elephant in the room' - finding a way to properly fund that which we think is important enough to properly fund, and not doing the rest, we would need to be looking at an entirely dfferent scale.

The way to eat an elephant is in many meals not one gigantic roast dinner

Indeed. There should be a zero-based review of spending ahead of the next Budget. It’s not been done properly in decades.

We could save £48 billion per annum by disbanding the Army, Navy and RAF. It would also free up thousands of healthy young people for more productive work.

We could save about the same by abandoning the state education system.

The way things are going, they'll only be antedating its disorganised collapse by a few months anyway.

Good idea, it frees up all those teachers to work in financial services, and all those children to go down the mines, up chimneys and pick cabbages

So having disbanded the armed forces and schools, we should have enough to fund the £87 billion due in interest on the national debt this year.

We will need further savings as next year the amount payable will be higher.

ohnotnow

Apols if this has been posted already - don't remember seeing it. But seems relevant to current discussions.

https://www.dw.com/en/spain-plans-temporary-wealth-tax-amid-high-inflation/a-63212575

"Spain's left-wing government has said it would slap a temporary tax on the wealthiest 1% of the country's population to help pay for inflation relief measures.

"We are talking about millionaires, those who are in the 1% of income," Finance Minister Maria Jesus Montero told Spanish laSexta television channel on Thursday.

She said it was important that "we can finance the aid" to support "the middle class and workers" but did not provide details on the tax rate or how much it would raise.

The government has introduced a raft of measures to help people cope with soaring prices, such as free public transport, stipends for students to stay in school and subsidized petrol.

The country's annual inflation rate hit 10.4% in August. It has remained in double digits since June, a level not seen since the mid-1980s."

bondegezou

Sandpit said:

BartholomewRoberts said:

pigeon said:

A tumbling pound is adding £5 to a tank of petrol by cancelling out the benefits of falling oil prices, according to the AA.

Another reminder that the government’s fiscal policy risks fuelling inflation.

https://twitter.com/PaulBrandITV/status/1573624635966558208

Of course, those riding around in Government limos don't have to worry about the cost of filling their tanks up.

The biggest problem is the Fed being too aggressive in raising rates causing the dollar to rise against every other currency.

The US has a considerably bigger deficit than the UK, but the Fed is jacking up rates by 0.75% a go while the BoE aren't.

Indeed. Many people discussing the fall in the pound and of the London stock market, as a stick with which to beat the UK government, are missing the international picture. The issue is the strong dollar, against pretty much every other currency at the moment, caused mostly by the over-eagerness of the Fed to raise rates.

The pound is down against the Euro too. QED.

Pagan2

wooliedyed said:

Pagan2 said:

wooliedyed said:

Pagan2 said:

wooliedyed said:

Pagan2 said:

maxh said:

Pagan2 said:

FPT

algarkirk said:

Pagan2 said:

Still no one addresses the elephant in the room. They complain about services being underfunded and how dare tax be cut.

If all services were properly funded and paid for out of tax we would have the government taking about 90% of gdp as tax.

Time to start asking what the state should be saying no we dont do that anymore. Sadly a conversation no politician seems to want to have.

The answer is not tax more when half the country is struggling to make ends meet as it is. The answer is reduce spending.

The really huge bits of state managed expenditure go on:

pensions
social security
NHS
debt interest
defence
education
justice/police/prisons
local government services.

Debt interest will steadily rise unless we take a North Korean approach to liabilities.

In each other area above there is gigantic pressure massively to increase expenditure. Add social care to the list too. I can't thinkmof a single big area where people are generally saying 'enough' or 'too much'.

Can you (or anyone) suggest where the first, say, £200 bn reductions will be found?

For a start while those area's are high expenditure doesn't mean they should do everything they do now.

Defence for a start we could save a huge amount on procurement by just buying off the shelf stuff rather than creating custom shit just because.

NHS - last night I suggested a cap on lifetime health care expense, would set it at the average to start with and people can take out insurance to cover any over that. Also services such as tattoo removal should not be available. I would also refuse IVF on the NHS, a round of IVF costs about 10k....if you cant afford to save up 10k once a year to pay for it can you really afford the child as raising a child is likely to cost that a year in any case plus we have a lot of kids crying out for adoption.

I am sure others could come up with savings in all the other areas as well

There is some truth in your first post - so many areas of public services are so significantly underfunded right now that redressing the balance is going to be financially really quite tricky.

But your reply to @algarkirk just reinforces their point - defence procurement, tattoo removal, IVF are all tiny nibbles.

If the country was to go down your suggested route, it would need to involve, say, revoking the right to free education entirely. That's the scale we're talking about.

Which is why I suspect the only answer is to muddle on through. Only not in the way Truss and Kwarteng want us to do so.

They maybe tiny nibbles but I am sure there are plenty more tiny nibbles we can take and they start to add up. What we can't do is keep adding on things that need money because we are already taxing the majority of the country into the ground and there is no more to squeeze out.

The biggest change that ought to be made is public sector pensions switching from to db to dc and a cap on what the employer contributes. Currently employer contributions average about 20% in the public sector. Yes wouldn't help immediately but in the long term it would. I would also do a clawback on state pensions so for every 5£ you get from other pensions you state pension is reduced by a pound

The problem with state pension clawback is that many of us have planned retirement based on what we will need over state pension to get by. Is it really practical to say to someone who is expecting 14k a year in retirement (9k state approx plus 5k in his own schemes) that he has to take a 1k cut and live on 13k? Will rental incomes be counted as 'other pensions' for those that bought property as retirement provision?
How would drawdown be handled?

Yes other income would be treated as other pensions and we all plan our lives everyday on facts that change over time and when the facts change we have to change our plans. I don't see why pensioners should be any different. If anything people facing clawback are probably in a better place to respond as chances are they have no mortgage or rent if they have significant enough pension. We could also start with a clawback free sum so only applies after first 5000 of additional income. HMRC will already have the figures for additional income so it could be handled via them.

Far far too harsh on low earners. Much higher clawback free amount required. And is this applied to future pensioners or to everyone, now? Will need to be worked out annually so all pensioners to complete tax returns?
Youre basically telling a pensioner on average UK income youre taking 6 grand a year off them, the equivalent of increasing basic rate on an average earner in work to over 45%.

Most low earners will not be getting anywhere near 5K in additional pension.

HMRC already knows how much pensioners get in total as it taxes them above a certain figure so no tax returns required. Landlords also get taxed pensioner or not.

How do you get to taking 6K off them....for that level of clawback they would need additional income over the state pension of 30K or 35k if you give them the first 5K free of clawback. In my book someone with additional income of 30K doesnt need the state pension

Well if we give them the 5k allowance we are taking 5k of state pension back, or the equivalent of raising basic rate for an average wage earner to about 40%.
Someone earning 60,000 a year doesn't 'need' the personal allowance.
Why should a pensioner who planned his or her retirement fund some arse who earned 100k a year and pissed it all up the wall rather than saving? Why should income dependant pensioners suffer whilst asset rich ones laugh?
If State pension was lavish, perhaps, but its a pittance in return for a lifetime of work and tax.
I mean we might as well extend it and block access to NHS services for anybody on over average wage.

sighs you misunderstood I think

You get state pension of 9k
You get additional income once the additional income is over 5k then for every 5£ you get state pension is reduced by £1

so additional income is 5k you get full state pension
at 10K additional you get 1K removed from state pension
at 20K additional you get 4k less state pension

so total for the 3 scenarios would be 14K, 18k,and 25K

DavidL

Fairliered said:

DavidL said:

Interesting that Nicola is saying she is not going to follow suite on the budget but my understanding that she will have to to a major extent. The elimination of the highest band of 45% (46% in Scotland) means that the gap between the rate in England and Scotland would be 6p in the £1, twice the permitted flexibility. So Nicola can extend the gap to the full 3p but she will still need to cut the rate for the highest earners by 3p in the £1.

And, of course, extending the additional tax to 3p in the £1.00 will not do much for the attractiveness of Scotland for high earners, either.

She could refuse to cut the highest band and force a constitutional crisis on the basis of who sets Scottish tax rates. I doubt the tories would get much sympathy, and it would force labour off the fence. It would be interesting to see which side of the fence labour climb down on to.

She may try that for her next distraction after the SC brings the current referendum farce to an end but the economic consequences for Scotland would, once again, be dire with the few remaining high earners in our financial services industry moving south.

pigeon

Fairliered said:

DavidL said:

Interesting that Nicola is saying she is not going to follow suite on the budget but my understanding that she will have to to a major extent. The elimination of the highest band of 45% (46% in Scotland) means that the gap between the rate in England and Scotland would be 6p in the £1, twice the permitted flexibility. So Nicola can extend the gap to the full 3p but she will still need to cut the rate for the highest earners by 3p in the £1.

And, of course, extending the additional tax to 3p in the £1.00 will not do much for the attractiveness of Scotland for high earners, either.

She could refuse to cut the highest band and force a constitutional crisis on the basis of who sets Scottish tax rates. I doubt the tories would get much sympathy, and it would force labour off the fence. It would be interesting to see which side of the fence labour climb down on to.

AIUI income tax in Scotland is collected by HMRC, thus the Scottish Government lacks the means to enforce refusal. To all intents and purposes, the Scottish rate of income tax is still whatever the UK Treasury says it is. One more consequence of the incompetent implementation of devolution, and the resultant structural flaws.

FrankBooth

Sandpit said:

BartholomewRoberts said:

pigeon said:

A tumbling pound is adding £5 to a tank of petrol by cancelling out the benefits of falling oil prices, according to the AA.

Another reminder that the government’s fiscal policy risks fuelling inflation.

https://twitter.com/PaulBrandITV/status/1573624635966558208

Of course, those riding around in Government limos don't have to worry about the cost of filling their tanks up.

The biggest problem is the Fed being too aggressive in raising rates causing the dollar to rise against every other currency.

The US has a considerably bigger deficit than the UK, but the Fed is jacking up rates by 0.75% a go while the BoE aren't.

Indeed. Many people discussing the fall in the pound and of the London stock market, as a stick with which to beat the UK government, are missing the international picture. The issue is the strong dollar, against pretty much every other currency at the moment, caused mostly by the over-eagerness of the Fed to raise rates.

The pound is near an all time low against the Euro too. And it fell specifically after Kwateng's statement.

ping

“Financial Repression May Become Necessary to Contain UK Yields”

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-09-23/financial-repression-may-become-necessary-to-contain-uk-yields

wooliedyed

bondegezou said:

wooliedyed said:

Pagan2 said:

wooliedyed said:

Pagan2 said:

wooliedyed said:

Pagan2 said:

maxh said:

Pagan2 said:

FPT

algarkirk said:

Pagan2 said:

Still no one addresses the elephant in the room. They complain about services being underfunded and how dare tax be cut.

If all services were properly funded and paid for out of tax we would have the government taking about 90% of gdp as tax.

Time to start asking what the state should be saying no we dont do that anymore. Sadly a conversation no politician seems to want to have.

The answer is not tax more when half the country is struggling to make ends meet as it is. The answer is reduce spending.

The really huge bits of state managed expenditure go on:

pensions
social security
NHS
debt interest
defence
education
justice/police/prisons
local government services.

Debt interest will steadily rise unless we take a North Korean approach to liabilities.

In each other area above there is gigantic pressure massively to increase expenditure. Add social care to the list too. I can't thinkmof a single big area where people are generally saying 'enough' or 'too much'.

Can you (or anyone) suggest where the first, say, £200 bn reductions will be found?

For a start while those area's are high expenditure doesn't mean they should do everything they do now.

Defence for a start we could save a huge amount on procurement by just buying off the shelf stuff rather than creating custom shit just because.

NHS - last night I suggested a cap on lifetime health care expense, would set it at the average to start with and people can take out insurance to cover any over that. Also services such as tattoo removal should not be available. I would also refuse IVF on the NHS, a round of IVF costs about 10k....if you cant afford to save up 10k once a year to pay for it can you really afford the child as raising a child is likely to cost that a year in any case plus we have a lot of kids crying out for adoption.

I am sure others could come up with savings in all the other areas as well

There is some truth in your first post - so many areas of public services are so significantly underfunded right now that redressing the balance is going to be financially really quite tricky.

But your reply to @algarkirk just reinforces their point - defence procurement, tattoo removal, IVF are all tiny nibbles.

If the country was to go down your suggested route, it would need to involve, say, revoking the right to free education entirely. That's the scale we're talking about.

Which is why I suspect the only answer is to muddle on through. Only not in the way Truss and Kwarteng want us to do so.

They maybe tiny nibbles but I am sure there are plenty more tiny nibbles we can take and they start to add up. What we can't do is keep adding on things that need money because we are already taxing the majority of the country into the ground and there is no more to squeeze out.

The biggest change that ought to be made is public sector pensions switching from to db to dc and a cap on what the employer contributes. Currently employer contributions average about 20% in the public sector. Yes wouldn't help immediately but in the long term it would. I would also do a clawback on state pensions so for every 5£ you get from other pensions you state pension is reduced by a pound

The problem with state pension clawback is that many of us have planned retirement based on what we will need over state pension to get by. Is it really practical to say to someone who is expecting 14k a year in retirement (9k state approx plus 5k in his own schemes) that he has to take a 1k cut and live on 13k? Will rental incomes be counted as 'other pensions' for those that bought property as retirement provision?
How would drawdown be handled?

Yes other income would be treated as other pensions and we all plan our lives everyday on facts that change over time and when the facts change we have to change our plans. I don't see why pensioners should be any different. If anything people facing clawback are probably in a better place to respond as chances are they have no mortgage or rent if they have significant enough pension. We could also start with a clawback free sum so only applies after first 5000 of additional income. HMRC will already have the figures for additional income so it could be handled via them.

Far far too harsh on low earners. Much higher clawback free amount required. And is this applied to future pensioners or to everyone, now? Will need to be worked out annually so all pensioners to complete tax returns?
Youre basically telling a pensioner on average UK income youre taking 6 grand a year off them, the equivalent of increasing basic rate on an average earner in work to over 45%.

Most low earners will not be getting anywhere near 5K in additional pension.

HMRC already knows how much pensioners get in total as it taxes them above a certain figure so no tax returns required. Landlords also get taxed pensioner or not.

How do you get to taking 6K off them....for that level of clawback they would need additional income over the state pension of 30K or 35k if you give them the first 5K free of clawback. In my book someone with additional income of 30K doesnt need the state pension

Well if we give them the 5k allowance we are taking 5k of state pension back, or the equivalent of raising basic rate for an average wage earner to about 40%.
Someone earning 60,000 a year doesn't 'need' the personal allowance.
Why should a pensioner who planned his or her retirement fund some arse who earned 100k a year and pissed it all up the wall rather than saving? Why should income dependant pensioners suffer whilst asset rich ones laugh?
If State pension was lavish, perhaps, but its a pittance in return for a lifetime of work and tax.
I mean we might as well extend it and block access to NHS services for anybody on over average wage.

Pagan2 has effectively abolished the NHS already in their other proposals.

I mean i like to think im a pretty dry fiscal conservative in many ways but man......

HYUFD

pigeon said:

HYUFD said:

pigeon said:

ydoethur said:

dixiedean said:

kinabalu said:

The budget is obviously dreadful but I'm maybe in a minority in that I think it does make sense politically. To have a chance of winning another term of tory government, with the polls showing a solid Labour lead, Truss has to project her government as fresh and vigorous and above all NEW, ie repeat the trick Johnson managed for GE19. She can't, unlike him, use personality, and she doesn't have Brexit or an electorally toxic Labour opponent going for her, therefore it has to be done on policy. Hence this "new era", "tax cutting", "going for growth", "break with the stale consensus" rhetoric and package.

They know it's reckless and requires magical thinking to believe it'll pay for itself through higher growth. But they also know that "steady as she goes" through this energy crisis, fund the help package via a sensible mix of tax and borrowing, whilst being objectively the correct approach would deliver little political upside. It would leave the game unchanged when they need to kick the table over and force a new deck. Having done so they plan to frame the narrative over the next 2 years as New Era Low Tax Tories vs Same Old Labour Tax & Spenders. Come the GE, to be whispering these dirty words into the ears of the electorate - "Do you really want to pay more tax?"

This is the play, I think. They (Truss, the Tories) have to get their "low tax" mantle back - they can't win an election without that - and this is why they're cutting taxes when the country can’t afford it. It's not because they think it'll boost aspiration, investment and long term sustainable growth. They have no clue whether it'll do that and neither do they really care. They know you can’t audit these things anyway because it’s impossible to strip out causes and effects. And in political time there is no long term, there’s only the election. The reason they are cutting taxes is very simple and it is pure politics – it's so Labour have to say they’d raise them.

The just punishment would be a tiny Conservative majority to give them till 2029 to begin to clear up the damage.

That would probably lead to a weak and chaotic (well, still weaker and more chaotic) that would end up doing much more damage.

What we need is for the Conservatives to get beat and then for Starmer to ram PR through Parliament, so that any realistic prospect of them ever ruling the country alone again is removed.

What we'll actually get is a couple of years of Labour flailing about as it's consumed by the enormity of cleaning up the mess, followed by yet more of the Tories carving up the nation's remaining assets and distributing them to the already minted.

PR would see the Tories govern again, just likely neither Labour nor the Tories would ever win a majority again.

Instead smaller parties like the LDs, Greens and RefUK and SNP would normally hold the balance of power

That's the entire point. The likes of Farage, Rees-Mogg and Corbyn, who are representative of small but very rich and/or very loud segments of public opinion, could be hived off into extremist sects and properly marginalised. It's obvious to anyone with eyes to see that our current suite of "broad church" political parties has failed utterly.

PR is no guarantor against the capture of the entire political system by loonies, but it would certainly make it a lot less probable.

In theory but in practice none of them are likely to win a majority under FPTP.

Under PR though the nationalist Sweden Democrats are now kingmakers in Sweden, the nationalist Meloni is likely to become PM in Italy tomorrow and in NZ the Greens or New Zealand First are often kingmakers. In Germany too the Greens are in power and the AfD growing in strength and in Spain the hard left Podemos are kingmakers with the populist right Vox gaining support

Pagan2

bondegezou said:

wooliedyed said:

Pagan2 said:

wooliedyed said:

Pagan2 said:

wooliedyed said:

Pagan2 said:

maxh said:

Pagan2 said:

FPT

algarkirk said:

Pagan2 said:

Still no one addresses the elephant in the room. They complain about services being underfunded and how dare tax be cut.

If all services were properly funded and paid for out of tax we would have the government taking about 90% of gdp as tax.

Time to start asking what the state should be saying no we dont do that anymore. Sadly a conversation no politician seems to want to have.

The answer is not tax more when half the country is struggling to make ends meet as it is. The answer is reduce spending.

The really huge bits of state managed expenditure go on:

pensions
social security
NHS
debt interest
defence
education
justice/police/prisons
local government services.

Debt interest will steadily rise unless we take a North Korean approach to liabilities.

In each other area above there is gigantic pressure massively to increase expenditure. Add social care to the list too. I can't thinkmof a single big area where people are generally saying 'enough' or 'too much'.

Can you (or anyone) suggest where the first, say, £200 bn reductions will be found?

For a start while those area's are high expenditure doesn't mean they should do everything they do now.

Defence for a start we could save a huge amount on procurement by just buying off the shelf stuff rather than creating custom shit just because.

NHS - last night I suggested a cap on lifetime health care expense, would set it at the average to start with and people can take out insurance to cover any over that. Also services such as tattoo removal should not be available. I would also refuse IVF on the NHS, a round of IVF costs about 10k....if you cant afford to save up 10k once a year to pay for it can you really afford the child as raising a child is likely to cost that a year in any case plus we have a lot of kids crying out for adoption.

I am sure others could come up with savings in all the other areas as well

There is some truth in your first post - so many areas of public services are so significantly underfunded right now that redressing the balance is going to be financially really quite tricky.

But your reply to @algarkirk just reinforces their point - defence procurement, tattoo removal, IVF are all tiny nibbles.

If the country was to go down your suggested route, it would need to involve, say, revoking the right to free education entirely. That's the scale we're talking about.

Which is why I suspect the only answer is to muddle on through. Only not in the way Truss and Kwarteng want us to do so.

They maybe tiny nibbles but I am sure there are plenty more tiny nibbles we can take and they start to add up. What we can't do is keep adding on things that need money because we are already taxing the majority of the country into the ground and there is no more to squeeze out.

The biggest change that ought to be made is public sector pensions switching from to db to dc and a cap on what the employer contributes. Currently employer contributions average about 20% in the public sector. Yes wouldn't help immediately but in the long term it would. I would also do a clawback on state pensions so for every 5£ you get from other pensions you state pension is reduced by a pound

The problem with state pension clawback is that many of us have planned retirement based on what we will need over state pension to get by. Is it really practical to say to someone who is expecting 14k a year in retirement (9k state approx plus 5k in his own schemes) that he has to take a 1k cut and live on 13k? Will rental incomes be counted as 'other pensions' for those that bought property as retirement provision?
How would drawdown be handled?

Yes other income would be treated as other pensions and we all plan our lives everyday on facts that change over time and when the facts change we have to change our plans. I don't see why pensioners should be any different. If anything people facing clawback are probably in a better place to respond as chances are they have no mortgage or rent if they have significant enough pension. We could also start with a clawback free sum so only applies after first 5000 of additional income. HMRC will already have the figures for additional income so it could be handled via them.

Far far too harsh on low earners. Much higher clawback free amount required. And is this applied to future pensioners or to everyone, now? Will need to be worked out annually so all pensioners to complete tax returns?
Youre basically telling a pensioner on average UK income youre taking 6 grand a year off them, the equivalent of increasing basic rate on an average earner in work to over 45%.

Most low earners will not be getting anywhere near 5K in additional pension.

HMRC already knows how much pensioners get in total as it taxes them above a certain figure so no tax returns required. Landlords also get taxed pensioner or not.

How do you get to taking 6K off them....for that level of clawback they would need additional income over the state pension of 30K or 35k if you give them the first 5K free of clawback. In my book someone with additional income of 30K doesnt need the state pension

Well if we give them the 5k allowance we are taking 5k of state pension back, or the equivalent of raising basic rate for an average wage earner to about 40%.
Someone earning 60,000 a year doesn't 'need' the personal allowance.
Why should a pensioner who planned his or her retirement fund some arse who earned 100k a year and pissed it all up the wall rather than saving? Why should income dependant pensioners suffer whilst asset rich ones laugh?
If State pension was lavish, perhaps, but its a pittance in return for a lifetime of work and tax.
I mean we might as well extend it and block access to NHS services for anybody on over average wage.

Pagan2 has effectively abolished the NHS already in their other proposals.

No I didn't typical left wing melodrama. Suggesting a cap on state care about average lifetime health care costs above which you have to insure is not abolishing the NHS in the least.

Northern_Al

I'm not persuaded that Scottish high earners will be tempted to move south of the border because of the attraction of slightly lower taxes.

By that logic, people would always try to arrange their lives to maximise their income. Yet millions of people still choose to live in London and other parts of the south east, knowing full well that property prices mean that they would have much more disposable income if they lived elsewhere.

ping

https://www.reuters.com/world/uk/cost-insuring-uk-government-debt-against-default-jumps-2022-09-23/

Foxy

Pagan2 said:

wooliedyed said:

Pagan2 said:

wooliedyed said:

Pagan2 said:

wooliedyed said:

Pagan2 said:

maxh said:

Pagan2 said:

FPT

algarkirk said:

Pagan2 said:

Still no one addresses the elephant in the room. They complain about services being underfunded and how dare tax be cut.

If all services were properly funded and paid for out of tax we would have the government taking about 90% of gdp as tax.

Time to start asking what the state should be saying no we dont do that anymore. Sadly a conversation no politician seems to want to have.

The answer is not tax more when half the country is struggling to make ends meet as it is. The answer is reduce spending.

The really huge bits of state managed expenditure go on:

pensions
social security
NHS
debt interest
defence
education
justice/police/prisons
local government services.

Debt interest will steadily rise unless we take a North Korean approach to liabilities.

In each other area above there is gigantic pressure massively to increase expenditure. Add social care to the list too. I can't thinkmof a single big area where people are generally saying 'enough' or 'too much'.

Can you (or anyone) suggest where the first, say, £200 bn reductions will be found?

For a start while those area's are high expenditure doesn't mean they should do everything they do now.

Defence for a start we could save a huge amount on procurement by just buying off the shelf stuff rather than creating custom shit just because.

NHS - last night I suggested a cap on lifetime health care expense, would set it at the average to start with and people can take out insurance to cover any over that. Also services such as tattoo removal should not be available. I would also refuse IVF on the NHS, a round of IVF costs about 10k....if you cant afford to save up 10k once a year to pay for it can you really afford the child as raising a child is likely to cost that a year in any case plus we have a lot of kids crying out for adoption.

I am sure others could come up with savings in all the other areas as well

There is some truth in your first post - so many areas of public services are so significantly underfunded right now that redressing the balance is going to be financially really quite tricky.

But your reply to @algarkirk just reinforces their point - defence procurement, tattoo removal, IVF are all tiny nibbles.

If the country was to go down your suggested route, it would need to involve, say, revoking the right to free education entirely. That's the scale we're talking about.

Which is why I suspect the only answer is to muddle on through. Only not in the way Truss and Kwarteng want us to do so.

They maybe tiny nibbles but I am sure there are plenty more tiny nibbles we can take and they start to add up. What we can't do is keep adding on things that need money because we are already taxing the majority of the country into the ground and there is no more to squeeze out.

The biggest change that ought to be made is public sector pensions switching from to db to dc and a cap on what the employer contributes. Currently employer contributions average about 20% in the public sector. Yes wouldn't help immediately but in the long term it would. I would also do a clawback on state pensions so for every 5£ you get from other pensions you state pension is reduced by a pound

The problem with state pension clawback is that many of us have planned retirement based on what we will need over state pension to get by. Is it really practical to say to someone who is expecting 14k a year in retirement (9k state approx plus 5k in his own schemes) that he has to take a 1k cut and live on 13k? Will rental incomes be counted as 'other pensions' for those that bought property as retirement provision?
How would drawdown be handled?

Yes other income would be treated as other pensions and we all plan our lives everyday on facts that change over time and when the facts change we have to change our plans. I don't see why pensioners should be any different. If anything people facing clawback are probably in a better place to respond as chances are they have no mortgage or rent if they have significant enough pension. We could also start with a clawback free sum so only applies after first 5000 of additional income. HMRC will already have the figures for additional income so it could be handled via them.

Far far too harsh on low earners. Much higher clawback free amount required. And is this applied to future pensioners or to everyone, now? Will need to be worked out annually so all pensioners to complete tax returns?
Youre basically telling a pensioner on average UK income youre taking 6 grand a year off them, the equivalent of increasing basic rate on an average earner in work to over 45%.

Most low earners will not be getting anywhere near 5K in additional pension.

HMRC already knows how much pensioners get in total as it taxes them above a certain figure so no tax returns required. Landlords also get taxed pensioner or not.

How do you get to taking 6K off them....for that level of clawback they would need additional income over the state pension of 30K or 35k if you give them the first 5K free of clawback. In my book someone with additional income of 30K doesnt need the state pension

Well if we give them the 5k allowance we are taking 5k of state pension back, or the equivalent of raising basic rate for an average wage earner to about 40%.
Someone earning 60,000 a year doesn't 'need' the personal allowance.
Why should a pensioner who planned his or her retirement fund some arse who earned 100k a year and pissed it all up the wall rather than saving? Why should income dependant pensioners suffer whilst asset rich ones laugh?
If State pension was lavish, perhaps, but its a pittance in return for a lifetime of work and tax.
I mean we might as well extend it and block access to NHS services for anybody on over average wage.

sighs you misunderstood I think

You get state pension of 9k
You get additional income once the additional income is over 5k then for every 5£ you get state pension is reduced by £1

so additional income is 5k you get full state pension
at 10K additional you get 1K removed from state pension
at 20K additional you get 4k less state pension

so total for the 3 scenarios would be 14K, 18k,and 25K

So on practice not any different to increasing taxation on pensioners, for example by charging all pensioners NI.

Benpointer

wooliedyed said:

Pagan2 said:

wooliedyed said:

Pagan2 said:

wooliedyed said:

Pagan2 said:

maxh said:

Pagan2 said:

FPT

algarkirk said:

Pagan2 said:

Still no one addresses the elephant in the room. They complain about services being underfunded and how dare tax be cut.

If all services were properly funded and paid for out of tax we would have the government taking about 90% of gdp as tax.

Time to start asking what the state should be saying no we dont do that anymore. Sadly a conversation no politician seems to want to have.

The answer is not tax more when half the country is struggling to make ends meet as it is. The answer is reduce spending.

The really huge bits of state managed expenditure go on:

pensions
social security
NHS
debt interest
defence
education
justice/police/prisons
local government services.

Debt interest will steadily rise unless we take a North Korean approach to liabilities.

In each other area above there is gigantic pressure massively to increase expenditure. Add social care to the list too. I can't thinkmof a single big area where people are generally saying 'enough' or 'too much'.

Can you (or anyone) suggest where the first, say, £200 bn reductions will be found?

For a start while those area's are high expenditure doesn't mean they should do everything they do now.

Defence for a start we could save a huge amount on procurement by just buying off the shelf stuff rather than creating custom shit just because.

NHS - last night I suggested a cap on lifetime health care expense, would set it at the average to start with and people can take out insurance to cover any over that. Also services such as tattoo removal should not be available. I would also refuse IVF on the NHS, a round of IVF costs about 10k....if you cant afford to save up 10k once a year to pay for it can you really afford the child as raising a child is likely to cost that a year in any case plus we have a lot of kids crying out for adoption.

I am sure others could come up with savings in all the other areas as well

There is some truth in your first post - so many areas of public services are so significantly underfunded right now that redressing the balance is going to be financially really quite tricky.

But your reply to @algarkirk just reinforces their point - defence procurement, tattoo removal, IVF are all tiny nibbles.

If the country was to go down your suggested route, it would need to involve, say, revoking the right to free education entirely. That's the scale we're talking about.

Which is why I suspect the only answer is to muddle on through. Only not in the way Truss and Kwarteng want us to do so.

They maybe tiny nibbles but I am sure there are plenty more tiny nibbles we can take and they start to add up. What we can't do is keep adding on things that need money because we are already taxing the majority of the country into the ground and there is no more to squeeze out.

The biggest change that ought to be made is public sector pensions switching from to db to dc and a cap on what the employer contributes. Currently employer contributions average about 20% in the public sector. Yes wouldn't help immediately but in the long term it would. I would also do a clawback on state pensions so for every 5£ you get from other pensions you state pension is reduced by a pound

The problem with state pension clawback is that many of us have planned retirement based on what we will need over state pension to get by. Is it really practical to say to someone who is expecting 14k a year in retirement (9k state approx plus 5k in his own schemes) that he has to take a 1k cut and live on 13k? Will rental incomes be counted as 'other pensions' for those that bought property as retirement provision?
How would drawdown be handled?

Yes other income would be treated as other pensions and we all plan our lives everyday on facts that change over time and when the facts change we have to change our plans. I don't see why pensioners should be any different. If anything people facing clawback are probably in a better place to respond as chances are they have no mortgage or rent if they have significant enough pension. We could also start with a clawback free sum so only applies after first 5000 of additional income. HMRC will already have the figures for additional income so it could be handled via them.

Far far too harsh on low earners. Much higher clawback free amount required. And is this applied to future pensioners or to everyone, now? Will need to be worked out annually so all pensioners to complete tax returns?
Youre basically telling a pensioner on average UK income youre taking 6 grand a year off them, the equivalent of increasing basic rate on an average earner in work to over 45%.

Most low earners will not be getting anywhere near 5K in additional pension.

HMRC already knows how much pensioners get in total as it taxes them above a certain figure so no tax returns required. Landlords also get taxed pensioner or not.

How do you get to taking 6K off them....for that level of clawback they would need additional income over the state pension of 30K or 35k if you give them the first 5K free of clawback. In my book someone with additional income of 30K doesnt need the state pension

Well if we give them the 5k allowance we are taking 5k of state pension back, or the equivalent of raising basic rate for an average wage earner to about 40%.
Someone earning 60,000 a year doesn't 'need' the personal allowance.
Why should a pensioner who planned his or her retirement fund some arse who earned 100k a year and pissed it all up the wall rather than saving? Why should income dependant pensioners suffer whilst asset rich ones laugh?
If State pension was lavish, perhaps, but its a pittance in return for a lifetime of work and tax.
I mean we might as well extend it and block access to NHS services for anybody on over average wage.

It's not difficult: extend NI to all income. Those like myself who are comfortably off in retirement will pay a bit more but those relying on just the Sate Pension will not be affected. Those living on unearned investment income (some all their life) will also pay a fairer share of taxes.

Sandpit

Foxy said:

Sandpit said:

Pagan2 said:

maxh said:

Pagan2 said:

maxh said:

Pulpstar said:

maxh said:

Pagan2 said:

FPT

algarkirk said:

Pagan2 said:

Still no one addresses the elephant in the room. They complain about services being underfunded and how dare tax be cut.

If all services were properly funded and paid for out of tax we would have the government taking about 90% of gdp as tax.

Time to start asking what the state should be saying no we dont do that anymore. Sadly a conversation no politician seems to want to have.

The answer is not tax more when half the country is struggling to make ends meet as it is. The answer is reduce spending.

The really huge bits of state managed expenditure go on:

pensions
social security
NHS
debt interest
defence
education
justice/police/prisons
local government services.

Debt interest will steadily rise unless we take a North Korean approach to liabilities.

In each other area above there is gigantic pressure massively to increase expenditure. Add social care to the list too. I can't thinkmof a single big area where people are generally saying 'enough' or 'too much'.

Can you (or anyone) suggest where the first, say, £200 bn reductions will be found?

For a start while those area's are high expenditure doesn't mean they should do everything they do now.

Defence for a start we could save a huge amount on procurement by just buying off the shelf stuff rather than creating custom shit just because.

NHS - last night I suggested a cap on lifetime health care expense, would set it at the average to start with and people can take out insurance to cover any over that. Also services such as tattoo removal should not be available. I would also refuse IVF on the NHS, a round of IVF costs about 10k....if you cant afford to save up 10k once a year to pay for it can you really afford the child as raising a child is likely to cost that a year in any case plus we have a lot of kids crying out for adoption.

I am sure others could come up with savings in all the other areas as well

There is some truth in your first post - so many areas of public services are so significantly underfunded right now that redressing the balance is going to be financially really quite tricky.

But your reply to @algarkirk just reinforces their point - defence procurement, tattoo removal, IVF are all tiny nibbles.

If the country was to go down your suggested route, it would need to involve, say, revoking the right to free education entirely. That's the scale we're talking about.

Which is why I suspect the only answer is to muddle on through. Only not in the way Truss and Kwarteng want us to do so.

This wouldn't save much on it's own is not a good reason to not try and save that cash in the first place.

I agree. It just doesn't match the scale @Pagan2 is suggesting we need to work at.

You are however taking my post as this is all we should do rather than just a couple of examples

I'm not taking it that way - what I'm trying to say is that my instinct is that the scale of change needed to solve the problem you identify is so large that however many examples you can identify, they won't add up to anywhere near enough.

That's not to say they aren't worth doing, just that, if we were really having a conversation about the 'elephant in the room' - finding a way to properly fund that which we think is important enough to properly fund, and not doing the rest, we would need to be looking at an entirely dfferent scale.

The way to eat an elephant is in many meals not one gigantic roast dinner

Indeed. There should be a zero-based review of spending ahead of the next Budget. It’s not been done properly in decades.

We could save £48 billion per annum by disbanding the Army, Navy and RAF. It would also free up thousands of healthy young people for more productive work.

I agree with you that there’s massive savings to be had from the military budget, especially in specification and procurement. More international co-operation with friendly nations - the British/Swedish NLAW springs to mind for some reason - can reduce costs significantly for the same capability.

ping

I’m getting angrier and angrier about what these fuckers are doing to my country.

StuartDickson

logical_song said:

CorrectHorseBattery3 said:

This Chancellor is unravelling with serious speed. He's out of his depth.

20 point lead, nailed on.

Kwasi Kwarteng, Quasi Chancellor

Kwasi Kwarteng, quasi sober.

https://twitter.com/nazirafzal/status/1572560150715826177?s=21&t=sS7fzsUkqwXfeh_oTuiE3g

wooliedyed

Pagan2 said:

wooliedyed said:

Pagan2 said:

wooliedyed said:

Pagan2 said:

wooliedyed said:

Pagan2 said:

maxh said:

Pagan2 said:

FPT

algarkirk said:

Pagan2 said:

Still no one addresses the elephant in the room. They complain about services being underfunded and how dare tax be cut.

If all services were properly funded and paid for out of tax we would have the government taking about 90% of gdp as tax.

Time to start asking what the state should be saying no we dont do that anymore. Sadly a conversation no politician seems to want to have.

The answer is not tax more when half the country is struggling to make ends meet as it is. The answer is reduce spending.

The really huge bits of state managed expenditure go on:

pensions
social security
NHS
debt interest
defence
education
justice/police/prisons
local government services.

Debt interest will steadily rise unless we take a North Korean approach to liabilities.

In each other area above there is gigantic pressure massively to increase expenditure. Add social care to the list too. I can't thinkmof a single big area where people are generally saying 'enough' or 'too much'.

Can you (or anyone) suggest where the first, say, £200 bn reductions will be found?

For a start while those area's are high expenditure doesn't mean they should do everything they do now.

Defence for a start we could save a huge amount on procurement by just buying off the shelf stuff rather than creating custom shit just because.

NHS - last night I suggested a cap on lifetime health care expense, would set it at the average to start with and people can take out insurance to cover any over that. Also services such as tattoo removal should not be available. I would also refuse IVF on the NHS, a round of IVF costs about 10k....if you cant afford to save up 10k once a year to pay for it can you really afford the child as raising a child is likely to cost that a year in any case plus we have a lot of kids crying out for adoption.

I am sure others could come up with savings in all the other areas as well

There is some truth in your first post - so many areas of public services are so significantly underfunded right now that redressing the balance is going to be financially really quite tricky.

But your reply to @algarkirk just reinforces their point - defence procurement, tattoo removal, IVF are all tiny nibbles.

If the country was to go down your suggested route, it would need to involve, say, revoking the right to free education entirely. That's the scale we're talking about.

Which is why I suspect the only answer is to muddle on through. Only not in the way Truss and Kwarteng want us to do so.

They maybe tiny nibbles but I am sure there are plenty more tiny nibbles we can take and they start to add up. What we can't do is keep adding on things that need money because we are already taxing the majority of the country into the ground and there is no more to squeeze out.

The biggest change that ought to be made is public sector pensions switching from to db to dc and a cap on what the employer contributes. Currently employer contributions average about 20% in the public sector. Yes wouldn't help immediately but in the long term it would. I would also do a clawback on state pensions so for every 5£ you get from other pensions you state pension is reduced by a pound

The problem with state pension clawback is that many of us have planned retirement based on what we will need over state pension to get by. Is it really practical to say to someone who is expecting 14k a year in retirement (9k state approx plus 5k in his own schemes) that he has to take a 1k cut and live on 13k? Will rental incomes be counted as 'other pensions' for those that bought property as retirement provision?
How would drawdown be handled?

Yes other income would be treated as other pensions and we all plan our lives everyday on facts that change over time and when the facts change we have to change our plans. I don't see why pensioners should be any different. If anything people facing clawback are probably in a better place to respond as chances are they have no mortgage or rent if they have significant enough pension. We could also start with a clawback free sum so only applies after first 5000 of additional income. HMRC will already have the figures for additional income so it could be handled via them.

Far far too harsh on low earners. Much higher clawback free amount required. And is this applied to future pensioners or to everyone, now? Will need to be worked out annually so all pensioners to complete tax returns?
Youre basically telling a pensioner on average UK income youre taking 6 grand a year off them, the equivalent of increasing basic rate on an average earner in work to over 45%.

Most low earners will not be getting anywhere near 5K in additional pension.

HMRC already knows how much pensioners get in total as it taxes them above a certain figure so no tax returns required. Landlords also get taxed pensioner or not.

How do you get to taking 6K off them....for that level of clawback they would need additional income over the state pension of 30K or 35k if you give them the first 5K free of clawback. In my book someone with additional income of 30K doesnt need the state pension

Well if we give them the 5k allowance we are taking 5k of state pension back, or the equivalent of raising basic rate for an average wage earner to about 40%.
Someone earning 60,000 a year doesn't 'need' the personal allowance.
Why should a pensioner who planned his or her retirement fund some arse who earned 100k a year and pissed it all up the wall rather than saving? Why should income dependant pensioners suffer whilst asset rich ones laugh?
If State pension was lavish, perhaps, but its a pittance in return for a lifetime of work and tax.
I mean we might as well extend it and block access to NHS services for anybody on over average wage.

sighs you misunderstood I think

You get state pension of 9k
You get additional income once the additional income is over 5k then for every 5£ you get state pension is reduced by £1

so additional income is 5k you get full state pension
at 10K additional you get 1K removed from state pension
at 20K additional you get 4k less state pension

so total for the 3 scenarios would be 14K, 18k,and 25K

Average uk income is 38,900, so a pensioner on 29,900 plus 9k state loses 20% of 24,900 or approx £5k
For a worker on 38,900 to lose an additional 5k of their income youd need to set basic rate at about 40% after the personal allowance

pigeon

Pagan2 said:

pigeon said:

HYUFD said:

pigeon said:

ydoethur said:

dixiedean said:

kinabalu said:

The budget is obviously dreadful but I'm maybe in a minority in that I think it does make sense politically. To have a chance of winning another term of tory government, with the polls showing a solid Labour lead, Truss has to project her government as fresh and vigorous and above all NEW, ie repeat the trick Johnson managed for GE19. She can't, unlike him, use personality, and she doesn't have Brexit or an electorally toxic Labour opponent going for her, therefore it has to be done on policy. Hence this "new era", "tax cutting", "going for growth", "break with the stale consensus" rhetoric and package.

They know it's reckless and requires magical thinking to believe it'll pay for itself through higher growth. But they also know that "steady as she goes" through this energy crisis, fund the help package via a sensible mix of tax and borrowing, whilst being objectively the correct approach would deliver little political upside. It would leave the game unchanged when they need to kick the table over and force a new deck. Having done so they plan to frame the narrative over the next 2 years as New Era Low Tax Tories vs Same Old Labour Tax & Spenders. Come the GE, to be whispering these dirty words into the ears of the electorate - "Do you really want to pay more tax?"

This is the play, I think. They (Truss, the Tories) have to get their "low tax" mantle back - they can't win an election without that - and this is why they're cutting taxes when the country can’t afford it. It's not because they think it'll boost aspiration, investment and long term sustainable growth. They have no clue whether it'll do that and neither do they really care. They know you can’t audit these things anyway because it’s impossible to strip out causes and effects. And in political time there is no long term, there’s only the election. The reason they are cutting taxes is very simple and it is pure politics – it's so Labour have to say they’d raise them.

The just punishment would be a tiny Conservative majority to give them till 2029 to begin to clear up the damage.

That would probably lead to a weak and chaotic (well, still weaker and more chaotic) that would end up doing much more damage.

What we need is for the Conservatives to get beat and then for Starmer to ram PR through Parliament, so that any realistic prospect of them ever ruling the country alone again is removed.

What we'll actually get is a couple of years of Labour flailing about as it's consumed by the enormity of cleaning up the mess, followed by yet more of the Tories carving up the nation's remaining assets and distributing them to the already minted.

PR would see the Tories govern again, just likely neither Labour nor the Tories would ever win a majority again.

Instead smaller parties like the LDs, Greens and RefUK and SNP would normally hold the balance of power

That's the entire point. The likes of Farage, Rees-Mogg and Corbyn, who are representative of small but very rich and/or very loud segments of public opinion, could be hived off into extremist sects and properly marginalised. It's obvious to anyone with eyes to see that our current suite of "broad church" political parties has failed utterly.

PR is no guarantor against the capture of the entire political system by loonies, but it would certainly make it a lot less probable.

Points at Germany and Scholz

Scholz, in common with the rest of SPD, has been too cosy historically with that shit in the Kremlin. Fortunately, quite apart from all the international pressure, Parliamentary arithmetic means that he also has to deal with the Greens, who won't put up with that nonsense. QED.

ydoethur

Louise Fletcher has died:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-63019250

TimS

HYUFD said:

pigeon said:

HYUFD said:

pigeon said:

ydoethur said:

dixiedean said:

kinabalu said:

The budget is obviously dreadful but I'm maybe in a minority in that I think it does make sense politically. To have a chance of winning another term of tory government, with the polls showing a solid Labour lead, Truss has to project her government as fresh and vigorous and above all NEW, ie repeat the trick Johnson managed for GE19. She can't, unlike him, use personality, and she doesn't have Brexit or an electorally toxic Labour opponent going for her, therefore it has to be done on policy. Hence this "new era", "tax cutting", "going for growth", "break with the stale consensus" rhetoric and package.

They know it's reckless and requires magical thinking to believe it'll pay for itself through higher growth. But they also know that "steady as she goes" through this energy crisis, fund the help package via a sensible mix of tax and borrowing, whilst being objectively the correct approach would deliver little political upside. It would leave the game unchanged when they need to kick the table over and force a new deck. Having done so they plan to frame the narrative over the next 2 years as New Era Low Tax Tories vs Same Old Labour Tax & Spenders. Come the GE, to be whispering these dirty words into the ears of the electorate - "Do you really want to pay more tax?"

This is the play, I think. They (Truss, the Tories) have to get their "low tax" mantle back - they can't win an election without that - and this is why they're cutting taxes when the country can’t afford it. It's not because they think it'll boost aspiration, investment and long term sustainable growth. They have no clue whether it'll do that and neither do they really care. They know you can’t audit these things anyway because it’s impossible to strip out causes and effects. And in political time there is no long term, there’s only the election. The reason they are cutting taxes is very simple and it is pure politics – it's so Labour have to say they’d raise them.

The just punishment would be a tiny Conservative majority to give them till 2029 to begin to clear up the damage.

That would probably lead to a weak and chaotic (well, still weaker and more chaotic) that would end up doing much more damage.

What we need is for the Conservatives to get beat and then for Starmer to ram PR through Parliament, so that any realistic prospect of them ever ruling the country alone again is removed.

What we'll actually get is a couple of years of Labour flailing about as it's consumed by the enormity of cleaning up the mess, followed by yet more of the Tories carving up the nation's remaining assets and distributing them to the already minted.

PR would see the Tories govern again, just likely neither Labour nor the Tories would ever win a majority again.

Instead smaller parties like the LDs, Greens and RefUK and SNP would normally hold the balance of power

That's the entire point. The likes of Farage, Rees-Mogg and Corbyn, who are representative of small but very rich and/or very loud segments of public opinion, could be hived off into extremist sects and properly marginalised. It's obvious to anyone with eyes to see that our current suite of "broad church" political parties has failed utterly.

PR is no guarantor against the capture of the entire political system by loonies, but it would certainly make it a lot less probable.

In theory but in practice none of them are likely to win a majority under FPTP.

Under PR though the nationalist Sweden Democrats are now kingmakers in Sweden, the nationalist Meloni is likely to become PM in Italy tomorrow and in NZ the Greens or New Zealand First are often kingmakers. In Germany too the Greens are in power and the AfD growing in strength and in Spain the hard left Podemos are kingmakers with the populist right Vox gaining support

For many years FPTP and a 2-party system was held up as a bulwark against extremist politicians getting into power. Trump put paid to that, as did the 2019 election choice of Johnson vs Corbyn. So at worst PR is now level pegging with FPTP in the don't elect loonies stakes and recent experience suggests it might be a tad better.

pigeon

ping said:

I’m getting angrier and angrier about what these fuckers are doing to my country.

It's bad, but try not to let it affect your blood pressure too much. There is nothing meaningful that any of us can do about it.

Sandpit

Northern_Al said:

I'm not persuaded that Scottish high earners will be tempted to move south of the border because of the attraction of slightly lower taxes.

By that logic, people would always try to arrange their lives to maximise their income. Yet millions of people still choose to live in London and other parts of the south east, knowing full well that property prices mean that they would have much more disposable income if they lived elsewhere.

That only holds because the property is seen as an appreciating asset, and usually an investment high;y-leveraged with a mortgage. If that stops being the case, then expect more decisions to be made as you suggest, especially if more higher-paid jobs are available outside London.

I wonder how many Scottish bankers might choose to move from Edinburgh to Newcastle?

RobD

Northern_Al said:

I'm not persuaded that Scottish high earners will be tempted to move south of the border because of the attraction of slightly lower taxes.

By that logic, people would always try to arrange their lives to maximise their income. Yet millions of people still choose to live in London and other parts of the south east, knowing full well that property prices mean that they would have much more disposable income if they lived elsewhere.

Right, I don’t think everyone will be rushing to leave. But it surely must have some effect? If they doubled income tax there would surely be some people moving. So it must change at a point between that and the status quo.

EPG

Northern_Al said:

I'm not persuaded that Scottish high earners will be tempted to move south of the border because of the attraction of slightly lower taxes.

By that logic, people would always try to arrange their lives to maximise their income. Yet millions of people still choose to live in London and other parts of the south east, knowing full well that property prices mean that they would have much more disposable income if they lived elsewhere.

Correct, quality of life matters once you are settled. For future job creation though, it's the kind of thing companies reflect on.

TimS

pigeon said:

Pagan2 said:

pigeon said:

HYUFD said:

pigeon said:

ydoethur said:

dixiedean said:

kinabalu said:

The budget is obviously dreadful but I'm maybe in a minority in that I think it does make sense politically. To have a chance of winning another term of tory government, with the polls showing a solid Labour lead, Truss has to project her government as fresh and vigorous and above all NEW, ie repeat the trick Johnson managed for GE19. She can't, unlike him, use personality, and she doesn't have Brexit or an electorally toxic Labour opponent going for her, therefore it has to be done on policy. Hence this "new era", "tax cutting", "going for growth", "break with the stale consensus" rhetoric and package.

They know it's reckless and requires magical thinking to believe it'll pay for itself through higher growth. But they also know that "steady as she goes" through this energy crisis, fund the help package via a sensible mix of tax and borrowing, whilst being objectively the correct approach would deliver little political upside. It would leave the game unchanged when they need to kick the table over and force a new deck. Having done so they plan to frame the narrative over the next 2 years as New Era Low Tax Tories vs Same Old Labour Tax & Spenders. Come the GE, to be whispering these dirty words into the ears of the electorate - "Do you really want to pay more tax?"

This is the play, I think. They (Truss, the Tories) have to get their "low tax" mantle back - they can't win an election without that - and this is why they're cutting taxes when the country can’t afford it. It's not because they think it'll boost aspiration, investment and long term sustainable growth. They have no clue whether it'll do that and neither do they really care. They know you can’t audit these things anyway because it’s impossible to strip out causes and effects. And in political time there is no long term, there’s only the election. The reason they are cutting taxes is very simple and it is pure politics – it's so Labour have to say they’d raise them.

The just punishment would be a tiny Conservative majority to give them till 2029 to begin to clear up the damage.

That would probably lead to a weak and chaotic (well, still weaker and more chaotic) that would end up doing much more damage.

What we need is for the Conservatives to get beat and then for Starmer to ram PR through Parliament, so that any realistic prospect of them ever ruling the country alone again is removed.

What we'll actually get is a couple of years of Labour flailing about as it's consumed by the enormity of cleaning up the mess, followed by yet more of the Tories carving up the nation's remaining assets and distributing them to the already minted.

PR would see the Tories govern again, just likely neither Labour nor the Tories would ever win a majority again.

Instead smaller parties like the LDs, Greens and RefUK and SNP would normally hold the balance of power

That's the entire point. The likes of Farage, Rees-Mogg and Corbyn, who are representative of small but very rich and/or very loud segments of public opinion, could be hived off into extremist sects and properly marginalised. It's obvious to anyone with eyes to see that our current suite of "broad church" political parties has failed utterly.

PR is no guarantor against the capture of the entire political system by loonies, but it would certainly make it a lot less probable.

Points at Germany and Scholz

Scholz, in common with the rest of SPD, has been too cosy historically with that shit in the Kremlin. Fortunately, quite apart from all the international pressure, Parliamentary arithmetic means that he also has to deal with the Greens, who won't put up with that nonsense. QED.

The German greens are a great bunch of lads. Are you watching, UK green party?

Theuniondivvie

Fairliered said:

DavidL said:

Interesting that Nicola is saying she is not going to follow suite on the budget but my understanding that she will have to to a major extent. The elimination of the highest band of 45% (46% in Scotland) means that the gap between the rate in England and Scotland would be 6p in the £1, twice the permitted flexibility. So Nicola can extend the gap to the full 3p but she will still need to cut the rate for the highest earners by 3p in the £1.

And, of course, extending the additional tax to 3p in the £1.00 will not do much for the attractiveness of Scotland for high earners, either.

She could refuse to cut the highest band and force a constitutional crisis on the basis of who sets Scottish tax rates. I doubt the tories would get much sympathy, and it would force labour off the fence. It would be interesting to see which side of the fence labour climb down on to.

Good chance that not for the first time they'd prevaricate and end up with a crack on the balls as they tried to straddle.

Pagan2

Foxy said:

Pagan2 said:

wooliedyed said:

Pagan2 said:

wooliedyed said:

Pagan2 said:

wooliedyed said:

Pagan2 said:

maxh said:

Pagan2 said:

FPT

algarkirk said:

Pagan2 said:

Still no one addresses the elephant in the room. They complain about services being underfunded and how dare tax be cut.

If all services were properly funded and paid for out of tax we would have the government taking about 90% of gdp as tax.

Time to start asking what the state should be saying no we dont do that anymore. Sadly a conversation no politician seems to want to have.

The answer is not tax more when half the country is struggling to make ends meet as it is. The answer is reduce spending.

The really huge bits of state managed expenditure go on:

pensions
social security
NHS
debt interest
defence
education
justice/police/prisons
local government services.

Debt interest will steadily rise unless we take a North Korean approach to liabilities.

In each other area above there is gigantic pressure massively to increase expenditure. Add social care to the list too. I can't thinkmof a single big area where people are generally saying 'enough' or 'too much'.

Can you (or anyone) suggest where the first, say, £200 bn reductions will be found?

For a start while those area's are high expenditure doesn't mean they should do everything they do now.

Defence for a start we could save a huge amount on procurement by just buying off the shelf stuff rather than creating custom shit just because.

NHS - last night I suggested a cap on lifetime health care expense, would set it at the average to start with and people can take out insurance to cover any over that. Also services such as tattoo removal should not be available. I would also refuse IVF on the NHS, a round of IVF costs about 10k....if you cant afford to save up 10k once a year to pay for it can you really afford the child as raising a child is likely to cost that a year in any case plus we have a lot of kids crying out for adoption.

I am sure others could come up with savings in all the other areas as well

There is some truth in your first post - so many areas of public services are so significantly underfunded right now that redressing the balance is going to be financially really quite tricky.

But your reply to @algarkirk just reinforces their point - defence procurement, tattoo removal, IVF are all tiny nibbles.

If the country was to go down your suggested route, it would need to involve, say, revoking the right to free education entirely. That's the scale we're talking about.

Which is why I suspect the only answer is to muddle on through. Only not in the way Truss and Kwarteng want us to do so.

They maybe tiny nibbles but I am sure there are plenty more tiny nibbles we can take and they start to add up. What we can't do is keep adding on things that need money because we are already taxing the majority of the country into the ground and there is no more to squeeze out.

The biggest change that ought to be made is public sector pensions switching from to db to dc and a cap on what the employer contributes. Currently employer contributions average about 20% in the public sector. Yes wouldn't help immediately but in the long term it would. I would also do a clawback on state pensions so for every 5£ you get from other pensions you state pension is reduced by a pound

The problem with state pension clawback is that many of us have planned retirement based on what we will need over state pension to get by. Is it really practical to say to someone who is expecting 14k a year in retirement (9k state approx plus 5k in his own schemes) that he has to take a 1k cut and live on 13k? Will rental incomes be counted as 'other pensions' for those that bought property as retirement provision?
How would drawdown be handled?

Yes other income would be treated as other pensions and we all plan our lives everyday on facts that change over time and when the facts change we have to change our plans. I don't see why pensioners should be any different. If anything people facing clawback are probably in a better place to respond as chances are they have no mortgage or rent if they have significant enough pension. We could also start with a clawback free sum so only applies after first 5000 of additional income. HMRC will already have the figures for additional income so it could be handled via them.

Far far too harsh on low earners. Much higher clawback free amount required. And is this applied to future pensioners or to everyone, now? Will need to be worked out annually so all pensioners to complete tax returns?
Youre basically telling a pensioner on average UK income youre taking 6 grand a year off them, the equivalent of increasing basic rate on an average earner in work to over 45%.

Most low earners will not be getting anywhere near 5K in additional pension.

HMRC already knows how much pensioners get in total as it taxes them above a certain figure so no tax returns required. Landlords also get taxed pensioner or not.

How do you get to taking 6K off them....for that level of clawback they would need additional income over the state pension of 30K or 35k if you give them the first 5K free of clawback. In my book someone with additional income of 30K doesnt need the state pension

Well if we give them the 5k allowance we are taking 5k of state pension back, or the equivalent of raising basic rate for an average wage earner to about 40%.
Someone earning 60,000 a year doesn't 'need' the personal allowance.
Why should a pensioner who planned his or her retirement fund some arse who earned 100k a year and pissed it all up the wall rather than saving? Why should income dependant pensioners suffer whilst asset rich ones laugh?
If State pension was lavish, perhaps, but its a pittance in return for a lifetime of work and tax.
I mean we might as well extend it and block access to NHS services for anybody on over average wage.

sighs you misunderstood I think

You get state pension of 9k
You get additional income once the additional income is over 5k then for every 5£ you get state pension is reduced by £1

so additional income is 5k you get full state pension
at 10K additional you get 1K removed from state pension
at 20K additional you get 4k less state pension

so total for the 3 scenarios would be 14K, 18k,and 25K

So on practice not any different to increasing taxation on pensioners, for example by charging all pensioners NI.

In practise yes it would be like a tax.

Sorry but you can't all bang on about pension time bombs, demographic pressure and underfunded services and yet any time someone suggests reducing the things we spend on or trying to save money you are all up in arms.

We either reduce spending or it all collapses. Yes that means some are going to lose out. Doing nothing is no longer an option.

Foxy

Sandpit said:

Foxy said:

Sandpit said:

Pagan2 said:

maxh said:

Pagan2 said:

maxh said:

Pulpstar said:

maxh said:

Pagan2 said:

FPT

algarkirk said:

Pagan2 said:

Still no one addresses the elephant in the room. They complain about services being underfunded and how dare tax be cut.

If all services were properly funded and paid for out of tax we would have the government taking about 90% of gdp as tax.

Time to start asking what the state should be saying no we dont do that anymore. Sadly a conversation no politician seems to want to have.

The answer is not tax more when half the country is struggling to make ends meet as it is. The answer is reduce spending.

The really huge bits of state managed expenditure go on:

pensions
social security
NHS
debt interest
defence
education
justice/police/prisons
local government services.

Debt interest will steadily rise unless we take a North Korean approach to liabilities.

In each other area above there is gigantic pressure massively to increase expenditure. Add social care to the list too. I can't thinkmof a single big area where people are generally saying 'enough' or 'too much'.

Can you (or anyone) suggest where the first, say, £200 bn reductions will be found?

For a start while those area's are high expenditure doesn't mean they should do everything they do now.

Defence for a start we could save a huge amount on procurement by just buying off the shelf stuff rather than creating custom shit just because.

NHS - last night I suggested a cap on lifetime health care expense, would set it at the average to start with and people can take out insurance to cover any over that. Also services such as tattoo removal should not be available. I would also refuse IVF on the NHS, a round of IVF costs about 10k....if you cant afford to save up 10k once a year to pay for it can you really afford the child as raising a child is likely to cost that a year in any case plus we have a lot of kids crying out for adoption.

I am sure others could come up with savings in all the other areas as well

There is some truth in your first post - so many areas of public services are so significantly underfunded right now that redressing the balance is going to be financially really quite tricky.

But your reply to @algarkirk just reinforces their point - defence procurement, tattoo removal, IVF are all tiny nibbles.

If the country was to go down your suggested route, it would need to involve, say, revoking the right to free education entirely. That's the scale we're talking about.

Which is why I suspect the only answer is to muddle on through. Only not in the way Truss and Kwarteng want us to do so.

This wouldn't save much on it's own is not a good reason to not try and save that cash in the first place.

I agree. It just doesn't match the scale @Pagan2 is suggesting we need to work at.

You are however taking my post as this is all we should do rather than just a couple of examples

I'm not taking it that way - what I'm trying to say is that my instinct is that the scale of change needed to solve the problem you identify is so large that however many examples you can identify, they won't add up to anywhere near enough.

That's not to say they aren't worth doing, just that, if we were really having a conversation about the 'elephant in the room' - finding a way to properly fund that which we think is important enough to properly fund, and not doing the rest, we would need to be looking at an entirely dfferent scale.

The way to eat an elephant is in many meals not one gigantic roast dinner

Indeed. There should be a zero-based review of spending ahead of the next Budget. It’s not been done properly in decades.

We could save £48 billion per annum by disbanding the Army, Navy and RAF. It would also free up thousands of healthy young people for more productive work.

I agree with you that there’s massive savings to be had from the military budget, especially in specification and procurement. More international co-operation with friendly nations - the British/Swedish NLAW springs to mind for some reason - can reduce costs significantly for the same capability.

The biggest savings come from complete abolition. Everything else is just tinkering.

There would be additional savings by abolishing the Ministry of defence too.

CorrectHorseBattery3

ydoethur said:

All the barriers to a Labour majority remain. But given it's very hard to see how the Tories don't lose around 80 seats, I would say if anything the markets are understating the chances of a Labour government.

Agree. How you matey?

Jim_Miller

Has the fall in the pound helped UK exporters? That is what I would expect, but I haven't seen any of the commenters here mention that, or better yet, provide any numbers.

I would think it would also help, for example, software developers, who want to work for US firms, while living in the UK.

CorrectHorseBattery3

If Starmer wins a majority even of one he will be one of the greatest LOTOs in history

bondegezou

Pagan2 said:

bondegezou said:

wooliedyed said:

Pagan2 said:

wooliedyed said:

Pagan2 said:

wooliedyed said:

Pagan2 said:

maxh said:

Pagan2 said:

FPT

algarkirk said:

Pagan2 said:

Still no one addresses the elephant in the room. They complain about services being underfunded and how dare tax be cut.

If all services were properly funded and paid for out of tax we would have the government taking about 90% of gdp as tax.

Time to start asking what the state should be saying no we dont do that anymore. Sadly a conversation no politician seems to want to have.

The answer is not tax more when half the country is struggling to make ends meet as it is. The answer is reduce spending.

The really huge bits of state managed expenditure go on:

pensions
social security
NHS
debt interest
defence
education
justice/police/prisons
local government services.

Debt interest will steadily rise unless we take a North Korean approach to liabilities.

In each other area above there is gigantic pressure massively to increase expenditure. Add social care to the list too. I can't thinkmof a single big area where people are generally saying 'enough' or 'too much'.

Can you (or anyone) suggest where the first, say, £200 bn reductions will be found?

For a start while those area's are high expenditure doesn't mean they should do everything they do now.

Defence for a start we could save a huge amount on procurement by just buying off the shelf stuff rather than creating custom shit just because.

NHS - last night I suggested a cap on lifetime health care expense, would set it at the average to start with and people can take out insurance to cover any over that. Also services such as tattoo removal should not be available. I would also refuse IVF on the NHS, a round of IVF costs about 10k....if you cant afford to save up 10k once a year to pay for it can you really afford the child as raising a child is likely to cost that a year in any case plus we have a lot of kids crying out for adoption.

I am sure others could come up with savings in all the other areas as well

There is some truth in your first post - so many areas of public services are so significantly underfunded right now that redressing the balance is going to be financially really quite tricky.

But your reply to @algarkirk just reinforces their point - defence procurement, tattoo removal, IVF are all tiny nibbles.

If the country was to go down your suggested route, it would need to involve, say, revoking the right to free education entirely. That's the scale we're talking about.

Which is why I suspect the only answer is to muddle on through. Only not in the way Truss and Kwarteng want us to do so.

They maybe tiny nibbles but I am sure there are plenty more tiny nibbles we can take and they start to add up. What we can't do is keep adding on things that need money because we are already taxing the majority of the country into the ground and there is no more to squeeze out.

The biggest change that ought to be made is public sector pensions switching from to db to dc and a cap on what the employer contributes. Currently employer contributions average about 20% in the public sector. Yes wouldn't help immediately but in the long term it would. I would also do a clawback on state pensions so for every 5£ you get from other pensions you state pension is reduced by a pound

The problem with state pension clawback is that many of us have planned retirement based on what we will need over state pension to get by. Is it really practical to say to someone who is expecting 14k a year in retirement (9k state approx plus 5k in his own schemes) that he has to take a 1k cut and live on 13k? Will rental incomes be counted as 'other pensions' for those that bought property as retirement provision?
How would drawdown be handled?

Yes other income would be treated as other pensions and we all plan our lives everyday on facts that change over time and when the facts change we have to change our plans. I don't see why pensioners should be any different. If anything people facing clawback are probably in a better place to respond as chances are they have no mortgage or rent if they have significant enough pension. We could also start with a clawback free sum so only applies after first 5000 of additional income. HMRC will already have the figures for additional income so it could be handled via them.

Far far too harsh on low earners. Much higher clawback free amount required. And is this applied to future pensioners or to everyone, now? Will need to be worked out annually so all pensioners to complete tax returns?
Youre basically telling a pensioner on average UK income youre taking 6 grand a year off them, the equivalent of increasing basic rate on an average earner in work to over 45%.

Most low earners will not be getting anywhere near 5K in additional pension.

HMRC already knows how much pensioners get in total as it taxes them above a certain figure so no tax returns required. Landlords also get taxed pensioner or not.

How do you get to taking 6K off them....for that level of clawback they would need additional income over the state pension of 30K or 35k if you give them the first 5K free of clawback. In my book someone with additional income of 30K doesnt need the state pension

Well if we give them the 5k allowance we are taking 5k of state pension back, or the equivalent of raising basic rate for an average wage earner to about 40%.
Someone earning 60,000 a year doesn't 'need' the personal allowance.
Why should a pensioner who planned his or her retirement fund some arse who earned 100k a year and pissed it all up the wall rather than saving? Why should income dependant pensioners suffer whilst asset rich ones laugh?
If State pension was lavish, perhaps, but its a pittance in return for a lifetime of work and tax.
I mean we might as well extend it and block access to NHS services for anybody on over average wage.

Pagan2 has effectively abolished the NHS already in their other proposals.

No I didn't typical left wing melodrama. Suggesting a cap on state care about average lifetime health care costs above which you have to insure is not abolishing the NHS in the least.

Depending on precisely what average you calculate, half the population will have lifetime health care costs above the current average, and half of all healthcare will become delivered outside the NHS and through a private insurance system. You would effectively turn the UK’s healthcare system into something like the US’s. About half of all healthcare funding in the US is paid for by the state, but their system targets state support at the old and pensioners (and federal employees), whereas your system would target state support at the lucky!

wooliedyed

Benpointer said:

wooliedyed said:

Pagan2 said:

wooliedyed said:

Pagan2 said:

wooliedyed said:

Pagan2 said:

maxh said:

Pagan2 said:

FPT

algarkirk said:

Pagan2 said:

Still no one addresses the elephant in the room. They complain about services being underfunded and how dare tax be cut.

If all services were properly funded and paid for out of tax we would have the government taking about 90% of gdp as tax.

Time to start asking what the state should be saying no we dont do that anymore. Sadly a conversation no politician seems to want to have.

The answer is not tax more when half the country is struggling to make ends meet as it is. The answer is reduce spending.

The really huge bits of state managed expenditure go on:

pensions
social security
NHS
debt interest
defence
education
justice/police/prisons
local government services.

Debt interest will steadily rise unless we take a North Korean approach to liabilities.

In each other area above there is gigantic pressure massively to increase expenditure. Add social care to the list too. I can't thinkmof a single big area where people are generally saying 'enough' or 'too much'.

Can you (or anyone) suggest where the first, say, £200 bn reductions will be found?

For a start while those area's are high expenditure doesn't mean they should do everything they do now.

Defence for a start we could save a huge amount on procurement by just buying off the shelf stuff rather than creating custom shit just because.

NHS - last night I suggested a cap on lifetime health care expense, would set it at the average to start with and people can take out insurance to cover any over that. Also services such as tattoo removal should not be available. I would also refuse IVF on the NHS, a round of IVF costs about 10k....if you cant afford to save up 10k once a year to pay for it can you really afford the child as raising a child is likely to cost that a year in any case plus we have a lot of kids crying out for adoption.

I am sure others could come up with savings in all the other areas as well

There is some truth in your first post - so many areas of public services are so significantly underfunded right now that redressing the balance is going to be financially really quite tricky.

But your reply to @algarkirk just reinforces their point - defence procurement, tattoo removal, IVF are all tiny nibbles.

If the country was to go down your suggested route, it would need to involve, say, revoking the right to free education entirely. That's the scale we're talking about.

Which is why I suspect the only answer is to muddle on through. Only not in the way Truss and Kwarteng want us to do so.

They maybe tiny nibbles but I am sure there are plenty more tiny nibbles we can take and they start to add up. What we can't do is keep adding on things that need money because we are already taxing the majority of the country into the ground and there is no more to squeeze out.

The biggest change that ought to be made is public sector pensions switching from to db to dc and a cap on what the employer contributes. Currently employer contributions average about 20% in the public sector. Yes wouldn't help immediately but in the long term it would. I would also do a clawback on state pensions so for every 5£ you get from other pensions you state pension is reduced by a pound

The problem with state pension clawback is that many of us have planned retirement based on what we will need over state pension to get by. Is it really practical to say to someone who is expecting 14k a year in retirement (9k state approx plus 5k in his own schemes) that he has to take a 1k cut and live on 13k? Will rental incomes be counted as 'other pensions' for those that bought property as retirement provision?
How would drawdown be handled?

Yes other income would be treated as other pensions and we all plan our lives everyday on facts that change over time and when the facts change we have to change our plans. I don't see why pensioners should be any different. If anything people facing clawback are probably in a better place to respond as chances are they have no mortgage or rent if they have significant enough pension. We could also start with a clawback free sum so only applies after first 5000 of additional income. HMRC will already have the figures for additional income so it could be handled via them.

Far far too harsh on low earners. Much higher clawback free amount required. And is this applied to future pensioners or to everyone, now? Will need to be worked out annually so all pensioners to complete tax returns?
Youre basically telling a pensioner on average UK income youre taking 6 grand a year off them, the equivalent of increasing basic rate on an average earner in work to over 45%.

Most low earners will not be getting anywhere near 5K in additional pension.

HMRC already knows how much pensioners get in total as it taxes them above a certain figure so no tax returns required. Landlords also get taxed pensioner or not.

How do you get to taking 6K off them....for that level of clawback they would need additional income over the state pension of 30K or 35k if you give them the first 5K free of clawback. In my book someone with additional income of 30K doesnt need the state pension

Well if we give them the 5k allowance we are taking 5k of state pension back, or the equivalent of raising basic rate for an average wage earner to about 40%.
Someone earning 60,000 a year doesn't 'need' the personal allowance.
Why should a pensioner who planned his or her retirement fund some arse who earned 100k a year and pissed it all up the wall rather than saving? Why should income dependant pensioners suffer whilst asset rich ones laugh?
If State pension was lavish, perhaps, but its a pittance in return for a lifetime of work and tax.
I mean we might as well extend it and block access to NHS services for anybody on over average wage.

It's not difficult: extend NI to all income. Those like myself who are comfortably off in retirement will pay a bit more but those relying on just the Sate Pension will not be affected. Those living on unearned investment income (some all their life) will also pay a fairer share of taxes.

I think if youre doing that then just roll it all into income tax, get rid of NI. I wouldnt object to that if we set a reasonable personal allowance at about 15k