This is a pretty good analogy. The current UK Government and the previous one have been largely composed of ideological fanatics destroying the country’s institutions and shredding our international reputation. There is nothing remotely ‘conservative’ about today’s Tory Party. https://twitter.com/dminghella/status/1573640237523288064
And another thing: government is expected to pay for pandemics and fuel crises, how will it not be expected to cover the Cost of Housing crisis this time next year?
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.
May I refer you to my header on the NHS, where I did address these issues, and make some proposals to address them.
The you in my post wasn't aimed at you personally but at all of the people who are constantly bemoaning underfunded services etc. Yet reacting in horror when anyone comes up with a proposal to change things. Cf Mays dementia tax
Agreed about the dementia tax. And keep coming with the proposals - they're much more constructive than much of what is posted on here, even if they're robustly challenged.
Thing is, right now, the most obvious proposal to change things is simply cancel what the government has announced. Wind back 48 hours, we had cheaper debt and less of it, and therefore very significantly better funded public services, for a given level of deficit.
If you're insisting on gentle nibbles rather than voracious gulps, let's at least not feed the elephant up so its even bigger. (This isn't directed at you specifically - you haven't as far as I can see argued for the governmeent's economic idiocy).
I am staying clear about the debate on the last budget and trying to take a broader view. I start at the point of what I want
a) Well funded services that we do continue b) People not having so much money taken from them to fund the services the state offers that they struggle c) not kicking debt down the road to our children and grandchildren
It remains true that you can pick a maximum of any two out of these three: Decent public services, manageable taxes, sound public finances.
Currently government scores Zero out of three.
We could tax the wealthy much more than we do without causing them hardship.
We should shift taxes away from 'the working population on or below average salaries' towards the 'asset rich'.
Total wealth in this country is well over £15,000,000,000,000. That's >£15 trillion. That's >600% of the national debt.
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.
Not significantly. The pound to Euro variance is within normal to be expected variance ranges. It's the aggressive Fed that are making the moves.
Na, it dropped 2% in a few hours.
Yes it "dropped" to one cent higher than it was this time last year.
The pound and euro are bouncing around in normal variance ranges seen in recent years. It's the dollar that has moved significantly.
The £ is not one cent higher than it was a year ago. It’s about 5 cents lower than a year ago.
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!
I advocated an insurance scheme to cover additional. I would suggest that the state itself runs a scheme for this to keep insurers honest and prevent abusive pricing. Many european countries have similar systems which are part insurance and part state funding. It does not have to be like america's lunacy
The thing is, a state-run insurance system that people have to pay into… well, basically, that just takes you back to where we started. You’ve re-labelled a tax into an insurance model… I guess you could call it a national insurance? The big difference is you go from funding healthcare via a progressive tax to funding it via effectively a flat tax.
But, sure, let’s look at some European models. In the UK, the state currently pays about 79% of all healthcare costs. Our nearest neighbour is France. The French state pays about 75% of all healthcare costs. It’s a similar figure in Germany, 77%. Switching to one of these European models doesn’t match what you proposed or deliver the savings you want.
I didn't say the state run scheme was mandatory. I suggested a state run scheme be run so that insurance companies offering similar schemes couldn't run riot.
Also those stats on europe while they look comparable may not be. Does for example the french system or the german system do all the procedures the nhs does for free or do they go you want procedure x sorry need to go private for that. I don't know that answer so am speculating
Purely anecdotal - but a Greek friend of mine who stays in the UK needed an operation. The NHS said they wouldn't do it until the problem/pain became a 'can't work' situation (and even getting to that stage had been a fight for scans etc).
So they went back to Greece, went to hospital the next day, had new scans done and the doctor was horrified to hear about their treatment here. Apologised profusely and said they could have the operation done - but they would have to wait a week or two. *But* if they paid 10 euro they could have it done within 2 days and also pick from a selection of surgeons who covered that type of surgery.
Long ramble there - but I think it shows some of the complexity in comparing systems. Two might both be 'free', but one is - to all intents and purposes not available, the other might be 'free' but mildly rationed with a 'skip the queue' option if you can pay something.
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.
May I refer you to my header on the NHS, where I did address these issues, and make some proposals to address them.
The you in my post wasn't aimed at you personally but at all of the people who are constantly bemoaning underfunded services etc. Yet reacting in horror when anyone comes up with a proposal to change things. Cf Mays dementia tax
Agreed about the dementia tax. And keep coming with the proposals - they're much more constructive than much of what is posted on here, even if they're robustly challenged.
Thing is, right now, the most obvious proposal to change things is simply cancel what the government has announced. Wind back 48 hours, we had cheaper debt and less of it, and therefore very significantly better funded public services, for a given level of deficit.
If you're insisting on gentle nibbles rather than voracious gulps, let's at least not feed the elephant up so its even bigger. (This isn't directed at you specifically - you haven't as far as I can see argued for the governmeent's economic idiocy).
I am staying clear about the debate on the last budget and trying to take a broader view. I start at the point of what I want
a) Well funded services that we do continue b) People not having so much money taken from them to fund the services the state offers that they struggle c) not kicking debt down the road to our children and grandchildren
Entirely agree with the overall sentiment, and its worth pursuing 'out there' solutions, at least in theory.
I disagree with (b) though. I don't think that people are struggling because of the levels of taxation. It's possible the economy as a whole is hampered, but individual struggles are affected much more by other things than taxation (above all else, costs of renting/buying a house).
Yes I agree that housing is a major cause of poverty in the country. However not much we can do about that without building more houses and we know how problematic that gets.
The lever we do have however is how much money we leave in peoples pockets
renting a room costs anything from 100 to 200 a week. someone earning 20k a year is taking home 328 a week so is left with only 228 to 128 a week out of which they will have to pay transport, fuel, and food. If we hadn't taken 45£ out of their pocket in tax and ni they would be better able to cope
They wouldn't be better off if that £45 went on health insurance or private pension contribution.
I haven't advocated abolishing the state pension just clawing some back from well off pensioners so they would not be paying anything more than now. As to the private health insurance to cover going over the cap....well average lifetime health care costs are something like 150k and so it would only have to pay for figures over that which half those insured would likely never have to claim so it should be relatively cheap cover
I think we need to have a real, honest conversation about transitioning to a Norway-style economy.
We need the higher tax rates that involves but is where I think we should go.
First, find a hundred times as much oil as your country ever needs. Second ... if you do the first part, you can afford someone more expensive for the rest.
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.
May I refer you to my header on the NHS, where I did address these issues, and make some proposals to address them.
The you in my post wasn't aimed at you personally but at all of the people who are constantly bemoaning underfunded services etc. Yet reacting in horror when anyone comes up with a proposal to change things. Cf Mays dementia tax
Agreed about the dementia tax. And keep coming with the proposals - they're much more constructive than much of what is posted on here, even if they're robustly challenged.
Thing is, right now, the most obvious proposal to change things is simply cancel what the government has announced. Wind back 48 hours, we had cheaper debt and less of it, and therefore very significantly better funded public services, for a given level of deficit.
If you're insisting on gentle nibbles rather than voracious gulps, let's at least not feed the elephant up so its even bigger. (This isn't directed at you specifically - you haven't as far as I can see argued for the governmeent's economic idiocy).
I am staying clear about the debate on the last budget and trying to take a broader view. I start at the point of what I want
a) Well funded services that we do continue b) People not having so much money taken from them to fund the services the state offers that they struggle c) not kicking debt down the road to our children and grandchildren
Entirely agree with the overall sentiment, and its worth pursuing 'out there' solutions, at least in theory.
I disagree with (b) though. I don't think that people are struggling because of the levels of taxation. It's possible the economy as a whole is hampered, but individual struggles are affected much more by other things than taxation (above all else, costs of renting/buying a house).
Yes I agree that housing is a major cause of poverty in the country. However not much we can do about that without building more houses and we know how problematic that gets.
The lever we do have however is how much money we leave in peoples pockets
renting a room costs anything from 100 to 200 a week. someone earning 20k a year is taking home 328 a week so is left with only 228 to 128 a week out of which they will have to pay transport, fuel, and food. If we hadn't taken 45£ out of their pocket in tax and ni they would be better able to cope
I suspect that doesn't matter.
Certainly in London, the supply-demand curve has reached the point where the market rent for anything half habitable is "wherever you can afford plus a bit".
So if you put £45 more in people's pockets by cutting taxes, it will go directly onto rents.
If I'm right, cutting the state to cut tax will just transfer even more cash to landlords.
I didn't anywhere advocate cutting tax I have merely said we can't raise the basic rate anymore so tax is not a way we can balance the spending we are doing. Cutting the state is about cutting spending to where it is manageable on our current taxes
Needless to say, the tax take from the "indie comedian / content creator" demographic is low, so it's a little ungracious of them to moan about everyone who lives less self-indulgently and funds their NHS etc.
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.
May I refer you to my header on the NHS, where I did address these issues, and make some proposals to address them.
The you in my post wasn't aimed at you personally but at all of the people who are constantly bemoaning underfunded services etc. Yet reacting in horror when anyone comes up with a proposal to change things. Cf Mays dementia tax
Agreed about the dementia tax. And keep coming with the proposals - they're much more constructive than much of what is posted on here, even if they're robustly challenged.
Thing is, right now, the most obvious proposal to change things is simply cancel what the government has announced. Wind back 48 hours, we had cheaper debt and less of it, and therefore very significantly better funded public services, for a given level of deficit.
If you're insisting on gentle nibbles rather than voracious gulps, let's at least not feed the elephant up so its even bigger. (This isn't directed at you specifically - you haven't as far as I can see argued for the governmeent's economic idiocy).
I am staying clear about the debate on the last budget and trying to take a broader view. I start at the point of what I want
a) Well funded services that we do continue b) People not having so much money taken from them to fund the services the state offers that they struggle c) not kicking debt down the road to our children and grandchildren
It remains true that you can pick a maximum of any two out of these three: Decent public services, manageable taxes, sound public finances.
Currently government scores Zero out of three.
Can we stop this catastrophising nonsense? You can have three out of three. The problem in the UK, if you want to put it in those terms, is that we want to pay US levels of tax and get German levels of public services. Let’s (a) shift taxes a bit higher, and (b) vote in a government capable of at a minimum organising a piss-up in a brewery.
When do we think it's going to start getting properly cold? I see a few 15 degree high days coming up but they're few and far between.
There was frost on the car roofs when I looked out the window this morning - so getting there. Think we're due arctic winds over the next few days which won't help.
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.
May I refer you to my header on the NHS, where I did address these issues, and make some proposals to address them.
The you in my post wasn't aimed at you personally but at all of the people who are constantly bemoaning underfunded services etc. Yet reacting in horror when anyone comes up with a proposal to change things. Cf Mays dementia tax
Agreed about the dementia tax. And keep coming with the proposals - they're much more constructive than much of what is posted on here, even if they're robustly challenged.
Thing is, right now, the most obvious proposal to change things is simply cancel what the government has announced. Wind back 48 hours, we had cheaper debt and less of it, and therefore very significantly better funded public services, for a given level of deficit.
If you're insisting on gentle nibbles rather than voracious gulps, let's at least not feed the elephant up so its even bigger. (This isn't directed at you specifically - you haven't as far as I can see argued for the governmeent's economic idiocy).
I am staying clear about the debate on the last budget and trying to take a broader view. I start at the point of what I want
a) Well funded services that we do continue b) People not having so much money taken from them to fund the services the state offers that they struggle c) not kicking debt down the road to our children and grandchildren
Entirely agree with the overall sentiment, and its worth pursuing 'out there' solutions, at least in theory.
I disagree with (b) though. I don't think that people are struggling because of the levels of taxation. It's possible the economy as a whole is hampered, but individual struggles are affected much more by other things than taxation (above all else, costs of renting/buying a house).
Yes I agree that housing is a major cause of poverty in the country. However not much we can do about that without building more houses and we know how problematic that gets.
The lever we do have however is how much money we leave in peoples pockets
renting a room costs anything from 100 to 200 a week. someone earning 20k a year is taking home 328 a week so is left with only 228 to 128 a week out of which they will have to pay transport, fuel, and food. If we hadn't taken 45£ out of their pocket in tax and ni they would be better able to cope
I humbly suggest that it is odd to propose very radical changes in what government funds or in taxation — as you have with healthcare funding and pensions — yet to run away from building more houses on the grounds that it’s too hard. Building more houses seems way easier than turning our healthcare services upside down.
Went to the Brian Cox 'Horizons' show last night. Very good. Seems like it's an interesting time for astrophysics as our understanding of black holes raises more and more questions about the nature of the universe.
Interestingly for all you alien hunters, Cox sounds decidedly more hesitant about the certainty of other intelligent life than he did when I went to a talk of his about 10 years ago.
'The human brain might be the only only thing in existence capable of giving meaning to the universe'. (I paraphrase)
Recommended if you happen to get chance to go to the show.
Personally, I’m a tad skeptical that the entire structure and meaning of the universe and all possibilities of life therein, have now been conclusively worked out by the keyboardist from D:Ream
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.
May I refer you to my header on the NHS, where I did address these issues, and make some proposals to address them.
The you in my post wasn't aimed at you personally but at all of the people who are constantly bemoaning underfunded services etc. Yet reacting in horror when anyone comes up with a proposal to change things. Cf Mays dementia tax
Agreed about the dementia tax. And keep coming with the proposals - they're much more constructive than much of what is posted on here, even if they're robustly challenged.
Thing is, right now, the most obvious proposal to change things is simply cancel what the government has announced. Wind back 48 hours, we had cheaper debt and less of it, and therefore very significantly better funded public services, for a given level of deficit.
If you're insisting on gentle nibbles rather than voracious gulps, let's at least not feed the elephant up so its even bigger. (This isn't directed at you specifically - you haven't as far as I can see argued for the governmeent's economic idiocy).
I am staying clear about the debate on the last budget and trying to take a broader view. I start at the point of what I want
a) Well funded services that we do continue b) People not having so much money taken from them to fund the services the state offers that they struggle c) not kicking debt down the road to our children and grandchildren
Entirely agree with the overall sentiment, and its worth pursuing 'out there' solutions, at least in theory.
I disagree with (b) though. I don't think that people are struggling because of the levels of taxation. It's possible the economy as a whole is hampered, but individual struggles are affected much more by other things than taxation (above all else, costs of renting/buying a house).
Yes I agree that housing is a major cause of poverty in the country. However not much we can do about that without building more houses and we know how problematic that gets.
The lever we do have however is how much money we leave in peoples pockets
renting a room costs anything from 100 to 200 a week. someone earning 20k a year is taking home 328 a week so is left with only 228 to 128 a week out of which they will have to pay transport, fuel, and food. If we hadn't taken 45£ out of their pocket in tax and ni they would be better able to cope
I humbly suggest that it is odd to propose very radical changes in what government funds or in taxation — as you have with healthcare funding and pensions — yet to run away from building more houses in the grounds that it’s too hard. Building more houses seems way easier than turning our healthcare services upside down.
I am all for building more houses however I see it being harder to accomplish than my suggestions because
a) nimbies would vote out any government that proposed it and the scheme would grind to a halt as it would be a multi decade project whereas my suggestions can be accomplished within the term of a single parliament
b) the practical, we have neither the supplies nor the trademen needed to build on that scale
Went to the Brian Cox 'Horizons' show last night. Very good. Seems like it's an interesting time for astrophysics as our understanding of black holes raises more and more questions about the nature of the universe.
Interestingly for all you alien hunters, Cox sounds decidedly more hesitant about the certainty of other intelligent life than he did when I went to a talk of his about 10 years ago.
'The human brain might be the only only thing in existence capable of giving meaning to the universe'. (I paraphrase)
Recommended if you happen to get chance to go to the show.
Personally, I’m a tad skeptical that the entire structure and meaning of the universe and all possibilities of life therein, have now been conclusively worked out by the keyboardist from D:Ream
There's not the slightest of chances that they are right.They just have careers that have found a very obvious brick wall.
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.
May I refer you to my header on the NHS, where I did address these issues, and make some proposals to address them.
The you in my post wasn't aimed at you personally but at all of the people who are constantly bemoaning underfunded services etc. Yet reacting in horror when anyone comes up with a proposal to change things. Cf Mays dementia tax
Agreed about the dementia tax. And keep coming with the proposals - they're much more constructive than much of what is posted on here, even if they're robustly challenged.
Thing is, right now, the most obvious proposal to change things is simply cancel what the government has announced. Wind back 48 hours, we had cheaper debt and less of it, and therefore very significantly better funded public services, for a given level of deficit.
If you're insisting on gentle nibbles rather than voracious gulps, let's at least not feed the elephant up so its even bigger. (This isn't directed at you specifically - you haven't as far as I can see argued for the governmeent's economic idiocy).
I am staying clear about the debate on the last budget and trying to take a broader view. I start at the point of what I want
a) Well funded services that we do continue b) People not having so much money taken from them to fund the services the state offers that they struggle c) not kicking debt down the road to our children and grandchildren
Entirely agree with the overall sentiment, and its worth pursuing 'out there' solutions, at least in theory.
I disagree with (b) though. I don't think that people are struggling because of the levels of taxation. It's possible the economy as a whole is hampered, but individual struggles are affected much more by other things than taxation (above all else, costs of renting/buying a house).
Yes I agree that housing is a major cause of poverty in the country. However not much we can do about that without building more houses and we know how problematic that gets.
The lever we do have however is how much money we leave in peoples pockets
renting a room costs anything from 100 to 200 a week. someone earning 20k a year is taking home 328 a week so is left with only 228 to 128 a week out of which they will have to pay transport, fuel, and food. If we hadn't taken 45£ out of their pocket in tax and ni they would be better able to cope
They wouldn't be better off if that £45 went on health insurance or private pension contribution.
I haven't advocated abolishing the state pension just clawing some back from well off pensioners so they would not be paying anything more than now. As to the private health insurance to cover going over the cap....well average lifetime health care costs are something like 150k and so it would only have to pay for figures over that which half those insured would likely never have to claim so it should be relatively cheap cover
Why would it be cheaper than what it costs through tax on the NHS? Indeed, various analyses suggest the more centralised NHS is cheaper than an insurance model (whether insurance payments are paid for by the individual or state or a combination).
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.
There are very few left bar the odd flint knapper
Our itinerant flint knapper does seem to be a net drain on the national finances as he and his commissioners earn their money here but seem to spend their earnings funding foreign hoteliers, sommeliers and restaurants.
Not actually true, most of my flints go for export. For the last ten years at least I have earned 70% of my money from abroad. Unlike you, I am directly benefiting the balance of payments
With my new Turkish contract - inshallah - I will probably earn even more from external sources as compared to domestic
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.
May I refer you to my header on the NHS, where I did address these issues, and make some proposals to address them.
The you in my post wasn't aimed at you personally but at all of the people who are constantly bemoaning underfunded services etc. Yet reacting in horror when anyone comes up with a proposal to change things. Cf Mays dementia tax
Agreed about the dementia tax. And keep coming with the proposals - they're much more constructive than much of what is posted on here, even if they're robustly challenged.
Thing is, right now, the most obvious proposal to change things is simply cancel what the government has announced. Wind back 48 hours, we had cheaper debt and less of it, and therefore very significantly better funded public services, for a given level of deficit.
If you're insisting on gentle nibbles rather than voracious gulps, let's at least not feed the elephant up so its even bigger. (This isn't directed at you specifically - you haven't as far as I can see argued for the governmeent's economic idiocy).
I am staying clear about the debate on the last budget and trying to take a broader view. I start at the point of what I want
a) Well funded services that we do continue b) People not having so much money taken from them to fund the services the state offers that they struggle c) not kicking debt down the road to our children and grandchildren
Entirely agree with the overall sentiment, and its worth pursuing 'out there' solutions, at least in theory.
I disagree with (b) though. I don't think that people are struggling because of the levels of taxation. It's possible the economy as a whole is hampered, but individual struggles are affected much more by other things than taxation (above all else, costs of renting/buying a house).
Yes I agree that housing is a major cause of poverty in the country. However not much we can do about that without building more houses and we know how problematic that gets.
The lever we do have however is how much money we leave in peoples pockets
renting a room costs anything from 100 to 200 a week. someone earning 20k a year is taking home 328 a week so is left with only 228 to 128 a week out of which they will have to pay transport, fuel, and food. If we hadn't taken 45£ out of their pocket in tax and ni they would be better able to cope
I suspect that doesn't matter.
Certainly in London, the supply-demand curve has reached the point where the market rent for anything half habitable is "wherever you can afford plus a bit".
So if you put £45 more in people's pockets by cutting taxes, it will go directly onto rents.
If I'm right, cutting the state to cut tax will just transfer even more cash to landlords.
I didn't anywhere advocate cutting tax I have merely said we can't raise the basic rate anymore so tax is not a way we can balance the spending we are doing. Cutting the state is about cutting spending to where it is manageable on our current taxes
Cut what?
Defence, NHS Social Care (Oh just done that) Something else.
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.
There are very few left bar the odd flint knapper
Our itinerant flint knapper does seem to be a net drain on the national finances as he and his commissioners earn their money here but seem to spend their earnings funding foreign hoteliers, sommeliers and restaurants.
Polite disagreements in the EU today around Russians fleeing conscription. The EU Council president has urged member states to open their borders to them. Poland and the Baltic States (with Finland soon to follow suit, it seems,) say no.
I'm with the border states on this one (whom, AIUI, are still accepting genuine political refugees.) Draft dodgers, like most Russians, are only reacting now that the war affects them. They should be told to sod off.
Simply put, the more badly trained and equipped Russian cannon fodder that gets turned into sunflower fertiliser by the Ukrainian army, the greater the likelihood that the Russian population will get off its arse in large enough numbers actually to threaten Putin's hold on power. We can't get rid of him, the revolution is their business - which is why locking the Russian people inside their wretched country and making them suffer the privations of this conflict has to be a priority. Letting them run away and squat here, whilst their dictator goes about his bloody business, undermines the West's entire strategy.
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.
May I refer you to my header on the NHS, where I did address these issues, and make some proposals to address them.
The you in my post wasn't aimed at you personally but at all of the people who are constantly bemoaning underfunded services etc. Yet reacting in horror when anyone comes up with a proposal to change things. Cf Mays dementia tax
Agreed about the dementia tax. And keep coming with the proposals - they're much more constructive than much of what is posted on here, even if they're robustly challenged.
Thing is, right now, the most obvious proposal to change things is simply cancel what the government has announced. Wind back 48 hours, we had cheaper debt and less of it, and therefore very significantly better funded public services, for a given level of deficit.
If you're insisting on gentle nibbles rather than voracious gulps, let's at least not feed the elephant up so its even bigger. (This isn't directed at you specifically - you haven't as far as I can see argued for the governmeent's economic idiocy).
I am staying clear about the debate on the last budget and trying to take a broader view. I start at the point of what I want
a) Well funded services that we do continue b) People not having so much money taken from them to fund the services the state offers that they struggle c) not kicking debt down the road to our children and grandchildren
Entirely agree with the overall sentiment, and its worth pursuing 'out there' solutions, at least in theory.
I disagree with (b) though. I don't think that people are struggling because of the levels of taxation. It's possible the economy as a whole is hampered, but individual struggles are affected much more by other things than taxation (above all else, costs of renting/buying a house).
Yes I agree that housing is a major cause of poverty in the country. However not much we can do about that without building more houses and we know how problematic that gets.
The lever we do have however is how much money we leave in peoples pockets
renting a room costs anything from 100 to 200 a week. someone earning 20k a year is taking home 328 a week so is left with only 228 to 128 a week out of which they will have to pay transport, fuel, and food. If we hadn't taken 45£ out of their pocket in tax and ni they would be better able to cope
I humbly suggest that it is odd to propose very radical changes in what government funds or in taxation — as you have with healthcare funding and pensions — yet to run away from building more houses in the grounds that it’s too hard. Building more houses seems way easier than turning our healthcare services upside down.
I am all for building more houses however I see it being harder to accomplish than my suggestions because
a) nimbies would vote out any government that proposed it and the scheme would grind to a halt as it would be a multi decade project whereas my suggestions can be accomplished within the term of a single parliament
b) the practical, we have neither the supplies nor the trademen needed to build on that scale
Given that the Scottish Gmt have been building an average of about 9k+ affordable houses a year since the SNP takeover in 2010, I'm not quite sure what the problem is.
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.
May I refer you to my header on the NHS, where I did address these issues, and make some proposals to address them.
The you in my post wasn't aimed at you personally but at all of the people who are constantly bemoaning underfunded services etc. Yet reacting in horror when anyone comes up with a proposal to change things. Cf Mays dementia tax
Agreed about the dementia tax. And keep coming with the proposals - they're much more constructive than much of what is posted on here, even if they're robustly challenged.
Thing is, right now, the most obvious proposal to change things is simply cancel what the government has announced. Wind back 48 hours, we had cheaper debt and less of it, and therefore very significantly better funded public services, for a given level of deficit.
If you're insisting on gentle nibbles rather than voracious gulps, let's at least not feed the elephant up so its even bigger. (This isn't directed at you specifically - you haven't as far as I can see argued for the governmeent's economic idiocy).
I am staying clear about the debate on the last budget and trying to take a broader view. I start at the point of what I want
a) Well funded services that we do continue b) People not having so much money taken from them to fund the services the state offers that they struggle c) not kicking debt down the road to our children and grandchildren
Entirely agree with the overall sentiment, and its worth pursuing 'out there' solutions, at least in theory.
I disagree with (b) though. I don't think that people are struggling because of the levels of taxation. It's possible the economy as a whole is hampered, but individual struggles are affected much more by other things than taxation (above all else, costs of renting/buying a house).
Yes I agree that housing is a major cause of poverty in the country. However not much we can do about that without building more houses and we know how problematic that gets.
The lever we do have however is how much money we leave in peoples pockets
renting a room costs anything from 100 to 200 a week. someone earning 20k a year is taking home 328 a week so is left with only 228 to 128 a week out of which they will have to pay transport, fuel, and food. If we hadn't taken 45£ out of their pocket in tax and ni they would be better able to cope
They wouldn't be better off if that £45 went on health insurance or private pension contribution.
I haven't advocated abolishing the state pension just clawing some back from well off pensioners so they would not be paying anything more than now. As to the private health insurance to cover going over the cap....well average lifetime health care costs are something like 150k and so it would only have to pay for figures over that which half those insured would likely never have to claim so it should be relatively cheap cover
Why would it be cheaper than what it costs through tax on the NHS? Indeed, various analyses suggest the more centralised NHS is cheaper than an insurance model (whether insurance payments are paid for by the individual or state or a combination).
Because it is insurance and will only pay out for half the people that use it and even then mostly will be small sums with the occasional hefty bill. Its just in case insurance not covering all your health care just any portion that takes you over the cap. Same reason house insurance is quite cheap the number of homes that need rebuilding from scratch is small compared to the number buying house insurance
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.
May I refer you to my header on the NHS, where I did address these issues, and make some proposals to address them.
The you in my post wasn't aimed at you personally but at all of the people who are constantly bemoaning underfunded services etc. Yet reacting in horror when anyone comes up with a proposal to change things. Cf Mays dementia tax
Agreed about the dementia tax. And keep coming with the proposals - they're much more constructive than much of what is posted on here, even if they're robustly challenged.
Thing is, right now, the most obvious proposal to change things is simply cancel what the government has announced. Wind back 48 hours, we had cheaper debt and less of it, and therefore very significantly better funded public services, for a given level of deficit.
If you're insisting on gentle nibbles rather than voracious gulps, let's at least not feed the elephant up so its even bigger. (This isn't directed at you specifically - you haven't as far as I can see argued for the governmeent's economic idiocy).
I am staying clear about the debate on the last budget and trying to take a broader view. I start at the point of what I want
a) Well funded services that we do continue b) People not having so much money taken from them to fund the services the state offers that they struggle c) not kicking debt down the road to our children and grandchildren
Entirely agree with the overall sentiment, and its worth pursuing 'out there' solutions, at least in theory.
I disagree with (b) though. I don't think that people are struggling because of the levels of taxation. It's possible the economy as a whole is hampered, but individual struggles are affected much more by other things than taxation (above all else, costs of renting/buying a house).
Yes I agree that housing is a major cause of poverty in the country. However not much we can do about that without building more houses and we know how problematic that gets.
The lever we do have however is how much money we leave in peoples pockets
renting a room costs anything from 100 to 200 a week. someone earning 20k a year is taking home 328 a week so is left with only 228 to 128 a week out of which they will have to pay transport, fuel, and food. If we hadn't taken 45£ out of their pocket in tax and ni they would be better able to cope
I humbly suggest that it is odd to propose very radical changes in what government funds or in taxation — as you have with healthcare funding and pensions — yet to run away from building more houses in the grounds that it’s too hard. Building more houses seems way easier than turning our healthcare services upside down.
I am all for building more houses however I see it being harder to accomplish than my suggestions because
a) nimbies would vote out any government that proposed it and the scheme would grind to a halt as it would be a multi decade project whereas my suggestions can be accomplished within the term of a single parliament
b) the practical, we have neither the supplies nor the trademen needed to build on that scale
On (a), it would be easier to get votes for building more houses than getting votes to aggressively cap lifetime healthcare costs! It would be easier than getting votes to up taxing pensioners so much!
Went to the Brian Cox 'Horizons' show last night. Very good. Seems like it's an interesting time for astrophysics as our understanding of black holes raises more and more questions about the nature of the universe.
Interestingly for all you alien hunters, Cox sounds decidedly more hesitant about the certainty of other intelligent life than he did when I went to a talk of his about 10 years ago.
'The human brain might be the only only thing in existence capable of giving meaning to the universe'. (I paraphrase)
Recommended if you happen to get chance to go to the show.
Personally, I’m a tad skeptical that the entire structure and meaning of the universe and all possibilities of life therein, have now been conclusively worked out by the keyboardist from D:Ream
You'd be right to be skeptical - except Cox doesn't claim to have conclusively worked out anything.
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.
May I refer you to my header on the NHS, where I did address these issues, and make some proposals to address them.
The you in my post wasn't aimed at you personally but at all of the people who are constantly bemoaning underfunded services etc. Yet reacting in horror when anyone comes up with a proposal to change things. Cf Mays dementia tax
Agreed about the dementia tax. And keep coming with the proposals - they're much more constructive than much of what is posted on here, even if they're robustly challenged.
Thing is, right now, the most obvious proposal to change things is simply cancel what the government has announced. Wind back 48 hours, we had cheaper debt and less of it, and therefore very significantly better funded public services, for a given level of deficit.
If you're insisting on gentle nibbles rather than voracious gulps, let's at least not feed the elephant up so its even bigger. (This isn't directed at you specifically - you haven't as far as I can see argued for the governmeent's economic idiocy).
I am staying clear about the debate on the last budget and trying to take a broader view. I start at the point of what I want
a) Well funded services that we do continue b) People not having so much money taken from them to fund the services the state offers that they struggle c) not kicking debt down the road to our children and grandchildren
Entirely agree with the overall sentiment, and its worth pursuing 'out there' solutions, at least in theory.
I disagree with (b) though. I don't think that people are struggling because of the levels of taxation. It's possible the economy as a whole is hampered, but individual struggles are affected much more by other things than taxation (above all else, costs of renting/buying a house).
Yes I agree that housing is a major cause of poverty in the country. However not much we can do about that without building more houses and we know how problematic that gets.
The lever we do have however is how much money we leave in peoples pockets
renting a room costs anything from 100 to 200 a week. someone earning 20k a year is taking home 328 a week so is left with only 228 to 128 a week out of which they will have to pay transport, fuel, and food. If we hadn't taken 45£ out of their pocket in tax and ni they would be better able to cope
I suspect that doesn't matter.
Certainly in London, the supply-demand curve has reached the point where the market rent for anything half habitable is "wherever you can afford plus a bit".
So if you put £45 more in people's pockets by cutting taxes, it will go directly onto rents.
If I'm right, cutting the state to cut tax will just transfer even more cash to landlords.
I didn't anywhere advocate cutting tax I have merely said we can't raise the basic rate anymore so tax is not a way we can balance the spending we are doing. Cutting the state is about cutting spending to where it is manageable on our current taxes
Cut what?
Defence, NHS Social Care (Oh just done that) Something else.
Try reading back down the thread, not my fault you arrived late
Even with the maximum bracket tax, the top rate is lower than in the UK after Kwasi's budget.
They have scads of cash from unearned wealth, the kind everyone wants to take from everyone else. It is like saying we should follow the fiscal policy of Shangri-La.
Arizona judge: State can enforce near-total abortion ban
https://thehill.com/homenews/ap/ap-health/ap-arizonas-15-week-abortion-ban-coming-as-other-ban-looms/ Arizona can enforce a near-total ban on abortions that has been blocked for nearly 50 years, a judge ruled Friday, meaning clinics statewide will have to stop providing the procedures to avoid the filing of criminal charges against doctors and other medical workers. The judge lifted a decades-old injunction that blocked enforcement of the law on the books since before Arizona became a state. The only exemption to the ban is if the woman’s life is in jeopardy. The ruling means the state’s abortions clinics will have to shut down and anyone seeking an abortion will have to go out of state. The ruling takes effect immediately, although an appeal is possible.…
Went to the Brian Cox 'Horizons' show last night. Very good. Seems like it's an interesting time for astrophysics as our understanding of black holes raises more and more questions about the nature of the universe.
Interestingly for all you alien hunters, Cox sounds decidedly more hesitant about the certainty of other intelligent life than he did when I went to a talk of his about 10 years ago.
'The human brain might be the only only thing in existence capable of giving meaning to the universe'. (I paraphrase)
Recommended if you happen to get chance to go to the show.
Personally, I’m a tad skeptical that the entire structure and meaning of the universe and all possibilities of life therein, have now been conclusively worked out by the keyboardist from D:Ream
There's not the slightest of chances that they are right.They just have careers that have found a very obvious brick wall.
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.
May I refer you to my header on the NHS, where I did address these issues, and make some proposals to address them.
The you in my post wasn't aimed at you personally but at all of the people who are constantly bemoaning underfunded services etc. Yet reacting in horror when anyone comes up with a proposal to change things. Cf Mays dementia tax
Agreed about the dementia tax. And keep coming with the proposals - they're much more constructive than much of what is posted on here, even if they're robustly challenged.
Thing is, right now, the most obvious proposal to change things is simply cancel what the government has announced. Wind back 48 hours, we had cheaper debt and less of it, and therefore very significantly better funded public services, for a given level of deficit.
If you're insisting on gentle nibbles rather than voracious gulps, let's at least not feed the elephant up so its even bigger. (This isn't directed at you specifically - you haven't as far as I can see argued for the governmeent's economic idiocy).
I am staying clear about the debate on the last budget and trying to take a broader view. I start at the point of what I want
a) Well funded services that we do continue b) People not having so much money taken from them to fund the services the state offers that they struggle c) not kicking debt down the road to our children and grandchildren
Entirely agree with the overall sentiment, and its worth pursuing 'out there' solutions, at least in theory.
I disagree with (b) though. I don't think that people are struggling because of the levels of taxation. It's possible the economy as a whole is hampered, but individual struggles are affected much more by other things than taxation (above all else, costs of renting/buying a house).
Yes I agree that housing is a major cause of poverty in the country. However not much we can do about that without building more houses and we know how problematic that gets.
The lever we do have however is how much money we leave in peoples pockets
renting a room costs anything from 100 to 200 a week. someone earning 20k a year is taking home 328 a week so is left with only 228 to 128 a week out of which they will have to pay transport, fuel, and food. If we hadn't taken 45£ out of their pocket in tax and ni they would be better able to cope
I humbly suggest that it is odd to propose very radical changes in what government funds or in taxation — as you have with healthcare funding and pensions — yet to run away from building more houses in the grounds that it’s too hard. Building more houses seems way easier than turning our healthcare services upside down.
I am all for building more houses however I see it being harder to accomplish than my suggestions because
a) nimbies would vote out any government that proposed it and the scheme would grind to a halt as it would be a multi decade project whereas my suggestions can be accomplished within the term of a single parliament
b) the practical, we have neither the supplies nor the trademen needed to build on that scale
Given that the Scottish Gmt have been building an average of about 9k+ affordable houses a year since the SNP takeover in 2010, I'm not quite sure what the problem is.
9000 is a small figure, we would need to be building about 300000 for most of 2 decades
Went to the Brian Cox 'Horizons' show last night. Very good. Seems like it's an interesting time for astrophysics as our understanding of black holes raises more and more questions about the nature of the universe.
Interestingly for all you alien hunters, Cox sounds decidedly more hesitant about the certainty of other intelligent life than he did when I went to a talk of his about 10 years ago.
'The human brain might be the only only thing in existence capable of giving meaning to the universe'. (I paraphrase)
Recommended if you happen to get chance to go to the show.
Personally, I’m a tad skeptical that the entire structure and meaning of the universe and all possibilities of life therein, have now been conclusively worked out by the keyboardist from D:Ream
TrUst THe ScienZe Leon ffs, he is a bona fide sciencing man with test tubes and petri dishes and EVERYTHING
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.
May I refer you to my header on the NHS, where I did address these issues, and make some proposals to address them.
The you in my post wasn't aimed at you personally but at all of the people who are constantly bemoaning underfunded services etc. Yet reacting in horror when anyone comes up with a proposal to change things. Cf Mays dementia tax
Agreed about the dementia tax. And keep coming with the proposals - they're much more constructive than much of what is posted on here, even if they're robustly challenged.
Thing is, right now, the most obvious proposal to change things is simply cancel what the government has announced. Wind back 48 hours, we had cheaper debt and less of it, and therefore very significantly better funded public services, for a given level of deficit.
If you're insisting on gentle nibbles rather than voracious gulps, let's at least not feed the elephant up so its even bigger. (This isn't directed at you specifically - you haven't as far as I can see argued for the governmeent's economic idiocy).
I am staying clear about the debate on the last budget and trying to take a broader view. I start at the point of what I want
a) Well funded services that we do continue b) People not having so much money taken from them to fund the services the state offers that they struggle c) not kicking debt down the road to our children and grandchildren
Entirely agree with the overall sentiment, and its worth pursuing 'out there' solutions, at least in theory.
I disagree with (b) though. I don't think that people are struggling because of the levels of taxation. It's possible the economy as a whole is hampered, but individual struggles are affected much more by other things than taxation (above all else, costs of renting/buying a house).
Yes I agree that housing is a major cause of poverty in the country. However not much we can do about that without building more houses and we know how problematic that gets.
The lever we do have however is how much money we leave in peoples pockets
renting a room costs anything from 100 to 200 a week. someone earning 20k a year is taking home 328 a week so is left with only 228 to 128 a week out of which they will have to pay transport, fuel, and food. If we hadn't taken 45£ out of their pocket in tax and ni they would be better able to cope
They wouldn't be better off if that £45 went on health insurance or private pension contribution.
I haven't advocated abolishing the state pension just clawing some back from well off pensioners so they would not be paying anything more than now. As to the private health insurance to cover going over the cap....well average lifetime health care costs are something like 150k and so it would only have to pay for figures over that which half those insured would likely never have to claim so it should be relatively cheap cover
Why would it be cheaper than what it costs through tax on the NHS? Indeed, various analyses suggest the more centralised NHS is cheaper than an insurance model (whether insurance payments are paid for by the individual or state or a combination).
Because it is insurance and will only pay out for half the people that use it and even then mostly will be small sums with the occasional hefty bill. Its just in case insurance not covering all your health care just any portion that takes you over the cap. Same reason house insurance is quite cheap the number of homes that need rebuilding from scratch is small compared to the number buying house insurance
You’re delivering the same healthcare. It’s going to cost roughly the same whether it’s via the NHS or insurance. The costs don’t magically disappear.
House insurance is cheap because very few buildings need rebuilding, but you’re talking about half the population needing healthcare from this fund.
Went to the Brian Cox 'Horizons' show last night. Very good. Seems like it's an interesting time for astrophysics as our understanding of black holes raises more and more questions about the nature of the universe.
Interestingly for all you alien hunters, Cox sounds decidedly more hesitant about the certainty of other intelligent life than he did when I went to a talk of his about 10 years ago.
'The human brain might be the only only thing in existence capable of giving meaning to the universe'. (I paraphrase)
Recommended if you happen to get chance to go to the show.
Personally, I’m a tad skeptical that the entire structure and meaning of the universe and all possibilities of life therein, have now been conclusively worked out by the keyboardist from D:Ream
You'd be right to be skeptical - except Cox doesn't claim to have conclusively worked out anything.
I follow this debate quite closely. As we discover evermore exoplanets, many of them strikingly receptive to life as we know it, the chances of life having evolved elsewhere in the universe have gone up by orders of magnitude
I expect us to discover firm evidence of non human life in the universe within my lifetime, and I’m not exactly a teenager
And no, this does not necessarily mean aliens landing in Surrey, tho I do not rule out the possibility we are being visited/observed by *something*
Went to the Brian Cox 'Horizons' show last night. Very good. Seems like it's an interesting time for astrophysics as our understanding of black holes raises more and more questions about the nature of the universe.
Interestingly for all you alien hunters, Cox sounds decidedly more hesitant about the certainty of other intelligent life than he did when I went to a talk of his about 10 years ago.
'The human brain might be the only only thing in existence capable of giving meaning to the universe'. (I paraphrase)
Recommended if you happen to get chance to go to the show.
Personally, I’m a tad skeptical that the entire structure and meaning of the universe and all possibilities of life therein, have now been conclusively worked out by the keyboardist from D:Ream
There's not the slightest of chances that they are right.They just have careers that have found a very obvious brick wall.
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.
May I refer you to my header on the NHS, where I did address these issues, and make some proposals to address them.
The you in my post wasn't aimed at you personally but at all of the people who are constantly bemoaning underfunded services etc. Yet reacting in horror when anyone comes up with a proposal to change things. Cf Mays dementia tax
Agreed about the dementia tax. And keep coming with the proposals - they're much more constructive than much of what is posted on here, even if they're robustly challenged.
Thing is, right now, the most obvious proposal to change things is simply cancel what the government has announced. Wind back 48 hours, we had cheaper debt and less of it, and therefore very significantly better funded public services, for a given level of deficit.
If you're insisting on gentle nibbles rather than voracious gulps, let's at least not feed the elephant up so its even bigger. (This isn't directed at you specifically - you haven't as far as I can see argued for the governmeent's economic idiocy).
I am staying clear about the debate on the last budget and trying to take a broader view. I start at the point of what I want
a) Well funded services that we do continue b) People not having so much money taken from them to fund the services the state offers that they struggle c) not kicking debt down the road to our children and grandchildren
Entirely agree with the overall sentiment, and its worth pursuing 'out there' solutions, at least in theory.
I disagree with (b) though. I don't think that people are struggling because of the levels of taxation. It's possible the economy as a whole is hampered, but individual struggles are affected much more by other things than taxation (above all else, costs of renting/buying a house).
Yes I agree that housing is a major cause of poverty in the country. However not much we can do about that without building more houses and we know how problematic that gets.
The lever we do have however is how much money we leave in peoples pockets
renting a room costs anything from 100 to 200 a week. someone earning 20k a year is taking home 328 a week so is left with only 228 to 128 a week out of which they will have to pay transport, fuel, and food. If we hadn't taken 45£ out of their pocket in tax and ni they would be better able to cope
I suspect that doesn't matter.
Certainly in London, the supply-demand curve has reached the point where the market rent for anything half habitable is "wherever you can afford plus a bit".
So if you put £45 more in people's pockets by cutting taxes, it will go directly onto rents.
If I'm right, cutting the state to cut tax will just transfer even more cash to landlords.
I didn't anywhere advocate cutting tax I have merely said we can't raise the basic rate anymore so tax is not a way we can balance the spending we are doing. Cutting the state is about cutting spending to where it is manageable on our current taxes
Cut what?
Defence, NHS Social Care (Oh just done that) Something else.
Try reading back down the thread, not my fault you arrived late
Tut-tut @Pagan2, that's unnecessarily tetchy if I may say so.
1. There's no set time to join a thread of PB, so no now is ever 'late'. 2. Honestly, what does it hurt to repeat your proposal in a few words of what could be cut.
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.
May I refer you to my header on the NHS, where I did address these issues, and make some proposals to address them.
The you in my post wasn't aimed at you personally but at all of the people who are constantly bemoaning underfunded services etc. Yet reacting in horror when anyone comes up with a proposal to change things. Cf Mays dementia tax
Agreed about the dementia tax. And keep coming with the proposals - they're much more constructive than much of what is posted on here, even if they're robustly challenged.
Thing is, right now, the most obvious proposal to change things is simply cancel what the government has announced. Wind back 48 hours, we had cheaper debt and less of it, and therefore very significantly better funded public services, for a given level of deficit.
If you're insisting on gentle nibbles rather than voracious gulps, let's at least not feed the elephant up so its even bigger. (This isn't directed at you specifically - you haven't as far as I can see argued for the governmeent's economic idiocy).
I am staying clear about the debate on the last budget and trying to take a broader view. I start at the point of what I want
a) Well funded services that we do continue b) People not having so much money taken from them to fund the services the state offers that they struggle c) not kicking debt down the road to our children and grandchildren
It remains true that you can pick a maximum of any two out of these three: Decent public services, manageable taxes, sound public finances.
Currently government scores Zero out of three.
We could tax the wealthy much more than we do without causing them hardship.
We should shift taxes away from 'the working population on or below average salaries' towards the 'asset rich'.
Total wealth in this country is well over £15,000,000,000,000. That's >£15 trillion. That's >600% of the national debt.
Nobody would be moronic enough to hold wealth in the country ever again.
Political big decisions ought to be either necessary and effective, or popular and election-winning. With their Special Financial Operation I think Truss and Kwarteng have managed to come up with something that is neither, which is quite a feat of ineptitude.
If Labour are forced to be realistic and say some more tax has to be raised then I think they should bite the bullet and commit to increasing tax on pensioners, by applying NI if that is simplest. I see little downside for them. Most pensioners don't vote for them anyway, especially those that would be impacted.
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.
There are very few left bar the odd flint knapper
Our itinerant flint knapper does seem to be a net drain on the national finances as he and his commissioners earn their money here but seem to spend their earnings funding foreign hoteliers, sommeliers and restaurants.
Not actually true, most of my flints go for export. For the last ten years at least I have earned 70% of my money from abroad. Unlike you, I am directly benefiting the balance of payments
With my new Turkish contract - inshallah - I will probably earn even more from external sources as compared to domestic
Just so long as it isn't Gob Tep da movie. Be ruined by location tourists.
Went to the Brian Cox 'Horizons' show last night. Very good. Seems like it's an interesting time for astrophysics as our understanding of black holes raises more and more questions about the nature of the universe.
Interestingly for all you alien hunters, Cox sounds decidedly more hesitant about the certainty of other intelligent life than he did when I went to a talk of his about 10 years ago.
'The human brain might be the only only thing in existence capable of giving meaning to the universe'. (I paraphrase)
Recommended if you happen to get chance to go to the show.
Personally, I’m a tad skeptical that the entire structure and meaning of the universe and all possibilities of life therein, have now been conclusively worked out by the keyboardist from D:Ream
You'd be right to be skeptical - except Cox doesn't claim to have conclusively worked out anything.
I follow this debate quite closely. As we discover evermore exoplanets, many of them strikingly receptive to life as we know it, the chances of life having evolved elsewhere in the universe have gone up by orders of magnitude
I expect us to discover firm evidence of non human life in the universe within my lifetime, and I’m not exactly a teenager
And no, this does not necessarily mean aliens landing in Surrey, tho I do not rule out the possibility we are being visited/observed by *something*
Neil De Twatty Tyson made an absolute arse of himself on this this week suggesting the Navy might be faking artefacts on scanners and video etc (like the gimbal, tic tac etc) to see how their pilots react
Polite disagreements in the EU today around Russians fleeing conscription. The EU Council president has urged member states to open their borders to them. Poland and the Baltic States (with Finland soon to follow suit, it seems,) say no.
I'm with the border states on this one (whom, AIUI, are still accepting genuine political refugees.) Draft dodgers, like most Russians, are only reacting now that the war affects them. They should be told to sod off.
Simply put, the more badly trained and equipped Russian cannon fodder that gets turned into sunflower fertiliser by the Ukrainian army, the greater the likelihood that the Russian population will get off its arse in large enough numbers actually to threaten Putin's hold on power. We can't get rid of him, the revolution is their business - which is why locking the Russian people inside their wretched country and making them suffer the privations of this conflict has to be a priority. Letting them run away and squat here, whilst their dictator goes about his bloody business, undermines the West's entire strategy.
What do you make of this chap then?
I’m PhD student in Russia, Saint-Petersburg and also a dermatologist in practice with experience in R, Python and bioinformatics. I’m at risk of being mobilised into Russian army. I’m in a search for a funded PhD position in epi/stats/bioinf + derm #PhDposition #derm #epi
When do we think it's going to start getting properly cold? I see a few 15 degree high days coming up but they're few and far between.
Its already cold enough that heating set to minimum levels will start kicking in at times. Proper cold any time from November?
My heating isn't yet on at all.
we've had heating on for about 1 hour this month. just got my last bill and we used £14.32 in gas last month. with the £400 rebate our bill will be about £5.60 per month october to march. crazy. Stepdaughter and her 3 children live in a colder house and seem addicted to doing laundry and using the tumble drier so they can have our £400.
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.
May I refer you to my header on the NHS, where I did address these issues, and make some proposals to address them.
The you in my post wasn't aimed at you personally but at all of the people who are constantly bemoaning underfunded services etc. Yet reacting in horror when anyone comes up with a proposal to change things. Cf Mays dementia tax
Agreed about the dementia tax. And keep coming with the proposals - they're much more constructive than much of what is posted on here, even if they're robustly challenged.
Thing is, right now, the most obvious proposal to change things is simply cancel what the government has announced. Wind back 48 hours, we had cheaper debt and less of it, and therefore very significantly better funded public services, for a given level of deficit.
If you're insisting on gentle nibbles rather than voracious gulps, let's at least not feed the elephant up so its even bigger. (This isn't directed at you specifically - you haven't as far as I can see argued for the governmeent's economic idiocy).
I am staying clear about the debate on the last budget and trying to take a broader view. I start at the point of what I want
a) Well funded services that we do continue b) People not having so much money taken from them to fund the services the state offers that they struggle c) not kicking debt down the road to our children and grandchildren
Entirely agree with the overall sentiment, and its worth pursuing 'out there' solutions, at least in theory.
I disagree with (b) though. I don't think that people are struggling because of the levels of taxation. It's possible the economy as a whole is hampered, but individual struggles are affected much more by other things than taxation (above all else, costs of renting/buying a house).
Yes I agree that housing is a major cause of poverty in the country. However not much we can do about that without building more houses and we know how problematic that gets.
The lever we do have however is how much money we leave in peoples pockets
renting a room costs anything from 100 to 200 a week. someone earning 20k a year is taking home 328 a week so is left with only 228 to 128 a week out of which they will have to pay transport, fuel, and food. If we hadn't taken 45£ out of their pocket in tax and ni they would be better able to cope
I humbly suggest that it is odd to propose very radical changes in what government funds or in taxation — as you have with healthcare funding and pensions — yet to run away from building more houses in the grounds that it’s too hard. Building more houses seems way easier than turning our healthcare services upside down.
I am all for building more houses however I see it being harder to accomplish than my suggestions because
a) nimbies would vote out any government that proposed it and the scheme would grind to a halt as it would be a multi decade project whereas my suggestions can be accomplished within the term of a single parliament
b) the practical, we have neither the supplies nor the trademen needed to build on that scale
Given that the Scottish Gmt have been building an average of about 9k+ affordable houses a year since the SNP takeover in 2010, I'm not quite sure what the problem is.
The problem is that it’s the Scottish Government, which, according to most of PB, is worse than Putin’s Russia, Venezuela or Haiti. If it were any other Government, it would be a success.
Went to the Brian Cox 'Horizons' show last night. Very good. Seems like it's an interesting time for astrophysics as our understanding of black holes raises more and more questions about the nature of the universe.
Interestingly for all you alien hunters, Cox sounds decidedly more hesitant about the certainty of other intelligent life than he did when I went to a talk of his about 10 years ago.
'The human brain might be the only only thing in existence capable of giving meaning to the universe'. (I paraphrase)
Recommended if you happen to get chance to go to the show.
Personally, I’m a tad skeptical that the entire structure and meaning of the universe and all possibilities of life therein, have now been conclusively worked out by the keyboardist from D:Ream
You'd be right to be skeptical - except Cox doesn't claim to have conclusively worked out anything.
I follow this debate quite closely. As we discover evermore exoplanets, many of them strikingly receptive to life as we know it, the chances of life having evolved elsewhere in the universe have gone up by orders of magnitude
I expect us to discover firm evidence of non human life in the universe within my lifetime, and I’m not exactly a teenager
And no, this does not necessarily mean aliens landing in Surrey, tho I do not rule out the possibility we are being visited/observed by *something*
Life may be quite common, but only at the microbial level.
Went to the Brian Cox 'Horizons' show last night. Very good. Seems like it's an interesting time for astrophysics as our understanding of black holes raises more and more questions about the nature of the universe.
Interestingly for all you alien hunters, Cox sounds decidedly more hesitant about the certainty of other intelligent life than he did when I went to a talk of his about 10 years ago.
'The human brain might be the only only thing in existence capable of giving meaning to the universe'. (I paraphrase)
Recommended if you happen to get chance to go to the show.
Personally, I’m a tad skeptical that the entire structure and meaning of the universe and all possibilities of life therein, have now been conclusively worked out by the keyboardist from D:Ream
You'd be right to be skeptical - except Cox doesn't claim to have conclusively worked out anything.
I follow this debate quite closely. As we discover evermore exoplanets, many of them strikingly receptive to life as we know it, the chances of life having evolved elsewhere in the universe have gone up by orders of magnitude
I expect us to discover firm evidence of non human life in the universe within my lifetime, and I’m not exactly a teenager
And no, this does not necessarily mean aliens landing in Surrey, tho I do not rule out the possibility we are being visited/observed by *something*
Neil De Twatty Tyson made an absolute arse of himself on this this week suggesting the Navy might be faking artefacts on scanners and video etc (like the gimbal, tic tac etc) to see how their pilots react
That is one of the more insane explanations I’ve heard!
I’ve now read Mick West’s debunking of the Ukraine scientists’ UFO paper. As ever West does a good careful job, and certainly makes them look slapdash and lacking. However, this is just a preprint
To my mind he has not entirely debunked them. And I find it hard to believe three senior astronomers would be fooled by “flies”
Indeed, a money-making hoax by desperate boffins in a war torn country seems more likely
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.
May I refer you to my header on the NHS, where I did address these issues, and make some proposals to address them.
The you in my post wasn't aimed at you personally but at all of the people who are constantly bemoaning underfunded services etc. Yet reacting in horror when anyone comes up with a proposal to change things. Cf Mays dementia tax
Agreed about the dementia tax. And keep coming with the proposals - they're much more constructive than much of what is posted on here, even if they're robustly challenged.
Thing is, right now, the most obvious proposal to change things is simply cancel what the government has announced. Wind back 48 hours, we had cheaper debt and less of it, and therefore very significantly better funded public services, for a given level of deficit.
If you're insisting on gentle nibbles rather than voracious gulps, let's at least not feed the elephant up so its even bigger. (This isn't directed at you specifically - you haven't as far as I can see argued for the governmeent's economic idiocy).
I am staying clear about the debate on the last budget and trying to take a broader view. I start at the point of what I want
a) Well funded services that we do continue b) People not having so much money taken from them to fund the services the state offers that they struggle c) not kicking debt down the road to our children and grandchildren
Entirely agree with the overall sentiment, and its worth pursuing 'out there' solutions, at least in theory.
I disagree with (b) though. I don't think that people are struggling because of the levels of taxation. It's possible the economy as a whole is hampered, but individual struggles are affected much more by other things than taxation (above all else, costs of renting/buying a house).
Yes I agree that housing is a major cause of poverty in the country. However not much we can do about that without building more houses and we know how problematic that gets.
The lever we do have however is how much money we leave in peoples pockets
renting a room costs anything from 100 to 200 a week. someone earning 20k a year is taking home 328 a week so is left with only 228 to 128 a week out of which they will have to pay transport, fuel, and food. If we hadn't taken 45£ out of their pocket in tax and ni they would be better able to cope
I humbly suggest that it is odd to propose very radical changes in what government funds or in taxation — as you have with healthcare funding and pensions — yet to run away from building more houses in the grounds that it’s too hard. Building more houses seems way easier than turning our healthcare services upside down.
I am all for building more houses however I see it being harder to accomplish than my suggestions because
a) nimbies would vote out any government that proposed it and the scheme would grind to a halt as it would be a multi decade project whereas my suggestions can be accomplished within the term of a single parliament
b) the practical, we have neither the supplies nor the trademen needed to build on that scale
Given that the Scottish Gmt have been building an average of about 9k+ affordable houses a year since the SNP takeover in 2010, I'm not quite sure what the problem is.
The problem is that it’s the Scottish Government, which, according to most of PB, is worse than Putin’s Russia, Venezuela or Haiti. If it were any other Government, it would be a success.
The new houses round here seem quite compact - nothing like as generous in terms of garden space as their expansive 1920s and 1930s predecessors. But decent, with proper individual back yards, solar panels on the roof, and off road parking and bin compounds.
Polite disagreements in the EU today around Russians fleeing conscription. The EU Council president has urged member states to open their borders to them. Poland and the Baltic States (with Finland soon to follow suit, it seems,) say no.
I'm with the border states on this one (whom, AIUI, are still accepting genuine political refugees.) Draft dodgers, like most Russians, are only reacting now that the war affects them. They should be told to sod off.
Simply put, the more badly trained and equipped Russian cannon fodder that gets turned into sunflower fertiliser by the Ukrainian army, the greater the likelihood that the Russian population will get off its arse in large enough numbers actually to threaten Putin's hold on power. We can't get rid of him, the revolution is their business - which is why locking the Russian people inside their wretched country and making them suffer the privations of this conflict has to be a priority. Letting them run away and squat here, whilst their dictator goes about his bloody business, undermines the West's entire strategy.
What do you make of this chap then?
I’m PhD student in Russia, Saint-Petersburg and also a dermatologist in practice with experience in R, Python and bioinformatics. I’m at risk of being mobilised into Russian army. I’m in a search for a funded PhD position in epi/stats/bioinf + derm #PhDposition #derm #epi
Went to the Brian Cox 'Horizons' show last night. Very good. Seems like it's an interesting time for astrophysics as our understanding of black holes raises more and more questions about the nature of the universe.
Interestingly for all you alien hunters, Cox sounds decidedly more hesitant about the certainty of other intelligent life than he did when I went to a talk of his about 10 years ago.
'The human brain might be the only only thing in existence capable of giving meaning to the universe'. (I paraphrase)
Recommended if you happen to get chance to go to the show.
Personally, I’m a tad skeptical that the entire structure and meaning of the universe and all possibilities of life therein, have now been conclusively worked out by the keyboardist from D:Ream
You'd be right to be skeptical - except Cox doesn't claim to have conclusively worked out anything.
I follow this debate quite closely. As we discover evermore exoplanets, many of them strikingly receptive to life as we know it, the chances of life having evolved elsewhere in the universe have gone up by orders of magnitude
I expect us to discover firm evidence of non human life in the universe within my lifetime, and I’m not exactly a teenager
And no, this does not necessarily mean aliens landing in Surrey, tho I do not rule out the possibility we are being visited/observed by *something*
I'm sure you will let us know if any grey-skinned little biped takes a suspiciously close interest in your botty.
Went to the Brian Cox 'Horizons' show last night. Very good. Seems like it's an interesting time for astrophysics as our understanding of black holes raises more and more questions about the nature of the universe.
Interestingly for all you alien hunters, Cox sounds decidedly more hesitant about the certainty of other intelligent life than he did when I went to a talk of his about 10 years ago.
'The human brain might be the only only thing in existence capable of giving meaning to the universe'. (I paraphrase)
Recommended if you happen to get chance to go to the show.
Personally, I’m a tad skeptical that the entire structure and meaning of the universe and all possibilities of life therein, have now been conclusively worked out by the keyboardist from D:Ream
You'd be right to be skeptical - except Cox doesn't claim to have conclusively worked out anything.
I follow this debate quite closely. As we discover evermore exoplanets, many of them strikingly receptive to life as we know it, the chances of life having evolved elsewhere in the universe have gone up by orders of magnitude
I expect us to discover firm evidence of non human life in the universe within my lifetime, and I’m not exactly a teenager
And no, this does not necessarily mean aliens landing in Surrey, tho I do not rule out the possibility we are being visited/observed by *something*
Life may be quite common, but only at the microbial level.
Yes, quite so
We are far more likely to encounter yeast-like beings than demigods. However I am sure that there are also advanced civilisations out there, somewhere. The universe is just so damn BIG the odds say there must be (and I know the arguments that allege all cultures end up committing suicide)
Went to the Brian Cox 'Horizons' show last night. Very good. Seems like it's an interesting time for astrophysics as our understanding of black holes raises more and more questions about the nature of the universe.
Interestingly for all you alien hunters, Cox sounds decidedly more hesitant about the certainty of other intelligent life than he did when I went to a talk of his about 10 years ago.
'The human brain might be the only only thing in existence capable of giving meaning to the universe'. (I paraphrase)
Recommended if you happen to get chance to go to the show.
Personally, I’m a tad skeptical that the entire structure and meaning of the universe and all possibilities of life therein, have now been conclusively worked out by the keyboardist from D:Ream
You'd be right to be skeptical - except Cox doesn't claim to have conclusively worked out anything.
I follow this debate quite closely. As we discover evermore exoplanets, many of them strikingly receptive to life as we know it, the chances of life having evolved elsewhere in the universe have gone up by orders of magnitude
I expect us to discover firm evidence of non human life in the universe within my lifetime, and I’m not exactly a teenager
And no, this does not necessarily mean aliens landing in Surrey, tho I do not rule out the possibility we are being visited/observed by *something*
Neil De Twatty Tyson made an absolute arse of himself on this this week suggesting the Navy might be faking artefacts on scanners and video etc (like the gimbal, tic tac etc) to see how their pilots react
That is one of the more insane explanations I’ve heard!
I’ve now read Mick West’s debunking of the Ukraine scientists’ UFO paper. As ever West does a good careful job, and certainly makes them look slapdash and lacking. However, this is just a preprint
To my mind he has not entirely debunked them. And I find it hard to believe three senior astronomers would be fooled by “flies”
Indeed, a money-making hoax by desperate boffins in a war torn country seems more likely
Theres an awful lot of garbage out there from varying motivations
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.
May I refer you to my header on the NHS, where I did address these issues, and make some proposals to address them.
The you in my post wasn't aimed at you personally but at all of the people who are constantly bemoaning underfunded services etc. Yet reacting in horror when anyone comes up with a proposal to change things. Cf Mays dementia tax
Agreed about the dementia tax. And keep coming with the proposals - they're much more constructive than much of what is posted on here, even if they're robustly challenged.
Thing is, right now, the most obvious proposal to change things is simply cancel what the government has announced. Wind back 48 hours, we had cheaper debt and less of it, and therefore very significantly better funded public services, for a given level of deficit.
If you're insisting on gentle nibbles rather than voracious gulps, let's at least not feed the elephant up so its even bigger. (This isn't directed at you specifically - you haven't as far as I can see argued for the governmeent's economic idiocy).
I am staying clear about the debate on the last budget and trying to take a broader view. I start at the point of what I want
a) Well funded services that we do continue b) People not having so much money taken from them to fund the services the state offers that they struggle c) not kicking debt down the road to our children and grandchildren
Entirely agree with the overall sentiment, and its worth pursuing 'out there' solutions, at least in theory.
I disagree with (b) though. I don't think that people are struggling because of the levels of taxation. It's possible the economy as a whole is hampered, but individual struggles are affected much more by other things than taxation (above all else, costs of renting/buying a house).
Yes I agree that housing is a major cause of poverty in the country. However not much we can do about that without building more houses and we know how problematic that gets.
The lever we do have however is how much money we leave in peoples pockets
renting a room costs anything from 100 to 200 a week. someone earning 20k a year is taking home 328 a week so is left with only 228 to 128 a week out of which they will have to pay transport, fuel, and food. If we hadn't taken 45£ out of their pocket in tax and ni they would be better able to cope
I suspect that doesn't matter.
Certainly in London, the supply-demand curve has reached the point where the market rent for anything half habitable is "wherever you can afford plus a bit".
So if you put £45 more in people's pockets by cutting taxes, it will go directly onto rents.
If I'm right, cutting the state to cut tax will just transfer even more cash to landlords.
I didn't anywhere advocate cutting tax I have merely said we can't raise the basic rate anymore so tax is not a way we can balance the spending we are doing. Cutting the state is about cutting spending to where it is manageable on our current taxes
Cut what?
Defence, NHS Social Care (Oh just done that) Something else.
Try reading back down the thread, not my fault you arrived late
Tried that but missed the bit where you concluded what would be best to cut.
OK so Z jr has just scored a distinction in a Masters in economics from a top 5 UK university. Have lunch with him and ask his plans. He says I am going to go and live in Bedford for a year because a mate has got a house there at a really good rent, was going to go to London but my house in Earlsfield fell through. Maybe get a bar job.
Insane that rentability of bedrooms in shit houses determines life decisions even for people like him.
When do we think it's going to start getting properly cold? I see a few 15 degree high days coming up but they're few and far between.
Its already cold enough that heating set to minimum levels will start kicking in at times. Proper cold any time from November?
My heating isn't yet on at all.
we've had heating on for about 1 hour this month. just got my last bill and we used £14.32 in gas last month. with the £400 rebate our bill will be about £5.60 per month october to march. crazy. Stepdaughter and her 3 children live in a colder house and seem addicted to doing laundry and using the tumble drier so they can have our £400.
We haven't had heating on since May. Gas bill is about £28 a month due to hot water boiler being on. It seems to fire up 3 times a day for about an hour each, maintaining water temp. Perhaps I need to relag my tank etc.
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.
May I refer you to my header on the NHS, where I did address these issues, and make some proposals to address them.
The you in my post wasn't aimed at you personally but at all of the people who are constantly bemoaning underfunded services etc. Yet reacting in horror when anyone comes up with a proposal to change things. Cf Mays dementia tax
Agreed about the dementia tax. And keep coming with the proposals - they're much more constructive than much of what is posted on here, even if they're robustly challenged.
Thing is, right now, the most obvious proposal to change things is simply cancel what the government has announced. Wind back 48 hours, we had cheaper debt and less of it, and therefore very significantly better funded public services, for a given level of deficit.
If you're insisting on gentle nibbles rather than voracious gulps, let's at least not feed the elephant up so its even bigger. (This isn't directed at you specifically - you haven't as far as I can see argued for the governmeent's economic idiocy).
I am staying clear about the debate on the last budget and trying to take a broader view. I start at the point of what I want
a) Well funded services that we do continue b) People not having so much money taken from them to fund the services the state offers that they struggle c) not kicking debt down the road to our children and grandchildren
Entirely agree with the overall sentiment, and its worth pursuing 'out there' solutions, at least in theory.
I disagree with (b) though. I don't think that people are struggling because of the levels of taxation. It's possible the economy as a whole is hampered, but individual struggles are affected much more by other things than taxation (above all else, costs of renting/buying a house).
Yes I agree that housing is a major cause of poverty in the country. However not much we can do about that without building more houses and we know how problematic that gets.
The lever we do have however is how much money we leave in peoples pockets
renting a room costs anything from 100 to 200 a week. someone earning 20k a year is taking home 328 a week so is left with only 228 to 128 a week out of which they will have to pay transport, fuel, and food. If we hadn't taken 45£ out of their pocket in tax and ni they would be better able to cope
I humbly suggest that it is odd to propose very radical changes in what government funds or in taxation — as you have with healthcare funding and pensions — yet to run away from building more houses in the grounds that it’s too hard. Building more houses seems way easier than turning our healthcare services upside down.
I am all for building more houses however I see it being harder to accomplish than my suggestions because
a) nimbies would vote out any government that proposed it and the scheme would grind to a halt as it would be a multi decade project whereas my suggestions can be accomplished within the term of a single parliament
b) the practical, we have neither the supplies nor the trademen needed to build on that scale
Given that the Scottish Gmt have been building an average of about 9k+ affordable houses a year since the SNP takeover in 2010, I'm not quite sure what the problem is.
9000 is a small figure, we would need to be building about 300000 for most of 2 decades
Per annum? Yes, but remember Scotland has 8% of the population. That would be something like 100K pa UK wide pro rata. A useful bite, in Scotland anyway, but - I agree - not enough. At least they see the problem and are trying to do something.
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.
May I refer you to my header on the NHS, where I did address these issues, and make some proposals to address them.
The you in my post wasn't aimed at you personally but at all of the people who are constantly bemoaning underfunded services etc. Yet reacting in horror when anyone comes up with a proposal to change things. Cf Mays dementia tax
Agreed about the dementia tax. And keep coming with the proposals - they're much more constructive than much of what is posted on here, even if they're robustly challenged.
Thing is, right now, the most obvious proposal to change things is simply cancel what the government has announced. Wind back 48 hours, we had cheaper debt and less of it, and therefore very significantly better funded public services, for a given level of deficit.
If you're insisting on gentle nibbles rather than voracious gulps, let's at least not feed the elephant up so its even bigger. (This isn't directed at you specifically - you haven't as far as I can see argued for the governmeent's economic idiocy).
I am staying clear about the debate on the last budget and trying to take a broader view. I start at the point of what I want
a) Well funded services that we do continue b) People not having so much money taken from them to fund the services the state offers that they struggle c) not kicking debt down the road to our children and grandchildren
Entirely agree with the overall sentiment, and its worth pursuing 'out there' solutions, at least in theory.
I disagree with (b) though. I don't think that people are struggling because of the levels of taxation. It's possible the economy as a whole is hampered, but individual struggles are affected much more by other things than taxation (above all else, costs of renting/buying a house).
Yes I agree that housing is a major cause of poverty in the country. However not much we can do about that without building more houses and we know how problematic that gets.
The lever we do have however is how much money we leave in peoples pockets
renting a room costs anything from 100 to 200 a week. someone earning 20k a year is taking home 328 a week so is left with only 228 to 128 a week out of which they will have to pay transport, fuel, and food. If we hadn't taken 45£ out of their pocket in tax and ni they would be better able to cope
I humbly suggest that it is odd to propose very radical changes in what government funds or in taxation — as you have with healthcare funding and pensions — yet to run away from building more houses in the grounds that it’s too hard. Building more houses seems way easier than turning our healthcare services upside down.
I am all for building more houses however I see it being harder to accomplish than my suggestions because
a) nimbies would vote out any government that proposed it and the scheme would grind to a halt as it would be a multi decade project whereas my suggestions can be accomplished within the term of a single parliament
b) the practical, we have neither the supplies nor the trademen needed to build on that scale
Given that the Scottish Gmt have been building an average of about 9k+ affordable houses a year since the SNP takeover in 2010, I'm not quite sure what the problem is.
The problem is that it’s the Scottish Government, which, according to most of PB, is worse than Putin’s Russia, Venezuela or Haiti. If it were any other Government, it would be a success.
OK so Z jr has just scored a distinction in a Masters in economics from a top 5 UK university. Have lunch with him and ask his plans. He says I am going to go and live in Bedford for a year because a mate has got a house there at a really good rent, was going to go to London but my house in Earlsfield fell through. Maybe get a bar job.
Insane that rentability of bedrooms in shit houses determines life decisions even for people like him.
Guess where we just bought!
Congratulations to your son, a smart cookie clearly like his father
Polite disagreements in the EU today around Russians fleeing conscription. The EU Council president has urged member states to open their borders to them. Poland and the Baltic States (with Finland soon to follow suit, it seems,) say no.
I'm with the border states on this one (whom, AIUI, are still accepting genuine political refugees.) Draft dodgers, like most Russians, are only reacting now that the war affects them. They should be told to sod off.
Simply put, the more badly trained and equipped Russian cannon fodder that gets turned into sunflower fertiliser by the Ukrainian army, the greater the likelihood that the Russian population will get off its arse in large enough numbers actually to threaten Putin's hold on power. We can't get rid of him, the revolution is their business - which is why locking the Russian people inside their wretched country and making them suffer the privations of this conflict has to be a priority. Letting them run away and squat here, whilst their dictator goes about his bloody business, undermines the West's entire strategy.
What do you make of this chap then?
I’m PhD student in Russia, Saint-Petersburg and also a dermatologist in practice with experience in R, Python and bioinformatics. I’m at risk of being mobilised into Russian army. I’m in a search for a funded PhD position in epi/stats/bioinf + derm #PhDposition #derm #epi
What’s going to take Russia decades to recover from, even when they’ve rebuilt their military and the world lets them trade oil again, is the hollowing-out of their skilled economy by emigration.
Polite disagreements in the EU today around Russians fleeing conscription. The EU Council president has urged member states to open their borders to them. Poland and the Baltic States (with Finland soon to follow suit, it seems,) say no.
I'm with the border states on this one (whom, AIUI, are still accepting genuine political refugees.) Draft dodgers, like most Russians, are only reacting now that the war affects them. They should be told to sod off.
Simply put, the more badly trained and equipped Russian cannon fodder that gets turned into sunflower fertiliser by the Ukrainian army, the greater the likelihood that the Russian population will get off its arse in large enough numbers actually to threaten Putin's hold on power. We can't get rid of him, the revolution is their business - which is why locking the Russian people inside their wretched country and making them suffer the privations of this conflict has to be a priority. Letting them run away and squat here, whilst their dictator goes about his bloody business, undermines the West's entire strategy.
What do you make of this chap then?
I’m PhD student in Russia, Saint-Petersburg and also a dermatologist in practice with experience in R, Python and bioinformatics. I’m at risk of being mobilised into Russian army. I’m in a search for a funded PhD position in epi/stats/bioinf + derm #PhDposition #derm #epi
The same argument applies regardless of the IQ of the individuals affected, I'm afraid. I can't summon up much sympathy for Russia or the Russians TBH. There were 15 Soviet republics, and this is the only one with an unquenchable bloodlust for imperial conquest coupled with a neat sideline in threatening to eradicate the human race in a thermonuclear holocaust if not given its way. Fuck em.
Allawi, a 73-year-old former banker and Oxford don with an air of owlish gravitas, started off with the usual bureaucratic niceties: a gracious thank-you to the prime minister, an assurance that the country’s finances were in relatively decent shape. But he went on to deliver a comprehensive indictment of Iraq’s political class that may be among the most stinging resignation letters ever written. When future historians write about Iraq’s troubled effort to build an American-style democracy in the early years of the 21st century, Allawi’s letter will provide them with a rare insider’s view of a failing state.
The letter detailed a series of outrageous scams that had been approved or promoted by some of the men around him, who, he said, had helped create a “vast octopus of corruption and deceit” that was poisoning the entire country. The letter built gradually toward a conclusion that was almost apocalyptic in scale. Iraq, Allawi said, was on the point of collapse, facing “a crisis of state, society, and even the individual.” The problem was not just dishonest leaders, but the entire system put in place by the Americans two decades earlier. “I believe,” he said, “we are facing one of the most serious challenges that any country has faced in the past century.”…
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.
May I refer you to my header on the NHS, where I did address these issues, and make some proposals to address them.
The you in my post wasn't aimed at you personally but at all of the people who are constantly bemoaning underfunded services etc. Yet reacting in horror when anyone comes up with a proposal to change things. Cf Mays dementia tax
Agreed about the dementia tax. And keep coming with the proposals - they're much more constructive than much of what is posted on here, even if they're robustly challenged.
Thing is, right now, the most obvious proposal to change things is simply cancel what the government has announced. Wind back 48 hours, we had cheaper debt and less of it, and therefore very significantly better funded public services, for a given level of deficit.
If you're insisting on gentle nibbles rather than voracious gulps, let's at least not feed the elephant up so its even bigger. (This isn't directed at you specifically - you haven't as far as I can see argued for the governmeent's economic idiocy).
I am staying clear about the debate on the last budget and trying to take a broader view. I start at the point of what I want
a) Well funded services that we do continue b) People not having so much money taken from them to fund the services the state offers that they struggle c) not kicking debt down the road to our children and grandchildren
Entirely agree with the overall sentiment, and its worth pursuing 'out there' solutions, at least in theory.
I disagree with (b) though. I don't think that people are struggling because of the levels of taxation. It's possible the economy as a whole is hampered, but individual struggles are affected much more by other things than taxation (above all else, costs of renting/buying a house).
Yes I agree that housing is a major cause of poverty in the country. However not much we can do about that without building more houses and we know how problematic that gets.
The lever we do have however is how much money we leave in peoples pockets
renting a room costs anything from 100 to 200 a week. someone earning 20k a year is taking home 328 a week so is left with only 228 to 128 a week out of which they will have to pay transport, fuel, and food. If we hadn't taken 45£ out of their pocket in tax and ni they would be better able to cope
I humbly suggest that it is odd to propose very radical changes in what government funds or in taxation — as you have with healthcare funding and pensions — yet to run away from building more houses in the grounds that it’s too hard. Building more houses seems way easier than turning our healthcare services upside down.
I am all for building more houses however I see it being harder to accomplish than my suggestions because
a) nimbies would vote out any government that proposed it and the scheme would grind to a halt as it would be a multi decade project whereas my suggestions can be accomplished within the term of a single parliament
b) the practical, we have neither the supplies nor the trademen needed to build on that scale
Given that the Scottish Gmt have been building an average of about 9k+ affordable houses a year since the SNP takeover in 2010, I'm not quite sure what the problem is.
The problem is that it’s the Scottish Government, which, according to most of PB, is worse than Putin’s Russia, Venezuela or Haiti. If it were any other Government, it would be a success.
More and cheaper land in Scotland.
Not around Edinburgh there isn't! But - even so - that can't be the explanation. There'll be an overlapping spectrum of prices compared with say, N, SE, SW etc England.
Went to the Brian Cox 'Horizons' show last night. Very good. Seems like it's an interesting time for astrophysics as our understanding of black holes raises more and more questions about the nature of the universe.
Interestingly for all you alien hunters, Cox sounds decidedly more hesitant about the certainty of other intelligent life than he did when I went to a talk of his about 10 years ago.
'The human brain might be the only only thing in existence capable of giving meaning to the universe'. (I paraphrase)
Recommended if you happen to get chance to go to the show.
Personally, I’m a tad skeptical that the entire structure and meaning of the universe and all possibilities of life therein, have now been conclusively worked out by the keyboardist from D:Ream
You'd be right to be skeptical - except Cox doesn't claim to have conclusively worked out anything.
I follow this debate quite closely. As we discover evermore exoplanets, many of them strikingly receptive to life as we know it, the chances of life having evolved elsewhere in the universe have gone up by orders of magnitude
I expect us to discover firm evidence of non human life in the universe within my lifetime, and I’m not exactly a teenager
And no, this does not necessarily mean aliens landing in Surrey, tho I do not rule out the possibility we are being visited/observed by *something*
Life may be quite common, but only at the microbial level.
Why? The only life we know of for certain is here and is abundant and varied, including multicellular life in extreme environments. Why would it be restricted to microbial level elsewhere?
Liz Truss has another problem. Because she’s a bit odd and not very warm, along with her Chancellor she finds it hard to sell this budget as being anything other than a rich person giveaway.
Their rebuttals have been utterly pathetic. Like Seumus Milne levels of bad. Labour has played them like a fiddle
It all depends on whether these tax cuts do indeed boost the economy. If they do the government will become more popular. If they don't they're probably finished.
OK so Z jr has just scored a distinction in a Masters in economics from a top 5 UK university. Have lunch with him and ask his plans. He says I am going to go and live in Bedford for a year because a mate has got a house there at a really good rent, was going to go to London but my house in Earlsfield fell through. Maybe get a bar job.
Insane that rentability of bedrooms in shit houses determines life decisions even for people like him.
Guess where we just bought!
Congratulations to your son, a smart cookie clearly like his father
Went to the Brian Cox 'Horizons' show last night. Very good. Seems like it's an interesting time for astrophysics as our understanding of black holes raises more and more questions about the nature of the universe.
Interestingly for all you alien hunters, Cox sounds decidedly more hesitant about the certainty of other intelligent life than he did when I went to a talk of his about 10 years ago.
'The human brain might be the only only thing in existence capable of giving meaning to the universe'. (I paraphrase)
Recommended if you happen to get chance to go to the show.
Personally, I’m a tad skeptical that the entire structure and meaning of the universe and all possibilities of life therein, have now been conclusively worked out by the keyboardist from D:Ream
You'd be right to be skeptical - except Cox doesn't claim to have conclusively worked out anything.
I follow this debate quite closely. As we discover evermore exoplanets, many of them strikingly receptive to life as we know it, the chances of life having evolved elsewhere in the universe have gone up by orders of magnitude
I expect us to discover firm evidence of non human life in the universe within my lifetime, and I’m not exactly a teenager
And no, this does not necessarily mean aliens landing in Surrey, tho I do not rule out the possibility we are being visited/observed by *something*
Neil De Twatty Tyson made an absolute arse of himself on this this week suggesting the Navy might be faking artefacts on scanners and video etc (like the gimbal, tic tac etc) to see how their pilots react
That is one of the more insane explanations I’ve heard!
I’ve now read Mick West’s debunking of the Ukraine scientists’ UFO paper. As ever West does a good careful job, and certainly makes them look slapdash and lacking. However, this is just a preprint
To my mind he has not entirely debunked them. And I find it hard to believe three senior astronomers would be fooled by “flies”
Indeed, a money-making hoax by desperate boffins in a war torn country seems more likely
Theres an awful lot of garbage out there from varying motivations
No one has debunked the Calvine photo. Indeed all the various bunkum theories - reflection, mountain top in fog, elaborate hoax, have been successfully ruled out themselves
Which leaves us with the likelihood this shows a real craft in the sky. What it is, who knows
When do we think it's going to start getting properly cold? I see a few 15 degree high days coming up but they're few and far between.
Its already cold enough that heating set to minimum levels will start kicking in at times. Proper cold any time from November?
My heating isn't yet on at all.
we've had heating on for about 1 hour this month. just got my last bill and we used £14.32 in gas last month. with the £400 rebate our bill will be about £5.60 per month october to march. crazy. Stepdaughter and her 3 children live in a colder house and seem addicted to doing laundry and using the tumble drier so they can have our £400.
Tumble dryers should be high on the list for the public information campaign - they use an inordinate amount of electricity, more than any other single appliance. After turning down the room temperature, avoiding the tumble dryer is the single best thing you can do to reduce the winter bills.
Polite disagreements in the EU today around Russians fleeing conscription. The EU Council president has urged member states to open their borders to them. Poland and the Baltic States (with Finland soon to follow suit, it seems,) say no.
I'm with the border states on this one (whom, AIUI, are still accepting genuine political refugees.) Draft dodgers, like most Russians, are only reacting now that the war affects them. They should be told to sod off.
Simply put, the more badly trained and equipped Russian cannon fodder that gets turned into sunflower fertiliser by the Ukrainian army, the greater the likelihood that the Russian population will get off its arse in large enough numbers actually to threaten Putin's hold on power. We can't get rid of him, the revolution is their business - which is why locking the Russian people inside their wretched country and making them suffer the privations of this conflict has to be a priority. Letting them run away and squat here, whilst their dictator goes about his bloody business, undermines the West's entire strategy.
What do you make of this chap then?
I’m PhD student in Russia, Saint-Petersburg and also a dermatologist in practice with experience in R, Python and bioinformatics. I’m at risk of being mobilised into Russian army. I’m in a search for a funded PhD position in epi/stats/bioinf + derm #PhDposition #derm #epi
The same argument applies regardless of the IQ of the individuals affected, I'm afraid. I can't summon up much sympathy for Russia or the Russians TBH. There were 15 Soviet republics, and this is the only one with an unquenchable bloodlust for imperial conquest coupled with a neat sideline in threatening to eradicate the human race in a thermonuclear holocaust if not given its way. Fuck em.
I’ve seen a lot of that sentiment on Twitter, but it’s holding Russians to a standard I’m not sure most of us would meet if we had a government like Putin’s. Besides, draining Russia of brains and manpower is surely a sensible thing to do where possible, even if it indulges a few cowardly hypocrites.
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!
I advocated an insurance scheme to cover additional. I would suggest that the state itself runs a scheme for this to keep insurers honest and prevent abusive pricing. Many european countries have similar systems which are part insurance and part state funding. It does not have to be like america's lunacy
The thing is, a state-run insurance system that people have to pay into… well, basically, that just takes you back to where we started. You’ve re-labelled a tax into an insurance model… I guess you could call it a national insurance? The big difference is you go from funding healthcare via a progressive tax to funding it via effectively a flat tax.
But, sure, let’s look at some European models. In the UK, the state currently pays about 79% of all healthcare costs. Our nearest neighbour is France. The French state pays about 75% of all healthcare costs. It’s a similar figure in Germany, 77%. Switching to one of these European models doesn’t match what you proposed or deliver the savings you want.
I didn't say the state run scheme was mandatory. I suggested a state run scheme be run so that insurance companies offering similar schemes couldn't run riot.
Also those stats on europe while they look comparable may not be. Does for example the french system or the german system do all the procedures the nhs does for free or do they go you want procedure x sorry need to go private for that. I don't know that answer so am speculating
Purely anecdotal - but a Greek friend of mine who stays in the UK needed an operation. The NHS said they wouldn't do it until the problem/pain became a 'can't work' situation (and even getting to that stage had been a fight for scans etc).
So they went back to Greece, went to hospital the next day, had new scans done and the doctor was horrified to hear about their treatment here. Apologised profusely and said they could have the operation done - but they would have to wait a week or two. *But* if they paid 10 euro they could have it done within 2 days and also pick from a selection of surgeons who covered that type of surgery.
Long ramble there - but I think it shows some of the complexity in comparing systems. Two might both be 'free', but one is - to all intents and purposes not available, the other might be 'free' but mildly rationed with a 'skip the queue' option if you can pay something.
One also might be over intervening!
My Greek colleagues paint a different picture of state medical services there*, though self funded private care seems decent for those who can afford it.
*such as bringing your own bedsheets because the hospital has none.
When do we think it's going to start getting properly cold? I see a few 15 degree high days coming up but they're few and far between.
Its already cold enough that heating set to minimum levels will start kicking in at times. Proper cold any time from November?
My heating isn't yet on at all.
we've had heating on for about 1 hour this month. just got my last bill and we used £14.32 in gas last month. with the £400 rebate our bill will be about £5.60 per month october to march. crazy. Stepdaughter and her 3 children live in a colder house and seem addicted to doing laundry and using the tumble drier so they can have our £400.
Tumble dryers should be high on the list for the public information campaign - they use an inordinate amount of electricity, more than any other single appliance. After turning down the room temperature, avoiding the tumble dryer is the single best thing you can do to reduce the winter bills.
The bills are capped now. No worries. Let her roll. Public information campaign my eye.
When do we think it's going to start getting properly cold? I see a few 15 degree high days coming up but they're few and far between.
Its already cold enough that heating set to minimum levels will start kicking in at times. Proper cold any time from November?
My heating isn't yet on at all.
we've had heating on for about 1 hour this month. just got my last bill and we used £14.32 in gas last month. with the £400 rebate our bill will be about £5.60 per month october to march. crazy. Stepdaughter and her 3 children live in a colder house and seem addicted to doing laundry and using the tumble drier so they can have our £400.
Tumble dryers should be high on the list for the public information campaign - they use an inordinate amount of electricity, more than any other single appliance. After turning down the room temperature, avoiding the tumble dryer is the single best thing you can do to reduce the winter bills.
What is the point in a tumble dryer? Can't you just stick your clothes up around the house or buy a heated drying rack like I've got. Never seen the point in owning one.
Went to the Brian Cox 'Horizons' show last night. Very good. Seems like it's an interesting time for astrophysics as our understanding of black holes raises more and more questions about the nature of the universe.
Interestingly for all you alien hunters, Cox sounds decidedly more hesitant about the certainty of other intelligent life than he did when I went to a talk of his about 10 years ago.
'The human brain might be the only only thing in existence capable of giving meaning to the universe'. (I paraphrase)
Recommended if you happen to get chance to go to the show.
Personally, I’m a tad skeptical that the entire structure and meaning of the universe and all possibilities of life therein, have now been conclusively worked out by the keyboardist from D:Ream
You'd be right to be skeptical - except Cox doesn't claim to have conclusively worked out anything.
I follow this debate quite closely. As we discover evermore exoplanets, many of them strikingly receptive to life as we know it, the chances of life having evolved elsewhere in the universe have gone up by orders of magnitude
I expect us to discover firm evidence of non human life in the universe within my lifetime, and I’m not exactly a teenager
And no, this does not necessarily mean aliens landing in Surrey, tho I do not rule out the possibility we are being visited/observed by *something*
Well, perhaps I should have been clearer.
I do not doubt (and neither does Cox as far as I can tell) that life exists in many, many places across the universe. I think there's a very good chance that the Mars Perseverance Rover will provide convincing evidence that simple life once existed on Mars (once the samples come back in c.10 years time).
Single cell life.
Complex life with evolution through natural selection took much longer - another 3bn years - to develop on Earth. That's a long time even in comparison to the life of the universe. Not all (many?) planets are going to remain stable over those periods.
Intelligent complex life? Well that's another step again.
Lib dems in England telling us yesterday’s mini budget was just a tax cut for the rich and did nothing for the poor. Lib dems in Scotland telling us the rich will now leave Scotland so we should copy Tory policy.
Might be easier to just not murder people i suppose.
Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman was "crucial" in securing the release of 10 foreign prisoners captured in Ukraine, the Saudi foreign minister has said.
Prince Faisal bin Farhan al Saud said the deal had enabled a major prisoner swap between Russia and Ukraine.
He said it was "very cynical" to think the Crown Prince was trying to repair the kingdom's international relations.
The crown prince has been linked by Western intelligence to the murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi. But Prince Faisal denied the kingdom's de-facto ruler got involved in talks to try to rehabilitate his reputation, instead saying it was for "humanitarian" reasons.
Went to the Brian Cox 'Horizons' show last night. Very good. Seems like it's an interesting time for astrophysics as our understanding of black holes raises more and more questions about the nature of the universe.
Interestingly for all you alien hunters, Cox sounds decidedly more hesitant about the certainty of other intelligent life than he did when I went to a talk of his about 10 years ago.
'The human brain might be the only only thing in existence capable of giving meaning to the universe'. (I paraphrase)
Recommended if you happen to get chance to go to the show.
Personally, I’m a tad skeptical that the entire structure and meaning of the universe and all possibilities of life therein, have now been conclusively worked out by the keyboardist from D:Ream
You'd be right to be skeptical - except Cox doesn't claim to have conclusively worked out anything.
I follow this debate quite closely. As we discover evermore exoplanets, many of them strikingly receptive to life as we know it, the chances of life having evolved elsewhere in the universe have gone up by orders of magnitude
I expect us to discover firm evidence of non human life in the universe within my lifetime, and I’m not exactly a teenager
And no, this does not necessarily mean aliens landing in Surrey, tho I do not rule out the possibility we are being visited/observed by *something*
Neil De Twatty Tyson made an absolute arse of himself on this this week suggesting the Navy might be faking artefacts on scanners and video etc (like the gimbal, tic tac etc) to see how their pilots react
That is one of the more insane explanations I’ve heard!
I’ve now read Mick West’s debunking of the Ukraine scientists’ UFO paper. As ever West does a good careful job, and certainly makes them look slapdash and lacking. However, this is just a preprint
To my mind he has not entirely debunked them. And I find it hard to believe three senior astronomers would be fooled by “flies”
Indeed, a money-making hoax by desperate boffins in a war torn country seems more likely
Theres an awful lot of garbage out there from varying motivations
No one has debunked the Calvine photo. Indeed all the various bunkum theories - reflection, mountain top in fog, elaborate hoax, have been successfully ruled out themselves
Which leaves us with the likelihood this shows a real craft in the sky. What it is, who knows
My two main issues i have with Calvine are Nick Pope's championing of it, i don't trust him as far as i can throw him and the sudden timing of it all just as interest peaks again with the USNavy/NASA stuff. Those aside its very interesting.
When do we think it's going to start getting properly cold? I see a few 15 degree high days coming up but they're few and far between.
Its already cold enough that heating set to minimum levels will start kicking in at times. Proper cold any time from November?
My heating isn't yet on at all.
we've had heating on for about 1 hour this month. just got my last bill and we used £14.32 in gas last month. with the £400 rebate our bill will be about £5.60 per month october to march. crazy. Stepdaughter and her 3 children live in a colder house and seem addicted to doing laundry and using the tumble drier so they can have our £400.
Tumble dryers should be high on the list for the public information campaign - they use an inordinate amount of electricity, more than any other single appliance. After turning down the room temperature, avoiding the tumble dryer is the single best thing you can do to reduce the winter bills.
What is the point in a tumble dryer? Can't you just stick your clothes up around the house or buy a heated drying rack like I've got. Never seen the point in owning one.
On this Horse we are in complete agreement Dishwashers are equally idiotic
Lib dems in England telling us yesterday’s mini budget was just a tax cut for the rich and did nothing for the poor. Lib dems in Scotland telling us the rich will now leave Scotland so we should copy Tory policy.
OK so Z jr has just scored a distinction in a Masters in economics from a top 5 UK university. Have lunch with him and ask his plans. He says I am going to go and live in Bedford for a year because a mate has got a house there at a really good rent, was going to go to London but my house in Earlsfield fell through. Maybe get a bar job.
Insane that rentability of bedrooms in shit houses determines life decisions even for people like him.
Guess where we just bought!
Congratulations to your son, a smart cookie clearly like his father
This was a rental, but 4 beds so he had to fill up the other 3 and his mates were saying Naah, too far out for us mate. WTF? Even in my day people thought Earlsfield was liveable. 15 min to Waterloo is it?
Lib dems in England telling us yesterday’s mini budget was just a tax cut for the rich and did nothing for the poor. Lib dems in Scotland telling us the rich will now leave Scotland so we should copy Tory policy.
When do we think it's going to start getting properly cold? I see a few 15 degree high days coming up but they're few and far between.
Its already cold enough that heating set to minimum levels will start kicking in at times. Proper cold any time from November?
My heating isn't yet on at all.
we've had heating on for about 1 hour this month. just got my last bill and we used £14.32 in gas last month. with the £400 rebate our bill will be about £5.60 per month october to march. crazy. Stepdaughter and her 3 children live in a colder house and seem addicted to doing laundry and using the tumble drier so they can have our £400.
Tumble dryers should be high on the list for the public information campaign - they use an inordinate amount of electricity, more than any other single appliance. After turning down the room temperature, avoiding the tumble dryer is the single best thing you can do to reduce the winter bills.
What is the point in a tumble dryer? Can't you just stick your clothes up around the house or buy a heated drying rack like I've got. Never seen the point in owning one.
I understand there is some benefit in baking your laundry dry in that it makes the fabrics softer.
OK so Z jr has just scored a distinction in a Masters in economics from a top 5 UK university. Have lunch with him and ask his plans. He says I am going to go and live in Bedford for a year because a mate has got a house there at a really good rent, was going to go to London but my house in Earlsfield fell through. Maybe get a bar job.
Insane that rentability of bedrooms in shit houses determines life decisions even for people like him.
Guess where we just bought!
Congratulations to your son, a smart cookie clearly like his father
This was a rental, but 4 beds so he had to fill up the other 3 and his mates were saying Naah, too far out for us mate. WTF? Even in my day people thought Earlsfield was liveable. 15 min to Waterloo is it?
Yes, part of the problem does seem to be that generation we-pay-too-much is also generation I'd-never-live-THERE.
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!
I advocated an insurance scheme to cover additional. I would suggest that the state itself runs a scheme for this to keep insurers honest and prevent abusive pricing. Many european countries have similar systems which are part insurance and part state funding. It does not have to be like america's lunacy
The thing is, a state-run insurance system that people have to pay into… well, basically, that just takes you back to where we started. You’ve re-labelled a tax into an insurance model… I guess you could call it a national insurance? The big difference is you go from funding healthcare via a progressive tax to funding it via effectively a flat tax.
But, sure, let’s look at some European models. In the UK, the state currently pays about 79% of all healthcare costs. Our nearest neighbour is France. The French state pays about 75% of all healthcare costs. It’s a similar figure in Germany, 77%. Switching to one of these European models doesn’t match what you proposed or deliver the savings you want.
I didn't say the state run scheme was mandatory. I suggested a state run scheme be run so that insurance companies offering similar schemes couldn't run riot.
Also those stats on europe while they look comparable may not be. Does for example the french system or the german system do all the procedures the nhs does for free or do they go you want procedure x sorry need to go private for that. I don't know that answer so am speculating
Purely anecdotal - but a Greek friend of mine who stays in the UK needed an operation. The NHS said they wouldn't do it until the problem/pain became a 'can't work' situation (and even getting to that stage had been a fight for scans etc).
So they went back to Greece, went to hospital the next day, had new scans done and the doctor was horrified to hear about their treatment here. Apologised profusely and said they could have the operation done - but they would have to wait a week or two. *But* if they paid 10 euro they could have it done within 2 days and also pick from a selection of surgeons who covered that type of surgery.
Long ramble there - but I think it shows some of the complexity in comparing systems. Two might both be 'free', but one is - to all intents and purposes not available, the other might be 'free' but mildly rationed with a 'skip the queue' option if you can pay something.
One also might be over intervening!
My Greek colleagues paint a different picture of state medical services there*, though self funded private care seems decent for those who can afford it.
*such as bringing your own bedsheets because the hospital has none.
It might have been over intervening I guess. It was a cyst on her womb and they wouldn't treat it here until it had grown to some specified size and would have been putting pressure on her spine (I may well be getting the details wrong - it was a few years ago and I'm squeamish!).
Now that you mention the bedsheets - that does ring a bell. But I'm sure I remember her saying something handed down from mothers advice that you couldn't trust those hospital people to clean bedding properly (some of them are men for goodness sake!) so always do your own.
When do we think it's going to start getting properly cold? I see a few 15 degree high days coming up but they're few and far between.
Its already cold enough that heating set to minimum levels will start kicking in at times. Proper cold any time from November?
My heating isn't yet on at all.
we've had heating on for about 1 hour this month. just got my last bill and we used £14.32 in gas last month. with the £400 rebate our bill will be about £5.60 per month october to march. crazy. Stepdaughter and her 3 children live in a colder house and seem addicted to doing laundry and using the tumble drier so they can have our £400.
Tumble dryers should be high on the list for the public information campaign - they use an inordinate amount of electricity, more than any other single appliance. After turning down the room temperature, avoiding the tumble dryer is the single best thing you can do to reduce the winter bills.
What is the point in a tumble dryer? Can't you just stick your clothes up around the house or buy a heated drying rack like I've got. Never seen the point in owning one.
On this Horse we are in complete agreement Dishwashers are equally idiotic
Wrong, dishwashers used right are more efficient than humans, whereas clothes lines cost nuffink.
When do we think it's going to start getting properly cold? I see a few 15 degree high days coming up but they're few and far between.
Its already cold enough that heating set to minimum levels will start kicking in at times. Proper cold any time from November?
My heating isn't yet on at all.
we've had heating on for about 1 hour this month. just got my last bill and we used £14.32 in gas last month. with the £400 rebate our bill will be about £5.60 per month october to march. crazy. Stepdaughter and her 3 children live in a colder house and seem addicted to doing laundry and using the tumble drier so they can have our £400.
Tumble dryers should be high on the list for the public information campaign - they use an inordinate amount of electricity, more than any other single appliance. After turning down the room temperature, avoiding the tumble dryer is the single best thing you can do to reduce the winter bills.
What is the point in a tumble dryer? Can't you just stick your clothes up around the house or buy a heated drying rack like I've got. Never seen the point in owning one.
Indeed.
They’re useful if you have a large family and want to do all of the week’s laundry in one day. Many people don’t realise just how much power they use though, it’s the same as having the kettle boil continuously for two hours at a time.
Comments
We should shift taxes away from 'the working population on or below average salaries' towards the 'asset rich'.
Total wealth in this country is well over £15,000,000,000,000. That's >£15 trillion. That's >600% of the national debt.
https://www.reuters.com/business/finance/odeys-hedge-fund-soars-145-bets-against-uk-bonds-sources-2022-09-22/
So I did what I think any of us would do - drove to a nearby affluent area, found the biggest, nicest house and put a tenner through their letter box.
You mark my words, before long that money will trickle down to the homeless guy.
https://twitter.com/jamesecook/status/1573563502773534720?s=21&t=sS7fzsUkqwXfeh_oTuiE3g
We need the higher tax rates that involves but is where I think we should go.
I enjoy your posts even if I disagree with them
So they went back to Greece, went to hospital the next day, had new scans done and the doctor was horrified to hear about their treatment here. Apologised profusely and said they could have the operation done - but they would have to wait a week or two. *But* if they paid 10 euro they could have it done within 2 days and also pick from a selection of surgeons who covered that type of surgery.
Long ramble there - but I think it shows some of the complexity in comparing systems. Two might both be 'free', but one is - to all intents and purposes not available, the other might be 'free' but mildly rationed with a 'skip the queue' option if you can pay something.
a) nimbies would vote out any government that proposed it and the scheme would grind to a halt as it would be a multi decade project whereas my suggestions can be accomplished within the term of a single parliament
b) the practical, we have neither the supplies nor the trademen needed to build on that scale
With my new Turkish contract - inshallah - I will probably earn even more from external sources as compared to domestic
Defence,
NHS
Social Care (Oh just done that)
Something else.
I'm with the border states on this one (whom, AIUI, are still accepting genuine political refugees.) Draft dodgers, like most Russians, are only reacting now that the war affects them. They should be told to sod off.
Simply put, the more badly trained and equipped Russian cannon fodder that gets turned into sunflower fertiliser by the Ukrainian army, the greater the likelihood that the Russian population will get off its arse in large enough numbers actually to threaten Putin's hold on power. We can't get rid of him, the revolution is their business - which is why locking the Russian people inside their wretched country and making them suffer the privations of this conflict has to be a priority. Letting them run away and squat here, whilst their dictator goes about his bloody business, undermines the West's entire strategy.
https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/3656490-desantis-risks-voter-backlash-in-florida-with-migrant-flights/
Thanks for your insight, I am shocked to see somebody who's contributions to this site being "Blair was crap" as being misinformed.
The number of vineyards is now quite noticeable
https://thehill.com/homenews/ap/ap-health/ap-arizonas-15-week-abortion-ban-coming-as-other-ban-looms/
Arizona can enforce a near-total ban on abortions that has been blocked for nearly 50 years, a judge ruled Friday, meaning clinics statewide will have to stop providing the procedures to avoid the filing of criminal charges against doctors and other medical workers.
The judge lifted a decades-old injunction that blocked enforcement of the law on the books since before Arizona became a state. The only exemption to the ban is if the woman’s life is in jeopardy.
The ruling means the state’s abortions clinics will have to shut down and anyone seeking an abortion will have to go out of state. The ruling takes effect immediately, although an appeal is possible.…
House insurance is cheap because very few buildings need rebuilding, but you’re talking about half the population needing healthcare from this fund.
I expect us to discover firm evidence of non human life in the universe within my lifetime, and I’m not exactly a teenager
And no, this does not necessarily mean aliens landing in Surrey, tho I do not rule out the possibility we are being visited/observed by *something*
1. There's no set time to join a thread of PB, so no now is ever 'late'.
2. Honestly, what does it hurt to repeat your proposal in a few words of what could be cut.
Just a suggestion.
If Labour are forced to be realistic and say some more tax has to be raised then I think they should bite the bullet and commit to increasing tax on pensioners, by applying NI if that is simplest. I see little downside for them. Most pensioners don't vote for them anyway, especially those that would be impacted.
I’m PhD student in Russia, Saint-Petersburg and also a dermatologist in practice with experience in R, Python and bioinformatics. I’m at risk of being mobilised into Russian army. I’m in a search for a funded PhD position in epi/stats/bioinf + derm #PhDposition #derm #epi
https://twitter.com/tonyzhelonkin/status/1573362264966823936?s=21&t=a-C5IM2e-GWe5M32RS1iqw
That is one of the more insane explanations I’ve heard!
I’ve now read Mick West’s debunking of the Ukraine scientists’ UFO paper. As ever West does a good careful job, and certainly makes them look slapdash and lacking. However, this is just a preprint
To my mind he has not entirely debunked them. And I find it hard to believe three senior astronomers would be fooled by “flies”
Indeed, a money-making hoax by desperate boffins in a war torn country seems more likely
I still can't tell if he was joking or not.
Experience - FFS.
We are far more likely to encounter yeast-like beings than demigods. However I am sure that there are also advanced civilisations out there, somewhere. The universe is just so damn BIG the odds say there must be (and I know the arguments that allege all cultures end up committing suicide)
Insane that rentability of bedrooms in shit houses determines life decisions even for people like him.
Congratulations to your son, a smart cookie clearly like his father
https://twitter.com/Pulpstar/status/1573682810107338752
The Most Stinging Resignation Letter Ever Written
https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2022/09/ali-allawi-iraq-corruption-resignation-letter/671509/
… Ali Allawi, the finance minister since 2020, was stepping down, and he wanted to read the full text of his resignation letter aloud. Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi gave his assent.
Allawi, a 73-year-old former banker and Oxford don with an air of owlish gravitas, started off with the usual bureaucratic niceties: a gracious thank-you to the prime minister, an assurance that the country’s finances were in relatively decent shape. But he went on to deliver a comprehensive indictment of Iraq’s political class that may be among the most stinging resignation letters ever written. When future historians write about Iraq’s troubled effort to build an American-style democracy in the early years of the 21st century, Allawi’s letter will provide them with a rare insider’s view of a failing state.
The letter detailed a series of outrageous scams that had been approved or promoted by some of the men around him, who, he said, had helped create a “vast octopus of corruption and deceit” that was poisoning the entire country. The letter built gradually toward a conclusion that was almost apocalyptic in scale. Iraq, Allawi said, was on the point of collapse, facing “a crisis of state, society, and even the individual.” The problem was not just dishonest leaders, but the entire system put in place by the Americans two decades earlier. “I believe,” he said, “we are facing one of the most serious challenges that any country has faced in the past century.”…
Which leaves us with the likelihood this shows a real craft in the sky. What it is, who knows
The parable of the prodigal son comes to mind.
My Greek colleagues paint a different picture of state medical services there*, though self funded private care seems decent for those who can afford it.
*such as bringing your own bedsheets because the hospital has none.
I do not doubt (and neither does Cox as far as I can tell) that life exists in many, many places across the universe. I think there's a very good chance that the Mars Perseverance Rover will provide convincing evidence that simple life once existed on Mars (once the samples come back in c.10 years time).
Single cell life.
Complex life with evolution through natural selection took much longer - another 3bn years - to develop on Earth. That's a long time even in comparison to the life of the universe. Not all (many?) planets are going to remain stable over those periods.
Intelligent complex life? Well that's another step again.
Lib dems in Scotland telling us the rich will now leave Scotland so we should copy Tory policy.
https://twitter.com/kmacraeplockton/status/1573551786056630273?s=46&t=a-C5IM2e-GWe5M32RS1iqw
Might be easier to just not murder people i suppose.
Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman was "crucial" in securing the release of 10 foreign prisoners captured in Ukraine, the Saudi foreign minister has said.
Prince Faisal bin Farhan al Saud said the deal had enabled a major prisoner swap between Russia and Ukraine.
He said it was "very cynical" to think the Crown Prince was trying to repair the kingdom's international relations.
The crown prince has been linked by Western intelligence to the murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
But Prince Faisal denied the kingdom's de-facto ruler got involved in talks to try to rehabilitate his reputation, instead saying it was for "humanitarian" reasons.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-63004964
Dishwashers are equally idiotic
Will this be the week we see that 20 point lead?
Now that you mention the bedsheets - that does ring a bell. But I'm sure I remember her saying something handed down from mothers advice that you couldn't trust those hospital people to clean bedding properly (some of them are men for goodness sake!) so always do your own.
They’re useful if you have a large family and want to do all of the week’s laundry in one day. Many people don’t realise just how much power they use though, it’s the same as having the kettle boil continuously for two hours at a time.