It's not a stealth tax if it's on the front page of the Telegraph. True ones are freezing thresholds. Virtually no one notices them, or calls them what they are. A tax increase. See also pay freezes and years of below inflation pay rises. Barely ever called pay cuts.
Those frozen lifetime allowances are driving a lot of my colleagues to retire, as are the way annual allowances are calculated in terms of pension input in relation to inflation.
I seemed to be on course for the sweetspot of maxing out at my 60th birthday.
But if they take their pension early (any age after 55, currently, soon to rise), the actuarial reduction will reduce its assessed value for the LA, since this is based on a simple multiple of the annual pension, plus any lump sum, both of which reduce if paid early. And with the additional advantage that the inflation uplift is applied to the pension in payment after the LA assessment has been done, avoiding what would otherwise be a huge hit as the deferred pension’s value rises by 10% (or commonly 5%, in a capped scheme) come April.
Yet they’ll effectively receive the same money spread over more years (obvs depending on life expectancy). And there is nothing to stop someone taking their pension and continuing in employment - no-one is “driven” to retire, in terms of stopping work.
Indeed early retirement is one way of avoiding breaching the lifetime allowance by that actuarial reduction.
There are rules on pension abatement that mean that a return to work is nearly always part time.
My old public sector scheme never had those abatement rules.
Simply abolishing abatement and allowing pay and pension would solve the problem, no?
Rail strikes called off, Is tomorrows Telegraph declaring Tory victory over the striking rail workers, by suggesting working practices are not part of the settlement? If it’s true a ballot taken not yet made public reveals Lynch losing union member support for his strike, he needs a deal soon - so maybe the government should not give him one? If Lynch is prepared to trade now, the government should hold out and get an even better deal in the coming days and weeks?
Maybe not just Sunak in search of a backbone - Mick Lynch is searching for one too now, as he begins to cave!
Both sides will claim that they got what they wanted, and more than likely both will be right. That is how these negotiations generally work.
Makes me think of some of the more extreme sides in the Brexit deal negotiations, where in so many words they would say something like 'If EU/UK would agree to a deal, it's not a deal we could accept', which seemed to fundamentally miss the point of negotiations.
It certainly felt like it was seen more on the Brexit side of things, but the 'no cherry picking at all' on the other side was definitely played way too hard, since again a negotiation is about trying to pick cherries, you may just have to be realistic about how many you will be able to get, yet it was often used as if to even ask for anything beyond what was offered was inherently unreasonable, no matter what it was.
The EU could do what they liked in the Brexit negotiations, because the UK couldn't walk away, and they knew it, and we knew they knew it. That's at the basis of May's flawed deal, and the flawed Boris deal we got.
Personally, I would have negotiated the bare bones divorce, with no FTA, and as I've said, placed a moratorium on signing any FTAs with anyone for 5 years. It would have been costly, but would have got us used to trading as a 3rd country under WTO rules. We would then have begun negotiations knowing that walking away was possible, and with both the UK and the EU approaching the negotiations positively, without so much baggage, and both with the same goal in mind - eliminating restrictions to trade.
I would have stepped gently into an EFTA type arrangement, taken a couple of years to draw breath and scan the horizon, and then decidedy on the next steps. It would have removed most of the emotion from the situation.
Norway for now was always the sensible option.
As ever with the Tories, they couldn’t do the right thing because their nutters wouldn’t allow it.
Okay. I’ll engage as thoughtfully I can with the asylum seeker problem, and offer my solutions.
This problem is as bad as it is due entirely to talentless clueless incompetents the Tory’s put in charge of mangling it. There’s no magic bullet, it’s true, though here’s my list of things that will reduce the problem for sure,
1. For starters, The incompetents managing it don’t understand the problem they are dealing with - it’s as simple of that - we know this as fact as they talk about 70% or more are economic migrants, bogus asylum seekers. Back in the real world do you really believe Undocumented economic migrants deliver themselves into the hands of Home Office officials as soon as they reach UK soil? Hence, 4% processing comes from setting up for 70%+ economic migrants, not genuine asylum claims. According the governments own figures, the majority of asylum claims are found to be legitimate Almost two-thirds (64%) of asylum claims end in a grant of protection. Of those rejected that went on to appeal, 48% were successfully overturned. They are clearly tackling the backlog with the wrong mindset and wrong prioritising.
2. Secondly, on basis you now realise how many are genuine asylum claims bogged down in your two year backlog, Set up a Department for International Development (DfID) to strengthen the infrastructures of fragile countries and increase stability there. Where do you want to spend the money, DfID, or 5 star hotels? You do the math.
3. Enable safe, legal routes for resettlement of genuine refugees. Would they even need a long stay in a processing centre on UK soil after dangerous water crossing, if you took safe, legal routes for resettlement more seriously? Take as example the priority given to Ukraine refugees, and how abysmal this home office under this government was at managing Ukrainian processing - sending them here and there, where no one was there to help them. And that’s what we call our gold star fast Lane process. Despite Tories paying lip service to liking safe, legal routes, the number of people resettled under the government’s UK resettlement scheme was 1,171 in the 12 months to September 2021, down by about 45% year on year.
4. This is the idea I like best. Process UK humanitarian visas on French soil, and bring them across on ferries. Genuine asylum seekers in northern France hoping to reach the UK to claim asylum, so happy to place themselves into the hands of our home office, could register their claim with UK officials and then be placed on ferries to be brought to the UK while their claim is processed. You want the Rwanda scheme because you are led to believe it hurts the business model of the people smugglers? The simple MoonRabbits Ferry to Freedom Solution utterly smashes through the business model of the people smugglers does it not?
Yes, throwing the doors open and charging nothing certainly does smash through the business model of the people smugglers.
Do you even see a difference between economic migrants in search of a job, and genuine refugee’s seeking asylum and safety? Or are you happy to repeatedly blur and box all this together, just as Braverman and Sunak have been doing?
I think basically CR believes that none are genuine refugees, even those that our courts rule are.
CR appears to distrust and fear people from outside Basingstoke, so actual refugees don’t stand a snowball’s with him.
Excuse the neo-colonial paternalism here but I feel sub Saharan Africa really needs a globally connected hub to act as a gravitational pull for capital. A Singapore or for that matter a Dubai. A holding company location, listing destination, strong tax treaty network, liquid capital market and a draw for regional immigration. Yes that might cause some brain drainage in some areas (as does Singapore) but I think the benefits would outweigh the costs.
At the moment it only has Mauritius, which does its best but is still an island not actually on the continent, and as much an entrepôt for India as for Africa.
It needs to be in the heart of Africa - SA is too far South. There are a few candidates but all are flawed. Lagos too dominated by oil industry and its own huge domestic market, Nairobi a bit distant from West Africa but otherwise promising, Addis more manufacturing focused, several others hamstrung by French language. Rwanda might actually be a player here. Small enough, not dominated by an industry or a huge national hinterland, central. A bit authoritarian but then so are Singapore and Dubai.
Rail strikes called off, Is tomorrows Telegraph declaring Tory victory over the striking rail workers, by suggesting working practices are not part of the settlement? If it’s true a ballot taken not yet made public reveals Lynch losing union member support for his strike, he needs a deal soon - so maybe the government should not give him one? If Lynch is prepared to trade now, the government should hold out and get an even better deal in the coming days and weeks?
Maybe not just Sunak in search of a backbone - Mick Lynch is searching for one too now, as he begins to cave!
Both sides will claim that they got what they wanted, and more than likely both will be right. That is how these negotiations generally work.
Makes me think of some of the more extreme sides in the Brexit deal negotiations, where in so many words they would say something like 'If EU/UK would agree to a deal, it's not a deal we could accept', which seemed to fundamentally miss the point of negotiations.
It certainly felt like it was seen more on the Brexit side of things, but the 'no cherry picking at all' on the other side was definitely played way too hard, since again a negotiation is about trying to pick cherries, you may just have to be realistic about how many you will be able to get, yet it was often used as if to even ask for anything beyond what was offered was inherently unreasonable, no matter what it was.
The EU could do what they liked in the Brexit negotiations, because the UK couldn't walk away, and they knew it, and we knew they knew it. That's at the basis of May's flawed deal, and the flawed Boris deal we got.
Personally, I would have negotiated the bare bones divorce, with no FTA, and as I've said, placed a moratorium on signing any FTAs with anyone for 5 years. It would have been costly, but would have got us used to trading as a 3rd country under WTO rules. We would then have begun negotiations knowing that walking away was possible, and with both the UK and the EU approaching the negotiations positively, without so much baggage, and both with the same goal in mind - eliminating restrictions to trade.
I would have stepped gently into an EFTA type arrangement, taken a couple of years to draw breath and scan the horizon, and then decidedy on the next steps. It would have removed most of the emotion from the situation.
Norway for now was always the sensible option.
As ever with the Tories, they couldn’t do the right thing because their nutters wouldn’t allow it.
A pretty dishonest assessment. Had the Lib Dems, the Labour Party and the Grieve wing of the Tories accept they’d lost but pushed for a consensus position, then perhaps that’s where we’d have ended up. Instead they tried every underhand trick they could conceive of to try and undo the referendum result outright. In turn the debate became utterly polarised.
Lots of people seem to have forgotten Starmer’s role in actively undermining our ancient principle of democratic consent. I haven’t.
Rail strikes called off, Is tomorrows Telegraph declaring Tory victory over the striking rail workers, by suggesting working practices are not part of the settlement? If it’s true a ballot taken not yet made public reveals Lynch losing union member support for his strike, he needs a deal soon - so maybe the government should not give him one? If Lynch is prepared to trade now, the government should hold out and get an even better deal in the coming days and weeks?
Maybe not just Sunak in search of a backbone - Mick Lynch is searching for one too now, as he begins to cave!
Both sides will claim that they got what they wanted, and more than likely both will be right. That is how these negotiations generally work.
Makes me think of some of the more extreme sides in the Brexit deal negotiations, where in so many words they would say something like 'If EU/UK would agree to a deal, it's not a deal we could accept', which seemed to fundamentally miss the point of negotiations.
It certainly felt like it was seen more on the Brexit side of things, but the 'no cherry picking at all' on the other side was definitely played way too hard, since again a negotiation is about trying to pick cherries, you may just have to be realistic about how many you will be able to get, yet it was often used as if to even ask for anything beyond what was offered was inherently unreasonable, no matter what it was.
The EU could do what they liked in the Brexit negotiations, because the UK couldn't walk away, and they knew it, and we knew they knew it. That's at the basis of May's flawed deal, and the flawed Boris deal we got.
Personally, I would have negotiated the bare bones divorce, with no FTA, and as I've said, placed a moratorium on signing any FTAs with anyone for 5 years. It would have been costly, but would have got us used to trading as a 3rd country under WTO rules. We would then have begun negotiations knowing that walking away was possible, and with both the UK and the EU approaching the negotiations positively, without so much baggage, and both with the same goal in mind - eliminating restrictions to trade.
What would happen to Northern Ireland under this 'bare bones divorce?'
I would have put an invisible customs border there, with hidden cameras, thermal imaging, monitoring of weights of vehicles etc. If you'd gone over with a lorry load of contraband stuff, you'd be intercepted in due course. Frankly it's what there should be on the ROI/NI border anyway.
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Simply abolishing abatement and allowing pay and pension would solve the problem, no?
As ever with the Tories, they couldn’t do the right thing because their nutters wouldn’t allow it.
Lots of people seem to have forgotten Starmer’s role in actively undermining our ancient principle of democratic consent. I haven’t.
been declared the winner by Michael Masi