Interesting. Listening to France24 this morning, just like us they have identified a shortfall in new staff for manufacturing industries and similar - estimated at 120k per annum, whilst the existing system delivers ~40k, half of whom go into other industries.
Proposals including making it easier to employ immigrants, or allowing illegal immigrants to work - not currently liked by many French businesses because of the ultra-bureaucracy, and presumably a smidge of xenophobia.
I'd say that if they boosted retirement age to be the same as the normal European country by +3-4 years, that would fix it for the medium term.
Interesting. Listening to France24 this morning, just like us they have identified a shortfall in new staff for manufacturing industries and similar - estimated at 120k per annum, whilst the existing system delivers ~40k, half of whom go into other industries.
Proposals including making it easier to employ immigrants, or allowing illegal immigrants to work - not currently liked by many French businesses because of the ultra-bureaucracy, and presumably a smidge of xenophobia.
I'd say that if they boosted retirement age to be the same as the normal European country by +3-4 years, that would fix it for the medium term.
RIOOOOOTTTTTTT....I mean "mostly peaceful" protest against said measures.
The PM is rich? So what. He is leader of the Conservative Party not a Corbynite Marxist sect.
What voters want to see is their own economic circumstances improve which he and Hunt are doing by cutting inflation and growing the economy and hopefully in due course cutting tax as well.
As for getting rid of Rishi, barely more than a year ago OGH was telling Tories to get rid of Boris in favour of Rishi!
Cutting inflation is not a sufficient condition for people to "see their own economic circumstances improve". What matters to most people is the difference between their income inflation and price inflation. Inflation is still high.
We're not going destitute as fast as we were, darling. I think i'll vote conservative now.
And don't forget the cumulative effect - it will be quite some time before real wages are back where they were before Sunak got in.
Yes. We're just off the back of 20 straight months of CPI inflation being above wage inflation. We've had one month with wages going up faster than CPI. So even if every month is the mirror of the months before, we'll still be worse off than we were in October 2021 by the time the election comes around.
Especially thanks to fiscal drag.
Real take-home wages are still falling currently, even with nominal wages growing faster than inflation.
You’re in danger of post hoc data mining
Wages aren’t growing!
Oops.
Real wages aren’t growing! 😁
Fuck!
Shit! Umm! Fiscal drag, thats’s it. Fiscal drag!
Realtake-home wages aren’t growing! 😁
Excuse me but I've been banging the drum on fiscal drag and opposed it since it was announced. I'm entirely consistent.
And of course I was a loyal Tory until Sunak started putting up taxes like National Insurance and fiscal drag.
I have my principles. I believe people should be able to keep more of their own income they work for. The Tories used to believe that too.
I haven't left the Tories, Sunak's Tories have left me.
Though you did also vote for Blair so not that loyal a Tory even before Sunak
And I'm sure you're excited to have only the purest of heart be the only ones to vote for your party next time then.
Loyal Tories would have voted Conservative in 2019 and still be voting Conservative now.
Loyal Labour would have voted Labour in 2019 and still be voting Labour now.
Everyone else is a swing voter to some degree, including you
I assume you vote Tory because they best represent your views. If they no longer did why would you vote for them? They aren't a football team.
Presumably if they moved too far to the right for you, you would vote LD or abstain. If they moved too far to the left for you, you would vote UKIP (or whatever they are called today) or abstain.
You surely wouldn't vote for a party whose views you didn't agree with?
Doesn't that also make you a swing voter as well, albeit that the Tories have never moved far enough for you to flip. The only difference between you and others who have flipped is the degree of movement from the core values of the party to cause you or them to change their vote.
Yes, I've usually voted Tory, not because I'm 'loyal', but because my judgement has been that the country would be better off with them than with the main alternatives. I find the idea of loyalty to a political party odd. I'm loyal to my family and my friends. I suppose if most of my friends and family were Conservative Party members, the idea of loyalty to a party would be less strange.
The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine has been awarded to a pair of scientists that developed the technology that led to the mRNA Covid vaccines.
They give these prizes out to any Tom, Dick and Harry these days....
There are some on the weird anti-vax community would have them subjected to a Nuremburg style trial for crimes against humanity...
By chance I had a Pfizer covid booster on saturday and sure as eggs is eggs, had an awful 24 hour period with high fever and feeling like crap. I have had this every time I've had an mRNA Covid shot, but not with the AZ ones. This is not going to stop me having them, but I do, think there is something in the delivery system that my body reacts violently to, much more so than any other vaccine I've ever had. The only other reaction I've had at all like it was a bird flu shot about 10 years ago.
I had quite the opposite experience. 24hr high fever with AZN, and not much at all from the mRNA jab.
Similarly with the immune response to Covid infection itself - some have a violent, sometimes dangerous immune response: others barely register it.
The risks, of course, are orders of magnitude higher with the bug itself.
Do we know why the booster jab is not yet available to buy like the flu one - can't be a capacity issue can it ?
I got it from my first AZ too, and not the others.
And today I have the real thing, for the first time in close to 2 years. Feeling decidedly crap.
The PM is rich? So what. He is leader of the Conservative Party not a Corbynite Marxist sect.
What voters want to see is their own economic circumstances improve which he and Hunt are doing by cutting inflation and growing the economy and hopefully in due course cutting tax as well.
As for getting rid of Rishi, barely more than a year ago OGH was telling Tories to get rid of Boris in favour of Rishi!
Cutting inflation is not a sufficient condition for people to "see their own economic circumstances improve". What matters to most people is the difference between their income inflation and price inflation. Inflation is still high.
We're not going destitute as fast as we were, darling. I think i'll vote conservative now.
And don't forget the cumulative effect - it will be quite some time before real wages are back where they were before Sunak got in.
Yes. We're just off the back of 20 straight months of CPI inflation being above wage inflation. We've had one month with wages going up faster than CPI. So even if every month is the mirror of the months before, we'll still be worse off than we were in October 2021 by the time the election comes around.
Especially thanks to fiscal drag.
Real take-home wages are still falling currently, even with nominal wages growing faster than inflation.
You’re in danger of post hoc data mining
Wages aren’t growing!
Oops.
Real wages aren’t growing! 😁
Fuck!
Shit! Umm! Fiscal drag, thats’s it. Fiscal drag!
Realtake-home wages aren’t growing! 😁
You’re in danger of wrapping yourself in a comfortable blanket of argument while, I suspect, Bart’s position better reflects the experience of the electorate.
He has two drums that he bangs with monotonous regularity. It gives me a headache.
Fiscal drag sucks. It’s a sneaky tax. But it’s not what people focus on - they see their tax home pay go up, but are struggling to make ends meet because prices are going up faster.
Unfortunately the size of state that the electorate wants needs to be paid for. If there was a government that was willing to be more disciplined then there would be saving that could be made, but that isn’t this government or (I suspect) the next one.
But the level of tax rises that are needed to balance the budget (or at least reduce the deficit below the rate of GDP growth) are too large to be affordable by the rich (however defined). They have already made significant contributions (eg additional rate threshold cut by £25k - that’s £1,250 extra income tax from each individual) as have companies with the planned increase in corporation tax.
there will be more tax rises to come for the wealthy, but the middle income voter needs to contribute as well.
Middle income earners can already be on 80% real marginal tax rates - how much higher than that should those go?
How about taxing everyone the same so everyone contributes equally, rather than opting some out of NICs etc?
Why should some be exempt from contributing whatsoever?
The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine has been awarded to a pair of scientists that developed the technology that led to the mRNA Covid vaccines.
They give these prizes out to any Tom, Dick and Harry these days....
There are some on the weird anti-vax community would have them subjected to a Nuremburg style trial for crimes against humanity...
By chance I had a Pfizer covid booster on saturday and sure as eggs is eggs, had an awful 24 hour period with high fever and feeling like crap. I have had this every time I've had an mRNA Covid shot, but not with the AZ ones. This is not going to stop me having them, but I do, think there is something in the delivery system that my body reacts violently to, much more so than any other vaccine I've ever had. The only other reaction I've had at all like it was a bird flu shot about 10 years ago.
That’s unfortunate. Mrs C and I had Pfizer booster’s on Wednesday and as usual, being a more sensitive subject than me, her arm hurt for a couple of days, whereas I forgot I’d had it later that day.
The PM is rich? So what. He is leader of the Conservative Party not a Corbynite Marxist sect.
What voters want to see is their own economic circumstances improve which he and Hunt are doing by cutting inflation and growing the economy and hopefully in due course cutting tax as well.
As for getting rid of Rishi, barely more than a year ago OGH was telling Tories to get rid of Boris in favour of Rishi!
Cutting inflation is not a sufficient condition for people to "see their own economic circumstances improve". What matters to most people is the difference between their income inflation and price inflation. Inflation is still high.
We're not going destitute as fast as we were, darling. I think i'll vote conservative now.
And don't forget the cumulative effect - it will be quite some time before real wages are back where they were before Sunak got in.
Yes. We're just off the back of 20 straight months of CPI inflation being above wage inflation. We've had one month with wages going up faster than CPI. So even if every month is the mirror of the months before, we'll still be worse off than we were in October 2021 by the time the election comes around.
Especially thanks to fiscal drag.
Real take-home wages are still falling currently, even with nominal wages growing faster than inflation.
You’re in danger of post hoc data mining
Wages aren’t growing!
Oops.
Real wages aren’t growing! 😁
Fuck!
Shit! Umm! Fiscal drag, thats’s it. Fiscal drag!
Realtake-home wages aren’t growing! 😁
Excuse me but I've been banging the drum on fiscal drag and opposed it since it was announced. I'm entirely consistent.
And of course I was a loyal Tory until Sunak started putting up taxes like National Insurance and fiscal drag.
I have my principles. I believe people should be able to keep more of their own income they work for. The Tories used to believe that too.
I haven't left the Tories, Sunak's Tories have left me.
Though you did also vote for Blair so not that loyal a Tory even before Sunak
And I'm sure you're excited to have only the purest of heart be the only ones to vote for your party next time then.
Loyal Tories would have voted Conservative in 2019 and still be voting Conservative now.
Loyal Labour would have voted Labour in 2019 and still be voting Labour now.
Everyone else is a swing voter to some degree, including you
I assume you vote Tory because they best represent your views. If they no longer did why would you vote for them? They aren't a football team.
Presumably if they moved too far to the right for you, you would vote LD or abstain. If they moved too far to the left for you, you would vote UKIP (or whatever they are called today) or abstain.
You surely wouldn't vote for a party whose views you didn't agree with?
Doesn't that also make you a swing voter as well, albeit that the Tories have never moved far enough for you to flip. The only difference between you and others who have flipped is the degree of movement from the core values of the party to cause you or them to change their vote.
BIB. Not really a response to the post or topic, but I think your sentence here is fascinating. I think, for an awful lot of people, their political party IS like a football team. A bit like having a football team in the family - "we're all Liverpool here" etc. Do the vast majority of voters really engage with politics to know enough about the parties to work out which one aligns best with their views and beliefs?
The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine has been awarded to a pair of scientists that developed the technology that led to the mRNA Covid vaccines.
They give these prizes out to any Tom, Dick and Harry these days....
There are some on the weird anti-vax community would have them subjected to a Nuremburg style trial for crimes against humanity...
By chance I had a Pfizer covid booster on saturday and sure as eggs is eggs, had an awful 24 hour period with high fever and feeling like crap. I have had this every time I've had an mRNA Covid shot, but not with the AZ ones. This is not going to stop me having them, but I do, think there is something in the delivery system that my body reacts violently to, much more so than any other vaccine I've ever had. The only other reaction I've had at all like it was a bird flu shot about 10 years ago.
That’s unfortunate. Mrs C and I had Pfizer booster’s on Wednesday and as usual, being a more sensitive subject than me, her arm hurt for a couple of days, whereas I forgot I’d had it later that day.
Its known that the immune system declines with age, and putting it delicately you and Mrs C have enjoyed more summers than most, so you probably benefit from that!
As I said, it doesn't put me off having it, as I really don't want covid (not knowingly had it yet (can't be many who can say that?). It does annoy me though and makes it more of a chore. Mostly back to 100% today.
I assume you vote Tory because they best represent your views. If they no longer did why would you vote for them? They aren't a football team.
If we had an electoral system for national elections that required voters to rank candidates or parties into preference order, do you think it would reduce the football team/tribalism aspect of politics a bit? Other parties might be mentally labelled as "my second choice" rather than simply "not my team, so bad". But maybe the us-vs-them aspect of human nature is just too strong...
The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine has been awarded to a pair of scientists that developed the technology that led to the mRNA Covid vaccines.
They give these prizes out to any Tom, Dick and Harry these days....
There are some on the weird anti-vax community would have them subjected to a Nuremburg style trial for crimes against humanity...
By chance I had a Pfizer covid booster on saturday and sure as eggs is eggs, had an awful 24 hour period with high fever and feeling like crap. I have had this every time I've had an mRNA Covid shot, but not with the AZ ones. This is not going to stop me having them, but I do, think there is something in the delivery system that my body reacts violently to, much more so than any other vaccine I've ever had. The only other reaction I've had at all like it was a bird flu shot about 10 years ago.
I had quite the opposite experience. 24hr high fever with AZN, and not much at all from the mRNA jab.
Similarly with the immune response to Covid infection itself - some have a violent, sometimes dangerous immune response: others barely register it.
The risks, of course, are orders of magnitude higher with the bug itself.
Do we know why the booster jab is not yet available to buy like the flu one - can't be a capacity issue can it ?
I got it from my first AZ too, and not the others.
And today I have the real thing, for the first time in close to 2 years. Feeling decidedly crap.
The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine has been awarded to a pair of scientists that developed the technology that led to the mRNA Covid vaccines.
They give these prizes out to any Tom, Dick and Harry these days....
There are some on the weird anti-vax community would have them subjected to a Nuremburg style trial for crimes against humanity...
By chance I had a Pfizer covid booster on saturday and sure as eggs is eggs, had an awful 24 hour period with high fever and feeling like crap. I have had this every time I've had an mRNA Covid shot, but not with the AZ ones. This is not going to stop me having them, but I do, think there is something in the delivery system that my body reacts violently to, much more so than any other vaccine I've ever had. The only other reaction I've had at all like it was a bird flu shot about 10 years ago.
That’s unfortunate. Mrs C and I had Pfizer booster’s on Wednesday and as usual, being a more sensitive subject than me, her arm hurt for a couple of days, whereas I forgot I’d had it later that day.
Its known that the immune system declines with age, and putting it delicately you and Mrs C have enjoyed more summers than most, so you probably benefit from that!
As I said, it doesn't put me off having it, as I really don't want covid (not knowingly had it yet (can't be many who can say that?). It does annoy me though and makes it more of a chore. Mostly back to 100% today.
If I remember correctly you work at a university. I find that quite incredible you have managed to dodge the plague given the incubator / super spreaders of diseases (otherwise known as students) surrounding you.
The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine has been awarded to a pair of scientists that developed the technology that led to the mRNA Covid vaccines.
They give these prizes out to any Tom, Dick and Harry these days....
There are some on the weird anti-vax community would have them subjected to a Nuremburg style trial for crimes against humanity...
By chance I had a Pfizer covid booster on saturday and sure as eggs is eggs, had an awful 24 hour period with high fever and feeling like crap. I have had this every time I've had an mRNA Covid shot, but not with the AZ ones. This is not going to stop me having them, but I do, think there is something in the delivery system that my body reacts violently to, much more so than any other vaccine I've ever had. The only other reaction I've had at all like it was a bird flu shot about 10 years ago.
That’s unfortunate. Mrs C and I had Pfizer booster’s on Wednesday and as usual, being a more sensitive subject than me, her arm hurt for a couple of days, whereas I forgot I’d had it later that day.
Its known that the immune system declines with age, and putting it delicately you and Mrs C have enjoyed more summers than most, so you probably benefit from that!
As I said, it doesn't put me off having it, as I really don't want covid (not knowingly had it yet (can't be many who can say that?). It does annoy me though and makes it more of a chore. Mostly back to 100% today.
TBH I don’t think I’ve ever had a bad reaction to a vaccine. True about immune system declining though. Thank you for the implied compliment though!
Eventually this race-grifting will come to a total juddering halt
They are playing to their base.
They want to hear that Braverman is evil personified and feel good about themselves and their shibboleths, and retweet accordingly to signal that to their peer group, so this article delivers perfectly.
According to wikipedia, she's a Buddhist, her mother's Hindu, her father's Christian, and her husband's Jewish.
Sounds very Multicultural, though she misunderstands the teachings of 4 major world religions.
Eventually this race-grifting will come to a total juddering halt
They are playing to their base.
They want to hear that Braverman is evil personified and feel good about themselves and their shibboleths, and retweet accordingly to signal that to their peer group, so this article delivers perfectly.
According to wikipedia, she's a Buddhist, her mother's Hindu, her father's Christian, and her husband's Jewish.
Sounds very Multicultural, though she misunderstands the teachings of 4 major world religions.
Not sure about the Hindu bit; maybe regards refugees as Dalits.
The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine has been awarded to a pair of scientists that developed the technology that led to the mRNA Covid vaccines.
They give these prizes out to any Tom, Dick and Harry these days....
There are some on the weird anti-vax community would have them subjected to a Nuremburg style trial for crimes against humanity...
By chance I had a Pfizer covid booster on saturday and sure as eggs is eggs, had an awful 24 hour period with high fever and feeling like crap. I have had this every time I've had an mRNA Covid shot, but not with the AZ ones. This is not going to stop me having them, but I do, think there is something in the delivery system that my body reacts violently to, much more so than any other vaccine I've ever had. The only other reaction I've had at all like it was a bird flu shot about 10 years ago.
I had quite the opposite experience. 24hr high fever with AZN, and not much at all from the mRNA jab.
Similarly with the immune response to Covid infection itself - some have a violent, sometimes dangerous immune response: others barely register it.
The risks, of course, are orders of magnitude higher with the bug itself.
Do we know why the booster jab is not yet available to buy like the flu one - can't be a capacity issue can it ?
I got it from my first AZ too, and not the others.
And today I have the real thing, for the first time in close to 2 years. Feeling decidedly crap.
Hope it passes soon Tim. I have had it twice, once without really even knowing it apart from the test and the other it felt like I had someone standing on all my joints for 3 days. So you have my sympathy and best wishes.
I am waiting for the call for my jabs (Flu and Covid). I am hearing a lot more friends say they had a bit of a kicking from the jabs this year compared to previously but I am still looking forward to getting it - if not to any after effects.
The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine has been awarded to a pair of scientists that developed the technology that led to the mRNA Covid vaccines.
They give these prizes out to any Tom, Dick and Harry these days....
There are some on the weird anti-vax community would have them subjected to a Nuremburg style trial for crimes against humanity...
By chance I had a Pfizer covid booster on saturday and sure as eggs is eggs, had an awful 24 hour period with high fever and feeling like crap. I have had this every time I've had an mRNA Covid shot, but not with the AZ ones. This is not going to stop me having them, but I do, think there is something in the delivery system that my body reacts violently to, much more so than any other vaccine I've ever had. The only other reaction I've had at all like it was a bird flu shot about 10 years ago.
That’s unfortunate. Mrs C and I had Pfizer booster’s on Wednesday and as usual, being a more sensitive subject than me, her arm hurt for a couple of days, whereas I forgot I’d had it later that day.
Its known that the immune system declines with age, and putting it delicately you and Mrs C have enjoyed more summers than most, so you probably benefit from that!
As I said, it doesn't put me off having it, as I really don't want covid (not knowingly had it yet (can't be many who can say that?). It does annoy me though and makes it more of a chore. Mostly back to 100% today.
If I remember correctly you work at a university. I find that quite incredible you have managed to dodge the plague given that working environment.
Its a bit of a mystery. I was not the most regular of testers to be fair, but I genuinely haven't been unwell since 2019. I had a sore throat for a day or two in Feb 2022, tested (but nose only) negative. Subsequently there was evidence that the strains at the time were only giving positive tests after a throat swab (a colleague had this). I also received the vaccine in Feb 2021 as I teach pharmacists who all needed to be jabbed and we were included, so I was done early.
Honestly - I think I probably have had it, but only after being vaccinated and its only been mild. its just that I have never tested positive to confirm. My wife is the same.
I can’t see the HS2 uncertainty being promoted by no 10 to only then say it’s going to be saved .
I expect they will cancel the Manchester part and instead do something with the west to east links . The government has overseen a total fiasco with HS2 , why anyone would believe them with more promises is clearly going to be an issue !
They can’t however use any savings to dish out tax cuts as HS2 comes under capital spending .
The thing is, 'doing something with the west to east links' requires HS2 to be there.
From a Northern perspective, broadly, if it was one or the other, we'd rather have Northern Powerhouse Rail (i.e. fast Liverpool-Manchester-Leeds trains) than HS2. But it's not really one or the other. The central bit of the planned NPR route in the Integrated Rail Plan for the North and Midlands is infrastructure delivered by HS2 i.e. the section from Manchester to Manchester Airport, plus both stations. It's also worth pointing out that NPR also includes Newcastle-Leeds-Manchester-Birmingham trains. These, too, need the whole of HS2 Phase 2b (i.e. the Manchester-Crewe section).
It's not beyond the bounds of credibility that someone tasked with 'what decisions can we make about HS2 at the party conference in Manchester to show us in the best light' came up with 'prioritise NPR over HS2' but was so ignorant of the detail that they didn't realise the extent of the shared infrastructure.
I only heard the other day that if the 'high speed' hadn't been a factor, a stopping service to Birmingham could have used the trackbed of the Great Central Railway, relieving pressure on the WCML at a fraction of the cost of HS2. This idea is discussed here (worth reading the comments for informed views on both sides): https://www.railnews.co.uk/news/2020/04/20-monday-essay-could-the-great.html
Can we not be inventive and revive former infrastructure which was clearly built originally with some purpose, if we stop being obsessed with quite unnecessary bullet trains and grand 'too big to fail' projects?
It is frequently alleged that the Great Central Railway was built to ‘continental loading gauge’ so that international trains coming through the Channel Tunnel would have been able to use Watkin’s new main line, and this claim is also used to bolster a further myth that a reopened Great Central would be a workable (and cheaper) substitute for HS2. Although the GCR was well-engineered, neither of these claims bear close examination.
Yes, thank you, I have read the piece; I also recommended reading the comments to acquire a sense of the different arguments.
In response to that argument, firstly, as I acknowledged, the track isn't suitable for very high speed rail. Secondly, even if significant improvements were needed, improving an existing derelict railway line has got to be orders of magnitude cheaper than building a totally new one.
The PM is rich? So what. He is leader of the Conservative Party not a Corbynite Marxist sect.
What voters want to see is their own economic circumstances improve which he and Hunt are doing by cutting inflation and growing the economy and hopefully in due course cutting tax as well.
As for getting rid of Rishi, barely more than a year ago OGH was telling Tories to get rid of Boris in favour of Rishi!
Cutting inflation is not a sufficient condition for people to "see their own economic circumstances improve". What matters to most people is the difference between their income inflation and price inflation. Inflation is still high.
We're not going destitute as fast as we were, darling. I think i'll vote conservative now.
And don't forget the cumulative effect - it will be quite some time before real wages are back where they were before Sunak got in.
Yes. We're just off the back of 20 straight months of CPI inflation being above wage inflation. We've had one month with wages going up faster than CPI. So even if every month is the mirror of the months before, we'll still be worse off than we were in October 2021 by the time the election comes around.
Especially thanks to fiscal drag.
Real take-home wages are still falling currently, even with nominal wages growing faster than inflation.
You’re in danger of post hoc data mining
Wages aren’t growing!
Oops.
Real wages aren’t growing! 😁
Fuck!
Shit! Umm! Fiscal drag, thats’s it. Fiscal drag!
Realtake-home wages aren’t growing! 😁
Excuse me but I've been banging the drum on fiscal drag and opposed it since it was announced. I'm entirely consistent.
And of course I was a loyal Tory until Sunak started putting up taxes like National Insurance and fiscal drag.
I have my principles. I believe people should be able to keep more of their own income they work for. The Tories used to believe that too.
I haven't left the Tories, Sunak's Tories have left me.
I'm sure Rishi wants lower taxes. But he wants them in the same way that St Augustine wanted chastity.
(Unless he can find ways of cutting government spending on a recurring basis, I'd rather it was funded by taxes than borrowing. The mix of taxes he's using is a disgrace, though.)
Two questions.
How can you talk tax cuts when borrowing £100billion+ a year.
Why are we borrowing £100 billion this year instead of balancing the books now the pandemic is over?
There is nothing wrong with borrowing if you are using the money to invest eg in infrastructure or education where the return is substantially greater than the interest on the borrowing.
We have plenty of borrowing headroom. The national debt is about one year's GDP. Individuals often have mortgage debt of up to three time annual salary and find it sustainable. Plenty of headroom.
But to borrow to cut taxes is severely damaging and driven by ideology.
So I agree with your first sentence but not your second.
Pretty much the entire deficit is due to interest payments on government debt. So Britain would be in a much better place if it wasn't having to service so much debt. It doesn't make much sense to me to add even more debt, and even more future debt interest payments, particularly when the future demographic challenges means that it becomes harder to service debts in the future, with an ageing population, and a shrinking global population.
And besides all that, after the experience of the Truss Calamity, I'm amazed that anyone could think that Britain has any headroom to borrow more. The market response showed that there wasn't much appetite to lend Britain more money, nor confidence in Britain being able to service larger debts.
Worked out over the weekend that my newly-graduated daughter is paying a higher tax rate on her income (20% basic rate + 9% student loans graduate tax + 12 % national insurance = 41%) than my Dad is on his pension (40% higher rate of income tax). Absolutely insane.
Poor comparison , the 9% is a government payday/bank type loan so not a tax ( and if she does not earn big money she does not pay the loan back).
My Dad is a graduate, just like her, and he didn't have to pay it. It's a tax masquerading as a loan. Claiming otherwise is pure sophistry.
The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine has been awarded to a pair of scientists that developed the technology that led to the mRNA Covid vaccines.
They give these prizes out to any Tom, Dick and Harry these days....
There are some on the weird anti-vax community would have them subjected to a Nuremburg style trial for crimes against humanity...
By chance I had a Pfizer covid booster on saturday and sure as eggs is eggs, had an awful 24 hour period with high fever and feeling like crap. I have had this every time I've had an mRNA Covid shot, but not with the AZ ones. This is not going to stop me having them, but I do, think there is something in the delivery system that my body reacts violently to, much more so than any other vaccine I've ever had. The only other reaction I've had at all like it was a bird flu shot about 10 years ago.
I had quite the opposite experience. 24hr high fever with AZN, and not much at all from the mRNA jab.
Similarly with the immune response to Covid infection itself - some have a violent, sometimes dangerous immune response: others barely register it.
The risks, of course, are orders of magnitude higher with the bug itself.
Do we know why the booster jab is not yet available to buy like the flu one - can't be a capacity issue can it ?
I got it from my first AZ too, and not the others.
And today I have the real thing, for the first time in close to 2 years. Feeling decidedly crap.
Hope it passes soon Tim. I have had it twice, once without really even knowing it apart from the test and the other it felt like I had someone standing on all my joints for 3 days. So you have my sympathy and best wishes.
I am waiting for the call for my jabs (Flu and Covid). I am hearing a lot more friends say they had a bit of a kicking from the jabs this year compared to previously but I am still looking forward to getting it - if not to any after effects.
Had flu and Covid jab last week. OK all day. Did lots of serious hedge trimming and sawing of wood, then come the evening I was rubbish. Had serious shakes and a headache. Next morning the shakes had gone but felt very wimpy for 24 hours.
I’m getting sick and tired of this anti-wealth agenda, picking on people who have luxurious or successful lives like it is some kind of crime
And yes, it is time to crack down on spongers who never even LOOK for a proper job
Good morning
Bergholt Stuttley Johnson, commonly known as "Bloody Stupid" Johnson, was an architect and inventor blessed with inspiration and possibly insanity. His work was beloved by the rich, several of whom survived his commissions, and attained heights (or, in the case of his fifty-foot ha-ha, depths) rarely reached by others, at least not deliberately.
One of his most notable commissions was the landscaping of Quirm Manor, which he did with exquisite beauty and delicacy of touch creating a vista of subtle delights, which he then capped off by piling 2,000 tons of earth into an artificial hillock right in front of it, obscuring the view entirely.
Who are these 100K people who can get benefit but have no obligation to look for work?
Hunt seems to have just told Radio 4 that it is not people with illness or disability.
Partners of someone who is working full time?
I'm not certain on this but believe since Universal Credit is applied for as a family and not as individuals, if one partner works full time I'm guessing there is no requirement for the other to do so since the partner has already met the obligation to work.
What would Hunt propose? That someone working full time is denied universal credit despite working full time unless their partner does too?
Doesn't matter, since very little of this is going to happen before the next election. And then, it's pretty unlikely that it won't happen at all.
(See also: MOBILE PHONES TO BE BANNED IN SCHOOLS in today's Mail. Which has already melted down to GOVERNMENT TO ISSUE GUIDANCE.)
I don't see why any school wouldn't just insist on pupils handing in their phones at the start of the day and then giving them back at the end quite honestly.
Secure storage and identification, administrative burden etc.
We've managed to do it this term. It has made an appreaciable difference to children's attention.
The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine has been awarded to a pair of scientists that developed the technology that led to the mRNA Covid vaccines.
They give these prizes out to any Tom, Dick and Harry these days....
There are some on the weird anti-vax community would have them subjected to a Nuremburg style trial for crimes against humanity...
By chance I had a Pfizer covid booster on saturday and sure as eggs is eggs, had an awful 24 hour period with high fever and feeling like crap. I have had this every time I've had an mRNA Covid shot, but not with the AZ ones. This is not going to stop me having them, but I do, think there is something in the delivery system that my body reacts violently to, much more so than any other vaccine I've ever had. The only other reaction I've had at all like it was a bird flu shot about 10 years ago.
I had quite the opposite experience. 24hr high fever with AZN, and not much at all from the mRNA jab.
Similarly with the immune response to Covid infection itself - some have a violent, sometimes dangerous immune response: others barely register it.
The risks, of course, are orders of magnitude higher with the bug itself.
Do we know why the booster jab is not yet available to buy like the flu one - can't be a capacity issue can it ?
I got the Covid jab on Saturday too as I took my Dad and they had some spare at the end of the day.
As per above 24 hours of feeling wrecked and general muscle aches. OK now though apart from a dead arm.
Not much different to actual Covid (finally caught earlier this year), though that might be because the vaccine works...
The PM is rich? So what. He is leader of the Conservative Party not a Corbynite Marxist sect.
What voters want to see is their own economic circumstances improve which he and Hunt are doing by cutting inflation and growing the economy and hopefully in due course cutting tax as well.
As for getting rid of Rishi, barely more than a year ago OGH was telling Tories to get rid of Boris in favour of Rishi!
Cutting inflation is not a sufficient condition for people to "see their own economic circumstances improve". What matters to most people is the difference between their income inflation and price inflation. Inflation is still high.
We're not going destitute as fast as we were, darling. I think i'll vote conservative now.
And don't forget the cumulative effect - it will be quite some time before real wages are back where they were before Sunak got in.
Yes. We're just off the back of 20 straight months of CPI inflation being above wage inflation. We've had one month with wages going up faster than CPI. So even if every month is the mirror of the months before, we'll still be worse off than we were in October 2021 by the time the election comes around.
Especially thanks to fiscal drag.
Real take-home wages are still falling currently, even with nominal wages growing faster than inflation.
You’re in danger of post hoc data mining
Wages aren’t growing!
Oops.
Real wages aren’t growing! 😁
Fuck!
Shit! Umm! Fiscal drag, thats’s it. Fiscal drag!
Realtake-home wages aren’t growing! 😁
Excuse me but I've been banging the drum on fiscal drag and opposed it since it was announced. I'm entirely consistent.
And of course I was a loyal Tory until Sunak started putting up taxes like National Insurance and fiscal drag.
I have my principles. I believe people should be able to keep more of their own income they work for. The Tories used to believe that too.
I haven't left the Tories, Sunak's Tories have left me.
I'm sure Rishi wants lower taxes. But he wants them in the same way that St Augustine wanted chastity.
(Unless he can find ways of cutting government spending on a recurring basis, I'd rather it was funded by taxes than borrowing. The mix of taxes he's using is a disgrace, though.)
Two questions.
How can you talk tax cuts when borrowing £100billion+ a year.
Why are we borrowing £100 billion this year instead of balancing the books now the pandemic is over?
There is nothing wrong with borrowing if you are using the money to invest eg in infrastructure or education where the return is substantially greater than the interest on the borrowing.
We have plenty of borrowing headroom. The national debt is about one year's GDP. Individuals often have mortgage debt of up to three time annual salary and find it sustainable. Plenty of headroom.
But to borrow to cut taxes is severely damaging and driven by ideology.
So I agree with your first sentence but not your second.
Pretty much the entire deficit is due to interest payments on government debt. So Britain would be in a much better place if it wasn't having to service so much debt. It doesn't make much sense to me to add even more debt, and even more future debt interest payments, particularly when the future demographic challenges means that it becomes harder to service debts in the future, with an ageing population, and a shrinking global population.
And besides all that, after the experience of the Truss Calamity, I'm amazed that anyone could think that Britain has any headroom to borrow more. The market response showed that there wasn't much appetite to lend Britain more money, nor confidence in Britain being able to service larger debts.
Worked out over the weekend that my newly-graduated daughter is paying a higher tax rate on her income (20% basic rate + 9% student loans graduate tax + 12 % national insurance = 41%) than my Dad is on his pension (40% higher rate of income tax). Absolutely insane.
Poor comparison , the 9% is a government payday/bank type loan so not a tax ( and if she does not earn big money she does not pay the loan back).
My Dad is a graduate, just like her, and he didn't have to pay it. It's a tax masquerading as a loan. Claiming otherwise is pure sophistry.
Just like National Insurance is a tax masquerading as Insurance.
All these taxes should be merged into one and everyone should pay the same rate of tax.
This of course horrifies those currently exempt from paying NIC and the Graduate Tax while expecting others to pay them both.
The PM is rich? So what. He is leader of the Conservative Party not a Corbynite Marxist sect.
What voters want to see is their own economic circumstances improve which he and Hunt are doing by cutting inflation and growing the economy and hopefully in due course cutting tax as well.
As for getting rid of Rishi, barely more than a year ago OGH was telling Tories to get rid of Boris in favour of Rishi!
Cutting inflation is not a sufficient condition for people to "see their own economic circumstances improve". What matters to most people is the difference between their income inflation and price inflation. Inflation is still high.
We're not going destitute as fast as we were, darling. I think i'll vote conservative now.
And don't forget the cumulative effect - it will be quite some time before real wages are back where they were before Sunak got in.
Yes. We're just off the back of 20 straight months of CPI inflation being above wage inflation. We've had one month with wages going up faster than CPI. So even if every month is the mirror of the months before, we'll still be worse off than we were in October 2021 by the time the election comes around.
Especially thanks to fiscal drag.
Real take-home wages are still falling currently, even with nominal wages growing faster than inflation.
You’re in danger of post hoc data mining
Wages aren’t growing!
Oops.
Real wages aren’t growing! 😁
Fuck!
Shit! Umm! Fiscal drag, thats’s it. Fiscal drag!
Realtake-home wages aren’t growing! 😁
Excuse me but I've been banging the drum on fiscal drag and opposed it since it was announced. I'm entirely consistent.
And of course I was a loyal Tory until Sunak started putting up taxes like National Insurance and fiscal drag.
I have my principles. I believe people should be able to keep more of their own income they work for. The Tories used to believe that too.
I haven't left the Tories, Sunak's Tories have left me.
I'm sure Rishi wants lower taxes. But he wants them in the same way that St Augustine wanted chastity.
(Unless he can find ways of cutting government spending on a recurring basis, I'd rather it was funded by taxes than borrowing. The mix of taxes he's using is a disgrace, though.)
Two questions.
How can you talk tax cuts when borrowing £100billion+ a year.
Why are we borrowing £100 billion this year instead of balancing the books now the pandemic is over?
There is nothing wrong with borrowing if you are using the money to invest eg in infrastructure or education where the return is substantially greater than the interest on the borrowing.
We have plenty of borrowing headroom. The national debt is about one year's GDP. Individuals often have mortgage debt of up to three time annual salary and find it sustainable. Plenty of headroom.
But to borrow to cut taxes is severely damaging and driven by ideology.
So I agree with your first sentence but not your second.
Pretty much the entire deficit is due to interest payments on government debt. So Britain would be in a much better place if it wasn't having to service so much debt. It doesn't make much sense to me to add even more debt, and even more future debt interest payments, particularly when the future demographic challenges means that it becomes harder to service debts in the future, with an ageing population, and a shrinking global population.
And besides all that, after the experience of the Truss Calamity, I'm amazed that anyone could think that Britain has any headroom to borrow more. The market response showed that there wasn't much appetite to lend Britain more money, nor confidence in Britain being able to service larger debts.
Worked out over the weekend that my newly-graduated daughter is paying a higher tax rate on her income (20% basic rate + 9% student loans graduate tax + 12 % national insurance = 41%) than my Dad is on his pension (40% higher rate of income tax). Absolutely insane.
Poor comparison , the 9% is a government payday/bank type loan so not a tax ( and if she does not earn big money she does not pay the loan back).
Its a tax, which is why its levied by HMRC and incorporated within PAYE.
I had my Covid booster on Saturday and my flu one the previous week. Absolutely no reaction to either, or any of the previous vaccines. And still Covid free.
And yesterday I successfully mortared back into place a slate step, which I felt quite proud of.
Who are these 100K people who can get benefit but have no obligation to look for work?
Hunt seems to have just told Radio 4 that it is not people with illness or disability.
Partners of someone who is working full time?
I'm not certain on this but believe since Universal Credit is applied for as a family and not as individuals, if one partner works full time I'm guessing there is no requirement for the other to do so since the partner has already met the obligation to work.
What would Hunt propose? That someone working full time is denied universal credit despite working full time unless their partner does too?
Doesn't matter, since very little of this is going to happen before the next election. And then, it's pretty unlikely that it won't happen at all.
(See also: MOBILE PHONES TO BE BANNED IN SCHOOLS in today's Mail. Which has already melted down to GOVERNMENT TO ISSUE GUIDANCE.)
I don't see why any school wouldn't just insist on pupils handing in their phones at the start of the day and then giving them back at the end quite honestly.
Secure storage and identification, administrative burden etc.
We've managed to do it this term. It has made an appreaciable difference to children's attention.
Looking at our catchment secondary they have a strict no phones policy, looking further "off and in bag" is OK though. Could change before 2033 though.
Amazing that they have found a far right politician who is NOT in the pay of Russia.
And the thing is, supporters of the AfD probably won't care. It's been remarkable how immune the populist parties and individuals are from being damaged by their connections with hostile states, even when the evidence is completely blatant. It does imply that the far right, like the far left, are more concerned with cultural questions than national ones.
The PM is rich? So what. He is leader of the Conservative Party not a Corbynite Marxist sect.
What voters want to see is their own economic circumstances improve which he and Hunt are doing by cutting inflation and growing the economy and hopefully in due course cutting tax as well.
As for getting rid of Rishi, barely more than a year ago OGH was telling Tories to get rid of Boris in favour of Rishi!
Cutting inflation is not a sufficient condition for people to "see their own economic circumstances improve". What matters to most people is the difference between their income inflation and price inflation. Inflation is still high.
We're not going destitute as fast as we were, darling. I think i'll vote conservative now.
And don't forget the cumulative effect - it will be quite some time before real wages are back where they were before Sunak got in.
Yes. We're just off the back of 20 straight months of CPI inflation being above wage inflation. We've had one month with wages going up faster than CPI. So even if every month is the mirror of the months before, we'll still be worse off than we were in October 2021 by the time the election comes around.
Especially thanks to fiscal drag.
Real take-home wages are still falling currently, even with nominal wages growing faster than inflation.
You’re in danger of post hoc data mining
Wages aren’t growing!
Oops.
Real wages aren’t growing! 😁
Fuck!
Shit! Umm! Fiscal drag, thats’s it. Fiscal drag!
Realtake-home wages aren’t growing! 😁
You’re in danger of wrapping yourself in a comfortable blanket of argument while, I suspect, Bart’s position better reflects the experience of the electorate.
He has two drums that he bangs with monotonous regularity. It gives me a headache.
Fiscal drag sucks. It’s a sneaky tax. But it’s not what people focus on - they see their tax home pay go up, but are struggling to make ends meet because prices are going up faster.
Unfortunately the size of state that the electorate wants needs to be paid for. If there was a government that was willing to be more disciplined then there would be saving that could be made, but that isn’t this government or (I suspect) the next one.
But the level of tax rises that are needed to balance the budget (or at least reduce the deficit below the rate of GDP growth) are too large to be affordable by the rich (however defined). They have already made significant contributions (eg additional rate threshold cut by £25k - that’s £1,250 extra income tax from each individual) as have companies with the planned increase in corporation tax.
there will be more tax rises to come for the wealthy, but the middle income voter needs to contribute as well.
Middle income earners can already be on 80% real marginal tax rates - how much higher than that should those go?
How about taxing everyone the same so everyone contributes equally, rather than opting some out of NICs etc?
Why should some be exempt from contributing whatsoever?
You really are thick , NIC is supposed to be paid till you are state pension age, hence why it stops DUMBO. Fact that a few pensioners work part time after that makes no difference and would raise peanuts you stupid half witted idiot.
The PM is rich? So what. He is leader of the Conservative Party not a Corbynite Marxist sect.
What voters want to see is their own economic circumstances improve which he and Hunt are doing by cutting inflation and growing the economy and hopefully in due course cutting tax as well.
As for getting rid of Rishi, barely more than a year ago OGH was telling Tories to get rid of Boris in favour of Rishi!
Cutting inflation is not a sufficient condition for people to "see their own economic circumstances improve". What matters to most people is the difference between their income inflation and price inflation. Inflation is still high.
We're not going destitute as fast as we were, darling. I think i'll vote conservative now.
And don't forget the cumulative effect - it will be quite some time before real wages are back where they were before Sunak got in.
Yes. We're just off the back of 20 straight months of CPI inflation being above wage inflation. We've had one month with wages going up faster than CPI. So even if every month is the mirror of the months before, we'll still be worse off than we were in October 2021 by the time the election comes around.
Especially thanks to fiscal drag.
Real take-home wages are still falling currently, even with nominal wages growing faster than inflation.
You’re in danger of post hoc data mining
Wages aren’t growing!
Oops.
Real wages aren’t growing! 😁
Fuck!
Shit! Umm! Fiscal drag, thats’s it. Fiscal drag!
Realtake-home wages aren’t growing! 😁
Excuse me but I've been banging the drum on fiscal drag and opposed it since it was announced. I'm entirely consistent.
And of course I was a loyal Tory until Sunak started putting up taxes like National Insurance and fiscal drag.
I have my principles. I believe people should be able to keep more of their own income they work for. The Tories used to believe that too.
I haven't left the Tories, Sunak's Tories have left me.
I'm sure Rishi wants lower taxes. But he wants them in the same way that St Augustine wanted chastity.
(Unless he can find ways of cutting government spending on a recurring basis, I'd rather it was funded by taxes than borrowing. The mix of taxes he's using is a disgrace, though.)
Two questions.
How can you talk tax cuts when borrowing £100billion+ a year.
Why are we borrowing £100 billion this year instead of balancing the books now the pandemic is over?
There is nothing wrong with borrowing if you are using the money to invest eg in infrastructure or education where the return is substantially greater than the interest on the borrowing.
We have plenty of borrowing headroom. The national debt is about one year's GDP. Individuals often have mortgage debt of up to three time annual salary and find it sustainable. Plenty of headroom.
But to borrow to cut taxes is severely damaging and driven by ideology.
So I agree with your first sentence but not your second.
Pretty much the entire deficit is due to interest payments on government debt. So Britain would be in a much better place if it wasn't having to service so much debt. It doesn't make much sense to me to add even more debt, and even more future debt interest payments, particularly when the future demographic challenges means that it becomes harder to service debts in the future, with an ageing population, and a shrinking global population.
And besides all that, after the experience of the Truss Calamity, I'm amazed that anyone could think that Britain has any headroom to borrow more. The market response showed that there wasn't much appetite to lend Britain more money, nor confidence in Britain being able to service larger debts.
Worked out over the weekend that my newly-graduated daughter is paying a higher tax rate on her income (20% basic rate + 9% student loans graduate tax + 12 % national insurance = 41%) than my Dad is on his pension (40% higher rate of income tax). Absolutely insane.
Poor comparison , the 9% is a government payday/bank type loan so not a tax ( and if she does not earn big money she does not pay the loan back).
Its a tax, which is why its levied by HMRC and incorporated within PAYE.
And its cute that you think £25k is "big money".
Is there anything you do not consider as tax.
Yes. Anything not set by the Chancellor of the Exchequer or levied by HMRC.
Ye Gods, are we back to "super spreaders" and "my vax story" again?
Somebody make it stop.
What would you like to discuss? The Covid and vax posts started as a response to the Nobel prize for Medicine to the originators of mRNA technology. To be honest does anyone want to talk about the Tory conference?
The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine has been awarded to a pair of scientists that developed the technology that led to the mRNA Covid vaccines.
They give these prizes out to any Tom, Dick and Harry these days....
There are some on the weird anti-vax community would have them subjected to a Nuremburg style trial for crimes against humanity...
By chance I had a Pfizer covid booster on saturday and sure as eggs is eggs, had an awful 24 hour period with high fever and feeling like crap. I have had this every time I've had an mRNA Covid shot, but not with the AZ ones. This is not going to stop me having them, but I do, think there is something in the delivery system that my body reacts violently to, much more so than any other vaccine I've ever had. The only other reaction I've had at all like it was a bird flu shot about 10 years ago.
I had quite the opposite experience. 24hr high fever with AZN, and not much at all from the mRNA jab.
Similarly with the immune response to Covid infection itself - some have a violent, sometimes dangerous immune response: others barely register it.
The risks, of course, are orders of magnitude higher with the bug itself.
Do we know why the booster jab is not yet available to buy like the flu one - can't be a capacity issue can it ?
I got it from my first AZ too, and not the others.
And today I have the real thing, for the first time in close to 2 years. Feeling decidedly crap.
Yeah, there is a lot of it about again, with admissions sharply up in my hospital, albeit nothing like previous autumn's. Staff masked again in clinical areas as policy and have had my booster and flu 10 days ago. No after effects.
The PM is rich? So what. He is leader of the Conservative Party not a Corbynite Marxist sect.
What voters want to see is their own economic circumstances improve which he and Hunt are doing by cutting inflation and growing the economy and hopefully in due course cutting tax as well.
As for getting rid of Rishi, barely more than a year ago OGH was telling Tories to get rid of Boris in favour of Rishi!
Cutting inflation is not a sufficient condition for people to "see their own economic circumstances improve". What matters to most people is the difference between their income inflation and price inflation. Inflation is still high.
We're not going destitute as fast as we were, darling. I think i'll vote conservative now.
And don't forget the cumulative effect - it will be quite some time before real wages are back where they were before Sunak got in.
Yes. We're just off the back of 20 straight months of CPI inflation being above wage inflation. We've had one month with wages going up faster than CPI. So even if every month is the mirror of the months before, we'll still be worse off than we were in October 2021 by the time the election comes around.
Especially thanks to fiscal drag.
Real take-home wages are still falling currently, even with nominal wages growing faster than inflation.
You’re in danger of post hoc data mining
Wages aren’t growing!
Oops.
Real wages aren’t growing! 😁
Fuck!
Shit! Umm! Fiscal drag, thats’s it. Fiscal drag!
Realtake-home wages aren’t growing! 😁
You’re in danger of wrapping yourself in a comfortable blanket of argument while, I suspect, Bart’s position better reflects the experience of the electorate.
He has two drums that he bangs with monotonous regularity. It gives me a headache.
Fiscal drag sucks. It’s a sneaky tax. But it’s not what people focus on - they see their tax home pay go up, but are struggling to make ends meet because prices are going up faster.
Unfortunately the size of state that the electorate wants needs to be paid for. If there was a government that was willing to be more disciplined then there would be saving that could be made, but that isn’t this government or (I suspect) the next one.
But the level of tax rises that are needed to balance the budget (or at least reduce the deficit below the rate of GDP growth) are too large to be affordable by the rich (however defined). They have already made significant contributions (eg additional rate threshold cut by £25k - that’s £1,250 extra income tax from each individual) as have companies with the planned increase in corporation tax.
there will be more tax rises to come for the wealthy, but the middle income voter needs to contribute as well.
Middle income earners can already be on 80% real marginal tax rates - how much higher than that should those go?
How about taxing everyone the same so everyone contributes equally, rather than opting some out of NICs etc?
Why should some be exempt from contributing whatsoever?
You really are thick , NIC is supposed to be paid till you are state pension age, hence why it stops DUMBO. Fact that a few pensioners work part time after that makes no difference and would raise peanuts you stupid half witted idiot.
I know what its supposed to be paid until, but things can be changed. Why should it stop once at pension age? What good reason is there for it not to apply to pensions, or investment incomes like from letting out homes, or dividends and so on and so forth?
I never said it should be levied on pensioners who work part time, did I?
I said it should be levied on all income that income tax applies to. Which would include pensioners working, yes, so it would also include pensions, money from letting out properties etc
Since everything the NIC tax pays is PAYG and there is no pot of money that has been accrued to fund obligations, it should be paid equitably as you go by everyone and not only those working for their pay.
The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine has been awarded to a pair of scientists that developed the technology that led to the mRNA Covid vaccines.
They give these prizes out to any Tom, Dick and Harry these days....
There are some on the weird anti-vax community would have them subjected to a Nuremburg style trial for crimes against humanity...
By chance I had a Pfizer covid booster on saturday and sure as eggs is eggs, had an awful 24 hour period with high fever and feeling like crap. I have had this every time I've had an mRNA Covid shot, but not with the AZ ones. This is not going to stop me having them, but I do, think there is something in the delivery system that my body reacts violently to, much more so than any other vaccine I've ever had. The only other reaction I've had at all like it was a bird flu shot about 10 years ago.
I had quite the opposite experience. 24hr high fever with AZN, and not much at all from the mRNA jab.
Similarly with the immune response to Covid infection itself - some have a violent, sometimes dangerous immune response: others barely register it.
The risks, of course, are orders of magnitude higher with the bug itself.
Do we know why the booster jab is not yet available to buy like the flu one - can't be a capacity issue can it ?
I got it from my first AZ too, and not the others.
And today I have the real thing, for the first time in close to 2 years. Feeling decidedly crap.
Hope it passes soon Tim. I have had it twice, once without really even knowing it apart from the test and the other it felt like I had someone standing on all my joints for 3 days. So you have my sympathy and best wishes.
I am waiting for the call for my jabs (Flu and Covid). I am hearing a lot more friends say they had a bit of a kicking from the jabs this year compared to previously but I am still looking forward to getting it - if not to any after effects.
Had the flu jab over the weekend. No noticeable reaction at all.
The PM is rich? So what. He is leader of the Conservative Party not a Corbynite Marxist sect.
What voters want to see is their own economic circumstances improve which he and Hunt are doing by cutting inflation and growing the economy and hopefully in due course cutting tax as well.
As for getting rid of Rishi, barely more than a year ago OGH was telling Tories to get rid of Boris in favour of Rishi!
Cutting inflation is not a sufficient condition for people to "see their own economic circumstances improve". What matters to most people is the difference between their income inflation and price inflation. Inflation is still high.
We're not going destitute as fast as we were, darling. I think i'll vote conservative now.
And don't forget the cumulative effect - it will be quite some time before real wages are back where they were before Sunak got in.
Yes. We're just off the back of 20 straight months of CPI inflation being above wage inflation. We've had one month with wages going up faster than CPI. So even if every month is the mirror of the months before, we'll still be worse off than we were in October 2021 by the time the election comes around.
Especially thanks to fiscal drag.
Real take-home wages are still falling currently, even with nominal wages growing faster than inflation.
You’re in danger of post hoc data mining
Wages aren’t growing!
Oops.
Real wages aren’t growing! 😁
Fuck!
Shit! Umm! Fiscal drag, thats’s it. Fiscal drag!
Realtake-home wages aren’t growing! 😁
Excuse me but I've been banging the drum on fiscal drag and opposed it since it was announced. I'm entirely consistent.
And of course I was a loyal Tory until Sunak started putting up taxes like National Insurance and fiscal drag.
I have my principles. I believe people should be able to keep more of their own income they work for. The Tories used to believe that too.
I haven't left the Tories, Sunak's Tories have left me.
I'm sure Rishi wants lower taxes. But he wants them in the same way that St Augustine wanted chastity.
(Unless he can find ways of cutting government spending on a recurring basis, I'd rather it was funded by taxes than borrowing. The mix of taxes he's using is a disgrace, though.)
Two questions.
How can you talk tax cuts when borrowing £100billion+ a year.
Why are we borrowing £100 billion this year instead of balancing the books now the pandemic is over?
There is nothing wrong with borrowing if you are using the money to invest eg in infrastructure or education where the return is substantially greater than the interest on the borrowing.
We have plenty of borrowing headroom. The national debt is about one year's GDP. Individuals often have mortgage debt of up to three time annual salary and find it sustainable. Plenty of headroom.
But to borrow to cut taxes is severely damaging and driven by ideology.
So I agree with your first sentence but not your second.
Pretty much the entire deficit is due to interest payments on government debt. So Britain would be in a much better place if it wasn't having to service so much debt. It doesn't make much sense to me to add even more debt, and even more future debt interest payments, particularly when the future demographic challenges means that it becomes harder to service debts in the future, with an ageing population, and a shrinking global population.
And besides all that, after the experience of the Truss Calamity, I'm amazed that anyone could think that Britain has any headroom to borrow more. The market response showed that there wasn't much appetite to lend Britain more money, nor confidence in Britain being able to service larger debts.
Worked out over the weekend that my newly-graduated daughter is paying a higher tax rate on her income (20% basic rate + 9% student loans graduate tax + 12 % national insurance = 41%) than my Dad is on his pension (40% higher rate of income tax). Absolutely insane.
Poor comparison , the 9% is a government payday/bank type loan so not a tax ( and if she does not earn big money she does not pay the loan back).
My Dad is a graduate, just like her, and he didn't have to pay it. It's a tax masquerading as a loan. Claiming otherwise is pure sophistry.
Letting so many people be paid by state to go to university is the issue ( only a fraction of the current volumes were at university when her Dad dit it ). Those who need to for certain jobs should go and pay for it , the others should jsut take a job and save wasting time and money. If as Idiot Bart says she is earning 25K then she could just as easily taken a job at a till in Tesco's and been earning for years and have no LOAN to pay back.
The PM is rich? So what. He is leader of the Conservative Party not a Corbynite Marxist sect.
What voters want to see is their own economic circumstances improve which he and Hunt are doing by cutting inflation and growing the economy and hopefully in due course cutting tax as well.
As for getting rid of Rishi, barely more than a year ago OGH was telling Tories to get rid of Boris in favour of Rishi!
Cutting inflation is not a sufficient condition for people to "see their own economic circumstances improve". What matters to most people is the difference between their income inflation and price inflation. Inflation is still high.
We're not going destitute as fast as we were, darling. I think i'll vote conservative now.
And don't forget the cumulative effect - it will be quite some time before real wages are back where they were before Sunak got in.
Yes. We're just off the back of 20 straight months of CPI inflation being above wage inflation. We've had one month with wages going up faster than CPI. So even if every month is the mirror of the months before, we'll still be worse off than we were in October 2021 by the time the election comes around.
Especially thanks to fiscal drag.
Real take-home wages are still falling currently, even with nominal wages growing faster than inflation.
You’re in danger of post hoc data mining
Wages aren’t growing!
Oops.
Real wages aren’t growing! 😁
Fuck!
Shit! Umm! Fiscal drag, thats’s it. Fiscal drag!
Realtake-home wages aren’t growing! 😁
Excuse me but I've been banging the drum on fiscal drag and opposed it since it was announced. I'm entirely consistent.
And of course I was a loyal Tory until Sunak started putting up taxes like National Insurance and fiscal drag.
I have my principles. I believe people should be able to keep more of their own income they work for. The Tories used to believe that too.
I haven't left the Tories, Sunak's Tories have left me.
I'm sure Rishi wants lower taxes. But he wants them in the same way that St Augustine wanted chastity.
(Unless he can find ways of cutting government spending on a recurring basis, I'd rather it was funded by taxes than borrowing. The mix of taxes he's using is a disgrace, though.)
Two questions.
How can you talk tax cuts when borrowing £100billion+ a year.
Why are we borrowing £100 billion this year instead of balancing the books now the pandemic is over?
There is nothing wrong with borrowing if you are using the money to invest eg in infrastructure or education where the return is substantially greater than the interest on the borrowing.
We have plenty of borrowing headroom. The national debt is about one year's GDP. Individuals often have mortgage debt of up to three time annual salary and find it sustainable. Plenty of headroom.
But to borrow to cut taxes is severely damaging and driven by ideology.
So I agree with your first sentence but not your second.
Pretty much the entire deficit is due to interest payments on government debt. So Britain would be in a much better place if it wasn't having to service so much debt. It doesn't make much sense to me to add even more debt, and even more future debt interest payments, particularly when the future demographic challenges means that it becomes harder to service debts in the future, with an ageing population, and a shrinking global population.
And besides all that, after the experience of the Truss Calamity, I'm amazed that anyone could think that Britain has any headroom to borrow more. The market response showed that there wasn't much appetite to lend Britain more money, nor confidence in Britain being able to service larger debts.
Worked out over the weekend that my newly-graduated daughter is paying a higher tax rate on her income (20% basic rate + 9% student loans graduate tax + 12 % national insurance = 41%) than my Dad is on his pension (40% higher rate of income tax). Absolutely insane.
Poor comparison , the 9% is a government payday/bank type loan so not a tax ( and if she does not earn big money she does not pay the loan back).
My Dad is a graduate, just like her, and he didn't have to pay it. It's a tax masquerading as a loan. Claiming otherwise is pure sophistry.
Just like National Insurance is a tax masquerading as Insurance.
All these taxes should be merged into one and everyone should pay the same rate of tax.
This of course horrifies those currently exempt from paying NIC and the Graduate Tax while expecting others to pay them both.
I've often said that NI should be rolled up into Tax. Not sure the single tax rate idea is good. If you have a higher income you should pay more. People on low incomes and pensioners can't do more to increase their incomes.
The PM is rich? So what. He is leader of the Conservative Party not a Corbynite Marxist sect.
What voters want to see is their own economic circumstances improve which he and Hunt are doing by cutting inflation and growing the economy and hopefully in due course cutting tax as well.
As for getting rid of Rishi, barely more than a year ago OGH was telling Tories to get rid of Boris in favour of Rishi!
Cutting inflation is not a sufficient condition for people to "see their own economic circumstances improve". What matters to most people is the difference between their income inflation and price inflation. Inflation is still high.
We're not going destitute as fast as we were, darling. I think i'll vote conservative now.
And don't forget the cumulative effect - it will be quite some time before real wages are back where they were before Sunak got in.
Yes. We're just off the back of 20 straight months of CPI inflation being above wage inflation. We've had one month with wages going up faster than CPI. So even if every month is the mirror of the months before, we'll still be worse off than we were in October 2021 by the time the election comes around.
Especially thanks to fiscal drag.
Real take-home wages are still falling currently, even with nominal wages growing faster than inflation.
You’re in danger of post hoc data mining
Wages aren’t growing!
Oops.
Real wages aren’t growing! 😁
Fuck!
Shit! Umm! Fiscal drag, thats’s it. Fiscal drag!
Realtake-home wages aren’t growing! 😁
Excuse me but I've been banging the drum on fiscal drag and opposed it since it was announced. I'm entirely consistent.
And of course I was a loyal Tory until Sunak started putting up taxes like National Insurance and fiscal drag.
I have my principles. I believe people should be able to keep more of their own income they work for. The Tories used to believe that too.
I haven't left the Tories, Sunak's Tories have left me.
I'm sure Rishi wants lower taxes. But he wants them in the same way that St Augustine wanted chastity.
(Unless he can find ways of cutting government spending on a recurring basis, I'd rather it was funded by taxes than borrowing. The mix of taxes he's using is a disgrace, though.)
Two questions.
How can you talk tax cuts when borrowing £100billion+ a year.
Why are we borrowing £100 billion this year instead of balancing the books now the pandemic is over?
There is nothing wrong with borrowing if you are using the money to invest eg in infrastructure or education where the return is substantially greater than the interest on the borrowing.
We have plenty of borrowing headroom. The national debt is about one year's GDP. Individuals often have mortgage debt of up to three time annual salary and find it sustainable. Plenty of headroom.
But to borrow to cut taxes is severely damaging and driven by ideology.
So I agree with your first sentence but not your second.
Pretty much the entire deficit is due to interest payments on government debt. So Britain would be in a much better place if it wasn't having to service so much debt. It doesn't make much sense to me to add even more debt, and even more future debt interest payments, particularly when the future demographic challenges means that it becomes harder to service debts in the future, with an ageing population, and a shrinking global population.
And besides all that, after the experience of the Truss Calamity, I'm amazed that anyone could think that Britain has any headroom to borrow more. The market response showed that there wasn't much appetite to lend Britain more money, nor confidence in Britain being able to service larger debts.
Worked out over the weekend that my newly-graduated daughter is paying a higher tax rate on her income (20% basic rate + 9% student loans graduate tax + 12 % national insurance = 41%) than my Dad is on his pension (40% higher rate of income tax). Absolutely insane.
Poor comparison , the 9% is a government payday/bank type loan so not a tax ( and if she does not earn big money she does not pay the loan back).
My Dad is a graduate, just like her, and he didn't have to pay it. It's a tax masquerading as a loan. Claiming otherwise is pure sophistry.
Just like National Insurance is a tax masquerading as Insurance.
All these taxes should be merged into one and everyone should pay the same rate of tax.
This of course horrifies those currently exempt from paying NIC and the Graduate Tax while expecting others to pay them both.
How would you propose to deal with graduates who took out a loan for university & have now paid it back. (That'll be a very common situation amongst younger gen X & older millenials)
Leaked doc shows Biden admin is more worried about Ukraine corruption than it says publicly https://www.politico.com/news/2023/10/02/biden-admin-ukraine-strategy-corruption-00119237 Biden administration officials are far more worried about corruption in Ukraine than they publicly admit, a confidential U.S. strategy document obtained by POLITICO suggests.
The “sensitive but unclassified” version of the long-term U.S. plan lays out numerous steps Washington is taking to help Kyiv root out malfeasance and otherwise reform an array of Ukrainian sectors. It stresses that corruption could cause Western allies to abandon Ukraine’s fight against Russia’s invasion, and that Kyiv cannot put off the anti-graft effort...
The PM is rich? So what. He is leader of the Conservative Party not a Corbynite Marxist sect.
What voters want to see is their own economic circumstances improve which he and Hunt are doing by cutting inflation and growing the economy and hopefully in due course cutting tax as well.
As for getting rid of Rishi, barely more than a year ago OGH was telling Tories to get rid of Boris in favour of Rishi!
Cutting inflation is not a sufficient condition for people to "see their own economic circumstances improve". What matters to most people is the difference between their income inflation and price inflation. Inflation is still high.
We're not going destitute as fast as we were, darling. I think i'll vote conservative now.
And don't forget the cumulative effect - it will be quite some time before real wages are back where they were before Sunak got in.
Yes. We're just off the back of 20 straight months of CPI inflation being above wage inflation. We've had one month with wages going up faster than CPI. So even if every month is the mirror of the months before, we'll still be worse off than we were in October 2021 by the time the election comes around.
Especially thanks to fiscal drag.
Real take-home wages are still falling currently, even with nominal wages growing faster than inflation.
You’re in danger of post hoc data mining
Wages aren’t growing!
Oops.
Real wages aren’t growing! 😁
Fuck!
Shit! Umm! Fiscal drag, thats’s it. Fiscal drag!
Realtake-home wages aren’t growing! 😁
You’re in danger of wrapping yourself in a comfortable blanket of argument while, I suspect, Bart’s position better reflects the experience of the electorate.
He has two drums that he bangs with monotonous regularity. It gives me a headache.
Fiscal drag sucks. It’s a sneaky tax. But it’s not what people focus on - they see their tax home pay go up, but are struggling to make ends meet because prices are going up faster.
Unfortunately the size of state that the electorate wants needs to be paid for. If there was a government that was willing to be more disciplined then there would be saving that could be made, but that isn’t this government or (I suspect) the next one.
But the level of tax rises that are needed to balance the budget (or at least reduce the deficit below the rate of GDP growth) are too large to be affordable by the rich (however defined). They have already made significant contributions (eg additional rate threshold cut by £25k - that’s £1,250 extra income tax from each individual) as have companies with the planned increase in corporation tax.
there will be more tax rises to come for the wealthy, but the middle income voter needs to contribute as well.
Middle income earners can already be on 80% real marginal tax rates - how much higher than that should those go?
How about taxing everyone the same so everyone contributes equally, rather than opting some out of NICs etc?
Why should some be exempt from contributing whatsoever?
You really are thick , NIC is supposed to be paid till you are state pension age, hence why it stops DUMBO. Fact that a few pensioners work part time after that makes no difference and would raise peanuts you stupid half witted idiot.
I know what its supposed to be paid until, but things can be changed. Why should it stop once at pension age? What good reason is there for it not to apply to pensions, or investment incomes like from letting out homes, or dividends and so on and so forth?
I never said it should be levied on pensioners who work part time, did I?
I said it should be levied on all income that income tax applies to. Which would include pensioners working, yes, so it would also include pensions, money from letting out properties etc
Since everything the NIC tax pays is PAYG and there is no pot of money that has been accrued to fund obligations, it should be paid equitably as you go by everyone and not only those working for their pay.
Don't be so stupid, why not have VAT on everything, you cannot get blood out of a stone. Why the Feck would you pay NI on your state pension that was provided due to teh vast amount of NI you had paid for it.
The PM is rich? So what. He is leader of the Conservative Party not a Corbynite Marxist sect.
What voters want to see is their own economic circumstances improve which he and Hunt are doing by cutting inflation and growing the economy and hopefully in due course cutting tax as well.
As for getting rid of Rishi, barely more than a year ago OGH was telling Tories to get rid of Boris in favour of Rishi!
Cutting inflation is not a sufficient condition for people to "see their own economic circumstances improve". What matters to most people is the difference between their income inflation and price inflation. Inflation is still high.
We're not going destitute as fast as we were, darling. I think i'll vote conservative now.
And don't forget the cumulative effect - it will be quite some time before real wages are back where they were before Sunak got in.
Yes. We're just off the back of 20 straight months of CPI inflation being above wage inflation. We've had one month with wages going up faster than CPI. So even if every month is the mirror of the months before, we'll still be worse off than we were in October 2021 by the time the election comes around.
Especially thanks to fiscal drag.
Real take-home wages are still falling currently, even with nominal wages growing faster than inflation.
You’re in danger of post hoc data mining
Wages aren’t growing!
Oops.
Real wages aren’t growing! 😁
Fuck!
Shit! Umm! Fiscal drag, thats’s it. Fiscal drag!
Realtake-home wages aren’t growing! 😁
Excuse me but I've been banging the drum on fiscal drag and opposed it since it was announced. I'm entirely consistent.
And of course I was a loyal Tory until Sunak started putting up taxes like National Insurance and fiscal drag.
I have my principles. I believe people should be able to keep more of their own income they work for. The Tories used to believe that too.
I haven't left the Tories, Sunak's Tories have left me.
I'm sure Rishi wants lower taxes. But he wants them in the same way that St Augustine wanted chastity.
(Unless he can find ways of cutting government spending on a recurring basis, I'd rather it was funded by taxes than borrowing. The mix of taxes he's using is a disgrace, though.)
Two questions.
How can you talk tax cuts when borrowing £100billion+ a year.
Why are we borrowing £100 billion this year instead of balancing the books now the pandemic is over?
There is nothing wrong with borrowing if you are using the money to invest eg in infrastructure or education where the return is substantially greater than the interest on the borrowing.
We have plenty of borrowing headroom. The national debt is about one year's GDP. Individuals often have mortgage debt of up to three time annual salary and find it sustainable. Plenty of headroom.
But to borrow to cut taxes is severely damaging and driven by ideology.
So I agree with your first sentence but not your second.
Pretty much the entire deficit is due to interest payments on government debt. So Britain would be in a much better place if it wasn't having to service so much debt. It doesn't make much sense to me to add even more debt, and even more future debt interest payments, particularly when the future demographic challenges means that it becomes harder to service debts in the future, with an ageing population, and a shrinking global population.
And besides all that, after the experience of the Truss Calamity, I'm amazed that anyone could think that Britain has any headroom to borrow more. The market response showed that there wasn't much appetite to lend Britain more money, nor confidence in Britain being able to service larger debts.
Worked out over the weekend that my newly-graduated daughter is paying a higher tax rate on her income (20% basic rate + 9% student loans graduate tax + 12 % national insurance = 41%) than my Dad is on his pension (40% higher rate of income tax). Absolutely insane.
Poor comparison , the 9% is a government payday/bank type loan so not a tax ( and if she does not earn big money she does not pay the loan back).
My Dad is a graduate, just like her, and he didn't have to pay it. It's a tax masquerading as a loan. Claiming otherwise is pure sophistry.
Letting so many people be paid by state to go to university is the issue ( only a fraction of the current volumes were at university when her Dad dit it ). Those who need to for certain jobs should go and pay for it , the others should jsut take a job and save wasting time and money. If as Idiot Bart says she is earning 25K then she could just as easily taken a job at a till in Tesco's and been earning for years and have no LOAN to pay back.
You really are an illiterate dumbo who can't understand what other people wrote aren't you? Maybe if you were better educated your reading comprehension would be better.
I never said she was earning £25k, I said that the repayment threshold is now set at £25k so graduates earning £25k or above is on an effective 9% higher income tax rate from that point on.
£25k is not in my view "big money" which is what you falsely claimed, do you think its big money?
Do you really think its air t hat someone on £25k or above should have a marginal tax rate of 41%? 20+12+9 = 41 whether you like it or not, don't be an innumerate dumbo, that's how the numbers are.
The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine has been awarded to a pair of scientists that developed the technology that led to the mRNA Covid vaccines.
They give these prizes out to any Tom, Dick and Harry these days....
There are some on the weird anti-vax community would have them subjected to a Nuremburg style trial for crimes against humanity...
By chance I had a Pfizer covid booster on saturday and sure as eggs is eggs, had an awful 24 hour period with high fever and feeling like crap. I have had this every time I've had an mRNA Covid shot, but not with the AZ ones. This is not going to stop me having them, but I do, think there is something in the delivery system that my body reacts violently to, much more so than any other vaccine I've ever had. The only other reaction I've had at all like it was a bird flu shot about 10 years ago.
I had quite the opposite experience. 24hr high fever with AZN, and not much at all from the mRNA jab.
Similarly with the immune response to Covid infection itself - some have a violent, sometimes dangerous immune response: others barely register it.
The risks, of course, are orders of magnitude higher with the bug itself.
Do we know why the booster jab is not yet available to buy like the flu one - can't be a capacity issue can it ?
I got it from my first AZ too, and not the others.
And today I have the real thing, for the first time in close to 2 years. Feeling decidedly crap.
Hope it passes soon Tim. I have had it twice, once without really even knowing it apart from the test and the other it felt like I had someone standing on all my joints for 3 days. So you have my sympathy and best wishes.
I am waiting for the call for my jabs (Flu and Covid). I am hearing a lot more friends say they had a bit of a kicking from the jabs this year compared to previously but I am still looking forward to getting it - if not to any after effects.
Had the flu jab over the weekend. No noticeable reaction at all.
Thought it was only old codgers getting it this time, I thought you were just a whippersnapper Nigel.
The PM is rich? So what. He is leader of the Conservative Party not a Corbynite Marxist sect.
What voters want to see is their own economic circumstances improve which he and Hunt are doing by cutting inflation and growing the economy and hopefully in due course cutting tax as well.
As for getting rid of Rishi, barely more than a year ago OGH was telling Tories to get rid of Boris in favour of Rishi!
Cutting inflation is not a sufficient condition for people to "see their own economic circumstances improve". What matters to most people is the difference between their income inflation and price inflation. Inflation is still high.
We're not going destitute as fast as we were, darling. I think i'll vote conservative now.
And don't forget the cumulative effect - it will be quite some time before real wages are back where they were before Sunak got in.
Yes. We're just off the back of 20 straight months of CPI inflation being above wage inflation. We've had one month with wages going up faster than CPI. So even if every month is the mirror of the months before, we'll still be worse off than we were in October 2021 by the time the election comes around.
Especially thanks to fiscal drag.
Real take-home wages are still falling currently, even with nominal wages growing faster than inflation.
You’re in danger of post hoc data mining
Wages aren’t growing!
Oops.
Real wages aren’t growing! 😁
Fuck!
Shit! Umm! Fiscal drag, thats’s it. Fiscal drag!
Realtake-home wages aren’t growing! 😁
You’re in danger of wrapping yourself in a comfortable blanket of argument while, I suspect, Bart’s position better reflects the experience of the electorate.
He has two drums that he bangs with monotonous regularity. It gives me a headache.
Fiscal drag sucks. It’s a sneaky tax. But it’s not what people focus on - they see their tax home pay go up, but are struggling to make ends meet because prices are going up faster.
Unfortunately the size of state that the electorate wants needs to be paid for. If there was a government that was willing to be more disciplined then there would be saving that could be made, but that isn’t this government or (I suspect) the next one.
But the level of tax rises that are needed to balance the budget (or at least reduce the deficit below the rate of GDP growth) are too large to be affordable by the rich (however defined). They have already made significant contributions (eg additional rate threshold cut by £25k - that’s £1,250 extra income tax from each individual) as have companies with the planned increase in corporation tax.
there will be more tax rises to come for the wealthy, but the middle income voter needs to contribute as well.
Middle income earners can already be on 80% real marginal tax rates - how much higher than that should those go?
How about taxing everyone the same so everyone contributes equally, rather than opting some out of NICs etc?
Why should some be exempt from contributing whatsoever?
You really are thick , NIC is supposed to be paid till you are state pension age, hence why it stops DUMBO. Fact that a few pensioners work part time after that makes no difference and would raise peanuts you stupid half witted idiot.
I know what its supposed to be paid until, but things can be changed. Why should it stop once at pension age? What good reason is there for it not to apply to pensions, or investment incomes like from letting out homes, or dividends and so on and so forth?
I never said it should be levied on pensioners who work part time, did I?
I said it should be levied on all income that income tax applies to. Which would include pensioners working, yes, so it would also include pensions, money from letting out properties etc
Since everything the NIC tax pays is PAYG and there is no pot of money that has been accrued to fund obligations, it should be paid equitably as you go by everyone and not only those working for their pay.
Don't be so stupid, why not have VAT on everything, you cannot get blood out of a stone. Why the Feck would you pay NI on your state pension that was provided due to teh vast amount of NI you had paid for it.
Because the state needs funding.
Why the Feck should you not pay NI on your state pension? Or private pensions too?
You've not "paid for it", its pay as you go, and the as you go hasn't finished.
I’m getting sick and tired of this anti-wealth agenda, picking on people who have luxurious or successful lives like it is some kind of crime
And yes, it is time to crack down on spongers who never even LOOK for a proper job
Good morning
Bergholt Stuttley Johnson, commonly known as "Bloody Stupid" Johnson, was an architect and inventor blessed with inspiration and possibly insanity. His work was beloved by the rich, several of whom survived his commissions, and attained heights (or, in the case of his fifty-foot ha-ha, depths) rarely reached by others, at least not deliberately.
One of his most notable commissions was the landscaping of Quirm Manor, which he did with exquisite beauty and delicacy of touch creating a vista of subtle delights, which he then capped off by piling 2,000 tons of earth into an artificial hillock right in front of it, obscuring the view entirely.
The PM is rich? So what. He is leader of the Conservative Party not a Corbynite Marxist sect.
What voters want to see is their own economic circumstances improve which he and Hunt are doing by cutting inflation and growing the economy and hopefully in due course cutting tax as well.
As for getting rid of Rishi, barely more than a year ago OGH was telling Tories to get rid of Boris in favour of Rishi!
Cutting inflation is not a sufficient condition for people to "see their own economic circumstances improve". What matters to most people is the difference between their income inflation and price inflation. Inflation is still high.
We're not going destitute as fast as we were, darling. I think i'll vote conservative now.
And don't forget the cumulative effect - it will be quite some time before real wages are back where they were before Sunak got in.
Yes. We're just off the back of 20 straight months of CPI inflation being above wage inflation. We've had one month with wages going up faster than CPI. So even if every month is the mirror of the months before, we'll still be worse off than we were in October 2021 by the time the election comes around.
Especially thanks to fiscal drag.
Real take-home wages are still falling currently, even with nominal wages growing faster than inflation.
You’re in danger of post hoc data mining
Wages aren’t growing!
Oops.
Real wages aren’t growing! 😁
Fuck!
Shit! Umm! Fiscal drag, thats’s it. Fiscal drag!
Realtake-home wages aren’t growing! 😁
Excuse me but I've been banging the drum on fiscal drag and opposed it since it was announced. I'm entirely consistent.
And of course I was a loyal Tory until Sunak started putting up taxes like National Insurance and fiscal drag.
I have my principles. I believe people should be able to keep more of their own income they work for. The Tories used to believe that too.
I haven't left the Tories, Sunak's Tories have left me.
I'm sure Rishi wants lower taxes. But he wants them in the same way that St Augustine wanted chastity.
(Unless he can find ways of cutting government spending on a recurring basis, I'd rather it was funded by taxes than borrowing. The mix of taxes he's using is a disgrace, though.)
Two questions.
How can you talk tax cuts when borrowing £100billion+ a year.
Why are we borrowing £100 billion this year instead of balancing the books now the pandemic is over?
There is nothing wrong with borrowing if you are using the money to invest eg in infrastructure or education where the return is substantially greater than the interest on the borrowing.
We have plenty of borrowing headroom. The national debt is about one year's GDP. Individuals often have mortgage debt of up to three time annual salary and find it sustainable. Plenty of headroom.
But to borrow to cut taxes is severely damaging and driven by ideology.
So I agree with your first sentence but not your second.
Pretty much the entire deficit is due to interest payments on government debt. So Britain would be in a much better place if it wasn't having to service so much debt. It doesn't make much sense to me to add even more debt, and even more future debt interest payments, particularly when the future demographic challenges means that it becomes harder to service debts in the future, with an ageing population, and a shrinking global population.
And besides all that, after the experience of the Truss Calamity, I'm amazed that anyone could think that Britain has any headroom to borrow more. The market response showed that there wasn't much appetite to lend Britain more money, nor confidence in Britain being able to service larger debts.
Worked out over the weekend that my newly-graduated daughter is paying a higher tax rate on her income (20% basic rate + 9% student loans graduate tax + 12 % national insurance = 41%) than my Dad is on his pension (40% higher rate of income tax). Absolutely insane.
Poor comparison , the 9% is a government payday/bank type loan so not a tax ( and if she does not earn big money she does not pay the loan back).
My Dad is a graduate, just like her, and he didn't have to pay it. It's a tax masquerading as a loan. Claiming otherwise is pure sophistry.
Just like National Insurance is a tax masquerading as Insurance.
All these taxes should be merged into one and everyone should pay the same rate of tax.
This of course horrifies those currently exempt from paying NIC and the Graduate Tax while expecting others to pay them both.
How would you propose to deal with graduates who took out a loan for university & have now paid it back. (That'll be a very common situation amongst younger gen X & older millenials)
Yes I know. I took out a student loan in 2000.
It sucks, but I don't think there's any alternative than to say we were robbed but we can't turn back time.
I would still have a single rate of tax. Including for those of us who were ripped off in my eyes.
I'd love the idea of a refund, but I can't see how that would work.
The PM is rich? So what. He is leader of the Conservative Party not a Corbynite Marxist sect.
What voters want to see is their own economic circumstances improve which he and Hunt are doing by cutting inflation and growing the economy and hopefully in due course cutting tax as well.
As for getting rid of Rishi, barely more than a year ago OGH was telling Tories to get rid of Boris in favour of Rishi!
Cutting inflation is not a sufficient condition for people to "see their own economic circumstances improve". What matters to most people is the difference between their income inflation and price inflation. Inflation is still high.
We're not going destitute as fast as we were, darling. I think i'll vote conservative now.
And don't forget the cumulative effect - it will be quite some time before real wages are back where they were before Sunak got in.
Yes. We're just off the back of 20 straight months of CPI inflation being above wage inflation. We've had one month with wages going up faster than CPI. So even if every month is the mirror of the months before, we'll still be worse off than we were in October 2021 by the time the election comes around.
Especially thanks to fiscal drag.
Real take-home wages are still falling currently, even with nominal wages growing faster than inflation.
You’re in danger of post hoc data mining
Wages aren’t growing!
Oops.
Real wages aren’t growing! 😁
Fuck!
Shit! Umm! Fiscal drag, thats’s it. Fiscal drag!
Realtake-home wages aren’t growing! 😁
Excuse me but I've been banging the drum on fiscal drag and opposed it since it was announced. I'm entirely consistent.
And of course I was a loyal Tory until Sunak started putting up taxes like National Insurance and fiscal drag.
I have my principles. I believe people should be able to keep more of their own income they work for. The Tories used to believe that too.
I haven't left the Tories, Sunak's Tories have left me.
I'm sure Rishi wants lower taxes. But he wants them in the same way that St Augustine wanted chastity.
(Unless he can find ways of cutting government spending on a recurring basis, I'd rather it was funded by taxes than borrowing. The mix of taxes he's using is a disgrace, though.)
Two questions.
How can you talk tax cuts when borrowing £100billion+ a year.
Why are we borrowing £100 billion this year instead of balancing the books now the pandemic is over?
There is nothing wrong with borrowing if you are using the money to invest eg in infrastructure or education where the return is substantially greater than the interest on the borrowing.
We have plenty of borrowing headroom. The national debt is about one year's GDP. Individuals often have mortgage debt of up to three time annual salary and find it sustainable. Plenty of headroom.
But to borrow to cut taxes is severely damaging and driven by ideology.
So I agree with your first sentence but not your second.
Pretty much the entire deficit is due to interest payments on government debt. So Britain would be in a much better place if it wasn't having to service so much debt. It doesn't make much sense to me to add even more debt, and even more future debt interest payments, particularly when the future demographic challenges means that it becomes harder to service debts in the future, with an ageing population, and a shrinking global population.
And besides all that, after the experience of the Truss Calamity, I'm amazed that anyone could think that Britain has any headroom to borrow more. The market response showed that there wasn't much appetite to lend Britain more money, nor confidence in Britain being able to service larger debts.
Worked out over the weekend that my newly-graduated daughter is paying a higher tax rate on her income (20% basic rate + 9% student loans graduate tax + 12 % national insurance = 41%) than my Dad is on his pension (40% higher rate of income tax). Absolutely insane.
Poor comparison , the 9% is a government payday/bank type loan so not a tax ( and if she does not earn big money she does not pay the loan back).
My Dad is a graduate, just like her, and he didn't have to pay it. It's a tax masquerading as a loan. Claiming otherwise is pure sophistry.
Letting so many people be paid by state to go to university is the issue ( only a fraction of the current volumes were at university when her Dad dit it ). Those who need to for certain jobs should go and pay for it , the others should jsut take a job and save wasting time and money. If as Idiot Bart says she is earning 25K then she could just as easily taken a job at a till in Tesco's and been earning for years and have no LOAN to pay back.
You really are an illiterate dumbo who can't understand what other people wrote aren't you? Maybe if you were better educated your reading comprehension would be better.
I never said she was earning £25k, I said that the repayment threshold is now set at £25k so graduates earning £25k or above is on an effective 9% higher income tax rate from that point on.
£25k is not in my view "big money" which is what you falsely claimed, do you think its big money?
Do you really think its air t hat someone on £25k or above should have a marginal tax rate of 41%? 20+12+9 = 41 whether you like it or not, don't be an innumerate dumbo, that's how the numbers are.
You are at it again Thicko , where did I say 25K was big money. If they want the advantage of university then they should pay for it , usual whining from the likes of you, scrounger that wants everybody else to pay for them and their brood. Get out and get a decent job rather than trying to sponge off pensioners.
The PM is rich? So what. He is leader of the Conservative Party not a Corbynite Marxist sect.
What voters want to see is their own economic circumstances improve which he and Hunt are doing by cutting inflation and growing the economy and hopefully in due course cutting tax as well.
As for getting rid of Rishi, barely more than a year ago OGH was telling Tories to get rid of Boris in favour of Rishi!
Cutting inflation is not a sufficient condition for people to "see their own economic circumstances improve". What matters to most people is the difference between their income inflation and price inflation. Inflation is still high.
We're not going destitute as fast as we were, darling. I think i'll vote conservative now.
And don't forget the cumulative effect - it will be quite some time before real wages are back where they were before Sunak got in.
Yes. We're just off the back of 20 straight months of CPI inflation being above wage inflation. We've had one month with wages going up faster than CPI. So even if every month is the mirror of the months before, we'll still be worse off than we were in October 2021 by the time the election comes around.
Especially thanks to fiscal drag.
Real take-home wages are still falling currently, even with nominal wages growing faster than inflation.
You’re in danger of post hoc data mining
Wages aren’t growing!
Oops.
Real wages aren’t growing! 😁
Fuck!
Shit! Umm! Fiscal drag, thats’s it. Fiscal drag!
Realtake-home wages aren’t growing! 😁
Excuse me but I've been banging the drum on fiscal drag and opposed it since it was announced. I'm entirely consistent.
And of course I was a loyal Tory until Sunak started putting up taxes like National Insurance and fiscal drag.
I have my principles. I believe people should be able to keep more of their own income they work for. The Tories used to believe that too.
I haven't left the Tories, Sunak's Tories have left me.
I'm sure Rishi wants lower taxes. But he wants them in the same way that St Augustine wanted chastity.
(Unless he can find ways of cutting government spending on a recurring basis, I'd rather it was funded by taxes than borrowing. The mix of taxes he's using is a disgrace, though.)
Two questions.
How can you talk tax cuts when borrowing £100billion+ a year.
Why are we borrowing £100 billion this year instead of balancing the books now the pandemic is over?
There is nothing wrong with borrowing if you are using the money to invest eg in infrastructure or education where the return is substantially greater than the interest on the borrowing.
We have plenty of borrowing headroom. The national debt is about one year's GDP. Individuals often have mortgage debt of up to three time annual salary and find it sustainable. Plenty of headroom.
But to borrow to cut taxes is severely damaging and driven by ideology.
So I agree with your first sentence but not your second.
Pretty much the entire deficit is due to interest payments on government debt. So Britain would be in a much better place if it wasn't having to service so much debt. It doesn't make much sense to me to add even more debt, and even more future debt interest payments, particularly when the future demographic challenges means that it becomes harder to service debts in the future, with an ageing population, and a shrinking global population.
And besides all that, after the experience of the Truss Calamity, I'm amazed that anyone could think that Britain has any headroom to borrow more. The market response showed that there wasn't much appetite to lend Britain more money, nor confidence in Britain being able to service larger debts.
Worked out over the weekend that my newly-graduated daughter is paying a higher tax rate on her income (20% basic rate + 9% student loans graduate tax + 12 % national insurance = 41%) than my Dad is on his pension (40% higher rate of income tax). Absolutely insane.
Poor comparison , the 9% is a government payday/bank type loan so not a tax ( and if she does not earn big money she does not pay the loan back).
My Dad is a graduate, just like her, and he didn't have to pay it. It's a tax masquerading as a loan. Claiming otherwise is pure sophistry.
Letting so many people be paid by state to go to university is the issue ( only a fraction of the current volumes were at university when her Dad dit it ). Those who need to for certain jobs should go and pay for it , the others should jsut take a job and save wasting time and money. If as Idiot Bart says she is earning 25K then she could just as easily taken a job at a till in Tesco's and been earning for years and have no LOAN to pay back.
£25k is the threshold above which the 9% graduate tax is levied. I'm not going to share her pay details on here, but she's working for a government-funded organisation in a technical role, where she'll hopefully make good use of her Maths degree, but isn't likely to make a huge income.
Possibly she'll end up taking a much better paid job in the private sector once she has a few years experience, but if too many skilled graduates do the same then government organisations will have to spend absurd sums of money on contractors and consultants to stop everything falling apart.
Story on my Facebook page ….. I know, but bear with me ….. of the SS Warrimoo, which at end of the 19C managed to get itself, while travelling from Vancouver to Australia, at the junction of the Equator and International Date Lines, so that it was, simultaneously in four different hemispheres, both North/South and East/West. Therefore one was, depending on where one was on the ship, in the summer or winter, the 19th or 20th Centuries, 1899 or 1900, January and December and one or two other “differencies”.
The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine has been awarded to a pair of scientists that developed the technology that led to the mRNA Covid vaccines.
They give these prizes out to any Tom, Dick and Harry these days....
There are some on the weird anti-vax community would have them subjected to a Nuremburg style trial for crimes against humanity...
By chance I had a Pfizer covid booster on saturday and sure as eggs is eggs, had an awful 24 hour period with high fever and feeling like crap. I have had this every time I've had an mRNA Covid shot, but not with the AZ ones. This is not going to stop me having them, but I do, think there is something in the delivery system that my body reacts violently to, much more so than any other vaccine I've ever had. The only other reaction I've had at all like it was a bird flu shot about 10 years ago.
I had quite the opposite experience. 24hr high fever with AZN, and not much at all from the mRNA jab.
Similarly with the immune response to Covid infection itself - some have a violent, sometimes dangerous immune response: others barely register it.
The risks, of course, are orders of magnitude higher with the bug itself.
Do we know why the booster jab is not yet available to buy like the flu one - can't be a capacity issue can it ?
I got it from my first AZ too, and not the others.
And today I have the real thing, for the first time in close to 2 years. Feeling decidedly crap.
Hope it passes soon Tim. I have had it twice, once without really even knowing it apart from the test and the other it felt like I had someone standing on all my joints for 3 days. So you have my sympathy and best wishes.
I am waiting for the call for my jabs (Flu and Covid). I am hearing a lot more friends say they had a bit of a kicking from the jabs this year compared to previously but I am still looking forward to getting it - if not to any after effects.
Had the flu jab over the weekend. No noticeable reaction at all.
Thought it was only old codgers getting it this time, I thought you were just a whippersnapper Nigel.
Indeed I am, so had to pay for it. Can't afford a week off with flu right now.
I'd have got the Covid shot too if it were available.
Ye Gods, are we back to "super spreaders" and "my vax story" again?
Somebody make it stop.
What would you like to discuss? The Covid and vax posts started as a response to the Nobel prize for Medicine to the originators of mRNA technology. To be honest does anyone want to talk about the Tory conference?
The non-ideas coming out of conference says it all....ban mobiles in schools, but it isn't a ban, its advice which many schools already implement....ban 20 mph zones, but it isn't a ban, its advice about under what conditions a local authority could use such a zone....topped with no tax cuts, same old same old for the foreseeable future.
The PM is rich? So what. He is leader of the Conservative Party not a Corbynite Marxist sect.
What voters want to see is their own economic circumstances improve which he and Hunt are doing by cutting inflation and growing the economy and hopefully in due course cutting tax as well.
As for getting rid of Rishi, barely more than a year ago OGH was telling Tories to get rid of Boris in favour of Rishi!
Cutting inflation is not a sufficient condition for people to "see their own economic circumstances improve". What matters to most people is the difference between their income inflation and price inflation. Inflation is still high.
We're not going destitute as fast as we were, darling. I think i'll vote conservative now.
And don't forget the cumulative effect - it will be quite some time before real wages are back where they were before Sunak got in.
Yes. We're just off the back of 20 straight months of CPI inflation being above wage inflation. We've had one month with wages going up faster than CPI. So even if every month is the mirror of the months before, we'll still be worse off than we were in October 2021 by the time the election comes around.
Especially thanks to fiscal drag.
Real take-home wages are still falling currently, even with nominal wages growing faster than inflation.
You’re in danger of post hoc data mining
Wages aren’t growing!
Oops.
Real wages aren’t growing! 😁
Fuck!
Shit! Umm! Fiscal drag, thats’s it. Fiscal drag!
Realtake-home wages aren’t growing! 😁
Excuse me but I've been banging the drum on fiscal drag and opposed it since it was announced. I'm entirely consistent.
And of course I was a loyal Tory until Sunak started putting up taxes like National Insurance and fiscal drag.
I have my principles. I believe people should be able to keep more of their own income they work for. The Tories used to believe that too.
I haven't left the Tories, Sunak's Tories have left me.
I'm sure Rishi wants lower taxes. But he wants them in the same way that St Augustine wanted chastity.
(Unless he can find ways of cutting government spending on a recurring basis, I'd rather it was funded by taxes than borrowing. The mix of taxes he's using is a disgrace, though.)
Two questions.
How can you talk tax cuts when borrowing £100billion+ a year.
Why are we borrowing £100 billion this year instead of balancing the books now the pandemic is over?
There is nothing wrong with borrowing if you are using the money to invest eg in infrastructure or education where the return is substantially greater than the interest on the borrowing.
We have plenty of borrowing headroom. The national debt is about one year's GDP. Individuals often have mortgage debt of up to three time annual salary and find it sustainable. Plenty of headroom.
But to borrow to cut taxes is severely damaging and driven by ideology.
So I agree with your first sentence but not your second.
Pretty much the entire deficit is due to interest payments on government debt. So Britain would be in a much better place if it wasn't having to service so much debt. It doesn't make much sense to me to add even more debt, and even more future debt interest payments, particularly when the future demographic challenges means that it becomes harder to service debts in the future, with an ageing population, and a shrinking global population.
And besides all that, after the experience of the Truss Calamity, I'm amazed that anyone could think that Britain has any headroom to borrow more. The market response showed that there wasn't much appetite to lend Britain more money, nor confidence in Britain being able to service larger debts.
Worked out over the weekend that my newly-graduated daughter is paying a higher tax rate on her income (20% basic rate + 9% student loans graduate tax + 12 % national insurance = 41%) than my Dad is on his pension (40% higher rate of income tax). Absolutely insane.
Poor comparison , the 9% is a government payday/bank type loan so not a tax ( and if she does not earn big money she does not pay the loan back).
My Dad is a graduate, just like her, and he didn't have to pay it. It's a tax masquerading as a loan. Claiming otherwise is pure sophistry.
Letting so many people be paid by state to go to university is the issue ( only a fraction of the current volumes were at university when her Dad dit it ). Those who need to for certain jobs should go and pay for it , the others should jsut take a job and save wasting time and money. If as Idiot Bart says she is earning 25K then she could just as easily taken a job at a till in Tesco's and been earning for years and have no LOAN to pay back.
You really are an illiterate dumbo who can't understand what other people wrote aren't you? Maybe if you were better educated your reading comprehension would be better.
I never said she was earning £25k, I said that the repayment threshold is now set at £25k so graduates earning £25k or above is on an effective 9% higher income tax rate from that point on.
£25k is not in my view "big money" which is what you falsely claimed, do you think its big money?
Do you really think its air t hat someone on £25k or above should have a marginal tax rate of 41%? 20+12+9 = 41 whether you like it or not, don't be an innumerate dumbo, that's how the numbers are.
You are at it again Thicko , where did I say 25K was big money. If they want the advantage of university then they should pay for it , usual whining from the likes of you, scrounger that wants everybody else to pay for them and their brood. Get out and get a decent job rather than trying to sponge off pensioners.
The PM is rich? So what. He is leader of the Conservative Party not a Corbynite Marxist sect.
What voters want to see is their own economic circumstances improve which he and Hunt are doing by cutting inflation and growing the economy and hopefully in due course cutting tax as well.
As for getting rid of Rishi, barely more than a year ago OGH was telling Tories to get rid of Boris in favour of Rishi!
Cutting inflation is not a sufficient condition for people to "see their own economic circumstances improve". What matters to most people is the difference between their income inflation and price inflation. Inflation is still high.
We're not going destitute as fast as we were, darling. I think i'll vote conservative now.
And don't forget the cumulative effect - it will be quite some time before real wages are back where they were before Sunak got in.
Yes. We're just off the back of 20 straight months of CPI inflation being above wage inflation. We've had one month with wages going up faster than CPI. So even if every month is the mirror of the months before, we'll still be worse off than we were in October 2021 by the time the election comes around.
Especially thanks to fiscal drag.
Real take-home wages are still falling currently, even with nominal wages growing faster than inflation.
You’re in danger of post hoc data mining
Wages aren’t growing!
Oops.
Real wages aren’t growing! 😁
Fuck!
Shit! Umm! Fiscal drag, thats’s it. Fiscal drag!
Realtake-home wages aren’t growing! 😁
Excuse me but I've been banging the drum on fiscal drag and opposed it since it was announced. I'm entirely consistent.
And of course I was a loyal Tory until Sunak started putting up taxes like National Insurance and fiscal drag.
I have my principles. I believe people should be able to keep more of their own income they work for. The Tories used to believe that too.
I haven't left the Tories, Sunak's Tories have left me.
I'm sure Rishi wants lower taxes. But he wants them in the same way that St Augustine wanted chastity.
(Unless he can find ways of cutting government spending on a recurring basis, I'd rather it was funded by taxes than borrowing. The mix of taxes he's using is a disgrace, though.)
Two questions.
How can you talk tax cuts when borrowing £100billion+ a year.
Why are we borrowing £100 billion this year instead of balancing the books now the pandemic is over?
There is nothing wrong with borrowing if you are using the money to invest eg in infrastructure or education where the return is substantially greater than the interest on the borrowing.
We have plenty of borrowing headroom. The national debt is about one year's GDP. Individuals often have mortgage debt of up to three time annual salary and find it sustainable. Plenty of headroom.
But to borrow to cut taxes is severely damaging and driven by ideology.
So I agree with your first sentence but not your second.
Pretty much the entire deficit is due to interest payments on government debt. So Britain would be in a much better place if it wasn't having to service so much debt. It doesn't make much sense to me to add even more debt, and even more future debt interest payments, particularly when the future demographic challenges means that it becomes harder to service debts in the future, with an ageing population, and a shrinking global population.
And besides all that, after the experience of the Truss Calamity, I'm amazed that anyone could think that Britain has any headroom to borrow more. The market response showed that there wasn't much appetite to lend Britain more money, nor confidence in Britain being able to service larger debts.
Worked out over the weekend that my newly-graduated daughter is paying a higher tax rate on her income (20% basic rate + 9% student loans graduate tax + 12 % national insurance = 41%) than my Dad is on his pension (40% higher rate of income tax). Absolutely insane.
Poor comparison , the 9% is a government payday/bank type loan so not a tax ( and if she does not earn big money she does not pay the loan back).
£25k is the threshold where you pay 9% extra income tax from then on. Not big money as you claimed, £25k.
So is £25k big money, or were you wrong? Dumbo.
Expecting pensioners to pay the same rate of tax as everyone else, including NIC on all pensions paid the same as all salaries, is not "scrounging". Everyone should be treated the same, that's consistency.
The PM is rich? So what. He is leader of the Conservative Party not a Corbynite Marxist sect.
What voters want to see is their own economic circumstances improve which he and Hunt are doing by cutting inflation and growing the economy and hopefully in due course cutting tax as well.
As for getting rid of Rishi, barely more than a year ago OGH was telling Tories to get rid of Boris in favour of Rishi!
Cutting inflation is not a sufficient condition for people to "see their own economic circumstances improve". What matters to most people is the difference between their income inflation and price inflation. Inflation is still high.
We're not going destitute as fast as we were, darling. I think i'll vote conservative now.
And don't forget the cumulative effect - it will be quite some time before real wages are back where they were before Sunak got in.
Yes. We're just off the back of 20 straight months of CPI inflation being above wage inflation. We've had one month with wages going up faster than CPI. So even if every month is the mirror of the months before, we'll still be worse off than we were in October 2021 by the time the election comes around.
Especially thanks to fiscal drag.
Real take-home wages are still falling currently, even with nominal wages growing faster than inflation.
You’re in danger of post hoc data mining
Wages aren’t growing!
Oops.
Real wages aren’t growing! 😁
Fuck!
Shit! Umm! Fiscal drag, thats’s it. Fiscal drag!
Realtake-home wages aren’t growing! 😁
You’re in danger of wrapping yourself in a comfortable blanket of argument while, I suspect, Bart’s position better reflects the experience of the electorate.
He has two drums that he bangs with monotonous regularity. It gives me a headache.
Fiscal drag sucks. It’s a sneaky tax. But it’s not what people focus on - they see their tax home pay go up, but are struggling to make ends meet because prices are going up faster.
Unfortunately the size of state that the electorate wants needs to be paid for. If there was a government that was willing to be more disciplined then there would be saving that could be made, but that isn’t this government or (I suspect) the next one.
But the level of tax rises that are needed to balance the budget (or at least reduce the deficit below the rate of GDP growth) are too large to be affordable by the rich (however defined). They have already made significant contributions (eg additional rate threshold cut by £25k - that’s £1,250 extra income tax from each individual) as have companies with the planned increase in corporation tax.
there will be more tax rises to come for the wealthy, but the middle income voter needs to contribute as well.
Middle income earners can already be on 80% real marginal tax rates - how much higher than that should those go?
How about taxing everyone the same so everyone contributes equally, rather than opting some out of NICs etc?
Why should some be exempt from contributing whatsoever?
You really are thick , NIC is supposed to be paid till you are state pension age, hence why it stops DUMBO. Fact that a few pensioners work part time after that makes no difference and would raise peanuts you stupid half witted idiot.
I know what its supposed to be paid until, but things can be changed. Why should it stop once at pension age? What good reason is there for it not to apply to pensions, or investment incomes like from letting out homes, or dividends and so on and so forth?
I never said it should be levied on pensioners who work part time, did I?
I said it should be levied on all income that income tax applies to. Which would include pensioners working, yes, so it would also include pensions, money from letting out properties etc
Since everything the NIC tax pays is PAYG and there is no pot of money that has been accrued to fund obligations, it should be paid equitably as you go by everyone and not only those working for their pay.
Don't be so stupid, why not have VAT on everything, you cannot get blood out of a stone. Why the Feck would you pay NI on your state pension that was provided due to teh vast amount of NI you had paid for it.
Because the state needs funding.
Why the Feck should you not pay NI on your state pension? Or private pensions too?
You've not "paid for it", its pay as you go, and the as you go hasn't finished.
So you cannot read either as well as being as thick as mince. Go read the government site , 35 years contributions idiot, I paid for 50 years , why not whine that I deserve 15 years back as well as back pension as I was supposed to get state pension a year earlier based on what I was originally promised. What a Bellend.
The PM is rich? So what. He is leader of the Conservative Party not a Corbynite Marxist sect.
What voters want to see is their own economic circumstances improve which he and Hunt are doing by cutting inflation and growing the economy and hopefully in due course cutting tax as well.
As for getting rid of Rishi, barely more than a year ago OGH was telling Tories to get rid of Boris in favour of Rishi!
Cutting inflation is not a sufficient condition for people to "see their own economic circumstances improve". What matters to most people is the difference between their income inflation and price inflation. Inflation is still high.
We're not going destitute as fast as we were, darling. I think i'll vote conservative now.
And don't forget the cumulative effect - it will be quite some time before real wages are back where they were before Sunak got in.
Yes. We're just off the back of 20 straight months of CPI inflation being above wage inflation. We've had one month with wages going up faster than CPI. So even if every month is the mirror of the months before, we'll still be worse off than we were in October 2021 by the time the election comes around.
Especially thanks to fiscal drag.
Real take-home wages are still falling currently, even with nominal wages growing faster than inflation.
You’re in danger of post hoc data mining
Wages aren’t growing!
Oops.
Real wages aren’t growing! 😁
Fuck!
Shit! Umm! Fiscal drag, thats’s it. Fiscal drag!
Realtake-home wages aren’t growing! 😁
Excuse me but I've been banging the drum on fiscal drag and opposed it since it was announced. I'm entirely consistent.
And of course I was a loyal Tory until Sunak started putting up taxes like National Insurance and fiscal drag.
I have my principles. I believe people should be able to keep more of their own income they work for. The Tories used to believe that too.
I haven't left the Tories, Sunak's Tories have left me.
I'm sure Rishi wants lower taxes. But he wants them in the same way that St Augustine wanted chastity.
(Unless he can find ways of cutting government spending on a recurring basis, I'd rather it was funded by taxes than borrowing. The mix of taxes he's using is a disgrace, though.)
Two questions.
How can you talk tax cuts when borrowing £100billion+ a year.
Why are we borrowing £100 billion this year instead of balancing the books now the pandemic is over?
There is nothing wrong with borrowing if you are using the money to invest eg in infrastructure or education where the return is substantially greater than the interest on the borrowing.
We have plenty of borrowing headroom. The national debt is about one year's GDP. Individuals often have mortgage debt of up to three time annual salary and find it sustainable. Plenty of headroom.
But to borrow to cut taxes is severely damaging and driven by ideology.
So I agree with your first sentence but not your second.
Pretty much the entire deficit is due to interest payments on government debt. So Britain would be in a much better place if it wasn't having to service so much debt. It doesn't make much sense to me to add even more debt, and even more future debt interest payments, particularly when the future demographic challenges means that it becomes harder to service debts in the future, with an ageing population, and a shrinking global population.
And besides all that, after the experience of the Truss Calamity, I'm amazed that anyone could think that Britain has any headroom to borrow more. The market response showed that there wasn't much appetite to lend Britain more money, nor confidence in Britain being able to service larger debts.
Worked out over the weekend that my newly-graduated daughter is paying a higher tax rate on her income (20% basic rate + 9% student loans graduate tax + 12 % national insurance = 41%) than my Dad is on his pension (40% higher rate of income tax). Absolutely insane.
Poor comparison , the 9% is a government payday/bank type loan so not a tax ( and if she does not earn big money she does not pay the loan back).
My Dad is a graduate, just like her, and he didn't have to pay it. It's a tax masquerading as a loan. Claiming otherwise is pure sophistry.
Letting so many people be paid by state to go to university is the issue ( only a fraction of the current volumes were at university when her Dad dit it ). Those who need to for certain jobs should go and pay for it , the others should jsut take a job and save wasting time and money. If as Idiot Bart says she is earning 25K then she could just as easily taken a job at a till in Tesco's and been earning for years and have no LOAN to pay back.
You really are an illiterate dumbo who can't understand what other people wrote aren't you? Maybe if you were better educated your reading comprehension would be better.
I never said she was earning £25k, I said that the repayment threshold is now set at £25k so graduates earning £25k or above is on an effective 9% higher income tax rate from that point on.
£25k is not in my view "big money" which is what you falsely claimed, do you think its big money?
Do you really think its air t hat someone on £25k or above should have a marginal tax rate of 41%? 20+12+9 = 41 whether you like it or not, don't be an innumerate dumbo, that's how the numbers are.
You are at it again Thicko , where did I say 25K was big money. If they want the advantage of university then they should pay for it , usual whining from the likes of you, scrounger that wants everybody else to pay for them and their brood. Get out and get a decent job rather than trying to sponge off pensioners.
A teacher or, even ‘worse’ a doctor spends several unremunerated years at university, to be fair.
The PM is rich? So what. He is leader of the Conservative Party not a Corbynite Marxist sect.
What voters want to see is their own economic circumstances improve which he and Hunt are doing by cutting inflation and growing the economy and hopefully in due course cutting tax as well.
As for getting rid of Rishi, barely more than a year ago OGH was telling Tories to get rid of Boris in favour of Rishi!
Cutting inflation is not a sufficient condition for people to "see their own economic circumstances improve". What matters to most people is the difference between their income inflation and price inflation. Inflation is still high.
We're not going destitute as fast as we were, darling. I think i'll vote conservative now.
And don't forget the cumulative effect - it will be quite some time before real wages are back where they were before Sunak got in.
Yes. We're just off the back of 20 straight months of CPI inflation being above wage inflation. We've had one month with wages going up faster than CPI. So even if every month is the mirror of the months before, we'll still be worse off than we were in October 2021 by the time the election comes around.
Especially thanks to fiscal drag.
Real take-home wages are still falling currently, even with nominal wages growing faster than inflation.
You’re in danger of post hoc data mining
Wages aren’t growing!
Oops.
Real wages aren’t growing! 😁
Fuck!
Shit! Umm! Fiscal drag, thats’s it. Fiscal drag!
Realtake-home wages aren’t growing! 😁
Excuse me but I've been banging the drum on fiscal drag and opposed it since it was announced. I'm entirely consistent.
And of course I was a loyal Tory until Sunak started putting up taxes like National Insurance and fiscal drag.
I have my principles. I believe people should be able to keep more of their own income they work for. The Tories used to believe that too.
I haven't left the Tories, Sunak's Tories have left me.
I'm sure Rishi wants lower taxes. But he wants them in the same way that St Augustine wanted chastity.
(Unless he can find ways of cutting government spending on a recurring basis, I'd rather it was funded by taxes than borrowing. The mix of taxes he's using is a disgrace, though.)
Two questions.
How can you talk tax cuts when borrowing £100billion+ a year.
Why are we borrowing £100 billion this year instead of balancing the books now the pandemic is over?
There is nothing wrong with borrowing if you are using the money to invest eg in infrastructure or education where the return is substantially greater than the interest on the borrowing.
We have plenty of borrowing headroom. The national debt is about one year's GDP. Individuals often have mortgage debt of up to three time annual salary and find it sustainable. Plenty of headroom.
But to borrow to cut taxes is severely damaging and driven by ideology.
So I agree with your first sentence but not your second.
Pretty much the entire deficit is due to interest payments on government debt. So Britain would be in a much better place if it wasn't having to service so much debt. It doesn't make much sense to me to add even more debt, and even more future debt interest payments, particularly when the future demographic challenges means that it becomes harder to service debts in the future, with an ageing population, and a shrinking global population.
And besides all that, after the experience of the Truss Calamity, I'm amazed that anyone could think that Britain has any headroom to borrow more. The market response showed that there wasn't much appetite to lend Britain more money, nor confidence in Britain being able to service larger debts.
Worked out over the weekend that my newly-graduated daughter is paying a higher tax rate on her income (20% basic rate + 9% student loans graduate tax + 12 % national insurance = 41%) than my Dad is on his pension (40% higher rate of income tax). Absolutely insane.
Poor comparison , the 9% is a government payday/bank type loan so not a tax ( and if she does not earn big money she does not pay the loan back).
My Dad is a graduate, just like her, and he didn't have to pay it. It's a tax masquerading as a loan. Claiming otherwise is pure sophistry.
Letting so many people be paid by state to go to university is the issue ( only a fraction of the current volumes were at university when her Dad dit it ). Those who need to for certain jobs should go and pay for it , the others should jsut take a job and save wasting time and money. If as Idiot Bart says she is earning 25K then she could just as easily taken a job at a till in Tesco's and been earning for years and have no LOAN to pay back.
£25k is the threshold above which the 9% graduate tax is levied. I'm not going to share her pay details on here, but she's working for a government-funded organisation in a technical role, where she'll hopefully make good use of her Maths degree, but isn't likely to make a huge income.
Possibly she'll end up taking a much better paid job in the private sector once she has a few years experience, but if too many skilled graduates do the same then government organisations will have to spend absurd sums of money on contractors and consultants to stop everything falling apart.
It will give you plenty to moan about, no doubt.
All I would say is far too many going to university who end up in jobs that do not need degrees and most government organisations jobs do not require degrees to function , it is just an affection. Most of tehm should at best be apprenticeships or learn on the job.
The PM is rich? So what. He is leader of the Conservative Party not a Corbynite Marxist sect.
What voters want to see is their own economic circumstances improve which he and Hunt are doing by cutting inflation and growing the economy and hopefully in due course cutting tax as well.
As for getting rid of Rishi, barely more than a year ago OGH was telling Tories to get rid of Boris in favour of Rishi!
Cutting inflation is not a sufficient condition for people to "see their own economic circumstances improve". What matters to most people is the difference between their income inflation and price inflation. Inflation is still high.
We're not going destitute as fast as we were, darling. I think i'll vote conservative now.
And don't forget the cumulative effect - it will be quite some time before real wages are back where they were before Sunak got in.
Yes. We're just off the back of 20 straight months of CPI inflation being above wage inflation. We've had one month with wages going up faster than CPI. So even if every month is the mirror of the months before, we'll still be worse off than we were in October 2021 by the time the election comes around.
Especially thanks to fiscal drag.
Real take-home wages are still falling currently, even with nominal wages growing faster than inflation.
You’re in danger of post hoc data mining
Wages aren’t growing!
Oops.
Real wages aren’t growing! 😁
Fuck!
Shit! Umm! Fiscal drag, thats’s it. Fiscal drag!
Realtake-home wages aren’t growing! 😁
You’re in danger of wrapping yourself in a comfortable blanket of argument while, I suspect, Bart’s position better reflects the experience of the electorate.
He has two drums that he bangs with monotonous regularity. It gives me a headache.
Fiscal drag sucks. It’s a sneaky tax. But it’s not what people focus on - they see their tax home pay go up, but are struggling to make ends meet because prices are going up faster.
Unfortunately the size of state that the electorate wants needs to be paid for. If there was a government that was willing to be more disciplined then there would be saving that could be made, but that isn’t this government or (I suspect) the next one.
But the level of tax rises that are needed to balance the budget (or at least reduce the deficit below the rate of GDP growth) are too large to be affordable by the rich (however defined). They have already made significant contributions (eg additional rate threshold cut by £25k - that’s £1,250 extra income tax from each individual) as have companies with the planned increase in corporation tax.
there will be more tax rises to come for the wealthy, but the middle income voter needs to contribute as well.
Middle income earners can already be on 80% real marginal tax rates - how much higher than that should those go?
How about taxing everyone the same so everyone contributes equally, rather than opting some out of NICs etc?
Why should some be exempt from contributing whatsoever?
You really are thick , NIC is supposed to be paid till you are state pension age, hence why it stops DUMBO. Fact that a few pensioners work part time after that makes no difference and would raise peanuts you stupid half witted idiot.
I know what its supposed to be paid until, but things can be changed. Why should it stop once at pension age? What good reason is there for it not to apply to pensions, or investment incomes like from letting out homes, or dividends and so on and so forth?
I never said it should be levied on pensioners who work part time, did I?
I said it should be levied on all income that income tax applies to. Which would include pensioners working, yes, so it would also include pensions, money from letting out properties etc
Since everything the NIC tax pays is PAYG and there is no pot of money that has been accrued to fund obligations, it should be paid equitably as you go by everyone and not only those working for their pay.
Don't be so stupid, why not have VAT on everything, you cannot get blood out of a stone. Why the Feck would you pay NI on your state pension that was provided due to teh vast amount of NI you had paid for it.
Because the state needs funding.
Why the Feck should you not pay NI on your state pension? Or private pensions too?
You've not "paid for it", its pay as you go, and the as you go hasn't finished.
So you cannot read either as well as being as thick as mince. Go read the government site , 35 years contributions idiot, I paid for 50 years , why not whine that I deserve 15 years back as well as back pension as I was supposed to get state pension a year earlier based on what I was originally promised. What a Bellend.
Contributions don't stop after 35 years you idiot. I've paid for most of that already, I'll still continue to pay for the rest of my working life - and should pay for the rest of my life as its PAYG not contributions based. Idiot.
So what if you've paid for 50 years? You never paid into a pot, its pay as you go, payments should continue for your entire life as you're not stopping claiming healthcare or any other benefits from the state anymore now are you?
The PM is rich? So what. He is leader of the Conservative Party not a Corbynite Marxist sect.
What voters want to see is their own economic circumstances improve which he and Hunt are doing by cutting inflation and growing the economy and hopefully in due course cutting tax as well.
As for getting rid of Rishi, barely more than a year ago OGH was telling Tories to get rid of Boris in favour of Rishi!
Cutting inflation is not a sufficient condition for people to "see their own economic circumstances improve". What matters to most people is the difference between their income inflation and price inflation. Inflation is still high.
We're not going destitute as fast as we were, darling. I think i'll vote conservative now.
And don't forget the cumulative effect - it will be quite some time before real wages are back where they were before Sunak got in.
Yes. We're just off the back of 20 straight months of CPI inflation being above wage inflation. We've had one month with wages going up faster than CPI. So even if every month is the mirror of the months before, we'll still be worse off than we were in October 2021 by the time the election comes around.
Especially thanks to fiscal drag.
Real take-home wages are still falling currently, even with nominal wages growing faster than inflation.
You’re in danger of post hoc data mining
Wages aren’t growing!
Oops.
Real wages aren’t growing! 😁
Fuck!
Shit! Umm! Fiscal drag, thats’s it. Fiscal drag!
Realtake-home wages aren’t growing! 😁
Excuse me but I've been banging the drum on fiscal drag and opposed it since it was announced. I'm entirely consistent.
And of course I was a loyal Tory until Sunak started putting up taxes like National Insurance and fiscal drag.
I have my principles. I believe people should be able to keep more of their own income they work for. The Tories used to believe that too.
I haven't left the Tories, Sunak's Tories have left me.
I'm sure Rishi wants lower taxes. But he wants them in the same way that St Augustine wanted chastity.
(Unless he can find ways of cutting government spending on a recurring basis, I'd rather it was funded by taxes than borrowing. The mix of taxes he's using is a disgrace, though.)
Two questions.
How can you talk tax cuts when borrowing £100billion+ a year.
Why are we borrowing £100 billion this year instead of balancing the books now the pandemic is over?
There is nothing wrong with borrowing if you are using the money to invest eg in infrastructure or education where the return is substantially greater than the interest on the borrowing.
We have plenty of borrowing headroom. The national debt is about one year's GDP. Individuals often have mortgage debt of up to three time annual salary and find it sustainable. Plenty of headroom.
But to borrow to cut taxes is severely damaging and driven by ideology.
So I agree with your first sentence but not your second.
Pretty much the entire deficit is due to interest payments on government debt. So Britain would be in a much better place if it wasn't having to service so much debt. It doesn't make much sense to me to add even more debt, and even more future debt interest payments, particularly when the future demographic challenges means that it becomes harder to service debts in the future, with an ageing population, and a shrinking global population.
And besides all that, after the experience of the Truss Calamity, I'm amazed that anyone could think that Britain has any headroom to borrow more. The market response showed that there wasn't much appetite to lend Britain more money, nor confidence in Britain being able to service larger debts.
Worked out over the weekend that my newly-graduated daughter is paying a higher tax rate on her income (20% basic rate + 9% student loans graduate tax + 12 % national insurance = 41%) than my Dad is on his pension (40% higher rate of income tax). Absolutely insane.
Poor comparison , the 9% is a government payday/bank type loan so not a tax ( and if she does not earn big money she does not pay the loan back).
My Dad is a graduate, just like her, and he didn't have to pay it. It's a tax masquerading as a loan. Claiming otherwise is pure sophistry.
Letting so many people be paid by state to go to university is the issue ( only a fraction of the current volumes were at university when her Dad dit it ). Those who need to for certain jobs should go and pay for it , the others should jsut take a job and save wasting time and money. If as Idiot Bart says she is earning 25K then she could just as easily taken a job at a till in Tesco's and been earning for years and have no LOAN to pay back.
You really are an illiterate dumbo who can't understand what other people wrote aren't you? Maybe if you were better educated your reading comprehension would be better.
I never said she was earning £25k, I said that the repayment threshold is now set at £25k so graduates earning £25k or above is on an effective 9% higher income tax rate from that point on.
£25k is not in my view "big money" which is what you falsely claimed, do you think its big money?
Do you really think its air t hat someone on £25k or above should have a marginal tax rate of 41%? 20+12+9 = 41 whether you like it or not, don't be an innumerate dumbo, that's how the numbers are.
You are at it again Thicko , where did I say 25K was big money. If they want the advantage of university then they should pay for it , usual whining from the likes of you, scrounger that wants everybody else to pay for them and their brood. Get out and get a decent job rather than trying to sponge off pensioners.
A teacher or, even ‘worse’ a doctor spends several unremunerated years at university, to be fair.
Some jobs do require a degree OKC, many do not though. Your examples would I say require a degree.
The PM is rich? So what. He is leader of the Conservative Party not a Corbynite Marxist sect.
What voters want to see is their own economic circumstances improve which he and Hunt are doing by cutting inflation and growing the economy and hopefully in due course cutting tax as well.
As for getting rid of Rishi, barely more than a year ago OGH was telling Tories to get rid of Boris in favour of Rishi!
Cutting inflation is not a sufficient condition for people to "see their own economic circumstances improve". What matters to most people is the difference between their income inflation and price inflation. Inflation is still high.
We're not going destitute as fast as we were, darling. I think i'll vote conservative now.
And don't forget the cumulative effect - it will be quite some time before real wages are back where they were before Sunak got in.
Yes. We're just off the back of 20 straight months of CPI inflation being above wage inflation. We've had one month with wages going up faster than CPI. So even if every month is the mirror of the months before, we'll still be worse off than we were in October 2021 by the time the election comes around.
Especially thanks to fiscal drag.
Real take-home wages are still falling currently, even with nominal wages growing faster than inflation.
You’re in danger of post hoc data mining
Wages aren’t growing!
Oops.
Real wages aren’t growing! 😁
Fuck!
Shit! Umm! Fiscal drag, thats’s it. Fiscal drag!
Realtake-home wages aren’t growing! 😁
Excuse me but I've been banging the drum on fiscal drag and opposed it since it was announced. I'm entirely consistent.
And of course I was a loyal Tory until Sunak started putting up taxes like National Insurance and fiscal drag.
I have my principles. I believe people should be able to keep more of their own income they work for. The Tories used to believe that too.
I haven't left the Tories, Sunak's Tories have left me.
I'm sure Rishi wants lower taxes. But he wants them in the same way that St Augustine wanted chastity.
(Unless he can find ways of cutting government spending on a recurring basis, I'd rather it was funded by taxes than borrowing. The mix of taxes he's using is a disgrace, though.)
Two questions.
How can you talk tax cuts when borrowing £100billion+ a year.
Why are we borrowing £100 billion this year instead of balancing the books now the pandemic is over?
There is nothing wrong with borrowing if you are using the money to invest eg in infrastructure or education where the return is substantially greater than the interest on the borrowing.
We have plenty of borrowing headroom. The national debt is about one year's GDP. Individuals often have mortgage debt of up to three time annual salary and find it sustainable. Plenty of headroom.
But to borrow to cut taxes is severely damaging and driven by ideology.
So I agree with your first sentence but not your second.
Pretty much the entire deficit is due to interest payments on government debt. So Britain would be in a much better place if it wasn't having to service so much debt. It doesn't make much sense to me to add even more debt, and even more future debt interest payments, particularly when the future demographic challenges means that it becomes harder to service debts in the future, with an ageing population, and a shrinking global population.
And besides all that, after the experience of the Truss Calamity, I'm amazed that anyone could think that Britain has any headroom to borrow more. The market response showed that there wasn't much appetite to lend Britain more money, nor confidence in Britain being able to service larger debts.
Worked out over the weekend that my newly-graduated daughter is paying a higher tax rate on her income (20% basic rate + 9% student loans graduate tax + 12 % national insurance = 41%) than my Dad is on his pension (40% higher rate of income tax). Absolutely insane.
Poor comparison , the 9% is a government payday/bank type loan so not a tax ( and if she does not earn big money she does not pay the loan back).
My Dad is a graduate, just like her, and he didn't have to pay it. It's a tax masquerading as a loan. Claiming otherwise is pure sophistry.
Letting so many people be paid by state to go to university is the issue ( only a fraction of the current volumes were at university when her Dad dit it ). Those who need to for certain jobs should go and pay for it , the others should jsut take a job and save wasting time and money. If as Idiot Bart says she is earning 25K then she could just as easily taken a job at a till in Tesco's and been earning for years and have no LOAN to pay back.
£25k is the threshold above which the 9% graduate tax is levied. I'm not going to share her pay details on here, but she's working for a government-funded organisation in a technical role, where she'll hopefully make good use of her Maths degree, but isn't likely to make a huge income.
Possibly she'll end up taking a much better paid job in the private sector once she has a few years experience, but if too many skilled graduates do the same then government organisations will have to spend absurd sums of money on contractors and consultants to stop everything falling apart.
It will give you plenty to moan about, no doubt.
All I would say is far too many going to university who end up in jobs that do not need degrees and most government organisations jobs do not require degrees to function , it is just an affection. Most of tehm should at best be apprenticeships or learn on the job.
I feel like we have been discussing this forever on here ..
One big problem we have in the UK is it really is very binary here, go to uni, away from home, fulltime or get a job....things like Open University and part time degrees are overwhelming used by mature students, in case of OU, very mature students.
Most countries have a third way e.g. US has community college, lots of European countries unless you are top end of achievement spectrum you go to local uni often in combination with a job.
The PM is rich? So what. He is leader of the Conservative Party not a Corbynite Marxist sect.
What voters want to see is their own economic circumstances improve which he and Hunt are doing by cutting inflation and growing the economy and hopefully in due course cutting tax as well.
As for getting rid of Rishi, barely more than a year ago OGH was telling Tories to get rid of Boris in favour of Rishi!
Cutting inflation is not a sufficient condition for people to "see their own economic circumstances improve". What matters to most people is the difference between their income inflation and price inflation. Inflation is still high.
We're not going destitute as fast as we were, darling. I think i'll vote conservative now.
And don't forget the cumulative effect - it will be quite some time before real wages are back where they were before Sunak got in.
Yes. We're just off the back of 20 straight months of CPI inflation being above wage inflation. We've had one month with wages going up faster than CPI. So even if every month is the mirror of the months before, we'll still be worse off than we were in October 2021 by the time the election comes around.
Especially thanks to fiscal drag.
Real take-home wages are still falling currently, even with nominal wages growing faster than inflation.
You’re in danger of post hoc data mining
Wages aren’t growing!
Oops.
Real wages aren’t growing! 😁
Fuck!
Shit! Umm! Fiscal drag, thats’s it. Fiscal drag!
Realtake-home wages aren’t growing! 😁
You’re in danger of wrapping yourself in a comfortable blanket of argument while, I suspect, Bart’s position better reflects the experience of the electorate.
He has two drums that he bangs with monotonous regularity. It gives me a headache.
Fiscal drag sucks. It’s a sneaky tax. But it’s not what people focus on - they see their tax home pay go up, but are struggling to make ends meet because prices are going up faster.
Unfortunately the size of state that the electorate wants needs to be paid for. If there was a government that was willing to be more disciplined then there would be saving that could be made, but that isn’t this government or (I suspect) the next one.
But the level of tax rises that are needed to balance the budget (or at least reduce the deficit below the rate of GDP growth) are too large to be affordable by the rich (however defined). They have already made significant contributions (eg additional rate threshold cut by £25k - that’s £1,250 extra income tax from each individual) as have companies with the planned increase in corporation tax.
there will be more tax rises to come for the wealthy, but the middle income voter needs to contribute as well.
Middle income earners can already be on 80% real marginal tax rates - how much higher than that should those go?
How about taxing everyone the same so everyone contributes equally, rather than opting some out of NICs etc?
Why should some be exempt from contributing whatsoever?
You really are thick , NIC is supposed to be paid till you are state pension age, hence why it stops DUMBO. Fact that a few pensioners work part time after that makes no difference and would raise peanuts you stupid half witted idiot.
I know what its supposed to be paid until, but things can be changed. Why should it stop once at pension age? What good reason is there for it not to apply to pensions, or investment incomes like from letting out homes, or dividends and so on and so forth?
I never said it should be levied on pensioners who work part time, did I?
I said it should be levied on all income that income tax applies to. Which would include pensioners working, yes, so it would also include pensions, money from letting out properties etc
Since everything the NIC tax pays is PAYG and there is no pot of money that has been accrued to fund obligations, it should be paid equitably as you go by everyone and not only those working for their pay.
Don't be so stupid, why not have VAT on everything, you cannot get blood out of a stone. Why the Feck would you pay NI on your state pension that was provided due to teh vast amount of NI you had paid for it.
Because the state needs funding.
Why the Feck should you not pay NI on your state pension? Or private pensions too?
You've not "paid for it", its pay as you go, and the as you go hasn't finished.
So you cannot read either as well as being as thick as mince. Go read the government site , 35 years contributions idiot, I paid for 50 years , why not whine that I deserve 15 years back as well as back pension as I was supposed to get state pension a year earlier based on what I was originally promised. What a Bellend.
Pushing up the age at which one becomes an OAP does irritate people. Especially if it’s pushed up while one is beginning to anticipate it!
The PM is rich? So what. He is leader of the Conservative Party not a Corbynite Marxist sect.
What voters want to see is their own economic circumstances improve which he and Hunt are doing by cutting inflation and growing the economy and hopefully in due course cutting tax as well.
As for getting rid of Rishi, barely more than a year ago OGH was telling Tories to get rid of Boris in favour of Rishi!
Cutting inflation is not a sufficient condition for people to "see their own economic circumstances improve". What matters to most people is the difference between their income inflation and price inflation. Inflation is still high.
We're not going destitute as fast as we were, darling. I think i'll vote conservative now.
And don't forget the cumulative effect - it will be quite some time before real wages are back where they were before Sunak got in.
Yes. We're just off the back of 20 straight months of CPI inflation being above wage inflation. We've had one month with wages going up faster than CPI. So even if every month is the mirror of the months before, we'll still be worse off than we were in October 2021 by the time the election comes around.
Especially thanks to fiscal drag.
Real take-home wages are still falling currently, even with nominal wages growing faster than inflation.
You’re in danger of post hoc data mining
Wages aren’t growing!
Oops.
Real wages aren’t growing! 😁
Fuck!
Shit! Umm! Fiscal drag, thats’s it. Fiscal drag!
Realtake-home wages aren’t growing! 😁
Excuse me but I've been banging the drum on fiscal drag and opposed it since it was announced. I'm entirely consistent.
And of course I was a loyal Tory until Sunak started putting up taxes like National Insurance and fiscal drag.
I have my principles. I believe people should be able to keep more of their own income they work for. The Tories used to believe that too.
I haven't left the Tories, Sunak's Tories have left me.
I'm sure Rishi wants lower taxes. But he wants them in the same way that St Augustine wanted chastity.
(Unless he can find ways of cutting government spending on a recurring basis, I'd rather it was funded by taxes than borrowing. The mix of taxes he's using is a disgrace, though.)
Two questions.
How can you talk tax cuts when borrowing £100billion+ a year.
Why are we borrowing £100 billion this year instead of balancing the books now the pandemic is over?
There is nothing wrong with borrowing if you are using the money to invest eg in infrastructure or education where the return is substantially greater than the interest on the borrowing.
We have plenty of borrowing headroom. The national debt is about one year's GDP. Individuals often have mortgage debt of up to three time annual salary and find it sustainable. Plenty of headroom.
But to borrow to cut taxes is severely damaging and driven by ideology.
So I agree with your first sentence but not your second.
Pretty much the entire deficit is due to interest payments on government debt. So Britain would be in a much better place if it wasn't having to service so much debt. It doesn't make much sense to me to add even more debt, and even more future debt interest payments, particularly when the future demographic challenges means that it becomes harder to service debts in the future, with an ageing population, and a shrinking global population.
And besides all that, after the experience of the Truss Calamity, I'm amazed that anyone could think that Britain has any headroom to borrow more. The market response showed that there wasn't much appetite to lend Britain more money, nor confidence in Britain being able to service larger debts.
Worked out over the weekend that my newly-graduated daughter is paying a higher tax rate on her income (20% basic rate + 9% student loans graduate tax + 12 % national insurance = 41%) than my Dad is on his pension (40% higher rate of income tax). Absolutely insane.
Poor comparison , the 9% is a government payday/bank type loan so not a tax ( and if she does not earn big money she does not pay the loan back).
My Dad is a graduate, just like her, and he didn't have to pay it. It's a tax masquerading as a loan. Claiming otherwise is pure sophistry.
Letting so many people be paid by state to go to university is the issue ( only a fraction of the current volumes were at university when her Dad dit it ). Those who need to for certain jobs should go and pay for it , the others should jsut take a job and save wasting time and money. If as Idiot Bart says she is earning 25K then she could just as easily taken a job at a till in Tesco's and been earning for years and have no LOAN to pay back.
You really are an illiterate dumbo who can't understand what other people wrote aren't you? Maybe if you were better educated your reading comprehension would be better.
I never said she was earning £25k, I said that the repayment threshold is now set at £25k so graduates earning £25k or above is on an effective 9% higher income tax rate from that point on.
£25k is not in my view "big money" which is what you falsely claimed, do you think its big money?
Do you really think its air t hat someone on £25k or above should have a marginal tax rate of 41%? 20+12+9 = 41 whether you like it or not, don't be an innumerate dumbo, that's how the numbers are.
You are at it again Thicko , where did I say 25K was big money. If they want the advantage of university then they should pay for it , usual whining from the likes of you, scrounger that wants everybody else to pay for them and their brood. Get out and get a decent job rather than trying to sponge off pensioners.
A teacher or, even ‘worse’ a doctor spends several unremunerated years at university, to be fair.
Some jobs do require a degree OKC, many do not though. Your examples would I say require a degree.
And a newly qualified teacher on a £30k salary is facing a real marginal tax rate of 41% on everything she or he earns over £25k. 20+12+9
Do you really think its reasonable to tax an early career teacher 41% when others are taxed less who earn the same or more?
Leaked doc shows Biden admin is more worried about Ukraine corruption than it says publicly https://www.politico.com/news/2023/10/02/biden-admin-ukraine-strategy-corruption-00119237 Biden administration officials are far more worried about corruption in Ukraine than they publicly admit, a confidential U.S. strategy document obtained by POLITICO suggests.
The “sensitive but unclassified” version of the long-term U.S. plan lays out numerous steps Washington is taking to help Kyiv root out malfeasance and otherwise reform an array of Ukrainian sectors. It stresses that corruption could cause Western allies to abandon Ukraine’s fight against Russia’s invasion, and that Kyiv cannot put off the anti-graft effort...
Does not surprise.
I worked in Kiev for Alliance Française for six months and I soon discovered that every single public and private functionary was as bent as fuck. It was worse than Russia and that's saying something. Belarus is less corrupt than both in my experience. It did mean I could ride a motorbike without a helmet though as I could just give a cop 5 euros on the rare occasions they could be bother to flag me down. (With a loaded Makarov, lol)
According to the Ukrainians in the UK grapevine the price for a "white ticket', the document that exempts one from conscription, is now up to $20,000. It was $5k at the start of the SMO. That's real cozzy livs for you.
The PM is rich? So what. He is leader of the Conservative Party not a Corbynite Marxist sect.
What voters want to see is their own economic circumstances improve which he and Hunt are doing by cutting inflation and growing the economy and hopefully in due course cutting tax as well.
As for getting rid of Rishi, barely more than a year ago OGH was telling Tories to get rid of Boris in favour of Rishi!
Cutting inflation is not a sufficient condition for people to "see their own economic circumstances improve". What matters to most people is the difference between their income inflation and price inflation. Inflation is still high.
We're not going destitute as fast as we were, darling. I think i'll vote conservative now.
And don't forget the cumulative effect - it will be quite some time before real wages are back where they were before Sunak got in.
Yes. We're just off the back of 20 straight months of CPI inflation being above wage inflation. We've had one month with wages going up faster than CPI. So even if every month is the mirror of the months before, we'll still be worse off than we were in October 2021 by the time the election comes around.
Especially thanks to fiscal drag.
Real take-home wages are still falling currently, even with nominal wages growing faster than inflation.
You’re in danger of post hoc data mining
Wages aren’t growing!
Oops.
Real wages aren’t growing! 😁
Fuck!
Shit! Umm! Fiscal drag, thats’s it. Fiscal drag!
Realtake-home wages aren’t growing! 😁
Excuse me but I've been banging the drum on fiscal drag and opposed it since it was announced. I'm entirely consistent.
And of course I was a loyal Tory until Sunak started putting up taxes like National Insurance and fiscal drag.
I have my principles. I believe people should be able to keep more of their own income they work for. The Tories used to believe that too.
I haven't left the Tories, Sunak's Tories have left me.
I'm sure Rishi wants lower taxes. But he wants them in the same way that St Augustine wanted chastity.
(Unless he can find ways of cutting government spending on a recurring basis, I'd rather it was funded by taxes than borrowing. The mix of taxes he's using is a disgrace, though.)
Two questions.
How can you talk tax cuts when borrowing £100billion+ a year.
Why are we borrowing £100 billion this year instead of balancing the books now the pandemic is over?
There is nothing wrong with borrowing if you are using the money to invest eg in infrastructure or education where the return is substantially greater than the interest on the borrowing.
We have plenty of borrowing headroom. The national debt is about one year's GDP. Individuals often have mortgage debt of up to three time annual salary and find it sustainable. Plenty of headroom.
But to borrow to cut taxes is severely damaging and driven by ideology.
So I agree with your first sentence but not your second.
Pretty much the entire deficit is due to interest payments on government debt. So Britain would be in a much better place if it wasn't having to service so much debt. It doesn't make much sense to me to add even more debt, and even more future debt interest payments, particularly when the future demographic challenges means that it becomes harder to service debts in the future, with an ageing population, and a shrinking global population.
And besides all that, after the experience of the Truss Calamity, I'm amazed that anyone could think that Britain has any headroom to borrow more. The market response showed that there wasn't much appetite to lend Britain more money, nor confidence in Britain being able to service larger debts.
Worked out over the weekend that my newly-graduated daughter is paying a higher tax rate on her income (20% basic rate + 9% student loans graduate tax + 12 % national insurance = 41%) than my Dad is on his pension (40% higher rate of income tax). Absolutely insane.
Poor comparison , the 9% is a government payday/bank type loan so not a tax ( and if she does not earn big money she does not pay the loan back).
My Dad is a graduate, just like her, and he didn't have to pay it. It's a tax masquerading as a loan. Claiming otherwise is pure sophistry.
Letting so many people be paid by state to go to university is the issue ( only a fraction of the current volumes were at university when her Dad dit it ). Those who need to for certain jobs should go and pay for it , the others should jsut take a job and save wasting time and money. If as Idiot Bart says she is earning 25K then she could just as easily taken a job at a till in Tesco's and been earning for years and have no LOAN to pay back.
You really are an illiterate dumbo who can't understand what other people wrote aren't you? Maybe if you were better educated your reading comprehension would be better.
I never said she was earning £25k, I said that the repayment threshold is now set at £25k so graduates earning £25k or above is on an effective 9% higher income tax rate from that point on.
£25k is not in my view "big money" which is what you falsely claimed, do you think its big money?
Do you really think its air t hat someone on £25k or above should have a marginal tax rate of 41%? 20+12+9 = 41 whether you like it or not, don't be an innumerate dumbo, that's how the numbers are.
You are at it again Thicko , where did I say 25K was big money. If they want the advantage of university then they should pay for it , usual whining from the likes of you, scrounger that wants everybody else to pay for them and their brood. Get out and get a decent job rather than trying to sponge off pensioners.
The PM is rich? So what. He is leader of the Conservative Party not a Corbynite Marxist sect.
What voters want to see is their own economic circumstances improve which he and Hunt are doing by cutting inflation and growing the economy and hopefully in due course cutting tax as well.
As for getting rid of Rishi, barely more than a year ago OGH was telling Tories to get rid of Boris in favour of Rishi!
Cutting inflation is not a sufficient condition for people to "see their own economic circumstances improve". What matters to most people is the difference between their income inflation and price inflation. Inflation is still high.
We're not going destitute as fast as we were, darling. I think i'll vote conservative now.
And don't forget the cumulative effect - it will be quite some time before real wages are back where they were before Sunak got in.
Yes. We're just off the back of 20 straight months of CPI inflation being above wage inflation. We've had one month with wages going up faster than CPI. So even if every month is the mirror of the months before, we'll still be worse off than we were in October 2021 by the time the election comes around.
Especially thanks to fiscal drag.
Real take-home wages are still falling currently, even with nominal wages growing faster than inflation.
You’re in danger of post hoc data mining
Wages aren’t growing!
Oops.
Real wages aren’t growing! 😁
Fuck!
Shit! Umm! Fiscal drag, thats’s it. Fiscal drag!
Realtake-home wages aren’t growing! 😁
Excuse me but I've been banging the drum on fiscal drag and opposed it since it was announced. I'm entirely consistent.
And of course I was a loyal Tory until Sunak started putting up taxes like National Insurance and fiscal drag.
I have my principles. I believe people should be able to keep more of their own income they work for. The Tories used to believe that too.
I haven't left the Tories, Sunak's Tories have left me.
I'm sure Rishi wants lower taxes. But he wants them in the same way that St Augustine wanted chastity.
(Unless he can find ways of cutting government spending on a recurring basis, I'd rather it was funded by taxes than borrowing. The mix of taxes he's using is a disgrace, though.)
Two questions.
How can you talk tax cuts when borrowing £100billion+ a year.
Why are we borrowing £100 billion this year instead of balancing the books now the pandemic is over?
There is nothing wrong with borrowing if you are using the money to invest eg in infrastructure or education where the return is substantially greater than the interest on the borrowing.
We have plenty of borrowing headroom. The national debt is about one year's GDP. Individuals often have mortgage debt of up to three time annual salary and find it sustainable. Plenty of headroom.
But to borrow to cut taxes is severely damaging and driven by ideology.
So I agree with your first sentence but not your second.
Pretty much the entire deficit is due to interest payments on government debt. So Britain would be in a much better place if it wasn't having to service so much debt. It doesn't make much sense to me to add even more debt, and even more future debt interest payments, particularly when the future demographic challenges means that it becomes harder to service debts in the future, with an ageing population, and a shrinking global population.
And besides all that, after the experience of the Truss Calamity, I'm amazed that anyone could think that Britain has any headroom to borrow more. The market response showed that there wasn't much appetite to lend Britain more money, nor confidence in Britain being able to service larger debts.
Worked out over the weekend that my newly-graduated daughter is paying a higher tax rate on her income (20% basic rate + 9% student loans graduate tax + 12 % national insurance = 41%) than my Dad is on his pension (40% higher rate of income tax). Absolutely insane.
Poor comparison , the 9% is a government payday/bank type loan so not a tax ( and if she does not earn big money she does not pay the loan back).
£25k is the threshold where you pay 9% extra income tax from then on. Not big money as you claimed, £25k.
So is £25k big money, or were you wrong? Dumbo.
Expecting pensioners to pay the same rate of tax as everyone else, including NIC on all pensions paid the same as all salaries, is not "scrounging". Everyone should be treated the same, that's consistency.
Don't like it? Go get a job.
You absolute numpty , I have a job , an extremely well paid one as well as my state pension and pay thousands monthly in income tax and paid NI for 50 years. Also chose not to go to university despite being the DUX at school , never held me back DUMBO. Unlike you I did not get free childcare and all sorts of benefits, my wife looked after my daughter.
The PM is rich? So what. He is leader of the Conservative Party not a Corbynite Marxist sect.
What voters want to see is their own economic circumstances improve which he and Hunt are doing by cutting inflation and growing the economy and hopefully in due course cutting tax as well.
As for getting rid of Rishi, barely more than a year ago OGH was telling Tories to get rid of Boris in favour of Rishi!
Cutting inflation is not a sufficient condition for people to "see their own economic circumstances improve". What matters to most people is the difference between their income inflation and price inflation. Inflation is still high.
We're not going destitute as fast as we were, darling. I think i'll vote conservative now.
And don't forget the cumulative effect - it will be quite some time before real wages are back where they were before Sunak got in.
Yes. We're just off the back of 20 straight months of CPI inflation being above wage inflation. We've had one month with wages going up faster than CPI. So even if every month is the mirror of the months before, we'll still be worse off than we were in October 2021 by the time the election comes around.
Especially thanks to fiscal drag.
Real take-home wages are still falling currently, even with nominal wages growing faster than inflation.
You’re in danger of post hoc data mining
Wages aren’t growing!
Oops.
Real wages aren’t growing! 😁
Fuck!
Shit! Umm! Fiscal drag, thats’s it. Fiscal drag!
Realtake-home wages aren’t growing! 😁
You’re in danger of wrapping yourself in a comfortable blanket of argument while, I suspect, Bart’s position better reflects the experience of the electorate.
He has two drums that he bangs with monotonous regularity. It gives me a headache.
Fiscal drag sucks. It’s a sneaky tax. But it’s not what people focus on - they see their tax home pay go up, but are struggling to make ends meet because prices are going up faster.
Unfortunately the size of state that the electorate wants needs to be paid for. If there was a government that was willing to be more disciplined then there would be saving that could be made, but that isn’t this government or (I suspect) the next one.
But the level of tax rises that are needed to balance the budget (or at least reduce the deficit below the rate of GDP growth) are too large to be affordable by the rich (however defined). They have already made significant contributions (eg additional rate threshold cut by £25k - that’s £1,250 extra income tax from each individual) as have companies with the planned increase in corporation tax.
there will be more tax rises to come for the wealthy, but the middle income voter needs to contribute as well.
Middle income earners can already be on 80% real marginal tax rates - how much higher than that should those go?
How about taxing everyone the same so everyone contributes equally, rather than opting some out of NICs etc?
Why should some be exempt from contributing whatsoever?
You really are thick , NIC is supposed to be paid till you are state pension age, hence why it stops DUMBO. Fact that a few pensioners work part time after that makes no difference and would raise peanuts you stupid half witted idiot.
I know what its supposed to be paid until, but things can be changed. Why should it stop once at pension age? What good reason is there for it not to apply to pensions, or investment incomes like from letting out homes, or dividends and so on and so forth?
I never said it should be levied on pensioners who work part time, did I?
I said it should be levied on all income that income tax applies to. Which would include pensioners working, yes, so it would also include pensions, money from letting out properties etc
Since everything the NIC tax pays is PAYG and there is no pot of money that has been accrued to fund obligations, it should be paid equitably as you go by everyone and not only those working for their pay.
Don't be so stupid, why not have VAT on everything, you cannot get blood out of a stone. Why the Feck would you pay NI on your state pension that was provided due to teh vast amount of NI you had paid for it.
Because the state needs funding.
Why the Feck should you not pay NI on your state pension? Or private pensions too?
You've not "paid for it", its pay as you go, and the as you go hasn't finished.
So you cannot read either as well as being as thick as mince. Go read the government site , 35 years contributions idiot, I paid for 50 years , why not whine that I deserve 15 years back as well as back pension as I was supposed to get state pension a year earlier based on what I was originally promised. What a Bellend.
Contributions don't stop after 35 years you idiot. I've paid for most of that already, I'll still continue to pay for the rest of my working life - and should pay for the rest of my life as its PAYG not contributions based. Idiot.
So what if you've paid for 50 years? You never paid into a pot, its pay as you go, payments should continue for your entire life as you're not stopping claiming healthcare or any other benefits from the state anymore now are you?
Yet again halfwit , I ahve private healthcare, private Dentistry. Do some work you slacker.
The PM is rich? So what. He is leader of the Conservative Party not a Corbynite Marxist sect.
What voters want to see is their own economic circumstances improve which he and Hunt are doing by cutting inflation and growing the economy and hopefully in due course cutting tax as well.
As for getting rid of Rishi, barely more than a year ago OGH was telling Tories to get rid of Boris in favour of Rishi!
Cutting inflation is not a sufficient condition for people to "see their own economic circumstances improve". What matters to most people is the difference between their income inflation and price inflation. Inflation is still high.
We're not going destitute as fast as we were, darling. I think i'll vote conservative now.
And don't forget the cumulative effect - it will be quite some time before real wages are back where they were before Sunak got in.
Yes. We're just off the back of 20 straight months of CPI inflation being above wage inflation. We've had one month with wages going up faster than CPI. So even if every month is the mirror of the months before, we'll still be worse off than we were in October 2021 by the time the election comes around.
Especially thanks to fiscal drag.
Real take-home wages are still falling currently, even with nominal wages growing faster than inflation.
You’re in danger of post hoc data mining
Wages aren’t growing!
Oops.
Real wages aren’t growing! 😁
Fuck!
Shit! Umm! Fiscal drag, thats’s it. Fiscal drag!
Realtake-home wages aren’t growing! 😁
Excuse me but I've been banging the drum on fiscal drag and opposed it since it was announced. I'm entirely consistent.
And of course I was a loyal Tory until Sunak started putting up taxes like National Insurance and fiscal drag.
I have my principles. I believe people should be able to keep more of their own income they work for. The Tories used to believe that too.
I haven't left the Tories, Sunak's Tories have left me.
I'm sure Rishi wants lower taxes. But he wants them in the same way that St Augustine wanted chastity.
(Unless he can find ways of cutting government spending on a recurring basis, I'd rather it was funded by taxes than borrowing. The mix of taxes he's using is a disgrace, though.)
Two questions.
How can you talk tax cuts when borrowing £100billion+ a year.
Why are we borrowing £100 billion this year instead of balancing the books now the pandemic is over?
There is nothing wrong with borrowing if you are using the money to invest eg in infrastructure or education where the return is substantially greater than the interest on the borrowing.
We have plenty of borrowing headroom. The national debt is about one year's GDP. Individuals often have mortgage debt of up to three time annual salary and find it sustainable. Plenty of headroom.
But to borrow to cut taxes is severely damaging and driven by ideology.
So I agree with your first sentence but not your second.
Pretty much the entire deficit is due to interest payments on government debt. So Britain would be in a much better place if it wasn't having to service so much debt. It doesn't make much sense to me to add even more debt, and even more future debt interest payments, particularly when the future demographic challenges means that it becomes harder to service debts in the future, with an ageing population, and a shrinking global population.
And besides all that, after the experience of the Truss Calamity, I'm amazed that anyone could think that Britain has any headroom to borrow more. The market response showed that there wasn't much appetite to lend Britain more money, nor confidence in Britain being able to service larger debts.
Worked out over the weekend that my newly-graduated daughter is paying a higher tax rate on her income (20% basic rate + 9% student loans graduate tax + 12 % national insurance = 41%) than my Dad is on his pension (40% higher rate of income tax). Absolutely insane.
Poor comparison , the 9% is a government payday/bank type loan so not a tax ( and if she does not earn big money she does not pay the loan back).
My Dad is a graduate, just like her, and he didn't have to pay it. It's a tax masquerading as a loan. Claiming otherwise is pure sophistry.
Letting so many people be paid by state to go to university is the issue ( only a fraction of the current volumes were at university when her Dad dit it ). Those who need to for certain jobs should go and pay for it , the others should jsut take a job and save wasting time and money. If as Idiot Bart says she is earning 25K then she could just as easily taken a job at a till in Tesco's and been earning for years and have no LOAN to pay back.
You really are an illiterate dumbo who can't understand what other people wrote aren't you? Maybe if you were better educated your reading comprehension would be better.
I never said she was earning £25k, I said that the repayment threshold is now set at £25k so graduates earning £25k or above is on an effective 9% higher income tax rate from that point on.
£25k is not in my view "big money" which is what you falsely claimed, do you think its big money?
Do you really think its air t hat someone on £25k or above should have a marginal tax rate of 41%? 20+12+9 = 41 whether you like it or not, don't be an innumerate dumbo, that's how the numbers are.
You are at it again Thicko , where did I say 25K was big money. If they want the advantage of university then they should pay for it , usual whining from the likes of you, scrounger that wants everybody else to pay for them and their brood. Get out and get a decent job rather than trying to sponge off pensioners.
The PM is rich? So what. He is leader of the Conservative Party not a Corbynite Marxist sect.
What voters want to see is their own economic circumstances improve which he and Hunt are doing by cutting inflation and growing the economy and hopefully in due course cutting tax as well.
As for getting rid of Rishi, barely more than a year ago OGH was telling Tories to get rid of Boris in favour of Rishi!
Cutting inflation is not a sufficient condition for people to "see their own economic circumstances improve". What matters to most people is the difference between their income inflation and price inflation. Inflation is still high.
We're not going destitute as fast as we were, darling. I think i'll vote conservative now.
And don't forget the cumulative effect - it will be quite some time before real wages are back where they were before Sunak got in.
Yes. We're just off the back of 20 straight months of CPI inflation being above wage inflation. We've had one month with wages going up faster than CPI. So even if every month is the mirror of the months before, we'll still be worse off than we were in October 2021 by the time the election comes around.
Especially thanks to fiscal drag.
Real take-home wages are still falling currently, even with nominal wages growing faster than inflation.
You’re in danger of post hoc data mining
Wages aren’t growing!
Oops.
Real wages aren’t growing! 😁
Fuck!
Shit! Umm! Fiscal drag, thats’s it. Fiscal drag!
Realtake-home wages aren’t growing! 😁
Excuse me but I've been banging the drum on fiscal drag and opposed it since it was announced. I'm entirely consistent.
And of course I was a loyal Tory until Sunak started putting up taxes like National Insurance and fiscal drag.
I have my principles. I believe people should be able to keep more of their own income they work for. The Tories used to believe that too.
I haven't left the Tories, Sunak's Tories have left me.
I'm sure Rishi wants lower taxes. But he wants them in the same way that St Augustine wanted chastity.
(Unless he can find ways of cutting government spending on a recurring basis, I'd rather it was funded by taxes than borrowing. The mix of taxes he's using is a disgrace, though.)
Two questions.
How can you talk tax cuts when borrowing £100billion+ a year.
Why are we borrowing £100 billion this year instead of balancing the books now the pandemic is over?
There is nothing wrong with borrowing if you are using the money to invest eg in infrastructure or education where the return is substantially greater than the interest on the borrowing.
We have plenty of borrowing headroom. The national debt is about one year's GDP. Individuals often have mortgage debt of up to three time annual salary and find it sustainable. Plenty of headroom.
But to borrow to cut taxes is severely damaging and driven by ideology.
So I agree with your first sentence but not your second.
Pretty much the entire deficit is due to interest payments on government debt. So Britain would be in a much better place if it wasn't having to service so much debt. It doesn't make much sense to me to add even more debt, and even more future debt interest payments, particularly when the future demographic challenges means that it becomes harder to service debts in the future, with an ageing population, and a shrinking global population.
And besides all that, after the experience of the Truss Calamity, I'm amazed that anyone could think that Britain has any headroom to borrow more. The market response showed that there wasn't much appetite to lend Britain more money, nor confidence in Britain being able to service larger debts.
Worked out over the weekend that my newly-graduated daughter is paying a higher tax rate on her income (20% basic rate + 9% student loans graduate tax + 12 % national insurance = 41%) than my Dad is on his pension (40% higher rate of income tax). Absolutely insane.
Poor comparison , the 9% is a government payday/bank type loan so not a tax ( and if she does not earn big money she does not pay the loan back).
£25k is the threshold where you pay 9% extra income tax from then on. Not big money as you claimed, £25k.
So is £25k big money, or were you wrong? Dumbo.
Expecting pensioners to pay the same rate of tax as everyone else, including NIC on all pensions paid the same as all salaries, is not "scrounging". Everyone should be treated the same, that's consistency.
Don't like it? Go get a job.
You absolute numpty , I have a job , an extremely well paid one as well as my state pension and pay thousands monthly in income tax and paid NI for 50 years. Also chose not to go to university despite being the DUX at school , never held me back DUMBO. Unlike you I did not get free childcare and all sorts of benefits, my wife looked after my daughter.
And care to share what tax rate are you paying on your "extremely well paid one"?
Is it higher or lower than the real 41% marginal tax rate an early career teacher earning £30k is paying?
My wife, like me, works full time. Would love it if we could afford to live off one income, but paying housing and expenses on one salary isn't really feasibly anymore.
The PM is rich? So what. He is leader of the Conservative Party not a Corbynite Marxist sect.
What voters want to see is their own economic circumstances improve which he and Hunt are doing by cutting inflation and growing the economy and hopefully in due course cutting tax as well.
As for getting rid of Rishi, barely more than a year ago OGH was telling Tories to get rid of Boris in favour of Rishi!
Cutting inflation is not a sufficient condition for people to "see their own economic circumstances improve". What matters to most people is the difference between their income inflation and price inflation. Inflation is still high.
We're not going destitute as fast as we were, darling. I think i'll vote conservative now.
And don't forget the cumulative effect - it will be quite some time before real wages are back where they were before Sunak got in.
Yes. We're just off the back of 20 straight months of CPI inflation being above wage inflation. We've had one month with wages going up faster than CPI. So even if every month is the mirror of the months before, we'll still be worse off than we were in October 2021 by the time the election comes around.
Especially thanks to fiscal drag.
Real take-home wages are still falling currently, even with nominal wages growing faster than inflation.
You’re in danger of post hoc data mining
Wages aren’t growing!
Oops.
Real wages aren’t growing! 😁
Fuck!
Shit! Umm! Fiscal drag, thats’s it. Fiscal drag!
Realtake-home wages aren’t growing! 😁
You’re in danger of wrapping yourself in a comfortable blanket of argument while, I suspect, Bart’s position better reflects the experience of the electorate.
He has two drums that he bangs with monotonous regularity. It gives me a headache.
Fiscal drag sucks. It’s a sneaky tax. But it’s not what people focus on - they see their tax home pay go up, but are struggling to make ends meet because prices are going up faster.
Unfortunately the size of state that the electorate wants needs to be paid for. If there was a government that was willing to be more disciplined then there would be saving that could be made, but that isn’t this government or (I suspect) the next one.
But the level of tax rises that are needed to balance the budget (or at least reduce the deficit below the rate of GDP growth) are too large to be affordable by the rich (however defined). They have already made significant contributions (eg additional rate threshold cut by £25k - that’s £1,250 extra income tax from each individual) as have companies with the planned increase in corporation tax.
there will be more tax rises to come for the wealthy, but the middle income voter needs to contribute as well.
Middle income earners can already be on 80% real marginal tax rates - how much higher than that should those go?
How about taxing everyone the same so everyone contributes equally, rather than opting some out of NICs etc?
Why should some be exempt from contributing whatsoever?
You really are thick , NIC is supposed to be paid till you are state pension age, hence why it stops DUMBO. Fact that a few pensioners work part time after that makes no difference and would raise peanuts you stupid half witted idiot.
I know what its supposed to be paid until, but things can be changed. Why should it stop once at pension age? What good reason is there for it not to apply to pensions, or investment incomes like from letting out homes, or dividends and so on and so forth?
I never said it should be levied on pensioners who work part time, did I?
I said it should be levied on all income that income tax applies to. Which would include pensioners working, yes, so it would also include pensions, money from letting out properties etc
Since everything the NIC tax pays is PAYG and there is no pot of money that has been accrued to fund obligations, it should be paid equitably as you go by everyone and not only those working for their pay.
Don't be so stupid, why not have VAT on everything, you cannot get blood out of a stone. Why the Feck would you pay NI on your state pension that was provided due to teh vast amount of NI you had paid for it.
Because the state needs funding.
Why the Feck should you not pay NI on your state pension? Or private pensions too?
You've not "paid for it", its pay as you go, and the as you go hasn't finished.
So you cannot read either as well as being as thick as mince. Go read the government site , 35 years contributions idiot, I paid for 50 years , why not whine that I deserve 15 years back as well as back pension as I was supposed to get state pension a year earlier based on what I was originally promised. What a Bellend.
Pushing up the age at which one becomes an OAP does irritate people. Especially if it’s pushed up while one is beginning to anticipate it!
The PM is rich? So what. He is leader of the Conservative Party not a Corbynite Marxist sect.
What voters want to see is their own economic circumstances improve which he and Hunt are doing by cutting inflation and growing the economy and hopefully in due course cutting tax as well.
As for getting rid of Rishi, barely more than a year ago OGH was telling Tories to get rid of Boris in favour of Rishi!
Cutting inflation is not a sufficient condition for people to "see their own economic circumstances improve". What matters to most people is the difference between their income inflation and price inflation. Inflation is still high.
We're not going destitute as fast as we were, darling. I think i'll vote conservative now.
And don't forget the cumulative effect - it will be quite some time before real wages are back where they were before Sunak got in.
Yes. We're just off the back of 20 straight months of CPI inflation being above wage inflation. We've had one month with wages going up faster than CPI. So even if every month is the mirror of the months before, we'll still be worse off than we were in October 2021 by the time the election comes around.
Especially thanks to fiscal drag.
Real take-home wages are still falling currently, even with nominal wages growing faster than inflation.
You’re in danger of post hoc data mining
Wages aren’t growing!
Oops.
Real wages aren’t growing! 😁
Fuck!
Shit! Umm! Fiscal drag, thats’s it. Fiscal drag!
Realtake-home wages aren’t growing! 😁
You’re in danger of wrapping yourself in a comfortable blanket of argument while, I suspect, Bart’s position better reflects the experience of the electorate.
He has two drums that he bangs with monotonous regularity. It gives me a headache.
Fiscal drag sucks. It’s a sneaky tax. But it’s not what people focus on - they see their tax home pay go up, but are struggling to make ends meet because prices are going up faster.
Unfortunately the size of state that the electorate wants needs to be paid for. If there was a government that was willing to be more disciplined then there would be saving that could be made, but that isn’t this government or (I suspect) the next one.
But the level of tax rises that are needed to balance the budget (or at least reduce the deficit below the rate of GDP growth) are too large to be affordable by the rich (however defined). They have already made significant contributions (eg additional rate threshold cut by £25k - that’s £1,250 extra income tax from each individual) as have companies with the planned increase in corporation tax.
there will be more tax rises to come for the wealthy, but the middle income voter needs to contribute as well.
Middle income earners can already be on 80% real marginal tax rates - how much higher than that should those go?
How about taxing everyone the same so everyone contributes equally, rather than opting some out of NICs etc?
Why should some be exempt from contributing whatsoever?
You really are thick , NIC is supposed to be paid till you are state pension age, hence why it stops DUMBO. Fact that a few pensioners work part time after that makes no difference and would raise peanuts you stupid half witted idiot.
I know what its supposed to be paid until, but things can be changed. Why should it stop once at pension age? What good reason is there for it not to apply to pensions, or investment incomes like from letting out homes, or dividends and so on and so forth?
I never said it should be levied on pensioners who work part time, did I?
I said it should be levied on all income that income tax applies to. Which would include pensioners working, yes, so it would also include pensions, money from letting out properties etc
Since everything the NIC tax pays is PAYG and there is no pot of money that has been accrued to fund obligations, it should be paid equitably as you go by everyone and not only those working for their pay.
Don't be so stupid, why not have VAT on everything, you cannot get blood out of a stone. Why the Feck would you pay NI on your state pension that was provided due to teh vast amount of NI you had paid for it.
Because the state needs funding.
Why the Feck should you not pay NI on your state pension? Or private pensions too?
You've not "paid for it", its pay as you go, and the as you go hasn't finished.
So you cannot read either as well as being as thick as mince. Go read the government site , 35 years contributions idiot, I paid for 50 years , why not whine that I deserve 15 years back as well as back pension as I was supposed to get state pension a year earlier based on what I was originally promised. What a Bellend.
Pushing up the age at which one becomes an OAP does irritate people. Especially if it’s pushed up while one is beginning to anticipate it!
It may irritate people, but it’s still the right thing to do.
The state pension used to kick in at the point 6 years after the average death. It was insurance in case you happened to get to 65 and be too old to work to support yourself, rather than a nice reward to look forward to at the end of your life. We should celebrate people living longer, but we should also make use of those people. Not least because it’s a lot easier to save for your retirement if you have more years in which to do it!
The PM is rich? So what. He is leader of the Conservative Party not a Corbynite Marxist sect.
What voters want to see is their own economic circumstances improve which he and Hunt are doing by cutting inflation and growing the economy and hopefully in due course cutting tax as well.
As for getting rid of Rishi, barely more than a year ago OGH was telling Tories to get rid of Boris in favour of Rishi!
Cutting inflation is not a sufficient condition for people to "see their own economic circumstances improve". What matters to most people is the difference between their income inflation and price inflation. Inflation is still high.
We're not going destitute as fast as we were, darling. I think i'll vote conservative now.
And don't forget the cumulative effect - it will be quite some time before real wages are back where they were before Sunak got in.
Yes. We're just off the back of 20 straight months of CPI inflation being above wage inflation. We've had one month with wages going up faster than CPI. So even if every month is the mirror of the months before, we'll still be worse off than we were in October 2021 by the time the election comes around.
Especially thanks to fiscal drag.
Real take-home wages are still falling currently, even with nominal wages growing faster than inflation.
You’re in danger of post hoc data mining
Wages aren’t growing!
Oops.
Real wages aren’t growing! 😁
Fuck!
Shit! Umm! Fiscal drag, thats’s it. Fiscal drag!
Realtake-home wages aren’t growing! 😁
You’re in danger of wrapping yourself in a comfortable blanket of argument while, I suspect, Bart’s position better reflects the experience of the electorate.
He has two drums that he bangs with monotonous regularity. It gives me a headache.
Fiscal drag sucks. It’s a sneaky tax. But it’s not what people focus on - they see their tax home pay go up, but are struggling to make ends meet because prices are going up faster.
Unfortunately the size of state that the electorate wants needs to be paid for. If there was a government that was willing to be more disciplined then there would be saving that could be made, but that isn’t this government or (I suspect) the next one.
But the level of tax rises that are needed to balance the budget (or at least reduce the deficit below the rate of GDP growth) are too large to be affordable by the rich (however defined). They have already made significant contributions (eg additional rate threshold cut by £25k - that’s £1,250 extra income tax from each individual) as have companies with the planned increase in corporation tax.
there will be more tax rises to come for the wealthy, but the middle income voter needs to contribute as well.
Middle income earners can already be on 80% real marginal tax rates - how much higher than that should those go?
How about taxing everyone the same so everyone contributes equally, rather than opting some out of NICs etc?
Why should some be exempt from contributing whatsoever?
You really are thick , NIC is supposed to be paid till you are state pension age, hence why it stops DUMBO. Fact that a few pensioners work part time after that makes no difference and would raise peanuts you stupid half witted idiot.
I know what its supposed to be paid until, but things can be changed. Why should it stop once at pension age? What good reason is there for it not to apply to pensions, or investment incomes like from letting out homes, or dividends and so on and so forth?
I never said it should be levied on pensioners who work part time, did I?
I said it should be levied on all income that income tax applies to. Which would include pensioners working, yes, so it would also include pensions, money from letting out properties etc
Since everything the NIC tax pays is PAYG and there is no pot of money that has been accrued to fund obligations, it should be paid equitably as you go by everyone and not only those working for their pay.
Don't be so stupid, why not have VAT on everything, you cannot get blood out of a stone. Why the Feck would you pay NI on your state pension that was provided due to teh vast amount of NI you had paid for it.
Because the state needs funding.
Why the Feck should you not pay NI on your state pension? Or private pensions too?
You've not "paid for it", its pay as you go, and the as you go hasn't finished.
So you cannot read either as well as being as thick as mince. Go read the government site , 35 years contributions idiot, I paid for 50 years , why not whine that I deserve 15 years back as well as back pension as I was supposed to get state pension a year earlier based on what I was originally promised. What a Bellend.
Contributions don't stop after 35 years you idiot. I've paid for most of that already, I'll still continue to pay for the rest of my working life - and should pay for the rest of my life as its PAYG not contributions based. Idiot.
So what if you've paid for 50 years? You never paid into a pot, its pay as you go, payments should continue for your entire life as you're not stopping claiming healthcare or any other benefits from the state anymore now are you?
Yet again halfwit , I ahve private healthcare, private Dentistry. Do some work you slacker.
The target is for it to be 2/3 of the median wage by next October. In a government that overall aspires to disappointing this is a real success story in terms of making work pay and reducing income inequality.
I wouldn't want to criticise any increase in the minimum wage but the 2/3 median wage target seems to represent more the downgrading of other work in the economy, it is being gradually bought down to minimum wage levels in a comparative sense. The marginal tax (Income tax, NI) that you pay for every pound above the minimum wage is quite significant, particularly if you are paying off a student loan.
Whilst purporting to be reducing 'income inequality' the one thing the government are noticeably not doing is adding more taxes to income from wealth. It is creating a structure whereby the gap between the workers and the capitalists increases. It is a contrast to here in Finland where the taxes on wealth are similar to the taxes on employment. Therefore more money is raised to provide things like free university education and council house building, along with many other advantages for the working age population who pay similar levels of tax to people in the UK.
Like politics, all pay is relative. An £11 minimum wage is £22k pa for a 40 hour week. Some routine jobs are not complicated, interact constantly with civilised and polite folk, and have little responsibility (which is not a problem - that's life). However lots of jobs that are difficult, arduous, back breaking, interface with monsters, keep you awake all night, shouty, complex and full of blame pay between say 22 and 28k pa.
A problem will always therefore develop from the fact that you can do OK in much of the UK as a couple on minimum wage (£44k pa) and actually have a nicer life than people earning not much more.
Is this part of the background to the outbreak of strikes from junior professionals and others?
A lot of high skilled, degree level jobs in the public sector, particularly local councils are paying only slightly above minimum wage, say £26k. You are responsible for some quite heavy stuff that can blow up quickly in your face and often there is no support, your manager just complains about you. I've seen this quite a bit, people starting and then saying 'no thanks' after about 3 months. The problem then is that you find out you are on a path to nowhere. If you don't get promoted you may be on £30k after 10 years. Why not just go and drive a van or make people coffee?
Exactly. Another issue is that the £22K minimum wage person will be paying tax and NI on 9-10K of that sum, meaning that the lowest paid FT workers are paying £3K or so in tax/NI.
There is an absurdity about saying that the lowest you can earn for a FT job ('living wage') is an amount which attracts thousands in IT and NI.
And of course absurd that the tax rate on low incomes is so high, while the marginal rate on the richest isn't much more.
The lowest earners were taken out of income tax by the Coalition
And look what happens when the LDs pulled out. Years of fiscal drag and the lowest earners shovelled back into tax.
Some people whose only income is State Pension are now being dragged into Income Tax, as has been mentioned on here several times.
Quite a few OAPs with full state pension and 20-40K savings will already be in it this current year, with the rise in interest rates. It's one thing to have PAYE on the pensions but another to have bank account interest taxable - which means checking and hassle and intimidating letters saying they'll be fined £X plus double charge etc etc.
Not helped by the fact that the DWP is not capable of deducting ICT from the State Pension. So pensioners are being faced with self-assessments or HMRC Simple Assessments, many for the first time in their life. Cue much confusion and anxiety.
Excellent point. And add to that that DWP does *not* give the pensioner an annual stated income figure, still less a P60, to use in one's sums. One has to work it out, and it's not obvious at all, especially given the various ways of payment (for instance, if the tax year ends in the middle opf a 4-weekly payment by arrears period, how does one apportion the income?).
DWP does give HMRC a figure which HMRC uses for its calculations, and in theory HMRC can calculate the tax from that and the details given by banks, but I've never found HMRC's [edit] overall calculation accurate, usually because something is missing somewhere.
I find it highly objectionable that it's made impossible to confirm just how much State Pension one gets a year, so it's impossible to check the HMRC figure!
PS This mainly from doing about 15 years' worth of my parents' taxes for them.
I wonder if Sunak is going to have to "clarify" Shappsie's remarks as he did after the bewigged charlatan's proposed British invasion and occupation of Ruthenia.
The PM is rich? So what. He is leader of the Conservative Party not a Corbynite Marxist sect.
What voters want to see is their own economic circumstances improve which he and Hunt are doing by cutting inflation and growing the economy and hopefully in due course cutting tax as well.
As for getting rid of Rishi, barely more than a year ago OGH was telling Tories to get rid of Boris in favour of Rishi!
Cutting inflation is not a sufficient condition for people to "see their own economic circumstances improve". What matters to most people is the difference between their income inflation and price inflation. Inflation is still high.
We're not going destitute as fast as we were, darling. I think i'll vote conservative now.
And don't forget the cumulative effect - it will be quite some time before real wages are back where they were before Sunak got in.
Yes. We're just off the back of 20 straight months of CPI inflation being above wage inflation. We've had one month with wages going up faster than CPI. So even if every month is the mirror of the months before, we'll still be worse off than we were in October 2021 by the time the election comes around.
Especially thanks to fiscal drag.
Real take-home wages are still falling currently, even with nominal wages growing faster than inflation.
You’re in danger of post hoc data mining
Wages aren’t growing!
Oops.
Real wages aren’t growing! 😁
Fuck!
Shit! Umm! Fiscal drag, thats’s it. Fiscal drag!
Realtake-home wages aren’t growing! 😁
You’re in danger of wrapping yourself in a comfortable blanket of argument while, I suspect, Bart’s position better reflects the experience of the electorate.
He has two drums that he bangs with monotonous regularity. It gives me a headache.
Fiscal drag sucks. It’s a sneaky tax. But it’s not what people focus on - they see their tax home pay go up, but are struggling to make ends meet because prices are going up faster.
Unfortunately the size of state that the electorate wants needs to be paid for. If there was a government that was willing to be more disciplined then there would be saving that could be made, but that isn’t this government or (I suspect) the next one.
But the level of tax rises that are needed to balance the budget (or at least reduce the deficit below the rate of GDP growth) are too large to be affordable by the rich (however defined). They have already made significant contributions (eg additional rate threshold cut by £25k - that’s £1,250 extra income tax from each individual) as have companies with the planned increase in corporation tax.
there will be more tax rises to come for the wealthy, but the middle income voter needs to contribute as well.
Middle income earners can already be on 80% real marginal tax rates - how much higher than that should those go?
How about taxing everyone the same so everyone contributes equally, rather than opting some out of NICs etc?
Why should some be exempt from contributing whatsoever?
You really are thick , NIC is supposed to be paid till you are state pension age, hence why it stops DUMBO. Fact that a few pensioners work part time after that makes no difference and would raise peanuts you stupid half witted idiot.
I know what its supposed to be paid until, but things can be changed. Why should it stop once at pension age? What good reason is there for it not to apply to pensions, or investment incomes like from letting out homes, or dividends and so on and so forth?
I never said it should be levied on pensioners who work part time, did I?
I said it should be levied on all income that income tax applies to. Which would include pensioners working, yes, so it would also include pensions, money from letting out properties etc
Since everything the NIC tax pays is PAYG and there is no pot of money that has been accrued to fund obligations, it should be paid equitably as you go by everyone and not only those working for their pay.
Don't be so stupid, why not have VAT on everything, you cannot get blood out of a stone. Why the Feck would you pay NI on your state pension that was provided due to teh vast amount of NI you had paid for it.
Because the state needs funding.
Why the Feck should you not pay NI on your state pension? Or private pensions too?
You've not "paid for it", its pay as you go, and the as you go hasn't finished.
So you cannot read either as well as being as thick as mince. Go read the government site , 35 years contributions idiot, I paid for 50 years , why not whine that I deserve 15 years back as well as back pension as I was supposed to get state pension a year earlier based on what I was originally promised. What a Bellend.
Pushing up the age at which one becomes an OAP does irritate people. Especially if it’s pushed up while one is beginning to anticipate it!
Because of all the freebies they're anticipating? Free bus passes at 60 is something that needs to change pretty quickly in my opinion. 60 isn't that old these days.
The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine has been awarded to a pair of scientists that developed the technology that led to the mRNA Covid vaccines.
They give these prizes out to any Tom, Dick and Harry these days....
There are some on the weird anti-vax community would have them subjected to a Nuremburg style trial for crimes against humanity...
By chance I had a Pfizer covid booster on saturday and sure as eggs is eggs, had an awful 24 hour period with high fever and feeling like crap. I have had this every time I've had an mRNA Covid shot, but not with the AZ ones. This is not going to stop me having them, but I do, think there is something in the delivery system that my body reacts violently to, much more so than any other vaccine I've ever had. The only other reaction I've had at all like it was a bird flu shot about 10 years ago.
I had quite the opposite experience. 24hr high fever with AZN, and not much at all from the mRNA jab.
Similarly with the immune response to Covid infection itself - some have a violent, sometimes dangerous immune response: others barely register it.
The risks, of course, are orders of magnitude higher with the bug itself.
Do we know why the booster jab is not yet available to buy like the flu one - can't be a capacity issue can it ?
I got it from my first AZ too, and not the others.
And today I have the real thing, for the first time in close to 2 years. Feeling decidedly crap.
Yeah, there is a lot of it about again, with admissions sharply up in my hospital, albeit nothing like previous autumn's. Staff masked again in clinical areas as policy and have had my booster and flu 10 days ago. No after effects.
There will be "a lot of it about" forever more. Like flu. Like the common cold. We just need to accept to rather than run daily commentaries on it.
The PM is rich? So what. He is leader of the Conservative Party not a Corbynite Marxist sect.
What voters want to see is their own economic circumstances improve which he and Hunt are doing by cutting inflation and growing the economy and hopefully in due course cutting tax as well.
As for getting rid of Rishi, barely more than a year ago OGH was telling Tories to get rid of Boris in favour of Rishi!
Cutting inflation is not a sufficient condition for people to "see their own economic circumstances improve". What matters to most people is the difference between their income inflation and price inflation. Inflation is still high.
We're not going destitute as fast as we were, darling. I think i'll vote conservative now.
And don't forget the cumulative effect - it will be quite some time before real wages are back where they were before Sunak got in.
Yes. We're just off the back of 20 straight months of CPI inflation being above wage inflation. We've had one month with wages going up faster than CPI. So even if every month is the mirror of the months before, we'll still be worse off than we were in October 2021 by the time the election comes around.
Especially thanks to fiscal drag.
Real take-home wages are still falling currently, even with nominal wages growing faster than inflation.
You’re in danger of post hoc data mining
Wages aren’t growing!
Oops.
Real wages aren’t growing! 😁
Fuck!
Shit! Umm! Fiscal drag, thats’s it. Fiscal drag!
Realtake-home wages aren’t growing! 😁
Excuse me but I've been banging the drum on fiscal drag and opposed it since it was announced. I'm entirely consistent.
And of course I was a loyal Tory until Sunak started putting up taxes like National Insurance and fiscal drag.
I have my principles. I believe people should be able to keep more of their own income they work for. The Tories used to believe that too.
I haven't left the Tories, Sunak's Tories have left me.
I'm sure Rishi wants lower taxes. But he wants them in the same way that St Augustine wanted chastity.
(Unless he can find ways of cutting government spending on a recurring basis, I'd rather it was funded by taxes than borrowing. The mix of taxes he's using is a disgrace, though.)
Two questions.
How can you talk tax cuts when borrowing £100billion+ a year.
Why are we borrowing £100 billion this year instead of balancing the books now the pandemic is over?
There is nothing wrong with borrowing if you are using the money to invest eg in infrastructure or education where the return is substantially greater than the interest on the borrowing.
We have plenty of borrowing headroom. The national debt is about one year's GDP. Individuals often have mortgage debt of up to three time annual salary and find it sustainable. Plenty of headroom.
But to borrow to cut taxes is severely damaging and driven by ideology.
So I agree with your first sentence but not your second.
Pretty much the entire deficit is due to interest payments on government debt. So Britain would be in a much better place if it wasn't having to service so much debt. It doesn't make much sense to me to add even more debt, and even more future debt interest payments, particularly when the future demographic challenges means that it becomes harder to service debts in the future, with an ageing population, and a shrinking global population.
And besides all that, after the experience of the Truss Calamity, I'm amazed that anyone could think that Britain has any headroom to borrow more. The market response showed that there wasn't much appetite to lend Britain more money, nor confidence in Britain being able to service larger debts.
Worked out over the weekend that my newly-graduated daughter is paying a higher tax rate on her income (20% basic rate + 9% student loans graduate tax + 12 % national insurance = 41%) than my Dad is on his pension (40% higher rate of income tax). Absolutely insane.
Poor comparison , the 9% is a government payday/bank type loan so not a tax ( and if she does not earn big money she does not pay the loan back).
My Dad is a graduate, just like her, and he didn't have to pay it. It's a tax masquerading as a loan. Claiming otherwise is pure sophistry.
Letting so many people be paid by state to go to university is the issue ( only a fraction of the current volumes were at university when her Dad dit it ). Those who need to for certain jobs should go and pay for it , the others should jsut take a job and save wasting time and money. If as Idiot Bart says she is earning 25K then she could just as easily taken a job at a till in Tesco's and been earning for years and have no LOAN to pay back.
You really are an illiterate dumbo who can't understand what other people wrote aren't you? Maybe if you were better educated your reading comprehension would be better.
I never said she was earning £25k, I said that the repayment threshold is now set at £25k so graduates earning £25k or above is on an effective 9% higher income tax rate from that point on.
£25k is not in my view "big money" which is what you falsely claimed, do you think its big money?
Do you really think its air t hat someone on £25k or above should have a marginal tax rate of 41%? 20+12+9 = 41 whether you like it or not, don't be an innumerate dumbo, that's how the numbers are.
You are at it again Thicko , where did I say 25K was big money. If they want the advantage of university then they should pay for it , usual whining from the likes of you, scrounger that wants everybody else to pay for them and their brood. Get out and get a decent job rather than trying to sponge off pensioners.
A teacher or, even ‘worse’ a doctor spends several unremunerated years at university, to be fair.
Some jobs do require a degree OKC, many do not though. Your examples would I say require a degree.
And a newly qualified teacher on a £30k salary is facing a real marginal tax rate of 41% on everything she or he earns over £25k. 20+12+9
Do you really think its reasonable to tax an early career teacher 41% when others are taxed less who earn the same or more?
If they want to take a loan to get the benefits then that is personal choice , if they don't liek it go out and get a job rather than go to university. They get 17 weeks holidays a year , do you shout to the rooftops that everyone should get 17 weeks , or a final salary pension , etc. NO just regurgitate the same old bash a pensioner crap ad nauseum. What part of your thick skull cannot grasp that most pensioners are NOT rich
The PM is rich? So what. He is leader of the Conservative Party not a Corbynite Marxist sect.
What voters want to see is their own economic circumstances improve which he and Hunt are doing by cutting inflation and growing the economy and hopefully in due course cutting tax as well.
As for getting rid of Rishi, barely more than a year ago OGH was telling Tories to get rid of Boris in favour of Rishi!
Cutting inflation is not a sufficient condition for people to "see their own economic circumstances improve". What matters to most people is the difference between their income inflation and price inflation. Inflation is still high.
We're not going destitute as fast as we were, darling. I think i'll vote conservative now.
And don't forget the cumulative effect - it will be quite some time before real wages are back where they were before Sunak got in.
Yes. We're just off the back of 20 straight months of CPI inflation being above wage inflation. We've had one month with wages going up faster than CPI. So even if every month is the mirror of the months before, we'll still be worse off than we were in October 2021 by the time the election comes around.
Especially thanks to fiscal drag.
Real take-home wages are still falling currently, even with nominal wages growing faster than inflation.
You’re in danger of post hoc data mining
Wages aren’t growing!
Oops.
Real wages aren’t growing! 😁
Fuck!
Shit! Umm! Fiscal drag, thats’s it. Fiscal drag!
Realtake-home wages aren’t growing! 😁
You’re in danger of wrapping yourself in a comfortable blanket of argument while, I suspect, Bart’s position better reflects the experience of the electorate.
He has two drums that he bangs with monotonous regularity. It gives me a headache.
Fiscal drag sucks. It’s a sneaky tax. But it’s not what people focus on - they see their tax home pay go up, but are struggling to make ends meet because prices are going up faster.
Unfortunately the size of state that the electorate wants needs to be paid for. If there was a government that was willing to be more disciplined then there would be saving that could be made, but that isn’t this government or (I suspect) the next one.
But the level of tax rises that are needed to balance the budget (or at least reduce the deficit below the rate of GDP growth) are too large to be affordable by the rich (however defined). They have already made significant contributions (eg additional rate threshold cut by £25k - that’s £1,250 extra income tax from each individual) as have companies with the planned increase in corporation tax.
there will be more tax rises to come for the wealthy, but the middle income voter needs to contribute as well.
Middle income earners can already be on 80% real marginal tax rates - how much higher than that should those go?
How about taxing everyone the same so everyone contributes equally, rather than opting some out of NICs etc?
Why should some be exempt from contributing whatsoever?
You really are thick , NIC is supposed to be paid till you are state pension age, hence why it stops DUMBO. Fact that a few pensioners work part time after that makes no difference and would raise peanuts you stupid half witted idiot.
I know what its supposed to be paid until, but things can be changed. Why should it stop once at pension age? What good reason is there for it not to apply to pensions, or investment incomes like from letting out homes, or dividends and so on and so forth?
I never said it should be levied on pensioners who work part time, did I?
I said it should be levied on all income that income tax applies to. Which would include pensioners working, yes, so it would also include pensions, money from letting out properties etc
Since everything the NIC tax pays is PAYG and there is no pot of money that has been accrued to fund obligations, it should be paid equitably as you go by everyone and not only those working for their pay.
Don't be so stupid, why not have VAT on everything, you cannot get blood out of a stone. Why the Feck would you pay NI on your state pension that was provided due to teh vast amount of NI you had paid for it.
Because the state needs funding.
Why the Feck should you not pay NI on your state pension? Or private pensions too?
You've not "paid for it", its pay as you go, and the as you go hasn't finished.
So you cannot read either as well as being as thick as mince. Go read the government site , 35 years contributions idiot, I paid for 50 years , why not whine that I deserve 15 years back as well as back pension as I was supposed to get state pension a year earlier based on what I was originally promised. What a Bellend.
Pushing up the age at which one becomes an OAP does irritate people. Especially if it’s pushed up while one is beginning to anticipate it!
Because of all the freebies they're anticipating? Free bus passes at 60 is something that needs to change pretty quickly in my opinion. 60 isn't that old these days.
The PM is rich? So what. He is leader of the Conservative Party not a Corbynite Marxist sect.
What voters want to see is their own economic circumstances improve which he and Hunt are doing by cutting inflation and growing the economy and hopefully in due course cutting tax as well.
As for getting rid of Rishi, barely more than a year ago OGH was telling Tories to get rid of Boris in favour of Rishi!
Cutting inflation is not a sufficient condition for people to "see their own economic circumstances improve". What matters to most people is the difference between their income inflation and price inflation. Inflation is still high.
We're not going destitute as fast as we were, darling. I think i'll vote conservative now.
And don't forget the cumulative effect - it will be quite some time before real wages are back where they were before Sunak got in.
Yes. We're just off the back of 20 straight months of CPI inflation being above wage inflation. We've had one month with wages going up faster than CPI. So even if every month is the mirror of the months before, we'll still be worse off than we were in October 2021 by the time the election comes around.
Especially thanks to fiscal drag.
Real take-home wages are still falling currently, even with nominal wages growing faster than inflation.
You’re in danger of post hoc data mining
Wages aren’t growing!
Oops.
Real wages aren’t growing! 😁
Fuck!
Shit! Umm! Fiscal drag, thats’s it. Fiscal drag!
Realtake-home wages aren’t growing! 😁
Excuse me but I've been banging the drum on fiscal drag and opposed it since it was announced. I'm entirely consistent.
And of course I was a loyal Tory until Sunak started putting up taxes like National Insurance and fiscal drag.
I have my principles. I believe people should be able to keep more of their own income they work for. The Tories used to believe that too.
I haven't left the Tories, Sunak's Tories have left me.
I'm sure Rishi wants lower taxes. But he wants them in the same way that St Augustine wanted chastity.
(Unless he can find ways of cutting government spending on a recurring basis, I'd rather it was funded by taxes than borrowing. The mix of taxes he's using is a disgrace, though.)
Two questions.
How can you talk tax cuts when borrowing £100billion+ a year.
Why are we borrowing £100 billion this year instead of balancing the books now the pandemic is over?
There is nothing wrong with borrowing if you are using the money to invest eg in infrastructure or education where the return is substantially greater than the interest on the borrowing.
We have plenty of borrowing headroom. The national debt is about one year's GDP. Individuals often have mortgage debt of up to three time annual salary and find it sustainable. Plenty of headroom.
But to borrow to cut taxes is severely damaging and driven by ideology.
So I agree with your first sentence but not your second.
Pretty much the entire deficit is due to interest payments on government debt. So Britain would be in a much better place if it wasn't having to service so much debt. It doesn't make much sense to me to add even more debt, and even more future debt interest payments, particularly when the future demographic challenges means that it becomes harder to service debts in the future, with an ageing population, and a shrinking global population.
And besides all that, after the experience of the Truss Calamity, I'm amazed that anyone could think that Britain has any headroom to borrow more. The market response showed that there wasn't much appetite to lend Britain more money, nor confidence in Britain being able to service larger debts.
Worked out over the weekend that my newly-graduated daughter is paying a higher tax rate on her income (20% basic rate + 9% student loans graduate tax + 12 % national insurance = 41%) than my Dad is on his pension (40% higher rate of income tax). Absolutely insane.
Poor comparison , the 9% is a government payday/bank type loan so not a tax ( and if she does not earn big money she does not pay the loan back).
My Dad is a graduate, just like her, and he didn't have to pay it. It's a tax masquerading as a loan. Claiming otherwise is pure sophistry.
Letting so many people be paid by state to go to university is the issue ( only a fraction of the current volumes were at university when her Dad dit it ). Those who need to for certain jobs should go and pay for it , the others should jsut take a job and save wasting time and money. If as Idiot Bart says she is earning 25K then she could just as easily taken a job at a till in Tesco's and been earning for years and have no LOAN to pay back.
You really are an illiterate dumbo who can't understand what other people wrote aren't you? Maybe if you were better educated your reading comprehension would be better.
I never said she was earning £25k, I said that the repayment threshold is now set at £25k so graduates earning £25k or above is on an effective 9% higher income tax rate from that point on.
£25k is not in my view "big money" which is what you falsely claimed, do you think its big money?
Do you really think its air t hat someone on £25k or above should have a marginal tax rate of 41%? 20+12+9 = 41 whether you like it or not, don't be an innumerate dumbo, that's how the numbers are.
You are at it again Thicko , where did I say 25K was big money. If they want the advantage of university then they should pay for it , usual whining from the likes of you, scrounger that wants everybody else to pay for them and their brood. Get out and get a decent job rather than trying to sponge off pensioners.
A teacher or, even ‘worse’ a doctor spends several unremunerated years at university, to be fair.
Some jobs do require a degree OKC, many do not though. Your examples would I say require a degree.
And a newly qualified teacher on a £30k salary is facing a real marginal tax rate of 41% on everything she or he earns over £25k. 20+12+9
Do you really think its reasonable to tax an early career teacher 41% when others are taxed less who earn the same or more?
If they want to take a loan to get the benefits then that is personal choice , if they don't liek it go out and get a job rather than go to university. They get 17 weeks holidays a year , do you shout to the rooftops that everyone should get 17 weeks , or a final salary pension , etc. NO just regurgitate the same old bash a pensioner crap ad nauseum. What part of your thick skull cannot grasp that most pensioners are NOT rich
If they're not rich then they won't be expected to pay much in income tax, even if they face the same tax rates as teachers.
If they are, then they will.
That's how taxes work. Moron. No need to exempt classes from them just as you hope others will shoulder your burdens for you.
The PM is rich? So what. He is leader of the Conservative Party not a Corbynite Marxist sect.
What voters want to see is their own economic circumstances improve which he and Hunt are doing by cutting inflation and growing the economy and hopefully in due course cutting tax as well.
As for getting rid of Rishi, barely more than a year ago OGH was telling Tories to get rid of Boris in favour of Rishi!
Cutting inflation is not a sufficient condition for people to "see their own economic circumstances improve". What matters to most people is the difference between their income inflation and price inflation. Inflation is still high.
We're not going destitute as fast as we were, darling. I think i'll vote conservative now.
And don't forget the cumulative effect - it will be quite some time before real wages are back where they were before Sunak got in.
Yes. We're just off the back of 20 straight months of CPI inflation being above wage inflation. We've had one month with wages going up faster than CPI. So even if every month is the mirror of the months before, we'll still be worse off than we were in October 2021 by the time the election comes around.
Especially thanks to fiscal drag.
Real take-home wages are still falling currently, even with nominal wages growing faster than inflation.
You’re in danger of post hoc data mining
Wages aren’t growing!
Oops.
Real wages aren’t growing! 😁
Fuck!
Shit! Umm! Fiscal drag, thats’s it. Fiscal drag!
Realtake-home wages aren’t growing! 😁
You’re in danger of wrapping yourself in a comfortable blanket of argument while, I suspect, Bart’s position better reflects the experience of the electorate.
He has two drums that he bangs with monotonous regularity. It gives me a headache.
Fiscal drag sucks. It’s a sneaky tax. But it’s not what people focus on - they see their tax home pay go up, but are struggling to make ends meet because prices are going up faster.
Unfortunately the size of state that the electorate wants needs to be paid for. If there was a government that was willing to be more disciplined then there would be saving that could be made, but that isn’t this government or (I suspect) the next one.
But the level of tax rises that are needed to balance the budget (or at least reduce the deficit below the rate of GDP growth) are too large to be affordable by the rich (however defined). They have already made significant contributions (eg additional rate threshold cut by £25k - that’s £1,250 extra income tax from each individual) as have companies with the planned increase in corporation tax.
there will be more tax rises to come for the wealthy, but the middle income voter needs to contribute as well.
Middle income earners can already be on 80% real marginal tax rates - how much higher than that should those go?
How about taxing everyone the same so everyone contributes equally, rather than opting some out of NICs etc?
Why should some be exempt from contributing whatsoever?
You really are thick , NIC is supposed to be paid till you are state pension age, hence why it stops DUMBO. Fact that a few pensioners work part time after that makes no difference and would raise peanuts you stupid half witted idiot.
I know what its supposed to be paid until, but things can be changed. Why should it stop once at pension age? What good reason is there for it not to apply to pensions, or investment incomes like from letting out homes, or dividends and so on and so forth?
I never said it should be levied on pensioners who work part time, did I?
I said it should be levied on all income that income tax applies to. Which would include pensioners working, yes, so it would also include pensions, money from letting out properties etc
Since everything the NIC tax pays is PAYG and there is no pot of money that has been accrued to fund obligations, it should be paid equitably as you go by everyone and not only those working for their pay.
Don't be so stupid, why not have VAT on everything, you cannot get blood out of a stone. Why the Feck would you pay NI on your state pension that was provided due to teh vast amount of NI you had paid for it.
Because the state needs funding.
Why the Feck should you not pay NI on your state pension? Or private pensions too?
You've not "paid for it", its pay as you go, and the as you go hasn't finished.
So you cannot read either as well as being as thick as mince. Go read the government site , 35 years contributions idiot, I paid for 50 years , why not whine that I deserve 15 years back as well as back pension as I was supposed to get state pension a year earlier based on what I was originally promised. What a Bellend.
Pushing up the age at which one becomes an OAP does irritate people. Especially if it’s pushed up while one is beginning to anticipate it!
The PM is rich? So what. He is leader of the Conservative Party not a Corbynite Marxist sect.
What voters want to see is their own economic circumstances improve which he and Hunt are doing by cutting inflation and growing the economy and hopefully in due course cutting tax as well.
As for getting rid of Rishi, barely more than a year ago OGH was telling Tories to get rid of Boris in favour of Rishi!
Cutting inflation is not a sufficient condition for people to "see their own economic circumstances improve". What matters to most people is the difference between their income inflation and price inflation. Inflation is still high.
We're not going destitute as fast as we were, darling. I think i'll vote conservative now.
And don't forget the cumulative effect - it will be quite some time before real wages are back where they were before Sunak got in.
Yes. We're just off the back of 20 straight months of CPI inflation being above wage inflation. We've had one month with wages going up faster than CPI. So even if every month is the mirror of the months before, we'll still be worse off than we were in October 2021 by the time the election comes around.
Especially thanks to fiscal drag.
Real take-home wages are still falling currently, even with nominal wages growing faster than inflation.
You’re in danger of post hoc data mining
Wages aren’t growing!
Oops.
Real wages aren’t growing! 😁
Fuck!
Shit! Umm! Fiscal drag, thats’s it. Fiscal drag!
Realtake-home wages aren’t growing! 😁
You’re in danger of wrapping yourself in a comfortable blanket of argument while, I suspect, Bart’s position better reflects the experience of the electorate.
He has two drums that he bangs with monotonous regularity. It gives me a headache.
Fiscal drag sucks. It’s a sneaky tax. But it’s not what people focus on - they see their tax home pay go up, but are struggling to make ends meet because prices are going up faster.
Unfortunately the size of state that the electorate wants needs to be paid for. If there was a government that was willing to be more disciplined then there would be saving that could be made, but that isn’t this government or (I suspect) the next one.
But the level of tax rises that are needed to balance the budget (or at least reduce the deficit below the rate of GDP growth) are too large to be affordable by the rich (however defined). They have already made significant contributions (eg additional rate threshold cut by £25k - that’s £1,250 extra income tax from each individual) as have companies with the planned increase in corporation tax.
there will be more tax rises to come for the wealthy, but the middle income voter needs to contribute as well.
Middle income earners can already be on 80% real marginal tax rates - how much higher than that should those go?
How about taxing everyone the same so everyone contributes equally, rather than opting some out of NICs etc?
Why should some be exempt from contributing whatsoever?
You really are thick , NIC is supposed to be paid till you are state pension age, hence why it stops DUMBO. Fact that a few pensioners work part time after that makes no difference and would raise peanuts you stupid half witted idiot.
I know what its supposed to be paid until, but things can be changed. Why should it stop once at pension age? What good reason is there for it not to apply to pensions, or investment incomes like from letting out homes, or dividends and so on and so forth?
I never said it should be levied on pensioners who work part time, did I?
I said it should be levied on all income that income tax applies to. Which would include pensioners working, yes, so it would also include pensions, money from letting out properties etc
Since everything the NIC tax pays is PAYG and there is no pot of money that has been accrued to fund obligations, it should be paid equitably as you go by everyone and not only those working for their pay.
Don't be so stupid, why not have VAT on everything, you cannot get blood out of a stone. Why the Feck would you pay NI on your state pension that was provided due to teh vast amount of NI you had paid for it.
Because the state needs funding.
Why the Feck should you not pay NI on your state pension? Or private pensions too?
You've not "paid for it", its pay as you go, and the as you go hasn't finished.
So you cannot read either as well as being as thick as mince. Go read the government site , 35 years contributions idiot, I paid for 50 years , why not whine that I deserve 15 years back as well as back pension as I was supposed to get state pension a year earlier based on what I was originally promised. What a Bellend.
Pushing up the age at which one becomes an OAP does irritate people. Especially if it’s pushed up while one is beginning to anticipate it!
It may irritate people, but it’s still the right thing to do.
The state pension used to kick in at the point 6 years after the average death. It was insurance in case you happened to get to 65 and be too old to work to support yourself, rather than a nice reward to look forward to at the end of your life. We should celebrate people living longer, but we should also make use of those people. Not least because it’s a lot easier to save for your retirement if you have more years in which to do it!
Trouble is that longer lives means more frail people and more demented people. Would you trust a 70-year-old firefighter to carry you down a ladder? The point is we cannot simply keep putting up the retirement age. It also means there are fewer good jobs for young people. We already see older people staying on past state pension age, the ones in cushy, highly-paid jobs, unsurprisingly.
The PM is rich? So what. He is leader of the Conservative Party not a Corbynite Marxist sect.
What voters want to see is their own economic circumstances improve which he and Hunt are doing by cutting inflation and growing the economy and hopefully in due course cutting tax as well.
As for getting rid of Rishi, barely more than a year ago OGH was telling Tories to get rid of Boris in favour of Rishi!
Cutting inflation is not a sufficient condition for people to "see their own economic circumstances improve". What matters to most people is the difference between their income inflation and price inflation. Inflation is still high.
We're not going destitute as fast as we were, darling. I think i'll vote conservative now.
And don't forget the cumulative effect - it will be quite some time before real wages are back where they were before Sunak got in.
Yes. We're just off the back of 20 straight months of CPI inflation being above wage inflation. We've had one month with wages going up faster than CPI. So even if every month is the mirror of the months before, we'll still be worse off than we were in October 2021 by the time the election comes around.
Especially thanks to fiscal drag.
Real take-home wages are still falling currently, even with nominal wages growing faster than inflation.
You’re in danger of post hoc data mining
Wages aren’t growing!
Oops.
Real wages aren’t growing! 😁
Fuck!
Shit! Umm! Fiscal drag, thats’s it. Fiscal drag!
Realtake-home wages aren’t growing! 😁
You’re in danger of wrapping yourself in a comfortable blanket of argument while, I suspect, Bart’s position better reflects the experience of the electorate.
He has two drums that he bangs with monotonous regularity. It gives me a headache.
Fiscal drag sucks. It’s a sneaky tax. But it’s not what people focus on - they see their tax home pay go up, but are struggling to make ends meet because prices are going up faster.
Unfortunately the size of state that the electorate wants needs to be paid for. If there was a government that was willing to be more disciplined then there would be saving that could be made, but that isn’t this government or (I suspect) the next one.
But the level of tax rises that are needed to balance the budget (or at least reduce the deficit below the rate of GDP growth) are too large to be affordable by the rich (however defined). They have already made significant contributions (eg additional rate threshold cut by £25k - that’s £1,250 extra income tax from each individual) as have companies with the planned increase in corporation tax.
there will be more tax rises to come for the wealthy, but the middle income voter needs to contribute as well.
Middle income earners can already be on 80% real marginal tax rates - how much higher than that should those go?
How about taxing everyone the same so everyone contributes equally, rather than opting some out of NICs etc?
Why should some be exempt from contributing whatsoever?
You really are thick , NIC is supposed to be paid till you are state pension age, hence why it stops DUMBO. Fact that a few pensioners work part time after that makes no difference and would raise peanuts you stupid half witted idiot.
I know what its supposed to be paid until, but things can be changed. Why should it stop once at pension age? What good reason is there for it not to apply to pensions, or investment incomes like from letting out homes, or dividends and so on and so forth?
I never said it should be levied on pensioners who work part time, did I?
I said it should be levied on all income that income tax applies to. Which would include pensioners working, yes, so it would also include pensions, money from letting out properties etc
Since everything the NIC tax pays is PAYG and there is no pot of money that has been accrued to fund obligations, it should be paid equitably as you go by everyone and not only those working for their pay.
Don't be so stupid, why not have VAT on everything, you cannot get blood out of a stone. Why the Feck would you pay NI on your state pension that was provided due to teh vast amount of NI you had paid for it.
Because the state needs funding.
Why the Feck should you not pay NI on your state pension? Or private pensions too?
You've not "paid for it", its pay as you go, and the as you go hasn't finished.
So you cannot read either as well as being as thick as mince. Go read the government site , 35 years contributions idiot, I paid for 50 years , why not whine that I deserve 15 years back as well as back pension as I was supposed to get state pension a year earlier based on what I was originally promised. What a Bellend.
Pushing up the age at which one becomes an OAP does irritate people. Especially if it’s pushed up while one is beginning to anticipate it!
The PM is rich? So what. He is leader of the Conservative Party not a Corbynite Marxist sect.
What voters want to see is their own economic circumstances improve which he and Hunt are doing by cutting inflation and growing the economy and hopefully in due course cutting tax as well.
As for getting rid of Rishi, barely more than a year ago OGH was telling Tories to get rid of Boris in favour of Rishi!
Cutting inflation is not a sufficient condition for people to "see their own economic circumstances improve". What matters to most people is the difference between their income inflation and price inflation. Inflation is still high.
We're not going destitute as fast as we were, darling. I think i'll vote conservative now.
And don't forget the cumulative effect - it will be quite some time before real wages are back where they were before Sunak got in.
Yes. We're just off the back of 20 straight months of CPI inflation being above wage inflation. We've had one month with wages going up faster than CPI. So even if every month is the mirror of the months before, we'll still be worse off than we were in October 2021 by the time the election comes around.
Especially thanks to fiscal drag.
Real take-home wages are still falling currently, even with nominal wages growing faster than inflation.
You’re in danger of post hoc data mining
Wages aren’t growing!
Oops.
Real wages aren’t growing! 😁
Fuck!
Shit! Umm! Fiscal drag, thats’s it. Fiscal drag!
Realtake-home wages aren’t growing! 😁
You’re in danger of wrapping yourself in a comfortable blanket of argument while, I suspect, Bart’s position better reflects the experience of the electorate.
He has two drums that he bangs with monotonous regularity. It gives me a headache.
Fiscal drag sucks. It’s a sneaky tax. But it’s not what people focus on - they see their tax home pay go up, but are struggling to make ends meet because prices are going up faster.
Unfortunately the size of state that the electorate wants needs to be paid for. If there was a government that was willing to be more disciplined then there would be saving that could be made, but that isn’t this government or (I suspect) the next one.
But the level of tax rises that are needed to balance the budget (or at least reduce the deficit below the rate of GDP growth) are too large to be affordable by the rich (however defined). They have already made significant contributions (eg additional rate threshold cut by £25k - that’s £1,250 extra income tax from each individual) as have companies with the planned increase in corporation tax.
there will be more tax rises to come for the wealthy, but the middle income voter needs to contribute as well.
Middle income earners can already be on 80% real marginal tax rates - how much higher than that should those go?
How about taxing everyone the same so everyone contributes equally, rather than opting some out of NICs etc?
Why should some be exempt from contributing whatsoever?
You really are thick , NIC is supposed to be paid till you are state pension age, hence why it stops DUMBO. Fact that a few pensioners work part time after that makes no difference and would raise peanuts you stupid half witted idiot.
I know what its supposed to be paid until, but things can be changed. Why should it stop once at pension age? What good reason is there for it not to apply to pensions, or investment incomes like from letting out homes, or dividends and so on and so forth?
I never said it should be levied on pensioners who work part time, did I?
I said it should be levied on all income that income tax applies to. Which would include pensioners working, yes, so it would also include pensions, money from letting out properties etc
Since everything the NIC tax pays is PAYG and there is no pot of money that has been accrued to fund obligations, it should be paid equitably as you go by everyone and not only those working for their pay.
Don't be so stupid, why not have VAT on everything, you cannot get blood out of a stone. Why the Feck would you pay NI on your state pension that was provided due to teh vast amount of NI you had paid for it.
Because the state needs funding.
Why the Feck should you not pay NI on your state pension? Or private pensions too?
You've not "paid for it", its pay as you go, and the as you go hasn't finished.
So you cannot read either as well as being as thick as mince. Go read the government site , 35 years contributions idiot, I paid for 50 years , why not whine that I deserve 15 years back as well as back pension as I was supposed to get state pension a year earlier based on what I was originally promised. What a Bellend.
Pushing up the age at which one becomes an OAP does irritate people. Especially if it’s pushed up while one is beginning to anticipate it!
It may irritate people, but it’s still the right thing to do.
The state pension used to kick in at the point 6 years after the average death. It was insurance in case you happened to get to 65 and be too old to work to support yourself, rather than a nice reward to look forward to at the end of your life. We should celebrate people living longer, but we should also make use of those people. Not least because it’s a lot easier to save for your retirement if you have more years in which to do it!
Look how great our pension is , miles behind even Ukraine
The PM is rich? So what. He is leader of the Conservative Party not a Corbynite Marxist sect.
What voters want to see is their own economic circumstances improve which he and Hunt are doing by cutting inflation and growing the economy and hopefully in due course cutting tax as well.
As for getting rid of Rishi, barely more than a year ago OGH was telling Tories to get rid of Boris in favour of Rishi!
Cutting inflation is not a sufficient condition for people to "see their own economic circumstances improve". What matters to most people is the difference between their income inflation and price inflation. Inflation is still high.
We're not going destitute as fast as we were, darling. I think i'll vote conservative now.
And don't forget the cumulative effect - it will be quite some time before real wages are back where they were before Sunak got in.
Yes. We're just off the back of 20 straight months of CPI inflation being above wage inflation. We've had one month with wages going up faster than CPI. So even if every month is the mirror of the months before, we'll still be worse off than we were in October 2021 by the time the election comes around.
Especially thanks to fiscal drag.
Real take-home wages are still falling currently, even with nominal wages growing faster than inflation.
You’re in danger of post hoc data mining
Wages aren’t growing!
Oops.
Real wages aren’t growing! 😁
Fuck!
Shit! Umm! Fiscal drag, thats’s it. Fiscal drag!
Realtake-home wages aren’t growing! 😁
Excuse me but I've been banging the drum on fiscal drag and opposed it since it was announced. I'm entirely consistent.
And of course I was a loyal Tory until Sunak started putting up taxes like National Insurance and fiscal drag.
I have my principles. I believe people should be able to keep more of their own income they work for. The Tories used to believe that too.
I haven't left the Tories, Sunak's Tories have left me.
I'm sure Rishi wants lower taxes. But he wants them in the same way that St Augustine wanted chastity.
(Unless he can find ways of cutting government spending on a recurring basis, I'd rather it was funded by taxes than borrowing. The mix of taxes he's using is a disgrace, though.)
Two questions.
How can you talk tax cuts when borrowing £100billion+ a year.
Why are we borrowing £100 billion this year instead of balancing the books now the pandemic is over?
There is nothing wrong with borrowing if you are using the money to invest eg in infrastructure or education where the return is substantially greater than the interest on the borrowing.
We have plenty of borrowing headroom. The national debt is about one year's GDP. Individuals often have mortgage debt of up to three time annual salary and find it sustainable. Plenty of headroom.
But to borrow to cut taxes is severely damaging and driven by ideology.
So I agree with your first sentence but not your second.
Pretty much the entire deficit is due to interest payments on government debt. So Britain would be in a much better place if it wasn't having to service so much debt. It doesn't make much sense to me to add even more debt, and even more future debt interest payments, particularly when the future demographic challenges means that it becomes harder to service debts in the future, with an ageing population, and a shrinking global population.
And besides all that, after the experience of the Truss Calamity, I'm amazed that anyone could think that Britain has any headroom to borrow more. The market response showed that there wasn't much appetite to lend Britain more money, nor confidence in Britain being able to service larger debts.
Worked out over the weekend that my newly-graduated daughter is paying a higher tax rate on her income (20% basic rate + 9% student loans graduate tax + 12 % national insurance = 41%) than my Dad is on his pension (40% higher rate of income tax). Absolutely insane.
Poor comparison , the 9% is a government payday/bank type loan so not a tax ( and if she does not earn big money she does not pay the loan back).
My Dad is a graduate, just like her, and he didn't have to pay it. It's a tax masquerading as a loan. Claiming otherwise is pure sophistry.
Letting so many people be paid by state to go to university is the issue ( only a fraction of the current volumes were at university when her Dad dit it ). Those who need to for certain jobs should go and pay for it , the others should jsut take a job and save wasting time and money. If as Idiot Bart says she is earning 25K then she could just as easily taken a job at a till in Tesco's and been earning for years and have no LOAN to pay back.
You really are an illiterate dumbo who can't understand what other people wrote aren't you? Maybe if you were better educated your reading comprehension would be better.
I never said she was earning £25k, I said that the repayment threshold is now set at £25k so graduates earning £25k or above is on an effective 9% higher income tax rate from that point on.
£25k is not in my view "big money" which is what you falsely claimed, do you think its big money?
Do you really think its air t hat someone on £25k or above should have a marginal tax rate of 41%? 20+12+9 = 41 whether you like it or not, don't be an innumerate dumbo, that's how the numbers are.
You are at it again Thicko , where did I say 25K was big money. If they want the advantage of university then they should pay for it , usual whining from the likes of you, scrounger that wants everybody else to pay for them and their brood. Get out and get a decent job rather than trying to sponge off pensioners.
A teacher or, even ‘worse’ a doctor spends several unremunerated years at university, to be fair.
Some jobs do require a degree OKC, many do not though. Your examples would I say require a degree.
And a newly qualified teacher on a £30k salary is facing a real marginal tax rate of 41% on everything she or he earns over £25k. 20+12+9
Do you really think its reasonable to tax an early career teacher 41% when others are taxed less who earn the same or more?
If they want to take a loan to get the benefits then that is personal choice , if they don't liek it go out and get a job rather than go to university. They get 17 weeks holidays a year , do you shout to the rooftops that everyone should get 17 weeks , or a final salary pension , etc. NO just regurgitate the same old bash a pensioner crap ad nauseum. What part of your thick skull cannot grasp that most pensioners are NOT rich
Can't take you seriously when you get basic facts wrong. A state school in England must, by law, be open for 190 days in a year. That's 38 weeks. How many weeks are there in a year? What's the difference between those two numbers?
Trouble is that longer lives means more frail people and more demented people. Would you trust a 70-year-old firefighter to carry you down a ladder? The point is we cannot simply keep putting up the retirement age. It also means there are fewer good jobs for young people. We already see older people staying on past state pension age, the ones in cushy, highly-paid jobs, unsurprisingly.
This is another situation where we need to move from binary to incentives for gradual "retirement". At the moment, it is one day you are working 40 hours a week, the next the big retirement and doing 0 hours.
All the talk about 4 day weeks as the new norm, this is what we actually want as you get older, drop to 4, then 3, etc, so a) you continue to earn, b) company can gradually transition while also benefitting from an experience member of staff knowledge. Also your role transitions away from certain responsibilities e.g. your older firefighter, there are still lots of tasks that need doing that aren't running up big ladders into burning buildings.
This is where government could and should be providing the right framework for employees / employers to follow such a trajectory.
I see in the Grauniad that the "New Conservatives" group includes such sprightly young things as Bill Cash, Iain Duncan Smith, John Redwood and Jacob Rees-Mogg.
This is obviously some strange usage of the word "new" that I wasn't previously aware of.
The PM is rich? So what. He is leader of the Conservative Party not a Corbynite Marxist sect.
What voters want to see is their own economic circumstances improve which he and Hunt are doing by cutting inflation and growing the economy and hopefully in due course cutting tax as well.
As for getting rid of Rishi, barely more than a year ago OGH was telling Tories to get rid of Boris in favour of Rishi!
Cutting inflation is not a sufficient condition for people to "see their own economic circumstances improve". What matters to most people is the difference between their income inflation and price inflation. Inflation is still high.
We're not going destitute as fast as we were, darling. I think i'll vote conservative now.
And don't forget the cumulative effect - it will be quite some time before real wages are back where they were before Sunak got in.
Yes. We're just off the back of 20 straight months of CPI inflation being above wage inflation. We've had one month with wages going up faster than CPI. So even if every month is the mirror of the months before, we'll still be worse off than we were in October 2021 by the time the election comes around.
Especially thanks to fiscal drag.
Real take-home wages are still falling currently, even with nominal wages growing faster than inflation.
You’re in danger of post hoc data mining
Wages aren’t growing!
Oops.
Real wages aren’t growing! 😁
Fuck!
Shit! Umm! Fiscal drag, thats’s it. Fiscal drag!
Realtake-home wages aren’t growing! 😁
You’re in danger of wrapping yourself in a comfortable blanket of argument while, I suspect, Bart’s position better reflects the experience of the electorate.
He has two drums that he bangs with monotonous regularity. It gives me a headache.
Fiscal drag sucks. It’s a sneaky tax. But it’s not what people focus on - they see their tax home pay go up, but are struggling to make ends meet because prices are going up faster.
Unfortunately the size of state that the electorate wants needs to be paid for. If there was a government that was willing to be more disciplined then there would be saving that could be made, but that isn’t this government or (I suspect) the next one.
But the level of tax rises that are needed to balance the budget (or at least reduce the deficit below the rate of GDP growth) are too large to be affordable by the rich (however defined). They have already made significant contributions (eg additional rate threshold cut by £25k - that’s £1,250 extra income tax from each individual) as have companies with the planned increase in corporation tax.
there will be more tax rises to come for the wealthy, but the middle income voter needs to contribute as well.
Middle income earners can already be on 80% real marginal tax rates - how much higher than that should those go?
How about taxing everyone the same so everyone contributes equally, rather than opting some out of NICs etc?
Why should some be exempt from contributing whatsoever?
You really are thick , NIC is supposed to be paid till you are state pension age, hence why it stops DUMBO. Fact that a few pensioners work part time after that makes no difference and would raise peanuts you stupid half witted idiot.
I know what its supposed to be paid until, but things can be changed. Why should it stop once at pension age? What good reason is there for it not to apply to pensions, or investment incomes like from letting out homes, or dividends and so on and so forth?
I never said it should be levied on pensioners who work part time, did I?
I said it should be levied on all income that income tax applies to. Which would include pensioners working, yes, so it would also include pensions, money from letting out properties etc
Since everything the NIC tax pays is PAYG and there is no pot of money that has been accrued to fund obligations, it should be paid equitably as you go by everyone and not only those working for their pay.
Don't be so stupid, why not have VAT on everything, you cannot get blood out of a stone. Why the Feck would you pay NI on your state pension that was provided due to teh vast amount of NI you had paid for it.
Because the state needs funding.
Why the Feck should you not pay NI on your state pension? Or private pensions too?
You've not "paid for it", its pay as you go, and the as you go hasn't finished.
So you cannot read either as well as being as thick as mince. Go read the government site , 35 years contributions idiot, I paid for 50 years , why not whine that I deserve 15 years back as well as back pension as I was supposed to get state pension a year earlier based on what I was originally promised. What a Bellend.
Pushing up the age at which one becomes an OAP does irritate people. Especially if it’s pushed up while one is beginning to anticipate it!
Because of all the freebies they're anticipating? Free bus passes at 60 is something that needs to change pretty quickly in my opinion. 60 isn't that old these days.
The PM is rich? So what. He is leader of the Conservative Party not a Corbynite Marxist sect.
What voters want to see is their own economic circumstances improve which he and Hunt are doing by cutting inflation and growing the economy and hopefully in due course cutting tax as well.
As for getting rid of Rishi, barely more than a year ago OGH was telling Tories to get rid of Boris in favour of Rishi!
Cutting inflation is not a sufficient condition for people to "see their own economic circumstances improve". What matters to most people is the difference between their income inflation and price inflation. Inflation is still high.
We're not going destitute as fast as we were, darling. I think i'll vote conservative now.
And don't forget the cumulative effect - it will be quite some time before real wages are back where they were before Sunak got in.
Yes. We're just off the back of 20 straight months of CPI inflation being above wage inflation. We've had one month with wages going up faster than CPI. So even if every month is the mirror of the months before, we'll still be worse off than we were in October 2021 by the time the election comes around.
Especially thanks to fiscal drag.
Real take-home wages are still falling currently, even with nominal wages growing faster than inflation.
You’re in danger of post hoc data mining
Wages aren’t growing!
Oops.
Real wages aren’t growing! 😁
Fuck!
Shit! Umm! Fiscal drag, thats’s it. Fiscal drag!
Realtake-home wages aren’t growing! 😁
You’re in danger of wrapping yourself in a comfortable blanket of argument while, I suspect, Bart’s position better reflects the experience of the electorate.
He has two drums that he bangs with monotonous regularity. It gives me a headache.
Fiscal drag sucks. It’s a sneaky tax. But it’s not what people focus on - they see their tax home pay go up, but are struggling to make ends meet because prices are going up faster.
Unfortunately the size of state that the electorate wants needs to be paid for. If there was a government that was willing to be more disciplined then there would be saving that could be made, but that isn’t this government or (I suspect) the next one.
But the level of tax rises that are needed to balance the budget (or at least reduce the deficit below the rate of GDP growth) are too large to be affordable by the rich (however defined). They have already made significant contributions (eg additional rate threshold cut by £25k - that’s £1,250 extra income tax from each individual) as have companies with the planned increase in corporation tax.
there will be more tax rises to come for the wealthy, but the middle income voter needs to contribute as well.
Middle income earners can already be on 80% real marginal tax rates - how much higher than that should those go?
How about taxing everyone the same so everyone contributes equally, rather than opting some out of NICs etc?
Why should some be exempt from contributing whatsoever?
You really are thick , NIC is supposed to be paid till you are state pension age, hence why it stops DUMBO. Fact that a few pensioners work part time after that makes no difference and would raise peanuts you stupid half witted idiot.
I know what its supposed to be paid until, but things can be changed. Why should it stop once at pension age? What good reason is there for it not to apply to pensions, or investment incomes like from letting out homes, or dividends and so on and so forth?
I never said it should be levied on pensioners who work part time, did I?
I said it should be levied on all income that income tax applies to. Which would include pensioners working, yes, so it would also include pensions, money from letting out properties etc
Since everything the NIC tax pays is PAYG and there is no pot of money that has been accrued to fund obligations, it should be paid equitably as you go by everyone and not only those working for their pay.
Don't be so stupid, why not have VAT on everything, you cannot get blood out of a stone. Why the Feck would you pay NI on your state pension that was provided due to teh vast amount of NI you had paid for it.
Because the state needs funding.
Why the Feck should you not pay NI on your state pension? Or private pensions too?
You've not "paid for it", its pay as you go, and the as you go hasn't finished.
So you cannot read either as well as being as thick as mince. Go read the government site , 35 years contributions idiot, I paid for 50 years , why not whine that I deserve 15 years back as well as back pension as I was supposed to get state pension a year earlier based on what I was originally promised. What a Bellend.
Pushing up the age at which one becomes an OAP does irritate people. Especially if it’s pushed up while one is beginning to anticipate it!
Because of all the freebies they're anticipating? Free bus passes at 60 is something that needs to change pretty quickly in my opinion. 60 isn't that old these days.
The actual cost of free bus passes, in terms of lost fares, will be less than their nominal value of 12 million paid travel passes which mainly sit unused, or even unclaimed. As for 60 not being "that old these days" the average 60-year-old will not be able to walk as far as a 30-year-old.
The PM is rich? So what. He is leader of the Conservative Party not a Corbynite Marxist sect.
What voters want to see is their own economic circumstances improve which he and Hunt are doing by cutting inflation and growing the economy and hopefully in due course cutting tax as well.
As for getting rid of Rishi, barely more than a year ago OGH was telling Tories to get rid of Boris in favour of Rishi!
Cutting inflation is not a sufficient condition for people to "see their own economic circumstances improve". What matters to most people is the difference between their income inflation and price inflation. Inflation is still high.
We're not going destitute as fast as we were, darling. I think i'll vote conservative now.
And don't forget the cumulative effect - it will be quite some time before real wages are back where they were before Sunak got in.
Yes. We're just off the back of 20 straight months of CPI inflation being above wage inflation. We've had one month with wages going up faster than CPI. So even if every month is the mirror of the months before, we'll still be worse off than we were in October 2021 by the time the election comes around.
Especially thanks to fiscal drag.
Real take-home wages are still falling currently, even with nominal wages growing faster than inflation.
You’re in danger of post hoc data mining
Wages aren’t growing!
Oops.
Real wages aren’t growing! 😁
Fuck!
Shit! Umm! Fiscal drag, thats’s it. Fiscal drag!
Realtake-home wages aren’t growing! 😁
You’re in danger of wrapping yourself in a comfortable blanket of argument while, I suspect, Bart’s position better reflects the experience of the electorate.
He has two drums that he bangs with monotonous regularity. It gives me a headache.
Fiscal drag sucks. It’s a sneaky tax. But it’s not what people focus on - they see their tax home pay go up, but are struggling to make ends meet because prices are going up faster.
Unfortunately the size of state that the electorate wants needs to be paid for. If there was a government that was willing to be more disciplined then there would be saving that could be made, but that isn’t this government or (I suspect) the next one.
But the level of tax rises that are needed to balance the budget (or at least reduce the deficit below the rate of GDP growth) are too large to be affordable by the rich (however defined). They have already made significant contributions (eg additional rate threshold cut by £25k - that’s £1,250 extra income tax from each individual) as have companies with the planned increase in corporation tax.
there will be more tax rises to come for the wealthy, but the middle income voter needs to contribute as well.
Middle income earners can already be on 80% real marginal tax rates - how much higher than that should those go?
How about taxing everyone the same so everyone contributes equally, rather than opting some out of NICs etc?
Why should some be exempt from contributing whatsoever?
You really are thick , NIC is supposed to be paid till you are state pension age, hence why it stops DUMBO. Fact that a few pensioners work part time after that makes no difference and would raise peanuts you stupid half witted idiot.
I know what its supposed to be paid until, but things can be changed. Why should it stop once at pension age? What good reason is there for it not to apply to pensions, or investment incomes like from letting out homes, or dividends and so on and so forth?
I never said it should be levied on pensioners who work part time, did I?
I said it should be levied on all income that income tax applies to. Which would include pensioners working, yes, so it would also include pensions, money from letting out properties etc
Since everything the NIC tax pays is PAYG and there is no pot of money that has been accrued to fund obligations, it should be paid equitably as you go by everyone and not only those working for their pay.
Don't be so stupid, why not have VAT on everything, you cannot get blood out of a stone. Why the Feck would you pay NI on your state pension that was provided due to teh vast amount of NI you had paid for it.
Because the state needs funding.
Why the Feck should you not pay NI on your state pension? Or private pensions too?
You've not "paid for it", its pay as you go, and the as you go hasn't finished.
So you cannot read either as well as being as thick as mince. Go read the government site , 35 years contributions idiot, I paid for 50 years , why not whine that I deserve 15 years back as well as back pension as I was supposed to get state pension a year earlier based on what I was originally promised. What a Bellend.
Pushing up the age at which one becomes an OAP does irritate people. Especially if it’s pushed up while one is beginning to anticipate it!
The PM is rich? So what. He is leader of the Conservative Party not a Corbynite Marxist sect.
What voters want to see is their own economic circumstances improve which he and Hunt are doing by cutting inflation and growing the economy and hopefully in due course cutting tax as well.
As for getting rid of Rishi, barely more than a year ago OGH was telling Tories to get rid of Boris in favour of Rishi!
Cutting inflation is not a sufficient condition for people to "see their own economic circumstances improve". What matters to most people is the difference between their income inflation and price inflation. Inflation is still high.
We're not going destitute as fast as we were, darling. I think i'll vote conservative now.
And don't forget the cumulative effect - it will be quite some time before real wages are back where they were before Sunak got in.
Yes. We're just off the back of 20 straight months of CPI inflation being above wage inflation. We've had one month with wages going up faster than CPI. So even if every month is the mirror of the months before, we'll still be worse off than we were in October 2021 by the time the election comes around.
Especially thanks to fiscal drag.
Real take-home wages are still falling currently, even with nominal wages growing faster than inflation.
You’re in danger of post hoc data mining
Wages aren’t growing!
Oops.
Real wages aren’t growing! 😁
Fuck!
Shit! Umm! Fiscal drag, thats’s it. Fiscal drag!
Realtake-home wages aren’t growing! 😁
You’re in danger of wrapping yourself in a comfortable blanket of argument while, I suspect, Bart’s position better reflects the experience of the electorate.
He has two drums that he bangs with monotonous regularity. It gives me a headache.
Fiscal drag sucks. It’s a sneaky tax. But it’s not what people focus on - they see their tax home pay go up, but are struggling to make ends meet because prices are going up faster.
Unfortunately the size of state that the electorate wants needs to be paid for. If there was a government that was willing to be more disciplined then there would be saving that could be made, but that isn’t this government or (I suspect) the next one.
But the level of tax rises that are needed to balance the budget (or at least reduce the deficit below the rate of GDP growth) are too large to be affordable by the rich (however defined). They have already made significant contributions (eg additional rate threshold cut by £25k - that’s £1,250 extra income tax from each individual) as have companies with the planned increase in corporation tax.
there will be more tax rises to come for the wealthy, but the middle income voter needs to contribute as well.
Middle income earners can already be on 80% real marginal tax rates - how much higher than that should those go?
How about taxing everyone the same so everyone contributes equally, rather than opting some out of NICs etc?
Why should some be exempt from contributing whatsoever?
You really are thick , NIC is supposed to be paid till you are state pension age, hence why it stops DUMBO. Fact that a few pensioners work part time after that makes no difference and would raise peanuts you stupid half witted idiot.
I know what its supposed to be paid until, but things can be changed. Why should it stop once at pension age? What good reason is there for it not to apply to pensions, or investment incomes like from letting out homes, or dividends and so on and so forth?
I never said it should be levied on pensioners who work part time, did I?
I said it should be levied on all income that income tax applies to. Which would include pensioners working, yes, so it would also include pensions, money from letting out properties etc
Since everything the NIC tax pays is PAYG and there is no pot of money that has been accrued to fund obligations, it should be paid equitably as you go by everyone and not only those working for their pay.
Don't be so stupid, why not have VAT on everything, you cannot get blood out of a stone. Why the Feck would you pay NI on your state pension that was provided due to teh vast amount of NI you had paid for it.
Because the state needs funding.
Why the Feck should you not pay NI on your state pension? Or private pensions too?
You've not "paid for it", its pay as you go, and the as you go hasn't finished.
So you cannot read either as well as being as thick as mince. Go read the government site , 35 years contributions idiot, I paid for 50 years , why not whine that I deserve 15 years back as well as back pension as I was supposed to get state pension a year earlier based on what I was originally promised. What a Bellend.
Pushing up the age at which one becomes an OAP does irritate people. Especially if it’s pushed up while one is beginning to anticipate it!
It may irritate people, but it’s still the right thing to do.
The state pension used to kick in at the point 6 years after the average death. It was insurance in case you happened to get to 65 and be too old to work to support yourself, rather than a nice reward to look forward to at the end of your life. We should celebrate people living longer, but we should also make use of those people. Not least because it’s a lot easier to save for your retirement if you have more years in which to do it!
Trouble is that longer lives means more frail people and more demented people. Would you trust a 70-year-old firefighter to carry you down a ladder? The point is we cannot simply keep putting up the retirement age. It also means there are fewer good jobs for young people. We already see older people staying on past state pension age, the ones in cushy, highly-paid jobs, unsurprisingly.
Comments
Interesting. Listening to France24 this morning, just like us they have identified a shortfall in new staff for manufacturing industries and similar - estimated at 120k per annum, whilst the existing system delivers ~40k, half of whom go into other industries.
Proposals including making it easier to employ immigrants, or allowing illegal immigrants to work - not currently liked by many French businesses because of the ultra-bureaucracy, and presumably a smidge of xenophobia.
I'd say that if they boosted retirement age to be the same as the normal European country by +3-4 years, that would fix it for the medium term.
Unbelievable! The AfD's top candidate for next year's European elections has just been revealed as head of a long-running Chinese influence operation
https://twitter.com/PeterRNeumann/status/1708731621191430504
I suppose if most of my friends and family were Conservative Party members, the idea of loyalty to a party would be less strange.
And today I have the real thing, for the first time in close to 2 years. Feeling decidedly crap.
How about taxing everyone the same so everyone contributes equally, rather than opting some out of NICs etc?
Why should some be exempt from contributing whatsoever?
As I said, it doesn't put me off having it, as I really don't want covid (not knowingly had it yet (can't be many who can say that?). It does annoy me though and makes it more of a chore. Mostly back to 100% today.
Thank you for the implied compliment though!
I am waiting for the call for my jabs (Flu and Covid). I am hearing a lot more friends say they had a bit of a kicking from the jabs this year compared to previously but I am still looking forward to getting it - if not to any after effects.
Honestly - I think I probably have had it, but only after being vaccinated and its only been mild. its just that I have never tested positive to confirm. My wife is the same.
In response to that argument, firstly, as I acknowledged, the track isn't suitable for very high speed rail. Secondly, even if significant improvements were needed, improving an existing derelict railway line has got to be orders of magnitude cheaper than building a totally new one.
If she had a 9 o'clock meeting, she was cutting it fine.
One of his most notable commissions was the landscaping of Quirm Manor, which he did with exquisite beauty and delicacy of touch creating a vista of subtle delights, which he then capped off by piling 2,000 tons of earth into an artificial hillock right in front of it, obscuring the view entirely.
When asked for an explanation, he said 'It'd drive me mad to have to look at a bunch of trees and mountains all day long, how about you?'
As per above 24 hours of feeling wrecked and general muscle aches. OK now though apart from a dead arm.
Not much different to actual Covid (finally caught earlier this year), though that might be because the vaccine works...
All these taxes should be merged into one and everyone should pay the same rate of tax.
This of course horrifies those currently exempt from paying NIC and the Graduate Tax while expecting others to pay them both.
And yesterday I successfully mortared back into place a slate step, which I felt quite proud of.
Somebody make it stop.
A fire which ripped through a historic Black Country pub dating back to the 16th century is being treated as arson."
https://www.dudleynews.co.uk/news/23825937.greyhound-punchbowl-pub-fire-treated-arson/
I never said it should be levied on pensioners who work part time, did I?
I said it should be levied on all income that income tax applies to. Which would include pensioners working, yes, so it would also include pensions, money from letting out properties etc
Since everything the NIC tax pays is PAYG and there is no pot of money that has been accrued to fund obligations, it should be paid equitably as you go by everyone and not only those working for their pay.
No noticeable reaction at all.
If as Idiot Bart says she is earning 25K then she could just as easily taken a job at a till in Tesco's and been earning for years and have no LOAN to pay back.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/oct/01/pat-arrowsmith-obituary
At 5 hours 14 mins.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b0074yz8/decision-79-election-night
https://www.politico.com/news/2023/10/02/biden-admin-ukraine-strategy-corruption-00119237
Biden administration officials are far more worried about corruption in Ukraine than they publicly admit, a confidential U.S. strategy document obtained by POLITICO suggests.
The “sensitive but unclassified” version of the long-term U.S. plan lays out numerous steps Washington is taking to help Kyiv root out malfeasance and otherwise reform an array of Ukrainian sectors. It stresses that corruption could cause Western allies to abandon Ukraine’s fight against Russia’s invasion, and that Kyiv cannot put off the anti-graft effort...
I never said she was earning £25k, I said that the repayment threshold is now set at £25k so graduates earning £25k or above is on an effective 9% higher income tax rate from that point on.
£25k is not in my view "big money" which is what you falsely claimed, do you think its big money?
Do you really think its air t hat someone on £25k or above should have a marginal tax rate of 41%? 20+12+9 = 41 whether you like it or not, don't be an innumerate dumbo, that's how the numbers are.
Why the Feck should you not pay NI on your state pension? Or private pensions too?
You've not "paid for it", its pay as you go, and the as you go hasn't finished.
It sucks, but I don't think there's any alternative than to say we were robbed but we can't turn back time.
I would still have a single rate of tax. Including for those of us who were ripped off in my eyes.
I'd love the idea of a refund, but I can't see how that would work.
Get out and get a decent job rather than trying to sponge off pensioners.
Possibly she'll end up taking a much better paid job in the private sector once she has a few years experience, but if too many skilled graduates do the same then government organisations will have to spend absurd sums of money on contractors and consultants to stop everything falling apart.
It will give you plenty to moan about, no doubt.
Therefore one was, depending on where one was on the ship, in the summer or winter, the 19th or 20th Centuries, 1899 or 1900, January and December and one or two other “differencies”.
Can't afford a week off with flu right now.
I'd have got the Covid shot too if it were available.
So is £25k big money, or were you wrong? Dumbo.
Expecting pensioners to pay the same rate of tax as everyone else, including NIC on all pensions paid the same as all salaries, is not "scrounging". Everyone should be treated the same, that's consistency.
Don't like it? Go get a job.
What a Bellend.
So what if you've paid for 50 years? You never paid into a pot, its pay as you go, payments should continue for your entire life as you're not stopping claiming healthcare or any other benefits from the state anymore now are you?
One big problem we have in the UK is it really is very binary here, go to uni, away from home, fulltime or get a job....things like Open University and part time degrees are overwhelming used by mature students, in case of OU, very mature students.
Most countries have a third way e.g. US has community college, lots of European countries unless you are top end of achievement spectrum you go to local uni often in combination with a job.
Do you really think its reasonable to tax an early career teacher 41% when others are taxed less who earn the same or more?
I worked in Kiev for Alliance Française for six months and I soon discovered that every single public and private functionary was as bent as fuck. It was worse than Russia and that's saying something. Belarus is less corrupt than both in my experience. It did mean I could ride a motorbike without a helmet though as I could just give a cop 5 euros on the rare occasions they could be bother to flag me down. (With a loaded Makarov, lol)
According to the Ukrainians in the UK grapevine the price for a "white ticket', the document that exempts one from conscription, is now up to $20,000. It was $5k at the start of the SMO. That's real cozzy livs for you.
John Rentoul
@JohnRentoul
·
40m
Newsom picks Laphonza Butler as Feinstein replacement
Is it higher or lower than the real 41% marginal tax rate an early career teacher earning £30k is paying?
My wife, like me, works full time. Would love it if we could afford to live off one income, but paying housing and expenses on one salary isn't really feasibly anymore.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TzXf8Gjy-OA&t=18900s
Will the Tories stay in office long enough for him to complete the full set ?
Grant Shapps appearing at @RUSI_org bright and early this morning to discuss Ukraine, GCAP, defence spending.
“I think I’m right in saying this is your fifth cabinet job?” asks
@LOS_Fisher .
“Fifth cabinet job this year,” Shapps replies.
https://twitter.com/georgegrylls/status/1708760174993793358
The state pension used to kick in at the point 6 years after the average death. It was insurance in case you happened to get to 65 and be too old to work to support yourself, rather than a nice reward to look forward to at the end of your life.
We should celebrate people living longer, but we should also make use of those people.
Not least because it’s a lot easier to save for your retirement if you have more years in which to do it!
DWP does give HMRC a figure which HMRC uses for its calculations, and in theory HMRC can calculate the tax from that and the details given by banks, but I've never found HMRC's [edit] overall calculation accurate, usually because something is missing somewhere.
I find it highly objectionable that it's made impossible to confirm just how much State Pension one gets a year, so it's impossible to check the HMRC figure!
PS This mainly from doing about 15 years' worth of my parents' taxes for them.
If they are, then they will.
That's how taxes work. Moron. No need to exempt classes from them just as you hope others will shoulder your burdens for you.
Really enjoyed the Ryder Cup and cooking a meal for my dear wife yesterday in a politics free zone
Just sat down for lunch to see Truss delivering a speech and Farage nodding in agreement
Time to go to politics free zone again methinks
All the talk about 4 day weeks as the new norm, this is what we actually want as you get older, drop to 4, then 3, etc, so a) you continue to earn, b) company can gradually transition while also benefitting from an experience member of staff knowledge. Also your role transitions away from certain responsibilities e.g. your older firefighter, there are still lots of tasks that need doing that aren't running up big ladders into burning buildings.
This is where government could and should be providing the right framework for employees / employers to follow such a trajectory.
This is obviously some strange usage of the word "new" that I wasn't previously aware of.