Odessa is so beautiful. And yet the Potemkin steps are fenced off with barbed wire, and all the palaces on the seafront have boarded up windows. And sandbags surround the statues
And there’s no mains power
I am afraid to tell you, PB, what this means when my phone runs out. Yes. Imagine
Yes. You won't be able to post here. Then we won't know whether you're dead or merely dead inside.
Also the Russians probably know who and where you are if you're using it so close to the front.
Hold on, I thought I was a “putinist shill” and a “fucking appeaser”. Surely vlad is holding off the drones to spare me so I can continue spreading my pro Russian lies?
Sam Coates Sky @SamCoatesSky · 11m There’s a new Sky / YouGov poll coming at 5pm
It’s interesting - but note it’s done under new methodology.
So read the full story on our website to see the comparisons of old and new.
And for why they’ve done it, look here:
(my comments from here)
From memory I think it's going to end up with a lower Labour % with Lib Dems higher and (possibly) Tory votes lower with Reform higher.
The latter may not be that truthful / accurate though so any drop / increase in Tory votes probably needs a bit of salt with it.
Reality is this YouGov poll is more a fresh starting point for subsequent ones than a continuation of the historic ones.
That's some way to word a caveat. Is he trying to Ratner their own poll?
Problem with the inability to post tweets is that you can't tell where the tweet and ends and my comment begins.
Everything from From Memory is my comment and I know that YouGov have been clear that labour are going to drop slightly with Lib Dems increasing - the posts I've read haven't covered how the changes impact Tory / Reform percentages - and with Farage returning there may be some natural movement alongside the methodology changes...
I mean, I'm really pissed off and somewhat baffled by the scheduling on Friday.
I might have mentioned it once or twice.
The Beeb's scheduler is clearly a lazy quarterwit good-for-nothing. They could have staged the debate at 6.15pm – prime time – and it would have been all over just as the England and Scotland teams kicked off, on the other channel. Or just do it the previous night.
Now most people will miss what could be a fun debate – Angela, Penny, Nige, Daisy and some random nationalists for good measure. But no, football it is.
A gentle reminder that any given Muslim is far, far more likely to be the victim of a hate crime than to perpetrate one.
The deliberate insinuation that Muslims are all bad is gross bigotry, yet oddly tolerated in certain circles.
Where would we be without painfully meaningless, boring left platitudes designed to avoid the fucking obvious? Congrats on getting yours in so quick
Well, we'd probably live in a fascist hellscape created by people like you.
Serious question. What do you think happens to a liberal society if you import millions of illiberal people, and it turns out they don’t assimilate, and instead they persist in those values?
I can tell you. What you get is an increasingly less liberal society. More hostile to Jews and gays, and - in the end - not great for women. And that is exactly what we are seeing
Which part of this do you still dispute?
If anyone is prepared to admit to being Jewish I can recommend the funniest book ever written and much more interesting and informative than the sterile racist bilge Leon pumps out daily.
@tomorrowsmps 🔵 I hear that the urgency for the Conservatives to find a candidate in every Btitish seat is so great that they are now contacting people who recently resigned from the approved candidates' list to see if they might nonetheless stand in a hopeless seat somewhere. https://x.com/tomorrowsmps/status/1798335719645335579
Some are saying Labour shouldn’t try and refute the tax claims as it draws attention to them . The difference now is the public are more likely to think the Tories are liars so Sunaks claim was probably on shaky ground anyway . And Sunak repeated the lie throughout the debate .
Starmer decided to lay a trap for Sunak and Labour will now use the liar tag for the next month to attack him .
Lol. The glorious leader was simply trying to appear crap in the debate against Sunak. It was all part of his cunning plan. The look of panic and frustration was due to acting skills he acquired from Sir Tony Blair
@tomorrowsmps 🔵 I hear that the urgency for the Conservatives to find a candidate in every Btitish seat is so great that they are now contacting people who recently resigned from the approved candidates' list to see if they might nonetheless stand in a hopeless seat somewhere. https://x.com/tomorrowsmps/status/1798335719645335579
Having not watched the debate only snippets, I thought one of the weirdest / face slipping thing was Starmer saying no he would never use private health.
What never, you kids are dying, you can only get that treatment privately and your idealogical purity would override that? That isn't the same as doing a Diane Abbott and sending your kids private after railing against private education (that isn't life and death).
Even lesser than that, your kid is in agony, lets say had an accident and smashed in face / teeth. You wouldn't pay for a private dentist to sort it tomorrow, rather than have to wait months (and may never get the full treatment via NHS dentist). Same with hips / knees, the pain from that for many old people is life limiting.
Surely the easy answer is we need to make the NHS better, it fails too many people, so even normal people are being faced with these decisions, that they should never have to....
What condition do you have in mind that would kill your children, but is treatable only privately?
I can't think of one.
Indeed paediatric services are generally very poor privately as few private hospitals can meet the CQC approval for children.
We see it all the time, where there are treatments only available in say US. They aren't licensed here and there is some charity drive to raise the money to send them.
But, even on the lesser note. Things like hips / knees, the wait list is years on NHS. And things like NHS dentistry doesn't over everything or won't get to you for a very very long time.
As I said, the easy answer is
"As PM I will improve the NHS, people shouldn't be having to make these decisions, but I understand that family is the most important thing and thus why people pay to go private. I support the NHS, I believe in the NHS, but there are very rare circumstances where if forced I am very fortunate to be able to make such a decision to help a family member. "
That to me seems the normal human response.
Treatments only available in the US are unusual. We hear about them because they are newsworthy precisely because they are rare.
Many, probably most, of these aren't available in the UK because NICE and the NHS have looked at them and decided they don't really work. Hope is a very powerful motivator and people want to believe some obscure, expensive thing in the US will work... but 9 times out of 10, it won't.
There are cases where something works and is so prohibitively expensive that the NHS won't do it. But they're very rare.
That is all fair points, but it doesn't change that if we believe Starmer he wouldn't even entertain the possibility / look into it if it was a family member. Each to their own, but its not an ideology I can personally understand.
I can understand why someone would take the principled stance not to use private health care, much as they might do for private education. What I don't understand is imposing your own viewpoint on your own family members, even when they are dying!
Wasn't the question - would you pay for someone in your family to get private healthcare - I can see why the answer to that would be no especially when your don't have £xm in the bank...
If one of my family members were in need of it I would like to think I would spend my last penny to get them the best healthcare. Pity Labour supporters families; they would rather the tax payer picked up the bill, even if they could afford it, and let their family member suffer longer so they can believe themselves pure while they book their next holiday in the Maldives.
I don't think that's how people read it. The question was 'are you prepared to pay to queue jump?'
People do it all the time - fast queues at airports, Ticketmaster, anything premium. You must do it all the time.
Indeed it is one of the prime hypocrisy of the left that makes me want to vomit. They love to attack people who pay for their children's education, but not those who buy a house in a good catchment area. They will boast about their latest holiday in some exotic place while wanting more taxes on things that they don't use. They strongly believe that tax rates should be radically increased just above the salary they get for their safe public sector, but let's not tax those public sector pensions that give generous taxpayer guaranteed pay outs for life.
And of course there is mateism. Everyone knows someone who can get them things or places the rest of us cant get. Do we stop that too ?
Nope, that is only going to be stopped for people in the private sector. I mean, the public sector and the Labour Party would simply fall apart if nepotism was disallowed!
A gentle reminder that any given Muslim is far, far more likely to be the victim of a hate crime than to perpetrate one.
The deliberate insinuation that Muslims are all bad is gross bigotry, yet oddly tolerated in certain circles.
Where would we be without painfully meaningless, boring left platitudes designed to avoid the fucking obvious? Congrats on getting yours in so quick
Well, we'd probably live in a fascist hellscape created by people like you.
Serious question. What do you think happens to a liberal society if you import millions of illiberal people, and it turns out they don’t assimilate, and instead they persist in those values?
I can tell you. What you get is an increasingly less liberal society. More hostile to Jews and gays, and - in the end - not great for women. And that is exactly what we are seeing
Which part of this do you still dispute?
If anyone is prepared to admit to being Jewish I can recommend the funniest book ever written and much more interesting and informative than the sterile racist bilge Leon pumps out daily.
Does it have a chapter called never take chewing gum from a mohel ?
That is absurd. I have met Holden and he is a capable politician but that is totally undemocratic.
CCHQ can just about get away with imposing 3 Sunak loyalists on Associations with no local candidate as they have been doing as at least the membership locally get a choice of those 3.
However for CCHQ to impose just 1 candidate on an Association removes even that choice
@tomorrowsmps 🔵 I hear that the urgency for the Conservatives to find a candidate in every Btitish seat is so great that they are now contacting people who recently resigned from the approved candidates' list to see if they might nonetheless stand in a hopeless seat somewhere. https://x.com/tomorrowsmps/status/1798335719645335579
Are you standing?
No, not on the approved list
If they are that desperate they’ll make an exception
Sam Coates Sky @SamCoatesSky · 11m There’s a new Sky / YouGov poll coming at 5pm
It’s interesting - but note it’s done under new methodology.
So read the full story on our website to see the comparisons of old and new.
And for why they’ve done it, look here:
From memory I think it's going to end up with a lower Labour % with Lib Dems higher and (possibly) Tory votes lower with Reform higher.
The latter may not be that truthful / accurate though so any drop / increase in Tory votes probably needs a bit of salt with it.
Reality is this YouGov poll is more a fresh starting point for subsequent ones than a continuation of the historic ones.
That's actually a reasonably modest claim rather than the usual silly ramp. Not quite the "we've got a poll coming out later but it's MOE so I wouldn't get too excited" – but better than the typical "you won't want to miss this super-soaraway BOOM! poll" ... which in any case turns out to be MOE.
Odessa is so beautiful. And yet the Potemkin steps are fenced off with barbed wire, and all the palaces on the seafront have boarded up windows. And sandbags surround the statues
And there’s no mains power
I am afraid to tell you, PB, what this means when my phone runs out. Yes. Imagine
Yes. You won't be able to post here. Then we won't know whether you're dead or merely dead inside.
Also the Russians probably know who and where you are if you're using it so close to the front.
Hold on, I thought I was a “putinist shill” and a “fucking appeaser”. Surely vlad is holding off the drones to spare me so I can continue spreading my pro Russian lies?
Yea, but he might have decided you are past your sell by. Keep away from hotel windows.
From memory I think it's going to end up with a lower Labour % with Lib Dems higher and (possibly) Tory votes lower with Reform higher.
The latter may not be that truthful / accurate though so any drop / increase in Tory votes probably needs a bit of salt with it.
Reality is this YouGov poll is more a fresh starting point for subsequent ones than a continuation of the historic ones.
Hmm. Don't think changing methodology just when an election arrives is a good idea for a pollster. Overall accuracy should be provided by various pollsters doing what they do with obviously similar underlying data.
The change is they are going to run the raw figures through the MRP methodology to get the national percentages - I think that is basically saying we trust the MRP filters more than our previous ones..
"'Sadistic' women who filmed themselves torturing man to death jailed for at least 26 years
Zoe Rider and Nicola Lethbridge carried out a "vicious and extremely violent joint attack" on 60-year-old Stephen Koszyczarski in his Sheffield flat last year. They left him with 22 separate injuries after falsely accusing him of being a paedophile.
Jurors at the trial were shown harrowing footage shot by Rider and Lethbridge, which included them threatening to mutilate Mr Koszyczarski with scissors."
@tomorrowsmps 🔵 I hear that the urgency for the Conservatives to find a candidate in every Btitish seat is so great that they are now contacting people who recently resigned from the approved candidates' list to see if they might nonetheless stand in a hopeless seat somewhere. https://x.com/tomorrowsmps/status/1798335719645335579
Are you standing?
Let's hope so. And in a safe seat too. @HYUFD is a nice, civic-minded chap IRL – he would be an excellent parliamentarian.
Having not watched the debate only snippets, I thought one of the weirdest / face slipping thing was Starmer saying no he would never use private health.
What never, you kids are dying, you can only get that treatment privately and your idealogical purity would override that? That isn't the same as doing a Diane Abbott and sending your kids private after railing against private education (that isn't life and death).
Even lesser than that, your kid is in agony, lets say had an accident and smashed in face / teeth. You wouldn't pay for a private dentist to sort it tomorrow, rather than have to wait months (and may never get the full treatment via NHS dentist). Same with hips / knees, the pain from that for many old people is life limiting.
Surely the easy answer is we need to make the NHS better, it fails too many people, so even normal people are being faced with these decisions, that they should never have to....
What condition do you have in mind that would kill your children, but is treatable only privately?
I can't think of one.
Indeed paediatric services are generally very poor privately as few private hospitals can meet the CQC approval for children.
We see it all the time, where there are treatments only available in say US. They aren't licensed here and there is some charity drive to raise the money to send them.
But, even on the lesser note. Things like hips / knees, the wait list is years on NHS. And things like NHS dentistry doesn't over everything or won't get to you for a very very long time.
As I said, the easy answer is
"As PM I will improve the NHS, people shouldn't be having to make these decisions, but I understand that family is the most important thing and thus why people pay to go private. I support the NHS, I believe in the NHS, but there are very rare circumstances where if forced I am very fortunate to be able to make such a decision to help a family member. "
That to me seems the normal human response.
Treatments only available in the US are unusual. We hear about them because they are newsworthy precisely because they are rare.
Many, probably most, of these aren't available in the UK because NICE and the NHS have looked at them and decided they don't really work. Hope is a very powerful motivator and people want to believe some obscure, expensive thing in the US will work... but 9 times out of 10, it won't.
There are cases where something works and is so prohibitively expensive that the NHS won't do it. But they're very rare.
That is all fair points, but it doesn't change that if we believe Starmer he wouldn't even entertain the possibility / look into it if it was a family member. Each to their own, but its not an ideology I can personally understand.
I can understand why someone would take the principled stance not to use private health care, much as they might do for private education. What I don't understand is imposing your own viewpoint on your own family members, even when they are dying!
Wasn't the question - would you pay for someone in your family to get private healthcare - I can see why the answer to that would be no especially when your don't have £xm in the bank...
If one of my family members were in need of it I would like to think I would spend my last penny to get them the best healthcare. Pity Labour supporters families; they would rather the tax payer picked up the bill, even if they could afford it, and let their family member suffer longer so they can believe themselves pure while they book their next holiday in the Maldives.
I don't think that's how people read it. The question was 'are you prepared to pay to queue jump?'
People do it all the time - fast queues at airports, Ticketmaster, anything premium. You must do it all the time.
I do. As I said earlier I'm in BUPA which is what it's for. I was obliged to for work but I would think better of someone who unlike me refused to on principle.
Sam Coates Sky @SamCoatesSky · 11m There’s a new Sky / YouGov poll coming at 5pm
It’s interesting - but note it’s done under new methodology.
So read the full story on our website to see the comparisons of old and new.
And for why they’ve done it, look here:
(my comments from here)
From memory I think it's going to end up with a lower Labour % with Lib Dems higher and (possibly) Tory votes lower with Reform higher.
The latter may not be that truthful / accurate though so any drop / increase in Tory votes probably needs a bit of salt with it.
Reality is this YouGov poll is more a fresh starting point for subsequent ones than a continuation of the historic ones.
That's some way to word a caveat. Is he trying to Ratner their own poll?
Problem with the inability to post tweets is that you can't tell where the tweet and ends and my comment begins.
Everything from From Memory is my comment and I know that YouGov have been clear that labour are going to drop slightly with Lib Dems increasing - the posts I've read haven't covered how the changes impact Tory / Reform percentages - and with Farage returning there may be some natural movement alongside the methodology changes...
It would be a lucky break for Farage if his comeback coincides with a methodology change that boosts their polling figures.
It’s incredible how many people are still saying it was a set up and she worked for Reform.
As pointed out by @Foxy yesterday, she has bought millions of pounds worth of advertising for her porn site for the princely sum of £1.79*
*(the cost of a banana milkshake at McDonald's apparently)
Which is why the State needs to prosecute this as an aggravated assault, because there’s now thousands of these “influencers” who think its okay to assault someone for publicity. She should be remanded in custody and expect six months, and Nigel should be free to set his lawyers on her for civil damages.
One of the many problems of polling on non binary issues is this. The moment you are polled and ask the pollster what a question means, or try in any way to drill down on its subtleties, you meet with complete refusal to engage. It's essential to their game.
The statement "The state of Israel should not exist" must have about a dozen or more possible significances, from one extreme of "All Jews in Israel should be killed and the land area replaced with non Jews" through "The current land mass should be a shared Palestinian/Jewish homeland" and "It should be part Israel and part Palestine" to another extreme of "Israel should occupy and reoccupy vast areas of adjacent land and render it exclusively Jewish by killing all the others".
So draw no conclusions from data which has a quantitative but not qualitative basis.
Having not watched the debate only snippets, I thought one of the weirdest / face slipping thing was Starmer saying no he would never use private health.
What never, you kids are dying, you can only get that treatment privately and your idealogical purity would override that? That isn't the same as doing a Diane Abbott and sending your kids private after railing against private education (that isn't life and death).
Even lesser than that, your kid is in agony, lets say had an accident and smashed in face / teeth. You wouldn't pay for a private dentist to sort it tomorrow, rather than have to wait months (and may never get the full treatment via NHS dentist). Same with hips / knees, the pain from that for many old people is life limiting.
Surely the easy answer is we need to make the NHS better, it fails too many people, so even normal people are being faced with these decisions, that they should never have to....
What condition do you have in mind that would kill your children, but is treatable only privately?
I can't think of one.
Indeed paediatric services are generally very poor privately as few private hospitals can meet the CQC approval for children.
We see it all the time, where there are treatments only available in say US. They aren't licensed here and there is some charity drive to raise the money to send them.
But, even on the lesser note. Things like hips / knees, the wait list is years on NHS. And things like NHS dentistry doesn't over everything or won't get to you for a very very long time.
As I said, the easy answer is
"As PM I will improve the NHS, people shouldn't be having to make these decisions, but I understand that family is the most important thing and thus why people pay to go private. I support the NHS, I believe in the NHS, but there are very rare circumstances where if forced I am very fortunate to be able to make such a decision to help a family member. "
That to me seems the normal human response.
Treatments only available in the US are unusual. We hear about them because they are newsworthy precisely because they are rare.
Many, probably most, of these aren't available in the UK because NICE and the NHS have looked at them and decided they don't really work. Hope is a very powerful motivator and people want to believe some obscure, expensive thing in the US will work... but 9 times out of 10, it won't.
There are cases where something works and is so prohibitively expensive that the NHS won't do it. But they're very rare.
That is all fair points, but it doesn't change that if we believe Starmer he wouldn't even entertain the possibility / look into it if it was a family member. Each to their own, but its not an ideology I can personally understand.
I can understand why someone would take the principled stance not to use private health care, much as they might do for private education. What I don't understand is imposing your own viewpoint on your own family members, even when they are dying!
Wasn't the question - would you pay for someone in your family to get private healthcare - I can see why the answer to that would be no especially when your don't have £xm in the bank...
If one of my family members were in need of it I would like to think I would spend my last penny to get them the best healthcare. Pity Labour supporters families; they would rather the tax payer picked up the bill, even if they could afford it, and let their family member suffer longer so they can believe themselves pure while they book their next holiday in the Maldives.
I don't think that's how people read it. The question was 'are you prepared to pay to queue jump?'
People do it all the time - fast queues at airports, Ticketmaster, anything premium. You must do it all the time.
I do. As I said earlier I'm in BUPA which is what it's for. I was obliged to for work but I would think better of someone who unlike me refused to on principle.
That's like saying you'd take a pay cut because your boss would think better of you.
It’s incredible how many people are still saying it was a set up and she worked for Reform.
As pointed out by @Foxy yesterday, she has bought millions of pounds worth of advertising for her porn site for the princely sum of £1.79*
*(the cost of a banana milkshake at McDonald's apparently)
Which is why the State needs to prosecute this as an aggravated assault, because there’s now thousands of these “influencers” who think its okay to assault someone for publicity. She should be remanded in custody and expect six months, and Nigel should be free to set his lawyers on her for civil damages.
Japan has apparently been suffering from a similar thing. Western influencer going there, deliberately being dicks to cause reacts from Japanese public who aren't used to this, all for the clicks.
That is absurd. I have met Holden and he is a capable politician but that is totally undemocratic.
CCHQ can just about get away with imposing 3 Sunak loyalists on Associations with no local candidate as they have been doing as at least the membership locally get a choice of those 3.
However for CCHQ to impose just 1 candidate on an Association removes even that choice
He was a great constituency MP (mine).
Then his seat was abolished for this election and he almost immediately gave up entirely. Showing he has no sense of duty; he was only ever doing it out of political cynicism.
@tomorrowsmps 🔵 I hear that the urgency for the Conservatives to find a candidate in every Btitish seat is so great that they are now contacting people who recently resigned from the approved candidates' list to see if they might nonetheless stand in a hopeless seat somewhere. https://x.com/tomorrowsmps/status/1798335719645335579
Are you standing?
No, not on the approved list
You mean they actually have some standards 😜
(not meant seriously, I know it's more timing isn't right)..
Fraser Nelson @FraserNelson · 1h The Spectator has just ran the figures for the Tories' published tax plans.
On Sunak's maths, it works out as £3,000 tax rise per household.
LOL so that's Starmer also taxing £3000 as he's not changing anything.
Question now is does the £2000 fall on top of the £3000 ?
It must do
Which is why when I say there is no money and I expect taxes to increase and a wealth tax is unavoidable, it's unavoidable because the Government needs money.
Having not watched the debate only snippets, I thought one of the weirdest / face slipping thing was Starmer saying no he would never use private health.
What never, you kids are dying, you can only get that treatment privately and your idealogical purity would override that? That isn't the same as doing a Diane Abbott and sending your kids private after railing against private education (that isn't life and death).
Even lesser than that, your kid is in agony, lets say had an accident and smashed in face / teeth. You wouldn't pay for a private dentist to sort it tomorrow, rather than have to wait months (and may never get the full treatment via NHS dentist). Same with hips / knees, the pain from that for many old people is life limiting.
Surely the easy answer is we need to make the NHS better, it fails too many people, so even normal people are being faced with these decisions, that they should never have to....
What condition do you have in mind that would kill your children, but is treatable only privately?
I can't think of one.
Indeed paediatric services are generally very poor privately as few private hospitals can meet the CQC approval for children.
We see it all the time, where there are treatments only available in say US. They aren't licensed here and there is some charity drive to raise the money to send them.
But, even on the lesser note. Things like hips / knees, the wait list is years on NHS. And things like NHS dentistry doesn't over everything or won't get to you for a very very long time.
As I said, the easy answer is
"As PM I will improve the NHS, people shouldn't be having to make these decisions, but I understand that family is the most important thing and thus why people pay to go private. I support the NHS, I believe in the NHS, but there are very rare circumstances where if forced I am very fortunate to be able to make such a decision to help a family member. "
That to me seems the normal human response.
Treatments only available in the US are unusual. We hear about them because they are newsworthy precisely because they are rare.
Many, probably most, of these aren't available in the UK because NICE and the NHS have looked at them and decided they don't really work. Hope is a very powerful motivator and people want to believe some obscure, expensive thing in the US will work... but 9 times out of 10, it won't.
There are cases where something works and is so prohibitively expensive that the NHS won't do it. But they're very rare.
That is all fair points, but it doesn't change that if we believe Starmer he wouldn't even entertain the possibility / look into it if it was a family member. Each to their own, but its not an ideology I can personally understand.
I can understand why someone would take the principled stance not to use private health care, much as they might do for private education. What I don't understand is imposing your own viewpoint on your own family members, even when they are dying!
Wasn't the question - would you pay for someone in your family to get private healthcare - I can see why the answer to that would be no especially when your don't have £xm in the bank...
If one of my family members were in need of it I would like to think I would spend my last penny to get them the best healthcare. Pity Labour supporters families; they would rather the tax payer picked up the bill, even if they could afford it, and let their family member suffer longer so they can believe themselves pure while they book their next holiday in the Maldives.
I don't think that's how people read it. The question was 'are you prepared to pay to queue jump?'
People do it all the time - fast queues at airports, Ticketmaster, anything premium. You must do it all the time.
I do. As I said earlier I'm in BUPA which is what it's for. I was obliged to for work but I would think better of someone who unlike me refused to on principle.
That's like saying you'd take a pay cut because your boss would think better of you.
PS he wouldn't
- If you were on the council house waiting list but got offered a job which paid enough for you to rent privately, would you take it? - Oh no, Julie, it's a council house for me. I'd wait my turn with everyone else.
PB Tories: the economy's fucked, any government will have to raise taxes Also PB Tories: lowering taxes generates more money for the exchequer
Choose, fuckers.
Both statements are true and false (see, that's a good, centrist answer, I feel so much better).
It is impossible to talk about raising taxes and has been for about 50 years because the media jump on it as akin to placing all grandparents in indentured servitude. Tax has been made to be a burden at best and a punishment at worse when the counter argument is it is the contribution many (perhaps not as many as some would like) make to the continuance of a civilised society.
Yet we use terms like "wage slave" as though we have exchanged one form of servitude for another.
The second statement is also true if you believe the Lafferites. There is a sound theory if you allow more people to keep more of their money they spend it or work harder thus generating more money for the Exchequer via VAT receipts or income tax. It also has the by product of making the rich richer and the "belief" is some of that largesse "trickles down" to the poor making them richer too.
What we are seeing however is those with money choosing to save in ISAs rather than undergoing retail therapy (did I see £11.5 billion invested in ISAs before the April 2024 deadline?). Saving is good, too much saving (especially if that means less consumption) isn't.
The usual response to shrinking receipts (apart from that ointment) is to reduce expenditure so if the tax take falls the spending cake gets reduced as well. That's the other side of the question - there's more of a certainty about the take from increased taxes (even more if we had Land Value Taxation) than the impact of a tax cut in terms of whether the Lafferite model would recover the receipts lost from the lower rates.
In any case, "reducing the State" never goes out of fashion (unless it's a part of the State that's important to you such as the NHS or schools or social care or the armed forces or the local library).
Odessa is so beautiful. And yet the Potemkin steps are fenced off with barbed wire, and all the palaces on the seafront have boarded up windows. And sandbags surround the statues
And there’s no mains power
I am afraid to tell you, PB, what this means when my phone runs out. Yes. Imagine
Yes. You won't be able to post here. Then we won't know whether you're dead or merely dead inside.
Also the Russians probably know who and where you are if you're using it so close to the front.
Fraser Nelson @FraserNelson · 1h The Spectator has just ran the figures for the Tories' published tax plans.
On Sunak's maths, it works out as £3,000 tax rise per household.
LOL so that's Starmer also taxing £3000 as he's not changing anything.
Question now is does the £2000 fall on top of the £3000 ?
It must do
Which is why when I say there is no money and I expect taxes to increase and a wealth tax is unavoidable, it's unavoidable because the Government needs money.
I think fining people for doing 73mph on a motorway is harsh, even if the limit was temporarily reduced to 60mph.
To be quite honest, if it was one of their stupid smart limits since nobody obeys them (due to them usually being put up for no reason) that would be harsh.
Technically MPs can as long as they avoid a prison sentence of a year or more or a prison sentence (even suspended) of any length which triggers a recall petition if that petition is successful
Fraser Nelson @FraserNelson · 1h The Spectator has just ran the figures for the Tories' published tax plans.
On Sunak's maths, it works out as £3,000 tax rise per household.
LOL so that's Starmer also taxing £3000 as he's not changing anything.
Question now is does the £2000 fall on top of the £3000 ?
It must do
Which is why when I say there is no money and I expect taxes to increase and a wealth tax is unavoidable, it's unavoidable because the Government needs money.
One of Sunak's better moments was the way he dealt with the gotcha question on private medical treatment with a straightforward "yes". Starmer's answer sounded like it belonged to another era and will be a hostage to fortune.
I am still struggling with why Starmer would even dream of saying no to a question that most people like Sunak would not have even hesitated to say yes too, and I think there will be some cut through with that bizarre answer with those that were watching the debate.
The correct answer for someone responsible for providing healthcare to the population is "if it's good enough for you, it's good enough for me." Starmer gave the correct answer; Sunak gave the incorrect answer.
The issue I suppose is whether it's better to be believable than correct. As this is a political debate I'm not sure it is better.
Good morning
I simply do not believe Starmer would not put his family first in the circumstances of a medical emergency and his answer was simply political and dishonest
Private care isn't about emergencies though. Emergency care is pretty much only via the NHS, which is why it matters to us all. A multimillionaire acquaintance of mine found this out when his mum fractured her hip. There is no alternative to the local Emergency Dept in that situation (Bangor in that case).
If it was a requirement that all elected politicians could only use the NHS and State Schools then I suspect that this would concentrate their minds on improving things for the rest of us quite noticeably!
Private healthcare is not without risk. After a close family member picked up a life threatening infection at a luxurious private hospital, which then had to be fixed by the NHS, I think it’s perfectly reasonable to reject the allure of quick fixes in the private sector and believe the NHS option is best.
Because of course the NHS never has problems with its care. :
Sure, but the point is that it’s perfectly reasonable to believe that private medicine is not the answer, nor the best option.
Several members of my family have use private medical care and it most certainly in their cases was the best option not least my daughter who had an urgent private scan that ruled out cancer
Great!
But don't you think everyone should be able to have an urgent scan, not just those who have the disposable income/savings to afford it?
The reason the NHS is failing rich people is that too few poor people are getting early interventions. Doom loop.
I'm sceptical private healthcare improves the overall provision. If a system is capacity constrained anyone bumped up the queue ipso facto pushes everyone else back. Possibly private medicine brings more money and investment into the system. Overall people care that they get the treatment and it's affordable and probably don't care whether they fund it through taxation or pay for it separately.
Fundamentally I think private healthcare pushes provision towards ability to pay than to need. The American system is an extreme example of an inequitable and inefficient system like this.
Private healthcare also provides examples of what is possible. My daughter had an issue. NHS slow motion ensues. Each specialist ordered a single test. Wait. Rule something out.... Waaaaait.
The private chap ordered the MRI, Xray etc in advance. Then called us in. Then gave a diagnosis that turned out to be correct on the spot.
The hypothesis to test here I think is that multiple tests are deemed not the best value use of a very limited budget. As you have plenty of spare money you are less constrained in your vfm calculation. So the question I think is whether multiple tests would be a good use of additional money being made available. I totally get your wanting the best for your daughter but someone aiming to get the best medical outcomes for a whole population needs to make trade offs. Treatment according to ability to pay rather on need undermines the objective of best medical outcomes for a population.
The NHS way of doing it was to
1) See a consultant 2) He ordered a a test 3) See the consultant 4) Another test 5) etc
Test data is cheap compared to consultants time - and it is cheap (relatively) to buy more MRI machines, X ray machines and find the staff to run them. Consultants are *rare* and it takes a decade to make a new one.
Tests *used* to be far more expensive.
This is classic OR stuff.
EDIT: The other classic NHS thing is joined up behaviour. Or lack of it. A relative, in hospital, just nearly died from neglect. The operation was a brilliant success - but the patient nearly died. It took a letter to the head of the Trust to get someone to pull their finger out.
Actually MRI's are restricted with say 1 per hospital while there is more than 1 consultant in a hospital.
I noticed this last week were Clinical Decisions had a sign saying they had 1 MRI slot a day (because otherwise it's fully booked x weeks in advance).
Now the fix is definitely more MRI machines but they are expensive to purchase maintain and run...
The last one purchased at Chesterfield was funded by a Charity cost £550k at the time but this was a top of the range thig from memory
Indeed. I remember a fundraiser for a million to buy one in the 1980s, so they’re half the cash price they were 40 years ago.
I wonder how much the healthcare system has worked out that testing and imaging has got an awful lot cheaper, to the point that anyone turning up to see a consultant should probably have had both an MRI of the affected area, and a full blood panel, by the time they actually see the consultant.
High throughput through the newer machines is even easier - they tolerate patient movement more etc.
Given the cost of a private MRI is a couple of hundred pounds....
I wonder what the economics looks like of hiring (importing) maybe a couple of thousand MRI operators, and a couple of thousand lab technicians, to offer a 24/7 walk-in MRI and blood panel service to anyone currently awaiting a consultant’s appointment?
It could potentially make a big difference to overall treatment time, as well as the waiting list, if the consultant has everything available to them in advance of the first consultation with the patient. The copy sent to the GP might even spot something else at the same time.
When the waiting list clears, offer the same service to anyone over 60, 50, 40, as a screener for all sorts of things that cost the NHS a fortune and have poor outcomes when spotted late.
One suggestion has been to buy up spare space in the private sector for MRI and similar. Since, in this case , the machines and technicians are 100% private usually.
Having not watched the debate only snippets, I thought one of the weirdest / face slipping thing was Starmer saying no he would never use private health.
What never, you kids are dying, you can only get that treatment privately and your idealogical purity would override that? That isn't the same as doing a Diane Abbott and sending your kids private after railing against private education (that isn't life and death).
Even lesser than that, your kid is in agony, lets say had an accident and smashed in face / teeth. You wouldn't pay for a private dentist to sort it tomorrow, rather than have to wait months (and may never get the full treatment via NHS dentist). Same with hips / knees, the pain from that for many old people is life limiting.
Surely the easy answer is we need to make the NHS better, it fails too many people, so even normal people are being faced with these decisions, that they should never have to....
What condition do you have in mind that would kill your children, but is treatable only privately?
I can't think of one.
Indeed paediatric services are generally very poor privately as few private hospitals can meet the CQC approval for children.
We see it all the time, where there are treatments only available in say US. They aren't licensed here and there is some charity drive to raise the money to send them.
But, even on the lesser note. Things like hips / knees, the wait list is years on NHS. And things like NHS dentistry doesn't over everything or won't get to you for a very very long time.
As I said, the easy answer is
"As PM I will improve the NHS, people shouldn't be having to make these decisions, but I understand that family is the most important thing and thus why people pay to go private. I support the NHS, I believe in the NHS, but there are very rare circumstances where if forced I am very fortunate to be able to make such a decision to help a family member. "
That to me seems the normal human response.
Treatments only available in the US are unusual. We hear about them because they are newsworthy precisely because they are rare.
Many, probably most, of these aren't available in the UK because NICE and the NHS have looked at them and decided they don't really work. Hope is a very powerful motivator and people want to believe some obscure, expensive thing in the US will work... but 9 times out of 10, it won't.
There are cases where something works and is so prohibitively expensive that the NHS won't do it. But they're very rare.
That is all fair points, but it doesn't change that if we believe Starmer he wouldn't even entertain the possibility / look into it if it was a family member. Each to their own, but its not an ideology I can personally understand.
I can understand why someone would take the principled stance not to use private health care, much as they might do for private education. What I don't understand is imposing your own viewpoint on your own family members, even when they are dying!
Wasn't the question - would you pay for someone in your family to get private healthcare - I can see why the answer to that would be no especially when your don't have £xm in the bank...
If one of my family members were in need of it I would like to think I would spend my last penny to get them the best healthcare. Pity Labour supporters families; they would rather the tax payer picked up the bill, even if they could afford it, and let their family member suffer longer so they can believe themselves pure while they book their next holiday in the Maldives.
I don't think that's how people read it. The question was 'are you prepared to pay to queue jump?'
People do it all the time - fast queues at airports, Ticketmaster, anything premium. You must do it all the time.
I do. As I said earlier I'm in BUPA which is what it's for. I was obliged to for work but I would think better of someone who unlike me refused to on principle.
You could argue that the best people are poor conservatives and rich socialists, both voting for the good of the country and against their own self-interest. Conversely, the worst people would then be the poor socialists and the rich conservatives:
Starmer’s team aggressively fighting back now & calling Sunak a liar over claims he made about small boats
Seems they are in real panic mode
Calling out a liar is not panic.
Do you agree that Sunak is a liar?
He is a politician and I doubt he will back down on the substantive claim
Question. “Do you agree that Sunak is a liar? ‘
Answer. “ He is a politician and I doubt he will back down on the substantive claim.”
That is a great answer 🙂
He has merely presented a truth which is why Labour supporters are getting so upset, ergo that Labour loves to raise tax, and raise it they will. If anyone really believes that Labour will find efficiencies in the system (guffaw) to meet their spending wetdreams, then I have a bridge to sell you.
You are not supposed to be caught out simply making up and lying about your opponents plans though. That’s just rank bad politics. 🙂
Which brings me to the presenters stupid stunt. They can both easily rule out top rates moving, rishi has proven you can bring in billions through fiscal drag and other stealth taxes, and keep the election promise of “not a penny more on”. Not that the Tories kept that promise not a penny more on. Sunak invented a whole new NI half way through parliament to stop NHS properly collapsing.
What you are missing Nigel is all those headlines about the highest tax take since the war. Both parties know they can make these promises not to raise tax as the system will be taking massively from us anyway, throughout the next parliament.
Fraser Nelson @FraserNelson · 1h The Spectator has just ran the figures for the Tories' published tax plans.
On Sunak's maths, it works out as £3,000 tax rise per household.
LOL so that's Starmer also taxing £3000 as he's not changing anything.
Question now is does the £2000 fall on top of the £3000 ?
It must do
Which is why when I say there is no money and I expect taxes to increase and a wealth tax is unavoidable, it's unavoidable because the Government needs money.
A gentle reminder that any given Muslim is far, far more likely to be the victim of a hate crime than to perpetrate one.
The deliberate insinuation that Muslims are all bad is gross bigotry, yet oddly tolerated in certain circles.
Where would we be without painfully meaningless, boring left platitudes designed to avoid the fucking obvious? Congrats on getting yours in so quick
Well, we'd probably live in a fascist hellscape created by people like you.
Serious question. What do you think happens to a liberal society if you import millions of illiberal people, and it turns out they don’t assimilate, and instead they persist in those values?
I can tell you. What you get is an increasingly less liberal society. More hostile to Jews and gays, and - in the end - not great for women. And that is exactly what we are seeing
Which part of this do you still dispute?
If anyone is prepared to admit to being Jewish I can recommend the funniest book ever written and much more interesting and informative than the sterile racist bilge Leon pumps out daily.
Does it have a chapter called never take chewing gum from a mohel ?
I've got some good mohel jokes if you like but it's not a joke book!
Guy goes into a shop and says 'can I have a pound of potatoes please''
'I'm sorry but I don't sell potatoes'
'Well why have you got them in your window!'
''I'm a mohel. What do you want me to have in my window?'
Fraser Nelson @FraserNelson · 1h The Spectator has just ran the figures for the Tories' published tax plans.
On Sunak's maths, it works out as £3,000 tax rise per household.
LOL so that's Starmer also taxing £3000 as he's not changing anything.
Question now is does the £2000 fall on top of the £3000 ?
It must do
Which is why when I say there is no money and I expect taxes to increase and a wealth tax is unavoidable, it's unavoidable because the Government needs money.
What odds VAT at 22.5%? I know it’s the one all the parties hate raising but Osborne did it using the “we checked the accounts and it’s worse than we thought” excuse in 2010 and it undoubtedly nets the government lots of cash.
PB Tories: the economy's fucked, any government will have to raise taxes Also PB Tories: lowering taxes generates more money for the exchequer
Choose, fuckers.
Both statements are true and false (see, that's a good, centrist answer, I feel so much better).
It is impossible to talk about raising taxes and has been for about 50 years because the media jump on it as akin to placing all grandparents in indentured servitude. Tax has been made to be a burden at best and a punishment at worse when the counter argument is it is the contribution many (perhaps not as many as some would like) make to the continuance of a civilised society.
Yet we use terms like "wage slave" as though we have exchanged one form of servitude for another.
The second statement is also true if you believe the Lafferites. There is a sound theory if you allow more people to keep more of their money they spend it or work harder thus generating more money for the Exchequer via VAT receipts or income tax. It also has the by product of making the rich richer and the "belief" is some of that largesse "trickles down" to the poor making them richer too.
What we are seeing however is those with money choosing to save in ISAs rather than undergoing retail therapy (did I see £11.5 billion invested in ISAs before the April 2024 deadline?). Saving is good, too much saving (especially if that means less consumption) isn't.
The usual response to shrinking receipts (apart from that ointment) is to reduce expenditure so if the tax take falls the spending cake gets reduced as well. That's the other side of the question - there's more of a certainty about the take from increased taxes (even more if we had Land Value Taxation) than the impact of a tax cut in terms of whether the Lafferite model would recover the receipts lost from the lower rates.
In any case, "reducing the State" never goes out of fashion (unless it's a part of the State that's important to you such as the NHS or schools or social care or the armed forces or the local library).
OTOH some of the saving is because folk are worried about the willingness of the State to look after them in their old age, even if that is solely the NHS.
That is absurd. I have met Holden and he is a capable politician but that is totally undemocratic.
CCHQ can just about get away with imposing 3 Sunak loyalists on Associations with no local candidate as they have been doing as at least the membership locally get a choice of those 3.
However for CCHQ to impose just 1 candidate on an Association removes even that choice
He was a great constituency MP (mine).
Then his seat was abolished for this election and he almost immediately gave up entirely. Showing he has no sense of duty; he was only ever doing it out of political cynicism.
Unimpressed to put it mildly.
He is also taking a risk, the Basildon part of the Basildon and Billericay seat was Labour in the Blair years and Teresa Gorman only held Billericay narrowly in 1997.
Labour could win it on current polls, especially if a big Reform vote and LD tactical voting. The only truly safe seats in Essex at the moment even on a worst case scenario are Maldon, Rayleigh and Wickford, Witham and Brentwood and Ongar (and probably Essex NW and Epping Forest)
Having not watched the debate only snippets, I thought one of the weirdest / face slipping thing was Starmer saying no he would never use private health.
What never, you kids are dying, you can only get that treatment privately and your idealogical purity would override that? That isn't the same as doing a Diane Abbott and sending your kids private after railing against private education (that isn't life and death).
Even lesser than that, your kid is in agony, lets say had an accident and smashed in face / teeth. You wouldn't pay for a private dentist to sort it tomorrow, rather than have to wait months (and may never get the full treatment via NHS dentist). Same with hips / knees, the pain from that for many old people is life limiting.
Surely the easy answer is we need to make the NHS better, it fails too many people, so even normal people are being faced with these decisions, that they should never have to....
What condition do you have in mind that would kill your children, but is treatable only privately?
I can't think of one.
Indeed paediatric services are generally very poor privately as few private hospitals can meet the CQC approval for children.
We see it all the time, where there are treatments only available in say US. They aren't licensed here and there is some charity drive to raise the money to send them.
But, even on the lesser note. Things like hips / knees, the wait list is years on NHS. And things like NHS dentistry doesn't over everything or won't get to you for a very very long time.
As I said, the easy answer is
"As PM I will improve the NHS, people shouldn't be having to make these decisions, but I understand that family is the most important thing and thus why people pay to go private. I support the NHS, I believe in the NHS, but there are very rare circumstances where if forced I am very fortunate to be able to make such a decision to help a family member. "
That to me seems the normal human response.
Treatments only available in the US are unusual. We hear about them because they are newsworthy precisely because they are rare.
Many, probably most, of these aren't available in the UK because NICE and the NHS have looked at them and decided they don't really work. Hope is a very powerful motivator and people want to believe some obscure, expensive thing in the US will work... but 9 times out of 10, it won't.
There are cases where something works and is so prohibitively expensive that the NHS won't do it. But they're very rare.
That is all fair points, but it doesn't change that if we believe Starmer he wouldn't even entertain the possibility / look into it if it was a family member. Each to their own, but its not an ideology I can personally understand.
I can understand why someone would take the principled stance not to use private health care, much as they might do for private education. What I don't understand is imposing your own viewpoint on your own family members, even when they are dying!
Wasn't the question - would you pay for someone in your family to get private healthcare - I can see why the answer to that would be no especially when your don't have £xm in the bank...
If one of my family members were in need of it I would like to think I would spend my last penny to get them the best healthcare. Pity Labour supporters families; they would rather the tax payer picked up the bill, even if they could afford it, and let their family member suffer longer so they can believe themselves pure while they book their next holiday in the Maldives.
I don't think that's how people read it. The question was 'are you prepared to pay to queue jump?'
People do it all the time - fast queues at airports, Ticketmaster, anything premium. You must do it all the time.
I do. As I said earlier I'm in BUPA which is what it's for. I was obliged to for work but I would think better of someone who unlike me refused to on principle.
That's like saying you'd take a pay cut because your boss would think better of you.
PS he wouldn't
- If you were on the council house waiting list but got offered a job which paid enough for you to rent privately, would you take it? - Oh no, Julie, it's a council house for me. I'd wait my turn with everyone else.
"I was obliged to for work" - how "obliged"?
1) Told to use it? 2) Told using it was a condition of employment? 3) Strapped to a stretcher and abducted to a BUPA hospital by heavily armed Unitarian Fundamentalists?
Fraser Nelson @FraserNelson · 1h The Spectator has just ran the figures for the Tories' published tax plans.
On Sunak's maths, it works out as £3,000 tax rise per household.
LOL so that's Starmer also taxing £3000 as he's not changing anything.
Question now is does the £2000 fall on top of the £3000 ?
It must do
Which is why when I say there is no money and I expect taxes to increase and a wealth tax is unavoidable, it's unavoidable because the Government needs money.
What odds VAT at 22.5%? I know it’s the one all the parties hate raising but Osborne did it using the “we checked the accounts and it’s worse than we thought” excuse in 2010 and it undoubtedly nets the government lots of cash.
That would be an absolute killer for hospitality businesses which are still struggling since COVID.
I think fining people for doing 73mph on a motorway is harsh, even if the limit was temporarily reduced to 60mph.
To be quite honest, if it was one of their stupid smart limits since nobody obeys them (due to them usually being put up for no reason) that would be harsh.
If it's roadworks then it's a fair cop.
Why wasn't Vicky Pryce driving ? What is Ed Davey hiding ?
Fraser Nelson @FraserNelson · 1h The Spectator has just ran the figures for the Tories' published tax plans.
On Sunak's maths, it works out as £3,000 tax rise per household.
LOL so that's Starmer also taxing £3000 as he's not changing anything.
Question now is does the £2000 fall on top of the £3000 ?
It must do
Which is why when I say there is no money and I expect taxes to increase and a wealth tax is unavoidable, it's unavoidable because the Government needs money.
As I have said before they can always spend less
Where do you cut spending - go ahead provide areas and examples?
Having not watched the debate only snippets, I thought one of the weirdest / face slipping thing was Starmer saying no he would never use private health.
What never, you kids are dying, you can only get that treatment privately and your idealogical purity would override that? That isn't the same as doing a Diane Abbott and sending your kids private after railing against private education (that isn't life and death).
Even lesser than that, your kid is in agony, lets say had an accident and smashed in face / teeth. You wouldn't pay for a private dentist to sort it tomorrow, rather than have to wait months (and may never get the full treatment via NHS dentist). Same with hips / knees, the pain from that for many old people is life limiting.
Surely the easy answer is we need to make the NHS better, it fails too many people, so even normal people are being faced with these decisions, that they should never have to....
What condition do you have in mind that would kill your children, but is treatable only privately?
I can't think of one.
Indeed paediatric services are generally very poor privately as few private hospitals can meet the CQC approval for children.
We see it all the time, where there are treatments only available in say US. They aren't licensed here and there is some charity drive to raise the money to send them.
But, even on the lesser note. Things like hips / knees, the wait list is years on NHS. And things like NHS dentistry doesn't over everything or won't get to you for a very very long time.
As I said, the easy answer is
"As PM I will improve the NHS, people shouldn't be having to make these decisions, but I understand that family is the most important thing and thus why people pay to go private. I support the NHS, I believe in the NHS, but there are very rare circumstances where if forced I am very fortunate to be able to make such a decision to help a family member. "
That to me seems the normal human response.
Treatments only available in the US are unusual. We hear about them because they are newsworthy precisely because they are rare.
Many, probably most, of these aren't available in the UK because NICE and the NHS have looked at them and decided they don't really work. Hope is a very powerful motivator and people want to believe some obscure, expensive thing in the US will work... but 9 times out of 10, it won't.
There are cases where something works and is so prohibitively expensive that the NHS won't do it. But they're very rare.
That is all fair points, but it doesn't change that if we believe Starmer he wouldn't even entertain the possibility / look into it if it was a family member. Each to their own, but its not an ideology I can personally understand.
I can understand why someone would take the principled stance not to use private health care, much as they might do for private education. What I don't understand is imposing your own viewpoint on your own family members, even when they are dying!
Wasn't the question - would you pay for someone in your family to get private healthcare - I can see why the answer to that would be no especially when your don't have £xm in the bank...
If one of my family members were in need of it I would like to think I would spend my last penny to get them the best healthcare. Pity Labour supporters families; they would rather the tax payer picked up the bill, even if they could afford it, and let their family member suffer longer so they can believe themselves pure while they book their next holiday in the Maldives.
I don't think that's how people read it. The question was 'are you prepared to pay to queue jump?'
People do it all the time - fast queues at airports, Ticketmaster, anything premium. You must do it all the time.
I do. As I said earlier I'm in BUPA which is what it's for. I was obliged to for work but I would think better of someone who unlike me refused to on principle.
That's like saying you'd take a pay cut because your boss would think better of you.
PS he wouldn't
- If you were on the council house waiting list but got offered a job which paid enough for you to rent privately, would you take it? - Oh no, Julie, it's a council house for me. I'd wait my turn with everyone else.
"I was obliged to for work" - how "obliged"?
1) Told to use it? 2) Told using it was a condition of employment? 3) Strapped to a stretcher and abducted to a BUPA hospital by heavily armed Unitarian Fundamentalists?
I remember when I taught in the independent sector I had to be in BUPA. It was a condition of employment though they paid my yearly subscription. I never used it myself, only my wife. I had to pay tax on the subscription as a benefit in kind.
I was a Tory member for a very short time, but they still send me emails even though I haven't been one for quite a while. Don't know whether this is deliberate or not.
Just got this from Richard Holden:
"I'm just following up on Rishi's email to you below by bringing you the BREAKING NEWS that, according to a snap poll, Rishi Sunak beat Sir Keir Starmer among people who watched the debate.
How did we know this was going to happen? Because only Rishi Sunak has the track record of delivery, and the bold ideas needed for a brighter future.
And it's a lot easier to stand up your ideas when you actually have a plan.
If you missed the debate you can see the best bits here >>>
Thank you to the thousands of you who shared our content at home, and who've chipped in £10, £5, even £1 during the course of the campaign.
Trust me when I say that everything you do really does make a difference.
Together, we're going to keep Sir Keir Starmer out of 10 Downing Street. And deliver the bold action needed for a brighter future.
Yours sincerely, Richard Holden Chairman of the Conservative and Unionist Party""
Do British voters support or oppose Rishi Sunak's plan to increase the income tax threshold at which pensioners will start paying income tax? (28-29 May)
Support 49% Oppose 17% Neither 26% Don't know 9%…..
Influence of Sunak's Pension Tax Plan (28-29 May):
More voters aged 55-64 (20%) and 65+ (25%) say they are now MORE LIKELY to vote Conservative than say they are less likely to do so (6% and 15%).
Among 18-24 year olds, 37% say they are now LESS LIKELY to vote Conservative
Since a negligible number of 18-24 year olds were going to vote Con in the first place….
This hits the nail on the head. How polling like that hides the truth of what voters are really thinking.
Corbyn’s crap manifesto also benefitted from voodoo polling like this on each particular measure, but it pointed to nothing substantial.
Ask exactly the same voters you polled to get that result, you aware Rishi turned this tax on you pension on, this merely a proposal to turn it off again? and you will find voters are not that unaware and gullible. Hence the current polls and eventual result.
Having not watched the debate only snippets, I thought one of the weirdest / face slipping thing was Starmer saying no he would never use private health.
What never, you kids are dying, you can only get that treatment privately and your idealogical purity would override that? That isn't the same as doing a Diane Abbott and sending your kids private after railing against private education (that isn't life and death).
Even lesser than that, your kid is in agony, lets say had an accident and smashed in face / teeth. You wouldn't pay for a private dentist to sort it tomorrow, rather than have to wait months (and may never get the full treatment via NHS dentist). Same with hips / knees, the pain from that for many old people is life limiting.
Surely the easy answer is we need to make the NHS better, it fails too many people, so even normal people are being faced with these decisions, that they should never have to....
What condition do you have in mind that would kill your children, but is treatable only privately?
I can't think of one.
Indeed paediatric services are generally very poor privately as few private hospitals can meet the CQC approval for children.
We see it all the time, where there are treatments only available in say US. They aren't licensed here and there is some charity drive to raise the money to send them.
But, even on the lesser note. Things like hips / knees, the wait list is years on NHS. And things like NHS dentistry doesn't over everything or won't get to you for a very very long time.
As I said, the easy answer is
"As PM I will improve the NHS, people shouldn't be having to make these decisions, but I understand that family is the most important thing and thus why people pay to go private. I support the NHS, I believe in the NHS, but there are very rare circumstances where if forced I am very fortunate to be able to make such a decision to help a family member. "
That to me seems the normal human response.
Treatments only available in the US are unusual. We hear about them because they are newsworthy precisely because they are rare.
Many, probably most, of these aren't available in the UK because NICE and the NHS have looked at them and decided they don't really work. Hope is a very powerful motivator and people want to believe some obscure, expensive thing in the US will work... but 9 times out of 10, it won't.
There are cases where something works and is so prohibitively expensive that the NHS won't do it. But they're very rare.
That is all fair points, but it doesn't change that if we believe Starmer he wouldn't even entertain the possibility / look into it if it was a family member. Each to their own, but its not an ideology I can personally understand.
I can understand why someone would take the principled stance not to use private health care, much as they might do for private education. What I don't understand is imposing your own viewpoint on your own family members, even when they are dying!
Wasn't the question - would you pay for someone in your family to get private healthcare - I can see why the answer to that would be no especially when your don't have £xm in the bank...
If one of my family members were in need of it I would like to think I would spend my last penny to get them the best healthcare. Pity Labour supporters families; they would rather the tax payer picked up the bill, even if they could afford it, and let their family member suffer longer so they can believe themselves pure while they book their next holiday in the Maldives.
I don't think that's how people read it. The question was 'are you prepared to pay to queue jump?'
People do it all the time - fast queues at airports, Ticketmaster, anything premium. You must do it all the time.
I do. As I said earlier I'm in BUPA which is what it's for. I was obliged to for work but I would think better of someone who unlike me refused to on principle.
That's like saying you'd take a pay cut because your boss would think better of you.
PS he wouldn't
- If you were on the council house waiting list but got offered a job which paid enough for you to rent privately, would you take it? - Oh no, Julie, it's a council house for me. I'd wait my turn with everyone else.
"I was obliged to for work" - how "obliged"?
1) Told to use it? 2) Told using it was a condition of employment? 3) Strapped to a stretcher and abducted to a BUPA hospital by heavily armed Unitarian Fundamentalists?
I remember when I taught in the independent sector I had to be in BUPA. It was a condition of employment though they paid my yearly subscription. I never used it myself, only my wife. I had to pay tax on the subscription as a benefit in kind.
Any sensible government would treat private healthcare expenditure (available to all employees) as deductible against employer NI, rather than try to tax it as a BIK for the employee.
Government needs to get as many people as possible out of the NHS, and encourage private providers to expand overall provision, not to mention the amount of absence that could be saved by fast-tracking those off work for months waiting for treatment.
Having not watched the debate only snippets, I thought one of the weirdest / face slipping thing was Starmer saying no he would never use private health.
What never, you kids are dying, you can only get that treatment privately and your idealogical purity would override that? That isn't the same as doing a Diane Abbott and sending your kids private after railing against private education (that isn't life and death).
Even lesser than that, your kid is in agony, lets say had an accident and smashed in face / teeth. You wouldn't pay for a private dentist to sort it tomorrow, rather than have to wait months (and may never get the full treatment via NHS dentist). Same with hips / knees, the pain from that for many old people is life limiting.
Surely the easy answer is we need to make the NHS better, it fails too many people, so even normal people are being faced with these decisions, that they should never have to....
What condition do you have in mind that would kill your children, but is treatable only privately?
I can't think of one.
Indeed paediatric services are generally very poor privately as few private hospitals can meet the CQC approval for children.
We see it all the time, where there are treatments only available in say US. They aren't licensed here and there is some charity drive to raise the money to send them.
But, even on the lesser note. Things like hips / knees, the wait list is years on NHS. And things like NHS dentistry doesn't over everything or won't get to you for a very very long time.
As I said, the easy answer is
"As PM I will improve the NHS, people shouldn't be having to make these decisions, but I understand that family is the most important thing and thus why people pay to go private. I support the NHS, I believe in the NHS, but there are very rare circumstances where if forced I am very fortunate to be able to make such a decision to help a family member. "
That to me seems the normal human response.
Treatments only available in the US are unusual. We hear about them because they are newsworthy precisely because they are rare.
Many, probably most, of these aren't available in the UK because NICE and the NHS have looked at them and decided they don't really work. Hope is a very powerful motivator and people want to believe some obscure, expensive thing in the US will work... but 9 times out of 10, it won't.
There are cases where something works and is so prohibitively expensive that the NHS won't do it. But they're very rare.
That is all fair points, but it doesn't change that if we believe Starmer he wouldn't even entertain the possibility / look into it if it was a family member. Each to their own, but its not an ideology I can personally understand.
I can understand why someone would take the principled stance not to use private health care, much as they might do for private education. What I don't understand is imposing your own viewpoint on your own family members, even when they are dying!
Wasn't the question - would you pay for someone in your family to get private healthcare - I can see why the answer to that would be no especially when your don't have £xm in the bank...
If one of my family members were in need of it I would like to think I would spend my last penny to get them the best healthcare. Pity Labour supporters families; they would rather the tax payer picked up the bill, even if they could afford it, and let their family member suffer longer so they can believe themselves pure while they book their next holiday in the Maldives.
I don't think that's how people read it. The question was 'are you prepared to pay to queue jump?'
People do it all the time - fast queues at airports, Ticketmaster, anything premium. You must do it all the time.
I do. As I said earlier I'm in BUPA which is what it's for. I was obliged to for work but I would think better of someone who unlike me refused to on principle.
That's like saying you'd take a pay cut because your boss would think better of you.
PS he wouldn't
- If you were on the council house waiting list but got offered a job which paid enough for you to rent privately, would you take it? - Oh no, Julie, it's a council house for me. I'd wait my turn with everyone else.
"I was obliged to for work" - how "obliged"?
1) Told to use it? 2) Told using it was a condition of employment? 3) Strapped to a stretcher and abducted to a BUPA hospital by heavily armed Unitarian Fundamentalists?
I remember when I taught in the independent sector I had to be in BUPA. It was a condition of employment though they paid my yearly subscription. I never used it myself, only my wife. I had to pay tax on the subscription as a benefit in kind.
Any sensible government would treat private healthcare expenditure (available to all employees) as deductible against employer NI, rather than try to tax it as a BIK for the employee.
Government needs to get as many people as possible out of the NHS, and encourage private providers to expand overall provision, not to mention the amount of absence that could be saved by fast-tracking those off work for months waiting for treatment.
Its the same with pensions. We want as many people putting their money in their pensions.
Instead I think its nailed on we will get a counterproductive raid on pensions.
Fraser Nelson @FraserNelson · 1h The Spectator has just ran the figures for the Tories' published tax plans.
On Sunak's maths, it works out as £3,000 tax rise per household.
LOL so that's Starmer also taxing £3000 as he's not changing anything.
Question now is does the £2000 fall on top of the £3000 ?
It must do
Which is why when I say there is no money and I expect taxes to increase and a wealth tax is unavoidable, it's unavoidable because the Government needs money.
As I have said before they can always spend less
Where do you cut spending - go ahead provide areas and examples?
Well you have to start by looking.
Cut quangos £82billion to go at. Id abolish the OBr day one. Reschedule Payments to the bank of England Sort out MoD procurement Take an IT spend holiday - they're always vastly overrun for dubious benefits Put some productivity back in to the public sector instead of pissing away 2% per year
I could continue but as I say if you wont look you wont find.
It’s incredible how many people are still saying it was a set up and she worked for Reform.
As pointed out by @Foxy yesterday, she has bought millions of pounds worth of advertising for her porn site for the princely sum of £1.79*
*(the cost of a banana milkshake at McDonald's apparently)
Which is why the State needs to prosecute this as an aggravated assault, because there’s now thousands of these “influencers” who think its okay to assault someone for publicity. She should be remanded in custody and expect six months, and Nigel should be free to set his lawyers on her for civil damages.
Japan has apparently been suffering from a similar thing. Western influencer going there, deliberately being dicks to cause reacts from Japanese public who aren't used to this, all for the clicks.
Yes, it’s a massive culture clash, and relatively libertarian authorities that don’t understand how to respond.
Funnily enough, we’ve not seen that sort of prank out here in the Gulf. I wonder why?
Starmer’s team aggressively fighting back now & calling Sunak a liar over claims he made about small boats
Seems they are in real panic mode
Really? Labour can now spend the next 4 weeks calling Rishi a liar - and has multiple bits of evidence to back it up.
I would call that just about the worst position possible for a politician to be in..
So you think a politician calling another politician a liar is going to persuade the public, when the general consensus is they all are the same
Being honest I think your love of the Tory party is completely impossible to understand.
Why - I am a one nation conservative and my party has lost its way
That doesn't mean that I will suddenly vote for another party, rather than try to influence my party to return to sanity and the centre
Your party hasn't so much lost it's way as been taking over (slowly) by a group of right wing clueless (often facist) loonies. Remember that prior to 2019 I voted Conservative - I was very much a centralist Tory but Bozo destroyed that in August - October 2019 and you amongst various others ignored the fact.
I'm going to be blunt but the best thing for the current Tory party is for it to be completely destroyed so that a new centralist right wing party can be formed from it's remains...
Except the current Tory government where the most senior figures in the Cabinet are Sunak, Hunt and Cameron IS the most centralist right wing party you are going to get in the UK anytime soon. Sunak toppled Johnson, Hunt was Johnson's opponent for the 2019 Tory leadership and Cameron led the Remain campaign in 2016 against Johnson's Leave campaign.
Not to mention the fact that Farage is back as leader of a Reform party polling over 10%, if the Tories were replaced it would be by a Farage led hard right populist party NOT any new centrist party
But dig behind the current figure heads and who is going to replace Rishi in September / October this year. It isn't going to be a centralist it's going to be the more populist facist who wins the members vote.
The reason why I'm happy to wear the "he loves Labour" hat on here is that I don't want to be within 1000 miles of any part of the blame for the next Tory party leader...
Not that it actually matters because I said in 2019 that Bozo would be the last Tory PM ever although he didn't manage to last all 5 years (and got replaced twice) I see no reason to believe my prediction that the 2019 Government will be the last one ever formed by the Tory party.
Re your first paragraph, has anyone actually done any digging on this? There seems to be a generally accepted opinion that someone of the harder right is going to be next Tory leader but is that based on facts?
For example if you took various seat levels for the Tories, looked at who would be left are we certain that they are majority to the right? As far as I know (and I know nothing, about anything) it could actually be that there would be a much greater number of one nation centrists who might be able to lock out the last two candidates from their wing.
Just because the remaining seats would by definition be stronger Tory seats it doesn’t necessarily follow that their MPs are further to the right.
If there ended up 160 Tories and 120 were one nation then they could ensure one of their tribe takes over. The same is true of course for the result being the other way. Like I said, unless someone has really delved into this we are just speculating.
There’s not a doubt it will be Patel v Badenoch in the final. What is interesting is what wedge issues they will find to fight each other on.
If a moderate Tory wants to say xx moderate Tory will make final as normally happens, that’s just wish casting this time.
Fraser Nelson @FraserNelson · 1h The Spectator has just ran the figures for the Tories' published tax plans.
On Sunak's maths, it works out as £3,000 tax rise per household.
LOL so that's Starmer also taxing £3000 as he's not changing anything.
Question now is does the £2000 fall on top of the £3000 ?
It must do
Which is why when I say there is no money and I expect taxes to increase and a wealth tax is unavoidable, it's unavoidable because the Government needs money.
As I predicted Sky have now expanded the conservative tax controversy to Labours misleading assertions on the conservatives plans for NI calling them dodgy dossiers
Having not watched the debate only snippets, I thought one of the weirdest / face slipping thing was Starmer saying no he would never use private health.
What never, you kids are dying, you can only get that treatment privately and your idealogical purity would override that? That isn't the same as doing a Diane Abbott and sending your kids private after railing against private education (that isn't life and death).
Even lesser than that, your kid is in agony, lets say had an accident and smashed in face / teeth. You wouldn't pay for a private dentist to sort it tomorrow, rather than have to wait months (and may never get the full treatment via NHS dentist). Same with hips / knees, the pain from that for many old people is life limiting.
Surely the easy answer is we need to make the NHS better, it fails too many people, so even normal people are being faced with these decisions, that they should never have to....
What condition do you have in mind that would kill your children, but is treatable only privately?
I can't think of one.
Indeed paediatric services are generally very poor privately as few private hospitals can meet the CQC approval for children.
We see it all the time, where there are treatments only available in say US. They aren't licensed here and there is some charity drive to raise the money to send them.
But, even on the lesser note. Things like hips / knees, the wait list is years on NHS. And things like NHS dentistry doesn't over everything or won't get to you for a very very long time.
As I said, the easy answer is
"As PM I will improve the NHS, people shouldn't be having to make these decisions, but I understand that family is the most important thing and thus why people pay to go private. I support the NHS, I believe in the NHS, but there are very rare circumstances where if forced I am very fortunate to be able to make such a decision to help a family member. "
That to me seems the normal human response.
Treatments only available in the US are unusual. We hear about them because they are newsworthy precisely because they are rare.
Many, probably most, of these aren't available in the UK because NICE and the NHS have looked at them and decided they don't really work. Hope is a very powerful motivator and people want to believe some obscure, expensive thing in the US will work... but 9 times out of 10, it won't.
There are cases where something works and is so prohibitively expensive that the NHS won't do it. But they're very rare.
That is all fair points, but it doesn't change that if we believe Starmer he wouldn't even entertain the possibility / look into it if it was a family member. Each to their own, but its not an ideology I can personally understand.
I can understand why someone would take the principled stance not to use private health care, much as they might do for private education. What I don't understand is imposing your own viewpoint on your own family members, even when they are dying!
Wasn't the question - would you pay for someone in your family to get private healthcare - I can see why the answer to that would be no especially when your don't have £xm in the bank...
If one of my family members were in need of it I would like to think I would spend my last penny to get them the best healthcare. Pity Labour supporters families; they would rather the tax payer picked up the bill, even if they could afford it, and let their family member suffer longer so they can believe themselves pure while they book their next holiday in the Maldives.
I don't think that's how people read it. The question was 'are you prepared to pay to queue jump?'
People do it all the time - fast queues at airports, Ticketmaster, anything premium. You must do it all the time.
I do. As I said earlier I'm in BUPA which is what it's for. I was obliged to for work but I would think better of someone who unlike me refused to on principle.
That's like saying you'd take a pay cut because your boss would think better of you.
PS he wouldn't
- If you were on the council house waiting list but got offered a job which paid enough for you to rent privately, would you take it? - Oh no, Julie, it's a council house for me. I'd wait my turn with everyone else.
"I was obliged to for work" - how "obliged"?
1) Told to use it? 2) Told using it was a condition of employment? 3) Strapped to a stretcher and abducted to a BUPA hospital by heavily armed Unitarian Fundamentalists?
I worked with a team of about thirty or forty freelancers. My English producer thought it necessary on the basis that if I wasn't there the job couldn't happen and it was loads of money out of the window. I thought it unnecessary but he was in charge of that side of things.
Having not watched the debate only snippets, I thought one of the weirdest / face slipping thing was Starmer saying no he would never use private health.
What never, you kids are dying, you can only get that treatment privately and your idealogical purity would override that? That isn't the same as doing a Diane Abbott and sending your kids private after railing against private education (that isn't life and death).
Even lesser than that, your kid is in agony, lets say had an accident and smashed in face / teeth. You wouldn't pay for a private dentist to sort it tomorrow, rather than have to wait months (and may never get the full treatment via NHS dentist). Same with hips / knees, the pain from that for many old people is life limiting.
Surely the easy answer is we need to make the NHS better, it fails too many people, so even normal people are being faced with these decisions, that they should never have to....
What condition do you have in mind that would kill your children, but is treatable only privately?
I can't think of one.
Indeed paediatric services are generally very poor privately as few private hospitals can meet the CQC approval for children.
We see it all the time, where there are treatments only available in say US. They aren't licensed here and there is some charity drive to raise the money to send them.
But, even on the lesser note. Things like hips / knees, the wait list is years on NHS. And things like NHS dentistry doesn't over everything or won't get to you for a very very long time.
As I said, the easy answer is
"As PM I will improve the NHS, people shouldn't be having to make these decisions, but I understand that family is the most important thing and thus why people pay to go private. I support the NHS, I believe in the NHS, but there are very rare circumstances where if forced I am very fortunate to be able to make such a decision to help a family member. "
That to me seems the normal human response.
Treatments only available in the US are unusual. We hear about them because they are newsworthy precisely because they are rare.
Many, probably most, of these aren't available in the UK because NICE and the NHS have looked at them and decided they don't really work. Hope is a very powerful motivator and people want to believe some obscure, expensive thing in the US will work... but 9 times out of 10, it won't.
There are cases where something works and is so prohibitively expensive that the NHS won't do it. But they're very rare.
That is all fair points, but it doesn't change that if we believe Starmer he wouldn't even entertain the possibility / look into it if it was a family member. Each to their own, but its not an ideology I can personally understand.
I can understand why someone would take the principled stance not to use private health care, much as they might do for private education. What I don't understand is imposing your own viewpoint on your own family members, even when they are dying!
Wasn't the question - would you pay for someone in your family to get private healthcare - I can see why the answer to that would be no especially when your don't have £xm in the bank...
If one of my family members were in need of it I would like to think I would spend my last penny to get them the best healthcare. Pity Labour supporters families; they would rather the tax payer picked up the bill, even if they could afford it, and let their family member suffer longer so they can believe themselves pure while they book their next holiday in the Maldives.
I don't think that's how people read it. The question was 'are you prepared to pay to queue jump?'
People do it all the time - fast queues at airports, Ticketmaster, anything premium. You must do it all the time.
I do. As I said earlier I'm in BUPA which is what it's for. I was obliged to for work but I would think better of someone who unlike me refused to on principle.
That's like saying you'd take a pay cut because your boss would think better of you.
PS he wouldn't
- If you were on the council house waiting list but got offered a job which paid enough for you to rent privately, would you take it? - Oh no, Julie, it's a council house for me. I'd wait my turn with everyone else.
"I was obliged to for work" - how "obliged"?
1) Told to use it? 2) Told using it was a condition of employment? 3) Strapped to a stretcher and abducted to a BUPA hospital by heavily armed Unitarian Fundamentalists?
I remember when I taught in the independent sector I had to be in BUPA. It was a condition of employment though they paid my yearly subscription. I never used it myself, only my wife. I had to pay tax on the subscription as a benefit in kind.
Any sensible government would treat private healthcare expenditure (available to all employees) as deductible against employer NI, rather than try to tax it as a BIK for the employee.
Government needs to get as many people as possible out of the NHS, and encourage private providers to expand overall provision, not to mention the amount of absence that could be saved by fast-tracking those off work for months waiting for treatment.
The Government also needs the £60bn that employer NI generates - and I will note I suspect that will increase post the election because no-one is talking about Employer NI
It’s incredible how many people are still saying it was a set up and she worked for Reform.
As pointed out by @Foxy yesterday, she has bought millions of pounds worth of advertising for her porn site for the princely sum of £1.79*
*(the cost of a banana milkshake at McDonald's apparently)
Which is why the State needs to prosecute this as an aggravated assault, because there’s now thousands of these “influencers” who think its okay to assault someone for publicity. She should be remanded in custody and expect six months, and Nigel should be free to set his lawyers on her for civil damages.
Japan has apparently been suffering from a similar thing. Western influencer going there, deliberately being dicks to cause reacts from Japanese public who aren't used to this, all for the clicks.
Yes, it’s a massive culture clash, and relatively libertarian authorities that don’t understand how to respond.
Funnily enough, we’ve not seen that sort of prank out here in the Gulf. I wonder why?
To be honest, I am surprised one of the knobheads haven't managed to piss off somebody connected to the Yakuza, because that wouldn't end well.
I was a Tory member for a very short time, but they still send me emails even though I haven't been one for quite a while. Don't know whether this is deliberate or not.
Just got this from Richard Holden:
"I'm just following up on Rishi's email to you below by bringing you the BREAKING NEWS that, according to a snap poll, Rishi Sunak beat Sir Keir Starmer among people who watched the debate.
How did we know this was going to happen? Because only Rishi Sunak has the track record of delivery, and the bold ideas needed for a brighter future.
And it's a lot easier to stand up your ideas when you actually have a plan.
If you missed the debate you can see the best bits here >>>
Thank you to the thousands of you who shared our content at home, and who've chipped in £10, £5, even £1 during the course of the campaign.
Trust me when I say that everything you do really does make a difference.
Together, we're going to keep Sir Keir Starmer out of 10 Downing Street. And deliver the bold action needed for a brighter future.
Yours sincerely, Richard Holden Chairman of the Conservative and Unionist Party""
I sent them a "take me off your list, GDPR blah blah blah" email a year or two ago and that seemed to work.
Having not watched the debate only snippets, I thought one of the weirdest / face slipping thing was Starmer saying no he would never use private health.
What never, you kids are dying, you can only get that treatment privately and your idealogical purity would override that? That isn't the same as doing a Diane Abbott and sending your kids private after railing against private education (that isn't life and death).
Even lesser than that, your kid is in agony, lets say had an accident and smashed in face / teeth. You wouldn't pay for a private dentist to sort it tomorrow, rather than have to wait months (and may never get the full treatment via NHS dentist). Same with hips / knees, the pain from that for many old people is life limiting.
Surely the easy answer is we need to make the NHS better, it fails too many people, so even normal people are being faced with these decisions, that they should never have to....
What condition do you have in mind that would kill your children, but is treatable only privately?
I can't think of one.
Indeed paediatric services are generally very poor privately as few private hospitals can meet the CQC approval for children.
We see it all the time, where there are treatments only available in say US. They aren't licensed here and there is some charity drive to raise the money to send them.
But, even on the lesser note. Things like hips / knees, the wait list is years on NHS. And things like NHS dentistry doesn't over everything or won't get to you for a very very long time.
As I said, the easy answer is
"As PM I will improve the NHS, people shouldn't be having to make these decisions, but I understand that family is the most important thing and thus why people pay to go private. I support the NHS, I believe in the NHS, but there are very rare circumstances where if forced I am very fortunate to be able to make such a decision to help a family member. "
That to me seems the normal human response.
Treatments only available in the US are unusual. We hear about them because they are newsworthy precisely because they are rare.
Many, probably most, of these aren't available in the UK because NICE and the NHS have looked at them and decided they don't really work. Hope is a very powerful motivator and people want to believe some obscure, expensive thing in the US will work... but 9 times out of 10, it won't.
There are cases where something works and is so prohibitively expensive that the NHS won't do it. But they're very rare.
That is all fair points, but it doesn't change that if we believe Starmer he wouldn't even entertain the possibility / look into it if it was a family member. Each to their own, but its not an ideology I can personally understand.
I can understand why someone would take the principled stance not to use private health care, much as they might do for private education. What I don't understand is imposing your own viewpoint on your own family members, even when they are dying!
Wasn't the question - would you pay for someone in your family to get private healthcare - I can see why the answer to that would be no especially when your don't have £xm in the bank...
If one of my family members were in need of it I would like to think I would spend my last penny to get them the best healthcare. Pity Labour supporters families; they would rather the tax payer picked up the bill, even if they could afford it, and let their family member suffer longer so they can believe themselves pure while they book their next holiday in the Maldives.
I don't think that's how people read it. The question was 'are you prepared to pay to queue jump?'
People do it all the time - fast queues at airports, Ticketmaster, anything premium. You must do it all the time.
I do. As I said earlier I'm in BUPA which is what it's for. I was obliged to for work but I would think better of someone who unlike me refused to on principle.
That's like saying you'd take a pay cut because your boss would think better of you.
PS he wouldn't
- If you were on the council house waiting list but got offered a job which paid enough for you to rent privately, would you take it? - Oh no, Julie, it's a council house for me. I'd wait my turn with everyone else.
"I was obliged to for work" - how "obliged"?
1) Told to use it? 2) Told using it was a condition of employment? 3) Strapped to a stretcher and abducted to a BUPA hospital by heavily armed Unitarian Fundamentalists?
I remember when I taught in the independent sector I had to be in BUPA. It was a condition of employment though they paid my yearly subscription. I never used it myself, only my wife. I had to pay tax on the subscription as a benefit in kind.
Any sensible government would treat private healthcare expenditure (available to all employees) as deductible against employer NI, rather than try to tax it as a BIK for the employee.
Government needs to get as many people as possible out of the NHS, and encourage private providers to expand overall provision, not to mention the amount of absence that could be saved by fast-tracking those off work for months waiting for treatment.
The Government also needs the £60bn that employer NI generates - and I will note I suspect that will increase post the election because no-one is talking about Employer NI
Which if you need growth is the absolutely wrong thing to do. Its a tax on jobs. Its why Sunak was such a moron to go down this road before the U-Turn, with his NI++ scheme.
As I predicted Sky have now expanded the conservative tax controversy to Labours misleading assertions on the conservatives plans for NI calling them dodgy dossiers
The fun is this has kicked off the debate on the economy. The more Labour protest the more they will be asked to set out what there plans are, something they have avoided to date. Sunak has little to lose in this as he's already on the rack Starmer might actually have to face some scrutiny now.
As an aside it's just come to my attention via yet another phone being stolen from a friend that Apple has largely solved the main incentive behind phone theft.
Anyone with apple needs to (a) make sure they have biometrics for their banking devices, and (b) turn on stolen device protection in settings.
Essentially what it does is lock apps that need biometrics away from being pin accessed (e.g. passwords, resetting password for apple, banking apps) when away from home or work. This means that when someone shoulder surfs your pin and then steals the phone they are unable to access the most crucial bits of it. They can't just use your pin to reset apple ID password, then use that to add their face and access everything. Last year I know someone who they managed to get a five figure sum from (eventually reclaimed from banks) using this method (additional loans, cash in bank, overdrafts, card details on the app), now it's immediately just worth the sum of its' parts rather than enabling access to everything.
Have you made any calculations on how it will save a lot of money? Because it seems to me that postponing death and disease isn't necessarily going to save any money - it might do the opposite.
Living longer isn't the problem. Living your last years with chronic disease (or cancer) is what really costs the NHS. Not everyone costs the NHS massive amounts in their final years.
I'm making assumptions, I acknowledge, but it already seems quite likely that these drugs reduce the incidence of both those things (there also seems to be an effect on dementia).
It's too soon to make calculations - and the costs of the drugs before they go generic will be a big factor - but organisations like NICE will be getting very interested.
You’re right to be optimistic. So many sudden advances are being made as technology gets to grips with priorly intractable medical problems - from cancer to dementia to obesity to basic ageing
In ten years we could add twenty HEALTHY years to the average life
That would undoubtedly be a great thing in many ways - assuming people realised it couldn't all be added onto their retirement. Would rather delay the predictions of global population starting to decline.
We are on the precipice of multiple transformations, which will render much of our political debate trivial if not ridiculous
No, they'll just change the terms of the debate.
And in any event much of our political debate over the last four decades has been ridiculous. It's almost completely ignored, for example, the structural problems set up by Thatcher's period in government (and perpetuated under Blair/Brown).
No, the entire debate is going to change, the world will not be recognisable
There are some generational geopol challenges with a realistic chance of crystallising in the next parliament. US abandonment of nato and Russian test of Article V, use of a nuke in Ukraine, Chinese blockade / annexation of Taiwan. Then in part associated with these, there’s the risk of a proper collapse in the market for US Treasuries and loss of USD as global reserve currency.
But these are trivial in the context of AGI and formal disclosure of non human intelligence interacting with earth. The latter being more likely pre-2029 but both probably >50% chance in the next parliament. And then there’s there’s the chance for a tangible advance in age extension tech, only an outside bet for this parliament but presumably won’t lag AGI by too much.
Our political debate is tiresome, trivial and pointless in the context of all this and hardly anyone seems to grasp this.
" formal disclosure of non human intelligence interacting with earth." Are you still persisting with this rubbish? There is nothing, NOTHING in what has come out in the last 18 months beyond the usual rubbish from MJ-12, Bluebook, Grudge etc. Its a collection of grifters grifting, telling the same old hackneyed stories and gulling in the gullable. Watch an episode of Skinwalker Ranch and you will realise the idiots that are behind all this.
Perhaps you are right. But it doesn’t easily explain why gang of 8 members from both parties have been pushing hard for legislation that legally defines technology of non-human origin and seeks eminent domain over it.
It’s incredible how many people are still saying it was a set up and she worked for Reform.
As pointed out by @Foxy yesterday, she has bought millions of pounds worth of advertising for her porn site for the princely sum of £1.79*
*(the cost of a banana milkshake at McDonald's apparently)
Which is why the State needs to prosecute this as an aggravated assault, because there’s now thousands of these “influencers” who think its okay to assault someone for publicity. She should be remanded in custody and expect six months, and Nigel should be free to set his lawyers on her for civil damages.
As expected, she has now got her own 'milkshake campaign' to attract new customers to her porn site, according to the Mail.
Sorry to distract everyone from the question of whether the PM is a liar, but it has been an absolutely riveting afternoon at the PO Inquiry.
I had never realised how central chairperson Alice Perkins was to the conspiracy. She was at the heart of it, and the other scoundrels, such as Vennel, van de Bogen, Flemington, and their numerous minions, appear now more like lieutenants to her role as General.
She and her Board had the opportunity to prevent ten years of miscarriage of justice, but between them they orchestrated a cover-up. Plain as a pikestaff now.
Well done Jason Beer. You have finally got to the heart of the matter.
Having not watched the debate only snippets, I thought one of the weirdest / face slipping thing was Starmer saying no he would never use private health.
What never, you kids are dying, you can only get that treatment privately and your idealogical purity would override that? That isn't the same as doing a Diane Abbott and sending your kids private after railing against private education (that isn't life and death).
Even lesser than that, your kid is in agony, lets say had an accident and smashed in face / teeth. You wouldn't pay for a private dentist to sort it tomorrow, rather than have to wait months (and may never get the full treatment via NHS dentist). Same with hips / knees, the pain from that for many old people is life limiting.
Surely the easy answer is we need to make the NHS better, it fails too many people, so even normal people are being faced with these decisions, that they should never have to....
What condition do you have in mind that would kill your children, but is treatable only privately?
I can't think of one.
Indeed paediatric services are generally very poor privately as few private hospitals can meet the CQC approval for children.
We see it all the time, where there are treatments only available in say US. They aren't licensed here and there is some charity drive to raise the money to send them.
But, even on the lesser note. Things like hips / knees, the wait list is years on NHS. And things like NHS dentistry doesn't over everything or won't get to you for a very very long time.
As I said, the easy answer is
"As PM I will improve the NHS, people shouldn't be having to make these decisions, but I understand that family is the most important thing and thus why people pay to go private. I support the NHS, I believe in the NHS, but there are very rare circumstances where if forced I am very fortunate to be able to make such a decision to help a family member. "
That to me seems the normal human response.
Treatments only available in the US are unusual. We hear about them because they are newsworthy precisely because they are rare.
Many, probably most, of these aren't available in the UK because NICE and the NHS have looked at them and decided they don't really work. Hope is a very powerful motivator and people want to believe some obscure, expensive thing in the US will work... but 9 times out of 10, it won't.
There are cases where something works and is so prohibitively expensive that the NHS won't do it. But they're very rare.
That is all fair points, but it doesn't change that if we believe Starmer he wouldn't even entertain the possibility / look into it if it was a family member. Each to their own, but its not an ideology I can personally understand.
I can understand why someone would take the principled stance not to use private health care, much as they might do for private education. What I don't understand is imposing your own viewpoint on your own family members, even when they are dying!
Wasn't the question - would you pay for someone in your family to get private healthcare - I can see why the answer to that would be no especially when your don't have £xm in the bank...
If one of my family members were in need of it I would like to think I would spend my last penny to get them the best healthcare. Pity Labour supporters families; they would rather the tax payer picked up the bill, even if they could afford it, and let their family member suffer longer so they can believe themselves pure while they book their next holiday in the Maldives.
I don't think that's how people read it. The question was 'are you prepared to pay to queue jump?'
People do it all the time - fast queues at airports, Ticketmaster, anything premium. You must do it all the time.
I do. As I said earlier I'm in BUPA which is what it's for. I was obliged to for work but I would think better of someone who unlike me refused to on principle.
That's like saying you'd take a pay cut because your boss would think better of you.
PS he wouldn't
- If you were on the council house waiting list but got offered a job which paid enough for you to rent privately, would you take it? - Oh no, Julie, it's a council house for me. I'd wait my turn with everyone else.
"I was obliged to for work" - how "obliged"?
1) Told to use it? 2) Told using it was a condition of employment? 3) Strapped to a stretcher and abducted to a BUPA hospital by heavily armed Unitarian Fundamentalists?
I remember when I taught in the independent sector I had to be in BUPA. It was a condition of employment though they paid my yearly subscription. I never used it myself, only my wife. I had to pay tax on the subscription as a benefit in kind.
Any sensible government would treat private healthcare expenditure (available to all employees) as deductible against employer NI, rather than try to tax it as a BIK for the employee.
Government needs to get as many people as possible out of the NHS, and encourage private providers to expand overall provision, not to mention the amount of absence that could be saved by fast-tracking those off work for months waiting for treatment.
The Government also needs the £60bn that employer NI generates - and I will note I suspect that will increase post the election because no-one is talking about Employer NI
Which if you need growth is the absolutely wrong thing to do. Its a tax on jobs. Its why Sunak was such a moron to go down this road before the U-Turn, with his NI++ scheme.
I'm sorry it's just the cost of employing someone - Employer NI just means that the headline figure being advertised isn't the true cost of employing them...
Having not watched the debate only snippets, I thought one of the weirdest / face slipping thing was Starmer saying no he would never use private health.
What never, you kids are dying, you can only get that treatment privately and your idealogical purity would override that? That isn't the same as doing a Diane Abbott and sending your kids private after railing against private education (that isn't life and death).
Even lesser than that, your kid is in agony, lets say had an accident and smashed in face / teeth. You wouldn't pay for a private dentist to sort it tomorrow, rather than have to wait months (and may never get the full treatment via NHS dentist). Same with hips / knees, the pain from that for many old people is life limiting.
Surely the easy answer is we need to make the NHS better, it fails too many people, so even normal people are being faced with these decisions, that they should never have to....
What condition do you have in mind that would kill your children, but is treatable only privately?
I can't think of one.
Indeed paediatric services are generally very poor privately as few private hospitals can meet the CQC approval for children.
We see it all the time, where there are treatments only available in say US. They aren't licensed here and there is some charity drive to raise the money to send them.
But, even on the lesser note. Things like hips / knees, the wait list is years on NHS. And things like NHS dentistry doesn't over everything or won't get to you for a very very long time.
As I said, the easy answer is
"As PM I will improve the NHS, people shouldn't be having to make these decisions, but I understand that family is the most important thing and thus why people pay to go private. I support the NHS, I believe in the NHS, but there are very rare circumstances where if forced I am very fortunate to be able to make such a decision to help a family member. "
That to me seems the normal human response.
Treatments only available in the US are unusual. We hear about them because they are newsworthy precisely because they are rare.
Many, probably most, of these aren't available in the UK because NICE and the NHS have looked at them and decided they don't really work. Hope is a very powerful motivator and people want to believe some obscure, expensive thing in the US will work... but 9 times out of 10, it won't.
There are cases where something works and is so prohibitively expensive that the NHS won't do it. But they're very rare.
That is all fair points, but it doesn't change that if we believe Starmer he wouldn't even entertain the possibility / look into it if it was a family member. Each to their own, but its not an ideology I can personally understand.
I can understand why someone would take the principled stance not to use private health care, much as they might do for private education. What I don't understand is imposing your own viewpoint on your own family members, even when they are dying!
Wasn't the question - would you pay for someone in your family to get private healthcare - I can see why the answer to that would be no especially when your don't have £xm in the bank...
If one of my family members were in need of it I would like to think I would spend my last penny to get them the best healthcare. Pity Labour supporters families; they would rather the tax payer picked up the bill, even if they could afford it, and let their family member suffer longer so they can believe themselves pure while they book their next holiday in the Maldives.
I don't think that's how people read it. The question was 'are you prepared to pay to queue jump?'
People do it all the time - fast queues at airports, Ticketmaster, anything premium. You must do it all the time.
I do. As I said earlier I'm in BUPA which is what it's for. I was obliged to for work but I would think better of someone who unlike me refused to on principle.
That's like saying you'd take a pay cut because your boss would think better of you.
PS he wouldn't
- If you were on the council house waiting list but got offered a job which paid enough for you to rent privately, would you take it? - Oh no, Julie, it's a council house for me. I'd wait my turn with everyone else.
"I was obliged to for work" - how "obliged"?
1) Told to use it? 2) Told using it was a condition of employment? 3) Strapped to a stretcher and abducted to a BUPA hospital by heavily armed Unitarian Fundamentalists?
I remember when I taught in the independent sector I had to be in BUPA. It was a condition of employment though they paid my yearly subscription. I never used it myself, only my wife. I had to pay tax on the subscription as a benefit in kind.
Any sensible government would treat private healthcare expenditure (available to all employees) as deductible against employer NI, rather than try to tax it as a BIK for the employee.
Government needs to get as many people as possible out of the NHS, and encourage private providers to expand overall provision, not to mention the amount of absence that could be saved by fast-tracking those off work for months waiting for treatment.
The Government also needs the £60bn that employer NI generates - and I will note I suspect that will increase post the election because no-one is talking about Employer NI
Which if you need growth is the absolutely wrong thing to do. Its a tax on jobs. Its why Sunak was such a moron to go down this road before the U-Turn, with his NI++ scheme.
Of course, but it’s politically easy to tax employers becuase no-one outside of the business media cares what the CBI or “the boss class” has to say.
As I predicted Sky have now expanded the conservative tax controversy to Labours misleading assertions on the conservatives plans for NI calling them dodgy dossiers
The fun is this has kicked off the debate on the economy. The more Labour protest the more they will be asked to set out what there plans are, something they have avoided to date. Sunak has little to lose in this as he's already on the rack Starmer might actually have to face some scrutiny now.
No. This only works like 1992, one party is going to raise your tax, they other won’t. If it cancels each other out it leaves Labours 20% lead un scratched.
Having not watched the debate only snippets, I thought one of the weirdest / face slipping thing was Starmer saying no he would never use private health.
What never, you kids are dying, you can only get that treatment privately and your idealogical purity would override that? That isn't the same as doing a Diane Abbott and sending your kids private after railing against private education (that isn't life and death).
Even lesser than that, your kid is in agony, lets say had an accident and smashed in face / teeth. You wouldn't pay for a private dentist to sort it tomorrow, rather than have to wait months (and may never get the full treatment via NHS dentist). Same with hips / knees, the pain from that for many old people is life limiting.
Surely the easy answer is we need to make the NHS better, it fails too many people, so even normal people are being faced with these decisions, that they should never have to....
What condition do you have in mind that would kill your children, but is treatable only privately?
I can't think of one.
Indeed paediatric services are generally very poor privately as few private hospitals can meet the CQC approval for children.
We see it all the time, where there are treatments only available in say US. They aren't licensed here and there is some charity drive to raise the money to send them.
But, even on the lesser note. Things like hips / knees, the wait list is years on NHS. And things like NHS dentistry doesn't over everything or won't get to you for a very very long time.
As I said, the easy answer is
"As PM I will improve the NHS, people shouldn't be having to make these decisions, but I understand that family is the most important thing and thus why people pay to go private. I support the NHS, I believe in the NHS, but there are very rare circumstances where if forced I am very fortunate to be able to make such a decision to help a family member. "
That to me seems the normal human response.
Treatments only available in the US are unusual. We hear about them because they are newsworthy precisely because they are rare.
Many, probably most, of these aren't available in the UK because NICE and the NHS have looked at them and decided they don't really work. Hope is a very powerful motivator and people want to believe some obscure, expensive thing in the US will work... but 9 times out of 10, it won't.
There are cases where something works and is so prohibitively expensive that the NHS won't do it. But they're very rare.
That is all fair points, but it doesn't change that if we believe Starmer he wouldn't even entertain the possibility / look into it if it was a family member. Each to their own, but its not an ideology I can personally understand.
I can understand why someone would take the principled stance not to use private health care, much as they might do for private education. What I don't understand is imposing your own viewpoint on your own family members, even when they are dying!
Wasn't the question - would you pay for someone in your family to get private healthcare - I can see why the answer to that would be no especially when your don't have £xm in the bank...
If one of my family members were in need of it I would like to think I would spend my last penny to get them the best healthcare. Pity Labour supporters families; they would rather the tax payer picked up the bill, even if they could afford it, and let their family member suffer longer so they can believe themselves pure while they book their next holiday in the Maldives.
I don't think that's how people read it. The question was 'are you prepared to pay to queue jump?'
People do it all the time - fast queues at airports, Ticketmaster, anything premium. You must do it all the time.
I do. As I said earlier I'm in BUPA which is what it's for. I was obliged to for work but I would think better of someone who unlike me refused to on principle.
That's like saying you'd take a pay cut because your boss would think better of you.
PS he wouldn't
- If you were on the council house waiting list but got offered a job which paid enough for you to rent privately, would you take it? - Oh no, Julie, it's a council house for me. I'd wait my turn with everyone else.
"I was obliged to for work" - how "obliged"?
1) Told to use it? 2) Told using it was a condition of employment? 3) Strapped to a stretcher and abducted to a BUPA hospital by heavily armed Unitarian Fundamentalists?
I remember when I taught in the independent sector I had to be in BUPA. It was a condition of employment though they paid my yearly subscription. I never used it myself, only my wife. I had to pay tax on the subscription as a benefit in kind.
Any sensible government would treat private healthcare expenditure (available to all employees) as deductible against employer NI, rather than try to tax it as a BIK for the employee.
Government needs to get as many people as possible out of the NHS, and encourage private providers to expand overall provision, not to mention the amount of absence that could be saved by fast-tracking those off work for months waiting for treatment.
The Government also needs the £60bn that employer NI generates - and I will note I suspect that will increase post the election because no-one is talking about Employer NI
Which if you need growth is the absolutely wrong thing to do. Its a tax on jobs. Its why Sunak was such a moron to go down this road before the U-Turn, with his NI++ scheme.
Of course, but it’s politically easy to tax employers becuase no-one outside of the business media cares what the CBI or “the boss class” has to say.
Well also big business can absorb this a lot easier. They already constant revolving door of hires and fires which is cost of doing business that is factored in when you are large.
Small employer that is much bigger deal. Do you want to expand and hire another 5-10 people, it makes things a lot harder decision.
A big problem is because the mega companies have taken the piss over paying tax, government have moved more and more to taxes that are basically just for operating a business rather than making money. This is fine for an Amazon, as otherwise they have the size and flexibility to play the international shell company game. But your local businessman with a business that is 100% physically located in one place, its far worse.
As I have said before, the UK now has (as a proportion) of the economy very few medium sized businesses. How do you get those, by small businesses growing. We don't have that, which is a big problem.
Having not watched the debate only snippets, I thought one of the weirdest / face slipping thing was Starmer saying no he would never use private health.
What never, you kids are dying, you can only get that treatment privately and your idealogical purity would override that? That isn't the same as doing a Diane Abbott and sending your kids private after railing against private education (that isn't life and death).
Even lesser than that, your kid is in agony, lets say had an accident and smashed in face / teeth. You wouldn't pay for a private dentist to sort it tomorrow, rather than have to wait months (and may never get the full treatment via NHS dentist). Same with hips / knees, the pain from that for many old people is life limiting.
Surely the easy answer is we need to make the NHS better, it fails too many people, so even normal people are being faced with these decisions, that they should never have to....
What condition do you have in mind that would kill your children, but is treatable only privately?
I can't think of one.
Indeed paediatric services are generally very poor privately as few private hospitals can meet the CQC approval for children.
We see it all the time, where there are treatments only available in say US. They aren't licensed here and there is some charity drive to raise the money to send them.
But, even on the lesser note. Things like hips / knees, the wait list is years on NHS. And things like NHS dentistry doesn't over everything or won't get to you for a very very long time.
As I said, the easy answer is
"As PM I will improve the NHS, people shouldn't be having to make these decisions, but I understand that family is the most important thing and thus why people pay to go private. I support the NHS, I believe in the NHS, but there are very rare circumstances where if forced I am very fortunate to be able to make such a decision to help a family member. "
That to me seems the normal human response.
Treatments only available in the US are unusual. We hear about them because they are newsworthy precisely because they are rare.
Many, probably most, of these aren't available in the UK because NICE and the NHS have looked at them and decided they don't really work. Hope is a very powerful motivator and people want to believe some obscure, expensive thing in the US will work... but 9 times out of 10, it won't.
There are cases where something works and is so prohibitively expensive that the NHS won't do it. But they're very rare.
That is all fair points, but it doesn't change that if we believe Starmer he wouldn't even entertain the possibility / look into it if it was a family member. Each to their own, but its not an ideology I can personally understand.
I can understand why someone would take the principled stance not to use private health care, much as they might do for private education. What I don't understand is imposing your own viewpoint on your own family members, even when they are dying!
Wasn't the question - would you pay for someone in your family to get private healthcare - I can see why the answer to that would be no especially when your don't have £xm in the bank...
If one of my family members were in need of it I would like to think I would spend my last penny to get them the best healthcare. Pity Labour supporters families; they would rather the tax payer picked up the bill, even if they could afford it, and let their family member suffer longer so they can believe themselves pure while they book their next holiday in the Maldives.
I don't think that's how people read it. The question was 'are you prepared to pay to queue jump?'
People do it all the time - fast queues at airports, Ticketmaster, anything premium. You must do it all the time.
I do. As I said earlier I'm in BUPA which is what it's for. I was obliged to for work but I would think better of someone who unlike me refused to on principle.
That's like saying you'd take a pay cut because your boss would think better of you.
PS he wouldn't
- If you were on the council house waiting list but got offered a job which paid enough for you to rent privately, would you take it? - Oh no, Julie, it's a council house for me. I'd wait my turn with everyone else.
"I was obliged to for work" - how "obliged"?
1) Told to use it? 2) Told using it was a condition of employment? 3) Strapped to a stretcher and abducted to a BUPA hospital by heavily armed Unitarian Fundamentalists?
I remember when I taught in the independent sector I had to be in BUPA. It was a condition of employment though they paid my yearly subscription. I never used it myself, only my wife. I had to pay tax on the subscription as a benefit in kind.
Any sensible government would treat private healthcare expenditure (available to all employees) as deductible against employer NI, rather than try to tax it as a BIK for the employee.
Government needs to get as many people as possible out of the NHS, and encourage private providers to expand overall provision, not to mention the amount of absence that could be saved by fast-tracking those off work for months waiting for treatment.
The Government also needs the £60bn that employer NI generates - and I will note I suspect that will increase post the election because no-one is talking about Employer NI
Which if you need growth is the absolutely wrong thing to do. Its a tax on jobs. Its why Sunak was such a moron to go down this road before the U-Turn, with his NI++ scheme.
Of course, but it’s politically easy to tax employers becuase no-one outside of the business media cares what the CBI or “the boss class” has to say.
Well also big business can absorb this a lot easier. They already constant revolving door of hires and fires which is cost of doing business that is factored in when you are large.
Small employer that is much bigger deal. Do you want to expand and hire another 5-10 people, it makes things a lot harder decision.
Indeed, and small business owners have almost no political voice - mostly because they spend all of their time running their businesses.
Having not watched the debate only snippets, I thought one of the weirdest / face slipping thing was Starmer saying no he would never use private health.
What never, you kids are dying, you can only get that treatment privately and your idealogical purity would override that? That isn't the same as doing a Diane Abbott and sending your kids private after railing against private education (that isn't life and death).
Even lesser than that, your kid is in agony, lets say had an accident and smashed in face / teeth. You wouldn't pay for a private dentist to sort it tomorrow, rather than have to wait months (and may never get the full treatment via NHS dentist). Same with hips / knees, the pain from that for many old people is life limiting.
Surely the easy answer is we need to make the NHS better, it fails too many people, so even normal people are being faced with these decisions, that they should never have to....
What condition do you have in mind that would kill your children, but is treatable only privately?
I can't think of one.
Indeed paediatric services are generally very poor privately as few private hospitals can meet the CQC approval for children.
We see it all the time, where there are treatments only available in say US. They aren't licensed here and there is some charity drive to raise the money to send them.
But, even on the lesser note. Things like hips / knees, the wait list is years on NHS. And things like NHS dentistry doesn't over everything or won't get to you for a very very long time.
As I said, the easy answer is
"As PM I will improve the NHS, people shouldn't be having to make these decisions, but I understand that family is the most important thing and thus why people pay to go private. I support the NHS, I believe in the NHS, but there are very rare circumstances where if forced I am very fortunate to be able to make such a decision to help a family member. "
That to me seems the normal human response.
Treatments only available in the US are unusual. We hear about them because they are newsworthy precisely because they are rare.
Many, probably most, of these aren't available in the UK because NICE and the NHS have looked at them and decided they don't really work. Hope is a very powerful motivator and people want to believe some obscure, expensive thing in the US will work... but 9 times out of 10, it won't.
There are cases where something works and is so prohibitively expensive that the NHS won't do it. But they're very rare.
That is all fair points, but it doesn't change that if we believe Starmer he wouldn't even entertain the possibility / look into it if it was a family member. Each to their own, but its not an ideology I can personally understand.
I can understand why someone would take the principled stance not to use private health care, much as they might do for private education. What I don't understand is imposing your own viewpoint on your own family members, even when they are dying!
Wasn't the question - would you pay for someone in your family to get private healthcare - I can see why the answer to that would be no especially when your don't have £xm in the bank...
If one of my family members were in need of it I would like to think I would spend my last penny to get them the best healthcare. Pity Labour supporters families; they would rather the tax payer picked up the bill, even if they could afford it, and let their family member suffer longer so they can believe themselves pure while they book their next holiday in the Maldives.
I don't think that's how people read it. The question was 'are you prepared to pay to queue jump?'
People do it all the time - fast queues at airports, Ticketmaster, anything premium. You must do it all the time.
I do. As I said earlier I'm in BUPA which is what it's for. I was obliged to for work but I would think better of someone who unlike me refused to on principle.
That's like saying you'd take a pay cut because your boss would think better of you.
PS he wouldn't
- If you were on the council house waiting list but got offered a job which paid enough for you to rent privately, would you take it? - Oh no, Julie, it's a council house for me. I'd wait my turn with everyone else.
"I was obliged to for work" - how "obliged"?
1) Told to use it? 2) Told using it was a condition of employment? 3) Strapped to a stretcher and abducted to a BUPA hospital by heavily armed Unitarian Fundamentalists?
I remember when I taught in the independent sector I had to be in BUPA. It was a condition of employment though they paid my yearly subscription. I never used it myself, only my wife. I had to pay tax on the subscription as a benefit in kind.
Any sensible government would treat private healthcare expenditure (available to all employees) as deductible against employer NI, rather than try to tax it as a BIK for the employee.
Government needs to get as many people as possible out of the NHS, and encourage private providers to expand overall provision, not to mention the amount of absence that could be saved by fast-tracking those off work for months waiting for treatment.
The Government also needs the £60bn that employer NI generates - and I will note I suspect that will increase post the election because no-one is talking about Employer NI
Which if you need growth is the absolutely wrong thing to do. Its a tax on jobs. Its why Sunak was such a moron to go down this road before the U-Turn, with his NI++ scheme.
Of course, but it’s politically easy to tax employers becuase no-one outside of the business media cares what the CBI or “the boss class” has to say.
Well also big business can absorb this a lot easier. They already constant revolving door of hires and fires which is cost of doing business that is factored in when you are large.
Small employer that is much bigger deal. Do you want to expand and hire another 5-10 people, it makes things a lot harder decision.
No it doesn't - it's just that the headline salary of £30,000 isn't the actual cost of employing someone it's £34,000 or so.
I really don't see how it makes it a harder decision, anyone in business will know that the true cost of hiring someone is way more than the headline advertised salary...
Having not watched the debate only snippets, I thought one of the weirdest / face slipping thing was Starmer saying no he would never use private health.
What never, you kids are dying, you can only get that treatment privately and your idealogical purity would override that? That isn't the same as doing a Diane Abbott and sending your kids private after railing against private education (that isn't life and death).
Even lesser than that, your kid is in agony, lets say had an accident and smashed in face / teeth. You wouldn't pay for a private dentist to sort it tomorrow, rather than have to wait months (and may never get the full treatment via NHS dentist). Same with hips / knees, the pain from that for many old people is life limiting.
Surely the easy answer is we need to make the NHS better, it fails too many people, so even normal people are being faced with these decisions, that they should never have to....
What condition do you have in mind that would kill your children, but is treatable only privately?
I can't think of one.
Indeed paediatric services are generally very poor privately as few private hospitals can meet the CQC approval for children.
We see it all the time, where there are treatments only available in say US. They aren't licensed here and there is some charity drive to raise the money to send them.
But, even on the lesser note. Things like hips / knees, the wait list is years on NHS. And things like NHS dentistry doesn't over everything or won't get to you for a very very long time.
As I said, the easy answer is
"As PM I will improve the NHS, people shouldn't be having to make these decisions, but I understand that family is the most important thing and thus why people pay to go private. I support the NHS, I believe in the NHS, but there are very rare circumstances where if forced I am very fortunate to be able to make such a decision to help a family member. "
That to me seems the normal human response.
Treatments only available in the US are unusual. We hear about them because they are newsworthy precisely because they are rare.
Many, probably most, of these aren't available in the UK because NICE and the NHS have looked at them and decided they don't really work. Hope is a very powerful motivator and people want to believe some obscure, expensive thing in the US will work... but 9 times out of 10, it won't.
There are cases where something works and is so prohibitively expensive that the NHS won't do it. But they're very rare.
That is all fair points, but it doesn't change that if we believe Starmer he wouldn't even entertain the possibility / look into it if it was a family member. Each to their own, but its not an ideology I can personally understand.
I can understand why someone would take the principled stance not to use private health care, much as they might do for private education. What I don't understand is imposing your own viewpoint on your own family members, even when they are dying!
Wasn't the question - would you pay for someone in your family to get private healthcare - I can see why the answer to that would be no especially when your don't have £xm in the bank...
If one of my family members were in need of it I would like to think I would spend my last penny to get them the best healthcare. Pity Labour supporters families; they would rather the tax payer picked up the bill, even if they could afford it, and let their family member suffer longer so they can believe themselves pure while they book their next holiday in the Maldives.
I don't think that's how people read it. The question was 'are you prepared to pay to queue jump?'
People do it all the time - fast queues at airports, Ticketmaster, anything premium. You must do it all the time.
I do. As I said earlier I'm in BUPA which is what it's for. I was obliged to for work but I would think better of someone who unlike me refused to on principle.
That's like saying you'd take a pay cut because your boss would think better of you.
PS he wouldn't
- If you were on the council house waiting list but got offered a job which paid enough for you to rent privately, would you take it? - Oh no, Julie, it's a council house for me. I'd wait my turn with everyone else.
"I was obliged to for work" - how "obliged"?
1) Told to use it? 2) Told using it was a condition of employment? 3) Strapped to a stretcher and abducted to a BUPA hospital by heavily armed Unitarian Fundamentalists?
I remember when I taught in the independent sector I had to be in BUPA. It was a condition of employment though they paid my yearly subscription. I never used it myself, only my wife. I had to pay tax on the subscription as a benefit in kind.
Any sensible government would treat private healthcare expenditure (available to all employees) as deductible against employer NI, rather than try to tax it as a BIK for the employee.
Government needs to get as many people as possible out of the NHS, and encourage private providers to expand overall provision, not to mention the amount of absence that could be saved by fast-tracking those off work for months waiting for treatment.
The Government also needs the £60bn that employer NI generates - and I will note I suspect that will increase post the election because no-one is talking about Employer NI
Which if you need growth is the absolutely wrong thing to do. Its a tax on jobs. Its why Sunak was such a moron to go down this road before the U-Turn, with his NI++ scheme.
Of course, but it’s politically easy to tax employers becuase no-one outside of the business media cares what the CBI or “the boss class” has to say.
Well also big business can absorb this a lot easier. They already constant revolving door of hires and fires which is cost of doing business that is factored in when you are large.
Small employer that is much bigger deal. Do you want to expand and hire another 5-10 people, it makes things a lot harder decision.
A big problem is because the mega companies have taken the piss over paying tax, government have moved more and more to taxes that are basically just for operating a business rather than making money. This is fine for an Amazon, as otherwise they have the size and flexibility to play the international shell company game. But your local businessman with a business that is 100% physically located in one place, its far worse.
As I have said before, the UK now has (as a proportion) of the economy very few medium sized businesses. How do you get those, by small businesses growing. We don't have that, which is a big problem.
They could also just actually fine large companies that are breaking multiple laws. That would be an enormous windfall tax on utility companies that would be much more difficult for them to whinge about.
Having not watched the debate only snippets, I thought one of the weirdest / face slipping thing was Starmer saying no he would never use private health.
What never, you kids are dying, you can only get that treatment privately and your idealogical purity would override that? That isn't the same as doing a Diane Abbott and sending your kids private after railing against private education (that isn't life and death).
Even lesser than that, your kid is in agony, lets say had an accident and smashed in face / teeth. You wouldn't pay for a private dentist to sort it tomorrow, rather than have to wait months (and may never get the full treatment via NHS dentist). Same with hips / knees, the pain from that for many old people is life limiting.
Surely the easy answer is we need to make the NHS better, it fails too many people, so even normal people are being faced with these decisions, that they should never have to....
What condition do you have in mind that would kill your children, but is treatable only privately?
I can't think of one.
Indeed paediatric services are generally very poor privately as few private hospitals can meet the CQC approval for children.
We see it all the time, where there are treatments only available in say US. They aren't licensed here and there is some charity drive to raise the money to send them.
But, even on the lesser note. Things like hips / knees, the wait list is years on NHS. And things like NHS dentistry doesn't over everything or won't get to you for a very very long time.
As I said, the easy answer is
"As PM I will improve the NHS, people shouldn't be having to make these decisions, but I understand that family is the most important thing and thus why people pay to go private. I support the NHS, I believe in the NHS, but there are very rare circumstances where if forced I am very fortunate to be able to make such a decision to help a family member. "
That to me seems the normal human response.
Treatments only available in the US are unusual. We hear about them because they are newsworthy precisely because they are rare.
Many, probably most, of these aren't available in the UK because NICE and the NHS have looked at them and decided they don't really work. Hope is a very powerful motivator and people want to believe some obscure, expensive thing in the US will work... but 9 times out of 10, it won't.
There are cases where something works and is so prohibitively expensive that the NHS won't do it. But they're very rare.
That is all fair points, but it doesn't change that if we believe Starmer he wouldn't even entertain the possibility / look into it if it was a family member. Each to their own, but its not an ideology I can personally understand.
I can understand why someone would take the principled stance not to use private health care, much as they might do for private education. What I don't understand is imposing your own viewpoint on your own family members, even when they are dying!
Wasn't the question - would you pay for someone in your family to get private healthcare - I can see why the answer to that would be no especially when your don't have £xm in the bank...
If one of my family members were in need of it I would like to think I would spend my last penny to get them the best healthcare. Pity Labour supporters families; they would rather the tax payer picked up the bill, even if they could afford it, and let their family member suffer longer so they can believe themselves pure while they book their next holiday in the Maldives.
I don't think that's how people read it. The question was 'are you prepared to pay to queue jump?'
People do it all the time - fast queues at airports, Ticketmaster, anything premium. You must do it all the time.
I do. As I said earlier I'm in BUPA which is what it's for. I was obliged to for work but I would think better of someone who unlike me refused to on principle.
That's like saying you'd take a pay cut because your boss would think better of you.
PS he wouldn't
- If you were on the council house waiting list but got offered a job which paid enough for you to rent privately, would you take it? - Oh no, Julie, it's a council house for me. I'd wait my turn with everyone else.
"I was obliged to for work" - how "obliged"?
1) Told to use it? 2) Told using it was a condition of employment? 3) Strapped to a stretcher and abducted to a BUPA hospital by heavily armed Unitarian Fundamentalists?
I remember when I taught in the independent sector I had to be in BUPA. It was a condition of employment though they paid my yearly subscription. I never used it myself, only my wife. I had to pay tax on the subscription as a benefit in kind.
Any sensible government would treat private healthcare expenditure (available to all employees) as deductible against employer NI, rather than try to tax it as a BIK for the employee.
Government needs to get as many people as possible out of the NHS, and encourage private providers to expand overall provision, not to mention the amount of absence that could be saved by fast-tracking those off work for months waiting for treatment.
The Government also needs the £60bn that employer NI generates - and I will note I suspect that will increase post the election because no-one is talking about Employer NI
Which if you need growth is the absolutely wrong thing to do. Its a tax on jobs. Its why Sunak was such a moron to go down this road before the U-Turn, with his NI++ scheme.
Of course, but it’s politically easy to tax employers becuase no-one outside of the business media cares what the CBI or “the boss class” has to say.
Well also big business can absorb this a lot easier. They already constant revolving door of hires and fires which is cost of doing business that is factored in when you are large.
Small employer that is much bigger deal. Do you want to expand and hire another 5-10 people, it makes things a lot harder decision.
A big problem is because the mega companies have taken the piss over paying tax, government have moved more and more to taxes that are basically just for operating a business rather than making money. This is fine for an Amazon, as otherwise they have the size and flexibility to play the international shell company game. But your local businessman with a business that is 100% physically located in one place, its far worse.
As I have said before, the UK now has (as a proportion) of the economy very few medium sized businesses. How do you get those, by small businesses growing. We don't have that, which is a big problem.
Part of the issue is that at every stage of a business there's a new big cost in the UK. The three that spring to mind are the VAT threshold for single person businesses (should be lowered right down to £10k), the sliding corp tax rate and audit costs when you need to start getting audited.
Having not watched the debate only snippets, I thought one of the weirdest / face slipping thing was Starmer saying no he would never use private health.
What never, you kids are dying, you can only get that treatment privately and your idealogical purity would override that? That isn't the same as doing a Diane Abbott and sending your kids private after railing against private education (that isn't life and death).
Even lesser than that, your kid is in agony, lets say had an accident and smashed in face / teeth. You wouldn't pay for a private dentist to sort it tomorrow, rather than have to wait months (and may never get the full treatment via NHS dentist). Same with hips / knees, the pain from that for many old people is life limiting.
Surely the easy answer is we need to make the NHS better, it fails too many people, so even normal people are being faced with these decisions, that they should never have to....
What condition do you have in mind that would kill your children, but is treatable only privately?
I can't think of one.
Indeed paediatric services are generally very poor privately as few private hospitals can meet the CQC approval for children.
We see it all the time, where there are treatments only available in say US. They aren't licensed here and there is some charity drive to raise the money to send them.
But, even on the lesser note. Things like hips / knees, the wait list is years on NHS. And things like NHS dentistry doesn't over everything or won't get to you for a very very long time.
As I said, the easy answer is
"As PM I will improve the NHS, people shouldn't be having to make these decisions, but I understand that family is the most important thing and thus why people pay to go private. I support the NHS, I believe in the NHS, but there are very rare circumstances where if forced I am very fortunate to be able to make such a decision to help a family member. "
That to me seems the normal human response.
Treatments only available in the US are unusual. We hear about them because they are newsworthy precisely because they are rare.
Many, probably most, of these aren't available in the UK because NICE and the NHS have looked at them and decided they don't really work. Hope is a very powerful motivator and people want to believe some obscure, expensive thing in the US will work... but 9 times out of 10, it won't.
There are cases where something works and is so prohibitively expensive that the NHS won't do it. But they're very rare.
That is all fair points, but it doesn't change that if we believe Starmer he wouldn't even entertain the possibility / look into it if it was a family member. Each to their own, but its not an ideology I can personally understand.
I can understand why someone would take the principled stance not to use private health care, much as they might do for private education. What I don't understand is imposing your own viewpoint on your own family members, even when they are dying!
Wasn't the question - would you pay for someone in your family to get private healthcare - I can see why the answer to that would be no especially when your don't have £xm in the bank...
If one of my family members were in need of it I would like to think I would spend my last penny to get them the best healthcare. Pity Labour supporters families; they would rather the tax payer picked up the bill, even if they could afford it, and let their family member suffer longer so they can believe themselves pure while they book their next holiday in the Maldives.
I don't think that's how people read it. The question was 'are you prepared to pay to queue jump?'
People do it all the time - fast queues at airports, Ticketmaster, anything premium. You must do it all the time.
I do. As I said earlier I'm in BUPA which is what it's for. I was obliged to for work but I would think better of someone who unlike me refused to on principle.
That's like saying you'd take a pay cut because your boss would think better of you.
PS he wouldn't
- If you were on the council house waiting list but got offered a job which paid enough for you to rent privately, would you take it? - Oh no, Julie, it's a council house for me. I'd wait my turn with everyone else.
"I was obliged to for work" - how "obliged"?
1) Told to use it? 2) Told using it was a condition of employment? 3) Strapped to a stretcher and abducted to a BUPA hospital by heavily armed Unitarian Fundamentalists?
I remember when I taught in the independent sector I had to be in BUPA. It was a condition of employment though they paid my yearly subscription. I never used it myself, only my wife. I had to pay tax on the subscription as a benefit in kind.
Any sensible government would treat private healthcare expenditure (available to all employees) as deductible against employer NI, rather than try to tax it as a BIK for the employee.
Government needs to get as many people as possible out of the NHS, and encourage private providers to expand overall provision, not to mention the amount of absence that could be saved by fast-tracking those off work for months waiting for treatment.
The Government also needs the £60bn that employer NI generates - and I will note I suspect that will increase post the election because no-one is talking about Employer NI
Which if you need growth is the absolutely wrong thing to do. Its a tax on jobs. Its why Sunak was such a moron to go down this road before the U-Turn, with his NI++ scheme.
Of course, but it’s politically easy to tax employers becuase no-one outside of the business media cares what the CBI or “the boss class” has to say.
Well also big business can absorb this a lot easier. They already constant revolving door of hires and fires which is cost of doing business that is factored in when you are large.
Small employer that is much bigger deal. Do you want to expand and hire another 5-10 people, it makes things a lot harder decision.
Indeed, and small business owners have almost no political voice - mostly because they spend all of their time running their businesses.
Yes. This is the tricky thing. When you are really small business a lot of the work day is either directly swapping money for time or out there wheeling / dealing for the new business / firefighting to keep the business running.
Large businesses, there is no direct operations. Its strategy, including lobbying governments (directly / indirectly).
Richard Tice was interviewed by Andrew Neil on Times Radio saying that the target for Reform is millions and millions of votes. UKIP got 3,881,099 votes in GE15, does anyone think that Reform UK will beat that in GE24?
Having not watched the debate only snippets, I thought one of the weirdest / face slipping thing was Starmer saying no he would never use private health.
What never, you kids are dying, you can only get that treatment privately and your idealogical purity would override that? That isn't the same as doing a Diane Abbott and sending your kids private after railing against private education (that isn't life and death).
Even lesser than that, your kid is in agony, lets say had an accident and smashed in face / teeth. You wouldn't pay for a private dentist to sort it tomorrow, rather than have to wait months (and may never get the full treatment via NHS dentist). Same with hips / knees, the pain from that for many old people is life limiting.
Surely the easy answer is we need to make the NHS better, it fails too many people, so even normal people are being faced with these decisions, that they should never have to....
What condition do you have in mind that would kill your children, but is treatable only privately?
I can't think of one.
Indeed paediatric services are generally very poor privately as few private hospitals can meet the CQC approval for children.
We see it all the time, where there are treatments only available in say US. They aren't licensed here and there is some charity drive to raise the money to send them.
But, even on the lesser note. Things like hips / knees, the wait list is years on NHS. And things like NHS dentistry doesn't over everything or won't get to you for a very very long time.
As I said, the easy answer is
"As PM I will improve the NHS, people shouldn't be having to make these decisions, but I understand that family is the most important thing and thus why people pay to go private. I support the NHS, I believe in the NHS, but there are very rare circumstances where if forced I am very fortunate to be able to make such a decision to help a family member. "
That to me seems the normal human response.
Treatments only available in the US are unusual. We hear about them because they are newsworthy precisely because they are rare.
Many, probably most, of these aren't available in the UK because NICE and the NHS have looked at them and decided they don't really work. Hope is a very powerful motivator and people want to believe some obscure, expensive thing in the US will work... but 9 times out of 10, it won't.
There are cases where something works and is so prohibitively expensive that the NHS won't do it. But they're very rare.
That is all fair points, but it doesn't change that if we believe Starmer he wouldn't even entertain the possibility / look into it if it was a family member. Each to their own, but its not an ideology I can personally understand.
I can understand why someone would take the principled stance not to use private health care, much as they might do for private education. What I don't understand is imposing your own viewpoint on your own family members, even when they are dying!
Wasn't the question - would you pay for someone in your family to get private healthcare - I can see why the answer to that would be no especially when your don't have £xm in the bank...
If one of my family members were in need of it I would like to think I would spend my last penny to get them the best healthcare. Pity Labour supporters families; they would rather the tax payer picked up the bill, even if they could afford it, and let their family member suffer longer so they can believe themselves pure while they book their next holiday in the Maldives.
I don't think that's how people read it. The question was 'are you prepared to pay to queue jump?'
People do it all the time - fast queues at airports, Ticketmaster, anything premium. You must do it all the time.
I do. As I said earlier I'm in BUPA which is what it's for. I was obliged to for work but I would think better of someone who unlike me refused to on principle.
That's like saying you'd take a pay cut because your boss would think better of you.
PS he wouldn't
- If you were on the council house waiting list but got offered a job which paid enough for you to rent privately, would you take it? - Oh no, Julie, it's a council house for me. I'd wait my turn with everyone else.
"I was obliged to for work" - how "obliged"?
1) Told to use it? 2) Told using it was a condition of employment? 3) Strapped to a stretcher and abducted to a BUPA hospital by heavily armed Unitarian Fundamentalists?
I remember when I taught in the independent sector I had to be in BUPA. It was a condition of employment though they paid my yearly subscription. I never used it myself, only my wife. I had to pay tax on the subscription as a benefit in kind.
Any sensible government would treat private healthcare expenditure (available to all employees) as deductible against employer NI, rather than try to tax it as a BIK for the employee.
Government needs to get as many people as possible out of the NHS, and encourage private providers to expand overall provision, not to mention the amount of absence that could be saved by fast-tracking those off work for months waiting for treatment.
The Government also needs the £60bn that employer NI generates - and I will note I suspect that will increase post the election because no-one is talking about Employer NI
Which if you need growth is the absolutely wrong thing to do. Its a tax on jobs. Its why Sunak was such a moron to go down this road before the U-Turn, with his NI++ scheme.
I'm sorry it's just the cost of employing someone - Employer NI just means that the headline figure being advertised isn't the true cost of employing them...
All things being equal, increasing employers NI should increase the incentive to invest in technology to increase productivity, by making labour more expensive.
Having not watched the debate only snippets, I thought one of the weirdest / face slipping thing was Starmer saying no he would never use private health.
What never, you kids are dying, you can only get that treatment privately and your idealogical purity would override that? That isn't the same as doing a Diane Abbott and sending your kids private after railing against private education (that isn't life and death).
Even lesser than that, your kid is in agony, lets say had an accident and smashed in face / teeth. You wouldn't pay for a private dentist to sort it tomorrow, rather than have to wait months (and may never get the full treatment via NHS dentist). Same with hips / knees, the pain from that for many old people is life limiting.
Surely the easy answer is we need to make the NHS better, it fails too many people, so even normal people are being faced with these decisions, that they should never have to....
What condition do you have in mind that would kill your children, but is treatable only privately?
I can't think of one.
Indeed paediatric services are generally very poor privately as few private hospitals can meet the CQC approval for children.
We see it all the time, where there are treatments only available in say US. They aren't licensed here and there is some charity drive to raise the money to send them.
But, even on the lesser note. Things like hips / knees, the wait list is years on NHS. And things like NHS dentistry doesn't over everything or won't get to you for a very very long time.
As I said, the easy answer is
"As PM I will improve the NHS, people shouldn't be having to make these decisions, but I understand that family is the most important thing and thus why people pay to go private. I support the NHS, I believe in the NHS, but there are very rare circumstances where if forced I am very fortunate to be able to make such a decision to help a family member. "
That to me seems the normal human response.
Treatments only available in the US are unusual. We hear about them because they are newsworthy precisely because they are rare.
Many, probably most, of these aren't available in the UK because NICE and the NHS have looked at them and decided they don't really work. Hope is a very powerful motivator and people want to believe some obscure, expensive thing in the US will work... but 9 times out of 10, it won't.
There are cases where something works and is so prohibitively expensive that the NHS won't do it. But they're very rare.
That is all fair points, but it doesn't change that if we believe Starmer he wouldn't even entertain the possibility / look into it if it was a family member. Each to their own, but its not an ideology I can personally understand.
I can understand why someone would take the principled stance not to use private health care, much as they might do for private education. What I don't understand is imposing your own viewpoint on your own family members, even when they are dying!
Wasn't the question - would you pay for someone in your family to get private healthcare - I can see why the answer to that would be no especially when your don't have £xm in the bank...
If one of my family members were in need of it I would like to think I would spend my last penny to get them the best healthcare. Pity Labour supporters families; they would rather the tax payer picked up the bill, even if they could afford it, and let their family member suffer longer so they can believe themselves pure while they book their next holiday in the Maldives.
I don't think that's how people read it. The question was 'are you prepared to pay to queue jump?'
People do it all the time - fast queues at airports, Ticketmaster, anything premium. You must do it all the time.
I do. As I said earlier I'm in BUPA which is what it's for. I was obliged to for work but I would think better of someone who unlike me refused to on principle.
That's like saying you'd take a pay cut because your boss would think better of you.
PS he wouldn't
- If you were on the council house waiting list but got offered a job which paid enough for you to rent privately, would you take it? - Oh no, Julie, it's a council house for me. I'd wait my turn with everyone else.
"I was obliged to for work" - how "obliged"?
1) Told to use it? 2) Told using it was a condition of employment? 3) Strapped to a stretcher and abducted to a BUPA hospital by heavily armed Unitarian Fundamentalists?
I remember when I taught in the independent sector I had to be in BUPA. It was a condition of employment though they paid my yearly subscription. I never used it myself, only my wife. I had to pay tax on the subscription as a benefit in kind.
Any sensible government would treat private healthcare expenditure (available to all employees) as deductible against employer NI, rather than try to tax it as a BIK for the employee.
Government needs to get as many people as possible out of the NHS, and encourage private providers to expand overall provision, not to mention the amount of absence that could be saved by fast-tracking those off work for months waiting for treatment.
The Government also needs the £60bn that employer NI generates - and I will note I suspect that will increase post the election because no-one is talking about Employer NI
Which if you need growth is the absolutely wrong thing to do. Its a tax on jobs. Its why Sunak was such a moron to go down this road before the U-Turn, with his NI++ scheme.
Of course, but it’s politically easy to tax employers becuase no-one outside of the business media cares what the CBI or “the boss class” has to say.
Well also big business can absorb this a lot easier. They already constant revolving door of hires and fires which is cost of doing business that is factored in when you are large.
Small employer that is much bigger deal. Do you want to expand and hire another 5-10 people, it makes things a lot harder decision.
A big problem is because the mega companies have taken the piss over paying tax, government have moved more and more to taxes that are basically just for operating a business rather than making money. This is fine for an Amazon, as otherwise they have the size and flexibility to play the international shell company game. But your local businessman with a business that is 100% physically located in one place, its far worse.
As I have said before, the UK now has (as a proportion) of the economy very few medium sized businesses. How do you get those, by small businesses growing. We don't have that, which is a big problem.
Part of the issue is that at every stage of a business there's a new big cost in the UK. The three that spring to mind are the VAT threshold for single person businesses (should be lowered right down to £10k), the sliding corp tax rate and audit costs when you need to start getting audited.
Cost and red tape.
Again, no discussion of these problem by the major parties. Instead its a day of no you are liar, no you are liar, its £2k extra, no £3k. It will be more than that if the economy doesn't find any growth.
As I predicted Sky have now expanded the conservative tax controversy to Labours misleading assertions on the conservatives plans for NI calling them dodgy dossiers
The fun is this has kicked off the debate on the economy. The more Labour protest the more they will be asked to set out what there plans are, something they have avoided to date. Sunak has little to lose in this as he's already on the rack Starmer might actually have to face some scrutiny now.
No. This only works like 1992, one party is going to raise your tax, they other won’t. If it cancels each other out it leaves Labours 20% lead un scratched.
Yes, and the more they have score draw rows over tax the more people are thinking about tax. About how much tax people are having to pay these days. Which doesn't much help the Tories.
Starmer’s team aggressively fighting back now & calling Sunak a liar over claims he made about small boats
Seems they are in real panic mode
Calling out a liar is not panic.
Do you agree that Sunak is a liar?
He is a politician and I doubt he will back down on the substantive claim
Question. “Do you agree that Sunak is a liar? ‘
Answer. “ He is a politician and I doubt he will back down on the substantive claim.”
That is a great answer 🙂
He has merely presented a truth which is why Labour supporters are getting so upset, ergo that Labour loves to raise tax, and raise it they will. If anyone really believes that Labour will find efficiencies in the system (guffaw) to meet their spending wetdreams, then I have a bridge to sell you.
You are not supposed to be caught out simply making up and lying about your opponents plans though. That’s just rank bad politics. 🙂
Which brings me to the presenters stupid stunt. They can both easily rule out top rates moving, rishi has proven you can bring in billions through fiscal drag and other stealth taxes, and keep the election promise of “not a penny more on”. Not that the Tories kept that promise not a penny more on. Sunak invented a whole new NI half way through parliament to stop NHS properly collapsing.
What you are missing Nigel is all those headlines about the highest tax take since the war. Both parties know they can make these promises not to raise tax as the system will be taking massively from us anyway, throughout the next parliament.
What I think you both miss is the number of factors that go into deciding which way you vote (or anything else for that matter) The best thing I read from an advertising guru was that people build opinions like birds build nests. Lots of small things put together over a period of time and after they're in place they are extremely difficult to shift. So if a newspaper prints a series of stories which contradicts your thinking you're far mire likely to change your paper than your mind
Having not watched the debate only snippets, I thought one of the weirdest / face slipping thing was Starmer saying no he would never use private health.
What never, you kids are dying, you can only get that treatment privately and your idealogical purity would override that? That isn't the same as doing a Diane Abbott and sending your kids private after railing against private education (that isn't life and death).
Even lesser than that, your kid is in agony, lets say had an accident and smashed in face / teeth. You wouldn't pay for a private dentist to sort it tomorrow, rather than have to wait months (and may never get the full treatment via NHS dentist). Same with hips / knees, the pain from that for many old people is life limiting.
Surely the easy answer is we need to make the NHS better, it fails too many people, so even normal people are being faced with these decisions, that they should never have to....
What condition do you have in mind that would kill your children, but is treatable only privately?
I can't think of one.
Indeed paediatric services are generally very poor privately as few private hospitals can meet the CQC approval for children.
We see it all the time, where there are treatments only available in say US. They aren't licensed here and there is some charity drive to raise the money to send them.
But, even on the lesser note. Things like hips / knees, the wait list is years on NHS. And things like NHS dentistry doesn't over everything or won't get to you for a very very long time.
As I said, the easy answer is
"As PM I will improve the NHS, people shouldn't be having to make these decisions, but I understand that family is the most important thing and thus why people pay to go private. I support the NHS, I believe in the NHS, but there are very rare circumstances where if forced I am very fortunate to be able to make such a decision to help a family member. "
That to me seems the normal human response.
Treatments only available in the US are unusual. We hear about them because they are newsworthy precisely because they are rare.
Many, probably most, of these aren't available in the UK because NICE and the NHS have looked at them and decided they don't really work. Hope is a very powerful motivator and people want to believe some obscure, expensive thing in the US will work... but 9 times out of 10, it won't.
There are cases where something works and is so prohibitively expensive that the NHS won't do it. But they're very rare.
That is all fair points, but it doesn't change that if we believe Starmer he wouldn't even entertain the possibility / look into it if it was a family member. Each to their own, but its not an ideology I can personally understand.
I can understand why someone would take the principled stance not to use private health care, much as they might do for private education. What I don't understand is imposing your own viewpoint on your own family members, even when they are dying!
Wasn't the question - would you pay for someone in your family to get private healthcare - I can see why the answer to that would be no especially when your don't have £xm in the bank...
If one of my family members were in need of it I would like to think I would spend my last penny to get them the best healthcare. Pity Labour supporters families; they would rather the tax payer picked up the bill, even if they could afford it, and let their family member suffer longer so they can believe themselves pure while they book their next holiday in the Maldives.
I don't think that's how people read it. The question was 'are you prepared to pay to queue jump?'
People do it all the time - fast queues at airports, Ticketmaster, anything premium. You must do it all the time.
I do. As I said earlier I'm in BUPA which is what it's for. I was obliged to for work but I would think better of someone who unlike me refused to on principle.
That's like saying you'd take a pay cut because your boss would think better of you.
PS he wouldn't
- If you were on the council house waiting list but got offered a job which paid enough for you to rent privately, would you take it? - Oh no, Julie, it's a council house for me. I'd wait my turn with everyone else.
"I was obliged to for work" - how "obliged"?
1) Told to use it? 2) Told using it was a condition of employment? 3) Strapped to a stretcher and abducted to a BUPA hospital by heavily armed Unitarian Fundamentalists?
I remember when I taught in the independent sector I had to be in BUPA. It was a condition of employment though they paid my yearly subscription. I never used it myself, only my wife. I had to pay tax on the subscription as a benefit in kind.
Any sensible government would treat private healthcare expenditure (available to all employees) as deductible against employer NI, rather than try to tax it as a BIK for the employee.
Government needs to get as many people as possible out of the NHS, and encourage private providers to expand overall provision, not to mention the amount of absence that could be saved by fast-tracking those off work for months waiting for treatment.
The Government also needs the £60bn that employer NI generates - and I will note I suspect that will increase post the election because no-one is talking about Employer NI
Which if you need growth is the absolutely wrong thing to do. Its a tax on jobs. Its why Sunak was such a moron to go down this road before the U-Turn, with his NI++ scheme.
I'm sorry it's just the cost of employing someone - Employer NI just means that the headline figure being advertised isn't the true cost of employing them...
All things being equal, increasing employers NI should increase the incentive to invest in technology to increase productivity, by making labour more expensive.
That's what we all want isn't it?
Yes, but there needs to be a lot more carrot and a lot less stick.
If this thread is going to cross 2000 replies, hurrah!
Friday night is Farage night it would seem - that might get some more viewers than last night's performance.
As others have said, mid to late June presents an embarrassment of riches for those seeking entertainment - Ascot, Glastonbury, Euro 2024, the General Election, decorating a spare bedroom to name but five.
That's why we've not had a GE in an even number year since 1992 (and that was in April). 1970 was the last "summer" election in an even numbered year - that didn't end well for a Government defending a large majority (in seats if not votes).
I think it could have been box office – as Farage, Angela and Penny are all entertaining figures. Sadly some quarterwit at the Beeb didn't even manage the most basic check of TV schedules. Had they done so, they would have spotted that both England AND Scotland are playing football at exactly the same time.
Amateurish scheduling, a real shame.
If only the technology existed to allow people to watch the debate at some later time of their choosing!
Well I'll record it, but a big part of the fun of live TV is the instant responses on social media etc.
Comments
Everything from From Memory is my comment and I know that YouGov have been clear that labour are going to drop slightly with Lib Dems increasing - the posts I've read haven't covered how the changes impact Tory / Reform percentages - and with Farage returning there may be some natural movement alongside the methodology changes...
I might have mentioned it once or twice.
The Beeb's scheduler is clearly a lazy quarterwit good-for-nothing. They could have staged the debate at 6.15pm – prime time – and it would have been all over just as the England and Scotland teams kicked off, on the other channel. Or just do it the previous night.
Now most people will miss what could be a fun debate – Angela, Penny, Nige, Daisy and some random nationalists for good measure. But no, football it is.
The milkshake I mean!
CCHQ can just about get away with imposing 3 Sunak loyalists on Associations with no local candidate as they have been doing as at least the membership locally get a choice of those 3.
However for CCHQ to impose just 1 candidate on an Association removes even that choice
"'Sadistic' women who filmed themselves torturing man to death jailed for at least 26 years
Zoe Rider and Nicola Lethbridge carried out a "vicious and extremely violent joint attack" on 60-year-old Stephen Koszyczarski in his Sheffield flat last year. They left him with 22 separate injuries after falsely accusing him of being a paedophile.
Jurors at the trial were shown harrowing footage shot by Rider and Lethbridge, which included them threatening to mutilate Mr Koszyczarski with scissors."
https://news.sky.com/story/sadistic-women-who-filmed-themselves-torturing-man-to-death-jailed-for-at-least-26-years-13148296
Fraser Nelson
@FraserNelson
·
1h
The Spectator has just ran the figures for the Tories' published tax plans.
On Sunak's maths, it works out as £3,000 tax rise per household.
https://inglesp.github.io/apogee/
The statement "The state of Israel should not exist" must have about a dozen or more possible significances, from one extreme of "All Jews in Israel should be killed and the land area replaced with non Jews" through "The current land mass should be a shared Palestinian/Jewish homeland" and "It should be part Israel and part Palestine" to another extreme of "Israel should occupy and reoccupy vast areas of adjacent land and render it exclusively Jewish by killing all the others".
So draw no conclusions from data which has a quantitative but not qualitative basis.
PS he wouldn't
Then his seat was abolished for this election and he almost immediately gave up entirely. Showing he has no sense of duty; he was only ever doing it out of political cynicism.
Unimpressed to put it mildly.
(not meant seriously, I know it's more timing isn't right)..
Question now is does the £2000 fall on top of the £3000 ?
Which is why when I say there is no money and I expect taxes to increase and a wealth tax is unavoidable, it's unavoidable because the Government needs money.
- Oh no, Julie, it's a council house for me. I'd wait my turn with everyone else.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c4nn23kz2meo
It is impossible to talk about raising taxes and has been for about 50 years because the media jump on it as akin to placing all grandparents in indentured servitude. Tax has been made to be a burden at best and a punishment at worse when the counter argument is it is the contribution many (perhaps not as many as some would like) make to the continuance of a civilised society.
Yet we use terms like "wage slave" as though we have exchanged one form of servitude for another.
The second statement is also true if you believe the Lafferites. There is a sound theory if you allow more people to keep more of their money they spend it or work harder thus generating more money for the Exchequer via VAT receipts or income tax. It also has the by product of making the rich richer and the "belief" is some of that largesse "trickles down" to the poor making them richer too.
What we are seeing however is those with money choosing to save in ISAs rather than undergoing retail therapy (did I see £11.5 billion invested in ISAs before the April 2024 deadline?). Saving is good, too much saving (especially if that means less consumption) isn't.
The usual response to shrinking receipts (apart from that ointment) is to reduce expenditure so if the tax take falls the spending cake gets reduced as well. That's the other side of the question - there's more of a certainty about the take from increased taxes (even more if we had Land Value Taxation) than the impact of a tax cut in terms of whether the Lafferite model would recover the receipts lost from the lower rates.
In any case, "reducing the State" never goes out of fashion (unless it's a part of the State that's important to you such as the NHS or schools or social care or the armed forces or the local library).
If it's roadworks then it's a fair cop.
Poor socialists: envious slackers
Poor conservatives: hard-working strivers
Rich socialists: benevolent philanthropists
Rich conservatives: evil scrooges
Which brings me to the presenters stupid stunt. They can both easily rule out top rates moving, rishi has proven you can bring in billions through fiscal drag and other stealth taxes, and keep the election promise of “not a penny more on”. Not that the Tories kept that promise not a penny more on. Sunak invented a whole new NI half way through parliament to stop NHS properly collapsing.
What you are missing Nigel is all those headlines about the highest tax take since the war. Both parties know they can make these promises not to raise tax as the system will be taking massively from us anyway, throughout the next parliament.
Guy goes into a shop and says 'can I have a pound of potatoes please''
'I'm sorry but I don't sell potatoes'
'Well why have you got them in your window!'
''I'm a mohel. What do you want me to have in my window?'
Labour could win it on current polls, especially if a big Reform vote and LD tactical voting. The only truly safe seats in Essex at the moment even on a worst case scenario are Maldon, Rayleigh and Wickford, Witham and Brentwood and Ongar (and probably Essex NW and Epping Forest)
1) Told to use it?
2) Told using it was a condition of employment?
3) Strapped to a stretcher and abducted to a BUPA hospital by heavily armed Unitarian Fundamentalists?
Just got this from Richard Holden:
"I'm just following up on Rishi's email to you below by bringing you the BREAKING NEWS that, according to a snap poll, Rishi Sunak beat Sir Keir Starmer among people who watched the debate.
How did we know this was going to happen? Because only Rishi Sunak has the track record of delivery, and the bold ideas needed for a brighter future.
And it's a lot easier to stand up your ideas when you actually have a plan.
If you missed the debate you can see the best bits here >>>
Thank you to the thousands of you who shared our content at home, and who've chipped in £10, £5, even £1 during the course of the campaign.
Trust me when I say that everything you do really does make a difference.
Together, we're going to keep Sir Keir Starmer out of 10 Downing Street. And deliver the bold action needed for a brighter future.
Yours sincerely,
Richard Holden
Chairman of the Conservative and Unionist Party""
Corbyn’s crap manifesto also benefitted from voodoo polling like this on each particular measure, but it pointed to nothing substantial.
Ask exactly the same voters you polled to get that result, you aware Rishi turned this tax on you pension on, this merely a proposal to turn it off again? and you will find voters are not that unaware and gullible. Hence the current polls and eventual result.
Government needs to get as many people as possible out of the NHS, and encourage private providers to expand overall provision, not to mention the amount of absence that could be saved by fast-tracking those off work for months waiting for treatment.
Instead I think its nailed on we will get a counterproductive raid on pensions.
Cut quangos £82billion to go at. Id abolish the OBr day one.
Reschedule Payments to the bank of England
Sort out MoD procurement
Take an IT spend holiday - they're always vastly overrun for dubious benefits
Put some productivity back in to the public sector instead of pissing away 2% per year
I could continue but as I say if you wont look you wont find.
Funnily enough, we’ve not seen that sort of prank out here in the Gulf.
If a moderate Tory wants to say xx moderate Tory will make final as normally happens, that’s just wish casting this time.
Number of Tories to Defect to Reform https://www.betfair.com/exchange/politics/event/28265958/multi-market?marketIds=1.229664621
Anyone with apple needs to (a) make sure they have biometrics for their banking devices, and (b) turn on stolen device protection in settings.
Essentially what it does is lock apps that need biometrics away from being pin accessed (e.g. passwords, resetting password for apple, banking apps) when away from home or work. This means that when someone shoulder surfs your pin and then steals the phone they are unable to access the most crucial bits of it. They can't just use your pin to reset apple ID password, then use that to add their face and access everything. Last year I know someone who they managed to get a five figure sum from (eventually reclaimed from banks) using this method (additional loans, cash in bank, overdrafts, card details on the app), now it's immediately just worth the sum of its' parts rather than enabling access to everything.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13496395/victoria-thomas-bowen-onlyfans-milkshake-nigel-farage.html
P.S. The headline is ironic: how about National newspaper shamelessly publishes pictures of porn star to attract visitors to its own site
I had never realised how central chairperson Alice Perkins was to the conspiracy. She was at the heart of it, and the other scoundrels, such as Vennel, van de Bogen, Flemington, and their numerous minions, appear now more like lieutenants to her role as General.
She and her Board had the opportunity to prevent ten years of miscarriage of justice, but between them they orchestrated a cover-up. Plain as a pikestaff now.
Well done Jason Beer. You have finally got to the heart of the matter.
Small employer that is much bigger deal. Do you want to expand and hire another 5-10 people, it makes things a lot harder decision.
A big problem is because the mega companies have taken the piss over paying tax, government have moved more and more to taxes that are basically just for operating a business rather than making money. This is fine for an Amazon, as otherwise they have the size and flexibility to play the international shell company game. But your local businessman with a business that is 100% physically located in one place, its far worse.
As I have said before, the UK now has (as a proportion) of the economy very few medium sized businesses. How do you get those, by small businesses growing. We don't have that, which is a big problem.
I really don't see how it makes it a harder decision, anyone in business will know that the true cost of hiring someone is way more than the headline advertised salary...
https://x.com/jeromestarkey/status/1798344639948415187
Video: British paras jumping into Normandy are greeted by French customs
Large businesses, there is no direct operations. Its strategy, including lobbying governments (directly / indirectly).
That's what we all want isn't it?
Again, no discussion of these problem by the major parties. Instead its a day of no you are liar, no you are liar, its £2k extra, no £3k. It will be more than that if the economy doesn't find any growth.