Let's say we could extend lifespans from the age of 88 (average) to 99 (average) but at the cost of £300bn extra on the public purse and with 50%+ of them with major and painful health issues for either themselves and /or their relatives as well.
Should we?
Not sure that question has an answer that remotely is possible short of euthanasia, and I am certain you are not suggesting that
This is a serious problem for governments going forward and I simply have no idea how the circle is squared
Charity money for research tends to go to certain diseases. Government research money could be braver in funding conditions that are less high-profile and attractive to donors but that have a greater impact on healthcare costs and quality of life. That means stuff from low back pain to dementia rather than cancer.
I actually have a hospital appointment this morning. What a budget!
I went to hospital yesterday.
There was a poster by the entrance warning about measles, which we thought had been vanquished in the 1960s, before they invented anti-vaxxers.
But beyond that were electronic signs displaying a message that their software licence had expired (presumably unbeknownst to whoever could either renew the licence or turn the system off to save electricity) and direction signs that stopped well short of their destination. The clock had not been put back an hour at the weekend, or so I thought till I noticed that even then it would be 10 minutes wrong.
People say the NHS needs huge investment. They are right. It does. But it also needs people directly running hospitals and clinics to pick the low hanging fruit.
My wife had a miscarriage at about 9 weeks 18 months or so ago. Turning up at my local large hospital to find there was nowhere to park (we would cheerfully have paid, but the site has about 50% of the parking spaces it needs - we ended up ditching the car in a nearby supermarket carpark), followed by having to find the "early pregnancy unit*" we'd been told to attend and then follow the non-existent signage to it with a tired and distressed wife was one of the less enjoyable experiences of my life, which could have been made vastly for virtually no cost by some decent signage.
I think I've posted before about how I nearly missed an expensive MRI slot because I went to the wrong hospital, thanks to the receptionist at a different hospital using without explanation the abbreviation MRI for Manchester Royal Infirmary, without considering this was also the department I was being sent to see. This was after a previous missed MRI because they failed to book an X-ray to check for steel splinters in my eyes first, despite my ringing them and telling them this exactly as instructed on the paperwork they sent out.
Stuff like this isn't hard, or expensive to fix - but because it's a state monolith entirely run by a mixture of incompetence and producer capture it isn't. Pouring loads more money in the top won't help either - this stuff isn't fixed primarily because nobody cares, rather than anything else.
*It turned out that it has been renamed the "Jasmine Suite" presumably to be more sensitive to people our situation, which is lovely and thoughtful, but does require that people are told to go there. And once we found that bit out, the signage was still rubbish to actually get there.
Sorry about your experiences. In mine, the NHS is not fit for purpose, no one cares, really, so people are just left to suffer and die and be fucked around.
Of course nurses staring in your face "care" but actually as you note with your examples, they don't care enough really to amend or help amend or voice concerns about the system which is useless.
Everyone in the NHS should be ashamed of themselves.
Basic stuff like signage and lighting requires one senior manager to spend an hour a day actually walking round, perhaps taking a week to complete the whole facility, and noting everything that’s out of place to the appropriate department.
The people who are there every day often don’t notice these things, and people in sick or distressed situations aren’t going to fill out a form or raise a complaint.
Why would it need a senior manager? What the fuck does a senior manager know about signage?
The builder I employed to rebuild my house could do it. And given he is a hands on guy (electrical & gas certified - even though he employs people for that), he would probably fix lots of it himself.
Because the senior manager has the authority to tell people to fix the problem and JFDI.
I actually have a hospital appointment this morning. What a budget!
I went to hospital yesterday.
There was a poster by the entrance warning about measles, which we thought had been vanquished in the 1960s, before they invented anti-vaxxers.
But beyond that were electronic signs displaying a message that their software licence had expired (presumably unbeknownst to whoever could either renew the licence or turn the system off to save electricity) and direction signs that stopped well short of their destination. The clock had not been put back an hour at the weekend, or so I thought till I noticed that even then it would be 10 minutes wrong.
People say the NHS needs huge investment. They are right. It does. But it also needs people directly running hospitals and clinics to pick the low hanging fruit.
My wife had a miscarriage at about 9 weeks 18 months or so ago. Turning up at my local large hospital to find there was nowhere to park (we would cheerfully have paid, but the site has about 50% of the parking spaces it needs - we ended up ditching the car in a nearby supermarket carpark), followed by having to find the "early pregnancy unit*" we'd been told to attend and then follow the non-existent signage to it with a tired and distressed wife was one of the less enjoyable experiences of my life, which could have been made vastly for virtually no cost by some decent signage.
I think I've posted before about how I nearly missed an expensive MRI slot because I went to the wrong hospital, thanks to the receptionist at a different hospital using without explanation the abbreviation MRI for Manchester Royal Infirmary, without considering this was also the department I was being sent to see. This was after a previous missed MRI because they failed to book an X-ray to check for steel splinters in my eyes first, despite my ringing them and telling them this exactly as instructed on the paperwork they sent out.
Stuff like this isn't hard, or expensive to fix - but because it's a state monolith entirely run by a mixture of incompetence and producer capture it isn't. Pouring loads more money in the top won't help either - this stuff isn't fixed primarily because nobody cares, rather than anything else.
*It turned out that it has been renamed the "Jasmine Suite" presumably to be more sensitive to people our situation, which is lovely and thoughtful, but does require that people are told to go there. And once we found that bit out, the signage was still rubbish to actually get there.
Sorry about your experiences. In mine, the NHS is not fit for purpose, no one cares, really, so people are just left to suffer and die and be fucked around.
Of course nurses staring in your face "care" but actually as you note with your examples, they don't care enough really to amend or help amend or voice concerns about the system which is useless.
Everyone in the NHS should be ashamed of themselves.
Basic stuff like signage and lighting requires one senior manager to spend an hour a day actually walking round, perhaps taking a week to complete the whole facility, and noting everything that’s out of place to the appropriate department.
The people who are there every day often don’t notice these things, and people in sick or distressed situations aren’t going to fill out a form or raise a complaint.
Why would it need a senior manager? What the fuck does a senior manager know about signage?
The builder I employed to rebuild my house could do it. And given he is a hands on guy (electrical & gas certified - even though he employs people for that), he would probably fix lots of it himself.
Because the senior manager has the authority to tell people to fix the problem and JFDI.
When will the political class wake up to the social care crisis and finally accept health and social care are the same fucking thing? All part of a continuum of care. Directly linked. Hospitals cannot discharge because the care homes don't have staff and beds, OTs so short in supply it takes months to get an assessment to send someone home etc etc.
I am so bloody sick of this. Every single budget, year after year, decade after decade. Labour or Conservative.
You are right. I think social care is an issue a bit like "growth" that we have been talking about, or reforming the tax system.
We all know these are major problems. Few people have a good idea of exactly how to fix those issues. Even fewer are willing to stake the political capital to actually tackle them . So nothing happens from parliament to parliament.
And frankly the UK public would almost certainly reject a party that had good ideas about these issues. Too big a change, too scary, too risky, so keep patching and tweaking the broken systems.
The political ‘wisdom’ is that there are hardly any votes in social care; surprising really, given the dramatic cost and effect on family finances when an elderly relative goes into care, as I am now dealing with. Ed Davey has gone a little way to proving this wisdom wrong; the LDs got a bit of traction for focusing on the issue during the GE and it was good to see Ed get a hat tip from the Budget speech. But Labour in particular always campaigns on the NHS (even in local elections) where it thinks the votes are, and has never made social care a priority. Streeting is clearly now fishing around for some way of offloading his promise of a resolution into some sort of cross-party long grass.
The problem iis the enormous cost, as May found out, any suggestion that the elderly should pitch in and share the risk of social care costs is political suicide. The only time a govt could do this is early in their term but Labour learnt a lesson when Cameron pulled out of cross party talks on a solution, choosing instead to use it for political point scoring.
Except that for many families, thats status quo. I've just this second sent another £6,000 over to the care home for my mother's next month, and we're selling her now vacant flat in order to cover future costs. Almost any change to the current arrangements would likely reduce our burden, and the Dilnot cap would have been most welcome, as we'll be up to it in about a year's time.
Similar situation in my family. Our inheritance from both sides has been wiped out by care costs; a result of brilliant efforts of the NHS to keep my grandparents alive.
It's a lottery and why, under the current system, inheritance tax feels fair to me. I'd rather it was upfront insurance premium that everyone paid though.
If they made inheritance tax 10% but with no exceptions, it would almost certainly raise more money than the current scheme full of a very expensive avoidance industry, that catches mostly the middle classes who happen to have a house in the South and some savings or pension - while the seriously wealthy pay little to nothing.
If it were up to me all inheritances would be taxed the same as income, with no exceptions.
Going to work to earn £50,000 shouldn't be taxed a single penny more than inheriting £50,000 that you haven't gone to work to earn.
IHT seems to evoke more emotion than any other tax, which is why there are so many reliefs. Politically extremely difficult.
My solution fixes that, it should be abolished and inheritance should be taxed as income instead.
No more IHT.
Would you also tax gifts?
I'd ban them for adults. Who really wants socks and toileteries from their family and friends. And who wants to spend their time coming up with fresh ideas.
LOL. You are a man after my own heart.
My (female) relatives regularly complain that I am "hard to buy for", this is despite my telling them every Christmas that – really – I don't want anything!
Gift-giving has very deep roots in human culture and is one of the things that binds people together.
It wouldn't go amiss for you to keep a list of a few books or other things that you could provide to people so that they could exercise this impulse.
Can't I just buy them dinner, which is what I usually do? People seem to like that.
When will the political class wake up to the social care crisis and finally accept health and social care are the same fucking thing? All part of a continuum of care. Directly linked. Hospitals cannot discharge because the care homes don't have staff and beds, OTs so short in supply it takes months to get an assessment to send someone home etc etc.
I am so bloody sick of this. Every single budget, year after year, decade after decade. Labour or Conservative.
You are right. I think social care is an issue a bit like "growth" that we have been talking about, or reforming the tax system.
We all know these are major problems. Few people have a good idea of exactly how to fix those issues. Even fewer are willing to stake the political capital to actually tackle them . So nothing happens from parliament to parliament.
And frankly the UK public would almost certainly reject a party that had good ideas about these issues. Too big a change, too scary, too risky, so keep patching and tweaking the broken systems.
The political ‘wisdom’ is that there are hardly any votes in social care; surprising really, given the dramatic cost and effect on family finances when an elderly relative goes into care, as I am now dealing with. Ed Davey has gone a little way to proving this wisdom wrong; the LDs got a bit of traction for focusing on the issue during the GE and it was good to see Ed get a hat tip from the Budget speech. But Labour in particular always campaigns on the NHS (even in local elections) where it thinks the votes are, and has never made social care a priority. Streeting is clearly now fishing around for some way of offloading his promise of a resolution into some sort of cross-party long grass.
The problem iis the enormous cost, as May found out, any suggestion that the elderly should pitch in and share the risk of social care costs is political suicide. The only time a govt could do this is early in their term but Labour learnt a lesson when Cameron pulled out of cross party talks on a solution, choosing instead to use it for political point scoring.
Except that for many families, thats status quo. I've just this second sent another £6,000 over to the care home for my mother's next month, and we're selling her now vacant flat in order to cover future costs. Almost any change to the current arrangements would likely reduce our burden, and the Dilnot cap would have been most welcome, as we'll be up to it in about a year's time.
Similar situation in my family. Our inheritance from both sides has been wiped out by care costs; a result of brilliant efforts of the NHS to keep my grandparents alive.
It's a lottery and why, under the current system, inheritance tax feels fair to me. I'd rather it was upfront insurance premium that everyone paid though.
If they made inheritance tax 10% but with no exceptions, it would almost certainly raise more money than the current scheme full of a very expensive avoidance industry, that catches mostly the middle classes who happen to have a house in the South and some savings or pension - while the seriously wealthy pay little to nothing.
If it were up to me all inheritances would be taxed the same as income, with no exceptions.
Going to work to earn £50,000 shouldn't be taxed a single penny more than inheriting £50,000 that you haven't gone to work to earn.
IHT seems to evoke more emotion than any other tax, which is why there are so many reliefs. Politically extremely difficult.
My solution fixes that, it should be abolished and inheritance should be taxed as income instead.
No more IHT.
Would you also tax gifts?
I'd ban them for adults. Who really wants socks and toileteries from their family and friends. And who wants to spend their time coming up with fresh ideas.
LOL. You are a man after my own heart.
My (female) relatives regularly complain that I am "hard to buy for", this is despite my telling them every Christmas that – really – I don't want anything!
I think I have in my wardrobe somewhere around a dozen branded polo shirts, none of which I’ve bought for myself!
The nicest gift anyone can give is to pick up the bill for lunch or dinner, or just be a great guest, and – if moved – bring a good bottle and/or a bouquet of flowers for the house. My the time you reach our time of life, you have no need for 'stuff'. Yet lots of people simply cannot grasp this, for reasons I have never fathomed.
Or just a pot of home made jam or local honey.
As for LostPassword's comment about it being ritual - which is a good one - the problem is that gift giving does imply a geas or obligation on the recipient never to dispose of the gift. Especially frustrating at your and my time of life when we're not only trying not to accumulate too much more but positively declutter and sort out.
Indeed – or read the book you gave them, which they might not otherwise be inclined to do. As you say, buying food items that you know they will eat (because they have similar items in their pantry) is a nice touch.
Putting your father to bed at 10:30pm, for him to be up dressed and ready for the next day 1hr later. A smart guy trying to help , he found and took his morning medication. Essentially double dosing warfarin. Dangerous.
He refused to return to bed, and decided to sit the whole night out in his wide awake in his chair. Heartbreaking.
This was not the night he decided to help out, fell down the stairs, broke his shoulder and landed himself in hospital for three months. The interesting thing is that he somehow managed to get back to bed. We only only discovered the massive bruise when he couldn’t get out of bed.
I assure you that this kind of dementia care is beyond the capability of most families. A problem for society as a whole to solve.
Why should the whole of society have responsibility for it?
This might sound harsh but we have a principle here that we deify length of life regardless of quality or cost.
Dementia is a very cruel fate and I wouldn't wish it on anyone but what sort of sense does it make to bankrupt ourselves to keep someone in that condition.
Because like much of life it’s primarily down to luck. So we all carry the burden of ill fortune and share the benefits of good fortune.
My thesis is that individuals should insure and manage more of that risk themselves, and think sometimes throwing it onto "society" is a way for some - not you - getting away from responsibilities for elderly parents or relatives that they'd rather not have to deal with.
Nah. That’s a cold bleak future. We’re all in it together. I have a responsibility to you.
You could buy me a pint, I suppose.
Look, I'm not saying dog eat dog. But I think we have an absurd level of overcommitment to very expensive chronic and morbid conditions atm that are overly socialised and not ensured enough.
Property, pensions and houses should be used to part fund them. As Theresa May argued.
We all need to contribute and share the burden, much as we do with the lottery of cancer.
We need to solve cancer.
That disease is cruel and fucking sick. Took a friend of mine 3 months ago who was my age (42 years old) and mother to a six year old boy.
Haven't cried that much on the way home from a funeral ever.
Trouble is, Nixon's crusade against cancer forgot it's not a single disease but a description of a swarm of disease entities. No single cure for it.
Never say never. This company has a pretty cool cross cancer vaccine approach that is being trialled in dogs, but if it did work - why not in humans. There's some amazing science out there. https://www.calviri.com/
This is the story from earlier. I see no mention of "having to sell our boat", and tbh it doesn't ring true as related; nor is the caricature as portrayed on social media.
The stated crisis is "until we sell up", so it's a short term squeeze for them not existential. They can sell a couple of properties for cash in a couple of weeks if they need, and with 60 there will be tenants leaving regularly.
This budget does not target landlords selling up - the 3% Stamp Duty surcharge up to 5% is on LL buyers not sellers (though IMO it's crass by Reeves, but that's a different argument), and they can sell into the general market. There has not been much increase in general costs particularly on LLs beyond what eg Osborne did, other than maybe required quality upgrades which are a train which has been coming and expected for more than a decade.
I'd say it's far more likely they are more affected by over-gearing and have been hit hard by mortgage rate increases on variable rate, or fixed rates reaching end-of-term, mortgages, which may have doubled or more on payments in the last year or two.
A LL with 60 properties needs a generous 6 figure liquid sum in the bank as a buffer (say £200k+).
For the Telegraph to run this as a pensioner poverty story is tin-eared and self-satirical - as stupid as we would expect. But they are twits to let it be used.
That you consider 200k a generous buffer for 60 properties is what is wrong with the BTL industry. I would be thinking more like £2m+.
It depends. Why do you say £2m+? Let's look at the risk to be managed, and the numbers.
60 properties at a perhaps typical £12k pa rent in Colchester is £720k per annum top line turnover (albett likely more like £700k due to vacancies). I am not aware of *any* business that requires 3 years of turnover in current reserves - are you?
Even a charity, such as say a local Anglican parish, which inherently needs to be more cautious, will normally run with available reserves of around 3 months of income. For £700k, that would be £210k.
The need is to cover crises, such as a T going non-paying, or a house being damaged and having to provide alternative accommodation for a period in extremis if it burns down, or sudden repairs such as a roof or gas boiler going phut. Even providing alternative accommodation for a year at LL expense will only be rent plus a premium, perhaps £15k over a year. A largish portfolio will lay-off a good deal of the risk, as even if something happens to 3 or 4 properties that is only 5% of normal income down. It's very different from running 1 or 3 properties.
That is further mitigated by rent-payment insurance, obviously buildings insurance and various other normal practices.
60 properties @ say 250k each would be £15m, maybe £10m borrowed. What happens in a recession with a 20% fall in house prices, interest rates go up to 8% and a significant proportion of tenants struggling to pay on time?
You manage your gearing and your risk at a level you can control. 3 or 5 or 10 year fixes as well as variable mortgages, the properties would have been bought over an extended period of perhaps 2 decades so the gearing on each would have fallen so there should be an increasing equity buffer over time. Personally, I think it is a bit late when one partner is 77.
If you are building a personal Ponzi scheme in which case there's greater risk, which also has to be managed. Anyone doing that now will be doing it through a company not personally, as the Osborne tax-business-finance-costs-as-if-was-income (roughly) measures killed that model as personal ownership. The sweet spots for personally owned rentals are either just a couple of properties or almost no leverage.
If you can't manage the business well enough, then don't be in the game.
One of them seems to be a property professional, and I see no indication they are being forced out by a business collapse, so they seem to have basic competence but need to wind it down.
Serious fury from pro Ukraine voices now. One can still dream that’s it’s a big psyop and on the morning of 6th Nov, Ukraine will launch a huge surprise operation aimed at crushing the Russian army. But that sadly feels like wish casting.
“Biden sabotaged Ukraine's confidential plans then didn't honor the request to keep those plans confidential, spreading it to media to further sabotage.
Biden is a f**king piece of sh*t and now costing thousands of deaths.”
Yes, to say that they’re royally pissed off with Biden would be something of an understatement right now.
His actions are some way short of matching his words, European nations are going to have to step up no matter the result in the US next week.
But step up rather more if it's Trump.
Absolutely. Have you polished your boots ready for deployment.
Let's say we could extend lifespans from the age of 88 (average) to 99 (average) but at the cost of £300bn extra on the public purse and with 50%+ of them with major and painful health issues for either themselves and /or their relatives as well.
Let's say we could extend lifespans from the age of 88 (average) to 99 (average) but at the cost of £300bn extra on the public purse and with 50%+ of them with major and painful health issues for either themselves and /or their relatives as well.
Should we?
Not sure that question has an answer that remotely is possible short of euthanasia, and I am certain you are not suggesting that
This is a serious problem for governments going forward and I simply have no idea how the circle is squared
As the poet said,
Thou shalt not kill; but need'st not strive Officiously to keep alive.
But "striving officiously" is an awfully grey area, and gets more so each year.
And whilst it's easy to say"put me in a hospice and let nature take its course" in the abstract, it's much harder to do when it's a real person who you know and love in front of you.
Let's say we could extend lifespans from the age of 88 (average) to 99 (average) but at the cost of £300bn extra on the public purse and with 50%+ of them with major and painful health issues for either themselves and /or their relatives as well.
Let's say we could extend lifespans from the age of 88 (average) to 99 (average) but at the cost of £300bn extra on the public purse and with 50%+ of them with major and painful health issues for either themselves and /or their relatives as well.
Should we?
Absolutely not.
NICE has entered the chat
I'd take an extra ten years in my twenties, however!
I actually have a hospital appointment this morning. What a budget!
I went to hospital yesterday.
There was a poster by the entrance warning about measles, which we thought had been vanquished in the 1960s, before they invented anti-vaxxers.
But beyond that were electronic signs displaying a message that their software licence had expired (presumably unbeknownst to whoever could either renew the licence or turn the system off to save electricity) and direction signs that stopped well short of their destination. The clock had not been put back an hour at the weekend, or so I thought till I noticed that even then it would be 10 minutes wrong.
People say the NHS needs huge investment. They are right. It does. But it also needs people directly running hospitals and clinics to pick the low hanging fruit.
My wife had a miscarriage at about 9 weeks 18 months or so ago. Turning up at my local large hospital to find there was nowhere to park (we would cheerfully have paid, but the site has about 50% of the parking spaces it needs - we ended up ditching the car in a nearby supermarket carpark), followed by having to find the "early pregnancy unit*" we'd been told to attend and then follow the non-existent signage to it with a tired and distressed wife was one of the less enjoyable experiences of my life, which could have been made vastly for virtually no cost by some decent signage.
I think I've posted before about how I nearly missed an expensive MRI slot because I went to the wrong hospital, thanks to the receptionist at a different hospital using without explanation the abbreviation MRI for Manchester Royal Infirmary, without considering this was also the department I was being sent to see. This was after a previous missed MRI because they failed to book an X-ray to check for steel splinters in my eyes first, despite my ringing them and telling them this exactly as instructed on the paperwork they sent out.
Stuff like this isn't hard, or expensive to fix - but because it's a state monolith entirely run by a mixture of incompetence and producer capture it isn't. Pouring loads more money in the top won't help either - this stuff isn't fixed primarily because nobody cares, rather than anything else.
*It turned out that it has been renamed the "Jasmine Suite" presumably to be more sensitive to people our situation, which is lovely and thoughtful, but does require that people are told to go there. And once we found that bit out, the signage was still rubbish to actually get there.
Sorry about your experiences. In mine, the NHS is not fit for purpose, no one cares, really, so people are just left to suffer and die and be fucked around.
Of course nurses staring in your face "care" but actually as you note with your examples, they don't care enough really to amend or help amend or voice concerns about the system which is useless.
Everyone in the NHS should be ashamed of themselves.
Basic stuff like signage and lighting requires one senior manager to spend an hour a day actually walking round, perhaps taking a week to complete the whole facility, and noting everything that’s out of place to the appropriate department.
The people who are there every day often don’t notice these things, and people in sick or distressed situations aren’t going to fill out a form or raise a complaint.
Why would it need a senior manager? What the fuck does a senior manager know about signage?
The builder I employed to rebuild my house could do it. And given he is a hands on guy (electrical & gas certified - even though he employs people for that), he would probably fix lots of it himself.
Because the senior manager has the authority to tell people to fix the problem and JFDI.
Not if it's a PFI hospital.
That's actually an interesting one. My GP has wheelbender cycle parking made out of concrete blocks - real Fred Flintstone stuff. And they said "it was put there by the landlord". Me: in about 1992.
Putting your father to bed at 10:30pm, for him to be up dressed and ready for the next day 1hr later. A smart guy trying to help , he found and took his morning medication. Essentially double dosing warfarin. Dangerous.
He refused to return to bed, and decided to sit the whole night out in his wide awake in his chair. Heartbreaking.
This was not the night he decided to help out, fell down the stairs, broke his shoulder and landed himself in hospital for three months. The interesting thing is that he somehow managed to get back to bed. We only only discovered the massive bruise when he couldn’t get out of bed.
I assure you that this kind of dementia care is beyond the capability of most families. A problem for society as a whole to solve.
Why should the whole of society have responsibility for it?
This might sound harsh but we have a principle here that we deify length of life regardless of quality or cost.
Dementia is a very cruel fate and I wouldn't wish it on anyone but what sort of sense does it make to bankrupt ourselves to keep someone in that condition.
Because like much of life it’s primarily down to luck. So we all carry the burden of ill fortune and share the benefits of good fortune.
My thesis is that individuals should insure and manage more of that risk themselves, and think sometimes throwing it onto "society" is a way for some - not you - getting away from responsibilities for elderly parents or relatives that they'd rather not have to deal with.
Nah. That’s a cold bleak future. We’re all in it together. I have a responsibility to you.
You could buy me a pint, I suppose.
Look, I'm not saying dog eat dog. But I think we have an absurd level of overcommitment to very expensive chronic and morbid conditions atm that are overly socialised and not ensured enough.
Property, pensions and houses should be used to part fund them. As Theresa May argued.
We all need to contribute and share the burden, much as we do with the lottery of cancer.
We need to solve cancer.
That disease is cruel and fucking sick. Took a friend of mine 3 months ago who was my age (42 years old) and mother to a six year old boy.
Haven't cried that much on the way home from a funeral ever.
Cruel disease. I’m sorry. We need to solve cancer.
Motor Neurone Disease is one I want to see gone. Or, at least, treatable. Took our daughter ten years ago, at 49.
Heartbreaking. I’m sorry. Let’s see that one gone too.
Let's say we could extend lifespans from the age of 88 (average) to 99 (average) but at the cost of £300bn extra on the public purse and with 50%+ of them with major and painful health issues for either themselves and /or their relatives as well.
Should we?
Not sure that question has an answer that remotely is possible short of euthanasia, and I am certain you are not suggesting that
This is a serious problem for governments going forward and I simply have no idea how the circle is squared
Charity money for research tends to go to certain diseases. Government research money could be braver in funding conditions that are less high-profile and attractive to donors but that have a greater impact on healthcare costs and quality of life. That means stuff from low back pain to dementia rather than cancer.
Generally agree. Dementia research is jn a bad place though. Lots of fraud has poisoned the field and means we have to redo/ignore many things people thought were known.
Let's say we could extend lifespans from the age of 88 (average) to 99 (average) but at the cost of £300bn extra on the public purse and with 50%+ of them with major and painful health issues for either themselves and /or their relatives as well.
Should we?
Not sure that question has an answer that remotely is possible short of euthanasia, and I am certain you are not suggesting that
This is a serious problem for governments going forward and I simply have no idea how the circle is squared
As the poet said,
Thou shalt not kill; but need'st not strive Officiously to keep alive.
But "striving officiously" is an awfully grey area, and gets more so each year.
And whilst it's easy to say"put me in a hospice and let nature take its course" in the abstract, it's much harder to do when it's a real person who you know and love in front of you.
That's exactly what NICE and QALYS are all about - trying to come up with a vaguely consistent moral and practical framework for looking at these things.
When will the political class wake up to the social care crisis and finally accept health and social care are the same fucking thing? All part of a continuum of care. Directly linked. Hospitals cannot discharge because the care homes don't have staff and beds, OTs so short in supply it takes months to get an assessment to send someone home etc etc.
I am so bloody sick of this. Every single budget, year after year, decade after decade. Labour or Conservative.
You are right. I think social care is an issue a bit like "growth" that we have been talking about, or reforming the tax system.
We all know these are major problems. Few people have a good idea of exactly how to fix those issues. Even fewer are willing to stake the political capital to actually tackle them . So nothing happens from parliament to parliament.
And frankly the UK public would almost certainly reject a party that had good ideas about these issues. Too big a change, too scary, too risky, so keep patching and tweaking the broken systems.
The political ‘wisdom’ is that there are hardly any votes in social care; surprising really, given the dramatic cost and effect on family finances when an elderly relative goes into care, as I am now dealing with. Ed Davey has gone a little way to proving this wisdom wrong; the LDs got a bit of traction for focusing on the issue during the GE and it was good to see Ed get a hat tip from the Budget speech. But Labour in particular always campaigns on the NHS (even in local elections) where it thinks the votes are, and has never made social care a priority. Streeting is clearly now fishing around for some way of offloading his promise of a resolution into some sort of cross-party long grass.
The problem iis the enormous cost, as May found out, any suggestion that the elderly should pitch in and share the risk of social care costs is political suicide. The only time a govt could do this is early in their term but Labour learnt a lesson when Cameron pulled out of cross party talks on a solution, choosing instead to use it for political point scoring.
Except that for many families, thats status quo. I've just this second sent another £6,000 over to the care home for my mother's next month, and we're selling her now vacant flat in order to cover future costs. Almost any change to the current arrangements would likely reduce our burden, and the Dilnot cap would have been most welcome, as we'll be up to it in about a year's time.
Similar situation in my family. Our inheritance from both sides has been wiped out by care costs; a result of brilliant efforts of the NHS to keep my grandparents alive.
It's a lottery and why, under the current system, inheritance tax feels fair to me. I'd rather it was upfront insurance premium that everyone paid though.
If they made inheritance tax 10% but with no exceptions, it would almost certainly raise more money than the current scheme full of a very expensive avoidance industry, that catches mostly the middle classes who happen to have a house in the South and some savings or pension - while the seriously wealthy pay little to nothing.
If it were up to me all inheritances would be taxed the same as income, with no exceptions.
Going to work to earn £50,000 shouldn't be taxed a single penny more than inheriting £50,000 that you haven't gone to work to earn.
IHT seems to evoke more emotion than any other tax, which is why there are so many reliefs. Politically extremely difficult.
My solution fixes that, it should be abolished and inheritance should be taxed as income instead.
No more IHT.
Would you also tax gifts?
I'd ban them for adults. Who really wants socks and toileteries from their family and friends. And who wants to spend their time coming up with fresh ideas.
LOL. You are a man after my own heart.
My (female) relatives regularly complain that I am "hard to buy for", this is despite my telling them every Christmas that – really – I don't want anything!
Gift-giving has very deep roots in human culture and is one of the things that binds people together.
It wouldn't go amiss for you to keep a list of a few books or other things that you could provide to people so that they could exercise this impulse.
Can't I just buy them dinner, which is what I usually do? People seem to like that.
Make sure it's venison. That way you keep the vegans happy.
I actually have a hospital appointment this morning. What a budget!
I went to hospital yesterday.
There was a poster by the entrance warning about measles, which we thought had been vanquished in the 1960s, before they invented anti-vaxxers.
But beyond that were electronic signs displaying a message that their software licence had expired (presumably unbeknownst to whoever could either renew the licence or turn the system off to save electricity) and direction signs that stopped well short of their destination. The clock had not been put back an hour at the weekend, or so I thought till I noticed that even then it would be 10 minutes wrong.
People say the NHS needs huge investment. They are right. It does. But it also needs people directly running hospitals and clinics to pick the low hanging fruit.
My wife had a miscarriage at about 9 weeks 18 months or so ago. Turning up at my local large hospital to find there was nowhere to park (we would cheerfully have paid, but the site has about 50% of the parking spaces it needs - we ended up ditching the car in a nearby supermarket carpark), followed by having to find the "early pregnancy unit*" we'd been told to attend and then follow the non-existent signage to it with a tired and distressed wife was one of the less enjoyable experiences of my life, which could have been made vastly for virtually no cost by some decent signage.
I think I've posted before about how I nearly missed an expensive MRI slot because I went to the wrong hospital, thanks to the receptionist at a different hospital using without explanation the abbreviation MRI for Manchester Royal Infirmary, without considering this was also the department I was being sent to see. This was after a previous missed MRI because they failed to book an X-ray to check for steel splinters in my eyes first, despite my ringing them and telling them this exactly as instructed on the paperwork they sent out.
Stuff like this isn't hard, or expensive to fix - but because it's a state monolith entirely run by a mixture of incompetence and producer capture it isn't. Pouring loads more money in the top won't help either - this stuff isn't fixed primarily because nobody cares, rather than anything else.
*It turned out that it has been renamed the "Jasmine Suite" presumably to be more sensitive to people our situation, which is lovely and thoughtful, but does require that people are told to go there. And once we found that bit out, the signage was still rubbish to actually get there.
These are exactly the sorts of problems that arise when you keep cutting costs so there's no-one to check on signage and staff don't have the time to check everything has been understood. They have nothing to do with the system being "a state monolith".
Your claim that "nobody cares" is nonsense (and insulting). NHS staff generally do care, but they're worked off their feet. More money does help.
Nobody cares you just have to deal with it. What would the budget line item be for "checking signage".
I appreciate you evidently love the NHS but it is crap. Or rather, it is brilliant on many measures apart from saving lives and health outcomes.
My sister was just invited for a smear test which is available, apparently, to "all women and those people with cervixes". This is not a political correctness gone mad rant but that is where the money is going. Could the budget used for developing and writing that not have been used to "check signage".
When will the political class wake up to the social care crisis and finally accept health and social care are the same fucking thing? All part of a continuum of care. Directly linked. Hospitals cannot discharge because the care homes don't have staff and beds, OTs so short in supply it takes months to get an assessment to send someone home etc etc.
I am so bloody sick of this. Every single budget, year after year, decade after decade. Labour or Conservative.
You are right. I think social care is an issue a bit like "growth" that we have been talking about, or reforming the tax system.
We all know these are major problems. Few people have a good idea of exactly how to fix those issues. Even fewer are willing to stake the political capital to actually tackle them . So nothing happens from parliament to parliament.
And frankly the UK public would almost certainly reject a party that had good ideas about these issues. Too big a change, too scary, too risky, so keep patching and tweaking the broken systems.
The political ‘wisdom’ is that there are hardly any votes in social care; surprising really, given the dramatic cost and effect on family finances when an elderly relative goes into care, as I am now dealing with. Ed Davey has gone a little way to proving this wisdom wrong; the LDs got a bit of traction for focusing on the issue during the GE and it was good to see Ed get a hat tip from the Budget speech. But Labour in particular always campaigns on the NHS (even in local elections) where it thinks the votes are, and has never made social care a priority. Streeting is clearly now fishing around for some way of offloading his promise of a resolution into some sort of cross-party long grass.
The problem iis the enormous cost, as May found out, any suggestion that the elderly should pitch in and share the risk of social care costs is political suicide. The only time a govt could do this is early in their term but Labour learnt a lesson when Cameron pulled out of cross party talks on a solution, choosing instead to use it for political point scoring.
Except that for many families, thats status quo. I've just this second sent another £6,000 over to the care home for my mother's next month, and we're selling her now vacant flat in order to cover future costs. Almost any change to the current arrangements would likely reduce our burden, and the Dilnot cap would have been most welcome, as we'll be up to it in about a year's time.
Similar situation in my family. Our inheritance from both sides has been wiped out by care costs; a result of brilliant efforts of the NHS to keep my grandparents alive.
It's a lottery and why, under the current system, inheritance tax feels fair to me. I'd rather it was upfront insurance premium that everyone paid though.
If they made inheritance tax 10% but with no exceptions, it would almost certainly raise more money than the current scheme full of a very expensive avoidance industry, that catches mostly the middle classes who happen to have a house in the South and some savings or pension - while the seriously wealthy pay little to nothing.
If it were up to me all inheritances would be taxed the same as income, with no exceptions.
Going to work to earn £50,000 shouldn't be taxed a single penny more than inheriting £50,000 that you haven't gone to work to earn.
IHT seems to evoke more emotion than any other tax, which is why there are so many reliefs. Politically extremely difficult.
My solution fixes that, it should be abolished and inheritance should be taxed as income instead.
No more IHT.
Would you also tax gifts?
I'd ban them for adults. Who really wants socks and toileteries from their family and friends. And who wants to spend their time coming up with fresh ideas.
LOL. You are a man after my own heart.
My (female) relatives regularly complain that I am "hard to buy for", this is despite my telling them every Christmas that – really – I don't want anything!
I think I have in my wardrobe somewhere around a dozen branded polo shirts, none of which I’ve bought for myself!
The nicest gift anyone can give is to pick up the bill for lunch or dinner, or just be a great guest, and – if moved – bring a good bottle and/or a bouquet of flowers for the house. My the time you reach our time of life, you have no need for 'stuff'. Yet lots of people simply cannot grasp this, for reasons I have never fathomed.
Or just a pot of home made jam or local honey.
As for LostPassword's comment about it being ritual - which is a good one - the problem is that gift giving does imply a geas or obligation on the recipient never to dispose of the gift. Especially frustrating at your and my time of life when we're not only trying not to accumulate too much more but positively declutter and sort out.
Yes. I came across a little rhyme for gift-giving a while ago which I think helps with that.
"Something to eat, something to read, something they want, something they need."
As you both say, most of us on here don't lack anything that we need, and if there are still things that we want we probably have a compulsive collecting habit that needs attention.
But something consumable shouldn't be a problem clutter wise, and even the most ascetic of us need some calories every week to keep us ticking over.
I actually have a hospital appointment this morning. What a budget!
I went to hospital yesterday.
There was a poster by the entrance warning about measles, which we thought had been vanquished in the 1960s, before they invented anti-vaxxers.
But beyond that were electronic signs displaying a message that their software licence had expired (presumably unbeknownst to whoever could either renew the licence or turn the system off to save electricity) and direction signs that stopped well short of their destination. The clock had not been put back an hour at the weekend, or so I thought till I noticed that even then it would be 10 minutes wrong.
People say the NHS needs huge investment. They are right. It does. But it also needs people directly running hospitals and clinics to pick the low hanging fruit.
My wife had a miscarriage at about 9 weeks 18 months or so ago. Turning up at my local large hospital to find there was nowhere to park (we would cheerfully have paid, but the site has about 50% of the parking spaces it needs - we ended up ditching the car in a nearby supermarket carpark), followed by having to find the "early pregnancy unit*" we'd been told to attend and then follow the non-existent signage to it with a tired and distressed wife was one of the less enjoyable experiences of my life, which could have been made vastly for virtually no cost by some decent signage.
I think I've posted before about how I nearly missed an expensive MRI slot because I went to the wrong hospital, thanks to the receptionist at a different hospital using without explanation the abbreviation MRI for Manchester Royal Infirmary, without considering this was also the department I was being sent to see. This was after a previous missed MRI because they failed to book an X-ray to check for steel splinters in my eyes first, despite my ringing them and telling them this exactly as instructed on the paperwork they sent out.
Stuff like this isn't hard, or expensive to fix - but because it's a state monolith entirely run by a mixture of incompetence and producer capture it isn't. Pouring loads more money in the top won't help either - this stuff isn't fixed primarily because nobody cares, rather than anything else.
*It turned out that it has been renamed the "Jasmine Suite" presumably to be more sensitive to people our situation, which is lovely and thoughtful, but does require that people are told to go there. And once we found that bit out, the signage was still rubbish to actually get there.
Sorry about your experiences. In mine, the NHS is not fit for purpose, no one cares, really, so people are just left to suffer and die and be fucked around.
Of course nurses staring in your face "care" but actually as you note with your examples, they don't care enough really to amend or help amend or voice concerns about the system which is useless.
Everyone in the NHS should be ashamed of themselves.
Basic stuff like signage and lighting requires one senior manager to spend an hour a day actually walking round, perhaps taking a week to complete the whole facility, and noting everything that’s out of place to the appropriate department.
The people who are there every day often don’t notice these things, and people in sick or distressed situations aren’t going to fill out a form or raise a complaint.
Why would it need a senior manager? What the fuck does a senior manager know about signage?
The builder I employed to rebuild my house could do it. And given he is a hands on guy (electrical & gas certified - even though he employs people for that), he would probably fix lots of it himself.
Because the senior manager has the authority to tell people to fix the problem and JFDI.
My builder would JFDI - if you pointed a gun at him to stop him, he would calmly ask you why you are working for an amoral system of rules. He studied philosophy and law before deciding that both were too amoral for his taste.
When will the political class wake up to the social care crisis and finally accept health and social care are the same fucking thing? All part of a continuum of care. Directly linked. Hospitals cannot discharge because the care homes don't have staff and beds, OTs so short in supply it takes months to get an assessment to send someone home etc etc.
I am so bloody sick of this. Every single budget, year after year, decade after decade. Labour or Conservative.
You are right. I think social care is an issue a bit like "growth" that we have been talking about, or reforming the tax system.
We all know these are major problems. Few people have a good idea of exactly how to fix those issues. Even fewer are willing to stake the political capital to actually tackle them . So nothing happens from parliament to parliament.
And frankly the UK public would almost certainly reject a party that had good ideas about these issues. Too big a change, too scary, too risky, so keep patching and tweaking the broken systems.
The political ‘wisdom’ is that there are hardly any votes in social care; surprising really, given the dramatic cost and effect on family finances when an elderly relative goes into care, as I am now dealing with. Ed Davey has gone a little way to proving this wisdom wrong; the LDs got a bit of traction for focusing on the issue during the GE and it was good to see Ed get a hat tip from the Budget speech. But Labour in particular always campaigns on the NHS (even in local elections) where it thinks the votes are, and has never made social care a priority. Streeting is clearly now fishing around for some way of offloading his promise of a resolution into some sort of cross-party long grass.
The problem iis the enormous cost, as May found out, any suggestion that the elderly should pitch in and share the risk of social care costs is political suicide. The only time a govt could do this is early in their term but Labour learnt a lesson when Cameron pulled out of cross party talks on a solution, choosing instead to use it for political point scoring.
Except that for many families, thats status quo. I've just this second sent another £6,000 over to the care home for my mother's next month, and we're selling her now vacant flat in order to cover future costs. Almost any change to the current arrangements would likely reduce our burden, and the Dilnot cap would have been most welcome, as we'll be up to it in about a year's time.
Similar situation in my family. Our inheritance from both sides has been wiped out by care costs; a result of brilliant efforts of the NHS to keep my grandparents alive.
It's a lottery and why, under the current system, inheritance tax feels fair to me. I'd rather it was upfront insurance premium that everyone paid though.
If they made inheritance tax 10% but with no exceptions, it would almost certainly raise more money than the current scheme full of a very expensive avoidance industry, that catches mostly the middle classes who happen to have a house in the South and some savings or pension - while the seriously wealthy pay little to nothing.
If it were up to me all inheritances would be taxed the same as income, with no exceptions.
Going to work to earn £50,000 shouldn't be taxed a single penny more than inheriting £50,000 that you haven't gone to work to earn.
IHT seems to evoke more emotion than any other tax, which is why there are so many reliefs. Politically extremely difficult.
My solution fixes that, it should be abolished and inheritance should be taxed as income instead.
No more IHT.
Would you also tax gifts?
I'd ban them for adults. Who really wants socks and toileteries from their family and friends. And who wants to spend their time coming up with fresh ideas.
LOL. You are a man after my own heart.
My (female) relatives regularly complain that I am "hard to buy for", this is despite my telling them every Christmas that – really – I don't want anything!
Not even cash !!!!!
Every year - Every. Single. Year. - I ask for money in a card. Not a lot, just the biggest note they can afford. Every year they buy me something else. My family are annoying
As I said upthread, my family find that whisky, or whiskey, or brandy always 'goes down' well with me!
You should only buy people presents which you can eat or drink.
When will the political class wake up to the social care crisis and finally accept health and social care are the same fucking thing? All part of a continuum of care. Directly linked. Hospitals cannot discharge because the care homes don't have staff and beds, OTs so short in supply it takes months to get an assessment to send someone home etc etc.
I am so bloody sick of this. Every single budget, year after year, decade after decade. Labour or Conservative.
You are right. I think social care is an issue a bit like "growth" that we have been talking about, or reforming the tax system.
We all know these are major problems. Few people have a good idea of exactly how to fix those issues. Even fewer are willing to stake the political capital to actually tackle them . So nothing happens from parliament to parliament.
And frankly the UK public would almost certainly reject a party that had good ideas about these issues. Too big a change, too scary, too risky, so keep patching and tweaking the broken systems.
The political ‘wisdom’ is that there are hardly any votes in social care; surprising really, given the dramatic cost and effect on family finances when an elderly relative goes into care, as I am now dealing with. Ed Davey has gone a little way to proving this wisdom wrong; the LDs got a bit of traction for focusing on the issue during the GE and it was good to see Ed get a hat tip from the Budget speech. But Labour in particular always campaigns on the NHS (even in local elections) where it thinks the votes are, and has never made social care a priority. Streeting is clearly now fishing around for some way of offloading his promise of a resolution into some sort of cross-party long grass.
The problem iis the enormous cost, as May found out, any suggestion that the elderly should pitch in and share the risk of social care costs is political suicide. The only time a govt could do this is early in their term but Labour learnt a lesson when Cameron pulled out of cross party talks on a solution, choosing instead to use it for political point scoring.
Except that for many families, thats status quo. I've just this second sent another £6,000 over to the care home for my mother's next month, and we're selling her now vacant flat in order to cover future costs. Almost any change to the current arrangements would likely reduce our burden, and the Dilnot cap would have been most welcome, as we'll be up to it in about a year's time.
Similar situation in my family. Our inheritance from both sides has been wiped out by care costs; a result of brilliant efforts of the NHS to keep my grandparents alive.
It's a lottery and why, under the current system, inheritance tax feels fair to me. I'd rather it was upfront insurance premium that everyone paid though.
If they made inheritance tax 10% but with no exceptions, it would almost certainly raise more money than the current scheme full of a very expensive avoidance industry, that catches mostly the middle classes who happen to have a house in the South and some savings or pension - while the seriously wealthy pay little to nothing.
If it were up to me all inheritances would be taxed the same as income, with no exceptions.
Going to work to earn £50,000 shouldn't be taxed a single penny more than inheriting £50,000 that you haven't gone to work to earn.
IHT seems to evoke more emotion than any other tax, which is why there are so many reliefs. Politically extremely difficult.
My solution fixes that, it should be abolished and inheritance should be taxed as income instead.
No more IHT.
Would you also tax gifts?
I'd ban them for adults. Who really wants socks and toileteries from their family and friends. And who wants to spend their time coming up with fresh ideas.
LOL. You are a man after my own heart.
My (female) relatives regularly complain that I am "hard to buy for", this is despite my telling them every Christmas that – really – I don't want anything!
Not even cash !!!!!
Every year - Every. Single. Year. - I ask for money in a card. Not a lot, just the biggest note they can afford. Every year they buy me something else. My family are annoying
As I said upthread, my family find that whisky, or whiskey, or brandy always 'goes down' well with me!
Yes, me too. I enjoy whiskey, but I never buy it for myself. Instead, I suggest it as a Christmas/birthday gift. I means my friends and relatives don't have to think too hard; it comes in a range of prices to suit most budgets; even cheap whiskey doesn't taste terrible (unlike some wines); and I get a special treat that I'm always grateful for.
Great plan. I once walked into The Whisky Shop (now closed) off Oxford Street and, for a friend's birthday, I thought it would be nice if I could buy a 40-yr old malt at which point the sales guy said yes sure they start at several hundred pounds a bottle.
Our vending machines have gone contactless yesterday. Fortunately there is still the cash option as well for people.
Not for much longer, I’d venture. The pool table in my local is now card only. I like to imagine certain PBers discovering this in horror as they furkle in their leather pouches for useless metal!
This is the story from earlier. I see no mention of "having to sell our boat", and tbh it doesn't ring true as related; nor is the caricature as portrayed on social media.
The stated crisis is "until we sell up", so it's a short term squeeze for them not existential. They can sell a couple of properties for cash in a couple of weeks if they need, and with 60 there will be tenants leaving regularly.
This budget does not target landlords selling up - the 3% Stamp Duty surcharge up to 5% is on LL buyers not sellers (though IMO it's crass by Reeves, but that's a different argument), and they can sell into the general market. There has not been much increase in general costs particularly on LLs beyond what eg Osborne did, other than maybe required quality upgrades which are a train which has been coming and expected for more than a decade.
I'd say it's far more likely they are more affected by over-gearing and have been hit hard by mortgage rate increases on variable rate, or fixed rates reaching end-of-term, mortgages, which may have doubled or more on payments in the last year or two.
A LL with 60 properties needs a generous 6 figure liquid sum in the bank as a buffer (say £200k+).
For the Telegraph to run this as a pensioner poverty story is tin-eared and self-satirical - as stupid as we would expect. But they are twits to let it be used.
That you consider 200k a generous buffer for 60 properties is what is wrong with the BTL industry. I would be thinking more like £2m+.
It depends. Why do you say £2m+? Let's look at the risk to be managed, and the numbers.
60 properties at a perhaps typical £12k pa rent in Colchester is £720k per annum top line turnover (albett likely more like £700k due to vacancies). I am not aware of *any* business that requires 3 years of turnover in current reserves - are you?
Even a charity, such as say a local Anglican parish, which inherently needs to be more cautious, will normally run with available reserves of around 3 months of income. For £700k, that would be £210k.
The need is to cover crises, such as a T going non-paying, or a house being damaged and having to provide alternative accommodation for a period in extremis if it burns down, or sudden repairs such as a roof or gas boiler going phut. Even providing alternative accommodation for a year at LL expense will only be rent plus a premium, perhaps £15k over a year. A largish portfolio will lay-off a good deal of the risk, as even if something happens to 3 or 4 properties that is only 5% of normal income down. It's very different from running 1 or 3 properties.
That is further mitigated by rent-payment insurance, obviously buildings insurance and various other normal practices.
60 properties @ say 250k each would be £15m, maybe £10m borrowed. What happens in a recession with a 20% fall in house prices, interest rates go up to 8% and a significant proportion of tenants struggling to pay on time?
You manage your gearing and your risk at a level you can control. 3 or 5 or 10 year fixes as well as variable mortgages, the properties would have been bought over an extended period of perhaps 2 decades so the gearing on each would have fallen so there should be an increasing equity buffer over time. Personally, I think it is a bit late when one partner is 77.
If you are building a personal Ponzi scheme in which case there's greater risk, which also has to be managed. Anyone doing that now will be doing it through a company not personally, as the Osborne tax-business-finance-costs-as-if-was-income (roughly) measures killed that model as personal ownership. The sweet spots for personally owned rentals are either just a couple of properties or almost no leverage.
If you can't manage the business well enough, then don't be in the game.
One of them seems to be a property professional, and I see no indication they are being forced out by a business collapse, so they seem to have basic competence but need to wind it down.
If there wasnt an implicit taxpayer guarantee backing the leveraged speculation and it didnt prevent wannabee homeowners from buying I wouldn't care less, and it would just be another business that may or may not succeed.
But those do both apply, and I would welcome further stronger controls on portfolio landlords.
When will the political class wake up to the social care crisis and finally accept health and social care are the same fucking thing? All part of a continuum of care. Directly linked. Hospitals cannot discharge because the care homes don't have staff and beds, OTs so short in supply it takes months to get an assessment to send someone home etc etc.
I am so bloody sick of this. Every single budget, year after year, decade after decade. Labour or Conservative.
You are right. I think social care is an issue a bit like "growth" that we have been talking about, or reforming the tax system.
We all know these are major problems. Few people have a good idea of exactly how to fix those issues. Even fewer are willing to stake the political capital to actually tackle them . So nothing happens from parliament to parliament.
And frankly the UK public would almost certainly reject a party that had good ideas about these issues. Too big a change, too scary, too risky, so keep patching and tweaking the broken systems.
The political ‘wisdom’ is that there are hardly any votes in social care; surprising really, given the dramatic cost and effect on family finances when an elderly relative goes into care, as I am now dealing with. Ed Davey has gone a little way to proving this wisdom wrong; the LDs got a bit of traction for focusing on the issue during the GE and it was good to see Ed get a hat tip from the Budget speech. But Labour in particular always campaigns on the NHS (even in local elections) where it thinks the votes are, and has never made social care a priority. Streeting is clearly now fishing around for some way of offloading his promise of a resolution into some sort of cross-party long grass.
The problem iis the enormous cost, as May found out, any suggestion that the elderly should pitch in and share the risk of social care costs is political suicide. The only time a govt could do this is early in their term but Labour learnt a lesson when Cameron pulled out of cross party talks on a solution, choosing instead to use it for political point scoring.
Except that for many families, thats status quo. I've just this second sent another £6,000 over to the care home for my mother's next month, and we're selling her now vacant flat in order to cover future costs. Almost any change to the current arrangements would likely reduce our burden, and the Dilnot cap would have been most welcome, as we'll be up to it in about a year's time.
Similar situation in my family. Our inheritance from both sides has been wiped out by care costs; a result of brilliant efforts of the NHS to keep my grandparents alive.
It's a lottery and why, under the current system, inheritance tax feels fair to me. I'd rather it was upfront insurance premium that everyone paid though.
If they made inheritance tax 10% but with no exceptions, it would almost certainly raise more money than the current scheme full of a very expensive avoidance industry, that catches mostly the middle classes who happen to have a house in the South and some savings or pension - while the seriously wealthy pay little to nothing.
If it were up to me all inheritances would be taxed the same as income, with no exceptions.
Going to work to earn £50,000 shouldn't be taxed a single penny more than inheriting £50,000 that you haven't gone to work to earn.
IHT seems to evoke more emotion than any other tax, which is why there are so many reliefs. Politically extremely difficult.
My solution fixes that, it should be abolished and inheritance should be taxed as income instead.
No more IHT.
Would you also tax gifts?
I'd ban them for adults. Who really wants socks and toileteries from their family and friends. And who wants to spend their time coming up with fresh ideas.
LOL. You are a man after my own heart.
My (female) relatives regularly complain that I am "hard to buy for", this is despite my telling them every Christmas that – really – I don't want anything!
Not even cash !!!!!
Every year - Every. Single. Year. - I ask for money in a card. Not a lot, just the biggest note they can afford. Every year they buy me something else. My family are annoying
As I said upthread, my family find that whisky, or whiskey, or brandy always 'goes down' well with me!
You should only buy people presents which you can eat or drink.
Or clothes if you're looking for some sort of influence/favour.
When will the political class wake up to the social care crisis and finally accept health and social care are the same fucking thing? All part of a continuum of care. Directly linked. Hospitals cannot discharge because the care homes don't have staff and beds, OTs so short in supply it takes months to get an assessment to send someone home etc etc.
I am so bloody sick of this. Every single budget, year after year, decade after decade. Labour or Conservative.
You are right. I think social care is an issue a bit like "growth" that we have been talking about, or reforming the tax system.
We all know these are major problems. Few people have a good idea of exactly how to fix those issues. Even fewer are willing to stake the political capital to actually tackle them . So nothing happens from parliament to parliament.
And frankly the UK public would almost certainly reject a party that had good ideas about these issues. Too big a change, too scary, too risky, so keep patching and tweaking the broken systems.
The political ‘wisdom’ is that there are hardly any votes in social care; surprising really, given the dramatic cost and effect on family finances when an elderly relative goes into care, as I am now dealing with. Ed Davey has gone a little way to proving this wisdom wrong; the LDs got a bit of traction for focusing on the issue during the GE and it was good to see Ed get a hat tip from the Budget speech. But Labour in particular always campaigns on the NHS (even in local elections) where it thinks the votes are, and has never made social care a priority. Streeting is clearly now fishing around for some way of offloading his promise of a resolution into some sort of cross-party long grass.
The problem iis the enormous cost, as May found out, any suggestion that the elderly should pitch in and share the risk of social care costs is political suicide. The only time a govt could do this is early in their term but Labour learnt a lesson when Cameron pulled out of cross party talks on a solution, choosing instead to use it for political point scoring.
Except that for many families, thats status quo. I've just this second sent another £6,000 over to the care home for my mother's next month, and we're selling her now vacant flat in order to cover future costs. Almost any change to the current arrangements would likely reduce our burden, and the Dilnot cap would have been most welcome, as we'll be up to it in about a year's time.
Similar situation in my family. Our inheritance from both sides has been wiped out by care costs; a result of brilliant efforts of the NHS to keep my grandparents alive.
It's a lottery and why, under the current system, inheritance tax feels fair to me. I'd rather it was upfront insurance premium that everyone paid though.
If they made inheritance tax 10% but with no exceptions, it would almost certainly raise more money than the current scheme full of a very expensive avoidance industry, that catches mostly the middle classes who happen to have a house in the South and some savings or pension - while the seriously wealthy pay little to nothing.
If it were up to me all inheritances would be taxed the same as income, with no exceptions.
Going to work to earn £50,000 shouldn't be taxed a single penny more than inheriting £50,000 that you haven't gone to work to earn.
IHT seems to evoke more emotion than any other tax, which is why there are so many reliefs. Politically extremely difficult.
My solution fixes that, it should be abolished and inheritance should be taxed as income instead.
No more IHT.
Would you also tax gifts?
I'd ban them for adults. Who really wants socks and toileteries from their family and friends. And who wants to spend their time coming up with fresh ideas.
LOL. You are a man after my own heart.
My (female) relatives regularly complain that I am "hard to buy for", this is despite my telling them every Christmas that – really – I don't want anything!
Gift-giving has very deep roots in human culture and is one of the things that binds people together.
It wouldn't go amiss for you to keep a list of a few books or other things that you could provide to people so that they could exercise this impulse.
Can't I just buy them dinner, which is what I usually do? People seem to like that.
My experience of any NHS outlet is that every scrap of wall is plastered with pointless bits of paper and other visual clutter obscuring what there is in terms of actual signage. Big Wes should have a paper amnesty day whereby everything is pulled down in one go, the walls scrubbed. Thereafter, only key information should allowed anywhere near the walls.
I actually have a hospital appointment this morning. What a budget!
I went to hospital yesterday.
There was a poster by the entrance warning about measles, which we thought had been vanquished in the 1960s, before they invented anti-vaxxers.
But beyond that were electronic signs displaying a message that their software licence had expired (presumably unbeknownst to whoever could either renew the licence or turn the system off to save electricity) and direction signs that stopped well short of their destination. The clock had not been put back an hour at the weekend, or so I thought till I noticed that even then it would be 10 minutes wrong.
People say the NHS needs huge investment. They are right. It does. But it also needs people directly running hospitals and clinics to pick the low hanging fruit.
My wife had a miscarriage at about 9 weeks 18 months or so ago. Turning up at my local large hospital to find there was nowhere to park (we would cheerfully have paid, but the site has about 50% of the parking spaces it needs - we ended up ditching the car in a nearby supermarket carpark), followed by having to find the "early pregnancy unit*" we'd been told to attend and then follow the non-existent signage to it with a tired and distressed wife was one of the less enjoyable experiences of my life, which could have been made vastly for virtually no cost by some decent signage.
I think I've posted before about how I nearly missed an expensive MRI slot because I went to the wrong hospital, thanks to the receptionist at a different hospital using without explanation the abbreviation MRI for Manchester Royal Infirmary, without considering this was also the department I was being sent to see. This was after a previous missed MRI because they failed to book an X-ray to check for steel splinters in my eyes first, despite my ringing them and telling them this exactly as instructed on the paperwork they sent out.
Stuff like this isn't hard, or expensive to fix - but because it's a state monolith entirely run by a mixture of incompetence and producer capture it isn't. Pouring loads more money in the top won't help either - this stuff isn't fixed primarily because nobody cares, rather than anything else.
*It turned out that it has been renamed the "Jasmine Suite" presumably to be more sensitive to people our situation, which is lovely and thoughtful, but does require that people are told to go there. And once we found that bit out, the signage was still rubbish to actually get there.
These are exactly the sorts of problems that arise when you keep cutting costs so there's no-one to check on signage and staff don't have the time to check everything has been understood. They have nothing to do with the system being "a state monolith".
Your claim that "nobody cares" is nonsense (and insulting). NHS staff generally do care, but they're worked off their feet. More money does help.
Nobody cares you just have to deal with it. What would the budget line item be for "checking signage".
I appreciate you evidently love the NHS but it is crap. Or rather, it is brilliant on many measures apart from saving lives and health outcomes.
My sister was just invited for a smear test which is available, apparently, to "all women and those people with cervixes". This is not a political correctness gone mad rant but that is where the money is going. Could the budget used for developing and writing that not have been used to "check signage".
This is why I think John Major's 'Back to Basics' and 'cones hotline' policies were unfairly misunderstood and maligned. Things like bad signage, horrible chairs and bad lighting really impact people's experience of using the NHS. It's also something where a bit more money would actually have a visible impact rather than being swallowed up in the maw of general expenditure.
My experience of any NHS outlet is that every scrap of wall is plastered with pointless bits of paper and other visual clutter obscuring what there is in terms of actual signage. Big Wes should have a paper amnesty day whereby everything is pulled down in one go, the walls scrubbed. Thereafter, only key information should allowed anywhere near the walls.
The signal - and the noise.
In Wales they are all bi lingual so lots of space needed !!!!
I actually have a hospital appointment this morning. What a budget!
I went to hospital yesterday.
There was a poster by the entrance warning about measles, which we thought had been vanquished in the 1960s, before they invented anti-vaxxers.
But beyond that were electronic signs displaying a message that their software licence had expired (presumably unbeknownst to whoever could either renew the licence or turn the system off to save electricity) and direction signs that stopped well short of their destination. The clock had not been put back an hour at the weekend, or so I thought till I noticed that even then it would be 10 minutes wrong.
People say the NHS needs huge investment. They are right. It does. But it also needs people directly running hospitals and clinics to pick the low hanging fruit.
My wife had a miscarriage at about 9 weeks 18 months or so ago. Turning up at my local large hospital to find there was nowhere to park (we would cheerfully have paid, but the site has about 50% of the parking spaces it needs - we ended up ditching the car in a nearby supermarket carpark), followed by having to find the "early pregnancy unit*" we'd been told to attend and then follow the non-existent signage to it with a tired and distressed wife was one of the less enjoyable experiences of my life, which could have been made vastly for virtually no cost by some decent signage.
I think I've posted before about how I nearly missed an expensive MRI slot because I went to the wrong hospital, thanks to the receptionist at a different hospital using without explanation the abbreviation MRI for Manchester Royal Infirmary, without considering this was also the department I was being sent to see. This was after a previous missed MRI because they failed to book an X-ray to check for steel splinters in my eyes first, despite my ringing them and telling them this exactly as instructed on the paperwork they sent out.
Stuff like this isn't hard, or expensive to fix - but because it's a state monolith entirely run by a mixture of incompetence and producer capture it isn't. Pouring loads more money in the top won't help either - this stuff isn't fixed primarily because nobody cares, rather than anything else.
*It turned out that it has been renamed the "Jasmine Suite" presumably to be more sensitive to people our situation, which is lovely and thoughtful, but does require that people are told to go there. And once we found that bit out, the signage was still rubbish to actually get there.
These are exactly the sorts of problems that arise when you keep cutting costs so there's no-one to check on signage and staff don't have the time to check everything has been understood. They have nothing to do with the system being "a state monolith".
Your claim that "nobody cares" is nonsense (and insulting). NHS staff generally do care, but they're worked off their feet. More money does help.
Nobody cares you just have to deal with it. What would the budget line item be for "checking signage".
I appreciate you evidently love the NHS but it is crap. Or rather, it is brilliant on many measures apart from saving lives and health outcomes.
My sister was just invited for a smear test which is available, apparently, to "all women and those people with cervixes". This is not a political correctness gone mad rant but that is where the money is going. Could the budget used for developing and writing that not have been used to "check signage".
The budget line for "checking signage" would probably be a manager. Politicians keep cutting NHS managers, who get described as "pen pushers". Yet NHS managers do important jobs.
Putting your father to bed at 10:30pm, for him to be up dressed and ready for the next day 1hr later. A smart guy trying to help , he found and took his morning medication. Essentially double dosing warfarin. Dangerous.
He refused to return to bed, and decided to sit the whole night out in his wide awake in his chair. Heartbreaking.
This was not the night he decided to help out, fell down the stairs, broke his shoulder and landed himself in hospital for three months. The interesting thing is that he somehow managed to get back to bed. We only only discovered the massive bruise when he couldn’t get out of bed.
I assure you that this kind of dementia care is beyond the capability of most families. A problem for society as a whole to solve.
Why should the whole of society have responsibility for it?
This might sound harsh but we have a principle here that we deify length of life regardless of quality or cost.
Dementia is a very cruel fate and I wouldn't wish it on anyone but what sort of sense does it make to bankrupt ourselves to keep someone in that condition.
Because, unless you're advocating compulsory euthanasia, it can place an intolerable burden on those caring for the worst affected by the genetic lottery.
Societal burden sharing is simply more efficient. And it needn't bankrupt us, as Dilnot calculated.
Worst thing about the NI hike is just how front loaded it is.
£615 on the first £9,100 of pay. The next £615 additional isn't attained till the employee hits £60,350 !
It is mental.
Why oh why couldn't they have used their excuse list of black holes, unsustainable NI cuts, NHS improvements or whatever and just increased income tax?
"Sorry, we had no choice. Manifesto pledges are not subject to legitimate expectation."
Why must we suffer really crap decisions just because the government wants to try and hide the obvious?
Imagine what she'd have done if the black hole actually existed!
A lot of comments are understandably partisan, but the independent organisations including the OBR, IFS, and Resolution Foundation are all singularly critical of the Autum Statement
Worst thing about the NI hike is just how front loaded it is.
£615 on the first £9,100 of pay. The next £615 additional isn't attained till the employee hits £60,350 !
It is mental.
Why oh why couldn't they have used their excuse list of black holes, unsustainable NI cuts, NHS improvements or whatever and just increased income tax?
"Sorry, we had no choice. Manifesto pledges are not subject to legitimate expectation".
Why must we suffer really crap decisions just because the government wants to try and hide the obvious?
Putting your father to bed at 10:30pm, for him to be up dressed and ready for the next day 1hr later. A smart guy trying to help , he found and took his morning medication. Essentially double dosing warfarin. Dangerous.
He refused to return to bed, and decided to sit the whole night out in his wide awake in his chair. Heartbreaking.
This was not the night he decided to help out, fell down the stairs, broke his shoulder and landed himself in hospital for three months. The interesting thing is that he somehow managed to get back to bed. We only only discovered the massive bruise when he couldn’t get out of bed.
I assure you that this kind of dementia care is beyond the capability of most families. A problem for society as a whole to solve.
Why should the whole of society have responsibility for it?
This might sound harsh but we have a principle here that we deify length of life regardless of quality or cost.
Dementia is a very cruel fate and I wouldn't wish it on anyone but what sort of sense does it make to bankrupt ourselves to keep someone in that condition.
Because like much of life it’s primarily down to luck. So we all carry the burden of ill fortune and share the benefits of good fortune.
My thesis is that individuals should insure and manage more of that risk themselves, and think sometimes throwing it onto "society" is a way for some - not you - getting away from responsibilities for elderly parents or relatives that they'd rather not have to deal with.
Nah. That’s a cold bleak future. We’re all in it together. I have a responsibility to you.
You could buy me a pint, I suppose.
Look, I'm not saying dog eat dog. But I think we have an absurd level of overcommitment to very expensive chronic and morbid conditions atm that are overly socialised and not ensured enough.
Property, pensions and houses should be used to part fund them. As Theresa May argued.
We all need to contribute and share the burden, much as we do with the lottery of cancer.
We need to solve cancer.
That disease is cruel and fucking sick. Took a friend of mine 3 months ago who was my age (42 years old) and mother to a six year old boy.
Haven't cried that much on the way home from a funeral ever.
Cruel disease. I’m sorry. We need to solve cancer.
Motor Neurone Disease is one I want to see gone. Or, at least, treatable. Took our daughter ten years ago, at 49.
Heartbreaking. I’m sorry. Let’s see that one gone too.
Huntington's Disease is another really distressing one - agonisingly painful and degenerative.
A friend (a professor of biochemistry) has a cure for it which works 100% of the time, but unfortunately can't find the funds to get it through the testing process. He often gets emails from people who are suffering from it and beg him to help them but without the relevant approvals there is nothing he can do. They break his heart.
Yeah, people are going to get (a touch) poorer. It is because of demographics, poor infrastructure, global instability and trade wars. The old days of gradual but consistent increases in wealth are gone for at least a generation regardless of who is in power.
Worst thing about the NI hike is just how front loaded it is.
£615 on the first £9,100 of pay. The next £615 additional isn't attained till the employee hits £60,350 !
It is mental.
Why oh why couldn't they have used their excuse list of black holes, unsustainable NI cuts, NHS improvements or whatever and just increased income tax?
"Sorry, we had no choice. Manifesto pledges are not subject to legitimate expectation".
Why must we suffer really crap decisions just because the government wants to try and hide the obvious?
I actually have a hospital appointment this morning. What a budget!
I went to hospital yesterday.
There was a poster by the entrance warning about measles, which we thought had been vanquished in the 1960s, before they invented anti-vaxxers.
But beyond that were electronic signs displaying a message that their software licence had expired (presumably unbeknownst to whoever could either renew the licence or turn the system off to save electricity) and direction signs that stopped well short of their destination. The clock had not been put back an hour at the weekend, or so I thought till I noticed that even then it would be 10 minutes wrong.
People say the NHS needs huge investment. They are right. It does. But it also needs people directly running hospitals and clinics to pick the low hanging fruit.
My wife had a miscarriage at about 9 weeks 18 months or so ago. Turning up at my local large hospital to find there was nowhere to park (we would cheerfully have paid, but the site has about 50% of the parking spaces it needs - we ended up ditching the car in a nearby supermarket carpark), followed by having to find the "early pregnancy unit*" we'd been told to attend and then follow the non-existent signage to it with a tired and distressed wife was one of the less enjoyable experiences of my life, which could have been made vastly for virtually no cost by some decent signage.
I think I've posted before about how I nearly missed an expensive MRI slot because I went to the wrong hospital, thanks to the receptionist at a different hospital using without explanation the abbreviation MRI for Manchester Royal Infirmary, without considering this was also the department I was being sent to see. This was after a previous missed MRI because they failed to book an X-ray to check for steel splinters in my eyes first, despite my ringing them and telling them this exactly as instructed on the paperwork they sent out.
Stuff like this isn't hard, or expensive to fix - but because it's a state monolith entirely run by a mixture of incompetence and producer capture it isn't. Pouring loads more money in the top won't help either - this stuff isn't fixed primarily because nobody cares, rather than anything else.
*It turned out that it has been renamed the "Jasmine Suite" presumably to be more sensitive to people our situation, which is lovely and thoughtful, but does require that people are told to go there. And once we found that bit out, the signage was still rubbish to actually get there.
These are exactly the sorts of problems that arise when you keep cutting costs so there's no-one to check on signage and staff don't have the time to check everything has been understood. They have nothing to do with the system being "a state monolith".
Your claim that "nobody cares" is nonsense (and insulting). NHS staff generally do care, but they're worked off their feet. More money does help.
Nobody cares you just have to deal with it. What would the budget line item be for "checking signage".
I appreciate you evidently love the NHS but it is crap. Or rather, it is brilliant on many measures apart from saving lives and health outcomes.
My sister was just invited for a smear test which is available, apparently, to "all women and those people with cervixes". This is not a political correctness gone mad rant but that is where the money is going. Could the budget used for developing and writing that not have been used to "check signage".
The budget line for "checking signage" would probably be a manager. Politicians keep cutting NHS managers, who get described as "pen pushers". Yet NHS managers do important jobs.
The problem in a nutshell. If you walk into work and there is a crisp packet on the floor do you wait for the person responsible for picking up crisp packets to come along. No. You pick it up or ask for the cleaners to go over the area.
The NHS is full of people who walk past the crisp packet because it isn't their job to pick up crisp packets and meanwhile the place is full to brimming with rubbish. And they don't care enough either to pick the damn thing up or to ask the cleaners to do so.
Let's say we could extend lifespans from the age of 88 (average) to 99 (average) but at the cost of £300bn extra on the public purse and with 50%+ of them with major and painful health issues for either themselves and /or their relatives as well.
Should we?
Not sure that question has an answer that remotely is possible short of euthanasia, and I am certain you are not suggesting that
This is a serious problem for governments going forward and I simply have no idea how the circle is squared
Not euthanasia but we are already prolonging lifespans over and above where they would otherwise be with expensive medical innovations and healthcare. When it doesn't work out people pass away naturally, and a bit earlier.
So these choices already exist.
I often wonder whether there's scope for a more humane but less interventionist approach to medication for diseases like dementia. There are often medications supplied for optimal body performance e.g. high blood pressure. Perhaps some of those medications could be reduced or left off without unduly impacting remaining quality of life but opening the way to an earlier natural death. That would seem to me much better than medically assisted death. More in the 'need not strive officiously' category.
Imagine what she'd have done if the black hole actually existed!
A lot of comments are understandably partisan, but the independent organisations including the OBR, IFS, and Resolution Foundation are all singularly critical of the Autum Statement
Rightly so, her rule changes are simply an attempt to magic up a magic money tree.
Let's say we could extend lifespans from the age of 88 (average) to 99 (average) but at the cost of £300bn extra on the public purse and with 50%+ of them with major and painful health issues for either themselves and /or their relatives as well.
Should we?
Not sure that question has an answer that remotely is possible short of euthanasia, and I am certain you are not suggesting that
This is a serious problem for governments going forward and I simply have no idea how the circle is squared
Not euthanasia but we are already prolonging lifespans over and above where they would otherwise be with expensive medical innovations and healthcare. When it doesn't work out people pass away naturally, and a bit earlier.
So these choices already exist.
I often wonder whether there's scope for a more humane but less interventionist approach to medication for diseases like dementia. There are often medications supplied for optimal body performance e.g. high blood pressure. Perhaps some of those medications could be reduced or left off without unduly impacting remaining quality of life but opening the way to an earlier natural death. That would seem to me much better than medically assisted death. More in the 'need not strive officiously' category.
I agree.
But of course if you start arguing that philosophically medicine should concentrate on decreasing suffering instead of increasing life span, we might as well chuck the planet into a black hole and be done with it.
I actually have a hospital appointment this morning. What a budget!
I went to hospital yesterday.
There was a poster by the entrance warning about measles, which we thought had been vanquished in the 1960s, before they invented anti-vaxxers.
But beyond that were electronic signs displaying a message that their software licence had expired (presumably unbeknownst to whoever could either renew the licence or turn the system off to save electricity) and direction signs that stopped well short of their destination. The clock had not been put back an hour at the weekend, or so I thought till I noticed that even then it would be 10 minutes wrong.
People say the NHS needs huge investment. They are right. It does. But it also needs people directly running hospitals and clinics to pick the low hanging fruit.
My wife had a miscarriage at about 9 weeks 18 months or so ago. Turning up at my local large hospital to find there was nowhere to park (we would cheerfully have paid, but the site has about 50% of the parking spaces it needs - we ended up ditching the car in a nearby supermarket carpark), followed by having to find the "early pregnancy unit*" we'd been told to attend and then follow the non-existent signage to it with a tired and distressed wife was one of the less enjoyable experiences of my life, which could have been made vastly for virtually no cost by some decent signage.
I think I've posted before about how I nearly missed an expensive MRI slot because I went to the wrong hospital, thanks to the receptionist at a different hospital using without explanation the abbreviation MRI for Manchester Royal Infirmary, without considering this was also the department I was being sent to see. This was after a previous missed MRI because they failed to book an X-ray to check for steel splinters in my eyes first, despite my ringing them and telling them this exactly as instructed on the paperwork they sent out.
Stuff like this isn't hard, or expensive to fix - but because it's a state monolith entirely run by a mixture of incompetence and producer capture it isn't. Pouring loads more money in the top won't help either - this stuff isn't fixed primarily because nobody cares, rather than anything else.
*It turned out that it has been renamed the "Jasmine Suite" presumably to be more sensitive to people our situation, which is lovely and thoughtful, but does require that people are told to go there. And once we found that bit out, the signage was still rubbish to actually get there.
These are exactly the sorts of problems that arise when you keep cutting costs so there's no-one to check on signage and staff don't have the time to check everything has been understood. They have nothing to do with the system being "a state monolith".
Your claim that "nobody cares" is nonsense (and insulting). NHS staff generally do care, but they're worked off their feet. More money does help.
Nobody cares you just have to deal with it. What would the budget line item be for "checking signage".
I appreciate you evidently love the NHS but it is crap. Or rather, it is brilliant on many measures apart from saving lives and health outcomes.
My sister was just invited for a smear test which is available, apparently, to "all women and those people with cervixes". This is not a political correctness gone mad rant but that is where the money is going. Could the budget used for developing and writing that not have been used to "check signage".
The budget line for "checking signage" would probably be a manager. Politicians keep cutting NHS managers, who get described as "pen pushers". Yet NHS managers do important jobs.
The problem in a nutshell. If you walk into work and there is a crisp packet on the floor do you wait for the person responsible for picking up crisp packets to come along. No. You pick it up or ask for the cleaners to go over the area.
The NHS is full of people who walk past the crisp packet because it isn't their job to pick up crisp packets and meanwhile the place is full to brimming with rubbish. And they don't care enough either to pick the damn thing up or to ask the cleaners to do so.
And Cheese & Onion if you're wondering.
Only women have cervixes whstever gender such an individual might identify as
Worst thing about the NI hike is just how front loaded it is.
£615 on the first £9,100 of pay. The next £615 additional isn't attained till the employee hits £60,350 !
People complained about the 16 hour week employees being subsidised by the state. The state tackles the problem. People complain.
The state hasn't tackled the problem.
People working 16 hours a week still get their benefits in full and still face a roughly 80%+ marginal tax rate if they work any more hours. So they're still going to only work 16 hours a week because that's the only rational thing to do if you're in their shoes with the system that exists.
Tackling the problem means serious reform not jacking up a tax that doesn't remotely address the problem whatsoever.
Imagine what she'd have done if the black hole actually existed!
A lot of comments are understandably partisan, but the independent organisations including the OBR, IFS, and Resolution Foundation are all singularly critical of the Autum Statement
No, they are not. They are typically cautious and thoughtful. The OBR make no such criticism and their statements are fact based.
There are elements of the budget which the IFS and Resolution Foundation highlight as having possibly harmful effects, and it's clear that some of the interventions (particularly the secondary threshold change) are difficult to model and rely on some tenuous assumptions. The IFS is frustrated by the jack of ambition in tax reform, and the disengenous assumptions on fuel duty.
The Joseph Rowntree foundation highlight just how good the budget is for pensioners compared with other groups. I'm sure you're delighted.
I actually have a hospital appointment this morning. What a budget!
I went to hospital yesterday.
There was a poster by the entrance warning about measles, which we thought had been vanquished in the 1960s, before they invented anti-vaxxers.
But beyond that were electronic signs displaying a message that their software licence had expired (presumably unbeknownst to whoever could either renew the licence or turn the system off to save electricity) and direction signs that stopped well short of their destination. The clock had not been put back an hour at the weekend, or so I thought till I noticed that even then it would be 10 minutes wrong.
People say the NHS needs huge investment. They are right. It does. But it also needs people directly running hospitals and clinics to pick the low hanging fruit.
My wife had a miscarriage at about 9 weeks 18 months or so ago. Turning up at my local large hospital to find there was nowhere to park (we would cheerfully have paid, but the site has about 50% of the parking spaces it needs - we ended up ditching the car in a nearby supermarket carpark), followed by having to find the "early pregnancy unit*" we'd been told to attend and then follow the non-existent signage to it with a tired and distressed wife was one of the less enjoyable experiences of my life, which could have been made vastly for virtually no cost by some decent signage.
I think I've posted before about how I nearly missed an expensive MRI slot because I went to the wrong hospital, thanks to the receptionist at a different hospital using without explanation the abbreviation MRI for Manchester Royal Infirmary, without considering this was also the department I was being sent to see. This was after a previous missed MRI because they failed to book an X-ray to check for steel splinters in my eyes first, despite my ringing them and telling them this exactly as instructed on the paperwork they sent out.
Stuff like this isn't hard, or expensive to fix - but because it's a state monolith entirely run by a mixture of incompetence and producer capture it isn't. Pouring loads more money in the top won't help either - this stuff isn't fixed primarily because nobody cares, rather than anything else.
*It turned out that it has been renamed the "Jasmine Suite" presumably to be more sensitive to people our situation, which is lovely and thoughtful, but does require that people are told to go there. And once we found that bit out, the signage was still rubbish to actually get there.
These are exactly the sorts of problems that arise when you keep cutting costs so there's no-one to check on signage and staff don't have the time to check everything has been understood. They have nothing to do with the system being "a state monolith".
Your claim that "nobody cares" is nonsense (and insulting). NHS staff generally do care, but they're worked off their feet. More money does help.
Nobody cares you just have to deal with it. What would the budget line item be for "checking signage".
I appreciate you evidently love the NHS but it is crap. Or rather, it is brilliant on many measures apart from saving lives and health outcomes.
My sister was just invited for a smear test which is available, apparently, to "all women and those people with cervixes". This is not a political correctness gone mad rant but that is where the money is going. Could the budget used for developing and writing that not have been used to "check signage".
The budget line for "checking signage" would probably be a manager. Politicians keep cutting NHS managers, who get described as "pen pushers". Yet NHS managers do important jobs.
The problem in a nutshell. If you walk into work and there is a crisp packet on the floor do you wait for the person responsible for picking up crisp packets to come along. No. You pick it up or ask for the cleaners to go over the area.
The NHS is full of people who walk past the crisp packet because it isn't their job to pick up crisp packets and meanwhile the place is full to brimming with rubbish. And they don't care enough either to pick the damn thing up or to ask the cleaners to do so.
And Cheese & Onion if you're wondering.
Only women have cervixes whstever gender such an individual might identify as
I can't believe that the NHS would have spent any money whatsoever on formulating that line.
Leon (who seems to have disappeared ?) is fond of talking about a "Korean style armistice". Nonsense, of course, for multiple reasons, but this demonstrates the biggest single one.
US Secretary of Defense confirmed that Washington would defend South Korea by using all available weapons, including nuclear weapons, if necessary. Any nuclear attack by the DPRK against the US or its allies and partners would lead to the end of the Kim Jong Un regime. https://x.com/Hromadske/status/1851922058030256371
Unless Ukraine is in NATO, the comparison is simply absurd.
It would require a nuclear guarantee from the UK and France. Not enough nukes to defeat Russia in an all out war, but enough for MAD.
But Europe definitely needs to get its act together, and part of that is by excluding, or threatening to exclude, bad actors like Hungary or Slovakia under Fico from NATO and the security apparatus of the EU as well as taking away their veto over economic sanctions. The US is going to become semi-detached from NATO even if Harris wins, and potentially actively hostile if Trump does - only mutual hostility to China would remain as common cause, and NATO is not the main geographical player in that theatre.
Any thoughts on simple investment strategies for a Trump win that could hedge against global trade wars?
Gold is at a record high this morning…
I struggle with gold for some reason (well because its a lump of metal without any obvious return bar speculation). But yes, that is probably part of the answer.
Investing in anything that's at a record high is an inherently risky move.
Gold is the ultimate store of value though. No returns but a lump of the yellow stuff put together 3000 years ago is still intrinsically valuable today (as opposed to something that's survived 3000 years and is valuable for that rather than for the purpose for which it was created).
Trump's hostility to China is trade-based though, not geostrategic. Big difference. He wouldn't give a toss if it invaded Taiwan; he cares much more about state subsidies to industry.
Nope - he cares that the product is being manufactured in china at a price that the USA can't compete with..
It’s something that the rest of the world is going to have to deal with in short order as well, especially in key industries such as car manufacturing and relatedly battery manufacture.
Many of Trump’s base are people who have lost their jobs when factories have been shipped abroad, in some cases hollowing out entire towns and cities. Detroit is full of whole abandoned towns that used to house the auto workers, and those displaced workers feel the government is doing nothing for them.
The old Michael Moore rant from eight years ago is just as relevant today as it was then, perhaps even more so.
And yet the GOP, at his behest, voted against Biden's programs to bring back manufacturing to the US. Which they then boast about having attracted to their stares when the money is spent there.
Let's say we could extend lifespans from the age of 88 (average) to 99 (average) but at the cost of £300bn extra on the public purse and with 50%+ of them with major and painful health issues for either themselves and /or their relatives as well.
Should we?
Absolutely not.
Is the £300bn per year or over 11 years improved lifespan?
Around 2m people getting average 5 years extra good quality of life @ £25k per QALY would make it marginal on current NHS calculations if over 11 years and a complete no per year.
When will the political class wake up to the social care crisis and finally accept health and social care are the same fucking thing? All part of a continuum of care. Directly linked. Hospitals cannot discharge because the care homes don't have staff and beds, OTs so short in supply it takes months to get an assessment to send someone home etc etc.
I am so bloody sick of this. Every single budget, year after year, decade after decade. Labour or Conservative.
You are right. I think social care is an issue a bit like "growth" that we have been talking about, or reforming the tax system.
We all know these are major problems. Few people have a good idea of exactly how to fix those issues. Even fewer are willing to stake the political capital to actually tackle them . So nothing happens from parliament to parliament.
And frankly the UK public would almost certainly reject a party that had good ideas about these issues. Too big a change, too scary, too risky, so keep patching and tweaking the broken systems.
The political ‘wisdom’ is that there are hardly any votes in social care; surprising really, given the dramatic cost and effect on family finances when an elderly relative goes into care, as I am now dealing with. Ed Davey has gone a little way to proving this wisdom wrong; the LDs got a bit of traction for focusing on the issue during the GE and it was good to see Ed get a hat tip from the Budget speech. But Labour in particular always campaigns on the NHS (even in local elections) where it thinks the votes are, and has never made social care a priority. Streeting is clearly now fishing around for some way of offloading his promise of a resolution into some sort of cross-party long grass.
The problem iis the enormous cost, as May found out, any suggestion that the elderly should pitch in and share the risk of social care costs is political suicide. The only time a govt could do this is early in their term but Labour learnt a lesson when Cameron pulled out of cross party talks on a solution, choosing instead to use it for political point scoring.
Except that for many families, thats status quo. I've just this second sent another £6,000 over to the care home for my mother's next month, and we're selling her now vacant flat in order to cover future costs. Almost any change to the current arrangements would likely reduce our burden, and the Dilnot cap would have been most welcome, as we'll be up to it in about a year's time.
Similar situation in my family. Our inheritance from both sides has been wiped out by care costs; a result of brilliant efforts of the NHS to keep my grandparents alive.
It's a lottery and why, under the current system, inheritance tax feels fair to me. I'd rather it was upfront insurance premium that everyone paid though.
If they made inheritance tax 10% but with no exceptions, it would almost certainly raise more money than the current scheme full of a very expensive avoidance industry, that catches mostly the middle classes who happen to have a house in the South and some savings or pension - while the seriously wealthy pay little to nothing.
If it were up to me all inheritances would be taxed the same as income, with no exceptions.
Going to work to earn £50,000 shouldn't be taxed a single penny more than inheriting £50,000 that you haven't gone to work to earn.
IHT seems to evoke more emotion than any other tax, which is why there are so many reliefs. Politically extremely difficult.
My solution fixes that, it should be abolished and inheritance should be taxed as income instead.
No more IHT.
Would you also tax gifts?
I'd ban them for adults. Who really wants socks and toileteries from their family and friends. And who wants to spend their time coming up with fresh ideas.
LOL. You are a man after my own heart.
My (female) relatives regularly complain that I am "hard to buy for", this is despite my telling them every Christmas that – really – I don't want anything!
Gift-giving has very deep roots in human culture and is one of the things that binds people together.
It wouldn't go amiss for you to keep a list of a few books or other things that you could provide to people so that they could exercise this impulse.
Can't I just buy them dinner, which is what I usually do? People seem to like that.
Yes. Dinner out is a great gift.
Vouchers for an afternoon tea local to the recipient often go down well.
Imagine what she'd have done if the black hole actually existed!
A lot of comments are understandably partisan, but the independent organisations including the OBR, IFS, and Resolution Foundation are all singularly critical of the Autum Statement
Steady on. The piece in today's Times by the director of the IFS reads like at least one and a half cheers;
...credit where it’s due. The budget may only have done enough to keep public investment stable as a fraction of national income, but that’s better than the sharp fall pencilled in by Jeremy Hunt. The economic benefits will arrive years, if not decades, down the road. Subject to the money being spent well, this is an encouraging prioritisation of long-term growth...
..As far as the fiscal framework is concerned, targeting a current budget balance in 2029-30 for the next couple of years and then working to a rolling three-year target — ie, looking for a current balance three years out — makes a lot of sense.
We should also give credit for making a big choice: to raise taxes in order to support public services...
Compared with the review of the March 2024 budget, it's positively glowing;
One thing is for certain. Whoever is chancellor after the next election, they are going to have one heck of a difficult circle to square. They will inherit historically high taxes, struggling public services, a big debt interest bill, the highest debt in 60 years, and poor growth. The first post-election budget and spending review will contain some nasty surprises.
Worst thing about the NI hike is just how front loaded it is.
£615 on the first £9,100 of pay. The next £615 additional isn't attained till the employee hits £60,350 !
People complained about the 16 hour week employees being subsidised by the state. The state tackles the problem. People complain.
The state hasn't tackled the problem.
People working 16 hours a week still get their benefits in full and still face a roughly 80%+ marginal tax rate if they work any more hours. So they're still going to only work 16 hours a week because that's the only rational thing to do if you're in their shoes with the system that exists.
Tackling the problem means serious reform not jacking up a tax that doesn't remotely address the problem whatsoever.
Their NI moving from £0 to £615 doesnt address the problem "whatsoever"? Okie-dokey.
Worst thing about the NI hike is just how front loaded it is.
£615 on the first £9,100 of pay. The next £615 additional isn't attained till the employee hits £60,350 !
People complained about the 16 hour week employees being subsidised by the state. The state tackles the problem. People complain.
The state hasn't tackled the problem.
People working 16 hours a week still get their benefits in full and still face a roughly 80%+ marginal tax rate if they work any more hours. So they're still going to only work 16 hours a week because that's the only rational thing to do if you're in their shoes with the system that exists.
Tackling the problem means serious reform not jacking up a tax that doesn't remotely address the problem whatsoever.
Their NI moving from £0 to £615 doesnt address the problem "whatsoever"? Okie-dokey.
No it doesn't.
They still get thousands, or tens of thousands of pounds of benefits and are not going to work a single hour more than 16 because they're trapped on 16 hours a week with an 80%+ tax rate if they work any more.
Our vending machines have gone contactless yesterday. Fortunately there is still the cash option as well for people.
Not for much longer, I’d venture. The pool table in my local is now card only. I like to imagine certain PBers discovering this in horror as they furkle in their leather pouches for useless metal!
It's the local defibrillator group's annual tea and cake fundraiser this Sunday and I've been been making a special effort to accumulate some change so that I can pay for some cakes.
Eventually a younger person like myself is going to have to volunteer to help them switch their payments over to contactless, but for now it's the strongly-designed discs of shiny metal.
Worst thing about the NI hike is just how front loaded it is.
£615 on the first £9,100 of pay. The next £615 additional isn't attained till the employee hits £60,350 !
People complained about the 16 hour week employees being subsidised by the state. The state tackles the problem. People complain.
The state hasn't tackled the problem.
People working 16 hours a week still get their benefits in full and still face a roughly 80%+ marginal tax rate if they work any more hours. So they're still going to only work 16 hours a week because that's the only rational thing to do if you're in their shoes with the system that exists.
Tackling the problem means serious reform not jacking up a tax that doesn't remotely address the problem whatsoever.
Their NI moving from £0 to £615 doesnt address the problem "whatsoever"? Okie-dokey.
No it doesn't.
They still get thousands, or tens of thousands of pounds of benefits and are not going to work a single hour more than 16 because they're trapped on 16 hours a week with an 80%+ tax rate if they work any more.
How does £615 in NI fix any of that?
It fixes a related problem, that big business is getting subsidised by the state to employ such workers. That subsidy is now reduced by £615.
Let's say we could extend lifespans from the age of 88 (average) to 99 (average) but at the cost of £300bn extra on the public purse and with 50%+ of them with major and painful health issues for either themselves and /or their relatives as well.
Should we?
Not sure that question has an answer that remotely is possible short of euthanasia, and I am certain you are not suggesting that
This is a serious problem for governments going forward and I simply have no idea how the circle is squared
Not euthanasia but we are already prolonging lifespans over and above where they would otherwise be with expensive medical innovations and healthcare. When it doesn't work out people pass away naturally, and a bit earlier.
So these choices already exist.
I often wonder whether there's scope for a more humane but less interventionist approach to medication for diseases like dementia. There are often medications supplied for optimal body performance e.g. high blood pressure. Perhaps some of those medications could be reduced or left off without unduly impacting remaining quality of life but opening the way to an earlier natural death. That would seem to me much better than medically assisted death. More in the 'need not strive officiously' category.
There's probably scope for encouraging living wills ? It's something I'll consider in due course, having no desire to be kept going as a steadily emptying shell, for years on end.
When will the political class wake up to the social care crisis and finally accept health and social care are the same fucking thing? All part of a continuum of care. Directly linked. Hospitals cannot discharge because the care homes don't have staff and beds, OTs so short in supply it takes months to get an assessment to send someone home etc etc.
I am so bloody sick of this. Every single budget, year after year, decade after decade. Labour or Conservative.
You are right. I think social care is an issue a bit like "growth" that we have been talking about, or reforming the tax system.
We all know these are major problems. Few people have a good idea of exactly how to fix those issues. Even fewer are willing to stake the political capital to actually tackle them . So nothing happens from parliament to parliament.
And frankly the UK public would almost certainly reject a party that had good ideas about these issues. Too big a change, too scary, too risky, so keep patching and tweaking the broken systems.
The political ‘wisdom’ is that there are hardly any votes in social care; surprising really, given the dramatic cost and effect on family finances when an elderly relative goes into care, as I am now dealing with. Ed Davey has gone a little way to proving this wisdom wrong; the LDs got a bit of traction for focusing on the issue during the GE and it was good to see Ed get a hat tip from the Budget speech. But Labour in particular always campaigns on the NHS (even in local elections) where it thinks the votes are, and has never made social care a priority. Streeting is clearly now fishing around for some way of offloading his promise of a resolution into some sort of cross-party long grass.
The problem iis the enormous cost, as May found out, any suggestion that the elderly should pitch in and share the risk of social care costs is political suicide. The only time a govt could do this is early in their term but Labour learnt a lesson when Cameron pulled out of cross party talks on a solution, choosing instead to use it for political point scoring.
Except that for many families, thats status quo. I've just this second sent another £6,000 over to the care home for my mother's next month, and we're selling her now vacant flat in order to cover future costs. Almost any change to the current arrangements would likely reduce our burden, and the Dilnot cap would have been most welcome, as we'll be up to it in about a year's time.
Similar situation in my family. Our inheritance from both sides has been wiped out by care costs; a result of brilliant efforts of the NHS to keep my grandparents alive.
It's a lottery and why, under the current system, inheritance tax feels fair to me. I'd rather it was upfront insurance premium that everyone paid though.
If they made inheritance tax 10% but with no exceptions, it would almost certainly raise more money than the current scheme full of a very expensive avoidance industry, that catches mostly the middle classes who happen to have a house in the South and some savings or pension - while the seriously wealthy pay little to nothing.
If it were up to me all inheritances would be taxed the same as income, with no exceptions.
Going to work to earn £50,000 shouldn't be taxed a single penny more than inheriting £50,000 that you haven't gone to work to earn.
IHT seems to evoke more emotion than any other tax, which is why there are so many reliefs. Politically extremely difficult.
My solution fixes that, it should be abolished and inheritance should be taxed as income instead.
No more IHT.
Would you also tax gifts?
I'd ban them for adults. Who really wants socks and toileteries from their family and friends. And who wants to spend their time coming up with fresh ideas.
LOL. You are a man after my own heart.
My (female) relatives regularly complain that I am "hard to buy for", this is despite my telling them every Christmas that – really – I don't want anything!
Gift-giving has very deep roots in human culture and is one of the things that binds people together.
It wouldn't go amiss for you to keep a list of a few books or other things that you could provide to people so that they could exercise this impulse.
Can't I just buy them dinner, which is what I usually do? People seem to like that.
Yes. Dinner out is a great gift.
Vouchers for an afternoon tea local to the recipient often go down well.
Afternoon tea at the Lissard estate is a lovely treat. Just saying.
Worst thing about the NI hike is just how front loaded it is.
£615 on the first £9,100 of pay. The next £615 additional isn't attained till the employee hits £60,350 !
People complained about the 16 hour week employees being subsidised by the state. The state tackles the problem. People complain.
The state hasn't tackled the problem.
People working 16 hours a week still get their benefits in full and still face a roughly 80%+ marginal tax rate if they work any more hours. So they're still going to only work 16 hours a week because that's the only rational thing to do if you're in their shoes with the system that exists.
Tackling the problem means serious reform not jacking up a tax that doesn't remotely address the problem whatsoever.
Their NI moving from £0 to £615 doesnt address the problem "whatsoever"? Okie-dokey.
No it doesn't.
They still get thousands, or tens of thousands of pounds of benefits and are not going to work a single hour more than 16 because they're trapped on 16 hours a week with an 80%+ tax rate if they work any more.
How does £615 in NI fix any of that?
It fixes a related problem, that big business is getting subsidised by the state to employ such workers. That subsidy is now reduced by £615.
Its not true though, businesses don't get a penny in "subsidy" to hire such workers.
The benefit trap applies primarily to people with children working 16 hours a week. It is the employee, not the employer, who refuses to work more than 16 hours - indeed employers have a legal responsibility applied by the state to accept such "flexible working" requirements unless they have a good reason not to do so.
The minimum wage is such that if people are working full time (single) or a couple with kids are both working full time, then they're not entitled to any benefits. It is part timers with kids who get benefits and that's a choice of the state, not businesses.
If you want to tackle the problem then tackle the problem. Abolish the incentive to only work 16 hours.
Worst thing about the NI hike is just how front loaded it is.
£615 on the first £9,100 of pay. The next £615 additional isn't attained till the employee hits £60,350 !
People complained about the 16 hour week employees being subsidised by the state. The state tackles the problem. People complain.
The state hasn't tackled the problem.
People working 16 hours a week still get their benefits in full and still face a roughly 80%+ marginal tax rate if they work any more hours. So they're still going to only work 16 hours a week because that's the only rational thing to do if you're in their shoes with the system that exists.
Tackling the problem means serious reform not jacking up a tax that doesn't remotely address the problem whatsoever.
Their NI moving from £0 to £615 doesnt address the problem "whatsoever"? Okie-dokey.
No it doesn't.
They still get thousands, or tens of thousands of pounds of benefits and are not going to work a single hour more than 16 because they're trapped on 16 hours a week with an 80%+ tax rate if they work any more.
How does £615 in NI fix any of that?
It fixes a related problem, that big business is getting subsidised by the state to employ such workers. That subsidy is now reduced by £615.
To be clear - it removes the cost savings from employing 2 people on 16 hours rather 1 person on 32 hours to now having to employ 4 people on 8 hours instead.
Putting your father to bed at 10:30pm, for him to be up dressed and ready for the next day 1hr later. A smart guy trying to help , he found and took his morning medication. Essentially double dosing warfarin. Dangerous.
He refused to return to bed, and decided to sit the whole night out in his wide awake in his chair. Heartbreaking.
This was not the night he decided to help out, fell down the stairs, broke his shoulder and landed himself in hospital for three months. The interesting thing is that he somehow managed to get back to bed. We only only discovered the massive bruise when he couldn’t get out of bed.
I assure you that this kind of dementia care is beyond the capability of most families. A problem for society as a whole to solve.
Why should the whole of society have responsibility for it?
This might sound harsh but we have a principle here that we deify length of life regardless of quality or cost.
Dementia is a very cruel fate and I wouldn't wish it on anyone but what sort of sense does it make to bankrupt ourselves to keep someone in that condition.
Because like much of life it’s primarily down to luck. So we all carry the burden of ill fortune and share the benefits of good fortune.
My thesis is that individuals should insure and manage more of that risk themselves, and think sometimes throwing it onto "society" is a way for some - not you - getting away from responsibilities for elderly parents or relatives that they'd rather not have to deal with.
Nah. That’s a cold bleak future. We’re all in it together. I have a responsibility to you.
You could buy me a pint, I suppose.
Look, I'm not saying dog eat dog. But I think we have an absurd level of overcommitment to very expensive chronic and morbid conditions atm that are overly socialised and not ensured enough.
Property, pensions and houses should be used to part fund them. As Theresa May argued.
We all need to contribute and share the burden, much as we do with the lottery of cancer.
We need to solve cancer.
That disease is cruel and fucking sick. Took a friend of mine 3 months ago who was my age (42 years old) and mother to a six year old boy.
Haven't cried that much on the way home from a funeral ever.
Cruel disease. I’m sorry. We need to solve cancer.
Motor Neurone Disease is one I want to see gone. Or, at least, treatable. Took our daughter ten years ago, at 49.
Heartbreaking. I’m sorry. Let’s see that one gone too.
Huntington's Disease is another really distressing one - agonisingly painful and degenerative.
A friend (a professor of biochemistry) has a cure for it which works 100% of the time, but unfortunately can't find the funds to get it through the testing process. He often gets emails from people who are suffering from it and beg him to help them but without the relevant approvals there is nothing he can do. They break his heart.
Do you have a link to more information?
I had several relatives who had Huntington's, and went through the genetic counsellng process. It stopped one generation back in my case.
Imagine what she'd have done if the black hole actually existed!
A lot of comments are understandably partisan, but the independent organisations including the OBR, IFS, and Resolution Foundation are all singularly critical of the Autum Statement
Steady on. The piece in today's Times by the director of the IFS reads like at least one and a half cheers;
...credit where it’s due. The budget may only have done enough to keep public investment stable as a fraction of national income, but that’s better than the sharp fall pencilled in by Jeremy Hunt. The economic benefits will arrive years, if not decades, down the road. Subject to the money being spent well, this is an encouraging prioritisation of long-term growth...
..As far as the fiscal framework is concerned, targeting a current budget balance in 2029-30 for the next couple of years and then working to a rolling three-year target — ie, looking for a current balance three years out — makes a lot of sense.
We should also give credit for making a big choice: to raise taxes in order to support public services...
Compared with the review of the March 2024 budget, it's positively glowing;
One thing is for certain. Whoever is chancellor after the next election, they are going to have one heck of a difficult circle to square. They will inherit historically high taxes, struggling public services, a big debt interest bill, the highest debt in 60 years, and poor growth. The first post-election budget and spending review will contain some nasty surprises.
Charlie Kirk is upset that Republican women may “undermine their husbands” and secretly vote for Harris while telling their husbands they voted for Trump, even though the husband “works his tail off to make sure that she can have a nice life.” https://x.com/RonFilipkowski/status/1851815354009342217
Our vending machines have gone contactless yesterday. Fortunately there is still the cash option as well for people.
Not for much longer, I’d venture. The pool table in my local is now card only. I like to imagine certain PBers discovering this in horror as they furkle in their leather pouches for useless metal!
It's the local defibrillator group's annual tea and cake fundraiser this Sunday and I've been been making a special effort to accumulate some change so that I can pay for some cakes.
Eventually a younger person like myself is going to have to volunteer to help them switch their payments over to contactless, but for now it's the strongly-designed discs of shiny metal.
It's really easy. Explain to them that they'd take more money with contactless. Our rugby club oldsters were deeply opposed but once they switched they won't go back. They doubled revenues on the last BBQ because the punters weren't limited by the scraps of pointless metal and paper in their pockets.
(And setting it up is child's play. Really simple app then punters tap your phone to pay)
Imagine what she'd have done if the black hole actually existed!
A lot of comments are understandably partisan, but the independent organisations including the OBR, IFS, and Resolution Foundation are all singularly critical of the Autum Statement
Steady on. The piece in today's Times by the director of the IFS reads like at least one and a half cheers;
...credit where it’s due. The budget may only have done enough to keep public investment stable as a fraction of national income, but that’s better than the sharp fall pencilled in by Jeremy Hunt. The economic benefits will arrive years, if not decades, down the road. Subject to the money being spent well, this is an encouraging prioritisation of long-term growth...
..As far as the fiscal framework is concerned, targeting a current budget balance in 2029-30 for the next couple of years and then working to a rolling three-year target — ie, looking for a current balance three years out — makes a lot of sense.
We should also give credit for making a big choice: to raise taxes in order to support public services...
Compared with the review of the March 2024 budget, it's positively glowing;
One thing is for certain. Whoever is chancellor after the next election, they are going to have one heck of a difficult circle to square. They will inherit historically high taxes, struggling public services, a big debt interest bill, the highest debt in 60 years, and poor growth. The first post-election budget and spending review will contain some nasty surprises.
Charlie Kirk is upset that Republican women may “undermine their husbands” and secretly vote for Harris while telling their husbands they voted for Trump, even though the husband “works his tail off to make sure that she can have a nice life.” https://x.com/RonFilipkowski/status/1851815354009342217
Seems to be a GOP thing. Here's the Fox News host who just married the researcher he had an affair with, while married to his first wife.
Jesse: if i found out my wife secretly voted for harris, "that's the same thing as having an affair... that violates the sanctity of our marriage... that would be D Day" https://x.com/cynicalzoomer/status/1851744214071332869
Charlie Kirk is upset that Republican women may “undermine their husbands” and secretly vote for Harris while telling their husbands they voted for Trump, even though the husband “works his tail off to make sure that she can have a nice life.” https://x.com/RonFilipkowski/status/1851815354009342217
That's odd because Trump keeps on about his voters being fat, lazy male slobs stuck on the sofa who need a prod from the wife to get out and vote.
Putting your father to bed at 10:30pm, for him to be up dressed and ready for the next day 1hr later. A smart guy trying to help , he found and took his morning medication. Essentially double dosing warfarin. Dangerous.
He refused to return to bed, and decided to sit the whole night out in his wide awake in his chair. Heartbreaking.
This was not the night he decided to help out, fell down the stairs, broke his shoulder and landed himself in hospital for three months. The interesting thing is that he somehow managed to get back to bed. We only only discovered the massive bruise when he couldn’t get out of bed.
I assure you that this kind of dementia care is beyond the capability of most families. A problem for society as a whole to solve.
Why should the whole of society have responsibility for it?
This might sound harsh but we have a principle here that we deify length of life regardless of quality or cost.
Dementia is a very cruel fate and I wouldn't wish it on anyone but what sort of sense does it make to bankrupt ourselves to keep someone in that condition.
Because like much of life it’s primarily down to luck. So we all carry the burden of ill fortune and share the benefits of good fortune.
My thesis is that individuals should insure and manage more of that risk themselves, and think sometimes throwing it onto "society" is a way for some - not you - getting away from responsibilities for elderly parents or relatives that they'd rather not have to deal with.
Nah. That’s a cold bleak future. We’re all in it together. I have a responsibility to you.
You could buy me a pint, I suppose.
Look, I'm not saying dog eat dog. But I think we have an absurd level of overcommitment to very expensive chronic and morbid conditions atm that are overly socialised and not ensured enough.
Property, pensions and houses should be used to part fund them. As Theresa May argued.
We all need to contribute and share the burden, much as we do with the lottery of cancer.
We need to solve cancer.
That disease is cruel and fucking sick. Took a friend of mine 3 months ago who was my age (42 years old) and mother to a six year old boy.
Haven't cried that much on the way home from a funeral ever.
Cruel disease. I’m sorry. We need to solve cancer.
Motor Neurone Disease is one I want to see gone. Or, at least, treatable. Took our daughter ten years ago, at 49.
Heartbreaking. I’m sorry. Let’s see that one gone too.
Huntington's Disease is another really distressing one - agonisingly painful and degenerative.
A friend (a professor of biochemistry) has a cure for it which works 100% of the time, but unfortunately can't find the funds to get it through the testing process. He often gets emails from people who are suffering from it and beg him to help them but without the relevant approvals there is nothing he can do. They break his heart.
Do you have a link to more information?
I had several relatives who had Huntington's, and went through the genetic counsellng process. It stopped one generation back in my case.
It's using zinc fingers. There's some info online if you use Google - Huntington's Disease and zinc fingers that is. It might as well be in Chinese as far as I'm concerned but sounds convincing when it's described.
I'm sorry, but he does completely invalidate his argument with this:
"I've seen some hysterical takes on this: £20k could make the difference between a £2m farm being profitable or loss making. [£20k over ten years = IHT on £2m]
Nope. If it's making less than £20k profit/year, it ain't worth £2m."
Charlie Kirk is upset that Republican women may “undermine their husbands” and secretly vote for Harris while telling their husbands they voted for Trump, even though the husband “works his tail off to make sure that she can have a nice life.” https://x.com/RonFilipkowski/status/1851815354009342217
Seems to be a GOP thing. Here's the Fox News host who just married the researcher he had an affair with, while married to his first wife.
Jesse: if i found out my wife secretly voted for harris, "that's the same thing as having an affair... that violates the sanctity of our marriage... that would be D Day" https://x.com/cynicalzoomer/status/1851744214071332869
A lot of Republicans have read the Handmaid's Tale and thought it was an instruction manual.
Charlie Kirk is upset that Republican women may “undermine their husbands” and secretly vote for Harris while telling their husbands they voted for Trump, even though the husband “works his tail off to make sure that she can have a nice life.” https://x.com/RonFilipkowski/status/1851815354009342217
Seems to be a GOP thing. Here's the Fox News host who just married the researcher he had an affair with, while married to his first wife.
Jesse: if i found out my wife secretly voted for harris, "that's the same thing as having an affair... that violates the sanctity of our marriage... that would be D Day" https://x.com/cynicalzoomer/status/1851744214071332869
A lot of Republicans have read the Handmaid's Tale and thought it was an instruction manual.
Charlie Kirk is upset that Republican women may “undermine their husbands” and secretly vote for Harris while telling their husbands they voted for Trump, even though the husband “works his tail off to make sure that she can have a nice life.” https://x.com/RonFilipkowski/status/1851815354009342217
Seems to be a GOP thing. Here's the Fox News host who just married the researcher he had an affair with, while married to his first wife.
Jesse: if i found out my wife secretly voted for harris, "that's the same thing as having an affair... that violates the sanctity of our marriage... that would be D Day" https://x.com/cynicalzoomer/status/1851744214071332869
A lot of Republicans have read the Handmaid's Tale and thought it was an instruction manual.
Imagine what she'd have done if the black hole actually existed!
A lot of comments are understandably partisan, but the independent organisations including the OBR, IFS, and Resolution Foundation are all singularly critical of the Autum Statement
Steady on. The piece in today's Times by the director of the IFS reads like at least one and a half cheers;
...credit where it’s due. The budget may only have done enough to keep public investment stable as a fraction of national income, but that’s better than the sharp fall pencilled in by Jeremy Hunt. The economic benefits will arrive years, if not decades, down the road. Subject to the money being spent well, this is an encouraging prioritisation of long-term growth...
..As far as the fiscal framework is concerned, targeting a current budget balance in 2029-30 for the next couple of years and then working to a rolling three-year target — ie, looking for a current balance three years out — makes a lot of sense.
We should also give credit for making a big choice: to raise taxes in order to support public services...
Compared with the review of the March 2024 budget, it's positively glowing;
One thing is for certain. Whoever is chancellor after the next election, they are going to have one heck of a difficult circle to square. They will inherit historically high taxes, struggling public services, a big debt interest bill, the highest debt in 60 years, and poor growth. The first post-election budget and spending review will contain some nasty surprises.
Yes, we're still in "somewhat less bad than the other lot" territory. An arresting image from Sam Freedman this morning;
The image that kept occurring to me as I read through the details of the budget was of an Indiana Jones style adventurer stuck in a booby-trapped cave with the walls closing in.
Yesterday’s announcements were the equivalent of slowing down the mechanism using a strategically placed rock. Imminent death is averted but only for so long.
Some more growth has got to come from somewhere, probably by the 2027 spending review. Planning reform is the obvious lever to pull. Fail with that and they, and we, are very deep in the doodoo.
Imagine what she'd have done if the black hole actually existed!
A lot of comments are understandably partisan, but the independent organisations including the OBR, IFS, and Resolution Foundation are all singularly critical of the Autum Statement
Steady on. The piece in today's Times by the director of the IFS reads like at least one and a half cheers;
...credit where it’s due. The budget may only have done enough to keep public investment stable as a fraction of national income, but that’s better than the sharp fall pencilled in by Jeremy Hunt. The economic benefits will arrive years, if not decades, down the road. Subject to the money being spent well, this is an encouraging prioritisation of long-term growth...
..As far as the fiscal framework is concerned, targeting a current budget balance in 2029-30 for the next couple of years and then working to a rolling three-year target — ie, looking for a current balance three years out — makes a lot of sense.
We should also give credit for making a big choice: to raise taxes in order to support public services...
Compared with the review of the March 2024 budget, it's positively glowing;
One thing is for certain. Whoever is chancellor after the next election, they are going to have one heck of a difficult circle to square. They will inherit historically high taxes, struggling public services, a big debt interest bill, the highest debt in 60 years, and poor growth. The first post-election budget and spending review will contain some nasty surprises.
Yes, we're still in "somewhat less bad than the other lot" territory. An arresting image from Sam Freedman this morning;
The image that kept occurring to me as I read through the details of the budget was of an Indiana Jones style adventurer stuck in a booby-trapped cave with the walls closing in.
Yesterday’s announcements were the equivalent of slowing down the mechanism using a strategically placed rock. Imminent death is averted but only for so long.
Some more growth has got to come from somewhere, probably by the 2027 spending review. Planning reform is the obvious lever to pull. Fail with that and they, and we, are very deep in the doodoo.
Planning reform would fix most of the country's problems.
Imagine what she'd have done if the black hole actually existed!
A lot of comments are understandably partisan, but the independent organisations including the OBR, IFS, and Resolution Foundation are all singularly critical of the Autum Statement
Steady on. The piece in today's Times by the director of the IFS reads like at least one and a half cheers;
...credit where it’s due. The budget may only have done enough to keep public investment stable as a fraction of national income, but that’s better than the sharp fall pencilled in by Jeremy Hunt. The economic benefits will arrive years, if not decades, down the road. Subject to the money being spent well, this is an encouraging prioritisation of long-term growth...
..As far as the fiscal framework is concerned, targeting a current budget balance in 2029-30 for the next couple of years and then working to a rolling three-year target — ie, looking for a current balance three years out — makes a lot of sense.
We should also give credit for making a big choice: to raise taxes in order to support public services...
Compared with the review of the March 2024 budget, it's positively glowing;
One thing is for certain. Whoever is chancellor after the next election, they are going to have one heck of a difficult circle to square. They will inherit historically high taxes, struggling public services, a big debt interest bill, the highest debt in 60 years, and poor growth. The first post-election budget and spending review will contain some nasty surprises.
Yes, we're still in "somewhat less bad than the other lot" territory. An arresting image from Sam Freedman this morning;
The image that kept occurring to me as I read through the details of the budget was of an Indiana Jones style adventurer stuck in a booby-trapped cave with the walls closing in.
Yesterday’s announcements were the equivalent of slowing down the mechanism using a strategically placed rock. Imminent death is averted but only for so long.
Some more growth has got to come from somewhere, probably by the 2027 spending review. Planning reform is the obvious lever to pull. Fail with that and they, and we, are very deep in the doodoo.
We are fooked anyway, Iran vs Israel/US kicks off shortly, the strait of Hormuz closes and poop interacts with the whirligig
Leon (who seems to have disappeared ?) is fond of talking about a "Korean style armistice". Nonsense, of course, for multiple reasons, but this demonstrates the biggest single one.
US Secretary of Defense confirmed that Washington would defend South Korea by using all available weapons, including nuclear weapons, if necessary. Any nuclear attack by the DPRK against the US or its allies and partners would lead to the end of the Kim Jong Un regime. https://x.com/Hromadske/status/1851922058030256371
Unless Ukraine is in NATO, the comparison is simply absurd.
It would require a nuclear guarantee from the UK and France. Not enough nukes to defeat Russia in an all out war, but enough for MAD.
But Europe definitely needs to get its act together, and part of that is by excluding, or threatening to exclude, bad actors like Hungary or Slovakia under Fico from NATO and the security apparatus of the EU as well as taking away their veto over economic sanctions. The US is going to become semi-detached from NATO even if Harris wins, and potentially actively hostile if Trump does - only mutual hostility to China would remain as common cause, and NATO is not the main geographical player in that theatre.
Any thoughts on simple investment strategies for a Trump win that could hedge against global trade wars?
On the personal level, I’ll be looking to move investment into domestic industries with limited exposure to global markets.
At corporate level, buying domestic players in major markets, and investing in duplicate supply chains makes sense.
Leon (who seems to have disappeared ?) is fond of talking about a "Korean style armistice". Nonsense, of course, for multiple reasons, but this demonstrates the biggest single one.
US Secretary of Defense confirmed that Washington would defend South Korea by using all available weapons, including nuclear weapons, if necessary. Any nuclear attack by the DPRK against the US or its allies and partners would lead to the end of the Kim Jong Un regime. https://x.com/Hromadske/status/1851922058030256371
Unless Ukraine is in NATO, the comparison is simply absurd.
It would require a nuclear guarantee from the UK and France. Not enough nukes to defeat Russia in an all out war, but enough for MAD.
But Europe definitely needs to get its act together, and part of that is by excluding, or threatening to exclude, bad actors like Hungary or Slovakia under Fico from NATO and the security apparatus of the EU as well as taking away their veto over economic sanctions. The US is going to become semi-detached from NATO even if Harris wins, and potentially actively hostile if Trump does - only mutual hostility to China would remain as common cause, and NATO is not the main geographical player in that theatre.
Any thoughts on simple investment strategies for a Trump win that could hedge against global trade wars?
It's a fascinating account of religious diversity in all its glory. But it doesn't reveal why they decided to kidnap this particular unfortunate coroner. Had he done something to upset them?
Charlie Kirk is upset that Republican women may “undermine their husbands” and secretly vote for Harris while telling their husbands they voted for Trump, even though the husband “works his tail off to make sure that she can have a nice life.” https://x.com/RonFilipkowski/status/1851815354009342217
Seems to be a GOP thing. Here's the Fox News host who just married the researcher he had an affair with, while married to his first wife.
Jesse: if i found out my wife secretly voted for harris, "that's the same thing as having an affair... that violates the sanctity of our marriage... that would be D Day" https://x.com/cynicalzoomer/status/1851744214071332869
Safest thing is just to take the vote away from women and let the menfolk vote on their behalf. A reading from Timothy in the bible would support this view.
Have you ever seen Harris in a hat? No, you have not, because she's a brazen hussy.
Go directly to Gilead, do not pause to think or worry.
Charlie Kirk is upset that Republican women may “undermine their husbands” and secretly vote for Harris while telling their husbands they voted for Trump, even though the husband “works his tail off to make sure that she can have a nice life.” https://x.com/RonFilipkowski/status/1851815354009342217
Seems to be a GOP thing. Here's the Fox News host who just married the researcher he had an affair with, while married to his first wife.
Jesse: if i found out my wife secretly voted for harris, "that's the same thing as having an affair... that violates the sanctity of our marriage... that would be D Day" https://x.com/cynicalzoomer/status/1851744214071332869
A lot of Republicans have read the Handmaid's Tale and thought it was an instruction manual.
A handmaid?????
(Requires passing acquaintance with amdram Lady Bracknell for full effect)
Our vending machines have gone contactless yesterday. Fortunately there is still the cash option as well for people.
Not for much longer, I’d venture. The pool table in my local is now card only. I like to imagine certain PBers discovering this in horror as they furkle in their leather pouches for useless metal!
Our local milk vending machines (supply your own bottle, they supply the milk) are contactless only. A month ago my card got declined (reached its limit for contactless). I could not use it until I went somewhere that allowed me to enter a pin.
Does this happen at the pool table too? I guess you could go to the bar and enter the pin there but I had no way to buy the milk at any of the three milk vending stations I tried.
Our vending machines have gone contactless yesterday. Fortunately there is still the cash option as well for people.
Not for much longer, I’d venture. The pool table in my local is now card only. I like to imagine certain PBers discovering this in horror as they furkle in their leather pouches for useless metal!
Charlie Kirk is upset that Republican women may “undermine their husbands” and secretly vote for Harris while telling their husbands they voted for Trump, even though the husband “works his tail off to make sure that she can have a nice life.” https://x.com/RonFilipkowski/status/1851815354009342217
Seems to be a GOP thing. Here's the Fox News host who just married the researcher he had an affair with, while married to his first wife.
Jesse: if i found out my wife secretly voted for harris, "that's the same thing as having an affair... that violates the sanctity of our marriage... that would be D Day" https://x.com/cynicalzoomer/status/1851744214071332869
The debate has been triggered because Harris is targeting married women on the basis that, while there is a gender split on voting, that's primarily driven by single women - I believe married women narrowly voted for Trump last time. The logic is that married women come under pressure from their husbands, so Harris has run ads basically reminding women it's a secret ballot etc.
Conveniently for her, some Republicans are responding to this in a stupid way (essentially "women damned well should vote as their husband says...") rather than just saying "this is all rather patronising... married women aren't being pushed around by Trumpian husbands at all, it's just that they like Donald because he's in favour of working families etc".
Our vending machines have gone contactless yesterday. Fortunately there is still the cash option as well for people.
Not for much longer, I’d venture. The pool table in my local is now card only. I like to imagine certain PBers discovering this in horror as they furkle in their leather pouches for useless metal!
Our local milk vending machines (supply your own bottle, they supply the milk) are contactless only. A month ago my card got declined (reached its limit for contactless). I could not use it until I went somewhere that allowed me to enter a pin.
Does this happen at the pool table too? I guess you could go to the bar and enter the pin there but I had no way to buy the milk at any of the three milk vending stations I tried.
#Firstworldproblem
Just use your phone/watch to pay – there's no limit to contactless that I have ever encountered.
Putting your father to bed at 10:30pm, for him to be up dressed and ready for the next day 1hr later. A smart guy trying to help , he found and took his morning medication. Essentially double dosing warfarin. Dangerous.
He refused to return to bed, and decided to sit the whole night out in his wide awake in his chair. Heartbreaking.
This was not the night he decided to help out, fell down the stairs, broke his shoulder and landed himself in hospital for three months. The interesting thing is that he somehow managed to get back to bed. We only only discovered the massive bruise when he couldn’t get out of bed.
I assure you that this kind of dementia care is beyond the capability of most families. A problem for society as a whole to solve.
Why should the whole of society have responsibility for it?
This might sound harsh but we have a principle here that we deify length of life regardless of quality or cost.
Dementia is a very cruel fate and I wouldn't wish it on anyone but what sort of sense does it make to bankrupt ourselves to keep someone in that condition.
Because like much of life it’s primarily down to luck. So we all carry the burden of ill fortune and share the benefits of good fortune.
My thesis is that individuals should insure and manage more of that risk themselves, and think sometimes throwing it onto "society" is a way for some - not you - getting away from responsibilities for elderly parents or relatives that they'd rather not have to deal with.
Nah. That’s a cold bleak future. We’re all in it together. I have a responsibility to you.
You could buy me a pint, I suppose.
Look, I'm not saying dog eat dog. But I think we have an absurd level of overcommitment to very expensive chronic and morbid conditions atm that are overly socialised and not ensured enough.
Property, pensions and houses should be used to part fund them. As Theresa May argued.
We all need to contribute and share the burden, much as we do with the lottery of cancer.
We need to solve cancer.
That disease is cruel and fucking sick. Took a friend of mine 3 months ago who was my age (42 years old) and mother to a six year old boy.
Haven't cried that much on the way home from a funeral ever.
Cruel disease. I’m sorry. We need to solve cancer.
Motor Neurone Disease is one I want to see gone. Or, at least, treatable. Took our daughter ten years ago, at 49.
Heartbreaking. I’m sorry. Let’s see that one gone too.
Huntington's Disease is another really distressing one - agonisingly painful and degenerative.
A friend (a professor of biochemistry) has a cure for it which works 100% of the time, but unfortunately can't find the funds to get it through the testing process. He often gets emails from people who are suffering from it and beg him to help them but without the relevant approvals there is nothing he can do. They break his heart.
Something about that doesn't ring true, tbh. He must have published data so why can he not get funding?
Anyway before I disappear off into the ether again in the next day ir so, my US prediction is for the following states go be won by Trump in an easy EC victory for him
All of 2020 plus
Pennsylvania Michigan (Coin Toss) Wisconsin Georgia Nevada Arizona (Coin toss) Virginia (Perhaps) New Hampshire
Comments
Owen Winter
@OwenWntr
·
41m
A million polls an hour but Harris's nationwide lead has been 1.5 for six days straight https://economist.com/interactive/us-2024-election/trump-harris-polls
https://x.com/OwenWntr/status/1851945602377990253
https://www.calviri.com/
If you are building a personal Ponzi scheme in which case there's greater risk, which also has to be managed. Anyone doing that now will be doing it through a company not personally, as the Osborne tax-business-finance-costs-as-if-was-income (roughly) measures killed that model as personal ownership. The sweet spots for personally owned rentals are either just a couple of properties or almost no leverage.
If you can't manage the business well enough, then don't be in the game.
One of them seems to be a property professional, and I see no indication they are being forced out by a business collapse, so they seem to have basic competence but need to wind it down.
Thou shalt not kill; but need'st not strive
Officiously to keep alive.
But "striving officiously" is an awfully grey area, and gets more so each year.
And whilst it's easy to say"put me in a hospice and let nature take its course" in the abstract, it's much harder to do when it's a real person who you know and love in front of you.
I appreciate you evidently love the NHS but it is crap. Or rather, it is brilliant on many measures apart from saving lives and health outcomes.
My sister was just invited for a smear test which is available, apparently, to "all women and those people with cervixes". This is not a political correctness gone mad rant but that is where the money is going. Could the budget used for developing and writing that not have been used to "check signage".
"Something to eat, something to read, something they want, something they need."
As you both say, most of us on here don't lack anything that we need, and if there are still things that we want we probably have a compulsive collecting habit that needs attention.
But something consumable shouldn't be a problem clutter wise, and even the most ascetic of us need some calories every week to keep us ticking over.
£615 on the first £9,100 of pay. The next £615 additional isn't attained till the employee hits £60,350 !
So I bought my friend a 12-yr old something.
Quick and brutal education, that.
https://news.sky.com/story/disposable-income-levels-to-worsen-and-wages-to-stagnate-in-wake-of-budget-says-thinktank-13245253
But those do both apply, and I would welcome further stronger controls on portfolio landlords.
Is this Sovereign Citizen types gone completely off-the-rails?
Report:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c5ym02kj146o
Sentencing remarks:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=swM2vw4eXBY
Quite heavy sentences.
The state tackles the problem.
People complain.
The signal - and the noise.
Societal burden sharing is simply more efficient. And it needn't bankrupt us, as Dilnot calculated.
Why oh why couldn't they have used their excuse list of black holes, unsustainable NI cuts, NHS improvements or whatever and just increased income tax?
"Sorry, we had no choice. Manifesto pledges are not subject to legitimate expectation."
Why must we suffer really crap decisions just because the government wants to try and hide the obvious?
A friend (a professor of biochemistry) has a cure for it which works 100% of the time, but unfortunately can't find the funds to get it through the testing process. He often gets emails from people who are suffering from it and beg him to help them but without the relevant approvals there is nothing he can do. They break his heart.
The NHS is full of people who walk past the crisp packet because it isn't their job to pick up crisp packets and meanwhile the place is full to brimming with rubbish. And they don't care enough either to pick the damn thing up or to ask the cleaners to do so.
And Cheese & Onion if you're wondering.
But of course if you start arguing that philosophically medicine should concentrate on decreasing suffering instead of increasing life span, we might as well chuck the planet into a black hole and be done with it.
This is Hard with a capital H.
People working 16 hours a week still get their benefits in full and still face a roughly 80%+ marginal tax rate if they work any more hours. So they're still going to only work 16 hours a week because that's the only rational thing to do if you're in their shoes with the system that exists.
Tackling the problem means serious reform not jacking up a tax that doesn't remotely address the problem whatsoever.
There are elements of the budget which the IFS and Resolution Foundation highlight as having possibly harmful effects, and it's clear that some of the interventions (particularly the secondary threshold change) are difficult to model and rely on some tenuous assumptions. The IFS is frustrated by the jack of ambition in tax reform, and the disengenous assumptions on fuel duty.
The Joseph Rowntree foundation highlight just how good the budget is for pensioners compared with other groups. I'm sure you're delighted.
Which they then boast about having attracted to their stares when the money is spent there.
Just utterly incoherent stuff.
General election poll
🔴 Trump 49% (+3)
🔵 Harris 46%
Last poll - 🔵 Harris +2
J. L Partners - 1000 LV - 10/29
Around 2m people getting average 5 years extra good quality of life @ £25k per QALY would make it marginal on current NHS calculations if over 11 years and a complete no per year.
I would say no regardless.
...credit where it’s due. The budget may only have done enough to keep public investment stable as a fraction of national income, but that’s better than the sharp fall pencilled in by Jeremy Hunt. The economic benefits will arrive years, if not decades, down the road. Subject to the money being spent well, this is an encouraging prioritisation of long-term growth...
..As far as the fiscal framework is concerned, targeting a current budget balance in 2029-30 for the next couple of years and then working to a rolling three-year target — ie, looking for a current balance three years out — makes a lot of sense.
We should also give credit for making a big choice: to raise taxes in order to support public services...
https://ifs.org.uk/articles/there-are-big-risks-lurking-budget
Compared with the review of the March 2024 budget, it's positively glowing;
One thing is for certain. Whoever is chancellor after the next election, they are going to have one heck of a difficult circle to square. They will inherit historically high taxes, struggling public services, a big debt interest bill, the highest debt in 60 years, and poor growth. The first post-election budget and spending review will contain some nasty surprises.
https://ifs.org.uk/articles/poor-old-jeremy-hunt-maxes-out-his-budget-headroom
They still get thousands, or tens of thousands of pounds of benefits and are not going to work a single hour more than 16 because they're trapped on 16 hours a week with an 80%+ tax rate if they work any more.
How does £615 in NI fix any of that?
Eventually a younger person like myself is going to have to volunteer to help them switch their payments over to contactless, but for now it's the strongly-designed discs of shiny metal.
It's something I'll consider in due course, having no desire to be kept going as a steadily emptying shell, for years on end.
The benefit trap applies primarily to people with children working 16 hours a week. It is the employee, not the employer, who refuses to work more than 16 hours - indeed employers have a legal responsibility applied by the state to accept such "flexible working" requirements unless they have a good reason not to do so.
The minimum wage is such that if people are working full time (single) or a couple with kids are both working full time, then they're not entitled to any benefits. It is part timers with kids who get benefits and that's a choice of the state, not businesses.
If you want to tackle the problem then tackle the problem. Abolish the incentive to only work 16 hours.
I had several relatives who had Huntington's, and went through the genetic counsellng process. It stopped one generation back in my case.
Happy Birthday.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/live/2024/oct/31/rachel-reeves-autumn-budget-labour-tax-rises-uk-politics-latest
Dan Neidle
@DanNeidle
Lots of over-the-top coverage right now about the £1m cap on inheritance tax agricultural property relief (APR).
https://x.com/DanNeidle/status/1851956384167776598
Charlie Kirk is upset that Republican women may “undermine their husbands” and secretly vote for Harris while telling their husbands they voted for Trump, even though the husband “works his tail off to make sure that she can have a nice life.”
https://x.com/RonFilipkowski/status/1851815354009342217
(And setting it up is child's play. Really simple app then punters tap your phone to pay)
I wouldn’t put money on that poll.
Here's the Fox News host who just married the researcher he had an affair with, while married to his first wife.
Jesse: if i found out my wife secretly voted for harris, "that's the same thing as having an affair... that violates the sanctity of our marriage... that would be D Day"
https://x.com/cynicalzoomer/status/1851744214071332869
"I've seen some hysterical takes on this: £20k could make the difference between a £2m farm being profitable or loss making. [£20k over ten years = IHT on £2m]
Nope. If it's making less than £20k profit/year, it ain't worth £2m."
That is quite obviously wrong.
He needs to watch Clarkson's Farm.
The image that kept occurring to me as I read through the details of the budget was of an Indiana Jones style adventurer stuck in a booby-trapped cave with the walls closing in.
Yesterday’s announcements were the equivalent of slowing down the mechanism using a strategically placed rock. Imminent death is averted but only for so long.
Some more growth has got to come from somewhere, probably by the 2027 spending review. Planning reform is the obvious lever to pull. Fail with that and they, and we, are very deep in the doodoo.
At corporate level, buying domestic players in major markets, and investing in duplicate supply chains makes sense.
Though others are already doing so.
Have you ever seen Harris in a hat? No, you have not, because she's a brazen hussy.
Go directly to Gilead, do not pause to think or worry.
(Requires passing acquaintance with amdram Lady Bracknell for full effect)
Does this happen at the pool table too? I guess you could go to the bar and enter the pin there but I had no way to buy the milk at any of the three milk vending stations I tried.
#Firstworldproblem
Conveniently for her, some Republicans are responding to this in a stupid way (essentially "women damned well should vote as their husband says...") rather than just saying "this is all rather patronising... married women aren't being pushed around by Trumpian husbands at all, it's just that they like Donald because he's in favour of working families etc".
All of 2020 plus
Pennsylvania
Michigan
(Coin Toss) Wisconsin
Georgia
Nevada
Arizona
(Coin toss) Virginia
(Perhaps) New Hampshire