So we give vaccines to Oz rather than, say, sub-saharan Africa.
Pfizer.
Exactly: they chances of Pfizer being wasted in Africa (as a consequence of the storage requirements) are at least 10x that of AZ.
Better to give the more robust vaccines to Africa, rather than the more delicate ones.
40% of our initial vaccine donations go to Australia.
It's not a "donation" - its a swap - they get ours now, we get theirs later.
Even worse let's play swapsies with those nice other developed nations.
Which under developed nation would you prefer to play swapsies with? Or would you rather we give Pfizer doses to countries that couldn't practically distribute them?
Prime Minister Scott Morrison said the UK deal doubles the number of Pfizer doses available in September. Throughout the month, Australia will receive more than 9 million doses of Pfizer alongside 1 million Moderna doses and continued AstraZeneca supply.
“From Downing Street to Down Under we are doubling down on the Pfizer doses available to us,” he said. “The plane’s on the tarmac now, it will be leaving tomorrow and those [Pfizer] doses will be coming over the course of the next few weeks.”
Britain’s high commissioner to Australia, Vicki Treadell, says it’s a privilege to be able to support Australians by helping to accelerate the vaccine rollout down under.
I fail to see why its "worse" that we do that in Topping's eyes. Its an entirely logical thing to do, which we considered doing with Israel earlier in the pandemic but the other way around.
We send them Pfizer doses we have now, but don't need now, before they expire.
They send us Pfizer doses later on, when we need them, for boosters.
Our current doses we're sending could potentially have expired before we get on with boosting.
Purely logical and sensible thing to do.
Wait:
I thought we were getting Kylie.
ABBA it seems will have to do.
Now we are getting on to a serious subject. I don't get ABBA. I think they are rubbish. I detest every song.
I respect your personal taste but...
I used to think ABBA were totally naff back in the day. But now when I hear their old songs I can't help singing along. They are very well crafted pop songs.
We all did. Now we all desperately pretend we didn't.
Waterloo is genuinely dreadful, Super trouper is superb.
So we give vaccines to Oz rather than, say, sub-saharan Africa.
Pfizer.
Exactly: they chances of Pfizer being wasted in Africa (as a consequence of the storage requirements) are at least 10x that of AZ.
Better to give the more robust vaccines to Africa, rather than the more delicate ones.
40% of our initial vaccine donations go to Australia.
It's not a "donation" - its a swap - they get ours now, we get theirs later.
Even worse let's play swapsies with those nice other developed nations.
Which under developed nation would you prefer to play swapsies with? Or would you rather we give Pfizer doses to countries that couldn't practically distribute them?
Prime Minister Scott Morrison said the UK deal doubles the number of Pfizer doses available in September. Throughout the month, Australia will receive more than 9 million doses of Pfizer alongside 1 million Moderna doses and continued AstraZeneca supply.
“From Downing Street to Down Under we are doubling down on the Pfizer doses available to us,” he said. “The plane’s on the tarmac now, it will be leaving tomorrow and those [Pfizer] doses will be coming over the course of the next few weeks.”
Britain’s high commissioner to Australia, Vicki Treadell, says it’s a privilege to be able to support Australians by helping to accelerate the vaccine rollout down under.
I fail to see why its "worse" that we do that in Topping's eyes. Its an entirely logical thing to do, which we considered doing with Israel earlier in the pandemic but the other way around.
We send them Pfizer doses we have now, but don't need now, before they expire.
They send us Pfizer doses later on, when we need them, for boosters.
Our current doses we're sending could potentially have expired before we get on with boosting.
Purely logical and sensible thing to do.
We also have AZ doses. Send some of those to "Africa". We have pledged 9m doses now and 100m by next year to Covax. Meanwhile we are sending/donating/swapping 4m doses (Pfizer, so the fuck what?) to Australia, that most troubled and desperately needy of countries right now.
If that doesn't move the collective moral compass of PB then god help you all.
Actually Australia is desperately in need of vaccine right now as its attempts to control Delta are failing.
There's likely 10k+ Australian lives dependent upon it completing its vaccination program this month.
But Australian lives are worth less than African lives.
But then again, First Australian lives - are they worth more or less than African lives?
Looking at your graphs yesterday did the hospital by age show a significant increase in the 85+ group ?
If so I wonder if that's evidence of the vaccine wearing off as they would have been the first vaccinated.
Enjoyable header, with a few quirky suggestions if I may say so (e.g. Cummings launch a new party - not a chance of that taking off).
Perversely, I think Johnson's best hope for the next GE will be if Covid rumbles on. That might allow him to kick the hard tax decisions further down the road past a GE 2023/24 and ho could go to the polls as a Pandemic-war-leader with a 'Keep Buggering On' pitch.
Quite. A Cummings launched party would make Alba look like it had achieved a landslide.
I like Alba! I am hopeful that it will help split the SNP vote for our council elections next May. (spoiler alert - it won't...)
I used to think ABBA were totally naff back in the day. But now when I hear their old songs I can't help singing along. They are very well crafted pop songs.
I seem to recall at least one PhD on how their songs are constructed
So we give vaccines to Oz rather than, say, sub-saharan Africa.
Pfizer.
Exactly: they chances of Pfizer being wasted in Africa (as a consequence of the storage requirements) are at least 10x that of AZ.
Better to give the more robust vaccines to Africa, rather than the more delicate ones.
40% of our initial vaccine donations go to Australia.
It's not a "donation" - its a swap - they get ours now, we get theirs later.
Even worse let's play swapsies with those nice other developed nations.
Which under developed nation would you prefer to play swapsies with? Or would you rather we give Pfizer doses to countries that couldn't practically distribute them?
Prime Minister Scott Morrison said the UK deal doubles the number of Pfizer doses available in September. Throughout the month, Australia will receive more than 9 million doses of Pfizer alongside 1 million Moderna doses and continued AstraZeneca supply.
“From Downing Street to Down Under we are doubling down on the Pfizer doses available to us,” he said. “The plane’s on the tarmac now, it will be leaving tomorrow and those [Pfizer] doses will be coming over the course of the next few weeks.”
Britain’s high commissioner to Australia, Vicki Treadell, says it’s a privilege to be able to support Australians by helping to accelerate the vaccine rollout down under.
Ahem, I mean it's not as though we don't have a few knocking around. You are acting as though the only vaccines we can give away/swap/donate are Pfizer.
We are:
The UK will this week begin delivering 9 million COVID-19 vaccines around the world, including to Indonesia, Jamaica and Kenya, to help tackle the pandemic, Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab announced today (Wednesday 28 July).
Five million doses are being offered to COVAX, the scheme to ensure equitable, global access to COVID-19 vaccines. COVAX will urgently distribute them to lower-income countries via an equitable allocation system which prioritises delivering vaccines to people who most need them. Another 4 million doses will be shared directly with countries in need....
The UK is donating the University of Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine, made by Oxford Biomedica in Oxford and packaged in Wrexham, North Wales.
This is the first tranche of the 100 million vaccines the Prime Minister pledged the UK would share within the next year at last month’s G7 in Cornwall, with 30 million due to be sent by the end of the year.
As I said, 40% (4m/9m) or 30% (4m/13m) of our initial covax effort is going to....Australia.
What’s wrong with helping out Australia with a vaccine swap?
This isn’t part of the Covax donatation, it’s trading vaccines we don’t need now for those we might need in the future, to help out a friendly nation which is struggling.
I give up. It's great we are helping out our mates in Australia. But if we are going to go around the world helping random nations I can think of many others we should have helped first.
But I appreciate the developed world I'm alright jack club is very tricky to get into.
Perhaps we should set aside a few for Switzerland also. We could bundle them up with the heaters we are planning on sending them this winter.
So we give vaccines to Oz rather than, say, sub-saharan Africa.
Pfizer.
Exactly: they chances of Pfizer being wasted in Africa (as a consequence of the storage requirements) are at least 10x that of AZ.
Better to give the more robust vaccines to Africa, rather than the more delicate ones.
40% of our initial vaccine donations go to Australia.
It's not a "donation" - its a swap - they get ours now, we get theirs later.
Even worse let's play swapsies with those nice other developed nations.
Which under developed nation would you prefer to play swapsies with? Or would you rather we give Pfizer doses to countries that couldn't practically distribute them?
Prime Minister Scott Morrison said the UK deal doubles the number of Pfizer doses available in September. Throughout the month, Australia will receive more than 9 million doses of Pfizer alongside 1 million Moderna doses and continued AstraZeneca supply.
“From Downing Street to Down Under we are doubling down on the Pfizer doses available to us,” he said. “The plane’s on the tarmac now, it will be leaving tomorrow and those [Pfizer] doses will be coming over the course of the next few weeks.”
Britain’s high commissioner to Australia, Vicki Treadell, says it’s a privilege to be able to support Australians by helping to accelerate the vaccine rollout down under.
Ahem, I mean it's not as though we don't have a few knocking around. You are acting as though the only vaccines we can give away/swap/donate are Pfizer.
If we give them AZ now, they'll give us AZ later. Do we need or want that swap given we're producing our own AZ?
Philip the point is we are giving/swapping/donating 4m (Pfizer) vaccines to Australia. Fine. Great.
But of all the countries in the world that need vaccines I would put Australia in the bottom 1%. Meanwhile, say, Africa really needs vaccines.
PB is trying to make itself feel better by saying oh it's the Pfizer don't you understand, the darkies can't do cold chain logistics...
But we, the UK are sending vaccines out to another country. We have plenty of AZ vaccines so the idea of sending any vaccines out to Australia instead of Africa is imo an extraordinary misapplication of resources.
The fiscal pressure on the government is now acute. Yesterday we had the NHS saying that they need an extra £10bn, keeping the uplift in UC is another £6bn and schools are needing an extra £2-3bn to get back to 2010 after inflation. Meantime, although not quite as bad as feared, the revenue side has not yet recovered and there is the issue of the funding of Social Care. So far Rishi has been very popular: competent, proactive and happy to dosh out the money. He now faces a genuinely difficult budget and some really hard decisions which are unlikely to be popular with anyone.
For me, we will have a much better idea of how this government is going to fare once we have heard the budget and seen the reaction of the inevitably disappointed.
When is the budget? Did it get pushed back to 2022?
Looks like this is still unknown. I thought it was going to be Q4 this year. But as the article mentions we have seen the Budget moved several times recently so moving it to Q1 ie March seems distinctly possible.
What is more than possible is that there will be lots of tax raising unpleasantness if the government is serious about balancing the books
"Unpleasantness" is not something Johnson wants to have to deal with. The hard decisions will get kicked down the road past the next GE.
A lot of Covid costs are unique and 1 off. there will be some structural deficits that still need to be fixed but we don't need to repay absolutely everything spent on Covid.
Masking never works, but it's what they did with council tax to keep the referendum lock, adding a levy.
I dont think people are very reasonable, but the gov has the votes for unpopular actions and if they think this is needed take the hit and say a pledge break is appropriate.
If they are modelling it on Brown's successful hit on NI for the NHS back in 2000 or whenever it was then they should be upfront about it. Public gave it the thumbs up last time.
Of course all this begs the question of why Johnson was so economically stupid as to box himself in for five years with a promise on tax and NI at the GE which he didn't need to do to win.
So we give vaccines to Oz rather than, say, sub-saharan Africa.
Pfizer.
Exactly: they chances of Pfizer being wasted in Africa (as a consequence of the storage requirements) are at least 10x that of AZ.
Better to give the more robust vaccines to Africa, rather than the more delicate ones.
40% of our initial vaccine donations go to Australia.
It's not a "donation" - its a swap - they get ours now, we get theirs later.
Even worse let's play swapsies with those nice other developed nations.
Which under developed nation would you prefer to play swapsies with? Or would you rather we give Pfizer doses to countries that couldn't practically distribute them?
Prime Minister Scott Morrison said the UK deal doubles the number of Pfizer doses available in September. Throughout the month, Australia will receive more than 9 million doses of Pfizer alongside 1 million Moderna doses and continued AstraZeneca supply.
“From Downing Street to Down Under we are doubling down on the Pfizer doses available to us,” he said. “The plane’s on the tarmac now, it will be leaving tomorrow and those [Pfizer] doses will be coming over the course of the next few weeks.”
Britain’s high commissioner to Australia, Vicki Treadell, says it’s a privilege to be able to support Australians by helping to accelerate the vaccine rollout down under.
Ahem, I mean it's not as though we don't have a few knocking around. You are acting as though the only vaccines we can give away/swap/donate are Pfizer.
If we give them AZ now, they'll give us AZ later. Do we need or want that swap given we're producing our own AZ?
Philip the point is we are giving/swapping/donating 4m (Pfizer) vaccines to Australia. Fine. Great.
But of all the countries in the world that need vaccines I would put Australia in the bottom 1%. Meanwhile, say, Africa really needs vaccines.
PB is trying to make itself feel better by saying oh it's the Pfizer don't you understand, the darkies can't do cold chain logistics...
But we, the UK are sending vaccines out to another country. We have plenty of AZ vaccines so the idea of sending any vaccines out to Australia instead of Africa is imo an extraordinary misapplication of resources.
I loved Rumsfeld's "unknowns" speech - succinct, elegant, insightful. People whose brain is wired opposite to mine hate it for all the opposite reasons. Yes Rummy was a warmongering lunatic whose Project for the New American Century delivered its US Reichstag fire, but the unknowns speech is one thing he got right.
Anyway, as I can't see that clearly to the end of this year never mind the end of 2023, who knows where we will be. I would like to think that punters realise they can see Boris's Johnson rather than his elegant suit of laddism, but they show no signs of waking up from the despair squid ink as yet.
What would be tragic is if the decaying GB goes further down the current American path where lies become partisan truth. We used to debate on facts and disagree on policy, but these days even self-evident truths get discarded because of partisan stupidity. America is transforming into Gilead, England doesn't have to follow suit.
Nothing wrong with the speech in itself - it was the context: a completely dishonest assessment of the likelihood of Iraq having weapons of mass destruction as a pretext for war.
And Rumsfeld as much as anyone is responsible for the Afghan debacle because of that.
Indeed - I have just described him as a "warmongering lunatic". But the knowns bit was perfect. For those unfamiliar:
Known knowns: things we know we know Unknown knowns: things we don't know we know Knowns unknowns: things we know we don't know Unknown unknowns: things we don't know we don't know
Perfect like Susan Collins declaring herself pro choice as she voted to confirm Kavanaugh ?
I've also seen the same concept - in matrix form - used in software engineering, way before Rumsfeld. The idea is that you make people consider what could go in each category. Unknown unknowns is looked at by trying to get people to challenge their internal mental assumptions.
That was my point. It was a facile statement, however neatly laid out, of someone's else's ideas from a man who had no intention whatsoever of challenging his own assumptions.
It was an excellent codification of the concept. The interesting bit was that he was done in by another category - things that "we know, but aren't true".
So we give vaccines to Oz rather than, say, sub-saharan Africa.
Pfizer.
Exactly: they chances of Pfizer being wasted in Africa (as a consequence of the storage requirements) are at least 10x that of AZ.
Better to give the more robust vaccines to Africa, rather than the more delicate ones.
40% of our initial vaccine donations go to Australia.
It's not a "donation" - its a swap - they get ours now, we get theirs later.
Even worse let's play swapsies with those nice other developed nations.
Which under developed nation would you prefer to play swapsies with? Or would you rather we give Pfizer doses to countries that couldn't practically distribute them?
Prime Minister Scott Morrison said the UK deal doubles the number of Pfizer doses available in September. Throughout the month, Australia will receive more than 9 million doses of Pfizer alongside 1 million Moderna doses and continued AstraZeneca supply.
“From Downing Street to Down Under we are doubling down on the Pfizer doses available to us,” he said. “The plane’s on the tarmac now, it will be leaving tomorrow and those [Pfizer] doses will be coming over the course of the next few weeks.”
Britain’s high commissioner to Australia, Vicki Treadell, says it’s a privilege to be able to support Australians by helping to accelerate the vaccine rollout down under.
I fail to see why its "worse" that we do that in Topping's eyes. Its an entirely logical thing to do, which we considered doing with Israel earlier in the pandemic but the other way around.
We send them Pfizer doses we have now, but don't need now, before they expire.
They send us Pfizer doses later on, when we need them, for boosters.
Our current doses we're sending could potentially have expired before we get on with boosting.
Purely logical and sensible thing to do.
Wait:
I thought we were getting Kylie.
ABBA it seems will have to do.
Now we are getting on to a serious subject. I don't get ABBA. I think they are rubbish. I detest every song.
I respect your personal taste but...
I used to think ABBA were totally naff back in the day. But now when I hear their old songs I can't help singing along. They are very well crafted pop songs.
We all did. Now we all desperately pretend we didn't.
Waterloo is genuinely dreadful, Super trouper is superb.
I love Waterloo! Surely the only truly great Eurovision winner.
Won't ever vote Tory again if they introduce a tax on working age people to pay for old age care. Fuck that noise. The old wankers need to have their freebies cut, the triple lock scrapped and NI paid on pension income before working age people are hit, yet again. The Tory party is nothing more than a vote buying exercise for old c***s who want everything for free.
It's the kind of shit that makes people my age want to leave the country. A proper brain drain tax.
"the triple lock scrapped and NI paid on pension income"
Yes, broad agreement on this. But they can't do the right thing because political opponents and the media will politick it as a broken manifesto promise.
So is this tax rise. They said no tax rises. Theresa May almost lost to Corbyn because the age where people starred voting Tory was around 55, Boris won an 80 seat majority because he brought that age down to 39.
The Tories are on a hiding to nothing if they go ahead with a tax on the young to pay for old. That age will shoot up and the 80 seat majority will turn into a 30 seat deficit. Boris just about won back credibility with working age people when he pledged no new tax rises. Breaking that pledge will destroy that credibility completely.
Won't ever vote Tory again if they introduce a tax on working age people to pay for old age care. Fuck that noise. The old wankers need to have their freebies cut, the triple lock scrapped and NI paid on pension income before working age people are hit, yet again. The Tory party is nothing more than a vote buying exercise for old c***s who want everything for free.
It's the kind of shit that makes people my age want to leave the country. A proper brain drain tax.
I would just like to gently point out that the 'old c***s' have worked hard all their lives for their pensions and paid their fair share of taxes. No to NI on pension income.
I agre with you on triple lock, state pension should be uplifted by CPI only.
Enjoyable header, with a few quirky suggestions if I may say so (e.g. Cummings launch a new party - not a chance of that taking off).
Perversely, I think Johnson's best hope for the next GE will be if Covid rumbles on. That might allow him to kick the hard tax decisions further down the road past a GE 2023/24 and ho could go to the polls as a Pandemic-war-leader with a 'Keep Buggering On' pitch.
Although by then, voters might not unreasonably be asking ‘what’s it all for?’. The government doesn’t really have an answer; a lot may depend on whether anyone else appears to, by then.
The fiscal pressure on the government is now acute. Yesterday we had the NHS saying that they need an extra £10bn, keeping the uplift in UC is another £6bn and schools are needing an extra £2-3bn to get back to 2010 after inflation. Meantime, although not quite as bad as feared, the revenue side has not yet recovered and there is the issue of the funding of Social Care. So far Rishi has been very popular: competent, proactive and happy to dosh out the money. He now faces a genuinely difficult budget and some really hard decisions which are unlikely to be popular with anyone.
For me, we will have a much better idea of how this government is going to fare once we have heard the budget and seen the reaction of the inevitably disappointed.
When is the budget? Did it get pushed back to 2022?
Looks like this is still unknown. I thought it was going to be Q4 this year. But as the article mentions we have seen the Budget moved several times recently so moving it to Q1 ie March seems distinctly possible.
What is more than possible is that there will be lots of tax raising unpleasantness if the government is serious about balancing the books
"Unpleasantness" is not something Johnson wants to have to deal with. The hard decisions will get kicked down the road past the next GE.
A lot of Covid costs are unique and 1 off. there will be some structural deficits that still need to be fixed but we don't need to repay absolutely everything spent on Covid.
Absolutely agree. But the structural deficits are going to be very big as @DavidL pointed out:
"Yesterday we had the NHS saying that they need an extra £10bn, keeping the uplift in UC is another £6bn and schools are needing an extra £2-3bn to get back to 2010 after inflation. Meantime... there is the issue of the funding of Social Care. "
So we give vaccines to Oz rather than, say, sub-saharan Africa.
Pfizer.
Exactly: they chances of Pfizer being wasted in Africa (as a consequence of the storage requirements) are at least 10x that of AZ.
Better to give the more robust vaccines to Africa, rather than the more delicate ones.
40% of our initial vaccine donations go to Australia.
It's not a "donation" - its a swap - they get ours now, we get theirs later.
Even worse let's play swapsies with those nice other developed nations.
Which under developed nation would you prefer to play swapsies with? Or would you rather we give Pfizer doses to countries that couldn't practically distribute them?
Prime Minister Scott Morrison said the UK deal doubles the number of Pfizer doses available in September. Throughout the month, Australia will receive more than 9 million doses of Pfizer alongside 1 million Moderna doses and continued AstraZeneca supply.
“From Downing Street to Down Under we are doubling down on the Pfizer doses available to us,” he said. “The plane’s on the tarmac now, it will be leaving tomorrow and those [Pfizer] doses will be coming over the course of the next few weeks.”
Britain’s high commissioner to Australia, Vicki Treadell, says it’s a privilege to be able to support Australians by helping to accelerate the vaccine rollout down under.
I fail to see why its "worse" that we do that in Topping's eyes. Its an entirely logical thing to do, which we considered doing with Israel earlier in the pandemic but the other way around.
We send them Pfizer doses we have now, but don't need now, before they expire.
They send us Pfizer doses later on, when we need them, for boosters.
Our current doses we're sending could potentially have expired before we get on with boosting.
Purely logical and sensible thing to do.
We also have AZ doses. Send some of those to "Africa". We have pledged 9m doses now and 100m by next year to Covax. Meanwhile we are sending/donating/swapping 4m doses (Pfizer, so the fuck what?) to Australia, that most troubled and desperately needy of countries right now.
If that doesn't move the collective moral compass of PB then god help you all.
Actually Australia is desperately in need of vaccine right now as its attempts to control Delta are failing.
There's likely 10k+ Australian lives dependent upon it completing its vaccination program this month.
But Australian lives are worth less than African lives.
But then again, First Australian lives - are they worth more or less than African lives?
Looking at your graphs yesterday did the hospital by age show a significant increase in the 85+ group ?
If so I wonder if that's evidence of the vaccine wearing off as they would have been the first vaccinated.
The oldies have been an increasing share of the hospital admissions for a while
Whether that is due to a very high prevalence among the unvaccinated or what would require a breakdown by vaccinated/unvaccinated. Which PHE said is not going to be released.
Won't ever vote Tory again if they introduce a tax on working age people to pay for old age care. Fuck that noise. The old wankers need to have their freebies cut, the triple lock scrapped and NI paid on pension income before working age people are hit, yet again. The Tory party is nothing more than a vote buying exercise for old c***s who want everything for free.
It's the kind of shit that makes people my age want to leave the country. A proper brain drain tax.
The problem is that the money needs to come from somewhere - which really only leaves the untouchable Council Tax...
As I commented last night - the only fix for this is a (predetermined) Royal Commission that reports at the beginning of the next Parliament with its conclusions implemented.
That predetermination is going to have to be something like a redesigned Council tax or Land Value Tax as it's really the only possible solution that's deemed fair. If the desire is for people to keep their inheritance tax the assets the inheritance is built upon.
So we give vaccines to Oz rather than, say, sub-saharan Africa.
Pfizer.
Exactly: they chances of Pfizer being wasted in Africa (as a consequence of the storage requirements) are at least 10x that of AZ.
Better to give the more robust vaccines to Africa, rather than the more delicate ones.
40% of our initial vaccine donations go to Australia.
It's not a "donation" - its a swap - they get ours now, we get theirs later.
Even worse let's play swapsies with those nice other developed nations.
Which under developed nation would you prefer to play swapsies with? Or would you rather we give Pfizer doses to countries that couldn't practically distribute them?
Prime Minister Scott Morrison said the UK deal doubles the number of Pfizer doses available in September. Throughout the month, Australia will receive more than 9 million doses of Pfizer alongside 1 million Moderna doses and continued AstraZeneca supply.
“From Downing Street to Down Under we are doubling down on the Pfizer doses available to us,” he said. “The plane’s on the tarmac now, it will be leaving tomorrow and those [Pfizer] doses will be coming over the course of the next few weeks.”
Britain’s high commissioner to Australia, Vicki Treadell, says it’s a privilege to be able to support Australians by helping to accelerate the vaccine rollout down under.
I fail to see why its "worse" that we do that in Topping's eyes. Its an entirely logical thing to do, which we considered doing with Israel earlier in the pandemic but the other way around.
We send them Pfizer doses we have now, but don't need now, before they expire.
They send us Pfizer doses later on, when we need them, for boosters.
Our current doses we're sending could potentially have expired before we get on with boosting.
Purely logical and sensible thing to do.
Wait:
I thought we were getting Kylie.
ABBA it seems will have to do.
Now we are getting on to a serious subject. I don't get ABBA. I think they are rubbish. I detest every song.
I respect your personal taste but...
I used to think ABBA were totally naff back in the day. But now when I hear their old songs I can't help singing along. They are very well crafted pop songs.
Why they decided to enter Scottish politics remains a mystery
So we give vaccines to Oz rather than, say, sub-saharan Africa.
Pfizer.
Exactly: they chances of Pfizer being wasted in Africa (as a consequence of the storage requirements) are at least 10x that of AZ.
Better to give the more robust vaccines to Africa, rather than the more delicate ones.
40% of our initial vaccine donations go to Australia.
It's not a "donation" - its a swap - they get ours now, we get theirs later.
Even worse let's play swapsies with those nice other developed nations.
Which under developed nation would you prefer to play swapsies with? Or would you rather we give Pfizer doses to countries that couldn't practically distribute them?
Prime Minister Scott Morrison said the UK deal doubles the number of Pfizer doses available in September. Throughout the month, Australia will receive more than 9 million doses of Pfizer alongside 1 million Moderna doses and continued AstraZeneca supply.
“From Downing Street to Down Under we are doubling down on the Pfizer doses available to us,” he said. “The plane’s on the tarmac now, it will be leaving tomorrow and those [Pfizer] doses will be coming over the course of the next few weeks.”
Britain’s high commissioner to Australia, Vicki Treadell, says it’s a privilege to be able to support Australians by helping to accelerate the vaccine rollout down under.
Ahem, I mean it's not as though we don't have a few knocking around. You are acting as though the only vaccines we can give away/swap/donate are Pfizer.
We are:
The UK will this week begin delivering 9 million COVID-19 vaccines around the world, including to Indonesia, Jamaica and Kenya, to help tackle the pandemic, Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab announced today (Wednesday 28 July).
Five million doses are being offered to COVAX, the scheme to ensure equitable, global access to COVID-19 vaccines. COVAX will urgently distribute them to lower-income countries via an equitable allocation system which prioritises delivering vaccines to people who most need them. Another 4 million doses will be shared directly with countries in need....
The UK is donating the University of Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine, made by Oxford Biomedica in Oxford and packaged in Wrexham, North Wales.
This is the first tranche of the 100 million vaccines the Prime Minister pledged the UK would share within the next year at last month’s G7 in Cornwall, with 30 million due to be sent by the end of the year.
As I said, 40% (4m/9m) or 30% (4m/13m) of our initial covax effort is going to....Australia.
What’s wrong with helping out Australia with a vaccine swap?
This isn’t part of the Covax donatation, it’s trading vaccines we don’t need now for those we might need in the future, to help out a friendly nation which is struggling.
I give up. It's great we are helping out our mates in Australia. But if we are going to go around the world helping random nations I can think of many others we should have helped first.
But I appreciate the developed world I'm alright jack club is very tricky to get into.
Perhaps we should set aside a few for Switzerland also. We could bundle them up with the heaters we are planning on sending them this winter.
Who else asked us to swap vaccines, that we turned down?
We are swapping some vaccines with Australia AS WELL AS keeping up the Covax donations we promised.
The fiscal pressure on the government is now acute. Yesterday we had the NHS saying that they need an extra £10bn, keeping the uplift in UC is another £6bn and schools are needing an extra £2-3bn to get back to 2010 after inflation. Meantime, although not quite as bad as feared, the revenue side has not yet recovered and there is the issue of the funding of Social Care. So far Rishi has been very popular: competent, proactive and happy to dosh out the money. He now faces a genuinely difficult budget and some really hard decisions which are unlikely to be popular with anyone.
For me, we will have a much better idea of how this government is going to fare once we have heard the budget and seen the reaction of the inevitably disappointed.
When is the budget? Did it get pushed back to 2022?
Looks like this is still unknown. I thought it was going to be Q4 this year. But as the article mentions we have seen the Budget moved several times recently so moving it to Q1 ie March seems distinctly possible.
What is more than possible is that there will be lots of tax raising unpleasantness if the government is serious about balancing the books
"Unpleasantness" is not something Johnson wants to have to deal with. The hard decisions will get kicked down the road past the next GE.
A lot of Covid costs are unique and 1 off. there will be some structural deficits that still need to be fixed but we don't need to repay absolutely everything spent on Covid.
Absolutely agree. But the structural deficits are going to be very big as @DavidL pointed out:
"Yesterday we had the NHS saying that they need an extra £10bn, keeping the uplift in UC is another £6bn and schools are needing an extra £2-3bn to get back to 2010 after inflation. Meantime... there is the issue of the funding of Social Care. "
Uplift in UC has gone. There was one way of keeping it and @Philip_Thompson pointed out the flaw in doing that yesterday.
Schools aren't going to see extra money and the NHS aren't going to get all that extra £10bn.
So we give vaccines to Oz rather than, say, sub-saharan Africa.
Pfizer.
Exactly: they chances of Pfizer being wasted in Africa (as a consequence of the storage requirements) are at least 10x that of AZ.
Better to give the more robust vaccines to Africa, rather than the more delicate ones.
40% of our initial vaccine donations go to Australia.
It's not a "donation" - its a swap - they get ours now, we get theirs later.
Even worse let's play swapsies with those nice other developed nations.
Which under developed nation would you prefer to play swapsies with? Or would you rather we give Pfizer doses to countries that couldn't practically distribute them?
Prime Minister Scott Morrison said the UK deal doubles the number of Pfizer doses available in September. Throughout the month, Australia will receive more than 9 million doses of Pfizer alongside 1 million Moderna doses and continued AstraZeneca supply.
“From Downing Street to Down Under we are doubling down on the Pfizer doses available to us,” he said. “The plane’s on the tarmac now, it will be leaving tomorrow and those [Pfizer] doses will be coming over the course of the next few weeks.”
Britain’s high commissioner to Australia, Vicki Treadell, says it’s a privilege to be able to support Australians by helping to accelerate the vaccine rollout down under.
I fail to see why its "worse" that we do that in Topping's eyes. Its an entirely logical thing to do, which we considered doing with Israel earlier in the pandemic but the other way around.
We send them Pfizer doses we have now, but don't need now, before they expire.
They send us Pfizer doses later on, when we need them, for boosters.
Our current doses we're sending could potentially have expired before we get on with boosting.
Purely logical and sensible thing to do.
We also have AZ doses. Send some of those to "Africa". We have pledged 9m doses now and 100m by next year to Covax. Meanwhile we are sending/donating/swapping 4m doses (Pfizer, so the fuck what?) to Australia, that most troubled and desperately needy of countries right now.
If that doesn't move the collective moral compass of PB then god help you all.
Actually Australia is desperately in need of vaccine right now as its attempts to control Delta are failing.
There's likely 10k+ Australian lives dependent upon it completing its vaccination program this month.
But Australian lives are worth less than African lives.
But then again, First Australian lives - are they worth more or less than African lives?
Looking at your graphs yesterday did the hospital by age show a significant increase in the 85+ group ?
If so I wonder if that's evidence of the vaccine wearing off as they would have been the first vaccinated.
The oldies have been an increasing share of the hospital admissions for a while
Whether that is due to a very high prevalence among the unvaccinated or what would require a breakdown by vaccinated/unvaccinated. Which PHE said is not going to be released.
Very few 85+ unvaccinated (and still alive) surely?
So we give vaccines to Oz rather than, say, sub-saharan Africa.
Pfizer.
Exactly: they chances of Pfizer being wasted in Africa (as a consequence of the storage requirements) are at least 10x that of AZ.
Better to give the more robust vaccines to Africa, rather than the more delicate ones.
40% of our initial vaccine donations go to Australia.
It's not a "donation" - its a swap - they get ours now, we get theirs later.
Even worse let's play swapsies with those nice other developed nations.
Which under developed nation would you prefer to play swapsies with? Or would you rather we give Pfizer doses to countries that couldn't practically distribute them?
Prime Minister Scott Morrison said the UK deal doubles the number of Pfizer doses available in September. Throughout the month, Australia will receive more than 9 million doses of Pfizer alongside 1 million Moderna doses and continued AstraZeneca supply.
“From Downing Street to Down Under we are doubling down on the Pfizer doses available to us,” he said. “The plane’s on the tarmac now, it will be leaving tomorrow and those [Pfizer] doses will be coming over the course of the next few weeks.”
Britain’s high commissioner to Australia, Vicki Treadell, says it’s a privilege to be able to support Australians by helping to accelerate the vaccine rollout down under.
Ahem, I mean it's not as though we don't have a few knocking around. You are acting as though the only vaccines we can give away/swap/donate are Pfizer.
We are:
The UK will this week begin delivering 9 million COVID-19 vaccines around the world, including to Indonesia, Jamaica and Kenya, to help tackle the pandemic, Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab announced today (Wednesday 28 July).
Five million doses are being offered to COVAX, the scheme to ensure equitable, global access to COVID-19 vaccines. COVAX will urgently distribute them to lower-income countries via an equitable allocation system which prioritises delivering vaccines to people who most need them. Another 4 million doses will be shared directly with countries in need....
The UK is donating the University of Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine, made by Oxford Biomedica in Oxford and packaged in Wrexham, North Wales.
This is the first tranche of the 100 million vaccines the Prime Minister pledged the UK would share within the next year at last month’s G7 in Cornwall, with 30 million due to be sent by the end of the year.
As I said, 40% (4m/9m) or 30% (4m/13m) of our initial covax effort is going to....Australia.
What’s wrong with helping out Australia with a vaccine swap?
This isn’t part of the Covax donatation, it’s trading vaccines we don’t need now for those we might need in the future, to help out a friendly nation which is struggling.
I give up. It's great we are helping out our mates in Australia. But if we are going to go around the world helping random nations I can think of many others we should have helped first.
But I appreciate the developed world I'm alright jack club is very tricky to get into.
Perhaps we should set aside a few for Switzerland also. We could bundle them up with the heaters we are planning on sending them this winter.
Who else asked us to swap vaccines, that we turned down?
We are swapping some vaccines with Australia AS WELL AS keeping up the Covax donations we promised.
I loved Rumsfeld's "unknowns" speech - succinct, elegant, insightful. People whose brain is wired opposite to mine hate it for all the opposite reasons. Yes Rummy was a warmongering lunatic whose Project for the New American Century delivered its US Reichstag fire, but the unknowns speech is one thing he got right.
Anyway, as I can't see that clearly to the end of this year never mind the end of 2023, who knows where we will be. I would like to think that punters realise they can see Boris's Johnson rather than his elegant suit of laddism, but they show no signs of waking up from the despair squid ink as yet.
What would be tragic is if the decaying GB goes further down the current American path where lies become partisan truth. We used to debate on facts and disagree on policy, but these days even self-evident truths get discarded because of partisan stupidity. America is transforming into Gilead, England doesn't have to follow suit.
Nothing wrong with the speech in itself - it was the context: a completely dishonest assessment of the likelihood of Iraq having weapons of mass destruction as a pretext for war.
And Rumsfeld as much as anyone is responsible for the Afghan debacle because of that.
Indeed - I have just described him as a "warmongering lunatic". But the knowns bit was perfect. For those unfamiliar:
Known knowns: things we know we know Unknown knowns: things we don't know we know Knowns unknowns: things we know we don't know Unknown unknowns: things we don't know we don't know
Perfect like Susan Collins declaring herself pro choice as she voted to confirm Kavanaugh ?
I've also seen the same concept - in matrix form - used in software engineering, way before Rumsfeld. The idea is that you make people consider what could go in each category. Unknown unknowns is looked at by trying to get people to challenge their internal mental assumptions.
I've said this before that the problem with the Rumsfeld speech was not the perfectly sensible knowledge matrix - it was the tone of dripping condescension with which he delivered it.
The fiscal pressure on the government is now acute. Yesterday we had the NHS saying that they need an extra £10bn, keeping the uplift in UC is another £6bn and schools are needing an extra £2-3bn to get back to 2010 after inflation. Meantime, although not quite as bad as feared, the revenue side has not yet recovered and there is the issue of the funding of Social Care. So far Rishi has been very popular: competent, proactive and happy to dosh out the money. He now faces a genuinely difficult budget and some really hard decisions which are unlikely to be popular with anyone.
For me, we will have a much better idea of how this government is going to fare once we have heard the budget and seen the reaction of the inevitably disappointed.
When is the budget? Did it get pushed back to 2022?
Looks like this is still unknown. I thought it was going to be Q4 this year. But as the article mentions we have seen the Budget moved several times recently so moving it to Q1 ie March seems distinctly possible.
What is more than possible is that there will be lots of tax raising unpleasantness if the government is serious about balancing the books
"Unpleasantness" is not something Johnson wants to have to deal with. The hard decisions will get kicked down the road past the next GE.
In which case he might have to deal with his Chancellor, who has clearly been briefing the media that he will raise taxes to pay for spending increases.
Good article; this is why a tory majority and NOM are about a level chance. Mathematically a Lab majority looks out of sight for now
There are one or two known unknowns that might be adverse to a Lab led NOM:
1) All politics is relative. Will the voters prefer the SKS/Davey/Sturgeon/Green rainbow to Boris?
2) Post 1997 Labour voters stayed at home and then switched to Tory. Will Tory voters hostile to Johnson stay at home or grit their teeth to vote against the Rainbow alliance
3) Can Labour inject the tiniest sense of self belief, charisma or distinctive vision?
4) The post Brexit policy world will be with us for decades. Can Labour find a post Brexit policy that unites party, Rainbow and voter?
5) Can Labour break out of its super-urban, Bame, posh and university hegemony into ordinary boring seats?
So we give vaccines to Oz rather than, say, sub-saharan Africa.
Pfizer.
Exactly: they chances of Pfizer being wasted in Africa (as a consequence of the storage requirements) are at least 10x that of AZ.
Better to give the more robust vaccines to Africa, rather than the more delicate ones.
40% of our initial vaccine donations go to Australia.
It's not a "donation" - its a swap - they get ours now, we get theirs later.
Even worse let's play swapsies with those nice other developed nations.
Which under developed nation would you prefer to play swapsies with? Or would you rather we give Pfizer doses to countries that couldn't practically distribute them?
Prime Minister Scott Morrison said the UK deal doubles the number of Pfizer doses available in September. Throughout the month, Australia will receive more than 9 million doses of Pfizer alongside 1 million Moderna doses and continued AstraZeneca supply.
“From Downing Street to Down Under we are doubling down on the Pfizer doses available to us,” he said. “The plane’s on the tarmac now, it will be leaving tomorrow and those [Pfizer] doses will be coming over the course of the next few weeks.”
Britain’s high commissioner to Australia, Vicki Treadell, says it’s a privilege to be able to support Australians by helping to accelerate the vaccine rollout down under.
Ahem, I mean it's not as though we don't have a few knocking around. You are acting as though the only vaccines we can give away/swap/donate are Pfizer.
We are:
The UK will this week begin delivering 9 million COVID-19 vaccines around the world, including to Indonesia, Jamaica and Kenya, to help tackle the pandemic, Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab announced today (Wednesday 28 July).
Five million doses are being offered to COVAX, the scheme to ensure equitable, global access to COVID-19 vaccines. COVAX will urgently distribute them to lower-income countries via an equitable allocation system which prioritises delivering vaccines to people who most need them. Another 4 million doses will be shared directly with countries in need....
The UK is donating the University of Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine, made by Oxford Biomedica in Oxford and packaged in Wrexham, North Wales.
This is the first tranche of the 100 million vaccines the Prime Minister pledged the UK would share within the next year at last month’s G7 in Cornwall, with 30 million due to be sent by the end of the year.
As I said, 40% (4m/9m) or 30% (4m/13m) of our initial covax effort is going to....Australia.
What’s wrong with helping out Australia with a vaccine swap?
This isn’t part of the Covax donatation, it’s trading vaccines we don’t need now for those we might need in the future, to help out a friendly nation which is struggling.
I give up. It's great we are helping out our mates in Australia. But if we are going to go around the world helping random nations I can think of many others we should have helped first.
But I appreciate the developed world I'm alright jack club is very tricky to get into.
Perhaps we should set aside a few for Switzerland also. We could bundle them up with the heaters we are planning on sending them this winter.
Who else asked us to swap vaccines, that we turned down?
We are swapping some vaccines with Australia AS WELL AS keeping up the Covax donations we promised.
We are not even really swapping - we are sending surplus supply we don't need today in return for the supply they will no longer need tomorrow (because we sent it today).
So we give vaccines to Oz rather than, say, sub-saharan Africa.
Pfizer.
Exactly: they chances of Pfizer being wasted in Africa (as a consequence of the storage requirements) are at least 10x that of AZ.
Better to give the more robust vaccines to Africa, rather than the more delicate ones.
40% of our initial vaccine donations go to Australia.
It's not a "donation" - its a swap - they get ours now, we get theirs later.
Even worse let's play swapsies with those nice other developed nations.
Which under developed nation would you prefer to play swapsies with? Or would you rather we give Pfizer doses to countries that couldn't practically distribute them?
Prime Minister Scott Morrison said the UK deal doubles the number of Pfizer doses available in September. Throughout the month, Australia will receive more than 9 million doses of Pfizer alongside 1 million Moderna doses and continued AstraZeneca supply.
“From Downing Street to Down Under we are doubling down on the Pfizer doses available to us,” he said. “The plane’s on the tarmac now, it will be leaving tomorrow and those [Pfizer] doses will be coming over the course of the next few weeks.”
Britain’s high commissioner to Australia, Vicki Treadell, says it’s a privilege to be able to support Australians by helping to accelerate the vaccine rollout down under.
Ahem, I mean it's not as though we don't have a few knocking around. You are acting as though the only vaccines we can give away/swap/donate are Pfizer.
If we give them AZ now, they'll give us AZ later. Do we need or want that swap given we're producing our own AZ?
Philip the point is we are giving/swapping/donating 4m (Pfizer) vaccines to Australia. Fine. Great.
But of all the countries in the world that need vaccines I would put Australia in the bottom 1%. Meanwhile, say, Africa really needs vaccines.
PB is trying to make itself feel better by saying oh it's the Pfizer don't you understand, the darkies can't do cold chain logistics...
But we, the UK are sending vaccines out to another country. We have plenty of AZ vaccines so the idea of sending any vaccines out to Australia instead of Africa is imo an extraordinary misapplication of resources.
Who has been talking about 'the darkies'?
Did I put "the darkies" in quotes?
No, I did, i was quoting you, what's your point?
Either you meant someone literally said it or, more likely, you are inventing a much more sinister motivation behind someones comment by summarising it in a way by referencing darkies.
I dont see a major distinction. From your summary someone either said something racist directly or they said something and you believe they did so for racist reasons.
Im merely curious which bit you think was racist enough to be summarised as them moaning about darkies
So we give vaccines to Oz rather than, say, sub-saharan Africa.
Pfizer.
Exactly: they chances of Pfizer being wasted in Africa (as a consequence of the storage requirements) are at least 10x that of AZ.
Better to give the more robust vaccines to Africa, rather than the more delicate ones.
40% of our initial vaccine donations go to Australia.
It's not a "donation" - its a swap - they get ours now, we get theirs later.
Even worse let's play swapsies with those nice other developed nations.
Which under developed nation would you prefer to play swapsies with? Or would you rather we give Pfizer doses to countries that couldn't practically distribute them?
Prime Minister Scott Morrison said the UK deal doubles the number of Pfizer doses available in September. Throughout the month, Australia will receive more than 9 million doses of Pfizer alongside 1 million Moderna doses and continued AstraZeneca supply.
“From Downing Street to Down Under we are doubling down on the Pfizer doses available to us,” he said. “The plane’s on the tarmac now, it will be leaving tomorrow and those [Pfizer] doses will be coming over the course of the next few weeks.”
Britain’s high commissioner to Australia, Vicki Treadell, says it’s a privilege to be able to support Australians by helping to accelerate the vaccine rollout down under.
Ahem, I mean it's not as though we don't have a few knocking around. You are acting as though the only vaccines we can give away/swap/donate are Pfizer.
We are:
The UK will this week begin delivering 9 million COVID-19 vaccines around the world, including to Indonesia, Jamaica and Kenya, to help tackle the pandemic, Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab announced today (Wednesday 28 July).
Five million doses are being offered to COVAX, the scheme to ensure equitable, global access to COVID-19 vaccines. COVAX will urgently distribute them to lower-income countries via an equitable allocation system which prioritises delivering vaccines to people who most need them. Another 4 million doses will be shared directly with countries in need....
The UK is donating the University of Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine, made by Oxford Biomedica in Oxford and packaged in Wrexham, North Wales.
This is the first tranche of the 100 million vaccines the Prime Minister pledged the UK would share within the next year at last month’s G7 in Cornwall, with 30 million due to be sent by the end of the year.
As I said, 40% (4m/9m) or 30% (4m/13m) of our initial covax effort is going to....Australia.
What’s wrong with helping out Australia with a vaccine swap?
This isn’t part of the Covax donatation, it’s trading vaccines we don’t need now for those we might need in the future, to help out a friendly nation which is struggling.
I give up. It's great we are helping out our mates in Australia. But if we are going to go around the world helping random nations I can think of many others we should have helped first.
But I appreciate the developed world I'm alright jack club is very tricky to get into.
Perhaps we should set aside a few for Switzerland also. We could bundle them up with the heaters we are planning on sending them this winter.
Who else asked us to swap vaccines, that we turned down?
We are swapping some vaccines with Australia AS WELL AS keeping up the Covax donations we promised.
We are not even really swapping - we are sending surplus supply we don't need today in return for the supply they will no longer need tomorrow (because we sent it today).
All is well in the world of the UK's global vaccine strategy.
So we give vaccines to Oz rather than, say, sub-saharan Africa.
Pfizer.
Exactly: they chances of Pfizer being wasted in Africa (as a consequence of the storage requirements) are at least 10x that of AZ.
Better to give the more robust vaccines to Africa, rather than the more delicate ones.
40% of our initial vaccine donations go to Australia.
It's not a "donation" - its a swap - they get ours now, we get theirs later.
Even worse let's play swapsies with those nice other developed nations.
Which under developed nation would you prefer to play swapsies with? Or would you rather we give Pfizer doses to countries that couldn't practically distribute them?
Prime Minister Scott Morrison said the UK deal doubles the number of Pfizer doses available in September. Throughout the month, Australia will receive more than 9 million doses of Pfizer alongside 1 million Moderna doses and continued AstraZeneca supply.
“From Downing Street to Down Under we are doubling down on the Pfizer doses available to us,” he said. “The plane’s on the tarmac now, it will be leaving tomorrow and those [Pfizer] doses will be coming over the course of the next few weeks.”
Britain’s high commissioner to Australia, Vicki Treadell, says it’s a privilege to be able to support Australians by helping to accelerate the vaccine rollout down under.
I fail to see why its "worse" that we do that in Topping's eyes. Its an entirely logical thing to do, which we considered doing with Israel earlier in the pandemic but the other way around.
We send them Pfizer doses we have now, but don't need now, before they expire.
They send us Pfizer doses later on, when we need them, for boosters.
Our current doses we're sending could potentially have expired before we get on with boosting.
Purely logical and sensible thing to do.
We also have AZ doses. Send some of those to "Africa". We have pledged 9m doses now and 100m by next year to Covax. Meanwhile we are sending/donating/swapping 4m doses (Pfizer, so the fuck what?) to Australia, that most troubled and desperately needy of countries right now.
If that doesn't move the collective moral compass of PB then god help you all.
Actually Australia is desperately in need of vaccine right now as its attempts to control Delta are failing.
There's likely 10k+ Australian lives dependent upon it completing its vaccination program this month.
OK that's cool. Australia's need is higher than Africa's. Gotit.
Edit: when you read back your post about how Australia is more needy than Africa doesn't it seem a teensy bit fucking ridiculous to you? How many African lives depend on vaccines "right now"?
I don't know how in need of more vaccine Africa is right now and covid is affecting different countries in different ways.
Tunisia has been hammered by covid while South Africa seems to have more vaccine supply than demand and most African countries have had little covid - at least officially.
So where extra vaccine would have the best effect in Africa I don't know - but it would certainly be advantageous right now in Australia. Especially so when its Pfizer with its storage issues.
This is why I liked the Dilnot proposals, which steered a course between two extremes:
• Increase the current support qualification threshold from £23,250 to £100,000.
• Those with assets between £14,250 and £100,000 will pay a contribution towards their care, with the remainder paid by the state.
• People with assets over £100,000 will pay for their care entirely - until the payments made hit a maximum limit.
• Dilnot recommended this limit to be set at £35,000. Thereafter, state will pick up all ongoing care costs to death.
So, in summary, the most anyone is liable for is £35,000. With everyone with assets over £14,250 paying some sort of contribution (which would include the home).
Won't ever vote Tory again if they introduce a tax on working age people to pay for old age care. Fuck that noise. The old wankers need to have their freebies cut, the triple lock scrapped and NI paid on pension income before working age people are hit, yet again. The Tory party is nothing more than a vote buying exercise for old c***s who want everything for free.
It's the kind of shit that makes people my age want to leave the country. A proper brain drain tax.
I would just like to gently point out that the 'old c***s' have worked hard all their lives for their pensions and paid their fair share of taxes. No to NI on pension income.
I agre with you on triple lock, state pension should be uplifted by CPI only.
So where does the money come from because any solution to fix Social care requires additional money coming from some additional tax?
The fiscal pressure on the government is now acute. Yesterday we had the NHS saying that they need an extra £10bn, keeping the uplift in UC is another £6bn and schools are needing an extra £2-3bn to get back to 2010 after inflation. Meantime, although not quite as bad as feared, the revenue side has not yet recovered and there is the issue of the funding of Social Care. So far Rishi has been very popular: competent, proactive and happy to dosh out the money. He now faces a genuinely difficult budget and some really hard decisions which are unlikely to be popular with anyone.
For me, we will have a much better idea of how this government is going to fare once we have heard the budget and seen the reaction of the inevitably disappointed.
When is the budget? Did it get pushed back to 2022?
Looks like this is still unknown. I thought it was going to be Q4 this year. But as the article mentions we have seen the Budget moved several times recently so moving it to Q1 ie March seems distinctly possible.
What is more than possible is that there will be lots of tax raising unpleasantness if the government is serious about balancing the books
"Unpleasantness" is not something Johnson wants to have to deal with. The hard decisions will get kicked down the road past the next GE.
A lot of Covid costs are unique and 1 off. there will be some structural deficits that still need to be fixed but we don't need to repay absolutely everything spent on Covid.
Absolutely agree. But the structural deficits are going to be very big as @DavidL pointed out:
"Yesterday we had the NHS saying that they need an extra £10bn, keeping the uplift in UC is another £6bn and schools are needing an extra £2-3bn to get back to 2010 after inflation. Meantime... there is the issue of the funding of Social Care. "
Uplift in UC has gone. There was one way of keeping it and @Philip_Thompson pointed out the flaw in doing that yesterday.
Schools aren't going to see extra money and the NHS aren't going to get all that extra £10bn.
The other way to keep the UC uplift is just to not remove it.
I fully expect HMG to do a late u-turn once Marcus Rashford weighs in.
Won't ever vote Tory again if they introduce a tax on working age people to pay for old age care. Fuck that noise. The old wankers need to have their freebies cut, the triple lock scrapped and NI paid on pension income before working age people are hit, yet again. The Tory party is nothing more than a vote buying exercise for old c***s who want everything for free.
It's the kind of shit that makes people my age want to leave the country. A proper brain drain tax.
I would just like to gently point out that the 'old c***s' have worked hard all their lives for their pensions and paid their fair share of taxes. No to NI on pension income.
I agre with you on triple lock, state pension should be uplifted by CPI only.
Fair share, don't make me laugh. You al got cheap houses, grants to go to university, inexpensive public transport, transferable tax allowances and a while bunch of other stuff people my age have has snatched away from us to pay ever more of the nation income to your generation. You didn't save enough and now we're all paying the price, whether it's young people pissing their money away in rent or people of working age having to pay more tax.
I'll vote for any party that shits on retirees. Even Labour. It's time that you all started paying your way. Tax the shit out of rental income as well. 110% levy on rental income profits, NI on pension income, defined benefit pension income surcharge, higher income tax rates for wealthy pensioners earning £50k+, scrap the triple lock, scrap the free bus pass, scrap free prescriptions.
No new tax rises for working age people. Full fucking stop.
This is why I liked the Dilnot proposals, which steered a course between two extremes:
• Increase from the current support qualification threshold from £23,250 to £100,000.
• Those with assets between £14,250 and £100,000 will pay a contribution towards their care, with the remainder paid by the state.
• People with assets over £100,000 will pay for their care entirely - until the payments made hit a maximum limit.
• Dilnot recommended this limit to be set at £35,000. Thereafter, state will pick up all ongoing care costs to death.
So, in summary, the most anyone is liable for is £35,000. With everyone with assets over £14,250 paying some sort of contribution (which would include the home).
£35,000 is approximately 9 months in a care home.
Average life expectancy in a care home is I believe 19 months.
So extra money is required to cover the shortfall - and where is that coming from.
Won't ever vote Tory again if they introduce a tax on working age people to pay for old age care. Fuck that noise. The old wankers need to have their freebies cut, the triple lock scrapped and NI paid on pension income before working age people are hit, yet again. The Tory party is nothing more than a vote buying exercise for old c***s who want everything for free.
It's the kind of shit that makes people my age want to leave the country. A proper brain drain tax.
I would just like to gently point out that the 'old c***s' have worked hard all their lives for their pensions and paid their fair share of taxes. No to NI on pension income.
I agre with you on triple lock, state pension should be uplifted by CPI only.
Fair share, don't make me laugh. You al got cheap houses, grants to go to university, inexpensive public transport, transferable tax allowances and a while bunch of other stuff people my age have has snatched away from us to pay ever more of the nation income to your generation. You didn't save enough and now we're all paying the price, whether it's young people pissing their money away in rent or people of working age having to pay more tax.
I'll vote for any party that shits on retirees. Even Labour. It's time that you all started paying your way. Tax the shit out of rental income as well. 110% levy on rental income profits, NI on pension income, defined benefit pension income surcharge, higher income tax rates for wealthy pensioners earning £50k+, scrap the triple lock, scrap the free bus pass, scrap free prescriptions.
No new tax rises for working age people. Full fucking stop.
Yeah. And give them free TV licenses so they are forced to watch the crap BBC. That'll teach them.
Shall I tell you what I love about this site: I often disagree with @CarlottaVance (or indeed any number of other posters), but this is a site where people come together when they agree on specific issues.
In the last day (s)he has posted a dozen or more pieces, all of which have made me nod my head, even if I don't agree with all of them.
It's how politics is supposed to work. It shouldn't be two monolithic blocks, and you have to agree with 100% or 0% - people should use their brain and back what is right in this specific circumstance.
Whatever works, folks. Whatever works.
The opposite shurely. America is stick in idiotville where you either support Gilead or support making meat illegal - we don't need to adopt the same 0% or 100% mindset.
Whatever works is right - the brilliance of Clinton and Blair's Third Way approach. What a shame that partisan hacks on both sides have torn that consensus appart.
It's not "whatever works", though, because this assumes people have the same values and priorities, which they don't. To cite one example: it's important to some that the correlation between family affluence and the life prospects of children is very significantly reduced, the egalitarian vision, whilst others place less (or no) importance on that; they instead set great store by the right to live with a minimum of government interference, a wholly different vision. This is what politics is about for me, priorities and values, rather than a cool, detached search for "evidence based" policy to meet objectives that almost everyone will agree with. If politics is the latter, given most of it isn't rocket science once you know what you're trying to achieve, it would have been sorted in this country by now, to the extent it's realistically possible. Politics would be "done" a la Fukuyama. This is patently not the case.
Nice header btw @rottenborough. I'm pessimistic on the next GE right now. I'm seeing another dollop of Johnson. But let's throw in the mandatory cheer-up caveat - there's a long way to go and things can change.
So we give vaccines to Oz rather than, say, sub-saharan Africa.
Pfizer.
Exactly: they chances of Pfizer being wasted in Africa (as a consequence of the storage requirements) are at least 10x that of AZ.
Better to give the more robust vaccines to Africa, rather than the more delicate ones.
40% of our initial vaccine donations go to Australia.
It's not a "donation" - its a swap - they get ours now, we get theirs later.
Even worse let's play swapsies with those nice other developed nations.
Which under developed nation would you prefer to play swapsies with? Or would you rather we give Pfizer doses to countries that couldn't practically distribute them?
Prime Minister Scott Morrison said the UK deal doubles the number of Pfizer doses available in September. Throughout the month, Australia will receive more than 9 million doses of Pfizer alongside 1 million Moderna doses and continued AstraZeneca supply.
“From Downing Street to Down Under we are doubling down on the Pfizer doses available to us,” he said. “The plane’s on the tarmac now, it will be leaving tomorrow and those [Pfizer] doses will be coming over the course of the next few weeks.”
Britain’s high commissioner to Australia, Vicki Treadell, says it’s a privilege to be able to support Australians by helping to accelerate the vaccine rollout down under.
I fail to see why its "worse" that we do that in Topping's eyes. Its an entirely logical thing to do, which we considered doing with Israel earlier in the pandemic but the other way around.
We send them Pfizer doses we have now, but don't need now, before they expire.
They send us Pfizer doses later on, when we need them, for boosters.
Our current doses we're sending could potentially have expired before we get on with boosting.
Purely logical and sensible thing to do.
We also have AZ doses. Send some of those to "Africa". We have pledged 9m doses now and 100m by next year to Covax. Meanwhile we are sending/donating/swapping 4m doses (Pfizer, so the fuck what?) to Australia, that most troubled and desperately needy of countries right now.
If that doesn't move the collective moral compass of PB then god help you all.
Australia is not a part of Covax. Your entire ire is based upon a misunderstanding.
Covax is being gifted to the third world with nothing expected in return. It is purely generosity.
The swap with Australia is exchanging shorter-dated stocks we don't currently but they desperately need, with longer-dated stocks that we will need.
If this is troubling your moral conscience then try turning it off and back on again as it needs recalibrating.
So we give vaccines to Oz rather than, say, sub-saharan Africa.
Pfizer.
Exactly: they chances of Pfizer being wasted in Africa (as a consequence of the storage requirements) are at least 10x that of AZ.
Better to give the more robust vaccines to Africa, rather than the more delicate ones.
40% of our initial vaccine donations go to Australia.
It's not a "donation" - its a swap - they get ours now, we get theirs later.
Even worse let's play swapsies with those nice other developed nations.
Which under developed nation would you prefer to play swapsies with? Or would you rather we give Pfizer doses to countries that couldn't practically distribute them?
Prime Minister Scott Morrison said the UK deal doubles the number of Pfizer doses available in September. Throughout the month, Australia will receive more than 9 million doses of Pfizer alongside 1 million Moderna doses and continued AstraZeneca supply.
“From Downing Street to Down Under we are doubling down on the Pfizer doses available to us,” he said. “The plane’s on the tarmac now, it will be leaving tomorrow and those [Pfizer] doses will be coming over the course of the next few weeks.”
Britain’s high commissioner to Australia, Vicki Treadell, says it’s a privilege to be able to support Australians by helping to accelerate the vaccine rollout down under.
I fail to see why its "worse" that we do that in Topping's eyes. Its an entirely logical thing to do, which we considered doing with Israel earlier in the pandemic but the other way around.
We send them Pfizer doses we have now, but don't need now, before they expire.
They send us Pfizer doses later on, when we need them, for boosters.
Our current doses we're sending could potentially have expired before we get on with boosting.
Purely logical and sensible thing to do.
Wait:
I thought we were getting Kylie.
ABBA it seems will have to do.
Now we are getting on to a serious subject. I don't get ABBA. I think they are rubbish. I detest every song.
I respect your personal taste but...
I used to think ABBA were totally naff back in the day. But now when I hear their old songs I can't help singing along. They are very well crafted pop songs.
We all did. Now we all desperately pretend we didn't...
No, like TSE, I have always liked ABBA, and am old enough to have done so when they were first in the charts. Brilliant musicians with a lyrical knack for profound banalities.
Won't ever vote Tory again if they introduce a tax on working age people to pay for old age care. Fuck that noise. The old wankers need to have their freebies cut, the triple lock scrapped and NI paid on pension income before working age people are hit, yet again. The Tory party is nothing more than a vote buying exercise for old c***s who want everything for free.
It's the kind of shit that makes people my age want to leave the country. A proper brain drain tax.
I would just like to gently point out that the 'old c***s' have worked hard all their lives for their pensions and paid their fair share of taxes. No to NI on pension income.
I agre with you on triple lock, state pension should be uplifted by CPI only.
So where does the money come from because any solution to fix Social care requires additional money coming from some additional tax?
Indeed. The 'worked hard all their lives' argument comes up with a lot of things, but by that logic they should never face a change, never face a tax rise, and be excluded from the impacts of everything no matter how urgent the need might be.
Beginning to make a Cons majority ever more likely if we need more money for the NHS more money for the NHS will hit working people is the only attack line Lab can come up with.
Shall I tell you what I love about this site: I often disagree with @CarlottaVance (or indeed any number of other posters), but this is a site where people come together when they agree on specific issues.
In the last day (s)he has posted a dozen or more pieces, all of which have made me nod my head, even if I don't agree with all of them.
It's how politics is supposed to work. It shouldn't be two monolithic blocks, and you have to agree with 100% or 0% - people should use their brain and back what is right in this specific circumstance.
Whatever works, folks. Whatever works.
The opposite shurely. America is stick in idiotville where you either support Gilead or support making meat illegal - we don't need to adopt the same 0% or 100% mindset.
Whatever works is right - the brilliance of Clinton and Blair's Third Way approach. What a shame that partisan hacks on both sides have torn that consensus appart.
It's not "whatever works", though, because this assumes people have the same values and priorities, and they don't. To cite one example: it's important to some that the correlation between family affluence and the life prospects of children is very significantly reduced, the egalitarian vision, whilst others place less (or no) importance on that; they instead place great value on the right to live with a minimum of government interference, a wholly different vision. This is what politics is about for me, priorities and values, rather than a cool and detached search for "evidence based" policy to meet objectives that almost everyone will agree with. If politics is the latter, given most of it isn't rocket science once you know what you're trying to achieve, it would have been sorted in this country by now to the extent it's realistically possible. Politics would be "done" a la Fukuyama. This is patently not the case.
Nice header btw @rottenborough. I'm pessimistic on the next GE right now. I'm seeing another dollop of Johnson. But let's throw in the mandatory cheer-up caveat - there's a long way to go and things can change.
Fukuyama never said that politics is done.
He said that liberal democracy is the best system devised and it would never be bettered. He is right - though the "End of History" tag was bollocks obvs.
The fiscal pressure on the government is now acute. Yesterday we had the NHS saying that they need an extra £10bn, keeping the uplift in UC is another £6bn and schools are needing an extra £2-3bn to get back to 2010 after inflation. Meantime, although not quite as bad as feared, the revenue side has not yet recovered and there is the issue of the funding of Social Care. So far Rishi has been very popular: competent, proactive and happy to dosh out the money. He now faces a genuinely difficult budget and some really hard decisions which are unlikely to be popular with anyone.
For me, we will have a much better idea of how this government is going to fare once we have heard the budget and seen the reaction of the inevitably disappointed.
When is the budget? Did it get pushed back to 2022?
Looks like this is still unknown. I thought it was going to be Q4 this year. But as the article mentions we have seen the Budget moved several times recently so moving it to Q1 ie March seems distinctly possible.
What is more than possible is that there will be lots of tax raising unpleasantness if the government is serious about balancing the books
That is a big if, and it shouldn't be, and it isn't. What would be nice, and what I expect, is a more careful delineation between investment, Covid support measures (whose need, we hope, will fade away) and current expenditure.
Won't ever vote Tory again if they introduce a tax on working age people to pay for old age care. Fuck that noise. The old wankers need to have their freebies cut, the triple lock scrapped and NI paid on pension income before working age people are hit, yet again. The Tory party is nothing more than a vote buying exercise for old c***s who want everything for free.
It's the kind of shit that makes people my age want to leave the country. A proper brain drain tax.
I would just like to gently point out that the 'old c***s' have worked hard all their lives for their pensions and paid their fair share of taxes. No to NI on pension income.
I agre with you on triple lock, state pension should be uplifted by CPI only.
Fair share, don't make me laugh. You al got cheap houses, grants to go to university, inexpensive public transport, transferable tax allowances and a while bunch of other stuff people my age have has snatched away from us to pay ever more of the nation income to your generation. You didn't save enough and now we're all paying the price, whether it's young people pissing their money away in rent or people of working age having to pay more tax.
I'll vote for any party that shits on retirees. Even Labour. It's time that you all started paying your way. Tax the shit out of rental income as well. 110% levy on rental income profits, NI on pension income, defined benefit pension income surcharge, higher income tax rates for wealthy pensioners earning £50k+, scrap the triple lock, scrap the free bus pass, scrap free prescriptions.
No new tax rises for working age people. Full fucking stop.
As a releatively recent retiree on a defined benefit pension I actually agree with most of that.
I would extend NI to all income, earned, pension or investment, and I'd equalised NI for self-employed and the employed.
A defined benefit pension income surcharge seems like retrospective taxation to me though. I chose to stay working for one employer for 20 years rather than chase higher salaries by moving around, partly because of the value of the pension.
It's all academic though. Triple lock will stay, NI will be hiked, the Tory OAP base will be pandered to, and you'll be voting Labour at the next GE. 😂
So we give vaccines to Oz rather than, say, sub-saharan Africa.
Pfizer.
Exactly: they chances of Pfizer being wasted in Africa (as a consequence of the storage requirements) are at least 10x that of AZ.
Better to give the more robust vaccines to Africa, rather than the more delicate ones.
40% of our initial vaccine donations go to Australia.
It's not a "donation" - its a swap - they get ours now, we get theirs later.
Even worse let's play swapsies with those nice other developed nations.
Which under developed nation would you prefer to play swapsies with? Or would you rather we give Pfizer doses to countries that couldn't practically distribute them?
Prime Minister Scott Morrison said the UK deal doubles the number of Pfizer doses available in September. Throughout the month, Australia will receive more than 9 million doses of Pfizer alongside 1 million Moderna doses and continued AstraZeneca supply.
“From Downing Street to Down Under we are doubling down on the Pfizer doses available to us,” he said. “The plane’s on the tarmac now, it will be leaving tomorrow and those [Pfizer] doses will be coming over the course of the next few weeks.”
Britain’s high commissioner to Australia, Vicki Treadell, says it’s a privilege to be able to support Australians by helping to accelerate the vaccine rollout down under.
I fail to see why its "worse" that we do that in Topping's eyes. Its an entirely logical thing to do, which we considered doing with Israel earlier in the pandemic but the other way around.
We send them Pfizer doses we have now, but don't need now, before they expire.
They send us Pfizer doses later on, when we need them, for boosters.
Our current doses we're sending could potentially have expired before we get on with boosting.
Purely logical and sensible thing to do.
Wait:
I thought we were getting Kylie.
ABBA it seems will have to do.
Now we are getting on to a serious subject. I don't get ABBA. I think they are rubbish. I detest every song.
I respect your personal taste but...
I used to think ABBA were totally naff back in the day. But now when I hear their old songs I can't help singing along. They are very well crafted pop songs.
Why they decided to enter Scottish politics remains a mystery
So we give vaccines to Oz rather than, say, sub-saharan Africa.
Pfizer.
Exactly: they chances of Pfizer being wasted in Africa (as a consequence of the storage requirements) are at least 10x that of AZ.
Better to give the more robust vaccines to Africa, rather than the more delicate ones.
40% of our initial vaccine donations go to Australia.
It's not a "donation" - its a swap - they get ours now, we get theirs later.
Even worse let's play swapsies with those nice other developed nations.
Which under developed nation would you prefer to play swapsies with? Or would you rather we give Pfizer doses to countries that couldn't practically distribute them?
Prime Minister Scott Morrison said the UK deal doubles the number of Pfizer doses available in September. Throughout the month, Australia will receive more than 9 million doses of Pfizer alongside 1 million Moderna doses and continued AstraZeneca supply.
“From Downing Street to Down Under we are doubling down on the Pfizer doses available to us,” he said. “The plane’s on the tarmac now, it will be leaving tomorrow and those [Pfizer] doses will be coming over the course of the next few weeks.”
Britain’s high commissioner to Australia, Vicki Treadell, says it’s a privilege to be able to support Australians by helping to accelerate the vaccine rollout down under.
I fail to see why its "worse" that we do that in Topping's eyes. Its an entirely logical thing to do, which we considered doing with Israel earlier in the pandemic but the other way around.
We send them Pfizer doses we have now, but don't need now, before they expire.
They send us Pfizer doses later on, when we need them, for boosters.
Our current doses we're sending could potentially have expired before we get on with boosting.
Purely logical and sensible thing to do.
We also have AZ doses. Send some of those to "Africa". We have pledged 9m doses now and 100m by next year to Covax. Meanwhile we are sending/donating/swapping 4m doses (Pfizer, so the fuck what?) to Australia, that most troubled and desperately needy of countries right now.
If that doesn't move the collective moral compass of PB then god help you all.
Australia is not a part of Covax. Your entire ire is based upon a misunderstanding.
Covax is being gifted to the third world with nothing expected in return. It is purely generosity.
The swap with Australia is exchanging shorter-dated stocks we don't currently but they desperately need, with longer-dated stocks that we will need.
If this is troubling your moral conscience then try turning it off and back on again as it needs recalibrating.
EXACTLY. I know that Australia is not part of Covax. I was using the Covax numbers (9m/100m) to show the extraordinary nature of giving non-Covax Australia 4m doses now (lending/swapping/whatever the fuck).
It is as a percentage, 45% of our entire first phase Covax commitment.
To Australia. That most desperately under-resourced country. Wasn't one of the Band Aids specifically set up to help NSW?
Won't ever vote Tory again if they introduce a tax on working age people to pay for old age care. Fuck that noise. The old wankers need to have their freebies cut, the triple lock scrapped and NI paid on pension income before working age people are hit, yet again. The Tory party is nothing more than a vote buying exercise for old c***s who want everything for free.
It's the kind of shit that makes people my age want to leave the country. A proper brain drain tax.
I would just like to gently point out that the 'old c***s' have worked hard all their lives for their pensions and paid their fair share of taxes. No to NI on pension income.
I agre with you on triple lock, state pension should be uplifted by CPI only.
Fair share, don't make me laugh. You al got cheap houses, grants to go to university, inexpensive public transport, transferable tax allowances and a while bunch of other stuff people my age have has snatched away from us to pay ever more of the nation income to your generation. You didn't save enough and now we're all paying the price, whether it's young people pissing their money away in rent or people of working age having to pay more tax.
I'll vote for any party that shits on retirees. Even Labour. It's time that you all started paying your way. Tax the shit out of rental income as well. 110% levy on rental income profits, NI on pension income, defined benefit pension income surcharge, higher income tax rates for wealthy pensioners earning £50k+, scrap the triple lock, scrap the free bus pass, scrap free prescriptions.
No new tax rises for working age people. Full fucking stop.
It's something @rcs1000 has pointed out before- if the dominant voice in elections is the retired, democracy tends to force decisions that aren't in the national interest, because the priority stops being producers.
And whilst the UK isn't as far gone as Italy or Japan, it's not in a good place.
It's also pretty galling that the generation that backed tax cuts over less stingy pensions and social care for their parents and grandparents (the popular policy from Thatcher to Blair) are carping now.
NEW: The EU and AstraZeneca have reached an agreement on the remaining COVID-19 vaccine doses for Member States under the terms of the August 2020 contract. The agreement will also end the pending litigation before the Belgian courts - European Commission statement
I have some sympathy with pensioners, many of whom have low, fixed incomes.
But they're an increasing proportion of the population and it isn't right for costs to be heaped on a relatively shrinking working age population. I'm not saying whack all pensioners with taxes or the like, but the proposed NI rise is dumb.
And if 8% goes through as the pension rise, that's indefensible in the current circumstances.
So we give vaccines to Oz rather than, say, sub-saharan Africa.
Pfizer.
Exactly: they chances of Pfizer being wasted in Africa (as a consequence of the storage requirements) are at least 10x that of AZ.
Better to give the more robust vaccines to Africa, rather than the more delicate ones.
40% of our initial vaccine donations go to Australia.
It's not a "donation" - its a swap - they get ours now, we get theirs later.
Even worse let's play swapsies with those nice other developed nations.
Which under developed nation would you prefer to play swapsies with? Or would you rather we give Pfizer doses to countries that couldn't practically distribute them?
Prime Minister Scott Morrison said the UK deal doubles the number of Pfizer doses available in September. Throughout the month, Australia will receive more than 9 million doses of Pfizer alongside 1 million Moderna doses and continued AstraZeneca supply.
“From Downing Street to Down Under we are doubling down on the Pfizer doses available to us,” he said. “The plane’s on the tarmac now, it will be leaving tomorrow and those [Pfizer] doses will be coming over the course of the next few weeks.”
Britain’s high commissioner to Australia, Vicki Treadell, says it’s a privilege to be able to support Australians by helping to accelerate the vaccine rollout down under.
I fail to see why its "worse" that we do that in Topping's eyes. Its an entirely logical thing to do, which we considered doing with Israel earlier in the pandemic but the other way around.
We send them Pfizer doses we have now, but don't need now, before they expire.
They send us Pfizer doses later on, when we need them, for boosters.
Our current doses we're sending could potentially have expired before we get on with boosting.
Purely logical and sensible thing to do.
Wait:
I thought we were getting Kylie.
ABBA it seems will have to do.
Now we are getting on to a serious subject. I don't get ABBA. I think they are rubbish. I detest every song.
I respect your personal taste but...
I used to think ABBA were totally naff back in the day. But now when I hear their old songs I can't help singing along. They are very well crafted pop songs.
Why they decided to enter Scottish politics remains a mystery
Dancing Queen of the South
Breaking up is never easy, I know But I have to go
This is why I liked the Dilnot proposals, which steered a course between two extremes:
• Increase from the current support qualification threshold from £23,250 to £100,000.
• Those with assets between £14,250 and £100,000 will pay a contribution towards their care, with the remainder paid by the state.
• People with assets over £100,000 will pay for their care entirely - until the payments made hit a maximum limit.
• Dilnot recommended this limit to be set at £35,000. Thereafter, state will pick up all ongoing care costs to death.
So, in summary, the most anyone is liable for is £35,000. With everyone with assets over £14,250 paying some sort of contribution (which would include the home).
£35,000 is approximately 9 months in a care home.
Average life expectancy in a care home is I believe 19 months.
So extra money is required to cover the shortfall - and where is that coming from.
General taxation. It's coming from that now. We can't fix social care without tax rises. People with £1m + assets with few non-property assets are getting most* of the cost paid by councils now.
* With regard to my mother, her £1000pw care home fees are paid by the council as she has no assets other than property and dad still lives in that (spouse in the house = exempt). But it is often forgotten that every individual in a home contributes indirectly towards the costs because the council take almost all of their income away (bar a meagre £25pw). This includes state pensions and private pensions and any other taxable income. So in my mum's case, even though she has no assets she has to pay £600 every month back to the council to, in effect, pay some of the care costs.
People are missing the extent of disillusionment with Johnson of the traditional tory core vote. Leavers or remainers, doesn't matter. They like their foxhunting and they like the preservation of rural England and they see housing estates popping up like mushrooms and a tory government leaving the Hunting Act untouched and NutNut being NutNut, and at a bare minimum a lot more than anyone thinks are going to say: I'll just sit this one out, come 2024.
Perhaps but those are the worst elements of the Tory Party. 👎 Our equivalent of the Corbynista far left.
Yay, Philibet the Libertarian is up and about DISAPPROVING OF THINGS, because that's what libertarians do best.
I don't know why you are at daggers drawn with the tank commander, because you are peas in a pod*. You have this essentialist view of what is a good tory or a loyal tory, whereas the adults are talking about where crosses are going on ballot papers.
*Perhaps one of you is the other's sockpuppet, and the spats are scripted to keep us entertained?
I'm talking about where crosses are going on ballot papers too. Appealling to the worst elements of your own core vote, like Corbnistas or Ditchers, is a recipe for disaster. IDS or Corbyn style politics doesn't work, you need to win Middle England.
Foxhunting: It got forgotten afterwards because of the dementia tax and terrorism but its worth remembering in 2017 May coming out in favour of reopening the Foxhunting debate was the first major clanger of the campaign. The issue is as settled now as Cockfighting, it is animal cruelty that is never coming back.
Housing: The Tories win when as much as the nation as possible can own their own home. Pulling up the drawbridge saying "I have a lovely home but you peasants should be in tower blocks, don't despoil my view" is not only a scummy attitude it is bad politics.
"NutNut": If you think misogyny or attacking animal welfare/environmentalism wins votes nowadays then you have another thing coming.
I will add to that list further featherbedding pensioners by giving them new benefits they never saved or paid for, by adding further higher taxes on the working aged population. If that happens it is a disgrace that I completely oppose and will piss off working age voters.
Won't ever vote Tory again if they introduce a tax on working age people to pay for old age care. Fuck that noise. The old wankers need to have their freebies cut, the triple lock scrapped and NI paid on pension income before working age people are hit, yet again. The Tory party is nothing more than a vote buying exercise for old c***s who want everything for free.
It's the kind of shit that makes people my age want to leave the country. A proper brain drain tax.
I would just like to gently point out that the 'old c***s' have worked hard all their lives for their pensions and paid their fair share of taxes. No to NI on pension income.
I agre with you on triple lock, state pension should be uplifted by CPI only.
Fair share, don't make me laugh. You al got cheap houses, grants to go to university, inexpensive public transport, transferable tax allowances and a while bunch of other stuff people my age have has snatched away from us to pay ever more of the nation income to your generation. You didn't save enough and now we're all paying the price, whether it's young people pissing their money away in rent or people of working age having to pay more tax.
I'll vote for any party that shits on retirees. Even Labour. It's time that you all started paying your way. Tax the shit out of rental income as well. 110% levy on rental income profits, NI on pension income, defined benefit pension income surcharge, higher income tax rates for wealthy pensioners earning £50k+, scrap the triple lock, scrap the free bus pass, scrap free prescriptions.
No new tax rises for working age people. Full fucking stop.
It's something @rcs1000 has pointed out before- if the dominant voice in elections is the retired, democracy tends to force decisions that aren't in the national interest, because the priority stops being producers.
And whilst the UK isn't as far gone as Italy or Japan, it's not in a good place.
It's also pretty galling that the generation that backed tax cuts over less stingy pensions and social care for their parents and grandparents (the popular policy from Thatcher to Blair) are carping now.
I just find the whole "we paid our share" argument complete bullshit. Being retired doesn't magically make someone immune to tax rises. Especially those with rentier assets or very high pension income.
Shall I tell you what I love about this site: I often disagree with @CarlottaVance (or indeed any number of other posters), but this is a site where people come together when they agree on specific issues.
In the last day (s)he has posted a dozen or more pieces, all of which have made me nod my head, even if I don't agree with all of them.
It's how politics is supposed to work. It shouldn't be two monolithic blocks, and you have to agree with 100% or 0% - people should use their brain and back what is right in this specific circumstance.
Whatever works, folks. Whatever works.
The opposite shurely. America is stick in idiotville where you either support Gilead or support making meat illegal - we don't need to adopt the same 0% or 100% mindset.
Whatever works is right - the brilliance of Clinton and Blair's Third Way approach. What a shame that partisan hacks on both sides have torn that consensus appart.
It's not "whatever works", though, because this assumes people have the same values and priorities, and they don't. To cite one example: it's important to some that the correlation between family affluence and the life prospects of children is very significantly reduced, the egalitarian vision, whilst others place less (or no) importance on that; they instead place great value on the right to live with a minimum of government interference, a wholly different vision. This is what politics is about for me, priorities and values, rather than a cool and detached search for "evidence based" policy to meet objectives that almost everyone will agree with. If politics is the latter, given most of it isn't rocket science once you know what you're trying to achieve, it would have been sorted in this country by now to the extent it's realistically possible. Politics would be "done" a la Fukuyama. This is patently not the case.
Nice header btw @rottenborough. I'm pessimistic on the next GE right now. I'm seeing another dollop of Johnson. But let's throw in the mandatory cheer-up caveat - there's a long way to go and things can change.
Fukuyama never said that politics is done.
He said that liberal democracy is the best system devised and it would never be bettered. He is right - though the "End of History" tag was bollocks obvs.
Yes, I know. "Sorted" as in the objectively optimum state of affairs which all should therefore aspire and tend to. Similar here for domestic politics. If we all wanted the same things, we could just apply a 'practicality' filter, throw out the pie-in-the-sky, and do the rest. Piece of cake. End of. But we don't all want the same things. So it's a non-starter. This is what I'm driving at.
I have some sympathy with pensioners, many of whom have low, fixed incomes.
But they're an increasing proportion of the population and it isn't right for costs to be heaped on a relatively shrinking working age population. I'm not saying whack all pensioners with taxes or the like, but the proposed NI rise is dumb.
And if 8% goes through as the pension rise, that's indefensible in the current circumstances.
Pensioners with low, fixed incomes won't be affected.
I'd bring in higher income tax rates for the over 65s. Instead of 0/20/40/45 they would be 0/22.5/42.5/47.5 (for example).
Won't ever vote Tory again if they introduce a tax on working age people to pay for old age care. Fuck that noise. The old wankers need to have their freebies cut, the triple lock scrapped and NI paid on pension income before working age people are hit, yet again. The Tory party is nothing more than a vote buying exercise for old c***s who want everything for free.
It's the kind of shit that makes people my age want to leave the country. A proper brain drain tax.
I would just like to gently point out that the 'old c***s' have worked hard all their lives for their pensions and paid their fair share of taxes. No to NI on pension income.
I agre with you on triple lock, state pension should be uplifted by CPI only.
Fair share, don't make me laugh. You al got cheap houses, grants to go to university, inexpensive public transport, transferable tax allowances and a while bunch of other stuff people my age have has snatched away from us to pay ever more of the nation income to your generation. You didn't save enough and now we're all paying the price, whether it's young people pissing their money away in rent or people of working age having to pay more tax.
I'll vote for any party that shits on retirees. Even Labour. It's time that you all started paying your way. Tax the shit out of rental income as well. 110% levy on rental income profits, NI on pension income, defined benefit pension income surcharge, higher income tax rates for wealthy pensioners earning £50k+, scrap the triple lock, scrap the free bus pass, scrap free prescriptions.
No new tax rises for working age people. Full fucking stop.
It's something @rcs1000 has pointed out before- if the dominant voice in elections is the retired, democracy tends to force decisions that aren't in the national interest, because the priority stops being producers.
So we give vaccines to Oz rather than, say, sub-saharan Africa.
Pfizer.
Exactly: they chances of Pfizer being wasted in Africa (as a consequence of the storage requirements) are at least 10x that of AZ.
Better to give the more robust vaccines to Africa, rather than the more delicate ones.
40% of our initial vaccine donations go to Australia.
It's not a "donation" - its a swap - they get ours now, we get theirs later.
Even worse let's play swapsies with those nice other developed nations.
Which under developed nation would you prefer to play swapsies with? Or would you rather we give Pfizer doses to countries that couldn't practically distribute them?
Prime Minister Scott Morrison said the UK deal doubles the number of Pfizer doses available in September. Throughout the month, Australia will receive more than 9 million doses of Pfizer alongside 1 million Moderna doses and continued AstraZeneca supply.
“From Downing Street to Down Under we are doubling down on the Pfizer doses available to us,” he said. “The plane’s on the tarmac now, it will be leaving tomorrow and those [Pfizer] doses will be coming over the course of the next few weeks.”
Britain’s high commissioner to Australia, Vicki Treadell, says it’s a privilege to be able to support Australians by helping to accelerate the vaccine rollout down under.
I fail to see why its "worse" that we do that in Topping's eyes. Its an entirely logical thing to do, which we considered doing with Israel earlier in the pandemic but the other way around.
We send them Pfizer doses we have now, but don't need now, before they expire.
They send us Pfizer doses later on, when we need them, for boosters.
Our current doses we're sending could potentially have expired before we get on with boosting.
Purely logical and sensible thing to do.
We also have AZ doses. Send some of those to "Africa". We have pledged 9m doses now and 100m by next year to Covax. Meanwhile we are sending/donating/swapping 4m doses (Pfizer, so the fuck what?) to Australia, that most troubled and desperately needy of countries right now.
If that doesn't move the collective moral compass of PB then god help you all.
Australia is not a part of Covax. Your entire ire is based upon a misunderstanding.
Covax is being gifted to the third world with nothing expected in return. It is purely generosity.
The swap with Australia is exchanging shorter-dated stocks we don't currently but they desperately need, with longer-dated stocks that we will need.
If this is troubling your moral conscience then try turning it off and back on again as it needs recalibrating.
EXACTLY. I know that Australia is not part of Covax. I was using the Covax numbers (9m/100m) to show the extraordinary nature of giving non-Covax Australia 4m doses now (lending/swapping/whatever the fuck).
It is as a percentage, 45% of our entire first phase Covax commitment.
To Australia. That most desperately under-resourced country. Wasn't one of the Band Aids specifically set up to help NSW?
Its not a part of our commitment and a net ZERO doses are going to Australia.
We're giving them some that we will need in the future but not now, they're giving it back to us in the future when we need it. No change in our longterm stocks.
How is that comparable to Covax? You're being pathetic.
Won't ever vote Tory again if they introduce a tax on working age people to pay for old age care. Fuck that noise. The old wankers need to have their freebies cut, the triple lock scrapped and NI paid on pension income before working age people are hit, yet again. The Tory party is nothing more than a vote buying exercise for old c***s who want everything for free.
It's the kind of shit that makes people my age want to leave the country. A proper brain drain tax.
I would just like to gently point out that the 'old c***s' have worked hard all their lives for their pensions and paid their fair share of taxes. No to NI on pension income.
I agre with you on triple lock, state pension should be uplifted by CPI only.
Ending the triple lock hurts poor pensioners and future pensioners – because any uplift will also benefit future retirees – compound interest and all that. Extending NI hurts affluent pensioners. Pensioners are not all the same.
I have some sympathy with pensioners, many of whom have low, fixed incomes.
But they're an increasing proportion of the population and it isn't right for costs to be heaped on a relatively shrinking working age population. I'm not saying whack all pensioners with taxes or the like, but the proposed NI rise is dumb.
And if 8% goes through as the pension rise, that's indefensible in the current circumstances.
Pensioners with low, fixed incomes won't be affected.
I'd bring in higher income tax rates for the over 65s. Instead of 0/20/40/45 they would be 0/22.5/42.5/47.5 (for example).
The fiscal pressure on the government is now acute. Yesterday we had the NHS saying that they need an extra £10bn, keeping the uplift in UC is another £6bn and schools are needing an extra £2-3bn to get back to 2010 after inflation. Meantime, although not quite as bad as feared, the revenue side has not yet recovered and there is the issue of the funding of Social Care. So far Rishi has been very popular: competent, proactive and happy to dosh out the money. He now faces a genuinely difficult budget and some really hard decisions which are unlikely to be popular with anyone.
For me, we will have a much better idea of how this government is going to fare once we have heard the budget and seen the reaction of the inevitably disappointed.
When is the budget? Did it get pushed back to 2022?
Looks like this is still unknown. I thought it was going to be Q4 this year. But as the article mentions we have seen the Budget moved several times recently so moving it to Q1 ie March seems distinctly possible.
What is more than possible is that there will be lots of tax raising unpleasantness if the government is serious about balancing the books
"Unpleasantness" is not something Johnson wants to have to deal with. The hard decisions will get kicked down the road past the next GE.
A lot of Covid costs are unique and 1 off. there will be some structural deficits that still need to be fixed but we don't need to repay absolutely everything spent on Covid.
Absolutely agree. But the structural deficits are going to be very big as @DavidL pointed out:
"Yesterday we had the NHS saying that they need an extra £10bn, keeping the uplift in UC is another £6bn and schools are needing an extra £2-3bn to get back to 2010 after inflation. Meantime... there is the issue of the funding of Social Care. "
Uplift in UC has gone. There was one way of keeping it and @Philip_Thompson pointed out the flaw in doing that yesterday.
Schools aren't going to see extra money and the NHS aren't going to get all that extra £10bn.
It isn't like this is tied - that working age people will pay more taxes to pay for the old. They can - and probably will - cut everyone AND make working people more taxes.
Partly because the Tories have trashed the economy*, partly because they want to ideologically. A tax on not commuting into the office to spend money on Pret is coming.
*yes Covid. But as the global financial crash was spun - successfully - as Labour trashing the economy then we may as well get started with reciprocity.
"So the package due to be announced is expected to include new money not just for improving social care but also for increasing the NHS budget to clear the backlog. How exactly that is split and when remains unclear.
One insider suggested it would be split 50-50. Tax and healthcare experts expect the money first to go to clearing the backlog, then to covering the costs of the social care move ."
Telegraph.
So, social care will never actually get the money then?
This in Stephen Bush#'s morning email from the Staggers, anent the social care proposals:
"That [rise in the limit], of course, means that many more people will come into contact with the state social care system, which would, in my view, have the happy side-benefit of increasing the quality of provision from its present state. But in the short term it might be fraught for the government, as part of the reason why England’s social care system has been neglected for so long is so few people come into contact with it. That period of adjustment might well be politically painful for Downing Street.
There’s another interesting policy angle here: whisper it, but these proposals don’t look all that different from Theresa May’s, which of course proved so politically explosive back in 2017."
Aren't some of these things unknown unknowns? Okay, Cummings starting a new party (yes or no?) could be classed as a known unknown but then you could have said the same for a virus coming along (yes or no?) had we done this just after the last election.
I think the big known unknown is "what do the public finances look like in 2022?"
This is why I liked the Dilnot proposals, which steered a course between two extremes:
• Increase from the current support qualification threshold from £23,250 to £100,000.
• Those with assets between £14,250 and £100,000 will pay a contribution towards their care, with the remainder paid by the state.
• People with assets over £100,000 will pay for their care entirely - until the payments made hit a maximum limit.
• Dilnot recommended this limit to be set at £35,000. Thereafter, state will pick up all ongoing care costs to death.
So, in summary, the most anyone is liable for is £35,000. With everyone with assets over £14,250 paying some sort of contribution (which would include the home).
£35,000 is approximately 9 months in a care home.
Average life expectancy in a care home is I believe 19 months.
So extra money is required to cover the shortfall - and where is that coming from.
General taxation. It's coming from that now. We can't fix social care without tax rises. People with £1m + assets with few non-property assets are getting most* of the cost paid by councils now.
* With regard to my mother, her £1000pw care home fees are paid by the council as she has no assets other than property and dad still lives in that (spouse in the house = exempt). But it is often forgotten that every individual in a home contributes indirectly towards the costs because the council take almost all of their income away (bar a meagre £25pw). This includes state pensions and private pensions and any other taxable income. So in my mum's case, even though she has no assets she has to pay £600 every month back to the council to, in effect, pay some of the care costs.
£600 contribution to a £4k bill and yet assets are available to pay all the costs... Now I agree that your dad shouldn't be penalised for your mum's illness and care requirements but why should the general public pay for her care when a charge could be applied to her assets.
The problem is that the current system doesn't help anyone - and all the fixes seem to be bandages rather than actual thought through solutions.
There is a reason why whenever I look at things I come back to a land value tax being 100% essential - we simply aren't taxing wealth enough while over taxing earnt income.
Won't ever vote Tory again if they introduce a tax on working age people to pay for old age care. Fuck that noise. The old wankers need to have their freebies cut, the triple lock scrapped and NI paid on pension income before working age people are hit, yet again. The Tory party is nothing more than a vote buying exercise for old c***s who want everything for free.
It's the kind of shit that makes people my age want to leave the country. A proper brain drain tax.
I would just like to gently point out that the 'old c***s' have worked hard all their lives for their pensions and paid their fair share of taxes. No to NI on pension income.
I agre with you on triple lock, state pension should be uplifted by CPI only.
Fair share, don't make me laugh. You al got cheap houses, grants to go to university, inexpensive public transport, transferable tax allowances and a while bunch of other stuff people my age have has snatched away from us to pay ever more of the nation income to your generation. You didn't save enough and now we're all paying the price, whether it's young people pissing their money away in rent or people of working age having to pay more tax.
I'll vote for any party that shits on retirees. Even Labour. It's time that you all started paying your way. Tax the shit out of rental income as well. 110% levy on rental income profits, NI on pension income, defined benefit pension income surcharge, higher income tax rates for wealthy pensioners earning £50k+, scrap the triple lock, scrap the free bus pass, scrap free prescriptions.
No new tax rises for working age people. Full fucking stop.
It's something @rcs1000 has pointed out before- if the dominant voice in elections is the retired, democracy tends to force decisions that aren't in the national interest, because the priority stops being producers.
And whilst the UK isn't as far gone as Italy or Japan, it's not in a good place.
It's also pretty galling that the generation that backed tax cuts over less stingy pensions and social care for their parents and grandparents (the popular policy from Thatcher to Blair) are carping now.
I just find the whole "we paid our share" argument complete bullshit. Being retired doesn't magically make someone immune to tax rises. Especially those with rentier assets or very high pension income.
There’s a LOT of wealthy pensioners who are relatively cash tight but are sitting on massively underoccupied family homes that are an untapped goldmine of liquidity. Land value tax yes but not if it’s going to be levelled at the working age as well. Apply it to anyone who is retired and get them downsizing.
It also needs a big campaign to build smaller bungalow type accommodation. They should be making it illegal under any circumstance to convert a single storey into multi storey and make them easier to get planning permission for. Annexes as well. Ludicrous that you’ll often get approval to build to a cinema room but not an annexe for an elderly relative.
Take with one hand, give with the other. Joined up thinking between Govt Depts. Lol!!
The fiscal pressure on the government is now acute. Yesterday we had the NHS saying that they need an extra £10bn, keeping the uplift in UC is another £6bn and schools are needing an extra £2-3bn to get back to 2010 after inflation. Meantime, although not quite as bad as feared, the revenue side has not yet recovered and there is the issue of the funding of Social Care. So far Rishi has been very popular: competent, proactive and happy to dosh out the money. He now faces a genuinely difficult budget and some really hard decisions which are unlikely to be popular with anyone.
For me, we will have a much better idea of how this government is going to fare once we have heard the budget and seen the reaction of the inevitably disappointed.
When is the budget? Did it get pushed back to 2022?
Looks like this is still unknown. I thought it was going to be Q4 this year. But as the article mentions we have seen the Budget moved several times recently so moving it to Q1 ie March seems distinctly possible.
What is more than possible is that there will be lots of tax raising unpleasantness if the government is serious about balancing the books
"Unpleasantness" is not something Johnson wants to have to deal with. The hard decisions will get kicked down the road past the next GE.
A lot of Covid costs are unique and 1 off. there will be some structural deficits that still need to be fixed but we don't need to repay absolutely everything spent on Covid.
Absolutely agree. But the structural deficits are going to be very big as @DavidL pointed out:
"Yesterday we had the NHS saying that they need an extra £10bn, keeping the uplift in UC is another £6bn and schools are needing an extra £2-3bn to get back to 2010 after inflation. Meantime... there is the issue of the funding of Social Care. "
Uplift in UC has gone. There was one way of keeping it and @Philip_Thompson pointed out the flaw in doing that yesterday.
Schools aren't going to see extra money and the NHS aren't going to get all that extra £10bn.
It isn't like this is tied - that working age people will pay more taxes to pay for the old. They can - and probably will - cut everyone AND make working people more taxes.
Partly because the Tories have trashed the economy*, partly because they want to ideologically. A tax on not commuting into the office to spend money on Pret is coming.
*yes Covid. But as the global financial crash was spun - successfully - as Labour trashing the economy then we may as well get started with reciprocity.
Labour did trash the economy then.
If years after the Covid the UK still has a budget deficit well over £100bn per annum then yes that'd be comparable to Labour.
Do you want a bet on that happening? I am willing to bet £50 at evens that despite Covid being more serious than the financial crisis, that the budget deficit will be a smaller percentage of GDP in 2024 than it was in 2010. Do you agree to that bet?
NEW with @PickardJE: Johnson government will renew emergency coronavirus legislation for another six months, signalling that restrictions may need to be introduced this winter.
Tory MPs are unhappy and expect a significant rebellion (more than 30)...
@Mark_J_Harper says it should expire: "We are going to have to learn to live with this virus, and retaining sweeping powers of detention in the Coronavirus Act is not consistent with this. What justification can there be for extending these measures?"
I watched an ABBA doc/drama on Ch5 the other week - still can’t get my head around Agnetha dating her weird stalker. She must have been in a very low place mentally after the deaths of her parents
Won't ever vote Tory again if they introduce a tax on working age people to pay for old age care. Fuck that noise. The old wankers need to have their freebies cut, the triple lock scrapped and NI paid on pension income before working age people are hit, yet again. The Tory party is nothing more than a vote buying exercise for old c***s who want everything for free.
It's the kind of shit that makes people my age want to leave the country. A proper brain drain tax.
I would just like to gently point out that the 'old c***s' have worked hard all their lives for their pensions and paid their fair share of taxes. No to NI on pension income.
I agre with you on triple lock, state pension should be uplifted by CPI only.
Fair share, don't make me laugh. You al got cheap houses, grants to go to university, inexpensive public transport, transferable tax allowances and a while bunch of other stuff people my age have has snatched away from us to pay ever more of the nation income to your generation. You didn't save enough and now we're all paying the price, whether it's young people pissing their money away in rent or people of working age having to pay more tax.
I'll vote for any party that shits on retirees. Even Labour. It's time that you all started paying your way. Tax the shit out of rental income as well. 110% levy on rental income profits, NI on pension income, defined benefit pension income surcharge, higher income tax rates for wealthy pensioners earning £50k+, scrap the triple lock, scrap the free bus pass, scrap free prescriptions.
No new tax rises for working age people. Full fucking stop.
It's something @rcs1000 has pointed out before- if the dominant voice in elections is the retired, democracy tends to force decisions that aren't in the national interest, because the priority stops being producers.
And whilst the UK isn't as far gone as Italy or Japan, it's not in a good place.
It's also pretty galling that the generation that backed tax cuts over less stingy pensions and social care for their parents and grandparents (the popular policy from Thatcher to Blair) are carping now.
I just find the whole "we paid our share" argument complete bullshit. Being retired doesn't magically make someone immune to tax rises. Especially those with rentier assets or very high pension income.
There’s a LOT of wealthy pensioners who are relatively cash tight but are sitting on massively underoccupied family homes that are an untapped goldmine of liquidity. Land value tax yes but not if it’s going to be levelled at the working age as well. Apply it to anyone who is retired and get them downsizing.
It also needs a big campaign to build smaller bungalow type accommodation. They should be making it illegal under any circumstance to convert a single storey into multi storey and make them easier to get planning permission for. Annexes as well. Ludicrous that you’ll often get approval to build to a cinema room but not an annexe for an elderly relative.
Take with one hand, give with the other. Joined up thinking between Govt Depts. Lol!!
Land value tax on everyone, replacing council tax.
If you are going to tax an asset class you need to do so consistently - the fact holiday lets can transfer to business rates is one reason why holiday lets and second homes are a nightmare in touristy / pretty areas.
The fiscal pressure on the government is now acute. Yesterday we had the NHS saying that they need an extra £10bn, keeping the uplift in UC is another £6bn and schools are needing an extra £2-3bn to get back to 2010 after inflation. Meantime, although not quite as bad as feared, the revenue side has not yet recovered and there is the issue of the funding of Social Care. So far Rishi has been very popular: competent, proactive and happy to dosh out the money. He now faces a genuinely difficult budget and some really hard decisions which are unlikely to be popular with anyone.
For me, we will have a much better idea of how this government is going to fare once we have heard the budget and seen the reaction of the inevitably disappointed.
When is the budget? Did it get pushed back to 2022?
Looks like this is still unknown. I thought it was going to be Q4 this year. But as the article mentions we have seen the Budget moved several times recently so moving it to Q1 ie March seems distinctly possible.
What is more than possible is that there will be lots of tax raising unpleasantness if the government is serious about balancing the books
"Unpleasantness" is not something Johnson wants to have to deal with. The hard decisions will get kicked down the road past the next GE.
A lot of Covid costs are unique and 1 off. there will be some structural deficits that still need to be fixed but we don't need to repay absolutely everything spent on Covid.
Absolutely agree. But the structural deficits are going to be very big as @DavidL pointed out:
"Yesterday we had the NHS saying that they need an extra £10bn, keeping the uplift in UC is another £6bn and schools are needing an extra £2-3bn to get back to 2010 after inflation. Meantime... there is the issue of the funding of Social Care. "
Uplift in UC has gone. There was one way of keeping it and @Philip_Thompson pointed out the flaw in doing that yesterday.
Schools aren't going to see extra money and the NHS aren't going to get all that extra £10bn.
It isn't like this is tied - that working age people will pay more taxes to pay for the old. They can - and probably will - cut everyone AND make working people more taxes.
Partly because the Tories have trashed the economy*, partly because they want to ideologically. A tax on not commuting into the office to spend money on Pret is coming.
*yes Covid. But as the global financial crash was spun - successfully - as Labour trashing the economy then we may as well get started with reciprocity.
Labour did trash the economy then.
If years after the Covid the UK still has a budget deficit well over £100bn per annum then yes that'd be comparable to Labour.
Do you want a bet on that happening? I am willing to bet £50 at evens that despite Covid being more serious than the financial crisis, that the budget deficit will be a smaller percentage of GDP in 2024 than it was in 2010. Do you agree to that bet?
Surely 2022, two years after the start of the crisis, is the appropriate comparitor to 2010?
NEW with @PickardJE: Johnson government will renew emergency coronavirus legislation for another six months, signalling that restrictions may need to be introduced this winter.
Tory MPs are unhappy and expect a significant rebellion (more than 30)...
@Mark_J_Harper says it should expire: "We are going to have to learn to live with this virus, and retaining sweeping powers of detention in the Coronavirus Act is not consistent with this. What justification can there be for extending these measures?"
NEW with @PickardJE: Johnson government will renew emergency coronavirus legislation for another six months, signalling that restrictions may need to be introduced this winter.
Tory MPs are unhappy and expect a significant rebellion (more than 30)...
@Mark_J_Harper says it should expire: "We are going to have to learn to live with this virus, and retaining sweeping powers of detention in the Coronavirus Act is not consistent with this. What justification can there be for extending these measures?"
Won't ever vote Tory again if they introduce a tax on working age people to pay for old age care. Fuck that noise. The old wankers need to have their freebies cut, the triple lock scrapped and NI paid on pension income before working age people are hit, yet again. The Tory party is nothing more than a vote buying exercise for old c***s who want everything for free.
It's the kind of shit that makes people my age want to leave the country. A proper brain drain tax.
I would just like to gently point out that the 'old c***s' have worked hard all their lives for their pensions and paid their fair share of taxes. No to NI on pension income.
I agre with you on triple lock, state pension should be uplifted by CPI only.
Fair share, don't make me laugh. You al got cheap houses, grants to go to university, inexpensive public transport, transferable tax allowances and a while bunch of other stuff people my age have has snatched away from us to pay ever more of the nation income to your generation. You didn't save enough and now we're all paying the price, whether it's young people pissing their money away in rent or people of working age having to pay more tax.
I'll vote for any party that shits on retirees. Even Labour. It's time that you all started paying your way. Tax the shit out of rental income as well. 110% levy on rental income profits, NI on pension income, defined benefit pension income surcharge, higher income tax rates for wealthy pensioners earning £50k+, scrap the triple lock, scrap the free bus pass, scrap free prescriptions.
No new tax rises for working age people. Full fucking stop.
It's something @rcs1000 has pointed out before- if the dominant voice in elections is the retired, democracy tends to force decisions that aren't in the national interest, because the priority stops being producers.
And whilst the UK isn't as far gone as Italy or Japan, it's not in a good place.
It's also pretty galling that the generation that backed tax cuts over less stingy pensions and social care for their parents and grandparents (the popular policy from Thatcher to Blair) are carping now.
I just find the whole "we paid our share" argument complete bullshit. Being retired doesn't magically make someone immune to tax rises. Especially those with rentier assets or very high pension income.
There’s a LOT of wealthy pensioners who are relatively cash tight but are sitting on massively underoccupied family homes that are an untapped goldmine of liquidity. Land value tax yes but not if it’s going to be levelled at the working age as well. Apply it to anyone who is retired and get them downsizing.
It also needs a big campaign to build smaller bungalow type accommodation. They should be making it illegal under any circumstance to convert a single storey into multi storey and make them easier to get planning permission for. Annexes as well. Ludicrous that you’ll often get approval to build to a cinema room but not an annexe for an elderly relative.
Take with one hand, give with the other. Joined up thinking between Govt Depts. Lol!!
A lot of families in this country are in the following situation: (a) Neither the older nor younger members of the family have a lot of spare money/cash, (b) The younger members of the family can't afford to buy a property, (c) The older members of the family do, however, own a property.
What this means is that although the younger members of the family are annoyed that they can't afford to buy a property themselves, the one thing that can look forward to is eventually inheriting the family property, although this might be a long way in the future because these days people tend to live much longer than they used to. So although they younger members of the family wish they could afford to buy a property right now, doing something to reduce the value of property in general might not be as popular with them as you might expect.
Aren't some of these things unknown unknowns? Okay, Cummings starting a new party (yes or no?) could be classed as a known unknown but then you could have said the same for a virus coming along (yes or no?) had we done this just after the last election.
I think the big known unknown is "what do the public finances look like in 2022?"
Surely by definition any risk we can name is not an unknown unknown?
This is why I liked the Dilnot proposals, which steered a course between two extremes:
• Increase from the current support qualification threshold from £23,250 to £100,000.
• Those with assets between £14,250 and £100,000 will pay a contribution towards their care, with the remainder paid by the state.
• People with assets over £100,000 will pay for their care entirely - until the payments made hit a maximum limit.
• Dilnot recommended this limit to be set at £35,000. Thereafter, state will pick up all ongoing care costs to death.
So, in summary, the most anyone is liable for is £35,000. With everyone with assets over £14,250 paying some sort of contribution (which would include the home).
£35,000 is approximately 9 months in a care home.
Average life expectancy in a care home is I believe 19 months.
So extra money is required to cover the shortfall - and where is that coming from.
General taxation. It's coming from that now. We can't fix social care without tax rises. People with £1m + assets with few non-property assets are getting most* of the cost paid by councils now.
* With regard to my mother, her £1000pw care home fees are paid by the council as she has no assets other than property and dad still lives in that (spouse in the house = exempt). But it is often forgotten that every individual in a home contributes indirectly towards the costs because the council take almost all of their income away (bar a meagre £25pw). This includes state pensions and private pensions and any other taxable income. So in my mum's case, even though she has no assets she has to pay £600 every month back to the council to, in effect, pay some of the care costs.
£600 contribution to a £4k bill and yet assets are available to pay all the costs... Now I agree that your dad shouldn't be penalised for your mum's illness and care requirements but why should the general public pay for her care when a charge could be applied to her assets.
Sure, that's the nub of the problem isn't it. A problem which Dilnot steered a course inbetween.
In my mum's case she is in a nursing home because going home was not an option. In the 12 months before going into the home we had to call emergency ambulances six time due to her frequent collapses. She ended up in hospital for two months. The truth is that she needs round-the-clock nursing care and if she wasn't in a home she would be in hospital now. This leads to the commonly-held school of thought that the NHS should be paying anyway because it is a health matter.
I'm conflicted on this. On one hand I agree with you but on the other I can tell you that my parent's bungalow is their pride and joy; the achievement of their lives. If they thought that this would be paid over to the council they would be broken-hearted and feel penalised for a lifetime's financial prudence.
I have some sympathy with pensioners, many of whom have low, fixed incomes.
But they're an increasing proportion of the population and it isn't right for costs to be heaped on a relatively shrinking working age population. I'm not saying whack all pensioners with taxes or the like, but the proposed NI rise is dumb.
And if 8% goes through as the pension rise, that's indefensible in the current circumstances.
Pensioners with low, fixed incomes won't be affected.
I'd bring in higher income tax rates for the over 65s. Instead of 0/20/40/45 they would be 0/22.5/42.5/47.5 (for example).
0/20/48/55 would be ideal tax rates for retirement incomes. Taxed at source so no escaping it either. My dad is going to have income of over £80k per year in retirement, he literally doesn't know what to do with it beyond giving it away to me and my sister and his grandkids.
Because it will screw millennials who have managed to get on the housing ladder but with low equity, like myself. The likelihood of wages keeping up is laughable to me.
This in Stephen Bush#'s morning email from the Staggers, anent the social care proposals:
"That [rise in the limit], of course, means that many more people will come into contact with the state social care system, which would, in my view, have the happy side-benefit of increasing the quality of provision from its present state. But in the short term it might be fraught for the government, as part of the reason why England’s social care system has been neglected for so long is so few people come into contact with it. That period of adjustment might well be politically painful for Downing Street.
There’s another interesting policy angle here: whisper it, but these proposals don’t look all that different from Theresa May’s, which of course proved so politically explosive back in 2017."
How does Greater demand on state social care improve the quality of provision.
Greater demand will result in a continual attempt to reduce costs that are already uneconomic in whole heaps of the country - for instance Cornwall are still trying to avoid paying for travel time between social care calls.
I have some sympathy with pensioners, many of whom have low, fixed incomes.
But they're an increasing proportion of the population and it isn't right for costs to be heaped on a relatively shrinking working age population. I'm not saying whack all pensioners with taxes or the like, but the proposed NI rise is dumb.
And if 8% goes through as the pension rise, that's indefensible in the current circumstances.
Pensioners with low, fixed incomes won't be affected.
I'd bring in higher income tax rates for the over 65s. Instead of 0/20/40/45 they would be 0/22.5/42.5/47.5 (for example).
I have some sympathy with pensioners, many of whom have low, fixed incomes.
But they're an increasing proportion of the population and it isn't right for costs to be heaped on a relatively shrinking working age population. I'm not saying whack all pensioners with taxes or the like, but the proposed NI rise is dumb.
And if 8% goes through as the pension rise, that's indefensible in the current circumstances.
Pensioners with low, fixed incomes won't be affected.
I'd bring in higher income tax rates for the over 65s. Instead of 0/20/40/45 they would be 0/22.5/42.5/47.5 (for example).
0/20/48/55 would be ideal tax rates for retirement incomes. Taxed at source so no escaping it either. My dad is going to have income of over £80k per year in retirement, he literally doesn't know what to do with it beyond giving it away to me and my sister and his grandkids.
Yes quite. But I thought you were against tax rises Max?
The fiscal pressure on the government is now acute. Yesterday we had the NHS saying that they need an extra £10bn, keeping the uplift in UC is another £6bn and schools are needing an extra £2-3bn to get back to 2010 after inflation. Meantime, although not quite as bad as feared, the revenue side has not yet recovered and there is the issue of the funding of Social Care. So far Rishi has been very popular: competent, proactive and happy to dosh out the money. He now faces a genuinely difficult budget and some really hard decisions which are unlikely to be popular with anyone.
For me, we will have a much better idea of how this government is going to fare once we have heard the budget and seen the reaction of the inevitably disappointed.
When is the budget? Did it get pushed back to 2022?
Looks like this is still unknown. I thought it was going to be Q4 this year. But as the article mentions we have seen the Budget moved several times recently so moving it to Q1 ie March seems distinctly possible.
What is more than possible is that there will be lots of tax raising unpleasantness if the government is serious about balancing the books
"Unpleasantness" is not something Johnson wants to have to deal with. The hard decisions will get kicked down the road past the next GE.
A lot of Covid costs are unique and 1 off. there will be some structural deficits that still need to be fixed but we don't need to repay absolutely everything spent on Covid.
Absolutely agree. But the structural deficits are going to be very big as @DavidL pointed out:
"Yesterday we had the NHS saying that they need an extra £10bn, keeping the uplift in UC is another £6bn and schools are needing an extra £2-3bn to get back to 2010 after inflation. Meantime... there is the issue of the funding of Social Care. "
Uplift in UC has gone. There was one way of keeping it and @Philip_Thompson pointed out the flaw in doing that yesterday.
Schools aren't going to see extra money and the NHS aren't going to get all that extra £10bn.
It isn't like this is tied - that working age people will pay more taxes to pay for the old. They can - and probably will - cut everyone AND make working people more taxes.
Partly because the Tories have trashed the economy*, partly because they want to ideologically. A tax on not commuting into the office to spend money on Pret is coming.
*yes Covid. But as the global financial crash was spun - successfully - as Labour trashing the economy then we may as well get started with reciprocity.
Labour did trash the economy then.
If years after the Covid the UK still has a budget deficit well over £100bn per annum then yes that'd be comparable to Labour.
Do you want a bet on that happening? I am willing to bet £50 at evens that despite Covid being more serious than the financial crisis, that the budget deficit will be a smaller percentage of GDP in 2024 than it was in 2010. Do you agree to that bet?
Surely 2022, two years after the start of the crisis, is the appropriate comparitor to 2010?
Either way, I expect the UK's 2022 deficit to be smaller than 2010 too. Again, despite Covid being a much bigger threat to both the economy and society in general.
Because Labour screwed up which is why a toxic mammoth structural deficit was still there even after the financial crisis was over.
The fiscal pressure on the government is now acute. Yesterday we had the NHS saying that they need an extra £10bn, keeping the uplift in UC is another £6bn and schools are needing an extra £2-3bn to get back to 2010 after inflation. Meantime, although not quite as bad as feared, the revenue side has not yet recovered and there is the issue of the funding of Social Care. So far Rishi has been very popular: competent, proactive and happy to dosh out the money. He now faces a genuinely difficult budget and some really hard decisions which are unlikely to be popular with anyone.
For me, we will have a much better idea of how this government is going to fare once we have heard the budget and seen the reaction of the inevitably disappointed.
When is the budget? Did it get pushed back to 2022?
Looks like this is still unknown. I thought it was going to be Q4 this year. But as the article mentions we have seen the Budget moved several times recently so moving it to Q1 ie March seems distinctly possible.
What is more than possible is that there will be lots of tax raising unpleasantness if the government is serious about balancing the books
"Unpleasantness" is not something Johnson wants to have to deal with. The hard decisions will get kicked down the road past the next GE.
A lot of Covid costs are unique and 1 off. there will be some structural deficits that still need to be fixed but we don't need to repay absolutely everything spent on Covid.
Absolutely agree. But the structural deficits are going to be very big as @DavidL pointed out:
"Yesterday we had the NHS saying that they need an extra £10bn, keeping the uplift in UC is another £6bn and schools are needing an extra £2-3bn to get back to 2010 after inflation. Meantime... there is the issue of the funding of Social Care. "
Uplift in UC has gone. There was one way of keeping it and @Philip_Thompson pointed out the flaw in doing that yesterday.
Schools aren't going to see extra money and the NHS aren't going to get all that extra £10bn.
It isn't like this is tied - that working age people will pay more taxes to pay for the old. They can - and probably will - cut everyone AND make working people more taxes.
Partly because the Tories have trashed the economy*, partly because they want to ideologically. A tax on not commuting into the office to spend money on Pret is coming.
*yes Covid. But as the global financial crash was spun - successfully - as Labour trashing the economy then we may as well get started with reciprocity.
Labour did trash the economy then.
If years after the Covid the UK still has a budget deficit well over £100bn per annum then yes that'd be comparable to Labour.
Do you want a bet on that happening? I am willing to bet £50 at evens that despite Covid being more serious than the financial crisis, that the budget deficit will be a smaller percentage of GDP in 2024 than it was in 2010. Do you agree to that bet?
This is why I liked the Dilnot proposals, which steered a course between two extremes:
• Increase from the current support qualification threshold from £23,250 to £100,000.
• Those with assets between £14,250 and £100,000 will pay a contribution towards their care, with the remainder paid by the state.
• People with assets over £100,000 will pay for their care entirely - until the payments made hit a maximum limit.
• Dilnot recommended this limit to be set at £35,000. Thereafter, state will pick up all ongoing care costs to death.
So, in summary, the most anyone is liable for is £35,000. With everyone with assets over £14,250 paying some sort of contribution (which would include the home).
£35,000 is approximately 9 months in a care home.
Average life expectancy in a care home is I believe 19 months.
So extra money is required to cover the shortfall - and where is that coming from.
General taxation. It's coming from that now. We can't fix social care without tax rises. People with £1m + assets with few non-property assets are getting most* of the cost paid by councils now.
* With regard to my mother, her £1000pw care home fees are paid by the council as she has no assets other than property and dad still lives in that (spouse in the house = exempt). But it is often forgotten that every individual in a home contributes indirectly towards the costs because the council take almost all of their income away (bar a meagre £25pw). This includes state pensions and private pensions and any other taxable income. So in my mum's case, even though she has no assets she has to pay £600 every month back to the council to, in effect, pay some of the care costs.
£600 contribution to a £4k bill and yet assets are available to pay all the costs... Now I agree that your dad shouldn't be penalised for your mum's illness and care requirements but why should the general public pay for her care when a charge could be applied to her assets.
Sure, that's the nub of the problem isn't it. A problem which Dilnot steered a course inbetween.
In my mum's case she is in a nursing home because going home was not an option. In the 12 months before going into the home we had to call emergency ambulances six time due to her frequent collapses. She ended up in hospital for two months. The truth is that she needs round-the-clock nursing care and if she wasn't in a home she would be in hospital now. This leads to the commonly-held school of thought that the NHS should be paying anyway because it is a health matter.
I'm conflicted on this. On one hand I agree with you but on the other I can tell you that my parent's bungalow is their pride and joy; the achievement of their lives. If they thought that this would be paid over to the council they would be broken-hearted and feel penalised for a lifetime's financial prudence.
They would be being penalised not for their lifetime's financial prudence but because they are unlucky enough that your mum lost the old age health lottery.
There really is no easy answer here - but the simple fact is that the costs can't be taken out of income, somehow or other they need to be taken out of wealth for income is already way too heavily taxed and wealth isn't really taxed at all in the UK.
Because it will screw millennials who have managed to get on the housing ladder but with low equity, like myself. The likelihood of wages keeping up is laughable to me.
Except the people fretting about inflation are typically fretting about wage inflation.
Wage inflation would be good for you and bad for those with savings and not earnings.
This in Stephen Bush#'s morning email from the Staggers, anent the social care proposals:
"That [rise in the limit], of course, means that many more people will come into contact with the state social care system, which would, in my view, have the happy side-benefit of increasing the quality of provision from its present state. But in the short term it might be fraught for the government, as part of the reason why England’s social care system has been neglected for so long is so few people come into contact with it. That period of adjustment might well be politically painful for Downing Street.
There’s another interesting policy angle here: whisper it, but these proposals don’t look all that different from Theresa May’s, which of course proved so politically explosive back in 2017."
How does Greater demand on state social care improve the quality of provision.
Greater demand will result in a continual attempt to reduce costs that are already uneconomic in whole heaps of the country - for instance Cornwall are still trying to avoid paying for travel time between social care calls.
Not my argument, obvs: but I presume he means that relegating state provision to the poor makes sure that hardly any voters have experience of it, still less the wealthier and Torier voters. However, extending it to more families broadens the base. So it will become more salient, and there will be more pressure to improve the quality.
Because it will screw millennials who have managed to get on the housing ladder but with low equity, like myself. The likelihood of wages keeping up is laughable to me.
Only if interest rates go up. I wouldn't bet on that happening, which is what I think David was getting at.
Aren't some of these things unknown unknowns? Okay, Cummings starting a new party (yes or no?) could be classed as a known unknown but then you could have said the same for a virus coming along (yes or no?) had we done this just after the last election.
I think the big known unknown is "what do the public finances look like in 2022?"
Surely by definition any risk we can name is not an unknown unknown?
This, according to Wiki, is the original quote:
"Reports that say that something hasn't happened are always interesting to me, because as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns—the ones we don't know we don't know. And if one looks throughout the history of our country and other free countries, it is the latter category that tends to be the difficult ones"
Because it will screw millennials who have managed to get on the housing ladder but with low equity, like myself. The likelihood of wages keeping up is laughable to me.
Except the people fretting about inflation are typically fretting about wage inflation.
Wage inflation would be good for you and bad for those with savings and not earnings.
Who frets about Wage inflation? It's inflation where wages don't increase that is the real issue?
The fiscal pressure on the government is now acute. Yesterday we had the NHS saying that they need an extra £10bn, keeping the uplift in UC is another £6bn and schools are needing an extra £2-3bn to get back to 2010 after inflation. Meantime, although not quite as bad as feared, the revenue side has not yet recovered and there is the issue of the funding of Social Care. So far Rishi has been very popular: competent, proactive and happy to dosh out the money. He now faces a genuinely difficult budget and some really hard decisions which are unlikely to be popular with anyone.
For me, we will have a much better idea of how this government is going to fare once we have heard the budget and seen the reaction of the inevitably disappointed.
When is the budget? Did it get pushed back to 2022?
Looks like this is still unknown. I thought it was going to be Q4 this year. But as the article mentions we have seen the Budget moved several times recently so moving it to Q1 ie March seems distinctly possible.
What is more than possible is that there will be lots of tax raising unpleasantness if the government is serious about balancing the books
"Unpleasantness" is not something Johnson wants to have to deal with. The hard decisions will get kicked down the road past the next GE.
A lot of Covid costs are unique and 1 off. there will be some structural deficits that still need to be fixed but we don't need to repay absolutely everything spent on Covid.
Absolutely agree. But the structural deficits are going to be very big as @DavidL pointed out:
"Yesterday we had the NHS saying that they need an extra £10bn, keeping the uplift in UC is another £6bn and schools are needing an extra £2-3bn to get back to 2010 after inflation. Meantime... there is the issue of the funding of Social Care. "
Uplift in UC has gone. There was one way of keeping it and @Philip_Thompson pointed out the flaw in doing that yesterday.
Schools aren't going to see extra money and the NHS aren't going to get all that extra £10bn.
It isn't like this is tied - that working age people will pay more taxes to pay for the old. They can - and probably will - cut everyone AND make working people more taxes.
Partly because the Tories have trashed the economy*, partly because they want to ideologically. A tax on not commuting into the office to spend money on Pret is coming.
*yes Covid. But as the global financial crash was spun - successfully - as Labour trashing the economy then we may as well get started with reciprocity.
Labour did trash the economy then.
If years after the Covid the UK still has a budget deficit well over £100bn per annum then yes that'd be comparable to Labour.
Do you want a bet on that happening? I am willing to bet £50 at evens that despite Covid being more serious than the financial crisis, that the budget deficit will be a smaller percentage of GDP in 2024 than it was in 2010. Do you agree to that bet?
I don't bet. Certainly not on your straw men.
It was your straw man, I was just challenging you to defend it with a bet.
Fair play if you don't though, its not for everyone. I can respect that.
But I expect your straw man will be proven wrong. The UK in 2024 won't be like the UK in 2010, because the Tories haven't messed up the economy like Labour did.
Because it will screw millennials who have managed to get on the housing ladder but with low equity, like myself. The likelihood of wages keeping up is laughable to me.
Except the people fretting about inflation are typically fretting about wage inflation.
Wage inflation would be good for you and bad for those with savings and not earnings.
The fear is price inflation leading to interest rate rises not wage inflation.
Interest rates have been for all intents and purposes zero my entire adult life.
Because it will screw millennials who have managed to get on the housing ladder but with low equity, like myself. The likelihood of wages keeping up is laughable to me.
Except the people fretting about inflation are typically fretting about wage inflation.
Wage inflation would be good for you and bad for those with savings and not earnings.
Who frets about Wage inflation? It's inflation where wages don't increase that is the real issue?
Almost every day we've got people on here saying its troubling if HGV drivers etc get pay rises.
NEW with @PickardJE: Johnson government will renew emergency coronavirus legislation for another six months, signalling that restrictions may need to be introduced this winter.
Tory MPs are unhappy and expect a significant rebellion (more than 30)...
@Mark_J_Harper says it should expire: "We are going to have to learn to live with this virus, and retaining sweeping powers of detention in the Coronavirus Act is not consistent with this. What justification can there be for extending these measures?"
Lets see where you are when your schools go back - the current prolonged spike that won't drop back to baseline can go surging off again. Lets see where we all are when the latest variant tears through us again. Lets see where we are when the "perhaps we need a booster for pensioners" becomes another emergency get needles in 40m arms.
Things are a lot better than they were a year ago. We won't face the same winter crisis as last winter. But the idea that it is over is wishful thinking. We all wish it was over. But it isn't.
This in Stephen Bush#'s morning email from the Staggers, anent the social care proposals:
"That [rise in the limit], of course, means that many more people will come into contact with the state social care system, which would, in my view, have the happy side-benefit of increasing the quality of provision from its present state. But in the short term it might be fraught for the government, as part of the reason why England’s social care system has been neglected for so long is so few people come into contact with it. That period of adjustment might well be politically painful for Downing Street.
There’s another interesting policy angle here: whisper it, but these proposals don’t look all that different from Theresa May’s, which of course proved so politically explosive back in 2017."
How does Greater demand on state social care improve the quality of provision.
Greater demand will result in a continual attempt to reduce costs that are already uneconomic in whole heaps of the country - for instance Cornwall are still trying to avoid paying for travel time between social care calls.
The sharp-elbowed middle class offspring of middle class pensioners will kick up a fuss about standards of provision.
When it is just the forelock-tugging classes relying on the state, this doesn't happen.
This in Stephen Bush#'s morning email from the Staggers, anent the social care proposals:
"That [rise in the limit], of course, means that many more people will come into contact with the state social care system, which would, in my view, have the happy side-benefit of increasing the quality of provision from its present state. But in the short term it might be fraught for the government, as part of the reason why England’s social care system has been neglected for so long is so few people come into contact with it. That period of adjustment might well be politically painful for Downing Street.
There’s another interesting policy angle here: whisper it, but these proposals don’t look all that different from Theresa May’s, which of course proved so politically explosive back in 2017."
How does Greater demand on state social care improve the quality of provision.
Greater demand will result in a continual attempt to reduce costs that are already uneconomic in whole heaps of the country - for instance Cornwall are still trying to avoid paying for travel time between social care calls.
Not my argument, obvs: but I presume he means that relegating state provision to the poor makes sure that hardly any voters have experience of it, still less the wealthier and Torier voters. However, extending it to more families broadens the base. So it will become more salient, and there will be more pressure to improve the quality.
But as people won't be paying for it, what pressure can be applied?
No one can go to a local election and say we will increase the wages of our social workers by £x an hour (which is what would be required to improve the supply and quality of workers) because no one is going to pay the bill.
I have some sympathy with pensioners, many of whom have low, fixed incomes.
But they're an increasing proportion of the population and it isn't right for costs to be heaped on a relatively shrinking working age population. I'm not saying whack all pensioners with taxes or the like, but the proposed NI rise is dumb.
And if 8% goes through as the pension rise, that's indefensible in the current circumstances.
Pensioners with low, fixed incomes won't be affected.
I'd bring in higher income tax rates for the over 65s. Instead of 0/20/40/45 they would be 0/22.5/42.5/47.5 (for example).
It's a myth that income tax rates are 0/20/40/45 for most people.
Once you include NI the current tax rates are (roughly):
For employed earners under 65: 0/32/42/47 For self-employed under 65: 0/29/42/47 For unearned income, or for those over 65: 0/20/40/45
Aren't some of these things unknown unknowns? Okay, Cummings starting a new party (yes or no?) could be classed as a known unknown but then you could have said the same for a virus coming along (yes or no?) had we done this just after the last election.
I think the big known unknown is "what do the public finances look like in 2022?"
Surely by definition any risk we can name is not an unknown unknown?
Okay, can you think of something that's happened in politics that was completely unimaginable before it happened?
John Prescott's affair is the only thing that comes to mind.
Comments
Waterloo is genuinely dreadful, Super trouper is superb.
If so I wonder if that's evidence of the vaccine wearing off as they would have been the first vaccinated.
All we know about is the past; the future is all we care about.
But I appreciate the developed world I'm alright jack club is very tricky to get into.
Perhaps we should set aside a few for Switzerland also. We could bundle them up with the heaters we are planning on sending them this winter.
Of course all this begs the question of why Johnson was so economically stupid as to box himself in for five years with a promise on tax and NI at the GE which he didn't need to do to win.
The Tories are on a hiding to nothing if they go ahead with a tax on the young to pay for old. That age will shoot up and the 80 seat majority will turn into a 30 seat deficit. Boris just about won back credibility with working age people when he pledged no new tax rises. Breaking that pledge will destroy that credibility completely.
I agre with you on triple lock, state pension should be uplifted by CPI only.
"Yesterday we had the NHS saying that they need an extra £10bn, keeping the uplift in UC is another £6bn and schools are needing an extra £2-3bn to get back to 2010 after inflation. Meantime... there is the issue of the funding of Social Care. "
Whether that is due to a very high prevalence among the unvaccinated or what would require a breakdown by vaccinated/unvaccinated. Which PHE said is not going to be released.
As I commented last night - the only fix for this is a (predetermined) Royal Commission that reports at the beginning of the next Parliament with its conclusions implemented.
That predetermination is going to have to be something like a redesigned Council tax or Land Value Tax as it's really the only possible solution that's deemed fair. If the desire is for people to keep their inheritance tax the assets the inheritance is built upon.
We are swapping some vaccines with Australia AS WELL AS keeping up the Covax donations we promised.
Schools aren't going to see extra money and the NHS aren't going to get all that extra £10bn.
There are one or two known unknowns that might be adverse to a Lab led NOM:
1) All politics is relative. Will the voters prefer the SKS/Davey/Sturgeon/Green rainbow to Boris?
2) Post 1997 Labour voters stayed at home and then switched to Tory. Will Tory voters hostile to Johnson stay at home or grit their teeth to vote against the Rainbow alliance
3) Can Labour inject the tiniest sense of self belief, charisma or distinctive vision?
4) The post Brexit policy world will be with us for decades. Can Labour find a post Brexit policy that unites party, Rainbow and voter?
5) Can Labour break out of its super-urban, Bame, posh and university hegemony into ordinary boring seats?
Either you meant someone literally said it or, more likely, you are inventing a much more sinister motivation behind someones comment by summarising it in a way by referencing darkies.
I dont see a major distinction. From your summary someone either said something racist directly or they said something and you believe they did so for racist reasons.
Im merely curious which bit you think was racist enough to be summarised as them moaning about darkies
Tunisia has been hammered by covid while South Africa seems to have more vaccine supply than demand and most African countries have had little covid - at least officially.
So where extra vaccine would have the best effect in Africa I don't know - but it would certainly be advantageous right now in Australia. Especially so when its Pfizer with its storage issues.
• Increase the current support qualification threshold from £23,250 to £100,000.
• Those with assets between £14,250 and £100,000 will pay a contribution towards their care, with the remainder paid by the state.
• People with assets over £100,000 will pay for their care entirely - until the payments made hit a maximum limit.
• Dilnot recommended this limit to be set at £35,000. Thereafter, state will pick up all ongoing care costs to death.
So, in summary, the most anyone is liable for is £35,000. With everyone with assets over £14,250 paying some sort of contribution (which would include the home).
I fully expect HMG to do a late u-turn once Marcus Rashford weighs in.
I'll vote for any party that shits on retirees. Even Labour. It's time that you all started paying your way. Tax the shit out of rental income as well. 110% levy on rental income profits, NI on pension income, defined benefit pension income surcharge, higher income tax rates for wealthy pensioners earning £50k+, scrap the triple lock, scrap the free bus pass, scrap free prescriptions.
No new tax rises for working age people. Full fucking stop.
Average life expectancy in a care home is I believe 19 months.
So extra money is required to cover the shortfall - and where is that coming from.
Labour has been calling for proper investment for our NHS and social care system.
But this manifesto-breaking tax rise is shortsighted, and it will hit businesses and working people hard. https://twitter.com/bphillipsonMP/status/1433703224989601797/photo/1
Nice header btw @rottenborough. I'm pessimistic on the next GE right now. I'm seeing another dollop of Johnson. But let's throw in the mandatory cheer-up caveat - there's a long way to go and things can change.
Covax is being gifted to the third world with nothing expected in return. It is purely generosity.
The swap with Australia is exchanging shorter-dated stocks we don't currently but they desperately need, with longer-dated stocks that we will need.
If this is troubling your moral conscience then try turning it off and back on again as it needs recalibrating.
He said that liberal democracy is the best system devised and it would never be bettered. He is right - though the "End of History" tag was bollocks obvs.
I would extend NI to all income, earned, pension or investment, and I'd equalised NI for self-employed and the employed.
A defined benefit pension income surcharge seems like retrospective taxation to me though. I chose to stay working for one employer for 20 years rather than chase higher salaries by moving around, partly because of the value of the pension.
It's all academic though. Triple lock will stay, NI will be hiked, the Tory OAP base will be pandered to, and you'll be voting Labour at the next GE. 😂
It is as a percentage, 45% of our entire first phase Covax commitment.
To Australia. That most desperately under-resourced country. Wasn't one of the Band Aids specifically set up to help NSW?
And whilst the UK isn't as far gone as Italy or Japan, it's not in a good place.
It's also pretty galling that the generation that backed tax cuts over less stingy pensions and social care for their parents and grandparents (the popular policy from Thatcher to Blair) are carping now.
NEW: The EU and AstraZeneca have reached an agreement on the remaining COVID-19 vaccine doses for Member States under the terms of the August 2020 contract. The agreement will also end the pending litigation before the Belgian courts - European Commission statement
https://twitter.com/tconnellyRTE/status/1433705898564800556?s=20
But they're an increasing proportion of the population and it isn't right for costs to be heaped on a relatively shrinking working age population. I'm not saying whack all pensioners with taxes or the like, but the proposed NI rise is dumb.
And if 8% goes through as the pension rise, that's indefensible in the current circumstances.
But I have to go
* With regard to my mother, her £1000pw care home fees are paid by the council as she has no assets other than property and dad still lives in that (spouse in the house = exempt). But it is often forgotten that every individual in a home contributes indirectly towards the costs because the council take almost all of their income away (bar a meagre £25pw). This includes state pensions and private pensions and any other taxable income. So in my mum's case, even though she has no assets she has to pay £600 every month back to the council to, in effect, pay some of the care costs.
Foxhunting: It got forgotten afterwards because of the dementia tax and terrorism but its worth remembering in 2017 May coming out in favour of reopening the Foxhunting debate was the first major clanger of the campaign. The issue is as settled now as Cockfighting, it is animal cruelty that is never coming back.
Housing: The Tories win when as much as the nation as possible can own their own home. Pulling up the drawbridge saying "I have a lovely home but you peasants should be in tower blocks, don't despoil my view" is not only a scummy attitude it is bad politics.
"NutNut": If you think misogyny or attacking animal welfare/environmentalism wins votes nowadays then you have another thing coming.
I will add to that list further featherbedding pensioners by giving them new benefits they never saved or paid for, by adding further higher taxes on the working aged population. If that happens it is a disgrace that I completely oppose and will piss off working age voters.
I'd bring in higher income tax rates for the over 65s. Instead of 0/20/40/45 they would be 0/22.5/42.5/47.5 (for example).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t0e9guhV35o
We're giving them some that we will need in the future but not now, they're giving it back to us in the future when we need it. No change in our longterm stocks.
How is that comparable to Covax? You're being pathetic.
Partly because the Tories have trashed the economy*, partly because they want to ideologically. A tax on not commuting into the office to spend money on Pret is coming.
*yes Covid. But as the global financial crash was spun - successfully - as Labour trashing the economy then we may as well get started with reciprocity.
"So the package due to be announced is expected to include new money not just for improving social care but also for increasing the NHS budget to clear the backlog. How exactly that is split and when remains unclear.
One insider suggested it would be split 50-50. Tax and healthcare experts expect the money first to go to clearing the backlog, then to covering the costs of the social care move ."
Telegraph.
So, social care will never actually get the money then?
This in Stephen Bush#'s morning email from the Staggers, anent the social care proposals:
"That [rise in the limit], of course, means that many more people will come into contact with the state social care system, which would, in my view, have the happy side-benefit of increasing the quality of provision from its present state. But in the short term it might be fraught for the government, as part of the reason why England’s social care system has been neglected for so long is so few people come into contact with it. That period of adjustment might well be politically painful for Downing Street.
There’s another interesting policy angle here: whisper it, but these proposals don’t look all that different from Theresa May’s, which of course proved so politically explosive back in 2017."
I think the big known unknown is "what do the public finances look like in 2022?"
The problem is that the current system doesn't help anyone - and all the fixes seem to be bandages rather than actual thought through solutions.
There is a reason why whenever I look at things I come back to a land value tax being 100% essential - we simply aren't taxing wealth enough while over taxing earnt income.
It also needs a big campaign to build smaller bungalow type accommodation. They should be making it illegal under any circumstance to convert a single storey into multi storey and make them easier to get planning permission for. Annexes as well. Ludicrous that you’ll often get approval to build to a cinema room but not an annexe for an elderly relative.
Take with one hand, give with the other. Joined up thinking between Govt Depts. Lol!!
If years after the Covid the UK still has a budget deficit well over £100bn per annum then yes that'd be comparable to Labour.
Do you want a bet on that happening? I am willing to bet £50 at evens that despite Covid being more serious than the financial crisis, that the budget deficit will be a smaller percentage of GDP in 2024 than it was in 2010. Do you agree to that bet?
Tory MPs are unhappy and expect a significant rebellion (more than 30)...
@Mark_J_Harper says it should expire: "We are going to have to learn to live with this virus, and retaining sweeping powers of detention in the Coronavirus Act is not consistent with this. What justification can there be for extending these measures?"
https://twitter.com/SebastianEPayne/status/1433709922198376490?s=20
If you are going to tax an asset class you need to do so consistently - the fact holiday lets can transfer to business rates is one reason why holiday lets and second homes are a nightmare in touristy / pretty areas.
If a new lockdown is needed, then the government should go to Parliament and get a new Coronavirus Act approved to do so.
A lot of MPs really need to think about why pandemics are explicitly mentioned as an override in whole heaps of laws - there is a reason for that.
What this means is that although the younger members of the family are annoyed that they can't afford to buy a property themselves, the one thing that can look forward to is eventually inheriting the family property, although this might be a long way in the future because these days people tend to live much longer than they used to. So although they younger members of the family wish they could afford to buy a property right now, doing something to reduce the value of property in general might not be as popular with them as you might expect.
In my mum's case she is in a nursing home because going home was not an option. In the 12 months before going into the home we had to call emergency ambulances six time due to her frequent collapses. She ended up in hospital for two months. The truth is that she needs round-the-clock nursing care and if she wasn't in a home she would be in hospital now. This leads to the commonly-held school of thought that the NHS should be paying anyway because it is a health matter.
I'm conflicted on this. On one hand I agree with you but on the other I can tell you that my parent's bungalow is their pride and joy; the achievement of their lives. If they thought that this would be paid over to the council they would be broken-hearted and feel penalised for a lifetime's financial prudence.
Greater demand will result in a continual attempt to reduce costs that are already uneconomic in whole heaps of the country - for instance Cornwall are still trying to avoid paying for travel time between social care calls.
Because Labour screwed up which is why a toxic mammoth structural deficit was still there even after the financial crisis was over.
There really is no easy answer here - but the simple fact is that the costs can't be taken out of income, somehow or other they need to be taken out of wealth for income is already way too heavily taxed and wealth isn't really taxed at all in the UK.
Wage inflation would be good for you and bad for those with savings and not earnings.
"Reports that say that something hasn't happened are always interesting to me, because as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns—the ones we don't know we don't know. And if one looks throughout the history of our country and other free countries, it is the latter category that tends to be the difficult ones"
Fair play if you don't though, its not for everyone. I can respect that.
But I expect your straw man will be proven wrong. The UK in 2024 won't be like the UK in 2010, because the Tories haven't messed up the economy like Labour did.
Interest rates have been for all intents and purposes zero my entire adult life.
Lets see where you are when your schools go back - the current prolonged spike that won't drop back to baseline can go surging off again. Lets see where we all are when the latest variant tears through us again. Lets see where we are when the "perhaps we need a booster for pensioners" becomes another emergency get needles in 40m arms.
Things are a lot better than they were a year ago. We won't face the same winter crisis as last winter. But the idea that it is over is wishful thinking. We all wish it was over. But it isn't.
When it is just the forelock-tugging classes relying on the state, this doesn't happen.
No one can go to a local election and say we will increase the wages of our social workers by £x an hour (which is what would be required to improve the supply and quality of workers) because no one is going to pay the bill.
Once you include NI the current tax rates are (roughly):
For employed earners under 65: 0/32/42/47
For self-employed under 65: 0/29/42/47
For unearned income, or for those over 65: 0/20/40/45
John Prescott's affair is the only thing that comes to mind.