'The UK government’s vast security operation to manage the immediate aftermath of the death of the Queen include official social media blackouts and a ban on retweets.
The secret documents, codenamed Operation London Bridge and seen by Politico, reveal the scale of the plans for the funeral and government anxieties about whether the UK has the resources to execute them.
The social media strategy plays a prominent role, including plans to change the royal family’s website to a black holding page with a short statement confirming the Queen’s death, while the gov.uk website and all governmental social media pages will display a black banner. Non-urgent content will not be published and retweets will be banned unless cleared by the government’s head of communications. [...]
The plans for Operation London Bridge and Operation Spring Tide, which sets out how Charles will accede to the throne, contain granular detail such as the potential for public anger if Downing Street cannot lower its flags to half-mast within 10 minutes of the announcement since there is no “flag officer”.
The documents also showed concerns from the Foreign Office over how to arrange entry for significant numbers of tourists, from the Home Office on how to handle potential terror alerts, and from the Department for Transport on overcrowding in the capital.'
More here (which confirms the social media accounts involved are government ones)
'The Department for Transport has raised concerns that the number of people who may want to travel to London could cause major problems for the transport network, and lead to overcrowding in the capital.
In a striking assessment of the scenes that could unfold, one memo warns of a worst-case scenario in which London literally becomes “full” for the first time ever as potentially hundreds of thousands of people try to make their way there — with accommodation, roads, public transport, food, policing, healthcare and basic services stretched to breaking point. Concerns have also been raised about a shortage of stewards for crowd control purposes.'
It’ll be Death of Stalin redux, dozens of sobbing royalists crushed to death as they try to get a glimpse of the catafalque. Various horrible people manoeuvring for power and being summarily executed would be nice.
I can't see it. I can just about understand (not empathize with) the Digasm in 1997, but a People's Princess is one thing, a very elderly billionairess with an interest in racing, quite another.
Nah, the Queen is only worth a few hundred million, poor thing. The Grand Duke of Luxembourg is worth more. Charles is doing pretty well for himself though.
And I don't think there'll be much sobbing, but I think that Guardian piece had it right that it will be very momentous. People like the Queen, even if not as emotionally as the Diana stuff, and there'll be a lot of nonsense stuff about changing of eras and what the country is like now compared to when she became queen.
Worth noting that figure excludes the Crown Estate which has property worth over £14 billion.
Its funny monarchists like to claim the Crown Estate belongs to the monarch personally not the state when it suits them, so the state would lose it if we became a republic, while also excluding it when discussing the monarch's wealth.
I don’t recall monarchists claiming the monarch owns the Crown Estate. They don’t.
An enterprising lawyer might argue they should get a share of revenues not a grant though under the terms of the deal with George III
'The UK government’s vast security operation to manage the immediate aftermath of the death of the Queen include official social media blackouts and a ban on retweets.
The secret documents, codenamed Operation London Bridge and seen by Politico, reveal the scale of the plans for the funeral and government anxieties about whether the UK has the resources to execute them.
The social media strategy plays a prominent role, including plans to change the royal family’s website to a black holding page with a short statement confirming the Queen’s death, while the gov.uk website and all governmental social media pages will display a black banner. Non-urgent content will not be published and retweets will be banned unless cleared by the government’s head of communications. [...]
The plans for Operation London Bridge and Operation Spring Tide, which sets out how Charles will accede to the throne, contain granular detail such as the potential for public anger if Downing Street cannot lower its flags to half-mast within 10 minutes of the announcement since there is no “flag officer”.
The documents also showed concerns from the Foreign Office over how to arrange entry for significant numbers of tourists, from the Home Office on how to handle potential terror alerts, and from the Department for Transport on overcrowding in the capital.'
More here (which confirms the social media accounts involved are government ones)
'The Department for Transport has raised concerns that the number of people who may want to travel to London could cause major problems for the transport network, and lead to overcrowding in the capital.
In a striking assessment of the scenes that could unfold, one memo warns of a worst-case scenario in which London literally becomes “full” for the first time ever as potentially hundreds of thousands of people try to make their way there — with accommodation, roads, public transport, food, policing, healthcare and basic services stretched to breaking point. Concerns have also been raised about a shortage of stewards for crowd control purposes.'
It’ll be Death of Stalin redux, dozens of sobbing royalists crushed to death as they try to get a glimpse of the catafalque. Various horrible people manoeuvring for power and being summarily executed would be nice.
I can't see it. I can just about understand (not empathize with) the Digasm in 1997, but a People's Princess is one thing, a very elderly billionairess with an interest in racing, quite another.
It's possible. I actually expected the furore round the DoE's death, yeuch as it was, to be more extreme. The public mood is an odd thing though, even more so at the moment. A known unknown perhaps.
It's not as if it won't, in general terms, be expected. The woman is 95, but her mother lived until 101, so I suppose she might easily expect to live another 8-10 years.
It won't be an unexpected death, but I'd suggest there will be rather more grief than there was for her granddaughter-in-law, or indeed for her husband or mother. I'd also say it will be more existentially challenging for the UK than anything since WW2.
Find it hard to see what difference it will make other than we will have that dupe Charles robbing us rather than a nice old biddy. We will have all the halfwitted nutjobs out wailing and gnashing their teeth and cretins spouting drivel on every media platform , it will be pathetic.
Its amusing to see you talk about "robbing" when you've been the loudest cheerleader on here for further robbing the wages of those in work, in order to pay for more new benefits that pensioners never worked for, never paid for and never saved for.
I'm a republican, but if the government makes the atrocious decision to raise NI to pay for a new entitlement that is going to rob workers far more than the monarchy ever could.
Can't the police kettle Extinction Rebellion? Or stop them when they leave home? Or does that only work with working class or anarcho demonstrators?
Apparently the loons dressed in red clothes "relate to archetypes or classical Greek characters" and they are "like spirits coming back from beyond the grave". XR need to be careful or they'll reveal so much that even people who didn't already know where they're coming from will start to realise.
The idea that given all the expenses of Covid, the NHS and social care, let alone anything else, we can avoid raising taxes on working people, as @MaxPB seems to want, is for the birds.
Taxes will have to rise and all will have to pay. That's all there is to it. All these demands for special exclusions is just self-interested nonsense.
Should we be raising taxes only on working age people?
"1% on NI" is a 2% tax rise on the employed, and a 0% tax rise on pensioners.
1%, 2% or whatever on income tax is a tax paid by all.
I did put forward the typically centre moderate view of 2% on income tax on here last night (I think). So workers and pensioners both contribute.
2% hike in income tax isn't moderate. It's almost Corbynite.
I'm absolutely disgusted with the Tory leadership. I campaigned hard in 2019 and believed the no tax rise manifesto promise. Fiscal drag is the order of the day.
In fairness it was not contemplated in 2019 that the government would spend more than £400bn on helping the economy cope with an 18 month pandemic which has devastated tax revenues as well. Politicians are all too keen to argue that circumstances have changed when breaking a promise but I struggle to think of a government that has a better base for such an argument than this one.
Tories should stand for sound money, careful management of the country's accounts and limitations on the role of the state. In some circumstances that requires more spending and thus, responsibly, more taxes, than others. This is such a time. I am more worried about having stable and sustainable public finances than current tax rates.
Now is not the time to put taxes up on working people. I don't care about my personal situation, an extra £1.6k per year in tax between myself and my wife is unfortunate but it doesn't really make a big difference to us. There will be millions of middle income people across the country that will find that kind of income cut very, very difficult to take.
Using my dad as an example again, his net income in retirement is about £60.5k. A working age person with an equivalent gross has a net income of £55k. In what world does it make sense that my dad, with no responsibilities, no kids, no mortgage and no real costs pays £5.5k less in tax than a working age person who will have a mortgage/rent, kids, possible nursery fees, school expenses, commuting costs etc...
The whole system is needs rethinking. Why is anyone in the higher rate tax bracket getting 100% of the state pension? In what world does that make sense?!
With respect a net pensioner income of 60K plus is a million miles from most pensioners income
It is not the average, but it is not particularly unusual either, especially for those from the public sector final salary schemes.
Poor pensioners are still better off than poor workers. Rich pensioners are better off than rich workers. They are also richer than the workers are forecast to get to when they are retired.
Yet new taxes go on workers, most public (and private) sector workers get a pay freeze. The retired get no new taxes and 8% increase in state pension.
This will only make the generational conflict deeper and wider.
I'm not sure about your first paragraph; it is often mentioned on here, but I'm yet to see the evidence.
I'm on a 'gold-plated' public sector (Civil Service) final pension salary scheme. I was well-paid, retiring on a salary of c. £82K after 38 years service, a couple of years ago. But my pension, generous though it is, is nowhere near £60K - much nearer £20K. I'm not complaining at all, quite happy with it, but I do wonder whether non-public sector workers have an exaggerated view of the value of public sector pensions. You would have to be retiring on a salary well over £120k to get anywhere near £60k in pension; there's not many in that category.
I've just had a pension review, actually. I knew my public sector pension was better than my previous private sector pension, but I'm slightly shocked just how much better. Most private sector workers do not have final salary pensions. The IFA I talked to told me that the average private sector workers amassed a pension pot of around £50k by retirement. Whereas if you work as, say, a hospital admin worker - or some other not desperately well paid public sector job - for 40 years you can amass a pension with a trade in value in excess of three quarters of a million pounds.
Yep. I tried to calculate the benefit once and I reckoned add 40% on the salary and you're getting close. We see many public sector retirees who have lump sum and income entitlements (always index-linked and with death benefits) that you would need over £1m to purchase in the real world. But, hey, let's pay the public sector more.
I did a similar exercise but was deeply unconvinced about the benefit of public sector final salary pensions. That is because the extent to which you ultimately benefit from it largely depends on when you die.
That said, many people become essentially addicted to them - they never leave the public sector because they keep thinking about their pension.
Personally, with many years to go until retirement age, I have a deep suspicion that they will be raided in some way and will not materialise in the way we assume they will. I've run up a significant chunk of final salary pension but would rather save for retirement in other more reliable ways.
"the extent to which you ultimately benefit from it largely depends on when you die."
Yes but that's true of private sector annuities too.
That is a good point - one that I hadn't perhaps fully appreciated when I originally assessed the situation. However, there are advantages in switching to the private sector: you have more control over your pension, the pension is less likely to be politically interfered with, the basic salaries are higher (as the pension is proportionately less of the overall benefit package).
Worth noting that figure excludes the Crown Estate which has property worth over £14 billion.
Its funny monarchists like to claim the Crown Estate belongs to the monarch personally not the state when it suits them, so the state would lose it if we became a republic, while also excluding it when discussing the monarch's wealth.
If she wanted to be a private person she shouldn't have decided to go around saying she's the monarch.
The idea that given all the expenses of Covid, the NHS and social care, let alone anything else, we can avoid raising taxes on working people, as @MaxPB seems to want, is for the birds.
Taxes will have to rise and all will have to pay. That's all there is to it. All these demands for special exclusions is just self-interested nonsense.
Should we be raising taxes only on working age people?
"1% on NI" is a 2% tax rise on the employed, and a 0% tax rise on pensioners.
1%, 2% or whatever on income tax is a tax paid by all.
I did put forward the typically centre moderate view of 2% on income tax on here last night (I think). So workers and pensioners both contribute.
2% hike in income tax isn't moderate. It's almost Corbynite.
I'm absolutely disgusted with the Tory leadership. I campaigned hard in 2019 and believed the no tax rise manifesto promise. Fiscal drag is the order of the day.
In fairness it was not contemplated in 2019 that the government would spend more than £400bn on helping the economy cope with an 18 month pandemic which has devastated tax revenues as well. Politicians are all too keen to argue that circumstances have changed when breaking a promise but I struggle to think of a government that has a better base for such an argument than this one.
Tories should stand for sound money, careful management of the country's accounts and limitations on the role of the state. In some circumstances that requires more spending and thus, responsibly, more taxes, than others. This is such a time. I am more worried about having stable and sustainable public finances than current tax rates.
Now is not the time to put taxes up on working people. I don't care about my personal situation, an extra £1.6k per year in tax between myself and my wife is unfortunate but it doesn't really make a big difference to us. There will be millions of middle income people across the country that will find that kind of income cut very, very difficult to take.
Using my dad as an example again, his net income in retirement is about £60.5k. A working age person with an equivalent gross has a net income of £55k. In what world does it make sense that my dad, with no responsibilities, no kids, no mortgage and no real costs pays £5.5k less in tax than a working age person who will have a mortgage/rent, kids, possible nursery fees, school expenses, commuting costs etc...
The whole system is needs rethinking. Why is anyone in the higher rate tax bracket getting 100% of the state pension? In what world does that make sense?!
With respect a net pensioner income of 60K plus is a million miles from most pensioners income
It is not the average, but it is not particularly unusual either, especially for those from the public sector final salary schemes.
Poor pensioners are still better off than poor workers. Rich pensioners are better off than rich workers. They are also richer than the workers are forecast to get to when they are retired.
Yet new taxes go on workers, most public (and private) sector workers get a pay freeze. The retired get no new taxes and 8% increase in state pension.
This will only make the generational conflict deeper and wider.
I'm not sure about your first paragraph; it is often mentioned on here, but I'm yet to see the evidence.
I'm on a 'gold-plated' public sector (Civil Service) final pension salary scheme. I was well-paid, retiring on a salary of c. £82K after 38 years service, a couple of years ago. But my pension, generous though it is, is nowhere near £60K - much nearer £20K. I'm not complaining at all, quite happy with it, but I do wonder whether non-public sector workers have an exaggerated view of the value of public sector pensions. You would have to be retiring on a salary well over £120k to get anywhere near £60k in pension; there's not many in that category.
I've just had a pension review, actually. I knew my public sector pension was better than my previous private sector pension, but I'm slightly shocked just how much better. Most private sector workers do not have final salary pensions. The IFA I talked to told me that the average private sector workers amassed a pension pot of around £50k by retirement. Whereas if you work as, say, a hospital admin worker - or some other not desperately well paid public sector job - for 40 years you can amass a pension with a trade in value in excess of three quarters of a million pounds.
Yep. I tried to calculate the benefit once and I reckoned add 40% on the salary and you're getting close. We see many public sector retirees who have lump sum and income entitlements (always index-linked and with death benefits) that you would need over £1m to purchase in the real world. But, hey, let's pay the public sector more.
PS pensions are good but generally the pay rates certainly used to be less than in the private sector. Also remember the monthly contributions were compulsory if you didn't opt out after the first couple of years or so. I'm very content with my arrangements but the idea that we have lived lives of idleness and luxury since the mid-70s is frankly rubbish. Like most generations we had our fair share of hardship. I well recall my first London flat - £15k - with strict borrowing rules and high interest rates. I lived hand to mouth for a good few years just to cope. I had bare floorboards for the first 3 years - not the varnished/sealed jobs of these days - I could not afford carpet. All of my furniture was begged, borrowed or second-hand. And I was by no means alone.
I'm reading Dominic Sandbrook's "Seasons in the Sun: the Battle for Britain 1974-1979" at the moment and my goodness does it sound shit.
I pity anyone who has to live through that.
The 70's were brilliant, pay rise every month , cheap beer , great music , will admit looking back the fashion was dodgy. We had the times of our lives and far superior to the shithole the country is just now..
I have just done a long tour of far north Scotland - Ullapool, Assynt, Cape Wrath, Caithness and the Orkneys. Much of it looked magnificent in generally fine weather,; tho I will confess John o Groats (where we mostly stayed) is a toilet (albeit with majestic views of the Orkneys)
Why do the Scots in that corner of Scotland INSIST on building houses in a dung-brown or birdshit-grey colour? Like they want them to be ugly. The far, flat north east of Scotland is never gonna be a beauty - unlike the Highlands and Islands - but it would be much improved if everyone just painted their houses white, like the crofts of old. Or even pink. Tartan?
Anything would be better than the colour of untreated sewage you get now. It is most perplexing
The average age of a adult social care worker (i.e. someone who does the caring) for Durham County Council is 56.
Social care is going to be an even bigger problem than I thought it would be.
No its going to be a bigger problem than the bigger problem you thought it would be.
The government has decreed care home staff must be double jabbed by law, and many don't want to be. The recruitment crisis is going to be enormous.
Anyone who's an antivaxxer while working with the extremely vulnerable can't be a very good carer so good riddance to them.
As the parent of someone who is extremely vulnerable I can tell you that you are talking utter bullsh8t. Total and complete bullshit.
Since you're an antivaxxer you would be familiar with bullshit.
"As the parent of someone who is extremely vulnerable" are you vaccinated yet?
Stop talking through your rectum, you nauseating little shit.
People who have vulnerable relatives want them cared for by people who care. Not by agency workers who couldn't give a fuck just because they have jumped through the bogus hoops you have set out for them.
Some people who really care about vulnerable people have not been jabbed themselves and don't want to be. They evade the labels you have given them because they are people, not the sub humans you and others on here are quite despicably trying to turn them into.
Get used to it.
You seem to have got out of the wrong side of bed this morning.
I would suggest taking some time out. Perhaps a walk somewhere, say a vaccine centre...
He's right though. It was always known and obvious that the vaccine route out of this mess would never capture all the population and it doesn't need to. It's captured far more than most thought. Everyone is entitled to make their own medical decisions. We are in danger of setting the unvaccinated up as second-class citizens. If I was an anti-vaxxer I'd say I wasn't vaccinated for health reasons - that seems to get a free pass, whereas citing principle doesn't.
I agree with this, and I have not had a satisfactory reply from the vaccine enthusiasts to my main question, which is to what extent the vaccine really reduces transmission in light of the delta variant. It seems to me that there is some reduction in transmission amongst people who have been vaccinated, but nowhere near enough to justify excluding anti-vaxxers from society in the manner that some argue for. Regarding care homes etc, the main issue is to get the most vulnerable vaxxed; then they are less likely to become seriously ill or hospitalised by the virus.
The primary reason to take the vaccine is self interest, to avoid serious illness and hospitalisation. The societal benefits (reduction of the spread of the virus, reduction in pressure on the healthcare system) are secondary, and are unlikely to persuade anti-vaxxers to change their stance.
The evidence is it considerably help reduces spread through three methods.
1: The vaccinated are less likely to catch the virus (and thus be infectious) than the unvaccinated. 2: The vaccinated are more likely to recover from the virus (and thus cease to be infection) days quicker than the unvaccinated. 3: The vaccinated are more likely to have a less serious infection and thus shed less of a viral load than the unvaccinated.
It doesn't stop the spread, but it does help it. Massively.
OK - Based on what I have previously read, I can accept #1, although there is possibly some uncertainty as there is potentially more assymptomatic infection amongst the vaccinated which is not picked up through testing.
I am not so sure about 2 and 3. Is there any definitive evidence that links the level of infectiousness with the severity of illness?
I know Covid's expensive at the moment and all, but could long term endemicity actually end up improving the nation's finances a bit ?
Its certainly going to change them. The property market is on fire as people try and move to the sticks / get somewhere with space to live & work. Suspect the halcyon days of vastly priced rabbit hutches stacked in close proximity to the train station are behind us.
Changes to how people live and work only come along once in every x number of generations. Covid really could be the end of the mass commute into town era that's been going since the late 19th century.
And yet, bizarrely, the NYC property market has roared back to life - including the inner city/skyscrapers. London tends to follow NYC pretty closely
I wonder if we seeing generational churn rather than secular change. Oldsters are moving out of cities, but some younger people are keen to get back in.
I see you are enjoying your Scottish trip, enjoying following it more info please
'The UK government’s vast security operation to manage the immediate aftermath of the death of the Queen include official social media blackouts and a ban on retweets.
The secret documents, codenamed Operation London Bridge and seen by Politico, reveal the scale of the plans for the funeral and government anxieties about whether the UK has the resources to execute them.
The social media strategy plays a prominent role, including plans to change the royal family’s website to a black holding page with a short statement confirming the Queen’s death, while the gov.uk website and all governmental social media pages will display a black banner. Non-urgent content will not be published and retweets will be banned unless cleared by the government’s head of communications. [...]
The plans for Operation London Bridge and Operation Spring Tide, which sets out how Charles will accede to the throne, contain granular detail such as the potential for public anger if Downing Street cannot lower its flags to half-mast within 10 minutes of the announcement since there is no “flag officer”.
The documents also showed concerns from the Foreign Office over how to arrange entry for significant numbers of tourists, from the Home Office on how to handle potential terror alerts, and from the Department for Transport on overcrowding in the capital.'
More here (which confirms the social media accounts involved are government ones)
'The Department for Transport has raised concerns that the number of people who may want to travel to London could cause major problems for the transport network, and lead to overcrowding in the capital.
In a striking assessment of the scenes that could unfold, one memo warns of a worst-case scenario in which London literally becomes “full” for the first time ever as potentially hundreds of thousands of people try to make their way there — with accommodation, roads, public transport, food, policing, healthcare and basic services stretched to breaking point. Concerns have also been raised about a shortage of stewards for crowd control purposes.'
It’ll be Death of Stalin redux, dozens of sobbing royalists crushed to death as they try to get a glimpse of the catafalque. Various horrible people manoeuvring for power and being summarily executed would be nice.
I can't see it. I can just about understand (not empathize with) the Digasm in 1997, but a People's Princess is one thing, a very elderly billionairess with an interest in racing, quite another.
It's possible. I actually expected the furore round the DoE's death, yeuch as it was, to be more extreme. The public mood is an odd thing though, even more so at the moment. A known unknown perhaps.
It's not as if it won't, in general terms, be expected. The woman is 95, but her mother lived until 101, so I suppose she might easily expect to live another 8-10 years.
It won't be an unexpected death, but I'd suggest there will be rather more grief than there was for her granddaughter-in-law, or indeed for her husband or mother. I'd also say it will be more existentially challenging for the UK than anything since WW2.
Find it hard to see what difference it will make other than we will have that dupe Charles robbing us rather than a nice old biddy. We will have all the halfwitted nutjobs out wailing and gnashing their teeth and cretins spouting drivel on every media platform , it will be pathetic.
Its amusing to see you talk about "robbing" when you've been the loudest cheerleader on here for further robbing the wages of those in work, in order to pay for more new benefits that pensioners never worked for, never paid for and never saved for.
I'm a republican, but if the government makes the atrocious decision to raise NI to pay for a new entitlement that is going to rob workers far more than the monarchy ever could.
You halfwit , obviously not bright enough to comprehend my posts and as most pensioners have paid for 50 years while whining arses like you have paid barely anything , jog on loser.
The ascension of the next monarch is going to be a hugely difficult time for the UK, and I suspect political attempts will be made to exploit it - both in the UK and around the Commonwealth - that will unsettle many people as it will very destabilising.
[As an aside, I will certainly go to London. There is no-one alive I respect more than Queen Elizabeth II and I will personally struggle with it as well.]
Re your feelings about the Queen. What you've written made me ruminate once more on how different we all are.
Whilst I recognise that she's been an enduring figurehead of the nation for a very long time, probably for the entire lives of the majority of people alive now, with global reach, and carried out her duties (obligations?) with dignity, I don't respect her more than any person alive. I respect a firefighter more, or a doctor. A nurse. People who do selfless and/or dangerous stuff daily.
She's played the hand fate dealt her well. But I'm a republican so I'd like the whole tottering edifice she has managed to hold together come crashing down.
I'm not trying to knock your view, or be offensive, just pointlessly typing out this trite observation that I find it endlessly fascinating how differently people can see the same situation.
When she goes I hope you are ok. Me, I just hope for a day or two off work. It'll be a momentous occasion but I'll avoid all the hullaballoo we all know will happen as much as I can.
Thanks - I find posts like this difficult to handle.
The Queen has sacrificed her whole life, working night and day, for our benefit - she's been a supreme diplomat for us and done remarkable public service to our nation and the Commonwealth through a period of tumultuous change. She has also faced down personal danger more than once too. It's of a wholly different magnitude to a nurse or doctor doing a shift and then retiring on a public sector pension.
However, your view doesn't surprise me; republicans are massively overrepresented on this site. But I think even you might be surprised by your own reaction when it happens, though. She's been around for so long we've very much taken the stability and continuity she provides for us for granted.
I have a huge degree of sympathy for the Queen as a person. She didn't grow up expecting to become the monarch. No doubt the role, thrust upon her, has meant huge personal sacrifice. I do respect her in that sense.
I guess it's a reversal of that 'respect the office' thing. I respect her as a person, I don't respect her status as monarch.
I don't want to embroil us in another pointless debate about the monarchy. Certainly not without the benefit of being sat face-to-face, to better pick up on our respective use of humour, irony, tone of voice and non-verbal cues. Preferably in a particularly pleasant boozer! We won't change each other's minds typing out guff on here. But suffice to say I'm sceptical as to whether you could describe her service as 'remarkable'. Enduring, yes. Dedicated, yes. Politically astute, yes ok. But remarkable? Not for me.
I'm a history graduate so I'll appreciate her demise in that sense, as a significant event. I'll be sad that someone has died. You may be right that my reaction surprises me, but I suspect not. I was 19 when Diana died and beyond it being interesting in historical terms, and feeling sorry for her and her loved ones, I was not really bothered. I got double time working during her funeral, if I remember correctly. I don't anticipate feeling too dissimilar when the Queen goes. But I could be wrong!
I know Covid's expensive at the moment and all, but could long term endemicity actually end up improving the nation's finances a bit ?
Its certainly going to change them. The property market is on fire as people try and move to the sticks / get somewhere with space to live & work. Suspect the halcyon days of vastly priced rabbit hutches stacked in close proximity to the train station are behind us.
Changes to how people live and work only come along once in every x number of generations. Covid really could be the end of the mass commute into town era that's been going since the late 19th century.
And yet, bizarrely, the NYC property market has roared back to life - including the inner city/skyscrapers. London tends to follow NYC pretty closely
I wonder if we seeing generational churn rather than secular change. Oldsters are moving out of cities, but some younger people are keen to get back in.
See my earlier comment about the dawning, nascent realisation of the sheer costs of working. If rents/prices fall a bit in London, then it is feasible to live where you can walk/ cycle to work, and eat in your own home at a reasonable hour. Rather than pay thousands, and waste hours, travelling for the privilege of being too knackered to cook. Or do anything at weekends other than sleep and recover. So you end up paying for cleaning, simple repairs, takeaway, eating out etc., etc.
I know Covid's expensive at the moment and all, but could long term endemicity actually end up improving the nation's finances a bit ?
Its certainly going to change them. The property market is on fire as people try and move to the sticks / get somewhere with space to live & work. Suspect the halcyon days of vastly priced rabbit hutches stacked in close proximity to the train station are behind us.
Changes to how people live and work only come along once in every x number of generations. Covid really could be the end of the mass commute into town era that's been going since the late 19th century.
And yet, bizarrely, the NYC property market has roared back to life - including the inner city/skyscrapers. London tends to follow NYC pretty closely
I wonder if we seeing generational churn rather than secular change. Oldsters are moving out of cities, but some younger people are keen to get back in.
I see you are enjoying your Scottish trip, enjoying following it more info please
I'm back now. It was brilliant. The great weather helped, but the NC500 - from., say, Thurso east, around the corner and down to Ullapool, and beyond, really is a glorious road, even if it is now a touristic cliche
I even enjoyed the Flow Country - for being so relentlessly, uncaringly, aggressively ugly. The Milllwall Fan of Landscapes
The idea that given all the expenses of Covid, the NHS and social care, let alone anything else, we can avoid raising taxes on working people, as @MaxPB seems to want, is for the birds.
Taxes will have to rise and all will have to pay. That's all there is to it. All these demands for special exclusions is just self-interested nonsense.
Should we be raising taxes only on working age people?
"1% on NI" is a 2% tax rise on the employed, and a 0% tax rise on pensioners.
1%, 2% or whatever on income tax is a tax paid by all.
I did put forward the typically centre moderate view of 2% on income tax on here last night (I think). So workers and pensioners both contribute.
2% hike in income tax isn't moderate. It's almost Corbynite.
I'm absolutely disgusted with the Tory leadership. I campaigned hard in 2019 and believed the no tax rise manifesto promise. Fiscal drag is the order of the day.
In fairness it was not contemplated in 2019 that the government would spend more than £400bn on helping the economy cope with an 18 month pandemic which has devastated tax revenues as well. Politicians are all too keen to argue that circumstances have changed when breaking a promise but I struggle to think of a government that has a better base for such an argument than this one.
Tories should stand for sound money, careful management of the country's accounts and limitations on the role of the state. In some circumstances that requires more spending and thus, responsibly, more taxes, than others. This is such a time. I am more worried about having stable and sustainable public finances than current tax rates.
Now is not the time to put taxes up on working people. I don't care about my personal situation, an extra £1.6k per year in tax between myself and my wife is unfortunate but it doesn't really make a big difference to us. There will be millions of middle income people across the country that will find that kind of income cut very, very difficult to take.
Using my dad as an example again, his net income in retirement is about £60.5k. A working age person with an equivalent gross has a net income of £55k. In what world does it make sense that my dad, with no responsibilities, no kids, no mortgage and no real costs pays £5.5k less in tax than a working age person who will have a mortgage/rent, kids, possible nursery fees, school expenses, commuting costs etc...
The whole system is needs rethinking. Why is anyone in the higher rate tax bracket getting 100% of the state pension? In what world does that make sense?!
With respect a net pensioner income of 60K plus is a million miles from most pensioners income
It is not the average, but it is not particularly unusual either, especially for those from the public sector final salary schemes.
Poor pensioners are still better off than poor workers. Rich pensioners are better off than rich workers. They are also richer than the workers are forecast to get to when they are retired.
Yet new taxes go on workers, most public (and private) sector workers get a pay freeze. The retired get no new taxes and 8% increase in state pension.
This will only make the generational conflict deeper and wider.
I'm not sure about your first paragraph; it is often mentioned on here, but I'm yet to see the evidence.
I'm on a 'gold-plated' public sector (Civil Service) final pension salary scheme. I was well-paid, retiring on a salary of c. £82K after 38 years service, a couple of years ago. But my pension, generous though it is, is nowhere near £60K - much nearer £20K. I'm not complaining at all, quite happy with it, but I do wonder whether non-public sector workers have an exaggerated view of the value of public sector pensions. You would have to be retiring on a salary well over £120k to get anywhere near £60k in pension; there's not many in that category.
I've just had a pension review, actually. I knew my public sector pension was better than my previous private sector pension, but I'm slightly shocked just how much better. Most private sector workers do not have final salary pensions. The IFA I talked to told me that the average private sector workers amassed a pension pot of around £50k by retirement. Whereas if you work as, say, a hospital admin worker - or some other not desperately well paid public sector job - for 40 years you can amass a pension with a trade in value in excess of three quarters of a million pounds.
Yep. I tried to calculate the benefit once and I reckoned add 40% on the salary and you're getting close. We see many public sector retirees who have lump sum and income entitlements (always index-linked and with death benefits) that you would need over £1m to purchase in the real world. But, hey, let's pay the public sector more.
PS pensions are good but generally the pay rates certainly used to be less than in the private sector. Also remember the monthly contributions were compulsory if you didn't opt out after the first couple of years or so. I'm very content with my arrangements but the idea that we have lived lives of idleness and luxury since the mid-70s is frankly rubbish. Like most generations we had our fair share of hardship. I well recall my first London flat - £15k - with strict borrowing rules and high interest rates. I lived hand to mouth for a good few years just to cope. I had bare floorboards for the first 3 years - not the varnished/sealed jobs of these days - I could not afford carpet. All of my furniture was begged, borrowed or second-hand. And I was by no means alone.
I'm reading Dominic Sandbrook's "Seasons in the Sun: the Battle for Britain 1974-1979" at the moment and my goodness does it sound shit.
I pity anyone who has to live through that.
The 70's were brilliant, pay rise every month , cheap beer , great music , will admit looking back the fashion was dodgy. We had the times of our lives and far superior to the shithole the country is just now..
I have just done a long tour of far north Scotland - Ullapool, Assynt, Cape Wrath, Caithness and the Orkneys. Much of it looked magnificent in generally fine weather,; tho I will confess John o Groats (where we mostly stayed) is a toilet (albeit with majestic views of the Orkneys)
Why do the Scots in that corner of Scotland INSIST on building houses in a dung-brown or birdshit-grey colour? Like they want them to be ugly. The far, flat north east of Scotland is never gonna be a beauty - unlike the Highlands and Islands - but it would be much improved if everyone just painted their houses white, like the crofts of old. Or even pink. Tartan?
Anything would be better than the colour of untreated sewage you get now. It is most perplexing
Probably don't want to have to paint it twice a year. Could have done with more posts on your trip by the way. PS: I see others now, I obviously missed them.
The average age of a adult social care worker (i.e. someone who does the caring) for Durham County Council is 56.
Social care is going to be an even bigger problem than I thought it would be.
No its going to be a bigger problem than the bigger problem you thought it would be.
The government has decreed care home staff must be double jabbed by law, and many don't want to be. The recruitment crisis is going to be enormous.
Anyone who's an antivaxxer while working with the extremely vulnerable can't be a very good carer so good riddance to them.
As the parent of someone who is extremely vulnerable I can tell you that you are talking utter bullsh8t. Total and complete bullshit.
Since you're an antivaxxer you would be familiar with bullshit.
"As the parent of someone who is extremely vulnerable" are you vaccinated yet?
Stop talking through your rectum, you nauseating little shit.
People who have vulnerable relatives want them cared for by people who care. Not by agency workers who couldn't give a fuck just because they have jumped through the bogus hoops you have set out for them.
Some people who really care about vulnerable people have not been jabbed themselves and don't want to be. They evade the labels you have given them because they are people, not the sub humans you and others on here are quite despicably trying to turn them into.
Get used to it.
You seem to have got out of the wrong side of bed this morning.
I would suggest taking some time out. Perhaps a walk somewhere, say a vaccine centre...
He's right though. It was always known and obvious that the vaccine route out of this mess would never capture all the population and it doesn't need to. It's captured far more than most thought. Everyone is entitled to make their own medical decisions. We are in danger of setting the unvaccinated up as second-class citizens. If I was an anti-vaxxer I'd say I wasn't vaccinated for health reasons - that seems to get a free pass, whereas citing principle doesn't.
I agree with this, and I have not had a satisfactory reply from the vaccine enthusiasts to my main question, which is to what extent the vaccine really reduces transmission in light of the delta variant. It seems to me that there is some reduction in transmission amongst people who have been vaccinated, but nowhere near enough to justify excluding anti-vaxxers from society in the manner that some argue for. Regarding care homes etc, the main issue is to get the most vulnerable vaxxed; then they are less likely to become seriously ill or hospitalised by the virus.
The primary reason to take the vaccine is self interest, to avoid serious illness and hospitalisation. The societal benefits (reduction of the spread of the virus, reduction in pressure on the healthcare system) are secondary, and are unlikely to persuade anti-vaxxers to change their stance.
The evidence is it considerably help reduces spread through three methods.
1: The vaccinated are less likely to catch the virus (and thus be infectious) than the unvaccinated. 2: The vaccinated are more likely to recover from the virus (and thus cease to be infection) days quicker than the unvaccinated. 3: The vaccinated are more likely to have a less serious infection and thus shed less of a viral load than the unvaccinated.
It doesn't stop the spread, but it does help it. Massively.
OK - Based on what I have previously read, I can accept #1, although there is possibly some uncertainty as there is potentially more assymptomatic infection amongst the vaccinated which is not picked up through testing.
There is sample testing of asymptomatic vaccinated people, and not just for SARSCoV2 either. There must be, for biowar defence reasons. Whether the information gained from it is made public is another matter.
This idea that now is not the time to raise taxes on those who work is odd. For the last 18 months or so working people have been supported by furlough. Others who worked from home in secure jobs have built up savings.
Now the bills have to be paid. Not just for Covid but for social care and everything else.
So everyone will have to pay: workers - and I include those past pensionable age who are still working - and those with savings and assets. And all generations will have to pay because (a) all generations benefited from the support for the economy; (b) all benefit one way or another from public services; and (c) all benefit from social care - either now (directly) or by not having to pay for parents or by not losing a possible inheritance or directly in the future.
It won't be nice. But no group should be immune from paying the bills. Far too much special pleading going on.
NI is an odd choice because it is in effect a tax but only on some. So it should be extended to all who are working if it is going to be raised.
The idea that given all the expenses of Covid, the NHS and social care, let alone anything else, we can avoid raising taxes on working people, as @MaxPB seems to want, is for the birds.
Taxes will have to rise and all will have to pay. That's all there is to it. All these demands for special exclusions is just self-interested nonsense.
Should we be raising taxes only on working age people?
"1% on NI" is a 2% tax rise on the employed, and a 0% tax rise on pensioners.
1%, 2% or whatever on income tax is a tax paid by all.
I did put forward the typically centre moderate view of 2% on income tax on here last night (I think). So workers and pensioners both contribute.
2% hike in income tax isn't moderate. It's almost Corbynite.
I'm absolutely disgusted with the Tory leadership. I campaigned hard in 2019 and believed the no tax rise manifesto promise. Fiscal drag is the order of the day.
In fairness it was not contemplated in 2019 that the government would spend more than £400bn on helping the economy cope with an 18 month pandemic which has devastated tax revenues as well. Politicians are all too keen to argue that circumstances have changed when breaking a promise but I struggle to think of a government that has a better base for such an argument than this one.
Tories should stand for sound money, careful management of the country's accounts and limitations on the role of the state. In some circumstances that requires more spending and thus, responsibly, more taxes, than others. This is such a time. I am more worried about having stable and sustainable public finances than current tax rates.
Now is not the time to put taxes up on working people. I don't care about my personal situation, an extra £1.6k per year in tax between myself and my wife is unfortunate but it doesn't really make a big difference to us. There will be millions of middle income people across the country that will find that kind of income cut very, very difficult to take.
Using my dad as an example again, his net income in retirement is about £60.5k. A working age person with an equivalent gross has a net income of £55k. In what world does it make sense that my dad, with no responsibilities, no kids, no mortgage and no real costs pays £5.5k less in tax than a working age person who will have a mortgage/rent, kids, possible nursery fees, school expenses, commuting costs etc...
The whole system is needs rethinking. Why is anyone in the higher rate tax bracket getting 100% of the state pension? In what world does that make sense?!
With respect a net pensioner income of 60K plus is a million miles from most pensioners income
It is not the average, but it is not particularly unusual either, especially for those from the public sector final salary schemes.
Poor pensioners are still better off than poor workers. Rich pensioners are better off than rich workers. They are also richer than the workers are forecast to get to when they are retired.
Yet new taxes go on workers, most public (and private) sector workers get a pay freeze. The retired get no new taxes and 8% increase in state pension.
This will only make the generational conflict deeper and wider.
I'm not sure about your first paragraph; it is often mentioned on here, but I'm yet to see the evidence.
I'm on a 'gold-plated' public sector (Civil Service) final pension salary scheme. I was well-paid, retiring on a salary of c. £82K after 38 years service, a couple of years ago. But my pension, generous though it is, is nowhere near £60K - much nearer £20K. I'm not complaining at all, quite happy with it, but I do wonder whether non-public sector workers have an exaggerated view of the value of public sector pensions. You would have to be retiring on a salary well over £120k to get anywhere near £60k in pension; there's not many in that category.
I've just had a pension review, actually. I knew my public sector pension was better than my previous private sector pension, but I'm slightly shocked just how much better. Most private sector workers do not have final salary pensions. The IFA I talked to told me that the average private sector workers amassed a pension pot of around £50k by retirement. Whereas if you work as, say, a hospital admin worker - or some other not desperately well paid public sector job - for 40 years you can amass a pension with a trade in value in excess of three quarters of a million pounds.
Yep. I tried to calculate the benefit once and I reckoned add 40% on the salary and you're getting close. We see many public sector retirees who have lump sum and income entitlements (always index-linked and with death benefits) that you would need over £1m to purchase in the real world. But, hey, let's pay the public sector more.
PS pensions are good but generally the pay rates certainly used to be less than in the private sector. Also remember the monthly contributions were compulsory if you didn't opt out after the first couple of years or so. I'm very content with my arrangements but the idea that we have lived lives of idleness and luxury since the mid-70s is frankly rubbish. Like most generations we had our fair share of hardship. I well recall my first London flat - £15k - with strict borrowing rules and high interest rates. I lived hand to mouth for a good few years just to cope. I had bare floorboards for the first 3 years - not the varnished/sealed jobs of these days - I could not afford carpet. All of my furniture was begged, borrowed or second-hand. And I was by no means alone.
I'm reading Dominic Sandbrook's "Seasons in the Sun: the Battle for Britain 1974-1979" at the moment and my goodness does it sound shit.
I pity anyone who has to live through that.
The 70's were brilliant, pay rise every month , cheap beer , great music , will admit looking back the fashion was dodgy. We had the times of our lives and far superior to the shithole the country is just now..
Seem to recall this being the decade my family, and our neighbours, got a car, indoor toilets, central heating, colour telly, washing machine, gas fire, etc. They were unusual in 1969. Ubiquitous by 1979. Or maybe that's just us. The rest of the nation may have been living in collectivist penury.
I know Covid's expensive at the moment and all, but could long term endemicity actually end up improving the nation's finances a bit ?
Its certainly going to change them. The property market is on fire as people try and move to the sticks / get somewhere with space to live & work. Suspect the halcyon days of vastly priced rabbit hutches stacked in close proximity to the train station are behind us.
Changes to how people live and work only come along once in every x number of generations. Covid really could be the end of the mass commute into town era that's been going since the late 19th century.
And yet, bizarrely, the NYC property market has roared back to life - including the inner city/skyscrapers. London tends to follow NYC pretty closely
I wonder if we seeing generational churn rather than secular change. Oldsters are moving out of cities, but some younger people are keen to get back in.
See my earlier comment about the dawning, nascent realisation of the sheer costs of working. If rents/prices fall a bit in London, then it is feasible to live where you can walk/ cycle to work, and eat in your own home at a reasonable hour. Rather than pay thousands, and waste hours, travelling for the privilege of being too knackered to cook. Or do anything at weekends other than sleep and recover. So you end up paying for cleaning, simple repairs, takeaway, eating out etc., etc.
Yes, very true. The centre/inner centre of cities might actually become MORE appealing as the suburbs and commuter towns fall away. Why live in Guildford, a town designed for commuting, if you barely ever commute? Especially if, with all the money you save from not commuting, you can have a nice flat in Islington or Bayswater near to all the attractions of a World City? Some will move closer in to the West End, some will move away entirely to Herefordshire, Northumberland and Portugal for bigger gardens, or guaranteed sunshine
It's complex and hard to predict. There will be flows and contraflows
I am going to defend Contrarian here (I can't believe I am doing this bearing in mind his posts to me). I suspect his abusive replies to a number of us was because he had painted himself, unintentionally, into a corner by appearing to be an irresponsible parent (I am sure he isn't).
I think that is probably one of the worst things a parent could be accused of being.
Signs of plateauing which is good news. Indicates we should expect English cases to go up now for the next 3 weeks and then hopefully start to go down. I hope it is the case that it is running out of people to infect without some level of immunity.
The ascension of the next monarch is going to be a hugely difficult time for the UK, and I suspect political attempts will be made to exploit it - both in the UK and around the Commonwealth - that will unsettle many people as it will very destabilising.
[As an aside, I will certainly go to London. There is no-one alive I respect more than Queen Elizabeth II and I will personally struggle with it as well.]
Re your feelings about the Queen. What you've written made me ruminate once more on how different we all are.
Whilst I recognise that she's been an enduring figurehead of the nation for a very long time, probably for the entire lives of the majority of people alive now, with global reach, and carried out her duties (obligations?) with dignity, I don't respect her more than any person alive. I respect a firefighter more, or a doctor. A nurse. People who do selfless and/or dangerous stuff daily.
She's played the hand fate dealt her well. But I'm a republican so I'd like the whole tottering edifice she has managed to hold together come crashing down.
I'm not trying to knock your view, or be offensive, just pointlessly typing out this trite observation that I find it endlessly fascinating how differently people can see the same situation.
When she goes I hope you are ok. Me, I just hope for a day or two off work. It'll be a momentous occasion but I'll avoid all the hullaballoo we all know will happen as much as I can.
Thanks - I find posts like this difficult to handle.
The Queen has sacrificed her whole life, working night and day, for our benefit - she's been a supreme diplomat for us and done remarkable public service to our nation and the Commonwealth through a period of tumultuous change. She has also faced down personal danger more than once too. It's of a wholly different magnitude to a nurse or doctor doing a shift and then retiring on a public sector pension.
However, your view doesn't surprise me; republicans are massively overrepresented on this site. But I think even you might be surprised by your own reaction when it happens, though. She's been around for so long we've very much taken the stability and continuity she provides for us for granted.
Agreed. We will all be knocked for six when she dies. I am a moderate monarchist, but I suspect most Republicans will also find themselves reeling. I will probably get sick of the solemn commentary after a while of course, because I don't like to feel like I'm being told what to think, even by people I agree with.
The idea that given all the expenses of Covid, the NHS and social care, let alone anything else, we can avoid raising taxes on working people, as @MaxPB seems to want, is for the birds.
Taxes will have to rise and all will have to pay. That's all there is to it. All these demands for special exclusions is just self-interested nonsense.
Should we be raising taxes only on working age people?
"1% on NI" is a 2% tax rise on the employed, and a 0% tax rise on pensioners.
1%, 2% or whatever on income tax is a tax paid by all.
I did put forward the typically centre moderate view of 2% on income tax on here last night (I think). So workers and pensioners both contribute.
2% hike in income tax isn't moderate. It's almost Corbynite.
I'm absolutely disgusted with the Tory leadership. I campaigned hard in 2019 and believed the no tax rise manifesto promise. Fiscal drag is the order of the day.
In fairness it was not contemplated in 2019 that the government would spend more than £400bn on helping the economy cope with an 18 month pandemic which has devastated tax revenues as well. Politicians are all too keen to argue that circumstances have changed when breaking a promise but I struggle to think of a government that has a better base for such an argument than this one.
Tories should stand for sound money, careful management of the country's accounts and limitations on the role of the state. In some circumstances that requires more spending and thus, responsibly, more taxes, than others. This is such a time. I am more worried about having stable and sustainable public finances than current tax rates.
Now is not the time to put taxes up on working people. I don't care about my personal situation, an extra £1.6k per year in tax between myself and my wife is unfortunate but it doesn't really make a big difference to us. There will be millions of middle income people across the country that will find that kind of income cut very, very difficult to take.
Using my dad as an example again, his net income in retirement is about £60.5k. A working age person with an equivalent gross has a net income of £55k. In what world does it make sense that my dad, with no responsibilities, no kids, no mortgage and no real costs pays £5.5k less in tax than a working age person who will have a mortgage/rent, kids, possible nursery fees, school expenses, commuting costs etc...
The whole system is needs rethinking. Why is anyone in the higher rate tax bracket getting 100% of the state pension? In what world does that make sense?!
With respect a net pensioner income of 60K plus is a million miles from most pensioners income
It is not the average, but it is not particularly unusual either, especially for those from the public sector final salary schemes.
Poor pensioners are still better off than poor workers. Rich pensioners are better off than rich workers. They are also richer than the workers are forecast to get to when they are retired.
Yet new taxes go on workers, most public (and private) sector workers get a pay freeze. The retired get no new taxes and 8% increase in state pension.
This will only make the generational conflict deeper and wider.
I'm not sure about your first paragraph; it is often mentioned on here, but I'm yet to see the evidence.
I'm on a 'gold-plated' public sector (Civil Service) final pension salary scheme. I was well-paid, retiring on a salary of c. £82K after 38 years service, a couple of years ago. But my pension, generous though it is, is nowhere near £60K - much nearer £20K. I'm not complaining at all, quite happy with it, but I do wonder whether non-public sector workers have an exaggerated view of the value of public sector pensions. You would have to be retiring on a salary well over £120k to get anywhere near £60k in pension; there's not many in that category.
I've just had a pension review, actually. I knew my public sector pension was better than my previous private sector pension, but I'm slightly shocked just how much better. Most private sector workers do not have final salary pensions. The IFA I talked to told me that the average private sector workers amassed a pension pot of around £50k by retirement. Whereas if you work as, say, a hospital admin worker - or some other not desperately well paid public sector job - for 40 years you can amass a pension with a trade in value in excess of three quarters of a million pounds.
Yep. I tried to calculate the benefit once and I reckoned add 40% on the salary and you're getting close. We see many public sector retirees who have lump sum and income entitlements (always index-linked and with death benefits) that you would need over £1m to purchase in the real world. But, hey, let's pay the public sector more.
PS pensions are good but generally the pay rates certainly used to be less than in the private sector. Also remember the monthly contributions were compulsory if you didn't opt out after the first couple of years or so. I'm very content with my arrangements but the idea that we have lived lives of idleness and luxury since the mid-70s is frankly rubbish. Like most generations we had our fair share of hardship. I well recall my first London flat - £15k - with strict borrowing rules and high interest rates. I lived hand to mouth for a good few years just to cope. I had bare floorboards for the first 3 years - not the varnished/sealed jobs of these days - I could not afford carpet. All of my furniture was begged, borrowed or second-hand. And I was by no means alone.
I'm reading Dominic Sandbrook's "Seasons in the Sun: the Battle for Britain 1974-1979" at the moment and my goodness does it sound shit.
I pity anyone who has to live through that.
The 70's were brilliant, pay rise every month , cheap beer , great music , will admit looking back the fashion was dodgy. We had the times of our lives and far superior to the shithole the country is just now..
I have just done a long tour of far north Scotland - Ullapool, Assynt, Cape Wrath, Caithness and the Orkneys. Much of it looked magnificent in generally fine weather,; tho I will confess John o Groats (where we mostly stayed) is a toilet (albeit with majestic views of the Orkneys)
Why do the Scots in that corner of Scotland INSIST on building houses in a dung-brown or birdshit-grey colour? Like they want them to be ugly. The far, flat north east of Scotland is never gonna be a beauty - unlike the Highlands and Islands - but it would be much improved if everyone just painted their houses white, like the crofts of old. Or even pink. Tartan?
Anything would be better than the colour of untreated sewage you get now. It is most perplexing
Probably don't want to have to paint it twice a year. Could have done with more posts on your trip by the way. PS: I see others now, I obviously missed them.
I was actually having too nice a time to comment on the trip. It was brilliant fun. Food was great too. I had one of the nicest scones of my life overlooking the Kyle of Tongue. And a fantastic tarka dahl in Strathness Hotel in Inverness. And superb haddock wraps and seafood soup at the Seafood Shack in Ullapool
The big culinary letdown was lunch in Stromness in the Orkneys, a town which seems to pride itself on refusing to serve stuff you want and stuff they advertise. So the bistro eagerly told us they would not serve alcohol before 7pm and NOR WILL ANYONE ELSE HAHAHA and then the cafe next door "famous for its crab rolls" said they had no crab and weren't expecting any.
My daughter and I ended up eating two cheddar baps on a bench by the harbour while I downed a bottle of screwtop white wine from the Co-op like a hobo. Then we went to Skara Brae
I know Covid's expensive at the moment and all, but could long term endemicity actually end up improving the nation's finances a bit ?
Its certainly going to change them. The property market is on fire as people try and move to the sticks / get somewhere with space to live & work. Suspect the halcyon days of vastly priced rabbit hutches stacked in close proximity to the train station are behind us.
Changes to how people live and work only come along once in every x number of generations. Covid really could be the end of the mass commute into town era that's been going since the late 19th century.
And yet, bizarrely, the NYC property market has roared back to life - including the inner city/skyscrapers. London tends to follow NYC pretty closely
I wonder if we seeing generational churn rather than secular change. Oldsters are moving out of cities, but some younger people are keen to get back in.
See my earlier comment about the dawning, nascent realisation of the sheer costs of working. If rents/prices fall a bit in London, then it is feasible to live where you can walk/ cycle to work, and eat in your own home at a reasonable hour. Rather than pay thousands, and waste hours, travelling for the privilege of being too knackered to cook. Or do anything at weekends other than sleep and recover. So you end up paying for cleaning, simple repairs, takeaway, eating out etc., etc.
Yes, very true. The centre/inner centre of cities might actually become MORE appealing as the suburbs and commuter towns fall away. Why live in Guildford, a town designed for commuting, if you barely ever commute? Especially if, with all the money you save from not commuting, you can have a nice flat in Islington or Bayswater near to all the attractions of a World City? Some will move closer in to the West End, some will move away entirely to Herefordshire, Northumberland and Portugal for bigger gardens, or guaranteed sunshine
It's complex and hard to predict. There will be flows and contraflows
Signs of plateauing which is good news. Indicates we should expect English cases to go up now for the next 3 weeks and then hopefully start to go down. I hope it is the case that it is running out of people to infect without some level of immunity.
The idea that given all the expenses of Covid, the NHS and social care, let alone anything else, we can avoid raising taxes on working people, as @MaxPB seems to want, is for the birds.
Taxes will have to rise and all will have to pay. That's all there is to it. All these demands for special exclusions is just self-interested nonsense.
Should we be raising taxes only on working age people?
"1% on NI" is a 2% tax rise on the employed, and a 0% tax rise on pensioners.
1%, 2% or whatever on income tax is a tax paid by all.
I did put forward the typically centre moderate view of 2% on income tax on here last night (I think). So workers and pensioners both contribute.
2% hike in income tax isn't moderate. It's almost Corbynite.
I'm absolutely disgusted with the Tory leadership. I campaigned hard in 2019 and believed the no tax rise manifesto promise. Fiscal drag is the order of the day.
In fairness it was not contemplated in 2019 that the government would spend more than £400bn on helping the economy cope with an 18 month pandemic which has devastated tax revenues as well. Politicians are all too keen to argue that circumstances have changed when breaking a promise but I struggle to think of a government that has a better base for such an argument than this one.
Tories should stand for sound money, careful management of the country's accounts and limitations on the role of the state. In some circumstances that requires more spending and thus, responsibly, more taxes, than others. This is such a time. I am more worried about having stable and sustainable public finances than current tax rates.
Now is not the time to put taxes up on working people. I don't care about my personal situation, an extra £1.6k per year in tax between myself and my wife is unfortunate but it doesn't really make a big difference to us. There will be millions of middle income people across the country that will find that kind of income cut very, very difficult to take.
Using my dad as an example again, his net income in retirement is about £60.5k. A working age person with an equivalent gross has a net income of £55k. In what world does it make sense that my dad, with no responsibilities, no kids, no mortgage and no real costs pays £5.5k less in tax than a working age person who will have a mortgage/rent, kids, possible nursery fees, school expenses, commuting costs etc...
The whole system is needs rethinking. Why is anyone in the higher rate tax bracket getting 100% of the state pension? In what world does that make sense?!
With respect a net pensioner income of 60K plus is a million miles from most pensioners income
It is not the average, but it is not particularly unusual either, especially for those from the public sector final salary schemes.
Poor pensioners are still better off than poor workers. Rich pensioners are better off than rich workers. They are also richer than the workers are forecast to get to when they are retired.
Yet new taxes go on workers, most public (and private) sector workers get a pay freeze. The retired get no new taxes and 8% increase in state pension.
This will only make the generational conflict deeper and wider.
I'm not sure about your first paragraph; it is often mentioned on here, but I'm yet to see the evidence.
I'm on a 'gold-plated' public sector (Civil Service) final pension salary scheme. I was well-paid, retiring on a salary of c. £82K after 38 years service, a couple of years ago. But my pension, generous though it is, is nowhere near £60K - much nearer £20K. I'm not complaining at all, quite happy with it, but I do wonder whether non-public sector workers have an exaggerated view of the value of public sector pensions. You would have to be retiring on a salary well over £120k to get anywhere near £60k in pension; there's not many in that category.
I've just had a pension review, actually. I knew my public sector pension was better than my previous private sector pension, but I'm slightly shocked just how much better. Most private sector workers do not have final salary pensions. The IFA I talked to told me that the average private sector workers amassed a pension pot of around £50k by retirement. Whereas if you work as, say, a hospital admin worker - or some other not desperately well paid public sector job - for 40 years you can amass a pension with a trade in value in excess of three quarters of a million pounds.
Yep. I tried to calculate the benefit once and I reckoned add 40% on the salary and you're getting close. We see many public sector retirees who have lump sum and income entitlements (always index-linked and with death benefits) that you would need over £1m to purchase in the real world. But, hey, let's pay the public sector more.
Alternatively, let’s find ways of encouraging private sector workers to save for significantly better pensions.
This idea that now is not the time to raise taxes on those who work is odd. For the last 18 months or so working people have been supported by furlough. Others who worked from home in secure jobs have built up savings.
Now the bills have to be paid. Not just for Covid but for social care and everything else.
So everyone will have to pay: workers - and I include those past pensionable age who are still working - and those with savings and assets. And all generations will have to pay because (a) all generations benefited from the support for the economy; (b) all benefit one way or another from public services; and (c) all benefit from social care - either now (directly) or by not having to pay for parents or by not losing a possible inheritance or directly in the future.
It won't be nice. But no group should be immune from paying the bills. Far too much special pleading going on.
NI is an odd choice because it is in effect a tax but only on some. So it should be extended to all who are working if it is going to be raised.
Yes, but furlough was because we shut down the country to protect the oldies.
I know Covid's expensive at the moment and all, but could long term endemicity actually end up improving the nation's finances a bit ?
Its certainly going to change them. The property market is on fire as people try and move to the sticks / get somewhere with space to live & work. Suspect the halcyon days of vastly priced rabbit hutches stacked in close proximity to the train station are behind us.
Changes to how people live and work only come along once in every x number of generations. Covid really could be the end of the mass commute into town era that's been going since the late 19th century.
And yet, bizarrely, the NYC property market has roared back to life - including the inner city/skyscrapers. London tends to follow NYC pretty closely
I wonder if we seeing generational churn rather than secular change. Oldsters are moving out of cities, but some younger people are keen to get back in.
I see you are enjoying your Scottish trip, enjoying following it more info please
I'm back now. It was brilliant. The great weather helped, but the NC500 - from., say, Thurso east, around the corner and down to Ullapool, and beyond, really is a glorious road, even if it is now a touristic cliche
I even enjoyed the Flow Country - for being so relentlessly, uncaringly, aggressively ugly. The Milllwall Fan of Landscapes
I know it's a popular series, but Gibbs and co. haven't been so successful that they'd raise that much revenue. Even if you include the Los Angeles and New Orleans spin-offs.
Signs of plateauing which is good news. Indicates we should expect English cases to go up now for the next 3 weeks and then hopefully start to go down. I hope it is the case that it is running out of people to infect without some level of immunity.
Can only keep fingers crossed
One thing about the Scottish numbers, testing in Scotland is up massively over even the alpha peak. That's not the case elsewhere in the UK.
I know it's a popular series, but Gibbs and co. haven't been so successful that they'd raise that much revenue. Even if you include the Los Angeles and New Orleans spin-offs.
Oh, you mean NICS, not NCIS ...
'NC - I I? or, you know, NC - S T D. I don't know. It's the one with all the letters.'
Signs of plateauing which is good news. Indicates we should expect English cases to go up now for the next 3 weeks and then hopefully start to go down. I hope it is the case that it is running out of people to infect without some level of immunity.
Famous last words, but England ONS incidence has been flat since "the great unlocking" - why do you expect them to go up?
Perhaps England was further down the "antibodies via vaccination/infection" road than Scotland - and this is Scotland's "exit wave"?
I know Covid's expensive at the moment and all, but could long term endemicity actually end up improving the nation's finances a bit ?
Its certainly going to change them. The property market is on fire as people try and move to the sticks / get somewhere with space to live & work. Suspect the halcyon days of vastly priced rabbit hutches stacked in close proximity to the train station are behind us.
Changes to how people live and work only come along once in every x number of generations. Covid really could be the end of the mass commute into town era that's been going since the late 19th century.
And yet, bizarrely, the NYC property market has roared back to life - including the inner city/skyscrapers. London tends to follow NYC pretty closely
I wonder if we seeing generational churn rather than secular change. Oldsters are moving out of cities, but some younger people are keen to get back in.
See my earlier comment about the dawning, nascent realisation of the sheer costs of working. If rents/prices fall a bit in London, then it is feasible to live where you can walk/ cycle to work, and eat in your own home at a reasonable hour. Rather than pay thousands, and waste hours, travelling for the privilege of being too knackered to cook. Or do anything at weekends other than sleep and recover. So you end up paying for cleaning, simple repairs, takeaway, eating out etc., etc.
Yes, very true. The centre/inner centre of cities might actually become MORE appealing as the suburbs and commuter towns fall away. Why live in Guildford, a town designed for commuting, if you barely ever commute? Especially if, with all the money you save from not commuting, you can have a nice flat in Islington or Bayswater near to all the attractions of a World City? Some will move closer in to the West End, some will move away entirely to Herefordshire, Northumberland and Portugal for bigger gardens, or guaranteed sunshine
It's complex and hard to predict. There will be flows and contraflows
The changes wrought by Covid - and also AI, and digitisation, and remote working (which would have happened anyway, but are now much accelerated), are so complicated and confounding it is impossible to confidently predict what they will do to property.
There are many conflicting forces. It is certainly much too simplistic to simply say: Oh, everyone will want to move to a more rural house with a garden.
The idea that given all the expenses of Covid, the NHS and social care, let alone anything else, we can avoid raising taxes on working people, as @MaxPB seems to want, is for the birds.
Taxes will have to rise and all will have to pay. That's all there is to it. All these demands for special exclusions is just self-interested nonsense.
Should we be raising taxes only on working age people?
"1% on NI" is a 2% tax rise on the employed, and a 0% tax rise on pensioners.
1%, 2% or whatever on income tax is a tax paid by all.
I did put forward the typically centre moderate view of 2% on income tax on here last night (I think). So workers and pensioners both contribute.
2% hike in income tax isn't moderate. It's almost Corbynite.
I'm absolutely disgusted with the Tory leadership. I campaigned hard in 2019 and believed the no tax rise manifesto promise. Fiscal drag is the order of the day.
In fairness it was not contemplated in 2019 that the government would spend more than £400bn on helping the economy cope with an 18 month pandemic which has devastated tax revenues as well. Politicians are all too keen to argue that circumstances have changed when breaking a promise but I struggle to think of a government that has a better base for such an argument than this one.
Tories should stand for sound money, careful management of the country's accounts and limitations on the role of the state. In some circumstances that requires more spending and thus, responsibly, more taxes, than others. This is such a time. I am more worried about having stable and sustainable public finances than current tax rates.
Now is not the time to put taxes up on working people. I don't care about my personal situation, an extra £1.6k per year in tax between myself and my wife is unfortunate but it doesn't really make a big difference to us. There will be millions of middle income people across the country that will find that kind of income cut very, very difficult to take.
Using my dad as an example again, his net income in retirement is about £60.5k. A working age person with an equivalent gross has a net income of £55k. In what world does it make sense that my dad, with no responsibilities, no kids, no mortgage and no real costs pays £5.5k less in tax than a working age person who will have a mortgage/rent, kids, possible nursery fees, school expenses, commuting costs etc...
The whole system is needs rethinking. Why is anyone in the higher rate tax bracket getting 100% of the state pension? In what world does that make sense?!
With respect a net pensioner income of 60K plus is a million miles from most pensioners income
It is not the average, but it is not particularly unusual either, especially for those from the public sector final salary schemes.
Poor pensioners are still better off than poor workers. Rich pensioners are better off than rich workers. They are also richer than the workers are forecast to get to when they are retired.
Yet new taxes go on workers, most public (and private) sector workers get a pay freeze. The retired get no new taxes and 8% increase in state pension.
This will only make the generational conflict deeper and wider.
I'm not sure about your first paragraph; it is often mentioned on here, but I'm yet to see the evidence.
I'm on a 'gold-plated' public sector (Civil Service) final pension salary scheme. I was well-paid, retiring on a salary of c. £82K after 38 years service, a couple of years ago. But my pension, generous though it is, is nowhere near £60K - much nearer £20K. I'm not complaining at all, quite happy with it, but I do wonder whether non-public sector workers have an exaggerated view of the value of public sector pensions. You would have to be retiring on a salary well over £120k to get anywhere near £60k in pension; there's not many in that category.
I've just had a pension review, actually. I knew my public sector pension was better than my previous private sector pension, but I'm slightly shocked just how much better. Most private sector workers do not have final salary pensions. The IFA I talked to told me that the average private sector workers amassed a pension pot of around £50k by retirement. Whereas if you work as, say, a hospital admin worker - or some other not desperately well paid public sector job - for 40 years you can amass a pension with a trade in value in excess of three quarters of a million pounds.
Yep. I tried to calculate the benefit once and I reckoned add 40% on the salary and you're getting close. We see many public sector retirees who have lump sum and income entitlements (always index-linked and with death benefits) that you would need over £1m to purchase in the real world. But, hey, let's pay the public sector more.
PS pensions are good but generally the pay rates certainly used to be less than in the private sector. Also remember the monthly contributions were compulsory if you didn't opt out after the first couple of years or so. I'm very content with my arrangements but the idea that we have lived lives of idleness and luxury since the mid-70s is frankly rubbish. Like most generations we had our fair share of hardship. I well recall my first London flat - £15k - with strict borrowing rules and high interest rates. I lived hand to mouth for a good few years just to cope. I had bare floorboards for the first 3 years - not the varnished/sealed jobs of these days - I could not afford carpet. All of my furniture was begged, borrowed or second-hand. And I was by no means alone.
I'm reading Dominic Sandbrook's "Seasons in the Sun: the Battle for Britain 1974-1979" at the moment and my goodness does it sound shit.
I pity anyone who has to live through that.
The 70's were brilliant, pay rise every month , cheap beer , great music , will admit looking back the fashion was dodgy. We had the times of our lives and far superior to the shithole the country is just now..
I have just done a long tour of far north Scotland - Ullapool, Assynt, Cape Wrath, Caithness and the Orkneys. Much of it looked magnificent in generally fine weather,; tho I will confess John o Groats (where we mostly stayed) is a toilet (albeit with majestic views of the Orkneys)
Why do the Scots in that corner of Scotland INSIST on building houses in a dung-brown or birdshit-grey colour? Like they want them to be ugly. The far, flat north east of Scotland is never gonna be a beauty - unlike the Highlands and Islands - but it would be much improved if everyone just painted their houses white, like the crofts of old. Or even pink. Tartan?
Anything would be better than the colour of untreated sewage you get now. It is most perplexing
I've often thought the same. And it's not just the North East. You can tell when you cross the border with the sudden arrival of houses covered in tiny stones (must be a word for this?). I'm sure they resist the weather, but good grief they're ugly. OTOH, the heavy stone fronted villas and tenements of the older parts of Scottish towns - I'm thinking in particular of Glasgow and Edinburgh, but you find them everywhere - are heartbreakingly lovely.
Signs of plateauing which is good news. Indicates we should expect English cases to go up now for the next 3 weeks and then hopefully start to go down. I hope it is the case that it is running out of people to infect without some level of immunity.
England has the advantage that a chunk of 16 and 17 year olds will be partially vaccinated from early September - something the Scottish school system didn’t have.
The idea that given all the expenses of Covid, the NHS and social care, let alone anything else, we can avoid raising taxes on working people, as @MaxPB seems to want, is for the birds.
Taxes will have to rise and all will have to pay. That's all there is to it. All these demands for special exclusions is just self-interested nonsense.
Should we be raising taxes only on working age people?
"1% on NI" is a 2% tax rise on the employed, and a 0% tax rise on pensioners.
1%, 2% or whatever on income tax is a tax paid by all.
I did put forward the typically centre moderate view of 2% on income tax on here last night (I think). So workers and pensioners both contribute.
2% hike in income tax isn't moderate. It's almost Corbynite.
I'm absolutely disgusted with the Tory leadership. I campaigned hard in 2019 and believed the no tax rise manifesto promise. Fiscal drag is the order of the day.
In fairness it was not contemplated in 2019 that the government would spend more than £400bn on helping the economy cope with an 18 month pandemic which has devastated tax revenues as well. Politicians are all too keen to argue that circumstances have changed when breaking a promise but I struggle to think of a government that has a better base for such an argument than this one.
Tories should stand for sound money, careful management of the country's accounts and limitations on the role of the state. In some circumstances that requires more spending and thus, responsibly, more taxes, than others. This is such a time. I am more worried about having stable and sustainable public finances than current tax rates.
Now is not the time to put taxes up on working people. I don't care about my personal situation, an extra £1.6k per year in tax between myself and my wife is unfortunate but it doesn't really make a big difference to us. There will be millions of middle income people across the country that will find that kind of income cut very, very difficult to take.
Using my dad as an example again, his net income in retirement is about £60.5k. A working age person with an equivalent gross has a net income of £55k. In what world does it make sense that my dad, with no responsibilities, no kids, no mortgage and no real costs pays £5.5k less in tax than a working age person who will have a mortgage/rent, kids, possible nursery fees, school expenses, commuting costs etc...
The whole system is needs rethinking. Why is anyone in the higher rate tax bracket getting 100% of the state pension? In what world does that make sense?!
With respect a net pensioner income of 60K plus is a million miles from most pensioners income
It is not the average, but it is not particularly unusual either, especially for those from the public sector final salary schemes.
Poor pensioners are still better off than poor workers. Rich pensioners are better off than rich workers. They are also richer than the workers are forecast to get to when they are retired.
Yet new taxes go on workers, most public (and private) sector workers get a pay freeze. The retired get no new taxes and 8% increase in state pension.
This will only make the generational conflict deeper and wider.
I'm not sure about your first paragraph; it is often mentioned on here, but I'm yet to see the evidence.
I'm on a 'gold-plated' public sector (Civil Service) final pension salary scheme. I was well-paid, retiring on a salary of c. £82K after 38 years service, a couple of years ago. But my pension, generous though it is, is nowhere near £60K - much nearer £20K. I'm not complaining at all, quite happy with it, but I do wonder whether non-public sector workers have an exaggerated view of the value of public sector pensions. You would have to be retiring on a salary well over £120k to get anywhere near £60k in pension; there's not many in that category.
I've just had a pension review, actually. I knew my public sector pension was better than my previous private sector pension, but I'm slightly shocked just how much better. Most private sector workers do not have final salary pensions. The IFA I talked to told me that the average private sector workers amassed a pension pot of around £50k by retirement. Whereas if you work as, say, a hospital admin worker - or some other not desperately well paid public sector job - for 40 years you can amass a pension with a trade in value in excess of three quarters of a million pounds.
Yep. I tried to calculate the benefit once and I reckoned add 40% on the salary and you're getting close. We see many public sector retirees who have lump sum and income entitlements (always index-linked and with death benefits) that you would need over £1m to purchase in the real world. But, hey, let's pay the public sector more.
PS pensions are good but generally the pay rates certainly used to be less than in the private sector. Also remember the monthly contributions were compulsory if you didn't opt out after the first couple of years or so. I'm very content with my arrangements but the idea that we have lived lives of idleness and luxury since the mid-70s is frankly rubbish. Like most generations we had our fair share of hardship. I well recall my first London flat - £15k - with strict borrowing rules and high interest rates. I lived hand to mouth for a good few years just to cope. I had bare floorboards for the first 3 years - not the varnished/sealed jobs of these days - I could not afford carpet. All of my furniture was begged, borrowed or second-hand. And I was by no means alone.
I'm reading Dominic Sandbrook's "Seasons in the Sun: the Battle for Britain 1974-1979" at the moment and my goodness does it sound shit.
I pity anyone who has to live through that.
The 70's were brilliant, pay rise every month , cheap beer , great music , will admit looking back the fashion was dodgy. We had the times of our lives and far superior to the shithole the country is just now..
Seem to recall this being the decade my family, and our neighbours, got a car, indoor toilets, central heating, colour telly, washing machine, gas fire, etc. They were unusual in 1969. Ubiquitous by 1979. Or maybe that's just us. The rest of the nation may have been living in collectivist penury.
and of course the 70s gave us Findus Crispy Pancakes.
I know Covid's expensive at the moment and all, but could long term endemicity actually end up improving the nation's finances a bit ?
Its certainly going to change them. The property market is on fire as people try and move to the sticks / get somewhere with space to live & work. Suspect the halcyon days of vastly priced rabbit hutches stacked in close proximity to the train station are behind us.
Changes to how people live and work only come along once in every x number of generations. Covid really could be the end of the mass commute into town era that's been going since the late 19th century.
And yet, bizarrely, the NYC property market has roared back to life - including the inner city/skyscrapers. London tends to follow NYC pretty closely
I wonder if we seeing generational churn rather than secular change. Oldsters are moving out of cities, but some younger people are keen to get back in.
See my earlier comment about the dawning, nascent realisation of the sheer costs of working. If rents/prices fall a bit in London, then it is feasible to live where you can walk/ cycle to work, and eat in your own home at a reasonable hour. Rather than pay thousands, and waste hours, travelling for the privilege of being too knackered to cook. Or do anything at weekends other than sleep and recover. So you end up paying for cleaning, simple repairs, takeaway, eating out etc., etc.
Yes, very true. The centre/inner centre of cities might actually become MORE appealing as the suburbs and commuter towns fall away. Why live in Guildford, a town designed for commuting, if you barely ever commute? Especially if, with all the money you save from not commuting, you can have a nice flat in Islington or Bayswater near to all the attractions of a World City? Some will move closer in to the West End, some will move away entirely to Herefordshire, Northumberland and Portugal for bigger gardens, or guaranteed sunshine
It's complex and hard to predict. There will be flows and contraflows
My girlfriend has a flat just near the Greenwich Foot Tunnel (you can see me running through it on my insta, to the sound of my one celebrity friend, Andy C’s ‘Valley of the Shadows’!) - the price has stagnated/dropped but I feel you’re never go wrong being in Zone1, 2 mins from the Thames even if wfh took over
The idea that given all the expenses of Covid, the NHS and social care, let alone anything else, we can avoid raising taxes on working people, as @MaxPB seems to want, is for the birds.
Taxes will have to rise and all will have to pay. That's all there is to it. All these demands for special exclusions is just self-interested nonsense.
Should we be raising taxes only on working age people?
"1% on NI" is a 2% tax rise on the employed, and a 0% tax rise on pensioners.
1%, 2% or whatever on income tax is a tax paid by all.
I did put forward the typically centre moderate view of 2% on income tax on here last night (I think). So workers and pensioners both contribute.
2% hike in income tax isn't moderate. It's almost Corbynite.
I'm absolutely disgusted with the Tory leadership. I campaigned hard in 2019 and believed the no tax rise manifesto promise. Fiscal drag is the order of the day.
In fairness it was not contemplated in 2019 that the government would spend more than £400bn on helping the economy cope with an 18 month pandemic which has devastated tax revenues as well. Politicians are all too keen to argue that circumstances have changed when breaking a promise but I struggle to think of a government that has a better base for such an argument than this one.
Tories should stand for sound money, careful management of the country's accounts and limitations on the role of the state. In some circumstances that requires more spending and thus, responsibly, more taxes, than others. This is such a time. I am more worried about having stable and sustainable public finances than current tax rates.
Now is not the time to put taxes up on working people. I don't care about my personal situation, an extra £1.6k per year in tax between myself and my wife is unfortunate but it doesn't really make a big difference to us. There will be millions of middle income people across the country that will find that kind of income cut very, very difficult to take.
Using my dad as an example again, his net income in retirement is about £60.5k. A working age person with an equivalent gross has a net income of £55k. In what world does it make sense that my dad, with no responsibilities, no kids, no mortgage and no real costs pays £5.5k less in tax than a working age person who will have a mortgage/rent, kids, possible nursery fees, school expenses, commuting costs etc...
The whole system is needs rethinking. Why is anyone in the higher rate tax bracket getting 100% of the state pension? In what world does that make sense?!
With respect a net pensioner income of 60K plus is a million miles from most pensioners income
It is not the average, but it is not particularly unusual either, especially for those from the public sector final salary schemes.
Poor pensioners are still better off than poor workers. Rich pensioners are better off than rich workers. They are also richer than the workers are forecast to get to when they are retired.
Yet new taxes go on workers, most public (and private) sector workers get a pay freeze. The retired get no new taxes and 8% increase in state pension.
This will only make the generational conflict deeper and wider.
I'm not sure about your first paragraph; it is often mentioned on here, but I'm yet to see the evidence.
I'm on a 'gold-plated' public sector (Civil Service) final pension salary scheme. I was well-paid, retiring on a salary of c. £82K after 38 years service, a couple of years ago. But my pension, generous though it is, is nowhere near £60K - much nearer £20K. I'm not complaining at all, quite happy with it, but I do wonder whether non-public sector workers have an exaggerated view of the value of public sector pensions. You would have to be retiring on a salary well over £120k to get anywhere near £60k in pension; there's not many in that category.
I've just had a pension review, actually. I knew my public sector pension was better than my previous private sector pension, but I'm slightly shocked just how much better. Most private sector workers do not have final salary pensions. The IFA I talked to told me that the average private sector workers amassed a pension pot of around £50k by retirement. Whereas if you work as, say, a hospital admin worker - or some other not desperately well paid public sector job - for 40 years you can amass a pension with a trade in value in excess of three quarters of a million pounds.
Yep. I tried to calculate the benefit once and I reckoned add 40% on the salary and you're getting close. We see many public sector retirees who have lump sum and income entitlements (always index-linked and with death benefits) that you would need over £1m to purchase in the real world. But, hey, let's pay the public sector more.
PS pensions are good but generally the pay rates certainly used to be less than in the private sector. Also remember the monthly contributions were compulsory if you didn't opt out after the first couple of years or so. I'm very content with my arrangements but the idea that we have lived lives of idleness and luxury since the mid-70s is frankly rubbish. Like most generations we had our fair share of hardship. I well recall my first London flat - £15k - with strict borrowing rules and high interest rates. I lived hand to mouth for a good few years just to cope. I had bare floorboards for the first 3 years - not the varnished/sealed jobs of these days - I could not afford carpet. All of my furniture was begged, borrowed or second-hand. And I was by no means alone.
I'm reading Dominic Sandbrook's "Seasons in the Sun: the Battle for Britain 1974-1979" at the moment and my goodness does it sound shit.
I pity anyone who has to live through that.
The 70's were brilliant, pay rise every month , cheap beer , great music , will admit looking back the fashion was dodgy. We had the times of our lives and far superior to the shithole the country is just now..
I have just done a long tour of far north Scotland - Ullapool, Assynt, Cape Wrath, Caithness and the Orkneys. Much of it looked magnificent in generally fine weather,; tho I will confess John o Groats (where we mostly stayed) is a toilet (albeit with majestic views of the Orkneys)
Why do the Scots in that corner of Scotland INSIST on building houses in a dung-brown or birdshit-grey colour? Like they want them to be ugly. The far, flat north east of Scotland is never gonna be a beauty - unlike the Highlands and Islands - but it would be much improved if everyone just painted their houses white, like the crofts of old. Or even pink. Tartan?
Anything would be better than the colour of untreated sewage you get now. It is most perplexing
Probably don't want to have to paint it twice a year. Could have done with more posts on your trip by the way. PS: I see others now, I obviously missed them.
I was actually having too nice a time to comment on the trip. It was brilliant fun. Food was great too. I had one of the nicest scones of my life overlooking the Kyle of Tongue. And a fantastic tarka dahl in Strathness Hotel in Inverness. And superb haddock wraps and seafood soup at the Seafood Shack in Ullapool
The big culinary letdown was lunch in Stromness in the Orkneys, a town which seems to pride itself on refusing to serve stuff you want and stuff they advertise. So the bistro eagerly told us they would not serve alcohol before 7pm and NOR WILL ANYONE ELSE HAHAHA and then the cafe next door "famous for its crab rolls" said they had no crab and weren't expecting any.
My daughter and I ended up eating two cheddar baps on a bench by the harbour while I downed a bottle of screwtop white wine from the Co-op like a hobo. Then we went to Skara Brae
Glad you enjoyed it and took on a bit of Scottish jakieness to boot. Your daughter would have probably ended up murdering you after two days in Millport.
The idea that given all the expenses of Covid, the NHS and social care, let alone anything else, we can avoid raising taxes on working people, as @MaxPB seems to want, is for the birds.
Taxes will have to rise and all will have to pay. That's all there is to it. All these demands for special exclusions is just self-interested nonsense.
Should we be raising taxes only on working age people?
"1% on NI" is a 2% tax rise on the employed, and a 0% tax rise on pensioners.
1%, 2% or whatever on income tax is a tax paid by all.
I did put forward the typically centre moderate view of 2% on income tax on here last night (I think). So workers and pensioners both contribute.
2% hike in income tax isn't moderate. It's almost Corbynite.
I'm absolutely disgusted with the Tory leadership. I campaigned hard in 2019 and believed the no tax rise manifesto promise. Fiscal drag is the order of the day.
In fairness it was not contemplated in 2019 that the government would spend more than £400bn on helping the economy cope with an 18 month pandemic which has devastated tax revenues as well. Politicians are all too keen to argue that circumstances have changed when breaking a promise but I struggle to think of a government that has a better base for such an argument than this one.
Tories should stand for sound money, careful management of the country's accounts and limitations on the role of the state. In some circumstances that requires more spending and thus, responsibly, more taxes, than others. This is such a time. I am more worried about having stable and sustainable public finances than current tax rates.
Now is not the time to put taxes up on working people. I don't care about my personal situation, an extra £1.6k per year in tax between myself and my wife is unfortunate but it doesn't really make a big difference to us. There will be millions of middle income people across the country that will find that kind of income cut very, very difficult to take.
Using my dad as an example again, his net income in retirement is about £60.5k. A working age person with an equivalent gross has a net income of £55k. In what world does it make sense that my dad, with no responsibilities, no kids, no mortgage and no real costs pays £5.5k less in tax than a working age person who will have a mortgage/rent, kids, possible nursery fees, school expenses, commuting costs etc...
The whole system is needs rethinking. Why is anyone in the higher rate tax bracket getting 100% of the state pension? In what world does that make sense?!
With respect a net pensioner income of 60K plus is a million miles from most pensioners income
It is not the average, but it is not particularly unusual either, especially for those from the public sector final salary schemes.
Poor pensioners are still better off than poor workers. Rich pensioners are better off than rich workers. They are also richer than the workers are forecast to get to when they are retired.
Yet new taxes go on workers, most public (and private) sector workers get a pay freeze. The retired get no new taxes and 8% increase in state pension.
This will only make the generational conflict deeper and wider.
I'm not sure about your first paragraph; it is often mentioned on here, but I'm yet to see the evidence.
I'm on a 'gold-plated' public sector (Civil Service) final pension salary scheme. I was well-paid, retiring on a salary of c. £82K after 38 years service, a couple of years ago. But my pension, generous though it is, is nowhere near £60K - much nearer £20K. I'm not complaining at all, quite happy with it, but I do wonder whether non-public sector workers have an exaggerated view of the value of public sector pensions. You would have to be retiring on a salary well over £120k to get anywhere near £60k in pension; there's not many in that category.
I've just had a pension review, actually. I knew my public sector pension was better than my previous private sector pension, but I'm slightly shocked just how much better. Most private sector workers do not have final salary pensions. The IFA I talked to told me that the average private sector workers amassed a pension pot of around £50k by retirement. Whereas if you work as, say, a hospital admin worker - or some other not desperately well paid public sector job - for 40 years you can amass a pension with a trade in value in excess of three quarters of a million pounds.
Yep. I tried to calculate the benefit once and I reckoned add 40% on the salary and you're getting close. We see many public sector retirees who have lump sum and income entitlements (always index-linked and with death benefits) that you would need over £1m to purchase in the real world. But, hey, let's pay the public sector more.
PS pensions are good but generally the pay rates certainly used to be less than in the private sector. Also remember the monthly contributions were compulsory if you didn't opt out after the first couple of years or so. I'm very content with my arrangements but the idea that we have lived lives of idleness and luxury since the mid-70s is frankly rubbish. Like most generations we had our fair share of hardship. I well recall my first London flat - £15k - with strict borrowing rules and high interest rates. I lived hand to mouth for a good few years just to cope. I had bare floorboards for the first 3 years - not the varnished/sealed jobs of these days - I could not afford carpet. All of my furniture was begged, borrowed or second-hand. And I was by no means alone.
I'm reading Dominic Sandbrook's "Seasons in the Sun: the Battle for Britain 1974-1979" at the moment and my goodness does it sound shit.
I pity anyone who has to live through that.
The 70's were brilliant, pay rise every month , cheap beer , great music , will admit looking back the fashion was dodgy. We had the times of our lives and far superior to the shithole the country is just now..
I have just done a long tour of far north Scotland - Ullapool, Assynt, Cape Wrath, Caithness and the Orkneys. Much of it looked magnificent in generally fine weather,; tho I will confess John o Groats (where we mostly stayed) is a toilet (albeit with majestic views of the Orkneys)
Why do the Scots in that corner of Scotland INSIST on building houses in a dung-brown or birdshit-grey colour? Like they want them to be ugly. The far, flat north east of Scotland is never gonna be a beauty - unlike the Highlands and Islands - but it would be much improved if everyone just painted their houses white, like the crofts of old. Or even pink. Tartan?
Anything would be better than the colour of untreated sewage you get now. It is most perplexing
I've often thought the same. And it's not just the North East. You can tell when you cross the border with the sudden arrival of houses covered in tiny stones (must be a word for this?). I'm sure they resist the weather, but good grief they're ugly. OTOH, the heavy stone fronted villas and tenements of the older parts of Scottish towns - I'm thinking in particular of Glasgow and Edinburgh, but you find them everywhere - are heartbreakingly lovely.
Ireland had a similar issue with ugly colour crofts everywhere. They had a national campaign to paint them all bright colours and now it is a national quirk.
I know Covid's expensive at the moment and all, but could long term endemicity actually end up improving the nation's finances a bit ?
Its certainly going to change them. The property market is on fire as people try and move to the sticks / get somewhere with space to live & work. Suspect the halcyon days of vastly priced rabbit hutches stacked in close proximity to the train station are behind us.
Changes to how people live and work only come along once in every x number of generations. Covid really could be the end of the mass commute into town era that's been going since the late 19th century.
And yet, bizarrely, the NYC property market has roared back to life - including the inner city/skyscrapers. London tends to follow NYC pretty closely
I wonder if we seeing generational churn rather than secular change. Oldsters are moving out of cities, but some younger people are keen to get back in.
See my earlier comment about the dawning, nascent realisation of the sheer costs of working. If rents/prices fall a bit in London, then it is feasible to live where you can walk/ cycle to work, and eat in your own home at a reasonable hour. Rather than pay thousands, and waste hours, travelling for the privilege of being too knackered to cook. Or do anything at weekends other than sleep and recover. So you end up paying for cleaning, simple repairs, takeaway, eating out etc., etc.
Yes, very true. The centre/inner centre of cities might actually become MORE appealing as the suburbs and commuter towns fall away. Why live in Guildford, a town designed for commuting, if you barely ever commute? Especially if, with all the money you save from not commuting, you can have a nice flat in Islington or Bayswater near to all the attractions of a World City? Some will move closer in to the West End, some will move away entirely to Herefordshire, Northumberland and Portugal for bigger gardens, or guaranteed sunshine
It's complex and hard to predict. There will be flows and contraflows
The changes wrought by Covid - and also AI, and digitisation, and remote working (which would have happened anyway, but are now much accelerated), are so complicated and confounding it is impossible to confidently predict what they will do to property.
There are many conflicting forces. It is certainly much too simplistic to simply say: Oh, everyone will want to move to a more rural house with a garden.
Suburbs are not the same thing as commuter towns either.
I know Covid's expensive at the moment and all, but could long term endemicity actually end up improving the nation's finances a bit ?
Its certainly going to change them. The property market is on fire as people try and move to the sticks / get somewhere with space to live & work. Suspect the halcyon days of vastly priced rabbit hutches stacked in close proximity to the train station are behind us.
Changes to how people live and work only come along once in every x number of generations. Covid really could be the end of the mass commute into town era that's been going since the late 19th century.
And yet, bizarrely, the NYC property market has roared back to life - including the inner city/skyscrapers. London tends to follow NYC pretty closely
I wonder if we seeing generational churn rather than secular change. Oldsters are moving out of cities, but some younger people are keen to get back in.
See my earlier comment about the dawning, nascent realisation of the sheer costs of working. If rents/prices fall a bit in London, then it is feasible to live where you can walk/ cycle to work, and eat in your own home at a reasonable hour. Rather than pay thousands, and waste hours, travelling for the privilege of being too knackered to cook. Or do anything at weekends other than sleep and recover. So you end up paying for cleaning, simple repairs, takeaway, eating out etc., etc.
Yes, very true. The centre/inner centre of cities might actually become MORE appealing as the suburbs and commuter towns fall away. Why live in Guildford, a town designed for commuting, if you barely ever commute? Especially if, with all the money you save from not commuting, you can have a nice flat in Islington or Bayswater near to all the attractions of a World City? Some will move closer in to the West End, some will move away entirely to Herefordshire, Northumberland and Portugal for bigger gardens, or guaranteed sunshine
It's complex and hard to predict. There will be flows and contraflows
The changes wrought by Covid - and also AI, and digitisation, and remote working (which would have happened anyway, but are now much accelerated), are so complicated and confounding it is impossible to confidently predict what they will do to property.
There are many conflicting forces. It is certainly much too simplistic to simply say: Oh, everyone will want to move to a more rural house with a garden.
might WFH help secure some jobs that would otherwise be lost to AI? saving the office costs might tip the balance between employees and technology.
This idea that now is not the time to raise taxes on those who work is odd. For the last 18 months or so working people have been supported by furlough. Others who worked from home in secure jobs have built up savings.
Now the bills have to be paid. Not just for Covid but for social care and everything else.
So everyone will have to pay: workers - and I include those past pensionable age who are still working - and those with savings and assets. And all generations will have to pay because (a) all generations benefited from the support for the economy; (b) all benefit one way or another from public services; and (c) all benefit from social care - either now (directly) or by not having to pay for parents or by not losing a possible inheritance or directly in the future.
It won't be nice. But no group should be immune from paying the bills. Far too much special pleading going on.
NI is an odd choice because it is in effect a tax but only on some. So it should be extended to all who are working if it is going to be raised.
It is not the workers pleading! The solution being proposed, as you point out in the final paragraph, is that only workers under 65 pay.
There is no additional tax being proposed for workers over 65. There are no new wealth taxes being proposed. Pensioners are also getting 8% increase on state pension vs wage freezes for most workers.
Saying that is unfair on workers under 65 is not special pleading, divisive or odd, just standing up for basic fairness.
I am going to defend Contrarian here (I can't believe I am doing this bearing in mind his posts to me). I suspect his abusive replies to a number of us was because he had painted himself, unintentionally, into a corner by appearing to be an irresponsible parent (I am sure he isn't).
I think that is probably one of the worst things a parent could be accused of being.
It did turn a rather jolly thread very dark.
I’d second that, although I suspect I have to do far less mental gymnastics than yourself. Same goes with HYFUD - I know he got banned but he gets far too much abuse at times.
Funnily enough, it only seems to happen with the right-leaning commentators. We have one commentator on here, for example, who can publicly make quite racist comments on the white working class which would never be tolerated elsewhere but never seems to get called out on the matter.
The idea that given all the expenses of Covid, the NHS and social care, let alone anything else, we can avoid raising taxes on working people, as @MaxPB seems to want, is for the birds.
Taxes will have to rise and all will have to pay. That's all there is to it. All these demands for special exclusions is just self-interested nonsense.
Should we be raising taxes only on working age people?
"1% on NI" is a 2% tax rise on the employed, and a 0% tax rise on pensioners.
1%, 2% or whatever on income tax is a tax paid by all.
I did put forward the typically centre moderate view of 2% on income tax on here last night (I think). So workers and pensioners both contribute.
2% hike in income tax isn't moderate. It's almost Corbynite.
I'm absolutely disgusted with the Tory leadership. I campaigned hard in 2019 and believed the no tax rise manifesto promise. Fiscal drag is the order of the day.
In fairness it was not contemplated in 2019 that the government would spend more than £400bn on helping the economy cope with an 18 month pandemic which has devastated tax revenues as well. Politicians are all too keen to argue that circumstances have changed when breaking a promise but I struggle to think of a government that has a better base for such an argument than this one.
Tories should stand for sound money, careful management of the country's accounts and limitations on the role of the state. In some circumstances that requires more spending and thus, responsibly, more taxes, than others. This is such a time. I am more worried about having stable and sustainable public finances than current tax rates.
Now is not the time to put taxes up on working people. I don't care about my personal situation, an extra £1.6k per year in tax between myself and my wife is unfortunate but it doesn't really make a big difference to us. There will be millions of middle income people across the country that will find that kind of income cut very, very difficult to take.
Using my dad as an example again, his net income in retirement is about £60.5k. A working age person with an equivalent gross has a net income of £55k. In what world does it make sense that my dad, with no responsibilities, no kids, no mortgage and no real costs pays £5.5k less in tax than a working age person who will have a mortgage/rent, kids, possible nursery fees, school expenses, commuting costs etc...
The whole system is needs rethinking. Why is anyone in the higher rate tax bracket getting 100% of the state pension? In what world does that make sense?!
With respect a net pensioner income of 60K plus is a million miles from most pensioners income
It is not the average, but it is not particularly unusual either, especially for those from the public sector final salary schemes.
Poor pensioners are still better off than poor workers. Rich pensioners are better off than rich workers. They are also richer than the workers are forecast to get to when they are retired.
Yet new taxes go on workers, most public (and private) sector workers get a pay freeze. The retired get no new taxes and 8% increase in state pension.
This will only make the generational conflict deeper and wider.
I'm not sure about your first paragraph; it is often mentioned on here, but I'm yet to see the evidence.
I'm on a 'gold-plated' public sector (Civil Service) final pension salary scheme. I was well-paid, retiring on a salary of c. £82K after 38 years service, a couple of years ago. But my pension, generous though it is, is nowhere near £60K - much nearer £20K. I'm not complaining at all, quite happy with it, but I do wonder whether non-public sector workers have an exaggerated view of the value of public sector pensions. You would have to be retiring on a salary well over £120k to get anywhere near £60k in pension; there's not many in that category.
I've just had a pension review, actually. I knew my public sector pension was better than my previous private sector pension, but I'm slightly shocked just how much better. Most private sector workers do not have final salary pensions. The IFA I talked to told me that the average private sector workers amassed a pension pot of around £50k by retirement. Whereas if you work as, say, a hospital admin worker - or some other not desperately well paid public sector job - for 40 years you can amass a pension with a trade in value in excess of three quarters of a million pounds.
Yep. I tried to calculate the benefit once and I reckoned add 40% on the salary and you're getting close. We see many public sector retirees who have lump sum and income entitlements (always index-linked and with death benefits) that you would need over £1m to purchase in the real world. But, hey, let's pay the public sector more.
PS pensions are good but generally the pay rates certainly used to be less than in the private sector. Also remember the monthly contributions were compulsory if you didn't opt out after the first couple of years or so. I'm very content with my arrangements but the idea that we have lived lives of idleness and luxury since the mid-70s is frankly rubbish. Like most generations we had our fair share of hardship. I well recall my first London flat - £15k - with strict borrowing rules and high interest rates. I lived hand to mouth for a good few years just to cope. I had bare floorboards for the first 3 years - not the varnished/sealed jobs of these days - I could not afford carpet. All of my furniture was begged, borrowed or second-hand. And I was by no means alone.
I'm reading Dominic Sandbrook's "Seasons in the Sun: the Battle for Britain 1974-1979" at the moment and my goodness does it sound shit.
I pity anyone who has to live through that.
Of course the past is another country for all of us but in truth like lost things you play the hand you are dealt and get on with it. Myth based envy is corrosive. Quite a lot of it on display today.
I recently read 'The Nanny State Made Me: A Story of Britain and How to Save it', by Stuart Maconie. It sings the praises of the welfare state that he grew up in, how it massively improved the lives of working-class people. I found it very persuasive, but he was definitely preaching to the choir in my case.
He did say one thing that has stuck with me. I don't have the exact quote but it was something along the lines of 'I can understand if you lived in the stockbroker belt and had some money then you would have thought that the 70s were appalling. If, however, you were growing up a working class northerner then you were benefitting massively from all the areas where the state got involved and made your life better than your parents and grandparents.'
I have a huge degree of sympathy for the Queen as a person. She didn't grow up expecting to become the monarch. No doubt the role, thrust upon her, has meant huge personal sacrifice. I do respect her in that sense.
I guess it's a reversal of that 'respect the office' thing. I respect her as a person, I don't respect her status as monarch.
I don't want to embroil us in another pointless debate about the monarchy. Certainly not without the benefit of being sat face-to-face, to better pick up on our respective use of humour, irony, tone of voice and non-verbal cues. Preferably in a particularly pleasant boozer! We won't change each other's minds typing out guff on here. But suffice to say I'm sceptical as to whether you could describe her service as 'remarkable'. Enduring, yes. Dedicated, yes. Politically astute, yes ok. But remarkable? Not for me.
I'm a history graduate so I'll appreciate her demise in that sense, as a significant event. I'll be sad that someone has died. You may be right that my reaction surprises me, but I suspect not. I was 19 when Diana died and beyond it being interesting in historical terms, and feeling sorry for her and her loved ones, I was not really bothered. I got double time working during her funeral, if I remember correctly. I don't anticipate feeling too dissimilar when the Queen goes. But I could be wrong!
People's motivations are fascinating. Back in 2014, there was this lad of 17 or so being interviewed about whether he was going to vote for Scotland to be independent. His big concern was whether Scotland would lose the Queen and would vote accordingly. It just wouldn't appear in my considerations at all.
Is Charles really going to be the next monarch? He will be touching eighty. I don't see him going for an Elizabethan life of service at this point.
Signs of plateauing which is good news. Indicates we should expect English cases to go up now for the next 3 weeks and then hopefully start to go down. I hope it is the case that it is running out of people to infect without some level of immunity.
Can only keep fingers crossed
One thing about the Scottish numbers, testing in Scotland is up massively over even the alpha peak. That's not the case elsewhere in the UK.
I know Covid's expensive at the moment and all, but could long term endemicity actually end up improving the nation's finances a bit ?
Its certainly going to change them. The property market is on fire as people try and move to the sticks / get somewhere with space to live & work. Suspect the halcyon days of vastly priced rabbit hutches stacked in close proximity to the train station are behind us.
Changes to how people live and work only come along once in every x number of generations. Covid really could be the end of the mass commute into town era that's been going since the late 19th century.
And yet, bizarrely, the NYC property market has roared back to life - including the inner city/skyscrapers. London tends to follow NYC pretty closely
I wonder if we seeing generational churn rather than secular change. Oldsters are moving out of cities, but some younger people are keen to get back in.
See my earlier comment about the dawning, nascent realisation of the sheer costs of working. If rents/prices fall a bit in London, then it is feasible to live where you can walk/ cycle to work, and eat in your own home at a reasonable hour. Rather than pay thousands, and waste hours, travelling for the privilege of being too knackered to cook. Or do anything at weekends other than sleep and recover. So you end up paying for cleaning, simple repairs, takeaway, eating out etc., etc.
Yes, very true. The centre/inner centre of cities might actually become MORE appealing as the suburbs and commuter towns fall away. Why live in Guildford, a town designed for commuting, if you barely ever commute? Especially if, with all the money you save from not commuting, you can have a nice flat in Islington or Bayswater near to all the attractions of a World City? Some will move closer in to the West End, some will move away entirely to Herefordshire, Northumberland and Portugal for bigger gardens, or guaranteed sunshine
It's complex and hard to predict. There will be flows and contraflows
The changes wrought by Covid - and also AI, and digitisation, and remote working (which would have happened anyway, but are now much accelerated), are so complicated and confounding it is impossible to confidently predict what they will do to property.
There are many conflicting forces. It is certainly much too simplistic to simply say: Oh, everyone will want to move to a more rural house with a garden.
Suburbs are not the same thing as commuter towns either.
So whoever gave Scotland control over income tax, created a bigger mess by accidently making Income Tax unchangeable.
Oops, I bet Osbourne didn't think about that when he did it.
When Scot Nats pointed out the partial devolving of income tax powers was filled with nonsensical procedural issues that would cause problems in the future they were denigrated as being "too scared" to accept the powers rather than being lauded as clear sighted visionaries.
The idea that given all the expenses of Covid, the NHS and social care, let alone anything else, we can avoid raising taxes on working people, as @MaxPB seems to want, is for the birds.
Taxes will have to rise and all will have to pay. That's all there is to it. All these demands for special exclusions is just self-interested nonsense.
Should we be raising taxes only on working age people?
"1% on NI" is a 2% tax rise on the employed, and a 0% tax rise on pensioners.
1%, 2% or whatever on income tax is a tax paid by all.
I did put forward the typically centre moderate view of 2% on income tax on here last night (I think). So workers and pensioners both contribute.
2% hike in income tax isn't moderate. It's almost Corbynite.
I'm absolutely disgusted with the Tory leadership. I campaigned hard in 2019 and believed the no tax rise manifesto promise. Fiscal drag is the order of the day.
In fairness it was not contemplated in 2019 that the government would spend more than £400bn on helping the economy cope with an 18 month pandemic which has devastated tax revenues as well. Politicians are all too keen to argue that circumstances have changed when breaking a promise but I struggle to think of a government that has a better base for such an argument than this one.
Tories should stand for sound money, careful management of the country's accounts and limitations on the role of the state. In some circumstances that requires more spending and thus, responsibly, more taxes, than others. This is such a time. I am more worried about having stable and sustainable public finances than current tax rates.
Now is not the time to put taxes up on working people. I don't care about my personal situation, an extra £1.6k per year in tax between myself and my wife is unfortunate but it doesn't really make a big difference to us. There will be millions of middle income people across the country that will find that kind of income cut very, very difficult to take.
Using my dad as an example again, his net income in retirement is about £60.5k. A working age person with an equivalent gross has a net income of £55k. In what world does it make sense that my dad, with no responsibilities, no kids, no mortgage and no real costs pays £5.5k less in tax than a working age person who will have a mortgage/rent, kids, possible nursery fees, school expenses, commuting costs etc...
The whole system is needs rethinking. Why is anyone in the higher rate tax bracket getting 100% of the state pension? In what world does that make sense?!
With respect a net pensioner income of 60K plus is a million miles from most pensioners income
It is not the average, but it is not particularly unusual either, especially for those from the public sector final salary schemes.
Poor pensioners are still better off than poor workers. Rich pensioners are better off than rich workers. They are also richer than the workers are forecast to get to when they are retired.
Yet new taxes go on workers, most public (and private) sector workers get a pay freeze. The retired get no new taxes and 8% increase in state pension.
This will only make the generational conflict deeper and wider.
I'm not sure about your first paragraph; it is often mentioned on here, but I'm yet to see the evidence.
I'm on a 'gold-plated' public sector (Civil Service) final pension salary scheme. I was well-paid, retiring on a salary of c. £82K after 38 years service, a couple of years ago. But my pension, generous though it is, is nowhere near £60K - much nearer £20K. I'm not complaining at all, quite happy with it, but I do wonder whether non-public sector workers have an exaggerated view of the value of public sector pensions. You would have to be retiring on a salary well over £120k to get anywhere near £60k in pension; there's not many in that category.
I've just had a pension review, actually. I knew my public sector pension was better than my previous private sector pension, but I'm slightly shocked just how much better. Most private sector workers do not have final salary pensions. The IFA I talked to told me that the average private sector workers amassed a pension pot of around £50k by retirement. Whereas if you work as, say, a hospital admin worker - or some other not desperately well paid public sector job - for 40 years you can amass a pension with a trade in value in excess of three quarters of a million pounds.
Yep. I tried to calculate the benefit once and I reckoned add 40% on the salary and you're getting close. We see many public sector retirees who have lump sum and income entitlements (always index-linked and with death benefits) that you would need over £1m to purchase in the real world. But, hey, let's pay the public sector more.
PS pensions are good but generally the pay rates certainly used to be less than in the private sector. Also remember the monthly contributions were compulsory if you didn't opt out after the first couple of years or so. I'm very content with my arrangements but the idea that we have lived lives of idleness and luxury since the mid-70s is frankly rubbish. Like most generations we had our fair share of hardship. I well recall my first London flat - £15k - with strict borrowing rules and high interest rates. I lived hand to mouth for a good few years just to cope. I had bare floorboards for the first 3 years - not the varnished/sealed jobs of these days - I could not afford carpet. All of my furniture was begged, borrowed or second-hand. And I was by no means alone.
I'm reading Dominic Sandbrook's "Seasons in the Sun: the Battle for Britain 1974-1979" at the moment and my goodness does it sound shit.
I pity anyone who has to live through that.
The 70's were brilliant, pay rise every month , cheap beer , great music , will admit looking back the fashion was dodgy. We had the times of our lives and far superior to the shithole the country is just now..
I have just done a long tour of far north Scotland - Ullapool, Assynt, Cape Wrath, Caithness and the Orkneys. Much of it looked magnificent in generally fine weather,; tho I will confess John o Groats (where we mostly stayed) is a toilet (albeit with majestic views of the Orkneys)
Why do the Scots in that corner of Scotland INSIST on building houses in a dung-brown or birdshit-grey colour? Like they want them to be ugly. The far, flat north east of Scotland is never gonna be a beauty - unlike the Highlands and Islands - but it would be much improved if everyone just painted their houses white, like the crofts of old. Or even pink. Tartan?
Anything would be better than the colour of untreated sewage you get now. It is most perplexing
I've often thought the same. And it's not just the North East. You can tell when you cross the border with the sudden arrival of houses covered in tiny stones (must be a word for this?). I'm sure they resist the weather, but good grief they're ugly. OTOH, the heavy stone fronted villas and tenements of the older parts of Scottish towns - I'm thinking in particular of Glasgow and Edinburgh, but you find them everywhere - are heartbreakingly lovely.
The idea that given all the expenses of Covid, the NHS and social care, let alone anything else, we can avoid raising taxes on working people, as @MaxPB seems to want, is for the birds.
Taxes will have to rise and all will have to pay. That's all there is to it. All these demands for special exclusions is just self-interested nonsense.
Should we be raising taxes only on working age people?
"1% on NI" is a 2% tax rise on the employed, and a 0% tax rise on pensioners.
1%, 2% or whatever on income tax is a tax paid by all.
I did put forward the typically centre moderate view of 2% on income tax on here last night (I think). So workers and pensioners both contribute.
2% hike in income tax isn't moderate. It's almost Corbynite.
I'm absolutely disgusted with the Tory leadership. I campaigned hard in 2019 and believed the no tax rise manifesto promise. Fiscal drag is the order of the day.
In fairness it was not contemplated in 2019 that the government would spend more than £400bn on helping the economy cope with an 18 month pandemic which has devastated tax revenues as well. Politicians are all too keen to argue that circumstances have changed when breaking a promise but I struggle to think of a government that has a better base for such an argument than this one.
Tories should stand for sound money, careful management of the country's accounts and limitations on the role of the state. In some circumstances that requires more spending and thus, responsibly, more taxes, than others. This is such a time. I am more worried about having stable and sustainable public finances than current tax rates.
Now is not the time to put taxes up on working people. I don't care about my personal situation, an extra £1.6k per year in tax between myself and my wife is unfortunate but it doesn't really make a big difference to us. There will be millions of middle income people across the country that will find that kind of income cut very, very difficult to take.
Using my dad as an example again, his net income in retirement is about £60.5k. A working age person with an equivalent gross has a net income of £55k. In what world does it make sense that my dad, with no responsibilities, no kids, no mortgage and no real costs pays £5.5k less in tax than a working age person who will have a mortgage/rent, kids, possible nursery fees, school expenses, commuting costs etc...
The whole system is needs rethinking. Why is anyone in the higher rate tax bracket getting 100% of the state pension? In what world does that make sense?!
With respect a net pensioner income of 60K plus is a million miles from most pensioners income
It is not the average, but it is not particularly unusual either, especially for those from the public sector final salary schemes.
Poor pensioners are still better off than poor workers. Rich pensioners are better off than rich workers. They are also richer than the workers are forecast to get to when they are retired.
Yet new taxes go on workers, most public (and private) sector workers get a pay freeze. The retired get no new taxes and 8% increase in state pension.
This will only make the generational conflict deeper and wider.
I'm not sure about your first paragraph; it is often mentioned on here, but I'm yet to see the evidence.
I'm on a 'gold-plated' public sector (Civil Service) final pension salary scheme. I was well-paid, retiring on a salary of c. £82K after 38 years service, a couple of years ago. But my pension, generous though it is, is nowhere near £60K - much nearer £20K. I'm not complaining at all, quite happy with it, but I do wonder whether non-public sector workers have an exaggerated view of the value of public sector pensions. You would have to be retiring on a salary well over £120k to get anywhere near £60k in pension; there's not many in that category.
I've just had a pension review, actually. I knew my public sector pension was better than my previous private sector pension, but I'm slightly shocked just how much better. Most private sector workers do not have final salary pensions. The IFA I talked to told me that the average private sector workers amassed a pension pot of around £50k by retirement. Whereas if you work as, say, a hospital admin worker - or some other not desperately well paid public sector job - for 40 years you can amass a pension with a trade in value in excess of three quarters of a million pounds.
Yep. I tried to calculate the benefit once and I reckoned add 40% on the salary and you're getting close. We see many public sector retirees who have lump sum and income entitlements (always index-linked and with death benefits) that you would need over £1m to purchase in the real world. But, hey, let's pay the public sector more.
PS pensions are good but generally the pay rates certainly used to be less than in the private sector. Also remember the monthly contributions were compulsory if you didn't opt out after the first couple of years or so. I'm very content with my arrangements but the idea that we have lived lives of idleness and luxury since the mid-70s is frankly rubbish. Like most generations we had our fair share of hardship. I well recall my first London flat - £15k - with strict borrowing rules and high interest rates. I lived hand to mouth for a good few years just to cope. I had bare floorboards for the first 3 years - not the varnished/sealed jobs of these days - I could not afford carpet. All of my furniture was begged, borrowed or second-hand. And I was by no means alone.
I'm reading Dominic Sandbrook's "Seasons in the Sun: the Battle for Britain 1974-1979" at the moment and my goodness does it sound shit.
I pity anyone who has to live through that.
The 70's were brilliant, pay rise every month , cheap beer , great music , will admit looking back the fashion was dodgy. We had the times of our lives and far superior to the shithole the country is just now..
I have just done a long tour of far north Scotland - Ullapool, Assynt, Cape Wrath, Caithness and the Orkneys. Much of it looked magnificent in generally fine weather,; tho I will confess John o Groats (where we mostly stayed) is a toilet (albeit with majestic views of the Orkneys)
Why do the Scots in that corner of Scotland INSIST on building houses in a dung-brown or birdshit-grey colour? Like they want them to be ugly. The far, flat north east of Scotland is never gonna be a beauty - unlike the Highlands and Islands - but it would be much improved if everyone just painted their houses white, like the crofts of old. Or even pink. Tartan?
Anything would be better than the colour of untreated sewage you get now. It is most perplexing
I've often thought the same. And it's not just the North East. You can tell when you cross the border with the sudden arrival of houses covered in tiny stones (must be a word for this?). I'm sure they resist the weather, but good grief they're ugly. OTOH, the heavy stone fronted villas and tenements of the older parts of Scottish towns - I'm thinking in particular of Glasgow and Edinburgh, but you find them everywhere - are heartbreakingly lovely.
Ireland had a similar issue with ugly colour crofts everywhere. They had a national campaign to paint them all bright colours and now it is a national quirk.
Yes, I've noticed that! - without realising why
Years ago when you went to Ireland the rural parts could be lovely, yet partly ruined by hideous dung-brown or grotty grey houses. Pointlessly depressing
Now when you go there all the village centres and even the rural houses are much jollier, with bright vivid colours or serene whitewash. It helps enormously
So whoever gave Scotland control over income tax, created a bigger mess by accidently making Income Tax unchangeable.
Oops, I bet Osbourne didn't think about that when he did it.
When Scot Nats pointed out the partial devolving of income tax powers was filled with nonsensical procedural issues that would cause problems in the future they were denigrated as being "too scared" to accept the powers rather than being lauded as clear sighted visionaries.
The idea that given all the expenses of Covid, the NHS and social care, let alone anything else, we can avoid raising taxes on working people, as @MaxPB seems to want, is for the birds.
Taxes will have to rise and all will have to pay. That's all there is to it. All these demands for special exclusions is just self-interested nonsense.
Should we be raising taxes only on working age people?
"1% on NI" is a 2% tax rise on the employed, and a 0% tax rise on pensioners.
1%, 2% or whatever on income tax is a tax paid by all.
I did put forward the typically centre moderate view of 2% on income tax on here last night (I think). So workers and pensioners both contribute.
2% hike in income tax isn't moderate. It's almost Corbynite.
I'm absolutely disgusted with the Tory leadership. I campaigned hard in 2019 and believed the no tax rise manifesto promise. Fiscal drag is the order of the day.
In fairness it was not contemplated in 2019 that the government would spend more than £400bn on helping the economy cope with an 18 month pandemic which has devastated tax revenues as well. Politicians are all too keen to argue that circumstances have changed when breaking a promise but I struggle to think of a government that has a better base for such an argument than this one.
Tories should stand for sound money, careful management of the country's accounts and limitations on the role of the state. In some circumstances that requires more spending and thus, responsibly, more taxes, than others. This is such a time. I am more worried about having stable and sustainable public finances than current tax rates.
Now is not the time to put taxes up on working people. I don't care about my personal situation, an extra £1.6k per year in tax between myself and my wife is unfortunate but it doesn't really make a big difference to us. There will be millions of middle income people across the country that will find that kind of income cut very, very difficult to take.
Using my dad as an example again, his net income in retirement is about £60.5k. A working age person with an equivalent gross has a net income of £55k. In what world does it make sense that my dad, with no responsibilities, no kids, no mortgage and no real costs pays £5.5k less in tax than a working age person who will have a mortgage/rent, kids, possible nursery fees, school expenses, commuting costs etc...
The whole system is needs rethinking. Why is anyone in the higher rate tax bracket getting 100% of the state pension? In what world does that make sense?!
With respect a net pensioner income of 60K plus is a million miles from most pensioners income
It is not the average, but it is not particularly unusual either, especially for those from the public sector final salary schemes.
Poor pensioners are still better off than poor workers. Rich pensioners are better off than rich workers. They are also richer than the workers are forecast to get to when they are retired.
Yet new taxes go on workers, most public (and private) sector workers get a pay freeze. The retired get no new taxes and 8% increase in state pension.
This will only make the generational conflict deeper and wider.
I'm not sure about your first paragraph; it is often mentioned on here, but I'm yet to see the evidence.
I'm on a 'gold-plated' public sector (Civil Service) final pension salary scheme. I was well-paid, retiring on a salary of c. £82K after 38 years service, a couple of years ago. But my pension, generous though it is, is nowhere near £60K - much nearer £20K. I'm not complaining at all, quite happy with it, but I do wonder whether non-public sector workers have an exaggerated view of the value of public sector pensions. You would have to be retiring on a salary well over £120k to get anywhere near £60k in pension; there's not many in that category.
I've just had a pension review, actually. I knew my public sector pension was better than my previous private sector pension, but I'm slightly shocked just how much better. Most private sector workers do not have final salary pensions. The IFA I talked to told me that the average private sector workers amassed a pension pot of around £50k by retirement. Whereas if you work as, say, a hospital admin worker - or some other not desperately well paid public sector job - for 40 years you can amass a pension with a trade in value in excess of three quarters of a million pounds.
Yep. I tried to calculate the benefit once and I reckoned add 40% on the salary and you're getting close. We see many public sector retirees who have lump sum and income entitlements (always index-linked and with death benefits) that you would need over £1m to purchase in the real world. But, hey, let's pay the public sector more.
PS pensions are good but generally the pay rates certainly used to be less than in the private sector. Also remember the monthly contributions were compulsory if you didn't opt out after the first couple of years or so. I'm very content with my arrangements but the idea that we have lived lives of idleness and luxury since the mid-70s is frankly rubbish. Like most generations we had our fair share of hardship. I well recall my first London flat - £15k - with strict borrowing rules and high interest rates. I lived hand to mouth for a good few years just to cope. I had bare floorboards for the first 3 years - not the varnished/sealed jobs of these days - I could not afford carpet. All of my furniture was begged, borrowed or second-hand. And I was by no means alone.
I'm reading Dominic Sandbrook's "Seasons in the Sun: the Battle for Britain 1974-1979" at the moment and my goodness does it sound shit.
I pity anyone who has to live through that.
The 70's were brilliant, pay rise every month , cheap beer , great music , will admit looking back the fashion was dodgy. We had the times of our lives and far superior to the shithole the country is just now..
I have just done a long tour of far north Scotland - Ullapool, Assynt, Cape Wrath, Caithness and the Orkneys. Much of it looked magnificent in generally fine weather,; tho I will confess John o Groats (where we mostly stayed) is a toilet (albeit with majestic views of the Orkneys)
Why do the Scots in that corner of Scotland INSIST on building houses in a dung-brown or birdshit-grey colour? Like they want them to be ugly. The far, flat north east of Scotland is never gonna be a beauty - unlike the Highlands and Islands - but it would be much improved if everyone just painted their houses white, like the crofts of old. Or even pink. Tartan?
Anything would be better than the colour of untreated sewage you get now. It is most perplexing
They really don't like people calling Orkney "the Orkneys" or "the Orkney Isles", or calling Shetland "the Shetlands" or "the Shetland Isles". So much so that some Orcadians and Shetlanders will even (wrongly) call the Faroes "Faroe".
Agreed about the paint. Stornoway, Kirkwall, and Lerwick would all look much nicer if the houses and shops in the centre were painted in pastel colours. They could use that street on the waterside in Portree as a model. They wouldn't have to go full-on Portmeirion to lighten the atmosphere.
I know Covid's expensive at the moment and all, but could long term endemicity actually end up improving the nation's finances a bit ?
Its certainly going to change them. The property market is on fire as people try and move to the sticks / get somewhere with space to live & work. Suspect the halcyon days of vastly priced rabbit hutches stacked in close proximity to the train station are behind us.
Changes to how people live and work only come along once in every x number of generations. Covid really could be the end of the mass commute into town era that's been going since the late 19th century.
And yet, bizarrely, the NYC property market has roared back to life - including the inner city/skyscrapers. London tends to follow NYC pretty closely
I wonder if we seeing generational churn rather than secular change. Oldsters are moving out of cities, but some younger people are keen to get back in.
See my earlier comment about the dawning, nascent realisation of the sheer costs of working. If rents/prices fall a bit in London, then it is feasible to live where you can walk/ cycle to work, and eat in your own home at a reasonable hour. Rather than pay thousands, and waste hours, travelling for the privilege of being too knackered to cook. Or do anything at weekends other than sleep and recover. So you end up paying for cleaning, simple repairs, takeaway, eating out etc., etc.
Yes, very true. The centre/inner centre of cities might actually become MORE appealing as the suburbs and commuter towns fall away. Why live in Guildford, a town designed for commuting, if you barely ever commute? Especially if, with all the money you save from not commuting, you can have a nice flat in Islington or Bayswater near to all the attractions of a World City? Some will move closer in to the West End, some will move away entirely to Herefordshire, Northumberland and Portugal for bigger gardens, or guaranteed sunshine
It's complex and hard to predict. There will be flows and contraflows
The changes wrought by Covid - and also AI, and digitisation, and remote working (which would have happened anyway, but are now much accelerated), are so complicated and confounding it is impossible to confidently predict what they will do to property.
There are many conflicting forces. It is certainly much too simplistic to simply say: Oh, everyone will want to move to a more rural house with a garden.
Suburbs are not the same thing as commuter towns either.
Spot on, staying with examples in that part of the world, I think it is the likes of New Malden or Morden that are most at risk and overpriced from wfh. Guildford or Richmond still would have a raison d'etre with enough going on locally and a very different vibe to living in central London.
Basically people will want to move to Con/LD marginals around the M25!
I know Covid's expensive at the moment and all, but could long term endemicity actually end up improving the nation's finances a bit ?
Its certainly going to change them. The property market is on fire as people try and move to the sticks / get somewhere with space to live & work. Suspect the halcyon days of vastly priced rabbit hutches stacked in close proximity to the train station are behind us.
Changes to how people live and work only come along once in every x number of generations. Covid really could be the end of the mass commute into town era that's been going since the late 19th century.
And yet, bizarrely, the NYC property market has roared back to life - including the inner city/skyscrapers. London tends to follow NYC pretty closely
I wonder if we seeing generational churn rather than secular change. Oldsters are moving out of cities, but some younger people are keen to get back in.
See my earlier comment about the dawning, nascent realisation of the sheer costs of working. If rents/prices fall a bit in London, then it is feasible to live where you can walk/ cycle to work, and eat in your own home at a reasonable hour. Rather than pay thousands, and waste hours, travelling for the privilege of being too knackered to cook. Or do anything at weekends other than sleep and recover. So you end up paying for cleaning, simple repairs, takeaway, eating out etc., etc.
Yes, very true. The centre/inner centre of cities might actually become MORE appealing as the suburbs and commuter towns fall away. Why live in Guildford, a town designed for commuting, if you barely ever commute? Especially if, with all the money you save from not commuting, you can have a nice flat in Islington or Bayswater near to all the attractions of a World City? Some will move closer in to the West End, some will move away entirely to Herefordshire, Northumberland and Portugal for bigger gardens, or guaranteed sunshine
It's complex and hard to predict. There will be flows and contraflows
My girlfriend has a flat just near the Greenwich Foot Tunnel (you can see me running through it on my insta, to the sound of my one celebrity friend, Andy C’s ‘Valley of the Shadows’!) - the price has stagnated/dropped but I feel you’re never go wrong being in Zone1, 2 mins from the Thames even if wfh took over
The idea that given all the expenses of Covid, the NHS and social care, let alone anything else, we can avoid raising taxes on working people, as @MaxPB seems to want, is for the birds.
Taxes will have to rise and all will have to pay. That's all there is to it. All these demands for special exclusions is just self-interested nonsense.
Should we be raising taxes only on working age people?
"1% on NI" is a 2% tax rise on the employed, and a 0% tax rise on pensioners.
1%, 2% or whatever on income tax is a tax paid by all.
I did put forward the typically centre moderate view of 2% on income tax on here last night (I think). So workers and pensioners both contribute.
2% hike in income tax isn't moderate. It's almost Corbynite.
I'm absolutely disgusted with the Tory leadership. I campaigned hard in 2019 and believed the no tax rise manifesto promise. Fiscal drag is the order of the day.
In fairness it was not contemplated in 2019 that the government would spend more than £400bn on helping the economy cope with an 18 month pandemic which has devastated tax revenues as well. Politicians are all too keen to argue that circumstances have changed when breaking a promise but I struggle to think of a government that has a better base for such an argument than this one.
Tories should stand for sound money, careful management of the country's accounts and limitations on the role of the state. In some circumstances that requires more spending and thus, responsibly, more taxes, than others. This is such a time. I am more worried about having stable and sustainable public finances than current tax rates.
Now is not the time to put taxes up on working people. I don't care about my personal situation, an extra £1.6k per year in tax between myself and my wife is unfortunate but it doesn't really make a big difference to us. There will be millions of middle income people across the country that will find that kind of income cut very, very difficult to take.
Using my dad as an example again, his net income in retirement is about £60.5k. A working age person with an equivalent gross has a net income of £55k. In what world does it make sense that my dad, with no responsibilities, no kids, no mortgage and no real costs pays £5.5k less in tax than a working age person who will have a mortgage/rent, kids, possible nursery fees, school expenses, commuting costs etc...
The whole system is needs rethinking. Why is anyone in the higher rate tax bracket getting 100% of the state pension? In what world does that make sense?!
With respect a net pensioner income of 60K plus is a million miles from most pensioners income
It is not the average, but it is not particularly unusual either, especially for those from the public sector final salary schemes.
Poor pensioners are still better off than poor workers. Rich pensioners are better off than rich workers. They are also richer than the workers are forecast to get to when they are retired.
Yet new taxes go on workers, most public (and private) sector workers get a pay freeze. The retired get no new taxes and 8% increase in state pension.
This will only make the generational conflict deeper and wider.
I'm not sure about your first paragraph; it is often mentioned on here, but I'm yet to see the evidence.
I'm on a 'gold-plated' public sector (Civil Service) final pension salary scheme. I was well-paid, retiring on a salary of c. £82K after 38 years service, a couple of years ago. But my pension, generous though it is, is nowhere near £60K - much nearer £20K. I'm not complaining at all, quite happy with it, but I do wonder whether non-public sector workers have an exaggerated view of the value of public sector pensions. You would have to be retiring on a salary well over £120k to get anywhere near £60k in pension; there's not many in that category.
I've just had a pension review, actually. I knew my public sector pension was better than my previous private sector pension, but I'm slightly shocked just how much better. Most private sector workers do not have final salary pensions. The IFA I talked to told me that the average private sector workers amassed a pension pot of around £50k by retirement. Whereas if you work as, say, a hospital admin worker - or some other not desperately well paid public sector job - for 40 years you can amass a pension with a trade in value in excess of three quarters of a million pounds.
Yep. I tried to calculate the benefit once and I reckoned add 40% on the salary and you're getting close. We see many public sector retirees who have lump sum and income entitlements (always index-linked and with death benefits) that you would need over £1m to purchase in the real world. But, hey, let's pay the public sector more.
PS pensions are good but generally the pay rates certainly used to be less than in the private sector. Also remember the monthly contributions were compulsory if you didn't opt out after the first couple of years or so. I'm very content with my arrangements but the idea that we have lived lives of idleness and luxury since the mid-70s is frankly rubbish. Like most generations we had our fair share of hardship. I well recall my first London flat - £15k - with strict borrowing rules and high interest rates. I lived hand to mouth for a good few years just to cope. I had bare floorboards for the first 3 years - not the varnished/sealed jobs of these days - I could not afford carpet. All of my furniture was begged, borrowed or second-hand. And I was by no means alone.
I'm reading Dominic Sandbrook's "Seasons in the Sun: the Battle for Britain 1974-1979" at the moment and my goodness does it sound shit.
I pity anyone who has to live through that.
The 70's were brilliant, pay rise every month , cheap beer , great music , will admit looking back the fashion was dodgy. We had the times of our lives and far superior to the shithole the country is just now..
I have just done a long tour of far north Scotland - Ullapool, Assynt, Cape Wrath, Caithness and the Orkneys. Much of it looked magnificent in generally fine weather,; tho I will confess John o Groats (where we mostly stayed) is a toilet (albeit with majestic views of the Orkneys)
Why do the Scots in that corner of Scotland INSIST on building houses in a dung-brown or birdshit-grey colour? Like they want them to be ugly. The far, flat north east of Scotland is never gonna be a beauty - unlike the Highlands and Islands - but it would be much improved if everyone just painted their houses white, like the crofts of old. Or even pink. Tartan?
Anything would be better than the colour of untreated sewage you get now. It is most perplexing
I've often thought the same. And it's not just the North East. You can tell when you cross the border with the sudden arrival of houses covered in tiny stones (must be a word for this?). I'm sure they resist the weather, but good grief they're ugly. OTOH, the heavy stone fronted villas and tenements of the older parts of Scottish towns - I'm thinking in particular of Glasgow and Edinburgh, but you find them everywhere - are heartbreakingly lovely.
Ireland had a similar issue with ugly colour crofts everywhere. They had a national campaign to paint them all bright colours and now it is a national quirk.
Yes, I've noticed that! - without realising why
Years ago when you went to Ireland the rural parts could be lovely, yet partly ruined by hideous dung-brown or grotty grey houses. Pointlessly depressing
Now when you go there all the village centres and even the rural houses are much jollier, with bright vivid colours or serene whitewash. It helps enormously
Signs of plateauing which is good news. Indicates we should expect English cases to go up now for the next 3 weeks and then hopefully start to go down. I hope it is the case that it is running out of people to infect without some level of immunity.
Can only keep fingers crossed
One thing about the Scottish numbers, testing in Scotland is up massively over even the alpha peak. That's not the case elsewhere in the UK.
The idea that given all the expenses of Covid, the NHS and social care, let alone anything else, we can avoid raising taxes on working people, as @MaxPB seems to want, is for the birds.
Taxes will have to rise and all will have to pay. That's all there is to it. All these demands for special exclusions is just self-interested nonsense.
Should we be raising taxes only on working age people?
"1% on NI" is a 2% tax rise on the employed, and a 0% tax rise on pensioners.
1%, 2% or whatever on income tax is a tax paid by all.
I did put forward the typically centre moderate view of 2% on income tax on here last night (I think). So workers and pensioners both contribute.
2% hike in income tax isn't moderate. It's almost Corbynite.
I'm absolutely disgusted with the Tory leadership. I campaigned hard in 2019 and believed the no tax rise manifesto promise. Fiscal drag is the order of the day.
In fairness it was not contemplated in 2019 that the government would spend more than £400bn on helping the economy cope with an 18 month pandemic which has devastated tax revenues as well. Politicians are all too keen to argue that circumstances have changed when breaking a promise but I struggle to think of a government that has a better base for such an argument than this one.
Tories should stand for sound money, careful management of the country's accounts and limitations on the role of the state. In some circumstances that requires more spending and thus, responsibly, more taxes, than others. This is such a time. I am more worried about having stable and sustainable public finances than current tax rates.
Now is not the time to put taxes up on working people. I don't care about my personal situation, an extra £1.6k per year in tax between myself and my wife is unfortunate but it doesn't really make a big difference to us. There will be millions of middle income people across the country that will find that kind of income cut very, very difficult to take.
Using my dad as an example again, his net income in retirement is about £60.5k. A working age person with an equivalent gross has a net income of £55k. In what world does it make sense that my dad, with no responsibilities, no kids, no mortgage and no real costs pays £5.5k less in tax than a working age person who will have a mortgage/rent, kids, possible nursery fees, school expenses, commuting costs etc...
The whole system is needs rethinking. Why is anyone in the higher rate tax bracket getting 100% of the state pension? In what world does that make sense?!
With respect a net pensioner income of 60K plus is a million miles from most pensioners income
It is not the average, but it is not particularly unusual either, especially for those from the public sector final salary schemes.
Poor pensioners are still better off than poor workers. Rich pensioners are better off than rich workers. They are also richer than the workers are forecast to get to when they are retired.
Yet new taxes go on workers, most public (and private) sector workers get a pay freeze. The retired get no new taxes and 8% increase in state pension.
This will only make the generational conflict deeper and wider.
I'm not sure about your first paragraph; it is often mentioned on here, but I'm yet to see the evidence.
I'm on a 'gold-plated' public sector (Civil Service) final pension salary scheme. I was well-paid, retiring on a salary of c. £82K after 38 years service, a couple of years ago. But my pension, generous though it is, is nowhere near £60K - much nearer £20K. I'm not complaining at all, quite happy with it, but I do wonder whether non-public sector workers have an exaggerated view of the value of public sector pensions. You would have to be retiring on a salary well over £120k to get anywhere near £60k in pension; there's not many in that category.
I've just had a pension review, actually. I knew my public sector pension was better than my previous private sector pension, but I'm slightly shocked just how much better. Most private sector workers do not have final salary pensions. The IFA I talked to told me that the average private sector workers amassed a pension pot of around £50k by retirement. Whereas if you work as, say, a hospital admin worker - or some other not desperately well paid public sector job - for 40 years you can amass a pension with a trade in value in excess of three quarters of a million pounds.
Yep. I tried to calculate the benefit once and I reckoned add 40% on the salary and you're getting close. We see many public sector retirees who have lump sum and income entitlements (always index-linked and with death benefits) that you would need over £1m to purchase in the real world. But, hey, let's pay the public sector more.
PS pensions are good but generally the pay rates certainly used to be less than in the private sector. Also remember the monthly contributions were compulsory if you didn't opt out after the first couple of years or so. I'm very content with my arrangements but the idea that we have lived lives of idleness and luxury since the mid-70s is frankly rubbish. Like most generations we had our fair share of hardship. I well recall my first London flat - £15k - with strict borrowing rules and high interest rates. I lived hand to mouth for a good few years just to cope. I had bare floorboards for the first 3 years - not the varnished/sealed jobs of these days - I could not afford carpet. All of my furniture was begged, borrowed or second-hand. And I was by no means alone.
I'm reading Dominic Sandbrook's "Seasons in the Sun: the Battle for Britain 1974-1979" at the moment and my goodness does it sound shit.
I pity anyone who has to live through that.
The 70's were brilliant, pay rise every month , cheap beer , great music , will admit looking back the fashion was dodgy. We had the times of our lives and far superior to the shithole the country is just now..
I have just done a long tour of far north Scotland - Ullapool, Assynt, Cape Wrath, Caithness and the Orkneys. Much of it looked magnificent in generally fine weather,; tho I will confess John o Groats (where we mostly stayed) is a toilet (albeit with majestic views of the Orkneys)
Why do the Scots in that corner of Scotland INSIST on building houses in a dung-brown or birdshit-grey colour? Like they want them to be ugly. The far, flat north east of Scotland is never gonna be a beauty - unlike the Highlands and Islands - but it would be much improved if everyone just painted their houses white, like the crofts of old. Or even pink. Tartan?
Anything would be better than the colour of untreated sewage you get now. It is most perplexing
I've often thought the same. And it's not just the North East. You can tell when you cross the border with the sudden arrival of houses covered in tiny stones (must be a word for this?). I'm sure they resist the weather, but good grief they're ugly. OTOH, the heavy stone fronted villas and tenements of the older parts of Scottish towns - I'm thinking in particular of Glasgow and Edinburgh, but you find them everywhere - are heartbreakingly lovely.
Ireland had a similar issue with ugly colour crofts everywhere. They had a national campaign to paint them all bright colours and now it is a national quirk.
Yes, I've noticed that! - without realising why
Years ago when you went to Ireland the rural parts could be lovely, yet partly ruined by hideous dung-brown or grotty grey houses. Pointlessly depressing
Now when you go there all the village centres and even the rural houses are much jollier, with bright vivid colours or serene whitewash. It helps enormously
The idea that given all the expenses of Covid, the NHS and social care, let alone anything else, we can avoid raising taxes on working people, as @MaxPB seems to want, is for the birds.
Taxes will have to rise and all will have to pay. That's all there is to it. All these demands for special exclusions is just self-interested nonsense.
Should we be raising taxes only on working age people?
"1% on NI" is a 2% tax rise on the employed, and a 0% tax rise on pensioners.
1%, 2% or whatever on income tax is a tax paid by all.
I did put forward the typically centre moderate view of 2% on income tax on here last night (I think). So workers and pensioners both contribute.
2% hike in income tax isn't moderate. It's almost Corbynite.
I'm absolutely disgusted with the Tory leadership. I campaigned hard in 2019 and believed the no tax rise manifesto promise. Fiscal drag is the order of the day.
In fairness it was not contemplated in 2019 that the government would spend more than £400bn on helping the economy cope with an 18 month pandemic which has devastated tax revenues as well. Politicians are all too keen to argue that circumstances have changed when breaking a promise but I struggle to think of a government that has a better base for such an argument than this one.
Tories should stand for sound money, careful management of the country's accounts and limitations on the role of the state. In some circumstances that requires more spending and thus, responsibly, more taxes, than others. This is such a time. I am more worried about having stable and sustainable public finances than current tax rates.
Now is not the time to put taxes up on working people. I don't care about my personal situation, an extra £1.6k per year in tax between myself and my wife is unfortunate but it doesn't really make a big difference to us. There will be millions of middle income people across the country that will find that kind of income cut very, very difficult to take.
Using my dad as an example again, his net income in retirement is about £60.5k. A working age person with an equivalent gross has a net income of £55k. In what world does it make sense that my dad, with no responsibilities, no kids, no mortgage and no real costs pays £5.5k less in tax than a working age person who will have a mortgage/rent, kids, possible nursery fees, school expenses, commuting costs etc...
The whole system is needs rethinking. Why is anyone in the higher rate tax bracket getting 100% of the state pension? In what world does that make sense?!
With respect a net pensioner income of 60K plus is a million miles from most pensioners income
It is not the average, but it is not particularly unusual either, especially for those from the public sector final salary schemes.
Poor pensioners are still better off than poor workers. Rich pensioners are better off than rich workers. They are also richer than the workers are forecast to get to when they are retired.
Yet new taxes go on workers, most public (and private) sector workers get a pay freeze. The retired get no new taxes and 8% increase in state pension.
This will only make the generational conflict deeper and wider.
I'm not sure about your first paragraph; it is often mentioned on here, but I'm yet to see the evidence.
I'm on a 'gold-plated' public sector (Civil Service) final pension salary scheme. I was well-paid, retiring on a salary of c. £82K after 38 years service, a couple of years ago. But my pension, generous though it is, is nowhere near £60K - much nearer £20K. I'm not complaining at all, quite happy with it, but I do wonder whether non-public sector workers have an exaggerated view of the value of public sector pensions. You would have to be retiring on a salary well over £120k to get anywhere near £60k in pension; there's not many in that category.
I've just had a pension review, actually. I knew my public sector pension was better than my previous private sector pension, but I'm slightly shocked just how much better. Most private sector workers do not have final salary pensions. The IFA I talked to told me that the average private sector workers amassed a pension pot of around £50k by retirement. Whereas if you work as, say, a hospital admin worker - or some other not desperately well paid public sector job - for 40 years you can amass a pension with a trade in value in excess of three quarters of a million pounds.
Yep. I tried to calculate the benefit once and I reckoned add 40% on the salary and you're getting close. We see many public sector retirees who have lump sum and income entitlements (always index-linked and with death benefits) that you would need over £1m to purchase in the real world. But, hey, let's pay the public sector more.
PS pensions are good but generally the pay rates certainly used to be less than in the private sector. Also remember the monthly contributions were compulsory if you didn't opt out after the first couple of years or so. I'm very content with my arrangements but the idea that we have lived lives of idleness and luxury since the mid-70s is frankly rubbish. Like most generations we had our fair share of hardship. I well recall my first London flat - £15k - with strict borrowing rules and high interest rates. I lived hand to mouth for a good few years just to cope. I had bare floorboards for the first 3 years - not the varnished/sealed jobs of these days - I could not afford carpet. All of my furniture was begged, borrowed or second-hand. And I was by no means alone.
I'm reading Dominic Sandbrook's "Seasons in the Sun: the Battle for Britain 1974-1979" at the moment and my goodness does it sound shit.
I pity anyone who has to live through that.
The 70's were brilliant, pay rise every month , cheap beer , great music , will admit looking back the fashion was dodgy. We had the times of our lives and far superior to the shithole the country is just now..
I have just done a long tour of far north Scotland - Ullapool, Assynt, Cape Wrath, Caithness and the Orkneys. Much of it looked magnificent in generally fine weather,; tho I will confess John o Groats (where we mostly stayed) is a toilet (albeit with majestic views of the Orkneys)
Why do the Scots in that corner of Scotland INSIST on building houses in a dung-brown or birdshit-grey colour? Like they want them to be ugly. The far, flat north east of Scotland is never gonna be a beauty - unlike the Highlands and Islands - but it would be much improved if everyone just painted their houses white, like the crofts of old. Or even pink. Tartan?
Anything would be better than the colour of untreated sewage you get now. It is most perplexing
Probably don't want to have to paint it twice a year. Could have done with more posts on your trip by the way. PS: I see others now, I obviously missed them.
I was actually having too nice a time to comment on the trip. It was brilliant fun. Food was great too. I had one of the nicest scones of my life overlooking the Kyle of Tongue. And a fantastic tarka dahl in Strathness Hotel in Inverness. And superb haddock wraps and seafood soup at the Seafood Shack in Ullapool
The big culinary letdown was lunch in Stromness in the Orkneys, a town which seems to pride itself on refusing to serve stuff you want and stuff they advertise. So the bistro eagerly told us they would not serve alcohol before 7pm and NOR WILL ANYONE ELSE HAHAHA and then the cafe next door "famous for its crab rolls" said they had no crab and weren't expecting any.
My daughter and I ended up eating two cheddar baps on a bench by the harbour while I downed a bottle of screwtop white wine from the Co-op like a hobo. Then we went to Skara Brae
Glad you enjoyed it and took on a bit of Scottish jakieness to boot. Your daughter would have probably ended up murdering you after two days in Millport.
Yes, John O Groats turned out to be a superb choice, because there's so much to see all around it, and it has a real sense of wildness. So thankyou for that!
A suburban island near Glasgow would have been dull if not disastrous.
Even John o Groats, despite being a toilet, has a kind of perverse charm. We had a brilliant apartment looking straight out to the Orkney, right on the harbour, which was a big bonus, and the weird cafes and shops are so quirky or kitsch they have a kind of fascination. There is a gift shop with an entire wing dedicated to insane Christmas knick-knacks, like hologram santas in crystal boxes continuously singing Jingle Bells. WTF
Also you can get tartan clocks. Clocks made from actual tartan. Genius
So whoever gave Scotland control over income tax, created a bigger mess by accidently making Income Tax unchangeable.
Oops, I bet Osbourne didn't think about that when he did it.
When Scot Nats pointed out the partial devolving of income tax powers was filled with nonsensical procedural issues that would cause problems in the future they were denigrated as being "too scared" to accept the powers rather than being lauded as clear sighted visionaries.
The problem is the Barnett formula.
If the Barnett formula was abolished and the Scots simply kept rather taxes they raised, without HMRC getting involved, that would be a much better solution.
This idea that now is not the time to raise taxes on those who work is odd. For the last 18 months or so working people have been supported by furlough. Others who worked from home in secure jobs have built up savings.
Now the bills have to be paid. Not just for Covid but for social care and everything else.
So everyone will have to pay: workers - and I include those past pensionable age who are still working - and those with savings and assets. And all generations will have to pay because (a) all generations benefited from the support for the economy; (b) all benefit one way or another from public services; and (c) all benefit from social care - either now (directly) or by not having to pay for parents or by not losing a possible inheritance or directly in the future.
It won't be nice. But no group should be immune from paying the bills. Far too much special pleading going on.
NI is an odd choice because it is in effect a tax but only on some. So it should be extended to all who are working if it is going to be raised.
What a load of rubbish. The economy was shut down to primarily benefit older people who are most at risk and to protect the NHS which is another service that is used mostly by older people.
Businesses like your daughter's was sacrificed to protect older people and now it's time for older people to bear the cost of that shutdown. A stat posted here showed that 16% of pensioners have earnings in the higher rate tax bracket, that's a huge number of people to target for more tax before we even think about putting up taxes on working age people.
The country is currently being fleeced by the generation above who have decided they want an easy life and the best way to get that is to claim a larger share of the economic pie for themselves and if they have to impoverish working age people then that's a bonus.
You ducked out of paying for your parents care, you're ducking out of paying for your own care, you've piled on cost after cost on young people, you bought all the property then accused young people of being incapable of saving all while charging us ridiculous rents on crap flats that aren't fit for animals to live in.
Your generation has a lot to answer for, you've ruined the legacy of what your parents left behind and now you're trying to take away any chance my generation has of leaving behind a better world for our kids. You destroyed the climate, made the rich much richer, the poor much poorer and now won't pay for the bill that was accumulated to protect your generation from dying. It wasn't 20-50 year olds dying of this.
So whoever gave Scotland control over income tax, created a bigger mess by accidently making Income Tax unchangeable.
Oops, I bet Osbourne didn't think about that when he did it.
When Scot Nats pointed out the partial devolving of income tax powers was filled with nonsensical procedural issues that would cause problems in the future they were denigrated as being "too scared" to accept the powers rather than being lauded as clear sighted visionaries.
Well they've done a grand job of complicating things:
The idea that given all the expenses of Covid, the NHS and social care, let alone anything else, we can avoid raising taxes on working people, as @MaxPB seems to want, is for the birds.
Taxes will have to rise and all will have to pay. That's all there is to it. All these demands for special exclusions is just self-interested nonsense.
Should we be raising taxes only on working age people?
"1% on NI" is a 2% tax rise on the employed, and a 0% tax rise on pensioners.
1%, 2% or whatever on income tax is a tax paid by all.
I did put forward the typically centre moderate view of 2% on income tax on here last night (I think). So workers and pensioners both contribute.
2% hike in income tax isn't moderate. It's almost Corbynite.
I'm absolutely disgusted with the Tory leadership. I campaigned hard in 2019 and believed the no tax rise manifesto promise. Fiscal drag is the order of the day.
In fairness it was not contemplated in 2019 that the government would spend more than £400bn on helping the economy cope with an 18 month pandemic which has devastated tax revenues as well. Politicians are all too keen to argue that circumstances have changed when breaking a promise but I struggle to think of a government that has a better base for such an argument than this one.
Tories should stand for sound money, careful management of the country's accounts and limitations on the role of the state. In some circumstances that requires more spending and thus, responsibly, more taxes, than others. This is such a time. I am more worried about having stable and sustainable public finances than current tax rates.
Now is not the time to put taxes up on working people. I don't care about my personal situation, an extra £1.6k per year in tax between myself and my wife is unfortunate but it doesn't really make a big difference to us. There will be millions of middle income people across the country that will find that kind of income cut very, very difficult to take.
Using my dad as an example again, his net income in retirement is about £60.5k. A working age person with an equivalent gross has a net income of £55k. In what world does it make sense that my dad, with no responsibilities, no kids, no mortgage and no real costs pays £5.5k less in tax than a working age person who will have a mortgage/rent, kids, possible nursery fees, school expenses, commuting costs etc...
The whole system is needs rethinking. Why is anyone in the higher rate tax bracket getting 100% of the state pension? In what world does that make sense?!
With respect a net pensioner income of 60K plus is a million miles from most pensioners income
It is not the average, but it is not particularly unusual either, especially for those from the public sector final salary schemes.
Poor pensioners are still better off than poor workers. Rich pensioners are better off than rich workers. They are also richer than the workers are forecast to get to when they are retired.
Yet new taxes go on workers, most public (and private) sector workers get a pay freeze. The retired get no new taxes and 8% increase in state pension.
This will only make the generational conflict deeper and wider.
I'm not sure about your first paragraph; it is often mentioned on here, but I'm yet to see the evidence.
I'm on a 'gold-plated' public sector (Civil Service) final pension salary scheme. I was well-paid, retiring on a salary of c. £82K after 38 years service, a couple of years ago. But my pension, generous though it is, is nowhere near £60K - much nearer £20K. I'm not complaining at all, quite happy with it, but I do wonder whether non-public sector workers have an exaggerated view of the value of public sector pensions. You would have to be retiring on a salary well over £120k to get anywhere near £60k in pension; there's not many in that category.
I've just had a pension review, actually. I knew my public sector pension was better than my previous private sector pension, but I'm slightly shocked just how much better. Most private sector workers do not have final salary pensions. The IFA I talked to told me that the average private sector workers amassed a pension pot of around £50k by retirement. Whereas if you work as, say, a hospital admin worker - or some other not desperately well paid public sector job - for 40 years you can amass a pension with a trade in value in excess of three quarters of a million pounds.
Yep. I tried to calculate the benefit once and I reckoned add 40% on the salary and you're getting close. We see many public sector retirees who have lump sum and income entitlements (always index-linked and with death benefits) that you would need over £1m to purchase in the real world. But, hey, let's pay the public sector more.
PS pensions are good but generally the pay rates certainly used to be less than in the private sector. Also remember the monthly contributions were compulsory if you didn't opt out after the first couple of years or so. I'm very content with my arrangements but the idea that we have lived lives of idleness and luxury since the mid-70s is frankly rubbish. Like most generations we had our fair share of hardship. I well recall my first London flat - £15k - with strict borrowing rules and high interest rates. I lived hand to mouth for a good few years just to cope. I had bare floorboards for the first 3 years - not the varnished/sealed jobs of these days - I could not afford carpet. All of my furniture was begged, borrowed or second-hand. And I was by no means alone.
I'm reading Dominic Sandbrook's "Seasons in the Sun: the Battle for Britain 1974-1979" at the moment and my goodness does it sound shit.
I pity anyone who has to live through that.
The 70's were brilliant, pay rise every month , cheap beer , great music , will admit looking back the fashion was dodgy. We had the times of our lives and far superior to the shithole the country is just now..
I have just done a long tour of far north Scotland - Ullapool, Assynt, Cape Wrath, Caithness and the Orkneys. Much of it looked magnificent in generally fine weather,; tho I will confess John o Groats (where we mostly stayed) is a toilet (albeit with majestic views of the Orkneys)
Why do the Scots in that corner of Scotland INSIST on building houses in a dung-brown or birdshit-grey colour? Like they want them to be ugly. The far, flat north east of Scotland is never gonna be a beauty - unlike the Highlands and Islands - but it would be much improved if everyone just painted their houses white, like the crofts of old. Or even pink. Tartan?
Anything would be better than the colour of untreated sewage you get now. It is most perplexing
I've often thought the same. And it's not just the North East. You can tell when you cross the border with the sudden arrival of houses covered in tiny stones (must be a word for this?). I'm sure they resist the weather, but good grief they're ugly. OTOH, the heavy stone fronted villas and tenements of the older parts of Scottish towns - I'm thinking in particular of Glasgow and Edinburgh, but you find them everywhere - are heartbreakingly lovely.
Harling is the word.
I thought it was pebbledash. It's horrible, anyhow
I know Covid's expensive at the moment and all, but could long term endemicity actually end up improving the nation's finances a bit ?
Its certainly going to change them. The property market is on fire as people try and move to the sticks / get somewhere with space to live & work. Suspect the halcyon days of vastly priced rabbit hutches stacked in close proximity to the train station are behind us.
Changes to how people live and work only come along once in every x number of generations. Covid really could be the end of the mass commute into town era that's been going since the late 19th century.
And yet, bizarrely, the NYC property market has roared back to life - including the inner city/skyscrapers. London tends to follow NYC pretty closely
I wonder if we seeing generational churn rather than secular change. Oldsters are moving out of cities, but some younger people are keen to get back in.
See my earlier comment about the dawning, nascent realisation of the sheer costs of working. If rents/prices fall a bit in London, then it is feasible to live where you can walk/ cycle to work, and eat in your own home at a reasonable hour. Rather than pay thousands, and waste hours, travelling for the privilege of being too knackered to cook. Or do anything at weekends other than sleep and recover. So you end up paying for cleaning, simple repairs, takeaway, eating out etc., etc.
Yes, very true. The centre/inner centre of cities might actually become MORE appealing as the suburbs and commuter towns fall away. Why live in Guildford, a town designed for commuting, if you barely ever commute? Especially if, with all the money you save from not commuting, you can have a nice flat in Islington or Bayswater near to all the attractions of a World City? Some will move closer in to the West End, some will move away entirely to Herefordshire, Northumberland and Portugal for bigger gardens, or guaranteed sunshine
It's complex and hard to predict. There will be flows and contraflows
My girlfriend has a flat just near the Greenwich Foot Tunnel (you can see me running through it on my insta, to the sound of my one celebrity friend, Andy C’s ‘Valley of the Shadows’!) - the price has stagnated/dropped but I feel you’re never go wrong being in Zone1, 2 mins from the Thames even if wfh took over
Greenwich Foot Tunnel is in Zone 2.
Almost zone 3 now I look it up. Oh well still handy for the city
I am going to defend Contrarian here (I can't believe I am doing this bearing in mind his posts to me). I suspect his abusive replies to a number of us was because he had painted himself, unintentionally, into a corner by appearing to be an irresponsible parent (I am sure he isn't).
I think that is probably one of the worst things a parent could be accused of being.
It did turn a rather jolly thread very dark.
I’d second that, although I suspect I have to do far less mental gymnastics than yourself. Same goes with HYFUD - I know he got banned but he gets far too much abuse at times.
Funnily enough, it only seems to happen with the right-leaning commentators. We have one commentator on here, for example, who can publicly make quite racist comments on the white working class which would never be tolerated elsewhere but never seems to get called out on the matter.
The idea that given all the expenses of Covid, the NHS and social care, let alone anything else, we can avoid raising taxes on working people, as @MaxPB seems to want, is for the birds.
Taxes will have to rise and all will have to pay. That's all there is to it. All these demands for special exclusions is just self-interested nonsense.
Should we be raising taxes only on working age people?
"1% on NI" is a 2% tax rise on the employed, and a 0% tax rise on pensioners.
1%, 2% or whatever on income tax is a tax paid by all.
I did put forward the typically centre moderate view of 2% on income tax on here last night (I think). So workers and pensioners both contribute.
2% hike in income tax isn't moderate. It's almost Corbynite.
I'm absolutely disgusted with the Tory leadership. I campaigned hard in 2019 and believed the no tax rise manifesto promise. Fiscal drag is the order of the day.
In fairness it was not contemplated in 2019 that the government would spend more than £400bn on helping the economy cope with an 18 month pandemic which has devastated tax revenues as well. Politicians are all too keen to argue that circumstances have changed when breaking a promise but I struggle to think of a government that has a better base for such an argument than this one.
Tories should stand for sound money, careful management of the country's accounts and limitations on the role of the state. In some circumstances that requires more spending and thus, responsibly, more taxes, than others. This is such a time. I am more worried about having stable and sustainable public finances than current tax rates.
Now is not the time to put taxes up on working people. I don't care about my personal situation, an extra £1.6k per year in tax between myself and my wife is unfortunate but it doesn't really make a big difference to us. There will be millions of middle income people across the country that will find that kind of income cut very, very difficult to take.
Using my dad as an example again, his net income in retirement is about £60.5k. A working age person with an equivalent gross has a net income of £55k. In what world does it make sense that my dad, with no responsibilities, no kids, no mortgage and no real costs pays £5.5k less in tax than a working age person who will have a mortgage/rent, kids, possible nursery fees, school expenses, commuting costs etc...
The whole system is needs rethinking. Why is anyone in the higher rate tax bracket getting 100% of the state pension? In what world does that make sense?!
With respect a net pensioner income of 60K plus is a million miles from most pensioners income
It is not the average, but it is not particularly unusual either, especially for those from the public sector final salary schemes.
Poor pensioners are still better off than poor workers. Rich pensioners are better off than rich workers. They are also richer than the workers are forecast to get to when they are retired.
Yet new taxes go on workers, most public (and private) sector workers get a pay freeze. The retired get no new taxes and 8% increase in state pension.
This will only make the generational conflict deeper and wider.
I'm not sure about your first paragraph; it is often mentioned on here, but I'm yet to see the evidence.
I'm on a 'gold-plated' public sector (Civil Service) final pension salary scheme. I was well-paid, retiring on a salary of c. £82K after 38 years service, a couple of years ago. But my pension, generous though it is, is nowhere near £60K - much nearer £20K. I'm not complaining at all, quite happy with it, but I do wonder whether non-public sector workers have an exaggerated view of the value of public sector pensions. You would have to be retiring on a salary well over £120k to get anywhere near £60k in pension; there's not many in that category.
If you retired a couple of years ago, aren't you on significantly worse terms than those who retired 10-20 years ago?
Here is an example from the police:
"if you are in the Police Pension Scheme 1987, you receive a pension calculated as ((1/60th x the number of years up to 20) + (2/60 x the number of years served between 20 and 30 years)) x final pensionable pay if you are in the New Police Pension Scheme 2006, you receive a pension calculated as 1/70th x final pensionable pay x years (up to a maximum of 35 years)"
So 30 years in the old scheme gives 66% of your final pay vs 42% in the new scheme.
This is a big part of why it is this particular cohort of pensioners that are going to be richer than their successors, and it is egregious that they will not contribute.
OTOH the pay review boards at that sort of time made it very clear that they were marking down public salary levels with respect to private sector comparators precisely because of the pension element - the latter was very much deferred pay. I got a job in a quango using the civil service scheme around 1990 and looked into that at the time and that was very much the case, at least before collective bargaining was dissolved.
Yet the IFS say that over the last 30 years, controlling for employee qualifications/characteristics, take home pay for public sector workers has been about 4% higher than private sector, and that is before any allowance for pensions. A decade of austerity and pay restraint has brought them level, but only pre pensions.
Whilst the pay review boards did indeed say that, they were lying.
I find that very difficult to believe given how ferocious the Treasury was. And the IFS chart posteds on the BBC site you post to has trhe difference as 8% after control - which is a very substantial gap - at about the relevant time, which is about right for my memory.
The idea that given all the expenses of Covid, the NHS and social care, let alone anything else, we can avoid raising taxes on working people, as @MaxPB seems to want, is for the birds.
Taxes will have to rise and all will have to pay. That's all there is to it. All these demands for special exclusions is just self-interested nonsense.
Should we be raising taxes only on working age people?
"1% on NI" is a 2% tax rise on the employed, and a 0% tax rise on pensioners.
1%, 2% or whatever on income tax is a tax paid by all.
I did put forward the typically centre moderate view of 2% on income tax on here last night (I think). So workers and pensioners both contribute.
2% hike in income tax isn't moderate. It's almost Corbynite.
I'm absolutely disgusted with the Tory leadership. I campaigned hard in 2019 and believed the no tax rise manifesto promise. Fiscal drag is the order of the day.
In fairness it was not contemplated in 2019 that the government would spend more than £400bn on helping the economy cope with an 18 month pandemic which has devastated tax revenues as well. Politicians are all too keen to argue that circumstances have changed when breaking a promise but I struggle to think of a government that has a better base for such an argument than this one.
Tories should stand for sound money, careful management of the country's accounts and limitations on the role of the state. In some circumstances that requires more spending and thus, responsibly, more taxes, than others. This is such a time. I am more worried about having stable and sustainable public finances than current tax rates.
Now is not the time to put taxes up on working people. I don't care about my personal situation, an extra £1.6k per year in tax between myself and my wife is unfortunate but it doesn't really make a big difference to us. There will be millions of middle income people across the country that will find that kind of income cut very, very difficult to take.
Using my dad as an example again, his net income in retirement is about £60.5k. A working age person with an equivalent gross has a net income of £55k. In what world does it make sense that my dad, with no responsibilities, no kids, no mortgage and no real costs pays £5.5k less in tax than a working age person who will have a mortgage/rent, kids, possible nursery fees, school expenses, commuting costs etc...
The whole system is needs rethinking. Why is anyone in the higher rate tax bracket getting 100% of the state pension? In what world does that make sense?!
With respect a net pensioner income of 60K plus is a million miles from most pensioners income
It is not the average, but it is not particularly unusual either, especially for those from the public sector final salary schemes.
Poor pensioners are still better off than poor workers. Rich pensioners are better off than rich workers. They are also richer than the workers are forecast to get to when they are retired.
Yet new taxes go on workers, most public (and private) sector workers get a pay freeze. The retired get no new taxes and 8% increase in state pension.
This will only make the generational conflict deeper and wider.
I'm not sure about your first paragraph; it is often mentioned on here, but I'm yet to see the evidence.
I'm on a 'gold-plated' public sector (Civil Service) final pension salary scheme. I was well-paid, retiring on a salary of c. £82K after 38 years service, a couple of years ago. But my pension, generous though it is, is nowhere near £60K - much nearer £20K. I'm not complaining at all, quite happy with it, but I do wonder whether non-public sector workers have an exaggerated view of the value of public sector pensions. You would have to be retiring on a salary well over £120k to get anywhere near £60k in pension; there's not many in that category.
I've just had a pension review, actually. I knew my public sector pension was better than my previous private sector pension, but I'm slightly shocked just how much better. Most private sector workers do not have final salary pensions. The IFA I talked to told me that the average private sector workers amassed a pension pot of around £50k by retirement. Whereas if you work as, say, a hospital admin worker - or some other not desperately well paid public sector job - for 40 years you can amass a pension with a trade in value in excess of three quarters of a million pounds.
Yep. I tried to calculate the benefit once and I reckoned add 40% on the salary and you're getting close. We see many public sector retirees who have lump sum and income entitlements (always index-linked and with death benefits) that you would need over £1m to purchase in the real world. But, hey, let's pay the public sector more.
PS pensions are good but generally the pay rates certainly used to be less than in the private sector. Also remember the monthly contributions were compulsory if you didn't opt out after the first couple of years or so. I'm very content with my arrangements but the idea that we have lived lives of idleness and luxury since the mid-70s is frankly rubbish. Like most generations we had our fair share of hardship. I well recall my first London flat - £15k - with strict borrowing rules and high interest rates. I lived hand to mouth for a good few years just to cope. I had bare floorboards for the first 3 years - not the varnished/sealed jobs of these days - I could not afford carpet. All of my furniture was begged, borrowed or second-hand. And I was by no means alone.
I'm reading Dominic Sandbrook's "Seasons in the Sun: the Battle for Britain 1974-1979" at the moment and my goodness does it sound shit.
I pity anyone who has to live through that.
The 70's were brilliant, pay rise every month , cheap beer , great music , will admit looking back the fashion was dodgy. We had the times of our lives and far superior to the shithole the country is just now..
I have just done a long tour of far north Scotland - Ullapool, Assynt, Cape Wrath, Caithness and the Orkneys. Much of it looked magnificent in generally fine weather,; tho I will confess John o Groats (where we mostly stayed) is a toilet (albeit with majestic views of the Orkneys)
Why do the Scots in that corner of Scotland INSIST on building houses in a dung-brown or birdshit-grey colour? Like they want them to be ugly. The far, flat north east of Scotland is never gonna be a beauty - unlike the Highlands and Islands - but it would be much improved if everyone just painted their houses white, like the crofts of old. Or even pink. Tartan?
Anything would be better than the colour of untreated sewage you get now. It is most perplexing
I've often thought the same. And it's not just the North East. You can tell when you cross the border with the sudden arrival of houses covered in tiny stones (must be a word for this?). I'm sure they resist the weather, but good grief they're ugly. OTOH, the heavy stone fronted villas and tenements of the older parts of Scottish towns - I'm thinking in particular of Glasgow and Edinburgh, but you find them everywhere - are heartbreakingly lovely.
It is called "Harl" I believe and was mainly social housing from the 50's. It lasts for a long time and protects the fabric of the building from weather big time.
So whoever gave Scotland control over income tax, created a bigger mess by accidently making Income Tax unchangeable.
Oops, I bet Osbourne didn't think about that when he did it.
When Scot Nats pointed out the partial devolving of income tax powers was filled with nonsensical procedural issues that would cause problems in the future they were denigrated as being "too scared" to accept the powers rather than being lauded as clear sighted visionaries.
Well they've done a grand job of complicating things:
For Scots....
Have they? They've smoothed out the function of tax take against income, which is always a laudable thing.
The idea that given all the expenses of Covid, the NHS and social care, let alone anything else, we can avoid raising taxes on working people, as @MaxPB seems to want, is for the birds.
Taxes will have to rise and all will have to pay. That's all there is to it. All these demands for special exclusions is just self-interested nonsense.
Should we be raising taxes only on working age people?
"1% on NI" is a 2% tax rise on the employed, and a 0% tax rise on pensioners.
1%, 2% or whatever on income tax is a tax paid by all.
I did put forward the typically centre moderate view of 2% on income tax on here last night (I think). So workers and pensioners both contribute.
2% hike in income tax isn't moderate. It's almost Corbynite.
I'm absolutely disgusted with the Tory leadership. I campaigned hard in 2019 and believed the no tax rise manifesto promise. Fiscal drag is the order of the day.
In fairness it was not contemplated in 2019 that the government would spend more than £400bn on helping the economy cope with an 18 month pandemic which has devastated tax revenues as well. Politicians are all too keen to argue that circumstances have changed when breaking a promise but I struggle to think of a government that has a better base for such an argument than this one.
Tories should stand for sound money, careful management of the country's accounts and limitations on the role of the state. In some circumstances that requires more spending and thus, responsibly, more taxes, than others. This is such a time. I am more worried about having stable and sustainable public finances than current tax rates.
Now is not the time to put taxes up on working people. I don't care about my personal situation, an extra £1.6k per year in tax between myself and my wife is unfortunate but it doesn't really make a big difference to us. There will be millions of middle income people across the country that will find that kind of income cut very, very difficult to take.
Using my dad as an example again, his net income in retirement is about £60.5k. A working age person with an equivalent gross has a net income of £55k. In what world does it make sense that my dad, with no responsibilities, no kids, no mortgage and no real costs pays £5.5k less in tax than a working age person who will have a mortgage/rent, kids, possible nursery fees, school expenses, commuting costs etc...
The whole system is needs rethinking. Why is anyone in the higher rate tax bracket getting 100% of the state pension? In what world does that make sense?!
With respect a net pensioner income of 60K plus is a million miles from most pensioners income
It is not the average, but it is not particularly unusual either, especially for those from the public sector final salary schemes.
Poor pensioners are still better off than poor workers. Rich pensioners are better off than rich workers. They are also richer than the workers are forecast to get to when they are retired.
Yet new taxes go on workers, most public (and private) sector workers get a pay freeze. The retired get no new taxes and 8% increase in state pension.
This will only make the generational conflict deeper and wider.
I'm not sure about your first paragraph; it is often mentioned on here, but I'm yet to see the evidence.
I'm on a 'gold-plated' public sector (Civil Service) final pension salary scheme. I was well-paid, retiring on a salary of c. £82K after 38 years service, a couple of years ago. But my pension, generous though it is, is nowhere near £60K - much nearer £20K. I'm not complaining at all, quite happy with it, but I do wonder whether non-public sector workers have an exaggerated view of the value of public sector pensions. You would have to be retiring on a salary well over £120k to get anywhere near £60k in pension; there's not many in that category.
I've just had a pension review, actually. I knew my public sector pension was better than my previous private sector pension, but I'm slightly shocked just how much better. Most private sector workers do not have final salary pensions. The IFA I talked to told me that the average private sector workers amassed a pension pot of around £50k by retirement. Whereas if you work as, say, a hospital admin worker - or some other not desperately well paid public sector job - for 40 years you can amass a pension with a trade in value in excess of three quarters of a million pounds.
Yep. I tried to calculate the benefit once and I reckoned add 40% on the salary and you're getting close. We see many public sector retirees who have lump sum and income entitlements (always index-linked and with death benefits) that you would need over £1m to purchase in the real world. But, hey, let's pay the public sector more.
PS pensions are good but generally the pay rates certainly used to be less than in the private sector. Also remember the monthly contributions were compulsory if you didn't opt out after the first couple of years or so. I'm very content with my arrangements but the idea that we have lived lives of idleness and luxury since the mid-70s is frankly rubbish. Like most generations we had our fair share of hardship. I well recall my first London flat - £15k - with strict borrowing rules and high interest rates. I lived hand to mouth for a good few years just to cope. I had bare floorboards for the first 3 years - not the varnished/sealed jobs of these days - I could not afford carpet. All of my furniture was begged, borrowed or second-hand. And I was by no means alone.
I'm reading Dominic Sandbrook's "Seasons in the Sun: the Battle for Britain 1974-1979" at the moment and my goodness does it sound shit.
I pity anyone who has to live through that.
The 70's were brilliant, pay rise every month , cheap beer , great music , will admit looking back the fashion was dodgy. We had the times of our lives and far superior to the shithole the country is just now..
I have just done a long tour of far north Scotland - Ullapool, Assynt, Cape Wrath, Caithness and the Orkneys. Much of it looked magnificent in generally fine weather,; tho I will confess John o Groats (where we mostly stayed) is a toilet (albeit with majestic views of the Orkneys)
Why do the Scots in that corner of Scotland INSIST on building houses in a dung-brown or birdshit-grey colour? Like they want them to be ugly. The far, flat north east of Scotland is never gonna be a beauty - unlike the Highlands and Islands - but it would be much improved if everyone just painted their houses white, like the crofts of old. Or even pink. Tartan?
Anything would be better than the colour of untreated sewage you get now. It is most perplexing
I've often thought the same. And it's not just the North East. You can tell when you cross the border with the sudden arrival of houses covered in tiny stones (must be a word for this?). I'm sure they resist the weather, but good grief they're ugly. OTOH, the heavy stone fronted villas and tenements of the older parts of Scottish towns - I'm thinking in particular of Glasgow and Edinburgh, but you find them everywhere - are heartbreakingly lovely.
It is called "Harl" I believe and was mainly social housing from the 50's. It lasts for a long time and protects the fabric of the building from weather big time.
Indeed. Effectively a sacrificial coating which has to be replaced every few decades - but protecting the underlying masonry.
Signs of plateauing which is good news. Indicates we should expect English cases to go up now for the next 3 weeks and then hopefully start to go down. I hope it is the case that it is running out of people to infect without some level of immunity.
Can only keep fingers crossed
One thing about the Scottish numbers, testing in Scotland is up massively over even the alpha peak. That's not the case elsewhere in the UK.
Scotland is proportionately currently testing less than England (some call it "targeting" (sic))
Scotland tests: 61,410 (6% UK) England tests:922,872 (90% UK)
You haven't contradicted my point, and those testing numbers are proportionally within a tiny rounding error of each other.
Yes, they've increased testing, but with 8% UK population, 6% of the testing and a 12% positivity rate I'd suggest they were behind before and are still behind now.
The idea that given all the expenses of Covid, the NHS and social care, let alone anything else, we can avoid raising taxes on working people, as @MaxPB seems to want, is for the birds.
Taxes will have to rise and all will have to pay. That's all there is to it. All these demands for special exclusions is just self-interested nonsense.
Should we be raising taxes only on working age people?
"1% on NI" is a 2% tax rise on the employed, and a 0% tax rise on pensioners.
1%, 2% or whatever on income tax is a tax paid by all.
I did put forward the typically centre moderate view of 2% on income tax on here last night (I think). So workers and pensioners both contribute.
2% hike in income tax isn't moderate. It's almost Corbynite.
I'm absolutely disgusted with the Tory leadership. I campaigned hard in 2019 and believed the no tax rise manifesto promise. Fiscal drag is the order of the day.
In fairness it was not contemplated in 2019 that the government would spend more than £400bn on helping the economy cope with an 18 month pandemic which has devastated tax revenues as well. Politicians are all too keen to argue that circumstances have changed when breaking a promise but I struggle to think of a government that has a better base for such an argument than this one.
Tories should stand for sound money, careful management of the country's accounts and limitations on the role of the state. In some circumstances that requires more spending and thus, responsibly, more taxes, than others. This is such a time. I am more worried about having stable and sustainable public finances than current tax rates.
Now is not the time to put taxes up on working people. I don't care about my personal situation, an extra £1.6k per year in tax between myself and my wife is unfortunate but it doesn't really make a big difference to us. There will be millions of middle income people across the country that will find that kind of income cut very, very difficult to take.
Using my dad as an example again, his net income in retirement is about £60.5k. A working age person with an equivalent gross has a net income of £55k. In what world does it make sense that my dad, with no responsibilities, no kids, no mortgage and no real costs pays £5.5k less in tax than a working age person who will have a mortgage/rent, kids, possible nursery fees, school expenses, commuting costs etc...
The whole system is needs rethinking. Why is anyone in the higher rate tax bracket getting 100% of the state pension? In what world does that make sense?!
With respect a net pensioner income of 60K plus is a million miles from most pensioners income
It is not the average, but it is not particularly unusual either, especially for those from the public sector final salary schemes.
Poor pensioners are still better off than poor workers. Rich pensioners are better off than rich workers. They are also richer than the workers are forecast to get to when they are retired.
Yet new taxes go on workers, most public (and private) sector workers get a pay freeze. The retired get no new taxes and 8% increase in state pension.
This will only make the generational conflict deeper and wider.
I'm not sure about your first paragraph; it is often mentioned on here, but I'm yet to see the evidence.
I'm on a 'gold-plated' public sector (Civil Service) final pension salary scheme. I was well-paid, retiring on a salary of c. £82K after 38 years service, a couple of years ago. But my pension, generous though it is, is nowhere near £60K - much nearer £20K. I'm not complaining at all, quite happy with it, but I do wonder whether non-public sector workers have an exaggerated view of the value of public sector pensions. You would have to be retiring on a salary well over £120k to get anywhere near £60k in pension; there's not many in that category.
I've just had a pension review, actually. I knew my public sector pension was better than my previous private sector pension, but I'm slightly shocked just how much better. Most private sector workers do not have final salary pensions. The IFA I talked to told me that the average private sector workers amassed a pension pot of around £50k by retirement. Whereas if you work as, say, a hospital admin worker - or some other not desperately well paid public sector job - for 40 years you can amass a pension with a trade in value in excess of three quarters of a million pounds.
Yep. I tried to calculate the benefit once and I reckoned add 40% on the salary and you're getting close. We see many public sector retirees who have lump sum and income entitlements (always index-linked and with death benefits) that you would need over £1m to purchase in the real world. But, hey, let's pay the public sector more.
PS pensions are good but generally the pay rates certainly used to be less than in the private sector. Also remember the monthly contributions were compulsory if you didn't opt out after the first couple of years or so. I'm very content with my arrangements but the idea that we have lived lives of idleness and luxury since the mid-70s is frankly rubbish. Like most generations we had our fair share of hardship. I well recall my first London flat - £15k - with strict borrowing rules and high interest rates. I lived hand to mouth for a good few years just to cope. I had bare floorboards for the first 3 years - not the varnished/sealed jobs of these days - I could not afford carpet. All of my furniture was begged, borrowed or second-hand. And I was by no means alone.
I'm reading Dominic Sandbrook's "Seasons in the Sun: the Battle for Britain 1974-1979" at the moment and my goodness does it sound shit.
I pity anyone who has to live through that.
The 70's were brilliant, pay rise every month , cheap beer , great music , will admit looking back the fashion was dodgy. We had the times of our lives and far superior to the shithole the country is just now..
I have just done a long tour of far north Scotland - Ullapool, Assynt, Cape Wrath, Caithness and the Orkneys. Much of it looked magnificent in generally fine weather,; tho I will confess John o Groats (where we mostly stayed) is a toilet (albeit with majestic views of the Orkneys)
Why do the Scots in that corner of Scotland INSIST on building houses in a dung-brown or birdshit-grey colour? Like they want them to be ugly. The far, flat north east of Scotland is never gonna be a beauty - unlike the Highlands and Islands - but it would be much improved if everyone just painted their houses white, like the crofts of old. Or even pink. Tartan?
Anything would be better than the colour of untreated sewage you get now. It is most perplexing
I've often thought the same. And it's not just the North East. You can tell when you cross the border with the sudden arrival of houses covered in tiny stones (must be a word for this?). I'm sure they resist the weather, but good grief they're ugly. OTOH, the heavy stone fronted villas and tenements of the older parts of Scottish towns - I'm thinking in particular of Glasgow and Edinburgh, but you find them everywhere - are heartbreakingly lovely.
Harling is the word.
I thought it was pebbledash. It's horrible, anyhow
Doesn't have to have pebbles on it, though it often does.
I am going to defend Contrarian here (I can't believe I am doing this bearing in mind his posts to me). I suspect his abusive replies to a number of us was because he had painted himself, unintentionally, into a corner by appearing to be an irresponsible parent (I am sure he isn't).
I think that is probably one of the worst things a parent could be accused of being.
It did turn a rather jolly thread very dark.
I’d second that, although I suspect I have to do far less mental gymnastics than yourself. Same goes with HYFUD - I know he got banned but he gets far too much abuse at times.
Funnily enough, it only seems to happen with the right-leaning commentators. We have one commentator on here, for example, who can publicly make quite racist comments on the white working class which would never be tolerated elsewhere but never seems to get called out on the matter.
The idea that given all the expenses of Covid, the NHS and social care, let alone anything else, we can avoid raising taxes on working people, as @MaxPB seems to want, is for the birds.
Taxes will have to rise and all will have to pay. That's all there is to it. All these demands for special exclusions is just self-interested nonsense.
Should we be raising taxes only on working age people?
"1% on NI" is a 2% tax rise on the employed, and a 0% tax rise on pensioners.
1%, 2% or whatever on income tax is a tax paid by all.
I did put forward the typically centre moderate view of 2% on income tax on here last night (I think). So workers and pensioners both contribute.
2% hike in income tax isn't moderate. It's almost Corbynite.
I'm absolutely disgusted with the Tory leadership. I campaigned hard in 2019 and believed the no tax rise manifesto promise. Fiscal drag is the order of the day.
In fairness it was not contemplated in 2019 that the government would spend more than £400bn on helping the economy cope with an 18 month pandemic which has devastated tax revenues as well. Politicians are all too keen to argue that circumstances have changed when breaking a promise but I struggle to think of a government that has a better base for such an argument than this one.
Tories should stand for sound money, careful management of the country's accounts and limitations on the role of the state. In some circumstances that requires more spending and thus, responsibly, more taxes, than others. This is such a time. I am more worried about having stable and sustainable public finances than current tax rates.
Now is not the time to put taxes up on working people. I don't care about my personal situation, an extra £1.6k per year in tax between myself and my wife is unfortunate but it doesn't really make a big difference to us. There will be millions of middle income people across the country that will find that kind of income cut very, very difficult to take.
Using my dad as an example again, his net income in retirement is about £60.5k. A working age person with an equivalent gross has a net income of £55k. In what world does it make sense that my dad, with no responsibilities, no kids, no mortgage and no real costs pays £5.5k less in tax than a working age person who will have a mortgage/rent, kids, possible nursery fees, school expenses, commuting costs etc...
The whole system is needs rethinking. Why is anyone in the higher rate tax bracket getting 100% of the state pension? In what world does that make sense?!
With respect a net pensioner income of 60K plus is a million miles from most pensioners income
It is not the average, but it is not particularly unusual either, especially for those from the public sector final salary schemes.
Poor pensioners are still better off than poor workers. Rich pensioners are better off than rich workers. They are also richer than the workers are forecast to get to when they are retired.
Yet new taxes go on workers, most public (and private) sector workers get a pay freeze. The retired get no new taxes and 8% increase in state pension.
This will only make the generational conflict deeper and wider.
I'm not sure about your first paragraph; it is often mentioned on here, but I'm yet to see the evidence.
I'm on a 'gold-plated' public sector (Civil Service) final pension salary scheme. I was well-paid, retiring on a salary of c. £82K after 38 years service, a couple of years ago. But my pension, generous though it is, is nowhere near £60K - much nearer £20K. I'm not complaining at all, quite happy with it, but I do wonder whether non-public sector workers have an exaggerated view of the value of public sector pensions. You would have to be retiring on a salary well over £120k to get anywhere near £60k in pension; there's not many in that category.
I've just had a pension review, actually. I knew my public sector pension was better than my previous private sector pension, but I'm slightly shocked just how much better. Most private sector workers do not have final salary pensions. The IFA I talked to told me that the average private sector workers amassed a pension pot of around £50k by retirement. Whereas if you work as, say, a hospital admin worker - or some other not desperately well paid public sector job - for 40 years you can amass a pension with a trade in value in excess of three quarters of a million pounds.
Yep. I tried to calculate the benefit once and I reckoned add 40% on the salary and you're getting close. We see many public sector retirees who have lump sum and income entitlements (always index-linked and with death benefits) that you would need over £1m to purchase in the real world. But, hey, let's pay the public sector more.
PS pensions are good but generally the pay rates certainly used to be less than in the private sector. Also remember the monthly contributions were compulsory if you didn't opt out after the first couple of years or so. I'm very content with my arrangements but the idea that we have lived lives of idleness and luxury since the mid-70s is frankly rubbish. Like most generations we had our fair share of hardship. I well recall my first London flat - £15k - with strict borrowing rules and high interest rates. I lived hand to mouth for a good few years just to cope. I had bare floorboards for the first 3 years - not the varnished/sealed jobs of these days - I could not afford carpet. All of my furniture was begged, borrowed or second-hand. And I was by no means alone.
I'm reading Dominic Sandbrook's "Seasons in the Sun: the Battle for Britain 1974-1979" at the moment and my goodness does it sound shit.
I pity anyone who has to live through that.
The 70's were brilliant, pay rise every month , cheap beer , great music , will admit looking back the fashion was dodgy. We had the times of our lives and far superior to the shithole the country is just now..
I have just done a long tour of far north Scotland - Ullapool, Assynt, Cape Wrath, Caithness and the Orkneys. Much of it looked magnificent in generally fine weather,; tho I will confess John o Groats (where we mostly stayed) is a toilet (albeit with majestic views of the Orkneys)
Why do the Scots in that corner of Scotland INSIST on building houses in a dung-brown or birdshit-grey colour? Like they want them to be ugly. The far, flat north east of Scotland is never gonna be a beauty - unlike the Highlands and Islands - but it would be much improved if everyone just painted their houses white, like the crofts of old. Or even pink. Tartan?
Anything would be better than the colour of untreated sewage you get now. It is most perplexing
I've often thought the same. And it's not just the North East. You can tell when you cross the border with the sudden arrival of houses covered in tiny stones (must be a word for this?). I'm sure they resist the weather, but good grief they're ugly. OTOH, the heavy stone fronted villas and tenements of the older parts of Scottish towns - I'm thinking in particular of Glasgow and Edinburgh, but you find them everywhere - are heartbreakingly lovely.
Ireland had a similar issue with ugly colour crofts everywhere. They had a national campaign to paint them all bright colours and now it is a national quirk.
Yes, I've noticed that! - without realising why
Years ago when you went to Ireland the rural parts could be lovely, yet partly ruined by hideous dung-brown or grotty grey houses. Pointlessly depressing
Now when you go there all the village centres and even the rural houses are much jollier, with bright vivid colours or serene whitewash. It helps enormously
This idea that now is not the time to raise taxes on those who work is odd. For the last 18 months or so working people have been supported by furlough. Others who worked from home in secure jobs have built up savings.
Now the bills have to be paid. Not just for Covid but for social care and everything else.
So everyone will have to pay: workers - and I include those past pensionable age who are still working - and those with savings and assets. And all generations will have to pay because (a) all generations benefited from the support for the economy; (b) all benefit one way or another from public services; and (c) all benefit from social care - either now (directly) or by not having to pay for parents or by not losing a possible inheritance or directly in the future.
It won't be nice. But no group should be immune from paying the bills. Far too much special pleading going on.
NI is an odd choice because it is in effect a tax but only on some. So it should be extended to all who are working if it is going to be raised.
What a load of rubbish. The economy was shut down to primarily benefit older people who are most at risk and to protect the NHS which is another service that is used mostly by older people.
Businesses like your daughter's was sacrificed to protect older people and now it's time for older people to bear the cost of that shutdown. A stat posted here showed that 16% of pensioners have earnings in the higher rate tax bracket, that's a huge number of people to target for more tax before we even think about putting up taxes on working age people.
The country is currently being fleeced by the generation above who have decided they want an easy life and the best way to get that is to claim a larger share of the economic pie for themselves and if they have to impoverish working age people then that's a bonus.
You ducked out of paying for your parents care, you're ducking out of paying for your own care, you've piled on cost after cost on young people, you bought all the property then accused young people of being incapable of saving all while charging us ridiculous rents on crap flats that aren't fit for animals to live in.
Your generation has a lot to answer for, you've ruined the legacy of what your parents left behind and now you're trying to take away any chance my generation has of leaving behind a better world for our kids. You destroyed the climate, made the rich much richer, the poor much poorer and now won't pay for the bill that was accumulated to protect your generation from dying. It wasn't 20-50 year olds dying of this.
Solidarity, comrade. Welcome to the barricades.
(I joke, I have a lot of sympathy with your anger and the points you make.)
So whoever gave Scotland control over income tax, created a bigger mess by accidently making Income Tax unchangeable.
Oops, I bet Osbourne didn't think about that when he did it.
When Scot Nats pointed out the partial devolving of income tax powers was filled with nonsensical procedural issues that would cause problems in the future they were denigrated as being "too scared" to accept the powers rather than being lauded as clear sighted visionaries.
Well they've done a grand job of complicating things:
For Scots....
Have they? They've smoothed out the function of tax take against income, which is always a laudable thing.
Looks like a rather minuscule adjustment actually. You'd want far more bands to achieve that.
The idea that given all the expenses of Covid, the NHS and social care, let alone anything else, we can avoid raising taxes on working people, as @MaxPB seems to want, is for the birds.
Taxes will have to rise and all will have to pay. That's all there is to it. All these demands for special exclusions is just self-interested nonsense.
Should we be raising taxes only on working age people?
"1% on NI" is a 2% tax rise on the employed, and a 0% tax rise on pensioners.
1%, 2% or whatever on income tax is a tax paid by all.
I did put forward the typically centre moderate view of 2% on income tax on here last night (I think). So workers and pensioners both contribute.
2% hike in income tax isn't moderate. It's almost Corbynite.
I'm absolutely disgusted with the Tory leadership. I campaigned hard in 2019 and believed the no tax rise manifesto promise. Fiscal drag is the order of the day.
In fairness it was not contemplated in 2019 that the government would spend more than £400bn on helping the economy cope with an 18 month pandemic which has devastated tax revenues as well. Politicians are all too keen to argue that circumstances have changed when breaking a promise but I struggle to think of a government that has a better base for such an argument than this one.
Tories should stand for sound money, careful management of the country's accounts and limitations on the role of the state. In some circumstances that requires more spending and thus, responsibly, more taxes, than others. This is such a time. I am more worried about having stable and sustainable public finances than current tax rates.
Now is not the time to put taxes up on working people. I don't care about my personal situation, an extra £1.6k per year in tax between myself and my wife is unfortunate but it doesn't really make a big difference to us. There will be millions of middle income people across the country that will find that kind of income cut very, very difficult to take.
Using my dad as an example again, his net income in retirement is about £60.5k. A working age person with an equivalent gross has a net income of £55k. In what world does it make sense that my dad, with no responsibilities, no kids, no mortgage and no real costs pays £5.5k less in tax than a working age person who will have a mortgage/rent, kids, possible nursery fees, school expenses, commuting costs etc...
The whole system is needs rethinking. Why is anyone in the higher rate tax bracket getting 100% of the state pension? In what world does that make sense?!
With respect a net pensioner income of 60K plus is a million miles from most pensioners income
It is not the average, but it is not particularly unusual either, especially for those from the public sector final salary schemes.
Poor pensioners are still better off than poor workers. Rich pensioners are better off than rich workers. They are also richer than the workers are forecast to get to when they are retired.
Yet new taxes go on workers, most public (and private) sector workers get a pay freeze. The retired get no new taxes and 8% increase in state pension.
This will only make the generational conflict deeper and wider.
I'm not sure about your first paragraph; it is often mentioned on here, but I'm yet to see the evidence.
I'm on a 'gold-plated' public sector (Civil Service) final pension salary scheme. I was well-paid, retiring on a salary of c. £82K after 38 years service, a couple of years ago. But my pension, generous though it is, is nowhere near £60K - much nearer £20K. I'm not complaining at all, quite happy with it, but I do wonder whether non-public sector workers have an exaggerated view of the value of public sector pensions. You would have to be retiring on a salary well over £120k to get anywhere near £60k in pension; there's not many in that category.
I've just had a pension review, actually. I knew my public sector pension was better than my previous private sector pension, but I'm slightly shocked just how much better. Most private sector workers do not have final salary pensions. The IFA I talked to told me that the average private sector workers amassed a pension pot of around £50k by retirement. Whereas if you work as, say, a hospital admin worker - or some other not desperately well paid public sector job - for 40 years you can amass a pension with a trade in value in excess of three quarters of a million pounds.
Yep. I tried to calculate the benefit once and I reckoned add 40% on the salary and you're getting close. We see many public sector retirees who have lump sum and income entitlements (always index-linked and with death benefits) that you would need over £1m to purchase in the real world. But, hey, let's pay the public sector more.
PS pensions are good but generally the pay rates certainly used to be less than in the private sector. Also remember the monthly contributions were compulsory if you didn't opt out after the first couple of years or so. I'm very content with my arrangements but the idea that we have lived lives of idleness and luxury since the mid-70s is frankly rubbish. Like most generations we had our fair share of hardship. I well recall my first London flat - £15k - with strict borrowing rules and high interest rates. I lived hand to mouth for a good few years just to cope. I had bare floorboards for the first 3 years - not the varnished/sealed jobs of these days - I could not afford carpet. All of my furniture was begged, borrowed or second-hand. And I was by no means alone.
I'm reading Dominic Sandbrook's "Seasons in the Sun: the Battle for Britain 1974-1979" at the moment and my goodness does it sound shit.
I pity anyone who has to live through that.
The 70's were brilliant, pay rise every month , cheap beer , great music , will admit looking back the fashion was dodgy. We had the times of our lives and far superior to the shithole the country is just now..
I have just done a long tour of far north Scotland - Ullapool, Assynt, Cape Wrath, Caithness and the Orkneys. Much of it looked magnificent in generally fine weather,; tho I will confess John o Groats (where we mostly stayed) is a toilet (albeit with majestic views of the Orkneys)
Why do the Scots in that corner of Scotland INSIST on building houses in a dung-brown or birdshit-grey colour? Like they want them to be ugly. The far, flat north east of Scotland is never gonna be a beauty - unlike the Highlands and Islands - but it would be much improved if everyone just painted their houses white, like the crofts of old. Or even pink. Tartan?
Anything would be better than the colour of untreated sewage you get now. It is most perplexing
They really don't like people calling Orkney "the Orkneys" or "the Orkney Isles", or calling Shetland "the Shetlands" or "the Shetland Isles". So much so that some Orcadians and Shetlanders will even (wrongly) call the Faroes "Faroe".
Agreed about the paint. Stornoway, Kirkwall, and Lerwick would all look much nicer if the houses and shops in the centre were painted in pastel colours. They could use that street on the waterside in Portree as a model. They wouldn't have to go full-on Portmeirion to lighten the atmosphere.
To be fair, there is quite a bit of colourful nordic inspired architecture in Shetland (I described it as nordish) that has sprung up over the last two decades, including in the docks at Lerwick.
The biggest objection I had from a tourist point of view was that they still serve nescafe everywhere.
The idea that given all the expenses of Covid, the NHS and social care, let alone anything else, we can avoid raising taxes on working people, as @MaxPB seems to want, is for the birds.
Taxes will have to rise and all will have to pay. That's all there is to it. All these demands for special exclusions is just self-interested nonsense.
Should we be raising taxes only on working age people?
"1% on NI" is a 2% tax rise on the employed, and a 0% tax rise on pensioners.
1%, 2% or whatever on income tax is a tax paid by all.
I did put forward the typically centre moderate view of 2% on income tax on here last night (I think). So workers and pensioners both contribute.
2% hike in income tax isn't moderate. It's almost Corbynite.
I'm absolutely disgusted with the Tory leadership. I campaigned hard in 2019 and believed the no tax rise manifesto promise. Fiscal drag is the order of the day.
In fairness it was not contemplated in 2019 that the government would spend more than £400bn on helping the economy cope with an 18 month pandemic which has devastated tax revenues as well. Politicians are all too keen to argue that circumstances have changed when breaking a promise but I struggle to think of a government that has a better base for such an argument than this one.
Tories should stand for sound money, careful management of the country's accounts and limitations on the role of the state. In some circumstances that requires more spending and thus, responsibly, more taxes, than others. This is such a time. I am more worried about having stable and sustainable public finances than current tax rates.
Now is not the time to put taxes up on working people. I don't care about my personal situation, an extra £1.6k per year in tax between myself and my wife is unfortunate but it doesn't really make a big difference to us. There will be millions of middle income people across the country that will find that kind of income cut very, very difficult to take.
Using my dad as an example again, his net income in retirement is about £60.5k. A working age person with an equivalent gross has a net income of £55k. In what world does it make sense that my dad, with no responsibilities, no kids, no mortgage and no real costs pays £5.5k less in tax than a working age person who will have a mortgage/rent, kids, possible nursery fees, school expenses, commuting costs etc...
The whole system is needs rethinking. Why is anyone in the higher rate tax bracket getting 100% of the state pension? In what world does that make sense?!
With respect a net pensioner income of 60K plus is a million miles from most pensioners income
It is not the average, but it is not particularly unusual either, especially for those from the public sector final salary schemes.
Poor pensioners are still better off than poor workers. Rich pensioners are better off than rich workers. They are also richer than the workers are forecast to get to when they are retired.
Yet new taxes go on workers, most public (and private) sector workers get a pay freeze. The retired get no new taxes and 8% increase in state pension.
This will only make the generational conflict deeper and wider.
I'm not sure about your first paragraph; it is often mentioned on here, but I'm yet to see the evidence.
I'm on a 'gold-plated' public sector (Civil Service) final pension salary scheme. I was well-paid, retiring on a salary of c. £82K after 38 years service, a couple of years ago. But my pension, generous though it is, is nowhere near £60K - much nearer £20K. I'm not complaining at all, quite happy with it, but I do wonder whether non-public sector workers have an exaggerated view of the value of public sector pensions. You would have to be retiring on a salary well over £120k to get anywhere near £60k in pension; there's not many in that category.
I've just had a pension review, actually. I knew my public sector pension was better than my previous private sector pension, but I'm slightly shocked just how much better. Most private sector workers do not have final salary pensions. The IFA I talked to told me that the average private sector workers amassed a pension pot of around £50k by retirement. Whereas if you work as, say, a hospital admin worker - or some other not desperately well paid public sector job - for 40 years you can amass a pension with a trade in value in excess of three quarters of a million pounds.
Yep. I tried to calculate the benefit once and I reckoned add 40% on the salary and you're getting close. We see many public sector retirees who have lump sum and income entitlements (always index-linked and with death benefits) that you would need over £1m to purchase in the real world. But, hey, let's pay the public sector more.
PS pensions are good but generally the pay rates certainly used to be less than in the private sector. Also remember the monthly contributions were compulsory if you didn't opt out after the first couple of years or so. I'm very content with my arrangements but the idea that we have lived lives of idleness and luxury since the mid-70s is frankly rubbish. Like most generations we had our fair share of hardship. I well recall my first London flat - £15k - with strict borrowing rules and high interest rates. I lived hand to mouth for a good few years just to cope. I had bare floorboards for the first 3 years - not the varnished/sealed jobs of these days - I could not afford carpet. All of my furniture was begged, borrowed or second-hand. And I was by no means alone.
I'm reading Dominic Sandbrook's "Seasons in the Sun: the Battle for Britain 1974-1979" at the moment and my goodness does it sound shit.
I pity anyone who has to live through that.
The 70's were brilliant, pay rise every month , cheap beer , great music , will admit looking back the fashion was dodgy. We had the times of our lives and far superior to the shithole the country is just now..
I have just done a long tour of far north Scotland - Ullapool, Assynt, Cape Wrath, Caithness and the Orkneys. Much of it looked magnificent in generally fine weather,; tho I will confess John o Groats (where we mostly stayed) is a toilet (albeit with majestic views of the Orkneys)
Why do the Scots in that corner of Scotland INSIST on building houses in a dung-brown or birdshit-grey colour? Like they want them to be ugly. The far, flat north east of Scotland is never gonna be a beauty - unlike the Highlands and Islands - but it would be much improved if everyone just painted their houses white, like the crofts of old. Or even pink. Tartan?
Anything would be better than the colour of untreated sewage you get now. It is most perplexing
Probably don't want to have to paint it twice a year. Could have done with more posts on your trip by the way. PS: I see others now, I obviously missed them.
I was actually having too nice a time to comment on the trip. It was brilliant fun. Food was great too. I had one of the nicest scones of my life overlooking the Kyle of Tongue. And a fantastic tarka dahl in Strathness Hotel in Inverness. And superb haddock wraps and seafood soup at the Seafood Shack in Ullapool
The big culinary letdown was lunch in Stromness in the Orkneys, a town which seems to pride itself on refusing to serve stuff you want and stuff they advertise. So the bistro eagerly told us they would not serve alcohol before 7pm and NOR WILL ANYONE ELSE HAHAHA and then the cafe next door "famous for its crab rolls" said they had no crab and weren't expecting any.
My daughter and I ended up eating two cheddar baps on a bench by the harbour while I downed a bottle of screwtop white wine from the Co-op like a hobo. Then we went to Skara Brae
Glad you enjoyed it and took on a bit of Scottish jakieness to boot. Your daughter would have probably ended up murdering you after two days in Millport.
Yes, John O Groats turned out to be a superb choice, because there's so much to see all around it, and it has a real sense of wildness. So thankyou for that!
A suburban island near Glasgow would have been dull if not disastrous.
Even John o Groats, despite being a toilet, has a kind of perverse charm. We had a brilliant apartment looking straight out to the Orkney, right on the harbour, which was a big bonus, and the weird cafes and shops are so quirky or kitsch they have a kind of fascination. There is a gift shop with an entire wing dedicated to insane Christmas knick-knacks, like hologram santas in crystal boxes continuously singing Jingle Bells. WTF
Also you can get tartan clocks. Clocks made from actual tartan. Genius
How did you like Skara Brae?
But commiserations re the Stromness lunch modeller style. Derek Cooper the food writer used to tear his hair out over the difficulty of getting local fish and crusties in the very areas they were fished, though things have improved a lot since the 1980s (believe me).
I am going to defend Contrarian here (I can't believe I am doing this bearing in mind his posts to me). I suspect his abusive replies to a number of us was because he had painted himself, unintentionally, into a corner by appearing to be an irresponsible parent (I am sure he isn't).
I think that is probably one of the worst things a parent could be accused of being.
It did turn a rather jolly thread very dark.
I’d second that, although I suspect I have to do far less mental gymnastics than yourself. Same goes with HYFUD - I know he got banned but he gets far too much abuse at times.
Funnily enough, it only seems to happen with the right-leaning commentators. We have one commentator on here, for example, who can publicly make quite racist comments on the white working class which would never be tolerated elsewhere but never seems to get called out on the matter.
Thank you for that comment.
Re HYUFD (and I don't want to be specific as it is not fair on someone who can't reply) it is not HYUFD's politics that cause the problem normally but the structure of the argument. I doesn't matter one jot what his politics are regarding this.
I have had some real humdingers with him, but although often very heated they have always ended up friendly which says a lot about him as a person (no matter how irritating the style of his arguing is).
I am going to defend Contrarian here (I can't believe I am doing this bearing in mind his posts to me). I suspect his abusive replies to a number of us was because he had painted himself, unintentionally, into a corner by appearing to be an irresponsible parent (I am sure he isn't).
I think that is probably one of the worst things a parent could be accused of being.
It did turn a rather jolly thread very dark.
I’d second that, although I suspect I have to do far less mental gymnastics than yourself. Same goes with HYFUD - I know he got banned but he gets far too much abuse at times.
Funnily enough, it only seems to happen with the right-leaning commentators. We have one commentator on here, for example, who can publicly make quite racist comments on the white working class which would never be tolerated elsewhere but never seems to get called out on the matter.
That's cos there are a lot of hard left here! 😈
Who see themselves as centrist and moderate
You should hear the squawking that goes on when anyone here is described as hard right..
So whoever gave Scotland control over income tax, created a bigger mess by accidently making Income Tax unchangeable.
Oops, I bet Osbourne didn't think about that when he did it.
When Scot Nats pointed out the partial devolving of income tax powers was filled with nonsensical procedural issues that would cause problems in the future they were denigrated as being "too scared" to accept the powers rather than being lauded as clear sighted visionaries.
Well they've done a grand job of complicating things:
For Scots....
Have they? They've smoothed out the function of tax take against income, which is always a laudable thing.
Looks like a rather minuscule adjustment actually. You'd want far more bands to achieve that.
Quite, but it is at least a start. Difficult to do more when the wealthy can fiddle so easily (for instance, in converting income from salary to dividends if self employed or company directors).
The idea that given all the expenses of Covid, the NHS and social care, let alone anything else, we can avoid raising taxes on working people, as @MaxPB seems to want, is for the birds.
Taxes will have to rise and all will have to pay. That's all there is to it. All these demands for special exclusions is just self-interested nonsense.
Should we be raising taxes only on working age people?
"1% on NI" is a 2% tax rise on the employed, and a 0% tax rise on pensioners.
1%, 2% or whatever on income tax is a tax paid by all.
I did put forward the typically centre moderate view of 2% on income tax on here last night (I think). So workers and pensioners both contribute.
2% hike in income tax isn't moderate. It's almost Corbynite.
I'm absolutely disgusted with the Tory leadership. I campaigned hard in 2019 and believed the no tax rise manifesto promise. Fiscal drag is the order of the day.
In fairness it was not contemplated in 2019 that the government would spend more than £400bn on helping the economy cope with an 18 month pandemic which has devastated tax revenues as well. Politicians are all too keen to argue that circumstances have changed when breaking a promise but I struggle to think of a government that has a better base for such an argument than this one.
Tories should stand for sound money, careful management of the country's accounts and limitations on the role of the state. In some circumstances that requires more spending and thus, responsibly, more taxes, than others. This is such a time. I am more worried about having stable and sustainable public finances than current tax rates.
Now is not the time to put taxes up on working people. I don't care about my personal situation, an extra £1.6k per year in tax between myself and my wife is unfortunate but it doesn't really make a big difference to us. There will be millions of middle income people across the country that will find that kind of income cut very, very difficult to take.
Using my dad as an example again, his net income in retirement is about £60.5k. A working age person with an equivalent gross has a net income of £55k. In what world does it make sense that my dad, with no responsibilities, no kids, no mortgage and no real costs pays £5.5k less in tax than a working age person who will have a mortgage/rent, kids, possible nursery fees, school expenses, commuting costs etc...
The whole system is needs rethinking. Why is anyone in the higher rate tax bracket getting 100% of the state pension? In what world does that make sense?!
With respect a net pensioner income of 60K plus is a million miles from most pensioners income
It is not the average, but it is not particularly unusual either, especially for those from the public sector final salary schemes.
Poor pensioners are still better off than poor workers. Rich pensioners are better off than rich workers. They are also richer than the workers are forecast to get to when they are retired.
Yet new taxes go on workers, most public (and private) sector workers get a pay freeze. The retired get no new taxes and 8% increase in state pension.
This will only make the generational conflict deeper and wider.
I'm not sure about your first paragraph; it is often mentioned on here, but I'm yet to see the evidence.
I'm on a 'gold-plated' public sector (Civil Service) final pension salary scheme. I was well-paid, retiring on a salary of c. £82K after 38 years service, a couple of years ago. But my pension, generous though it is, is nowhere near £60K - much nearer £20K. I'm not complaining at all, quite happy with it, but I do wonder whether non-public sector workers have an exaggerated view of the value of public sector pensions. You would have to be retiring on a salary well over £120k to get anywhere near £60k in pension; there's not many in that category.
I've just had a pension review, actually. I knew my public sector pension was better than my previous private sector pension, but I'm slightly shocked just how much better. Most private sector workers do not have final salary pensions. The IFA I talked to told me that the average private sector workers amassed a pension pot of around £50k by retirement. Whereas if you work as, say, a hospital admin worker - or some other not desperately well paid public sector job - for 40 years you can amass a pension with a trade in value in excess of three quarters of a million pounds.
Yep. I tried to calculate the benefit once and I reckoned add 40% on the salary and you're getting close. We see many public sector retirees who have lump sum and income entitlements (always index-linked and with death benefits) that you would need over £1m to purchase in the real world. But, hey, let's pay the public sector more.
PS pensions are good but generally the pay rates certainly used to be less than in the private sector. Also remember the monthly contributions were compulsory if you didn't opt out after the first couple of years or so. I'm very content with my arrangements but the idea that we have lived lives of idleness and luxury since the mid-70s is frankly rubbish. Like most generations we had our fair share of hardship. I well recall my first London flat - £15k - with strict borrowing rules and high interest rates. I lived hand to mouth for a good few years just to cope. I had bare floorboards for the first 3 years - not the varnished/sealed jobs of these days - I could not afford carpet. All of my furniture was begged, borrowed or second-hand. And I was by no means alone.
I'm reading Dominic Sandbrook's "Seasons in the Sun: the Battle for Britain 1974-1979" at the moment and my goodness does it sound shit.
I pity anyone who has to live through that.
The 70's were brilliant, pay rise every month , cheap beer , great music , will admit looking back the fashion was dodgy. We had the times of our lives and far superior to the shithole the country is just now..
I have just done a long tour of far north Scotland - Ullapool, Assynt, Cape Wrath, Caithness and the Orkneys. Much of it looked magnificent in generally fine weather,; tho I will confess John o Groats (where we mostly stayed) is a toilet (albeit with majestic views of the Orkneys)
Why do the Scots in that corner of Scotland INSIST on building houses in a dung-brown or birdshit-grey colour? Like they want them to be ugly. The far, flat north east of Scotland is never gonna be a beauty - unlike the Highlands and Islands - but it would be much improved if everyone just painted their houses white, like the crofts of old. Or even pink. Tartan?
Anything would be better than the colour of untreated sewage you get now. It is most perplexing
I've often thought the same. And it's not just the North East. You can tell when you cross the border with the sudden arrival of houses covered in tiny stones (must be a word for this?). I'm sure they resist the weather, but good grief they're ugly. OTOH, the heavy stone fronted villas and tenements of the older parts of Scottish towns - I'm thinking in particular of Glasgow and Edinburgh, but you find them everywhere - are heartbreakingly lovely.
Ireland had a similar issue with ugly colour crofts everywhere. They had a national campaign to paint them all bright colours and now it is a national quirk.
Yes, I've noticed that! - without realising why
Years ago when you went to Ireland the rural parts could be lovely, yet partly ruined by hideous dung-brown or grotty grey houses. Pointlessly depressing
Now when you go there all the village centres and even the rural houses are much jollier, with bright vivid colours or serene whitewash. It helps enormously
Didn't make it to Halkirk, but it would be quite hard for any town to be uglier than Wick. My God. Wick!
It is the epitome of grey-brown-council-housey-sludgey-crumbling awfulness. It would be improved by total demolition and conversion into the world's biggest scrapyard. At least that would be striking
But I don't wanna be down on Scotland or even Caithness coz I had a fab time and the people were REALLY friendly everywhere. And most of far north Scotland is beauteous
I even enjoyed the totally pissed trio of Scots lasses (age 20-40) on the last Easyjet Inverness flight back to Luton who agressively chatted up half the men at the back of the plane, sang several songs, then when they landed let out a big cheer and said "hey we're in fucking LONDON!!!!" and then one said "And we're in England so we don't have to wear our fucking masks!" - and they all ripped off their masks and did a jig
This idea that now is not the time to raise taxes on those who work is odd. For the last 18 months or so working people have been supported by furlough. Others who worked from home in secure jobs have built up savings.
Now the bills have to be paid. Not just for Covid but for social care and everything else.
So everyone will have to pay: workers - and I include those past pensionable age who are still working - and those with savings and assets. And all generations will have to pay because (a) all generations benefited from the support for the economy; (b) all benefit one way or another from public services; and (c) all benefit from social care - either now (directly) or by not having to pay for parents or by not losing a possible inheritance or directly in the future.
It won't be nice. But no group should be immune from paying the bills. Far too much special pleading going on.
NI is an odd choice because it is in effect a tax but only on some. So it should be extended to all who are working if it is going to be raised.
It is not the workers pleading! The solution being proposed, as you point out in the final paragraph, is that only workers under 65 pay.
There is no additional tax being proposed for workers over 65. There are no new wealth taxes being proposed. Pensioners are also getting 8% increase on state pension vs wage freezes for most workers.
Saying that is unfair on workers under 65 is not special pleading, divisive or odd, just standing up for basic fairness.
Rubbish, people retiring now do not get the state pension till 67 and rising and so many over 65's will pay the NI.
This idea that now is not the time to raise taxes on those who work is odd. For the last 18 months or so working people have been supported by furlough. Others who worked from home in secure jobs have built up savings.
Now the bills have to be paid. Not just for Covid but for social care and everything else.
So everyone will have to pay: workers - and I include those past pensionable age who are still working - and those with savings and assets. And all generations will have to pay because (a) all generations benefited from the support for the economy; (b) all benefit one way or another from public services; and (c) all benefit from social care - either now (directly) or by not having to pay for parents or by not losing a possible inheritance or directly in the future.
It won't be nice. But no group should be immune from paying the bills. Far too much special pleading going on.
NI is an odd choice because it is in effect a tax but only on some. So it should be extended to all who are working if it is going to be raised.
What a load of rubbish. The economy was shut down to primarily benefit older people who are most at risk and to protect the NHS which is another service that is used mostly by older people.
Businesses like your daughter's was sacrificed to protect older people and now it's time for older people to bear the cost of that shutdown. A stat posted here showed that 16% of pensioners have earnings in the higher rate tax bracket, that's a huge number of people to target for more tax before we even think about putting up taxes on working age people.
The country is currently being fleeced by the generation above who have decided they want an easy life and the best way to get that is to claim a larger share of the economic pie for themselves and if they have to impoverish working age people then that's a bonus.
You ducked out of paying for your parents care, you're ducking out of paying for your own care, you've piled on cost after cost on young people, you bought all the property then accused young people of being incapable of saving all while charging us ridiculous rents on crap flats that aren't fit for animals to live in.
Your generation has a lot to answer for, you've ruined the legacy of what your parents left behind and now you're trying to take away any chance my generation has of leaving behind a better world for our kids. You destroyed the climate, made the rich much richer, the poor much poorer and now won't pay for the bill that was accumulated to protect your generation from dying. It wasn't 20-50 year olds dying of this.
Solidarity, comrade. Welcome to the barricades.
(I joke, I have a lot of sympathy with your anger and the points you make.)
Honestly, is the kind of stuff that makes me want to vote for Labour just to fuck with the old wankers but then I remember Labour are also part of the gerontocracy and will do exactly the same as the Tories because they want the votes.
So whoever gave Scotland control over income tax, created a bigger mess by accidently making Income Tax unchangeable.
Oops, I bet Osbourne didn't think about that when he did it.
When Scot Nats pointed out the partial devolving of income tax powers was filled with nonsensical procedural issues that would cause problems in the future they were denigrated as being "too scared" to accept the powers rather than being lauded as clear sighted visionaries.
Well they've done a grand job of complicating things:
For Scots....
Have they? They've smoothed out the function of tax take against income, which is always a laudable thing.
Not very nice for pensioners in Scotland receiving more than £44,000 pa, they have to pay nasty 41%. In England they only pay 20% up to £50,000
The idea that given all the expenses of Covid, the NHS and social care, let alone anything else, we can avoid raising taxes on working people, as @MaxPB seems to want, is for the birds.
Taxes will have to rise and all will have to pay. That's all there is to it. All these demands for special exclusions is just self-interested nonsense.
Should we be raising taxes only on working age people?
"1% on NI" is a 2% tax rise on the employed, and a 0% tax rise on pensioners.
1%, 2% or whatever on income tax is a tax paid by all.
I did put forward the typically centre moderate view of 2% on income tax on here last night (I think). So workers and pensioners both contribute.
2% hike in income tax isn't moderate. It's almost Corbynite.
I'm absolutely disgusted with the Tory leadership. I campaigned hard in 2019 and believed the no tax rise manifesto promise. Fiscal drag is the order of the day.
In fairness it was not contemplated in 2019 that the government would spend more than £400bn on helping the economy cope with an 18 month pandemic which has devastated tax revenues as well. Politicians are all too keen to argue that circumstances have changed when breaking a promise but I struggle to think of a government that has a better base for such an argument than this one.
Tories should stand for sound money, careful management of the country's accounts and limitations on the role of the state. In some circumstances that requires more spending and thus, responsibly, more taxes, than others. This is such a time. I am more worried about having stable and sustainable public finances than current tax rates.
Now is not the time to put taxes up on working people. I don't care about my personal situation, an extra £1.6k per year in tax between myself and my wife is unfortunate but it doesn't really make a big difference to us. There will be millions of middle income people across the country that will find that kind of income cut very, very difficult to take.
Using my dad as an example again, his net income in retirement is about £60.5k. A working age person with an equivalent gross has a net income of £55k. In what world does it make sense that my dad, with no responsibilities, no kids, no mortgage and no real costs pays £5.5k less in tax than a working age person who will have a mortgage/rent, kids, possible nursery fees, school expenses, commuting costs etc...
The whole system is needs rethinking. Why is anyone in the higher rate tax bracket getting 100% of the state pension? In what world does that make sense?!
With respect a net pensioner income of 60K plus is a million miles from most pensioners income
It is not the average, but it is not particularly unusual either, especially for those from the public sector final salary schemes.
Poor pensioners are still better off than poor workers. Rich pensioners are better off than rich workers. They are also richer than the workers are forecast to get to when they are retired.
Yet new taxes go on workers, most public (and private) sector workers get a pay freeze. The retired get no new taxes and 8% increase in state pension.
This will only make the generational conflict deeper and wider.
I'm not sure about your first paragraph; it is often mentioned on here, but I'm yet to see the evidence.
I'm on a 'gold-plated' public sector (Civil Service) final pension salary scheme. I was well-paid, retiring on a salary of c. £82K after 38 years service, a couple of years ago. But my pension, generous though it is, is nowhere near £60K - much nearer £20K. I'm not complaining at all, quite happy with it, but I do wonder whether non-public sector workers have an exaggerated view of the value of public sector pensions. You would have to be retiring on a salary well over £120k to get anywhere near £60k in pension; there's not many in that category.
I've just had a pension review, actually. I knew my public sector pension was better than my previous private sector pension, but I'm slightly shocked just how much better. Most private sector workers do not have final salary pensions. The IFA I talked to told me that the average private sector workers amassed a pension pot of around £50k by retirement. Whereas if you work as, say, a hospital admin worker - or some other not desperately well paid public sector job - for 40 years you can amass a pension with a trade in value in excess of three quarters of a million pounds.
Yep. I tried to calculate the benefit once and I reckoned add 40% on the salary and you're getting close. We see many public sector retirees who have lump sum and income entitlements (always index-linked and with death benefits) that you would need over £1m to purchase in the real world. But, hey, let's pay the public sector more.
PS pensions are good but generally the pay rates certainly used to be less than in the private sector. Also remember the monthly contributions were compulsory if you didn't opt out after the first couple of years or so. I'm very content with my arrangements but the idea that we have lived lives of idleness and luxury since the mid-70s is frankly rubbish. Like most generations we had our fair share of hardship. I well recall my first London flat - £15k - with strict borrowing rules and high interest rates. I lived hand to mouth for a good few years just to cope. I had bare floorboards for the first 3 years - not the varnished/sealed jobs of these days - I could not afford carpet. All of my furniture was begged, borrowed or second-hand. And I was by no means alone.
I'm reading Dominic Sandbrook's "Seasons in the Sun: the Battle for Britain 1974-1979" at the moment and my goodness does it sound shit.
I pity anyone who has to live through that.
The 70's were brilliant, pay rise every month , cheap beer , great music , will admit looking back the fashion was dodgy. We had the times of our lives and far superior to the shithole the country is just now..
I have just done a long tour of far north Scotland - Ullapool, Assynt, Cape Wrath, Caithness and the Orkneys. Much of it looked magnificent in generally fine weather,; tho I will confess John o Groats (where we mostly stayed) is a toilet (albeit with majestic views of the Orkneys)
Why do the Scots in that corner of Scotland INSIST on building houses in a dung-brown or birdshit-grey colour? Like they want them to be ugly. The far, flat north east of Scotland is never gonna be a beauty - unlike the Highlands and Islands - but it would be much improved if everyone just painted their houses white, like the crofts of old. Or even pink. Tartan?
Anything would be better than the colour of untreated sewage you get now. It is most perplexing
I've often thought the same. And it's not just the North East. You can tell when you cross the border with the sudden arrival of houses covered in tiny stones (must be a word for this?). I'm sure they resist the weather, but good grief they're ugly. OTOH, the heavy stone fronted villas and tenements of the older parts of Scottish towns - I'm thinking in particular of Glasgow and Edinburgh, but you find them everywhere - are heartbreakingly lovely.
Ireland had a similar issue with ugly colour crofts everywhere. They had a national campaign to paint them all bright colours and now it is a national quirk.
Yes, I've noticed that! - without realising why
Years ago when you went to Ireland the rural parts could be lovely, yet partly ruined by hideous dung-brown or grotty grey houses. Pointlessly depressing
Now when you go there all the village centres and even the rural houses are much jollier, with bright vivid colours or serene whitewash. It helps enormously
Didn't make it to Halkirk, but it would be quite hard for any town to be uglier than Wick. My God. Wick!
It is the epitome of grey-brown-council-housey-sludgey-crumbling awfulness. It would be improved by total demolition and conversion into the world's biggest scrapyard. At least that would be striking
But I don't wanna be down on Scotland or even Caithness coz I had a fab time and the people were REALLY friendly everywhere. And most of far north Scotland is beauteous
I even enjoyed the totally pissed trio of Scots lasses (age 20-40) on the last Easyjet Inverness flight back to Luton who agressively chatted up half the men at the back of the plane, sang several songs, then when they landed let out a big cheer and said "hey we're in fucking LONDON!!!!" and then one said "And we're in England so we don't have to wear our fucking masks!" - and they all ripped off their masks and did a jig
Did you see Pulteneytown in Wick? The Telford quarter.
I know Covid's expensive at the moment and all, but could long term endemicity actually end up improving the nation's finances a bit ?
Its certainly going to change them. The property market is on fire as people try and move to the sticks / get somewhere with space to live & work. Suspect the halcyon days of vastly priced rabbit hutches stacked in close proximity to the train station are behind us.
Changes to how people live and work only come along once in every x number of generations. Covid really could be the end of the mass commute into town era that's been going since the late 19th century.
And yet, bizarrely, the NYC property market has roared back to life - including the inner city/skyscrapers. London tends to follow NYC pretty closely
I wonder if we seeing generational churn rather than secular change. Oldsters are moving out of cities, but some younger people are keen to get back in.
See my earlier comment about the dawning, nascent realisation of the sheer costs of working. If rents/prices fall a bit in London, then it is feasible to live where you can walk/ cycle to work, and eat in your own home at a reasonable hour. Rather than pay thousands, and waste hours, travelling for the privilege of being too knackered to cook. Or do anything at weekends other than sleep and recover. So you end up paying for cleaning, simple repairs, takeaway, eating out etc., etc.
Yes, very true. The centre/inner centre of cities might actually become MORE appealing as the suburbs and commuter towns fall away. Why live in Guildford, a town designed for commuting, if you barely ever commute? Especially if, with all the money you save from not commuting, you can have a nice flat in Islington or Bayswater near to all the attractions of a World City? Some will move closer in to the West End, some will move away entirely to Herefordshire, Northumberland and Portugal for bigger gardens, or guaranteed sunshine
It's complex and hard to predict. There will be flows and contraflows
The changes wrought by Covid - and also AI, and digitisation, and remote working (which would have happened anyway, but are now much accelerated), are so complicated and confounding it is impossible to confidently predict what they will do to property.
There are many conflicting forces. It is certainly much too simplistic to simply say: Oh, everyone will want to move to a more rural house with a garden.
Suburbs are not the same thing as commuter towns either.
Spot on, staying with examples in that part of the world, I think it is the likes of New Malden or Morden that are most at risk and overpriced from wfh. Guildford or Richmond still would have a raison d'etre with enough going on locally and a very different vibe to living in central London.
Basically people will want to move to Con/LD marginals around the M25!
Guildford is unlikely to lose its appeal as a place to live - set between the surrey hills and south downs, and 45 minutes to central london on the train.
I agree that it is the dormitory suburbs in Zone 3-6 that will probably suffer. Much of the house price inflation of the last 2 decades was through converting family housing to shared housing, with the public realm and infrastructure not keeping pace with the rise in population.
The idea that given all the expenses of Covid, the NHS and social care, let alone anything else, we can avoid raising taxes on working people, as @MaxPB seems to want, is for the birds.
Taxes will have to rise and all will have to pay. That's all there is to it. All these demands for special exclusions is just self-interested nonsense.
Should we be raising taxes only on working age people?
"1% on NI" is a 2% tax rise on the employed, and a 0% tax rise on pensioners.
1%, 2% or whatever on income tax is a tax paid by all.
I did put forward the typically centre moderate view of 2% on income tax on here last night (I think). So workers and pensioners both contribute.
2% hike in income tax isn't moderate. It's almost Corbynite.
I'm absolutely disgusted with the Tory leadership. I campaigned hard in 2019 and believed the no tax rise manifesto promise. Fiscal drag is the order of the day.
Rishi has already tried fiscal drag. No increases to personal allowance or higher rate threshold until 2026. Will drag lots of people into the higher rate threshold by then especially if inflation accelerates.
But that will only raise so much...
He's also frozen CGT thresholds.
If he wants a wealth tax, the best and easiest to collect is the Proportional Property Tax, in my view with a supplement for people who refuse to improve the energy efficiency of their own homes. No reason why that can't be set to a % of property value a little higher than the 0.48% proposed.
The actual cost of social care improvements is I think around £5-10bn a year, which is not really that much extra.
The idea that given all the expenses of Covid, the NHS and social care, let alone anything else, we can avoid raising taxes on working people, as @MaxPB seems to want, is for the birds.
Taxes will have to rise and all will have to pay. That's all there is to it. All these demands for special exclusions is just self-interested nonsense.
Should we be raising taxes only on working age people?
"1% on NI" is a 2% tax rise on the employed, and a 0% tax rise on pensioners.
1%, 2% or whatever on income tax is a tax paid by all.
I did put forward the typically centre moderate view of 2% on income tax on here last night (I think). So workers and pensioners both contribute.
2% hike in income tax isn't moderate. It's almost Corbynite.
I'm absolutely disgusted with the Tory leadership. I campaigned hard in 2019 and believed the no tax rise manifesto promise. Fiscal drag is the order of the day.
In fairness it was not contemplated in 2019 that the government would spend more than £400bn on helping the economy cope with an 18 month pandemic which has devastated tax revenues as well. Politicians are all too keen to argue that circumstances have changed when breaking a promise but I struggle to think of a government that has a better base for such an argument than this one.
Tories should stand for sound money, careful management of the country's accounts and limitations on the role of the state. In some circumstances that requires more spending and thus, responsibly, more taxes, than others. This is such a time. I am more worried about having stable and sustainable public finances than current tax rates.
Now is not the time to put taxes up on working people. I don't care about my personal situation, an extra £1.6k per year in tax between myself and my wife is unfortunate but it doesn't really make a big difference to us. There will be millions of middle income people across the country that will find that kind of income cut very, very difficult to take.
Using my dad as an example again, his net income in retirement is about £60.5k. A working age person with an equivalent gross has a net income of £55k. In what world does it make sense that my dad, with no responsibilities, no kids, no mortgage and no real costs pays £5.5k less in tax than a working age person who will have a mortgage/rent, kids, possible nursery fees, school expenses, commuting costs etc...
The whole system is needs rethinking. Why is anyone in the higher rate tax bracket getting 100% of the state pension? In what world does that make sense?!
With respect a net pensioner income of 60K plus is a million miles from most pensioners income
It is not the average, but it is not particularly unusual either, especially for those from the public sector final salary schemes.
Poor pensioners are still better off than poor workers. Rich pensioners are better off than rich workers. They are also richer than the workers are forecast to get to when they are retired.
Yet new taxes go on workers, most public (and private) sector workers get a pay freeze. The retired get no new taxes and 8% increase in state pension.
This will only make the generational conflict deeper and wider.
I'm not sure about your first paragraph; it is often mentioned on here, but I'm yet to see the evidence.
I'm on a 'gold-plated' public sector (Civil Service) final pension salary scheme. I was well-paid, retiring on a salary of c. £82K after 38 years service, a couple of years ago. But my pension, generous though it is, is nowhere near £60K - much nearer £20K. I'm not complaining at all, quite happy with it, but I do wonder whether non-public sector workers have an exaggerated view of the value of public sector pensions. You would have to be retiring on a salary well over £120k to get anywhere near £60k in pension; there's not many in that category.
I've just had a pension review, actually. I knew my public sector pension was better than my previous private sector pension, but I'm slightly shocked just how much better. Most private sector workers do not have final salary pensions. The IFA I talked to told me that the average private sector workers amassed a pension pot of around £50k by retirement. Whereas if you work as, say, a hospital admin worker - or some other not desperately well paid public sector job - for 40 years you can amass a pension with a trade in value in excess of three quarters of a million pounds.
Yep. I tried to calculate the benefit once and I reckoned add 40% on the salary and you're getting close. We see many public sector retirees who have lump sum and income entitlements (always index-linked and with death benefits) that you would need over £1m to purchase in the real world. But, hey, let's pay the public sector more.
PS pensions are good but generally the pay rates certainly used to be less than in the private sector. Also remember the monthly contributions were compulsory if you didn't opt out after the first couple of years or so. I'm very content with my arrangements but the idea that we have lived lives of idleness and luxury since the mid-70s is frankly rubbish. Like most generations we had our fair share of hardship. I well recall my first London flat - £15k - with strict borrowing rules and high interest rates. I lived hand to mouth for a good few years just to cope. I had bare floorboards for the first 3 years - not the varnished/sealed jobs of these days - I could not afford carpet. All of my furniture was begged, borrowed or second-hand. And I was by no means alone.
I'm reading Dominic Sandbrook's "Seasons in the Sun: the Battle for Britain 1974-1979" at the moment and my goodness does it sound shit.
I pity anyone who has to live through that.
The 70's were brilliant, pay rise every month , cheap beer , great music , will admit looking back the fashion was dodgy. We had the times of our lives and far superior to the shithole the country is just now..
Seem to recall this being the decade my family, and our neighbours, got a car, indoor toilets, central heating, colour telly, washing machine, gas fire, etc. They were unusual in 1969. Ubiquitous by 1979. Or maybe that's just us. The rest of the nation may have been living in collectivist penury.
and of course the 70s gave us Findus Crispy Pancakes.
So whoever gave Scotland control over income tax, created a bigger mess by accidently making Income Tax unchangeable.
Oops, I bet Osbourne didn't think about that when he did it.
When Scot Nats pointed out the partial devolving of income tax powers was filled with nonsensical procedural issues that would cause problems in the future they were denigrated as being "too scared" to accept the powers rather than being lauded as clear sighted visionaries.
Well they've done a grand job of complicating things:
For Scots....
Have they? They've smoothed out the function of tax take against income, which is always a laudable thing.
Not very nice for pensioners in Scotland receiving more than £44,000 pa, they have to pay nasty 41%. In England they only pay 20% up to £50,000
The idea that given all the expenses of Covid, the NHS and social care, let alone anything else, we can avoid raising taxes on working people, as @MaxPB seems to want, is for the birds.
Taxes will have to rise and all will have to pay. That's all there is to it. All these demands for special exclusions is just self-interested nonsense.
Should we be raising taxes only on working age people?
"1% on NI" is a 2% tax rise on the employed, and a 0% tax rise on pensioners.
1%, 2% or whatever on income tax is a tax paid by all.
I did put forward the typically centre moderate view of 2% on income tax on here last night (I think). So workers and pensioners both contribute.
2% hike in income tax isn't moderate. It's almost Corbynite.
I'm absolutely disgusted with the Tory leadership. I campaigned hard in 2019 and believed the no tax rise manifesto promise. Fiscal drag is the order of the day.
In fairness it was not contemplated in 2019 that the government would spend more than £400bn on helping the economy cope with an 18 month pandemic which has devastated tax revenues as well. Politicians are all too keen to argue that circumstances have changed when breaking a promise but I struggle to think of a government that has a better base for such an argument than this one.
Tories should stand for sound money, careful management of the country's accounts and limitations on the role of the state. In some circumstances that requires more spending and thus, responsibly, more taxes, than others. This is such a time. I am more worried about having stable and sustainable public finances than current tax rates.
Now is not the time to put taxes up on working people. I don't care about my personal situation, an extra £1.6k per year in tax between myself and my wife is unfortunate but it doesn't really make a big difference to us. There will be millions of middle income people across the country that will find that kind of income cut very, very difficult to take.
Using my dad as an example again, his net income in retirement is about £60.5k. A working age person with an equivalent gross has a net income of £55k. In what world does it make sense that my dad, with no responsibilities, no kids, no mortgage and no real costs pays £5.5k less in tax than a working age person who will have a mortgage/rent, kids, possible nursery fees, school expenses, commuting costs etc...
The whole system is needs rethinking. Why is anyone in the higher rate tax bracket getting 100% of the state pension? In what world does that make sense?!
With respect a net pensioner income of 60K plus is a million miles from most pensioners income
It is not the average, but it is not particularly unusual either, especially for those from the public sector final salary schemes.
Poor pensioners are still better off than poor workers. Rich pensioners are better off than rich workers. They are also richer than the workers are forecast to get to when they are retired.
Yet new taxes go on workers, most public (and private) sector workers get a pay freeze. The retired get no new taxes and 8% increase in state pension.
This will only make the generational conflict deeper and wider.
I'm not sure about your first paragraph; it is often mentioned on here, but I'm yet to see the evidence.
I'm on a 'gold-plated' public sector (Civil Service) final pension salary scheme. I was well-paid, retiring on a salary of c. £82K after 38 years service, a couple of years ago. But my pension, generous though it is, is nowhere near £60K - much nearer £20K. I'm not complaining at all, quite happy with it, but I do wonder whether non-public sector workers have an exaggerated view of the value of public sector pensions. You would have to be retiring on a salary well over £120k to get anywhere near £60k in pension; there's not many in that category.
I've just had a pension review, actually. I knew my public sector pension was better than my previous private sector pension, but I'm slightly shocked just how much better. Most private sector workers do not have final salary pensions. The IFA I talked to told me that the average private sector workers amassed a pension pot of around £50k by retirement. Whereas if you work as, say, a hospital admin worker - or some other not desperately well paid public sector job - for 40 years you can amass a pension with a trade in value in excess of three quarters of a million pounds.
Yep. I tried to calculate the benefit once and I reckoned add 40% on the salary and you're getting close. We see many public sector retirees who have lump sum and income entitlements (always index-linked and with death benefits) that you would need over £1m to purchase in the real world. But, hey, let's pay the public sector more.
PS pensions are good but generally the pay rates certainly used to be less than in the private sector. Also remember the monthly contributions were compulsory if you didn't opt out after the first couple of years or so. I'm very content with my arrangements but the idea that we have lived lives of idleness and luxury since the mid-70s is frankly rubbish. Like most generations we had our fair share of hardship. I well recall my first London flat - £15k - with strict borrowing rules and high interest rates. I lived hand to mouth for a good few years just to cope. I had bare floorboards for the first 3 years - not the varnished/sealed jobs of these days - I could not afford carpet. All of my furniture was begged, borrowed or second-hand. And I was by no means alone.
I'm reading Dominic Sandbrook's "Seasons in the Sun: the Battle for Britain 1974-1979" at the moment and my goodness does it sound shit.
I pity anyone who has to live through that.
The 70's were brilliant, pay rise every month , cheap beer , great music , will admit looking back the fashion was dodgy. We had the times of our lives and far superior to the shithole the country is just now..
I have just done a long tour of far north Scotland - Ullapool, Assynt, Cape Wrath, Caithness and the Orkneys. Much of it looked magnificent in generally fine weather,; tho I will confess John o Groats (where we mostly stayed) is a toilet (albeit with majestic views of the Orkneys)
Why do the Scots in that corner of Scotland INSIST on building houses in a dung-brown or birdshit-grey colour? Like they want them to be ugly. The far, flat north east of Scotland is never gonna be a beauty - unlike the Highlands and Islands - but it would be much improved if everyone just painted their houses white, like the crofts of old. Or even pink. Tartan?
Anything would be better than the colour of untreated sewage you get now. It is most perplexing
I've often thought the same. And it's not just the North East. You can tell when you cross the border with the sudden arrival of houses covered in tiny stones (must be a word for this?). I'm sure they resist the weather, but good grief they're ugly. OTOH, the heavy stone fronted villas and tenements of the older parts of Scottish towns - I'm thinking in particular of Glasgow and Edinburgh, but you find them everywhere - are heartbreakingly lovely.
You see some shitty houses south of the border , far worse than harled ones.
I know Covid's expensive at the moment and all, but could long term endemicity actually end up improving the nation's finances a bit ?
Its certainly going to change them. The property market is on fire as people try and move to the sticks / get somewhere with space to live & work. Suspect the halcyon days of vastly priced rabbit hutches stacked in close proximity to the train station are behind us.
Changes to how people live and work only come along once in every x number of generations. Covid really could be the end of the mass commute into town era that's been going since the late 19th century.
And yet, bizarrely, the NYC property market has roared back to life - including the inner city/skyscrapers. London tends to follow NYC pretty closely
I wonder if we seeing generational churn rather than secular change. Oldsters are moving out of cities, but some younger people are keen to get back in.
See my earlier comment about the dawning, nascent realisation of the sheer costs of working. If rents/prices fall a bit in London, then it is feasible to live where you can walk/ cycle to work, and eat in your own home at a reasonable hour. Rather than pay thousands, and waste hours, travelling for the privilege of being too knackered to cook. Or do anything at weekends other than sleep and recover. So you end up paying for cleaning, simple repairs, takeaway, eating out etc., etc.
Yes, very true. The centre/inner centre of cities might actually become MORE appealing as the suburbs and commuter towns fall away. Why live in Guildford, a town designed for commuting, if you barely ever commute? Especially if, with all the money you save from not commuting, you can have a nice flat in Islington or Bayswater near to all the attractions of a World City? Some will move closer in to the West End, some will move away entirely to Herefordshire, Northumberland and Portugal for bigger gardens, or guaranteed sunshine
It's complex and hard to predict. There will be flows and contraflows
My girlfriend has a flat just near the Greenwich Foot Tunnel (you can see me running through it on my insta, to the sound of my one celebrity friend, Andy C’s ‘Valley of the Shadows’!) - the price has stagnated/dropped but I feel you’re never go wrong being in Zone1, 2 mins from the Thames even if wfh took over
Greenwich Foot Tunnel is in Zone 2.
Almost zone 3 now I look it up. Oh well still handy for the city
Two DLR stations flank the foot tunnel.
Island Gardens DLR is in Zone 2, while Cutty Sark DLR is in both Zones 2 and 3.
The idea that given all the expenses of Covid, the NHS and social care, let alone anything else, we can avoid raising taxes on working people, as @MaxPB seems to want, is for the birds.
Taxes will have to rise and all will have to pay. That's all there is to it. All these demands for special exclusions is just self-interested nonsense.
Should we be raising taxes only on working age people?
"1% on NI" is a 2% tax rise on the employed, and a 0% tax rise on pensioners.
1%, 2% or whatever on income tax is a tax paid by all.
I did put forward the typically centre moderate view of 2% on income tax on here last night (I think). So workers and pensioners both contribute.
2% hike in income tax isn't moderate. It's almost Corbynite.
I'm absolutely disgusted with the Tory leadership. I campaigned hard in 2019 and believed the no tax rise manifesto promise. Fiscal drag is the order of the day.
In fairness it was not contemplated in 2019 that the government would spend more than £400bn on helping the economy cope with an 18 month pandemic which has devastated tax revenues as well. Politicians are all too keen to argue that circumstances have changed when breaking a promise but I struggle to think of a government that has a better base for such an argument than this one.
Tories should stand for sound money, careful management of the country's accounts and limitations on the role of the state. In some circumstances that requires more spending and thus, responsibly, more taxes, than others. This is such a time. I am more worried about having stable and sustainable public finances than current tax rates.
Now is not the time to put taxes up on working people. I don't care about my personal situation, an extra £1.6k per year in tax between myself and my wife is unfortunate but it doesn't really make a big difference to us. There will be millions of middle income people across the country that will find that kind of income cut very, very difficult to take.
Using my dad as an example again, his net income in retirement is about £60.5k. A working age person with an equivalent gross has a net income of £55k. In what world does it make sense that my dad, with no responsibilities, no kids, no mortgage and no real costs pays £5.5k less in tax than a working age person who will have a mortgage/rent, kids, possible nursery fees, school expenses, commuting costs etc...
The whole system is needs rethinking. Why is anyone in the higher rate tax bracket getting 100% of the state pension? In what world does that make sense?!
With respect a net pensioner income of 60K plus is a million miles from most pensioners income
It is not the average, but it is not particularly unusual either, especially for those from the public sector final salary schemes.
Poor pensioners are still better off than poor workers. Rich pensioners are better off than rich workers. They are also richer than the workers are forecast to get to when they are retired.
Yet new taxes go on workers, most public (and private) sector workers get a pay freeze. The retired get no new taxes and 8% increase in state pension.
This will only make the generational conflict deeper and wider.
I'm not sure about your first paragraph; it is often mentioned on here, but I'm yet to see the evidence.
I'm on a 'gold-plated' public sector (Civil Service) final pension salary scheme. I was well-paid, retiring on a salary of c. £82K after 38 years service, a couple of years ago. But my pension, generous though it is, is nowhere near £60K - much nearer £20K. I'm not complaining at all, quite happy with it, but I do wonder whether non-public sector workers have an exaggerated view of the value of public sector pensions. You would have to be retiring on a salary well over £120k to get anywhere near £60k in pension; there's not many in that category.
I've just had a pension review, actually. I knew my public sector pension was better than my previous private sector pension, but I'm slightly shocked just how much better. Most private sector workers do not have final salary pensions. The IFA I talked to told me that the average private sector workers amassed a pension pot of around £50k by retirement. Whereas if you work as, say, a hospital admin worker - or some other not desperately well paid public sector job - for 40 years you can amass a pension with a trade in value in excess of three quarters of a million pounds.
Yep. I tried to calculate the benefit once and I reckoned add 40% on the salary and you're getting close. We see many public sector retirees who have lump sum and income entitlements (always index-linked and with death benefits) that you would need over £1m to purchase in the real world. But, hey, let's pay the public sector more.
PS pensions are good but generally the pay rates certainly used to be less than in the private sector. Also remember the monthly contributions were compulsory if you didn't opt out after the first couple of years or so. I'm very content with my arrangements but the idea that we have lived lives of idleness and luxury since the mid-70s is frankly rubbish. Like most generations we had our fair share of hardship. I well recall my first London flat - £15k - with strict borrowing rules and high interest rates. I lived hand to mouth for a good few years just to cope. I had bare floorboards for the first 3 years - not the varnished/sealed jobs of these days - I could not afford carpet. All of my furniture was begged, borrowed or second-hand. And I was by no means alone.
I'm reading Dominic Sandbrook's "Seasons in the Sun: the Battle for Britain 1974-1979" at the moment and my goodness does it sound shit.
I pity anyone who has to live through that.
The 70's were brilliant, pay rise every month , cheap beer , great music , will admit looking back the fashion was dodgy. We had the times of our lives and far superior to the shithole the country is just now..
I have just done a long tour of far north Scotland - Ullapool, Assynt, Cape Wrath, Caithness and the Orkneys. Much of it looked magnificent in generally fine weather,; tho I will confess John o Groats (where we mostly stayed) is a toilet (albeit with majestic views of the Orkneys)
Why do the Scots in that corner of Scotland INSIST on building houses in a dung-brown or birdshit-grey colour? Like they want them to be ugly. The far, flat north east of Scotland is never gonna be a beauty - unlike the Highlands and Islands - but it would be much improved if everyone just painted their houses white, like the crofts of old. Or even pink. Tartan?
Anything would be better than the colour of untreated sewage you get now. It is most perplexing
Ahhh... A tour of LibDem constituencies. Are St Albans, Richmond and Oxford next?
This idea that now is not the time to raise taxes on those who work is odd. For the last 18 months or so working people have been supported by furlough. Others who worked from home in secure jobs have built up savings.
Now the bills have to be paid. Not just for Covid but for social care and everything else.
So everyone will have to pay: workers - and I include those past pensionable age who are still working - and those with savings and assets. And all generations will have to pay because (a) all generations benefited from the support for the economy; (b) all benefit one way or another from public services; and (c) all benefit from social care - either now (directly) or by not having to pay for parents or by not losing a possible inheritance or directly in the future.
It won't be nice. But no group should be immune from paying the bills. Far too much special pleading going on.
NI is an odd choice because it is in effect a tax but only on some. So it should be extended to all who are working if it is going to be raised.
What a load of rubbish. The economy was shut down to primarily benefit older people who are most at risk and to protect the NHS which is another service that is used mostly by older people.
Businesses like your daughter's was sacrificed to protect older people and now it's time for older people to bear the cost of that shutdown. A stat posted here showed that 16% of pensioners have earnings in the higher rate tax bracket, that's a huge number of people to target for more tax before we even think about putting up taxes on working age people.
The country is currently being fleeced by the generation above who have decided they want an easy life and the best way to get that is to claim a larger share of the economic pie for themselves and if they have to impoverish working age people then that's a bonus.
You ducked out of paying for your parents care, you're ducking out of paying for your own care, you've piled on cost after cost on young people, you bought all the property then accused young people of being incapable of saving all while charging us ridiculous rents on crap flats that aren't fit for animals to live in.
Your generation has a lot to answer for, you've ruined the legacy of what your parents left behind and now you're trying to take away any chance my generation has of leaving behind a better world for our kids. You destroyed the climate, made the rich much richer, the poor much poorer and now won't pay for the bill that was accumulated to protect your generation from dying. It wasn't 20-50 year olds dying of this.
I think you need a lie down Max. You shouldn't get too worked up before the cricket on Sunday, that will provide you with enough stress!
So whoever gave Scotland control over income tax, created a bigger mess by accidently making Income Tax unchangeable.
Oops, I bet Osbourne didn't think about that when he did it.
When Scot Nats pointed out the partial devolving of income tax powers was filled with nonsensical procedural issues that would cause problems in the future they were denigrated as being "too scared" to accept the powers rather than being lauded as clear sighted visionaries.
The problem is the Barnett formula.
If the Barnett formula was abolished and the Scots simply kept rather taxes they raised, without HMRC getting involved, that would be a much better solution.
That would mean exposing that they are stiffing us and no chance they will hand over any real powers to Scotland any time. The income one was meant to be a ball and chain that hampered Scotland not helped. As ever the Fcukwits made a real arse of it.
The idea that given all the expenses of Covid, the NHS and social care, let alone anything else, we can avoid raising taxes on working people, as @MaxPB seems to want, is for the birds.
Taxes will have to rise and all will have to pay. That's all there is to it. All these demands for special exclusions is just self-interested nonsense.
Should we be raising taxes only on working age people?
"1% on NI" is a 2% tax rise on the employed, and a 0% tax rise on pensioners.
1%, 2% or whatever on income tax is a tax paid by all.
I did put forward the typically centre moderate view of 2% on income tax on here last night (I think). So workers and pensioners both contribute.
2% hike in income tax isn't moderate. It's almost Corbynite.
I'm absolutely disgusted with the Tory leadership. I campaigned hard in 2019 and believed the no tax rise manifesto promise. Fiscal drag is the order of the day.
In fairness it was not contemplated in 2019 that the government would spend more than £400bn on helping the economy cope with an 18 month pandemic which has devastated tax revenues as well. Politicians are all too keen to argue that circumstances have changed when breaking a promise but I struggle to think of a government that has a better base for such an argument than this one.
Tories should stand for sound money, careful management of the country's accounts and limitations on the role of the state. In some circumstances that requires more spending and thus, responsibly, more taxes, than others. This is such a time. I am more worried about having stable and sustainable public finances than current tax rates.
Now is not the time to put taxes up on working people. I don't care about my personal situation, an extra £1.6k per year in tax between myself and my wife is unfortunate but it doesn't really make a big difference to us. There will be millions of middle income people across the country that will find that kind of income cut very, very difficult to take.
Using my dad as an example again, his net income in retirement is about £60.5k. A working age person with an equivalent gross has a net income of £55k. In what world does it make sense that my dad, with no responsibilities, no kids, no mortgage and no real costs pays £5.5k less in tax than a working age person who will have a mortgage/rent, kids, possible nursery fees, school expenses, commuting costs etc...
The whole system is needs rethinking. Why is anyone in the higher rate tax bracket getting 100% of the state pension? In what world does that make sense?!
With respect a net pensioner income of 60K plus is a million miles from most pensioners income
It is not the average, but it is not particularly unusual either, especially for those from the public sector final salary schemes.
Poor pensioners are still better off than poor workers. Rich pensioners are better off than rich workers. They are also richer than the workers are forecast to get to when they are retired.
Yet new taxes go on workers, most public (and private) sector workers get a pay freeze. The retired get no new taxes and 8% increase in state pension.
This will only make the generational conflict deeper and wider.
I'm not sure about your first paragraph; it is often mentioned on here, but I'm yet to see the evidence.
I'm on a 'gold-plated' public sector (Civil Service) final pension salary scheme. I was well-paid, retiring on a salary of c. £82K after 38 years service, a couple of years ago. But my pension, generous though it is, is nowhere near £60K - much nearer £20K. I'm not complaining at all, quite happy with it, but I do wonder whether non-public sector workers have an exaggerated view of the value of public sector pensions. You would have to be retiring on a salary well over £120k to get anywhere near £60k in pension; there's not many in that category.
I've just had a pension review, actually. I knew my public sector pension was better than my previous private sector pension, but I'm slightly shocked just how much better. Most private sector workers do not have final salary pensions. The IFA I talked to told me that the average private sector workers amassed a pension pot of around £50k by retirement. Whereas if you work as, say, a hospital admin worker - or some other not desperately well paid public sector job - for 40 years you can amass a pension with a trade in value in excess of three quarters of a million pounds.
Yep. I tried to calculate the benefit once and I reckoned add 40% on the salary and you're getting close. We see many public sector retirees who have lump sum and income entitlements (always index-linked and with death benefits) that you would need over £1m to purchase in the real world. But, hey, let's pay the public sector more.
PS pensions are good but generally the pay rates certainly used to be less than in the private sector. Also remember the monthly contributions were compulsory if you didn't opt out after the first couple of years or so. I'm very content with my arrangements but the idea that we have lived lives of idleness and luxury since the mid-70s is frankly rubbish. Like most generations we had our fair share of hardship. I well recall my first London flat - £15k - with strict borrowing rules and high interest rates. I lived hand to mouth for a good few years just to cope. I had bare floorboards for the first 3 years - not the varnished/sealed jobs of these days - I could not afford carpet. All of my furniture was begged, borrowed or second-hand. And I was by no means alone.
I'm reading Dominic Sandbrook's "Seasons in the Sun: the Battle for Britain 1974-1979" at the moment and my goodness does it sound shit.
I pity anyone who has to live through that.
The 70's were brilliant, pay rise every month , cheap beer , great music , will admit looking back the fashion was dodgy. We had the times of our lives and far superior to the shithole the country is just now..
Seem to recall this being the decade my family, and our neighbours, got a car, indoor toilets, central heating, colour telly, washing machine, gas fire, etc. They were unusual in 1969. Ubiquitous by 1979. Or maybe that's just us. The rest of the nation may have been living in collectivist penury.
and of course the 70s gave us Findus Crispy Pancakes.
So whoever gave Scotland control over income tax, created a bigger mess by accidently making Income Tax unchangeable.
Oops, I bet Osbourne didn't think about that when he did it.
When Scot Nats pointed out the partial devolving of income tax powers was filled with nonsensical procedural issues that would cause problems in the future they were denigrated as being "too scared" to accept the powers rather than being lauded as clear sighted visionaries.
The problem is the Barnett formula.
If the Barnett formula was abolished and the Scots simply kept rather taxes they raised, without HMRC getting involved, that would be a much better solution.
The whole partial devolution of revenue is insane. Because income tax is devolved if the Scottish government spotted a policy that would crater Scottish corporation tax but raise even just a penny more income tax then Scotland's budget would increase if they enacted the policy despite it lowering Scotland's overall revenue.
Similarly if Scotland spotted a policy that would stimulate economic growth such that the broad tax base increased but resulted in income tax falling then that would cut Scotland's budget despite its revenue increasing.
The idea that given all the expenses of Covid, the NHS and social care, let alone anything else, we can avoid raising taxes on working people, as @MaxPB seems to want, is for the birds.
Taxes will have to rise and all will have to pay. That's all there is to it. All these demands for special exclusions is just self-interested nonsense.
Should we be raising taxes only on working age people?
"1% on NI" is a 2% tax rise on the employed, and a 0% tax rise on pensioners.
1%, 2% or whatever on income tax is a tax paid by all.
I did put forward the typically centre moderate view of 2% on income tax on here last night (I think). So workers and pensioners both contribute.
2% hike in income tax isn't moderate. It's almost Corbynite.
I'm absolutely disgusted with the Tory leadership. I campaigned hard in 2019 and believed the no tax rise manifesto promise. Fiscal drag is the order of the day.
In fairness it was not contemplated in 2019 that the government would spend more than £400bn on helping the economy cope with an 18 month pandemic which has devastated tax revenues as well. Politicians are all too keen to argue that circumstances have changed when breaking a promise but I struggle to think of a government that has a better base for such an argument than this one.
Tories should stand for sound money, careful management of the country's accounts and limitations on the role of the state. In some circumstances that requires more spending and thus, responsibly, more taxes, than others. This is such a time. I am more worried about having stable and sustainable public finances than current tax rates.
Now is not the time to put taxes up on working people. I don't care about my personal situation, an extra £1.6k per year in tax between myself and my wife is unfortunate but it doesn't really make a big difference to us. There will be millions of middle income people across the country that will find that kind of income cut very, very difficult to take.
Using my dad as an example again, his net income in retirement is about £60.5k. A working age person with an equivalent gross has a net income of £55k. In what world does it make sense that my dad, with no responsibilities, no kids, no mortgage and no real costs pays £5.5k less in tax than a working age person who will have a mortgage/rent, kids, possible nursery fees, school expenses, commuting costs etc...
The whole system is needs rethinking. Why is anyone in the higher rate tax bracket getting 100% of the state pension? In what world does that make sense?!
With respect a net pensioner income of 60K plus is a million miles from most pensioners income
It is not the average, but it is not particularly unusual either, especially for those from the public sector final salary schemes.
Poor pensioners are still better off than poor workers. Rich pensioners are better off than rich workers. They are also richer than the workers are forecast to get to when they are retired.
Yet new taxes go on workers, most public (and private) sector workers get a pay freeze. The retired get no new taxes and 8% increase in state pension.
This will only make the generational conflict deeper and wider.
I'm not sure about your first paragraph; it is often mentioned on here, but I'm yet to see the evidence.
I'm on a 'gold-plated' public sector (Civil Service) final pension salary scheme. I was well-paid, retiring on a salary of c. £82K after 38 years service, a couple of years ago. But my pension, generous though it is, is nowhere near £60K - much nearer £20K. I'm not complaining at all, quite happy with it, but I do wonder whether non-public sector workers have an exaggerated view of the value of public sector pensions. You would have to be retiring on a salary well over £120k to get anywhere near £60k in pension; there's not many in that category.
I've just had a pension review, actually. I knew my public sector pension was better than my previous private sector pension, but I'm slightly shocked just how much better. Most private sector workers do not have final salary pensions. The IFA I talked to told me that the average private sector workers amassed a pension pot of around £50k by retirement. Whereas if you work as, say, a hospital admin worker - or some other not desperately well paid public sector job - for 40 years you can amass a pension with a trade in value in excess of three quarters of a million pounds.
Yep. I tried to calculate the benefit once and I reckoned add 40% on the salary and you're getting close. We see many public sector retirees who have lump sum and income entitlements (always index-linked and with death benefits) that you would need over £1m to purchase in the real world. But, hey, let's pay the public sector more.
PS pensions are good but generally the pay rates certainly used to be less than in the private sector. Also remember the monthly contributions were compulsory if you didn't opt out after the first couple of years or so. I'm very content with my arrangements but the idea that we have lived lives of idleness and luxury since the mid-70s is frankly rubbish. Like most generations we had our fair share of hardship. I well recall my first London flat - £15k - with strict borrowing rules and high interest rates. I lived hand to mouth for a good few years just to cope. I had bare floorboards for the first 3 years - not the varnished/sealed jobs of these days - I could not afford carpet. All of my furniture was begged, borrowed or second-hand. And I was by no means alone.
I'm reading Dominic Sandbrook's "Seasons in the Sun: the Battle for Britain 1974-1979" at the moment and my goodness does it sound shit.
I pity anyone who has to live through that.
The 70's were brilliant, pay rise every month , cheap beer , great music , will admit looking back the fashion was dodgy. We had the times of our lives and far superior to the shithole the country is just now..
I have just done a long tour of far north Scotland - Ullapool, Assynt, Cape Wrath, Caithness and the Orkneys. Much of it looked magnificent in generally fine weather,; tho I will confess John o Groats (where we mostly stayed) is a toilet (albeit with majestic views of the Orkneys)
Why do the Scots in that corner of Scotland INSIST on building houses in a dung-brown or birdshit-grey colour? Like they want them to be ugly. The far, flat north east of Scotland is never gonna be a beauty - unlike the Highlands and Islands - but it would be much improved if everyone just painted their houses white, like the crofts of old. Or even pink. Tartan?
Anything would be better than the colour of untreated sewage you get now. It is most perplexing
Probably don't want to have to paint it twice a year. Could have done with more posts on your trip by the way. PS: I see others now, I obviously missed them.
I was actually having too nice a time to comment on the trip. It was brilliant fun. Food was great too. I had one of the nicest scones of my life overlooking the Kyle of Tongue. And a fantastic tarka dahl in Strathness Hotel in Inverness. And superb haddock wraps and seafood soup at the Seafood Shack in Ullapool
The big culinary letdown was lunch in Stromness in the Orkneys, a town which seems to pride itself on refusing to serve stuff you want and stuff they advertise. So the bistro eagerly told us they would not serve alcohol before 7pm and NOR WILL ANYONE ELSE HAHAHA and then the cafe next door "famous for its crab rolls" said they had no crab and weren't expecting any.
My daughter and I ended up eating two cheddar baps on a bench by the harbour while I downed a bottle of screwtop white wine from the Co-op like a hobo. Then we went to Skara Brae
Glad you enjoyed it and took on a bit of Scottish jakieness to boot. Your daughter would have probably ended up murdering you after two days in Millport.
Yes, John O Groats turned out to be a superb choice, because there's so much to see all around it, and it has a real sense of wildness. So thankyou for that!
A suburban island near Glasgow would have been dull if not disastrous.
Even John o Groats, despite being a toilet, has a kind of perverse charm. We had a brilliant apartment looking straight out to the Orkney, right on the harbour, which was a big bonus, and the weird cafes and shops are so quirky or kitsch they have a kind of fascination. There is a gift shop with an entire wing dedicated to insane Christmas knick-knacks, like hologram santas in crystal boxes continuously singing Jingle Bells. WTF
Also you can get tartan clocks. Clocks made from actual tartan. Genius
How did you like Skara Brae?
But commiserations re the Stromness lunch modeller style. Derek Cooper the food writer used to tear his hair out over the difficulty of getting local fish and crusties in the very areas they were fished, though things have improved a lot since the 1980s (believe me).
I believe you. Food in Scotland has improved markedly, sometimes fabulously, just like everywhere else in Britain. And you can generally get seafood on the coast, now, across the UK (it was crazy when you could not)
The Orkneys - Orkney - was (is?) highly intriguing. Not sure I could ever live there, the lack of trees and abundance of wind would drive me nuts. But it's fascinating. Skara Brae is of course remarkable, the stone circles are poetically lonely and lovely.
But the biggest surprise, for me, was Kirkwall, which was much nicer than I anticipated, and has that unique cathedral in the middle. A medieval Viking Cathedral made of faded apricot sandstone! Wondrous
OK now I must stop doing brand marketing for North Scotland and do my own work. Anon
Comments
An enterprising lawyer might argue they should get a share of revenues not a grant though under the terms of the deal with George III
I'm a republican, but if the government makes the atrocious decision to raise NI to pay for a new entitlement that is going to rob workers far more than the monarchy ever could.
Apparently the loons dressed in red clothes "relate to archetypes or classical Greek characters" and they are "like spirits coming back from beyond the grave". XR need to be careful or they'll reveal so much that even people who didn't already know where they're coming from will start to realise.
What a shame Cromwell couldn't abolish equity forever.
Next time...
Why do the Scots in that corner of Scotland INSIST on building houses in a dung-brown or birdshit-grey colour? Like they want them to be ugly. The far, flat north east of Scotland is never gonna be a beauty - unlike the Highlands and Islands - but it would be much improved if everyone just painted their houses white, like the crofts of old. Or even pink. Tartan?
Anything would be better than the colour of untreated sewage you get now. It is most perplexing
From a very cursory Google search this was first to come up but there's plenty more: https://news.arizona.edu/story/covid-19-vaccine-reduces-severity-length-viral-load-those-who-still-get-infected
https://twitter.com/UKCovid19Stats/status/1433778564655108097?s=20
I guess it's a reversal of that 'respect the office' thing. I respect her as a person, I don't respect her status as monarch.
I don't want to embroil us in another pointless debate about the monarchy. Certainly not without the benefit of being sat face-to-face, to better pick up on our respective use of humour, irony, tone of voice and non-verbal cues. Preferably in a particularly pleasant boozer! We won't change each other's minds typing out guff on here. But suffice to say I'm sceptical as to whether you could describe her service as 'remarkable'. Enduring, yes. Dedicated, yes. Politically astute, yes ok. But remarkable? Not for me.
I'm a history graduate so I'll appreciate her demise in that sense, as a significant event. I'll be sad that someone has died. You may be right that my reaction surprises me, but I suspect not. I was 19 when Diana died and beyond it being interesting in historical terms, and feeling sorry for her and her loved ones, I was not really bothered. I got double time working during her funeral, if I remember correctly. I don't anticipate feeling too dissimilar when the Queen goes. But I could be wrong!
Rather than pay thousands, and waste hours, travelling for the privilege of being too knackered to cook. Or do anything at weekends other than sleep and recover. So you end up paying for cleaning, simple repairs, takeaway, eating out etc., etc.
I even enjoyed the Flow Country - for being so relentlessly, uncaringly, aggressively ugly. The Milllwall Fan of Landscapes
PS: I see others now, I obviously missed them.
Now the bills have to be paid. Not just for Covid but for social care and everything else.
So everyone will have to pay: workers - and I include those past pensionable age who are still working - and those with savings and assets. And all generations will have to pay because (a) all generations benefited from the support for the economy; (b) all benefit one way or another from public services; and (c) all benefit from social care - either now (directly) or by not having to pay for parents or by not losing a possible inheritance or directly in the future.
It won't be nice. But no group should be immune from paying the bills. Far too much special pleading going on.
NI is an odd choice because it is in effect a tax but only on some. So it should be extended to all who are working if it is going to be raised.
They were unusual in 1969. Ubiquitous by 1979.
Or maybe that's just us. The rest of the nation may have been living in collectivist penury.
It's complex and hard to predict. There will be flows and contraflows
I think that is probably one of the worst things a parent could be accused of being.
It did turn a rather jolly thread very dark.
https://fraserofallander.org/funding-a-rise-in-social-care-spending-england-implications-for-the-scottish-budget/
Oops, I bet Osbourne didn't think about that when he did it.
The big culinary letdown was lunch in Stromness in the Orkneys, a town which seems to pride itself on refusing to serve stuff you want and stuff they advertise. So the bistro eagerly told us they would not serve alcohol before 7pm and NOR WILL ANYONE ELSE HAHAHA and then the cafe next door "famous for its crab rolls" said they had no crab and weren't expecting any.
My daughter and I ended up eating two cheddar baps on a bench by the harbour while I downed a bottle of screwtop white wine from the Co-op like a hobo. Then we went to Skara Brae
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/family/life/cool-de-sac-suburbia-went-outskirts-thing/
Oh, you mean NICS, not NCIS ...
https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/details/testing?areaType=nation&areaName=Scotland
https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/details/testing
Perhaps England was further down the "antibodies via vaccination/infection" road than Scotland - and this is Scotland's "exit wave"?
The changes wrought by Covid - and also AI, and digitisation, and remote working (which would have happened anyway, but are now much accelerated), are so complicated and confounding it is impossible to confidently predict what they will do to property.
There are many conflicting forces. It is certainly much too simplistic to simply say: Oh, everyone will want to move to a more rural house with a garden.
And it's not just the North East. You can tell when you cross the border with the sudden arrival of houses covered in tiny stones (must be a word for this?). I'm sure they resist the weather, but good grief they're ugly.
OTOH, the heavy stone fronted villas and tenements of the older parts of Scottish towns - I'm thinking in particular of Glasgow and Edinburgh, but you find them everywhere - are heartbreakingly lovely.
Your daughter would have probably ended up murdering you after two days in Millport.
There is no additional tax being proposed for workers over 65.
There are no new wealth taxes being proposed.
Pensioners are also getting 8% increase on state pension vs wage freezes for most workers.
Saying that is unfair on workers under 65 is not special pleading, divisive or odd, just standing up for basic fairness.
Funnily enough, it only seems to happen with the right-leaning commentators. We have one commentator on here, for example, who can publicly make quite racist comments on the white working class which would never be tolerated elsewhere but never seems to get called out on the matter.
He did say one thing that has stuck with me. I don't have the exact quote but it was something along the lines of 'I can understand if you lived in the stockbroker belt and had some money then you would have thought that the 70s were appalling. If, however, you were growing up a working class northerner then you were benefitting massively from all the areas where the state got involved and made your life better than your parents and grandparents.'
I thought that was quite an interesting point.
Is Charles really going to be the next monarch? He will be touching eighty. I don't see him going for an Elizabethan life of service at this point.
Scotland tests: 61,410 (6% UK)
England tests:922,872 (90% UK)
Years ago when you went to Ireland the rural parts could be lovely, yet partly ruined by hideous dung-brown or grotty grey houses. Pointlessly depressing
Now when you go there all the village centres and even the rural houses are much jollier, with bright vivid colours or serene whitewash. It helps enormously
Why can't Scotland do the same?
Agreed about the paint. Stornoway, Kirkwall, and Lerwick would all look much nicer if the houses and shops in the centre were painted in pastel colours. They could use that street on the waterside in Portree as a model. They wouldn't have to go full-on Portmeirion to lighten the atmosphere.
Basically people will want to move to Con/LD marginals around the M25!
A suburban island near Glasgow would have been dull if not disastrous.
Even John o Groats, despite being a toilet, has a kind of perverse charm. We had a brilliant apartment looking straight out to the Orkney, right on the harbour, which was a big bonus, and the weird cafes and shops are so quirky or kitsch they have a kind of fascination. There is a gift shop with an entire wing dedicated to insane Christmas knick-knacks, like hologram santas in crystal boxes continuously singing Jingle Bells. WTF
Also you can get tartan clocks. Clocks made from actual tartan. Genius
If the Barnett formula was abolished and the Scots simply kept rather taxes they raised, without HMRC getting involved, that would be a much better solution.
Businesses like your daughter's was sacrificed to protect older people and now it's time for older people to bear the cost of that shutdown. A stat posted here showed that 16% of pensioners have earnings in the higher rate tax bracket, that's a huge number of people to target for more tax before we even think about putting up taxes on working age people.
The country is currently being fleeced by the generation above who have decided they want an easy life and the best way to get that is to claim a larger share of the economic pie for themselves and if they have to impoverish working age people then that's a bonus.
You ducked out of paying for your parents care, you're ducking out of paying for your own care, you've piled on cost after cost on young people, you bought all the property then accused young people of being incapable of saving all while charging us ridiculous rents on crap flats that aren't fit for animals to live in.
Your generation has a lot to answer for, you've ruined the legacy of what your parents left behind and now you're trying to take away any chance my generation has of leaving behind a better world for our kids. You destroyed the climate, made the rich much richer, the poor much poorer and now won't pay for the bill that was accumulated to protect your generation from dying. It wasn't 20-50 year olds dying of this.
For Scots....
(I joke, I have a lot of sympathy with your anger and the points you make.)
The biggest objection I had from a tourist point of view was that they still serve nescafe everywhere.
But commiserations re the Stromness lunch modeller style. Derek Cooper the food writer used to tear his hair out over the difficulty of getting local fish and crusties in the very areas they were fished, though things have improved a lot since the 1980s (believe me).
Re HYUFD (and I don't want to be specific as it is not fair on someone who can't reply) it is not HYUFD's politics that cause the problem normally but the structure of the argument. I doesn't matter one jot what his politics are regarding this.
I have had some real humdingers with him, but although often very heated they have always ended up friendly which says a lot about him as a person (no matter how irritating the style of his arguing is).
It is the epitome of grey-brown-council-housey-sludgey-crumbling awfulness. It would be improved by total demolition and conversion into the world's biggest scrapyard. At least that would be striking
But I don't wanna be down on Scotland or even Caithness coz I had a fab time and the people were REALLY friendly everywhere. And most of far north Scotland is beauteous
I even enjoyed the totally pissed trio of Scots lasses (age 20-40) on the last Easyjet Inverness flight back to Luton who agressively chatted up half the men at the back of the plane, sang several songs, then when they landed let out a big cheer and said "hey we're in fucking LONDON!!!!" and then one said "And we're in England so we don't have to wear our fucking masks!" - and they all ripped off their masks and did a jig
@malcolmg are you moving to England soon? 😈
I agree that it is the dormitory suburbs in Zone 3-6 that will probably suffer. Much of the house price inflation of the last 2 decades was through converting family housing to shared housing, with the public realm and infrastructure not keeping pace with the rise in population.
If he wants a wealth tax, the best and easiest to collect is the Proportional Property Tax, in my view with a supplement for people who refuse to improve the energy efficiency of their own homes. No reason why that can't be set to a % of property value a little higher than the 0.48% proposed.
The actual cost of social care improvements is I think around £5-10bn a year, which is not really that much extra.
I'm expecting a hit on CGT.
Island Gardens DLR is in Zone 2, while Cutty Sark DLR is in both Zones 2 and 3.
Is there something you need to share with us?
Similarly if Scotland spotted a policy that would stimulate economic growth such that the broad tax base increased but resulted in income tax falling then that would cut Scotland's budget despite its revenue increasing.
The Orkneys - Orkney - was (is?) highly intriguing. Not sure I could ever live there, the lack of trees and abundance of wind would drive me nuts. But it's fascinating. Skara Brae is of course remarkable, the stone circles are poetically lonely and lovely.
But the biggest surprise, for me, was Kirkwall, which was much nicer than I anticipated, and has that unique cathedral in the middle. A medieval Viking Cathedral made of faded apricot sandstone! Wondrous
OK now I must stop doing brand marketing for North Scotland and do my own work. Anon