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.
Well over £120k, do you know what it would actually be? Scaling linearly from your salary and pension suggest it'd be £250k.
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...
I have some sympathy with pensioners, many of whom have low, fixed incomes.
But they're an increasing proportion of the population and it isn't right for costs to be heaped on a relatively shrinking working age population. I'm not saying whack all pensioners with taxes or the like, but the proposed NI rise is dumb.
And if 8% goes through as the pension rise, that's indefensible in the current circumstances.
Pensioners with low, fixed incomes won't be affected.
I'd bring in higher income tax rates for the over 65s. Instead of 0/20/40/45 they would be 0/22.5/42.5/47.5 (for example).
It's a myth that income tax rates are 0/20/40/45 for most people.
Once you include NI the current tax rates are (roughly):
For employed earners under 65: 0/32/42/47 For self-employed under 65: 0/29/42/47 For unearned income, or for those over 65: 0/20/40/45
You've forgotten the bitch-slap in the face if you fall between 100k-120k where you face an effective rate of 62%.
Isn't there still one as well lower down where one comes off UC and family credit etc.? (Not keeping up with the topic so I may be out of date.)
Yes, that's worse.
I think as a rule we should took to smooth all tax and benefits at all income levels so you always keep more than half of what you earn.
Can you actually give vaccines to an African country in a cozy deal, or does it have to be through the scheme? Through the scheme you can’t choose the country’s it goes to, they assess who is ready to roll it out so it’s not wasted. Not just temperature but logistically ready.
So if the old colonial powers are now triple vaccinating and vaccinating those not even in danger, those in danger in Africa waiting for their first, it’s simply down to colonialism isn’t it - brilliantly summed up by Geldof saying, hold on a moment, there are too many unnecessary countries in Africa?
The point Topping has been making today, Jab share with Africa, which I totally agree with, it’s a surprise we don’t get more of it in the lame stream media?
So where is Geldof and the band aid, sport aid, comic aid crew in the red tops? Where’s the religious leaders in the Mail and Telegraph? New Statesman and Speccy could have articles from the scientists so many would rather see first jabs in Africa than 3rd Jabs and Kiddie Jabs in Europe. Where’s Labour leaders Corbyn and Starmer and the TUC?
Perhaps we are still a nation with a rotten colonial mindset right the way through us?
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.
You have literally come on here to say you are willing to sacrifice your child in your drive for personal freedom by refusing to be vaxed. I am truly shocked by the revelation that you have a vulnerable child.
How fucking dare you try to lecture me on how to bring up my childen you fucking bastard, you have no idea what my wife and I have been through...How fucking dare you. I hope you and I never meet, for your sake.
My child has been double vaxxed and will soon get a booster. That being the case, I would far rather they were looked after by someone who cared, rather than some agency worker, just because they have been vaxxed. You have no idea what you are talking about.
Every judgement you have made is wrong. Every thing you think you know, is wrong.
I dare because you admit to looking after a vulnerable person and you refuse to be vaxed.
'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.
She's staying on until she beats Louis XIV at least. Loves a record.
Got a Thai and a Liechtensteiner to see off first.
Boosters are only being lined up (for the time being) for the immune compromised. This is literally the group that the initial vaccines won't have "worked" on particularly well. They're precisely the people that need others to get vaccinated to form a protective barrier around them. On a personal note I've had a shocking year. Getting vaccinated hasn't made it any better, but a loved one going down with a severe bout of Covid would certainly make it worse.
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.
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.
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 have some sympathy with pensioners, many of whom have low, fixed incomes.
But they're an increasing proportion of the population and it isn't right for costs to be heaped on a relatively shrinking working age population. I'm not saying whack all pensioners with taxes or the like, but the proposed NI rise is dumb.
And if 8% goes through as the pension rise, that's indefensible in the current circumstances.
Pensioners with low, fixed incomes won't be affected.
I'd bring in higher income tax rates for the over 65s. Instead of 0/20/40/45 they would be 0/22.5/42.5/47.5 (for example).
It's a myth that income tax rates are 0/20/40/45 for most people.
Once you include NI the current tax rates are (roughly):
For employed earners under 65: 0/32/42/47 For self-employed under 65: 0/29/42/47 For unearned income, or for those over 65: 0/20/40/45
You've forgotten the bitch-slap in the face if you fall between 100k-120k where you face an effective rate of 62%.
For those at that income level plenty of legal tax reduction schemes are available, such as paying into a private pension, SEIS, EIS, VCT etc.
My understanding is that only the first of these works for the specific case of changing your marginal tax rate. Paying into a private pension can be done out of pre-tax income and hence reduces your effective taxable income. The others must be done out of post-tax income and you can then claim back the tax relief - so there is no difference in the amount reclaimed if you have a higher marginal tax rate.
Happy to be corrected if others have better information.
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.
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.]
People will get touchy, but I think it inevitable and acceptable that there will be people, especially overseas, who will note it would be a moment to consider the future of the institution.
It will also definitely be annoying for those who find exhaustive coverage irritating, as it will be wall to wall for more than a week.
But it will be very significant for many and that will have to be bourne.
It's a personal view - the decision up to the nations concerned - but I'd mourn the loss of any of the Commonwealth realms.
I take great comfort from being part of a family of nations with close historical ties.
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.
This group of people is vanishingly small, haven't seen any particular groups that can't be vaxxed for health reasons other than those recovering from Covid may need to have jabs delayed for a bit (My brother fell into this category between jabs)
I don't understand how you can be anti-vax and care for someone highly vulnerable to serious illness and death by Covid.
I didn't see my very very vulnerable parents for a year and a quarter. Covid would have killed my dad in a few days flat, so until we all got vaxxed I stayed away. Including all the way through last winter worried that I would never see him alive again.
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.]
People will get touchy, but I think it inevitable and acceptable that there will be people, especially overseas, who will note it would be a moment to consider the future of the institution.
It will also definitely be annoying for those who find exhaustive coverage irritating, as it will be wall to wall for more than a week.
But it will be very significant for many and that will have to be bourne.
It's a personal view - the decision up to the nations concerned - but I'd mourn the loss of any of the Commonwealth realms.
I take great comfort from being part of a family of nations with close historical ties.
The caribbean islands will I think all go. Most intend to but seem to drag their feet. Aus, NZ, Canada probably not rushing into anything. Belize surprise last man standing ?
Now we are getting on to a serious subject. I don't get ABBA. I think they are rubbish. I detest every song.
ABBA write catchy tunes and when they sing, they put a smile on your face. Those are skills, which ABBA have in greater abundance than anyone else in popular music, ever. Other performers would give their eyes teeth to be able to do the same.
I didn't claim they weren't talented, just I hate them. Same goes for Andrew Lloyd Webber.
Nothing worse than feelgood music that doesn't make you feel good.
I disagree with the other commentator who thinks ABBA music to be quite sophisticated. But I do think they are superb performers, where performance is what it is all about.
Not sophisticated? Try "The day before you came". It's a comprehensive novella in 3 minutes, and in their second language.
It's quite impressive that they can write in their second language. But what they write isn't exactly sophisticated. The word which comes to mind for TDBYC is trite. It's hardly Morrissey or Guy Garvey.
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.
You have literally come on here to say you are willing to sacrifice your child in your drive for personal freedom by refusing to be vaxed. I am truly shocked by the revelation that you have a vulnerable child.
How fucking dare you try to lecture me on how to bring up my childen you fucking bastard, you have no idea what my wife and I have been through...How fucking dare you. I hope you and I never meet, for your sake.
My child has been double vaxxed and will soon get a booster. That being the case, I would far rather they were looked after by someone who cared, rather than some agency worker, just because they have been vaxxed. You have no idea what you are talking about.
Every judgement you have made is wrong. Every thing you think you know, is wrong.
I dare because you admit to looking after a vulnerable person and you refuse to be vaxed.
A threat of violence has been noted.
I don't need to threaten you with anything matey. Just continue going around telling the parents of the disabled they are falling down on the job. You won't last long, I can tell you.
My child is now in their mid 20s and cared for in a facility. Most carers are vaccinated. A few are not. All care.
And that is all I care about. They care. They have time. They make time to make the residents happy, to try to give them a life. They are fantastic, and that includes the un-vaccinated ones.
The way some posters on here have tried to de-humanise people just because they do not want a vaccine is obscene.
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.]
People will get touchy, but I think it inevitable and acceptable that there will be people, especially overseas, who will note it would be a moment to consider the future of the institution.
It will also definitely be annoying for those who find exhaustive coverage irritating, as it will be wall to wall for more than a week.
But it will be very significant for many and that will have to be bourne.
It's a personal view - the decision up to the nations concerned - but I'd mourn the loss of any of the Commonwealth realms.
I take great comfort from being part of a family of nations with close historical ties.
The caribbean islands will I think all go. Most intend to but seem to drag their feet. Aus, NZ, Canada probably not rushing into anything. Belize surprise last man standing ?
I'm not sure any are "safe". And they could easily be culture-warred out rather fast.
I'd say the Pacific Islands, Belize and NZ would be last.
I have some sympathy with pensioners, many of whom have low, fixed incomes.
But they're an increasing proportion of the population and it isn't right for costs to be heaped on a relatively shrinking working age population. I'm not saying whack all pensioners with taxes or the like, but the proposed NI rise is dumb.
And if 8% goes through as the pension rise, that's indefensible in the current circumstances.
Pensioners with low, fixed incomes won't be affected.
I'd bring in higher income tax rates for the over 65s. Instead of 0/20/40/45 they would be 0/22.5/42.5/47.5 (for example).
It's a myth that income tax rates are 0/20/40/45 for most people.
Once you include NI the current tax rates are (roughly):
For employed earners under 65: 0/32/42/47 For self-employed under 65: 0/29/42/47 For unearned income, or for those over 65: 0/20/40/45
You've forgotten the bitch-slap in the face if you fall between 100k-120k where you face an effective rate of 62%.
But better able to afford it than those on UC where the taper is about the same.
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.
This group of people is vanishingly small, haven't seen any particular groups that can't be vaxxed for health reasons other than those recovering from Covid may need to have jabs delayed for a bit (My brother fell into this category between jabs)
I've met two or three people who haven't been vaccinated they say due to their health. I didn't probe further. There are valid circs for sure but I suspect these are outweighed by the deluded. Rather like those who say they are allergic to some particular food but have never actually had this medically confirmed (I reckon that covers half the population in the States).
See this clip. It's a hoot. From one of my favourite comedians, Paul Foot - love his stagecraft:
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.
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.
The point about "gold-plated public sector pensions" is that they only started to be gold-plated when private sector final salary pensions stopped being available.
Anyone who retired before about 2010 was probably better off being in the private sector, because the public sector pensions were actually a slightly watered-down version of what was available privately. However, during the late 90s and early 00s, those private sector final salary schemes all closed, and anyone who started work from then on has likely never been in one. So anyone retiring from around 2040 onwards will be much better off if they spent their career in the public sector, because the new private defined contribution schemes are just much less generous, and the public sector schemes are basically the same as they always were.
The underlying issue with pensions is generally that any changes take about 50 years to work through the system and become apparent. It will be obvious at some point in the middle of this century that we should have massively reduced public sector entitlements to reflect rising longevity, the new interest rate environment and what is available in the private sector, and are probably already too late to prevent a significant strain on public finances as a result. Oh well.
Can you actually give vaccines to an African country in a cozy deal, or does it have to be through the scheme? Through the scheme you can’t choose the country’s it goes to, they assess who is ready to roll it out so it’s not wasted. Not just temperature but logistically ready.
So if the old colonial powers are now triple vaccinating and vaccinating those not even in danger, those in danger in Africa waiting for their first, it’s simply down to colonialism isn’t it - brilliantly summed up by Geldof saying, hold on a moment, there are too many unnecessary countries in Africa?
The point Topping has been making today, Jab share with Africa, which I totally agree with, it’s a surprise we don’t get more of it in the lame stream media?
So where is Geldof and the band aid, sport aid, comic aid crew in the red tops? Where’s the religious leaders in the Mail and Telegraph? New Statesman and Speccy could have articles from the scientists so many would rather see first jabs in Africa than 3rd Jabs and Kiddie Jabs in Europe. Where’s Labour leaders Corbyn and Starmer and the TUC?
Perhaps we are still a nation with a rotten colonial mindset right the way through us?
Don't be silly. We're giving vaccines to the third world with no expectation of anything back in return.
That doesn't mean we shouldn't look after ourselves too.
There is no finite supply of resources here, the more money put in the more that can be produced. So the UK working without any lockdown restrictions means we can afford to put more money in and give more doses to the third world. They're better off, we're better off.
The trickle down effect is alive and well and real there. Better than levelling down.
Its the same reason why when you're in an airline you should always put your own oxygen mask on first before helping others. Once you've done so, you can then help others.
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.
My sister in law has just left a care home job for exactly this reason, and gone working for an insurance broker.
I don't particularly agree with her reasoning for not being vaccinated (although as she's had Covid in the last 9 months, I suspect the value of jabbing her is actually quite low), but if this is happening a lot, it's only going to be putting more pressure on the sector.
The fact is that all vulnerable people have been double jabbed and will soon get a booster.
The criteria for care home workers should not be whether they have been doubled jabbed or not, but whether they CARE....
I would much rather my child was looked after by someone who cared (and they all do), rather than some agency worker doing it for the money.
Why shouldn't it be one of the criteria? A requirement to be vaccinated for certain lines of work is not a new thing.
Ever wiped a nineteen year old's backside, fuckwit?
you do not know what you are talking about you unfeeling shite.
This sort of personal abuse is abhorrent. I find it says something about people who descend to it. I am a free speech supporter but it should be done through well mannered debate and not insults.
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.
You have literally come on here to say you are willing to sacrifice your child in your drive for personal freedom by refusing to be vaxed. I am truly shocked by the revelation that you have a vulnerable child.
How fucking dare you try to lecture me on how to bring up my childen you fucking bastard, you have no idea what my wife and I have been through...How fucking dare you. I hope you and I never meet, for your sake.
My child has been double vaxxed and will soon get a booster. That being the case, I would far rather they were looked after by someone who cared, rather than some agency worker, just because they have been vaxxed. You have no idea what you are talking about.
Every judgement you have made is wrong. Every thing you think you know, is wrong.
I dare because you admit to looking after a vulnerable person and you refuse to be vaxed.
A threat of violence has been noted.
I don't need to threaten you with anything matey. Just continue going around telling the parents of the disabled they are falling down on the job. You won't last long, I can tell you.
My child is now in their mid 20s and cared for in a facility. Most carers are vaccinated. A few are not. All care.
And that is all I care about. They care. They have time. They make time to make the residents happy, to try to give them a life. They are fantastic, and that includes the un-vaccinated ones.
The way some posters on here have tried to de-humanise people just because they do not want a vaccine is obscene.
At no point did I comment on whether carers care or not. That is all in your own imagination. I made one simple point and that is it is irresponsible for a carer to not be vaccinated. A point I believe most people agree with.
And no you don't need to threaten me, but you did.
'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.
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.
'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.
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.
Well over £120k, do you know what it would actually be? Scaling linearly from your salary and pension suggest it'd be £250k.
I am on top whack as a Consultant and with a pensionable merit award (newer ones are not pensionable) and my NHS pension will be £40 000 give or take a little, after continuous service from age 25. I am not complaining, but there won't be many on a £60 000 pension, perhaps a few who managed to hold on to the higher lifetime limit. A £60 000 pension exceeds the current lifetime allowance by about £300 000, so would be taxed at 55%.
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.
Well over £120k, do you know what it would actually be? Scaling linearly from your salary and pension suggest it'd be £250k.
I find that rather odd. I retired early at 55 after 33 years teaching - my final salary then was about £22k with a large lump sum tax free as well. Had I worked another 7 years my pension would have been 40/80ths - arouind £32k. So to retire after 38yrs from 82k should be around 40k pa unless the CS scheme is now a lot less generous than the teacher's one. I retired in 2008.
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.
Now we are getting on to a serious subject. I don't get ABBA. I think they are rubbish. I detest every song.
ABBA write catchy tunes and when they sing, they put a smile on your face. Those are skills, which ABBA have in greater abundance than anyone else in popular music, ever. Other performers would give their eyes teeth to be able to do the same.
I didn't claim they weren't talented, just I hate them. Same goes for Andrew Lloyd Webber.
Nothing worse than feelgood music that doesn't make you feel good.
I disagree with the other commentator who thinks ABBA music to be quite sophisticated. But I do think they are superb performers, where performance is what it is all about.
Not sophisticated? Try "The day before you came". It's a comprehensive novella in 3 minutes, and in their second language.
It's quite impressive that they can write in their second language. But what they write isn't exactly sophisticated. The word which comes to mind for TDBYC is trite. It's hardly Morrissey or Guy Garvey.
We'll have to agree to disagree. I think TDBYC is a minor masterpiece. You are right about Elbow, absolute genius, but Steven Morrisey? What a miserable man, and with some unpleasant extremist views.
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.
Well over £120k, do you know what it would actually be? Scaling linearly from your salary and pension suggest it'd be £250k.
I am on top whack as a Consultant and with a pensionable merit award (newer ones are not pensionable) and my NHS pension will be £40 000 give or take a little, after continuous service from age 25. I am not complaining, but there won't be many on a £60 000 pension, perhaps a few who managed to hold on to the higher lifetime limit. A £60 000 pension exceeds the current lifetime allowance by about £300 000, so would be taxed at 55%.
I think the Lifetime Allowance was brought in primarily to moderate defined benefit pensions.
And the Annual Allowance to ban city boys from dumping humongous bonuses into their pension schemes to avoid tax.
For what it's worth I dislike the LTA because it amounts to a retrospective tax. It has resulted in many public sector workers retiring early to avoid it.
'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.
70% of the population could be vaccinated (2 doses) in 137 days (or by Jan 18, 2022). Raw global supply of vaccines won't be what's preventing the likes of Afghanistan and the Democratic Republic of Congo vaccinated at that point, rather the supply chains, healthcare workers, access and all the remaining peripheral gubbins, international politics, corruption and so forth will.
'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.
Daughter in law?
Meghan's card has been marked..
Cookie's let slip! We won't be hearing from them for much longer.
Comres now use UK data so GB figures would be Con 41% Lab 35%.
Not much change then. We seem to have been marooned on 40/41 to 34/35 on average for weeks now.
The polls now show the Greens in the range of 5% - 9%, though in a GE I would be surprised to see the party exceed 3%. Most would probably switch to Labour - with a few voting LD.That could well be sufficient to push Labour up to 38%.
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.
You have literally come on here to say you are willing to sacrifice your child in your drive for personal freedom by refusing to be vaxed. I am truly shocked by the revelation that you have a vulnerable child.
How fucking dare you try to lecture me on how to bring up my childen you fucking bastard, you have no idea what my wife and I have been through...How fucking dare you. I hope you and I never meet, for your sake.
My child has been double vaxxed and will soon get a booster. That being the case, I would far rather they were looked after by someone who cared, rather than some agency worker, just because they have been vaxxed. You have no idea what you are talking about.
Every judgement you have made is wrong. Every thing you think you know, is wrong.
I dare because you admit to looking after a vulnerable person and you refuse to be vaxed.
A threat of violence has been noted.
I don't need to threaten you with anything matey. Just continue going around telling the parents of the disabled they are falling down on the job. You won't last long, I can tell you.
My child is now in their mid 20s and cared for in a facility. Most carers are vaccinated. A few are not. All care.
And that is all I care about. They care. They have time. They make time to make the residents happy, to try to give them a life. They are fantastic, and that includes the un-vaccinated ones.
The way some posters on here have tried to de-humanise people just because they do not want a vaccine is obscene.
That may be all you care about, but its not all I care about.
My nan was recently admitted to a care home. She doesn't want to be in one, but she had a fall recently and needs to be in one - and the Council and the NHS won't let my grandad take her home. For the past year she's been afraid of the virus because it most likely will catch her if she catches it due to underlying health conditions and now she's forced against her will to be in a home.
Anyone who is caring for her, that doesn't care enough about her interests to be vaccinated, should not be caring for her.
I have some sympathy with pensioners, many of whom have low, fixed incomes.
But they're an increasing proportion of the population and it isn't right for costs to be heaped on a relatively shrinking working age population. I'm not saying whack all pensioners with taxes or the like, but the proposed NI rise is dumb.
And if 8% goes through as the pension rise, that's indefensible in the current circumstances.
Pensioners with low, fixed incomes won't be affected.
I'd bring in higher income tax rates for the over 65s. Instead of 0/20/40/45 they would be 0/22.5/42.5/47.5 (for example).
It's a myth that income tax rates are 0/20/40/45 for most people.
Once you include NI the current tax rates are (roughly):
For employed earners under 65: 0/32/42/47 For self-employed under 65: 0/29/42/47 For unearned income, or for those over 65: 0/20/40/45
You've forgotten the bitch-slap in the face if you fall between 100k-120k where you face an effective rate of 62%.
But better able to afford it than those on UC where the taper is about the same.
Well, yes, and that'd apply if it kicked in at 80k instead, or if the taper was at 70% rather than 60%.
It still makes it a stupid anomalous idea. Alistair Darling was just mucking around in 2009 for reasons of "dividing lines" and politics for the GE the following year.
No-one can touch it now for fear of 'helping the rich', but it'd be better to simply amend the headline rate of tax as it makes no sense for someone earning £105k to pay 62% and someone on £155k to pay 47%.
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.
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.
Well over £120k, do you know what it would actually be? Scaling linearly from your salary and pension suggest it'd be £250k.
I am on top whack as a Consultant and with a pensionable merit award (newer ones are not pensionable) and my NHS pension will be £40 000 give or take a little, after continuous service from age 25. I am not complaining, but there won't be many on a £60 000 pension, perhaps a few who managed to hold on to the higher lifetime limit. A £60 000 pension exceeds the current lifetime allowance by about £300 000, so would be taxed at 55%.
I think the Lifetime Allowance was brought in primarily to moderate defined benefit pensions.
And the Annual Allowance to ban city boys from dumping humongous bonuses into their pension schemes to avoid tax.
For what it's worth I dislike the LTA because it amounts to a retrospective tax. It has resulted in many public sector workers retiring early to avoid it.
Certainly so. Retiring early and getting CPI each year rather than zero or one percent is very appealing. The LTA pushes a lot to retire.
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.
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.
Well over £120k, do you know what it would actually be? Scaling linearly from your salary and pension suggest it'd be £250k.
I am on top whack as a Consultant and with a pensionable merit award (newer ones are not pensionable) and my NHS pension will be £40 000 give or take a little, after continuous service from age 25. I am not complaining, but there won't be many on a £60 000 pension, perhaps a few who managed to hold on to the higher lifetime limit. A £60 000 pension exceeds the current lifetime allowance by about £300 000, so would be taxed at 55%.
Cheers, Foxy. Poking around on the NHS website because I was curious. You'd need to earn £175k to get a £76k pension based on this example.
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.
You have literally come on here to say you are willing to sacrifice your child in your drive for personal freedom by refusing to be vaxed. I am truly shocked by the revelation that you have a vulnerable child.
How fucking dare you try to lecture me on how to bring up my childen you fucking bastard, you have no idea what my wife and I have been through...How fucking dare you. I hope you and I never meet, for your sake.
My child has been double vaxxed and will soon get a booster. That being the case, I would far rather they were looked after by someone who cared, rather than some agency worker, just because they have been vaxxed. You have no idea what you are talking about.
Every judgement you have made is wrong. Every thing you think you know, is wrong.
I dare because you admit to looking after a vulnerable person and you refuse to be vaxed.
A threat of violence has been noted.
I don't need to threaten you with anything matey. Just continue going around telling the parents of the disabled they are falling down on the job. You won't last long, I can tell you.
My child is now in their mid 20s and cared for in a facility. Most carers are vaccinated. A few are not. All care.
And that is all I care about. They care. They have time. They make time to make the residents happy, to try to give them a life. They are fantastic, and that includes the un-vaccinated ones.
The way some posters on here have tried to de-humanise people just because they do not want a vaccine is obscene.
I hear you and you certainly have my sympathies over your child.
Where most people struggle with anti-vaxxers is who they are. We see an assortment of paranoids and lunatics foaming on about conspiracies and the "fakedemic". We others who have a view of liberty that they should be allowed to do what the fuck they like and who the fuck are you to tell them what to do whilst getting (maskless) in your face going puce whilst jabbing their gammony finger at you.
And then we have a very small minority who have a religious or other ethical objection and those whose own medical condition means the vaccine would be Bad.
A lot of us take Covid very seriously, and it has opened many people's eyes to the fact that a lot of other people are self-centred selfish fucks. If that isn't you then you have my sympathy. Thing is that as "contrarian" you do come across as being more on the liberty-uber-alles end of the spectrum rather than genuine medical / ethical reason for not getting jabbed. And in your position of responsibility I have to assume your reason for not getting it is a doozy.
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.
From your link, the IFS seems to be saying they are the same.
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.
Well over £120k, do you know what it would actually be? Scaling linearly from your salary and pension suggest it'd be £250k.
Now we are getting on to a serious subject. I don't get ABBA. I think they are rubbish. I detest every song.
ABBA write catchy tunes and when they sing, they put a smile on your face. Those are skills, which ABBA have in greater abundance than anyone else in popular music, ever. Other performers would give their eyes teeth to be able to do the same.
I didn't claim they weren't talented, just I hate them. Same goes for Andrew Lloyd Webber.
Nothing worse than feelgood music that doesn't make you feel good.
I disagree with the other commentator who thinks ABBA music to be quite sophisticated. But I do think they are superb performers, where performance is what it is all about.
Not sophisticated? Try "The day before you came". It's a comprehensive novella in 3 minutes, and in their second language.
It's quite impressive that they can write in their second language. But what they write isn't exactly sophisticated. The word which comes to mind for TDBYC is trite. It's hardly Morrissey or Guy Garvey.
We'll have to agree to disagree. I think TDBYC is a minor masterpiece. You are right about Elbow, absolute genius, but Steven Morrisey? What a miserable man, and with some unpleasant extremist views.
The Day Before You Came, the covid version, in lego, may be the best music video of recent times:
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.
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.
Well over £120k, do you know what it would actually be? Scaling linearly from your salary and pension suggest it'd be £250k.
Well, £250k is well over £120k, as I said!
That I know, I was wondering what kind of figure you would need. See the link in my reply to Foxy. Seems like around £150k.
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.
You have literally come on here to say you are willing to sacrifice your child in your drive for personal freedom by refusing to be vaxed. I am truly shocked by the revelation that you have a vulnerable child.
How fucking dare you try to lecture me on how to bring up my childen you fucking bastard, you have no idea what my wife and I have been through...How fucking dare you. I hope you and I never meet, for your sake.
My child has been double vaxxed and will soon get a booster. That being the case, I would far rather they were looked after by someone who cared, rather than some agency worker, just because they have been vaxxed. You have no idea what you are talking about.
Every judgement you have made is wrong. Every thing you think you know, is wrong.
I dare because you admit to looking after a vulnerable person and you refuse to be vaxed.
A threat of violence has been noted.
I don't need to threaten you with anything matey. Just continue going around telling the parents of the disabled they are falling down on the job. You won't last long, I can tell you.
My child is now in their mid 20s and cared for in a facility. Most carers are vaccinated. A few are not. All care.
And that is all I care about. They care. They have time. They make time to make the residents happy, to try to give them a life. They are fantastic, and that includes the un-vaccinated ones.
The way some posters on here have tried to de-humanise people just because they do not want a vaccine is obscene.
I hear you and you certainly have my sympathies over your child.
Where most people struggle with anti-vaxxers is who they are. We see an assortment of paranoids and lunatics foaming on about conspiracies and the "fakedemic". We others who have a view of liberty that they should be allowed to do what the fuck they like and who the fuck are you to tell them what to do whilst getting (maskless) in your face going puce whilst jabbing their gammony finger at you.
And then we have a very small minority who have a religious or other ethical objection and those whose own medical condition means the vaccine would be Bad.
A lot of us take Covid very seriously, and it has opened many people's eyes to the fact that a lot of other people are self-centred selfish fucks. If that isn't you then you have my sympathy. Thing is that as "contrarian" you do come across as being more on the liberty-uber-alles end of the spectrum rather than genuine medical / ethical reason for not getting jabbed. And in your position of responsibility I have to assume your reason for not getting it is a doozy.
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 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.
Daughter in law?
Meghan's card has been marked..
Cookie's let slip! We won't be hearing from them for much longer.
Oops! I actually thought about that for some time before getting it wrong. In my head, Diana is still in her thirties while HMQ is in her 90s.
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.
I had a clear out recently and came across some old pay slips. As an Analyst/Programmer in the private sector in 2003 I was taking home abut £1000/month more than as an A/P in the public sector in 1997.
Once again Scotland showing how well tagetted its testing is unlike wildly profligate England.
I was also off, i thought Scotland would be 1-in-50
11%+ positivity smacks of under-testing vs "targeting" (the WHO benchmark is 5% for "pandemic under control) - and the Scotland range is 60 - 95 vs England 65-75, so you might not have been that far off.....
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.
You would have to be at the real upper end of public sector to be getting that kind of pension , majority will have a fraction of that , however look far superior to most private sector schemes.
Pensions schemes covering the NHS, the civil service and the teaching profession were paying six-figure incomes last year to 375 retirees, up from 117 in 2010. Those in receipt of pensions higher than the UK’s average annual salary of about £28,600 also increased by 46% – up from 78,000 in 2010/11 to 115,000 in 2017/18.
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.
I wonder if one of the long term changes might be an awareness of how expensive working can be? Factoring in the cost of taking certain jobs was something folk seldom did. They just looked at the extra pay of the role, and were mystified as to why they seemed to have less to spend.
Comres now use UK data so GB figures would be Con 41% Lab 35%.
Not much change then. We seem to have been marooned on 40/41 to 34/35 on average for weeks now.
The polls now show the Greens in the range of 5% - 9%, though in a GE I would be surprised to see the party exceed 3%. Most would probably switch to Labour - with a few voting LD.That could well be sufficient to push Labour up to 38%.
And that matters, because at 41-38, it starts getting tricky for the Conservatives to have a majority. (My guess is that the boundary review and tactical rewind will roughly cancel out.) It also changes the narrative from the current self-fulfilling prophecy.
So then lefties. So then impatient rejoiners. What do you want to happen?
On social care, wasn't there talk of pursuing a solution through cross-party consensus, so that both Conservative and Labour (any maybe others as well) signed up to it?
It would be much easier to deliver if the government could say "we have agreed with the Labour front bench (and others) that this solution is the way forward to tackle the huge funding shortage in social care". I may be naive. But at least then it would take electoral politics out of it, as neither main party could use it at the next GE to knock the other.
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.
I wonder if one of the long term changes might be an awareness of how expensive working can be? Factoring in the cost of taking certain jobs was something folk seldom did. They just looked at the extra pay of the role, and were mystified as to why they seemed to have less to spend.
And idiots in government want to make it more expensive to work by taxing workers more?
Including the word tactical to appeal to men is such a cliche. Maybe it works but jeez.
Still, if it leads to dad's pulling their weight good I guess.
'Look honey, it's good that he wants to play with the Glock.'
The second amendment is quite clear that babies should be allowed to own guns. How else can they defend their liberty from unelected tyrants aka parents.
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.
'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.
Daughter in law?
Meghan's card has been marked..
Cookie's let slip! We won't be hearing from them for much longer.
Oops! I actually thought about that for some time before getting it wrong. In my head, Diana is still in her thirties while HMQ is in her 90s.
She would have been 60 in July. Which surprised me too.
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.
On social care, wasn't there talk of pursuing a solution through cross-party consensus, so that both Conservative and Labour (any maybe others as well) signed up to it?
It would be much easier to deliver if the government could say "we have agreed with the Labour front bench (and others) that this solution is the way forward to tackle the huge funding shortage in social care". I may be naive. But at least then it would take electoral politics out of it, as neither main party could use it at the next GE to knock the other.
There always is such talk, I'm sure the 2017 manifestos all said that.
Now we are getting on to a serious subject. I don't get ABBA. I think they are rubbish. I detest every song.
ABBA write catchy tunes and when they sing, they put a smile on your face. Those are skills, which ABBA have in greater abundance than anyone else in popular music, ever. Other performers would give their eyes teeth to be able to do the same.
I didn't claim they weren't talented, just I hate them. Same goes for Andrew Lloyd Webber.
Nothing worse than feelgood music that doesn't make you feel good.
I disagree with the other commentator who thinks ABBA music to be quite sophisticated. But I do think they are superb performers, where performance is what it is all about.
Not sophisticated? Try "The day before you came". It's a comprehensive novella in 3 minutes, and in their second language.
It's quite impressive that they can write in their second language. But what they write isn't exactly sophisticated. The word which comes to mind for TDBYC is trite. It's hardly Morrissey or Guy Garvey.
We'll have to agree to disagree. I think TDBYC is a minor masterpiece. You are right about Elbow, absolute genius, but Steven Morrisey? What a miserable man, and with some unpleasant extremist views.
The Day Before You Came, the covid version, in lego, may be the best music video of recent times:
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.
'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.
Daughter in law?
Meghan's card has been marked..
Cookie's let slip! We won't be hearing from them for much longer.
Oops! I actually thought about that for some time before getting it wrong. In my head, Diana is still in her thirties while HMQ is in her 90s.
She would have been 60 in July. Which surprised me too.
I remember being much more shocked at the concept of a decade younger colleague turning 50 (good heavens - that old!) than the inevitable personal consequence!
On social care, wasn't there talk of pursuing a solution through cross-party consensus, so that both Conservative and Labour (any maybe others as well) signed up to it?
It would be much easier to deliver if the government could say "we have agreed with the Labour front bench (and others) that this solution is the way forward to tackle the huge funding shortage in social care". I may be naive. But at least then it would take electoral politics out of it, as neither main party could use it at the next GE to knock the other.
Solving social care is a fundamentally political issue. Both in what should be implemented & how it should be paid for.
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.
'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.
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.
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.
Now we are getting on to a serious subject. I don't get ABBA. I think they are rubbish. I detest every song.
ABBA write catchy tunes and when they sing, they put a smile on your face. Those are skills, which ABBA have in greater abundance than anyone else in popular music, ever. Other performers would give their eyes teeth to be able to do the same.
I didn't claim they weren't talented, just I hate them. Same goes for Andrew Lloyd Webber.
Nothing worse than feelgood music that doesn't make you feel good.
I disagree with the other commentator who thinks ABBA music to be quite sophisticated. But I do think they are superb performers, where performance is what it is all about.
Not sophisticated? Try "The day before you came". It's a comprehensive novella in 3 minutes, and in their second language.
It's quite impressive that they can write in their second language. But what they write isn't exactly sophisticated. The word which comes to mind for TDBYC is trite. It's hardly Morrissey or Guy Garvey.
We'll have to agree to disagree. I think TDBYC is a minor masterpiece. You are right about Elbow, absolute genius, but Steven Morrisey? What a miserable man, and with some unpleasant extremist views.
Morrissey is indeed a very odd man. I started reading his autobiography. The early years were very interesting - he grew up 16 years and 8 miles from me but it could have been another planet. And his years in the Smiths were also interesting. But then he devotes over 100 pages of his autobiography to a court case of who should benefit from the Smiths' royalties. Good grief he can bear a grudge. But one of the finest songwriters of his or any other generation.
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.
Once again Scotland showing how well tagetted its testing is unlike wildly profligate England.
I was also off, i thought Scotland would be 1-in-50
11%+ positivity smacks of under-testing vs "targeting" (the WHO benchmark is 5% for "pandemic under control) - and the Scotland range is 60 - 95 vs England 65-75, so you might not have been that far off.....
Surprise surprise you only see negativity if it relates to Scotland. You concerned we are not catching up with rates in another country you keep pushing as gold standard.
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?
Including the word tactical to appeal to men is such a cliche. Maybe it works but jeez.
Still, if it leads to dad's pulling their weight good I guess.
'Look honey, it's good that he wants to play with the Glock.'
The second amendment is quite clear that babies should be allowed to own guns. How else can they defend their liberty from unelected tyrants aka parents.
How about before they are born. It would solve the Texas problem.
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..
Comments
I would suggest taking some time out. Perhaps a walk somewhere, say a vaccine centre...
I think as a rule we should took to smooth all tax and benefits at all income levels so you always keep more than half of what you earn.
I don't think anything else is fair.
So where is Geldof and the band aid, sport aid, comic aid crew in the red tops? Where’s the religious leaders in the Mail and Telegraph? New Statesman and Speccy could have articles from the scientists so many would rather see first jabs in Africa than 3rd Jabs and Kiddie Jabs in Europe. Where’s Labour leaders Corbyn and Starmer and the TUC?
Perhaps we are still a nation with a rotten colonial mindset right the way through us?
A threat of violence has been noted.
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)"
https://www.gov.uk/guidance/police-pension-reform
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.
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.
(JOKE for the avoidance of doubt)
Happy to be corrected if others have better information.
I take great comfort from being part of a family of nations with close historical ties.
I didn't see my very very vulnerable parents for a year and a quarter. Covid would have killed my dad in a few days flat, so until we all got vaxxed I stayed away. Including all the way through last winter worried that I would never see him alive again.
My child is now in their mid 20s and cared for in a facility. Most carers are vaccinated. A few are not. All care.
And that is all I care about. They care. They have time. They make time to make the residents happy, to try to give them a life. They are fantastic, and that includes the un-vaccinated ones.
The way some posters on here have tried to de-humanise people just because they do not want a vaccine is obscene.
I'd say the Pacific Islands, Belize and NZ would be last.
See this clip. It's a hoot. From one of my favourite comedians, Paul Foot - love his stagecraft:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F6DoZIml0ak
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.
Anyone who retired before about 2010 was probably better off being in the private sector, because the public sector pensions were actually a slightly watered-down version of what was available privately. However, during the late 90s and early 00s, those private sector final salary schemes all closed, and anyone who started work from then on has likely never been in one. So anyone retiring from around 2040 onwards will be much better off if they spent their career in the public sector, because the new private defined contribution schemes are just much less generous, and the public sector schemes are basically the same as they always were.
The underlying issue with pensions is generally that any changes take about 50 years to work through the system and become apparent. It will be obvious at some point in the middle of this century that we should have massively reduced public sector entitlements to reflect rising longevity, the new interest rate environment and what is available in the private sector, and are probably already too late to prevent a significant strain on public finances as a result. Oh well.
🔵Con 40 (-1)
🔴Lab 34 (=)
🟠LDM 10 (+1)
🟢GRN 5 (+1)
🟡SNP 4 (=)
⚪️Other 6 (-1)
27-29 Aug, 2,062 UK adults
(Changes from 20-22 Aug)
Comres now use UK data so GB figures would be Con 41% Lab 35%.
That doesn't mean we shouldn't look after ourselves too.
There is no finite supply of resources here, the more money put in the more that can be produced. So the UK working without any lockdown restrictions means we can afford to put more money in and give more doses to the third world. They're better off, we're better off.
The trickle down effect is alive and well and real there. Better than levelling down.
Its the same reason why when you're in an airline you should always put your own oxygen mask on first before helping others. Once you've done so, you can then help others.
And no you don't need to threaten me, but you did.
https://twitter.com/Urban_Pictures/status/1433765171311300609?s=20
Video in tweet
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.
And the Annual Allowance to ban city boys from dumping humongous bonuses into their pension schemes to avoid tax.
For what it's worth I dislike the LTA because it amounts to a retrospective tax. It has resulted in many public sector workers retiring early to avoid it.
70% of the population could be vaccinated (2 doses) in 137 days (or by Jan 18, 2022).
Raw global supply of vaccines won't be what's preventing the likes of Afghanistan and the Democratic Republic of Congo vaccinated at that point, rather the supply chains, healthcare workers, access and all the remaining peripheral gubbins, international politics, corruption and so forth will.
My nan was recently admitted to a care home. She doesn't want to be in one, but she had a fall recently and needs to be in one - and the Council and the NHS won't let my grandad take her home. For the past year she's been afraid of the virus because it most likely will catch her if she catches it due to underlying health conditions and now she's forced against her will to be in a home.
Anyone who is caring for her, that doesn't care enough about her interests to be vaccinated, should not be caring for her.
No ifs, no buts.
It still makes it a stupid anomalous idea. Alistair Darling was just mucking around in 2009 for reasons of "dividing lines" and politics for the GE the following year.
No-one can touch it now for fear of 'helping the rich', but it'd be better to simply amend the headline rate of tax as it makes no sense for someone earning £105k to pay 62% and someone on £155k to pay 47%.
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.
https://www.nhsbsa.nhs.uk/sites/default/files/2019-07/Lifetime Allowance Charge examples-20190709-(V4) 1.pdf
Where most people struggle with anti-vaxxers is who they are. We see an assortment of paranoids and lunatics foaming on about conspiracies and the "fakedemic". We others who have a view of liberty that they should be allowed to do what the fuck they like and who the fuck are you to tell them what to do whilst getting (maskless) in your face going puce whilst jabbing their gammony finger at you.
And then we have a very small minority who have a religious or other ethical objection and those whose own medical condition means the vaccine would be Bad.
A lot of us take Covid very seriously, and it has opened many people's eyes to the fact that a lot of other people are self-centred selfish fucks. If that isn't you then you have my sympathy. Thing is that as "contrarian" you do come across as being more on the liberty-uber-alles end of the spectrum rather than genuine medical / ethical reason for not getting jabbed. And in your position of responsibility I have to assume your reason for not getting it is a doozy.
https://youtu.be/tGg_6CAfJCw
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.
I was also off, i thought Scotland would be 1-in-50
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.
I actually thought about that for some time before getting it wrong. In my head, Diana is still in her thirties while HMQ is in her 90s.
https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/pensioners-incomes-series-financial-year-2019-to-2020
Occupational pension scheme - 8% get over £750 pw (16% over 500 pw)
Private pension scheme - 7% get over £750 pw (14% over 500 pw)
On top of those there is the state pension, typically £120-200 pw, private income from btl, shares, bonds, etc.
Many pensioners are also earning, 16% earn over £1k per week, and dont pay NI on it, which is where we came in.
Well off pensioners are not the norm, and by definition not the average, but far from unusual.
Still, if it leads to dad's pulling their weight good I guess.
Pensions schemes covering the NHS, the civil service and the teaching profession were paying six-figure incomes last year to 375 retirees, up from 117 in 2010. Those in receipt of pensions higher than the UK’s average annual salary of about £28,600 also increased by 46% – up from 78,000 in 2010/11 to 115,000 in 2017/18.
Factoring in the cost of taking certain jobs was something folk seldom did. They just looked at the extra pay of the role, and were mystified as to why they seemed to have less to spend.
So then lefties. So then impatient rejoiners. What do you want to happen?
It would be much easier to deliver if the government could say "we have agreed with the Labour front bench (and others) that this solution is the way forward to tackle the huge funding shortage in social care". I may be naive. But at least then it would take electoral politics out of it, as neither main party could use it at the next GE to knock the other.
F**k that.
I pity anyone who has to live through that.
Which surprised me too.
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.
Politically no one cares enough for that.
Back to work!
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.
Both in what should be implemented & how it should be paid for.
Yes but that's true of private sector annuities too.
Vaccine certificates are now available to be downloaded as a QR code, or received as a paper copy.
From Friday, people living in Scotland are able to request the certification via the NHS Inform website.
On the site, users are then able to login to their NHS Scotland account, before clicking the tap for ‘vaccination status’.
https://news.stv.tv/scotland/covid-vaccine-passports-available-for-download-as-qr-code?top
I started reading his autobiography. The early years were very interesting - he grew up 16 years and 8 miles from me but it could have been another planet. And his years in the Smiths were also interesting. But then he devotes over 100 pages of his autobiography to a court case of who should benefit from the Smiths' royalties. Good grief he can bear a grudge.
But one of the finest songwriters of his or any other generation.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/03/realestate/top-nyc-real-estate-sales.html
https://www.forbes.com/sites/fredpeters/2021/08/18/revitalized-nyc-real-estate-faces-thinning-supply-and-increasing-demand/
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 am not so sure about 2 and 3. Is there any definitive evidence that links the level of infectiousness with the severity of illness?