Let’s not forget how appalling Corbyn’s GE2019 ratings were – politicalbetting.com

GIN1138 said:

eek said:

GIN1138 said:

eek said:

It's probably unfair to point this out but this is a photo from Sir David Amess's memorial service in Westminister



Boris just looks unwell - that expression reminds me of my Grandfather after 5 years of Parkinson's

I mean he's at the funeral of a friend and colleague who has been murdered and in the company of Mrs May (not to mention John Major)

I think unfair is an understatement don't you?

Nope, look at his face and look at the photos from yesterday - Boris is just drawn / worn out.

Perhaps he never fully recovered from Covid?

Long Covid? Shhhh, can't say them words on here.

In all seriousness I can't tell if he looks unwell or not, his shabby appearance day to day especially with that head of hair makes it difficult.

It's easily one of the hardest, most high pressure jobs you can do so that must take its toll on people who get the top job in the land. So I wouldn't be surprised if Boris is feeling it right now.

Leon said:

Gardenwalker said:

Leon said:

eek said:

Leon said:

Today I learned, while endlessly prevaricating instead of tackling a difficult flint, that the population of the Ukraine has declined from a peak of 52 million in 1993 to just 41.9 million today (some recent estimates put it down at around 37 million)

That is an incredible fall. A fifth of the country has disappeared in 25 years. If it continues Ukraine will cease to exist in the next century, and will be virtually deserted within a few decades

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Ukraine

Bulgaria's has shrunk 30% since 1988 - and that excludes any impact from a separate movement from the countryside into Sofia and the other larger towns.

Yes. People who eulogise the EU forget that the expansion into the East has been calamitous for several countries there, as all their young people vigorously decanted to the richer West, en masse

So why don’t they leave if it is such a calamity?

Because the EU gives them loads of cash

Ukraine isn't part of the EU, this sort of economic movement is inevitable if you can earn more money elsewhere (and have the means to pay for the initial relocation).

OnlyLivingBoy said:

Leon said:

Nigelb said:

OnlyLivingBoy said:

Cookie said:

I remember watching the 2019 election with a Conservative-inclined friend. We shared the view that we did not

Chelyabinsk said:

rcs1000 said:

It's the other set of grandparents - the capitalist ones - that she's taking about now.

Which set, sorry?

Dad of Birmingham Jess Phillips MP writes glorious letter defending her roots

...my Mom worked as a conductor on the buses during the war... My Mom remarried when I was four years old, and with my wonderful stepfather we eventually got a council house of our own in Sheldon (also part of Jess's constituency). Jess's other Grandma was a dinner lady at the local school in Yardley - are you getting the links!

OldKingCole said:

Chelyabinsk said:

eek said:

Labour are finally working out attack strategies

Jess Phillips MP
@jessphillips
Mrs Thatcher told my Gran to buy her council house. She said it would mean she had something to leave her family. Boris Johnson says to all those who bought their modest 2 bed houses that he's going to take it all away, while people like him get to keep so much

What a difference four months make:

'I was given a sense of injustice from the day I was born. My grandparents set up the independent Labour party in Birmingham. My grandad was a flag-waving activist. I was born, in 1981, to socialist parents who worked in the public sector. Mrs Thatcher was in power and we’d go on rallies, marches and take part in picket lines from before I can remember.' (Jess Phillips, The Guardian, 18 July 2021)

Granny must have been less of a flag-waving socialist activist than she let on. Wonder how her picketing, rallying kids felt about mum obeying Margaret Thatcher's injunction to buy her council house? Given that they sent darling Jess to a selective grammar school ten years later, perhaps it was where the rot set in.

You don't get sent to a selective grammar school. You win a place as a result of what can be a loaded exam.

An exam which most people don't have the choice to take, thanks to Labour. However, I apologise wholeheartedly to Jess's parents. Apparently Jess was : "A precocious child who insisted, against the wishes of her parents, on attending the local grammar school". Sadly, she had more sense at 11 than she does now.

"My Mom" - is this a Birmingham thing? The only place I know of in England who don't have a "Mum" are those in the North East who have a "Mam".

Yeah mom is a Birmingham thing, it is weird.

Also very much a US thing.

it's not. It is definitely British parlance now. Do you not have kids?

"Mum" will probably be gone entirely within 20 years. Blame social media

Really? Our kids still say "mum" despite two of them actually being American. In this country I've only ever heard "Mom" from Brummies. Other Americanisms are happening in our house, though. We do correct them when we can and try to encourage use of proper South London idioms in keeping with our surroundings.

If you go on Insta or Tik Tok you encounter a lot of British kids saying "Mom" now

The same process happened in Canada, they went from universal Mum to commonly saying Mom, because of the huge American influence. I doubt we will be different, sadly

DavidL said:

Carnyx said:

HYUFD said:

Carnyx said:

TheWhiteRabbit said:

eek said:

Labour are finally working out attack strategies

Jess Phillips MP
@jessphillips
Mrs Thatcher told my Gran to buy her council house. She said it would mean she had something to leave her family. Boris Johnson says to all those who bought their modest 2 bed houses that he's going to take it all away, while people like him get to keep so much

As has always been the case. There has never been a time when older people have been protected from losing their homes. Nor would it be prevented by implementation of Dilnot's primary recommendations.

True, but as HYUFD helpfully shows us passim, the Tories are currently making a big thing of intergenerational wealth transfer, and to tax the poor more highly on that than the rich* is not exactly consistent with Mrs T's original promise.

*before IHT kicks in on anyone who hasn't claimed all the allowances that benefit rich Tory voting southerners disporportionately already, and who hasn't put in place basic avoidance methods.

There is no tax on the poor, if you are poor you won't own a property but will be living in social housing or using housing benefits and all your care costs will still be paid anyway.

The £86,000 care cap applies to all homeowners, rich or poor.

The only other alternative would be to say have a policy where nobody will pay more than 40% of their assets in care costs but that would be an administrative nightmare to administer and very costly

Thinking about this some more, it is all about wealth transfer to the next generation. As Tory party policyt and your own frequent comments make clear.

So it has to be seen in the context also of Tory IHT policy. Which does indeed claim 40% of dutiable assets, at the cost of a fair bit of hassle.

And which is carefully crafted to minimise the effect on home owners in wealthier parts of the UK (because it differentiates between the house and other wealth).

You can't suddenly suggest that complex IHT calculations are acceptable while claiming that similar calculations are impossible for wealth in life.

There is a compelling argument that the cap is a bad thing because it protects the estates of the wealthy from open ended costs. It doesn't do much for the estates of the poor because their resources will be exhausted or at least reduced to £20k after which the state picks up the cost. Similarly, the hotel costs are met on a means tested basis.

Dilnott thought that what he called catastrophic care costs were unfair and that some of that risk should be shared by society as a whole. I am somewhat ambivalent about that for the above reason. But this argument that this scheme penalises the poor and less well off is just economically illiterate, it really is.

It’s the young working poor who are paying to protect the inheritances of the asset rich.

Frankly, the previous settlement was fairer than the scam the government is pushing.

eek said:

Leon said:

Gardenwalker said:

Leon said:

eek said:

Leon said:

Today I learned, while endlessly prevaricating instead of tackling a difficult flint, that the population of the Ukraine has declined from a peak of 52 million in 1993 to just 41.9 million today (some recent estimates put it down at around 37 million)

That is an incredible fall. A fifth of the country has disappeared in 25 years. If it continues Ukraine will cease to exist in the next century, and will be virtually deserted within a few decades

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Ukraine

Bulgaria's has shrunk 30% since 1988 - and that excludes any impact from a separate movement from the countryside into Sofia and the other larger towns.

Yes. People who eulogise the EU forget that the expansion into the East has been calamitous for several countries there, as all their young people vigorously decanted to the richer West, en masse

So why don’t they leave if it is such a calamity?

Because the EU gives them loads of cash

Ukraine isn't part of the EU, this sort of economic movement is inevitable if you can earn more money elsewhere (and have the means to pay for the initial relocation).

Precisely.
Only Brexiters attempt to blame the EU for this.

Indeed I recall Poland telling Cameron to piss off when during his failed attempt to renegotiate around EU migration.

ping said:

Carnyx said:

HYUFD said:

Carnyx said:

TheWhiteRabbit said:

eek said:

Labour are finally working out attack strategies

Jess Phillips MP
@jessphillips
Mrs Thatcher told my Gran to buy her council house. She said it would mean she had something to leave her family. Boris Johnson says to all those who bought their modest 2 bed houses that he's going to take it all away, while people like him get to keep so much

As has always been the case. There has never been a time when older people have been protected from losing their homes. Nor would it be prevented by implementation of Dilnot's primary recommendations.

True, but as HYUFD helpfully shows us passim, the Tories are currently making a big thing of intergenerational wealth transfer, and to tax the poor more highly on that than the rich* is not exactly consistent with Mrs T's original promise.

*before IHT kicks in on anyone who hasn't claimed all the allowances that benefit rich Tory voting southerners disporportionately already, and who hasn't put in place basic avoidance methods.

There is no tax on the poor, if you are poor you won't own a property but will be living in social housing or using housing benefits and all your care costs will still be paid anyway.

The £86,000 care cap applies to all homeowners, rich or poor.

The only other alternative would be to say have a policy where nobody will pay more than 40% of their assets in care costs but that would be an administrative nightmare to administer and very costly

Thinking about this some more, it is all about wealth transfer to the next generation. As Tory party policyt and your own frequent comments make clear.

So it has to be seen in the context also of Tory IHT policy. Which does indeed claim 40% of dutiable assets, at the cost of a fair bit of hassle.

And which is carefully crafted to minimise the effect on home owners in wealthier parts of the UK (because it differentiates between the house and other wealth).

You can't suddenly suggest that complex IHT calculations are acceptable while claiming that similar calculations are impossible for wealth in life.

Yup, that’s about it.

They’re the socialism for the rich party, paid for by the working poor.

They’ve managed to pull off quite the scam in recent years, getting the working poor to vote against their own interests.

Not really, even in 2019 most of those in social housing still voted Labour.

If you are a homeowner whatever the property value then by definition you are not poor

ping said:

DavidL said:

Carnyx said:

HYUFD said:

Carnyx said:

TheWhiteRabbit said:

eek said:

Labour are finally working out attack strategies

Jess Phillips MP
@jessphillips
Mrs Thatcher told my Gran to buy her council house. She said it would mean she had something to leave her family. Boris Johnson says to all those who bought their modest 2 bed houses that he's going to take it all away, while people like him get to keep so much

As has always been the case. There has never been a time when older people have been protected from losing their homes. Nor would it be prevented by implementation of Dilnot's primary recommendations.

True, but as HYUFD helpfully shows us passim, the Tories are currently making a big thing of intergenerational wealth transfer, and to tax the poor more highly on that than the rich* is not exactly consistent with Mrs T's original promise.

*before IHT kicks in on anyone who hasn't claimed all the allowances that benefit rich Tory voting southerners disporportionately already, and who hasn't put in place basic avoidance methods.

There is no tax on the poor, if you are poor you won't own a property but will be living in social housing or using housing benefits and all your care costs will still be paid anyway.

The £86,000 care cap applies to all homeowners, rich or poor.

The only other alternative would be to say have a policy where nobody will pay more than 40% of their assets in care costs but that would be an administrative nightmare to administer and very costly

Thinking about this some more, it is all about wealth transfer to the next generation. As Tory party policyt and your own frequent comments make clear.

So it has to be seen in the context also of Tory IHT policy. Which does indeed claim 40% of dutiable assets, at the cost of a fair bit of hassle.

And which is carefully crafted to minimise the effect on home owners in wealthier parts of the UK (because it differentiates between the house and other wealth).

You can't suddenly suggest that complex IHT calculations are acceptable while claiming that similar calculations are impossible for wealth in life.

There is a compelling argument that the cap is a bad thing because it protects the estates of the wealthy from open ended costs. It doesn't do much for the estates of the poor because their resources will be exhausted or at least reduced to £20k after which the state picks up the cost. Similarly, the hotel costs are met on a means tested basis.

Dilnott thought that what he called catastrophic care costs were unfair and that some of that risk should be shared by society as a whole. I am somewhat ambivalent about that for the above reason. But this argument that this scheme penalises the poor and less well off is just economically illiterate, it really is.

It’s the working poor who are paying to protect the inheritances of the asset rich.

Yes, I agree with that, which is why I have reservations about the cap. Inheritance seems a very strange priority for the tax payer, totally unrelated to need but laden with sentimentality. I would have preferred an option to buy insurance myself.

42,484 (+8.7%) and 165 deaths (-5.5%) and 826 admissions (-9.5%)

eek said:

DavidL said:

Carnyx said:

HYUFD said:

Carnyx said:

TheWhiteRabbit said:

eek said:

Labour are finally working out attack strategies

Jess Phillips MP
@jessphillips
Mrs Thatcher told my Gran to buy her council house. She said it would mean she had something to leave her family. Boris Johnson says to all those who bought their modest 2 bed houses that he's going to take it all away, while people like him get to keep so much

As has always been the case. There has never been a time when older people have been protected from losing their homes. Nor would it be prevented by implementation of Dilnot's primary recommendations.

True, but as HYUFD helpfully shows us passim, the Tories are currently making a big thing of intergenerational wealth transfer, and to tax the poor more highly on that than the rich* is not exactly consistent with Mrs T's original promise.

*before IHT kicks in on anyone who hasn't claimed all the allowances that benefit rich Tory voting southerners disporportionately already, and who hasn't put in place basic avoidance methods.

There is no tax on the poor, if you are poor you won't own a property but will be living in social housing or using housing benefits and all your care costs will still be paid anyway.

The £86,000 care cap applies to all homeowners, rich or poor.

The only other alternative would be to say have a policy where nobody will pay more than 40% of their assets in care costs but that would be an administrative nightmare to administer and very costly

Thinking about this some more, it is all about wealth transfer to the next generation. As Tory party policyt and your own frequent comments make clear.

So it has to be seen in the context also of Tory IHT policy. Which does indeed claim 40% of dutiable assets, at the cost of a fair bit of hassle.

And which is carefully crafted to minimise the effect on home owners in wealthier parts of the UK (because it differentiates between the house and other wealth).

You can't suddenly suggest that complex IHT calculations are acceptable while claiming that similar calculations are impossible for wealth in life.

There is a compelling argument that the cap is a bad thing because it protects the estates of the wealthy from open ended costs. It doesn't do much for the estates of the poor because their resources will be exhausted or at least reduced to £20k after which the state picks up the cost. Similarly, the hotel costs are met on a means tested basis.

Dilnott thought that what he called catastrophic care costs were unfair and that some of that risk should be shared by society as a whole. I am somewhat ambivalent about that for the above reason. But this argument that this scheme penalises the poor and less well off is just economically illiterate, it really is.

Is it.

Start with £100,000 end little.
Start with £1,000,000 end with £900,000.

What's even stupider is that if you allowed the family of the person with £100,000 in assets to inherit some I suspect that extra capital would in a lot of cases allow them to create opportunities and benefits that otherwise wouldn't exist and say allow their children / grandchildren to say go to University or do something else rather than day to day work.

Tell that to Jess Phillips, who wants her mother's council flat protected.

If you want the asset rich to pay more, the result is that the unlucky few with high care costs will lose everything - right or poor.

kinabalu said:

TOPPING said:

kinabalu said:

TOPPING said:

kinabalu said:

TOPPING said:

kinabalu said:

There's a boring 'in the middle' truth here. The Con GE19 landslide WAS due to Corbyn's weakness as a candidate. But it was also due to Johnson's strength. It was, truly, the Brexit election and it was Brexit that cemented the negative/positive view of the 2 leaders. For Johnson, hellbent on pushing Brexit through, his breezy 'can-do' persona was burnished. For Corbyn, dithering and triangulating, his previous rep as a man of principle was destroyed. So, that 80 seat result, it was Corbyn, and it was Johnson, but above all it was BREXIT.

It was above all CORBYN.

I loathe Boris. I loathe Brexit. But I loathe Corbyn about a million million million times more.

And I imagine as I think so does perhaps a majority-winning number of reasonably centrist types around the country.

It was above all CORBYN.

You're projecting, I'm analysing.

You would rather that the anti-semitic, Brit-hating, terrorist-loving c**t who you supported was a minor factor in the election result.

But he wasn't.

You replied to my post without reading it. It said that both Johnson and Corbyn were major factors.

I did read it. You are right they were all major factors but the most important one was Corbyn.

But that said I'm sure someone has the evidence to support either your or my point. I tried a mini-google but gave up.

Brexit, for me, since it was the biggest (almost only) issue in its own right and it also impacted positively on Johnson's image and negatively on Corbyn's. Hence it had a massive direct impact and a significant indirect impact. This is to repeat the main point in the post I wrote so I think that needs to be a wrap.

The issue as to why Corbyn was quite so disastrous though was that he was disliked by all sorts, so there was far less room for Labour to gain or hold people who were bothered about Brexit but might cast a vote differently, whichever way they jumped. A significant number of staunch remainers would never vote for him - either because they were generally Tory and viewed him as PM an even more dangerously stupid idea than Brexit or were ex-Labour/floating voters bothered by antisemitism or the extremism it served as a prime example of. It's remarkable in hidsight given the divides on Brexit that there were no Tory to Labour defections given how the significant anti-Brexit minority were basically told to get out of the Tory Party. Except of course it wasn't because someone like David Gauke was never going to endorse Jeremy Corbyn as PM - even as a gamble to get a desired outcome on Brexit.

Disastrously, though he couldn't embrace Brexit to counterbalance that, as why on Earth would a Labour leave/UKIP voter bothered about things like immigration, sovereignty and national prestige, vote for someone whose entire persona and support base was being vocally in opposition to those notions? Even if they turned round and said 'Brexit is great'. So they ended up where they had to be on damage limitation - in part because they had a leader so unpopular he couldn't take his own stance on Brexit and build a coalition around that.

TheWhiteRabbit said:

eek said:

DavidL said:

Carnyx said:

HYUFD said:

Carnyx said:

TheWhiteRabbit said:

eek said:

Labour are finally working out attack strategies

Jess Phillips MP
@jessphillips
Mrs Thatcher told my Gran to buy her council house. She said it would mean she had something to leave her family. Boris Johnson says to all those who bought their modest 2 bed houses that he's going to take it all away, while people like him get to keep so much

As has always been the case. There has never been a time when older people have been protected from losing their homes. Nor would it be prevented by implementation of Dilnot's primary recommendations.

True, but as HYUFD helpfully shows us passim, the Tories are currently making a big thing of intergenerational wealth transfer, and to tax the poor more highly on that than the rich* is not exactly consistent with Mrs T's original promise.

*before IHT kicks in on anyone who hasn't claimed all the allowances that benefit rich Tory voting southerners disporportionately already, and who hasn't put in place basic avoidance methods.

There is no tax on the poor, if you are poor you won't own a property but will be living in social housing or using housing benefits and all your care costs will still be paid anyway.

The £86,000 care cap applies to all homeowners, rich or poor.

The only other alternative would be to say have a policy where nobody will pay more than 40% of their assets in care costs but that would be an administrative nightmare to administer and very costly

Thinking about this some more, it is all about wealth transfer to the next generation. As Tory party policyt and your own frequent comments make clear.

So it has to be seen in the context also of Tory IHT policy. Which does indeed claim 40% of dutiable assets, at the cost of a fair bit of hassle.

And which is carefully crafted to minimise the effect on home owners in wealthier parts of the UK (because it differentiates between the house and other wealth).

You can't suddenly suggest that complex IHT calculations are acceptable while claiming that similar calculations are impossible for wealth in life.

There is a compelling argument that the cap is a bad thing because it protects the estates of the wealthy from open ended costs. It doesn't do much for the estates of the poor because their resources will be exhausted or at least reduced to £20k after which the state picks up the cost. Similarly, the hotel costs are met on a means tested basis.

Dilnott thought that what he called catastrophic care costs were unfair and that some of that risk should be shared by society as a whole. I am somewhat ambivalent about that for the above reason. But this argument that this scheme penalises the poor and less well off is just economically illiterate, it really is.

Is it.

Start with £100,000 end little.
Start with £1,000,000 end with £900,000.

What's even stupider is that if you allowed the family of the person with £100,000 in assets to inherit some I suspect that extra capital would in a lot of cases allow them to create opportunities and benefits that otherwise wouldn't exist and say allow their children / grandchildren to say go to University or do something else rather than day to day work.

Tell that to Jess Phillips, who wants her mother's council flat protected.

If you want the asset rich to pay more, the result is that the unlucky few with high care costs will lose everything - right or poor.

Um, I want the Dilnot approach implemented so that for the very poorest there is a tapering applied.

Gardenwalker said:

eek said:

Leon said:

Gardenwalker said:

Leon said:

eek said:

Leon said:

Today I learned, while endlessly prevaricating instead of tackling a difficult flint, that the population of the Ukraine has declined from a peak of 52 million in 1993 to just 41.9 million today (some recent estimates put it down at around 37 million)

That is an incredible fall. A fifth of the country has disappeared in 25 years. If it continues Ukraine will cease to exist in the next century, and will be virtually deserted within a few decades

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Ukraine

Bulgaria's has shrunk 30% since 1988 - and that excludes any impact from a separate movement from the countryside into Sofia and the other larger towns.

Yes. People who eulogise the EU forget that the expansion into the East has been calamitous for several countries there, as all their young people vigorously decanted to the richer West, en masse

So why don’t they leave if it is such a calamity?

Because the EU gives them loads of cash

Ukraine isn't part of the EU, this sort of economic movement is inevitable if you can earn more money elsewhere (and have the means to pay for the initial relocation).

Precisely.
Only Brexiters attempt to blame the EU for this.

Indeed I recall Poland telling Cameron to piss off when during his failed attempt to renegotiate around EU migration.

lol, no. I know you adore the EU and it can do no wrong, but this really *is* an EU *thing*. It's not "blaming the EU", it is a feature of the EU. Free Movement. The Baltics got depopulated. Poland desperately tried to persuade people to return.

"Poland’s population, however, continued to rise until 1996, since which time it has declined slowly. It was only in 2004, when Poland joined the European Union, that emigration really took off. While most EU countries instituted transitional arrangements, meaning that for several years Poles did not have the freedom to move to or work in them, the UK was a major exception amongst the big countries.

"The numbers who emigrated during this period are stunning. By 2015 there were estimated to be 2.4 million Poles living abroad, most of whom had left since 2004. By 2017 the number of Poles in the UK alone was more than a million."

https://balkaninsight.com/2021/04/01/polands-population-imponderables/

The Ukraine is a different case, with unique characteristics. Ongoing quasi-war does not help. It is notable that neighbouring Belarus (not in the EU) has a stable population of ~9m. Tho I imagine many of them would love to leave

eek said:

TheWhiteRabbit said:

eek said:

DavidL said:

Carnyx said:

HYUFD said:

Carnyx said:

TheWhiteRabbit said:

As has always been the case. There has never been a time when older people have been protected from losing their homes. Nor would it be prevented by implementation of Dilnot's primary recommendations.

True, but as HYUFD helpfully shows us passim, the Tories are currently making a big thing of intergenerational wealth transfer, and to tax the poor more highly on that than the rich* is not exactly consistent with Mrs T's original promise.

*before IHT kicks in on anyone who hasn't claimed all the allowances that benefit rich Tory voting southerners disporportionately already, and who hasn't put in place basic avoidance methods.

There is no tax on the poor, if you are poor you won't own a property but will be living in social housing or using housing benefits and all your care costs will still be paid anyway.

The £86,000 care cap applies to all homeowners, rich or poor.

The only other alternative would be to say have a policy where nobody will pay more than 40% of their assets in care costs but that would be an administrative nightmare to administer and very costly

Thinking about this some more, it is all about wealth transfer to the next generation. As Tory party policyt and your own frequent comments make clear.

So it has to be seen in the context also of Tory IHT policy. Which does indeed claim 40% of dutiable assets, at the cost of a fair bit of hassle.

And which is carefully crafted to minimise the effect on home owners in wealthier parts of the UK (because it differentiates between the house and other wealth).

You can't suddenly suggest that complex IHT calculations are acceptable while claiming that similar calculations are impossible for wealth in life.

There is a compelling argument that the cap is a bad thing because it protects the estates of the wealthy from open ended costs. It doesn't do much for the estates of the poor because their resources will be exhausted or at least reduced to £20k after which the state picks up the cost. Similarly, the hotel costs are met on a means tested basis.

Dilnott thought that what he called catastrophic care costs were unfair and that some of that risk should be shared by society as a whole. I am somewhat ambivalent about that for the above reason. But this argument that this scheme penalises the poor and less well off is just economically illiterate, it really is.

Is it.

Start with £100,000 end little.
Start with £1,000,000 end with £900,000.

What's even stupider is that if you allowed the family of the person with £100,000 in assets to inherit some I suspect that extra capital would in a lot of cases allow them to create opportunities and benefits that otherwise wouldn't exist and say allow their children / grandchildren to say go to University or do something else rather than day to day work.

Tell that to Jess Phillips, who wants her mother's council flat protected.

If you want the asset rich to pay more, the result is that the unlucky few with high care costs will lose everything - right or poor.

Um, I want the Dilcott approach implemented so that for the very poorest there is a tapering applied.

A 'modest' 2 bed flat will be worth significantly more than £100,000., so it's certainly not protected under Bilnot.

TheWhiteRabbit said:

eek said:

TheWhiteRabbit said:

eek said:

DavidL said:

Carnyx said:

HYUFD said:

Carnyx said:

TheWhiteRabbit said:

As has always been the case. There has never been a time when older people have been protected from losing their homes. Nor would it be prevented by implementation of Dilnot's primary recommendations.

True, but as HYUFD helpfully shows us passim, the Tories are currently making a big thing of intergenerational wealth transfer, and to tax the poor more highly on that than the rich* is not exactly consistent with Mrs T's original promise.

*before IHT kicks in on anyone who hasn't claimed all the allowances that benefit rich Tory voting southerners disporportionately already, and who hasn't put in place basic avoidance methods.

There is no tax on the poor, if you are poor you won't own a property but will be living in social housing or using housing benefits and all your care costs will still be paid anyway.

The £86,000 care cap applies to all homeowners, rich or poor.

The only other alternative would be to say have a policy where nobody will pay more than 40% of their assets in care costs but that would be an administrative nightmare to administer and very costly

Thinking about this some more, it is all about wealth transfer to the next generation. As Tory party policyt and your own frequent comments make clear.

So it has to be seen in the context also of Tory IHT policy. Which does indeed claim 40% of dutiable assets, at the cost of a fair bit of hassle.

And which is carefully crafted to minimise the effect on home owners in wealthier parts of the UK (because it differentiates between the house and other wealth).

You can't suddenly suggest that complex IHT calculations are acceptable while claiming that similar calculations are impossible for wealth in life.

There is a compelling argument that the cap is a bad thing because it protects the estates of the wealthy from open ended costs. It doesn't do much for the estates of the poor because their resources will be exhausted or at least reduced to £20k after which the state picks up the cost. Similarly, the hotel costs are met on a means tested basis.

Dilnott thought that what he called catastrophic care costs were unfair and that some of that risk should be shared by society as a whole. I am somewhat ambivalent about that for the above reason. But this argument that this scheme penalises the poor and less well off is just economically illiterate, it really is.

Is it.

Start with £100,000 end little.
Start with £1,000,000 end with £900,000.

What's even stupider is that if you allowed the family of the person with £100,000 in assets to inherit some I suspect that extra capital would in a lot of cases allow them to create opportunities and benefits that otherwise wouldn't exist and say allow their children / grandchildren to say go to University or do something else rather than day to day work.

Tell that to Jess Phillips, who wants her mother's council flat protected.

If you want the asset rich to pay more, the result is that the unlucky few with high care costs will lose everything - right or poor.

Um, I want the Dilcott approach implemented so that for the very poorest there is a tapering applied.

A 'modest' 2 bed flat will be worth significantly more than £100,000., so it's certainly not protected under Bilnot.

Doesn't need to be completely protected, just protected enough that it's not completely regressive (as Boris's current version is).

Cookie said:

I remember watching the 2019 election with a Conservative-inclined friend. We shared the view that we did not

Chelyabinsk said:

rcs1000 said:

It's the other set of grandparents - the capitalist ones - that she's taking about now.

Which set, sorry?

Dad of Birmingham Jess Phillips MP writes glorious letter defending her roots

...my Mom worked as a conductor on the buses during the war... My Mom remarried when I was four years old, and with my wonderful stepfather we eventually got a council house of our own in Sheldon (also part of Jess's constituency). Jess's other Grandma was a dinner lady at the local school in Yardley - are you getting the links!

OldKingCole said:

Chelyabinsk said:

eek said:

Labour are finally working out attack strategies

Jess Phillips MP
@jessphillips
Mrs Thatcher told my Gran to buy her council house. She said it would mean she had something to leave her family. Boris Johnson says to all those who bought their modest 2 bed houses that he's going to take it all away, while people like him get to keep so much

What a difference four months make:

'I was given a sense of injustice from the day I was born. My grandparents set up the independent Labour party in Birmingham. My grandad was a flag-waving activist. I was born, in 1981, to socialist parents who worked in the public sector. Mrs Thatcher was in power and we’d go on rallies, marches and take part in picket lines from before I can remember.' (Jess Phillips, The Guardian, 18 July 2021)

Granny must have been less of a flag-waving socialist activist than she let on. Wonder how her picketing, rallying kids felt about mum obeying Margaret Thatcher's injunction to buy her council house? Given that they sent darling Jess to a selective grammar school ten years later, perhaps it was where the rot set in.

You don't get sent to a selective grammar school. You win a place as a result of what can be a loaded exam.

An exam which most people don't have the choice to take, thanks to Labour. However, I apologise wholeheartedly to Jess's parents. Apparently Jess was : "A precocious child who insisted, against the wishes of her parents, on attending the local grammar school". Sadly, she had more sense at 11 than she does now.

"My Mom" - is this a Birmingham thing? The only place I know of in England who don't have a "Mum" are those in the North East who have a "Mam".

You've never heard Mam in the NW? Was standard in Wigan for one.

DavidL said:

eek said:

DavidL said:

Carnyx said:

HYUFD said:

Carnyx said:

TheWhiteRabbit said:

eek said:

Labour are finally working out attack strategies

Jess Phillips MP
@jessphillips
Mrs Thatcher told my Gran to buy her council house. She said it would mean she had something to leave her family. Boris Johnson says to all those who bought their modest 2 bed houses that he's going to take it all away, while people like him get to keep so much

As has always been the case. There has never been a time when older people have been protected from losing their homes. Nor would it be prevented by implementation of Dilnot's primary recommendations.

True, but as HYUFD helpfully shows us passim, the Tories are currently making a big thing of intergenerational wealth transfer, and to tax the poor more highly on that than the rich* is not exactly consistent with Mrs T's original promise.

*before IHT kicks in on anyone who hasn't claimed all the allowances that benefit rich Tory voting southerners disporportionately already, and who hasn't put in place basic avoidance methods.

There is no tax on the poor, if you are poor you won't own a property but will be living in social housing or using housing benefits and all your care costs will still be paid anyway.

The £86,000 care cap applies to all homeowners, rich or poor.

The only other alternative would be to say have a policy where nobody will pay more than 40% of their assets in care costs but that would be an administrative nightmare to administer and very costly

Thinking about this some more, it is all about wealth transfer to the next generation. As Tory party policyt and your own frequent comments make clear.

So it has to be seen in the context also of Tory IHT policy. Which does indeed claim 40% of dutiable assets, at the cost of a fair bit of hassle.

And which is carefully crafted to minimise the effect on home owners in wealthier parts of the UK (because it differentiates between the house and other wealth).

You can't suddenly suggest that complex IHT calculations are acceptable while claiming that similar calculations are impossible for wealth in life.

There is a compelling argument that the cap is a bad thing because it protects the estates of the wealthy from open ended costs. It doesn't do much for the estates of the poor because their resources will be exhausted or at least reduced to £20k after which the state picks up the cost. Similarly, the hotel costs are met on a means tested basis.

Dilnott thought that what he called catastrophic care costs were unfair and that some of that risk should be shared by society as a whole. I am somewhat ambivalent about that for the above reason. But this argument that this scheme penalises the poor and less well off is just economically illiterate, it really is.

Is it.

Start with £100,000 end little.
Start with £1,000,000 end with £900,000.

What's even stupider is that if you allowed the family of the person with £100,000 in assets to inherit some I suspect that extra capital would in a lot of cases allow them to create opportunities and benefits that otherwise wouldn't exist and say allow their children / grandchildren to say go to University or do something else rather than day to day work.

Start with £100k and you end up with £20k, costs effectively capped at £80k.
Start with £1m and you end up with £914k. You pay the full whack.

The estates started off unequal and ended unequal because they got a bill. Unlucky, but why should the beneficiaries of the first get more money at the cost of the taxpayer? Their beneficiaries may of course be rich rather than poor. Its irrational.

Start at £106,000 then....

Sean_F said:

MaxPB said:

Sean_F said:

@Leon, those Ukraine demographic statistics are horrendous.

It's quite a similar story across most of Eastern Europe, their young people all left for Germany and the UK. It's quite sad really.

It's a dreadful trifecta of low birth rate, high death rate, and emigration of the people most likely to have children.

Well, there are at least 3-4m mainly young, child bearing aged eastern Europeans living here. Good for our demographic issues. Not so much for the countries they left behind.

TimT said:

Leon said:

Sean_F said:

@Leon, those Ukraine demographic statistics are horrendous.

Yes, the equivalent in the UK would be our population falling from 67 million to about 50 million in the next 25 years. Twice the population of London: disappearing. In one generation. Remarkable and desolating


However as @eek points out, other East European countries have it even worse. And the demographic crunch is spreading....

Must be some pretty spectacular properties available at very reasonable prices ...

I saw a property in Sofia that was... well, it would have made a very nice embassy on Kensington Place Gardens.

I could have afforded it.....

TheWhiteRabbit said:

DavidL said:

ping said:

DavidL said:

Carnyx said:

HYUFD said:

Carnyx said:

TheWhiteRabbit said:

eek said:

Labour are finally working out attack strategies

Jess Phillips MP
@jessphillips
Mrs Thatcher told my Gran to buy her council house. She said it would mean she had something to leave her family. Boris Johnson says to all those who bought their modest 2 bed houses that he's going to take it all away, while people like him get to keep so much

As has always been the case. There has never been a time when older people have been protected from losing their homes. Nor would it be prevented by implementation of Dilnot's primary recommendations.

True, but as HYUFD helpfully shows us passim, the Tories are currently making a big thing of intergenerational wealth transfer, and to tax the poor more highly on that than the rich* is not exactly consistent with Mrs T's original promise.

*before IHT kicks in on anyone who hasn't claimed all the allowances that benefit rich Tory voting southerners disporportionately already, and who hasn't put in place basic avoidance methods.

There is no tax on the poor, if you are poor you won't own a property but will be living in social housing or using housing benefits and all your care costs will still be paid anyway.

The £86,000 care cap applies to all homeowners, rich or poor.

The only other alternative would be to say have a policy where nobody will pay more than 40% of their assets in care costs but that would be an administrative nightmare to administer and very costly

Thinking about this some more, it is all about wealth transfer to the next generation. As Tory party policyt and your own frequent comments make clear.

So it has to be seen in the context also of Tory IHT policy. Which does indeed claim 40% of dutiable assets, at the cost of a fair bit of hassle.

And which is carefully crafted to minimise the effect on home owners in wealthier parts of the UK (because it differentiates between the house and other wealth).

You can't suddenly suggest that complex IHT calculations are acceptable while claiming that similar calculations are impossible for wealth in life.

There is a compelling argument that the cap is a bad thing because it protects the estates of the wealthy from open ended costs. It doesn't do much for the estates of the poor because their resources will be exhausted or at least reduced to £20k after which the state picks up the cost. Similarly, the hotel costs are met on a means tested basis.

Dilnott thought that what he called catastrophic care costs were unfair and that some of that risk should be shared by society as a whole. I am somewhat ambivalent about that for the above reason. But this argument that this scheme penalises the poor and less well off is just economically illiterate, it really is.

It’s the working poor who are paying to protect the inheritances of the asset rich.

Yes, I agree with that, which is why I have reservations about the cap. Inheritance seems a very strange priority for the tax payer, totally unrelated to need but laden with sentimentality. I would have preferred an option to buy insurance myself.

This is covered in Dilnot.

Basically, there cannot be a market for insurance without a cap.

So the intention is to create a market because the state will insure above the cap, via a scheme of, er, national insurance.

I would be delighted to see it but I anticipate either very, very high premiums or a lot of wriggling by the insurers about undisclosed family history, possibly genetic tests etc.

Leon said:

TimT said:

Leon said:

Sean_F said:

@Leon, those Ukraine demographic statistics are horrendous.

Yes, the equivalent in the UK would be our population falling from 67 million to about 50 million in the next 25 years. Twice the population of London: disappearing. In one generation. Remarkable and desolating


However as @eek points out, other East European countries have it even worse. And the demographic crunch is spreading....

Must be some pretty spectacular properties available at very reasonable prices ...

The €1 house in Italy meme is actually a real thing. People do it. Tho if you add in the fees and whatnot, it's more like a few thousand euro. Still a bargain for a great big townhouse in Sicily

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/destinations/europe/italy/one-euro-villa-rural-italy-wheres-catch/

However, unless you speak fluent Italian it's pretty tough to get work done at a reasonable price and then it's just easier to buy a standard €200-300k place that's ready to live in.

AlistairM said:

Big_G_NorthWales said:

42,484 (+8.7%) and 165 deaths (-5.5%) and 826 admissions (-9.5%)

We had a particularly big specimen date case day on 15th Nov (49,927 cases). Most of that seems to have been reported on 18th Nov (46,807 cases). There are signs since then that cases are declining.



Fingers crossed for the next few days that that happens. Having said that, hospitalisations are coming down at quite a pace. This is the first time since the Summer that the link between cases and hospitalisations seems to have been broken - cases have been going up since almost the start of November but admissions have been declining and continuing to do so since before then.

Boosters for the most vulnerable working. Thank goodness for that.

TheWhiteRabbit said:

eek said:

DavidL said:

Carnyx said:

HYUFD said:

Carnyx said:

TheWhiteRabbit said:

eek said:

Labour are finally working out attack strategies

Jess Phillips MP
@jessphillips
Mrs Thatcher told my Gran to buy her council house. She said it would mean she had something to leave her family. Boris Johnson says to all those who bought their modest 2 bed houses that he's going to take it all away, while people like him get to keep so much

As has always been the case. There has never been a time when older people have been protected from losing their homes. Nor would it be prevented by implementation of Dilnot's primary recommendations.

True, but as HYUFD helpfully shows us passim, the Tories are currently making a big thing of intergenerational wealth transfer, and to tax the poor more highly on that than the rich* is not exactly consistent with Mrs T's original promise.

*before IHT kicks in on anyone who hasn't claimed all the allowances that benefit rich Tory voting southerners disporportionately already, and who hasn't put in place basic avoidance methods.

There is no tax on the poor, if you are poor you won't own a property but will be living in social housing or using housing benefits and all your care costs will still be paid anyway.

The £86,000 care cap applies to all homeowners, rich or poor.

The only other alternative would be to say have a policy where nobody will pay more than 40% of their assets in care costs but that would be an administrative nightmare to administer and very costly

Thinking about this some more, it is all about wealth transfer to the next generation. As Tory party policyt and your own frequent comments make clear.

So it has to be seen in the context also of Tory IHT policy. Which does indeed claim 40% of dutiable assets, at the cost of a fair bit of hassle.

And which is carefully crafted to minimise the effect on home owners in wealthier parts of the UK (because it differentiates between the house and other wealth).

You can't suddenly suggest that complex IHT calculations are acceptable while claiming that similar calculations are impossible for wealth in life.

There is a compelling argument that the cap is a bad thing because it protects the estates of the wealthy from open ended costs. It doesn't do much for the estates of the poor because their resources will be exhausted or at least reduced to £20k after which the state picks up the cost. Similarly, the hotel costs are met on a means tested basis.

Dilnott thought that what he called catastrophic care costs were unfair and that some of that risk should be shared by society as a whole. I am somewhat ambivalent about that for the above reason. But this argument that this scheme penalises the poor and less well off is just economically illiterate, it really is.

Is it.

Start with £100,000 end little.
Start with £1,000,000 end with £900,000.

What's even stupider is that if you allowed the family of the person with £100,000 in assets to inherit some I suspect that extra capital would in a lot of cases allow them to create opportunities and benefits that otherwise wouldn't exist and say allow their children / grandchildren to say go to University or do something else rather than day to day work.

Tell that to Jess Phillips, who wants her mother's council flat protected.

If you want the asset rich to pay more, the result is that the unlucky few with high care costs will lose everything - right or poor.

That's bollocks.
The inescapable point is that this plan disproportionately protects the wealthy, while taking away a large proportion of the assets of those with more modest assets (and is paid for by a tax increase on incomes).
Any government which was even vaguely interested in levelling up would encourage those towards the bottom end of society saving to pass on assets to the next generation.

LostPassword said:

DavidL said:

ping said:

DavidL said:

Carnyx said:

HYUFD said:

Carnyx said:

TheWhiteRabbit said:

eek said:

Labour are finally working out attack strategies

Jess Phillips MP
@jessphillips
Mrs Thatcher told my Gran to buy her council house. She said it would mean she had something to leave her family. Boris Johnson says to all those who bought their modest 2 bed houses that he's going to take it all away, while people like him get to keep so much

As has always been the case. There has never been a time when older people have been protected from losing their homes. Nor would it be prevented by implementation of Dilnot's primary recommendations.

True, but as HYUFD helpfully shows us passim, the Tories are currently making a big thing of intergenerational wealth transfer, and to tax the poor more highly on that than the rich* is not exactly consistent with Mrs T's original promise.

*before IHT kicks in on anyone who hasn't claimed all the allowances that benefit rich Tory voting southerners disporportionately already, and who hasn't put in place basic avoidance methods.

There is no tax on the poor, if you are poor you won't own a property but will be living in social housing or using housing benefits and all your care costs will still be paid anyway.

The £86,000 care cap applies to all homeowners, rich or poor.

The only other alternative would be to say have a policy where nobody will pay more than 40% of their assets in care costs but that would be an administrative nightmare to administer and very costly

Thinking about this some more, it is all about wealth transfer to the next generation. As Tory party policyt and your own frequent comments make clear.

So it has to be seen in the context also of Tory IHT policy. Which does indeed claim 40% of dutiable assets, at the cost of a fair bit of hassle.

And which is carefully crafted to minimise the effect on home owners in wealthier parts of the UK (because it differentiates between the house and other wealth).

You can't suddenly suggest that complex IHT calculations are acceptable while claiming that similar calculations are impossible for wealth in life.

There is a compelling argument that the cap is a bad thing because it protects the estates of the wealthy from open ended costs. It doesn't do much for the estates of the poor because their resources will be exhausted or at least reduced to £20k after which the state picks up the cost. Similarly, the hotel costs are met on a means tested basis.

Dilnott thought that what he called catastrophic care costs were unfair and that some of that risk should be shared by society as a whole. I am somewhat ambivalent about that for the above reason. But this argument that this scheme penalises the poor and less well off is just economically illiterate, it really is.

It’s the working poor who are paying to protect the inheritances of the asset rich.

Yes, I agree with that, which is why I have reservations about the cap. Inheritance seems a very strange priority for the tax payer, totally unrelated to need but laden with sentimentality. I would have preferred an option to buy insurance myself.

The proposed scheme is essentially a compulsory insurance scheme with an £86,000 excess and paid for via general taxation.

That seems like a very large excess, which makes the insurance effectively worthless for many people. Should general taxation be used to buy insurance only for those with assets above £100k?

The majority will not need this kind of care. Of those that do the vast majority will not receive £86K of care. Only those who are unlucky and who have more than £106k of assets really benefit from this. I am not sure I agree with the policy but the uncertainty about all of this has left the care system chronically underfunded over the last 20 years and we may be at the point that some decision, any decision, is better.

TheWhiteRabbit said:

eek said:

TheWhiteRabbit said:

eek said:

DavidL said:

Carnyx said:

HYUFD said:

Carnyx said:

TheWhiteRabbit said:

As has always been the case. There has never been a time when older people have been protected from losing their homes. Nor would it be prevented by implementation of Dilnot's primary recommendations.

True, but as HYUFD helpfully shows us passim, the Tories are currently making a big thing of intergenerational wealth transfer, and to tax the poor more highly on that than the rich* is not exactly consistent with Mrs T's original promise.

*before IHT kicks in on anyone who hasn't claimed all the allowances that benefit rich Tory voting southerners disporportionately already, and who hasn't put in place basic avoidance methods.

There is no tax on the poor, if you are poor you won't own a property but will be living in social housing or using housing benefits and all your care costs will still be paid anyway.

The £86,000 care cap applies to all homeowners, rich or poor.

The only other alternative would be to say have a policy where nobody will pay more than 40% of their assets in care costs but that would be an administrative nightmare to administer and very costly

Thinking about this some more, it is all about wealth transfer to the next generation. As Tory party policyt and your own frequent comments make clear.

So it has to be seen in the context also of Tory IHT policy. Which does indeed claim 40% of dutiable assets, at the cost of a fair bit of hassle.

And which is carefully crafted to minimise the effect on home owners in wealthier parts of the UK (because it differentiates between the house and other wealth).

You can't suddenly suggest that complex IHT calculations are acceptable while claiming that similar calculations are impossible for wealth in life.

There is a compelling argument that the cap is a bad thing because it protects the estates of the wealthy from open ended costs. It doesn't do much for the estates of the poor because their resources will be exhausted or at least reduced to £20k after which the state picks up the cost. Similarly, the hotel costs are met on a means tested basis.

Dilnott thought that what he called catastrophic care costs were unfair and that some of that risk should be shared by society as a whole. I am somewhat ambivalent about that for the above reason. But this argument that this scheme penalises the poor and less well off is just economically illiterate, it really is.

Is it.

Start with £100,000 end little.
Start with £1,000,000 end with £900,000.

What's even stupider is that if you allowed the family of the person with £100,000 in assets to inherit some I suspect that extra capital would in a lot of cases allow them to create opportunities and benefits that otherwise wouldn't exist and say allow their children / grandchildren to say go to University or do something else rather than day to day work.

Tell that to Jess Phillips, who wants her mother's council flat protected.

If you want the asset rich to pay more, the result is that the unlucky few with high care costs will lose everything - right or poor.

Um, I want the Dilcott approach implemented so that for the very poorest there is a tapering applied.

A 'modest' 2 bed flat will be worth significantly more than £100,000., so it's certainly not protected under Bilnot.

You do realise that the current legislation isn't Dilnot ?
(& can no one spell his name ?)

DavidL said:

TheWhiteRabbit said:

DavidL said:

ping said:

DavidL said:

Carnyx said:

HYUFD said:

Carnyx said:

TheWhiteRabbit said:

eek said:

Labour are finally working out attack strategies

Jess Phillips MP
@jessphillips
Mrs Thatcher told my Gran to buy her council house. She said it would mean she had something to leave her family. Boris Johnson says to all those who bought their modest 2 bed houses that he's going to take it all away, while people like him get to keep so much

As has always been the case. There has never been a time when older people have been protected from losing their homes. Nor would it be prevented by implementation of Dilnot's primary recommendations.

True, but as HYUFD helpfully shows us passim, the Tories are currently making a big thing of intergenerational wealth transfer, and to tax the poor more highly on that than the rich* is not exactly consistent with Mrs T's original promise.

*before IHT kicks in on anyone who hasn't claimed all the allowances that benefit rich Tory voting southerners disporportionately already, and who hasn't put in place basic avoidance methods.

There is no tax on the poor, if you are poor you won't own a property but will be living in social housing or using housing benefits and all your care costs will still be paid anyway.

The £86,000 care cap applies to all homeowners, rich or poor.

The only other alternative would be to say have a policy where nobody will pay more than 40% of their assets in care costs but that would be an administrative nightmare to administer and very costly

Thinking about this some more, it is all about wealth transfer to the next generation. As Tory party policyt and your own frequent comments make clear.

So it has to be seen in the context also of Tory IHT policy. Which does indeed claim 40% of dutiable assets, at the cost of a fair bit of hassle.

And which is carefully crafted to minimise the effect on home owners in wealthier parts of the UK (because it differentiates between the house and other wealth).

You can't suddenly suggest that complex IHT calculations are acceptable while claiming that similar calculations are impossible for wealth in life.

There is a compelling argument that the cap is a bad thing because it protects the estates of the wealthy from open ended costs. It doesn't do much for the estates of the poor because their resources will be exhausted or at least reduced to £20k after which the state picks up the cost. Similarly, the hotel costs are met on a means tested basis.

Dilnott thought that what he called catastrophic care costs were unfair and that some of that risk should be shared by society as a whole. I am somewhat ambivalent about that for the above reason. But this argument that this scheme penalises the poor and less well off is just economically illiterate, it really is.

It’s the working poor who are paying to protect the inheritances of the asset rich.

Yes, I agree with that, which is why I have reservations about the cap. Inheritance seems a very strange priority for the tax payer, totally unrelated to need but laden with sentimentality. I would have preferred an option to buy insurance myself.

This is covered in Dilnot.

Basically, there cannot be a market for insurance without a cap.

So the intention is to create a market because the state will insure above the cap, via a scheme of, er, national insurance.

I would be delighted to see it but I anticipate either very, very high premiums or a lot of wriggling by the insurers about undisclosed family history, possibly genetic tests etc.

Why would the premiums be very high? The total they would have to pay out is the cap of £86K. It's life insurance of that level but with maybe ≈ only a 1/10 chance that they would need to pay at all as not everyone gets dementia and ends up in a care home.

(Assuming the insurance is for the capped care costs and NOT the on-going bed and breakfast costs).

rottenborough said:

DavidL said:

TheWhiteRabbit said:

DavidL said:

ping said:

DavidL said:

Carnyx said:

HYUFD said:

Carnyx said:

TheWhiteRabbit said:

eek said:

Labour are finally working out attack strategies

Jess Phillips MP
@jessphillips
Mrs Thatcher told my Gran to buy her council house. She said it would mean she had something to leave her family. Boris Johnson says to all those who bought their modest 2 bed houses that he's going to take it all away, while people like him get to keep so much

As has always been the case. There has never been a time when older people have been protected from losing their homes. Nor would it be prevented by implementation of Dilnot's primary recommendations.

True, but as HYUFD helpfully shows us passim, the Tories are currently making a big thing of intergenerational wealth transfer, and to tax the poor more highly on that than the rich* is not exactly consistent with Mrs T's original promise.

*before IHT kicks in on anyone who hasn't claimed all the allowances that benefit rich Tory voting southerners disporportionately already, and who hasn't put in place basic avoidance methods.

There is no tax on the poor, if you are poor you won't own a property but will be living in social housing or using housing benefits and all your care costs will still be paid anyway.

The £86,000 care cap applies to all homeowners, rich or poor.

The only other alternative would be to say have a policy where nobody will pay more than 40% of their assets in care costs but that would be an administrative nightmare to administer and very costly

Thinking about this some more, it is all about wealth transfer to the next generation. As Tory party policyt and your own frequent comments make clear.

So it has to be seen in the context also of Tory IHT policy. Which does indeed claim 40% of dutiable assets, at the cost of a fair bit of hassle.

And which is carefully crafted to minimise the effect on home owners in wealthier parts of the UK (because it differentiates between the house and other wealth).

You can't suddenly suggest that complex IHT calculations are acceptable while claiming that similar calculations are impossible for wealth in life.

There is a compelling argument that the cap is a bad thing because it protects the estates of the wealthy from open ended costs. It doesn't do much for the estates of the poor because their resources will be exhausted or at least reduced to £20k after which the state picks up the cost. Similarly, the hotel costs are met on a means tested basis.

Dilnott thought that what he called catastrophic care costs were unfair and that some of that risk should be shared by society as a whole. I am somewhat ambivalent about that for the above reason. But this argument that this scheme penalises the poor and less well off is just economically illiterate, it really is.

It’s the working poor who are paying to protect the inheritances of the asset rich.

Yes, I agree with that, which is why I have reservations about the cap. Inheritance seems a very strange priority for the tax payer, totally unrelated to need but laden with sentimentality. I would have preferred an option to buy insurance myself.

This is covered in Dilnot.

Basically, there cannot be a market for insurance without a cap.

So the intention is to create a market because the state will insure above the cap, via a scheme of, er, national insurance.

I would be delighted to see it but I anticipate either very, very high premiums or a lot of wriggling by the insurers about undisclosed family history, possibly genetic tests etc.

Why would the premiums be very high? The total they would have to pay out is the cap of £86K. It's life insurance of that level but with maybe ≈ only a 1/10 chance that they would need to pay at all as not everyone gets dementia and ends up in a care home.

(Assuming the insurance is for the capped care costs and NOT the on-going bed and breakfast costs).

Because only those with a significantly higher risk than average will buy it.

DavidL said:

Big_G_NorthWales said:

42,484 and 165 deaths and 826 admissions

Pretty much as you were then. Our numbers are not really moving, unlike those on the continent.

New hospitalisation 13% down against last Tuesday.

Number in hospital with Covid has been trickling down since end of October.

Ditto patients in ventilator beds.

Leon said:

Today I learned, while endlessly prevaricating instead of tackling a difficult flint, that the population of the Ukraine has declined from a peak of 52 million in 1993 to just 41.9 million today (some recent estimates put it down at around 37 million)

That is an incredible fall. A fifth of the country has disappeared in 25 years. If it continues Ukraine will cease to exist in the next century, and will be virtually deserted within a few decades

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Ukraine

A model for the rest of the world to follow.

I applaud them.

Labour about to go into an internal earthquake?


lee harpin
@lmharpin
·
12m
Lisa Nandy confirms Labour will back Priti Patel’s move to ban Hamas

https://jewishnews.timesofisrael.com/lisa-nandy-confirms-labour-will-back-priti-patels-move-to-ban-hamas/ via
@JewishNewsUK

TheScreamingEagles said:

Gardenwalker said:

williamglenn said:

From the official France Diplomacy account: Foreign Minister @JY_LeDrian claims that @BorisJohnson is a "populist who uses all elements at his disposal to blame others for problems he faces internally."

https://twitter.com/francediplo_EN/status/1462834768563822609

It’s true, but very odd to see this sort of thing from an ostensible ally.

Oh dear, oh dear.

France is not our ally.

Don’t be daft.

kinabalu said:

TOPPING said:

kinabalu said:

TOPPING said:

kinabalu said:

There's a boring 'in the middle' truth here. The Con GE19 landslide WAS due to Corbyn's weakness as a candidate. But it was also due to Johnson's strength. It was, truly, the Brexit election and it was Brexit that cemented the negative/positive view of the 2 leaders. For Johnson, hellbent on pushing Brexit through, his breezy 'can-do' persona was burnished. For Corbyn, dithering and triangulating, his previous rep as a man of principle was destroyed. So, that 80 seat result, it was Corbyn, and it was Johnson, but above all it was BREXIT.

It was above all CORBYN.

I loathe Boris. I loathe Brexit. But I loathe Corbyn about a million million million times more.

And I imagine as I think so does perhaps a majority-winning number of reasonably centrist types around the country.

It was above all CORBYN.

You're projecting, I'm analysing.

You would rather that the anti-semitic, Brit-hating, terrorist-loving c**t who you supported was a minor factor in the election result.

But he wasn't.

You replied to my post without reading it. It said that both Johnson and Corbyn were major factors.

"You replied to my post without reading it." - saves time for busy, politically polarized (and polarizing) PBers.

Malmesbury said:

Gardenwalker said:

The EU has enabled freedom of movement of course, but I see no evidence that the countries themselves are keen to stop freedom of movement, presumably seeing the opportunity for experience in London, Paris or Hamburg as a net benefit for its workforce.

Instead, they seem to be looking at ways to improve fertility for eg paid parental leave etc.

Apart from the Ukraine, the Balkans generally seems to have the worst demography problem even though much of it is not in the EU.

The problem is assuming that a country is a monolith.

There are people in Poland who have done very well out of flood of *cash* from people working in "London, Paris or Hamburg".

There are also people who find the resulting inflation in various asset types as people come back and buy the place up problematic.

There are also people who are concerned at the hollowing out of the workforce.

In a way it resembles the house price boom in the UK - lots of winners. Lots of losers.

Sure, but I find it disingenuous for some posters to shake their heads and appeal to the plight of poor Bulgaria to justify Brexit.

In reality, these countries think Brexit is nuts and don’t want @DavidL’s mock sympathy.

rottenborough said:

Labour about to go into an internal earthquake?


lee harpin
@lmharpin
·
12m
Lisa Nandy confirms Labour will back Priti Patel’s move to ban Hamas

https://jewishnews.timesofisrael.com/lisa-nandy-confirms-labour-will-back-priti-patels-move-to-ban-hamas/ via
@JewishNewsUK

Should help Labour to lose a few rogue members and identify any left with awkward views

DavidL said:

Big_G_NorthWales said:

42,484 and 165 deaths and 826 admissions

Pretty much as you were then. Our numbers are not really moving, unlike those on the continent.

As far as I can make out cases in the UK have been increasing since the 5th November, but we're not seeing an increase in hospitalizations yet, where the latest data is a continued decline on the 18th - so perhaps an increase is imminent.

The England data on the dashboard is more recent and shows a continued decline in admissions on the 21st, following a rise in cases since the 5th.

I think the previous trough in admissions we on the 28th September, which was following a trough in cases on the 13th September.

We will see in a few days whether the booster campaign is exerting a downward effect on hospitalizations that is greater than the increase in cases.

Nadine Dorries having a torrid time in committee:

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/live/2021/nov/23/social-care-costs-jeremy-hunt-boris-johnson-sajid-javid-covid-uk-politics-live-latest-updates

Gardenwalker said:

There does seem to be a global movement away the countryside and towards the cities.

We don’t really see this in the U.K. much - maybe parts of Scotland? - but it’s a big issue across most of Europe.

Maybe Covid will stall this somewhat?

Highlands* and Scottish Borders Regions have seen modest but real increases in population over the last two decades (didn't check back further).

*PS Had a thought and went back and checked - but no, not entirely due to growth of Inverness (real as it is).

CarlottaVance said:

Words fail me:

WATCH: Labour’s Shadow NI Secretary tells me that if there was a referendum on a united Ireland that the British government and British political parties should not campaign for the Union “if there is a border poll, we should remain neutral”

https://twitter.com/darrenmccaffrey/status/1463129064420651011?s=20

Blair publicly supported the union. Starmer has said he would campaign for the union in a border poll. But such is the facile level of understanding about the Good Friday Agreement it is now assumed the UK is the only state in the world that cannot campaign for its own existence.

https://twitter.com/TomMcTague/status/1463181618043043840?s=20

I think the best policy is not to campaign... let the people of NI decide.

Benpointer said:

CarlottaVance said:

Words fail me:

WATCH: Labour’s Shadow NI Secretary tells me that if there was a referendum on a united Ireland that the British government and British political parties should not campaign for the Union “if there is a border poll, we should remain neutral”

https://twitter.com/darrenmccaffrey/status/1463129064420651011?s=20

Blair publicly supported the union. Starmer has said he would campaign for the union in a border poll. But such is the facile level of understanding about the Good Friday Agreement it is now assumed the UK is the only state in the world that cannot campaign for its own existence.

https://twitter.com/TomMcTague/status/1463181618043043840?s=20

I think the best policy is not to campaign... let the people of NI decide.

Do you think the Irish government will follow your advice?

Personal statement - yesterday got my copy of "The British General Election of 2019" which was published just this past spring.

Cover photo features Boris Johnson wearing a sly grin (composite of Benny Hill & Alfred E. Neuman?) and a "Get Brexit Done' apron, and carrying what appears to be a casserole of some sort (perhaps an old Etonian favorite such as "badgers in a trap" or somesuch?) fresh from the (Brexit) oven.

My copy is paperback fully 1.5 inches thick, 659 pages. Chock full of both nuts (for example Nigel Farage), facts and analysis until the cows (or the chickens?) come home.

For me only downside is the choice of cartoons used as illustrations/examples, as I do NOT like as general rule complex, multi-color, often downright nasty and/or macabre efforts in faux Gilray-Stedman style. Much prefer the work of Marf and Matt - much more in the spirit of Low humor!

FYI, am now the proud possessor of all 21 editions of "The British General Election" series from 1945 forward, if you are not familiar with them, check them out!

williamglenn said:

Benpointer said:

CarlottaVance said:

Words fail me:

WATCH: Labour’s Shadow NI Secretary tells me that if there was a referendum on a united Ireland that the British government and British political parties should not campaign for the Union “if there is a border poll, we should remain neutral”

https://twitter.com/darrenmccaffrey/status/1463129064420651011?s=20

Blair publicly supported the union. Starmer has said he would campaign for the union in a border poll. But such is the facile level of understanding about the Good Friday Agreement it is now assumed the UK is the only state in the world that cannot campaign for its own existence.

https://twitter.com/TomMcTague/status/1463181618043043840?s=20

I think the best policy is not to campaign... let the people of NI decide.

Do you think the Irish government will follow your advice?

Yep - because any sane Irish Government would be doing it's best to avoid having to support the basket case that is the Northern Irish economy and it can't campaign for it's silently preferred option of Never, Never, Never.

StuartDickson said:

Malmesbury said:

Gardenwalker said:

The EU has enabled freedom of movement of course, but I see no evidence that the countries themselves are keen to stop freedom of movement, presumably seeing the opportunity for experience in London, Paris or Hamburg as a net benefit for its workforce.

Instead, they seem to be looking at ways to improve fertility for eg paid parental leave etc.

Apart from the Ukraine, the Balkans generally seems to have the worst demography problem even though much of it is not in the EU.

The problem is assuming that a country is a monolith.

There are people in Poland who have done very well out of flood of *cash* from people working in "London, Paris or Hamburg".

There are also people who find the resulting inflation in various asset types as people come back and buy the place up problematic.

There are also people who are concerned at the hollowing out of the workforce.

In a way it resembles the house price boom in the UK - lots of winners. Lots of losers.

There is a lot of cultural tension between patriotic Poles who stayed at home, and the traitors who buggered off to Paris, Frankfurt, London etc. The emigrants are looked down upon, a bit like gypsies. When they drifted home as Covid and Brexit hit they found they were given short shrift. The patriots are in the ascendancy.

There is also issues with people coming home, buying up a huge parcel of land and build huge, ugly houses. For example.

In some areas, house price inflation is pushing out the "local" locals... Sound familiar?

eek said:

Malmesbury said:

Benpointer said:

TheScreamingEagles said:

Gardenwalker said:

williamglenn said:

From the official France Diplomacy account: Foreign Minister @JY_LeDrian claims that @BorisJohnson is a "populist who uses all elements at his disposal to blame others for problems he faces internally."

https://twitter.com/francediplo_EN/status/1462834768563822609

It’s true, but very odd to see this sort of thing from an ostensible ally.

Oh dear, oh dear.

France is not our ally.

What rot - your Francophobia does you no credit.

France is a great country, the French are generally nice people, we have much more in common than divides us, the petty rivalries on both sides are pointless and corrosive.

Time to grow up.

What makes me giggle is that the French political class has been using the "Perfidious Anglo-Saxons did it and ran away" excuse to try and blame internal problems on an external factor since.... a long long time ago...

All politicians want someone else to blame.

See in particular Nicola Sturgeon and Scotland who use the UK government everytime anything goes wrong in Scotland.

Yup, hence her new name in the Yoon-Twitterverse - #ElsieMcSelfie

Benpointer said:

TheScreamingEagles said:

Benpointer said:

TheScreamingEagles said:

Gardenwalker said:

williamglenn said:

From the official France Diplomacy account: Foreign Minister @JY_LeDrian claims that @BorisJohnson is a "populist who uses all elements at his disposal to blame others for problems he faces internally."

https://twitter.com/francediplo_EN/status/1462834768563822609

It’s true, but very odd to see this sort of thing from an ostensible ally.

Oh dear, oh dear.

France is not our ally.

What rot - your Francophobia does you no credit.

France is a great country, the French are generally nice people, we have much more in common than divides us, the petty rivalries on both sides are pointless and corrosive.

Time to grow up.

I'm not a Francophobe, I speak the language, love the food, love holidaying there.

You slip into Boris-lite mode too often when referring to the French for me to believe you are being ironic (same thing regards Wales and the Welsh).

It does you no credit, and I say that as a strong admirer of the majority of your views and posts.

Agreed. It's absolutely pathetic stuff from Eagles.

Leon said:

StuartDickson said:

Leon said:

OnlyLivingBoy said:

Leon said:

Nigelb said:

OnlyLivingBoy said:

Cookie said:

I remember watching the 2019 election with a Conservative-inclined friend. We shared the view that we did not

Chelyabinsk said:

rcs1000 said:

It's the other set of grandparents - the capitalist ones - that she's taking about now.

Which set, sorry?

Dad of Birmingham Jess Phillips MP writes glorious letter defending her roots

...my Mom worked as a conductor on the buses during the war... My Mom remarried when I was four years old, and with my wonderful stepfather we eventually got a council house of our own in Sheldon (also part of Jess's constituency). Jess's other Grandma was a dinner lady at the local school in Yardley - are you getting the links!

OldKingCole said:

Chelyabinsk said:

eek said:

Labour are finally working out attack strategies

Jess Phillips MP
@jessphillips
Mrs Thatcher told my Gran to buy her council house. She said it would mean she had something to leave her family. Boris Johnson says to all those who bought their modest 2 bed houses that he's going to take it all away, while people like him get to keep so much

What a difference four months make:

'I was given a sense of injustice from the day I was born. My grandparents set up the independent Labour party in Birmingham. My grandad was a flag-waving activist. I was born, in 1981, to socialist parents who worked in the public sector. Mrs Thatcher was in power and we’d go on rallies, marches and take part in picket lines from before I can remember.' (Jess Phillips, The Guardian, 18 July 2021)

Granny must have been less of a flag-waving socialist activist than she let on. Wonder how her picketing, rallying kids felt about mum obeying Margaret Thatcher's injunction to buy her council house? Given that they sent darling Jess to a selective grammar school ten years later, perhaps it was where the rot set in.

You don't get sent to a selective grammar school. You win a place as a result of what can be a loaded exam.

An exam which most people don't have the choice to take, thanks to Labour. However, I apologise wholeheartedly to Jess's parents. Apparently Jess was : "A precocious child who insisted, against the wishes of her parents, on attending the local grammar school". Sadly, she had more sense at 11 than she does now.

"My Mom" - is this a Birmingham thing? The only place I know of in England who don't have a "Mum" are those in the North East who have a "Mam".

Yeah mom is a Birmingham thing, it is weird.

Also very much a US thing.

it's not. It is definitely British parlance now. Do you not have kids?

"Mum" will probably be gone entirely within 20 years. Blame social media

Really? Our kids still say "mum" despite two of them actually being American. In this country I've only ever heard "Mom" from Brummies. Other Americanisms are happening in our house, though. We do correct them when we can and try to encourage use of proper South London idioms in keeping with our surroundings.

If you go on Insta or Tik Tok you encounter a lot of British kids saying "Mom" now

The same process happened in Canada, they went from universal Mum to commonly saying Mom, because of the huge American influence. I doubt we will be different, sadly

Try Scandinavia. Officially our children are meant to be taught English English. Bollocks. They are taught US English. Everyone under 30 speaks and writes pure Yankee.

Yet they generally speak it with a British accent? They all speak English near-perfectly, but it is rare to find one with an American accent.

I dunno about spellings. They definitely use American idioms - as do we

From the admittedly few scandi-dramas I have seen when they speak English they sound pretty american to me.

SeaShantyIrish2 said:

Personal statement - yesterday got my copy of "The British General Election of 2019" which was published just this past spring.

Cover photo features Boris Johnson wearing a sly grin (composite of Benny Hill & Alfred E. Neuman?) and a "Get Brexit Done' apron, and carrying what appears to be a casserole of some sort (perhaps an old Etonian favorite such as "badgers in a trap" or somesuch?) fresh from the (Brexit) oven.

My copy is paperback fully 1.5 inches thick, 659 pages. Chock full of both nuts (for example Nigel Farage), facts and analysis until the cows (or the chickens?) come home.

For me only downside is the choice of cartoons used as illustrations/examples, as I do NOT like as general rule complex, multi-color, often downright nasty and/or macabre efforts in faux Gilray-Stedman style. Much prefer the work of Marf and Matt - much more in the spirit of Low humor!

FYI, am now the proud possessor of all 21 editions of "The British General Election" series from 1945 forward, if you are not familiar with them, check them out!

What a collection! Very envious right now.

Nigelb said:

Leon said:

Sean_F said:

@Leon, those Ukraine demographic statistics are horrendous.

Yes, the equivalent in the UK would be our population falling from 67 million to about 50 million in the next 25 years. Twice the population of London: disappearing. In one generation. Remarkable and desolating...

Do those numbers include the loss of Crimea?

I believe so, there is a sudden drop around the time of the annexation. However it was falling hard before that, and it has continued to fall, hard, ever since

Pretty bleak outlook for Ukraine. It is also a negative feedback loop. The more young people leave the less viable the economy becomes, the fewer the opportunities, the villages are dead and the cities become sadder, and so even more people run away...

Anabobazina said:

Benpointer said:

TheScreamingEagles said:

Benpointer said:

TheScreamingEagles said:

Gardenwalker said:

williamglenn said:

From the official France Diplomacy account: Foreign Minister @JY_LeDrian claims that @BorisJohnson is a "populist who uses all elements at his disposal to blame others for problems he faces internally."

https://twitter.com/francediplo_EN/status/1462834768563822609

It’s true, but very odd to see this sort of thing from an ostensible ally.

Oh dear, oh dear.

France is not our ally.

What rot - your Francophobia does you no credit.

France is a great country, the French are generally nice people, we have much more in common than divides us, the petty rivalries on both sides are pointless and corrosive.

Time to grow up.

I'm not a Francophobe, I speak the language, love the food, love holidaying there.

You slip into Boris-lite mode too often when referring to the French for me to believe you are being ironic (same thing regards Wales and the Welsh).

It does you no credit, and I say that as a strong admirer of the majority of your views and posts.

Agreed. It's absolutely pathetic stuff from Eagles.

Would you describe it as racist?