Fundamentally, our highly westernised individualistic model means we expect people who need help and those who need care to be fully independent or cared for by paid others without any recourse to extended families or communities who'd do it essentially for free with a bit of aid and help.
This is not normal, throughout human history or in the rest of the world, where extended families care for their elderly parents and those with disabilities.
That doesn't bankrupt nations. And psychologically it's better for them too.
It is though dependent on family members living locally and being available so difficult where both of a couple work or if the elderly parent does not live near them. If the elderly parent has to move in, then a bigger house is needed, and possibly significant modifications.
It's also not true.
Historically families were not caring for elderly parents with dementia, where elderly means what it means today.
Historically those family members would be dead by now and their children would already be classed as elderly themselves.
On topic I doubt if the behaviour described is aimed at manipulating the price.
Clearing out the whole order book and buying shares for some silly price is much more consistent with not knowing what you're doing than manipulation. Wash trading doesn't in itself move the odds on the order book. It's most likely done either by the platform itself trying to make itself look more impressive or by someone who hopes they will issue a token and distribute it free to traders based on how much they traded.
I actually have a hospital appointment this morning. What a budget!
I went to hospital yesterday.
There was a poster by the entrance warning about measles, which we thought had been vanquished in the 1960s, before they invented anti-vaxxers.
But beyond that were electronic signs displaying a message that their software licence had expired (presumably unbeknownst to whoever could either renew the licence or turn the system off to save electricity) and direction signs that stopped well short of their destination. The clock had not been put back an hour at the weekend, or so I thought till I noticed that even then it would be 10 minutes wrong.
People say the NHS needs huge investment. They are right. It does. But it also needs people directly running hospitals and clinics to pick the low hanging fruit.
When will the political class wake up to the social care crisis and finally accept health and social care are the same fucking thing? All part of a continuum of care. Directly linked. Hospitals cannot discharge because the care homes don't have staff and beds, OTs so short in supply it takes months to get an assessment to send someone home etc etc.
I am so bloody sick of this. Every single budget, year after year, decade after decade. Labour or Conservative.
You are right. I think social care is an issue a bit like "growth" that we have been talking about, or reforming the tax system.
We all know these are major problems. Few people have a good idea of exactly how to fix those issues. Even fewer are willing to stake the political capital to actually tackle them . So nothing happens from parliament to parliament.
And frankly the UK public would almost certainly reject a party that had good ideas about these issues. Too big a change, too scary, too risky, so keep patching and tweaking the broken systems.
The political ‘wisdom’ is that there are hardly any votes in social care; surprising really, given the dramatic cost and effect on family finances when an elderly relative goes into care, as I am now dealing with. Ed Davey has gone a little way to proving this wisdom wrong; the LDs got a bit of traction for focusing on the issue during the GE and it was good to see Ed get a hat tip from the Budget speech. But Labour in particular always campaigns on the NHS (even in local elections) where it thinks the votes are, and has never made social care a priority. Streeting is clearly now fishing around for some way of offloading his promise of a resolution into some sort of cross-party long grass.
The problem iis the enormous cost, as May found out, any suggestion that the elderly should pitch in and share the risk of social care costs is political suicide. The only time a govt could do this is early in their term but Labour learnt a lesson when Cameron pulled out of cross party talks on a solution, choosing instead to use it for political point scoring.
Except that for many families, thats status quo. I've just this second sent another £6,000 over to the care home for my mother's next month, and we're selling her now vacant flat in order to cover future costs. Almost any change to the current arrangements would likely reduce our burden, and the Dilnot cap would have been most welcome, as we'll be up to it in about a year's time.
Similar situation in my family. Our inheritance from both sides has been wiped out by care costs; a result of brilliant efforts of the NHS to keep my grandparents alive.
It's a lottery and why, under the current system, inheritance tax feels fair to me. I'd rather it was upfront insurance premium that everyone paid though.
Yes, my MiL was in a very nice care home and very well looked after for 18 months, but the fees left only £50 000 from the sale of her bungalow for Mrs Foxy and her sister.
Personally I thought that fine, as that's what her savings were for, to keep her comfortable and well fed in her dotage.
It is a bit of a lottery though. Not all of us get to keel over quickly and painlessly reaching for the ketchup as Alec Salmond did the other week.
Then imagine how situations such as that interact with the euthanasia assisted dying bill that is currently being discussed…
Yes, that is my concern. There will be a direct financial incentive for families to bump off their elders.
Most families will consider quality of life and distress, but anyone with a financial interest in an early death and bigger inheritance has a clear conflict of interest.
Would make The Archers a more interesting listen. Like when Helen married the psychopath.
We discussed this before here between ourselves and others. We need more information on why people are voting Trump. I asked the question and got a lot of helpful replies, but none really totally convinced me. The idea that 50% of Americans are idiots is just daft. So I would really like some more informed feedback and shutting down people who give that is not helpful.
I do think @Sandpit gives a lot of useful stuff and people don't try and shut him down, which is good.
*The one minor point in defence of @Jossiasjessop is that particular poster does post a lot of conspiracy stuff and does link to a lot of exceedingly dodgy stuff. You might have noticed that he referred to that in one of his posts, although none appeared in that exchange. The links seemed straight forward. I would probably have done the same as @JosiasJessop , but it would have been without justification in this instant.
When will the political class wake up to the social care crisis and finally accept health and social care are the same fucking thing? All part of a continuum of care. Directly linked. Hospitals cannot discharge because the care homes don't have staff and beds, OTs so short in supply it takes months to get an assessment to send someone home etc etc.
I am so bloody sick of this. Every single budget, year after year, decade after decade. Labour or Conservative.
You are right. I think social care is an issue a bit like "growth" that we have been talking about, or reforming the tax system.
We all know these are major problems. Few people have a good idea of exactly how to fix those issues. Even fewer are willing to stake the political capital to actually tackle them . So nothing happens from parliament to parliament.
And frankly the UK public would almost certainly reject a party that had good ideas about these issues. Too big a change, too scary, too risky, so keep patching and tweaking the broken systems.
The political ‘wisdom’ is that there are hardly any votes in social care; surprising really, given the dramatic cost and effect on family finances when an elderly relative goes into care, as I am now dealing with. Ed Davey has gone a little way to proving this wisdom wrong; the LDs got a bit of traction for focusing on the issue during the GE and it was good to see Ed get a hat tip from the Budget speech. But Labour in particular always campaigns on the NHS (even in local elections) where it thinks the votes are, and has never made social care a priority. Streeting is clearly now fishing around for some way of offloading his promise of a resolution into some sort of cross-party long grass.
The problem iis the enormous cost, as May found out, any suggestion that the elderly should pitch in and share the risk of social care costs is political suicide. The only time a govt could do this is early in their term but Labour learnt a lesson when Cameron pulled out of cross party talks on a solution, choosing instead to use it for political point scoring.
Except that for many families, thats status quo. I've just this second sent another £6,000 over to the care home for my mother's next month, and we're selling her now vacant flat in order to cover future costs. Almost any change to the current arrangements would likely reduce our burden, and the Dilnot cap would have been most welcome, as we'll be up to it in about a year's time.
Similar situation in my family. Our inheritance from both sides has been wiped out by care costs; a result of brilliant efforts of the NHS to keep my grandparents alive.
It's a lottery and why, under the current system, inheritance tax feels fair to me. I'd rather it was upfront insurance premium that everyone paid though.
If they made inheritance tax 10% but with no exceptions, it would almost certainly raise more money than the current scheme full of a very expensive avoidance industry, that catches mostly the middle classes who happen to have a house in the South and some savings or pension - while the seriously wealthy pay little to nothing.
If it were up to me all inheritances would be taxed the same as income, with no exceptions.
Going to work to earn £50,000 shouldn't be taxed a single penny more than inheriting £50,000 that you haven't gone to work to earn.
IHT seems to evoke more emotion than any other tax, which is why there are so many reliefs. Politically extremely difficult.
My solution fixes that, it should be abolished and inheritance should be taxed as income instead.
No more IHT.
What's your limit on gifts? Or does everyone have to fill in a tax return every year? Ornaybe every time they get a credit in their bank account?
£10K
How often? To how many people?
Once a year. To as many people as you like.
Ireland taxes gifts. €3,000 yearly to as many people as you like. Lifetime gift allowance to your children of €400,000. It can be done.
France allows you to gift up to €100k every, I think, 10 or possibly 15 years (I should know, I was looking into it recently as my parents were handing over their half of the ownership of our French house).
My mum did that with the house she shared with me for her final years when I was her carer.
She very inconsiderately popped her clogs after six and a half years ...
When will the political class wake up to the social care crisis and finally accept health and social care are the same fucking thing? All part of a continuum of care. Directly linked. Hospitals cannot discharge because the care homes don't have staff and beds, OTs so short in supply it takes months to get an assessment to send someone home etc etc.
I am so bloody sick of this. Every single budget, year after year, decade after decade. Labour or Conservative.
You are right. I think social care is an issue a bit like "growth" that we have been talking about, or reforming the tax system.
We all know these are major problems. Few people have a good idea of exactly how to fix those issues. Even fewer are willing to stake the political capital to actually tackle them . So nothing happens from parliament to parliament.
And frankly the UK public would almost certainly reject a party that had good ideas about these issues. Too big a change, too scary, too risky, so keep patching and tweaking the broken systems.
The political ‘wisdom’ is that there are hardly any votes in social care; surprising really, given the dramatic cost and effect on family finances when an elderly relative goes into care, as I am now dealing with. Ed Davey has gone a little way to proving this wisdom wrong; the LDs got a bit of traction for focusing on the issue during the GE and it was good to see Ed get a hat tip from the Budget speech. But Labour in particular always campaigns on the NHS (even in local elections) where it thinks the votes are, and has never made social care a priority. Streeting is clearly now fishing around for some way of offloading his promise of a resolution into some sort of cross-party long grass.
The problem iis the enormous cost, as May found out, any suggestion that the elderly should pitch in and share the risk of social care costs is political suicide. The only time a govt could do this is early in their term but Labour learnt a lesson when Cameron pulled out of cross party talks on a solution, choosing instead to use it for political point scoring.
Except that for many families, thats status quo. I've just this second sent another £6,000 over to the care home for my mother's next month, and we're selling her now vacant flat in order to cover future costs. Almost any change to the current arrangements would likely reduce our burden, and the Dilnot cap would have been most welcome, as we'll be up to it in about a year's time.
Similar situation in my family. Our inheritance from both sides has been wiped out by care costs; a result of brilliant efforts of the NHS to keep my grandparents alive.
It's a lottery and why, under the current system, inheritance tax feels fair to me. I'd rather it was upfront insurance premium that everyone paid though.
If they made inheritance tax 10% but with no exceptions, it would almost certainly raise more money than the current scheme full of a very expensive avoidance industry, that catches mostly the middle classes who happen to have a house in the South and some savings or pension - while the seriously wealthy pay little to nothing.
Yesterday went some way towards that. 20% IHT on business and agricultural property above the threshold.
Our regime is out of step with other developed European countries, which generally have broader bases and lower rates.
Agricultural property used to be exempt, so yesterday’s changes are simply a tax rise that sends even more money to the lawyers and accountants.
Isn't the concern that wealthy non-farming people have been buying farmland to evade IHT when they die?
Avoid. Not evade.
Evade=illegal Avoid=finding a legal loophole. It's reasonable for governments to close loopholes.
The distinction between the two isn't as clear as it was, of course. But if it's a government designed exemption, which was true for agricultural land, it's not a loophole.
Rich non-farmers buying agricultural land just in order to pass down assets, while avoiding IHT, wasn't really part of the plan.
Are you saying the likes of the Duke of Westminster have fucked it for regular farmers ?
Not the headline/push notification Starmer/Reeves would have wanted.
Two questions there.
1. Titanic, on your phone? 2. 8am and your battery is nearly dead. Did you stay ‘out’ last night?
1) Yes, my phone is called Titanic, back in 2010 when my phone synced with my car it used to say ‘phone syncing’, so I renamed my phone Titanic so whenever it synced it would say ‘Titanic syncing’ which is amused me.
2) My new iPhone 16 Pro Max has a phenomenal battery, I can go two whole days on a full charge and I hate charging overnight so it was 18% last night when I went to bed.
Not the headline/push notification Starmer/Reeves would have wanted.
Two questions there.
1. Titanic, on your phone? 2. 8am and your battery is nearly dead. Did you stay ‘out’ last night?
Re 2. I'll often charge my phone in the morning by plugging* it into my laptop when I start work or, on non-work days, plugging it in to a USB socket over breakfast. Exceptions are 1-2 days I cycle to work when it's charged overnight in case I need it on the way.
Re 1. Nothing to add, m'lud
*yep, I'm old-school, no wireless charging here
Round here, there is a usb charging port by every seat on the new electric buses.
When will the political class wake up to the social care crisis and finally accept health and social care are the same fucking thing? All part of a continuum of care. Directly linked. Hospitals cannot discharge because the care homes don't have staff and beds, OTs so short in supply it takes months to get an assessment to send someone home etc etc.
I am so bloody sick of this. Every single budget, year after year, decade after decade. Labour or Conservative.
You are right. I think social care is an issue a bit like "growth" that we have been talking about, or reforming the tax system.
We all know these are major problems. Few people have a good idea of exactly how to fix those issues. Even fewer are willing to stake the political capital to actually tackle them . So nothing happens from parliament to parliament.
And frankly the UK public would almost certainly reject a party that had good ideas about these issues. Too big a change, too scary, too risky, so keep patching and tweaking the broken systems.
The political ‘wisdom’ is that there are hardly any votes in social care; surprising really, given the dramatic cost and effect on family finances when an elderly relative goes into care, as I am now dealing with. Ed Davey has gone a little way to proving this wisdom wrong; the LDs got a bit of traction for focusing on the issue during the GE and it was good to see Ed get a hat tip from the Budget speech. But Labour in particular always campaigns on the NHS (even in local elections) where it thinks the votes are, and has never made social care a priority. Streeting is clearly now fishing around for some way of offloading his promise of a resolution into some sort of cross-party long grass.
The problem iis the enormous cost, as May found out, any suggestion that the elderly should pitch in and share the risk of social care costs is political suicide. The only time a govt could do this is early in their term but Labour learnt a lesson when Cameron pulled out of cross party talks on a solution, choosing instead to use it for political point scoring.
Except that for many families, thats status quo. I've just this second sent another £6,000 over to the care home for my mother's next month, and we're selling her now vacant flat in order to cover future costs. Almost any change to the current arrangements would likely reduce our burden, and the Dilnot cap would have been most welcome, as we'll be up to it in about a year's time.
Similar situation in my family. Our inheritance from both sides has been wiped out by care costs; a result of brilliant efforts of the NHS to keep my grandparents alive.
It's a lottery and why, under the current system, inheritance tax feels fair to me. I'd rather it was upfront insurance premium that everyone paid though.
If they made inheritance tax 10% but with no exceptions, it would almost certainly raise more money than the current scheme full of a very expensive avoidance industry, that catches mostly the middle classes who happen to have a house in the South and some savings or pension - while the seriously wealthy pay little to nothing.
Yesterday went some way towards that. 20% IHT on business and agricultural property above the threshold.
Our regime is out of step with other developed European countries, which generally have broader bases and lower rates.
Agricultural property used to be exempt, so yesterday’s changes are simply a tax rise that sends even more money to the lawyers and accountants.
Isn't the concern that wealthy non-farming people have been buying farmland to evade IHT when they die?
Avoid. Not evade.
Evade=illegal Avoid=finding a legal loophole. It's reasonable for governments to close loopholes.
The distinction between the two isn't as clear as it was, of course. But if it's a government designed exemption, which was true for agricultural land, it's not a loophole.
Rich non-farmers buying agricultural land just in order to pass down assets, while avoiding IHT, wasn't really part of the plan.
Are you saying the likes of the Duke of Westminster have fucked it for regular farmers ?
There's a separate exemption for "heritage assets". I'm not sure whether that was addressed in the Budget ?
Fundamentally, our highly westernised individualistic model means we expect people who need help and those who need care to be fully independent or cared for by paid others without any recourse to extended families or communities who'd do it essentially for free with a bit of aid and help.
This is not normal, throughout human history or in the rest of the world, where extended families care for their elderly parents and those with disabilities.
That doesn't bankrupt nations. And psychologically it's better for them too.
It is though dependent on family members living locally and being available so difficult where both of a couple work or if the elderly parent does not live near them. If the elderly parent has to move in, then a bigger house is needed, and possibly significant modifications.
It's also not true.
Historically families were not caring for elderly parents with dementia, where elderly means what it means today.
Historically those family members would be dead by now and their children would already be classed as elderly themselves.
If the long trailed antibiotics crisis ever arrives then a return to those days rapidly follows.
When will the political class wake up to the social care crisis and finally accept health and social care are the same fucking thing? All part of a continuum of care. Directly linked. Hospitals cannot discharge because the care homes don't have staff and beds, OTs so short in supply it takes months to get an assessment to send someone home etc etc.
I am so bloody sick of this. Every single budget, year after year, decade after decade. Labour or Conservative.
You are right. I think social care is an issue a bit like "growth" that we have been talking about, or reforming the tax system.
We all know these are major problems. Few people have a good idea of exactly how to fix those issues. Even fewer are willing to stake the political capital to actually tackle them . So nothing happens from parliament to parliament.
And frankly the UK public would almost certainly reject a party that had good ideas about these issues. Too big a change, too scary, too risky, so keep patching and tweaking the broken systems.
The political ‘wisdom’ is that there are hardly any votes in social care; surprising really, given the dramatic cost and effect on family finances when an elderly relative goes into care, as I am now dealing with. Ed Davey has gone a little way to proving this wisdom wrong; the LDs got a bit of traction for focusing on the issue during the GE and it was good to see Ed get a hat tip from the Budget speech. But Labour in particular always campaigns on the NHS (even in local elections) where it thinks the votes are, and has never made social care a priority. Streeting is clearly now fishing around for some way of offloading his promise of a resolution into some sort of cross-party long grass.
The problem iis the enormous cost, as May found out, any suggestion that the elderly should pitch in and share the risk of social care costs is political suicide. The only time a govt could do this is early in their term but Labour learnt a lesson when Cameron pulled out of cross party talks on a solution, choosing instead to use it for political point scoring.
Except that for many families, thats status quo. I've just this second sent another £6,000 over to the care home for my mother's next month, and we're selling her now vacant flat in order to cover future costs. Almost any change to the current arrangements would likely reduce our burden, and the Dilnot cap would have been most welcome, as we'll be up to it in about a year's time.
Similar situation in my family. Our inheritance from both sides has been wiped out by care costs; a result of brilliant efforts of the NHS to keep my grandparents alive.
It's a lottery and why, under the current system, inheritance tax feels fair to me. I'd rather it was upfront insurance premium that everyone paid though.
If they made inheritance tax 10% but with no exceptions, it would almost certainly raise more money than the current scheme full of a very expensive avoidance industry, that catches mostly the middle classes who happen to have a house in the South and some savings or pension - while the seriously wealthy pay little to nothing.
If it were up to me all inheritances would be taxed the same as income, with no exceptions.
Going to work to earn £50,000 shouldn't be taxed a single penny more than inheriting £50,000 that you haven't gone to work to earn.
IHT seems to evoke more emotion than any other tax, which is why there are so many reliefs. Politically extremely difficult.
Yep, although I completely disagree with @hyufd on IHT and I am more in line with @BartholomewRoberts there is no doubting @HYUFD views represent a huge constituency of voters and you have to respect that to some extent.
I do think the pension pot change is right as it was an anomaly, but you can't ignore that it will bring into IHT an awful lot of people who previously were nowhere near it.
It'll trigger behavioural change though. People will take their pensions rather than keeping hold of them. There's a lot to be said for encouraging older people to spend the money and assets they have. Ideally on having a good time rather than social care, but realistically both.
The retired are such a huge proportion of the population now that we rely heavily on them for consumer spending. That's the only way they pay meaningful tax - through VAT - while keeping the economy afloat.
The maths is brutal. You have an ever expanding dependent population with ever increasing health and social care needs, coupled with an ever-decreasing working age population that is only going to shrink further now birth rates have sunk so low (even with significant immigration). So unless the retired either keep working much longer or spend spend spend, the tax on working age people has to rise inexorably simply for public services to stand still.
I agree with all of that except 'It'll trigger behavioural change'. It won't. It is the one time that won't because you don't know when you are going to die. You need the pot to live on so you have to keep it. You won't blow it because otherwise you have nothing to live on. If you remove it and keep it, it still attracts IHT when you die. You might distribute some funds before you die, but again what you have to distribute is unchanged.
It will likely see a further increase in annuities that had become less popular under ultra low interest rates.
Governments really should address the problem with annuity rates. Pensions should not be a lottery where your future income depends on wherever interest rates happen to be on your birthday.
When will the political class wake up to the social care crisis and finally accept health and social care are the same fucking thing? All part of a continuum of care. Directly linked. Hospitals cannot discharge because the care homes don't have staff and beds, OTs so short in supply it takes months to get an assessment to send someone home etc etc.
I am so bloody sick of this. Every single budget, year after year, decade after decade. Labour or Conservative.
You are right. I think social care is an issue a bit like "growth" that we have been talking about, or reforming the tax system.
We all know these are major problems. Few people have a good idea of exactly how to fix those issues. Even fewer are willing to stake the political capital to actually tackle them . So nothing happens from parliament to parliament.
And frankly the UK public would almost certainly reject a party that had good ideas about these issues. Too big a change, too scary, too risky, so keep patching and tweaking the broken systems.
The political ‘wisdom’ is that there are hardly any votes in social care; surprising really, given the dramatic cost and effect on family finances when an elderly relative goes into care, as I am now dealing with. Ed Davey has gone a little way to proving this wisdom wrong; the LDs got a bit of traction for focusing on the issue during the GE and it was good to see Ed get a hat tip from the Budget speech. But Labour in particular always campaigns on the NHS (even in local elections) where it thinks the votes are, and has never made social care a priority. Streeting is clearly now fishing around for some way of offloading his promise of a resolution into some sort of cross-party long grass.
The problem iis the enormous cost, as May found out, any suggestion that the elderly should pitch in and share the risk of social care costs is political suicide. The only time a govt could do this is early in their term but Labour learnt a lesson when Cameron pulled out of cross party talks on a solution, choosing instead to use it for political point scoring.
Except that for many families, thats status quo. I've just this second sent another £6,000 over to the care home for my mother's next month, and we're selling her now vacant flat in order to cover future costs. Almost any change to the current arrangements would likely reduce our burden, and the Dilnot cap would have been most welcome, as we'll be up to it in about a year's time.
Similar situation in my family. Our inheritance from both sides has been wiped out by care costs; a result of brilliant efforts of the NHS to keep my grandparents alive.
It's a lottery and why, under the current system, inheritance tax feels fair to me. I'd rather it was upfront insurance premium that everyone paid though.
If they made inheritance tax 10% but with no exceptions, it would almost certainly raise more money than the current scheme full of a very expensive avoidance industry, that catches mostly the middle classes who happen to have a house in the South and some savings or pension - while the seriously wealthy pay little to nothing.
Yesterday went some way towards that. 20% IHT on business and agricultural property above the threshold.
Our regime is out of step with other developed European countries, which generally have broader bases and lower rates.
Agricultural property used to be exempt, so yesterday’s changes are simply a tax rise that sends even more money to the lawyers and accountants.
Isn't the concern that wealthy non-farming people have been buying farmland to evade IHT when they die?
Avoid. Not evade.
Evade=illegal Avoid=finding a legal loophole. It's reasonable for governments to close loopholes.
The distinction between the two isn't as clear as it was, of course. But if it's a government designed exemption, which was true for agricultural land, it's not a loophole.
Rich non-farmers buying agricultural land just in order to pass down assets, while avoiding IHT, wasn't really part of the plan.
Are you saying the likes of the Duke of Westminster have fucked it for regular farmers ?
Anders Holch Povlsen is probably a bigger culprit...
When will the political class wake up to the social care crisis and finally accept health and social care are the same fucking thing? All part of a continuum of care. Directly linked. Hospitals cannot discharge because the care homes don't have staff and beds, OTs so short in supply it takes months to get an assessment to send someone home etc etc.
I am so bloody sick of this. Every single budget, year after year, decade after decade. Labour or Conservative.
You are right. I think social care is an issue a bit like "growth" that we have been talking about, or reforming the tax system.
We all know these are major problems. Few people have a good idea of exactly how to fix those issues. Even fewer are willing to stake the political capital to actually tackle them . So nothing happens from parliament to parliament.
And frankly the UK public would almost certainly reject a party that had good ideas about these issues. Too big a change, too scary, too risky, so keep patching and tweaking the broken systems.
The political ‘wisdom’ is that there are hardly any votes in social care; surprising really, given the dramatic cost and effect on family finances when an elderly relative goes into care, as I am now dealing with. Ed Davey has gone a little way to proving this wisdom wrong; the LDs got a bit of traction for focusing on the issue during the GE and it was good to see Ed get a hat tip from the Budget speech. But Labour in particular always campaigns on the NHS (even in local elections) where it thinks the votes are, and has never made social care a priority. Streeting is clearly now fishing around for some way of offloading his promise of a resolution into some sort of cross-party long grass.
The problem iis the enormous cost, as May found out, any suggestion that the elderly should pitch in and share the risk of social care costs is political suicide. The only time a govt could do this is early in their term but Labour learnt a lesson when Cameron pulled out of cross party talks on a solution, choosing instead to use it for political point scoring.
Except that for many families, thats status quo. I've just this second sent another £6,000 over to the care home for my mother's next month, and we're selling her now vacant flat in order to cover future costs. Almost any change to the current arrangements would likely reduce our burden, and the Dilnot cap would have been most welcome, as we'll be up to it in about a year's time.
Similar situation in my family. Our inheritance from both sides has been wiped out by care costs; a result of brilliant efforts of the NHS to keep my grandparents alive.
It's a lottery and why, under the current system, inheritance tax feels fair to me. I'd rather it was upfront insurance premium that everyone paid though.
If they made inheritance tax 10% but with no exceptions, it would almost certainly raise more money than the current scheme full of a very expensive avoidance industry, that catches mostly the middle classes who happen to have a house in the South and some savings or pension - while the seriously wealthy pay little to nothing.
If it were up to me all inheritances would be taxed the same as income, with no exceptions.
Going to work to earn £50,000 shouldn't be taxed a single penny more than inheriting £50,000 that you haven't gone to work to earn.
IHT seems to evoke more emotion than any other tax, which is why there are so many reliefs. Politically extremely difficult.
Yep, although I completely disagree with @hyufd on IHT and I am more in line with @BartholomewRoberts there is no doubting @HYUFD views represent a huge constituency of voters and you have to respect that to some extent.
I do think the pension pot change is right as it was an anomaly, but you can't ignore that it will bring into IHT an awful lot of people who previously were nowhere near it.
It'll trigger behavioural change though. People will take their pensions rather than keeping hold of them. There's a lot to be said for encouraging older people to spend the money and assets they have. Ideally on having a good time rather than social care, but realistically both.
The retired are such a huge proportion of the population now that we rely heavily on them for consumer spending. That's the only way they pay meaningful tax - through VAT - while keeping the economy afloat.
The maths is brutal. You have an ever expanding dependent population with ever increasing health and social care needs, coupled with an ever-decreasing working age population that is only going to shrink further now birth rates have sunk so low (even with significant immigration). So unless the retired either keep working much longer or spend spend spend, the tax on working age people has to rise inexorably simply for public services to stand still.
I agree with all of that except 'It'll trigger behavioural change'. It won't. It is the one time that won't because you don't know when you are going to die. You need the pot to live on so you have to keep it. You won't blow it because otherwise you have nothing to live on. If you remove it and keep it, it still attracts IHT when you die. You might distribute some funds before you die, but again what you have to distribute is unchanged.
It will likely see a further increase in annuities that had become less popular under ultra low interest rates.
Governments really should address the problem with annuity rates. Pensions should not be a lottery where your future income depends on wherever interest rates happen to be on your birthday.
The coalition already did that by ending the requirement to take an annuity and making it optional. Don't like the current offering? Wait until you do, or don't even bother with them.
A country bumpkin writes: This article contains a maximal saturation of great sounding terms that don't mean anything to us, even though we understand the effects of IHT changes on muck spreading farmers.
Glossary required.
Bots and people with deep pockets have been caught manipulating Polymarket into a pro Trump position.
The question is have their tentacles of doom spread to Betfair?
Fundamentally, our highly westernised individualistic model means we expect people who need help and those who need care to be fully independent or cared for by paid others without any recourse to extended families or communities who'd do it essentially for free with a bit of aid and help.
This is not normal, throughout human history or in the rest of the world, where extended families care for their elderly parents and those with disabilities.
That doesn't bankrupt nations. And psychologically it's better for them too.
It is though dependent on family members living locally and being available so difficult where both of a couple work or if the elderly parent does not live near them. If the elderly parent has to move in, then a bigger house is needed, and possibly significant modifications.
And that would be a very different sort of society. One where the vast majority of people stay in the town where they were born, and don't leave to study, marry, persue a career or any of those other things lots of us now do. Things that have generated a lot of wealth and human happiness overall.
And whilst reverting to that sort of world (probably pre-bicycle) would have benefits of the sort that conservatives approve of, I'm pretty sure that the disadvantages would outweigh the advantages.
Leon (who seems to have disappeared ?) is fond of talking about a "Korean style armistice". Nonsense, of course, for multiple reasons, but this demonstrates the biggest single one.
US Secretary of Defense confirmed that Washington would defend South Korea by using all available weapons, including nuclear weapons, if necessary. Any nuclear attack by the DPRK against the US or its allies and partners would lead to the end of the Kim Jong Un regime. https://x.com/Hromadske/status/1851922058030256371
Unless Ukraine is in NATO, the comparison is simply absurd.
When will the political class wake up to the social care crisis and finally accept health and social care are the same fucking thing? All part of a continuum of care. Directly linked. Hospitals cannot discharge because the care homes don't have staff and beds, OTs so short in supply it takes months to get an assessment to send someone home etc etc.
I am so bloody sick of this. Every single budget, year after year, decade after decade. Labour or Conservative.
You are right. I think social care is an issue a bit like "growth" that we have been talking about, or reforming the tax system.
We all know these are major problems. Few people have a good idea of exactly how to fix those issues. Even fewer are willing to stake the political capital to actually tackle them . So nothing happens from parliament to parliament.
And frankly the UK public would almost certainly reject a party that had good ideas about these issues. Too big a change, too scary, too risky, so keep patching and tweaking the broken systems.
The political ‘wisdom’ is that there are hardly any votes in social care; surprising really, given the dramatic cost and effect on family finances when an elderly relative goes into care, as I am now dealing with. Ed Davey has gone a little way to proving this wisdom wrong; the LDs got a bit of traction for focusing on the issue during the GE and it was good to see Ed get a hat tip from the Budget speech. But Labour in particular always campaigns on the NHS (even in local elections) where it thinks the votes are, and has never made social care a priority. Streeting is clearly now fishing around for some way of offloading his promise of a resolution into some sort of cross-party long grass.
The problem iis the enormous cost, as May found out, any suggestion that the elderly should pitch in and share the risk of social care costs is political suicide. The only time a govt could do this is early in their term but Labour learnt a lesson when Cameron pulled out of cross party talks on a solution, choosing instead to use it for political point scoring.
Except that for many families, thats status quo. I've just this second sent another £6,000 over to the care home for my mother's next month, and we're selling her now vacant flat in order to cover future costs. Almost any change to the current arrangements would likely reduce our burden, and the Dilnot cap would have been most welcome, as we'll be up to it in about a year's time.
Similar situation in my family. Our inheritance from both sides has been wiped out by care costs; a result of brilliant efforts of the NHS to keep my grandparents alive.
It's a lottery and why, under the current system, inheritance tax feels fair to me. I'd rather it was upfront insurance premium that everyone paid though.
If they made inheritance tax 10% but with no exceptions, it would almost certainly raise more money than the current scheme full of a very expensive avoidance industry, that catches mostly the middle classes who happen to have a house in the South and some savings or pension - while the seriously wealthy pay little to nothing.
If it were up to me all inheritances would be taxed the same as income, with no exceptions.
Going to work to earn £50,000 shouldn't be taxed a single penny more than inheriting £50,000 that you haven't gone to work to earn.
IHT seems to evoke more emotion than any other tax, which is why there are so many reliefs. Politically extremely difficult.
My solution fixes that, it should be abolished and inheritance should be taxed as income instead.
No more IHT.
Would you also tax gifts?
I'd ban them for adults. Who really wants socks and toileteries from their family and friends. And who wants to spend their time coming up with fresh ideas.
Point of order, I would welcome some socks.
I usually get bottles of whisky and/or brandy from my nearest and dearest. Or a couple of bottles of a nice wine. Or, if I've been asked, a donation to a charity. No point in giving me socks etc; I've got enough to see me out!
A country bumpkin writes: This article contains a maximal saturation of great sounding terms that don't mean anything to us, even though we understand the effects of IHT changes on muck spreading farmers.
Glossary required.
Bots and people with deep pockets have been caught manipulating Polymarket into a pro Trump position.
The question is have their tentacles of doom spread to Betfair?
Thank you, just what I needed.
There is no question that what happens on Polymarket is going to influence Betfair through arbitrage. It is inevitable.
When will the political class wake up to the social care crisis and finally accept health and social care are the same fucking thing? All part of a continuum of care. Directly linked. Hospitals cannot discharge because the care homes don't have staff and beds, OTs so short in supply it takes months to get an assessment to send someone home etc etc.
I am so bloody sick of this. Every single budget, year after year, decade after decade. Labour or Conservative.
You are right. I think social care is an issue a bit like "growth" that we have been talking about, or reforming the tax system.
We all know these are major problems. Few people have a good idea of exactly how to fix those issues. Even fewer are willing to stake the political capital to actually tackle them . So nothing happens from parliament to parliament.
And frankly the UK public would almost certainly reject a party that had good ideas about these issues. Too big a change, too scary, too risky, so keep patching and tweaking the broken systems.
The political ‘wisdom’ is that there are hardly any votes in social care; surprising really, given the dramatic cost and effect on family finances when an elderly relative goes into care, as I am now dealing with. Ed Davey has gone a little way to proving this wisdom wrong; the LDs got a bit of traction for focusing on the issue during the GE and it was good to see Ed get a hat tip from the Budget speech. But Labour in particular always campaigns on the NHS (even in local elections) where it thinks the votes are, and has never made social care a priority. Streeting is clearly now fishing around for some way of offloading his promise of a resolution into some sort of cross-party long grass.
The problem iis the enormous cost, as May found out, any suggestion that the elderly should pitch in and share the risk of social care costs is political suicide. The only time a govt could do this is early in their term but Labour learnt a lesson when Cameron pulled out of cross party talks on a solution, choosing instead to use it for political point scoring.
Except that for many families, thats status quo. I've just this second sent another £6,000 over to the care home for my mother's next month, and we're selling her now vacant flat in order to cover future costs. Almost any change to the current arrangements would likely reduce our burden, and the Dilnot cap would have been most welcome, as we'll be up to it in about a year's time.
Similar situation in my family. Our inheritance from both sides has been wiped out by care costs; a result of brilliant efforts of the NHS to keep my grandparents alive.
It's a lottery and why, under the current system, inheritance tax feels fair to me. I'd rather it was upfront insurance premium that everyone paid though.
If they made inheritance tax 10% but with no exceptions, it would almost certainly raise more money than the current scheme full of a very expensive avoidance industry, that catches mostly the middle classes who happen to have a house in the South and some savings or pension - while the seriously wealthy pay little to nothing.
If it were up to me all inheritances would be taxed the same as income, with no exceptions.
Going to work to earn £50,000 shouldn't be taxed a single penny more than inheriting £50,000 that you haven't gone to work to earn.
IHT seems to evoke more emotion than any other tax, which is why there are so many reliefs. Politically extremely difficult.
Yep, although I completely disagree with @hyufd on IHT and I am more in line with @BartholomewRoberts there is no doubting @HYUFD views represent a huge constituency of voters and you have to respect that to some extent.
I do think the pension pot change is right as it was an anomaly, but you can't ignore that it will bring into IHT an awful lot of people who previously were nowhere near it.
It'll trigger behavioural change though. People will take their pensions rather than keeping hold of them. There's a lot to be said for encouraging older people to spend the money and assets they have. Ideally on having a good time rather than social care, but realistically both.
The retired are such a huge proportion of the population now that we rely heavily on them for consumer spending. That's the only way they pay meaningful tax - through VAT - while keeping the economy afloat.
The maths is brutal. You have an ever expanding dependent population with ever increasing health and social care needs, coupled with an ever-decreasing working age population that is only going to shrink further now birth rates have sunk so low (even with significant immigration). So unless the retired either keep working much longer or spend spend spend, the tax on working age people has to rise inexorably simply for public services to stand still.
I agree with all of that except 'It'll trigger behavioural change'. It won't. It is the one time that won't because you don't know when you are going to die. You need the pot to live on so you have to keep it. You won't blow it because otherwise you have nothing to live on. If you remove it and keep it, it still attracts IHT when you die. You might distribute some funds before you die, but again what you have to distribute is unchanged.
It will likely see a further increase in annuities that had become less popular under ultra low interest rates.
Must admit I hadn't thought of that. Good point. It does sway the argument towards annuity.
However I wonder if the decision on drawdown/annuity is financial based or life style based. It certainly wasn't financial for me. I have good genes so an annuity would be the best decision financially but I have opted for drawdown for flexibility and as it isn't my only source I am happy with the risk.
I suspect annuities are more attractive to people on lower resources and the IHT impact is on those with higher resources.
Fundamentally, our highly westernised individualistic model means we expect people who need help and those who need care to be fully independent or cared for by paid others without any recourse to extended families or communities who'd do it essentially for free with a bit of aid and help.
This is not normal, throughout human history or in the rest of the world, where extended families care for their elderly parents and those with disabilities.
That doesn't bankrupt nations. And psychologically it's better for them too.
It is though dependent on family members living locally and being available so difficult where both of a couple work or if the elderly parent does not live near them. If the elderly parent has to move in, then a bigger house is needed, and possibly significant modifications.
And that would be a very different sort of society. One where the vast majority of people stay in the town where they were born, and don't leave to study, marry, persue a career or any of those other things lots of us now do. Things that have generated a lot of wealth and human happiness overall.
And whilst reverting to that sort of world (probably pre-bicycle) would have benefits of the sort that conservatives approve of, I'm pretty sure that the disadvantages would outweigh the advantages.
The cultural challenge is also that this hasn't been the British norm for centuries. Since at least the Georgian era and probably before, the country has had a more nuclear family structure, more mobility out of ancestral regions and occupations, more individualism in its economic behaviour than its European or wider global peers.
Given Trumps history perhaps not the best thing to say .
Trump says talking about protecting women , he’ll do it “ whether the women like it or not “.
The US really is so different to here. In the Uk that might be approved by 5-10% of the country, over there it might be 30% and another 30% who are not bothered.
Fundamentally, our highly westernised individualistic model means we expect people who need help and those who need care to be fully independent or cared for by paid others without any recourse to extended families or communities who'd do it essentially for free with a bit of aid and help.
This is not normal, throughout human history or in the rest of the world, where extended families care for their elderly parents and those with disabilities.
That doesn't bankrupt nations. And psychologically it's better for them too.
It is though dependent on family members living locally and being available so difficult where both of a couple work or if the elderly parent does not live near them. If the elderly parent has to move in, then a bigger house is needed, and possibly significant modifications.
And that would be a very different sort of society. One where the vast majority of people stay in the town where they were born, and don't leave to study, marry, persue a career or any of those other things lots of us now do. Things that have generated a lot of wealth and human happiness overall.
And whilst reverting to that sort of world (probably pre-bicycle) would have benefits of the sort that conservatives approve of, I'm pretty sure that the disadvantages would outweigh the advantages.
I'd say that trend to loss of local extended family dates more to the 1960s, other than for a smallish minority, rather than the 1870-80s (which I think is perhaps what you mean). The reverse trend has been simultaneously, for example amongst immigrant families, and more recently amongst nuclear families - starting with "grandma moving back in".
I'll let you off that the first handcycle was most likely 1655 by Stephan Farffler, whilst Oliver Cromwell was the boss here .
Serious fury from pro Ukraine voices now. One can still dream that’s it’s a big psyop and on the morning of 6th Nov, Ukraine will launch a huge surprise operation aimed at crushing the Russian army. But that sadly feels like wish casting.
“Biden sabotaged Ukraine's confidential plans then didn't honor the request to keep those plans confidential, spreading it to media to further sabotage.
Biden is a f**king piece of sh*t and now costing thousands of deaths.”
Yes, to say that they’re royally pissed off with Biden would be something of an understatement right now.
His actions are some way short of matching his words, European nations are going to have to step up no matter the result in the US next week.
As we should, but can we do enough? I hope so. All European countries need to pull their weight and not leave it to a few.
When will the political class wake up to the social care crisis and finally accept health and social care are the same fucking thing? All part of a continuum of care. Directly linked. Hospitals cannot discharge because the care homes don't have staff and beds, OTs so short in supply it takes months to get an assessment to send someone home etc etc.
I am so bloody sick of this. Every single budget, year after year, decade after decade. Labour or Conservative.
You are right. I think social care is an issue a bit like "growth" that we have been talking about, or reforming the tax system.
We all know these are major problems. Few people have a good idea of exactly how to fix those issues. Even fewer are willing to stake the political capital to actually tackle them . So nothing happens from parliament to parliament.
And frankly the UK public would almost certainly reject a party that had good ideas about these issues. Too big a change, too scary, too risky, so keep patching and tweaking the broken systems.
The political ‘wisdom’ is that there are hardly any votes in social care; surprising really, given the dramatic cost and effect on family finances when an elderly relative goes into care, as I am now dealing with. Ed Davey has gone a little way to proving this wisdom wrong; the LDs got a bit of traction for focusing on the issue during the GE and it was good to see Ed get a hat tip from the Budget speech. But Labour in particular always campaigns on the NHS (even in local elections) where it thinks the votes are, and has never made social care a priority. Streeting is clearly now fishing around for some way of offloading his promise of a resolution into some sort of cross-party long grass.
The problem iis the enormous cost, as May found out, any suggestion that the elderly should pitch in and share the risk of social care costs is political suicide. The only time a govt could do this is early in their term but Labour learnt a lesson when Cameron pulled out of cross party talks on a solution, choosing instead to use it for political point scoring.
Except that for many families, thats status quo. I've just this second sent another £6,000 over to the care home for my mother's next month, and we're selling her now vacant flat in order to cover future costs. Almost any change to the current arrangements would likely reduce our burden, and the Dilnot cap would have been most welcome, as we'll be up to it in about a year's time.
Similar situation in my family. Our inheritance from both sides has been wiped out by care costs; a result of brilliant efforts of the NHS to keep my grandparents alive.
It's a lottery and why, under the current system, inheritance tax feels fair to me. I'd rather it was upfront insurance premium that everyone paid though.
If they made inheritance tax 10% but with no exceptions, it would almost certainly raise more money than the current scheme full of a very expensive avoidance industry, that catches mostly the middle classes who happen to have a house in the South and some savings or pension - while the seriously wealthy pay little to nothing.
If it were up to me all inheritances would be taxed the same as income, with no exceptions.
Going to work to earn £50,000 shouldn't be taxed a single penny more than inheriting £50,000 that you haven't gone to work to earn.
IHT seems to evoke more emotion than any other tax, which is why there are so many reliefs. Politically extremely difficult.
Yep, although I completely disagree with @hyufd on IHT and I am more in line with @BartholomewRoberts there is no doubting @HYUFD views represent a huge constituency of voters and you have to respect that to some extent.
I do think the pension pot change is right as it was an anomaly, but you can't ignore that it will bring into IHT an awful lot of people who previously were nowhere near it.
It'll trigger behavioural change though. People will take their pensions rather than keeping hold of them. There's a lot to be said for encouraging older people to spend the money and assets they have. Ideally on having a good time rather than social care, but realistically both.
The retired are such a huge proportion of the population now that we rely heavily on them for consumer spending. That's the only way they pay meaningful tax - through VAT - while keeping the economy afloat.
The maths is brutal. You have an ever expanding dependent population with ever increasing health and social care needs, coupled with an ever-decreasing working age population that is only going to shrink further now birth rates have sunk so low (even with significant immigration). So unless the retired either keep working much longer or spend spend spend, the tax on working age people has to rise inexorably simply for public services to stand still.
I agree with all of that except 'It'll trigger behavioural change'. It won't. It is the one time that won't because you don't know when you are going to die. You need the pot to live on so you have to keep it. You won't blow it because otherwise you have nothing to live on. If you remove it and keep it, it still attracts IHT when you die. You might distribute some funds before you die, but again what you have to distribute is unchanged.
It will likely see a further increase in annuities that had become less popular under ultra low interest rates.
Must admit I hadn't thought of that. Good point. It does sway the argument towards annuity.
However I wonder if the decision on drawdown/annuity is financial based or life style based. It certainly wasn't financial for me. I have good genes so an annuity would be the best decision financially but I have opted for drawdown for flexibility and as it isn't my only source I am happy with the risk.
I suspect annuities are more attractive to people on lower resources and the IHT impact is on those with higher resources.
If IHT was part of calculations it is very hard for an annuity to make sense under current rules. Generally it is an extra layer of transactions and insurance that come with costs that have to be paid, so is typically worse than self managed drawdown mathematically but the price may suit those wanting certainty and security.
Leon (who seems to have disappeared ?) is fond of talking about a "Korean style armistice". Nonsense, of course, for multiple reasons, but this demonstrates the biggest single one.
US Secretary of Defense confirmed that Washington would defend South Korea by using all available weapons, including nuclear weapons, if necessary. Any nuclear attack by the DPRK against the US or its allies and partners would lead to the end of the Kim Jong Un regime. https://x.com/Hromadske/status/1851922058030256371
Unless Ukraine is in NATO, the comparison is simply absurd.
It would require a nuclear guarantee from the UK and France. Not enough nukes to defeat Russia in an all out war, but enough for MAD.
But Europe definitely needs to get its act together, and part of that is by excluding, or threatening to exclude, bad actors like Hungary or Slovakia under Fico from NATO and the security apparatus of the EU as well as taking away their veto over economic sanctions. The US is going to become semi-detached from NATO even if Harris wins, and potentially actively hostile if Trump does - only mutual hostility to China would remain as common cause, and NATO is not the main geographical player in that theatre.
Serious fury from pro Ukraine voices now. One can still dream that’s it’s a big psyop and on the morning of 6th Nov, Ukraine will launch a huge surprise operation aimed at crushing the Russian army. But that sadly feels like wish casting.
“Biden sabotaged Ukraine's confidential plans then didn't honor the request to keep those plans confidential, spreading it to media to further sabotage.
Biden is a f**king piece of sh*t and now costing thousands of deaths.”
Yes, to say that they’re royally pissed off with Biden would be something of an understatement right now.
His actions are some way short of matching his words, European nations are going to have to step up no matter the result in the US next week.
As we should, but can we do enough? I hope so. All European countries need to pull their weight and not leave it to a few.
If you are going to wait for Switzerland, Ireland and Hungary (and too often even Germany) to do their bit you (and thousands of Ukrainians) will die disappointed. That's why the whole notion of a joint European policy or view on anything controversial is bollocks, no matter how much Eurofanatics might try to pretend the opposite.
Serious fury from pro Ukraine voices now. One can still dream that’s it’s a big psyop and on the morning of 6th Nov, Ukraine will launch a huge surprise operation aimed at crushing the Russian army. But that sadly feels like wish casting.
“Biden sabotaged Ukraine's confidential plans then didn't honor the request to keep those plans confidential, spreading it to media to further sabotage.
Biden is a f**king piece of sh*t and now costing thousands of deaths.”
Yes, to say that they’re royally pissed off with Biden would be something of an understatement right now.
His actions are some way short of matching his words, European nations are going to have to step up no matter the result in the US next week.
Leon (who seems to have disappeared ?) is fond of talking about a "Korean style armistice". Nonsense, of course, for multiple reasons, but this demonstrates the biggest single one.
US Secretary of Defense confirmed that Washington would defend South Korea by using all available weapons, including nuclear weapons, if necessary. Any nuclear attack by the DPRK against the US or its allies and partners would lead to the end of the Kim Jong Un regime. https://x.com/Hromadske/status/1851922058030256371
Unless Ukraine is in NATO, the comparison is simply absurd.
It would require a nuclear guarantee from the UK and France. Not enough nukes to defeat Russia in an all out war, but enough for MAD.
But Europe definitely needs to get its act together, and part of that is by excluding, or threatening to exclude, bad actors like Hungary or Slovakia under Fico from NATO and the security apparatus of the EU as well as taking away their veto over economic sanctions. The US is going to become semi-detached from NATO even if Harris wins, and potentially actively hostile if Trump does - only mutual hostility to China would remain as common cause, and NATO is not the main geographical player in that theatre.
Any thoughts on simple investment strategies for a Trump win that could hedge against global trade wars?
Leon (who seems to have disappeared ?) is fond of talking about a "Korean style armistice". Nonsense, of course, for multiple reasons, but this demonstrates the biggest single one.
US Secretary of Defense confirmed that Washington would defend South Korea by using all available weapons, including nuclear weapons, if necessary. Any nuclear attack by the DPRK against the US or its allies and partners would lead to the end of the Kim Jong Un regime. https://x.com/Hromadske/status/1851922058030256371
Unless Ukraine is in NATO, the comparison is simply absurd.
However DRPK can move into a forward position to attack Ukraine and it causes barely a whisper of dissent. Where is the leadership? Have America and Western Europe really lost every shred of self confidence in their deterrence capability? It’s baffling.
Leon (who seems to have disappeared ?) is fond of talking about a "Korean style armistice". Nonsense, of course, for multiple reasons, but this demonstrates the biggest single one.
US Secretary of Defense confirmed that Washington would defend South Korea by using all available weapons, including nuclear weapons, if necessary. Any nuclear attack by the DPRK against the US or its allies and partners would lead to the end of the Kim Jong Un regime. https://x.com/Hromadske/status/1851922058030256371
Unless Ukraine is in NATO, the comparison is simply absurd.
Leon has received the ban hammer a few nights back.
Don't know if it is Temp or not. It was all somewhat tetchy here at the time.
Serious fury from pro Ukraine voices now. One can still dream that’s it’s a big psyop and on the morning of 6th Nov, Ukraine will launch a huge surprise operation aimed at crushing the Russian army. But that sadly feels like wish casting.
“Biden sabotaged Ukraine's confidential plans then didn't honor the request to keep those plans confidential, spreading it to media to further sabotage.
Biden is a f**king piece of sh*t and now costing thousands of deaths.”
Yes, to say that they’re royally pissed off with Biden would be something of an understatement right now.
His actions are some way short of matching his words, European nations are going to have to step up no matter the result in the US next week.
But step up rather more if it's Trump.
Absolutely. Have you polished your boots ready for deployment.
Serious fury from pro Ukraine voices now. One can still dream that’s it’s a big psyop and on the morning of 6th Nov, Ukraine will launch a huge surprise operation aimed at crushing the Russian army. But that sadly feels like wish casting.
“Biden sabotaged Ukraine's confidential plans then didn't honor the request to keep those plans confidential, spreading it to media to further sabotage.
Biden is a f**king piece of sh*t and now costing thousands of deaths.”
Yes, to say that they’re royally pissed off with Biden would be something of an understatement right now.
His actions are some way short of matching his words, European nations are going to have to step up no matter the result in the US next week.
As we should, but can we do enough? I hope so. All European countries need to pull their weight and not leave it to a few.
If you are going to wait for Switzerland, Ireland and Hungary (and too often even Germany) to do their bit you (and thousands of Ukrainians) will die disappointed. That's why the whole notion of a joint European policy or view on anything controversial is bollocks, no matter how much Eurofanatics might try to pretend the opposite.
Much as I really really want to disagree with you on that I tend to agree and I am one of those Eurofanatics. Herding cats comes to mind.
Leon (who seems to have disappeared ?) is fond of talking about a "Korean style armistice". Nonsense, of course, for multiple reasons, but this demonstrates the biggest single one.
US Secretary of Defense confirmed that Washington would defend South Korea by using all available weapons, including nuclear weapons, if necessary. Any nuclear attack by the DPRK against the US or its allies and partners would lead to the end of the Kim Jong Un regime. https://x.com/Hromadske/status/1851922058030256371
Unless Ukraine is in NATO, the comparison is simply absurd.
Leon has received the ban hammer a few nights back.
Don't know if it is Temp or not. It was all somewhat tetchy here at the time.
I would say 'Leon (PBUH)', but in the case of his temporary enforced absences it's more a case of peace being upon us
Fundamentally, our highly westernised individualistic model means we expect people who need help and those who need care to be fully independent or cared for by paid others without any recourse to extended families or communities who'd do it essentially for free with a bit of aid and help.
This is not normal, throughout human history or in the rest of the world, where extended families care for their elderly parents and those with disabilities.
That doesn't bankrupt nations. And psychologically it's better for them too.
It is though dependent on family members living locally and being available so difficult where both of a couple work or if the elderly parent does not live near them. If the elderly parent has to move in, then a bigger house is needed, and possibly significant modifications.
And that would be a very different sort of society. One where the vast majority of people stay in the town where they were born, and don't leave to study, marry, persue a career or any of those other things lots of us now do. Things that have generated a lot of wealth and human happiness overall.
And whilst reverting to that sort of world (probably pre-bicycle) would have benefits of the sort that conservatives approve of, I'm pretty sure that the disadvantages would outweigh the advantages.
I'd say that trend to loss of local extended family dates more to the 1960s, other than for a smallish minority, rather than the 1870-80s (which I think is perhaps what you mean). The reverse trend has been simultaneously, for example amongst immigrant families, and more recently amongst nuclear families - starting with "grandma moving back in".
I'll let you off that the first handcycle was most likely 1655 by Stephan Farffler, whilst Oliver Cromwell was the boss here .
Certainly when it went stratospheric. Though the nature of exponential growths is that it's hard to say where the before and after are. Winding the clock back to a better time in the past is a natural conservative instinct, but not an easy one to stop doing.
(Does this have implications for what we understand by "local" government, I wonder? The mergers of the 1960s and 1970s were in part resisted because of neighbouring places seeing themselves as irredemably distinct. If our collective mental sense of how big "here" is has expanded, how does that affect the boundaries we are willing to draw?)
When will the political class wake up to the social care crisis and finally accept health and social care are the same fucking thing? All part of a continuum of care. Directly linked. Hospitals cannot discharge because the care homes don't have staff and beds, OTs so short in supply it takes months to get an assessment to send someone home etc etc.
I am so bloody sick of this. Every single budget, year after year, decade after decade. Labour or Conservative.
You are right. I think social care is an issue a bit like "growth" that we have been talking about, or reforming the tax system.
We all know these are major problems. Few people have a good idea of exactly how to fix those issues. Even fewer are willing to stake the political capital to actually tackle them . So nothing happens from parliament to parliament.
And frankly the UK public would almost certainly reject a party that had good ideas about these issues. Too big a change, too scary, too risky, so keep patching and tweaking the broken systems.
The political ‘wisdom’ is that there are hardly any votes in social care; surprising really, given the dramatic cost and effect on family finances when an elderly relative goes into care, as I am now dealing with. Ed Davey has gone a little way to proving this wisdom wrong; the LDs got a bit of traction for focusing on the issue during the GE and it was good to see Ed get a hat tip from the Budget speech. But Labour in particular always campaigns on the NHS (even in local elections) where it thinks the votes are, and has never made social care a priority. Streeting is clearly now fishing around for some way of offloading his promise of a resolution into some sort of cross-party long grass.
The problem iis the enormous cost, as May found out, any suggestion that the elderly should pitch in and share the risk of social care costs is political suicide. The only time a govt could do this is early in their term but Labour learnt a lesson when Cameron pulled out of cross party talks on a solution, choosing instead to use it for political point scoring.
Except that for many families, thats status quo. I've just this second sent another £6,000 over to the care home for my mother's next month, and we're selling her now vacant flat in order to cover future costs. Almost any change to the current arrangements would likely reduce our burden, and the Dilnot cap would have been most welcome, as we'll be up to it in about a year's time.
Similar situation in my family. Our inheritance from both sides has been wiped out by care costs; a result of brilliant efforts of the NHS to keep my grandparents alive.
It's a lottery and why, under the current system, inheritance tax feels fair to me. I'd rather it was upfront insurance premium that everyone paid though.
If they made inheritance tax 10% but with no exceptions, it would almost certainly raise more money than the current scheme full of a very expensive avoidance industry, that catches mostly the middle classes who happen to have a house in the South and some savings or pension - while the seriously wealthy pay little to nothing.
If it were up to me all inheritances would be taxed the same as income, with no exceptions.
Going to work to earn £50,000 shouldn't be taxed a single penny more than inheriting £50,000 that you haven't gone to work to earn.
IHT seems to evoke more emotion than any other tax, which is why there are so many reliefs. Politically extremely difficult.
Yep, although I completely disagree with @hyufd on IHT and I am more in line with @BartholomewRoberts there is no doubting @HYUFD views represent a huge constituency of voters and you have to respect that to some extent.
I do think the pension pot change is right as it was an anomaly, but you can't ignore that it will bring into IHT an awful lot of people who previously were nowhere near it.
It'll trigger behavioural change though. People will take their pensions rather than keeping hold of them. There's a lot to be said for encouraging older people to spend the money and assets they have. Ideally on having a good time rather than social care, but realistically both.
The retired are such a huge proportion of the population now that we rely heavily on them for consumer spending. That's the only way they pay meaningful tax - through VAT - while keeping the economy afloat.
The maths is brutal. You have an ever expanding dependent population with ever increasing health and social care needs, coupled with an ever-decreasing working age population that is only going to shrink further now birth rates have sunk so low (even with significant immigration). So unless the retired either keep working much longer or spend spend spend, the tax on working age people has to rise inexorably simply for public services to stand still.
I agree with all of that except 'It'll trigger behavioural change'. It won't. It is the one time that won't because you don't know when you are going to die. You need the pot to live on so you have to keep it. You won't blow it because otherwise you have nothing to live on. If you remove it and keep it, it still attracts IHT when you die. You might distribute some funds before you die, but again what you have to distribute is unchanged.
It will likely see a further increase in annuities that had become less popular under ultra low interest rates.
Must admit I hadn't thought of that. Good point. It does sway the argument towards annuity.
However I wonder if the decision on drawdown/annuity is financial based or life style based. It certainly wasn't financial for me. I have good genes so an annuity would be the best decision financially but I have opted for drawdown for flexibility and as it isn't my only source I am happy with the risk.
I suspect annuities are more attractive to people on lower resources and the IHT impact is on those with higher resources.
If IHT was part of calculations it is very hard for an annuity to make sense under current rules. Generally it is an extra layer of transactions and insurance that come with costs that have to be paid, so is typically worse than self managed drawdown mathematically but the price may suit those wanting certainty and security.
"The problem iis the enormous cost, as May found out, any suggestion that the elderly should pitch in and share the risk of social care costs is political suicide."
This is the stupidity of all this because, as other PBers have pointed out and experienced, the unlucky ones lose everything.
It is a 100% IHT but by lottery. Maybe 1 in 6 lose the lottery and lose everything they have built up over a lifetime whereas the old guy next door passes in his sleep and leaves the lot behind to face at most a 40% hit and then only above £500K.
A decent set of politicians would be able to take the public through this argument and build a solution.
Serious fury from pro Ukraine voices now. One can still dream that’s it’s a big psyop and on the morning of 6th Nov, Ukraine will launch a huge surprise operation aimed at crushing the Russian army. But that sadly feels like wish casting.
“Biden sabotaged Ukraine's confidential plans then didn't honor the request to keep those plans confidential, spreading it to media to further sabotage.
Biden is a f**king piece of sh*t and now costing thousands of deaths.”
Yes, to say that they’re royally pissed off with Biden would be something of an understatement right now.
His actions are some way short of matching his words, European nations are going to have to step up no matter the result in the US next week.
But step up rather more if it's Trump.
I believe this is now the rationale(sic) of Trumpers for Ukraine; if/when Trump shits all over Zhelensky and Ukraine, Europe will HAVE to step up in their defence. A high risk strategy, particularly when the same people have been constantly disparaging European efforts up to now.
Leon (who seems to have disappeared ?) is fond of talking about a "Korean style armistice". Nonsense, of course, for multiple reasons, but this demonstrates the biggest single one.
US Secretary of Defense confirmed that Washington would defend South Korea by using all available weapons, including nuclear weapons, if necessary. Any nuclear attack by the DPRK against the US or its allies and partners would lead to the end of the Kim Jong Un regime. https://x.com/Hromadske/status/1851922058030256371
Unless Ukraine is in NATO, the comparison is simply absurd.
Leon has received the ban hammer a few nights back.
Don't know if it is Temp or not. It was all somewhat tetchy here at the time.
He went the full racist; Britain for the white British.
Good riddance IMO. He's entertaining, but I don't think that excuses his views.
Leon (who seems to have disappeared ?) is fond of talking about a "Korean style armistice". Nonsense, of course, for multiple reasons, but this demonstrates the biggest single one.
US Secretary of Defense confirmed that Washington would defend South Korea by using all available weapons, including nuclear weapons, if necessary. Any nuclear attack by the DPRK against the US or its allies and partners would lead to the end of the Kim Jong Un regime. https://x.com/Hromadske/status/1851922058030256371
Unless Ukraine is in NATO, the comparison is simply absurd.
Leon has received the ban hammer a few nights back.
Don't know if it is Temp or not. It was all somewhat tetchy here at the time.
Ah, thanks. Last I heard, he was tucking into oxbone stew with Korean rice wine. I thought it might just be a serious hangover.
Serious fury from pro Ukraine voices now. One can still dream that’s it’s a big psyop and on the morning of 6th Nov, Ukraine will launch a huge surprise operation aimed at crushing the Russian army. But that sadly feels like wish casting.
“Biden sabotaged Ukraine's confidential plans then didn't honor the request to keep those plans confidential, spreading it to media to further sabotage.
Biden is a f**king piece of sh*t and now costing thousands of deaths.”
Yes, to say that they’re royally pissed off with Biden would be something of an understatement right now.
His actions are some way short of matching his words, European nations are going to have to step up no matter the result in the US next week.
But step up rather more if it's Trump.
I believe this is now the rationale(sic) of Trumpers for Ukraine; if/when Trump shits all over Zhelensky and Ukraine, Europe will HAVE to step up in their defence. A high risk strategy, particularly when the same people have been constantly disparaging European efforts up to now.
Wokeist Leftist muddled thinkers: We hate America who do they think they are thinking they are the world's policemen it's just cultural imperialism. Also Wokeist Leftist muddled thinkers *dialling the US*: Hello is that the emergency services.
I see this morning's Telegraph hard luck story is a poor retired couple forced to go back to working full time and sell their boat after Labour's budget because their...*60* buy to let homes aren't enough to live off.
Good to see the Telegraph keeping up the good fight against pensioner poverty.
I don't think the budgets a good one but the UK boomer obsession with property is a bit crackers. Now farming - that's different, it's not a job it's a way of life but landlords of mahoosive numbers of properties what on earth are they thinking. Why not just sit back, relax, let capital grow in the stock-market and live off dividends.
Is it just a "boomer" obsession?
The saying "An Englishmans home is his castle" goes back a long time... It was forever thus...
Indeed - the old, old stories of the "rent man".
If you owned your own home, outright - well, you could survive on a pittance.
There's also the really ancient favouritism towards property vs finance - in Ancient Rome, having your money in companies etc would disqualify you from the Senate. Land and property were *safe*....
When will the political class wake up to the social care crisis and finally accept health and social care are the same fucking thing? All part of a continuum of care. Directly linked. Hospitals cannot discharge because the care homes don't have staff and beds, OTs so short in supply it takes months to get an assessment to send someone home etc etc.
I am so bloody sick of this. Every single budget, year after year, decade after decade. Labour or Conservative.
You are right. I think social care is an issue a bit like "growth" that we have been talking about, or reforming the tax system.
We all know these are major problems. Few people have a good idea of exactly how to fix those issues. Even fewer are willing to stake the political capital to actually tackle them . So nothing happens from parliament to parliament.
And frankly the UK public would almost certainly reject a party that had good ideas about these issues. Too big a change, too scary, too risky, so keep patching and tweaking the broken systems.
The political ‘wisdom’ is that there are hardly any votes in social care; surprising really, given the dramatic cost and effect on family finances when an elderly relative goes into care, as I am now dealing with. Ed Davey has gone a little way to proving this wisdom wrong; the LDs got a bit of traction for focusing on the issue during the GE and it was good to see Ed get a hat tip from the Budget speech. But Labour in particular always campaigns on the NHS (even in local elections) where it thinks the votes are, and has never made social care a priority. Streeting is clearly now fishing around for some way of offloading his promise of a resolution into some sort of cross-party long grass.
The problem iis the enormous cost, as May found out, any suggestion that the elderly should pitch in and share the risk of social care costs is political suicide. The only time a govt could do this is early in their term but Labour learnt a lesson when Cameron pulled out of cross party talks on a solution, choosing instead to use it for political point scoring.
Except that for many families, thats status quo. I've just this second sent another £6,000 over to the care home for my mother's next month, and we're selling her now vacant flat in order to cover future costs. Almost any change to the current arrangements would likely reduce our burden, and the Dilnot cap would have been most welcome, as we'll be up to it in about a year's time.
Similar situation in my family. Our inheritance from both sides has been wiped out by care costs; a result of brilliant efforts of the NHS to keep my grandparents alive.
It's a lottery and why, under the current system, inheritance tax feels fair to me. I'd rather it was upfront insurance premium that everyone paid though.
If they made inheritance tax 10% but with no exceptions, it would almost certainly raise more money than the current scheme full of a very expensive avoidance industry, that catches mostly the middle classes who happen to have a house in the South and some savings or pension - while the seriously wealthy pay little to nothing.
If it were up to me all inheritances would be taxed the same as income, with no exceptions.
Going to work to earn £50,000 shouldn't be taxed a single penny more than inheriting £50,000 that you haven't gone to work to earn.
It’s already been taxed though
The basic principle is that government taxes economic activity: wealth generation (income tax or capital gains tax); spending or asset purchases (stamp duty, VAT, etc); or charges for services provided (council tax).
To tax inheritance as income breaches that principle and becomes effective confiscation.
In the extreme example, if someone gets a large bonus and pays income tax, then keels over and dies from excitement why is it just that the government should take 92% of that bonus for the Treasury (45% income tax + 2% NIC + 45% IHT)
Dodgy maths alert. In your example, someone would get a bonus of 100k, pay 47k tax. Then on the remaining 53k pay 40% -> ~21k... leaving them £31k.
Also, there is no such double tax principle. When I buy a house and pay stamp duty, it is with money I already paid income tax on.
Leon (who seems to have disappeared ?) is fond of talking about a "Korean style armistice". Nonsense, of course, for multiple reasons, but this demonstrates the biggest single one.
US Secretary of Defense confirmed that Washington would defend South Korea by using all available weapons, including nuclear weapons, if necessary. Any nuclear attack by the DPRK against the US or its allies and partners would lead to the end of the Kim Jong Un regime. https://x.com/Hromadske/status/1851922058030256371
Unless Ukraine is in NATO, the comparison is simply absurd.
Leon has received the ban hammer a few nights back.
Don't know if it is Temp or not. It was all somewhat tetchy here at the time.
I was surprised. I thought the exchanges were ok. He wasn't let off the hook and a number of us were arguing with him and I didn't think he went over the top, no matter how much I disagreed with his point of view.
However I did ameliorate my point of view somewhat when @TheScreamingEagles posted his comment later about the effect it had on him in relation to his daughter. It is easier for me to be just annoyed, but not hurt, when I am white.
Leon (who seems to have disappeared ?) is fond of talking about a "Korean style armistice". Nonsense, of course, for multiple reasons, but this demonstrates the biggest single one.
US Secretary of Defense confirmed that Washington would defend South Korea by using all available weapons, including nuclear weapons, if necessary. Any nuclear attack by the DPRK against the US or its allies and partners would lead to the end of the Kim Jong Un regime. https://x.com/Hromadske/status/1851922058030256371
Unless Ukraine is in NATO, the comparison is simply absurd.
Leon has received the ban hammer a few nights back.
Don't know if it is Temp or not. It was all somewhat tetchy here at the time.
He went the full racist; Britain for the white British.
Good riddance IMO. He's entertaining, but I don't think that excuses his views.
Leon is a paradox.
At times interesting and creative, at other times a bully who needs to resolve some conflicts, within himself.
I've noticed, though not here, that there's a lot of delusional people who think that the two NI will be paid for by businesses who will take it out of their profit margins. I guess these will be the same people that blame their employers when wages are frozen for three years to recover the losses.
@MaxPB you're forgetting that all businesses are own by fat white men, who sit in the boardroom all day. Smoking cigars, drinking brandy and counting the profits - which are huge piles of £50 notes. If they need more, they get their wands out (all graduate of Hogwarts Public School) and create more.
Fundamentally, our highly westernised individualistic model means we expect people who need help and those who need care to be fully independent or cared for by paid others without any recourse to extended families or communities who'd do it essentially for free with a bit of aid and help.
This is not normal, throughout human history or in the rest of the world, where extended families care for their elderly parents and those with disabilities.
That doesn't bankrupt nations. And psychologically it's better for them too.
It is though dependent on family members living locally and being available so difficult where both of a couple work or if the elderly parent does not live near them. If the elderly parent has to move in, then a bigger house is needed, and possibly significant modifications.
And that would be a very different sort of society. One where the vast majority of people stay in the town where they were born, and don't leave to study, marry, persue a career or any of those other things lots of us now do. Things that have generated a lot of wealth and human happiness overall.
And whilst reverting to that sort of world (probably pre-bicycle) would have benefits of the sort that conservatives approve of, I'm pretty sure that the disadvantages would outweigh the advantages.
I'd say that trend to loss of local extended family dates more to the 1960s, other than for a smallish minority, rather than the 1870-80s (which I think is perhaps what you mean). The reverse trend has been simultaneously, for example amongst immigrant families, and more recently amongst nuclear families - starting with "grandma moving back in".
I'll let you off that the first handcycle was most likely 1655 by Stephan Farffler, whilst Oliver Cromwell was the boss here .
Certainly when it went stratospheric. Though the nature of exponential growths is that it's hard to say where the before and after are. Winding the clock back to a better time in the past is a natural conservative instinct, but not an easy one to stop doing.
(Does this have implications for what we understand by "local" government, I wonder? The mergers of the 1960s and 1970s were in part resisted because of neighbouring places seeing themselves as irredemably distinct. If our collective mental sense of how big "here" is has expanded, how does that affect the boundaries we are willing to draw?)
Maybe, but there is no national settlement. You can see from discussion of commuting that northerners have smaller, tighter local limits than residents of the home counties who think nothing of a 90-minute commute into London. That said, WFH is shrinking southern boundaries too.
When will the political class wake up to the social care crisis and finally accept health and social care are the same fucking thing? All part of a continuum of care. Directly linked. Hospitals cannot discharge because the care homes don't have staff and beds, OTs so short in supply it takes months to get an assessment to send someone home etc etc.
I am so bloody sick of this. Every single budget, year after year, decade after decade. Labour or Conservative.
You are right. I think social care is an issue a bit like "growth" that we have been talking about, or reforming the tax system.
We all know these are major problems. Few people have a good idea of exactly how to fix those issues. Even fewer are willing to stake the political capital to actually tackle them . So nothing happens from parliament to parliament.
And frankly the UK public would almost certainly reject a party that had good ideas about these issues. Too big a change, too scary, too risky, so keep patching and tweaking the broken systems.
The political ‘wisdom’ is that there are hardly any votes in social care; surprising really, given the dramatic cost and effect on family finances when an elderly relative goes into care, as I am now dealing with. Ed Davey has gone a little way to proving this wisdom wrong; the LDs got a bit of traction for focusing on the issue during the GE and it was good to see Ed get a hat tip from the Budget speech. But Labour in particular always campaigns on the NHS (even in local elections) where it thinks the votes are, and has never made social care a priority. Streeting is clearly now fishing around for some way of offloading his promise of a resolution into some sort of cross-party long grass.
The problem iis the enormous cost, as May found out, any suggestion that the elderly should pitch in and share the risk of social care costs is political suicide. The only time a govt could do this is early in their term but Labour learnt a lesson when Cameron pulled out of cross party talks on a solution, choosing instead to use it for political point scoring.
Except that for many families, thats status quo. I've just this second sent another £6,000 over to the care home for my mother's next month, and we're selling her now vacant flat in order to cover future costs. Almost any change to the current arrangements would likely reduce our burden, and the Dilnot cap would have been most welcome, as we'll be up to it in about a year's time.
Similar situation in my family. Our inheritance from both sides has been wiped out by care costs; a result of brilliant efforts of the NHS to keep my grandparents alive.
It's a lottery and why, under the current system, inheritance tax feels fair to me. I'd rather it was upfront insurance premium that everyone paid though.
If they made inheritance tax 10% but with no exceptions, it would almost certainly raise more money than the current scheme full of a very expensive avoidance industry, that catches mostly the middle classes who happen to have a house in the South and some savings or pension - while the seriously wealthy pay little to nothing.
If it were up to me all inheritances would be taxed the same as income, with no exceptions.
Going to work to earn £50,000 shouldn't be taxed a single penny more than inheriting £50,000 that you haven't gone to work to earn.
IHT seems to evoke more emotion than any other tax, which is why there are so many reliefs. Politically extremely difficult.
Yep, although I completely disagree with @hyufd on IHT and I am more in line with @BartholomewRoberts there is no doubting @HYUFD views represent a huge constituency of voters and you have to respect that to some extent.
I do think the pension pot change is right as it was an anomaly, but you can't ignore that it will bring into IHT an awful lot of people who previously were nowhere near it.
It'll trigger behavioural change though. People will take their pensions rather than keeping hold of them. There's a lot to be said for encouraging older people to spend the money and assets they have. Ideally on having a good time rather than social care, but realistically both.
The retired are such a huge proportion of the population now that we rely heavily on them for consumer spending. That's the only way they pay meaningful tax - through VAT - while keeping the economy afloat.
The maths is brutal. You have an ever expanding dependent population with ever increasing health and social care needs, coupled with an ever-decreasing working age population that is only going to shrink further now birth rates have sunk so low (even with significant immigration). So unless the retired either keep working much longer or spend spend spend, the tax on working age people has to rise inexorably simply for public services to stand still.
I agree with all of that except 'It'll trigger behavioural change'. It won't. It is the one time that won't because you don't know when you are going to die. You need the pot to live on so you have to keep it. You won't blow it because otherwise you have nothing to live on. If you remove it and keep it, it still attracts IHT when you die. You might distribute some funds before you die, but again what you have to distribute is unchanged.
It will likely see a further increase in annuities that had become less popular under ultra low interest rates.
Must admit I hadn't thought of that. Good point. It does sway the argument towards annuity.
However I wonder if the decision on drawdown/annuity is financial based or life style based. It certainly wasn't financial for me. I have good genes so an annuity would be the best decision financially but I have opted for drawdown for flexibility and as it isn't my only source I am happy with the risk.
I suspect annuities are more attractive to people on lower resources and the IHT impact is on those with higher resources.
If IHT was part of calculations it is very hard for an annuity to make sense under current rules. Generally it is an extra layer of transactions and insurance that come with costs that have to be paid, so is typically worse than self managed drawdown mathematically but the price may suit those wanting certainty and security.
"The problem iis the enormous cost, as May found out, any suggestion that the elderly should pitch in and share the risk of social care costs is political suicide."
This is the stupidity of all this because, as other PBers have pointed out and experienced, the unlucky ones lose everything.
It is a 100% IHT but by lottery. Maybe 1 in 6 lose the lottery and lose everything they have built up over a lifetime whereas the old guy next door passes in his sleep and leaves the lot behind to face at most a 40% hit and then only above £500K.
A decent set of politicians would be able to take the public through this argument and build a solution.
Good morning
The Dilnot Commission report should have been implemented with cross party support
Care for the elderly is a lottery especially as dementia is not treated the same as a terminal illness
My sister, who had terminal cancer, was cared for in a nursing home for 18 months until she died under CHC assessment but my son in law's parents who both had dementia did not get care under CHC resulting in £200,000 care fees
When will the political class wake up to the social care crisis and finally accept health and social care are the same fucking thing? All part of a continuum of care. Directly linked. Hospitals cannot discharge because the care homes don't have staff and beds, OTs so short in supply it takes months to get an assessment to send someone home etc etc.
I am so bloody sick of this. Every single budget, year after year, decade after decade. Labour or Conservative.
You are right. I think social care is an issue a bit like "growth" that we have been talking about, or reforming the tax system.
We all know these are major problems. Few people have a good idea of exactly how to fix those issues. Even fewer are willing to stake the political capital to actually tackle them . So nothing happens from parliament to parliament.
And frankly the UK public would almost certainly reject a party that had good ideas about these issues. Too big a change, too scary, too risky, so keep patching and tweaking the broken systems.
The political ‘wisdom’ is that there are hardly any votes in social care; surprising really, given the dramatic cost and effect on family finances when an elderly relative goes into care, as I am now dealing with. Ed Davey has gone a little way to proving this wisdom wrong; the LDs got a bit of traction for focusing on the issue during the GE and it was good to see Ed get a hat tip from the Budget speech. But Labour in particular always campaigns on the NHS (even in local elections) where it thinks the votes are, and has never made social care a priority. Streeting is clearly now fishing around for some way of offloading his promise of a resolution into some sort of cross-party long grass.
The problem iis the enormous cost, as May found out, any suggestion that the elderly should pitch in and share the risk of social care costs is political suicide. The only time a govt could do this is early in their term but Labour learnt a lesson when Cameron pulled out of cross party talks on a solution, choosing instead to use it for political point scoring.
Except that for many families, thats status quo. I've just this second sent another £6,000 over to the care home for my mother's next month, and we're selling her now vacant flat in order to cover future costs. Almost any change to the current arrangements would likely reduce our burden, and the Dilnot cap would have been most welcome, as we'll be up to it in about a year's time.
Similar situation in my family. Our inheritance from both sides has been wiped out by care costs; a result of brilliant efforts of the NHS to keep my grandparents alive.
It's a lottery and why, under the current system, inheritance tax feels fair to me. I'd rather it was upfront insurance premium that everyone paid though.
If they made inheritance tax 10% but with no exceptions, it would almost certainly raise more money than the current scheme full of a very expensive avoidance industry, that catches mostly the middle classes who happen to have a house in the South and some savings or pension - while the seriously wealthy pay little to nothing.
If it were up to me all inheritances would be taxed the same as income, with no exceptions.
Going to work to earn £50,000 shouldn't be taxed a single penny more than inheriting £50,000 that you haven't gone to work to earn.
It’s already been taxed though
The basic principle is that government taxes economic activity: wealth generation (income tax or capital gains tax); spending or asset purchases (stamp duty, VAT, etc); or charges for services provided (council tax).
To tax inheritance as income breaches that principle and becomes effective confiscation.
In the extreme example, if someone gets a large bonus and pays income tax, then keels over and dies from excitement why is it just that the government should take 92% of that bonus for the Treasury (45% income tax + 2% NIC + 45% IHT)
Personally I think the "basic principle" is that the government taxes where it can practically speaking get its hands on the money and where it can build or rely on a social consensus that that taxation is not completely outrageous.
PS council tax isn't "charges for services provided" -- I don't get a rebate because I'm not using the local education system, for example, and the money that council tax does raise isn't the only source of funding for the services councils provide. It's just a tax imposed on people to raise money, same as any other tax.
Which means, of course, that the size of the state and the level of its spending is only really constrained by the amount of tax it can reasonably extract to fund it, and not the other way round.
Fundamentally, our highly westernised individualistic model means we expect people who need help and those who need care to be fully independent or cared for by paid others without any recourse to extended families or communities who'd do it essentially for free with a bit of aid and help.
This is not normal, throughout human history or in the rest of the world, where extended families care for their elderly parents and those with disabilities.
That doesn't bankrupt nations. And psychologically it's better for them too.
It is though dependent on family members living locally and being available so difficult where both of a couple work or if the elderly parent does not live near them. If the elderly parent has to move in, then a bigger house is needed, and possibly significant modifications.
Which is exactly what we intend to do.
You have a duty to look after your nearest and dearest, and we need to talk much more about duty and responsibility rather than "rights".
Fundamentally, our highly westernised individualistic model means we expect people who need help and those who need care to be fully independent or cared for by paid others without any recourse to extended families or communities who'd do it essentially for free with a bit of aid and help.
This is not normal, throughout human history or in the rest of the world, where extended families care for their elderly parents and those with disabilities.
That doesn't bankrupt nations. And psychologically it's better for them too.
It is though dependent on family members living locally and being available so difficult where both of a couple work or if the elderly parent does not live near them. If the elderly parent has to move in, then a bigger house is needed, and possibly significant modifications.
And that would be a very different sort of society. One where the vast majority of people stay in the town where they were born, and don't leave to study, marry, persue a career or any of those other things lots of us now do. Things that have generated a lot of wealth and human happiness overall.
And whilst reverting to that sort of world (probably pre-bicycle) would have benefits of the sort that conservatives approve of, I'm pretty sure that the disadvantages would outweigh the advantages.
I'd say that trend to loss of local extended family dates more to the 1960s, other than for a smallish minority, rather than the 1870-80s (which I think is perhaps what you mean). The reverse trend has been simultaneously, for example amongst immigrant families, and more recently amongst nuclear families - starting with "grandma moving back in".
I'll let you off that the first handcycle was most likely 1655 by Stephan Farffler, whilst Oliver Cromwell was the boss here .
Certainly when it went stratospheric. Though the nature of exponential growths is that it's hard to say where the before and after are. Winding the clock back to a better time in the past is a natural conservative instinct, but not an easy one to stop doing.
(Does this have implications for what we understand by "local" government, I wonder? The mergers of the 1960s and 1970s were in part resisted because of neighbouring places seeing themselves as irredemably distinct. If our collective mental sense of how big "here" is has expanded, how does that affect the boundaries we are willing to draw?)
Maybe, but there is no national settlement. You can see from discussion of commuting that northerners have smaller, tighter local limits than residents of the home counties who think nothing of a 90-minute commute into London. That said, WFH is shrinking southern boundaries too.
A cousin of mine moved to New Zealand's South Island and ended up with a 20 minute car commute. As he was originally from South Essex he thought nothing of it; his new neighbours, though, were horrified at the distance he had to travel.
Serious fury from pro Ukraine voices now. One can still dream that’s it’s a big psyop and on the morning of 6th Nov, Ukraine will launch a huge surprise operation aimed at crushing the Russian army. But that sadly feels like wish casting.
“Biden sabotaged Ukraine's confidential plans then didn't honor the request to keep those plans confidential, spreading it to media to further sabotage.
Biden is a f**king piece of sh*t and now costing thousands of deaths.”
Yes, to say that they’re royally pissed off with Biden would be something of an understatement right now.
His actions are some way short of matching his words, European nations are going to have to step up no matter the result in the US next week.
As we should, but can we do enough? I hope so. All European countries need to pull their weight and not leave it to a few.
Absolutely. Everyone also needs to think about how much they’re currently spending on the millions of displaced people from Ukraine living in their own countries, the vast majority of whom will wish to return home to join families and help with the rebuilding once the war is over.
Battery manufacturing capacity is a national security essential.
Biggest US drone maker @SkydioHQ which supplies Ukraine with drones for intelligence gathering) faces supply chain crisis after China bans company from selling batteries to the group. https://x.com/Dimi/status/1851810020855296369
The West is sleepwalking into disaster.
But building stuff is *HARD* and it's *BORING* and I want to spend the money on a new *TOY*
- Boardroom temper tantrum somewhere.
Meanwhile we are left with the only people who are interested in building actual battery factories, play Diablo on the conference calls...
Leon (who seems to have disappeared ?) is fond of talking about a "Korean style armistice". Nonsense, of course, for multiple reasons, but this demonstrates the biggest single one.
US Secretary of Defense confirmed that Washington would defend South Korea by using all available weapons, including nuclear weapons, if necessary. Any nuclear attack by the DPRK against the US or its allies and partners would lead to the end of the Kim Jong Un regime. https://x.com/Hromadske/status/1851922058030256371
Unless Ukraine is in NATO, the comparison is simply absurd.
It would require a nuclear guarantee from the UK and France. Not enough nukes to defeat Russia in an all out war, but enough for MAD.
But Europe definitely needs to get its act together, and part of that is by excluding, or threatening to exclude, bad actors like Hungary or Slovakia under Fico from NATO and the security apparatus of the EU as well as taking away their veto over economic sanctions. The US is going to become semi-detached from NATO even if Harris wins, and potentially actively hostile if Trump does - only mutual hostility to China would remain as common cause, and NATO is not the main geographical player in that theatre.
Any thoughts on simple investment strategies for a Trump win that could hedge against global trade wars?
Fundamentally, our highly westernised individualistic model means we expect people who need help and those who need care to be fully independent or cared for by paid others without any recourse to extended families or communities who'd do it essentially for free with a bit of aid and help.
This is not normal, throughout human history or in the rest of the world, where extended families care for their elderly parents and those with disabilities.
That doesn't bankrupt nations. And psychologically it's better for them too.
It is though dependent on family members living locally and being available so difficult where both of a couple work or if the elderly parent does not live near them. If the elderly parent has to move in, then a bigger house is needed, and possibly significant modifications.
And that would be a very different sort of society. One where the vast majority of people stay in the town where they were born, and don't leave to study, marry, persue a career or any of those other things lots of us now do. Things that have generated a lot of wealth and human happiness overall.
And whilst reverting to that sort of world (probably pre-bicycle) would have benefits of the sort that conservatives approve of, I'm pretty sure that the disadvantages would outweigh the advantages.
I'd say that trend to loss of local extended family dates more to the 1960s, other than for a smallish minority, rather than the 1870-80s (which I think is perhaps what you mean). The reverse trend has been simultaneously, for example amongst immigrant families, and more recently amongst nuclear families - starting with "grandma moving back in".
I'll let you off that the first handcycle was most likely 1655 by Stephan Farffler, whilst Oliver Cromwell was the boss here .
Certainly when it went stratospheric. Though the nature of exponential growths is that it's hard to say where the before and after are. Winding the clock back to a better time in the past is a natural conservative instinct, but not an easy one to stop doing.
(Does this have implications for what we understand by "local" government, I wonder? The mergers of the 1960s and 1970s were in part resisted because of neighbouring places seeing themselves as irredemably distinct. If our collective mental sense of how big "here" is has expanded, how does that affect the boundaries we are willing to draw?)
Maybe, but there is no national settlement. You can see from discussion of commuting that northerners have smaller, tighter local limits than residents of the home counties who think nothing of a 90-minute commute into London. That said, WFH is shrinking southern boundaries too.
A cousin of mine moved to New Zealand's South Island and ended up with a 20 minute car commute. As he was originally from South Essex he thought nothing of it; his new neighbours, though, were horrified at the distance he had to travel.
They say that in the US people think nothing of driving five hours to pick up a taco.
The biggest impact this government could make is planning reform. Where is it?
I wouldn’t worry yet. That’s separate from the budget.
And presumably not showing up in yesterday's graphs?
(Incidentally, am I reading them right- that there's a bigger GDP gain in years 1 and 2 than the projected GDP loss in years 4 and 5?)
Total growth in the period is down to 8.2% from 8.5% so very little difference, but the later years are essentially an estimate of the trend rate of growth, aka economic destiny.
To have those quite a bit lower is not a good direction of travel.
When will the political class wake up to the social care crisis and finally accept health and social care are the same fucking thing? All part of a continuum of care. Directly linked. Hospitals cannot discharge because the care homes don't have staff and beds, OTs so short in supply it takes months to get an assessment to send someone home etc etc.
I am so bloody sick of this. Every single budget, year after year, decade after decade. Labour or Conservative.
You are right. I think social care is an issue a bit like "growth" that we have been talking about, or reforming the tax system.
We all know these are major problems. Few people have a good idea of exactly how to fix those issues. Even fewer are willing to stake the political capital to actually tackle them . So nothing happens from parliament to parliament.
And frankly the UK public would almost certainly reject a party that had good ideas about these issues. Too big a change, too scary, too risky, so keep patching and tweaking the broken systems.
The political ‘wisdom’ is that there are hardly any votes in social care; surprising really, given the dramatic cost and effect on family finances when an elderly relative goes into care, as I am now dealing with. Ed Davey has gone a little way to proving this wisdom wrong; the LDs got a bit of traction for focusing on the issue during the GE and it was good to see Ed get a hat tip from the Budget speech. But Labour in particular always campaigns on the NHS (even in local elections) where it thinks the votes are, and has never made social care a priority. Streeting is clearly now fishing around for some way of offloading his promise of a resolution into some sort of cross-party long grass.
The problem iis the enormous cost, as May found out, any suggestion that the elderly should pitch in and share the risk of social care costs is political suicide. The only time a govt could do this is early in their term but Labour learnt a lesson when Cameron pulled out of cross party talks on a solution, choosing instead to use it for political point scoring.
Except that for many families, thats status quo. I've just this second sent another £6,000 over to the care home for my mother's next month, and we're selling her now vacant flat in order to cover future costs. Almost any change to the current arrangements would likely reduce our burden, and the Dilnot cap would have been most welcome, as we'll be up to it in about a year's time.
Similar situation in my family. Our inheritance from both sides has been wiped out by care costs; a result of brilliant efforts of the NHS to keep my grandparents alive.
It's a lottery and why, under the current system, inheritance tax feels fair to me. I'd rather it was upfront insurance premium that everyone paid though.
If they made inheritance tax 10% but with no exceptions, it would almost certainly raise more money than the current scheme full of a very expensive avoidance industry, that catches mostly the middle classes who happen to have a house in the South and some savings or pension - while the seriously wealthy pay little to nothing.
Yesterday went some way towards that. 20% IHT on business and agricultural property above the threshold.
Our regime is out of step with other developed European countries, which generally have broader bases and lower rates.
Agricultural property used to be exempt, so yesterday’s changes are simply a tax rise that sends even more money to the lawyers and accountants.
Isn't the concern that wealthy non-farming people have been buying farmland to evade IHT when they die?
Avoid. Not evade.
Evade=illegal Avoid=finding a legal loophole. It's reasonable for governments to close loopholes.
The distinction between the two isn't as clear as it was, of course. But if it's a government designed exemption, which was true for agricultural land, it's not a loophole.
Rich non-farmers buying agricultural land just in order to pass down assets, while avoiding IHT, wasn't really part of the plan.
Are you saying the likes of the Duke of Westminster have fucked it for regular farmers ?
Anders Holch Povlsen is probably a bigger culprit...
I don't think he's buying land for IHT reasons. It could all legitimately be in a nature conservation trust anyway.
I remember Glen Feshie from the early 90's when the tree cover was very limited and the wildlife interest was close to zero. Very different now.
He's put a big boot into official conservation organisations who have mucked about avoiding radical solutions for too long.
In terms of taxing inheritance as income, would it make sense to do so only on withdrawal from a fund?
So instead of setting up some sort of complicated family trust in advance, you could just create one on inheriting with the money and withdraw from it at whatever rate, paying income tax at that time?
We discussed this before here between ourselves and others. We need more information on why people are voting Trump. I asked the question and got a lot of helpful replies, but none really totally convinced me. The idea that 50% of Americans are idiots is just daft. So I would really like some more informed feedback and shutting down people who give that is not helpful.
I do think @Sandpit gives a lot of useful stuff and people don't try and shut him down, which is good.
*The one minor point in defence of @Jossiasjessop is that particular poster does post a lot of conspiracy stuff and does link to a lot of exceedingly dodgy stuff. You might have noticed that he referred to that in one of his posts, although none appeared in that exchange. The links seemed straight forward. I would probably have done the same as @JosiasJessop , but it would have been without justification in this instant.
Fair enough. I am a bit sensitive to the pile-ons on any poster who gives a "pro-Trump" angle because I think it's really important to see it from the PoV of an American swing voter and to try to understand that.
George Osborne had some interesting points to make about Dilnot report on a recent podcast. He said Dilnot refused to work closely with treasury/govt and so ended up with recommendations that weren't really practical to implement politically. I think there is a balance between finding the optimal policy answer and finding something politicians can get behind.
Personally I don't feel super strongly that there is some inherent right to pass down your house/wealth to your children, whilst the state pays for your care. I think some kind of cap would help people psychologically to plan and not worry.
Leon (who seems to have disappeared ?) is fond of talking about a "Korean style armistice". Nonsense, of course, for multiple reasons, but this demonstrates the biggest single one.
US Secretary of Defense confirmed that Washington would defend South Korea by using all available weapons, including nuclear weapons, if necessary. Any nuclear attack by the DPRK against the US or its allies and partners would lead to the end of the Kim Jong Un regime. https://x.com/Hromadske/status/1851922058030256371
Unless Ukraine is in NATO, the comparison is simply absurd.
It would require a nuclear guarantee from the UK and France. Not enough nukes to defeat Russia in an all out war, but enough for MAD.
But Europe definitely needs to get its act together, and part of that is by excluding, or threatening to exclude, bad actors like Hungary or Slovakia under Fico from NATO and the security apparatus of the EU as well as taking away their veto over economic sanctions. The US is going to become semi-detached from NATO even if Harris wins, and potentially actively hostile if Trump does - only mutual hostility to China would remain as common cause, and NATO is not the main geographical player in that theatre.
Any thoughts on simple investment strategies for a Trump win that could hedge against global trade wars?
Gold is at a record high this morning…
I struggle with gold for some reason (well because its a lump of metal without any obvious return bar speculation). But yes, that is probably part of the answer.
When will the political class wake up to the social care crisis and finally accept health and social care are the same fucking thing? All part of a continuum of care. Directly linked. Hospitals cannot discharge because the care homes don't have staff and beds, OTs so short in supply it takes months to get an assessment to send someone home etc etc.
I am so bloody sick of this. Every single budget, year after year, decade after decade. Labour or Conservative.
You are right. I think social care is an issue a bit like "growth" that we have been talking about, or reforming the tax system.
We all know these are major problems. Few people have a good idea of exactly how to fix those issues. Even fewer are willing to stake the political capital to actually tackle them . So nothing happens from parliament to parliament.
And frankly the UK public would almost certainly reject a party that had good ideas about these issues. Too big a change, too scary, too risky, so keep patching and tweaking the broken systems.
The political ‘wisdom’ is that there are hardly any votes in social care; surprising really, given the dramatic cost and effect on family finances when an elderly relative goes into care, as I am now dealing with. Ed Davey has gone a little way to proving this wisdom wrong; the LDs got a bit of traction for focusing on the issue during the GE and it was good to see Ed get a hat tip from the Budget speech. But Labour in particular always campaigns on the NHS (even in local elections) where it thinks the votes are, and has never made social care a priority. Streeting is clearly now fishing around for some way of offloading his promise of a resolution into some sort of cross-party long grass.
The problem iis the enormous cost, as May found out, any suggestion that the elderly should pitch in and share the risk of social care costs is political suicide. The only time a govt could do this is early in their term but Labour learnt a lesson when Cameron pulled out of cross party talks on a solution, choosing instead to use it for political point scoring.
Except that for many families, thats status quo. I've just this second sent another £6,000 over to the care home for my mother's next month, and we're selling her now vacant flat in order to cover future costs. Almost any change to the current arrangements would likely reduce our burden, and the Dilnot cap would have been most welcome, as we'll be up to it in about a year's time.
Similar situation in my family. Our inheritance from both sides has been wiped out by care costs; a result of brilliant efforts of the NHS to keep my grandparents alive.
It's a lottery and why, under the current system, inheritance tax feels fair to me. I'd rather it was upfront insurance premium that everyone paid though.
If they made inheritance tax 10% but with no exceptions, it would almost certainly raise more money than the current scheme full of a very expensive avoidance industry, that catches mostly the middle classes who happen to have a house in the South and some savings or pension - while the seriously wealthy pay little to nothing.
Yesterday went some way towards that. 20% IHT on business and agricultural property above the threshold.
Our regime is out of step with other developed European countries, which generally have broader bases and lower rates.
Agricultural property used to be exempt, so yesterday’s changes are simply a tax rise that sends even more money to the lawyers and accountants.
Isn't the concern that wealthy non-farming people have been buying farmland to evade IHT when they die?
Avoid. Not evade.
Evade=illegal Avoid=finding a legal loophole. It's reasonable for governments to close loopholes.
The distinction between the two isn't as clear as it was, of course. But if it's a government designed exemption, which was true for agricultural land, it's not a loophole.
Rich non-farmers buying agricultural land just in order to pass down assets, while avoiding IHT, wasn't really part of the plan.
Are you saying the likes of the Duke of Westminster have fucked it for regular farmers ?
Anders Holch Povlsen is probably a bigger culprit...
I don't think he's buying land for IHT reasons. It could all legitimately be in a nature conservation trust anyway.
I remember Glen Feshie from the early 90's when the tree cover was very limited and the wildlife interest was close to zero. Very different now.
He's put a big boot into official conservation organisations who have mucked about avoiding radical solutions for too long.
In terms of taxing inheritance as income, would it make sense to do so only on withdrawal from a fund?
So instead of setting up some sort of complicated family trust in advance, you could just create one on inheriting with the money and withdraw from it at whatever rate, paying income tax at that time?
That would be the way to deal with the farm land issue - if it is simply passed onto the next generation of farmers, no tax. If they sell it...
Otherwise corporate ownership of all agricultural land will be the norm in a generation.
When will the political class wake up to the social care crisis and finally accept health and social care are the same fucking thing? All part of a continuum of care. Directly linked. Hospitals cannot discharge because the care homes don't have staff and beds, OTs so short in supply it takes months to get an assessment to send someone home etc etc.
I am so bloody sick of this. Every single budget, year after year, decade after decade. Labour or Conservative.
You are right. I think social care is an issue a bit like "growth" that we have been talking about, or reforming the tax system.
We all know these are major problems. Few people have a good idea of exactly how to fix those issues. Even fewer are willing to stake the political capital to actually tackle them . So nothing happens from parliament to parliament.
And frankly the UK public would almost certainly reject a party that had good ideas about these issues. Too big a change, too scary, too risky, so keep patching and tweaking the broken systems.
The political ‘wisdom’ is that there are hardly any votes in social care; surprising really, given the dramatic cost and effect on family finances when an elderly relative goes into care, as I am now dealing with. Ed Davey has gone a little way to proving this wisdom wrong; the LDs got a bit of traction for focusing on the issue during the GE and it was good to see Ed get a hat tip from the Budget speech. But Labour in particular always campaigns on the NHS (even in local elections) where it thinks the votes are, and has never made social care a priority. Streeting is clearly now fishing around for some way of offloading his promise of a resolution into some sort of cross-party long grass.
The problem iis the enormous cost, as May found out, any suggestion that the elderly should pitch in and share the risk of social care costs is political suicide. The only time a govt could do this is early in their term but Labour learnt a lesson when Cameron pulled out of cross party talks on a solution, choosing instead to use it for political point scoring.
Except that for many families, thats status quo. I've just this second sent another £6,000 over to the care home for my mother's next month, and we're selling her now vacant flat in order to cover future costs. Almost any change to the current arrangements would likely reduce our burden, and the Dilnot cap would have been most welcome, as we'll be up to it in about a year's time.
Similar situation in my family. Our inheritance from both sides has been wiped out by care costs; a result of brilliant efforts of the NHS to keep my grandparents alive.
It's a lottery and why, under the current system, inheritance tax feels fair to me. I'd rather it was upfront insurance premium that everyone paid though.
If they made inheritance tax 10% but with no exceptions, it would almost certainly raise more money than the current scheme full of a very expensive avoidance industry, that catches mostly the middle classes who happen to have a house in the South and some savings or pension - while the seriously wealthy pay little to nothing.
If it were up to me all inheritances would be taxed the same as income, with no exceptions.
Going to work to earn £50,000 shouldn't be taxed a single penny more than inheriting £50,000 that you haven't gone to work to earn.
IHT seems to evoke more emotion than any other tax, which is why there are so many reliefs. Politically extremely difficult.
Yep, although I completely disagree with @hyufd on IHT and I am more in line with @BartholomewRoberts there is no doubting @HYUFD views represent a huge constituency of voters and you have to respect that to some extent.
I do think the pension pot change is right as it was an anomaly, but you can't ignore that it will bring into IHT an awful lot of people who previously were nowhere near it.
It'll trigger behavioural change though. People will take their pensions rather than keeping hold of them. There's a lot to be said for encouraging older people to spend the money and assets they have. Ideally on having a good time rather than social care, but realistically both.
The retired are such a huge proportion of the population now that we rely heavily on them for consumer spending. That's the only way they pay meaningful tax - through VAT - while keeping the economy afloat.
The maths is brutal. You have an ever expanding dependent population with ever increasing health and social care needs, coupled with an ever-decreasing working age population that is only going to shrink further now birth rates have sunk so low (even with significant immigration). So unless the retired either keep working much longer or spend spend spend, the tax on working age people has to rise inexorably simply for public services to stand still.
I agree with all of that except 'It'll trigger behavioural change'. It won't. It is the one time that won't because you don't know when you are going to die. You need the pot to live on so you have to keep it. You won't blow it because otherwise you have nothing to live on. If you remove it and keep it, it still attracts IHT when you die. You might distribute some funds before you die, but again what you have to distribute is unchanged.
It will likely see a further increase in annuities that had become less popular under ultra low interest rates.
Must admit I hadn't thought of that. Good point. It does sway the argument towards annuity.
However I wonder if the decision on drawdown/annuity is financial based or life style based. It certainly wasn't financial for me. I have good genes so an annuity would be the best decision financially but I have opted for drawdown for flexibility and as it isn't my only source I am happy with the risk.
I suspect annuities are more attractive to people on lower resources and the IHT impact is on those with higher resources.
If IHT was part of calculations it is very hard for an annuity to make sense under current rules. Generally it is an extra layer of transactions and insurance that come with costs that have to be paid, so is typically worse than self managed drawdown mathematically but the price may suit those wanting certainty and security.
"The problem iis the enormous cost, as May found out, any suggestion that the elderly should pitch in and share the risk of social care costs is political suicide."
This is the stupidity of all this because, as other PBers have pointed out and experienced, the unlucky ones lose everything.
It is a 100% IHT but by lottery. Maybe 1 in 6 lose the lottery and lose everything they have built up over a lifetime whereas the old guy next door passes in his sleep and leaves the lot behind to face at most a 40% hit and then only above £500K.
A decent set of politicians would be able to take the public through this argument and build a solution.
Good morning
The Dilnot Commission report should have been implemented with cross party support
Care for the elderly is a lottery especially as dementia is not treated the same as a terminal illness
My sister, who had terminal cancer, was cared for in a nursing home for 18 months until she died under CHC assessment but my son in law's parents who both had dementia did not get care under CHC resulting in £200,000 care fees
Mrs Flatlander's mum has dementia but is being cared for at home through a big effort by the family, because (evidenced by a couple of episodes in respite care) she gets better looked after that way.
So any money saved in care fees will be taxed at 40%.
Fundamentally, our highly westernised individualistic model means we expect people who need help and those who need care to be fully independent or cared for by paid others without any recourse to extended families or communities who'd do it essentially for free with a bit of aid and help.
This is not normal, throughout human history or in the rest of the world, where extended families care for their elderly parents and those with disabilities.
That doesn't bankrupt nations. And psychologically it's better for them too.
It is though dependent on family members living locally and being available so difficult where both of a couple work or if the elderly parent does not live near them. If the elderly parent has to move in, then a bigger house is needed, and possibly significant modifications.
And that would be a very different sort of society. One where the vast majority of people stay in the town where they were born, and don't leave to study, marry, persue a career or any of those other things lots of us now do. Things that have generated a lot of wealth and human happiness overall.
And whilst reverting to that sort of world (probably pre-bicycle) would have benefits of the sort that conservatives approve of, I'm pretty sure that the disadvantages would outweigh the advantages.
I'd say that trend to loss of local extended family dates more to the 1960s, other than for a smallish minority, rather than the 1870-80s (which I think is perhaps what you mean). The reverse trend has been simultaneously, for example amongst immigrant families, and more recently amongst nuclear families - starting with "grandma moving back in".
I'll let you off that the first handcycle was most likely 1655 by Stephan Farffler, whilst Oliver Cromwell was the boss here .
Certainly when it went stratospheric. Though the nature of exponential growths is that it's hard to say where the before and after are. Winding the clock back to a better time in the past is a natural conservative instinct, but not an easy one to stop doing.
(Does this have implications for what we understand by "local" government, I wonder? The mergers of the 1960s and 1970s were in part resisted because of neighbouring places seeing themselves as irredemably distinct. If our collective mental sense of how big "here" is has expanded, how does that affect the boundaries we are willing to draw?)
Maybe, but there is no national settlement. You can see from discussion of commuting that northerners have smaller, tighter local limits than residents of the home counties who think nothing of a 90-minute commute into London. That said, WFH is shrinking southern boundaries too.
A cousin of mine moved to New Zealand's South Island and ended up with a 20 minute car commute. As he was originally from South Essex he thought nothing of it; his new neighbours, though, were horrified at the distance he had to travel.
They say that in the US people think nothing of driving five hours to pick up a taco.
I suspect it's similar in some parts of Australia.
The biggest impact this government could make is planning reform. Where is it?
I wouldn’t worry yet. That’s separate from the budget.
And presumably not showing up in yesterday's graphs?
(Incidentally, am I reading them right- that there's a bigger GDP gain in years 1 and 2 than the projected GDP loss in years 4 and 5?)
Total growth in the period is down to 8.2% from 8.5% so very little difference, but the later years are essentially an estimate of the trend rate of growth, aka economic destiny.
To have those quite a bit lower is not a good direction of travel.
There was nothing in the budget about growing the economy. All very good to bang on about growth. But there were no pro-growth policies.
Leon (who seems to have disappeared ?) is fond of talking about a "Korean style armistice". Nonsense, of course, for multiple reasons, but this demonstrates the biggest single one.
US Secretary of Defense confirmed that Washington would defend South Korea by using all available weapons, including nuclear weapons, if necessary. Any nuclear attack by the DPRK against the US or its allies and partners would lead to the end of the Kim Jong Un regime. https://x.com/Hromadske/status/1851922058030256371
Unless Ukraine is in NATO, the comparison is simply absurd.
Leon has received the ban hammer a few nights back.
Don't know if it is Temp or not. It was all somewhat tetchy here at the time.
He went the full racist; Britain for the white British.
Good riddance IMO. He's entertaining, but I don't think that excuses his views.
I don't think he was saying that and, even if he was, I don't think such views should lead to a banning unless it was accompanied by incitement to violence or raw hate.
But, I have a higher spectrum of tolerance for speech (admittedly I can respond very aggressively and rudely to them but I only advocate banning where they are consistently personally abusive or nasty)
Serious fury from pro Ukraine voices now. One can still dream that’s it’s a big psyop and on the morning of 6th Nov, Ukraine will launch a huge surprise operation aimed at crushing the Russian army. But that sadly feels like wish casting.
“Biden sabotaged Ukraine's confidential plans then didn't honor the request to keep those plans confidential, spreading it to media to further sabotage.
Biden is a f**king piece of sh*t and now costing thousands of deaths.”
Yes, to say that they’re royally pissed off with Biden would be something of an understatement right now.
His actions are some way short of matching his words, European nations are going to have to step up no matter the result in the US next week.
But step up rather more if it's Trump.
I believe this is now the rationale(sic) of Trumpers for Ukraine; if/when Trump shits all over Zhelensky and Ukraine, Europe will HAVE to step up in their defence. A high risk strategy, particularly when the same people have been constantly disparaging European efforts up to now.
Yes. "Biden's" America has provided half of all assistance to Ukraine. Germany is the next biggest provider and the EU will probably be the biggest eventually. Ukraine needs all these on board and it would useful if certain actors kept their ideology to themselves.
Leon (who seems to have disappeared ?) is fond of talking about a "Korean style armistice". Nonsense, of course, for multiple reasons, but this demonstrates the biggest single one.
US Secretary of Defense confirmed that Washington would defend South Korea by using all available weapons, including nuclear weapons, if necessary. Any nuclear attack by the DPRK against the US or its allies and partners would lead to the end of the Kim Jong Un regime. https://x.com/Hromadske/status/1851922058030256371
Unless Ukraine is in NATO, the comparison is simply absurd.
Leon has received the ban hammer a few nights back.
Don't know if it is Temp or not. It was all somewhat tetchy here at the time.
He went the full racist; Britain for the white British.
Good riddance IMO. He's entertaining, but I don't think that excuses his views.
I don't think he was saying that and, even if he was, I don't think such views should lead to a banning unless it was accompanied by incitement to violence or raw hate.
But, I have a higher spectrum of tolerance for speech (admittedly I can respond very aggressively and rudely to them but I only advocate banning where they are consistently personally abusive or nasty)
He literally said that the UK should promote/increase the number of "white babies".
Great Replacement and "14 words" are all that's left from there....
When will the political class wake up to the social care crisis and finally accept health and social care are the same fucking thing? All part of a continuum of care. Directly linked. Hospitals cannot discharge because the care homes don't have staff and beds, OTs so short in supply it takes months to get an assessment to send someone home etc etc.
I am so bloody sick of this. Every single budget, year after year, decade after decade. Labour or Conservative.
You are right. I think social care is an issue a bit like "growth" that we have been talking about, or reforming the tax system.
We all know these are major problems. Few people have a good idea of exactly how to fix those issues. Even fewer are willing to stake the political capital to actually tackle them . So nothing happens from parliament to parliament.
And frankly the UK public would almost certainly reject a party that had good ideas about these issues. Too big a change, too scary, too risky, so keep patching and tweaking the broken systems.
The political ‘wisdom’ is that there are hardly any votes in social care; surprising really, given the dramatic cost and effect on family finances when an elderly relative goes into care, as I am now dealing with. Ed Davey has gone a little way to proving this wisdom wrong; the LDs got a bit of traction for focusing on the issue during the GE and it was good to see Ed get a hat tip from the Budget speech. But Labour in particular always campaigns on the NHS (even in local elections) where it thinks the votes are, and has never made social care a priority. Streeting is clearly now fishing around for some way of offloading his promise of a resolution into some sort of cross-party long grass.
The problem iis the enormous cost, as May found out, any suggestion that the elderly should pitch in and share the risk of social care costs is political suicide. The only time a govt could do this is early in their term but Labour learnt a lesson when Cameron pulled out of cross party talks on a solution, choosing instead to use it for political point scoring.
Except that for many families, thats status quo. I've just this second sent another £6,000 over to the care home for my mother's next month, and we're selling her now vacant flat in order to cover future costs. Almost any change to the current arrangements would likely reduce our burden, and the Dilnot cap would have been most welcome, as we'll be up to it in about a year's time.
Similar situation in my family. Our inheritance from both sides has been wiped out by care costs; a result of brilliant efforts of the NHS to keep my grandparents alive.
It's a lottery and why, under the current system, inheritance tax feels fair to me. I'd rather it was upfront insurance premium that everyone paid though.
If they made inheritance tax 10% but with no exceptions, it would almost certainly raise more money than the current scheme full of a very expensive avoidance industry, that catches mostly the middle classes who happen to have a house in the South and some savings or pension - while the seriously wealthy pay little to nothing.
If it were up to me all inheritances would be taxed the same as income, with no exceptions.
Going to work to earn £50,000 shouldn't be taxed a single penny more than inheriting £50,000 that you haven't gone to work to earn.
IHT seems to evoke more emotion than any other tax, which is why there are so many reliefs. Politically extremely difficult.
Yep, although I completely disagree with @hyufd on IHT and I am more in line with @BartholomewRoberts there is no doubting @HYUFD views represent a huge constituency of voters and you have to respect that to some extent.
I do think the pension pot change is right as it was an anomaly, but you can't ignore that it will bring into IHT an awful lot of people who previously were nowhere near it.
It'll trigger behavioural change though. People will take their pensions rather than keeping hold of them. There's a lot to be said for encouraging older people to spend the money and assets they have. Ideally on having a good time rather than social care, but realistically both.
The retired are such a huge proportion of the population now that we rely heavily on them for consumer spending. That's the only way they pay meaningful tax - through VAT - while keeping the economy afloat.
The maths is brutal. You have an ever expanding dependent population with ever increasing health and social care needs, coupled with an ever-decreasing working age population that is only going to shrink further now birth rates have sunk so low (even with significant immigration). So unless the retired either keep working much longer or spend spend spend, the tax on working age people has to rise inexorably simply for public services to stand still.
I agree with all of that except 'It'll trigger behavioural change'. It won't. It is the one time that won't because you don't know when you are going to die. You need the pot to live on so you have to keep it. You won't blow it because otherwise you have nothing to live on. If you remove it and keep it, it still attracts IHT when you die. You might distribute some funds before you die, but again what you have to distribute is unchanged.
It will likely see a further increase in annuities that had become less popular under ultra low interest rates.
Must admit I hadn't thought of that. Good point. It does sway the argument towards annuity.
However I wonder if the decision on drawdown/annuity is financial based or life style based. It certainly wasn't financial for me. I have good genes so an annuity would be the best decision financially but I have opted for drawdown for flexibility and as it isn't my only source I am happy with the risk.
I suspect annuities are more attractive to people on lower resources and the IHT impact is on those with higher resources.
If IHT was part of calculations it is very hard for an annuity to make sense under current rules. Generally it is an extra layer of transactions and insurance that come with costs that have to be paid, so is typically worse than self managed drawdown mathematically but the price may suit those wanting certainty and security.
"The problem iis the enormous cost, as May found out, any suggestion that the elderly should pitch in and share the risk of social care costs is political suicide."
This is the stupidity of all this because, as other PBers have pointed out and experienced, the unlucky ones lose everything.
It is a 100% IHT but by lottery. Maybe 1 in 6 lose the lottery and lose everything they have built up over a lifetime whereas the old guy next door passes in his sleep and leaves the lot behind to face at most a 40% hit and then only above £500K.
A decent set of politicians would be able to take the public through this argument and build a solution.
Many people don't pay as they have little to no assets.
You self fund and at least have the choice of a decent place. Your council funded & you can end up in some horrendous place.
Its also not a binary 0 or 100%
If its in a nursing bed the median stay before death is less than a year. For residential is a couple of months over 2 years. So the median cost might be around £120k You can argue that it may be much more in the South East but equally your house equity will be higher.
There are obviously complex cases and people can live many years - but that I'm afraid is just part of life.
Basically special plea that middle classes want the taxpayer to have the burden so their assets (often by sheer luck of buying a house at the right time) pass to their children.
Just how much more tax do young people have to pay to fund baby boomers wish lists ?
George Osborne had some interesting points to make about Dilnot report on a recent podcast. He said Dilnot refused to work closely with treasury/govt and so ended up with recommendations that weren't really practical to implement politically. I think there is a balance between finding the optimal policy answer and finding something politicians can get behind.
Personally I don't feel super strongly that there is some inherent right to pass down your house/wealth to your children, whilst the state pays for your care. I think some kind of cap would help people psychologically to plan and not worry.
If the increase in wealth were the result of the efforts of the efforts of the wealth-holder that's one thing. However if the increase is largely due to inflation, that's something else.
When will the political class wake up to the social care crisis and finally accept health and social care are the same fucking thing? All part of a continuum of care. Directly linked. Hospitals cannot discharge because the care homes don't have staff and beds, OTs so short in supply it takes months to get an assessment to send someone home etc etc.
I am so bloody sick of this. Every single budget, year after year, decade after decade. Labour or Conservative.
You are right. I think social care is an issue a bit like "growth" that we have been talking about, or reforming the tax system.
We all know these are major problems. Few people have a good idea of exactly how to fix those issues. Even fewer are willing to stake the political capital to actually tackle them . So nothing happens from parliament to parliament.
And frankly the UK public would almost certainly reject a party that had good ideas about these issues. Too big a change, too scary, too risky, so keep patching and tweaking the broken systems.
The political ‘wisdom’ is that there are hardly any votes in social care; surprising really, given the dramatic cost and effect on family finances when an elderly relative goes into care, as I am now dealing with. Ed Davey has gone a little way to proving this wisdom wrong; the LDs got a bit of traction for focusing on the issue during the GE and it was good to see Ed get a hat tip from the Budget speech. But Labour in particular always campaigns on the NHS (even in local elections) where it thinks the votes are, and has never made social care a priority. Streeting is clearly now fishing around for some way of offloading his promise of a resolution into some sort of cross-party long grass.
The problem iis the enormous cost, as May found out, any suggestion that the elderly should pitch in and share the risk of social care costs is political suicide. The only time a govt could do this is early in their term but Labour learnt a lesson when Cameron pulled out of cross party talks on a solution, choosing instead to use it for political point scoring.
Except that for many families, thats status quo. I've just this second sent another £6,000 over to the care home for my mother's next month, and we're selling her now vacant flat in order to cover future costs. Almost any change to the current arrangements would likely reduce our burden, and the Dilnot cap would have been most welcome, as we'll be up to it in about a year's time.
Similar situation in my family. Our inheritance from both sides has been wiped out by care costs; a result of brilliant efforts of the NHS to keep my grandparents alive.
It's a lottery and why, under the current system, inheritance tax feels fair to me. I'd rather it was upfront insurance premium that everyone paid though.
If they made inheritance tax 10% but with no exceptions, it would almost certainly raise more money than the current scheme full of a very expensive avoidance industry, that catches mostly the middle classes who happen to have a house in the South and some savings or pension - while the seriously wealthy pay little to nothing.
If it were up to me all inheritances would be taxed the same as income, with no exceptions.
Going to work to earn £50,000 shouldn't be taxed a single penny more than inheriting £50,000 that you haven't gone to work to earn.
IHT seems to evoke more emotion than any other tax, which is why there are so many reliefs. Politically extremely difficult.
My solution fixes that, it should be abolished and inheritance should be taxed as income instead.
No more IHT.
What's your limit on gifts? Or does everyone have to fill in a tax return every year? Ornaybe every time they get a credit in their bank account?
£10K
How often? To how many people?
Once a year. To as many people as you like.
Ireland taxes gifts. €3,000 yearly to as many people as you like. Lifetime gift allowance to your children of €400,000. It can be done.
France allows you to gift up to €100k every, I think, 10 or possibly 15 years (I should know, I was looking into it recently as my parents were handing over their half of the ownership of our French house).
My mum did that with the house she shared with me for her final years when I was her carer.
She very inconsiderately popped her clogs after six and a half years ...
If she lived in it post "giving" it" to you... it's not a gift for iht purposes afaik
There's a huge mismatch on social care. Many of those pushing for reform think it will save them money on receiving or giving inheritance, but actually we surely also need a lot more money for it... there's an ageing population, and rising worker wages. Difficult problem for the government. But a shame that they haven't made much of a start. Leaving it until later and hoping the economy will improve is probably not going to work.
Leon (who seems to have disappeared ?) is fond of talking about a "Korean style armistice". Nonsense, of course, for multiple reasons, but this demonstrates the biggest single one.
US Secretary of Defense confirmed that Washington would defend South Korea by using all available weapons, including nuclear weapons, if necessary. Any nuclear attack by the DPRK against the US or its allies and partners would lead to the end of the Kim Jong Un regime. https://x.com/Hromadske/status/1851922058030256371
Unless Ukraine is in NATO, the comparison is simply absurd.
Leon has received the ban hammer a few nights back.
Don't know if it is Temp or not. It was all somewhat tetchy here at the time.
He went the full racist; Britain for the white British.
Good riddance IMO. He's entertaining, but I don't think that excuses his views.
I don't think he was saying that and, even if he was, I don't think such views should lead to a banning unless it was accompanied by incitement to violence or raw hate.
But, I have a higher spectrum of tolerance for speech (admittedly I can respond very aggressively and rudely to them but I only advocate banning where they are consistently personally abusive or nasty)
Saying non whites are second class citizens here is pretty personally abusive and nasty to many. I'm sure he will be back soon enough anyway, he always is.
When will the political class wake up to the social care crisis and finally accept health and social care are the same fucking thing? All part of a continuum of care. Directly linked. Hospitals cannot discharge because the care homes don't have staff and beds, OTs so short in supply it takes months to get an assessment to send someone home etc etc.
I am so bloody sick of this. Every single budget, year after year, decade after decade. Labour or Conservative.
You are right. I think social care is an issue a bit like "growth" that we have been talking about, or reforming the tax system.
We all know these are major problems. Few people have a good idea of exactly how to fix those issues. Even fewer are willing to stake the political capital to actually tackle them . So nothing happens from parliament to parliament.
And frankly the UK public would almost certainly reject a party that had good ideas about these issues. Too big a change, too scary, too risky, so keep patching and tweaking the broken systems.
The political ‘wisdom’ is that there are hardly any votes in social care; surprising really, given the dramatic cost and effect on family finances when an elderly relative goes into care, as I am now dealing with. Ed Davey has gone a little way to proving this wisdom wrong; the LDs got a bit of traction for focusing on the issue during the GE and it was good to see Ed get a hat tip from the Budget speech. But Labour in particular always campaigns on the NHS (even in local elections) where it thinks the votes are, and has never made social care a priority. Streeting is clearly now fishing around for some way of offloading his promise of a resolution into some sort of cross-party long grass.
The problem iis the enormous cost, as May found out, any suggestion that the elderly should pitch in and share the risk of social care costs is political suicide. The only time a govt could do this is early in their term but Labour learnt a lesson when Cameron pulled out of cross party talks on a solution, choosing instead to use it for political point scoring.
Except that for many families, thats status quo. I've just this second sent another £6,000 over to the care home for my mother's next month, and we're selling her now vacant flat in order to cover future costs. Almost any change to the current arrangements would likely reduce our burden, and the Dilnot cap would have been most welcome, as we'll be up to it in about a year's time.
Similar situation in my family. Our inheritance from both sides has been wiped out by care costs; a result of brilliant efforts of the NHS to keep my grandparents alive.
It's a lottery and why, under the current system, inheritance tax feels fair to me. I'd rather it was upfront insurance premium that everyone paid though.
If they made inheritance tax 10% but with no exceptions, it would almost certainly raise more money than the current scheme full of a very expensive avoidance industry, that catches mostly the middle classes who happen to have a house in the South and some savings or pension - while the seriously wealthy pay little to nothing.
Yesterday went some way towards that. 20% IHT on business and agricultural property above the threshold.
Our regime is out of step with other developed European countries, which generally have broader bases and lower rates.
Agricultural property used to be exempt, so yesterday’s changes are simply a tax rise that sends even more money to the lawyers and accountants.
Isn't the concern that wealthy non-farming people have been buying farmland to evade IHT when they die?
Avoid. Not evade.
Evade=illegal Avoid=finding a legal loophole. It's reasonable for governments to close loopholes.
The distinction between the two isn't as clear as it was, of course. But if it's a government designed exemption, which was true for agricultural land, it's not a loophole.
Rich non-farmers buying agricultural land just in order to pass down assets, while avoiding IHT, wasn't really part of the plan.
Are you saying the likes of the Duke of Westminster have fucked it for regular farmers ?
Anders Holch Povlsen is probably a bigger culprit...
I don't think he's buying land for IHT reasons. It could all legitimately be in a nature conservation trust anyway.
I remember Glen Feshie from the early 90's when the tree cover was very limited and the wildlife interest was close to zero. Very different now.
He's put a big boot into official conservation organisations who have mucked about avoiding radical solutions for too long.
In terms of taxing inheritance as income, would it make sense to do so only on withdrawal from a fund?
So instead of setting up some sort of complicated family trust in advance, you could just create one on inheriting with the money and withdraw from it at whatever rate, paying income tax at that time?
That would be the way to deal with the farm land issue - if it is simply passed onto the next generation of farmers, no tax. If they sell it...
Otherwise corporate ownership of all agricultural land will be the norm in a generation.
If you don't mind that....
Exactly - it would solve most of the farm problem straight away.
What you would do with other sorts of assets is the tricky part. Is the Van Gogh on the wall part of the fund or not?
When will the political class wake up to the social care crisis and finally accept health and social care are the same fucking thing? All part of a continuum of care. Directly linked. Hospitals cannot discharge because the care homes don't have staff and beds, OTs so short in supply it takes months to get an assessment to send someone home etc etc.
I am so bloody sick of this. Every single budget, year after year, decade after decade. Labour or Conservative.
You are right. I think social care is an issue a bit like "growth" that we have been talking about, or reforming the tax system.
We all know these are major problems. Few people have a good idea of exactly how to fix those issues. Even fewer are willing to stake the political capital to actually tackle them . So nothing happens from parliament to parliament.
And frankly the UK public would almost certainly reject a party that had good ideas about these issues. Too big a change, too scary, too risky, so keep patching and tweaking the broken systems.
The political ‘wisdom’ is that there are hardly any votes in social care; surprising really, given the dramatic cost and effect on family finances when an elderly relative goes into care, as I am now dealing with. Ed Davey has gone a little way to proving this wisdom wrong; the LDs got a bit of traction for focusing on the issue during the GE and it was good to see Ed get a hat tip from the Budget speech. But Labour in particular always campaigns on the NHS (even in local elections) where it thinks the votes are, and has never made social care a priority. Streeting is clearly now fishing around for some way of offloading his promise of a resolution into some sort of cross-party long grass.
The problem iis the enormous cost, as May found out, any suggestion that the elderly should pitch in and share the risk of social care costs is political suicide. The only time a govt could do this is early in their term but Labour learnt a lesson when Cameron pulled out of cross party talks on a solution, choosing instead to use it for political point scoring.
Except that for many families, thats status quo. I've just this second sent another £6,000 over to the care home for my mother's next month, and we're selling her now vacant flat in order to cover future costs. Almost any change to the current arrangements would likely reduce our burden, and the Dilnot cap would have been most welcome, as we'll be up to it in about a year's time.
Similar situation in my family. Our inheritance from both sides has been wiped out by care costs; a result of brilliant efforts of the NHS to keep my grandparents alive.
It's a lottery and why, under the current system, inheritance tax feels fair to me. I'd rather it was upfront insurance premium that everyone paid though.
If they made inheritance tax 10% but with no exceptions, it would almost certainly raise more money than the current scheme full of a very expensive avoidance industry, that catches mostly the middle classes who happen to have a house in the South and some savings or pension - while the seriously wealthy pay little to nothing.
If it were up to me all inheritances would be taxed the same as income, with no exceptions.
Going to work to earn £50,000 shouldn't be taxed a single penny more than inheriting £50,000 that you haven't gone to work to earn.
IHT seems to evoke more emotion than any other tax, which is why there are so many reliefs. Politically extremely difficult.
Yep, although I completely disagree with @hyufd on IHT and I am more in line with @BartholomewRoberts there is no doubting @HYUFD views represent a huge constituency of voters and you have to respect that to some extent.
I do think the pension pot change is right as it was an anomaly, but you can't ignore that it will bring into IHT an awful lot of people who previously were nowhere near it.
It'll trigger behavioural change though. People will take their pensions rather than keeping hold of them. There's a lot to be said for encouraging older people to spend the money and assets they have. Ideally on having a good time rather than social care, but realistically both.
The retired are such a huge proportion of the population now that we rely heavily on them for consumer spending. That's the only way they pay meaningful tax - through VAT - while keeping the economy afloat.
The maths is brutal. You have an ever expanding dependent population with ever increasing health and social care needs, coupled with an ever-decreasing working age population that is only going to shrink further now birth rates have sunk so low (even with significant immigration). So unless the retired either keep working much longer or spend spend spend, the tax on working age people has to rise inexorably simply for public services to stand still.
I agree with all of that except 'It'll trigger behavioural change'. It won't. It is the one time that won't because you don't know when you are going to die. You need the pot to live on so you have to keep it. You won't blow it because otherwise you have nothing to live on. If you remove it and keep it, it still attracts IHT when you die. You might distribute some funds before you die, but again what you have to distribute is unchanged.
It will likely see a further increase in annuities that had become less popular under ultra low interest rates.
Must admit I hadn't thought of that. Good point. It does sway the argument towards annuity.
However I wonder if the decision on drawdown/annuity is financial based or life style based. It certainly wasn't financial for me. I have good genes so an annuity would be the best decision financially but I have opted for drawdown for flexibility and as it isn't my only source I am happy with the risk.
I suspect annuities are more attractive to people on lower resources and the IHT impact is on those with higher resources.
If IHT was part of calculations it is very hard for an annuity to make sense under current rules. Generally it is an extra layer of transactions and insurance that come with costs that have to be paid, so is typically worse than self managed drawdown mathematically but the price may suit those wanting certainty and security.
"The problem iis the enormous cost, as May found out, any suggestion that the elderly should pitch in and share the risk of social care costs is political suicide."
This is the stupidity of all this because, as other PBers have pointed out and experienced, the unlucky ones lose everything.
It is a 100% IHT but by lottery. Maybe 1 in 6 lose the lottery and lose everything they have built up over a lifetime whereas the old guy next door passes in his sleep and leaves the lot behind to face at most a 40% hit and then only above £500K.
A decent set of politicians would be able to take the public through this argument and build a solution.
Good morning
The Dilnot Commission report should have been implemented with cross party support
Care for the elderly is a lottery especially as dementia is not treated the same as a terminal illness
My sister, who had terminal cancer, was cared for in a nursing home for 18 months until she died under CHC assessment but my son in law's parents who both had dementia did not get care under CHC resulting in £200,000 care fees
Mrs Flatlander's mum has dementia but is being cared for at home through a big effort by the family, because (evidenced by a couple of episodes in respite care) she gets better looked after that way.
So any money saved in care fees will be taxed at 40%.
That seems wrong...
Presumably you mean any money in the estate over £500k or £1m is taxed at 40% ?
Leon (who seems to have disappeared ?) is fond of talking about a "Korean style armistice". Nonsense, of course, for multiple reasons, but this demonstrates the biggest single one.
US Secretary of Defense confirmed that Washington would defend South Korea by using all available weapons, including nuclear weapons, if necessary. Any nuclear attack by the DPRK against the US or its allies and partners would lead to the end of the Kim Jong Un regime. https://x.com/Hromadske/status/1851922058030256371
Unless Ukraine is in NATO, the comparison is simply absurd.
Leon has received the ban hammer a few nights back.
Don't know if it is Temp or not. It was all somewhat tetchy here at the time.
He went the full racist; Britain for the white British.
Good riddance IMO. He's entertaining, but I don't think that excuses his views.
I don't think he was saying that and, even if he was, I don't think such views should lead to a banning unless it was accompanied by incitement to violence or raw hate.
But, I have a higher spectrum of tolerance for speech (admittedly I can respond very aggressively and rudely to them but I only advocate banning where they are consistently personally abusive or nasty)
He literally said that the UK should promote/increase the number of "white babies".
Great Replacement and "14 words" are all that's left from there....
But, that's your extrapolation of what you thought he might subsequently say and mean and not what he actually said.
Just saying we should increase the number of white babies isn't an intrinsically and fundamentally unreasonable thing to say.
Leon (who seems to have disappeared ?) is fond of talking about a "Korean style armistice". Nonsense, of course, for multiple reasons, but this demonstrates the biggest single one.
US Secretary of Defense confirmed that Washington would defend South Korea by using all available weapons, including nuclear weapons, if necessary. Any nuclear attack by the DPRK against the US or its allies and partners would lead to the end of the Kim Jong Un regime. https://x.com/Hromadske/status/1851922058030256371
Unless Ukraine is in NATO, the comparison is simply absurd.
Leon has received the ban hammer a few nights back.
Don't know if it is Temp or not. It was all somewhat tetchy here at the time.
He went the full racist; Britain for the white British.
Good riddance IMO. He's entertaining, but I don't think that excuses his views.
I don't think he was saying that and, even if he was, I don't think such views should lead to a banning unless it was accompanied by incitement to violence or raw hate.
But, I have a higher spectrum of tolerance for speech (admittedly I can respond very aggressively and rudely to them but I only advocate banning where they are consistently personally abusive or nasty)
Saying non whites are second class citizens here is pretty personally abusive and nasty to many. I'm sure he will be back soon enough anyway, he always is.
I didn't see or read him saying that non whites are second class citizens.
We discussed this before here between ourselves and others. We need more information on why people are voting Trump. I asked the question and got a lot of helpful replies, but none really totally convinced me. The idea that 50% of Americans are idiots is just daft. So I would really like some more informed feedback and shutting down people who give that is not helpful.
I do think @Sandpit gives a lot of useful stuff and people don't try and shut him down, which is good.
*The one minor point in defence of @Jossiasjessop is that particular poster does post a lot of conspiracy stuff and does link to a lot of exceedingly dodgy stuff. You might have noticed that he referred to that in one of his posts, although none appeared in that exchange. The links seemed straight forward. I would probably have done the same as @JosiasJessop , but it would have been without justification in this instant.
Fair enough. I am a bit sensitive to the pile-ons on any poster who gives a "pro-Trump" angle because I think it's really important to see it from the PoV of an American swing voter and to try to understand that.
I understand completely. I also want to see it from the point of view of all those who intend to vote for Trump and are not MAGA. I want to know why? It is important for me to understand, because I just don't.
Leon (who seems to have disappeared ?) is fond of talking about a "Korean style armistice". Nonsense, of course, for multiple reasons, but this demonstrates the biggest single one.
US Secretary of Defense confirmed that Washington would defend South Korea by using all available weapons, including nuclear weapons, if necessary. Any nuclear attack by the DPRK against the US or its allies and partners would lead to the end of the Kim Jong Un regime. https://x.com/Hromadske/status/1851922058030256371
Unless Ukraine is in NATO, the comparison is simply absurd.
Leon has received the ban hammer a few nights back.
Don't know if it is Temp or not. It was all somewhat tetchy here at the time.
He went the full racist; Britain for the white British.
Good riddance IMO. He's entertaining, but I don't think that excuses his views.
I don't think he was saying that and, even if he was, I don't think such views should lead to a banning unless it was accompanied by incitement to violence or raw hate.
But, I have a higher spectrum of tolerance for speech (admittedly I can respond very aggressively and rudely to them but I only advocate banning where they are consistently personally abusive or nasty)
He literally said that the UK should promote/increase the number of "white babies".
Great Replacement and "14 words" are all that's left from there....
But, that's your extrapolation of what you thought he might subsequently say and mean and not what he actually said.
Just saying we should increase the number of white babies isn't an intrinsically and fundamentally unreasonable thing to say.
We discussed this before here between ourselves and others. We need more information on why people are voting Trump. I asked the question and got a lot of helpful replies, but none really totally convinced me. The idea that 50% of Americans are idiots is just daft. So I would really like some more informed feedback and shutting down people who give that is not helpful.
I do think @Sandpit gives a lot of useful stuff and people don't try and shut him down, which is good.
*The one minor point in defence of @Jossiasjessop is that particular poster does post a lot of conspiracy stuff and does link to a lot of exceedingly dodgy stuff. You might have noticed that he referred to that in one of his posts, although none appeared in that exchange. The links seemed straight forward. I would probably have done the same as @JosiasJessop , but it would have been without justification in this instant.
Fair enough. I am a bit sensitive to the pile-ons on any poster who gives a "pro-Trump" angle because I think it's really important to see it from the PoV of an American swing voter and to try to understand that.
I understand completely. I also want to see it from the point of view of all those who intend to vote for Trump and are not MAGA. I want to know why? It is important for me to understand, because I just don't.
I posted my own theory the other day.
I think lots of us would see things a bit differently if we were born American and lived in America.
I actually have a hospital appointment this morning. What a budget!
I went to hospital yesterday.
There was a poster by the entrance warning about measles, which we thought had been vanquished in the 1960s, before they invented anti-vaxxers.
But beyond that were electronic signs displaying a message that their software licence had expired (presumably unbeknownst to whoever could either renew the licence or turn the system off to save electricity) and direction signs that stopped well short of their destination. The clock had not been put back an hour at the weekend, or so I thought till I noticed that even then it would be 10 minutes wrong.
People say the NHS needs huge investment. They are right. It does. But it also needs people directly running hospitals and clinics to pick the low hanging fruit.
We haven't invented anti-vaxxers, we've invited them in. You're right about the rest.
Previously I was content to defend the extension of the bus fare cap at £3 rather than the existing £2, on the basis that it required additional subsidy to keep it going.
But when the Chancellor announced not only a freeze in fuel duty, but an extension of the temporary 5p/litre discount, then feck this.
With rail fares also increasing, the motorist is being feather-bedded, with public transport users bearing the cost.
Leon (who seems to have disappeared ?) is fond of talking about a "Korean style armistice". Nonsense, of course, for multiple reasons, but this demonstrates the biggest single one.
US Secretary of Defense confirmed that Washington would defend South Korea by using all available weapons, including nuclear weapons, if necessary. Any nuclear attack by the DPRK against the US or its allies and partners would lead to the end of the Kim Jong Un regime. https://x.com/Hromadske/status/1851922058030256371
Unless Ukraine is in NATO, the comparison is simply absurd.
Leon has received the ban hammer a few nights back.
Don't know if it is Temp or not. It was all somewhat tetchy here at the time.
He went the full racist; Britain for the white British.
Good riddance IMO. He's entertaining, but I don't think that excuses his views.
I don't think he was saying that and, even if he was, I don't think such views should lead to a banning unless it was accompanied by incitement to violence or raw hate.
But, I have a higher spectrum of tolerance for speech (admittedly I can respond very aggressively and rudely to them but I only advocate banning where they are consistently personally abusive or nasty)
He literally said that the UK should promote/increase the number of "white babies".
Great Replacement and "14 words" are all that's left from there....
But, that's your extrapolation of what you thought he might subsequently say and mean and not what he actually said.
Just saying we should increase the number of white babies isn't an intrinsically and fundamentally unreasonable thing to say.
The implication is "increase the proportion of white babies", which is.
When will the political class wake up to the social care crisis and finally accept health and social care are the same fucking thing? All part of a continuum of care. Directly linked. Hospitals cannot discharge because the care homes don't have staff and beds, OTs so short in supply it takes months to get an assessment to send someone home etc etc.
I am so bloody sick of this. Every single budget, year after year, decade after decade. Labour or Conservative.
You are right. I think social care is an issue a bit like "growth" that we have been talking about, or reforming the tax system.
We all know these are major problems. Few people have a good idea of exactly how to fix those issues. Even fewer are willing to stake the political capital to actually tackle them . So nothing happens from parliament to parliament.
And frankly the UK public would almost certainly reject a party that had good ideas about these issues. Too big a change, too scary, too risky, so keep patching and tweaking the broken systems.
The political ‘wisdom’ is that there are hardly any votes in social care; surprising really, given the dramatic cost and effect on family finances when an elderly relative goes into care, as I am now dealing with. Ed Davey has gone a little way to proving this wisdom wrong; the LDs got a bit of traction for focusing on the issue during the GE and it was good to see Ed get a hat tip from the Budget speech. But Labour in particular always campaigns on the NHS (even in local elections) where it thinks the votes are, and has never made social care a priority. Streeting is clearly now fishing around for some way of offloading his promise of a resolution into some sort of cross-party long grass.
The problem iis the enormous cost, as May found out, any suggestion that the elderly should pitch in and share the risk of social care costs is political suicide. The only time a govt could do this is early in their term but Labour learnt a lesson when Cameron pulled out of cross party talks on a solution, choosing instead to use it for political point scoring.
Except that for many families, thats status quo. I've just this second sent another £6,000 over to the care home for my mother's next month, and we're selling her now vacant flat in order to cover future costs. Almost any change to the current arrangements would likely reduce our burden, and the Dilnot cap would have been most welcome, as we'll be up to it in about a year's time.
Similar situation in my family. Our inheritance from both sides has been wiped out by care costs; a result of brilliant efforts of the NHS to keep my grandparents alive.
It's a lottery and why, under the current system, inheritance tax feels fair to me. I'd rather it was upfront insurance premium that everyone paid though.
If they made inheritance tax 10% but with no exceptions, it would almost certainly raise more money than the current scheme full of a very expensive avoidance industry, that catches mostly the middle classes who happen to have a house in the South and some savings or pension - while the seriously wealthy pay little to nothing.
Yesterday went some way towards that. 20% IHT on business and agricultural property above the threshold.
Our regime is out of step with other developed European countries, which generally have broader bases and lower rates.
Agricultural property used to be exempt, so yesterday’s changes are simply a tax rise that sends even more money to the lawyers and accountants.
Isn't the concern that wealthy non-farming people have been buying farmland to evade IHT when they die?
Avoid. Not evade.
Evade=illegal Avoid=finding a legal loophole. It's reasonable for governments to close loopholes.
The distinction between the two isn't as clear as it was, of course. But if it's a government designed exemption, which was true for agricultural land, it's not a loophole.
Rich non-farmers buying agricultural land just in order to pass down assets, while avoiding IHT, wasn't really part of the plan.
Are you saying the likes of the Duke of Westminster have fucked it for regular farmers ?
Anders Holch Povlsen is probably a bigger culprit...
Interestingly in Denmark, to buy property if you are a non resident you need permission from the Ministry of Justice. It's been much easier for Mr Povlsen to expand his portfolio over here. He's the largest private landowner in Scotland now
Previously I was content to defend the extension of the bus fare cap at £3 rather than the existing £2, on the basis that it required additional subsidy to keep it going.
But when the Chancellor announced not only a freeze in fuel duty, but an extension of the temporary 5p/litre discount, then feck this.
With rail fares also increasing, the motorist is being feather-bedded, with public transport users bearing the cost.
Sorry, RR, you've got this badly wrong.
But the front page of today's Sun newspaper was better than it would have otherwise been so job done..
Comments
Historically families were not caring for elderly parents with dementia, where elderly means what it means today.
Historically those family members would be dead by now and their children would already be classed as elderly themselves.
Clearing out the whole order book and buying shares for some silly price is much more consistent with not knowing what you're doing than manipulation. Wash trading doesn't in itself move the odds on the order book. It's most likely done either by the platform itself trying to make itself look more impressive or by someone who hopes they will issue a token and distribute it free to traders based on how much they traded.
There was a poster by the entrance warning about measles, which we thought had been vanquished in the 1960s, before they invented anti-vaxxers.
But beyond that were electronic signs displaying a message that their software licence had expired (presumably unbeknownst to whoever could either renew the licence or turn the system off to save electricity) and direction signs that stopped well short of their destination. The clock had not been put back an hour at the weekend, or so I thought till I noticed that even then it would be 10 minutes wrong.
People say the NHS needs huge investment. They are right. It does. But it also needs people directly running hospitals and clinics to pick the low hanging fruit.
I completely agree (with one very minor point*).
We discussed this before here between ourselves and others. We need more information on why people are voting Trump. I asked the question and got a lot of helpful replies, but none really totally convinced me. The idea that 50% of Americans are idiots is just daft. So I would really like some more informed feedback and shutting down people who give that is not helpful.
I do think @Sandpit gives a lot of useful stuff and people don't try and shut him down, which is good.
*The one minor point in defence of @Jossiasjessop is that particular poster does post a lot of conspiracy stuff and does link to a lot of exceedingly dodgy stuff. You might have noticed that he referred to that in one of his posts, although none appeared in that exchange. The links seemed straight forward. I would probably have done the same as @JosiasJessop , but it would have been without justification in this instant.
She very inconsiderately popped her clogs after six and a half years ...
I'm not sure whether that was addressed in the Budget ?
I saw this report on my YouTube feed yesterday and didn't understand a word, so thank you for the header and the discussion which I'm about to read.
Trump says talking about protecting women , he’ll do it “ whether the women like it or not “.
(the University finally imposed the employers' pay offer that the unions are still, I think, disputing and which should have kicked in in August)
And whilst reverting to that sort of world (probably pre-bicycle) would have benefits of the sort that conservatives approve of, I'm pretty sure that the disadvantages would outweigh the advantages.
Drachinifel, interviewed on Times History Radio:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Hrr7XXZIZU
(Very kind of him; he has ~25 times more Youtube subscribers than they do.)
US Secretary of Defense confirmed that Washington would defend South Korea by using all available weapons, including nuclear weapons, if necessary. Any nuclear attack by the DPRK against the US or its allies and partners would lead to the end of the Kim Jong Un regime.
https://x.com/Hromadske/status/1851922058030256371
Unless Ukraine is in NATO, the comparison is simply absurd.
Or, if I've been asked, a donation to a charity.
No point in giving me socks etc; I've got enough to see me out!
However I wonder if the decision on drawdown/annuity is financial based or life style based. It certainly wasn't financial for me. I have good genes so an annuity would be the best decision financially but I have opted for drawdown for flexibility and as it isn't my only source I am happy with the risk.
I suspect annuities are more attractive to people on lower resources and the IHT impact is on those with higher resources.
I'll let you off that the first handcycle was most likely 1655 by Stephan Farffler, whilst Oliver Cromwell was the boss here
But Europe definitely needs to get its act together, and part of that is by excluding, or threatening to exclude, bad actors like Hungary or Slovakia under Fico from NATO and the security apparatus of the EU as well as taking away their veto over economic sanctions. The US is going to become semi-detached from NATO even if Harris wins, and potentially actively hostile if Trump does - only mutual hostility to China would remain as common cause, and NATO is not the main geographical player in that theatre.
Don't know if it is Temp or not. It was all somewhat tetchy here at the time.
(faked, or not ?)
https://x.com/BobMarsdale/status/1851817358710493265
(Does this have implications for what we understand by "local" government, I wonder? The mergers of the 1960s and 1970s were in part resisted because of neighbouring places seeing themselves as irredemably distinct. If our collective mental sense of how big "here" is has expanded, how does that affect the boundaries we are willing to draw?)
This is the stupidity of all this because, as other PBers have pointed out and experienced, the unlucky ones lose everything.
It is a 100% IHT but by lottery. Maybe 1 in 6 lose the lottery and lose everything they have built up over a lifetime whereas the old guy next door passes in his sleep and leaves the lot behind to face at most a 40% hit and then only above £500K.
A decent set of politicians would be able to take the public through this argument and build a solution.
A high risk strategy, particularly when the same people have been constantly disparaging European efforts up to now.
Good riddance IMO. He's entertaining, but I don't think that excuses his views.
Last I heard, he was tucking into oxbone stew with Korean rice wine.
I thought it might just be a serious hangover.
Also Wokeist Leftist muddled thinkers *dialling the US*: Hello is that the emergency services.
If you owned your own home, outright - well, you could survive on a pittance.
There's also the really ancient favouritism towards property vs finance - in Ancient Rome, having your money in companies etc would disqualify you from the Senate. Land and property were *safe*....
Also, there is no such double tax principle. When I buy a house and pay stamp duty, it is with money I already paid income tax on.
However I did ameliorate my point of view somewhat when @TheScreamingEagles posted his comment later about the effect it had on him in relation to his daughter. It is easier for me to be just annoyed, but not hurt, when I am white.
At times interesting and creative, at other times a bully who needs to resolve some conflicts, within himself.
The Dilnot Commission report should have been implemented with cross party support
Care for the elderly is a lottery especially as dementia is not treated the same as a terminal illness
My sister, who had terminal cancer, was cared for in a nursing home for 18 months until she died under CHC assessment but my son in law's parents who both had dementia did not get care under CHC resulting in £200,000 care fees
You have a duty to look after your nearest and dearest, and we need to talk much more about duty and responsibility rather than "rights".
As he was originally from South Essex he thought nothing of it; his new neighbours, though, were horrified at the distance he had to travel.
- Boardroom temper tantrum somewhere.
Meanwhile we are left with the only people who are interested in building actual battery factories, play Diablo on the conference calls...
To have those quite a bit lower is not a good direction of travel.
I remember Glen Feshie from the early 90's when the tree cover was very limited and the wildlife interest was close to zero. Very different now.
He's put a big boot into official conservation organisations who have mucked about avoiding radical solutions for too long.
In terms of taxing inheritance as income, would it make sense to do so only on withdrawal from a fund?
So instead of setting up some sort of complicated family trust in advance, you could just create one on inheriting with the money and withdraw from it at whatever rate, paying income tax at that time?
Personally I don't feel super strongly that there is some inherent right to pass down your house/wealth to your children, whilst the state pays for your care. I think some kind of cap would help people psychologically to plan and not worry.
Otherwise corporate ownership of all agricultural land will be the norm in a generation.
If you don't mind that....
So any money saved in care fees will be taxed at 40%.
That seems wrong...
But, I have a higher spectrum of tolerance for speech (admittedly I can respond very aggressively and rudely to them but I only advocate banning where they are consistently personally abusive or nasty)
Great Replacement and "14 words" are all that's left from there....
You self fund and at least have the choice of a decent place.
Your council funded & you can end up in some horrendous place.
Its also not a binary 0 or 100%
If its in a nursing bed the median stay before death is less than a year.
For residential is a couple of months over 2 years.
So the median cost might be around £120k
You can argue that it may be much more in the South East but equally your house equity will be higher.
There are obviously complex cases and people can live many years - but that I'm afraid is just part of life.
Basically special plea that middle classes want the taxpayer to have the burden so their assets (often by sheer luck of buying a house at the right time) pass to their children.
Just how much more tax do young people have to pay to fund baby boomers wish lists ?
If the increase in wealth were the result of the efforts of the efforts of the wealth-holder that's one thing. However if the increase is largely due to inflation, that's something else.
What you would do with other sorts of assets is the tricky part. Is the Van Gogh on the wall part of the fund or not?
Just saying we should increase the number of white babies isn't an intrinsically and fundamentally unreasonable thing to say.
I think lots of us would see things a bit differently if we were born American and lived in America.
https://www.england.nhs.uk/south-east/wp-content/uploads/sites/45/2021/05/Vaccination-and-race-religion-and-belief-A4.pdf
But when the Chancellor announced not only a freeze in fuel duty, but an extension of the temporary 5p/litre discount, then feck this.
With rail fares also increasing, the motorist is being feather-bedded, with public transport users bearing the cost.
Sorry, RR, you've got this badly wrong.