To get motability as stated you need 12 points in mobility, meaning you need to demonstrate
1. Planning and following journeys. Can plan and follow the route of a journey unaided. 0 points. Needs prompting to be able to undertake any journey to avoid overwhelming psychological distress to the claimant. 4 points. Cannot plan the route of a journey. 8 points. Cannot follow the route of an unfamiliar journey without another person, assistance dog or orientation aid. 10 points. Cannot undertake any journey because it would cause overwhelming psychological distress to the claimant. 10 points. Cannot follow the route of a familiar journey without another person, an assistance dog or an orientation aid. 12 points.
2. Moving around. Can stand and then move more than 200 metres, either aided or unaided. 0 points. Can stand and then move more than 50 metres but no more than 200 metres, either aided or unaided. 4 points. Can stand and then move unaided more than 20 metres but no more than 50 metres. 8 points. Can stand and then move using an aid or appliance more than 20 metres but no more than 50 metres. 10 points. Can stand and then move more than 1 metre but no more than 20 metres, either aided or unaided. 12 points. Cannot, either aided or unaided, – stand; or move more than 1 metre. 12 points.
You can only score once from each section
If you 'Cannot follow the route of a familiar journey without another person, an assistance dog or an orientation aid.' how are you expected to cope with roundabouts?
I have no idea, these are descriptors for the mobility part of PIP, which is the qualifying section for motability (mobility scooters etc also)
The Motability Scheme, the government-backed programme that hands out cars in exchange for PIP benefits, is back in the spotlight. Fresh figures quietly released in response to a Parliamentary Question reveal that in 2024 alone, £600 million was funnelled from the Department for Work and Pensions straight into the Scheme.
To lease a new BMW on the Motability Scheme in exchange for your Mobility Allowance, simply contact a Motability Sales Specialist at your local BMW Centre, who can help find the right BMW for you, either at the showroom or in the comfort of your own home.
With one-off Advance Payments across our choice of BMW models, the benefits of choosing a BMW on the Motability Scheme include:
A new BMW every three years 60,000 mile allowance or 100,000 miles for Wheelchair Adapted Vehicles (WAV) Insurance included
The last car in that scheme, the i4, is a £53k car:
I want to be indignant. But... what's the full weekly PIP worth though ? Wonder how it compares with market leasing rates for that car ?
Enhanced rate for mobility is just over 77 quid a week
Thanks. So when the BMW brochure says it will cost your "full allowance" it just means the £77 pw enhanced mobility allowance ?
If so that's an insanely good deal with everything that's thrown in.
There is additionally a prepayment deposit required. On the wife's WAV that was £43999 five years ago and similar DFW Wavs are about £59,999 deposit now for a 5 year lease
I'm hoping you've added an extra 9 in those numbers ?!
No a normal car without conversion will have an upfront payment of typically £4 to £5k but to get a FT wheelchair bound person so they can drive from their chair using hand controls used to cost circa £40k upfront payment. Latest equivalent with flat bed access and low floor now due out next month at £60k.
They do means tested grants but also have to need it for work to access a grant.
Duncan Weldon @duncanweldon.bsky.social · 17m The gilt move - especially at the long end - is big and bad. No sugar coating it. That said, the thing about the Truss debacle is that we saw these sort of moves day after day. Too early to say if this is a wobble or a bigger problem.
Worth noting: the gilt move really kicked off on speculation that Reeves could be replaced. ‘Reeves being replaced’ in this case meaning ‘a loosening of the fiscal rules’.
So there you have the first problem. Cut spending - PLP won’t wear it. Increase borrowing - the gilt market pushes back. You’re left with, raise taxes - break a manifesto pledge. Option 3 likely the least painful.
Depends on which taxes are raised. IIRC Starmer and Reeves have always said that they wouldn't raise taxes of 'working people"! Hence, en passant, the inheritance tax on rural landlords. But what about people who don't work? As well the rural landlords the are other landlords, investors, speculators on the Stock Exchange and Metal (etc) Exchanges. Inheritance tax might be a goer, too, although that doesn't bring in money quickly enough.
They will freeze tax allowances, freeze the WFA threshold, and maybe row back the annual cash ISA limit
If Reeves is still in post then the assumption is on Cash Isas she will announce a cut to 5k a year limit in the Mansion House speech in 2 weeks time. Freezing personal allowances almost certain and a big rise in fuel duty i think is likely
I think the ISA policy is broadly OK, but it’s another one that’s going to get people grumpy. Particularly pensioners who use the allowance to build more “safe” savings pots.
As a pensioner, we have more than enough help from the Government. If we have to pay some tax on our savings to help others, I don’t have a problem.
Equities will still have a £20k allowance so it's just useless cash ISAs that get gutted so pushing more money into equity markets will be the end result which is a net positive. Should have been done years ago.
Cah is not useless.
The economy benefits if cash is invested rather than just sitting in bank accounts. It’s how capitalism is supposed to work.
If it’s sitting in your account the bank is investing it.
I am aware of that but it’s not really participating in capitalism the way it is supposed to work and you never get any real growth of your capital in the bank, the interest rate will nearly always be below inflation.
That’s your problem, not the economy’s
No it’s the economy’s problem because if people are encouraged to grow their own capital they become more self sufficient. They can even spend more in the future, so more economic activity in the real economy. Money in banks just allows banks to spend money.
If no one deposited money in the bank I’m sure the current system would rapidly fall apart. Banks wouldn’t have any capital to lend to businesses etc.
Part of the problem, around the world, and at the moment though, is that far too much money is being hoarded in banks and not productively spent.
To get motability as stated you need 12 points in mobility, meaning you need to demonstrate
1. Planning and following journeys. Can plan and follow the route of a journey unaided. 0 points. Needs prompting to be able to undertake any journey to avoid overwhelming psychological distress to the claimant. 4 points. Cannot plan the route of a journey. 8 points. Cannot follow the route of an unfamiliar journey without another person, assistance dog or orientation aid. 10 points. Cannot undertake any journey because it would cause overwhelming psychological distress to the claimant. 10 points. Cannot follow the route of a familiar journey without another person, an assistance dog or an orientation aid. 12 points.
2. Moving around. Can stand and then move more than 200 metres, either aided or unaided. 0 points. Can stand and then move more than 50 metres but no more than 200 metres, either aided or unaided. 4 points. Can stand and then move unaided more than 20 metres but no more than 50 metres. 8 points. Can stand and then move using an aid or appliance more than 20 metres but no more than 50 metres. 10 points. Can stand and then move more than 1 metre but no more than 20 metres, either aided or unaided. 12 points. Cannot, either aided or unaided, – stand; or move more than 1 metre. 12 points.
You can only score once from each section
Hmm, a very large proportion of drivers would qualify for Cannot follow the route of an unfamiliar journey without another person, assistance dog or orientation aid. Look at the number of people driving cars off piers because sat nav said so.
The Tories two cuts to NI really does seem to be incredibly reckless now. Labour have themselves to blame for the current situation but their legacy from the Tories was a real hospital pass.
The government had a small window to say we have a big mandate, finances are far worse than we thought, sorry we are going to have to break promises. Tories did it with VAT in 2010, nobody remembered that by 2015.
They would have got lots of incoming about lying, but 4-5 years down the line if the public finances were in better shape people will continue to buy the initial claims of action had to be taken that we didn't want to take.
By now they’d have ridden it out too. That along with reform to the triple lock. Make it an average rather than the highest, for example.
But they squandered that massive majority and the goodwill and now cannot make any change without annoying their backbenchers who hold the whip hand over them.
In office but not in power and if Ange takes over heaven help us.
To get motability as stated you need 12 points in mobility, meaning you need to demonstrate
1. Planning and following journeys. Can plan and follow the route of a journey unaided. 0 points. Needs prompting to be able to undertake any journey to avoid overwhelming psychological distress to the claimant. 4 points. Cannot plan the route of a journey. 8 points. Cannot follow the route of an unfamiliar journey without another person, assistance dog or orientation aid. 10 points. Cannot undertake any journey because it would cause overwhelming psychological distress to the claimant. 10 points. Cannot follow the route of a familiar journey without another person, an assistance dog or an orientation aid. 12 points.
2. Moving around. Can stand and then move more than 200 metres, either aided or unaided. 0 points. Can stand and then move more than 50 metres but no more than 200 metres, either aided or unaided. 4 points. Can stand and then move unaided more than 20 metres but no more than 50 metres. 8 points. Can stand and then move using an aid or appliance more than 20 metres but no more than 50 metres. 10 points. Can stand and then move more than 1 metre but no more than 20 metres, either aided or unaided. 12 points. Cannot, either aided or unaided, – stand; or move more than 1 metre. 12 points.
You can only score once from each section
Hmm, a very large proportion of drivers would qualify for Cannot follow the route of an unfamiliar journey without another person, assistance dog or orientation aid. Look at the number of people driving cars off piers because sat nav said so.
Points to down thread, with mobility scooter man story....
Now they want to get rid of the state pension triple lock.and replace it with a 4 point guarantee which inevitably will be worth less. These politicians are duplicitous nssty people.. trust none of them. Do they really think.people will be deceived?
I'm convinced a lot of the social media ire against the triple lock and ‘boomer pensioners’ originated with foreign trolls, but it's here now. Aside from anything else, most of our baby boomers are only just approaching pension age; it is America that had a sustained, post-war baby boom.
To get motability as stated you need 12 points in mobility, meaning you need to demonstrate
1. Planning and following journeys. Can plan and follow the route of a journey unaided. 0 points. Needs prompting to be able to undertake any journey to avoid overwhelming psychological distress to the claimant. 4 points. Cannot plan the route of a journey. 8 points. Cannot follow the route of an unfamiliar journey without another person, assistance dog or orientation aid. 10 points. Cannot undertake any journey because it would cause overwhelming psychological distress to the claimant. 10 points. Cannot follow the route of a familiar journey without another person, an assistance dog or an orientation aid. 12 points.
2. Moving around. Can stand and then move more than 200 metres, either aided or unaided. 0 points. Can stand and then move more than 50 metres but no more than 200 metres, either aided or unaided. 4 points. Can stand and then move unaided more than 20 metres but no more than 50 metres. 8 points. Can stand and then move using an aid or appliance more than 20 metres but no more than 50 metres. 10 points. Can stand and then move more than 1 metre but no more than 20 metres, either aided or unaided. 12 points. Cannot, either aided or unaided, – stand; or move more than 1 metre. 12 points.
You can only score once from each section
Mrs U could get 12 points on that, despite being in perfect physical and mental shape.
Well then you're both very fortunate. Three of my very nearest and dearest have become very ill recently and getting any kind of state institution to help them is frankly driving me to the end of my tether. Sorry if this is overemotional but the consensus on here recently that anyone can walk into a vast wodge of cash from the state is so at odds with my current experience it makes me quite upset.
To get motability as stated you need 12 points in mobility, meaning you need to demonstrate
1. Planning and following journeys. Can plan and follow the route of a journey unaided. 0 points. Needs prompting to be able to undertake any journey to avoid overwhelming psychological distress to the claimant. 4 points. Cannot plan the route of a journey. 8 points. Cannot follow the route of an unfamiliar journey without another person, assistance dog or orientation aid. 10 points. Cannot undertake any journey because it would cause overwhelming psychological distress to the claimant. 10 points. Cannot follow the route of a familiar journey without another person, an assistance dog or an orientation aid. 12 points.
2. Moving around. Can stand and then move more than 200 metres, either aided or unaided. 0 points. Can stand and then move more than 50 metres but no more than 200 metres, either aided or unaided. 4 points. Can stand and then move unaided more than 20 metres but no more than 50 metres. 8 points. Can stand and then move using an aid or appliance more than 20 metres but no more than 50 metres. 10 points. Can stand and then move more than 1 metre but no more than 20 metres, either aided or unaided. 12 points. Cannot, either aided or unaided, – stand; or move more than 1 metre. 12 points.
You can only score once from each section
Hmm, a very large proportion of drivers would qualify for Cannot follow the route of an unfamiliar journey without another person, assistance dog or orientation aid. Look at the number of people driving cars off piers because sat nav said so.
The blind white stick is the only accepted orientation aid currently
Duncan Weldon @duncanweldon.bsky.social · 17m The gilt move - especially at the long end - is big and bad. No sugar coating it. That said, the thing about the Truss debacle is that we saw these sort of moves day after day. Too early to say if this is a wobble or a bigger problem.
Worth noting: the gilt move really kicked off on speculation that Reeves could be replaced. ‘Reeves being replaced’ in this case meaning ‘a loosening of the fiscal rules’.
So there you have the first problem. Cut spending - PLP won’t wear it. Increase borrowing - the gilt market pushes back. You’re left with, raise taxes - break a manifesto pledge. Option 3 likely the least painful.
Depends on which taxes are raised. IIRC Starmer and Reeves have always said that they wouldn't raise taxes of 'working people"! Hence, en passant, the inheritance tax on rural landlords. But what about people who don't work? As well the rural landlords the are other landlords, investors, speculators on the Stock Exchange and Metal (etc) Exchanges. Inheritance tax might be a goer, too, although that doesn't bring in money quickly enough.
They will freeze tax allowances, freeze the WFA threshold, and maybe row back the annual cash ISA limit
If Reeves is still in post then the assumption is on Cash Isas she will announce a cut to 5k a year limit in the Mansion House speech in 2 weeks time. Freezing personal allowances almost certain and a big rise in fuel duty i think is likely
I think the ISA policy is broadly OK, but it’s another one that’s going to get people grumpy. Particularly pensioners who use the allowance to build more “safe” savings pots.
As a pensioner, we have more than enough help from the Government. If we have to pay some tax on our savings to help others, I don’t have a problem.
Equities will still have a £20k allowance so it's just useless cash ISAs that get gutted so pushing more money into equity markets will be the end result which is a net positive. Should have been done years ago.
Depends which equity markets. Doesn't help London much if people use world or US trackers.
Knowledgeable investors will be able to find a safe investment for their stocks ISA that more or less replicates what they would have got from a cash ISA. It will be people nervous about going near the stock market who will lose out.
Duncan Weldon @duncanweldon.bsky.social · 17m The gilt move - especially at the long end - is big and bad. No sugar coating it. That said, the thing about the Truss debacle is that we saw these sort of moves day after day. Too early to say if this is a wobble or a bigger problem.
Worth noting: the gilt move really kicked off on speculation that Reeves could be replaced. ‘Reeves being replaced’ in this case meaning ‘a loosening of the fiscal rules’.
So there you have the first problem. Cut spending - PLP won’t wear it. Increase borrowing - the gilt market pushes back. You’re left with, raise taxes - break a manifesto pledge. Option 3 likely the least painful.
Depends on which taxes are raised. IIRC Starmer and Reeves have always said that they wouldn't raise taxes of 'working people"! Hence, en passant, the inheritance tax on rural landlords. But what about people who don't work? As well the rural landlords the are other landlords, investors, speculators on the Stock Exchange and Metal (etc) Exchanges. Inheritance tax might be a goer, too, although that doesn't bring in money quickly enough.
They will freeze tax allowances, freeze the WFA threshold, and maybe row back the annual cash ISA limit
If Reeves is still in post then the assumption is on Cash Isas she will announce a cut to 5k a year limit in the Mansion House speech in 2 weeks time. Freezing personal allowances almost certain and a big rise in fuel duty i think is likely
I think the ISA policy is broadly OK, but it’s another one that’s going to get people grumpy. Particularly pensioners who use the allowance to build more “safe” savings pots.
As a pensioner, we have more than enough help from the Government. If we have to pay some tax on our savings to help others, I don’t have a problem.
Equities will still have a £20k allowance so it's just useless cash ISAs that get gutted so pushing more money into equity markets will be the end result which is a net positive. Should have been done years ago.
Cah is not useless.
The economy benefits if cash is invested rather than just sitting in bank accounts. It’s how capitalism is supposed to work.
If it’s sitting in your account the bank is investing it.
I am aware of that but it’s not really participating in capitalism the way it is supposed to work and you never get any real growth of your capital in the bank, the interest rate will nearly always be below inflation.
That’s your problem, not the economy’s
No it’s the economy’s problem because if people are encouraged to grow their own capital they become more self sufficient. They can even spend more in the future, so more economic activity in the real economy. Money in banks just allows banks to spend money.
If no one deposited money in the bank I’m sure the current system would rapidly fall apart. Banks wouldn’t have any capital to lend to businesses etc.
I don’t know if you’re being deliberately dense but you well that the point is about encouraging people to invest cash rather than having large amounts sat in bank accounts, not telling people to stop putting money in banks full stop.
The Motability Scheme, the government-backed programme that hands out cars in exchange for PIP benefits, is back in the spotlight. Fresh figures quietly released in response to a Parliamentary Question reveal that in 2024 alone, £600 million was funnelled from the Department for Work and Pensions straight into the Scheme.
To lease a new BMW on the Motability Scheme in exchange for your Mobility Allowance, simply contact a Motability Sales Specialist at your local BMW Centre, who can help find the right BMW for you, either at the showroom or in the comfort of your own home.
With one-off Advance Payments across our choice of BMW models, the benefits of choosing a BMW on the Motability Scheme include:
A new BMW every three years 60,000 mile allowance or 100,000 miles for Wheelchair Adapted Vehicles (WAV) Insurance included
The last car in that scheme, the i4, is a £53k car:
I want to be indignant. But... what's the full weekly PIP worth though ? Wonder how it compares with market leasing rates for that car ?
Enhanced rate for mobility is just over 77 quid a week
Thanks. So when the BMW brochure says it will cost your "full allowance" it just means the £77 pw enhanced mobility allowance ?
If so that's an insanely good deal with everything that's thrown in.
There is additionally a prepayment deposit required. On the wife's WAV that was £43999 five years ago and similar DFW Wavs are about £59,999 deposit now for a 5 year lease
I'm hoping you've added an extra 9 in those numbers ?!
No that is what the deposit on a VW Transporter was in 2020 for a driver from conversion. There are currently no equivalents but a Ford replacement is due out very shortly and the wife has been told the upfront payment is likely in the region of £59,999
Wow. So very different numbers to the unmodified BMWs that I'm trying not to get indignant about
So in the scheme you're looking at, maybe a dumb question but do you get some of that money back at the end of the lease ? Doesn't seem like a great deal otherwise.
No you get the option to extend but not to buy and remember this is a very Specialist car.
To get motability as stated you need 12 points in mobility, meaning you need to demonstrate
1. Planning and following journeys. Can plan and follow the route of a journey unaided. 0 points. Needs prompting to be able to undertake any journey to avoid overwhelming psychological distress to the claimant. 4 points. Cannot plan the route of a journey. 8 points. Cannot follow the route of an unfamiliar journey without another person, assistance dog or orientation aid. 10 points. Cannot undertake any journey because it would cause overwhelming psychological distress to the claimant. 10 points. Cannot follow the route of a familiar journey without another person, an assistance dog or an orientation aid. 12 points.
2. Moving around. Can stand and then move more than 200 metres, either aided or unaided. 0 points. Can stand and then move more than 50 metres but no more than 200 metres, either aided or unaided. 4 points. Can stand and then move unaided more than 20 metres but no more than 50 metres. 8 points. Can stand and then move using an aid or appliance more than 20 metres but no more than 50 metres. 10 points. Can stand and then move more than 1 metre but no more than 20 metres, either aided or unaided. 12 points. Cannot, either aided or unaided, – stand; or move more than 1 metre. 12 points.
You can only score once from each section
Mrs U could get 12 points on that, despite being in perfect physical and mental shape.
Well then you're both very fortunate. Three of my very nearest and dearest have become very ill recently and getting any kind of state institution to help them is frankly driving me to the end of my tether. Sorry if this is overemotional but the consensus on here recently that anyone can walk into a vast wodge of cash from the state is so at odds with my current experience it makes me quite upset.
But this is the problem. The system seems to be broken, see the link I posted about 100k+ people on very high incomes getting subsidised public housing. People who need help aren't always getting it, while for instance this mobility scheme is out of control. Same with these stories of clearly people who have undebatable life long disabilities that won't change being reassessed, because system says everybody must (and I suspect they are low hanging fruit / easy cases).
A poor couple of days for the Government it would seem - we'll see how long this sticks in the public memory. It could be forgotten by 2028 or it might be the defining moment of this Government.
The extent to which the Prime Minister and Chancellor have been significantly damaged by this remains to be seen but the fact remains if any kind of attempt to reduce spending is met with this kind of political resistance, it will be taxes which will have to rise (land value taxation?) and substantially if the deficit and borrowing are to be reduced.
The Conservatives, who allowed, albeit under extraordinary circumstances, borrowing and deficit levels to soar have nothing to offer but platitudes while the other parties seem convinced the party isn't yet over but it is.
Raising taxes (and all that flows from it) now seems the only game in town and we can all look forward to more pain over the coming years which I think was inevitable whoever won last year. Labour are the ones stuck holding the hand grenade with the pin out when the music stopped.
Closing off options to raise income tax, NI and VAT is in the true spirit of George HW Bush but we are past that point if we cannot even make relatively small (£5 billion is peanuts) changes to welfare. There are real questions for the Conservatives, Reform and the LDs to answer about what they would do and what they would support but they aren't the ones in charge now.
Whether today has cost Labour the next election is debatable but the overarching images aren't good for a party which promised "change". It sounds and feels like the Tories never left the building in some respects.
Labour lost the election months ago. Probably a few months into their first year. People chucked the Tories overboard hoping/praying that would miraculously fix the pitiful state of Britain, and sharpish. Both parties are now equally loathed. We're on for a muddled hung parliament or narrow Reform victory whenever the election is held.
And to think Alastair Campbell was on the BBC on election day +1 revelling in thoughts of another Blair/Brown-esque managerial 13 years. His ilk are dinosaurs from a lost epoch.
Government, whoever is in power, has lost legitimacy.
Labour dug their own grave, getting elected on such a timid prospectus when people were patently crying out for change.
To get motability as stated you need 12 points in mobility, meaning you need to demonstrate
1. Planning and following journeys. Can plan and follow the route of a journey unaided. 0 points. Needs prompting to be able to undertake any journey to avoid overwhelming psychological distress to the claimant. 4 points. Cannot plan the route of a journey. 8 points. Cannot follow the route of an unfamiliar journey without another person, assistance dog or orientation aid. 10 points. Cannot undertake any journey because it would cause overwhelming psychological distress to the claimant. 10 points. Cannot follow the route of a familiar journey without another person, an assistance dog or an orientation aid. 12 points.
2. Moving around. Can stand and then move more than 200 metres, either aided or unaided. 0 points. Can stand and then move more than 50 metres but no more than 200 metres, either aided or unaided. 4 points. Can stand and then move unaided more than 20 metres but no more than 50 metres. 8 points. Can stand and then move using an aid or appliance more than 20 metres but no more than 50 metres. 10 points. Can stand and then move more than 1 metre but no more than 20 metres, either aided or unaided. 12 points. Cannot, either aided or unaided, – stand; or move more than 1 metre. 12 points.
You can only score once from each section
Oh look, "psychological distress" + obesity = a brand new car every three years for free. Little wonder so many people are scamming one.
Duncan Weldon @duncanweldon.bsky.social · 17m The gilt move - especially at the long end - is big and bad. No sugar coating it. That said, the thing about the Truss debacle is that we saw these sort of moves day after day. Too early to say if this is a wobble or a bigger problem.
Worth noting: the gilt move really kicked off on speculation that Reeves could be replaced. ‘Reeves being replaced’ in this case meaning ‘a loosening of the fiscal rules’.
So there you have the first problem. Cut spending - PLP won’t wear it. Increase borrowing - the gilt market pushes back. You’re left with, raise taxes - break a manifesto pledge. Option 3 likely the least painful.
Depends on which taxes are raised. IIRC Starmer and Reeves have always said that they wouldn't raise taxes of 'working people"! Hence, en passant, the inheritance tax on rural landlords. But what about people who don't work? As well the rural landlords the are other landlords, investors, speculators on the Stock Exchange and Metal (etc) Exchanges. Inheritance tax might be a goer, too, although that doesn't bring in money quickly enough.
They will freeze tax allowances, freeze the WFA threshold, and maybe row back the annual cash ISA limit
If Reeves is still in post then the assumption is on Cash Isas she will announce a cut to 5k a year limit in the Mansion House speech in 2 weeks time. Freezing personal allowances almost certain and a big rise in fuel duty i think is likely
I think the ISA policy is broadly OK, but it’s another one that’s going to get people grumpy. Particularly pensioners who use the allowance to build more “safe” savings pots.
As a pensioner, we have more than enough help from the Government. If we have to pay some tax on our savings to help others, I don’t have a problem.
Equities will still have a £20k allowance so it's just useless cash ISAs that get gutted so pushing more money into equity markets will be the end result which is a net positive. Should have been done years ago.
Depends which equity markets. Doesn't help London much if people use world or US trackers.
Knowledgeable investors will be able to find a safe investment for their stocks ISA that more or less replicates what they would have got from a cash ISA. It will be people nervous about going near the stock market who will lose out.
The banks were investing / lending the ISA money though, so does this make any difference? Saver got a guaranteed 3%, banks lent/invested for a return >3%, where's the net additonal money?
To get motability as stated you need 12 points in mobility, meaning you need to demonstrate
1. Planning and following journeys. Can plan and follow the route of a journey unaided. 0 points. Needs prompting to be able to undertake any journey to avoid overwhelming psychological distress to the claimant. 4 points. Cannot plan the route of a journey. 8 points. Cannot follow the route of an unfamiliar journey without another person, assistance dog or orientation aid. 10 points. Cannot undertake any journey because it would cause overwhelming psychological distress to the claimant. 10 points. Cannot follow the route of a familiar journey without another person, an assistance dog or an orientation aid. 12 points.
2. Moving around. Can stand and then move more than 200 metres, either aided or unaided. 0 points. Can stand and then move more than 50 metres but no more than 200 metres, either aided or unaided. 4 points. Can stand and then move unaided more than 20 metres but no more than 50 metres. 8 points. Can stand and then move using an aid or appliance more than 20 metres but no more than 50 metres. 10 points. Can stand and then move more than 1 metre but no more than 20 metres, either aided or unaided. 12 points. Cannot, either aided or unaided, – stand; or move more than 1 metre. 12 points.
You can only score once from each section
Mrs U could get 12 points on that, despite being in perfect physical and mental shape.
Well then you're both very fortunate. Three of my very nearest and dearest have become very ill recently and getting any kind of state institution to help them is frankly driving me to the end of my tether. Sorry if this is overemotional but the consensus on here recently that anyone can walk into a vast wodge of cash from the state is so at odds with my current experience it makes me quite upset.
But this is the problem. The system seems to be broken, see the link I posted about people on very high incomes getting subsidised public housing. People who need help aren't getting, while for instance this mobility scheme is out of control.
In this context it's worth noting that Motability, over a number of years, built up and eye-watering amount of cash due to income dramatically exceeding costs. That's changed now (and they stuck a load of the cash into a foundation that supports other charities and research etc). But it was cash that didn't need to be spent at that time.
Duncan Weldon @duncanweldon.bsky.social · 17m The gilt move - especially at the long end - is big and bad. No sugar coating it. That said, the thing about the Truss debacle is that we saw these sort of moves day after day. Too early to say if this is a wobble or a bigger problem.
Worth noting: the gilt move really kicked off on speculation that Reeves could be replaced. ‘Reeves being replaced’ in this case meaning ‘a loosening of the fiscal rules’.
So there you have the first problem. Cut spending - PLP won’t wear it. Increase borrowing - the gilt market pushes back. You’re left with, raise taxes - break a manifesto pledge. Option 3 likely the least painful.
Depends on which taxes are raised. IIRC Starmer and Reeves have always said that they wouldn't raise taxes of 'working people"! Hence, en passant, the inheritance tax on rural landlords. But what about people who don't work? As well the rural landlords the are other landlords, investors, speculators on the Stock Exchange and Metal (etc) Exchanges. Inheritance tax might be a goer, too, although that doesn't bring in money quickly enough.
They will freeze tax allowances, freeze the WFA threshold, and maybe row back the annual cash ISA limit
If Reeves is still in post then the assumption is on Cash Isas she will announce a cut to 5k a year limit in the Mansion House speech in 2 weeks time. Freezing personal allowances almost certain and a big rise in fuel duty i think is likely
I think the ISA policy is broadly OK, but it’s another one that’s going to get people grumpy. Particularly pensioners who use the allowance to build more “safe” savings pots.
As a pensioner, we have more than enough help from the Government. If we have to pay some tax on our savings to help others, I don’t have a problem.
Equities will still have a £20k allowance so it's just useless cash ISAs that get gutted so pushing more money into equity markets will be the end result which is a net positive. Should have been done years ago.
Cah is not useless.
The economy benefits if cash is invested rather than just sitting in bank accounts. It’s how capitalism is supposed to work.
If it’s sitting in your account the bank is investing it.
I am aware of that but it’s not really participating in capitalism the way it is supposed to work and you never get any real growth of your capital in the bank, the interest rate will nearly always be below inflation.
That’s your problem, not the economy’s
No it’s the economy’s problem because if people are encouraged to grow their own capital they become more self sufficient. They can even spend more in the future, so more economic activity in the real economy. Money in banks just allows banks to spend money.
If no one deposited money in the bank I’m sure the current system would rapidly fall apart. Banks wouldn’t have any capital to lend to businesses etc.
I don’t know if you’re being deliberately dense but you well that the point is about encouraging people to invest cash rather than having large amounts sat in bank accounts, not telling people to stop putting money in banks full stop.
My point is the cash is invested either way, it’s not just “sat there”, and whether you invest it or deposit in the bank, it is being used in the economy in some way. Tipping the balance too far in one direction may have unintended consequences.
Duncan Weldon @duncanweldon.bsky.social · 17m The gilt move - especially at the long end - is big and bad. No sugar coating it. That said, the thing about the Truss debacle is that we saw these sort of moves day after day. Too early to say if this is a wobble or a bigger problem.
Worth noting: the gilt move really kicked off on speculation that Reeves could be replaced. ‘Reeves being replaced’ in this case meaning ‘a loosening of the fiscal rules’.
So there you have the first problem. Cut spending - PLP won’t wear it. Increase borrowing - the gilt market pushes back. You’re left with, raise taxes - break a manifesto pledge. Option 3 likely the least painful.
Depends on which taxes are raised. IIRC Starmer and Reeves have always said that they wouldn't raise taxes of 'working people"! Hence, en passant, the inheritance tax on rural landlords. But what about people who don't work? As well the rural landlords the are other landlords, investors, speculators on the Stock Exchange and Metal (etc) Exchanges. Inheritance tax might be a goer, too, although that doesn't bring in money quickly enough.
They will freeze tax allowances, freeze the WFA threshold, and maybe row back the annual cash ISA limit
If Reeves is still in post then the assumption is on Cash Isas she will announce a cut to 5k a year limit in the Mansion House speech in 2 weeks time. Freezing personal allowances almost certain and a big rise in fuel duty i think is likely
I think the ISA policy is broadly OK, but it’s another one that’s going to get people grumpy. Particularly pensioners who use the allowance to build more “safe” savings pots.
As a pensioner, we have more than enough help from the Government. If we have to pay some tax on our savings to help others, I don’t have a problem.
Equities will still have a £20k allowance so it's just useless cash ISAs that get gutted so pushing more money into equity markets will be the end result which is a net positive. Should have been done years ago.
Depends which equity markets. Doesn't help London much if people use world or US trackers.
Knowledgeable investors will be able to find a safe investment for their stocks ISA that more or less replicates what they would have got from a cash ISA. It will be people nervous about going near the stock market who will lose out.
Yes, you can put it in something like a money market account, for example, and pay the charges associated with it.
Different people at different times of their lives have different investment priorities.
I don’t see why holding cash is a bad thing.
People should have a cash buffer for a rainy day, 6-12 months bills as a minimum, and the older you are the less risk you want to take with money.
To get motability as stated you need 12 points in mobility, meaning you need to demonstrate
1. Planning and following journeys. Can plan and follow the route of a journey unaided. 0 points. Needs prompting to be able to undertake any journey to avoid overwhelming psychological distress to the claimant. 4 points. Cannot plan the route of a journey. 8 points. Cannot follow the route of an unfamiliar journey without another person, assistance dog or orientation aid. 10 points. Cannot undertake any journey because it would cause overwhelming psychological distress to the claimant. 10 points. Cannot follow the route of a familiar journey without another person, an assistance dog or an orientation aid. 12 points.
2. Moving around. Can stand and then move more than 200 metres, either aided or unaided. 0 points. Can stand and then move more than 50 metres but no more than 200 metres, either aided or unaided. 4 points. Can stand and then move unaided more than 20 metres but no more than 50 metres. 8 points. Can stand and then move using an aid or appliance more than 20 metres but no more than 50 metres. 10 points. Can stand and then move more than 1 metre but no more than 20 metres, either aided or unaided. 12 points. Cannot, either aided or unaided, – stand; or move more than 1 metre. 12 points.
You can only score once from each section
Hmm, a very large proportion of drivers would qualify for Cannot follow the route of an unfamiliar journey without another person, assistance dog or orientation aid. Look at the number of people driving cars off piers because sat nav said so.
The blind white stick is the only accepted orientation aid currently
Ah, that makes more sense (as long as it's a friend or partner doing the actual driving...).
Duncan Weldon @duncanweldon.bsky.social · 17m The gilt move - especially at the long end - is big and bad. No sugar coating it. That said, the thing about the Truss debacle is that we saw these sort of moves day after day. Too early to say if this is a wobble or a bigger problem.
Worth noting: the gilt move really kicked off on speculation that Reeves could be replaced. ‘Reeves being replaced’ in this case meaning ‘a loosening of the fiscal rules’.
So there you have the first problem. Cut spending - PLP won’t wear it. Increase borrowing - the gilt market pushes back. You’re left with, raise taxes - break a manifesto pledge. Option 3 likely the least painful.
Depends on which taxes are raised. IIRC Starmer and Reeves have always said that they wouldn't raise taxes of 'working people"! Hence, en passant, the inheritance tax on rural landlords. But what about people who don't work? As well the rural landlords the are other landlords, investors, speculators on the Stock Exchange and Metal (etc) Exchanges. Inheritance tax might be a goer, too, although that doesn't bring in money quickly enough.
They will freeze tax allowances, freeze the WFA threshold, and maybe row back the annual cash ISA limit
If Reeves is still in post then the assumption is on Cash Isas she will announce a cut to 5k a year limit in the Mansion House speech in 2 weeks time. Freezing personal allowances almost certain and a big rise in fuel duty i think is likely
I think the ISA policy is broadly OK, but it’s another one that’s going to get people grumpy. Particularly pensioners who use the allowance to build more “safe” savings pots.
As a pensioner, we have more than enough help from the Government. If we have to pay some tax on our savings to help others, I don’t have a problem.
Equities will still have a £20k allowance so it's just useless cash ISAs that get gutted so pushing more money into equity markets will be the end result which is a net positive. Should have been done years ago.
Cah is not useless.
The economy benefits if cash is invested rather than just sitting in bank accounts. It’s how capitalism is supposed to work.
If it’s sitting in your account the bank is investing it.
I am aware of that but it’s not really participating in capitalism the way it is supposed to work and you never get any real growth of your capital in the bank, the interest rate will nearly always be below inflation.
That’s your problem, not the economy’s
No it’s the economy’s problem because if people are encouraged to grow their own capital they become more self sufficient. They can even spend more in the future, so more economic activity in the real economy. Money in banks just allows banks to spend money.
If no one deposited money in the bank I’m sure the current system would rapidly fall apart. Banks wouldn’t have any capital to lend to businesses etc.
I don’t know if you’re being deliberately dense but you well that the point is about encouraging people to invest cash rather than having large amounts sat in bank accounts, not telling people to stop putting money in banks full stop.
My point is the cash is invested either way, it’s not just “sat there”, and whether you invest it or deposit in the bank, it is being used in the economy in some way. Tipping the balance too far in one direction may have unintended consequences.
Yes it may but I still believe there is a benefit to encouraging normal every day people to participate more in capitalism. It doesn’t work when only the super rich and the banks do it - it just generates vast inequality.
To get motability as stated you need 12 points in mobility, meaning you need to demonstrate
1. Planning and following journeys. Can plan and follow the route of a journey unaided. 0 points. Needs prompting to be able to undertake any journey to avoid overwhelming psychological distress to the claimant. 4 points. Cannot plan the route of a journey. 8 points. Cannot follow the route of an unfamiliar journey without another person, assistance dog or orientation aid. 10 points. Cannot undertake any journey because it would cause overwhelming psychological distress to the claimant. 10 points. Cannot follow the route of a familiar journey without another person, an assistance dog or an orientation aid. 12 points.
2. Moving around. Can stand and then move more than 200 metres, either aided or unaided. 0 points. Can stand and then move more than 50 metres but no more than 200 metres, either aided or unaided. 4 points. Can stand and then move unaided more than 20 metres but no more than 50 metres. 8 points. Can stand and then move using an aid or appliance more than 20 metres but no more than 50 metres. 10 points. Can stand and then move more than 1 metre but no more than 20 metres, either aided or unaided. 12 points. Cannot, either aided or unaided, – stand; or move more than 1 metre. 12 points.
You can only score once from each section
Mrs U could get 12 points on that, despite being in perfect physical and mental shape.
Well then you're both very fortunate. Three of my very nearest and dearest have become very ill recently and getting any kind of state institution to help them is frankly driving me to the end of my tether. Sorry if this is overemotional but the consensus on here recently that anyone can walk into a vast wodge of cash from the state is so at odds with my current experience it makes me quite upset.
But this is the problem. The system seems to be broken, see the link I posted about people on very high incomes getting subsidised public housing. People who need help aren't getting, while for instance this mobility scheme is out of control.
In this context it's worth noting that Motability, over a number of years, built up and eye-watering amount of cash due to income dramatically exceeding costs. That's changed now (and they stuck a load of the cash into a foundation that supports other charities and research etc). But it was cash that didn't need to be spent at that time.
This is classic issues we see time and time again. Must spend the money this year, otherwise you lose it. It is my big concern with all this front loading of NHS cash.
Duncan Weldon @duncanweldon.bsky.social · 17m The gilt move - especially at the long end - is big and bad. No sugar coating it. That said, the thing about the Truss debacle is that we saw these sort of moves day after day. Too early to say if this is a wobble or a bigger problem.
Worth noting: the gilt move really kicked off on speculation that Reeves could be replaced. ‘Reeves being replaced’ in this case meaning ‘a loosening of the fiscal rules’.
So there you have the first problem. Cut spending - PLP won’t wear it. Increase borrowing - the gilt market pushes back. You’re left with, raise taxes - break a manifesto pledge. Option 3 likely the least painful.
Depends on which taxes are raised. IIRC Starmer and Reeves have always said that they wouldn't raise taxes of 'working people"! Hence, en passant, the inheritance tax on rural landlords. But what about people who don't work? As well the rural landlords the are other landlords, investors, speculators on the Stock Exchange and Metal (etc) Exchanges. Inheritance tax might be a goer, too, although that doesn't bring in money quickly enough.
They will freeze tax allowances, freeze the WFA threshold, and maybe row back the annual cash ISA limit
If Reeves is still in post then the assumption is on Cash Isas she will announce a cut to 5k a year limit in the Mansion House speech in 2 weeks time. Freezing personal allowances almost certain and a big rise in fuel duty i think is likely
I think the ISA policy is broadly OK, but it’s another one that’s going to get people grumpy. Particularly pensioners who use the allowance to build more “safe” income pots.
Im not a fan of it as I think encouraging investment into shitty equity funds is pointless. But as I can't have 5k a year to save right now it's not a drama for me. If banks take savings interest at source you can probably find deals that get around the lost 20%, it's not like savings produce much income with our flaccid interest rates anyway. Easiest sokution would be raise the interest limit before tax kicks in to a few thousand and scrap isas altogether
You can easily replicate the risk and return characteristics of a cash ISA within a stocks and shares ISA: short dated gilts, money market funds made up of said gilts plus other short dated debt...
For some values of ‘easily’.
Fair. I am now imagining explaining to my parents in law how Vanguard's short term £ MM fund held through XYZ's online investment platform is "just like" the cash ISA they were going to open at the PoOst Office down the road.
And that’s the rub, I can easily see people being sold such a short term fund as a replacement for the cash isa, and a cash isa is better for banks while the short term money fund may be good for the Government.
To get motability as stated you need 12 points in mobility, meaning you need to demonstrate
1. Planning and following journeys. Can plan and follow the route of a journey unaided. 0 points. Needs prompting to be able to undertake any journey to avoid overwhelming psychological distress to the claimant. 4 points. Cannot plan the route of a journey. 8 points. Cannot follow the route of an unfamiliar journey without another person, assistance dog or orientation aid. 10 points. Cannot undertake any journey because it would cause overwhelming psychological distress to the claimant. 10 points. Cannot follow the route of a familiar journey without another person, an assistance dog or an orientation aid. 12 points.
2. Moving around. Can stand and then move more than 200 metres, either aided or unaided. 0 points. Can stand and then move more than 50 metres but no more than 200 metres, either aided or unaided. 4 points. Can stand and then move unaided more than 20 metres but no more than 50 metres. 8 points. Can stand and then move using an aid or appliance more than 20 metres but no more than 50 metres. 10 points. Can stand and then move more than 1 metre but no more than 20 metres, either aided or unaided. 12 points. Cannot, either aided or unaided, – stand; or move more than 1 metre. 12 points.
You can only score once from each section
If you 'Cannot follow the route of a familiar journey without another person, an assistance dog or an orientation aid.' how are you expected to cope with roundabouts?
In London we have it sussed. If you drive an Audi, BMW or Mercedes assume other people will give way and accelerate a little to intimidate anyone nostalgically expecting you to follow the highway code. Whereas if you drive a Nissan or Volvo, brake sharply and suddenly just as you approach regardless of any other traffic, just in case. Drive anything else, then follow the highway code and wonder how either group ever passed their test.
To get motability as stated you need 12 points in mobility, meaning you need to demonstrate
1. Planning and following journeys. Can plan and follow the route of a journey unaided. 0 points. Needs prompting to be able to undertake any journey to avoid overwhelming psychological distress to the claimant. 4 points. Cannot plan the route of a journey. 8 points. Cannot follow the route of an unfamiliar journey without another person, assistance dog or orientation aid. 10 points. Cannot undertake any journey because it would cause overwhelming psychological distress to the claimant. 10 points. Cannot follow the route of a familiar journey without another person, an assistance dog or an orientation aid. 12 points.
2. Moving around. Can stand and then move more than 200 metres, either aided or unaided. 0 points. Can stand and then move more than 50 metres but no more than 200 metres, either aided or unaided. 4 points. Can stand and then move unaided more than 20 metres but no more than 50 metres. 8 points. Can stand and then move using an aid or appliance more than 20 metres but no more than 50 metres. 10 points. Can stand and then move more than 1 metre but no more than 20 metres, either aided or unaided. 12 points. Cannot, either aided or unaided, – stand; or move more than 1 metre. 12 points.
You can only score once from each section
If you 'Cannot follow the route of a familiar journey without another person, an assistance dog or an orientation aid.' how are you expected to cope with roundabouts?
I have no idea, these are descriptors for the mobility part of PIP, which is the qualifying section for motability (mobility scooters etc also)
If you qualify you used to be able to nominate a named driver but can only be used for your benefit. So you don't have to drive the car yourself as long as you are a passenger or the journey it undertakes is for your benefit eg picking up your prescriptions or weekly shop. Not sure if that's still the case but when the wife first became paraplegic I was able to use her old motability car within those guidelines
To get motability as stated you need 12 points in mobility, meaning you need to demonstrate
1. Planning and following journeys. Can plan and follow the route of a journey unaided. 0 points. Needs prompting to be able to undertake any journey to avoid overwhelming psychological distress to the claimant. 4 points. Cannot plan the route of a journey. 8 points. Cannot follow the route of an unfamiliar journey without another person, assistance dog or orientation aid. 10 points. Cannot undertake any journey because it would cause overwhelming psychological distress to the claimant. 10 points. Cannot follow the route of a familiar journey without another person, an assistance dog or an orientation aid. 12 points.
2. Moving around. Can stand and then move more than 200 metres, either aided or unaided. 0 points. Can stand and then move more than 50 metres but no more than 200 metres, either aided or unaided. 4 points. Can stand and then move unaided more than 20 metres but no more than 50 metres. 8 points. Can stand and then move using an aid or appliance more than 20 metres but no more than 50 metres. 10 points. Can stand and then move more than 1 metre but no more than 20 metres, either aided or unaided. 12 points. Cannot, either aided or unaided, – stand; or move more than 1 metre. 12 points.
You can only score once from each section
Mrs U could get 12 points on that, despite being in perfect physical and mental shape.
I can't get anywhere and near 12 points despite being unable stand unaided. Once I've got support from a walking device I can do 200m+. I'm a pensioner though, so can't get Motability anyway.
To get motability as stated you need 12 points in mobility, meaning you need to demonstrate
1. Planning and following journeys. Can plan and follow the route of a journey unaided. 0 points. Needs prompting to be able to undertake any journey to avoid overwhelming psychological distress to the claimant. 4 points. Cannot plan the route of a journey. 8 points. Cannot follow the route of an unfamiliar journey without another person, assistance dog or orientation aid. 10 points. Cannot undertake any journey because it would cause overwhelming psychological distress to the claimant. 10 points. Cannot follow the route of a familiar journey without another person, an assistance dog or an orientation aid. 12 points.
2. Moving around. Can stand and then move more than 200 metres, either aided or unaided. 0 points. Can stand and then move more than 50 metres but no more than 200 metres, either aided or unaided. 4 points. Can stand and then move unaided more than 20 metres but no more than 50 metres. 8 points. Can stand and then move using an aid or appliance more than 20 metres but no more than 50 metres. 10 points. Can stand and then move more than 1 metre but no more than 20 metres, either aided or unaided. 12 points. Cannot, either aided or unaided, – stand; or move more than 1 metre. 12 points.
You can only score once from each section
If you 'Cannot follow the route of a familiar journey without another person, an assistance dog or an orientation aid.' how are you expected to cope with roundabouts?
To get motability as stated you need 12 points in mobility, meaning you need to demonstrate
1. Planning and following journeys. Can plan and follow the route of a journey unaided. 0 points. Needs prompting to be able to undertake any journey to avoid overwhelming psychological distress to the claimant. 4 points. Cannot plan the route of a journey. 8 points. Cannot follow the route of an unfamiliar journey without another person, assistance dog or orientation aid. 10 points. Cannot undertake any journey because it would cause overwhelming psychological distress to the claimant. 10 points. Cannot follow the route of a familiar journey without another person, an assistance dog or an orientation aid. 12 points.
2. Moving around. Can stand and then move more than 200 metres, either aided or unaided. 0 points. Can stand and then move more than 50 metres but no more than 200 metres, either aided or unaided. 4 points. Can stand and then move unaided more than 20 metres but no more than 50 metres. 8 points. Can stand and then move using an aid or appliance more than 20 metres but no more than 50 metres. 10 points. Can stand and then move more than 1 metre but no more than 20 metres, either aided or unaided. 12 points. Cannot, either aided or unaided, – stand; or move more than 1 metre. 12 points.
You can only score once from each section
If you 'Cannot follow the route of a familiar journey without another person, an assistance dog or an orientation aid.' how are you expected to cope with roundabouts?
I have no idea, these are descriptors for the mobility part of PIP, which is the qualifying section for motability (mobility scooters etc also)
If you qualify you used to be able to nominate a named driver but can only be used for your benefit. So you don't have to drive the car yourself as long as you are a passenger or the journey it undertakes is for your benefit eg picking up your prescriptions or weekly shop. Not sure if that's still the case but when the wife first became paraplegic I was able to use her old motability car within those guidelines
To get motability as stated you need 12 points in mobility, meaning you need to demonstrate
1. Planning and following journeys. Can plan and follow the route of a journey unaided. 0 points. Needs prompting to be able to undertake any journey to avoid overwhelming psychological distress to the claimant. 4 points. Cannot plan the route of a journey. 8 points. Cannot follow the route of an unfamiliar journey without another person, assistance dog or orientation aid. 10 points. Cannot undertake any journey because it would cause overwhelming psychological distress to the claimant. 10 points. Cannot follow the route of a familiar journey without another person, an assistance dog or an orientation aid. 12 points.
2. Moving around. Can stand and then move more than 200 metres, either aided or unaided. 0 points. Can stand and then move more than 50 metres but no more than 200 metres, either aided or unaided. 4 points. Can stand and then move unaided more than 20 metres but no more than 50 metres. 8 points. Can stand and then move using an aid or appliance more than 20 metres but no more than 50 metres. 10 points. Can stand and then move more than 1 metre but no more than 20 metres, either aided or unaided. 12 points. Cannot, either aided or unaided, – stand; or move more than 1 metre. 12 points.
You can only score once from each section
If you 'Cannot follow the route of a familiar journey without another person, an assistance dog or an orientation aid.' how are you expected to cope with roundabouts?
I have no idea, these are descriptors for the mobility part of PIP, which is the qualifying section for motability (mobility scooters etc also)
If you qualify you used to be able to nominate a named driver but can only be used for your benefit. So you don't have to drive the car yourself as long as you are a passenger or the journey it undertakes is for your benefit eg picking up your prescriptions or weekly shop. Not sure if that's still the case but when the wife first became paraplegic I was able to use her old motability car within those guidelines
To get motability as stated you need 12 points in mobility, meaning you need to demonstrate
1. Planning and following journeys. Can plan and follow the route of a journey unaided. 0 points. Needs prompting to be able to undertake any journey to avoid overwhelming psychological distress to the claimant. 4 points. Cannot plan the route of a journey. 8 points. Cannot follow the route of an unfamiliar journey without another person, assistance dog or orientation aid. 10 points. Cannot undertake any journey because it would cause overwhelming psychological distress to the claimant. 10 points. Cannot follow the route of a familiar journey without another person, an assistance dog or an orientation aid. 12 points.
2. Moving around. Can stand and then move more than 200 metres, either aided or unaided. 0 points. Can stand and then move more than 50 metres but no more than 200 metres, either aided or unaided. 4 points. Can stand and then move unaided more than 20 metres but no more than 50 metres. 8 points. Can stand and then move using an aid or appliance more than 20 metres but no more than 50 metres. 10 points. Can stand and then move more than 1 metre but no more than 20 metres, either aided or unaided. 12 points. Cannot, either aided or unaided, – stand; or move more than 1 metre. 12 points.
You can only score once from each section
Mrs U could get 12 points on that, despite being in perfect physical and mental shape.
I can't get anywhere and near 12 points despite being unable stand unaided. Once I've got support from a walking device I can do 200m+. I'm a pensioner though, so can't get Motability anyway.
@RachelReevesMP Don't think I've ever been so close to tears as I was at surgery today. Feeling angry at govt welfare reforms that so hurt very ill people.
Duncan Weldon @duncanweldon.bsky.social · 17m The gilt move - especially at the long end - is big and bad. No sugar coating it. That said, the thing about the Truss debacle is that we saw these sort of moves day after day. Too early to say if this is a wobble or a bigger problem.
Worth noting: the gilt move really kicked off on speculation that Reeves could be replaced. ‘Reeves being replaced’ in this case meaning ‘a loosening of the fiscal rules’.
So there you have the first problem. Cut spending - PLP won’t wear it. Increase borrowing - the gilt market pushes back. You’re left with, raise taxes - break a manifesto pledge. Option 3 likely the least painful.
Depends on which taxes are raised. IIRC Starmer and Reeves have always said that they wouldn't raise taxes of 'working people"! Hence, en passant, the inheritance tax on rural landlords. But what about people who don't work? As well the rural landlords the are other landlords, investors, speculators on the Stock Exchange and Metal (etc) Exchanges. Inheritance tax might be a goer, too, although that doesn't bring in money quickly enough.
They will freeze tax allowances, freeze the WFA threshold, and maybe row back the annual cash ISA limit
If Reeves is still in post then the assumption is on Cash Isas she will announce a cut to 5k a year limit in the Mansion House speech in 2 weeks time. Freezing personal allowances almost certain and a big rise in fuel duty i think is likely
I think the ISA policy is broadly OK, but it’s another one that’s going to get people grumpy. Particularly pensioners who use the allowance to build more “safe” savings pots.
As a pensioner, we have more than enough help from the Government. If we have to pay some tax on our savings to help others, I don’t have a problem.
Equities will still have a £20k allowance so it's just useless cash ISAs that get gutted so pushing more money into equity markets will be the end result which is a net positive. Should have been done years ago.
Depends which equity markets. Doesn't help London much if people use world or US trackers.
Knowledgeable investors will be able to find a safe investment for their stocks ISA that more or less replicates what they would have got from a cash ISA. It will be people nervous about going near the stock market who will lose out.
Yes, you can put it in something like a money market account, for example, and pay the charges associated with it.
Different people at different times of their lives have different investment priorities.
I don’t see why holding cash is a bad thing.
People should have a cash buffer for a rainy day, 6-12 months bills as a minimum, and the older you are the less risk you want to take with money.
Holding cash is not a bad thing, particularly when a nutter is in the White House and keeps threatening to crash the global economy.
To get motability as stated you need 12 points in mobility, meaning you need to demonstrate
1. Planning and following journeys. Can plan and follow the route of a journey unaided. 0 points. Needs prompting to be able to undertake any journey to avoid overwhelming psychological distress to the claimant. 4 points. Cannot plan the route of a journey. 8 points. Cannot follow the route of an unfamiliar journey without another person, assistance dog or orientation aid. 10 points. Cannot undertake any journey because it would cause overwhelming psychological distress to the claimant. 10 points. Cannot follow the route of a familiar journey without another person, an assistance dog or an orientation aid. 12 points.
2. Moving around. Can stand and then move more than 200 metres, either aided or unaided. 0 points. Can stand and then move more than 50 metres but no more than 200 metres, either aided or unaided. 4 points. Can stand and then move unaided more than 20 metres but no more than 50 metres. 8 points. Can stand and then move using an aid or appliance more than 20 metres but no more than 50 metres. 10 points. Can stand and then move more than 1 metre but no more than 20 metres, either aided or unaided. 12 points. Cannot, either aided or unaided, – stand; or move more than 1 metre. 12 points.
You can only score once from each section
Mrs U could get 12 points on that, despite being in perfect physical and mental shape.
I can't get anywhere and near 12 points despite being unable stand unaided. Once I've got support from a walking device I can do 200m+. I'm a pensioner though, so can't get Motability anyway.
I don't think that is true that because you are a pensioner you can't get it.
"There is no upper age limit for joining the Motability Scheme. "
And you can get it as a parent or carer when people are on things like PIP. I can see the logic, but also it opens another avenue for expanding eligibility e.g. if you are on a high income and your kid has a non-physical disability, does the state need to provide discounted transportation? I can think of examples when yes and no.
To get motability as stated you need 12 points in mobility, meaning you need to demonstrate
1. Planning and following journeys. Can plan and follow the route of a journey unaided. 0 points. Needs prompting to be able to undertake any journey to avoid overwhelming psychological distress to the claimant. 4 points. Cannot plan the route of a journey. 8 points. Cannot follow the route of an unfamiliar journey without another person, assistance dog or orientation aid. 10 points. Cannot undertake any journey because it would cause overwhelming psychological distress to the claimant. 10 points. Cannot follow the route of a familiar journey without another person, an assistance dog or an orientation aid. 12 points.
2. Moving around. Can stand and then move more than 200 metres, either aided or unaided. 0 points. Can stand and then move more than 50 metres but no more than 200 metres, either aided or unaided. 4 points. Can stand and then move unaided more than 20 metres but no more than 50 metres. 8 points. Can stand and then move using an aid or appliance more than 20 metres but no more than 50 metres. 10 points. Can stand and then move more than 1 metre but no more than 20 metres, either aided or unaided. 12 points. Cannot, either aided or unaided, – stand; or move more than 1 metre. 12 points.
You can only score once from each section
Mrs U could get 12 points on that, despite being in perfect physical and mental shape.
I can't get anywhere and near 12 points despite being unable stand unaided. Once I've got support from a walking device I can do 200m+. I'm a pensioner though, so can't get Motability anyway.
I don't think that is true that because you are a pensioner you can't get it.
"There is no upper age limit for joining the Motability Scheme. "
Really? That's what I was told. However, as I say, with a walking aid ..... set of wheels ..... I can do quite a long way.... as far as the local pub!
Duncan Weldon @duncanweldon.bsky.social · 17m The gilt move - especially at the long end - is big and bad. No sugar coating it. That said, the thing about the Truss debacle is that we saw these sort of moves day after day. Too early to say if this is a wobble or a bigger problem.
Worth noting: the gilt move really kicked off on speculation that Reeves could be replaced. ‘Reeves being replaced’ in this case meaning ‘a loosening of the fiscal rules’.
So there you have the first problem. Cut spending - PLP won’t wear it. Increase borrowing - the gilt market pushes back. You’re left with, raise taxes - break a manifesto pledge. Option 3 likely the least painful.
Depends on which taxes are raised. IIRC Starmer and Reeves have always said that they wouldn't raise taxes of 'working people"! Hence, en passant, the inheritance tax on rural landlords. But what about people who don't work? As well the rural landlords the are other landlords, investors, speculators on the Stock Exchange and Metal (etc) Exchanges. Inheritance tax might be a goer, too, although that doesn't bring in money quickly enough.
They will freeze tax allowances, freeze the WFA threshold, and maybe row back the annual cash ISA limit
If Reeves is still in post then the assumption is on Cash Isas she will announce a cut to 5k a year limit in the Mansion House speech in 2 weeks time. Freezing personal allowances almost certain and a big rise in fuel duty i think is likely
I think the ISA policy is broadly OK, but it’s another one that’s going to get people grumpy. Particularly pensioners who use the allowance to build more “safe” income pots.
Im not a fan of it as I think encouraging investment into shitty equity funds is pointless. But as I can't have 5k a year to save right now it's not a drama for me. If banks take savings interest at source you can probably find deals that get around the lost 20%, it's not like savings produce much income with our flaccid interest rates anyway. Easiest sokution would be raise the interest limit before tax kicks in to a few thousand and scrap isas altogether
You can easily replicate the risk and return characteristics of a cash ISA within a stocks and shares ISA: short dated gilts, money market funds made up of said gilts plus other short dated debt...
For some values of ‘easily’.
Fair. I am now imagining explaining to my parents in law how Vanguard's short term £ MM fund held through XYZ's online investment platform is "just like" the cash ISA they were going to open at the PoOst Office down the road.
Trading 212 (and others) will do it all automatically for you. Outside of occasional speculative punts with my ISA I pound cost average into a worldwide tracker (daily) and keep the rest of the yearly allowance effectively in cash which gradually depletes during the year on said averaging. Looks like it's spread amongst 6 bank accounts and 8 money market funds none of which I have had to think about, I just ticked a button. I don't see how it's any more complicated than the Post Office... probably simpler if anything as latter would require a bunch of form filling.
Duncan Weldon @duncanweldon.bsky.social · 17m The gilt move - especially at the long end - is big and bad. No sugar coating it. That said, the thing about the Truss debacle is that we saw these sort of moves day after day. Too early to say if this is a wobble or a bigger problem.
Worth noting: the gilt move really kicked off on speculation that Reeves could be replaced. ‘Reeves being replaced’ in this case meaning ‘a loosening of the fiscal rules’.
So there you have the first problem. Cut spending - PLP won’t wear it. Increase borrowing - the gilt market pushes back. You’re left with, raise taxes - break a manifesto pledge. Option 3 likely the least painful.
Depends on which taxes are raised. IIRC Starmer and Reeves have always said that they wouldn't raise taxes of 'working people"! Hence, en passant, the inheritance tax on rural landlords. But what about people who don't work? As well the rural landlords the are other landlords, investors, speculators on the Stock Exchange and Metal (etc) Exchanges. Inheritance tax might be a goer, too, although that doesn't bring in money quickly enough.
They will freeze tax allowances, freeze the WFA threshold, and maybe row back the annual cash ISA limit
If Reeves is still in post then the assumption is on Cash Isas she will announce a cut to 5k a year limit in the Mansion House speech in 2 weeks time. Freezing personal allowances almost certain and a big rise in fuel duty i think is likely
I think the ISA policy is broadly OK, but it’s another one that’s going to get people grumpy. Particularly pensioners who use the allowance to build more “safe” savings pots.
As a pensioner, we have more than enough help from the Government. If we have to pay some tax on our savings to help others, I don’t have a problem.
Equities will still have a £20k allowance so it's just useless cash ISAs that get gutted so pushing more money into equity markets will be the end result which is a net positive. Should have been done years ago.
Depends which equity markets. Doesn't help London much if people use world or US trackers.
Knowledgeable investors will be able to find a safe investment for their stocks ISA that more or less replicates what they would have got from a cash ISA. It will be people nervous about going near the stock market who will lose out.
Yes, you can put it in something like a money market account, for example, and pay the charges associated with it.
Different people at different times of their lives have different investment priorities.
I don’t see why holding cash is a bad thing.
People should have a cash buffer for a rainy day, 6-12 months bills as a minimum, and the older you are the less risk you want to take with money.
Holding cash is not a bad thing, particularly when a nutter is in the White House and keeps threatening to crash the global economy.
As a balanced portfolio I don’t see holding cash as a problem.
Especially in periods of heightened volatility although time in the market usually beats timing the market.
In the long term the market delivers.
If people cannot stomach a reversal or a crash investing in markets is not for them.
@RachelReevesMP Don't think I've ever been so close to tears as I was at surgery today. Feeling angry at govt welfare reforms that so hurt very ill people.
I have no idea why politicians don't use auto-deleting services. You are setting yourself for a world of hurt.
Duncan Weldon @duncanweldon.bsky.social · 17m The gilt move - especially at the long end - is big and bad. No sugar coating it. That said, the thing about the Truss debacle is that we saw these sort of moves day after day. Too early to say if this is a wobble or a bigger problem.
Worth noting: the gilt move really kicked off on speculation that Reeves could be replaced. ‘Reeves being replaced’ in this case meaning ‘a loosening of the fiscal rules’.
So there you have the first problem. Cut spending - PLP won’t wear it. Increase borrowing - the gilt market pushes back. You’re left with, raise taxes - break a manifesto pledge. Option 3 likely the least painful.
Depends on which taxes are raised. IIRC Starmer and Reeves have always said that they wouldn't raise taxes of 'working people"! Hence, en passant, the inheritance tax on rural landlords. But what about people who don't work? As well the rural landlords the are other landlords, investors, speculators on the Stock Exchange and Metal (etc) Exchanges. Inheritance tax might be a goer, too, although that doesn't bring in money quickly enough.
They will freeze tax allowances, freeze the WFA threshold, and maybe row back the annual cash ISA limit
If Reeves is still in post then the assumption is on Cash Isas she will announce a cut to 5k a year limit in the Mansion House speech in 2 weeks time. Freezing personal allowances almost certain and a big rise in fuel duty i think is likely
I think the ISA policy is broadly OK, but it’s another one that’s going to get people grumpy. Particularly pensioners who use the allowance to build more “safe” income pots.
Im not a fan of it as I think encouraging investment into shitty equity funds is pointless. But as I can't have 5k a year to save right now it's not a drama for me. If banks take savings interest at source you can probably find deals that get around the lost 20%, it's not like savings produce much income with our flaccid interest rates anyway. Easiest sokution would be raise the interest limit before tax kicks in to a few thousand and scrap isas altogether
You can easily replicate the risk and return characteristics of a cash ISA within a stocks and shares ISA: short dated gilts, money market funds made up of said gilts plus other short dated debt...
For some values of ‘easily’.
Fair. I am now imagining explaining to my parents in law how Vanguard's short term £ MM fund held through XYZ's online investment platform is "just like" the cash ISA they were going to open at the PoOst Office down the road.
And that’s the rub, I can easily see people being sold such a short term fund as a replacement for the cash isa, and a cash isa is better for banks while the short term money fund may be good for the Government.
Like most things its not been thought through
How would something like that cope with 911? Or Black Monday?
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@RachelReevesMP Don't think I've ever been so close to tears as I was at surgery today. Feeling angry at govt welfare reforms that so hurt very ill people.
I have no idea why politicians don't use auto-deleting services. You are setting yourself for a world of hurt.
Duncan Weldon @duncanweldon.bsky.social · 17m The gilt move - especially at the long end - is big and bad. No sugar coating it. That said, the thing about the Truss debacle is that we saw these sort of moves day after day. Too early to say if this is a wobble or a bigger problem.
Worth noting: the gilt move really kicked off on speculation that Reeves could be replaced. ‘Reeves being replaced’ in this case meaning ‘a loosening of the fiscal rules’.
So there you have the first problem. Cut spending - PLP won’t wear it. Increase borrowing - the gilt market pushes back. You’re left with, raise taxes - break a manifesto pledge. Option 3 likely the least painful.
Depends on which taxes are raised. IIRC Starmer and Reeves have always said that they wouldn't raise taxes of 'working people"! Hence, en passant, the inheritance tax on rural landlords. But what about people who don't work? As well the rural landlords the are other landlords, investors, speculators on the Stock Exchange and Metal (etc) Exchanges. Inheritance tax might be a goer, too, although that doesn't bring in money quickly enough.
They will freeze tax allowances, freeze the WFA threshold, and maybe row back the annual cash ISA limit
If Reeves is still in post then the assumption is on Cash Isas she will announce a cut to 5k a year limit in the Mansion House speech in 2 weeks time. Freezing personal allowances almost certain and a big rise in fuel duty i think is likely
I think the ISA policy is broadly OK, but it’s another one that’s going to get people grumpy. Particularly pensioners who use the allowance to build more “safe” savings pots.
As a pensioner, we have more than enough help from the Government. If we have to pay some tax on our savings to help others, I don’t have a problem.
Equities will still have a £20k allowance so it's just useless cash ISAs that get gutted so pushing more money into equity markets will be the end result which is a net positive. Should have been done years ago.
Cah is not useless.
The economy benefits if cash is invested rather than just sitting in bank accounts. It’s how capitalism is supposed to work.
If it’s sitting in your account the bank is investing it.
I am aware of that but it’s not really participating in capitalism the way it is supposed to work and you never get any real growth of your capital in the bank, the interest rate will nearly always be below inflation.
That’s your problem, not the economy’s
No it’s the economy’s problem because if people are encouraged to grow their own capital they become more self sufficient. They can even spend more in the future, so more economic activity in the real economy. Money in banks just allows banks to spend money.
If no one deposited money in the bank I’m sure the current system would rapidly fall apart. Banks wouldn’t have any capital to lend to businesses etc.
I don’t know if you’re being deliberately dense but you well that the point is about encouraging people to invest cash rather than having large amounts sat in bank accounts, not telling people to stop putting money in banks full stop.
My point is the cash is invested either way, it’s not just “sat there”, and whether you invest it or deposit in the bank, it is being used in the economy in some way. Tipping the balance too far in one direction may have unintended consequences.
Yes it may but I still believe there is a benefit to encouraging normal every day people to participate more in capitalism. It doesn’t work when only the super rich and the banks do it - it just generates vast inequality.
It may result in some people getting a higher return than in an ISA, it will almost definitely result in some swapping a tax-free guaranteed 3% for a "surefire 50% return" in some scam (see German property investment fraud). Long-term result I foresee is, More money for fraudsters More people losing their savings to scams Taxpayer picking up a bigger bill for old age care earlier
For fourteen years Labour kept on saying austerity was a choice, yesterday was when those chickens came home to roost.
They seemed to forget that going into the 2010 election Alistair Darling was promising cuts more severe than Thatcher.
I maintain that the 2010 government should have taken a more Keynesian approach. Anyway not having followed the details I don't really understand why PIP was the focus of this welfare bill. Isn't the main issue a rise in people on out of work benefits?
5 in 6 people who receive PIP don't work. It is predominantly an out of work benefit despite nominally being classed as an in-work benefit. The issue is spurious claims and the government cuts didn't really address that issue and instead just cut it for everyone regardless of whether they actually should be getting it or not.
Again Labour already have a solution, they did it ruthlessly on 2001-2007 by targeting companies with bonuses on how many people they could kick off incapacity benefits which led to much tougher individual assessments and a tendency to refuse rather than accept and for appeals to also tend to rejection than acceptance. Labour successfully pushed over a million people off incapacity benefits and back into work with that approach and while there were some unfortunate edge cases, overall it was the single most successful policy that they had.
This is largely fiction - PIP has far more face-to-face assessments than DLA, the equivalent benefit at the time. In fact PIP assessments are generally considered far stricter than DLA, which had only 6% face-to-face assessments and PIP has far stricter qualifying rules on the backend to cover the descriptors, which are pretty vague. Getting DLA also automatically qualified you for the disability elements in Income Support without further assessments, the equivalent now would be ESA or one of the Limited Capability elements in Universal Credit. So if anything it was significantly easier to claim without assessment.
And if we really wanted to target the largest growth in PIP claims by numbers, then it would be physical disabilities and people over 45, rather than imagining that people with ADHD are suddenly claiming in huge numbers purely off the back of those. There is a wider data problem in that it doesn't seem possible to look at comorbidity, just lists of diagnoses involved in claims.
Duncan Weldon @duncanweldon.bsky.social · 17m The gilt move - especially at the long end - is big and bad. No sugar coating it. That said, the thing about the Truss debacle is that we saw these sort of moves day after day. Too early to say if this is a wobble or a bigger problem.
Worth noting: the gilt move really kicked off on speculation that Reeves could be replaced. ‘Reeves being replaced’ in this case meaning ‘a loosening of the fiscal rules’.
So there you have the first problem. Cut spending - PLP won’t wear it. Increase borrowing - the gilt market pushes back. You’re left with, raise taxes - break a manifesto pledge. Option 3 likely the least painful.
Depends on which taxes are raised. IIRC Starmer and Reeves have always said that they wouldn't raise taxes of 'working people"! Hence, en passant, the inheritance tax on rural landlords. But what about people who don't work? As well the rural landlords the are other landlords, investors, speculators on the Stock Exchange and Metal (etc) Exchanges. Inheritance tax might be a goer, too, although that doesn't bring in money quickly enough.
They will freeze tax allowances, freeze the WFA threshold, and maybe row back the annual cash ISA limit
If Reeves is still in post then the assumption is on Cash Isas she will announce a cut to 5k a year limit in the Mansion House speech in 2 weeks time. Freezing personal allowances almost certain and a big rise in fuel duty i think is likely
I think the ISA policy is broadly OK, but it’s another one that’s going to get people grumpy. Particularly pensioners who use the allowance to build more “safe” savings pots.
As a pensioner, we have more than enough help from the Government. If we have to pay some tax on our savings to help others, I don’t have a problem.
Equities will still have a £20k allowance so it's just useless cash ISAs that get gutted so pushing more money into equity markets will be the end result which is a net positive. Should have been done years ago.
Depends which equity markets. Doesn't help London much if people use world or US trackers.
Knowledgeable investors will be able to find a safe investment for their stocks ISA that more or less replicates what they would have got from a cash ISA. It will be people nervous about going near the stock market who will lose out.
This is a classic example of "not fixing the roof when the sun is shining". The time to restrict cash ISAs was when mine e.g. was paying 0.2% not the 4.0% it is now.
@RachelReevesMP Don't think I've ever been so close to tears as I was at surgery today. Feeling angry at govt welfare reforms that so hurt very ill people.
I have no idea why politicians don't use auto-deleting services. You are setting yourself for a world of hurt.
It’s all archived somewhere…
I don't believe all of social media are archived like the wayback machine and not easily accessible. Famous people yes, but I am pretty sure if you are a nobody now and you delete them in 13 years nobody will be digging out that tweet. I might be wrong?
Duncan Weldon @duncanweldon.bsky.social · 17m The gilt move - especially at the long end - is big and bad. No sugar coating it. That said, the thing about the Truss debacle is that we saw these sort of moves day after day. Too early to say if this is a wobble or a bigger problem.
Worth noting: the gilt move really kicked off on speculation that Reeves could be replaced. ‘Reeves being replaced’ in this case meaning ‘a loosening of the fiscal rules’.
So there you have the first problem. Cut spending - PLP won’t wear it. Increase borrowing - the gilt market pushes back. You’re left with, raise taxes - break a manifesto pledge. Option 3 likely the least painful.
Depends on which taxes are raised. IIRC Starmer and Reeves have always said that they wouldn't raise taxes of 'working people"! Hence, en passant, the inheritance tax on rural landlords. But what about people who don't work? As well the rural landlords the are other landlords, investors, speculators on the Stock Exchange and Metal (etc) Exchanges. Inheritance tax might be a goer, too, although that doesn't bring in money quickly enough.
They will freeze tax allowances, freeze the WFA threshold, and maybe row back the annual cash ISA limit
If Reeves is still in post then the assumption is on Cash Isas she will announce a cut to 5k a year limit in the Mansion House speech in 2 weeks time. Freezing personal allowances almost certain and a big rise in fuel duty i think is likely
I think the ISA policy is broadly OK, but it’s another one that’s going to get people grumpy. Particularly pensioners who use the allowance to build more “safe” savings pots.
As a pensioner, we have more than enough help from the Government. If we have to pay some tax on our savings to help others, I don’t have a problem.
Equities will still have a £20k allowance so it's just useless cash ISAs that get gutted so pushing more money into equity markets will be the end result which is a net positive. Should have been done years ago.
Should equity ISAs have a bigger allowance than savings ones? I was chatting to a recently arrived from Hong Kong gentleman recently. He was puzzled by the lack of enthusiasm for investing among the native population here. Another sign of how the Thatcher revolution didn't really change the dial.
Instead of property porn programmes, I would like to see documentaries about ordinary people who have invested sensibly in the markets and done well. It might encourage others.
@RachelReevesMP Don't think I've ever been so close to tears as I was at surgery today. Feeling angry at govt welfare reforms that so hurt very ill people.
Duncan Weldon @duncanweldon.bsky.social · 17m The gilt move - especially at the long end - is big and bad. No sugar coating it. That said, the thing about the Truss debacle is that we saw these sort of moves day after day. Too early to say if this is a wobble or a bigger problem.
Worth noting: the gilt move really kicked off on speculation that Reeves could be replaced. ‘Reeves being replaced’ in this case meaning ‘a loosening of the fiscal rules’.
So there you have the first problem. Cut spending - PLP won’t wear it. Increase borrowing - the gilt market pushes back. You’re left with, raise taxes - break a manifesto pledge. Option 3 likely the least painful.
Depends on which taxes are raised. IIRC Starmer and Reeves have always said that they wouldn't raise taxes of 'working people"! Hence, en passant, the inheritance tax on rural landlords. But what about people who don't work? As well the rural landlords the are other landlords, investors, speculators on the Stock Exchange and Metal (etc) Exchanges. Inheritance tax might be a goer, too, although that doesn't bring in money quickly enough.
They will freeze tax allowances, freeze the WFA threshold, and maybe row back the annual cash ISA limit
If Reeves is still in post then the assumption is on Cash Isas she will announce a cut to 5k a year limit in the Mansion House speech in 2 weeks time. Freezing personal allowances almost certain and a big rise in fuel duty i think is likely
I think the ISA policy is broadly OK, but it’s another one that’s going to get people grumpy. Particularly pensioners who use the allowance to build more “safe” savings pots.
As a pensioner, we have more than enough help from the Government. If we have to pay some tax on our savings to help others, I don’t have a problem.
Equities will still have a £20k allowance so it's just useless cash ISAs that get gutted so pushing more money into equity markets will be the end result which is a net positive. Should have been done years ago.
Should equity ISAs have a bigger allowance than savings ones? I was chatting to a recently arrived from Hong Kong gentleman recently. He was puzzled by the lack of enthusiasm for investing among the native population here. Another sign of how the Thatcher revolution didn't really change the dial.
Instead of property porn programmes, I would like to see documentaries about ordinary people who have invested sensibly in the markets and done well. It might encourage others.
HUTH is a big driver of under resourced and over ambitious landlords.
To get motability as stated you need 12 points in mobility, meaning you need to demonstrate
1. Planning and following journeys. Can plan and follow the route of a journey unaided. 0 points. Needs prompting to be able to undertake any journey to avoid overwhelming psychological distress to the claimant. 4 points. Cannot plan the route of a journey. 8 points. Cannot follow the route of an unfamiliar journey without another person, assistance dog or orientation aid. 10 points. Cannot undertake any journey because it would cause overwhelming psychological distress to the claimant. 10 points. Cannot follow the route of a familiar journey without another person, an assistance dog or an orientation aid. 12 points.
2. Moving around. Can stand and then move more than 200 metres, either aided or unaided. 0 points. Can stand and then move more than 50 metres but no more than 200 metres, either aided or unaided. 4 points. Can stand and then move unaided more than 20 metres but no more than 50 metres. 8 points. Can stand and then move using an aid or appliance more than 20 metres but no more than 50 metres. 10 points. Can stand and then move more than 1 metre but no more than 20 metres, either aided or unaided. 12 points. Cannot, either aided or unaided, – stand; or move more than 1 metre. 12 points.
You can only score once from each section
Mrs U could get 12 points on that, despite being in perfect physical and mental shape.
Well then you're both very fortunate. Three of my very nearest and dearest have become very ill recently and getting any kind of state institution to help them is frankly driving me to the end of my tether. Sorry if this is overemotional but the consensus on here recently that anyone can walk into a vast wodge of cash from the state is so at odds with my current experience it makes me quite upset.
But this is the problem. The system seems to be broken, see the link I posted about 100k+ people on very high incomes getting subsidised public housing. People who need help aren't always getting it, while for instance this mobility scheme is out of control. Same with these stories of clearly people who have undebatable life long disabilities that won't change being reassessed, because system says everybody must (and I suspect they are low hanging fruit / easy cases).
Pretty frustrating how many people can't be discharged from psychiatric hospitals because they'd be homeless and you can't discharge someone to be homeless (but you can obviously) resulting in bedblocking and a denial of access to people who really need a bed, and treatment, right this second.
To get motability as stated you need 12 points in mobility, meaning you need to demonstrate
1. Planning and following journeys. Can plan and follow the route of a journey unaided. 0 points. Needs prompting to be able to undertake any journey to avoid overwhelming psychological distress to the claimant. 4 points. Cannot plan the route of a journey. 8 points. Cannot follow the route of an unfamiliar journey without another person, assistance dog or orientation aid. 10 points. Cannot undertake any journey because it would cause overwhelming psychological distress to the claimant. 10 points. Cannot follow the route of a familiar journey without another person, an assistance dog or an orientation aid. 12 points.
2. Moving around. Can stand and then move more than 200 metres, either aided or unaided. 0 points. Can stand and then move more than 50 metres but no more than 200 metres, either aided or unaided. 4 points. Can stand and then move unaided more than 20 metres but no more than 50 metres. 8 points. Can stand and then move using an aid or appliance more than 20 metres but no more than 50 metres. 10 points. Can stand and then move more than 1 metre but no more than 20 metres, either aided or unaided. 12 points. Cannot, either aided or unaided, – stand; or move more than 1 metre. 12 points.
You can only score once from each section
Mrs U could get 12 points on that, despite being in perfect physical and mental shape.
Well then you're both very fortunate. Three of my very nearest and dearest have become very ill recently and getting any kind of state institution to help them is frankly driving me to the end of my tether. Sorry if this is overemotional but the consensus on here recently that anyone can walk into a vast wodge of cash from the state is so at odds with my current experience it makes me quite upset.
But this is the problem. The system seems to be broken, see the link I posted about 100k+ people on very high incomes getting subsidised public housing. People who need help aren't getting it, while for instance this mobility scheme is out of control.
The problem is ultimately the distance between the person receiving the help and the person paying for it.
If you neither see the people you are taking the piss out of nor see the people you are helping there's no understanding at all on either side.
Exciting news — we’re upgrading your community to Higher Logic Vanilla’s new Foundation theme!
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Improved mobile responsiveness and SEO performance
We’re happy to incorporate your chosen images (banners, category icons etc) into your new theme. Please share any collateral with us within the next two weeks so we can be sure they are included. After that, we’ll move the new theme to your production site July 18th 2025.
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Oh lord, another improvement. We're doomed.
A colleague of mine’s favourite saying was “Don’t improve a working system. You might improve it worse.”
On a human level, I have a huge amount of persona sympathy for Rachel Reeves.
But if you applied for a job - perhaps with a slightly juiced-up CV - which you got, but then found you weren't up to doing that job, should I have any personal sympathy if you have a meltdown?
Duncan Weldon @duncanweldon.bsky.social · 17m The gilt move - especially at the long end - is big and bad. No sugar coating it. That said, the thing about the Truss debacle is that we saw these sort of moves day after day. Too early to say if this is a wobble or a bigger problem.
Worth noting: the gilt move really kicked off on speculation that Reeves could be replaced. ‘Reeves being replaced’ in this case meaning ‘a loosening of the fiscal rules’.
So there you have the first problem. Cut spending - PLP won’t wear it. Increase borrowing - the gilt market pushes back. You’re left with, raise taxes - break a manifesto pledge. Option 3 likely the least painful.
Depends on which taxes are raised. IIRC Starmer and Reeves have always said that they wouldn't raise taxes of 'working people"! Hence, en passant, the inheritance tax on rural landlords. But what about people who don't work? As well the rural landlords the are other landlords, investors, speculators on the Stock Exchange and Metal (etc) Exchanges. Inheritance tax might be a goer, too, although that doesn't bring in money quickly enough.
They will freeze tax allowances, freeze the WFA threshold, and maybe row back the annual cash ISA limit
If Reeves is still in post then the assumption is on Cash Isas she will announce a cut to 5k a year limit in the Mansion House speech in 2 weeks time. Freezing personal allowances almost certain and a big rise in fuel duty i think is likely
I think the ISA policy is broadly OK, but it’s another one that’s going to get people grumpy. Particularly pensioners who use the allowance to build more “safe” income pots.
Im not a fan of it as I think encouraging investment into shitty equity funds is pointless. But as I can't have 5k a year to save right now it's not a drama for me. If banks take savings interest at source you can probably find deals that get around the lost 20%, it's not like savings produce much income with our flaccid interest rates anyway. Easiest sokution would be raise the interest limit before tax kicks in to a few thousand and scrap isas altogether
You can easily replicate the risk and return characteristics of a cash ISA within a stocks and shares ISA: short dated gilts, money market funds made up of said gilts plus other short dated debt...
For some values of ‘easily’.
Fair. I am now imagining explaining to my parents in law how Vanguard's short term £ MM fund held through XYZ's online investment platform is "just like" the cash ISA they were going to open at the PoOst Office down the road.
And that’s the rub, I can easily see people being sold such a short term fund as a replacement for the cash isa, and a cash isa is better for banks while the short term money fund may be good for the Government.
Like most things its not been thought through
How would something like that cope with 911? Or Black Monday?
Theoretically gilts, or funds composed of gilts, are at least as safe as [the first £85k per bank of] consumer savings, as they are backed by the gov't. In terms of volatility, very short-dated gilts hardly move, and you're holding to redemption anyway: at the point you buy, you know exactly what you're going to get back, and when.
Exciting news — we’re upgrading your community to Higher Logic Vanilla’s new Foundation theme!
This modernized version replicates your current community design while bringing the benefits of our most flexible and future-ready theming system. With Foundation, you’ll enjoy:
A user-friendly Theme Editor for easier customization
Compatibility with the latest Vanilla features
Improved mobile responsiveness and SEO performance
We’re happy to incorporate your chosen images (banners, category icons etc) into your new theme. Please share any collateral with us within the next two weeks so we can be sure they are included. After that, we’ll move the new theme to your production site July 18th 2025.
If you have any questions or want help reviewing the changes afterwards, feel free to reach out! I will also be sending you a message directly on your dashboard to make sure you don’t miss this important update.
Best,
Kirstie
Oh lord, another improvement. We're doomed.
A colleague of mine’s favourite saying was “Don’t improve a working system. You might improve it worse.”
There's a German word for that: verschlimmbessern.
To get motability as stated you need 12 points in mobility, meaning you need to demonstrate
1. Planning and following journeys. Can plan and follow the route of a journey unaided. 0 points. Needs prompting to be able to undertake any journey to avoid overwhelming psychological distress to the claimant. 4 points. Cannot plan the route of a journey. 8 points. Cannot follow the route of an unfamiliar journey without another person, assistance dog or orientation aid. 10 points. Cannot undertake any journey because it would cause overwhelming psychological distress to the claimant. 10 points. Cannot follow the route of a familiar journey without another person, an assistance dog or an orientation aid. 12 points.
2. Moving around. Can stand and then move more than 200 metres, either aided or unaided. 0 points. Can stand and then move more than 50 metres but no more than 200 metres, either aided or unaided. 4 points. Can stand and then move unaided more than 20 metres but no more than 50 metres. 8 points. Can stand and then move using an aid or appliance more than 20 metres but no more than 50 metres. 10 points. Can stand and then move more than 1 metre but no more than 20 metres, either aided or unaided. 12 points. Cannot, either aided or unaided, – stand; or move more than 1 metre. 12 points.
You can only score once from each section
Mrs U could get 12 points on that, despite being in perfect physical and mental shape.
Well then you're both very fortunate. Three of my very nearest and dearest have become very ill recently and getting any kind of state institution to help them is frankly driving me to the end of my tether. Sorry if this is overemotional but the consensus on here recently that anyone can walk into a vast wodge of cash from the state is so at odds with my current experience it makes me quite upset.
Thats very much my experience of PIP and similar assessments. The hurdles are very high, and sufficiently bureaucratic to put off the less assertive, so legitimate claims get a hard time while the shysters know how to work the system.
It's rather like being easier to catch middle class tax dodgers than millionaire ones.
Duncan Weldon @duncanweldon.bsky.social · 17m The gilt move - especially at the long end - is big and bad. No sugar coating it. That said, the thing about the Truss debacle is that we saw these sort of moves day after day. Too early to say if this is a wobble or a bigger problem.
Worth noting: the gilt move really kicked off on speculation that Reeves could be replaced. ‘Reeves being replaced’ in this case meaning ‘a loosening of the fiscal rules’.
So there you have the first problem. Cut spending - PLP won’t wear it. Increase borrowing - the gilt market pushes back. You’re left with, raise taxes - break a manifesto pledge. Option 3 likely the least painful.
Depends on which taxes are raised. IIRC Starmer and Reeves have always said that they wouldn't raise taxes of 'working people"! Hence, en passant, the inheritance tax on rural landlords. But what about people who don't work? As well the rural landlords the are other landlords, investors, speculators on the Stock Exchange and Metal (etc) Exchanges. Inheritance tax might be a goer, too, although that doesn't bring in money quickly enough.
They will freeze tax allowances, freeze the WFA threshold, and maybe row back the annual cash ISA limit
If Reeves is still in post then the assumption is on Cash Isas she will announce a cut to 5k a year limit in the Mansion House speech in 2 weeks time. Freezing personal allowances almost certain and a big rise in fuel duty i think is likely
I think the ISA policy is broadly OK, but it’s another one that’s going to get people grumpy. Particularly pensioners who use the allowance to build more “safe” income pots.
Im not a fan of it as I think encouraging investment into shitty equity funds is pointless. But as I can't have 5k a year to save right now it's not a drama for me. If banks take savings interest at source you can probably find deals that get around the lost 20%, it's not like savings produce much income with our flaccid interest rates anyway. Easiest sokution would be raise the interest limit before tax kicks in to a few thousand and scrap isas altogether
You can easily replicate the risk and return characteristics of a cash ISA within a stocks and shares ISA: short dated gilts, money market funds made up of said gilts plus other short dated debt...
For some values of ‘easily’.
Fair. I am now imagining explaining to my parents in law how Vanguard's short term £ MM fund held through XYZ's online investment platform is "just like" the cash ISA they were going to open at the PoOst Office down the road.
And that’s the rub, I can easily see people being sold such a short term fund as a replacement for the cash isa, and a cash isa is better for banks while the short term money fund may be good for the Government.
Like most things its not been thought through
How would something like that cope with 911? Or Black Monday?
Theoretically gilts, or funds composed of gilts, are at least as safe as [the first £85k per bank of] consumer savings, as they are backed by the gov't. In terms of volatility, very short-dated gilts hardly move, and you're holding to redemption anyway: at the point you buy, you know exactly what you're going to get back, and when.
I’ve done some of that with the proceeds of my mother’s flat sale. As you say, you can buy at less than par and the return, if you hold to maturity, is known and fixed, with the added advantage that a decent chunk of it is capital and not income.
Duncan Weldon @duncanweldon.bsky.social · 17m The gilt move - especially at the long end - is big and bad. No sugar coating it. That said, the thing about the Truss debacle is that we saw these sort of moves day after day. Too early to say if this is a wobble or a bigger problem.
Worth noting: the gilt move really kicked off on speculation that Reeves could be replaced. ‘Reeves being replaced’ in this case meaning ‘a loosening of the fiscal rules’.
So there you have the first problem. Cut spending - PLP won’t wear it. Increase borrowing - the gilt market pushes back. You’re left with, raise taxes - break a manifesto pledge. Option 3 likely the least painful.
Depends on which taxes are raised. IIRC Starmer and Reeves have always said that they wouldn't raise taxes of 'working people"! Hence, en passant, the inheritance tax on rural landlords. But what about people who don't work? As well the rural landlords the are other landlords, investors, speculators on the Stock Exchange and Metal (etc) Exchanges. Inheritance tax might be a goer, too, although that doesn't bring in money quickly enough.
They will freeze tax allowances, freeze the WFA threshold, and maybe row back the annual cash ISA limit
If Reeves is still in post then the assumption is on Cash Isas she will announce a cut to 5k a year limit in the Mansion House speech in 2 weeks time. Freezing personal allowances almost certain and a big rise in fuel duty i think is likely
I think the ISA policy is broadly OK, but it’s another one that’s going to get people grumpy. Particularly pensioners who use the allowance to build more “safe” income pots.
Im not a fan of it as I think encouraging investment into shitty equity funds is pointless. But as I can't have 5k a year to save right now it's not a drama for me. If banks take savings interest at source you can probably find deals that get around the lost 20%, it's not like savings produce much income with our flaccid interest rates anyway. Easiest sokution would be raise the interest limit before tax kicks in to a few thousand and scrap isas altogether
You can easily replicate the risk and return characteristics of a cash ISA within a stocks and shares ISA: short dated gilts, money market funds made up of said gilts plus other short dated debt...
For some values of ‘easily’.
Fair. I am now imagining explaining to my parents in law how Vanguard's short term £ MM fund held through XYZ's online investment platform is "just like" the cash ISA they were going to open at the PoOst Office down the road.
Trading 212 (and others) will do it all automatically for you. Outside of occasional speculative punts with my ISA I pound cost average into a worldwide tracker (daily) and keep the rest of the yearly allowance effectively in cash which gradually depletes during the year on said averaging. Looks like it's spread amongst 6 bank accounts and 8 money market funds none of which I have had to think about, I just ticked a button. I don't see how it's any more complicated than the Post Office... probably simpler if anything as latter would require a bunch of form filling.
Why are you dripfeeding from cash into the markets if the money's already in the wrapper ?
Duncan Weldon @duncanweldon.bsky.social · 17m The gilt move - especially at the long end - is big and bad. No sugar coating it. That said, the thing about the Truss debacle is that we saw these sort of moves day after day. Too early to say if this is a wobble or a bigger problem.
Worth noting: the gilt move really kicked off on speculation that Reeves could be replaced. ‘Reeves being replaced’ in this case meaning ‘a loosening of the fiscal rules’.
So there you have the first problem. Cut spending - PLP won’t wear it. Increase borrowing - the gilt market pushes back. You’re left with, raise taxes - break a manifesto pledge. Option 3 likely the least painful.
Depends on which taxes are raised. IIRC Starmer and Reeves have always said that they wouldn't raise taxes of 'working people"! Hence, en passant, the inheritance tax on rural landlords. But what about people who don't work? As well the rural landlords the are other landlords, investors, speculators on the Stock Exchange and Metal (etc) Exchanges. Inheritance tax might be a goer, too, although that doesn't bring in money quickly enough.
They will freeze tax allowances, freeze the WFA threshold, and maybe row back the annual cash ISA limit
If Reeves is still in post then the assumption is on Cash Isas she will announce a cut to 5k a year limit in the Mansion House speech in 2 weeks time. Freezing personal allowances almost certain and a big rise in fuel duty i think is likely
I think the ISA policy is broadly OK, but it’s another one that’s going to get people grumpy. Particularly pensioners who use the allowance to build more “safe” income pots.
Im not a fan of it as I think encouraging investment into shitty equity funds is pointless. But as I can't have 5k a year to save right now it's not a drama for me. If banks take savings interest at source you can probably find deals that get around the lost 20%, it's not like savings produce much income with our flaccid interest rates anyway. Easiest sokution would be raise the interest limit before tax kicks in to a few thousand and scrap isas altogether
You can easily replicate the risk and return characteristics of a cash ISA within a stocks and shares ISA: short dated gilts, money market funds made up of said gilts plus other short dated debt...
For some values of ‘easily’.
Fair. I am now imagining explaining to my parents in law how Vanguard's short term £ MM fund held through XYZ's online investment platform is "just like" the cash ISA they were going to open at the PoOst Office down the road.
And that’s the rub, I can easily see people being sold such a short term fund as a replacement for the cash isa, and a cash isa is better for banks while the short term money fund may be good for the Government.
Like most things its not been thought through
How would something like that cope with 911? Or Black Monday?
Theoretically gilts, or funds composed of gilts, are at least as safe as [the first £85k per bank of] consumer savings, as they are backed by the gov't. In terms of volatility, very short-dated gilts hardly move, and you're holding to redemption anyway: at the point you buy, you know exactly what you're going to get back, and when.
I’ve done some of that with the proceeds of my mother’s flat sale. As you say, you can buy at less than par and the return, if you hold to maturity, is known and fixed, with the added advantage that a decent chunk of it is capital and not income.
Yes, further advantage of "low coupon" gilts is that capital gain element of return is usually exempt from CGT, useful if outside an ISA.
On a human level, I have a huge amount of persona sympathy for Rachel Reeves.
But if you applied for a job - perhaps with a slightly juiced-up CV - which you got, but then found you weren't up to doing that job, should I have any personal sympathy if you have a meltdown?
I have a similar level of sympathy to when Truss was in the ringer. On a human level, it must be awful and something I wouldn't want anyone to go through. However, politicians put themselves in this position, particularly if you're in the Cabinet. The mature thing to do is admit they're not up to it and throw in the towel.
To get motability as stated you need 12 points in mobility, meaning you need to demonstrate
1. Planning and following journeys. Can plan and follow the route of a journey unaided. 0 points. Needs prompting to be able to undertake any journey to avoid overwhelming psychological distress to the claimant. 4 points. Cannot plan the route of a journey. 8 points. Cannot follow the route of an unfamiliar journey without another person, assistance dog or orientation aid. 10 points. Cannot undertake any journey because it would cause overwhelming psychological distress to the claimant. 10 points. Cannot follow the route of a familiar journey without another person, an assistance dog or an orientation aid. 12 points.
2. Moving around. Can stand and then move more than 200 metres, either aided or unaided. 0 points. Can stand and then move more than 50 metres but no more than 200 metres, either aided or unaided. 4 points. Can stand and then move unaided more than 20 metres but no more than 50 metres. 8 points. Can stand and then move using an aid or appliance more than 20 metres but no more than 50 metres. 10 points. Can stand and then move more than 1 metre but no more than 20 metres, either aided or unaided. 12 points. Cannot, either aided or unaided, – stand; or move more than 1 metre. 12 points.
You can only score once from each section
Mrs U could get 12 points on that, despite being in perfect physical and mental shape.
Well then you're both very fortunate. Three of my very nearest and dearest have become very ill recently and getting any kind of state institution to help them is frankly driving me to the end of my tether. Sorry if this is overemotional but the consensus on here recently that anyone can walk into a vast wodge of cash from the state is so at odds with my current experience it makes me quite upset.
Thats very much my experience of PIP and similar assessments. The hurdles are very high, and sufficiently bureaucratic to put off the less assertive, so legitimate claims get a hard time while the shysters know how to work the system.
It's rather like being easier to catch middle class tax dodgers than millionaire ones.
Sounds like trying to claim a refund from Ryanair.
On a human level, I have a huge amount of persona sympathy for Rachel Reeves.
But if you applied for a job - perhaps with a slightly juiced-up CV - which you got, but then found you weren't up to doing that job, should I have any personal sympathy if you have a meltdown?
I’m pretty sure she caused a few people meltdowns when adding VAT to private school fees and gave absolutely zero fks and no personal sympathy.
Duncan Weldon @duncanweldon.bsky.social · 17m The gilt move - especially at the long end - is big and bad. No sugar coating it. That said, the thing about the Truss debacle is that we saw these sort of moves day after day. Too early to say if this is a wobble or a bigger problem.
Worth noting: the gilt move really kicked off on speculation that Reeves could be replaced. ‘Reeves being replaced’ in this case meaning ‘a loosening of the fiscal rules’.
So there you have the first problem. Cut spending - PLP won’t wear it. Increase borrowing - the gilt market pushes back. You’re left with, raise taxes - break a manifesto pledge. Option 3 likely the least painful.
Depends on which taxes are raised. IIRC Starmer and Reeves have always said that they wouldn't raise taxes of 'working people"! Hence, en passant, the inheritance tax on rural landlords. But what about people who don't work? As well the rural landlords the are other landlords, investors, speculators on the Stock Exchange and Metal (etc) Exchanges. Inheritance tax might be a goer, too, although that doesn't bring in money quickly enough.
They will freeze tax allowances, freeze the WFA threshold, and maybe row back the annual cash ISA limit
If Reeves is still in post then the assumption is on Cash Isas she will announce a cut to 5k a year limit in the Mansion House speech in 2 weeks time. Freezing personal allowances almost certain and a big rise in fuel duty i think is likely
I think the ISA policy is broadly OK, but it’s another one that’s going to get people grumpy. Particularly pensioners who use the allowance to build more “safe” savings pots.
As a pensioner, we have more than enough help from the Government. If we have to pay some tax on our savings to help others, I don’t have a problem.
Equities will still have a £20k allowance so it's just useless cash ISAs that get gutted so pushing more money into equity markets will be the end result which is a net positive. Should have been done years ago.
Depends which equity markets. Doesn't help London much if people use world or US trackers.
Knowledgeable investors will be able to find a safe investment for their stocks ISA that more or less replicates what they would have got from a cash ISA. It will be people nervous about going near the stock market who will lose out.
To me it makes no sense to tax (including NI) income from working more highly than income from anything else. Why disincentivise work?
To get motability as stated you need 12 points in mobility, meaning you need to demonstrate
1. Planning and following journeys. Can plan and follow the route of a journey unaided. 0 points. Needs prompting to be able to undertake any journey to avoid overwhelming psychological distress to the claimant. 4 points. Cannot plan the route of a journey. 8 points. Cannot follow the route of an unfamiliar journey without another person, assistance dog or orientation aid. 10 points. Cannot undertake any journey because it would cause overwhelming psychological distress to the claimant. 10 points. Cannot follow the route of a familiar journey without another person, an assistance dog or an orientation aid. 12 points.
2. Moving around. Can stand and then move more than 200 metres, either aided or unaided. 0 points. Can stand and then move more than 50 metres but no more than 200 metres, either aided or unaided. 4 points. Can stand and then move unaided more than 20 metres but no more than 50 metres. 8 points. Can stand and then move using an aid or appliance more than 20 metres but no more than 50 metres. 10 points. Can stand and then move more than 1 metre but no more than 20 metres, either aided or unaided. 12 points. Cannot, either aided or unaided, – stand; or move more than 1 metre. 12 points.
You can only score once from each section
Mrs U could get 12 points on that, despite being in perfect physical and mental shape.
Well then you're both very fortunate. Three of my very nearest and dearest have become very ill recently and getting any kind of state institution to help them is frankly driving me to the end of my tether. Sorry if this is overemotional but the consensus on here recently that anyone can walk into a vast wodge of cash from the state is so at odds with my current experience it makes me quite upset.
I thought Francis was making a witty remark about Mrs U's navigation skills, but I may be wrong...
On a human level, I have a huge amount of persona sympathy for Rachel Reeves.
But if you applied for a job - perhaps with a slightly juiced-up CV - which you got, but then found you weren't up to doing that job, should I have any personal sympathy if you have a meltdown?
I’m pretty sure she caused a few people meltdowns when adding VAT to private school fees and gave absolutely zero fks and no personal sympathy.
It's difficult to feel too much sympathy when you look back at how arrogant she was before the election:
Duncan Weldon @duncanweldon.bsky.social · 17m The gilt move - especially at the long end - is big and bad. No sugar coating it. That said, the thing about the Truss debacle is that we saw these sort of moves day after day. Too early to say if this is a wobble or a bigger problem.
Worth noting: the gilt move really kicked off on speculation that Reeves could be replaced. ‘Reeves being replaced’ in this case meaning ‘a loosening of the fiscal rules’.
So there you have the first problem. Cut spending - PLP won’t wear it. Increase borrowing - the gilt market pushes back. You’re left with, raise taxes - break a manifesto pledge. Option 3 likely the least painful.
Depends on which taxes are raised. IIRC Starmer and Reeves have always said that they wouldn't raise taxes of 'working people"! Hence, en passant, the inheritance tax on rural landlords. But what about people who don't work? As well the rural landlords the are other landlords, investors, speculators on the Stock Exchange and Metal (etc) Exchanges. Inheritance tax might be a goer, too, although that doesn't bring in money quickly enough.
They will freeze tax allowances, freeze the WFA threshold, and maybe row back the annual cash ISA limit
If Reeves is still in post then the assumption is on Cash Isas she will announce a cut to 5k a year limit in the Mansion House speech in 2 weeks time. Freezing personal allowances almost certain and a big rise in fuel duty i think is likely
I think the ISA policy is broadly OK, but it’s another one that’s going to get people grumpy. Particularly pensioners who use the allowance to build more “safe” income pots.
Im not a fan of it as I think encouraging investment into shitty equity funds is pointless. But as I can't have 5k a year to save right now it's not a drama for me. If banks take savings interest at source you can probably find deals that get around the lost 20%, it's not like savings produce much income with our flaccid interest rates anyway. Easiest sokution would be raise the interest limit before tax kicks in to a few thousand and scrap isas altogether
You can easily replicate the risk and return characteristics of a cash ISA within a stocks and shares ISA: short dated gilts, money market funds made up of said gilts plus other short dated debt...
For some values of ‘easily’.
Fair. I am now imagining explaining to my parents in law how Vanguard's short term £ MM fund held through XYZ's online investment platform is "just like" the cash ISA they were going to open at the PoOst Office down the road.
Trading 212 (and others) will do it all automatically for you. Outside of occasional speculative punts with my ISA I pound cost average into a worldwide tracker (daily) and keep the rest of the yearly allowance effectively in cash which gradually depletes during the year on said averaging. Looks like it's spread amongst 6 bank accounts and 8 money market funds none of which I have had to think about, I just ticked a button. I don't see how it's any more complicated than the Post Office... probably simpler if anything as latter would require a bunch of form filling.
Why are you dripfeeding from cash into the markets if the money's already in the wrapper ?
Whilst on the subject of investing Trumps's Big Beautiful Bill has a "revenge tax" on overseas investors, i.e. us, if our governments dare tax US companies operating here. Could halve US dividends, fortunately most big US corporates already prefer share buy backs to dividends but one to keep an eye on for the nerdy or overweight US income stocks.
Duncan Weldon @duncanweldon.bsky.social · 17m The gilt move - especially at the long end - is big and bad. No sugar coating it. That said, the thing about the Truss debacle is that we saw these sort of moves day after day. Too early to say if this is a wobble or a bigger problem.
Worth noting: the gilt move really kicked off on speculation that Reeves could be replaced. ‘Reeves being replaced’ in this case meaning ‘a loosening of the fiscal rules’.
So there you have the first problem. Cut spending - PLP won’t wear it. Increase borrowing - the gilt market pushes back. You’re left with, raise taxes - break a manifesto pledge. Option 3 likely the least painful.
Depends on which taxes are raised. IIRC Starmer and Reeves have always said that they wouldn't raise taxes of 'working people"! Hence, en passant, the inheritance tax on rural landlords. But what about people who don't work? As well the rural landlords the are other landlords, investors, speculators on the Stock Exchange and Metal (etc) Exchanges. Inheritance tax might be a goer, too, although that doesn't bring in money quickly enough.
They will freeze tax allowances, freeze the WFA threshold, and maybe row back the annual cash ISA limit
If Reeves is still in post then the assumption is on Cash Isas she will announce a cut to 5k a year limit in the Mansion House speech in 2 weeks time. Freezing personal allowances almost certain and a big rise in fuel duty i think is likely
I think the ISA policy is broadly OK, but it’s another one that’s going to get people grumpy. Particularly pensioners who use the allowance to build more “safe” income pots.
Im not a fan of it as I think encouraging investment into shitty equity funds is pointless. But as I can't have 5k a year to save right now it's not a drama for me. If banks take savings interest at source you can probably find deals that get around the lost 20%, it's not like savings produce much income with our flaccid interest rates anyway. Easiest sokution would be raise the interest limit before tax kicks in to a few thousand and scrap isas altogether
You can easily replicate the risk and return characteristics of a cash ISA within a stocks and shares ISA: short dated gilts, money market funds made up of said gilts plus other short dated debt...
For some values of ‘easily’.
Fair. I am now imagining explaining to my parents in law how Vanguard's short term £ MM fund held through XYZ's online investment platform is "just like" the cash ISA they were going to open at the PoOst Office down the road.
And that’s the rub, I can easily see people being sold such a short term fund as a replacement for the cash isa, and a cash isa is better for banks while the short term money fund may be good for the Government.
Like most things its not been thought through
How would something like that cope with 911? Or Black Monday?
Theoretically gilts, or funds composed of gilts, are at least as safe as [the first £85k per bank of] consumer savings, as they are backed by the gov't. In terms of volatility, very short-dated gilts hardly move, and you're holding to redemption anyway: at the point you buy, you know exactly what you're going to get back, and when.
I’ve done some of that with the proceeds of my mother’s flat sale. As you say, you can buy at less than par and the return, if you hold to maturity, is known and fixed, with the added advantage that a decent chunk of it is capital and not income.
Yes, further advantage of "low coupon" gilts is that capital gain element of return is usually exempt from CGT, useful if outside an ISA.
I looked at these as I was looking to build a bond ladder but, even allowing for the discount, they didn’t seem too good value to me as they were paying sub 1%. The big advantage seems to be the capital uplift at the end.
On a human level, I have a huge amount of persona sympathy for Rachel Reeves.
But if you applied for a job - perhaps with a slightly juiced-up CV - which you got, but then found you weren't up to doing that job, should I have any personal sympathy if you have a meltdown?
None whatsoever, bring out the tumbrils. She has now had teh kiss of death re having full backing of Spammer.
On a human level, I have a huge amount of persona sympathy for Rachel Reeves.
But if you applied for a job - perhaps with a slightly juiced-up CV - which you got, but then found you weren't up to doing that job, should I have any personal sympathy if you have a meltdown?
I’m pretty sure she caused a few people meltdowns when adding VAT to private school fees and gave absolutely zero fks and no personal sympathy.
I still can't quite believe they did that mid-school-year.
On a human level, I have a huge amount of persona sympathy for Rachel Reeves.
Likewise. She has an extremely difficult job, she has a boss who is as reliable as a weathervane in a tornado, a party that lives in cloud cuckoo land and she knows enough to recognise the dangers here. Her attempts to at least ameliorate the situation, in WFA and benefits, have both collapsed due to political weakness and her options are extremely limited.
Chancellors need unequivocal backing when the sh*t starts to fly. Unequivocal is something Starmer wouldn't recognise if you hit him in the face with it.
On a human level, I have a huge amount of persona sympathy for Rachel Reeves.
But if you applied for a job - perhaps with a slightly juiced-up CV - which you got, but then found you weren't up to doing that job, should I have any personal sympathy if you have a meltdown?
I’m pretty sure she caused a few people meltdowns when adding VAT to private school fees and gave absolutely zero fks and no personal sympathy.
It's difficult to feel too much sympathy when you look back at how arrogant she was before the election:
For fourteen years Labour kept on saying austerity was a choice, yesterday was when those chickens came home to roost.
They seemed to forget that going into the 2010 election Alistair Darling was promising cuts more severe than Thatcher.
I maintain that the 2010 government should have taken a more Keynesian approach. Anyway not having followed the details I don't really understand why PIP was the focus of this welfare bill. Isn't the main issue a rise in people on out of work benefits?
5 in 6 people who receive PIP don't work. It is predominantly an out of work benefit despite nominally being classed as an in-work benefit. The issue is spurious claims and the government cuts didn't really address that issue and instead just cut it for everyone regardless of whether they actually should be getting it or not.
Again Labour already have a solution, they did it ruthlessly on 2001-2007 by targeting companies with bonuses on how many people they could kick off incapacity benefits which led to much tougher individual assessments and a tendency to refuse rather than accept and for appeals to also tend to rejection than acceptance. Labour successfully pushed over a million people off incapacity benefits and back into work with that approach and while there were some unfortunate edge cases, overall it was the single most successful policy that they had.
This is largely fiction - PIP has far more face-to-face assessments than DLA, the equivalent benefit at the time. In fact PIP assessments are generally considered far stricter than DLA, which had only 6% face-to-face assessments and PIP has far stricter qualifying rules on the backend to cover the descriptors, which are pretty vague. Getting DLA also automatically qualified you for the disability elements in Income Support without further assessments, the equivalent now would be ESA or one of the Limited Capability elements in Universal Credit. So if anything it was significantly easier to claim without assessment.
And if we really wanted to target the largest growth in PIP claims by numbers, then it would be physical disabilities and people over 45, rather than imagining that people with ADHD are suddenly claiming in huge numbers purely off the back of those. There is a wider data problem in that it doesn't seem possible to look at comorbidity, just lists of diagnoses involved in claims.
(edited to remove various incoherencies)
Except the biggest percentage rises in claimants are the under 45's
For fourteen years Labour kept on saying austerity was a choice, yesterday was when those chickens came home to roost.
They seemed to forget that going into the 2010 election Alistair Darling was promising cuts more severe than Thatcher.
I maintain that the 2010 government should have taken a more Keynesian approach. Anyway not having followed the details I don't really understand why PIP was the focus of this welfare bill. Isn't the main issue a rise in people on out of work benefits?
5 in 6 people who receive PIP don't work. It is predominantly an out of work benefit despite nominally being classed as an in-work benefit. The issue is spurious claims and the government cuts didn't really address that issue and instead just cut it for everyone regardless of whether they actually should be getting it or not.
Again Labour already have a solution, they did it ruthlessly on 2001-2007 by targeting companies with bonuses on how many people they could kick off incapacity benefits which led to much tougher individual assessments and a tendency to refuse rather than accept and for appeals to also tend to rejection than acceptance. Labour successfully pushed over a million people off incapacity benefits and back into work with that approach and while there were some unfortunate edge cases, overall it was the single most successful policy that they had.
This is largely fiction - PIP has far more face-to-face assessments than DLA, the equivalent benefit at the time. In fact PIP assessments are generally considered far stricter than DLA, which had only 6% face-to-face assessments and PIP has far stricter qualifying rules on the backend to cover the descriptors, which are pretty vague. Getting DLA also automatically qualified you for the disability elements in Income Support without further assessments, the equivalent now would be ESA or one of the Limited Capability elements in Universal Credit. So if anything it was significantly easier to claim without assessment.
And if we really wanted to target the largest growth in PIP claims by numbers, then it would be physical disabilities and people over 45, rather than imagining that people with ADHD are suddenly claiming in huge numbers purely off the back of those. There is a wider data problem in that it doesn't seem possible to look at comorbidity, just lists of diagnoses involved in claims.
(edited to remove various incoherencies)
Except the biggest percentage rises in claimants are the under 45's
That doesn't necessarily contradict his point. If under 45s were 10% historically, and are 15% now, they would have had the biggest percentage jump, but still be less than a sixth of the total
Duncan Weldon @duncanweldon.bsky.social · 17m The gilt move - especially at the long end - is big and bad. No sugar coating it. That said, the thing about the Truss debacle is that we saw these sort of moves day after day. Too early to say if this is a wobble or a bigger problem.
Worth noting: the gilt move really kicked off on speculation that Reeves could be replaced. ‘Reeves being replaced’ in this case meaning ‘a loosening of the fiscal rules’.
So there you have the first problem. Cut spending - PLP won’t wear it. Increase borrowing - the gilt market pushes back. You’re left with, raise taxes - break a manifesto pledge. Option 3 likely the least painful.
Depends on which taxes are raised. IIRC Starmer and Reeves have always said that they wouldn't raise taxes of 'working people"! Hence, en passant, the inheritance tax on rural landlords. But what about people who don't work? As well the rural landlords the are other landlords, investors, speculators on the Stock Exchange and Metal (etc) Exchanges. Inheritance tax might be a goer, too, although that doesn't bring in money quickly enough.
They will freeze tax allowances, freeze the WFA threshold, and maybe row back the annual cash ISA limit
If Reeves is still in post then the assumption is on Cash Isas she will announce a cut to 5k a year limit in the Mansion House speech in 2 weeks time. Freezing personal allowances almost certain and a big rise in fuel duty i think is likely
I think the ISA policy is broadly OK, but it’s another one that’s going to get people grumpy. Particularly pensioners who use the allowance to build more “safe” savings pots.
As a pensioner, we have more than enough help from the Government. If we have to pay some tax on our savings to help others, I don’t have a problem.
Equities will still have a £20k allowance so it's just useless cash ISAs that get gutted so pushing more money into equity markets will be the end result which is a net positive. Should have been done years ago.
Depends which equity markets. Doesn't help London much if people use world or US trackers.
Knowledgeable investors will be able to find a safe investment for their stocks ISA that more or less replicates what they would have got from a cash ISA. It will be people nervous about going near the stock market who will lose out.
To me it makes no sense to tax (including NI) income from working more highly than income from anything else. Why disincentivise work?
To a certain extent you tax the things they you can tax. Most of the normal people in work have no option but to work to pay the bills.
People who have spare capital around for investing have more options for what to do with it, and will thereby be able to avoid higher rates of tax.
This is why taxation of land has so much to recommend it.
On a human level, I have a huge amount of persona sympathy for Rachel Reeves.
Likewise. She has an extremely difficult job, she has a boss who is as reliable as a weathervane in a tornado, a party that lives in cloud cuckoo land and she knows enough to recognise the dangers here. Her attempts to at least ameliorate the situation, in WFA and benefits, have both collapsed due to political weakness and her options are extremely limited.
Chancellors need unequivocal backing when the sh*t starts to fly. Unequivocal is something Starmer wouldn't recognise if you hit him in the face with it.
David, it does not mitigate teh fact that she is totally useless, cannot count and tin ear for politics. How do these people ever get to where they are, certainly not on talent.
For fourteen years Labour kept on saying austerity was a choice, yesterday was when those chickens came home to roost.
They seemed to forget that going into the 2010 election Alistair Darling was promising cuts more severe than Thatcher.
I maintain that the 2010 government should have taken a more Keynesian approach. Anyway not having followed the details I don't really understand why PIP was the focus of this welfare bill. Isn't the main issue a rise in people on out of work benefits?
5 in 6 people who receive PIP don't work. It is predominantly an out of work benefit despite nominally being classed as an in-work benefit. The issue is spurious claims and the government cuts didn't really address that issue and instead just cut it for everyone regardless of whether they actually should be getting it or not.
Again Labour already have a solution, they did it ruthlessly on 2001-2007 by targeting companies with bonuses on how many people they could kick off incapacity benefits which led to much tougher individual assessments and a tendency to refuse rather than accept and for appeals to also tend to rejection than acceptance. Labour successfully pushed over a million people off incapacity benefits and back into work with that approach and while there were some unfortunate edge cases, overall it was the single most successful policy that they had.
This is largely fiction - PIP has far more face-to-face assessments than DLA, the equivalent benefit at the time. In fact PIP assessments are generally considered far stricter than DLA, which had only 6% face-to-face assessments and PIP has far stricter qualifying rules on the backend to cover the descriptors, which are pretty vague. Getting DLA also automatically qualified you for the disability elements in Income Support without further assessments, the equivalent now would be ESA or one of the Limited Capability elements in Universal Credit. So if anything it was significantly easier to claim without assessment.
And if we really wanted to target the largest growth in PIP claims by numbers, then it would be physical disabilities and people over 45, rather than imagining that people with ADHD are suddenly claiming in huge numbers purely off the back of those. There is a wider data problem in that it doesn't seem possible to look at comorbidity, just lists of diagnoses involved in claims.
(edited to remove various incoherencies)
Except the biggest percentage rises in claimants are the under 45's
Yes and usually online and all invisible disabilities at that.
@RachelReevesMP Don't think I've ever been so close to tears as I was at surgery today. Feeling angry at govt welfare reforms that so hurt very ill people.
Duncan Weldon @duncanweldon.bsky.social · 17m The gilt move - especially at the long end - is big and bad. No sugar coating it. That said, the thing about the Truss debacle is that we saw these sort of moves day after day. Too early to say if this is a wobble or a bigger problem.
Worth noting: the gilt move really kicked off on speculation that Reeves could be replaced. ‘Reeves being replaced’ in this case meaning ‘a loosening of the fiscal rules’.
So there you have the first problem. Cut spending - PLP won’t wear it. Increase borrowing - the gilt market pushes back. You’re left with, raise taxes - break a manifesto pledge. Option 3 likely the least painful.
Depends on which taxes are raised. IIRC Starmer and Reeves have always said that they wouldn't raise taxes of 'working people"! Hence, en passant, the inheritance tax on rural landlords. But what about people who don't work? As well the rural landlords the are other landlords, investors, speculators on the Stock Exchange and Metal (etc) Exchanges. Inheritance tax might be a goer, too, although that doesn't bring in money quickly enough.
They will freeze tax allowances, freeze the WFA threshold, and maybe row back the annual cash ISA limit
If Reeves is still in post then the assumption is on Cash Isas she will announce a cut to 5k a year limit in the Mansion House speech in 2 weeks time. Freezing personal allowances almost certain and a big rise in fuel duty i think is likely
I think the ISA policy is broadly OK, but it’s another one that’s going to get people grumpy. Particularly pensioners who use the allowance to build more “safe” savings pots.
As a pensioner, we have more than enough help from the Government. If we have to pay some tax on our savings to help others, I don’t have a problem.
Equities will still have a £20k allowance so it's just useless cash ISAs that get gutted so pushing more money into equity markets will be the end result which is a net positive. Should have been done years ago.
Depends which equity markets. Doesn't help London much if people use world or US trackers.
Knowledgeable investors will be able to find a safe investment for their stocks ISA that more or less replicates what they would have got from a cash ISA. It will be people nervous about going near the stock market who will lose out.
To me it makes no sense to tax (including NI) income from working more highly than income from anything else. Why disincentivise work?
To a certain extent you tax the things they you can tax. Most of the normal people in work have no option but to work to pay the bills.
People who have spare capital around for investing have more options for what to do with it, and will thereby be able to avoid higher rates of tax.
This is why taxation of land has so much to recommend it.
Duncan Weldon @duncanweldon.bsky.social · 17m The gilt move - especially at the long end - is big and bad. No sugar coating it. That said, the thing about the Truss debacle is that we saw these sort of moves day after day. Too early to say if this is a wobble or a bigger problem.
Worth noting: the gilt move really kicked off on speculation that Reeves could be replaced. ‘Reeves being replaced’ in this case meaning ‘a loosening of the fiscal rules’.
So there you have the first problem. Cut spending - PLP won’t wear it. Increase borrowing - the gilt market pushes back. You’re left with, raise taxes - break a manifesto pledge. Option 3 likely the least painful.
Depends on which taxes are raised. IIRC Starmer and Reeves have always said that they wouldn't raise taxes of 'working people"! Hence, en passant, the inheritance tax on rural landlords. But what about people who don't work? As well the rural landlords the are other landlords, investors, speculators on the Stock Exchange and Metal (etc) Exchanges. Inheritance tax might be a goer, too, although that doesn't bring in money quickly enough.
They will freeze tax allowances, freeze the WFA threshold, and maybe row back the annual cash ISA limit
If Reeves is still in post then the assumption is on Cash Isas she will announce a cut to 5k a year limit in the Mansion House speech in 2 weeks time. Freezing personal allowances almost certain and a big rise in fuel duty i think is likely
I think the ISA policy is broadly OK, but it’s another one that’s going to get people grumpy. Particularly pensioners who use the allowance to build more “safe” income pots.
Im not a fan of it as I think encouraging investment into shitty equity funds is pointless. But as I can't have 5k a year to save right now it's not a drama for me. If banks take savings interest at source you can probably find deals that get around the lost 20%, it's not like savings produce much income with our flaccid interest rates anyway. Easiest sokution would be raise the interest limit before tax kicks in to a few thousand and scrap isas altogether
You can easily replicate the risk and return characteristics of a cash ISA within a stocks and shares ISA: short dated gilts, money market funds made up of said gilts plus other short dated debt...
For some values of ‘easily’.
Fair. I am now imagining explaining to my parents in law how Vanguard's short term £ MM fund held through XYZ's online investment platform is "just like" the cash ISA they were going to open at the PoOst Office down the road.
And that’s the rub, I can easily see people being sold such a short term fund as a replacement for the cash isa, and a cash isa is better for banks while the short term money fund may be good for the Government.
Like most things its not been thought through
How would something like that cope with 911? Or Black Monday?
Theoretically gilts, or funds composed of gilts, are at least as safe as [the first £85k per bank of] consumer savings, as they are backed by the gov't. In terms of volatility, very short-dated gilts hardly move, and you're holding to redemption anyway: at the point you buy, you know exactly what you're going to get back, and when.
I’ve done some of that with the proceeds of my mother’s flat sale. As you say, you can buy at less than par and the return, if you hold to maturity, is known and fixed, with the added advantage that a decent chunk of it is capital and not income.
Yes, further advantage of "low coupon" gilts is that capital gain element of return is usually exempt from CGT, useful if outside an ISA.
I looked at these as I was looking to build a bond ladder but, even allowing for the discount, they didn’t seem too good value to me as they were paying sub 1%. The big advantage seems to be the capital uplift at the end.
Well, yes, they're priced perfectly in the market so that the overall yield is competitive...
Though I suspect now that doing this kind of thing is getting sexier for retail investors, the overall yield is being depressed a bit on the lowest coupon ones because of the tax advantage.
For fourteen years Labour kept on saying austerity was a choice, yesterday was when those chickens came home to roost.
They seemed to forget that going into the 2010 election Alistair Darling was promising cuts more severe than Thatcher.
I maintain that the 2010 government should have taken a more Keynesian approach. Anyway not having followed the details I don't really understand why PIP was the focus of this welfare bill. Isn't the main issue a rise in people on out of work benefits?
5 in 6 people who receive PIP don't work. It is predominantly an out of work benefit despite nominally being classed as an in-work benefit. The issue is spurious claims and the government cuts didn't really address that issue and instead just cut it for everyone regardless of whether they actually should be getting it or not.
Again Labour already have a solution, they did it ruthlessly on 2001-2007 by targeting companies with bonuses on how many people they could kick off incapacity benefits which led to much tougher individual assessments and a tendency to refuse rather than accept and for appeals to also tend to rejection than acceptance. Labour successfully pushed over a million people off incapacity benefits and back into work with that approach and while there were some unfortunate edge cases, overall it was the single most successful policy that they had.
This is largely fiction - PIP has far more face-to-face assessments than DLA, the equivalent benefit at the time. In fact PIP assessments are generally considered far stricter than DLA, which had only 6% face-to-face assessments and PIP has far stricter qualifying rules on the backend to cover the descriptors, which are pretty vague. Getting DLA also automatically qualified you for the disability elements in Income Support without further assessments, the equivalent now would be ESA or one of the Limited Capability elements in Universal Credit. So if anything it was significantly easier to claim without assessment.
And if we really wanted to target the largest growth in PIP claims by numbers, then it would be physical disabilities and people over 45, rather than imagining that people with ADHD are suddenly claiming in huge numbers purely off the back of those. There is a wider data problem in that it doesn't seem possible to look at comorbidity, just lists of diagnoses involved in claims.
(edited to remove various incoherencies)
Except the biggest percentage rises in claimants are the under 45's
Sure, but only about 60 000 claimants are under 25, so you can have a tripling of claimants on a monthly basis in those numbers that are significantly less in numerical terms than say, a doubling of the 50-54 age group which constitutes circa 80 000 claimants alone. The vast majority of claimants are in the older age brackets.
Large percentage increases among under-25s result in much smaller absolute numbers compared to older groups.
To get motability as stated you need 12 points in mobility, meaning you need to demonstrate
1. Planning and following journeys. Can plan and follow the route of a journey unaided. 0 points. Needs prompting to be able to undertake any journey to avoid overwhelming psychological distress to the claimant. 4 points. Cannot plan the route of a journey. 8 points. Cannot follow the route of an unfamiliar journey without another person, assistance dog or orientation aid. 10 points. Cannot undertake any journey because it would cause overwhelming psychological distress to the claimant. 10 points. Cannot follow the route of a familiar journey without another person, an assistance dog or an orientation aid. 12 points.
2. Moving around. Can stand and then move more than 200 metres, either aided or unaided. 0 points. Can stand and then move more than 50 metres but no more than 200 metres, either aided or unaided. 4 points. Can stand and then move unaided more than 20 metres but no more than 50 metres. 8 points. Can stand and then move using an aid or appliance more than 20 metres but no more than 50 metres. 10 points. Can stand and then move more than 1 metre but no more than 20 metres, either aided or unaided. 12 points. Cannot, either aided or unaided, – stand; or move more than 1 metre. 12 points.
You can only score once from each section
Mrs U could get 12 points on that, despite being in perfect physical and mental shape.
Well then you're both very fortunate. Three of my very nearest and dearest have become very ill recently and getting any kind of state institution to help them is frankly driving me to the end of my tether. Sorry if this is overemotional but the consensus on here recently that anyone can walk into a vast wodge of cash from the state is so at odds with my current experience it makes me quite upset.
Thats very much my experience of PIP and similar assessments. The hurdles are very high, and sufficiently bureaucratic to put off the less assertive, so legitimate claims get a hard time while the shysters know how to work the system.
It's rather like being easier to catch middle class tax dodgers than millionaire ones.
Sounds like trying to claim a refund from Ryanair.
Taz, Cannot be too hard if 1000 new people are getting it every day.
On a human level, I have a huge amount of persona sympathy for Rachel Reeves.
Likewise. She has an extremely difficult job, she has a boss who is as reliable as a weathervane in a tornado, a party that lives in cloud cuckoo land and she knows enough to recognise the dangers here. Her attempts to at least ameliorate the situation, in WFA and benefits, have both collapsed due to political weakness and her options are extremely limited.
Chancellors need unequivocal backing when the sh*t starts to fly. Unequivocal is something Starmer wouldn't recognise if you hit him in the face with it.
David, it does not mitigate teh fact that she is totally useless, cannot count and tin ear for politics. How do these people ever get to where they are, certainly not on talent.
Duncan Weldon @duncanweldon.bsky.social · 17m The gilt move - especially at the long end - is big and bad. No sugar coating it. That said, the thing about the Truss debacle is that we saw these sort of moves day after day. Too early to say if this is a wobble or a bigger problem.
Worth noting: the gilt move really kicked off on speculation that Reeves could be replaced. ‘Reeves being replaced’ in this case meaning ‘a loosening of the fiscal rules’.
So there you have the first problem. Cut spending - PLP won’t wear it. Increase borrowing - the gilt market pushes back. You’re left with, raise taxes - break a manifesto pledge. Option 3 likely the least painful.
Depends on which taxes are raised. IIRC Starmer and Reeves have always said that they wouldn't raise taxes of 'working people"! Hence, en passant, the inheritance tax on rural landlords. But what about people who don't work? As well the rural landlords the are other landlords, investors, speculators on the Stock Exchange and Metal (etc) Exchanges. Inheritance tax might be a goer, too, although that doesn't bring in money quickly enough.
They will freeze tax allowances, freeze the WFA threshold, and maybe row back the annual cash ISA limit
If Reeves is still in post then the assumption is on Cash Isas she will announce a cut to 5k a year limit in the Mansion House speech in 2 weeks time. Freezing personal allowances almost certain and a big rise in fuel duty i think is likely
I think the ISA policy is broadly OK, but it’s another one that’s going to get people grumpy. Particularly pensioners who use the allowance to build more “safe” savings pots.
As a pensioner, we have more than enough help from the Government. If we have to pay some tax on our savings to help others, I don’t have a problem.
Equities will still have a £20k allowance so it's just useless cash ISAs that get gutted so pushing more money into equity markets will be the end result which is a net positive. Should have been done years ago.
Cah is not useless.
The economy benefits if cash is invested rather than just sitting in bank accounts. It’s how capitalism is supposed to work.
If it’s sitting in your account the bank is investing it.
I am aware of that but it’s not really participating in capitalism the way it is supposed to work and you never get any real growth of your capital in the bank, the interest rate will nearly always be below inflation.
That’s your problem, not the economy’s
No it’s the economy’s problem because if people are encouraged to grow their own capital they become more self sufficient. They can even spend more in the future, so more economic activity in the real economy. Money in banks just allows banks to spend money.
If no one deposited money in the bank I’m sure the current system would rapidly fall apart. Banks wouldn’t have any capital to lend to businesses etc.
I don’t know if you’re being deliberately dense but you well that the point is about encouraging people to invest cash rather than having large amounts sat in bank accounts, not telling people to stop putting money in banks full stop.
My point is the cash is invested either way, it’s not just “sat there”, and whether you invest it or deposit in the bank, it is being used in the economy in some way. Tipping the balance too far in one direction may have unintended consequences.
Motability (the non-Foundation part) is a subsidiary of Lloyds Bank. Why should the Foundation give back to the bank?
On a human level, I have a huge amount of persona sympathy for Rachel Reeves.
But if you applied for a job - perhaps with a slightly juiced-up CV - which you got, but then found you weren't up to doing that job, should I have any personal sympathy if you have a meltdown?
Well yes you should. Unless the person was a con artist / crook.
Stokes is again doing a lot of heavy lifting on the bowling front. This worries me for the Ashes.
There's some excitement about the possibility of a bowling attack that includes Wood, Archer and Stokes, but if they don't bowl out the opposition in the first 20 overs, who puts the overs in without breaking themselves?
On a human level, I have a huge amount of persona sympathy for Rachel Reeves.
But if you applied for a job - perhaps with a slightly juiced-up CV - which you got, but then found you weren't up to doing that job, should I have any personal sympathy if you have a meltdown?
Look, the lady worked in customer services at a bank, so she should be used to dealing with idiots.
To get motability as stated you need 12 points in mobility, meaning you need to demonstrate
1. Planning and following journeys. Can plan and follow the route of a journey unaided. 0 points. Needs prompting to be able to undertake any journey to avoid overwhelming psychological distress to the claimant. 4 points. Cannot plan the route of a journey. 8 points. Cannot follow the route of an unfamiliar journey without another person, assistance dog or orientation aid. 10 points. Cannot undertake any journey because it would cause overwhelming psychological distress to the claimant. 10 points. Cannot follow the route of a familiar journey without another person, an assistance dog or an orientation aid. 12 points.
2. Moving around. Can stand and then move more than 200 metres, either aided or unaided. 0 points. Can stand and then move more than 50 metres but no more than 200 metres, either aided or unaided. 4 points. Can stand and then move unaided more than 20 metres but no more than 50 metres. 8 points. Can stand and then move using an aid or appliance more than 20 metres but no more than 50 metres. 10 points. Can stand and then move more than 1 metre but no more than 20 metres, either aided or unaided. 12 points. Cannot, either aided or unaided, – stand; or move more than 1 metre. 12 points.
You can only score once from each section
If you 'Cannot follow the route of a familiar journey without another person, an assistance dog or an orientation aid.' how are you expected to cope with roundabouts?
I have no idea, these are descriptors for the mobility part of PIP, which is the qualifying section for motability (mobility scooters etc also)
If you qualify you used to be able to nominate a named driver but can only be used for your benefit. So you don't have to drive the car yourself as long as you are a passenger or the journey it undertakes is for your benefit eg picking up your prescriptions or weekly shop. Not sure if that's still the case but when the wife first became paraplegic I was able to use her old motability car within those guidelines
Ah! Thanks for clearing that up.
That is false. You don't ever have to drive it , your partner , carer or anyone can drive it.
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Oh lord, another improvement. We're doomed.
A colleague of mine’s favourite saying was “Don’t improve a working system. You might improve it worse.”
The only thing I would quibble about there is the word "might". In my experience "improvements" invariably reduce functionality to give you stuff you don't want.
Comments
They do means tested grants but also have to need it for work to access a grant.
But they squandered that massive majority and the goodwill and now cannot make any change without annoying their backbenchers who hold the whip hand over them.
In office but not in power and if Ange takes over heaven help us.
Saver got a guaranteed 3%, banks lent/invested for a return >3%, where's the net additonal money?
Different people at different times of their lives have different investment priorities.
I don’t see why holding cash is a bad thing.
People should have a cash buffer for a rainy day, 6-12 months bills as a minimum, and the older you are the less risk you want to take with money.
Like most things its not been thought through
I'm a pensioner though, so can't get Motability anyway.
https://x.com/RachelReevesMP/status/157885693291528192
@RachelReevesMP
Don't think I've ever been so close to tears as I was at surgery today. Feeling angry at govt welfare reforms that so hurt very ill people.
"There is no upper age limit for joining the Motability Scheme. "
And you can get it as a parent or carer when people are on things like PIP. I can see the logic, but also it opens another avenue for expanding eligibility e.g. if you are on a high income and your kid has a non-physical disability, does the state need to provide discounted transportation? I can think of examples when yes and no.
Especially in periods of heightened volatility although time in the market usually beats timing the market.
In the long term the market delivers.
If people cannot stomach a reversal or a crash investing in markets is not for them.
Long-term result I foresee is,
More money for fraudsters
More people losing their savings to scams
Taxpayer picking up a bigger bill for old age care earlier
And if we really wanted to target the largest growth in PIP claims by numbers, then it would be physical disabilities and people over 45, rather than imagining that people with ADHD are suddenly claiming in huge numbers purely off the back of those. There is a wider data problem in that it doesn't seem possible to look at comorbidity, just lists of diagnoses involved in claims.
(edited to remove various incoherencies)
The time to restrict cash ISAs was when mine e.g. was paying 0.2% not the 4.0% it is now.
If you neither see the people you are taking the piss out of nor see the people you are helping there's no understanding at all on either side.
You could always have called it something else.
It's rather like being easier to catch middle class tax dodgers than millionaire ones.
https://www.vanguard.co.uk/professional/vanguard-365/financial-planning/financial-well-being/cost-averaging
https://x.com/RoryStewartUK/status/1836402604689236420/
https://monevator.com/us-investments-section-899/
Chancellors need unequivocal backing when the sh*t starts to fly. Unequivocal is something Starmer wouldn't recognise if you hit him in the face with it.
My word, London is different now.
Great TV too.
People who have spare capital around for investing have more options for what to do with it, and will thereby be able to avoid higher rates of tax.
This is why taxation of land has so much to recommend it.
Though I suspect now that doing this kind of thing is getting sexier for retail investors, the overall yield is being depressed a bit on the lowest coupon ones because of the tax advantage.
Large percentage increases among under-25s result in much smaller absolute numbers compared to older groups.
Risen without trace.