The Labour Government

RiversideBlue said:
My in-laws are pretty well off. Both retired in their early 50s, because they had generous pensions. They don't need the winter fuel allowance. They've even tried to have their's cancelled, out of guilt, in the past. In fact there's an awful lot of well-off baby boomers who don't need that money, and a lot of younger people, who are far worse off, who do need it. The same younger people who probably aren't going to be able to retire until their 70. It's right that the fuel payment is means tested. The important thing is making sure that older people, who need the benefit, are able and encouraged to apply for it.
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Get them to donate to a decent charity and make sure they "gift aid" it. That adds another 20-40% to their contribution.
 
heslops barnet said:
99% of politicians are cunts……end of
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Agreed.

I said in a previous post that I think ALL governments are incompetent at running anything (which incidentally is why I am a Tory, because shit though they are, they want to run less things than Labour do).

Then today, I read this:

"Woeful budgeting" has resulted in the Home Office spending on average 23 times more per year than it had allocated on asylum seekers, a watchdog has claimed."

"The department has set £110m aside for "asylum operations" for the past three years but a new report from the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) said the actual spend had averaged £2.6bn a year in that time."

"When it is happening year after year, something is going wrong with the budgeting process."

Seriously??? Out by a factor if 23x year after year? I mean if you have a budget of £10 and you end up spending £11 or £12 then fair enough. But a budget of £10 and you end up spending £230??? And then you do the same again, and again and again.

This is beyond incompetent. But not remotely surprising.
 
I notice now there is a row about the staffing of key posts in the No.10 unit. Plus ca change.
 
Quad said:
We manage the money for her so luckily her investments have grown but changing them

Maybe worth talking to your parents about getting rid of some before October
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Only £3k per year can be gifted to other people to avoid inheritance tax if someone dies within 7 years. Eg, Mrs Smith gives her daughter £20k in 2024 then pops her clogs in 2025, 17k of the gift would form part of her estate.

Of course there's ways around it such as trust funds but technically this is UK law.

If someone deliberately gives a house away and moves into care at any stage in the future without paying for it the 7 year rule doesn't apply, it can be any number of years.
 
Kirkstall Blue said:
That’s typical of your average family with what is hard earned money at the end of life and successive governments take it off them.
From a personal experience Six months home
care costs £67 thousand pounds people with no savings get it free.

The family home will be carved up and CGT IHT will take another big slice, if there was a way round it we would go down that route definitely
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It's a dilemma, when my mum died my Dad was 85, me and Mrs H and my sister looked after him but it was hard work, cooking, shopping, having meals with him everyday, getting him up in the morning, spending time watching football or just TV with him, it was a full time job and I was running my business as well.

He lived for 3 and a half years until July 22, he left his estate to me and my sister, if he'd gone into care it would have cost around £175k, it would have made our lives easier. It's not just about money though, you do your best for your loved ones, I'd have never left him on his own, he was so lonely after my Mum died, they'd been married for 65 years.

I get some people don't have the choices we did but it's awful the hard work that paid for houses, pensions and savings is taken away whilst others on benefits all their lives get the same treatment FOC.

Just for the looney left on here I'm not talking about genuine people on benefits, just those who are too lazy to work and come up with all kinds of excuses.
 
bert38 said:
The independent pay review body recommended them.

Secondly austerity hit public service workers the most-with pay eroded by around 20% over the decade.
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I was not debating whether or not the public sector deserved or should have been paid the £9bn. Merely the fact that the Tories were not planning on paying it.

As I said in my poor analogy, it's like someone looks in the kitty, sees no money in there and then goes out for a £100 meal and then comes back and says hell there's a £100 black hole. But the previous guy says "but I wasn't going to go out for the meal because we don't have any money. Don't accuse me of a £100 shortfall on money I was not going to spend."

Now obviously there would have had to be some kind of public sector pay settlement but it is disingenuous of Labour to suggest that there is a £22bn black hole. *Some* - and we can debate how much - of that black hole is of Labour's *choosing^. It's money they are choosing to spend, not money they MUST spend. We don't NEED to give £11bn in overseas aid, for example. That is a choice.

What is clear - because it's been true of every Labour government ever - is that Labour plan on SPENDING a lot more than the Tories were ever planning on spending. And they are now scratching around trying to figure out who they can take money off whilst doing the least political damage, i.e. losing the fewest voters.
 
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hammocity said:
Only £3k per year can be gifted to other people to avoid inheritance tax if someone dies within 7 years. Eg, Mrs Smith gives her daughter £20k in 2024 then pops her clogs in 2025, 17k of the gift would form part of her estate.

Of course there's ways around it such as trust funds but technically this is UK law.

If someone deliberately gives a house away and moves into care at any stage in the future without paying for it the 7 year rule doesn't apply, it can be any number of years.
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Can you suddenly need your entire house rewiring and pay someone slightly related to you an extortionate fee? Say £100,000 ?
 
hammocity said:
It's a dilemma, when my mum died my Dad was 85, me and Mrs H and my sister looked after him but it was hard work, cooking, shopping, having meals with him everyday, getting him up in the morning, spending time watching football or just TV with him, it was a full time job and I was running my business as well.

He lived for 3 and a half years until July 22, he left his estate to me and my sister, if he'd gone into care it would have cost around £175k, it would have made our lives easier. It's not just about money though, you do your best for your loved ones, I'd have never left him on his own, he was so lonely after my Mum died, they'd been married for 65 years.

I get some people don't have the choices we did but it's awful the hard work that paid for houses, pensions and savings is taken away whilst others on benefits all their lives get the same treatment FOC.

Just for the looney left on here I'm not talking about genuine people on benefits, just those who are too lazy to work and come up with all kinds of excuses.
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Well done mate, it's rewarding in the end in an emotional sense.
 
Blue Llama said:
Your last para trumpets the Tory shout about faster growth than the rest of Europe. You fall for the smoke and mirrors that was the Tories strategy. It's easier to grow faster from rock bottom than it is from a position higher up the economic pyramid. As to the rest of your detailed list I am sure the Tories got somethings right but no one can argue that their 14 years was a glorious success.
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Fair points. (Although in my defence, I did say the Tories made lots of mistakes and some howlers.)

However, Labour have got off to a shockingly awful start IMO.
  • Calling anyone standing around protesting about mass immigration, "far right". I am sure that went down well with the low-pay, high unemployment, red wall constituents!
  • Letting violent criminals out of prison early so they can lock up people who have tweeted
  • No.10 pass for the bloke buying Starmer his suits etc and give hundreds of thousands to the party
  • Labour MPs receiving bungs from unions prior to pay awards
  • No strings attached to IMO in some cases overly generous pay awards
  • Removal of the winter fuel allowance - a really, really stupid move, which, if they actually were genuine about encouraging people to claim pension credit, would actually cost more money than it saves!
I could go on.

Let's see how they get on in coming months and years.
 
Chippy_boy said:
I was not debating whether or not the public sector deserved or should have been paid the £9bn. Merely the fact that the Tories were not planning on paying it.

As I said in my poor analogy, it's like someone looks in the kitty, sees no money in there and then goes out for a £100 meal and then comes back and says hell there's a £100 black hole. But the previous guy says "but I wasn't going to go out for the meal because we don't have any money. Don't accuse me of a £100 shortfall on money I was not going to spend."

Now obviously there would have had to be some kind of public sector pay settlement but it is disingenuous of Labour to suggest that there is a £22bn black hole. *Some* - and we can debate how much - of that black hole is of Labour's *choosing^. It's money they are choosing to spend, not money they MUST spend. We don't NEED to give £11bn in overseas aid, for example. That is a choice.

What is clear - because it's been true of every Labour government ever - is that Labour plan on SPENDING a lot more than the Tories were ever planning on spending. And they are now scratching around trying to figure out who they can take money off whilst doing the least political damage, i.e. losing the fewest voters.
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You are blinkered though:

The last Tory govt added on average £300 million to national debt every single day for the last 14 years-with v little to show for it.

It is highly likely though that the Tories would have honoured the recommendation of the Independent pay review body (Jenrick for one stated this).

The £11bn aid budget was also agreed by the last Tory govt.

This is largely the right wing press and their paymasters whipping up fear in the public-because they themselves may have to pay more.

A bit like IHT-if your estate is say 1.2million and you are the sole survivor in the marriage for example-and you leave it to your children: you have a tax free allowance of 1 million. You pay 40% on the remainder-so, in this case a tax bill of 80,000-that's hardly preventing your children from getting a 'leg up'. I'd say its a very good deal-the real cost is on the super wealthy-and thats why they want you to be angry about proposed rises in IHT-because it affects them for a change.
 
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