The Labour Government

[metalblue]

Talks between Health Secretary Wes Streeting and the British Medical Association (BMA) will take place next week in a bid to avert strike action in England's NHS.

- Tories didn’t do this for months and months, allowed some of our best doctors to leave the health sector and we had constant strikes despite them asking for a far more justified payrise than this one.

That’s simply not true. Strikes started in October 2023, both Junior Doctors and Consultants.

Talks in October 2023

Junior and specialist doctors in England to hold strike talks with government

The BMA says it will hold talks with the government to avert strikes by junior and specialist doctors.

www.bbc.co.uk

Talks in November 2023 settled the Consultant strikes.

NHS strike breakthrough as consultants’ union agrees new pay deal with government

NHS leaders urge union members to vote yes on new pay deal with government

www.independent.co.uk

 

[Churchlawtonblue]

So no promises actually broken then?

A bit like Thatcher denying the Tories wouldn't double VAT and only putting it up from 8% to 15%...

In your opinion, I would say the majority of the British public would say otherwise.

Ah of course I forgot, all employers are the size of the companies you mention.

Have you ever run or even worked for a small or medium business?

Perhaps you should Google how many people run or work for a small or medium business in the UK? You are clearly going to be very surprised!

 

[Vic]

Raise the Council Tax banding above H ..... So that larger more valuable properties contribute more to the local budget. (currently a 20 bedroom mansion worth £15 million pays the same as a 6 bedroom house worth £1.5 million)


Hey ... but what do I know? Waiting for the incoming ........

In one area, Council Tax could be less for a mansion than for a 4-bed house in a different area.

All a legacy of the Tories' abolishing the rates.

 

[Vic]

But...... didn't the Department for Health say at the start of last week when the strikes were announced that he "would not enter into negotiations with the BMA"?

...btw I am glad to see there are negotiations set to commence.

... from Sky News

"Unfortunately, the government has stated that it will not negotiate on pay, wanting to focus on non-pay elements without suggesting what these might be," the BMA said.

A Downing Street spokesman said: "We aren't going to reopen negotiations on pay

Dates doctors will strike this summer announced

More than 26,000 resident doctors voted in favour of strike action with the British Medical Association claiming salary increases did not account for historical pay freezes.

news.sky.com

You've answered your own first question.

 

[Vic]

In your opinion, I would say the majority of the British public would say otherwise.

Ah of course I forgot, all employers are the size of the companies you mention.

Have you ever run or even worked for a small or medium business?

Perhaps you should Google how many people run or work for a small or medium business in the UK? You are clearly going to be very surprised!

They might say that but, like you, would struggle to say what promises had been broken.

And you said all employers are working people.

As for smaller enterprises, did you not notice this in the NI changes?

The Employment Allowance is a benefit that reduces Employers NIC liabilities and the threshold will be increased from the current £5,000 to £10,500. This means that qualifying businesses can deduct up to an additional £5,500 from their Employers NIC bills which will provide some welcome relief with less businesses liable for Employers NICs. It’s expected that this change will primarily benefit smaller businesses with almost 900,000 businesses not having to pay any Employers NICs in the next tax year and around 1,000,000 paying the same amount or less.

 

[Churchlawtonblue]

They might say that but, like you, would struggle to say what promises had been broken.

And you said all employers are working people.

As for smaller enterprises, did you not notice this in the NI changes?

The Employment Allowance is a benefit that reduces Employers NIC liabilities and the threshold will be increased from the current £5,000 to £10,500. This means that qualifying businesses can deduct up to an additional £5,500 from their Employers NIC bills which will provide some welcome relief with less businesses liable for Employers NICs. It’s expected that this change will primarily benefit smaller businesses with almost 900,000 businesses not having to pay any Employers NICs in the next tax year and around 1,000,000 paying the same amount or less.

Have a good day Vic.

 

[hilts]

It is bad and unfair I agree, though I am only referring to means testing at the top end of the scale, certainly nowhere near pushing people into pension credit.

What amount are we talking here? It's just not a good idea imho, not everyone knows how well they may become, it's a motivation killer for people taking out a private pension. If we want to tax rich pensioners income and council tax should be the route taken.

 

[Corky]

Stop the practice of of the self employed drawing tax free dividends from their income

It is only £500 above the standard personal allowance that is tax free.

 

[dickie davies]

Stop the practice of the self employed drawing tax free dividends from their income.

It is only £500 above the standard personal allowance that is tax free

I was self employed for 14 years, 2001-2015 and I never understood why my NIC contributions were so low, like £4 a month, even though after all my deductions I was clearing £40k a year

 

[Hertzblue]

Your pitch is that we eat gruel today to avoid eating gruel tomorrow. Either way we are still eating gruel.

Fifteen years ago we were told we needed austerity measures to provide for a better future. Today the argument is - we need austerity measures to provide for a better future.

People bang on about growing the economy yet you want to gut the education sector as per your ‘take the medicine’ plan. Higher Education is worth £275 billion to the UK economy with considerable revenue from overseas students (immigrants). You suggest it is necessary to gut this revenue. For what purpose? It isn’t growth, so what will reducing the University sector achieve? How will this provide for a better future?

Because gruel is all we have left in the cupboard, we can keep taking out our credit card and buying in something a bit nicer, that we can't really afford and haven't worked for but sooner or later that card is going to be declined.
As to your point on Universities, because we need to re-balance the workforce, we have major skill shortages in construction for example and it seems we cannot meet the governments house building targets even if we do resolve the planning issues , more vocational training required. The Higher education industry does bring in revenue from overseas students but a great deal of it is a back door immigration scam. By all means keep the high value, high skilled overseas students that may stay and genuinely boost the economy but it will be no loss to loose the overseas Design course students and business studies students.

 

[Hertzblue]

This made me smile.



Facts eh?



Is this one of them alternative facts?



More like opinions masquerading as facts to me.

Maybe, point remains that we will be unable to find a way out of our current predicament without a great deal of pain and the sooner we accept that and consider how we might all share that pain, we may at least avoid the prospect of a settlement being forced upon us.

 

[Chippy_boy]

If even half of that is right, why are people so upset about the current government's management of the impossible?

Because they're doing mainly the wrong things!

 

[Chippy_boy]

That wouldn't be good for me either and there would be plenty of grounds for claiming it wasn't fair.
However as you say , we are in one hell of a mess and regardless of who is to blame we need to get out of it ourselves before a solution is imposed on us. If we are all in it together, that includes wealthier pensioners . Would the IMF impose cuts on your pension ? - you know they would.

I'm not sure it would be legal tbh. Especially someone like my Mrs handing over thousands in discretionary NI top up explicitly to get a full pension, only to be told you're not getting it? Nah, that has class action lawsuit written all over it. Hell, I'd even start one.

 

[Chippy_boy]

So no promises actually broken then?

A bit like Thatcher denying the Tories wouldn't double VAT and only putting it up from 8% to 15%...

And I don't think Tesco / Starbucks / Thames Water are "working people".

Assuming true (not sure it is, but I'll take what you say on face value), what sort of excuse is this?

It's ok to break promises because the Tories did it?

No. It's not an excuse. And I'm sure Labour complained about the Tories doing it at the time.

 

[Chippy_boy]

It is bad and unfair I agree, though I am only referring to means testing at the top end of the scale, certainly nowhere near pushing people into pension credit.

It would be a massive disincentive to save for your own retirement though.

And whilst our pension is currently so shit, it would seem unreasonably mean to try to cut it further. Here's how it compares to other countries:

(The % is what % of someone's salary does it replace, on average).

OECD Average~62%
Netherlands~100%
Portugal~95%
Italy~90%
Germany~52%
France~74%
Ireland~30%
USA~50%
Australia~40%

UK? 29% The worst of the lot.

 

[metalblue]

So no promises actually broken then?

A bit like Thatcher denying the Tories wouldn't double VAT and only putting it up from 8% to 15%...

And I don't think Tesco / Starbucks / Thames Water are "working people".

I suppose they didn’t promise not to remove the WFA but nor have they promised to, or not to, invade France. See how silly it can get when trying to compare the ambiguity of pre election promises with policy once in power? Let’s be honest it’s why politicians use ambiguous language in interviews and we all complain about them not giving straight answers.

The government promised not to raise VAT but that only rules out changes to the rate, not how it is applied, let’s say the government decided to apply VAT to gambling at 20% (currently exempt I believe, not a bad idea actually as it raises about £3bn) - they’ll get accused of breaking their promises but technically they aren’t.

They promised to reform welfare - and they tried to.

Their main problem is how they approach these challenges, it’s ill thought through and poorly managed by a weak PM.

 

[Chippy_boy]

It might be useful at this point to remember what Labour did actually promise, from their manifesto, page 19.

"We will not increase National Insurance, the basic, higher, or additional rates of Income Tax, or VAT"

Does it say Employees National Insurance? No. National Insurace. We will NOT increase National Insurace. It could not be more clear.

They have now changed their tune and a 3-line whip has any Labour representative on TV saying "we promised not to raise Employees National Insurance". NO. You promised not to raise NI, period.

Will be interesting in the coming weeks/months whether the "higher or additional rates of income Tax" promise is conveniently forgotten too.

 

[Chippy_boy]

For what it's worth, I think it was a stupid and unnecessary manifesto commitment they did not need to make and now it's causing all sorts of problems.

A very simple solution to the imbalanced books would be to put a penny or two on the basic rate of income tax. Even a couple of pence on the 45% rate would probably not have millionaires running for the hills. But they have dug themselves a hole in promising not to touch it.

 

[threespires]

Honestly I think it's the middle earners. I don't think it's remotely feasible for people on say £50k a year to just keep saying "the rich can pay".

I also think we are going to have to get rid of a lot of things we'd rather not get rid of. Like benefits for some people, NHS treatments for others. Expensive drugs. My sister has recently been the beneficiary of some pioneering new treatment that's costs £500,000 yes £500,000. The NHS cannot afford such things.

I think the flaw in this thinking is if you look at the flow of wealth over the last 30/40 years the trajectory is such that squeezing the middle classes is at very best a temporary band aid. It might feel good for a while that they are taking the kind of medicine the less well off have had to take, it might also feel good that we are seemingly taking action to fix things. Except it won't address the fundamental issue we have which is massive outflows of wealth to a tiny percentage of the population and that the version of capitalism we've ended up with is focused on large scale wealth extraction and hoarding by a tiny group at the expense of the vast majority. When the post war social consensus broke down this is what replaced it. The argument that their existing taxes pay for a significant proportion of the state is irrelevant because (a) they often make their fortunes by extracting wealth from states in the first place (b) things are continuing to get worse for the vast majority of people anyway.

If we cannot stop rising inequality and decelerate the flow of wealth to the super rich then talk of taking the medicine sounds reasonable but is futile. The poor and middle income 'classes' cannot fix this problem on their own, at least not through shouldering more burden.

The globalisation and financialisation of the economy seems to make fixing this problem head spinningly hard. If I had the answers I wouldn't be sat on here pontificating. But we'd be better devoting our efforts to working that out than donning financial sack cloth and ashes in the hope it provides a miracle that isn't going to come.

I am truly glad for your sister and you that she has had access to the pioneering treatment. Hopefully, as is often the case with advancements, the costs of such treatment can be reduced to increase access to others too. At one level £500k is a very big number, but another way of looking at it is it takes Jeff Bezo about 30-40 seconds to increase his wealth by that amount. Does taking all of Jeffrey's money off him magically solve the problem? Of course not, but it does highlight the insanity of the system we are trying to fix.

Even if we could fix it temporarily by ordinary folk taking yet another hair cut, what happens when the super rich come back for more?

 

[inbetween]

For what it's worth, I think it was a stupid and unnecessary manifesto commitment they did not need to make and now it's causing all sorts of problems.

A very simple solution to the imbalanced books would be to put a penny or two on the basic rate of income tax. Even a couple of pence on the 45% rate would probably not have millionaires running for the hills. But they have dug themselves a hole in promising not to touch it.

Putting a few pennies on income tax won't make any difference. Many taxpayers either don't pay income tax or don't pay a lot. However, one big chunk of income tax is paid by the wealthiest but there are far less of them so a few pennies aren't going to make much difference.

There is still an honest and difficult conversation to be had about taxation of assets.