Not so, in the short term there may be trouble ahead but with rail and healthcare strikes averted and what is recognised as a breath of fresh air from this side of the channel/north sea in the attitude to the EU re trade and immigration, along with the Rwanda scheme being cancelled. Let's not forget the green energy plan and a bill to repeal the strikes act. Almost forgot the house of Lords reform, it's all good **** Sherlock.
The biggest compliment I can give Laura K is that she is not a good political journalist. She has made her whole career out of insider knowledge dropped to her by Tory contacts. She is wuite excellent at getting that kind of scoop. She has never been able attack or query Tories as her whole career is built off their backs. It isn’t political bias but the entire structure of her success.
I have said before that I don’t know what Starmer stands for although his treatment of the MPs who are more left of centre, or in simple terms, those who still stand for the old Labour principles is quite telling. Something else I have said to my friends and family ever since Starmer reneged on the promises he made to become party leader, I don’t know if I have mentioned it on here, is that I can envisage the Labour Party splitting into two parties. This could be devastating in future elections because it further dilutes the left of centre vote, in FPTP, but could be useful if it forces Starmer to change the voting system to PR and he needs to build a coalition. I can understand him front loading all the **** decisions into his first budget as it gives him time to try and rebuild trust.
Reform of the HoL begins. https://www.electoral-reform.org.uk/the-plans-to-remove-all-the-hereditary-peers-are-now-in-motion/?utm_medium=email&utm_source=ers-email&utm_campaign=blog-roundup&utm_content=ERS News: 7 Sep 2024 B
Give HRMC the resources to pursue the tax evaders of all types "The UK is losing billions of pounds a year in revenue due to tax evasion among small businesses, which can easily exploit weaknesses in government systems, according to a new National Audit Office (NAO) report on tax evasion in retail." https://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog...-to-crack-down-on-small-business-tax-evasion/
Just heard on the radio, that up to 880,000 pensioners could be entitled to pension credit…..therefore entitled to the winter fuel allowance. I thought being a homeowner and have more than £16,000 in savings would stop any entitlement, But apparently your home doesn’t come in to it( unless you have more homes and rent out) And even if you had £50,000 in savings you would still get a reduced pension credit.
So is this another one of those things like with inheritance tax where loads more people think they are impacted than actually are? Has anyone done the numbers on how many people actually lose out here? And is the snag that you have to go through the admin of claiming pension credit whereas before you didn’t ?
Have Haven’t done this stuff in a while but when I provided benefits support there was a simple PC calculator online and the form wasn’t too bad. 200 questions reported but many of those are name, address, dob etc and DWP, Age UK, CAB can provide support for claimants
It’s probably one of those things where it looks bad when you report it in a sensational way. It’s similar to if you provided someone with an instruction manual for “get a drink from the fridge” assuming no actual knowledge then many people would be stunned at how long that list would be
James O’Brien had a caller who pointed all this out yesterday, and the light dawned in JO’B as it did in me. Labour are being very astute in getting this out early in the piece, as by the time it actually hits, the people who would be affected most would have been given help to claim their pension credit if they hadn’t already. I fall into the category of those where the payment is a nice bonus but not actually strictly needed, so while I’m not happy at losing it, I can see the need, given the utterly ruinous state the country was left in. I just hope that some form of wealth tax is introduced to make up the rest of the shortfall.
I'm a little lost on this one. So, I think it is a good measure that Labour are effectively means testing the winter fuel payments, and perhaps the size of the UK benefits bill could do with more of such measures. However, I get this is generalising, but so many on here seem to hate the wealthy - companies, individuals etc. Yet as pointed out above, want a wealth tax from the wealthy. So, are the wealthy so bad if they are able to be called upon at a whim to help those with less? And if there was no wealth as such - ie reducing/removing the wealth gap, do we believe it would solve the issue? Surely there is a bit of both worlds meeting here - in that the wealth divide is large, i get that, but why should some have stuff taken from them to continually help out, and that why are we seemingly unable to look at reducing the need to keep taxing the tits of the wealthy, as in how do we drastically reduce the benefits bill? Surely it has to work both ways, cant always be the rich bailing out the poor - those with less also need to take a degree of responsibility and the government (whichever one) need to reduce the dependency on the state. Only some musings, off the top of my head thoughts. Can wait to be shot down in flames and pointed out where my moral compass is offline
I think the “so many on here seem to hate the wealthy” is the mischaracterisation Want the wealthy to pay would usually be more accurate. And the logic (which you are welcome to disagree with) is that the vast majority of the wealthy become so off of the work of the less wealthy. So “bailing out” is arguably necessary in this instance. In the extreme abstract where those less fortunate could refuse to work for the wealthy without starving to death and being thrown out on the street then those people don’t become wealthy (or as wealthy). It’s sort of a covenant. And that covenant is being broken - nowhere more so than in America A term about billionaires is that you can’t become one without benefiting off of the suffering of others. And so expecting paying back in some way is not really “hatred” of the people who got there. Most people are accepting of it I think most of the discussions about the “wealthy” on here that could potentially be characterised as “hatred” if you were being uncharitable is focused on super rich billionaires and energy companies making enormous profits raising energy bills. Profits that could still be kept massive if the prices were reduced for people. I don’t think the sentiment is generally aimed most at people who earn 100k or 200k a year or have a £1m house that they happened to get for well less than half of that 20+ years ago And it’s often muddied by people lobbing out claims of “envy”. It’s not envy when people who can afford to can manoeuvre round the tax system in ways most people cannot to pay a lower tax percentage than people who just work a normal job. That’s just people wanting fairness. I remember this in the 2012 US election where it was reported that Romney paid a lower percentage tax than what his cleaner would. That’s what people don’t like And then we can also bring up these super rich people paying the last government to become richer through PPE they didn’t deliver. Again I’m not sure that’s hatred of the wealthy. It’s severe unhappiness with bias in the system that favours them I don’t think a “wealth tax” would be designed to remove the wealth gap (I’m aware you said reduce / remove but given they are together I assume you mean drastically reduce). So that is sort of a straw man. Although I’m not really that clued up on wealth taxes , proposals and prior implementation. But I don’t think anyone is really suggesting some sort of sudden shift to extreme communism where all wealth is taken and redistributed evenly so that everyone was always equal. Which kind of eliminates most of the rest of the musings in my view at least
I get what you're saying, and I think you both have a point. There is a weird inverse snobbery that exists toward the wealthy, and an even weirder thing about how it's more wholesome, even aspirational to be able to call yourself "working class" - see Angela Rayner's strange "I'm working class, I like a dance" comment - as if it's something that the middle class can't possibly enjoy, or that to enjoy dancing you need to be working class. The class system in the UK is mad as anything. I even hate the term "working class" because it implies that the middle (and supposedly upper) classes don't work. Which is bollocks. It's such a strange hangover from the feudal systems of old, and is incredibly destructive. The other thing I'd question in what you wrote is - "the vast majority of the wealthy become so off of the work of the less wealthy" - I'd disagree on that. Once again the "vast majority" gets used wrongly, first off. Secondly, the people who have risen to the top of companies have largely done so working their tits off. When they get to the top of the company, and can then be called "wealthy", yes, they supplement their wealth through the people working in the company (the less wealthy), but those less wealthy can also work themselves up to that point too. People aren't just made CEOs for a laugh, having done nothing to get to that point (or at least, to coin a phrase, the 'vast majority' of CEOs).
I’d take Rayner as more about not being ashamed to be working class. I heard an interesting comment the other day with regards to the US election - it was effectively “if you are middle class and can only really afford a $30 political donation…” - that’s not middle class. That’s Americans calling everyone middle class because the idea of being working class is considered shameful to some. If you can only spare €30 as a political donation then you are closer to the breadline than “middle class”. Note I’m saying “afford that donation”. Not whether they want to of consider it worthwhile / a priority I can’t really get into the second paragraph now because I’m supposed to be paying attention elsewhere. Suffice to say we are unlikely to agree here and probably are not in alignment on the definition of “wealthy”. And like “working their tits off” (which many do and don’t end up anything close to wealthy - something that always comes up in the private school tuition discussion)
This is sadly not true. There is not equality of opportunity in this country - or indeed in any country - and wealth is always sucked up. It may then trickle down, but the steady movement of wealth for the last 50 years is to an increasingly wealthy elite. Men have it better than women: https://www.forbes.com/sites/lindsa...eal---and-contributing-to-the-gender-pay-gap/ 1 in 25 CEOs in the UK has broken the old boys club by being female. Estimates suggest 66% of CEOs went to private school. That is from 9% of the population who attends them. Money is largely ring-fenced for people with money, and social mobility is at its lowest for 50 years (https://amp.theguardian.com/society/2023/sep/07/social-mobility-uk-worst-50-years-report-finds). Everyone is working their tits off, but the money jobs are ringfenced for a few.
