POLITICS CORNER

[Stanley]

I'm listening to a woman called Victoria Atkins who has a master's degree in obfuscation. She is being questioned about the treatment of Afghan migrants and has successfully avoided every question and is filling the air time with a flood of bleeding obvious banality.
God forgive them..... I shan't!

[Tripps]

Pity you can't get CGTN in the UK.

I'd almost forgotten that it had been removed from Freesat which I use. I find it's still available on their own website, or Youtube though - so our censorship isn't quite as bad as yours.

I look at a lot of TV news, and noticed that Al Jazeera has also been removed from Freesat. It went recently just as the Afghanistan situation went bad.
Conspiracy theory anyone? Again it's still available on the interweb, but that needs more effort than just flicking through the channels so unlikely to be accessed too often.

[Stanley]

It sounds like a form of censorship to me David....

[Stanley]

See THIS BBC report of Dominic Raab in Quatar arranging for further repatriation flights from Kabul under Taliban control. He says they will start again soon. Really? Rumour states that Raab is being given a lifeline to keep him in post until the next reshuffle. I have great doubts about rational responses from what will soon be an Islamic Caliphate using strict Shariah law.

[Tizer]

I used to flag up a lot of things that were going badly wrong or already had done so but I'm doing it much less now. The reason is simply that there's so much of it and I don't want to sow despondency. But I have to say I'm more pessimistic about the future now than I can remember ever being in the past. I can't see any good way out of the world's problems, especially with the type of people in charge now. I worry for the youngsters and their future.

[Tripps]

I'm more pessimistic about the future now than I can remember ever being in the past.

Something similar here, but life must go on - and a 'coping strategy' (awful expression), must be found or misery will follow. Each to his own would be my advice. Find something which gives you joy, distracts you from the present, and get on with it.

I console myself with the thought that I've probably had a better, safer, fulfilling, and more prosperous life, than about 99 % of all the people that have ever inhabited the planet.

Discuss. . . .

[Stanley]

You both echo my thoughts. Susan and I were talking about similar matters on Thursday.
I can't stop flagging up what I see as the mistakes in the hope that the younger ones might get the picture. However, I admit I am not optimistic and more and more I immerse myself in what I enjoy and my family. I agree with David on the 99%, I often wonder how I can have been so lucky. As evidence, I don't have a bucket list, I've done almost all the things that have attracted me and still have my enjoyments like two hours in the shed each day and my daily correspondence with my grand children. I can't think of any major sins I have committed, if I have any I have blanked them.
As for what's happening now, don't blame me, I have been doing my best for 86 years now, none of your mistakes are down to me.
My opinion about the present state of politics is too complicated and virulent to chronicle. Suffice it to say that I have never seen a worse state of affairs in Westminster. The grass roots, the working classes, are not represented at all. The place is staffed by clones who have PPE degrees and political careers. That's their main preoccupation, not what they can do for the people they came from.

[plaques]

The government’s Ponzi scam has been raised to new levels. Ever since the master builder George Osborne was up on the roof preparing for the rainy day and imposing austerity on Joe Blogs the worker questions were being asked “why don’t we tax the super rich instead of letting them salt it away in tax havens?”. We would like to do exactly that but we can’t go it alone we would need the strength of the rest of Europe behind us.
As expected austerity begins to bite. Its now unfair to pay the public sector worker a bigger percentage than the private sector. A balance is required a reverse of the levelling up that we hear today. Anyhow we can fill vacancies from Europe and Asia with cheap labour.
Time moves on. Lets get Brexit done and take control again especially our borders and stop all this cheap labour coming in taking our jobs not to mention there’s £350 M extra a week for the NHS. “But the NHS and Social Care will still understaffed and underfunded won’t these measures make it more expensive?”. Yes we’ll probably have to raise taxes on the workers to pay for it. “Why don’t we tax the super rich instead of letting them salt it away in tax havens?”. Now we are out of the EU we are on our own and as we have said before there’s nothing we can do by ourselves we’ll just have to wait to see what the rest do.

[Stanley]

Piketty identified that problem Ken in 'Capital'. He said a wealth tax was needed to reverse the draining uphill of wealth from the poor to the rich but at the same time said that it had to be a global tax to work. That's the problem, If we impose a big enough hit to make a difference the wealthy will instruct their accountants and lawyers to avoid it.
Ten years ago I said that austerity was a big mistake and everyone else has fallen in line now, all the progressive economists and politicians agree. But it's too late, they have killed the goose that laid the golden egg and cuts to Universal Credit at the end of this month will make it worse.

[Stanley]

Some of the cans that have been kicked down the road are on the agenda this week. The most important is the social care plan Johnson promised and more contentious, how to fund it.
There are also the small matters of the ending of furlough and the £20 increase in Universal Credit. Add the end of protection against eviction and you begin to get the impression that the cheerful messages we have been getting about the economy roaring back may be muted somewhat.

[plaques]

A reminder if we need it that the Conservative manifesto said quite clearly that there would be NO increases in National Insurance, Income Tax or Vat. They also promised to increase the funding to the Health Care services. Now it becomes almost certain that they will break their promise and impose the most regressive tax of the three. No mention of offshore tax havens. The question must be asked if they were going to increase Care funding without tax raising how were they going to do it? With Brexit falling apart by the minute and no visible advantages on the horizon its obvious that the UK is going down the tube on yet another Boris lie.

[PanBiker]

They keep banging on about how it wouldn't be fair to put the burden onto younger workers to pay for the crumblies. Now please correct me if I am wrong but when I was a lad and most folk had proper jobs with guaranteed work and proper contracts for terms and conditions and the like. That's how it all functioned. I worked, I paid my taxes and my NI contributions throughout my working life and was perfectly aware that all the money wasn't just being accrued for my benefit but for the wider society good. It worked then so why not now?

I know the answer and of course it lies in the crap jobs with no proper contracts that young folk have to put up with now and of course the fact that we no longer make anything. Everyone HAS to go to university to get the crap jobs as well which ensures they are fully in harness during their best years paying back the fees. Couple this with bugger you Jack I'm all right thinking and you are stuffed as a nation. We are crying out for the basic stuff, builders, plumbers, electricians, folk to pick crops and others to move it about the country. It's not rocket science, why cant other folk see this?

[plaques]

The argument goes that NI starts at 16 and ends at 65.
You pay mandatory National Insurance if you’re 16 or over and are either :an employee earning above £184 a week
self-employed and making a profit of £6,515 or more a year. With Tax providing you earn enough its from the time you are born until you die. Except if your are rich enough to get it into a tax haven.

Under the NI proposal the tax burden falls on the workers. With income tax its spread over a broader base including those in a position to pay more. The right-wing Conservatives look at collectively paying for health care as Socialism and don't want anything to do with it. Tip granny out on the streets is their view.

[Stanley]

My view is that you are both correct and there is no point me repeating your posts.
On the subject of what they will do, one thing is certain, it will not 'fix' the problem of social care. The answer to doing that is to give proper pensions and social services more priority than vanity projects like HS2 and aircraft carriers and that won't happen. To do the job properly involves as big a leap of faith as the original health service and these spivs aren't capable of that. I'm glad that so far I don't need these services.....
Later... I have just realised that Johnson isn't fixing social care but setting a cap on how much people pay.
What should be addressed is the standard and staffing of the service together with the transfer to NHS and proper funding given.

[plaques]

Although Buffoon Boris has promised to 'fix' the Social Care system its looks like we are replacing the 'Get Brexit Done' slogan with a 'Fix Social Care'. All pie in the sky rhetoric for the gullible. A quote from today's 'Seen in the News'

I'm told the cash raised, potentially over £12 billion, will be ring-fenced somehow, targeted initially at the health service itself then will switch to social care after three years.

So there we are the 'can' kicked back 3 years. Meanwhile the local councils who have to find most of the funding will be forced into extra cutbacks due to cutbacks in government funding. The care homes who relied on cheap labour now having to compete for their cheap labour in a market place that has cut off foreign workers thanks to Brexit and now seeing their business model collapsing. If Laura Kuenssberg is right and we have to wait three years to see if there is any money left it will take us nicely to the other side of a general election enduring months of 'Fix Social Care' propaganda. How thick can the people be? Having fallen for the lies once does the Buffoon think he can get away with it again? The sad thing is he may be right.

[Big Kev]

I don't see why they're making such a fuss, we should have plenty of money now...

Screenshot_20210907-092633_Facebook.jpg

Perhaps I should have put this in the 'jokes' thread.

[Tizer]

Thanks for that Kev. All those who voted Leave should be asking Boris where the money is and then joining the rest of us in getting rid of him.

I keep hearing arguments about whether the extra money for social care should come from NI or income tax. What I haven't heard (even from the Tory moderates and the other political parties) is why don't we use this perfect opportunity to do it all on income tax and change the % rate so that it increases logarithmically until those who are paid a million £ pay, say, 75% tax. I used to do work with a Swedish university professor who also had a management position in a company. He paid 90% tax and was still well off. He wouldn't do as so many Tories predict, i.e. leave his country to make more dosh elsewhere - he loved his country and approved of the way the tax money was being used for the common good.

Ian, you'd have enjoyed the long article by Rachel Sylvester in The Times on Saturday. She started out by explaining how Blackpool wants to become an equivalent to the US silicon valley. Sounds odd at first but there's now an ultrafast undersea cable linking Blackpool to Dublin, Denmark and New York - you can send data faster from Blackpool to NY than from London to NY! There are companies lining up to put their offices and factories in Blackpool...but they can't get workers with the essential qualifications and abilities locally and are having to bring them from elsewhere, including from overseas. The companies would much prefer locals but the schools are tied to the official education methods and can't give the kids what's needed. For example one company needs computer scientists but it says the schools concentrate on teaching the kids coding when the company does most of that `by machine'. The government is still too focused on teaching kids traditional stuff. As one company man said: `Shakespear doesn't change but maths and engineering are changing very fast'.

[Stanley]

As I am sure you are aware, yesterday was all about politics, not about social care or even the NHS (Who by the way have been told that all capital funding to put back the cut backs is to be referred to by the generic term 'new hospital accommodation'.) It was pure politics to adjust the manifesto to fit reality. As Ken so rightly points out, social care has been kicked down the road for another three years, after an election. The age of the Big Lie is still with us.
We still have the stupid situation that if you have cancer money is no object but if you are tortured by dementia you can lie in your own faeces until someone remembers you.
An unworthy thought.... Could the fact that Johnson is expected to have a re-shuffle imminently have any bearing on how Tory backbenchers vote today on the new taxes? Surely not.....

[PanBiker]

Javed is already back peddling and saying that the NI hike may not cover the full recovery and clearing of the NHS backlog now there's a surprise!

Conveniently lost in the furore over the NI increase is that Boris has also ditched the triple lock on the pension increase. Demoted it to a double lock and conveniently sidestepped the 8% increase they would have had to pay because that's what they say the economy has grown by. We will get about half of that if we are lucky. Thanks Boris, looks like you CAN have your cake and eat it, I hope you choke.

Bloody Lords of the Universe.

[plaques]

To paraphrase the old saying. 'There are lies, damned lies and the Tory manifesto.
The Brexit battle bus propaganda not in the manifesto but as near as you can get clearly offered. Up to £350M per week towards the NHS, we now know that 'up to starts at ZERO.
No tax rises. Well only a tidgy one on the workers at the bottom of the heap. For years considered by the Tories as a tax on jobs which in this case will probably only result in those on minimum wage getting the push.
Triple lock. Pensioners to get the highest percentage of three factors. The pandemic removed millions of low paid workers from the calculations. This left them measuring the remaining top end workers. The result nearly 8% increase. Can't have pensioners getting as much as the rich it would sound too much like levelling up. So it gets nocked on the head.
Cap on social care costs at £80,000. But nobody yet knows how this is calculated. In all probability it will be based on the minimum council support anything above this is still paid by the individual.

Can't wait until Boris blames the shortage of lorry drivers on the reluctance of women to take it up as a career.

[Tripps]

Well I've heard it twice now - once yesterday in the statement, and today at PMQ's. After being questioned today on just how does someone find the £86,000 which is now said to be your maximum exposure without selling your house. Fighting my way through the defensive waffle, of which he is so fond , I heard the Prime Minister say it would be covered by an insurance policy which would become available.

This took me back to my two conversations in Waitrose and Tesco with my (then) MP Andrew Lansley, who told me exactly the same thing. I think the figure proposed then ws £70,000, and that was getting on for ten years ago. It alll came to nothing then because in a trial, the insurance companies were unable to sell enough policies, because at the level of premium required, few were willing to buy. It was expensive, and no one thought it would happen to them.

PS - I thought then it would only work if everyone was obliged to buy a policy.We could perhaps call it "National Insurance". That would work.


If I can remember this failed policy, why has there been no mention of it in Parliament yet? Perhaps Lord Lansley will speak?

There has been little mention either of the precept of 3% added to the Councl tax which was said to be imposed to help the Local Authorities (who actually do the funding) to meet the cost of adult social care. This I am surprised to see, was added in 2017.

This will all come to nothing. How will it be ' hypothecated in law' for a single purpose? Nothing else is, and since in fact everything goes into the pot, and if it's used for three years to 'clear the backlog', I doubt there'll be enough left for social care at the end of that period. Of course that will not be the problem of the current crop of MP's. He also said it would not go into the salaries of senior managers, but would go 'straight to the front line'. Yeah right. . . .

"PS This exerpt from Guido Fawkes today gives no confidence that will happen
New job adverts on the Integrated Care Systems (ICS) recruitment page show that the NHS is now hiring 42 new chief executives to manage ‘integrated care boards‘ across the country, on salaries averaging £223,261. Seven of which will pay up to a whopping £270,000. 80% more than Boris himself "

In case he hadn't noticed the Covid episode is very far from over, and winter is coming. . . .

We will see how the vote goes in about an hour's time.

[plaques]

More smoke and mirrors. The NI contribution starts at £184 and is 12% of earning thereafter. To say its going up by 1.2 % represents a 10% increase. Sajid Javid Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, has stated that there is no actual plan and has no idea how much money will be available and when he will get it. All this in spite of a manifesto statement that there was an existing plan which would be discussed with all parties prior implementation. How much more of these lies and nonsense will the voting public take?

[Tripps]

Looks like my memory is proving to be unreliable - I seem to have posted 'fake news' . Here is what Boris actually said from the Hansard record of Tues 7 Sep 21.

"Governments have ducked this problem for decades. Parliament even voted to fix it, yet that 30,000 figure is an indictment of the failure to do so. There can be no more dither and delay. We know we cannot rely solely on private insurance because demand would be too low for insurers to offer an affordable price, and a universal system of free care for all would be needlessly expensive when those who can afford to contribute to their care should do so."

********************************************************************************************************************************************************************

PS Wait a minute though - the very next paragraph contradicts that. My memory isn't as bad as I thought.

"Instead, the state should target its help at protecting people against the catastrophic fear of losing everything to pay for the cost of their care, and that is what this Government will do. We are setting a limit on what people can be asked to pay, and we will be working with the financial services industry to innovate and to help people insure themselves against expenditure up to that limit."

[Tripps]

Just came across this. I don't understand the subtleties of it all, but it gets a bit dramatic at about 1hr 14 mins in. Cries of "this is corrupt"

I'm sure it will mean more to other site members.

[Stanley]

Very good posts which I enjoyed reading. They say everything that I could on the corrupt way the public are once more being hoodwinked on the subject of a 'final solution' for the social care problem. As I believe I predicted, the subject of debate would not be what needs to be done to fix social care but purely on the thing that concerns Tories most, how could taking that money from the most wealthy corporations and individuals be avoided. That's why you didn't hear about a wealth tax. Johnson said only one thing I agree with, ALL governments have shied away from fixing the problem because it is as fundamental as the inception of the NHS itself. The best way I can see is to take Dilnot and use that as the basis for starting the fix of social care. No arguments about funding, just do it. And another prediction for you, that ain't going to happen. The money will still go to the high profile vanity projects and stupid things like atomic weapons and aircraft carriers.
David, I've never looked at a video of a local political meeting before. No wonder we are in a mess. I didn't see any signs of anyone trying to cut the Gordian Knot of a dispute between the Chair and DW.