National insurance cut

You could be right of course, I was just pointing out that there are other factors aswell
So you wouldn't blame it on the Soviet Unions invasion as a factor? Or any other external problem that we had no control over that impacted our economy?

The glaringly obvious bit you are missing with your simplistic view is of course Govts can't control what external problems occur, but it's 100% in their control how they react to the problem.

That's what you judge them on.
 
1. Growth
2. If no growth then we have to live within means, and that means no improvement in services

Interesting how you suggest growth yet have no faith in the country’s economic growth, or at least not enough faith to invest in it with your pension.

In 2020 during Covid when I had nothing to do, I thought I'd take a look at my pension fund.

I had never really given it a second thought before. It is a defined contribution employer scheme where the funds are taken salary sacrifice, and the provider they chose to run it picked the funds it was invested in, on what they term a 'lifestyle' profile, which means that initially its more invested in stocks and shares, then as you approach retirement age it switches over to safer assets.

Anyway, I looked into the growth I'd had over the 16 ish years Ive been in the scheme, and where it was invested. I was not happy with what I found.

There was a very high proportion of UK equities. I found out that many 'default' funds have this, because the logic was its a UK scheme, for UK employees, and that meant that those people favour UK bias. This immediately seemed crazy to me, as the US has experienced much higher growth. Why would you favour UK equities over faster growing US equities with the US being the biggest economy in the world?

Does this mean you believe that the NHS is destined to deteriorate to nothing? As the financial requirement of the NHS is already out pacing the growth of this country.
 
Inheritance tax is just another tax on the less well off. Its designed to keep people in their place, cant have to many up and commers entering the sphere of the North Norfolk Holiday yaaaaah team.

Hardly, (I'm sure this has been said plenty of times) if a married couple passes their home to their children then the threshold is a million quid. Nobody in the "less well off" category is sporting a million quid estate.
 
Hardly, (I'm sure this has been said plenty of times) if a married couple passes their home to their children then the threshold is a million quid. Nobody in the "less well off" category is sporting a million quid estate.
Totally agree in reality it is hardest on those in the middle, the really rich (like our chancellor) can structure there assets etc to avoid as much inheritance tax as possible where those in the middle who don’t have either enough money or enough knowledge to game the system get nailed. Inheritance tax certainly isn’t a tax on the poor unless your definition of poor is massively off!
 
Can I remind everyone that on 7 September 2021, Then PM BJ announced the introduction of a Health and Social Care Tax.

By increasing NI by 1.25% (13.25% total) rom 6 April 2022 and for a separate tax to start in April 2023 to tax people a futher 1.25% to address the funding crisis in the sector.

This broke the tory manifesto of not raising taxes, but BJ insists that it was required. "we cannot shirk the challenge of putting the NHS back on its feet"
manifesto: https://www.conservatives.com/our-plan/economy
back bench anger: https://www.theguardian.com/politic...d-tory-anger-over-manifesto-breaking-tax-rise

Then backbencher Hunt said "social care does not actually get as much money as it needs."

7 months later; November 2022, This was reversed by Kami Kwarteng stating, "Taxing our way to prosperity has never worked"

in November 2023, now Chancellor Hunt in the "Autumn Statement for growth" announced a 2p cut to NI in January 2024.

The uk entered a recession late 2023 before the NI cuts took place.

Now two days ago, during the spring budget, Chancellor Hunt cuts NI by 2% again...

So in the space of less than 2 and a half years... the same party that was predicting gloom and doom for the future of our health service unless we start to pay an extra 3%+ now thinks that we can pay 4% less and it will be fine.

Please tick all that applies...
[ ] they have found a magic money tree
[ ] they make **** up as they go along
[ ] they don't care about the billions of people that need the NHS nor the future of social care
[ ] it's an election year
[ ] they are salting the battlefield before losing the war.
[ ] other, please explain:

I'm sure I read something a couple of days ago about Aviva announcing massive profits as more and more people are taking up private healthcare. It's like the public have given up on the NHS too.

I watched an episode of ambulance last night (new season) and a caller phoned in for an ambulance to be told there was currently a 9 hour wait!!!

Excluding the fact that if you can genuinely wait 9 hours for an ambulance you clearly don't need emergency medical assistance, but it just emphasises the pressure that the ambulance service is under.
 
Very simple, follow model similar to middle east.
Problem, they don't want to do that.
N.I cut will made pension funding an issue in the future. Rise in age I guess.
Which actually boils down to ‘they spend more on healthcare per person than we do’. The UAE who have the best healthcare in the region rely on a mixture of taxation and compulsory insurance and provide universal healthcare. The funding method might be different but the critical difference is expenditure and it is the same in basically every country in the world with better healthcare than the UK contrary to our government continual snipping by international standards the NHS delivers decent value for money and is significantly underfunded.
 
We are nudging our way to higher taxes and declining public services. We have an ageing population and it's political suicide to put taxes up, so here we are.

Hunt's NIC cut is essentially unfunded, Labour will have to find the money from some where when they come into power.
 
The glaringly obvious bit you are missing with your simplistic view is of course Govts can't control what external problems occur, but it's 100% in their control how they react to the problem.

That's what you judge them on.
Of course the government is ultimately responsible, as you put it, in the long term but they can't react to external factors as quickly as say the stock exchange which can react within minutes.
Yes the will get judged on their performance we all know that but as has been mentioned several times its more complicated than just this or that as an explanation
 
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So the 5th largest economy in the world can’t afford half decent public services wow the world is screwed!

We're 6th highest total gdp but 21st gdp per capita.

According to this data we're 14th highest on health spending per capita. So it seems to me that our health spending isn't out of whack with our overall wealth as a country. We have similar spending to France and Canada and more than Denmark, Austria, Netherlands, Australia.




Interesting how you suggest growth yet have no faith in the country’s economic growth, or at least not enough faith to invest in it with your pension.

I'm doing what everyone else is doing (align to global index) and what the pension experts recommend. It's not the fault of UK individuals that growth is poor it's because our country is crap compared to say the US.

According to this data, China and India have the highest GDP per capita growth rates over the last 10 years.


We are way down the list alongside other developed countries.
 
Agreed, but did the person actually survive the 9 hour wait?


I think the whole 9 hour wait thing is just the abulance services way of saying you don't really need an ambulance - it doesnt logically make sense that they can possibly know the next 9 hours of emergencies..

Never really understood the people that will wait rather than get a lift or a taxi - unless you literally cant move or are spraying blood everywhere seems crazy to wait. Although i suppose you dont then have to wait in the queue at A&E to be seen..
 
I think the whole 9 hour wait thing is just the abulance services way of saying you don't really need an ambulance - it doesnt logically make sense that they can possibly know the next 9 hours of emergencies..

Never really understood the people that will wait rather than get a lift or a taxi - unless you literally cant move or are spraying blood everywhere seems crazy to wait. Although i suppose you dont then have to wait in the queue at A&E to be seen..
They don't know from one minute to the next what jobs are coming in obviously, jobs are prioritised on need not time. So they will go to a cardiac arrest first, then down the list in order of priority. If you have had a gall and you are in no danger you will be classed as none urgent. Then put onto of that the number of calls that come in on a single shift. You could have no priority calls and loads of quick turnaround ones or the complete opposite of a major RTC combined with 20 cardiac arrests. Now put in this the hospital where they have to wait to hand over you get the 9hr waits(yes sometimes the system will break and sometimes a person gets missed).
 
The number of ambulance drivers and paramedics has dropped, when it should be increasing. N.I cut will damage the NHS, most lord's and some MPs have vested interest in private medical companies.
Yes, money should be going up in the NHS and other departments, but there is no qualified people to actually make good decisions, that's how our democracy works.

Of course they will have, they're human.
It's the I look after me and mine mentally.
 
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I think the whole 9 hour wait thing is just the abulance services way of saying you don't really need an ambulance - it doesnt logically make sense that they can possibly know the next 9 hours of emergencies..

While partly that, it's also staff who have been doing the job for X years who will have a decent idea of average demand, wait times etc. on certain days/times and be able to give an educated estimate based on the current situation and the caller's priority.

Unfortunately there simply aren't enough ambulances, and people are dying because of it.
 
While partly that, it's also staff who have been doing the job for X years who will have a decent idea of average demand, wait times etc. on certain days/times and be able to give an educated estimate based on the current situation and the caller's priority.

Unfortunately there simply aren't enough ambulances, and people are dying because of it.
Or in some cases wasting the ambulance services time(this also applies to the police and fireservice).
 
The son has said about regulars, but even though they know it's from a time waster they still have to attend

i think most of us working at the frontlines will have experiences about the ones with frequent flyer platinum miles
Back when I was working in gen med, there was this patient that was admitted nearly 150x in 9 months with recurrent "chest pain" only to find out that he would call the ambulance when he was having a tiff with his wife and just said he had chest pain so that he could go to A+E and not have to argue with his wife...
 
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