news & politics:discussion

[steviewevie]

Telegraph not happy.

[efcfanwirral]

Can someone explain why I'm supposed to be furious that a problem (nhs capacity in the times of covid needs to be higher or we risk regular restrictions) has been given a solution (more money via taxation). Where else do people think the money will come from? Why should the government not take decisions like this just to avoid being a little bit like Labour? I really don't get it

[steviewevie]

8 minutes ago, efcfanwirral said:

Can someone explain why I'm supposed to be furious that a problem (nhs capacity in the times of covid needs to be higher or we risk regular restrictions) has been given a solution (more money via taxation). Where else do people think the money will come from? Why should the government not take decisions like this just to avoid being a little bit like Labour? I really don't get it

Who said you're supposed to be furious?

[efcfanwirral]

53 minutes ago, steviewevie said:

Who said you're supposed to be furious?

Hehe you know what I mean - the almost universal outrage in the press telling people the right way to think (in the words of Dale Mailey) 

[maelzoid]

1 hour ago, efcfanwirral said:

Can someone explain why I'm supposed to be furious that a problem (nhs capacity in the times of covid needs to be higher or we risk regular restrictions) has been given a solution (more money via taxation). Where else do people think the money will come from? Why should the government not take decisions like this just to avoid being a little bit like Labour? I really don't get it

Don’t be a c**t, yeah.

[steviewevie]

7 hours ago, efcfanwirral said:

Hehe you know what I mean - the almost universal outrage in the press telling people the right way to think (in the words of Dale Mailey) 

Yeah well I guess this goes very much against the Conservative position of the last 40 odd years. Also, he did blatantly break a manifesto pledge but the pandemic gets him a get out of jail card with that I think. And you could argue there are fairer ways of getting the money, income tax for example, but they have made a few changes to appease that. In the end the NHS does need the money, but so does social care and will they end up diverting the money to social like they said they're going to. So, will probably pass through commons pretty easily.

[steviewevie]

This from New Statesman's Stephen Bush morning email thing...

Good morning. The government will increase National Insurance from 12 per cent to 13.25 per cent next year to… do what, exactly? The headline that Boris Johnson wants (and, with a few exceptions in today’s papers, the headline he has got) is that the money is to fix the social care crisis and to reform social care.  

But if you look at the rest of what he, Rishi Sunak and Sajid Javid are saying, then the one thing that the government has not done is provide the money to fix the crisis and to reform social care.  

Instead, it has hiked taxes in order to spend more money on reducing waiting times in the National Health Service, laid out a broad set of principles about what the balance between the state and private individuals should be in paying for social care, and invented a new way to increase income tax through the so-called health and social care levy, which will come into being as a separate line on payslips from the 2023 tax year. (“So-called” because the costs of health and social care are far in excess of what the levy raises: just like National Insurance, it’s another tool for the Treasury to increase income tax without saying it is increasing income tax.)   

Politically speaking, Johnson is surely right to believe that mounting NHS waiting times (which were constantly getting longer before the pandemic and are significantly worse now) are a bigger problem for the government today than the social care crisis. But that’s the biggest reason to be dubious about claims that the money for fixing social care is going to come from yesterday’s tax hike: at no point in British political history has money from the NHS been taken back out of it and redirected to elsewhere in the British state, and it seems unlikely, to put it mildly, that we are going to start in three years’ time. So the money for social care will have to come from somewhere else, whether it’s more borrowing, taxes elsewhere, or, the most likely alternative in my view, a big I-can’t-believe-it’s-not-income-tax increase to the health and social care levy.  

There are a couple of risks to that approach: the first is that this plan depends on the social care system limping on in its present state, unnoticed by most people, for the next three years. It’s possible that the pressures on social care, the ongoing cuts to local authority budgets, and the ever-growing number of people of all ages in need of social care won’t cause a major crisis before 2023. But it’s equally possible that the problem becomes more acute the wrong side of the next election.  

The second risk is that the broken manifesto promise and the reality that, for all the talk of ending austerity, the rest of the parliament is going to be one in which spending restraint continues, gives the government a reputation for shiftiness: for breaking its promises and failing to deliver. The comparison that Johnson’s inner circle and the Treasury have kept making is to Gordon Brown’s increase in National Insurance following the 2001 election. The equally important part of Brown’s tax increase is that he didn’t need to do the same thing in 2003, and that by 2005, the NHS was, visibly, in a better state of repair than it had been in 2001.  

The big bet that Johnson is making is that, when the next election rolls around, the United Kingdom will feel and look like a country where the crisis in health and social care is being addressed, even if it isn’t really, and even if the difficult decisions are still being put off and the actual task of fixing social care has been kicked into the next parliament. 

[maelzoid]

9 hours ago, maelzoid said:

Don’t be a c**t, yeah.

Sorry, I had a few shandies in me when I typed this.

But the outrage is coming from the fact that the tories are choosing to raise a tax which affects low earners the most while the rich are proportionally less affected. 

There are so many other ways that the funds could be raised that would be more equitable, ie. increasing income tax, increasing inheritance tax, or increasing the upper threshold for NI would be better for low earners.

The idea of labelling it for the NHS is a swizz. NHS and social care spending historically comes form general taxation. By saying the raise pays for this it makes it sound good, but the reality is just an increase in tax and an increase in spending. By removing the burden of the NHS from the general tax fund, they are now free to spend that money on what they want, rather than cutting spending elsewhere. If for example they suggested an increase in NI to pay for trident or overseas aid, people would really be up in arms, but the net result is exactly the same.

[efcfanwirral]

10 hours ago, maelzoid said:

Don’t be a c**t, yeah.

 

29 minutes ago, maelzoid said:

Sorry, I had a few shandies in me when I typed this.

But the outrage is coming from the fact that the tories are choosing to raise a tax which affects low earners the most while the rich are proportionally less affected. 

There are so many other ways that the funds could be raised that would be more equitable, ie. increasing income tax, increasing inheritance tax, or increasing the upper threshold for NI would be better for low earners.

The idea of labelling it for the NHS is a swizz. NHS and social care spending historically comes form general taxation. By saying the raise pays for this it makes it sound good, but the reality is just an increase in tax and an increase in spending. By removing the burden of the NHS from the general tax fund, they are now free to spend that money on what they want, rather than cutting spending elsewhere. If for example they suggested an increase in NI to pay for trident or overseas aid, people would really be up in arms, but the net result is exactly the same.

Fair enough- I'm lucky enough to be able to afford it. Maybe it should've been a minimum threshold of some kind. Wasn't taxing dividends a good thing at least? 

[maelzoid]

A pretty low-stake bet then... amiright?!

[maelzoid]

Just now, efcfanwirral said:

Wasn't taxing dividends a good thing at least? 

Yes, it was.

[steviewevie]

 

[steviewevie]

A lot of tory MPs are very much against this tax rise, but when it comes down to it they get behind Johnson and cheer him to the rafters in the commons and Starmer and labour are all lost. They do party unity so well.

[Ryan1984]

I was going to ask how was PMQs but I envision it was a full Tory chamber being loud and boisterous, cheering every lie while questions were ignored?

Pretty much like every other Wednesday.

[Gingerfish79]

Even when the Tories offer Starmer and Labour a free shot they go all 'England in a penalty shoot-out' and balls it up. Starmer really needs to go, he cant lay a glove on BJ and he must surely realise that now. He should jump now so that there is time for somebody else to make an impact before the election, which if BJ's advisors have any sense will be sooner rather than later.

[steviewevie]

14 minutes ago, Gingerfish79 said:

Even when the Tories offer Starmer and Labour a free shot they go all 'England in a penalty shoot-out' and balls it up. Starmer really needs to go, he cant lay a glove on BJ and he must surely realise that now. He should jump now so that there is time for somebody else to make an impact before the election, which if BJ's advisors have any sense will be sooner rather than later.

I can't see him going until after the next election at the earliest....expecially as there doesn't seem to be anyone obvious who could replace him.

[steviewevie]

17 minutes ago, Gingerfish79 said:

Even when the Tories offer Starmer and Labour a free shot they go all 'England in a penalty shoot-out' and balls it up. Starmer really needs to go, he cant lay a glove on BJ and he must surely realise that now. He should jump now so that there is time for somebody else to make an impact before the election, which if BJ's advisors have any sense will be sooner rather than later.

plus, I mean Starmer has criticised using ni and breaking manifesto pledges etc. And is going to vote against later. What else can they do? they can offer an alternative plan, but then that just leaves them open for it to be pulled apart, so they can just pledge to pay for it with a fairier taxing strategy. They've also criticised it for not fixing social care. But, does any of this cut through? Not really. Tories have a comfortable majority in parliament, Johnson and his govt are still pretty popular, and don't think this will change that despite what the telegraph says. Labour is so divided, and the divide between Corbynite left and Blairite centre is huge, and any leader has to somehow appeal to both sides, which is kind of impossible. Without Scotland, and without N England, they're fucked, and that isn't changing anytime soon no matter who's in charge (cue Burnham for leader).

[mattiloy]

2 minutes ago, steviewevie said:

the divide between Corbynite left and Blairite centre is huge, and any leader has to somehow appeal to both sides, which is kind of impossible. Without Scotland, and without N England, they're fucked, and that isn't changing anytime soon no matter who's in charge (cue Burnham for leader).

Some ideological differences might have been reconcilable but for the intolerance of the New Labour mob and their puppet Starmer.

Not even sure they’d allow Burnham to stand at this point. The prospect of handing over control of the party again, this time permanently, is something I guess they wouldn’t be keen on.

[steviewevie]

1 minute ago, mattiloy said:

Some ideological differences might have been reconcilable but for the intolerance of the New Labour mob and their puppet Starmer.

Not even sure they’d allow Burnham to stand at this point. The prospect of handing over control of the party again, this time permanently, is something I guess they wouldn’t be keen on.

Not sure Burnham is that left wing, he'd definitely like to be leader though. I guess he's got that nice northern accent and a bit of phwoar factor.

[mattiloy]

10 minutes ago, steviewevie said:

Not sure Burnham is that left wing, he'd definitely like to be leader though. I guess he's got that nice northern accent and a bit of phwoar factor.

His leadership bid in 2015 was well to the left of Starmer. Think he’s likely to be more convinced of interventions after his years as Manchester mayor.

I do wonder where he is on immigration. Whatever one’s opinions on it, polling consistently shows the uk want more controls and the regeneration of centre left parties in the west (Denmark/New Zealand) seems to have been achieved by left economics and tighter restrictions on immigration. I think that is probably the key to any electoral success for Labour. 

Edited September 8, 2021 by mattiloy

[steviewevie]

7 minutes ago, mattiloy said:

His leadership bid in 2015 was well to the left of Starmer. Think he’s likely to be more convinced of interventions after his years as Manchester mayor.

I do wonder where he is on immigration. Whatever one’s opinions on it, polling consistently shows the uk want more controls and the regeneration of centre left parties in the west (Denmark/New Zealand) seems to have been achieved by left economics and tighter restrictions on immigration. I think that is probably the key to any electoral success for Labour. 

They'll never outdo the tories on immigration.

Plus, there are a whole bunch of labour supporters they would then lose.

But...doesn't brexit make immigration less of a hot issue now? Now it's all about illegal assylum seekers, send them back etc.

Edited September 8, 2021 by steviewevie

[fraybentos1]

7 minutes ago, mattiloy said:

His leadership bid in 2015 was well to the left of Starmer. Think he’s likely to be more convinced of interventions after his years as Manchester mayor.

I do wonder where he is on immigration. Whatever one’s opinions on it, polling consistently shows the uk want more controls and the regeneration of centre left parties in the west (Denmark/New Zealand) seems to have been achieved by left economics and tighter restrictions on immigration. I think that is probably the key to any electoral success for Labour. 

Did he not just shift left as soon as Corbs was seen as a contender? Also Starmer's leadership bid was pretty lefty too nah? The ten pledges etc.

If Labour get too strict on the immigration stuff I cannot even imagine how much people like Owen Jones, Ash Shakar etc would start weeping.

[steviewevie]

8 minutes ago, mattiloy said:

His leadership bid in 2015 was well to the left of Starmer. Think he’s likely to be more convinced of interventions after his years as Manchester mayor.

Starmer's leadership bid was well to the left of Starmer! (maybe). If Burnham was just a left wing hero Corbyn wouldn't have stood.

[mattiloy]

Just now, steviewevie said:

They'll never outdo the tories in immigration.

They don’t really need to. They can outdo them in other areas.
 

If he’s willing to attack the ineffectiveness and the (in)humanity of their policy, he can challenge them. He can frame it as an economic problem, about wages and public services, and an overseas development problem, rather than joining the culture war. If he ignores it or takes a liberal stance, he’ll lose.

[steviewevie]

1 minute ago, mattiloy said:

They don’t really need to. They can outdo them in other areas.
 

If he’s willing to attack the ineffectiveness and the (in)humanity of their policy, he can challenge them. He can frame it as an economic problem, about wages and public services, and an overseas development problem, rather than joining the culture war. If he ignores it or takes a liberal stance, he’ll lose.

I get it, I really do....but might mean people pay for it...which maybe a lot of people will not like.