So again, Niko, before you have a go. I have no problem with there being some sort of death duties. I just don’t think it should be exclusively for those who get sick as they get older. It should be for everyone who is rich.
It should be run by the government. It must not involve private companies making vast amounts of money, and it shouldn’t ever mean that people who are starting to get sick will wish themselves dead before they have had time to spend the legacy that they thought they were leaving to their kids.
My concern is all about the universality of social security and the welfare state.
Anyway, it’s been fun watching “strong and stable” become “weak and wobbly”.
MUNGUIN'S NEW REPUBLIC 
Tris
Squeckie bum time for mayhem as the s close and it starts to get interesting. Hung parliament would be so interesting, would they let the Tories win to keep the snp out, you bet they would. This policy is a huge own goal and she looks weak for changing her mind when she has been trying to play all Thatcher in us. Bring it on.
Bruce
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Of course, we can see, as we look back that she has changed her mind on various occasions.
That article that Douglas linked to on the last post gave several examples.
She’s weak and wobbly, inarticulate, slow of thought, and utterly unpersonable.
I would love to see her lose seats rather than gain them.
She makes Cameron look half way competent.
I was kinda amused by the headlines in the Evening Standard. It seems she really should have been a little less unkind to George Osborne. Oh boy, has he got it in for her?
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Tris
Sorry for the typos, on phone.
Bruce
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I’ve rarely got that excuse, Bruce 🙂
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I really don’t understand the Tories thought process, ever, with this idea.
The economy is based on the housing market, one of the big drivers of that market has to be the legacy factor; if you know there is going to be a greatly reduced or zero legacy from your home ownership, surely that would make you baulk at buying.
Thus rendering the whole housing market, and hence the economy, impotent. Putting 1000’s of building workers on the dole, not that we the self-employed get any dole, and 100,000s of homeowners in to negative equity.
And these economic imbeciles want us to trust them to run the economy, and get the dealiest deal, of deals ever to be dealt, from Brussels because of their self inflicted Brexit.
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It beggars belief, but someone on Twitter just pointed out that the largest insurance company dealing with this kind of business, happens to be a part of the Mr May’ sphere of influence.
Maybe that explains something.
I can’t imagine why anyone thinks they have any economic credibility. For 7 years they have been practising austerity and at the end of it the debt is doubled (and then some).
Other countries in the same sort of mess as we were… Ireland and Iceland, even the USA, are in a far far better position now than we are.
And once the hell that is Brexit bites (particularly if this woman gets to run it in her weak and wobbly way) heaven knows what will happen.
And the utterly damnable thing is that she will have cut off any escape we might have had to go and live in Europe.
So we’ll be stuck here.
Still, Buckingham Palace is being done up at a cost of around half a billion, so that’s OK.
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The premiums would likely be massive, the housing market would crash quicker than a Tory “leader” being interviewed.
We’d need to build council housing on a grand scale again, no bad thing IMO. We should, and to some extent are in Scotland, be building high quality social housing on a grand scale.
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We’re doing quite a bit in Dundee, and I have to say they look great. A bit Norwegian/Icelandic is style. Lovely.
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So – no more “from the cradle to the grave”
It is now from the cradle until you start to cost the state too much to justify taking care of you. Next they will be saying that you have to pay for your care from birth until you start earning so as well as student loans for your education you will need to think of paying back upbringing healthcare costs, no doubt the financial service providers will have loans packages available to do this.
That should ensure a debt liability from the cradle to the grave. AKA slavery.
Meantime no expense spared to retain the monarchy and the Lords, fund wars in far off and not so far off places, bail out banks and bankers and stack up eyewatering levels of debt in doing so.
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Well, that’s how it seems to me.
You only get penalised for being rich, mind, if you get sick. People who are well until they drop dead will be fine.
Truth is, you don’t have to be rich. Who has a house that is worth less than £100,000? Even in Dundee, hardly a place of great wealth, only relatively small houses come in cheaper than that.
Next, it will be pensions that will be means tested. And at that point, people will start to ask why on earth they should pay for a pension they will never get.
What next? Hospital treatment?
OK. She doesn’t, at the moment make the rules about Scotland, but who knows in the future… and what about funding based on English costs?
Still, as you say, at least our betters are well looked after.
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My house is only worth around £60,000, on a good day. But in 5, 10 to 20 years time, who knows?
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I guess it depends on the part of Scotland you are in… or rather the part of Britain.
Clearly in Edinburgh, Aberdeen, Glasgow etc, prices will be higher.
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I doubt you can get a box room for £100,000 in London.
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Of course, the logical thing would be to borrow the value of the house and just blow it before the bastards take it off you anyway. Interest rates are pitifully low. Might be best to take an interest only loan and party like there really is no tomorrow.
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It would seem sensible. You pay your national insurance to be looked after.
You pay your mortgage for a house.
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What!
You are making a distinction there, the fact, it seems to me is that we paid the ‘nice’ tax because we were investing in our health and our future. That was what NI was supposed to be about. One would have reasonably expected it to be invested in a way that it could have been self sufficient, earning enough to support the National Health Service, and Pensions until such times as the Sun melts the Earth. Was that not why we contributed? Or at least, told that that was why we contributed?
The reality is that the ‘nice’ tax has been ripped off and joined with income, VAT and the rest of it, in a pool of idiocy.
Frankly, I doubt that any UK government are anything other than a parcel of rogues. Correct me if I am wrong, but Gordon Brown extended this lunacy, giving us the blessed PFI where we, as individuals, pay for his ludicrous sell out to capitalism? And, before that, there was the British National Oil Corporation based in Glasgow, that the wonderful lunatic that was Margaret Thatcher sold to the highest bidder.
You couldn’t trust a Tory, in fact you couldn’t trust a Scot (c.f. Gordon Brown)
And we now have Theresa May
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Yes. Exactly. You pay NI, you get care when you need it.
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Strong and stable to weak and wobbly if re-elected
Nasty and vindictive .
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Beats me how anyone can see leadership in her. She’s just bossy and opinionated.
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She Mrs May imagined the Plebs would give up thier
Pot of gold….But they behaved
Just like any filthy rich city type and she decided ignominious retreat was the only way out …..But as in much of English history tried to rewrite the defeat as a glorious and planned for victory .
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No one want to give up their pot of gold, but part of the “Englishman’s home is his castle” was that you bought a house, looked after it, did the garden, did DIY and when you dies, instead of having money, you passed on your house. In the last 25 years in particular the ever growing value of the house made it an investment.
In the end of course you have to give up some of the value of it. No one knows which of us will get sick or at what time in life we will need some kind of care.
But I think that that care should come out of taxation. And if that means putting taxes up, then so be it.
But taxes for all.
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I always thought (naively as it turns out) that when paying NI you had entered into a contract with the state i.e. You worked, handed over the cash and they undertook to look after you if you became ill, disabled, old or infirm. The state pension on its own was always just barely liveable but it kept the wolf from the door.
Now I find that they can breach the terms of that contract almost at a whim whilst simultaneously handing over umpteen billions to their corporate pals to ‘stimulate growth’.
It beats me why they want to bring back fox hunting when fleecing the public seems to be so much more fun.
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Good one.
But, as you say, however much fun the toffs get from having dogs trained to tear a fox to pieces, it doesn’t bring in money like ripping off sick people.
So why not get a big strong and stable majority and do both.
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