Starmer's speech 27th Aug 24

Iam64

Good post, David49. I met up with 3 good friends this week, retired teacher, senior nurse, social worker and entrepreneur who left school at 18 and built a business. We are comfortable as we all have work pensions. We agreed despite the obvious worries about pensioners on the edge who don’t qualify for WFA, there are many more like us who don’t need it. All 4 of us donated ours to charity.
The previous government did support the very wealthy. They failed to invest enough in or support our public services with the result being the grim task facing the new government.

Agreed. I'm not well off but don't need the WFA and want the money to go to public services that like the NHS benefit us older people, I just want to see the bar raised a bit for WFA.

J52. No.

ronib

MissAdventure I never did trust a man who couldn’t pay for his own clothes ….

Don’t the Royals get their formal clothes paid for by the state?

MissAdventure I never did trust a man who couldn’t pay for his own clothes ….

I wonder what gives the impression to some that Starmer is dangerous?

Good post, David49. I met up with 3 good friends this week, retired teacher, senior nurse, social worker and entrepreneur who left school at 18 and built a business. We are comfortable as we all have work pensions. We agreed despite the obvious worries about pensioners on the edge who don’t qualify for WFA, there are many more like us who don’t need it. All 4 of us donated ours to charity.
The previous government did support the very wealthy. They failed to invest enough in or support our public services with the result being the grim task facing the new government.

Rekarie

I'm amazed that anyone thinks Starmer is being a good PM.

Personally I think he's appalling. But of course we all have our own opinions.

As for a safe pair of hands. We shall see.

To me, he's dangerous. He's dangerous to his traditional voters.

I didn't like Rishi at all either.

I despair with most politicians of today.

I don’t understand this opinion, the nation has to pay its way we can’t expect others to pay for our lifestyle.

The policies are designed to reduce the payments made to the wealthy and make more money available for the poor and disadvantaged. There are going to be losers, there are millions that get WFA that don’t need it, they all want it of course which means 75% is wasted. If all benefits were means tested a massive amount of money would be available for other services, I’m a high taxpayer, the very last thing I want is that money being given to those that can manage perfectly well without it.

Labour are likely to increase taxes on the very wealthy, the multimillionaires that the Tories have been supporting for years. If they succeed the plans we have seen so far should produce a fairer society with better services.

I am pleased Starmer is in charge.
Strangely enough so am I, but it does not make me blind to his hypocrisy, or his twisting of the truth to make him look good. Nor does it make me unable to accept that he dies those things, or find excuses for them.

I'm amazed that anyone thinks Starmer is being a good PM.

Personally I think he's appalling. But of course we all have our own opinions.

As for a safe pair of hands. We shall see.

To me, he's dangerous. He's dangerous to his traditional voters.

I didn't like Rishi at all either.

I despair with most politicians of today.

The smoking ban actually originated from Rishi Sunak in April 2024

It was actually Rishi Sunak's plan :

Rishi Sunak's flagship smoking ban bill passes first hurdle despite cabinet opposition

Labour supports the prime minister's policy to phase out smoking. But several senior Tories, including former prime ministers and a senior cabinet minister, have opposed the government's plan."

16th April 2024 for details.
news.sky.com/story/rishi-sunaks-flagship-smoking-ban-bill-passes-first-hurdle-despite-cabinet-opposition-13116593

It was pushed very strongly for some time before that by Professor Chris Whitty, Chief Medical Officer (CMO) for England, the UK government’s Chief Medical Adviser and head of the public health profession.

So it had cross party support, and appeared as one of the bills proposed in the Kings Speech.

The details are as yet to be decided.

I dont think its a party political issue as there are mixed opinions in both parties as to what the bill should cover

Possibly, but the number of smokers has dropped significantly since the ban came in. You could well be right about existing addicts, but maybe fewer new ones will be recruited if people don’t keep going out for a smoke and leaving their friends on their own.

I used to have to walk through a wall of smoke at the doors of buildings at work, as lectures finished at the same time and people stood outside smoking before the next one. It was very bad for my asthma.

I’m not a fan of boiling health issues down to money, but I understand that smoking costs the NHS more than alcohol obesity and sedentary lifestyles put together, which will be the motive.

Nothing Labour has done so far makes me want to see them in power for the next five yeàrs and now no smoking outside please leave vapes alone !!! I dont want to fork out for smoking again vapes changed my life Banning smoking outside won't make a smoker less likely to smoke they will just smoke where they càn that's addiction

I agree with a lot of what you say, ILC. I hope that Starmer means what he says, and I believe that he does. I think he'd much rather have been able to make a more upbeat speech, but is simply unable to do what he's like to because of the state the country is in, but he will do his best to do as much as he can.

I am not supporting (and have never supported) the withdrawal of the WFP, as I am fundamentally against means-testing. It would have been much better to tax it back from higher rate taxpayers, as you say.

I also agree that public sector pay rises have been overdue, and am pleased to see them come in.

* Doodledog* said Nobody should be working for so little that they can't pay the rent because of greedy landlords. Nobody who has a job should be going to food banks - nobody on benefits should need them either. People shouldn't be pulling their own teeth out because they can't afford a dentist, or waiting years for a new knee or hip after paying NI for decades. We are still a rich country, not a third world one. If that means taxing people who are passing on more than a million pounds in IHT, or whatever else they think might happen in the budget, well, so be it."

I quite agree, I am just not that confident that austerity by any other name, or relying on the private sector alone to achieve "growth" is going to achieve that.
I just hope that when Starmer talks about broad shoulders baring the brunt, he actually means it.

The public sector pay rises are a good thing in my opinion. perhaps now nurses can stop using food banks and spend some money in their local economies, thus improving this much vaunted "growth" that Starmer is pinning his hopes on.

Rachel Reeves didn't have to take the winter fuel payment from all pensioners. She made a choice to do that. She could have at least just taken it from pensioners who were higher rate taxpayers. The Govt. is going to have to spend money now on a publicity campaign to encourage people to apply for pension credit, spend money assessing all the new claims and spend money to all the new successful claimants. I am not saying that everybody who can claim pension credit should not do so, just that perhaps she has lost the goodwill of so many people for not as much money as she anticipated.

The difference is that it was Sunak's government that (a) caused the 'black hole' and (b) lied about it/hid it.

I am pleased Starmer is in charge. He's not populist or charismatic, but so what? He does want to improve life for the average person. I don't think he wants to make things worse for those who have more than average, but if that has to happen, I'd rather that than drag more people into the abyss.

Nobody should be working for so little that they can't pay the rent because of greedy landlords. Nobody who has a job should be going to food banks - nobody on benefits should need them either. People shouldn't be pulling their own teeth out because they can't afford a dentist, or waiting years for a new knee or hip after paying NI for decades. We are still a rich country, not a third world one. If that means taxing people who are passing on more than a million pounds in IHT, or whatever else they think might happen in the budget, well, so be it.

She had to do it for the same reason that Sunak was going to do it. The reason Starmer disapproved of, remember?

👏👏

Siope

Thank you Doodledog. I do sometimes wonder if I’m down a rabbit hole…

Thank you Doodledog. I do sometimes wonder if I’m down a rabbit hole…

It’s a much bigger black hole than the pre-election financial position that the Tories shared showed. I thought that was quite clearly spelt out in all Reeves’ post-election briefings. It’s why she commissioned reviews, to understand the size of the deception.
It was very clearly spelt out, Siope. RR was furious when she announced the changes to the WFP, and explained why she had to do it.

And of course discovering it’s much bigger was going to change Labour’s spending decisions. It would be naive to think they’d do otherwise (because they’ve straitjacketed themselves with their bizarre self-imposed ‘rules’)

It’s a much bigger black hole than the pre-election financial position that the Tories shared showed. I thought that was quite clearly spelt out in all Reeves’ post-election briefings. It’s why she commissioned reviews, to understand the size of the deception.

This does not mean I approve of Labour’s overall fiscal strategy, btw, but it’s important to be clear about the position it comes from.