Why do things keep getting worse?

sazz1

I think Reform is our only hope for a better life here. We've had Conservative which was quite bad with so many strikes under Rishi and don't mention the havoc Liz Truss caused. Kier is really hopeless protests everywhere, mass illegal immigration, pensioners freezing without fuel allowance, private schools and uni fees up, tried to cut money for disabled, hundreds of businesses folding or leaving the UK and Rayner deputy PM doing Tax fraud. Also pensioners being arrested because they don't want Palestinian to suffer any longer.
Reform at least deserves a chance - can they really be any worse?

Yes, I think a Reform-led UK could be a lot worse!

However, I'm interested in what you think they would do to improve the situation.

Incidentally, the UK doesn't have mass illegal immigration or hundreds of thousands of freezing pensioners. IMO an increase in private school fees isn't a bad thing. Unis need a massive overhaul anyway. The most deserving disabled will have their benefits increased and there will be more security for them. I've written before that I actually think some disabled benefits need scrutinising.

I agree that there needs to be a new approach to businesses. IMO the increase in employers' NI was a huge mistake. We've had three recent threads about Angela Rayner and I'm not going to comment any further. Frankly, I hope Farage goes the same way because he deserves it.

The "Palestine Action" designation as a terror group is ridiculous and I hope it will be reversed. I can't see Reform being great supporters.

So what will Reform actually do to improve the state of the country? It would be helpful to know because they don't seem to have any policies - and I'd hate to think people wouldn't know what they're voting for.

varian

sazz1

I think Reform is our only hope for a better life here. We've had Conservative which was quite bad with so many strikes under Rishi and don't mention the havoc Liz Truss caused. Kier is really hopeless protests everywhere, mass illegal immigration, pensioners freezing without fuel allowance, private schools and uni fees up, tried to cut money for disabled, hundreds of businesses folding or leaving the UK and Rayner deputy PM doing Tax fraud. Also pensioners being arrested because they don't want Palestinian to suffer any longer.
Reform at least deserves a chance - can they really be any worse?

YES - much much worse _ just look at the USA where Fatage's hero Trump has destroyed the economy and reduced the country to the laughing stock of the world/

It is the richest Country.
By a wide margin.

David49

Weddingbelle123

Stop the billionaires hiding their wealth in the Cayman Islands!

You have to understand you can’t tell billionaires where to live, they can buy their way into almost any country they choose.
We should be encouraging them to invest in the UK, to a degree we do but no where near as much as our competitors, it has resulted in almost no technology or renewable industry.

Most of Europe is no better France and several others have serious economic problems, not enough is being invested in growth of the economy

Not that there is a whole heap of actual billionaires. 3,000 of them.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_number_of_billionaires

It depends on the number of lefty lawyers Farage recruits to his team surely?

sazz1

I think Reform is our only hope for a better life here. We've had Conservative which was quite bad with so many strikes under Rishi and don't mention the havoc Liz Truss caused. Kier is really hopeless protests everywhere, mass illegal immigration, pensioners freezing without fuel allowance, private schools and uni fees up, tried to cut money for disabled, hundreds of businesses folding or leaving the UK and Rayner deputy PM doing Tax fraud. Also pensioners being arrested because they don't want Palestinian to suffer any longer.
Reform at least deserves a chance - can they really be any worse?

YES - much much worse _ just look at the USA where Fatage's hero Trump has destroyed the economy and reduced the country to the laughing stock of the world/

Weddingbelle123

Stop the billionaires hiding their wealth in the Cayman Islands!

You have to understand you can’t tell billionaires where to live, they can buy their way into almost any country they choose.
We should be encouraging them to invest in the UK, to a degree we do but no where near as much as our competitors, it has resulted in almost no technology or renewable industry.

Most of Europe is no better France and several others have serious economic problems, not enough is being invested in growth of the economy

Jojo1950

Blair and Brown are to blame for all our troubles. Too arrogant to admit it.
Blair is a liar. He knows what he has done. Wasting money on an illegal war! Brown just wanted to be PM.
Foolish people wanting their little bit of power however it came. Brown lost us our pension savings. Never forgive him.

I agree up to a point as I think Blair and Brown did a great deal of damage.

I think that Thatcher, Cameron and Johnson are also to blame for many of today's problems.

I think Reform is our only hope for a better life here. We've had Conservative which was quite bad with so many strikes under Rishi and don't mention the havoc Liz Truss caused. Kier is really hopeless protests everywhere, mass illegal immigration, pensioners freezing without fuel allowance, private schools and uni fees up, tried to cut money for disabled, hundreds of businesses folding or leaving the UK and Rayner deputy PM doing Tax fraud. Also pensioners being arrested because they don't want Palestinian to suffer any longer.
Reform at least deserves a chance - can they really be any worse?

Weddingbelle123

Stop the billionaires hiding their wealth in the Cayman Islands!

They can just move Countries anyway, can they not?

Just read something about France saying Labour made a mistake by trying to tax the wealthy.
And the wealthy just got up and moved.

Stop the billionaires hiding their wealth in the Cayman Islands!

Blair and Brown are to blame for all our troubles. Too arrogant to admit it.
Blair is a liar. He knows what he has done. Wasting money on an illegal war! Brown just wanted to be PM.
Foolish people wanting their little bit of power however it came. Brown lost us our pension savings. Never forgive him.

Uschi

The videos by Gary Stevenson, which can be viewed on YouTube, are extremely interesting. He is a very brilliant economist and explains in simple terms the increasing wealth gap between the very rich and working people. His solution is to tax wealth not work but so far governments have been afraid to do it.

Gary Stevens has his limits. He understands how the wealthy are sucking up the country's wealth and how it is not only keeping the poor, poor, but is also affecting the middle classes.

This isn't exactly a new concept, Thomas Pikety, a
french economist who wrote a very thoroughly researched book on 'Capital', published in 2011, came to much the same conclusion.

The problem with Gary and Pikety is that they don't really understand how the national economy works, they're still pushing the 'taxes fund spending' myth and the fact that states with a sovereign currency create their own money and should be able to direct how it is to be used.

So they don't really have workable solutions to how wealth can redistributed more equably. In the last Stevenson video I watched Gary basically said just that. "I know what the problem is but I don't know how to solve it'.

More unorthodox economists could easily tell him....

Uschi

The videos by Gary Stevenson, which can be viewed on YouTube, are extremely interesting. He is a very brilliant economist and explains in simple terms the increasing wealth gap between the very rich and working people. His solution is to tax wealth not work but so far governments have been afraid to do it.

It just makes sense for the wealthy to bear the biggest burden when it comes to paying taxes, as well as big corporations, rather than evading said taxes, and makes absolutely no sense to keep hitting those who are just trying to make a decent living and struggling with hikes in stamp duty and extortionate bills.
Why should the many support the minority of wealthy people at the top of the tree.
Time to shake things up and get rid of suck-ups in government.

that instead of than in the last sentence.

Uschi

The videos by Gary Stevenson, which can be viewed on YouTube, are extremely interesting. He is a very brilliant economist and explains in simple terms the increasing wealth gap between the very rich and working people. His solution is to tax wealth not work but so far governments have been afraid to do it.

Lawyers get involved.
Smarter ones than employed by our governments.

Beginning to seem more and more than lawyers are the ones running the Uk.

The videos by Gary Stevenson, which can be viewed on YouTube, are extremely interesting. He is a very brilliant economist and explains in simple terms the increasing wealth gap between the very rich and working people. His solution is to tax wealth not work but so far governments have been afraid to do it.

A £200 million drone factory is being constructed in Mildenhall, Suffolk to make drones for Ukraine. 500 jobs will be created.
Of course, we’re now a legitimate target for Russia or do we conveniently ignore that point? Better or worse?

Allira

cc

Allira

fancythat

There used to be a time when man went out to work and woman kept house and kids.
Nowadays, to have any decent standard of living, both people need to work. And often get topped up by benefits.

I know which time of life I prefered.

When was that?
I remember my mother working.
Not full-time, admittedly and she was usually there for me or I went work with her.

I do have friends who never went back to work after having a family but somehow manage to have a higher State Pension than me 🤔

Yes, my sister has a higher "new" pension than I do despite the fact that I went back to work once my children were at school. She never worked after she met her husband.

People I know must have had their stamp paid somehow! They are on the old SP.

My friends stopped working for 7 and 10 years when they had children and get a higher (old) pension than me. They both had their stamp paid by the government called Home Responsibilities protection. (HRP)
Like CC I went back to work part time (11.30 - 2.30) when the children went to school but I paid the 'small' stamp until they went to senior school and then I paid the higher amount.
I was also raising my children and had 'Home Responsibilities' whilst juggling with that and work while they were at school, and had paid some NI.
My friends who stayed at home and paid nothing were able to be 'ladies who lunch' and other activities during school hours but they get the larger pension. How is this fair??
I did apply to HMRC recently to see if rules had changed and if I would qualify for HRP too but was advised that I was not eligible as I had paid the married women's NI

Brexit is the elephant in the room: Boris Johnson effectively bullied the media into propagating the nonsense that Brexit was a good thing. It has been an economic disaster. So many restaurants (now much more expensive) along with sectors like Care don't have enough staff. Added to this, Austerity was a disaster, robbing public services of valuable resources. One further addition to this disastrous brew was that Gordon Brown and Tony Blair bailed out the banks in 2008.

I think people in the UK have to realise they have voted in a lot of bullies and burks over the last 30+ years and this is the result.
Thatcher said "there is no such thing as society". Well, she succeeded there. Blair and his various privatised agendas, Cameron and the oddities who followed him. Johnson - well, need I say more? Starmer is no socialist to my mind and is just continuing their work.

Follow the money. It's big corporations not countries who rule the world. Parliamentary lobbying is vile and has partially created this. A direct line to government if you can and are willing to pay.
People dislike the BBC but watch GB News!
Follow the money! Who owns GB news?

So just like in the US - and other countries, these self-centered politicians have led us here. Sadly creating the perfect breeding ground for very rich snake-oil salesmen like Chump and Farage to pretend to be 'of the people' and possible get in.

Reform's "cut taxes, slash the welfare budget" means worse NHS, worse education, much more poverty.
But, it's OK, you have all got your country back.

There has been no responsibility for the lies about Brexit, the criminal goings-on during Covid, the influence on elections and referendoms by bad actors using AI.

Chump just changed the name of the Dept or Defence to ... Department of War. Think on!
Yes, if we keep on and on voting this way, it's next stop 1984.

Jeannied

Because of the idiots who voted Labour

What a naive, dismissive thing to say.

Plenty of people who are not idiots voted Labour. At the time it seemed the only way to put an end to 13 years of farcically incompetent Conservative government. I think it was often a case of better the devil you don't know.

David Cameron, Liz Truss, Boris Johnson. Memories seem to be very short.

Raising stamp duty was brutal and in one fell swoop prevented many from being able to afford to buy a house and has slowed the property market down to a standstill with property experts saying is the most stagnated property market for over a decade.

cc

I'm also in a lucky position, our life is fine though we are not as comfortably off as we had realistically expected to be.
I wouldn't mind paying more tax if it was a temporary measure based on our annual income - this is what happened in the UK in the 60's to the better off sections of society.
But when there is talk of taxing peoples' capital that is an altogether different story. Many of us have saved all our lives into pensions, ISAs and savings accounts and would not take it well if the government decided to attack our savings as we rely on them for our future living expenses after retirement.
We need to encourage people to downsize if possible to get the housing market moving for people who need to move and to release more money into the economy. The idea of adding stamp duty to sales will stifle this. The idea of CGT on our main homes will hopefully be a non-runner as it is far too complicated to administer, in view of capital spent on home improvements etc.
The economy needs to be run in a balanced way but the current ideas doing the rounds suggests that the government will mainly be going for those of us who have always saved and invested so that we can look after ourselves in our old age.
I appreciate that there are many in society who are unable to work and look after themselves, one of my children is amongst this number, and they are being hit very hard at the moment. There are however many who could work and look after themselves and their families but who do not.
The money being wasted by Ed Milliband and his ilk could also be put to better use.

There is a plan for a completely new type of property tax, that is only paid after a property has been sold and if it’s over a certain value. It would replace stamp duty. There are some issues with it, but I thought it was quite a good idea.

As far as your point that the government are ‘coming for our pensions and savings’, I have heard a few people say this but I have no idea what it’s based on and it doesn’t seem to relate to any proposals or even suggestions from the current government. But the fact that the tax thresholds have not been raised for such a long time (by successive administrations) means that the population of pension age are paying much more tax.

The Conservatives made a lot of retaining the triple lock, but reduced national insurance contributions, thus reducing the overall tax burden on people in work. At the same time the tax concession on small amounts of dividend income was reduced. So, as pensions have risen, the tax burden on pensioners has increased signficantly, but goes largely unrecognised.

TanaMa If only it were that simple. It is becoming increasingly difficult for some people to find work for various reasons.

I know there are people who choose not to work but there are also many people out there who are not sick or disabled and are only too willing to work.

I never had to claim unemployment benefit as I was very lucky to be in a job throughout my 40 year working life. I put this down entirely to luck not virtue on my part.

Unemployment can happen to anyone.

I think that they voluntarily paid NI at a basic rate to cover the time they were not working once their children reached 18. If I'd been a couple of years younger my pension would have also have been "new" and I'd have received more. So irritating!