Some vg comments re this highly questionable way to tax working people and, as Matt said, another Tory manifesto breach!! Nothing new there! I'd add it's been a cunning exercise by Johnson that includes steamrolling colleagues (a poss Cabinet reshuffle eh!?), wrongfooting opponents and lashings of deceit. He leaked a worst-case NI funding scenario that clobbered the young and the poor, only to extend NI payments to working pensioners AND CUT THEIR PENSION INCREASE!!!
Somehow when everyone gets clobbered - THAT'S PORTRAYED AS FAIR IN THIS DOG-EAT-DOG SOCIETY!!!!!!!??? Then Johnson announced a shareholder tax to make it seem that the richest are funding this social care package thereby deflecting attention from the savage Conservative Party cocktail he has actually created, with higher NI contributions and lower Universal Credit rates for the poorest working age people.
He's getting plaudits for finally tackling the social care dilemma and is being cast (mostly by himself) as the saviour of the NHS - the noble successor to the progressive wartime Labour govt that first created the welfare state - beyond ridiculous TBF, as the slightest "scratch below the surface" proves. How can social care be funded by money put into the NHS??????? How can social care be saved now with money paid (maybe) later???? What precedent in history suggests an underfunded NHS will ever be able to hand back cash???? Why use National Insurance when even Jacob-Rees-Mogg points out income tax is far fairer and more stable (not that his Irish millions will be affected btw!!!).
And how does any of this tackle the fact that care homes are half-empty thanks to staff shortages caused by Brexit, extra Covid stress and chronically low pay. There was a recent article by Isobel Hartman in The Spectator that noted, "The workforce shortages that were already visible, pre-Covid, will take years to solve, not weeks. Quite!! Even commentators in the Tory-supporting press acknowledge this plan doesn't "stack up", but no point expecting them to explain why. England has an unfit for purpose semi-privatised "National" Health Service whose health boards are partly run by Virgin Health Care, whose hospital trusts are only solvent because their debt was written off during the pandemic and whose nursing staff was shamelessly fobbed off with a 1% pay rise till they threatened strike action and whose poorest customers pay £9.35p for a prescription (not in Scotland btw!), work in precarious contract free jobs and "enjoy" the worst sick pay rates in Europe!!! WELCOME TO BRITAIN'S BROKEN WELFARE STATE EH!! So can more cash fix it? Who but a born-again Tory believes that a PM presiding over a marketised health service shambles will ever devise a fair, workable and properly funded social care system? No-one in Scotland for obvious reasons!!
Somehow when everyone gets clobbered - THAT'S PORTRAYED AS FAIR IN THIS DOG-EAT-DOG SOCIETY!!!!!!!??? Then Johnson announced a shareholder tax to make it seem that the richest are funding this social care package thereby deflecting attention from the savage Conservative Party cocktail he has actually created, with higher NI contributions and lower Universal Credit rates for the poorest working age people. He's getting plaudits for finally tackling the social care dilemma and is being cast (mostly by himself) as the saviour of the NHS - the noble successor to the progressive wartime Labour govt that first created the welfare state - beyond ridiculous TBF, as the slightest "scratch below the surface" proves. How can social care be funded by money put into the NHS??????? How can social care be saved now with money paid (maybe) later???? What precedent in history suggests an underfunded NHS will ever be able to hand back cash???? Why use National Insurance when even Jacob-Rees-Mogg points out income tax is far fairer and more stable (not that his Irish millions will be affected btw!!!).
And how does any of this tackle the fact that care homes are half-empty thanks to staff shortages caused by Brexit, extra Covid stress and chronically low pay. There was a recent article by Isobel Hartman in The Spectator that noted, "The workforce shortages that were already visible, pre-Covid, will take years to solve, not weeks. Quite!! Even commentators in the Tory-supporting press acknowledge this plan doesn't "stack up", but no point expecting them to explain why. England has an unfit for purpose semi-privatised "National" Health Service whose health boards are partly run by Virgin Health Care, whose hospital trusts are only solvent because their debt was written off during the pandemic and whose nursing staff was shamelessly fobbed off with a 1% pay rise till they threatened strike action and whose poorest customers pay £9.35p for a prescription (not in Scotland btw!), work in precarious contract free jobs and "enjoy" the worst sick pay rates in Europe!!!
WELCOME TO BRITAIN'S BROKEN WELFARE STATE EH!! So can more cash fix it? Who but a born-again Tory believes that a PM presiding over a marketised health service shambles will ever devise a fair, workable and properly funded social care system? No-one in Scotland for obvious reasons!!