[hibeejim21]

Tories continue the wheeze of making people who don't vote for them pay through the nose to keep the system running at bare minimum, whilst their mates,votors and donors get away lightly, squirrelling their wealth away offshore. Robbing the country blind.

So unfair on the young and the low paid to be shouldering this, if it were an increase in income tax, scotland would not have been included and the tories could have taxed higher earners to pay for it.

Instead, they've lumped everyone in together and ultimately, the poorer and the young especially in the north are paying to subsidise middle class southern tory voters. Boris is 'levelling up' alright the chancing bastard.....Storing up massive problems for the future.

Steady on there, jim. You've just fallen into the trap of resorting to "lazy stereotypes" that you rightly have criticised others on here for. I get the hatred of the Tories, but don't let that get in the way of telling the whole truth. You probably realise that the NI increases apply to Tory voters as well as others and that older wage earners also shoulder the burden.

I've paid my taxes for the past 55 years and NI for 48 of those - the first 20 being when I was still young and I didn't think it was unfair. In my eyes I was investing for my future. Too many people want something for nothing, but if you want better social care, health services, education, police, etc you have to expect to pay for it. Of course, you also expect the government of the day to invest the extra money wisely for the benefit of the poorer among us and I'm not sure the Tories are to be trusted on this.

Well to be fair mate I'd gauge "too many people want something for nothing" as a bit of a lazy stereotype too. But i do get what you're saying. I still stand by the thrust of what I'm saying though.

This levies further taxes on working age adults (many on not very much all- it kicks in at £120/wk) and their employers. Some also about to lose £20/wk UC (40% of them in work) to go into the pot.

The point is that the wealthiest will pay bugger all or very little, whilst the poorest workers are paying more.

Also bear in mind that very, very few of those workers will ever have to sell their home to fund social care, because they'll never earn enough to own one in the first place.

The truth, of course, is that its wrong to increase NI because it is fundamentally a regressive tax. The higher your income, the less you pay as a proportion of that income. It also has no effect whatsoever on the unearned income that constitutes an ever increasing proportion of the income of the wealthy. Who overwhelmingly vote tory.

Funny that.