[spireitematt]

The Tories have been in 11 years and they are only fixing it now?? They blame Labour and say 'well where is your plan?' Do they understand that they are in Government and that Labour are in opposition?

They said in there 2019 manifesto that there would be no increases in N.I or any taxes and they said the same thing in January 2021 yet they've gone back on their word and they've put up N.I which is the biggest tax increase since WW2, yet lambasted Corbyn and Labour in 2019 when they said they wanted to put up tax for earners over £80,000. Johnson said no one will have to sell their homes but they will though. Anyone with savings or assets of over £23,000 will have to pay social care and the limit they said anyone would have to pay is £86,000 but 1 in 7 people will have to pay £100,000 or more. So when someone is taken into care and they pass away the £86,000 will be deducted from the sale of the house which will go to the council or Government which means people cannot pass on houses to their children or grandchildren. Also the £86,000 does not include accommodation or food that costs extra.

The Tories could have paid for this by making multi-national companies pay more tax, the one's who have made millions and billions profit during 2020.

[ritchiebaby]

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.

[0762]

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!!

[spireitematt]

None of it adds up though. By increasing National Insurance contributions they are hoping to raise £36 billion over 3 years and then when we hit 2024 (election year) the contributions will go back to 12%. The £36 billion, £5.4 billion of that will go into social care but where is the other £30.6 billion going? The whole point of National Insurance is it's meant to be for pensions and the NHS etc and because it isn't ring fenced when it should be then they could use the money for something else. It is time now the NHS was stopped being used as political football and became independent and a cross party committee sat down and worked it out, it badly needs reform as does the welfare state.

Been in for 11 years and they've made a mess with Brexit and the Covid pandemic. It's come out that exports from Britain to Germany are down by 11% and that we are not Germany's top 10 trading partner anymore like we were for 50 years but imports from Germany are up by 2.6% so we are importing more from Germany then we are exporting to Germany which will hurt small and medium sized businesses, this is before we even have a trade deal with the EU, then there is the Irish border to sort out as well. A lot of people seem to think that Brexit is done and dusted but it isn't far from it and they are going to get a big shock come 31st December when the transition period with the EU comes to an end and we don't have a trade deal. A lot of the World has shortages due to the Covid pandemic etc but we can't blame everything on Covid, a lot of it has to do with Brexit and piss poor planning from the Tories. They put on the side of the big red bus that we would save £350m a week and we could put that into the NHS but where is it? It turns out that we are losing £800m a week and it's cost £200 billion in total.

A lot of voters only seem to care now that the National Insurance increase will affect them but they weren't angry about austerity, children going hungry, they weren't angry about the Covid deaths or when the Government lied to us several times. It was the 'I'm alright Jack' attitude, as long as they were doing ok and that it didn't affect them then they didn't care about anyone else and it's an extremely selfish attitude and outlook to have. I didn't vote for Brexit even though I have eurosceptic views about the EU and the reason I didn't vote for it because I didn't trust Johnson and what they were saying and will never trust a Tory, I knew that they weren't going to give £350m a week to the NHS but some people fell for it.

[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.

[hibeejim21]

None of it adds up though. By increasing National Insurance contributions they are hoping to raise £36 billion over 3 years and then when we hit 2024 (election year) the contributions will go back to 12%. The £36 billion, £5.4 billion of that will go into social care but where is the other £30.6 billion going? The whole point of National Insurance is it's meant to be for pensions and the NHS etc and because it isn't ring fenced when it should be then they could use the money for something else. It is time now the NHS was stopped being used as political football and became independent and a cross party committee sat down and worked it out, it badly needs reform as does the welfare state.

Been in for 11 years and they've made a mess with Brexit and the Covid pandemic. It's come out that exports from Britain to Germany are down by 11% and that we are not Germany's top 10 trading partner anymore like we were for 50 years but imports from Germany are up by 2.6% so we are importing more from Germany then we are exporting to Germany which will hurt small and medium sized businesses, this is before we even have a trade deal with the EU, then there is the Irish border to sort out as well. A lot of people seem to think that Brexit is done and dusted but it isn't far from it and they are going to get a big shock come 31st December when the transition period with the EU comes to an end and we don't have a trade deal. A lot of the World has shortages due to the Covid pandemic etc but we can't blame everything on Covid, a lot of it has to do with Brexit and piss poor planning from the Tories. They put on the side of the big red bus that we would save £350m a week and we could put that into the NHS but where is it? It turns out that we are losing £800m a week and it's cost £200 billion in total.

A lot of voters only seem to care now that the National Insurance increase will affect them but they weren't angry about austerity, children going hungry, they weren't angry about the Covid deaths or when the Government lied to us several times. It was the 'I'm alright Jack' attitude, as long as they were doing ok and that it didn't affect them then they didn't care about anyone else and it's an extremely selfish attitude and outlook to have. I didn't vote for Brexit even though I have eurosceptic views about the EU and the reason I didn't vote for it because I didn't trust Johnson and what they were saying and will never trust a Tory, I knew that they weren't going to give £350m a week to the NHS but some people fell for it.

All the chickens are going to come home to roost this winter.

[theo_luddite]

One or two might also be noticing empty supermarket shelves. Then again, probably not. They mostly flipped to home delivery last year, and in many cases their need for a year's supply of bog roll in a week surpassed their ability to store it. They've not been to Asda/Morrisons/Sainsbugs for over a year, so they've no idea why their fave fizzy organic bottled water is being replaced with Domestos or generic washing up liquid. Perhaps they should get out more?

[hibeejim21]

Don't know about you guys but up here I'm noticing limited choice of certain products from before. And more "out of stock" labels.

I don't think were going to starve but its definitely becoming an issue, not just with supermarkets either.

[ritchiebaby]

Very true, jim, but I've not noticed any great difference in fresh foods. It's more noticeable in frozen foods and general household items and the centre aisle in my local Aldi has been decimated. I'm sure there will not be any improvement over the next month or so.

I'm beginning to sound like my mother of 40 years ago!

[spireitematt]

Boris Johnson has outlined he wants 10 more years in charge and that levelling up will take 10 more years. He wants to go on longer than Thatcher. He's also trying to frame the 2024 election around Britain's relationship with the EU and levelling up the country.

If the Tories and Johnson go on for another 10 years there will be literally nothing left.