To think there is no more money?

I totally agree. Get them volunteering and then into work. Help them go walks in green spaces and go swimming or to the gym. Our current approach to mental health does not work and it is parents who need to fix it for young people, not the NHS. The NHS should be helping those with the most severe mental health problems.

The evidence for treatment of most mental health diagnoses is poor. The explosion of mental health drugs and professionals has worsened outcomes, not improved them. A mental health label can be incredibly damaging to a young person. The vast majority of young people with a mental health label need social connection and meaningful activity not drugs or therapy. This can be provided through quality work with protections for employees from exploitation. Reduce migration, provide more apprenticeships and vocational training, make sure they are paid well. Make our economy an attractive place for high skilled workers. Invest in good infrastructure for all like council gyms and parks. Mental health will improve.

Eligibility for Attendance Allowance

You can get Attendance Allowance if you’ve reached State Pension age and the following apply (unless you might have 12 months or less to live):

• you have a physical disability (including sensory disability, for example blindness), a mental disability (including learning difficulties), or both
• your disability is severe enough for you to need help caring for yourself or someone to supervise you, for your own or someone else’s safety
• you have needed that help for at least 6 months

You give them details of your disability or medical condition and medical contact details. The assessors contact the medics. These are people who usually have loads of medical evidence and fairly often care assessment plans in place.
I would guess that most people getting Attendance Allowance need far more daily care than most people getting PIP. These are usually people who can't survive without a carer coming in.

This.

Military, wasteful Covid expenses, Tory interacts offered to friends... always money for those things

Don’t know about the first bit.

But the part about the right wing media is horseshit. There’s also left-wing media and neutral mass media (all the broadcasters). And then there’s online: that’s where Labour has been very successful in its relentless campaigns of falsehoods.

I particularly admire the lies and brass neck of Labour about Covid spending. All topped off with this bogus ‘Corruption’ Commisioner.

@Eart they were installed, that costs.

AA is the equivalent of DLA or PIP for elderly people. It is awarded to people who need help to eat, dress, wash, and get out of bed. It is usually easier to get as the people getting it are usually being discharged from hospital and have had hospital care assessments, so there is lots of evidence or lots of other evidence. I do not know anyone who has got it who does not already have significant medical involvement. My FIL got it from the hospital care assessment paperwork.

There is plenty of money.

It's just misspent

Somebody locally put in a FOI request about new wooden sunloungers installed by the council. £5500 for large ones £3500 for small ones.

They were wooden sundowners that could be knocked up for £200.

That's why there's 'no money'

AA is awarded to help with carers. If it was means tested I think we would just get more hospital admissions.

I agree. It's ridiculous to claim AA when you've got hundreds of thousands in the bank. And people do because I know them!

Paying lots of taxes doesn't mean you should try and scrape some of them back. It's about ability to pay not about levelling out.

What a load of shit. In work benefits were designed to encourage people into work who would otherwise be caught in a benefits trap. It was not designed to make people dependent on the state to ensure Labour would constantly be in power.

Although those in power on the right have bought up most of the media. They've also done a lot of scaremongering over the years: if you don't vote for us you'll be taxed to within an inch of your life, you'll pay huge inheritance taxes (despite the fact that most estates are not big enough to even be taxed as there are huge allowances).

That is why we have a minimum wage, that should be higher.

Companies ultimately pay the least possible to workers they can get away with, in order to maximise profits and compete. It's called capitalism. Within companies, top level gets many times the ratio of the majority middle and bottom layer, masqueraded as "talent retention" or competitiveness.

The shoddiness of public-private contracts money merry go rounds have messed up everything further, reducing social security safety nets and created little pockets of wealth in public services, whether in housing, council services, NHS or education. Work is highly disintermediated from wealth-building and saving.

Tories have made an absolute convuluted mess that any party will struggle to disentangle and clean up.

So it is easier to take on workers and their savings, with all sorts of nuances to make it seem like they are not attacking... 98% of the population.

I'd be very disappointed if Labour imposes a pension tax and disincentivise ordinary workers more, including the very large middle class population in the country.

If Amazon paid ALL those working within and for it, an extra pound per hour then it would be bankrupt! Just do the Maths! The owner could give up his profits but all the staff would be barely any better off and would still be claiming benefits!

I did an analysis of Tesco's accounts once a few years ago. If their profits were zeroised and all staff were paid a bonus, it would have worked out something like a pound per week, and without profits, there'd be no investment, development, etc., so the firm would be crippled and ultimately collapse - for £1 per worker per week! The profit "per store" was actually pretty similar to the profit made by smaller/independent stores on a size basis, so basically Tesco don't make excessive profits - it's just because they have hundreds of stores that the overall figures "look big"!

It's all a numbers game.

If a company cannot pay its workers... its not a good business model in the first place.
Shall we have a look at the likes of Amazon ( for example) ... who certainly could afford to pay decent wages but decide not to...

Absolutely right...but...in work benefits were a construct of the Blair government to create a dependency on the state that he though would lead to Labour being in power for ever, but which actually just transfrred more public money to the private sector (by subsidising staff costs ane increasing profits) than any conservative government has ever done! Income supprt and tax credits cost £44billion a year. That's over a trillion pounds transferred since they were introduced!!

Thats a grim out look but the reality is that wealth per capita in the West is far far higher than in India and across the EU, its higher than China.

The UK has a per capita wealth over double that of China, as have all of the EU8.

Of course people have a choice, there is no reason for anyone to buy a MG EV made in China, plenty of alternatives & rather short sighted given the messaging we keep getting in regard to China.

Volvo still make vehicles in Sweden (vast majority of production) and recently opened a factory in the USA.... maybe do a bit more research before making all these ridiculous claims.

But businesses will increase their prices, so the workers will be no better off.

And what about public sector workers, i.e. hospital care workers. Taxes would need to rise to give them a pay rise, and they'd pay more tax, so they'd be no better off, especially if they lost benefits.

It's far more complicated than just saying "raise wages"! Look at the inflationary aspects of Brown's tax credits and benefits - they fuelled increased housing costs.

We need employers to pay an actual wage so that people don't rely on in-work benefits,
Basically- the taxpayer is subsiding business.

They're coming for our pensions/savings. Rachel's "big bang" reform.

Basically they will milk every working person and every penny over the personal allowance, until you're too old and completely disincentivise working. Attack earners and "high earners" and families rather than the very wealthy (i mean the capital owners) and corporates/businesses.

Good luck trying to tax billionaires like Elon Musk and Bill Gates. (But why do we never mention Arab and Chinese billionaires??).

They'll just move to another tax haven. Without full Worldwide support to ban tax havens, it simply can't happen. And to persuade all the tax havens to stop would require them to be massively "compensated" for the loss of the millionaires/billionaires who live/base themselves in tax havens.

Good luck trying to persuade the Isle of Man to give up its "special" tax rules and charge the same level of taxes as the UK or Europe. They simply wouldn't without billions of "aid"/compensation as they know that most people/businesses would simply walk away once there was no tax benefits of being resident there! And IOM is a pretty insignificant tax haven compared to other countries/islands in the World.

Individuals in the UK often have no choice but to buy stuff made in China. Global corporations have bought out so many firms from the UK and Europe and have downsized and make stuff abroad far cheaper.

Plenty of items simply aren't made in the UK anymore.

Surprised to discover the other day than even "Swedish" Volvo cars are now made in China, owned by the Chinese!

Same with Hornby model railways, main production now in China.

When very long standing, well respected firms, have ceased UK/Europe manufacturing, customers really don't have much choice.

The genie long since left the bottle and there's no going back. We are in the middle of the end of the European/USA empire as regards wealth etc. We, in the West will continue to see wealth decline as the East continues to grow and gain wealth. History is repeating itself - look at previous empires - they all come to an end eventually.

Taxing billionaires won't solve the problem. The uncomfortabel truth is that other (mainly EU) economies that spend more on public services tax those on average income more than we do in the UK. Because you get a lot more money a lot more consistently buy having a broad tax base.

The average EU average taxation rate for a single person without children who earned an average salary in the European Union was 29.6%. In the UK that's nearer 18%

https://www.statista.com/statistics/1449813/average-rate-of-taxation-european-countries-households/

This Guardian article is quite old, so rates will have changed, but I imagine the general trend is the same.

www.theguardian.com/money/2017/may/27/tax-britons-pay-europe-australia-us

And it is completely absurd that one individual is estimated to have the wealth which would fund a healthcare system for 70 million people for one year. It's not normal, moral or right in any society. If billionaires all paid their fare share of taxes and paid their staff properly there would be far fewer billionaires and far more money in tax receipts for the government.

For example, if places like Amazon actually paid they're staff properly they wouldn't have huge pots of cash to pay dividends to their shareholders and CEOs, instead their staff would be able to contribute a bit more in tax and be less likely to need the state to top up their wages with universal credit etc. How many companies low wage bills and thus huge profits are being propped up by the things such as universal credit?