To wonder what could Starmer do, to turn things around?

You have done name calling, ad hominem and responding to tone. See if you can raise your game to contradiction. 😀

News flash. Just because you don’t agree with something doesn’t make it idiotic. How very teenager.

Another idiotic post....

Oh you haven’t been paying attention.

Are you against contributions based benefits?

I think they are the only possible way to balance the books. You can have a percentage of people who don’t contribute at any given point, but at this point we are at, 2025, there are too many of them, and the NHS is pretty much unaffordable.

Moving people around the world is a bit of a healthcare disaster because different parts of the world have different climates and natural threats and accordingly different diseases. Local healthcare is not set up to deal with diseases of which it has limited knowledge. Dealing with them is more expensive than dealing with issues than local healthcare is set up for.

Paying people who can’t work because they are too mentally fragile incentivises them to stay fragile. There are millions of people wasting their lives in misery - that is what mental health problems are, utter misery - because of the misplaced ‘kindness’ of permitting them to be survive without being socially integrated by work. Improve workplaces by all means, but don’t pay people to be miserable. It’s mean.

Free healthcare for non contributors is thus foolish for several reasons.

Something being unpalatable (to you) doesn’t make it untrue.

Every thing about starmer and all of them just says

Screams: we're doomed.

It's just been one long endless streak of misery hasn't it??

Constantly telling us how awful everything is.

Hopeless..

What's the point of any of us doing anything? Where I live for the past decade a huge amount of housing has gone up in flats and housing. We've been loosing green belt in increments for ages but we fought against it. I'm in a town BTW but I do like fields and want fields around us.

Our roads are utterly gridlocked and you can't get near pretty villages on a weekend in summer now. I don't need to mention docs and dreadful hospitals...

I had the smallest incremental salary increases which will now be taken from me with a massive ct hike and whatever else. I don't feel people like me on near mw will be any better off at all after this government and I feel petulant and childish like just try and win the lottery and leave.

Not only idiotic, but childish and distasteful.

One of the more idiotic posts I've read on MN recently.

I thought of another unpopular thing Starmer could do. He could make the NHS contributions based. OAPs could be protected as they will have made contributions of one kind or another. You would have to exempt children; sending them back up chimneys is probably going too far.

Groups that would be impacted would include tourists, new migrants, asylum seekers, the young unemployed and those on long term sickness benefits. It would be brutal in terms of curable sickness going uncured and excess deaths, so I can’t see the government going for it, but it would save massive amounts of money.

And it might free up enough NHS money to pay for people who get ill but can be made better and go back to work - cancer sufferers, or people who need Mounjaro etc.

Starmer should love it, I can’t imagine anything that would outrage so many so quickly.

But every single one of them.is paying tax at a lower level than working people, even working people with much lower incomes. Because workers pay NI. Retirees do not (not do people who have passed retirement age but are still working) which is why NI needs to be scrapped and income tax increased to make up for it.

This.

All wealthy pensioners that people are moaning about are paying thousands of pounds in tax per year.

I'm not familiar with your assertion that there will only be 2 workers for every pensioner... and that would depend if these are workers are net contributors or not surely? so what if we have more workers per pensioner if these are low paid workers, claiming more in benefits than they earn?

Raising the SPA affects the poor far more, they don't benefit from triple lock for very long, unlike the wealthier pensioner, so in the first instance, i'd impose NI on pension incomes, above a certain amount, reaching a certain age, shouldn't mean a tax cut.

There also needs to be higher contributions made on working people & business now, the levels currently are far too low.
I'd also have a state insurance scheme for social care, everyone pays in, inc employers, ring fenced, this would reduce the benefits bill as well.

Changes to IHT, more bands, 10% 20% 40%... get rid of trusts, the wealthy should not be able to protect their wealth if the poor cannot not.

Triple lock reductions or cuts in SP ? mean higher benefits for poorer pensioners..

Raising the SPA affects the poor once again, the wealthy tend not to do physically demanding jobs, so can, if they wish, work for longer and/or retire earlier.
Where as those doing tough jobs will have to leave work and live in poverty on benefits.... doubtless dying even younger than before... Great!!!

All your solutions hit the poor, a means tested pension wont affect the rich but it will hit the less well off just above any threshold - see cuts to WFA !

The current model will always be unsustainable because the government doesn’t plan or invest for pensions, it keeps spending all revenue on interest payments for its huge borrowing.

I wonder how much difference it’ll make as a number of poorer OAPs will still need to be propped up by various other means tested benefits like housing benefit and UC.

Seems poor form to take 35 years plus of NI and then say no pension because we spent your contributions, but hey ho that’s government for you.

He should resign

@Alexandra2001

"Dead against increasing SPA, it should be lowered, starting work at say 18/20 and work for another 50 years???
I'm at a loss as to how you think its a good thing for carers, lorry drivers, trades & other manual workers to continue work into their late 60s 70s & if they have to give up work before able to claim SP, they'll be on benefits, so little to no saving."

I agree that raising the retirement age is not great and hardly a vote winner but the current model is unsustainable so what would you change?

Currently there are 3.6 workers to every pensioner and the cost of the state pension is equal to 45% of the income/ NI tax paid by someone on an average salary. By 2050 it is expected to drop to 2 workers for every pensioner which on todays average salary / tax / SP would mean the SP would make up 82% of the tax.

So as I see it there are three options:

1. Means test the SP
2. Cut the value of the SP
3. increase the retirement age

Which one would go for?

It’s easier to put an asterisk before and after a quote. Like this

Sorry I missed an ".

I used to try and differentiate between another person's comment and mine by putting a line of ++++++ between them. But I got criticised for it for some reason 🤷‍♀️!

And kill the housing market. Great move!!!

Yes of course

Definitely not where I am based

Depends where you live. It would buy a three bed semi in many parts of the country.

You can't even buy a flat for £250K

@Alexandra2001

Unfortunately I live in the SE and the properties are very expensive so it would be a lot more and bungalows are especially dear.

Also I believe it is getting even more expensive in April.

SDLT isn't very much in comparison to the cost of a house, about 2k on a purchase worth £285k or £0 below £250k.

The issue with that is this may well leave someone unable to move, 18 or 24% CGT could mean a loan to buy another house, not possible if retired/not earning enough.

Dead against increasing SPA, it should be lowered, starting work at say 18/20 and work for another 50 years???
I'm at a loss as to how you think its a good thing for carers, lorry drivers, trades & other manual workers to continue work into their late 60s 70s & if they have to give up work before able to claim SP, they'll be on benefits, so little to no saving.

May as well have company graveyards, keep working until you drop dead, wheeled out, thrown in a pit... short funeral, new starter takes over....

What exactly would be the work ethic of people who may well be physically and mentally struggling with work and poor health?

Would lead to even lower productivity, UK workers already have some of the longest hours in Europe, yet UK has such poor outputs.

Unsnarky hint @1dayatatime. If you put an asterisk before and after another poster’s quote it makes it bold and much easier for others to differentiate between the original and your response.

@Alexandra2001

Hopefully it won't be. You then have to pay huge amounts of stamp duty to buy somewhere else