Rishi is PM - coronation, unelected -GE Now

[MrsRobinsonsHandprints]

This is not democracy.

He was in no small part responsible for the financial mess we’re in. Watch as the poorest and most vulnerable in the country pay the price.

Is it really too much to ask that the party leader doesn't change all the time? I get Thatcher/Major and Blair/Brown, but how can we trust a party if they can't hold it together for one full term? Vote Cameron's Conservative party, get Theresa May's. Vote for May's Conservative party, get Boris Johnson's. Vote for Johnson's Conservative's, get Truss's then Sunak's. Each PM taking the country in a different direction to the one before.🤯🤯🤯

This isn't double standards, and none of us should have to suck up the destruction being done to our country because of the chaotic, corrupt, incompetent Conservatives.

As much as I would like a GE, I have to agree with this. In fact you could argue that anyone with any insight into the sort of leader BJ was going to be, ought to have known that he wouldn’t go the distance and would screw things up and have to be replaced way before the end of the Parliament. So yeah, we all collectively (not me guv) voted for this shit show.

It IS democracy. You will all get your say at the NEXT ELECTION.
We all agreed that the NHS needed more money injected into it. They add a percentage onto our National Insurace, and you all bitched about it. Well make the mind, either we pay more into the NHS, or it dies. and the NI was the most sensible way. That way Both the Employee the the Employer paid.
Unless of course you can afford Private health insurance.

Jeez! What are you most proud of? The 2000 plus food banks we’ve seen a rise in these last 12 awful years?! The massive inequalities in wealth? The decimation of the NHS and now waiting over 2 weeks just to see a GP? Let’s not even talk about waiting lists for surgery -all of which were awful well before covid!! Working people who are too poor to heat their homes? The rise in homelessness? The eye watering corruption? Stealing from the public purse to enrich Tory donors? 37 billions wasted on track and trace? Billions wasted on dodgy PPP? I could go on!! The list is endless! What’s appalling is Tory voters, now affected financially by a rise in their mortgages and impacted by the attack on their own wealth and/or a brown PM being put in place, is what’s made you decide you’ve NOW had enough!!

This is democracy. For those who do not understand the process, we vote in a party, in this case the Conservative party. The prime minister is the leader of the party and s/he is voted into that position by the party. This is not America and we don't vote the prime minister in. OK?

And, the last thing we need now is a general election, it would make the pound sink much lower and cause a lot of financial problems in and of itself. Then, Labour might get in and we would be in an even worse position!

Hey don't try to stop the tories ripping themselves apart because racism.

It absolutely in our interests that they continue to implode. Step back away from the shrapnel and watch the show. Keep your electoral card handy.

No need to be so patronising, funnily enough this has been covered on the this heavily commented thread.

And no it isn't OK and it isn't democracy. LT was voted in democratically. Coronations are anything but.

@TooBigForMyBoots

is it really too much to ask you to consider the geo political crisis the world is reeling under????
YES suck it up because
1.more money to NHS will mean raising taxes.
2.All the furlough perks have to be recovered from somewhere
3.Ukraine war will hit us hard

these are unprecedented times!!!

no one has the right answer. Boris had to go because of party gate. Poor Lizzy was unqualified to solve the economics. So in Rishi there is some hope

if not stay in cuckoo-land believing money grows on magic trees like Labour wants you to believe .

Then, Labour might get in and we would be in an even worse position!

It’s mind blowing that anyone could actually think this. What on earth do you think any other party could do that would make things worse?

Not the most sensible way at all when it was only a tax on workers, and those whose incomes are derived in other ways, i.e. from investments, properties, pensions, benefits, etc paid nothing more. The "sensible" way would have been to spread the cost over EVERYONE, not just workers.

But most of those pensioners have been workers for a minimum of 35 years.

And? It was still a bad idea to place that cost on income earned by work, a group who are already being very heavily relied on. Whatever notions of fairness people might have, and those are debatable anyway, there is only so far working people can be bled whilst those with income and assets from other sources are excused.

The argument about democracy made by a pp is also bollocks, because an NI increase wasn't a manifesto promise.

So what, taxes are on levels of income, not age. The people with higher incomes need to pay their share, regardless of their age. You really can't have 70 year olds paying less tax than twenty somethings working full time with less income.

Obviously you can because we do. And it’s been that way for the last 70 odd years. You’re making it sound as if it became the case last week. Every 70 year old has been in exactly the same position as today’s 20 somethings. Why is it suddenly an issue?

So do you think we should charge 70yos National Insurance @Badbadbunny?

Pensioners pay tax on their income

Because when today's 70 year olds were 20, pensioners as a group were both much poorer and a significantly smaller percentage of the population than they are today. We just don't have enough people who are earning their income through work to make it a good idea to aim more taxation at them whilst leaving out other large groups with substantial resources (I know NI isn't technically a tax but it's functioning like one for the relevant cohort here). Sooner or later we are going to have to disabuse ourselves of that notion.

The average UK pensioner income is £15k, how poor do you want them to be @PerfectlyPreservedQuagaarWarrior?

www.unbiased.co.uk/life/pensions-retirement/what-is-the-average-uk-retirement-income

Yet you're fine with working age people whose incomes are much less than 15k per annum having to cough up blossomtoes, given the NI threshold. So let's not pretend this is about poverty.

Ultimately, we simply do not have the demographics to exclude people from the need to better fund the NHS because of their age or the way in which their income was earned.

Yes, if their incomes are high enough, why on Earth not?

Today's pensioners paid NIC (when they were working) at much lower rates than today's workers!

NIC rates have been rising for years, but only impact on workers.

Depends when they became a pensioner, some of them might have retired a few weeks/months/years ago and paid the same as you. In fact haven't they raised the starting point for paying so it is lower now than a few months ago.

Don't forget if you are going back to the 70s income tax was much higher even if NI was lower.

But you said it was about poverty, you quite specifically said the reason it was an issue now when it never was in the past is because pensioners in the past were poorer. The average pension is £15k, the average wage is almost £30k and minimum wage amounts to £19k so how many people’s incomes are below the NI threshold? Very few is the answer.

As I’ve said on another thread, if non working pensioners are going to be included in NI payments the specific link between NI contributions and pension qualification will have to be removed or the 35 qualifying years will become a nonsense.

Precisely that. The basic rate of income tax alone was 33% when I started work, with NI on top. I only stopped paying NI in 2019, so hardly at a lower rate than today’s workers.

The Conservative chaos was around long before Covid.