For all those who support the strikes

[chopc]

Where do you think the money will come from for all the pay rises? Are you personally willing to pay more tax?
We all saw during the pandemic it is the poorly paid essential workers that kept the country going and they totally deserve more money than the claps they got. However will YOU be prepared to contribute to the pot ?

If not where do you think the govn will find more money from?

Benefits should only be available to those who work full time. This is one of the thickest things I've ever read.

Yes absolutely. SAHMs, the retired, people who are too sick to work, people who are carers for disabled children and elderly relatives, children, people with learning disabilities... all of these people have the resources to pay for their own healthcare. After all, chemotherapy, hip replacements, hearing aids etc. are all dirt cheap so can easily be afforded out of pocket.

Or are you planning for them all to suffer and die?

Weapons grade stupidity, I'd say.

So what I take from this is 1) you are quite well off and 2) a minor inconvenience to you (same day GP) is worse than a life threatening situation to other people (not able to access medical care when they need it as no GP appointments and borked a&e)

Personally I'd rather tolerate inconvenience to me in having medical appointments at times not most suitable, if it meant I was guaranteed a GP appointment if i needed one.

Are there any other ways you think 2010 was worse than today?

Oh so aggressive from our far right fanboy.

The Covid-19 pandemic has resulted in very high levels of public spending. Current estimates of the cost of Government measures announced so far range from about £310 to £410 billion

Commons account committee.

You haven't a clue what QE is do you?

The majority of nurses are not in the heating or eating bracket. Those who are are presumably in debt or have made some very poor decisions.

Nothing to with starting your career with a ton of student debt after the government removed bursaries for student nurses of course. Or hospitals charging daft sums for their staff to park on the premises. Or the real term pay cuts every year for the last decade so a nurse today is 20% poorer then when this government came to power. Nope, it's 'very poor decisions'

@chopc

You mean you have no ideas yourself. Have you not been watching whilst billions have been wasted. Where were you?

Don't YOU think workers deserve fair pay for working? Are YOU another TORY apologist for the wastefulness and adding to the DIVIDE AND RULE. Seriously are YOU tone deaf to what is going on in this country?

Well in that case you need to read the thread again, plenty more where that came from and far worse, esp from some of our wealthy home countries posters.

However I wonder if this will mean that people won't be able to afford cleaners, gardeners etc

Well let's hope they don't have more than 1 child eh? What with them having to claim benefits because of people not wanting them anymore.

Agreed. Never stepped out of Surrey or at a push Hampstead.
@RosesAndHellebores her comments are disgusting. Attacking a whole profession on the basis of a few interactions wow.

Benefits should only be available to those who work full time.

You're being silly now.

The money could easily be found. They paid an insane amount of money to their mates during the pandemic for a starters!!! Have you been living under a rock???
Dont fall for this ‘there’s no magic money tree’ bullshit. This is a line told to justify cutting the public services funding in the UK to benefit the private sector. Surely you dont still believe it after ten years of the tories

Well the man who is currently running Royal Mail into the ground could stop awarding himself huge bonuses and paying all the profits to shareholders and use that money towards pay rises. Incidentally this is the same man who was in charge of Test and Trace which lost 37 billion pounds of public money.

I'm not, no & i'm guessing many others are in the same boat as me. I can't afford to pay anymore. Bully for you if you can

The self employed set their own salary, terms and conditions so they would have to negotiate with themselves. If their self employment can't pay them a living wage then it isn't a viable business so they should find something else to do.

“Our taxes” don’t pay for things. The government has its own magic money orchard called the Bank of England. The money the government “borrows” has no repayment term and they pay no interest on it, and is nothing like a normal household loan. Managing the national economy is nothing like managing a household budget. If you give money to poor people they spend it on the things they need, stimulating their local economies. If you give money to rich people they siphon it off to the Caymans, bypassing the UK economy altogether. Austerity was an ideological political decision which has destroyed the UK’s infrastructure and economy (along with Brexit). The pandemic showed us it’s the low-income, low-status workers who keep this country running, not the millionaire/billionaire “wealth creators” who create wealth only for themselves at the expense of you and me and all the other worker-ants.

Here concludes your first economics lesson. You’re welcome.

@Bettyboop3

Nobody is asking you to pay more in tax if you can't afford it. The discussion is about whether those who can afford it should pay more (although yet again, it is worth saying that income tax is not the only form of taxation and that income tax only accounts for 25% of the tax raised by the Treasury).

The highest paid 10% of the population contribute almost 60% of income tax revenue. They would argue that they already pay too much - others would disagree and think that these people should pay more.

There are two issues:

Is the government willing to raise taxes from those who can best afford it, or in ways that don't impact on the poorest in society? Conservatives think not - they want to reduce taxes for individuals and companies - but the inevitable impact is that there is then less money to pay for public services. Others think that there is room for more taxation of those who can afford it or of assets that are not currently taxed particularly highly. The UK is already a low-tax country (despite what the Conservatives will have you believe) - companies pay relatively low levels of tax on their profits and Capital Gains Tax is far lower than in many other countries.

The second issue is how are the taxes raised to be allocated? I.e. what are the spending priorities? The current government has decided that healthcare should be funded to a far lower level than in other developed countries, with the results that are plain to see. Too few doctors and nurses, long waiting lists, waiting times to se a GP or get an ambulance, run-down buildings and equipment etc. If people find this acceptable in the 6th wealthiest economy on the planet, then so be it. In other countries the Health Minister and government would have been kicked out of office years ago if the situation were to be half as bad as it is currently in the UK. Continuing to expect a Rolls-Royce service while voting for a government that is only willing to invest in keeping a clapped-out Morris Marina on the road will not improve the situation.

As we are not given access to how money is raised from all different sources and what goes where, it's impossible to say. We need to see the accounts.

But we need to change government. I seriously think that no amount of strikes and social unrest can make the current one ease the everyday citizen burden.
They know they have very low prospectives of returning to power on the next elections and they love making money "disappear".
I think we should demand elections. Otherwise, we are, yet again, losing money to the country, even only on the lost wages so far!)

I do agree with the notion of a sovereign currency, so the government can in effect print money to support whatever the latest fad is at the time.
A prime example is Track and Trace, the clamor for which was started by the media, wanting to copy China, Taiwan, etc. However, the UK population is non-compliant and quite frankly too stupid to use an app. So the concept failed.
Waste of money.

Why they would siphon the money off to the Caymans? They Invest. Pensions, and infrastructure, avoid some taxes because they believe governments are incompetent. Which they are. Basically, they have more control over where their wealth is spent.
Poor people don't spend the money on the wider economy they spend it on direct essentials. They certainly don't spend it in the local eateries or small businesses like plumbers.

Yes! New government should get a peak to the situation.
There has to be a way we can force elections to happen. Even by raising petitions to force them to discuss it in parlament every single day.

I'd personally pay more tax for the workers than for the dodgy contracts the tories seem to be giving their mates

"Of course because they are private sector, their wage rises are magically unable to cause inflation to rise, only public sector money can affect inflation"

Private sector pay rises do impact inflation and the BoE has requested restraint. But governments can't tell private companies how much to pay their staff.

I believe highlyflavouredgravy asked if we were prepared to pay more in taxes and i said no.

Yes I'm willing to pay more tax to ensure more fairness and equality in our society.

Anyone who votes for the preserving the wealth of the few over the well-being of the many is an arse in my book. The 'I'm alright Jack' school of politics is just selfish.