To ask what you'll be doing to avoid the Labour tax hikes

[OptimismvsRealism]

Pension contributions
Gift aid
Selling my shares now while CGT is relatively low

What really worries me is that all the professionals we actually need to want to be here will just fuck off elsewhere, though.

It's not like we're knee deep in hospital doctors.

How clueless. Some of those crabs are fucking drowning in that bucket and 14 years of the last govt has seen to it that they're unable to do much more than fruitlessly attempt to climb up the sides before being shoved back down to the bottom by the latest austerity measure. It's not about 'pulling others down', it's about desperately struggling for mere survival. Bloody hell, how blinkered and compassionless you sound.

Incorrect. Over 100k people earners lose their tax free allowance (on a sliding scale) so for the amount between 100 and 125K they pay 40% PLUS 20% clawback of the tax free allowance.

You’re assuming they won’t touch the seven year survival rule. It could easily be ten or 15 years.

With IHT I think they will:

change the seven year rule

increase the rate of IHT

reduce the IHT threshold

remove the residence nil rate band

All of which will push far more estates into the IHT category

I wouldn’t have any issue with any of that. After all, I’ll be dead.

Pulling up the drawbridge? Like my Labour MP who attended 3 private schools and is now kicking away the ladder for others?

I save the gvt £22k+ a year for 3 school places we don’t take up. I pay all my tax. Paid off my student loans, and have been fortunate enough to never need to claim benefits, social housing. I use my work private healthcare not the NHS. I guess I had 3 NHS births but my conscious is absolutely clear in terms of what benefit I have had compared to what I have put in to the system.

But Labour want more from me? Good luck improving services when net contributors wave goodbye.

A 4-5% annual increase, which we had planned for, is very different to a 20% in one go hit! Who gets a pay rise of 20% in 1 year after all?

I’m actually feeling really positive and excited about our family’s future now we have made the decision to try something different! It just doesn’t involve staying in the UK at least in the short-term.

I am familiar with economics, thanks very much. I'm also familiar with the way statistics can be manipulated to show whatever you want them to show.

Having spent a day and a half in A&E - necessitating an in-patient stay because the staff couldn't get their act together, I could streamline the process in my local hospital for less than the cost of one agency shift.
What's horrifying is that I would be copying what I saw in another hospital when I visited someone who suffered a medical emergency.
There are people with decades of experience gained in a variety of hospitals in numerous counties - why aren't good ideas shared?
Liz Truss was after cost savings for 2022-23 and was told that the cupboard was bare. That fiscal year, the Dept for Health & Social Care handed back £35,168,975,000 of its in-year revenue budget and the Department for business handed back £143,477,081,000. Sadly, the Treasury needed the £179,295,400,000 to give to the Bank of England.
This is the stop-start nature of the civil service - whatever Rachel Reeves grabs (and it will be lots) she and her ilk will be convinced that their plans would have been a success, if only they'd taken more, faster.

@BIossomtoes
sorry, I'm not sure if you're for real or pretending

I specifically said 4-5 people in reception who aren't medically trained and the only thing they do is register new patients. They don't do bloods, dressings, triage etc. They need to be replaced by medical staff. This goes on at all levels.

I'd very much like to pay a few millions for shit hot management consultants with private sector experience to review NHS processes end to end - it can and should be drastically reformed and can function well with less investments than now.

@Bunbry you really think you could change your A and E? Or maybe there are barriers you do not understand?
I think the NHS could be more efficient, but it needs investment to do so. People are admitted for medical issues that they were waiting outpatient treatment for. Services are understaffed and so if anyone is off sick they have to get temporary or bank workers in who do not know how exactly that service works and is learning on the job.
And everyone knows social care is the big one. Nearly 10% of hospital beds are taken by someone who needs social care to leave hospital but there are delays. Its party care homes, but also getting home care packages into place. Because we pay carers so little there is a real lack of carers.

The top shit private sector consultants has been tried. It did not work.

In my hospital you have admin staff registering patients in the system at reception. They are very low paid and they do the admin. There are also volunteers at A and E reception who can help as needed e.g. pushing people in wheelchairs, fetching drinks for frail elderly patients. No point replacing volunteers with paid medical staff.
Some paramedics and ambulance drivers waiting to pick up patients or handing over patients also tend to congregate at reception. Sometimes because they are waiting for someone, sometimes they are on a 15 minute break and just having a gossip.

You tell me:

1. In A&E (in both of my local hospitals) records are in paper booklets. Staff leaf through these over and over again, seemingly randomly and occasionally patients get fed, watered or medicated. There are a dozen patients in each room, my suggestion is for 24 slots, one for each hour of the day and if the person in bay 6 requires medication at 10am, 2pm, and 6pm a card with the number 6 would be in each of the relevant slots. Seeing a card in the 10am slot at 11am would alert staff to someone missing their meds - as happened to me between 05:30 and 14:00 when I had sepsis and my drips were missed. I became an in-patient for a week.
2. My nearest hospital likes to move patients in the early hours. There are insufficient staff to deal with patients on in-patient wards, so visitors are welcomed. However, the only signs identifying the ward are on the outside, so a patient can't tell family or friends where to find them. One laminated A4 sheet per ward above the door would fix this. When I visited someone at a different hospital they have such signs, it works very well - sadly their signage on the outside of the ward is poor.

No rocket science, just common sense - I like to think.

@Bunbry I do not know any hospital still using paper notes and with no names of wards. I am wondering now where this hospital is. It does sound like it is stuck back in time.

An East London Borough. The records eventually find their way onto 'the system' but in A&E it's all paper. The wards and bays are clearly signed from corridors, just not on the inside, so when you're moved at 2am and dozy it's not clear where you are when you wake.

Some A and Es use paper summary records. It is quicker than trying to find the relevant information on the electronic records. Drs have told me it is a safer system.
You don't have the ward name inside every bay, it is on the outside of the ward, but just ask and someone will tell you where you have been moved to. And if visitors ring switchboard or go to the reception of the hospital, they can find out for visitors where you are.
You really misrepresented the situation at first.

Same - happy to pay more.

Half the issue with the JD strikes was the awful working conditions currently. Sort them out and we’ll have fewer leaving.

Why on earth would you take 4/5 nurses and put them in reception checking people in/scanning notes etc, taking them away from their clinical duties instead of that entirely unskilled job being done by min wage admin staff?

If there are 4/5 people there, there is 4/5 people’s worth of work to do there. The NHS is not flush with admin staff either. It is likely that when things are quiet they are doing other things besides checking people in (like scanning notes, sending out discharge letters, booking follow up appointments). I also suspect you underestimate the number of people attending A&E at peak hours.

I have just sorted out an ISA for this year so not an option unfortunately! Also it is quite a large sum as the fund has been growing for over 20 years, I think I’d have around £75,000 to invest! It’s annoying as the fund, being a pension, is not part of my estate for Inheritance Tax ( although that might also change in the budget!) so I was trying to leave most of it to help my children pay IH tax when I die.

I think lots of people are being hit by IT tax now, especially those who are divorced and have an allowance of £500,000 - many house in my area are valued above that. My ex left his money to his new wife when he died last year so it’s likely our children will now pay IT on what I leave them as my bungalow has gone up in value from £400,000 in 2010 to £650,000 now, partly due to improvements I gave made ie new roof, boiler, patio, drive etc from my already taxed income!

I was hoping that a pension fund I have not yet touched ( plan to drawdown if I need the income in later years) would pay IT for them but I have read that Labour might remove the current exemption from IT that pension funds currently have.

This is what was voted for. It’s bloody depressing.

Can you reference this? I’m in Scotland and can’t say this is my observation/experience.

The other thing they might change is social care thresholds so that they are aligned with benefits savings thresholds. They’re only a few thousand apart as it is but it’s an easy grab

Perhaps it’s my language then. You responded initially as though I was saying we should tax the poor, which is not at all what I was saying. That’s all I was defending myself against.

Really not bitter- worried about her but not bitter. I’m not sure whether she’s motivated by passing it down, as she won’t spend it on her grandkids at the moment.

She’s a perfect example of why trickledown doesn’t work.

Getting frustrated at how anyone thinks we’ll raise taxes if no one we know can be taxed. Money needs to work, ideally on helping people.
Just a few people on here have said they don’t mind paying ore tax to a functioning country.

I think the problem is a “functioning country” I have no faith that the current crop of politicians of any variety will fix long term issues.

Where I live if you don’t have a new job after 6 months you work for what is called “community” so helping maintain flowers in public parks, working in community cafe for the elderly…lots of roles that help in society. On the job training or qualifications are provided as part of the contract. You can not stay on long term unemployment benefit without contributing in some way.

And I have no clue how you even begin with fixing so many failing schools, unhappy teachers. The NHS is just a money pit. We used the free healthcare where we life a few weeks ago- my husband had stomach pains. I dropped him off at an and e whilst I parked the car - maybe 10 mins. He had been seen and a CT booked - within the hour he was diagnosed with an appendicitis and 3 hours later he was operated on and out the next day.

I can tell you I don’t mind paying taxes as it works and it’s fair but I am not sure the uk will function again how ever much money is thrown at it. I hope I am wrong I really do.