I have sacrificed my earning potential, my happiness and my future pension to care for my son.
No more. I told social care that I’m working so this is what that means. It means that an agency will provide social care at £25 per hour instead of me at £81 per week carers allowance. I can now save for a pension and also work to get back my self respect that has been lost in the years of caring.
People have hit the nail on the head. Life as a disabled person is a lot more expensive. Just engaging the PA you have expenses as everything is double. Public transport is often inaccessible. As an example of an expense my DS just seems to break things when he tries to do something eg clean.
I realise that people here think that disabled people should live in a box, never have holidays and pretty much have no quality of life as some sort of punishment for daring to be disabled. It’s frankly disturbing and also frankly there is karma so be careful what you wish for.
Disabled people are not those who choose not to work. Many would absolutely love to work but we have such an awful society that does not want to engage with them or they might get extremely low paid work with support. I’m not talking about a whizz with Alzheimer’s who’s someone’s cousin or nephew, I’m talking about my son who will walk down a street gesturing to himself and talking to himself and occasionally might bang his head on a wall. I don’t want to see him dressed in shabby clothes frankly he has enough issues without looking less acceptable in dress. I would like him to look smart with short hair etc
Where should the money come from. So called working people are taxed to the hilt. I recognise that I have to contribute and at my advanced age made numerous application and have secured work. If wages and earning cannot be taxed enough then next it will be capital. So how shall that fall? People who have straightforward inheritances are losing their family homes in the South as the value exceeds the IHT thresholds. They are proportionately poorer as 30 years ago that exact same house would not have been subject to IHT it could have remained the family home. Everyone is being taxed more except the uber rich.
As for farmers,8% of all farmers are responsible for over 50% of all output from farms and own 38% of all farm land in the UK. These are huge mega estates that pay zero tax. The middle earning farmers are described by their own ‘union’ the NFU as life style farmers ie not chasing the profits. They often have other interests eg employment of the farm or their activities eg farm shops, camp sites, bed and breakfast etc. These are not my words.
There are a significant number of farmers - over one third who barely produce any output and I’m nor even sure why they bother. There little bits of land will most likely be exempt from IHt
I’m sure that the wealthy farmers have whipped up a storm with the NFU who under Tory rule were insider lobbyists. They are the ones encouraging the protests and the spread of misinformation, half the farmers on their one portal had no ideas that the IHT could be paid over 10 years interest free for example. Inflation will erode that debt to very little unless you are one of the above huge mega farmers.
Also we have the uber rich corporations. How much tax does Facebook pay and yet how many today have seen adverts on Facebook Instagram and other social media? All that advertising revenue now completely lost to the UK because successive governments lack the desire to tax where the advert is shown. There’s big money in government and watch ex minister secure lucrative positions on the board.
So yes there are decisions to be made.
If asked on a bad day, my son would ask you to allow him to die but that option is not even allowed by the State who just wants to keep the disabled in some form of controlled poverty. Also the people here who think thst my son should never have a holiday or any fun because he is a burden to the state.
In an ideal World they would have their one villages with their own little shops, entertainment and community where they could live safely and those that could work a bit could run the shops, the pub with support. There is so much that should be done and maybe if the Uber rich were taxed it could happen.
When my son was a toddler and I heard the news that he was significantly disabled for a day I wanted to walk with him in front of a bus. I was shivering and scared and a lovely lady from his nursery took me in and gave me a cup of tea and made an emergency call to the GP who tried to reassure me that things would not necessarily be that bad.
But they are that bad because the people here don’t want the disabled to have decent lives. They don’t want the disabled to have a holiday, a meal out or whatever, they want them incarcerated in some rubbish hole not costing much until they die. Well great but the same might come back to you when you get dementia and your funds run out - hopefully you will go to some third rate hell hole of a care home. The reality is that the wealthier of the OAP’s get to stay in the nicer care homes because they paid for a while so the state allows them to remain. How many of you will give away money to your kids to avoid care home fees. How many of you will set up some sort of trust or ensure at the house is held as tenants in common to avoid care home fees. Probably the same people who begrudge a disabled person a holiday but want the state to pay for their care when older. millions signed the various campaigns in papers like the Daily Mail for free social care for the elderly!
They are the ones who campaigned to ask the state not to take their houses when they finally need care. However at least that care is just for the last few years and not a lifetime of misery and dependancy with abject poverty, At least they have had some sort of decent life before dementia or Parkinson’s struck,
When I thought about that bus as it approached me all I could think of was “ We are the bad one”. I felt rubbish for having a rubbish son who would drag down the family.
The biggest irony is that the lovely lady who rescued me, her husband died under a bus a few years later and she herself died of cancer. So trust me all the thoughts I had that day have been justified because people are frankly despicable and nasty until it happens to them, luckily I met an angel that day. Be warned the likelihood is you will need care one day and it will cost £80,000 per annum and many of you ( the same ones who begrudged a disabled person a holiday) would seek advice to for instance shield assets from social services eg with some form of trust or by severing a joint tenancy or by making life time gifts to adult kids. That’s why I think there is so much hypocrisy.