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

[B0xes]

He was elected on fewer votes than Corbyn with very lukewarm support, the Tories lost that election, Labour did not sweep in on a tide of public approval, they just benefitted from peoples anger at the Conservatives. Since then, Starmers approval rating has tanked. He seems to have gone from one ill judged move to the next and seems totally tone deaf in speeches. Can he turn it around? What would he need to do?

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.

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.

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

Not only idiotic, but childish and distasteful.

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.

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.

Another idiotic post....

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

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

They aren't, the Tories are to blame for Labour getting in though.

Labour lost badly in 2019 and were on their knees as a party. Most of their limited talent left under Corbyn. Now one election cycle later and they have a huge majority. They aren't and weren't ready.

Haha good one

Assuming to other pp

Sorry but anyone who thinks that receiving healthcare or not should be based on your "Tax Contributions" is an idiot and anyone who agrees with them is also an idiot.

Even if the pp is serious and believes this - doubtful - they ve clearly given it no thought, so a parent who stays at home to look after a sick parent/child, they don't get any healthcare as they ve not "contributed"

Or to put it another way: “If you argue with a madman, it is extremely probable that you will get the worst of it; for in many ways his mind moves all the quicker for not being delayed by things that go with good judgment

You re a Tory, so deny people healthcare goes with the badge.

So here we have another ad hominem, because ‘Tory’ is being used as an insult. We are nearly at contradiction though - the phrase ‘deny people healthcare’ suggests an attempt to make a point. It would not get a passing grade at GCSE English, but you can see what the poster thinks they are arguing against.

Interesting that @Alexandra2001 believes people having to contribute to society to get the rewards of society is ‘Tory’ and ‘deny[ing] healthcare’. Seems a rather entitled point of view. I would argue it is in fact promoting social cohesion - nobody expects a contribution beyond what somebody can manage, but everybody who can contribute should. Normal people who pay loads of tax because UK is v tax heavy just think this is actually just sensible and fair.

You re a Tory, so deny people healthcare goes with the badge.

Wow…..that’s pretty ad hominem.

Are you capable of making any post without resorting to insults? Any post at all? Any argument you think you have is lost with the other crap.

Ooooh you’re hard.

Haha just saw the pp attempt as per

Bit lame but I'll quote this in response

Are you capable of making any post without resorting to insults? Any post at all? Any argument you think you have is lost with the other crap.

This made me laugh too.

Come April 2025, SDLT kicks in at £125K except for first time buyers. That's not going to encourage many buyers is it?

Personally, because we think moving into a smaller house would be sensible about now, our thinking is that it probably wont be in the UK. Malta? Cyprus? who knows?

Highly intelligent comeback there raising the tone of the debate. Not.

Anyone who thinks that @KTheGrey 's suggestion is one that the Labour Party would take up with enthusiasm is projecting.

Firstly a parent might well have worked outside the home before giving birth and would therefore have made tax contributions. Ditto an adult who cares for a parent.

However, I did not say tax contributions, I said contributions. I believe that having children is, in fact, a contribution to society. That said, working life is longer for most of us than the years it takes to get children safely delivered at adulthood.

And yes, I do believe that everyone should contribute, and paying tax is part of that. The world doesn’t owe anybody a living, and you should seriously consider putting into society as well as taking out. It is what we are all here for.

Malta’s lovely. I’d move there in a heartbeat. Outrageously hot in the summer months, though.