Scared of what labour will do

[Wantachangefor2024]

Is anyone else terrified of what labour will enforce. The tax on farmers. Will they means test pip? Will they tax state pension more? What else will they do and where will it all end. They ruthlessly without no care took away the winter fuel allowance. Means testing and taxing state pension would massively impact my family

How do you decide who is genuinely unwell and who isn’t?

Mental Heath issues are difficult to quantify.

WCA are all about how a condition affects your every day life, not about what the condition is.

Anyone can says anything about it, and there are no ways of checking, because it’s far too expensive and intrusive.

I've left the UK, stopped paying school fees and tax. My clients are overseas, my colleagues have left or are leaving, out office is closing here, the UK will be down circa 10m in tax from this alone which won't be replaced as we will pay tax overseas instead.

The UK government spends on average 17k a person. Someone earning 30k pays circa 5k in tax a year. The low earners are subsidised by tax payers who are paying more than 17k in tax. Do you really want higher earners to leave?

Higher earners leaving the UK means:

• Less funding for the NHS
• Less money to pay benefits and pensions
• Less money to pay teachers.

The UK is losing more millionaires a year than any country in the world. This means government will have to start cutting services.

Hope your rude smug attitude gives you comfort when you watch services being cut.

You are probably a wealthy pensioner that people hate though

We pay so much less income tax than the rest of Western Europe,

I believe higher earners are taxed at similar levels but lower and middle earners are taxed much less. This is PAYE though.

We give farmers £4 billion per year, their handling of F&M when it first broke out, cost the country billions.

They also pollute and damage our environment, look at the River Wye for example.

They also make quite a lot of money too.

So what do you suggest? That we go on churning out more and more money for people to stay off work sick with anxiety? The mental health sickness bill is riding exponentially. We cannot afford to protect everyone from every little thing.

Just because you are not bothered about the WFA being taken away it doesn't make it right. Slowly but surely there will be some new policy that will affect you in the end and I have no doubt others will say they have no problem with it because it hasn't altered their life.

@Dorisbonson all because of VAT on school fees? Where did you go?

Someone earning 30k pays circa 5k in tax a year. The low earners are subsidised by tax payers who are paying more than 17k in tax. Do you really want higher earners to leave?

We have always had lower earners and people who take more in tax than then pay, it's not a new thing. Not helped off course by economic policy that devalued wages and boosted asset prices.

The UK is losing more millionaires a year than any country in the world.

Is there evidence of this, I am interested?

My uncle took over my grandads farm and it will be the end for the passing down to future generations. I’ve never known my family fear something like this.

What's the value of the farm? Up to 3 million can still be passed down exempt from the tax.

You should read about the reasons for this policy, those it is aimed at, and the loopholes it wishes to close. Sounds fair to me.

@Mespher if cash ISAs are reduced as has been floated I think the plan (such as it is) is that the overall ISA allowance would remain unchanged to encourage money into the stock market, so not necessarily any tax impact.

The exciting bit would be when banks and building societies lost this very important source of funding. They'd all have to compete harder for what remained of the cash savings market and this would both reduce the amount of lending they could do and put the cost of that lending up a great deal. This would be great for cash rich, mortgage-free pensioners but would hurt anyone who has a mortgage or was hoping to buy one of the eleventy billion houses our Ange reckons she's going to get built.

There are no simple answers - everything's interconnected and Labour keeps making choices with little regard to the downstream consequences.

I don’t t suggest that.

I would like to see a more robust mechanism for MH assessments.

I just don’t see how it can be done.

Yup. Basic rate tax is about 10p per £ higher. You can’t keep wanting the rich to fund public services as there aren’t enough of them.

Just because you are not bothered about the WFA being taken away it doesn't make it right. Slowly but surely there will be some new policy that will affect you in the end and I have no doubt others will say they have no problem with it because it hasn't altered their life.

Yep. There's a few groups to go

we need to take another look at sickness benefits.

Do you think the increase is down to socioeconomic factors or just more chancers?

I am glad you are doing well even when families like us have been bled to the point of leaving next year.

Can i ask what being bled means to you in this context? Genuine not goady question. Is it worries of what you think is to come, or have you already seen a significant drop in income since Labour has been in power, other than VAT on school fees?

Right back at you.

It’s actually not rude or smug to disagree with the op and histrionics to make a point.

The people who are the farmers enemy here isn’t the Labour government but the likes of james Dyson and Jeremy Clarkson. Rich guys trying to avoid IHT pile into agricultural land pushing land values up so high real farmers can’t afford to buy it and forcing Labour to close this ‘loophole’ which was originally meant to help farmers rightfully avoid IHT. Jeremy and James are farmers enemies, not their friends.

"Baumberg Geiger says the overall welfare bill, as a proportion of GDP, has changed little since 2007 so it is wrong to say benefits spending is out of control. It is true, however, that a greater share of welfare spending is on incapacity and disability benefits."

Is it to be expected that we are more unhealthy after a pandemic, years of no investment?

Many PIP claimants are in work.

I am not sure how you reduce sick benefits without it resulting in increased costs in other areas.

This. It’s so frustrating when people have no critical thinking skills whatsoever.

You don’t have to invest for years. Our savings are in stocks and shares ISAs which have far better yields than the cash variety and the money can be withdrawn any time. The Treasury wants to encourage investment in these ISAs and it wouldn’t surprise me if the threshold was raised on them at the same time that it was reduced on cash ISAs.

No.

Bit of both. There was the ‘bad back’ in the 1990s as the easiest illness to fake, and that trend has certainly changed to mental health, but I can also see that people are finding life tough. Yes it must be rubbish working a full week for minimum wage.

Ah yes, the weekly Labour bashing thread. A bit tone deaf given the week of news we've just had, don't you think? And true to form, OP posts until roughly page 2 and then trots off.

Yes it must be rubbish working a full week for minimum wage.

Yes, there is definitely an increase in a wider feeling of hopelessness and younger people do seem to have more mental health disorders. Although again maybe this was always there but it was covered up, masked by alcohol etc.

I have a house, decent job & I don't feel particularly positive

Someone i know has been unemployed for 3 years, he is 28, before then he was jumping from college course to course, he has never worked.... MH/Anxiety

He has recently started to attend some therapy sessions, funded by the state, that has enabled him to start a work experience program at M&S of all places!

This work placement is supported by Prince Charles.

Its a start, people cannot be allowed to fester at home for decades.

Its not just the assessment, its the support put in place after this.

If Liz Kendal can crack this particular nut, then all credit to her.