To be done with Labour - no money will be saved

[Viviennemary]

I've just seen on ITV news that even if the bill goes through no money whatsoever will be saved. So it all seems a pretty pointless exercise. What on earth was the point of all this fuss and argument. Might have guessed this government would be a disaster. That huge majority and they can't get anything done.

I hate to think what the UK will be like after 4 more years of this.

The Tories lol. Look what they've done for law and order for 14 years. Just more liberal wets.

🙄

Oh I’m sorry. You seem to have overlooked Covid and what that did to our borrowing. Borrowing is vastly higher than it was pre Covid, that debt is a much bigger cost in terms of interest and we have to show real effort in addressing it otherwise that interest will soar.

Oh and I’d love to know why you think KS suggested welfare cuts?

I'm fuming with Labour for so many reasons - Palestine mostly - but then all the viable alternatives are so much worse.

Unfortunately, this is true.

The more soft hearted among us need to accept the bleak reality that there are not enough net contributors left to cover the cost of the vast numbers now claiming benefits for 'mental health issues'.

In response to such an increased liability, the govt's borrowing costs will rise, they will find it harder to sell bonds, which means either massive tax rises for everyone (not just our 156 billionaires who will skip the country anyway) or slashed budgets in the future.

Labour MPs have behaved like a bunch of petulant children and I fear Starmer's capitulation tonight has pretty much guaranteed Reform's path in to power.

Hikes in NI for example and reducing the starting point from when you pay NI from 9k to 5k that will impact small businesses, those with tight margins or those new entrants to markets.

To an extent this was a necessary change as too many low pay business sectors are structured around paying no NI at all and relying on the state to support at the individual level via benefits.

The problem is the amount of imported workers that will be unemployed as a result and stay, so really all that's happened is a shift from in work to out or work benefits.

We should be able to remove unemployed people without the right to remain and hopefully this will be extended to 10 years, but that's literally going to be the next Labour bunfight, it will be all about racism this time around.

I'm not sticking around to watch. The racism screeching about immigration will be 100 times worse than this practice run!.

The nightmare is so locked in it's going to take a collapse to get any traction.

The bit very few people are paying attention to is that they have also completely fucked our oil and gas sector.

Chevron pulled out of Aberdeen today after 55 years as part of their exit from the UK. Labour don't support Rosebank. There's no confidence in new exploration.

Fine, we should all use less oil but we are doing nothing to address that and will instead ship it from the (very stable) middle east where clearly the price will remain lovely and stable.

Not just the billionaires skipping the country. I would advise my DS to do the same. Labour will bleed him dry.

Agreed. It’s like the government decided eating beef is bad for the environment so shut down the British beef industry but imported the same amount from the US. Stupid politics. A lot of this lies at the feet of the SNP’s anti nuclear or fracking or oil or gas stance too.

So how does the fact that benefit spending as a proportion of GDP has remained stable for a number of years fit with what you're claiming? You say the "welfare" (sic) bill is growing hugely out of control; evidently it isn't.

I've already said what I think Mr Starmer et al's motive for cutting disability benefits is, earlier in the thread, and I'm disinclined to repeat myself.

If it wasn’t so tragic, it would be fun to watch Scotland grappling with this disaster. After all, they like a bit of socialism up there. Now they can have it, but without the oil dollars.

Exactly that, my mother worked in care homes for 30 years from when it was local authority run and the latter half private and was paid quite well and had a good amount of pension but it's flat lined since the turn of the century.

So much of the sector is foreign owned.

I don't think Thatcher would have visualised how utterly rapacious global capital and immigration would become against the UKs interests like this, it simply wasn't back in the 80s but if course it was a very different time.

The last Tory government just held the door open, all globalists, Sunak being the ultimate representative of that.

We need to cut public spending by a 100 billion a year every year for at least a decade.

More madness

But there are elements of people playing the system. We all know at least one person who takes advantage of the system by exagerating their capabilities. That's why it needs to be tightened up so that only those genuinely in need have access to it.

Never going to happen. There’d be no country left.

The enormous rise in immigration, especially low paid, low skilled immigration and dodgy visa scams has been as a result of Boris Johnsons ' points based ' post Brexit immigration system that was apparently impossible before Brexit. They were then so incompetent and so snowed under with Brexit that there were no checks on who was coming in, spurious applications for skilled workers, people coming in to work in nonexistent care homes but working for Deliveroo, 90 visa applications for one corner shop etc . It's what has caused the alarming changes in communities that has fuelled Reform.

Exactly. And the annual health benefit bill is due to rise by £30bn from 2019 to 2029

That’s what needs to happen. But the morons in charge either don’t have the brain power or the will to do it.

Statmer not that bright, we know that. What with his unflinching support for terrorists and wrong uns over the years. Someone should X ray him to chem for a backbone also.

You might know one person playing the system. I don't. So immediately your statement is proved inaccurate.

There's more evidence to show that PIP is unclaimed by those with a rightful entitlement than that widespread abuse of the system occurs. You only have to look at the numbers of claims initially refused (almost 50%) and the numbers of cases at tribunal that are successful (c two out of three) to realise that whatever is wrong with the system isn't being caused by extensive fraud.

That's the thing. I would absolutely say you should benefit from PIP. Yours is a diagnosis that isn't going to improve. Same as my neighbour with MS. The process though should be tightened for those with conditions that can improve, those who are on PIP and happy to remain on it for life with no regular reviews. Many conditions, such as MH can and do improve with time and counselling. PIP shouldn't be looked on as a permanent fix, that can go on indefinitely.

Crikey, it didn't start then, this goes back to the 90s at least.

Dodgy student visa scams have been around for decades.

We spend a trillion.

1997 was when it all started to go wrong. Uncontrolled immigration, a welfare lifestyle, low wages, hollow economy.

Boris accelerated it massively so that even those in denial could no longer keep their heads buried in the sand about how broken this country is.