Would Labour voters be upset if joining the EU meant they could no longer tax children’s education?

[Blarneyspoco]

Taxing children’s education is banned as part of EU membership. If the U.K. rejoined the EU, would Labour supporters be upset that they can no longer levy the tax or would it be seen as a necessary compromise.

They have an impact (and are paid fairly in the UK) but the impact is less than the surgeon.

You can do all the prelim work you want but at the end someone needs to go pull out the tumour (which is the end result we are working towards).

Also a standard US bedside nurse has double the real disposable income of a standard UK bedside nurse. I blame the NHS for suppressing wages.

The nhs doesn't decide the Agenda for Change. You could at least try to get your facts right

You want facts? Come on this is MN, facts are so unfashionable here.

When is the era of politics of division going to end?

I'm sorry, I'm just old fashioned

Me too.

I happen to like facts too.

But the fact it's a monopoly means pay is kept low

That's not true at all. Aren't you embarrassed by repeatedly bullshitting?

This is all such a ridiculous thing to become obsessed about. You need to understand that this is not a policy that 93% of children’s families care about.

You can’t change it except by hoping to vote the government out for one that feels strongly about it. However, on the basis that this government is likely to look at voter reform in the next couple of years it is unlikely that any of the mainstream parties will hold any type of majority in the next or subsequent parliaments.

You also need to bear in mind that this parliament could run to 2029 July . So you’ve got to face the fact that you will be paying an extra 20% on your fees (or whatever it is that your school has decided to levy because it’s not obligatory to put them up by 20% it was put on the school not on the fees )

So sit down calmly, work out if it’s affordable, definitely for the next 3 school years.. and almost certainly beyond that. Then if you can’t afford it you will just have to join the 93% and have your children educated by the state.

It’s not a monopoly. Do you really not know we have private healthcare in this country?

I think the PP is suggesting we put VAT on private healthcare.

Or something.

The largest buyer of doctors and medical staff is the NHS. It's a near monopoly. Well I believe the correct term is actually a monopsony.

The size of the private sector isn't that big and private sector pay is linked to NHS pay.

The NHS is still by far the largest player in the healthcare sector.

Of course not

There’s no link between private healthcare and NHS salaries. The private sector pays far more because the terms and conditions are worse. The private sector wouldn’t be able to recruit otherwise.

This is untrue

It’s not.

It is

Your vitriol is aimed in the wrong place. You've no idea how rich I am, or how much tax I pay. Nor do you represent all rich people.

The level of anger and hatred in your replies shows that for you, this has gone way beyong the VAT on education. You think every single Labour voter is responsible for that one policy. They're not, any more than any single Tory voter was responsible for austerity and its damage to the economy. It just doesn't work like that.

On a serious note, you may want to look at yourself. The amount of hate and malice you have for anonymous strangers is out of proportion to what any of them did.

Your most recent post reminds me a bit of that guy who killed that CEO of a healthcare company. Yes he had been adversely affected, but did that give him the right to kill another human? Yes you were affected, but in your search for someone to blame, you're casting the better wide. Labour voters do not hate you, they absolutely do not.

Maybe you need to slightly let go. I mean that kindly, because I dont know you, but I worry for you carrying such a big grievance when youve obviously got good stuff to be happy about - kids, money. 😶

Not.

You can say this all you want. It isn't true. And the fact that there's a government monopoly on healthcare depresses wages. There's a reason US doctors make more.

The current level of NHS pay is one of the benchmarks used to determine private sector pay.

The reason US doctors make more money is because all healthcare is private and funded largely by insurance companies. It’s for profit.

Private healthcare providers in the UK have to pay more to recruit staff because they can’t/don’t/won’t provide the same level of pension or sick pay for permanent staff. They also rely on agency staff moonlighting from their substantive posts.

Doctors in the private sector are obviously self employed for their non NHS work so this doesn’t apply to them.

I have worked in both NHS and private healthcare.

They don't pay more. Most of their in-house clinical jobs are simply paid on NHS salaries and AfC T&C. The hospitals are competing in the same market for staff as the NHS.

To be fair, private healthcare is a broad church, and so there are different models. Surgery can be paid on different bases, depending on role. The surgeon might get a sessional rate, or a price per op. It depends on whether you mean private delivery of NHS care, or privately paid by health insurers or self-pay.

There's a myth in Britain that everyone in the holy grail of the private sector is a "wealth creator", and everyone in a public sector job is a drainer.

Its not only offensive but unhelpful. And it misrepresents the truth. Barristers and other legal jobs are just as much a part of the "public" sector as policing. The difference is that it is structurally important that they are independent. So therefore "private sector".

This idea of private good, public bad is actually such an arbitrary divide.

That's actually quite a sweet post, and I'll take your concern at face value.

It's in very stark contrast to the shocking lack of compassion you showed nearlylovemyusername in your previous post. Not "disconnected from your fellow human beings" or "self-righteous", indeed.

I also find you misguided in putting 'the noble manual worker' on a pedestal. I know someone who works as a binman. Do you? It's a perfectly fine job - decent pay for really good hours. Far less brutal than a 60+ hour City job. They would readily agree.

I think you misunderstand my position. I don't remotely think that a person's value depends on their job. But I do think that pay reflects the value of the work, along with how hard it is to find someone to do it (and do it as well as the job requires). That's how markets work.

As mentioned above, the job market is distorted by state-mandated pay scales in largely captive labour markets like UK healthcare. It's also distorted by flooding the supply, which is why immigration is such a hot topic. But overall, I believe it works fairly accurately.

And the key difference is that I consider it to be morally right (as well as economically effective) for someone's work productivity - which comes from their choices, their ability and their effort - to accrue to them, not to the collective.

You're right that my opinion and strength of feeling about Reeves, Phillipson, Milliband, Rayner is very similar to what the the Left feel about Thatcher and her Tory government. It's beyond a single policy. It's a fundamental conflict in world-view and values, which evokes strong feelings.

I've seen older Lefties pretend to spit at the mention of Thatcher's name, more than 30 years after she left office! That long-running grudge doesn't seem to have harmed the old Lefties, so I think I'll be fine too. I'm braced for Labour’s continuing onslaught, with another budget coming soon.

My frustration on here is accumulated from many private-school-VAT threads. It's out of proportion to this one, it's true, but not really out of proportion to what's been said to me over the last few years.

But you really needn't worry: I'm not a nutter with a vendetta list. The worst I would ever do in a RL encounter with a Labour MP would be a mildly-barbed, pointedly-polite comment, delivered with a tight smile. And mockery online. Great British traditions.

And for the avoidance of doubt: no, being adversely affected by someone's actions doesn't justify killing them.

I find it incredibly offensive that you equate my expression of views with a murder.

Political violence is utterly abhorrent. Always.

You might like to reflect on the political leanings of the politically motivated murders we've tragically seen in the UK in recent years.