DEM not gonna CON dis NATION: Rolling UK politics in the short-lived Cleggeron era

what? kind of think the idea is redistribution. if we were actually in it together we wouldn't have extreme wealth disparity.

yeah exactly. scale income tax.

kids get £20 a week until they earn their own income.

sorted.

i mean, how fucking difficult does it have to be?

tracer, on this point of principle in re: universal benefits, would you support the elimination of means testing for income support, job seeker's allowance, pension credit, housing benefit, council tax benefit, etc.

the concept of universal income support or jobseeker's allowance is nonsensical.

we could dispense with child benefit completely if we just once and for all dealt with the massive, head-doing expense of child care between the ages of 9m - 4yo. the UK is dead last in the European league table for this IIRC and i guarantee this is where 90% of child benefit goes.

just to give you a taste, in London the average creche cost is probably around £30 a day. if you've got 22 work days in a month that's an expense of £660 a month. EVERY MONTH. FOR YEARS. so of course many women (and men) prefer to simply quit their jobs and spend more time with their kids rather than stump up this massive bill. and now the tories want to punish them! fabulous.

They're only punishing them if they have a partner earning in the top 10% in the country.

finding it really hard to be all ;_; for people earning £40k+

we could dispense with child benefit completely if we just once and for all dealt with the massive, head-doing expense of child care between the ages of 9m - 4yo.

not sure about dispensing completely with, but in agreement with the sentiment, definitely.

JSA was not means tested against income (from investments etc.) until relatively recently iirc. that may be crazy (certainly seems so to me), but it's not nonsensical or a meaningless question.

unless i'm missing something, the benefits in that list are not qualitatively different from universal child support.

so i want to know where you draw the line. what about housing benefit? why shouldn't that be universal?

mortgage/rent relief substitutes for that over here

how would you feel about the NHS being only available for sub-45K earners? or be generous, say sub-60K.

or heck, public schooling should only be available for sub-60K, everyone else can pay for private school surely!

― progressive cuts (Tracer Hand), Tuesday, October 5, 2010 12:45 PM (34 seconds ago) Bookmark

well, in the latter case, they already do, though i can see how this powerful constituency might suddenly turn on the welfare state if we didn't appease them

i paid university tuition fees and did not get a student grant because my parents earned however much; having never earned more than the median income, i owe getting on for ten grand

so yeah, i think the nhs shd be for all. but not cash benefits.

just to give you a taste, in London the average creche cost is probably around £30 a day. if you've got 22 work days in a month that's an expense of £660 a month. EVERY MONTH. FOR YEARS. so of course many women (and men) prefer to simply quit their jobs and spend more time with their kids rather than stump up this massive bill. and now the tories want to punish them! fabulous.

― progressive cuts (Tracer Hand), Tuesday, October 5, 2010 1:11 PM (11 minutes ago) Bookmark

ok, fair play. this sucks. they shd concentrate money on the pre-schoolers. child benefit goes up to 19yo, however, and that's pretty weird for people in the top income tax bracket. not sure what being a stay-at-home-mother of a 17yo entails.

telling them to gtfo

that was a full time job for my dad iirc.

haha

i'm not sure where you draw the line, caek. child benefit seems different from these other benefits you mention in that children come with a unique and unavoidable expense that arrives suddenly in your budget, regardless of how much you make or how much you have saved.

do you want me to admit that rich people don't need it? obviously that's true. look, i am all for progressive benefits and taxation! but in some cases i think there's a real value in having a single, identifiable, universal benefit. it means the powerful classes will fight to keep it. it means the service provided cannot be entirely shitty because coddled stokey milquetoasts will complain about it. and it strips away (ideally) the complexity which would otherwise be a barrier to entry for the people who actually need the benefit (and cost money to administer). these aren't iron-clad justifications for retaining any universal benefits much less this one but i consider them significant especially in the face of the relatively paltry savings to be made

but yeah enough about me and my coddled milquetoast life as a new dad, the stuff about conservatives admitting their strategy is to push poor people out of the city and free up pied-a-terres for the BTL buddies is absolutely sickening

If the shortfall in rent rose to more than £20 per week, almost all landlords said they would evict the tenant or not renew the tenancy.

Tenants are then likely to warn councils they are in danger of becoming homeless, and councils will be under a duty to find them temporary accommodation or relocate them to a less expensive property.

this administration is really learning from the bush years - squeeze federal benefits dry and leave local government to clean up the mess

Trying to think whether argument on this thread is more/less retarded than an argument on iPhone4 vs htc desire

well surely you're here to raise the standard

Argument seems to be, they're rich, so fuck reason

He's got the ball. It's a legal tackle

finding it really hard to be all ;_; for people earning £40k+

Well, if we were both on 40k for sure I wouldn't be complaining. BECAUSE I'D STILL BE GETTING CB!

ned, presumably you will return to the workplace once the kids are old enough to get to school etc?

xp that's the real problem with this. quite pleased to see tories aiming their cuts at the better off, but you can't cut benefits to 1.2 million yet leave 900,000 wealthier people untouched and wave it away as an "anomaly".

Anyways, they're backtracking now...
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-11473609

Really, it's the "made-up five minutes before we go to conference-ness" of it all that makes me mad.

not debating the whole retardedness of the single vs combo benefit bullshit but still oh no it's a tough life on £45k

Tax high earners and fuck top 10% earners, I'm all for it, but why do things in a way that fucks up the most only people who are at exactly 10% at the bottom of the high scale? when there's already another perfectly good way for people to progressively contribute based on income?

wonder if it's time for a netmums vs mumsnet poll

http://www.netmums.com/coffeehouse/general-coffeehouse-chat-514/news-current-affairs-topical-discussion-12/385877-mumsnet-mafia.html

Tax high earners and fuck top 10% earners, I'm all for it, but why do things in a way that fucks up the most only people who are at exactly 10% at the bottom of the high scale? when there's already another perfectly good way for people to progressively contribute based on income?

― HOOS' THE BOSS (ken c), Tuesday, October 5, 2010 2:03 PM (37 seconds ago) Bookmark

high earners don't pay tax you noob. anyway there's fuck all of them.

tracer, i think we agree that ***if there were no risk to the integrity of the welfare state***, getting rid of CB for two parent families with incomes greater than twice the 40% income tax threshold seems pretty unobjectionable. obviously the issue re: single income homes like ned's is total bullshit and smells late night policy making, but paying 4k p.a. to families with an income of 85k is obviously not the best possible use of ~£1bn.

assuming we agree on that...

i am also saying that the principle of this policy does not represent much of a risk to the integrity of the welfare state. much of the money distributed in benefits/allowances is already means tested so it's demonstrably not a house of cards. i don't think this particular issue is any different. sure there will be further rollbacks during this government because it draws the line in a different place to the previous one, but they'll happen whether or not this policy is implemented, and not as a thin end of the wedge consequence of it.

ken i don't get the suggestion you're making? how do you change the income tax system to redistribute money to families with children? ask them to declare children to their employers?

ned, presumably you will return to the workplace once the kids are old enough to get to school etc?

Yes, I will walk into a job as a 46 year old with an arts degree who has been out of full time employment for 12 years. Anyway, even if it was that easy, you've still got kids going to school at 9, finished at 3, and having (please don't remind me) ten weeks holiday a year.

I know this sounds like "sense of entitlement" bs but please don't get me wrong, if I really thought "we were all in this together" I wouldn't be so pissed about it but, as I keep on saying, as far as I can see we're taking a 3% cut in income that I don't see the (actually, genuinely) wealthy taking. Instead, as per usual it seems, you encourage the non-rich by taking stuff away and encourage the rich by giving them stuff.

raise the 40% rate to whatever amount that would generate that extra 1bn, keep cb as it is

No no, Ken, this lot are making the *hard* choices.

raise the 40% rate to whatever amount that would generate that extra 1bn, keep cb as it is

― HOOS' THE BOSS (ken c), Tuesday, October 5, 2010 2:10 PM (37 seconds ago) Bookmark

this would cruelly punish stay-at-home mothers, if their menfolk got phttp://images.chron.com/blogs/askacat/hatcat.JPGted and earned more than £37k

raise the 40% rate to whatever amount that would generate that extra 1bn, keep cb as it is

― HOOS' THE BOSS (ken c), Tuesday, October 5, 2010 2:10 PM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

No no, Ken, this lot are making the *hard* choices.

― Tim, Tuesday, October 5, 2010 2:11 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark

given the response in the right-wing press, i think you'd have to admit this is a hard choice. 'aspirational' people will now not want to earn more than £44k because they will get less of a handout. stay-at-home mothers may have to contemplate taking work.

this is clearly a pisser for people who earn £44-47-odd thou.

Would aspirational people with kids want to earn more than 44k if earning 45k means you're in fact worse off

computer says no

Would aspirational people with kids want to earn more than 44k if earning 45k means you're in fact worse off

― HOOS' THE BOSS (ken c), Tuesday, October 5, 2010 2:21 PM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark

this is what the right-wing media is saying, well done

Would aspirational people with kids want to earn more than 44k if earning over 45k means they're considerably richer than you

it's handy that the worlds smallest violin has just been invented.

xpost

break even for someone earning just below to just above 44k is at 45.8k for one child plus 900 for each subsequent child. i.e with one child you start to be better off ~46k, ~47k for 2 etc. Not better off if you already were above those thresholds but if your pay rises above them.

the fabled disincentive to earn, helluva priority for those setting tax rates.

Er xpost I was using your point to show my point. Thanks thought!

I.e. its ridiculous even in an 'aspirations' point of view compared with just setting the. tax correctly

ken, it looks like they realise they've fucked up in that 40-46k window.

Let's start with 3% of this, just to make it fair.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-11473352
I make that £210m. Buy a hospital.
Of course, then their incentive to work would go and they'd piss off to Hong Kong. Or something.

it goes w/o saying that bankers can and should eat a dick

given the response in the right-wing press, i think you'd have to admit this is a hard choice.

If you believe whoever it was on the radio this morning, they weren't expecting this kind of response from the right. I'd have thought a raise in income tax would have been harder and fairer, but whatevs. I'm not especially against this, I recognise that there are going to be cuts and I fully expect to be a lot more angry about a lot more things in the future.

("This" in that last sentence being the removal of child benefit from top-taxed people, fwiw)

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1317800/Theresa-May-steals-conference-bash-tight-fitting-top.html

What awful, awful people in that article.

http://www.solarnavigator.net/aviation_and_space_travel/aviation_space_images/Lancaster_bomber_aircraft_dropping_bombs_1944.jpg

...on the lot of them.

New Statesman currently speculating that cutting housing benefit, capping benefits and the flight of the poor from inner cities would make it a lot easier for the Tories to win seats like Hammersmith and Westminster North where they failed last time around.

well duh, boris 4 life