I was asked this morning to ask for the party leaders' debate this week. I recorded this video whilst having a coffee when editing a chapter this morning:
To watch it, you will have to view it here.
And yes, I should have held the phone higher.
There is no transcript.
The question, however, is simple. It is, what do our party leaders think is more important? Subsidising the pensions of the wealthy, or ending child poverty?
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The UK is the 6th (sometimes 5th depending on measurement) wealthiest country in the world. Why doesn’t the UK do both, ensure ALL pensions and end ALL child poverty. As Richard as shown many times, the UK can easily afford do both.
The qustion was not about ‘ensuring’ pensions (laudable), but about ‘subsidising’ those of the wealthy. Not at all the same thing.
Richard,
On one hand are you are correct but the pension issue is a VERY difficult one (I accept that the pension and/or Social Security System in the USA is very different from the scheme in the UK). Each time the idea of “means testing” Social Security comes up both main parties (but not the MAGAts) run as far from the discussion as possible for many different reasons.
We are talking here about tax relief on subsidies for private pension funds at higher rates of tax
Should have addressed “anrigaut” not “Richard”.
Sorry! Time for more coffee!
@Richard,
SORRY! Did not understand that we were referencing & discussing private pension plans which in my mind’s eye is basically investment income. SORRY!
You are forgiven
On the other side, re Sunak:
A brilliant video just released by Led by Donkeys here:
https://x.com/ByDonkeys/status/1797872238676599121
Very good
Let me know if anyone finds a similar exposé on Nigel Farage. He announced yesterday that he is standing in the parliamentary constituency of Clacton. I cheered inwardly when a young woman called Victoria threw a McDonald’s banana milkshake over him. As we know he cares much more about immigration than child poverty. No need to ask the question of him! His Clacton constituency has many many people and children who live in poverty. What is he doing here except enjoying his own divisive and publicity seeking self. And that’s being kind.
Here we go, very illuminating.
https://youtu.be/mfyiSk8Rjc8?si=jmklBKEODY8KB5yg
How is he 6 years younger than me? He seems to be about 100 years older….
@anrigaut
The video was very-very-very good!
Sky News has reported that gas prices have spiked due to a crack in a Norwegian international gas supply pipe. The price is back around where it was in December; which means, if this was happening in December (when demand is high, rather than June, when demand is low) prices would be even higher. One solitary crack in one pipeline; and prices rocket. Why? The excuse is the Ukraine war (see other threads for the mess we have made of our response to that – Putin’s economy is ironically proving more resilient than ours, because public opposition is simply suppressed; so much for our “tough sanctions”).
The real failure here is the neoliberal ideological insistence that we pay world market prices for our domestic energy; even where, with our considerable renewables production costs are far below world prices. China provides domestic energy at subsidised prices. There is no good reason for our prices to be set by world markets. It inhibits growth, and adds to the cost of living crisis. In Scotland (Shetland, for example), which produces more renewable energy per capita for the UK than anywhere else, at prices far below world market price; because of the British network grid charges, consumers pay among the highest energy prices, if not the highest energy prices in the UK. Scotland is continually being savagely ripped-off by British energy policy.
“so much for our “tough sanctions”
Sanctions are worthless in a world of global trade.
Seizing assets is a much better option in my arrogant opinion.
I have to write this in a state of some shock. I have lived in my home for 22 years and it’s in a very safe conservative seat. The current mp is in place – welded, manacled and riveted in his seat. He does not campaign in any election – fields have blue posters with his name, picture and the words “vote conservative” and he stands in the town centre for an hour on one Saturday and that’s it. No other party campaigns much either – maybe a stall one Saturday morning in the market, but they all know it’s a wast of time, money and energy so they don’t bother. And that’s been the case for all 22 years and all elections. Tonight my husband and I had just agreed that despite our interest in politics, we won’t watch the leader’s “debate” on the grounds that irrespective of the speaker, all we would hear is Tory guff.
Then the doorbell rang.
The Labour Party wanting to know if we wanted “to discuss any national issues”! I said I had 4 words for him: Natalie Elphicke and Diane Abbott. He spouted some words about each, claiming inside knowledge, but I ended the (polite, reasoned and civil) discussion with the information that although we both normally vote labour we are not doing so this time as (in my words) “you’re just too close to the Tories in every way”. Asked who I would vote for I stated the Green Party to which he responded that if he were not labour, that would be the way he would vote too.
If labour are campaigning here I think the Tories know they are in trouble – but if our mp is removed, they will have fewer than 50 mps after the election, which I find too far a thought. Sorry for a long post – feel free to not read it or put it up!
You are welcome…..
@CRenn
Excellent post. More please as the electioneering progresses. I love real life stories!
Writing this during the first break in the Sunak Starmer ‘debate’.
Apparently Julie Etchingham is ‘controlling it. She needs sacking. She has allowed Sunak to waffle on and on while trying to prevent Starmer speak over Sunak interrupting him. It is a farce. The moderator needs an off switch. One request to stop speaking then the mike is off.
The quality of the ‘debate’ from both is appalling, but I think Sunak is being allowed to score more points.
I tweeted a request for microphones to be turned off when they break the rules
If they don’t stop talking, interrupting or lying they should be excluded.
Three strikes and they’re out.
Slightly annoyed that Starmer was not able to call out more of Sunak’s lies and misrepresentations.
One particularly egregious example is Sunak’s invocation of “Labour’s pensions tax” because they refuse to copy the Conservative “triple lock plus”. This is addressing a problem caused by Conservative fiscal drag.
The simple fact is that the full state pension is currently £221.20 per week, or £11,502.40 per year. The income tax personal allowance was frozen by Sunak in 2021 at £12,570, and that freeze was extended by Hunt to 2028. So fiscal drag is pulling many people on low pay into income tax.
Because the state pension is increased each year (except in 2022, when the government suspended the triple lock) but the Conservatives have frozen the income tax personal allowance, we are approaching the point in the next three or four years when for the first time the full state pension may be more than the personal allowance. Frankly, the pensions system is not set up to apply PAYE to state pensions, or to require millions of pensioners to file tax returns for small amounts, so something has to give. Perhaps the reintroduction of a higher age-related personal allowance.
We could be celebrating that the state pension is becoming generous enough that pensioners might be liable to income tax (albeit state pensions in many other European countries are much more generous). But what this also means is that a younger person working for a little bit more than 21 hours a week on the £11.44 minimum wage and earning £228.80 per week or £11,897.60 per year would pay some income tax, but an older person being paid a similar income as a pensioner would not pay income tax. Is that “fair”?
A post to come on this….
Typo correction: the weekly and annual figures for a minimum wage earner are for 20 hours per week (not 21) and 52 weeks. But you get the point. We have to explain why pensioners on basic pensions should be given more generous tax treatment on their pensions income than people on low wages.
Andrew
Of course, speaking as a pensioner whose state pension exceeded the tax free allowance by £2 from April this year, we should not treat pensioners differently. I am also unsure why Universal Credit is not taxable, unless it is to make it dificult to try to understand how much moey people have to live on.
In a fair world all income should be taxed in the same way, regardless of the source of the income or the status of the individual.
The only reason my state pension is partly taxable is because of the Conservative party policy of freezing income tax thresholds. Which is a hidden way of increasing the tax that everyone pays. A despicable action to have taken, and one which Starmer will not correct.
In the aftermath of the debate last night the most important question that should have been put to Starmer and Sunak but wasn’t is the following:-
“A very large amount of government spending is needed to tackle global warming but are you both telling us there’s no money to do this when the argument exists taxation and subsidies for the wealthy are inequitable or unbalanced?”
Because it wasn’t it’s impossible to take this general election seriously because it gets to the very fundamental question of how as a nation do we tackle all the issues facing the nation and not just global warming. In other words the nation is just mindlessly treading water!
Imagine AI being used to build a ‘future national self’ chatbot to inspire wise life choices and this being used as a basis for general election debate:-
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/article/2024/jun/05/ai-researchers-build-future-self-chatbot-to-inspire-wise-life-choices