How did we get to this?

[SueEllen]

Liz just confirmed the triple-lock on PMQs as I understand it.

https://forums.contractoruk.com/gene...ml#post2951142

[d000hg]

For some like head teachers and nurses.

Others particularly in healthcare and teaching will continue quitting to change job e.g. go and work in Aldi, or to emigrate.

Teachers get a fairly decent salary, in purely "putting food on the table" terms even if we can argue they should get more. Especially those who have been doing it a few years. They will struggle to get anywhere near that salary picking up a random job unless they have qualifications to get something skilled (like return to industry).

[d000hg]

https://forums.contractoruk.com/gene...ml#post2951142

What does your post about milk bottling prices have to do with this?

[SueEllen]

Teachers get a fairly decent salary, in purely "putting food on the table" terms even if we can argue they should get more. Especially those who have been doing it a few years. They will struggle to get anywhere near that salary picking up a random job unless they have qualifications to get something skilled (like return to industry).

Lots of ex-teachers I know do have the qualifications to return to industry and have done so. Well I've worked with a few. Not all of them have quit during training or recently afterwards.

[SueEllen]

What does your post about milk bottling prices have to do with this?

On a more interesting point if you watched/listened to PMQs you would have noticed her own MPs weren't cheering her as usual.

[d000hg]

Lots of ex-teachers I know do have the qualifications to return to industry and have done so. Well I've worked with a few. Not all of them have quit during training or recently afterwards.

You know lots of people who gave up well-paying professional jobs to re-train as teachers?

What on earth possessed them to do such a thing!? For the last 10 years, every teacher I know has the same advice to those considering a career in teaching: Don't!

[clearedforlanding]

You know lots of people who gave up well-paying professional jobs to re-train as teachers?

What on earth possessed them to do such a thing!?

Holidays & children usually,

[Lance]

Main income tax band needs to go up by 5% at least - should raise 70-80 bln, plus VAT to 25% - do it 1% per annum to make it easier, sorted.

Shove the tax bands up a bit as well to make sure that the lowest paid are out of income tax.
Scrap NI and put it into the 25p and 40p bands (dunno what that would make it but 30p and 50p would seem reasonable).

But don't increase VAT as that will directly push inflation up.... The gov could get inflation down to any figure to wanted to with a VAT cut but why would they do that????

[Lost It]

Kind of looks like that hole was always there, but the gov was directing atention elsewhere.

Covid cost a fortune because the clowns at No10 got it completely wrong and let it kill almost anyone it caught, at some point they will find a way to prove it was the NHS that got it wrong not the government.

But it was they that gave billions away to "Companies" that sprang up out of nowhere just to claim the Covid grants, and never chased it. Why didn't they chase it god only knows, they know who stole it, why aren't they in other? Money down the drain.

As for taxing the poor, well to actually pay tax you have to be earning money in the first place, so many of the "poorer" sector have multiple jobs just trying to make ends meet, they still pay NI on at least on of those jobs and if they are really unlucky they are taxed as if they have more than one income. If they are below the tax threshold they really are not very well off at all.
If they are working through an umbrella they get to pay both parts of the NI, which isn't a small sum. Then they have to worry about how to put fuel in the car to get to work, or expensive bus fares, or if they are lucky they can find work that's within cycling distance.

I think we will see a return very soon to the days when people rode little 100mpg motorcycles to get to work. At least there's a chance you can afford to fuel it?

Now what about the plans to tax all these pure electric cars that are paying no road tax and very little per mile in power? Road pricing? Pay a fixed rate per mile gleaned from little black boxes measuring your journey? It will come because the Gov cannot afford to lose all that road fund and fuel duty... Is it £30 billions worth? I wouldn't know.

Then there's VAT. They could cut the cost of everything to the population just by lowering the VAT rate. It would lower the cost of fuel, food, consumables, gas, electricity, medicine, care, housing, just about anything that has a VAT component would become cheaper. Even the VAT registered amongst us would be slightly better off. The accountants bills would be slightly cheaper too....

Why won't they do that? Well.... It's money for old rope for a start. A tax on a tax in effect. A golden goose.

[d000hg]

Covid cost a fortune because the clowns at No10 got it completely wrong and let it kill almost anyone it caught

Not sure which data you're basing that on. Mortality was something like 3% in an unvaccinated population like ours and the first lockdown (the only real one) demonstrably kicked the can down the road so many people never got Covid until vaccinated, as well as smearing the cases out over a longer timeframe pre-vaccine so that people needing ventilation got it (if you got to that point this made a massive difference to survival odds)