Saturday, Mar 27, 2010
Toffs bribe oldies
FT: Cameron to protect welfare benefits
Do are they going to cut the deficit or increase it?
Posted by chrisch @ 11:04 AM (1468 views) Add Comment
26 Comments
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1. taffee said...
david cameron is a moron...he reminds me of hilary clinton...when dave gets in in the morning his inner circle probably say...we done a survey and people have said they don't want cuts....'right lets give them what they want then'...then the nexy day they say...'dave we need to cut the deficit'...dave would reply...'but you told me the people didn't want that'
2. shipbuilder said...
If Cameron fails to win the election it will surely count as one of the greatest political failures of recent times, yet it seems that is exactly what will happen.
Of course New Labour have done this by moving to the right, rather than the left - protect the rich, deregulation, protect the homeowners, the war against terrorism, the war against drugs, creeping privatisation, the cult of efficiency.....the Tories have nowhere to go as a result.
A return to true conservatism might get a result, but Maggie's radical economic liberalism buried that as effectively as Tony buried old Labour.
Now we have a political monoculture of PR-obsessed elitist crony capitalists.
3. mr g said...
@Shipbuilder "A return to true conservatism might get a result, but Maggie's radical economic liberalism buried that as effectively as Tony buried old Labour.
Now we have a political monoculture of PR-obsessed elitist crony capitalists."
Spot on, that hits the nail on the head and says everything about UK politics.
4. mr g said...
"Cameron to protect welfare benefits"
What's wrong with helping the elderly who are GENUINELY in need of benefits?
I assume that if he had said he was going to protect the benefits of unmarried mothers it would be OK?
Another example of the rampant ageism of some HPC contributors?
5. quiet guy said...
@Shipbuilder
"deregulation"
Oh come off it! One common complaint about NuLabour is that they're a meddling bunch of control freaks who have passed far to many laws and have loaded more costs onto employers.
6. markj69 str05 said...
@Shipbuilder - 'the cult of efficiency'!!! Do you realise how many people now work in the public sector? And up to the election it will probably keep increasing just to balance out the unemployment figures. Nothing efficient there.
7. cyril said...
@4 mr g - I expect people on this site think the country can't afford to pay the level of benefits we currently do to anyone old or young.
My mother in law is a pensioner who has never done much paid work apart from being a school dinner lady for a while. She says she has never been better off. She regularly gives away £100s to her gradchildren (who are grown up and in work) because they seem to need it more than her. Funny old world isn't it.
8. mystie010 said...
We need a new party called the 'Lets get rid of all these idiots and get some sensible, genuine, honest, hard working, patriotic people in' But I guess that is a bit too long. But you get what I'm saying. Maybe we call it the 'Honest party' or something like that. In fact lets get rid of all government all they do is screw the country and take all of your money off you.
9. icarus said...
For anyone accessing the article by googling the title it's 'Cameron to protect benefits for the elderly'. Anyone got any ideas about the cost/benefit (cash and votes) of means-testing winter fuel, bus-pass and TV licence benefits? After all not all elderly people are poor. Presumably the cost to the government of bus passes needn't be too high - the marginal cost to a bus company of letting over-60s ride free must be quite small and the govt will take this into account when dealing with them. Free TV licences for the over-75s are presumably paid for by an extra £15 or so on everyone else's licence fee. The big cost is winter fuel - I think this is £250 for over-60s living alone and £25 extra for cold weeks, making the bill about £350 pp.in the recent cold winter. How many well-off over 60s received this?
10. mr g said...
@7 Cyril
Agreed it is a funny old world and I know from personal experience there are pensioners who have never been better off (one of my sisters in law, for example) but equally I'm sure there are many deserving cases for benefits in that age group.
@8 Mystie010 "In fact lets get rid of all government all they do is screw the country and take all of your money off you."
Add them to the following list: http://him.uk.msn.com/in-the-know/photos.aspx?cp-documentid=152633285
11. landofconfusion said...
7. cyril said...
My mother in law is a pensioner who has never done much paid work apart from being a school dinner lady for a while.
One set of my grandparents fell into that category. They used to have more foreign holidays in a year than I've had in my lifetime. They differed from what you say about yours, though in that they, for the most part didn't give a sh*t about future generations.
I also know a guy who, from what he's told me, retired early. He regularly complains about not getting any benefits and yet takes 3-4 holidays a year to Europe, holds shares and runs a nice car (well, 2 actually but I haven't seen the other).
4. mr g said... "What's wrong with helping the elderly who are GENUINELY in need of benefits?"
You know what? I actually agree with you on this. There should be a minimum level at which people can be expected to live and the state should step in and support those who fall below this.
It's just a shame that we've just had a Labour government. Maybe a few more elderly people might not have frozen to death if we hadn't.
12. mr g said...
@LOC "There should be a minimum level at which people can be expected to live and the state should step in and support those who fall below this."
Pleased to see that we agree on this!
13. shipbuilder said...
quiet guy - deregulation where it did the most damage - the financial sector. The likes of health and safety, employment law etc. that small businesses complain about have little to do with Labour, they are either EU regulations or international trends. Remember that the UK opted out of working hours regulation. H&S was THE big thing in the American company I worked for.
markj69 str05 - the obsession with targets, PFI, consultants, big IT projects, healthcare trusts and so on are a direct result of the 'cult of efficiency'. Tony Blair's big idea was that the public sector could be corporatised and modernised, that social ideals could be pursued through business processes.
The ballooning of public sector employment was a result of it not working. Anyone in the public sector could pinpoint any number of reasons why it didn't work. Unfortunately this gets simplified to the usual public sector bad/private good argument.
14. shipbuilder said...
I keep mentioning it, but Adam Curtis' documentary 'The Trap' highlights very well Blair's thinking, continuing the thinking of the Thatcher era. Remember that Blair was an admirer of Maggie. He undoubtedly thought he could expand on her methods to deliver his social ideals.
15. titaniccaptain said...
I can't wait until some of the posters on here are old.
I hope Labour win the election......because if they do win....the whole system will eventually collapse.
And this country needs to collapse and rebuild itself with a fair system of government where the state doesn't interfere in 'society' and individuals make communities and not the other way around.
It's not Labour that needs to be booted out.....its our entire way of governing ourselves and that works on a microcosmic level as well as on the microcosmic level.
We are not free.
No that's not a conspiraloon statement its a fact......
This is a very large country with it's population crammed together on land owned by whoever with the majority of the land owned by a fraction of the population or state owned...........we could all live off the land and in the land without a f*&king mortgage or high taxation.
Taxes should not work themselves out of the borough except for defence....
Oh b*gger I can't be bothered with all this......come on Gordon!!!!!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S1zci07Kono
16. clockslinger said...
Andrew Haldenby...that is a name I will remember for future reference.
I can completely see the logic in the proposal that you need the elderly poor to suffer a bit more in order not to do things like restoring CGT to 40% or more to cut the deficit...Being poor they'd only spend it on drugs and cider anyway, wouldn't they Mr Halenby.
17. alan_540 said...
The Captain's been on the rum again...
18. quiet guy said...
Shipbuilder,
In a sense I agree that certain financial deregulation such as the repeal of the Glass–Steagall Act has proven to be disastrous but there has been a mountain of red tape placed upon the financial services - Basel II, Sarbanes–Oxley Act and the oversight of our wonderful FSA - all of which proved to be useless in the end.
I agree that the EU are keen on regulating their subjects but I'd suggest that our goverment is very keen to adopt and assist the EU with its policies. I also notice that after you introduce the EU you use an example of us opting out as well.
http://www.businesszone.co.uk/item/183914
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/businesslatestnews/5055791/Regulations-under-Labour-cost-business-77bn.html
http://www.fpb.org/news/2194/Small_businesses_buckling_under_the_burden_of_regulation.htm
19. mark wadsworth said...
Why are people so obsessed with cutting benefits? I'm happier paying £60 a week to an unemployed person or £130 a week to a pensioner than I am paying £500 a week to a superfluous bureaucrat (of which there are two or three million).
As to the welfare system, it's the poverty trap, couple penalty and complications that need to be sorted out first - if you get that right, then the cash cost of welfare will fall all by itself - you have to remember that benefit withdrawal is the same as tax, and then to think about the Laffer Curve. If we reduced the level of benefits withdrawal plus tax from their current levels of 70p to 100p for every £1 earned to something humane like 30p or even 50p, then the amount of benefits recouped would probably go up.
As to Thatcher, she may have had her economically liberal moments, but by and large she practised Home-Owner-Ism on a grand scale - the only reason that the 1980s bubble wasn't as big as the 2000s bubble was that back then politicians hadn't quite sussed out how to blow bubbles properly, and she lacked the cheap credit from China and so on.
20. icarus said...
@mark w - I don't think any of the posts here are obsessing about cutting benefits. My own post @9 was querying how politicians calculate the pros and cons of directing over-60 benefits specifically to those who need them. There are the savings to the Exchequer on the one hand and on the other there's the extra work involved and the cost in votes. A lot of older people can afford to go off to sunny places for the winter and come back to find £300 winter fuel payments waiting for them.
Regarding the £130 for pensioners and £60 for the unemployed I wonder how many relying on those benefits get less than their rental costs from housing benefit and have to make up the difference from their benefits?
21. mark wadsworth said...
Icarus, the Winter Fuel Allowance is a gimmick and ought to be rolled into the weekly pension. If pensioners can afford to go abroad in winter, then good luck to them.
Housing Benefit and Council Tax Benefit are separate topics, there's not really any need for them if you think about it, i.e. have proper land value tax instead of council tax, so if a pensioner wants to cut his or her LVT bill they just downsize to somewhere where they can afford it (or just let them roll up the tax).
As to Housing Benefit, let's just scrap the hugely expensive HB for "private tenants" (which is just a subsidy to landlords) and use the money to build more social housing (the numbers stack up) and scrap rents and LVT for council tenants, just give them a K-code for PAYE so they pay an extra 20% of their wages in "rent" - the chances are, with the reduction in marginal withdrawal rates, councils would collect MORE in "rent" and not less. Either way, the councils would break even in cash terms and everybody gets somewhere affordable to live. What's not to like?
22. landofconfusion said...
21. mark wadsworth said...
"As to Housing Benefit, let's just scrap the hugely expensive HB for "private tenants" (which is just a subsidy to landlords) and use the money to build more social housing"
And don't forget to remove "the right to buy". I've never understood why people thought this was a good idea. You subsidise those who lack the financial capability to save and buy their own home by letting them buy their council house, and at a discount. Astonishing.
23. icarus said...
@mark w 21. 'If pensioners can afford to go abroad in winter then good luck to them'. Yep, lack of sun for several months is bad for you. You're arguing that they may as well forget the fuel payment and give pensioners £136 instead of £130 pw. I'm not sure about the following - it's what I've gathered talking to a couple of recipients - but I thought that the pension credit that takes the state pension up to £130 was based on need (without pension credit fully-paid-up people receive just £95pw and you don't get the pension credit if your savings are above £6k?? - I could be wrong about the sum or the whole idea that the pension credit is based on need). If I'm right about the pension credit then my point was that these fuel and other over-60s extras are different - they're for anyone of that age irrespective of wealth.
24. Simon said...
Icarus ,
Frank Field is one of the major proponents of the Universal Protected Pension .
The principle is pretty simple , deduct money from wages through the same mechanism as National Insurance but actually establish a fund . There is an element of redistribution to the less well off . The only problem I have with it is that it is proposed to be funded by investment in securities but it could of course be funded at the risk-free rate of growth which is about 1.25% above inflation .
The idea is to pitch the pension at such a level that other benefits are not generally required .
I believe the anticipated saving in the costs of administrating means tested benefits is £18 billion per annum . The figure shocked me .
As you know , means testing penalises people who attempt to save rather than spend everything .
25. mark wadsworth said...
@ LandOf 22 - yes of course get rid of right to buy. I never liked this policy when I was young and left-wing, and now I'm old and care mainly about value for taxpayers' money I still don't like it.
@ icarus 23, the pensions credit is insanely means tested, if that's what you mean by "based on need". The PC rate of £130 is higher than the full BSP of £95, so what is the point of running two systems in parallel? Citizen's Pension is the way forward, that way we only have to argue about the age it starts and how much it should be.
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