General Discussion
It isn't only your vote they are seeking.
They're also working out how much your house is worth just in case you should need social care.
Is not Social Care run by the local authority Lynne and if i am correct they all ready know what its worth.
I've asked this before but I'll ask it again.
Why do we have this division between medical care (the NHS) paid for by tax receipts, but social care getting paid for by the individual.*
If the social care is needed because of a health problem - why the difference in how it and the NHS care is funded?
* believe the tab gets picked up by the local authority if the individual concerned has no assets (eg property) and very little savings.
The point is Lynne that it is and local authorities have cut social care they force folk to sell there houses to pay for care by means testing, now under the new system yes property will be used but a £100,000 will be safe for the kids and the property will not be sold untill the owner is deceased seems fair to me.
There is no logic in one form of health care being paid for by us all and another form of health care being paid for by the individual. It is all health care.
And if local authorities are starved of cash now to pay for social (health) care then they are hardly in a position to wait for people to die before they can recoup the money, as per the Conservative manifesto proposal, that has been spent on that person's social (health) care.
This proposal is reminding me of a situation in my family whereby one member worked all her life, saved money etc. A sister of hers did not.
Both lived in council accommodation. The first had to pay her rent in full. The other got housing benefit plus other benefits.
Can you imagine how the one who had worked and saved money felt about that?
So....people work, they pay their mortgage, they buy their homes. They then have to pay for their social care from their savings and the value of their homes.
Meanwhile, those without savings and/or property get their social (health) care paid for by the taxpayer.
I know of people, not rich people by any means, who have scrimped and saved and gone without in order to own their own home. If they then decide to do without social (health) care because they don't see why they should pay for it and end up having a fall and breaking a hip or something similar consequentially ending up in hospital just where is the financial logic?
So as always it's simple pay more council tax or vat or more for fuel etc etc, whatever it is folk will moan you get what you pay for, now with a labour goverment they will give us what we want but on borrowed cash the solution is higher taxation its that simple. VAT needs to be 30%, 30p on a litre of fuel, 5p on personel tax, double the duty on fags beer and spirits but who will vote for that the alternative cuts cuts cuts. And Lynne i have had 70 years on this earth and its never been fair but we make the best of it nothing will ever change everybody knows it they just live in hope because thats how it is.
Of course things have changed!
Would you say that the health system we have now (the NHS) is a fairer health system than the one we had before 1948 whereby people had to pay, individually, for their health care?
Are you suggesting it is a choice between collective paying for (tax) or individual paying for?
In which case why should those having to pay for themselves have to also pay (via tax) for those others who can't?
Hope people have also got enough money, on an individual basis, to pay for their (grand)kids' schooling........
Is that not the same with everything in life we pay our taxes and those less fortunate benifit from it. If goverment is borrowing large amounts of cash to prop up the system who ever they are that cant be right we have to pay more in tax or am i missing something.
Well it seems there are two options
a) pay more tax
or
b) be on the receiving end of more and more cut backs in services that are provided via tax (NHS, Police, Armed Services, Social Care, Education, Trading Standards, Building Control, Highways and countless other things).
And don't forget when Labour come knocking at your door they are eyeing up your garden in order to treble your Council Tax.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4553476/Labour-s-secret-plans-4-000-garden-tax.html
@leatash - how the problem is resolved and funded needs to be sorted out on a cross party basis.
@burneside - labour is committed to looking at the idea.
“Labour is to examine proposals for a Land Value Tax (LVT) as a possible replacement for council tax and business rates, the party’s manifesto says.
Land value taxes are paid by landowners on the unimproved rental value of their land. They are recommended by many economists – ranging from Adam Smith to the Institute for Fiscal Studies – because they are considered to be economically efficient.
Land ownership is highly concentrated in Britain, with 432 people owning half of all private rural land. One man, the Duke of Westminster, owns 133,199 acres, including 300 acres in central London.
As a result, a move to LVT could see a dramatic shift in property taxation towards wealthy property barons, with most people getting a cut.”
When the Tories knock on anyone's door, why not ask them:-
What have you done to our Police Force? (You all moan about the lack of Police)
What are you going to do about our Armed Forces as they have been vastly reduced since the Tories come in?
What are you doing about the NHS as it is in such a mess now?
And let's not forget about Education.
The list is endless.
So then, you all have the chance to do something about it but will you? NO.
The tories will again sweep in and in a years time, you lot will all be moaning about the state of the NHS, lack of Police in the town, cuts etc etc etc. and putting the blame on someone else.
How many people are sick of ALL politicians? Same old promises, same old lies, same old failure to actually do anything positive and long term for the people of this country. We all go to the poles to place our vote only to get another few years of misery whilst the politicians get large pay increases, big expense accounts and their own private security as things get more dangerous in the REAL world.
How can we as a community in the U.K.( yes, I am talking about more than just Dawlish as someone is so keen to point out everytime) change this state of doldrums we are trapped in?
Politicians are part of the system, they uphold it. The system is inherently flawed, therefore politicians are part of the problem and not part of the solution.
From what i've seen locally, nationally and internationally the vast majority are in it for themselves or are simply lobbyists for powerful corporations and institutions that have basically bought democracy.
We can change this malaise by re-engaging with politics, community, the environment, etc instead of being dumbed down opiates for the masses and by becoming active, better informed citizens and organized.
Clearly the vote changes nothing.
The vast majority of politicians don't support electoral reform yet they call themselves 'democrats'. How many oppose the House of Lords? How can you have a democracy that includes hereditary peers who are not democratically elected? The system evolved from feudalism, it's still nowhere near a democracy.
and look at landownership and the stats provided by @Lynne above. Not a lot has changed since the Middle Ages, how can you have a democracy when the few own most of the land?
I don't know how you can have a true democracy alongside a monarchy - we're obviously not all equal under the current system.
We're just third class citizens.
Most politicians are just bureaucrats and administrators for the wealthy elite. They're not much more than tax collectors, the second class citizens situated below the elite. Although some are millionaires and billionaires themselves, especially those in the Tory party.
The way to make real change is for every voter and i mean every voter to stay at home and not use there vote so the only folk voting would be politicians so every candidate would have one vote each and therefore we would have stalemate then they would sit up and listen.
Forget making them sit up and listen. They're often referred to as the 'political class', they relate more to the corporation, bankers and upper class than they do to citizens going about their daily lives. They occupy their own class between the top in society who the appease and aspire to replicate and those at the bottom who they have little in common with and in the case of the Tory party; who they despise.
Real change needs to circumvent politicians. The current system cannot be reformed.
We need radical change given the issues facing us globally from climate change to biodiversity loss and resource depletion to increased poverty. But yes passive resistance is one option, we could bring the system to a stand-still through strikes in all workplaces, etc. There are numerous peaceful methods, but we first need to become aware, informed and organized.
We can't turn the clock back, politicians in the 60s and 70s were normal working class guys who had a passion for doing the right thing, now things are more complex the economy, NHS, Policing , etc, etc are far more complicated and we need highly educated people to run the country. Strikes really, do we want to go back to a 3 day week, power shortages and what did it achieve last time absolutely nothing, just hardship and misery. Perfectly good pits and steelworks closed for what purpose? To break the unions. Could you honestly see a national strike in 2017? I don't think so. Folk now have an "I'm alright jack attitude" and are reluctant to jeopardise their safe little world, they dont care that folk have to beg borrow or steal to feed their kids it's "I'm alright jack", and who can blame them.
@leatash. i never stated we should go back to the 60s and 70s, that's in the past.
I agree with your comment about an "I'm alright jack" attitude. Maybe more people today people are just concerned about themselves and their family and little else beyond that, compared to in the past. But the rise of individualism is born out of Thatcher's meritocracy, it worked people are less likely to take collective actions these days.
I never offered an opinion of the likelihood strikes, collectivism and a change in attitude happening.
@leatah What do you think the likelihood is of every voter staying at home and not using their vote? As you suggested.
I simply recognised that we need radical change, a paradigm shift in thinking if we want to deal with the problems we face.
How should I know whether human beings have the capacity to revolutionize the way we interact with one another and our only ecosystem?
The need to radically change is well documented, but we seem incapable of changing as a species; which suggests a psychological impasse.
If we need highly educated people to run the country (see Leatash post 16:52) would that make them experts in their particular field of study?
Only raise this point as I seem to remember certain highly educated politicians (Michael Gove, Boris Johnson) saying that the public were fed up with experts.
Not having a 'go' at you Leatash.
Just making a point.
Look at the reaction (click on link below) to a letter concerning Brexit. This is written by someone who is highly educated and, it would seem from his academic discipline, that he would have a good idea of what he is talking about.
And yet the views he expresses are dismissed. Not with any alternative argument but simply because he is a university professor.
@Lynne i read that letter. i thought the professor made some excellent points and his argument was evidence based. unfortunately politicians who are highly educated dismiss views of experts in their fields. publicly at least they don't display the same disdain as the two contributors on that thread. however politicians like gove and johnson have an ideological agenda to shrink the state and facilitate corporations' profit making at the expense of scociety and environment. whereas i can only assume that the two contributors comments were based on sheer ignorance, jealousy and anti-intellectualism.
They each got 4 Agrees, but what do you expect? This is Dawlish.com