Weak & Wobbly

[Ed P]

Teresa May’s caving in over her Election Pledges for Social Care hardly shows ‘Strong & Stable’ leadership – ‘Weak & Wobbly’ would be more accurate.

Assuming that If she gets back to lead the Government I hope that she does not display the same lack of intestinal fortitude when she is setting terms of reference for her Brexit negotiating teams. The one thing that always made me happy when negotiating a deal was an opposition that caved in easily.

It is hardly surprising that she is referred to as the ‘Submarine’ in Parliament judging by the way she dives for cover at the first sign of a united opposition.

[Bob Williams]

What worries me more, Ed, is the other idiot being elected PM. Within 2 years we will be many more £Billions in debt and a great deal of business will have moved away from the UK.

I think TM would have been bettter off with something along the lines of “After the election, we are going to take a serious look at Adult Social Care” instead of coming out with a plan of action that has put so many people’s backs up. For me, the £100,000 limit is fine: I rent Social Housing. But I can see why so many see it as a bad move. There does have to be an answer to all the money going into caring for an increasingly larger ageing population, but this plan is a difficult sell. Knees are jerking everywhere. Younger generations are looking with horror at their inheritances being whittled away. A resentment of the older generation may very well follow. Young people already blame my generation (as a majority) for the Referendum result. How will they view us when they realise that their retirement will come later than ours did, and a greater proportion of what they earn and/or should have inherited, goes to care for the old?

Incidentally, the Chinese have the same problem, with correspondingly and horrifically high numbers, thanks to the “one child” rule they brought in many years ago. Their solutions may be somewhat final, if recent history is any guide…

Manny Festo? Wasn’t that an Italian in a Synagogue?

When the Thought Police arrive at your door, think -
I'm out.

[Ed P]

It just irritates me that she claims virtues that patently she lacks. Luckily we all know the reality now, and hopefully there will be a large enough opposition to hold her large feet to the fire.

[doctoryorkie]

Ed, The alternatives are so much better?

Keep turning left and you are going round in circles. B-)

I will make my own mind up.

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[Dave Rice]

How many U turns is that now? I’ve lost count and she’s not been leader for that long.

Clearly has no sense of what the public find acceptable and seems to manage by keeping things to herself. A bit like Trump. The faithful come out on the morning after to defend the latest ill thought through move only to have the rug pulled out hours later. the Brexit election? I never thought it would be, that’s last years news.

I’m also getting weary of the character assassination of Corbyn. OK we get it, he’s a tosser. But if that is your only strategy, to slag off the opposition rather than promote your own policies, then there is something wrong with those policies. And it seems there is.

I love watching politicians squirming and lately it’s all being done by the blue party.

[Anonymous]

Having watched Mrs May’s debate, I am left with a definite sense of “who the hell do I vote for?”.

If she’d have stuck to her guns, she would have been better off, carefully explaining why it’s a better system. In the end the left have “won” but it’s a hollow victory as they will have ended up giving exactly what they don’t want, a tax cut to the rich.

If the election was now, I’d vote LDs, but I disagree with their Brexit stance.

[Spedley]

I’ve stayed away from comment on this forum so far – I’m too much in favour of Labour and think Corbyn is excellent.  I also dread what will happen to my country if the Conservatives get in again – I will actually think about emigrating if things turn out as I suspect the would under May.  If I can’t steer the ship away from an iceberg because of deaf ears then I’m jumping ship asap and leaving you to it.

I suppose my only comment on the subject here of substance would be to consider voting Labour because in 5 years you will have the chance to vote again but if you vote Conservative I fear significant irreparable damage will have been done to the country.  If you have any doubts then give Corbyn a chance, even if he doesn’t deliver everything he promises the only thing wrong will be a few years of mediocre government.

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[JayCeeDee]

This election, I think, will be remembered for an extremely low turnout, rather than the result, even though the low turnout will have more influence on the result than anything else. People are fed up with the sort of confrontational politics displayed at PMQ’s when Corbyn was asking about the leaked text on Council Tax. The last time I saw behaviour like that ( from both sides ) was in a schoolyard at playtime when two cliques had a near physical disagreement while the Head wasn’t looking.
I’ve gone through the options and I don’t see a party that merits my support.
Conservative – TM has done more to ruin any uptake than anything else – and that was before this latest shambolic nonsense. She called the election to show Europe that Britain was united behind her and strong and steady in their intent. It looks like she might have made the same mistake as Cameron – underestimating the British public.
Labour – JC lost all credibility when he was at the microphone at the meeting on Anti-Semitism where his own Labout MP got heckled and abused and he stood there with his mouth open, listening to the abuse spouted and did nothing. If you can’t support and protect your staff, you don’t deserve to be a boss, be that a company of 5, 50, 500 or 5000. Or a parliament or a country. He had the temerity to issue a whip on the Brexit vote when just a few years ago, he was proudly proclaiming that he’d not followed a whip vote for most of his life. See HERE.
John Major was described as the “Grey Man” – JC is positively ashen!!
LibDems – were the protest option until their caving in u-turn on student loans. With a weak ineffectual leader that sounds more like he’s prevaricating when he’s trying to be decisive.
UKIP – were the protest vote for anybody that couldn’t stomach the LibDems, and didn’t like Europe. They have succeded in achieving what they wanted and seem stuck in No-Man’s Land with nowhere to turn. This was exemplified in the recent local elections that decimated their numbers.
Greens – nice goals and principles, but don’t make me laugh.
I’ve deliberately missed out the Scottish Nazionalists and Plaid Cymru because my vote is in England.
I really worry, because my only option seems to be the Monster Raving Loony Party.
To put all this in context, I’ve been a lifelong Labour supporter – but not lifelong voter – they get my support and my vote most of the time, but there have been times when I just couldn’t, and this is one of those times.

[Dave Rice]

I’m seriously thinking of going down the none of the above route. Living in a safe seat my vote is largely irrelevant anyway.

That’s what made me laugh about the Brexiteers banging on about bringing Democracy back. I have no more say on my local representative than who will be the President of the EU. “The average constituency last changed hands between parties in the 1960s, with some super safe seats having remained firmly in one-party control since the time of Queen Victoria”. – See more at: http://www.electoral-reform.org.uk/safe-seats#sthash.bzlgcqGB.dpuf

Put it this way, I have never ever had any political canvasser knock on my door and we’ve lived in the area for over 25 years. There’s no point, it’s all decided before it’s even begun.

[Ed P]

We need either real democracy (where the public decide all major issues e.g. a ‘Super’ Irish system), or a benevolent dictator.

Anything but the sham ‘We will consult with the Public’ and totally ignore your input until the next election. TBLiar started this sham ‘We will listen to you’ and May seems to be following in his odious footsteps with similar worthless promises over her ‘Dementia tax’ on the young.

Above all, we need to get rid of the MP’s gravy train of external Directorships, Consultancies and Foreign Speaking Tours. If anything smells of corruption these things all come pretty close to stinking of it. Instead, pay MPs a LOT more money equivalent to today’s Senior Civil Servants and ban any sub-rosa income with threats of a ten year jail term and confiscation of all assets. In this respect PFI companies and holdings should be carefully investigated along with any suspicious assets of MPs and Civil Servants who were or are associated with them. Any company or holding making returns of 50+% raises massive warning flags.

Where does this leave me? Strategic voting seems my only option, our system needs a real shake-up.

[Richard]

I have read all the clap trap about Dementia Tax from the Corbynistas and wonder where any reality might creep in. I dealt with my mother’s and father’s affairs. She had vascular dementia for years and father suffered the effects. They both lived into their 90s and mother’s trouble started about 2005. There was NO financial help for either of them, they had to pay for everything though mother, as a result of her condition did not want to have any very expensive helper come into her home.

In fact the helper was probably paid about £5.50 per hour at the time but it cost my parents nearly £20 per hour, that not the helper’s pay slip was the figure I saw. I think my parents even paid for travel time, was the helper paid that money? After a year or two mother had to go into a home and the council and anti social service moved heaven and earth to avoid paying anything at all for her. When they found she owned a half share of the house and had some money in her own right, the anti social services left burn marks on the path as they ran away.

Mother was bed ridden, could not feed herself, move or do anything except be craned into and out of bed. I arranged payment for everything so I know how expensive it was. Though I have not bothered to total all of the bills exactly it was close to £150,000, father was in a home for less time so his bill was only about £90,000. So their total was not far short of quarter of a million pounds. So what is going to change now? Oh yes if you need home help the user might also have to pay something for that, tell me pray where is that robbing the young?

Paying four times what the helper is getting paid is a disgrace I admit, but if the consumer of the care does not pay, who does? The young, active possibly tax payer?

Frankly, a cyanide pill or any other similar is my preferred answer compared to God’s very expensive unpleasant waiting room.

[The Duke]

When my Fil hit 60, he was telling me how much he feared dementia or the like, and asked me to finish him off at the first sigh. He said he asked me as there was a higher chance I’d help.

 

His words was something like “the day I can’t wipe my own arse is the day you need to shoot me” it went form a joke, to a deep drunken discussion. As these things do.

I didn’t know wether to be flattered or offended, but understood his point. Especially after seeing it take my grandad.

[JayCeeDee]

The system is completely shot. The biggest problem is that the “Care” industry has too many owners/managers all taking their cut, and the NHS, which has too many middle managers, all taking wages and contributing little to the actual care of patients or clients.

 
Company’s pockets are being lined while the public ( and the government ) is saying money is short. The whole nightmare is exemplified by Agency Nurses. They work for the NHS while they are training, go off to work for an agency when they finish training and very often come back to do the jobs they were performing previously under the NHS. The problem is, the cost charged by the Agency outweighs what the NHS would have paid to cover that job. Dead money going to line private pockets while depriving the NHS of much needed finance. I’m sure that for the money you pay 4 agency nurses, you could create another nursing post ( job ) with the added benefit of taking someone out of unemployment.

 
The cost of care homes is a similar situation. The money paid to Private Nursing Homes – lining the pockets of the owners – would be better utilised in providing more staff or more homes to cope with the growing demand. Selling things off into private ownership doesn’t save money, it just costs the system more to pay for the service, than it did to provide it.
The actual organisation of care is just as bad. In the late 90’s my father had cancer of the bowel which meant my ( blind ) mother couldn’t care for him at home. He spent more time in a critical care ward @ £1000 per week, than he did in a Nursing Home @ £350 per week. Mum had to chase the system to get him out of the hospital and into a home. Had she not been on the Community Health Council for years and knew who and where to put pressure on, Dad’s care would probably have wasted £1000’s through inefficiency.

 
When Mum couldn’t look after herself at home after a bad fall and needed to go into a care home we sold her bungalow and paid for the care. That racked up £100k – £500 per week over about 4 years.

 
I don’t know about a real democracy or a benevolent dictator Ed, I just think we need a real leader for our government and our parliament, not just a succession of front-(wo)men. Our Nations’ only hope is for a Winston Churchill type character, or God forbid, another war.

[Ed P]

This is a bullet that should have been bitten years ago, but it has to start at some time. It now needs higher taxes on those who can afford it, and eliminating deliberate Government waste such as obscene PFIs. Any caring parent wants to leave their children with something to start them off, and today’s children need that nest-egg more than ever due to the silly cost of housing. That is why this is a stealthy May tax on the young.

When I started work I had to save 15% for the deposit on a house, but the average home for the average young graduate was ‘only’ three to four times gross annual income i.e. in today’s terms i.e. a 2-3 bed house price of around £100000 (starting salary for a Civil Engineer is ~£25,000) and deposit of around £15000. Numbers that are now just about impossible to find unless you live in the very far North of England or an isolated community with poor employment prospects

If I were young I would be out marching in the streets in protest the way we did in the 60s, unfortunately today’s young seem to have been emasculated by bread & circuses.

[Richard]

While I agree that action on the final segment of life costs and care is well overdue Incidentally some such costs are in the process of being greatly increased for those who need overnight on call support and suppliers might yet stop supplying the services.

I am sorry ED that is just now how it was for me back in the late 1960s early 1970s. I looked to buy a house and found the likely price range. I started to save and saved about what I thought that I would need for a deposit, prices doubled while I saved, (which incidentally saved me from risking such a hell hole as Luton).

I missed out on what appears to have been a golden chance at the time. A major road scheme decimated prices in one London area and I might have been able to buy a flat in London for silly money, something like 25% of the previous asking prices. Two years later the scheme completed and prices went up almost over night by a factor of five, last time I looked some 10 or 20 years back the places were well over £500,000, I could have paid well less than £3,000 back in the day.

I had the chance to work overseas so I took it, adventure and pay, great. I saved, at times we saved a great deal more than we spent. Perhaps we were cheapskates but we bought a house that way. Some small legacies came along and together with savings we paid off the mortgage early, I have been mortgage free since 1980, all those 18 hour days and seven day working weeks helped. to pay for something.

When we returned we sold the old house and bought a new one as we were by then a family of four and space was needed.

Since then, our daughter bought a house seven years back. It needed work as it was a re-possession. Back then I could do some of the work and act as the COW and pay for other things. Yes I also ‘very soft loaned’ them some money. Interest rates on deposit were crap anyway and still are so they pay me back, slowly and some legacies have cleared bits of the debt and bought them a close to new car. Due to efforts to save they have overpaid on their mortgage and sometimes reduced the term and other times reduced the repayment rate. They would like to move on as the house is quite small and now with two children they would like the space. They are not part of the ‘experience generation’, live just outside the edge of London and yes they have received some help from us – while we were still alive. However that relied on prudent steps we had taken in the past.

As I set out above my parents paid out hugely for their end of life care, though father’s cost was met to some extent by his pension.Their whole cost bundle was met by them, the state ran screaming from the room and refused all approaches.

In one of my best investment moves ever I made sure my pension was as topped up as it could be paying in the maximum the tax rules allowed at the time. Because of work demands I had not taken all the paid leave I had accumulated and that was folded into the pension rather than have a ‘good experience or two’.

Perhaps that is the difference, you would have marched, to doubtful effect. I worked long and hard to make and take the chances life offered to me.

[Richard]

As a sort of belate addendum, I agree on the use of so called PFI as an example of ‘Mortgaging the grandchildren by another name’ it ranks along with many other slight of hand efforts, like keeping civil service pensions off books as another example of ‘Mortgaging the grandchildren by another name’.

Some of the really crass and stupid PFI contracts can take your breath away, a routine rat catcher visit cannot deal with an actual infestation report, that has to be another visit paid for during the life of the faulty contract. Change a light bulb ditto, repair a sink and so on. Those are OP EX NOT damned capital projects DON’T CAPITALISE THEM for the benefit of others. Though it should be noted that pension funds are a prime investor in PFI contracts, I dare not check on my fund.

Also, COW in the above message was of course Clerk of Works.

[Ed P]

The 60s students marched for very different things such as protesting against the stupid Vietnam War. Lucky for us these protests enabled the Government to be able to ignore US pressure. Others such as Australasia were dragged into the conflict in 1962.

If I were a student today I would instead be protesting at the growing lack of prospects and the way people of this age-group have borne the brunt of the last ten years, without any prospect of future alleviation.

[Richard]

While I have some limited sympathy for the students, marching round and sometimes getting drawn in to running fights does not feel like the best way to get a job. Selecting a course which has good prospects rather than simply what someone ‘might like to do’ is a starting point. My daughter spent a while working in a school when she got her degree, she learned a lot about schools and their mafia, but above all she learned she never wanted to work in a school, ever. She revised storage to separate sources of ignition from flammable materials only to learn that her maternity relief put them in alphabetical order which broke all the hazardous materials rules. She got back into her specialisation after that thrilling episode.

However exactly what does anyone expect such a march to achieve? Jobs need to have a purpose and someone to ‘pay the piper’. To hear that they want jobs and cannot find work, while employers are having to import workers at all levels,  with more at the higher skills levels, not just potato pickers and other seasonal low grade work suggests something is seriously out of kilter. I do not know what but doubt that a march will find the answer to that either.

So cards on the table, yes the housing situation is a mess with cheap housing only in areas where no one wants to work. Yes there are pockets of youth unemployment, though not currently as bad as I much of mainland European locations, where educational levels are often higher. Let us agree that both suggest some structural issues. Maybe our training is not as good as it should be, e.g the recent training of midwives who do not get taught how to use equipment before qualifying, result brain damaged babies. Or those who go on courses of several hundred students when the market needs a few tens of graduates per year. That sound pretty structural to me. Or where we need apprenticeship level candidates but too few are being produced.

I agree that housing in the South East is loony tunes land. My daughter wonders if she should sell up and move her family elsewhere, they would loose a couple of thousand pounds a year income between her husband and her without the same allowances, but could buy two houses for the price of their present home. A structural issue or not?

Something does need to change but I seriously doubt a march will see that happen.

[Bob Williams]

Much of the debate here, demonstrates my fears and explains why I voted Remain. I know I am returning to flog that horse again and it will never take up the traces again, but I was voting for my grandchildren’s future, in my opinion.

As for the coming election, I still have no idea here to put my cross. Yesterday SWMBO and I visited a beautiful Garden:

Brightwater Gardens, The Garden House, Saxby, Lincolnshire

It was just the place to remind you what a beautiful country we live in, with the kind of people who can take a derelict site and use their hard work and imagination to build something that just takes away your breath. It was the most peaceful, calming place I have ever visited and it sits in the middle of the most wonderful green. Lincolnshire countryside, with those big skies of Lincolnshire shining down an almost cloudless blue. How do we defend this place and those people with our vote?

It is no longer true that we get the government we deserve. No one is saying anything remotely usable or useful to the British public, which might make us say ‘yes, that’s the kind of government I want, I’ll vote for that.’ All they want to do is attack each other from several different viewpoints.

When the Thought Police arrive at your door, think -
I'm out.

[Ed P]

We marched for our beliefs, and we got jobs. In those days it was fairly easy to get a job. It was even easy to get career related work during the summer break. Not so now.

Bob, which-ever way we old pharts voted I hope that it was done in the belief that the result would be the best for our descendents. For good or ill the die is now cast, I just hope that it does not drive a wedge between us and our continental friends and make us even more insular.

[Author]

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