UK Politics Thread

The increased NI payed by NHS staff will be payed directly back into the NHS apparently. According to radio 4

Again, coming back to the 6% pay rise.

That is the same problem. The government went "we're going to give everybody a 6% pay rise" and had absolutely no idea how to implement it. What they've actually ended up doing is just throwing a chunk of change to providers to address it, but it completely failed to consider other costs providers might have seen which also come out of the same budget (fuel/energy/rent/indemnity/drugs/equipment/toilet paper/oxygen cylinders/paint/pens/anything else) which have also gone up.

Payment flows within the NHS are complicated.

Again, if it's being framed out to profit making companies they wouldn't benefit. As with any increases to tax on private companies, there will be a knock on effect to service costs to retain profit. Another reason why this shit should never have been subbed out.

You have a lot more faith in this process than I do.

Just imagine being a gutter press numpty who'd shilled for austerity, Brexit and the Liz Truss insider trading shitshow, and going " this is really bad ". Until the client media is absolutely destroyed, this country is basically ungovernable.

I'm sure it *can* be solved. We've put man on the moon and invented the bouncy castle. We are truly astounding in our inventiveness and adaptability.

My elaboration is a bit of a side show in just how needlessly complicated this is compared to what could have been.

The point I initially jumped in on and elaborated on was monkey's post about they could have just put this on PAYE and be done with it and the same result would have been the case and it would saved a *lot* of hassle. Several hours of many expensive people's time is now being wasted on working out how to fudge this so it works. And although from a uninvolved bystander this should seem simple, it isn't. This will take likely months of horse trading and phone calls and meetings and emails involving some very expensive people spending hours of their time to sort something out that might sort of cover it maybe. Been there, got the t-shirt, same bullshit different government.

It's just all needlessly complicated. People ask for efficiency in the public sector, and then are happy with this? It's nuts.

People will eventually end up with the same take home pay as they would have either way. This isn't some cunning ruse to make The Man pay for this. Ironically the usual Bad Guys will be fine. Deliveroo and Uber and them lot do everything they can to employ people off payroll so these kinds of taxes will never affect them. The Amazons and Twitters of the world will similarly do the same or have the investor sentiment they can go to "soz, less profit from the UK because the government, don't blame us" and people will still throw money at them because they're a global company and this is just one tax jurisdiction among many. The exploiters who take the piss will still take the piss.

Those who run small business restricted to the UK, not so great. Pubs, restaurants, smaller independent trades and service industry in price sensitive industries that rely on discretionary spend when everybody's wages are stagnant and they're cutting back on disposable income: this is going to hurt.

Megacorps aren't going to notice.

Well, quite. And it seems a bit of a fudge to say it will really harm the NHS while saying ‘megacorps won’t notice’. And sticking a load of carve outs for public sector in there would surely also involve lots of expensive peoples time in working out exactly how it’s to be done?

If I’m on minimum wage I’d rather it was my employers problem than mine directly in my paypacket.

This is exactly what the problem is, "it's not my problem it's yours so I'm fine".

It will be your problem, you're not fine and you shouldn't be fine cause taxes need to go up to pay for half decent services.

BUT NO! I DON'T WANT TO PAY FOR ANYTHING!

This isn't a dig knighty it's a general gripe I have.

People appear to have forgotten: "There is no such thing as a free lunch".

on the subject of the minimum wage, I was struck by the interviews with "business owners" about how the increase would affect their costs

they had no embarrassment whatsoever about paying their staff the absolute bare legal minimum and how they'd pay them even less if they could. That's not a business to be proud of my man, and you can take that page about how you value your staff down from your website

employer's NI will increase costs sure, but businesses aren't viable without an educated workforce, without a health system to keep them productive after whatever drudge work you assign them has destroyed their joints, without a legal system which largely keeps your business safe, without infrastructure to transport your goods

Sorry for the aside and off-topic comment but now I'm just picturing people using the bouncy castle to get to the moon.