UK Politics: Oh Ambassador you are really spoiling us!

[HexMachina]

14 hours ago, Spockydog said:

No. That is Carer's Allowance. A benefit paid by the DWP. It's just for me. I gave up work to look after my brother, who lives with me. I'm also now looking after my Maw, who doesn't.

Carer's Allowance is £67 per week, paid monthly. Then, every two weeks, I get an Income Support payment of £89, to bring me up to The Minimum Amount The Law Says I Need To Live On (it actually says that on the award letter). My rent and Council Tax are paid by Housing Benefit.

Outside of my caring duties, I am not allowed to work. If I do any part time work, I will lose the Income Support and Housing Benefit.

I used to pull in a very tidy salary. I travelled the world and had thousands in the bank. Now, my savings are gone and I have to grovel to the DWP every two years for this pittance. On top of this, on two separate occasions, I have had to take the DWP to tribunal after they tried to stop my brother's benefits. We won both appeals.

ETA: I should point out that I don't feel poor. I feel blessed. While a lot of my friends are suffering from some kind of middle-aged misery - loveless marriages and demonic children - I get to live with my brother. For ever. He's the best, and I honestly can't remember the last time we crossed words. 

 

 

 

This is anecdotal of course but the mothership was refused carer’s allowance (i think it was that, or something similar) when she applied after having to quit work to look after her own mam. When she was refused she was told “Oh just appeal it, most people get refused first time to deter applications.” 

[Werthead]

Extremely early findings that variant B117 (the strain now dominant in the UK) is more deadly than the standard variant, and is being linked to a higher degree of mortality.

Very preliminary and further studies required, but concerning. This, combined with lack of resources when every bed is filled and twice the number of staff is out themselves with illness than during the first wave, may be driving the high mortality we are seeing at the moment, despite treatments being available that were not during the first outbreak.

[Spockydog]

44 minutes ago, HelenaExMachina said:

This is anecdotal of course but the mothership was refused carer’s allowance (i think it was that, or something similar) when she applied after having to quit work to look after her own mam. When she was refused she was told “Oh just appeal it, most people get refused first time to deter applications.” 

The entire process is degrading and dehumanizing. No doubt by design. They really are a bunch of soulless bastards.

And when it comes to cancelling people's benefits and destroying their lives, they really like picking on people who are ill equipped to deal with it. 

Pretty sure denial of perfectly valid claims is SOP for the DWP. If she hasn't already done so, your Ma should appeal. Many appeals are upheld without the need for a tribunal hearing.

 

[Raja]

12 minutes ago, Werthead said:

may be driving the high mortality we are seeing at the moment, despite treatments being available that were not during the first outbreak.

Important to note what else Vallance said

Quote

"When we look at data from hospitals, and in patients that are in hospital with the virus, the outcomes for those with the original virus and the new variant look the same, there is no real evidence of increase in mortality in those patients that are in hospital"

They really should be releasing this data to the public, and I hope they do in the next coming days.

[Which Tyler]

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jan/22/foreign-nhs-workers-risk-being-denied-covid-vaccine-england?

[Spockydog]

2 minutes ago, Which Tyler said:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jan/22/foreign-nhs-workers-risk-being-denied-covid-vaccine-england?

Of course they are. JFC. 

When I had heart surgery at Barts, probably 70-80% of the people who took care of me were from overseas. Smh. 

[BigFatCoward]

My sister lives in Oslo, one case of UK variant and it looks like they are shutting everything down. 

Imagine being looked after by proper people, just imagine. 

[felice]

17 hours ago, The Anti-Targ said:

Personally I am opposed to UBI because it pointlessly gives money to people who don't need it, which inflates the govt's spending beyond what is necessary.

But determining who needs it and who doesn't is a nightmare of stigma and bureaucracy, while the extra cost of a UBI is easily recouped by upping the top income tax brackets.

[williamjm]

6 hours ago, Heartofice said:

From what I saw Imperials numbers seem to be taken from 2 points in time and comparing them, not really taking the christmas peak into account. I don't think they are especially accurate if you look at it that way. I would say the number of cases were almost certainly dropping.

Saying the number of cases was rising at the start of January and the number of cases might be falling now are both things that could be true.

2 hours ago, Raja said:

Important to note what else Vallance said

"When we look at data from hospitals, and in patients that are in hospital with the virus, the outcomes for those with the original virus and the new variant look the same, there is no real evidence of increase in mortality in those patients that are in hospital"

They really should be releasing this data to the public, and I hope they do in the next coming days.

It does seem a bit confusing.

I do have some sympathy that if they're start to see some evidence that they want to mention that without delay. I saw there was some criticism about Boris having said in December that there wasn't any evidence of it being more deadly, I think there are plenty of things Boris can be criticised for but that one seems a bit unfair to expect him to anticipate data that hadn't been gathered at the time.

In better news, there were 400000 vaccinations done yesterday, which I think is a new record.

[Werthead]

1 hour ago, williamjm said:

I do have some sympathy that if they're start to see some evidence that they want to mention that without delay. I saw there was some criticism about Boris having said in December that there wasn't any evidence of it being more deadly, I think there are plenty of things Boris can be criticised for but that one seems a bit unfair to expect him to anticipate data that hadn't been gathered at the time.

In better news, there were 400000 vaccinations done yesterday, which I think is a new record.

Apparently a hard figure has been put on the rise as well: a 30% rise in mortality rate on hospital admissions, which is rather alarming.

However, the precise meaning of that figure has not been released or peer-reviewed, and clearly more study is required.

[Pebble thats Stubby]

in other news, Both my parents have just been given vaccine appointments for Tuesday.  

Dad turned 70 on Monday and Mum 3 weeks ago.  My In-laws who are older have (almost 80) have not heard anything yet.  I'm guessing its a bit of a postcode lottery.  My parents are Thurrock (essex) the in-laws are in Havering - London.

[The Anti-Targ]

3 hours ago, felice said:

But determining who needs it and who doesn't is a nightmare of stigma and bureaucracy, while the extra cost of a UBI is easily recouped by upping the top income tax brackets.

What stigma? There's no more stigma than an unemployed person living solely on the UBI. And determining who needs it is simple: anyone not employed, and anyone employed but not making a living wage. Bureaucracy isn't an issue since it creates some employment, which can draw from the pool of people not in employment or under-employed, who would be getting a living wage anyway. It just has to be universally available and not come with pre-conditions, like having to show that you've been applying for jobs every few months.

[mormont]

59 minutes ago, The Anti-Targ said:

And determining who needs it is simple: anyone not employed, and anyone employed but not making a living wage.

Not everyone makes a fixed annual or even monthly income. Not everyone has permanent, year-round employment. Not everyone has only one employer. Then there are the self-employed: then there's undeclared income, dividends, various other wrinkles. If assessing everyone's income was simple, means-testing existing benefits would be simple. We know, however, that it is not.

[felice]

5 hours ago, The Anti-Targ said:

What stigma? There's no more stigma than an unemployed person living solely on the UBI.

Personally I think there'd likely be significant differences in attitudes towards "member of the class of people who need to take government money" (a clear binary us vs them) compared to "not currently in paid employment" (what are they doing instead?).

5 hours ago, The Anti-Targ said:

And determining who needs it is simple: anyone not employed, and anyone employed but not making a living wage. Bureaucracy isn't an issue since it creates some employment, which can draw from the pool of people not in employment or under-employed, who would be getting a living wage anyway. It just has to be universally available and not come with pre-conditions, like having to show that you've been applying for jobs every few months.

"Must be unemployed or not making enough" is a pre-condition. Once you've got a conditional payment, the specifics of the conditions become a political football and you get people falling through the cracks. I don't see make-work jobs as a good thing.

[Which Tyler]

Personally, I'm a fan of UBI rather than UMI (which we already have in a laughable manner). I favour a low UBI, enough to cover a roof over your head, utilities and food.

Quite honestly, the cost difference between the 2 would be minimal, as the admin costs would be massively less than the current system. It would probably result in tens of thousands of job losses just in that bureaucracy , but that wouldn't matter anywhere near as much, as they'd have UBI. Extra comes from increased taxation, especially the highest tax bracket (or create a 5th bracket for anyone earning >£500k)*.

UBI would replace Universal Credit, Pensions, Carer's allowance, Child maintenance and most of disability allowances. The biggest department of government would overnight become the smallest - enough to cover extra payments for disability and regional variations in the cost of living (which could easily be farmed out to county / local councils)

 

 

*ETA: Actually, it wouldn't need a new tax bracket, as it would no longer need the "personal allowance" bracket, as all earning beyond UBI could be safely taxed.

[polishgenius]

Apart from all the actual moral things about how having enough money to live should be a fundamental right, and my belief that the increase in automation means we have to get rid of the stigma around not working, I'm for UBI on the basis that shit gets done by people who aren't stressing out about where meals are coming from. People would have far more freedom to choose the direction of their own lives and end up in places where they actually do big things, be it art or science or whatever. Sure, you'd have the odd person who just sits at home doing nothing, but most people don't like doing that.

[Stannis Eats No Peaches]

I’m quite glad the topic has turned to UBI, because I’ve been thinking about it a lot for the past few months. Surely the easiest way to get rid of the stigma surrounding claiming benefits would be to just put everyone on benefits? If everyone has the option to quit that job they hate and retrain, UBI can help to eliminate a serious amount of misery and raise productivity levels. I’ve known a few people who were able to find better jobs because they were furloughed!

I’d be curious to find out what kind of tax structure you would need in order to pay every adult in the country, say, £16K. Furlough has been a lifeline for many people, but hideously expensive (according to the government, which has also spent an obscene amount of money on aircraft carriers, but we’ve discussed this already). I wonder what the publicly acceptable, or even economically viable, cost of such a system would be.

[Werthead]

6 hours ago, Which Tyler said:

Personally, I'm a fan of UBI rather than UMI (which we already have in a laughable manner). I favour a low UBI, enough to cover a roof over your head, utilities and food.

One problem with this is that the UK has a very high cost of living compared to many other countries. Rent is astronomical, especially in the south-east, and food costs are insane compared to, say, the United States. Utilities are also quite expensive. The cost of living also varies incredibly between different parts of the country; what will allow you rent an entire house in the north will barely get you a tiny room in a cramped flatshare in London.

Although I think UBI is broadly a good idea, working out what rate to set it at, and how to make it work is a non-trivial task. Successive governments have, however, made stronger arguments for it themselves by raising people out of paying tax at all at lower price points, defeating one of the key arguments against it (lack of tax income from people on low incomes).

The strengths of the argument are notable, though. The bureaucracy around UC has been utterly insane, and the cost of maintaining a UC office in almost every locality in the country is significant. The behind-the-scenes checking that goes on also wildly incoherent, and constantly demanding that, for example, people with no legs haven't magically regrown them on a regular basis is absurd. Removing all of these would save significant amounts of time and money, and allow people working in that sector to move to more productive areas of the economy. However, that's only significant in overall terms (hundreds of millions of pounds), and utterly negligible compared to the cost of a moderate UBI rate. 

The biggest problem is that it's not a trivial task to pay for it. Currently there are ~51 million people in the UK over the age of 18 and there is around £200 billion spent on benefits, pensions and disability allowances*. Splitting that evenly would result in a payment of £3,921.56 per person, which very clearly is not enough to live on (some figures suggestion it's closer to £250 billion, which would raise the split per person to closer to £5,000, which is still wholly inadequate). Assuming we take the current minimum wage at 40 hours a week as a baseline (£18,000 per year, roughly, bearing in mind the different bandings), and ignoring the fact that many people can barely make ends meet on that amount, you'd need to increase benefit payments by four and a half times to make that possible, so close to a trillion pounds a year. Raising an extra £800 billion in tax is certainly possible, but would be either so politically toxic (taxing working people more) or so incompatible with Tory doctrine (taxing companies and the rich, closing tax loopholes) that it is unrealistic.

UBI is a great idea, but I would not expect to see it seriously discussed here in the UK at any time in the near future, certainly not under a Tory government.

* Disability allowances seem to be treated differently in different UBI calculations, some claiming they should just be folded into the payment and others that they should be means-tested based on need.

[Spockydog]

You tax the rich to pay for UBI. Or at least make them pay some tax.

Simple as that. 

[Liffguard]

4 hours ago, polishgenius said:

Apart from all the actual moral things about how having enough money to live should be a fundamental right, and my belief that the increase in automation means we have to get rid of the stigma around not working, I'm for UBI on the basis that shit gets done by people who aren't stressing out about where meals are coming from. People would have far more freedom to choose the direction of their own lives and end up in places where they actually do big things, be it art or science or whatever. Sure, you'd have the odd person who just sits at home doing nothing, but most people don't like doing that.

“I am, somehow, less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein’s brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops.” - Stephen Jay Gould