Cost of Living Crisis

[vikingTON]

2 hours ago, TxRover said:

Ah, there’s his second favorite deflector phrase…any bets on the third?

Laughable coming from the chump who dived out of the thread just yesterday having made an arse of yourself. 

 

[Guest Jedi]

7 hours ago, virginton said:

Shouldn't people who earn more money pay... more tax as a result? 

Given all the other things that the Tories should rightly be eviscerated for, this 'stealth tax' complaint is bizarre. 

Quite. I don't see the 'stealth' taxes in Hunt's budget either.

[Dawson Park Boy]

28 minutes ago, Jedi said:

Quite. I don't see the 'stealth' taxes in Hunt's budget either.

The freezing of bands is the biggest stealth tax that could ever have been conceived.

Or am I reading you wrongly?

[TxRover]

57 minutes ago, virginton said:

Laughable coming from the chump who dived out of the thread just yesterday having made an arse of yourself. 

 

You dove, I remain.

[Florentine_Pogen]

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2022/nov/18/british-people-poorer-ifs-uk-autumn-statement

"The British people “just got a lot poorer” after a series of “economic own goals” that have made a recovery much harder than it might have been, a leading thinktank has said.

In his verdict on the chancellor’s autumn statement, Paul Johnson, the director of the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS), said the government was “reaping the costs of a long-term failure to grow the economy”, along with an ageing population and high levels of historic borrowing.

Jeremy Hunt’s statement on Thursday revealed that the UK was already in a recession that is expected to last more than a year and knock 2% off economic output."

[Dawson Park Boy]

21 minutes ago, Florentine_Pogen said:

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2022/nov/18/british-people-poorer-ifs-uk-autumn-statement

"The British people “just got a lot poorer” after a series of “economic own goals” that have made a recovery much harder than it might have been, a leading thinktank has said.

In his verdict on the chancellor’s autumn statement, Paul Johnson, the director of the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS), said the government was “reaping the costs of a long-term failure to grow the economy”, along with an ageing population and high levels of historic borrowing.

Jeremy Hunt’s statement on Thursday revealed that the UK was already in a recession that is expected to last more than a year and knock 2% off economic output."

Again, the ‘bleeding’ obvious.

At least KK tried to break us out of this cycle of growth stagnation but he and LS went about it far too stridently.

A shame.

[Benjamin_Nevis]

26 minutes ago, Dawson Park Boy said:

Again, the ‘bleeding’ obvious.

At least KK tried to break us out of this cycle of growth stagnation but he and LS went about it far too stridently.

A shame.

[vikingTON]

57 minutes ago, TxRover said:

You dove, I remain.

 

23 hours ago, TxRover said:

Well, why don’t you two fight it out, trying to explain anything to VT is like punching a weeble…

^^^ fantasist 

[TxRover]

21 minutes ago, virginton said:

 

^^^ fantasist 

^^^ narcissist

[Billy Jean King]

Someone was on Jeremy Vine's program complaining about the cost-of-living squeeze on his finances.
He earns £100k per year and his wife also has a decent job in the NHS. This is just getting ridiculous.
So many middle and higher earners squealing about "feeling the pinch" has made me wonder if there was ever a time in our country's recent past where so many of the population had so little resilience and so much entitlement.
The people in real trouble are those on benefits, pensioners relying on state benefits, disabled people, single parents and those on minimum wage and fluctuating hours and that's who needs directed help most. I'd never want to be a politician these days. I couldn't tolerate the sheer wall of noise coming from people outside those groups.
God help all these middle and high earning whiners if a genuine disaster hit the country.

The issue is a hell of a lot of these higher earners have gone "baws deep" on what was at the time cheap credit. Massive mortgages, car leases, 2nd homes or BTL mortgages. All self inflicted of course and hard to feel empathy for those that are in that position but it's not difficult to envisage that the years of cheap credit will have left millions on good wages exposed like this. You right it's not hardship in its true form but in their eyes they will have done nothing wrong and probably their whole new build estate is in the same boat.

[welshbairn]

9 minutes ago, Billy Jean King said:

The issue is a hell of a lot of these higher earners have gone "baws deep" on what was at the time cheap credit. Massive mortgages, car leases, 2nd homes or BTL mortgages. All self inflicted of course and hard to feel empathy for those that are in that position but it's not difficult to envisage that the years of cheap credit will have left millions on good wages exposed like this. You right it's not hardship in its true form but in their eyes they will have done nothing wrong and probably their whole new build estate is in the same boat.
 

People earning a lot less than £100,000 have gone baws deep as well to get the nicest place to live in that they could afford at 2% mortgages, near zero base rates, thinking that they would be here forever. Quite a few on here thought warning that interest rates might not stay unprecedently low was irrational fearmongering.

[Florentine_Pogen]

Never change,

[O'Kelly Isley III]

54 minutes ago, welshbairn said:

People earning a lot less than £100,000 have gone baws deep as well to get the nicest place to live in that they could afford at 2% mortgages, near zero base rates, thinking that they would be here forever. Quite a few on here thought warning that interest rates might not stay unprecedently low was irrational fearmongering.

Aye, I'm old enough to have required a meeting with the Manager of my local Clydesdale Bank to discuss my mortgage application for a one-bedroom tenement flat priced at less than £10K.  Fast forward into full-throttle Thatcherism and you could get five times that by phoning a number in an advert on the back of Exchange & Mart.  

Now watch that pendulum as it swings back.

[BFTD]

3 minutes ago, O'Kelly Isley III said:

Aye, I'm old enough to have required a meeting with the Manager of my local Clydesdale Bank to discuss my mortgage application for a one-bedroom tenement flat priced at less than £10K.  Fast forward into full-throttle Thatcherism and you could get five times that by phoning a number in an advert on the back of Exchange & Mart.  

Now watch that pendulum as it swings back.

Nobody's getting a meeting with a "bank manager" at a "branch" now. It'll be an automated call with the MortgageBot 3000 in the basement of a server farm somewhere on the other side of the world.

Invariably ending with the phrase, "computer says no".

[Guest Jedi]

No question that someone earning £100K plus a year (and lets face it, that is a small % of the working population) are not 'feeling the squeeze' in the same way that single parents, those on minimum wage, those on disability benefits etc are. Rather more able to absorb an energy bill of £3K per year when on that 100,000 plus, to say the least.

Also agree that cheap credit, years of low interest rates, Brexit, furlough, Covid etc have caught up with the economy. Still incredible that some Tories are crying for tax cuts at such a time (after Truss' attempts to do so, helped to blow a £30 billion hole in the finances).

Overall, Hunt has largely backloaded most of the cuts to services for after the next GE, hardly surprising. Far from being a fan of his to say the least, but an inflationary rise for pensions and benefits, sweeping in those on £125K as opposed to £150K on the top rate of tax, increasing the minimum wage, windfall on energy companies at 35%, etc does help at the moment. 

More could have been done to try and close non-dom loopholes, and not allow bankers bonuses to rise, but wouldn't expect a Tory Chancellor to go after either of these.

Edited November 18, 2022 by Jedi

[vikingTON]

1 hour ago, O'Kelly Isley III said:

Aye, I'm old enough to have required a meeting with the Manager of my local Clydesdale Bank to discuss my mortgage application for a one-bedroom tenement flat priced at less than £10K.  Fast forward into full-throttle Thatcherism and you could get five times that by phoning a number in an advert on the back of Exchange & Mart.  

Now watch that pendulum as it swings back.

Since the (last) financial crash mortgage applications have been stress tested against a significant hike in interest rates, at least up to providing a significant deposit. It probably was more difficult to get one in the distant past, but it hasn't been a Wild West situation recently either. 

Taking out a mortgage is one of the most serious decisions in an adult's life. Nobody puts a gun to their head and demands that they go up to their eyeballs in debt before any shock occurs. And given that housing is an asset that does not depreciate, the overwhelming majority have an escape route that private renters could only dream of for their years of contributing to some BtL parasite's mortgages while getting absolutely nothing in return. 

The worst of the immediate and genuine crisis has probably been shuffled away from crushing the very lowest incomes yesterday. But the shredding of any sort of credible local and public services that millions rely on is still absolutely on the cards. Against that backdrop the mewling of high-value mortgage holders about their cost of living crisis is risible. 

Edited November 18, 2022 by vikingTON

[invergowrie arab]

12 hours ago, spongeheid15 said:

What about nurses for sex change operations.

[Jacksgranda]

23 minutes ago, invergowrie arab said:

What about nurses for sex change operations.

Is that a pressure group?

[Abdul_Latif]

1 hour ago, Jedi said:

No question that someone earning £100K plus a year (and lets face it, that is a small % of the working population) are not 'feeling the squeeze' in the same way that single parents, those on minimum wage, those on disability benefits etc are. Rather more able to absorb an energy bill of £3K per year when on that 100,000 plus, to say the least.

I was speaking about this in work today, essentially about how insulting it is for middle and high earners to be grabbing onto the “everyone is going to be poorer” narrative. 

There is a massive difference between slightly less well off and poor, which many, selfishly cannot get their head around.

 

[thisal]

If people think they are hard done by they should take a pay cut so they don't have to pay all that extra tax.