COLD WEATHER PAYMENTS IN A HOT CLIMATE!
By David Vance On July 11th, 2012Or, the folly of the modern Welfare State. I was SUPPOSED to be on the BBC this morning discussing Welfarism but the topic got dropped because of all the “Parades” nonsense that goes on here. So I though I would jot down the gist of what I was going to say so my morning is not wasted!
You see I think that the Conservative MP Nick Boles has done us all a favour by raising some of the more lunatic aspects of the modern Welfare system. Now I don’t entirely agree with all that he says but I’d like to know if there is anybody out there who really believes that the Welfare State was put in place to provide a comfort blanket for millionaires in terms of free public travel? Were cold weather payments put in place so pensioners living in the warmth of the south of Spain and the Algarve could enjoy them? Are free prescriptions really vital for retired bankers and those on generous final salary pensions?
To any sane person, such financial largesse is utter financial madness BUT if you support the construct of modern welfare state, and I don’t, then you must accept that benefits have to be for all not just for some. I blame Politicians for manipulating Welfare to make people think the State can look after them from cradle to grave. Plenty of votes in that but it can’t and won’t work , the Country is running out of cash to pay for all this indulgence and things are going to have to change.
The Welfare State is out of time and out of cash. I do believe in looking after those who cannot look after themselves but that’s where it should also end. The Welfare monster needs slain.
What a totally fallacious – or is it specious, argument.
Certainly Boles has done us all a favour, – in revealing just how narrow-minnded and thoughtless, and dare I say , greedy, – he and his colleagues are when making decisions concerning those not immediately relevant to their own generation or age group. of course, I realise that is the biggest group of those likely to vote ‘their way’, and that has to be his main motivation.
He obviously is totally ignorant of the history and timescale of changes in the post WWII welfare system, which, of course, includes legislation affecting the financial sector, as well as healthcare.
Changes to pension law alone has been most significant over the past forty years, – a timespan most relevant when building a pension plan. A decent pension plan has to be given time to show a result which would be better than just a plain savings plan. Twenty to thirty years was once considered the norm, Brown’s pension plundering certainly put paid to that idea.
It wasn’t until the ’70′s that an individual could start his own pension plan as averse to a corporate or group scheme, and then limited to a mere 7% of annual income, – an income that was not very large to start with, with a majority of annual salaries barely reaching five figures, – that is less than £10,000 p.a.
Whatever the merit or demerits of our post war welfare system, it has not been helped by the continual political meddling of whatever party happens to be in power, whether it be the NHS or the State pension scheme. Continually moving the goal posts does not make for a great game.
Perhaps the ‘system’ has created far more folk who cannot to afford to look after themselves, not by any personal indolence, but by government ignorance.
Anyone who, even at near retirement age, considers themselves to be smugly secure, would do well to be circumspect with regards to their future.
It wasn’t too long ago in the days of football pools that a first divi of £100,000 was considerd a ‘life-changer’, now it’s barely the cost of a few years of elderly care. What you might call ‘food for thought’…
It isn’t the welfare system that is ‘out of cash’, – it’s the country that is broke, if cuts need to be made, and they most certainly do, let’s start by spending what we do have, here in this country – for example our ‘aid to India, a £1.6 billion annual donation, – and yet we are closing a facility here for the disabled that costs much less p.a. and yet does far more humaitarian good than providing a ‘sneering point’ for some pissant Indian minister.
Our total annual budget for all disabled care, including Remploy, is but £320 million.
Now I don’t entirely agree with all that he says but I’d like to know if there is anybody out there who really believes that the Welfare State was put in place to provide a comfort blanket for millionaires in terms of free public travel?
– How many millionaires are traveling on buses?
Were cold weather payments put in place so pensioners living in the warmth of the south of Spain and the Algarve could enjoy them?
– What percentage of cold weather payments go to people in the south of Spain?
Are free prescriptions really vital for retired bankers and those on generous final salary pensions?
– How much of the NHS budget goes on prescriptions for retired bankers?
To any sane person, such financial largesse is utter financial madness BUT if you support the construct of modern welfare state, and I don’t, then you must accept that benefits have to be for all not just for some.
– And here we get the truth, it is not the millionaire retired bankers traveling by bus that you have a problem with but the fact that millions of pensioners have benefited from it.
Ernest
For starters, I agree with much of what you say. Politicians have undermined pensions, have lavished NIC on current expenditure whilst pretending otherwise, have spent money on creating a courtier class who want the State to take care of their every need. Let cut ALL overseas aid, let us cut the public sector and let us educate people that it is for them, not the all powerful State, to look after themselves.
Fews
1. How many should?
2. How many cold weather payments should go to pensioners living in warm climes? To the nearest %?
3. Should those who can afford free prescriptions not pay for them? If not, why not?
The crux of the issue is a bloated parody of a welfare system that has run out of cash but evidently not people foolish enough to defend it.
Oh right, so it’s proper that minimum wage workers are taxed to give perks to millionaires now.
As they say, there’s none so conservative as a socialist.
The crux of the issue is that we have a bunch of people on the right who would like to get rid of the whole welfare system and NHS and make up imaginary problems like millionaires on buses and retired bankers bankrupting the country with free prescriptions, instead of simply admitting that they are opposed not just to welfare payments to the few rich people who receive them, but are opposed to all such payments.
The crux of the issue is that some of us would like everyone to be wealthy enough to consign the Welfare State to the dustbin, and we recognise that the Welfare State is an impediment to that; others want the poor to remain poor and on welfare.
Pete, you are honest enough to admit that you wish to get rid of the welfare system, others hide behind rhetoric about millionaires on buses.
Pete,
Minimum wage workers paying tax? – where did you say you lived?
Niall Ferguson touches on this in his excellent final Reath Lecture this week, well worth listening to here
ernest Young -
I don’t live in Florida.
The UK minimum wage is £6.08 per hour. A 40 hour week earns £12,646 gross per annum. The personal allowance is £8105, so the minimum wage earner has an income tax levied on £4541 at 20 per cent.
National Insurance is levied above above £5564. Including employer’s NI, which is a tax on salary, NI is a tax of about 25pc on wages above £5,564 a year.
I see that Peter has posted above:
NMW (£6.08 x 40 x 52) = gross pay = £12,646
Employees nic 12% (starts at £7,592)= £606
Tax 20% (starts at £8,105) = £908
Total deductions = £1,514 = an effective tax rate of 12% which is higher than many of the city spivs and scammers pay, as we’ve learnt recently.
Are there 2 Pete Moore’s here ?
Entertaining to read people arguing for that which cannot be afforded. Excellent stuff.
This is probably the best time since the ’70s to re-evaluate the Welfare State.
Undoubtedly set up with the best of intentions, it has grown into a monster sapping the lifeblood from our economy, breeding more welfare addicts and attracting the poor and needy from all parts of the globe.
The British have a fondness for tradition and fairness. Any national innovation runs the risk of becoming a “national institution” and hence sacred. That is what has happened to the Welfare State. Another weakness we have is supporting lost causes.
We don’t stop to think why it is a lost cause; we just throw all our money and energies at it until we are exhausted.
Or put more simply, the Welfare State has become our “cuckoo in the nest”.
So, who should be helped by the Welfare State?
I would say the disabled, long term sick and the elderly and for a limited time, those out of work. At this point I would advocate my new, revamped workhouse scheme, whereby the unemployed fit are made to do useful work in return for State help.
econdly I would completely re-organise and simplify the tax system, ensuring that even the most menial of jobs yields a decent wage. I would cut out the disparities between the public and wealth producing sectors, and ensure that money from employer and employee goes towards a decent pensions system.
Lastly I would drastically reduce the power and ability of governments to manipulate and lie to the electorate – which is why I favour having representatives of all NGO’s charities and advisory bodies in the second chamber…
What would YOU do?
David,
Most of this stuff is not about affordability, it’s about priority.
When we read about MP’ travel expenses and Ministerial taxi fares in the tens of thousands per month, and see them or their representatives on tv bitching about a 50p bus fare, then you just gotta know the priorities are severly wrong.
I wouldn’t mind so much, but when the said ‘bus passes’ cost nothing, other than admin costs, you realise just how big the gap is between ‘us’ and ‘them’.
Entertaining to read people arguing that it is millionaires on buses which means it cannot be afforded. Excellent stuff.
Ernest
I would take from them as they are thieving parasites so broadly agree
Fews
So, keep on spending, I see, excellent stuff. Are you Greek by chance?
OAP bus passes don’t cost nothing. Do you think bus operators just give them to the State to hand out?
Yes, it’s a question of priorities. While we’re handing billions to the EU and other countries in foreign aid, it’s bloody stupid politics to close Remploy and talk about OAP bus passes.
But it’s not MPs who are coming up with this.
A google search shows that the Nuffield Trust and the Social Market Foundation, neither of which are associated with the Tory Party, have called for wealthier pensioners to have benefits cut before Tory MPs did.
The fact that pensioners are the subject is irrelevent and clouds the discussion. We’re talking about wealthy people getting benefits mainly from lower earners who cannot afford to be taxed to provide them. I’d include MPs – higher earners compered to most – in that.
This is a nation of severe welfare junkies. It’s so chronic we’ve even got people with brains here arguing that the poor should be taxed so the wealthy don;t have to pay a bus fare. Unbelievable!
So, keep on spending, I see, excellent stuff. Are you Greek by chance?
There you go again, pretending that millionaires on buses and free prescriptions for retired bankers are the cause of the budget problems.
Quite right we are arguing over what is really trivia.
We talk of welfare addicts and the like, but the real problem is that our days of full employment are over, possibly never to return.
Thatcher refusing help to manufacturers in the Midlands and the North, not entirely out of political spite, but nonetheless very shortsighted. Couple this with the opening of our borders to all comers – as much an error of judgement as sheer stupidity, by both parties, – and all in the search for supposedly ‘affordable labour’, and all we got was cheap labour, and an unemployment problem.
We might well condemn Allan for his conspiracy theories, but if we study the time line of events from Wilson onwards, it is hard not to agree with him that this is all more than just happenstance and may well have been a blueprint for our collective futures. It would also explain the reluctance for an ‘in or out’ vote on the EU.
So cut ‘benefits’ all you want, but it will come at a price. Greater violence on our streets for a start. It isn’t only us Brits that need a roof over our heads. Our new arrivals will feel equally betrayed and they wont hesitate to take what they want, and it will make them feel very much ‘at home’, where violence seems to be more of a norm than here.
As we are seeing daily, we are already suffering from a different sort of criminality, but at a higher level, Murdoch and Diamond being but a small sample of
a pretty general and global malaise.
Shortsighted taxation and spendthrift ideas have literally ‘killed the golden goose’ of manufacturing and other wealth producing industries, small wonder that incentive is at such a low level.
Wasn’t it Thatcher who said we will replace manufacturing with a service orientated economic base? Trouble is she forgot that to be a service provider, you have to have something to service, i.e. a manufacturing industry.
I think she might well have been equally enthralled with our financiers as has every PM since, believing their promises that ‘the City’ would be the lifeblood of our economy, – such a pity she forgot the vampires!!
A classic example of a service industry is the ‘call centre’, – what happened there? why our oh! so loyal international companies found that India does it so much cheaper, n.b. I didn’t say better!
As for arguing over trivia, – doesn’t House of Lords debates lasting hours fall into tha category?
“Commons’ you twit House of Commons….
Pete,
‘Do you think bus operators just give them to the State to hand out?
if they don’t, they should be, as most of them are subsidised by Local or national government.
If Councillors are too stupid or lackadaisical, to negotiate a beneficial deal, then that is yet another example of the problems we have.
Fews
I’m still waiting for you to share with us how many on final salary pension plus state pension should get free travel, free prescriptions and erm..cold weather payment if they reside in Spain, or Portugal, maybe France. Just how many..go on…please share?
Only those that are eligible should get them.
Define eligible. Cold Weather payments go to all as best I am aware. So, are all eligible and if some does that confirm that you believe pensioners living in Spain, Portugal, south of France should get such tax monies?
Cold Weather payments go to all as best I am aware.
Well you would be wrong of course.
http://www.direct.gov.uk/en/moneytaxandbenefits/benefitstaxcreditsandothersupport/inretirement/dg_10018668
How the Cold Weather Payments scheme works
Then again, I could be right…
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-506947/Britain-posts-10million-winter-fuel-bonuses-pensioners-living-abroad-sunshine.html
Still, what’s £10 million, right?
Then again, I could be right…
Only if the Winter Fuel Payment is the same thing as the Cold weather payment.
Which it isn’t.
But don’t let that get in the way of a good rant.
Winter fuel tends to be paid when it is cold. Still you know best and as I say that £10m send to Spain/Algarve/France is surely what the Welfare State was designed for. And it’s not as IF we are in recession or anything. Right? Still, I’m sure you can share with us WHY it is important millions for on cold weather fuel payments for those…in the sun.
The Welfare State, bloated, obscene and furiously defended by Statists.
Okay we all seem to agree that the present system stinks, but I repeat the question I asked at 1.30pm..
“What is your solution?”
I believe in democracy and I do agree with Pete Moore that politicians are no brainier than we in the electorate are, but they DO have the ability to ignore that fact, and kid the rest of us that they are.
Surely between ourselves (Pete Moore., Frank O’Dwyer and David Vance included) we have enough accounting/economist skills to come up with an alternative system.
…or are we content with our role as muttering in a cyber corner?
Agited,
Surely democracy is much more than mere accountancy skills.
To be a leader at any level in any functioning democracy, and that would inlude from the humblest Parish Councillor to the PM himself, there are several ‘must have’ attributes, such as integrity, honesty, responsibility, intelligence and a belief in the spirit of the law, not just the letter of it.
Not much to ask is it? That our present system precludes most of the above virtues is all too obvious. Whether the decline came when being an elected ‘Leader’ became a profession in itself, is a moot point, but no doubt that the pandering purely to gain votes has had much to do with it.
Far from a reformation of the House of Lords, perhaps we should start with a major reform of the House of Commons, at present more of a cosy club than an elite leadership cadre, but perhaps that would be too much for socialists to stomach, having to recognize that some folks are just that much smarter than the average bear.
Democracy may not be a perfect system, but then neither is mankind, and that is where morality and humanity could play a part.
So what say you? – is this a start to freedom from that cyber corner, or maybe not…
“Councillor to the PM himself, there are several ‘must have’ attributes, such as integrity, honesty, responsibility, intelligence and a belief in the spirit of the law, not just the letter of it.”
What you left out Ernest, is humility.
Two qualities are needed to (socially) change things for the better: humility and the wisdom of serpents!!
PS.
I am so glad you are back on ATW. I missed you.
Agit8ed -
Talking of the Welfare State, you say:
“Undoubtedly set up with the best of intentions, it has grown into a monster sapping the lifeblood from our economy, breeding more welfare addicts and attracting the poor and needy from all parts of the globe.”
This was all predictable and proves Hans-Hermann Hoppe’s dictum:
Also, you suggest:
“Lastly I would drastically reduce the power and ability of governments to manipulate and lie to the electorate – which is why I favour having representatives of all NGO’s charities and advisory bodies in the second chamber…”
That’s merely an invite for corruption. Within a couple of years those bodies will have doubled their budgets and empires.
The problem is democracy itself. In the last century government became grotesquely bloated, as exemplified by the Welfare State. Everyone agrees that it was founded as a safety net, yet no-one seems curious as to why it exceeded by bounds by a long way.
Well it’s no suprise that government became an omnipresent parasite after universal enfranschisement. From then on we were doomed because politics will always grow as politicians buy off more and more client groups.
There’s no scaling back the Welfare State this side of an economic catastrophe. It’s impossible. Voters now will never vote for it and politicians will never do it because they cannot. Government now has a life of its own. Even Margaret Thatcher’s governments spent more year on year. She couldn’t even halt the expansion of goernment, let alone reverse it.
Only when government can no longer borrow and print up money will the welfare State collapse.
Pete,
thank you so much for responding.
I agree mostly with your analysis of the problem, but you fail to provide a solution to the problem known as “human nature”.
If like me you accept that different times call for different treatments, you must surely accept that the problem we now face is not so much one of knowledge, as one of moral rectitude.
In other words, the people in charge can’t be trusted to do the right thing for society as a whole.
Those here yammering on about what is WRONG with the system are strangely quiet about how to FIX the system, so that we end up with a fairer more transparent deal for everyone.
To my mind the
goyguy who delivers the mail or empties the bins or unblocks the drains is as important as the guy who advises you at the bank…We need a better deal for everyone.
Agit8ed -
Every day I provide the solution to the facts of human nature.
We all recognise that we are each unique with our disparate characteristics, needs, wants, desires, skills and so on. Government provides one solution to everything – tax, spend and the law here is the singular parameter by which everyone must conform, the straightjacket into which everyone must contort themselves.
I suggest the (classical) liberal solution: do as you will as long you harm no-one else. It’s a rather fine, British tradition which we have sadly lost. You say:
No entity is possibly capable of that. No entity, no matter how wise and far-seeing, can possibly have the perfect knowledge necessary to carry out such a task. How can a politician or bureaucrat in Norwich, let alone London, possibly know what you and your wife want from life and are willing to sacrifice in order to have it? Millions of people cannot possibly be governed in any satisfactory way by a centralised state such as ours.
Agit8ed,
Thank you, your 7.45 p.m. – much appreciated…
Ernest!!
How are you pal?
Pinky,
Just fine – thank you! I hope I find you the same…
You do, thanks.