Bearing in mind Margaret Thatcher, John Major, Bill Clinton, Nelson Mandela and Tony Blair also met and held discussions with the IRA.
However, Jeremy Corbyn also appears to favour certain groups over other groups which makes him a target for the Telegraph etc.
Corbyn's problem is that it went a bit further than just meeting with them.
Corbyn and McDonnell have blood on their hands for IRA support, claims ex-terrorist - BelfastTelegraph.co.uk
Stories like that, coupled with Corbyn's reluctance to denounce IRA bombings and instead try to refocus the question on the actions of british troops etc...
Agreed it's now an important issue especially for the over 40s, but I promised @IronGiant I wouldn't discuss it anymore. Besides it should really be on the other thread.
I thought we were in the other thread for a minute there, sorry IG data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7
Well I was talking about the original pledge before the U-turn. There are going to be many who would be a lot better off under that than the existing scheme.
Its a £75k bribe for them
What many of those saying it's capped at £100K and that thus this amount is ring fenced to pass on as inheritance are missing is that the manifesto proposal is for care costs to be paid from everything but the final £100K. Not the total cost which will be a combination of care costs and the costs of the finance mechanism used to pay for the care costs.
What is very vague is who will provide the finance mechanism to be used for the care funding, public or private sector. As it is a Tory party proposal it is a given that this would be via the private sector.
With a house not being sold until after death the finance mechanism would likely be via equity release. As anyone who has looked into equity release can tell you the insurance companies providing this take a very, very large proportion of the equity in fees and interest.
So for £250K house, £150K can go for social care leaving £100K (the proposed floor amount).
Out of that £100K will come the insurance company cut potentially leaving nothing remaining if a long period of care is needed.
The difference is in the detail. At the moment:
social care costs in the home are payable from income/capital but the house is not assessed as capital.care home costs will, after the existing £23K capital threshold (which includes house value), be paid for by the council who take a charge on the house. After death they get first cut of the house proceeds.But they do not charge an excessive set of fees and use a high interest rate, both of which apply to an insurance company equity release scheme. Deferred payment agreements for people who own their own home and are moving into a care home
From Aviva who are one of the largest companies in the equity release market:
Interest will be added to the money you borrow and any interest added to your mortgage will itself attract interest. This quickly increases the total amount you will owe.If you have an existing mortgage on your home this will need to be paid off before or at the same time as taking out the lifetime mortgage. You can use the money you borrow with your lifetime mortgage to pay off your existing mortgage in full. This will not affect the amount you are able to borrow, but it will reduce the amount of cash that is available for you to spend on other things.Equity release – Retirement - Aviva
Using the Aviva equity release calculator for an 80 year old with a house worth £250K, up to £94K can be released.Now if that 80 year old then lives for a further 10-15 years requiring home care the equity released will gather interest for up to 10 -15 years. Only at death (or if going into a long term care home) will the interest be paid from the proceeds of the house sale.
So for those who have to take equity loan out to fund social care in the home and who then have to go into a care home, the house would need to be sold at that point (and the interest etc paid from the proceeds). Early repayment fees are also payable to the insurance company.
Interest is charged on both the amount you borrow and any interest already added. This quickly increases what you owe and will reduce the value you have in your property, possibly to nothing. (Aviva).
Compound interest calculator shows for a £250K house with £150K equity release loan at a fixed 5% interest (with no monthly repayments) the real value left in the house is reduced to near £0 in around 9 years. This ignores any house price appreciation or depreciation.
Now at the moment the equity release schemes available are not really ideal for what is being proposed in the Tory manifesto. So the insurance industry would need to provide new products suited to the proposed policy.
What is totally lacking in the manifesto is details of how the funding could be provided or its associated costs.At the moment for equity release interest is charged at either a fixed rate if all the available capital is withdrawn at once, or via variable rates if the capital is withdrawn in stages (annually to pay for the following year care fees). Lowest fixed equity release rate seems to be around the 5% mark, variable rates are higher Equity Release Interest Rates | Equity Release Supermarket
If the Tory Manifesto was honest it should mention how the care funding would operate and also make it clear that there would be either a low fixed interest rate or a capped variable rate for the funding.
Under Cameron a £72K cap on total lifetime care costs was due to be implemented in 2020. Now what is proposed to replace this is a £100K floor below which care wouldn't be charged for.A very big difference especially as the care funding mechanism has not been disclosed.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/election-2017-39967486
The Tory Party has taken it as axiomatic that their older voters will vote for them no matter what they propose. But with ending the triple pension lock, stopping Winter Fuel Payment to around 12 million pensioners, and especially with this policy their hubris may end up with many older voters going elsewhere with their votes. And that is a lot of voters at stake.
I haven't been round these parts for a bit, but this one has me scratching my head.
We used to have a thread on Inheritance Tax, and it seemed that the tory position was that, if you'd worked hard all of your life, you should be able to pass that on to your kids (or the cats' home, or whatever).
The whole thing appears out of whack with most other things we all appear to agree on.We all seem to think that the state should provide a safety net if you're suddenly made unemployed (through no fault of your own), or suddenly become ill (through no fault of your own), or become too old to work (through no fault of your own...apart from not living on lard), and that this is paid for from our taxes, a system where you pay more tax the more you earn.I mean that's how the state appears to work for most things, most of the time.And whilst no one likes taxes, we seem to agree this is largely a fair system.
No one here knows whether they're going to get dementia, or some other debilitating disease.It might come to us and it might not.And if it does, we may have a child, or 2 , or 3, or 4 to share the burden.Or none, or they've all moved to Australia.Or we're still close to them, or have fallen out with us.
For these reasons, I don't think you can rely on family to look after the elderly.I mean they can do so, and may well want to, but I can't see any fair system where the state expects and/or counts on them doing so.
So the state must pay.And the fairest way to collect the extra cash (the way we collect it for most other things) is some sort of taxation.And this manifesto idea suggests the best 'new' tax is to take money from what people leave in their estate.
So the answer seems fairly obvious.See how much the state will have to pay for this care every year.See how much people leave in their estates every year.Divide one into the other, and set an inheritance tax at that level.
Now obviously, you can tweak that.Some sort of tax allowance, so the first £100,000 or whatever is tax free.Maybe make it progressive, so it's (just as an example) 20% from £100,000 to £400,000, 30% on £400,000 to £1,000,000, and 50% over that. I'm not saying those are the rates we should set, just offering an example.
Why isn't this just obvious?
My dad is getting older, and no one lives forever.He might slip away suddenly after a short illness, or require years (decades?) of expensive care.My brothers still live close enough to help, but I don't.
I wouldn't want to see his entire estate disappear in tax (even if you minus off the first £100,00).I can see no fair way of the family looking after him, given our different circumstances.And I also understand the money would have to come from somewhere.
Paying 20% or 30% on the estate or whatever seems a much fairer system than me relying on my brothers, or playing some sort of roulette where the family risks losing nothing from his estate or everything, or something in between.
That aside, there's an issue with this manifesto idea that's perhaps been missed.I've had a look at costs, and it seems that, whilst there's a huge variation, you can look at maybe £40,000 a year.And whilst some may only live with this sort of care for a year (or less), and others may live for maybe 10 years (or longer) you can maybe average it out at 5 years.So that's £200,000.
So if your estate is £100,000 you lose nothing.If your estate is anything between £100,000 and £300,000 you lose everything (other than that £100,000).But if you're estate is anything over £300,000 you get to keep the first £100,000 plus every penny over £300,000.
So it's a system that protects the less well off at the bottom, protects the well off at the top, but penalises those in the middle.Do we have any other taxes like that?
Is this why Labour have caught up a little in the polls?Rule 1 of elections in the UK is 'protect middle England'.This looks like targeting Mondeo Man.
data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7 Since when were they stopping it for all pensioners ?data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7
It has been reported that only those getting Pension Credit or another means tested benefit will qualify for Winter Fuel payment as opposed to the current situation where it is based solely on age. I said around 12 million pensioners, not all pensioners.
Latest government stats (May 2017) show 13 million people getting State Pension (SP) and 1.9 million claimants of Pension Credit (PC). Page 1 and Page 16 of https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/614225/dwp-quarterly-stats-summary-may-2017.pdf
Pension Credit can be claimed by anyone over the female state pension age (was 60 until 2010 and has been slowly increasing since then|) on low income grounds. Only the Guarantee element of PC qualifies for benefit passporting (PC GC). The Saving element of Pension Credit on it's own doesn't do so (PC SC).So the 1.560 million (PC GC, 640K) and PC (GC with SC, 920K) is the figure that should be used in these calculations rather than the total PC figure.
A simple calculation 13million - 1.56 million = 11.44 million pensioners not receiving PC.
So around 12 million pensioners not in receipt of PC, and thus if reports are correct will loose Winter Fuel Payment. Now you don't have to be rich to not receive PC, State Pension is still well below the official poverty line.
For those who say 11.44 million is not really around 12 million I include the figues below which includes the fact that not all those in receipt of PC are also in receipt of SP.State pension age of 60 and 65 are used for simplification purposes.
At age 60 (see above for caveats) a male is not eligible to receive State Pension and thus is not a 'pensioner' but can claim Pension Cedit. So will be included in PC total but not SP total. Over age 65 both males and females can get SP and PC, so will appear in both sets of totals.
So for a slightly more accurate figure: 13 million - the result of the total male PC claimants after having deducted from that the numer of males between 60 and 65 getting PC.
(males SP and PC) - (males PC but not SP) = z
Unfortunately at this point a lot more age band related stats are needed but of the 1.56 million getting PC GCthe stats noteNearly two thirds of claimants (63%) were women.
Most of those can be assumed to be getting SP and PC (SP age was 60 for women until 2010) and so should be used to get total number of affected pensioners.
So 37% of 1.56 million = 0.5772 million males = x
and 63% of 1.56 million = 0.9828 million females = y
so z can be between 0.5772 million and 0 (lower more likely) and y can be between 0 and 0.998 million (higher more likely)
13 million - 0.5772 million = 12.42 million
13 million - 1.56 million = 11.44 million
So a maximum/minimum range between 11.44 million and 12.42 million or around 12 million 4%/-5%. Either one is a load of voters...
Ah, so you are speculating on a worse case scenario again data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7
It would be interesting if you could also present the many other possible/suggested outcomes, you know, the ones that don't always paint the Tory Policy in the worst possible light.Having said that the Pension Credit route would gain the greatest savings for the Government so maybe they will go for thatdata:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7