We are very much seeing the alignment of MPs after the budget. Starmer opened up PMQs with a statement that the government were issuing new guidance which could cut the cost of baby formula saying parents should save up to £500 a year. I can only agree with Phil Moorhouse that "one of the most visible signs of the desperate poverty we've seen in Britain these past few years is security tags on baby formula in supermarkets."
Back to the Budget and the alignment of MPs. The main themes have been tackling poverty for the left and complaints about expensive "handouts" from the right. The budget boosted the incomes of those struggling the most with the cost of living with particular focus on children via the removal of the two child cap on Universal Credit. On the other hand, the right-wing has attacked the budget as giving handouts to the idle whilst charging hard working people for it. We can see the latter has been picked up by the MSM, read by far-right followers and poured over the pages of Gransnet.
This balance was how PMQs continued. Several Labour MPs asked about the government's moves on poverty, while several of the Tory questions asked why we should even care about poverty. Again, a balance reflected on Gransnet.
After a seated snipe from the Opposition Leader Starmer listed that:
Growth is up this year defeating and beating the forecast.
Wages are up more since the General Election than in 10 years of the Tories.
We've had five interest rate cuts.
NHS waiting lists are down.
We've had record investment into this country.
Badenocks latest reason why Reeves should resign was put forward (oh how they must fear her) and easily dismissed. She then set her aim on the two child cap. She must have thought it was an easy win. The cap has shown to be popular with a majority of voters at this time. But she seems to forget is that child poverty itself, is not popular. The right do try to categorise those on benefit as scroungers, but many work, earning their poverty, or are retired pensioners. The rest are trying to find work. What do these people expect children to do? Starmer's reply was that half a million children had been lifted out of poverty. And that was the answer to all three of her questions on this.
So, this is where the parties are after the budget has had a few days to be considered.
It’s not a convenient argument, it’s factual, it’s how waits have been calculated since the NHS started collecting performance data.. How else would you suggest waits are calculated to provide a national picture?
If your experience of waiting lists has improved, you will believe the NHS report.
If your experience has nit improved or has got worse, then whatever the NHS report says, looks like the figures have been massaged to support government claims.
Ergo, when my experience of being on a waiting list was better under the last government, if they’d claimed to have improved things (they didn’t) I’d have believed that. In actual fact, despite my better experience, the waiting list rose between 2012 and 2019 because of the number of people joining the list, who were mainly referred onto the list by their GPs.
In my current experience the waiting time has increased.
NHS says The maximum waiting time for non-urgent, consultant-led treatments is 18 weeks from the day your appointment is booked through the NHS e-Referral Service.
However that doesn’t take into account the issue I mentioned in an earlier post about the length of the wait for referral. That conveniently makes the waiting time look as if it has improved.
I don’t want to get into a pointless argument, suffice to say it’s not all about you when average waits are calculated, because for every you there is somebody else who has waited months less than the average wait.
Evidently you do want to get into an argument.
Mollygo
MD
I'd be interested (genuinely) to know what sort of support Galaxy would suggest for these children while keeping them with their families.
I didn’t know Galaxy had suggested removing children from their families.
If it is being suggested that she did, where is the evidence for that. It’s not a very nice accusation.
I’d be equally (genuinely) interested to know what MD would suggest as a way to support the 1.2 million children from workless families.
I didn't say anything about removing children from their families. It was DAR's possibly sarcastic, words.
I was genuinely interested in Galaxy's ideas.
Casdon
Moving on from personal anecdotes is helpful I hope. This is what the Independent Health Foundation has to say about the performance in the first year of government on waiting times.
www.health.org.uk/reports-and-analysis/analysis/one-year-on-is-the-government-on-track-to-meet-its-waiting-times
As I thought, that report is about waiting times in England.
If other areas of the UK were to be included, it might paint a different picture.
It must be seven and a half years now since my GP first referred me to an orthopaedic surgeon, six years since I saw one and was put on the waiting list for knee replacements, eighteen months since one was done but nothing yet about the second.
So is seven and a half years acceptable?
petra
DaisyAnneReturns
JamesandJon33
I read in the paper today that the government pay benefits to households who practice polygamy. Extra wives mean extra money. Is this true ?
I wonder which paper that was, and who owns it?
It’s true. The UK recognise polygamy= more benefits.
You cannot have a legal polygamous marriage in this country.
keepingquiet
The LP has always been bad at handling the media. The media is a monster that eats itself in order to get the public riled up and anxious about things which are often not well-researched or even clearly embellished for effect.
Starmer is particularly poor at communicating. I know lots of party members are offered help in public speaking but often this focuses on delivery and not about speaking with passion or conviction. Often the Labour front bench sound like robots.
They could learn a lot from Zak Polanski- who knows exactly what is needed to get people to listen. Passion and conviction without sounding like a robotic-school graduate.
The media is a monster but it is now pouring out propoganda rather than news amd people are swallowing it hook, line and sinker. It's very easy to find the facts but so few do so. It seens they prefer the propoganda, just as has happened where authoritarianism is trying to take over elsewhere.
I didn't say anything about removing children from their families. It was DAR's possibly sarcastic, words.
They were not sarcastic Maizie. If you are not going to help thd families there are few alternatives left. I assumed most people would go for the least worst of those options.
DaisyAnneReturns
^I didn't say anything about removing children from their families. It was DAR's possibly sarcastic, words.^
They were not sarcastic Maizie. If you are not going to help thd families there are few alternatives left. I assumed most people would go for the least worst of those options.
I had rather hoped that they were sarcastic, DAR because removing children from their families (which I am perfectly well aware does happen) should be a rigorously thought out decision, not a response to welfare dependency.
Do people know the threshold for removing children into care these days, poverty certainly wouldn't meet that threshold.
Sometimes I wonder what does meet that threshold.
Maizie, I’m very aware of the range of experiences people can have with care, both positive and negative. From what I understand, most cost–benefit analyses tend to show that investing in families brings significant long-term benefits. I also don’t believe that having more children automatically means a family is incapable; that’s an oversimplification that doesn’t reflect many families’ realities or the reason why they msy need finacial help. I recognise as well that some of the concerns being raised may be influenced by broader social or political conversations, including those relating to ethnicity.
DaisyAnneReturns
petra
DaisyAnneReturns
JamesandJon33
I read in the paper today that the government pay benefits to households who practice polygamy. Extra wives mean extra money. Is this true ?
I wonder which paper that was, and who owns it?
It’s true. The UK recognise polygamy= more benefits.
You cannot have a legal polygamous marriage in this country.
As far as I can see, polygamy is still not legal in Britain. Someone with one wife or husband cannot marry another one (or another two or three). If a man moves from a country where polygamy is legal to Britain, he can only bring in with him his first wife. However, if they qualify IN THEIR OWN RIGHT, AND NOT AS HIS DEPENDENTS to be allowed to enter the country legally, there no law that prevents them living with him and his first wife, just as any unmarried people can live together as a threesome.
What's Starmer done?? He's put up income tax, put up NI, gave a great rise to resident doctors and they are going on strike again, jetted all around the world has ha net zero, welcoming to boats containing people breaking into our country with no passports, paid them thousands of pounds if they agree to go home, put up prices for university, private schools, beer, petrol, cigarettes, tax coming on electric cars per mile. Given loads of handouts to pension credit people so they get almost twice the value of people who worked for a full pension. Put up benefits and universal credit. Encouraging people to have more children to get more benefits for some will be worth 44K a year.
And employed a person who lied about their CV and experience and lied about our country finances to manage our money for the country.
He's the worst PM in British history.
I 🤔 find the delusion on here hard to understand. Free meal for kids then lifts the two kid policy. Working people can maybe afford one or two children others uninvited to the country watch them walking down to schools with 5-6-kids each.
This country is ruined 😡
Ainee
I 🤔 find the delusion on here hard to understand. Free meal for kids then lifts the two kid policy. Working people can maybe afford one or two children others uninvited to the country watch them walking down to schools with 5-6-kids each.
This country is ruined 😡
Sorry, you’re not really allowed to say that even though you’ve seen it for yourself, as it’s racist.
So people who stop at 2 children because that's all they can afford and both work full time are paying more tax for others lifestyle choice to have many children they know they can't afford.
The child element of universal credit and child benefit is just under £100 pw so 10 kids is 🙄£1k per week (£50k a year, cash) just in child benefits then there's housing and other elements too. Crazy money!
It would have been better to issue vouchers for various things like food,school uniforms etc. How can they be certain that the children are going to be lifted out of poverty when there is no way to ensure the extra money is being spent on the children?
As for “free” meals for children I would guess that the tax payers are covering the cost of these, so not really free, the government are not giving you these.
Get the immigration situaion sorted out. Lots of promises on new rules and laws
Yeah, yeah, l really do not believe they will happen.
sazz1 . . and he can't even give us decent weather for Christmas . .
If you can't afford children, then dont have them, its call takeing responsibility for yourself and not expecting other people to pay for them, hubby and I worked all our lives, had 2, couldn't afford anymore.
Sadie5803
If you can't afford children, then dont have them, its call takeing responsibility for yourself and not expecting other people to pay for them, hubby and I worked all our lives, had 2, couldn't afford anymore.
It’s a good rule for those deciding to have children, but unfortunately, circumstances change, bereavement, divorce, job loss etc. which means that what was correct at the time of procreation doesn't mean it will always work that well.
Deliberately having more children when you can’t afford the ones you already have is a different matter.
I waited 64 weeks for an opthalmology appointment. The appointment lasted all of 2 minutes and the consultant took 15 seconds to declare problem. Waiting list for treatment another 15 months. Decided to go private (as I did for cataract rather than wait a year).Consultant had copy of letter NHS consultant had sent. Private did some tests and declared NHS diagnosis was way way wrong, I need surgery on my nose. So I paid privately to have a diagnosis NHS didn't even bother to test for. Yes waiting lists may be down but at what cost. Now awaiting NHS response to private consultant's diagnosis. Optician who had referred me said I should go with private diagnosis as more qualified and experienced than NHS.
Children are not monetary units.
What happens if you take out a massive mortgage you can't afford?
Or buy a really expensive car that guzzles petrol and harms the environment?
What happens if you max out on your credit card and struggle to pay it off?
What if you lose your job, get divorced, need major surgery or cancer treament?
What if your spouse dies, or they beat you up, or develop an addiction?
There are so many variables here that happen in people's lives and none of them are the fault of the children, so why should they be punished???
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