Some years ago, when we were living in Nottingham, A got a job in Hastings. The money wasn't to be sniffed at and the bungalow we found to rent was none too shabby either. He asked the tax office if he could claim the rent back as a legitimate business expense and was told that it would be ok. So we did. We all lived there as a family (not that it would make any difference).
Several months later the tax office decided that claiming back this rent was NOT OK and they'd like us to pay the tax on what we'd claimed back from our business and they wanted it NOW. I don't know about you but suddenly laying our hands on about £2K just like that was impossible. The tax office begrudgingly gave us 3 months to pay it. We were understandably upset but managed to do so.
We had to rent somewhere so that A could carry out his work. He was then, and still is, an IT contractor so, to all intents and purposes, employed himself. So we ended up paying a mortgage on our property back home - we didn't want to rent it out as it gave us somewhere to stay on our regular trips back to visit family and friends - and rent on this other property, AND two sets of bills - all out of our personal money. None of it was claimable.
So tell me, why should our MPs be able to get all expenses paid for their second homes? We had to have a base for work-purposes 200 miles from our current house, yet WE had to fund it ourselves. MPs don't need some flash pad in a posh area of London. Westminster should build their own hotel with 600+ identical flats in there. That should keep things down a bit.
And, yes, I think those 4 MPs/Lords members should be prosecuted. If something feels morally wrong then, despite someone saying it's OK, you really shouldn't do it. Their defence, that the Expenses Office approved them, is really no defence. After all, we didn't let all those SS guards from the concentration camps use that sort of thing as a defence in their trials, did we.
Showing posts with label current affairs. Show all posts
Showing posts with label current affairs. Show all posts
Saturday, 6 February 2010
Wednesday, 18 June 2008
Where are we supposed to find the money?
Petrol/diesel is at an all-time high. Everyone is feeling the pinch from this. It affects all of our lives. The wholesale prices of goods goes up as it costs more to get them from the manufacturers/producers to the retail outlets. Taxi and bus fares will rise, if they haven't already.
Mortgage rates are rising. The deals that were around at Christmas just aren't there anymore. Prices are beginning to fall. Anyone coming to the end of a mortgage deal is going to find the new monthly payment a shock, if they can find anyone prepared to offer them a mortgage at all. If your house has dropped in value since you took out your last deal you will struggle to find another lender willing to offer you a big enough mortgage to cover what you owe. And don't get me started on Council Tax!
Today we are warned that gas and electricity prices could rise by 40% this winter. No, not £40, 40%. If your yearly bills come to £1000 now, you could find they rise to £1400 by this time next year! On top of all the other financial squeezes above a lot of people are going to suffer.
Pensioners are on a low fixed income. Where are they going to find that sort of money? The same goes for those on the various Carers/Disabled allowances. Even those of us who have, until the last few months, been ok are going to find it hard.
As people start spending less in the shops, then some shops and businesses are going to fail. Their employees will lose their jobs, adding to the numbers of those who have to decide whether to have a hot meal or enough hot water for a wash!
I've been complaining to friends for a while that in the last 5 years my food bill has doubled. The contents of my trolley haven't changed that much. Yet the government would have us believe that inflation has been below 2.5%! So I've been investigating where it gets its figures from.
The Office of National Statistics publishes the Retail Price Index (RPI) each month. There are different versions of the RPI depending on whether you want mortgage interest payments and/or indirect taxation such as that on fuel/cigarettes/alcohol etc. The relevant link is
http://www.statistics.gov.uk/CCI/nugget.asp?ID=21 or to find out what is included and why go to http://www.statistics.gov.uk/elmr/04_07/downloads/ELMR_April07_Wingfield.pdf
I don't have time to read it and give you the summary today. I'll come back to it soon.
Mortgage rates are rising. The deals that were around at Christmas just aren't there anymore. Prices are beginning to fall. Anyone coming to the end of a mortgage deal is going to find the new monthly payment a shock, if they can find anyone prepared to offer them a mortgage at all. If your house has dropped in value since you took out your last deal you will struggle to find another lender willing to offer you a big enough mortgage to cover what you owe. And don't get me started on Council Tax!
Today we are warned that gas and electricity prices could rise by 40% this winter. No, not £40, 40%. If your yearly bills come to £1000 now, you could find they rise to £1400 by this time next year! On top of all the other financial squeezes above a lot of people are going to suffer.
Pensioners are on a low fixed income. Where are they going to find that sort of money? The same goes for those on the various Carers/Disabled allowances. Even those of us who have, until the last few months, been ok are going to find it hard.
As people start spending less in the shops, then some shops and businesses are going to fail. Their employees will lose their jobs, adding to the numbers of those who have to decide whether to have a hot meal or enough hot water for a wash!
I've been complaining to friends for a while that in the last 5 years my food bill has doubled. The contents of my trolley haven't changed that much. Yet the government would have us believe that inflation has been below 2.5%! So I've been investigating where it gets its figures from.
The Office of National Statistics publishes the Retail Price Index (RPI) each month. There are different versions of the RPI depending on whether you want mortgage interest payments and/or indirect taxation such as that on fuel/cigarettes/alcohol etc. The relevant link is
http://www.statistics.gov.uk/CCI/nugget.asp?ID=21 or to find out what is included and why go to http://www.statistics.gov.uk/elmr/04_07/downloads/ELMR_April07_Wingfield.pdf
I don't have time to read it and give you the summary today. I'll come back to it soon.
Sunday, 1 June 2008
More Labour absurdity
Did you know that if you are receiving NHS treatment for a medical condition and you decide you would like to privately purchase some medication not available on the NHS to improve your chances, you would then be unable to access ANY treatment for that condition on the NHS?
Scandalous, isn't it?!
This is becoming a big issue in the treatment of cancer. If you hear of a drug that may prolong your life, but NICE (National Institute for Clincial Excellence - what a misnomer!) decide that the costs outweigh the benefit and don't approve it for the NHS to use, you would then have to decide whether to forgo this drug and keep all the other NHS treaments and drugs; OR you could scrape together enough money to supply this drug and find that the NHS will no longer provide you with any treatment related to your condition.
Labour do not want to create a two-tier health system. Someone should tell them that there has been a many-tiered health system in this country for years. Private healthcare has always been around, even before the NHS came along. And on the NHS you have the postcode lottery - where you live decides what treatments you get for various conditions. Even when NICE give the go-ahead to the NHS to use certain drugs, not every PCT (Primary Care Trust) will prescribe them (usually citing cost).
So you get into the ludicrous situation of one PCT willing to prescribe drugs for Alzheimer's but not drugs that would greatly improve a terminal cancer patient's life expectancy, and another that would do just the opposite. Neither condition, Alzheimer's or terminal cancer, will be cured by the treatment. The drugs are just for palliative care, to make life more comfortable for the sufferer and their loved ones as they would all have more time together.
A group of NHS doctors are preparing to take on the Department of Health over this. Have a look at their website http://www.doctorsforreform.com/.
There isn't enough money in the NHS to pay for all the new drugs that are available, especially with all the managers and admin staff they're having to employ to monitor the PCTs compliance with all Labour's targets. Co-pay, as part-NHS and part-private treament is called, will soon be the only way forward. France operates their health-care in this way. The patient pays the bill in full and is then reimbursed, receiving somewhere around 70% of the cost. The French also pay about 20% (in some cases more), which is taken from their gross salary in much the same way as we pay National Insurance (NI), that goes into the pot to pay this 70%.
The French system is not perfect, especially seeing as it is about 6 billion euros in debt, but I don't think any health-care system is. The NHS can no longer afford to treat everyone for every illness. We are either going to have to pay more NI or contribute towards our treament as and when we need it.
Scandalous, isn't it?!
This is becoming a big issue in the treatment of cancer. If you hear of a drug that may prolong your life, but NICE (National Institute for Clincial Excellence - what a misnomer!) decide that the costs outweigh the benefit and don't approve it for the NHS to use, you would then have to decide whether to forgo this drug and keep all the other NHS treaments and drugs; OR you could scrape together enough money to supply this drug and find that the NHS will no longer provide you with any treatment related to your condition.
Labour do not want to create a two-tier health system. Someone should tell them that there has been a many-tiered health system in this country for years. Private healthcare has always been around, even before the NHS came along. And on the NHS you have the postcode lottery - where you live decides what treatments you get for various conditions. Even when NICE give the go-ahead to the NHS to use certain drugs, not every PCT (Primary Care Trust) will prescribe them (usually citing cost).
So you get into the ludicrous situation of one PCT willing to prescribe drugs for Alzheimer's but not drugs that would greatly improve a terminal cancer patient's life expectancy, and another that would do just the opposite. Neither condition, Alzheimer's or terminal cancer, will be cured by the treatment. The drugs are just for palliative care, to make life more comfortable for the sufferer and their loved ones as they would all have more time together.
A group of NHS doctors are preparing to take on the Department of Health over this. Have a look at their website http://www.doctorsforreform.com/.
There isn't enough money in the NHS to pay for all the new drugs that are available, especially with all the managers and admin staff they're having to employ to monitor the PCTs compliance with all Labour's targets. Co-pay, as part-NHS and part-private treament is called, will soon be the only way forward. France operates their health-care in this way. The patient pays the bill in full and is then reimbursed, receiving somewhere around 70% of the cost. The French also pay about 20% (in some cases more), which is taken from their gross salary in much the same way as we pay National Insurance (NI), that goes into the pot to pay this 70%.
The French system is not perfect, especially seeing as it is about 6 billion euros in debt, but I don't think any health-care system is. The NHS can no longer afford to treat everyone for every illness. We are either going to have to pay more NI or contribute towards our treament as and when we need it.
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