Chesterfield Online Forum
General Category => Chesterfield Discussion => Topic started by: Pete on March 30, 2015, 05:32:37 PM
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Don't let the Nasty party ruin the NHS.
91-year-old war veteran Harry Smith at the Labour Party Conference (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CsmIfDNeKLY#ws)
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Nice old man, lovely sentiment.
Afraid though we need to take a reality check.
The maths simply don't add up.
Let's take a fairly simple example. Me (can't get much more simple than that!!)
I lived for the first 18 years of my life as a burden on the tax payer.
I expect to be working till I'm at least 60,
I'm then hoping for 20 years or so of retirement.
So that's 42 years paying in and 38 years taking out. Not far off a 50/50 split biased towards paying.
Now take my step daughter
She's spent 24 years at the cost of the tax payer she still wants to retire at 60 and by then she can reasonably expect to have a good quality of retirement till she's 90.
That's 54 years taking out and only 36 putting in. Not a 50/50 split and more biased towards taking out.
So more people taking out than putting in and more reliance on the NHS as we age.
So how are we paying for it.
And there's the crux of this and indeed the last election. Everyone agrees we need to make cuts but no one will tell us accurately where. So we don't have a clue what we are voting for and we are all working on assumptions.
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All that is irrelevant if we lived in a fair society instead of the money-obsessed one that prevails under the Tories.
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Tell me how we pay for this fair society and I will vote for it. And yes I appreciate the irony that my question is money obsessed!!!!
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Get the Tories to make their mates to pay their taxes.
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If (and its a big if) you can write a set of rules that are totally unbreakable AND persuade the rich to stay here long enough to pay their taxes you might just might raise £25b. The NHS needs an extra £20b a year just to stand still at its current levels of spending and service (around £125b per annum). The benefits system costs another £169b. As the population ages both these budgets can only get bigger. So again the ideas are laudable but until someone tells me exactly where they are going to find the money (and don't bury us up to our rear ends in debt)I won't vote for them..
(Incidentally I don't think we have an ukip supporters on here but pulling us out of the EU only saves around £8b nett a year)
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Maybe they could scrap HS2 - after all "Every Little Helps".
Sorry, couldn't resist it... ;)