Posts Tagged ‘household’
Posted by michael on June 17, 2009
Our local paper (Chronicle and Gazette in Essex) is carrying the following:
New Department of Health guidelines mean the families living illegally on land off Chelmsford Road, Blackmore, and any other gipsies stopping off in the borough could get preferential primary care treatment – just because they could be evicted and are considered a vulnerable group.
South West Essex PCT is considering giving staff “cultural awareness” training so they understand what it is like to be a traveller.
Fast-tracking travellers for specific services and telling doctors not to turn away any traveller who walks in without an appointment, even if all appointments are full, are also being considered.
If the guidelines are adopted travellers will get longer consultations with GPs.
Can I as an ordinary person do the same? We have to make appointments. We have to wait until the surgery has doctors available for an appointment.
So what is the difference between my family and the family of ‘travellers’?
Is this part of New Labour’s general bias against ordinary people? You know, those who live in ordinary houses, who have ordinary jobs, who send their ordinary children to ordinary schools and pay all their taxes!
Perhaps this highlights a way of getting treatment on the NHS when all the cuts forced on it by Labour giving the UK such high debt levels have to come int effect.
Those who want treatment in the future should just buy themselves a caravan and claim to be a traveller!
Posted in Blogroll, credit crunch, labour, Lib Dems, recession, UK Economy, Uncategorized | Tagged: abuse, brown, conservative, david cameron, economy, families, gordon brown, health, household, nhs, travellers, UK Economy | Leave a Comment »
Posted by michael on June 8, 2009
I suspect that the result of the New Labour MPs meeting that is going on now is that the Labour MPs are going to support Brown!
They don’t really have a choice. Labour cannot have another unelected Leader. They would be crucified by the people of the UK if they tried that again!
So whatever they think of Brown, they are stuck with him!
They could leave Brown as PM and give some MPs the job of managing him, effectively a puppet leader with the real power behind the throne!
New Labour is a sham. The object was to pretend to the UK that New Labour was no longer a socialist party. The pretence was that New Labour embodied all the elements of the Conservative party policies whilst still retaining socialist values.
This sham, which could only work if it had a dynamic, charasmatic leader, was successful whilst Blair was personally holding the house of cards together. Managing the press and the news media was an important part of the pretence.
When Blair left (had he seen the inevitable collapse of ‘New’ Labour?) he passed control over to Brown without an election! This was the first mistake. The second mistake was that Brown is totally the wrong sort of person to replace Blair.
In my view Brown could never have replaced Blair. Now the country can see for themselves that New Labour is simply another manifestation of the Emperor’s New Clothes.
Posted in Blogroll, Conservatives, credit crunch, debt, economy, Euopean Union, Europe, labour, Lib Dems, mp expenses, recession, UK Economy, Uncategorized | Tagged: abuse, brown, conservative, credit crunch, david cameron, debt, economy, expenses, gordon brown, government, greedy, household, labour, parliament, repossession, UK Economy | Leave a Comment »
Posted by michael on February 22, 2009
I have just heard a radio interview where a Labour minister was defending Gordon Brown by saying that Brown had been calling for years for global financial controls and global actions to prevent the sort of financial crash that we have had.
It was an interesting defence of Gordon Brown. If Brown had been actively campaigning for these controls over a number of years, then why did he not take steps years ago to prevent the crash we have had in the UK???
Or, as I suspect, he did not have a clue about the risks to the UK economy and is desperately trying to save his political skin now. We know that he has said that he didn’t see the recession coming.
Posted in Blogroll, Conservatives, credit crunch, debt, economy, financial, labour, Lib Dems, recession, UK Economy | Tagged: abuse, banker, bankers, banking, banks, borrowing, brown, conservative, cost of living, credit crunch, debt, economy, government, household, labour, recession, tax increases, UK Economy | Leave a Comment »
Posted by michael on February 7, 2009
I came across a statistic today which I am very unhappy about.
25% of our council tax is now spent funding town hall pensions
It is almost unbelievable the government of the UK would allow so much of our council tax to towards pension benefits for a minority of the people who work in our council offices.
We need competent staff to run our councils in an efficient and capable manner. But if 25% of our council tax is required to pay to have efficient councils then I would suggest that we could dispense with these people and have very inefficient councils and we would save a lot of money on our council bills!
Posted in Blogroll, council tax, tax, UK Economy | Tagged: abuse, bureaucrat, bureaucrats, council tax, government, household, local taxes, official, pension, pensions | Leave a Comment »
Posted by michael on January 31, 2009
I quite often hear people saying that there is no point voting, either the party they support in their constituency cannot get in or they see all the parties as the same.
But it is worth getting involved and voting for what you want or even voting against what you don’t like!
Your opinion does matter, but not if you are the only person in the world who knows what it is!
And you can influence or even change things by speaking out, writing letters, going to your MP and your local councillors.
Many of the government announcements are attempts to see how people react before they go ahead with legislation. New Labour are scared of people’s reactions – that is why so much stuff is announced quietly or hidden away in some other legislation. For example recently hiding the law changes to allow local councils to charge for recycling and bin collection charges. We are in a democracy (!) but New Labour hide law changes and sneak them in without us knowing.
Another example recently was the vehicle excise duty changes for new cars. They announce changes that most people would have thought were quite reasonable. And then once people had accepted these ideas, they quietly changed the legislation to cover cars up to 10 years old!. What a mess ensued, lots of people lost a lot of money on the value of their cars!
If a government upsets you greatly then vote it out of power as soon as you can. Do the same with your local council. Stand for your local council if you really want to oppose what they are doing.
Join a political party that you feel that you can support. Do what you can to change things. And if the wrong people still get into power then that is democracy in action. As a last straw you can always emigrate!
Posted in Blogroll, Conservatives, economy, Euopean Union, Europe, labour, Lib Dems, tax, UK Economy | Tagged: benefits, cost of living, council, councils, families, government, green, green tax, household, local council | Leave a Comment »
Posted by michael on October 17, 2008
Although this is not a political blog, it is blatently obvious that the government of the UK (and that would be any government of the UK) directly affects our daily lives. Our income, savings, investments, VAT, taxation, benefits, price of food, prices of everything really are directly linked to the policies of the government in power.
It is obviously a political statement to say anything about the government in power. But criticising or praising the government in power should not always be seen as ‘party politics’, although that tends to be used to devalue any comments that the government do not like!
The ‘credit crunch’ is now well known to most people. And the government is now taking steps to try to minimise the effect on us. All the political parties support these moves.
But it is now becoming obvious that at least some of the current problems with the ‘credit crunch’ are the result of a failing of regulation of the financial sector by the government in power over the ten years that they have been in power.
Many other countries in the world are having similar problems and their governments will also have to account to their people for what has happened.
The Prime Minister is presenting himself as someone who can save the UK from the difficulties that we are in. I hope that he can. But we shouldn’t be in this mess in the first place!
The consequences on many people’s lives will be difficult to manage. Of course some people will do well out of this crisis. Many others will manage without any real difficulties. But most people will find life getting much tougher.
Financial pressures often puts pressure on family relationships. Unemployment and money difficulties harms relationships (men in particular feel that they have failed if they cannot provide for their families).
Paying the mortgage/rent becomes a priority.
The energy bills have to be paid (and these will cost most people significantly more this year). Life could become very difficult for many people if we have a severe winter.
Food bills also have to be paid. There is much more scope for people to shop around to make the most of their budget. We are already seeing changes in shopping habits with people switching to the budget stores to save money.
And then there are those whose homes have been repossessed and are thrown out on the streets. Whatever the cause of the repossesion (other than criminal fraud) I do not see the point in throwing a family out of a home if that house is to stand vacant for months or even years whilst the family have nowhere to live or are rehoused at the expense of the public!
Posted in Blogroll, financial | Tagged: bills, credit crunch, financial crisis, household, repossession | Leave a Comment »
Posted by michael on June 17, 2008
We now have a much better idea of what we are facing over the next 12 months.
The Consumer Prices Index (CPI) rose by 3.3% in May, up from 3% in April, the fastest rate since the CPI measure began in 1997, although, to be honest, that was not that long ago! It is thought that the index will exceed 4% in the next 12 months.
On the face of it these figures would not seem to be that bad, but I think that they are bad news to the huge number of people in the UK who do not have highly paid jobs and plenty of disposable income!
The idea of a price index is that it measures changes in prices of a ‘basket’ of goods and services that people, on average, spend their money on.
So when we look at the items with the biggest impact to ordinary people we find that that they are food and non-alcoholic drinks! Meat products and vegetables in particular are increasing in price.
The price of oil is nearly double that of 12 months ago. Most people have been affected the price of petrol and diesel at the pumps. What they probably also realise is that they are paying for the extra fuel costs of the haulage companies and the increased energy costs of food production in the factories and on the farms.
Gas prices are more than double what they were 12 months ago. Household energy bills are going up and will continue to be high whilst the wholesale price of fuel is high.
What I can see behind this headline inflation figure is a big impact on the lower paid and those with little disposable income. Of course there is good news. Apparantly DVDs are now cheaper which is a relief!
The increases are on the items and services that people need to buy all the time. But there are very many people in the UK who simply do not have the money to pay the extra. They are going to have to find the money for gas and electric bills or they will be cut off. They will have to find the money to pay for their basic food requirements and necessities. They will have to pay their loans and credit card bills
But they will cut back on other items, which in turn will impact the shops and other services that are not essentials.
I do urge people to start cutting back their expenditure now! Avoid borrowing money to buy higher value items even if they seem to be a bargain! Don’t borrow more money or increase your credit card debt. Do everything that you can to avoid spending money and try to have a credit balance in your bank account. There are difficult times ahead. Start doing what you can now to help yourself over the next 12 months.
I have to take this view because it is the right thing for families to do! It won’t help the shops and other non-essential businesses unfortunately!
Posted in Blogroll | Tagged: cost of living, debt, families, household, recession | 2 Comments »
Posted by michael on April 1, 2008
Please be aware of the effect that the 2008 tax changes may have on you. This especially applies to people on lower wages. The higher your earnings the less effected you are. The lower your earnings the more, in percentage terms, you will pay in tax.
(Please remember that your personal allowance is free of tax)
2007-2008
Those who earned £10,000 last year would have paid £783 in tax. That was because £2230 was taxed at 10% and the balance up to £ 34,600 taxed at 22%.
2008-2009
Those who will earn £10,000 this year will pay £913 in tax. This is because the 10% band has been withdrawn and everything above the personal tax allowance of £ 5435 is being taxed at 20%.
The extra tax on a £10,000 income is £130 which is approximately a 16% increase
To put these figures into perspective, a family on minimum wage for a 35 hour week will bring in approximately £10,000 per year.
All our bills are going up, utility bills in particular are increasing. People on lower incomes are going to have to put a lot more effort into saving money and managing their finances in order to stay out of trouble!
Please check the tax situation on your particular circumstances so that you can manage your family finances the best you can.
(calculations are approximate, minimum wage rate taken as £5.52, personal allowance is taken as £5,500 per year.)
Posted in Blogroll, tax | Tagged: bills, finances, household, income, tax, tax increases | 1 Comment »
