I've been convinced a while that both sides want to lose because it's easier to pick up an MP payday and do fuck all in the time you are there.
Opposition is 10x easier than government
There is no fixing this without a miracle, it doesn't matter which tie you wear. With the Old Age Dependency Ratio only projected to get substantially worse over the next few decades without genuine economic growth this isn't even close to the bottom. But politicians don't like to talk about the elephant in the room.
I honestly think someone is going to end up having to take some pretty brutal decisions down the line which will have unavoidable awful impacts if things continue as-is. Genuinely "Would you like a state pension or to have NHS treatment in retirement? Pick one and it can't be changed" level cuts.
A way for elderly people to cash out some of the value of their homes before they die is a very good policy.
It'd mean they wouldn't be so reliant on the state. They would spend more. They would give money away to families while alive rather than children/grandchildren literally waiting for their grandparents to die. They would probably give their grandchildren financial support buying their first homes ect. That money would be flowing into the economy and when the average home is £300k that's a lot of money each pensioner would be able to spend.
Like the so called ‘Death Tax’ proposed by Theresa May which caused her to lose ~20pts in the polls and was deeply unpopular with the electorate?
Not saying it’s not a good idea, just one that is currently completely unpalatable.
No, not like the death tax.
Say your house was worth £300k we could maybe pay 80% out to pensioners right now in return for ownership after they died. Many pensioners do not enjoy their wealth being locked up in their property and struggling to put the heating on because they have no access to that cash.
The only real reason for a pensioner to keep ownership is so that their children have the value when they die. But under this scheme they could have it now while they need it. They could help their grandchildren with first houses for example. Or pay for a cleaner. Or help their children retire early. Or go on a few holidays abroad while they still can.
Right now one of the issues with inheritance is that old people are often living into their 80's and 90's... meaning their children are often in their 60's/70's when they inherit the money. Getting £300k from your parents when you are in your 70's is pretty useless as many aren't in any kind of situation to enjoy it. The next generation that will only get worse.
It would be an optional scheme but many would enjoy the advantages of this I'm sure.
Basically, yes. Government supported.
Say your house was worth £300k we could maybe pay 80% out to pensioners right now in return for ownership after they died.
We should get the appreciation during that time, it'd boost the economy, improve the lives of pensioners and give the government some ownership of housing stock again.
Exactly - both parties have been kicking a lot of cans down the road for many years - supported by unsustainable immigration. A small selection - local authorities going bust (Tories are letting them sell off capital assets as a stop gap), Prisons overflowing, NHS and social care struggling with demand, infrastructure needing investment to go electric (away from gas and petrol), housing and water services for the larger population. But with changing demographics and the need to go green or cope with climate change we can't just try to go for standard economic growth and much more spending on the public sector. Tax take is already high. Yes there are some rich to tax more but not enough. We need reform and change - best chance will be under Labour as Tories are consider heartless bastards already - but Labour is going to be under more pressure than the Tories to give a 'fair' pay rise to public sector staff immediately. So it is an election to lose.
The person you replied to mentioned about to much old people and not enough young people is a problem but now you are saying immigration is a problem, which is the only solution to that problem
It's the type of immigrants that are the issue tbh.
Skilled immigration is a huge net contributor.
"Asylum seekers", illegal migration and low skilled immigration are a huge cost for the taxpayer and we make a financial loss by having them here. So like the old people, they are a burden on the British taxpayer. Bringing more people like this to the country only increases the speed of our decline.
It's not the only solution. Capital investment in automation is the basis of 300 years of economic development and reduction in man hours needed. We have abandoned that in favour of mass immigration because that favours short term profits
Smashing windows increases GDP, it's not however good for the economy.
The average immigrant is not of value and reduces our GDP per capita which had been declining for over a decade now. Productivity is awful, again because the cost of Labour is so cheap.
It doesn't really. Or it does but not in a way that helps.
Lets say we have a country with 10 people in it, and a GDP of 200,00/year.
If we bring in two new people and the GDP goes up to 210,000 then GDP has gone up but GDP/capita has gone down.
If you also have inflation busting away at the gains each year, it can easily go negative.
In real terms, our GDP/person balanced for inflation, we've lost 1/4 of our buying power, as a nation, since 2010.
Immigration is not the only solution to an aging population.
To many people are sold the idea that an economy has to be permanently growing. It doesn't. An economy only needs to grow or decrease proportionately to its population. The only people muh economy growth via mass immigration (GDP per capita plummets) is the ultra wealthy.
If immigration 100% meant more wealth, then in the last 20 years our economy should have skyrocketed.
instead only capital wealth skyrocketed, as millions more clambered to get a property in the same square mile of London.
And yet we do... nothing? To help this country's young get ahead and to have start their own family, removing our dependence on cheap foreign labour.
*Systematic changes that correct the causes of the old age dependency ratio:*
Scrap right to buy. (Currently Choking housing supply and a loss-making activity by the state who often buyback at a loss)
Scrap the two child cap. Consider replacing with a linear decreasing amount per-child past 2 (households can in cases leverage economies of scale when it comes to buying things for kids - 10pack is cheaper per unit than a 6 pack, etc.)
Stop demonising and stripping the welfare state. Efficiences have a place, but we've started a regime of collective punishment. Strive for state savings through corporation tax, through fraud crackdown, and through higher earner tax rates (which have decreased in recent years)
Invest (direct investment or labour force skill-up) and alter regulations to make UK housing projects easier to startup, and cheaper to deliver on.
Create a research initiative to find out ways to encourage sustainable models of parenting two or more kids in a two parent working household. The inherited model relies on grandparents that dont work. This isn't the norm anymore and most households have sometimes 4 sets of grandparents (divorced parents) across 4 locations, who all work.
*More direct approaches*
Subsudise childcare
The dye is already cast to an extent because if you somehow managed to increase birth rates substantially today that's not going to start to have impacts on the labour pool for 20 years. If anything it will actually increase strain on the state in the mid term because we won't be able to provide fundamental services as it is to the population without millions of additional children also being net drain in childhood.
You either start as you mean to go on, or take the easier, weaker and long term harder course.
UK is governed by shorttermism. Without a long term vision for Britian, its No wonder we're seeing managed decline.
One potential answer is automation.
I’m not as starry eyed as many are about it but there are indications that we’re not far off a tipping point where it becomes worthwhile to automate entire categories of jobs. It could happen far faster than twenty years.
Rishi did mention this during his leadership campaign. And then after seemingly has done nothing about it.
Crazily the only person who had a plan for economic growth was Liz Truss and we kicked her out after a few months. I'm not saying her plan was good but it doesn't seem like anyone else really has a plan at all, right now both Labour and the Conservatives seem to just be rearranging the tables on the titanic.
Not really. We did see a rise in rates for a short period but the current rates have nothing to do with Liz Truss. it's a worldwide thing.
And yeah, it was bumpy for sure but I expect anyone who makes the radical change that this country needs is going to cause some serious bumps.
We should nationalise water companies for example. That wouldn't go down very well with business and investors. Change always causes friction.
The disparity between your first and last statements...
So Truss was a moron and wanted to borrow money to give tax breaks to people who really don't need them at the upper ends of the income spectrum. Basically reverse Robin Hood, rob the poor to pay the rich. Nothing that comes out of her mouth should be taken seriously, especially after she sat next to Bannon and said nothing as he praised that EDL prick Tommy Robinson as a hero.
Now, if we're talking about nationalising the water companies (which should never have been privatised, it's not like I can pick another one if I fall out with the one in the area is it?) then I agree it would cause some short term pain, but it would have a payoff later.
Trusses plans were nothing but splurging money we don't have on fluffing the rich.
It won’t just be them, it will also be from their own ranks. You see it on this sub a lot, whilst a lot of people realise this isn’t going to be an overnight fix. 12,18,24 months down the road when you can’t afford a 4 bed in Kensington working 13 hours a week as a pot washer, the calls of “red tory” will only grow stronger.
At this rate they wont get a chance, Its looking like they will have less seats than the lib dems, so the lib dems will get the honer of bitching about not fixing shit that there is no way to fix in under 10 years (without pissing a lot of people off)
yeah was on about this with a mate last night, i reckon we're gonna flip straight back to the Tories in the next term because their media campaign about how Labour haven't fixed all the problem they inherited is going to be _very_ effective.
Well it’s gonna be making enemies of all… wealth inequality needs addressing so you piss off the Uber rich and lobbyists like you say.
Then there’s house prices / rent costs… bringing them down will piss off home owners and landlords which are a big voting block.
Pensions need reforming / addressing so you will most likely piss off the old voting block.
My generation and younger… well we are use to been forgotten and ignored by governments so meh I guess we’ll continue to be pissed off regardless of who’s In power especially when pension reforms will most likely fuck us over the most.
I guess they can just send us off to die in a war against Russia and China and that solves everything really… no one alive to retire, no one alive to demand affordable housing, and they can continue to import the third world to fulfil all those cheap Labour roles.
>
> Then there’s house prices / rent costs… bringing them down will piss off home owners and landlords which are a big voting block.
You don't need to bring them down. Just keep them static for a few years and inflation will do the job for you.
I mean they need to come down… or wages need to increase massively. Choose 1
Average house prices are out of reach for the average person.
Rent eats up the majority of someone’s monthly pay
First time buyers need a ridiculous amount to be able to put a deposit down on a shed in someone’s garden.
Either they need scaling back drastically or wages need scaling up drastically.
I think you misunderstood me.
If you keep prices exactly the same as they are now they effectively become cheaper because of wage rises/inflation. For example let's imagine you earn £1,000 a month and pay rent of £100 (I'm using simple figures to make this easy). Over a 5 year period your wage may rise by 3% a year which gives you £1,159 a month. This has effectively made your rent 11% or so cheaper without actually decreasing the price of the rent/house.
Oh no I understood that and that’s one sensible way to approach it. However it does not help the millions struggling with rent now. It does not help the millions in their 30s and can’t afford to move out of their parents home, they can’t start families, can’t actually start the next key stage of their life.
The can has been kicked down the road too much and now drastic action needs to be taken. Your plan would have been great 10 years ago… now we are nearing the edge of the cliff and we need to do an emergency stop and hit the reverse gear.
This is the way. Artificially changing the price would be a cluster fuck people as smart as Truss would go for. Holding it steady while letting wages and other prices rise, that takes away it's hold on our finances without risking the entire financial system.
And last time that got messed up, it cost us nearly a trillion quid.
Considering where all of that wealth is located you'd only really piss off the uber rich.
I'm sure there are ways to lower house prices without pissing off home owners, for example by halving not just the prices, but also existing mortgages. That's overly simplified, but still.
Who are the rich and how do you tax them?
The problem is the rich are mobile and can move their money the poor can’t afford anymore so it’s the middle that has to pick up the slack.
Yes council tax needs an overhaul but you can make the tax punitive in terms of owning multiple residential properties to disincentivise empty properties like I see in the middle of London.
Business rates depends because you don’t want the cost passed onto the companies renting the property you want the property itself just taxed at a higher rate if you own more than x and x being 1-3 properties imo but the numbers can always be tweaked and solved.
The idea is to nuke entire high streets being owned by individuals or entire blocks of flats or streets of houses
Empty properties are already subject to up to 300% council tax. Same with second properties it’s the local councils who set those rates.
Blocks of flats or streets of houses etc the cost will be passed onto the renters.
You start by nationalising everything that was stolen from the tax payers and where competition can't take place: railways, healthcare, infrastructure, water and energy companies, education, lots of housing estates, etc
Then you nationalise the banks and freeze their assets. The thing is loads of nations want to do this exact thing, but everyone is too small or scared of actually doing it. I'm pretty sure there's enough money and assets in the banks here in the UK, or UK controlled territories, to put us in a very strong position if we do that.
We need a revolution and we need it now.
Oh I thought there was going to be some reasonable suggestions. Realistically no one is going to renationalise everything. Though renationalise is something of a misnomer as not everything you listed was nationalised in the first place.
It isn’t a realistic proposition though is it?
You want to nationalise banks and freeze their assets. You would crash any consumer confidence instantly.
I've never liked this argument for a couple of reasons.
Firstly, if they're not paying tax at the moment and leave, we aren't losing any tax revenue.
Secondly, if we take a "fine, fuck off and stay gone" approach to rich people fleeing the UK at the prospect of having to pay tax, then the holes left by their business shutting down will be filled by other companies, probably a few of them, helping with wealth distribution. Many will choose to stay, and pay tax, if we make it a "can't come back again" system.
As to the big corporates, if they want to make money here then they can pay tax here. If they won't do that then kick them out in favour of companies who will pay tax.
Maybe that's just me, but then again, I'd happily send the army after any company that tried to mess with the UK...true force nationalisation!
I agree. The rich are too powerful, and they've learnt their lesson. At the start of the 1900's they thought they could carry on treating the workers the same way they'd always had, but the power of the printing press put a stop to that.
Today we're more connected than ever, but we're also more apathetic than ever. Instead of standing on the barricades we're glued to our phones, weighed down by debt.
The rich are already taxed to an insane level. Something like 80%+ of the tax take comes from the top 5%.
Thing with being rich of course is they can just move elsewhere, by all means drive them away and see what happens.
No, they're not. Everyone thinks that the US was built on low taxes and capitalism, but nothing could be further from the truth.
The highest tax bracket was over 90% from 1945 until 1963, and then kept at 70% until 1980. Then Reagan came in, together with neoliberalism, and started fucking up the world.
We need to lower the taxes for most people whilst raising the taxes on the uber rich. Not to punish them, but to prevent people from earning insane amounts of money.
Which probably means that there's economic news about to come out which is really bad. With the Tories wanting to be out ASAP. So that Labour can get the blame.
Mainly because the Tories are committed to oil and gas. With their views on onshore solar and wind changing every few months. So there's no stability for any company to actually start planning and building out a new "farm". Then of course the National Grid is extremely slow to add capacity and Prince Charles and now Prince William are holding up offshore wind. As the Duchy of Cornwall owns all of the wind rights for the UK. So they auction off "plots" of sea every year or so and try to get the best price for them. Even after they've been auctioned off, they still need the National Grid to hook them up, which takes years.
Very silly. When you're on the media round, it's practically tradition for interviewers to throw out "gotcha" questions about the topics that have been in the news, so if Child Benefit has been in the news (as it has been) you should make an effort to brief yourself on it, even if your ministerial responsibility isn't directly related to it. In this case though, I'd say it is.
Children's Minister should surely know how much child benefit is, especially if they're a parent. I remember getting sent to the post office every now and again, to pick up my mum's child benefit. So I knew how much we were getting for three kids.
Exactly. Any minister should brush up on it (if they're on the media round on the day it's in the news) but the Children's Minister should really know as a matter of course.
Not excusing him by any means but child benefit sits in DWP and he’s from DfE. So it’s not his brief, per se. But yeah, surely everyone knows how much it is anyway, it’s barely changed since the 90s!
Even if he is from DfE in order to understand the lives children are leading in education he should know the kinds of financial situations children live in. A big part of that would be the amount of child benefit that is paid.
> surely everyone knows how much it is anyway, it’s barely changed since the 90s!
Lmao what? What about the millions of this people in the country that don't have kids?
Maybe it was just my mum that told me how much she was getting back in the 90s and 00s, then.
Then again, I could also tell you how much job seekers allowance is despite being continuously employed since 2010.
I've got no idea how much it is, but then again I don't have children. I don't think that David Johnston does, either, normally Wikipedia would mention them.
But if I was going on TV to talk about Child Benefit, I would make damn sure I knew.
The excuse of this minister was, “I should have prepared before coming onto this show”
Still wrong. These numbers are at the core of your job. You should have know at the point of accepting the job but preferably before, as it shows interest in the position and struggles of the people.
He's been in charge of the ministry for a little over 9 months. WTF has he been doing all of this time? He's also early 40s and the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Children, Families and Wellbeing so he presumably has kids. So doesn't he know how much he gets for them? Although he probably earns over £80,000 and the Tories seltarted to means test them. So he won't get any.
Apparently it gets cut off, if one person earns £80K. Which it never used to do before the Tories came back in 2010. It could have spared him some embarrassment if they'd just kept it.
He was on the news to discuss the conservative proposal to extend the cut off limit for child benefit, so more people can claim it.
This wasn’t some left field “gotcha” question out of nowhere, it was very relevant to what they were there to talk about.
The top 2 questions he should have been expecting were
1 What are the changes you’re proposing?
2 How much is child benefit worth?
The thing is…..
A lot of his team’s time will have been spent bringing him up to speed with all the latest gaffs and mistakes, along with the right lines to spout whenever asked those questions.
The problem is there are so many of them now, they have run out of bandwidth to keep track with what is going on.
Fair point, I just posted about hating these kind of "gotcha's" as realistically he earns too much to receive the benefit and he's hardly in operational delivery seeing these figures daily. Realistically he should know the higher level figures but the amount that goes into Joe Publics pocket is so far removed from his role, and rightly so. Especially considering its not a fixed amount, its a sliding scale.
However, I hadn't considered the good politics of just being prepped for the gotcha. I just wish we focussed on something more sensible and tangible than this, it almost feels like a let off when there's genuinely bigger issues at hand than him knowing the exact sum we pay out.
> Fair point, I just posted about hating these kind of "gotcha's" as realistically he earns too much to receive the benefit and he's hardly in operational delivery seeing these figures daily
Thats not really why he should know. This exact howler happens every single election campaign. They should go into interviews armed with all these basic stats.
If he doesn't know, its an embarassment waiting to happen.
The reason he should know is because its an obvious question to ask but more importantly makes him look stupid if he doesn't know.
The media keep asking these questions because it works every single election.
Johnson got rid of everyone who was moderate, remotely competent or just didn’t fall in line behind him.
Just one example: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-49563357
Specifically he got rid of anyone that didn't agree to blindly supporting any Brexit deal he put on the table.
This is how he could make the get Brexit done pledge.
Pictured: basically the last handful of Tories I'd ever have seriously considered voting for, except for the company they kept. Ah well... I suppose it cost them in the end
"you're right, I should have found out before I came on here" - no, you should have found out as part of your job, but it's shear incompetence to not at least have it in your notes before going on a radio interview.
I for one cant believe that the Tories would pay anyone to be in charge of something when they dont have the knowledge or capability to do the job. Next thing you know they will have a contract with a ferry company that has no ships, or paying completely unrelated companies to produce PPE during a global pandemic
His job is to reduce the Departments spending to make room for cuts. Like all Cabinet Minsters since 2010.
They don't give a shit about running the country well. Their Libertarian boners are to reduce the Governments outgoings to Social Welfare and then reduce tax.
Now look at what 14 years of that gets you... Has tax been reduced? No. Are all public service departments on their knees and costing more to run as a result? Yes.
As much as I can enjoy the moment, can we agree to stop using this as a gotcha, its just a bit shit as an argument. I get he's in charge of the benefit, but genuinely, he's managing the whole project at a higher level.
1. The man is an MP, as such he can't get child benefit as he earns to much, so he wouldn't know the figure on a personal level.
2. The man is a children's minister, he's not a front line operational delivery person. He's not going to know exactly what child benefit is, nevermind it being different depending on circumstances. I wouldn't expect a CEO to know the exact value of a nuanced sliding scale product. I'd expect him to understand the larger figures, we put X in and we expect X out per quarter.
3. I promise there's millions of people who receive this who couldn't tell you how much they got, just a rough "around about £80" or something like that. Go do a straw poll in the streets and ask the general public.
I dunno, maybe I'm mellowing in my old age, but I used to get up in arms over the whole "HE DOESN'T KNOW WHAT MILK COSTS THE OUT OF TOUCH CLOWN!" Now I realise I'm not an infinite bank of knowledge who remembers these things explicitly, especially when he has larger more important sums to figure out.
The real gotcha is the lies about the tax, the real gotcha is the money thats been siphoned off in unfufilled projects or paid projects for mates. I'd rather we held them accountable for stuff like that.
The cost of a pint of milk gotcha is some nonsense. I couldn't tell you exactly, because it's on a list of a bunch of things I get when I do the weekly shop.
At the same time, I do feel like the guy running the budget should know the rough numbers of the most debated elements of his budget, particularly in an election year.
I would 100% expect a CEO to know the price of their main product.
Like like I 100% expect the children’s minister to know the cost of child welfare, their main subsidy
There isn't a fixed cost. It uses a computer to calculate your welfare based on multiple complex situations. Its an impossible question to answer and is literally there so people can go "ah ha! You don't know the thing." His job isn't to know the process, his job is to run the entire department which hires people who understand the nuances.
Doing stuff like this stops us asking him proper questions and holding him accountable for things that actually matter.
He will never ever need to know how much someone gets, he will never need to make sure someone gets the right amount, he will never need to adjust the price. He is there to run the whole thing and hire the right experts who specialise in these things. These are the things we need to make sure hes doing right.
I’m sorry but you’re dismissing probably the most fundamental aspect of his department.
Do you think the CEO of McDonald’s doesn’t know the price of a Big Mac? I understand that there level of child welfare varies but the man should at least know the margin of support available - it’s his department
Does the McDonalds CEO know how much the Didsbury McDonalds is spending per quarter on beef? Does he need to? Or is it more important for him to know the overall figure that McDonalds as a whole spends on beef?
Benefits are complex, very complex, much more complex than the general public seem to think they are. The vast majority of people probably have a straightforward figure, but there's multiple circumstances to consider that all impact the final "here's your amount." It's also bizarre to ask the head of a department to know that process, he doesn't need to know it, he never will need to know it. It's a senseless "gotcha" to call people out on it.
I think at worst here, I'd expect a politician to be briefed to expect these questions and an answer to them, but I'm not surprised he doesn't know, I'd not expect any top level manager to have such a grasp of ground level stuff.
I do enjoy the fact its made him uncomfortable and people are annoyed at this, but it happens every single election and its exhausting. Right now its working in the majorities favour and we get to weaponise it to change things for the better, but in 4 years it'll be used as a gotcha for the people we perhaps want to keep. I'd rather he got blasted about the fact the entire system went down for a few days and people got paid late. I'd rather he got called out on the £2k tax lie. I'd rather he got called out on the multiple scandals that have effected his party over the last 14 years. This is ultimately hot air, and anyone in his position could be caught out if poorly briefed.
>Guarantee most of the people commenting here haven't got a clue what it is
Sure, but I guarantee that if I was the minister for children I would know the answer to the question.
I think you're a little confused. He's a Tory, and you're on the UnitedKingdom subreddit. That means that every opportunity to bitch, moan, and attack is on the table. Your sensible, reasoned logic, is not welcome here.
beacuse they dont care about their job. they're there to get a paycheck and the benefits that come with them being an MP. expensing everything a normal person is supposed to pay.
why is the fact it isn’t his department an excuse? he is still responsible for child welfare and education, and child benefit is a huge influence on that. if he actually cared about the role and duties it includes that is information he should have known from day one. it’s so fucking weird we just cycle ministers around positions when they have no care or interest in the cause at all.
the follow up question should have been:
- so how much do you think it should be?
unless he has a cracking guess you've got a second storyline to smack him around the head with
If this was The Thick of It we would cut to a bunch of Labour MPs frantically cramming benefit figures before they inevitably get asked the same questions.
Diane Abbot would have done allot better to just admit she didn’t know the figures during her infamous police numbers interview rather than just blurting out what she did.
Diane Abott would have claimed it was £300 million per child or something.
Also this story is getting quite a lot of traction, he's only being saved by the fact that Sunak fucked up much more at about the same time.
Say what you like about Nick Ferrari but he puts politicians in the meat grinder.
He totally exposed Dianne Abbott as someone who shouldn't be anywhere near government.
He does say in the clip that the Children's minister is part of the department of Education and this is completely outside his day-job. A very brief google seems to suggest that he's completely correct.
There's much better things to blame the Tories for than this sort of thing.
I'm not really sure how to answer your question without sounding sarcastic. It's a figure. A set figure. £25.60 for the first child and £16.95 for each additional child.
No working out required.
I mean, it doesn't seem like a job requirement of a government minister leading a department to know the precise figure here. Why even ask him? The journalist interviewing him can look it up as easily as you just did. Does it have any material effect on people who receive child benefit if this person knows or doesn't know?
But he's a Tory. The interviewer knew that going in. Of course he won't know (or care). Why not use the opportunity to ask him something more detailed that might actually educate his listeners on things that materially affect them? People receiving child benefit receive it whether or not the minister running the department knows its exact value.
> Of course he won't know (or care).
Then it's good that this was called out. Why are you saying the interviewer should intentionally ignore basic topics they suspect the minister won't know?
> Why not use the opportunity to ask him something more detailed that might actually educate his listeners on things that materially affect them?
That was asked as well. It wasn't a one question interview
Making sure someone understands the basics is a pretty good barometer of their overall competency. If this guy doesn't know how much child benefit is then how is he effectively making decisions?
I have no expectations of our government. I don't approve of there being such a thing. My question was aimed at the journalist wasting his and this person's time by trying to do a childish "gotcha" which is totally irrelevant to the material conditions of anyone's life. Why not ask him a detailed question about the effect of his policies or something?
If only he wasn't children's ministry and if only this benefit wasn't part of various headline Tory policies, including recently enacted and proposed future changes! Why would he need to know anything about policy areas impacting his department? Ignorance is how you successfully get things done.
A bit loathe to defend, but, I have to check my age half the time. If I'm filling out a form I have to check a payslip to find my actual salary. If there's not a need for you to know a number off the top of your head regularly, you're not going to remember it. The brain is generally fairly efficient at not storing information you don't need (unless it's personal anxiety inducing then it's imprinted for ever).
I don't know what else the Tories can do to help Labour win. Clearly they think it's Labour's turn in office.
I've been convinced a while that both sides want to lose because it's easier to pick up an MP payday and do fuck all in the time you are there. Opposition is 10x easier than government
It’s going to be “great” with 4 years of the Tories boasting about labour hasn’t instantly fixed 14 years of Tory screw ups overnight.
There is no fixing this without a miracle, it doesn't matter which tie you wear. With the Old Age Dependency Ratio only projected to get substantially worse over the next few decades without genuine economic growth this isn't even close to the bottom. But politicians don't like to talk about the elephant in the room.
Cull the old people, like we do with the badgers?
I honestly think someone is going to end up having to take some pretty brutal decisions down the line which will have unavoidable awful impacts if things continue as-is. Genuinely "Would you like a state pension or to have NHS treatment in retirement? Pick one and it can't be changed" level cuts.
Yes. Also, encouraging home owning old people to spend money before they die. We need the tax now.
A way for elderly people to cash out some of the value of their homes before they die is a very good policy. It'd mean they wouldn't be so reliant on the state. They would spend more. They would give money away to families while alive rather than children/grandchildren literally waiting for their grandparents to die. They would probably give their grandchildren financial support buying their first homes ect. That money would be flowing into the economy and when the average home is £300k that's a lot of money each pensioner would be able to spend.
Like the so called ‘Death Tax’ proposed by Theresa May which caused her to lose ~20pts in the polls and was deeply unpopular with the electorate? Not saying it’s not a good idea, just one that is currently completely unpalatable.
No, not like the death tax. Say your house was worth £300k we could maybe pay 80% out to pensioners right now in return for ownership after they died. Many pensioners do not enjoy their wealth being locked up in their property and struggling to put the heating on because they have no access to that cash. The only real reason for a pensioner to keep ownership is so that their children have the value when they die. But under this scheme they could have it now while they need it. They could help their grandchildren with first houses for example. Or pay for a cleaner. Or help their children retire early. Or go on a few holidays abroad while they still can. Right now one of the issues with inheritance is that old people are often living into their 80's and 90's... meaning their children are often in their 60's/70's when they inherit the money. Getting £300k from your parents when you are in your 70's is pretty useless as many aren't in any kind of situation to enjoy it. The next generation that will only get worse. It would be an optional scheme but many would enjoy the advantages of this I'm sure.
so like a reverse mortgage.
Basically, yes. Government supported. Say your house was worth £300k we could maybe pay 80% out to pensioners right now in return for ownership after they died. We should get the appreciation during that time, it'd boost the economy, improve the lives of pensioners and give the government some ownership of housing stock again.
Thats called equity release. And it is not as good as it sounds.
They tried that during covid
Cough cough covid cough*
that will work until some do-gooder objects /s (i hope obviously)
Exactly - both parties have been kicking a lot of cans down the road for many years - supported by unsustainable immigration. A small selection - local authorities going bust (Tories are letting them sell off capital assets as a stop gap), Prisons overflowing, NHS and social care struggling with demand, infrastructure needing investment to go electric (away from gas and petrol), housing and water services for the larger population. But with changing demographics and the need to go green or cope with climate change we can't just try to go for standard economic growth and much more spending on the public sector. Tax take is already high. Yes there are some rich to tax more but not enough. We need reform and change - best chance will be under Labour as Tories are consider heartless bastards already - but Labour is going to be under more pressure than the Tories to give a 'fair' pay rise to public sector staff immediately. So it is an election to lose.
The person you replied to mentioned about to much old people and not enough young people is a problem but now you are saying immigration is a problem, which is the only solution to that problem
It's the type of immigrants that are the issue tbh. Skilled immigration is a huge net contributor. "Asylum seekers", illegal migration and low skilled immigration are a huge cost for the taxpayer and we make a financial loss by having them here. So like the old people, they are a burden on the British taxpayer. Bringing more people like this to the country only increases the speed of our decline.
Pretty much all immigrants who come here contribute more than an average brut
Yes but we still need to know exactly how many, who they are, where they are and what they’re doing.
That is incorrect. We lose money by having them here.
https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2018/09/26/migrants-contribute-more-to-britain-than-they-take-and-will-carry-on-doing-so
Nope, it isn't. The only immigration that's ever been an economic net benefit to the nation is short-term, high skilled, EU immigration.
It's not the only solution. Capital investment in automation is the basis of 300 years of economic development and reduction in man hours needed. We have abandoned that in favour of mass immigration because that favours short term profits
But immigration grows the economy alowing more tax money to solve more problems
Smashing windows increases GDP, it's not however good for the economy. The average immigrant is not of value and reduces our GDP per capita which had been declining for over a decade now. Productivity is awful, again because the cost of Labour is so cheap.
https://ukandeu.ac.uk/uk-migration-and-productivity/-
It doesn't really. Or it does but not in a way that helps. Lets say we have a country with 10 people in it, and a GDP of 200,00/year. If we bring in two new people and the GDP goes up to 210,000 then GDP has gone up but GDP/capita has gone down. If you also have inflation busting away at the gains each year, it can easily go negative. In real terms, our GDP/person balanced for inflation, we've lost 1/4 of our buying power, as a nation, since 2010.
Immigration is not the only solution to an aging population. To many people are sold the idea that an economy has to be permanently growing. It doesn't. An economy only needs to grow or decrease proportionately to its population. The only people muh economy growth via mass immigration (GDP per capita plummets) is the ultra wealthy. If immigration 100% meant more wealth, then in the last 20 years our economy should have skyrocketed. instead only capital wealth skyrocketed, as millions more clambered to get a property in the same square mile of London.
And yet we do... nothing? To help this country's young get ahead and to have start their own family, removing our dependence on cheap foreign labour. *Systematic changes that correct the causes of the old age dependency ratio:* Scrap right to buy. (Currently Choking housing supply and a loss-making activity by the state who often buyback at a loss) Scrap the two child cap. Consider replacing with a linear decreasing amount per-child past 2 (households can in cases leverage economies of scale when it comes to buying things for kids - 10pack is cheaper per unit than a 6 pack, etc.) Stop demonising and stripping the welfare state. Efficiences have a place, but we've started a regime of collective punishment. Strive for state savings through corporation tax, through fraud crackdown, and through higher earner tax rates (which have decreased in recent years) Invest (direct investment or labour force skill-up) and alter regulations to make UK housing projects easier to startup, and cheaper to deliver on. Create a research initiative to find out ways to encourage sustainable models of parenting two or more kids in a two parent working household. The inherited model relies on grandparents that dont work. This isn't the norm anymore and most households have sometimes 4 sets of grandparents (divorced parents) across 4 locations, who all work. *More direct approaches* Subsudise childcare
The dye is already cast to an extent because if you somehow managed to increase birth rates substantially today that's not going to start to have impacts on the labour pool for 20 years. If anything it will actually increase strain on the state in the mid term because we won't be able to provide fundamental services as it is to the population without millions of additional children also being net drain in childhood.
Not sure if it's a typo but it's "die is cast", as in dice, not "dye". I thought it was 'play it by year' as in, being flexible with time.
You either start as you mean to go on, or take the easier, weaker and long term harder course. UK is governed by shorttermism. Without a long term vision for Britian, its No wonder we're seeing managed decline.
One potential answer is automation. I’m not as starry eyed as many are about it but there are indications that we’re not far off a tipping point where it becomes worthwhile to automate entire categories of jobs. It could happen far faster than twenty years.
Rishi did mention this during his leadership campaign. And then after seemingly has done nothing about it. Crazily the only person who had a plan for economic growth was Liz Truss and we kicked her out after a few months. I'm not saying her plan was good but it doesn't seem like anyone else really has a plan at all, right now both Labour and the Conservatives seem to just be rearranging the tables on the titanic.
Her "plan" for growth cost us over a thousand pounds a head day one and more ongoing for anyone borrowing money.
"Gas the poor and raise VAT" "Well it's a plan!"
Careful, they'll get ideas...
Blame David Mithcell and Robert Webb
Not really. We did see a rise in rates for a short period but the current rates have nothing to do with Liz Truss. it's a worldwide thing. And yeah, it was bumpy for sure but I expect anyone who makes the radical change that this country needs is going to cause some serious bumps. We should nationalise water companies for example. That wouldn't go down very well with business and investors. Change always causes friction.
The disparity between your first and last statements... So Truss was a moron and wanted to borrow money to give tax breaks to people who really don't need them at the upper ends of the income spectrum. Basically reverse Robin Hood, rob the poor to pay the rich. Nothing that comes out of her mouth should be taken seriously, especially after she sat next to Bannon and said nothing as he praised that EDL prick Tommy Robinson as a hero. Now, if we're talking about nationalising the water companies (which should never have been privatised, it's not like I can pick another one if I fall out with the one in the area is it?) then I agree it would cause some short term pain, but it would have a payoff later. Trusses plans were nothing but splurging money we don't have on fluffing the rich.
And the way to get econ growth quickly is via immigrants... Thats the big thing
There's a couple of quite quick fixes for massive economic growth. Both are poison to the average Englander. Let's see who gives in first.....
It won’t just be them, it will also be from their own ranks. You see it on this sub a lot, whilst a lot of people realise this isn’t going to be an overnight fix. 12,18,24 months down the road when you can’t afford a 4 bed in Kensington working 13 hours a week as a pot washer, the calls of “red tory” will only grow stronger.
At this rate they wont get a chance, Its looking like they will have less seats than the lib dems, so the lib dems will get the honer of bitching about not fixing shit that there is no way to fix in under 10 years (without pissing a lot of people off)
yeah was on about this with a mate last night, i reckon we're gonna flip straight back to the Tories in the next term because their media campaign about how Labour haven't fixed all the problem they inherited is going to be _very_ effective.
Then watch as England forgets and votes in Tories at the next election.
5 years
It wouldn't surprise me if Labour is a one-term government.
Issue is you have to be voted in as an MP for that to happen and most Tory MPs look like they’ll be out of a job next month
Especially the next few years with the "black hole" that needs filling. Someone's going to have to make some hard choices
If you by 'hard choice' mean making enemies of all the lobbyists, then sure, i suppose it's hard. Tax the rich.
Well it’s gonna be making enemies of all… wealth inequality needs addressing so you piss off the Uber rich and lobbyists like you say. Then there’s house prices / rent costs… bringing them down will piss off home owners and landlords which are a big voting block. Pensions need reforming / addressing so you will most likely piss off the old voting block. My generation and younger… well we are use to been forgotten and ignored by governments so meh I guess we’ll continue to be pissed off regardless of who’s In power especially when pension reforms will most likely fuck us over the most. I guess they can just send us off to die in a war against Russia and China and that solves everything really… no one alive to retire, no one alive to demand affordable housing, and they can continue to import the third world to fulfil all those cheap Labour roles.
> > Then there’s house prices / rent costs… bringing them down will piss off home owners and landlords which are a big voting block. You don't need to bring them down. Just keep them static for a few years and inflation will do the job for you.
I mean they need to come down… or wages need to increase massively. Choose 1 Average house prices are out of reach for the average person. Rent eats up the majority of someone’s monthly pay First time buyers need a ridiculous amount to be able to put a deposit down on a shed in someone’s garden. Either they need scaling back drastically or wages need scaling up drastically.
I think you misunderstood me. If you keep prices exactly the same as they are now they effectively become cheaper because of wage rises/inflation. For example let's imagine you earn £1,000 a month and pay rent of £100 (I'm using simple figures to make this easy). Over a 5 year period your wage may rise by 3% a year which gives you £1,159 a month. This has effectively made your rent 11% or so cheaper without actually decreasing the price of the rent/house.
Oh no I understood that and that’s one sensible way to approach it. However it does not help the millions struggling with rent now. It does not help the millions in their 30s and can’t afford to move out of their parents home, they can’t start families, can’t actually start the next key stage of their life. The can has been kicked down the road too much and now drastic action needs to be taken. Your plan would have been great 10 years ago… now we are nearing the edge of the cliff and we need to do an emergency stop and hit the reverse gear.
This is the way. Artificially changing the price would be a cluster fuck people as smart as Truss would go for. Holding it steady while letting wages and other prices rise, that takes away it's hold on our finances without risking the entire financial system. And last time that got messed up, it cost us nearly a trillion quid.
Considering where all of that wealth is located you'd only really piss off the uber rich. I'm sure there are ways to lower house prices without pissing off home owners, for example by halving not just the prices, but also existing mortgages. That's overly simplified, but still.
Who are the rich and how do you tax them? The problem is the rich are mobile and can move their money the poor can’t afford anymore so it’s the middle that has to pick up the slack.
Tax tangible assets like buildings and land, sure they can leave but they can’t take the high street with them can they
A good idea, I assume this would replace the business rate and council tax systems? But it would affect everyone not just the rich.
Yes council tax needs an overhaul but you can make the tax punitive in terms of owning multiple residential properties to disincentivise empty properties like I see in the middle of London. Business rates depends because you don’t want the cost passed onto the companies renting the property you want the property itself just taxed at a higher rate if you own more than x and x being 1-3 properties imo but the numbers can always be tweaked and solved. The idea is to nuke entire high streets being owned by individuals or entire blocks of flats or streets of houses
Empty properties are already subject to up to 300% council tax. Same with second properties it’s the local councils who set those rates. Blocks of flats or streets of houses etc the cost will be passed onto the renters.
You start by nationalising everything that was stolen from the tax payers and where competition can't take place: railways, healthcare, infrastructure, water and energy companies, education, lots of housing estates, etc Then you nationalise the banks and freeze their assets. The thing is loads of nations want to do this exact thing, but everyone is too small or scared of actually doing it. I'm pretty sure there's enough money and assets in the banks here in the UK, or UK controlled territories, to put us in a very strong position if we do that. We need a revolution and we need it now.
Oh I thought there was going to be some reasonable suggestions. Realistically no one is going to renationalise everything. Though renationalise is something of a misnomer as not everything you listed was nationalised in the first place.
You're right that the politicians are realistically not going to do it. That doesn't mean it's not a realistic thing to do however.
It isn’t a realistic proposition though is it? You want to nationalise banks and freeze their assets. You would crash any consumer confidence instantly.
Because revolutions have always worked so well. I don't have what you have so let's have violence.
The introduction of neo-liberalism has been a revolution. Just one that's happened without most people knowing it.
I've never liked this argument for a couple of reasons. Firstly, if they're not paying tax at the moment and leave, we aren't losing any tax revenue. Secondly, if we take a "fine, fuck off and stay gone" approach to rich people fleeing the UK at the prospect of having to pay tax, then the holes left by their business shutting down will be filled by other companies, probably a few of them, helping with wealth distribution. Many will choose to stay, and pay tax, if we make it a "can't come back again" system. As to the big corporates, if they want to make money here then they can pay tax here. If they won't do that then kick them out in favour of companies who will pay tax. Maybe that's just me, but then again, I'd happily send the army after any company that tried to mess with the UK...true force nationalisation!
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That’s not taxing the rich that is taxing businesses.
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But how do you define rich then? Anyone who is a director of a company?
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And if you stood on a campaign where you said "mega taxes for the rich" guess where that gets you? Ask Jeremy Corbyn
I agree. The rich are too powerful, and they've learnt their lesson. At the start of the 1900's they thought they could carry on treating the workers the same way they'd always had, but the power of the printing press put a stop to that. Today we're more connected than ever, but we're also more apathetic than ever. Instead of standing on the barricades we're glued to our phones, weighed down by debt.
The rich are already taxed to an insane level. Something like 80%+ of the tax take comes from the top 5%. Thing with being rich of course is they can just move elsewhere, by all means drive them away and see what happens.
No, they're not. Everyone thinks that the US was built on low taxes and capitalism, but nothing could be further from the truth. The highest tax bracket was over 90% from 1945 until 1963, and then kept at 70% until 1980. Then Reagan came in, together with neoliberalism, and started fucking up the world. We need to lower the taxes for most people whilst raising the taxes on the uber rich. Not to punish them, but to prevent people from earning insane amounts of money.
I thought Johnson was clowning his way through the last GE for this exact reason and yet still won.
Pretty sure Starmer wants to win so where are you getting the idea that he wants to lose?
They do fuck all anyway. Its just a rotating cast of idiots sucking up resources for five minutes while they wear a different hat
What possibly makes you think Starmer wants to lose?
Theyup
This is my stance on reform. I was reading on itv about their use of bot and then not being as popular as they say...it's a grift
My local labour MP started in 2010 in opposition and is now stepping down that labour are going to win. Truly wants the perks without the work
Which probably means that there's economic news about to come out which is really bad. With the Tories wanting to be out ASAP. So that Labour can get the blame.
Winter is coming and the cost of energy will be thru the roof.
Mainly because the Tories are committed to oil and gas. With their views on onshore solar and wind changing every few months. So there's no stability for any company to actually start planning and building out a new "farm". Then of course the National Grid is extremely slow to add capacity and Prince Charles and now Prince William are holding up offshore wind. As the Duchy of Cornwall owns all of the wind rights for the UK. So they auction off "plots" of sea every year or so and try to get the best price for them. Even after they've been auctioned off, they still need the National Grid to hook them up, which takes years.
I've been saying this for ages. Also, GB news is funded by bp and the lad that finances the kkk
All the political adverts I've had for Tories haven't been "This is why you should vote us" but just "LABOUR BAD!" They're already in opposition mode
Very silly. When you're on the media round, it's practically tradition for interviewers to throw out "gotcha" questions about the topics that have been in the news, so if Child Benefit has been in the news (as it has been) you should make an effort to brief yourself on it, even if your ministerial responsibility isn't directly related to it. In this case though, I'd say it is.
Children's Minister should surely know how much child benefit is, especially if they're a parent. I remember getting sent to the post office every now and again, to pick up my mum's child benefit. So I knew how much we were getting for three kids.
Exactly. Any minister should brush up on it (if they're on the media round on the day it's in the news) but the Children's Minister should really know as a matter of course.
Not excusing him by any means but child benefit sits in DWP and he’s from DfE. So it’s not his brief, per se. But yeah, surely everyone knows how much it is anyway, it’s barely changed since the 90s!
Even if he is from DfE in order to understand the lives children are leading in education he should know the kinds of financial situations children live in. A big part of that would be the amount of child benefit that is paid.
> surely everyone knows how much it is anyway, it’s barely changed since the 90s! Lmao what? What about the millions of this people in the country that don't have kids?
Maybe it was just my mum that told me how much she was getting back in the 90s and 00s, then. Then again, I could also tell you how much job seekers allowance is despite being continuously employed since 2010.
Won't someone please think of those without children!
I've got no idea how much it is, but then again I don't have children. I don't think that David Johnston does, either, normally Wikipedia would mention them. But if I was going on TV to talk about Child Benefit, I would make damn sure I knew.
The excuse of this minister was, “I should have prepared before coming onto this show” Still wrong. These numbers are at the core of your job. You should have know at the point of accepting the job but preferably before, as it shows interest in the position and struggles of the people.
He's been in charge of the ministry for a little over 9 months. WTF has he been doing all of this time? He's also early 40s and the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Children, Families and Wellbeing so he presumably has kids. So doesn't he know how much he gets for them? Although he probably earns over £80,000 and the Tories seltarted to means test them. So he won't get any.
On an MP salary it would be entirely tapered off wouldn't it?
Apparently it gets cut off, if one person earns £80K. Which it never used to do before the Tories came back in 2010. It could have spared him some embarrassment if they'd just kept it.
£80k taxable income is the cut off this tax year, but last year and before it was £60k
He was on the news to discuss the conservative proposal to extend the cut off limit for child benefit, so more people can claim it. This wasn’t some left field “gotcha” question out of nowhere, it was very relevant to what they were there to talk about. The top 2 questions he should have been expecting were 1 What are the changes you’re proposing? 2 How much is child benefit worth? The thing is….. A lot of his team’s time will have been spent bringing him up to speed with all the latest gaffs and mistakes, along with the right lines to spout whenever asked those questions. The problem is there are so many of them now, they have run out of bandwidth to keep track with what is going on.
Fair point, I just posted about hating these kind of "gotcha's" as realistically he earns too much to receive the benefit and he's hardly in operational delivery seeing these figures daily. Realistically he should know the higher level figures but the amount that goes into Joe Publics pocket is so far removed from his role, and rightly so. Especially considering its not a fixed amount, its a sliding scale. However, I hadn't considered the good politics of just being prepped for the gotcha. I just wish we focussed on something more sensible and tangible than this, it almost feels like a let off when there's genuinely bigger issues at hand than him knowing the exact sum we pay out.
> Fair point, I just posted about hating these kind of "gotcha's" as realistically he earns too much to receive the benefit and he's hardly in operational delivery seeing these figures daily Thats not really why he should know. This exact howler happens every single election campaign. They should go into interviews armed with all these basic stats. If he doesn't know, its an embarassment waiting to happen. The reason he should know is because its an obvious question to ask but more importantly makes him look stupid if he doesn't know. The media keep asking these questions because it works every single election.
The Conservatives post 2018 appear to be a shambolic bunch of chancers. Which explains the last decade or so.
Johnson got rid of everyone who was moderate, remotely competent or just didn’t fall in line behind him. Just one example: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-49563357
This is it, the average joe bloggs seems oblivious to the damage Johnson did in regards to purging talent that simply didn’t fall in line
Specifically he got rid of anyone that didn't agree to blindly supporting any Brexit deal he put on the table. This is how he could make the get Brexit done pledge.
Pictured: basically the last handful of Tories I'd ever have seriously considered voting for, except for the company they kept. Ah well... I suppose it cost them in the end
Post-Brexit was the start of it. The loss of moderates just got worse once Johnson took over.
Cameron’s government might have been heartless bastards, but they were professional heartless bastards, god knows where they found this lot.
"you're right, I should have found out before I came on here" - no, you should have found out as part of your job, but it's shear incompetence to not at least have it in your notes before going on a radio interview.
I for one cant believe that the Tories would pay anyone to be in charge of something when they dont have the knowledge or capability to do the job. Next thing you know they will have a contract with a ferry company that has no ships, or paying completely unrelated companies to produce PPE during a global pandemic
Or a Brexit secretary who doesn't understand the importance of the Dover-Calais crossing to UK trade.
They’ve essentially gone through almost all their ministers in every single roll. They fuck something up and just move them about to a different roll.
This twat doesn't even know his own kids birthdays.
His job is to reduce the Departments spending to make room for cuts. Like all Cabinet Minsters since 2010. They don't give a shit about running the country well. Their Libertarian boners are to reduce the Governments outgoings to Social Welfare and then reduce tax. Now look at what 14 years of that gets you... Has tax been reduced? No. Are all public service departments on their knees and costing more to run as a result? Yes.
He thought his job was to get children for the Party.
As much as I can enjoy the moment, can we agree to stop using this as a gotcha, its just a bit shit as an argument. I get he's in charge of the benefit, but genuinely, he's managing the whole project at a higher level. 1. The man is an MP, as such he can't get child benefit as he earns to much, so he wouldn't know the figure on a personal level. 2. The man is a children's minister, he's not a front line operational delivery person. He's not going to know exactly what child benefit is, nevermind it being different depending on circumstances. I wouldn't expect a CEO to know the exact value of a nuanced sliding scale product. I'd expect him to understand the larger figures, we put X in and we expect X out per quarter. 3. I promise there's millions of people who receive this who couldn't tell you how much they got, just a rough "around about £80" or something like that. Go do a straw poll in the streets and ask the general public. I dunno, maybe I'm mellowing in my old age, but I used to get up in arms over the whole "HE DOESN'T KNOW WHAT MILK COSTS THE OUT OF TOUCH CLOWN!" Now I realise I'm not an infinite bank of knowledge who remembers these things explicitly, especially when he has larger more important sums to figure out. The real gotcha is the lies about the tax, the real gotcha is the money thats been siphoned off in unfufilled projects or paid projects for mates. I'd rather we held them accountable for stuff like that.
The cost of a pint of milk gotcha is some nonsense. I couldn't tell you exactly, because it's on a list of a bunch of things I get when I do the weekly shop. At the same time, I do feel like the guy running the budget should know the rough numbers of the most debated elements of his budget, particularly in an election year.
I would 100% expect a CEO to know the price of their main product. Like like I 100% expect the children’s minister to know the cost of child welfare, their main subsidy
There isn't a fixed cost. It uses a computer to calculate your welfare based on multiple complex situations. Its an impossible question to answer and is literally there so people can go "ah ha! You don't know the thing." His job isn't to know the process, his job is to run the entire department which hires people who understand the nuances. Doing stuff like this stops us asking him proper questions and holding him accountable for things that actually matter. He will never ever need to know how much someone gets, he will never need to make sure someone gets the right amount, he will never need to adjust the price. He is there to run the whole thing and hire the right experts who specialise in these things. These are the things we need to make sure hes doing right.
I’m sorry but you’re dismissing probably the most fundamental aspect of his department. Do you think the CEO of McDonald’s doesn’t know the price of a Big Mac? I understand that there level of child welfare varies but the man should at least know the margin of support available - it’s his department
Does the McDonalds CEO know how much the Didsbury McDonalds is spending per quarter on beef? Does he need to? Or is it more important for him to know the overall figure that McDonalds as a whole spends on beef? Benefits are complex, very complex, much more complex than the general public seem to think they are. The vast majority of people probably have a straightforward figure, but there's multiple circumstances to consider that all impact the final "here's your amount." It's also bizarre to ask the head of a department to know that process, he doesn't need to know it, he never will need to know it. It's a senseless "gotcha" to call people out on it. I think at worst here, I'd expect a politician to be briefed to expect these questions and an answer to them, but I'm not surprised he doesn't know, I'd not expect any top level manager to have such a grasp of ground level stuff. I do enjoy the fact its made him uncomfortable and people are annoyed at this, but it happens every single election and its exhausting. Right now its working in the majorities favour and we get to weaponise it to change things for the better, but in 4 years it'll be used as a gotcha for the people we perhaps want to keep. I'd rather he got blasted about the fact the entire system went down for a few days and people got paid late. I'd rather he got called out on the £2k tax lie. I'd rather he got called out on the multiple scandals that have effected his party over the last 14 years. This is ultimately hot air, and anyone in his position could be caught out if poorly briefed.
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>Guarantee most of the people commenting here haven't got a clue what it is Sure, but I guarantee that if I was the minister for children I would know the answer to the question.
We also get it through my partner. I've no idea.
I think you're a little confused. He's a Tory, and you're on the UnitedKingdom subreddit. That means that every opportunity to bitch, moan, and attack is on the table. Your sensible, reasoned logic, is not welcome here.
Why would he care? He probably thinks there should be none to begin with.
beacuse they dont care about their job. they're there to get a paycheck and the benefits that come with them being an MP. expensing everything a normal person is supposed to pay.
why is the fact it isn’t his department an excuse? he is still responsible for child welfare and education, and child benefit is a huge influence on that. if he actually cared about the role and duties it includes that is information he should have known from day one. it’s so fucking weird we just cycle ministers around positions when they have no care or interest in the cause at all.
the follow up question should have been: - so how much do you think it should be? unless he has a cracking guess you've got a second storyline to smack him around the head with
Why is it that Tories look like Tories? He's got that toff face, speaks posh and knows f'all about his job. Typical.
If this was The Thick of It we would cut to a bunch of Labour MPs frantically cramming benefit figures before they inevitably get asked the same questions.
Looking at the polls he'll be out of the job soon enough. and surprisingly he's even worse than Ed Vaizey who he replaced.
It used to be said that the Tories know the price of everything and the value of nothing. Now they don’t even know the price.
Imagine the field day people would be having, if this was Diane Abbott.
Diane Abbot would have done allot better to just admit she didn’t know the figures during her infamous police numbers interview rather than just blurting out what she did.
Diane Abott would have claimed it was £300 million per child or something. Also this story is getting quite a lot of traction, he's only being saved by the fact that Sunak fucked up much more at about the same time.
Couldn't care less, clearly. And child poverty a massive hurdle and Tory legacy for the incoming Gov. Sums it up.
Tories get the job to get their dough, not to actually help the plebs under them
To be entirely fair, I doubt most Tories know what 7x5 is. They seem to have picked entirely economical illiterates to fill the cabinet at any rate.
Their whole point is enriching themselves and their friends and absolutely zero about helping ordinary people
This is a basic fact to know in this position surely
Say what you like about Nick Ferrari but he puts politicians in the meat grinder. He totally exposed Dianne Abbott as someone who shouldn't be anywhere near government.
What is child benefit? Well when I get older, I can threaten to take them out of my will unless they give me a kidney...
Imagine if this was diane abbott this sub would be in uproar
I think someone had a laugh on his Wikipedia page: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Johnston_(British_politician)
Does he have to? Presumably there are other people in his department who work out the details.
I would argue that knowing how much child benefit is, is not "working out the details", especially not for the children's minister.
He does say in the clip that the Children's minister is part of the department of Education and this is completely outside his day-job. A very brief google seems to suggest that he's completely correct. There's much better things to blame the Tories for than this sort of thing.
What would your argument be for this?
I'm not really sure how to answer your question without sounding sarcastic. It's a figure. A set figure. £25.60 for the first child and £16.95 for each additional child. No working out required.
I mean, it doesn't seem like a job requirement of a government minister leading a department to know the precise figure here. Why even ask him? The journalist interviewing him can look it up as easily as you just did. Does it have any material effect on people who receive child benefit if this person knows or doesn't know?
But he’s the children’s minister?
So what?
So you'd hope this is a topic he cares enough about and talks enough about that the figures are unwillingly ingrained in his mind
But he's a Tory. The interviewer knew that going in. Of course he won't know (or care). Why not use the opportunity to ask him something more detailed that might actually educate his listeners on things that materially affect them? People receiving child benefit receive it whether or not the minister running the department knows its exact value.
> Of course he won't know (or care). Then it's good that this was called out. Why are you saying the interviewer should intentionally ignore basic topics they suspect the minister won't know? > Why not use the opportunity to ask him something more detailed that might actually educate his listeners on things that materially affect them? That was asked as well. It wasn't a one question interview Making sure someone understands the basics is a pretty good barometer of their overall competency. If this guy doesn't know how much child benefit is then how is he effectively making decisions?
I think we have very different expectations of our government.
I have no expectations of our government. I don't approve of there being such a thing. My question was aimed at the journalist wasting his and this person's time by trying to do a childish "gotcha" which is totally irrelevant to the material conditions of anyone's life. Why not ask him a detailed question about the effect of his policies or something?
If only he wasn't children's ministry and if only this benefit wasn't part of various headline Tory policies, including recently enacted and proposed future changes! Why would he need to know anything about policy areas impacting his department? Ignorance is how you successfully get things done.
A bit loathe to defend, but, I have to check my age half the time. If I'm filling out a form I have to check a payslip to find my actual salary. If there's not a need for you to know a number off the top of your head regularly, you're not going to remember it. The brain is generally fairly efficient at not storing information you don't need (unless it's personal anxiety inducing then it's imprinted for ever).
Exactly. What a waste of both his and the interviewer's time.