HalfaSeatOn
Well-known member
A thank you would have sufficed for me.
[Politics] The Labour Government
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I agree to a point but I cannot help feeling that some sections of society, the media, and NSC, have been waiting to pounce on something and if it was not this then it would be something else. This is the nature of the media in the UK which is fuelling this with trite three word slogans to appeal to a certain demographic. I hope in 5 years time people judge him on his policies and not a free pair of glasses.
As for the silver lining. I think he could have put Free Gear Keir to bed by annoucning a revision of the winter fuel allowance. I agree it needs to be means-tested but in a different way.
- Jul 10, 2003
- 27,781
Whilst the vast majority of people believe something should be done about WFA, I don't think I've seen anyone say the current 'receipt of benefits' cut off is right. Two reasonable suggestions I have seen are to also include any pensioners who are in council tax bands A&B or, give it to any pensioners who are not on the higher tax rate and make the benefit taxable. I believe either of these would be far better.
Bold Seagull
strong and stable with me, or...
Sue Gray for example is on less than Ed Llewelyn and Dom Cummings, without even allowing for inflation. I don’t ever remember their salaries being mentioned.
nevergoagain
Well-known member
You're right there, people definitely are waiting to pounce on anything, that's an annoying part of our media/culture and I'm as guilty as anyone else.
When finally in power though and especially after you have spent a lot of time and energy frothing at the mouth about anything and everything your opposition did and make such a big play on transparency and a fairer politics then of course the spotlight will switch to you and expose the hypocrisy that we all know is there. I daresay that had that spotlight been so bright on labour in opposition more things would have come out, exactly as the spotlight on Tories dims now they will still be doing stuff which is unacceptable.
Thunder Bolt
Silly old bat
I did a couple of pages ago, before being accused of Whataboutery.
I literally don't care one way or the other, but I'm not sure what are you talking about.
The highest salary payable to a Spad was £140k, which is exactly what Cummings was widely reported to be on after his £40k rise.
I'm no maths genius, but £170k > £140k as best as I can tell.
So, are you talking about something else?
You were making comparisons with civil servants. The comparison in question was for previous high-profile Spads.
The demonisation of KS is an absolute farce. Whether people believe the 22 billion figure or not is up to them, the reality is that he has a massive job on his hands and he has to take unpopular decisions. The speed at which the media have sought to highlight every possible indiscretion, decision and speech error has been astonishing. A member of my extended family has done nothing but complain about the removal of the winter fuel allowance but fails to mention his final salary pension, second home on the coast and multiple foreign trips every year. If what I read is true, the box at The Emirates is basically a security upgrade for the PM who has long been a season ticket holder.
As you say, a longer period is required before judgement is passed, and it will be passed at the next election. Sadly until then I think he is going to have to run a very vicious gauntlet.
Bold Seagull
strong and stable with me, or...
A fair press and coverage is a direct comparison to the scrutiny others faced, if you can’t compare then you can’t judge if your press is fair and balanced.
Why has Sue Gray’s salary stoked unease and vicious briefings?
Downing Street chief of staff’s £170,000 wage is a blow as special advisers are handed surprisingly low pay settlements
www.ft.com
My wife and kids get the benefit of my work private medical cover. Again, it's common for families to benefit from someone's job to an extent.
The three word slogans and, frankly, obsessive digging around for anything to use personally are the right wing press's equivalent to many of the ad hominem attacks on NSC. See also Angela Rayner's birth certificate. And that's because the country is being led for a change. Things are just happening and people are getting on with it. You might not like a comparison to the previous shitshow, but I can remember tuning in to the news at 6 every evening wondering what minister would have resigned or how many letters had gone into the 1922 Committee about the current PM. That's the point of relevance to mentioning the other lot. Press are finding fairly minor things because the big stuff isn't happening.
As for WFA it is nuts that people with huge pensions or large equity who have constantly had the best of the conditions in this country would get benefits. It is also bad, I agree, that there are poorer pensioners within a few quid of being able to claim pension credit who are losing it. But, if you change that cusp you just create a new set of people who just miss out and you maybe lose more than you bring in with the additional administration complexity. I'd imagine the DWP systems already calculate if someone is entitled to pension credit and set it as a field indicator. Ultimately, the answer should be encouraging energy firms who have made enormous profits for shareholders to reduce their tarrifs in winter, and beyond that, shrinking the deficit by growing the economy so that we're all better off (which is a Labour policy).
- Oct 17, 2008
- 14,575
Once again, just because you have cited one very specific and personal example of someone not needing WFA, it doesn’t allow for the hundreds of thousands of others who are not in the same position as your family member.
What I was actually trying to point out Einstein, was not that all pensioners do not need it, but that some who shout the loudest are just in denial about how comfortable they actually are.
Of course there are those who will miss it greatly, and perhaps a second look should be taken to see if the criteria can be altered. But the wholesale condemnation of a three month old government is frankly ridiculous.
You've pointed me to a paywalled article I can't read.A fair press and coverage is a direct comparison to the scrutiny others faced, if you can’t compare then you can’t judge if your press is fair and balanced.
Why has Sue Gray’s salary stoked unease and vicious briefings?
Downing Street chief of staff’s £170,000 wage is a blow as special advisers are handed surprisingly low pay settlements
But, I've navigated around that to try to find what you are referencing.
It's this bit here: "One way to see Sue Gray’s £170,000 a year salary is that it is less, in real terms, than Ed Llewellyn was paid when he was David Cameron’s chief of staff, and less, both in real terms and compared with average wage growth, even than Dominic Cummings’ salary in 2020."
Unfortunately, you seem to have misinterpreted it as your "without even allowing for inflation" is patently false.
The reason I queried your "fact" is that, having looked at all this yesterday, I knew there are strictly-defined pay bands for Spads and, before the redrafting which permitted Sue Gray to be awarded a £170k salary, the maximum Spad salary was £145k, meaning it was impossible for Cummings to be paid more as a Spad than Gray is.
Fortunately for us all, this stuff is reported each year, so we can verify that by checking The Cabinet Office's
Annual Report on Special Advisers 2020 which is here:
In there we can read: "Lee Cain and Dominic Cummings are in the process of leaving their government posts and are not included in
the above list. They are, however, included in the December FTE numbers. Both individuals were in PB4 and
pay band £140,000-£144,999."
The figure for Cummings was widely reported as £140k and my GCSE maths has £170k being greater than £140k.
As I say, none of this matters. I believe people in jobs of this seniority should be paid considerably more.
Facts, eh?
Shameful
Was that before or after your post about the breaking story of Harold Wilson receiving a Gannex rain coat?
I don't care what Sue Gray earns but Dom Cummings salary certainly was mentioned at the time. You must have missed it.
In fact some bloke called Keir Starmer tweeted about it in a deeply critical manner, making a comparison to nurses pay.
- Oct 20, 2022
- 6,941
I’m not belittling the potential impact - I am not well informed enough on health in the elderly or how many win’t use their heating this winter for that.
However You said yesterday :
Is that an official medical source? If so, do you have a reference for that please?
Also, no one can look into the future and say “will”, the most that can be said is ‘likely’ or ‘probably’. Anything else is scaremongering and hyperbolic language.
It is very difficult to ascertain the specific causes of winter mortality in the elderly anyway - not least flu and Covid are responsible for excess winter deaths in the elderly (as much as 15,000 per year even without a serious flu epidemic)
Excess deaths associated with flu highest in 5 years
UKHSA has published its annual flu report for the 2022 to 2023 flu season, the first time flu has been widespread since the COVID-19 pandemic began.
I do accept that being very cold increases risk of high blood pressure, strokes and increased risk of worse symptoms for winter flu etc and obviously accept there will be millions not using their heating enough (or at all) with the withdrawal of the WFA but how are you quantifying the “thousands of deaths from the loss of the WFA directly” and how are you predicting the numbers of fatalities as a certainty when it is a future scenario?
Let's re-visit that, briefly, because it's interesting given what business secretary Jonathan Reynolds said yesterday.
The Guardian reports that, when pressed on Sue Gray's salary, Reynolds said:
"I think it’s important people understand that the pay bands for any official, any adviser, are not set by politicians. There’s an official process that does that. I don’t, for instance, get to set the pay for my own advisers who work directly for me. So, there’s a process, we don’t have political input into that.
There’s a process that sets these things. It is widely recognised. It’s long-standing. It hasn’t changed and that is how pay bands are set for any adviser."
So, any criticism of Keir Starmer for Sue Gray's salary is mis-directed.But, then, errrm.....
If there's a long-standing, unchanged, non-political process for adviser pay, why was the now Prime Minister seeking to make political capital out of Cummings' salary?
Did he simply not know how adviser pay worked? That seems highly unlikely doesn't it?
Or was he seeking to score cheap political points based on something he knew not to be true? Also unlikely for a man of such high integrity.
What a conundrum!
- Oct 17, 2008
- 14,575
I’m not belittling the potential impact - I am not well informed enough on health in the elderly or how many win’t use their heating this winter for that.
However You said yesterday :
Is that an official medical source? If so, do you have a reference for that please?
Also, no one can look into the future and say “will”, the most that can be said is ‘likely’ or ‘probably’. Anything else is scaremongering and hyperbolic language.
It is very difficult to ascertain the specific causes of winter mortality in the elderly anyway - not least flu and Covid are responsible for excess winter deaths in the elderly (as much as 15,000 per year even without a serious flu epidemic)
Excess deaths associated with flu highest in 5 years
UKHSA has published its annual flu report for the 2022 to 2023 flu season, the first time flu has been widespread since the COVID-19 pandemic began.www.gov.uk
I do accept that being very cold increases risk of high blood pressure, strokes and increased risk of worse symptoms for winter flu etc and obviously accept there will be millions not using their heating enough (or at all) with the withdrawal of the WFA but how are you quantifying the “thousands of deaths from the loss of the WFA directly” and how are you predicting the numbers of fatalities as a certainty when it is a future scenario?
4,950 excess winter deaths caused by cold homes last winter
Excess winter deaths have increased as records show that when winter temperatures drop below 4 degrees, deaths caused by cold homes increase.
www.endfuelpoverty.org.uk
These are the statistics for the last few years including this winter past, which included the WFA.
In April 2022 there was a 54% increase in the domestic energy price cap, leading to several thousand further deaths year on year.
On October 1st this year, the price cap raises again a further 10%, after a minor drop in price in the last 12 months. On average, households are paying over 29% more than two years ago and now with the poorest and most vulnerable without WFA offsetting some of the difference.
The year after WFA was introduced, confirmed deaths from cold homes have fallen in line with mean winter temperatures. Here are the government statistics showing a correlation between colder temperatures and numbers of deaths from cold homes.