It's not enviro, but I'm posting anyway as it goes to the core of how we are mis-governed - NHS pariahs
Oh, yes, I am angry.
My Mum has mild but deteriorating Alzheimer's. She is also quite comfortable financially. When she was no longer able to manage in her own home we moved her to a cottage next to ours where i could keep an eye on her hourly. It has worked well so far. Yes, there was some official interest (more visits and clipboards than I could count in a short period), but once it was appreciated that she had family looking after her this evaporated. Priorities. Fair enough. And we are grateful for the non means-tested attendance allowance that helps us to look after her more intimate needs via private carer visits.
However soon it may be that her medical needs will require her to go into a home, and while this will be a sad day for all there is really no option. Fortunately she is well prepared for this, and we will ensure that she has the best her money can buy.
So why I am I angry? Because, with the exception of the attendance allowance, thanks to her and my deceased father's prudence and thrift she has been near zero a burden on the state or its coffers. Helped in a small way by her family rallying round.
But when the time comes and she passes on, should she yet be able to leave some funds to ease the personal, familial and national burden of geriatric care for future generations, it first has to run the gamut of IHT so the government can suck out as much as it can to fund useless box-tickers and gold-plated civil service pensions.
And yet in defence of this all I see is smug Brown babes and comfy Islington media luvvies trying to claim it is just to redistribute wealth to prevent rich landed gentry spoiling their heirs.
Where is the incentive to save for your old age and the benefit of others who may play a great part in making its consequences less onerous... for all concerned???!
4 comments:
Peter,
Don't know if you've checked back to your post on CIF but someone has had quite a swipe at you.
Funny, I didn't at first read it as a swipe.
It merely shows the danger of the one line 'blog-bite' and if anything the mentality of most who haunt CiF.
Having been tied, albeit voluntarily, to this house and this area in no small measure by the need to look after Mum, at age 50 I have little hope of finding gainful employment at all, much less in the area I am qualified for and good at.
Who knows how long she will last? Or how much it will all cost?
If she gives it all to me now, or had a decade (actually 7 years) ago, by some silly game that's OK.
But by protecting her right to have her money on call without risk (if I got divorced, half would go out of the blood line) we're in this situation.
And if she had blown all her cash on booze, fags and toyboys that would have been OK because the state would have to move in.
But this cretin obviously thinks it fine that 40% of any excess over £300k she may have preserved to help her family's future should go on those that haven't saved a penny (like me!!!) and the salaries of those who only get moved to golden-funded eternity if caught by a film crew with a tick-box in hand beside someone they have left in a bed of their own vomit because they work 9-5.
All supported by those in power who are equally funded, and supported by a chattering class elite who have no clue what most hard-working, middle to low income families are trying to cope with as every aspect of their future is eroded both in terms of income through tax-grabs and calls on their savings to compensate ever-greater unproductive state leeches.
I know what we have done for my Mum and she for us. And what we are still doing for each other and, though not done so altruistically, for the future of this country and this planet.
I often get quite hurt and affected by swipes on such as CiF, but in this case they can suck an egg.
I cannot disagree with a single comment you have made. I think you should respond with a similar post on CIF - it will probably stir up a real hornet's nest though!
So it wasn't you then:)
Seriously, I appreciate the comment. It means a lot.
As to responding on CiF, well, having had a few implied 'we know where you lives' already on that forum I already worry I may have strayed too far.
It's simply a rock and hard place scenario. Be it defence or health or the BBC or whatever, there seems to be a whole different mindset at work there. And one that seems unable to connect consequences with responsibility or expenditures with revenue.
It's none of their darn business what my Mum has to leave, but anyone can guess a minimum from my point.
So let's call it that £300k. About the price of a nice detached hereabouts.
Also about 8 years in the only reasonable care home we'd dare let her in.
So whether any does get passed on is likely moot (thereafter we pay, or consign her to something that oh-so-aloof poster is unlikely to suffer I’ll be bound).
But say it is. What is this clown's point?
That her having paid for it every which way through earnings and taxes at every point, the government gets 40%... to do what with it?
Well, as I have devoted a fair chunk to Mum and a few other things I could address whilst being there for her - that were my call, such as Junkk.com, which WHEN it succeeds will in no small measure be down to her support of me as I supported her, and my family's sacrifices with the consequences - one could for instance guess that it may well end up going to supporting me.
Thing is, her 100% will be eroded to next to nothing by the time it gets to my bedsore-ridden corpse, because a million layers of incompetents will chip away at it before it gets anywhere near doing what it is designed for. Or will simply be siphoned off to cover the pension of a public service union or ministerial teeth-straightening.
For the same reasons as above I wouldn’t ask this cretin whether they are getting snitty from the comfort of a 9-5, mandatory tea-break PC-station in local government, or secure that one's liberal media employer's pension pot is rock solid, but I'd really like them to justify why they or theirs should score a red cent above Mum’s nearest and dearest on that basis.
Or if they are simply too socially attuned to be credible, and just want it to go to those 'less fortunate', how if any that's left after the official vultures have been filled to bloating it goes equitably between Mum's heirs and those who simply blew all they could buying stuff, frying their lungs or pickling their livers and can qualify by having no savings.
I’m worried. Not so much for the boys being raised as we can get through another decade or more with few probs. But the burden the missus and I may represent to them when we are well old is an issue. We are not as well covered financially as Mum’s generation, in no small measure due to policy and the sheer facts of life.
And as far as I can see it is a downward spiral as each generation lives longer and gets more taxed. Easing off on IHT would to me give a breather to many, and maybe re-establish familial bonds. It’s just a pity that the blind hatred of those in power - and their privileged acolytes - for any form of meritocracy or reward for ‘good behaviour’ has only allowed them to focus on a small minority who in any case are so rich they pay no tax anyway.
I am angry. I will not go quietly. And those that have made me thus should be very afraid. Especially if they are seduced into thinking they are unassailable in word or deed. I don’t think I’m alone. And we’ve had enough.
Post a Comment