Panchwati

@DamienDown112 @iWalkOutdoors @melindiscott Free money, from where?

@iWalkOutdoors @melindiscott What’s mental about a universal basic income?

Green Party say they plan to ensure everyone has a minimum wage of £31,000pa. I run a business. I don’t earn that. I employ 2 people. They don’t earn that. The business I run doesn’t take in enough to pay that. I’d need to charge customers way more to afford that 🤷‍♂️. Or go bust.

@ESzczambur93581 @ANDIBABY8 Bid acceptance is followed by survey which may show issues unacceptable to the buyer, making them pull out. You suggest penalizing buyers in such cases!

@ANDIBABY8 That doesn’t sound like renters rights? They want to rent a property but can’t for a year? So there’s going to be a load of houses just sat there while others are homeless?? They need to crack down on buyers who bid & confirm but then pull out -they should cover the rent for a yr

Under the new renters rights act. If you give notice because you want to sell, and the sale falls through - you cannot rent it again for a year. How is this going to help the housing shortage? Landlords pay tax on rental income too. I see another black hole appearing!

@tbfl141 @darrensharp73 @1ohreally @ANDIBABY8 You are looking through greedy landlord lens only. Other posters have highlighted genuine reasons for sale falling through midway.

@darrensharp73 @1ohreally @ANDIBABY8 No the majority say they put it on the market so they can remove the current tenants and then it gives them the perfect reason to hike up the rent. What a shame it stops greed

@JerryBarnett @Rational_Obs @joemichalczuk Nothing is free.

@Rational_Obs @joemichalczuk There's a difference between a principle (free healthcare) and an implementation (the UK's most dysfunctional organisation)

A shower screen shattered all over my wife this week. Over the next 72 hours, the NHS got almost everything wrong. A cautionary tale of a system that is broken (with the usual caveat that everyone working in it is doing their best) 👇 I called an ambulance. All good at first: “It’s on its way.” Ten minutes later: “Actually, there are no ambulances for hours - can you get her to hospital?” So I loaded my bleeding wife into the car, along with the kids and the dog, and drove to A&E. Ten hours later, she came home - having given up after not even being offered a plaster. The next morning, we called our GP: “Any chance she could see a nurse?” “No - as the ambulance referred her to hospital, we can’t see her.” So I went to the pharmacy and bought a first aid kit. Because apparently that’s where we are now - me and a pack of plasters, in one of the richest countries in the world. This morning, still in pain, still untreated, and with a ballooning foot, we went to an urgent treatment centre. At first, smooth. She was seen in under two hours. X-ray done. “Nasty cut, but nothing broken.” Relief. Two hours later, the phone rang. It was the hospital. “Sorry - we got that completely wrong. Your foot is broken and the wound needs antibiotics.” If it wasn’t so serious, it would be laughable. And the truth is - anyone who uses the system has a story like this. We need to stop clinging to an idealised version of the NHS and have a grown-up conversation about how to fix it. Free healthcare for all should remain a principle - but pretending the current model works isn’t helping anyone. Almost every other developed country combines public healthcare with some level of private provision - and all deliver better outcomes as a result. Yet in the UK, even suggesting that tends to get shut down before the conversation starts. That’s not protecting the NHS. It’s protecting a cult. We don’t need ideology. We need honesty about what works. We need a brilliant NHS in practice for all of us - not one we’re told to revere while it quietly crumbles, and where anyone who speaks up is dismissed or discredited. When are we going to get serious about the things that actually matter - and have the difficult national conversations needed to fix them? We don’t need to abandon the NHS. We need to be honest about fixing it. We shouldn’t just shrug our shoulders. We have to be better. We need to vote for real change.

@Simon_Ingari Time waster and you dress it up like a victory of independent thinking!

No Slack message. No “network issue.” No dramatic excuse. At 4:18 PM, HR finally texted. Gen Z replied and said, “I realized this isn’t aligned with what I’m looking for.” Boss just stared at the phone. - No shouting. - No argument. - Just a decision. That’s when the team realized something. When people say “Gen Z lacks commitment,” what they really mean is: Gen Z doesn’t stay to be convinced, pressured, or guilted into a bad deal. They listen carefully. They test the reality. And when it doesn’t match the promise, they leave. Not after months. Not after burnout. After lunch. It’s not disrespect. It’s efficiency. And honestly, after everything the old generation normalized… Can you really blame them?

A Gen Z joined the team. Week one. During onboarding, the manager said, “Lunch break is 1 to 2.” Gen Z nodded. At 1:00 PM, He stood up and said, “Going for lunch.” Everyone nodded. 2:00 PM passed. Then 3:00 PM. ↓↓

@ChrisThomas1107 @iAmJoshHunt Cuckoo land! Why not African nations then?

@Panchwati2000 @iAmJoshHunt Meaningless stats because tax doesn't fund British government spending and the government can ALWAYS afford to pay pensions, other benefits and the NHS.

Let me walk you through the arithmetic of Britain's demographic crisis. Because once you see the numbers, you can't unsee them. The UK has around 43 million people of working age. These are the people the entire system depends on. They pay the taxes. They fund the pensions. They staff the hospitals. 9 million of them are economically inactive. Not working and not looking for work. 1 in 5. That number deserves unpacking because it isn't one problem. It's several, layered on top of each other. The largest group, around 2.8 million, are out due to long-term sickness or disability. That number has been rising steadily since 2019 and recently hit a record high. Among younger people, the driver is mental health. Among older workers, it's musculoskeletal conditions, back problems, and other chronic illness. People in their early twenties are now more likely to be economically inactive due to ill health than people in their forties. That statistic alone should stop you in your tracks. The second largest group, roughly 2.4 million, are students in full-time education. They're investing in their future productivity. But while they study, they aren't contributing to the tax base. Around 1.6 million are looking after family or home, disproportionately women. Around 1.1 million took early retirement before state pension age. Many left during or after the pandemic and haven't returned. The rest are classed as discouraged or otherwise outside the labour market. On top of the 9 million inactive, another 1.87 million are unemployed. Youth unemployment has risen to around 16%. So of around 43 million people of working age, roughly 32 million are actually in work. About a quarter of the working-age population is not in paid employment. Now look at who they're supporting. There are roughly 12 million people above state pension age. The official dependency ratio is 278 pensioners per 1,000 people of working age. That sounds manageable. About 3.6 to one. But when you use the number of people actually working, it drops to roughly 2.7 workers per pensioner. Less than three. By 2047, the latest official projections show the ratio worsening to 302 per 1,000, even after planned pension age rises. ONS modelling submitted to the House of Lords suggests that to hold the current ratio constant, pension age would eventually need to reach 70 or beyond. Under current law, it rises to 67 by 2028, with further increases likely to stay on the table. And the support base is under growing pressure. The fertility rate just hit 1.41. The lowest on record. You need 2.1 to keep the population stable. We're at two thirds of that and falling. The average age of mothers is now 31. The government has expanded funded childcare significantly, and that's a genuine step forward. But the birth rate kept falling right through it. Because the problem isn't just childcare. It's housing. It's wages. It's the cost of being alive in this country while trying to raise a family. The overall population is still projected to grow, mainly through migration. But the pension-age population is growing faster than the working-age population. The number of people aged 85 and over is projected to nearly double, from 1.7 million in 2022 to 3.3 million by 2047. More pensions. More NHS demand. More social care. All landing on a workforce where the ratio of workers to dependants is weakening every year. And here's the part nobody talks about. According to the ONS, at least 1.4 million people in the UK are raising children while simultaneously caring for ageing parents. The sandwich generation. Wider estimates suggest the true figure may be considerably higher. Typically aged 35 to 64, spanning millennials and Gen X. These are people in mid-career. Many in management roles. Peak earning years. Maximum professional responsibility. And they're juggling all of that with school runs on one side and elderly care on the other. Two thirds say their finances are under strain. Carers UK estimates that over 600 people a day quit their jobs to care for a loved one. Research by the Centre for Economics and Business Research puts the average lifetime financial cost of being a sandwich carer at over £345,000 in lost earnings, reduced pension contributions, and direct care costs. Women are more than twice as likely to be the ones who leave work. Every one of those people who leaves is one fewer taxpayer. One fewer pension contributor. One fewer worker holding up the dependency ratio. And they don't just lose their salary. They lose years of compound growth on pension savings. They arrive at retirement with a depleted pot, needing the same support they were once helping to fund. This is about to intensify. As the over-85 population nearly doubles and social care continues to collapse, more people in that 35 to 64 age bracket will face the impossible choice between their career and their parents. The sandwich generation will get bigger. The workforce will come under even more strain. Now layer the health crisis on top. The Health Foundation projects that 3.7 million working-age people will be living with major illness by 2040, a 17% rise on 2019 levels. Already, 3.7 million people who are in work have a health condition that limits the type or amount of work they can do. That number has grown by 1.4 million in a decade. The House of Lords Economic Affairs Committee said it plainly. Those who are already economically inactive are becoming sicker, meaning they're less likely to return to work. The ageing effect that was previously being masked by other factors is now being reinforced by them. So here's the picture. The state pension costs around £146 billion a year. Funded entirely by current workers paying current retirees. There is no pot. The triple lock ratchets it higher every year. The working-age support base is under pressure and weakening. The number of dependants is growing. The people in the middle are getting sicker, burning out, and leaving work to care for parents the state can't look after. The generation behind them is smaller because the birth rate has collapsed. And the generation behind them will be smaller still. Nobody chose this. No generation is to blame. People didn't decide to be priced out of having children. Workers didn't choose to develop chronic conditions. The sandwich generation didn't volunteer to care for ageing parents with no safety net. This is a systems failure. We can argue over whether it's underinvestment in housing, health, social care, and prevention, or poor personal choices of the population at large that have produced a workforce that is too small, too sick, and too stretched to carry what's being placed on it. But this is where we're at. And the weight is growing every year. The arithmetic doesn't negotiate. And right now, it says we're running out of people to pay for the country we've built.

@iAmJoshHunt We pretend the country to be cash ruch and accordingly all parties dole out social promises (free social care, free healthcare) with no upper cap to stay in power. Money will eventually run out one day (or perhaps already has).

There's a crisis hiding inside British local government right now that almost nobody is talking about. And it connects to almost everything else that's going wrong. Since 2018, seven councils have effectively gone bankrupt. Northamptonshire. Croydon. Slough. Thurrock. Woking. Birmingham. Nottingham. They issued what's called a Section 114 notice. Local government's way of saying the money has run out. The number of councils needing emergency help from central government is growing every year. In 2025-26, 30 councils needed exceptional financial support. This year it's 35, sharing around £1.5 billion. The government had been warned it could reach 100. The Local Government Association estimates almost 1 in 5 councils are at risk. The LGIU found more than half of senior council figures believe their authority will effectively go bankrupt within five years. Some of this is mismanagement. Woking racked up £2.4 billion in debt, 100 times its annual budget, gambling on hotels and skyscrapers. Thurrock lost hundreds of millions on solar farm investments. Croydon's housing company collapsed. But the deeper story is structural. Between 2009 and 2020, central government funding to councils was cut by 40% in real terms. From £46.5 billion to £28 billion. At the same time, demand for the services councils are legally required to provide has been rising every single year. And while the funding was being slashed, your council tax was going in the opposite direction. In 2011, the average Band D council tax bill was £1,439. Today it's £2,392. Up over 66% in fifteen years. This year, 274 out of 384 councils raised it by the maximum allowed without triggering a referendum. Seven were given special permission to go even higher. You'd think all that extra money would mean better services. It doesn't. Libraries are closing. Bins are collected less often. Roads are falling apart. Social care is being rationed. You're paying more every year and getting less every year. So where is the money going? Social care is the single biggest answer. It's eating local government alive. The adult social care funding gap is now over £1 billion a year just to stand still. The Health Foundation estimates an additional £8.3 billion will be needed by 2032 just to keep up with growing demand. Care England estimates that increases to the National Living Wage and employer National Insurance have added £3.7 billion in extra costs to the sector. The government's response has fallen well short of that. But there's another cost most people don't know about. And I want to be precise here because the numbers are contested and the picture is complicated. Councils fund themselves from multiple sources. Government grants. Business rates. Fees. And council tax. Council tax is the part you pay directly. So when I talk about what follows, I'm talking specifically about how much of your council tax revenue goes to one particular cost. Freedom of Information requests submitted to over 300 councils found that local authorities across England contributed roughly £6.7 billion to staff pension schemes last year. When measured against the council tax those councils collected, that works out at an average of around 23p in every pound of council tax revenue going to staff pensions. Councils will rightly point out that council tax is only one part of their total funding. That's true and it's an important caveat. But council tax is the part that comes directly from you. Council employees are enrolled in the Local Government Pension Scheme. A defined benefit scheme where councils pay an average of roughly 20% of each staff member's salary in employer contributions. In the private sector, the minimum employer contribution under auto-enrolment is 3%. The two aren't directly comparable because defined benefit and defined contribution schemes work very differently. But the gap gives you a sense of the cost pressure. And this isn't an argument against council workers having decent retirements. Many of them are low paid and do vital work. The average LGPS pension in payment is around £4,000 a year. This isn't gold-plated for most people. But when your council tax has gone up over 66% in fifteen years while your services have visibly deteriorated, you deserve to understand what's driving those costs. Pension obligations are one significant part of the picture. Social care is another. And between them, they leave very little room for everything else. Now here's where it connects to the NHS. Care providers are closing. Councils are rationing who qualifies for help. And the knock-on effect is landing directly on hospitals. Every single day in England, somewhere between 13,000 and 14,000 hospital beds are occupied by patients who are medically fit to go home but can't. Because the social care they need to leave hospital doesn't exist. One in eight general and acute beds in the country. Blocked. Not because the patients are sick. Because there's nowhere for them to go. Care England estimates that over 45% of hospital discharge delays are linked to social care. The Royal College of Physicians has called this "a failing system" and said the NHS front door will remain in a state of emergency until it's fixed. This is a doom loop. And nobody in government is treating it as one. Councils can't fund social care. So elderly patients can't leave hospital. So hospital beds are blocked. So waiting lists grow. So people who need treatment can't get it. So they can't work. So economic inactivity rises. So tax receipts fall. So the government has less money. So councils get squeezed further. So social care gets worse. So more beds are blocked. And round it goes. Every part of that chain is supported by data from official sources. The waiting lists. The inactivity figures. The funding gaps. The discharge numbers. The Section 114 notices. They're all published separately by different departments. But nobody is connecting them. The DWP treats inactivity as a welfare problem. The NHS treats waiting lists as a health problem. The Treasury treats both as spending problems. Local government treats social care as a funding problem. They're all looking at their own piece. Nobody is looking at the system. Meanwhile your council tax keeps going up. Your services keep getting worse. The population is ageing. The fertility rate just hit its lowest level on record. And the cost of everything, pensions, healthcare, social care, debt interest, keeps growing faster than the economy that's supposed to pay for it. The councils going bust aren't the crisis. They're the symptom. The crisis is a system that was built for a younger, richer, growing country and is now buckling under the weight of an older, poorer, stagnating one. And nobody in power is willing to say that out loud. Because the honest answer is that this requires a fundamental redesign of how the state works. And nobody wants to be the one to start that conversation.

@MartinMonmouth @ColinBrazierTV Why others have to pay?

@ColinBrazierTV I don't share people's fury. I think that Britain's history and culture should be available to those who are poor, sick or vulnerable. Clearly they don't need cheap access to Alton Towers, but I believe all our children should be able to go to something like the Tower of London.

The Spectator reports this week that many of London’s tourist attractions now offer huge reductions to visitors in receipt of Universal Credit benefits. The Welfare State began as a refuge of last resort. It has become a two-fingered salute to all those who work and pay taxes.

@Samanthacoda1 @dougiebrimson Reward those first who work hard and contribute. Rest all can queue up. Society norms need to adjust.

So basically, you want to take away my pension based on decades worth of contributions made through national insurance which I was obliged to pay from my earnings and hand the ‘saving’ to someone who quite possibly arrived here illegally and has never paid so much as a penny in tax. Fuck off. #VoteReformUK

@annaroseridgway State pension is a return on NI contributions over the years - it doesn't matter which other way you spin it. Means testing will not cut it.

25% of pensioners are millionaires. 55% of welfare spending goes on pensioners. Why don’t we: 1) means test the state pension, millionaires don’t need benefits. 2) increase the amount we give to the pensioners who need it the most. 3) stop the unsustainable triple lock.

@ReemAmirIbrahim Pay for your education and healthcare if you are going down that route.

Why should young people have to pay for someone else’s retirement? If you live in a million pound house, and you can’t afford to retire, sell the house. Or don’t. I don’t care. You just can’t expect young people to pay for you!

@Cerfoo148 @blaiklockBP Backup your claim with facts/numbers, otherwise this post is just illogical rant. Also, pay doctors market wages; don't strangulate them under state monopoly.

@blaiklockBP UK doctors have lost the respect of the public. They repeatedly go on strike, withholding health care for the public. Weak applicants who should never have been in medicine are admitted to medical school on account of DEI. Medicine is no longer a vocation serving the public.

Tried many times to tell people that student doctors are living 4 to an ex council house, in conditions worse than the unemployed in places with expensive housing like Winchester . Av house price £700,000 Most people will never try to do the maths and underatand . Young doctors were the cream before Bought nice houses. Now they earn the same after tax and student loans as many of unemployed.

@John_J_C_Moss @RobertJenrick Funded by fleecing taxpayers through which councils pay generous 20% plus contribution into pension.

@RobertJenrick Nonsense. The Local Government schemes are funded. The other Pay as you go schemes are currently paying our more than they collect by £5bn a year. Close those schemes and the govt has to pay out £40bn. Maths doesn't appear to be your strong suit.

Defined benefit public sector pensions are the British state’s second largest liability. They’re about £2.4 trillion - around 100 per cent of GDP. The old parties have ducked this for years. Most of the media won’t talk about it either. But Reform UK will not dodge this mammoth issue. Richard Tice has already announced that a Reform would close Local Government Pension Schemes to new entrants. And today Reform UK launched a review of whether new entrants for any defined benefit scheme should be permitted to such schemes. Reform UK have already announced £40bn of yearly savings. In the coming weeks, we’ll be saying more about the true cost of the Boriswave and unskilled migration we’ve had - and how Reform will stop it blowing a hole in the country’s finances. And we will commit to more savings in the coming months. It’s because we are the only the party with a plan to cut wasteful spending that we can credibly commit to keeping the triple lock. So, yes: we’ll balance the books. We just won’t do it on the backs of British people who’ve paid in their whole life. Instead, we’ll save tens of billions by resetting Government spending so it puts the British people – and only the British people – first.  Politics is about choices.  And we choose the British people. We will every time.

@carrieof6122 @RobertJenrick 20% plus contribution by councils who are bankrupt themselves! Look around - which or how many private sector companies afford this?

@RobertJenrick This is a lie. Public Sector workers paid into pension schemes which are managed by City institutions. The pensions are not unfunded. The firemen, police, teachers, local government and health service workers had money deducted from wages and we have our payslips to prove it.

@lukerobertblack Read HMRC website on state pension forecast and then opine.

Tim - you do not “pay in” to your state pension. It comes out of general taxation. It is a benefit. You don’t have a pot that is returned to you. It is completely different from your workplace pension, or your private personal pension.

@dave43law First right to receive a state pension is of those who paid NI for qualifying years. If money is still left, others can queue up.

The time has come for 'state pension' to be means tested Removal of those 3 million from the equation at the very least would free £36billion to fund others

@_Unknown_D_ Those who have paid NI over qualifying number of years should be the first one to receive a state pension. How the government funds it will be their headache.

Completely agree that the most vulnerable pensioners should be protected but what’s the argument for millionaire pensioners who clearly don’t need the support, receiving a state pension? And please stop with the ‘they paid in to the system argument’. The reality is their pensions are being funded by working age people who have worse prospects for their futures than the generation before them.

@JyotiKarma7 Brilliant

Jasmine Sandlas set a new bar for singing in Dhurandhar which is hard to keep up with ..but this rendition is equally soulful! Wow ..

@miriam_cates If government is not allocating funds wisely, it should be honest and not promise so (linking pension to NI contributions) on its website.

No one has ‘paid into’ the state pension. NI payments are spent by the government of the day, not put into a pot with your name on. Using these terms just perpetuates the myth that the state pension is a contributory scheme. It isn’t. It’s a non-means tested universal benefit paid for by current taxpayers.