Teachers

[pwa]

A lot of society's ills could be reduced if the tax threshold were increased significantly. So everyone gets to keep, say, the first £15k they receive. Then pay more on everything above that to balance the books. And yes, more emphasis on getting revenue from the higher rates, though the basic rate will still end up being the main earner for the state. To me it makes no sense to have folk who earn less than £15k paying income tax, only to get assistance with their living costs through other channels.

But with regard to teachers, we are starting to get what we pay for. The profession is widely seen as being less prestigious, less comfortably off than it once was, and recruitment is suffering as a result. The person who now teaches your kids to speak French may no longer be a qualified language teacher, for example. Even in a private school charging many thousands a year. Schools have good teachers in some positions, but for others they are having to make do with anyone who can muddle through. If we think that is okay, and we can live with that, we can sit back and not pay more. If we think that is not a satisfactory way to educate our kids, we have to find more money for it. The choice is there.

[Biospace]

To become wealthier - in order to pay for better services - we need to make more and to higher standards. We need fewer in Government who've come from finance and law, more with what I would term experience of 'real world' life, although I know plenty of lawyers would argue there's little more real than working in law.

Successive Governments have largely ignored SME, planning departments need a total change in thinking and operation, too many of the public want something for nothing or have delusions of their real capabilities thanks to degrees for almost anyone who wants. At present we have segregation for school entry dictated in part by the ability of parents' incomes, when if we are going to segregate. it should be by the ability of the child.

Regarding teaching, from what I observe if there was any higher a barrier for the quality of candidates there would be serious shortages, perhaps a reflection of the prestige of the profession, working conditions and what are perceived as better alternatives. Raising the bar may create short term problems (not necessarily higher qualifications but a range of practical abilities and having sound basic skills would make sense), but I would see it as the only permanent fix.

[Jon in Sweden]

Good points, all three of you.

I especially agree about having more people from a manufacturing background in politics. I'd also add that people with a scientific background would be very valuable too.

You've got to ask some serious questions of the people who are seeking the top jobs. Why are so many of them incredibly wealthy? What are they using their influence for? I think it's pretty apparent, but it needs to be stamped out. So long as this blatant cronyism exists at the top, with belligerently transparent corruption (seemingly without serious consequences) what hope is there of an equal and fair society?

Taxation here in Sweden is higher than the UK, but due to things you don't need to pay for, you're much better off if you're low to middle income (like us). Especially if you have kids.

Tax free allowance is around £2k. Though there is a special additional tax free allowance of about £800 for berries/mushrooms picked in the forest

Basic rate tax is around 32%. There is no national insurance. This rate applies up to about £50k

Additional rate on all earnings over £50k is another 20%, taking it to 52%.

But the things that we don't pay for are nursery and breakfast club. Sports activities are heavily subsidised, so my daughters do gym (at about £50 a year each), table tennis (free), ice skating (free). When we start skiing, that'll also be free because I volunteer at the slope sometimes. We also have no mortgage, because house prices here are 1/8 of what they were in Devon.

The reason I highlight the taxation versus what we (as a family) get for free is that having all activities and opportunities available to all people, regardless of financial background, is the foundation of an equal society. Every child can try everything and has every door open to them. Equality in society starts at a very young age which is why schooling is so vitally important.

[pete75]

To become wealthier - in order to pay for better services - we need to make more and to higher standards. We need fewer in Government who've come from finance and law, more with what I would term experience of 'real world' life, although I know plenty of lawyers would argue there's little more real than working in law.

Successive Governments have largely ignored SME, planning departments need a total change in thinking and operation, too many of the public want something for nothing or have delusions of their real capabilities thanks to degrees for almost anyone who wants. At present we have segregation for school entry dictated in part by the ability of parents' incomes, when if we are going to segregate. it should be by the ability of the child.

The fabled folk with common sense as Mr. Farage and his ilk in the Reform party keep saying. Common sense people with common sense policies. Vote for them, and, if you're unlucky, you may get what you wish for. Here's one of you may get more of. https://www.indy100.com/politics/lee-an ... 2659284959

What is 'real world' life?

Here in Lincolnshire, you'll be pleased to hear, segregation in education is by the "ability" of the child, almost entirely Grammar / Secondary Modern school education, determined by the 11 plus. The secondary mods are now called academies/comps but everyone knows what they - the places where 11 plus failures are kept until leaving age. The county results at GCSE and A level are about average, and well behind the top performing comprehensive counties.
Creaming off the so called "best" often means the rest are written off educationally.
The Reform party wants to bring back grammars nationally. They say little about where they want to dump the kids who don't get into one.

[pwa]

No system of selecting kids for educational purposes that I have ever seen actually avoids the fact that those with money can pay to have their kids tutored, ensuring that average ability kids from better-off families look better than they are for assessment purposes.

[pete75]

No system of selecting kids for educational purposes that I have ever seen actually avoids the fact that those with money can pay to have their kids tutored, ensuring that average ability kids from better-off families look better than they are for assessment purposes.

Especially now the selection for Lincolnshire grammar schools consists of a couple of short tests - the sort of thing that used to be called IQ tests. When I did the 11 plus over 50 years ago it lasted a day and a half. It had some of those tests but also arithmetic, comprehension, essay writing etc. Much more difficult to fake. About half the kids from our primary passed and we were almost all from council houses at that school. These days there don't seem to be many council house children passing.

[Carlton green]

We need fewer in Government who've come from finance and law, more with what I would term experience of 'real world' life, although I know plenty of lawyers would argue there's little more real than working in law.

At one time I’d have said similar too however, as I grow older, I’ve met a few Solicitors and Accountants whose grasp on the real world is comprehensive: they meet such a wide variety of people and situations in their professional dealings. Here I think is the key to to usefulness - or rather lack of - of our political classes in that many of them come with little experience of the real world and dogmatically follow political ideology.

It’s important that that the Arts and Sciences are well represented in Parliament but at the same time we need people who are professionally competent to oversea the creation of our laws and the management of our finances. The ethics of individuals is something else, I rather think that many members of the governing party have shown themselves to be somewhat lacking in integrity …

[francovendee]

Raising more in tax is the only way to fund the services to a decent level after 12 years of cuts.
The only other way to raise tax is to increase our productivity and this won't happen quickly.
If 'loop holes' were closed and rich and poor paid in proportionately then tax prices would be more palatable to the majority of the country.

[Carlton green]

We also have no mortgage, because house prices here are 1/8 of what they were in Devon.

And there we have a massive factor: the proportion of somebody’s income taken up in housing costs is financially crippling on the individual and takes money out of the economy that could be either circulating or better invested in business efficiency and socially useful ways.

We really should introduce capital gains tax on owner occupier housing and treat profits from it just like any other investment; whilst being a fair tax it will be somewhat disruptive and unpopular so a lot of care would be needed in its introduction. To be clear that tax is not intended to be a wealth tax as such, IMHO folk who save shouldn’t be penalised, but rather a fair tax on income (in the form of profit) from the sale of an investment. Houses should be places to live in (ie. homes) and, in particular the expensive ones, not financial investment ‘vehicles’ that the well off can use to avoid paying taxes. If such a tax were to be introduced then there’s a strong case for either abolishing stamp duty or reducing it to levels comparable to those applied to traditional investments (eg. stocks and shares).

[Biospace]

At present we have segregation for school entry dictated in part by the ability of parents' incomes, when if we are going to segregate, it should be by the ability of the child.

Here in Lincolnshire, you'll be pleased to hear, segregation in education is by the "ability" of the child, almost entirely Grammar / Secondary Modern school education, determined by the 11 plus.

Creaming off the so called "best" often means the rest are written off educationally.

You jumped to your own conclusions and ignored what I actually said. If we're to select children to go somewhere best able to further their skills, then doing it on the back of where they happen to live is the very opposite of how it should be done. It's a sad reflection on the English and their system that it's automatically assumed that by ability, academic prowess is implied.

I didn't suggest we should necessarily segregate, just that at present we do and on the most unfair basis.

[Cugel]

One major consideration, rarely made, is that what's come to be regarded as the basic types, levels and methods of "education" can all be summed into a neat and very limited package, supposedly suitable for every child from around 4/5 years old to late teens or early twenties .... but in fact, is not suitable for a large percentage of children. Even university education has become a series of limited and pre-packaged courses that shrink in scope and depth with each passing year and the attentions of ideologue politicians of the moribund red or blue hues.

Perhaps there are other sorts of education beside the currently state-promoted, sponsored, endorsed or allowed?

There are some alternatives, via homeschooling and various religious institutions. These are often worse, in various ways, than the limited state-promoted variety; and lack the essential element of a broad socialisation via mixing with many other varieties of children. However, other more beneficial kinds of eduction must surely be possible, better-suited to various children with a vast range of different proclivities, interests, abilities or other individual features that don't fit well in the state-promoted variety of education.

As an example: I have a friend who effectively "left" school at 14, being a very bad fit there for various reasons. His bunking-off wasn't wasted time, though, as he was interested in all sorts of matters so pursued a gradually accelerating and widening self-education. At age 37 now, he has an immense breadth of skills and associated knowledge, both practical and artistic. His reading is also wide and way outside the standard texts prevalent in schools. His thinking has a degree of independence far greater than the vast majority of mass-media tutored folk.

How could such different educational paths be discovered, enabled, encouraged or otherwise nurtured? It's hard to say. But the sort of formal state schooling, as well as that provided by abuser-palaces such as Eton, seem inadequate and unlikely to have the wherewithal to evolve into something far better.

Cugel

[Ben@Forest]

We also have no mortgage, because house prices here are 1/8 of what they were in Devon.

And there we have a massive factor: the proportion of somebody’s income taken up in housing costs is financially crippling on the individual and takes money out of the economy that could be either circulating or better invested in business efficiency and socially useful ways.

Sweden has no inheritance tax. It was abolished because a surviving spouse could no longer afford to live in the heavily taxed family home because all assets were tied up in the property. Also Swedes often have low household savings because of the trust in welfare systems, so many had no money to pay such bills.

I don't know whether abolishing inheritance tax would nave the same effect here, in terms of making housing more affordable for succeeding generations, or just keep prices artificially high.

[Jon in Sweden]

We also have no mortgage, because house prices here are 1/8 of what they were in Devon.

And there we have a massive factor: the proportion of somebody’s income taken up in housing costs is financially crippling on the individual and takes money out of the economy that could be either circulating or better invested in business efficiency and socially useful ways.

Sweden has no inheritance tax. It was abolished because a surviving spouse could no longer afford to live in the heavily taxed family home because all assets were tied up in the property. Also Swedes often have low household savings because of the trust in welfare systems, so many had no money to pay such bills.

I don't know whether abolishing inheritance tax would nave the same effect here, in terms of making housing more affordable for succeeding generations, or just keep prices artificially high.

Interesting. I didn't know that. Houses are extraordinarily cheap here. You can pick up a reasonable 3 bed house in fair condition (with basement and modern heating system) for £50-60k.

I don't object to the higher tax burden here. In the UK, your outgoings are far higher, because you're saddled with a massive mortgage that you spend most of your working life paying with little to show for it other than underpinning a bank's bottom line.

Here, you pay a bit more in tax (if you're middle earning and up) but you get it all back, in the form of services, good infrastructure and social support.

Another aspect is that you can get quite a lot of your tax back if you choose to do work on your house. I think it's up to £8000 a year, based on a 30% reduction in your renovation costs. You obviously have to pay the tax first, but the incentive is there to encourage you to improve your house and employ local businesses. We have a double garage to build at some point, and we'll take advantage of this tax break.

Back to teachers though. My wife's mum was a nursery school teaching assistant for much of her working life, and even when my wife was young, her mum was taking in supplies (paints, paper, etc) to class. So it's not something that is new, but it's definitely become much worse in recent years.

[Ben@Forest]

Interesting. I didn't know that. Houses are extraordinarily cheap here. You can pick up a reasonable 3 bed house in fair condition (with basement and modern heating system) for £50-60k.

This must be partly because the UK has 650 people per sq mile and Sweden has 57 (from Infoplease).

I remember reading once that the biggest sawmill premises in the UK would fit 30 times into the biggest sawmill premises in Sweden. That's partly because Sweden has a massively bigger forestry industry, but l imagine also because land is cheaper and there won't be the pressure to fit the business into a confined space, or if trying to expand, being told by the local authority that field next to you is earmarked for possible housing development, so not there please.

[Carlton green]

We also have no mortgage, because house prices here are 1/8 of what they were in Devon.

And there we have a massive factor: the proportion of somebody’s income taken up in housing costs is financially crippling on the individual and takes money out of the economy that could be either circulating or better invested in business efficiency and socially useful ways.

Sweden has no inheritance tax. It was abolished because a surviving spouse could no longer afford to live in the heavily taxed family home because all assets were tied up in the property. Also Swedes often have low household savings because of the trust in welfare systems, so many had no money to pay such bills.

I don't know whether abolishing inheritance tax would nave the same effect here, in terms of making housing more affordable for succeeding generations, or just keep prices artificially high.

Thank you for that additional detail. As is often the case whatever system is in place has unintended consequences … many are not good ones. We don’t have quite the social safety net in the UK but personal savings in the UK, against some ‘rainy day’, are (also) frighteningly small; for there are a mix of reasons for that low saving rate.

Interesting. I didn't know that. Houses are extraordinarily cheap here. You can pick up a reasonable 3 bed house in fair condition (with basement and modern heating system) for £50-60k.

This must be partly because the UK has 650 people per sq mile and Sweden has 57 (from Infoplease).

I remember reading once that the biggest sawmill premises in the UK would fit 30 times into the biggest sawmill premises in Sweden. That's partly because Sweden has a massively bigger forestry industry, but l imagine also because land is cheaper and there won't be the pressure to fit the business into a confined space, or if trying to expand, being told by the local authority that field next to you is earmarked for possible housing development, so not there please.

I’m convinced that the UK is overpopulated and that most people don’t understand that overpopulation doesn’t mean you’re now standing on someone else’s head. Whether very low population density is (overall) a good thing or not I wouldn’t like to say, but I do see some downsides to that too.

For the house prices suggested I’m surprised that the building costs are covered.