Tuesday 9 October 2007

A Comment

' I have a friend living in Cornhill in Northumberland. If he goes into care he will have to sell his house. If he crosses the bridge into Coldstream he can keep his house for his family to inherit. That sums up Brown for me. If you are English under this government you have a lot more to worry about than inheritance tax.'

9 comments:

Newmania said...

Yes indeed HG ..but what exactly is the position on care between the two countries? Is this quite right.

Oh me me me ...I was on Doughty Street with dale (I went outthere a chorus girl ...)
xx

hatfield girl said...

People in Scotland get free care in their houses to enable them to stay there when they are old and not be unhappy in 'homes' .
People in England have to pay for this and, as most have just their house, their pension (what has been left of it) and what savings the regime has not sequestered, that means selling their house, before or immediately after they are dead, rather than leaving it to their family.

While it is possible to take different views on the propriety of paying for care for old people when they have any resources at all to call upon, it is not proper that people living in different parts of what is for the moment a single state, should be so differently treated.
Personally, I am in favour of having to pay up for personal care where there are any resources so to do, and rather against the privatisation of, for domestic services that could be reasonably offered within the family, socially generated resources. But, then, it would be unlikely that a garden city reared, state direct grant educated, public library consuming, Lemsford lido frequenting, state scholarship holding university educated, SSRC research funded working clas Girl would be otherwise. Innit?

Hatfield and the North paused at 9pm, N, and were disappointed you didn't wave but impressed you made your points and that they knew a Girl who'd spoke to...

Sackerson said...

HG: I think Frank Field offered the right compromise - exclude the cost of an average semi from the financial assessment. But Blair and his power-worshippers wouldn't listen to any ideas from such a decent, sensible man.

hatfield girl said...

The anti-Field Labour Power Elite Front has baffled me S, what he says and his obvious preparedness to cope with what we all know now to call moral hazard ought to recomment him and his sensible policies to any party in the advanced economies.

Newmania said...

I was introduced to Frank Field`s work on Welfare by Arthurian legend ...a fellow Islington Conservative and I think I was as impressed by it as anything I have read. What astonished me , of course , was that it came from Labour.Gordon brown was the ring leader of the back bench assasination and thats the real reason why I never liked him and never will.




I was a direct grant recipient and remain somewhat gauche HG you , on the other hand , always seem the last word in sophistication to me . Do I understand that you are now back in Blighty? I thought you were gone for good .We are exchanging tommorow and leaving London on the 23rd...


BTW...You are making a reference aren`t you , is it from 42nd street ? I cannot pin it down Grrr

XX

hatfield girl said...

'..somewhat gauche..' And there I was thinking of you as right of centre.
You keep displaying open-mindedness, N, that can sit well with Conservatism but never with being right-wing.
Did you see Labour is trying to stir trouble over selective schools again? Will you set out some views on a reasonable parent's approach to providing a good education? You are heading deep into educating for the next 20 years so must be thinking hard about it.

Newmania said...

Yes I did . In the last decade one Grammar school`s status has been challenged .Clearly an unrgent matter for education and nothing to do with playing politics .

Its as if Government has stopped entirely . Thankyou for your kind comment HG although in some ways I am quite right wing. Immigration , Europe , Drugs , crime and so on . For society its never an easy question.

Lewes has excellent schools

hatfield girl said...

'Lewes has excellent schools'.

So why, and in what does their excellence consist? And why did you fear that Islington did not?

Holborn and St Pancras are trying (for decades) still to get a community secondary school south of the Euston Road. Frankly having a school at all is an improvement for some. Denying schools, or letting them degenerate into incompetence, is a way of disrupting communities inappropriately (for the authorities) settled in some areas.

Anonymous said...

Frank Field, if I recall correctly, was hauled in by New Labour way back to reform welfare. He came up with a raft of sensible and workable solutions. And was kicked out of the inner circle.

If I recall correctly (it was a long time ago, and in - it would seem - another country).

Newmania - Lilith's boyfriend here. Not to threaten you :-) but to say, well done on 18 Doughty Street, and your blog is compulsive reading. And this from a lifelong "primitive" socialist (my term - I like the idea of 'from each ..., to each ...).

Can't believe ZaNu Labour had the utter gall to sing The Red Flag at the end of their annual pantomime.