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Comment by gumballindie | Hacker News Reader

The NHS (public healthcare), is unusable. They are taking the piss, having two hour lunch breaks at surgeries, pushing everyone towards main hospitals which are overcrowded. Schools are a gamble, it’s called the post code lottery - the masses obviously say the “rich” are sending kids private, but anyone who wants decent schooling goes private. Increased small business taxes, increased software contractor regulation, are literally killing the industry. Cities are going bankrupt due to mismanagement yet folks keep demanding tax hikes as if that’s going to fix the fundamental issues of this country. I’ve never seen the UK in such a bad state. Potholes everywhere while the government is yet to be held accountable for misspending money.

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NHS have always been fine when I’ve needed them. They could not have done more for my dad during his cancer treatment.

Same for my MIL as she deals with arthritis. And my FIL for cataracts.

I have zero complaints.

I moved to Germany and it’s so much better here. I’m terrified of moving back to the UK because the quality of life is so much worse there across the board, particularly for healthcare and public services

what i've seen with the nhs is doctors avoiding care/exams in order to save ££ (i suspect as guidance from above). i've heard these takes on public schools but they failed to explain what's actually bad about them. could you provide more detail?

as for the sw contract industry, the way i see it more like closing a loophole where contractors were essentially working as permanent employees but ended up paying less taxes. outside ir35 contracts are a thing and the fact that there's less of those is probably an indicator that they were indeed used as a loophole.

tax hikes might help, it just depends on whom.

> i've heard these takes on public schools but they failed to explain what's actually bad about them. could you provide more detail?

I'm also very interested to hear about this.

https://www.theguardian.com/education/2023/aug/20/private-sc...

Your kids likely to do better in a private school. Hard to say all public schools are bad, there are just fewer good ones and it depends where you live. It's like you either play a public/grammar school lottery or pay your dues.

Thanks for the link, but

A) from that link it's not possible to tell if there's causality between those two, and

B) it doesn't tell me what exactly is "bad" about the "bad schools", which is what I wanted to know.

Poor funding, demographics, crime, academic underperformance.

There isn’t a consistent factor, just a combination of the above. Teacher pay and conditions are also worse in state schools.

Bad schools are generally in bad areas.

A few years ago, primary age students going into high school from my home village were going to be split between two secondary (or high) schools, as not every student could be accounted for in the closer school.

The closer school was a decent high school in an affluent town across from my village. Decent teachers, grades, no drama.

The other was a poorer high school in a rough and downtrodden town. The town has higher crime, including crime which reaches students (anti-social/troubled kids, more bullying, even cases of knives being brought into school).

This is a classic pattern in the UK. Well off/decent towns within spitting distance of formerly well-off towns which used to be industrially important and are now in stagnation, with poor job prospects, crime, anti-social behaviour, poor maintenance, nothing to do, and nothing to help.

Worse average grades, worse teachers (due to high turnover from teachers being pushed out by bullying), more potential to get in trouble, and worse life potential.

Not sure how this should be worded to not be construed in a funny way, but the kids from my village would have been the only white kids in the school in the rougher town, so you can imagine how that may amplify the effect the school would have on them.

Unsurprisingly, parents protested and many sold up and moved in order to avoid the "bad school" in question and get into a better school catchment area.

If you know West Yorkshire, you probably know exactly which towns I'm talking about. Such is the reputation of both towns and their respective schools.

Thank you for taking the time to write this, much appreciated.

Side note, I skimmed your comment history and I think we kind of think alike.

> what I've seen with the nhs is doctors avoiding care/exams in order to save ££

This happens in all healthcare. Depending on the insurance, and the incentives you either get loads of pointless investigations, or none.

There are three main problems with the NHS:

1) culture

2) no social care, meaning the the NHS is a medium stay care home

3) not enough staff (see 1)

(source, half of my friends are medical in one sort of another.)

For schools, objectively English schools are performing better than ever. https://wisevoter.com/country-rankings/education-rankings-by... (trying to find the specific link to the percentage improvement is hard)

However, without support this isn't going to last.

Private schools have the veneer of betterness because they are rich and have massive selection bias. For places like west sussex, there are an unusually high number of _shit_ private schools (the key is value added in the league tables)

I am a bit surprised to read this about the UK.

Is this everywhere or just in some regions?

Anyway, the issue is not the taxation but the misuse, then?

Tax hikes coupled with higher interest rates and an increased cost of living are making a dent. For software developer, contractors in particular - the only way to reach something that somewhat resembles US pay - are now subject to tightened regulation called IR35. Contracts "inside" IR53 are taxed just like regular pay even if done via an LTD and you can't claim expenses. This regulation is meant to catch disguised employees, but large clients don't want to risk it. In reality what's happening is that contract work is sent to outsourcing companies, one of which is the prime minister's wife's father Infosys. And that's one example. Outside tech there are all sorts of "traps": people's wages are increasing only to be caught up in higher tax brackets essentially meaning their pay is still low. Factoring in what I wrote about taxes, col, and interest raters, everyone is much poorer now than before. A lot of low income earners are squeaking about further tax hikes as if that's going to improve their lifes somehow. It's a crab mentality.

In regards to regions, it naturally varies, but overall the situation is the same everywhere. For instance, the second largest city just went bankrupt and I suppose those people are in for a ride. The region where I live, despite being the type that pays the tax so many yearn for, roads are filled with potholes, and the local surgery constantly complains about how much work they need to do. Friday, 2 PM it's closed for the weekend, and each day there's a two hour lunch break. You can't make this up.

But throughout schools, hospitals, complain about being understaffed, including private companies, yet when they try and increase wages to attract talent, said wages are immediately taxed. I can go on for ages, but something's way off about the country and it seems like a lot of factors are converging and forming a perfect storm.

Its not direct taxes that people is causing pain for those on lower income.

taxation for people on £250k is very different to those on £25k

Sure _graduates_ are feeling the pinch of tax. No, the cost of living is driven by three things:

Rent.

Staple inflation (food, basic travel, etc)

fucking fuel prices.

If you're outside of london and you are earning the average of £27k after tax its £1800 a month.

rent for a two bed place is between £850-1200 a month, thats going to go up

your heating is £250 a month (thats doubled )

your food bill has doubled

Your car insurance has gone up to £1k a year

Thats the real squeeze. Yes taxing them harder is bad.

However taxing someone on £250k a year a bit more, fine they can fucking take it.

removing the ridiculous contractor loophole where you can go from 45% income tax to <30% even if you earn megabucks is great.(hello IR35) Now increase captial gains tax.

Fun fact: when you take account of inflation, petrol's pretty cheap (135p in 2012 would be 184p today according to the BofE's inflation calculator - you get different results with different starting points of course, but it's hard to cherry-pick one that's that runs much above inflation over the same period). I reckon fuel costs feel worse now because salaries have flatlined.

> removing the ridiculous contractor loophole where you can go from 45% income tax to <30%

While paying your own holiday, insurance, employer's stamp, sick pay, pensions, bench time, etc. If you've got an in-demand skill and you're healthy I'd say it's definitely an improvement, but it's not quite as simple as comparing tax rates.

> While paying your own holiday, insurance, employer's stamp, sick pay, pensions, bench time, etc.

Whilst also being able to write of a bunch of things against tax (insurance, car, property if you're clever, loans etc etc etc). I am fully aware of how big the loophole used to be. Its also being abused to keep costs down at high turnover jobs as well. but that's another issue.

> If you've got an in-demand skill and you're healthy I'd say it's definitely an improvement, but it's not quite as simple as comparing tax rates.

Its entirely to do with tax minimisation, otherwise people wouldn't go through the faff of doing it? Why on earth would you give up employment rights and stability, just so you can have the privilege of doing accounts each year?

Its avoiding tax, something that low/middle earners aren't able to do/cost effective enough.

Local government has two sources of funds - money raised locally via taxation, and a grant from central government.

To take Birmingham as an example, the central government grant in 2010 was £1.125bn, but that had been reduced to £250m by 2020. Some of this was offset by locally retained business rates (£550m which previously went to central government) but there's still a shortfall of £525m (more when you account for inflation).

Local government has responded by cutting services to the bone, and focusing on those services that they are required by statute to provide. Some councils also took a shot at commercial property investment (they're barred from investing in residential property for ideological reasons). You can imagine how those investments are doing in the post-WFH world.

So over the past decade all the slack (and then some) has been removed from the system. So when something unexpected comes along (like a £760m equal pay award) it's the straw that breaks the camel's back. But the root cause is the decade of austerity we've just suffered. Cutting back even further isn't the answer.

Thank you for explaining what's actually going on. Groups like the "Taxpayers Alliance" (which is where I suspect our friend is getting their information from) are actually very right-wing, extreme libertarian think tanks pushing an agenda that's supposed to make people feel like taxation is unfair.

Personally, I don't actually pay myself particularly well but I still pay as much tax as I possibly can, even though I despise the current government. I claim none of the deductions I'm entitled to, and I still have enough to live comfortably.

The tories and austerity have spent more than a decade destroying this country.

Tufton Street. Meh.

When someone starts in on them I always ask if they've ever tried joining the Taxpayers Alliance.

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