Dear Sir,
I believe I find myself in a similar position to many in our town who work full-time and have been fortunate enough to get on the property ladder, a little dismayed by our MP Paul Howell and his vote to hike our National Insurance by 10% and put a cap on care alone, of £86,000.
Not only has our personal taxable allowance been frozen, meaning as the years go on we’ll get to keep less of what we earn but his government also wants to take more from us as full-time workers, especially those of us who earn less than £50,000. He won’t pay a penny extra on the income from the sixteen properties he owns though, but his tenants probably will.
The cap means should I need social care, we’ll have to sell our home. Not that we’ve paid enough of the mortgage off to cover £86,000 but should my wife need it too, we’ll need to find £172,000. Oh, and our pensions will be worth significantly less from scrapping the triple lock by the time we come to need it.
Is this making work pay or making work, worth less?
Not to worry though, the Libdems are going to save us all up to £400 on our council tax which couldn’t have come at a better time with all these increases. Or that was what was promised until they voted against starting a working group to look at it or even speak on the matter at the last P&R meeting at town council and voted to increase council tax at County for the next four years!
It seems not keeping election pledges is the order of the day for our budding politicians in Newton Aycliffe, I’ll remember this and I’m sure many others will too.
Simon Hocking