And then as an individual for tax purposes?
Nope, the point I was making was that she wasn’t eligible for any other benefit because of my income, they looked at us jointly when assessing her benefit entitlement but individual from a tax stand point.
If you got your wish and all benefits were means tested on household income then might you not be worse off?
Quite probably, but I’m not complaining about that, I do think all beenfits should be means tested, universal benefits in our society don’t make a lot of sense to me (when child benefit was introduced there was some reason behind it being universal). All I want is the tax system to consistent.
What you mean is that you’re happy for the service to get worse, as long as you don’t have to use it?
Not really, those are your words, I look at it from the point of view that I don’t believe it will get better in it’s present form and I’m ending up paying for private treatment anyway, private dentristry, private eye care, had to go private after the NHS repeatedly insisted there was nothing wrong with my wife’s eye (the private consultant actually took her seriously as did the private opticians, turns out she had a grass seed husk embedded in the front of her eye, apparent rather serious and very lucky not to have had permenant damage).
The fantastic NHS that gave my son a hospital acquired infection that damaged one of his kidneys, the NHS team who spent time auditing the cleaners and who were more worried about dust on a shelf 7 feet off the floor than the fact that they hadn’t trained the cleaner who cleaned the hospital cot, she worked very hard but only cleaned about half the cot, the NHS that seems incapable of keeping to it’s own appointment schedule, the NHS that thinks it’s fair game to charge people to park at an out of town hospital which isn’t accessible by public transport.
I’m not happy for the service to get worse, I’d much rather have a fully functionning NHS which provides good care for everybody, however I have lost faith that either the politicians or many (not all) NHS staff have the will and ability to turn it around.
