Iv'e just emailed her regarding the N.I. predicted tax cuts asking how this will benefit pensioners and what they are going to do to help pensioners etc etc. I got the usual "your email has been received and will be dealt with" etc etc.
But! what really pissed me off was her address.

Alison Shepherd
Office Manager to Jill Mortimer
Member of Parliament for Hartlpeool
01429 226457

Hartlpeool !!! WTF just shows the disregard held for us, just a way of getting a seat and bags of money and can't even spell the name of the town she represents. I bet she can spell Thirsk or where ever it is she comes from.

I hate politicians.

I don't know how many questions she has asked in parliament but it won't be many

One comes to mind, I can’t remember what it was about, she has submitted 5 written questions,
https://members.parliament.uk/member/49 ... nquestions.

#uselessJill

how many times as she spoke apart from the once we all know about.

In all fairness how many people in most towns know how many questions their MP has asked.

How many times has your MP spoke Mr Accy. I haven't a clue how many times mine has. I remember Ted Leadbitter holding some record for the number of questions he asked. Why all of a sudden is the focus on asking questions or how many times they speak???? Remember when you get rid of a politician all that happens is you replace that politician with another politician.

I'm expecting the oaps rabbit in the hat will happen in the Autumn Budget.

WE ALL KNOW WHAT TO DO !!!! VOTE THESE TORY BUGGERS OUT !!!

i know, but surely voters need to know what input they put in or how many times they attend a sitting with no reasons not to. know if you have nothing to say its best to keep quiet, but its hard to imagine somewhere like the commons its hard not to have an opinion without speaking.

Well we’ll have ex Councillor Brash as MP after the election.
Now wasn’t he the one who quit the Council a few years ago when the Akers Belchers were strutting their stuff?
Might it have been better to stay and fight his corner?

Whatever floats yer boat. Personally I prefer more visibility in local matters, rather than the level of spouting in the hot air balloon more commonly known as the house of commons.

Well that wasn't a GE winning budget.
What happened to income tax cut n raising the tax thresholds.

Must be saving the best for Autumn or it's hello Reform.

What’s Reform going to do for the electorate, they are are just a bunch of right wing politicians who will look after their own, there is no money available for tax cuts.

After yesterday's budget the main losers are the lowest paid and pensioners, both groups minimally or not affected by NI cuts. A fairer cut would have been to increase tax thresholds.
This must be the most blatantly corrupt and malicious term of office of any British Government in history.

At the end of the day the U.K. is skint, there is no magic money tree, if Labour get into power nought will change. Ok the pensioners will get rise in the State Pension but if you have a private pension that will be taxed more as the rise will increase your taxable income.

exactly and so many cannot or will not get their heads around this. knock 2p off the standard rate of tax will excite the majority especially if beer, wines and spirits are left alone. personally i,d bang more on those, increase income tax but higher the amount you can have before you pay it.

Nobody's saying there's a money tree but to hit the most vulnerable in the pocket during a cost of living crisis and reward those earning the most is callous in the extreme.
Latest analysis of his budget shows people earning less than £19k pa will be £240 a year worse off because of the freeze to tax allowances.
This current government are driving more and more people into debt and poverty while pushing increased wealth and fortune towards the already wealthy and fortunate without any real attempt to disguise their intended policy.
I don't expect much to change under Starmer apart from I think his government will be sneaker and less transparent.

If I what you say is correct it just goes to show the Tories don’t give a flying f*** about the working class, they just look after their own.

A few Papers saying the tories will finish the budget of in the Autumn with rumours of N I going altogether.
Oh they ain't as skint as people believe.
And probably bring pensioners on board.
A case of wait n see.
So working tax could go down from 33% to 20% in the space of 2 years.
How could anyone be against that.

100% correct IMO

Agree another 100% most openly corrupt government in my 63 year lifetime

Speaking as a pensioner I think with the triple lock we have done ok especially last year and from this April. I don't mind giving the workforce a bit back. I personally think the tax threshold should start at the minimum wage, enabling the lower paid and us pensioners to keep what we get. £12571 is far too low as the lower tax threshold and should be increased year on year in line with the minimum wage. Where is the sense in taxing people who are on minimum wages, thus actually denying them a part of that minimum wage. It is supposed to be the minimum required to exist, not as a cash cow to the treasury.

Surprised there has been little coverage of the one million pounds that was in the budget for a Muslim memorial.

These ministers fail to mention the extra tax generated by the minimum wage Goin up over a quid an hour from next month. Extra £500 a year x a guess at 4 million NMW grafters.
And this average wage of 35k a year doesn't exist in Hpool n the north of England.

So ye the treasury remains a silent winner.

There seems to be some mooted proposal to get rid of NI and raise the same amount from Income Tax.
If it was to be abolished and Income Tax to be increased from 20% to x% that would mean pensioners would pay more in tax which would be suicidal politically.
Has anyone heard of any well thought out solutions of how this "merger" of taxes could be achieved from "experts" and be politically deliverable.
I seem to get the impression that this is a view shared by most political parties.......unless you know differently?

Lots of us older generation relate NI contributions to future pension "rights" - yes we know that in actuality it was our payments when working that paid the then pensioners.
Doing away with NI will kill off this notion and the state pension will be clamped down on as a benefit, first they'll do away with the triple lock, then they'll means test it. And both parties will be complicit as the drive to widen the gap between the rich and poor intensifies.

At the moment you can earn up to £12,570 before you have to start paying tax.
It is correct to point out that some have been dragged into paying tax since the tax thresholds were frozen in 2021.
The IFS says most tax-paying pensioners will typically be £650 a year worse off by 2027 as a result.
Ministers say this shouldn't be taken in isolation, because pensioners have benefitted from extra help like cost-of-living payments. Yes but only certain pensioners qualify for cost of living payments depending how much savings you have.

The Living Wage, if you work 40 hours a week its just under £24000 a year, why should pensioners be expected to live on half that amount ?

This idea will stay buried for the time being, plans will exist to phase out NI Contributions, yes it could be easier to calculate your salary but you can bet we would be worse off if it were abolished.

The 40 hour week still happens but for the last 17 years Ish you only get paid for 37.5 hours nowadays.
Theres rich and poor pensioners.
Suppose it's all in the planning n ambition throughout the working life.
But no way the State Pension should become taxable income whatever your circumstances.
Expecting better news in the Autumn Budget before the GE.

there are rich and poor pensioners in the same way there are rich and poor workers. those of us who are not well off always have a laugh at the saga brigade ads as these pensioners look more like 50 year olds than 65 plus. being jealous and wanting to smash the rich will not put that much more in our pockets anyway. do not think the tories are the party of the rich but once were the partyof the business man but now like em all they are the party of the big multi national business man no matter where they are based in.

I paid into pension schemes wherever I worked and had one non contributory pension, but it was always a drain on your resources.
However despite the bull, we have one o& the lowest pendion s in Europe for a country of our standing…how a single person survives on the state pension alone is a mystery to me.

They get Pension Credits if they don’t have more than £10000 savings, £201.05 if you are single and £306.85 if you are a couple and receiving it gives you other benefits.
Pension Credit can help with health costs

You’ll get free NHS dental treatment, and you can get help with the cost of glasses and transport to the hospital.

If you’re a carer, you might get an extra amount known as Carer Addition, which is worth up to £42.75 a week.

If you have a disability, you may get an extra amount known as Severe Disability Addition, which is worth up to £76.40 a week.
Pension Credit can help with housing costs

You probably won't have to pay Council Tax (unless other people live with you).
If you rent your home, you might get your rent paid in full by Housing Benefit.

If you own your home, you might be eligible for help with mortgage interest, ground rent and service charges.
Pension Credit can help with other costs

If you're 75 or over, you can get a free TV licence.
You’ll be eligible for a Cold Weather Payment during particularly cold

Benefits for lazy bastads getting nearly double the State Pension money.
Despite majority of OAPs paying for there pension thru years of taxable contributions.
Full system needs a major overall.
Not saying all benefits are not warranted by the way. Just about 90%.

those are good reasons to swerve paying into a pension scheme when you are young and need every penny you can get to give yourself and family the best life you can afford. plus there is no guarentee you,ll reach pension age anyway with the inreases of how long you need to work before you can claim it.

I still haven't had a reply from her so she appears to have no answer to my enquiry not even a lie, just silence. Typical m.p. then. She'll suddenly come to life and be wanting her picture in the press when the elections come around though won't she.

The problem causing people getting closer to paying tax on their pension is the freezing of the tax thresholds. If the same criteria used in the triple lock was applied to tax thresholds then people relying solely on the state pension would remain below the threshold or on it.

It is worth remembering that any increase in the state pension taking it over the threshold and therefore attracting tax still means the net increase is 80p in the pound at present tax rates.

I still maintain that the state pension should be free of tax and the threshold should apply to private pensions only. If people knew they were going to get the state pension free and the first £12571 (and rising) free from their private pensions, surely that would encourage more people to join private pension schemes.

There is no evidence of banging a drum in favour of pensioners getting a living income from the state from any of the parties that I can see, so it looks like we have to rely on the triple lock. If ever the lock was abandoned it would have to be replaced with something similar or better.

Reform have stated a threshold starting at 20k which would put the argument over thresholds to bed but we have to go further by getting rid of all the add on benefits and apply minimum living wage status to the state pension. It's no benefit at all to say to someone on the state pension you can earn £20k a year before paying tax and then limit them to £220 a week.

I can’t imagine many of the younger ones paying into a pension scheme if it is non contributory, they live for today not the future and some will have their parents inheritance.

Anyone on the basic State Pension can claim full pension credit providing they meet the criteria of not having more than £10k in savings, it’s tax free.
Yet if you have a PP of a similar amount together with your SP and it’s over the threshold you pay tax, where’s the right in that ?

Someone told me that in 1976……I ignored it.

that was me and knew i would not be getting any inheritance money either as my parents were ones who if they earned a quid they,d spend 99p of it. something i have followed on doing like my late sister did.

By she gets some stick.
Funny how the previous MP…who to me appeared inert, resigned after breaches of sexual misconduct were proven and as far as I can recall no one on here raised a a murmur…… how odd.

especially as i doubt a single person voted for her personally but either for the party she stood for or a vote against another one.

She does doesn't she but to some people putting the word Tory after somebody's name means that person is next to the devil incarnate.
It is bred into some people from birth. The same thing happens in the leafy suburbs of Surrey, only the other way round.
It is big problem and there really is no need for it.
But Que sera, sera.
We choose who we want to represent us and as was once said " A Country deserves it's Government because after all is said and done, they and their system produced it".

She does doesn't she but to some people putting the word Tory after somebody's name means that person is next to the devil incarnate.
It is bred into some people from birth. The same thing happens in the leafy suburbs of Surrey, only the other way round.
It is big problem and there really is no need for it.
But Que sera, sera.
We choose who we want to represent us and as was once said " A Country deserves it's Government because after all is said and done, they and their system produced it".

That’s normally the case unless the prospective candidate is locally or nationally well known, high ranking politicians are placed into safe seats like Mandelson and Sunak were.

Not the point I was making though, why was ‘Benny Hill’ left unscathed ..…almost as if a blind eye was turned to his behaviour…..looks like selective standards.
Now I wonder why.

He resigned, faced charges and was found guilty.

Indeed he did, but it was ignored ….now if it had been say a Tory, Lib Dem, Reform or the The Boston Tea Party there’d have been a meltdown…..but zilch, very odd

Snowy there has been quite a few cases of a sexual nature against MPs the majority were Tories,
MPs involved with sexual harassment Snowy, the majority Tories,
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/202 ... gainst-mps