A new Conservative party poster appeared to be backfiring last night as media commentators attacked the ad and a new spoof site was set up to parody the campaign
A new Conservative party poster appeared to be backfiring last night with a range of media commentators attacking the ad and a new spoof site set up to parody the campaign.
Trailed on Conservative Home yesterday, a new posted outlining that, “Now Gordon wants £20,000 when you die” will appear at 18 sites nationwide. But writing on the Spectator’s Coffee House blog, Peter Hoskin describes the poster as “disingenuous”:
Andy Burnham this morning denied the death tax claim with the words, “The Guardian story suggests a £20,000 flat levy. I’m not currently considering that as a lead option for reform.” Sure, the Health Secretary has left himself some wiggle room – he could still introduce the levy. But the fact remains that the death tax isn’t current Labour policy. It may never be. And it’s disingenuous to suggest otherwise.
On politics.co.uk, Alex Stevenson writes that Andrew Lansley’s decision to push the death tax line even after Burnham’s statement was “only a flimsy covering over the scare tactics so keenly seized on by the opposition.” On Sky’s Boulton & Co. Miranda Richardson says, “It seems a somewhat wishy-washy basis on which to campaign.”
Clifford Singer, the man behind the viral MyDavidCameron spoof poster site, quickly launched a MyToryTombstone site. An online generator will be in place soon but in the meantime, the graphically skilled can email their posters to [email protected].
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37 Responses to “New Tory ad backfires”
Liz McShane
Anon – re manufacturing, yes it is unfortunately in decline but you can’t pin all the blame at GB’s door, I think the rot set in a few years back with Mrs T’s over-zealous desire to make Britain a financial services-led economy at the expense of other key/traditional sectors.
Re the poll ratings that I referred to – LFF is merely reporting them from another source (have another read of the thread) – they are not LFF’s original data.
Richard Blogger
@Roger 3:22 pm
The Tory proposal is to take £8,000 from you at 65 and give you free social care in return.
NO NO NO, that is NOT what they are suggesting. The policuy is very simple, and here are their words exactly:
“we will allow everyone – on retirement – to protect their homes from being sold to fund residential care costs by paying a one-off insurance premium of £8,000.”
The point is that they will only pay for residential care. So at retirement you hand over £8K and if you need to go into a residential home or a nursing home then the insurance company will pay. The problem is two-fold, firstly, people want to live in their own homes, and want to stay there as long as possible, but the Tories have no plan to pay for that. Consequently, social commentators say that the Tories plan will mean that when people get infirm and need help in their home, they will have the option of paying for help themselves, or going into residential care. Not the sort of option most people will want to make. The other problem is the cost, as has been mentioned upthread. Residential care costs on average £18K per year, nursing home care costs £25K per year. The Tories have not explained how a £8K premium will pay for that level of care (and remember, because of the other point I made – people going into care before they need to – they will live longer in residential care). The insurance companies are not interested in the idea, and a Tory government will not want to fund it.So it seems that the Tories are promising something that they cannot deliver.
Anon E Mouse
Richard Blogger – Long time no posts dude – where you been?
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Roger
Richard – of course you are right and I was over-generalising by using ‘free social care’ in the loosest rhetorical sense.
In fact neither the Tory £8,000 at retirement nor the Green Paper £20,000
at death option would cover the whole range of possible social care costs.
My point was from the POV of people whose primary interest is in getting hold of as much of their parent’s estate as possible (and why the fuck should we care about the views of such people?) both proposals will ‘cost’ on average the same (i.e. estates will be worth about £20k less than they would have been worth by the time of death).
And as you say the Tory proposal is not a good deal in itself and I am personally sure from past experience working for a company that sold long term care insurance that neither insurers nor most retirees will touch this with a bargepole – unless there is some incentive for them the Tories have not yet told us about.
The Green Paper option while also imperfect does at least make some attempt to cover the real average costs and by considering whether it needs to be mandatory or not addresses the well-documented refusal of virtually everyone who is nearing or past retirement to face the unfaceable.