Another Glorious Day

It was another glorious day today with full sun and an afternoon temp per my car of 30C. This morning I met up with my three sisters for the first time in nearly two years. Whilst we speak regularly, it’s not the same as meeting in person. We met in the open in a park, got seats in the shade and all wanted an ice cream rather than a drink! This afternoon I met up with my friend L for lunch outside and a lovely walk around some landscape gardens. I succumbed to another ice cream! 

Day 540 / Day 51 of Step 4 of Roadmap Easing (for my record only)
4 in 5 people over 16 have now had two vaccine doses in the UK. The Govt plans to recruit 50,000 more nurses to tackle backlogs. The pandemic really highlighted the problems with artificial barriers between what is health care and what is social care and different approaches to funding. The PM today announced some new funding changes, but what I haven’t heard yet are the structural / organisational changes. There will be a new ‘social care levy’ of 1.25% on employee and employer NI from Apr 2022 which will also be levied on working pensioners from Apr 2023. From Oct 2023 there will be a £86,000 cap on how much you pay for care over your lifetime (this is in effect nursing care, not the cost of accommodation, food etc). Someone with financial assets less than £20,000 won’t pay from their assets, but may contribute from income. If you have assets of between £20k and £100k it will be means tested. TBH it sounded complicated and a bit lacking in detail / clarity. There will also be an increase in dividend tax and the ‘triple lock’ on state pensions will not be fully applied this year, it will be a 2.5% increase not the earning increase as quite rightly looking at the last two years, the figure this year is a statistical anomaly which wouldn’t be fair to follow.