Energy prices Government help etc

Interesting. In my garage I have a flourescent tube (and a separate LED bulb). I've thought about ditching it, and would have if it spent a lot of time on. But it doesn't, so it hasn't felt like good sense to throwaway a functioning and 'relatively' efficient fitting and replace it before its reached end of life.

That said, I've also toyed with the idea of changing things around so its on its own separate switch: at the moment it is on the same switch that the bulb is on, and its the latter that is needed more often (it lights up the part of the garage next to the second FF and the internal access). That said, in most cases where it isn't needed, it is likely to only be on for a handful of tens of seconds.

Well, doctors can vote anything they like, but it is the government that determines number of medical students trained.  And they have increased the numbers quite substantially. Which makes it all the more incomprehensible that they can't see the (probably unintended) consequences of their pensions taxation policy. 

Surely you would turn it off during the DAY, so it could run overnight on the lower-rate tariff?

E.g. turn off at 17:00 (at -18'C) and coast to 01:00 (still below -10'C) before switching back on to catch up, thereby shifting hours of day usage to night?

The sipp cap is silly. Why stop people saving. But then again capital gains tax is silly. It virtually makes no money for the Exchequer.

Remember that using the 4% rule, £4000 pa of pension is equivalent to £100K - and some would say the rate ought to be lower than 4% - so when I say several hundreds of thousands that isn't an enormous amount of actual pension per year.

I have no problem with people arguing the remuneration of doctors is too high (and pension is just delayed remuneration, albeit that you don't have much control over it). We will then get the doctors who are willing to work for less (and doctors salaries are already 30-odd percent down in real terms since 2008). Personally I wouldn't want that - I'd want to try and attract the brightest and best into medicine - but I can see that many people may disagree and think the government should do this. However, it doesn't address the real problem of what to do right now.

The problems is - as I said - the incentive is to leave earlier because your pension is actually HIGHER by leaving earlier (as it gets index linked whereas salary is most definitely not, year on year).  So you lose doctors earlier and give them higher pensions - is that what you think the government is trying to do? If I left just one year later, my pension would have been permanently less by several thousand per year (there's your first £100K of disincentive to stay on) and I would have lost a year of it (add some more £Ks) and I would have had to pay contributions at 15% (add some more £Ks) and I would have been liable for AA on deemed pension growth even though the pension would have been much less that having taken it earlier (more £Ks). The extra year's growth (minus LTA) would have been tiny in comparison to the above. There was no option to take employer pension contributions as salary instead.

I am indeed fortunate and have never complained about paying tax on my salary (including pension) at higher rates. That's only fair, and I am happy to do so. However, until you are in a position where earning more leads directly to you taking home less (marginal tax rates over 100%, which I had for two years) and where you have zero control over how much you contribute to your pension and are only told after the event how much you have exceeded the deemed limit, you may not fully understand the kafkaesque way this has turned out in practice.  

There is also a misunderstanding though when talking about "extraordinary high" salaries here. You really don't have to be on very high salaries to come a cropper with the AA, which is calculated in such a way that you are often now taxed on illusory growth that you will never receive because of the complex ways the pension scheme has evolved and been modified (eg many people are members of two schemes, and due to the way they are calculated, deemed growth may be positive in one and negative in the other, but the negative is always zeroed off and not offset against the positive). 

Of note is that the government DID recognise the effects on judges and changed things so that the pensions were tax unregistered (ie received no tax relief so didn't need AA/LTA to be applied). 

Bottom line - I am very happy to pay 40/45% tax plus 3.25% NI on everything. I'd be happy to only contribute up to AA and LTA to my pension, and to take the rest as salary. But where you set up a complex, uncontrollable system that disincentives working, and leads to marginal tax rates way higher than that, there is something wrong.

Anyway, I am (mostly) out, looks that that is what the government wanted, good luck to the NHS. 

Look - I am probably oversharing, and the fact is I am in a fortunate place in many ways to have the options I do - I am not complaining about my position. But it absolutely is currently incentivised for me (and many others) to cut down NHS work sooner rather than later - and it is real problem for a government that values the NHS to have introduced a system that encourages senior doctors to leave 5-10 years earlier than they otherwise might. Now, whether this government does value the NHS, and/or has a strategy to rid itself of overpaid experienced doctors to allow room for lower paid unexperienced tick-box medical algorithm managers is obviously up for discussion.  

In Ukraine (before the war and probably still now in Kyiv and further west), Doctors are rightly held in high regard. Unlike in the UK it is not difficult to see one as many are trained. No doubt many will be thinking "but would I really want to trust a doctor in Ukraine"? Well I would without a doubt. Why should I trust a doctor trained in India or the UK any more than I would seeing a doctor in a high end hospital in Kyiv? I have plenty of examples but they mostly relate to my children so won't give them publicly but suffice to say (for example) a 10 hour overnight EEG test with live specialist monitoring and recording in a private room in a pleasant environment is very modestly priced.

When it comes to dentists I have first hand experience and have done a lot of research. Not only are practices more available, but complex procedures like root canal therapy which are typically done poorly in this country can be obtained there at a much higher standard. For example, my dentist in the UK will do root canal and if I'm lucky he will use a "rubber dam" (considered mandatory). He won't use a dental microscope as he isn't trained to use one. We do have "endodontists" who can do root canals to a high standard but there are not many of them and they are eye wateringly expensive. Here we have "general" dentists who do many jobs to an acceptable but typically not exemplary  standard. In Ukraine a typical surgery will divide these tasks among appropriate specialists (endodontists for root canal, periodontist for gums etc). A RCT here will be a couple of vists of maybe an hour each if you're lucky. In Ukraine where my endodontist saved two teeth by re-doing the roots, it was an hour _per root_ plus an hour. So for a 3 root tooth thats four hours. Most in the UK can't afford to pay even a general dentist for 4 hours of work.

And that is Ukraine - a fairly poor country. Why is it so bad here ?