Best Of

Something that also bothers me at the moment is how Labour are using the treasury to protect Rachel Reeves against allegations of CV fluffing. This is nothing to do with the treasury, it's a political issue and the denials need to come from a Labour source, treasury officials should point people in the direction of the chancellor or the Labour party press office.

She was assistant to the Customer Complaints Manager.

I've been asking some people I know who worked at the Bank when she was there and the reports back of what she did vs what she says she did don't match either.

As for people saying it's not a big deal, maybe it wouldn't be if she was just a functionary but she's not. She's the chancellor and has previously lied about being an economist for a private sector bank and seemingly misrepresented what she did at the Bank of England. She has used that reputation she cultivated as an "Economist for a bank" to get the role of chancellor, if Starmer had any balls he'd sack her for gross misconduct and get a better chancellor in, she's clearly useless anyway and this gives him the right cover to do it.

I see this as very much Starmer's budget, wouldn't you agree?

As for Ministers to go, I'd say it's Milliband who really needs to head off to spend more time with his heat pump. Starmer could hang the worst of the green bollocks on him.

Sadly neither looks likely.

The whole government looks to me like what would happen if you put the National Union of Students in charge of Britain.

None of them have grown up.

Good morning everyone.

In response to @Leon 's enquiry yesterday about Bluesky.

I've just dropped a toe in the water for the last few weeks, and just tipped over 100 followers. For those familiar with the Twitter timeline, I'd say it is in roughly autumn 2007 by comparison. UK politicos going onto Twitter started in about spring 2007 with early adopters or media tarts, and the process was largely done by about autumn 2008.

I like there being an absence of deliberate manipulation by Musk and the Muskovites.

I have a decent Twitter community of a little under 5k followers, since I have been cross-partisan and cross-cutting by design since I started my blog in 2007, and I have maintained my community by trimming dormant follows and followers every year or so. It's going to take some effort to rebuild on Bluesky, but that is currently possible - with lots of new people around. I get follow backs from most.

On Twitter strategy-type people (eg Mark Pack) are putting in the plumbing interconnection and future influence for their communities. A different set of hub / distributor accounts will emerge from Twitter.

Automated and ease-of-use tools are not so available. Remember the difference made by Tweetdeck and Hootsuite? I'm not sure how this will go.

I'm also not sure about Bluesky's future business model.

One test will be what happens when people who have other platforms to cross-promote from start feeling they have to be on Bluesky, and take their followers with them.

For me, a couple of my current core niches are shifting to Bluesky - active travel and disabled. Which makes the decision to transfer more likely.

From my point of view, if I lose the "patriots" and the trolls I won't miss them. Nor the Pfaffers - people focused on football, autos, flags and the far right, which seem to go together, including the Usonian types who have never left Alabama and think their laws rule everywhere. Reform UK can have them.

An absence of drive by abuse artists posting "the pedestrian should have got out of the way" (tbf I don't get that many), every time someone is run down on a zebra crossing, will be welcome. And they are irrelevant in the UK for the next several years, as in my niche it is all about delivery not diversionary debates.

Equally, an account with a small number of followers is great for self-expression, just like a blog which only gets 100 readers a week.

What do you want from it ,and what do you want to put in?

Westminster Voting Intention:

LAB: 30% (-1)
CON: 24% (=)
RFM: 21% (+1)
LDM: 12% (+2)
GRN: 8% (-2)
SNP: 3% (+1)

Via @OpiniumResearch, 11-13 Nov.
Changes w/ 30-31 Oct.

https://x.com/electionmapsuk/status/1857877965356315070

Given an election campaign Labour will be back up to where they were before.

Hardly given Labour began on over 40% and ended up on 33% in July.

Opinium not brilliant for Kemi but still a swing of just under 2% from Labour to the Tories since the GE so not great for Starmer either.

Brilliant poll for Farage whose Reform party is up 7% on the 14% they got at the GE to 21%. LDs and SNP basically unchanged since the GE like the Tories in voteshare, Greens up but by just 1%

Opposition parties flourish at this stage of a Parliament, and in local elections it can be any of them who do well. But it's hard to see the Conservative election win evolving from those figures.

I think Starmer is taking an interestingly honest approach to government.

A large part of the disillusionment that voters have for politics is down to their experience of populist politicians that promise loads, but fail to deliver. Often because their proposed solutions are undeliverable, and while those work to get elected they are a problem in government.

Starmer is staking his government on under-promising, but over-delivering, and gambling that voters are mature enough to recognise this in 2029.

Of course, he has to actually deliver for this to work, and voters to be grateful rather than just bank the gains and demand more.

How much money did the Tories lose the country by not settling the pay rises in the first place? What an utterly pointless battle that was.

I think you are assuming here that giving in to pay demands prevents strikes. It seems to me that the reverse is true - if unions see that striking works, more strikes ensue.

Well, in the NHS strikes have stopped.

There was a change of Government. Part of the reason for the strikes had gone away.

Exactly, the new government re-opened negotiations rather than continue the debilitating stand off.

LOL. No. Part of the reason for the strikes was purely political. To get rid of the Tory Government. Once that had happened that reason was gone. Having demanded 35% they settled for far less. Funny that.

On the subject of AR, this letter in the FT makes a good point:

The guy is a fucking idiot. He uses a small percentage of people misuing a tax loophole as an excuse for an attack on the whole farming industry

But that’s the thing about economics. If a small number of people are willing to pay a high price then the invisible hand adjusts all land prices accordingly.

I think everyone (other than the small percentage you mention above) would be happy if agricultural land prices crashed?

S

Yes, the invisible hand (market) here reflects the fact that, supply being near enough perfectly inelastic, the price of land is set by demand, which is certainly affected by tax incentives. Reducing them will surely push land prices down, and this is a beneficial side effect of a policy designed to raise tax revenue.

It will simply concentrate more of the farmland in the hands of the big agri-businesses who aren't affected by the tax changes.

There are very very few listed businesses owning British farmland. Almost all is owned by the big estates, which are privately held and subject to IHT.

I work with a couple of agribusiness giants that have farmland, but it’s in the USA, Canada, Ukraine, Brazil and (until recently) Russia, where the big bucks are to be made.

I think the APR changes were a bit cack handed but actually, certainly in the South and midlands, they may give tenant farmers more of a chance to pick up some holdings. I know from the long and frustrating process of trying to find land for a vineyard that most land just doesn’t come on the market from one generation to the next.

Well indeed. A relative of mine has worked his entire adult life as a tenant farmer, and his eldest daughter now works for the son of the same landowner. Needless to say, the family of the landowner are apoplectic about the new tax, but my relative is secretly pleased because it means his daughter will have more of a chance of buying some land of her own. He has to keep very quiet about it though.