Best Of

Populism - policies that are simple, easy to implement, cost nothing and only harm people we don’t like.

I just stand by the fact that farmers shouldn't have a tax exemption. They haven't had one forever, this is a very recent thing.

But then I think fuel duty freeze and the triple lock should both go too.

For the umpteenth time, the APR is not a tax break. It’s an investment. Agriculture provides half of the food we eat in UK - APR is protection to UK consumers from price rises, global supply chain issues bringing shortages. The farming industry keeps four million people in jobs, trades, crafts, and skills, APR protects those jobs from foreign competition. The APR goes toward looking after nature, our habitats and environment, balancing land use, protecting soil, water, air. 70% of UK land in agricultural use is the UKs carbon sink. The APR helps to look after an industry bringing in £130B to UK economy.

Now can you see Labour axing it, because you and they only understand it as unnecessary tax exemption in this situation, is actually completely unnecessary boneheaded vandalism?

If you listen to the right wingers on PB - honest Pirates like Barty, who don’t believe money should be thrown at UK agriculture to shape the prices in supermarkets instead let the consumer choose antopeadian or British lamb themselves, is to me rather warped view of what capitalism is - because when market place turns to dominance, cartels and lack of choice, you don’t actually have capitalism, it died when the market and competition and choice died, so of course capitalist governments must intervene - and ignore the simpleton views like from kyf100 who can only see Labours APR axing as a tribal, partisan and ideological. Instead listen to me, is not what I have described in para 1 not worth government forms of investment, by every nation state in the world irrespective of domestic politics and economics?

It is tribal, partisan and ideological.

Just like their attack on people who send their children to private school, with the imposition of VAT.

Just like their attack on investors with the CGT hike (while keeping landlord CGT the same and maintaining the exemption for primary homes).

Just like their attack on the private sector, by raising Employer's NI and lowering the threshold.

Labour's aim is to punish people they don't like.

It's not 'punishment' is it? It's just a fact that all governments have a tendency to raise taxes/cut spending on those who aren't their natural supporters. It's "tribal, partisan and ideological" when the side you don't like does it, and practical tough decisions when it's your side. Some people just got so used to 14 years of a Tory government that hit other people while protecting them from even limited pain, they're now crying about it like babies.

Labour faced public finances in a state and so faced a choice - do they badly disappoint supporters who'll claim betrayal, or scrape around to get what extra money they can while signalling that the pain is shared and they can fulfil promises to some extent. From that perspective it's a no brainer to look to people who by any estimation are among the wealthiest cohort in the country and don't tend to vote Labour.

That's politics, it's about priorities and isn't going to be fair in that someone will be hit by any tax change or spending shift. You can equally look at things Labour would clearly love to do but won't go near for practical and electoral reasons to show aren't being more tribal and partisan than any government.

Meanwhile, if you want someone to blame for the rise in employer's NI it's Jeremy Hunt - who made the reckless decision to cut employees' NI as a pre-election bribe and trap for Labour. Whose answer to get out of the pickle it presented them has been to raise it on employers so they can fill the hole while not technically raising taxes on ordinary working people.

That might well be a wrong decision economically, but it's fairly obvious why they did it politically - and if you're looking for someone to blame it's the Tories for abandoning economic sobriety in favour of playing political games.

Off topic, but relevant given discussion on immigration earlier today. I can understand a fear of net migration figures in the hundreds of thousands, but what I find worthy of contempt is when this discussion is divorced from any real understanding of why people are migrating. Today's 'The Take's from Al Jazeera discusses the experiences of women in Sudan: https://pca.st/episode/7874d751-b1e2-4a45-888b-7d8f3f60f9fb.

To summarise, with apologies for the language: women are being raped at such scale by the RSF that suicide statistics are on the rise as women choose to take their own lives rather than fall into the hands of RSF
fighters. Is it any surprise that people want to migrate away from this?

Of course a reasonable response is that sexual violence is such an incredibly common historical fact that it is the modern western world that is unusual for its relative safety for women. That may be true, but I find it grossly unjustifiable to argue that this relative safety should be open only to those who happen to be born in the right part of the world.

This isn't really an argument for migration - I think it is a really poor solution for everyone concerned - but those who simultaneously argue against migration and against development support for places like Sudan are criminals, in my view.

Regrettably, however, the experience of Sweden suggests that as well as importing those sheltering from rape they have also been importing a not inconsiderable number of rapists.

As I said I'm not making a pro-immigration argument. I'm making the argument that we will never reduce the pull of international migration whilst there are parts of the world in the situation Sudan is currently in. Trying to stop migration in
this context will destroy the ethical basis of our nation states as we take more and more extreme measures to try to stop people arriving here, having escaped from there.

Afghan woman are even more deserving of our help than those in Sudan. What is being done to them is truly evil.

"Andrew Tettenborn
Non-crime hate incidents are out of control"

https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/non-hate-crime-incidents-are-out-of-control/

For all those of us who don't have a Spectator account: https://archive.is/eiYHi

Thanks for the link and for following up the theme I raised earlier (comments passim. screen .. er .. 94).

I think they might be pushing slightly to hard on this being "out of control", as the increase from last year quoted in the Telegraph podcast I cited was 2.4%, which whatever we think is hardly out of control - and we don't really know anything from stats on a brand new Government. It's too early to tell.

I'm a little reminded of the PMQ question (This week I think? Farage?) where he cited £5bn spent on warehousing possibly illegal immigrants in 2022-3 as being a reason for having a go at the new Government, and their policies therefore being useless.

I'm concerned about these, and about how difficult it is to challenge if a Chief Constable lets it through onto the text of an Enhanced Disclosure Request for a job or charity role check. The last serious legal challenge I saw on this left unfettered discretion in place iirc. Back in the mid 2016-17 we had a Chief Constable in Notts who was an enthusiast for recording non-crime hate incidents around misogyny as a hate crime, and imo overdid it.

I think there's an element in this current shouting about "suddenly it's affecting US", and the response is somewhat misjudged. IMO there's too much emphasis on edge cases being argued as undermining the whole thing. I do have some sympathy with the Suella Braverman changes in this area, and such powers being used too readily - but to frame it all as WOKE is to throw the baby out with the bathwater.

We'll see.

I don't think they should exist at all. If it isn't a crime, the police shouldn't be investigating it. Investigating non-crimes is the sort of thing the Stasi used to do.

Off topic, but relevant given discussion on immigration earlier today. I can understand a fear of net migration figures in the hundreds of thousands, but what I find worthy of contempt is when this discussion is divorced from any real understanding of why people are migrating. Today's 'The Take's from Al Jazeera discusses the experiences of women in Sudan: https://pca.st/episode/7874d751-b1e2-4a45-888b-7d8f3f60f9fb.

To summarise, with apologies for the language: women are being raped at such scale by the RSF that suicide statistics are on the rise as women choose to take their own lives rather than fall into the hands of RSF
fighters. Is it any surprise that people want to migrate away from this?

Of course a reasonable response is that sexual violence is such an incredibly common historical fact that it is the modern western world that is unusual for its relative safety for women. That may be true, but I find it grossly unjustifiable to argue that this relative safety should be open only to those who happen to be born in the right part of the world.

This isn't really an argument for migration - I think it is a really poor solution for everyone concerned - but those who simultaneously argue against migration and against development support for places like Sudan are criminals, in my view.

Regrettably, however, the experience of Sweden suggests that as well as importing those sheltering from rape they have also been importing a not inconsiderable number of rapists.

We are all, pace @kjh , overlooking the important question:

Were they animals or do they count as birds?

Birds are in fact dinosaurs.

Maybe the ones you’re dating at your age. 😘

Reptiles as a group includes the birds, because the latter are descended from dinosaurs (which were reptiles). The closest living relatives of the birds are in fact the crocodiles.

I was only joking.

You are still my favourite PBer. ❤️

After Robert, OGH and TSE, obviously. 🙂

And Viewcode, Ydoethur. Nigel, Malmesbury, Nicky, Barty, Lucky, Malc.
Decrepit, Stodge, Stu, BigG, Oldy, Ben, Kin, Rotten, Jos. Leon.
Cyclefree. Yokes. Mr Bristols. The Balrog. And Horse.

So. See? You’re high on the speed dial.