Best Of

How many surgeons live in council houses?

Maybe quite a lot, I don't believe there is a maximum salary for social housing. Once you have the house you get to stay there.

I'm not sure we know why they came to the country - if it was as refugees it might explain the council house.

I can’t help but feel that there should be a maximum salary. Why should public resources be used to subsidise the housing costs for those that can afford?

Why should public resources be used to subsidise childcare for the highly-paid, where the cut-off is at £100,000 a year? That is for either parent, so provided mum is on £99,000 a year and dad gets £98,000, the family still qualifies for 15 hours a week of free childcare per preschool child, and that is on top of the 15 hours for which there is no income limit.

Routinely, posh papers and accountants advise the rich (or HENRYs, high-earning, not rich yet) to use salary sacrifice to keep their income below the threshold and at the same time enjoy the Chancellor's largesse on private pensions.

Traditionally those on the left welcome universality of benefits because it means the well-off have skin in the game and will not seek to cut payments that go only to the poor. WFA is a good example. The argument for universality from the right is that it saves money on administration – paying benefits becomes more expensive where you need to check who qualifies.

Personally I would cut off child
benefit at £100k or above household income.

I would then use the savings to increase child benefit for the majority of parents who still claim it

The postwar social safety net including universal healthcare set out by the Attlee Government is a failed project in every way shape or form. The Conservative Government between 2010 and 2024 crashed the project to write-off status. Whether this was cock-up (Boris Johnson handing out cash and benefits like confetti) or conspiracy ( because they hated the hand put society) is debatable.

Nope.

The postwar plan was 100% based on rapid economic growth *and* demographics (lots of workers who remember to do the right thing and die before collecting benefits).

Everything to be paid out of current taxation.

A move to savings accounts for pensions was mooted in the 90s - reflected comprehensively on the Left.

Even then, with the vanishing of rapid growth (the rising tide reached the inherent level), less workers and the old refusing to die, it’s not dead.

Someone told the story, yesterday, of a relative who has been on a government pension (updated, indexed etc) longer than he worked in the job. Which was his whole working life up to retirement.

Which isn’t a bad thing, morally. It’s just that the fundamental premises behind the system do not work with such outcomes.

Another factor is the inability to cut our cloth according to the measure of what we have. Some little time ago, we had the story of two children in care. Due to special needs etc, a house was being purchase for their use and those of their 24/7 careers. The cost was estimated at £250,000 per child, per year. For life.

Now, I would say that is probably an improvement over the infamous Romanian orphanages. The problem is affordability.

We need to learn how to do functional without gold plating. Because if we say “Gold plated or nothing” - we may well get nothing.

OT. It so happens that my sister and her vast family are members of the Heaton Park synagogue in Prestwich where the killing took place. They were there yesterday but thankfully undamaged. Indeed the last time I visited that synagogue was for the wedding of one of her children about five years ago.

I'm really not interested in getting into this anti semitism discussion particularly when it is as full of ignorance as it so often is on here when the leading racists take the stage.

But how is it after the wanton killings of newsmen babies small children photo journalists doctors nurses and at least 60,000 non combatents we know no details whatsoever about the life stories of any of them yet we are told out of respect for the synagogue attack all demonstations against the Gazan genocide should stop. Just don't offend Jews?

Does Netanyahu answer for anything? He is a proven liar and a butcher yet not a word from the Board of Deputies against him except that trying to charge him with genocide is an outrage.

British Jews opinion of Netanyahu is strongly negative*:

"95% of adult British Jews have an opinion on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the most widely known leader among those examined. Four in five Jews hold an unfavourable opinion of him, with 65% saying they “strongly disapprove” and 15% saying they “somewhat” disapprove of him."

https://www.jpr.org.uk/reports/what-do-jews-uk-think-about-israel-and-its-leaders-and-how-has-changed-october-7

You wouldn't know that if you just read the output of the Board of Deputies, or for that matter PB, or indeed British Jihadists.

* the poll is from 2024, but things have only got worse since.

He has collected letters from every MP who likes him.

Next week he hopes to make it to double figures.

From the header-linked story:-

Sources said up to 12 letters of no confidence had already been written, but are yet to be submitted to Bob Blackman. He is chairman of the backbench 1922 Committee and would normally file letters until the threshold for challenge had been reached. By holding on to the letters, the allies of Jenrick remain in greater control of any potential challenge.

Recent rule changes now require a move by 30 per cent of the Parliamentary party or 36 letters of no-confidence. They would then hold a ballot.
https://inews.co.uk/news/politics/tories-plotting-replace-badenoch-jenrick-3955742

30% is quite a high bar, requiring almost everyone who is sceptical of a leader to act. It's a very non trivial barrier to surmount, compared with the travails of getting only 15% of letters in.

I wonder if the additional hurdle makes Badenoch a lot safer than we might suppose and brings the Conservatives quite a lot closer to Labour in terms of leader safety.

Clear betting implications here.

It'd be comically fitting if Jenrick manages to topple Badenoch, then Cleverly wins a leadership contest.

OT. It so happens that my sister and her vast family are members of the Heaton Park synagogue in Prestwich where the killing took place. They were there yesterday but thankfully undamaged. Indeed the last time I visited that synagogue was for the wedding of one of her children about five years ago.

I'm really not interested in getting into this anti semitism discussion particularly when it is as full of ignorance as it so often is on here when the leading racists take the stage.

But how is it after the wanton killings of newsmen babies small children photo journalists doctors nurses and at least 60,000 non combatents we know no details whatsoever about the life stories of any of them yet we are told out of respect for the synagogue attack all demonstations against the Gazan genocide should stop. Just don't offend Jews?

Does Netanyahu answer for anything? He is a proven liar and a butcher yet not a word from the Board of Deputies against him except that trying to charge him with genocide is an outrage.

British Jews opinion of Netanyahu is strongly negative*:

"95% of adult British Jews have an opinion on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the most widely known leader among those examined. Four in five Jews hold an unfavourable opinion of him, with 65% saying they “strongly disapprove” and 15% saying they “somewhat” disapprove of him."

https://www.jpr.org.uk/reports/what-do-jews-uk-think-about-israel-and-its-leaders-and-how-has-changed-october-7

You wouldn't know that if you just read the output of the Board of Deputies, or for that matter PB, or indeed British Jihadists.

* the poll is from 2024, but things have only got worse since.

I’m not sure I see the connection. The British Jews I know have a deeply unfavourite opinion of Bibi. Yet still consider Israel has the right to defend herself against external attack.

Sure, but when that defence turns into genocide?

The lengths to which some on here seek to deny the anti-Semitic nature of some of the pro-Palestinian demonstrators and their actions over the last two years is really very depressing and very discouraging for the future of this country and the Jewish community living here. If we refuse to name clearly what is going on, we will not be able to deal with it properly.

It saddens and angers me too much. So I will take a break. Bad enough that these things happen but then to see apparently intelligent people try to pretend that it isn't happening or to diminish it is too much for me.

Holding such demonstrations, and organising them impromptu, straight after the attack in Manchester (and earlier, straight after 7/10/23), seems like coat-trailing to me, a poke in the eye.

Guardian has some background on yesterday's killer, terrorist.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025/oct/03/manchester-synagogue-terrorist-was-on-bail-for-alleged

"The Syrian-born attacker is also believed to have other criminal convictions, although he was not on the radar of counter-terrorism officers."

This follows quite a similar pattern of a lot of these people. They have a criminal background for low level stuff.

One of the tactics ISIS recruiters used was to lean on such people that their unIslamic behaviour could never be undone without making the ultimate sacrifice.

Joan Smith has written extensively about how often terrorists have a record of domestic violence or violence against women.

As indeed we saw with those arrested in last summers race riots, where 40% had prior convictions for domestic violence.

I think you also have to take into account that a third of British men have a criminal record by the age of 50.

There's a lot of it about. We even used to have a poster here who was remanded in custody for rape.

Perhaps we could learn the obvious lesson and take male violence against women seriously.