Best Of

Prepare to wield the the POWER of compulsory ID

Keir Starmer
@Keir_Starmer
·
4m
Digital ID will be a huge help in tackling illegal immigration.

But it’s so much more than that.

It will empower people every single day by giving you a new way to prove who you are.

Saving time and money when you apply for a mortgage by cutting down unnecessary paperwork.

Proving your right to rent in one click.

Personalised public services like helping parents claim eligibility for free childcare and nursery places.

It is time to put power back in people’s hands and bring the UK into the modern age.

https://x.com/Keir_Starmer/status/1981405376458142013

Will it give us the power to check and amend our data and monitor who has been accessing it?

If not, it does not empower us. Quite the contrary.

'The Green Party's proposal for a wealth tax on 1% of assets above £10m and 2% on assets above £1bn comes top of our list of tax reforms that Britons would support, with 75% giving it their backing.

93% of Green voters and 87% of Labour voters and 80% of LD voters back a wealth tax on the richest. Even 70% of Tory and 61% of Reform voters in favour

https://x.com/YouGov/status/1981319728174928268
https://ygo-assets-websites-editorial-emea.yougov.net/documents/YouGov_-_Tax_reforms.pdf

How much would it raise in the first year? I assume tax evasion/avoidance/put the Stubbs in the lorry would kick in from year 2 onwards.

Yes, plenty of the rich affected would base themselves in Monaco, Switzerland, Dubai, Florida, the Bahamas, Singapore etc if such a tax came in

They can’t take their Knightsbridge townhouses with them

And so the wealth tax argument reaches it natural conclusion - the only part of wealth that can be easily taxed is land and property.

And we simply don’t tax property efficiently or enough

And it’s going to apply to far more people than just the so called super rich with ‘wealth’ in excess of £10 million.

The super rich may not be able to take their townhouses with them but they can sell them off. They don’t need to own an asset that may be a liability.

They also take their spending on food and drink both in shops and bars/restaurants, they stop employing their cleaner, driver, security, accountant, solicitors. They stop buying their clothes, watches and jewellery, art, furniture in London too so the shops that were selling these things need fewer staff or close. Those staff have to find jobs in possibly lower paid roles elsewhere and so cut down their spending.

So great, the people have stuck it to those rich bastards by raising their taxes. Unfortunately those rich bastards aren’t going to be paying those taxes in the UK anyway now, you’ve sucked spending out of the country. You’ve affected balance of payments because a lot of those people were making their money overseas and bringing it in to the UK as they were living there.

They were also keeping maybe an office in the UK, don’t need that now. They might be about to be setting up a spin-off of one of their businesses and liked the idea of having it based in the UK as they can gets hands on.

Now they are in Zurich, Dubai, wherever they might as well do it there and employ people there.

If they care about the arts or a particularl medical condition then they aren’t going to be donating to UK based charities and entities, won’t be supporting fundraisers in the UK, they will support where they are living.

Ultimately the country is poorer and some people might feel so much better for having kicked the rich but they are still rich, just not benefiting the UK.

Despite what you say true patriots would, of course, just take the hit and stay in the greatest country on earth.

After all, it's not as if these millionaires and billionaires would be short of a bob or two if they had to pay 1% or 2% extra tax on their wealth.

Indeed, they'd still be absolutely rolling in it in a way that the vast majority of us can barely imagine. Unless they're just greedy.

You are assuming that they are mostly or even partly British.

On a smaller scale - why should my Indian or Chinese colleagues not move to another country where the bank we work for has offices? One that offers them a better tax/services/ environment?

People undersell the UK on this topic. It would still be a fabulous place to live with a wealth tax and whilst some would leave, the vast, vast majority won't.

Ah yes - “they won’t alter their behaviour” strategy on tax.

Always works.

Some will as I said. Moving to another country is towards the extreme side of changing behaviour for a tax that makes less difference to their wealth than a typical weeks of volatility in global share prices.

And yet people are bemoaning that Brexit has denied people the opportunity to move and live and work around Europe to improve their lives.

If we consider the apparent millions who have had their plans ruined by Brexit stopping them from moving as rational then it’s surely no different than the wealthy moving country for their best options - is keeping more of your own money not as valid as wanting a different culture, different career options, different weather and lifestyle.

I doubt there were millions of Brits looking to move abroad who have been stopped due to Brexit, low hundreds of thousands over several years perhaps. Unless we are including youngsters who would spend a summer or two there.

Hi None.

It was something Mrs PtP and I were looking at back then, but Brexit ruled it out. To be fair, we may not have gone anyway, and we could probably find workarounds if we really wanted to go now, but the bottom line is that it effectively closed a door for us.

Individual anecdotal examples prove nothing of course, but I should think there are quite a few others similarly affected.

I have no plans to retire to the continent but my grandparents retired to Spain, thanks to the EU, so I am very aware of how Brexit has shrunk our opportunities.

I tell you what I do miss. The free and easy travel through Europe.

A few years before Brexit I drove to Nice for a holiday and on a whim decided to return through Switzerland, Germany and Belgium. It was a delight, and I don't think I showed my passport once.

FPT

On the immigration law ghastliness

- a British Passport may help but isn’t 100% solid. Why?
- The Home Sec. can withdraw citizenship from any “dual national”
- From the Begum case, a dual national is someone who *is eligible* for another passport
- Renouncing another nationality might well not be enough. Most countries that allow renunciation allow reacquiring citizenship.
- So a future Home Sec. issues an order cancelling the citizenship of x hundred thousand people in one go.

In Ancient Athens, the Thirty Tyrants used the cancellation of citizenship to get round a law on trials for citizens.

It’s all been done before

As a Jewish person theoretically eligible for an Israeli passport this precedent has always been a little worrying.

Important to remember. If you have a grandparent or closer born on the island of Ireland you're eligible for citizenship, and can therefore be deported if this goes through.
Theoretically.

The way things are going I think anyone who has a connection to another country or has family that do should start to think about a plan B. Not as a baseline but as contingency planning. This country might be heading somewhere very dark. Hope for the best, plan for the worst.

It's rather shocking how the main three parties seem utterly disinterested in the centre ground and are (mostly) busy rushing to ape Reform. The Lib Dems aren't, but with their policy of flinging cash at the WASPI lot and comfortable limitation as the party of lovely leafy suburbs and Waitrose shoppers appear thoroughly disinterested in appealing to the sensible left, right and centre.

Badenoch needs to slap down this Lam nonsense. Threatening to expel law-abiding and tax-paying migrants who have done nothing wrong is morally repugnant and bloody stupid. It reminds me a little of Tyrion lambasting Joffrey as being the first king who was both vicious and an idiot.

It's apparently official Tory party policy. They published a draft bill setting it out in May, but no-one noticed until Lam's interview in the Sunday Times.

It's a terrible position for Badenoch to find herself in. She's under pressure to discipline a backbencher effectively for merely being better than her at gaining publicity for party policy. What a mess.

If Badenoch simply says, "this has been party policy for half a year," then, firstly, it's incredibly embarrassing that everyone ignored it, and secondly all the outrage transfers to her. Anything else she might say would be worse.

So she's left saying and doing nothing and hoping it goes away and everyone forgets. Absolute shambles.

It's basically Enoch's agenda from 1968, made real by draft legislation, isn't it?

Powell only went as far as voluntary repatriation. This is worse.

Different Powell I hope.

Thoughts and non-ecumenical prayers for a particular community in Glasgow.

BBC Breakfast
@BBCBreakfast
1h
'It's not since 1534 that a British monarch will have prayed next to a Catholic Pope'
Mark Lowen spoke to #BBCBreakfast from Vatican City where King Charles will take part in a service with Pope Leo, the first time this will have happened since the Church of England split from the Catholic Church

https://bbc.co.uk/news/articles/

They keep trotting out the line about it being the first time an English King has prayed with pope since 1534 as if it’s something that used to happen all the time but I can’t find any English ruler who has prayed with a Pope anyway. I think one Scots king did.

Alfred went to Rome didn't he?

Two Kings of Scots - Macbeth and James VIII. Admittedly debated at the time.

Yes, but he wasn't king at the time.

Thanks, long time since I read the relevant Alfred Duggen novel!

Never read that, but Pollard's biography of Alfred has him going there when he's a pretty young boy (I think, it's also been a while).

The Duggan historical novels went out of print and are hard to get nowadays, which is a shame I think. Surprised they haven't been reprinted by people such as OUP and Red Fox, whence I am currently revisiting my childhood reading in the form of Sutcliffe and Treece (and filling in the ones I missed at the time).

Sword at Sunset, by Rosemary Sutcliffe, is an outstanding novel about Arthur.

Good to hear; it's on the recently-bought-and-to-read heap on the shelf above my PC!

In all seriousness, have you thought of joining a library? There's no point in buying books you don't read.

Wash your mouth out with soap!

A pairing : ‘tsundoko’ & ‘antilibrary’.

Tsundoko is Japanese for piling up books ready to read at some later date, it implies that part of the joy is the anticipation, combined with a wistfullness that life is too short.

An antilibrary is Umberto Eco’s notion that one should curate a personal collection of resources around themes you’re curious about; not shelves of read books. He kept 30 000 of them.

Excellent, tsundoko is right up there with döstädning as epitomising life for me.

Having looked up döstädning, there is a certain amount of clash.

There is a legitimate case for giving away books that have been read, and that book shelves should be reserved for unread books. I try to do this, but do make an exception for reference works.

If you have a book that nobody in the house is ever going to read (again), then it doesn't belong in your house.

Books are not ornaments.

What is it you would rather have in the space where bookshelves are? Some “Live, Love, Laugh” signs? A Jack Vetriano Poster? Some tribal African masks?

They are a rare thing that follow both of William Morris’s suggestion to “ Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful.”

There is nothing more beautiful than a library, IMO.
Even if it's just your own lot of books, it beats most alternatives.

On the immigration law ghastliness

- a British Passport may help but isn’t 100% solid. Why?
- The Home Sec. can withdraw citizenship from any “dual national”
- From the Begum case, a dual national is someone who *is eligible* for another passport
- Renouncing another nationality might well not be enough. Most countries that allow renunciation allow reacquiring citizenship.
- So a future Home Sec. issues an order cancelling the citizenship of x hundred thousand people in one go.

In Ancient Athens, the Thirty Tyrants used the cancellation of citizenship to get round a law on trials for citizens.

It’s all been done before

As a Jewish person theoretically eligible for an Israeli passport this precedent has always been a little worrying.

History tells us that things done to the “undesirables” at breakfast are done to the Jews by mid-morning, to blacks at lunchtime and everyone else by afternoon tea.

“Yes, I'd give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety's sake!”