Best Of

StaLLMer will do nothing to help me, presumably I'm well enough off

@Keir_Starmer

From April, we're raising the National Living Wage and National Minimum Wage.

The cost of living is the number one issue people are facing, with too many struggling to make ends meet.

I am determined to tackle it.

https://x.com/Keir_Starmer/status/1993379464516939998

You can have too much of a good thing. It made a lot of sense to lift the NMW rapidly when we were short of labour and trying to entice people back into the job market. Now, with unemployment rising, I am really not sure it is a good idea. At the margins the employer will simply not be able to recover their costs so the employment will disappear. Conversely, in the public sector the cost of services will increase. In both cases the wage increase will be inflationary.

For those who lose their jobs but would have been willing to work for less this is not "tackling" the cost of living, it is aggravating it. For those on fixed incomes the cost of living gets worse as costs go up. This is pretty basic stuff and it is disappointing that the government seems to be finding it so difficult.

If you have hens that lay golden eggs, trying to squeeze more eggs out of them (or threatening to cut them open to get all of the eggs out) teaches them to fly

So, you're saying that additional taxation makes people work harder than ever before?

It always makes me laugh that the well-off (which let's be honest includes most of us on here) often assume that higher taxation leads to less inclination to work. That may be the case for the well-off (although in my experience most successful people work hard because they enjoy it, not directly because they calculate each penny they will earn).

But in any case, when you are less well-off if finances get tight whether because of increased costs or reduced income the first inclination is to see if you have get some extra hours, work longer, earn a bit more. I can remember this only too well from my younger day - a lot of Laffer followers seem to have completely forgotten (if they ever knew) what it is like to be really tight for money.

Most of you missing the point that gross inequality might be more than just a little bit corrosive.

The fact that inequality gets passed down the generations via inherited wealth, inequality of opportunity, etc. - meaning that we seldom put the best people in the top jobs - adds salt to the wounds that damage our country.

How would you define the top 100 jobs in Britain, and how many of them would that apply to? Would Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves be on the list?

Typically narrow thinking on your part.

This illustrates the issue:

Business: 68% of FTSE 100 chairs and 37% of FTSE 100 chief executives were privately educated.
Law: 62% of senior judges were privately educated.
Politics: 52% of the House of Lords are privately educated, and 47% of the shadow cabinet are too.
Media: One-third of regular newspaper columnists attended private schools, and one-third of high-profile actors are privately educated, per this report from The Stage.
Civil Service: 47% of permanent secretaries in the civil service were privately educated.

https://www.suttontrust.com/our-research/elitist-britain-2019/
https://elitistbritain.suttontrust.com

Is there any evidence that the people in each of those categories who weren't privately educated perform better?

Do you think the 7% who were privately educated deserve to take 63% of the senior judge positions? Were they inherently better at birth?

That's a contradictory complaint if it's their education that you take issue with. Even if they were not inherently better at birth, their education and training might make them more suited for a position of authority.

For your average successful Barrister or Advocate, becoming a Judge means a significant drop in income.

I suspect that those who are privately educated are more likely to come from relatively well off backgrounds, and are therefore better able to weather the income drop. While those who are state educated are more likely to still be paying off the mortgage.

I know this is Peston, but the government is quite timid enough for this to be true...

John Fingleton’s review for the government of how to reduce unnecessary barriers and costs for nuclear power development is a tour de force, a compelling road map for how to accelerate important infrastructure investment in the UK - which is the sine qua non of improving growth and living standards (read John’s nutshell below).

For the last eight weeks he was assured that the prime minister and chancellor would accept and implement the recommendations in full. He even tweaked an important clause at the government’s request, to give them a bit more flexibility over the means to implementation.

I understand he has now been told that at the budget tomorrow the welcome will be conditional, subject to further work and review - because the Chancellor has been nobbled by a legal and planning adviser, who claims the Fingleton recommendations somehow breach the UK’s environmental, trade and human rights obligations.

He and his colleagues believe this is nonsense. They examined the legal considerations in their assessment. But they fear that yet again the dead hand of official caution has squashed - potentially for months and years - important growth-enhancing investment.
https://x.com/Peston/status/1993295277877334275

Reduce safety regulations for the nuclear industry?
Watch the documentaries on what the negligent t****rs did at Sellafield under the current "overly strict" regulations.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b07v80s4
We'd be paying for it for generations.
It's not just the UK either, the nuclear industry's habit of throwing the difficult stuff into a pond for someone else to deal with was the problem at Fukushima.

The stuff they are talking about binning is nothing to do with nuclear safety.

That's to fall into "All the regulations are about safety" bullshit.

See the comedy of hundreds of millions being spent at Sizewell to save fewer salmon than are in the window of my local fishmonger.

In fact the bullshit regulation are great to hide real problems behind. Grenfell had metric tons of documents to prove that it was structurally sound, ecologically sound, socially cohesive etc etc. Even that it was fireproof. There was one tiny flaw - it was covered in fire lighters.

Another classic was the Royal Navy shells scandal in WWI. It turned out that the main armament shell of the battleships were shit. An extremely long and complex testing regime had been used. Until a mathematician pointed out that the effect was that if a shell in a batch failed, test the next one. If that failed...... Yes, find one that works and it's all good. So a huge pile of paperwork proved it was all good. They fixed the testing and created the Green Boy shells - that would reach the German magazines, reliably. Bit late for Jutland, though.....

"Reform UK's support has surged in London while backing for Labour languishes at a record low in the capital, according to a new poll. The latest Savanta survey released today found Nigel Farage's party were supported by 23 per cent of voters in London, up from 15 per cent in June. This put Reform ahead of the Tories, who were down one percentage point to 20 per cent, with the Liberal Democrats on 11 per cent (-2) and Greens on 10 per cent (-3). Support for Labour was at 32 per cent, which is the joint lowest recorded by Savanta - who have polled London voters since 2020 - following the same result in June."

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-15324345/Poll-Reform-oust-Sadiq-Khan-London.html

Pre Nathan Gill imprisonment and the highlighting across the Commons and media

@Mexicanpete may get his wish that Gill damages Farage and Reform by association

Gill is far too obscure a figure for his conviction to have an impact.

I've seen an outline of an attack ad on this subject, blimey, if it sees the light of day it might be the most controversial political video in the history of the UK.

So the video will show clips of Nathan Gill spouting his pro Russian bollocks and a voiceover saying he accepted bribes and is doing 10 years in prison for that then it moves onto to other Nigel Farage related politicians saying the same bollocks and then the narrator says 'They didn't need to be paid, they believe in this pro Russia bollocks from the heart.'