Best Of

Not an especial fan of the IFS (ever since they criticised an Osborne budget for cutting benefits, when said change would be less employment benefit due to more people being in work...) but here's a BBC ramble about the still far-off Budget, based on IFS views:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cx2n08n15w2o

"...while £6bn could be raised from the abolition of relief on inheritance tax for main homes. "

That would be courageous, in the Yes, (Prime) Minister sense.

What were they asked to do - identify the most politically stupid tax increase possible?

Now I can see them doing it but only if you were going to implement every political stupid tax increase possible see which ones caused the most outcry and revoking the 1/2 that created the most outcry but it's a stupid idea.

They really did tie themselves in with their promises on income tax, NI and VAT. Raising income tax would have pretty much no negative economic impact. Not a fan of raising tax, would prefer budget cuts, but if you are going to do it, that is where you do it. 2p, 4p 5p? And then VAT, wholesale removal of exemptions. The last one of course politically impossible and inflationary.

Death by a thousand taxes is the way this government will go down.

I like the idea of raising income tax and cutting national insurance by an equal amount.

Raises about £4bn per point too. Cut NI by 5% and increase income tax by 5% and that's £20bn raised from landlords and pensioners with little to no impact for working age people and because of the higher income tax threshold introduced by the last government people who only receive the state pension or have low private pension income will be minimally impacted.

If Labour are truly on the side of working people then they should introduce this policy.

Just catching up with PB over last couple of days and I feel incredible strongly about this issue that Big G NorthWales brought up. Its a bloody disgrace that the A9 and the A96 from Inverness to Aberdeen remain such dangerous roads, add to that the amount of pregnant women who have to travel both roads to give birth when in labour in all weathers. That is now on the awful and incompetent SNP Government of the last eighteen years, most of whom don't live anywhere near these areas!!

FPT.
Big_G_NorthWales said:

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We have travelled from Llandudno to Lossiemouth countless times and use the M6, M74, then to Perth, A9 to Aviemore, then on to Elgin and Lossiemouth
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Occasionally we have gone via Edinburgh and the M90 but the first route is our preferred choice

The lack of dualling the A9 to Inverness is disgraceful and it remains one of the most dangerous roads in UK
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The A9 should have been duelled years ago, and it would have saved so many lives, ditto the awful A96. I came from Aviemore and most locals living along the full length of both routes all know the notorious accident blackspots, there is a horrible junction leading onto the A9 outside Aviemore and one leading onto the A96 from Aberdeenshire that we rarely use for good reason, seriously heart in mouth!! I sadly know people who have lost their lives on these roads.

The problem of somewhat inadequate maternity provision is not novel to the North of Scotland.

My wife had our 2nd little one on Thursday night. It was a quick labour - she felt a bit sick eating her tea around 7pm (hardly unusual when heavily pregnant!), and decided she had "coming and going" sick feelings at 8.37pm (I have the timestamp as she messaged me to come upstairs!) I summoned the baby sitter for son no1 shortly afterwards. Baby sitter was with us in 20 mins, and we left 10 mins later (after my wife had thrown up fairly spectacularly!).

I then did the journey to the hospital in 28 minutes, which is an all time record - fortunately the roads were quiet and I was able to press on rather over the speed limit, as by then it was obvious that she was getting quite advanced in labour. When I wheeled her into hospital and they got her in the delivery room, son no2's head was already visible, and he was born 41 minutes later.

As it was, this all worked out fine. Had this all occurred starting at 7.30am on a weekday, we wouldn't have made it to the hospital - the journey can be well over an hour in peak traffic. Given my wife tore quite badly despite an episiotomy, had I delivered the baby in the car, there would have been a real risk of things going very wrong indeed. Indeed, even at hospital, there was a point shortly before the episiotomy where baby's heartrate started noticeably dropping, and I could sense the midwifes going from fairly chilled to "we need to get this baby out pronto".

Our town had maternity provision at our cottage hospital when I moved here, 13 years ago - but the NHS decided economies of scale were the future and closed it. Since then the traffic has got lots worse, and it wasn't great then, and our town has also expanded by 25% with new housing, without any additional medical provision (you can't get on the books of a private dentist within 15 miles, never mind an NHS one).
Unfortunately I don't see things changing locally - if we go for another baby (we need another 0.4 of one to hit replacement rate!), I think we'll probably be asking for a home birth - ironically, although there is a no maternity suite at the cottage hospital, there are still loads of midwives based there!

Not an especial fan of the IFS (ever since they criticised an Osborne budget for cutting benefits, when said change would be less employment benefit due to more people being in work...) but here's a BBC ramble about the still far-off Budget, based on IFS views:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cx2n08n15w2o

"...while £6bn could be raised from the abolition of relief on inheritance tax for main homes. "

That would be courageous, in the Yes, (Prime) Minister sense.

What were they asked to do - identify the most politically stupid tax increase possible?

Now I can see them doing it but only if you were going to implement every political stupid tax increase possible see which ones caused the most outcry and revoking the 1/2 that created the most outcry but it's a stupid idea.

They really did tie themselves in with their promises on income tax, NI and VAT. Raising income tax would have pretty much no negative economic impact. Not a fan of raising tax, would prefer budget cuts, but if you are going to do it, that is where you do it. 2p, 4p 5p? And then VAT, wholesale removal of exemptions. The last one of course politically impossible and inflationary.

Death by a thousand taxes is the way this government will go down.

I like the idea of raising income tax and cutting national insurance by an equal amount.

Evening, P.B.

My relative-in-law quite upset today. A large family tour of impeccably liberal, anti-Netanyahu relatives of my wife went on a large family tour to north-east London for retrace the roots and steps of their Jewish ancestors.
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All was going well, and a lovely family day out in the autumn sun, until a passer-by, possibly from Somalia or somewhere in the same region, overhead that the group was Jewish. He started swearing and threatening the whole group, and screaming at them to stop bombing the Palestinians, in between spitting on them. Two of the group were very liberal healthcare workers who calmed him down, from both a professional and political point of view, before he got violent.

Family day partially ruined. The hatred out there is still very raw and real, particularly after two years of the conflict.

The irony is that Gaza, though tragic, is an irrelevant distraction to the conflict that really matters to the free world, which is in Ukraine. But many people are much more passionate about Gaza. Putin can only be delighted by that. However the war ends, I think future generations will judge us harshly for not helping the brave Ukrainians a lot more.

Without question, the outcome of the Ukraine war is vastly more important to any European than the outcome of the war in Gaza.

Tony Blair's video trying to persuade us to support ID cards.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=alnNJ3vR9qY

Real-time monitoring of the entire population, both physical and online, combined with AI, facial recognition, cloud-based computing, will enable the Government to know every detail and action of your life and retrieve it at a moment's notice

When people ask me why I have turned so vehemently against this Government, it's because they have grown so far from their left-wing roots that all they have left is warmed-over right-wing shit like this. This is just awful.

The Labour Party has never been about liberty in the general sense. The idea of the Labour Party is that they will come up with the ideal solutions (in the centre) and the solutions will enacted on the country.

There is even a level of incomprehension there - during the negotiations over the Coalition government, the Labour Party negotiators (such as Ed Balls) assumed that the Lib Dems would drop their opposition to the ID card databases, because it was a well meaning policy.

Quite. Anyone who inherently associates liberty with the left and authoritarianism with the right is likely brainwashed or entirely ignorant of politics. But it's a misrepresentation so widespread that it allows the left to get away with terrible liberties (and indeed the retraction thereof).

It would be amusing to hear ID cards unironically described as 'right wing shit', were it not for the fact that a lot of people genuinely believe this...