Best Of

What chance the Easter rush provoking UK-wide petrol shortages? I'm thinking about evens...

See my comment from earlier today - we now have rationing at some local petrol stations max £30 purchase.

Now that may just be until a delivery later today / this week but I suspect we will see it again next weekend as well.

I had to get back to Devon from NE Lincs yesterday. Diesel was 166.9 in Tescos in Grimsby - 66 litres meant a £20 saving on the top-end prices I saw. Quite a saving. But not enough to have stopped me going to see my chums. Just have to bite the bullet.

(For those amongst us looking to fill their homes with aged items, I did discover that at Hemswell they have Europe's larget antiques centre, in an old Bomber Command base about 12 miles north of Lincoln. If it is of interest to any here, allow yourself all day. And the next day.

https://www.hemswell-antiques.com/ )

Starmer needs to get ahead of this oil crisis. Do some unpopular stuff that people will come to appreciate and will signal this is a big deal.

Cut speed limits, mandate wfh where possible, introduce carpool lanes all over the place...

Tories and Reform will oppose on reflex and it will show he's the serious politician thinking about national interest.

Pure authoritarianism that will do nothing to fix the problems.

Serious politics means fixing what the politicians control.

The Australian Labor Government has had good ideas on this. The price of fuel is mostly tax anyway, and the fuel cost is controlled by HMG. Australia has halved fuel duty, we should do the same, or go one better and suspend it altogether.

Australia has reacted faster as they are (like the Asian counties) affected earlier, as they import a larger percentage of their oil from the Gulf.

Indeed and we don't.

So we are more protected, besides fiscally.

So this can all be solved by slashing or abolishing fuel duty.

And how would you replace the tax revenue?

The state takes billions more from drivers than it spends on roads etc, there is no shortfall there.

Drivers should pay no more for transport than the cost of their transport.

General expenditure should come from general taxation, not drivers.

So specifically which tax would you increase instead?

I would start by merging Income Tax and National Insurance so everyone is paying the same tax rate.

I would also abolish subsidies on rail fares etc.

Drivers or rail passengers should pay their own transport costs, without extra taxes or subsidies.

You are cutting taxes now with a fix that is both electoral suicide and longer term.

So again where do you raise £xbn of taxes from today to subsidies car drivers who drive a lot..

You options are really VAT or National insurance BTW as both those can be changed with about 1 months notice..

I would not subsidise car drivers. I would not excessively tax them, but that is not a subsidy.

Drivers should be paying for their cost of commuting, as should rail commuters and everyone else engaging in transport.

But that should not be filling the coffera of general taxation.

Let's try again - you want to remove tax revenue (by not taxing fuel), where are you going to increase the tax make up the shortfall you've just created?

. I have heard quite a few people say that they wish Israel did not exist. But there is tumbleweed when I ask what they want done with its Jewish citizens. Unless people have an answer to that - something more realistic than kumbaya-let's-all-sing-together - then a country's destruction usually involves at a minimum ethnic cleansing and usually the killing of many of its inhabitants.

Did you give any of these "quite a few" people a chance to answer your question? Any of them at all? Points that may well have come up would have included

1. what % are citizens of other countries or hold the right to citizenship in other countries (a majority?)

2. questions of ties, e.g. birth in Palestine, recency of immigration, etc.

3. willingness to apply for Palestinian citizenship,

4. proscription of old-regime ethnic supremacist agitation , including in the context of foreign-backed terrorism and stay-behind networks,

5. comparison with French Algeria, the Confederacy, and other regimes that have been caused to cease to exist,

6. the right of return for refugees,

7. the need for humanitarian compassion,

8. truth and reconciliation.

"Tumbleweed" suggests you've never heard any of the above points raised, not even point 1.

I met up with my friends: all “centrist dads”, whether in Law, Consulting, Advertising or IT.

They are now all ferociously anti-Israel, if not actively anti-Zionist.

We seem to have been on the same journey

And yet the deliberate planned horror of the brutal rapes of women on October 7 and the female hostages kept thereafter has not led to any journey by you - or apparently @Gardenwalker's friends - reflecting on why male violence against women is wrong and why those groups, states, cultures etc which promote it should be equally viewed with horror and distaste. Which is doubtless why we read you this morning proudly saying that you feel like punching an opportunistic female politician but never an opportunistic male politician, of which there are many.

It is not necessary to balance every criticism of Israel with a criticism of Islam, or Hamas or whatever.

When a man talks about inflicting violence against a woman but then claims to have been on a journey because of his distaste about why Israel has done then it is worth noting how selective his outrage is and how he has never, as far as I can see, condemned male violence against women.

I am not often here anymore but it strikes me that it the preponderance of criticism here has been against Israel rather than Iran or Hamas and there has been very little talk or reflection on or criticism of the those attacking Jews in this country which, unlike the Middle East, is something we can actually do something about.

None of my friends talked about inflicting violence on women.
And I’m not sure Roger did, did he?

And the rest of your post is absurd whataboutery.

@Roger at 9.41

https://vf.politicalbetting.com/discussion/comment/5501311#Comment_5501311

Almost all the charges of outrageous behaviour by the Iranian government could equally be laid at the door of Saudi Arabia. Which is even less democratic.
Would it be right to bomb them to achieve regime change?

I am not a great fan of the Saudi regime but Iran executed 5 times the number Saudi did in 2023 for instance and Saudi is not actively funding terrorism now against Israel and the West as Iran is

https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/policy-issues/policy/international/executions-around-the-world

If you have time, buy "World Order" by Henry Kissinger. Chapter 3 describes the ongoing conflict between the Sunni bloc (led by Saudi Arabia) and the Shiite bloc (led by Iran), both wishing to export their brand of Islam. It's ten years old now, and Trump has remade the world, but it's still useful.

I have often, and occasionally been abused for doing so, likened the current situation in the Islamic world to that in the Western Christian one in the 16th Century, when the Catholics and Protestants were knocking lumps out of each other.
And it's about as long from the founding of Islam and it was then since the founding of Christianity.

What is it about Abrahamic religions?

Having about four billion adherents (including me) gives a lot of scope for diversity, manipulation and bad people to rise to power at the top of things. A few billion critics of war, conflict, violence, autocracy etc belong to Abrahamic religions too. About half the population of the UK claim to belong to an Abrahamic religion. Very few kill each other. Most live quite good lives. Strange that.

I met up with my friends: all “centrist dads”, whether in Law, Consulting, Advertising or IT.

They are now all ferociously anti-Israel, if not actively anti-Zionist.

We seem to have been on the same journey

And yet the deliberate planned horror of the brutal rapes of women on October 7 and the female hostages kept thereafter has not led to any journey by you - or apparently @Gardenwalker's friends - reflecting on why male violence against women is wrong and why those groups, states, cultures etc which promote it should be equally viewed with horror and distaste. Which is doubtless why we read you this morning proudly saying that you feel like punching an opportunistic female politician but never an opportunistic male politician, of which there are many.

It is not necessary to balance every criticism of Israel with a criticism of Islam, or Hamas or whatever.

When a man talks about inflicting violence against a woman but then claims to have been on a journey because of his distaste about why Israel has done then it is worth noting how selective his outrage is and how he has never, as far as I can see, condemned male violence against women.

I am not often here anymore but it strikes me that it the preponderance of criticism here has been against Israel rather than Iran or Hamas and there has been very little talk or reflection on or criticism of the those attacking Jews in this country which, unlike the Middle East, is something we can actually do something about.

I believe you care being unusually disingenuous. After October 7th I was in discussion on here with @Richard_Tyndall that Hamas should be punished first not by wiping out the footsoldier holed up in tunnels under Gazan hospitals but take out the Grandees in Doha. It was a long while before Netanyahu took out the Doha contingent.

The criticism certainly from me has been for the Israeli regime and certainly the hardliners, of which I consider Netanyahu to be crucial. Netanyahu like Trump has used conflict as a smokescreen for domestic existential troubles. At no point have I brushed off the wickedness of October 7th. When Hamas were useful idiots to Bibi, he funded their activities covertly.

I would condemn criminals setting fire to ambulances in North London, shooting up synagogues in Manchester with equal measure to criminals setting fire to Holiday Inn Express hotels in Essex. Anyone going about their lawful business unhindered and in safety,whatever their creed or colour. The fact that they can't either as Jews or Muslims, suggests a dereliction of duty by the authorities, and not just Central Government.

Guardian.
Spain, a Nato member, has closed its airspace to US planes involved in attacks on Iran, the country’s defence minister, Margarita Robles, told reporters in Madrid this morning.

“We don’t authorise either the use of military bases or the use of airspace for actions related to the war in Iran,” she said.

Spanish newspaper El Pais, which first reported the news on Monday, said the closure of the airspace forces military planes to bypass Spain en route to their targets in the Middle East, but it does not include emergency situations, in which case the aircraft will be permitted to transit or land.

“We have denied the United States the use of the Rota and Morón bases for this illegal war. All flight plans involving operations in Iran have been rejected. All of them, including those for refuelling aircraft,” Spanish prime minister Pedro Sánchez, a vocal critic of the US-Israeli war on Iran, was quoted as having said last Wednesday in Congress...

That'll be a blow to Trump.
I'm assuming Moron base was where this War was planned from.

That and Crete, where the cretins met...

Liars, shirley?

I always lie. In fact, I am lying to you now.