Best Of

Why are HMRC spending £11m on office furniture?

https://x.com/lnallalingham/status/2003029277759979530

Because it has 60,000 staff and £160 a chair is good value?

Not just chairs but desks too. As the tweet makes clear.

It may well be about saving money.

If you have staff sitting at a desk x hours a day, then you have an obligation to provide furniture that protects the staff against bad back, RSI etc.

Plenty of companies have been sued and had to make large settlements for this.

One reason for the popularity of the Herman Miller Aeron chairs in offices, was that they provided a bulletproof protection against such claims - “We spent over a thousand per person on buying the most ergonomic chairs on the planet”. I was told, by an HR person, that buying them meant that the company insurance policy against such things was a fraction of what it otherwise would be.

So you get expensive chairs, monitor arms (easy adjustment) and the latest - the powered, adjustable height desks.

Yes, a typical office worker (public or private sector) spends a large portion of their life in their chair. Having a comfortable one is important and a good use of £££. It's no different to making sure our soldiers have proper boots.

If you give your soldiers crap boots though it provides them with an incentive to kill the enemy. I believe this approach has typically worked well for the Russians.

Kill the enemy and nick their boots? Ah yes ok. HMRC equivalent - tatty malfunctioning chairs make them so angry they take it out on all the evaders, hunt down every last one!

Allow tax to be paid in furniture, and then HMRC employees will be incentivised to go after the companies with nice chairs and desks, and make sure they pay up.

The problem with the single market of course is that while it works very well for “goods”, it doesn’t work so well for “services”.

This is a glaring example of EU hypocrisy.

I’d like to see some more analysis on this, though.
How “bad” is single market integration for services, and how does it compare - for example - to the U.S.?

The IMF reckons the internal effective tariff between EU states is 44% for goods and 110% for services. I suspect language differences play a big part...

https://www.elibrary.imf.org/downloadpdf/view/journals/001/2025/040/001.2025.issue-040-en.pdf

(Page 11)

I suspect the US is generally better, but worse for some things - e.g needing 50 licenses to offer insurance in 50 states...

...

Interesting article in the Telegraph saying Help to buy has created a whole set of housing problems at great expense to tax payers

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/gift/a783b34855474f85

It's so left field I wonder what the long term agenda is for reform - actively building social housing?

The article is about Right to buy - which is different to Help to buy.

Yep I'm an idiot - but the fact that the Telegraph is saying right to buy (THE Thatcherite policy) was a bad idea with serious consequences is incredibly interesting.

Are we really saying that a council could not create a dwelling for less than £440,000. That's an endightment of current building costs, planning laws, council efficiency, and half a dozen other things before it's an endightment of Right to buy.

Yes, it is.

The crapulence of what is actually built for that money is another indictment.

In recent years, we have seen properties torn down as irredeemably defective which are a year or two old.

In some cases *before completion*

Building standards were higher before all the Polish and Lithuanian builders went home.

Nope. Barrat having been building shit for years.

With Polish labour. And all the other Eastern Europeans.

It’s a simple thing, that the Victorians understood. Hell, the Medievals had a clue on the subject.

If you have a standard, you get two things. A potentially better product for the consumer. You also create an opportunity for the unscrupulous.

A simple example is the minimum wage. As it goes up, this increases the incentives to pay people less.

During the early 2000s my relative who runs a building company tried to get something done about the following - in whole swathes of London, it was not possible to compete with illegal builders (cash in hand, illegal employment, gross violations of H & S, gross violations of building standards).

Nothing was done - because, as he was told, it was policy to ignore it.

The answer is not to abolish standards. But as those Victorians (and Medievals , with the Guilds) understood, a regulation or a standard is worse than useless without… drum roll… *enforcement*

What you need is simple, clear standards. And teeth in enforcement.

Instead we have had a nearly exponential increase in paperwork. And reductions in enforcement.

Imagine a big site. The Big Builders have actually subcontracted the site to A, who have subcontracted down the alphabet to about Q. Who digs the ditches for the foundation six inches less than plan - quicker, cheaper (less concrete and rebar). This is (largely) because Q is being squeezed on price.

The Big Builders know. But they don’t know in the legal, provable sense.

The inspectors look at the foundations for one house. That’s done properly. The others have been filled with concrete before they got there. So sorry. Just sign here.

When it gets found out, Q has gone out of business (different Ltd for each job).

There's a lot of engineering him into position I think, and Starmer is clearly on board - not sure how else someone openly campaigning for the top job is still in the Cabinet. He is the annointed successor - and always was.

For that reason, I don't think he makes it.

Doubt he is anointed. There was number 10 briefing against him about a month ago.

IMO wouldn't be surprised if Starmer sacks him, says he needs to bring someone in to end the strikes.

I think it depends on how desperate Labour becomes, which itself depends on how catastrophic the local elections are. If Labour has a true mare - for example losing control of London Boroughs which they currently run with large majorities - then switching to Streeting might be on the cards. The one caveat is if the big winner in the cities happens to be the Greens, Labour members might conclude that being more radical and passionate and tacking left is what's required.

Labour won a NEV of 35% in 2022, and will probably win about 10-15% in May. Reform won nothing in 2022, and will probably win 25-30% next year. The Greens would surge, but the traditional outperformance in local elections by the Lib Dem’s will take a lot of votes that would otherwise go to them. The Conservatives will probably win 20-25%, compared to 30% in 2022.

What that likely means is Labour being hit on multiple fronts.

Boroughs like Barnsley, Wakefield, Sunderland, Halton, Sandwell, Thurrock will go Reform.

Islington, Hackney, Camden, Lambeth, Birmingham, Southwark, Brent, South Tyneside, will be lost to NOC at least (Your Party will also be challenging in some).

The Tories will lose a string of counties and new unitaries to Reform, but pick up Westminster, Barnet, Wandsworth,

And of course, the results in Wales and Scotland will be horrid.

I suspect Labour will actually get about 20%, win London overall still and do better than expected in Scotland where Holyrood polls suggest Labour gains from the SNP as in the Hamilton by election. That will stop a bad night for Starmer becoming a catastrophe and may save his job

Otherwise agree with Reform and the Greens likely the main winners next year plus Plaid in Wales and the LDs treading water as the Tories and Labour collapse

With both Tories and Labour down, I'd be surprised and disappointed if the LDs just tread water. National opinion polls during the 2022 local campaign period had Labour on around 40%, the Tories on around 34%, with the LDs at 10%. The political situation now is hugely better for the LDs in relation to both the major parties, notwithstanding Reform's huge surge from just 5% back then.

You may see some LD gains from the Tories, Labour and SNP but offset by some LD losses to the Greens and Reform and Plaid

Mark Pack is a good scout and he has been dutifully recording the LD's ups and downs since the GE. It's been generally a pattern of modest progress, and I would expect that to continue through the May contests.

One would think the ID card Bill, and rejoining the EU moving the agenda, are both in the LibDem’s favour?

Mark Pack is standing down as Lib Dem President from January 1st, so he will have more time on his hands (as if!).

I hope to engage him in suggesting ways in which members of the House of Lords can be held to account when they waste the time of the HoL repeatedly spouting inane bollocks into the national conversation, displaying the hinterland of a lobotomised slug.

(That follows a particular recent debate on aspects of 'cycling' where there were peers reading out bits of the Telegraph, and proposing amendments to introduce laws that have already been in law for nearly half a century already.)

Since when has death by dangerous cycling, death by careless cycling or serious injury by dangerous or careless cycling been UK law for cyclists unlike the equivalent death or serious injury offences by dangerous or careless driving for drivers of vehicles?

They used wanton and furious driving in this case

Where a dozy woman was looking at her phone and walked out on the road and the guy was using a not road legal bike.

I had a little sympathy for the cyclist. She should be paying attention when crossing the road.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-41028321

She should but the law works on extra caution the more dangerous the vehicle. So lorry drivers have to pay extra attention to drivers, drivers to cyclists and motorcycles and pedestrians and cyclists to pedestrians etc. Even if the pedestrian or cyclist or motorcyclist was slightly at fault the driver will normally get the blame or the cyclist if a pedestrian unless say a motorcycle was being driven massively over the speed limit

You can usually tell when someone will walk out in front of you - they will be walking towards the kerb while looking at their phone. At this point you can ring your bell or shout - but they often also have headphones on. You can brake or take evasive action - having first checked that this will not put you under the wheels of a bus. Sometimes they just step out in front of you with no warning, though.

They may do but you will still likely get the blame if that pedestrian is killed or injured and be prosecuted. A prosecutor would say you were still at least careless if not as a driver or cyclist being ready to brake or take evasive action at all times

I doubt any driver or cyclist would be prosecuted for hitting a pedestrian who walks out directly in front of them. There is a reaction time and a braking distance that you need to factor in. Cyclists in particular are always riding defensively, because if we hit a pedestrian we may well be injured as much as they are (from a weight point of view the bike itself is typically marginal: a cyclist colliding with a pedestrian is just two people hitting each other).

They likely would. Certainly provided it could be shown they could have had enough breaking distance to stop

If there is sufficient braking (sic) distance I would not put that in the category of walking out directly in front of you.