Best Of

Morning all

Yes, poor numbers for Labour but I think we know if any other party were in Government at this time their numbers would be as bad if not worse.

It's often said some elections are "bad ones to win" - 1992 being a good example - but 2024 would be right up there it seems. I'll be honest (and this seems a peculiarly London-centric view) - I don't think Starmer is doing too badly. At worst he's Continuity Sunak but big shifts in governance aren't easy - as has been said, there were probably only three really radical Governments in the 20th century - Asquith, Attlee and Thatcher.

In a globally interconnected world, doing something radical isn't easy and even within Britain one decision impacts on others. Cuts in public spending on the scale some here would seem to want don't end at the balance sheet - they would impact real people in their daily lives, perhaps not the individuals and their families urging the deep cuts but nonetheless.

Government is difficult especially at a time of weak economic growth - however you try to slice the cake someone complains about their share or lack of it. I do agree some of the initial ideas of the new Government were implemented in a hamfisted way - removing Winter Fuel Allowance from higher rate taxpayers while retaining it for those on basic rate would probably have been sellable. The "boats" defy all attempts at a solution for now though I suspect autumn and winter will slow things down a bit.

Cutting Peter's benefits to ensure Paul pays less tax isn't the answer and nor is raising Paul's taxes so Peter can keep all his benefits so it becomes dancing on a pinhead in terms of what you can and can't do.

It also becomes easier to look for scapegoats - blame the migrants, blame the scroungers, blame those with mental and physical challenges, blame those with long Covid, blame the last Government, blame this Government etc.

You can see the attraction of masterly inactivity and the destiny of the poor can as it gets propelled once more down the road. You can also see why those peddling "easy answers" get traction.

The problem I see it is that Starmer is built for a sort of managerial role when the country doesn’t need it. He might have been a decently average (or even average to good) PM conceivably, in 2015, or in the 1960s, or in the John Major role. He just isn’t the “cometh the hour” person.

The Atlees, Thatchers, Asquiths of this world are rare but they’re precisely what we need right now - a purpose, a radical sense of mission, and a party firmly behind them. Farage play-acts as one of those people, but isnt the real deal.

Ah, yes, the "strong" leader. The "radical" leader. It's seductive I know to think all our problems could be dealt with by such an individual - we could vote them in and then they would lead us from the valley of the shadow to the sunlit uplands...

Blah, blah, blah - that's how authoritarianism starts. I'd rather our imperfect, bumbling democracy than a "strong" leader. The truth probably is we could solve a lot of our problems ourselves with some changes in our personal behaviour and within our communities - that would be really radical.

The problem with top-down solutions is they create bottom-up problems. Somebody suggested yesterday it was all the fault of "fatties" as he called them and said everyone who was overweight should be given free Mounjaro. Well, setting aside the economics, the practicalities and the legalities (but they aren't that individual's strong suit), Mounjaro isn't side effect free as I know from a friend who has used it.

The other consequence is if you have a significant portion (sorry) of the population on appetite suppressing drugs, what happens to the catering and hospitality industries? Do the non-"fatties" have to become "fatties" in order to keep every cafe and restaurant from my cafe in the Barking Road to the top three Michelin star eaterie going? Will we see Gordon Ramsey begging on the streets as his restaurant empire collapses from lack of demand?

The claim that radical change in a democracy is dictatorship or something is an old, old cry.

The problem is that, in many areas, the government is not doing much, if anything.

On health in the community - why not some trials? Pick an area. Vitality style rewards for health indicators. You wouldn’t need legislation for that.

£100 off income tax (or added to your UC or State Pension) if you have a healthy BMI or can run 5K in less than 30 minutes.

First, we know BMI isn't the be all and end all as a measure of health. Second, physical exercise tests - seriously? Third, £100 - a lot of people will see it as not worth the effort (make it £10,000 a year and you;d get more takers).

Tough. The NHS is going to collapse under the weight of the population and we already have the classic insurance issues of moral hazard and adverse selection.

Health inequality is enormous. We have a group of well paid, healthy and active people paying a huge amount of tax for a service they rarely use because it's been overwhelmed by the old and inactive.

That's completely unsustainable, a breach of the social contract. And this is coming from someone who is instinctively generous with government support for those who need it.

Most of the redistribution done by the NHS is over time. If you're healthy and active, you are paying for your future care more than you are paying for inactive others'. Even if you eat well and do lots of physical activity, you're going to die at some point and most of the average person's health costs are at the end of life.

Now, that doesn't argue against the importance of health promotion. Health promotion is very cost effective. We should be doing more to encourage physical activity and healthy diets. What's the best way of doing that? Giving people £100 for being fit, or spending £4 billion on council gyms and good quality health promotion apps?

If we were paying for our future care that would be fine. But we aren't, are we?

We aren't even paying for current care requirements.

The whole Ponzi scheme is collapsing and nobody wants to admit it.

We pay for current old people's care, and when we're old, a younger generation will pay for our care. This is not a Ponzi scheme. (Calling it a Ponzi scheme is one of the laziest lines in politics.) The country is currently running a deficit, but talk of "collapsing" is hyperbole.

In the 47 years that I paid NI I never once objected to paying it. My parents and grandparents would have benefited from my contributions. Now my children and grandchildren are paying and I am benefiting. There are some utterly selfish and small minded scrooges on PB.

The problem is that the system of “current tax payers pay for the retired” only produces generous results with few retired and lots of taxpayers.

How to fix that?

Most retired people are also taxpayers. In effect, I am paying for my own pension.

FPT...

"Labour admits shoplifting has got ‘out of hand’
Comments come after police officers told shopkeeper to take down sign calling shoplifters ‘scumbags’"

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2025/08/11/labour-admits-shoplifting-has-got-out-of-hand

Guess what? The report that police officers had told a shopkeeper to take down a sign weren't true! https://www.northwales.police.uk/news/north-wales/news/news/2025/august/statement-in-response-to-media-coverage/

Does The Telegraph bother fact-checking what they write?

Actually this is a classic new landscape of the media. This story was actually posted online a month ago by a local outlet,

Ragged said, “You couldn’t make this up, I have just had the police in the shop only to be informed that the signs on my cabinets could be seen as provocative and offensive and they advised me to re word them”

https://wrexham.com/news/police-advised-scumbag-shoplifters-sign-was-provocative-and-offensive-claims-shop-owner-273943.html

And "reword the sign" got morphed to take the sign down and not just the Telegraph, every media outlet covered it. I bet what happened was various journalists are just ctrl-F for shoplifting stories.

I always bring up the FT story on the government will spend £10bn on equipment during COVID. Where somebody at the FT did a ctrl-F on all government tender documents and added up the numbers. Within a couple of days that was a "fact". When in fact, these documents were saying things we need this bits of kit over the next 5-10 years ...especially in the light of COVID blah blah blah.... and so putting out to tender this bit of kit i.e. it was just waffle people put in as an added justification for something they were already going to put out to tender.

To be fair - telling someone to reword the sign is saying that the sign, as is, should be removed.

VAT on schools:
1) It will cost the state more money than it raises
2) Most people don't care because they see this as fair
3) Schools are using VAT to cover all number of things

I can understand the frustration of parents affected - it is unfair. Then again there are so many things which are egregiously unfair and this isn't anywhere near the top of the unfairness chart. Carers losing their entire allowance for going £1 over the earnings cap? More unfair. And there's stacks of examples of things done by merciless ministers to make the lives of the poor and sick practically unliveable which are more unfair.

This explains point 2 above.

Process State meets populist policy.

Sure! But for many of the people in point 2, they here the people complaining and consider that they largely are the people who support all of the egregious merciless stuff which hurts people at an existential level.

Sam Freedman (yes I know) was good on that in his piece on the anti-VAT campaign;

https://samf.substack.com/p/the-great-vat-panic

The TLDR is that campaigns against government policy work best when you have a back channel negotiation to come up with a mutually-acceptable deal. The Independent Schools Council went straight for berating the policy in the press, and only that, which was never going to work.

Yes, VAT on school fees is another version of "Do it to Julia"; accept that there needs to be pain to balance the books, but that pain should be experienced by other people. A lot of the anger was because people used to getting their way didn't.

(And whilst there will be some blowback from this policy, it will need a massive exodus to be a net negative for the government. There is no sign of that right now. In large part because British private schools are mostly fishing in the global elite market, which isn't very price-sensitive. Hard on those who have gone from just about affording school fees to not affording them, but they're a minority of a minority.)

Is that true? Would like to see some figures to back that up. My gut is that it’s true for the Public Schools and the London private schools but the vast majority of private schools aren’t them, they are private schools in towns and cities with good local reputations attracting the children of local professionals or they are the only alternative to failing state schools in an area where people decide to make a financial sacrifice to pay for their childrens’ education.

These are the schools that will suffer - the public schools with international or national reputation and big endowments alongside the London private day schools with a big global wealthy community to fill places who would never dream of sending their children off to board will largely be fine.

https://www.pepf.co.uk/fact-finder/facts-and-figures/ says

Excluding international schools, about 5% of private school pupils are non-British with parents living abroad. The largest group are from China (both mainland and Hong Kong).

Another 5% are non-British but with parents who live in Britain.

My old school's proudest boast was that it had students from 70 different countries. It really is a terrible reflection on us all that we have allowed that slimy toad Farage to corrupt us into seeing foreigners as people to be feared

https://www.millfieldschool.com/admissions/overseas

We travelled home from York yesterday and an Indian family were in the seats in front

They consisted of a father and mother, three children aged 8, 4 and a babe in arms, and his 2 sisters

As we approached Colwyn Bay he came next to us to take photos of the lovely coast and I spoke to him and he said he was a taxi driver in Manchester and hadn't been to Llandudno. He was using the train as his taxi was limited to 5

I said he should really enjoy our home town and pointed out lots of things he could do with his family

They were impeccably dressed and polite and each tooks turns to look after the baby

The vast majority welcome everyone to our Country, but it is also something the left seem to overlook that like our wonderful Indian family the vast majority contribute enormousy, but it is not helping to suggest that anyone who objects to the boats, asylum hotels, and some crimes comitted by those arriving to our shores are rascists

The only way to assauge Farage is to stop the boats, control immigation and deal firmly with those committing crimes

Since Starmer took office, total immigration is down a lot, deportations are up, and deportations of foreign criminals are up. However, boat numbers are up.

I would suggest that the problem is at least as much those on the radical right who object to all immigrants (or all Muslims, etc.). There are several regulars here who voice such views.

The country is bust, it needs proper control of immigration and anyone who does come needs to look after themselves till they have paid a minimum of 5 or 10 years taxes etc. Should be no free housing or benefits for anyone who arrives or wants to arrive regardless of method.

What about the likes of Sandpit or my son who want to bring long-standing wives here, and who are prepared (not sure whether Sandpit is) catch up NIC?

No issue if they are not getting benefits etc and spouse who is taxpayer is supporting them. As it is now , people are let in , then have no means to support and start bringing in droves of family. Perception also is that asylum seekers ( illegal immigrants ) are also getting first calss service whilst local people get chhased , cannot get doctors , houses , etc. Whole benefits scheme is needing serious overhaul, people should not be able to make a career of being unemployed. everything is far to lax and most seems to just be online nowadays.

It's not just perception Malc, it's actually happening. These 4* asylum hotels have doctors, nurses and dentists on site, they get free gym memberships, they can refuse to leave the hotel and beat the government in court.

Asylum seekers and illegals need to be moved into camps with very high fences, basic conditions in tents. It sounds harsh but our generosity has run out, the nation is going bankrupt and we're spending billions on welfare for non-citizens while millions of citizens live in poverty or are unable to get access to basic healthcare. It's fundamentally and morally wrong that we're looking after strangers rather than our own families.

As we saw from the discussion here last night there are many people happy to be generous with others money to make themselves feel good.

There are also many people happy to lie through their teeth and repeat nonsense like referring to asylum accommodation as "4*".

Lol, you keep explaining to the public that "it's not actually 4* hotels because they closed the swimming pool and sauna" and see how far you get. I hope Labour put it on the side of a bus and add 5% to Reform overnight.

Well indeed, presumably that just makes it a 3*

https://www.xotels.com/en/glossary/three-star-hotel

Firstly the hotel must have a clearly designated reception area. Additionally it must have a minimum of five bedrooms available for rent. Furthermore, all of theses rooms must come with en suite bathrooms. As from the moment of registration the guest must have 24 hour access to the hotel without the need of a key. And the owner or staff is at minimum available via call for residents throughout day / night. The restaurant must be open a minimum of 6 days a week, serving bar snacks, breakfast or more. Hotels which do not offer dinner must be located in the vicinity of restaurants which do.

Furthermore, the hotel should have a liquor license and an area where beverages can be served. Room service must be available with a minimum of hot and cold drinks and light snacks (e.g. sandwiches) during daytime and evening. The hotel has the option to provide on request only, without having to promote its menu. Phone service available in-room as well as WiFi in all public areas. All areas of operation should meet the Three Star level of quality for cleanliness, maintenance and hospitality, and for the quality of physical facilities and delivery of services.

They ain't getting room service, so, no, not even 3*.

Well, most people never use room service, not if they're paying for it themselves.

If the hotel was formerly 4* but downgraded due to the lack of sauna, gym etc, it will still be furnished to 4* standard

These former 4* hotels have generally been refurbished to fit more people in. They haven't simply carried over the old furnishings.

You mean, like Colditz was a "royal* palace".

*Electoral, I think, but am hazy ...

Morning all

Yes, poor numbers for Labour but I think we know if any other party were in Government at this time their numbers would be as bad if not worse.

It's often said some elections are "bad ones to win" - 1992 being a good example - but 2024 would be right up there it seems. I'll be honest (and this seems a peculiarly London-centric view) - I don't think Starmer is doing too badly. At worst he's Continuity Sunak but big shifts in governance aren't easy - as has been said, there were probably only three really radical Governments in the 20th century - Asquith, Attlee and Thatcher.

In a globally interconnected world, doing something radical isn't easy and even within Britain one decision impacts on others. Cuts in public spending on the scale some here would seem to want don't end at the balance sheet - they would impact real people in their daily lives, perhaps not the individuals and their families urging the deep cuts but nonetheless.

Government is difficult especially at a time of weak economic growth - however you try to slice the cake someone complains about their share or lack of it. I do agree some of the initial ideas of the new Government were implemented in a hamfisted way - removing Winter Fuel Allowance from higher rate taxpayers while retaining it for those on basic rate would probably have been sellable. The "boats" defy all attempts at a solution for now though I suspect autumn and winter will slow things down a bit.

Cutting Peter's benefits to ensure Paul pays less tax isn't the answer and nor is raising Paul's taxes so Peter can keep all his benefits so it becomes dancing on a pinhead in terms of what you can and can't do.

It also becomes easier to look for scapegoats - blame the migrants, blame the scroungers, blame those with mental and physical challenges, blame those with long Covid, blame the last Government, blame this Government etc.

You can see the attraction of masterly inactivity and the destiny of the poor can as it gets propelled once more down the road. You can also see why those peddling "easy answers" get traction.

The problem I see it is that Starmer is built for a sort of managerial role when the country doesn’t need it. He might have been a decently average (or even average to good) PM conceivably, in 2015, or in the 1960s, or in the John Major role. He just isn’t the “cometh the hour” person.

The Atlees, Thatchers, Asquiths of this world are rare but they’re precisely what we need right now - a purpose, a radical sense of mission, and a party firmly behind them. Farage play-acts as one of those people, but isnt the real deal.

Ah, yes, the "strong" leader. The "radical" leader. It's seductive I know to think all our problems could be dealt with by such an individual - we could vote them in and then they would lead us from the valley of the shadow to the sunlit uplands...

Blah, blah, blah - that's how authoritarianism starts. I'd rather our imperfect, bumbling democracy than a "strong" leader. The truth probably is we could solve a lot of our problems ourselves with some changes in our personal behaviour and within our communities - that would be really radical.

The problem with top-down solutions is they create bottom-up problems. Somebody suggested yesterday it was all the fault of "fatties" as he called them and said everyone who was overweight should be given free Mounjaro. Well, setting aside the economics, the practicalities and the legalities (but they aren't that individual's strong suit), Mounjaro isn't side effect free as I know from a friend who has used it.

The other consequence is if you have a significant portion (sorry) of the population on appetite suppressing drugs, what happens to the catering and hospitality industries? Do the non-"fatties" have to become "fatties" in order to keep every cafe and restaurant from my cafe in the Barking Road to the top three Michelin star eaterie going? Will we see Gordon Ramsey begging on the streets as his restaurant empire collapses from lack of demand?

The claim that radical change in a democracy is dictatorship or something is an old, old cry.

The problem is that, in many areas, the government is not doing much, if anything.

On health in the community - why not some trials? Pick an area. Vitality style rewards for health indicators. You wouldn’t need legislation for that.

£100 off income tax (or added to your UC or State Pension) if you have a healthy BMI or can run 5K in less than 30 minutes.

First, we know BMI isn't the be all and end all as a measure of health. Second, physical exercise tests - seriously? Third, £100 - a lot of people will see it as not worth the effort (make it £10,000 a year and you;d get more takers).

Tough. The NHS is going to collapse under the weight of the population and we already have the classic insurance issues of moral hazard and adverse selection.

Health inequality is enormous. We have a group of well paid, healthy and active people paying a huge amount of tax for a service they rarely use because it's been overwhelmed by the old and inactive.

That's completely unsustainable, a breach of the social contract. And this is coming from someone who is instinctively generous with government support for those who need it.

Most of the redistribution done by the NHS is over time. If you're healthy and active, you are paying for your future care more than you are paying for inactive others'. Even if you eat well and do lots of physical activity, you're going to die at some point and most of the average person's health costs are at the end of life.

Now, that doesn't argue against the importance of health promotion. Health promotion is very cost effective. We should be doing more to encourage physical activity and healthy diets. What's the best way of doing that? Giving people £100 for being fit, or spending £4 billion on council gyms and good quality health promotion apps?

If we were paying for our future care that would be fine. But we aren't, are we?

We aren't even paying for current care requirements.

The whole Ponzi scheme is collapsing and nobody wants to admit it.

We pay for current old people's care, and when we're old, a younger generation will pay for our care. This is not a Ponzi scheme. (Calling it a Ponzi scheme is one of the laziest lines in politics.) The country is currently running a deficit, but talk of "collapsing" is hyperbole.

In the 47 years that I paid NI I never once objected to paying it. My parents and grandparents would have benefited from my contributions. Now my children and grandchildren are paying and I am benefiting. There are some utterly selfish and small minded scrooges on PB.

The problem is that the system of “current tax payers pay for the retired” only produces generous results with few retired and lots of taxpayers.

How to fix that?

I’m an OAP but I’m also a taxpayer. So is Mrs C.

VAT on schools:
1) It will cost the state more money than it raises
2) Most people don't care because they see this as fair
3) Schools are using VAT to cover all number of things

I can understand the frustration of parents affected - it is unfair. Then again there are so many things which are egregiously unfair and this isn't anywhere near the top of the unfairness chart. Carers losing their entire allowance for going £1 over the earnings cap? More unfair. And there's stacks of examples of things done by merciless ministers to make the lives of the poor and sick practically unliveable which are more unfair.

This explains point 2 above.

Process State meets populist policy.

Sure! But for many of the people in point 2, they here the people complaining and consider that they largely are the people who support all of the egregious merciless stuff which hurts people at an existential level.

Sam Freedman (yes I know) was good on that in his piece on the anti-VAT campaign;

https://samf.substack.com/p/the-great-vat-panic

The TLDR is that campaigns against government policy work best when you have a back channel negotiation to come up with a mutually-acceptable deal. The Independent Schools Council went straight for berating the policy in the press, and only that, which was never going to work.

Yes, VAT on school fees is another version of "Do it to Julia"; accept that there needs to be pain to balance the books, but that pain should be experienced by other people. A lot of the anger was because people used to getting their way didn't.

(And whilst there will be some blowback from this policy, it will need a massive exodus to be a net negative for the government. There is no sign of that right now. In large part because British private schools are mostly fishing in the global elite market, which isn't very price-sensitive. Hard on those who have gone from just about affording school fees to not affording them, but they're a minority of a minority.)

Is that true? Would like to see some figures to back that up. My gut is that it’s true for the Public Schools and the London private schools but the vast majority of private schools aren’t them, they are private schools in towns and cities with good local reputations attracting the children of local professionals or they are the only alternative to failing state schools in an area where people decide to make a financial sacrifice to pay for their childrens’ education.

These are the schools that will suffer - the public schools with international or national reputation and big endowments alongside the London private day schools with a big global wealthy community to fill places who would never dream of sending their children off to board will largely be fine.

https://www.pepf.co.uk/fact-finder/facts-and-figures/ says

Excluding international schools, about 5% of private school pupils are non-British with parents living abroad. The largest group are from China (both mainland and Hong Kong).

Another 5% are non-British but with parents who live in Britain.

My old school's proudest boast was that it had students from 70 different countries. It really is a terrible reflection on us all that we have allowed that slimy toad Farage to corrupt us into seeing foreigners as people to be feared

https://www.millfieldschool.com/admissions/overseas

We travelled home from York yesterday and an Indian family were in the seats in front

They consisted of a father and mother, three children aged 8, 4 and a babe in arms, and his 2 sisters

As we approached Colwyn Bay he came next to us to take photos of the lovely coast and I spoke to him and he said he was a taxi driver in Manchester and hadn't been to Llandudno. He was using the train as his taxi was limited to 5

I said he should really enjoy our home town and pointed out lots of things he could do with his family

They were impeccably dressed and polite and each tooks turns to look after the baby

The vast majority welcome everyone to our Country, but it is also something the left seem to overlook that like our wonderful Indian family the vast majority contribute enormousy, but it is not helping to suggest that anyone who objects to the boats, asylum hotels, and some crimes comitted by those arriving to our shores are rascists

The only way to assauge Farage is to stop the boats, control immigation and deal firmly with those committing crimes

Since Starmer took office, total immigration is down a lot, deportations are up, and deportations of foreign criminals are up. However, boat numbers are up.

I would suggest that the problem is at least as much those on the radical right who object to all immigrants (or all Muslims, etc.). There are several regulars here who voice such views.

The country is bust, it needs proper control of immigration and anyone who does come needs to look after themselves till they have paid a minimum of 5 or 10 years taxes etc. Should be no free housing or benefits for anyone who arrives or wants to arrive regardless of method.

What about the likes of Sandpit or my son who want to bring long-standing wives here, and who are prepared (not sure whether Sandpit is) catch up NIC?

No issue if they are not getting benefits etc and spouse who is taxpayer is supporting them. As it is now , people are let in , then have no means to support and start bringing in droves of family. Perception also is that asylum seekers ( illegal immigrants ) are also getting first calss service whilst local people get chhased , cannot get doctors , houses , etc. Whole benefits scheme is needing serious overhaul, people should not be able to make a career of being unemployed. everything is far to lax and most seems to just be online nowadays.

Asylum seekers are not illegal immigrants. They have reported themselves to immigration authorities and claimed asylum, a legal process.

Asylum seekers don't get a first class service. They are treated very poorly. The perception is otherwise because the populist right lie.

Surely some asylum seekers are illegal immigrants, they are falsely claiming to be at risk of persecution. OK sometimes it might be a 50:50 decision but I remember when we used to get Albanians pretending to be Kosovars and I am sure similar still happens. Any Levantine Arabic speaker can probably pretend to come from Syria for example

Today's pic. Boat people by nationality for those wanting to send them back. Not so easy to do in the short term.

The other point is that peak boats is in summer when the papers don't have anything to write about so it sorts of lends itself to the clickbaiters.

The final point is that there have been about 10 changes to the immigration rules since 1983 when 'anchor babies*' like Kemi were British because they were born on British soil. We've been tightening up on immigration for a while.

* The term is meant to be ironic rather than pejorative.

Give them the option of going back to their home country or Rwanda. Hold them in a detention camp for two weeks to give them time to choose, if they don't then forcibly remove them to Rwanda. Legislate and write in a bunch of stuff like "parliament is sovereign and elected by the people and this legislation overrides the HRA and ECHR" and dare the courts to strike it down. It may be a blunt instrument but sometimes low cunning is what's needed to beat the sophistry of the leftist human rights industry.

FPT...

"Labour admits shoplifting has got ‘out of hand’
Comments come after police officers told shopkeeper to take down sign calling shoplifters ‘scumbags’"

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2025/08/11/labour-admits-shoplifting-has-got-out-of-hand

Guess what? The report that police officers had told a shopkeeper to take down a sign weren't true! https://www.northwales.police.uk/news/north-wales/news/news/2025/august/statement-in-response-to-media-coverage/

Does The Telegraph bother fact-checking what they write?

Actually this is a classic new landscape of the media. This story was actually posted online a month ago by a local outlet,

Ragged said, “You couldn’t make this up, I have just had the police in the shop only to be informed that the signs on my cabinets could be seen as provocative and offensive and they advised me to re word them”

https://wrexham.com/news/police-advised-scumbag-shoplifters-sign-was-provocative-and-offensive-claims-shop-owner-273943.html

And "reword the sign" got morphed to take the sign down and not just the Telegraph, every media outlet covered it. I bet what happened was various journalists are just ctrl-F for shoplifting stories.

I always bring up the FT story on the government will spend £10bn on equipment during COVID. Where somebody at the FT did a ctrl-F on all government tender documents and added up the numbers. Within a couple of days that was a "fact". When in fact, these documents were saying things we need this bits of kit over the next 5-10 years ...especially in the light of COVID blah blah blah.... and so putting out to tender this bit of kit i.e. it was just waffle people put in as an added justification for something they were already going to put out to tender.

VAT on schools:
1) It will cost the state more money than it raises
2) Most people don't care because they see this as fair
3) Schools are using VAT to cover all number of things

I can understand the frustration of parents affected - it is unfair. Then again there are so many things which are egregiously unfair and this isn't anywhere near the top of the unfairness chart. Carers losing their entire allowance for going £1 over the earnings cap? More unfair. And there's stacks of examples of things done by merciless ministers to make the lives of the poor and sick practically unliveable which are more unfair.

This explains point 2 above.

Process State meets populist policy.

Sure! But for many of the people in point 2, they here the people complaining and consider that they largely are the people who support all of the egregious merciless stuff which hurts people at an existential level.

Sam Freedman (yes I know) was good on that in his piece on the anti-VAT campaign;

https://samf.substack.com/p/the-great-vat-panic

The TLDR is that campaigns against government policy work best when you have a back channel negotiation to come up with a mutually-acceptable deal. The Independent Schools Council went straight for berating the policy in the press, and only that, which was never going to work.

Yes, VAT on school fees is another version of "Do it to Julia"; accept that there needs to be pain to balance the books, but that pain should be experienced by other people. A lot of the anger was because people used to getting their way didn't.

(And whilst there will be some blowback from this policy, it will need a massive exodus to be a net negative for the government. There is no sign of that right now. In large part because British private schools are mostly fishing in the global elite market, which isn't very price-sensitive. Hard on those who have gone from just about affording school fees to not affording them, but they're a minority of a minority.)

Is that true? Would like to see some figures to back that up. My gut is that it’s true for the Public Schools and the London private schools but the vast majority of private schools aren’t them, they are private schools in towns and cities with good local reputations attracting the children of local professionals or they are the only alternative to failing state schools in an area where people decide to make a financial sacrifice to pay for their childrens’ education.

These are the schools that will suffer - the public schools with international or national reputation and big endowments alongside the London private day schools with a big global wealthy community to fill places who would never dream of sending their children off to board will largely be fine.

https://www.pepf.co.uk/fact-finder/facts-and-figures/ says

Excluding international schools, about 5% of private school pupils are non-British with parents living abroad. The largest group are from China (both mainland and Hong Kong).

Another 5% are non-British but with parents who live in Britain.

My old school's proudest boast was that it had students from 70 different countries. It really is a terrible reflection on us all that we have allowed that slimy toad Farage to corrupt us into seeing foreigners as people to be feared

https://www.millfieldschool.com/admissions/overseas

We travelled home from York yesterday and an Indian family were in the seats in front

They consisted of a father and mother, three children aged 8, 4 and a babe in arms, and his 2 sisters

As we approached Colwyn Bay he came next to us to take photos of the lovely coast and I spoke to him and he said he was a taxi driver in Manchester and hadn't been to Llandudno. He was using the train as his taxi was limited to 5

I said he should really enjoy our home town and pointed out lots of things he could do with his family

They were impeccably dressed and polite and each tooks turns to look after the baby

The vast majority welcome everyone to our Country, but it is also something the left seem to overlook that like our wonderful Indian family the vast majority contribute enormousy, but it is not helping to suggest that anyone who objects to the boats, asylum hotels, and some crimes comitted by those arriving to our shores are rascists

The only way to assauge Farage is to stop the boats, control immigation and deal firmly with those committing crimes

Well put the blame where it belongs. Brexit! Try a trip to a nice little French town between Beaulieu and Nice. They have the Brit Bar Riviera King The Aussie Bar Tosca Italian restaurant The Rumanian builders Pembroke Films The Arthouse Gallery Pisani Estate agents...... run by every nationality you can think of running every kind of small business you can imagine making the place vibrant all the year round. While the Cote d'azur is getting rich beyond avarice the UK is burning hotels and stigmatising rubber boats. It's beyond depressing

My son and his family campervan broke down by Paris

They were told the main dealer has 8 mechanics but only 1 is working this week

The main dealer said they had not got the parts and but for his breakdown cover they would have been in a terrible predicament

Also why across Europe are countries looking at Rwanda schemes to address their problems and even changes to the ECHR

Also look at Ireland for its unrest

Using Brexit is lazy and irrelevant

Today is (arguably) the 88th anniversary of the first major battle of WWII.
Anything up to a million troops engaged.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Shanghai
...the first of the twenty-two major engagements fought between the National Revolutionary Army (NRA) of the Republic of China (ROC) and the Imperial Japanese Army (IJA) of the Empire of Japan at the beginning of the Second Sino-Japanese War. The Japanese eventually prevailed after over three months of extensive fighting on land, in the air and at sea. Both sides accused each other of using chemical weapons during the battle, with Japanese forces confirmed to have illegally deployed poison gas at least thirteen times. Historian Peter Harmsen stated that the battle "presaged urban combat as it was to be waged not just during the Second World War, but throughout the remainder of the twentieth century" and that it "signalled the totality of modern urban warfare". It was the single largest urban battle prior to the Battle of Stalingrad, which occurred almost 5 years later..