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Re: I do worry about Liz Truss – politicalbetting.com
Treasury targeting inheritance tax reforms to help plug UK deficitWe are clearly in the leaking of a proposal to a tame/friendly paper to see the reaction to it phase.
Exclusive: Chancellor also looking at tweaks to capital gains tax to try to bridge £40bn-plus spending gap before budget
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025/aug/12/treasury-targeting-inheritance-tax-reforms-to-help-plug-uk-deficit
This wont be the first, wont be the last.

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Re: I do worry about Liz Truss – politicalbetting.com
PB trigger moment incomingHang on.
JENRICK has spent 48 hours in Northern France. Suffice to say he’s appalled.
Video to be released shortly.
https://x.com/robertjenrick/status/1955341058482552902?s=61
Wasn't our own @Gallowgate asking for things to do in northern France only yesterday?
Have Jenrick and him ever been seen together?
Re: I do worry about Liz Truss – politicalbetting.com
It’s not just the money, it’s also the time.We seem to be back in “why can’t we just” world this evening. Government is simple etc.Maybe it's not simple but you can't pretend that the British government doesn't over complicate everything. Just look at £49bn being spent on a third runway or £78bn on a nuclear power plant. It's completely ridiculous.
The lack of 3rd runway at LHR is already costing billions in opportunity costs, and has been for years now. They’ve been doing ‘special spacing’ (read ‘planes closer together than almost anywhere else in the world’) between aircraft on approach for decades, but means that on a foggy morning dozens of planes end up sent somewhere else or don’t take off.
I’ll keep referring to my story that Dubai’s Terminal 3 was built in less time than Heathrow’s Terminal 5 planning inquiry. Same scope of project, new buildings on an extant airfield with some access roads. Dubai built it while London talked about building it.
The 3rd runway is going to be even worse, there wil be a decade of talking about it before we see a spade in the ground.

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Re: I do worry about Liz Truss – politicalbetting.com
We seem to be back in “why can’t we just” world this evening. Government is simple etc.

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Re: I do worry about Liz Truss – politicalbetting.com
Speaking of government waste, has anyone worked out why HMG is giving £2bn a year to Microsoft? According to this article, that isn’t even for licensing costs; public bodies have to buy licenses separately.Headcount. The number of uk central government employees was just over 4m in q1 2025 vs 3.4m in q1 2020.This stands at about £1.3 tn at the moment. 2.5% is about £32 billion. That's a cut of £1000 pa in expenditure for 32 million people, or £10,000 for 3.2 million people.It's simply not going to raise enough money and will send wealthy people fleeing overseas. The non-dom changes have already caused a huge hole in the public finances, hitting long term investment two tax rises is going to cause an even bigger loss for the government.This is actually targeted at the unearned wealth of the boomer generation. So I'd have thought you would approve.Treasury targeting inheritance tax reforms to help plug UK deficitThis is going to be a disaster. They just need to get real and cut spending. Freeze public sector salaries, cut the triple lock and cut public sector pensions. Private sector salary growth is stalling already and the number of vacancies is falling drastically so they can't even cry about a recruitment problem like they moaned about when the last government did it.
Exclusive: Chancellor also looking at tweaks to capital gains tax to try to bridge £40bn-plus spending gap before budget
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025/aug/12/treasury-targeting-inheritance-tax-reforms-to-help-plug-uk-deficit
Taxes can't go up now without taking money out of the productive base of the economy. There's no more left to give.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025/aug/12/treasury-targeting-inheritance-tax-reforms-to-help-plug-uk-deficit
For every billion pounds in tax they raise they are going to take a billion out of the economy, if not more given that they will have to target the productive part meaning money that would otherwise be better used and result in a pretty good 1.5x economic multiplier now goes to the state which consumes. I wouldn't be surprised for every £1bn the government intends to raise by the maths it will only get around £0.5-0.6bn in additional revenue due to slower growth.
Cutting spending is the only answer, it isn't beyond the wit of man to cut 2.5% out of the government budget.
Even when you have identified these cuts (answers on a postcard to 11 Downing Street) you have only cut about a third of our annual debt interest payments, or about a fifth of the additional amount we are borrowing each year for our grandchildren to pay back.
Let’s say 0.5m at the median wage of £30k = £15bn p.a. (Plus the social costs so let’s say another £5bn)
Local government employment has fallen about 30k in that period to a shade under 2m.
I’m not sure that the quality of government services has improved by that much over the last 5 years?
Over time - and it might take a year - this we’ll be absorbed by the productive economy so the income and social taxes will be replaced and hopefully output will be higher resulting in additional corporate taxes
https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwork/publicsectorpersonnel/timeseries/g6nt/pse
https://www.theregister.com/2025/08/07/uk_microsoft_spending/

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Re: I do worry about Liz Truss – politicalbetting.com
One reason for a margin of forgiveness was that car speedometers could be inaccurate. The speed shown on your dashcam or satnav should be bang on as it will be GPS-based.AIUI it is policy set at Force level ie Chief Constable. In general they are +10% + 2 enforcement threshold, but there is no guarantee.There is a folk legend (I think) that the really enforced limit is the announced limit plus 10% plus 2, i.e. 24, 35, 46 etc. I don't know if that's still the practice, or if you can get fined for driving at 22 in a 20 zone?Where are you?Why isn't anyone suggesting a crackdown on speeding ?Speeding is one thing we seem to be very effective at cracking down on, as my two penalties in the last 2 years for going at 26 and 24 in a new 20 zone attest.
Or is it some unalienable right to do 85mph on motorways ?
Personally I'd increase the limit to 80mph and enforce it.
There was a famous Chief Constable in North Wales called Richard Brunstrom aka "Mad Mullah of the Traffic Taliban" who went Zero Tolerance, and was slightly unpopular with some but his force performed well.
Re: I do worry about Liz Truss – politicalbetting.com
Several video game style “hazard recognition” tests are part of the current theory testThere was ca. 1967 a (then very expensive and primitive) arcade machine which was a driving simulator which threw in such things as a parked car's door opening in front of you. No idea how long that lasted.If you want an easy test try Fruit Ninja on an iPad.In terms of testing older drivers, I think that the real problem is reaction time rather than vision. In some US States the vision rules are so lax that people who are registered partially sighted can drive, but there is little evidence those states have more accidents. Reaction time is more critical, and requires not just vision, but also acting on hazards, particularly so where there is cognitive impairment developing, though physical frailty too.I remember arcade machines where you had to press a button to see how quickly you reacted. They can’t be expensive, and could be located in opticians, GP surgeries, etc.
Vision is at least fairly easy to test, with objective measures, but reaction time etc is more difficult. At the very least it requires a good simulator, but more realistically an on the road test, and we have very limited capacity for those.
Then have a pint and try again. Even if barely noticing the alcohol the level of performance drops very quickly.
Quite a good test for elderly parents too.
But what we do have is Microsoft Flight Simulator - especially a version which shows one's path in space in plan and elevation afterwards. I was startled at the effect of first one, then two, then three not particularly big glasses of wine - and I'm not a small person.
Made me realise decades ago that the 50 limit is, if anything, perhaps a bit generous.
You can try some in this app -
https://apps.apple.com/gb/app/official-dvsa-theory-test-kit/id463295925
Re: I do worry about Liz Truss – politicalbetting.com
There are, remarkable though it may seem, potential policy options that fall in between those two extremes.We seem to be back in “why can’t we just” world this evening. Government is simple etc.Yeah, let’s do nothing but bumble along as we are because decisions are ‘tough’ and we don’t have politicians to take tough decisions. 🤔

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Re: I do worry about Liz Truss – politicalbetting.com
Headcount. The number of uk central government employees was just over 4m in q1 2025 vs 3.4m in q1 2020.This stands at about £1.3 tn at the moment. 2.5% is about £32 billion. That's a cut of £1000 pa in expenditure for 32 million people, or £10,000 for 3.2 million people.It's simply not going to raise enough money and will send wealthy people fleeing overseas. The non-dom changes have already caused a huge hole in the public finances, hitting long term investment two tax rises is going to cause an even bigger loss for the government.This is actually targeted at the unearned wealth of the boomer generation. So I'd have thought you would approve.Treasury targeting inheritance tax reforms to help plug UK deficitThis is going to be a disaster. They just need to get real and cut spending. Freeze public sector salaries, cut the triple lock and cut public sector pensions. Private sector salary growth is stalling already and the number of vacancies is falling drastically so they can't even cry about a recruitment problem like they moaned about when the last government did it.
Exclusive: Chancellor also looking at tweaks to capital gains tax to try to bridge £40bn-plus spending gap before budget
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025/aug/12/treasury-targeting-inheritance-tax-reforms-to-help-plug-uk-deficit
Taxes can't go up now without taking money out of the productive base of the economy. There's no more left to give.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025/aug/12/treasury-targeting-inheritance-tax-reforms-to-help-plug-uk-deficit
For every billion pounds in tax they raise they are going to take a billion out of the economy, if not more given that they will have to target the productive part meaning money that would otherwise be better used and result in a pretty good 1.5x economic multiplier now goes to the state which consumes. I wouldn't be surprised for every £1bn the government intends to raise by the maths it will only get around £0.5-0.6bn in additional revenue due to slower growth.
Cutting spending is the only answer, it isn't beyond the wit of man to cut 2.5% out of the government budget.
Even when you have identified these cuts (answers on a postcard to 11 Downing Street) you have only cut about a third of our annual debt interest payments, or about a fifth of the additional amount we are borrowing each year for our grandchildren to pay back.
Let’s say 0.5m at the median wage of £30k = £15bn p.a. (Plus the social costs so let’s say another £5bn)
Local government employment has fallen about 30k in that period to a shade under 2m.
I’m not sure that the quality of government services has improved by that much over the last 5 years?
Over time - and it might take a year - this we’ll be absorbed by the productive economy so the income and social taxes will be replaced and hopefully output will be higher resulting in additional corporate taxes
https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwork/publicsectorpersonnel/timeseries/g6nt/pse
Re: Proposed changes to Driving Laws: A Quick Reaction – politicalbetting.com
If I recall correctly, there’s roughly an order of magnitude difference in price between underground and overground routes for high voltage power cables.Customers benefit when there is investment in improving the local distribution grid. A good example was Garsdale and upper Dentdale which were both put in as spurs in 1960. About 20 years ago UU or whatever it was called then redesigned the whole as a ring main. Before the change our electic went off somewhere at least once a month. Since then maybe goes off for 5 seconds then jumps back on. Fantastic change benefiting perhaps 800 householders. The thing is Friends of the Earth did their usual this will be terrible bullshit, should all be undergrounded (No!). In fact the lines are much less visible than they were. I wouldn't be able to see where it goes under the Rawthey, if I didn't know. but because they are only undergrounded where there is absolute need it is much safer and faults are easier to detect. Undergound everything is a fool's promise. Suppose the conductor breaks, we know it is between two points 2 miles apart - typical situation. Drive around and you can find an overground break within 10 minutes. Underground, will take a day to locate the break within 100 metres then it is all to dig out.Customers do not benefit from increased transmission capacity - they benefit from reliable and cheap electricity. That might mean building more pylons, but equally it might mean building more generation closer to demand.Two points I think here. Do consumers benefit from investments in additional transmission capacity that needs to be paid for? Zonal pricing discourages that, while generating companies in Scotland are paying for part of that investment under current arrangements.And, yes, zonal pricing ultimately reduces the business case for investments in energy production in Scotland. Long term average prices could be higher: consumers in the south pay for more expensively produced electricity while Scottish producers have a smaller market to sell to and to spread their costs over.Of course it does. If the price of electricity is much higher in the SE, that incentivises power companies to invest in generation in those areas because they make more profit from doing so. Think about the shape of a supply curve.There's a complicated explanation here, but fundamentally if energy producers in Scotland generate more than the transmission network can cope with you either have to boost the transmission network or encourage generation away from Scotland and nearer to the point of most consumption. Zonal pricing encourages neither of those outcomes. The current imperfect arrangement feeds some of the pay not to produce payments back into network upgrades.Other than 'Ed Miliband is rubbish' (which might be true, but seems overly simplistic) - what are the reasons why nodal (or zonal if nodal is too complicated) pricing wasn't put forward in the latest review? It seems such an obvious "win" to reduce constraint payments and encourage battery farms and privately funded links between nodes / zones etc that I feel that I must be missing something.This is so obvious it drives me crazy. Just slap nodal and 30-minute tariffs on everyone and the market will sort itself out. Instead, we have people in the Highlands desperately putting solar up because they are effectively subsiding London and the SE.Oh, yes. To encourage cheaper electricity in London and the SE without having to renew nasty power stations where the most important folk/voters live.Has anyone ever provided a rational explanation of why electricity should be cheaper the further away from the source of generation?And imagine the political pressure and lobbying for charging electricity according to the distance from the generator. Wouldn't just be the SNP etc.We can’t do that. It would mean moving jobs and investment from the south to the north, which is not on."Delete old emails to save water, say officialsFrom your link:-
Environment Agency releases new guidance to reduce water usage as five areas of UK are in drought" (£)
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/08/11/southern-england-heatwave-amber-alert/
Emails and photos stored in the cloud are maintained by vast data centres, which consume so much energy that they require large amounts of water to keep cool.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/08/11/southern-england-heatwave-amber-alert/ (£££)
Three facts combined by the tech numpty who wrote the OSA, by the look of it, to reach a silly conclusion.
As an aside, the computing power needed for AI is worrying some green campaigners. Some (even on pb) have suggested that devolved governments in colder and wetter parts of the country should look at building data centres there to take advantage of natural cooling.
Edit: Else they'd have to pay for transmission more than the folk who live in the north/west or downwind from Hinkley Point etc. And we can't have that. Apparently.
https://octopus.energy/blog/zonal-pricing-for-large-businesses/
https://www.these-islands.co.uk/publications/i403/zonal_pricing_what_happened.aspx
Instead, we have the absurd situation where the price is universal, which means there is no cost to investing in Sutherland and then offloading the cost of transmission to customers via standing charges.
As I say it's complicated and I don't personally have a settled view. The best argument for zonal pricing, I suspect, it encourages earlier electrification, which should be everyone's goal.
And you're absolutely right about Scotland. We're an enormous exporter of renewable energy. There shouldn't really be a case for more generation here, unless the benefits of doing so outweigh the costs of building transmission to the SE of England. The price signal does not currently reflect those benefits and costs.
I helped push approval through South Lakeland but can't forget the grand-standing of Farron et al for whom winning a vote is worth more than an efficient electricity supply. That attitude hasn't changed just see the Lib Dems with the Gas and Lithium Battery site near Kendal.
The overground ones are not quite as reliable in service, but are much easier to repair when they do break. These days you can use drones for inspections, which makes it cheaper to plan routine maintenance such as clearing trees.
Lib Dems being naked opportunists is definitely not a new story.

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