Best Of
Re: Reform & The Greens, the parties of Coldplay fans – politicalbetting.com
Where I live, the council planted some fast growing trees. About 15 years back.Even with small projects, the process state still rears it’s ugly head.It's not universally bad. We've had some good projects in Scotland. Queensferry Crossing came in under budget and on time. Small stuff, incremental stuff, tends to go ok.I honestly don't see the point in borrowing for capital investment when the cost of infrastructure is so high. We need to actually work to remove all of those barriers before we even think about that. Again, it just seems absolutely criminal to me that building a third runway at Heathrow will cost £49bn, even the short runway will come in at £21bn. This is just one example, there's suggestions that the next nuclear plant will be £70bn while Korea builds all of this similar infrastructure at a tenth of the cost. It's not as though their living standards are substantially different to ours.I'd double council tax. That's the current deficit wiped out (nearly) in one go.What additional cuts would you have made to balance the budget and run a surplus?Maybe. But yet the national debt still increased over the 14 years you were in power. Massively.It led to the decline in increase in the national debtMaybe, but that isn’t the national debt. That’s a different statistic entirely.Spending as a percentage of gdp was 47% when Brown left office in 2010, falling to 41% when Cameron left office in 2016And yet the national debt increased. Massively. Strong financial management by the Tories. Bravo.It increased at a lower rate than under Brown and Darling, certainly pre lockdownAre you trying to argue that the national debt didn’t increase between 2010 and 2024? Because it did. Massively.You did not just say national debt, you said national debt increase, the national debt increase was lower under Cameron and Clegg and Osborne than Brown and DarlingYou’d think someone interested in politics would understand the difference between the deficit and the debt but you’ve never been good with numbers.Because of lockdown, Cameron and Osborne certainly cut it compared to what Brown leftHow much did the national debt increase during the last Conservative government?Cameron and Osborne certainly cut spending as a percentage of gdp and cut tax at all income levels, including a big inheritance tax cut.Why on earth would you expect them to do that? Most of that is at odds with their time in office - particularly on renewables and farmers.Labour are a high tax high spend government and it is not in their DNA to cut spendingDo you think whoever is leading the tory party at the next GE will do into it promising to raise income tax because I don't.Truth is that income tax has to rise, but she cannot do that because of her idiotic pre election promisesWhy doesn't she focus on all the popular ways to increase taxes and cut spending? It's exasperating.I expect the two child benefit cap will go in November mostly funded by an increase in gambling taxes . This no 10 will hope will reduce the appeal of Your party .Good morning
An increase in gambling taxes is low hanging fruit and won’t be controversial for the vast majority of the
public .
Another unpopular measure according to the polls, and does nothing to address Reeves 'all my very own deep hole' in the public finances
Also you do not raise taxes to address a huge hole in the public finances and use some of that tax raising to create another spending commitment
Conservatives are low tax low spending and I would expect a conservative government to reduce corporation tax, encourage wealth creation and abolish IHT on farmers. I would also expect a review of all net zero subsidies
Any party that is focussed on a pensioner voting cohort like the Conservatives is going to high tax, high spend.
Kemi has said she will take an axe to spending, especially welfare spending and net zero spending etc and at one stage even proposed means testing the triple lock
A freeze on hospital spending, abolish stamp duty, NICs/IT merger. Borrow as much for capital investment as the markets allow.
I think you've fallen for the trap of thinking in terms of billions, not millions. The odd town bypass, new tram routes, a few million on cycle lanes, rail electrification, phone masts, a public health investment. That can add up to billions, but you've diversified across projects so that one disaster doesn't cause the whole investment to collapse.
Not very far from where I live the council decided to use some government money to build a cycle/pedestrian bridge over the river between two sites that are due for extensive redevelopment in the future. Cue outrage from local nimbies over the trauma caused by the need to cut down twelve trees. Twelve self-seeded trees that would grow back afterwards. So far we’ve had one judicial review, another in the works & the entire project has roughly doubled in cost due to all the delays.
The Aarhus Convention is a plague upon the nation.
These tore up the pavement, when they got big. Because the pavements are narrow, in places, this makes it impossible to use prams, wheelchairs or walking frames. Literally you can’t get through the gap between the tree and people’s garden walls, except by scrambling over tree roots erupting from the pavement.
The sane thing to do is chop the trees down and replace. They have all the cultural value of a pine tree in one of those Swedish forest grown for wood pulp.
But no.
So the old people and mothers walk in the actual road, with the cars.
Re: Reform & The Greens, the parties of Coldplay fans – politicalbetting.com
Even with small projects, the process state still rears it’s ugly head.It's not universally bad. We've had some good projects in Scotland. Queensferry Crossing came in under budget and on time. Small stuff, incremental stuff, tends to go ok.I honestly don't see the point in borrowing for capital investment when the cost of infrastructure is so high. We need to actually work to remove all of those barriers before we even think about that. Again, it just seems absolutely criminal to me that building a third runway at Heathrow will cost £49bn, even the short runway will come in at £21bn. This is just one example, there's suggestions that the next nuclear plant will be £70bn while Korea builds all of this similar infrastructure at a tenth of the cost. It's not as though their living standards are substantially different to ours.I'd double council tax. That's the current deficit wiped out (nearly) in one go.What additional cuts would you have made to balance the budget and run a surplus?Maybe. But yet the national debt still increased over the 14 years you were in power. Massively.It led to the decline in increase in the national debtMaybe, but that isn’t the national debt. That’s a different statistic entirely.Spending as a percentage of gdp was 47% when Brown left office in 2010, falling to 41% when Cameron left office in 2016And yet the national debt increased. Massively. Strong financial management by the Tories. Bravo.It increased at a lower rate than under Brown and Darling, certainly pre lockdownAre you trying to argue that the national debt didn’t increase between 2010 and 2024? Because it did. Massively.You did not just say national debt, you said national debt increase, the national debt increase was lower under Cameron and Clegg and Osborne than Brown and DarlingYou’d think someone interested in politics would understand the difference between the deficit and the debt but you’ve never been good with numbers.Because of lockdown, Cameron and Osborne certainly cut it compared to what Brown leftHow much did the national debt increase during the last Conservative government?Cameron and Osborne certainly cut spending as a percentage of gdp and cut tax at all income levels, including a big inheritance tax cut.Why on earth would you expect them to do that? Most of that is at odds with their time in office - particularly on renewables and farmers.Labour are a high tax high spend government and it is not in their DNA to cut spendingDo you think whoever is leading the tory party at the next GE will do into it promising to raise income tax because I don't.Truth is that income tax has to rise, but she cannot do that because of her idiotic pre election promisesWhy doesn't she focus on all the popular ways to increase taxes and cut spending? It's exasperating.I expect the two child benefit cap will go in November mostly funded by an increase in gambling taxes . This no 10 will hope will reduce the appeal of Your party .Good morning
An increase in gambling taxes is low hanging fruit and won’t be controversial for the vast majority of the
public .
Another unpopular measure according to the polls, and does nothing to address Reeves 'all my very own deep hole' in the public finances
Also you do not raise taxes to address a huge hole in the public finances and use some of that tax raising to create another spending commitment
Conservatives are low tax low spending and I would expect a conservative government to reduce corporation tax, encourage wealth creation and abolish IHT on farmers. I would also expect a review of all net zero subsidies
Any party that is focussed on a pensioner voting cohort like the Conservatives is going to high tax, high spend.
Kemi has said she will take an axe to spending, especially welfare spending and net zero spending etc and at one stage even proposed means testing the triple lock
A freeze on hospital spending, abolish stamp duty, NICs/IT merger. Borrow as much for capital investment as the markets allow.
I think you've fallen for the trap of thinking in terms of billions, not millions. The odd town bypass, new tram routes, a few million on cycle lanes, rail electrification, phone masts, a public health investment. That can add up to billions, but you've diversified across projects so that one disaster doesn't cause the whole investment to collapse.
Not very far from where I live the council decided to use some government money to build a cycle/pedestrian bridge over the river between two sites that are due for extensive redevelopment in the future. Cue outrage from local nimbies over the trauma caused by the need to cut down twelve trees. Twelve self-seeded trees that would grow back afterwards. So far we’ve had one judicial review, another in the works & the entire project has roughly doubled in cost due to all the delays.
The Aarhus Convention is a plague upon the nation.

5
Re: Reform & The Greens, the parties of Coldplay fans – politicalbetting.com
{firing-up-the-palantir-gesture}If the government doesn't implement some kind of restriction on VPNs before they get kicked out I will happily and publicly acknowledge I was wrong. But the alternative scenario is to admit the OSA is a failure, repeal it and look like a bunch of ridiculous fools. Can't see this government being in any way willing to do that.When people say this stuff about what's going to happen and it doesn't (eg the government were going to keep the lockdown beyond the pandemic because they were luvin it) I'd like to see some accountability. Some fessing up that "I was wrong and will learn from it "Marc Andreessen complains to Downing Street about Online Safety Act and UK tech ministerIt's not hard to see where this is going. What happens when Ofcom come back and say, yes, VPNs are being extensively used by under-18s and the OSA is being bypassed to the extent it's a giant waste of time?
In a sign that the government was caught off guard by the extent to which these tools would be used, ministers last week requested data from the internet regulator Ofcom about how and when VPNs were being downloaded, according to two people briefed on the move.
Kyle has said publicly that he is not considering any ban on VPNs, but officials say ministers are keen to understand how the tools are being used, particularly by children.
I don't believe Kyle's statements about VPNs. He's one of those morons who believe any problem can be fixed by making a new law. So the government will ban VPNs without a licence.
Like I always do on the odd occasion I get things wrong.
The only way I see a VPN ban not happening is if some organisation - Wikipedia possibly - refuses to comply with the OSA and then takes uk.gov to the ECHR and wins. But that will take more years than this administration has left.
1) they will ban VPNs
2) companies say they will have to stop working in the U.K.
3) the government will come up with VPN registration - even trying to demand control from the VPN provider if what the customer is doing
4) after multiple rounds of unworkable legislation, it turns out that at least one of the licensed VPNs is run by terrorists. Another is run by organised crime. At least one is owned by Donald Trump.
{staggers back from palantir}
Re: Reform & The Greens, the parties of Coldplay fans – politicalbetting.com
Yes - a constant problem. Also to do with "funding available for one year and must be spent by April".In local Government, on the rare occasions there was money, there was huge pressure to spend it and spend it quickly. That often led to poor decisions and a "spade in the ground" mentality on building projects.That - on a massive scale - is what I saw and experienced all day every day during my time in 'investment banking'. And not a government or public sector employee in sight.That’s nuts, and you know that exactly the same scenario would have played out for every single other trade on the project. Thousands of people people each paid hundreds of pounds a day to do nothing productive.Yes lots of small projects can add up to a decent gain, yet it's the big projects that will move the needle. The problem we have is the government treats it like something like HS2 as a 5x 55 point unrelated tickets instead of an epic with 150x 3 point tickets.It's not universally bad. We've had some good projects in Scotland. Queensferry Crossing came in under budget and on time. Small stuff, incremental stuff, tends to go ok.I honestly don't see the point in borrowing for capital investment when the cost of infrastructure is so high. We need to actually work to remove all of those barriers before we even think about that. Again, it just seems absolutely criminal to me that building a third runway at Heathrow will cost £49bn, even the short runway will come in at £21bn. This is just one example, there's suggestions that the next nuclear plant will be £70bn while Korea builds all of this similar infrastructure at a tenth of the cost. It's not as though their living standards are substantially different to ours.I'd double council tax. That's the current deficit wiped out (nearly) in one go.What additional cuts would you have made to balance the budget and run a surplus?Maybe. But yet the national debt still increased over the 14 years you were in power. Massively.It led to the decline in increase in the national debtMaybe, but that isn’t the national debt. That’s a different statistic entirely.Spending as a percentage of gdp was 47% when Brown left office in 2010, falling to 41% when Cameron left office in 2016And yet the national debt increased. Massively. Strong financial management by the Tories. Bravo.It increased at a lower rate than under Brown and Darling, certainly pre lockdownAre you trying to argue that the national debt didn’t increase between 2010 and 2024? Because it did. Massively.You did not just say national debt, you said national debt increase, the national debt increase was lower under Cameron and Clegg and Osborne than Brown and DarlingYou’d think someone interested in politics would understand the difference between the deficit and the debt but you’ve never been good with numbers.Because of lockdown, Cameron and Osborne certainly cut it compared to what Brown leftHow much did the national debt increase during the last Conservative government?Cameron and Osborne certainly cut spending as a percentage of gdp and cut tax at all income levels, including a big inheritance tax cut.Why on earth would you expect them to do that? Most of that is at odds with their time in office - particularly on renewables and farmers.Labour are a high tax high spend government and it is not in their DNA to cut spendingDo you think whoever is leading the tory party at the next GE will do into it promising to raise income tax because I don't.Truth is that income tax has to rise, but she cannot do that because of her idiotic pre election promisesWhy doesn't she focus on all the popular ways to increase taxes and cut spending? It's exasperating.I expect the two child benefit cap will go in November mostly funded by an increase in gambling taxes . This no 10 will hope will reduce the appeal of Your party .Good morning
An increase in gambling taxes is low hanging fruit and won’t be controversial for the vast majority of the
public .
Another unpopular measure according to the polls, and does nothing to address Reeves 'all my very own deep hole' in the public finances
Also you do not raise taxes to address a huge hole in the public finances and use some of that tax raising to create another spending commitment
Conservatives are low tax low spending and I would expect a conservative government to reduce corporation tax, encourage wealth creation and abolish IHT on farmers. I would also expect a review of all net zero subsidies
Any party that is focussed on a pensioner voting cohort like the Conservatives is going to high tax, high spend.
Kemi has said she will take an axe to spending, especially welfare spending and net zero spending etc and at one stage even proposed means testing the triple lock
A freeze on hospital spending, abolish stamp duty, NICs/IT merger. Borrow as much for capital investment as the markets allow.
I think you've fallen for the trap of thinking in terms of billions, not millions. The odd town bypass, new tram routes, a few million on cycle lanes, rail electrification, phone masts, a public health investment. That can add up to billions, but you've diversified across projects so that one disaster doesn't cause the whole investment to collapse.
One of my best mates was previously on the project and he was sitting around being paid £650 per day to do nothing because there just wasn't anything for him to do but they'd contracted him from a set date to a set date but that work was so badly delayed that for the whole 3 months of the contract he got paid to be "on call" and then once work finally did commence they had to call him and his crew back at an even higher rate. That's about 25 electricians of varying skill level on day rates because they declined to do the fixed price deal he offered as it was "too restrictive" due to him setting a specific time to start and finish, requiring the site to be handed in a certain way and all materials etc... to be delivered to a tight schedule and completing the project over 4.5 months. In the end it took them 3 months of doing nothing, then another 6 months of actual work and the overall cost was 2.5x what he offered in the fixed price contract.
I have no doubt that this small example isn't the only one where inept public sector project managers and consultants who don't know what they're doing end up pissing public money into the wind because there's zero repercussions.
The successful Councils are those with 101 95% Ready to Roll projects that can be topped and tailed and rapidly submitted.
One of the improvements coming from Mr Starmer is multiyear (3 iirc) funding settlements.
In the last round of active travel funding, which was due to be multiyear, it was about half way through the spending period before the Department (DFT?) had got off their arse enough to even identify what the amount of funding available was going to be.

1
Re: Reform & The Greens, the parties of Coldplay fans – politicalbetting.com
If you want to secure access to certain sites for people below the age of x, you need to have a way of proving you are over x.I'm no tech expert but I'd have thought there are possibilities between do nothing (about VPNs accessing 'nasty' sites) and a ban (the chance of which imo is close to zero).If the government doesn't implement some kind of restriction on VPNs before they get kicked out I will happily and publicly acknowledge I was wrong. But the alternative scenario is to admit the OSA is a failure, repeal it and look like a bunch of ridiculous fools. Can't see this government being in any way willing to do that.When people say this stuff about what's going to happen and it doesn't (eg the government were going to keep the lockdown beyond the pandemic because they were luvin it) I'd like to see some accountability. Some fessing up that "I was wrong and will learn from it "Marc Andreessen complains to Downing Street about Online Safety Act and UK tech ministerIt's not hard to see where this is going. What happens when Ofcom come back and say, yes, VPNs are being extensively used by under-18s and the OSA is being bypassed to the extent it's a giant waste of time?
In a sign that the government was caught off guard by the extent to which these tools would be used, ministers last week requested data from the internet regulator Ofcom about how and when VPNs were being downloaded, according to two people briefed on the move.
Kyle has said publicly that he is not considering any ban on VPNs, but officials say ministers are keen to understand how the tools are being used, particularly by children.
I don't believe Kyle's statements about VPNs. He's one of those morons who believe any problem can be fixed by making a new law. So the government will ban VPNs without a licence.
Like I always do on the odd occasion I get things wrong.
The only way I see a VPN ban not happening is if some organisation - Wikipedia possibly - refuses to comply with the OSA and then takes uk.gov to the ECHR and wins. But that will take more years than this administration has left.
1) you use official identification documents to prove this. Online banks do this. No one, will upload their passport details to a porn site, though.
2) A trusted third party could run a site that, having proved you are over x, issues one use codes (tokens) that confirm to the over x sites that you are over x, without disclosing your actual personal identity.
Either will not prevent strawman sales, logins etc.
The second option is the most practical. It could be used for a wide range of things - buying alcohol online, gambling access etc. So using it would not be immediately disreputable. You could easily imagine that Amazon could offer issuing such tokens.
Re: Reform & The Greens, the parties of Coldplay fans – politicalbetting.com
The main difference is that a reckoning comes in the end. After the GFC, whole floors of useless drone at Shiti Group were ditched. We used to joke that the tower was shorter each morning.The difference being that investment banking inefficiencies are a problem for the bank management and shareholders, as opposed to taxpayers being forcibly relieved of their money under penalty of imprisonment.That - on a massive scale - is what I saw and experienced all day every day during my time in 'investment banking'. And not a government or public sector employee in sight.That’s nuts, and you know that exactly the same scenario would have played out for every single other trade on the project. Thousands of people people each paid hundreds of pounds a day to do nothing productive.Yes lots of small projects can add up to a decent gain, yet it's the big projects that will move the needle. The problem we have is the government treats it like something like HS2 as a 5x 55 point unrelated tickets instead of an epic with 150x 3 point tickets.It's not universally bad. We've had some good projects in Scotland. Queensferry Crossing came in under budget and on time. Small stuff, incremental stuff, tends to go ok.I honestly don't see the point in borrowing for capital investment when the cost of infrastructure is so high. We need to actually work to remove all of those barriers before we even think about that. Again, it just seems absolutely criminal to me that building a third runway at Heathrow will cost £49bn, even the short runway will come in at £21bn. This is just one example, there's suggestions that the next nuclear plant will be £70bn while Korea builds all of this similar infrastructure at a tenth of the cost. It's not as though their living standards are substantially different to ours.I'd double council tax. That's the current deficit wiped out (nearly) in one go.What additional cuts would you have made to balance the budget and run a surplus?Maybe. But yet the national debt still increased over the 14 years you were in power. Massively.It led to the decline in increase in the national debtMaybe, but that isn’t the national debt. That’s a different statistic entirely.Spending as a percentage of gdp was 47% when Brown left office in 2010, falling to 41% when Cameron left office in 2016And yet the national debt increased. Massively. Strong financial management by the Tories. Bravo.It increased at a lower rate than under Brown and Darling, certainly pre lockdownAre you trying to argue that the national debt didn’t increase between 2010 and 2024? Because it did. Massively.You did not just say national debt, you said national debt increase, the national debt increase was lower under Cameron and Clegg and Osborne than Brown and DarlingYou’d think someone interested in politics would understand the difference between the deficit and the debt but you’ve never been good with numbers.Because of lockdown, Cameron and Osborne certainly cut it compared to what Brown leftHow much did the national debt increase during the last Conservative government?Cameron and Osborne certainly cut spending as a percentage of gdp and cut tax at all income levels, including a big inheritance tax cut.Why on earth would you expect them to do that? Most of that is at odds with their time in office - particularly on renewables and farmers.Labour are a high tax high spend government and it is not in their DNA to cut spendingDo you think whoever is leading the tory party at the next GE will do into it promising to raise income tax because I don't.Truth is that income tax has to rise, but she cannot do that because of her idiotic pre election promisesWhy doesn't she focus on all the popular ways to increase taxes and cut spending? It's exasperating.I expect the two child benefit cap will go in November mostly funded by an increase in gambling taxes . This no 10 will hope will reduce the appeal of Your party .Good morning
An increase in gambling taxes is low hanging fruit and won’t be controversial for the vast majority of the
public .
Another unpopular measure according to the polls, and does nothing to address Reeves 'all my very own deep hole' in the public finances
Also you do not raise taxes to address a huge hole in the public finances and use some of that tax raising to create another spending commitment
Conservatives are low tax low spending and I would expect a conservative government to reduce corporation tax, encourage wealth creation and abolish IHT on farmers. I would also expect a review of all net zero subsidies
Any party that is focussed on a pensioner voting cohort like the Conservatives is going to high tax, high spend.
Kemi has said she will take an axe to spending, especially welfare spending and net zero spending etc and at one stage even proposed means testing the triple lock
A freeze on hospital spending, abolish stamp duty, NICs/IT merger. Borrow as much for capital investment as the markets allow.
I think you've fallen for the trap of thinking in terms of billions, not millions. The odd town bypass, new tram routes, a few million on cycle lanes, rail electrification, phone masts, a public health investment. That can add up to billions, but you've diversified across projects so that one disaster doesn't cause the whole investment to collapse.
One of my best mates was previously on the project and he was sitting around being paid £650 per day to do nothing because there just wasn't anything for him to do but they'd contracted him from a set date to a set date but that work was so badly delayed that for the whole 3 months of the contract he got paid to be "on call" and then once work finally did commence they had to call him and his crew back at an even higher rate. That's about 25 electricians of varying skill level on day rates because they declined to do the fixed price deal he offered as it was "too restrictive" due to him setting a specific time to start and finish, requiring the site to be handed in a certain way and all materials etc... to be delivered to a tight schedule and completing the project over 4.5 months. In the end it took them 3 months of doing nothing, then another 6 months of actual work and the overall cost was 2.5x what he offered in the fixed price contract.
I have no doubt that this small example isn't the only one where inept public sector project managers and consultants who don't know what they're doing end up pissing public money into the wind because there's zero repercussions.
Anyone seen Debit Suisse recently? No?
Re: Reform & The Greens, the parties of Coldplay fans – politicalbetting.com
Lehmans was too big to fail but the Fed did not realise, so they let it fail which triggered the Global Financial Crisis.Not all banks were too big to fail, the US government allowed Lehmans to go bankrupt with no bailoutSadly, no. Too Big Too Fail.Were bank bailouts left to shareholders in your reality?The main difference is that a reckoning comes in the end. After the GFC, whole floors of useless drone at Shiti Group were ditched. We used to joke that the tower was shorter each morning.The difference being that investment banking inefficiencies are a problem for the bank management and shareholders, as opposed to taxpayers being forcibly relieved of their money under penalty of imprisonment.That - on a massive scale - is what I saw and experienced all day every day during my time in 'investment banking'. And not a government or public sector employee in sight.That’s nuts, and you know that exactly the same scenario would have played out for every single other trade on the project. Thousands of people people each paid hundreds of pounds a day to do nothing productive.Yes lots of small projects can add up to a decent gain, yet it's the big projects that will move the needle. The problem we have is the government treats it like something like HS2 as a 5x 55 point unrelated tickets instead of an epic with 150x 3 point tickets.It's not universally bad. We've had some good projects in Scotland. Queensferry Crossing came in under budget and on time. Small stuff, incremental stuff, tends to go ok.I honestly don't see the point in borrowing for capital investment when the cost of infrastructure is so high. We need to actually work to remove all of those barriers before we even think about that. Again, it just seems absolutely criminal to me that building a third runway at Heathrow will cost £49bn, even the short runway will come in at £21bn. This is just one example, there's suggestions that the next nuclear plant will be £70bn while Korea builds all of this similar infrastructure at a tenth of the cost. It's not as though their living standards are substantially different to ours.I'd double council tax. That's the current deficit wiped out (nearly) in one go.What additional cuts would you have made to balance the budget and run a surplus?Maybe. But yet the national debt still increased over the 14 years you were in power. Massively.It led to the decline in increase in the national debtMaybe, but that isn’t the national debt. That’s a different statistic entirely.Spending as a percentage of gdp was 47% when Brown left office in 2010, falling to 41% when Cameron left office in 2016And yet the national debt increased. Massively. Strong financial management by the Tories. Bravo.It increased at a lower rate than under Brown and Darling, certainly pre lockdownAre you trying to argue that the national debt didn’t increase between 2010 and 2024? Because it did. Massively.You did not just say national debt, you said national debt increase, the national debt increase was lower under Cameron and Clegg and Osborne than Brown and DarlingYou’d think someone interested in politics would understand the difference between the deficit and the debt but you’ve never been good with numbers.Because of lockdown, Cameron and Osborne certainly cut it compared to what Brown leftHow much did the national debt increase during the last Conservative government?Cameron and Osborne certainly cut spending as a percentage of gdp and cut tax at all income levels, including a big inheritance tax cut.Why on earth would you expect them to do that? Most of that is at odds with their time in office - particularly on renewables and farmers.Labour are a high tax high spend government and it is not in their DNA to cut spendingDo you think whoever is leading the tory party at the next GE will do into it promising to raise income tax because I don't.Truth is that income tax has to rise, but she cannot do that because of her idiotic pre election promisesWhy doesn't she focus on all the popular ways to increase taxes and cut spending? It's exasperating.I expect the two child benefit cap will go in November mostly funded by an increase in gambling taxes . This no 10 will hope will reduce the appeal of Your party .Good morning
An increase in gambling taxes is low hanging fruit and won’t be controversial for the vast majority of the
public .
Another unpopular measure according to the polls, and does nothing to address Reeves 'all my very own deep hole' in the public finances
Also you do not raise taxes to address a huge hole in the public finances and use some of that tax raising to create another spending commitment
Conservatives are low tax low spending and I would expect a conservative government to reduce corporation tax, encourage wealth creation and abolish IHT on farmers. I would also expect a review of all net zero subsidies
Any party that is focussed on a pensioner voting cohort like the Conservatives is going to high tax, high spend.
Kemi has said she will take an axe to spending, especially welfare spending and net zero spending etc and at one stage even proposed means testing the triple lock
A freeze on hospital spending, abolish stamp duty, NICs/IT merger. Borrow as much for capital investment as the markets allow.
I think you've fallen for the trap of thinking in terms of billions, not millions. The odd town bypass, new tram routes, a few million on cycle lanes, rail electrification, phone masts, a public health investment. That can add up to billions, but you've diversified across projects so that one disaster doesn't cause the whole investment to collapse.
One of my best mates was previously on the project and he was sitting around being paid £650 per day to do nothing because there just wasn't anything for him to do but they'd contracted him from a set date to a set date but that work was so badly delayed that for the whole 3 months of the contract he got paid to be "on call" and then once work finally did commence they had to call him and his crew back at an even higher rate. That's about 25 electricians of varying skill level on day rates because they declined to do the fixed price deal he offered as it was "too restrictive" due to him setting a specific time to start and finish, requiring the site to be handed in a certain way and all materials etc... to be delivered to a tight schedule and completing the project over 4.5 months. In the end it took them 3 months of doing nothing, then another 6 months of actual work and the overall cost was 2.5x what he offered in the fixed price contract.
I have no doubt that this small example isn't the only one where inept public sector project managers and consultants who don't know what they're doing end up pissing public money into the wind because there's zero repercussions.
Anyone seen Debit Suisse recently? No?
What we need is more, and deeper failure.
So : You run a bank. It fails.
1) You can kill your self - your family is provided for.
2) You can live the rest of your life on benefits in Bedford, after 20 years in prison.
3) You can escape by sea. And be murdered by financially sophisticated, sociopathic whalers off the coast of Norway.
(As an aside, it is odd that those PBers who are wrongly convinced the GFC was somehow Gordon Brown's fault overlook that London also declined to save Lehmans!)
Re: Reform & The Greens, the parties of Coldplay fans – politicalbetting.com
Marc Andreessen complains to Downing Street about Online Safety Act and UK tech minister
In a sign that the government was caught off guard by the extent to which these tools would be used, ministers last week requested data from the internet regulator Ofcom about how and when VPNs were being downloaded, according to two people briefed on the move.
Kyle has said publicly that he is not considering any ban on VPNs, but officials say ministers are keen to understand how the tools are being used, particularly by children.
https://www.ft.com/content/09c88dde-687e-47c7-ba9d-7ad5048e2bc7
The blind leading the blind.
In a sign that the government was caught off guard by the extent to which these tools would be used, ministers last week requested data from the internet regulator Ofcom about how and when VPNs were being downloaded, according to two people briefed on the move.
Kyle has said publicly that he is not considering any ban on VPNs, but officials say ministers are keen to understand how the tools are being used, particularly by children.
https://www.ft.com/content/09c88dde-687e-47c7-ba9d-7ad5048e2bc7
The blind leading the blind.
Re: Reform & The Greens, the parties of Coldplay fans – politicalbetting.com
Yes. The porn mags didn't used to be displayed with the comics, did they.It does stop young children accidentally stumbling on adult and pornographic material howeverMarc Andreessen complains to Downing Street about Online Safety Act and UK tech ministerLOL, none of them have the slightest bit of a clue!
In a sign that the government was caught off guard by the extent to which these tools would be used, ministers last week requested data from the internet regulator Ofcom about how and when VPNs were being downloaded, according to two people briefed on the move.
Kyle has said publicly that he is not considering any ban on VPNs, but officials say ministers are keen to understand how the tools are being used, particularly by children.
https://www.ft.com/content/09c88dde-687e-47c7-ba9d-7ad5048e2bc7
The blind leading the blind.
Do none of them have a 14-year-old son, who could tell them that it takes about three minutes to work around the OSA provisions on adult content?

2
Re: Reform & The Greens, the parties of Coldplay fans – politicalbetting.com
Sadly, no. Too Big Too Fail.Were bank bailouts left to shareholders in your reality?The main difference is that a reckoning comes in the end. After the GFC, whole floors of useless drone at Shiti Group were ditched. We used to joke that the tower was shorter each morning.The difference being that investment banking inefficiencies are a problem for the bank management and shareholders, as opposed to taxpayers being forcibly relieved of their money under penalty of imprisonment.That - on a massive scale - is what I saw and experienced all day every day during my time in 'investment banking'. And not a government or public sector employee in sight.That’s nuts, and you know that exactly the same scenario would have played out for every single other trade on the project. Thousands of people people each paid hundreds of pounds a day to do nothing productive.Yes lots of small projects can add up to a decent gain, yet it's the big projects that will move the needle. The problem we have is the government treats it like something like HS2 as a 5x 55 point unrelated tickets instead of an epic with 150x 3 point tickets.It's not universally bad. We've had some good projects in Scotland. Queensferry Crossing came in under budget and on time. Small stuff, incremental stuff, tends to go ok.I honestly don't see the point in borrowing for capital investment when the cost of infrastructure is so high. We need to actually work to remove all of those barriers before we even think about that. Again, it just seems absolutely criminal to me that building a third runway at Heathrow will cost £49bn, even the short runway will come in at £21bn. This is just one example, there's suggestions that the next nuclear plant will be £70bn while Korea builds all of this similar infrastructure at a tenth of the cost. It's not as though their living standards are substantially different to ours.I'd double council tax. That's the current deficit wiped out (nearly) in one go.What additional cuts would you have made to balance the budget and run a surplus?Maybe. But yet the national debt still increased over the 14 years you were in power. Massively.It led to the decline in increase in the national debtMaybe, but that isn’t the national debt. That’s a different statistic entirely.Spending as a percentage of gdp was 47% when Brown left office in 2010, falling to 41% when Cameron left office in 2016And yet the national debt increased. Massively. Strong financial management by the Tories. Bravo.It increased at a lower rate than under Brown and Darling, certainly pre lockdownAre you trying to argue that the national debt didn’t increase between 2010 and 2024? Because it did. Massively.You did not just say national debt, you said national debt increase, the national debt increase was lower under Cameron and Clegg and Osborne than Brown and DarlingYou’d think someone interested in politics would understand the difference between the deficit and the debt but you’ve never been good with numbers.Because of lockdown, Cameron and Osborne certainly cut it compared to what Brown leftHow much did the national debt increase during the last Conservative government?Cameron and Osborne certainly cut spending as a percentage of gdp and cut tax at all income levels, including a big inheritance tax cut.Why on earth would you expect them to do that? Most of that is at odds with their time in office - particularly on renewables and farmers.Labour are a high tax high spend government and it is not in their DNA to cut spendingDo you think whoever is leading the tory party at the next GE will do into it promising to raise income tax because I don't.Truth is that income tax has to rise, but she cannot do that because of her idiotic pre election promisesWhy doesn't she focus on all the popular ways to increase taxes and cut spending? It's exasperating.I expect the two child benefit cap will go in November mostly funded by an increase in gambling taxes . This no 10 will hope will reduce the appeal of Your party .Good morning
An increase in gambling taxes is low hanging fruit and won’t be controversial for the vast majority of the
public .
Another unpopular measure according to the polls, and does nothing to address Reeves 'all my very own deep hole' in the public finances
Also you do not raise taxes to address a huge hole in the public finances and use some of that tax raising to create another spending commitment
Conservatives are low tax low spending and I would expect a conservative government to reduce corporation tax, encourage wealth creation and abolish IHT on farmers. I would also expect a review of all net zero subsidies
Any party that is focussed on a pensioner voting cohort like the Conservatives is going to high tax, high spend.
Kemi has said she will take an axe to spending, especially welfare spending and net zero spending etc and at one stage even proposed means testing the triple lock
A freeze on hospital spending, abolish stamp duty, NICs/IT merger. Borrow as much for capital investment as the markets allow.
I think you've fallen for the trap of thinking in terms of billions, not millions. The odd town bypass, new tram routes, a few million on cycle lanes, rail electrification, phone masts, a public health investment. That can add up to billions, but you've diversified across projects so that one disaster doesn't cause the whole investment to collapse.
One of my best mates was previously on the project and he was sitting around being paid £650 per day to do nothing because there just wasn't anything for him to do but they'd contracted him from a set date to a set date but that work was so badly delayed that for the whole 3 months of the contract he got paid to be "on call" and then once work finally did commence they had to call him and his crew back at an even higher rate. That's about 25 electricians of varying skill level on day rates because they declined to do the fixed price deal he offered as it was "too restrictive" due to him setting a specific time to start and finish, requiring the site to be handed in a certain way and all materials etc... to be delivered to a tight schedule and completing the project over 4.5 months. In the end it took them 3 months of doing nothing, then another 6 months of actual work and the overall cost was 2.5x what he offered in the fixed price contract.
I have no doubt that this small example isn't the only one where inept public sector project managers and consultants who don't know what they're doing end up pissing public money into the wind because there's zero repercussions.
Anyone seen Debit Suisse recently? No?
What we need is more, and deeper failure.
So : You run a bank. It fails.
1) You can kill your self - your family is provided for.
2) You can live the rest of your life on benefits in Bedford, after 20 years in prison.
3) You can escape by sea. And be murdered by financially sophisticated, sociopathic whalers off the coast of Norway.