Best Of

I see Badenoch's pledge to abolish stamp duty has made quite a splash, both in the press and on here. But I'm left somewhat baffled. If this is such a brilliant panacea that will boost economic growth and free up the housing market, why on earth hasn't it been proposed before by any government, of both stripes, in recent decades? I mean, it's a pretty easy policy to implement.
I can't help thinking there's a catch somewhere.

1) And why hasn’t the planning system been reformed so that no-hope litigation can’t hold up
projects for decades?
2) why not a British DARPA?
3) a partially reusable space launch vehicle was developed for $400 million dollars. Why not have one of our own? This would give the U.K. a national security advantage and mean that we could cheaply launch all kinds of things - such as a massively expanded OneWeb.
4) why not merge employee NI and IT? Genuine savings, tax levelling (fairness)
5) make employees genuinely liable for illegal employment - undocumented workers, paying below minimum wage, unsafe condition etc.
6) rebalance corporate tax to make finacialisation of companies expensive. And investing in long term productivity improvements, cheap.

Because “we don’t do things like that, here”

I see Badenoch's pledge to abolish stamp duty has made quite a splash, both in the press and on here. But I'm left somewhat baffled. If this is such a brilliant panacea that will boost economic growth and free up the housing market, why on earth hasn't it been proposed before by any government, of both stripes, in recent decades? I mean, it's a pretty easy policy to implement.
I can't help thinking there's a catch somewhere.

I'm reminded of Osborne's IHT ploy that brought the Tories very much back in the game.

The difference was there was going to be a general election within a few weeks.

Remember at the time a Labour MP wrote

'Shortly there will be an election, in which Labour will increase its majority'

https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2007/09/labour-majority-increase

There was going to be a general election: the IHT ploy caused Brown to bottle it. From which he never recovered.

Conference season ends and I believe the unexpected happened

Kemi Badenoch delivered the best speech, rolled out an array of policies, and stamp duty the 'rabbit out of the hat'

She energised her supporters and have given them something to sell on the doorstep

And she did what I prayed she would, sent out a positive [conservative] message and barely mentioned Starmer or Farage

Labour and Farage fell into the trap of hurling insults at each other to the detriment of both

The added bonus is Jenrick is the biggest loser

I do not know how the polls will react, but today was a start on the long road to relevance

Rabbit out of a hat, or bollocks out of her arse?

Pound shop Liz Truss.

No Kemi identified welfare and spending cuts to fund her tax cut

It wasn't just welfare but cuts in climate change subsidies and increasing north sea production with associated tax income, as well as welcoming back millionaires, entrepreneurs, and wealth creators

She also will scrap IHT on farmers and abolish vat on private school fees

Add in banning doctor strikes

This is conservative policies and is a direct challenge to Labour and Reform

This is pennies BigG. No spending cuts plan is credible without some sort of control on pensioner benefits and health spending. They are are growing so quickly - from a very high base - that any other cut or even steady economic growth is completely overwhelmed by them. Literally by design in the case of the triple lock.

Labour haven't set out a plan either but let's not pretend the Conservative plan is fiscally prudent. DavidL's take on this is correct.

Google tells me that the number of UK civil servants has increased since 2016 by 132,000 and that the median salary is £34k.

That would imply a saving of £4.5bn under the Tory plan.

Not commenting on whether it is feasible or not but it’s not “pennies”

True - but I think the fact the median salary is so low suggests what kinds of roles those civil servants are doing - particularly when you consider how London dominated the civil service is.

If you could cut 130,000 people out of Whitehall or it's equivalent in Scotland, Wales then fair enough. But I think the stats show that increase is primarily agencies like HMRC and DWP. Basically call centres, which would mean a reduced service. AI might be the answer to that but it's not a magic button you can press.

It said that the range was £24 - 84k (from memory - haven’t checked).

The only way to plausibly cuts costs is to stop doing stuff. Governments need to cut verticals rather than horizontally. (Equally I am sure that there are the sort of grinding efficiencies - 1, 2, 3 percent a year - that the private sector makes which government agencies never seem to be able to find)

And that's why, at the moment, this is Potemkin Policy. Tell us which Civil Servants are going to be axed, and what's going to happen to the work they were doing, and it gets interesting. "It won't be done by the state" is a legitimate answer.

Otherwise, Kemi is doing the fun bit without doing the hard work first. Maggie wouldn't have approved.

PB Tories are normally pragmatic people, questioning the symmetry of a Labour or Lib Dem tax cut or spending pledge. "The books don't balance" they will cry.

Yet a welcome Tory £12b tax cut paid by fantasy wastage savings get a free ride.

Fortunately the Tories are not in Government. I am sure if they were the gilt markets might baulk.

They are not “fantasy wastage savings”.

They have said that they will reduce civil service numbers back to 2016 levels. That’s pretty specific - of course they haven’t identified “Me Mexican” or “Ms Pete” as being at risk of being made redundant - but it’s not just a number made up by some spreadsheet jockey.

You had fourteen years in Government. Fourteen years to identify and implement swingeing service cuts to pay for massive tax cuts. You failed. During that 14 years, service provision levels crashed at the same time the tax burden increased.

Posters have quoted Reform fantasy savings in Kent, savings so magnificent that Council tax increases could be suspended, until they found out there were few savings to be made and Council taxes were raised by 5%.

A nice speech offering the Moon on a stick is one thing, shoehorning the contents of that speech into reality is quite another.

Your party and the cheerleaders on here are profoundly unserious.

Good morning

And giveover

Badenoch gave a totally unexpected and successful speech that galvanised her audience and has given her party lots of policies, and of scrapping stamp duty has been well received from think tanks and Paul Johnson formally of the IFS who said yesterday it is the worst of many bad taxes

Your mixture of cynicism and satire is par for the course but at least this conservative is pleased to see conservative policies and Jenrick put back in his box

I think it was a good speech and I quite like her personally. The central role of the abolition of stamp duty should be more controversial than it is, since it only benefits people who own homes worth more than £300K (which excludes 35% of households who don't own their home, plus whatever proportion own homes worth less than £300K - I can't find this info but it will be higher in the north). As such, it addresses a genuine problem (reluctance to move home) but overwhelmingly benefits the well-off. By contrast, the abolition of aid for people with limited mental problems probably affects non-voters disproportionately. Overall, it's a right-wing policy which ignores poorer people, while having benefits in encouraging mobility. As a Conservative policy it makes sense, although it doesn't tempt me as I prefer economic policies to favour people on lower incomes.

Oh, and another channel I watch, "not a pound for air to ground" (an aviation channel) was threatened for removal by YouTube this week for being AI content.

I really doubt it is.

Good grief, really? I wouldn't have pegged it for such.

Apologies; it was not an accusation of being AI, but reused content.

From a post on his YouTube channel a couple of days ago:
"Some news for you all. YouTube has decided that Not A Pound For Air To Ground is "reused content" and have informed me that they intend to suspend me and the channel. I have the opportunity for appeal and will do so, but as it stands I'll go dark on October 13th. Since I'm unclear how they've come to this conclusion, I will side with Marko Ramius and give myself one chance in three."

As you may know, AI slop and YouTube algorithms are killing YouTube channels, to the extent it's become it's own genre. Here is Kurzgesagt pointing this out

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_zfN9wnPvU0 "AI Slop Is Killing Our Channel" 13 mins

Dove instead of dived. AI or decades of America television?

ETA and 10-year anniversary rather than 10th anniversary.

Well yes, but it is a thing. There used to be four or five really good YouTubers I could go to for things like tanks, but now it's all computer-generated voices and stock footage saying things that I'm not sure are true. And that's across the board on every subject. That, and the rise of podcasts and vids where somebody talks into a mic with a neon sign in the background, makes YouTube an increasingly frustrating experience where my favourite creators are cut off by the knees and slop just keeps rising.

Ukraine war Youtube is a lot like that, there’s so many videos that are just a computer voice reading a bad translation of a Telegram or Reddit thread, with stock footage in the background that roughly matches the words. These seem to regularly get hundreds of thousand of views in a few hours, despite the fact that it’s unwatchable and repetitive.

Meanwhile, independent journalists and OSINT guys, many of whom are actually in Ukraine, who do their research and use mapping tools, clearly putting half a day’s work into a 10m video, are getting only tens of thousands of views for it and are obviously not making any money. I’m sure many of them aren’t doing it for the money, rather to draw international attention to the plight of their country, but it does seem that the rewards are not going the right way.

Good ones to follow:

https://www.youtube.com/@RFU
https://www.youtube.com/@AnnafromUkraine
https://www.youtube.com/@presidentsdailybrief
https://www.youtube.com/@TheMilitaryShow
https://www.youtube.com/@DenysDavydov

Times Radio and Daily Telegraph also have regular podcasts which are worth a listen.

Do you know if the viewing figures for the good channels has decreased?

Most of my YouTube watching is of channels I've subscribed to, so I'm not really affected by AI slop. The change would be that I'd need to rely on other people recommending new channels to me, rather than finding things through YouTube's algorithm, so that might be a good change if the AI slop breaks the algorithm.

Scott Manley's recently complained that the viewership of his channel has decreased - Around the time he chucked in his job to become a full-time YouTuber.

https://x.com/DJSnM/status/1974320572294418478

I see Badenoch's pledge to abolish stamp duty has made quite a splash, both in the press and on here. But I'm left somewhat baffled. If this is such a brilliant panacea that will boost economic growth and free up the housing market, why on earth hasn't it been proposed before by any government, of both stripes, in recent decades? I mean, it's a pretty easy policy to implement.
I can't help thinking there's a catch somewhere.

I'm reminded of Osborne's IHT ploy that brought the Tories very much back in the game.

The difference was there was going to be a general election within a few weeks.

Remember at the time a Labour MP wrote

'Shortly there will be an election, in which Labour will increase its majority'

https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2007/09/labour-majority-increase

Conference season ends and I believe the unexpected happened

Kemi Badenoch delivered the best speech, rolled out an array of policies, and stamp duty the 'rabbit out of the hat'

She energised her supporters and have given them something to sell on the doorstep

And she did what I prayed she would, sent out a positive [conservative] message and barely mentioned Starmer or Farage

Labour and Farage fell into the trap of hurling insults at each other to the detriment of both

The added bonus is Jenrick is the biggest loser

I do not know how the polls will react, but today was a start on the long road to relevance

Rabbit out of a hat, or bollocks out of her arse?

Pound shop Liz Truss.

No Kemi identified welfare and spending cuts to fund her tax cut

It wasn't just welfare but cuts in climate change subsidies and increasing north sea production with associated tax income, as well as welcoming back millionaires, entrepreneurs, and wealth creators

She also will scrap IHT on farmers and abolish vat on private school fees

Add in banning doctor strikes

This is conservative policies and is a direct challenge to Labour and Reform

This is pennies BigG. No spending cuts plan is credible without some sort of control on pensioner benefits and health spending. They are are growing so quickly - from a very high base - that any other cut or even steady economic growth is completely overwhelmed by them. Literally by design in the case of the triple lock.

Labour haven't set out a plan either but let's not pretend the Conservative plan is fiscally prudent. DavidL's take on this is correct.

Google tells me that the number of UK civil servants has increased since 2016 by 132,000 and that the median salary is £34k.

That would imply a saving of £4.5bn under the Tory plan.

Not commenting on whether it is feasible or not but it’s not “pennies”

True - but I think the fact the median salary is so low suggests what kinds of roles those civil servants are doing - particularly when you consider how London dominated the civil service is.

If you could cut 130,000 people out of Whitehall or it's equivalent in Scotland, Wales then fair enough. But I think the stats show that increase is primarily agencies like HMRC and DWP. Basically call centres, which would mean a reduced service. AI might be the answer to that but it's not a magic button you can press.

It said that the range was £24 - 84k (from memory - haven’t checked).

The only way to plausibly cuts costs is to stop doing stuff. Governments need to cut verticals rather than horizontally. (Equally I am sure that there are the sort of grinding efficiencies - 1, 2, 3 percent a year - that the private sector makes which government agencies never seem to be able to find)

And that's why, at the moment, this is Potemkin Policy. Tell us which Civil Servants are going to be axed, and what's going to happen to the work they were doing, and it gets interesting. "It won't be done by the state" is a legitimate answer.

Otherwise, Kemi is doing the fun bit without doing the hard work first. Maggie wouldn't have approved.

PB Tories are normally pragmatic people, questioning the symmetry of a Labour or Lib Dem tax cut or spending pledge. "The books don't balance" they will cry.

Yet a welcome Tory £12b tax cut paid by fantasy wastage savings get a free ride.

Fortunately the Tories are not in Government. I am sure if they were the gilt markets might baulk.

Morning all

The thing about populism is it always has to be on the right side of opinion - to be popular.

Farage's sole misstep in the 2024 GE was when he advocated a view on the Ukraine which was well out of step with public opinion at the time and he suffered for it.

Simply running to where the focus groups tell you public opinion is on any subject will leave a party completely tied up in an incomprehensible platform of contradictory policies which will make Government either impossible or so riddled with compromises and broken promises as to be entirely discredited.

The other side of this is where a populist leadership tries to offer a more conciliatory or moderate line they are then in danger of losing support because their voter base is often more extreme - immigration being the classic example. Yet the populist leader will, if they have any sense, know that the more they chase their own supporters to the extreme, the more they will repel others.

The art of politics is or should be about arguing a case to the electorate and convincing them it's the right thing to do even when many of the voters will lose out as a result. That's not easy.

There is for example a case to be made for immigration but no one is making it.

Farage’s comments on Ukraine were obviously a result of spending too much time in the US. The American debate on Ukraine in 2024 was very different to, and much more polarised than, the British or European debate. IIRC he was planning to be out there through the summer, and had to come back to the UK when Sunak surprised everyone with the July election.

If Farage is serious about government, he’s going to need a lot more firm policies in place before the next election, and a fully costed manifesto capable of external scrutiny.

He’s also going to need a whole shadow front bench.

He doesn’t appear to have people dedicated to a particular brief.

Conference season ends and I believe the unexpected happened

Kemi Badenoch delivered the best speech, rolled out an array of policies, and stamp duty the 'rabbit out of the hat'

She energised her supporters and have given them something to sell on the doorstep

And she did what I prayed she would, sent out a positive [conservative] message and barely mentioned Starmer or Farage

Labour and Farage fell into the trap of hurling insults at each other to the detriment of both

The added bonus is Jenrick is the biggest loser

I do not know how the polls will react, but today was a start on the long road to relevance

Rabbit out of a hat, or bollocks out of her arse?

Pound shop Liz Truss.

No Kemi identified welfare and spending cuts to fund her tax cut

It wasn't just welfare but cuts in climate change subsidies and increasing north sea production with associated tax income, as well as welcoming back millionaires, entrepreneurs, and wealth creators

She also will scrap IHT on farmers and abolish vat on private school fees

Add in banning doctor strikes

This is conservative policies and is a direct challenge to Labour and Reform

This is pennies BigG. No spending cuts plan is credible without some sort of control on pensioner benefits and health spending. They are are growing so quickly - from a very high base - that any other cut or even steady economic growth is completely overwhelmed by them. Literally by design in the case of the triple lock.

Labour haven't set out a plan either but let's not pretend the Conservative plan is fiscally prudent. DavidL's take on this is correct.

Google tells me that the number of UK civil servants has increased since 2016 by 132,000 and that the median salary is £34k.

That would imply a saving of £4.5bn under the Tory plan.

Not commenting on whether it is feasible or not but it’s not “pennies”

True - but I think the fact the median salary is so low suggests what kinds of roles those civil servants are doing - particularly when you consider how London dominated the civil service is.

If you could cut 130,000 people out of Whitehall or it's equivalent in Scotland, Wales then fair enough. But I think the stats show that increase is primarily agencies like HMRC and DWP. Basically call centres, which would mean a reduced service. AI might be the answer to that but it's not a magic button you can press.

It said that the range was £24 - 84k (from memory - haven’t checked).

The only way to plausibly cuts costs is to stop doing stuff. Governments need to cut verticals rather than horizontally. (Equally I am sure that there are the sort of grinding efficiencies - 1, 2, 3 percent a year - that the private sector makes which government agencies never seem to be able to find)

And that's why, at the moment, this is Potemkin Policy. Tell us which Civil Servants are going to be axed, and what's going to happen to the work they were doing, and it gets interesting. "It won't be done by the state" is a legitimate answer.

Otherwise, Kemi is doing the fun bit without doing the hard work first. Maggie wouldn't have approved.

PB Tories are normally pragmatic people, questioning the symmetry of a Labour or Lib Dem tax cut or spending pledge. "The books don't balance" they will cry.

Yet a welcome Tory £12b tax cut paid by fantasy wastage savings get a free ride.

Fortunately the Tories are not in Government. I am sure if they were the gilt markets might baulk.

They are not “fantasy wastage savings”.

They have said that they will reduce civil service numbers back to 2016 levels. That’s pretty specific - of course they haven’t identified “Me Mexican” or “Ms Pete” as being at risk of being made redundant - but it’s not just a number made up by some spreadsheet jockey.

You had fourteen years in Government. Fourteen years to identify and implement swingeing service cuts to pay for massive tax cuts. You failed. During that 14 years, service provision levels crashed at the same time the tax burden increased.

Posters have quoted Reform fantasy savings in Kent, savings so magnificent that Council tax increases could be suspended, until they found out there were few savings to be made and Council taxes were raised by 5%.

A nice speech offering the Moon on a stick is one thing, shoehorning the contents of that speech into reality is quite another.

Your party and the cheerleaders on here are profoundly unserious.

Good morning

And giveover

Badenoch gave a totally unexpected and successful speech that galvanised her audience and has given her party lots of policies, and of scrapping stamp duty has been well received from think tanks and Paul Johnson formally of the IFS who said yesterday it is the worst of many bad taxes

Your mixture of cynicism and satire is par for the course but at least this conservative is pleased to see conservative policies and Jenrick put back in his box

Indeed. Badenoch has upped her game - against Reform.

Labour bods here are worried because she doesn't need to up her game against Labour, so mired in the shit are they.

If Badenoch can get the Tories up to somewhere around 25% by the time of the May elections, she'll have bought herself another year - to see what further turnaround she can achieve.

Conference season ends and I believe the unexpected happened

Kemi Badenoch delivered the best speech, rolled out an array of policies, and stamp duty the 'rabbit out of the hat'

She energised her supporters and have given them something to sell on the doorstep

And she did what I prayed she would, sent out a positive [conservative] message and barely mentioned Starmer or Farage

Labour and Farage fell into the trap of hurling insults at each other to the detriment of both

The added bonus is Jenrick is the biggest loser

I do not know how the polls will react, but today was a start on the long road to relevance

Rabbit out of a hat, or bollocks out of her arse?

Pound shop Liz Truss.

No Kemi identified welfare and spending cuts to fund her tax cut

It wasn't just welfare but cuts in climate change subsidies and increasing north sea production with associated tax income, as well as welcoming back millionaires, entrepreneurs, and wealth creators

She also will scrap IHT on farmers and abolish vat on private school fees

Add in banning doctor strikes

This is conservative policies and is a direct challenge to Labour and Reform

This is pennies BigG. No spending cuts plan is credible without some sort of control on pensioner benefits and health spending. They are are growing so quickly - from a very high base - that any other cut or even steady economic growth is completely overwhelmed by them. Literally by design in the case of the triple lock.

Labour haven't set out a plan either but let's not pretend the Conservative plan is fiscally prudent. DavidL's take on this is correct.

Google tells me that the number of UK civil servants has increased since 2016 by 132,000 and that the median salary is £34k.

That would imply a saving of £4.5bn under the Tory plan.

Not commenting on whether it is feasible or not but it’s not “pennies”

True - but I think the fact the median salary is so low suggests what kinds of roles those civil servants are doing - particularly when you consider how London dominated the civil service is.

If you could cut 130,000 people out of Whitehall or it's equivalent in Scotland, Wales then fair enough. But I think the stats show that increase is primarily agencies like HMRC and DWP. Basically call centres, which would mean a reduced service. AI might be the answer to that but it's not a magic button you can press.

It said that the range was £24 - 84k (from memory - haven’t checked).

The only way to plausibly cuts costs is to stop doing stuff. Governments need to cut verticals rather than horizontally. (Equally I am sure that there are the sort of grinding efficiencies - 1, 2, 3 percent a year - that the private sector makes which government agencies never seem to be able to find)

And that's why, at the moment, this is Potemkin Policy. Tell us which Civil Servants are going to be axed, and what's going to happen to the work they were doing, and it gets interesting. "It won't be done by the state" is a legitimate answer.

Otherwise, Kemi is doing the fun bit without doing the hard work first. Maggie wouldn't have approved.

PB Tories are normally pragmatic people, questioning the symmetry of a Labour or Lib Dem tax cut or spending pledge. "The books don't balance" they will cry.

Yet a welcome Tory £12b tax cut paid by fantasy wastage savings get a free ride.

Fortunately the Tories are not in Government. I am sure if they were the gilt markets might baulk.

They are not “fantasy wastage savings”.

They have said that they will reduce civil service numbers back to 2016 levels. That’s pretty specific - of course they haven’t identified “Me Mexican” or “Ms Pete” as being at risk of being made redundant - but it’s not just a number made up by some spreadsheet jockey.

You had fourteen years in Government. Fourteen years to identify and implement swingeing service cuts to pay for massive tax cuts. You failed. During that 14 years, service provision levels crashed at the same time the tax burden increased.

Posters have quoted Reform fantasy savings in Kent, savings so magnificent that Council tax increases could be suspended, until they found out there were few savings to be made and Council taxes were raised by 5%.

A nice speech offering the Moon on a stick is one thing, shoehorning the contents of that speech into reality is quite another.

Your party and the cheerleaders on here are profoundly unserious.

Good morning

And giveover

Badenoch gave a totally unexpected and successful speech that galvanised her audience and has given her party lots of policies, and of scrapping stamp duty has been well received from think tanks and Paul Johnson formally of the IFS who said yesterday it is the worst of many bad taxes

Your mixture of cynicism and satire is par for the course but at least this conservative is pleased to see conservative policies and Jenrick put back in his box

Except - cost savings aren’t instant but tax cuts cost money immediately.

And as I said there is no substance to the £23bn in cost savings - if you want me to believe you tell me exactly what you are going to cut and I can check if the figures add up. If you don’t give me the detail I’m not going to believe you because I have 14 years of evidence that cuts don’t occur immediately