Best Of

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 .

An increase in gambling taxes is low hanging fruit and won’t be controversial for the vast majority of the
public .

Good morning

Another unpopular measure according to the polls, and does nothing to address Reeves 'all my very own deep hole' in the public finances

Why doesn't she focus on all the popular ways to increase taxes and cut spending? It's exasperating.

Truth is that income tax has to rise, but she cannot do that because of her idiotic pre election promises

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

Do 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.

Labour are a high tax high spend government and it is not in their DNA to cut spending

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

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.

Any party that is focussed on a pensioner voting cohort like the Conservatives is going to high tax, high spend.

Cameron and Osborne certainly cut spending as a percentage of gdp and cut tax at all income levels, including a big inheritance tax cut.

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

How much did the national debt increase during the last Conservative government?

Because of lockdown, Cameron and Osborne certainly cut it compared to what Brown left

You’d think someone interested in politics would understand the difference between the deficit and the debt but you’ve never been good with numbers.

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 Darling

Are you trying to argue that the national debt didn’t increase between 2010 and 2024? Because it did. Massively.

It increased at a lower rate than under Brown and Darling, certainly pre lockdown

And yet the national debt increased. Massively. Strong financial management by the Tories. Bravo.

Spending as a percentage of gdp was 47% when Brown left office in 2010, falling to 41% when Cameron left office in 2016

Maybe, but that isn’t the national debt. That’s a different statistic entirely.

It led to the decline in increase in the national debt

Maybe. But yet the national debt still increased over the 14 years you were in power. Massively.

What additional cuts would you have made to balance the budget and run a surplus?

I'd double council tax. That's the current deficit wiped out (nearly) in one go.

A freeze on hospital spending, abolish stamp duty, NICs/IT merger. Borrow as much for capital investment as the markets allow.

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.

If people favour polyamory, or an open marriage, all well and good.

But, I do get disgusted by the kind of politician (usually a Conservative), who features his wife and children on election literature, before dumping them in favour of a younger model, or abandoning his wife when she develops cancer.

IMHO, if they do that to those they are closest to, just imagine what they'll do to the voters.

The worst thing about it is that when the story of their affair breaks you have to ingest loads of mind bleach to get rid of the image of some out of shape grim toad rogering away - I still have nightmares from the thought of David Mellor sweating and grunting away on Antonia de Sancha like Jaba the Hut having an epileptic fit.

They say politics is showbiz for ugly people so until Salma Hayek or Sidney Sweeney are occupying the green benches I don’t want to have to imagine their sexual antics.

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 .

An increase in gambling taxes is low hanging fruit and won’t be controversial for the vast majority of the
public .

Good morning

Another unpopular measure according to the polls, and does nothing to address Reeves 'all my very own deep hole' in the public finances

Why doesn't she focus on all the popular ways to increase taxes and cut spending? It's exasperating.

Truth is that income tax has to rise, but she cannot do that because of her idiotic pre election promises

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

Do 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.

Labour are a high tax high spend government and it is not in their DNA to cut spending

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

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.

Any party that is focussed on a pensioner voting cohort like the Conservatives is going to high tax, high spend.

Cameron and Osborne certainly cut spending as a percentage of gdp and cut tax at all income levels, including a big inheritance tax cut.

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

How much did the national debt increase during the last Conservative government?

Because of lockdown, Cameron and Osborne certainly cut it compared to what Brown left

You’d think someone interested in politics would understand the difference between the deficit and the debt but you’ve never been good with numbers.

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 Darling

Are you trying to argue that the national debt didn’t increase between 2010 and 2024? Because it did. Massively.

It increased at a lower rate than under Brown and Darling, certainly pre lockdown

And yet the national debt increased. Massively. Strong financial management by the Tories. Bravo.

Spending as a percentage of gdp was 47% when Brown left office in 2010, falling to 41% when Cameron left office in 2016

Maybe, but that isn’t the national debt. That’s a different statistic entirely.

It led to the decline in increase in the national debt

Maybe. But yet the national debt still increased over the 14 years you were in power. Massively.

What additional cuts would you have made to balance the budget and run a surplus?

I'd double council tax. That's the current deficit wiped out (nearly) in one go.

A freeze on hospital spending, abolish stamp duty, NICs/IT merger. Borrow as much for capital investment as the markets allow.

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.

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 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.

Possibly the funniest betting market of the year. Well it is silly season in August.

https://polymarket.com/event/dildo-thrown-at-wnba-game-on-august-6-13?tid=1754642193379

$180,000 bet on this market so far!

The WNBA has been providing quite a lot of amusement this summer. There was the “protest” by the two teams in the all star game where they wore t-shirts saying “pay us what you owe us” which just ended up with the finances being torn apart showing what a loss the women’s game made and how it was covered by the men’s game. The players didn’t understand why they aren’t being paid the same as the men, whose game makes about $2b a year profit even after their huge wages.

This then went to get people to look at the viewing figures which were abysmal - when they threatened to strike my favourite comment was “tens of people will be upset if this happens”.

The dildo throwing has just been a childish reaction to the nonsense over the last few weeks.

The WNBA should lean into it, and make it an official pre-game thing.

Invite Vance or someone to throw the first dildo.

It’s going to keep happening unless they do lean into it. Trying to take it seriously just encourages the jokers.

One player wrote on Twitter to please stop doing this because someone will get hurt, the top reply was “Stop playing basketball on the dildo range”, with 35,000 likes.
https://x.com/red1bangarang/status/1951495276717384126

Which celeb/politician would actually be up for it ?

Good question. They should really be able to get a few retired basketballers to try and throw one in from halfway.

As for politicans, most of the younger Congresscritters on both sides have been seen to have a sense of humour at some point, having grown up around social media. They’d definitely need to get both sides engaged though, otherwise it would become as political as a jeans advert.

How do you think the players feel about this?

Right now most of them are having a severe sense of humour failure about it, which is why it keeps happening.

If they’d leaned into the joke the first time it happened, it would have been a one and done.

It's designed to degrade and humiliate them so I can see why they are not laughing.

Of course.
But the best, possibly the only way to deal with the assholes would be to lean into it.

How is a professional athlete supposed to "lean into it" when some arsehole throws a rubber cock at her? What's the ideal leaning into it course of action?

Presumably find the childish (*^$£^*% who threw it, bend him over and insert said rubber implement in his frenulum.

Er, you do know what a frenulum is?

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 .

An increase in gambling taxes is low hanging fruit and won’t be controversial for the vast majority of the
public .

Good morning

Another unpopular measure according to the polls, and does nothing to address Reeves 'all my very own deep hole' in the public finances

Why doesn't she focus on all the popular ways to increase taxes and cut spending? It's exasperating.

Truth is that income tax has to rise, but she cannot do that because of her idiotic pre election promises

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

Do 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.

Labour are a high tax high spend government and it is not in their DNA to cut spending

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

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.

Any party that is focussed on a pensioner voting cohort like the Conservatives is going to high tax, high spend.

Cameron and Osborne certainly cut spending as a percentage of gdp and cut tax at all income levels, including a big inheritance tax cut.

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

How much did the national debt increase during the last Conservative government?

Because of lockdown, Cameron and Osborne certainly cut it compared to what Brown left

You’d think someone interested in politics would understand the difference between the deficit and the debt but you’ve never been good with numbers.

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 Darling

Are you trying to argue that the national debt didn’t increase between 2010 and 2024? Because it did. Massively.

It increased at a lower rate than under Brown and Darling, certainly pre lockdown

And yet the national debt increased. Massively. Strong financial management by the Tories. Bravo.

Spending as a percentage of gdp was 47% when Brown left office in 2010, falling to 41% when Cameron left office in 2016

Maybe, but that isn’t the national debt. That’s a different statistic entirely.

It led to the decline in increase in the national debt

Maybe. But yet the national debt still increased over the 14 years you were in power. Massively.

What additional cuts would you have made to balance the budget and run a surplus?

I'd double council tax. That's the current deficit wiped out (nearly) in one go.

A freeze on hospital spending, abolish stamp duty, NICs/IT merger. Borrow as much for capital investment as the markets allow.

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 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 .

An increase in gambling taxes is low hanging fruit and won’t be controversial for the vast majority of the
public .

Good morning

Another unpopular measure according to the polls, and does nothing to address Reeves 'all my very own deep hole' in the public finances

Fiddling whilst London burns.
She's crashed the economy properly. To show Liz how its done

She has not 'crashed the economy'.

Some people need to remember the mantra "you lost- get over it".

There's a degree of general anger on the right about there being a Labour government. Just the fact of it. Because it's hardly a big socialist experiment, is it.

The biggest threat to Farage is that Starmer succeeds. And Farage has very little agency in that, which I think is why his core political activities are shit-shovelling and shit-stirring - notably him and all his colleagues constantly (husk off) lying about what is happening to try and create a febrile summer. It's not a kind word, but it is what they do.

Conversely the noisier and more desperate Farage becomes, the greater risks he faces in his own political base. For example, he has weakened his vetting process, but that will let more knuckle draggers inside the sandcastle, but may cause some of the decents to exit from the other door. His support base is tribal and fissiparous, and he knows it. And he has a compliant mass media largely onside ignoring real problems, but that could change. He is walking a tightrope, or perhaps several tightropes.

Each time Starmer reduces immigration, or their policies lock up an trafficking gang, or reduce the number of hotels in use, or anything else, it washes away a bit more of Farage's sandcastle of rhetoric.

The same goes for the other areas - NHS, Local Government, Economy, Defence and so on.

I think as a society we want an inclusive, pleasant place to be rather than the hell hole Farage wants to pretend exists.

The question is how far Starmer's Govt can succeed and make progress, and how much of that will be perceived, and to what extent Farage's smokescreen can have effect.

The problem that you (and I given my antipathy towards Farage) have is that Starmer is showing no signs of 'succeeding'. His policies do not appear to be having any impact on migration nor does he appear to be making any progress in any other policy areas.

Now on one level, with my strange (by most people's standards) view of migration as a positive thing, I am not particularly sad that Starmer is not succeeding. But on another level of wanting competent Government answerable to the people - perhaps the only reason to consider Starmer as a better choice than Sunak at the last election - he is failing utterly. And that failure makes a Reform victory and its consequences all the more likely.

I'm not ready to call that yet. What would success be and how would we - and voters - detect it?

We can see certain clear successes - NHS Waiting Lists down from 7.64 million to 7.3 million in the first 12 months (assuming published numbers of -0.03 million for June and July which is trend). That's big and is turning around a 15 year trend, but imo not big enough to be obvious.

I'm actually seeing extra police. Also defence expenditure, and expenditure in local government, are ticking up. Various metrics are improving very slowly.

I think "more money in my pocket" is perhaps better than expected, but detectible for eg minimum wagers rather than the PB demographic.

There are good things that have been / are being done that will require time to see (perhaps too much time). IMO Local Gov reorganisation is one of these, which will be valuable over time; we desperately need well resourced, capable local goverment. One of the reason I would be pleased to see the Tory Party die is because I don't believe any more there is any chance of them ever believing in investing in the public realm. I had hopes, but they are going backwards and may turn into mini-me Farages.

At the next election everyone will still be grumpy. It's imo whether it is "they've done a bit, and it is working for me a bit, so we can give them a bit more time", or "failure, let's try something completely different".

But most of the new legislation is hardly in, never mind having time to have an impact. And the Tories are still rushing in circles round the drain.

So my core view is ... we can't know yet. Which is boring.

NHS waiting lists are being held hostage for much higher pay. If the nurses get screwed but the surgeons and consultants get large pay rises, that could negate the politics of reduced waiting lists.

Waiting lists should be coming down anyway, absent a big uptick in a nasty variant of COvid - they reason they were so badly bent out of shape in the first place.

Point of order. The Consultants and Surgeons are not striking, it is the Resident Docors (formerly Junior Doctors).

Consultants got 4%, so a fraction over CPI, and incidentally not yet paid. I am told that it is in this month's pay, backdated to April.

Uni academics, who have suffered a similar decline in salary to medics, are rejoicing in 1.4% this year. Mainly thanks to the governments (plural) refusing to allow inflation matching increases in student fees.

Average starting salary of a junior doctor is also now £36,616, rising to over £70,000 at the top of the pay scale.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cy5yy13ng33o

Average salary for a lecturer in the UK is £36,555 with starting salaries for academics often below £30k
https://uk.indeed.com/career/lecturer/salaries

Though of course the whole student fees system needs reform, fees for courses in economics at Cambridge or law at Oxford or medicine or engineering at Imperial should be far higher than they are for starters while courses in creative arts in newer universities should certainly be frozen or even cut

Other way around. Fees for STEM subjects should be significantly reduced, as that’s where the skills shortages lie.

Universities should also work with employers to make sure the courses are actually useful and tailored to what’s needed in industry now and in the future.

Unfortunately, they tend to cost significantly more to run.

The irony is that the reason fees are higher for humanities courses is to cross-subsidise those courses which run at a loss.

Which is ridiculous, you should pay the market price for the course you are studying not somebody else's course. Humanities course fees should be frozen or even cut

You do have a point, but all you and Sandpit for the matter of that are talking about is tinkering at the edges while ignoring the real problem - the entire university funding system, fees, research grants, spending, endowments, is more broken than Trump's brain cell and needs rethinking from the guts up.

I don't know what the answer is but I can foresee a major implosion without it.

The former won't happen. Too many feathers would get seriously ruffled by any changes.

Therefore at some point we should expect the latter.

If I could do two big changes to how Uni is run etc.

1) Post A level application. Scrap the whole farrago of applying to five places, choosing one and a reserve, waiting for results to see if you've made it, clearing if you haven't. Get the exams marked sooner, apply with results in hand. Done.

2) Allow uni's to set the fees for courses to what they want.

3) (I know I said two but this is a biggy) - scrap funding bodies and dole out the research money to the Uni's to decide who gets it.

My fear for 2), is technically when they raises the cap to £9k, that was max not the fee. However, within unis all departments demanded to charge the same fees across the board and between unis after a few years of the odd uni offering cheaper fees, they all upped it to the max as the perception was cheaper fees = lesser quality course.

I could see repeat of that, and also the fees at elite US colleges are now mental and yes some of that is better pay for lecturers, better facilities, but also plenty of evidence it gets hosed of all sorts of non-academic stuff because we must have x, as y college got one, and the number of admin people at these places is crazy.

I think that was a long way if saying unis don't seem to work as a proper market.