Best Of

Did we do this yet ?

Family in fear after Tommy Robinson shares video of black man with white granddaughters

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/aug/20/family-in-fear-after-tommy-robinson-shares-video-of-black-man-with-white-granddaughters
..Ayeni and his wife have been scared to leave their house because of threats. “We haven’t gone outside at home, we just can’t,” Natalie said. “Just after it started to go viral, someone in the local pub recognised Olajuwon immediately; we couldn’t believe how quick it had spread. We were walking home from shops just streets from our house, and two lads passed us, spun round and said ‘I hope you’re not them off that video or we’re coming back to slash you up’. It’s just horrendous.

“Someone was shouting ‘paedophile’ outside the house the other night, so I rang the police again but they say there’s little they can do. It feels a matter of time before something bad happens. We tried to go out yesterday and had to come home.”

The impact on Ayeni has been particularly severe. “I feel I have to sleep with one eye open,” he said. “I feel unsafe, scared and sad, as mine and my brother’s lives have been threatened. Someone said they will seek revenge and I’ll never walk again, all for just being in the park with the kids I love on a family day out...

This is why I laugh when people who live in places like this tell me that London is a shithole.

Rachel Reeves - worst Chancellor in decades?

Certainly one of the least deft political operators to inhabit the role in recent times.

She cannot sell an economic vision or plan because she doesn’t have one. It’s rather painful to watch this all unfold in slow motion. At least Kwarteng was gone quickly.

No-one in this government appears to have any concrete 'vision'. At best, any vision is a nebulous cloud that varies from minister to minister.

And it is led by someone who cannot sell a vision if they had one.

(I might tentatively suggest that that is the problem: Starmer cannot sell the vision they have. But I see no other ministers trying, either, so I fear they don't have one.)

The killer point. We don't know where we're going - and we haven't done since Boris was removed. Boris had vision - no plan to actually deliver it, but the vision was clearly there.

As usual with policy, neat slogans to sell helps. And I honestly think the one Labour should adopt is Build Back Better. An awful lot of people wistfully looking to the past. A huge amount of stuff needed. A society - cultural and infrastructure - needing improvements.

Boris the great showman rightly identified this and had the pithy slogan, just without the policies. Starmer lacks the vision but gives the impression of being a technocrat. So come up with the polices to actually do it.

IMV Boris did have a plan. As with all plans, it was flawed, and may (or would) not have worked. Covid struck within a few months of his getting his stonking majority, and any plans he had were utterly derailed.

What we really need is a PM with Boris' vision and ability to sell things to the electorate; Starmer's technocracy, and someone else's (May's ?) morality.

I agree with most of the rest of your post.

Boris *sold* a plan, but it wasn't real. He got desperate councils to bid for BBB funding. Which cost them money they didn't have. To apply for money that largely didn't exist.

Everyone can point to general decay and rot. On local streets, in their communities, in town centres. In the tatty schools and hospitals and public buildings. Maintenance budgets cut because "we can't afford it" which creates more mess and a bigger bill than the cut. Water and electricity infrastructure not invested in for foreign owner profits hence running out of water and Heathrow's substation burning down.

We need to spend money to save money. Every pound we save fixing things up saves more than a pound fixing the mess caused by not fixing them. Of making commercial centres buzz again. Of making people proud of their community again. Will have to spend more in the short term to save in the medium to long term. Better to do that than to keep throwing more money onto the bonfire to only get ashes.

THAT is the vision thing.

When I spend on long term maintenance and capital improvement I modify my current spending to balance it.

How much is the government and people of this country willing to reduce their current spending for long term benefit.

Reducing crisis management *is* reducing current spending.

Accounting rules in local government do stupid things. Maintaining drains costs money, so the budget is cut and the money is saved. Huzzah!

But a blocked drain creates a flood which means the council need to spend money in year to clean up - including clearing the drain.

The current spending they need to save to pay to maintain the drains is the money spent clearing up the mess not maintaining the drains. But as the budget needs to balance - and crisis spending isn't firmly costed as its by exception - we end up paying more and getting less.

Don't you get it? We can't afford not to maintain drains and roads and other things. Today the schools have gone back, and Fraserburgh North primary school has the heating jammed on full 24/7. We can't afford to repair the heating because the school is due to be replaced, but we can't afford to replace the school either.

But in-year heating? If it runs over budget then what can you do. So the heating stays on. And students and teachers get sick. Which means high cost supply teachers.

You think cuts save money? No, they cost money.

Cut spending on welfare to invest in maintenance and capital improvements.

That requires a government big enough to tell people that they need to make some sacrifices in living standards for medium term gains in quality of life.

And a people big enough to accept it.

If though you want to increase spending on maintenance and capital improvements without cutting welfare spending then you need to convince the bond markets not me.

OK, so the direct example I gave was a council. Who got lumbered with Adult Social Care but not the money to pay for Adult Social Care. You don't want to make a personal sacrifice in your living standards, just other people.

We get that. Why do you think the Tories got demolished in the election?

We don't need to cut welfare, we need to cut waste. The poorest in our society not only spend that money quickly, they do so locally. Cut their money, they spend less, local businesses go bust and more people are out of work.

Cut the waste. Welfare is an absurd mess with endless bureaucracy and petty assessments contracted out. Simplify to save. Same with Education or Health - stop tipping money onto the admin bonfire and buy a hosepipe.

Did we do this yet ?

Family in fear after Tommy Robinson shares video of black man with white granddaughters

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/aug/20/family-in-fear-after-tommy-robinson-shares-video-of-black-man-with-white-granddaughters
..Ayeni and his wife have been scared to leave their house because of threats. “We haven’t gone outside at home, we just can’t,” Natalie said. “Just after it started to go viral, someone in the local pub recognised Olajuwon immediately; we couldn’t believe how quick it had spread. We were walking home from shops just streets from our house, and two lads passed us, spun round and said ‘I hope you’re not them off that video or we’re coming back to slash you up’. It’s just horrendous.

“Someone was shouting ‘paedophile’ outside the house the other night, so I rang the police again but they say there’s little they can do. It feels a matter of time before something bad happens. We tried to go out yesterday and had to come home.”

The impact on Ayeni has been particularly severe. “I feel I have to sleep with one eye open,” he said. “I feel unsafe, scared and sad, as mine and my brother’s lives have been threatened. Someone said they will seek revenge and I’ll never walk again, all for just being in the park with the kids I love on a family day out...

What a terrible story

This is the stuff that will help Reform sink themselves - basic, lazy, ignorant abusive behaviour. Labour Councillor granted one year non-personal-attendance at meetings; RefUK Councillor commenting. This is one I had not seen.

The excuse was roughly "but nobody told me it was cancer, so my actions were OK":

Carol Hyatt has non-Hodgkin lymphoma and due to her illness City of Wolverhampton Council has given her a dispensation to carry out her duties from home.

At the meeting on Wednesday, councillor Anita Stanley said she did not feel Hyatt's arrangement was "very fair on the residents".

"I'm immunocompromised, I can do everything, but I can't go out because then I'll get sepsis and could die, but I've done my very best still represent my ward," Hyatt told the BBC.

During a full council discussion about a proposed extension of Hyatt's dispensation to work from home, Stanley stood up and said: "I do not feel it is very fair on the residents not to have a political representative being able to speak up for them for the period of effectively one whole year.

"It's not fair on taxpayers."

Hyatt said: "The situation is not a party political thing so why would you treat any human being like that when they're fighting cancer and going through treatment?

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c24v1010p90o

Because there are a lot of selfish nasty shits out there with a vote, and Reform want to be their best mates.

The conversation about the British empire below was interesting, and held varied views. Some pro, some anti, some mixed. All thoughtful.

Then two posters come along with posts with zero content, just "You disagree with me, you stoopid!"

Do you really need the absurdity of some of these "thoughtful" posts spelt out for you?

By all means, give your contrary arguments.

I think it's impossible to answer a question like 'would the world be worse off if the British Empire had never existed?'

But I'll give a you couple of examples.

Firstly, you missed the point I was attempting to indicate: Some of the arguments for why the British Empire was a good thing sound very similar to arguments other people make for why their empires were/are a good thing. For example, have a look at Chinese arguments for why their occupation of Tibet is a good thing. Or read the fascinating texts written by German historians and academics in the 1920s arguing that the former German colonies in Africa were run much better than all other European colonies in Africa, and they should be given back to Germany.

Of course, some of the arguments people make for why their own empire was/is good can have some truth in them. But I always think it's a bit of a coincidence when people think own empires undoubtedly a great blessing for humanity, while finding all the other empires abhorrent. Of course I can understand people feeling this way - I didn't argue with my 10-year-old son the other day when he told me that I am 'the best dad in the world'.

Then you've got things like people saying 'you can't judge the British Empire by the standards of today', and in literally the next sentence inviting us to compare the British Empire favourably with the Mongol Empire. Just to spell this out for you:
Time between today and the heyday of the British Empire - about a century or so
Time between the heyday of the British Empire and the heyday of the Mongol Empire - about 7 centuries

Or there are claims like this: "The Empire invariably improved the constitutional and economic conditions wherever it settled"

As for the argument that the British Empire was definitely a good thing because the Belgian Empire was terrible - I'm hoping this was posted as a joke.

This is the stuff that will help Reform sink themselves - basic, lazy, ignorant abusive behaviour. Labour Councillor granted one year non-personal-attendance at meetings; RefUK Councillor commenting. This is one I had not seen.

The excuse was roughly "but nobody told me it was cancer, so my actions were OK":

Carol Hyatt has non-Hodgkin lymphoma and due to her illness City of Wolverhampton Council has given her a dispensation to carry out her duties from home.

At the meeting on Wednesday, councillor Anita Stanley said she did not feel Hyatt's arrangement was "very fair on the residents".

"I'm immunocompromised, I can do everything, but I can't go out because then I'll get sepsis and could die, but I've done my very best still represent my ward," Hyatt told the BBC.

During a full council discussion about a proposed extension of Hyatt's dispensation to work from home, Stanley stood up and said: "I do not feel it is very fair on the residents not to have a political representative being able to speak up for them for the period of effectively one whole year.

"It's not fair on taxpayers."

Hyatt said: "The situation is not a party political thing so why would you treat any human being like that when they're fighting cancer and going through treatment?

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c24v1010p90o

Because there are a lot of selfish nasty shits out there with a vote, and Reform want to be their best mates.

The 'i didn't vote for this' cries from the Workhouse will be deafening

This is the stuff that will help Reform sink themselves - basic, lazy, ignorant abusive behaviour. Labour Councillor granted one year non-personal-attendance at meetings; RefUK Councillor commenting. This is one I had not seen.

The excuse was roughly "but nobody told me it was cancer, so my actions were OK":

Carol Hyatt has non-Hodgkin lymphoma and due to her illness City of Wolverhampton Council has given her a dispensation to carry out her duties from home.

At the meeting on Wednesday, councillor Anita Stanley said she did not feel Hyatt's arrangement was "very fair on the residents".

"I'm immunocompromised, I can do everything, but I can't go out because then I'll get sepsis and could die, but I've done my very best still represent my ward," Hyatt told the BBC.

During a full council discussion about a proposed extension of Hyatt's dispensation to work from home, Stanley stood up and said: "I do not feel it is very fair on the residents not to have a political representative being able to speak up for them for the period of effectively one whole year.

"It's not fair on taxpayers."

Hyatt said: "The situation is not a party political thing so why would you treat any human being like that when they're fighting cancer and going through treatment?

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c24v1010p90o

The only way to do it would be a reformed council tax based on property value. A significant tax cut for most of the country, particularly in the Red Wall.

The problem is the huge range of house values across the country - in Burnley, the average house price is £120k. In London, you still have relatively cheap housing in Newham compared with, say, Kensington and Chelsea.

Coming up with a banding system to cover this vast disparity is probably a non starter so you need simply to go with the value of the property (or the land it's sitting on) and put a tax on that. 0.5% on a £400k property would be £2,000 which in my case isn't far off what we pay Newham in Council Tax. In Bromley, Band H properties pay over £4k in Council Tax - if you assume 0.5% on an £800k property (pretty average for Bromley) you get £4k so again not much change. For your £2 milion property in Cheam Village you would be looking at £10k.

Such a move wouldn't violently impact the housing market and while I've no clue on how much it would raise, I would guess more than the current Council Tax and Stamp Duty combined so both could be removed.
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There will be winners and losers - aren't there always - and the losers will scream and vent on social media and elsewhere but I think it's the way forward.

CGT on sales above a certain value sounds more like a wealth tax than a property tax - I'm not convinced and you'll see people desperately selling under the limit or a rush of sales of high value properties before such a tax is introduced.