Quite an interesting survey, though one has to fight past the spin the people who commissioned with give it (even though I generally agree with them). Essentially people want a quiet life without adventures rather than a strong military and a vigorous foreign policy:
I wonder what the 2% who want us to fight alongside China against the US are like, though?? A militant suicide cult?
As I have said several times western Europe is becoming a peaceful, prosperous, geopolitically irrelevant backwater and that may well prove to be a very nice place to live. Surveys like that suggest it will suit most people just fine even if those with egos like Macron want to strut the world stage rather more.
That depends on whether the EU gets its act together or not wrt Russia, and especially wrt the frontline states from Finland/Sweden through to Ukraine. In reality we are in a new cold war, and the opportunity to be isolated, self-satisfied herbivores does not exist.
I would suggest that we have had that period already, and over-relaxed.
I am not sure how a non-vigorous foreign policy will work when much of the "heart of Europe" wants to spend its time sanctimoniously lecturing the rest of the world what to do, from a self-image of assumed moral superiority. That's not how it works.
Witness Macron's assertions at his recent press conference wrt how he will transform the EU: "Europe invented human rights". (I think that reference is probably to the French revolution, and the philosophical shift.)
I think it will be interesting to revisit in 12 months time, after 6 months of Macron as EU first-mover, and the subsequent hangover.
There are some interesting bits:
"40% said they would like foreign policy to focus primarily on strengthening the domestic economy."
The real dilemma for the Chancellor is how to target help to those small businesses who really need it like @Cyclefree daughter while not subsidising those with shareholders who should take the hit rather than the taxpayer
Every business has shareholders Big G.
It is quite obvious what Big G meant.
You mean the larger businesses in which, say, your pension fund is invested.
Essentially, yes.
Someone has to pay, and rather it be me (and my pension fund) than small business owners like Cyclefree’s daughter.
One other pandemic finance issue which has received little attention is the scale of fraud relating to the 'bounce back' loans.
The government always expected to make a loss on these loans, since some of the genuine businesses which borrowed would never be able to pay the money back. It will likely make a loss as great (somewhere around £8bn, I think) on fraudulent loans, where (for example) shell companies have borrowed money and disappeared overnight.
Despite them being 3 weeks ahead of us and in the midst of the peak of Omicron, it only makes the 3rd item, after racisim in a school and a story about Zuma. And the story about Omicron is only that their alert level will remain at level 1.
But I will wait and when I have the opportunity I will get my own back at the ballot box. I will not be the only one.
Very well written post at the end of the previous post and I feel awful for people like your daughter, but who to vote for at the ballot box?
Over a hundred Tories rebelled against these motions because they saw the damage this is inflicting upon the economy and those who work for a living like your daughter.
Labour and Keir Starmer nodded these measures through without even asking for support for hospitality or anything else. No qualms or concerns.
What the government is doing is bad, but the Opposition is worse. Worst of both worlds.
The strong likelihood is that hospitality would have been severely affected without the legislation. Labour is at least arguing for government support for the industry over the next couple of months; the Chancellor has disappeared.
There appear to be a lot of people who voted Tory (or perhaps worse didn't vote!) who claim to be very unhappy with the govt, and yet can't quite bring themselves to vote for any opposition party.
I might have missed it, but in all the complaining I don't remember any of the moaners congratulating the Lib Dems for voting against.
I think you'll find that one Lib Dem MP 5 years ago once voiced doubts about a fantastic opportunity for rural broadband or something and therefore the party is forever tainted.
Yes the general sniffy dismissal of the Lib Dems is unfathomable.
The real dilemma for the Chancellor is how to target help to those small businesses who really need it like @Cyclefree daughter while not subsidising those with shareholders who should take the hit rather than the taxpayer
Every business has shareholders Big G.
It is quite obvious what Big G meant.
You mean the larger businesses in which, say, your pension fund is invested.
Support should only be provided to the small business sector, and it is not for the government to subsidise pension funds
The real dilemma for the Chancellor is how to target help to those small businesses who really need it like @Cyclefree daughter while not subsidising those with shareholders who should take the hit rather than the taxpayer
Every business has shareholders Big G.
It is quite obvious what Big G meant.
My business (a single proprietor LLC) has no shareholders. So Topping is wrong, plain and simple. Of course, I have stakeholders, but not shareholders.
The real dilemma for the Chancellor is how to target help to those small businesses who really need it like @Cyclefree daughter while not subsidising those with shareholders who should take the hit rather than the taxpayer
Every business has shareholders Big G.
It is quite obvious what Big G meant.
You mean the larger businesses in which, say, your pension fund is invested.
Essentially, yes.
Someone has to pay, and rather it be me (and my pension fund) than small business owners like Cyclefree’s daughter.
Sounds good. You would penalise millions of people via a hit to their future wealth. Understand.
Today's decision for Daughter is whether to cancel the band she had booked for Saturday. It is a very popular band and the pub is normally rammed whenever it appears. But she has to pay them and if people don't turn up, it is pointless and costs her money.
She booked them ages ago - a great night out a week before Xmas. It seemed like a good idea at the time.
So another cancellation on the cards. One of the long-time regulars who has cancer is also close to the end. A lovely guy. It has been expected for a while but still a bit of a blow.
Every pub/restaurant around here is suffering in the same way.
It is not good enough to wait for a few weeks to give help. What's needed is not fannying about measures but a cash grant to cover the next 3 months.
Without this lots of businesses will close.
Daughter is not extending her lease, understandably. Still she wanted to end her lease in good order leaving a good business and having had a good Xmas season. Not now. She is heartbroken. And when it closes she can't travel anywhere or have a decent holiday because lots of other places will be shut and the health risks. So it is going to be a bleak few months, lockdown or no bloody lockdown.
I wish there was something I could do to help.
Would a one off grant of the type given before really help? The problem seems to be that businesses such as your daughter's have simply become a lot less viable when we live with the uncertainty of Covid and new variants. Its hellish that the all so important Christmas season has been hit so hard for the second year in a row but this just might be the new normal for many years to come.
People may not be inclined to believe the government but they are scared. My daughter was trying to organise a night out tonight for her year group to celebrate the end of term. She has ultimately given up because too few were willing to risk going out. We are talking a post graduate diploma so the vast majority will be very early 20s. They did not want to be isolating over Christmas and were not willing to take the risk.
It's just one anecdote but I fear nights out before Christmas are going to be a lot rarer and far more poorly attended. It may not be an official lockdown but the optimistic language of July seems a long time ago.
Yes a grant would help.To pay costs until Easter. When the season traditionally starts and people are out of doors again. To give time for a new vaccine. Or as I have said before a grant to help close businesses down provided the money is also used to start up new ones so that people see some hope.
But not this nonsense - where the government wounds but does not help.
It is shabby shabby behaviour - to pretend that because it is not an official lockdown no help is needed when the reality is very different. And in the middle of it all the Chancellor avoids votes and disappears off to the other side of the world and local MPs are nowhere to be seen.
If Sunak’s absence this week is really because he is on holiday in California, then that is sufficiently poor form that it should exclude him from the pending leadership election and call into question his fitness for high office at all.
Perhaps I’m giving him the benefit of the doubt too much, but I doubt the story.
No he's on a trade mission to California, and in order to save the Exchequer hotel costs is staying at his own expense in his holiday home in California.
This also allowed him to abstain from the Labour Party Lockdown vote on Wednesday. So he was full square behind the CRG.
So who paid for Rishi Rich to go to California? Him or the taxpayer?
He is on government business seeking hi tec investment into the UK
Lol. Sounds to me that pre omicron, he thought that sounded like a good wheeze for the last week of term, after which he could spend Christmas with his family in the holiday home he keeps in California.
That he didn’t have the foresight to cancel this trip is pretty telling to be honest. And extremely disappointing.
This was an existing government business commitment and your cynicism is getting the better of you
Or your credulity, you. Equally possible, at the very least.
So, if the Mirror is right the extremely rich Rishi Sunak is in California on business; the state where he met his wife and where he, apparently, owns a home in Santa Monica and has lots of friends there. I'm not sure why this business trip wasn't public knowledge, but it clearly wasn't. Wonder why.
Could be a problem for Sunak. Whatever one's view of Omicron and what should be done, we are in the middle of another Covid crisis and it's clearly going to have major economic implications for lots of businesses. But the man to decide whether to lend support to hospitality businesses (which are going to lose loads of money whether or not more restrictions are put in place) is on a jolly business trip in California. I'll bet Cyclefree is livid.
Sunak has relatives there. Part of his wife's family are Californian.
And Cyclefree is always livid about something, in any case.
I've just got home.
My Daughter's business is taking 40% of the revenue she was taking in November let alone December. She is beyond depressed.
She normally closes for the first 2 weeks of January. Unless support is forthcoming, as other countries faced with this variant have provided, she will not be reopening. There is no point.
A business which survived, was viable, increased its turnover and was profitable will disappear because it simply cannot survive the loss of Xmas business without support. So all the support that was given before will have been for nothing.
Jobs lost. Local suppliers and breweries lose another customer and a village loses a venue. The government loses the tax revenues. What are the chances of the owner finding a buyer or tenant in this sort of environment? And yet the government is proposing to spend £21 million in the area to increase its attractiveness as a tourist destination. Where are people supposed to eat and stay when all the local venues have closed?
She is young. She is entrepreneurial and tough. But she looks utterly beaten and abandoned. It breaks my heart. She will not be the only one who feels like this. She and her generation are this country's future and this government is treating them like shit.
I expect better. At least I used to. Not any more.
More than livid I am utterly contemptuous of people like you who are so dismissive of what is happening to the young. And even more contemptuous of people like Sunak, cosseted by their money, who have no clue at the damage they are doing.
But I will wait and when I have the opportunity I will get my own back at the ballot box. I will not be the only one.
This country has been shafting the young for years. It was similar under Labour - they pulled up many ladders behind them: free education, good pensions, etc. The Millennials et al have been used as a human bank account by the older generations to feather-bed their existence and protect their inheritances.
It is why I have encouraged my kids to use their dual nationality to seek work overseas. The UK was a great country once and being British was something you could take pride in. Nowadays it is a joke with a comedy govt which is mapping the way to becoming a shabby, insular backwater.
Some excellent points - I think you are right about the young being systematically shxfted - the interest rate on the govt student loan scheme is a scandal is an excellent example, meanwhile the wealthy over 60s remain absolutely steadfast in their grip on political power - one of the great political shifts in the 21C has been the systematic hoovering up of the grey vote by the Conservatives in England - its given us BREXIT, a sex-crazed liar as PM, a series of culture wars and an inflated sense of national importance that will culminate in disaster at some point. I do think the Blues will edge it (but will watch with an enthusiasm for a byelection I've not had in years)
That RPI plus 3% on Student Loans is just cruel.
I was talking to my neighbour. She is in her 20's, a teaching assistant, doing a teaching degree at night school. So, about the most sensible and cost effective way of doing a degree. Will leave with 18k of debt. We worked out that it could well be cheaper for her to get a loan from the bank upon graduation then pay it off over 5 years when she gets a teaching job (should be about 3% interest, if the current bank interest rates are sustained), than stay with the student loans company.
Aside from vocational degrees such as the above; University education is for the wealthy only. An extension of private school; but the student loans system enables the poor and naive to be exploited under the guise of 'access'.
Commercial bank offering unsecured personal loan for 3%?
Colour me sceptical.
I've taken out unsecured loans at this rate. Admittedly not recently though.
Another option is mortgage equity withdrawal, that could bring the rate down to sub 2%, dependent on personal circumstances. Or just borrow the money off a wealthy relative and pay it back at 1-2%; win win as the savings rate is hopeless.
What was the politicos rationale for the interest rate being so high? If you get a high flying job and reach six figures in your 20s, you pay it off early. The bigger chunk will presumably never pay it off. But there will be plenty in the middle who do pay it off but take most of their working life to do so.
Was it purely so they could privatise the loan book with as small a discount as possible? Poor form if so.
Well it was all pursued in the interest of sound public finances. Balancing the books. Paying our way in the world. Cutting the deficit. Strong and stable government in the National Interest.
The previous answer of privatising the debt - to make an essentially cosmetic improvement to the government finances - is the correct one.
This is an old article (2015(), but I don't think its essential critique of the sale of student loan debt has altered much. Basically when the government has sld off debt tranches, it has replaced state financing with more expensive private financing, while retaining the risk, purely in return for cash now rather than later. https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v37/n05/andrew-mcgettigan/cash-today
That seems eerily similar to the PFI nonesense from two decades ago. Future governments are going to end up writing off billions, in inflated student loan amounts outstanding.
The real dilemma for the Chancellor is how to target help to those small businesses who really need it like @Cyclefree daughter while not subsidising those with shareholders who should take the hit rather than the taxpayer
Every business has shareholders Big G.
It is quite obvious what Big G meant.
You mean the larger businesses in which, say, your pension fund is invested.
Support should only be provided to the small business sector, and it is not for the government to subsidise pension funds
What if a small business owner, say @Cyclefree's daughter, has a SIPP. Penalise her?
If there's a market on turnout tonight, i'd go for really low. You're an NS voter who usually goes Tory but think they're a mess; you've barely heard of the LibDem leader and wouldn't vote Labour if they paid you. You're so scared of the pandemic that you hesitate to walk round a supermarket. It's December. The moment to visit a polling station? Pffft.
France banning travel to and from the UK from Saturday without a compelling reason
I sold my place in France because it was just getting too difficult to get there and back. If the pando is ever over (and if I survive it) we'll buy again but somewhere in Pyrénées-Orientales this time.
But I will wait and when I have the opportunity I will get my own back at the ballot box. I will not be the only one.
Very well written post at the end of the previous post and I feel awful for people like your daughter, but who to vote for at the ballot box?
Over a hundred Tories rebelled against these motions because they saw the damage this is inflicting upon the economy and those who work for a living like your daughter.
Labour and Keir Starmer nodded these measures through without even asking for support for hospitality or anything else. No qualms or concerns.
What the government is doing is bad, but the Opposition is worse. Worst of both worlds.
The strong likelihood is that hospitality would have been severely affected without the legislation. Labour is at least arguing for government support for the industry over the next couple of months; the Chancellor has disappeared.
There appear to be a lot of people who voted Tory (or perhaps worse didn't vote!) who claim to be very unhappy with the govt, and yet can't quite bring themselves to vote for any opposition party.
I might have missed it, but in all the complaining I don't remember any of the moaners congratulating the Lib Dems for voting against.
I think you'll find that one Lib Dem MP 5 years ago once voiced doubts about a fantastic opportunity for rural broadband or something and therefore the party is forever tainted.
Yes the general sniffy dismissal of the Lib Dems is unfathomable.
It is the understandable attitude of the two large parties (and their supporters) in a FPTP system, and therefore assiduously cultivated.
If there's a market on turnout tonight, i'd go for really low. You're an NS voter who usually goes Tory but think they're a mess; you've barely heard of the LibDem leader and wouldn't vote Labour if they paid you. You're so scared of the pandemic that you hesitate to walk round a supermarket. It's December. The moment to visit a polling station? Pffft.
I have been agonising over that and with my prediction (below) I actually pulled it down to 44% to account for Omicron. I just can't help feeling the national focus will drive awareness will drive turnout. I think turnout could surprise on the upside.
The real dilemma for the Chancellor is how to target help to those small businesses who really need it like @Cyclefree daughter while not subsidising those with shareholders who should take the hit rather than the taxpayer
Every business has shareholders Big G.
It is quite obvious what Big G meant.
My business (a single proprietor LLC) has no shareholders. So Topping is wrong, plain and simple. Of course, I have stakeholders, but not shareholders.
The stakeholders or members in many regards look for all the world like shareholders, save for an ability to, er, limit liability.
The real dilemma for the Chancellor is how to target help to those small businesses who really need it like @Cyclefree daughter while not subsidising those with shareholders who should take the hit rather than the taxpayer
Every business has shareholders Big G.
It is quite obvious what Big G meant.
You mean the larger businesses in which, say, your pension fund is invested.
Support should only be provided to the small business sector, and it is not for the government to subsidise pension funds
Agree but Govts have been pretty good at raiding pension funds as a hidden form of taxation on the individual in the past and the consequences of those raids have been devastating for many. Ask anyone in the FAS or PPF who have had their pensions destroyed.
The real dilemma for the Chancellor is how to target help to those small businesses who really need it like @Cyclefree daughter while not subsidising those with shareholders who should take the hit rather than the taxpayer
Every business has shareholders Big G.
It is quite obvious what Big G meant.
You mean the larger businesses in which, say, your pension fund is invested.
Support should only be provided to the small business sector, and it is not for the government to subsidise pension funds
What if a small business owner, say @Cyclefree's daughter, has a SIPP. Penalise her?
Pension finds managers are paid enormous sums to ensure maximum returns and it is upto them to invest wisely and not expect handouts from HMG in times of crisis
@Cyclefree daughter is a small business owner that should receive targeted support for her business to survive
The “Great British Dream” is dead. This is by no means solely a British problem, but I think it is probably worse here.
When I talk to 20-somethings, unless their parents are loaded, they have no hope of ever getting on the housing ladder.
Class advancement has utterly collapsed.
University education has become a bizarre fiscal imposition, you can’t *not* do it (because you want a “middle class job”), but you can’t afford to do it, either.
I was born poor and came to this country with nothing, and I regret with all my heart that my journey is now nigh-on impossible.
MEANWHILE,
My top end art gallerist friend has “never been busier” because her wealthy patrons have done so well during Covid and need to diversify their asset base.
A society cannot last forever if the stories it tells itself (work hard and prosper!) are false.
So, if the Mirror is right the extremely rich Rishi Sunak is in California on business; the state where he met his wife and where he, apparently, owns a home in Santa Monica and has lots of friends there. I'm not sure why this business trip wasn't public knowledge, but it clearly wasn't. Wonder why.
Could be a problem for Sunak. Whatever one's view of Omicron and what should be done, we are in the middle of another Covid crisis and it's clearly going to have major economic implications for lots of businesses. But the man to decide whether to lend support to hospitality businesses (which are going to lose loads of money whether or not more restrictions are put in place) is on a jolly business trip in California. I'll bet Cyclefree is livid.
Sunak has relatives there. Part of his wife's family are Californian.
And Cyclefree is always livid about something, in any case.
I've just got home.
My Daughter's business is taking 40% of the revenue she was taking in November let alone December. She is beyond depressed.
She normally closes for the first 2 weeks of January. Unless support is forthcoming, as other countries faced with this variant have provided, she will not be reopening. There is no point.
A business which survived, was viable, increased its turnover and was profitable will disappear because it simply cannot survive the loss of Xmas business without support. So all the support that was given before will have been for nothing.
Jobs lost. Local suppliers and breweries lose another customer and a village loses a venue. The government loses the tax revenues. What are the chances of the owner finding a buyer or tenant in this sort of environment? And yet the government is proposing to spend £21 million in the area to increase its attractiveness as a tourist destination. Where are people supposed to eat and stay when all the local venues have closed?
She is young. She is entrepreneurial and tough. But she looks utterly beaten and abandoned. It breaks my heart. She will not be the only one who feels like this. She and her generation are this country's future and this government is treating them like shit.
I expect better. At least I used to. Not any more.
More than livid I am utterly contemptuous of people like you who are so dismissive of what is happening to the young. And even more contemptuous of people like Sunak, cosseted by their money, who have no clue at the damage they are doing.
But I will wait and when I have the opportunity I will get my own back at the ballot box. I will not be the only one.
This country has been shafting the young for years. It was similar under Labour - they pulled up many ladders behind them: free education, good pensions, etc. The Millennials et al have been used as a human bank account by the older generations to feather-bed their existence and protect their inheritances.
It is why I have encouraged my kids to use their dual nationality to seek work overseas. The UK was a great country once and being British was something you could take pride in. Nowadays it is a joke with a comedy govt which is mapping the way to becoming a shabby, insular backwater.
Some excellent points - I think you are right about the young being systematically shxfted - the interest rate on the govt student loan scheme is a scandal is an excellent example, meanwhile the wealthy over 60s remain absolutely steadfast in their grip on political power - one of the great political shifts in the 21C has been the systematic hoovering up of the grey vote by the Conservatives in England - its given us BREXIT, a sex-crazed liar as PM, a series of culture wars and an inflated sense of national importance that will culminate in disaster at some point. I do think the Blues will edge it (but will watch with an enthusiasm for a byelection I've not had in years)
That RPI plus 3% on Student Loans is just cruel.
I was talking to my neighbour. She is in her 20's, a teaching assistant, doing a teaching degree at night school. So, about the most sensible and cost effective way of doing a degree. Will leave with 18k of debt. We worked out that it could well be cheaper for her to get a loan from the bank upon graduation then pay it off over 5 years when she gets a teaching job (should be about 3% interest, if the current bank interest rates are sustained), than stay with the student loans company.
Aside from vocational degrees such as the above; University education is for the wealthy only. An extension of private school; but the student loans system enables the poor and naive to be exploited under the guise of 'access'.
Commercial bank offering unsecured personal loan for 3%?
Colour me sceptical.
I've taken out unsecured loans at this rate. Admittedly not recently though.
Another option is mortgage equity withdrawal, that could bring the rate down to sub 2%, dependent on personal circumstances. Or just borrow the money off a wealthy relative and pay it back at 1-2%; win win as the savings rate is hopeless.
What was the politicos rationale for the interest rate being so high? If you get a high flying job and reach six figures in your 20s, you pay it off early. The bigger chunk will presumably never pay it off. But there will be plenty in the middle who do pay it off but take most of their working life to do so.
Was it purely so they could privatise the loan book with as small a discount as possible? Poor form if so.
Well it was all pursued in the interest of sound public finances. Balancing the books. Paying our way in the world. Cutting the deficit. Strong and stable government in the National Interest.
The previous answer of privatising the debt - to make an essentially cosmetic improvement to the government finances - is the correct one.
This is an old article (2015(), but I don't think its essential critique of the sale of student loan debt has altered much. Basically when the government has sld off debt tranches, it has replaced state financing with more expensive private financing, while retaining the risk, purely in return for cash now rather than later. https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v37/n05/andrew-mcgettigan/cash-today
That seems eerily similar to the PFI nonesense from two decades ago. Future governments are going to end up writing off billions, in inflated student loan amounts outstanding.
Well it's not quite the same, since student debts were never intended to be fully paid back from the outset, while PFI contracts (in theory) were supposed to self finance.
It's an ever more obvious nonsense, though, since the private investors take little or no risk, and the administration of the loans stays with the Student Finance Company.
Today's decision for Daughter is whether to cancel the band she had booked for Saturday. It is a very popular band and the pub is normally rammed whenever it appears. But she has to pay them and if people don't turn up, it is pointless and costs her money.
She booked them ages ago - a great night out a week before Xmas. It seemed like a good idea at the time.
So another cancellation on the cards. One of the long-time regulars who has cancer is also close to the end. A lovely guy. It has been expected for a while but still a bit of a blow.
Every pub/restaurant around here is suffering in the same way.
It is not good enough to wait for a few weeks to give help. What's needed is not fannying about measures but a cash grant to cover the next 3 months.
Without this lots of businesses will close.
Daughter is not extending her lease, understandably. Still she wanted to end her lease in good order leaving a good business and having had a good Xmas season. Not now. She is heartbroken. And when it closes she can't travel anywhere or have a decent holiday because lots of other places will be shut and the health risks. So it is going to be a bleak few months, lockdown or no bloody lockdown.
I wish there was something I could do to help.
Would a one off grant of the type given before really help? The problem seems to be that businesses such as your daughter's have simply become a lot less viable when we live with the uncertainty of Covid and new variants. Its hellish that the all so important Christmas season has been hit so hard for the second year in a row but this just might be the new normal for many years to come.
People may not be inclined to believe the government but they are scared. My daughter was trying to organise a night out tonight for her year group to celebrate the end of term. She has ultimately given up because too few were willing to risk going out. We are talking a post graduate diploma so the vast majority will be very early 20s. They did not want to be isolating over Christmas and were not willing to take the risk.
It's just one anecdote but I fear nights out before Christmas are going to be a lot rarer and far more poorly attended. It may not be an official lockdown but the optimistic language of July seems a long time ago.
Except we are not "living with the virus". Living with the virus would be saying that the vulnerable have had three vaccine doses each already and putting faith in the vaccines instead of losing our minds and changing the law because of "cases".
This damage is the direct result of panicking over cases and changing the law rather than saying to "keep calm and carry on" while we live with the virus.
You said yesterday that the devastating measures passed two days ago were "not enough" rather than too much. Well actions have consequences, these are the consequences. These are the consequences of what you deemed "not enough" so what more do you advocate?
And given all the vulnerable should have had three vaccine doses by now at what point do we say "enough is enough" and live with the virus?
Kudos to the backbench rebels, what a disgusting shame that the rest of Parliament was prepared to throw livelihoods like this under the bus due to "cases" when we have vaccines. Shame on them all.
The need for more steps to slow the speed of spread of this variant is a matter of arithmetic. We need to flatten the curve once again or the NHS will be overwhelmed. Whitty seems to think its probably too late to avoid this. His judgment has been pretty good to date. Its now a question of how bad, not good or bad.
I agree with @Cyclefree that these necessary steps should have created support as earlier lockdowns did but I am also conscious that the younger generation that have been shafted by the old in so many ways are going to be left with the problem of repaying this debt too.
If its too late, its too late, so don't worry about it and live your life.
I've seen a few people say that people aren't worried because of "government measures" they're worried because they don't want to have to isolate over Christmas. Well guess what: Isolation is a government measure too! As are the ramping up of tests etc
In the summer Chris Whitty wisely said we're all going to get Covid. The notion of "controlling the spread" post-vaccinations is a wicked and harmful policy the outcome of which we're seeing. We've never told people with a cold or cough or similar in the past that they need to isolate.
We should be abolishing isolation even for the infectious and telling people they don't need to take tests either. If people get infected, they get infected, then either the vaccines work or they don't. And if people are unvaccinated, they roll the dice.
We need to live with the virus. Not try and control its spread or eradicate its spread or anything else. Let the vaccines do their job and let people live.
The real dilemma for the Chancellor is how to target help to those small businesses who really need it like @Cyclefree daughter while not subsidising those with shareholders who should take the hit rather than the taxpayer
Every business has shareholders Big G.
It is quite obvious what Big G meant.
You mean the larger businesses in which, say, your pension fund is invested.
Essentially, yes.
Someone has to pay, and rather it be me (and my pension fund) than small business owners like Cyclefree’s daughter.
Sounds good. You would penalise millions of people via a hit to their future wealth. Understand.
Actually, if I was the govt I would just borrow more. But penalising your fat pension fund is the next best option.
The real dilemma for the Chancellor is how to target help to those small businesses who really need it like @Cyclefree daughter while not subsidising those with shareholders who should take the hit rather than the taxpayer
Every business has shareholders Big G.
It is quite obvious what Big G meant.
You mean the larger businesses in which, say, your pension fund is invested.
Support should only be provided to the small business sector, and it is not for the government to subsidise pension funds
What if a small business owner, say @Cyclefree's daughter, has a SIPP. Penalise her?
Pension finds managers are paid enormous sums to ensure maximum returns and it is upto them to invest wisely and not expect handouts from HMG in times of crisis
@Cyclefree daughter is a small business owner that should receive targeted support for her business to survive
So, if the Mirror is right the extremely rich Rishi Sunak is in California on business; the state where he met his wife and where he, apparently, owns a home in Santa Monica and has lots of friends there. I'm not sure why this business trip wasn't public knowledge, but it clearly wasn't. Wonder why.
Could be a problem for Sunak. Whatever one's view of Omicron and what should be done, we are in the middle of another Covid crisis and it's clearly going to have major economic implications for lots of businesses. But the man to decide whether to lend support to hospitality businesses (which are going to lose loads of money whether or not more restrictions are put in place) is on a jolly business trip in California. I'll bet Cyclefree is livid.
Sunak has relatives there. Part of his wife's family are Californian.
And Cyclefree is always livid about something, in any case.
I've just got home.
My Daughter's business is taking 40% of the revenue she was taking in November let alone December. She is beyond depressed.
She normally closes for the first 2 weeks of January. Unless support is forthcoming, as other countries faced with this variant have provided, she will not be reopening. There is no point.
A business which survived, was viable, increased its turnover and was profitable will disappear because it simply cannot survive the loss of Xmas business without support. So all the support that was given before will have been for nothing.
Jobs lost. Local suppliers and breweries lose another customer and a village loses a venue. The government loses the tax revenues. What are the chances of the owner finding a buyer or tenant in this sort of environment? And yet the government is proposing to spend £21 million in the area to increase its attractiveness as a tourist destination. Where are people supposed to eat and stay when all the local venues have closed?
She is young. She is entrepreneurial and tough. But she looks utterly beaten and abandoned. It breaks my heart. She will not be the only one who feels like this. She and her generation are this country's future and this government is treating them like shit.
I expect better. At least I used to. Not any more.
More than livid I am utterly contemptuous of people like you who are so dismissive of what is happening to the young. And even more contemptuous of people like Sunak, cosseted by their money, who have no clue at the damage they are doing.
But I will wait and when I have the opportunity I will get my own back at the ballot box. I will not be the only one.
This country has been shafting the young for years. It was similar under Labour - they pulled up many ladders behind them: free education, good pensions, etc. The Millennials et al have been used as a human bank account by the older generations to feather-bed their existence and protect their inheritances.
It is why I have encouraged my kids to use their dual nationality to seek work overseas. The UK was a great country once and being British was something you could take pride in. Nowadays it is a joke with a comedy govt which is mapping the way to becoming a shabby, insular backwater.
Some excellent points - I think you are right about the young being systematically shxfted - the interest rate on the govt student loan scheme is a scandal is an excellent example, meanwhile the wealthy over 60s remain absolutely steadfast in their grip on political power - one of the great political shifts in the 21C has been the systematic hoovering up of the grey vote by the Conservatives in England - its given us BREXIT, a sex-crazed liar as PM, a series of culture wars and an inflated sense of national importance that will culminate in disaster at some point. I do think the Blues will edge it (but will watch with an enthusiasm for a byelection I've not had in years)
That RPI plus 3% on Student Loans is just cruel.
I was talking to my neighbour. She is in her 20's, a teaching assistant, doing a teaching degree at night school. So, about the most sensible and cost effective way of doing a degree. Will leave with 18k of debt. We worked out that it could well be cheaper for her to get a loan from the bank upon graduation then pay it off over 5 years when she gets a teaching job (should be about 3% interest, if the current bank interest rates are sustained), than stay with the student loans company.
Aside from vocational degrees such as the above; University education is for the wealthy only. An extension of private school; but the student loans system enables the poor and naive to be exploited under the guise of 'access'.
Commercial bank offering unsecured personal loan for 3%?
Colour me sceptical.
I've taken out unsecured loans at this rate. Admittedly not recently though.
Another option is mortgage equity withdrawal, that could bring the rate down to sub 2%, dependent on personal circumstances. Or just borrow the money off a wealthy relative and pay it back at 1-2%; win win as the savings rate is hopeless.
What was the politicos rationale for the interest rate being so high? If you get a high flying job and reach six figures in your 20s, you pay it off early. The bigger chunk will presumably never pay it off. But there will be plenty in the middle who do pay it off but take most of their working life to do so.
Was it purely so they could privatise the loan book with as small a discount as possible? Poor form if so.
Well it was all pursued in the interest of sound public finances. Balancing the books. Paying our way in the world. Cutting the deficit. Strong and stable government in the National Interest.
Well yes, but it was all based on the premise that we needed to send 50% of our youth to university. Take that arbitrary target away and it becomes somewhat easier to suppose that do go through university. We could even decide to pay the tuition fees of those doing courses we were looking to encourage (i.e. STEM courses).
The fundamental problem is the decreasing graduate premium (which is, of course, a result of there being too many graduates). It simply makes no sense to spend 4-5 years of a 45 year career training and studying incurring over £100k of debt to earn salaries of less than £50k. As you point out those that do will never repay their student "loans" and will simply pay what is effectively a higher tax rate for most of their careers making the housing ladder more inaccessible and pension provision more challenging. How distant the Tory dream of a property owning democracy seems now.
Mass property ownership was only feasible because decades of social democracy had flattened the income and wealth distribution. Now, decades of Thatcherism have led to an increasing concentration of wealth. In other words, mass home ownership and popular share ownership were only transitory phases. The real Tory dream is the rich man in his castle, the poor man at his gate, and that is where we are heading.
I think that is a little simplistic but did you hear the Reith lecture yesterday about the implications of AI for work? It was thought provoking but the central thrust is that the problem for the last 20-30 years has been that the share of profits taken by capital as opposed to labour has been increasing resulting in stagnant wages. AI is going to accelerate this trend by making labour far less competitive. Those with capital will gain but how does society keep going? UBI is one possibility but it is going to be a tricky transition.
I didn't hear it but the premise sounds plausible. I do worry that the increasing inequality and divisions I've witnessed during my life are only going to gather pace for my children. Add in the climate crisis and it's quite a toxic brew.
The real dilemma for the Chancellor is how to target help to those small businesses who really need it like @Cyclefree daughter while not subsidising those with shareholders who should take the hit rather than the taxpayer
Every business has shareholders Big G.
It is quite obvious what Big G meant.
You mean the larger businesses in which, say, your pension fund is invested.
Essentially, yes.
Someone has to pay, and rather it be me (and my pension fund) than small business owners like Cyclefree’s daughter.
Sounds good. You would penalise millions of people via a hit to their future wealth. Understand.
Actually, if I was the govt I would just borrow more. But penalising your fat pension fund is the next best option.
It's not my fat pension fund (why fat?), it is @Cyclefree's daughter's SIPP.
The “Great British Dream” is dead. This is by no means solely a British problem, but I think it is probably worse here.
When I talk to 20-somethings, unless their parents are loaded, they have no hope of ever getting on the housing ladder.
Class advancement has utterly collapsed.
University education has become a bizarre fiscal imposition, you can’t *not* do it (because you want a “middle class job”), but you can’t afford to do it, either.
I was born poor and came to this country with nothing, and I regret with all my heart that my journey is now nigh-on impossible.
MEANWHILE,
My top end art gallerist friend has “never been busier” because her wealthy patrons have done so well during Covid and need to diversify their asset base.
A society cannot last forever if the stories it tells itself (work hard and prosper!) are false.
Examine the language you used: "the housing ladder". In what sense could "housing" be a "ladder"? Is it? Should it be?
France banning travel to and from the UK from Saturday without a compelling reason
I sold my place in France because it was just getting too difficult to get there and back. If the pando is ever over (and if I survive it) we'll buy again but somewhere in Pyrénées-Orientales this time.
But I will wait and when I have the opportunity I will get my own back at the ballot box. I will not be the only one.
Very well written post at the end of the previous post and I feel awful for people like your daughter, but who to vote for at the ballot box?
Over a hundred Tories rebelled against these motions because they saw the damage this is inflicting upon the economy and those who work for a living like your daughter.
Labour and Keir Starmer nodded these measures through without even asking for support for hospitality or anything else. No qualms or concerns.
What the government is doing is bad, but the Opposition is worse. Worst of both worlds.
The strong likelihood is that hospitality would have been severely affected without the legislation. Labour is at least arguing for government support for the industry over the next couple of months; the Chancellor has disappeared.
There appear to be a lot of people who voted Tory (or perhaps worse didn't vote!) who claim to be very unhappy with the govt, and yet can't quite bring themselves to vote for any opposition party.
I might have missed it, but in all the complaining I don't remember any of the moaners congratulating the Lib Dems for voting against.
I think you'll find that one Lib Dem MP 5 years ago once voiced doubts about a fantastic opportunity for rural broadband or something and therefore the party is forever tainted.
Yes the general sniffy dismissal of the Lib Dems is unfathomable.
It is the understandable attitude of the two large parties (and their supporters) in a FPTP system, and therefore assiduously cultivated.
Oh noes! Wera Hobhouse (who?) said something daft about 5G!!!!!
Cool. Let me introduce you to Chope, Swayne, Bridgen, Burgon, Webbe, etc etc.
Well given the way our government, opposition and media are acting so hysterically you'd understandably think we were undergoing some Omicron Armageddon right now if you glanced at our media.
The “Great British Dream” is dead. This is by no means solely a British problem, but I think it is probably worse here.
When I talk to 20-somethings, unless their parents are loaded, they have no hope of ever getting on the housing ladder.
Class advancement has utterly collapsed.
University education has become a bizarre fiscal imposition, you can’t *not* do it (because you want a “middle class job”), but you can’t afford to do it, either.
I was born poor and came to this country with nothing, and I regret with all my heart that my journey is now nigh-on impossible.
MEANWHILE,
My top end art gallerist friend has “never been busier” because her wealthy patrons have done so well during Covid and need to diversify their asset base.
A society cannot last forever if the stories it tells itself (work hard and prosper!) are false.
Examine the language you used: "the housing ladder". In what sense could "housing" be a "ladder"? Is it? Should it be?
What do you mean, “could”?
It served well enough for my grandparents, then my parents, and then me.
“Should” is an interesting question, but space does not permit a proper answer.
The real dilemma for the Chancellor is how to target help to those small businesses who really need it like @Cyclefree daughter while not subsidising those with shareholders who should take the hit rather than the taxpayer
Every business has shareholders Big G.
It is quite obvious what Big G meant.
You mean the larger businesses in which, say, your pension fund is invested.
Essentially, yes.
Someone has to pay, and rather it be me (and my pension fund) than small business owners like Cyclefree’s daughter.
Sounds good. You would penalise millions of people via a hit to their future wealth. Understand.
Actually, if I was the govt I would just borrow more. But penalising your fat pension fund is the next best option.
It's not my fat pension fund (why fat?), it is @Cyclefree's daughter's SIPP.
Today's decision for Daughter is whether to cancel the band she had booked for Saturday. It is a very popular band and the pub is normally rammed whenever it appears. But she has to pay them and if people don't turn up, it is pointless and costs her money.
She booked them ages ago - a great night out a week before Xmas. It seemed like a good idea at the time.
So another cancellation on the cards. One of the long-time regulars who has cancer is also close to the end. A lovely guy. It has been expected for a while but still a bit of a blow.
Every pub/restaurant around here is suffering in the same way.
It is not good enough to wait for a few weeks to give help. What's needed is not fannying about measures but a cash grant to cover the next 3 months.
Without this lots of businesses will close.
Daughter is not extending her lease, understandably. Still she wanted to end her lease in good order leaving a good business and having had a good Xmas season. Not now. She is heartbroken. And when it closes she can't travel anywhere or have a decent holiday because lots of other places will be shut and the health risks. So it is going to be a bleak few months, lockdown or no bloody lockdown.
I wish there was something I could do to help.
Would a one off grant of the type given before really help? The problem seems to be that businesses such as your daughter's have simply become a lot less viable when we live with the uncertainty of Covid and new variants. Its hellish that the all so important Christmas season has been hit so hard for the second year in a row but this just might be the new normal for many years to come.
People may not be inclined to believe the government but they are scared. My daughter was trying to organise a night out tonight for her year group to celebrate the end of term. She has ultimately given up because too few were willing to risk going out. We are talking a post graduate diploma so the vast majority will be very early 20s. They did not want to be isolating over Christmas and were not willing to take the risk.
It's just one anecdote but I fear nights out before Christmas are going to be a lot rarer and far more poorly attended. It may not be an official lockdown but the optimistic language of July seems a long time ago.
Except we are not "living with the virus". Living with the virus would be saying that the vulnerable have had three vaccine doses each already and putting faith in the vaccines instead of losing our minds and changing the law because of "cases".
This damage is the direct result of panicking over cases and changing the law rather than saying to "keep calm and carry on" while we live with the virus.
You said yesterday that the devastating measures passed two days ago were "not enough" rather than too much. Well actions have consequences, these are the consequences. These are the consequences of what you deemed "not enough" so what more do you advocate?
And given all the vulnerable should have had three vaccine doses by now at what point do we say "enough is enough" and live with the virus?
Kudos to the backbench rebels, what a disgusting shame that the rest of Parliament was prepared to throw livelihoods like this under the bus due to "cases" when we have vaccines. Shame on them all.
The need for more steps to slow the speed of spread of this variant is a matter of arithmetic. We need to flatten the curve once again or the NHS will be overwhelmed. Whitty seems to think its probably too late to avoid this. His judgment has been pretty good to date. Its now a question of how bad, not good or bad.
I agree with @Cyclefree that these necessary steps should have created support as earlier lockdowns did but I am also conscious that the younger generation that have been shafted by the old in so many ways are going to be left with the problem of repaying this debt too.
If its too late, its too late, so don't worry about it and live your life.
I've seen a few people say that people aren't worried because of "government measures" they're worried because they don't want to have to isolate over Christmas. Well guess what: Isolation is a government measure too! As are the ramping up of tests etc
In the summer Chris Whitty wisely said we're all going to get Covid. The notion of "controlling the spread" post-vaccinations is a wicked and harmful policy the outcome of which we're seeing. We've never told people with a cold or cough or similar in the past that they need to isolate.
We should be abolishing isolation even for the infectious and telling people they don't need to take tests either. If people get infected, they get infected, then either the vaccines work or they don't. And if people are unvaccinated, they roll the dice.
We need to live with the virus. Not try and control its spread or eradicate its spread or anything else. Let the vaccines do their job and let people live.
The issue there is that omicron is so infectious we need (at least some) people with it to isolate as otherwise it's going to swamp the NHS.
Now it's possible that omicron is so slight that it won't result in the NHS being swamped but we just don't know that today.
Miss Cyclefree, my sympathies, must be very tough on your daughter, and you.
Said it yesterday, but this approach by the Government is categorically stupid. I'll never support vaccine passports, but even if the other restrictions are necessary (I am yet to be persuaded, though we'll find out soon enough) then implementing them to drastically cut hospitality activity while not helping the sector at all is practically designed to kill off businesses.
Remember that as @Philip_Thompson pointed out yesterday there are no rules about vaccine passports being required for pubs.
The current issues are the consequences of people panicking rather than any direct government policy - but the timing of this really couldn't be worse. This is peak profit season for restaurants and (with pantos/shows that are struggling to keep going) theatres
Depending on the mood of Mrs Eek we will be going out of Friday night but as she had Covid just over a month ago (and I probably did) that's because it's almost risk free for us.
I don't think its panic. Its rational. Breakfast news quite explicit today in linking those who tested positive yesterday are now isolating until Christmas. Many people will prioritize Christmas Day over going out in the next week. I don't blame them. I have sympathy for the pubs and restaurants and theatres and cinemas. i remember working in a pub in Dec 1998 - hugely busy, worked every day for a month.
The irony is that most years we wouldn't be going out this time of year as its just too busy. The reason we will be going out is that we can provide some of the money they would usually be getting.
Yesterday I had a pub supper arranged with some friends. Two of them didn't want to go to the pub so we had a takeout from there. I paid 2x what the food actually cost to try to make up for service, booze, some extra starters, etc that we might have had had we been there.
And of course while we were waiting for the order to be ready we (one of the guys who hadn't wanted to go to the pub and I) stood......in the pub.
My Dad has decided to come and meet us for lunch in Bath on Sunday, which is nice, but we are having a tussle over whether we will eat inside or outside. It will be quite cold, but he's coming from Lambeth, which had an enormous spike in cases yesterday.
Make him sit outside and talk to him through the window. 😉
The “Great British Dream” is dead. This is by no means solely a British problem, but I think it is probably worse here.
When I talk to 20-somethings, unless their parents are loaded, they have no hope of ever getting on the housing ladder.
Class advancement has utterly collapsed.
University education has become a bizarre fiscal imposition, you can’t *not* do it (because you want a “middle class job”), but you can’t afford to do it, either.
I was born poor and came to this country with nothing, and I regret with all my heart that my journey is now nigh-on impossible.
MEANWHILE,
My top end art gallerist friend has “never been busier” because her wealthy patrons have done so well during Covid and need to diversify their asset base.
A society cannot last forever if the stories it tells itself (work hard and prosper!) are false.
Examine the language you used: "the housing ladder". In what sense could "housing" be a "ladder"? Is it? Should it be?
Yes it was a ladder for previous generations.
Young people might get a smaller starter home, then move up to a bigger home when they have kids, then move into a bigger home when they're well off. Younger people would follow them up the ladder.
If there's a market on turnout tonight, i'd go for really low. You're an NS voter who usually goes Tory but think they're a mess; you've barely heard of the LibDem leader and wouldn't vote Labour if they paid you. You're so scared of the pandemic that you hesitate to walk round a supermarket. It's December. The moment to visit a polling station? Pffft.
It's an election that is going to be determined by the postal votes.
The “Great British Dream” is dead. This is by no means solely a British problem, but I think it is probably worse here.
When I talk to 20-somethings, unless their parents are loaded, they have no hope of ever getting on the housing ladder.
Class advancement has utterly collapsed.
University education has become a bizarre fiscal imposition, you can’t *not* do it (because you want a “middle class job”), but you can’t afford to do it, either.
I was born poor and came to this country with nothing, and I regret with all my heart that my journey is now nigh-on impossible.
MEANWHILE,
My top end art gallerist friend has “never been busier” because her wealthy patrons have done so well during Covid and need to diversify their asset base.
A society cannot last forever if the stories it tells itself (work hard and prosper!) are false.
I agree about house ownership. And the main reason is the fact the population has increased by 10 million over the last 20 years or so, whereas in the 70s, 80s and 90s it hardly increased at all, which meant house prices remained affordable. Ironically, the people who can't afford property are the ones most likely to support an increase in the population.
The real dilemma for the Chancellor is how to target help to those small businesses who really need it like @Cyclefree daughter while not subsidising those with shareholders who should take the hit rather than the taxpayer
Every business has shareholders Big G.
It is quite obvious what Big G meant.
My business (a single proprietor LLC) has no shareholders. So Topping is wrong, plain and simple. Of course, I have stakeholders, but not shareholders.
My business is a one man band, unincorporated and with no shareholders. Its a crazy way to operate really. Unlimited liability, incredibly inefficient tax wise and no goodwill to sell on at the end of it. Defo wrong career choice somewhere.
On current polls the Tories should get about 40-45% in North Shropshire on UNS, so even despite being a Leave seat they will still see a significant swing against them. However that does not mean they will lose it necessarily unless the vast majority of Labour voters tactically vote LD. In the end it may be the fact that it was Labour 2nd in the seat in 2019 not the LDs, despite the latter making the biggest challenge, that will save the Tory candidate. Not the fact it was a solid but overwhelmingly Leave seat.
If the Tories lose the seat Boris could face a VONC in the next few weeks, though I think he would narrowly survive it for now which would keep him safe for a year. Longer term though more important for his survival will be the booster programme proving effective
But I will wait and when I have the opportunity I will get my own back at the ballot box. I will not be the only one.
Very well written post at the end of the previous post and I feel awful for people like your daughter, but who to vote for at the ballot box?
Over a hundred Tories rebelled against these motions because they saw the damage this is inflicting upon the economy and those who work for a living like your daughter.
Labour and Keir Starmer nodded these measures through without even asking for support for hospitality or anything else. No qualms or concerns.
What the government is doing is bad, but the Opposition is worse. Worst of both worlds.
The strong likelihood is that hospitality would have been severely affected without the legislation. Labour is at least arguing for government support for the industry over the next couple of months; the Chancellor has disappeared.
There appear to be a lot of people who voted Tory (or perhaps worse didn't vote!) who claim to be very unhappy with the govt, and yet can't quite bring themselves to vote for any opposition party.
I might have missed it, but in all the complaining I don't remember any of the moaners congratulating the Lib Dems for voting against.
I think you'll find that one Lib Dem MP 5 years ago once voiced doubts about a fantastic opportunity for rural broadband or something and therefore the party is forever tainted.
Yes the general sniffy dismissal of the Lib Dems is unfathomable.
It is the understandable attitude of the two large parties (and their supporters) in a FPTP system, and therefore assiduously cultivated.
Oh noes! Wera Hobhouse (who?) said something daft about 5G!!!!!
Cool. Let me introduce you to Chope, Swayne, Bridgen, Burgon, Webbe, etc etc.
@Farooq - I'm a moaner, and I've repeatedly congratulated the Lib Dems on voting against (including on this thread). Doesn't stop me complaining about some of their dafter obsessions but at the moment for me they are the most credible of the parties.
Today's decision for Daughter is whether to cancel the band she had booked for Saturday. It is a very popular band and the pub is normally rammed whenever it appears. But she has to pay them and if people don't turn up, it is pointless and costs her money.
She booked them ages ago - a great night out a week before Xmas. It seemed like a good idea at the time.
So another cancellation on the cards. One of the long-time regulars who has cancer is also close to the end. A lovely guy. It has been expected for a while but still a bit of a blow.
Every pub/restaurant around here is suffering in the same way.
It is not good enough to wait for a few weeks to give help. What's needed is not fannying about measures but a cash grant to cover the next 3 months.
Without this lots of businesses will close.
Daughter is not extending her lease, understandably. Still she wanted to end her lease in good order leaving a good business and having had a good Xmas season. Not now. She is heartbroken. And when it closes she can't travel anywhere or have a decent holiday because lots of other places will be shut and the health risks. So it is going to be a bleak few months, lockdown or no bloody lockdown.
I wish there was something I could do to help.
Would a one off grant of the type given before really help? The problem seems to be that businesses such as your daughter's have simply become a lot less viable when we live with the uncertainty of Covid and new variants. Its hellish that the all so important Christmas season has been hit so hard for the second year in a row but this just might be the new normal for many years to come.
People may not be inclined to believe the government but they are scared. My daughter was trying to organise a night out tonight for her year group to celebrate the end of term. She has ultimately given up because too few were willing to risk going out. We are talking a post graduate diploma so the vast majority will be very early 20s. They did not want to be isolating over Christmas and were not willing to take the risk.
It's just one anecdote but I fear nights out before Christmas are going to be a lot rarer and far more poorly attended. It may not be an official lockdown but the optimistic language of July seems a long time ago.
Except we are not "living with the virus". Living with the virus would be saying that the vulnerable have had three vaccine doses each already and putting faith in the vaccines instead of losing our minds and changing the law because of "cases".
This damage is the direct result of panicking over cases and changing the law rather than saying to "keep calm and carry on" while we live with the virus.
You said yesterday that the devastating measures passed two days ago were "not enough" rather than too much. Well actions have consequences, these are the consequences. These are the consequences of what you deemed "not enough" so what more do you advocate?
And given all the vulnerable should have had three vaccine doses by now at what point do we say "enough is enough" and live with the virus?
Kudos to the backbench rebels, what a disgusting shame that the rest of Parliament was prepared to throw livelihoods like this under the bus due to "cases" when we have vaccines. Shame on them all.
The need for more steps to slow the speed of spread of this variant is a matter of arithmetic. We need to flatten the curve once again or the NHS will be overwhelmed. Whitty seems to think its probably too late to avoid this. His judgment has been pretty good to date. Its now a question of how bad, not good or bad.
I agree with @Cyclefree that these necessary steps should have created support as earlier lockdowns did but I am also conscious that the younger generation that have been shafted by the old in so many ways are going to be left with the problem of repaying this debt too.
If its too late, its too late, so don't worry about it and live your life.
I've seen a few people say that people aren't worried because of "government measures" they're worried because they don't want to have to isolate over Christmas. Well guess what: Isolation is a government measure too! As are the ramping up of tests etc
In the summer Chris Whitty wisely said we're all going to get Covid. The notion of "controlling the spread" post-vaccinations is a wicked and harmful policy the outcome of which we're seeing. We've never told people with a cold or cough or similar in the past that they need to isolate.
We should be abolishing isolation even for the infectious and telling people they don't need to take tests either. If people get infected, they get infected, then either the vaccines work or they don't. And if people are unvaccinated, they roll the dice.
We need to live with the virus. Not try and control its spread or eradicate its spread or anything else. Let the vaccines do their job and let people live.
The issue there is that omicron is so infectious we need (at least some) people with it to isolate as otherwise it's going to swamp the NHS.
Now it's possible that omicron is so slight that it won't result in the NHS being swamped but we just don't know that today.
If you believe the figures the government are spouting then everyone in the entire country would have had Omicron by Christmas Day anyway. So either the current doubling rate will slow down as it runs out of hosts, or its too late to do anything either way, so why trash the economy?
But realistically its not going to spread that much since not everyone in the country is going to get infected anyway, almost everyone has some form of immunity and not everyone with immunity becomes a breakthrough case so people are illogically losing their minds over nothing.
If we'd abolished testing and isolation requirements over the summer then even more people would have had natural immunity by now.
Reading the criticism of my (and Big G's) generation earlier in the thread, especially how we had, financially, thrown our grandchildren under the bus I was struck by a couple of thoughts. The generation born just before and just after WWII were the young people who marched at Aldermaston to Ban the Bomb, who backed the likes of Peter Hain in fighting apartheid. We looked for a bright new future. We were part of the Liberal Revival in the mid 60's. We were Flower Power.
As the theme tune to a popular programme ran "Oh, what happened to us?..... What became of the people we used to be?"
I am guessing that many if not most of the people who were involved in things like Aldermaston or the anti apartheid movement have retained their political idealism. My parents certainly have, and I think you have too. But they were only ever a small minority of their generation, and remain so. Those in the apolitical centre have drifted rightwards, though, that is for sure.
The real dilemma for the Chancellor is how to target help to those small businesses who really need it like @Cyclefree daughter while not subsidising those with shareholders who should take the hit rather than the taxpayer
Every business has shareholders Big G.
It is quite obvious what Big G meant.
My business (a single proprietor LLC) has no shareholders. So Topping is wrong, plain and simple. Of course, I have stakeholders, but not shareholders.
The stakeholders or members in many regards look for all the world like shareholders, save for an ability to, er, limit liability.
The real dilemma for the Chancellor is how to target help to those small businesses who really need it like @Cyclefree daughter while not subsidising those with shareholders who should take the hit rather than the taxpayer
Every business has shareholders Big G.
It is quite obvious what Big G meant.
My business (a single proprietor LLC) has no shareholders. So Topping is wrong, plain and simple. Of course, I have stakeholders, but not shareholders.
The stakeholders or members in many regards look for all the world like shareholders, save for an ability to, er, limit liability.
But you used the word shareholder.
Don't LLC owners technically own 100% of the shares?
Labour proper gunning for treasury this morning… turned up with their boots on finally.
10:30am - UQ - Pat McFadden MP – To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer if he will make a statement on government support for business given the advice to “de-prioritise social contacts”. https://twitter.com/mrharrycole/status/1471401729891905537
"Learning to live with covid, cannot mean pretending life can be exactly as it was before. The public gets this. Only the ruling party seems to struggle"
The real dilemma for the Chancellor is how to target help to those small businesses who really need it like @Cyclefree daughter while not subsidising those with shareholders who should take the hit rather than the taxpayer
Every business has shareholders Big G.
It is quite obvious what Big G meant.
My business (a single proprietor LLC) has no shareholders. So Topping is wrong, plain and simple. Of course, I have stakeholders, but not shareholders.
My business is a one man band, unincorporated and with no shareholders. Its a crazy way to operate really. Unlimited liability, incredibly inefficient tax wise and no goodwill to sell on at the end of it. Defo wrong career choice somewhere.
In the US, the benefit of this single proprietor LLC is limited liability coupled with the ability to file one tax return for business(es) and personal, offsetting profits and losses across the whole.
The “Great British Dream” is dead. This is by no means solely a British problem, but I think it is probably worse here.
When I talk to 20-somethings, unless their parents are loaded, they have no hope of ever getting on the housing ladder.
Class advancement has utterly collapsed.
University education has become a bizarre fiscal imposition, you can’t *not* do it (because you want a “middle class job”), but you can’t afford to do it, either.
I was born poor and came to this country with nothing, and I regret with all my heart that my journey is now nigh-on impossible.
MEANWHILE,
My top end art gallerist friend has “never been busier” because her wealthy patrons have done so well during Covid and need to diversify their asset base.
A society cannot last forever if the stories it tells itself (work hard and prosper!) are false.
I agree about house ownership. And the main reason is the fact the population has increased by 10 million over the last 20 years or so, whereas in the 70s, 80s and 90s it hardly increased at all, which meant house prices remained affordable. Ironically, the people who can't afford property are the ones most likely to support an increase in the population.
That’s a reason (for high house prices), but by no means the only reason and probably not even the main one.
Quite an interesting survey, though one has to fight past the spin the people who commissioned with give it (even though I generally agree with them). Essentially people want a quiet life without adventures rather than a strong military and a vigorous foreign policy:
I wonder what the 2% who want us to fight alongside China against the US are like, though?? A militant suicide cult?
As I have said several times western Europe is becoming a peaceful, prosperous, geopolitically irrelevant backwater and that may well prove to be a very nice place to live. Surveys like that suggest it will suit most people just fine even if those with egos like Macron want to strut the world stage rather more.
That may describe the likes of Switzerland and Norway or even most individual western European nations but it does not describe western Europe as a whole. As a whole western Europe is economically bigger than the rest of the planet except the US and China and militarily as well it needs to act as one coherent unit to contain Putin and jihadi terrorism and the US also needs the UK and ideally France and Germany etc too as well as Australia, Japan, South Korea, India etc to contain Xi's China.
Labour proper gunning for treasury this morning… turned up with their boots on finally.
10:30am - UQ - Pat McFadden MP – To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer if he will make a statement on government support for business given the advice to “de-prioritise social contacts”. https://twitter.com/mrharrycole/status/1471401729891905537
Shame Labour couldn't be arsed to make this a pre-condition of voting with the government two days ago. Bloody shitheads.
The real dilemma for the Chancellor is how to target help to those small businesses who really need it like @Cyclefree daughter while not subsidising those with shareholders who should take the hit rather than the taxpayer
Every business has shareholders Big G.
It is quite obvious what Big G meant.
You mean the larger businesses in which, say, your pension fund is invested.
Essentially, yes.
Someone has to pay, and rather it be me (and my pension fund) than small business owners like Cyclefree’s daughter.
Sounds good. You would penalise millions of people via a hit to their future wealth. Understand.
Actually, if I was the govt I would just borrow more. But penalising your fat pension fund is the next best option.
It's not my fat pension fund (why fat?), it is @Cyclefree's daughter's SIPP.
Don’t be an arse.
Which bit have I got wrong? Cyclefree's daughter's SIPP will take a hit. I'm sure I don't have to explain the effect of compounding which will mean that a hit now means that the eventual hit to her wealth by the time she comes to draw down on the pension will be substantial.
"Learning to live with covid, cannot mean pretending life can be exactly as it was before. The public gets this. Only the ruling party seems to struggle"
The real dilemma for the Chancellor is how to target help to those small businesses who really need it like @Cyclefree daughter while not subsidising those with shareholders who should take the hit rather than the taxpayer
Every business has shareholders Big G.
It is quite obvious what Big G meant.
My business (a single proprietor LLC) has no shareholders. So Topping is wrong, plain and simple. Of course, I have stakeholders, but not shareholders.
My business is a one man band, unincorporated and with no shareholders. Its a crazy way to operate really. Unlimited liability, incredibly inefficient tax wise and no goodwill to sell on at the end of it. Defo wrong career choice somewhere.
In the US, the benefit of this single proprietor LLC is limited liability coupled with the ability to file one tax return for business(es) and personal, offsetting profits and losses across the whole.
Sounds great. I reckon if I was allowed to incorporate I would be able to save something like £20k a year in tax. I might even have a pension worth the name.
We have some weird posts here re pension funds. Re the various posts:
Defined Contribution funds are for most people not fat, they are for most very, very modest and usually not enough.
Just because a fund manager maybe well paid does not mean that someone's small pension fund should be clobbered. On that logic clobber the fund manager not the fund.
Young people are investing in pensions as well so clobbering those does not help them.
Retired and near retired people can't do anything about restoring their pension if you do clobber it.
The history of Gordon Brown and the devastation he caused on pension funds and thousands of people's lives who had their retirement destroyed should be a lesson we should never have to learn again.
As some of you may know I am involved in the campaigns to try and help some of these individuals, many of whom have now died or living on o much less than they expected in their 80s and 90s.
The real dilemma for the Chancellor is how to target help to those small businesses who really need it like @Cyclefree daughter while not subsidising those with shareholders who should take the hit rather than the taxpayer
Every business has shareholders Big G.
It is quite obvious what Big G meant.
My business (a single proprietor LLC) has no shareholders. So Topping is wrong, plain and simple. Of course, I have stakeholders, but not shareholders.
The stakeholders or members in many regards look for all the world like shareholders, save for an ability to, er, limit liability.
But you used the word shareholder.
They are owners of the LLC and hence shareholders is appropriate to use.
The “Great British Dream” is dead. This is by no means solely a British problem, but I think it is probably worse here.
When I talk to 20-somethings, unless their parents are loaded, they have no hope of ever getting on the housing ladder.
Class advancement has utterly collapsed.
University education has become a bizarre fiscal imposition, you can’t *not* do it (because you want a “middle class job”), but you can’t afford to do it, either.
I was born poor and came to this country with nothing, and I regret with all my heart that my journey is now nigh-on impossible.
MEANWHILE,
My top end art gallerist friend has “never been busier” because her wealthy patrons have done so well during Covid and need to diversify their asset base.
A society cannot last forever if the stories it tells itself (work hard and prosper!) are false.
I agree about house ownership. And the main reason is the fact the population has increased by 10 million over the last 20 years or so, whereas in the 70s, 80s and 90s it hardly increased at all, which meant house prices remained affordable. Ironically, the people who can't afford property are the ones most likely to support an increase in the population.
You have to be careful here because there are 2 distinct phases in house price increases (up North it's clear because we only got the first one).
From 1999 to 2004 as the maximum amount that could be lent changed from 3+1 income to 3-4.5* joint income, house prices boomed in price.
Since 2005 onwards - house prices have reflected population growth relative to housing supply. Which means round here house prices remained static from 2004 to about the end of 2020 when they started increasing again.
So, if the Mirror is right the extremely rich Rishi Sunak is in California on business; the state where he met his wife and where he, apparently, owns a home in Santa Monica and has lots of friends there. I'm not sure why this business trip wasn't public knowledge, but it clearly wasn't. Wonder why.
Could be a problem for Sunak. Whatever one's view of Omicron and what should be done, we are in the middle of another Covid crisis and it's clearly going to have major economic implications for lots of businesses. But the man to decide whether to lend support to hospitality businesses (which are going to lose loads of money whether or not more restrictions are put in place) is on a jolly business trip in California. I'll bet Cyclefree is livid.
Sunak has relatives there. Part of his wife's family are Californian.
And Cyclefree is always livid about something, in any case.
I've just got home.
My Daughter's business is taking 40% of the revenue she was taking in November let alone December. She is beyond depressed.
She normally closes for the first 2 weeks of January. Unless support is forthcoming, as other countries faced with this variant have provided, she will not be reopening. There is no point.
A business which survived, was viable, increased its turnover and was profitable will disappear because it simply cannot survive the loss of Xmas business without support. So all the support that was given before will have been for nothing.
Jobs lost. Local suppliers and breweries lose another customer and a village loses a venue. The government loses the tax revenues. What are the chances of the owner finding a buyer or tenant in this sort of environment? And yet the government is proposing to spend £21 million in the area to increase its attractiveness as a tourist destination. Where are people supposed to eat and stay when all the local venues have closed?
She is young. She is entrepreneurial and tough. But she looks utterly beaten and abandoned. It breaks my heart. She will not be the only one who feels like this. She and her generation are this country's future and this government is treating them like shit.
I expect better. At least I used to. Not any more.
More than livid I am utterly contemptuous of people like you who are so dismissive of what is happening to the young. And even more contemptuous of people like Sunak, cosseted by their money, who have no clue at the damage they are doing.
But I will wait and when I have the opportunity I will get my own back at the ballot box. I will not be the only one.
This country has been shafting the young for years. It was similar under Labour - they pulled up many ladders behind them: free education, good pensions, etc. The Millennials et al have been used as a human bank account by the older generations to feather-bed their existence and protect their inheritances.
It is why I have encouraged my kids to use their dual nationality to seek work overseas. The UK was a great country once and being British was something you could take pride in. Nowadays it is a joke with a comedy govt which is mapping the way to becoming a shabby, insular backwater.
Some excellent points - I think you are right about the young being systematically shxfted - the interest rate on the govt student loan scheme is a scandal is an excellent example, meanwhile the wealthy over 60s remain absolutely steadfast in their grip on political power - one of the great political shifts in the 21C has been the systematic hoovering up of the grey vote by the Conservatives in England - its given us BREXIT, a sex-crazed liar as PM, a series of culture wars and an inflated sense of national importance that will culminate in disaster at some point. I do think the Blues will edge it (but will watch with an enthusiasm for a byelection I've not had in years)
That RPI plus 3% on Student Loans is just cruel.
I was talking to my neighbour. She is in her 20's, a teaching assistant, doing a teaching degree at night school. So, about the most sensible and cost effective way of doing a degree. Will leave with 18k of debt. We worked out that it could well be cheaper for her to get a loan from the bank upon graduation then pay it off over 5 years when she gets a teaching job (should be about 3% interest, if the current bank interest rates are sustained), than stay with the student loans company.
Aside from vocational degrees such as the above; University education is for the wealthy only. An extension of private school; but the student loans system enables the poor and naive to be exploited under the guise of 'access'.
Commercial bank offering unsecured personal loan for 3%?
Colour me sceptical.
I've taken out unsecured loans at this rate. Admittedly not recently though.
Another option is mortgage equity withdrawal, that could bring the rate down to sub 2%, dependent on personal circumstances. Or just borrow the money off a wealthy relative and pay it back at 1-2%; win win as the savings rate is hopeless.
What was the politicos rationale for the interest rate being so high? If you get a high flying job and reach six figures in your 20s, you pay it off early. The bigger chunk will presumably never pay it off. But there will be plenty in the middle who do pay it off but take most of their working life to do so.
Was it purely so they could privatise the loan book with as small a discount as possible? Poor form if so.
Well it was all pursued in the interest of sound public finances. Balancing the books. Paying our way in the world. Cutting the deficit. Strong and stable government in the National Interest.
Well yes, but it was all based on the premise that we needed to send 50% of our youth to university. Take that arbitrary target away and it becomes somewhat easier to suppose that do go through university. We could even decide to pay the tuition fees of those doing courses we were looking to encourage (i.e. STEM courses).
The fundamental problem is the decreasing graduate premium (which is, of course, a result of there being too many graduates). It simply makes no sense to spend 4-5 years of a 45 year career training and studying incurring over £100k of debt to earn salaries of less than £50k. As you point out those that do will never repay their student "loans" and will simply pay what is effectively a higher tax rate for most of their careers making the housing ladder more inaccessible and pension provision more challenging. How distant the Tory dream of a property owning democracy seems now.
Mass property ownership was only feasible because decades of social democracy had flattened the income and wealth distribution. Now, decades of Thatcherism have led to an increasing concentration of wealth. In other words, mass home ownership and popular share ownership were only transitory phases. The real Tory dream is the rich man in his castle, the poor man at his gate, and that is where we are heading.
Over 2/3 of the UK population still own the property in which theyl ive, either outright or with a mortgage. 100 years ago most of the population rented. The Tory dream is still that the majority own their own homes and many get shares too as that is the most likely way to make them vote Tory eg the Tories did not get 10 consecutive years in power since universal suffrage until the expansion of property ownership and housebuilding under Macmillan and they then extended that after Thatcher endabled more to buy their their own council homes from 1979-1997.
So, if the Mirror is right the extremely rich Rishi Sunak is in California on business; the state where he met his wife and where he, apparently, owns a home in Santa Monica and has lots of friends there. I'm not sure why this business trip wasn't public knowledge, but it clearly wasn't. Wonder why.
Could be a problem for Sunak. Whatever one's view of Omicron and what should be done, we are in the middle of another Covid crisis and it's clearly going to have major economic implications for lots of businesses. But the man to decide whether to lend support to hospitality businesses (which are going to lose loads of money whether or not more restrictions are put in place) is on a jolly business trip in California. I'll bet Cyclefree is livid.
Sunak has relatives there. Part of his wife's family are Californian.
And Cyclefree is always livid about something, in any case.
I've just got home.
My Daughter's business is taking 40% of the revenue she was taking in November let alone December. She is beyond depressed.
She normally closes for the first 2 weeks of January. Unless support is forthcoming, as other countries faced with this variant have provided, she will not be reopening. There is no point.
A business which survived, was viable, increased its turnover and was profitable will disappear because it simply cannot survive the loss of Xmas business without support. So all the support that was given before will have been for nothing.
Jobs lost. Local suppliers and breweries lose another customer and a village loses a venue. The government loses the tax revenues. What are the chances of the owner finding a buyer or tenant in this sort of environment? And yet the government is proposing to spend £21 million in the area to increase its attractiveness as a tourist destination. Where are people supposed to eat and stay when all the local venues have closed?
She is young. She is entrepreneurial and tough. But she looks utterly beaten and abandoned. It breaks my heart. She will not be the only one who feels like this. She and her generation are this country's future and this government is treating them like shit.
I expect better. At least I used to. Not any more.
More than livid I am utterly contemptuous of people like you who are so dismissive of what is happening to the young. And even more contemptuous of people like Sunak, cosseted by their money, who have no clue at the damage they are doing.
But I will wait and when I have the opportunity I will get my own back at the ballot box. I will not be the only one.
This country has been shafting the young for years. It was similar under Labour - they pulled up many ladders behind them: free education, good pensions, etc. The Millennials et al have been used as a human bank account by the older generations to feather-bed their existence and protect their inheritances.
It is why I have encouraged my kids to use their dual nationality to seek work overseas. The UK was a great country once and being British was something you could take pride in. Nowadays it is a joke with a comedy govt which is mapping the way to becoming a shabby, insular backwater.
Some excellent points - I think you are right about the young being systematically shxfted - the interest rate on the govt student loan scheme is a scandal is an excellent example, meanwhile the wealthy over 60s remain absolutely steadfast in their grip on political power - one of the great political shifts in the 21C has been the systematic hoovering up of the grey vote by the Conservatives in England - its given us BREXIT, a sex-crazed liar as PM, a series of culture wars and an inflated sense of national importance that will culminate in disaster at some point. I do think the Blues will edge it (but will watch with an enthusiasm for a byelection I've not had in years)
That RPI plus 3% on Student Loans is just cruel.
I was talking to my neighbour. She is in her 20's, a teaching assistant, doing a teaching degree at night school. So, about the most sensible and cost effective way of doing a degree. Will leave with 18k of debt. We worked out that it could well be cheaper for her to get a loan from the bank upon graduation then pay it off over 5 years when she gets a teaching job (should be about 3% interest, if the current bank interest rates are sustained), than stay with the student loans company.
Aside from vocational degrees such as the above; University education is for the wealthy only. An extension of private school; but the student loans system enables the poor and naive to be exploited under the guise of 'access'.
Commercial bank offering unsecured personal loan for 3%?
Colour me sceptical.
I've taken out unsecured loans at this rate. Admittedly not recently though.
Another option is mortgage equity withdrawal, that could bring the rate down to sub 2%, dependent on personal circumstances. Or just borrow the money off a wealthy relative and pay it back at 1-2%; win win as the savings rate is hopeless.
What was the politicos rationale for the interest rate being so high? If you get a high flying job and reach six figures in your 20s, you pay it off early. The bigger chunk will presumably never pay it off. But there will be plenty in the middle who do pay it off but take most of their working life to do so.
Was it purely so they could privatise the loan book with as small a discount as possible? Poor form if so.
Well it was all pursued in the interest of sound public finances. Balancing the books. Paying our way in the world. Cutting the deficit. Strong and stable government in the National Interest.
Well yes, but it was all based on the premise that we needed to send 50% of our youth to university. Take that arbitrary target away and it becomes somewhat easier to suppose that do go through university. We could even decide to pay the tuition fees of those doing courses we were looking to encourage (i.e. STEM courses).
The fundamental problem is the decreasing graduate premium (which is, of course, a result of there being too many graduates). It simply makes no sense to spend 4-5 years of a 45 year career training and studying incurring over £100k of debt to earn salaries of less than £50k. As you point out those that do will never repay their student "loans" and will simply pay what is effectively a higher tax rate for most of their careers making the housing ladder more inaccessible and pension provision more challenging. How distant the Tory dream of a property owning democracy seems now.
Mass property ownership was only feasible because decades of social democracy had flattened the income and wealth distribution. Now, decades of Thatcherism have led to an increasing concentration of wealth. In other words, mass home ownership and popular share ownership were only transitory phases. The real Tory dream is the rich man in his castle, the poor man at his gate, and that is where we are heading.
I think that is a little simplistic but did you hear the Reith lecture yesterday about the implications of AI for work? It was thought provoking but the central thrust is that the problem for the last 20-30 years has been that the share of profits taken by capital as opposed to labour has been increasing resulting in stagnant wages. AI is going to accelerate this trend by making labour far less competitive. Those with capital will gain but how does society keep going? UBI is one possibility but it is going to be a tricky transition.
I didn't hear it but the premise sounds plausible. I do worry that the increasing inequality and divisions I've witnessed during my life are only going to gather pace for my children. Add in the climate crisis and it's quite a toxic brew.
Its worth a listen. The one last week on AI and warfare was somewhat scarier but only in a superficial kind of way. This one indicates the kind of challenges that we are going to inevitably face as a society (before the robots classify us as vermin and wipe us all out).
Anything below Con 45 and he is in big, big trouble. The only time their vote has dipped below that in this constituency at a general election was in 1997, when it was 40% (coincidentally,the same as in the by-election of 1961).
If the Lib Dems win, he's finished.
Only two predictions, neither with much confidence,
The Tories will win NS.
That result will buy Boris time until sometime in January.
I also fancy the Cons to hold on in NS but, regardless, I don't see Johnson going anytime soon. You can get 1.75 on him still to be PM at the next Tory Party Conf - that's real value imo.
We have some weird posts here re pension funds. Re the various posts:
Defined Contribution funds are for most people not fat, they are for most very, very modest and usually not enough.
Just because a fund manager maybe well paid does not mean that someone's small pension fund should be clobbered. On that logic clobber the fund manager not the fund.
Young people are investing in pensions as well so clobbering those does not help them.
Retired and near retired people can't do anything about restoring their pension if you do clobber it.
The history of Gordon Brown and the devastation he caused on pension funds and thousands of people's lives who had their retirement destroyed should be a lesson we should never have to learn again.
As some of you may know I am involved in the campaigns to try and help some of these individuals, many of whom have now died or living on o much less than they expected in their 80s and 90s.
I mean it's not as though we are stating something extraordinary but "fat pension fund" just like "debt" are words that are flung around by those who don't bother or don't want to understand what they are really saying.
I saw a vox pop on the Shropshire election yesterday -I'm not sure on what station as I'm in France at the moment-but from that alone I'd say it'll be a win for the Tories. Hardly anyone had a good word to say for Johnson but neither did anyone said they would vote for anyone else. The Tory Party felt a bit like a religion where even the lapsed wouldn't convert.
Yes, this time tomorrow we will be talking of how the Tory won, as if that was a great feat in one of the bluest bits of Shire Leaverstan.
I'm afraid so. I think many of us who live and work in cities will find the attitudes in the vox pop unfamiliar. It reminded me of trips to the newsagent in Grasmere where there are two piles of Newspapers on display. The Telegraph and yesterday's Telegraph
So, if the Mirror is right the extremely rich Rishi Sunak is in California on business; the state where he met his wife and where he, apparently, owns a home in Santa Monica and has lots of friends there. I'm not sure why this business trip wasn't public knowledge, but it clearly wasn't. Wonder why.
Could be a problem for Sunak. Whatever one's view of Omicron and what should be done, we are in the middle of another Covid crisis and it's clearly going to have major economic implications for lots of businesses. But the man to decide whether to lend support to hospitality businesses (which are going to lose loads of money whether or not more restrictions are put in place) is on a jolly business trip in California. I'll bet Cyclefree is livid.
Sunak has relatives there. Part of his wife's family are Californian.
And Cyclefree is always livid about something, in any case.
I've just got home.
My Daughter's business is taking 40% of the revenue she was taking in November let alone December. She is beyond depressed.
She normally closes for the first 2 weeks of January. Unless support is forthcoming, as other countries faced with this variant have provided, she will not be reopening. There is no point.
A business which survived, was viable, increased its turnover and was profitable will disappear because it simply cannot survive the loss of Xmas business without support. So all the support that was given before will have been for nothing.
Jobs lost. Local suppliers and breweries lose another customer and a village loses a venue. The government loses the tax revenues. What are the chances of the owner finding a buyer or tenant in this sort of environment? And yet the government is proposing to spend £21 million in the area to increase its attractiveness as a tourist destination. Where are people supposed to eat and stay when all the local venues have closed?
She is young. She is entrepreneurial and tough. But she looks utterly beaten and abandoned. It breaks my heart. She will not be the only one who feels like this. She and her generation are this country's future and this government is treating them like shit.
I expect better. At least I used to. Not any more.
More than livid I am utterly contemptuous of people like you who are so dismissive of what is happening to the young. And even more contemptuous of people like Sunak, cosseted by their money, who have no clue at the damage they are doing.
But I will wait and when I have the opportunity I will get my own back at the ballot box. I will not be the only one.
This country has been shafting the young for years. It was similar under Labour - they pulled up many ladders behind them: free education, good pensions, etc. The Millennials et al have been used as a human bank account by the older generations to feather-bed their existence and protect their inheritances.
It is why I have encouraged my kids to use their dual nationality to seek work overseas. The UK was a great country once and being British was something you could take pride in. Nowadays it is a joke with a comedy govt which is mapping the way to becoming a shabby, insular backwater.
Some excellent points - I think you are right about the young being systematically shxfted - the interest rate on the govt student loan scheme is a scandal is an excellent example, meanwhile the wealthy over 60s remain absolutely steadfast in their grip on political power - one of the great political shifts in the 21C has been the systematic hoovering up of the grey vote by the Conservatives in England - its given us BREXIT, a sex-crazed liar as PM, a series of culture wars and an inflated sense of national importance that will culminate in disaster at some point. I do think the Blues will edge it (but will watch with an enthusiasm for a byelection I've not had in years)
That RPI plus 3% on Student Loans is just cruel.
I was talking to my neighbour. She is in her 20's, a teaching assistant, doing a teaching degree at night school. So, about the most sensible and cost effective way of doing a degree. Will leave with 18k of debt. We worked out that it could well be cheaper for her to get a loan from the bank upon graduation then pay it off over 5 years when she gets a teaching job (should be about 3% interest, if the current bank interest rates are sustained), than stay with the student loans company.
Aside from vocational degrees such as the above; University education is for the wealthy only. An extension of private school; but the student loans system enables the poor and naive to be exploited under the guise of 'access'.
Commercial bank offering unsecured personal loan for 3%?
Colour me sceptical.
I've taken out unsecured loans at this rate. Admittedly not recently though.
Another option is mortgage equity withdrawal, that could bring the rate down to sub 2%, dependent on personal circumstances. Or just borrow the money off a wealthy relative and pay it back at 1-2%; win win as the savings rate is hopeless.
What was the politicos rationale for the interest rate being so high? If you get a high flying job and reach six figures in your 20s, you pay it off early. The bigger chunk will presumably never pay it off. But there will be plenty in the middle who do pay it off but take most of their working life to do so.
Was it purely so they could privatise the loan book with as small a discount as possible? Poor form if so.
It's really, really hard to repay the student loan (deliberately so). I've just done the calculation, assuming CPI at 2% (increasing the repayment threshold each year), RPI at 3% (so the interest is 6% each year) for someone who starts earning at £25,000 and receives a 4% pay rise every year. They never pay back the £27,000 borrowed. Not only that, they never reduce the amount of debt owed. They make repayments of more than £28,000, but the debt outstanding grows every year to reach nearly £120,000 when it is written off.
If you increase the average pay rise to 5% every year, then in the final year the student sees the first drop in their outstanding debt, before the remaining £81,000 or so is written off. They will have paid more than £51,000.
You have to increase the average pay rise each year to 7% to achieve repayment (in the penultimate year) with a total of about £96,000 repaid. The salary at this year is £95,473 in inflation-adjusted terms (£166k nominal). This is far above the middle.
It can't be emphasised enough that you are not meant to pay this debt off. This is why Martin Lewis advises people that they would be simply throwing their money away to use a lump sum to repay some of the principal amount outstanding. It would be a fundamental change to the system to make repayment reasonably achievable. Maybe it would be a vote winner in the Home Counties, where more people would have a decent chance of clearing the debt, and reducing the amount if interest they pay. It would make no difference to most other people.
And who gets a pay rise anymore? All the time I've been in the public sector, it has been frozen at less than 1%. In my case, I did some calculations and worked out that inflation has eroded gains even in the context of multiple promotions. If you add on to that the problem of progressive taxation once you start earning well (of which the post 2012 student loan situation is a feature), it becomes prohibitively difficult to ever build up wealth through employment. I've said on here that people need to look at alternatives to traditional employment if they want to build up wealth and that is still very true, and entirely a product of bad government policy.
In planning, most local councils now have to take on contractors because it's simply not worth doing the job for the money they get paid. Mrs Eek was on £27,000 or so when she left planning in 2004, returning in 2018 (if you don't believe in God or freak events the story of how she returned is implausible). She is now on £35,000 doing a more senior job. No one is going to work for that money especially down south.
As for student loans - as I pointed out to twin B, unless you can pay the entire debt off there is zero point paying any of it of. The money we saved for her will eventually be a housing deposit and (if I can afford it) a monthly sub to cover some of her repayment costs.
I live in the south east. The reality is that there just aren't that many jobs that pay above the mid 20k range. Even once you ascend past that point, the taxation plus student loan starts to hit badly.
I started in the public sector in 2007 at 31k in an entry level role, and got to 49k in 2020, in a role touted as the pinnacle of my profession. It often involved working 6 days a week, for 12 hours a day, making extremely difficult decisions with little support, for which I will essentially be liable for the rest of my life, in organisations that are increasingly subject to political interference on staffing matters; and have a habit of hanging former staff out to dry.
In the end, I came to conclude that I was being taken for a fool by the government, and that there are far easier ways to make £3000 per month after tax. That has turned out to be true.
Anything below Con 45 and he is in big, big trouble. The only time their vote has dipped below that in this constituency at a general election was in 1997, when it was 40% (coincidentally,the same as in the by-election of 1961).
If the Lib Dems win, he's finished.
Only two predictions, neither with much confidence,
The Tories will win NS.
That result will buy Boris time until sometime in January.
I also fancy the Cons to hold on in NS but, regardless, I don't see Johnson going anytime soon. You can get 1.75 on him still to be PM at the next Tory Party Conf - that's real value imo.
What is the definition of at - when the conference begins or when it ends?
I ask because one plausible scenario is that Boris goes after ensuring the vote takes him past August.
On current polls the Tories should get about 40-45% in North Shropshire on UNS, so even despite being a Leave seat they will still see a significant swing against them. However that does not mean they will lose it necessarily unless the vast majority of Labour voters tactically vote LD. In the end it may be the fact that it was Labour 2nd in the seat in 2019 not the LDs, despite the latter making the biggest challenge, that will save the Tory candidate. Not the fact it was a solid but overwhelmingly Leave seat.
If the Tories lose the seat Boris could face a VONC in the next few weeks, though I think he would narrowly survive it for now which would keep him safe for a year. Longer term though more important for his survival will be the booster programme proving effective
Who are your first and second choices for Tory leader if Boris Johnson does leave office soon?
So, if the Mirror is right the extremely rich Rishi Sunak is in California on business; the state where he met his wife and where he, apparently, owns a home in Santa Monica and has lots of friends there. I'm not sure why this business trip wasn't public knowledge, but it clearly wasn't. Wonder why.
Could be a problem for Sunak. Whatever one's view of Omicron and what should be done, we are in the middle of another Covid crisis and it's clearly going to have major economic implications for lots of businesses. But the man to decide whether to lend support to hospitality businesses (which are going to lose loads of money whether or not more restrictions are put in place) is on a jolly business trip in California. I'll bet Cyclefree is livid.
Sunak has relatives there. Part of his wife's family are Californian.
And Cyclefree is always livid about something, in any case.
I've just got home.
My Daughter's business is taking 40% of the revenue she was taking in November let alone December. She is beyond depressed.
She normally closes for the first 2 weeks of January. Unless support is forthcoming, as other countries faced with this variant have provided, she will not be reopening. There is no point.
A business which survived, was viable, increased its turnover and was profitable will disappear because it simply cannot survive the loss of Xmas business without support. So all the support that was given before will have been for nothing.
Jobs lost. Local suppliers and breweries lose another customer and a village loses a venue. The government loses the tax revenues. What are the chances of the owner finding a buyer or tenant in this sort of environment? And yet the government is proposing to spend £21 million in the area to increase its attractiveness as a tourist destination. Where are people supposed to eat and stay when all the local venues have closed?
She is young. She is entrepreneurial and tough. But she looks utterly beaten and abandoned. It breaks my heart. She will not be the only one who feels like this. She and her generation are this country's future and this government is treating them like shit.
I expect better. At least I used to. Not any more.
More than livid I am utterly contemptuous of people like you who are so dismissive of what is happening to the young. And even more contemptuous of people like Sunak, cosseted by their money, who have no clue at the damage they are doing.
But I will wait and when I have the opportunity I will get my own back at the ballot box. I will not be the only one.
This country has been shafting the young for years. It was similar under Labour - they pulled up many ladders behind them: free education, good pensions, etc. The Millennials et al have been used as a human bank account by the older generations to feather-bed their existence and protect their inheritances.
It is why I have encouraged my kids to use their dual nationality to seek work overseas. The UK was a great country once and being British was something you could take pride in. Nowadays it is a joke with a comedy govt which is mapping the way to becoming a shabby, insular backwater.
Some excellent points - I think you are right about the young being systematically shxfted - the interest rate on the govt student loan scheme is a scandal is an excellent example, meanwhile the wealthy over 60s remain absolutely steadfast in their grip on political power - one of the great political shifts in the 21C has been the systematic hoovering up of the grey vote by the Conservatives in England - its given us BREXIT, a sex-crazed liar as PM, a series of culture wars and an inflated sense of national importance that will culminate in disaster at some point. I do think the Blues will edge it (but will watch with an enthusiasm for a byelection I've not had in years)
That RPI plus 3% on Student Loans is just cruel.
I was talking to my neighbour. She is in her 20's, a teaching assistant, doing a teaching degree at night school. So, about the most sensible and cost effective way of doing a degree. Will leave with 18k of debt. We worked out that it could well be cheaper for her to get a loan from the bank upon graduation then pay it off over 5 years when she gets a teaching job (should be about 3% interest, if the current bank interest rates are sustained), than stay with the student loans company.
Aside from vocational degrees such as the above; University education is for the wealthy only. An extension of private school; but the student loans system enables the poor and naive to be exploited under the guise of 'access'.
Commercial bank offering unsecured personal loan for 3%?
Colour me sceptical.
I've taken out unsecured loans at this rate. Admittedly not recently though.
Another option is mortgage equity withdrawal, that could bring the rate down to sub 2%, dependent on personal circumstances. Or just borrow the money off a wealthy relative and pay it back at 1-2%; win win as the savings rate is hopeless.
What was the politicos rationale for the interest rate being so high? If you get a high flying job and reach six figures in your 20s, you pay it off early. The bigger chunk will presumably never pay it off. But there will be plenty in the middle who do pay it off but take most of their working life to do so.
Was it purely so they could privatise the loan book with as small a discount as possible? Poor form if so.
Well it was all pursued in the interest of sound public finances. Balancing the books. Paying our way in the world. Cutting the deficit. Strong and stable government in the National Interest.
Well yes, but it was all based on the premise that we needed to send 50% of our youth to university. Take that arbitrary target away and it becomes somewhat easier to suppose that do go through university. We could even decide to pay the tuition fees of those doing courses we were looking to encourage (i.e. STEM courses).
The fundamental problem is the decreasing graduate premium (which is, of course, a result of there being too many graduates). It simply makes no sense to spend 4-5 years of a 45 year career training and studying incurring over £100k of debt to earn salaries of less than £50k. As you point out those that do will never repay their student "loans" and will simply pay what is effectively a higher tax rate for most of their careers making the housing ladder more inaccessible and pension provision more challenging. How distant the Tory dream of a property owning democracy seems now.
Mass property ownership was only feasible because decades of social democracy had flattened the income and wealth distribution. Now, decades of Thatcherism have led to an increasing concentration of wealth. In other words, mass home ownership and popular share ownership were only transitory phases. The real Tory dream is the rich man in his castle, the poor man at his gate, and that is where we are heading.
I think that is a little simplistic but did you hear the Reith lecture yesterday about the implications of AI for work? It was thought provoking but the central thrust is that the problem for the last 20-30 years has been that the share of profits taken by capital as opposed to labour has been increasing resulting in stagnant wages. AI is going to accelerate this trend by making labour far less competitive. Those with capital will gain but how does society keep going? UBI is one possibility but it is going to be a tricky transition.
I didn't hear it but the premise sounds plausible. I do worry that the increasing inequality and divisions I've witnessed during my life are only going to gather pace for my children. Add in the climate crisis and it's quite a toxic brew.
Its worth a listen. The one last week on AI and warfare was somewhat scarier but only in a superficial kind of way. This one indicates the kind of challenges that we are going to inevitably face as a society (before the robots classify us as vermin and wipe us all out).
Which is why I am very wary about how AI is conducted, otherwise you end up creating a monster you cannot control (albeit in all likelihood if that was the outcome the robots would eventually end up destroying themselves too)
So, if the Mirror is right the extremely rich Rishi Sunak is in California on business; the state where he met his wife and where he, apparently, owns a home in Santa Monica and has lots of friends there. I'm not sure why this business trip wasn't public knowledge, but it clearly wasn't. Wonder why.
Could be a problem for Sunak. Whatever one's view of Omicron and what should be done, we are in the middle of another Covid crisis and it's clearly going to have major economic implications for lots of businesses. But the man to decide whether to lend support to hospitality businesses (which are going to lose loads of money whether or not more restrictions are put in place) is on a jolly business trip in California. I'll bet Cyclefree is livid.
Sunak has relatives there. Part of his wife's family are Californian.
And Cyclefree is always livid about something, in any case.
I've just got home.
My Daughter's business is taking 40% of the revenue she was taking in November let alone December. She is beyond depressed.
She normally closes for the first 2 weeks of January. Unless support is forthcoming, as other countries faced with this variant have provided, she will not be reopening. There is no point.
A business which survived, was viable, increased its turnover and was profitable will disappear because it simply cannot survive the loss of Xmas business without support. So all the support that was given before will have been for nothing.
Jobs lost. Local suppliers and breweries lose another customer and a village loses a venue. The government loses the tax revenues. What are the chances of the owner finding a buyer or tenant in this sort of environment? And yet the government is proposing to spend £21 million in the area to increase its attractiveness as a tourist destination. Where are people supposed to eat and stay when all the local venues have closed?
She is young. She is entrepreneurial and tough. But she looks utterly beaten and abandoned. It breaks my heart. She will not be the only one who feels like this. She and her generation are this country's future and this government is treating them like shit.
I expect better. At least I used to. Not any more.
More than livid I am utterly contemptuous of people like you who are so dismissive of what is happening to the young. And even more contemptuous of people like Sunak, cosseted by their money, who have no clue at the damage they are doing.
But I will wait and when I have the opportunity I will get my own back at the ballot box. I will not be the only one.
This country has been shafting the young for years. It was similar under Labour - they pulled up many ladders behind them: free education, good pensions, etc. The Millennials et al have been used as a human bank account by the older generations to feather-bed their existence and protect their inheritances.
It is why I have encouraged my kids to use their dual nationality to seek work overseas. The UK was a great country once and being British was something you could take pride in. Nowadays it is a joke with a comedy govt which is mapping the way to becoming a shabby, insular backwater.
Some excellent points - I think you are right about the young being systematically shxfted - the interest rate on the govt student loan scheme is a scandal is an excellent example, meanwhile the wealthy over 60s remain absolutely steadfast in their grip on political power - one of the great political shifts in the 21C has been the systematic hoovering up of the grey vote by the Conservatives in England - its given us BREXIT, a sex-crazed liar as PM, a series of culture wars and an inflated sense of national importance that will culminate in disaster at some point. I do think the Blues will edge it (but will watch with an enthusiasm for a byelection I've not had in years)
That RPI plus 3% on Student Loans is just cruel.
I was talking to my neighbour. She is in her 20's, a teaching assistant, doing a teaching degree at night school. So, about the most sensible and cost effective way of doing a degree. Will leave with 18k of debt. We worked out that it could well be cheaper for her to get a loan from the bank upon graduation then pay it off over 5 years when she gets a teaching job (should be about 3% interest, if the current bank interest rates are sustained), than stay with the student loans company.
Aside from vocational degrees such as the above; University education is for the wealthy only. An extension of private school; but the student loans system enables the poor and naive to be exploited under the guise of 'access'.
Commercial bank offering unsecured personal loan for 3%?
Colour me sceptical.
I've taken out unsecured loans at this rate. Admittedly not recently though.
Another option is mortgage equity withdrawal, that could bring the rate down to sub 2%, dependent on personal circumstances. Or just borrow the money off a wealthy relative and pay it back at 1-2%; win win as the savings rate is hopeless.
What was the politicos rationale for the interest rate being so high? If you get a high flying job and reach six figures in your 20s, you pay it off early. The bigger chunk will presumably never pay it off. But there will be plenty in the middle who do pay it off but take most of their working life to do so.
Was it purely so they could privatise the loan book with as small a discount as possible? Poor form if so.
Well it was all pursued in the interest of sound public finances. Balancing the books. Paying our way in the world. Cutting the deficit. Strong and stable government in the National Interest.
Well yes, but it was all based on the premise that we needed to send 50% of our youth to university. Take that arbitrary target away and it becomes somewhat easier to suppose that do go through university. We could even decide to pay the tuition fees of those doing courses we were looking to encourage (i.e. STEM courses).
The fundamental problem is the decreasing graduate premium (which is, of course, a result of there being too many graduates). It simply makes no sense to spend 4-5 years of a 45 year career training and studying incurring over £100k of debt to earn salaries of less than £50k. As you point out those that do will never repay their student "loans" and will simply pay what is effectively a higher tax rate for most of their careers making the housing ladder more inaccessible and pension provision more challenging. How distant the Tory dream of a property owning democracy seems now.
Mass property ownership was only feasible because decades of social democracy had flattened the income and wealth distribution. Now, decades of Thatcherism have led to an increasing concentration of wealth. In other words, mass home ownership and popular share ownership were only transitory phases. The real Tory dream is the rich man in his castle, the poor man at his gate, and that is where we are heading.
I think that is a little simplistic but did you hear the Reith lecture yesterday about the implications of AI for work? It was thought provoking but the central thrust is that the problem for the last 20-30 years has been that the share of profits taken by capital as opposed to labour has been increasing resulting in stagnant wages. AI is going to accelerate this trend by making labour far less competitive. Those with capital will gain but how does society keep going? UBI is one possibility but it is going to be a tricky transition.
I didn't hear it but the premise sounds plausible. I do worry that the increasing inequality and divisions I've witnessed during my life are only going to gather pace for my children. Add in the climate crisis and it's quite a toxic brew.
Its worth a listen. The one last week on AI and warfare was somewhat scarier but only in a superficial kind of way. This one indicates the kind of challenges that we are going to inevitably face as a society (before the robots classify us as vermin and wipe us all out).
On the topics of AI and UBI, Kurt Vonnegut Jr wrote a scifi novel, Player Piano, as long ago as 1952, anticipating in striking detail some of the issues that haunt us today. One 'interesting' prospect was warfare between multinational corporations after state governments had all failed.
London the most religious, but least Christian region of E&W:
London had the lowest percentage of people reporting No religion The percentage of the population who reported No religion ranged from an estimated 29.0% in London to 47.3% in Wales in 2019.
People with a religious affiliation other than Christian accounted for over 25% of London’s population, compared with an estimated 10.6% of the overall population. Around one in seven people in London (14.3%) were Muslim. This percentage is higher than other regions, with the next most common regions being the West Midlands, Yorkshire and The Humber and North West (with 8.6%, 6.6% and 6.3% Muslim, respectively).
The North East, South West, and Wales were the least religiously diverse regions, with over 95% of their populations Christian or with No religion.
So, if the Mirror is right the extremely rich Rishi Sunak is in California on business; the state where he met his wife and where he, apparently, owns a home in Santa Monica and has lots of friends there. I'm not sure why this business trip wasn't public knowledge, but it clearly wasn't. Wonder why.
Could be a problem for Sunak. Whatever one's view of Omicron and what should be done, we are in the middle of another Covid crisis and it's clearly going to have major economic implications for lots of businesses. But the man to decide whether to lend support to hospitality businesses (which are going to lose loads of money whether or not more restrictions are put in place) is on a jolly business trip in California. I'll bet Cyclefree is livid.
Sunak has relatives there. Part of his wife's family are Californian.
And Cyclefree is always livid about something, in any case.
I've just got home.
My Daughter's business is taking 40% of the revenue she was taking in November let alone December. She is beyond depressed.
She normally closes for the first 2 weeks of January. Unless support is forthcoming, as other countries faced with this variant have provided, she will not be reopening. There is no point.
A business which survived, was viable, increased its turnover and was profitable will disappear because it simply cannot survive the loss of Xmas business without support. So all the support that was given before will have been for nothing.
Jobs lost. Local suppliers and breweries lose another customer and a village loses a venue. The government loses the tax revenues. What are the chances of the owner finding a buyer or tenant in this sort of environment? And yet the government is proposing to spend £21 million in the area to increase its attractiveness as a tourist destination. Where are people supposed to eat and stay when all the local venues have closed?
She is young. She is entrepreneurial and tough. But she looks utterly beaten and abandoned. It breaks my heart. She will not be the only one who feels like this. She and her generation are this country's future and this government is treating them like shit.
I expect better. At least I used to. Not any more.
More than livid I am utterly contemptuous of people like you who are so dismissive of what is happening to the young. And even more contemptuous of people like Sunak, cosseted by their money, who have no clue at the damage they are doing.
But I will wait and when I have the opportunity I will get my own back at the ballot box. I will not be the only one.
This country has been shafting the young for years. It was similar under Labour - they pulled up many ladders behind them: free education, good pensions, etc. The Millennials et al have been used as a human bank account by the older generations to feather-bed their existence and protect their inheritances.
It is why I have encouraged my kids to use their dual nationality to seek work overseas. The UK was a great country once and being British was something you could take pride in. Nowadays it is a joke with a comedy govt which is mapping the way to becoming a shabby, insular backwater.
Some excellent points - I think you are right about the young being systematically shxfted - the interest rate on the govt student loan scheme is a scandal is an excellent example, meanwhile the wealthy over 60s remain absolutely steadfast in their grip on political power - one of the great political shifts in the 21C has been the systematic hoovering up of the grey vote by the Conservatives in England - its given us BREXIT, a sex-crazed liar as PM, a series of culture wars and an inflated sense of national importance that will culminate in disaster at some point. I do think the Blues will edge it (but will watch with an enthusiasm for a byelection I've not had in years)
That RPI plus 3% on Student Loans is just cruel.
I was talking to my neighbour. She is in her 20's, a teaching assistant, doing a teaching degree at night school. So, about the most sensible and cost effective way of doing a degree. Will leave with 18k of debt. We worked out that it could well be cheaper for her to get a loan from the bank upon graduation then pay it off over 5 years when she gets a teaching job (should be about 3% interest, if the current bank interest rates are sustained), than stay with the student loans company.
Aside from vocational degrees such as the above; University education is for the wealthy only. An extension of private school; but the student loans system enables the poor and naive to be exploited under the guise of 'access'.
Commercial bank offering unsecured personal loan for 3%?
Colour me sceptical.
I've taken out unsecured loans at this rate. Admittedly not recently though.
Another option is mortgage equity withdrawal, that could bring the rate down to sub 2%, dependent on personal circumstances. Or just borrow the money off a wealthy relative and pay it back at 1-2%; win win as the savings rate is hopeless.
What was the politicos rationale for the interest rate being so high? If you get a high flying job and reach six figures in your 20s, you pay it off early. The bigger chunk will presumably never pay it off. But there will be plenty in the middle who do pay it off but take most of their working life to do so.
Was it purely so they could privatise the loan book with as small a discount as possible? Poor form if so.
Well it was all pursued in the interest of sound public finances. Balancing the books. Paying our way in the world. Cutting the deficit. Strong and stable government in the National Interest.
Well yes, but it was all based on the premise that we needed to send 50% of our youth to university. Take that arbitrary target away and it becomes somewhat easier to suppose that do go through university. We could even decide to pay the tuition fees of those doing courses we were looking to encourage (i.e. STEM courses).
The fundamental problem is the decreasing graduate premium (which is, of course, a result of there being too many graduates). It simply makes no sense to spend 4-5 years of a 45 year career training and studying incurring over £100k of debt to earn salaries of less than £50k. As you point out those that do will never repay their student "loans" and will simply pay what is effectively a higher tax rate for most of their careers making the housing ladder more inaccessible and pension provision more challenging. How distant the Tory dream of a property owning democracy seems now.
Mass property ownership was only feasible because decades of social democracy had flattened the income and wealth distribution. Now, decades of Thatcherism have led to an increasing concentration of wealth. In other words, mass home ownership and popular share ownership were only transitory phases. The real Tory dream is the rich man in his castle, the poor man at his gate, and that is where we are heading.
Over 2/3 of the UK population still own the property in which theyl ive, either outright or with a mortgage. 100 years ago most of the population rented. The Tory dream is still that the majority own their own homes and many get shares too as that is the most likely way to make them vote Tory eg the Tories did not get 10 consecutive years in power since universal suffrage until the expansion of property ownership and housebuilding under Macmillan and they then extended that after Thatcher endabled more to buy their their own council homes from 1979-1997.
When I met my wife, back in the 50's, her family. father a senior, albeit local, nationalised industry official, lived in a council house. Many of their neighbours were similar middle management types. When I bought our second family home, in the late 60's the bank manager remarked that 'a figure of £14k might, in today's inflationary times, be paid'. That house today is probably worth 3/4 million.
My in-laws old house doesn't look anywhere near as smart and well-kept, nor does the rest of the row and 60 years ago.
People, this is your future thanks to the green lobby.
Gas prices are at a near record level again and we are nowhere near a viable, fully scalable alternative that will keep the lights on and our homes warm in winter.
Still, stop drilling for oil and gas and stop further exploration. All good.
When we have five times the wind capacity then wind would still be generating a respectable 12 GW or so on a day like today, and we'd have the excess from previous days stored. If we would build the tidal lagoons, and the mini-nuke reactors too, then our exposure to fluctuations in global fossil fuel prices would be much reduced, perhaps eliminated.
Which is why, in a litany of silly mistakes, May's abandonment of tidal power was her worst one.
People, this is your future thanks to the green lobby.
Gas prices are at a near record level again and we are nowhere near a viable, fully scalable alternative that will keep the lights on and our homes warm in winter.
Still, stop drilling for oil and gas and stop further exploration. All good.
When we have five times the wind capacity then wind would still be generating a respectable 12 GW or so on a day like today, and we'd have the excess from previous days stored. If we would build the tidal lagoons, and the mini-nuke reactors too, then our exposure to fluctuations in global fossil fuel prices would be much reduced, perhaps eliminated.
Which is why, in a litany of silly mistakes, May's abandonment of tidal power was her worst one.
One of her top Severn mistakes?
Jeez Charles not so early in the morning that hurt.
So, if the Mirror is right the extremely rich Rishi Sunak is in California on business; the state where he met his wife and where he, apparently, owns a home in Santa Monica and has lots of friends there. I'm not sure why this business trip wasn't public knowledge, but it clearly wasn't. Wonder why.
Could be a problem for Sunak. Whatever one's view of Omicron and what should be done, we are in the middle of another Covid crisis and it's clearly going to have major economic implications for lots of businesses. But the man to decide whether to lend support to hospitality businesses (which are going to lose loads of money whether or not more restrictions are put in place) is on a jolly business trip in California. I'll bet Cyclefree is livid.
Sunak has relatives there. Part of his wife's family are Californian.
And Cyclefree is always livid about something, in any case.
I've just got home.
My Daughter's business is taking 40% of the revenue she was taking in November let alone December. She is beyond depressed.
She normally closes for the first 2 weeks of January. Unless support is forthcoming, as other countries faced with this variant have provided, she will not be reopening. There is no point.
A business which survived, was viable, increased its turnover and was profitable will disappear because it simply cannot survive the loss of Xmas business without support. So all the support that was given before will have been for nothing.
Jobs lost. Local suppliers and breweries lose another customer and a village loses a venue. The government loses the tax revenues. What are the chances of the owner finding a buyer or tenant in this sort of environment? And yet the government is proposing to spend £21 million in the area to increase its attractiveness as a tourist destination. Where are people supposed to eat and stay when all the local venues have closed?
She is young. She is entrepreneurial and tough. But she looks utterly beaten and abandoned. It breaks my heart. She will not be the only one who feels like this. She and her generation are this country's future and this government is treating them like shit.
I expect better. At least I used to. Not any more.
More than livid I am utterly contemptuous of people like you who are so dismissive of what is happening to the young. And even more contemptuous of people like Sunak, cosseted by their money, who have no clue at the damage they are doing.
But I will wait and when I have the opportunity I will get my own back at the ballot box. I will not be the only one.
This country has been shafting the young for years. It was similar under Labour - they pulled up many ladders behind them: free education, good pensions, etc. The Millennials et al have been used as a human bank account by the older generations to feather-bed their existence and protect their inheritances.
It is why I have encouraged my kids to use their dual nationality to seek work overseas. The UK was a great country once and being British was something you could take pride in. Nowadays it is a joke with a comedy govt which is mapping the way to becoming a shabby, insular backwater.
Some excellent points - I think you are right about the young being systematically shxfted - the interest rate on the govt student loan scheme is a scandal is an excellent example, meanwhile the wealthy over 60s remain absolutely steadfast in their grip on political power - one of the great political shifts in the 21C has been the systematic hoovering up of the grey vote by the Conservatives in England - its given us BREXIT, a sex-crazed liar as PM, a series of culture wars and an inflated sense of national importance that will culminate in disaster at some point. I do think the Blues will edge it (but will watch with an enthusiasm for a byelection I've not had in years)
That RPI plus 3% on Student Loans is just cruel.
I was talking to my neighbour. She is in her 20's, a teaching assistant, doing a teaching degree at night school. So, about the most sensible and cost effective way of doing a degree. Will leave with 18k of debt. We worked out that it could well be cheaper for her to get a loan from the bank upon graduation then pay it off over 5 years when she gets a teaching job (should be about 3% interest, if the current bank interest rates are sustained), than stay with the student loans company.
Aside from vocational degrees such as the above; University education is for the wealthy only. An extension of private school; but the student loans system enables the poor and naive to be exploited under the guise of 'access'.
Commercial bank offering unsecured personal loan for 3%?
Colour me sceptical.
I've taken out unsecured loans at this rate. Admittedly not recently though.
Another option is mortgage equity withdrawal, that could bring the rate down to sub 2%, dependent on personal circumstances. Or just borrow the money off a wealthy relative and pay it back at 1-2%; win win as the savings rate is hopeless.
We frequently disintermediate our bank by borrowing from the Bank of Mum and Dad
So, if the Mirror is right the extremely rich Rishi Sunak is in California on business; the state where he met his wife and where he, apparently, owns a home in Santa Monica and has lots of friends there. I'm not sure why this business trip wasn't public knowledge, but it clearly wasn't. Wonder why.
Could be a problem for Sunak. Whatever one's view of Omicron and what should be done, we are in the middle of another Covid crisis and it's clearly going to have major economic implications for lots of businesses. But the man to decide whether to lend support to hospitality businesses (which are going to lose loads of money whether or not more restrictions are put in place) is on a jolly business trip in California. I'll bet Cyclefree is livid.
Sunak has relatives there. Part of his wife's family are Californian.
And Cyclefree is always livid about something, in any case.
I've just got home.
My Daughter's business is taking 40% of the revenue she was taking in November let alone December. She is beyond depressed.
She normally closes for the first 2 weeks of January. Unless support is forthcoming, as other countries faced with this variant have provided, she will not be reopening. There is no point.
A business which survived, was viable, increased its turnover and was profitable will disappear because it simply cannot survive the loss of Xmas business without support. So all the support that was given before will have been for nothing.
Jobs lost. Local suppliers and breweries lose another customer and a village loses a venue. The government loses the tax revenues. What are the chances of the owner finding a buyer or tenant in this sort of environment? And yet the government is proposing to spend £21 million in the area to increase its attractiveness as a tourist destination. Where are people supposed to eat and stay when all the local venues have closed?
She is young. She is entrepreneurial and tough. But she looks utterly beaten and abandoned. It breaks my heart. She will not be the only one who feels like this. She and her generation are this country's future and this government is treating them like shit.
I expect better. At least I used to. Not any more.
More than livid I am utterly contemptuous of people like you who are so dismissive of what is happening to the young. And even more contemptuous of people like Sunak, cosseted by their money, who have no clue at the damage they are doing.
But I will wait and when I have the opportunity I will get my own back at the ballot box. I will not be the only one.
This country has been shafting the young for years. It was similar under Labour - they pulled up many ladders behind them: free education, good pensions, etc. The Millennials et al have been used as a human bank account by the older generations to feather-bed their existence and protect their inheritances.
It is why I have encouraged my kids to use their dual nationality to seek work overseas. The UK was a great country once and being British was something you could take pride in. Nowadays it is a joke with a comedy govt which is mapping the way to becoming a shabby, insular backwater.
Some excellent points - I think you are right about the young being systematically shxfted - the interest rate on the govt student loan scheme is a scandal is an excellent example, meanwhile the wealthy over 60s remain absolutely steadfast in their grip on political power - one of the great political shifts in the 21C has been the systematic hoovering up of the grey vote by the Conservatives in England - its given us BREXIT, a sex-crazed liar as PM, a series of culture wars and an inflated sense of national importance that will culminate in disaster at some point. I do think the Blues will edge it (but will watch with an enthusiasm for a byelection I've not had in years)
That RPI plus 3% on Student Loans is just cruel.
I was talking to my neighbour. She is in her 20's, a teaching assistant, doing a teaching degree at night school. So, about the most sensible and cost effective way of doing a degree. Will leave with 18k of debt. We worked out that it could well be cheaper for her to get a loan from the bank upon graduation then pay it off over 5 years when she gets a teaching job (should be about 3% interest, if the current bank interest rates are sustained), than stay with the student loans company.
Aside from vocational degrees such as the above; University education is for the wealthy only. An extension of private school; but the student loans system enables the poor and naive to be exploited under the guise of 'access'.
Commercial bank offering unsecured personal loan for 3%?
Colour me sceptical.
I've taken out unsecured loans at this rate. Admittedly not recently though.
Another option is mortgage equity withdrawal, that could bring the rate down to sub 2%, dependent on personal circumstances. Or just borrow the money off a wealthy relative and pay it back at 1-2%; win win as the savings rate is hopeless.
What was the politicos rationale for the interest rate being so high? If you get a high flying job and reach six figures in your 20s, you pay it off early. The bigger chunk will presumably never pay it off. But there will be plenty in the middle who do pay it off but take most of their working life to do so.
Was it purely so they could privatise the loan book with as small a discount as possible? Poor form if so.
It's really, really hard to repay the student loan (deliberately so). I've just done the calculation, assuming CPI at 2% (increasing the repayment threshold each year), RPI at 3% (so the interest is 6% each year) for someone who starts earning at £25,000 and receives a 4% pay rise every year. They never pay back the £27,000 borrowed. Not only that, they never reduce the amount of debt owed. They make repayments of more than £28,000, but the debt outstanding grows every year to reach nearly £120,000 when it is written off.
If you increase the average pay rise to 5% every year, then in the final year the student sees the first drop in their outstanding debt, before the remaining £81,000 or so is written off. They will have paid more than £51,000.
You have to increase the average pay rise each year to 7% to achieve repayment (in the penultimate year) with a total of about £96,000 repaid. The salary at this year is £95,473 in inflation-adjusted terms (£166k nominal). This is far above the middle.
It can't be emphasised enough that you are not meant to pay this debt off. This is why Martin Lewis advises people that they would be simply throwing their money away to use a lump sum to repay some of the principal amount outstanding. It would be a fundamental change to the system to make repayment reasonably achievable. Maybe it would be a vote winner in the Home Counties, where more people would have a decent chance of clearing the debt, and reducing the amount if interest they pay. It would make no difference to most other people.
And who gets a pay rise anymore? All the time I've been in the public sector, it has been frozen at less than 1%. In my case, I did some calculations and worked out that inflation has eroded gains even in the context of multiple promotions. If you add on to that the problem of progressive taxation once you start earning well (of which the post 2012 student loan situation is a feature), it becomes prohibitively difficult to ever build up wealth through employment. I've said on here that people need to look at alternatives to traditional employment if they want to build up wealth and that is still very true, and entirely a product of bad government policy.
In planning, most local councils now have to take on contractors because it's simply not worth doing the job for the money they get paid. Mrs Eek was on £27,000 or so when she left planning in 2004, returning in 2018 (if you don't believe in God or freak events the story of how she returned is implausible). She is now on £35,000 doing a more senior job. No one is going to work for that money especially down south.
As for student loans - as I pointed out to twin B, unless you can pay the entire debt off there is zero point paying any of it of. The money we saved for her will eventually be a housing deposit and (if I can afford it) a monthly sub to cover some of her repayment costs.
I live in the south east. The reality is that there just aren't that many jobs that pay above the mid 20k range. Even once you ascend past that point, the taxation plus student loan starts to hit badly.
I started in the public sector in 2007 at 31k in an entry level role, and got to 49k in 2020, in a role touted as the pinnacle of my profession. It often involved working 6 days a week, for 12 hours a day, making extremely difficult decisions with little support, for which I will essentially be liable for the rest of my life, in organisations that are increasingly subject to political interference on staffing matters; and have a habit of hanging former staff out to dry.
In the end, I came to conclude that I was being taken for a fool by the government, and that there are far easier ways to make £3000 per month after tax. That has turned out to be true.
Wait until you come to the next realisation which is that the government would really rather you didn’t make your money via salary. You will be taxed heavily for doing so.
London the most religious, but least Christian region of E&W:
London had the lowest percentage of people reporting No religion The percentage of the population who reported No religion ranged from an estimated 29.0% in London to 47.3% in Wales in 2019.
People with a religious affiliation other than Christian accounted for over 25% of London’s population, compared with an estimated 10.6% of the overall population. Around one in seven people in London (14.3%) were Muslim. This percentage is higher than other regions, with the next most common regions being the West Midlands, Yorkshire and The Humber and North West (with 8.6%, 6.6% and 6.3% Muslim, respectively).
The North East, South West, and Wales were the least religiously diverse regions, with over 95% of their populations Christian or with No religion.
No surprise given London is almost 50% non white now and has big Asian populations who are Hindu or Sikh or Muslim and plenty of Muslims from Nigeria etc too. Though those who are Christian in London tend to be more active as London has bucked the trend of declining church attendance again helped by immigration of evangelicals from Africa and Roman Catholics from Eastern Europe and charismatic evangelical Christianity driven by the likes of HTB.
So, if the Mirror is right the extremely rich Rishi Sunak is in California on business; the state where he met his wife and where he, apparently, owns a home in Santa Monica and has lots of friends there. I'm not sure why this business trip wasn't public knowledge, but it clearly wasn't. Wonder why.
Could be a problem for Sunak. Whatever one's view of Omicron and what should be done, we are in the middle of another Covid crisis and it's clearly going to have major economic implications for lots of businesses. But the man to decide whether to lend support to hospitality businesses (which are going to lose loads of money whether or not more restrictions are put in place) is on a jolly business trip in California. I'll bet Cyclefree is livid.
Sunak has relatives there. Part of his wife's family are Californian.
And Cyclefree is always livid about something, in any case.
I've just got home.
My Daughter's business is taking 40% of the revenue she was taking in November let alone December. She is beyond depressed.
She normally closes for the first 2 weeks of January. Unless support is forthcoming, as other countries faced with this variant have provided, she will not be reopening. There is no point.
A business which survived, was viable, increased its turnover and was profitable will disappear because it simply cannot survive the loss of Xmas business without support. So all the support that was given before will have been for nothing.
Jobs lost. Local suppliers and breweries lose another customer and a village loses a venue. The government loses the tax revenues. What are the chances of the owner finding a buyer or tenant in this sort of environment? And yet the government is proposing to spend £21 million in the area to increase its attractiveness as a tourist destination. Where are people supposed to eat and stay when all the local venues have closed?
She is young. She is entrepreneurial and tough. But she looks utterly beaten and abandoned. It breaks my heart. She will not be the only one who feels like this. She and her generation are this country's future and this government is treating them like shit.
I expect better. At least I used to. Not any more.
More than livid I am utterly contemptuous of people like you who are so dismissive of what is happening to the young. And even more contemptuous of people like Sunak, cosseted by their money, who have no clue at the damage they are doing.
But I will wait and when I have the opportunity I will get my own back at the ballot box. I will not be the only one.
This country has been shafting the young for years. It was similar under Labour - they pulled up many ladders behind them: free education, good pensions, etc. The Millennials et al have been used as a human bank account by the older generations to feather-bed their existence and protect their inheritances.
It is why I have encouraged my kids to use their dual nationality to seek work overseas. The UK was a great country once and being British was something you could take pride in. Nowadays it is a joke with a comedy govt which is mapping the way to becoming a shabby, insular backwater.
Some excellent points - I think you are right about the young being systematically shxfted - the interest rate on the govt student loan scheme is a scandal is an excellent example, meanwhile the wealthy over 60s remain absolutely steadfast in their grip on political power - one of the great political shifts in the 21C has been the systematic hoovering up of the grey vote by the Conservatives in England - its given us BREXIT, a sex-crazed liar as PM, a series of culture wars and an inflated sense of national importance that will culminate in disaster at some point. I do think the Blues will edge it (but will watch with an enthusiasm for a byelection I've not had in years)
That RPI plus 3% on Student Loans is just cruel.
I was talking to my neighbour. She is in her 20's, a teaching assistant, doing a teaching degree at night school. So, about the most sensible and cost effective way of doing a degree. Will leave with 18k of debt. We worked out that it could well be cheaper for her to get a loan from the bank upon graduation then pay it off over 5 years when she gets a teaching job (should be about 3% interest, if the current bank interest rates are sustained), than stay with the student loans company.
Aside from vocational degrees such as the above; University education is for the wealthy only. An extension of private school; but the student loans system enables the poor and naive to be exploited under the guise of 'access'.
Commercial bank offering unsecured personal loan for 3%?
Colour me sceptical.
I've taken out unsecured loans at this rate. Admittedly not recently though.
Another option is mortgage equity withdrawal, that could bring the rate down to sub 2%, dependent on personal circumstances. Or just borrow the money off a wealthy relative and pay it back at 1-2%; win win as the savings rate is hopeless.
What was the politicos rationale for the interest rate being so high? If you get a high flying job and reach six figures in your 20s, you pay it off early. The bigger chunk will presumably never pay it off. But there will be plenty in the middle who do pay it off but take most of their working life to do so.
Was it purely so they could privatise the loan book with as small a discount as possible? Poor form if so.
George Osborne… poor form… too clever by half… hmmh…
The real dilemma for the Chancellor is how to target help to those small businesses who really need it like @Cyclefree daughter while not subsidising those with shareholders who should take the hit rather than the taxpayer
Every business has shareholders Big G.
It is quite obvious what Big G meant.
My business (a single proprietor LLC) has no shareholders. So Topping is wrong, plain and simple. Of course, I have stakeholders, but not shareholders.
The stakeholders or members in many regards look for all the world like shareholders, save for an ability to, er, limit liability.
But you used the word shareholder.
They are owners of the LLC and hence shareholders is appropriate to use.
No it is not. While they are owners, there are no shares to own, and hence no shareholder (which per business would be singular in any case). Why can't you simply admit you were wrong in your word choice.
So, if the Mirror is right the extremely rich Rishi Sunak is in California on business; the state where he met his wife and where he, apparently, owns a home in Santa Monica and has lots of friends there. I'm not sure why this business trip wasn't public knowledge, but it clearly wasn't. Wonder why.
Could be a problem for Sunak. Whatever one's view of Omicron and what should be done, we are in the middle of another Covid crisis and it's clearly going to have major economic implications for lots of businesses. But the man to decide whether to lend support to hospitality businesses (which are going to lose loads of money whether or not more restrictions are put in place) is on a jolly business trip in California. I'll bet Cyclefree is livid.
Sunak has relatives there. Part of his wife's family are Californian.
And Cyclefree is always livid about something, in any case.
I've just got home.
My Daughter's business is taking 40% of the revenue she was taking in November let alone December. She is beyond depressed.
She normally closes for the first 2 weeks of January. Unless support is forthcoming, as other countries faced with this variant have provided, she will not be reopening. There is no point.
A business which survived, was viable, increased its turnover and was profitable will disappear because it simply cannot survive the loss of Xmas business without support. So all the support that was given before will have been for nothing.
Jobs lost. Local suppliers and breweries lose another customer and a village loses a venue. The government loses the tax revenues. What are the chances of the owner finding a buyer or tenant in this sort of environment? And yet the government is proposing to spend £21 million in the area to increase its attractiveness as a tourist destination. Where are people supposed to eat and stay when all the local venues have closed?
She is young. She is entrepreneurial and tough. But she looks utterly beaten and abandoned. It breaks my heart. She will not be the only one who feels like this. She and her generation are this country's future and this government is treating them like shit.
I expect better. At least I used to. Not any more.
More than livid I am utterly contemptuous of people like you who are so dismissive of what is happening to the young. And even more contemptuous of people like Sunak, cosseted by their money, who have no clue at the damage they are doing.
But I will wait and when I have the opportunity I will get my own back at the ballot box. I will not be the only one.
This country has been shafting the young for years. It was similar under Labour - they pulled up many ladders behind them: free education, good pensions, etc. The Millennials et al have been used as a human bank account by the older generations to feather-bed their existence and protect their inheritances.
It is why I have encouraged my kids to use their dual nationality to seek work overseas. The UK was a great country once and being British was something you could take pride in. Nowadays it is a joke with a comedy govt which is mapping the way to becoming a shabby, insular backwater.
Some excellent points - I think you are right about the young being systematically shxfted - the interest rate on the govt student loan scheme is a scandal is an excellent example, meanwhile the wealthy over 60s remain absolutely steadfast in their grip on political power - one of the great political shifts in the 21C has been the systematic hoovering up of the grey vote by the Conservatives in England - its given us BREXIT, a sex-crazed liar as PM, a series of culture wars and an inflated sense of national importance that will culminate in disaster at some point. I do think the Blues will edge it (but will watch with an enthusiasm for a byelection I've not had in years)
That RPI plus 3% on Student Loans is just cruel.
I was talking to my neighbour. She is in her 20's, a teaching assistant, doing a teaching degree at night school. So, about the most sensible and cost effective way of doing a degree. Will leave with 18k of debt. We worked out that it could well be cheaper for her to get a loan from the bank upon graduation then pay it off over 5 years when she gets a teaching job (should be about 3% interest, if the current bank interest rates are sustained), than stay with the student loans company.
Aside from vocational degrees such as the above; University education is for the wealthy only. An extension of private school; but the student loans system enables the poor and naive to be exploited under the guise of 'access'.
Commercial bank offering unsecured personal loan for 3%?
Colour me sceptical.
I've taken out unsecured loans at this rate. Admittedly not recently though.
Another option is mortgage equity withdrawal, that could bring the rate down to sub 2%, dependent on personal circumstances. Or just borrow the money off a wealthy relative and pay it back at 1-2%; win win as the savings rate is hopeless.
We frequently disintermediate our bank by borrowing from the Bank of Mum and Dad
Lean times ahead for the bank of great great great great granpa?
London the most religious, but least Christian region of E&W:
London had the lowest percentage of people reporting No religion The percentage of the population who reported No religion ranged from an estimated 29.0% in London to 47.3% in Wales in 2019.
People with a religious affiliation other than Christian accounted for over 25% of London’s population, compared with an estimated 10.6% of the overall population. Around one in seven people in London (14.3%) were Muslim. This percentage is higher than other regions, with the next most common regions being the West Midlands, Yorkshire and The Humber and North West (with 8.6%, 6.6% and 6.3% Muslim, respectively).
The North East, South West, and Wales were the least religiously diverse regions, with over 95% of their populations Christian or with No religion.
No surprise given London is almost 50% non white now and has big Asian populations who are Hindu or Sikh or Muslim and plenty of Muslims from Nigeria etc too. Though those who are Christian in London tend to be more active as London has bucked the trend of declining church attendance again helped by immigration of evangelicals from Africa and Roman Catholics from Eastern Europe and charismatic evangelical Christianity driven by the likes of HTB.
Today's decision for Daughter is whether to cancel the band she had booked for Saturday. It is a very popular band and the pub is normally rammed whenever it appears. But she has to pay them and if people don't turn up, it is pointless and costs her money.
She booked them ages ago - a great night out a week before Xmas. It seemed like a good idea at the time.
So another cancellation on the cards. One of the long-time regulars who has cancer is also close to the end. A lovely guy. It has been expected for a while but still a bit of a blow.
Every pub/restaurant around here is suffering in the same way.
It is not good enough to wait for a few weeks to give help. What's needed is not fannying about measures but a cash grant to cover the next 3 months.
Without this lots of businesses will close.
Daughter is not extending her lease, understandably. Still she wanted to end her lease in good order leaving a good business and having had a good Xmas season. Not now. She is heartbroken. And when it closes she can't travel anywhere or have a decent holiday because lots of other places will be shut and the health risks. So it is going to be a bleak few months, lockdown or no bloody lockdown.
I wish there was something I could do to help.
Just being there for her will be a lot. It may not satisfy you, as I suspect you are a problem solver by nature, but it will be hugely important for her
London the most religious, but least Christian region of E&W:
London had the lowest percentage of people reporting No religion The percentage of the population who reported No religion ranged from an estimated 29.0% in London to 47.3% in Wales in 2019.
People with a religious affiliation other than Christian accounted for over 25% of London’s population, compared with an estimated 10.6% of the overall population. Around one in seven people in London (14.3%) were Muslim. This percentage is higher than other regions, with the next most common regions being the West Midlands, Yorkshire and The Humber and North West (with 8.6%, 6.6% and 6.3% Muslim, respectively).
The North East, South West, and Wales were the least religiously diverse regions, with over 95% of their populations Christian or with No religion.
No surprise given London is almost 50% non white now and has big Asian populations who are Hindu or Sikh or Muslim and plenty of Muslims from Nigeria etc too. Though those who are Christian in London tend to be more active as London has bucked the trend of declining church attendance again helped by immigration of evangelicals from Africa and Roman Catholics from Eastern Europe and charismatic evangelical Christianity driven by the likes of HTB.
The “Great British Dream” is dead. This is by no means solely a British problem, but I think it is probably worse here.
When I talk to 20-somethings, unless their parents are loaded, they have no hope of ever getting on the housing ladder.
Class advancement has utterly collapsed.
University education has become a bizarre fiscal imposition, you can’t *not* do it (because you want a “middle class job”), but you can’t afford to do it, either.
I was born poor and came to this country with nothing, and I regret with all my heart that my journey is now nigh-on impossible.
MEANWHILE,
My top end art gallerist friend has “never been busier” because her wealthy patrons have done so well during Covid and need to diversify their asset base.
A society cannot last forever if the stories it tells itself (work hard and prosper!) are false.
Examine the language you used: "the housing ladder". In what sense could "housing" be a "ladder"? Is it? Should it be?
What do you mean, “could”?
It served well enough for my grandparents, then my parents, and then me.
“Should” is an interesting question, but space does not permit a proper answer.
Ok, let me put it this way.
A ladder is a tool that elevates you from one level to another. The way that PT described people buying a cheap house, then a more expensive one and so on etc doesn't strike me as a "ladder". That strikes me as the levels. The thing that allows you to access the different levels is having more money.
The way in which housing can function as a "ladder" is when you derive wealth from it. I think a lot of people see housing as a way of becoming richer. You buy cheap and you sell dear. Of course, this doesn't necessarily help you buy a bigger house because that too will have increased in price.
So housing being a "ladder" I think can work in general sense, but only if housing keeps increasing in value relative to income and a significant proportion of other investment or assets. That is obviously unsustainable in the long run.
Perhaps some people have a different idea of a "ladder", that is, it is a yardstick by which you measure individual wealth as opposed to a means to an end. But I think a lot of people see things the way I described above: a ladder in the snakes-and-ladders sense. A shortcut that some will land on and others simply won't.
You need to be confident you will be in the "The top 20%-ish of graduate earners - Starting salary £40,000+ and above-inflation rises, or lower but with v big pay rises later" group to make it a sensible consideration.
Today's decision for Daughter is whether to cancel the band she had booked for Saturday. It is a very popular band and the pub is normally rammed whenever it appears. But she has to pay them and if people don't turn up, it is pointless and costs her money.
She booked them ages ago - a great night out a week before Xmas. It seemed like a good idea at the time.
So another cancellation on the cards. One of the long-time regulars who has cancer is also close to the end. A lovely guy. It has been expected for a while but still a bit of a blow.
Every pub/restaurant around here is suffering in the same way.
It is not good enough to wait for a few weeks to give help. What's needed is not fannying about measures but a cash grant to cover the next 3 months.
Without this lots of businesses will close.
Daughter is not extending her lease, understandably. Still she wanted to end her lease in good order leaving a good business and having had a good Xmas season. Not now. She is heartbroken. And when it closes she can't travel anywhere or have a decent holiday because lots of other places will be shut and the health risks. So it is going to be a bleak few months, lockdown or no bloody lockdown.
I wish there was something I could do to help.
Just being there for her will be a lot. It may not satisfy you, as I suspect you are a problem solver by nature, but it will be hugely important for her
Totally agree, Mr C; I gather young Ms Cyclefree hasn't got a partner to whom she can cry, and it's vital to have such at times likes these.
The real dilemma for the Chancellor is how to target help to those small businesses who really need it like @Cyclefree daughter while not subsidising those with shareholders who should take the hit rather than the taxpayer
Every business has shareholders Big G.
It is quite obvious what Big G meant.
My business (a single proprietor LLC) has no shareholders. So Topping is wrong, plain and simple. Of course, I have stakeholders, but not shareholders.
The stakeholders or members in many regards look for all the world like shareholders, save for an ability to, er, limit liability.
But you used the word shareholder.
They are owners of the LLC and hence shareholders is appropriate to use.
No it is not. While they are owners, there are no shares to own, and hence no shareholder (which per business would be singular in any case). Why can't you simply admit you were wrong in your word choice.
Labour proper gunning for treasury this morning… turned up with their boots on finally.
10:30am - UQ - Pat McFadden MP – To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer if he will make a statement on government support for business given the advice to “de-prioritise social contacts”. https://twitter.com/mrharrycole/status/1471401729891905537
Maybe Labour should have made that argument more clear, when there was a vote the other night?
London the most religious, but least Christian region of E&W:
London had the lowest percentage of people reporting No religion The percentage of the population who reported No religion ranged from an estimated 29.0% in London to 47.3% in Wales in 2019.
People with a religious affiliation other than Christian accounted for over 25% of London’s population, compared with an estimated 10.6% of the overall population. Around one in seven people in London (14.3%) were Muslim. This percentage is higher than other regions, with the next most common regions being the West Midlands, Yorkshire and The Humber and North West (with 8.6%, 6.6% and 6.3% Muslim, respectively).
The North East, South West, and Wales were the least religiously diverse regions, with over 95% of their populations Christian or with No religion.
No surprise given London is almost 50% non white now and has big Asian populations who are Hindu or Sikh or Muslim and plenty of Muslims from Nigeria etc too. Though those who are Christian in London tend to be more active as London has bucked the trend of declining church attendance again helped by immigration of evangelicals from Africa and Roman Catholics from Eastern Europe and charismatic evangelical Christianity driven by the likes of HTB.
The “Great British Dream” is dead. This is by no means solely a British problem, but I think it is probably worse here.
When I talk to 20-somethings, unless their parents are loaded, they have no hope of ever getting on the housing ladder.
Class advancement has utterly collapsed.
University education has become a bizarre fiscal imposition, you can’t *not* do it (because you want a “middle class job”), but you can’t afford to do it, either.
I was born poor and came to this country with nothing, and I regret with all my heart that my journey is now nigh-on impossible.
MEANWHILE,
My top end art gallerist friend has “never been busier” because her wealthy patrons have done so well during Covid and need to diversify their asset base.
A society cannot last forever if the stories it tells itself (work hard and prosper!) are false.
Examine the language you used: "the housing ladder". In what sense could "housing" be a "ladder"? Is it? Should it be?
What do you mean, “could”?
It served well enough for my grandparents, then my parents, and then me.
“Should” is an interesting question, but space does not permit a proper answer.
Ok, let me put it this way.
A ladder is a tool that elevates you from one level to another. The way that PT described people buying a cheap house, then a more expensive one and so on etc doesn't strike me as a "ladder". That strikes me as the levels. The thing that allows you to access the different levels is having more money.
The way in which housing can function as a "ladder" is when you derive wealth from it. I think a lot of people see housing as a way of becoming richer. You buy cheap and you sell dear. Of course, this doesn't necessarily help you buy a bigger house because that too will have increased in price.
So housing being a "ladder" I think can work in general sense, but only if housing keeps increasing in value relative to income and a significant proportion of other investment or assets. That is obviously unsustainable in the long run.
Perhaps some people have a different idea of a "ladder", that is, it is a yardstick by which you measure individual wealth as oppose to a means to an end. But I think a lot of people see things the way I described above: a ladder in the snakes-and-ladders sense. A shortcut that some will land on and others simply won't.
Never occurred to me, but possibly the root of the metaphor is that a ladder is temporary? If you don't get on it today while you have the chance, it might have been pulled up tomorrow (tr: you might have missed out on your chance of ever owning property).
Comments
I would suggest that we have had that period already, and over-relaxed.
I am not sure how a non-vigorous foreign policy will work when much of the "heart of Europe" wants to spend its time sanctimoniously lecturing the rest of the world what to do, from a self-image of assumed moral superiority. That's not how it works.
Witness Macron's assertions at his recent press conference wrt how he will transform the EU: "Europe invented human rights". (I think that reference is probably to the French revolution, and the philosophical shift.)
I think it will be interesting to revisit in 12 months time, after 6 months of Macron as EU first-mover, and the subsequent hangover.
There are some interesting bits:
"40% said they would like foreign policy to focus primarily on strengthening the domestic economy."
An update on the distribution of variants in each country, based on GISAID data up to December 13.
Blue is delta, Red is omicron
https://twitter.com/redouad/status/1471405946018701313?s=20
Someone has to pay, and rather it be me (and my pension fund) than small business owners like Cyclefree’s daughter.
The government always expected to make a loss on these loans, since some of the genuine businesses which borrowed would never be able to pay the money back. It will likely make a loss as great (somewhere around £8bn, I think) on fraudulent loans, where (for example) shell companies have borrowed money and disappeared overnight.
https://www.news24.com/
Despite them being 3 weeks ahead of us and in the midst of the peak of Omicron, it only makes the 3rd item, after racisim in a school and a story about Zuma. And the story about Omicron is only that their alert level will remain at level 1.
This also allowed him to abstain from the Labour Party Lockdown vote on Wednesday. So he was full square behind the CRG.
Equally possible, at the very least.
@Cyclefree daughter is a small business owner that should receive targeted support for her business to survive
The “Great British Dream” is dead. This is by no means solely a British problem, but I think it is probably worse here.
When I talk to 20-somethings, unless their parents are loaded, they have no hope of ever getting on the housing ladder.
Class advancement has utterly collapsed.
University education has become a bizarre fiscal imposition, you can’t *not* do it (because you want a “middle class job”), but you can’t afford to do it, either.
I was born poor and came to this country with nothing, and I regret with all my heart that my journey is now nigh-on impossible.
MEANWHILE,
My top end art gallerist friend has “never been busier” because her wealthy patrons have done so well during Covid and need to diversify their asset base.
A society cannot last forever if the stories it tells itself (work hard and prosper!) are false.
It's an ever more obvious nonsense, though, since the private investors take little or no risk, and the administration of the loans stays with the Student Finance Company.
I've seen a few people say that people aren't worried because of "government measures" they're worried because they don't want to have to isolate over Christmas. Well guess what: Isolation is a government measure too! As are the ramping up of tests etc
In the summer Chris Whitty wisely said we're all going to get Covid. The notion of "controlling the spread" post-vaccinations is a wicked and harmful policy the outcome of which we're seeing. We've never told people with a cold or cough or similar in the past that they need to isolate.
We should be abolishing isolation even for the infectious and telling people they don't need to take tests either. If people get infected, they get infected, then either the vaccines work or they don't. And if people are unvaccinated, they roll the dice.
We need to live with the virus. Not try and control its spread or eradicate its spread or anything else. Let the vaccines do their job and let people live.
Never seen such a disgraceful case of the legal profession protecting one of their own!
https://www.bailiwickexpress.com/jsy/news/lawyer-slammed-inappropriate-response-neighbourly-dispute/#.YbsFzhanyEc
In what sense could "housing" be a "ladder"? Is it? Should it be?
Cool.
Let me introduce you to Chope, Swayne, Bridgen, Burgon, Webbe, etc etc.
The Daily Wail is not going to report comparative restrictions on travelling from Ch to Fr.
Though there's a clear Muppetry of the Macron element here.
Why not email the French Embassy, and report back?
It served well enough for my grandparents, then my parents, and then me.
“Should” is an interesting question, but space does not permit a proper answer.
Now it's possible that omicron is so slight that it won't result in the NHS being swamped but we just don't know that today.
Young people might get a smaller starter home, then move up to a bigger home when they have kids, then move into a bigger home when they're well off. Younger people would follow them up the ladder.
Then the ladder stopped working.
So in that case probably a slight Tory win
If the Tories lose the seat Boris could face a VONC in the next few weeks, though I think he would narrowly survive it for now which would keep him safe for a year. Longer term though more important for his survival will be the booster programme proving effective
Doesn't stop me complaining about some of their dafter obsessions but at the moment for me they are the most credible of the parties.
But realistically its not going to spread that much since not everyone in the country is going to get infected anyway, almost everyone has some form of immunity and not everyone with immunity becomes a breakthrough case so people are illogically losing their minds over nothing.
If we'd abolished testing and isolation requirements over the summer then even more people would have had natural immunity by now.
10:30am - UQ - Pat McFadden MP – To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer if he will make a statement on government support for business given the advice to “de-prioritise social contacts”. https://twitter.com/mrharrycole/status/1471401729891905537
How supposedly libertarian Tories are blocking the steps that can keep society open.
https://www.ft.com/content/cb2ed249-1ee2-43bc-bb67-7329df84baa5 https://twitter.com/robertshrimsley/status/1471407403723800577/photo/1
Get over Covid. Its just a virus, we have vaccines. Its going to spread, get over it already.
Defined Contribution funds are for most people not fat, they are for most very, very modest and usually not enough.
Just because a fund manager maybe well paid does not mean that someone's small pension fund should be clobbered. On that logic clobber the fund manager not the fund.
Young people are investing in pensions as well so clobbering those does not help them.
Retired and near retired people can't do anything about restoring their pension if you do clobber it.
The history of Gordon Brown and the devastation he caused on pension funds and thousands of people's lives who had their retirement destroyed should be a lesson we should never have to learn again.
As some of you may know I am involved in the campaigns to try and help some of these individuals, many of whom have now died or living on o much less than they expected in their 80s and 90s.
From 1999 to 2004 as the maximum amount that could be lent changed from 3+1 income to 3-4.5* joint income, house prices boomed in price.
Since 2005 onwards - house prices have reflected population growth relative to housing supply. Which means round here house prices remained static from 2004 to about the end of 2020 when they started increasing again.
I started in the public sector in 2007 at 31k in an entry level role, and got to 49k in 2020, in a role touted as the pinnacle of my profession. It often involved working 6 days a week, for 12 hours a day, making extremely difficult decisions with little support, for which I will essentially be liable for the rest of my life, in organisations that are increasingly subject to political interference on staffing matters; and have a habit of hanging former staff out to dry.
In the end, I came to conclude that I was being taken for a fool by the government, and that there are far easier ways to make £3000 per month after tax. That has turned out to be true.
I ask because one plausible scenario is that Boris goes after ensuring the vote takes him past August.
Edit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Player_Piano_(novel)
London had the lowest percentage of people reporting No religion
The percentage of the population who reported No religion ranged from an estimated 29.0% in London to 47.3% in Wales in 2019.
People with a religious affiliation other than Christian accounted for over 25% of London’s population, compared with an estimated 10.6% of the overall population. Around one in seven people in London (14.3%) were Muslim. This percentage is higher than other regions, with the next most common regions being the West Midlands, Yorkshire and The Humber and North West (with 8.6%, 6.6% and 6.3% Muslim, respectively).
The North East, South West, and Wales were the least religiously diverse regions, with over 95% of their populations Christian or with No religion.
https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/populationandmigration/populationestimates/articles/populationestimatesbyethnicgroupandreligionenglandandwales/2019
It's like letting Harold Shipman run a care home or Boris Johnson becoming a marriage counsellor.
It's just not cricket.
When I bought our second family home, in the late 60's the bank manager remarked that 'a figure of £14k might, in today's inflationary times, be paid'. That house today is probably worth 3/4 million.
My in-laws old house doesn't look anywhere near as smart and well-kept, nor does the rest of the row and 60 years ago.
https://www.ft.com/content/db8cade2-ffe0-11e8-ac00-57a2a826423e
Immigration however is much slower in the North East, SW and Wales which have lower gdp and few really big cities than it is to London and the SE.
"non-white" = non-Christian?
A ladder is a tool that elevates you from one level to another. The way that PT described people buying a cheap house, then a more expensive one and so on etc doesn't strike me as a "ladder". That strikes me as the levels. The thing that allows you to access the different levels is having more money.
The way in which housing can function as a "ladder" is when you derive wealth from it. I think a lot of people see housing as a way of becoming richer. You buy cheap and you sell dear. Of course, this doesn't necessarily help you buy a bigger house because that too will have increased in price.
So housing being a "ladder" I think can work in general sense, but only if housing keeps increasing in value relative to income and a significant proportion of other investment or assets. That is obviously unsustainable in the long run.
Perhaps some people have a different idea of a "ladder", that is, it is a yardstick by which you measure individual wealth as opposed to a means to an end. But I think a lot of people see things the way I described above: a ladder in the snakes-and-ladders sense. A shortcut that some will land on and others simply won't.
https://twitter.com/ben_machell/status/1471420393697206273
https://www.moneysavingexpert.com/students/repay-post-2012-student-loan/
You need to be confident you will be in the "The top 20%-ish of graduate earners - Starting salary £40,000+ and above-inflation rises, or lower but with v big pay rises later" group to make it a sensible consideration.
Disgraceful.
I thought, on a skim read, that he was saying that because people are non-white they wouldn't be Christian.
Entirely possible that that is not what he meant.