Remembering #DesmondTutu: “I would not worship a God who is homophobic… I have to tell you, I cannot keep quiet when people are penalised for something about which they can do nothing… I oppose such injustice with the same passion that I opposed apartheid.”
Michael Gove is prepared to “go to war” with Rishi Sunak as he pushes to exempt high-street retailers from paying business rates as part of his levelling-up agenda, The Times has been told.
Gove, the levelling-up secretary, wants a radical overhaul of the commercial property tax because he views it as one of the most effective ways of achieving tangible change in crucial red wall seats before the next election.
He is said to be in favour of funding it by introducing an online sales tax, which would effectively add extra VAT to purchases made over the internet. Sunak, the chancellor, is resisting wholesale changes to business rates, which bring in £25 billion per year and are relatively easy to collect in comparison with other taxes. He is said to be sceptical about an online sales tax.
The Treasury will do everything they can to avoid business rate changes and exactly how does an online sales tax work?
Does it count if the good is delivered to a store rather than a home? How about delivery to the corner shop?
It's going to get utterly insane incredibly quickly.
I just don't see how this idea is going to level up the Red Wall, is the idea to discourage shopping online?
The damage to Red Wall town centres comes more from out of town shopping than online shopping - it doesn't help and shows how much Gove and co are clutching at straws.
Want to win Red Wall seats, spend money on them nowt else is going to work.
It seems to me that they basically don't have any ideas beyond the slogans. And this was obvious in GE19 to me
As a red wall town dweller what ideas does labour have ?
I think genuine investment rather than cuts over the last decade would have done a lot more for the Red Wall.
New Labour did the most levelling up of any Government in recent memory
Sorry, that is utter bilge. Labour did little for the red wall. You may be a labour fanboy and think they can do no wrong but under labour our manufacturing as a percentage of gdp halved, we lost 1/6th of our manufacturing jobs and companies closed and moved to Eastern Europe. New labour were obsessed with the so called future industries. They allowed the red wall to decline simply because they used to weigh votes here as opposed to count them.
Not a Labour fanboy dude, I've voted Tory and Lib Dem in the past, just think Labour are the best option at the moment.
The numbers don't lie, New Labour did a tremendous amount of the Red Wall, more than the Tories have done. What have the Tories done for the Red Wall?
Could Labour have done more, hell yes.
What did labour do for us ? Under labour, both govt and local govt, my town went from thriving to on its knees.
I don’t expect the Tories to do stuff for us, I expected labour to. They did sweet FA. The Tories made a promise. So far have failed. Let’s see what labour offer. They cannot take our votes for granted and do nothing for us in future
Factories closed, well paying jobs went offshore and young people moved away, but let’s celebrate a sure start centre.
Anyway weren’t your whining the other week that levelling was punishing the rich and affluent south.
No I said genuine levelling up is not making the south poorer. It's about levelling up the entire country.
My point was that London has some of the worst poverty in the country, I do not want them neglected just as I don't want the Red Wall neglected. The Tory view is that everyone in London is metropolitan elite and drinking champagne
But labour is about making everyone poorer....its what they always do
Tories say "hold my pint"...
Not claiming they dont. Frankly its globalization and none of the parties have an answer for it. The problem is that wages get globalized but prices don't. For example a company can manufacture at third world wages but if consumers try and buy at third world prices they object. A good example of this was the court case levi's brought against tescos for importing jeans from outside the eu and selling them still at a profit but levi's didnt like them doing so and the eu courts ruled they couldnt import from outside the region.
Now we are out the eu we should have a rule, if a company manufactures in a particular country then customers and retailers are free to buy from said country.
Michael Gove is prepared to “go to war” with Rishi Sunak as he pushes to exempt high-street retailers from paying business rates as part of his levelling-up agenda, The Times has been told.
Gove, the levelling-up secretary, wants a radical overhaul of the commercial property tax because he views it as one of the most effective ways of achieving tangible change in crucial red wall seats before the next election.
He is said to be in favour of funding it by introducing an online sales tax, which would effectively add extra VAT to purchases made over the internet. Sunak, the chancellor, is resisting wholesale changes to business rates, which bring in £25 billion per year and are relatively easy to collect in comparison with other taxes. He is said to be sceptical about an online sales tax.
The Treasury will do everything they can to avoid business rate changes and exactly how does an online sales tax work?
Does it count if the good is delivered to a store rather than a home? How about delivery to the corner shop?
It's going to get utterly insane incredibly quickly.
I just don't see how this idea is going to level up the Red Wall, is the idea to discourage shopping online?
The damage to Red Wall town centres comes more from out of town shopping than online shopping - it doesn't help and shows how much Gove and co are clutching at straws.
Want to win Red Wall seats, spend money on them nowt else is going to work.
It seems to me that they basically don't have any ideas beyond the slogans. And this was obvious in GE19 to me
As a red wall town dweller what ideas does labour have ?
I think genuine investment rather than cuts over the last decade would have done a lot more for the Red Wall.
New Labour did the most levelling up of any Government in recent memory
Sorry, that is utter bilge. Labour did little for the red wall. You may be a labour fanboy and think they can do no wrong but under labour our manufacturing as a percentage of gdp halved, we lost 1/6th of our manufacturing jobs and companies closed and moved to Eastern Europe. New labour were obsessed with the so called future industries. They allowed the red wall to decline simply because they used to weigh votes here as opposed to count them.
Not a Labour fanboy dude, I've voted Tory and Lib Dem in the past, just think Labour are the best option at the moment.
The numbers don't lie, New Labour did a tremendous amount of the Red Wall, more than the Tories have done. What have the Tories done for the Red Wall?
Could Labour have done more, hell yes.
What did labour do for us ? Under labour, both govt and local govt, my town went from thriving to on its knees.
I don’t expect the Tories to do stuff for us, I expected labour to. They did sweet FA. The Tories made a promise. So far have failed. Let’s see what labour offer. They cannot take our votes for granted and do nothing for us in future
Factories closed, well paying jobs went offshore and young people moved away, but let’s celebrate a sure start centre.
Anyway weren’t your whining the other week that levelling was punishing the rich and affluent south.
No I said genuine levelling up is not making the south poorer. It's about levelling up the entire country.
No one is talking about making the south poorer. It’s not in our interests to do that and it’s levelling up not down. There’s the clue !
No, you cried and whine about London being punished when that was not the case.
Just look at the investment per head in transport for London compared to the north east ?
The south and London benefits from young people from the regions, educated and bright, moving there from the regions for the opportunities. But the moment the regions want some levelling up you’re the victim,
What, however, will happen because of the cancellation of HS2E and NPR is that subsidises elsewhere will be highlighted.
And that is going to create great problems because any penny spent to support TfL will be used up North to regain Red Wall seats - as it's an incredibly easy story - London got £xbn a year on trains yet you get zero).
The ultimate problem with high street shops is not only not being able to compete with the likes of Amazon on price, it is selection and convenience. I go into town, I pay to park, I go to the shop and find they only have a fraction of the selection as online, so even if I am willing to pay a bit more, think the customer service is informed and wonderful, they then say oh sorry we don't carry x in stock, you will have to order it and come back again.....
The "shops" that I see doing well are the ones that have identified a niche segment, are extremely knowledgeable about that and then combine a warehouse type online business and attach a storefront, so you best the economy of scale, plus they can go to the warehouse to get what you need and failing all that they can order it and send it via their online channels to your home.
But they aren't high street businesses, they locate themselves on industrial parks.
Would be basically 2010 in reverse on these figures, a hung parliament but Labour largest party and close to a majority with the LDs. Starmer as Cameron and Boris as Brown but Labour as largest party able to ignore the LDs.
However considering the endless media attacks on partygate, which was more significant than Paterson in moving the polls, still no Labour majority even on this poll.
Don't forget you have gerrymandered the constituency boundaries to help yourselves prevent a Labour majority.
What are you talking about? The last boundary review was held under Labour.
The current boundaries are decades out of date and the boundary review is being done by the independent Electoral Commission as always, no gerrymandering in sight.
The next one isn't and it stands to benefit the already advantaged Conservative Party. The unfair Labour advantage of GE2005 was a very long time ago!
HYUFD takes much comfort from the Tories ahead by circa 40 seats at level pegging on points and level pegging on seats when Labour are 3 points ahead ( on new boundaries).
But of course you would call it efficiency of votes.
The current boundaries will be 22 years out of date in a few weeks' time.
What a daft point. So they are 22 years old and unfair. So updating them so they are even more unfair is progress?
And Phil mentioned earlier that the Commission is independent, however didn't Cameron set the terms of reference, i.e. registered voters not general voting age population?
The boundary commission is impartial and draws politically neutral constituency boundaries.
After 22 years its inevitable that many constituencies will contain either far too many or too few voters because of population movements over that time.
Yup. The boundary commission does a bloody fine job. Look at America. They've made a decent fist of this one too given the criteria. The only criticism of Cameron's reforms are two. Firstly, the quotas are too tight. They were +/- 8.5% of average size. Cutting to 5% made it difficult to keep natural constituencies together. This was done to ensure they were all of similar sizes. Secondly, in complete opposition to the above equality reasoning, he expanded the number of protected constituencies from 2 to 5 for pure partisan advantage. We don't need them at all in the age of Skype and email.
+1
Labour supporters who make cynical comments about the boundary commission are embarrassing themselves in my opinion. We're lucky to have it. Look at the corruption in the American system.
Michael Gove is prepared to “go to war” with Rishi Sunak as he pushes to exempt high-street retailers from paying business rates as part of his levelling-up agenda, The Times has been told.
Gove, the levelling-up secretary, wants a radical overhaul of the commercial property tax because he views it as one of the most effective ways of achieving tangible change in crucial red wall seats before the next election.
He is said to be in favour of funding it by introducing an online sales tax, which would effectively add extra VAT to purchases made over the internet. Sunak, the chancellor, is resisting wholesale changes to business rates, which bring in £25 billion per year and are relatively easy to collect in comparison with other taxes. He is said to be sceptical about an online sales tax.
The Treasury will do everything they can to avoid business rate changes and exactly how does an online sales tax work?
Does it count if the good is delivered to a store rather than a home? How about delivery to the corner shop?
It's going to get utterly insane incredibly quickly.
They’re better off dropping business rates on the High St, keeping them on out of-town retail, and finding the savings from elsewhere in the departmental budget. Also incentivise councils to allow housebuilding, directing cash away from the NIMBYs towards those which permit development.
Not sure why any poster would particularly be worried about doxing issues with the name - well let's call it PT. I went to school with a PT,I work with a PT. They're two different people, it's an incredibly common name.
Michael Gove is prepared to “go to war” with Rishi Sunak as he pushes to exempt high-street retailers from paying business rates as part of his levelling-up agenda, The Times has been told.
Gove, the levelling-up secretary, wants a radical overhaul of the commercial property tax because he views it as one of the most effective ways of achieving tangible change in crucial red wall seats before the next election.
He is said to be in favour of funding it by introducing an online sales tax, which would effectively add extra VAT to purchases made over the internet. Sunak, the chancellor, is resisting wholesale changes to business rates, which bring in £25 billion per year and are relatively easy to collect in comparison with other taxes. He is said to be sceptical about an online sales tax.
The Treasury will do everything they can to avoid business rate changes and exactly how does an online sales tax work?
Does it count if the good is delivered to a store rather than a home? How about delivery to the corner shop?
It's going to get utterly insane incredibly quickly.
I just don't see how this idea is going to level up the Red Wall, is the idea to discourage shopping online?
The damage to Red Wall town centres comes more from out of town shopping than online shopping - it doesn't help and shows how much Gove and co are clutching at straws.
Want to win Red Wall seats, spend money on them nowt else is going to work.
It seems to me that they basically don't have any ideas beyond the slogans. And this was obvious in GE19 to me
As a red wall town dweller what ideas does labour have ?
I think genuine investment rather than cuts over the last decade would have done a lot more for the Red Wall.
New Labour did the most levelling up of any Government in recent memory
Sorry, that is utter bilge. Labour did little for the red wall. You may be a labour fanboy and think they can do no wrong but under labour our manufacturing as a percentage of gdp halved, we lost 1/6th of our manufacturing jobs and companies closed and moved to Eastern Europe. New labour were obsessed with the so called future industries. They allowed the red wall to decline simply because they used to weigh votes here as opposed to count them.
Not a Labour fanboy dude, I've voted Tory and Lib Dem in the past, just think Labour are the best option at the moment.
The numbers don't lie, New Labour did a tremendous amount of the Red Wall, more than the Tories have done. What have the Tories done for the Red Wall?
Could Labour have done more, hell yes.
What did labour do for us ? Under labour, both govt and local govt, my town went from thriving to on its knees.
I don’t expect the Tories to do stuff for us, I expected labour to. They did sweet FA. The Tories made a promise. So far have failed. Let’s see what labour offer. They cannot take our votes for granted and do nothing for us in future
Factories closed, well paying jobs went offshore and young people moved away, but let’s celebrate a sure start centre.
Anyway weren’t your whining the other week that levelling was punishing the rich and affluent south.
No I said genuine levelling up is not making the south poorer. It's about levelling up the entire country.
No one is talking about making the south poorer. It’s not in our interests to do that and it’s levelling up not down. There’s the clue !
No, you cried and whine about London being punished when that was not the case.
Just look at the investment per head in transport for London compared to the north east ?
The south and London benefits from young people from the regions, educated and bright, moving there from the regions for the opportunities. But the moment the regions want some levelling up you’re the victim,
What, however, will happen because of the cancellation of HS2E and NPR is that subsidises elsewhere will be highlighted.
And that is going to create great problems because any penny spent to support TfL will be used up North to regain Red Wall seats - as it's an incredibly easy story - London got £xbn a year on trains yet you get zero).
And TfL needs subsidies so it's a very quick win.
What really brought the northern deprivation to light was the huge disparity in public subsidy for public transport between London and the NE - a decade or so ago, I think? So it is already a hugely sensitive issue.
PS From memory it was the first time such a regional breakdown had been published within England, hence the impact at the time.
< What did labour do for us ? Under labour, both govt and local govt, my town went from thriving to on its knees.
I don’t expect the Tories to do stuff for us, I expected labour to. They did sweet FA. The Tories made a promise. So far have failed. Let’s see what labour offer. They cannot take our votes for granted and do nothing for us in future
Factories closed, well paying jobs went offshore and young people moved away, but let’s celebrate a sure start centre.
Anyway weren’t your whining the other week that levelling was punishing the rich and affluent south.
It's fair to say ALL local Government irrespective of which party is running the Council (or none) has been systematically squeezed by BOTH Conservative and Labour Governments. We need to take the funding of local Government out of the hands of Whitehall and have it carried out by a wholly independent body which can take an objective look at each area's needs.
We aren't all equal and some areas need more help than others and the other side of that inequality is the richer areas need to subsidise the poorer. It happens everywhere.
I'd also suggest long periods of political control by one authority, perpetuated by FPTP, don't help. I'd have STV for local elections (not Westminster as yet) and put much more real power back to local Councils including ending Council Tax capping. If people in an area want to pay 20% extra in Council Tax for better services they should be able.
Not sure why any poster would particularly be worried about doxing issues with the name - well let's call it PT. I went to school with a PT,I work with a PT. They're two different people, it's an incredibly common name.
Well back in the day we had an issue with this. Tim Bot full name was revealed (it was a similar common name), then Plato based on all the things he had talked about on PB went totally overboard (because Tim had been targeting her for months), searched the internet for more info and found out and published his home address and family details.
If people prefer not to use their full name / real name, that is entirely up to them and it should be respected.
Michael Gove is prepared to “go to war” with Rishi Sunak as he pushes to exempt high-street retailers from paying business rates as part of his levelling-up agenda, The Times has been told.
Gove, the levelling-up secretary, wants a radical overhaul of the commercial property tax because he views it as one of the most effective ways of achieving tangible change in crucial red wall seats before the next election.
He is said to be in favour of funding it by introducing an online sales tax, which would effectively add extra VAT to purchases made over the internet. Sunak, the chancellor, is resisting wholesale changes to business rates, which bring in £25 billion per year and are relatively easy to collect in comparison with other taxes. He is said to be sceptical about an online sales tax.
The Treasury will do everything they can to avoid business rate changes and exactly how does an online sales tax work?
Does it count if the good is delivered to a store rather than a home? How about delivery to the corner shop?
It's going to get utterly insane incredibly quickly.
I just don't see how this idea is going to level up the Red Wall, is the idea to discourage shopping online?
The damage to Red Wall town centres comes more from out of town shopping than online shopping - it doesn't help and shows how much Gove and co are clutching at straws.
Want to win Red Wall seats, spend money on them nowt else is going to work.
It seems to me that they basically don't have any ideas beyond the slogans. And this was obvious in GE19 to me
As a red wall town dweller what ideas does labour have ?
I think genuine investment rather than cuts over the last decade would have done a lot more for the Red Wall.
New Labour did the most levelling up of any Government in recent memory
Sorry, that is utter bilge. Labour did little for the red wall. You may be a labour fanboy and think they can do no wrong but under labour our manufacturing as a percentage of gdp halved, we lost 1/6th of our manufacturing jobs and companies closed and moved to Eastern Europe. New labour were obsessed with the so called future industries. They allowed the red wall to decline simply because they used to weigh votes here as opposed to count them.
Not a Labour fanboy dude, I've voted Tory and Lib Dem in the past, just think Labour are the best option at the moment.
The numbers don't lie, New Labour did a tremendous amount of the Red Wall, more than the Tories have done. What have the Tories done for the Red Wall?
Could Labour have done more, hell yes.
What did labour do for us ? Under labour, both govt and local govt, my town went from thriving to on its knees.
I don’t expect the Tories to do stuff for us, I expected labour to. They did sweet FA. The Tories made a promise. So far have failed. Let’s see what labour offer. They cannot take our votes for granted and do nothing for us in future
Factories closed, well paying jobs went offshore and young people moved away, but let’s celebrate a sure start centre.
Anyway weren’t your whining the other week that levelling was punishing the rich and affluent south.
No I said genuine levelling up is not making the south poorer. It's about levelling up the entire country.
My point was that London has some of the worst poverty in the country, I do not want them neglected just as I don't want the Red Wall neglected. The Tory view is that everyone in London is metropolitan elite and drinking champagne
But labour is about making everyone poorer....its what they always do
Tories say "hold my pint"...
Not claiming they dont. Frankly its globalization and none of the parties have an answer for it. The problem is that wages get globalized but prices don't. For example a company can manufacture at third world wages but if consumers try and buy at third world prices they object. A good example of this was the court case levi's brought against tescos for importing jeans from outside the eu and selling them still at a profit but levi's didnt like them doing so and the eu courts ruled they couldnt import from outside the region.
Now we are out the eu we should have a rule, if a company manufactures in a particular country then customers and retailers are free to buy from said country.
so its ok for levis to globalise the wages, but they want their prices not globalised.
I like this post. UK have been hit for decades by globalisation, and been poorly helped by short term minded politicians. All those years of Labour government with their head in sand about globalisation, just refusing to admit their own voters communities and jobs were getting screwed by globalisation.
My theory is Brexit and SNP taking over Scotland, and Trump and other Trump style leaders are reaction to wanting some thing done about ravages of globalisation.
If Boris cannot deliver the reversal of globalisation he promised with Brexit and levelling, and he doesn’t appear to show first clue how to make a dent in what globalisation has done to UK, he quite rightly should get slaughtered at election and someone else given their chance.
Remembering #DesmondTutu: “I would not worship a God who is homophobic… I have to tell you, I cannot keep quiet when people are penalised for something about which they can do nothing… I oppose such injustice with the same passion that I opposed apartheid.”
Michael Gove is prepared to “go to war” with Rishi Sunak as he pushes to exempt high-street retailers from paying business rates as part of his levelling-up agenda, The Times has been told.
Gove, the levelling-up secretary, wants a radical overhaul of the commercial property tax because he views it as one of the most effective ways of achieving tangible change in crucial red wall seats before the next election.
He is said to be in favour of funding it by introducing an online sales tax, which would effectively add extra VAT to purchases made over the internet. Sunak, the chancellor, is resisting wholesale changes to business rates, which bring in £25 billion per year and are relatively easy to collect in comparison with other taxes. He is said to be sceptical about an online sales tax.
Gove is a marmite character, but he is a spectacularly productive and innovative cabinet minister. The contrast with Robert Jenrick, his predecessor (and a man once regarded as a rising star) is huge. Jenrick seemed to be just treading water, following orders from the treasury and No.10 and incapable of spotting the political catastrophes that would inevitably follow. Gove is quickly coming up with ideas of his own, some of them quite good.
And some (like this one) make as much sense as Boris's bridge to Belfast.
I don't agree. I can tell you from the bitter experience of Dundee that there are few things as depressing as a town centre that is boarded up and deserted. We need to save our town centres, both because of the employment they bring and the community they create.
We need to do a variety of things to achieve this. Firstly, and probably most importantly, we need to rebalance the playing field between the online and bricks and mortar retailer. At the moment this is heavily weighed in favour of the online supplier who pays a fraction of the business rates that the B&M retailer does because, historically, town centre shops have been seen as cash cows ready to be milked. We also need to improve transport into town, parking, the availability of charging points, a broader range of permitted uses for old retail and to increase the number of people actually living there. It is not a sufficient policy but it is a start. And it is going to be absolutely central to the levelling up agenda.
The biggest problem is the pyramid that has been built on the back of town centre shops. Quite simply town centre shops are not worth *that* much money any more.
I had this conversation with an Abingdon town councillor, years ago. He literally could not accept that the river of money was gone.
This effects the landlords, the tenants, the councils and the government.
There are a few choices -
1) Recognise that due to the enormous pressures on hosing costs caused by planning limits, that turning town centres into more homes is infinitely more profitable than keeping the shops*. 2) Accept a massive reduction in taxation, rents etc to match the actual footfall/spend. This includes a lot of landlords going bust. 3) Increase the cost of other ways to shop by about 100%
*Where I live, the council insisted in retail units on the ground floor of new developments. Which, in some cases are now still empty after a *decade*.
That's a massive problem, because for the last couple of decades new shopping centres has been the go-to way to regenerate towns. Romford, to take an extreme example, has at least one more complex than it can really support- so there are vacant sites, some fairly meh shops and big distances to walk between shops.
Romford is especially unlucky- it's been hit by both Lakeside and Stratford. But even without the online effect (who needs classic department stores any more?), there's more shop space than is useful. But it will be hard to shrink in a coherent way.
We have to have rezoning in our town centres - changing shops back into houses. One thing I always say: many (albeit not all) shops in towns are actually not in bad buildings, that could be made into homes once more by rebuilding the ground floor. You can then either have them as flats (many shops have flats above anyway), or as full family houses.
It's a better solution than having boarded-up shops that slowly degenerate.
So the question becomes: what do we want from our town centres?
Not sure why any poster would particularly be worried about doxing issues with the name - well let's call it PT. I went to school with a PT,I work with a PT. They're two different people, it's an incredibly common name.
I didn't even know @BartholomewRoberts was Philip, wasn't even aware Philip had left.
If you want to connect yourself to another poster that's up to you, you could have just not responded and we wouldn't be here.
Did I connect you to this new account. No, you did
Bullshit, why tell lies? You have less integrity than Boris Johnson it seems.
You did know it was me and I've made no secret, there is no "another poster" and you know that full well you lying shitbag which is why you said the name in response to me. I've said in conversations with you before that I don't want to be doxxed and you keep using the name to doxx me as an attempt to win an argument.
You're a fucking liar and a nasty person to boot. Fuck you. And you started swearing first if @PBModerator wants to get involved.
Michael Gove is prepared to “go to war” with Rishi Sunak as he pushes to exempt high-street retailers from paying business rates as part of his levelling-up agenda, The Times has been told.
Gove, the levelling-up secretary, wants a radical overhaul of the commercial property tax because he views it as one of the most effective ways of achieving tangible change in crucial red wall seats before the next election.
He is said to be in favour of funding it by introducing an online sales tax, which would effectively add extra VAT to purchases made over the internet. Sunak, the chancellor, is resisting wholesale changes to business rates, which bring in £25 billion per year and are relatively easy to collect in comparison with other taxes. He is said to be sceptical about an online sales tax.
The Treasury will do everything they can to avoid business rate changes and exactly how does an online sales tax work?
Does it count if the good is delivered to a store rather than a home? How about delivery to the corner shop?
It's going to get utterly insane incredibly quickly.
I just don't see how this idea is going to level up the Red Wall, is the idea to discourage shopping online?
The damage to Red Wall town centres comes more from out of town shopping than online shopping - it doesn't help and shows how much Gove and co are clutching at straws.
Want to win Red Wall seats, spend money on them nowt else is going to work.
It seems to me that they basically don't have any ideas beyond the slogans. And this was obvious in GE19 to me
As a red wall town dweller what ideas does labour have ?
I think genuine investment rather than cuts over the last decade would have done a lot more for the Red Wall.
New Labour did the most levelling up of any Government in recent memory
Sorry, that is utter bilge. Labour did little for the red wall. You may be a labour fanboy and think they can do no wrong but under labour our manufacturing as a percentage of gdp halved, we lost 1/6th of our manufacturing jobs and companies closed and moved to Eastern Europe. New labour were obsessed with the so called future industries. They allowed the red wall to decline simply because they used to weigh votes here as opposed to count them.
Not a Labour fanboy dude, I've voted Tory and Lib Dem in the past, just think Labour are the best option at the moment.
The numbers don't lie, New Labour did a tremendous amount of the Red Wall, more than the Tories have done. What have the Tories done for the Red Wall?
Could Labour have done more, hell yes.
What did labour do for us ? Under labour, both govt and local govt, my town went from thriving to on its knees.
I don’t expect the Tories to do stuff for us, I expected labour to. They did sweet FA. The Tories made a promise. So far have failed. Let’s see what labour offer. They cannot take our votes for granted and do nothing for us in future
Factories closed, well paying jobs went offshore and young people moved away, but let’s celebrate a sure start centre.
Anyway weren’t your whining the other week that levelling was punishing the rich and affluent south.
No I said genuine levelling up is not making the south poorer. It's about levelling up the entire country.
No one is talking about making the south poorer. It’s not in our interests to do that and it’s levelling up not down. There’s the clue !
No, you cried and whine about London being punished when that was not the case.
Just look at the investment per head in transport for London compared to the north east ?
The south and London benefits from young people from the regions, educated and bright, moving there from the regions for the opportunities. But the moment the regions want some levelling up you’re the victim,
What however, will happen because of the cancellation of HS2E and NPR is that subsidises elsewhere will be highlighted.
And that is going to create great problems because any penny spent to support TfL will be used up North to regain Red Wall seats - as it's an incredibly easy story - London got £xbn a year on trains yet you get zero).
Rail Magazine has already been making just that point. Can't find the link but Nigel Harris pointed out that Yorkshire gets £315 per passenger on public transport, the NE under £300 and London a whopping £1019.
Which are not exactly encouraging figures for those who want to 'level up.'
Oddly, the one contributor to Rail who was happy with the IRP was Christian Wolmar, who thinks all railway lines outside London should be shut and the money diverted to London, which just happens to be where he lives...Serpell on speed.
It benefits no one . Prior to brexit - you could have ten jobs on your van , reducing costs to customers. Whilst increasing your profitability per run. That’s gone. Now it’s one job out and one job in . Can’t risk one job if another has incorrect paperwork = stuck in customs
I have noticed that it takes 6 hours to get into Dover and across the water nowadays. Every truck and van has to hand over their paperwork to be processed before boarding passes are issued . Doesn’t take long for queues to form
Remember it's the paperwork we were told doesn't exist that is going to kill things not tariffs or taxes.
Not sure why any poster would particularly be worried about doxing issues with the name - well let's call it PT. I went to school with a PT,I work with a PT. They're two different people, it's an incredibly common name.
Well back in the day we had an issue with this. Tim Bot full name was revealed (it was a similar common name), then Plato based on all the things he had talked about on PB went totally overboard (because Tim had been targeting her for months), searched the internet for more info and found out and published his home address and family details.
Michael Gove is prepared to “go to war” with Rishi Sunak as he pushes to exempt high-street retailers from paying business rates as part of his levelling-up agenda, The Times has been told.
Gove, the levelling-up secretary, wants a radical overhaul of the commercial property tax because he views it as one of the most effective ways of achieving tangible change in crucial red wall seats before the next election.
He is said to be in favour of funding it by introducing an online sales tax, which would effectively add extra VAT to purchases made over the internet. Sunak, the chancellor, is resisting wholesale changes to business rates, which bring in £25 billion per year and are relatively easy to collect in comparison with other taxes. He is said to be sceptical about an online sales tax.
Gove is a marmite character, but he is a spectacularly productive and innovative cabinet minister. The contrast with Robert Jenrick, his predecessor (and a man once regarded as a rising star) is huge. Jenrick seemed to be just treading water, following orders from the treasury and No.10 and incapable of spotting the political catastrophes that would inevitably follow. Gove is quickly coming up with ideas of his own, some of them quite good.
Gove is an out and out arse of the greatest proportions. A total waste of space.
Spent Christmas at my daughter's , they had all taken tests etc , she felt crap next day and just received the wonderful news that she has Covid. Wife is having kittens.
Hope your daughter gets well soon and has a speedy recovery. Fingers crossed you and your wife dodged it.
thanks, must about the 3rd time maximum, apart from getting jags,my wife has been out in 2 years as well.
Best of luck. I shall raise a glass of cask strength turnip juice to the good health of you and your family.
Not sure why any poster would particularly be worried about doxing issues with the name - well let's call it PT. I went to school with a PT,I work with a PT. They're two different people, it's an incredibly common name.
Well back in the day we had an issue with this. Tim Bot full name was revealed (it was a similar common name), then Plato based on all the things he had talked about on PB went totally overboard (because Tim had been targeting her for months), searched the internet for more info and found out and published his home address and family details.
Poor Plato, taken too soon
She appears to have been a very sad decline into madness and early death. I know some PBers back in the day met her in real life (not me) and at the time said she perfectly reasonable individual.
Spent Christmas at my daughter's , they had all taken tests etc , she felt crap next day and just received the wonderful news that she has Covid. Wife is having kittens.
Hope your daughter gets well soon and has a speedy recovery. Fingers crossed you and your wife dodged it.
thanks, must about the 3rd time maximum, apart from getting jags,my wife has been out in 2 years as well.
Sorry to hear. Hope you both are well enough for Hogmannay and a happy new year.
Remembering #DesmondTutu: “I would not worship a God who is homophobic… I have to tell you, I cannot keep quiet when people are penalised for something about which they can do nothing… I oppose such injustice with the same passion that I opposed apartheid.”
There is nothing in the New Testament about homosexuality, unlike the Old Testament or Koran
Ahem Romans 1 Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another. 25They exchanged the truth about God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator—who is forever praised. Amen.
26Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural sexual relations for unnatural ones. 27In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed shameful acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their error.
There are other examples. Paul was a bit of a traditionalist.
The concept of addiction is being stretched beyond reason. Not just by the Spectator but also with regards to gambling and even booze: not every habitual drunk is an alcoholic just as not all drug users are addicts.
Michael Gove is prepared to “go to war” with Rishi Sunak as he pushes to exempt high-street retailers from paying business rates as part of his levelling-up agenda, The Times has been told.
Gove, the levelling-up secretary, wants a radical overhaul of the commercial property tax because he views it as one of the most effective ways of achieving tangible change in crucial red wall seats before the next election.
He is said to be in favour of funding it by introducing an online sales tax, which would effectively add extra VAT to purchases made over the internet. Sunak, the chancellor, is resisting wholesale changes to business rates, which bring in £25 billion per year and are relatively easy to collect in comparison with other taxes. He is said to be sceptical about an online sales tax.
The Treasury will do everything they can to avoid business rate changes and exactly how does an online sales tax work?
Does it count if the good is delivered to a store rather than a home? How about delivery to the corner shop?
It's going to get utterly insane incredibly quickly.
I just don't see how this idea is going to level up the Red Wall, is the idea to discourage shopping online?
The damage to Red Wall town centres comes more from out of town shopping than online shopping - it doesn't help and shows how much Gove and co are clutching at straws.
Want to win Red Wall seats, spend money on them nowt else is going to work.
It seems to me that they basically don't have any ideas beyond the slogans. And this was obvious in GE19 to me
As a red wall town dweller what ideas does labour have ?
I think genuine investment rather than cuts over the last decade would have done a lot more for the Red Wall.
New Labour did the most levelling up of any Government in recent memory
Sorry, that is utter bilge. Labour did little for the red wall. You may be a labour fanboy and think they can do no wrong but under labour our manufacturing as a percentage of gdp halved, we lost 1/6th of our manufacturing jobs and companies closed and moved to Eastern Europe. New labour were obsessed with the so called future industries. They allowed the red wall to decline simply because they used to weigh votes here as opposed to count them.
Not a Labour fanboy dude, I've voted Tory and Lib Dem in the past, just think Labour are the best option at the moment.
The numbers don't lie, New Labour did a tremendous amount of the Red Wall, more than the Tories have done. What have the Tories done for the Red Wall?
Could Labour have done more, hell yes.
What did labour do for us ? Under labour, both govt and local govt, my town went from thriving to on its knees.
I don’t expect the Tories to do stuff for us, I expected labour to. They did sweet FA. The Tories made a promise. So far have failed. Let’s see what labour offer. They cannot take our votes for granted and do nothing for us in future
Factories closed, well paying jobs went offshore and young people moved away, but let’s celebrate a sure start centre.
Anyway weren’t your whining the other week that levelling was punishing the rich and affluent south.
No I said genuine levelling up is not making the south poorer. It's about levelling up the entire country.
No one is talking about making the south poorer. It’s not in our interests to do that and it’s levelling up not down. There’s the clue !
No, you cried and whine about London being punished when that was not the case.
Just look at the investment per head in transport for London compared to the north east ?
The south and London benefits from young people from the regions, educated and bright, moving there from the regions for the opportunities. But the moment the regions want some levelling up you’re the victim,
What, however, will happen because of the cancellation of HS2E and NPR is that subsidises elsewhere will be highlighted.
And that is going to create great problems because any penny spent to support TfL will be used up North to regain Red Wall seats - as it's an incredibly easy story - London got £xbn a year on trains yet you get zero).
And TfL needs subsidies so it's a very quick win.
What really brought the northern deprivation to light was the huge disparity in public subsidy for public transport between London and the NE - a decade or so ago, I think? So it is already a hugely sensitive issue.
PS From memory it was the first time such a regional breakdown had been published within England, hence the impact at the time.
Oh I don't need the regional breakdown. Round here all I would need to use is the money TfL get alongside the false promises and that would be enough.
On the northern side of town I would just talk about the failure to build the Northern bypass as another Amazon or Teesside lorry drove past a row of houses.
Remembering #DesmondTutu: “I would not worship a God who is homophobic… I have to tell you, I cannot keep quiet when people are penalised for something about which they can do nothing… I oppose such injustice with the same passion that I opposed apartheid.”
There is nothing in the New Testament about homosexuality, unlike the Old Testament or Koran
Ahem Romans 1 Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another. 25They exchanged the truth about God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator—who is forever praised. Amen.
26Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural sexual relations for unnatural ones. 27In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed shameful acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their error.
There are other examples. Paul was a bit of a traditionalist.
I think Hyufd may have meant 'in the Gospels.'
Which is hardly surprising given the penalties for sodomy in the Herodian kingdom made it very much a side issue compared to rampaging corruption and official fraud.
Michael Gove is prepared to “go to war” with Rishi Sunak as he pushes to exempt high-street retailers from paying business rates as part of his levelling-up agenda, The Times has been told.
Gove, the levelling-up secretary, wants a radical overhaul of the commercial property tax because he views it as one of the most effective ways of achieving tangible change in crucial red wall seats before the next election.
He is said to be in favour of funding it by introducing an online sales tax, which would effectively add extra VAT to purchases made over the internet. Sunak, the chancellor, is resisting wholesale changes to business rates, which bring in £25 billion per year and are relatively easy to collect in comparison with other taxes. He is said to be sceptical about an online sales tax.
Gove is a marmite character, but he is a spectacularly productive and innovative cabinet minister. The contrast with Robert Jenrick, his predecessor (and a man once regarded as a rising star) is huge. Jenrick seemed to be just treading water, following orders from the treasury and No.10 and incapable of spotting the political catastrophes that would inevitably follow. Gove is quickly coming up with ideas of his own, some of them quite good.
And some (like this one) make as much sense as Boris's bridge to Belfast.
I don't agree. I can tell you from the bitter experience of Dundee that there are few things as depressing as a town centre that is boarded up and deserted. We need to save our town centres, both because of the employment they bring and the community they create.
We need to do a variety of things to achieve this. Firstly, and probably most importantly, we need to rebalance the playing field between the online and bricks and mortar retailer. At the moment this is heavily weighed in favour of the online supplier who pays a fraction of the business rates that the B&M retailer does because, historically, town centre shops have been seen as cash cows ready to be milked. We also need to improve transport into town, parking, the availability of charging points, a broader range of permitted uses for old retail and to increase the number of people actually living there. It is not a sufficient policy but it is a start. And it is going to be absolutely central to the levelling up agenda.
The biggest problem is the pyramid that has been built on the back of town centre shops. Quite simply town centre shops are not worth *that* much money any more.
I had this conversation with an Abingdon town councillor, years ago. He literally could not accept that the river of money was gone.
This effects the landlords, the tenants, the councils and the government.
There are a few choices -
1) Recognise that due to the enormous pressures on hosing costs caused by planning limits, that turning town centres into more homes is infinitely more profitable than keeping the shops*. 2) Accept a massive reduction in taxation, rents etc to match the actual footfall/spend. This includes a lot of landlords going bust. 3) Increase the cost of other ways to shop by about 100%
*Where I live, the council insisted in retail units on the ground floor of new developments. Which, in some cases are now still empty after a *decade*.
That's a massive problem, because for the last couple of decades new shopping centres has been the go-to way to regenerate towns. Romford, to take an extreme example, has at least one more complex than it can really support- so there are vacant sites, some fairly meh shops and big distances to walk between shops.
Romford is especially unlucky- it's been hit by both Lakeside and Stratford. But even without the online effect (who needs classic department stores any more?), there's more shop space than is useful. But it will be hard to shrink in a coherent way.
We have to have rezoning in our town centres - changing shops back into houses. One thing I always say: many (albeit not all) shops in towns are actually not in bad buildings, that could be made into homes once more by rebuilding the ground floor. You can then either have them as flats (many shops have flats above anyway), or as full family houses.
It's a better solution than having boarded-up shops that slowly degenerate.
So the question becomes: what do we want from our town centres?
Already happening here in my small town - helped by the fact that the old shops were shops + houses anyway. A number of shops on the fringe of the centre have become all houses over the last decade or two with the shop window infilled or even retained. Mind, they are in an area which used to be the main transit route to the local factory, which no longer exists.
Michael Gove is prepared to “go to war” with Rishi Sunak as he pushes to exempt high-street retailers from paying business rates as part of his levelling-up agenda, The Times has been told.
Gove, the levelling-up secretary, wants a radical overhaul of the commercial property tax because he views it as one of the most effective ways of achieving tangible change in crucial red wall seats before the next election.
He is said to be in favour of funding it by introducing an online sales tax, which would effectively add extra VAT to purchases made over the internet. Sunak, the chancellor, is resisting wholesale changes to business rates, which bring in £25 billion per year and are relatively easy to collect in comparison with other taxes. He is said to be sceptical about an online sales tax.
The Treasury will do everything they can to avoid business rate changes and exactly how does an online sales tax work?
Does it count if the good is delivered to a store rather than a home? How about delivery to the corner shop?
It's going to get utterly insane incredibly quickly.
They’re better off dropping business rates on the High St, keeping them on out of-town retail, and finding the savings from elsewhere in the departmental budget. Also incentivise councils to allow housebuilding, directing cash away from the NIMBYs towards those which permit development.
Not going to work, how do you define a town centre in a way that also doesn't define an out of town shopping centre near some houses.
I could probably find a definition that say excluded Metro Centre / Trafford Centre but that isn't going to work for Stratford or Meadowhall.
I didn't even know @BartholomewRoberts was Philip, wasn't even aware Philip had left.
If you want to connect yourself to another poster that's up to you, you could have just not responded and we wouldn't be here.
Did I connect you to this new account. No, you did
Bullshit, why tell lies? You have less integrity than Boris Johnson it seems.
You did know it was me and I've made no secret, there is no "another poster" and you know that full well you lying shitbag which is why you said the name in response to me. I've said in conversations with you before that I don't want to be doxxed and you keep using the name to doxx me as an attempt to win an argument.
You're a fucking liar and a nasty person to boot. Fuck you. And you started swearing first if @PBModerator wants to get involved.
Eh? Are you okay, genuinely?
Quite clearly no.
I said I don't want to be doxxed and you are going above and beyond to use the name I said I don't want using.
You said you had personal issues, which I won't repeat, and I wished you the best for it. I've shown nothing but sympathy for your personal issues, but you're going above and beyond in disrespecting mine. You may think you're being funny, but remember there's another human being behind the screen.
Boris will not announce any new restrictions for England today.
Fun times Boris is back and will allow vaccinated people in England to pub and club at New Year's eve to their hearts content. Unlike the Welsh and Scots where Sturgeon and Drakeford have shut nightclubs and made restaurants and bars table service only
Michael Gove is prepared to “go to war” with Rishi Sunak as he pushes to exempt high-street retailers from paying business rates as part of his levelling-up agenda, The Times has been told.
Gove, the levelling-up secretary, wants a radical overhaul of the commercial property tax because he views it as one of the most effective ways of achieving tangible change in crucial red wall seats before the next election.
He is said to be in favour of funding it by introducing an online sales tax, which would effectively add extra VAT to purchases made over the internet. Sunak, the chancellor, is resisting wholesale changes to business rates, which bring in £25 billion per year and are relatively easy to collect in comparison with other taxes. He is said to be sceptical about an online sales tax.
The Treasury will do everything they can to avoid business rate changes and exactly how does an online sales tax work?
Does it count if the good is delivered to a store rather than a home? How about delivery to the corner shop?
It's going to get utterly insane incredibly quickly.
I just don't see how this idea is going to level up the Red Wall, is the idea to discourage shopping online?
The damage to Red Wall town centres comes more from out of town shopping than online shopping - it doesn't help and shows how much Gove and co are clutching at straws.
Want to win Red Wall seats, spend money on them nowt else is going to work.
It seems to me that they basically don't have any ideas beyond the slogans. And this was obvious in GE19 to me
As a red wall town dweller what ideas does labour have ?
I think genuine investment rather than cuts over the last decade would have done a lot more for the Red Wall.
New Labour did the most levelling up of any Government in recent memory
Sorry, that is utter bilge. Labour did little for the red wall. You may be a labour fanboy and think they can do no wrong but under labour our manufacturing as a percentage of gdp halved, we lost 1/6th of our manufacturing jobs and companies closed and moved to Eastern Europe. New labour were obsessed with the so called future industries. They allowed the red wall to decline simply because they used to weigh votes here as opposed to count them.
Not a Labour fanboy dude, I've voted Tory and Lib Dem in the past, just think Labour are the best option at the moment.
The numbers don't lie, New Labour did a tremendous amount of the Red Wall, more than the Tories have done. What have the Tories done for the Red Wall?
Could Labour have done more, hell yes.
What did labour do for us ? Under labour, both govt and local govt, my town went from thriving to on its knees.
I don’t expect the Tories to do stuff for us, I expected labour to. They did sweet FA. The Tories made a promise. So far have failed. Let’s see what labour offer. They cannot take our votes for granted and do nothing for us in future
Factories closed, well paying jobs went offshore and young people moved away, but let’s celebrate a sure start centre.
Anyway weren’t your whining the other week that levelling was punishing the rich and affluent south.
Yes, but the era of mass employment in manufacturing and extraction industries is over, at least for unskilled and semi-skilled workers. Automation has done as much for that as trade policy.
Automation was happening from the eighties . This was more offshoring. Manufacturing halved as a percentage of GDP under labour who did nothing To try to help or arrest the development especially when the pound was so high as to make exports expensive in the late nineties. Still you’re okay so why should you be bothered.
Well, other countries in the EU have managed to keep manufacturing in a profitable high skilled way. We're they not susceptible to the same pressures of globalisation?
The biggest problem for Red Wall towns (and I am a Wiganer by birth) is that the ambitious young leave for higher education and mostly don't wish to return. Hence the ageing demographics of such towns, and consequent voting shifts.
Would be basically 2010 in reverse on these figures, a hung parliament but Labour largest party and close to a majority with the LDs. Starmer as Cameron and Boris as Brown but Labour as largest party able to ignore the LDs.
However considering the endless media attacks on partygate, which was more significant than Paterson in moving the polls, still no Labour majority even on this poll.
Don't forget you have gerrymandered the constituency boundaries to help yourselves prevent a Labour majority.
What are you talking about? The last boundary review was held under Labour.
The current boundaries are decades out of date and the boundary review is being done by the independent Electoral Commission as always, no gerrymandering in sight.
The next one isn't and it stands to benefit the already advantaged Conservative Party. The unfair Labour advantage of GE2005 was a very long time ago!
HYUFD takes much comfort from the Tories ahead by circa 40 seats at level pegging on points and level pegging on seats when Labour are 3 points ahead ( on new boundaries).
But of course you would call it efficiency of votes.
The current boundaries will be 22 years out of date in a few weeks' time.
What a daft point. So they are 22 years old and unfair. So updating them so they are even more unfair is progress?
And Phil mentioned earlier that the Commission is independent, however didn't Cameron set the terms of reference, i.e. registered voters not general voting age population?
The boundary commission is impartial and draws politically neutral constituency boundaries.
After 22 years its inevitable that many constituencies will contain either far too many or too few voters because of population movements over that time.
Yup. The boundary commission does a bloody fine job. Look at America. They've made a decent fist of this one too given the criteria. The only criticism of Cameron's reforms are two. Firstly, the quotas are too tight. They were +/- 8.5% of average size. Cutting to 5% made it difficult to keep natural constituencies together. This was done to ensure they were all of similar sizes. Secondly, in complete opposition to the above equality reasoning, he expanded the number of protected constituencies from 2 to 5 for pure partisan advantage. We don't need them at all in the age of Skype and email.
+1
Labour supporters who make cynical comments about the boundary commission are embarrassing themselves in my opinion. We're lucky to have it. Look at the corruption in the American system.
Spent Christmas at my daughter's , they had all taken tests etc , she felt crap next day and just received the wonderful news that she has Covid. Wife is having kittens.
Hope your daughter gets well soon and has a speedy recovery. Fingers crossed you and your wife dodged it.
Best of luck, Malc. And to your good lady wife. You have both had all three vaccinations, haven't you?
Yes we have OKC, so fingers crossed.
Our best wishes to you all Malc. Hope you are all okay.
I didn't even know @BartholomewRoberts was Philip, wasn't even aware Philip had left.
If you want to connect yourself to another poster that's up to you, you could have just not responded and we wouldn't be here.
Did I connect you to this new account. No, you did
Bullshit, why tell lies? You have less integrity than Boris Johnson it seems.
You did know it was me and I've made no secret, there is no "another poster" and you know that full well you lying shitbag which is why you said the name in response to me. I've said in conversations with you before that I don't want to be doxxed and you keep using the name to doxx me as an attempt to win an argument.
You're a fucking liar and a nasty person to boot. Fuck you. And you started swearing first if @PBModerator wants to get involved.
Eh? Are you okay, genuinely?
Quite clearly no.
I said I don't want to be doxxed and you are going above and beyond to use the name I said I don't want using.
You said you had personal issues, which I won't repeat, and I wished you the best for it. I've shown nothing but sympathy for your personal issues, but you're going above and beyond in disrespecting mine. You may think you're being funny, but remember there's another human being behind the screen.
Some decency would be appreciated.
I am sorry you feel upset but I am going to stand by what I said which is that I don't see what I have done wrong.
I made a post and you chose - you chose - to respond to it. You didn't need to, so why did you?
You then accused me of doxxing you, which I didn't do. If you hadn't responded, nobody would even have known it was you.
So I am sorry for the misunderstanding but I don't think I have done anything wrong here. Going forward, my suggestion would be to not respond to posts that refer to a Phil, if you wish to not draw yourself to them.
I must say it is bizarre to be angry now, when I just had a look back and one of your first posts on this account is you saying who you are - I had missed this before but why didn't you just start afresh? Seems like odd behaviour to me.
Not sure why any poster would particularly be worried about doxing issues with the name - well let's call it PT. I went to school with a PT,I work with a PT. They're two different people, it's an incredibly common name.
Well back in the day we had an issue with this. Tim Bot full name was revealed (it was a similar common name), then Plato based on all the things he had talked about on PB went totally overboard (because Tim had been targeting her for months), searched the internet for more info and found out and published his home address and family details.
Poor Plato, taken too soon
She appears to have been a very sad decline into madness and early death. I know some PBers back in the day met her in real life (not me) and at the time said she perfectly reasonable individual.
Unfortunately went down some dark rabbit holes.
Indeed. We had some spiky exchanges on here. But some lovely PM's in which we discovered we had much in common. RIP.
Spent Christmas at my daughter's , they had all taken tests etc , she felt crap next day and just received the wonderful news that she has Covid. Wife is having kittens.
What I would say Malcolm is that if you and your wife have had boosters in the last month catching it now may not be the worst result. Far better now than when any booster effect has worn off although I appreciate that your wife has been ill recently.
David, yes certainly not be a better time , but has wife well spooked to say the least. I would expect us to be ok , but just concerned a bit re her given her lungs not in best condition from last episode.
Remembering #DesmondTutu: “I would not worship a God who is homophobic… I have to tell you, I cannot keep quiet when people are penalised for something about which they can do nothing… I oppose such injustice with the same passion that I opposed apartheid.”
There is nothing in the New Testament about homosexuality, unlike the Old Testament or Koran
OTOH Jesus was a Jewish rabbi anyway, so the OT was the default rule book. Presumably, for instance, he didn't eat pork.
Christians base their philosophy on Christ's teaching unlike Jews and not Muhammad's unlike Muslims. Paul is also only a secondary influence to Christians compared to Jesus Christ
Has it ever been shown this works? And I wonder how safe it is pumping such massive volumes of chemicals around like that?
Local officials under extreme pressure to control the outbreak. What could be a more visible sign that they are doing everything they can then to bathe the whole city in disinfectant?
Apparently this is Delta too, and not yet Omicron.
Michael Gove is prepared to “go to war” with Rishi Sunak as he pushes to exempt high-street retailers from paying business rates as part of his levelling-up agenda, The Times has been told.
Gove, the levelling-up secretary, wants a radical overhaul of the commercial property tax because he views it as one of the most effective ways of achieving tangible change in crucial red wall seats before the next election.
He is said to be in favour of funding it by introducing an online sales tax, which would effectively add extra VAT to purchases made over the internet. Sunak, the chancellor, is resisting wholesale changes to business rates, which bring in £25 billion per year and are relatively easy to collect in comparison with other taxes. He is said to be sceptical about an online sales tax.
The Treasury will do everything they can to avoid business rate changes and exactly how does an online sales tax work?
Does it count if the good is delivered to a store rather than a home? How about delivery to the corner shop?
It's going to get utterly insane incredibly quickly.
I just don't see how this idea is going to level up the Red Wall, is the idea to discourage shopping online?
The damage to Red Wall town centres comes more from out of town shopping than online shopping - it doesn't help and shows how much Gove and co are clutching at straws.
Want to win Red Wall seats, spend money on them nowt else is going to work.
It seems to me that they basically don't have any ideas beyond the slogans. And this was obvious in GE19 to me
As a red wall town dweller what ideas does labour have ?
I think genuine investment rather than cuts over the last decade would have done a lot more for the Red Wall.
New Labour did the most levelling up of any Government in recent memory
Sorry, that is utter bilge. Labour did little for the red wall. You may be a labour fanboy and think they can do no wrong but under labour our manufacturing as a percentage of gdp halved, we lost 1/6th of our manufacturing jobs and companies closed and moved to Eastern Europe. New labour were obsessed with the so called future industries. They allowed the red wall to decline simply because they used to weigh votes here as opposed to count them.
Not a Labour fanboy dude, I've voted Tory and Lib Dem in the past, just think Labour are the best option at the moment.
The numbers don't lie, New Labour did a tremendous amount of the Red Wall, more than the Tories have done. What have the Tories done for the Red Wall?
Could Labour have done more, hell yes.
What did labour do for us ? Under labour, both govt and local govt, my town went from thriving to on its knees.
I don’t expect the Tories to do stuff for us, I expected labour to. They did sweet FA. The Tories made a promise. So far have failed. Let’s see what labour offer. They cannot take our votes for granted and do nothing for us in future
Factories closed, well paying jobs went offshore and young people moved away, but let’s celebrate a sure start centre.
Anyway weren’t your whining the other week that levelling was punishing the rich and affluent south.
Yes, but the era of mass employment in manufacturing and extraction industries is over, at least for unskilled and semi-skilled workers. Automation has done as much for that as trade policy.
Automation was happening from the eighties . This was more offshoring. Manufacturing halved as a percentage of GDP under labour who did nothing To try to help or arrest the development especially when the pound was so high as to make exports expensive in the late nineties. Still you’re okay so why should you be bothered.
Well, other countries in the EU have managed to keep manufacturing in a profitable high skilled way. We're they not susceptible to the same pressures of globalisation?
The biggest problem for Red Wall towns (and I am a Wiganer by birth) is that the ambitious young leave for higher education and mostly don't wish to return. Hence the ageing demographics of such towns, and consequent voting shifts.
Of course other nations have managed to do far better than us in terms of manufacturing since the mid nineties. Of course they had govts far more manufacturing friendly than new labour. Govts that valued manufacturing rather than seeing it as an old industry. I have said elsewhere the lack of opportunities in red wall towns is a driving force for the decline in those areas as London and the south takes in our talented youngsters. Although I live in Durham I have spent many years working away in the south and rage Midlands.
Boris will not announce any new restrictions for England today.
Fun times Boris is back and will allow vaccinated people in England to pub and club at New Year's eve to their hearts content. Unlike the Welsh and Scots where Sturgeon and Drakeford have shut nightclubs and made restaurants and bars table service only
Boris will not announce any new restrictions for England today.
Fun times Boris is back and will allow vaccinated people in England to pub and club at New Year's eve to their hearts content. Unlike the Welsh and Scots where Sturgeon and Drakeford have shut nightclubs and made restaurants and bars table service only
Well I can certainly agree that there seems to be no need for a lockdown but you can see how we're now going to end up at "everything is fine, COVID has gone" again.
And in the months to come, I am very concerned we're going to be in a lot of trouble
Remembering #DesmondTutu: “I would not worship a God who is homophobic… I have to tell you, I cannot keep quiet when people are penalised for something about which they can do nothing… I oppose such injustice with the same passion that I opposed apartheid.”
There is nothing in the New Testament about homosexuality, unlike the Old Testament or Koran
OTOH Jesus was a Jewish rabbi anyway, so the OT was the default rule book. Presumably, for instance, he didn't eat pork.
Christians base their philosophy on Christ's teaching unlike Jews and not Muhammad's unlike Muslims. Paul is also only a secondary influence to Christians compared to Jesus Christ
He maybe should be, but he really, really isn't. In fact, looked at over the centuries Paul's teachings have been considerably more influential than those of Jesus, particularly in the Catholic Church.
When I did New Testament Studies, we spent about six weeks on Pauline ethics and a whole hour on The Sermon on the Mount.
Spent Christmas at my daughter's , they had all taken tests etc , she felt crap next day and just received the wonderful news that she has Covid. Wife is having kittens.
😟 Hope things work out okay Malc.
Been at my brothers for Christmas back at barn conversion now. Just catching up on things. There a lot of it about. I’m sort of feeling guilty I’ve never had it. 😕 unless one of the bad colds I’ve had was it.
Yesterday I got soaked, freezing, lost all my money. I was on the right horses for the finish, they slipped over in wet before got there. 🙄 Brilliant day out though! 👍🏻
Getting a bad chest now. Done latty test negative, but still possible to get bad chest without covid suppose having spent day out getting so wet and cold.
Thanks, best of luck. I had not a bad day yesterday , got a trixie up and had a few pounds on Bravesmansgame. Got an early winner today on Nichol's novice hurdler Iceo, looks like it will be a good one. Have done Highland Hunter in Welsh National.
Not sure why any poster would particularly be worried about doxing issues with the name - well let's call it PT. I went to school with a PT,I work with a PT. They're two different people, it's an incredibly common name.
I thought it was the sudden need to hid having turned into a total Phil by demanding that people who have Covid go out to infect others, people die so what, "liberty" for him and his wife and daughter over the lives of other people's wives and daughters.
He just used a string of expletives to describe CHB as nasty. Perhaps someone needs to have been bought a mirror for Christmas. We all have debates, sometimes it transgresses and people calm down. I can't think of how you can be demanding other people die for so long using your own name and then claim "doxxing". Its not as if the new name has changed its tune or avatar or the old persona taken down.
Michael Gove is prepared to “go to war” with Rishi Sunak as he pushes to exempt high-street retailers from paying business rates as part of his levelling-up agenda, The Times has been told.
Gove, the levelling-up secretary, wants a radical overhaul of the commercial property tax because he views it as one of the most effective ways of achieving tangible change in crucial red wall seats before the next election.
He is said to be in favour of funding it by introducing an online sales tax, which would effectively add extra VAT to purchases made over the internet. Sunak, the chancellor, is resisting wholesale changes to business rates, which bring in £25 billion per year and are relatively easy to collect in comparison with other taxes. He is said to be sceptical about an online sales tax.
The Treasury will do everything they can to avoid business rate changes and exactly how does an online sales tax work?
Does it count if the good is delivered to a store rather than a home? How about delivery to the corner shop?
It's going to get utterly insane incredibly quickly.
I just don't see how this idea is going to level up the Red Wall, is the idea to discourage shopping online?
The damage to Red Wall town centres comes more from out of town shopping than online shopping - it doesn't help and shows how much Gove and co are clutching at straws.
Want to win Red Wall seats, spend money on them nowt else is going to work.
It seems to me that they basically don't have any ideas beyond the slogans. And this was obvious in GE19 to me
As a red wall town dweller what ideas does labour have ?
I think genuine investment rather than cuts over the last decade would have done a lot more for the Red Wall.
New Labour did the most levelling up of any Government in recent memory
Sorry, that is utter bilge. Labour did little for the red wall. You may be a labour fanboy and think they can do no wrong but under labour our manufacturing as a percentage of gdp halved, we lost 1/6th of our manufacturing jobs and companies closed and moved to Eastern Europe. New labour were obsessed with the so called future industries. They allowed the red wall to decline simply because they used to weigh votes here as opposed to count them.
Not a Labour fanboy dude, I've voted Tory and Lib Dem in the past, just think Labour are the best option at the moment.
The numbers don't lie, New Labour did a tremendous amount of the Red Wall, more than the Tories have done. What have the Tories done for the Red Wall?
Could Labour have done more, hell yes.
What did labour do for us ? Under labour, both govt and local govt, my town went from thriving to on its knees.
I don’t expect the Tories to do stuff for us, I expected labour to. They did sweet FA. The Tories made a promise. So far have failed. Let’s see what labour offer. They cannot take our votes for granted and do nothing for us in future
Factories closed, well paying jobs went offshore and young people moved away, but let’s celebrate a sure start centre.
Anyway weren’t your whining the other week that levelling was punishing the rich and affluent south.
Yes, but the era of mass employment in manufacturing and extraction industries is over, at least for unskilled and semi-skilled workers. Automation has done as much for that as trade policy.
Automation was happening from the eighties . This was more offshoring. Manufacturing halved as a percentage of GDP under labour who did nothing To try to help or arrest the development especially when the pound was so high as to make exports expensive in the late nineties. Still you’re okay so why should you be bothered.
Well, other countries in the EU have managed to keep manufacturing in a profitable high skilled way. We're they not susceptible to the same pressures of globalisation?
The biggest problem for Red Wall towns (and I am a Wiganer by birth) is that the ambitious young leave for higher education and mostly don't wish to return. Hence the ageing demographics of such towns, and consequent voting shifts.
And that's the awkward conversation we don't have. After all, I'm from what looks a lot like a Red Wall town that voted Conservative because of the Navy.
The older generation see their children and grandchildren leaving and it makes them sad.
The younger generation leave because small towns, even prosperous small towns, can't deliver the opportunities (or numbers of other young people) they would like.
And every young adult who leaves Hometown makes it less attractive for other young adults.
Spent Christmas at my daughter's , they had all taken tests etc , she felt crap next day and just received the wonderful news that she has Covid. Wife is having kittens.
What I would say Malcolm is that if you and your wife have had boosters in the last month catching it now may not be the worst result. Far better now than when any booster effect has worn off although I appreciate that your wife has been ill recently.
David, yes certainly not be a better time , but has wife well spooked to say the least. I would expect us to be ok , but just concerned a bit re her given her lungs not in best condition from last episode.
Fingers crossed Malc, not easy reassuring someone in your wife's situation.
Spent Christmas at my daughter's , they had all taken tests etc , she felt crap next day and just received the wonderful news that she has Covid. Wife is having kittens.
Hope your daughter gets well soon and has a speedy recovery. Fingers crossed you and your wife dodged it.
Best of luck, Malc. And to your good lady wife. You have both had all three vaccinations, haven't you?
Yes we have OKC, so fingers crossed.
Sorry to hear your news, hopefully you can sail through it safely. Aye the best.
Remembering #DesmondTutu: “I would not worship a God who is homophobic… I have to tell you, I cannot keep quiet when people are penalised for something about which they can do nothing… I oppose such injustice with the same passion that I opposed apartheid.”
There is nothing in the New Testament about homosexuality, unlike the Old Testament or Koran
Ahem Romans 1 Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another. 25They exchanged the truth about God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator—who is forever praised. Amen.
26Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural sexual relations for unnatural ones. 27In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed shameful acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their error.
There are other examples. Paul was a bit of a traditionalist.
I think Hyufd may have meant 'in the Gospels.'
Which is hardly surprising given the penalties for sodomy in the Herodian kingdom made it very much a side issue compared to rampaging corruption and official fraud.
Christianity may well have been a much more commendable religion if it was not for the misogyny and homophobia of Paul. An unfortunate diversion that has taken more than 1900 years to fix and on some points we are not there yet.
Boris will not announce any new restrictions for England today.
Fun times Boris is back and will allow vaccinated people in England to pub and club at New Year's eve to their hearts content. Unlike the Welsh and Scots where Sturgeon and Drakeford have shut nightclubs and made restaurants and bars table service only
Remembering #DesmondTutu: “I would not worship a God who is homophobic… I have to tell you, I cannot keep quiet when people are penalised for something about which they can do nothing… I oppose such injustice with the same passion that I opposed apartheid.”
There is nothing in the New Testament about homosexuality, unlike the Old Testament or Koran
OTOH Jesus was a Jewish rabbi anyway, so the OT was the default rule book. Presumably, for instance, he didn't eat pork.
Christians base their philosophy on Christ's teaching unlike Jews and not Muhammad's unlike Muslims. Paul is also only a secondary influence to Christians compared to Jesus Christ
He maybe should be, but he really, really isn't. In fact, looked at over the centuries Paul's teachings have been considerably more influential than those of Jesus, particularly in the Catholic Church.
When I did New Testament Studies, we spent about six weeks on Pauline ethics and a whole hour on The Sermon on the Mount.
I am not Roman Catholic, I am Anglican.
The Anglican Episcopal Church in the US and Church of Wales already allow gay couples blessings
I really don't want to pull the site down any further so am quite happy to apologise to @BartholomewRoberts if it means we can put this issue to bed
I don't get what you need to apologise for. Having the same avatar, saying "yes I have changed name" and still saying the same 0.01% sociopathic stuff is hardly starting again with a clean new image.
Michael Gove is prepared to “go to war” with Rishi Sunak as he pushes to exempt high-street retailers from paying business rates as part of his levelling-up agenda, The Times has been told.
Gove, the levelling-up secretary, wants a radical overhaul of the commercial property tax because he views it as one of the most effective ways of achieving tangible change in crucial red wall seats before the next election.
He is said to be in favour of funding it by introducing an online sales tax, which would effectively add extra VAT to purchases made over the internet. Sunak, the chancellor, is resisting wholesale changes to business rates, which bring in £25 billion per year and are relatively easy to collect in comparison with other taxes. He is said to be sceptical about an online sales tax.
The Treasury will do everything they can to avoid business rate changes and exactly how does an online sales tax work?
Does it count if the good is delivered to a store rather than a home? How about delivery to the corner shop?
It's going to get utterly insane incredibly quickly.
I just don't see how this idea is going to level up the Red Wall, is the idea to discourage shopping online?
The damage to Red Wall town centres comes more from out of town shopping than online shopping - it doesn't help and shows how much Gove and co are clutching at straws.
Want to win Red Wall seats, spend money on them nowt else is going to work.
It seems to me that they basically don't have any ideas beyond the slogans. And this was obvious in GE19 to me
As a red wall town dweller what ideas does labour have ?
I think genuine investment rather than cuts over the last decade would have done a lot more for the Red Wall.
New Labour did the most levelling up of any Government in recent memory
Sorry, that is utter bilge. Labour did little for the red wall. You may be a labour fanboy and think they can do no wrong but under labour our manufacturing as a percentage of gdp halved, we lost 1/6th of our manufacturing jobs and companies closed and moved to Eastern Europe. New labour were obsessed with the so called future industries. They allowed the red wall to decline simply because they used to weigh votes here as opposed to count them.
Not a Labour fanboy dude, I've voted Tory and Lib Dem in the past, just think Labour are the best option at the moment.
The numbers don't lie, New Labour did a tremendous amount of the Red Wall, more than the Tories have done. What have the Tories done for the Red Wall?
Could Labour have done more, hell yes.
What did labour do for us ? Under labour, both govt and local govt, my town went from thriving to on its knees.
I don’t expect the Tories to do stuff for us, I expected labour to. They did sweet FA. The Tories made a promise. So far have failed. Let’s see what labour offer. They cannot take our votes for granted and do nothing for us in future
Factories closed, well paying jobs went offshore and young people moved away, but let’s celebrate a sure start centre.
Anyway weren’t your whining the other week that levelling was punishing the rich and affluent south.
No I said genuine levelling up is not making the south poorer. It's about levelling up the entire country.
No one is talking about making the south poorer. It’s not in our interests to do that and it’s levelling up not down. There’s the clue !
No, you cried and whine about London being punished when that was not the case.
Just look at the investment per head in transport for London compared to the north east ?
The south and London benefits from young people from the regions, educated and bright, moving there from the regions for the opportunities. But the moment the regions want some levelling up you’re the victim,
What, however, will happen because of the cancellation of HS2E and NPR is that subsidises elsewhere will be highlighted.
And that is going to create great problems because any penny spent to support TfL will be used up North to regain Red Wall seats - as it's an incredibly easy story - London got £xbn a year on trains yet you get zero).
And TfL needs subsidies so it's a very quick win.
What really brought the northern deprivation to light was the huge disparity in public subsidy for public transport between London and the NE - a decade or so ago, I think? So it is already a hugely sensitive issue.
PS From memory it was the first time such a regional breakdown had been published within England, hence the impact at the time.
Remembering #DesmondTutu: “I would not worship a God who is homophobic… I have to tell you, I cannot keep quiet when people are penalised for something about which they can do nothing… I oppose such injustice with the same passion that I opposed apartheid.”
There is nothing in the New Testament about homosexuality, unlike the Old Testament or Koran
OTOH Jesus was a Jewish rabbi anyway, so the OT was the default rule book. Presumably, for instance, he didn't eat pork.
Christians base their philosophy on Christ's teaching unlike Jews and not Muhammad's unlike Muslims. Paul is also only a secondary influence to Christians compared to Jesus Christ
He maybe should be, but he really, really isn't. In fact, looked at over the centuries Paul's teachings have been considerably more influential than those of Jesus, particularly in the Catholic Church.
When I did New Testament Studies, we spent about six weeks on Pauline ethics and a whole hour on The Sermon on the Mount.
I am not Roman Catholic, I am Anglican.
The Anglican Episcopal Church in the US and Church of Wales already allow gay couples blessings
I don't care what you are. Facts do not change according to your denomination Hyufd. The quality of music does, of course.
My daughter (recently turned 18) has had an invite for a booster despite having her second Pfizer jab at the beginning of November. Three months not up until 1st Feb; six months 1st May.
Remembering #DesmondTutu: “I would not worship a God who is homophobic… I have to tell you, I cannot keep quiet when people are penalised for something about which they can do nothing… I oppose such injustice with the same passion that I opposed apartheid.”
There is nothing in the New Testament about homosexuality, unlike the Old Testament or Koran
OTOH Jesus was a Jewish rabbi anyway, so the OT was the default rule book. Presumably, for instance, he didn't eat pork.
Christians base their philosophy on Christ's teaching unlike Jews and not Muhammad's unlike Muslims. Paul is also only a secondary influence to Christians compared to Jesus Christ
I always thought Paul a big influence though. Having gone to Greece and converted gentiles, it moved it from a Jewish Messiah to a world Messiah.
Was Paul also the person who arrested Jesus and had his ear cut off?
Michael Gove is prepared to “go to war” with Rishi Sunak as he pushes to exempt high-street retailers from paying business rates as part of his levelling-up agenda, The Times has been told.
Gove, the levelling-up secretary, wants a radical overhaul of the commercial property tax because he views it as one of the most effective ways of achieving tangible change in crucial red wall seats before the next election.
He is said to be in favour of funding it by introducing an online sales tax, which would effectively add extra VAT to purchases made over the internet. Sunak, the chancellor, is resisting wholesale changes to business rates, which bring in £25 billion per year and are relatively easy to collect in comparison with other taxes. He is said to be sceptical about an online sales tax.
The Treasury will do everything they can to avoid business rate changes and exactly how does an online sales tax work?
Does it count if the good is delivered to a store rather than a home? How about delivery to the corner shop?
It's going to get utterly insane incredibly quickly.
I just don't see how this idea is going to level up the Red Wall, is the idea to discourage shopping online?
The damage to Red Wall town centres comes more from out of town shopping than online shopping - it doesn't help and shows how much Gove and co are clutching at straws.
Want to win Red Wall seats, spend money on them nowt else is going to work.
It seems to me that they basically don't have any ideas beyond the slogans. And this was obvious in GE19 to me
As a red wall town dweller what ideas does labour have ?
I think genuine investment rather than cuts over the last decade would have done a lot more for the Red Wall.
New Labour did the most levelling up of any Government in recent memory
Sorry, that is utter bilge. Labour did little for the red wall. You may be a labour fanboy and think they can do no wrong but under labour our manufacturing as a percentage of gdp halved, we lost 1/6th of our manufacturing jobs and companies closed and moved to Eastern Europe. New labour were obsessed with the so called future industries. They allowed the red wall to decline simply because they used to weigh votes here as opposed to count them.
Not a Labour fanboy dude, I've voted Tory and Lib Dem in the past, just think Labour are the best option at the moment.
The numbers don't lie, New Labour did a tremendous amount of the Red Wall, more than the Tories have done. What have the Tories done for the Red Wall?
Could Labour have done more, hell yes.
What did labour do for us ? Under labour, both govt and local govt, my town went from thriving to on its knees.
I don’t expect the Tories to do stuff for us, I expected labour to. They did sweet FA. The Tories made a promise. So far have failed. Let’s see what labour offer. They cannot take our votes for granted and do nothing for us in future
Factories closed, well paying jobs went offshore and young people moved away, but let’s celebrate a sure start centre.
Anyway weren’t your whining the other week that levelling was punishing the rich and affluent south.
No I said genuine levelling up is not making the south poorer. It's about levelling up the entire country.
No one is talking about making the south poorer. It’s not in our interests to do that and it’s levelling up not down. There’s the clue !
No, you cried and whine about London being punished when that was not the case.
Just look at the investment per head in transport for London compared to the north east ?
The south and London benefits from young people from the regions, educated and bright, moving there from the regions for the opportunities. But the moment the regions want some levelling up you’re the victim,
What, however, will happen because of the cancellation of HS2E and NPR is that subsidises elsewhere will be highlighted.
And that is going to create great problems because any penny spent to support TfL will be used up North to regain Red Wall seats - as it's an incredibly easy story - London got £xbn a year on trains yet you get zero).
And TfL needs subsidies so it's a very quick win.
A very quick win and, as @RochdalePioneers says, voters up here are not fools. It will play badly and labour will make hay with it and the Tories have no defence.
Boris will not announce any new restrictions for England today.
Fun times Boris is back and will allow vaccinated people in England to pub and club at New Year's eve to their hearts content. Unlike the Welsh and Scots where Sturgeon and Drakeford have shut nightclubs and made restaurants and bars table service only
5....4....3....2....1.....Now on BBC News / Sky News, we are joined by .... member of SAGE, who is speaking in a personal capacity....this is highly irresponsible behaviour by the PM, the evidence is clear, we need to lockdown....
Not sure why any poster would particularly be worried about doxing issues with the name - well let's call it PT. I went to school with a PT,I work with a PT. They're two different people, it's an incredibly common name.
I thought it was the sudden need to hid having turned into a total Phil by demanding that people who have Covid go out to infect others, people die so what, "liberty" for him and his wife and daughter over the lives of other people's wives and daughters.
He just used a string of expletives to describe CHB as nasty. Perhaps someone needs to have been bought a mirror for Christmas. We all have debates, sometimes it transgresses and people calm down. I can't think of how you can be demanding other people die for so long using your own name and then claim "doxxing". Its not as if the new name has changed its tune or avatar or the old persona taken down.
Feel free to call it a total Bart, or total Bartholomew, I stand by all my opinions - except for those where I've changed my mind. EG I regret supporting lockdown last year, we should never have had a lockdown.
However not wanting real life name used online is entirely reasonable, so please show some respect with that, even if you don't like my opinions. I would never go out of my way to say your real life name.
I'm not trying to distance myself here from my opinions, I'm not trying to start with a clean slate. I stand by my opinions but lets discuss opinions on their own merits.
Boris will not announce any new restrictions for England today.
Fun times Boris is back and will allow vaccinated people in England to pub and club at New Year's eve to their hearts content. Unlike the Welsh and Scots where Sturgeon and Drakeford have shut nightclubs and made restaurants and bars table service only
Boris will not announce any new restrictions for England today.
Fun times Boris is back and will allow vaccinated people in England to pub and club at New Year's eve to their hearts content. Unlike the Welsh and Scots where Sturgeon and Drakeford have shut nightclubs and made restaurants and bars table service only
I really don't want to pull the site down any further so am quite happy to apologise to @BartholomewRoberts if it means we can put this issue to bed
I don't get what you need to apologise for. Having the same avatar, saying "yes I have changed name" and still saying the same 0.01% sociopathic stuff is hardly starting again with a clean new image.
If anyone doxxed him, it was himself.
I don’t get it either. I cannot see what @CorrectHorseBattery has done that is wrong.
Boris will not announce any new restrictions for England today.
Fun times Boris is back and will allow vaccinated people in England to pub and club at New Year's eve to their hearts content. Unlike the Welsh and Scots where Sturgeon and Drakeford have shut nightclubs and made restaurants and bars table service only
You mean both my locals which have always had table service of which I have partaken and leave decent tips for the privilege will have to provide table service? The humanity!
Handy tip, the phrase 'fun times Boris is back' is likely to make many people do a little bit of sick in their mouth.
Has it ever been shown this works? And I wonder how safe it is pumping such massive volumes of chemicals around like that?
Local officials under extreme pressure to control the outbreak. What could be a more visible sign that they are doing everything they can then to bathe the whole city in disinfectant?
Apparently this is Delta too, and not yet Omicron.
At what point does this sort of thing begin to approach “drinking bleach” levels? (In “category” terms, if not overall effect?
Remembering #DesmondTutu: “I would not worship a God who is homophobic… I have to tell you, I cannot keep quiet when people are penalised for something about which they can do nothing… I oppose such injustice with the same passion that I opposed apartheid.”
There is nothing in the New Testament about homosexuality, unlike the Old Testament or Koran
OTOH Jesus was a Jewish rabbi anyway, so the OT was the default rule book. Presumably, for instance, he didn't eat pork.
Christians base their philosophy on Christ's teaching unlike Jews and not Muhammad's unlike Muslims. Paul is also only a secondary influence to Christians compared to Jesus Christ
He maybe should be, but he really, really isn't. In fact, looked at over the centuries Paul's teachings have been considerably more influential than those of Jesus, particularly in the Catholic Church.
When I did New Testament Studies, we spent about six weeks on Pauline ethics and a whole hour on The Sermon on the Mount.
I am not Roman Catholic, I am Anglican.
The Anglican Episcopal Church in the US and Church of Wales already allow gay couples blessings
I don't care what you are. Facts do not change according to your denomination Hyufd. The quality of music does, of course.
So what are you Dr Y? I know you are every bit devout because you bristled at being compared to Merlin The Magician.
Michael Gove is prepared to “go to war” with Rishi Sunak as he pushes to exempt high-street retailers from paying business rates as part of his levelling-up agenda, The Times has been told.
Gove, the levelling-up secretary, wants a radical overhaul of the commercial property tax because he views it as one of the most effective ways of achieving tangible change in crucial red wall seats before the next election.
He is said to be in favour of funding it by introducing an online sales tax, which would effectively add extra VAT to purchases made over the internet. Sunak, the chancellor, is resisting wholesale changes to business rates, which bring in £25 billion per year and are relatively easy to collect in comparison with other taxes. He is said to be sceptical about an online sales tax.
The Treasury will do everything they can to avoid business rate changes and exactly how does an online sales tax work?
Does it count if the good is delivered to a store rather than a home? How about delivery to the corner shop?
It's going to get utterly insane incredibly quickly.
They’re better off dropping business rates on the High St, keeping them on out of-town retail, and finding the savings from elsewhere in the departmental budget. Also incentivise councils to allow housebuilding, directing cash away from the NIMBYs towards those which permit development.
I like my idea of a NIMBY tax. Work out population growth etc nationally. Each area gets a quota for housing planning permissions to be given out.
Don't want development. No problem. Vote against it.
Then you'll be taxed in that local area to pay (plus a handling charge, of course) for another area to build the houses.
If you don't want development, pay for no development.
Michael Gove is prepared to “go to war” with Rishi Sunak as he pushes to exempt high-street retailers from paying business rates as part of his levelling-up agenda, The Times has been told.
Gove, the levelling-up secretary, wants a radical overhaul of the commercial property tax because he views it as one of the most effective ways of achieving tangible change in crucial red wall seats before the next election.
He is said to be in favour of funding it by introducing an online sales tax, which would effectively add extra VAT to purchases made over the internet. Sunak, the chancellor, is resisting wholesale changes to business rates, which bring in £25 billion per year and are relatively easy to collect in comparison with other taxes. He is said to be sceptical about an online sales tax.
Gove is a marmite character, but he is a spectacularly productive and innovative cabinet minister. The contrast with Robert Jenrick, his predecessor (and a man once regarded as a rising star) is huge. Jenrick seemed to be just treading water, following orders from the treasury and No.10 and incapable of spotting the political catastrophes that would inevitably follow. Gove is quickly coming up with ideas of his own, some of them quite good.
And some (like this one) make as much sense as Boris's bridge to Belfast.
I don't agree. I can tell you from the bitter experience of Dundee that there are few things as depressing as a town centre that is boarded up and deserted. We need to save our town centres, both because of the employment they bring and the community they create.
We need to do a variety of things to achieve this. Firstly, and probably most importantly, we need to rebalance the playing field between the online and bricks and mortar retailer. At the moment this is heavily weighed in favour of the online supplier who pays a fraction of the business rates that the B&M retailer does because, historically, town centre shops have been seen as cash cows ready to be milked. We also need to improve transport into town, parking, the availability of charging points, a broader range of permitted uses for old retail and to increase the number of people actually living there. It is not a sufficient policy but it is a start. And it is going to be absolutely central to the levelling up agenda.
The biggest problem is the pyramid that has been built on the back of town centre shops. Quite simply town centre shops are not worth *that* much money any more.
I had this conversation with an Abingdon town councillor, years ago. He literally could not accept that the river of money was gone.
This effects the landlords, the tenants, the councils and the government.
There are a few choices -
1) Recognise that due to the enormous pressures on hosing costs caused by planning limits, that turning town centres into more homes is infinitely more profitable than keeping the shops*. 2) Accept a massive reduction in taxation, rents etc to match the actual footfall/spend. This includes a lot of landlords going bust. 3) Increase the cost of other ways to shop by about 100%
*Where I live, the council insisted in retail units on the ground floor of new developments. Which, in some cases are now still empty after a *decade*.
Yep, it’s taken councils and government a decade, and a pandemic, to work out the problems with town centre retail.
The answer is a combination of all of the above. Allow redevelopment of retail space into residential, increase incentives for retail areas to remain so, such as business rates, let landlords sell up or go bust.
Oh, and parking. Lots of parking. No matter what council officers love to think, people who own cars won’t get buses into town unless they’re going to the pub, and definitely not if they’re going shopping.
I am sorry if at times I come across as a Labour fanboy but I genuinely have voted for other parties in the past and I would again. I happen to think a Tory Party that is respectable and of the centre is a good thing. Labour needed time out of Government and hence why I voted Tory in 2010.
I am quite open to being a social democrat who occasionally flirts with socialism but it doesn't mean I am Labour for life. I am a Labour member at the moment but I would resign if I felt they were going in the wrong direction.
This is really irresponsible, as it might well put people off even looking. When will these donuts on tw@tter figure out that now those running the system use a bit of intelligence and as sites fill up, they release more slots in the afternoon if required.
My daughter (recently turned 18) has had an invite for a booster despite having her second Pfizer jab at the beginning of November. Three months not up until 1st Feb; six months 1st May.
Michael Gove is prepared to “go to war” with Rishi Sunak as he pushes to exempt high-street retailers from paying business rates as part of his levelling-up agenda, The Times has been told.
Gove, the levelling-up secretary, wants a radical overhaul of the commercial property tax because he views it as one of the most effective ways of achieving tangible change in crucial red wall seats before the next election.
He is said to be in favour of funding it by introducing an online sales tax, which would effectively add extra VAT to purchases made over the internet. Sunak, the chancellor, is resisting wholesale changes to business rates, which bring in £25 billion per year and are relatively easy to collect in comparison with other taxes. He is said to be sceptical about an online sales tax.
The Treasury will do everything they can to avoid business rate changes and exactly how does an online sales tax work?
Does it count if the good is delivered to a store rather than a home? How about delivery to the corner shop?
It's going to get utterly insane incredibly quickly.
I just don't see how this idea is going to level up the Red Wall, is the idea to discourage shopping online?
The damage to Red Wall town centres comes more from out of town shopping than online shopping - it doesn't help and shows how much Gove and co are clutching at straws.
Want to win Red Wall seats, spend money on them nowt else is going to work.
It seems to me that they basically don't have any ideas beyond the slogans. And this was obvious in GE19 to me
As a red wall town dweller what ideas does labour have ?
I think genuine investment rather than cuts over the last decade would have done a lot more for the Red Wall.
New Labour did the most levelling up of any Government in recent memory
Sorry, that is utter bilge. Labour did little for the red wall. You may be a labour fanboy and think they can do no wrong but under labour our manufacturing as a percentage of gdp halved, we lost 1/6th of our manufacturing jobs and companies closed and moved to Eastern Europe. New labour were obsessed with the so called future industries. They allowed the red wall to decline simply because they used to weigh votes here as opposed to count them.
Not a Labour fanboy dude, I've voted Tory and Lib Dem in the past, just think Labour are the best option at the moment.
The numbers don't lie, New Labour did a tremendous amount of the Red Wall, more than the Tories have done. What have the Tories done for the Red Wall?
Could Labour have done more, hell yes.
What did labour do for us ? Under labour, both govt and local govt, my town went from thriving to on its knees.
I don’t expect the Tories to do stuff for us, I expected labour to. They did sweet FA. The Tories made a promise. So far have failed. Let’s see what labour offer. They cannot take our votes for granted and do nothing for us in future
Factories closed, well paying jobs went offshore and young people moved away, but let’s celebrate a sure start centre.
Anyway weren’t your whining the other week that levelling was punishing the rich and affluent south.
No I said genuine levelling up is not making the south poorer. It's about levelling up the entire country.
No one is talking about making the south poorer. It’s not in our interests to do that and it’s levelling up not down. There’s the clue !
No, you cried and whine about London being punished when that was not the case.
Just look at the investment per head in transport for London compared to the north east ?
The south and London benefits from young people from the regions, educated and bright, moving there from the regions for the opportunities. But the moment the regions want some levelling up you’re the victim,
What, however, will happen because of the cancellation of HS2E and NPR is that subsidises elsewhere will be highlighted.
And that is going to create great problems because any penny spent to support TfL will be used up North to regain Red Wall seats - as it's an incredibly easy story - London got £xbn a year on trains yet you get zero).
And TfL needs subsidies so it's a very quick win.
A very quick win and, as @RochdalePioneers says, voters up here are not fools. It will play badly and labour will make hay with it and the Tories have no defence.
We need to be clear about two things. The New Labour government did a lot for people in the red wall. And awful lot. And that they failed to change the long term decline of many areas and decided that "blame the Tories" was enough to keep getting re-elected.
Yes the oceans of money spent on health and education and social mobility and waiting lists and poverty made a huge difference to people. But without any change in prospects and the loss of pride and town image when generational heavy industry jobs got replaced by warehouse jobs, it didn't take much pushing for people say "we've been done over".
The Tories either deliver rapidly on their grand promises or they will lose most of the red wall back to Labour. Not an enthusiastic vote, but "we did tell you it was the Tories fault" will now resonate in a way it had ceased to do so.
Michael Gove is prepared to “go to war” with Rishi Sunak as he pushes to exempt high-street retailers from paying business rates as part of his levelling-up agenda, The Times has been told.
Gove, the levelling-up secretary, wants a radical overhaul of the commercial property tax because he views it as one of the most effective ways of achieving tangible change in crucial red wall seats before the next election.
He is said to be in favour of funding it by introducing an online sales tax, which would effectively add extra VAT to purchases made over the internet. Sunak, the chancellor, is resisting wholesale changes to business rates, which bring in £25 billion per year and are relatively easy to collect in comparison with other taxes. He is said to be sceptical about an online sales tax.
Gove is a marmite character, but he is a spectacularly productive and innovative cabinet minister. The contrast with Robert Jenrick, his predecessor (and a man once regarded as a rising star) is huge. Jenrick seemed to be just treading water, following orders from the treasury and No.10 and incapable of spotting the political catastrophes that would inevitably follow. Gove is quickly coming up with ideas of his own, some of them quite good.
And some (like this one) make as much sense as Boris's bridge to Belfast.
I don't agree. I can tell you from the bitter experience of Dundee that there are few things as depressing as a town centre that is boarded up and deserted. We need to save our town centres, both because of the employment they bring and the community they create.
We need to do a variety of things to achieve this. Firstly, and probably most importantly, we need to rebalance the playing field between the online and bricks and mortar retailer. At the moment this is heavily weighed in favour of the online supplier who pays a fraction of the business rates that the B&M retailer does because, historically, town centre shops have been seen as cash cows ready to be milked. We also need to improve transport into town, parking, the availability of charging points, a broader range of permitted uses for old retail and to increase the number of people actually living there. It is not a sufficient policy but it is a start. And it is going to be absolutely central to the levelling up agenda.
The biggest problem is the pyramid that has been built on the back of town centre shops. Quite simply town centre shops are not worth *that* much money any more.
I had this conversation with an Abingdon town councillor, years ago. He literally could not accept that the river of money was gone.
This effects the landlords, the tenants, the councils and the government.
There are a few choices -
1) Recognise that due to the enormous pressures on hosing costs caused by planning limits, that turning town centres into more homes is infinitely more profitable than keeping the shops*. 2) Accept a massive reduction in taxation, rents etc to match the actual footfall/spend. This includes a lot of landlords going bust. 3) Increase the cost of other ways to shop by about 100%
*Where I live, the council insisted in retail units on the ground floor of new developments. Which, in some cases are now still empty after a *decade*.
That's a massive problem, because for the last couple of decades new shopping centres has been the go-to way to regenerate towns. Romford, to take an extreme example, has at least one more complex than it can really support- so there are vacant sites, some fairly meh shops and big distances to walk between shops.
Romford is especially unlucky- it's been hit by both Lakeside and Stratford. But even without the online effect (who needs classic department stores any more?), there's more shop space than is useful. But it will be hard to shrink in a coherent way.
We have to have rezoning in our town centres - changing shops back into houses. One thing I always say: many (albeit not all) shops in towns are actually not in bad buildings, that could be made into homes once more by rebuilding the ground floor. You can then either have them as flats (many shops have flats above anyway), or as full family houses.
It's a better solution than having boarded-up shops that slowly degenerate.
So the question becomes: what do we want from our town centres?
Already happening here in my small town - helped by the fact that the old shops were shops + houses anyway. A number of shops on the fringe of the centre have become all houses over the last decade or two with the shop window infilled or even retained. Mind, they are in an area which used to be the main transit route to the local factory, which no longer exists.
I don't know about the planning rules in Scotland, but in England the government have already effectively rezoned town centres as housing by allowing a permitted change from all employment uses to residential. That came in within the last year or so. So the only shops that won't be changed back to housing are those that are uneconomic for conversion or are prime retail. It is all a bit more complex than that, but this is the jist. There is always a time lag of a few years before these changes actually happen on the ground, but they inevitably will.
Given this background, any campaign to 'save shops' and abolish business rates makes no sense because shops are already wiped out by the drive for low cost slum housing of the type that many shop conversions provide, given that they basically look out on main roads where passers by can stare in to your front living room. Who wants to live there? No one by choice, just people who have no other option. This is all, incidentally, a way for the government to deliver new housing without having to make strategic decisions about which parts of the countryside get built on.
At the same time the government publish national palnning policy that tries to support the vitality of town centres and the shops in them, and also seeks to achieve beauty and a high standard of design in housing development. Nothing the government does in this policy area makes any sense at all, it is totally insane and irrational. Perhaps Gove will get his head around it, but the probability of him doing anything useful is ultimately low, because that would involve undoing a decades worth of bad policy and law initiated by the conservative party.
Well I am in the majority there because I have no doubt people were opening bottles of wine and, no doubt, some ghastly prosecco after work and that people who should have known better, including the Permanent Secretary and, very likely, Boris popped by to give their regards.
It just doesn't change my vote 1 iota. There are more important things to be annoyed about (eg the Paterson fiasco) and far more important considerations that will determine it, eg the Union.
And I suspect that I am in the large majority on that too.
Boris will not announce any new restrictions for England today.
Fun times Boris is back and will allow vaccinated people in England to pub and club at New Year's eve to their hearts content. Unlike the Welsh and Scots where Sturgeon and Drakeford have shut nightclubs and made restaurants and bars table service only
You mean both my locals which have always had table service of which I have partaken and leave decent tips for the privilege will have to provide table service? The humanity!
Handy tip, the phrase 'fun times Boris is back' is likely to make many people do a little bit of sick in their mouth.
A bucket of sick more like. Who knew walking to the bar for a pint made it taste better than someone bringing it to your table, life gets stranger by the day.
Not sure why any poster would particularly be worried about doxing issues with the name - well let's call it PT. I went to school with a PT,I work with a PT. They're two different people, it's an incredibly common name.
I thought it was the sudden need to hid having turned into a total Phil by demanding that people who have Covid go out to infect others, people die so what, "liberty" for him and his wife and daughter over the lives of other people's wives and daughters.
He just used a string of expletives to describe CHB as nasty. Perhaps someone needs to have been bought a mirror for Christmas. We all have debates, sometimes it transgresses and people calm down. I can't think of how you can be demanding other people die for so long using your own name and then claim "doxxing". Its not as if the new name has changed its tune or avatar or the old persona taken down.
Feel free to call it a total Bart, or total Bartholomew, I stand by all my opinions - except for those where I've changed my mind. EG I regret supporting lockdown last year, we should never have had a lockdown.
However not wanting real life name used online is entirely reasonable, so please show some respect with that, even if you don't like my opinions. I would never go out of my way to say your real life name.
I'm not trying to distance myself here from my opinions, I'm not trying to start with a clean slate. I stand by my opinions but lets discuss opinions on their own merits.
Fine. But you really need to drop this holier than thou shit. We all know who you are, you have said who you are openly and haven't even tried to conceal it as Sean does. So the idea that CHB "doxxed" you requiring "fuck you" etc is laughable.
You say some egregious shit. You don't want your name associated with it - I can understand that. But it still is, because the old name is still up, still visible and you have said "this is me". So drop the abuse of CHB.
Boris will not announce any new restrictions for England today.
Fun times Boris is back and will allow vaccinated people in England to pub and club at New Year's eve to their hearts content. Unlike the Welsh and Scots where Sturgeon and Drakeford have shut nightclubs and made restaurants and bars table service only
Good. Looks like Boris won't be going anywhere in January.
A smart political move would be to finally announce a (one-off) substantial bonus for NHS frontline workers. I understand the reticence to offer base increases in pay, but (given the enormous amounts chucked around (often wasted) on Covid in general) it is absurd that hospital workers haven’t had their share of the pie. It is incredible what some people GPs (where relevant)/pharmacies are making to encourage participation in the booster programmes. Suspension of normal work whilst still being paid for it, and substantial additional amounts for jabs in arms. Makes the amounts paid to Pfizer teal look puny.
Spent Christmas at my daughter's , they had all taken tests etc , she felt crap next day and just received the wonderful news that she has Covid. Wife is having kittens.
Hope your daughter gets well soon and has a speedy recovery. Fingers crossed you and your wife dodged it.
Best of luck, Malc. And to your good lady wife. You have both had all three vaccinations, haven't you?
Yes we have OKC, so fingers crossed.
Sorry to hear your news, hopefully you can sail through it safely. Aye the best.
Michael Gove is prepared to “go to war” with Rishi Sunak as he pushes to exempt high-street retailers from paying business rates as part of his levelling-up agenda, The Times has been told.
Gove, the levelling-up secretary, wants a radical overhaul of the commercial property tax because he views it as one of the most effective ways of achieving tangible change in crucial red wall seats before the next election.
He is said to be in favour of funding it by introducing an online sales tax, which would effectively add extra VAT to purchases made over the internet. Sunak, the chancellor, is resisting wholesale changes to business rates, which bring in £25 billion per year and are relatively easy to collect in comparison with other taxes. He is said to be sceptical about an online sales tax.
Gove is a marmite character, but he is a spectacularly productive and innovative cabinet minister. The contrast with Robert Jenrick, his predecessor (and a man once regarded as a rising star) is huge. Jenrick seemed to be just treading water, following orders from the treasury and No.10 and incapable of spotting the political catastrophes that would inevitably follow. Gove is quickly coming up with ideas of his own, some of them quite good.
And some (like this one) make as much sense as Boris's bridge to Belfast.
I don't agree. I can tell you from the bitter experience of Dundee that there are few things as depressing as a town centre that is boarded up and deserted. We need to save our town centres, both because of the employment they bring and the community they create.
We need to do a variety of things to achieve this. Firstly, and probably most importantly, we need to rebalance the playing field between the online and bricks and mortar retailer. At the moment this is heavily weighed in favour of the online supplier who pays a fraction of the business rates that the B&M retailer does because, historically, town centre shops have been seen as cash cows ready to be milked. We also need to improve transport into town, parking, the availability of charging points, a broader range of permitted uses for old retail and to increase the number of people actually living there. It is not a sufficient policy but it is a start. And it is going to be absolutely central to the levelling up agenda.
The biggest problem is the pyramid that has been built on the back of town centre shops. Quite simply town centre shops are not worth *that* much money any more.
I had this conversation with an Abingdon town councillor, years ago. He literally could not accept that the river of money was gone.
This effects the landlords, the tenants, the councils and the government.
There are a few choices -
1) Recognise that due to the enormous pressures on hosing costs caused by planning limits, that turning town centres into more homes is infinitely more profitable than keeping the shops*. 2) Accept a massive reduction in taxation, rents etc to match the actual footfall/spend. This includes a lot of landlords going bust. 3) Increase the cost of other ways to shop by about 100%
*Where I live, the council insisted in retail units on the ground floor of new developments. Which, in some cases are now still empty after a *decade*.
Yep, it’s taken councils and government a decade, and a pandemic, to work out the problems with town centre retail.
The answer is a combination of all of the above. Allow redevelopment of retail space into residential, increase incentives for retail areas to remain so, such as business rates, let landlords sell up or go bust.
Oh, and parking. Lots of parking. No matter what council officers love to think, people who own cars won’t get buses into town unless they’re going to the pub, and definitely not if they’re going shopping.
For so many towns there is a brutal reality - they will not succeed. Rochdale is a great example of this. Minimal catchment area with so many towns in close proximity and a huge city just down the road, a massive shopping mall just off the motorway and now online as well.
There is no longer any need for every town to have lots of chain shops as there simply isn't the money to support them. What they should do - all these kinds of towns - is copy the examples happening in places like Preston and Stockton-on-Tees.
Either totally differentiate your retail offer, or replace most of it with non-retail, or both. Town centres as we knew them are dead - time to reinvent them.
Has it ever been shown this works? And I wonder how safe it is pumping such massive volumes of chemicals around like that?
Local officials under extreme pressure to control the outbreak. What could be a more visible sign that they are doing everything they can then to bathe the whole city in disinfectant?
Apparently this is Delta too, and not yet Omicron.
At what point does this sort of thing begin to approach “drinking bleach” levels? (In “category” terms, if not overall effect?
I don't know much about the local government officials in Xian, but I think that with a boss like Xi, this is understandable in terms of panic and the desire to be seen to be doing something, whereas Trump's musing about drinking bleach was more obviously incoherent rambling stupidity.
Spent Christmas at my daughter's , they had all taken tests etc , she felt crap next day and just received the wonderful news that she has Covid. Wife is having kittens.
Hope your daughter gets well soon and has a speedy recovery. Fingers crossed you and your wife dodged it.
Best of luck, Malc. And to your good lady wife. You have both had all three vaccinations, haven't you?
Yes we have OKC, so fingers crossed.
Sorry to hear your news, hopefully you can sail through it safely. Aye the best.
I really don't want to pull the site down any further so am quite happy to apologise to @BartholomewRoberts if it means we can put this issue to bed
I don't get what you need to apologise for. Having the same avatar, saying "yes I have changed name" and still saying the same 0.01% sociopathic stuff is hardly starting again with a clean new image.
If anyone doxxed him, it was himself.
I don’t get it either. I cannot see what @CorrectHorseBattery has done that is wrong.
The parties have kissed and made up. Do we really need anyone else getting involved?
Comments
Now we are out the eu we should have a rule, if a company manufactures in a particular country then customers and retailers are free to buy from said country.
This is the case I am referring to
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2002/aug/01/clothes.marketingandpr
so its ok for levis to globalise the wages, but they want their prices not globalised.
And that is going to create great problems because any penny spent to support TfL will be used up North to regain Red Wall seats - as it's an incredibly easy story - London got £xbn a year on trains yet you get zero).
And TfL needs subsidies so it's a very quick win.
"Sam Leith
The modern economy is built on addiction
‘Late capitalism’ seeks to exploit addictive behaviour" (£)
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/the-modern-economy-is-built-on-addiction
The "shops" that I see doing well are the ones that have identified a niche segment, are extremely knowledgeable about that and then combine a warehouse type online business and attach a storefront, so you best the economy of scale, plus they can go to the warehouse to get what you need and failing all that they can order it and send it via their online channels to your home.
But they aren't high street businesses, they locate themselves on industrial parks.
Labour supporters who make cynical comments about the boundary commission are embarrassing themselves in my opinion. We're lucky to have it. Look at the corruption in the American system.
I went to school with a PT,I work with a PT. They're two different people, it's an incredibly common name.
PS From memory it was the first time such a regional breakdown had been published within England, hence the impact at the time.
We aren't all equal and some areas need more help than others and the other side of that inequality is the richer areas need to subsidise the poorer. It happens everywhere.
I'd also suggest long periods of political control by one authority, perpetuated by FPTP, don't help. I'd have STV for local elections (not Westminster as yet) and put much more real power back to local Councils including ending Council Tax capping. If people in an area want to pay 20% extra in Council Tax for better services they should be able.
If people prefer not to use their full name / real name, that is entirely up to them and it should be respected.
My theory is Brexit and SNP taking over Scotland, and Trump and other Trump style leaders are reaction to wanting some thing done about ravages of globalisation.
If Boris cannot deliver the reversal of globalisation he promised with Brexit and levelling, and he doesn’t appear to show first clue how to make a dent in what globalisation has done to UK, he quite rightly should get slaughtered at election and someone else given their chance.
It's a better solution than having boarded-up shops that slowly degenerate.
So the question becomes: what do we want from our town centres?
Which are not exactly encouraging figures for those who want to 'level up.'
Oddly, the one contributor to Rail who was happy with the IRP was Christian Wolmar, who thinks all railway lines outside London should be shut and the money diverted to London, which just happens to be where he lives...Serpell on speed.
https://twitter.com/donnyc1975/status/1475253965763891200
Choice quotes
It benefits no one . Prior to brexit - you could have ten jobs on your van , reducing costs to customers. Whilst increasing your profitability per run. That’s gone. Now it’s one job out and one job in . Can’t risk one job if another has incorrect paperwork = stuck in customs
I have noticed that it takes 6 hours to get into Dover and across the water nowadays. Every truck and van has to hand over their paperwork to be processed before boarding passes are issued . Doesn’t take long for queues to form
Remember it's the paperwork we were told doesn't exist that is going to kill things not tariffs or taxes.
Unfortunately went down some dark rabbit holes.
Romans 1
Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another. 25They exchanged the truth about God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator—who is forever praised. Amen.
26Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural sexual relations for unnatural ones. 27In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed shameful acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their error.
There are other examples. Paul was a bit of a traditionalist.
On the northern side of town I would just talk about the failure to build the Northern bypass as another Amazon or Teesside lorry drove past a row of houses.
Which is hardly surprising given the penalties for sodomy in the Herodian kingdom made it very much a side issue compared to rampaging corruption and official fraud.
I could probably find a definition that say excluded Metro Centre / Trafford Centre but that isn't going to work for Stratford or Meadowhall.
I said I don't want to be doxxed and you are going above and beyond to use the name I said I don't want using.
You said you had personal issues, which I won't repeat, and I wished you the best for it. I've shown nothing but sympathy for your personal issues, but you're going above and beyond in disrespecting mine. You may think you're being funny, but remember there's another human being behind the screen.
Some decency would be appreciated.
Fun times Boris is back and will allow vaccinated people in England to pub and club at New Year's eve to their hearts content. Unlike the Welsh and Scots where Sturgeon and Drakeford have shut nightclubs and made restaurants and bars table service only
https://twitter.com/PoliticsForAlI/status/1475450934717292547?s=20
The biggest problem for Red Wall towns (and I am a Wiganer by birth) is that the ambitious young leave for higher education and mostly don't wish to return. Hence the ageing demographics of such towns, and consequent voting shifts.
Clouds of disinfectant covered the city to combat the outbreak, with 150 new cases reported on Sunday
Local officials have described the situation as ‘dire and complex’ with case numbers expected to remain high in coming days
https://www.scmp.com/news/china/science/article/3161133/chinas-covid-19-surge-continues-150-new-cases-xian-epicentre
Has it ever been shown this works? And I wonder how safe it is pumping such massive volumes of chemicals around like that?
https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/redistricting-2022-maps/illinois/
I made a post and you chose - you chose - to respond to it. You didn't need to, so why did you?
You then accused me of doxxing you, which I didn't do. If you hadn't responded, nobody would even have known it was you.
So I am sorry for the misunderstanding but I don't think I have done anything wrong here. Going forward, my suggestion would be to not respond to posts that refer to a Phil, if you wish to not draw yourself to them.
I must say it is bizarre to be angry now, when I just had a look back and one of your first posts on this account is you saying who you are - I had missed this before but why didn't you just start afresh? Seems like odd behaviour to me.
Apparently this is Delta too, and not yet Omicron.
And I apologise to you too.
Maybe there won’t be a cost to pay the others thought they were acting on 🤷♀️
And in the months to come, I am very concerned we're going to be in a lot of trouble
When I did New Testament Studies, we spent about six weeks on Pauline ethics and a whole hour on The Sermon on the Mount.
Have done Highland Hunter in Welsh National.
He just used a string of expletives to describe CHB as nasty. Perhaps someone needs to have been bought a mirror for Christmas. We all have debates, sometimes it transgresses and people calm down. I can't think of how you can be demanding other people die for so long using your own name and then claim "doxxing". Its not as if the new name has changed its tune or avatar or the old persona taken down.
The older generation see their children and grandchildren leaving and it makes them sad.
The younger generation leave because small towns, even prosperous small towns, can't deliver the opportunities (or numbers of other young people) they would like.
And every young adult who leaves Hometown makes it less attractive for other young adults.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/dec/27/pfizer-biontech-tax-windfall-brings-mainz-an-early-christmas-present
Just 8% think Boris Johnson is telling the truth about what happened, compared to 77% who think he isn't. https://twitter.com/OpiniumResearch/status/1475462251155017732/photo/1
I think he's only 50/50 to make it through Jan, but if he does I think he will survive until May.
The Anglican Episcopal Church in the US and Church of Wales already allow gay couples blessings
If anyone doxxed him, it was himself.
Should she have booster now or wait a bit??
Was Paul also the person who arrested Jesus and had his ear cut off?
However not wanting real life name used online is entirely reasonable, so please show some respect with that, even if you don't like my opinions. I would never go out of my way to say your real life name.
I'm not trying to distance myself here from my opinions, I'm not trying to start with a clean slate. I stand by my opinions but lets discuss opinions on their own merits.
Handy tip, the phrase 'fun times Boris is back' is likely to make many people do a little bit of sick in their mouth.
Don't want development. No problem. Vote against it.
Then you'll be taxed in that local area to pay (plus a handling charge, of course) for another area to build the houses.
If you don't want development, pay for no development.
The answer is a combination of all of the above. Allow redevelopment of retail space into residential, increase incentives for retail areas to remain so, such as business rates, let landlords sell up or go bust.
Oh, and parking. Lots of parking. No matter what council officers love to think, people who own cars won’t get buses into town unless they’re going to the pub, and definitely not if they’re going shopping.
I am quite open to being a social democrat who occasionally flirts with socialism but it doesn't mean I am Labour for life. I am a Labour member at the moment but I would resign if I felt they were going in the wrong direction.
Once again, there are NO walk-in PCR testing slots available to book in the whole of England.
https://twitter.com/rachaelvenables/status/1475440052771729411?s=20
Full availability....
https://self-referral.test-for-coronavirus.service.gov.uk/antigen/channel-status
This is really irresponsible, as it might well put people off even looking. When will these donuts on tw@tter figure out that now those running the system use a bit of intelligence and as sites fill up, they release more slots in the afternoon if required.
Yes the oceans of money spent on health and education and social mobility and waiting lists and poverty made a huge difference to people. But without any change in prospects and the loss of pride and town image when generational heavy industry jobs got replaced by warehouse jobs, it didn't take much pushing for people say "we've been done over".
The Tories either deliver rapidly on their grand promises or they will lose most of the red wall back to Labour. Not an enthusiastic vote, but "we did tell you it was the Tories fault" will now resonate in a way it had ceased to do so.
Given this background, any campaign to 'save shops' and abolish business rates makes no sense because shops are already wiped out by the drive for low cost slum housing of the type that many shop conversions provide, given that they basically look out on main roads where passers by can stare in to your front living room. Who wants to live there? No one by choice, just people who have no other option. This is all, incidentally, a way for the government to deliver new housing without having to make strategic decisions about which parts of the countryside get built on.
At the same time the government publish national palnning policy that tries to support the vitality of town centres and the shops in them, and also seeks to achieve beauty and a high standard of design in housing development. Nothing the government does in this policy area makes any sense at all, it is totally insane and irrational. Perhaps Gove will get his head around it, but the probability of him doing anything useful is ultimately low, because that would involve undoing a decades worth of bad policy and law initiated by the conservative party.
It just doesn't change my vote 1 iota. There are more important things to be annoyed about (eg the Paterson fiasco) and far more important considerations that will determine it, eg the Union.
And I suspect that I am in the large majority on that too.
Later…
Chairman says stop sprinkling towns with disinfectant, we need people alive and breathing.
PS leave the sparrows alone too 😀
You say some egregious shit. You don't want your name associated with it - I can understand that. But it still is, because the old name is still up, still visible and you have said "this is me". So drop the abuse of CHB.
A smart political move would be to finally announce a (one-off) substantial bonus for NHS frontline workers. I understand the reticence to offer base increases in pay, but (given the enormous amounts chucked around (often wasted) on Covid in general) it is absurd that hospital workers haven’t had their share of the pie. It is incredible what some people GPs (where relevant)/pharmacies are making to encourage participation in the booster programmes. Suspension of normal work whilst still being paid for it, and substantial additional amounts for jabs in arms. Makes the amounts paid to Pfizer teal look puny.
There is no longer any need for every town to have lots of chain shops as there simply isn't the money to support them. What they should do - all these kinds of towns - is copy the examples happening in places like Preston and Stockton-on-Tees.
Either totally differentiate your retail offer, or replace most of it with non-retail, or both. Town centres as we knew them are dead - time to reinvent them.