I regret to inform you France is doing the "EU institutions need to speak French" thing again. Feels half-hearted (they want to encourage eurocrats and diplomats to take lessons) but they have not given up.
You’d have thought with the UK having left they’d be more relaxed about English being the lingua franca of the EU. Ireland and Malta are unlikely to disproportionately benefit from its use…
On the subject of languages, have we covered our Saudi loving, Polish born MPs £22, 000 on Polish language lessons?
If you pay the teacher 50 quid an hour, then that's 160 hours in a year, or about 3 per week. That's just about plausible, although obviously poor value for money.
In my experience it's not usual for tutors to charge £50 an hour. £30 would be more like it, although @Dura_Ace would know more about the rate for languages (obviously)!
If £30 is the normal rate, then I can well believe a Tory MP spending taxpayer money on himself could go to £50. Where it will get dicey is if it turns out his Polish tutor is a 23 year old supermodel.
I had a friend actually who taught Romanian for extra cash to bankers looking to impress their Romanian wives/girlfriends. Very lucrative apparently.
I made mad stacks teaching English and French to well heeled Russians and their kids when I lived in Moscow. They didn't care what they paid but wanted the Paris/London escape plan prepared. One guy used to fly me out to his place in Cyprus once a month for lessons for him and his wife.
Native speakers and teachers of English who can also speak Russian at B2+ are always in very high demand.
"The American polity is cracked, and might collapse. Canada must prepare The U.S. is becoming increasingly ungovernable, and some experts believe it could descend into civil war. What should Canada do then? Thomas Homer-Dixon"
Gilead is coming. They aren't going to accept being voted out of power again.
Could be a very large refugee problem at the Canada border in a few years time. The Canadians would do well to prepare.
I know that I keep banging on about Gilead - its just a TV show. But the scenario is one that has been written about in various ways for a long time. And right now America is about as divided as it can get - two polar opposites in fear and absolute conviction that the other side are out to destroy everything they are.
Unless there is a sudden peace and live movement that unites both I am unsure how anything other than time can cool tensions - and they have elections every 2 years!
I regret to inform you France is doing the "EU institutions need to speak French" thing again. Feels half-hearted (they want to encourage eurocrats and diplomats to take lessons) but they have not given up.
You’d have thought with the UK having left they’d be more relaxed about English being the lingua franca of the EU. Ireland and Malta are unlikely to disproportionately benefit from its use…
On the subject of languages, have we covered our Saudi loving, Polish born MPs £22, 000 on Polish language lessons?
If you pay the teacher 50 quid an hour, then that's 160 hours in a year, or about 3 per week. That's just about plausible, although obviously poor value for money.
In my experience it's not usual for tutors to charge £50 an hour. £30 would be more like it, although @Dura_Ace would know more about the rate for languages (obviously)!
The issue with the MP is surely that he was born in Poland and has previously claimed to be fluent, rather than the precise detail of the cost? If he's a native speaker why does he need to spend anything on lessons?
Welsh was my mother's language, and I speak it fairly well. But not having spoken it consistently in 14 years, I would want to spend time practising it before I had an interview in it.
Just not three sessions a week for a whole year at a vastly inflated price.
I suspect the '23 year old supermodel' may be on the money in more ways than one here...
How can the government prevent energy bills from causing political problems?
Options available to it:
1. Cutting VAT - not likely to be enough. 2. Energy Subsidies - likely too expensive and won’t solve anything long term. 3. Er…
What else can they do? Not a lot.
Extend the cap. A subsidy, but politically easier.
That’s a price control, isn’t it? And if energy company’s are subsidised above this level to keep them solvent, how much money will that take, and for how long?
How can the government prevent energy bills from causing political problems?
Options available to it:
1. Cutting VAT - not likely to be enough. 2. Energy Subsidies - likely too expensive and won’t solve anything long term. 3. Er…
What else can they do? Not a lot.
Good morning
This is a problem for governments across the world, and certainly cutting vat would only save a small amount when considering the huge increases
I would expect HMG to provide targeted help to those on low incomes similar to the £300 provided to elderly pensioners each December and restricting the rise in April
On topic, recency bias. All the stuff is now, literally, very last year, and people vaguely feel he will put it all behind him and make a fresh start. No chance. He is toast this year.
Gotta love an on-topic post in the midst of the nonsense.
It is hard to see Truss not making the final two and if she is there then she's in with a strong chance.
Why do you say that? What sort of following does she have amongst MPs? I can't believe the recent polling would have encouraged them.
I share the general scepticism of Ms Truss's chances with the MP base... that being said, the reality is that the MPs want a leader who keeps their seats and their prospect of a ministerial job.
This means there will be natural splits: MPs for the former Red Wall will probably want someone very different to an MP facing a challenge from LibDem.
Ultimately, though, the hypothetical polling is probably going to be the biggest driver: who is seen as most popular with voters. Ms Truss is popular with Conservative members, but she isn't really that well known with the population at large.
In other words: I don't know. But I would do what I always do in these markets and sell the favorite.
How can the government prevent energy bills from causing political problems?
Options available to it:
1. Cutting VAT - not likely to be enough. 2. Energy Subsidies - likely too expensive and won’t solve anything long term. 3. Er…
What else can they do? Not a lot.
Good morning
This is a problem for governments across the world, and certainly cutting vat would only save a small amount when considering the huge increases
I would expect HMG to provide targeted help to those on low incomes similar to the £300 provided to elderly pensioners each December and restricting the rise in April
That’s certainly the right thing to do, but its not a political solution as the loudest voices will come from the middle classes who can afford them but will feel much poorer as a result.
It is hard to see Truss not making the final two and if she is there then she's in with a strong chance.
Why are you sure she will make the final two? Do you know what level of MP support she has?
From above, if say Sunak, Truss, Gove, Javid, Hunt and either Baker/Harper stood in a contest, which two would come through.
I don't know but my best guess would be Sunak and Hunt. Possibly Sunak and Baker/or Harper. And Gove had decent support in the 2019 (narrowly beaten by Hunt into second place). I'm far from convinced that Truss has the MPs' support.
My feel at the moment is the candidate from the pro-Brexit / Blue Collar / economically interventionist wing will make the final round. That grouping is clearly on manoeuvres (eg the letter to the Telegraph), know they have the numbers to get far (the near 100 MPs rebelling against Boris for a start) and have opinions that should appeal to many of the base.
What might be interesting are the shorts. Jeremy Hunt is a classic example of a bet where us sophisticated elites of PB.com project our own views onto the base. Truss is close by.
Do you think blue collar/interventionist has a significant following amongst the Tory members?
I think they will base their vote on who is the best placed leader to keep the Tories in power. I’m sure @HYUFD has a better view than me but I would imagine the base has moved right wards in recent years as many of the pro-EU, socially liberal types have become less comfortable.
From a betting standpoint for next Tory leader, I think the value bets are from that part of the party.
Yes. But the membership is overwhelmingly older, wealthier and more SE based than the electorate as a whole. I can't see them wanting anything approaching a levelling up agenda. Culture War and cuts yes. Culture War isn't blue collar necessarily.
Who would be against levelling up? On what basis? As an old fart of Conservative disposition in the Home Counties I would love to see successful levelling up.
Levelling up yes, as long as it does not mean levelling you down with higher tax rises on the South to pay for more spending on the redwall
By definition levelling up implies making the lower deciles better off. There is obviously a cost to that aka taxation. So long as it is levelling up to generate a better outcome and not levelling down I'm relaxed about it. Extra taxation isn't a deal breaker.
But you can't have levelling up without someone being levelled down. That's pure fantasy.
Of course you can.
That’s the fundamental difference between left and right.
Equality of opportunity and extra investment; more growth overall but the north gets richer faster (hence levelling up). That’s the right’s approach
The left would prefer equality of outcome, delivered through taxation and redistribution, which results in levelling down
Lazy.
The South is currently relatively much richer than the North. If you point the limited national resources at the North at the expense of the South (which is what is required), the South will relatively become poorer compared to the North.
This is just a fact of life. It doesn’t mean that the South doesn’t get objectively richer during the time, it just gets relatively poorer.
If the South doesn’t get relatively poorer, then its not true levelling up as the North/South divide remains.
This is the truth about where New Labour went wrong. Remember that Many was relaxed about the filthy rich getting richer? Doesn't matter - they thought - because we're lifting you out of institutionalised poverty, building new schools and hospitals, transforming your life chances etc. The list of their achievements in office - direct benefits to the red wall achievements - is extensive.
And yet ultimately so many of the people benefitting from New Labour think they did nothing. Why? Because of economic relativity. They picked up places like Teesside and lifted them towards where the south was. But the south was also lifting, so the disparity remained. Whats worse, so many of the new job opportunities were service jobs - hard graft in an anonymous warehouse for you to make the south richer
The problem for me with that is that we have not been getting regular and consistently reported data, so we can't do that analysis for quite a time yet.
How can the government prevent energy bills from causing political problems?
Options available to it:
1. Cutting VAT - not likely to be enough. 2. Energy Subsidies - likely too expensive and won’t solve anything long term. 3. Er…
What else can they do? Not a lot.
Wind the clock back 3 years, not allow closure of the UK strategic gas storage facilities for private profit and/or not leave the regulated European energy market. As their own advisers explicitly warned them not to do.
It is hard to see Truss not making the final two and if she is there then she's in with a strong chance.
Why are you sure she will make the final two? Do you know what level of MP support she has?
From above, if say Sunak, Truss, Gove, Javid, Hunt and either Baker/Harper stood in a contest, which two would come through.
I don't know but my best guess would be Sunak and Hunt. Possibly Sunak and Baker/or Harper. And Gove had decent support in the 2019 (narrowly beaten by Hunt into second place). I'm far from convinced that Truss has the MPs' support.
My feel at the moment is the candidate from the pro-Brexit / Blue Collar / economically interventionist wing will make the final round. That grouping is clearly on manoeuvres (eg the letter to the Telegraph), know they have the numbers to get far (the near 100 MPs rebelling against Boris for a start) and have opinions that should appeal to many of the base.
What might be interesting are the shorts. Jeremy Hunt is a classic example of a bet where us sophisticated elites of PB.com project our own views onto the base. Truss is close by.
Do you think blue collar/interventionist has a significant following amongst the Tory members?
I think they will base their vote on who is the best placed leader to keep the Tories in power. I’m sure @HYUFD has a better view than me but I would imagine the base has moved right wards in recent years as many of the pro-EU, socially liberal types have become less comfortable.
From a betting standpoint for next Tory leader, I think the value bets are from that part of the party.
Yes. But the membership is overwhelmingly older, wealthier and more SE based than the electorate as a whole. I can't see them wanting anything approaching a levelling up agenda. Culture War and cuts yes. Culture War isn't blue collar necessarily.
Who would be against levelling up? On what basis? As an old fart of Conservative disposition in the Home Counties I would love to see successful levelling up.
Levelling up yes, as long as it does not mean levelling you down with higher tax rises on the South to pay for more spending on the redwall
By definition levelling up implies making the lower deciles better off. There is obviously a cost to that aka taxation. So long as it is levelling up to generate a better outcome and not levelling down I'm relaxed about it. Extra taxation isn't a deal breaker.
But you can't have levelling up without someone being levelled down. That's pure fantasy.
Of course you can.
That’s the fundamental difference between left and right.
Equality of opportunity and extra investment; more growth overall but the north gets richer faster (hence levelling up). That’s the right’s approach
The left would prefer equality of outcome, delivered through taxation and redistribution, which results in levelling down
Lazy.
The South is currently relatively much richer than the North. If you point the limited national resources at the North at the expense of the South (which is what is required), the South will relatively become poorer compared to the North.
This is just a fact of life. It doesn’t mean that the South doesn’t get objectively richer during the time, it just gets relatively poorer.
If the South doesn’t get relatively poorer, then its not true levelling up as the North/South divide remains.
This is the truth about where New Labour went wrong. Remember that Many was relaxed about the filthy rich getting richer? Doesn't matter - they thought - because we're lifting you out of institutionalised poverty, building new schools and hospitals, transforming your life chances etc. The list of their achievements in office - direct benefits to the red wall achievements - is extensive.
And yet ultimately so many of the people benefitting from New Labour think they did nothing. Why? Because of economic relativity. They picked up places like Teesside and lifted them towards where the south was. But the south was also lifting, so the disparity remained. Whats worse, so many of the new job opportunities were service jobs - hard graft in an anonymous warehouse for you to make the south richer
And those northern service jobs were generally worse paid than the disappearing industrial and mining jobs they replaced.
It is hard to see Truss not making the final two and if she is there then she's in with a strong chance.
Why are you sure she will make the final two? Do you know what level of MP support she has?
From above, if say Sunak, Truss, Gove, Javid, Hunt and either Baker/Harper stood in a contest, which two would come through.
I don't know but my best guess would be Sunak and Hunt. Possibly Sunak and Baker/or Harper. And Gove had decent support in the 2019 (narrowly beaten by Hunt into second place). I'm far from convinced that Truss has the MPs' support.
My feel at the moment is the candidate from the pro-Brexit / Blue Collar / economically interventionist wing will make the final round. That grouping is clearly on manoeuvres (eg the letter to the Telegraph), know they have the numbers to get far (the near 100 MPs rebelling against Boris for a start) and have opinions that should appeal to many of the base.
What might be interesting are the shorts. Jeremy Hunt is a classic example of a bet where us sophisticated elites of PB.com project our own views onto the base. Truss is close by.
Do you think blue collar/interventionist has a significant following amongst the Tory members?
I think they will base their vote on who is the best placed leader to keep the Tories in power. I’m sure @HYUFD has a better view than me but I would imagine the base has moved right wards in recent years as many of the pro-EU, socially liberal types have become less comfortable.
From a betting standpoint for next Tory leader, I think the value bets are from that part of the party.
Yes. But the membership is overwhelmingly older, wealthier and more SE based than the electorate as a whole. I can't see them wanting anything approaching a levelling up agenda. Culture War and cuts yes. Culture War isn't blue collar necessarily.
Who would be against levelling up? On what basis? As an old fart of Conservative disposition in the Home Counties I would love to see successful levelling up.
Levelling up yes, as long as it does not mean levelling you down with higher tax rises on the South to pay for more spending on the redwall
By definition levelling up implies making the lower deciles better off. There is obviously a cost to that aka taxation. So long as it is levelling up to generate a better outcome and not levelling down I'm relaxed about it. Extra taxation isn't a deal breaker.
But you can't have levelling up without someone being levelled down. That's pure fantasy.
Only if you assume the economy is a zero sum game. Which is pure nonsense.
I regret to inform you France is doing the "EU institutions need to speak French" thing again. Feels half-hearted (they want to encourage eurocrats and diplomats to take lessons) but they have not given up.
You’d have thought with the UK having left they’d be more relaxed about English being the lingua franca of the EU. Ireland and Malta are unlikely to disproportionately benefit from its use…
On the subject of languages, have we covered our Saudi loving, Polish born MPs £22, 000 on Polish language lessons?
If you pay the teacher 50 quid an hour, then that's 160 hours in a year, or about 3 per week. That's just about plausible, although obviously poor value for money.
In my experience it's not usual for tutors to charge £50 an hour. £30 would be more like it, although @Dura_Ace would know more about the rate for languages (obviously)!
The issue with the MP is surely that he was born in Poland and has previously claimed to be fluent, rather than the precise detail of the cost? If he's a native speaker why does he need to spend anything on lessons?
Welsh was my mother's language, and I speak it fairly well. But not having spoken it consistently in 14 years, I would want to spend time practising it before I had an interview in it.
Just not three sessions a week for a whole year at a vastly inflated price.
I suspect the '23 year old supermodel' may be on the money in more ways than one here...
On topic, recency bias. All the stuff is now, literally, very last year, and people vaguely feel he will put it all behind him and make a fresh start. No chance. He is toast this year.
He was toast last year. He just hasn't left office yet.
Indeed.
Confidence is a harsh quality. Once lost, it is almost impossible to regain.
He hasn’t lost a VONC, yet, but he has already lost the confidence of his party, parliament and the countries.
It is hard to see Truss not making the final two and if she is there then she's in with a strong chance.
Why are you sure she will make the final two? Do you know what level of MP support she has?
From above, if say Sunak, Truss, Gove, Javid, Hunt and either Baker/Harper stood in a contest, which two would come through.
I don't know but my best guess would be Sunak and Hunt. Possibly Sunak and Baker/or Harper. And Gove had decent support in the 2019 (narrowly beaten by Hunt into second place). I'm far from convinced that Truss has the MPs' support.
My feel at the moment is the candidate from the pro-Brexit / Blue Collar / economically interventionist wing will make the final round. That grouping is clearly on manoeuvres (eg the letter to the Telegraph), know they have the numbers to get far (the near 100 MPs rebelling against Boris for a start) and have opinions that should appeal to many of the base.
What might be interesting are the shorts. Jeremy Hunt is a classic example of a bet where us sophisticated elites of PB.com project our own views onto the base. Truss is close by.
Do you think blue collar/interventionist has a significant following amongst the Tory members?
I think they will base their vote on who is the best placed leader to keep the Tories in power. I’m sure @HYUFD has a better view than me but I would imagine the base has moved right wards in recent years as many of the pro-EU, socially liberal types have become less comfortable.
From a betting standpoint for next Tory leader, I think the value bets are from that part of the party.
Yes. But the membership is overwhelmingly older, wealthier and more SE based than the electorate as a whole. I can't see them wanting anything approaching a levelling up agenda. Culture War and cuts yes. Culture War isn't blue collar necessarily.
Who would be against levelling up? On what basis? As an old fart of Conservative disposition in the Home Counties I would love to see successful levelling up.
Levelling up yes, as long as it does not mean levelling you down with higher tax rises on the South to pay for more spending on the redwall
By definition levelling up implies making the lower deciles better off. There is obviously a cost to that aka taxation. So long as it is levelling up to generate a better outcome and not levelling down I'm relaxed about it. Extra taxation isn't a deal breaker.
But you can't have levelling up without someone being levelled down. That's pure fantasy.
Of course you can.
That’s the fundamental difference between left and right.
Equality of opportunity and extra investment; more growth overall but the north gets richer faster (hence levelling up). That’s the right’s approach
The left would prefer equality of outcome, delivered through taxation and redistribution, which results in levelling down
Lazy.
The South is currently relatively much richer than the North. If you point the limited national resources at the North at the expense of the South (which is what is required), the South will relatively become poorer compared to the North.
This is just a fact of life. It doesn’t mean that the South doesn’t get objectively richer during the time, it just gets relatively poorer.
If the South doesn’t get relatively poorer, then its not true levelling up as the North/South divide remains.
This is the truth about where New Labour went wrong. Remember that Many was relaxed about the filthy rich getting richer? Doesn't matter - they thought - because we're lifting you out of institutionalised poverty, building new schools and hospitals, transforming your life chances etc. The list of their achievements in office - direct benefits to the red wall achievements - is extensive.
And yet ultimately so many of the people benefitting from New Labour think they did nothing. Why? Because of economic relativity. They picked up places like Teesside and lifted them towards where the south was. But the south was also lifting, so the disparity remained. Whats worse, so many of the new job opportunities were service jobs - hard graft in an anonymous warehouse for you to make the south richer
I'm not clear how the balance in Tory membership has shifted as a result of the new Midlands / Northern MPs.
How can the government prevent energy bills from causing political problems?
Options available to it:
1. Cutting VAT - not likely to be enough. 2. Energy Subsidies - likely too expensive and won’t solve anything long term. 3. Er…
What else can they do? Not a lot.
Good morning
This is a problem for governments across the world, and certainly cutting vat would only save a small amount when considering the huge increases
I would expect HMG to provide targeted help to those on low incomes similar to the £300 provided to elderly pensioners each December and restricting the rise in April
That’s certainly the right thing to do, but its not a political solution as the loudest voices will come from the middle classes who can afford them but will feel much poorer as a result.
Ultimately HMG need to protect the poorest but this is a problem that does not have an easy answer
How can the government prevent energy bills from causing political problems?
Options available to it:
1. Cutting VAT - not likely to be enough. 2. Energy Subsidies - likely too expensive and won’t solve anything long term. 3. Er…
What else can they do? Not a lot.
Good morning
This is a problem for governments across the world, and certainly cutting vat would only save a small amount when considering the huge increases
I would expect HMG to provide targeted help to those on low incomes similar to the £300 provided to elderly pensioners each December and restricting the rise in April
Whilst it is a problem elsewhere we are uniquely hard hit thanks to having minimal storage and having chosen to be unprotected against spot prices.
As for the lowest incomes yes I absolutely agree. But the political pain will be from the squeezed middle, ineligible for any support but really struggling to keep up with soaring bills just as the big tax rises kick in.
It is hard to see Truss not making the final two and if she is there then she's in with a strong chance.
Why are you sure she will make the final two? Do you know what level of MP support she has?
From above, if say Sunak, Truss, Gove, Javid, Hunt and either Baker/Harper stood in a contest, which two would come through.
I don't know but my best guess would be Sunak and Hunt. Possibly Sunak and Baker/or Harper. And Gove had decent support in the 2019 (narrowly beaten by Hunt into second place). I'm far from convinced that Truss has the MPs' support.
My feel at the moment is the candidate from the pro-Brexit / Blue Collar / economically interventionist wing will make the final round. That grouping is clearly on manoeuvres (eg the letter to the Telegraph), know they have the numbers to get far (the near 100 MPs rebelling against Boris for a start) and have opinions that should appeal to many of the base.
What might be interesting are the shorts. Jeremy Hunt is a classic example of a bet where us sophisticated elites of PB.com project our own views onto the base. Truss is close by.
Do you think blue collar/interventionist has a significant following amongst the Tory members?
I think they will base their vote on who is the best placed leader to keep the Tories in power. I’m sure @HYUFD has a better view than me but I would imagine the base has moved right wards in recent years as many of the pro-EU, socially liberal types have become less comfortable.
From a betting standpoint for next Tory leader, I think the value bets are from that part of the party.
Yes. But the membership is overwhelmingly older, wealthier and more SE based than the electorate as a whole. I can't see them wanting anything approaching a levelling up agenda. Culture War and cuts yes. Culture War isn't blue collar necessarily.
Who would be against levelling up? On what basis? As an old fart of Conservative disposition in the Home Counties I would love to see successful levelling up.
Levelling up yes, as long as it does not mean levelling you down with higher tax rises on the South to pay for more spending on the redwall
By definition levelling up implies making the lower deciles better off. There is obviously a cost to that aka taxation. So long as it is levelling up to generate a better outcome and not levelling down I'm relaxed about it. Extra taxation isn't a deal breaker.
But you can't have levelling up without someone being levelled down. That's pure fantasy.
Things don't have to be a zero-sum game. Investments that (for instance) decrease the unemployment rate may cost initially, but the reduction in unemployment is a positive benefit to the area in a number of ways, and the wider economy as a whole.
The problem is that levelling up is really hard to do: if it wasn't, then it would have been done yonks ago. But at least these areas, so long forgotten by their Labour masters, are getting some attention. We're talking about the 'Red Wall', rather than just forgetting about them.
Yes, but redistribution implies tinkering with the market, thereby in right wing thinking making it less efficient. After all, if the market was going to level up on its own then it wouldn't be nessecary.
Now there are different government interventions, from outright subsidy to various regions or industries, to tax breaks that come to the same thing, but they all interfere in the free market.
Redistribution is intrinsically anti-market. For some of us that isn't really an issue, as a core part of Social Democrat philosophy is that capitalism is good, but needs mitigating for the social good of the country. It is right wing ideologues like Thatcher who have a problem with it. The Levelling up agenda is a fundamental repudiation of Thatcherism.
I don't care about left- and right- wing thinking. It's tribal sh*t that has helped us get into this mess in the first place. Ideologues caring more about their petty ideologies than they do about people. I'd also argue you're very wrong with all of that, and are just seeing it through a prism of your own politics.
What matters is what works.
Labour's record for these areas is (ahem) rather poor. The Levelling Up agenda may or may not be a fundamental repudiation of Thatcherism (I think that's a bogus argument); but then you can also claim that it is a fundamental repudiation of Labour and Blairite policies of the last fifty years.
On topic, recency bias. All the stuff is now, literally, very last year, and people vaguely feel he will put it all behind him and make a fresh start. No chance. He is toast this year.
Gotta love an on-topic post in the midst of the nonsense.
You (re-re-re-re-re-re)posted a picture of Jim Murphy in 2014. Probably best not to talk about nonsense and being off-topic.
Spain update: An optimistic covid article from El Pais - unless you're under 50 in Andalucia - just 13% of 50-59 year olds have been given the booster jab!
Moreover, it isn’t accurate. They’re not to be tested *before* starting back, they are to be tested *on* starting back. Given the numbers to be tested that will have to go ahead as stated because there is no time to make changes (most schools starting back tomorrow).
I am very rapidly coming to the conclusion that every single member of the DfE is actively out to destroy education, rather than just being thick as mince. The whole thing is spinning to try and look as if they’re doing something to conceal the fact they have completely failed to take the only two measures that would work - smaller classes and air filters.
And yet the media aren’t even asking the basic questions about this.
Yep. I wasn't paying close attention TBH but they were interviewing Zahawi on the TV a few minutes ago, and most of the discussion seemed to revolve around masks, before it moved on to generic stuff about the NHS and staff absences.
Leaky cotton or paper masks are almost certainly useless against Omicron and, therefore, constitute futile something-must-be-done-ism, but they are also highly visible and a nuisance, divisive imposition which therefore attracts a lot of media attention and argument. Ventilation is boring so nobody's interested in talking about it.
They had a go on R4, but Zahawi rather determinedly avoided the awkward questions.
How can the government prevent energy bills from causing political problems?
Options available to it:
1. Cutting VAT - not likely to be enough. 2. Energy Subsidies - likely too expensive and won’t solve anything long term. 3. Er…
What else can they do? Not a lot.
Wind the clock back 3 years, not allow closure of the UK strategic gas storage facilities for private profit and/or not leave the regulated European energy market. As their own advisers explicitly warned them not to do.
This may be on the margins but the price of gas is hitting each and every country
How can the government prevent energy bills from causing political problems?
Options available to it:
1. Cutting VAT - not likely to be enough. 2. Energy Subsidies - likely too expensive and won’t solve anything long term. 3. Er…
What else can they do? Not a lot.
There's been talk of a £20bn fund (over the next decade) to 'smooth out' prices / stabilise the market... Whether it comes to anything will be interesting to watch.
How can the government prevent energy bills from causing political problems?
Options available to it:
1. Cutting VAT - not likely to be enough. 2. Energy Subsidies - likely too expensive and won’t solve anything long term. 3. Er…
What else can they do? Not a lot.
Good morning
This is a problem for governments across the world, and certainly cutting vat would only save a small amount when considering the huge increases
I would expect HMG to provide targeted help to those on low incomes similar to the £300 provided to elderly pensioners each December and restricting the rise in April
Whilst it is a problem elsewhere we are uniquely hard hit thanks to having minimal storage and having chosen to be unprotected against spot prices.
As for the lowest incomes yes I absolutely agree. But the political pain will be from the squeezed middle, ineligible for any support but really struggling to keep up with soaring bills just as the big tax rises kick in.
Spanish electricity & fuel prices are through the roof [and the former was pretty expensive before!] despite some help for the poorest. As a result inflation is currently running at nearly 7% and rising. Any idea that this is uniquely British is simply absurd.
How can the government prevent energy bills from causing political problems?
Options available to it:
1. Cutting VAT - not likely to be enough. 2. Energy Subsidies - likely too expensive and won’t solve anything long term. 3. Er…
What else can they do? Not a lot.
Good morning
This is a problem for governments across the world, and certainly cutting vat would only save a small amount when considering the huge increases
I would expect HMG to provide targeted help to those on low incomes similar to the £300 provided to elderly pensioners each December and restricting the rise in April
Is that 300 pounds per year or per month? It seems like a joke, but an extra 300 pounds per month is what EDF offered me to fix my energy bills.
On topic, recency bias. All the stuff is now, literally, very last year, and people vaguely feel he will put it all behind him and make a fresh start. No chance. He is toast this year.
He was toast last year. He just hasn't left office yet.
Indeed.
Confidence is a harsh quality. Once lost, it is almost impossible to regain.
He hasn’t lost a VONC, yet, but he has already lost the confidence of his party, parliament and the countries.
Yes, but the shopping trolley with a stuck wheel will bumble on, at least until the springtime.
It wouldn't surprise me if Johnson did a cull of cabinet plotters to shore up his support with the headbangers on the backbenches. Look out for a fresh reshuffle, Johnson is quite Stalinist in how he runs his court. It's about the only thing that he does plan for.
It is hard to see Truss not making the final two and if she is there then she's in with a strong chance.
Why are you sure she will make the final two? Do you know what level of MP support she has?
From above, if say Sunak, Truss, Gove, Javid, Hunt and either Baker/Harper stood in a contest, which two would come through.
I don't know but my best guess would be Sunak and Hunt. Possibly Sunak and Baker/or Harper. And Gove had decent support in the 2019 (narrowly beaten by Hunt into second place). I'm far from convinced that Truss has the MPs' support.
My feel at the moment is the candidate from the pro-Brexit / Blue Collar / economically interventionist wing will make the final round. That grouping is clearly on manoeuvres (eg the letter to the Telegraph), know they have the numbers to get far (the near 100 MPs rebelling against Boris for a start) and have opinions that should appeal to many of the base.
What might be interesting are the shorts. Jeremy Hunt is a classic example of a bet where us sophisticated elites of PB.com project our own views onto the base. Truss is close by.
Do you think blue collar/interventionist has a significant following amongst the Tory members?
I think they will base their vote on who is the best placed leader to keep the Tories in power. I’m sure @HYUFD has a better view than me but I would imagine the base has moved right wards in recent years as many of the pro-EU, socially liberal types have become less comfortable.
From a betting standpoint for next Tory leader, I think the value bets are from that part of the party.
Yes. But the membership is overwhelmingly older, wealthier and more SE based than the electorate as a whole. I can't see them wanting anything approaching a levelling up agenda. Culture War and cuts yes. Culture War isn't blue collar necessarily.
Who would be against levelling up? On what basis? As an old fart of Conservative disposition in the Home Counties I would love to see successful levelling up.
Levelling up yes, as long as it does not mean levelling you down with higher tax rises on the South to pay for more spending on the redwall
By definition levelling up implies making the lower deciles better off. There is obviously a cost to that aka taxation. So long as it is levelling up to generate a better outcome and not levelling down I'm relaxed about it. Extra taxation isn't a deal breaker.
But you can't have levelling up without someone being levelled down. That's pure fantasy.
Of course you can.
That’s the fundamental difference between left and right.
Equality of opportunity and extra investment; more growth overall but the north gets richer faster (hence levelling up). That’s the right’s approach
The left would prefer equality of outcome, delivered through taxation and redistribution, which results in levelling down
Lazy.
The South is currently relatively much richer than the North. If you point the limited national resources at the North at the expense of the South (which is what is required), the South will relatively become poorer compared to the North.
This is just a fact of life. It doesn’t mean that the South doesn’t get objectively richer during the time, it just gets relatively poorer.
If the South doesn’t get relatively poorer, then its not true levelling up as the North/South divide remains.
This is the truth about where New Labour went wrong. Remember that Many was relaxed about the filthy rich getting richer? Doesn't matter - they thought - because we're lifting you out of institutionalised poverty, building new schools and hospitals, transforming your life chances etc. The list of their achievements in office - direct benefits to the red wall achievements - is extensive.
And yet ultimately so many of the people benefitting from New Labour think they did nothing. Why? Because of economic relativity. They picked up places like Teesside and lifted them towards where the south was. But the south was also lifting, so the disparity remained. Whats worse, so many of the new job opportunities were service jobs - hard graft in an anonymous warehouse for you to make the south richer
And those northern service jobs were generally worse paid than the disappearing industrial and mining jobs they replaced.
Even if they paid the same, too many outsiders miss the big picture. Heavy industry gave a place an identity. Pride. A community spirit. The knowledge that your work was doing something big, something that put your town on the map, your work noticed. And a job for your sons.
What do warehouse and call centre jobs offer, even if the work pays the same? No pride. No worth. No image. No security. Labour then spent their time in government and beyond either saying this is the new world deal with it, or 'this is the Tories fault, deal with it'.
No wonder people voted for Brexit and then Boris to get Brexit done. But here we are in 2022 and the only thing that's been done is the red wall voter. I expect many will swing back to Labour as a muscle memory. But turnout will be lower because whats the point?
I regret to inform you France is doing the "EU institutions need to speak French" thing again. Feels half-hearted (they want to encourage eurocrats and diplomats to take lessons) but they have not given up.
You’d have thought with the UK having left they’d be more relaxed about English being the lingua franca of the EU. Ireland and Malta are unlikely to disproportionately benefit from its use…
On the subject of languages, have we covered our Saudi loving, Polish born MPs £22, 000 on Polish language lessons?
If you pay the teacher 50 quid an hour, then that's 160 hours in a year, or about 3 per week. That's just about plausible, although obviously poor value for money.
In my experience it's not usual for tutors to charge £50 an hour. £30 would be more like it, although @Dura_Ace would know more about the rate for languages (obviously)!
The issue with the MP is surely that he was born in Poland and has previously claimed to be fluent, rather than the precise detail of the cost? If he's a native speaker why does he need to spend anything on lessons?
Welsh was my mother's language, and I speak it fairly well. But not having spoken it consistently in 14 years, I would want to spend time practising it before I had an interview in it.
Just not three sessions a week for a whole year at a vastly inflated price.
I suspect the '23 year old supermodel' may be on the money in more ways than one here...
Now that would be a scandal
Hardly. Not for the MP in question. And the party in question.
It is hard to see Truss not making the final two and if she is there then she's in with a strong chance.
Why are you sure she will make the final two? Do you know what level of MP support she has?
From above, if say Sunak, Truss, Gove, Javid, Hunt and either Baker/Harper stood in a contest, which two would come through.
I don't know but my best guess would be Sunak and Hunt. Possibly Sunak and Baker/or Harper. And Gove had decent support in the 2019 (narrowly beaten by Hunt into second place). I'm far from convinced that Truss has the MPs' support.
My feel at the moment is the candidate from the pro-Brexit / Blue Collar / economically interventionist wing will make the final round. That grouping is clearly on manoeuvres (eg the letter to the Telegraph), know they have the numbers to get far (the near 100 MPs rebelling against Boris for a start) and have opinions that should appeal to many of the base.
What might be interesting are the shorts. Jeremy Hunt is a classic example of a bet where us sophisticated elites of PB.com project our own views onto the base. Truss is close by.
Do you think blue collar/interventionist has a significant following amongst the Tory members?
I think they will base their vote on who is the best placed leader to keep the Tories in power. I’m sure @HYUFD has a better view than me but I would imagine the base has moved right wards in recent years as many of the pro-EU, socially liberal types have become less comfortable.
From a betting standpoint for next Tory leader, I think the value bets are from that part of the party.
Yes. But the membership is overwhelmingly older, wealthier and more SE based than the electorate as a whole. I can't see them wanting anything approaching a levelling up agenda. Culture War and cuts yes. Culture War isn't blue collar necessarily.
Who would be against levelling up? On what basis? As an old fart of Conservative disposition in the Home Counties I would love to see successful levelling up.
Levelling up yes, as long as it does not mean levelling you down with higher tax rises on the South to pay for more spending on the redwall
By definition levelling up implies making the lower deciles better off. There is obviously a cost to that aka taxation. So long as it is levelling up to generate a better outcome and not levelling down I'm relaxed about it. Extra taxation isn't a deal breaker.
But you can't have levelling up without someone being levelled down. That's pure fantasy.
Things don't have to be a zero-sum game. Investments that (for instance) decrease the unemployment rate may cost initially, but the reduction in unemployment is a positive benefit to the area in a number of ways, and the wider economy as a whole.
The problem is that levelling up is really hard to do: if it wasn't, then it would have been done yonks ago. But at least these areas, so long forgotten by their Labour masters, are getting some attention. We're talking about the 'Red Wall', rather than just forgetting about them.
40 years into the post-industrial age most investment seems very hard to do. We're still brilliant inventors, researchers, creators. But awful at the long-term investment and long-term ownership bits. People are rightly now looking at the amount of tax the government is taking and wondering what its being spent on when we have inferior infrastructure and services compared to many of our neighbours.
Frankly we need to follow the money. Start with the NHS - how are we pumping record amounts into the system yet see front line services starved of money in a crisis? The PPE contracts are the gimme - don't just look at oceans of money disappearing into back pockets on these contracts. Understand that is the set up in general. Then expand from healthcare to so many other things and start to understand the problem.
Profit is good - from industry. Much less so from services. But it needs to be reinvested for future growth and so often it isn't. I have no idea how we turn that around when the people owning the trousers who the cash is disappearing into are the ones largely in control.
I think there's also a lot of lazy thinking about these areas. Investment goes to the south / more prosperous areas because money follows money, and because that's where the money always goes. It's just a little easier to do what's always done. It's the place investors know. It's the lazy choice.
That's the sort of thinking we need to be banishing. We need to make the poorer areas more attractive to inward investment, from inside the UK and abroad. It's a long-term project, but at least people are now looking at it.
There is a massive amount of unfulfilled potential in these areas - and that's why levelling up is not a zero-sum game.
Moreover, it isn’t accurate. They’re not to be tested *before* starting back, they are to be tested *on* starting back. Given the numbers to be tested that will have to go ahead as stated because there is no time to make changes (most schools starting back tomorrow).
I am very rapidly coming to the conclusion that every single member of the DfE is actively out to destroy education, rather than just being thick as mince. The whole thing is spinning to try and look as if they’re doing something to conceal the fact they have completely failed to take the only two measures that would work - smaller classes and air filters.
And yet the media aren’t even asking the basic questions about this.
Yep. I wasn't paying close attention TBH but they were interviewing Zahawi on the TV a few minutes ago, and most of the discussion seemed to revolve around masks, before it moved on to generic stuff about the NHS and staff absences.
Leaky cotton or paper masks are almost certainly useless against Omicron and, therefore, constitute futile something-must-be-done-ism, but they are also highly visible and a nuisance, divisive imposition which therefore attracts a lot of media attention and argument. Ventilation is boring so nobody's interested in talking about it.
They had a go on R4, but Zahawi rather determinedly avoided the awkward questions.
What questions did they ask, can you remember?
So far nothing from my school, but they may simply have been caught by surprise.
I wonder about our PM's problems sometimes. He must have made excellent financial settlements for all his ex-wives.... I recall the story about his second one ..... and children, and be continuing with that support as necessary or requested. Otherwise, somewhere, there will be a disgruntled ex-wife, or partner. Or even offspring! I'm not entirely sure we've heard the last of Ms Arcuri, either. Although I suspect that revelations from that quarter would only be really damaging if his activities there were found to be co-incidental with the early days of the current Mrs J.
His problems all do appear to have either a financial or sexual aspect to them. I suspect that he’s pretty much skint after his last divorce, is not earning a lot of money by his own standards, and has no idea how he gets out of the situation.
It’s actually a reason to bet against him staying on too long as PM: at some point he’s going to really need the book advance and the speaking fees, and can’t keep hiding loans from old friends. Even Theresa May has managed to bank a couple of million as a speaker, since she stood down from the top job.
I’m surprised at this ‘even Theresa May’ gibe I keep seeing.
1) When giving speeches not on politics, all the evidence is she is witty, intelligent, well informed and quite capable of laughing at herself. The perfect after dinner speaker.
2) She is also a very powerful speaker when she puts her mind to it. Who could forget that time she roasted the police?
3) She’s an ex-PM who led through some very tough times and did in fact lay the groundwork for our departure from the EU, although Johnson negotiated a deal one stage back from hers and then shamelessly took credit. Why wouldn’t you want to hear from such a person?
4) She’s still an MP and has emerged as one of the more thoughtful and independently-minded Tories out there (not saying much).
Why wouldn’t you pay good money to hear from such a person?
I think the reason she came across so badly as PM was partly the very difficult situation she was in and partly appalling advice.
But Theresa May was awful! She failed to deliver Singapore-on-Thames Brexit and had to go.
I wonder about our PM's problems sometimes. He must have made excellent financial settlements for all his ex-wives.... I recall the story about his second one ..... and children, and be continuing with that support as necessary or requested. Otherwise, somewhere, there will be a disgruntled ex-wife, or partner. Or even offspring! I'm not entirely sure we've heard the last of Ms Arcuri, either. Although I suspect that revelations from that quarter would only be really damaging if his activities there were found to be co-incidental with the early days of the current Mrs J.
His problems all do appear to have either a financial or sexual aspect to them. I suspect that he’s pretty much skint after his last divorce, is not earning a lot of money by his own standards, and has no idea how he gets out of the situation.
It’s actually a reason to bet against him staying on too long as PM: at some point he’s going to really need the book advance and the speaking fees, and can’t keep hiding loans from old friends. Even Theresa May has managed to bank a couple of million as a speaker, since she stood down from the top job.
I’m surprised at this ‘even Theresa May’ gibe I keep seeing.
1) When giving speeches not on politics, all the evidence is she is witty, intelligent, well informed and quite capable of laughing at herself. The perfect after dinner speaker.
2) She is also a very powerful speaker when she puts her mind to it. Who could forget that time she roasted the police?
3) She’s an ex-PM who led through some very tough times and did in fact lay the groundwork for our departure from the EU, although Johnson negotiated a deal one stage back from hers and then shamelessly took credit. Why wouldn’t you want to hear from such a person?
4) She’s still an MP and has emerged as one of the more thoughtful and independently-minded Tories out there (not saying much).
Why wouldn’t you pay good money to hear from such a person?
I think the reason she came across so badly as PM was partly the very difficult situation she was in and partly appalling advice.
It may be Boris has shat the bed so badly he's not worth as much as May on the lecture circuit. Joke's not funny any more to anyone. Who wants to pay for more peppa pig speeches?
But like Peppa that was free except in political capital. And the people who went to the sell out stadium concerts don't necessarily go to the same band only most of the line up changed replaying its old standards to village festivals and town halls. Worst case he winds up as a tribute act to himself
It is hard to see Truss not making the final two and if she is there then she's in with a strong chance.
Why are you sure she will make the final two? Do you know what level of MP support she has?
From above, if say Sunak, Truss, Gove, Javid, Hunt and either Baker/Harper stood in a contest, which two would come through.
I don't know but my best guess would be Sunak and Hunt. Possibly Sunak and Baker/or Harper. And Gove had decent support in the 2019 (narrowly beaten by Hunt into second place). I'm far from convinced that Truss has the MPs' support.
My feel at the moment is the candidate from the pro-Brexit / Blue Collar / economically interventionist wing will make the final round. That grouping is clearly on manoeuvres (eg the letter to the Telegraph), know they have the numbers to get far (the near 100 MPs rebelling against Boris for a start) and have opinions that should appeal to many of the base.
What might be interesting are the shorts. Jeremy Hunt is a classic example of a bet where us sophisticated elites of PB.com project our own views onto the base. Truss is close by.
Do you think blue collar/interventionist has a significant following amongst the Tory members?
I think they will base their vote on who is the best placed leader to keep the Tories in power. I’m sure @HYUFD has a better view than me but I would imagine the base has moved right wards in recent years as many of the pro-EU, socially liberal types have become less comfortable.
From a betting standpoint for next Tory leader, I think the value bets are from that part of the party.
Yes. But the membership is overwhelmingly older, wealthier and more SE based than the electorate as a whole. I can't see them wanting anything approaching a levelling up agenda. Culture War and cuts yes. Culture War isn't blue collar necessarily.
Who would be against levelling up? On what basis? As an old fart of Conservative disposition in the Home Counties I would love to see successful levelling up.
Levelling up yes, as long as it does not mean levelling you down with higher tax rises on the South to pay for more spending on the redwall
By definition levelling up implies making the lower deciles better off. There is obviously a cost to that aka taxation. So long as it is levelling up to generate a better outcome and not levelling down I'm relaxed about it. Extra taxation isn't a deal breaker.
But you can't have levelling up without someone being levelled down. That's pure fantasy.
Of course you can.
That’s the fundamental difference between left and right.
Equality of opportunity and extra investment; more growth overall but the north gets richer faster (hence levelling up). That’s the right’s approach
The left would prefer equality of outcome, delivered through taxation and redistribution, which results in levelling down
Strange post. A couple of questions:
Equality of opportunity - how does private education square with that?
Extra investment - where does the money come from?
It is hard to see Truss not making the final two and if she is there then she's in with a strong chance.
Why are you sure she will make the final two? Do you know what level of MP support she has?
From above, if say Sunak, Truss, Gove, Javid, Hunt and either Baker/Harper stood in a contest, which two would come through.
I don't know but my best guess would be Sunak and Hunt. Possibly Sunak and Baker/or Harper. And Gove had decent support in the 2019 (narrowly beaten by Hunt into second place). I'm far from convinced that Truss has the MPs' support.
My feel at the moment is the candidate from the pro-Brexit / Blue Collar / economically interventionist wing will make the final round. That grouping is clearly on manoeuvres (eg the letter to the Telegraph), know they have the numbers to get far (the near 100 MPs rebelling against Boris for a start) and have opinions that should appeal to many of the base.
What might be interesting are the shorts. Jeremy Hunt is a classic example of a bet where us sophisticated elites of PB.com project our own views onto the base. Truss is close by.
Do you think blue collar/interventionist has a significant following amongst the Tory members?
I think they will base their vote on who is the best placed leader to keep the Tories in power. I’m sure @HYUFD has a better view than me but I would imagine the base has moved right wards in recent years as many of the pro-EU, socially liberal types have become less comfortable.
From a betting standpoint for next Tory leader, I think the value bets are from that part of the party.
Yes. But the membership is overwhelmingly older, wealthier and more SE based than the electorate as a whole. I can't see them wanting anything approaching a levelling up agenda. Culture War and cuts yes. Culture War isn't blue collar necessarily.
Who would be against levelling up? On what basis? As an old fart of Conservative disposition in the Home Counties I would love to see successful levelling up.
Levelling up yes, as long as it does not mean levelling you down with higher tax rises on the South to pay for more spending on the redwall
By definition levelling up implies making the lower deciles better off. There is obviously a cost to that aka taxation. So long as it is levelling up to generate a better outcome and not levelling down I'm relaxed about it. Extra taxation isn't a deal breaker.
But you can't have levelling up without someone being levelled down. That's pure fantasy.
Things don't have to be a zero-sum game. Investments that (for instance) decrease the unemployment rate may cost initially, but the reduction in unemployment is a positive benefit to the area in a number of ways, and the wider economy as a whole.
The problem is that levelling up is really hard to do: if it wasn't, then it would have been done yonks ago. But at least these areas, so long forgotten by their Labour masters, are getting some attention. We're talking about the 'Red Wall', rather than just forgetting about them.
Yes, but redistribution implies tinkering with the market, thereby in right wing thinking making it less efficient. After all, if the market was going to level up on its own then it wouldn't be nessecary.
Now there are different government interventions, from outright subsidy to various regions or industries, to tax breaks that come to the same thing, but they all interfere in the free market.
Redistribution is intrinsically anti-market. For some of us that isn't really an issue, as a core part of Social Democrat philosophy is that capitalism is good, but needs mitigating for the social good of the country. It is right wing ideologues like Thatcher who have a problem with it. The Levelling up agenda is a fundamental repudiation of Thatcherism.
I don't care about left- and right- wing thinking. It's tribal sh*t that has helped us get into this mess in the first place. Ideologues caring more about their petty ideologies than they do about people. I'd also argue you're very wrong with all of that, and are just seeing it through a prism of your own politics.
What matters is what works.
Labour's record for these areas is (ahem) rather poor. The Levelling Up agenda may or may not be a fundamental repudiation of Thatcherism (I think that's a bogus argument); but then you can also claim that it is a fundamental repudiation of Labour and Blairite policies of the last fifty years.
Indeed. Seeing as all the major economies of the world run a mixed economy model rather than pure capitalism or pure communism it is baffling how few are pragmatic about selecting the right tools to use for our economy rather than the tools that are best only ideologically.
How can the government prevent energy bills from causing political problems?
Options available to it:
1. Cutting VAT - not likely to be enough. 2. Energy Subsidies - likely too expensive and won’t solve anything long term. 3. Er…
What else can they do? Not a lot.
Good morning
This is a problem for governments across the world, and certainly cutting vat would only save a small amount when considering the huge increases
I would expect HMG to provide targeted help to those on low incomes similar to the £300 provided to elderly pensioners each December and restricting the rise in April
Is that 300 pounds per year or per month? It seems like a joke, but an extra 300 pounds per month is what EDF offered me to fix my energy bills.
It is an annual payment for pensioners over 80 and £200 for those born between September 1941 and September 1955
It is expected energy bills will rise from £1200 to £2000 average by April - it is an issue that needs to be ameliorated
It is hard to see Truss not making the final two and if she is there then she's in with a strong chance.
Why are you sure she will make the final two? Do you know what level of MP support she has?
From above, if say Sunak, Truss, Gove, Javid, Hunt and either Baker/Harper stood in a contest, which two would come through.
I don't know but my best guess would be Sunak and Hunt. Possibly Sunak and Baker/or Harper. And Gove had decent support in the 2019 (narrowly beaten by Hunt into second place). I'm far from convinced that Truss has the MPs' support.
My feel at the moment is the candidate from the pro-Brexit / Blue Collar / economically interventionist wing will make the final round. That grouping is clearly on manoeuvres (eg the letter to the Telegraph), know they have the numbers to get far (the near 100 MPs rebelling against Boris for a start) and have opinions that should appeal to many of the base.
What might be interesting are the shorts. Jeremy Hunt is a classic example of a bet where us sophisticated elites of PB.com project our own views onto the base. Truss is close by.
Do you think blue collar/interventionist has a significant following amongst the Tory members?
I think they will base their vote on who is the best placed leader to keep the Tories in power. I’m sure @HYUFD has a better view than me but I would imagine the base has moved right wards in recent years as many of the pro-EU, socially liberal types have become less comfortable.
From a betting standpoint for next Tory leader, I think the value bets are from that part of the party.
Yes. But the membership is overwhelmingly older, wealthier and more SE based than the electorate as a whole. I can't see them wanting anything approaching a levelling up agenda. Culture War and cuts yes. Culture War isn't blue collar necessarily.
Who would be against levelling up? On what basis? As an old fart of Conservative disposition in the Home Counties I would love to see successful levelling up.
Levelling up yes, as long as it does not mean levelling you down with higher tax rises on the South to pay for more spending on the redwall
By definition levelling up implies making the lower deciles better off. There is obviously a cost to that aka taxation. So long as it is levelling up to generate a better outcome and not levelling down I'm relaxed about it. Extra taxation isn't a deal breaker.
But you can't have levelling up without someone being levelled down. That's pure fantasy.
Things don't have to be a zero-sum game. Investments that (for instance) decrease the unemployment rate may cost initially, but the reduction in unemployment is a positive benefit to the area in a number of ways, and the wider economy as a whole.
The problem is that levelling up is really hard to do: if it wasn't, then it would have been done yonks ago. But at least these areas, so long forgotten by their Labour masters, are getting some attention. We're talking about the 'Red Wall', rather than just forgetting about them.
Yes, but redistribution implies tinkering with the market, thereby in right wing thinking making it less efficient. After all, if the market was going to level up on its own then it wouldn't be nessecary.
Now there are different government interventions, from outright subsidy to various regions or industries, to tax breaks that come to the same thing, but they all interfere in the free market.
Redistribution is intrinsically anti-market. For some of us that isn't really an issue, as a core part of Social Democrat philosophy is that capitalism is good, but needs mitigating for the social good of the country. It is right wing ideologues like Thatcher who have a problem with it. The Levelling up agenda is a fundamental repudiation of Thatcherism.
I don't care about left- and right- wing thinking. It's tribal sh*t that has helped us get into this mess in the first place. Ideologues caring more about their petty ideologies than they do about people. I'd also argue you're very wrong with all of that, and are just seeing it through a prism of your own politics.
What matters is what works.
Labour's record for these areas is (ahem) rather poor. The Levelling Up agenda may or may not be a fundamental repudiation of Thatcherism (I think that's a bogus argument); but then you can also claim that it is a fundamental repudiation of Labour and Blairite policies of the last fifty years.
Depends on what measure. Vs the decayed crumbling hell that so many red wall towns were by the mid-90s, Labour's record was success piled on success. The problem was that they levelled up to the south circa 1985, not the south of the present. Give people more and they want even more.
What they should have done was to invest to transform red wall towns. Don't just try and repair the damage caused by Thatcher. Completely overhaul and refocus former industrial areas to be new industrial areas. The white heat of the 21st century and all that. But Sir Tony believed whole-heartedly in globalisation, so didn't.
It is hard to see Truss not making the final two and if she is there then she's in with a strong chance.
Why are you sure she will make the final two? Do you know what level of MP support she has?
From above, if say Sunak, Truss, Gove, Javid, Hunt and either Baker/Harper stood in a contest, which two would come through.
I don't know but my best guess would be Sunak and Hunt. Possibly Sunak and Baker/or Harper. And Gove had decent support in the 2019 (narrowly beaten by Hunt into second place). I'm far from convinced that Truss has the MPs' support.
My feel at the moment is the candidate from the pro-Brexit / Blue Collar / economically interventionist wing will make the final round. That grouping is clearly on manoeuvres (eg the letter to the Telegraph), know they have the numbers to get far (the near 100 MPs rebelling against Boris for a start) and have opinions that should appeal to many of the base.
What might be interesting are the shorts. Jeremy Hunt is a classic example of a bet where us sophisticated elites of PB.com project our own views onto the base. Truss is close by.
Do you think blue collar/interventionist has a significant following amongst the Tory members?
I think they will base their vote on who is the best placed leader to keep the Tories in power. I’m sure @HYUFD has a better view than me but I would imagine the base has moved right wards in recent years as many of the pro-EU, socially liberal types have become less comfortable.
From a betting standpoint for next Tory leader, I think the value bets are from that part of the party.
Yes. But the membership is overwhelmingly older, wealthier and more SE based than the electorate as a whole. I can't see them wanting anything approaching a levelling up agenda. Culture War and cuts yes. Culture War isn't blue collar necessarily.
Who would be against levelling up? On what basis? As an old fart of Conservative disposition in the Home Counties I would love to see successful levelling up.
Levelling up yes, as long as it does not mean levelling you down with higher tax rises on the South to pay for more spending on the redwall
By definition levelling up implies making the lower deciles better off. There is obviously a cost to that aka taxation. So long as it is levelling up to generate a better outcome and not levelling down I'm relaxed about it. Extra taxation isn't a deal breaker.
But you can't have levelling up without someone being levelled down. That's pure fantasy.
Of course you can.
That’s the fundamental difference between left and right.
Equality of opportunity and extra investment; more growth overall but the north gets richer faster (hence levelling up). That’s the right’s approach
The left would prefer equality of outcome, delivered through taxation and redistribution, which results in levelling down
Lazy.
The South is currently relatively much richer than the North. If you point the limited national resources at the North at the expense of the South (which is what is required), the South will relatively become poorer compared to the North.
This is just a fact of life. It doesn’t mean that the South doesn’t get objectively richer during the time, it just gets relatively poorer.
If the South doesn’t get relatively poorer, then its not true levelling up as the North/South divide remains.
This is the truth about where New Labour went wrong. Remember that Many was relaxed about the filthy rich getting richer? Doesn't matter - they thought - because we're lifting you out of institutionalised poverty, building new schools and hospitals, transforming your life chances etc. The list of their achievements in office - direct benefits to the red wall achievements - is extensive.
And yet ultimately so many of the people benefitting from New Labour think they did nothing. Why? Because of economic relativity. They picked up places like Teesside and lifted them towards where the south was. But the south was also lifting, so the disparity remained. Whats worse, so many of the new job opportunities were service jobs - hard graft in an anonymous warehouse for you to make the south richer
I'm not clear how the balance in Tory membership has shifted as a result of the new Midlands / Northern MPs.
Well, we do know that Conservative Party membership jumped by a third in 2019, so presumably Brexit fans (and not kipper entryists because that only happens to Labour). Their geographic spread and what has happened in the last two years, dunno.
p.s. as it happens I'm not really in favour of masking children. I find it absolutely bizarre that we're happy to let adults frolick around in a pub without any protection or restrictions whilst we're prepared to gag our children.
Child abuse.
they must know or strongly suspect that cotton or paper masks are useless against Omicron. Thus, no point applying them where they might do even more economic damage, but useful for virtue signalling where they won't.
I don't disagree with anything in your post except your repeated denigration of the use of cotton or paper masks. We went through all of this at the beginning of covid and unless you are a scientist and can prove your point (which you won't be able to) it's obviously preferable to wear a less-than-perfect mask than not wear one at all. So pack it in please.
The rest of your post is good though. It is, as you say, basically about money and virtue signalling.
I think we'll have to agree to differ politely on the low quality masks.
It's not heresy to suggest that simple masks and some other basic interventions that could've been of useful effect against earlier strains of this virus might no longer be so against the vastly more transmissible Omicron. There are simply too many other jurisdictions that have more restrictions, yet have started suffering as badly or worse than England since Omicron got stuck into them, for it to be a coincidence.
An intervention that no longer achieves anything useful is worse than no intervention at all.
I've been a strong proponent of masks almost since the beginning of the pandemic. At this point, though, the case for making them compulsory in schools is slim indeed.
And given government has had two years to work out the importance of good ventilation, and do something about it, the lack of any real action there is contemptible.
On topic, I continue to see a 2022 exit for the PM as likely. The first half of the year will see bad Covid/NHS headlines, plus the combined economic hit from Omicron, energy inflation and the accumulating drag from Brexit. Higher utility bills will be a big political event and will combine with increased NI and the increase in hospitality VAT to leave people feeling poorer. Then there are local elections in May, when the Tories will likely get a kicking. For a PM whose credibility with the public is already destroyed, I think the combination of these negative headlines will easily be enough to trigger a leadership challenge.
I suspect not and the mood music continues to be against the re-imposition of any kind of restriction at this time.
I presume we're past the point when something useful could have been done to slow the spread of Omicron - it's now loose and thankfully for the vast majority any symptoms are mild. It will cause some minor issues in terms of public and private service provision if staff are self-isolating or ill and the situation in hospitals will doubtless be closely monitored.
However, all I'm hearing is the sound of the stable door swinging off its hinges and the horse galloping over the horizon.
How can the government prevent energy bills from causing political problems?
Options available to it:
1. Cutting VAT - not likely to be enough. 2. Energy Subsidies - likely too expensive and won’t solve anything long term. 3. Er…
What else can they do? Not a lot.
Good morning
This is a problem for governments across the world, and certainly cutting vat would only save a small amount when considering the huge increases
I would expect HMG to provide targeted help to those on low incomes similar to the £300 provided to elderly pensioners each December and restricting the rise in April
Whilst it is a problem elsewhere we are uniquely hard hit thanks to having minimal storage and having chosen to be unprotected against spot prices.
As for the lowest incomes yes I absolutely agree. But the political pain will be from the squeezed middle, ineligible for any support but really struggling to keep up with soaring bills just as the big tax rises kick in.
Spanish electricity & fuel prices are through the roof [and the former was pretty expensive before!] despite some help for the poorest. As a result inflation is currently running at nearly 7% and rising. Any idea that this is uniquely British is simply absurd.
Where have I said that this is uniquely British? I said "it is a problem elsewhere" - and a big one. What is unique to us is that we have none of the protections that even hard-hit places like Spain has.
Each country as a different set-up with energy markets so prices will start at different levels and will move at different speeds. What is different about Britain is that we are so utterly exposed to spot price moves. If the price doubles and we have to buy then we have to pay. Spain isn't the same - that isn't to say no exposure to the huge price increases, but no direct exposure to spot prices like we do.
It is hard to see Truss not making the final two and if she is there then she's in with a strong chance.
Why are you sure she will make the final two? Do you know what level of MP support she has?
From above, if say Sunak, Truss, Gove, Javid, Hunt and either Baker/Harper stood in a contest, which two would come through.
I don't know but my best guess would be Sunak and Hunt. Possibly Sunak and Baker/or Harper. And Gove had decent support in the 2019 (narrowly beaten by Hunt into second place). I'm far from convinced that Truss has the MPs' support.
My feel at the moment is the candidate from the pro-Brexit / Blue Collar / economically interventionist wing will make the final round. That grouping is clearly on manoeuvres (eg the letter to the Telegraph), know they have the numbers to get far (the near 100 MPs rebelling against Boris for a start) and have opinions that should appeal to many of the base.
What might be interesting are the shorts. Jeremy Hunt is a classic example of a bet where us sophisticated elites of PB.com project our own views onto the base. Truss is close by.
Do you think blue collar/interventionist has a significant following amongst the Tory members?
I think they will base their vote on who is the best placed leader to keep the Tories in power. I’m sure @HYUFD has a better view than me but I would imagine the base has moved right wards in recent years as many of the pro-EU, socially liberal types have become less comfortable.
From a betting standpoint for next Tory leader, I think the value bets are from that part of the party.
Yes. But the membership is overwhelmingly older, wealthier and more SE based than the electorate as a whole. I can't see them wanting anything approaching a levelling up agenda. Culture War and cuts yes. Culture War isn't blue collar necessarily.
Who would be against levelling up? On what basis? As an old fart of Conservative disposition in the Home Counties I would love to see successful levelling up.
Levelling up yes, as long as it does not mean levelling you down with higher tax rises on the South to pay for more spending on the redwall
By definition levelling up implies making the lower deciles better off. There is obviously a cost to that aka taxation. So long as it is levelling up to generate a better outcome and not levelling down I'm relaxed about it. Extra taxation isn't a deal breaker.
But you can't have levelling up without someone being levelled down. That's pure fantasy.
Of course you can.
That’s the fundamental difference between left and right.
Equality of opportunity and extra investment; more growth overall but the north gets richer faster (hence levelling up). That’s the right’s approach
The left would prefer equality of outcome, delivered through taxation and redistribution, which results in levelling down
Lazy.
The South is currently relatively much richer than the North. If you point the limited national resources at the North at the expense of the South (which is what is required), the South will relatively become poorer compared to the North.
This is just a fact of life. It doesn’t mean that the South doesn’t get objectively richer during the time, it just gets relatively poorer.
If the South doesn’t get relatively poorer, then its not true levelling up as the North/South divide remains.
This is the truth about where New Labour went wrong. Remember that Many was relaxed about the filthy rich getting richer? Doesn't matter - they thought - because we're lifting you out of institutionalised poverty, building new schools and hospitals, transforming your life chances etc. The list of their achievements in office - direct benefits to the red wall achievements - is extensive.
And yet ultimately so many of the people benefitting from New Labour think they did nothing. Why? Because of economic relativity. They picked up places like Teesside and lifted them towards where the south was. But the south was also lifting, so the disparity remained. Whats worse, so many of the new job opportunities were service jobs - hard graft in an anonymous warehouse for you to make the south richer
And those northern service jobs were generally worse paid than the disappearing industrial and mining jobs they replaced.
Even if they paid the same, too many outsiders miss the big picture. Heavy industry gave a place an identity. Pride. A community spirit. The knowledge that your work was doing something big, something that put your town on the map, your work noticed. And a job for your sons.
What do warehouse and call centre jobs offer, even if the work pays the same? No pride. No worth. No image. No security. Labour then spent their time in government and beyond either saying this is the new world deal with it, or 'this is the Tories fault, deal with it'.
No wonder people voted for Brexit and then Boris to get Brexit done. But here we are in 2022 and the only thing that's been done is the red wall voter. I expect many will swing back to Labour as a muscle memory. But turnout will be lower because whats the point?
" Heavy industry gave a place an identity. Pride. A community spirit."
Having talked to people who worked in heavy industry in the past - mining, steelworking - I think that' a BS generalisation. For one thing, from a couple of people I've chatted to, there was a sense of camaraderie in workers down in a mine - as you might expect from a dangerous environment. But that did not necessarily extend to the majority of workers who were on the surface. I've heard people talk about three 'classes' of mineworkers, even into the 1980s: the ones working underground (the ones we always think of), those working at grass, and the clerical workers. They did not necessarily get along.
It also ignores the vast majority of the people who did not work in the heavy industry, but in support industries, from pubs to shops, equipment supply to transport.
I also think you're being very nasty towards call centres and their workers. It's probably a better job than working in an accounts office at a mine.
How can the government prevent energy bills from causing political problems?
Options available to it:
1. Cutting VAT - not likely to be enough. 2. Energy Subsidies - likely too expensive and won’t solve anything long term. 3. Er…
What else can they do? Not a lot.
Wind the clock back 3 years, not allow closure of the UK strategic gas storage facilities for private profit and/or not leave the regulated European energy market. As their own advisers explicitly warned them not to do.
This may be on the margins but the price of gas is hitting each and every country
Didn't say it wasn't. But the rest of Europe has protection in the form of a regulated energy market - they are seeing the hard impacts of soaring prices but aren't directly exposed to insane spot price moves as we are.
p.s. as it happens I'm not really in favour of masking children. I find it absolutely bizarre that we're happy to let adults frolick around in a pub without any protection or restrictions whilst we're prepared to gag our children.
Child abuse.
they must know or strongly suspect that cotton or paper masks are useless against Omicron. Thus, no point applying them where they might do even more economic damage, but useful for virtue signalling where they won't.
I don't disagree with anything in your post except your repeated denigration of the use of cotton or paper masks. We went through all of this at the beginning of covid and unless you are a scientist and can prove your point (which you won't be able to) it's obviously preferable to wear a less-than-perfect mask than not wear one at all. So pack it in please.
The rest of your post is good though. It is, as you say, basically about money and virtue signalling.
I think we'll have to agree to differ politely on the low quality masks.
It's not heresy to suggest that simple masks and some other basic interventions that could've been of useful effect against earlier strains of this virus might no longer be so against the vastly more transmissible Omicron. There are simply too many other jurisdictions that have more restrictions, yet have started suffering as badly or worse than England since Omicron got stuck into them, for it to be a coincidence.
An intervention that no longer achieves anything useful is worse than no intervention at all.
I've been a strong proponent of masks almost since the beginning of the pandemic. At this point, though, the case for making them compulsory in schools is slim indeed.
And given government has had two years to work out the importance of good ventilation, and do something about it, the lack of any real action there is contemptible.
What's worse is they've introduced them as they say 'no new restrictions are needed.'
Well, what does compulsory mask wearing* count as, then? A fecking fashion statement?
*I should point out that technically they have given schools 'advice' to enforce mask wearing in schools, rather than making them mandatory. This is because it is then the school that gets sued over any problems.
On topic, I think the government’s ratings will slowly start improving from the low base in the next couple of months. As predicted, much of Western Europe is introducing more restrictions, and England isn’t, something that was highlighted on New Year’s Eve and will become more so in the coming weeks. Look at the riots in Amsterdam overnight.
Everyone has been vaccinated, there doesn’t look to be an imminent collapse of the health system and we will just have to start living with it. It’s still going to be a tough couple of weeks for the NHS, with high levels of staff absence due to the virus, even though it looks like the corner is being turned. The key point will turn out to be the Fraser Nelson interrogation of the SAGE scientist, which got the Cabinet asking the right questions of their pandemic advisors.
Q2 looks horrible though, with the planned NI rise (which will surely be cancelled for employees), and energy prices the focus, illustrating the futility of price controls. It’s definitely become clear that opponents of the government, and the PM specifically, are hard at work collecting trivial stories they hope will eventually add up to something.
Assuming there’s not more gaffes coming up, and the PM gets a couple of good new advisors, he’s probably safe this year. The biggest problem, not that he realises it yet, is the wife. He would be much better off sending the family to live at Chequers, and not hang around Downing St getting in the way.
If you were married to Boris (I know, bear with me…) would you want him in town alone during the week?
It is hard to see Truss not making the final two and if she is there then she's in with a strong chance.
Why are you sure she will make the final two? Do you know what level of MP support she has?
From above, if say Sunak, Truss, Gove, Javid, Hunt and either Baker/Harper stood in a contest, which two would come through.
I don't know but my best guess would be Sunak and Hunt. Possibly Sunak and Baker/or Harper. And Gove had decent support in the 2019 (narrowly beaten by Hunt into second place). I'm far from convinced that Truss has the MPs' support.
My feel at the moment is the candidate from the pro-Brexit / Blue Collar / economically interventionist wing will make the final round. That grouping is clearly on manoeuvres (eg the letter to the Telegraph), know they have the numbers to get far (the near 100 MPs rebelling against Boris for a start) and have opinions that should appeal to many of the base.
What might be interesting are the shorts. Jeremy Hunt is a classic example of a bet where us sophisticated elites of PB.com project our own views onto the base. Truss is close by.
Do you think blue collar/interventionist has a significant following amongst the Tory members?
I think they will base their vote on who is the best placed leader to keep the Tories in power. I’m sure @HYUFD has a better view than me but I would imagine the base has moved right wards in recent years as many of the pro-EU, socially liberal types have become less comfortable.
From a betting standpoint for next Tory leader, I think the value bets are from that part of the party.
Yes. But the membership is overwhelmingly older, wealthier and more SE based than the electorate as a whole. I can't see them wanting anything approaching a levelling up agenda. Culture War and cuts yes. Culture War isn't blue collar necessarily.
Who would be against levelling up? On what basis? As an old fart of Conservative disposition in the Home Counties I would love to see successful levelling up.
Levelling up yes, as long as it does not mean levelling you down with higher tax rises on the South to pay for more spending on the redwall
By definition levelling up implies making the lower deciles better off. There is obviously a cost to that aka taxation. So long as it is levelling up to generate a better outcome and not levelling down I'm relaxed about it. Extra taxation isn't a deal breaker.
But you can't have levelling up without someone being levelled down. That's pure fantasy.
Things don't have to be a zero-sum game. Investments that (for instance) decrease the unemployment rate may cost initially, but the reduction in unemployment is a positive benefit to the area in a number of ways, and the wider economy as a whole.
The problem is that levelling up is really hard to do: if it wasn't, then it would have been done yonks ago. But at least these areas, so long forgotten by their Labour masters, are getting some attention. We're talking about the 'Red Wall', rather than just forgetting about them.
Yes, but redistribution implies tinkering with the market, thereby in right wing thinking making it less efficient. After all, if the market was going to level up on its own then it wouldn't be nessecary.
Now there are different government interventions, from outright subsidy to various regions or industries, to tax breaks that come to the same thing, but they all interfere in the free market.
Redistribution is intrinsically anti-market. For some of us that isn't really an issue, as a core part of Social Democrat philosophy is that capitalism is good, but needs mitigating for the social good of the country. It is right wing ideologues like Thatcher who have a problem with it. The Levelling up agenda is a fundamental repudiation of Thatcherism.
I don't care about left- and right- wing thinking. It's tribal sh*t that has helped us get into this mess in the first place. Ideologues caring more about their petty ideologies than they do about people. I'd also argue you're very wrong with all of that, and are just seeing it through a prism of your own politics.
What matters is what works.
Labour's record for these areas is (ahem) rather poor. The Levelling Up agenda may or may not be a fundamental repudiation of Thatcherism (I think that's a bogus argument); but then you can also claim that it is a fundamental repudiation of Labour and Blairite policies of the last fifty years.
I am a Social Democrat, and it sounds like you are too if you believe that market intervention to achieve social justice is an appropriate goal of government. It doesn't sit well with the Libertarian free marketeers on the right of the Tory party though, and that is a growing schism for them.
I think though that you underestimate the rebuilding of the North, and other post industrial parts of the UK under New Labour. @RochdalePioneers has elaborated this well in the past*. The problem was not under New Labour, but the post 2010 Austerity which fell most harshly on post industrial parts of Britain.
*imperfect though it was, Northern cities like Newcastle, Manchester, Liverpool, Leeds and Sheffield are much nicer places to live and work than they were in the 1980s. Brum, Cardiff, Belfast too. The smaller coalfield towns much less so, and it is a fair criticism of New Labour's concentration on urban areas with knowledge based service industries.
It is hard to see Truss not making the final two and if she is there then she's in with a strong chance.
Why are you sure she will make the final two? Do you know what level of MP support she has?
From above, if say Sunak, Truss, Gove, Javid, Hunt and either Baker/Harper stood in a contest, which two would come through.
I don't know but my best guess would be Sunak and Hunt. Possibly Sunak and Baker/or Harper. And Gove had decent support in the 2019 (narrowly beaten by Hunt into second place). I'm far from convinced that Truss has the MPs' support.
My feel at the moment is the candidate from the pro-Brexit / Blue Collar / economically interventionist wing will make the final round. That grouping is clearly on manoeuvres (eg the letter to the Telegraph), know they have the numbers to get far (the near 100 MPs rebelling against Boris for a start) and have opinions that should appeal to many of the base.
What might be interesting are the shorts. Jeremy Hunt is a classic example of a bet where us sophisticated elites of PB.com project our own views onto the base. Truss is close by.
Do you think blue collar/interventionist has a significant following amongst the Tory members?
I think they will base their vote on who is the best placed leader to keep the Tories in power. I’m sure @HYUFD has a better view than me but I would imagine the base has moved right wards in recent years as many of the pro-EU, socially liberal types have become less comfortable.
From a betting standpoint for next Tory leader, I think the value bets are from that part of the party.
Yes. But the membership is overwhelmingly older, wealthier and more SE based than the electorate as a whole. I can't see them wanting anything approaching a levelling up agenda. Culture War and cuts yes. Culture War isn't blue collar necessarily.
Who would be against levelling up? On what basis? As an old fart of Conservative disposition in the Home Counties I would love to see successful levelling up.
Levelling up yes, as long as it does not mean levelling you down with higher tax rises on the South to pay for more spending on the redwall
By definition levelling up implies making the lower deciles better off. There is obviously a cost to that aka taxation. So long as it is levelling up to generate a better outcome and not levelling down I'm relaxed about it. Extra taxation isn't a deal breaker.
But you can't have levelling up without someone being levelled down. That's pure fantasy.
Things don't have to be a zero-sum game. Investments that (for instance) decrease the unemployment rate may cost initially, but the reduction in unemployment is a positive benefit to the area in a number of ways, and the wider economy as a whole.
The problem is that levelling up is really hard to do: if it wasn't, then it would have been done yonks ago. But at least these areas, so long forgotten by their Labour masters, are getting some attention. We're talking about the 'Red Wall', rather than just forgetting about them.
40 years into the post-industrial age most investment seems very hard to do. We're still brilliant inventors, researchers, creators. But awful at the long-term investment and long-term ownership bits. People are rightly now looking at the amount of tax the government is taking and wondering what its being spent on when we have inferior infrastructure and services compared to many of our neighbours.
Frankly we need to follow the money. Start with the NHS - how are we pumping record amounts into the system yet see front line services starved of money in a crisis? The PPE contracts are the gimme - don't just look at oceans of money disappearing into back pockets on these contracts. Understand that is the set up in general. Then expand from healthcare to so many other things and start to understand the problem.
Profit is good - from industry. Much less so from services. But it needs to be reinvested for future growth and so often it isn't. I have no idea how we turn that around when the people owning the trousers who the cash is disappearing into are the ones largely in control.
I think there's also a lot of lazy thinking about these areas. Investment goes to the south / more prosperous areas because money follows money, and because that's where the money always goes. It's just a little easier to do what's always done. It's the place investors know. It's the lazy choice.
That's the sort of thinking we need to be banishing. We need to make the poorer areas more attractive to inward investment, from inside the UK and abroad. It's a long-term project, but at least people are now looking at it.
There is a massive amount of unfulfilled potential in these areas - and that's why levelling up is not a zero-sum game.
Those areas need different corporate tax rates. I’ve never understood why regional CT diversity hadn’t been more embraced. It works very well in the US, Germany, Switzerland of course, and several poorer countries that have seen localised FDI booms in low tax regions.
A level CT rate nationwide means an unlevel playing field when all the other advantages of London and the SE are taken into account.
It is hard to see Truss not making the final two and if she is there then she's in with a strong chance.
Why are you sure she will make the final two? Do you know what level of MP support she has?
From above, if say Sunak, Truss, Gove, Javid, Hunt and either Baker/Harper stood in a contest, which two would come through.
I don't know but my best guess would be Sunak and Hunt. Possibly Sunak and Baker/or Harper. And Gove had decent support in the 2019 (narrowly beaten by Hunt into second place). I'm far from convinced that Truss has the MPs' support.
My feel at the moment is the candidate from the pro-Brexit / Blue Collar / economically interventionist wing will make the final round. That grouping is clearly on manoeuvres (eg the letter to the Telegraph), know they have the numbers to get far (the near 100 MPs rebelling against Boris for a start) and have opinions that should appeal to many of the base.
What might be interesting are the shorts. Jeremy Hunt is a classic example of a bet where us sophisticated elites of PB.com project our own views onto the base. Truss is close by.
Do you think blue collar/interventionist has a significant following amongst the Tory members?
I think they will base their vote on who is the best placed leader to keep the Tories in power. I’m sure @HYUFD has a better view than me but I would imagine the base has moved right wards in recent years as many of the pro-EU, socially liberal types have become less comfortable.
From a betting standpoint for next Tory leader, I think the value bets are from that part of the party.
Yes. But the membership is overwhelmingly older, wealthier and more SE based than the electorate as a whole. I can't see them wanting anything approaching a levelling up agenda. Culture War and cuts yes. Culture War isn't blue collar necessarily.
Who would be against levelling up? On what basis? As an old fart of Conservative disposition in the Home Counties I would love to see successful levelling up.
Levelling up yes, as long as it does not mean levelling you down with higher tax rises on the South to pay for more spending on the redwall
By definition levelling up implies making the lower deciles better off. There is obviously a cost to that aka taxation. So long as it is levelling up to generate a better outcome and not levelling down I'm relaxed about it. Extra taxation isn't a deal breaker.
But you can't have levelling up without someone being levelled down. That's pure fantasy.
Of course you can.
That’s the fundamental difference between left and right.
Equality of opportunity and extra investment; more growth overall but the north gets richer faster (hence levelling up). That’s the right’s approach
The left would prefer equality of outcome, delivered through taxation and redistribution, which results in levelling down
Lazy.
The South is currently relatively much richer than the North. If you point the limited national resources at the North at the expense of the South (which is what is required), the South will relatively become poorer compared to the North.
This is just a fact of life. It doesn’t mean that the South doesn’t get objectively richer during the time, it just gets relatively poorer.
If the South doesn’t get relatively poorer, then its not true levelling up as the North/South divide remains.
This is the truth about where New Labour went wrong. Remember that Many was relaxed about the filthy rich getting richer? Doesn't matter - they thought - because we're lifting you out of institutionalised poverty, building new schools and hospitals, transforming your life chances etc. The list of their achievements in office - direct benefits to the red wall achievements - is extensive.
And yet ultimately so many of the people benefitting from New Labour think they did nothing. Why? Because of economic relativity. They picked up places like Teesside and lifted them towards where the south was. But the south was also lifting, so the disparity remained. Whats worse, so many of the new job opportunities were service jobs - hard graft in an anonymous warehouse for you to make the south richer
And those northern service jobs were generally worse paid than the disappearing industrial and mining jobs they replaced.
Even if they paid the same, too many outsiders miss the big picture. Heavy industry gave a place an identity. Pride. A community spirit. The knowledge that your work was doing something big, something that put your town on the map, your work noticed. And a job for your sons.
What do warehouse and call centre jobs offer, even if the work pays the same? No pride. No worth. No image. No security. Labour then spent their time in government and beyond either saying this is the new world deal with it, or 'this is the Tories fault, deal with it'.
No wonder people voted for Brexit and then Boris to get Brexit done. But here we are in 2022 and the only thing that's been done is the red wall voter. I expect many will swing back to Labour as a muscle memory. But turnout will be lower because whats the point?
A short 'motivational' mini-lecture I used to give ran as follows: Two chaps working in a quarry, stone cutting. Man is a suit approaches them "I say, what are you chaps doing" Without looking up, the first grunted that he was cutting blocks 2ft by 2ft by 2ft. The second turned to face the man in the suit and replied "I'm helping to build a cathedral!"
As Mr P said; one needs to have pride in one's work. One of the nicest things anyone has ever said to me was when I left my last 'job'..... advising on medicines in care homes..... and was told by management that 'I had made a difference'.
She was speaking very positively, I hasten to add.
And I'm sure it's possible to take a pride in one's work, make a positive difference, in a call centre, if management goes about it the right way.
On topic, I think the government’s ratings will slowly start improving from the low base in the next couple of months. As predicted, much of Western Europe is introducing more restrictions, and England isn’t, something that was highlighted on New Year’s Eve and will become more so in the coming weeks. Look at the riots in Amsterdam overnight.
Everyone has been vaccinated, there doesn’t look to be an imminent collapse of the health system and we will just have to start living with it. It’s still going to be a tough couple of weeks for the NHS, with high levels of staff absence due to the virus, even though it looks like the corner is being turned. The key point will turn out to be the Fraser Nelson interrogation of the SAGE scientist, which got the Cabinet asking the right questions of their pandemic advisors.
Q2 looks horrible though, with the planned NI rise (which will surely be cancelled for employees), and energy prices the focus, illustrating the futility of price controls. It’s definitely become clear that opponents of the government, and the PM specifically, are hard at work collecting trivial stories they hope will eventually add up to something.
Assuming there’s not more gaffes coming up, and the PM gets a couple of good new advisors, he’s probably safe this year. The biggest problem, not that he realises it yet, is the wife. He would be much better off sending the family to live at Chequers, and not hang around Downing St getting in the way.
Good morning everyone. Is there no end to the (quasi) celebratory days?
Mr S is making a big assumption, I suspect, in his last paragraph. Our PM clearly likes living with his latest family around him and the chance of him removing his wife as, effectively, senior advisor seems remote. And while she is a senior advisor, the chances of anyone else getting a word in seem unlikely. It's different from the days of Cherie Blair, who at least had a career of her own, as did other PM's spouses.
I think you are being unfair. Carrie does have a career of her own. Unfortunately her career is as a professional lobbyist/political operative
It is hard to see Truss not making the final two and if she is there then she's in with a strong chance.
Why are you sure she will make the final two? Do you know what level of MP support she has?
From above, if say Sunak, Truss, Gove, Javid, Hunt and either Baker/Harper stood in a contest, which two would come through.
I don't know but my best guess would be Sunak and Hunt. Possibly Sunak and Baker/or Harper. And Gove had decent support in the 2019 (narrowly beaten by Hunt into second place). I'm far from convinced that Truss has the MPs' support.
My feel at the moment is the candidate from the pro-Brexit / Blue Collar / economically interventionist wing will make the final round. That grouping is clearly on manoeuvres (eg the letter to the Telegraph), know they have the numbers to get far (the near 100 MPs rebelling against Boris for a start) and have opinions that should appeal to many of the base.
What might be interesting are the shorts. Jeremy Hunt is a classic example of a bet where us sophisticated elites of PB.com project our own views onto the base. Truss is close by.
Do you think blue collar/interventionist has a significant following amongst the Tory members?
I think they will base their vote on who is the best placed leader to keep the Tories in power. I’m sure @HYUFD has a better view than me but I would imagine the base has moved right wards in recent years as many of the pro-EU, socially liberal types have become less comfortable.
From a betting standpoint for next Tory leader, I think the value bets are from that part of the party.
Yes. But the membership is overwhelmingly older, wealthier and more SE based than the electorate as a whole. I can't see them wanting anything approaching a levelling up agenda. Culture War and cuts yes. Culture War isn't blue collar necessarily.
Who would be against levelling up? On what basis? As an old fart of Conservative disposition in the Home Counties I would love to see successful levelling up.
Levelling up yes, as long as it does not mean levelling you down with higher tax rises on the South to pay for more spending on the redwall
By definition levelling up implies making the lower deciles better off. There is obviously a cost to that aka taxation. So long as it is levelling up to generate a better outcome and not levelling down I'm relaxed about it. Extra taxation isn't a deal breaker.
But you can't have levelling up without someone being levelled down. That's pure fantasy.
Of course you can.
That’s the fundamental difference between left and right.
Equality of opportunity and extra investment; more growth overall but the north gets richer faster (hence levelling up). That’s the right’s approach
The left would prefer equality of outcome, delivered through taxation and redistribution, which results in levelling down
Lazy.
The South is currently relatively much richer than the North. If you point the limited national resources at the North at the expense of the South (which is what is required), the South will relatively become poorer compared to the North.
This is just a fact of life. It doesn’t mean that the South doesn’t get objectively richer during the time, it just gets relatively poorer.
If the South doesn’t get relatively poorer, then its not true levelling up as the North/South divide remains.
This is the truth about where New Labour went wrong. Remember that Many was relaxed about the filthy rich getting richer? Doesn't matter - they thought - because we're lifting you out of institutionalised poverty, building new schools and hospitals, transforming your life chances etc. The list of their achievements in office - direct benefits to the red wall achievements - is extensive.
And yet ultimately so many of the people benefitting from New Labour think they did nothing. Why? Because of economic relativity. They picked up places like Teesside and lifted them towards where the south was. But the south was also lifting, so the disparity remained. Whats worse, so many of the new job opportunities were service jobs - hard graft in an anonymous warehouse for you to make the south richer
And those northern service jobs were generally worse paid than the disappearing industrial and mining jobs they replaced.
Even if they paid the same, too many outsiders miss the big picture. Heavy industry gave a place an identity. Pride. A community spirit. The knowledge that your work was doing something big, something that put your town on the map, your work noticed. And a job for your sons.
What do warehouse and call centre jobs offer, even if the work pays the same? No pride. No worth. No image. No security. Labour then spent their time in government and beyond either saying this is the new world deal with it, or 'this is the Tories fault, deal with it'.
No wonder people voted for Brexit and then Boris to get Brexit done. But here we are in 2022 and the only thing that's been done is the red wall voter. I expect many will swing back to Labour as a muscle memory. But turnout will be lower because whats the point?
" Heavy industry gave a place an identity. Pride. A community spirit."
Having talked to people who worked in heavy industry in the past - mining, steelworking - I think that' a BS generalisation. For one thing, from a couple of people I've chatted to, there was a sense of camaraderie in workers down in a mine - as you might expect from a dangerous environment. But that did not necessarily extend to the majority of workers who were on the surface. I've heard people talk about three 'classes' of mineworkers, even into the 1980s: the ones working underground (the ones we always think of), those working at grass, and the clerical workers. They did not necessarily get along.
It also ignores the vast majority of the people who did not work in the heavy industry, but in support industries, from pubs to shops, equipment supply to transport.
I also think you're being very nasty towards call centres and their workers. It's probably a better job than working in an accounts office at a mine.
I have worked in a call centre...
I completely take your point that not all miners are equal, not all jobs are equal. Of course. But I do stand by the image that towns had as a mining town or a cotton town or a steel town or a shipbuilding town. Most of them are littered with reminders of their shared history with this hole where a shared present and future would be if they had one.
Moreover, it isn’t accurate. They’re not to be tested *before* starting back, they are to be tested *on* starting back. Given the numbers to be tested that will have to go ahead as stated because there is no time to make changes (most schools starting back tomorrow).
I am very rapidly coming to the conclusion that every single member of the DfE is actively out to destroy education, rather than just being thick as mince. The whole thing is spinning to try and look as if they’re doing something to conceal the fact they have completely failed to take the only two measures that would work - smaller classes and air filters.
And yet the media aren’t even asking the basic questions about this.
Yep. I wasn't paying close attention TBH but they were interviewing Zahawi on the TV a few minutes ago, and most of the discussion seemed to revolve around masks, before it moved on to generic stuff about the NHS and staff absences.
Leaky cotton or paper masks are almost certainly useless against Omicron and, therefore, constitute futile something-must-be-done-ism, but they are also highly visible and a nuisance, divisive imposition which therefore attracts a lot of media attention and argument. Ventilation is boring so nobody's interested in talking about it.
They had a go on R4, but Zahawi rather determinedly avoided the awkward questions.
What questions did they ask, can you remember?
So far nothing from my school, but they may simply have been caught by surprise.
Something along the lines of are basic masks if any utility against Omicron, but Zahawi just moved on to other stuff and ignored the attempt at a follow up question.
On topic, I continue to see a 2022 exit for the PM as likely. The first half of the year will see bad Covid/NHS headlines, plus the combined economic hit from Omicron, energy inflation and the accumulating drag from Brexit. Higher utility bills will be a big political event and will combine with increased NI and the increase in hospitality VAT to leave people feeling poorer. Then there are local elections in May, when the Tories will likely get a kicking. For a PM whose credibility with the public is already destroyed, I think the combination of these negative headlines will easily be enough to trigger a leadership challenge.
Probably but if Boris can weather the storm to mid-year, there are a number of "feel good" events from summer onwards, from the Platinum Jubilee in June, through the Commonwealth Games in Birmingham, Wimbledon with Emma, and England's inevitable victory in the World Cup in December.
ETA the BBC has this handy cut-out-and-keep calendar of 2022 sporting events. It turns out we will also host the Rugby League World Cup and Women's Euro 2022. https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/59548186
I am curious to see the governments response to fuel bills doubling/trebling over the coming weeks. There must be a political dimension to folks having to find up to 300 pounds extra per month.
It’s perhaps the biggest issue facing the government in the first half of the year.
By imposing caps, rather than letting the market do its thing, people are now going to blame government when the price rises, rather than greedy utilities and bad Mr Putin.
I would think that the Brexit-enabled dividend of dropping VAT of energy is a no-brainer before April.
Cutting vat will cut bills by 5%, if they’ve risen by 200-300% that will not be seen as an adequate response.
Not ideal conditions for a Tory revival.
Oh, it will indeed be a drop in the ocean, but at least it’s an acknowledgement towards the problem.
The biggest mistake was imposing the price cap in the first place.
So wind the clock back and look at why the price cap was even considered - the perfect storm of endlessly rising bills and endlessly rising profits. The companies wouldn't behave so the regulated market intervened.
Except that the price cap wasn't anything to do with endlessly rising bills and profits. It was an attempt to do something about the way in which the market did over customers who didn't switch, in favour of those who did.
Those of us who understood how the system worked prior to the cap did very badly out of it (my energy bills pretty much doubled) as all the good deals promptly evaporated.
The creators of the cap (being politicians in search of a quick fix, and therefore stupid) never considered what would happen if the cost of wholesale energy doubled or trippled overnight, so set the cap up with a fairly slow review process, which is fine if wholesale trends move slowly. It was never intended to be used to make suppliers supply for long periods at a loss as currently is occurring.
It would have been very politically difficult to deal with a sudden price rise of the current scales before the price cap, but now via the laws of unintended consequences its going to be a massive political football when the price cap is next reset.
Comparing the graphs of coal spot prices to gas spot prices, if we had any real opposition they'd be crucifying the government over the closing of coal fired baseload generation in favour of gas - whilst the coal price has risen, its gone up around 50% rather than 300%.
"The American polity is cracked, and might collapse. Canada must prepare The U.S. is becoming increasingly ungovernable, and some experts believe it could descend into civil war. What should Canada do then? Thomas Homer-Dixon"
Gilead is coming. They aren't going to accept being voted out of power again.
Could be a very large refugee problem at the Canada border in a few years time. The Canadians would do well to prepare.
If Trump returns to power in 2024 you could even get some of the conservative western Canadian States like Alberta looking to join the US while some of the liberal US States in New England, the upper Midwest and Pacific West coast seek to break away and join Trudeau's Canada
It is hard to see Truss not making the final two and if she is there then she's in with a strong chance.
Why are you sure she will make the final two? Do you know what level of MP support she has?
From above, if say Sunak, Truss, Gove, Javid, Hunt and either Baker/Harper stood in a contest, which two would come through.
I don't know but my best guess would be Sunak and Hunt. Possibly Sunak and Baker/or Harper. And Gove had decent support in the 2019 (narrowly beaten by Hunt into second place). I'm far from convinced that Truss has the MPs' support.
My feel at the moment is the candidate from the pro-Brexit / Blue Collar / economically interventionist wing will make the final round. That grouping is clearly on manoeuvres (eg the letter to the Telegraph), know they have the numbers to get far (the near 100 MPs rebelling against Boris for a start) and have opinions that should appeal to many of the base.
What might be interesting are the shorts. Jeremy Hunt is a classic example of a bet where us sophisticated elites of PB.com project our own views onto the base. Truss is close by.
Do you think blue collar/interventionist has a significant following amongst the Tory members?
I think they will base their vote on who is the best placed leader to keep the Tories in power. I’m sure @HYUFD has a better view than me but I would imagine the base has moved right wards in recent years as many of the pro-EU, socially liberal types have become less comfortable.
From a betting standpoint for next Tory leader, I think the value bets are from that part of the party.
Yes. But the membership is overwhelmingly older, wealthier and more SE based than the electorate as a whole. I can't see them wanting anything approaching a levelling up agenda. Culture War and cuts yes. Culture War isn't blue collar necessarily.
Who would be against levelling up? On what basis? As an old fart of Conservative disposition in the Home Counties I would love to see successful levelling up.
Levelling up yes, as long as it does not mean levelling you down with higher tax rises on the South to pay for more spending on the redwall
By definition levelling up implies making the lower deciles better off. There is obviously a cost to that aka taxation. So long as it is levelling up to generate a better outcome and not levelling down I'm relaxed about it. Extra taxation isn't a deal breaker.
But you can't have levelling up without someone being levelled down. That's pure fantasy.
Things don't have to be a zero-sum game. Investments that (for instance) decrease the unemployment rate may cost initially, but the reduction in unemployment is a positive benefit to the area in a number of ways, and the wider economy as a whole.
The problem is that levelling up is really hard to do: if it wasn't, then it would have been done yonks ago. But at least these areas, so long forgotten by their Labour masters, are getting some attention. We're talking about the 'Red Wall', rather than just forgetting about them.
Yes, but redistribution implies tinkering with the market, thereby in right wing thinking making it less efficient. After all, if the market was going to level up on its own then it wouldn't be nessecary.
Now there are different government interventions, from outright subsidy to various regions or industries, to tax breaks that come to the same thing, but they all interfere in the free market.
Redistribution is intrinsically anti-market. For some of us that isn't really an issue, as a core part of Social Democrat philosophy is that capitalism is good, but needs mitigating for the social good of the country. It is right wing ideologues like Thatcher who have a problem with it. The Levelling up agenda is a fundamental repudiation of Thatcherism.
I don't care about left- and right- wing thinking. It's tribal sh*t that has helped us get into this mess in the first place. Ideologues caring more about their petty ideologies than they do about people. I'd also argue you're very wrong with all of that, and are just seeing it through a prism of your own politics.
What matters is what works.
Labour's record for these areas is (ahem) rather poor. The Levelling Up agenda may or may not be a fundamental repudiation of Thatcherism (I think that's a bogus argument); but then you can also claim that it is a fundamental repudiation of Labour and Blairite policies of the last fifty years.
I am a Social Democrat, and it sounds like you are too if you believe that market intervention to achieve social justice is an appropriate goal of government. It doesn't sit well with the Libertarian free marketeers on the right of the Tory party though, and that is a growing schism for them.
I think though that you underestimate the rebuilding of the North, and other post industrial parts of the UK under New Labour. @RochdalePioneers has elaborated this well in the past*. The problem was not under New Labour, but the post 2010 Austerity which fell most harshly on post industrial parts of Britain.
*imperfect though it was, Northern cities like Newcastle, Manchester, Liverpool, Leeds and Sheffield are much nicer places to live and work than they were in the 1980s. Brum, Cardiff, Belfast too. The smaller coalfield towns much less so, and it is a fair criticism of New Labour's concentration on urban areas with knowledge based service industries.
I think you'll find many of those changes started under Thatcher and Major. I also disagree with RP's take on this: New Labour was far too London-centric (and big city centric to a lesser extent).
Moreover, it isn’t accurate. They’re not to be tested *before* starting back, they are to be tested *on* starting back. Given the numbers to be tested that will have to go ahead as stated because there is no time to make changes (most schools starting back tomorrow).
I am very rapidly coming to the conclusion that every single member of the DfE is actively out to destroy education, rather than just being thick as mince. The whole thing is spinning to try and look as if they’re doing something to conceal the fact they have completely failed to take the only two measures that would work - smaller classes and air filters.
And yet the media aren’t even asking the basic questions about this.
Yep. I wasn't paying close attention TBH but they were interviewing Zahawi on the TV a few minutes ago, and most of the discussion seemed to revolve around masks, before it moved on to generic stuff about the NHS and staff absences.
Leaky cotton or paper masks are almost certainly useless against Omicron and, therefore, constitute futile something-must-be-done-ism, but they are also highly visible and a nuisance, divisive imposition which therefore attracts a lot of media attention and argument. Ventilation is boring so nobody's interested in talking about it.
They had a go on R4, but Zahawi rather determinedly avoided the awkward questions.
What questions did they ask, can you remember?
So far nothing from my school, but they may simply have been caught by surprise.
Something along the lines of are basic masks if any utility against Omicron, but Zahawi just moved on to other stuff and ignored the attempt at a follow up question.
Thanks for the reply but - Hmph. That says a lot. Not in a good way.
I had hopes when Zahawi was appointed that he would finally kick some arse at the DfE. So far, he has mostly been a disappointment.
How can the government prevent energy bills from causing political problems?
Options available to it:
1. Cutting VAT - not likely to be enough. 2. Energy Subsidies - likely too expensive and won’t solve anything long term. 3. Er…
What else can they do? Not a lot.
I would do these things, in addition to cutting VAT.
1. Increase Universal Credit and other subsistence benefit rates. 2. Do whatever it takes to increase the speed of the transition away from burning gas to generate electricity. We're currently on a stretch of five continuous days of generating more electricity from wind than gas, every hour of the day. The more electricity from wind we have, the less gas we need to burn, and electricity prices will be cheaper and less affected by global volatility in fossil fuel prices.
The VAT cut is a nod towards trying to help everyone, a little, and avoiding the government being seen to profit from the price increases. Targeted help to avoid extreme hardship for those on the lowest incomes. A medium-term plan to protect Britain from this happening again.
She recognized that "delivering Brexit" would destroy the Union, so she refused to do it.
Unlike BoZo
Scott you're responding to historical revisionism with your own historic revisionism.
May proposed and repeatedly legislated for Brexit. Parliament blocked her. The notions that she both failed to deliver and that she wouldn't deliver are wrong.
I am curious to see the governments response to fuel bills doubling/trebling over the coming weeks. There must be a political dimension to folks having to find up to 300 pounds extra per month.
It’s perhaps the biggest issue facing the government in the first half of the year.
By imposing caps, rather than letting the market do its thing, people are now going to blame government when the price rises, rather than greedy utilities and bad Mr Putin.
I would think that the Brexit-enabled dividend of dropping VAT of energy is a no-brainer before April.
Cutting vat will cut bills by 5%, if they’ve risen by 200-300% that will not be seen as an adequate response.
Not ideal conditions for a Tory revival.
Oh, it will indeed be a drop in the ocean, but at least it’s an acknowledgement towards the problem.
The biggest mistake was imposing the price cap in the first place.
So wind the clock back and look at why the price cap was even considered - the perfect storm of endlessly rising bills and endlessly rising profits. The companies wouldn't behave so the regulated market intervened.
Except that the price cap wasn't anything to do with endlessly rising bills and profits. It was an attempt to do something about the way in which the market did over customers who didn't switch, in favour of those who did.
Those of us who understood how the system worked prior to the cap did very badly out of it (my energy bills pretty much doubled) as all the good deals promptly evaporated.
The creators of the cap (being politicians in search of a quick fix, and therefore stupid) never considered what would happen if the cost of wholesale energy doubled or trippled overnight, so set the cap up with a fairly slow review process, which is fine if wholesale trends move slowly. It was never intended to be used to make suppliers supply for long periods at a loss as currently is occurring.
It would have been very politically difficult to deal with a sudden price rise of the current scales before the price cap, but now via the laws of unintended consequences its going to be a massive political football when the price cap is next reset.
Comparing the graphs of coal spot prices to gas spot prices, if we had any real opposition they'd be crucifying the government over the closing of coal fired baseload generation in favour of gas - whilst the coal price has risen, its gone up around 50% rather than 300%.
Yes. Like most attempts by politicians to intervene in markets they don't really understand it has been a spectacular disaster.
On energy prices specifically, the other thing they could do to revive their fortunes is take an axe to the "green crap", as David Cameron called it, that makes up about a quarter of bills. Or make it voluntary, so that those that want to pay it can do so.
It is hard to see Truss not making the final two and if she is there then she's in with a strong chance.
Why are you sure she will make the final two? Do you know what level of MP support she has?
From above, if say Sunak, Truss, Gove, Javid, Hunt and either Baker/Harper stood in a contest, which two would come through.
I don't know but my best guess would be Sunak and Hunt. Possibly Sunak and Baker/or Harper. And Gove had decent support in the 2019 (narrowly beaten by Hunt into second place). I'm far from convinced that Truss has the MPs' support.
My feel at the moment is the candidate from the pro-Brexit / Blue Collar / economically interventionist wing will make the final round. That grouping is clearly on manoeuvres (eg the letter to the Telegraph), know they have the numbers to get far (the near 100 MPs rebelling against Boris for a start) and have opinions that should appeal to many of the base.
What might be interesting are the shorts. Jeremy Hunt is a classic example of a bet where us sophisticated elites of PB.com project our own views onto the base. Truss is close by.
Do you think blue collar/interventionist has a significant following amongst the Tory members?
I think they will base their vote on who is the best placed leader to keep the Tories in power. I’m sure @HYUFD has a better view than me but I would imagine the base has moved right wards in recent years as many of the pro-EU, socially liberal types have become less comfortable.
From a betting standpoint for next Tory leader, I think the value bets are from that part of the party.
Yes. But the membership is overwhelmingly older, wealthier and more SE based than the electorate as a whole. I can't see them wanting anything approaching a levelling up agenda. Culture War and cuts yes. Culture War isn't blue collar necessarily.
Who would be against levelling up? On what basis? As an old fart of Conservative disposition in the Home Counties I would love to see successful levelling up.
Levelling up yes, as long as it does not mean levelling you down with higher tax rises on the South to pay for more spending on the redwall
By definition levelling up implies making the lower deciles better off. There is obviously a cost to that aka taxation. So long as it is levelling up to generate a better outcome and not levelling down I'm relaxed about it. Extra taxation isn't a deal breaker.
But you can't have levelling up without someone being levelled down. That's pure fantasy.
Only if you assume the economy is a zero sum game. Which is pure nonsense.
It is - but so is Reagan's 'trickle down', giving tax breaks for business and the rich and expecting everyone else to benefit without actually doing anything to distribute the benefits.
It is hard to see Truss not making the final two and if she is there then she's in with a strong chance.
Why are you sure she will make the final two? Do you know what level of MP support she has?
From above, if say Sunak, Truss, Gove, Javid, Hunt and either Baker/Harper stood in a contest, which two would come through.
I don't know but my best guess would be Sunak and Hunt. Possibly Sunak and Baker/or Harper. And Gove had decent support in the 2019 (narrowly beaten by Hunt into second place). I'm far from convinced that Truss has the MPs' support.
My feel at the moment is the candidate from the pro-Brexit / Blue Collar / economically interventionist wing will make the final round. That grouping is clearly on manoeuvres (eg the letter to the Telegraph), know they have the numbers to get far (the near 100 MPs rebelling against Boris for a start) and have opinions that should appeal to many of the base.
What might be interesting are the shorts. Jeremy Hunt is a classic example of a bet where us sophisticated elites of PB.com project our own views onto the base. Truss is close by.
Do you think blue collar/interventionist has a significant following amongst the Tory members?
I think they will base their vote on who is the best placed leader to keep the Tories in power. I’m sure @HYUFD has a better view than me but I would imagine the base has moved right wards in recent years as many of the pro-EU, socially liberal types have become less comfortable.
From a betting standpoint for next Tory leader, I think the value bets are from that part of the party.
Yes. But the membership is overwhelmingly older, wealthier and more SE based than the electorate as a whole. I can't see them wanting anything approaching a levelling up agenda. Culture War and cuts yes. Culture War isn't blue collar necessarily.
Who would be against levelling up? On what basis? As an old fart of Conservative disposition in the Home Counties I would love to see successful levelling up.
Levelling up yes, as long as it does not mean levelling you down with higher tax rises on the South to pay for more spending on the redwall
By definition levelling up implies making the lower deciles better off. There is obviously a cost to that aka taxation. So long as it is levelling up to generate a better outcome and not levelling down I'm relaxed about it. Extra taxation isn't a deal breaker.
But you can't have levelling up without someone being levelled down. That's pure fantasy.
Things don't have to be a zero-sum game. Investments that (for instance) decrease the unemployment rate may cost initially, but the reduction in unemployment is a positive benefit to the area in a number of ways, and the wider economy as a whole.
The problem is that levelling up is really hard to do: if it wasn't, then it would have been done yonks ago. But at least these areas, so long forgotten by their Labour masters, are getting some attention. We're talking about the 'Red Wall', rather than just forgetting about them.
Yes, but redistribution implies tinkering with the market, thereby in right wing thinking making it less efficient. After all, if the market was going to level up on its own then it wouldn't be nessecary.
Now there are different government interventions, from outright subsidy to various regions or industries, to tax breaks that come to the same thing, but they all interfere in the free market.
Redistribution is intrinsically anti-market. For some of us that isn't really an issue, as a core part of Social Democrat philosophy is that capitalism is good, but needs mitigating for the social good of the country. It is right wing ideologues like Thatcher who have a problem with it. The Levelling up agenda is a fundamental repudiation of Thatcherism.
Social Democracy does not believe capitalism is good, it believes in watered down socialism.
How can the government prevent energy bills from causing political problems?
Options available to it:
1. Cutting VAT - not likely to be enough. 2. Energy Subsidies - likely too expensive and won’t solve anything long term. 3. Er…
What else can they do? Not a lot.
Good morning
This is a problem for governments across the world, and certainly cutting vat would only save a small amount when considering the huge increases
I would expect HMG to provide targeted help to those on low incomes similar to the £300 provided to elderly pensioners each December and restricting the rise in April
Is that 300 pounds per year or per month? It seems like a joke, but an extra 300 pounds per month is what EDF offered me to fix my energy bills.
It is an annual payment for pensioners over 80 and £200 for those born between September 1941 and September 1955
It is expected energy bills will rise from £1200 to £2000 average by April - it is an issue that needs to be ameliorated
The only good thing about that is most people use hardly any gas between May and October. At least I don't - 8-10 units a month, as opposed to 30-50 in the winter. Will this just push the problem down the road to next autumn? Of course what will happen is that people won't be in credit by as much over the summer. And electricity will go up as well, as much of it is generated by gas. On the other hand, I have a green electricity account so I'm not sure if that will be effective.
In preparation I have reduced the thermostat by 1° (and may go further) and reduced the boiler output and hot water temperatures as advised by Octopus.
Moreover, it isn’t accurate. They’re not to be tested *before* starting back, they are to be tested *on* starting back. Given the numbers to be tested that will have to go ahead as stated because there is no time to make changes (most schools starting back tomorrow).
I am very rapidly coming to the conclusion that every single member of the DfE is actively out to destroy education, rather than just being thick as mince. The whole thing is spinning to try and look as if they’re doing something to conceal the fact they have completely failed to take the only two measures that would work - smaller classes and air filters.
And yet the media aren’t even asking the basic questions about this.
Yep. I wasn't paying close attention TBH but they were interviewing Zahawi on the TV a few minutes ago, and most of the discussion seemed to revolve around masks, before it moved on to generic stuff about the NHS and staff absences.
Leaky cotton or paper masks are almost certainly useless against Omicron and, therefore, constitute futile something-must-be-done-ism, but they are also highly visible and a nuisance, divisive imposition which therefore attracts a lot of media attention and argument. Ventilation is boring so nobody's interested in talking about it.
It just shows how useless the government is. A year on from the last winter wave and bugger all done about school (and other crowded indoor space) ventilation. Sweet FA on preventing hospital acquired covid either, even though effective measures for each exist that don't impinge on freedoms or economy.
I suspect it is hugely expensive and complex in older school buildings and virtually impossible / prohibitive in schools built under New Labour’s crappy PFI contracts.
I am curious to see the governments response to fuel bills doubling/trebling over the coming weeks. There must be a political dimension to folks having to find up to 300 pounds extra per month.
It’s perhaps the biggest issue facing the government in the first half of the year.
By imposing caps, rather than letting the market do its thing, people are now going to blame government when the price rises, rather than greedy utilities and bad Mr Putin.
I would think that the Brexit-enabled dividend of dropping VAT of energy is a no-brainer before April.
Cutting vat will cut bills by 5%, if they’ve risen by 200-300% that will not be seen as an adequate response.
Not ideal conditions for a Tory revival.
Oh, it will indeed be a drop in the ocean, but at least it’s an acknowledgement towards the problem.
The biggest mistake was imposing the price cap in the first place.
So wind the clock back and look at why the price cap was even considered - the perfect storm of endlessly rising bills and endlessly rising profits. The companies wouldn't behave so the regulated market intervened.
Except that the price cap wasn't anything to do with endlessly rising bills and profits. It was an attempt to do something about the way in which the market did over customers who didn't switch, in favour of those who did.
Those of us who understood how the system worked prior to the cap did very badly out of it (my energy bills pretty much doubled) as all the good deals promptly evaporated.
The creators of the cap (being politicians in search of a quick fix, and therefore stupid) never considered what would happen if the cost of wholesale energy doubled or trippled overnight, so set the cap up with a fairly slow review process, which is fine if wholesale trends move slowly. It was never intended to be used to make suppliers supply for long periods at a loss as currently is occurring.
It would have been very politically difficult to deal with a sudden price rise of the current scales before the price cap, but now via the laws of unintended consequences its going to be a massive political football when the price cap is next reset.
Comparing the graphs of coal spot prices to gas spot prices, if we had any real opposition they'd be crucifying the government over the closing of coal fired baseload generation in favour of gas - whilst the coal price has risen, its gone up around 50% rather than 300%.
If I were the opposition I'd be crucifying them for prizing gas and wind over tidal power, which once you've built it doesn't rely on the whims of a market to generate power cheaply or stop functioning in a flat calm (although the power generated may be somewhat reduced).
It is particularly disingenuous and downright dangerous of the right-wing boneheads to be hiding behind the lack of covid data from c. 21st Dec to 06th Jan in order to promote their freedom-at-all-costs agenda.
We do NOT yet know how this is going to pan out. Prudence would have been to have additional restrictions in place until we see how the tree shakes.
Crowing about 'success' of a policy based on a paucity of data is disingenuous (at best).
That’s not prudence that’s the precautionary principle. They are very different things.
"The American polity is cracked, and might collapse. Canada must prepare The U.S. is becoming increasingly ungovernable, and some experts believe it could descend into civil war. What should Canada do then? Thomas Homer-Dixon"
Gilead is coming. They aren't going to accept being voted out of power again.
Could be a very large refugee problem at the Canada border in a few years time. The Canadians would do well to prepare.
If Trump returns to power in 2024 you could even get some of the conservative western Canadian States like Alberta looking to join the US while some of the liberal US States in New England, the upper Midwest and Pacific West coast seek to break away and join Trudeau's Canada
How can the government prevent energy bills from causing political problems?
Options available to it:
1. Cutting VAT - not likely to be enough. 2. Energy Subsidies - likely too expensive and won’t solve anything long term. 3. Er…
What else can they do? Not a lot.
Good morning
This is a problem for governments across the world, and certainly cutting vat would only save a small amount when considering the huge increases
I would expect HMG to provide targeted help to those on low incomes similar to the £300 provided to elderly pensioners each December and restricting the rise in April
Whilst it is a problem elsewhere we are uniquely hard hit thanks to having minimal storage and having chosen to be unprotected against spot prices.
As for the lowest incomes yes I absolutely agree. But the political pain will be from the squeezed middle, ineligible for any support but really struggling to keep up with soaring bills just as the big tax rises kick in.
Spanish electricity & fuel prices are through the roof [and the former was pretty expensive before!] despite some help for the poorest. As a result inflation is currently running at nearly 7% and rising. Any idea that this is uniquely British is simply absurd.
Where have I said that this is uniquely British? I said "it is a problem elsewhere" - and a big one. What is unique to us is that we have none of the protections that even hard-hit places like Spain has.
Each country as a different set-up with energy markets so prices will start at different levels and will move at different speeds. What is different about Britain is that we are so utterly exposed to spot price moves. If the price doubles and we have to buy then we have to pay. Spain isn't the same - that isn't to say no exposure to the huge price increases, but no direct exposure to spot prices like we do.
You keep saying Spain is protected - all the time I've lived here electricity has been much more expensive than the UK - the daily spot prices are daily headline news here and there is no sign of things improving. The UK has probably now caught up but the reality at best is that they are still relaitively more expensive. Where I live in Andalucia salaries average at net around £12k pa.
It is hard to see Truss not making the final two and if she is there then she's in with a strong chance.
Why are you sure she will make the final two? Do you know what level of MP support she has?
From above, if say Sunak, Truss, Gove, Javid, Hunt and either Baker/Harper stood in a contest, which two would come through.
I don't know but my best guess would be Sunak and Hunt. Possibly Sunak and Baker/or Harper. And Gove had decent support in the 2019 (narrowly beaten by Hunt into second place). I'm far from convinced that Truss has the MPs' support.
My feel at the moment is the candidate from the pro-Brexit / Blue Collar / economically interventionist wing will make the final round. That grouping is clearly on manoeuvres (eg the letter to the Telegraph), know they have the numbers to get far (the near 100 MPs rebelling against Boris for a start) and have opinions that should appeal to many of the base.
What might be interesting are the shorts. Jeremy Hunt is a classic example of a bet where us sophisticated elites of PB.com project our own views onto the base. Truss is close by.
Do you think blue collar/interventionist has a significant following amongst the Tory members?
I think they will base their vote on who is the best placed leader to keep the Tories in power. I’m sure @HYUFD has a better view than me but I would imagine the base has moved right wards in recent years as many of the pro-EU, socially liberal types have become less comfortable.
From a betting standpoint for next Tory leader, I think the value bets are from that part of the party.
Yes. But the membership is overwhelmingly older, wealthier and more SE based than the electorate as a whole. I can't see them wanting anything approaching a levelling up agenda. Culture War and cuts yes. Culture War isn't blue collar necessarily.
Who would be against levelling up? On what basis? As an old fart of Conservative disposition in the Home Counties I would love to see successful levelling up.
Levelling up yes, as long as it does not mean levelling you down with higher tax rises on the South to pay for more spending on the redwall
By definition levelling up implies making the lower deciles better off. There is obviously a cost to that aka taxation. So long as it is levelling up to generate a better outcome and not levelling down I'm relaxed about it. Extra taxation isn't a deal breaker.
But you can't have levelling up without someone being levelled down. That's pure fantasy.
Things don't have to be a zero-sum game. Investments that (for instance) decrease the unemployment rate may cost initially, but the reduction in unemployment is a positive benefit to the area in a number of ways, and the wider economy as a whole.
The problem is that levelling up is really hard to do: if it wasn't, then it would have been done yonks ago. But at least these areas, so long forgotten by their Labour masters, are getting some attention. We're talking about the 'Red Wall', rather than just forgetting about them.
Yes, but redistribution implies tinkering with the market, thereby in right wing thinking making it less efficient. After all, if the market was going to level up on its own then it wouldn't be nessecary.
Now there are different government interventions, from outright subsidy to various regions or industries, to tax breaks that come to the same thing, but they all interfere in the free market.
Redistribution is intrinsically anti-market. For some of us that isn't really an issue, as a core part of Social Democrat philosophy is that capitalism is good, but needs mitigating for the social good of the country. It is right wing ideologues like Thatcher who have a problem with it. The Levelling up agenda is a fundamental repudiation of Thatcherism.
I don't care about left- and right- wing thinking. It's tribal sh*t that has helped us get into this mess in the first place. Ideologues caring more about their petty ideologies than they do about people. I'd also argue you're very wrong with all of that, and are just seeing it through a prism of your own politics.
What matters is what works.
Labour's record for these areas is (ahem) rather poor. The Levelling Up agenda may or may not be a fundamental repudiation of Thatcherism (I think that's a bogus argument); but then you can also claim that it is a fundamental repudiation of Labour and Blairite policies of the last fifty years.
I am a Social Democrat, and it sounds like you are too if you believe that market intervention to achieve social justice is an appropriate goal of government. It doesn't sit well with the Libertarian free marketeers on the right of the Tory party though, and that is a growing schism for them.
I think though that you underestimate the rebuilding of the North, and other post industrial parts of the UK under New Labour. @RochdalePioneers has elaborated this well in the past*. The problem was not under New Labour, but the post 2010 Austerity which fell most harshly on post industrial parts of Britain.
*imperfect though it was, Northern cities like Newcastle, Manchester, Liverpool, Leeds and Sheffield are much nicer places to live and work than they were in the 1980s. Brum, Cardiff, Belfast too. The smaller coalfield towns much less so, and it is a fair criticism of New Labour's concentration on urban areas with knowledge based service industries.
I think you'll find many of those changes started under Thatcher and Major. I also disagree with RP's take on this: New Labour was far too London-centric (and big city centric to a lesser extent).
It was - I agree. But that doesn't change the realities on the ground. People in northern towns and cities had seen the heart ripped out of them - the big employers gone, services cut, facilities like schools and hospitals literally collapsing around them. So much of that changed and changed quickly post 97.
"The American polity is cracked, and might collapse. Canada must prepare The U.S. is becoming increasingly ungovernable, and some experts believe it could descend into civil war. What should Canada do then? Thomas Homer-Dixon"
Gilead is coming. They aren't going to accept being voted out of power again.
Could be a very large refugee problem at the Canada border in a few years time. The Canadians would do well to prepare.
If Trump returns to power in 2024 you could even get some of the conservative western Canadian States like Alberta looking to join the US while some of the liberal US States in New England, the upper Midwest and Pacific West coast seek to break away and join Trudeau's Canada
How can the government prevent energy bills from causing political problems?
Options available to it:
1. Cutting VAT - not likely to be enough. 2. Energy Subsidies - likely too expensive and won’t solve anything long term. 3. Er…
What else can they do? Not a lot.
Good morning
This is a problem for governments across the world, and certainly cutting vat would only save a small amount when considering the huge increases
I would expect HMG to provide targeted help to those on low incomes similar to the £300 provided to elderly pensioners each December and restricting the rise in April
Is that 300 pounds per year or per month? It seems like a joke, but an extra 300 pounds per month is what EDF offered me to fix my energy bills.
It is an annual payment for pensioners over 80 and £200 for those born between September 1941 and September 1955
It is expected energy bills will rise from £1200 to £2000 average by April - it is an issue that needs to be ameliorated
The only good thing about that is most people use hardly any gas between May and October. At least I don't - 8-10 units a month, as opposed to 30-50 in the winter. Will this just push the problem down the road to next autumn? Of course what will happen is that people won't be in credit by as much over the summer. And electricity will go up as well, as much of it is generated by gas. On the other hand, I have a green electricity account so I'm not sure if that will be effective.
In preparation I have reduced the thermostat by 1° (and may go further) and reduced the boiler output and hot water temperatures as advised by Octopus.
My house is never heated beyond 18 degrees except when I light the stove (and asthat's an expensive form of heating I do it because I like a nice warm fire rather than to save money).
It's no coincidence my energy bills are quite low.
How can the government prevent energy bills from causing political problems?
Options available to it:
1. Cutting VAT - not likely to be enough. 2. Energy Subsidies - likely too expensive and won’t solve anything long term. 3. Er…
What else can they do? Not a lot.
Wind the clock back 3 years, not allow closure of the UK strategic gas storage facilities for private profit and/or not leave the regulated European energy market. As their own advisers explicitly warned them not to do.
This may be on the margins but the price of gas is hitting each and every country
Didn't say it wasn't. But the rest of Europe has protection in the form of a regulated energy market - they are seeing the hard impacts of soaring prices but aren't directly exposed to insane spot price moves as we are.
Yes they are. The gas comes from somewhere eventually. That's like saying UK consumers aren't exposed to spot pricing because of the energy price cap, it's fundamentally untrue.
I wonder about our PM's problems sometimes. He must have made excellent financial settlements for all his ex-wives.... I recall the story about his second one ..... and children, and be continuing with that support as necessary or requested. Otherwise, somewhere, there will be a disgruntled ex-wife, or partner. Or even offspring! I'm not entirely sure we've heard the last of Ms Arcuri, either. Although I suspect that revelations from that quarter would only be really damaging if his activities there were found to be co-incidental with the early days of the current Mrs J.
His problems all do appear to have either a financial or sexual aspect to them. I suspect that he’s pretty much skint after his last divorce, is not earning a lot of money by his own standards, and has no idea how he gets out of the situation.
It’s actually a reason to bet against him staying on too long as PM: at some point he’s going to really need the book advance and the speaking fees, and can’t keep hiding loans from old friends. Even Theresa May has managed to bank a couple of million as a speaker, since she stood down from the top job.
I’m surprised at this ‘even Theresa May’ gibe I keep seeing.
1) When giving speeches not on politics, all the evidence is she is witty, intelligent, well informed and quite capable of laughing at herself. The perfect after dinner speaker.
2) She is also a very powerful speaker when she puts her mind to it. Who could forget that time she roasted the police?
3) She’s an ex-PM who led through some very tough times and did in fact lay the groundwork for our departure from the EU, although Johnson negotiated a deal one stage back from hers and then shamelessly took credit. Why wouldn’t you want to hear from such a person?
4) She’s still an MP and has emerged as one of the more thoughtful and independently-minded Tories out there (not saying much).
Why wouldn’t you pay good money to hear from such a person?
I think the reason she came across so badly as PM was partly the very difficult situation she was in and partly appalling advice.
It may be Boris has shat the bed so badly he's not worth as much as May on the lecture circuit. Joke's not funny any more to anyone. Who wants to pay for more peppa pig speeches?
Johnson was never the lucid, Peter Ustinov style racantour his fans would have us believe. However he could make a fortune by spilling the beans on his salacious past. I wouldn't expect him to have the wit and timing of a George Best but hey the punters would love a bit of standup from a real life bumbling Ben Dover.
Alternatively he could take substantial contributions from wealthy former squeezes to stfu.
It is hard to see Truss not making the final two and if she is there then she's in with a strong chance.
Why are you sure she will make the final two? Do you know what level of MP support she has?
From above, if say Sunak, Truss, Gove, Javid, Hunt and either Baker/Harper stood in a contest, which two would come through.
I don't know but my best guess would be Sunak and Hunt. Possibly Sunak and Baker/or Harper. And Gove had decent support in the 2019 (narrowly beaten by Hunt into second place). I'm far from convinced that Truss has the MPs' support.
My feel at the moment is the candidate from the pro-Brexit / Blue Collar / economically interventionist wing will make the final round. That grouping is clearly on manoeuvres (eg the letter to the Telegraph), know they have the numbers to get far (the near 100 MPs rebelling against Boris for a start) and have opinions that should appeal to many of the base.
What might be interesting are the shorts. Jeremy Hunt is a classic example of a bet where us sophisticated elites of PB.com project our own views onto the base. Truss is close by.
Do you think blue collar/interventionist has a significant following amongst the Tory members?
I think they will base their vote on who is the best placed leader to keep the Tories in power. I’m sure @HYUFD has a better view than me but I would imagine the base has moved right wards in recent years as many of the pro-EU, socially liberal types have become less comfortable.
From a betting standpoint for next Tory leader, I think the value bets are from that part of the party.
Yes. But the membership is overwhelmingly older, wealthier and more SE based than the electorate as a whole. I can't see them wanting anything approaching a levelling up agenda. Culture War and cuts yes. Culture War isn't blue collar necessarily.
Who would be against levelling up? On what basis? As an old fart of Conservative disposition in the Home Counties I would love to see successful levelling up.
Levelling up yes, as long as it does not mean levelling you down with higher tax rises on the South to pay for more spending on the redwall
By definition levelling up implies making the lower deciles better off. There is obviously a cost to that aka taxation. So long as it is levelling up to generate a better outcome and not levelling down I'm relaxed about it. Extra taxation isn't a deal breaker.
But you can't have levelling up without someone being levelled down. That's pure fantasy.
Of course you can.
That’s the fundamental difference between left and right.
Equality of opportunity and extra investment; more growth overall but the north gets richer faster (hence levelling up). That’s the right’s approach
The left would prefer equality of outcome, delivered through taxation and redistribution, which results in levelling down
Lazy.
The South is currently relatively much richer than the North. If you point the limited national resources at the North at the expense of the South (which is what is required), the South will relatively become poorer compared to the North.
This is just a fact of life. It doesn’t mean that the South doesn’t get objectively richer during the time, it just gets relatively poorer.
If the South doesn’t get relatively poorer, then its not true levelling up as the North/South divide remains.
This is the truth about where New Labour went wrong. Remember that Many was relaxed about the filthy rich getting richer? Doesn't matter - they thought - because we're lifting you out of institutionalised poverty, building new schools and hospitals, transforming your life chances etc. The list of their achievements in office - direct benefits to the red wall achievements - is extensive.
And yet ultimately so many of the people benefitting from New Labour think they did nothing. Why? Because of economic relativity. They picked up places like Teesside and lifted them towards where the south was. But the south was also lifting, so the disparity remained. Whats worse, so many of the new job opportunities were service jobs - hard graft in an anonymous warehouse for you to make the south richer
And those northern service jobs were generally worse paid than the disappearing industrial and mining jobs they replaced.
Even if they paid the same, too many outsiders miss the big picture. Heavy industry gave a place an identity. Pride. A community spirit. The knowledge that your work was doing something big, something that put your town on the map, your work noticed. And a job for your sons.
What do warehouse and call centre jobs offer, even if the work pays the same? No pride. No worth. No image. No security. Labour then spent their time in government and beyond either saying this is the new world deal with it, or 'this is the Tories fault, deal with it'.
No wonder people voted for Brexit and then Boris to get Brexit done. But here we are in 2022 and the only thing that's been done is the red wall voter. I expect many will swing back to Labour as a muscle memory. But turnout will be lower because whats the point?
" Heavy industry gave a place an identity. Pride. A community spirit."
Having talked to people who worked in heavy industry in the past - mining, steelworking - I think that' a BS generalisation. For one thing, from a couple of people I've chatted to, there was a sense of camaraderie in workers down in a mine - as you might expect from a dangerous environment. But that did not necessarily extend to the majority of workers who were on the surface. I've heard people talk about three 'classes' of mineworkers, even into the 1980s: the ones working underground (the ones we always think of), those working at grass, and the clerical workers. They did not necessarily get along.
It also ignores the vast majority of the people who did not work in the heavy industry, but in support industries, from pubs to shops, equipment supply to transport.
I also think you're being very nasty towards call centres and their workers. It's probably a better job than working in an accounts office at a mine.
I have worked in a call centre...
I completely take your point that not all miners are equal, not all jobs are equal. Of course. But I do stand by the image that towns had as a mining town or a cotton town or a steel town or a shipbuilding town. Most of them are littered with reminders of their shared history with this hole where a shared present and future would be if they had one.
And the fact that they were one-industry towns is exactly why they failed, and is a mistake we cannot afford to make again. But even then, the majority of people did not work directly in those industries.
People complain about Thatcher and the death of those industries, even if that death had been occurring long before her (e.g. shipbuilding, mining), and continued into Major and New Labour.
p.s. as it happens I'm not really in favour of masking children. I find it absolutely bizarre that we're happy to let adults frolick around in a pub without any protection or restrictions whilst we're prepared to gag our children.
Child abuse.
The approach to masking is easily explicable.
The Government has exempted hospitality businesses because they've been battered by cancellations anyway, and it wants to avoid doing them any more harm, because that might be expensive - either as a consequence of business failures, or the Treasury finally being compelled to dish out more financial support to avert them.
The Government has applied masks to schools because the children are a captive market - they can't choose not to go - and because it's a quick and easy way of signalling that they take Omicron seriously, without doing anything useful (or expensive) about it.
In short, they want to spend as little money as they can get away with, and they must know or strongly suspect that cotton or paper masks are useless against Omicron. Thus, no point applying them where they might do even more economic damage, but useful for virtue signalling where they won't.
Someone from Fullers was on this morning. Said takings over Christmas / New Year were 20-25% down but when combined with the “limited government support” available it was good enough
It is hard to see Truss not making the final two and if she is there then she's in with a strong chance.
Why are you sure she will make the final two? Do you know what level of MP support she has?
From above, if say Sunak, Truss, Gove, Javid, Hunt and either Baker/Harper stood in a contest, which two would come through.
I don't know but my best guess would be Sunak and Hunt. Possibly Sunak and Baker/or Harper. And Gove had decent support in the 2019 (narrowly beaten by Hunt into second place). I'm far from convinced that Truss has the MPs' support.
My feel at the moment is the candidate from the pro-Brexit / Blue Collar / economically interventionist wing will make the final round. That grouping is clearly on manoeuvres (eg the letter to the Telegraph), know they have the numbers to get far (the near 100 MPs rebelling against Boris for a start) and have opinions that should appeal to many of the base.
What might be interesting are the shorts. Jeremy Hunt is a classic example of a bet where us sophisticated elites of PB.com project our own views onto the base. Truss is close by.
Do you think blue collar/interventionist has a significant following amongst the Tory members?
I think they will base their vote on who is the best placed leader to keep the Tories in power. I’m sure @HYUFD has a better view than me but I would imagine the base has moved right wards in recent years as many of the pro-EU, socially liberal types have become less comfortable.
From a betting standpoint for next Tory leader, I think the value bets are from that part of the party.
Yes. But the membership is overwhelmingly older, wealthier and more SE based than the electorate as a whole. I can't see them wanting anything approaching a levelling up agenda. Culture War and cuts yes. Culture War isn't blue collar necessarily.
Who would be against levelling up? On what basis? As an old fart of Conservative disposition in the Home Counties I would love to see successful levelling up.
Levelling up yes, as long as it does not mean levelling you down with higher tax rises on the South to pay for more spending on the redwall
By definition levelling up implies making the lower deciles better off. There is obviously a cost to that aka taxation. So long as it is levelling up to generate a better outcome and not levelling down I'm relaxed about it. Extra taxation isn't a deal breaker.
But you can't have levelling up without someone being levelled down. That's pure fantasy.
Things don't have to be a zero-sum game. Investments that (for instance) decrease the unemployment rate may cost initially, but the reduction in unemployment is a positive benefit to the area in a number of ways, and the wider economy as a whole.
The problem is that levelling up is really hard to do: if it wasn't, then it would have been done yonks ago. But at least these areas, so long forgotten by their Labour masters, are getting some attention. We're talking about the 'Red Wall', rather than just forgetting about them.
Yes, but redistribution implies tinkering with the market, thereby in right wing thinking making it less efficient. After all, if the market was going to level up on its own then it wouldn't be nessecary.
Now there are different government interventions, from outright subsidy to various regions or industries, to tax breaks that come to the same thing, but they all interfere in the free market.
Redistribution is intrinsically anti-market. For some of us that isn't really an issue, as a core part of Social Democrat philosophy is that capitalism is good, but needs mitigating for the social good of the country. It is right wing ideologues like Thatcher who have a problem with it. The Levelling up agenda is a fundamental repudiation of Thatcherism.
Social Democracy does not believe capitalism is good, it believes in watered down socialism.
No I don't think that is right. Social Democracy is in direct opposition to socialism. That's why socialists hate it to much. Socialism seeks the dismantling of capitalism whereas social democrats seek to use it to ameliorate economic inequalities and see that as a key role for government. Socialists aside, we are all social democrats. It's just a question of degree.
"The American polity is cracked, and might collapse. Canada must prepare The U.S. is becoming increasingly ungovernable, and some experts believe it could descend into civil war. What should Canada do then? Thomas Homer-Dixon"
Gilead is coming. They aren't going to accept being voted out of power again.
Could be a very large refugee problem at the Canada border in a few years time. The Canadians would do well to prepare.
If Trump returns to power in 2024 you could even get some of the conservative western Canadian States like Alberta looking to join the US while some of the liberal US States in New England, the upper Midwest and Pacific West coast seek to break away and join Trudeau's Canada
Er - the odds of Alberta joining the US are about the same as you admitting a mistake.
Conservative they may be, but they're also very proud Canadians, partly because of that.
I am curious to see the governments response to fuel bills doubling/trebling over the coming weeks. There must be a political dimension to folks having to find up to 300 pounds extra per month.
It’s perhaps the biggest issue facing the government in the first half of the year.
By imposing caps, rather than letting the market do its thing, people are now going to blame government when the price rises, rather than greedy utilities and bad Mr Putin.
I would think that the Brexit-enabled dividend of dropping VAT of energy is a no-brainer before April.
Cutting vat will cut bills by 5%, if they’ve risen by 200-300% that will not be seen as an adequate response.
Not ideal conditions for a Tory revival.
Oh, it will indeed be a drop in the ocean, but at least it’s an acknowledgement towards the problem.
The biggest mistake was imposing the price cap in the first place.
So wind the clock back and look at why the price cap was even considered - the perfect storm of endlessly rising bills and endlessly rising profits. The companies wouldn't behave so the regulated market intervened.
Except that the price cap wasn't anything to do with endlessly rising bills and profits. It was an attempt to do something about the way in which the market did over customers who didn't switch, in favour of those who did.
Those of us who understood how the system worked prior to the cap did very badly out of it (my energy bills pretty much doubled) as all the good deals promptly evaporated.
The creators of the cap (being politicians in search of a quick fix, and therefore stupid) never considered what would happen if the cost of wholesale energy doubled or trippled overnight, so set the cap up with a fairly slow review process, which is fine if wholesale trends move slowly. It was never intended to be used to make suppliers supply for long periods at a loss as currently is occurring.
It would have been very politically difficult to deal with a sudden price rise of the current scales before the price cap, but now via the laws of unintended consequences its going to be a massive political football when the price cap is next reset.
Comparing the graphs of coal spot prices to gas spot prices, if we had any real opposition they'd be crucifying the government over the closing of coal fired baseload generation in favour of gas - whilst the coal price has risen, its gone up around 50% rather than 300%.
This is just basic economics. If a country or the EU imposes a price cap they will run out of people prepared to sell them gas at that price. If they have longer term contracts they may be able to force supply for a time, until their supplier goes bust but that is it.
We are clearly more vulnerable to the spot price than many EU counties but this has little or nothing to do with the market being regulated. It is because most EU countries have strategic stores of gas that can be used to deflate the market at a spot peak and we don't.
And I'm sure it's possible to take a pride in one's work, make a positive difference, in a call centre, if management goes about it the right way.
If your job is answering customer support calls, then yes.
If your job is cold calling people claiming to be "from microsoft security department", then no.
I just did a change of address call to First Direct from my new house in Spain. The service was first rate fron start to finish - answered in less than 30 seconds, clear, polite and helpful. I'd like to say the Spanish banks were generally as good but they really aren't.
On topic: those Muscly exit prices are about right now. Incredible you could get better than evens on him surviving 2022 just a couple of weeks ago. Massive overreaction to events imo. And a lot of 'wish father to the thought'. Which tbf I can relate to because, god, I'd love to see him toppled sooner rather later. But later was the smart bet and I fear it still is.
I am curious to see the governments response to fuel bills doubling/trebling over the coming weeks. There must be a political dimension to folks having to find up to 300 pounds extra per month.
It’s perhaps the biggest issue facing the government in the first half of the year.
By imposing caps, rather than letting the market do its thing, people are now going to blame government when the price rises, rather than greedy utilities and bad Mr Putin.
I would think that the Brexit-enabled dividend of dropping VAT of energy is a no-brainer before April.
Cutting vat will cut bills by 5%, if they’ve risen by 200-300% that will not be seen as an adequate response.
Not ideal conditions for a Tory revival.
Oh, it will indeed be a drop in the ocean, but at least it’s an acknowledgement towards the problem.
The biggest mistake was imposing the price cap in the first place.
So wind the clock back and look at why the price cap was even considered - the perfect storm of endlessly rising bills and endlessly rising profits. The companies wouldn't behave so the regulated market intervened.
Except that the price cap wasn't anything to do with endlessly rising bills and profits. It was an attempt to do something about the way in which the market did over customers who didn't switch, in favour of those who did.
Those of us who understood how the system worked prior to the cap did very badly out of it (my energy bills pretty much doubled) as all the good deals promptly evaporated.
The creators of the cap (being politicians in search of a quick fix, and therefore stupid) never considered what would happen if the cost of wholesale energy doubled or trippled overnight, so set the cap up with a fairly slow review process, which is fine if wholesale trends move slowly. It was never intended to be used to make suppliers supply for long periods at a loss as currently is occurring.
It would have been very politically difficult to deal with a sudden price rise of the current scales before the price cap, but now via the laws of unintended consequences its going to be a massive political football when the price cap is next reset.
Comparing the graphs of coal spot prices to gas spot prices, if we had any real opposition they'd be crucifying the government over the closing of coal fired baseload generation in favour of gas - whilst the coal price has risen, its gone up around 50% rather than 300%.
Yes. Like most attempts by politicians to intervene in markets they don't really understand it has been a spectacular disaster.
On energy prices specifically, the other thing they could do to revive their fortunes is take an axe to the "green crap", as David Cameron called it, that makes up about a quarter of bills. Or make it voluntary, so that those that want to pay it can do so.
Which brings us back to "levelling up"...
Government direction of investment to address the problems of regional imbalances has been going on for decades. It is a curates egg of successes and failures, but to suggest that it is a new policy is simply not correct.
How can the government prevent energy bills from causing political problems?
Options available to it:
1. Cutting VAT - not likely to be enough. 2. Energy Subsidies - likely too expensive and won’t solve anything long term. 3. Er…
What else can they do? Not a lot.
Good morning
This is a problem for governments across the world, and certainly cutting vat would only save a small amount when considering the huge increases
I would expect HMG to provide targeted help to those on low incomes similar to the £300 provided to elderly pensioners each December and restricting the rise in April
Is that 300 pounds per year or per month? It seems like a joke, but an extra 300 pounds per month is what EDF offered me to fix my energy bills.
It is an annual payment for pensioners over 80 and £200 for those born between September 1941 and September 1955
It is expected energy bills will rise from £1200 to £2000 average by April - it is an issue that needs to be ameliorated
The only good thing about that is most people use hardly any gas between May and October. At least I don't - 8-10 units a month, as opposed to 30-50 in the winter. Will this just push the problem down the road to next autumn? Of course what will happen is that people won't be in credit by as much over the summer. And electricity will go up as well, as much of it is generated by gas. On the other hand, I have a green electricity account so I'm not sure if that will be effective.
In preparation I have reduced the thermostat by 1° (and may go further) and reduced the boiler output and hot water temperatures as advised by Octopus.
My house is never heated beyond 18 degrees except when I light the stove (and asthat's an expensive form of heating I do it because I like a nice warm fire rather than to save money).
It's no coincidence my energy bills are quite low.
I'd never get away with lower than 20 degrees C in the winter.
It is hard to see Truss not making the final two and if she is there then she's in with a strong chance.
Why are you sure she will make the final two? Do you know what level of MP support she has?
From above, if say Sunak, Truss, Gove, Javid, Hunt and either Baker/Harper stood in a contest, which two would come through.
I don't know but my best guess would be Sunak and Hunt. Possibly Sunak and Baker/or Harper. And Gove had decent support in the 2019 (narrowly beaten by Hunt into second place). I'm far from convinced that Truss has the MPs' support.
My feel at the moment is the candidate from the pro-Brexit / Blue Collar / economically interventionist wing will make the final round. That grouping is clearly on manoeuvres (eg the letter to the Telegraph), know they have the numbers to get far (the near 100 MPs rebelling against Boris for a start) and have opinions that should appeal to many of the base.
What might be interesting are the shorts. Jeremy Hunt is a classic example of a bet where us sophisticated elites of PB.com project our own views onto the base. Truss is close by.
Do you think blue collar/interventionist has a significant following amongst the Tory members?
I think they will base their vote on who is the best placed leader to keep the Tories in power. I’m sure @HYUFD has a better view than me but I would imagine the base has moved right wards in recent years as many of the pro-EU, socially liberal types have become less comfortable.
From a betting standpoint for next Tory leader, I think the value bets are from that part of the party.
Yes. But the membership is overwhelmingly older, wealthier and more SE based than the electorate as a whole. I can't see them wanting anything approaching a levelling up agenda. Culture War and cuts yes. Culture War isn't blue collar necessarily.
Who would be against levelling up? On what basis? As an old fart of Conservative disposition in the Home Counties I would love to see successful levelling up.
Levelling up yes, as long as it does not mean levelling you down with higher tax rises on the South to pay for more spending on the redwall
By definition levelling up implies making the lower deciles better off. There is obviously a cost to that aka taxation. So long as it is levelling up to generate a better outcome and not levelling down I'm relaxed about it. Extra taxation isn't a deal breaker.
But you can't have levelling up without someone being levelled down. That's pure fantasy.
Things don't have to be a zero-sum game. Investments that (for instance) decrease the unemployment rate may cost initially, but the reduction in unemployment is a positive benefit to the area in a number of ways, and the wider economy as a whole.
The problem is that levelling up is really hard to do: if it wasn't, then it would have been done yonks ago. But at least these areas, so long forgotten by their Labour masters, are getting some attention. We're talking about the 'Red Wall', rather than just forgetting about them.
Yes, but redistribution implies tinkering with the market, thereby in right wing thinking making it less efficient. After all, if the market was going to level up on its own then it wouldn't be nessecary.
Now there are different government interventions, from outright subsidy to various regions or industries, to tax breaks that come to the same thing, but they all interfere in the free market.
Redistribution is intrinsically anti-market. For some of us that isn't really an issue, as a core part of Social Democrat philosophy is that capitalism is good, but needs mitigating for the social good of the country. It is right wing ideologues like Thatcher who have a problem with it. The Levelling up agenda is a fundamental repudiation of Thatcherism.
I don't care about left- and right- wing thinking. It's tribal sh*t that has helped us get into this mess in the first place. Ideologues caring more about their petty ideologies than they do about people. I'd also argue you're very wrong with all of that, and are just seeing it through a prism of your own politics.
What matters is what works.
Labour's record for these areas is (ahem) rather poor. The Levelling Up agenda may or may not be a fundamental repudiation of Thatcherism (I think that's a bogus argument); but then you can also claim that it is a fundamental repudiation of Labour and Blairite policies of the last fifty years.
Depends on what measure. Vs the decayed crumbling hell that so many red wall towns were by the mid-90s, Labour's record was success piled on success. The problem was that they levelled up to the south circa 1985, not the south of the present. Give people more and they want even more.
What they should have done was to invest to transform red wall towns. Don't just try and repair the damage caused by Thatcher. Completely overhaul and refocus former industrial areas to be new industrial areas. The white heat of the 21st century and all that. But Sir Tony believed whole-heartedly in globalisation, so didn't.
It's a genuinely difficult problem to solve. The unique conditions of Britain leading the industrial revolution created a temporary economic advantage for parts of the UK and they have been in relative economic decline more or less continuously since the late nineteenth century, once countries like the US and Germany started to surpass us as industrial powers. Labour's sticking plaster approach in my view was the right one. Cameron era austerity, which fell most harshly on these areas, was a big mistake. But throwing huge amounts of money at them in an effort to completely transform their economies is probably unaffordable, especially given that Brexit has already shrunk our economy and hamstrung the ability of the competitive parts of it to generate tax revenue. That's a hard message for people to hear and it's not surprising they're pissed off.
I am curious to see the governments response to fuel bills doubling/trebling over the coming weeks. There must be a political dimension to folks having to find up to 300 pounds extra per month.
It’s perhaps the biggest issue facing the government in the first half of the year.
By imposing caps, rather than letting the market do its thing, people are now going to blame government when the price rises, rather than greedy utilities and bad Mr Putin.
I would think that the Brexit-enabled dividend of dropping VAT of energy is a no-brainer before April.
Cutting vat will cut bills by 5%, if they’ve risen by 200-300% that will not be seen as an adequate response.
Not ideal conditions for a Tory revival.
Oh, it will indeed be a drop in the ocean, but at least it’s an acknowledgement towards the problem.
The biggest mistake was imposing the price cap in the first place.
So wind the clock back and look at why the price cap was even considered - the perfect storm of endlessly rising bills and endlessly rising profits. The companies wouldn't behave so the regulated market intervened.
Except that the price cap wasn't anything to do with endlessly rising bills and profits. It was an attempt to do something about the way in which the market did over customers who didn't switch, in favour of those who did.
Those of us who understood how the system worked prior to the cap did very badly out of it (my energy bills pretty much doubled) as all the good deals promptly evaporated.
The creators of the cap (being politicians in search of a quick fix, and therefore stupid) never considered what would happen if the cost of wholesale energy doubled or trippled overnight, so set the cap up with a fairly slow review process, which is fine if wholesale trends move slowly. It was never intended to be used to make suppliers supply for long periods at a loss as currently is occurring.
It would have been very politically difficult to deal with a sudden price rise of the current scales before the price cap, but now via the laws of unintended consequences its going to be a massive political football when the price cap is next reset.
Comparing the graphs of coal spot prices to gas spot prices, if we had any real opposition they'd be crucifying the government over the closing of coal fired baseload generation in favour of gas - whilst the coal price has risen, its gone up around 50% rather than 300%.
Yes. Like most attempts by politicians to intervene in markets they don't really understand it has been a spectacular disaster.
On energy prices specifically, the other thing they could do to revive their fortunes is take an axe to the "green crap", as David Cameron called it, that makes up about a quarter of bills. Or make it voluntary, so that those that want to pay it can do so.
It has not been a "spectacular disaster" or even an unspectacular one. The lights are still on (except you've probably turned them off because it is daylight). There are problems, granted.
"The American polity is cracked, and might collapse. Canada must prepare The U.S. is becoming increasingly ungovernable, and some experts believe it could descend into civil war. What should Canada do then? Thomas Homer-Dixon"
Gilead is coming. They aren't going to accept being voted out of power again.
Could be a very large refugee problem at the Canada border in a few years time. The Canadians would do well to prepare.
If Trump returns to power in 2024 you could even get some of the conservative western Canadian States like Alberta looking to join the US while some of the liberal US States in New England, the upper Midwest and Pacific West coast seek to break away and join Trudeau's Canada
No way will that happen!
Culturally however there is no doubt Alberta has more in common with Wyoming for example than Ontario. New England too has more in common with the Atlantic States of Canada than Texas
It is hard to see Truss not making the final two and if she is there then she's in with a strong chance.
Why are you sure she will make the final two? Do you know what level of MP support she has?
From above, if say Sunak, Truss, Gove, Javid, Hunt and either Baker/Harper stood in a contest, which two would come through.
I don't know but my best guess would be Sunak and Hunt. Possibly Sunak and Baker/or Harper. And Gove had decent support in the 2019 (narrowly beaten by Hunt into second place). I'm far from convinced that Truss has the MPs' support.
My feel at the moment is the candidate from the pro-Brexit / Blue Collar / economically interventionist wing will make the final round. That grouping is clearly on manoeuvres (eg the letter to the Telegraph), know they have the numbers to get far (the near 100 MPs rebelling against Boris for a start) and have opinions that should appeal to many of the base.
What might be interesting are the shorts. Jeremy Hunt is a classic example of a bet where us sophisticated elites of PB.com project our own views onto the base. Truss is close by.
Do you think blue collar/interventionist has a significant following amongst the Tory members?
I think they will base their vote on who is the best placed leader to keep the Tories in power. I’m sure @HYUFD has a better view than me but I would imagine the base has moved right wards in recent years as many of the pro-EU, socially liberal types have become less comfortable.
From a betting standpoint for next Tory leader, I think the value bets are from that part of the party.
Yes. But the membership is overwhelmingly older, wealthier and more SE based than the electorate as a whole. I can't see them wanting anything approaching a levelling up agenda. Culture War and cuts yes. Culture War isn't blue collar necessarily.
Who would be against levelling up? On what basis? As an old fart of Conservative disposition in the Home Counties I would love to see successful levelling up.
Levelling up yes, as long as it does not mean levelling you down with higher tax rises on the South to pay for more spending on the redwall
By definition levelling up implies making the lower deciles better off. There is obviously a cost to that aka taxation. So long as it is levelling up to generate a better outcome and not levelling down I'm relaxed about it. Extra taxation isn't a deal breaker.
But you can't have levelling up without someone being levelled down. That's pure fantasy.
Of course you can.
That’s the fundamental difference between left and right.
Equality of opportunity and extra investment; more growth overall but the north gets richer faster (hence levelling up). That’s the right’s approach
The left would prefer equality of outcome, delivered through taxation and redistribution, which results in levelling down
Lazy.
The South is currently relatively much richer than the North. If you point the limited national resources at the North at the expense of the South (which is what is required), the South will relatively become poorer compared to the North.
This is just a fact of life. It doesn’t mean that the South doesn’t get objectively richer during the time, it just gets relatively poorer.
If the South doesn’t get relatively poorer, then its not true levelling up as the North/South divide remains.
This is the truth about where New Labour went wrong. Remember that Many was relaxed about the filthy rich getting richer? Doesn't matter - they thought - because we're lifting you out of institutionalised poverty, building new schools and hospitals, transforming your life chances etc. The list of their achievements in office - direct benefits to the red wall achievements - is extensive.
And yet ultimately so many of the people benefitting from New Labour think they did nothing. Why? Because of economic relativity. They picked up places like Teesside and lifted them towards where the south was. But the south was also lifting, so the disparity remained. Whats worse, so many of the new job opportunities were service jobs - hard graft in an anonymous warehouse for you to make the south richer
And those northern service jobs were generally worse paid than the disappearing industrial and mining jobs they replaced.
Even if they paid the same, too many outsiders miss the big picture. Heavy industry gave a place an identity. Pride. A community spirit. The knowledge that your work was doing something big, something that put your town on the map, your work noticed. And a job for your sons.
What do warehouse and call centre jobs offer, even if the work pays the same? No pride. No worth. No image. No security. Labour then spent their time in government and beyond either saying this is the new world deal with it, or 'this is the Tories fault, deal with it'.
No wonder people voted for Brexit and then Boris to get Brexit done. But here we are in 2022 and the only thing that's been done is the red wall voter. I expect many will swing back to Labour as a muscle memory. But turnout will be lower because whats the point?
" Heavy industry gave a place an identity. Pride. A community spirit."
Having talked to people who worked in heavy industry in the past - mining, steelworking - I think that' a BS generalisation. For one thing, from a couple of people I've chatted to, there was a sense of camaraderie in workers down in a mine - as you might expect from a dangerous environment. But that did not necessarily extend to the majority of workers who were on the surface. I've heard people talk about three 'classes' of mineworkers, even into the 1980s: the ones working underground (the ones we always think of), those working at grass, and the clerical workers. They did not necessarily get along.
It also ignores the vast majority of the people who did not work in the heavy industry, but in support industries, from pubs to shops, equipment supply to transport.
I also think you're being very nasty towards call centres and their workers. It's probably a better job than working in an accounts office at a mine.
I have worked in a call centre...
I completely take your point that not all miners are equal, not all jobs are equal. Of course. But I do stand by the image that towns had as a mining town or a cotton town or a steel town or a shipbuilding town. Most of them are littered with reminders of their shared history with this hole where a shared present and future would be if they had one.
And the fact that they were one-industry towns is exactly why they failed, and is a mistake we cannot afford to make again. But even then, the majority of people did not work directly in those industries.
People complain about Thatcher and the death of those industries, even if that death had been occurring long before her (e.g. shipbuilding, mining), and continued into Major and New Labour.
Yes. It is very parochial. The same people who tend to believe that the NHS is the envy of the world despite no country ever copying it also tend to believe that Mrs Thatcher was responsible for deindustrialising trends that long predated and postdated her, and that happened in all other industrialised countries.
It is hard to see Truss not making the final two and if she is there then she's in with a strong chance.
Why are you sure she will make the final two? Do you know what level of MP support she has?
From above, if say Sunak, Truss, Gove, Javid, Hunt and either Baker/Harper stood in a contest, which two would come through.
I don't know but my best guess would be Sunak and Hunt. Possibly Sunak and Baker/or Harper. And Gove had decent support in the 2019 (narrowly beaten by Hunt into second place). I'm far from convinced that Truss has the MPs' support.
My feel at the moment is the candidate from the pro-Brexit / Blue Collar / economically interventionist wing will make the final round. That grouping is clearly on manoeuvres (eg the letter to the Telegraph), know they have the numbers to get far (the near 100 MPs rebelling against Boris for a start) and have opinions that should appeal to many of the base.
What might be interesting are the shorts. Jeremy Hunt is a classic example of a bet where us sophisticated elites of PB.com project our own views onto the base. Truss is close by.
Do you think blue collar/interventionist has a significant following amongst the Tory members?
I think they will base their vote on who is the best placed leader to keep the Tories in power. I’m sure @HYUFD has a better view than me but I would imagine the base has moved right wards in recent years as many of the pro-EU, socially liberal types have become less comfortable.
From a betting standpoint for next Tory leader, I think the value bets are from that part of the party.
Yes. But the membership is overwhelmingly older, wealthier and more SE based than the electorate as a whole. I can't see them wanting anything approaching a levelling up agenda. Culture War and cuts yes. Culture War isn't blue collar necessarily.
Who would be against levelling up? On what basis? As an old fart of Conservative disposition in the Home Counties I would love to see successful levelling up.
Levelling up yes, as long as it does not mean levelling you down with higher tax rises on the South to pay for more spending on the redwall
By definition levelling up implies making the lower deciles better off. There is obviously a cost to that aka taxation. So long as it is levelling up to generate a better outcome and not levelling down I'm relaxed about it. Extra taxation isn't a deal breaker.
But you can't have levelling up without someone being levelled down. That's pure fantasy.
Of course you can.
That’s the fundamental difference between left and right.
Equality of opportunity and extra investment; more growth overall but the north gets richer faster (hence levelling up). That’s the right’s approach
The left would prefer equality of outcome, delivered through taxation and redistribution, which results in levelling down
Lazy.
The South is currently relatively much richer than the North. If you point the limited national resources at the North at the expense of the South (which is what is required), the South will relatively become poorer compared to the North.
This is just a fact of life. It doesn’t mean that the South doesn’t get objectively richer during the time, it just gets relatively poorer.
If the South doesn’t get relatively poorer, then its not true levelling up as the North/South divide remains.
This is the truth about where New Labour went wrong. Remember that Many was relaxed about the filthy rich getting richer? Doesn't matter - they thought - because we're lifting you out of institutionalised poverty, building new schools and hospitals, transforming your life chances etc. The list of their achievements in office - direct benefits to the red wall achievements - is extensive.
And yet ultimately so many of the people benefitting from New Labour think they did nothing. Why? Because of economic relativity. They picked up places like Teesside and lifted them towards where the south was. But the south was also lifting, so the disparity remained. Whats worse, so many of the new job opportunities were service jobs - hard graft in an anonymous warehouse for you to make the south richer
And those northern service jobs were generally worse paid than the disappearing industrial and mining jobs they replaced.
Even if they paid the same, too many outsiders miss the big picture. Heavy industry gave a place an identity. Pride. A community spirit. The knowledge that your work was doing something big, something that put your town on the map, your work noticed. And a job for your sons.
What do warehouse and call centre jobs offer, even if the work pays the same? No pride. No worth. No image. No security. Labour then spent their time in government and beyond either saying this is the new world deal with it, or 'this is the Tories fault, deal with it'.
No wonder people voted for Brexit and then Boris to get Brexit done. But here we are in 2022 and the only thing that's been done is the red wall voter. I expect many will swing back to Labour as a muscle memory. But turnout will be lower because whats the point?
" Heavy industry gave a place an identity. Pride. A community spirit."
Having talked to people who worked in heavy industry in the past - mining, steelworking - I think that' a BS generalisation. For one thing, from a couple of people I've chatted to, there was a sense of camaraderie in workers down in a mine - as you might expect from a dangerous environment. But that did not necessarily extend to the majority of workers who were on the surface. I've heard people talk about three 'classes' of mineworkers, even into the 1980s: the ones working underground (the ones we always think of), those working at grass, and the clerical workers. They did not necessarily get along.
It also ignores the vast majority of the people who did not work in the heavy industry, but in support industries, from pubs to shops, equipment supply to transport.
I also think you're being very nasty towards call centres and their workers. It's probably a better job than working in an accounts office at a mine.
I have worked in a call centre...
I completely take your point that not all miners are equal, not all jobs are equal. Of course. But I do stand by the image that towns had as a mining town or a cotton town or a steel town or a shipbuilding town. Most of them are littered with reminders of their shared history with this hole where a shared present and future would be if they had one.
Surely the fact that Dad worked at the coalface didn't preclude son from getting a job in the mine office, provided of course that the job didn't lead to management! Or of course, vice versa.
Moreover, it isn’t accurate. They’re not to be tested *before* starting back, they are to be tested *on* starting back. Given the numbers to be tested that will have to go ahead as stated because there is no time to make changes (most schools starting back tomorrow).
I am very rapidly coming to the conclusion that every single member of the DfE is actively out to destroy education, rather than just being thick as mince. The whole thing is spinning to try and look as if they’re doing something to conceal the fact they have completely failed to take the only two measures that would work - smaller classes and air filters.
And yet the media aren’t even asking the basic questions about this.
Yep. I wasn't paying close attention TBH but they were interviewing Zahawi on the TV a few minutes ago, and most of the discussion seemed to revolve around masks, before it moved on to generic stuff about the NHS and staff absences.
Leaky cotton or paper masks are almost certainly useless against Omicron and, therefore, constitute futile something-must-be-done-ism, but they are also highly visible and a nuisance, divisive imposition which therefore attracts a lot of media attention and argument. Ventilation is boring so nobody's interested in talking about it.
It just shows how useless the government is. A year on from the last winter wave and bugger all done about school (and other crowded indoor space) ventilation. Sweet FA on preventing hospital acquired covid either, even though effective measures for each exist that don't impinge on freedoms or economy.
I suspect it is hugely expensive and complex in older school buildings and virtually impossible / prohibitive in schools built under New Labour’s crappy PFI contracts.
Question. How are New Labour's crappy PFI contracts different to Ken Clarke's brilliant PFI contracts or George Osborne's superb PFI contracts?
Either PFI is crappy or it is not. The notion that it was only crap under one party defies realities about how the civil service works. The notion that PFI was only under one party is laughable revisionism that is beneath you.
As for Labour-specific PFI my response for a long time has been "what was the alternative". 18 month waits to see a specialist to join the waiting list for actual treatment. Schools and hospitals literally crumbing around you. Public infrastructure unsafe and uncared for. Your party did not spend any money to "fix the roof when the sun was shining" hence the huge backlog.
Personally I would have borrowed to invest but politically that was impossible as people were so paranoid about spending money on anything even as they sent their kids into schools held up by steel endoskeletons.
She recognized that "delivering Brexit" would destroy the Union, so she refused to do it.
Unlike BoZo
Scott you're responding to historical revisionism with your own historic revisionism.
May proposed and repeatedly legislated for Brexit. Parliament blocked her. The notions that she both failed to deliver and that she wouldn't deliver are wrong.
There must be many ex mps who regret the way they acted in those votes
It is hard to see Truss not making the final two and if she is there then she's in with a strong chance.
Why are you sure she will make the final two? Do you know what level of MP support she has?
From above, if say Sunak, Truss, Gove, Javid, Hunt and either Baker/Harper stood in a contest, which two would come through.
I don't know but my best guess would be Sunak and Hunt. Possibly Sunak and Baker/or Harper. And Gove had decent support in the 2019 (narrowly beaten by Hunt into second place). I'm far from convinced that Truss has the MPs' support.
My feel at the moment is the candidate from the pro-Brexit / Blue Collar / economically interventionist wing will make the final round. That grouping is clearly on manoeuvres (eg the letter to the Telegraph), know they have the numbers to get far (the near 100 MPs rebelling against Boris for a start) and have opinions that should appeal to many of the base.
What might be interesting are the shorts. Jeremy Hunt is a classic example of a bet where us sophisticated elites of PB.com project our own views onto the base. Truss is close by.
Do you think blue collar/interventionist has a significant following amongst the Tory members?
I think they will base their vote on who is the best placed leader to keep the Tories in power. I’m sure @HYUFD has a better view than me but I would imagine the base has moved right wards in recent years as many of the pro-EU, socially liberal types have become less comfortable.
From a betting standpoint for next Tory leader, I think the value bets are from that part of the party.
Yes. But the membership is overwhelmingly older, wealthier and more SE based than the electorate as a whole. I can't see them wanting anything approaching a levelling up agenda. Culture War and cuts yes. Culture War isn't blue collar necessarily.
Who would be against levelling up? On what basis? As an old fart of Conservative disposition in the Home Counties I would love to see successful levelling up.
Levelling up yes, as long as it does not mean levelling you down with higher tax rises on the South to pay for more spending on the redwall
By definition levelling up implies making the lower deciles better off. There is obviously a cost to that aka taxation. So long as it is levelling up to generate a better outcome and not levelling down I'm relaxed about it. Extra taxation isn't a deal breaker.
But you can't have levelling up without someone being levelled down. That's pure fantasy.
Things don't have to be a zero-sum game. Investments that (for instance) decrease the unemployment rate may cost initially, but the reduction in unemployment is a positive benefit to the area in a number of ways, and the wider economy as a whole.
The problem is that levelling up is really hard to do: if it wasn't, then it would have been done yonks ago. But at least these areas, so long forgotten by their Labour masters, are getting some attention. We're talking about the 'Red Wall', rather than just forgetting about them.
Yes, but redistribution implies tinkering with the market, thereby in right wing thinking making it less efficient. After all, if the market was going to level up on its own then it wouldn't be nessecary.
Now there are different government interventions, from outright subsidy to various regions or industries, to tax breaks that come to the same thing, but they all interfere in the free market.
Redistribution is intrinsically anti-market. For some of us that isn't really an issue, as a core part of Social Democrat philosophy is that capitalism is good, but needs mitigating for the social good of the country. It is right wing ideologues like Thatcher who have a problem with it. The Levelling up agenda is a fundamental repudiation of Thatcherism.
Social Democracy does not believe capitalism is good, it believes in watered down socialism.
It is hard to see Truss not making the final two and if she is there then she's in with a strong chance.
Why are you sure she will make the final two? Do you know what level of MP support she has?
From above, if say Sunak, Truss, Gove, Javid, Hunt and either Baker/Harper stood in a contest, which two would come through.
I don't know but my best guess would be Sunak and Hunt. Possibly Sunak and Baker/or Harper. And Gove had decent support in the 2019 (narrowly beaten by Hunt into second place). I'm far from convinced that Truss has the MPs' support.
My feel at the moment is the candidate from the pro-Brexit / Blue Collar / economically interventionist wing will make the final round. That grouping is clearly on manoeuvres (eg the letter to the Telegraph), know they have the numbers to get far (the near 100 MPs rebelling against Boris for a start) and have opinions that should appeal to many of the base.
What might be interesting are the shorts. Jeremy Hunt is a classic example of a bet where us sophisticated elites of PB.com project our own views onto the base. Truss is close by.
Do you think blue collar/interventionist has a significant following amongst the Tory members?
I think they will base their vote on who is the best placed leader to keep the Tories in power. I’m sure @HYUFD has a better view than me but I would imagine the base has moved right wards in recent years as many of the pro-EU, socially liberal types have become less comfortable.
From a betting standpoint for next Tory leader, I think the value bets are from that part of the party.
Yes. But the membership is overwhelmingly older, wealthier and more SE based than the electorate as a whole. I can't see them wanting anything approaching a levelling up agenda. Culture War and cuts yes. Culture War isn't blue collar necessarily.
Who would be against levelling up? On what basis? As an old fart of Conservative disposition in the Home Counties I would love to see successful levelling up.
Levelling up yes, as long as it does not mean levelling you down with higher tax rises on the South to pay for more spending on the redwall
By definition levelling up implies making the lower deciles better off. There is obviously a cost to that aka taxation. So long as it is levelling up to generate a better outcome and not levelling down I'm relaxed about it. Extra taxation isn't a deal breaker.
But you can't have levelling up without someone being levelled down. That's pure fantasy.
Of course you can.
That’s the fundamental difference between left and right.
Equality of opportunity and extra investment; more growth overall but the north gets richer faster (hence levelling up). That’s the right’s approach
The left would prefer equality of outcome, delivered through taxation and redistribution, which results in levelling down
May proposed and repeatedly legislated for Brexit. Parliament blocked her. The notions that she both failed to deliver and that she wouldn't deliver are wrong.
On topic, I think the government’s ratings will slowly start improving from the low base in the next couple of months. As predicted, much of Western Europe is introducing more restrictions, and England isn’t, something that was highlighted on New Year’s Eve and will become more so in the coming weeks. Look at the riots in Amsterdam overnight.
Everyone has been vaccinated, there doesn’t look to be an imminent collapse of the health system and we will just have to start living with it. It’s still going to be a tough couple of weeks for the NHS, with high levels of staff absence due to the virus, even though it looks like the corner is being turned. The key point will turn out to be the Fraser Nelson interrogation of the SAGE scientist, which got the Cabinet asking the right questions of their pandemic advisors.
Q2 looks horrible though, with the planned NI rise (which will surely be cancelled for employees), and energy prices the focus, illustrating the futility of price controls. It’s definitely become clear that opponents of the government, and the PM specifically, are hard at work collecting trivial stories they hope will eventually add up to something.
Assuming there’s not more gaffes coming up, and the PM gets a couple of good new advisors, he’s probably safe this year. The biggest problem, not that he realises it yet, is the wife. He would be much better off sending the family to live at Chequers, and not hang around Downing St getting in the way.
So you're saying that, provided:
- the Omicron wave becomes an enduring problem in Europe rather than blowing through quickly; - the April NI rise is cancelled for employees; - there are no more gaffes from the clown; - he somehow finds advisers with both talent and a willingness to drink from a poisoned chalice; - he gets his wife to go away or be kept otherwise busy;
It is hard to see Truss not making the final two and if she is there then she's in with a strong chance.
Why are you sure she will make the final two? Do you know what level of MP support she has?
From above, if say Sunak, Truss, Gove, Javid, Hunt and either Baker/Harper stood in a contest, which two would come through.
I don't know but my best guess would be Sunak and Hunt. Possibly Sunak and Baker/or Harper. And Gove had decent support in the 2019 (narrowly beaten by Hunt into second place). I'm far from convinced that Truss has the MPs' support.
My feel at the moment is the candidate from the pro-Brexit / Blue Collar / economically interventionist wing will make the final round. That grouping is clearly on manoeuvres (eg the letter to the Telegraph), know they have the numbers to get far (the near 100 MPs rebelling against Boris for a start) and have opinions that should appeal to many of the base.
What might be interesting are the shorts. Jeremy Hunt is a classic example of a bet where us sophisticated elites of PB.com project our own views onto the base. Truss is close by.
Do you think blue collar/interventionist has a significant following amongst the Tory members?
I think they will base their vote on who is the best placed leader to keep the Tories in power. I’m sure @HYUFD has a better view than me but I would imagine the base has moved right wards in recent years as many of the pro-EU, socially liberal types have become less comfortable.
From a betting standpoint for next Tory leader, I think the value bets are from that part of the party.
Yes. But the membership is overwhelmingly older, wealthier and more SE based than the electorate as a whole. I can't see them wanting anything approaching a levelling up agenda. Culture War and cuts yes. Culture War isn't blue collar necessarily.
Who would be against levelling up? On what basis? As an old fart of Conservative disposition in the Home Counties I would love to see successful levelling up.
Levelling up yes, as long as it does not mean levelling you down with higher tax rises on the South to pay for more spending on the redwall
By definition levelling up implies making the lower deciles better off. There is obviously a cost to that aka taxation. So long as it is levelling up to generate a better outcome and not levelling down I'm relaxed about it. Extra taxation isn't a deal breaker.
But you can't have levelling up without someone being levelled down. That's pure fantasy.
Of course you can.
That’s the fundamental difference between left and right.
Equality of opportunity and extra investment; more growth overall but the north gets richer faster (hence levelling up). That’s the right’s approach
The left would prefer equality of outcome, delivered through taxation and redistribution, which results in levelling down
Someone who is already wealthy would say that, whether it is true or not? Cf MRD.
On topic, I think the government’s ratings will slowly start improving from the low base in the next couple of months. As predicted, much of Western Europe is introducing more restrictions, and England isn’t, something that was highlighted on New Year’s Eve and will become more so in the coming weeks. Look at the riots in Amsterdam overnight.
Everyone has been vaccinated, there doesn’t look to be an imminent collapse of the health system and we will just have to start living with it. It’s still going to be a tough couple of weeks for the NHS, with high levels of staff absence due to the virus, even though it looks like the corner is being turned. The key point will turn out to be the Fraser Nelson interrogation of the SAGE scientist, which got the Cabinet asking the right questions of their pandemic advisors.
Q2 looks horrible though, with the planned NI rise (which will surely be cancelled for employees), and energy prices the focus, illustrating the futility of price controls. It’s definitely become clear that opponents of the government, and the PM specifically, are hard at work collecting trivial stories they hope will eventually add up to something.
Assuming there’s not more gaffes coming up, and the PM gets a couple of good new advisors, he’s probably safe this year. The biggest problem, not that he realises it yet, is the wife. He would be much better off sending the family to live at Chequers, and not hang around Downing St getting in the way.
So you're saying that, provided:
- the Omicron wave becomes an enduring problem in Europe rather than blowing through quickly; - the April NI rise is cancelled for employees; - there are no more gaffes from the clown; - he somehow finds advisers with both talent and a willingness to drink from a poisoned chalice; - he gets his wife to go away or be kept otherwise busy;
Comments
Native speakers and teachers of English who can also speak Russian at B2+ are always in very high demand.
Unless there is a sudden peace and live movement that unites both I am unsure how anything other than time can cool tensions - and they have elections every 2 years!
Just not three sessions a week for a whole year at a vastly inflated price.
I suspect the '23 year old supermodel' may be on the money in more ways than one here...
This is a problem for governments across the world, and certainly cutting vat would only save a small amount when considering the huge increases
I would expect HMG to provide targeted help to those on low incomes similar to the £300 provided to elderly pensioners each December and restricting the rise in April
And yet ultimately so many of the people benefitting from New Labour think they did nothing. Why? Because of economic relativity. They picked up places like Teesside and lifted them towards where the south was. But the south was also lifting, so the disparity remained. Whats worse, so many of the new job opportunities were service jobs - hard graft in an anonymous warehouse for you to make the south richer
Which is pure nonsense.
Confidence is a harsh quality. Once lost, it is almost impossible to regain.
He hasn’t lost a VONC, yet, but he has already lost the confidence of his party, parliament and the countries.
As for the lowest incomes yes I absolutely agree. But the political pain will be from the squeezed middle, ineligible for any support but really struggling to keep up with soaring bills just as the big tax rises kick in.
What matters is what works.
Labour's record for these areas is (ahem) rather poor. The Levelling Up agenda may or may not be a fundamental repudiation of Thatcherism (I think that's a bogus argument); but then you can also claim that it is a fundamental repudiation of Labour and Blairite policies of the last fifty years.
https://english.elpais.com/society/2022-01-03/flood-of-new-coronavirus-infections-and-progress-of-third-doses-should-see-immunity-levels-rise-in-spain.html?ssm=FB_CM_EN&utm_source=Facebook&fbclid=IwAR3iQIZ9hgAaHLCXLm--GvSCJZ-ZkWvhzZz_FvRpn02nrBUP3jTjI3DxxH0#Echobox=1641197823
Whether it comes to anything will be interesting to watch.
It wouldn't surprise me if Johnson did a cull of cabinet plotters to shore up his support with the headbangers on the backbenches. Look out for a fresh reshuffle, Johnson is quite Stalinist in how he runs his court. It's about the only thing that he does plan for.
What do warehouse and call centre jobs offer, even if the work pays the same? No pride. No worth. No image. No security. Labour then spent their time in government and beyond either saying this is the new world deal with it, or 'this is the Tories fault, deal with it'.
No wonder people voted for Brexit and then Boris to get Brexit done. But here we are in 2022 and the only thing that's been done is the red wall voter. I expect many will swing back to Labour as a muscle memory. But turnout will be lower because whats the point?
That's the sort of thinking we need to be banishing. We need to make the poorer areas more attractive to inward investment, from inside the UK and abroad. It's a long-term project, but at least people are now looking at it.
There is a massive amount of unfulfilled potential in these areas - and that's why levelling up is not a zero-sum game.
So far nothing from my school, but they may simply have been caught by surprise.
Equality of opportunity - how does private education square with that?
Extra investment - where does the money come from?
It is expected energy bills will rise from £1200 to £2000 average by April - it is an issue that needs to be ameliorated
What they should have done was to invest to transform red wall towns. Don't just try and repair the damage caused by Thatcher. Completely overhaul and refocus former industrial areas to be new industrial areas. The white heat of the 21st century and all that. But Sir Tony believed whole-heartedly in globalisation, so didn't.
ETA see for instance
https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/sn05125/
At this point, though, the case for making them compulsory in schools is slim indeed.
And given government has had two years to work out the importance of good ventilation, and do something about it, the lack of any real action there is contemptible.
I presume we're past the point when something useful could have been done to slow the spread of Omicron - it's now loose and thankfully for the vast majority any symptoms are mild. It will cause some minor issues in terms of public and private service provision if staff are self-isolating or ill and the situation in hospitals will doubtless be closely monitored.
However, all I'm hearing is the sound of the stable door swinging off its hinges and the horse galloping over the horizon.
Each country as a different set-up with energy markets so prices will start at different levels and will move at different speeds. What is different about Britain is that we are so utterly exposed to spot price moves. If the price doubles and we have to buy then we have to pay. Spain isn't the same - that isn't to say no exposure to the huge price increases, but no direct exposure to spot prices like we do.
Having talked to people who worked in heavy industry in the past - mining, steelworking - I think that' a BS generalisation. For one thing, from a couple of people I've chatted to, there was a sense of camaraderie in workers down in a mine - as you might expect from a dangerous environment. But that did not necessarily extend to the majority of workers who were on the surface. I've heard people talk about three 'classes' of mineworkers, even into the 1980s: the ones working underground (the ones we always think of), those working at grass, and the clerical workers. They did not necessarily get along.
It also ignores the vast majority of the people who did not work in the heavy industry, but in support industries, from pubs to shops, equipment supply to transport.
I also think you're being very nasty towards call centres and their workers. It's probably a better job than working in an accounts office at a mine.
Well, what does compulsory mask wearing* count as, then? A fecking fashion statement?
*I should point out that technically they have given schools 'advice' to enforce mask wearing in schools, rather than making them mandatory. This is because it is then the school that gets sued over any problems.
I think though that you underestimate the rebuilding of the North, and other post industrial parts of the UK under New Labour. @RochdalePioneers has elaborated this well in the past*. The problem was not under New Labour, but the post 2010 Austerity which fell most harshly on post industrial parts of Britain.
*imperfect though it was, Northern cities like Newcastle, Manchester, Liverpool, Leeds and Sheffield are much nicer places to live and work than they were in the 1980s. Brum, Cardiff, Belfast too. The smaller coalfield towns much less so, and it is a fair criticism of New Labour's concentration on urban areas with knowledge based service industries.
A level CT rate nationwide means an unlevel playing field when all the other advantages of London and the SE are taken into account.
Two chaps working in a quarry, stone cutting.
Man is a suit approaches them
"I say, what are you chaps doing"
Without looking up, the first grunted that he was cutting blocks 2ft by 2ft by 2ft.
The second turned to face the man in the suit and replied
"I'm helping to build a cathedral!"
As Mr P said; one needs to have pride in one's work. One of the nicest things anyone has ever said to me was when I left my last 'job'..... advising on medicines in care homes..... and was told by management that 'I had made a difference'.
She was speaking very positively, I hasten to add.
And I'm sure it's possible to take a pride in one's work, make a positive difference, in a call centre, if management goes about it the right way.
Unlike BoZo
I completely take your point that not all miners are equal, not all jobs are equal. Of course. But I do stand by the image that towns had as a mining town or a cotton town or a steel town or a shipbuilding town. Most of them are littered with reminders of their shared history with this hole where a shared present and future would be if they had one.
If your job is cold calling people claiming to be "from microsoft security department", then no.
ETA the BBC has this handy cut-out-and-keep calendar of 2022 sporting events. It turns out we will also host the Rugby League World Cup and Women's Euro 2022.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/59548186
Those of us who understood how the system worked prior to the cap did very badly out of it (my energy bills pretty much doubled) as all the good deals promptly evaporated.
The creators of the cap (being politicians in search of a quick fix, and therefore stupid) never considered what would happen if the cost of wholesale energy doubled or trippled overnight, so set the cap up with a fairly slow review process, which is fine if wholesale trends move slowly. It was never intended to be used to make suppliers supply for long periods at a loss as currently is occurring.
It would have been very politically difficult to deal with a sudden price rise of the current scales before the price cap, but now via the laws of unintended consequences its going to be a massive political football when the price cap is next reset.
Comparing the graphs of coal spot prices to gas spot prices, if we had any real opposition they'd be crucifying the government over the closing of coal fired baseload generation in favour of gas - whilst the coal price has risen, its gone up around 50% rather than 300%.
I had hopes when Zahawi was appointed that he would finally kick some arse at the DfE. So far, he has mostly been a disappointment.
1. Increase Universal Credit and other subsistence benefit rates.
2. Do whatever it takes to increase the speed of the transition away from burning gas to generate electricity. We're currently on a stretch of five continuous days of generating more electricity from wind than gas, every hour of the day. The more electricity from wind we have, the less gas we need to burn, and electricity prices will be cheaper and less affected by global volatility in fossil fuel prices.
The VAT cut is a nod towards trying to help everyone, a little, and avoiding the government being seen to profit from the price increases. Targeted help to avoid extreme hardship for those on the lowest incomes. A medium-term plan to protect Britain from this happening again.
May proposed and repeatedly legislated for Brexit. Parliament blocked her. The notions that she both failed to deliver and that she wouldn't deliver are wrong.
On energy prices specifically, the other thing they could do to revive their fortunes is take an axe to the "green crap", as David Cameron called it, that makes up about a quarter of bills. Or make it voluntary, so that those that want to pay it can do so.
In preparation I have reduced the thermostat by 1° (and may go further) and reduced the boiler output and hot water temperatures as advised by Octopus.
It's no coincidence my energy bills are quite low.
Alternatively he could take substantial contributions from wealthy former squeezes to stfu.
People complain about Thatcher and the death of those industries, even if that death had been occurring long before her (e.g. shipbuilding, mining), and continued into Major and New Labour.
As an example, often forgotten by people who blame Thatcher for mining's ills, here is a chart of employment in coal mining. It's not the picture many people paint.
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/employment-in-the-coal-industry-in-the-united-kingdom
Conservative they may be, but they're also very proud Canadians, partly because of that.
We are clearly more vulnerable to the spot price than many EU counties but this has little or nothing to do with the market being regulated. It is because most EU countries have strategic stores of gas that can be used to deflate the market at a spot peak and we don't.
Government direction of investment to address the problems of regional imbalances has been going on for decades. It is a curates egg of successes and failures, but to suggest that it is a new policy is simply not correct.
Or of course, vice versa.
Either PFI is crappy or it is not. The notion that it was only crap under one party defies realities about how the civil service works. The notion that PFI was only under one party is laughable revisionism that is beneath you.
As for Labour-specific PFI my response for a long time has been "what was the alternative". 18 month waits to see a specialist to join the waiting list for actual treatment. Schools and hospitals literally crumbing around you. Public infrastructure unsafe and uncared for. Your party did not spend any money to "fix the roof when the sun was shining" hence the huge backlog.
Personally I would have borrowed to invest but politically that was impossible as people were so paranoid about spending money on anything even as they sent their kids into schools held up by steel endoskeletons.
Right: equality of opportunity through growth
Left: equality of outcome through redistribution
Not a comment on this government specifically
"No British PM could agree to this"...
- the Omicron wave becomes an enduring problem in Europe rather than blowing through quickly;
- the April NI rise is cancelled for employees;
- there are no more gaffes from the clown;
- he somehow finds advisers with both talent and a willingness to drink from a poisoned chalice;
- he gets his wife to go away or be kept otherwise busy;
it'll all turn good for him in 2022?