Some changes (NI on pensions) are possible, but otherwise it seems to be largely a matter of luck as to how well or badly a generation does. Baby boomers got lucky. Young people today much less so.
There are two sorts of wealth, income and assets. The first is heavily taxed, the latter much more lightly if at all. This needs to be rebalanced.
Some changes (NI on pensions) are possible, but otherwise it seems to be largely a matter of luck as to how well or badly a generation does. Baby boomers got lucky. Young people today much less so.
There are two sorts of wealth, income and assets. The first is heavily taxed, the latter much more lightly if at all. This needs to be rebalanced.
Now I am not going to go all HYUFD on this as I don't disagree but you have to be careful re pensions particularly with the decline of DB schemes. Not that I am biased or anything but whereas you will receive an NHS pension I am entirely dependent upon the wealth I have built up. People forget the capital value of their DB pensions and unless you want to apply a wealth tax to DB pensions (how paid?) anything else would be unreasonable and also make some retirements unviable.
There are two kinds of wealth
- Evil, scummy money, owned by other people - Sacred entitlements owned by ME!
Mr. kjh, a fair point. The public sector has far better pensions than the private sector. If we're talking about rebalancing I'm sure people will be in favour of adjusting them accordingly.
Headline on my Guardian..... admittedly website ...... is the cost of living.. Andrew's second. And throughout history attractive young women have either been thrown at, or thrown themselves at, princes. Sometime's it's worked for them; more often, of course, it hasn't.
Good morning all; bit windy today, but dry.
Morning,
Wind building here. Had a bit of a leak in roof next to a flu yesterday, so not looking forward to more rain this evening.
Some changes (NI on pensions) are possible, but otherwise it seems to be largely a matter of luck as to how well or badly a generation does. Baby boomers got lucky. Young people today much less so.
There are two sorts of wealth, income and assets. The first is heavily taxed, the latter much more lightly if at all. This needs to be rebalanced.
How about optimising spending?
It is impossible for the government to spend less by increasing productivity.
This is why Aerojet Rocketdyne RS-25 (a warm over version of the Space Shuttle Main Engines) will take 3 years to build 18 examples, for 100 million dollars each.
Meanwhile, Elon Musk is annoyed because Raptor 2 (a more complex engine) is costing around 1 million dollars per example and they are only coming of the production line at 1 per *day*
The money for Andrew’s settlement has come from his sale of his Swiss chalet and the Queen's Duchy of Lancaster estate income not taxpayers. In the end a settlement was agreed as all Epstein's clients agreed a settlement or NDA
“It seems to me like I’m just working to be able to cover the bills,” said Matthew Tovey. The 30-year-old from Merthyr Tydfil, south Wales, said his pay had not risen above inflation for a decade under the Conservatives’ austerity drive.
Tovey, who uses his car to commute to work, has seen the cost of diesel rise sharply and is concerned that his pay packet will not keep up with the surge in gas and electricity bills due in April. “I’m quite fearful of how I’m going to manage,” he said.
He said it felt as if NHS staff had been ignored despite being on the frontline of the pandemic. “I worked through three waves, and they stood on their doorsteps and clapped, but they’re taking food away from our tables, really.”
Having gone to university to become a nurse, Tovey says he probably earns more than other people but is still struggling. “It feels like if I’ve worked hard and gone into a profession to better myself, and I’m in this position, how the hell are other people coping?
“It impacts on your mental health, there’s nowhere to turn. You’re caught between a rock and a hard place and you wonder, when are we going to have a break?”
This week British bankers will start collecting the biggest bonuses since before the 2008 global financial crisis as their employers fight an “increasingly intense war for talent”.
As most Britons face the biggest squeeze on their incomes since at least 1990, already very highly paid bankers are celebrating “particularly obscene” bonuses in the City’s pubs and wine bars.
“We have had quite the run on champagne – the poshest champagne we stock,” says James, a bartender at the New Moon on the streets of Leadenhall Market near the headquarters of many of the City of London’s banks. “They come here to celebrate when they get told their ‘number’ – the numbers seem to have been particularly obscene this year.”
...
The bumper bonuses will tip several hundred more UK bankers into the EU’s “high earners” warning report which details every banker earning more than €1m (£835,000) a year. The European Banking Authority (EBA) found that 3,519 bankers working in the UK earned more than €1m-a-year last year – more than seven times as many as those working in Germany which has the second highest number of €1m-a-year bankers.
The EBA figures show 27 UK bankers earned more than €10m in 2019 (the latest year available). Two UK-based asset managers were paid between €38m and €39m, and one merchant banker was paid €64.8m. That banker received fixed pay of €242,000, topped up with a bonus of €64.6m.
“It seems to me like I’m just working to be able to cover the bills,” said Matthew Tovey. The 30-year-old from Merthyr Tydfil, south Wales, said his pay had not risen above inflation for a decade under the Conservatives’ austerity drive.
The Guardian appears to be unaware that Merthyr Tydfil is in Wales, that health is devolved, and that pay and conditions are the responsibility of the Welsh Government.
The joys of "lets keep people stupid" politics. The Tory tactics during austerity was cut nationally and pass the blame locally. The idea being that they gut the finances of Labour councils and then get voted in with the Labour councillors getting the blame. It worked - so many people had no clue how funding worked.
So here it isn't The Guardian that is ignorant of how things work, it is the *voter*. Exactly what the Tories wanted.
And indeed, some googling reveals Matthew Tovey hardly to be an ignorant average "voter".
My guess from Tovey's social media profile and the images of him with Jeremy Corbyn is he may not be entirely a political naif.
I am not sure that it would be the greatest strategy in the world for the Tories to claim there is not a serious cost of living crisis for millions of working people people across the UK.
I am not a Tory strategist.
My only point is that the Welsh NHS is the responsibility of the Welsh Government.
Yep and you're right. But pointing that out to angry voters in Wales won't do the Tories any favours. People have been worked hard by the media for a decade to not understand stuff, and unfortunately that is going to bite them on the arse hard.
What could also be a key issue in many rural / far flung / poorer areas is the axing of regional development monies. The EU cash has gone and the pledge to match it dropped. Many places will be viscerally and visibly poorer because of it, just at the time as the cost of living squeeze pinches hardest and the Tories try to parade Brexit benefits.
When the government itself demonstrates that it doesn't know how stuff works they can hardly complain that their voters are just as ignorant.
The EU cash was not spent to any great benefit of the residents of Merthyr Tydfil. There was EU cash in Wales, but the beneficiaries were people/institutions that knew how to work the system.
Where I do agree with you is that the increased cost of living will hurt the Government. In fact, my guess is that is why Johnson is still in place, to take some of the hit.
As regards Matthew Tovey, after rummaging around his extensive media profile, I rather like the guy -- but he is clearly on the "Starmer Out" wing of the Labour party
What he is not is an average, politically disengaged voter from Merthyr Tydfil, as the Guardian present him.
And the Guardian keep on making this mistake -- picking something wrong with the Welsh NHS and blaming the Tories. Time they learnt.
Does the Welsh Government have significant tax raising powers, like we do up here in Scotland? ....
The reality is, though, that the ability to vary taxes doesn't mean all that much when central government has power over most of the rest of the economy, which leaves fairly limited scope for manoeuvre without creating perverse consequences.
“It seems to me like I’m just working to be able to cover the bills,” said Matthew Tovey. The 30-year-old from Merthyr Tydfil, south Wales, said his pay had not risen above inflation for a decade under the Conservatives’ austerity drive.
Tovey, who uses his car to commute to work, has seen the cost of diesel rise sharply and is concerned that his pay packet will not keep up with the surge in gas and electricity bills due in April. “I’m quite fearful of how I’m going to manage,” he said.
He said it felt as if NHS staff had been ignored despite being on the frontline of the pandemic. “I worked through three waves, and they stood on their doorsteps and clapped, but they’re taking food away from our tables, really.”
Having gone to university to become a nurse, Tovey says he probably earns more than other people but is still struggling. “It feels like if I’ve worked hard and gone into a profession to better myself, and I’m in this position, how the hell are other people coping?
“It impacts on your mental health, there’s nowhere to turn. You’re caught between a rock and a hard place and you wonder, when are we going to have a break?”
This week British bankers will start collecting the biggest bonuses since before the 2008 global financial crisis as their employers fight an “increasingly intense war for talent”.
As most Britons face the biggest squeeze on their incomes since at least 1990, already very highly paid bankers are celebrating “particularly obscene” bonuses in the City’s pubs and wine bars.
“We have had quite the run on champagne – the poshest champagne we stock,” says James, a bartender at the New Moon on the streets of Leadenhall Market near the headquarters of many of the City of London’s banks. “They come here to celebrate when they get told their ‘number’ – the numbers seem to have been particularly obscene this year.”
...
The bumper bonuses will tip several hundred more UK bankers into the EU’s “high earners” warning report which details every banker earning more than €1m (£835,000) a year. The European Banking Authority (EBA) found that 3,519 bankers working in the UK earned more than €1m-a-year last year – more than seven times as many as those working in Germany which has the second highest number of €1m-a-year bankers.
The EBA figures show 27 UK bankers earned more than €10m in 2019 (the latest year available). Two UK-based asset managers were paid between €38m and €39m, and one merchant banker was paid €64.8m. That banker received fixed pay of €242,000, topped up with a bonus of €64.6m.
“It seems to me like I’m just working to be able to cover the bills,” said Matthew Tovey. The 30-year-old from Merthyr Tydfil, south Wales, said his pay had not risen above inflation for a decade under the Conservatives’ austerity drive.
The Guardian appears to be unaware that Merthyr Tydfil is in Wales, that health is devolved, and that pay and conditions are the responsibility of the Welsh Government.
The joys of "lets keep people stupid" politics. The Tory tactics during austerity was cut nationally and pass the blame locally. The idea being that they gut the finances of Labour councils and then get voted in with the Labour councillors getting the blame. It worked - so many people had no clue how funding worked.
So here it isn't The Guardian that is ignorant of how things work, it is the *voter*. Exactly what the Tories wanted.
And indeed, some googling reveals Matthew Tovey hardly to be an ignorant average "voter".
My guess from Tovey's social media profile and the images of him with Jeremy Corbyn is he may not be entirely a political naif.
I am not sure that it would be the greatest strategy in the world for the Tories to claim there is not a serious cost of living crisis for millions of working people people across the UK.
I am not a Tory strategist.
My only point is that the Welsh NHS is the responsibility of the Welsh Government.
Yep and you're right. But pointing that out to angry voters in Wales won't do the Tories any favours. People have been worked hard by the media for a decade to not understand stuff, and unfortunately that is going to bite them on the arse hard.
What could also be a key issue in many rural / far flung / poorer areas is the axing of regional development monies. The EU cash has gone and the pledge to match it dropped. Many places will be viscerally and visibly poorer because of it, just at the time as the cost of living squeeze pinches hardest and the Tories try to parade Brexit benefits.
When the government itself demonstrates that it doesn't know how stuff works they can hardly complain that their voters are just as ignorant.
The EU cash was not spent to any great benefit of the residents of Merthyr Tydfil. There was EU cash in Wales, but the beneficiaries were people/institutions that knew how to work the system.
Where I do agree with you is that the increased cost of living will hurt the Government. In fact, my guess is that is why Johnson is still in place, to take some of the hit.
As regards Matthew Tovey, after rummaging around his extensive media profile, I rather like the guy -- but he is clearly on the "Starmer Out" wing of the Labour party
What he is not is an average, politically disengaged voter from Merthyr Tydfil, as the Guardian present him.
And the Guardian keep on making this mistake -- picking something wrong with the Welsh NHS and blaming the Tories. Time they learnt.
Does the Welsh Government have significant tax raising powers, like we do up here in Scotland?
I appreciate that borrowing is important, but while SC/WA are in Union with England all that really means is borrowing off the English given the tax/expenditure differential.
@RochdalePioneers is wrong to suggest that voters have been hoodwinked by devolution. If they are holding the SG etc to account, while they have tax powers, then it's working exactly as it should.
I was suggesting no such thing. Voters have been hoodwinked by a decade-long misinformation campaign by the Tories to pin all the blame on service provision onto localities regardless of where the money comes from.
The plan - and it has been a success - was to destroy local government finance through removal of the government grant then blame councils for the local destruction of services provided by councils using the government grant.
Now that voters have been educated to not understand the flow of money it is quite funny that this is now in reverse with the Westminster government blamed for things it doesn't control. They can't complain - they wanted voters who were ignorant of reality.
Yesterday was a great day for the victims of (child) sexual abuse and the republican movement in this country.
So Brenda is going to help pay the £12 million settlement, an utter disgrace.
The Supreme Governor of the Church of England is setting a marvellous example.
Yet more rubbish from the republican, Liberal Democrat voting non Tory.
What the Queen does with her private funds is her own affair. It also had no impact on the monarchy, indeed former US Presidents Clinton and Trump associated with Epstein, Andrew is only 9th in the line of succession now.
The Queen has set a marvellous example her entire life and is not responsible for the actions of her son
Rising RPI inflation, hitting 7.8% in the 12 months to January according to @ONS, is pushing up the cost of government debt held in index-linked gilts.
Yesterday was a great day for the victims of (child) sexual abuse and the republican movement in this country.
So Brenda is going to help pay the £12 million settlement, an utter disgrace.
The Supreme Governor of the Church of England is setting a marvellous example.
Yet more rubbish from the republican, Liberal Democrat voting non Tory.
What the Queen does with her private funds is her own affair. It also had no impact on the monarchy, indeed former US Presidents Clinton and Trump associated with Epstein, Andrew is only 9th in the line of succession now.
The Queen has set a marvellous example her entire life and is not responsible for the actions of her son
She's responsible for bailing him out to keep it hushed up and not affecting her stupid jubilee thing.
On topic: glad to see the general level of disgust at rich man's "justice"
Off topic thanks to @pigeon for the piece on pay. This line stood out: "He said it felt as if NHS staff had been ignored despite being on the frontline of the pandemic. “I worked through three waves, and they stood on their doorsteps and clapped, but they’re taking food away from our tables, really.”
An awful lot of people in an awful lot of jobs worked tirelessly and at some risk through the pandemic and their reward appears to be getting screwed over and sneered at. NHS staff less likely to be Tory voters but plenty in all of the other key worker jobs who kept essential services going.
Their reward for their vote in 2019 and then their graft is a whopping tax rise, front line NHS cuts and being sneeringly told by ministers that asking for a pay rise is out of order. As the champagne corks pop amongst Tory banking friends.
A deep sense of unfairness drove first the Brexit vote then the Tory win in 2019. That unfairness, once the target is reversed, will do egregious things to Tory chances in 2024.
Labour's Welsh NHS austerity.
Indeed! And like everything else the cash circulates from Westminster. So it doesn't matter that this Nurse is a bit trotty and lives in Wales, his "hang on I did all the work and now can't pay the bills how is that fair" question is exactly what we have been debating on here for a while.
Inflation plus tax cuts equal unhappy voters. Hard to deflect the blame away from the government though some of you will valiantly try.
Indeed perhaps it is because of his lived experience that he "is a bit trotty".
The young workers being screwed over and over again by this government are hardly going to be turning blue.
The war on woke and defending ar values are just the things to bring them round though.
Yesterday was a great day for the victims of (child) sexual abuse and the republican movement in this country.
So Brenda is going to help pay the £12 million settlement, an utter disgrace.
The Supreme Governor of the Church of England is setting a marvellous example.
Yet more rubbish from the republican, Liberal Democrat voting non Tory.
What the Queen does with her private funds is her own affair. It also had no impact on the monarchy, indeed former US Presidents Clinton and Trump associated with Epstein, Andrew is only 9th in the line of succession now.
The Queen has set a marvellous example her entire life and is not responsible for the actions of her son
Valiant effort on your part, but still not enough for an OBE, I fear.
On topic: glad to see the general level of disgust at rich man's "justice"
Yes - lots of disgust being expressed.
Justice would have meant a criminal trial where the allegations could be properly tested.
But when I pointed this out on here weeks ago and the inappropriateness of having such serious matters decided in civil proceedings, I was told off by many on here, that Giuffre had every right to make a claim, blah blah
And yet the end result is completely unsatisfactory: she has got some money, she has not got any admission of guilt or an apology from him, if guilty he has not been convicted and properly punished, if innocent he has not cleared his name and the promise to help sex trafficking victims is meaningless since he's retired from public life and will not be allowed to resume it.
It is a complete mess and exactly what those who cheered Ms Giuffre on were warned was likely to happen.
If a man commits rape he should be in prison. If he is innocent he should not have his good character attacked in this way or have to pay out.
It's not rich man's justice. It's completely unsatisfactory and not justice at all.
Far from being the victory which some are claiming it to have been, today's Divisional Court decision about Dido Harding's appointment is a massive blow to the Good Law Project and its ability to meddle in all manner of governmental decisions
I wonder if this could force a change in the functioning of the GLP? I was listening to More Perfect (podcast about SCOTUS), and they have an episode about Imperfect Plaintiffs, where special interest groups look for plaintiffs with standing to challenge unjust laws in court. In one case, the police entered an apartment and used a Texas law to arrest two men having sex. A gay rights group took up the cause, and during the pre-trial period one of the plaintiffs complained that they weren't even having sex! The plaintiff was told to not repeat this by the interest group. Of course, the law was eventually found to be unconstitutional. This works in the opposite political direction, with challenges to affirmative action brought by white plaintiffs who feel discriminated against in University admissions policies (found to be constitutional in the case I have in mind).
Essentially, and noted in the replies to that tweet, the GLP will just have to find plaintiffs with standing in the future. Seems like a bit of a ballache for the GLP (and would limit them in cases like this present one with Harding - though maybe there are alternative legal routes here??), but if the Government have really fucked it surely they can find and fund a legal challenge from someone who has standing. I'm not necessarily condoning a US-style of political lawfare, but I think it demonstrates that it might not be so difficult to find an individual with standing.
Yesterday was a great day for the victims of (child) sexual abuse and the republican movement in this country.
So Brenda is going to help pay the £12 million settlement, an utter disgrace.
The Supreme Governor of the Church of England is setting a marvellous example.
Yet more rubbish from the republican, Liberal Democrat voting non Tory.
What the Queen does with her private funds is her own affair. It also had no impact on the monarchy, indeed former US Presidents Clinton and Trump associated with Epstein, Andrew is only 9th in the line of succession now.
The Queen has set a marvellous example her entire life and is not responsible for the actions of her son
I think she takes responsibility for it to an extent if her money means that he avoids being held to account for his actions.
Some changes (NI on pensions) are possible, but otherwise it seems to be largely a matter of luck as to how well or badly a generation does. Baby boomers got lucky. Young people today much less so.
There are two sorts of wealth, income and assets. The first is heavily taxed, the latter much more lightly if at all. This needs to be rebalanced.
How about optimising spending?
It is impossible for the government to spend less by increasing productivity.
This is why Aerojet Rocketdyne RS-25 (a warm over version of the Space Shuttle Main Engines) will take 3 years to build 18 examples, for 100 million dollars each.
Meanwhile, Elon Musk is annoyed because Raptor 2 (a more complex engine) is costing around 1 million dollars per example and they are only coming of the production line at 1 per *day*
Of course, the SSME has had many, many successful flights to orbit. Raptor 1... has not. It has only had hops, and the engine's performance was not as good as hoped - and destroyed itself on one occasion.
It's hard to argue that Raptor 1 has not been a failure, using Musk's own words in the past.
As ever, take Musk's timescales and ambitions with a large pinch of salt.
“It seems to me like I’m just working to be able to cover the bills,” said Matthew Tovey. The 30-year-old from Merthyr Tydfil, south Wales, said his pay had not risen above inflation for a decade under the Conservatives’ austerity drive.
Tovey, who uses his car to commute to work, has seen the cost of diesel rise sharply and is concerned that his pay packet will not keep up with the surge in gas and electricity bills due in April. “I’m quite fearful of how I’m going to manage,” he said.
He said it felt as if NHS staff had been ignored despite being on the frontline of the pandemic. “I worked through three waves, and they stood on their doorsteps and clapped, but they’re taking food away from our tables, really.”
Having gone to university to become a nurse, Tovey says he probably earns more than other people but is still struggling. “It feels like if I’ve worked hard and gone into a profession to better myself, and I’m in this position, how the hell are other people coping?
“It impacts on your mental health, there’s nowhere to turn. You’re caught between a rock and a hard place and you wonder, when are we going to have a break?”
This week British bankers will start collecting the biggest bonuses since before the 2008 global financial crisis as their employers fight an “increasingly intense war for talent”.
As most Britons face the biggest squeeze on their incomes since at least 1990, already very highly paid bankers are celebrating “particularly obscene” bonuses in the City’s pubs and wine bars.
“We have had quite the run on champagne – the poshest champagne we stock,” says James, a bartender at the New Moon on the streets of Leadenhall Market near the headquarters of many of the City of London’s banks. “They come here to celebrate when they get told their ‘number’ – the numbers seem to have been particularly obscene this year.”
...
The bumper bonuses will tip several hundred more UK bankers into the EU’s “high earners” warning report which details every banker earning more than €1m (£835,000) a year. The European Banking Authority (EBA) found that 3,519 bankers working in the UK earned more than €1m-a-year last year – more than seven times as many as those working in Germany which has the second highest number of €1m-a-year bankers.
The EBA figures show 27 UK bankers earned more than €10m in 2019 (the latest year available). Two UK-based asset managers were paid between €38m and €39m, and one merchant banker was paid €64.8m. That banker received fixed pay of €242,000, topped up with a bonus of €64.6m.
“It seems to me like I’m just working to be able to cover the bills,” said Matthew Tovey. The 30-year-old from Merthyr Tydfil, south Wales, said his pay had not risen above inflation for a decade under the Conservatives’ austerity drive.
The Guardian appears to be unaware that Merthyr Tydfil is in Wales, that health is devolved, and that pay and conditions are the responsibility of the Welsh Government.
The joys of "lets keep people stupid" politics. The Tory tactics during austerity was cut nationally and pass the blame locally. The idea being that they gut the finances of Labour councils and then get voted in with the Labour councillors getting the blame. It worked - so many people had no clue how funding worked.
So here it isn't The Guardian that is ignorant of how things work, it is the *voter*. Exactly what the Tories wanted.
And indeed, some googling reveals Matthew Tovey hardly to be an ignorant average "voter".
My guess from Tovey's social media profile and the images of him with Jeremy Corbyn is he may not be entirely a political naif.
I am not sure that it would be the greatest strategy in the world for the Tories to claim there is not a serious cost of living crisis for millions of working people people across the UK.
I am not a Tory strategist.
My only point is that the Welsh NHS is the responsibility of the Welsh Government.
Yep and you're right. But pointing that out to angry voters in Wales won't do the Tories any favours. People have been worked hard by the media for a decade to not understand stuff, and unfortunately that is going to bite them on the arse hard.
What could also be a key issue in many rural / far flung / poorer areas is the axing of regional development monies. The EU cash has gone and the pledge to match it dropped. Many places will be viscerally and visibly poorer because of it, just at the time as the cost of living squeeze pinches hardest and the Tories try to parade Brexit benefits.
When the government itself demonstrates that it doesn't know how stuff works they can hardly complain that their voters are just as ignorant.
The EU cash was not spent to any great benefit of the residents of Merthyr Tydfil. There was EU cash in Wales, but the beneficiaries were people/institutions that knew how to work the system.
Where I do agree with you is that the increased cost of living will hurt the Government. In fact, my guess is that is why Johnson is still in place, to take some of the hit.
As regards Matthew Tovey, after rummaging around his extensive media profile, I rather like the guy -- but he is clearly on the "Starmer Out" wing of the Labour party
What he is not is an average, politically disengaged voter from Merthyr Tydfil, as the Guardian present him.
And the Guardian keep on making this mistake -- picking something wrong with the Welsh NHS and blaming the Tories. Time they learnt.
Does the Welsh Government have significant tax raising powers, like we do up here in Scotland?
I appreciate that borrowing is important, but while SC/WA are in Union with England all that really means is borrowing off the English given the tax/expenditure differential.
@RochdalePioneers is wrong to suggest that voters have been hoodwinked by devolution. If they are holding the SG etc to account, while they have tax powers, then it's working exactly as it should.
I was suggesting no such thing. Voters have been hoodwinked by a decade-long misinformation campaign by the Tories to pin all the blame on service provision onto localities regardless of where the money comes from.
The plan - and it has been a success - was to destroy local government finance through removal of the government grant then blame councils for the local destruction of services provided by councils using the government grant.
Now that voters have been educated to not understand the flow of money it is quite funny that this is now in reverse with the Westminster government blamed for things it doesn't control. They can't complain - they wanted voters who were ignorant of reality.
Exactly what the SNP have just done to councils in Scotland.
Sabre rattling by the West would be sending an American carrier group into the Black Sea.
The Montreux Convention precludes this so it would be a bit more than sabre rattling.
Wasn’t there a photo the other day of a Russian sub sailing (?) through the Bosphorus? Wouldn’t that also be a breach?
Russia is a Black Sea power and has less requirements on notification and no restriction on tonnage. Hence why the Kuznetzov (with its slightly dodgy classficaton has a cruiser) has passed through the Turkish Straits.
“It seems to me like I’m just working to be able to cover the bills,” said Matthew Tovey. The 30-year-old from Merthyr Tydfil, south Wales, said his pay had not risen above inflation for a decade under the Conservatives’ austerity drive.
Tovey, who uses his car to commute to work, has seen the cost of diesel rise sharply and is concerned that his pay packet will not keep up with the surge in gas and electricity bills due in April. “I’m quite fearful of how I’m going to manage,” he said.
He said it felt as if NHS staff had been ignored despite being on the frontline of the pandemic. “I worked through three waves, and they stood on their doorsteps and clapped, but they’re taking food away from our tables, really.”
Having gone to university to become a nurse, Tovey says he probably earns more than other people but is still struggling. “It feels like if I’ve worked hard and gone into a profession to better myself, and I’m in this position, how the hell are other people coping?
“It impacts on your mental health, there’s nowhere to turn. You’re caught between a rock and a hard place and you wonder, when are we going to have a break?”
This week British bankers will start collecting the biggest bonuses since before the 2008 global financial crisis as their employers fight an “increasingly intense war for talent”.
As most Britons face the biggest squeeze on their incomes since at least 1990, already very highly paid bankers are celebrating “particularly obscene” bonuses in the City’s pubs and wine bars.
“We have had quite the run on champagne – the poshest champagne we stock,” says James, a bartender at the New Moon on the streets of Leadenhall Market near the headquarters of many of the City of London’s banks. “They come here to celebrate when they get told their ‘number’ – the numbers seem to have been particularly obscene this year.”
...
The bumper bonuses will tip several hundred more UK bankers into the EU’s “high earners” warning report which details every banker earning more than €1m (£835,000) a year. The European Banking Authority (EBA) found that 3,519 bankers working in the UK earned more than €1m-a-year last year – more than seven times as many as those working in Germany which has the second highest number of €1m-a-year bankers.
The EBA figures show 27 UK bankers earned more than €10m in 2019 (the latest year available). Two UK-based asset managers were paid between €38m and €39m, and one merchant banker was paid €64.8m. That banker received fixed pay of €242,000, topped up with a bonus of €64.6m.
“It seems to me like I’m just working to be able to cover the bills,” said Matthew Tovey. The 30-year-old from Merthyr Tydfil, south Wales, said his pay had not risen above inflation for a decade under the Conservatives’ austerity drive.
The Guardian appears to be unaware that Merthyr Tydfil is in Wales, that health is devolved, and that pay and conditions are the responsibility of the Welsh Government.
The joys of "lets keep people stupid" politics. The Tory tactics during austerity was cut nationally and pass the blame locally. The idea being that they gut the finances of Labour councils and then get voted in with the Labour councillors getting the blame. It worked - so many people had no clue how funding worked.
So here it isn't The Guardian that is ignorant of how things work, it is the *voter*. Exactly what the Tories wanted.
And indeed, some googling reveals Matthew Tovey hardly to be an ignorant average "voter".
My guess from Tovey's social media profile and the images of him with Jeremy Corbyn is he may not be entirely a political naif.
I am not sure that it would be the greatest strategy in the world for the Tories to claim there is not a serious cost of living crisis for millions of working people people across the UK.
I am not a Tory strategist.
My only point is that the Welsh NHS is the responsibility of the Welsh Government.
Yep and you're right. But pointing that out to angry voters in Wales won't do the Tories any favours. People have been worked hard by the media for a decade to not understand stuff, and unfortunately that is going to bite them on the arse hard.
What could also be a key issue in many rural / far flung / poorer areas is the axing of regional development monies. The EU cash has gone and the pledge to match it dropped. Many places will be viscerally and visibly poorer because of it, just at the time as the cost of living squeeze pinches hardest and the Tories try to parade Brexit benefits.
When the government itself demonstrates that it doesn't know how stuff works they can hardly complain that their voters are just as ignorant.
The EU cash was not spent to any great benefit of the residents of Merthyr Tydfil. There was EU cash in Wales, but the beneficiaries were people/institutions that knew how to work the system.
Where I do agree with you is that the increased cost of living will hurt the Government. In fact, my guess is that is why Johnson is still in place, to take some of the hit.
As regards Matthew Tovey, after rummaging around his extensive media profile, I rather like the guy -- but he is clearly on the "Starmer Out" wing of the Labour party
What he is not is an average, politically disengaged voter from Merthyr Tydfil, as the Guardian present him.
And the Guardian keep on making this mistake -- picking something wrong with the Welsh NHS and blaming the Tories. Time they learnt.
You post is very largely correct.
I was involved with a business contact who absolutely milked all the free money and loans available to build a business in Wales. This guy was super smart. He engaged his own building firm (based in South Yorkshire) to build the project at a vastly over inflated price. I would estimate I could have built what he built at 10% of the price he charged. But hey, for the promise of 25 jobs it was worth it ...only it wasn't because it was liquidated within a year of completion.
So £6m of EU funded WDA and British Steel grants and loans wound up in a bank in South Yorkshire. Happy days.
Yesterday was a great day for the victims of (child) sexual abuse and the republican movement in this country.
So Brenda is going to help pay the £12 million settlement, an utter disgrace.
The Supreme Governor of the Church of England is setting a marvellous example.
Yet more rubbish from the republican, Liberal Democrat voting non Tory.
What the Queen does with her private funds is her own affair. It also had no impact on the monarchy, indeed former US Presidents Clinton and Trump associated with Epstein, Andrew is only 9th in the line of succession now.
The Queen has set a marvellous example her entire life and is not responsible for the actions of her son
Laughable. @TSE is your colleague in the Tory party. You need to win votes to stay in power and you are describing party members in such a way.
I do hope that you never ever go out canvassing for votes. You would be damaging to your cause...
Yesterday was a great day for the victims of (child) sexual abuse and the republican movement in this country.
So Brenda is going to help pay the £12 million settlement, an utter disgrace.
The Supreme Governor of the Church of England is setting a marvellous example.
Yet more rubbish from the republican, Liberal Democrat voting non Tory.
What the Queen does with her private funds is her own affair. It also had no impact on the monarchy, indeed former US Presidents Clinton and Trump associated with Epstein, Andrew is only 9th in the line of succession now.
The Queen has set a marvellous example her entire life and is not responsible for the actions of her son
“It seems to me like I’m just working to be able to cover the bills,” said Matthew Tovey. The 30-year-old from Merthyr Tydfil, south Wales, said his pay had not risen above inflation for a decade under the Conservatives’ austerity drive.
Tovey, who uses his car to commute to work, has seen the cost of diesel rise sharply and is concerned that his pay packet will not keep up with the surge in gas and electricity bills due in April. “I’m quite fearful of how I’m going to manage,” he said.
He said it felt as if NHS staff had been ignored despite being on the frontline of the pandemic. “I worked through three waves, and they stood on their doorsteps and clapped, but they’re taking food away from our tables, really.”
Having gone to university to become a nurse, Tovey says he probably earns more than other people but is still struggling. “It feels like if I’ve worked hard and gone into a profession to better myself, and I’m in this position, how the hell are other people coping?
“It impacts on your mental health, there’s nowhere to turn. You’re caught between a rock and a hard place and you wonder, when are we going to have a break?”
This week British bankers will start collecting the biggest bonuses since before the 2008 global financial crisis as their employers fight an “increasingly intense war for talent”.
As most Britons face the biggest squeeze on their incomes since at least 1990, already very highly paid bankers are celebrating “particularly obscene” bonuses in the City’s pubs and wine bars.
“We have had quite the run on champagne – the poshest champagne we stock,” says James, a bartender at the New Moon on the streets of Leadenhall Market near the headquarters of many of the City of London’s banks. “They come here to celebrate when they get told their ‘number’ – the numbers seem to have been particularly obscene this year.”
...
The bumper bonuses will tip several hundred more UK bankers into the EU’s “high earners” warning report which details every banker earning more than €1m (£835,000) a year. The European Banking Authority (EBA) found that 3,519 bankers working in the UK earned more than €1m-a-year last year – more than seven times as many as those working in Germany which has the second highest number of €1m-a-year bankers.
The EBA figures show 27 UK bankers earned more than €10m in 2019 (the latest year available). Two UK-based asset managers were paid between €38m and €39m, and one merchant banker was paid €64.8m. That banker received fixed pay of €242,000, topped up with a bonus of €64.6m.
“It seems to me like I’m just working to be able to cover the bills,” said Matthew Tovey. The 30-year-old from Merthyr Tydfil, south Wales, said his pay had not risen above inflation for a decade under the Conservatives’ austerity drive.
The Guardian appears to be unaware that Merthyr Tydfil is in Wales, that health is devolved, and that pay and conditions are the responsibility of the Welsh Government.
The joys of "lets keep people stupid" politics. The Tory tactics during austerity was cut nationally and pass the blame locally. The idea being that they gut the finances of Labour councils and then get voted in with the Labour councillors getting the blame. It worked - so many people had no clue how funding worked.
So here it isn't The Guardian that is ignorant of how things work, it is the *voter*. Exactly what the Tories wanted.
And indeed, some googling reveals Matthew Tovey hardly to be an ignorant average "voter".
My guess from Tovey's social media profile and the images of him with Jeremy Corbyn is he may not be entirely a political naif.
I am not sure that it would be the greatest strategy in the world for the Tories to claim there is not a serious cost of living crisis for millions of working people people across the UK.
I am not a Tory strategist.
My only point is that the Welsh NHS is the responsibility of the Welsh Government.
Yep and you're right. But pointing that out to angry voters in Wales won't do the Tories any favours. People have been worked hard by the media for a decade to not understand stuff, and unfortunately that is going to bite them on the arse hard.
What could also be a key issue in many rural / far flung / poorer areas is the axing of regional development monies. The EU cash has gone and the pledge to match it dropped. Many places will be viscerally and visibly poorer because of it, just at the time as the cost of living squeeze pinches hardest and the Tories try to parade Brexit benefits.
When the government itself demonstrates that it doesn't know how stuff works they can hardly complain that their voters are just as ignorant.
The EU cash was not spent to any great benefit of the residents of Merthyr Tydfil. There was EU cash in Wales, but the beneficiaries were people/institutions that knew how to work the system.
Where I do agree with you is that the increased cost of living will hurt the Government. In fact, my guess is that is why Johnson is still in place, to take some of the hit.
As regards Matthew Tovey, after rummaging around his extensive media profile, I rather like the guy -- but he is clearly on the "Starmer Out" wing of the Labour party
What he is not is an average, politically disengaged voter from Merthyr Tydfil, as the Guardian present him.
And the Guardian keep on making this mistake -- picking something wrong with the Welsh NHS and blaming the Tories. Time they learnt.
Does the Welsh Government have significant tax raising powers, like we do up here in Scotland?
I appreciate that borrowing is important, but while SC/WA are in Union with England all that really means is borrowing off the English given the tax/expenditure differential.
@RochdalePioneers is wrong to suggest that voters have been hoodwinked by devolution. If they are holding the SG etc to account, while they have tax powers, then it's working exactly as it should.
I was suggesting no such thing. Voters have been hoodwinked by a decade-long misinformation campaign by the Tories to pin all the blame on service provision onto localities regardless of where the money comes from.
The plan - and it has been a success - was to destroy local government finance through removal of the government grant then blame councils for the local destruction of services provided by councils using the government grant.
Now that voters have been educated to not understand the flow of money it is quite funny that this is now in reverse with the Westminster government blamed for things it doesn't control. They can't complain - they wanted voters who were ignorant of reality.
@RochdalePioneers,old chap. The SNP are doing exactly the same thing up here. Holyrood is implementing real-time cuts to local government, despite the block grant from Westminster going up. . All 32 councils complained, even SNP-led ones. Meanwhile money is spaffed away on free bicycles, baby-boxes etc. All govts do this TBF.
Listened to some lawyer on R4 about Andrew. No one knows anything, no apology, no acknowledgement. She speculated that the no apology bit might have cost him in increased settlement terms.
People may or may not be interested to know, given the picture some papers are using of him, that one of the Colonelcies Andrew is giving up is that of the Grenadier Guards. It is reverting to the Queen. The last time Elizabeth held this appointment was 80 years ago next Thursday.
Yesterday was a great day for the victims of (child) sexual abuse and the republican movement in this country.
So Brenda is going to help pay the £12 million settlement, an utter disgrace.
The Supreme Governor of the Church of England is setting a marvellous example.
Yet more rubbish from the republican, Liberal Democrat voting non Tory.
What the Queen does with her private funds is her own affair. It also had no impact on the monarchy, indeed former US Presidents Clinton and Trump associated with Epstein, Andrew is only 9th in the line of succession now.
The Queen has set a marvellous example her entire life and is not responsible for the actions of her son
"her private funds" doing a lot of work there.
And yes I hate the whole "doing a lot of work there" thing also.
"The commodity boom is adding an extra $10bn a month to Kremlin coffers from oil and gas. It is being squirrelled away in the National Wellbeing Fund."
Sabre rattling by the West would be sending an American carrier group into the Black Sea.
The Montreux Convention precludes this so it would be a bit more than sabre rattling.
Wasn’t there a photo the other day of a Russian sub sailing (?) through the Bosphorus? Wouldn’t that also be a breach?
Russia is a Black Sea power and has less requirements on notification and no restriction on tonnage. Hence why the Kuznetzov (with its slightly dodgy classficaton has a cruiser) has passed through the Turkish Straits.
JESUS FUCKING CHRIST and you a language tutor.
Fewer requirements by Toutatis.
We teach less/fewer as interchangeable in TEFL. It's an entirely artificial distinction that was only introduced by Baker in the late 18th C.
"The commodity boom is adding an extra $10bn a month to Kremlin coffers from oil and gas. It is being squirrelled away in the National Wellbeing Fund."
Some changes (NI on pensions) are possible, but otherwise it seems to be largely a matter of luck as to how well or badly a generation does. Baby boomers got lucky. Young people today much less so.
There are two sorts of wealth, income and assets. The first is heavily taxed, the latter much more lightly if at all. This needs to be rebalanced.
How about optimising spending?
It is impossible for the government to spend less by increasing productivity.
This is why Aerojet Rocketdyne RS-25 (a warm over version of the Space Shuttle Main Engines) will take 3 years to build 18 examples, for 100 million dollars each.
Meanwhile, Elon Musk is annoyed because Raptor 2 (a more complex engine) is costing around 1 million dollars per example and they are only coming of the production line at 1 per *day*
Of course, the SSME has had many, many successful flights to orbit. Raptor 1... has not. It has only had hops, and the engine's performance was not as good as hoped - and destroyed itself on one occasion.
It's hard to argue that Raptor 1 has not been a failure, using Musk's own words in the past.
As ever, take Musk's timescales and ambitions with a large pinch of salt.
In the same way that Merlin 1A, 1B, 1C were failures, perhaps.
Raptor 2 is on the test stand, and firing 100 second tests. AR hasn't actually managed to put a final version of the "new" RS-25 on the stand yet.
If we live in a world where railways *must* cost a billion per mile.... well, get used to a world with not many railways.
Yesterday was a great day for the victims of (child) sexual abuse and the republican movement in this country.
So Brenda is going to help pay the £12 million settlement, an utter disgrace.
The Supreme Governor of the Church of England is setting a marvellous example.
Yet more rubbish from the republican, Liberal Democrat voting non Tory.
What the Queen does with her private funds is her own affair. It also had no impact on the monarchy, indeed former US Presidents Clinton and Trump associated with Epstein, Andrew is only 9th in the line of succession now.
The Queen has set a marvellous example her entire life and is not responsible for the actions of her son
The whole point of a monarchy is elevating inheritance to a governing principle, so the Queen has every responsibility for her son, given that one of her other sons will follow her into the job.
"The commodity boom is adding an extra $10bn a month to Kremlin coffers from oil and gas. It is being squirrelled away in the National Wellbeing Fund."
Some changes (NI on pensions) are possible, but otherwise it seems to be largely a matter of luck as to how well or badly a generation does. Baby boomers got lucky. Young people today much less so.
There are two sorts of wealth, income and assets. The first is heavily taxed, the latter much more lightly if at all. This needs to be rebalanced.
How about optimising spending?
It is impossible for the government to spend less by increasing productivity.
This is why Aerojet Rocketdyne RS-25 (a warm over version of the Space Shuttle Main Engines) will take 3 years to build 18 examples, for 100 million dollars each.
Meanwhile, Elon Musk is annoyed because Raptor 2 (a more complex engine) is costing around 1 million dollars per example and they are only coming of the production line at 1 per *day*
To be fair, managing to spend $100m turning a reusable engine into an expendable one, is bloody hard work!
Sabre rattling by the West would be sending an American carrier group into the Black Sea.
The Montreux Convention precludes this so it would be a bit more than sabre rattling.
Wasn’t there a photo the other day of a Russian sub sailing (?) through the Bosphorus? Wouldn’t that also be a breach?
Russia is a Black Sea power and has less requirements on notification and no restriction on tonnage. Hence why the Kuznetzov (with its slightly dodgy classficaton has a cruiser) has passed through the Turkish Straits.
JESUS FUCKING CHRIST and you a language tutor.
Fewer requirements by Toutatis.
We teach less/fewer as interchangeable in TEFL. It's an entirely artificial distinction that was only introduced by Baker in the late 18th C.
End of days. You can't pick up requirements with a pitchfork and hence it is fewer. Then again I can think of a few other 18th C new fangled innovations that we could jettison.
Also, you are setting your students up to be unwelcome on PB. What kind of a life would that be.
Some changes (NI on pensions) are possible, but otherwise it seems to be largely a matter of luck as to how well or badly a generation does. Baby boomers got lucky. Young people today much less so.
There are two sorts of wealth, income and assets. The first is heavily taxed, the latter much more lightly if at all. This needs to be rebalanced.
Some changes (NI on pensions) are possible, but otherwise it seems to be largely a matter of luck as to how well or badly a generation does. Baby boomers got lucky. Young people today much less so.
There are two sorts of wealth, income and assets. The first is heavily taxed, the latter much more lightly if at all. This needs to be rebalanced.
Now I am not going to go all HYUFD on this as I don't disagree but you have to be careful re pensions particularly with the decline of DB schemes. Not that I am biased or anything but whereas you will receive an NHS pension I am entirely dependent upon the wealth I have built up. People forget the capital value of their DB pensions and unless you want to apply a wealth tax to DB pensions (how paid?) anything else would be unreasonable and also make some retirements unviable.
There are two kinds of wealth
- Evil, scummy money, owned by other people - Sacred entitlements owned by ME!
Yesterday was a great day for the victims of (child) sexual abuse and the republican movement in this country.
So Brenda is going to help pay the £12 million settlement, an utter disgrace.
The Supreme Governor of the Church of England is setting a marvellous example.
Yet more rubbish from the republican, Liberal Democrat voting non Tory.
What the Queen does with her private funds is her own affair. It also had no impact on the monarchy, indeed former US Presidents Clinton and Trump associated with Epstein, Andrew is only 9th in the line of succession now.
The Queen has set a marvellous example her entire life and is not responsible for the actions of her son
I think she takes responsibility for it to an extent if her money means that he avoids being held to account for his actions.
That is the US system. This was never about holding hi to account. It was all about cash. As US lawyers keep claiming when interviewed about this, 95% of cases end in an out of court settlement. It is a ridiculous system which encourages law suits whatever the rights and wrongs of the case because it is not about justice, it is all about money.
And the Queen was screwed whichever way this went. If Andrew doesn't have the funds then he ends up facing a trial which damages the Royal Family even if the claims are utterly groundless (which I suspect they are not of course). If she provides the funds then Republican idiots like TSE use it as another stick to poke the monarchy.
Some changes (NI on pensions) are possible, but otherwise it seems to be largely a matter of luck as to how well or badly a generation does. Baby boomers got lucky. Young people today much less so.
Mr Dancer, the rich (like bankers and their bonuses) always seem to get lucky, don't they?
Some changes (NI on pensions) are possible, but otherwise it seems to be largely a matter of luck as to how well or badly a generation does. Baby boomers got lucky. Young people today much less so.
There are two sorts of wealth, income and assets. The first is heavily taxed, the latter much more lightly if at all. This needs to be rebalanced.
How about optimising spending?
It is impossible for the government to spend less by increasing productivity.
This is why Aerojet Rocketdyne RS-25 (a warm over version of the Space Shuttle Main Engines) will take 3 years to build 18 examples, for 100 million dollars each.
Meanwhile, Elon Musk is annoyed because Raptor 2 (a more complex engine) is costing around 1 million dollars per example and they are only coming of the production line at 1 per *day*
Of course, the SSME has had many, many successful flights to orbit. Raptor 1... has not. It has only had hops, and the engine's performance was not as good as hoped - and destroyed itself on one occasion.
It's hard to argue that Raptor 1 has not been a failure, using Musk's own words in the past.
As ever, take Musk's timescales and ambitions with a large pinch of salt.
In the same way that Merlin 1A, 1B, 1C were failures, perhaps.
Raptor 2 is on the test stand, and firing 100 second tests. AR hasn't actually managed to put a final version of the "new" RS-25 on the stand yet.
If we live in a world where railways *must* cost a billion per mile.... well, get used to a world with not many railways.
No, the early Merlins flew orbit flights, I believe.
Being on the test stand is fine - if that was the measure, then BO's BE-4 would be a success atm.
For a couple of years, until midway through last year, Musk was saying all sorts of grandiose claims about Raptor, about how many they'd make a month, how little they would cost. AIUI the difference between Raptor 1 and raptor 2 are far greater than between consecutive Merlin marks. It's clear something's gone very wrong with the R1 project.
On topic: glad to see the general level of disgust at rich man's "justice"
Yes - lots of disgust being expressed.
Justice would have meant a criminal trial where the allegations could be properly tested.
But when I pointed this out on here weeks ago and the inappropriateness of having such serious matters decided in civil proceedings, I was told off by many on here, that Giuffre had every right to make a claim, blah blah
And yet the end result is completely unsatisfactory: she has got some money, she has not got any admission of guilt or an apology from him, if guilty he has not been convicted and properly punished, if innocent he has not cleared his name and the promise to help sex trafficking victims is meaningless since he's retired from public life and will not be allowed to resume it.
It is a complete mess and exactly what those who cheered Ms Giuffre on were warned was likely to happen.
If a man commits rape he should be in prison. If he is innocent he should not have his good character attacked in this way or have to pay out.
It's not rich man's justice. It's completely unsatisfactory and not justice at all.
I am curious about attitudes towards fighting a civil case based on alleged criminal conduct without involving any process in the criminal justice system. I understand bringing a claim in a civil case against a defendant who was found guilty, it seems murkier when the defendant was found not guilty (though I understand this to be a consequence of the differing burdens of proof and such claims are not barred), but litigating based on criminal conduct that has not been tested at all (even at the level of a police investigation, as I understand it) seems like a potentially dark road.
Some changes (NI on pensions) are possible, but otherwise it seems to be largely a matter of luck as to how well or badly a generation does. Baby boomers got lucky. Young people today much less so.
Mr Dancer, the rich (like bankers and their bonuses) always seem to get lucky, don't they?
That has always been true. The differences now are that it is generational and the gap between rich and poor accelerating specifically due to govt policies of QE and ultra low interest rates. A correction is well over due.
“It seems to me like I’m just working to be able to cover the bills,” said Matthew Tovey. The 30-year-old from Merthyr Tydfil, south Wales, said his pay had not risen above inflation for a decade under the Conservatives’ austerity drive.
Tovey, who uses his car to commute to work, has seen the cost of diesel rise sharply and is concerned that his pay packet will not keep up with the surge in gas and electricity bills due in April. “I’m quite fearful of how I’m going to manage,” he said.
He said it felt as if NHS staff had been ignored despite being on the frontline of the pandemic. “I worked through three waves, and they stood on their doorsteps and clapped, but they’re taking food away from our tables, really.”
Having gone to university to become a nurse, Tovey says he probably earns more than other people but is still struggling. “It feels like if I’ve worked hard and gone into a profession to better myself, and I’m in this position, how the hell are other people coping?
“It impacts on your mental health, there’s nowhere to turn. You’re caught between a rock and a hard place and you wonder, when are we going to have a break?”
This week British bankers will start collecting the biggest bonuses since before the 2008 global financial crisis as their employers fight an “increasingly intense war for talent”.
As most Britons face the biggest squeeze on their incomes since at least 1990, already very highly paid bankers are celebrating “particularly obscene” bonuses in the City’s pubs and wine bars.
“We have had quite the run on champagne – the poshest champagne we stock,” says James, a bartender at the New Moon on the streets of Leadenhall Market near the headquarters of many of the City of London’s banks. “They come here to celebrate when they get told their ‘number’ – the numbers seem to have been particularly obscene this year.”
...
The bumper bonuses will tip several hundred more UK bankers into the EU’s “high earners” warning report which details every banker earning more than €1m (£835,000) a year. The European Banking Authority (EBA) found that 3,519 bankers working in the UK earned more than €1m-a-year last year – more than seven times as many as those working in Germany which has the second highest number of €1m-a-year bankers.
The EBA figures show 27 UK bankers earned more than €10m in 2019 (the latest year available). Two UK-based asset managers were paid between €38m and €39m, and one merchant banker was paid €64.8m. That banker received fixed pay of €242,000, topped up with a bonus of €64.6m.
“It seems to me like I’m just working to be able to cover the bills,” said Matthew Tovey. The 30-year-old from Merthyr Tydfil, south Wales, said his pay had not risen above inflation for a decade under the Conservatives’ austerity drive.
The Guardian appears to be unaware that Merthyr Tydfil is in Wales, that health is devolved, and that pay and conditions are the responsibility of the Welsh Government.
The joys of "lets keep people stupid" politics. The Tory tactics during austerity was cut nationally and pass the blame locally. The idea being that they gut the finances of Labour councils and then get voted in with the Labour councillors getting the blame. It worked - so many people had no clue how funding worked.
So here it isn't The Guardian that is ignorant of how things work, it is the *voter*. Exactly what the Tories wanted.
And indeed, some googling reveals Matthew Tovey hardly to be an ignorant average "voter".
My guess from Tovey's social media profile and the images of him with Jeremy Corbyn is he may not be entirely a political naif.
I am not sure that it would be the greatest strategy in the world for the Tories to claim there is not a serious cost of living crisis for millions of working people people across the UK.
I am not a Tory strategist.
My only point is that the Welsh NHS is the responsibility of the Welsh Government.
Yep and you're right. But pointing that out to angry voters in Wales won't do the Tories any favours. People have been worked hard by the media for a decade to not understand stuff, and unfortunately that is going to bite them on the arse hard.
What could also be a key issue in many rural / far flung / poorer areas is the axing of regional development monies. The EU cash has gone and the pledge to match it dropped. Many places will be viscerally and visibly poorer because of it, just at the time as the cost of living squeeze pinches hardest and the Tories try to parade Brexit benefits.
When the government itself demonstrates that it doesn't know how stuff works they can hardly complain that their voters are just as ignorant.
The EU cash was not spent to any great benefit of the residents of Merthyr Tydfil. There was EU cash in Wales, but the beneficiaries were people/institutions that knew how to work the system.
Where I do agree with you is that the increased cost of living will hurt the Government. In fact, my guess is that is why Johnson is still in place, to take some of the hit.
As regards Matthew Tovey, after rummaging around his extensive media profile, I rather like the guy -- but he is clearly on the "Starmer Out" wing of the Labour party
What he is not is an average, politically disengaged voter from Merthyr Tydfil, as the Guardian present him.
And the Guardian keep on making this mistake -- picking something wrong with the Welsh NHS and blaming the Tories. Time they learnt.
Strangely the media, including the Guardian, have no problem with confusing who is responsible for the NHS in Scotland, indeed it’s the basis of much of Reporting Scotland’s output.
Yesterday was a great day for the victims of (child) sexual abuse and the republican movement in this country.
So Brenda is going to help pay the £12 million settlement, an utter disgrace.
The Supreme Governor of the Church of England is setting a marvellous example.
Yet more rubbish from the republican, Liberal Democrat voting non Tory.
What the Queen does with her private funds is her own affair. It also had no impact on the monarchy, indeed former US Presidents Clinton and Trump associated with Epstein, Andrew is only 9th in the line of succession now.
The Queen has set a marvellous example her entire life and is not responsible for the actions of her son
Tory in ‘I don’t blame the parents’ shock!
Clearly not a proper Tory. Lets hope he doesnt run into someone with very particular and narrow views of a proper Tory in his career.
Sabre rattling by the West would be sending an American carrier group into the Black Sea.
The Montreux Convention precludes this so it would be a bit more than sabre rattling.
Wasn’t there a photo the other day of a Russian sub sailing (?) through the Bosphorus? Wouldn’t that also be a breach?
Russia is a Black Sea power and has less requirements on notification and no restriction on tonnage. Hence why the Kuznetzov (with its slightly dodgy classficaton has a cruiser) has passed through the Turkish Straits.
JESUS FUCKING CHRIST and you a language tutor.
Fewer requirements by Toutatis.
We teach less/fewer as interchangeable in TEFL. It's an entirely artificial distinction that was only introduced by Baker in the late 18th C.
All language is entirely artificial and arbitrary at some point. The late 18th century was over 200 years ago - a linguistic convention that's 200 years old is pretty venerable. Samuel Johnson's dictionary was late 18th century, IIRC. More to the point, 'less things', or, worse, 'fewer stuff' just sounds clunky and awful.
You'll be telling me 'disinterested' is a perfectly acceptable synonym for 'uninterested' next.
Sabre rattling by the West would be sending an American carrier group into the Black Sea.
The Montreux Convention precludes this so it would be a bit more than sabre rattling.
Wasn’t there a photo the other day of a Russian sub sailing (?) through the Bosphorus? Wouldn’t that also be a breach?
Russia is a Black Sea power and has less requirements on notification and no restriction on tonnage. Hence why the Kuznetzov (with its slightly dodgy classficaton has a cruiser) has passed through the Turkish Straits.
JESUS FUCKING CHRIST and you a language tutor.
Fewer requirements by Toutatis.
We teach less/fewer as interchangeable in TEFL. It's an entirely artificial distinction that was only introduced by Baker in the late 18th C.
The ‘if you don’t want to come across as a precious old fud’ component of the course?
Some changes (NI on pensions) are possible, but otherwise it seems to be largely a matter of luck as to how well or badly a generation does. Baby boomers got lucky. Young people today much less so.
There are two sorts of wealth, income and assets. The first is heavily taxed, the latter much more lightly if at all. This needs to be rebalanced.
How about optimising spending?
It is impossible for the government to spend less by increasing productivity.
This is why Aerojet Rocketdyne RS-25 (a warm over version of the Space Shuttle Main Engines) will take 3 years to build 18 examples, for 100 million dollars each.
Meanwhile, Elon Musk is annoyed because Raptor 2 (a more complex engine) is costing around 1 million dollars per example and they are only coming of the production line at 1 per *day*
To be fair, managing to spend $100m turning a reusable engine into an expendable one, is bloody hard work!
A distance aquaintance who has some involvement as a government inspector told me of the following - a bunch of AR engineers had a discussion about tightening a bolt on a test build of the RS25.
Turns out the original documentation (1970s, typed) was a bit unclear on process, torque values etc. Finally, after a non-trivial number of hours on the subject, they stood around as an actual hands on guy fired up the air powered tool to tighten it. And strips the thread. Despite having a platoon assigned to the job, they had managed to miss the wrong value being set on the torque gun. And not testing it first on a test piece. The thread was integral to the part - so that part was now ruined.
But don't worry - they all got coffee and had a conference to discuss the problem.
Meanwhile in The Company That Can't Be Mentioned, they are eliminating joins by welding major assemblies together......
“It seems to me like I’m just working to be able to cover the bills,” said Matthew Tovey. The 30-year-old from Merthyr Tydfil, south Wales, said his pay had not risen above inflation for a decade under the Conservatives’ austerity drive.
Tovey, who uses his car to commute to work, has seen the cost of diesel rise sharply and is concerned that his pay packet will not keep up with the surge in gas and electricity bills due in April. “I’m quite fearful of how I’m going to manage,” he said.
He said it felt as if NHS staff had been ignored despite being on the frontline of the pandemic. “I worked through three waves, and they stood on their doorsteps and clapped, but they’re taking food away from our tables, really.”
Having gone to university to become a nurse, Tovey says he probably earns more than other people but is still struggling. “It feels like if I’ve worked hard and gone into a profession to better myself, and I’m in this position, how the hell are other people coping?
“It impacts on your mental health, there’s nowhere to turn. You’re caught between a rock and a hard place and you wonder, when are we going to have a break?”
This week British bankers will start collecting the biggest bonuses since before the 2008 global financial crisis as their employers fight an “increasingly intense war for talent”.
As most Britons face the biggest squeeze on their incomes since at least 1990, already very highly paid bankers are celebrating “particularly obscene” bonuses in the City’s pubs and wine bars.
“We have had quite the run on champagne – the poshest champagne we stock,” says James, a bartender at the New Moon on the streets of Leadenhall Market near the headquarters of many of the City of London’s banks. “They come here to celebrate when they get told their ‘number’ – the numbers seem to have been particularly obscene this year.”
...
The bumper bonuses will tip several hundred more UK bankers into the EU’s “high earners” warning report which details every banker earning more than €1m (£835,000) a year. The European Banking Authority (EBA) found that 3,519 bankers working in the UK earned more than €1m-a-year last year – more than seven times as many as those working in Germany which has the second highest number of €1m-a-year bankers.
The EBA figures show 27 UK bankers earned more than €10m in 2019 (the latest year available). Two UK-based asset managers were paid between €38m and €39m, and one merchant banker was paid €64.8m. That banker received fixed pay of €242,000, topped up with a bonus of €64.6m.
That sounds like something of an income tax and VAT windfall for the Treasury, that so many of the economically successful choose to base themselves in the UK.
Someone on PB has started a countdown to Big Dog’s neutering? and it stands today at just Snip minus 6 days left for Boris as PM. How is this looking today, all rather quiet and Boris looking like he has more than 6 days left?
Going to be have to be a dramatic turnaround then 🙂
“It seems to me like I’m just working to be able to cover the bills,” said Matthew Tovey. The 30-year-old from Merthyr Tydfil, south Wales, said his pay had not risen above inflation for a decade under the Conservatives’ austerity drive.
Tovey, who uses his car to commute to work, has seen the cost of diesel rise sharply and is concerned that his pay packet will not keep up with the surge in gas and electricity bills due in April. “I’m quite fearful of how I’m going to manage,” he said.
He said it felt as if NHS staff had been ignored despite being on the frontline of the pandemic. “I worked through three waves, and they stood on their doorsteps and clapped, but they’re taking food away from our tables, really.”
Having gone to university to become a nurse, Tovey says he probably earns more than other people but is still struggling. “It feels like if I’ve worked hard and gone into a profession to better myself, and I’m in this position, how the hell are other people coping?
“It impacts on your mental health, there’s nowhere to turn. You’re caught between a rock and a hard place and you wonder, when are we going to have a break?”
This week British bankers will start collecting the biggest bonuses since before the 2008 global financial crisis as their employers fight an “increasingly intense war for talent”.
As most Britons face the biggest squeeze on their incomes since at least 1990, already very highly paid bankers are celebrating “particularly obscene” bonuses in the City’s pubs and wine bars.
“We have had quite the run on champagne – the poshest champagne we stock,” says James, a bartender at the New Moon on the streets of Leadenhall Market near the headquarters of many of the City of London’s banks. “They come here to celebrate when they get told their ‘number’ – the numbers seem to have been particularly obscene this year.”
...
The bumper bonuses will tip several hundred more UK bankers into the EU’s “high earners” warning report which details every banker earning more than €1m (£835,000) a year. The European Banking Authority (EBA) found that 3,519 bankers working in the UK earned more than €1m-a-year last year – more than seven times as many as those working in Germany which has the second highest number of €1m-a-year bankers.
The EBA figures show 27 UK bankers earned more than €10m in 2019 (the latest year available). Two UK-based asset managers were paid between €38m and €39m, and one merchant banker was paid €64.8m. That banker received fixed pay of €242,000, topped up with a bonus of €64.6m.
That sounds like something of an income tax and VAT windfall for the Treasury, that so many of the economically successful choose to base themselves in the UK.
They will have got round the tax bit for sure.
People in those jobs are nearly never contractors - they are paid via PAYE. One good feature of the UK tax system is that tax fiddles are not really possible in that situation.
Some changes (NI on pensions) are possible, but otherwise it seems to be largely a matter of luck as to how well or badly a generation does. Baby boomers got lucky. Young people today much less so.
Mr Dancer, the rich (like bankers and their bonuses) always seem to get lucky, don't they?
That has always been true. The differences now are that it is generational and the gap between rich and poor accelerating specifically due to govt policies of QE and ultra low interest rates. A correction is well over due.
Just as soon as someone works out how to get re-elected after said correction.
Some changes (NI on pensions) are possible, but otherwise it seems to be largely a matter of luck as to how well or badly a generation does. Baby boomers got lucky. Young people today much less so.
There are two sorts of wealth, income and assets. The first is heavily taxed, the latter much more lightly if at all. This needs to be rebalanced.
How about optimising spending?
It is impossible for the government to spend less by increasing productivity.
This is why Aerojet Rocketdyne RS-25 (a warm over version of the Space Shuttle Main Engines) will take 3 years to build 18 examples, for 100 million dollars each.
Meanwhile, Elon Musk is annoyed because Raptor 2 (a more complex engine) is costing around 1 million dollars per example and they are only coming of the production line at 1 per *day*
To be fair, managing to spend $100m turning a reusable engine into an expendable one, is bloody hard work!
A distance aquaintance who has some involvement as a government inspector told me of the following - a bunch of AR engineers had a discussion about tightening a bolt on a test build of the RS25.
Turns out the original documentation (1970s, typed) was a bit unclear on process, torque values etc. Finally, after a non-trivial number of hours on the subject, they stood around as an actual hands on guy fired up the air powered tool to tighten it. And strips the thread. Despite having a platoon assigned to the job, they had managed to miss the wrong value being set on the torque gun. And not testing it first on a test piece. The thread was integral to the part - so that part was now ruined.
But don't worry - they all got coffee and had a conference to discuss the problem.
Meanwhile in The Company That Can't Be Mentioned, they are eliminating joins by welding major assemblies together......
More pertinently, they all got paid at the end of the month, whether or not they had a serviceable RS-25 rocket motor on their test stand.
Meanwhile a private company, with individual shareholders ploughing in millions of dollars a day of their own money into the project, are managing to iterate their design the old fashioned way, with much better results.
"The commodity boom is adding an extra $10bn a month to Kremlin coffers from oil and gas. It is being squirrelled away in the National Wellbeing Fund."
Sounds about right. We should not overestimate the likely effects of sanctions on Russia, whose economy is a Conservative's wet dream: low debt; high reserves; even a commitment to levelling up.
Some changes (NI on pensions) are possible, but otherwise it seems to be largely a matter of luck as to how well or badly a generation does. Baby boomers got lucky. Young people today much less so.
Mr Dancer, the rich (like bankers and their bonuses) always seem to get lucky, don't they?
That has always been true. The differences now are that it is generational and the gap between rich and poor accelerating specifically due to govt policies of QE and ultra low interest rates. A correction is well over due.
On that argument there is a case for saying Starmer would prefer to face the ex Goldman Sachs banker Sunak, who has just cut taxes for banks opposed by Labour and is more of a fiscal conservative, than the cake for all populist Boris
“It seems to me like I’m just working to be able to cover the bills,” said Matthew Tovey. The 30-year-old from Merthyr Tydfil, south Wales, said his pay had not risen above inflation for a decade under the Conservatives’ austerity drive.
Tovey, who uses his car to commute to work, has seen the cost of diesel rise sharply and is concerned that his pay packet will not keep up with the surge in gas and electricity bills due in April. “I’m quite fearful of how I’m going to manage,” he said.
He said it felt as if NHS staff had been ignored despite being on the frontline of the pandemic. “I worked through three waves, and they stood on their doorsteps and clapped, but they’re taking food away from our tables, really.”
Having gone to university to become a nurse, Tovey says he probably earns more than other people but is still struggling. “It feels like if I’ve worked hard and gone into a profession to better myself, and I’m in this position, how the hell are other people coping?
“It impacts on your mental health, there’s nowhere to turn. You’re caught between a rock and a hard place and you wonder, when are we going to have a break?”
This week British bankers will start collecting the biggest bonuses since before the 2008 global financial crisis as their employers fight an “increasingly intense war for talent”.
As most Britons face the biggest squeeze on their incomes since at least 1990, already very highly paid bankers are celebrating “particularly obscene” bonuses in the City’s pubs and wine bars.
“We have had quite the run on champagne – the poshest champagne we stock,” says James, a bartender at the New Moon on the streets of Leadenhall Market near the headquarters of many of the City of London’s banks. “They come here to celebrate when they get told their ‘number’ – the numbers seem to have been particularly obscene this year.”
...
The bumper bonuses will tip several hundred more UK bankers into the EU’s “high earners” warning report which details every banker earning more than €1m (£835,000) a year. The European Banking Authority (EBA) found that 3,519 bankers working in the UK earned more than €1m-a-year last year – more than seven times as many as those working in Germany which has the second highest number of €1m-a-year bankers.
The EBA figures show 27 UK bankers earned more than €10m in 2019 (the latest year available). Two UK-based asset managers were paid between €38m and €39m, and one merchant banker was paid €64.8m. That banker received fixed pay of €242,000, topped up with a bonus of €64.6m.
“It seems to me like I’m just working to be able to cover the bills,” said Matthew Tovey. The 30-year-old from Merthyr Tydfil, south Wales, said his pay had not risen above inflation for a decade under the Conservatives’ austerity drive.
The Guardian appears to be unaware that Merthyr Tydfil is in Wales, that health is devolved, and that pay and conditions are the responsibility of the Welsh Government.
The joys of "lets keep people stupid" politics. The Tory tactics during austerity was cut nationally and pass the blame locally. The idea being that they gut the finances of Labour councils and then get voted in with the Labour councillors getting the blame. It worked - so many people had no clue how funding worked.
So here it isn't The Guardian that is ignorant of how things work, it is the *voter*. Exactly what the Tories wanted.
And indeed, some googling reveals Matthew Tovey hardly to be an ignorant average "voter".
My guess from Tovey's social media profile and the images of him with Jeremy Corbyn is he may not be entirely a political naif.
I am not sure that it would be the greatest strategy in the world for the Tories to claim there is not a serious cost of living crisis for millions of working people people across the UK.
I am not a Tory strategist.
My only point is that the Welsh NHS is the responsibility of the Welsh Government.
Yep and you're right. But pointing that out to angry voters in Wales won't do the Tories any favours. People have been worked hard by the media for a decade to not understand stuff, and unfortunately that is going to bite them on the arse hard.
What could also be a key issue in many rural / far flung / poorer areas is the axing of regional development monies. The EU cash has gone and the pledge to match it dropped. Many places will be viscerally and visibly poorer because of it, just at the time as the cost of living squeeze pinches hardest and the Tories try to parade Brexit benefits.
When the government itself demonstrates that it doesn't know how stuff works they can hardly complain that their voters are just as ignorant.
The EU cash was not spent to any great benefit of the residents of Merthyr Tydfil. There was EU cash in Wales, but the beneficiaries were people/institutions that knew how to work the system.
Where I do agree with you is that the increased cost of living will hurt the Government. In fact, my guess is that is why Johnson is still in place, to take some of the hit.
As regards Matthew Tovey, after rummaging around his extensive media profile, I rather like the guy -- but he is clearly on the "Starmer Out" wing of the Labour party
What he is not is an average, politically disengaged voter from Merthyr Tydfil, as the Guardian present him.
And the Guardian keep on making this mistake -- picking something wrong with the Welsh NHS and blaming the Tories. Time they learnt.
Does the Welsh Government have significant tax raising powers, like we do up here in Scotland?
I appreciate that borrowing is important, but while SC/WA are in Union with England all that really means is borrowing off the English given the tax/expenditure differential.
@RochdalePioneers is wrong to suggest that voters have been hoodwinked by devolution. If they are holding the SG etc to account, while they have tax powers, then it's working exactly as it should.
I was suggesting no such thing. Voters have been hoodwinked by a decade-long misinformation campaign by the Tories to pin all the blame on service provision onto localities regardless of where the money comes from.
The plan - and it has been a success - was to destroy local government finance through removal of the government grant then blame councils for the local destruction of services provided by councils using the government grant.
Now that voters have been educated to not understand the flow of money it is quite funny that this is now in reverse with the Westminster government blamed for things it doesn't control. They can't complain - they wanted voters who were ignorant of reality.
@RochdalePioneers,old chap. The SNP are doing exactly the same thing up here. Holyrood is implementing real-time cuts to local government, despite the block grant from Westminster going up. . All 32 councils complained, even SNP-led ones. Meanwhile money is spaffed away on free bicycles, baby-boxes etc. All govts do this TBF.
Sure! And when the anger finally hits the SNP government for things they haven't done they will have only themselves to blame. I do keep pointing out that I'm not an SNP fanboi (I'm a LD candidate for Aberdeenshire council so running * against* them).
My point was simply that people in devolved areas blaming Westminster for devolved policies is a quite funny outcome.
The monarchy is an absurdity and has pressed self-destruct with a string of appalling scandals.
The Queen has done a lot for this country but much must change after she dies. There have clearly been some terrible mistakes (e.g. Diana, Camilla, Andrew). A drastically pared down monarchy might help them survive but, really, the whole institution is quite ridiculous. As is the honours system.
Yesterday was a great day for the victims of (child) sexual abuse and the republican movement in this country.
So Brenda is going to help pay the £12 million settlement, an utter disgrace.
The Supreme Governor of the Church of England is setting a marvellous example.
Yet more rubbish from the republican, Liberal Democrat voting non Tory.
What the Queen does with her private funds is her own affair. It also had no impact on the monarchy, indeed former US Presidents Clinton and Trump associated with Epstein, Andrew is only 9th in the line of succession now.
The Queen has set a marvellous example her entire life and is not responsible for the actions of her son
I think she takes responsibility for it to an extent if her money means that he avoids being held to account for his actions.
That is the US system. This was never about holding hi to account. It was all about cash. As US lawyers keep claiming when interviewed about this, 95% of cases end in an out of court settlement. It is a ridiculous system which encourages law suits whatever the rights and wrongs of the case because it is not about justice, it is all about money.
And the Queen was screwed whichever way this went. If Andrew doesn't have the funds then he ends up facing a trial which damages the Royal Family even if the claims are utterly groundless (which I suspect they are not of course). If she provides the funds then Republican idiots like TSE use it as another stick to poke the monarchy.
Interesting. I've gained the impression, over the years, that Andrew can be rather bone-headed and entitled. But who knows what happened, if anything, with Giuffre. What I do think is likely is that he has been put under pressure to give this up because of the fears that it would impact on the Platinum Jubilee. It's possible that he's simply been unwise by associating with Epstein/Maxwell and ignored the warning signs, and has ended up being sent into the desert as a result. Will we ever know?
Yesterday was a great day for the victims of (child) sexual abuse and the republican movement in this country.
So Brenda is going to help pay the £12 million settlement, an utter disgrace.
The Supreme Governor of the Church of England is setting a marvellous example.
Yet more rubbish from the republican, Liberal Democrat voting non Tory.
What the Queen does with her private funds is her own affair. It also had no impact on the monarchy, indeed former US Presidents Clinton and Trump associated with Epstein, Andrew is only 9th in the line of succession now.
The Queen has set a marvellous example her entire life and is not responsible for the actions of her son
The whole point of a monarchy is elevating inheritance to a governing principle, so the Queen has every responsibility for her son, given that one of her other sons will follow her into the job.
No, as the Queen always knew Charles and William would be the heirs, so she invested most in training them.
Once Charles becomes King he will discard most of the Royal family except him, Camilla, the Cambridges and Prince Edward and Princess Anne.
Some changes (NI on pensions) are possible, but otherwise it seems to be largely a matter of luck as to how well or badly a generation does. Baby boomers got lucky. Young people today much less so.
Cancel student debt and fund the return of LA grants. Residential property tax. RTB for private tenants.
The first one only works if you are going to massively reduce the number of students at university. Otherwise at current undergraduate levels you are looking at somewhere north of £16 billion a year just on tuition fees.
In a highly anticipated judgment, the EU’s top court has ruled the bloc can cut funds to countries with rule-of-law issues, rejecting a legal challenge from Poland and Hungary.
Anyway, I must go. I seem to have fewer time for PB than I used to, more's the pity.
Enjoy your days.
I have days when I can linger whilst other tasks rumble on. Other days where I'm not here at all. Expecting a lot more of the latter going forward (much to the benefit of some of you
Anyway, I must go. I seem to have fewer time for PB than I used to, more's the pity. .
It's really unhealthy to spend too much time on here imho. Small doses is best. Otherwise it's all too easy to descend into arguments in what can seem at times something of a bear pit.
Some changes (NI on pensions) are possible, but otherwise it seems to be largely a matter of luck as to how well or badly a generation does. Baby boomers got lucky. Young people today much less so.
There are two sorts of wealth, income and assets. The first is heavily taxed, the latter much more lightly if at all. This needs to be rebalanced.
How about optimising spending?
It is impossible for the government to spend less by increasing productivity.
This is why Aerojet Rocketdyne RS-25 (a warm over version of the Space Shuttle Main Engines) will take 3 years to build 18 examples, for 100 million dollars each.
Meanwhile, Elon Musk is annoyed because Raptor 2 (a more complex engine) is costing around 1 million dollars per example and they are only coming of the production line at 1 per *day*
Of course, the SSME has had many, many successful flights to orbit. Raptor 1... has not. It has only had hops, and the engine's performance was not as good as hoped - and destroyed itself on one occasion.
It's hard to argue that Raptor 1 has not been a failure, using Musk's own words in the past.
As ever, take Musk's timescales and ambitions with a large pinch of salt.
In the same way that Merlin 1A, 1B, 1C were failures, perhaps.
Raptor 2 is on the test stand, and firing 100 second tests. AR hasn't actually managed to put a final version of the "new" RS-25 on the stand yet.
If we live in a world where railways *must* cost a billion per mile.... well, get used to a world with not many railways.
No, the early Merlins flew orbit flights, I believe.
Being on the test stand is fine - if that was the measure, then BO's BE-4 would be a success atm.
For a couple of years, until midway through last year, Musk was saying all sorts of grandiose claims about Raptor, about how many they'd make a month, how little they would cost. AIUI the difference between Raptor 1 and raptor 2 are far greater than between consecutive Merlin marks. It's clear something's gone very wrong with the R1 project.
Merlin 1A and 1B were ditched very rapidly...
The difference between Raptor 1 and 2 is similar to Merlin 1C to Merlin 1D - a redesign to reduce the Christmas Tree decoration of minor pipework and part count.
From various sources, the issue was producibility - Raptor 1 required lots of hand work with installing the minor pipework.
BE-4 still has combustion stability problems, I believe. But they are trying to deliver engines to ULA - with a promise to update them to flight ready, later!
Yesterday was a great day for the victims of (child) sexual abuse and the republican movement in this country.
So Brenda is going to help pay the £12 million settlement, an utter disgrace.
The Supreme Governor of the Church of England is setting a marvellous example.
Yet more rubbish from the republican, Liberal Democrat voting non Tory.
What the Queen does with her private funds is her own affair. It also had no impact on the monarchy, indeed former US Presidents Clinton and Trump associated with Epstein, Andrew is only 9th in the line of succession now.
The Queen has set a marvellous example her entire life and is not responsible for the actions of her son
Laughable. @TSE is your colleague in the Tory party. You need to win votes to stay in power and you are describing party members in such a way.
I do hope that you never ever go out canvassing for votes. You would be damaging to your cause...
Nope. TSE is a Liberal Democrat who voted LD in 2019 even when the Tories won their biggest landslide since 1987.
TSE is not a Tory and the Tories do not need republicans like TSE to win.
In fact even Ed Davey is a monarchist, let alone most Tories
“It seems to me like I’m just working to be able to cover the bills,” said Matthew Tovey. The 30-year-old from Merthyr Tydfil, south Wales, said his pay had not risen above inflation for a decade under the Conservatives’ austerity drive.
Tovey, who uses his car to commute to work, has seen the cost of diesel rise sharply and is concerned that his pay packet will not keep up with the surge in gas and electricity bills due in April. “I’m quite fearful of how I’m going to manage,” he said.
He said it felt as if NHS staff had been ignored despite being on the frontline of the pandemic. “I worked through three waves, and they stood on their doorsteps and clapped, but they’re taking food away from our tables, really.”
Having gone to university to become a nurse, Tovey says he probably earns more than other people but is still struggling. “It feels like if I’ve worked hard and gone into a profession to better myself, and I’m in this position, how the hell are other people coping?
“It impacts on your mental health, there’s nowhere to turn. You’re caught between a rock and a hard place and you wonder, when are we going to have a break?”
This week British bankers will start collecting the biggest bonuses since before the 2008 global financial crisis as their employers fight an “increasingly intense war for talent”.
As most Britons face the biggest squeeze on their incomes since at least 1990, already very highly paid bankers are celebrating “particularly obscene” bonuses in the City’s pubs and wine bars.
“We have had quite the run on champagne – the poshest champagne we stock,” says James, a bartender at the New Moon on the streets of Leadenhall Market near the headquarters of many of the City of London’s banks. “They come here to celebrate when they get told their ‘number’ – the numbers seem to have been particularly obscene this year.”
...
The bumper bonuses will tip several hundred more UK bankers into the EU’s “high earners” warning report which details every banker earning more than €1m (£835,000) a year. The European Banking Authority (EBA) found that 3,519 bankers working in the UK earned more than €1m-a-year last year – more than seven times as many as those working in Germany which has the second highest number of €1m-a-year bankers.
The EBA figures show 27 UK bankers earned more than €10m in 2019 (the latest year available). Two UK-based asset managers were paid between €38m and €39m, and one merchant banker was paid €64.8m. That banker received fixed pay of €242,000, topped up with a bonus of €64.6m.
“It seems to me like I’m just working to be able to cover the bills,” said Matthew Tovey. The 30-year-old from Merthyr Tydfil, south Wales, said his pay had not risen above inflation for a decade under the Conservatives’ austerity drive.
The Guardian appears to be unaware that Merthyr Tydfil is in Wales, that health is devolved, and that pay and conditions are the responsibility of the Welsh Government.
The joys of "lets keep people stupid" politics. The Tory tactics during austerity was cut nationally and pass the blame locally. The idea being that they gut the finances of Labour councils and then get voted in with the Labour councillors getting the blame. It worked - so many people had no clue how funding worked.
So here it isn't The Guardian that is ignorant of how things work, it is the *voter*. Exactly what the Tories wanted.
And indeed, some googling reveals Matthew Tovey hardly to be an ignorant average "voter".
My guess from Tovey's social media profile and the images of him with Jeremy Corbyn is he may not be entirely a political naif.
I am not sure that it would be the greatest strategy in the world for the Tories to claim there is not a serious cost of living crisis for millions of working people people across the UK.
I am not a Tory strategist.
My only point is that the Welsh NHS is the responsibility of the Welsh Government.
Yep and you're right. But pointing that out to angry voters in Wales won't do the Tories any favours. People have been worked hard by the media for a decade to not understand stuff, and unfortunately that is going to bite them on the arse hard.
What could also be a key issue in many rural / far flung / poorer areas is the axing of regional development monies. The EU cash has gone and the pledge to match it dropped. Many places will be viscerally and visibly poorer because of it, just at the time as the cost of living squeeze pinches hardest and the Tories try to parade Brexit benefits.
When the government itself demonstrates that it doesn't know how stuff works they can hardly complain that their voters are just as ignorant.
The EU cash was not spent to any great benefit of the residents of Merthyr Tydfil. There was EU cash in Wales, but the beneficiaries were people/institutions that knew how to work the system.
Where I do agree with you is that the increased cost of living will hurt the Government. In fact, my guess is that is why Johnson is still in place, to take some of the hit.
As regards Matthew Tovey, after rummaging around his extensive media profile, I rather like the guy -- but he is clearly on the "Starmer Out" wing of the Labour party
What he is not is an average, politically disengaged voter from Merthyr Tydfil, as the Guardian present him.
And the Guardian keep on making this mistake -- picking something wrong with the Welsh NHS and blaming the Tories. Time they learnt.
Does the Welsh Government have significant tax raising powers, like we do up here in Scotland?
I appreciate that borrowing is important, but while SC/WA are in Union with England all that really means is borrowing off the English given the tax/expenditure differential.
@RochdalePioneers is wrong to suggest that voters have been hoodwinked by devolution. If they are holding the SG etc to account, while they have tax powers, then it's working exactly as it should.
I was suggesting no such thing. Voters have been hoodwinked by a decade-long misinformation campaign by the Tories to pin all the blame on service provision onto localities regardless of where the money comes from.
The plan - and it has been a success - was to destroy local government finance through removal of the government grant then blame councils for the local destruction of services provided by councils using the government grant.
Now that voters have been educated to not understand the flow of money it is quite funny that this is now in reverse with the Westminster government blamed for things it doesn't control. They can't complain - they wanted voters who were ignorant of reality.
@RochdalePioneers,old chap. The SNP are doing exactly the same thing up here. Holyrood is implementing real-time cuts to local government, despite the block grant from Westminster going up. . All 32 councils complained, even SNP-led ones. Meanwhile money is spaffed away on free bicycles, baby-boxes etc. All govts do this TBF.
Sure! And when the anger finally hits the SNP government for things they haven't done they will have only themselves to blame. I do keep pointing out that I'm not an SNP fanboi (I'm a LD candidate for Aberdeenshire council so running * against* them).
My point was simply that people in devolved areas blaming Westminster for devolved policies is a quite funny outcome.
Fair comment. One of the ironies is that while the UK overall has been rapidly devolving over the last 20 years or so (in addition to the three parliaments/assemblies, mayors of different stripes, PCCs, etc) exactly the opposite has been happening within Scotland, with all power accruing to Holyrood and a centralisation of services previously run on a regional basis, such as police, fire, etc. It's quite a thing.
Yesterday was a great day for the victims of (child) sexual abuse and the republican movement in this country.
So Brenda is going to help pay the £12 million settlement, an utter disgrace.
The Supreme Governor of the Church of England is setting a marvellous example.
Yet more rubbish from the republican, Liberal Democrat voting non Tory.
What the Queen does with her private funds is her own affair. It also had no impact on the monarchy, indeed former US Presidents Clinton and Trump associated with Epstein, Andrew is only 9th in the line of succession now.
The Queen has set a marvellous example her entire life and is not responsible for the actions of her son
I think she takes responsibility for it to an extent if her money means that he avoids being held to account for his actions.
That is the US system. This was never about holding hi to account. It was all about cash. As US lawyers keep claiming when interviewed about this, 95% of cases end in an out of court settlement. It is a ridiculous system which encourages law suits whatever the rights and wrongs of the case because it is not about justice, it is all about money.
And the Queen was screwed whichever way this went. If Andrew doesn't have the funds then he ends up facing a trial which damages the Royal Family even if the claims are utterly groundless (which I suspect they are not of course). If she provides the funds then Republican idiots like TSE use it as another stick to poke the monarchy.
Interesting. I've gained the impression, over the years, that Andrew can be rather bone-headed and entitled. But who knows what happened, if anything, with Giuffre. What I do think is likely is that he has been put under pressure to give this up because of the fears that it would impact on the Platinum Jubilee. It's possible that he's simply been unwise by associating with Epstein/Maxwell and ignored the warning signs, and has ended up being sent into the desert as a result. Will we ever know?
I doubt it. I certainly don't like Andrew and think of all the Royals he displays the worst sense of entitlement so I would not for a minute be surprised to find she was telling the truth. But again I simply don't believe this was about justice. It was all about money. Which, from what I can see, is the whole basis of US civil law suit industry.
The monarchy is an absurdity and has pressed self-destruct with a string of appalling scandals.
The Queen has done a lot for this country but much must change after she dies. There have clearly been some terrible mistakes (e.g. Diana, Camilla, Andrew). A drastically pared down monarchy might help them survive but, really, the whole institution is quite ridiculous. As is the honours system.
Paring down the monarchy does not de facto mean a presidency. Let alone one with that clown at the helm. Still, if the snide remark made you feel better ...
Yesterday was a great day for the victims of (child) sexual abuse and the republican movement in this country.
So Brenda is going to help pay the £12 million settlement, an utter disgrace.
The Supreme Governor of the Church of England is setting a marvellous example.
Yet more rubbish from the republican, Liberal Democrat voting non Tory.
What the Queen does with her private funds is her own affair. It also had no impact on the monarchy, indeed former US Presidents Clinton and Trump associated with Epstein, Andrew is only 9th in the line of succession now.
The Queen has set a marvellous example her entire life and is not responsible for the actions of her son
The whole point of a monarchy is elevating inheritance to a governing principle, so the Queen has every responsibility for her son, given that one of her other sons will follow her into the job.
No, as the Queen always knew Charles and William would be the heirs, so she invested most in training them.
Once Charles becomes King he will discard most of the Royal family except him, Camilla, the Cambridges and Prince Edward and Princess Anne.
Does Edward have a function? Other than not being Andrew?
a) At what point ignorance of the law became a defence under the British legal system b) Ignorance of the law became a defence under the British legal system when it was your law, and you drafted it
Some changes (NI on pensions) are possible, but otherwise it seems to be largely a matter of luck as to how well or badly a generation does. Baby boomers got lucky. Young people today much less so.
There are two sorts of wealth, income and assets. The first is heavily taxed, the latter much more lightly if at all. This needs to be rebalanced.
How about optimising spending?
It is impossible for the government to spend less by increasing productivity.
This is why Aerojet Rocketdyne RS-25 (a warm over version of the Space Shuttle Main Engines) will take 3 years to build 18 examples, for 100 million dollars each.
Meanwhile, Elon Musk is annoyed because Raptor 2 (a more complex engine) is costing around 1 million dollars per example and they are only coming of the production line at 1 per *day*
To be fair, managing to spend $100m turning a reusable engine into an expendable one, is bloody hard work!
A distance aquaintance who has some involvement as a government inspector told me of the following - a bunch of AR engineers had a discussion about tightening a bolt on a test build of the RS25.
Turns out the original documentation (1970s, typed) was a bit unclear on process, torque values etc. Finally, after a non-trivial number of hours on the subject, they stood around as an actual hands on guy fired up the air powered tool to tighten it. And strips the thread. Despite having a platoon assigned to the job, they had managed to miss the wrong value being set on the torque gun. And not testing it first on a test piece. The thread was integral to the part - so that part was now ruined.
But don't worry - they all got coffee and had a conference to discuss the problem.
Meanwhile in The Company That Can't Be Mentioned, they are eliminating joins by welding major assemblies together......
More pertinently, they all got paid at the end of the month, whether or not they had a serviceable RS-25 rocket motor on their test stand.
Meanwhile a private company, with individual shareholders ploughing in millions of dollars a day of their own money into the project, are managing to iterate their design the old fashioned way, with much better results.
I am not defending AR and the costly mess that engine and the entire SLS systems has become. I'm just saying that Raptor 1 appears to be a bit of a Dodo compared to Musk's claims a year and more ago.
It'll be interesting to eventually hear what went wrong with R1 - we're not getting anything meaningful atm. It's also interesting to hear that they're increasing R2's capabilities in terms of performance (e.g. chamber pressure).
Yesterday was a great day for the victims of (child) sexual abuse and the republican movement in this country.
So Brenda is going to help pay the £12 million settlement, an utter disgrace.
The Supreme Governor of the Church of England is setting a marvellous example.
Yet more rubbish from the republican, Liberal Democrat voting non Tory.
What the Queen does with her private funds is her own affair. It also had no impact on the monarchy, indeed former US Presidents Clinton and Trump associated with Epstein, Andrew is only 9th in the line of succession now.
The Queen has set a marvellous example her entire life and is not responsible for the actions of her son
The whole point of a monarchy is elevating inheritance to a governing principle, so the Queen has every responsibility for her son, given that one of her other sons will follow her into the job.
No, as the Queen always knew Charles and William would be the heirs, so she invested most in training them.
Once Charles becomes King he will discard most of the Royal family except him, Camilla, the Cambridges and Prince Edward and Princess Anne.
On that we agree, a much slimmed-down monarchy will reign under Charles.
HMQ has already told WIlliam to stop flying together with his children, and I doubt Charles and William have travelled together for decades.
Some changes (NI on pensions) are possible, but otherwise it seems to be largely a matter of luck as to how well or badly a generation does. Baby boomers got lucky. Young people today much less so.
Cancel student debt and fund the return of LA grants. Residential property tax. RTB for private tenants.
The first one only works if you are going to massively reduce the number of students at university. Otherwise at current undergraduate levels you are looking at somewhere north of £16 billion a year just on tuition fees.
The first one doesn't actual solve any issues we face. When Blair and co massively increased university student numbers (more to reduce youth unemployment rather than educational benefits) he missed the chance to create a proper means of offering lifetime learning.
And that is what people need more than anything else.
Headline on my Guardian..... admittedly website ...... is the cost of living.. Andrew's second. And throughout history attractive young women have either been thrown at, or thrown themselves at, princes. Sometime's it's worked for them; more often, of course, it hasn't.
Good morning all; bit windy today, but dry.
Morning,
Wind building here. Had a bit of a leak in roof next to a flu yesterday, so not looking forward to more rain this evening.
Nasty; always difficult to find tradesmen in these sort of circumstances, too. Rushed off their feet. Best of luck
Yesterday was a great day for the victims of (child) sexual abuse and the republican movement in this country.
So Brenda is going to help pay the £12 million settlement, an utter disgrace.
The Supreme Governor of the Church of England is setting a marvellous example.
Yet more rubbish from the republican, Liberal Democrat voting non Tory.
What the Queen does with her private funds is her own affair. It also had no impact on the monarchy, indeed former US Presidents Clinton and Trump associated with Epstein, Andrew is only 9th in the line of succession now.
The Queen has set a marvellous example her entire life and is not responsible for the actions of her son
The whole point of a monarchy is elevating inheritance to a governing principle, so the Queen has every responsibility for her son, given that one of her other sons will follow her into the job.
No, as the Queen always knew Charles and William would be the heirs, so she invested most in training them.
Once Charles becomes King he will discard most of the Royal family except him, Camilla, the Cambridges and Prince Edward and Princess Anne.
There are some who blame the Duke of Edinburgh for how the children turned out.
Yesterday was a great day for the victims of (child) sexual abuse and the republican movement in this country.
So Brenda is going to help pay the £12 million settlement, an utter disgrace.
The Supreme Governor of the Church of England is setting a marvellous example.
Yet more rubbish from the republican, Liberal Democrat voting non Tory.
What the Queen does with her private funds is her own affair. It also had no impact on the monarchy, indeed former US Presidents Clinton and Trump associated with Epstein, Andrew is only 9th in the line of succession now.
The Queen has set a marvellous example her entire life and is not responsible for the actions of her son
I think she takes responsibility for it to an extent if her money means that he avoids being held to account for his actions.
That is the US system. This was never about holding hi to account. It was all about cash. As US lawyers keep claiming when interviewed about this, 95% of cases end in an out of court settlement. It is a ridiculous system which encourages law suits whatever the rights and wrongs of the case because it is not about justice, it is all about money.
And the Queen was screwed whichever way this went. If Andrew doesn't have the funds then he ends up facing a trial which damages the Royal Family even if the claims are utterly groundless (which I suspect they are not of course). If she provides the funds then Republican idiots like TSE use it as another stick to poke the monarchy.
What do the republican non-idiots do?
Not sure which class of republican I come under, but I see this as more evidence (were it needed) of the limitations of a hereditary monarchy. We were only one accident away from Andrew being next King until Charles had children (Anne was down the order, presumably, as a woman, until the recent changes).
Of course, the alternatives have their problems - e.g. elected president as you might get a complete numpty for that too. But with limited terms the damage can be limited and in a largely ceremonial role you perhaps avoid the power hungry. The Irish model, in my opinion, works quite well.
Some changes (NI on pensions) are possible, but otherwise it seems to be largely a matter of luck as to how well or badly a generation does. Baby boomers got lucky. Young people today much less so.
There are two sorts of wealth, income and assets. The first is heavily taxed, the latter much more lightly if at all. This needs to be rebalanced.
How about optimising spending?
It is impossible for the government to spend less by increasing productivity.
This is why Aerojet Rocketdyne RS-25 (a warm over version of the Space Shuttle Main Engines) will take 3 years to build 18 examples, for 100 million dollars each.
Meanwhile, Elon Musk is annoyed because Raptor 2 (a more complex engine) is costing around 1 million dollars per example and they are only coming of the production line at 1 per *day*
To be fair, managing to spend $100m turning a reusable engine into an expendable one, is bloody hard work!
A distance aquaintance who has some involvement as a government inspector told me of the following - a bunch of AR engineers had a discussion about tightening a bolt on a test build of the RS25.
Turns out the original documentation (1970s, typed) was a bit unclear on process, torque values etc. Finally, after a non-trivial number of hours on the subject, they stood around as an actual hands on guy fired up the air powered tool to tighten it. And strips the thread. Despite having a platoon assigned to the job, they had managed to miss the wrong value being set on the torque gun. And not testing it first on a test piece. The thread was integral to the part - so that part was now ruined.
But don't worry - they all got coffee and had a conference to discuss the problem.
Meanwhile in The Company That Can't Be Mentioned, they are eliminating joins by welding major assemblies together......
More pertinently, they all got paid at the end of the month, whether or not they had a serviceable RS-25 rocket motor on their test stand.
Meanwhile a private company, with individual shareholders ploughing in millions of dollars a day of their own money into the project, are managing to iterate their design the old fashioned way, with much better results.
Yes - one thing that has changed is that in the old days, blowing up test stands was seen as doing work. Engines went through dozens of versions before going anywhere near a launch vehicle.
Now people try and remove all risk with design and process. The dream that you can bolt a engine together and fire it up and it will be perfect.
Strangely, this doesn't work and costs orders of magnitude more than the original ways...
This is a common feature of government projects around the world - a perfect design must be created and implemented, first time, no matter what the cost. And it always fails.
“It seems to me like I’m just working to be able to cover the bills,” said Matthew Tovey. The 30-year-old from Merthyr Tydfil, south Wales, said his pay had not risen above inflation for a decade under the Conservatives’ austerity drive.
Tovey, who uses his car to commute to work, has seen the cost of diesel rise sharply and is concerned that his pay packet will not keep up with the surge in gas and electricity bills due in April. “I’m quite fearful of how I’m going to manage,” he said.
He said it felt as if NHS staff had been ignored despite being on the frontline of the pandemic. “I worked through three waves, and they stood on their doorsteps and clapped, but they’re taking food away from our tables, really.”
Having gone to university to become a nurse, Tovey says he probably earns more than other people but is still struggling. “It feels like if I’ve worked hard and gone into a profession to better myself, and I’m in this position, how the hell are other people coping?
“It impacts on your mental health, there’s nowhere to turn. You’re caught between a rock and a hard place and you wonder, when are we going to have a break?”
This week British bankers will start collecting the biggest bonuses since before the 2008 global financial crisis as their employers fight an “increasingly intense war for talent”.
As most Britons face the biggest squeeze on their incomes since at least 1990, already very highly paid bankers are celebrating “particularly obscene” bonuses in the City’s pubs and wine bars.
“We have had quite the run on champagne – the poshest champagne we stock,” says James, a bartender at the New Moon on the streets of Leadenhall Market near the headquarters of many of the City of London’s banks. “They come here to celebrate when they get told their ‘number’ – the numbers seem to have been particularly obscene this year.”
...
The bumper bonuses will tip several hundred more UK bankers into the EU’s “high earners” warning report which details every banker earning more than €1m (£835,000) a year. The European Banking Authority (EBA) found that 3,519 bankers working in the UK earned more than €1m-a-year last year – more than seven times as many as those working in Germany which has the second highest number of €1m-a-year bankers.
The EBA figures show 27 UK bankers earned more than €10m in 2019 (the latest year available). Two UK-based asset managers were paid between €38m and €39m, and one merchant banker was paid €64.8m. That banker received fixed pay of €242,000, topped up with a bonus of €64.6m.
“It seems to me like I’m just working to be able to cover the bills,” said Matthew Tovey. The 30-year-old from Merthyr Tydfil, south Wales, said his pay had not risen above inflation for a decade under the Conservatives’ austerity drive.
The Guardian appears to be unaware that Merthyr Tydfil is in Wales, that health is devolved, and that pay and conditions are the responsibility of the Welsh Government.
The joys of "lets keep people stupid" politics. The Tory tactics during austerity was cut nationally and pass the blame locally. The idea being that they gut the finances of Labour councils and then get voted in with the Labour councillors getting the blame. It worked - so many people had no clue how funding worked.
So here it isn't The Guardian that is ignorant of how things work, it is the *voter*. Exactly what the Tories wanted.
And indeed, some googling reveals Matthew Tovey hardly to be an ignorant average "voter".
My guess from Tovey's social media profile and the images of him with Jeremy Corbyn is he may not be entirely a political naif.
I am not sure that it would be the greatest strategy in the world for the Tories to claim there is not a serious cost of living crisis for millions of working people people across the UK.
I am not a Tory strategist.
My only point is that the Welsh NHS is the responsibility of the Welsh Government.
Yep and you're right. But pointing that out to angry voters in Wales won't do the Tories any favours. People have been worked hard by the media for a decade to not understand stuff, and unfortunately that is going to bite them on the arse hard.
What could also be a key issue in many rural / far flung / poorer areas is the axing of regional development monies. The EU cash has gone and the pledge to match it dropped. Many places will be viscerally and visibly poorer because of it, just at the time as the cost of living squeeze pinches hardest and the Tories try to parade Brexit benefits.
When the government itself demonstrates that it doesn't know how stuff works they can hardly complain that their voters are just as ignorant.
The EU cash was not spent to any great benefit of the residents of Merthyr Tydfil. There was EU cash in Wales, but the beneficiaries were people/institutions that knew how to work the system.
Where I do agree with you is that the increased cost of living will hurt the Government. In fact, my guess is that is why Johnson is still in place, to take some of the hit.
As regards Matthew Tovey, after rummaging around his extensive media profile, I rather like the guy -- but he is clearly on the "Starmer Out" wing of the Labour party
What he is not is an average, politically disengaged voter from Merthyr Tydfil, as the Guardian present him.
And the Guardian keep on making this mistake -- picking something wrong with the Welsh NHS and blaming the Tories. Time they learnt.
Does the Welsh Government have significant tax raising powers, like we do up here in Scotland?
I appreciate that borrowing is important, but while SC/WA are in Union with England all that really means is borrowing off the English given the tax/expenditure differential.
@RochdalePioneers is wrong to suggest that voters have been hoodwinked by devolution. If they are holding the SG etc to account, while they have tax powers, then it's working exactly as it should.
I was suggesting no such thing. Voters have been hoodwinked by a decade-long misinformation campaign by the Tories to pin all the blame on service provision onto localities regardless of where the money comes from.
The plan - and it has been a success - was to destroy local government finance through removal of the government grant then blame councils for the local destruction of services provided by councils using the government grant.
Now that voters have been educated to not understand the flow of money it is quite funny that this is now in reverse with the Westminster government blamed for things it doesn't control. They can't complain - they wanted voters who were ignorant of reality.
@RochdalePioneers,old chap. The SNP are doing exactly the same thing up here. Holyrood is implementing real-time cuts to local government, despite the block grant from Westminster going up. . All 32 councils complained, even SNP-led ones. Meanwhile money is spaffed away on free bicycles, baby-boxes etc. All govts do this TBF.
Sure! And when the anger finally hits the SNP government for things they haven't done they will have only themselves to blame. I do keep pointing out that I'm not an SNP fanboi (I'm a LD candidate for Aberdeenshire council so running * against* them).
My point was simply that people in devolved areas blaming Westminster for devolved policies is a quite funny outcome.
WEll quite and Aberdeenshire has been a particular example of SNP malign neglect. Good Luck!
Some changes (NI on pensions) are possible, but otherwise it seems to be largely a matter of luck as to how well or badly a generation does. Baby boomers got lucky. Young people today much less so.
There are two sorts of wealth, income and assets. The first is heavily taxed, the latter much more lightly if at all. This needs to be rebalanced.
How about optimising spending?
It is impossible for the government to spend less by increasing productivity.
This is why Aerojet Rocketdyne RS-25 (a warm over version of the Space Shuttle Main Engines) will take 3 years to build 18 examples, for 100 million dollars each.
Meanwhile, Elon Musk is annoyed because Raptor 2 (a more complex engine) is costing around 1 million dollars per example and they are only coming of the production line at 1 per *day*
To be fair, managing to spend $100m turning a reusable engine into an expendable one, is bloody hard work!
A distance aquaintance who has some involvement as a government inspector told me of the following - a bunch of AR engineers had a discussion about tightening a bolt on a test build of the RS25.
Turns out the original documentation (1970s, typed) was a bit unclear on process, torque values etc. Finally, after a non-trivial number of hours on the subject, they stood around as an actual hands on guy fired up the air powered tool to tighten it. And strips the thread. Despite having a platoon assigned to the job, they had managed to miss the wrong value being set on the torque gun. And not testing it first on a test piece. The thread was integral to the part - so that part was now ruined.
But don't worry - they all got coffee and had a conference to discuss the problem.
Meanwhile in The Company That Can't Be Mentioned, they are eliminating joins by welding major assemblies together......
More pertinently, they all got paid at the end of the month, whether or not they had a serviceable RS-25 rocket motor on their test stand.
Meanwhile a private company, with individual shareholders ploughing in millions of dollars a day of their own money into the project, are managing to iterate their design the old fashioned way, with much better results.
I am not defending AR and the costly mess that engine and the entire SLS systems has become. I'm just saying that Raptor 1 appears to be a bit of a Dodo compared to Musk's claims a year and more ago.
It'll be interesting to eventually hear what went wrong with R1 - we're not getting anything meaningful atm. It's also interesting to hear that they're increasing R2's capabilities in terms of performance (e.g. chamber pressure).
My proposal for higher education is to scrap tuition fees but also massively reduce the numbers of students going to university and instead get more people into work via apprenticeships or other routes.
I would prioritise STEM subjects for free tuition along with nursing
Yesterday was a great day for the victims of (child) sexual abuse and the republican movement in this country.
So Brenda is going to help pay the £12 million settlement, an utter disgrace.
The Supreme Governor of the Church of England is setting a marvellous example.
Yet more rubbish from the republican, Liberal Democrat voting non Tory.
What the Queen does with her private funds is her own affair. It also had no impact on the monarchy, indeed former US Presidents Clinton and Trump associated with Epstein, Andrew is only 9th in the line of succession now.
The Queen has set a marvellous example her entire life and is not responsible for the actions of her son
The whole point of a monarchy is elevating inheritance to a governing principle, so the Queen has every responsibility for her son, given that one of her other sons will follow her into the job.
No, as the Queen always knew Charles and William would be the heirs, so she invested most in training them.
Once Charles becomes King he will discard most of the Royal family except him, Camilla, the Cambridges and Prince Edward and Princess Anne.
Discard? Checkout at Tescos or used to feed the Duchy Originals pigs?
Windy here but hopefully won't cause any real problems. I feel sorry for those in more exposed areas, with days of high winds (and not that long since the last time we had back-to-back storms).
Some changes (NI on pensions) are possible, but otherwise it seems to be largely a matter of luck as to how well or badly a generation does. Baby boomers got lucky. Young people today much less so.
Cancel student debt and fund the return of LA grants. Residential property tax. RTB for private tenants.
Lump sum payment to people who have already paid off their student "loan"?
Headline on my Guardian..... admittedly website ...... is the cost of living.. Andrew's second. And throughout history attractive young women have either been thrown at, or thrown themselves at, princes. Sometime's it's worked for them; more often, of course, it hasn't.
Good morning all; bit windy today, but dry.
Andrew experiencing his own cost of living crisis, of course. Having to turn to the bank of mum and dad, too. Who says the Royals are not in touch with the problems of the common people?
On topic: glad to see the general level of disgust at rich man's "justice"
Yes - lots of disgust being expressed.
Justice would have meant a criminal trial where the allegations could be properly tested.
But when I pointed this out on here weeks ago and the inappropriateness of having such serious matters decided in civil proceedings, I was told off by many on here, that Giuffre had every right to make a claim, blah blah
And yet the end result is completely unsatisfactory: she has got some money, she has not got any admission of guilt or an apology from him, if guilty he has not been convicted and properly punished, if innocent he has not cleared his name and the promise to help sex trafficking victims is meaningless since he's retired from public life and will not be allowed to resume it.
It is a complete mess and exactly what those who cheered Ms Giuffre on were warned was likely to happen.
If a man commits rape he should be in prison. If he is innocent he should not have his good character attacked in this way or have to pay out....
This though (a bit like your solution to the trans issue) assumes things which simply don't exist, and aren't likely to anytime soon even with governments more competent than the one we now have. Looking at the rates for prosecution and conviction for sex crimes which aren't decades old, the chances of getting justice appear quite low. What are the prospects in a case like this ?
Has anything changed for the better ? Andrew has at least now decided he regrets his friendship with Epstein.
My proposal for higher education is to scrap tuition fees but also massively reduce the numbers of students going to university and instead get more people into work via apprenticeships or other routes.
I would prioritise STEM subjects for free tuition along with nursing
Yep this would be exactly my view as well. The country should be investing in the students studying the courses that will benefit us the most.
Yesterday was a great day for the victims of (child) sexual abuse and the republican movement in this country.
So Brenda is going to help pay the £12 million settlement, an utter disgrace.
The Supreme Governor of the Church of England is setting a marvellous example.
Yet more rubbish from the republican, Liberal Democrat voting non Tory.
What the Queen does with her private funds is her own affair. It also had no impact on the monarchy, indeed former US Presidents Clinton and Trump associated with Epstein, Andrew is only 9th in the line of succession now.
The Queen has set a marvellous example her entire life and is not responsible for the actions of her son
I think she takes responsibility for it to an extent if her money means that he avoids being held to account for his actions.
That is the US system. This was never about holding hi to account. It was all about cash. As US lawyers keep claiming when interviewed about this, 95% of cases end in an out of court settlement. It is a ridiculous system which encourages law suits whatever the rights and wrongs of the case because it is not about justice, it is all about money.
And the Queen was screwed whichever way this went. If Andrew doesn't have the funds then he ends up facing a trial which damages the Royal Family even if the claims are utterly groundless (which I suspect they are not of course). If she provides the funds then Republican idiots like TSE use it as another stick to poke the monarchy.
What do the republican non-idiots do?
Not sure which class of republican I come under, but I see this as more evidence (were it needed) of the limitations of a hereditary monarchy. We were only one accident away from Andrew being next King until Charles had children (Anne was down the order, presumably, as a woman until the recent changes).
Of course, the alternatives have their problems - e.g. elected president as you might get a complete numpty for that too. But with limited terms the damage can be limited and in a largely ceremonial role you perhaps avoid the power hungry. The Irish model, in my opinion, works quite well.
Excellent post.
Enormous respect is due to the Queen for all her indefatigable service to this nation and the Commonwealth but I suspect after she dies some reappraisals will occur.
1. More advances were made under Victoria than Elizabeth II
2. She has presided over some terrible mistakes. Charles was obviously never suited for Diana and never loved her. He did love Camilla. He was also of a very different character to his father. The repercussions of the disaster surrounding Diana are still being felt and whilst it's easy to lay into Harry I suspect there's some truth behind his gripes.
3. Then there's Andrew ...
4. ... And a host of other entitled ludicrous hangers-on who should be told to get out and live in the real world with real jobs.
5. They have a ridiculous number of homes. It's a dreadful example to set in today's world.
6. The honours system is absolutely ridiculous and should be abolished. All knighthoods removed.
7. We need an elected second chamber
And with that constitutional broadside I bid you g'day. Up the Revolution!
My proposal for higher education is to scrap tuition fees but also massively reduce the numbers of students going to university and instead get more people into work via apprenticeships or other routes.
I would prioritise STEM subjects for free tuition along with nursing
Absolutely agree, I'd extend it to law and history.
I'd extend it also to medical degrees on the proviso that they agree to work for the NHS for five years after they graduate.
If there were to be a General Election in the United Kingdom tomorrow, how likely would you be to vote? (R&W)
Certain to vote:
Scotland 69% Wales 67% North West 64% Yorkshire & Humber 60% Eastern 60% South East 58% South West 56% West Midlands 50% North East 46% East Midlands 42% London 32%
Those are huge differences. Never seen polling data like this before.
I concur. And I’m struggling to think of an explanation. Beyond the obvious.
Some changes (NI on pensions) are possible, but otherwise it seems to be largely a matter of luck as to how well or badly a generation does. Baby boomers got lucky. Young people today much less so.
There are two sorts of wealth, income and assets. The first is heavily taxed, the latter much more lightly if at all. This needs to be rebalanced.
How about optimising spending?
It is impossible for the government to spend less by increasing productivity.
This is why Aerojet Rocketdyne RS-25 (a warm over version of the Space Shuttle Main Engines) will take 3 years to build 18 examples, for 100 million dollars each.
Meanwhile, Elon Musk is annoyed because Raptor 2 (a more complex engine) is costing around 1 million dollars per example and they are only coming of the production line at 1 per *day*
To be fair, managing to spend $100m turning a reusable engine into an expendable one, is bloody hard work!
A distance aquaintance who has some involvement as a government inspector told me of the following - a bunch of AR engineers had a discussion about tightening a bolt on a test build of the RS25.
Turns out the original documentation (1970s, typed) was a bit unclear on process, torque values etc. Finally, after a non-trivial number of hours on the subject, they stood around as an actual hands on guy fired up the air powered tool to tighten it. And strips the thread. Despite having a platoon assigned to the job, they had managed to miss the wrong value being set on the torque gun. And not testing it first on a test piece. The thread was integral to the part - so that part was now ruined.
But don't worry - they all got coffee and had a conference to discuss the problem.
Meanwhile in The Company That Can't Be Mentioned, they are eliminating joins by welding major assemblies together......
More pertinently, they all got paid at the end of the month, whether or not they had a serviceable RS-25 rocket motor on their test stand.
Meanwhile a private company, with individual shareholders ploughing in millions of dollars a day of their own money into the project, are managing to iterate their design the old fashioned way, with much better results.
Yes - one thing that has changed is that in the old days, blowing up test stands was seen as doing work. Engines went through dozens of versions before going anywhere near a launch vehicle.
Now people try and remove all risk with design and process. The dream that you can bolt a engine together and fire it up and it will be perfect.
Strangely, this doesn't work and costs orders of magnitude more than the original ways...
This is a common feature of government projects around the world - a perfect design must be created and implemented, first time, no matter what the cost. And it always fails.
Of course it does - it’s actual rocket science after all, and why even the smallest program involves dozens of engineers.
I think the change was with Apollo, where there was no room for error, the various assemblies were outsourced to different teams, and everything had to fit together and be man-rated from Day 1 - and even then, they managed to kill three astronauts early on in the program, which made them even more risk-averse in future.
Comments
- Evil, scummy money, owned by other people
- Sacred entitlements owned by ME!
Ahem.
Wind building here. Had a bit of a leak in roof next to a flu yesterday, so not looking forward to more rain this evening.
This is why Aerojet Rocketdyne RS-25 (a warm over version of the Space Shuttle Main Engines) will take 3 years to build 18 examples, for 100 million dollars each.
Meanwhile, Elon Musk is annoyed because Raptor 2 (a more complex engine) is costing around 1 million dollars per example and they are only coming of the production line at 1 per *day*
https://gov.wales/welsh-rates-income-tax
More detail here:
https://gov.wales/welsh-taxes
The reality is, though, that the ability to vary taxes doesn't mean all that much when central government has power over most of the rest of the economy, which leaves fairly limited scope for manoeuvre without creating perverse consequences.
The plan - and it has been a success - was to destroy local government finance through removal of the government grant then blame councils for the local destruction of services provided by councils using the government grant.
Now that voters have been educated to not understand the flow of money it is quite funny that this is now in reverse with the Westminster government blamed for things it doesn't control. They can't complain - they wanted voters who were ignorant of reality.
What the Queen does with her private funds is her own affair. It also had no impact on the monarchy, indeed former US Presidents Clinton and Trump associated with Epstein, Andrew is only 9th in the line of succession now.
The Queen has set a marvellous example her entire life and is not responsible for the actions of her son
@TheIFS·
Rising RPI inflation, hitting 7.8% in the 12 months to January according to @ONS, is pushing up the cost of government debt held in index-linked gilts.
https://twitter.com/TheIFS
Justice would have meant a criminal trial where the allegations could be properly tested.
But when I pointed this out on here weeks ago and the inappropriateness of having such serious matters decided in civil proceedings, I was told off by many on here, that Giuffre had every right to make a claim, blah blah
And yet the end result is completely unsatisfactory: she has got some money, she has not got any admission of guilt or an apology from him, if guilty he has not been convicted and properly punished, if innocent he has not cleared his name and the promise to help sex trafficking victims is meaningless since he's retired from public life and will not be allowed to resume it.
It is a complete mess and exactly what those who cheered Ms Giuffre on were warned was likely to happen.
If a man commits rape he should be in prison. If he is innocent he should not have his good character attacked in this way or have to pay out.
It's not rich man's justice. It's completely unsatisfactory and not justice at all.
Essentially, and noted in the replies to that tweet, the GLP will just have to find plaintiffs with standing in the future. Seems like a bit of a ballache for the GLP (and would limit them in cases like this present one with Harding - though maybe there are alternative legal routes here??), but if the Government have really fucked it surely they can find and fund a legal challenge from someone who has standing. I'm not necessarily condoning a US-style of political lawfare, but I think it demonstrates that it might not be so difficult to find an individual with standing.
It's hard to argue that Raptor 1 has not been a failure, using Musk's own words in the past.
As ever, take Musk's timescales and ambitions with a large pinch of salt.
Fewer requirements by Toutatis.
I was involved with a business contact who absolutely milked all the free money and loans available to build a business in Wales. This guy was super smart. He engaged his own building firm (based in South Yorkshire) to build the project at a vastly over inflated price. I would estimate I could have built what he built at 10% of the price he charged. But hey, for the promise of 25 jobs it was worth it ...only it wasn't because it was liquidated within a year of completion.
So £6m of EU funded WDA and British Steel grants and loans wound up in a bank in South Yorkshire. Happy days.
What is it that monarchists like to say? Something about value for money?
I do hope that you never ever go out canvassing for votes. You would be damaging to your cause...
People may or may not be interested to know, given the picture some papers are using of him, that one of the Colonelcies Andrew is giving up is that of the Grenadier Guards. It is reverting to the Queen. The last time Elizabeth held this appointment was 80 years ago next Thursday.
And yes I hate the whole "doing a lot of work there" thing also.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2022/02/15/putin-close-winning-ukraine/
Raptor 2 is on the test stand, and firing 100 second tests. AR hasn't actually managed to put a final version of the "new" RS-25 on the stand yet.
If we live in a world where railways *must* cost a billion per mile.... well, get used to a world with not many railways.
Also, you are setting your students up to be unwelcome on PB. What kind of a life would that be.
And the Queen was screwed whichever way this went. If Andrew doesn't have the funds then he ends up facing a trial which damages the Royal Family even if the claims are utterly groundless (which I suspect they are not of course). If she provides the funds then Republican idiots like TSE use it as another stick to poke the monarchy.
Being on the test stand is fine - if that was the measure, then BO's BE-4 would be a success atm.
For a couple of years, until midway through last year, Musk was saying all sorts of grandiose claims about Raptor, about how many they'd make a month, how little they would cost. AIUI the difference between Raptor 1 and raptor 2 are far greater than between consecutive Merlin marks. It's clear something's gone very wrong with the R1 project.
Is there any jurisprudence on this issue?
The rich also pay way more in taxes, with the prime beneficiaries of state spending being the poor.
More to the point, 'less things', or, worse, 'fewer stuff' just sounds clunky and awful.
You'll be telling me 'disinterested' is a perfectly acceptable synonym for 'uninterested' next.
Turns out the original documentation (1970s, typed) was a bit unclear on process, torque values etc. Finally, after a non-trivial number of hours on the subject, they stood around as an actual hands on guy fired up the air powered tool to tighten it. And strips the thread. Despite having a platoon assigned to the job, they had managed to miss the wrong value being set on the torque gun. And not testing it first on a test piece. The thread was integral to the part - so that part was now ruined.
But don't worry - they all got coffee and had a conference to discuss the problem.
Meanwhile in The Company That Can't Be Mentioned, they are eliminating joins by welding major assemblies together......
Enjoy your days.
Going to be have to be a dramatic turnaround then 🙂
Meanwhile a private company, with individual shareholders ploughing in millions of dollars a day of their own money into the project, are managing to iterate their design the old fashioned way, with much better results.
My point was simply that people in devolved areas blaming Westminster for devolved policies is a quite funny outcome.
Genius...
I wouldn't be surprised to see an Amber warning issued today and Red warning tomorrow. That means don't travel.
Once Charles becomes King he will discard most of the Royal family except him, Camilla, the Cambridges and Prince Edward and Princess Anne.
No and they're not going to. I don't believe they ever were.
Still, it deflected from partygate so Boris will be chuffed.
https://twitter.com/politicoeurope/status/1493877063169843200?s=21
The difference between Raptor 1 and 2 is similar to Merlin 1C to Merlin 1D - a redesign to reduce the Christmas Tree decoration of minor pipework and part count.
From various sources, the issue was producibility - Raptor 1 required lots of hand work with installing the minor pipework.
BE-4 still has combustion stability problems, I believe. But they are trying to deliver engines to ULA - with a promise to update them to flight ready, later!
Income tax is paid at a higher rate the more you earn. When footballers or bankers earn huge pay packets, almost half ends up with the Treasury.
That's not a bad thing.
Or are you contesting that state-funded services and benefits are more helpful to the poor than the rich?
TSE is not a Tory and the Tories do not need republicans like TSE to win.
In fact even Ed Davey is a monarchist, let alone most Tories
Paring down the monarchy does not de facto mean a presidency. Let alone one with that clown at the helm. Still, if the snide remark made you feel better ...
@DPJHodges·11m
Can someone explain:
a) At what point ignorance of the law became a defence under the British legal system
b) Ignorance of the law became a defence under the British legal system when it was your law, and you drafted it
https://twitter.com/DPJHodges/status/1493880724969172993
It'll be interesting to eventually hear what went wrong with R1 - we're not getting anything meaningful atm. It's also interesting to hear that they're increasing R2's capabilities in terms of performance (e.g. chamber pressure).
HMQ has already told WIlliam to stop flying together with his children, and I doubt Charles and William have travelled together for decades.
And that is what people need more than anything else.
Best of luck
Not sure which class of republican I come under, but I see this as more evidence (were it needed) of the limitations of a hereditary monarchy. We were only one accident away from Andrew being next King until Charles had children (Anne was down the order, presumably, as a woman, until the recent changes).
Of course, the alternatives have their problems - e.g. elected president as you might get a complete numpty for that too. But with limited terms the damage can be limited and in a largely ceremonial role you perhaps avoid the power hungry. The Irish model, in my opinion, works quite well.
Now people try and remove all risk with design and process. The dream that you can bolt a engine together and fire it up and it will be perfect.
Strangely, this doesn't work and costs orders of magnitude more than the original ways...
This is a common feature of government projects around the world - a perfect design must be created and implemented, first time, no matter what the cost. And it always fails.
I would prioritise STEM subjects for free tuition along with nursing
Checkout at Tescos or used to feed the Duchy Originals pigs?
Windy here but hopefully won't cause any real problems. I feel sorry for those in more exposed areas, with days of high winds (and not that long since the last time we had back-to-back storms).
Looking at the rates for prosecution and conviction for sex crimes which aren't decades old, the chances of getting justice appear quite low. What are the prospects in a case like this ?
Has anything changed for the better ? Andrew has at least now decided he regrets his friendship with Epstein.
Enormous respect is due to the Queen for all her indefatigable service to this nation and the Commonwealth but I suspect after she dies some reappraisals will occur.
1. More advances were made under Victoria than Elizabeth II
2. She has presided over some terrible mistakes. Charles was obviously never suited for Diana and never loved her. He did love Camilla. He was also of a very different character to his father. The repercussions of the disaster surrounding Diana are still being felt and whilst it's easy to lay into Harry I suspect there's some truth behind his gripes.
3. Then there's Andrew ...
4. ... And a host of other entitled ludicrous hangers-on who should be told to get out and live in the real world with real jobs.
5. They have a ridiculous number of homes. It's a dreadful example to set in today's world.
6. The honours system is absolutely ridiculous and should be abolished. All knighthoods removed.
7. We need an elected second chamber
And with that constitutional broadside I bid you g'day. Up the Revolution!
I'd extend it also to medical degrees on the proviso that they agree to work for the NHS for five years after they graduate.
9.25am
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/russia-moving-troops-into-attack-areas-near-ukraine-minister-warns-fg0d2nh2t?utm_medium=Social&utm_source=Twitter#Echobox=1645004642-1
Great!
I think the change was with Apollo, where there was no room for error, the various assemblies were outsourced to different teams, and everything had to fit together and be man-rated from Day 1 - and even then, they managed to kill three astronauts early on in the program, which made them even more risk-averse in future.