Putin is evil. Boris... well, he's flawed. Deeply flawed. But he is not evil.
The evidence for your claim is weak.
You have a stupidly low threshold for evil then.
Evil is bombing civilians out of their own homeland. Stop fucking debasing the word. Twat.
We all know the real reason people on here think he's evil - he delivered the democratic wishes of the British people, then smashed Communism in this country, probably for a generation.
And they'll never forgive him for either or both of those.
Putin is evil. Boris... well, he's flawed. Deeply flawed. But he is not evil.
The evidence for your claim is weak.
You have a stupidly low threshold for evil then.
Evil is bombing civilians out of their own homeland. Stop fucking debasing the word. Twat.
We all know the real reason people on here think he's evil - he delivered the democratic wishes of the British people, then smashed Communism in this country, probably for a generation.
And they'll never forgive him for either or both of those.
I agree strongly with @MarqueeMark. If we equate Boris with Putin we are no different to Boris equating Brexit to Ukrainian for which we were all critical.
However I don't get your communism point. We didn't have a communism issue and still don't and Boris hasn't done anything to solve a non existing issue. What exactly are you talking about?
I imagine it’s a reference to Corbyn and Corbynism.
Putin is evil. Boris... well, he's flawed. Deeply flawed. But he is not evil.
The evidence for your claim is weak.
You have a stupidly low threshold for evil then.
Evil is bombing civilians out of their own homeland. Stop fucking debasing the word. Twat.
We all know the real reason people on here think he's evil - he delivered the democratic wishes of the British people, then smashed Communism in this country, probably for a generation.
And they'll never forgive him for either or both of those.
Good morning everyone. Bright but chilly here, with a cold wind yesterday.
As far as our PM is concerned I'm about halfway between Ms Heathener and Mr Jessop; I have a nasty suspicion that our PM could easily be 'evil' if events turned against him and he couldn't do his 'greased piglet' act. Two or three times in the Commons he's looked to be at least on the verge of a temper tantrum when he's been challenged.
Morning OKC, sun and blue sky again but very fresh, yesterday was like a summer day, today will be lovely but not quite as hot I think.
On pensions , most people like to consolidate them if they have worked for a few employers . Personally i quite like the varied nature of them and treat them almost like a curious collection ! I have defined benefits ones (two types) , a DC top up to a DB one, two workplace invested contribution ones - in a balanced mix not under my control , a SIPP (when self employed) that i enjoy making investment decisions on , the state pension of course and other investments in ISAs that are effectively pensions for me . Its a bit chaotic but i like that . Looking forward to choosing which to draw on first when retirement draws nearer!
I’ve got 9 small pots I’m currently having consolidated into one. The IFA is taking their time but it should be done by the middle of April. I also have a modest DC fund from my current employer and a SIPP as well as 2 DB schemes, one in the PPF.
I’m hoping to start drawing down in a couple of years.
Two other related markets I'm keeping an eye on are inflation and interest rates.
Smarkets currently have odds on CPI inflation hitting 7.5% by July. The odds on this don't really attract me.
I'm looking to see if I can get odds on 10% CPI by end of the year. That's more controversial but there's a hell of a lot of surge upstream. Double-digit inflation would really be a meme changer I suspect. I think you have to go back to 1981 for the last time?
Two other related markets I'm keeping an eye on are inflation and interest rates.
Smarkets currently have odds on CPI inflation hitting 7.5% by July. The odds on this don't really attract me.
I'm looking to see if I can get odds on 10% CPI by end of the year. That's more controversial but there's a hell of a lot of surge upstream. Double-digit inflation would really be a meme changer I suspect. I think you have to go back to 1981 for the last time?
The Express had a 9.5% guesstimate on its front page a couple of weeks ago.
Music was great in the 70s. The economy? Not so much.
The fuel crisis of 1973 and the one following the Iranian revolution of 1979 were both pretty brutal economically. Those of us old enough to remember what real inflation was like are not keen to see it return.
It isn't a straight repeat though. We have far less of a manufacturing economy, we have very weak private sector Trade Unions, a much older population, and we have no politicians who support living within our means. It is quite a different cocktail.
Despite inflation, war, the worst consumer confidence for decades, visible stagflation, China in lockdown etc my equity portfolio is up quite a bit this week. Quite what I should do with it is unclear. The 1973 fuel crisis led to a severe bear market. Are we there again? The 1979 one led to a very long bull market.
I hold some Quilter shares in my portfolio . Its been interesting to see they have gone up (more than others) in recent weeks . As they are financial advisors , i wonder if more people are engaging financial advisors to combat inflation. I am certianly scratching my head to protect my portfolio and hence most of my pension
Also a good moment to be a financial adviser in light of McCloud. Lots of nifty footwork is about to happen in members of the public sector pension schemes to lock in final salary benefits. (The judgement doesn’t apply to me incidentally as I wasn’t in a PSPS before the cut-off date.)
yes as a fellow late joiner to a defined benefit scheme I am more relaxed in a weird way that i dont have to go through all that !
I am just covered by McCloud but it looks like I will just get to choose between Alpha and Nuvos for the period up to this month. What I don't understand though is the potential effect of the failure to review contributions - I have heard that members have effectively been over-contributing but haven't heard what, if anything, will be done about it.
McLeod is a real headache. I am fairly sure that I will be better off under the 1994 scheme (Final salary) rather than 2015 (career average earnings) so should have my years in the latter credited to the former, but it does mean recalculating my income tax for several years because of the annual allowance taper, potentially landing me with a big tax bill.
My wife is in a similar position in the NHS and will be better off under the final salary scheme.
However she says she doesn’t have to make a decision until she draws the pension which, for the final salary scheme she’s looking in the next four years.
I’ll have to mention a potential tax liability to her as she’s not mentioned it.
It is to do with how the annual contribution of the 1995 scheme is calculated for tax purposes, and how it interacts with the allowance taper, which has been quite brutal in some tax years. Potentially a marginal tax rate of over 100%.
The Right on here won't like this but Boris Johnson is very similar to Vladimir Putin.
Both share the attempt to recast reality, to warp truth, to generate something from the opposite of what is actually true.
Here's another example of classic Johnson Putinism. Knowing he is vulnerable to attacks over dirty Russian donations to the tory party, Johnson has upturned the truth to make out it's Keir Starmer who is opening the floodgates to dirty Russian money.
Johnson is a lying shit. An unflushable turd. The nastiest piece of work to be our PM in at least a century. A Putinist.
I'm not a Boris fan, but that's a ridiculous comparison. It's also quite a nasty one. If you look at what Putin has done over the last twenty years to his country, there is zero comparison. Putin is evil. Boris... well, he's flawed. Deeply flawed. But he is not evil.
Well it may have a hint of hyperbole about it, but I do think Boris is evil.
The UK leaving the EU was predicated on evil lies and there are countless other examples from that macro level to micro ones which aren't so micro if you are the one on the receiving end. I know of people who have been traduced by his lies, smeared into despair and suicidal thoughts. He tramples on people for his own egomania.
Boris Johnson is evil.
If Boris is 'evil', then you need to have another term for the really evil people, such as Putin. Uber-evil? evil-max?
The Right on here won't like this but Boris Johnson is very similar to Vladimir Putin.
Both share the attempt to recast reality, to warp truth, to generate something from the opposite of what is actually true.
Here's another example of classic Johnson Putinism. Knowing he is vulnerable to attacks over dirty Russian donations to the tory party, Johnson has upturned the truth to make out it's Keir Starmer who is opening the floodgates to dirty Russian money.
Johnson is a lying shit. An unflushable turd. The nastiest piece of work to be our PM in at least a century. A Putinist.
I'm not a Boris fan, but that's a ridiculous comparison. It's also quite a nasty one. If you look at what Putin has done over the last twenty years to his country, there is zero comparison. Putin is evil. Boris... well, he's flawed. Deeply flawed. But he is not evil.
Well it may have a hint of hyperbole about it, but I do think Boris is evil.
The UK leaving the EU was predicated on evil lies and there are countless other examples from that macro level to micro ones which aren't so micro if you are the one on the receiving end. I know of people who have been traduced by his lies, smeared into despair and suicidal thoughts. He tramples on people for his own egomania.
Boris Johnson is evil.
If Boris is 'evil', then you need to have another term for the really evil people, such as Putin. Uber-evil? evil-max?
Your last paragraph is ridiculous.
What a silly remark. There's that guy the Godwin thing is about, and there's literally millions of small time bullies who get through a lifetime of selfishly making life mildly unpleasant for everyone in their ambit, in many cases never actually breaking any law. Both are evil, why shouldn't they be? Evil is not some sort of inverted super power confined to film baddies.
"lifetime of selfishly making life mildly unpleasant for everyone in their ambit"
I'd call that nasty. 'evil' is another level beyond that IMO.
Fair point, but given the entire country in in his ambit, it’s a very good argument for booting out Boris at the first opportunity.
I will probably be one of those giving him the boot.
On pensions , most people like to consolidate them if they have worked for a few employers . Personally i quite like the varied nature of them and treat them almost like a curious collection ! I have defined benefits ones (two types) , a DC top up to a DB one, two workplace invested contribution ones - in a balanced mix not under my control , a SIPP (when self employed) that i enjoy making investment decisions on , the state pension of course and other investments in ISAs that are effectively pensions for me . Its a bit chaotic but i like that . Looking forward to choosing which to draw on first when retirement draws nearer!
I am already in that boat after redundancy close to retirement age. I'm currently spending my way through my second of three pension pots. Augmenting my meagre savings through judiciously chosen antepost bets went awry at Cheltenham owing to last-minute non-runners and horses dotting up in the wrong races.
BBC picks up on Johnson’s Ukraine/Brexit connection:
Boris Johnson has been criticised for comparing the struggle of Ukrainians fighting Russia's invasion to people in Britain voting for Brexit.
In a speech he said Britons, like Ukrainians, had the instinct "to choose freedom" and cited the 2016 vote to leave the EU as a "recent example".
The comments have caused anger among politicians both in the UK and Europe. Donald Tusk, the former president of the European Council, called the comments offensive.
Putin is evil. Boris... well, he's flawed. Deeply flawed. But he is not evil.
The evidence for your claim is weak.
You have a stupidly low threshold for evil then.
Evil is bombing civilians out of their own homeland. Stop fucking debasing the word. Twat.
We all know the real reason people on here think he's evil - he delivered the democratic wishes of the British people, then smashed Communism in this country, probably for a generation.
And they'll never forgive him for either or both of those.
He put Nazanin in prison for six years
We have a winner!!!
I'm sure she saw the funny side.
I’m sure she also knows who put here in prison for six years too.
Politicians have a tendency to exaggerate wildly and think it's clever. Angela Rayner usually begins a speech by marshalling as many nasty adjectives as she can think of. Polly Toynbee is another when she equates ethnic cleansing to any tax change she dislikes. It makes them look childish, not clever. Even Corbyn resists the temptation sometimes.
It reminds you of a seven-year-old who thinks it makes him sound impressive. "My fart was the biggest explosion the world has ever heard."
Not surprised that BoJo indulges too. As others have pointed out, it demeans them, and what they're talking about. It shows they've never grown up.
I see Rishi is pushing back against Boris' drive for much more nuclear. Bloody good job too. He gets my vote on that basis alone.
Why the hell Boris is in thrall to the nuclear industry, I can only guess. There is no "dash to nuclear", Boris. They are stupidly slow and expensive to build.
No nuclear plant on the planet has ever been built without massive government subsisidies. There is no need - they have now been overtaken by other options. Cheaper, cleaner, faster. Open your eyes, Prime Minister. And keep blocking them, Chancellor.
The Right on here won't like this but Boris Johnson is very similar to Vladimir Putin.
Both share the attempt to recast reality, to warp truth, to generate something from the opposite of what is actually true.
Here's another example of classic Johnson Putinism. Knowing he is vulnerable to attacks over dirty Russian donations to the tory party, Johnson has upturned the truth to make out it's Keir Starmer who is opening the floodgates to dirty Russian money.
Johnson is a lying shit. An unflushable turd. The nastiest piece of work to be our PM in at least a century. A Putinist.
I'm not a Boris fan, but that's a ridiculous comparison. It's also quite a nasty one. If you look at what Putin has done over the last twenty years to his country, there is zero comparison. Putin is evil. Boris... well, he's flawed. Deeply flawed. But he is not evil.
(And starting off a post with terms like 'The Right on here won't like it...' is also a bad idea, as you are already framing the reaction to your post. "Of course, you say that, you're on the Right!')
I’m on the left, and I also think it’s total bollox for pretty much the reasons you state.
Why would Boris want to draw attention to Russian influence or donations? These kind of remarks along with the surely misguided Brexit/Ukraine comparison suggest to me he feels under pressure.
What of his character? Boris once suggested that whilst Theresa May admired Geoffrey Boycott, he was more akin to Ian Botham. For the uninitiated, Boycott was the archetypical gritty, calculating, defensive batsman who played the percentages whilst Botham was the swashbuckling, risk taking crowdpleaser for whom attack was the best form of defence. Perhaps I'm being rather florid on a Sunday morning but Johnson being so determined to seize the initiative may be a sign he feels the vultures circling.
Two other related markets I'm keeping an eye on are inflation and interest rates.
Smarkets currently have odds on CPI inflation hitting 7.5% by July. The odds on this don't really attract me.
I'm looking to see if I can get odds on 10% CPI by end of the year. That's more controversial but there's a hell of a lot of surge upstream. Double-digit inflation would really be a meme changer I suspect. I think you have to go back to 1981 for the last time?
The Express had a 9.5% guesstimate on its front page a couple of weeks ago.
Music was great in the 70s. The economy? Not so much.
The fuel crisis of 1973 and the one following the Iranian revolution of 1979 were both pretty brutal economically. Those of us old enough to remember what real inflation was like are not keen to see it return.
It isn't a straight repeat though. We have far less of a manufacturing economy, we have very weak private sector Trade Unions, a much older population, and we have no politicians who support living within our means. It is quite a different cocktail.
Despite inflation, war, the worst consumer confidence for decades, visible stagflation, China in lockdown etc my equity portfolio is up quite a bit this week. Quite what I should do with it is unclear. The 1973 fuel crisis led to a severe bear market. Are we there again? The 1979 one led to a very long bull market.
I hold some Quilter shares in my portfolio . Its been interesting to see they have gone up (more than others) in recent weeks . As they are financial advisors , i wonder if more people are engaging financial advisors to combat inflation. I am certianly scratching my head to protect my portfolio and hence most of my pension
Also a good moment to be a financial adviser in light of McCloud. Lots of nifty footwork is about to happen in members of the public sector pension schemes to lock in final salary benefits. (The judgement doesn’t apply to me incidentally as I wasn’t in a PSPS before the cut-off date.)
yes as a fellow late joiner to a defined benefit scheme I am more relaxed in a weird way that i dont have to go through all that !
I am just covered by McCloud but it looks like I will just get to choose between Alpha and Nuvos for the period up to this month. What I don't understand though is the potential effect of the failure to review contributions - I have heard that members have effectively been over-contributing but haven't heard what, if anything, will be done about it.
McLeod is a real headache. I am fairly sure that I will be better off under the 1994 scheme (Final salary) rather than 2015 (career average earnings) so should have my years in the latter credited to the former, but it does mean recalculating my income tax for several years because of the annual allowance taper, potentially landing me with a big tax bill.
My wife is in a similar position in the NHS and will be better off under the final salary scheme.
However she says she doesn’t have to make a decision until she draws the pension which, for the final salary scheme she’s looking in the next four years.
I’ll have to mention a potential tax liability to her as she’s not mentioned it.
It is to do with how the annual contribution of the 1995 scheme is calculated for tax purposes, and how it interacts with the allowance taper, which has been quite brutal in some tax years. Potentially a marginal tax rate of over 100%.
What people does this issue affect, please? Any hope of a link?
BBC picks up on Johnson’s Ukraine/Brexit connection:
Boris Johnson has been criticised for comparing the struggle of Ukrainians fighting Russia's invasion to people in Britain voting for Brexit.
In a speech he said Britons, like Ukrainians, had the instinct "to choose freedom" and cited the 2016 vote to leave the EU as a "recent example".
The comments have caused anger among politicians both in the UK and Europe. Donald Tusk, the former president of the European Council, called the comments offensive.
It’s going to be a long road to the next election. Johnson will continue to drop this shit, twitter will light up against him time after time and his base will love him a little bit more each time for owning the libs, Remoaners, cosmopolitans, Woke, blah blah blah. Trumpian.
On pensions , most people like to consolidate them if they have worked for a few employers . Personally i quite like the varied nature of them and treat them almost like a curious collection ! I have defined benefits ones (two types) , a DC top up to a DB one, two workplace invested contribution ones - in a balanced mix not under my control , a SIPP (when self employed) that i enjoy making investment decisions on , the state pension of course and other investments in ISAs that are effectively pensions for me . Its a bit chaotic but i like that . Looking forward to choosing which to draw on first when retirement draws nearer!
I am already in that boat after redundancy close to retirement age. I'm currently spending my way through my second of three pension pots. Augmenting my meagre savings through judiciously chosen antepost bets went awry at Cheltenham owing to last-minute non-runners and horses dotting up in the wrong races.
yes four of my "pension" pots are labelled as Ladbrokes, Unibet, William Hill and Bet365! Not my most reliable ones either !
The Right on here won't like this but Boris Johnson is very similar to Vladimir Putin.
Both share the attempt to recast reality, to warp truth, to generate something from the opposite of what is actually true.
Here's another example of classic Johnson Putinism. Knowing he is vulnerable to attacks over dirty Russian donations to the tory party, Johnson has upturned the truth to make out it's Keir Starmer who is opening the floodgates to dirty Russian money.
Johnson is a lying shit. An unflushable turd. The nastiest piece of work to be our PM in at least a century. A Putinist.
I'm not a Boris fan, but that's a ridiculous comparison. It's also quite a nasty one. If you look at what Putin has done over the last twenty years to his country, there is zero comparison. Putin is evil. Boris... well, he's flawed. Deeply flawed. But he is not evil.
Well it may have a hint of hyperbole about it, but I do think Boris is evil.
The UK leaving the EU was predicated on evil lies and there are countless other examples from that macro level to micro ones which aren't so micro if you are the one on the receiving end. I know of people who have been traduced by his lies, smeared into despair and suicidal thoughts. He tramples on people for his own egomania.
Boris Johnson is evil.
If Boris is 'evil', then you need to have another term for the really evil people, such as Putin. Uber-evil? evil-max?
The Right on here won't like this but Boris Johnson is very similar to Vladimir Putin.
Both share the attempt to recast reality, to warp truth, to generate something from the opposite of what is actually true.
Here's another example of classic Johnson Putinism. Knowing he is vulnerable to attacks over dirty Russian donations to the tory party, Johnson has upturned the truth to make out it's Keir Starmer who is opening the floodgates to dirty Russian money.
Johnson is a lying shit. An unflushable turd. The nastiest piece of work to be our PM in at least a century. A Putinist.
I'm not a Boris fan, but that's a ridiculous comparison. It's also quite a nasty one. If you look at what Putin has done over the last twenty years to his country, there is zero comparison. Putin is evil. Boris... well, he's flawed. Deeply flawed. But he is not evil.
Well it may have a hint of hyperbole about it, but I do think Boris is evil.
The UK leaving the EU was predicated on evil lies and there are countless other examples from that macro level to micro ones which aren't so micro if you are the one on the receiving end. I know of people who have been traduced by his lies, smeared into despair and suicidal thoughts. He tramples on people for his own egomania.
Boris Johnson is evil.
If Boris is 'evil', then you need to have another term for the really evil people, such as Putin. Uber-evil? evil-max?
Your last paragraph is ridiculous.
What a silly remark. There's that guy the Godwin thing is about, and there's literally millions of small time bullies who get through a lifetime of selfishly making life mildly unpleasant for everyone in their ambit, in many cases never actually breaking any law. Both are evil, why shouldn't they be? Evil is not some sort of inverted super power confined to film baddies.
"lifetime of selfishly making life mildly unpleasant for everyone in their ambit"
I'd call that nasty. 'evil' is another level beyond that IMO.
Fair point, but given the entire country in in his ambit, it’s a very good argument for booting out Boris at the first opportunity.
I will probably be one of those giving him the boot.
Two other related markets I'm keeping an eye on are inflation and interest rates.
Smarkets currently have odds on CPI inflation hitting 7.5% by July. The odds on this don't really attract me.
I'm looking to see if I can get odds on 10% CPI by end of the year. That's more controversial but there's a hell of a lot of surge upstream. Double-digit inflation would really be a meme changer I suspect. I think you have to go back to 1981 for the last time?
The Express had a 9.5% guesstimate on its front page a couple of weeks ago.
Music was great in the 70s. The economy? Not so much.
The fuel crisis of 1973 and the one following the Iranian revolution of 1979 were both pretty brutal economically. Those of us old enough to remember what real inflation was like are not keen to see it return.
It isn't a straight repeat though. We have far less of a manufacturing economy, we have very weak private sector Trade Unions, a much older population, and we have no politicians who support living within our means. It is quite a different cocktail.
Despite inflation, war, the worst consumer confidence for decades, visible stagflation, China in lockdown etc my equity portfolio is up quite a bit this week. Quite what I should do with it is unclear. The 1973 fuel crisis led to a severe bear market. Are we there again? The 1979 one led to a very long bull market.
I hold some Quilter shares in my portfolio . Its been interesting to see they have gone up (more than others) in recent weeks . As they are financial advisors , i wonder if more people are engaging financial advisors to combat inflation. I am certianly scratching my head to protect my portfolio and hence most of my pension
Also a good moment to be a financial adviser in light of McCloud. Lots of nifty footwork is about to happen in members of the public sector pension schemes to lock in final salary benefits. (The judgement doesn’t apply to me incidentally as I wasn’t in a PSPS before the cut-off date.)
yes as a fellow late joiner to a defined benefit scheme I am more relaxed in a weird way that i dont have to go through all that !
I am just covered by McCloud but it looks like I will just get to choose between Alpha and Nuvos for the period up to this month. What I don't understand though is the potential effect of the failure to review contributions - I have heard that members have effectively been over-contributing but haven't heard what, if anything, will be done about it.
What, wait: does this affect teachers? And if so what is “McCloud”?
Two other related markets I'm keeping an eye on are inflation and interest rates.
Smarkets currently have odds on CPI inflation hitting 7.5% by July. The odds on this don't really attract me.
I'm looking to see if I can get odds on 10% CPI by end of the year. That's more controversial but there's a hell of a lot of surge upstream. Double-digit inflation would really be a meme changer I suspect. I think you have to go back to 1981 for the last time?
The Express had a 9.5% guesstimate on its front page a couple of weeks ago.
Music was great in the 70s. The economy? Not so much.
The fuel crisis of 1973 and the one following the Iranian revolution of 1979 were both pretty brutal economically. Those of us old enough to remember what real inflation was like are not keen to see it return.
It isn't a straight repeat though. We have far less of a manufacturing economy, we have very weak private sector Trade Unions, a much older population, and we have no politicians who support living within our means. It is quite a different cocktail.
Despite inflation, war, the worst consumer confidence for decades, visible stagflation, China in lockdown etc my equity portfolio is up quite a bit this week. Quite what I should do with it is unclear. The 1973 fuel crisis led to a severe bear market. Are we there again? The 1979 one led to a very long bull market.
I hold some Quilter shares in my portfolio . Its been interesting to see they have gone up (more than others) in recent weeks . As they are financial advisors , i wonder if more people are engaging financial advisors to combat inflation. I am certianly scratching my head to protect my portfolio and hence most of my pension
Also a good moment to be a financial adviser in light of McCloud. Lots of nifty footwork is about to happen in members of the public sector pension schemes to lock in final salary benefits. (The judgement doesn’t apply to me incidentally as I wasn’t in a PSPS before the cut-off date.)
yes as a fellow late joiner to a defined benefit scheme I am more relaxed in a weird way that i dont have to go through all that !
I am just covered by McCloud but it looks like I will just get to choose between Alpha and Nuvos for the period up to this month. What I don't understand though is the potential effect of the failure to review contributions - I have heard that members have effectively been over-contributing but haven't heard what, if anything, will be done about it.
McLeod is a real headache. I am fairly sure that I will be better off under the 1994 scheme (Final salary) rather than 2015 (career average earnings) so should have my years in the latter credited to the former, but it does mean recalculating my income tax for several years because of the annual allowance taper, potentially landing me with a big tax bill.
My wife is in a similar position in the NHS and will be better off under the final salary scheme.
However she says she doesn’t have to make a decision until she draws the pension which, for the final salary scheme she’s looking in the next four years.
I’ll have to mention a potential tax liability to her as she’s not mentioned it.
It is to do with how the annual contribution of the 1995 scheme is calculated for tax purposes, and how it interacts with the allowance taper, which has been quite brutal in some tax years. Potentially a marginal tax rate of over 100%.
Thanks.
She says at the time she will get a letter outlining two options. But I will get her to check it out. Could be a nasty sting in the tail,there.
Last month, NI civil servants took advice from someone – Whitehall says the EU – to harden the Irish Sea border, but didn't tell their minister. Firms lost money after GB loads were arbitrarily turned back by secretly altered rules - with no compensation.
For two government departments to blame each other for a major policy change, as here, is highly unusual - but not unheard of. But for two departments to say that their ministers had no role in the policy is remarkable. It means no one is democratically accountable for this.
1- It is exactly the sort of thing Brussels would try to do, and exactly how they would do it. 2 - I think UK Civil Service has an inertia all its own. Very Sir Humphrey.
The context for Boris Johnson's comments today is a significant decline in his electoral appeal among Leave voters: the Conservative share of the Leave vote has fallen from 74% in December 2019 to 54%, a far sharper fall than among Conservative Remainers.
Bound to happen after a "blank screen to project your desires on" campaign.
BoJo got what he wanted from Brexit- a big chair made bigger by not having to automatically align with the little countries in the EU.
Hardly anyone else has. There hasn't been a bonfire of red tape, we don't have practical control of borders, and not paying into the EU doesn't free up masses of money to spend on ourselves.
A lot of this is about badly managing you-know-what, rather than the process itself.
"Brexit is in peril" still works as a rallying call, but it's not obvious that it always will, outside a small circle of sozzled hacks.
Johnson is an insignificant man, for whom life has always been a game and where nothing has real consequence - because nothing risks real suffering or loss; the concept is simply incomprehensible to him.
Two other related markets I'm keeping an eye on are inflation and interest rates.
Smarkets currently have odds on CPI inflation hitting 7.5% by July. The odds on this don't really attract me.
I'm looking to see if I can get odds on 10% CPI by end of the year. That's more controversial but there's a hell of a lot of surge upstream. Double-digit inflation would really be a meme changer I suspect. I think you have to go back to 1981 for the last time?
The Express had a 9.5% guesstimate on its front page a couple of weeks ago.
Music was great in the 70s. The economy? Not so much.
The fuel crisis of 1973 and the one following the Iranian revolution of 1979 were both pretty brutal economically. Those of us old enough to remember what real inflation was like are not keen to see it return.
It isn't a straight repeat though. We have far less of a manufacturing economy, we have very weak private sector Trade Unions, a much older population, and we have no politicians who support living within our means. It is quite a different cocktail.
Despite inflation, war, the worst consumer confidence for decades, visible stagflation, China in lockdown etc my equity portfolio is up quite a bit this week. Quite what I should do with it is unclear. The 1973 fuel crisis led to a severe bear market. Are we there again? The 1979 one led to a very long bull market.
I hold some Quilter shares in my portfolio . Its been interesting to see they have gone up (more than others) in recent weeks . As they are financial advisors , i wonder if more people are engaging financial advisors to combat inflation. I am certianly scratching my head to protect my portfolio and hence most of my pension
Also a good moment to be a financial adviser in light of McCloud. Lots of nifty footwork is about to happen in members of the public sector pension schemes to lock in final salary benefits. (The judgement doesn’t apply to me incidentally as I wasn’t in a PSPS before the cut-off date.)
yes as a fellow late joiner to a defined benefit scheme I am more relaxed in a weird way that i dont have to go through all that !
I am just covered by McCloud but it looks like I will just get to choose between Alpha and Nuvos for the period up to this month. What I don't understand though is the potential effect of the failure to review contributions - I have heard that members have effectively been over-contributing but haven't heard what, if anything, will be done about it.
What, wait: does this affect teachers? And if so what is “McCloud”?
Ok this is anecdata but it’s something I’ve picked up talking to various Leave voters. There’ll always be, what, a third(?) of the population who will champion Brexit no matter what and will always be vociferously anti-EU.
But if those who voted Leave who aren’t viscerally anti-EU but bought the rhetoric of the Leave campaigns and who haven’t received their unicorns yet abandon the collective self-imposed omertà then this low-level, quiet, ‘Brexit is a mistake’ feeling could become something stronger:
‘On which subject I recently had an interesting encounter with a Remainer British expat who was visiting his Brexiter friends in assorted home counties havens. To his surprise, he found that most of them were admitting in private but could not bring themselves to say so publicly: “Brexit is a catastrophe.”’
Visited by x - an unscrupulous journalist, such as our PM for example, might just make up said character.
An unscrupulous Remainer expat, might just make up said conversation. In any event it cannot be corroborated.
And the distinction between public and private makes little sense to me, they were happy to tell an expat friend, for most people telling friends is public. Unless his friends are all leading politicians with a big public platform perhaps.
Finally, it is unlikely they view it as a catastrophe. A bit of a shambles, worse than expected, poorly executed could all make sense, but given we are going through covid and a war, a catastrophe would seem a big leap for leavers to have all made privately and independently (remember they are not sharing this publicly, apart from with the expat.....).
I don't actually disagree with the thrust of the point, but the quote looks "very dubious" to me.
Two other related markets I'm keeping an eye on are inflation and interest rates.
Smarkets currently have odds on CPI inflation hitting 7.5% by July. The odds on this don't really attract me.
I'm looking to see if I can get odds on 10% CPI by end of the year. That's more controversial but there's a hell of a lot of surge upstream. Double-digit inflation would really be a meme changer I suspect. I think you have to go back to 1981 for the last time?
The Express had a 9.5% guesstimate on its front page a couple of weeks ago.
Music was great in the 70s. The economy? Not so much.
The fuel crisis of 1973 and the one following the Iranian revolution of 1979 were both pretty brutal economically. Those of us old enough to remember what real inflation was like are not keen to see it return.
It isn't a straight repeat though. We have far less of a manufacturing economy, we have very weak private sector Trade Unions, a much older population, and we have no politicians who support living within our means. It is quite a different cocktail.
Despite inflation, war, the worst consumer confidence for decades, visible stagflation, China in lockdown etc my equity portfolio is up quite a bit this week. Quite what I should do with it is unclear. The 1973 fuel crisis led to a severe bear market. Are we there again? The 1979 one led to a very long bull market.
I hold some Quilter shares in my portfolio . Its been interesting to see they have gone up (more than others) in recent weeks . As they are financial advisors , i wonder if more people are engaging financial advisors to combat inflation. I am certianly scratching my head to protect my portfolio and hence most of my pension
Also a good moment to be a financial adviser in light of McCloud. Lots of nifty footwork is about to happen in members of the public sector pension schemes to lock in final salary benefits. (The judgement doesn’t apply to me incidentally as I wasn’t in a PSPS before the cut-off date.)
yes as a fellow late joiner to a defined benefit scheme I am more relaxed in a weird way that i dont have to go through all that !
I am just covered by McCloud but it looks like I will just get to choose between Alpha and Nuvos for the period up to this month. What I don't understand though is the potential effect of the failure to review contributions - I have heard that members have effectively been over-contributing but haven't heard what, if anything, will be done about it.
What, wait: does this affect teachers? And if so what is “McCloud”?
It was the adverse (to employers within DB schemes) judgement about age discrimination in pension options - affects most DB schemes i think
The Right on here won't like this but Boris Johnson is very similar to Vladimir Putin.
Both share the attempt to recast reality, to warp truth, to generate something from the opposite of what is actually true.
Here's another example of classic Johnson Putinism. Knowing he is vulnerable to attacks over dirty Russian donations to the tory party, Johnson has upturned the truth to make out it's Keir Starmer who is opening the floodgates to dirty Russian money.
Johnson is a lying shit. An unflushable turd. The nastiest piece of work to be our PM in at least a century. A Putinist.
I'm not a Boris fan, but that's a ridiculous comparison. It's also quite a nasty one. If you look at what Putin has done over the last twenty years to his country, there is zero comparison. Putin is evil. Boris... well, he's flawed. Deeply flawed. But he is not evil.
Well it may have a hint of hyperbole about it, but I do think Boris is evil.
The UK leaving the EU was predicated on evil lies and there are countless other examples from that macro level to micro ones which aren't so micro if you are the one on the receiving end. I know of people who have been traduced by his lies, smeared into despair and suicidal thoughts. He tramples on people for his own egomania.
Boris Johnson is evil.
If Boris is 'evil', then you need to have another term for the really evil people, such as Putin. Uber-evil? evil-max?
The Right on here won't like this but Boris Johnson is very similar to Vladimir Putin.
Both share the attempt to recast reality, to warp truth, to generate something from the opposite of what is actually true.
Here's another example of classic Johnson Putinism. Knowing he is vulnerable to attacks over dirty Russian donations to the tory party, Johnson has upturned the truth to make out it's Keir Starmer who is opening the floodgates to dirty Russian money.
Johnson is a lying shit. An unflushable turd. The nastiest piece of work to be our PM in at least a century. A Putinist.
I'm not a Boris fan, but that's a ridiculous comparison. It's also quite a nasty one. If you look at what Putin has done over the last twenty years to his country, there is zero comparison. Putin is evil. Boris... well, he's flawed. Deeply flawed. But he is not evil.
Well it may have a hint of hyperbole about it, but I do think Boris is evil.
The UK leaving the EU was predicated on evil lies and there are countless other examples from that macro level to micro ones which aren't so micro if you are the one on the receiving end. I know of people who have been traduced by his lies, smeared into despair and suicidal thoughts. He tramples on people for his own egomania.
Boris Johnson is evil.
If Boris is 'evil', then you need to have another term for the really evil people, such as Putin. Uber-evil? evil-max?
Your last paragraph is ridiculous.
What a silly remark. There's that guy the Godwin thing is about, and there's literally millions of small time bullies who get through a lifetime of selfishly making life mildly unpleasant for everyone in their ambit, in many cases never actually breaking any law. Both are evil, why shouldn't they be? Evil is not some sort of inverted super power confined to film baddies.
"lifetime of selfishly making life mildly unpleasant for everyone in their ambit"
I'd call that nasty. 'evil' is another level beyond that IMO.
Fair point, but given the entire country in in his ambit, it’s a very good argument for booting out Boris at the first opportunity.
I will probably be one of those giving him the boot.
You're a Tory MP then? 😉
Nah, I have a spine.
(I actually meant at any future GE; I now doubt he's going before one. Which probably means he will...)
Two other related markets I'm keeping an eye on are inflation and interest rates.
Smarkets currently have odds on CPI inflation hitting 7.5% by July. The odds on this don't really attract me.
I'm looking to see if I can get odds on 10% CPI by end of the year. That's more controversial but there's a hell of a lot of surge upstream. Double-digit inflation would really be a meme changer I suspect. I think you have to go back to 1981 for the last time?
The Express had a 9.5% guesstimate on its front page a couple of weeks ago.
Music was great in the 70s. The economy? Not so much.
The fuel crisis of 1973 and the one following the Iranian revolution of 1979 were both pretty brutal economically. Those of us old enough to remember what real inflation was like are not keen to see it return.
It isn't a straight repeat though. We have far less of a manufacturing economy, we have very weak private sector Trade Unions, a much older population, and we have no politicians who support living within our means. It is quite a different cocktail.
Despite inflation, war, the worst consumer confidence for decades, visible stagflation, China in lockdown etc my equity portfolio is up quite a bit this week. Quite what I should do with it is unclear. The 1973 fuel crisis led to a severe bear market. Are we there again? The 1979 one led to a very long bull market.
I hold some Quilter shares in my portfolio . Its been interesting to see they have gone up (more than others) in recent weeks . As they are financial advisors , i wonder if more people are engaging financial advisors to combat inflation. I am certianly scratching my head to protect my portfolio and hence most of my pension
Also a good moment to be a financial adviser in light of McCloud. Lots of nifty footwork is about to happen in members of the public sector pension schemes to lock in final salary benefits. (The judgement doesn’t apply to me incidentally as I wasn’t in a PSPS before the cut-off date.)
yes as a fellow late joiner to a defined benefit scheme I am more relaxed in a weird way that i dont have to go through all that !
I am just covered by McCloud but it looks like I will just get to choose between Alpha and Nuvos for the period up to this month. What I don't understand though is the potential effect of the failure to review contributions - I have heard that members have effectively been over-contributing but haven't heard what, if anything, will be done about it.
What, wait: does this affect teachers? And if so what is “McCloud”?
Yes. And McCloud was a judge who made a judgement that the government had acted incorrectly over reforms to final salary schemes and that remedial action had to be taken. It will affect you. More here:
I see Rishi is pushing back against Boris' drive for much more nuclear. Bloody good job too. He gets my vote on that basis alone.
Why the hell Boris is in thrall to the nuclear industry, I can only guess. There is no "dash to nuclear", Boris. They are stupidly slow and expensive to build.
No nuclear plant on the planet has ever been built without massive government subsisidies. There is no need - they have now been overtaken by other options. Cheaper, cleaner, faster. Open your eyes, Prime Minister. And keep blocking them, Chancellor.
Nah, mini nukes rock. Also they are made by Rolls Royce who put the Merlin engine in the Spitfire during our Finest Hour. What are you, some kind of Blighty hating remoaner?
Two other related markets I'm keeping an eye on are inflation and interest rates.
Smarkets currently have odds on CPI inflation hitting 7.5% by July. The odds on this don't really attract me.
I'm looking to see if I can get odds on 10% CPI by end of the year. That's more controversial but there's a hell of a lot of surge upstream. Double-digit inflation would really be a meme changer I suspect. I think you have to go back to 1981 for the last time?
The Express had a 9.5% guesstimate on its front page a couple of weeks ago.
Music was great in the 70s. The economy? Not so much.
The fuel crisis of 1973 and the one following the Iranian revolution of 1979 were both pretty brutal economically. Those of us old enough to remember what real inflation was like are not keen to see it return.
It isn't a straight repeat though. We have far less of a manufacturing economy, we have very weak private sector Trade Unions, a much older population, and we have no politicians who support living within our means. It is quite a different cocktail.
Despite inflation, war, the worst consumer confidence for decades, visible stagflation, China in lockdown etc my equity portfolio is up quite a bit this week. Quite what I should do with it is unclear. The 1973 fuel crisis led to a severe bear market. Are we there again? The 1979 one led to a very long bull market.
I hold some Quilter shares in my portfolio . Its been interesting to see they have gone up (more than others) in recent weeks . As they are financial advisors , i wonder if more people are engaging financial advisors to combat inflation. I am certianly scratching my head to protect my portfolio and hence most of my pension
Also a good moment to be a financial adviser in light of McCloud. Lots of nifty footwork is about to happen in members of the public sector pension schemes to lock in final salary benefits. (The judgement doesn’t apply to me incidentally as I wasn’t in a PSPS before the cut-off date.)
yes as a fellow late joiner to a defined benefit scheme I am more relaxed in a weird way that i dont have to go through all that !
I am just covered by McCloud but it looks like I will just get to choose between Alpha and Nuvos for the period up to this month. What I don't understand though is the potential effect of the failure to review contributions - I have heard that members have effectively been over-contributing but haven't heard what, if anything, will be done about it.
McLeod is a real headache. I am fairly sure that I will be better off under the 1994 scheme (Final salary) rather than 2015 (career average earnings) so should have my years in the latter credited to the former, but it does mean recalculating my income tax for several years because of the annual allowance taper, potentially landing me with a big tax bill.
My wife is in a similar position in the NHS and will be better off under the final salary scheme.
However she says she doesn’t have to make a decision until she draws the pension which, for the final salary scheme she’s looking in the next four years.
I’ll have to mention a potential tax liability to her as she’s not mentioned it.
It is to do with how the annual contribution of the 1995 scheme is calculated for tax purposes, and how it interacts with the allowance taper, which has been quite brutal in some tax years. Potentially a marginal tax rate of over 100%.
What people does this issue affect, please? Any hope of a link?
I know the NHS schemes, but other public sector schemes are similar. McLeod is a fireman.
It involves the shift from a final salary scheme to a career average one. The McLeod judgement (which has been accepted by the government) is that forced migration was wrong, and members should have been able to choose. Hence those retiring soon can have the years in the latter credited to the former.
The tax issues are an issue for those, like me, on higher salaries. Lower income workers probably won't have a tax liability as plenty of unused allowances.
Two other related markets I'm keeping an eye on are inflation and interest rates.
Smarkets currently have odds on CPI inflation hitting 7.5% by July. The odds on this don't really attract me.
I'm looking to see if I can get odds on 10% CPI by end of the year. That's more controversial but there's a hell of a lot of surge upstream. Double-digit inflation would really be a meme changer I suspect. I think you have to go back to 1981 for the last time?
The Express had a 9.5% guesstimate on its front page a couple of weeks ago.
Music was great in the 70s. The economy? Not so much.
The fuel crisis of 1973 and the one following the Iranian revolution of 1979 were both pretty brutal economically. Those of us old enough to remember what real inflation was like are not keen to see it return.
It isn't a straight repeat though. We have far less of a manufacturing economy, we have very weak private sector Trade Unions, a much older population, and we have no politicians who support living within our means. It is quite a different cocktail.
Despite inflation, war, the worst consumer confidence for decades, visible stagflation, China in lockdown etc my equity portfolio is up quite a bit this week. Quite what I should do with it is unclear. The 1973 fuel crisis led to a severe bear market. Are we there again? The 1979 one led to a very long bull market.
I hold some Quilter shares in my portfolio . Its been interesting to see they have gone up (more than others) in recent weeks . As they are financial advisors , i wonder if more people are engaging financial advisors to combat inflation. I am certianly scratching my head to protect my portfolio and hence most of my pension
Also a good moment to be a financial adviser in light of McCloud. Lots of nifty footwork is about to happen in members of the public sector pension schemes to lock in final salary benefits. (The judgement doesn’t apply to me incidentally as I wasn’t in a PSPS before the cut-off date.)
yes as a fellow late joiner to a defined benefit scheme I am more relaxed in a weird way that i dont have to go through all that !
I am just covered by McCloud but it looks like I will just get to choose between Alpha and Nuvos for the period up to this month. What I don't understand though is the potential effect of the failure to review contributions - I have heard that members have effectively been over-contributing but haven't heard what, if anything, will be done about it.
What, wait: does this affect teachers? And if so what is “McCloud”?
I see Rishi is pushing back against Boris' drive for much more nuclear. Bloody good job too. He gets my vote on that basis alone.
Why the hell Boris is in thrall to the nuclear industry, I can only guess. There is no "dash to nuclear", Boris. They are stupidly slow and expensive to build.
No nuclear plant on the planet has ever been built without massive government subsisidies. There is no need - they have now been overtaken by other options. Cheaper, cleaner, faster. Open your eyes, Prime Minister. And keep blocking them, Chancellor.
Nah, mini nukes rock. Also they are made by Rolls Royce who put the Merlin engine in the Spitfire during our Finest Hour. What are you, some kind of Blighty hating remoaner?
We are going to put one in every Tory MPs garden. They couldn't possibly complain, could they?
Putin is evil. Boris... well, he's flawed. Deeply flawed. But he is not evil.
The evidence for your claim is weak.
You have a stupidly low threshold for evil then.
Evil is bombing civilians out of their own homeland. Stop fucking debasing the word. Twat.
We all know the real reason people on here think he's evil - he delivered the democratic wishes of the British people, then smashed Communism in this country, probably for a generation.
And they'll never forgive him for either or both of those.
He put Nazanin in prison for six years, and almost certainly arranged for the torture and murder of dozens of allies of this country in Afghanistan last year. Arguably that's not evil, just vain silly and lazy, like Ilse Koch. But whatever it is I don't want it governing my country. For reasons which have nothing to do with communism or brexit.
Thiis is genuinely demented. That poor woman, along with several others who got less publicity, was kidnapped by the state with whom she had dual citizenship and then held hostage until they got their ransom money. It is just absurd to blame anyone in this country for such evil or indeed anyone at all other than the perpetrators of the act.
Johnson is an insignificant man, for whom life has always been a game and where nothing has real consequence - because nothing risks real suffering or loss; the concept is simply incomprehensible to him.
Two other related markets I'm keeping an eye on are inflation and interest rates.
Smarkets currently have odds on CPI inflation hitting 7.5% by July. The odds on this don't really attract me.
I'm looking to see if I can get odds on 10% CPI by end of the year. That's more controversial but there's a hell of a lot of surge upstream. Double-digit inflation would really be a meme changer I suspect. I think you have to go back to 1981 for the last time?
The Express had a 9.5% guesstimate on its front page a couple of weeks ago.
Music was great in the 70s. The economy? Not so much.
The fuel crisis of 1973 and the one following the Iranian revolution of 1979 were both pretty brutal economically. Those of us old enough to remember what real inflation was like are not keen to see it return.
It isn't a straight repeat though. We have far less of a manufacturing economy, we have very weak private sector Trade Unions, a much older population, and we have no politicians who support living within our means. It is quite a different cocktail.
Despite inflation, war, the worst consumer confidence for decades, visible stagflation, China in lockdown etc my equity portfolio is up quite a bit this week. Quite what I should do with it is unclear. The 1973 fuel crisis led to a severe bear market. Are we there again? The 1979 one led to a very long bull market.
I hold some Quilter shares in my portfolio . Its been interesting to see they have gone up (more than others) in recent weeks . As they are financial advisors , i wonder if more people are engaging financial advisors to combat inflation. I am certianly scratching my head to protect my portfolio and hence most of my pension
Also a good moment to be a financial adviser in light of McCloud. Lots of nifty footwork is about to happen in members of the public sector pension schemes to lock in final salary benefits. (The judgement doesn’t apply to me incidentally as I wasn’t in a PSPS before the cut-off date.)
yes as a fellow late joiner to a defined benefit scheme I am more relaxed in a weird way that i dont have to go through all that !
I am just covered by McCloud but it looks like I will just get to choose between Alpha and Nuvos for the period up to this month. What I don't understand though is the potential effect of the failure to review contributions - I have heard that members have effectively been over-contributing but haven't heard what, if anything, will be done about it.
McLeod is a real headache. I am fairly sure that I will be better off under the 1994 scheme (Final salary) rather than 2015 (career average earnings) so should have my years in the latter credited to the former, but it does mean recalculating my income tax for several years because of the annual allowance taper, potentially landing me with a big tax bill.
My wife is in a similar position in the NHS and will be better off under the final salary scheme.
However she says she doesn’t have to make a decision until she draws the pension which, for the final salary scheme she’s looking in the next four years.
I’ll have to mention a potential tax liability to her as she’s not mentioned it.
It is to do with how the annual contribution of the 1995 scheme is calculated for tax purposes, and how it interacts with the allowance taper, which has been quite brutal in some tax years. Potentially a marginal tax rate of over 100%.
Thanks.
She says at the time she will get a letter outlining two options. But I will get her to check it out. Could be a nasty sting in the tail,there.
i think the basic math is that DB annual entitlements get multiplied by 16 to determine how much of the annual allowance is used- For the last few years most people can get £40,000 of annual allowance including DC employer contributions and well as employee and DB cal as above. However three year use of unused relief can be carried forward to be used in a current year
Two other related markets I'm keeping an eye on are inflation and interest rates.
Smarkets currently have odds on CPI inflation hitting 7.5% by July. The odds on this don't really attract me.
I'm looking to see if I can get odds on 10% CPI by end of the year. That's more controversial but there's a hell of a lot of surge upstream. Double-digit inflation would really be a meme changer I suspect. I think you have to go back to 1981 for the last time?
The Express had a 9.5% guesstimate on its front page a couple of weeks ago.
Music was great in the 70s. The economy? Not so much.
The fuel crisis of 1973 and the one following the Iranian revolution of 1979 were both pretty brutal economically. Those of us old enough to remember what real inflation was like are not keen to see it return.
It isn't a straight repeat though. We have far less of a manufacturing economy, we have very weak private sector Trade Unions, a much older population, and we have no politicians who support living within our means. It is quite a different cocktail.
Despite inflation, war, the worst consumer confidence for decades, visible stagflation, China in lockdown etc my equity portfolio is up quite a bit this week. Quite what I should do with it is unclear. The 1973 fuel crisis led to a severe bear market. Are we there again? The 1979 one led to a very long bull market.
I hold some Quilter shares in my portfolio . Its been interesting to see they have gone up (more than others) in recent weeks . As they are financial advisors , i wonder if more people are engaging financial advisors to combat inflation. I am certianly scratching my head to protect my portfolio and hence most of my pension
Also a good moment to be a financial adviser in light of McCloud. Lots of nifty footwork is about to happen in members of the public sector pension schemes to lock in final salary benefits. (The judgement doesn’t apply to me incidentally as I wasn’t in a PSPS before the cut-off date.)
yes as a fellow late joiner to a defined benefit scheme I am more relaxed in a weird way that i dont have to go through all that !
I am just covered by McCloud but it looks like I will just get to choose between Alpha and Nuvos for the period up to this month. What I don't understand though is the potential effect of the failure to review contributions - I have heard that members have effectively been over-contributing but haven't heard what, if anything, will be done about it.
McLeod is a real headache. I am fairly sure that I will be better off under the 1994 scheme (Final salary) rather than 2015 (career average earnings) so should have my years in the latter credited to the former, but it does mean recalculating my income tax for several years because of the annual allowance taper, potentially landing me with a big tax bill.
My wife is in a similar position in the NHS and will be better off under the final salary scheme.
However she says she doesn’t have to make a decision until she draws the pension which, for the final salary scheme she’s looking in the next four years.
I’ll have to mention a potential tax liability to her as she’s not mentioned it.
It is to do with how the annual contribution of the 1995 scheme is calculated for tax purposes, and how it interacts with the allowance taper, which has been quite brutal in some tax years. Potentially a marginal tax rate of over 100%.
What people does this issue affect, please? Any hope of a link?
I know the NHS schemes, but other public sector schemes are similar. McLeod is a fireman.
It involves the shift from a final salary scheme to a career average one. The McLeod judgement (which has been accepted by the government) is that forced migration was wrong, and members should have been able to choose. Hence those retiring soon can have the years in the latter credited to the former.
The tax issues are an issue for those, like me, on higher salaries. Lower income workers probably won't have a tax liability as plenty of unused allowances.
Thank you! I should be OK from what you say but will check.
Two other related markets I'm keeping an eye on are inflation and interest rates.
Smarkets currently have odds on CPI inflation hitting 7.5% by July. The odds on this don't really attract me.
I'm looking to see if I can get odds on 10% CPI by end of the year. That's more controversial but there's a hell of a lot of surge upstream. Double-digit inflation would really be a meme changer I suspect. I think you have to go back to 1981 for the last time?
The Express had a 9.5% guesstimate on its front page a couple of weeks ago.
Music was great in the 70s. The economy? Not so much.
The fuel crisis of 1973 and the one following the Iranian revolution of 1979 were both pretty brutal economically. Those of us old enough to remember what real inflation was like are not keen to see it return.
It isn't a straight repeat though. We have far less of a manufacturing economy, we have very weak private sector Trade Unions, a much older population, and we have no politicians who support living within our means. It is quite a different cocktail.
Despite inflation, war, the worst consumer confidence for decades, visible stagflation, China in lockdown etc my equity portfolio is up quite a bit this week. Quite what I should do with it is unclear. The 1973 fuel crisis led to a severe bear market. Are we there again? The 1979 one led to a very long bull market.
I hold some Quilter shares in my portfolio . Its been interesting to see they have gone up (more than others) in recent weeks . As they are financial advisors , i wonder if more people are engaging financial advisors to combat inflation. I am certianly scratching my head to protect my portfolio and hence most of my pension
Also a good moment to be a financial adviser in light of McCloud. Lots of nifty footwork is about to happen in members of the public sector pension schemes to lock in final salary benefits. (The judgement doesn’t apply to me incidentally as I wasn’t in a PSPS before the cut-off date.)
yes as a fellow late joiner to a defined benefit scheme I am more relaxed in a weird way that i dont have to go through all that !
I am just covered by McCloud but it looks like I will just get to choose between Alpha and Nuvos for the period up to this month. What I don't understand though is the potential effect of the failure to review contributions - I have heard that members have effectively been over-contributing but haven't heard what, if anything, will be done about it.
What, wait: does this affect teachers? And if so what is “McCloud”?
It was the adverse (to employers within DB schemes) judgement about age discrimination in pension options - affects most DB schemes i think
Basically, older people had more transitional protection than they needed, so slightly younger people had been discriminated against
Ok this is anecdata but it’s something I’ve picked up talking to various Leave voters. There’ll always be, what, a third(?) of the population who will champion Brexit no matter what and will always be vociferously anti-EU.
But if those who voted Leave who aren’t viscerally anti-EU but bought the rhetoric of the Leave campaigns and who haven’t received their unicorns yet abandon the collective self-imposed omertà then this low-level, quiet, ‘Brexit is a mistake’ feeling could become something stronger:
‘On which subject I recently had an interesting encounter with a Remainer British expat who was visiting his Brexiter friends in assorted home counties havens. To his surprise, he found that most of them were admitting in private but could not bring themselves to say so publicly: “Brexit is a catastrophe.”’
"I spoke to a friend who already agrees with me who told me he'd met some other friends who told him what he wanted to hear and then he interpreted it how he wanted to hear it and played it back to me."
I see Rishi is pushing back against Boris' drive for much more nuclear. Bloody good job too. He gets my vote on that basis alone.
Why the hell Boris is in thrall to the nuclear industry, I can only guess. There is no "dash to nuclear", Boris. They are stupidly slow and expensive to build.
No nuclear plant on the planet has ever been built without massive government subsisidies. There is no need - they have now been overtaken by other options. Cheaper, cleaner, faster. Open your eyes, Prime Minister. And keep blocking them, Chancellor.
Nah, mini nukes rock. Also they are made by Rolls Royce who put the Merlin engine in the Spitfire during our Finest Hour. What are you, some kind of Blighty hating remoaner?
We are going to put one in every Tory MPs garden. They couldn't possibly complain, could they?
Well, you're right they probably wouldn't complain given they're nuclear reactors and inanimate, but why would you be so unkind as to put them near Tory MPs?
On pensions , most people like to consolidate them if they have worked for a few employers . Personally i quite like the varied nature of them and treat them almost like a curious collection ! I have defined benefits ones (two types) , a DC top up to a DB one, two workplace invested contribution ones - in a balanced mix not under my control , a SIPP (when self employed) that i enjoy making investment decisions on , the state pension of course and other investments in ISAs that are effectively pensions for me . Its a bit chaotic but i like that . Looking forward to choosing which to draw on first when retirement draws nearer!
The reason most people look to consolidate pensions is to reduce the cost of administration. But if you are lucky enough to have pensions that charge similar percentage based amounts then keeping your funds in a series of funds is as good a way as any of diversifying risk, provided that the pensions are not glorified FTSE trackers in which case they will all move in the same direction.
I see Rishi is pushing back against Boris' drive for much more nuclear. Bloody good job too. He gets my vote on that basis alone.
Why the hell Boris is in thrall to the nuclear industry, I can only guess. There is no "dash to nuclear", Boris. They are stupidly slow and expensive to build.
No nuclear plant on the planet has ever been built without massive government subsisidies. There is no need - they have now been overtaken by other options. Cheaper, cleaner, faster. Open your eyes, Prime Minister. And keep blocking them, Chancellor.
Nah, mini nukes rock. Also they are made by Rolls Royce who put the Merlin engine in the Spitfire during our Finest Hour. What are you, some kind of Blighty hating remoaner?
We are going to put one in every Tory MPs garden. They couldn't possibly complain, could they?
Well, they wouldn't complain, but why would you be so unkind as to put them near Tory MPs?
Dr Y, it's off-topic, but I saw the following about Rugeley and Amazon and thought you might be interested:
The Homes for Ukraine scheme is mired in excessive bureaucracy with no thought given to the desperate situation facing Ukrainian families fleeing Russian aggression. This is a serious crisis, not online dating. Government needs to grip this urgently.
I see Rishi is pushing back against Boris' drive for much more nuclear. Bloody good job too. He gets my vote on that basis alone.
Why the hell Boris is in thrall to the nuclear industry, I can only guess. There is no "dash to nuclear", Boris. They are stupidly slow and expensive to build.
No nuclear plant on the planet has ever been built without massive government subsisidies. There is no need - they have now been overtaken by other options. Cheaper, cleaner, faster. Open your eyes, Prime Minister. And keep blocking them, Chancellor.
Nah, mini nukes rock. Also they are made by Rolls Royce who put the Merlin engine in the Spitfire during our Finest Hour. What are you, some kind of Blighty hating remoaner?
We are going to put one in every Tory MPs garden. They couldn't possibly complain, could they?
Reminded of the time the UK developed the first underground silos* for ICBMs (Blue Streak, technically an IRBM but never mind) and looked for the best place to put them. The claylands of North Norfolk. Only problem was the Tory MPs who wanted the deterrent blew a fuse at putting them in their constituencies. Hence the crisis that led to the Bahama conference, Skybolt and Polaris (off the US - so UK deterrent no longer independent) and Faslane (Labour voting up there, at the time).
*Prototype hole at Spadeadam ranges still, apparently.
Two other related markets I'm keeping an eye on are inflation and interest rates.
Smarkets currently have odds on CPI inflation hitting 7.5% by July. The odds on this don't really attract me.
I'm looking to see if I can get odds on 10% CPI by end of the year. That's more controversial but there's a hell of a lot of surge upstream. Double-digit inflation would really be a meme changer I suspect. I think you have to go back to 1981 for the last time?
The Express had a 9.5% guesstimate on its front page a couple of weeks ago.
Music was great in the 70s. The economy? Not so much.
The fuel crisis of 1973 and the one following the Iranian revolution of 1979 were both pretty brutal economically. Those of us old enough to remember what real inflation was like are not keen to see it return.
It isn't a straight repeat though. We have far less of a manufacturing economy, we have very weak private sector Trade Unions, a much older population, and we have no politicians who support living within our means. It is quite a different cocktail.
Despite inflation, war, the worst consumer confidence for decades, visible stagflation, China in lockdown etc my equity portfolio is up quite a bit this week. Quite what I should do with it is unclear. The 1973 fuel crisis led to a severe bear market. Are we there again? The 1979 one led to a very long bull market.
I hold some Quilter shares in my portfolio . Its been interesting to see they have gone up (more than others) in recent weeks . As they are financial advisors , i wonder if more people are engaging financial advisors to combat inflation. I am certianly scratching my head to protect my portfolio and hence most of my pension
Also a good moment to be a financial adviser in light of McCloud. Lots of nifty footwork is about to happen in members of the public sector pension schemes to lock in final salary benefits. (The judgement doesn’t apply to me incidentally as I wasn’t in a PSPS before the cut-off date.)
yes as a fellow late joiner to a defined benefit scheme I am more relaxed in a weird way that i dont have to go through all that !
I am just covered by McCloud but it looks like I will just get to choose between Alpha and Nuvos for the period up to this month. What I don't understand though is the potential effect of the failure to review contributions - I have heard that members have effectively been over-contributing but haven't heard what, if anything, will be done about it.
What, wait: does this affect teachers? And if so what is “McCloud”?
Yes. And McCloud was a judge who made a judgement that the government had acted incorrectly over reforms to final salary schemes and that remedial action had to be taken. It will affect you. More here:
Putin is evil. Boris... well, he's flawed. Deeply flawed. But he is not evil.
The evidence for your claim is weak.
You have a stupidly low threshold for evil then.
Evil is bombing civilians out of their own homeland. Stop fucking debasing the word. Twat.
We all know the real reason people on here think he's evil - he delivered the democratic wishes of the British people, then smashed Communism in this country, probably for a generation.
And they'll never forgive him for either or both of those.
He put Nazanin in prison for six years, and almost certainly arranged for the torture and murder of dozens of allies of this country in Afghanistan last year. Arguably that's not evil, just vain silly and lazy, like Ilse Koch. But whatever it is I don't want it governing my country. For reasons which have nothing to do with communism or brexit.
Thiis is genuinely demented. That poor woman, along with several others who got less publicity, was kidnapped by the state with whom she had dual citizenship and then held hostage until they got their ransom money. It is just absurd to blame anyone in this country for such evil or indeed anyone at all other than the perpetrators of the act.
Ransom money? It was money we actually owed them wasn't it?
Putin is evil. Boris... well, he's flawed. Deeply flawed. But he is not evil.
The evidence for your claim is weak.
You have a stupidly low threshold for evil then.
Evil is bombing civilians out of their own homeland. Stop fucking debasing the word. Twat.
We all know the real reason people on here think he's evil - he delivered the democratic wishes of the British people, then smashed Communism in this country, probably for a generation.
And they'll never forgive him for either or both of those.
He put Nazanin in prison for six years, and almost certainly arranged for the torture and murder of dozens of allies of this country in Afghanistan last year. Arguably that's not evil, just vain silly and lazy, like Ilse Koch. But whatever it is I don't want it governing my country. For reasons which have nothing to do with communism or brexit.
Thiis is genuinely demented. That poor woman was kidnapped by the state with whom she had dual citizenship and then held hostage until they got their ransom money. It is just absurd to blame anyone in this country for such evil or indeed anyone at all other than the perpetrators of the act.
Bloke comes up to you with an axe and says Have you seen my wife? And you say she went thataway and he chops her head off. So he's the guilty party, we can all agree, but how do you rate your own conduct, 1-10?
The analogy is imperfect because you owe only a duty of general humanity to the woman, while it was Johnson's duty as part of a highly well paid and prestigious job to protect nzr s interests
Two other related markets I'm keeping an eye on are inflation and interest rates.
Smarkets currently have odds on CPI inflation hitting 7.5% by July. The odds on this don't really attract me.
I'm looking to see if I can get odds on 10% CPI by end of the year. That's more controversial but there's a hell of a lot of surge upstream. Double-digit inflation would really be a meme changer I suspect. I think you have to go back to 1981 for the last time?
The Express had a 9.5% guesstimate on its front page a couple of weeks ago.
Music was great in the 70s. The economy? Not so much.
The fuel crisis of 1973 and the one following the Iranian revolution of 1979 were both pretty brutal economically. Those of us old enough to remember what real inflation was like are not keen to see it return.
It isn't a straight repeat though. We have far less of a manufacturing economy, we have very weak private sector Trade Unions, a much older population, and we have no politicians who support living within our means. It is quite a different cocktail.
Despite inflation, war, the worst consumer confidence for decades, visible stagflation, China in lockdown etc my equity portfolio is up quite a bit this week. Quite what I should do with it is unclear. The 1973 fuel crisis led to a severe bear market. Are we there again? The 1979 one led to a very long bull market.
I hold some Quilter shares in my portfolio . Its been interesting to see they have gone up (more than others) in recent weeks . As they are financial advisors , i wonder if more people are engaging financial advisors to combat inflation. I am certianly scratching my head to protect my portfolio and hence most of my pension
Also a good moment to be a financial adviser in light of McCloud. Lots of nifty footwork is about to happen in members of the public sector pension schemes to lock in final salary benefits. (The judgement doesn’t apply to me incidentally as I wasn’t in a PSPS before the cut-off date.)
yes as a fellow late joiner to a defined benefit scheme I am more relaxed in a weird way that i dont have to go through all that !
I am just covered by McCloud but it looks like I will just get to choose between Alpha and Nuvos for the period up to this month. What I don't understand though is the potential effect of the failure to review contributions - I have heard that members have effectively been over-contributing but haven't heard what, if anything, will be done about it.
What, wait: does this affect teachers? And if so what is “McCloud”?
Johnson is an insignificant man, for whom life has always been a game and where nothing has real consequence - because nothing risks real suffering or loss; the concept is simply incomprehensible to him.
Putin is evil. Boris... well, he's flawed. Deeply flawed. But he is not evil.
The evidence for your claim is weak.
You have a stupidly low threshold for evil then.
Evil is bombing civilians out of their own homeland. Stop fucking debasing the word. Twat.
We all know the real reason people on here think he's evil - he delivered the democratic wishes of the British people, then smashed Communism in this country, probably for a generation.
And they'll never forgive him for either or both of those.
He put Nazanin in prison for six years, and almost certainly arranged for the torture and murder of dozens of allies of this country in Afghanistan last year. Arguably that's not evil, just vain silly and lazy, like Ilse Koch. But whatever it is I don't want it governing my country. For reasons which have nothing to do with communism or brexit.
Thiis is genuinely demented. That poor woman, along with several others who got less publicity, was kidnapped by the state with whom she had dual citizenship and then held hostage until they got their ransom money. It is just absurd to blame anyone in this country for such evil or indeed anyone at all other than the perpetrators of the act.
Ransom money? It was money we actually owed them wasn't it?
You still don't do what Iran did. And are still doing to Morad Tahbaz.
It’s going to be a long road to the next election. Johnson will continue to drop this shit
That is the lesson Tory MPs have yet to learn from Partygate
BoZo will fuck up. Again. Reliably. Relentlessly. Repeatedly.
Yep, hence you do have to wonder whether there are any intelligent Tories left. Certainly, we see very few in the Cabinet. Johnson's speech yesterday risked creating divisions with our allies at a time when unity is absolutely key. It happened a few days after more threats to invoke Article 16. A government that frames everything around keeping the ERG on board is not one that is working in the national interest.
Putin is evil. Boris... well, he's flawed. Deeply flawed. But he is not evil.
The evidence for your claim is weak.
You have a stupidly low threshold for evil then.
Evil is bombing civilians out of their own homeland. Stop fucking debasing the word. Twat.
We all know the real reason people on here think he's evil - he delivered the democratic wishes of the British people, then smashed Communism in this country, probably for a generation.
And they'll never forgive him for either or both of those.
He put Nazanin in prison for six years, and almost certainly arranged for the torture and murder of dozens of allies of this country in Afghanistan last year. Arguably that's not evil, just vain silly and lazy, like Ilse Koch. But whatever it is I don't want it governing my country. For reasons which have nothing to do with communism or brexit.
Thiis is genuinely demented. That poor woman, along with several others who got less publicity, was kidnapped by the state with whom she had dual citizenship and then held hostage until they got their ransom money. It is just absurd to blame anyone in this country for such evil or indeed anyone at all other than the perpetrators of the act.
Ransom money? It was money we actually owed them wasn't it?
We owed them money which we could not pay without breaking American imposed sanctions. What did that have to do with kidnapping?
Putin is evil. Boris... well, he's flawed. Deeply flawed. But he is not evil.
The evidence for your claim is weak.
You have a stupidly low threshold for evil then.
Evil is bombing civilians out of their own homeland. Stop fucking debasing the word. Twat.
We all know the real reason people on here think he's evil - he delivered the democratic wishes of the British people, then smashed Communism in this country, probably for a generation.
And they'll never forgive him for either or both of those.
He put Nazanin in prison for six years, and almost certainly arranged for the torture and murder of dozens of allies of this country in Afghanistan last year. Arguably that's not evil, just vain silly and lazy, like Ilse Koch. But whatever it is I don't want it governing my country. For reasons which have nothing to do with communism or brexit.
Thiis is genuinely demented. That poor woman, along with several others who got less publicity, was kidnapped by the state with whom she had dual citizenship and then held hostage until they got their ransom money. It is just absurd to blame anyone in this country for such evil or indeed anyone at all other than the perpetrators of the act.
Ransom money? It was money we actually owed them wasn't it?
You still don't do what Iran did. And are still doing to Morad Tahbaz.
Two other related markets I'm keeping an eye on are inflation and interest rates.
Smarkets currently have odds on CPI inflation hitting 7.5% by July. The odds on this don't really attract me.
I'm looking to see if I can get odds on 10% CPI by end of the year. That's more controversial but there's a hell of a lot of surge upstream. Double-digit inflation would really be a meme changer I suspect. I think you have to go back to 1981 for the last time?
The Express had a 9.5% guesstimate on its front page a couple of weeks ago.
Music was great in the 70s. The economy? Not so much.
The fuel crisis of 1973 and the one following the Iranian revolution of 1979 were both pretty brutal economically. Those of us old enough to remember what real inflation was like are not keen to see it return.
It isn't a straight repeat though. We have far less of a manufacturing economy, we have very weak private sector Trade Unions, a much older population, and we have no politicians who support living within our means. It is quite a different cocktail.
Despite inflation, war, the worst consumer confidence for decades, visible stagflation, China in lockdown etc my equity portfolio is up quite a bit this week. Quite what I should do with it is unclear. The 1973 fuel crisis led to a severe bear market. Are we there again? The 1979 one led to a very long bull market.
I hold some Quilter shares in my portfolio . Its been interesting to see they have gone up (more than others) in recent weeks . As they are financial advisors , i wonder if more people are engaging financial advisors to combat inflation. I am certianly scratching my head to protect my portfolio and hence most of my pension
Also a good moment to be a financial adviser in light of McCloud. Lots of nifty footwork is about to happen in members of the public sector pension schemes to lock in final salary benefits. (The judgement doesn’t apply to me incidentally as I wasn’t in a PSPS before the cut-off date.)
yes as a fellow late joiner to a defined benefit scheme I am more relaxed in a weird way that i dont have to go through all that !
I am just covered by McCloud but it looks like I will just get to choose between Alpha and Nuvos for the period up to this month. What I don't understand though is the potential effect of the failure to review contributions - I have heard that members have effectively been over-contributing but haven't heard what, if anything, will be done about it.
What, wait: does this affect teachers? And if so what is “McCloud”?
Little known fact: scotch folk rock group Runrig recorded a version of the rolling stones Hey, you, get off of my cloud. Reimagined as Hey, Mccloud, get off of my ewe.
“Over the past week, several thousand Mariupol residents were deported on to the Russian territory,” the city council said in a statement on its Telegram channel late on Saturday.
“The occupiers illegally took people from the Livoberezhniy district and from the shelter in the sports club building, where more than a thousand people (mostly women and children) were hiding from the constant bombing.”…
I heard that on the BBC WS early this morning.
Given Putin's admiration for Stalin's Russia, a return to Stalin's ethnic cleansing policies would not be a surprise in any way, though I am not sure where Putin would be on simply murdering them a la Lenin/Stalin. It needs to be called what it is.
When I heard that I wondered whether we are going to end up with a Cold War situation in Ukr, with West / East, a fortified border somewhere in the Middle, and a wait until Russia cannot afford to pay for itself again.
There will be no UN intervention, as Russia will veto it, and learnt the lesson of not boycotting after the UN approval of intervention in Korea in 1950 when it was boycotting the UN over Taiwan.
It would be a coalition of the willing, again, and that would be the best outcome. The other being ultimately to lose Ukraine to the democratic world.
I see Rishi is pushing back against Boris' drive for much more nuclear. Bloody good job too. He gets my vote on that basis alone.
Why the hell Boris is in thrall to the nuclear industry, I can only guess. There is no "dash to nuclear", Boris. They are stupidly slow and expensive to build.
No nuclear plant on the planet has ever been built without massive government subsisidies. There is no need - they have now been overtaken by other options. Cheaper, cleaner, faster. Open your eyes, Prime Minister. And keep blocking them, Chancellor.
Nah, mini nukes rock. Also they are made by Rolls Royce who put the Merlin engine in the Spitfire during our Finest Hour. What are you, some kind of Blighty hating remoaner?
We are going to put one in every Tory MPs garden. They couldn't possibly complain, could they?
Well, they wouldn't complain, but why would you be so unkind as to put them near Tory MPs?
Dr Y, it's off-topic, but I saw the following about Rugeley and Amazon and thought you might be interested:
THat is interesting - not least the Amazon policy of chucking people out, or at least giving them an offer they can't refuse, after a relatively short time of service, and never employing them again. Where are the new workers to come from and the old ones to go, one wonders.
Putin is evil. Boris... well, he's flawed. Deeply flawed. But he is not evil.
The evidence for your claim is weak.
You have a stupidly low threshold for evil then.
Evil is bombing civilians out of their own homeland. Stop fucking debasing the word. Twat.
We all know the real reason people on here think he's evil - he delivered the democratic wishes of the British people, then smashed Communism in this country, probably for a generation.
And they'll never forgive him for either or both of those.
He put Nazanin in prison for six years, and almost certainly arranged for the torture and murder of dozens of allies of this country in Afghanistan last year. Arguably that's not evil, just vain silly and lazy, like Ilse Koch. But whatever it is I don't want it governing my country. For reasons which have nothing to do with communism or brexit.
Thiis is genuinely demented. That poor woman, along with several others who got less publicity, was kidnapped by the state with whom she had dual citizenship and then held hostage until they got their ransom money. It is just absurd to blame anyone in this country for such evil or indeed anyone at all other than the perpetrators of the act.
True, but it’s not unfair to blame Johnson for carelessly increasing the risk to her.
"Brexit is in peril" still works as a rallying call, but it's not obvious that it always will, outside a small circle of sozzled hacks.
It only works as long as "Brexit is shit" doesn't take hold
It will continue to work for those who see Brexit as the point of Brexit. Not all of them are sozzled hacks, though many are. But I suspect they're a minority.
But the interesting group who voted Brexit in order to make something happen. What will they think/do when their something doesn't happen?
And so the great game of democracy, where the final whistle is never blown, continues.
Interesting. He clearly still sees Boris's authority as weak enough to challenge, despite all the pressures of the global situation. And going on the evidence of yesterday, he's probably right.
Putin is evil. Boris... well, he's flawed. Deeply flawed. But he is not evil.
The evidence for your claim is weak.
You have a stupidly low threshold for evil then.
Evil is bombing civilians out of their own homeland. Stop fucking debasing the word. Twat.
We all know the real reason people on here think he's evil - he delivered the democratic wishes of the British people, then smashed Communism in this country, probably for a generation.
And they'll never forgive him for either or both of those.
He put Nazanin in prison for six years, and almost certainly arranged for the torture and murder of dozens of allies of this country in Afghanistan last year. Arguably that's not evil, just vain silly and lazy, like Ilse Koch. But whatever it is I don't want it governing my country. For reasons which have nothing to do with communism or brexit.
Thiis is genuinely demented. That poor woman, along with several others who got less publicity, was kidnapped by the state with whom she had dual citizenship and then held hostage until they got their ransom money. It is just absurd to blame anyone in this country for such evil or indeed anyone at all other than the perpetrators of the act.
True, but it’s not unfair to blame Johnson for carelessly increasing the risk to her.
Boris was clumsy in his wording about her, which gave the Iranian Ayatollahs cover to clutch their pearls. But he increased the risk to her not one jot. She was staying until they got their money.
Witness the Americans still in jail because they have not signed a cheque.
Putin is evil. Boris... well, he's flawed. Deeply flawed. But he is not evil.
The evidence for your claim is weak.
You have a stupidly low threshold for evil then.
Evil is bombing civilians out of their own homeland. Stop fucking debasing the word. Twat.
We all know the real reason people on here think he's evil - he delivered the democratic wishes of the British people, then smashed Communism in this country, probably for a generation.
And they'll never forgive him for either or both of those.
He put Nazanin in prison for six years, and almost certainly arranged for the torture and murder of dozens of allies of this country in Afghanistan last year. Arguably that's not evil, just vain silly and lazy, like Ilse Koch. But whatever it is I don't want it governing my country. For reasons which have nothing to do with communism or brexit.
Thiis is genuinely demented. That poor woman, along with several others who got less publicity, was kidnapped by the state with whom she had dual citizenship and then held hostage until they got their ransom money. It is just absurd to blame anyone in this country for such evil or indeed anyone at all other than the perpetrators of the act.
True, but it’s not unfair to blame Johnson for carelessly increasing the risk to her.
If that was true she would have been treated differently from Anoosheh Ashoori. She wasn't.
“Over the past week, several thousand Mariupol residents were deported on to the Russian territory,” the city council said in a statement on its Telegram channel late on Saturday.
“The occupiers illegally took people from the Livoberezhniy district and from the shelter in the sports club building, where more than a thousand people (mostly women and children) were hiding from the constant bombing.”…
I heard that on the BBC WS early this morning.
Given Putin's admiration for Stalin's Russia, a return to Stalin's ethnic cleansing policies would not be a surprise in any way, though I am not sure where Putin would be on simply murdering them a la Lenin/Stalin. It needs to be called what it is.
When I heard that I wondered whether we are going to end up with a Cold War situation in Ukr, with West / East, a fortified border somewhere in the Middle, and a wait until Russia cannot afford to pay for itself again.
There will be no UN intervention, as Russia will veto it, and learnt the lesson of not boycotting after the UN approval of intervention in Korea in 1950 when it was boycotting the UN over Taiwan.
It would be a coalition of the willing, again, and that would be the best outcome. The other being ultimately to lose Ukraine to the democratic world.
The Coalition of the Willing has an unfortunate resonance, for me, given that it was key to the Iraq disaster that helped set Putin on his course away from the West and towards eventual mad agression.
Johnson is an insignificant man, for whom life has always been a game and where nothing has real consequence - because nothing risks real suffering or loss; the concept is simply incomprehensible to him.
A shame we don't see more of David posting on here of late. He captures it brilliantly.
Agree. It also strikes me that there are so many from the right, centre and left on here who frankly agree on most things or could come to acceptable compromises and apply common sense to most issues. We should form the PB party.
Dan Hannan is a foundational member of the Speccie/Telegraph set that now runs the country.
"There is obviously a difference between identity politics and genocide," he writes in the Telegraph. "But it is, if you think about it, a difference of degree."
I think Boris is Chaotic Neutral and Putin is Neutral Evil.
No, Boris is Chaotic Arse, and Putin is Warmonger Evil.
I don't think the "no" was needed; you haven't contradicted my assessment at all. Being an arse isn't good or evil. Being a warmonger isn't really on the chaotic/lawful spectrum.
Johnson is an insignificant man, for whom life has always been a game and where nothing has real consequence - because nothing risks real suffering or loss; the concept is simply incomprehensible to him.
A shame we don't see more of David posting on here of late. He captures it brilliantly.
Not sure he does? "Insignificant man" is strange. And I think the PM intended it to be offensive, so did comprehend how it would be perceived by many.
Maybe superficial would be a better word than insignificant?
I think 'insignificant' matters politically though. There's not much point trying to get inside Johnson's head and work out an ideology. It's all about self promotion with him. Sex, power, popularity.
Last month, NI civil servants took advice from someone – Whitehall says the EU – to harden the Irish Sea border, but didn't tell their minister. Firms lost money after GB loads were arbitrarily turned back by secretly altered rules - with no compensation.
For two government departments to blame each other for a major policy change, as here, is highly unusual - but not unheard of. But for two departments to say that their ministers had no role in the policy is remarkable. It means no one is democratically accountable for this.
1- It is exactly the sort of thing Brussels would try to do, and exactly how they would do it. 2 - I think UK Civil Service has an inertia all its own. Very Sir Humphrey.
After all their Brexit is done they still try to blame the EU for everything. We have seen in technicolour that the UK ails have never been due to EU but home grown by mendacious useless UK grubby politicians.
The Homes for Ukraine scheme is mired in excessive bureaucracy with no thought given to the desperate situation facing Ukrainian families fleeing Russian aggression. This is a serious crisis, not online dating. Government needs to grip this urgently.
Interesting. He clearly still sees Boris's authority as weak enough to challenge, despite all the pressures of the global situation. And going on the evidence of yesterday, he's probably right.
Rishi's star is back in the ascendency....
The risk of laying a 2023 election is that Boris is ousted and Rishi goes for an early "honeymoon" election. It would have to overcome the benefit of waiting for new boundaries and a very jittery Party thinking of 2017 Redux. But it is not such a low risk as to make it a lay.
Ok this is anecdata but it’s something I’ve picked up talking to various Leave voters. There’ll always be, what, a third(?) of the population who will champion Brexit no matter what and will always be vociferously anti-EU.
But if those who voted Leave who aren’t viscerally anti-EU but bought the rhetoric of the Leave campaigns and who haven’t received their unicorns yet abandon the collective self-imposed omertà then this low-level, quiet, ‘Brexit is a mistake’ feeling could become something stronger:
‘On which subject I recently had an interesting encounter with a Remainer British expat who was visiting his Brexiter friends in assorted home counties havens. To his surprise, he found that most of them were admitting in private but could not bring themselves to say so publicly: “Brexit is a catastrophe.”’
"I spoke to a friend who already agrees with me who told me he'd met some other friends who told him what he wanted to hear and then he interpreted it how he wanted to hear it and played it back to me."
The anecdata does match systematic polling though, for example:
I see Rishi is pushing back against Boris' drive for much more nuclear. Bloody good job too. He gets my vote on that basis alone.
Why the hell Boris is in thrall to the nuclear industry, I can only guess. There is no "dash to nuclear", Boris. They are stupidly slow and expensive to build.
No nuclear plant on the planet has ever been built without massive government subsisidies. There is no need - they have now been overtaken by other options. Cheaper, cleaner, faster. Open your eyes, Prime Minister. And keep blocking them, Chancellor.
Nah, mini nukes rock. Also they are made by Rolls Royce who put the Merlin engine in the Spitfire during our Finest Hour. What are you, some kind of Blighty hating remoaner?
We are going to put one in every Tory MPs garden. They couldn't possibly complain, could they?
Well, they wouldn't complain, but why would you be so unkind as to put them near Tory MPs?
Dr Y, it's off-topic, but I saw the following about Rugeley and Amazon and thought you might be interested:
THat is interesting - not least the Amazon policy of chucking people out, or at least giving them an offer they can't refuse, after a relatively short time of service, and never employing them again. Where are the new workers to come from and the old ones to go, one wonders.
Interesting piece, and broadly +ve about Amazon.
The anger toward Amazon, meanwhile, has dissipated. The company has become a better employer, at least in some ways. But it feels as if Amazon and Rugeley have learnt to live alongside each other, rather than to live together. Their stories are running along different tracks at different speeds, their fates not intertwined in the way of company towns of old. Whatever Rugeley’s future (and it doesn’t look bleak by any means), few in the town see Amazon at the heart of it.
Interesting on the politics too. The Tories won the Council by behaving like Lib Dems. Will they hold it?
The "Mining town" to "Amazon town" trope does not stand up, as Amazon only employ 300 from a local pop of 25k.
Putin is evil. Boris... well, he's flawed. Deeply flawed. But he is not evil.
The evidence for your claim is weak.
You have a stupidly low threshold for evil then.
Evil is bombing civilians out of their own homeland. Stop fucking debasing the word. Twat.
We all know the real reason people on here think he's evil - he delivered the democratic wishes of the British people, then smashed Communism in this country, probably for a generation.
And they'll never forgive him for either or both of those.
He put Nazanin in prison for six years, and almost certainly arranged for the torture and murder of dozens of allies of this country in Afghanistan last year. Arguably that's not evil, just vain silly and lazy, like Ilse Koch. But whatever it is I don't want it governing my country. For reasons which have nothing to do with communism or brexit.
The Iranian regime imprisoned Nazanin and the other gentlemen, not Johnson. His comments clearly were unhelpful, but we’ve seen the real reason just this week - the money we owed.
Exactly. Terrible FM, but any reason bar the money shows itself as nothing but pretext.
Ok this is anecdata but it’s something I’ve picked up talking to various Leave voters. There’ll always be, what, a third(?) of the population who will champion Brexit no matter what and will always be vociferously anti-EU.
But if those who voted Leave who aren’t viscerally anti-EU but bought the rhetoric of the Leave campaigns and who haven’t received their unicorns yet abandon the collective self-imposed omertà then this low-level, quiet, ‘Brexit is a mistake’ feeling could become something stronger:
‘On which subject I recently had an interesting encounter with a Remainer British expat who was visiting his Brexiter friends in assorted home counties havens. To his surprise, he found that most of them were admitting in private but could not bring themselves to say so publicly: “Brexit is a catastrophe.”’
"I spoke to a friend who already agrees with me who told me he'd met some other friends who told him what he wanted to hear and then he interpreted it how he wanted to hear it and played it back to me."
The anecdata does match systematic polling though, for example:
Rachel Reeves demands Boris Johnson apologise to the Ukrainian people for his “utterly distasteful and insulting” comparison between their resistance against Russia and the Brexit vote.
The Homes for Ukraine scheme is mired in excessive bureaucracy with no thought given to the desperate situation facing Ukrainian families fleeing Russian aggression. This is a serious crisis, not online dating. Government needs to grip this urgently.
Interesting. He clearly still sees Boris's authority as weak enough to challenge, despite all the pressures of the global situation. And going on the evidence of yesterday, he's probably right.
Let's not overthink this. As with the Savile smear, when Sunak said I wouldn't have said that, it's really difficult to see what else he could have said. Sure, mogg or dorries might have doubled down, but normal human beings don't have that option.
The NZR debate, I award to the Johnsonites. Their defence that their man is only guilty of being a lazy unprincipled slob you wouldn't trust to clean your outdoor privy, is a good one
Last month, NI civil servants took advice from someone – Whitehall says the EU – to harden the Irish Sea border, but didn't tell their minister. Firms lost money after GB loads were arbitrarily turned back by secretly altered rules - with no compensation.
For two government departments to blame each other for a major policy change, as here, is highly unusual - but not unheard of. But for two departments to say that their ministers had no role in the policy is remarkable. It means no one is democratically accountable for this.
1- It is exactly the sort of thing Brussels would try to do, and exactly how they would do it. 2 - I think UK Civil Service has an inertia all its own. Very Sir Humphrey.
After all their Brexit is done they still try to blame the EU for everything. We have seen in technicolour that the UK ails have never been due to EU but home grown by mendacious useless UK grubby politicians.
And....We have seen in technicolour that Scotland's ails have never been due to Westminster but home grown by mendacious useless Scottish grubby politicians.
“Over the past week, several thousand Mariupol residents were deported on to the Russian territory,” the city council said in a statement on its Telegram channel late on Saturday.
“The occupiers illegally took people from the Livoberezhniy district and from the shelter in the sports club building, where more than a thousand people (mostly women and children) were hiding from the constant bombing.”…
I heard that on the BBC WS early this morning.
Given Putin's admiration for Stalin's Russia, a return to Stalin's ethnic cleansing policies would not be a surprise in any way, though I am not sure where Putin would be on simply murdering them a la Lenin/Stalin. It needs to be called what it is.
When I heard that I wondered whether we are going to end up with a Cold War situation in Ukr, with West / East, a fortified border somewhere in the Middle, and a wait until Russia cannot afford to pay for itself again.
There will be no UN intervention, as Russia will veto it, and learnt the lesson of not boycotting after the UN approval of intervention in Korea in 1950 when it was boycotting the UN over Taiwan.
It would be a coalition of the willing, again, and that would be the best outcome. The other being ultimately to lose Ukraine to the democratic world.
Russian treatment of Ukrainians - including their separatist supporters - is appalling. Putin seems to be trying to create another Syria on his border.
"Brexit is in peril" still works as a rallying call, but it's not obvious that it always will, outside a small circle of sozzled hacks.
It only works as long as "Brexit is shit" doesn't take hold
It will continue to work for those who see Brexit as the point of Brexit. Not all of them are sozzled hacks, though many are. But I suspect they're a minority.
But the interesting group who voted Brexit in order to make something happen. What will they think/do when their something doesn't happen?
And so the great game of democracy, where the final whistle is never blown, continues.
For most normal people the whistle has blown - just look how far the salience of the issue has dropped down the general populace: now well under 20%.
"This", now, is the new normal. And for most people it's indistinguishable from life in, say, 2015. It's fine except for some extra bureaucracy around the edges, which isn't meaningful enough to shift the dial. They've moved on.
This is why I said both Boris and the FBPE are both making a mistake. 2024 will be about anything but Brexit.
Interesting. He clearly still sees Boris's authority as weak enough to challenge, despite all the pressures of the global situation. And going on the evidence of yesterday, he's probably right.
Rishi's star is back in the ascendency....
The risk of laying a 2023 election is that Boris is ousted and Rishi goes for an early "honeymoon" election. It would have to overcome the benefit of waiting for new boundaries and a very jittery Party thinking of 2017 Redux. But it is not such a low risk as to make it a lay.
Like him or not Rishi is confident and even reassuring and to those who have written him off may prove to be wrong
My hope is that sometime in the next 12 months there is a rapprochement in Russia and Boris can either hand over the office or if not the mps take action to remove him
We all know Boris is lazy and does not do detail but he has a chance to leave office with a future secured on the International speaking stage
The Homes for Ukraine scheme is mired in excessive bureaucracy with no thought given to the desperate situation facing Ukrainian families fleeing Russian aggression. This is a serious crisis, not online dating. Government needs to grip this urgently.
That gives me the impression that Lisa Nandy and others are trying to create space to have something semi-credibly to complain about politically. We are now at what - just under 10k visas granted - with this scheme just getting up and running.
I think booking Zhenya was quite a coup for the Scottish Tories.
Zhenya Jenny Dove @FitMouse I was invited to give a speech at @ScotTories conference, and got lucky to have a private meeting with @BorisJohnson , the person in charge of the decision-making in our country. I am humbled and touched. No political entity showed any interest in what I had to say until now ❤️🇺🇦 https://twitter.com/FitMouse/status/1505179840290377736
The Homes for Ukraine scheme is mired in excessive bureaucracy with no thought given to the desperate situation facing Ukrainian families fleeing Russian aggression. This is a serious crisis, not online dating. Government needs to grip this urgently.
It absolutely doesn't work. Anybody trying to use it is wasting their time at the moment.
According to @leon, who claimed there weren't problems originally and it was just a Twitter storm, but who now admits there were problems, now claims it is all working fine. Suspect he has never had to deal with Govt dept like some of us who are fully aware they will screw up everything.
(Except that the silly old bugger went for Moths, which would not make a good sitcom title. I can't find a vid of the titles in 10s, unfortunately.)
Butterflies too - first Brimstone of the year in the garden yesterday. But there's only about 60 British butterflies and 2,600 moths. Ignoring moths would be as restrictive as just arguing with folk on pb.com....when there are far more people out there to annoy.
Interesting. He clearly still sees Boris's authority as weak enough to challenge, despite all the pressures of the global situation. And going on the evidence of yesterday, he's probably right.
Let's not overthink this. As with the Savile smear, when Sunak said I wouldn't have said that, it's really difficult to see what else he could have said. Sure, mogg or dorries might have doubled down, but normal human beings don't have that option.
The NZR debate, I award to the Johnsonites. Their defence that their man is only guilty of being a lazy unprincipled slob you wouldn't trust to clean your outdoor privy, is a good one
Doubling down like Dorries/Rees-Mogg or disavowing what the PM said are not the only two options. Questions of that nature can always be dodged ("I'm sure you in the Westminster bubble find this fascinating, but I'm here to talk to working people about the economic recovery..."), or you can say the PM is being selectively misquoted etc.
I think it's fairly clear that Sunak considers himself unsackable at the moment (and he's right), and that he's decided to publicly distance himself from Johnson's sillier comments as that works well for his own position and ambitions.
Johnson doesn't send armies to neighbouring countries to destroy cities and murder the inhabitants. It's grotesque to make a moral comparison between him and Putin.
I think Boris is Chaotic Neutral and Putin is Neutral Evil.
Putin is a murderous dictator; Johnson is an arse. That's the difference between the two men.
But the consequences can turn out to be not very different. It is a good deal more likely than not that people were tortured to death in Afghanistan who might have got a flight out, but carrie is a doggie person. awww.
Double digit inflation will not lead to you and your Kremlin paymasters getting softer treatment. .
As I'm the only one on here suggesting we back Zelensky with a No Fly Zone and stand up to Putin your tiresome playground name calling is sounding ever more shrill.
Go and whistle to yourself in the corner. Or play with your willy. Whatever it is that keeps you happy in your sad little warped mind.
You’re the only person who wanted to give Putin the ability to divide the west and claim NATO is escalating the conflict you mean
Comments
I’m hoping to start drawing down in a couple of years.
That's why so many Conservative MPs were kicked out of the BoZo appreciation society and replaced with UKIP retreads
Brexit will be over when the Conservatives retake control of their party
Boris Johnson has been criticised for comparing the struggle of Ukrainians fighting Russia's invasion to people in Britain voting for Brexit.
In a speech he said Britons, like Ukrainians, had the instinct "to choose freedom" and cited the 2016 vote to leave the EU as a "recent example".
The comments have caused anger among politicians both in the UK and Europe.
Donald Tusk, the former president of the European Council, called the comments offensive.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-60809454
Priti on how we are lovely inclusive people, but Ukrainians will abuse our trust by turning out to be Putinist sleepers weighed down with novichok.
It reminds you of a seven-year-old who thinks it makes him sound impressive. "My fart was the biggest explosion the world has ever heard."
Not surprised that BoJo indulges too. As others have pointed out, it demeans them, and what they're talking about. It shows they've never grown up.
Why the hell Boris is in thrall to the nuclear industry, I can only guess. There is no "dash to nuclear", Boris. They are stupidly slow and expensive to build.
No nuclear plant on the planet has ever been built without massive government subsisidies. There is no need - they have now been overtaken by other options. Cheaper, cleaner, faster. Open your eyes, Prime Minister. And keep blocking them, Chancellor.
What of his character? Boris once suggested that whilst Theresa May admired Geoffrey Boycott, he was more akin to Ian Botham. For the uninitiated, Boycott was the archetypical gritty, calculating, defensive batsman who played the percentages whilst Botham was the swashbuckling, risk taking crowdpleaser for whom attack was the best form of defence. Perhaps I'm being rather florid on a Sunday morning but Johnson being so determined to seize the initiative may be a sign he feels the vultures circling.
Edit: this is about the 2015 scheme?
https://www.civilservicepensionscheme.org.uk/your-pension/2015-remedy/
She says at the time she will get a letter outlining two options. But I will get her to check it out. Could be a nasty sting in the tail,there.
1- It is exactly the sort of thing Brussels would try to do, and exactly how they would do it.
2 - I think UK Civil Service has an inertia all its own. Very Sir Humphrey.
BoJo got what he wanted from Brexit- a big chair made bigger by not having to automatically align with the little countries in the EU.
Hardly anyone else has. There hasn't been a bonfire of red tape, we don't have practical control of borders, and not paying into the EU doesn't free up masses of money to spend on ourselves.
A lot of this is about badly managing you-know-what, rather than the process itself.
"Brexit is in peril" still works as a rallying call, but it's not obvious that it always will, outside a small circle of sozzled hacks.
Hence why he can't see why it's so offensive to compare Ukraine to Brexit.
https://twitter.com/DavidHerdson/status/1505460759215677444
https://www.civilservicepensionscheme.org.uk/your-pension/2015-remedy/ seems to be it, but the TPS website would be the place to look for you I imagine.
Visited by x - an unscrupulous journalist, such as our PM for example, might just make up said character.
An unscrupulous Remainer expat, might just make up said conversation. In any event it cannot be corroborated.
And the distinction between public and private makes little sense to me, they were happy to tell an expat friend, for most people telling friends is public. Unless his friends are all leading politicians with a big public platform perhaps.
Finally, it is unlikely they view it as a catastrophe. A bit of a shambles, worse than expected, poorly executed could all make sense, but given we are going through covid and a war, a catastrophe would seem a big leap for leavers to have all made privately and independently (remember they are not sharing this publicly, apart from with the expat.....).
I don't actually disagree with the thrust of the point, but the quote looks "very dubious" to me.
(I actually meant at any future GE; I now doubt he's going before one. Which probably means he will...)
BoZo will fuck up. Again. Reliably. Relentlessly. Repeatedly.
https://www.teacherspensions.co.uk/members/scheme-changes/transitional-protection.aspx
It involves the shift from a final salary scheme to a career average one. The McLeod judgement (which has been accepted by the government) is that forced migration was wrong, and members should have been able to choose. Hence those retiring soon can have the years in the latter credited to the former.
The tax issues are an issue for those, like me, on higher salaries. Lower income workers probably won't have a tax liability as plenty of unused allowances.
https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/nhs-pension-scheme-mccloud-remedy-part-1-proposed-changes-to-scheme-regulations-2022/outcome/mccloud-remedy-part-1-proposed-changes-to-nhs-pension-schemes-regulations-2022
An unusual name, I know.
We had a free and democratic vote. Leave won. Move on. Nagging at it like a dog with a bone won't improve things.
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2022/03/how-did-a-vast-amazon-warehouse-change-life-in-a-former-mining-town/
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/mar/20/homes-for-ukraine-sponsorship-scheme-beset-by-unworkable-bureaucracy?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other
*Prototype hole at Spadeadam ranges still, apparently.
The analogy is imperfect because you owe only a duty of general humanity to the woman, while it was Johnson's duty as part of a highly well paid and prestigious job to protect nzr s interests
Right?
On Sky News tells @SophyRidgeSky:
“Those situations are obviously not analogous”
https://twitter.com/MattChorley/status/1505463658213789705
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-60807600
Given Putin's admiration for Stalin's Russia, a return to Stalin's ethnic cleansing policies would not be a surprise in any way, though I am not sure where Putin would be on simply murdering them a la Lenin/Stalin. It needs to be called what it is.
When I heard that I wondered whether we are going to end up with a Cold War situation in Ukr, with West / East, a fortified border somewhere in the Middle, and a wait until Russia cannot afford to pay for itself again.
There will be no UN intervention, as Russia will veto it, and learnt the lesson of not boycotting after the UN approval of intervention in Korea in 1950 when it was boycotting the UN over Taiwan.
It would be a coalition of the willing, again, and that would be the best outcome. The other being ultimately to lose Ukraine to the democratic world.
But the interesting group who voted Brexit in order to make something happen. What will they think/do when their something doesn't happen?
And so the great game of democracy, where the final whistle is never blown, continues.
Witness the Americans still in jail because they have not signed a cheque.
"There is obviously a difference between identity politics and genocide," he writes in the Telegraph. "But it is, if you think about it, a difference of degree."
https://twitter.com/leonardocarella/status/1505461852465205251
I think 'insignificant' matters politically though. There's not much point trying to get inside Johnson's head and work out an ideology. It's all about self promotion with him. Sex, power, popularity.
But Johnson throws the red meat out to loyalists for short term gainz.
The risk of laying a 2023 election is that Boris is ousted and Rishi goes for an early "honeymoon" election. It would have to overcome the benefit of waiting for new boundaries and a very jittery Party thinking of 2017 Redux. But it is not such a low risk as to make it a lay.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/brexit-poll-survey-gone-badly-b1982375.html
The anger toward Amazon, meanwhile, has dissipated. The company has become a better employer, at least in some ways. But it feels as if Amazon and Rugeley have learnt to live alongside each other, rather than to live together. Their stories are running along different tracks at different speeds, their fates not intertwined in the way of company towns of old. Whatever Rugeley’s future (and it doesn’t look bleak by any means), few in the town see Amazon at the heart of it.
Interesting on the politics too. The Tories won the Council by behaving like Lib Dems. Will they hold it?
The "Mining town" to "Amazon town" trope does not stand up, as Amazon only employ 300 from a local pop of 25k.
She says it’s also insulting to British people. @SophyRidgeSky
https://twitter.com/matt_dathan/status/1505468935365435395
The NZR debate, I award to the Johnsonites. Their defence that their man is only guilty of being a lazy unprincipled slob you wouldn't trust to clean your outdoor privy, is a good one
"This", now, is the new normal. And for most people it's indistinguishable from life in, say, 2015. It's fine except for some extra bureaucracy around the edges, which isn't meaningful enough to shift the dial. They've moved on.
This is why I said both Boris and the FBPE are both making a mistake. 2024 will be about anything but Brexit.
My hope is that sometime in the next 12 months there is a rapprochement in Russia and Boris can either hand over the office or if not the mps take action to remove him
We all know Boris is lazy and does not do detail but he has a chance to leave office with a future secured on the International speaking stage
@RAnxius
We know why he spoke to you love
Zhenya Jenny Dove
@FitMouse
Replying to
@RAnxius
Whichever way you look at it, at least he wasn't disrespectful to refer to a stranger as "love" 🤷🏼♀️
https://twitter.com/FitMouse/status/1505469100381949952
I think it's fairly clear that Sunak considers himself unsackable at the moment (and he's right), and that he's decided to publicly distance himself from Johnson's sillier comments as that works well for his own position and ambitions.