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Today’s budget could be the trigger for a Tory poll lead – politicalbetting.com
Today’s budget could be the trigger for a Tory poll lead – politicalbetting.com
We all know that there has not been a CON poll lead since the start of December and one of the current active betting markets is on whether such a move will happen in March. As I write it is 36% chance on Smarkets.
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Well yes, it could. But I doubt it.
Rishi has certainly had an 'interesting' time to be chancellor. Covid, then the war and increased fuel prices. I bet he'd prefer to be chancellor in normal, boring times when you generally don't have to react to such grand events.
Nominal tax receipts over the next few years will be much higher than previously forecast.
Just by the Chancellor doing nothing, government revenues increase as taxpayers get poorer. It takes a while for the latter to realise, as we saw in the 70s.
The inflationary pain (notably gas and electric prices for example) has only just started to be felt, while Treasury forecasts which give the Chancellor his spending room look ahead beyond the present.
Once inflationary expectations really sink in, that temporal con trick stops working, but we’re only at the start of the process.
https://twitter.com/carlbildt/status/1506315902169534464
We have no right to ignore what’s said on 🇷🇺 state TV these days. This unfortunately has all the potential for getting much worse.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/22/world/europe/ukraine-air-force-russia.html
…. “I had situations when I was approaching a Russian plane to a close enough distance to target and fire,” he said. “I could already detect it but was waiting for my missile to lock on while at the same time from the ground they tell me that a missile was fired at me already.”
He said he maneuvered his jet through a series of extreme banks, dives and climbs in order to exhaust the fuel supplies of the missiles coming after him. “The time I have to save myself depends on how far away the missile was fired at me and what kind of missile,” he said…
… “I only have to use my skills to win,” said Andriy. “My skills are better than the Russians. But on the other hand, many of my friends, and even those more experienced than me, are already dead.”
https://www.independent.co.uk/independentpremium/politics-explained/boris-johnson-election-parliament-vote-b2041433.html
I think he's wrong. It's a very good thing this is altered. The FTPA seemed at the time like a good thing but has ultimately been terrible for democracy.
It comes as a shock to many in this country that we built much of our wealth and success by invading countries, crushing people, stealing their land and their produce and selling their people into slavery. Vladimir Putin has nothing on the British empire.
Reparations are due and the tide has rightly turned.
https://news.sky.com/story/william-and-kate-jamaican-protester-says-couple-benefitting-from-her-great-great-grandparents-blood-tears-and-sweat-12572878
That said cost pressures will be so pronounced this year that I think almost everyone will notice: millions simply won't be able to afford it either and will get pushed into poverty.
"Opal Adisa, a retired professor in her 60s, is a gender specialist and human rights advocate who works with Advocates Network, a coalition of Jamaican politicians, business leaders, doctors and musicians, and was taking part in the protest".
Perhaps not so representative of the population.
In any event, Jamaica has been talking about getting rid the Monarchy for years and hasn't done much about it. It's a topic that is a great talking point for the politicians but, given the state of Jamaican politics, there seems to be a tacit understanding that it might be better to leave things as they are, at least for now.
Yawn. Don’t they ever give you a day off?
The thinking goes something like this: "However bad the situation in Ukraine is, it is not as bad as the unimaginable and prolonged horrors of the British empire, which exist to this day in the form of British dominance established through NATO. Russian resistance to NATO expansion in Ukraine is part of a bigger strategic picture, which includes the cause of republicanism in Jamaica, and the need to address historic imbalances through reparations."
The past was the past. Things were different then, and we have - mostly - progressed (the Russian leadership are currently showing such progression has not been even).
The impression I get of Russia is of a great nation humiliating itself. It is an absolute tragedy. Makes me feel a bit better about our own country.
BBC News - US rolls back Trump-era tariffs on UK steel
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-60839343
60% of Jamaicans actually disagree, or did a decade ago, thinking that they'd have been better off had they remained in the British Empire, compared with 17% who disagreed:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-13952592
And given the corruption and incompetence of the Jamaican government, they may be right.
(I think it's also PB's birthday. One of these is more important than the other to most on here)
On topic, good to think we back to where we were in our EU membership days.
I want to do something slightly insane for my 50th year. I've got a little 'un to look after, so I cannot disappear for months at a time, but I'm thinking what I can fit in within the school times.
Every year I set myself an objective for that year. Last year it was to run every day; this year it's something more cerebral. My current thinking for next year is 52 marathons in the year - if my body will allow it. I'm unsure atm. I might just decide to laze about and do nothing...
I think he was going off-piste.
This is up from the 4.9% growth in the year to January 2022 ow.ly/OmWq50IpWes
https://twitter.com/ons/status/1506526764142678016?s=21
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/03/ukraine-is-winning-war-russia/627121/
But I think it more likely a kite was being flown.
I'm thinking the odds are it will be this silly loan on energy bills, if that's still going ahead at all.
Look at the roads Putin has taken his country down. Look at his hamfisted reaction to the Covid crisis. Look at the Litvinenko or Salisbury. Look at the way he has stifled free press in his country; the way he has strangled democracy.
For all Johnson's faults, he is not a Putin. Neither do I think he wants to be.
@AuditorGenScot
’s report: https://buff.ly/36jlVOU
Scottish ministers approved the contract award to Ferguson Marine Engineering Limited in Oct 2015, despite serious risks and misgivings. As the project progressed, delays, costs, and a contract dispute escalated. In late 2019 the shipyard was brought into public ownership.
2/3
More than two years after the Scottish Government took over control of the shipyard, significant operational failures still need to be fully resolved and further remedial work on the vessels continues to be identified.
3/3
https://twitter.com/AuditScotland/status/1506531660065656837
I'm planning to do things with the little 'un as well. We've had a couple of years where opportunities to do stuff have been lessened due to Covid, so it's time to spend a little of the money we've saved. He wants to go to Edinburgh, so I'll probably do that in early summer before the festival madness.
I get the appeal in principle but in practice the Governor-General is always domestic now and the Monarch provides pageantry and ceremony on top and Commonwealth kinship.
I certainly wouldn't vote to get rid of it.
I'd go in the most expensive class I could afford probably and enjoy myself.
I suspect you'd get even higher figures in Hong Kong.
What gives you that impression?
He's not got that much room to play with. TEN BILLION POUNDS sounds like a lot, but it's about £150 per person across the country, which will barely touch the sides of the problem. £3 a week.
And the fiscal outlook for next year (which ideally will be election runup) looks worse than expected.
And whilst not much of this is Rishi's fault, he will inevitably cop the blame.
"Tony Blair is promoting his party's "farming" of postal vote applications in a national mailshot which defies advice from returning officers that there should be no third party involvement in the process."
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2005/apr/15/uk.postalvoting
Or more recently, I could point to the boundary reviews, which both parties have been playing with.
If Johnson did not have democratic instincts, there is lots more he could have done to stymy things.
Euromaidan Press
@EuromaidanPress
Patron hard at work!
Meet Patron (Cartridge), 2y.o pyrothechnic detection dog, the heart & soul of the Chernihiv pyrotechnic team.
Patron accompanies them everywhere. He loves cheese, so our guys sometimes give him a special treat.
#PlanesForUkraine
#PutinWarCriminal
https://twitter.com/EuromaidanPress/status/1506501591347732480
The bare minimum I would want to start supporting him again is a complete reversal of the NI Tax Hike.
If there is instead an Income Tax cut or similar then that will only add insult to injury further rebalancing tax burden even higher on people who work for a living and lower on others.
But I entirely agree about postal votes and third parties.
Although stating that any woman who did not want to get abused by 'the talent' in the media should go and become hairdressers was original for a modern man - it was the sort of thing that I would expect from a Neanderthal.
Hang on, being in France: did you paint Lascaux? Were they some early adverts for meat products?
Can't imagine that in Putin's Russia.
https://www.ons.gov.uk/economy/governmentpublicsectorandtaxes/publicsectorfinance/timeseries/dzls/pusf
January (-£7bn) was pretty good, and not far off pre-COVID, but February (£13bn) is still not much better than last year and way worse than pre-COVID:
https://www.jamaicaobserver.com/news/55-of-respondents-say-the-queen-must-go_200465
55% Republic, 30% Queen to remain HoS, 15% don't know/care.
Having done several crossings I’d highly recommend it - if only going one way then West is Best (25h days and arrival in NY). While the Grills are exclusive, the Britannia dining room is more spectacular - Britannia Club is a good compromise.
In these circumstances are we going to see many individual court cases and at what point does this get out of hand?
Though 55% is hardly a landslide
I think (hope) he does something about those on benefits.
The loan gimick on fuel bills needs to be dropped.
There will presumably be yet more money for the NHS focused on backlogs.
Possible wild card would be the suspension of VAT on domestic fuel, benefit of Brexit etc
Nobody alive in Britain today was involved in slavery and we abolished slavery well before most European Empires, the Arab States and USA did.
There will be no reparations.
Otherwise we might as well claim reparations from Denmark for Viking raids and from Italy for the slaves the Romans took