As of yesterday, I think Rishi’s chances of winning an election are similar to Johnson’s.
So with the Tory secret weapon dead, who do they have now?
Their gameplan is Brexit Woke Corbyn Brexit if I recall correctly. I predict an edifying and dignified Tory election campaign.
Pretty much seems to be. ‘We blew the economy but look, cross dressers who fetishise being a woman in womens changin rooms. Labour supports that. Vote Tory.’
It won’t work.
You missed out 'Labours old leader, supported by the current one, doesn't like Israel'.
I have always been sceptical that this "the old leader did this" is effective.
The Tories tried that in 1997 when they tried to say Blair had supported all sorts of extreme policies and it fell flat on its face.
Sunak has spent the last two years building a brand rather than doing the hard political yards. His lack of experience is now very clear to see.
Johnson is safe because there is no better Conservative option. That should terrify the Tories and anyone who cares about the future of this country.
Out of interest what is the experience he is lacking?
Surely all Chancellors lack experience of being Chancellor unless they have been Chancellor before?
Or is his lack of experience a lack of experience in global finance? Because that’s clearly not the case and would rule out 99% of politicians from the role of that’s required.
Or is it lack of experience as an MP in which case should we only consider chancellors who have been an MP for a set number of terms?
Or is it lack of experience being chancellor during a two year global pandemic and then a European war? Maybe we should appoint only those who have previously had this experience?
Just trying to find out what experience we need to look for before appointing the next Chancellor of the Exchequer.
I don't dispute that Sunak is now most likely sunk, but I would repeat my question about what could realistically be done given the situation?
Aside from easing the finances today of individuals by borrowing, increasing costs for everyone tomorrow, it just seems like a shitstorm with no time to hand out umbrellas.
As of yesterday, I think Rishi’s chances of winning an election are similar to Johnson’s.
So with the Tory secret weapon dead, who do they have now?
Their gameplan is Brexit Woke Corbyn Brexit if I recall correctly. I predict an edifying and dignified Tory election campaign.
Pretty much seems to be. ‘We blew the economy but look, cross dressers who fetishise being a woman in womens changin rooms. Labour supports that. Vote Tory.’
It won’t work.
I remain deeply sceptical that wokeism is the big vote winner that the Tories think it is.
It won’t be. It shows they have run out of ideas. ‘It’s the economy, stupid’ as the old saying goes.
I get the impression wokeism agitates a small amount of people on either side of the debate. Most people are just meh about it.
Are you keeping well Taz? Thank you for your kind comments of late.
You're absolutely right, it annoys a few very loud people but most people genuinely don't really see what the fuss is about, in my experience
No problem, and I’m keeping well thanks as is my better half. Hope you are too. I never like the winter but always feel really good and optimistic this time of year.
God knows why.
I do think the Tories are pretty much done now. Every time I get a free bet at ladbrokes I put it on Starmer as next PM.
Morning all! Struggling to think of a recent budget that was as painfully tone deaf as that one. He starts off with a swagger of PM-in-waiting and sits down to his own press going "are you taking the piss son?"
He's so brutally done nothing for the poorest not because he's scum but because he doesn't understand - witness the painful phone-in he did with Ian Dale afterwards on LBC. At the same time he's burned £3bn on a fuel duty cut that benefits nobody and just highlights to the still angry just how much of their money they are paying for the basics.
And the worst bit of all? Not remotely costed. Slams in with NIC rise. Then a cut. Income tax cut - in 2 years. Fuel duty going back up in 12 months. Nothing beyond the immediate will happen as he says and the Treasury know it - he may as well have borrowed Simon Clarke's colouring book and crayons.
Any other government could get away with it. Humility. We're doing our best in extraordinary circumstances. But not this government. What we will get instead is sneering condescension. We managed to see some Big Dog faces on the front bench yesterday that are already all over Twitter. They don't care, they don't get it, and saying "if you are poorer its your fault because everyone is better off actually" is a poor message to win an election on.
Good morning
I would largely agree with you and the absence of help for those in real need was appalling
I can only assume that he has calculated that there is worse to come and he wanted to retain funds for further interventions but he has provided an open door for his critics
This is an opportunity for labour but they need to lay out how they would deal with this crisis going forward
A one off windfall tax does not address the future, and I genuinely do not know their policies on any of this
Questions for labour are as they are opposed to NI increases and are not in a position to increase standard rare tax from 19% in April 24 where do they raise the money for the NHS, public sector pay, and now their much heralded increase in defence spending
I would support a wealth tax but this needs working on and any suggestion to apply CGT to owner occupied homes would be the equivalent of the poll tax
However, I believe all this is indicating a good GE 24 for labour and after yesterday my vote is available if they can convince me on their tax and spend proposals
The Government has spent large parts of the last 2 years paying people to stay at home. It was hardly going to be a give away budget as the Government has been giving money to millions of people during Covid.
You entirely miss the point
Where was the compassion for all those less fortunate then ourselves and struggling on universal credit, or the disabled and disadvantaged
They received a 3.1% upgrade on their benefits when inflation is 8% plus and rising
How is it entirely missing the point, the Government funded large parts of the Country to stay at home in probably the most generous scheme in the world during the pandemic and well as introducing a raft of other measures to benefit those less well off including the £20 per week rise in UC. To say this Government lacks compassion is bizarre
The Governemnt has tried to address the long term issue with Social Care, and yesterday reduced this impact on the lower paid with an increase in the NI threshold.
Where is all this money coming from that you want to be given away?
Churchill discovered in 1945 that winning the war wasn’t enough to remain in power.
Bozo is going to discover the same - yes there is no money but back in 2019 Bozo promised the north money and where is it?
In case you haven't been paying attention a lot has happened since 2019. Dear God.
Yebbut the red wall going blue was a one time deal, BJ had his chance. It’s pretty clear that folk at the bottom of the pile (as usual) are going to suffer the worst over the next few years and the Tories haven’t even reached the end of the beginning stage of the revitalisation of the north.
And Labour's plan is.......um....anyone?
The finest electoral plan known to man, we are not these c*nts who obviously despise you and you hate.
You mean, the same as Kinnock 1992?
Kinnock is pretty much the Labour clownish equivalent of Johnson though, so that doesn't quite work. I recall watching him on HIGNFY once and thinking "my God, this clown almost became PM". That was long before his Tory equivalent got the job by not being Corbyn.
As of yesterday, I think Rishi’s chances of winning an election are similar to Johnson’s.
So with the Tory secret weapon dead, who do they have now?
Their gameplan is Brexit Woke Corbyn Brexit if I recall correctly. I predict an edifying and dignified Tory election campaign.
Pretty much seems to be. ‘We blew the economy but look, cross dressers who fetishise being a woman in womens changin rooms. Labour supports that. Vote Tory.’
It won’t work.
I remain deeply sceptical that wokeism is the big vote winner that the Tories think it is.
It won’t be. It shows they have run out of ideas. ‘It’s the economy, stupid’ as the old saying goes.
I get the impression wokeism agitates a small amount of people on either side of the debate. Most people are just meh about it.
Most people are indeed pretty meh about it, it is the extremes at both ends who are "wrong". But its also an issue where a few % care so passionately that they will be willing to switch their votes over it, hence the govt strategy.
As of yesterday, I think Rishi’s chances of winning an election are similar to Johnson’s.
So with the Tory secret weapon dead, who do they have now?
Their gameplan is Brexit Woke Corbyn Brexit if I recall correctly. I predict an edifying and dignified Tory election campaign.
Pretty much seems to be. ‘We blew the economy but look, cross dressers who fetishise being a woman in womens changin rooms. Labour supports that. Vote Tory.’
It won’t work.
I remain deeply sceptical that wokeism is the big vote winner that the Tories think it is.
It won’t be. It shows they have run out of ideas. ‘It’s the economy, stupid’ as the old saying goes.
I get the impression wokeism agitates a small amount of people on either side of the debate. Most people are just meh about it.
Are you keeping well Taz? Thank you for your kind comments of late.
You're absolutely right, it annoys a few very loud people but most people genuinely don't really see what the fuss is about, in my experience
No problem, and I’m keeping well thanks as is my better half. Hope you are too. I never like the winter but always feel really good and optimistic this time of year.
God knows why.
I do think the Tories are pretty much done now. Every time I get a free bet at ladbrokes I put it on Starmer as next PM.
Yes I agree, a bit of sun improves my mood no end.
Now I have been discharged from the counselling I am just trying my best to keep it together, I am managing okay so far
I think the Tories could go back to being sensible but it feels like they need a spell in opposition for that.
As of yesterday, I think Rishi’s chances of winning an election are similar to Johnson’s.
So with the Tory secret weapon dead, who do they have now?
Their gameplan is Brexit Woke Corbyn Brexit if I recall correctly. I predict an edifying and dignified Tory election campaign.
Pretty much seems to be. ‘We blew the economy but look, cross dressers who fetishise being a woman in womens changin rooms. Labour supports that. Vote Tory.’
It won’t work.
I remain deeply sceptical that wokeism is the big vote winner that the Tories think it is.
It isn't supposed to be, directly. But the theory is that it shows that Labour has the wrong instincts, so it makes their other decisions less trustworthy.
As of yesterday, I think Rishi’s chances of winning an election are similar to Johnson’s.
So with the Tory secret weapon dead, who do they have now?
Their gameplan is Brexit Woke Corbyn Brexit if I recall correctly. I predict an edifying and dignified Tory election campaign.
Pretty much seems to be. ‘We blew the economy but look, cross dressers who fetishise being a woman in womens changin rooms. Labour supports that. Vote Tory.’
It won’t work.
You missed out 'Labours old leader, supported by the current one, doesn't like Israel'.
I have always been sceptical that this "the old leader did this" is effective.
The Tories tried that in 1997 when they tried to say Blair had supported all sorts of extreme policies and it fell flat on its face.
To me it indicates a party totally out of ideas.
"What lies behind the smile" is not going to really work with Bozo still there. That was a genius slogan. It could have been devastating if social media had been a thing and that Major was too decent a man to run with it .
Sunak has spent the last two years building a brand rather than doing the hard political yards. His lack of experience is now very clear to see.
Johnson is safe because there is no better Conservative option. That should terrify the Tories and anyone who cares about the future of this country.
Out of interest what is the experience he is lacking?
Surely all Chancellors lack experience of being Chancellor unless they have been Chancellor before?
Or is his lack of experience a lack of experience in global finance? Because that’s clearly not the case and would rule out 99% of politicians from the role of that’s required.
Or is it lack of experience as an MP in which case should we only consider chancellors who have been an MP for a set number of terms?
Or is it lack of experience being chancellor during a two year global pandemic and then a European war? Maybe we should appoint only those who have previously had this experience?
Just trying to find out what experience we need to look for before appointing the next Chancellor of the Exchequer.
Having been chief secretary to the treasury is a handy stepping stone.
Once it becomes obvious that a construct is a construct, it’s over. I’m vaguely astounded that there were numerous claims in the past that Rishi was good at this ‘politics’ business, and slightly ashamed that I might even have bought into it a liddle bit.
Brother in Law's just texted me. Not a happy bunny. Petrol station near his house in Notts put petrol up 6p this morning, wiping out Sunak's short-lived cut.
The government is like a rabbit in the headlights. It seems incapable of recognising what's coming. Bonkers. It's going to be brutal. And it's going to hit everyone, including a lot of the Tory pensioner base. And they don't seem to care.
I suspect they know what is coming.
The issue is there is very little they can do about it.
This was always the risk with QE (which in defence of the BoE they recognised and pulled back as early as they could).
Fundamentally there is very little/no money. We’ve overspent for a generation. Most of government borrowing in recent years has been from the BoE. And printing money in an inflationary environment fuels the problem.
Basically we had weak structural position + crisis spending for 2 years + external shock and massive energy price shock.
It’s awful. It’s going to be awful. And there is fuck all the government can do to make it better
I wonder whether Rishi should have been upfront and not tried to pretend he can do something he can’t.
The wealth is going to have to be re-extracted from wealthy homeowners. Sorry tories.
Yes, but that’s not something that can be done in a few weeks. Major structural change takes thought and planning.
Surely everything can be solved by a windfall tax punishing oil and gas companies for recovering from the pandemic? That's what Reeves said yesterday.
They took a thumping loss during the pandemic. It’s good politics but poor for labour being a pro business party. Also reeves pretty much ruling out exploiting new oil and gas domestically on Sunday which May pander to labours young city based base but is just reckless.
Brother in Law's just texted me. Not a happy bunny. Petrol station near his house in Notts put petrol up 6p this morning, wiping out Sunak's short-lived cut.
The government is like a rabbit in the headlights. It seems incapable of recognising what's coming. Bonkers. It's going to be brutal. And it's going to hit everyone, including a lot of the Tory pensioner base. And they don't seem to care.
I suspect they know what is coming.
The issue is there is very little they can do about it.
This was always the risk with QE (which in defence of the BoE they recognised and pulled back as early as they could).
Fundamentally there is very little/no money. We’ve overspent for a generation. Most of government borrowing in recent years has been from the BoE. And printing money in an inflationary environment fuels the problem.
Basically we had weak structural position + crisis spending for 2 years + external shock and massive energy price shock.
It’s awful. It’s going to be awful. And there is fuck all the government can do to make it better
I wonder whether Rishi should have been upfront and not tried to pretend he can do something he can’t.
The wealth is going to have to be re-extracted from wealthy homeowners. Sorry tories.
Yes, but that’s not something that can be done in a few weeks. Major structural change takes thought and planning.
Surely everything can be solved by a windfall tax punishing oil and gas companies for recovering from the pandemic? That's what Reeves said yesterday.
As of yesterday, I think Rishi’s chances of winning an election are similar to Johnson’s.
So with the Tory secret weapon dead, who do they have now?
Their gameplan is Brexit Woke Corbyn Brexit if I recall correctly. I predict an edifying and dignified Tory election campaign.
Pretty much seems to be. ‘We blew the economy but look, cross dressers who fetishise being a woman in womens changin rooms. Labour supports that. Vote Tory.’
It won’t work.
I remain deeply sceptical that wokeism is the big vote winner that the Tories think it is.
It won’t be. It shows they have run out of ideas. ‘It’s the economy, stupid’ as the old saying goes.
I get the impression wokeism agitates a small amount of people on either side of the debate. Most people are just meh about it.
Are you keeping well Taz? Thank you for your kind comments of late.
You're absolutely right, it annoys a few very loud people but most people genuinely don't really see what the fuss is about, in my experience
No problem, and I’m keeping well thanks as is my better half. Hope you are too. I never like the winter but always feel really good and optimistic this time of year.
God knows why.
I do think the Tories are pretty much done now. Every time I get a free bet at ladbrokes I put it on Starmer as next PM.
Agree. SKS is value, as is perhaps Hunt (experienced and untainted by the current regime). Sunak undoubtedly (and obvious at the time) should have resigned on a Patterson/Partygate/policy principle and awaited events from the back benches if he had PM ambitions. Maybe he doesn't.
Brother in Law's just texted me. Not a happy bunny. Petrol station near his house in Notts put petrol up 6p this morning, wiping out Sunak's short-lived cut.
The government is like a rabbit in the headlights. It seems incapable of recognising what's coming. Bonkers. It's going to be brutal. And it's going to hit everyone, including a lot of the Tory pensioner base. And they don't seem to care.
I suspect they know what is coming.
The issue is there is very little they can do about it.
This was always the risk with QE (which in defence of the BoE they recognised and pulled back as early as they could).
Fundamentally there is very little/no money. We’ve overspent for a generation. Most of government borrowing in recent years has been from the BoE. And printing money in an inflationary environment fuels the problem.
Basically we had weak structural position + crisis spending for 2 years + external shock and massive energy price shock.
It’s awful. It’s going to be awful. And there is fuck all the government can do to make it better
I wonder whether Rishi should have been upfront and not tried to pretend he can do something he can’t.
The wealth is going to have to be re-extracted from wealthy homeowners. Sorry tories.
Yes, but that’s not something that can be done in a few weeks. Major structural change takes thought and planning.
Surely everything can be solved by a windfall tax punishing oil and gas companies for recovering from the pandemic? That's what Reeves said yesterday.
When Thatcher did it through the 80s was that also "punishing oil and gas companies"?
The energy sector levy still exists, just set at zero rate. So increasing tax revenues using it - as Mrs T did to cut income tax - is hardly something monstrous is it?
As of yesterday, I think Rishi’s chances of winning an election are similar to Johnson’s.
So with the Tory secret weapon dead, who do they have now?
Their gameplan is Brexit Woke Corbyn Brexit if I recall correctly. I predict an edifying and dignified Tory election campaign.
Pretty much seems to be. ‘We blew the economy but look, cross dressers who fetishise being a woman in womens changin rooms. Labour supports that. Vote Tory.’
It won’t work.
You missed out 'Labours old leader, supported by the current one, doesn't like Israel'.
I have always been sceptical that this "the old leader did this" is effective.
The Tories tried that in 1997 when they tried to say Blair had supported all sorts of extreme policies and it fell flat on its face.
To me it indicates a party totally out of ideas.
The difference is that Blair was inspiring and actually popular in his own right.
I don't dispute that Sunak is now most likely sunk, but I would repeat my question about what could realistically be done given the situation?
Aside from easing the finances today of individuals by borrowing, increasing costs for everyone tomorrow, it just seems like a shitstorm with no time to hand out umbrellas.
Not much he could do, but for Tory voting liberal minded centrists who like the look of SKS, I think the package needed to look a little more like one that gave as much help to those reliant on state support as those who will struggle on middle incomes. No easy answers of course. But one or two populist measures against oil companies would have been expedient.
I've a little bit of sympathy for him on this - it's clearly embarrassing, but how far are politicians responsible for their relatives' activities and need to be ready to be quizzed about them in live interviews? Similar issues have arisen for Boris Johnson, Tony Blair and I'm sure others. The borderline does become blurred if he's benefiting from the company, e.g. through dividends paid to the family, but it's still not entirely clear to me where the border should lie.
(And no, I don't have any embarrassing family members that I'm aware of!)
As of yesterday, I think Rishi’s chances of winning an election are similar to Johnson’s.
So with the Tory secret weapon dead, who do they have now?
Their gameplan is Brexit Woke Corbyn Brexit if I recall correctly. I predict an edifying and dignified Tory election campaign.
Pretty much seems to be. ‘We blew the economy but look, cross dressers who fetishise being a woman in womens changin rooms. Labour supports that. Vote Tory.’
It won’t work.
You missed out 'Labours old leader, supported by the current one, doesn't like Israel'.
I have always been sceptical that this "the old leader did this" is effective.
The Tories tried that in 1997 when they tried to say Blair had supported all sorts of extreme policies and it fell flat on its face.
To me it indicates a party totally out of ideas.
Yup. (And I say that as someone who voted Conservative in '97. I knew that both JM and the local candidate were going to lose, but didn't want them to lose too badly because they both seemed like decent coves.)
The thing to worry about is this. There was that notorious PPB-that-never-was in 1997, portraying Blair as Faust, and Mandelson as the Devil. It wasn't used, because... well it's obvious why it wasn't used. Would this iteration of the Conservative Party make the same decision? Hard to see it, myself.
Unless the Conservatives collapse in misery and despair, this could get ugly.
Brother in Law's just texted me. Not a happy bunny. Petrol station near his house in Notts put petrol up 6p this morning, wiping out Sunak's short-lived cut.
The government is like a rabbit in the headlights. It seems incapable of recognising what's coming. Bonkers. It's going to be brutal. And it's going to hit everyone, including a lot of the Tory pensioner base. And they don't seem to care.
I suspect they know what is coming.
The issue is there is very little they can do about it.
This was always the risk with QE (which in defence of the BoE they recognised and pulled back as early as they could).
Fundamentally there is very little/no money. We’ve overspent for a generation. Most of government borrowing in recent years has been from the BoE. And printing money in an inflationary environment fuels the problem.
Basically we had weak structural position + crisis spending for 2 years + external shock and massive energy price shock.
It’s awful. It’s going to be awful. And there is fuck all the government can do to make it better
I wonder whether Rishi should have been upfront and not tried to pretend he can do something he can’t.
The wealth is going to have to be re-extracted from wealthy homeowners. Sorry tories.
Yes, but that’s not something that can be done in a few weeks. Major structural change takes thought and planning.
Surely everything can be solved by a windfall tax punishing oil and gas companies for recovering from the pandemic? That's what Reeves said yesterday.
When Thatcher did it through the 80s was that also "punishing oil and gas companies"?
Did they effectively get two years' profits in one year because of a pandemic?
As of yesterday, I think Rishi’s chances of winning an election are similar to Johnson’s.
So with the Tory secret weapon dead, who do they have now?
Their gameplan is Brexit Woke Corbyn Brexit if I recall correctly. I predict an edifying and dignified Tory election campaign.
Pretty much seems to be. ‘We blew the economy but look, cross dressers who fetishise being a woman in womens changin rooms. Labour supports that. Vote Tory.’
It won’t work.
You missed out 'Labours old leader, supported by the current one, doesn't like Israel'.
I have always been sceptical that this "the old leader did this" is effective.
The Tories tried that in 1997 when they tried to say Blair had supported all sorts of extreme policies and it fell flat on its face.
To me it indicates a party totally out of ideas.
The difference is that Blair was inspiring and actually popular in his own right.
Starmer is the most popular Labour leader since Blair though.
Starmer isn't unpopular, Johnson however is. Starmer is neutral.
As of yesterday, I think Rishi’s chances of winning an election are similar to Johnson’s.
So with the Tory secret weapon dead, who do they have now?
Their gameplan is Brexit Woke Corbyn Brexit if I recall correctly. I predict an edifying and dignified Tory election campaign.
Pretty much seems to be. ‘We blew the economy but look, cross dressers who fetishise being a woman in womens changin rooms. Labour supports that. Vote Tory.’
It won’t work.
You missed out 'Labours old leader, supported by the current one, doesn't like Israel'.
I have always been sceptical that this "the old leader did this" is effective.
The Tories tried that in 1997 when they tried to say Blair had supported all sorts of extreme policies and it fell flat on its face.
To me it indicates a party totally out of ideas.
The difference is that Blair was inspiring and actually popular in his own right.
He certainly inspired me to stop voting Labour after his accession.
I've a little bit of sympathy for him on this - it's clearly embarrassing, but how far are politicians responsible for their relatives' activities and need to be ready to be quizzed about them in live interviews? Similar issues have arisen for Boris Johnson, Tony Blair and I'm sure others. The borderline does become blurred if he's benefiting from the company, e.g. through dividends paid to the family, but it's still not entirely clear to me where the border should lie.
(And no, I don't have any embarrassing family members that I'm aware of!)
It is an Indian and NY listed company, not UK, and his f in law is no longer chief exec (but he is chairman). Not a slam dunk against Rishi, but legitimate tail-twisting.
Brother in Law's just texted me. Not a happy bunny. Petrol station near his house in Notts put petrol up 6p this morning, wiping out Sunak's short-lived cut.
The government is like a rabbit in the headlights. It seems incapable of recognising what's coming. Bonkers. It's going to be brutal. And it's going to hit everyone, including a lot of the Tory pensioner base. And they don't seem to care.
Perhaps he should go to a petrol station which hasn't put the price up 6p.
Sunak has spent the last two years building a brand rather than doing the hard political yards. His lack of experience is now very clear to see.
Johnson is safe because there is no better Conservative option. That should terrify the Tories and anyone who cares about the future of this country.
Out of interest what is the experience he is lacking?
Surely all Chancellors lack experience of being Chancellor unless they have been Chancellor before?
Or is his lack of experience a lack of experience in global finance? Because that’s clearly not the case and would rule out 99% of politicians from the role of that’s required.
Or is it lack of experience as an MP in which case should we only consider chancellors who have been an MP for a set number of terms?
Or is it lack of experience being chancellor during a two year global pandemic and then a European war? Maybe we should appoint only those who have previously had this experience?
Just trying to find out what experience we need to look for before appointing the next Chancellor of the Exchequer.
Having been chief secretary to the treasury is a handy stepping stone.
A stepping stone, yes, but not a jumping point.
Some time running a spending department, being exposed to the "much government spending is necessary at a human level" side of the equation would have (hopefully) filled out his CV and mental toolbox.
Yay. We all know from experience Elections are won and lost on what happens on Twitter.
You're very attack dog this morning, have you been bitten by @BluestBlue? Because he had the gig when boris looked like an immortal God-Emperor and it was all plain sailing.
1997. don't know whether you were alive/dead/undead in those days. Now, Starmer is no Blair but then Johnson is no Major either, and I stand astonished at the relative innocence of what we thought of as tory sleaze then vs what we have now.
Yep - was alive in 1997 and it was actually my fist GE in which I could vote so I remember it well.
The dynamics are so very different, not only due to the characters involved. For one, the economy was on the up (in large part to Conservative economic policies which Labour vowed to maintain - spending at least). This allowed Blair to combine his astonishing political skill (and yes - charisma) with the knowledge that Labour were inheriting an economy which would allow them, in time, to promise the world. Which they did. All in the context of a huge global economic boom.
Yes there was Tory sleaze in '97, and yes the Tories had been in power for 18 years, but every Government has sleaze. Always. Including Labour from 1997 to 2010. Tory sleaze gets much more attention as, well, they're evil Tories innit. Labour do sleaze more on the quiet.
In 2010, which although global and largely out of the control of ANY government (like the situation today) - the causes of the GFC had been overseen by Labour for over 10 years. They were the regulators and they were the ones happy to turn a blind eye (no pun intended Mr Brown!) to all the lovely tax revenue generated by the astonishing banking profits. So when the GFC hit the government couldn't plausibly deny they "knew nothing". Of course they did. And people cottoned on to that.
Now - now we have had an un-paralleled economic hit due to a bug. Which is not even the evil Tories' fault - or even Johnson's. I didn't agree with the hysteria to save 100,000 people would would have mostly died soon anyway but there we are. But shutting down the economy for the best part of a year was always going to have consequences. And now we're seeing them. This is the result of satisfying all those screaming "Something must be done". It's ironic that a lot of commentators on here now bemoaning how Sunak can't do this or that, or give them free shit, were the same ones criticising the government for not locking down harder, faster and longer. (That's what she said).
Add the ongoing march to WW3 and an energy crisis which has been at least 40 years in the making and I'm struggling to see how any government could have done better.
Just checking out some new sunglasses for no doubt theoretical holidays this year and the Britons among us will be glad to hear that one manufacturer has ranges called Boudica, Iceni and Prasutagas. Quite what they have to do with UV protection is yet to become clear to me.
I've a little bit of sympathy for him on this - it's clearly embarrassing, but how far are politicians responsible for their relatives' activities and need to be ready to be quizzed about them in live interviews? Similar issues have arisen for Boris Johnson, Tony Blair and I'm sure others. The borderline does become blurred if he's benefiting from the company, e.g. through dividends paid to the family, but it's still not entirely clear to me where the border should lie.
(And no, I don't have any embarrassing family members that I'm aware of!)
Agree Other than I do have an embarrassing relative so sympathise even more.
Sunak has spent the last two years building a brand rather than doing the hard political yards. His lack of experience is now very clear to see.
Johnson is safe because there is no better Conservative option. That should terrify the Tories and anyone who cares about the future of this country.
Out of interest what is the experience he is lacking?
Surely all Chancellors lack experience of being Chancellor unless they have been Chancellor before?
Or is his lack of experience a lack of experience in global finance? Because that’s clearly not the case and would rule out 99% of politicians from the role of that’s required.
Or is it lack of experience as an MP in which case should we only consider chancellors who have been an MP for a set number of terms?
Or is it lack of experience being chancellor during a two year global pandemic and then a European war? Maybe we should appoint only those who have previously had this experience?
Just trying to find out what experience we need to look for before appointing the next Chancellor of the Exchequer.
He lacks political experience. This is the first time in his political career he has come under serious, critical scrutiny - and it's showing. He has wasted two years on brand building.
Brother in Law's just texted me. Not a happy bunny. Petrol station near his house in Notts put petrol up 6p this morning, wiping out Sunak's short-lived cut.
The government is like a rabbit in the headlights. It seems incapable of recognising what's coming. Bonkers. It's going to be brutal. And it's going to hit everyone, including a lot of the Tory pensioner base. And they don't seem to care.
I suspect they know what is coming.
The issue is there is very little they can do about it.
This was always the risk with QE (which in defence of the BoE they recognised and pulled back as early as they could).
Fundamentally there is very little/no money. We’ve overspent for a generation. Most of government borrowing in recent years has been from the BoE. And printing money in an inflationary environment fuels the problem.
Basically we had weak structural position + crisis spending for 2 years + external shock and massive energy price shock.
It’s awful. It’s going to be awful. And there is fuck all the government can do to make it better
I wonder whether Rishi should have been upfront and not tried to pretend he can do something he can’t.
The wealth is going to have to be re-extracted from wealthy homeowners. Sorry tories.
Yes, but that’s not something that can be done in a few weeks. Major structural change takes thought and planning.
Surely everything can be solved by a windfall tax punishing oil and gas companies for recovering from the pandemic? That's what Reeves said yesterday.
Reeves is an amateur compared to Ed Davey.
His interview with Mishal Hussein this morning was good.
He wants a windfall tax on oil and gas companies.
MH says that’s fine, you take a lump now, what happens when they leave the UK to avoid this risk in future as we will lose their tax returns.
ED says they won’t leave because the North Sea is their biggest business…..
MH pointed out to him that the Lib Dems want to stop oil and gas production in the North Sea to which ED says “oh there are decades left of that - not if you stop it Ed and lose the revenue.
ED asked about investment by oil and gas companies in new technology says that we shouldn’t be relying on them and there is billions waiting to be invested by other companies in clean energy (not sure what’s stopping them but there you go).
Apparently the oil companies are bad because they “pushed up the bidding” on sea floor auction for wind turbines (so the exchequer benefits?) which surely shows the oil cos are trying to invest in green energy.
From The Guardian. Ukraine's Foreign Minister. It's really worrying if some are already backsliding. It's what Putin is banking on.
----------------
Yesterday in an interview with the Economist, Kuleba said “What we saw in the beginning of the war was the rise of the European Union as a powerful player that can bring change. What I see in the last ten days in the European Union is backsliding back to its normality where it cannot decide on strong and swift action.”
The clear favourite in the Next PM market should be Keir Starmer. How long before the penny drops on this?
Boris won't lead the Tories into the next election. There will be a new Conservative PM before then.
That leads to some obvious questions which dont have answers that support your assertion.
Why did they not pull the trigger when the PM was vulnerable? Who is more likely to win the next election than the PM? Who has more support within the parliamentary party?
You may end up right, but don't think that is the value in the betting.
Brother in Law's just texted me. Not a happy bunny. Petrol station near his house in Notts put petrol up 6p this morning, wiping out Sunak's short-lived cut.
The government is like a rabbit in the headlights. It seems incapable of recognising what's coming. Bonkers. It's going to be brutal. And it's going to hit everyone, including a lot of the Tory pensioner base. And they don't seem to care.
I suspect they know what is coming.
The issue is there is very little they can do about it.
This was always the risk with QE (which in defence of the BoE they recognised and pulled back as early as they could).
Fundamentally there is very little/no money. We’ve overspent for a generation. Most of government borrowing in recent years has been from the BoE. And printing money in an inflationary environment fuels the problem.
Basically we had weak structural position + crisis spending for 2 years + external shock and massive energy price shock.
It’s awful. It’s going to be awful. And there is fuck all the government can do to make it better
I wonder whether Rishi should have been upfront and not tried to pretend he can do something he can’t.
The wealth is going to have to be re-extracted from wealthy homeowners. Sorry tories.
Yes, but that’s not something that can be done in a few weeks. Major structural change takes thought and planning.
Surely everything can be solved by a windfall tax punishing oil and gas companies for recovering from the pandemic? That's what Reeves said yesterday.
Reeves is an amateur compared to Ed Davey.
His interview with Mishal Hussein this morning was good.
He wants a windfall tax on oil and gas companies.
MH says that’s fine, you take a lump now, what happens when they leave the UK to avoid this risk in future as we will lose their tax returns.
ED says they won’t leave because the North Sea is their biggest business…..
MH pointed out to him that the Lib Dems want to stop oil and gas production in the North Sea to which ED says “oh there are decades left of that - not if you stop it Ed and lose the revenue.
ED asked about investment by oil and gas companies in new technology says that we shouldn’t be relying on them and there is billions waiting to be invested by other companies in clean energy (not sure what’s stopping them but there you go).
Apparently the oil companies are bad because they “pushed up the bidding” on sea floor auction for wind turbines (so the exchequer benefits?) which surely shows the oil cos are trying to invest in green energy.
The underlying problem is that work and business are already heavily taxed.
Which means that to raise money you can either tax consumption - difficult when prices are rising and when voters like consuming.
Or you can tax wealth, in particular property wealth.
Something which would certainly hit Ed Davey's Kingston & Surbiton hard.
As of yesterday, I think Rishi’s chances of winning an election are similar to Johnson’s.
So with the Tory secret weapon dead, who do they have now?
Their gameplan is Brexit Woke Corbyn Brexit if I recall correctly. I predict an edifying and dignified Tory election campaign.
Pretty much seems to be. ‘We blew the economy but look, cross dressers who fetishise being a woman in womens changin rooms. Labour supports that. Vote Tory.’
It won’t work.
You missed out 'Labours old leader, supported by the current one, doesn't like Israel'.
I have always been sceptical that this "the old leader did this" is effective.
The Tories tried that in 1997 when they tried to say Blair had supported all sorts of extreme policies and it fell flat on its face.
To me it indicates a party totally out of ideas.
The difference is that Blair was inspiring and actually popular in his own right.
Starmer is the most popular Labour leader since Blair though.
Starmer isn't unpopular, Johnson however is. Starmer is neutral.
"Starmer is the most popular Labour leader since Blair"? True. The Vaalserberg is the highest point in the (European) Netherlands.
Yay. We all know from experience Elections are won and lost on what happens on Twitter.
You're very attack dog this morning, have you been bitten by @BluestBlue? Because he had the gig when boris looked like an immortal God-Emperor and it was all plain sailing.
1997. don't know whether you were alive/dead/undead in those days. Now, Starmer is no Blair but then Johnson is no Major either, and I stand astonished at the relative innocence of what we thought of as tory sleaze then vs what we have now.
Yep - was alive in 1997 and it was actually my fist GE in which I could vote so I remember it well.
The dynamics are so very different, not only due to the characters involved. For one, the economy was on the up (in large part to Conservative economic policies which Labour vowed to maintain - spending at least). This allowed Blair to combine his astonishing political skill (and yes - charisma) with the knowledge that Labour were inheriting an economy which would allow them, in time, to promise the world. Which they did. All in the context of a huge global economic boom.
Yes there was Tory sleaze in '97, and yes the Tories had been in power for 18 years, but every Government has sleaze. Always. Including Labour from 1997 to 2010. Tory sleaze gets much more attention as, well, they're evil Tories innit. Labour do sleaze more on the quiet.
In 2010, which although global and largely out of the control of ANY government (like the situation today) - the causes of the GFC had been overseen by Labour for over 10 years. They were the regulators and they were the ones happy to turn a blind eye (no pun intended Mr Brown!) to all the lovely tax revenue generated by the astonishing banking profits. So when the GFC hit the government couldn't plausibly deny they "knew nothing". Of course they did. And people cottoned on to that.
Now - now we have had an un-paralleled economic hit due to a bug. Which is not even the evil Tories' fault - or even Johnson's. I didn't agree with the hysteria to save 100,000 people would would have mostly died soon anyway but there we are. But shutting down the economy for the best part of a year was always going to have consequences. And now we're seeing them. This is the result of satisfying all those screaming "Something must be done". It's ironic that a lot of commentators on here now bemoaning how Sunak can't do this or that, or give them free shit, were the same ones criticising the government for not locking down harder, faster and longer. (That's what she said).
Add the ongoing march to WW3 and an energy crisis which has been at least 40 years in the making and I'm struggling to see how any government could have done better.
It is bizzare where people think the money required for all the wished for increases in benefits and decreases in taxes are going to come from. The last 2 years have been unprecedented, millions of people were paid by the Government to stay at home for months and months. Yet people are thinking the Government still has a big pot of money to spray around.
Regardless of political partisan loyalties, are there any PBers that would prefer Sunak to Reeves as Chancellor? (For the My Party Right or Wrong Brigade, imagine Rachel as a Tory if it helps).
Reeves is bright and effective, and at least gives the impression of being on the side of people who actually work for a living.
Oh boy, I have seen today's front pages – and to think some moons ago we were worrying about pasties.
Sunak has spent the last two years building a brand rather than doing the hard political yards. His lack of experience is now very clear to see.
Johnson is safe because there is no better Conservative option. That should terrify the Tories and anyone who cares about the future of this country.
Out of interest what is the experience he is lacking?
Surely all Chancellors lack experience of being Chancellor unless they have been Chancellor before?
Or is his lack of experience a lack of experience in global finance? Because that’s clearly not the case and would rule out 99% of politicians from the role of that’s required.
Or is it lack of experience as an MP in which case should we only consider chancellors who have been an MP for a set number of terms?
Or is it lack of experience being chancellor during a two year global pandemic and then a European war? Maybe we should appoint only those who have previously had this experience?
Just trying to find out what experience we need to look for before appointing the next Chancellor of the Exchequer.
He lacks political experience. This is the first time in his political career he has come under serious, critical scrutiny - and it's showing. He has wasted two years on brand building.
So we need someone more “political”? Seeing things through the lens of what’s best “politically” rather than maybe (rightly or wrongly) trying to do things without the main concern with how it plays politically.
Maybe because for my sins I am more a fan of technocrats in technical roles that I think it would be better if governments were less political as more might get done if they aren’t primarily concerned with the political angle/reception.
I think over the last two years the brand building probably has taken up no more than 1% of his time at best - 9% trying to dodge conga lines through Downing Street and the rest I imagine trying to work through the shit show of covid.
BTW I’m not blindly defending his decisions as I was hoping for someone to come in and bring radical new approaches and it’s clearly not going to be him.
Yay. We all know from experience Elections are won and lost on what happens on Twitter.
You're very attack dog this morning, have you been bitten by @BluestBlue? Because he had the gig when boris looked like an immortal God-Emperor and it was all plain sailing.
1997. don't know whether you were alive/dead/undead in those days. Now, Starmer is no Blair but then Johnson is no Major either, and I stand astonished at the relative innocence of what we thought of as tory sleaze then vs what we have now.
Yep - was alive in 1997 and it was actually my fist GE in which I could vote so I remember it well.
The dynamics are so very different, not only due to the characters involved. For one, the economy was on the up (in large part to Conservative economic policies which Labour vowed to maintain - spending at least). This allowed Blair to combine his astonishing political skill (and yes - charisma) with the knowledge that Labour were inheriting an economy which would allow them, in time, to promise the world. Which they did. All in the context of a huge global economic boom.
Yes there was Tory sleaze in '97, and yes the Tories had been in power for 18 years, but every Government has sleaze. Always. Including Labour from 1997 to 2010. Tory sleaze gets much more attention as, well, they're evil Tories innit. Labour do sleaze more on the quiet.
In 2010, which although global and largely out of the control of ANY government (like the situation today) - the causes of the GFC had been overseen by Labour for over 10 years. They were the regulators and they were the ones happy to turn a blind eye (no pun intended Mr Brown!) to all the lovely tax revenue generated by the astonishing banking profits. So when the GFC hit the government couldn't plausibly deny they "knew nothing". Of course they did. And people cottoned on to that.
Now - now we have had an un-paralleled economic hit due to a bug. Which is not even the evil Tories' fault - or even Johnson's. I didn't agree with the hysteria to save 100,000 people would would have mostly died soon anyway but there we are. But shutting down the economy for the best part of a year was always going to have consequences. And now we're seeing them. This is the result of satisfying all those screaming "Something must be done". It's ironic that a lot of commentators on here now bemoaning how Sunak can't do this or that, or give them free shit, were the same ones criticising the government for not locking down harder, faster and longer. (That's what she said).
Add the ongoing march to WW3 and an energy crisis which has been at least 40 years in the making and I'm struggling to see how any government could have done better.
It is bizzare where people think the money required for all the wished for increases in benefits and decreases in taxes are going to come from. The last 2 years have been unprecedented, millions of people were paid by the Government to stay at home for months and months. Yet people are thinking the Government still has a big pot of money to spray around.
Can Shell & BP pay for it all?
No, but the asset rich can and should pay much more than they do now.
Just checking out some new sunglasses for no doubt theoretical holidays this year and the Britons among us will be glad to hear that one manufacturer has ranges called Boudica, Iceni and Prasutagas. Quite what they have to do with UV protection is yet to become clear to me.
The sun comes from the East, with not even a visa to its name. We have more than enough of that sort already.
The clear favourite in the Next PM market should be Keir Starmer. How long before the penny drops on this?
Boris won't lead the Tories into the next election. There will be a new Conservative PM before then.
I don't know, I would say Johnson has a 60% chance of fighting the next election at the moment. He is surely now safe until mid 2023.
There are eerily similarities with Gordon Brown in that Johnson retains a lot of core support in some areas like the West Midlands I would argue but probably not in the marginal seats in the North and South of England that are likely to decide the next election.
As of yesterday, I think Rishi’s chances of winning an election are similar to Johnson’s.
So with the Tory secret weapon dead, who do they have now?
Their gameplan is Brexit Woke Corbyn Brexit if I recall correctly. I predict an edifying and dignified Tory election campaign.
Pretty much seems to be. ‘We blew the economy but look, cross dressers who fetishise being a woman in womens changin rooms. Labour supports that. Vote Tory.’
It won’t work.
What's the advantage to voting Labour though? It's not like they appear to have any better idea about what to do about the current mess than the Tories. They certainly aren't going to cut taxes on ordinary working folk. Voting Labour will get you Tory levels of tax and spend or worse, plus all the stupid woke stuff about abolishing womens sport so the trannies can join in, and letting men in frocks with a history of sexual offences go in women's prisons...
Brother in Law's just texted me. Not a happy bunny. Petrol station near his house in Notts put petrol up 6p this morning, wiping out Sunak's short-lived cut.
The government is like a rabbit in the headlights. It seems incapable of recognising what's coming. Bonkers. It's going to be brutal. And it's going to hit everyone, including a lot of the Tory pensioner base. And they don't seem to care.
I suspect they know what is coming.
The issue is there is very little they can do about it.
This was always the risk with QE (which in defence of the BoE they recognised and pulled back as early as they could).
Fundamentally there is very little/no money. We’ve overspent for a generation. Most of government borrowing in recent years has been from the BoE. And printing money in an inflationary environment fuels the problem.
Basically we had weak structural position + crisis spending for 2 years + external shock and massive energy price shock.
It’s awful. It’s going to be awful. And there is fuck all the government can do to make it better
I wonder whether Rishi should have been upfront and not tried to pretend he can do something he can’t.
The wealth is going to have to be re-extracted from wealthy homeowners. Sorry tories.
Yes, but that’s not something that can be done in a few weeks. Major structural change takes thought and planning.
Surely everything can be solved by a windfall tax punishing oil and gas companies for recovering from the pandemic? That's what Reeves said yesterday.
Reeves is an amateur compared to Ed Davey.
His interview with Mishal Hussein this morning was good.
He wants a windfall tax on oil and gas companies.
MH says that’s fine, you take a lump now, what happens when they leave the UK to avoid this risk in future as we will lose their tax returns.
ED says they won’t leave because the North Sea is their biggest business…..
MH pointed out to him that the Lib Dems want to stop oil and gas production in the North Sea to which ED says “oh there are decades left of that - not if you stop it Ed and lose the revenue.
ED asked about investment by oil and gas companies in new technology says that we shouldn’t be relying on them and there is billions waiting to be invested by other companies in clean energy (not sure what’s stopping them but there you go).
Apparently the oil companies are bad because they “pushed up the bidding” on sea floor auction for wind turbines (so the exchequer benefits?) which surely shows the oil cos are trying to invest in green energy.
The underlying problem is that work and business are already heavily taxed.
Which means that to raise money you can either tax consumption - difficult when prices are rising and when voters like consuming.
Or you can tax wealth, in particular property wealth.
Something which would certainly hit Ed Davey's Kingston & Surbiton hard.
Property wealth is fairy gold. It doesn't make an owner occupier any richer, and if you start taxing it it will collapse in value.
Yay. We all know from experience Elections are won and lost on what happens on Twitter.
You're very attack dog this morning, have you been bitten by @BluestBlue? Because he had the gig when boris looked like an immortal God-Emperor and it was all plain sailing.
1997. don't know whether you were alive/dead/undead in those days. Now, Starmer is no Blair but then Johnson is no Major either, and I stand astonished at the relative innocence of what we thought of as tory sleaze then vs what we have now.
Yep - was alive in 1997 and it was actually my fist GE in which I could vote so I remember it well.
The dynamics are so very different, not only due to the characters involved. For one, the economy was on the up (in large part to Conservative economic policies which Labour vowed to maintain - spending at least). This allowed Blair to combine his astonishing political skill (and yes - charisma) with the knowledge that Labour were inheriting an economy which would allow them, in time, to promise the world. Which they did. All in the context of a huge global economic boom.
Yes there was Tory sleaze in '97, and yes the Tories had been in power for 18 years, but every Government has sleaze. Always. Including Labour from 1997 to 2010. Tory sleaze gets much more attention as, well, they're evil Tories innit. Labour do sleaze more on the quiet.
In 2010, which although global and largely out of the control of ANY government (like the situation today) - the causes of the GFC had been overseen by Labour for over 10 years. They were the regulators and they were the ones happy to turn a blind eye (no pun intended Mr Brown!) to all the lovely tax revenue generated by the astonishing banking profits. So when the GFC hit the government couldn't plausibly deny they "knew nothing". Of course they did. And people cottoned on to that.
Now - now we have had an un-paralleled economic hit due to a bug. Which is not even the evil Tories' fault - or even Johnson's. I didn't agree with the hysteria to save 100,000 people would would have mostly died soon anyway but there we are. But shutting down the economy for the best part of a year was always going to have consequences. And now we're seeing them. This is the result of satisfying all those screaming "Something must be done". It's ironic that a lot of commentators on here now bemoaning how Sunak can't do this or that, or give them free shit, were the same ones criticising the government for not locking down harder, faster and longer. (That's what she said).
Add the ongoing march to WW3 and an energy crisis which has been at least 40 years in the making and I'm struggling to see how any government could have done better.
It is bizzare where people think the money required for all the wished for increases in benefits and decreases in taxes are going to come from. The last 2 years have been unprecedented, millions of people were paid by the Government to stay at home for months and months. Yet people are thinking the Government still has a big pot of money to spray around.
Can Shell & BP pay for it all?
No, but the asset rich can and should pay much more than they do now.
You realise that we are being taxed more than at any point since 1945?
Sunak has spent the last two years building a brand rather than doing the hard political yards. His lack of experience is now very clear to see.
Johnson is safe because there is no better Conservative option. That should terrify the Tories and anyone who cares about the future of this country.
Out of interest what is the experience he is lacking?
Surely all Chancellors lack experience of being Chancellor unless they have been Chancellor before?
Or is his lack of experience a lack of experience in global finance? Because that’s clearly not the case and would rule out 99% of politicians from the role of that’s required.
Or is it lack of experience as an MP in which case should we only consider chancellors who have been an MP for a set number of terms?
Or is it lack of experience being chancellor during a two year global pandemic and then a European war? Maybe we should appoint only those who have previously had this experience?
Just trying to find out what experience we need to look for before appointing the next Chancellor of the Exchequer.
He lacks political experience. This is the first time in his political career he has come under serious, critical scrutiny - and it's showing. He has wasted two years on brand building.
So we need someone more “political”? Seeing things through the lens of what’s best “politically” rather than maybe (rightly or wrongly) trying to do things without the main concern with how it plays politically
Sunak has spent the last two years building a brand rather than doing the hard political yards. His lack of experience is now very clear to see.
Johnson is safe because there is no better Conservative option. That should terrify the Tories and anyone who cares about the future of this country.
Out of interest what is the experience he is lacking?
Surely all Chancellors lack experience of being Chancellor unless they have been Chancellor before?
Or is his lack of experience a lack of experience in global finance? Because that’s clearly not the case and would rule out 99% of politicians from the role of that’s required.
Or is it lack of experience as an MP in which case should we only consider chancellors who have been an MP for a set number of terms?
Or is it lack of experience being chancellor during a two year global pandemic and then a European war? Maybe we should appoint only those who have previously had this experience?
Just trying to find out what experience we need to look for before appointing the next Chancellor of the Exchequer.
He lacks political experience. This is the first time in his political career he has come under serious, critical scrutiny - and it's showing. He has wasted two years on brand building.
So we need someone more “political”? Seeing things through the lens of what’s best “politically” rather than maybe (rightly or wrongly) trying to do things without the main concern with how it plays politically.
Maybe because for my sins I am more a fan of technocrats in technical roles that I think it would be better if governments were less political as more might get done if they aren’t primarily concerned with the political angle/reception.
I think over the last two years the brand building probably has taken up no more than 1% of his time at best - 9% trying to dodge conga lines through Downing Street and the rest I imagine trying to work through the shit show of covid.
BTW I’m not blindly defending his decisions as I was hoping for someone to come in and bring radical new approaches and it’s clearly not going to be him.
My suggestion is to have a minimum level of experience required to be eligible for a given cabinet role.
3 years served either as a minister or shadow minister within that specific department or 3 years on the relevant select committee.
Yay. We all know from experience Elections are won and lost on what happens on Twitter.
You're very attack dog this morning, have you been bitten by @BluestBlue? Because he had the gig when boris looked like an immortal God-Emperor and it was all plain sailing.
1997. don't know whether you were alive/dead/undead in those days. Now, Starmer is no Blair but then Johnson is no Major either, and I stand astonished at the relative innocence of what we thought of as tory sleaze then vs what we have now.
Yep - was alive in 1997 and it was actually my fist GE in which I could vote so I remember it well.
The dynamics are so very different, not only due to the characters involved. For one, the economy was on the up (in large part to Conservative economic policies which Labour vowed to maintain - spending at least). This allowed Blair to combine his astonishing political skill (and yes - charisma) with the knowledge that Labour were inheriting an economy which would allow them, in time, to promise the world. Which they did. All in the context of a huge global economic boom.
Yes there was Tory sleaze in '97, and yes the Tories had been in power for 18 years, but every Government has sleaze. Always. Including Labour from 1997 to 2010. Tory sleaze gets much more attention as, well, they're evil Tories innit. Labour do sleaze more on the quiet.
In 2010, which although global and largely out of the control of ANY government (like the situation today) - the causes of the GFC had been overseen by Labour for over 10 years. They were the regulators and they were the ones happy to turn a blind eye (no pun intended Mr Brown!) to all the lovely tax revenue generated by the astonishing banking profits. So when the GFC hit the government couldn't plausibly deny they "knew nothing". Of course they did. And people cottoned on to that.
Now - now we have had an un-paralleled economic hit due to a bug. Which is not even the evil Tories' fault - or even Johnson's. I didn't agree with the hysteria to save 100,000 people would would have mostly died soon anyway but there we are. But shutting down the economy for the best part of a year was always going to have consequences. And now we're seeing them. This is the result of satisfying all those screaming "Something must be done". It's ironic that a lot of commentators on here now bemoaning how Sunak can't do this or that, or give them free shit, were the same ones criticising the government for not locking down harder, faster and longer. (That's what she said).
Add the ongoing march to WW3 and an energy crisis which has been at least 40 years in the making and I'm struggling to see how any government could have done better.
It is bizzare where people think the money required for all the wished for increases in benefits and decreases in taxes are going to come from. The last 2 years have been unprecedented, millions of people were paid by the Government to stay at home for months and months. Yet people are thinking the Government still has a big pot of money to spray around.
Can Shell & BP pay for it all?
No, but the asset rich can and should pay much more than they do now.
You're confusing asset rich with cash rich. How can an "asset rich" person pay any more when the cash is locked in that asset? Unless you sell that asset, which is now less of value when crystallised because it'll be taxed more.
Just because someone lives in a property valued £1m doesn't make them "rich". They may earn £25k a year but it's just the house which has gone up in value since they've been there 15 years. Which is not their fault or in their control.
Yay. We all know from experience Elections are won and lost on what happens on Twitter.
You're very attack dog this morning, have you been bitten by @BluestBlue? Because he had the gig when boris looked like an immortal God-Emperor and it was all plain sailing.
1997. don't know whether you were alive/dead/undead in those days. Now, Starmer is no Blair but then Johnson is no Major either, and I stand astonished at the relative innocence of what we thought of as tory sleaze then vs what we have now.
Yep - was alive in 1997 and it was actually my fist GE in which I could vote so I remember it well.
The dynamics are so very different, not only due to the characters involved. For one, the economy was on the up (in large part to Conservative economic policies which Labour vowed to maintain - spending at least). This allowed Blair to combine his astonishing political skill (and yes - charisma) with the knowledge that Labour were inheriting an economy which would allow them, in time, to promise the world. Which they did. All in the context of a huge global economic boom.
Yes there was Tory sleaze in '97, and yes the Tories had been in power for 18 years, but every Government has sleaze. Always. Including Labour from 1997 to 2010. Tory sleaze gets much more attention as, well, they're evil Tories innit. Labour do sleaze more on the quiet.
In 2010, which although global and largely out of the control of ANY government (like the situation today) - the causes of the GFC had been overseen by Labour for over 10 years. They were the regulators and they were the ones happy to turn a blind eye (no pun intended Mr Brown!) to all the lovely tax revenue generated by the astonishing banking profits. So when the GFC hit the government couldn't plausibly deny they "knew nothing". Of course they did. And people cottoned on to that.
Now - now we have had an un-paralleled economic hit due to a bug. Which is not even the evil Tories' fault - or even Johnson's. I didn't agree with the hysteria to save 100,000 people would would have mostly died soon anyway but there we are. But shutting down the economy for the best part of a year was always going to have consequences. And now we're seeing them. This is the result of satisfying all those screaming "Something must be done". It's ironic that a lot of commentators on here now bemoaning how Sunak can't do this or that, or give them free shit, were the same ones criticising the government for not locking down harder, faster and longer. (That's what she said).
Add the ongoing march to WW3 and an energy crisis which has been at least 40 years in the making and I'm struggling to see how any government could have done better.
It is bizzare where people think the money required for all the wished for increases in benefits and decreases in taxes are going to come from. The last 2 years have been unprecedented, millions of people were paid by the Government to stay at home for months and months. Yet people are thinking the Government still has a big pot of money to spray around.
Can Shell & BP pay for it all?
No, but the asset rich can and should pay much more than they do now.
You're confusing asset rich with cash rich. How can an "asset rich" person pay any more when the cash is locked in that asset? Unless you sell that asset, which is now less of value when crystallised because it'll be taxed more.
Just because someone lives in a property valued £1m doesn't make them "rich". They may earn £25k a year but it's just the house which has gone up in value since they've been there 15 years. Which is not their fault or in their control.
Have you heard of borrowing? Non asset rich people are quite familiar with it already.
I've a little bit of sympathy for him on this - it's clearly embarrassing, but how far are politicians responsible for their relatives' activities and need to be ready to be quizzed about them in live interviews? Similar issues have arisen for Boris Johnson, Tony Blair and I'm sure others. The borderline does become blurred if he's benefiting from the company, e.g. through dividends paid to the family, but it's still not entirely clear to me where the border should lie.
(And no, I don't have any embarrassing family members that I'm aware of!)
Maybe you're the one the resto them are embarasse by d
I guess this may have already been commented on this, it is utterly staggering. That there are people who are still apologists for this idiot being our PM is also staggering.
Brother in Law's just texted me. Not a happy bunny. Petrol station near his house in Notts put petrol up 6p this morning, wiping out Sunak's short-lived cut.
The government is like a rabbit in the headlights. It seems incapable of recognising what's coming. Bonkers. It's going to be brutal. And it's going to hit everyone, including a lot of the Tory pensioner base. And they don't seem to care.
I suspect they know what is coming.
The issue is there is very little they can do about it.
This was always the risk with QE (which in defence of the BoE they recognised and pulled back as early as they could).
Fundamentally there is very little/no money. We’ve overspent for a generation. Most of government borrowing in recent years has been from the BoE. And printing money in an inflationary environment fuels the problem.
Basically we had weak structural position + crisis spending for 2 years + external shock and massive energy price shock.
It’s awful. It’s going to be awful. And there is fuck all the government can do to make it better
I wonder whether Rishi should have been upfront and not tried to pretend he can do something he can’t.
The wealth is going to have to be re-extracted from wealthy homeowners. Sorry tories.
Yes, but that’s not something that can be done in a few weeks. Major structural change takes thought and planning.
Surely everything can be solved by a windfall tax punishing oil and gas companies for recovering from the pandemic? That's what Reeves said yesterday.
Reeves is an amateur compared to Ed Davey.
His interview with Mishal Hussein this morning was good.
He wants a windfall tax on oil and gas companies.
MH says that’s fine, you take a lump now, what happens when they leave the UK to avoid this risk in future as we will lose their tax returns.
ED says they won’t leave because the North Sea is their biggest business…..
MH pointed out to him that the Lib Dems want to stop oil and gas production in the North Sea to which ED says “oh there are decades left of that - not if you stop it Ed and lose the revenue.
ED asked about investment by oil and gas companies in new technology says that we shouldn’t be relying on them and there is billions waiting to be invested by other companies in clean energy (not sure what’s stopping them but there you go).
Apparently the oil companies are bad because they “pushed up the bidding” on sea floor auction for wind turbines (so the exchequer benefits?) which surely shows the oil cos are trying to invest in green energy.
The underlying problem is that work and business are already heavily taxed.
Which means that to raise money you can either tax consumption - difficult when prices are rising and when voters like consuming.
Or you can tax wealth, in particular property wealth.
Something which would certainly hit Ed Davey's Kingston & Surbiton hard.
Property wealth is fairy gold. It doesn't make an owner occupier any richer, and if you start taxing it it will collapse in value.
It was interesting that the wealth tax report from the LSE a while back recognised that a ‘one-time’ wealth tax would work better than ongoing wealth taxes for exactly this reason.
Yet wealth taxes are continually raised as a solution to ongoing rather than one off spending requirements.
None of which is to argue that there aren’t sensible tweaks to be made to equalise unearned/earned income taxation. But they’re not going to do much heavy lifting.
Just checking out some new sunglasses for no doubt theoretical holidays this year and the Britons among us will be glad to hear that one manufacturer has ranges called Boudica, Iceni and Prasutagas. Quite what they have to do with UV protection is yet to become clear to me.
Yay. We all know from experience Elections are won and lost on what happens on Twitter.
You're very attack dog this morning, have you been bitten by @BluestBlue? Because he had the gig when boris looked like an immortal God-Emperor and it was all plain sailing.
1997. don't know whether you were alive/dead/undead in those days. Now, Starmer is no Blair but then Johnson is no Major either, and I stand astonished at the relative innocence of what we thought of as tory sleaze then vs what we have now.
Yep - was alive in 1997 and it was actually my fist GE in which I could vote so I remember it well.
The dynamics are so very different, not only due to the characters involved. For one, the economy was on the up (in large part to Conservative economic policies which Labour vowed to maintain - spending at least). This allowed Blair to combine his astonishing political skill (and yes - charisma) with the knowledge that Labour were inheriting an economy which would allow them, in time, to promise the world. Which they did. All in the context of a huge global economic boom.
Yes there was Tory sleaze in '97, and yes the Tories had been in power for 18 years, but every Government has sleaze. Always. Including Labour from 1997 to 2010. Tory sleaze gets much more attention as, well, they're evil Tories innit. Labour do sleaze more on the quiet.
In 2010, which although global and largely out of the control of ANY government (like the situation today) - the causes of the GFC had been overseen by Labour for over 10 years. They were the regulators and they were the ones happy to turn a blind eye (no pun intended Mr Brown!) to all the lovely tax revenue generated by the astonishing banking profits. So when the GFC hit the government couldn't plausibly deny they "knew nothing". Of course they did. And people cottoned on to that.
Now - now we have had an un-paralleled economic hit due to a bug. Which is not even the evil Tories' fault - or even Johnson's. I didn't agree with the hysteria to save 100,000 people would would have mostly died soon anyway but there we are. But shutting down the economy for the best part of a year was always going to have consequences. And now we're seeing them. This is the result of satisfying all those screaming "Something must be done". It's ironic that a lot of commentators on here now bemoaning how Sunak can't do this or that, or give them free shit, were the same ones criticising the government for not locking down harder, faster and longer. (That's what she said).
Add the ongoing march to WW3 and an energy crisis which has been at least 40 years in the making and I'm struggling to see how any government could have done better.
It is bizzare where people think the money required for all the wished for increases in benefits and decreases in taxes are going to come from. The last 2 years have been unprecedented, millions of people were paid by the Government to stay at home for months and months. Yet people are thinking the Government still has a big pot of money to spray around.
Can Shell & BP pay for it all?
No, but the asset rich can and should pay much more than they do now.
You're confusing asset rich with cash rich. How can an "asset rich" person pay any more when the cash is locked in that asset? Unless you sell that asset, which is now less of value when crystallised because it'll be taxed more.
Just because someone lives in a property valued £1m doesn't make them "rich". They may earn £25k a year but it's just the house which has gone up in value since they've been there 15 years. Which is not their fault or in their control.
Have you heard of borrowing? Non asset rich people are quite familiar with it already.
Forcing people to take on debt to pay taxes? It's an interesting concept.
Yay. We all know from experience Elections are won and lost on what happens on Twitter.
You're very attack dog this morning, have you been bitten by @BluestBlue? Because he had the gig when boris looked like an immortal God-Emperor and it was all plain sailing.
1997. don't know whether you were alive/dead/undead in those days. Now, Starmer is no Blair but then Johnson is no Major either, and I stand astonished at the relative innocence of what we thought of as tory sleaze then vs what we have now.
Yep - was alive in 1997 and it was actually my fist GE in which I could vote so I remember it well.
The dynamics are so very different, not only due to the characters involved. For one, the economy was on the up (in large part to Conservative economic policies which Labour vowed to maintain - spending at least). This allowed Blair to combine his astonishing political skill (and yes - charisma) with the knowledge that Labour were inheriting an economy which would allow them, in time, to promise the world. Which they did. All in the context of a huge global economic boom.
Yes there was Tory sleaze in '97, and yes the Tories had been in power for 18 years, but every Government has sleaze. Always. Including Labour from 1997 to 2010. Tory sleaze gets much more attention as, well, they're evil Tories innit. Labour do sleaze more on the quiet.
In 2010, which although global and largely out of the control of ANY government (like the situation today) - the causes of the GFC had been overseen by Labour for over 10 years. They were the regulators and they were the ones happy to turn a blind eye (no pun intended Mr Brown!) to all the lovely tax revenue generated by the astonishing banking profits. So when the GFC hit the government couldn't plausibly deny they "knew nothing". Of course they did. And people cottoned on to that.
Now - now we have had an un-paralleled economic hit due to a bug. Which is not even the evil Tories' fault - or even Johnson's. I didn't agree with the hysteria to save 100,000 people would would have mostly died soon anyway but there we are. But shutting down the economy for the best part of a year was always going to have consequences. And now we're seeing them. This is the result of satisfying all those screaming "Something must be done". It's ironic that a lot of commentators on here now bemoaning how Sunak can't do this or that, or give them free shit, were the same ones criticising the government for not locking down harder, faster and longer. (That's what she said).
Add the ongoing march to WW3 and an energy crisis which has been at least 40 years in the making and I'm struggling to see how any government could have done better.
It is bizzare where people think the money required for all the wished for increases in benefits and decreases in taxes are going to come from. The last 2 years have been unprecedented, millions of people were paid by the Government to stay at home for months and months. Yet people are thinking the Government still has a big pot of money to spray around.
Can Shell & BP pay for it all?
No, but the asset rich can and should pay much more than they do now.
You're confusing asset rich with cash rich. How can an "asset rich" person pay any more when the cash is locked in that asset? Unless you sell that asset, which is now less of value when crystallised because it'll be taxed more.
Just because someone lives in a property valued £1m doesn't make them "rich". They may earn £25k a year but it's just the house which has gone up in value since they've been there 15 years. Which is not their fault or in their control.
Have you heard of borrowing? Non asset rich people are quite familiar with it already.
Naah, you'll crash the whole property market. The rich will be fine, because they always are, but have you heard of poor people with mortgages?
Yay. We all know from experience Elections are won and lost on what happens on Twitter.
You're very attack dog this morning, have you been bitten by @BluestBlue? Because he had the gig when boris looked like an immortal God-Emperor and it was all plain sailing.
1997. don't know whether you were alive/dead/undead in those days. Now, Starmer is no Blair but then Johnson is no Major either, and I stand astonished at the relative innocence of what we thought of as tory sleaze then vs what we have now.
Yep - was alive in 1997 and it was actually my fist GE in which I could vote so I remember it well.
The dynamics are so very different, not only due to the characters involved. For one, the economy was on the up (in large part to Conservative economic policies which Labour vowed to maintain - spending at least). This allowed Blair to combine his astonishing political skill (and yes - charisma) with the knowledge that Labour were inheriting an economy which would allow them, in time, to promise the world. Which they did. All in the context of a huge global economic boom.
Yes there was Tory sleaze in '97, and yes the Tories had been in power for 18 years, but every Government has sleaze. Always. Including Labour from 1997 to 2010. Tory sleaze gets much more attention as, well, they're evil Tories innit. Labour do sleaze more on the quiet.
In 2010, which although global and largely out of the control of ANY government (like the situation today) - the causes of the GFC had been overseen by Labour for over 10 years. They were the regulators and they were the ones happy to turn a blind eye (no pun intended Mr Brown!) to all the lovely tax revenue generated by the astonishing banking profits. So when the GFC hit the government couldn't plausibly deny they "knew nothing". Of course they did. And people cottoned on to that.
Now - now we have had an un-paralleled economic hit due to a bug. Which is not even the evil Tories' fault - or even Johnson's. I didn't agree with the hysteria to save 100,000 people would would have mostly died soon anyway but there we are. But shutting down the economy for the best part of a year was always going to have consequences. And now we're seeing them. This is the result of satisfying all those screaming "Something must be done". It's ironic that a lot of commentators on here now bemoaning how Sunak can't do this or that, or give them free shit, were the same ones criticising the government for not locking down harder, faster and longer. (That's what she said).
Add the ongoing march to WW3 and an energy crisis which has been at least 40 years in the making and I'm struggling to see how any government could have done better.
It is bizzare where people think the money required for all the wished for increases in benefits and decreases in taxes are going to come from. The last 2 years have been unprecedented, millions of people were paid by the Government to stay at home for months and months. Yet people are thinking the Government still has a big pot of money to spray around.
Can Shell & BP pay for it all?
No, but the asset rich can and should pay much more than they do now.
You're confusing asset rich with cash rich. How can an "asset rich" person pay any more when the cash is locked in that asset? Unless you sell that asset, which is now less of value when crystallised because it'll be taxed more.
Just because someone lives in a property valued £1m doesn't make them "rich". They may earn £25k a year but it's just the house which has gone up in value since they've been there 15 years. Which is not their fault or in their control.
It has always been a mystery to me how you tax the value of a house when the person who lives in it may be on a low income. Are we suggesting that they be forced to sale their house to pay tax on it?
Amazing moment as Boris Johnson ambles up to Joe Biden after the leaders' photo at Nato, but as they begin to chat, Macron heads straight for the middle of the pair and splits them up. Whole international press room laughing. https://twitter.com/jessicaelgot/status/1506937514820517888
Yay. We all know from experience Elections are won and lost on what happens on Twitter.
You're very attack dog this morning, have you been bitten by @BluestBlue? Because he had the gig when boris looked like an immortal God-Emperor and it was all plain sailing.
1997. don't know whether you were alive/dead/undead in those days. Now, Starmer is no Blair but then Johnson is no Major either, and I stand astonished at the relative innocence of what we thought of as tory sleaze then vs what we have now.
Yep - was alive in 1997 and it was actually my fist GE in which I could vote so I remember it well.
The dynamics are so very different, not only due to the characters involved. For one, the economy was on the up (in large part to Conservative economic policies which Labour vowed to maintain - spending at least). This allowed Blair to combine his astonishing political skill (and yes - charisma) with the knowledge that Labour were inheriting an economy which would allow them, in time, to promise the world. Which they did. All in the context of a huge global economic boom.
Yes there was Tory sleaze in '97, and yes the Tories had been in power for 18 years, but every Government has sleaze. Always. Including Labour from 1997 to 2010. Tory sleaze gets much more attention as, well, they're evil Tories innit. Labour do sleaze more on the quiet.
In 2010, which although global and largely out of the control of ANY government (like the situation today) - the causes of the GFC had been overseen by Labour for over 10 years. They were the regulators and they were the ones happy to turn a blind eye (no pun intended Mr Brown!) to all the lovely tax revenue generated by the astonishing banking profits. So when the GFC hit the government couldn't plausibly deny they "knew nothing". Of course they did. And people cottoned on to that.
Now - now we have had an un-paralleled economic hit due to a bug. Which is not even the evil Tories' fault - or even Johnson's. I didn't agree with the hysteria to save 100,000 people would would have mostly died soon anyway but there we are. But shutting down the economy for the best part of a year was always going to have consequences. And now we're seeing them. This is the result of satisfying all those screaming "Something must be done". It's ironic that a lot of commentators on here now bemoaning how Sunak can't do this or that, or give them free shit, were the same ones criticising the government for not locking down harder, faster and longer. (That's what she said).
Add the ongoing march to WW3 and an energy crisis which has been at least 40 years in the making and I'm struggling to see how any government could have done better.
It is bizzare where people think the money required for all the wished for increases in benefits and decreases in taxes are going to come from. The last 2 years have been unprecedented, millions of people were paid by the Government to stay at home for months and months. Yet people are thinking the Government still has a big pot of money to spray around.
Can Shell & BP pay for it all?
No, but the asset rich can and should pay much more than they do now.
You realise that we are being taxed more than at any point since 1945?
Yay. We all know from experience Elections are won and lost on what happens on Twitter.
You're very attack dog this morning, have you been bitten by @BluestBlue? Because he had the gig when boris looked like an immortal God-Emperor and it was all plain sailing.
1997. don't know whether you were alive/dead/undead in those days. Now, Starmer is no Blair but then Johnson is no Major either, and I stand astonished at the relative innocence of what we thought of as tory sleaze then vs what we have now.
Yep - was alive in 1997 and it was actually my fist GE in which I could vote so I remember it well.
The dynamics are so very different, not only due to the characters involved. For one, the economy was on the up (in large part to Conservative economic policies which Labour vowed to maintain - spending at least). This allowed Blair to combine his astonishing political skill (and yes - charisma) with the knowledge that Labour were inheriting an economy which would allow them, in time, to promise the world. Which they did. All in the context of a huge global economic boom.
Yes there was Tory sleaze in '97, and yes the Tories had been in power for 18 years, but every Government has sleaze. Always. Including Labour from 1997 to 2010. Tory sleaze gets much more attention as, well, they're evil Tories innit. Labour do sleaze more on the quiet.
In 2010, which although global and largely out of the control of ANY government (like the situation today) - the causes of the GFC had been overseen by Labour for over 10 years. They were the regulators and they were the ones happy to turn a blind eye (no pun intended Mr Brown!) to all the lovely tax revenue generated by the astonishing banking profits. So when the GFC hit the government couldn't plausibly deny they "knew nothing". Of course they did. And people cottoned on to that.
Now - now we have had an un-paralleled economic hit due to a bug. Which is not even the evil Tories' fault - or even Johnson's. I didn't agree with the hysteria to save 100,000 people would would have mostly died soon anyway but there we are. But shutting down the economy for the best part of a year was always going to have consequences. And now we're seeing them. This is the result of satisfying all those screaming "Something must be done". It's ironic that a lot of commentators on here now bemoaning how Sunak can't do this or that, or give them free shit, were the same ones criticising the government for not locking down harder, faster and longer. (That's what she said).
Add the ongoing march to WW3 and an energy crisis which has been at least 40 years in the making and I'm struggling to see how any government could have done better.
It is bizzare where people think the money required for all the wished for increases in benefits and decreases in taxes are going to come from. The last 2 years have been unprecedented, millions of people were paid by the Government to stay at home for months and months. Yet people are thinking the Government still has a big pot of money to spray around.
Can Shell & BP pay for it all?
No, but the asset rich can and should pay much more than they do now.
You realise that we are being taxed more than at any point since 1945?
I would reduce taxes on earnings and increase them on assets. It is that ratio that I think is more wrong than the total amount raised.
Yay. We all know from experience Elections are won and lost on what happens on Twitter.
You're very attack dog this morning, have you been bitten by @BluestBlue? Because he had the gig when boris looked like an immortal God-Emperor and it was all plain sailing.
1997. don't know whether you were alive/dead/undead in those days. Now, Starmer is no Blair but then Johnson is no Major either, and I stand astonished at the relative innocence of what we thought of as tory sleaze then vs what we have now.
Yep - was alive in 1997 and it was actually my fist GE in which I could vote so I remember it well.
The dynamics are so very different, not only due to the characters involved. For one, the economy was on the up (in large part to Conservative economic policies which Labour vowed to maintain - spending at least). This allowed Blair to combine his astonishing political skill (and yes - charisma) with the knowledge that Labour were inheriting an economy which would allow them, in time, to promise the world. Which they did. All in the context of a huge global economic boom.
Yes there was Tory sleaze in '97, and yes the Tories had been in power for 18 years, but every Government has sleaze. Always. Including Labour from 1997 to 2010. Tory sleaze gets much more attention as, well, they're evil Tories innit. Labour do sleaze more on the quiet.
In 2010, which although global and largely out of the control of ANY government (like the situation today) - the causes of the GFC had been overseen by Labour for over 10 years. They were the regulators and they were the ones happy to turn a blind eye (no pun intended Mr Brown!) to all the lovely tax revenue generated by the astonishing banking profits. So when the GFC hit the government couldn't plausibly deny they "knew nothing". Of course they did. And people cottoned on to that.
Now - now we have had an un-paralleled economic hit due to a bug. Which is not even the evil Tories' fault - or even Johnson's. I didn't agree with the hysteria to save 100,000 people would would have mostly died soon anyway but there we are. But shutting down the economy for the best part of a year was always going to have consequences. And now we're seeing them. This is the result of satisfying all those screaming "Something must be done". It's ironic that a lot of commentators on here now bemoaning how Sunak can't do this or that, or give them free shit, were the same ones criticising the government for not locking down harder, faster and longer. (That's what she said).
Add the ongoing march to WW3 and an energy crisis which has been at least 40 years in the making and I'm struggling to see how any government could have done better.
It is bizzare where people think the money required for all the wished for increases in benefits and decreases in taxes are going to come from. The last 2 years have been unprecedented, millions of people were paid by the Government to stay at home for months and months. Yet people are thinking the Government still has a big pot of money to spray around.
Can Shell & BP pay for it all?
No, but the asset rich can and should pay much more than they do now.
You're confusing asset rich with cash rich. How can an "asset rich" person pay any more when the cash is locked in that asset? Unless you sell that asset, which is now less of value when crystallised because it'll be taxed more.
Just because someone lives in a property valued £1m doesn't make them "rich". They may earn £25k a year but it's just the house which has gone up in value since they've been there 15 years. Which is not their fault or in their control.
Have you heard of borrowing? Non asset rich people are quite familiar with it already.
Forcing people to take on debt to pay taxes? It's an interesting concept.
They can arrange their affairs as they wish. But for millionaires to bleat about cash flow problems when they can borrow at sub 2% I have absolutely zero sympathy.
NEW - the State Opening of Parliament will be on 10 May, Downing St has announced. The Queen will set out the government's plans to "grow our economy, cut the cost of living, make our streets safer and clear the covid backlogs". https://twitter.com/GuardianHeather/status/1506940318716936195
Yay. We all know from experience Elections are won and lost on what happens on Twitter.
You're very attack dog this morning, have you been bitten by @BluestBlue? Because he had the gig when boris looked like an immortal God-Emperor and it was all plain sailing.
1997. don't know whether you were alive/dead/undead in those days. Now, Starmer is no Blair but then Johnson is no Major either, and I stand astonished at the relative innocence of what we thought of as tory sleaze then vs what we have now.
Yep - was alive in 1997 and it was actually my fist GE in which I could vote so I remember it well.
The dynamics are so very different, not only due to the characters involved. For one, the economy was on the up (in large part to Conservative economic policies which Labour vowed to maintain - spending at least). This allowed Blair to combine his astonishing political skill (and yes - charisma) with the knowledge that Labour were inheriting an economy which would allow them, in time, to promise the world. Which they did. All in the context of a huge global economic boom.
Yes there was Tory sleaze in '97, and yes the Tories had been in power for 18 years, but every Government has sleaze. Always. Including Labour from 1997 to 2010. Tory sleaze gets much more attention as, well, they're evil Tories innit. Labour do sleaze more on the quiet.
In 2010, which although global and largely out of the control of ANY government (like the situation today) - the causes of the GFC had been overseen by Labour for over 10 years. They were the regulators and they were the ones happy to turn a blind eye (no pun intended Mr Brown!) to all the lovely tax revenue generated by the astonishing banking profits. So when the GFC hit the government couldn't plausibly deny they "knew nothing". Of course they did. And people cottoned on to that.
Now - now we have had an un-paralleled economic hit due to a bug. Which is not even the evil Tories' fault - or even Johnson's. I didn't agree with the hysteria to save 100,000 people would would have mostly died soon anyway but there we are. But shutting down the economy for the best part of a year was always going to have consequences. And now we're seeing them. This is the result of satisfying all those screaming "Something must be done". It's ironic that a lot of commentators on here now bemoaning how Sunak can't do this or that, or give them free shit, were the same ones criticising the government for not locking down harder, faster and longer. (That's what she said).
Add the ongoing march to WW3 and an energy crisis which has been at least 40 years in the making and I'm struggling to see how any government could have done better.
It is bizzare where people think the money required for all the wished for increases in benefits and decreases in taxes are going to come from. The last 2 years have been unprecedented, millions of people were paid by the Government to stay at home for months and months. Yet people are thinking the Government still has a big pot of money to spray around.
Can Shell & BP pay for it all?
No, but the asset rich can and should pay much more than they do now.
You realise that we are being taxed more than at any point since 1945?
Yay. We all know from experience Elections are won and lost on what happens on Twitter.
You're very attack dog this morning, have you been bitten by @BluestBlue? Because he had the gig when boris looked like an immortal God-Emperor and it was all plain sailing.
1997. don't know whether you were alive/dead/undead in those days. Now, Starmer is no Blair but then Johnson is no Major either, and I stand astonished at the relative innocence of what we thought of as tory sleaze then vs what we have now.
Yep - was alive in 1997 and it was actually my fist GE in which I could vote so I remember it well.
The dynamics are so very different, not only due to the characters involved. For one, the economy was on the up (in large part to Conservative economic policies which Labour vowed to maintain - spending at least). This allowed Blair to combine his astonishing political skill (and yes - charisma) with the knowledge that Labour were inheriting an economy which would allow them, in time, to promise the world. Which they did. All in the context of a huge global economic boom.
Yes there was Tory sleaze in '97, and yes the Tories had been in power for 18 years, but every Government has sleaze. Always. Including Labour from 1997 to 2010. Tory sleaze gets much more attention as, well, they're evil Tories innit. Labour do sleaze more on the quiet.
In 2010, which although global and largely out of the control of ANY government (like the situation today) - the causes of the GFC had been overseen by Labour for over 10 years. They were the regulators and they were the ones happy to turn a blind eye (no pun intended Mr Brown!) to all the lovely tax revenue generated by the astonishing banking profits. So when the GFC hit the government couldn't plausibly deny they "knew nothing". Of course they did. And people cottoned on to that.
Now - now we have had an un-paralleled economic hit due to a bug. Which is not even the evil Tories' fault - or even Johnson's. I didn't agree with the hysteria to save 100,000 people would would have mostly died soon anyway but there we are. But shutting down the economy for the best part of a year was always going to have consequences. And now we're seeing them. This is the result of satisfying all those screaming "Something must be done". It's ironic that a lot of commentators on here now bemoaning how Sunak can't do this or that, or give them free shit, were the same ones criticising the government for not locking down harder, faster and longer. (That's what she said).
Add the ongoing march to WW3 and an energy crisis which has been at least 40 years in the making and I'm struggling to see how any government could have done better.
It is bizzare where people think the money required for all the wished for increases in benefits and decreases in taxes are going to come from. The last 2 years have been unprecedented, millions of people were paid by the Government to stay at home for months and months. Yet people are thinking the Government still has a big pot of money to spray around.
Can Shell & BP pay for it all?
No, but the asset rich can and should pay much more than they do now.
You realise that we are being taxed more than at any point since 1945?
I would reduce taxes on earnings and increase them on assets. It is that ratio that I think is more wrong than the total amount raised.
Yay. We all know from experience Elections are won and lost on what happens on Twitter.
You're very attack dog this morning, have you been bitten by @BluestBlue? Because he had the gig when boris looked like an immortal God-Emperor and it was all plain sailing.
1997. don't know whether you were alive/dead/undead in those days. Now, Starmer is no Blair but then Johnson is no Major either, and I stand astonished at the relative innocence of what we thought of as tory sleaze then vs what we have now.
Yep - was alive in 1997 and it was actually my fist GE in which I could vote so I remember it well.
The dynamics are so very different, not only due to the characters involved. For one, the economy was on the up (in large part to Conservative economic policies which Labour vowed to maintain - spending at least). This allowed Blair to combine his astonishing political skill (and yes - charisma) with the knowledge that Labour were inheriting an economy which would allow them, in time, to promise the world. Which they did. All in the context of a huge global economic boom.
Yes there was Tory sleaze in '97, and yes the Tories had been in power for 18 years, but every Government has sleaze. Always. Including Labour from 1997 to 2010. Tory sleaze gets much more attention as, well, they're evil Tories innit. Labour do sleaze more on the quiet.
In 2010, which although global and largely out of the control of ANY government (like the situation today) - the causes of the GFC had been overseen by Labour for over 10 years. They were the regulators and they were the ones happy to turn a blind eye (no pun intended Mr Brown!) to all the lovely tax revenue generated by the astonishing banking profits. So when the GFC hit the government couldn't plausibly deny they "knew nothing". Of course they did. And people cottoned on to that.
Now - now we have had an un-paralleled economic hit due to a bug. Which is not even the evil Tories' fault - or even Johnson's. I didn't agree with the hysteria to save 100,000 people would would have mostly died soon anyway but there we are. But shutting down the economy for the best part of a year was always going to have consequences. And now we're seeing them. This is the result of satisfying all those screaming "Something must be done". It's ironic that a lot of commentators on here now bemoaning how Sunak can't do this or that, or give them free shit, were the same ones criticising the government for not locking down harder, faster and longer. (That's what she said).
Add the ongoing march to WW3 and an energy crisis which has been at least 40 years in the making and I'm struggling to see how any government could have done better.
It is bizzare where people think the money required for all the wished for increases in benefits and decreases in taxes are going to come from. The last 2 years have been unprecedented, millions of people were paid by the Government to stay at home for months and months. Yet people are thinking the Government still has a big pot of money to spray around.
Can Shell & BP pay for it all?
No, but the asset rich can and should pay much more than they do now.
You realise that we are being taxed more than at any point since 1945?
Yay. We all know from experience Elections are won and lost on what happens on Twitter.
You're very attack dog this morning, have you been bitten by @BluestBlue? Because he had the gig when boris looked like an immortal God-Emperor and it was all plain sailing.
1997. don't know whether you were alive/dead/undead in those days. Now, Starmer is no Blair but then Johnson is no Major either, and I stand astonished at the relative innocence of what we thought of as tory sleaze then vs what we have now.
Yep - was alive in 1997 and it was actually my fist GE in which I could vote so I remember it well.
The dynamics are so very different, not only due to the characters involved. For one, the economy was on the up (in large part to Conservative economic policies which Labour vowed to maintain - spending at least). This allowed Blair to combine his astonishing political skill (and yes - charisma) with the knowledge that Labour were inheriting an economy which would allow them, in time, to promise the world. Which they did. All in the context of a huge global economic boom.
Yes there was Tory sleaze in '97, and yes the Tories had been in power for 18 years, but every Government has sleaze. Always. Including Labour from 1997 to 2010. Tory sleaze gets much more attention as, well, they're evil Tories innit. Labour do sleaze more on the quiet.
In 2010, which although global and largely out of the control of ANY government (like the situation today) - the causes of the GFC had been overseen by Labour for over 10 years. They were the regulators and they were the ones happy to turn a blind eye (no pun intended Mr Brown!) to all the lovely tax revenue generated by the astonishing banking profits. So when the GFC hit the government couldn't plausibly deny they "knew nothing". Of course they did. And people cottoned on to that.
Now - now we have had an un-paralleled economic hit due to a bug. Which is not even the evil Tories' fault - or even Johnson's. I didn't agree with the hysteria to save 100,000 people would would have mostly died soon anyway but there we are. But shutting down the economy for the best part of a year was always going to have consequences. And now we're seeing them. This is the result of satisfying all those screaming "Something must be done". It's ironic that a lot of commentators on here now bemoaning how Sunak can't do this or that, or give them free shit, were the same ones criticising the government for not locking down harder, faster and longer. (That's what she said).
Add the ongoing march to WW3 and an energy crisis which has been at least 40 years in the making and I'm struggling to see how any government could have done better.
It is bizzare where people think the money required for all the wished for increases in benefits and decreases in taxes are going to come from. The last 2 years have been unprecedented, millions of people were paid by the Government to stay at home for months and months. Yet people are thinking the Government still has a big pot of money to spray around.
Can Shell & BP pay for it all?
No, but the asset rich can and should pay much more than they do now.
You realise that we are being taxed more than at any point since 1945?
I would reduce taxes on earnings and increase them on assets. It is that ratio that I think is more wrong than the total amount raised.
So you are advocating people selling their houses to pay tax on the value of the house?
Yay. We all know from experience Elections are won and lost on what happens on Twitter.
You're very attack dog this morning, have you been bitten by @BluestBlue? Because he had the gig when boris looked like an immortal God-Emperor and it was all plain sailing.
1997. don't know whether you were alive/dead/undead in those days. Now, Starmer is no Blair but then Johnson is no Major either, and I stand astonished at the relative innocence of what we thought of as tory sleaze then vs what we have now.
Yep - was alive in 1997 and it was actually my fist GE in which I could vote so I remember it well.
The dynamics are so very different, not only due to the characters involved. For one, the economy was on the up (in large part to Conservative economic policies which Labour vowed to maintain - spending at least). This allowed Blair to combine his astonishing political skill (and yes - charisma) with the knowledge that Labour were inheriting an economy which would allow them, in time, to promise the world. Which they did. All in the context of a huge global economic boom.
Yes there was Tory sleaze in '97, and yes the Tories had been in power for 18 years, but every Government has sleaze. Always. Including Labour from 1997 to 2010. Tory sleaze gets much more attention as, well, they're evil Tories innit. Labour do sleaze more on the quiet.
In 2010, which although global and largely out of the control of ANY government (like the situation today) - the causes of the GFC had been overseen by Labour for over 10 years. They were the regulators and they were the ones happy to turn a blind eye (no pun intended Mr Brown!) to all the lovely tax revenue generated by the astonishing banking profits. So when the GFC hit the government couldn't plausibly deny they "knew nothing". Of course they did. And people cottoned on to that.
Now - now we have had an un-paralleled economic hit due to a bug. Which is not even the evil Tories' fault - or even Johnson's. I didn't agree with the hysteria to save 100,000 people would would have mostly died soon anyway but there we are. But shutting down the economy for the best part of a year was always going to have consequences. And now we're seeing them. This is the result of satisfying all those screaming "Something must be done". It's ironic that a lot of commentators on here now bemoaning how Sunak can't do this or that, or give them free shit, were the same ones criticising the government for not locking down harder, faster and longer. (That's what she said).
Add the ongoing march to WW3 and an energy crisis which has been at least 40 years in the making and I'm struggling to see how any government could have done better.
It is bizzare where people think the money required for all the wished for increases in benefits and decreases in taxes are going to come from. The last 2 years have been unprecedented, millions of people were paid by the Government to stay at home for months and months. Yet people are thinking the Government still has a big pot of money to spray around.
Can Shell & BP pay for it all?
No, but the asset rich can and should pay much more than they do now.
You're confusing asset rich with cash rich. How can an "asset rich" person pay any more when the cash is locked in that asset? Unless you sell that asset, which is now less of value when crystallised because it'll be taxed more.
Just because someone lives in a property valued £1m doesn't make them "rich". They may earn £25k a year but it's just the house which has gone up in value since they've been there 15 years. Which is not their fault or in their control.
Have you heard of borrowing? Non asset rich people are quite familiar with it already.
Most borrowing is via mortgages or cars. And as they are collateralised against the asset value you are buying then by definition most borrowing is actually for people who have assets - or an increasing part of that asset as they pay off the borrowing.
So you borrow money to pay for taxes on an asset you are not taking wealth from? Borrowed money has to be paid back - you do realise this? So the more you borrow the more impoverished you become, just to pay taxes. And you can't sell the asset because it's become toxic and you may still be earning less than the national average.
Marvellous policy. What's needed to compliment it is a tax credit to boost the underlying cash earnings, so the loan to pay the property tax can be paid off. It would create thousands of non-jobs in some bleak civil service office somewhere to administer. And have the net result of generating bugger all more tax revenue.
Are you sure you're not a Labour economic advisor?
Yay. We all know from experience Elections are won and lost on what happens on Twitter.
You're very attack dog this morning, have you been bitten by @BluestBlue? Because he had the gig when boris looked like an immortal God-Emperor and it was all plain sailing.
1997. don't know whether you were alive/dead/undead in those days. Now, Starmer is no Blair but then Johnson is no Major either, and I stand astonished at the relative innocence of what we thought of as tory sleaze then vs what we have now.
Yep - was alive in 1997 and it was actually my fist GE in which I could vote so I remember it well.
The dynamics are so very different, not only due to the characters involved. For one, the economy was on the up (in large part to Conservative economic policies which Labour vowed to maintain - spending at least). This allowed Blair to combine his astonishing political skill (and yes - charisma) with the knowledge that Labour were inheriting an economy which would allow them, in time, to promise the world. Which they did. All in the context of a huge global economic boom.
Yes there was Tory sleaze in '97, and yes the Tories had been in power for 18 years, but every Government has sleaze. Always. Including Labour from 1997 to 2010. Tory sleaze gets much more attention as, well, they're evil Tories innit. Labour do sleaze more on the quiet.
In 2010, which although global and largely out of the control of ANY government (like the situation today) - the causes of the GFC had been overseen by Labour for over 10 years. They were the regulators and they were the ones happy to turn a blind eye (no pun intended Mr Brown!) to all the lovely tax revenue generated by the astonishing banking profits. So when the GFC hit the government couldn't plausibly deny they "knew nothing". Of course they did. And people cottoned on to that.
Now - now we have had an un-paralleled economic hit due to a bug. Which is not even the evil Tories' fault - or even Johnson's. I didn't agree with the hysteria to save 100,000 people would would have mostly died soon anyway but there we are. But shutting down the economy for the best part of a year was always going to have consequences. And now we're seeing them. This is the result of satisfying all those screaming "Something must be done". It's ironic that a lot of commentators on here now bemoaning how Sunak can't do this or that, or give them free shit, were the same ones criticising the government for not locking down harder, faster and longer. (That's what she said).
Add the ongoing march to WW3 and an energy crisis which has been at least 40 years in the making and I'm struggling to see how any government could have done better.
It is bizzare where people think the money required for all the wished for increases in benefits and decreases in taxes are going to come from. The last 2 years have been unprecedented, millions of people were paid by the Government to stay at home for months and months. Yet people are thinking the Government still has a big pot of money to spray around.
Can Shell & BP pay for it all?
No, but the asset rich can and should pay much more than they do now.
You're confusing asset rich with cash rich. How can an "asset rich" person pay any more when the cash is locked in that asset? Unless you sell that asset, which is now less of value when crystallised because it'll be taxed more.
Just because someone lives in a property valued £1m doesn't make them "rich". They may earn £25k a year but it's just the house which has gone up in value since they've been there 15 years. Which is not their fault or in their control.
Have you heard of borrowing? Non asset rich people are quite familiar with it already.
Naah, you'll crash the whole property market. The rich will be fine, because they always are, but have you heard of poor people with mortgages?
Sunak has spent the last two years building a brand rather than doing the hard political yards. His lack of experience is now very clear to see.
Johnson is safe because there is no better Conservative option. That should terrify the Tories and anyone who cares about the future of this country.
Out of interest what is the experience he is lacking?
Surely all Chancellors lack experience of being Chancellor unless they have been Chancellor before?
Or is his lack of experience a lack of experience in global finance? Because that’s clearly not the case and would rule out 99% of politicians from the role of that’s required.
Or is it lack of experience as an MP in which case should we only consider chancellors who have been an MP for a set number of terms?
Or is it lack of experience being chancellor during a two year global pandemic and then a European war? Maybe we should appoint only those who have previously had this experience?
Just trying to find out what experience we need to look for before appointing the next Chancellor of the Exchequer.
He lacks political experience. This is the first time in his political career he has come under serious, critical scrutiny - and it's showing. He has wasted two years on brand building.
So we need someone more “political”? Seeing things through the lens of what’s best “politically” rather than maybe (rightly or wrongly) trying to do things without the main concern with how it plays politically.
Maybe because for my sins I am more a fan of technocrats in technical roles that I think it would be better if governments were less political as more might get done if they aren’t primarily concerned with the political angle/reception.
I think over the last two years the brand building probably has taken up no more than 1% of his time at best - 9% trying to dodge conga lines through Downing Street and the rest I imagine trying to work through the shit show of covid.
BTW I’m not blindly defending his decisions as I was hoping for someone to come in and bring radical new approaches and it’s clearly not going to be him.
My suggestion is to have a minimum level of experience required to be eligible for a given cabinet role.
3 years served either as a minister or shadow minister within that specific department or 3 years on the relevant select committee.
What would happen, for example, if the Tories won the next election with a two seat majority, and all the people who have held those roles either lose their seats or have stepped down?
Yay. We all know from experience Elections are won and lost on what happens on Twitter.
You're very attack dog this morning, have you been bitten by @BluestBlue? Because he had the gig when boris looked like an immortal God-Emperor and it was all plain sailing.
1997. don't know whether you were alive/dead/undead in those days. Now, Starmer is no Blair but then Johnson is no Major either, and I stand astonished at the relative innocence of what we thought of as tory sleaze then vs what we have now.
Yep - was alive in 1997 and it was actually my fist GE in which I could vote so I remember it well.
The dynamics are so very different, not only due to the characters involved. For one, the economy was on the up (in large part to Conservative economic policies which Labour vowed to maintain - spending at least). This allowed Blair to combine his astonishing political skill (and yes - charisma) with the knowledge that Labour were inheriting an economy which would allow them, in time, to promise the world. Which they did. All in the context of a huge global economic boom.
Yes there was Tory sleaze in '97, and yes the Tories had been in power for 18 years, but every Government has sleaze. Always. Including Labour from 1997 to 2010. Tory sleaze gets much more attention as, well, they're evil Tories innit. Labour do sleaze more on the quiet.
In 2010, which although global and largely out of the control of ANY government (like the situation today) - the causes of the GFC had been overseen by Labour for over 10 years. They were the regulators and they were the ones happy to turn a blind eye (no pun intended Mr Brown!) to all the lovely tax revenue generated by the astonishing banking profits. So when the GFC hit the government couldn't plausibly deny they "knew nothing". Of course they did. And people cottoned on to that.
Now - now we have had an un-paralleled economic hit due to a bug. Which is not even the evil Tories' fault - or even Johnson's. I didn't agree with the hysteria to save 100,000 people would would have mostly died soon anyway but there we are. But shutting down the economy for the best part of a year was always going to have consequences. And now we're seeing them. This is the result of satisfying all those screaming "Something must be done". It's ironic that a lot of commentators on here now bemoaning how Sunak can't do this or that, or give them free shit, were the same ones criticising the government for not locking down harder, faster and longer. (That's what she said).
Add the ongoing march to WW3 and an energy crisis which has been at least 40 years in the making and I'm struggling to see how any government could have done better.
It is bizzare where people think the money required for all the wished for increases in benefits and decreases in taxes are going to come from. The last 2 years have been unprecedented, millions of people were paid by the Government to stay at home for months and months. Yet people are thinking the Government still has a big pot of money to spray around.
Can Shell & BP pay for it all?
No, but the asset rich can and should pay much more than they do now.
You realise that we are being taxed more than at any point since 1945?
Yay. We all know from experience Elections are won and lost on what happens on Twitter.
You're very attack dog this morning, have you been bitten by @BluestBlue? Because he had the gig when boris looked like an immortal God-Emperor and it was all plain sailing.
1997. don't know whether you were alive/dead/undead in those days. Now, Starmer is no Blair but then Johnson is no Major either, and I stand astonished at the relative innocence of what we thought of as tory sleaze then vs what we have now.
Yep - was alive in 1997 and it was actually my fist GE in which I could vote so I remember it well.
The dynamics are so very different, not only due to the characters involved. For one, the economy was on the up (in large part to Conservative economic policies which Labour vowed to maintain - spending at least). This allowed Blair to combine his astonishing political skill (and yes - charisma) with the knowledge that Labour were inheriting an economy which would allow them, in time, to promise the world. Which they did. All in the context of a huge global economic boom.
Yes there was Tory sleaze in '97, and yes the Tories had been in power for 18 years, but every Government has sleaze. Always. Including Labour from 1997 to 2010. Tory sleaze gets much more attention as, well, they're evil Tories innit. Labour do sleaze more on the quiet.
In 2010, which although global and largely out of the control of ANY government (like the situation today) - the causes of the GFC had been overseen by Labour for over 10 years. They were the regulators and they were the ones happy to turn a blind eye (no pun intended Mr Brown!) to all the lovely tax revenue generated by the astonishing banking profits. So when the GFC hit the government couldn't plausibly deny they "knew nothing". Of course they did. And people cottoned on to that.
Now - now we have had an un-paralleled economic hit due to a bug. Which is not even the evil Tories' fault - or even Johnson's. I didn't agree with the hysteria to save 100,000 people would would have mostly died soon anyway but there we are. But shutting down the economy for the best part of a year was always going to have consequences. And now we're seeing them. This is the result of satisfying all those screaming "Something must be done". It's ironic that a lot of commentators on here now bemoaning how Sunak can't do this or that, or give them free shit, were the same ones criticising the government for not locking down harder, faster and longer. (That's what she said).
Add the ongoing march to WW3 and an energy crisis which has been at least 40 years in the making and I'm struggling to see how any government could have done better.
It is bizzare where people think the money required for all the wished for increases in benefits and decreases in taxes are going to come from. The last 2 years have been unprecedented, millions of people were paid by the Government to stay at home for months and months. Yet people are thinking the Government still has a big pot of money to spray around.
Can Shell & BP pay for it all?
No, but the asset rich can and should pay much more than they do now.
You realise that we are being taxed more than at any point since 1945?
I would reduce taxes on earnings and increase them on assets. It is that ratio that I think is more wrong than the total amount raised.
So you are advocating people selling their houses to pay tax on the value of the house?
No. I encourage people to manage their own affairs however suits them best. I also encourage the government to tax assets more, specifically second home owners, including landlords, and the very wealthy (i.e. £5m or £10m +).
Yay. We all know from experience Elections are won and lost on what happens on Twitter.
You're very attack dog this morning, have you been bitten by @BluestBlue? Because he had the gig when boris looked like an immortal God-Emperor and it was all plain sailing.
1997. don't know whether you were alive/dead/undead in those days. Now, Starmer is no Blair but then Johnson is no Major either, and I stand astonished at the relative innocence of what we thought of as tory sleaze then vs what we have now.
Yep - was alive in 1997 and it was actually my fist GE in which I could vote so I remember it well.
The dynamics are so very different, not only due to the characters involved. For one, the economy was on the up (in large part to Conservative economic policies which Labour vowed to maintain - spending at least). This allowed Blair to combine his astonishing political skill (and yes - charisma) with the knowledge that Labour were inheriting an economy which would allow them, in time, to promise the world. Which they did. All in the context of a huge global economic boom.
Yes there was Tory sleaze in '97, and yes the Tories had been in power for 18 years, but every Government has sleaze. Always. Including Labour from 1997 to 2010. Tory sleaze gets much more attention as, well, they're evil Tories innit. Labour do sleaze more on the quiet.
In 2010, which although global and largely out of the control of ANY government (like the situation today) - the causes of the GFC had been overseen by Labour for over 10 years. They were the regulators and they were the ones happy to turn a blind eye (no pun intended Mr Brown!) to all the lovely tax revenue generated by the astonishing banking profits. So when the GFC hit the government couldn't plausibly deny they "knew nothing". Of course they did. And people cottoned on to that.
Now - now we have had an un-paralleled economic hit due to a bug. Which is not even the evil Tories' fault - or even Johnson's. I didn't agree with the hysteria to save 100,000 people would would have mostly died soon anyway but there we are. But shutting down the economy for the best part of a year was always going to have consequences. And now we're seeing them. This is the result of satisfying all those screaming "Something must be done". It's ironic that a lot of commentators on here now bemoaning how Sunak can't do this or that, or give them free shit, were the same ones criticising the government for not locking down harder, faster and longer. (That's what she said).
Add the ongoing march to WW3 and an energy crisis which has been at least 40 years in the making and I'm struggling to see how any government could have done better.
It is bizzare where people think the money required for all the wished for increases in benefits and decreases in taxes are going to come from. The last 2 years have been unprecedented, millions of people were paid by the Government to stay at home for months and months. Yet people are thinking the Government still has a big pot of money to spray around.
Can Shell & BP pay for it all?
No, but the asset rich can and should pay much more than they do now.
You realise that we are being taxed more than at any point since 1945?
Yay. We all know from experience Elections are won and lost on what happens on Twitter.
You're very attack dog this morning, have you been bitten by @BluestBlue? Because he had the gig when boris looked like an immortal God-Emperor and it was all plain sailing.
1997. don't know whether you were alive/dead/undead in those days. Now, Starmer is no Blair but then Johnson is no Major either, and I stand astonished at the relative innocence of what we thought of as tory sleaze then vs what we have now.
Yep - was alive in 1997 and it was actually my fist GE in which I could vote so I remember it well.
The dynamics are so very different, not only due to the characters involved. For one, the economy was on the up (in large part to Conservative economic policies which Labour vowed to maintain - spending at least). This allowed Blair to combine his astonishing political skill (and yes - charisma) with the knowledge that Labour were inheriting an economy which would allow them, in time, to promise the world. Which they did. All in the context of a huge global economic boom.
Yes there was Tory sleaze in '97, and yes the Tories had been in power for 18 years, but every Government has sleaze. Always. Including Labour from 1997 to 2010. Tory sleaze gets much more attention as, well, they're evil Tories innit. Labour do sleaze more on the quiet.
In 2010, which although global and largely out of the control of ANY government (like the situation today) - the causes of the GFC had been overseen by Labour for over 10 years. They were the regulators and they were the ones happy to turn a blind eye (no pun intended Mr Brown!) to all the lovely tax revenue generated by the astonishing banking profits. So when the GFC hit the government couldn't plausibly deny they "knew nothing". Of course they did. And people cottoned on to that.
Now - now we have had an un-paralleled economic hit due to a bug. Which is not even the evil Tories' fault - or even Johnson's. I didn't agree with the hysteria to save 100,000 people would would have mostly died soon anyway but there we are. But shutting down the economy for the best part of a year was always going to have consequences. And now we're seeing them. This is the result of satisfying all those screaming "Something must be done". It's ironic that a lot of commentators on here now bemoaning how Sunak can't do this or that, or give them free shit, were the same ones criticising the government for not locking down harder, faster and longer. (That's what she said).
Add the ongoing march to WW3 and an energy crisis which has been at least 40 years in the making and I'm struggling to see how any government could have done better.
It is bizzare where people think the money required for all the wished for increases in benefits and decreases in taxes are going to come from. The last 2 years have been unprecedented, millions of people were paid by the Government to stay at home for months and months. Yet people are thinking the Government still has a big pot of money to spray around.
Can Shell & BP pay for it all?
No, but the asset rich can and should pay much more than they do now.
You realise that we are being taxed more than at any point since 1945?
I would reduce taxes on earnings and increase them on assets. It is that ratio that I think is more wrong than the total amount raised.
You'd have to really stress that first bit to have a chance of selling it, I think.
Brother in Law's just texted me. Not a happy bunny. Petrol station near his house in Notts put petrol up 6p this morning, wiping out Sunak's short-lived cut.
The government is like a rabbit in the headlights. It seems incapable of recognising what's coming. Bonkers. It's going to be brutal. And it's going to hit everyone, including a lot of the Tory pensioner base. And they don't seem to care.
I suspect they know what is coming.
The issue is there is very little they can do about it.
This was always the risk with QE (which in defence of the BoE they recognised and pulled back as early as they could).
Fundamentally there is very little/no money. We’ve overspent for a generation. Most of government borrowing in recent years has been from the BoE. And printing money in an inflationary environment fuels the problem.
Basically we had weak structural position + crisis spending for 2 years + external shock and massive energy price shock.
It’s awful. It’s going to be awful. And there is fuck all the government can do to make it better
I wonder whether Rishi should have been upfront and not tried to pretend he can do something he can’t.
The wealth is going to have to be re-extracted from wealthy homeowners. Sorry tories.
Yes, but that’s not something that can be done in a few weeks. Major structural change takes thought and planning.
Surely everything can be solved by a windfall tax punishing oil and gas companies for recovering from the pandemic? That's what Reeves said yesterday.
Reeves is an amateur compared to Ed Davey.
His interview with Mishal Hussein this morning was good.
He wants a windfall tax on oil and gas companies.
MH says that’s fine, you take a lump now, what happens when they leave the UK to avoid this risk in future as we will lose their tax returns.
ED says they won’t leave because the North Sea is their biggest business…..
MH pointed out to him that the Lib Dems want to stop oil and gas production in the North Sea to which ED says “oh there are decades left of that - not if you stop it Ed and lose the revenue.
ED asked about investment by oil and gas companies in new technology says that we shouldn’t be relying on them and there is billions waiting to be invested by other companies in clean energy (not sure what’s stopping them but there you go).
Apparently the oil companies are bad because they “pushed up the bidding” on sea floor auction for wind turbines (so the exchequer benefits?) which surely shows the oil cos are trying to invest in green energy.
The underlying problem is that work and business are already heavily taxed.
Which means that to raise money you can either tax consumption - difficult when prices are rising and when voters like consuming.
Or you can tax wealth, in particular property wealth.
Something which would certainly hit Ed Davey's Kingston & Surbiton hard.
Property wealth is fairy gold. It doesn't make an owner occupier any richer, and if you start taxing it it will collapse in value.
Trouble is that we have spent getting on for 40 years getting excited about fairy gold and rewarding politicians who give us more of the stuff. The eventual realisation that it was fairy gold and that its pusuit has distracted us from working for the real thing was inevitable and inevitably ugly. I don't think we're there yet, either.
The best we can hope for now is a government that a) doesn't make things worse and b) distributes the pain in the least cruel way possible. Does that sound like the incumbents?
Yay. We all know from experience Elections are won and lost on what happens on Twitter.
You're very attack dog this morning, have you been bitten by @BluestBlue? Because he had the gig when boris looked like an immortal God-Emperor and it was all plain sailing.
1997. don't know whether you were alive/dead/undead in those days. Now, Starmer is no Blair but then Johnson is no Major either, and I stand astonished at the relative innocence of what we thought of as tory sleaze then vs what we have now.
Yep - was alive in 1997 and it was actually my fist GE in which I could vote so I remember it well.
The dynamics are so very different, not only due to the characters involved. For one, the economy was on the up (in large part to Conservative economic policies which Labour vowed to maintain - spending at least). This allowed Blair to combine his astonishing political skill (and yes - charisma) with the knowledge that Labour were inheriting an economy which would allow them, in time, to promise the world. Which they did. All in the context of a huge global economic boom.
Yes there was Tory sleaze in '97, and yes the Tories had been in power for 18 years, but every Government has sleaze. Always. Including Labour from 1997 to 2010. Tory sleaze gets much more attention as, well, they're evil Tories innit. Labour do sleaze more on the quiet.
In 2010, which although global and largely out of the control of ANY government (like the situation today) - the causes of the GFC had been overseen by Labour for over 10 years. They were the regulators and they were the ones happy to turn a blind eye (no pun intended Mr Brown!) to all the lovely tax revenue generated by the astonishing banking profits. So when the GFC hit the government couldn't plausibly deny they "knew nothing". Of course they did. And people cottoned on to that.
Now - now we have had an un-paralleled economic hit due to a bug. Which is not even the evil Tories' fault - or even Johnson's. I didn't agree with the hysteria to save 100,000 people would would have mostly died soon anyway but there we are. But shutting down the economy for the best part of a year was always going to have consequences. And now we're seeing them. This is the result of satisfying all those screaming "Something must be done". It's ironic that a lot of commentators on here now bemoaning how Sunak can't do this or that, or give them free shit, were the same ones criticising the government for not locking down harder, faster and longer. (That's what she said).
Add the ongoing march to WW3 and an energy crisis which has been at least 40 years in the making and I'm struggling to see how any government could have done better.
It is bizzare where people think the money required for all the wished for increases in benefits and decreases in taxes are going to come from. The last 2 years have been unprecedented, millions of people were paid by the Government to stay at home for months and months. Yet people are thinking the Government still has a big pot of money to spray around.
Can Shell & BP pay for it all?
No, but the asset rich can and should pay much more than they do now.
You realise that we are being taxed more than at any point since 1945?
Yay. We all know from experience Elections are won and lost on what happens on Twitter.
You're very attack dog this morning, have you been bitten by @BluestBlue? Because he had the gig when boris looked like an immortal God-Emperor and it was all plain sailing.
1997. don't know whether you were alive/dead/undead in those days. Now, Starmer is no Blair but then Johnson is no Major either, and I stand astonished at the relative innocence of what we thought of as tory sleaze then vs what we have now.
Yep - was alive in 1997 and it was actually my fist GE in which I could vote so I remember it well.
The dynamics are so very different, not only due to the characters involved. For one, the economy was on the up (in large part to Conservative economic policies which Labour vowed to maintain - spending at least). This allowed Blair to combine his astonishing political skill (and yes - charisma) with the knowledge that Labour were inheriting an economy which would allow them, in time, to promise the world. Which they did. All in the context of a huge global economic boom.
Yes there was Tory sleaze in '97, and yes the Tories had been in power for 18 years, but every Government has sleaze. Always. Including Labour from 1997 to 2010. Tory sleaze gets much more attention as, well, they're evil Tories innit. Labour do sleaze more on the quiet.
In 2010, which although global and largely out of the control of ANY government (like the situation today) - the causes of the GFC had been overseen by Labour for over 10 years. They were the regulators and they were the ones happy to turn a blind eye (no pun intended Mr Brown!) to all the lovely tax revenue generated by the astonishing banking profits. So when the GFC hit the government couldn't plausibly deny they "knew nothing". Of course they did. And people cottoned on to that.
Now - now we have had an un-paralleled economic hit due to a bug. Which is not even the evil Tories' fault - or even Johnson's. I didn't agree with the hysteria to save 100,000 people would would have mostly died soon anyway but there we are. But shutting down the economy for the best part of a year was always going to have consequences. And now we're seeing them. This is the result of satisfying all those screaming "Something must be done". It's ironic that a lot of commentators on here now bemoaning how Sunak can't do this or that, or give them free shit, were the same ones criticising the government for not locking down harder, faster and longer. (That's what she said).
Add the ongoing march to WW3 and an energy crisis which has been at least 40 years in the making and I'm struggling to see how any government could have done better.
It is bizzare where people think the money required for all the wished for increases in benefits and decreases in taxes are going to come from. The last 2 years have been unprecedented, millions of people were paid by the Government to stay at home for months and months. Yet people are thinking the Government still has a big pot of money to spray around.
Can Shell & BP pay for it all?
No, but the asset rich can and should pay much more than they do now.
You realise that we are being taxed more than at any point since 1945?
I would reduce taxes on earnings and increase them on assets. It is that ratio that I think is more wrong than the total amount raised.
You'd have to really stress that first bit to have a chance of selling it, I think.
NEW - the State Opening of Parliament will be on 10 May, Downing St has announced. The Queen will set out the government's plans to "grow our economy, cut the cost of living, make our streets safer and clear the covid backlogs". https://twitter.com/GuardianHeather/status/1506940318716936195
She'll be getting around in a powered exoskeleton by then.
Yay. We all know from experience Elections are won and lost on what happens on Twitter.
You're very attack dog this morning, have you been bitten by @BluestBlue? Because he had the gig when boris looked like an immortal God-Emperor and it was all plain sailing.
1997. don't know whether you were alive/dead/undead in those days. Now, Starmer is no Blair but then Johnson is no Major either, and I stand astonished at the relative innocence of what we thought of as tory sleaze then vs what we have now.
Yep - was alive in 1997 and it was actually my fist GE in which I could vote so I remember it well.
The dynamics are so very different, not only due to the characters involved. For one, the economy was on the up (in large part to Conservative economic policies which Labour vowed to maintain - spending at least). This allowed Blair to combine his astonishing political skill (and yes - charisma) with the knowledge that Labour were inheriting an economy which would allow them, in time, to promise the world. Which they did. All in the context of a huge global economic boom.
Yes there was Tory sleaze in '97, and yes the Tories had been in power for 18 years, but every Government has sleaze. Always. Including Labour from 1997 to 2010. Tory sleaze gets much more attention as, well, they're evil Tories innit. Labour do sleaze more on the quiet.
In 2010, which although global and largely out of the control of ANY government (like the situation today) - the causes of the GFC had been overseen by Labour for over 10 years. They were the regulators and they were the ones happy to turn a blind eye (no pun intended Mr Brown!) to all the lovely tax revenue generated by the astonishing banking profits. So when the GFC hit the government couldn't plausibly deny they "knew nothing". Of course they did. And people cottoned on to that.
Now - now we have had an un-paralleled economic hit due to a bug. Which is not even the evil Tories' fault - or even Johnson's. I didn't agree with the hysteria to save 100,000 people would would have mostly died soon anyway but there we are. But shutting down the economy for the best part of a year was always going to have consequences. And now we're seeing them. This is the result of satisfying all those screaming "Something must be done". It's ironic that a lot of commentators on here now bemoaning how Sunak can't do this or that, or give them free shit, were the same ones criticising the government for not locking down harder, faster and longer. (That's what she said).
Add the ongoing march to WW3 and an energy crisis which has been at least 40 years in the making and I'm struggling to see how any government could have done better.
It is bizzare where people think the money required for all the wished for increases in benefits and decreases in taxes are going to come from. The last 2 years have been unprecedented, millions of people were paid by the Government to stay at home for months and months. Yet people are thinking the Government still has a big pot of money to spray around.
Can Shell & BP pay for it all?
No, but the asset rich can and should pay much more than they do now.
You're confusing asset rich with cash rich. How can an "asset rich" person pay any more when the cash is locked in that asset? Unless you sell that asset, which is now less of value when crystallised because it'll be taxed more.
Just because someone lives in a property valued £1m doesn't make them "rich". They may earn £25k a year but it's just the house which has gone up in value since they've been there 15 years. Which is not their fault or in their control.
Have you heard of borrowing? Non asset rich people are quite familiar with it already.
Forcing people to take on debt to pay taxes? It's an interesting concept.
They can arrange their affairs as they wish. But for millionaires to bleat about cash flow problems when they can borrow at sub 2% I have absolutely zero sympathy.
1. Millionaire is a silly expression these days
2. You just asked "Have you heard of borrowing," but you yourself seem to have only the very vaguest grasp ofthe concept. Lenders in my experience like to see evidence of cash flow from which repayments can be made before hey put their hands in their pockets
Don't think I don't sympathise with your broad position, I am all for a one-off levy on financial assets, but I think your view is distorted by housing envy.
NEW - the State Opening of Parliament will be on 10 May, Downing St has announced. The Queen will set out the government's plans to "grow our economy, cut the cost of living, make our streets safer and clear the covid backlogs". https://twitter.com/GuardianHeather/status/1506940318716936195
She'll be getting around in a powered exoskeleton by then.
Maybe she'll organise a party the night before and Boris will find himself sitting alone.
Yay. We all know from experience Elections are won and lost on what happens on Twitter.
You're very attack dog this morning, have you been bitten by @BluestBlue? Because he had the gig when boris looked like an immortal God-Emperor and it was all plain sailing.
1997. don't know whether you were alive/dead/undead in those days. Now, Starmer is no Blair but then Johnson is no Major either, and I stand astonished at the relative innocence of what we thought of as tory sleaze then vs what we have now.
Yep - was alive in 1997 and it was actually my fist GE in which I could vote so I remember it well.
The dynamics are so very different, not only due to the characters involved. For one, the economy was on the up (in large part to Conservative economic policies which Labour vowed to maintain - spending at least). This allowed Blair to combine his astonishing political skill (and yes - charisma) with the knowledge that Labour were inheriting an economy which would allow them, in time, to promise the world. Which they did. All in the context of a huge global economic boom.
Yes there was Tory sleaze in '97, and yes the Tories had been in power for 18 years, but every Government has sleaze. Always. Including Labour from 1997 to 2010. Tory sleaze gets much more attention as, well, they're evil Tories innit. Labour do sleaze more on the quiet.
In 2010, which although global and largely out of the control of ANY government (like the situation today) - the causes of the GFC had been overseen by Labour for over 10 years. They were the regulators and they were the ones happy to turn a blind eye (no pun intended Mr Brown!) to all the lovely tax revenue generated by the astonishing banking profits. So when the GFC hit the government couldn't plausibly deny they "knew nothing". Of course they did. And people cottoned on to that.
Now - now we have had an un-paralleled economic hit due to a bug. Which is not even the evil Tories' fault - or even Johnson's. I didn't agree with the hysteria to save 100,000 people would would have mostly died soon anyway but there we are. But shutting down the economy for the best part of a year was always going to have consequences. And now we're seeing them. This is the result of satisfying all those screaming "Something must be done". It's ironic that a lot of commentators on here now bemoaning how Sunak can't do this or that, or give them free shit, were the same ones criticising the government for not locking down harder, faster and longer. (That's what she said).
Add the ongoing march to WW3 and an energy crisis which has been at least 40 years in the making and I'm struggling to see how any government could have done better.
It is bizzare where people think the money required for all the wished for increases in benefits and decreases in taxes are going to come from. The last 2 years have been unprecedented, millions of people were paid by the Government to stay at home for months and months. Yet people are thinking the Government still has a big pot of money to spray around.
Can Shell & BP pay for it all?
No, but the asset rich can and should pay much more than they do now.
You realise that we are being taxed more than at any point since 1945?
Yay. We all know from experience Elections are won and lost on what happens on Twitter.
You're very attack dog this morning, have you been bitten by @BluestBlue? Because he had the gig when boris looked like an immortal God-Emperor and it was all plain sailing.
1997. don't know whether you were alive/dead/undead in those days. Now, Starmer is no Blair but then Johnson is no Major either, and I stand astonished at the relative innocence of what we thought of as tory sleaze then vs what we have now.
Yep - was alive in 1997 and it was actually my fist GE in which I could vote so I remember it well.
The dynamics are so very different, not only due to the characters involved. For one, the economy was on the up (in large part to Conservative economic policies which Labour vowed to maintain - spending at least). This allowed Blair to combine his astonishing political skill (and yes - charisma) with the knowledge that Labour were inheriting an economy which would allow them, in time, to promise the world. Which they did. All in the context of a huge global economic boom.
Yes there was Tory sleaze in '97, and yes the Tories had been in power for 18 years, but every Government has sleaze. Always. Including Labour from 1997 to 2010. Tory sleaze gets much more attention as, well, they're evil Tories innit. Labour do sleaze more on the quiet.
In 2010, which although global and largely out of the control of ANY government (like the situation today) - the causes of the GFC had been overseen by Labour for over 10 years. They were the regulators and they were the ones happy to turn a blind eye (no pun intended Mr Brown!) to all the lovely tax revenue generated by the astonishing banking profits. So when the GFC hit the government couldn't plausibly deny they "knew nothing". Of course they did. And people cottoned on to that.
Now - now we have had an un-paralleled economic hit due to a bug. Which is not even the evil Tories' fault - or even Johnson's. I didn't agree with the hysteria to save 100,000 people would would have mostly died soon anyway but there we are. But shutting down the economy for the best part of a year was always going to have consequences. And now we're seeing them. This is the result of satisfying all those screaming "Something must be done". It's ironic that a lot of commentators on here now bemoaning how Sunak can't do this or that, or give them free shit, were the same ones criticising the government for not locking down harder, faster and longer. (That's what she said).
Add the ongoing march to WW3 and an energy crisis which has been at least 40 years in the making and I'm struggling to see how any government could have done better.
It is bizzare where people think the money required for all the wished for increases in benefits and decreases in taxes are going to come from. The last 2 years have been unprecedented, millions of people were paid by the Government to stay at home for months and months. Yet people are thinking the Government still has a big pot of money to spray around.
Can Shell & BP pay for it all?
No, but the asset rich can and should pay much more than they do now.
You realise that we are being taxed more than at any point since 1945?
I would reduce taxes on earnings and increase them on assets. It is that ratio that I think is more wrong than the total amount raised.
So you are advocating people selling their houses to pay tax on the value of the house?
No. I encourage people to manage their own affairs however suits them best. I also encourage the government to tax assets more, specifically second home owners, including landlords, and the very wealthy (i.e. £5m or £10m +).
Yay. We all know from experience Elections are won and lost on what happens on Twitter.
You're very attack dog this morning, have you been bitten by @BluestBlue? Because he had the gig when boris looked like an immortal God-Emperor and it was all plain sailing.
1997. don't know whether you were alive/dead/undead in those days. Now, Starmer is no Blair but then Johnson is no Major either, and I stand astonished at the relative innocence of what we thought of as tory sleaze then vs what we have now.
Yep - was alive in 1997 and it was actually my fist GE in which I could vote so I remember it well.
The dynamics are so very different, not only due to the characters involved. For one, the economy was on the up (in large part to Conservative economic policies which Labour vowed to maintain - spending at least). This allowed Blair to combine his astonishing political skill (and yes - charisma) with the knowledge that Labour were inheriting an economy which would allow them, in time, to promise the world. Which they did. All in the context of a huge global economic boom.
Yes there was Tory sleaze in '97, and yes the Tories had been in power for 18 years, but every Government has sleaze. Always. Including Labour from 1997 to 2010. Tory sleaze gets much more attention as, well, they're evil Tories innit. Labour do sleaze more on the quiet.
In 2010, which although global and largely out of the control of ANY government (like the situation today) - the causes of the GFC had been overseen by Labour for over 10 years. They were the regulators and they were the ones happy to turn a blind eye (no pun intended Mr Brown!) to all the lovely tax revenue generated by the astonishing banking profits. So when the GFC hit the government couldn't plausibly deny they "knew nothing". Of course they did. And people cottoned on to that.
Now - now we have had an un-paralleled economic hit due to a bug. Which is not even the evil Tories' fault - or even Johnson's. I didn't agree with the hysteria to save 100,000 people would would have mostly died soon anyway but there we are. But shutting down the economy for the best part of a year was always going to have consequences. And now we're seeing them. This is the result of satisfying all those screaming "Something must be done". It's ironic that a lot of commentators on here now bemoaning how Sunak can't do this or that, or give them free shit, were the same ones criticising the government for not locking down harder, faster and longer. (That's what she said).
Add the ongoing march to WW3 and an energy crisis which has been at least 40 years in the making and I'm struggling to see how any government could have done better.
It is bizzare where people think the money required for all the wished for increases in benefits and decreases in taxes are going to come from. The last 2 years have been unprecedented, millions of people were paid by the Government to stay at home for months and months. Yet people are thinking the Government still has a big pot of money to spray around.
Can Shell & BP pay for it all?
No, but the asset rich can and should pay much more than they do now.
You're confusing asset rich with cash rich. How can an "asset rich" person pay any more when the cash is locked in that asset? Unless you sell that asset, which is now less of value when crystallised because it'll be taxed more.
Just because someone lives in a property valued £1m doesn't make them "rich". They may earn £25k a year but it's just the house which has gone up in value since they've been there 15 years. Which is not their fault or in their control.
Have you heard of borrowing? Non asset rich people are quite familiar with it already.
Naah, you'll crash the whole property market. The rich will be fine, because they always are, but have you heard of poor people with mortgages?
And that wouldn't be the only benefit.
What, screwing poor people with mortgages? They being the eggs in the omelette?
Amazing moment as Boris Johnson ambles up to Joe Biden after the leaders' photo at Nato, but as they begin to chat, Macron heads straight for the middle of the pair and splits them up. Whole international press room laughing. https://twitter.com/jessicaelgot/status/1506937514820517888
Sunak has spent the last two years building a brand rather than doing the hard political yards. His lack of experience is now very clear to see.
Johnson is safe because there is no better Conservative option. That should terrify the Tories and anyone who cares about the future of this country.
Out of interest what is the experience he is lacking?
Surely all Chancellors lack experience of being Chancellor unless they have been Chancellor before?
Or is his lack of experience a lack of experience in global finance? Because that’s clearly not the case and would rule out 99% of politicians from the role of that’s required.
Or is it lack of experience as an MP in which case should we only consider chancellors who have been an MP for a set number of terms?
Or is it lack of experience being chancellor during a two year global pandemic and then a European war? Maybe we should appoint only those who have previously had this experience?
Just trying to find out what experience we need to look for before appointing the next Chancellor of the Exchequer.
He lacks political experience. This is the first time in his political career he has come under serious, critical scrutiny - and it's showing. He has wasted two years on brand building.
So we need someone more “political”? Seeing things through the lens of what’s best “politically” rather than maybe (rightly or wrongly) trying to do things without the main concern with how it plays politically.
Maybe because for my sins I am more a fan of technocrats in technical roles that I think it would be better if governments were less political as more might get done if they aren’t primarily concerned with the political angle/reception.
I think over the last two years the brand building probably has taken up no more than 1% of his time at best - 9% trying to dodge conga lines through Downing Street and the rest I imagine trying to work through the shit show of covid.
BTW I’m not blindly defending his decisions as I was hoping for someone to come in and bring radical new approaches and it’s clearly not going to be him.
My suggestion is to have a minimum level of experience required to be eligible for a given cabinet role.
3 years served either as a minister or shadow minister within that specific department or 3 years on the relevant select committee.
What would happen, for example, if the Tories won the next election with a two seat majority, and all the people who have held those roles either lose their seats or have stepped down?
Unlikely as there are loads of junior minister roles. So for Justice there are 7 Tories serving currently plus 6 on the select committee. And others who have served in those roles previously as well, so maybe 20-25 odd Tories would be qualified to serve as Justice Secretary under my proposal.
Yay. We all know from experience Elections are won and lost on what happens on Twitter.
You're very attack dog this morning, have you been bitten by @BluestBlue? Because he had the gig when boris looked like an immortal God-Emperor and it was all plain sailing.
1997. don't know whether you were alive/dead/undead in those days. Now, Starmer is no Blair but then Johnson is no Major either, and I stand astonished at the relative innocence of what we thought of as tory sleaze then vs what we have now.
Yep - was alive in 1997 and it was actually my fist GE in which I could vote so I remember it well.
The dynamics are so very different, not only due to the characters involved. For one, the economy was on the up (in large part to Conservative economic policies which Labour vowed to maintain - spending at least). This allowed Blair to combine his astonishing political skill (and yes - charisma) with the knowledge that Labour were inheriting an economy which would allow them, in time, to promise the world. Which they did. All in the context of a huge global economic boom.
Yes there was Tory sleaze in '97, and yes the Tories had been in power for 18 years, but every Government has sleaze. Always. Including Labour from 1997 to 2010. Tory sleaze gets much more attention as, well, they're evil Tories innit. Labour do sleaze more on the quiet.
In 2010, which although global and largely out of the control of ANY government (like the situation today) - the causes of the GFC had been overseen by Labour for over 10 years. They were the regulators and they were the ones happy to turn a blind eye (no pun intended Mr Brown!) to all the lovely tax revenue generated by the astonishing banking profits. So when the GFC hit the government couldn't plausibly deny they "knew nothing". Of course they did. And people cottoned on to that.
Now - now we have had an un-paralleled economic hit due to a bug. Which is not even the evil Tories' fault - or even Johnson's. I didn't agree with the hysteria to save 100,000 people would would have mostly died soon anyway but there we are. But shutting down the economy for the best part of a year was always going to have consequences. And now we're seeing them. This is the result of satisfying all those screaming "Something must be done". It's ironic that a lot of commentators on here now bemoaning how Sunak can't do this or that, or give them free shit, were the same ones criticising the government for not locking down harder, faster and longer. (That's what she said).
Add the ongoing march to WW3 and an energy crisis which has been at least 40 years in the making and I'm struggling to see how any government could have done better.
It is bizzare where people think the money required for all the wished for increases in benefits and decreases in taxes are going to come from. The last 2 years have been unprecedented, millions of people were paid by the Government to stay at home for months and months. Yet people are thinking the Government still has a big pot of money to spray around.
Can Shell & BP pay for it all?
No, but the asset rich can and should pay much more than they do now.
You realise that we are being taxed more than at any point since 1945?
Yay. We all know from experience Elections are won and lost on what happens on Twitter.
You're very attack dog this morning, have you been bitten by @BluestBlue? Because he had the gig when boris looked like an immortal God-Emperor and it was all plain sailing.
1997. don't know whether you were alive/dead/undead in those days. Now, Starmer is no Blair but then Johnson is no Major either, and I stand astonished at the relative innocence of what we thought of as tory sleaze then vs what we have now.
Yep - was alive in 1997 and it was actually my fist GE in which I could vote so I remember it well.
The dynamics are so very different, not only due to the characters involved. For one, the economy was on the up (in large part to Conservative economic policies which Labour vowed to maintain - spending at least). This allowed Blair to combine his astonishing political skill (and yes - charisma) with the knowledge that Labour were inheriting an economy which would allow them, in time, to promise the world. Which they did. All in the context of a huge global economic boom.
Yes there was Tory sleaze in '97, and yes the Tories had been in power for 18 years, but every Government has sleaze. Always. Including Labour from 1997 to 2010. Tory sleaze gets much more attention as, well, they're evil Tories innit. Labour do sleaze more on the quiet.
In 2010, which although global and largely out of the control of ANY government (like the situation today) - the causes of the GFC had been overseen by Labour for over 10 years. They were the regulators and they were the ones happy to turn a blind eye (no pun intended Mr Brown!) to all the lovely tax revenue generated by the astonishing banking profits. So when the GFC hit the government couldn't plausibly deny they "knew nothing". Of course they did. And people cottoned on to that.
Now - now we have had an un-paralleled economic hit due to a bug. Which is not even the evil Tories' fault - or even Johnson's. I didn't agree with the hysteria to save 100,000 people would would have mostly died soon anyway but there we are. But shutting down the economy for the best part of a year was always going to have consequences. And now we're seeing them. This is the result of satisfying all those screaming "Something must be done". It's ironic that a lot of commentators on here now bemoaning how Sunak can't do this or that, or give them free shit, were the same ones criticising the government for not locking down harder, faster and longer. (That's what she said).
Add the ongoing march to WW3 and an energy crisis which has been at least 40 years in the making and I'm struggling to see how any government could have done better.
It is bizzare where people think the money required for all the wished for increases in benefits and decreases in taxes are going to come from. The last 2 years have been unprecedented, millions of people were paid by the Government to stay at home for months and months. Yet people are thinking the Government still has a big pot of money to spray around.
Can Shell & BP pay for it all?
No, but the asset rich can and should pay much more than they do now.
You realise that we are being taxed more than at any point since 1945?
I would reduce taxes on earnings and increase them on assets. It is that ratio that I think is more wrong than the total amount raised.
So you are advocating people selling their houses to pay tax on the value of the house?
It doesn't have to apply to first home, of course. I'm not against an asset tax. It encourages making assets work (and then also paying tax on the resultant earnings) rather than just taking capital out of the economy.
Yay. We all know from experience Elections are won and lost on what happens on Twitter.
You're very attack dog this morning, have you been bitten by @BluestBlue? Because he had the gig when boris looked like an immortal God-Emperor and it was all plain sailing.
1997. don't know whether you were alive/dead/undead in those days. Now, Starmer is no Blair but then Johnson is no Major either, and I stand astonished at the relative innocence of what we thought of as tory sleaze then vs what we have now.
Yep - was alive in 1997 and it was actually my fist GE in which I could vote so I remember it well.
The dynamics are so very different, not only due to the characters involved. For one, the economy was on the up (in large part to Conservative economic policies which Labour vowed to maintain - spending at least). This allowed Blair to combine his astonishing political skill (and yes - charisma) with the knowledge that Labour were inheriting an economy which would allow them, in time, to promise the world. Which they did. All in the context of a huge global economic boom.
Yes there was Tory sleaze in '97, and yes the Tories had been in power for 18 years, but every Government has sleaze. Always. Including Labour from 1997 to 2010. Tory sleaze gets much more attention as, well, they're evil Tories innit. Labour do sleaze more on the quiet.
In 2010, which although global and largely out of the control of ANY government (like the situation today) - the causes of the GFC had been overseen by Labour for over 10 years. They were the regulators and they were the ones happy to turn a blind eye (no pun intended Mr Brown!) to all the lovely tax revenue generated by the astonishing banking profits. So when the GFC hit the government couldn't plausibly deny they "knew nothing". Of course they did. And people cottoned on to that.
Now - now we have had an un-paralleled economic hit due to a bug. Which is not even the evil Tories' fault - or even Johnson's. I didn't agree with the hysteria to save 100,000 people would would have mostly died soon anyway but there we are. But shutting down the economy for the best part of a year was always going to have consequences. And now we're seeing them. This is the result of satisfying all those screaming "Something must be done". It's ironic that a lot of commentators on here now bemoaning how Sunak can't do this or that, or give them free shit, were the same ones criticising the government for not locking down harder, faster and longer. (That's what she said).
Add the ongoing march to WW3 and an energy crisis which has been at least 40 years in the making and I'm struggling to see how any government could have done better.
It is bizzare where people think the money required for all the wished for increases in benefits and decreases in taxes are going to come from. The last 2 years have been unprecedented, millions of people were paid by the Government to stay at home for months and months. Yet people are thinking the Government still has a big pot of money to spray around.
Can Shell & BP pay for it all?
No, but the asset rich can and should pay much more than they do now.
You're confusing asset rich with cash rich. How can an "asset rich" person pay any more when the cash is locked in that asset? Unless you sell that asset, which is now less of value when crystallised because it'll be taxed more.
Just because someone lives in a property valued £1m doesn't make them "rich". They may earn £25k a year but it's just the house which has gone up in value since they've been there 15 years. Which is not their fault or in their control.
It has always been a mystery to me how you tax the value of a house when the person who lives in it may be on a low income. Are we suggesting that they be forced to sale their house to pay tax on it?
There are plenty of ways to avoid forced sale. Also you'd set the % at a modest level.
But fret not - it won't be happening. Vote loser. "They're coming for your house!" will say the party not advocating it.
Amazing moment as Boris Johnson ambles up to Joe Biden after the leaders' photo at Nato, but as they begin to chat, Macron heads straight for the middle of the pair and splits them up. Whole international press room laughing. https://twitter.com/jessicaelgot/status/1506937514820517888
This has become a game now, trying to show johnson and Truss being dissed at these things. Biden talks to BJ, Biden then talks to someone else. Whoopee.
Comments
The Tories tried that in 1997 when they tried to say Blair had supported all sorts of extreme policies and it fell flat on its face.
To me it indicates a party totally out of ideas.
Surely all Chancellors lack experience of being Chancellor unless they have been Chancellor before?
Or is his lack of experience a lack of experience in global finance? Because that’s clearly not the case and would rule out 99% of politicians from the role of that’s required.
Or is it lack of experience as an MP in which case should we only consider chancellors who have been an MP for a set number of terms?
Or is it lack of experience being chancellor during a two year global pandemic and then a European war? Maybe we should appoint only those who have previously had this experience?
Just trying to find out what experience we need to look for before appointing the next Chancellor of the Exchequer.
Aside from easing the finances today of individuals by borrowing, increasing costs for everyone tomorrow, it just seems like a shitstorm with no time to hand out umbrellas.
God knows why.
I do think the Tories are pretty much done now. Every time I get a free bet at ladbrokes I put it on Starmer as next PM.
Now I have been discharged from the counselling I am just trying my best to keep it together, I am managing okay so far
I think the Tories could go back to being sensible but it feels like they need a spell in opposition for that.
Wordle 278 3/6*
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https://twitter.com/peatworrier/status/1506907865893806081?s=21
The energy sector levy still exists, just set at zero rate. So increasing tax revenues using it - as Mrs T did to cut income tax - is hardly something monstrous is it?
https://twitter.com/secrettory12/status/1506741638613377031
Worth a watch, it's Bowie pretending not to be an extra terrestrial in Man Who Fell To Earth.
(And no, I don't have any embarrassing family members that I'm aware of!)
The thing to worry about is this. There was that notorious PPB-that-never-was in 1997, portraying Blair as Faust, and Mandelson as the Devil. It wasn't used, because... well it's obvious why it wasn't used. Would this iteration of the Conservative Party make the same decision? Hard to see it, myself.
Unless the Conservatives collapse in misery and despair, this could get ugly.
Starmer isn't unpopular, Johnson however is. Starmer is neutral.
The latest RedfieldWilton poll showing Sunak only tieing Starmer as preferred PM while Boris leads Starmer by 2% is particularly damaging for him
https://twitter.com/RedfieldWilton/status/1505975053212598280?s=20&t=z67ejZyEfi7EKh0-nkbNZQ
https://twitter.com/RedfieldWilton/status/1505967600504918021?s=20&t=z67ejZyEfi7EKh0-nkbNZQ
Reminds me of this meme:
https://giphy.com/gifs/30-rock-sme-how-do-you-1Qdp4trljSkY8
Some time running a spending department, being exposed to the "much government spending is necessary at a human level" side of the equation would have (hopefully) filled out his CV and mental toolbox.
The dynamics are so very different, not only due to the characters involved. For one, the economy was on the up (in large part to Conservative economic policies which Labour vowed to maintain - spending at least). This allowed Blair to combine his astonishing political skill (and yes - charisma) with the knowledge that Labour were inheriting an economy which would allow them, in time, to promise the world. Which they did. All in the context of a huge global economic boom.
Yes there was Tory sleaze in '97, and yes the Tories had been in power for 18 years, but every Government has sleaze. Always. Including Labour from 1997 to 2010. Tory sleaze gets much more attention as, well, they're evil Tories innit. Labour do sleaze more on the quiet.
In 2010, which although global and largely out of the control of ANY government (like the situation today) - the causes of the GFC had been overseen by Labour for over 10 years. They were the regulators and they were the ones happy to turn a blind eye (no pun intended Mr Brown!) to all the lovely tax revenue generated by the astonishing banking profits. So when the GFC hit the government couldn't plausibly deny they "knew nothing". Of course they did. And people cottoned on to that.
Now - now we have had an un-paralleled economic hit due to a bug. Which is not even the evil Tories' fault - or even Johnson's. I didn't agree with the hysteria to save 100,000 people would would have mostly died soon anyway but there we are. But shutting down the economy for the best part of a year was always going to have consequences. And now we're seeing them. This is the result of satisfying all those screaming "Something must be done". It's ironic that a lot of commentators on here now bemoaning how Sunak can't do this or that, or give them free shit, were the same ones criticising the government for not locking down harder, faster and longer. (That's what she said).
Add the ongoing march to WW3 and an energy crisis which has been at least 40 years in the making and I'm struggling to see how any government could have done better.
....'Lizzie trust me. You'll look ravishing in a pilot's outfit on an aircraft carrier...."
........and then there was one
'Hey Rishi how about sitting next to the gorgeous pouting Priti Patel to give your budget a bit of glamour?'
His interview with Mishal Hussein this morning was good.
He wants a windfall tax on oil and gas companies.
MH says that’s fine, you take a lump now, what happens when they leave the UK to avoid this risk in future as we will lose their tax returns.
ED says they won’t leave because the North Sea is their biggest business…..
MH pointed out to him that the Lib Dems want to stop oil and gas production in the North Sea to which ED says “oh there are decades left of that - not if you stop it Ed and lose the revenue.
ED asked about investment by oil and gas companies in new technology says that we shouldn’t be relying on them and there is billions waiting to be invested by other companies in clean energy (not sure what’s stopping them but there you go).
Apparently the oil companies are bad because they “pushed up the bidding” on sea floor auction for wind turbines (so the exchequer benefits?) which surely shows the oil cos are trying to invest in green energy.
https://twitter.com/tradasro/status/1506923395765653510?s=20&t=D3O48QFR8OouwYlgVoHz-w
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Yesterday in an interview with the Economist, Kuleba said “What we saw in the beginning of the war was the rise of the European Union as a powerful player that can bring change. What I see in the last ten days in the European Union is backsliding back to its normality where it cannot decide on strong and swift action.”
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Why did they not pull the trigger when the PM was vulnerable?
Who is more likely to win the next election than the PM?
Who has more support within the parliamentary party?
You may end up right, but don't think that is the value in the betting.
Which means that to raise money you can either tax consumption - difficult when prices are rising and when voters like consuming.
Or you can tax wealth, in particular property wealth.
Something which would certainly hit Ed Davey's Kingston & Surbiton hard.
Is neutral good enough?
Can Shell & BP pay for it all?
Reeves is bright and effective, and at least gives the impression of being on the side of people who actually work for a living.
Oh boy, I have seen today's front pages – and to think some moons ago we were worrying about pasties.
Maybe because for my sins I am more a fan of technocrats in technical roles that I think it would be better if governments were less political as more might get done if they aren’t primarily concerned with the political angle/reception.
I think over the last two years the brand building probably has taken up no more than 1% of his time at best - 9% trying to dodge conga lines through Downing Street and the rest I imagine trying to work through the shit show of covid.
BTW I’m not blindly defending his decisions as I was hoping for someone to come in and bring radical new approaches and it’s clearly not going to be him.
UK’s richest MP, Chancellor Sunak continues to refuse to answer questions about his wife’s business interests in Russia.
https://twitter.com/alextomo/status/1506936285621010432
There are eerily similarities with Gordon Brown in that Johnson retains a lot of core support in some areas like the West Midlands I would argue but probably not in the marginal seats in the North and South of England that are likely to decide the next election.
It's not like they appear to have any better idea about what to do about the current mess than the Tories. They certainly aren't going to cut taxes on ordinary working folk.
Voting Labour will get you Tory levels of tax and spend or worse, plus all the stupid woke stuff about abolishing womens sport so the trannies can join in, and letting men in frocks with a history of sexual offences go in women's prisons...
3 years served either as a minister or shadow minister within that specific department or 3 years on the relevant select committee.
Just because someone lives in a property valued £1m doesn't make them "rich". They may earn £25k a year but it's just the house which has gone up in value since they've been there 15 years. Which is not their fault or in their control.
He is an affront to decency: https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/uknews/boris-johnson-condemned-for-pulling-funny-faces-as-mps-told-of-ukrainians-huddled-in-basements/ar-AAVpKEs?ocid=entnewsntp
Yet wealth taxes are continually raised as a solution to ongoing rather than one off spending requirements.
None of which is to argue that there aren’t sensible tweaks to be made to equalise unearned/earned income taxation. But they’re not going to do much heavy lifting.
Sunak may think it's now or never, and Truss might think she's had some better times of late and her main rival has had more difficulty.
https://twitter.com/jessicaelgot/status/1506937514820517888
The Queen will set out the government's plans to "grow our economy, cut the cost of living, make our streets safer and clear the covid backlogs".
https://twitter.com/GuardianHeather/status/1506940318716936195
Most borrowing is via mortgages or cars. And as they are collateralised against the asset value you are buying then by definition most borrowing is actually for people who have assets - or an increasing part of that asset as they pay off the borrowing.
So you borrow money to pay for taxes on an asset you are not taking wealth from? Borrowed money has to be paid back - you do realise this? So the more you borrow the more impoverished you become, just to pay taxes. And you can't sell the asset because it's become toxic and you may still be earning less than the national average.
Marvellous policy. What's needed to compliment it is a tax credit to boost the underlying cash earnings, so the loan to pay the property tax can be paid off. It would create thousands of non-jobs in some bleak civil service office somewhere to administer. And have the net result of generating bugger all more tax revenue.
Are you sure you're not a Labour economic advisor?
The best we can hope for now is a government that a) doesn't make things worse and b) distributes the pain in the least cruel way possible. Does that sound like the incumbents?
Fetching black track suit. Glorious weather.
2. You just asked "Have you heard of borrowing," but you yourself seem to have only the very vaguest grasp ofthe concept. Lenders in my experience like to see evidence of cash flow from which repayments can be made before hey put their hands in their pockets
Don't think I don't sympathise with your broad position, I am all for a one-off levy on financial assets, but I think your view is distorted by housing envy.
We all have different breads in my house
https://twitter.com/danbloom1/status/1506900663111987201
But fret not - it won't be happening. Vote loser. "They're coming for your house!" will say the party not advocating it.