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.
I think it is a vote winner, but not a very big one. Lots of people do not like parties or leaders but vote for them anyway as other things are more important, Boris should know that better than anyone. The pool of those annoyed by extremist positions on trans issues or whatever may well be pretty big, but it isnt going to swing that many votes if they think you'll do a shit job on the economy.
Plenty of support for a wealth tax so long as it remains a theoretical proposition. This is my sense of things.
The golden rule of taxes is that 95% are in favour of any tax they don't think will apply to them. The reality is that if we want good public services we need a higher basic rate of income tax and to tax things like capital gains on homes. Good luck anyone who proposes that though, so instead we get stealth taxes and gimmicky taxes on assorted bogeymen, combined with a decaying public sector. Yay!
So you expect a person whose only income is a state pension to pay a capital gains tax on the increasing value of their home?
On sale, yes. Not unrealised gains. I don't think it's unreasonable for people to pay tax on unearned income especially if you expect them to pay an effective tax rate on earned income of 50% or more. You could set a minimum threshold of £100k or something if you were feeling generous. It's not going to happen anyway, the right of people to earn ludicrous amounts of money from the appreciation of their house is one of the great British fundamental rights that any politician meddled with at their peril.
Yep I can see that and it seems reasonable. The only issue is that successive governments have so gutted the pension system that many are looking at the house as their pension. I am personally fortunate in that my hope is that they take me out of here in a box and bury me in the back garden. I see my house as a place to live not an investment. But for many that is not a choice. Any government making such a fundamental change to the system would be destroying the retirement plans of hundreds of thousands pf people.
I would set the rate lower than regular CGT eg 10% and set a threshold eg £75k below which you pay nothing. You could also taper it in at eg 1% per year to give people a decade to change their retirement planning. It isn't about penalising people, simply recognising that the current tax system doesn't share the burden fairly between earned income and this form of unearned income.
Another dreary thread of people claiming that a wealth tax is impossible, forgetting that they exist in those bastions of socialism, Switzerland and the USA.
There isn't a Federal US wealth tax, Switzerland also has a maximum income tax rate of just 11.5%
Thanks for confirming my point. US also has generally lower income taxes.
That’s one of the benefits of wealth (or property) taxes. They allow for lower income taxes.
There are more people with above average property wealth in the UK than there are high income earners in the UK
Another dreary thread of people claiming that a wealth tax is impossible, forgetting that they exist in those bastions of socialism, Switzerland and the USA.
There isn't a Federal US wealth tax, Switzerland also has a maximum income tax rate of just 11.5%
Thanks for confirming my point. US also has generally lower income taxes.
That’s one of the benefits of wealth (or property) taxes. They allow for lower income taxes.
There are more people with above average property wealth in the UK than there are high income earners in the UK
Good. More money to tax. Proves my point. I’m all for incentivising wealth creation.
Michael Jacobs @michaelujacobs · 3h I noted yesterday how the biggest announcement in the #SpringStatement2022 was the one Sunak didn’t make, his decision to uprate benefits and pensions by only 3.1%, not by the current inflation rate of 7%+. This makes the lowest income households c£500 poorer. Here’s the chart.
Ah, the old "a smaller increase than planned is a cut" line.
It's a cut in real disposable incomes, and arguing otherwise is wrong.
Chancellors are practiced at swapping back and forth between real and nominal terms to suit their narratives. It doesn't mean we should blindly follow them.
Another dreary thread of people claiming that a wealth tax is impossible, forgetting that they exist in those bastions of socialism, Switzerland and the USA.
There isn't a Federal US wealth tax, Switzerland also has a maximum income tax rate of just 11.5%
Thanks for confirming my point. US also has generally lower income taxes.
That’s one of the benefits of wealth (or property) taxes. They allow for lower income taxes.
There are more people with above average property wealth in the UK than there are high income earners in the UK
Good. More money to tax. Proves my point. I’m all for incentivising wealth creation.
Which also means the government overall loses votes
Another dreary thread of people claiming that a wealth tax is impossible, forgetting that they exist in those bastions of socialism, Switzerland and the USA.
There isn't a Federal US wealth tax, Switzerland also has a maximum income tax rate of just 11.5%
Thanks for confirming my point. US also has generally lower income taxes.
That’s one of the benefits of wealth (or property) taxes. They allow for lower income taxes.
There are more people with above average property wealth in the UK than there are high income earners in the UK
Good. More money to tax. Proves my point. I’m all for incentivising wealth creation.
Which also means the government overall loses votes
I thought you favoured wealth protection for quasi-religious reasons rather than worrying about the political consequences.
Anyway, you’re wrong in that I’ve said nothing about how or what level I think wealth taxes should be levied. Your point is meaningless.
Mr Memory @AmIRightSir · 19m Replying to @JohnRentoul As a result, the last Thursday on which the next general election can take place is now 23 January 2025
Good news right...of course not says Mrs Glass always empty....
I suspect current wave will peak next week - helped greatly by school term finishing & nicer weather. but still a few million more people infected, 1000s more admissions and 10,000s more long covid cases to show for it. But what level will the plateau be at? & when's next one?
Not a lot in the news about long covid and I'm not totally sure why. Its clearly real, but will be different for different people. Those with serious organ damage may well never recover fully, but I'm not convinced that they are the majority. I think for most people the a long covid of symptoms lasting a few months will probably fully resolve, as happened to a colleagues wife who was surprised to still be struggling for 5 weeks, but then was back to normal. I'd like to see serious analysis of the problem (not self reporting) to get a fuller understanding. I'd also like to know if having 99% of adults with antibodies reduces the incidence of long covid, as I would expect.
The medical community at large absolutely hates long term chronic conditions and talking about them which I think explains the lack of serious study of Long Covid.
The normal response is to pretend that people complaining of long term illness are malingerers who are making it up to try and skive off.
You just have to look how the medical community treats people who have the the broad range of things that get lumped under Chronic Fatigue Syndrome for evidence of this.
Rather inexplicable why the treasury hasn’t included double glazing in the VAT cut.
It’s one of the best energy saving measures out there, yet not included. Why, Sunak?
I'd say there are several reasons potential for that.
One is that they usually look for new measures, as that gets the maximum bang for the buck compared to replacements. And since perhaps 90% of dwellings are already double glazed, and many of the rest are difficult to do, there is not that much extra to do, a large majority of what would be done is replacement, not new - which is sometimes even considered to be maintenance by the Taxman.
To make a difference it would need to mainly be new installations, and that is not the case with 2G.
As a similar example, eligibility for free roof insulation under the current programme does not apply I think if you already have 100mm or more in place.
And for boilers, quite often funding is available to replace non-condensing boilers, but not condensing, as the latter do not deliver much of a saving.
There was also this in the statement: the government will include additional technologies and remove the complex eligibility conditions, reversing a Court of Justice of the European Union ruling that unnecessarily restricted the application of the relief.
What is included will also depend on definitions elsewhere in law and practice.
Mr Memory @AmIRightSir · 19m Replying to @JohnRentoul As a result, the last Thursday on which the next general election can take place is now 23 January 2025
*Heading* in the wrong direction. What is wrong with people?
It's rather sad how Americanisms are slipping in, even in professional discourse. I even have a friend who calls aeroplanes, airplanes. Movies is now sanctioned by usage (sadly) and scheduled with a sked rather than a shed is now more commonplace than the RP.
All this seems to have accelerated in recent years. It's fighting a losing battle I fear: rather like those of us who were brought up that H was spelled and sounded like this: aitch; and that haitch was simply wrong. I even hear haitch on the BBC now (although to be fair to them, Americans don't use it!)
Just correct people kindly and politely. 'Headed' is not 'just another way' of saying 'heading'; in modern English, it's the wrong tense and it doesn't make as much sense. You HAVE headed in the wrong direction. You ARE heading in the wrong direction. It isn't a losing battle unless one accepts that it is lost - behaviour is dynamic and changes all the time. It is capable of changing more than one way. A less abrasive alternative to correction is to use the same word (like schedule) immediately afterwards in a sentence and pronounce it correctly.
Another dreary thread of people claiming that a wealth tax is impossible, forgetting that they exist in those bastions of socialism, Switzerland and the USA.
There isn't a Federal US wealth tax, Switzerland also has a maximum income tax rate of just 11.5%
Thanks for confirming my point. US also has generally lower income taxes.
That’s one of the benefits of wealth (or property) taxes. They allow for lower income taxes.
There are more people with above average property wealth in the UK than there are high income earners in the UK
Good. More money to tax. Proves my point. I’m all for incentivising wealth creation.
Sums up what is wrong with the Left. See how much money we can tax out of people and then work out what we want to spend it on.
- Replace stamp duty (disincentives efficient housing stock allocation and labour mobility)
- Replace council tax (targeted at tenants not owners, bands poorly maintained)
- Have an option to defer payment until the property is sold
- The house value should be rolled forward using housing market data by region and house type (very easy to do) from the point of last sale.
- Start off as being a revenue neutral measure to those abolished above in order to establish it across a wide tax base. Future governments will then find it easier to increase the proportion of tax that comes from wealth rather than income or consumption.
Caught up with the overnight thread, which seemed to morph from my merely comparing the cities of Nottingham and Derby (and the counties of Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire) into open season from various PB Bumpkins to pile in on London and cities in general.
I mean, I was with you all on some of the arguments – I too love a bit of countryside, am an avid hiker and mountain biker and live very near the rural edge of London. I too admire Hampshire, and the gorgeous Peak District, and the Lakes, and the handsome city of Nottingham. Agreed.
But when one PBer claimed his nirvana was "suburban Leicester", well ... the threadette lost all sense of reality at that stage. I mean, the point of satire is that it has to be at least vaguely plausible.
Suburban Leicester and suburban north-west London aren't much different to each other.
Yes, they are, because one of them is part of the greatest city in the world, and commands rapid access to all its treasures. And the other is Leicester.
Well I take your point. Give me a choice between a house in Oadby or a house in Pinner and I'd probably choose the latter. I can see the argument for Leicester though. Most importantly - and I don't know who it was who claimed suburban Leicester as his personal nirvana (Foxy?) - but if that's where home is, there is something very powerful about that which overrides any objective criteria. You know where you're at home. It'll be a view which suddenly reveals itself or a road sign you pass which may say something neutral like 'Cheshire' but in your head says something like 'welcome home' while a brass band plays something upbeat and sentimental in the background. So if for you your terroir is Leciestershire, then absolutely I can see why Oadby would be your nirvana.
But there is also a more prosaic reason why Oadby might beat Pinner: which is that you can live in a pretty spacious and comfortable house in Oadby for the price of a small flat in Pinner. In reality, that's what the choice is: would you rather have a small flat in Pinner or a large house in Oadby; or a house in Pinner or a mansion in Oadby? Or equivalently sized houses in each but not have to work any more in Oadby? On that basis, suburban Leicester is starting to look a lot more attractive.
So glad you use that word terroir. It is something I believe in very strongly when I think of England and more specifically of those parts of England I have chosen to live. That combination of geography, climate, soil, tradition, myth and natural environment which all combine to make a place so much more than just a place to live.
Britain has 159 “national character areas”.
Never heard of those before. I do prefer the idea of Terroir though as it makes it a deeply personal thing rather than something imposed from above.
It is worth noting - because it has NOT been picked up by PB worthies, that the Chancellor has left himself plenty of room for tax giveaways closer to an election.
He is projected to stay well within his own fiscal rules.
So the idea that “there is no more money”, is bunk.
Good news right...of course not says Mrs Glass always empty....
I suspect current wave will peak next week - helped greatly by school term finishing & nicer weather. but still a few million more people infected, 1000s more admissions and 10,000s more long covid cases to show for it. But what level will the plateau be at? & when's next one?
Not a lot in the news about long covid and I'm not totally sure why. Its clearly real, but will be different for different people. Those with serious organ damage may well never recover fully, but I'm not convinced that they are the majority. I think for most people the a long covid of symptoms lasting a few months will probably fully resolve, as happened to a colleagues wife who was surprised to still be struggling for 5 weeks, but then was back to normal. I'd like to see serious analysis of the problem (not self reporting) to get a fuller understanding. I'd also like to know if having 99% of adults with antibodies reduces the incidence of long covid, as I would expect.
The medical community at large absolutely hates long term chronic conditions and talking about them which I think explains the lack of serious study of Long Covid.
The normal response is to pretend that people complaining of long term illness are malingerers who are making it up to try and skive off.
You just have to look how the medical community treats people who have the the broad range of things that get lumped under Chronic Fatigue Syndrome for evidence of this.
If anything, Long Covid has given them a nudge in the direction of taking a serious look at such conditions. The reason they hate them, to be fair, is that they're complex and poorly understood. Medics tend not to like admitting they're in the dark like the rest of us.
But even with enthusiastic support for research, it will be a very long haul understanding such conditions.
Plenty of support for a wealth tax so long as it remains a theoretical proposition. This is my sense of things.
The golden rule of taxes is that 95% are in favour of any tax they don't think will apply to them. The reality is that if we want good public services we need a higher basic rate of income tax and to tax things like capital gains on homes. Good luck anyone who proposes that though, so instead we get stealth taxes and gimmicky taxes on assorted bogeymen, combined with a decaying public sector. Yay!
I'm afraid so. But the basic rate of income tax has become something almost mystical. It can never be raised. And if necessary you raise other taxes so you can cut it. See how Sunak yesterday chose that as his preferred 'mark of the man'. Just 1p off, and not an action but a 'sort of' promise for later, and yet in his mind the most important thing he said.
My idealised tax system would look something like this: income tax and CGT 25% over 15k, 50% over 75k; land taxed at less than 1% including primary residence; 10% capital gains tax on gains over £75k on primary residence; 50% IHT on estates over £750k; 10 to 15% VAT; 10 to 15% corporation tax; NI and council tax abolished; all thresholds and brackets uprated with CPI by law.
So you would be expecting most people in London to be paying an average of almost £9000 a year if they own their own house even when they have little or no income at all?
Average house price in London is £500k (median will be less than that) and so a land tax of less than 1% would be less than £5k. You could apply a minimum income threshold if you wanted to protect the proverbial little old lady. Abolition of council tax worth about half that in any case. Most home owners in London of course have plenty of income.
The average 'sold' price for houses in London over the last 6 months was £879,000.
Plenty of support for a wealth tax so long as it remains a theoretical proposition. This is my sense of things.
The golden rule of taxes is that 95% are in favour of any tax they don't think will apply to them. The reality is that if we want good public services we need a higher basic rate of income tax and to tax things like capital gains on homes. Good luck anyone who proposes that though, so instead we get stealth taxes and gimmicky taxes on assorted bogeymen, combined with a decaying public sector. Yay!
I'm afraid so. But the basic rate of income tax has become something almost mystical. It can never be raised. And if necessary you raise other taxes so you can cut it. See how Sunak yesterday chose that as his preferred 'mark of the man'. Just 1p off, and not an action but a 'sort of' promise for later, and yet in his mind the most important thing he said.
My idealised tax system would look something like this: income tax and CGT 25% over 15k, 50% over 75k; land taxed at less than 1% including primary residence; 10% capital gains tax on gains over £75k on primary residence; 50% IHT on estates over £750k; 10 to 15% VAT; 10 to 15% corporation tax; NI and council tax abolished; all thresholds and brackets uprated with CPI by law.
So you would be expecting most people in London to be paying an average of almost £9000 a year if they own their own house even when they have little or no income at all?
Average house price in London is £500k (median will be less than that) and so a land tax of less than 1% would be less than £5k. You could apply a minimum income threshold if you wanted to protect the proverbial little old lady. Abolition of council tax worth about half that in any case. Most home owners in London of course have plenty of income.
The average 'sold' price for houses in London over the last 6 months was £879,000.
- Replace stamp duty (disincentives efficient housing stock allocation and labour mobility)
- Replace council tax (targeted at tenants not owners, bands poorly maintained)
- Have an option to defer payment until the property is sold
- The house value should be rolled forward using housing market data by region and house type (very easy to do) from the point of last sale.
- Start off as being a revenue neutral measure to those abolished above in order to establish it across a wide tax base. Future governments will then find it easier to increase the proportion of tax that comes from wealth rather than income or consumption.
Yes I forgot to add abolition of SDLT in my idealised tax system. It is a dire tax.
Plenty of support for a wealth tax so long as it remains a theoretical proposition. This is my sense of things.
The golden rule of taxes is that 95% are in favour of any tax they don't think will apply to them. The reality is that if we want good public services we need a higher basic rate of income tax and to tax things like capital gains on homes. Good luck anyone who proposes that though, so instead we get stealth taxes and gimmicky taxes on assorted bogeymen, combined with a decaying public sector. Yay!
So you expect a person whose only income is a state pension to pay a capital gains tax on the increasing value of their home?
On sale, yes. Not unrealised gains. I don't think it's unreasonable for people to pay tax on unearned income especially if you expect them to pay an effective tax rate on earned income of 50% or more. You could set a minimum threshold of £100k or something if you were feeling generous. It's not going to happen anyway, the right of people to earn ludicrous amounts of money from the appreciation of their house is one of the great British fundamental rights that any politician meddled with at their peril.
Yep I can see that and it seems reasonable. The only issue is that successive governments have so gutted the pension system that many are looking at the house as their pension. I am personally fortunate in that my hope is that they take me out of here in a box and bury me in the back garden. I see my house as a place to live not an investment. But for many that is not a choice. Any government making such a fundamental change to the system would be destroying the retirement plans of hundreds of thousands pf people.
I would set the rate lower than regular CGT eg 10% and set a threshold eg £75k below which you pay nothing. You could also taper it in at eg 1% per year to give people a decade to change their retirement planning. It isn't about penalising people, simply recognising that the current tax system doesn't share the burden fairly between earned income and this form of unearned income.
But unless you change the pension system to restore what has been stolen by successive governments over the years, you are still wrecking the retirement plans of people who rightly saw pensions as a bad investment. Nothing you can do with tapering etc will change that.
Again I am not attacking the basic idea - though I do think we ned to stop thinking we can just keep taxing people to pay for every stupid scheme the Government comes up with - but all you are doing is trying to change one small part of the system without properly dealing with the consequences of those changes.
Plenty of support for a wealth tax so long as it remains a theoretical proposition. This is my sense of things.
The golden rule of taxes is that 95% are in favour of any tax they don't think will apply to them. The reality is that if we want good public services we need a higher basic rate of income tax and to tax things like capital gains on homes. Good luck anyone who proposes that though, so instead we get stealth taxes and gimmicky taxes on assorted bogeymen, combined with a decaying public sector. Yay!
I'm afraid so. But the basic rate of income tax has become something almost mystical. It can never be raised. And if necessary you raise other taxes so you can cut it. See how Sunak yesterday chose that as his preferred 'mark of the man'. Just 1p off, and not an action but a 'sort of' promise for later, and yet in his mind the most important thing he said.
My idealised tax system would look something like this: income tax and CGT 25% over 15k, 50% over 75k; land taxed at less than 1% including primary residence; 10% capital gains tax on gains over £75k on primary residence; 50% IHT on estates over £750k; 10 to 15% VAT; 10 to 15% corporation tax; NI and council tax abolished; all thresholds and brackets uprated with CPI by law.
So you would be expecting most people in London to be paying an average of almost £9000 a year if they own their own house even when they have little or no income at all?
Average house price in London is £500k (median will be less than that) and so a land tax of less than 1% would be less than £5k. You could apply a minimum income threshold if you wanted to protect the proverbial little old lady. Abolition of council tax worth about half that in any case. Most home owners in London of course have plenty of income.
The average 'sold' price for houses in London over the last 6 months was £879,000.
Plenty of support for a wealth tax so long as it remains a theoretical proposition. This is my sense of things.
The golden rule of taxes is that 95% are in favour of any tax they don't think will apply to them. The reality is that if we want good public services we need a higher basic rate of income tax and to tax things like capital gains on homes. Good luck anyone who proposes that though, so instead we get stealth taxes and gimmicky taxes on assorted bogeymen, combined with a decaying public sector. Yay!
So you expect a person whose only income is a state pension to pay a capital gains tax on the increasing value of their home?
On sale, yes. Not unrealised gains. I don't think it's unreasonable for people to pay tax on unearned income especially if you expect them to pay an effective tax rate on earned income of 50% or more. You could set a minimum threshold of £100k or something if you were feeling generous. It's not going to happen anyway, the right of people to earn ludicrous amounts of money from the appreciation of their house is one of the great British fundamental rights that any politician meddled with at their peril.
Yep I can see that and it seems reasonable. The only issue is that successive governments have so gutted the pension system that many are looking at the house as their pension. I am personally fortunate in that my hope is that they take me out of here in a box and bury me in the back garden. I see my house as a place to live not an investment. But for many that is not a choice. Any government making such a fundamental change to the system would be destroying the retirement plans of hundreds of thousands pf people.
I would set the rate lower than regular CGT eg 10% and set a threshold eg £75k below which you pay nothing. You could also taper it in at eg 1% per year to give people a decade to change their retirement planning. It isn't about penalising people, simply recognising that the current tax system doesn't share the burden fairly between earned income and this form of unearned income.
But unless you change the pension system to restore what has been stolen by successive governments over the years, you are still wrecking the retirement plans of people who rightly saw pensions as a bad investment. Nothing you can do with tapering etc will change that.
Again I am not attacking the basic idea - though I do think we ned to stop thinking we can just keep taxing people to pay for every stupid scheme the Government comes up with - but all you are doing is trying to change one small part of the system without properly dealing with the consequences of those changes.
The last Chancellor to take seriously the idea of reforming the tax system was Ken Clarke (& he was far from perfect). The rest of the time it's tactical smoke and mirrors for temporary political gain - and that goes for both major parties.
Whilst we're putting the tax system to rights, I think VED should be abolished, MOT certificates would inform the database of what should be on the road, and the tax added to fuel duty. Though I'm not sure where electrical vehicles come in.
Caught up with the overnight thread, which seemed to morph from my merely comparing the cities of Nottingham and Derby (and the counties of Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire) into open season from various PB Bumpkins to pile in on London and cities in general.
I mean, I was with you all on some of the arguments – I too love a bit of countryside, am an avid hiker and mountain biker and live very near the rural edge of London. I too admire Hampshire, and the gorgeous Peak District, and the Lakes, and the handsome city of Nottingham. Agreed.
But when one PBer claimed his nirvana was "suburban Leicester", well ... the threadette lost all sense of reality at that stage. I mean, the point of satire is that it has to be at least vaguely plausible.
Suburban Leicester and suburban north-west London aren't much different to each other.
Yes, they are, because one of them is part of the greatest city in the world, and commands rapid access to all its treasures. And the other is Leicester.
Well I take your point. Give me a choice between a house in Oadby or a house in Pinner and I'd probably choose the latter. I can see the argument for Leicester though. Most importantly - and I don't know who it was who claimed suburban Leicester as his personal nirvana (Foxy?) - but if that's where home is, there is something very powerful about that which overrides any objective criteria. You know where you're at home. It'll be a view which suddenly reveals itself or a road sign you pass which may say something neutral like 'Cheshire' but in your head says something like 'welcome home' while a brass band plays something upbeat and sentimental in the background. So if for you your terroir is Leciestershire, then absolutely I can see why Oadby would be your nirvana.
But there is also a more prosaic reason why Oadby might beat Pinner: which is that you can live in a pretty spacious and comfortable house in Oadby for the price of a small flat in Pinner. In reality, that's what the choice is: would you rather have a small flat in Pinner or a large house in Oadby; or a house in Pinner or a mansion in Oadby? Or equivalently sized houses in each but not have to work any more in Oadby? On that basis, suburban Leicester is starting to look a lot more attractive.
You could probably buy a Scottish castle for a similar price as a house in Pinner. But that's not really what the discussion was about!
It's not really a realistic discussion unless you include some element of cost though. It's not a choice you can reasonably make. Let's say you have £750,000 to spend on somewhere to live, and could reasonably base your life anywhere - albeit that you'd probably earn more in London. Would you spend it on a small house in Pinner, a large house in Oadby or a mansion in Wick? I'd go for Oadby. I expect you'd go for Pinner. I'm sure some contrarians would go for Wick. All are fair choices. Personally, with a free choice of anywhere, no ties and a budget of £750,000, I'd go for Windermere. Occasionally, as a fun mental exercise, I rank different bits of the UK. The North West of England and most of Yorkshire tend to always come out top - for a mix of reasons: quality of landscape, quality of cities, but probably most importantly of all an unquantifiable emotional reaction of how I feel about the place. When Topsham in Devon was discussed a few months back I did end up thinking that would be a rather lovely place to live too.
Wollaton, west Nottingham – Matlock Bath, Peak District 47 mins Breadsall, north Derby - Matlock Bath, Peak District 31 mins
Hardly a critical difference is it?
Fair point. But from Beeston it always seemed such a slog to get to somewhere which should be pretty close. An hour was not typical but not uncommon while you pass unedifying little towns like Codnor and Ripley. You get better journey time reliability from Breadsall.
I'd also say the nice bits of Derbyshire start at about Little Eaton. So Breadsall - Little Eaton: about 2 minutes. Beeston - Little Eaton: about half an hour.
I lived in Sheffield for a bit. One of the reasons I loved it - and this was back in the 90s when the city centre was, frankly, a bit run down - was that from my house in the west of Sheffield I could walk to the Peak District. Derby doesn't quite have that, but it's pretty close. Manchester doesn't quite have that either, but the bits of Peak District it is close to are more dramatic. So, you know - swings and roundabouts. I don't want to be denigrating Nottingham, which was a nice city to live in in a lot of ways - just that if all else were equal I'd be choosing Derby. That said, Manchester is even better. It's not just close to home, it is home.
Yes, the access to the Peak from the western districts of Sheffield is quite fantastic. It's a much underrated city for that reason but has always suffered, as you imply, from a rather uninspiring city centre.
Much improved since I lived there though. Have you visited Sheffield City Centre in the last 15 years or so? A city transformed.
https://mobile.twitter.com/kamilkazani/status/1506975344926109702 Russian negotiator Medinsky made a speech on compulsory prayers "in glory of America" in the US schools and suggested introducing an "analogous procedure" in Russia, too. Few understand it, but Russian official discourse is largely a derivative from the American culture wars
Caught up with the overnight thread, which seemed to morph from my merely comparing the cities of Nottingham and Derby (and the counties of Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire) into open season from various PB Bumpkins to pile in on London and cities in general.
I mean, I was with you all on some of the arguments – I too love a bit of countryside, am an avid hiker and mountain biker and live very near the rural edge of London. I too admire Hampshire, and the gorgeous Peak District, and the Lakes, and the handsome city of Nottingham. Agreed.
But when one PBer claimed his nirvana was "suburban Leicester", well ... the threadette lost all sense of reality at that stage. I mean, the point of satire is that it has to be at least vaguely plausible.
Suburban Leicester and suburban north-west London aren't much different to each other.
Yes, they are, because one of them is part of the greatest city in the world, and commands rapid access to all its treasures. And the other is Leicester.
Well I take your point. Give me a choice between a house in Oadby or a house in Pinner and I'd probably choose the latter. I can see the argument for Leicester though. Most importantly - and I don't know who it was who claimed suburban Leicester as his personal nirvana (Foxy?) - but if that's where home is, there is something very powerful about that which overrides any objective criteria. You know where you're at home. It'll be a view which suddenly reveals itself or a road sign you pass which may say something neutral like 'Cheshire' but in your head says something like 'welcome home' while a brass band plays something upbeat and sentimental in the background. So if for you your terroir is Leciestershire, then absolutely I can see why Oadby would be your nirvana.
But there is also a more prosaic reason why Oadby might beat Pinner: which is that you can live in a pretty spacious and comfortable house in Oadby for the price of a small flat in Pinner. In reality, that's what the choice is: would you rather have a small flat in Pinner or a large house in Oadby; or a house in Pinner or a mansion in Oadby? Or equivalently sized houses in each but not have to work any more in Oadby? On that basis, suburban Leicester is starting to look a lot more attractive.
So glad you use that word terroir. It is something I believe in very strongly when I think of England and more specifically of those parts of England I have chosen to live. That combination of geography, climate, soil, tradition, myth and natural environment which all combine to make a place so much more than just a place to live.
Britain has 159 “national character areas”.
Never heard of those before. I do prefer the idea of Terroir though as it makes it a deeply personal thing rather than something imposed from above.
If you are as tremendously geeky as I am (highly likely, as you are on PB), I urge you to find a map of Charles Phythian-Adams’s “Cultural Provinces of England” from his obscure book “Societies, Culture and Kinship”.
To me it explains everything about how England “divides” including much vexed questions about where the Midlands begin and end.
https://mobile.twitter.com/Hromadske/status/1506972346653024268 The US government officially considers the actions of the Russian occupation forces in Ukraine to be war crimes. The US assessment is based on information from government and intelligence sources
*Heading* in the wrong direction. What is wrong with people?
It's rather sad how Americanisms are slipping in, even in professional discourse. I even have a friend who calls aeroplanes, airplanes. Movies is now sanctioned by usage (sadly) and scheduled with a sked rather than a shed is now more commonplace than the RP.
All this seems to have accelerated in recent years. It's fighting a losing battle I fear: rather like those of us who were brought up that H was spelled and sounded like this: aitch; and that haitch was simply wrong. I even hear haitch on the BBC now (although to be fair to them, Americans don't use it!)
Just correct people kindly and politely. 'Headed' is not 'just another way' of saying 'heading'; in modern English, it's the wrong tense and it doesn't make as much sense. You HAVE headed in the wrong direction. You ARE heading in the wrong direction. It isn't a losing battle unless one accepts that it is lost - behaviour is dynamic and changes all the time. It is capable of changing more than one way. A less abrasive alternative to correction is to use the same word (like schedule) immediately afterwards in a sentence and pronounce it correctly.
Past participle with 'to be' as the auxiliary verb is fine if used as a participial adjective. There is a school of thought that maintains the usage should be restricted to the description of emotional states but there is no grammatical proscription against it and it is became increasingly common for a wide range of verbs.
Plenty of support for a wealth tax so long as it remains a theoretical proposition. This is my sense of things.
The golden rule of taxes is that 95% are in favour of any tax they don't think will apply to them. The reality is that if we want good public services we need a higher basic rate of income tax and to tax things like capital gains on homes. Good luck anyone who proposes that though, so instead we get stealth taxes and gimmicky taxes on assorted bogeymen, combined with a decaying public sector. Yay!
I'm afraid so. But the basic rate of income tax has become something almost mystical. It can never be raised. And if necessary you raise other taxes so you can cut it. See how Sunak yesterday chose that as his preferred 'mark of the man'. Just 1p off, and not an action but a 'sort of' promise for later, and yet in his mind the most important thing he said.
My idealised tax system would look something like this: income tax and CGT 25% over 15k, 50% over 75k; land taxed at less than 1% including primary residence; 10% capital gains tax on gains over £75k on primary residence; 50% IHT on estates over £750k; 10 to 15% VAT; 10 to 15% corporation tax; NI and council tax abolished; all thresholds and brackets uprated with CPI by law.
So you would be expecting most people in London to be paying an average of almost £9000 a year if they own their own house even when they have little or no income at all?
Average house price in London is £500k (median will be less than that) and so a land tax of less than 1% would be less than £5k. You could apply a minimum income threshold if you wanted to protect the proverbial little old lady. Abolition of council tax worth about half that in any case. Most home owners in London of course have plenty of income.
The average 'sold' price for houses in London over the last 6 months was £879,000.
I am going off ONS data which are more likely to be accurate.
Hahahaha. Sorry that made me laugh. Why on earth should the ONS data be more accurate than the actual value of the houses being sold?
I don't know the provenance of the data you cite. Is it based on all sales or just a subset? And is the set of houses that are sold representative of all houses, or are there biases? Eg do some types of property get sold more often than others? The ONS data will also be based ultimately on sales prices, but appropriately weighted. Of course the ONS data will also include rented properties, so if you want yo focus only on owner occupied properties it may not be accurate. Rented properties may on average be cheaper, although not necessarily (more rentals in central than outer London for instance). While I don't always think the ONS do a great job, I will always trust official data more than random numbers from the Internet.
*Heading* in the wrong direction. What is wrong with people?
It's rather sad how Americanisms are slipping in, even in professional discourse. I even have a friend who calls aeroplanes, airplanes. Movies is now sanctioned by usage (sadly) and scheduled with a sked rather than a shed is now more commonplace than the RP.
All this seems to have accelerated in recent years. It's fighting a losing battle I fear: rather like those of us who were brought up that H was spelled and sounded like this: aitch; and that haitch was simply wrong. I even hear haitch on the BBC now (although to be fair to them, Americans don't use it!)
Just correct people kindly and politely. 'Headed' is not 'just another way' of saying 'heading'; in modern English, it's the wrong tense and it doesn't make as much sense. You HAVE headed in the wrong direction. You ARE heading in the wrong direction. It isn't a losing battle unless one accepts that it is lost - behaviour is dynamic and changes all the time. It is capable of changing more than one way. A less abrasive alternative to correction is to use the same word (like schedule) immediately afterwards in a sentence and pronounce it correctly.
Past participle with 'to be' as the auxiliary verb is fine if used as a participial adjective. There is a school of thought that maintains the usage should be restricted to the description of emotional states but there is no grammatical proscription against it and it is became increasingly common for a wide range of verbs.
Actually I think in older English to be was used as the auxiliary verb for intransitive verbs and especially verbs of motion (as in, I'm gone). So I'm headed equally correct.
Comments
What a complete twerp he is.
Get rid.
Compare with this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T-I5s_Jzzkk
https://twitter.com/nexta_tv/status/1506977167003070474
Chancellors are practiced at swapping back and forth between real and nominal terms to suit their narratives. It doesn't mean we should blindly follow them.
Anyway, you’re wrong in that I’ve said nothing about how or what level I think wealth taxes should be levied. Your point is meaningless.
Is that bribing an elector ?
@AmIRightSir
·
19m
Replying to
@JohnRentoul
As a result, the last Thursday on which the next general election can take place is now 23 January 2025
The normal response is to pretend that people complaining of long term illness are malingerers who are making it up to try and skive off.
You just have to look how the medical community treats people who have the the broad range of things that get lumped under Chronic Fatigue Syndrome for evidence of this.
One is that they usually look for new measures, as that gets the maximum bang for the buck compared to replacements. And since perhaps 90% of dwellings are already double glazed, and many of the rest are difficult to do, there is not that much extra to do, a large majority of what would be done is replacement, not new - which is sometimes even considered to be maintenance by the Taxman.
To make a difference it would need to mainly be new installations, and that is not the case with 2G.
As a similar example, eligibility for free roof insulation under the current programme does not apply I think if you already have 100mm or more in place.
And for boilers, quite often funding is available to replace non-condensing boilers, but not condensing, as the latter do not deliver much of a saving.
There was also this in the statement:
the government will include additional technologies and remove the complex
eligibility conditions, reversing a Court of Justice of the European Union ruling that unnecessarily
restricted the application of the relief.
What is included will also depend on definitions elsewhere in law and practice.
- Replace stamp duty (disincentives efficient housing stock allocation and labour mobility)
- Replace council tax (targeted at tenants not owners, bands poorly maintained)
- Have an option to defer payment until the property is sold
- The house value should be rolled forward using housing market data by region and house type (very easy to do) from the point of last sale.
- Start off as being a revenue neutral measure to those abolished above in order to establish it across a wide tax base. Future governments will then find it easier to increase the proportion of tax that comes from wealth rather than income or consumption.
https://twitter.com/Redistrict/status/1506980271761076226
He is projected to stay well within his own fiscal rules.
So the idea that “there is no more money”, is bunk.
THIS THREAD AND ALL ITS THREADETTES SYMBOLICALLY SUNK INTO THE EUXINE SEA
The reason they hate them, to be fair, is that they're complex and poorly understood. Medics tend not to like admitting they're in the dark like the rest of us.
But even with enthusiastic support for research, it will be a very long haul understanding such conditions.
https://www.getagent.co.uk/area/london
Again I am not attacking the basic idea - though I do think we ned to stop thinking we can just keep taxing people to pay for every stupid scheme the Government comes up with - but all you are doing is trying to change one small part of the system without properly dealing with the consequences of those changes.
The rest of the time it's tactical smoke and mirrors for temporary political gain - and that goes for both major parties.
All we have from parties in favour of asset taxes is more taxes. No corresponding reduction elsewhere.
That’s how to do it.
(Or is it this thread)
The Rio isn't a terrible choice if all you want from a car is for it to take you somewhere else as cheaply as possible.
https://mobile.twitter.com/kamilkazani/status/1506975344926109702
Russian negotiator Medinsky made a speech on compulsory prayers "in glory of America" in the US schools and suggested introducing an "analogous procedure" in Russia, too. Few understand it, but Russian official discourse is largely a derivative from the American culture wars
To me it explains everything about how England “divides” including much vexed questions about where the Midlands begin and end.
https://mobile.twitter.com/Hromadske/status/1506972346653024268
The US government officially considers the actions of the Russian occupation forces in Ukraine to be war crimes. The US assessment is based on information from government and intelligence sources
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/mar/24/uk-widens-russian-sanctions-list-to-target-key-industries-and-individuals
The £4 flat could be the target of an unexplained wealth order... paid for in cash by her unemployed mum.