On Musk, I know nothing about him, and care even less. However, when partygate subsides, I look forward to him getting embroiled in some sort of similarly lengthy scandal. Just so that we can call it Elongate.
He's embroiled in lots of scandals. He's due to give 'evidence' in the Depp/Heard mess soon. Let's just say Musk and Depp are not best buds.
One wonders re: Elon Musk's motives re: the Twit-sphere? Pure altruism seems unlikely.
He wanted to own the libs.
$44BN to own the libs. Hope it’s worth it.
As recently as 2020 he was 'only' worth less than $40bn according to wiki. Not sure what the tipping point was which caused his wealth to shoot up 4x in a year.
Probably the value of Tesla stock as it’s done pretty well since 2020.
Yes, but what drove the sudden rise?
$5bn operating profit last quarter and a dizzying growth rate. People don't buy EVs, they buy Teslas. Case in point, now that our move to Switzerland is close to being canned (praise be to whoever or whatever higher power convinced my wife) we've begun looking for a car, the Model X is at the top of the shopping list.
When my Fiesta got rescued from the end of a Highland landrover track after being slightly on fire, the man who picked me up desperately urged me never to buy a Tesla.
He seemed to make most of his living picking them up from the NC500.
Because they're unreliable, or because everyone's surprised that the north of Scotland isn't a massive hotbed of electric charging points?
Apparently the "important stuff" is fine but everything else breaks and has the car has to make its way to dealership to get fixed.
There are charging points at every overpriced b&b you can throw your wallet at up here. Even ones in the Hebrides.
On pb they still think everyone North of Glasgow runs about in kilts and use horses for transport
There were even two Tesla's charging up at the point of Ardnamurchan last weekend.
I think all the chat about better public transport in the Highlands is a waste of time. Cars are King, and we just need the government to focus on getting mass production of cheap electric ones running as quickly as possible.
The charges for parking at work are deeply unfair on people living outwith the central belt, particularly as they are the ones least likely to be able to WFH and are already hammered by fuel prices.
One of the things that surprised me during my walk around Scotland 20 years ago was how available the Internet was. The Scottish government spent a lot of money creating links to settlements, and having public access points in places like surgeries and libraries. It was very useful to me, and I think money well spent. I could get reasonable (for the time) Internet access even in tiny little hamlets in the middle of nowhere.
I wonder if they've extended that with public WiFi?
That fits. 2000 was about when Internet Access was being rolled out across public libraries, following on from various pioneers - under an initiative called the "New Opportunities Fund". Obvs Blair called it "The People's Network". http://informationr.net/ir/5-3/paper75.html#Context
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov says Western arms shipments to Ukraine mean Nato is "in essence engaged in war with Russia" and there is "considerable" risk of the conflict going nuclear
This is now a settled theme from Russia,.
Tbh I'm amazed they haven't said this from the outset, and it's part of the reason why I think we've being really disingenuous about the No Fly Zone. We have drawn our own line by saying that it's fine to supply tons of military equipment, intelligence and, even, special 'advisors' (SAS) to Ukraine but it's not fine to install a NFZ. 95% of people on here have gone along with this, often vociferously. They've told themselves that the one will help Ukraine but won't escalate it but the other would lead to WWIII and Armageddon.
But it's cant and hypocrisy basically, isn't it? If we're going to support Ukraine, bloody well support Ukraine. We should have backed Zelensky's request and stood up to Putin.
Just my opinion. Don't flame me.
Not going to flame you, but consider this: all but the most psychopathic criminals retain a demented sense of justice, a point quite neatly illustrated by monty python's piranha brothers who nail someone's head to the floor "because he had transgressed the unwritten code." Putin's unwritten code includes no nfz.
Or of course, he is bluffing and we only think it does. But don't fall into the narrative of Stand up to the bully, give Ivan a bloody nose and he will always cave in to true British grit. That is a school story and there's no nukes in schools.
It's amazing how many people think this is fucking Michael Bay film and that Russia will back down if, in some as yet to be defined manner, Ukraine wins.
There is going to have to be a deal sooner or later and the pressure should be on Ukraine and Russia to make it sooner.
What 'pressure to do a deal' can we put on a Russia that is doing, and saying, what it is?
And what makes you think they'll stick with the deal for a microsecond longer than it takes to get what they want?
IIRC Putin declared that the *last* deal no longer applied 'because the situation has changed'. In 2014.
I wonder what leadership would take over post-Putin?
*last* deal no longer applied 'because the situation has changed'.
Idly looking at the local rightmove I note a flat for sale to "Buy To Let Purchasers Only." What sort of scumbag imposes this sort of condition and why? Is it enforceable?
Breaking: Germany to deliver “Gepard” anti-aircraft tanks to Ukraine.
According to several German media reports, the government has finally approved the delivery of such heavy weapons to Ukraine. The step will be officially announced at the Ukraine conference in Rammstein today. https://twitter.com/vonderburchard/status/1518846126144765952
Note, the ammo is again Swiss, so there might be an attempt to veto, as with the Marder vehicles.
Gepard has been out of service for a decade. Better hope the guys doing mothballing were good at their jobs....
Germany were (as with the Netherlands) looking to sell them on: Qatar: In December 2020, it was announced that a license had been issued for the export of a total of 15 Gepard anti-aircraft tanks to Qatar. Furthermore, four automatic cannons, 30 tubes, 16,000 rounds of ammunition and 45 breechblocks will be delivered as spare parts. Apparently, the Emirate of Qatar plans to use the Gepard tanks during the 2022 World Cup to counter possible terrorist drone attacks... So probably, yes.
On Musk, I know nothing about him, and care even less. However, when partygate subsides, I look forward to him getting embroiled in some sort of similarly lengthy scandal. Just so that we can call it Elongate.
Musk actually asked, on Twitter a while back, that if he was involved in a scandal, could it please be called Elongate....
Idly looking at the local rightmove I note a flat for sale to "Buy To Let Purchasers Only." What sort of scumbag imposes this sort of condition and why? Is it enforceable?
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov says Western arms shipments to Ukraine mean Nato is "in essence engaged in war with Russia" and there is "considerable" risk of the conflict going nuclear
This is now a settled theme from Russia,.
Tbh I'm amazed they haven't said this from the outset, and it's part of the reason why I think we've being really disingenuous about the No Fly Zone. We have drawn our own line by saying that it's fine to supply tons of military equipment, intelligence and, even, special 'advisors' (SAS) to Ukraine but it's not fine to install a NFZ. 95% of people on here have gone along with this, often vociferously. They've told themselves that the one will help Ukraine but won't escalate it but the other would lead to WWIII and Armageddon.
But it's cant and hypocrisy basically, isn't it? If we're going to support Ukraine, bloody well support Ukraine. We should have backed Zelensky's request and stood up to Putin.
Just my opinion. Don't flame me.
Not going to flame you, but consider this: all but the most psychopathic criminals retain a demented sense of justice, a point quite neatly illustrated by monty python's piranha brothers who nail someone's head to the floor "because he had transgressed the unwritten code." Putin's unwritten code includes no nfz.
Or of course, he is bluffing and we only think it does. But don't fall into the narrative of Stand up to the bully, give Ivan a bloody nose and he will always cave in to true British grit. That is a school story and there's no nukes in schools.
It's amazing how many people think this is fucking Michael Bay film and that Russia will back down if, in some as yet to be defined manner, Ukraine wins.
There is going to have to be a deal sooner or later and the pressure should be on Ukraine and Russia to make it sooner.
I don't disagree - but while territory is being fought over in the east, there's no real prospect of any deal (unless we make Ukraine surrender, which isn't going to happen).
Until Putin starts losing some of the ground he's taken, there's no prospect of getting him to the table, either.
"lost interest"
Did anyone credible ever believe he had any interest in diplomatic efforts in the first place?
Seizing as much territory as possible was literally the reason the war started and denying that is the only way to make it end. That requires sending heavy armaments to Ukraine.
Ukraine needs to be able to not just halt the invasion but to start to regain lost territory, then there is a hope for peace.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov says Western arms shipments to Ukraine mean Nato is "in essence engaged in war with Russia" and there is "considerable" risk of the conflict going nuclear
This is now a settled theme from Russia,.
Tbh I'm amazed they haven't said this from the outset, and it's part of the reason why I think we've being really disingenuous about the No Fly Zone. We have drawn our own line by saying that it's fine to supply tons of military equipment, intelligence and, even, special 'advisors' (SAS) to Ukraine but it's not fine to install a NFZ. 95% of people on here have gone along with this, often vociferously. They've told themselves that the one will help Ukraine but won't escalate it but the other would lead to WWIII and Armageddon.
But it's cant and hypocrisy basically, isn't it? If we're going to support Ukraine, bloody well support Ukraine. We should have backed Zelensky's request and stood up to Putin.
Just my opinion. Don't flame me.
Not going to flame you, but consider this: all but the most psychopathic criminals retain a demented sense of justice, a point quite neatly illustrated by monty python's piranha brothers who nail someone's head to the floor "because he had transgressed the unwritten code." Putin's unwritten code includes no nfz.
Or of course, he is bluffing and we only think it does. But don't fall into the narrative of Stand up to the bully, give Ivan a bloody nose and he will always cave in to true British grit. That is a school story and there's no nukes in schools.
It's amazing how many people think this is fucking Michael Bay film and that Russia will back down if, in some as yet to be defined manner, Ukraine wins.
There is going to have to be a deal sooner or later and the pressure should be on Ukraine and Russia to make it sooner.
Utter codswallop.
Instead of fighting the Battle of Britain, should the UK have been pressured to reach a "deal" with Nazi Germany in WWII? That's not a Godwin, that's the situation Ukraine are in right now.
Russia needs to lose the war and Ukraine needs to win it. That means supporting Ukraine and pressuring Russia, not pressuring both of them.
And if Hitler had nukes ?
In any event, the realpolitik is that Russia will have to lose ground before they agree to negotiate. The case for carrying on with what we're doing is as much pragmatic as it is a moral one.
1 - Hitler was mad - as mad as Putin? And spent it on stuff that delivered little bang-for-the-buck.
I believe the expenditure on the rocket programme was equivalent relative to the German economy as the Manhattan Project to the Allies.
2 - Yep.
Though one hopes for a Day of the Jackal on May 9th.
Idly looking at the local rightmove I note a flat for sale to "Buy To Let Purchasers Only." What sort of scumbag imposes this sort of condition and why? Is it enforceable?
No idea if enforceable. Perhaps the owner owns the building and doesn't want an owner/occupier to ruffle the nest?
Here are the March figures. They will be revised (Feb 2022 was revised down £2.5 billion in today's release), but March 2022 is currently £4.6 billion above the March 2009 figure.
Borrowing is less than half of what it was last year as pandemic spending unwinds.
These are still terrible numbers though.
How do they compare with peers?
This unfortunately is another symbol of Boris the Bastard being utterly clueless about running an administration for practical effectiveness or political benefit.
His speciality is ending up spending the money anyway, having already pissed away the political capital that could have been used to his Govt's benefit.
"the OBR said three weeks ago that borrowing in 2021-2 would be £233.9bn. I think you could do better by taking the last reported month's data (a deficit of £14.2 billion for Feb) timesing it up by 12 and getting £170bn"
Today's figures put it at £151bn, and likely to be revised down.
What's worrying is that UK state spending now just looks structurally higher than tax receipts like France or Italy. People can scream austerity all they like but we need to start cutting the size of the state back to pre-pandemic levels. The jump in spending from 2019-20 to 21-22 has not been matched by tax receipts. We're spending somewhere between 3-4% of GDP more on current spending than we get in tax. Insanely the government and opposition are talking about more spending rather than less.
This is also without the additional £30bn in debt interest we'll end up paying this year, wiping out the remaining COVID subsidies shutdown gains.
Unless the government starts putting a very, very big break on spending of 2-3% cash terms and minus 3-4% real terms the UK is heading into a high tax, low growth period. Just as people are being fiscally dragged to pay more tax, government spending needs to be fiscally dragged for 3-5 years to allow tax receipts to catch up. We simply need for the government to do less and for wealthy older people to pay a much larger share of their ongoing costs.
Idly looking at the local rightmove I note a flat for sale to "Buy To Let Purchasers Only." What sort of scumbag imposes this sort of condition and why? Is it enforceable?
The most likely reason, is that there’s a long-term sitting tenant the owner doesn’t want to make homeless. Other reasons might include the building being designated by the council as social housing for rent, but was sold off or is being sold off by the owner to raise funds, or perhaps the owner lives next door and owns a block of flats, and doesn’t want to have to deal with another owner sharing the maintainance costs.
Idly looking at the local rightmove I note a flat for sale to "Buy To Let Purchasers Only." What sort of scumbag imposes this sort of condition and why? Is it enforceable?
Perhaps a Local Authority imposed a planning condition on the tenure when it was built, or it was built under a scheme for local permanently rental housing?
We simply need for the government to do less and for wealthy older people to pay a much larger share of their ongoing costs.
That's not an election winning platform.
Dave and George won on a fiscal responsibility platform in 2010 and 2015. No need to outline the specifics.
The Tories are abandoning their house building pledges, so fat luck.
House prices boom for the elderly, young people get taxed, student loans pegged to inflation and CoL.
We are fucked. Vote Labour.
Labour are just as bad.
The house price to earning ratio was trashed under Labour and Labour are the ones who introduced Student Loans and started heavily raising National Insurance instead of Income Tax so that young people who work are taxed while pensioners aren't.
So who else can we vote for? The Lib Dems maybe - except they want to pander to NIMBYs in a desperate attempt to be relevant to somebody. So they're no good either.
The Russian nuclear threat, to some degree, has to be faced down in the same way that the wider Russian threat is. The way it is being waved about as a solution to even quite modest NATO stances, the accession of long-democratic Sweden and Finland, for instance, shows that Russia wouldn't limit how they would try and push NATO further and further back with nuclear threats if they were seen to work, perhaps, over years, all the way to Plzen.
There is no zero risk here and NATO should therefore, with all the due care and caution that war must always entail anyway, act freely in adopting an appropriate stance.
The clarity was already there: Ukraine had a defence partnership but was not under article 5, and everything being done is pretty much consistent with that. In terms of the facts on the ground, in conventional terms, a Ukranian liberation of as many as possible of the captured lands under war, including pushing back Donbass, would suit.
Whether opening up Crimea, heavily militarised no doubt, but not a current theatre of active fighting and whose people aren't under the local warlord type governance of Donbass, would be to the benefit of Crimean residents, is a tougher call. Much as I'd love to see genuine free choice for Crimeans, that may be one for longer term diplomatic pressure.
What is clear though is that, if we get through this in one piece, and end up with a Russia we can deal with, disarmament of MAD type nuclear arsenals must be a much more aggressively pursued aim. We cannot tolerate the ability to threaten like this as a permanent reality of living on earth because, even if Putin does not cross the line, somebody, sometime, eventually will - the idea of deterrence will, ultimately, fail.
MAD worked because the two regimes for want of a better word, USA and Soviet, were controlled by rational people. I'm not a game theorist or a MAD strategist but it looks like it doesn't work if one of the parties is controlled by a lunatic.
In Jan 2025 both parties could be.
True - although consider that Brezhnev in his latter years was a drunk, drug-addicted depressive, and Andropov and Chernenko were both, to all extents and purposes, dead for pretty much their entire term in office. I'm not sure the soviets in the 1976-1985 period had leadership which could be characterised as 'rational'. Though by all accounts we were uncomfortably close to nuclear armageddon at least once during that period.
Good point. And of course Nixon was drunk a lot near the end by all accounts.
We simply need for the government to do less and for wealthy older people to pay a much larger share of their ongoing costs.
That's not an election winning platform.
Dave and George won on a fiscal responsibility platform in 2010 and 2015. No need to outline the specifics.
The Tories are abandoning their house building pledges, so fat luck.
House prices boom for the elderly, young people get taxed, student loans pegged to inflation and CoL.
We are fucked. Vote Labour.
Labour are just as bad.
The house price to earning ratio was trashed under Labour and Labour are the ones who introduced Student Loans and started heavily raising National Insurance instead of Income Tax so that young people who work are taxed while pensioners aren't.
So who else can we vote for? The Lib Dems maybe - except they want to pander to NIMBYs in a desperate attempt to be relevant to somebody. So they're no good either.
There's nobody decent to vote for. We are fucked.
We just have to hope Boris gets shit canned soon. I can't bring myself to vote for "women have dicks" Labour or anything to do with Boris.
We simply need for the government to do less and for wealthy older people to pay a much larger share of their ongoing costs.
That's not an election winning platform.
Dave and George won on a fiscal responsibility platform in 2010 and 2015. No need to outline the specifics.
Even if gets a party through an election, they are still going to have to make the cuts.
And the magnitude of cuts you're after aren't going to come from waste, diversity officers and foreign aid. And public sector pay is getting to the point where you can't get anybody, let alone anybody good.
So what concrete things should the government stop doing? Because if the answer is "welfare for richer pensioners" or "expensive care that prolongs end-of-life", you may have a point, but good luck sneaking that past the electorate.
(And no, I don't have a better answer. Except maybe to get the band to play "Near my God to thee". Before firing the band as an unaffordable luxury.)
"the OBR said three weeks ago that borrowing in 2021-2 would be £233.9bn. I think you could do better by taking the last reported month's data (a deficit of £14.2 billion for Feb) timesing it up by 12 and getting £170bn"
Today's figures put it at £151bn, and likely to be revised down.
What's worrying is that UK state spending now just looks structurally higher than tax receipts like France or Italy. People can scream austerity all they like but we need to start cutting the size of the state back to pre-pandemic levels. The jump in spending from 2019-20 to 21-22 has not been matched by tax receipts. We're spending somewhere between 3-4% of GDP more on current spending than we get in tax. Insanely the government and opposition are talking about more spending rather than less.
This is also without the additional £30bn in debt interest we'll end up paying this year, wiping out the remaining COVID subsidies shutdown gains.
Unless the government starts putting a very, very big break on spending of 2-3% cash terms and minus 3-4% real terms the UK is heading into a high tax, low growth period. Just as people are being fiscally dragged to pay more tax, government spending needs to be fiscally dragged for 3-5 years to allow tax receipts to catch up. We simply need for the government to do less and for wealthy older people to pay a much larger share of their ongoing costs.
I don't share your pessimism, because it selectively chooses the downsides of inflation.
Public sector net debt excluding public sector banks and the Bank of England (PSND ex BoE) is now falling at a percentage of GDP. Debt interest is only growing as the real value of the government's debt pile falls.
The deficit is at 2013 levels, with a further unwind to come.
I think we'll have a clearer picture by the autumn, assuming no further restrictions.
"the OBR said three weeks ago that borrowing in 2021-2 would be £233.9bn. I think you could do better by taking the last reported month's data (a deficit of £14.2 billion for Feb) timesing it up by 12 and getting £170bn"
Today's figures put it at £151bn, and likely to be revised down.
What's worrying is that UK state spending now just looks structurally higher than tax receipts like France or Italy. People can scream austerity all they like but we need to start cutting the size of the state back to pre-pandemic levels. The jump in spending from 2019-20 to 21-22 has not been matched by tax receipts. We're spending somewhere between 3-4% of GDP more on current spending than we get in tax. Insanely the government and opposition are talking about more spending rather than less.
This is also without the additional £30bn in debt interest we'll end up paying this year, wiping out the remaining COVID subsidies shutdown gains.
Unless the government starts putting a very, very big break on spending of 2-3% cash terms and minus 3-4% real terms the UK is heading into a high tax, low growth period. Just as people are being fiscally dragged to pay more tax, government spending needs to be fiscally dragged for 3-5 years to allow tax receipts to catch up. We simply need for the government to do less and for wealthy older people to pay a much larger share of their ongoing costs.
I don't share your pessimism, because it selectively chooses the downsides of inflation.
Public sector net debt excluding public sector banks and the Bank of England (PSND ex BoE) is now falling at a percentage of GDP. Debt interest is only growing as the real value of the government's debt pile falls.
The deficit is at 2013 levels, with a further unwind to come.
I think we'll have a clearer picture by the autumn, assuming no further restrictions.
There’s also pretty much full employment, and wages at the bottom end of the scale are rising.
We simply need for the government to do less and for wealthy older people to pay a much larger share of their ongoing costs.
That's not an election winning platform.
Dave and George won on a fiscal responsibility platform in 2010 and 2015. No need to outline the specifics.
The Tories are abandoning their house building pledges, so fat luck.
House prices boom for the elderly, young people get taxed, student loans pegged to inflation and CoL.
We are fucked. Vote Labour.
Labour are just as bad.
The house price to earning ratio was trashed under Labour and Labour are the ones who introduced Student Loans and started heavily raising National Insurance instead of Income Tax so that young people who work are taxed while pensioners aren't.
So who else can we vote for? The Lib Dems maybe - except they want to pander to NIMBYs in a desperate attempt to be relevant to somebody. So they're no good either.
There's nobody decent to vote for. We are fucked.
The interesting thing here though is that you, me and CHB, from different political perspectives, all agree on the problem, and to some extent on the solution (not 'vote Labour' or otherwise, but build more houses and make housing more affordable). Ten years ago I don't think this would have been the case. (We may have differing views on urban design but that's a matter of detail.) That's cause for hope, at least.
We simply need for the government to do less and for wealthy older people to pay a much larger share of their ongoing costs.
That's not an election winning platform.
Dave and George won on a fiscal responsibility platform in 2010 and 2015. No need to outline the specifics.
Even if gets a party through an election, they are still going to have to make the cuts.
And the magnitude of cuts you're after aren't going to come from waste, diversity officers and foreign aid. And public sector pay is getting to the point where you can't get anybody, let alone anybody good.
So what concrete things should the government stop doing? Because if the answer is "welfare for richer pensioners" or "expensive care that prolongs end-of-life", you may have a point, but good luck sneaking that past the electorate.
(And no, I don't have a better answer. Except maybe to get the band to play "Near my God to thee". Before firing the band as an unaffordable luxury.)
It will take a government with real cojones to do what it takes to axe the size of the state to avoid a high tax low growth future. Neither party seems up to it.
Two explosions have rattled a village in Transnistria, a Russia-aligned breakaway region of Moldova on the border with Ukraine, destroying two radio antennas, the local interior ministry said in a statement.
Idly looking at the local rightmove I note a flat for sale to "Buy To Let Purchasers Only." What sort of scumbag imposes this sort of condition and why? Is it enforceable?
Well, you can choose not to sell something you own for any reason you like, so of course it's enforceable, except a buyer could lie to an extent.
The only reason I can think of for such a condition is that it might be expected that a buy-to-let purchaser might be less hassle in terms of mortgage approvals, completion dates, etc.
Ah, TheWhiteRabbit has the likely answer - a sitting tenant.
We simply need for the government to do less and for wealthy older people to pay a much larger share of their ongoing costs.
That's not an election winning platform.
Dave and George won on a fiscal responsibility platform in 2010 and 2015. No need to outline the specifics.
Even if gets a party through an election, they are still going to have to make the cuts.
And the magnitude of cuts you're after aren't going to come from waste, diversity officers and foreign aid. And public sector pay is getting to the point where you can't get anybody, let alone anybody good.
So what concrete things should the government stop doing? Because if the answer is "welfare for richer pensioners" or "expensive care that prolongs end-of-life", you may have a point, but good luck sneaking that past the electorate.
(And no, I don't have a better answer. Except maybe to get the band to play "Near my God to thee". Before firing the band as an unaffordable luxury.)
It will take a government with real cojones to do what it takes to axe the size of the state to avoid a high tax low growth future. Neither party seems up to it.
Not just to axe the size of the state but also to axe the cost of housing.
We need a house price crash and a return to 3-4x multiples so that people can afford their own home in the same way as the generations before them could but again that would take real cojones and no party is up to it.
Instead what we may need to rely upon for both is the market ensuring that TINA applies and both are to happen against the wishes of the parties.
Fckn hell, Grant ‘Partridge’ Shapps is at it again. Would love to think it indicates a satirical soh but more probably he’s been driven mad by having to fluff for BJ on the morning news circuit.
If anyone in government had bothered to read the thing, they might also have removed the line in point six about libraries being closed until July. When was that anyway — 2020, 2021?
We simply need for the government to do less and for wealthy older people to pay a much larger share of their ongoing costs.
That's not an election winning platform.
Dave and George won on a fiscal responsibility platform in 2010 and 2015. No need to outline the specifics.
The Tories are abandoning their house building pledges, so fat luck.
House prices boom for the elderly, young people get taxed, student loans pegged to inflation and CoL.
We are fucked. Vote Labour.
Labour are just as bad.
The house price to earning ratio was trashed under Labour and Labour are the ones who introduced Student Loans and started heavily raising National Insurance instead of Income Tax so that young people who work are taxed while pensioners aren't.
So who else can we vote for? The Lib Dems maybe - except they want to pander to NIMBYs in a desperate attempt to be relevant to somebody. So they're no good either.
There's nobody decent to vote for. We are fucked.
This is far more a London / SE problem than a young / old, or a national, problem.
I'm sure people in London / SE love having their mouths stuffed with free money, at a cost to the taxpayer of £35bn a year or so most of which goes there, but it's time they realised the damage they are inflicting.
CGT relief on main homes has to go. It is the single biggest problem preventing a more functional housing market.
Two explosions have rattled a village in Transnistria, a Russia-aligned breakaway region of Moldova on the border with Ukraine, destroying two radio antennas, the local interior ministry said in a statement.
NY Times live blog
Transnistria is an interesting place, I watched a youtube video on it a little while ago.
We simply need for the government to do less and for wealthy older people to pay a much larger share of their ongoing costs.
That's not an election winning platform.
Dave and George won on a fiscal responsibility platform in 2010 and 2015. No need to outline the specifics.
The Tories are abandoning their house building pledges, so fat luck.
House prices boom for the elderly, young people get taxed, student loans pegged to inflation and CoL.
We are fucked. Vote Labour.
Labour are just as bad.
The house price to earning ratio was trashed under Labour and Labour are the ones who introduced Student Loans and started heavily raising National Insurance instead of Income Tax so that young people who work are taxed while pensioners aren't.
So who else can we vote for? The Lib Dems maybe - except they want to pander to NIMBYs in a desperate attempt to be relevant to somebody. So they're no good either.
There's nobody decent to vote for. We are fucked.
This is far more a London / SE problem than a young / old, or a national, problem.
CGT relief on main homes has to go. It is the single biggest problem in our housing market.
We simply need for the government to do less and for wealthy older people to pay a much larger share of their ongoing costs.
That's not an election winning platform.
Dave and George won on a fiscal responsibility platform in 2010 and 2015. No need to outline the specifics.
Even if gets a party through an election, they are still going to have to make the cuts.
And the magnitude of cuts you're after aren't going to come from waste, diversity officers and foreign aid. And public sector pay is getting to the point where you can't get anybody, let alone anybody good.
So what concrete things should the government stop doing? Because if the answer is "welfare for richer pensioners" or "expensive care that prolongs end-of-life", you may have a point, but good luck sneaking that past the electorate.
(And no, I don't have a better answer. Except maybe to get the band to play "Near my God to thee". Before firing the band as an unaffordable luxury.)
It will take a government with real cojones to do what it takes to axe the size of the state to avoid a high tax low growth future. Neither party seems up to it.
So what specific things is the government spending money on now, that it should stop spending money on?
Fckn hell, Grant ‘Partridge’ Shapps is at it again. Would love to think it indicates a satirical soh but more probably he’s been driven mad by having to fluff for BJ on the morning news circuit.
It is the usual nonsense isn't it of the UK gold plating EU rules or not undoing stuff when they could and then blaming the EU, when in fact it is the UK government actually introducing this stuff. It is the usual stuff about straight bananas, coffins (one of Boris's) and cabbage regulation, none of which was ever true.
Breaking: Germany to deliver “Gepard” anti-aircraft tanks to Ukraine.
According to several German media reports, the government has finally approved the delivery of such heavy weapons to Ukraine. The step will be officially announced at the Ukraine conference in Rammstein today. https://twitter.com/vonderburchard/status/1518846126144765952
Note, the ammo is again Swiss, so there might be an attempt to veto, as with the Marder vehicles.
Gepard has been out of service for a decade. Better hope the guys doing mothballing were good at their jobs....
From Wiki...if they can defend the fitba they must be quite something...
"In December 2020, it was announced that a license had been issued for the export of a total of 15 Gepard anti-aircraft tanks to Qatar. Furthermore, four automatic cannons, 30 tubes, 16,000 rounds of ammunition and 45 breechblocks will be delivered as spare parts. Apparently, the Emirate of Qatar plans to use the Gepard tanks during the 2022 World Cup to counter possible terrorist drone attacks"
We simply need for the government to do less and for wealthy older people to pay a much larger share of their ongoing costs.
That's not an election winning platform.
Dave and George won on a fiscal responsibility platform in 2010 and 2015. No need to outline the specifics.
The Tories are abandoning their house building pledges, so fat luck.
House prices boom for the elderly, young people get taxed, student loans pegged to inflation and CoL.
We are fucked. Vote Labour.
Labour are just as bad.
The house price to earning ratio was trashed under Labour and Labour are the ones who introduced Student Loans and started heavily raising National Insurance instead of Income Tax so that young people who work are taxed while pensioners aren't.
So who else can we vote for? The Lib Dems maybe - except they want to pander to NIMBYs in a desperate attempt to be relevant to somebody. So they're no good either.
There's nobody decent to vote for. We are fucked.
This is far more a London / SE problem than a young / old, or a national, problem.
I'm sure people in London / SE love having their mouths stuffed with free money, at a cost to the taxpayer of £35bn a year or so most of which goes there, but it's time they realised the damage they are inflicting.
CGT relief on main homes has to go. It is the single biggest problem in our housing market.
From your own chart the cost multiple even in the North is far higher now than it was at the turn of the century.
Prices collapsing back to 2000 levels (in real terms) would be a great thing to happen. But its worth @CorrectHorseBattery looking at that chart and thinking who was PM in the 2000-2007 period when much of the damage was inflicted.
We simply need for the government to do less and for wealthy older people to pay a much larger share of their ongoing costs.
That's not an election winning platform.
Dave and George won on a fiscal responsibility platform in 2010 and 2015. No need to outline the specifics.
The Tories are abandoning their house building pledges, so fat luck.
House prices boom for the elderly, young people get taxed, student loans pegged to inflation and CoL.
We are fucked. Vote Labour.
Labour are just as bad.
The house price to earning ratio was trashed under Labour and Labour are the ones who introduced Student Loans and started heavily raising National Insurance instead of Income Tax so that young people who work are taxed while pensioners aren't.
So who else can we vote for? The Lib Dems maybe - except they want to pander to NIMBYs in a desperate attempt to be relevant to somebody. So they're no good either.
There's nobody decent to vote for. We are fucked.
This is far more a London / SE problem than a young / old, or a national, problem.
I'm sure people in London / SE love having their mouths stuffed with free money, at a cost to the taxpayer of £35bn a year or so most of which goes there, but it's time they realised the damage they are inflicting.
CGT relief on main homes has to go. It is the single biggest problem in our housing market.
We simply need for the government to do less and for wealthy older people to pay a much larger share of their ongoing costs.
That's not an election winning platform.
Dave and George won on a fiscal responsibility platform in 2010 and 2015. No need to outline the specifics.
The Tories are abandoning their house building pledges, so fat luck.
House prices boom for the elderly, young people get taxed, student loans pegged to inflation and CoL.
We are fucked. Vote Labour.
Labour are just as bad.
The house price to earning ratio was trashed under Labour and Labour are the ones who introduced Student Loans and started heavily raising National Insurance instead of Income Tax so that young people who work are taxed while pensioners aren't.
So who else can we vote for? The Lib Dems maybe - except they want to pander to NIMBYs in a desperate attempt to be relevant to somebody. So they're no good either.
There's nobody decent to vote for. We are fucked.
This is far more a London / SE problem than a young / old, or a national, problem.
CGT relief on main homes has to go. It is the single biggest problem in our housing market.
Good luck getting anyone to vote for that.
The usual way to get people to vote for something they don't want is for both parties to put it in their manifestos.
We simply need for the government to do less and for wealthy older people to pay a much larger share of their ongoing costs.
That's not an election winning platform.
Dave and George won on a fiscal responsibility platform in 2010 and 2015. No need to outline the specifics.
The Tories are abandoning their house building pledges, so fat luck.
House prices boom for the elderly, young people get taxed, student loans pegged to inflation and CoL.
We are fucked. Vote Labour.
Labour are just as bad.
The house price to earning ratio was trashed under Labour and Labour are the ones who introduced Student Loans and started heavily raising National Insurance instead of Income Tax so that young people who work are taxed while pensioners aren't.
So who else can we vote for? The Lib Dems maybe - except they want to pander to NIMBYs in a desperate attempt to be relevant to somebody. So they're no good either.
There's nobody decent to vote for. We are fucked.
This is far more a London / SE problem than a young / old, or a national, problem.
I'm sure people in London / SE love having their mouths stuffed with free money, at a cost to the taxpayer of £35bn a year or so most of which goes there, but it's time they realised the damage they are inflicting.
CGT relief on main homes has to go. It is the single biggest problem in our housing market.
From your own chart the cost multiple even in the North is far higher now than it was at the turn of the century.
Prices collapsing back to 2000 levels (in real terms) would be a great thing to happen. But its worth @CorrectHorseBattery looking at that chart and thinking who was PM in the 2000-2007 period when much of the damage was inflicted.
Yep - I'll give you some of that . But only part of it.
London multiple in 2007-2013 - about 7. London multiple in 2014-2021 - about 11.
Multiples in the N consistently on this metric for the last 15 years - about 4.
The graph runs to late 2020, since when the only real change has been to further inflate (unnecessarily) the demand side.
We need tax distortions taking out, and that starts with CGT, the Sacred Cow - as the largest.
Breaking: Germany to deliver “Gepard” anti-aircraft tanks to Ukraine.
According to several German media reports, the government has finally approved the delivery of such heavy weapons to Ukraine. The step will be officially announced at the Ukraine conference in Rammstein today. https://twitter.com/vonderburchard/status/1518846126144765952
Note, the ammo is again Swiss, so there might be an attempt to veto, as with the Marder vehicles.
Gepard has been out of service for a decade. Better hope the guys doing mothballing were good at their jobs....
From Wiki...if they can defend the fitba they must be quite something...
"In December 2020, it was announced that a license had been issued for the export of a total of 15 Gepard anti-aircraft tanks to Qatar. Furthermore, four automatic cannons, 30 tubes, 16,000 rounds of ammunition and 45 breechblocks will be delivered as spare parts. Apparently, the Emirate of Qatar plans to use the Gepard tanks during the 2022 World Cup to counter possible terrorist drone attacks"
The basic design is very, very ancient. 1960s.
They have been extensively upgraded over the years, but what that actually means is anyones guess.
We simply need for the government to do less and for wealthy older people to pay a much larger share of their ongoing costs.
That's not an election winning platform.
Dave and George won on a fiscal responsibility platform in 2010 and 2015. No need to outline the specifics.
Even if gets a party through an election, they are still going to have to make the cuts.
And the magnitude of cuts you're after aren't going to come from waste, diversity officers and foreign aid. And public sector pay is getting to the point where you can't get anybody, let alone anybody good.
So what concrete things should the government stop doing? Because if the answer is "welfare for richer pensioners" or "expensive care that prolongs end-of-life", you may have a point, but good luck sneaking that past the electorate.
(And no, I don't have a better answer. Except maybe to get the band to play "Near my God to thee". Before firing the band as an unaffordable luxury.)
It will take a government with real cojones to do what it takes to axe the size of the state to avoid a high tax low growth future. Neither party seems up to it.
Not just to axe the size of the state but also to axe the cost of housing.
We need a house price crash and a return to 3-4x multiples so that people can afford their own home in the same way as the generations before them could but again that would take real cojones and no party is up to it.
Instead what we may need to rely upon for both is the market ensuring that TINA applies and both are to happen against the wishes of the parties.
Trouble is, somehow we need to engineer a house price crash without leaving half the country in negative equity. That's going to be challenging, to put it mildly.
We also need to do something about putting in infrastructure to match the additional housing - my town is growing by about 20% in five years. It was a pleasant place without major traffic problems. It seems fairly clear that its going to be a traffic nightmare by the time the builders have finished, and the local council has zero intention of doing anything about it. We've no obvious plans for more schools, doctors etc, and even attempts to get a new supermarket through planning get repeatedly scuppered.
Breaking: Germany to deliver “Gepard” anti-aircraft tanks to Ukraine.
According to several German media reports, the government has finally approved the delivery of such heavy weapons to Ukraine. The step will be officially announced at the Ukraine conference in Rammstein today. https://twitter.com/vonderburchard/status/1518846126144765952
Note, the ammo is again Swiss, so there might be an attempt to veto, as with the Marder vehicles.
Gepard has been out of service for a decade. Better hope the guys doing mothballing were good at their jobs....
From Wiki...if they can defend the fitba they must be quite something...
"In December 2020, it was announced that a license had been issued for the export of a total of 15 Gepard anti-aircraft tanks to Qatar. Furthermore, four automatic cannons, 30 tubes, 16,000 rounds of ammunition and 45 breechblocks will be delivered as spare parts. Apparently, the Emirate of Qatar plans to use the Gepard tanks during the 2022 World Cup to counter possible terrorist drone attacks"
The basic design is very, very ancient. 1960s.
They have been extensively upgraded over the years, but what that actually means is anyones guess.
We simply need for the government to do less and for wealthy older people to pay a much larger share of their ongoing costs.
That's not an election winning platform.
Dave and George won on a fiscal responsibility platform in 2010 and 2015. No need to outline the specifics.
Even if gets a party through an election, they are still going to have to make the cuts.
And the magnitude of cuts you're after aren't going to come from waste, diversity officers and foreign aid. And public sector pay is getting to the point where you can't get anybody, let alone anybody good.
So what concrete things should the government stop doing? Because if the answer is "welfare for richer pensioners" or "expensive care that prolongs end-of-life", you may have a point, but good luck sneaking that past the electorate.
(And no, I don't have a better answer. Except maybe to get the band to play "Near my God to thee". Before firing the band as an unaffordable luxury.)
It will take a government with real cojones to do what it takes to axe the size of the state to avoid a high tax low growth future. Neither party seems up to it.
Not just to axe the size of the state but also to axe the cost of housing.
We need a house price crash and a return to 3-4x multiples so that people can afford their own home in the same way as the generations before them could but again that would take real cojones and no party is up to it.
Instead what we may need to rely upon for both is the market ensuring that TINA applies and both are to happen against the wishes of the parties.
A house price crash in money terms is somewhat undesirable, as it leads to negative equity and people unable to move.
They can drop 5% per year without too many problems though. Add a couple of years of 8% inflation and you’re 25% down in real terms.
There’s only two ways to get the ball rolling though, building lots more houses and tighter mortgage requirements.
Breaking: Germany to deliver “Gepard” anti-aircraft tanks to Ukraine.
According to several German media reports, the government has finally approved the delivery of such heavy weapons to Ukraine. The step will be officially announced at the Ukraine conference in Rammstein today. https://twitter.com/vonderburchard/status/1518846126144765952
Note, the ammo is again Swiss, so there might be an attempt to veto, as with the Marder vehicles.
Gepard has been out of service for a decade. Better hope the guys doing mothballing were good at their jobs....
From Wiki...if they can defend the fitba they must be quite something...
"In December 2020, it was announced that a license had been issued for the export of a total of 15 Gepard anti-aircraft tanks to Qatar. Furthermore, four automatic cannons, 30 tubes, 16,000 rounds of ammunition and 45 breechblocks will be delivered as spare parts. Apparently, the Emirate of Qatar plans to use the Gepard tanks during the 2022 World Cup to counter possible terrorist drone attacks"
The basic design is very, very ancient. 1960s.
They have been extensively upgraded over the years, but what that actually means is anyones guess.
Radars and control electronics.
I meant in terms of actual performance - they may be anything from so hopelessly outdated that jamming it's systems is completely trivial to death-on-wheels.
EDIT: Gun vehicles largely became obsolete when aircraft stopped playing nice and used stand off weapons instead. For drones - will they make a come back? Is anyone dusting off the blueprints for the T250 gun?
We simply need for the government to do less and for wealthy older people to pay a much larger share of their ongoing costs.
That's not an election winning platform.
Dave and George won on a fiscal responsibility platform in 2010 and 2015. No need to outline the specifics.
The Tories are abandoning their house building pledges, so fat luck.
House prices boom for the elderly, young people get taxed, student loans pegged to inflation and CoL.
We are fucked. Vote Labour.
Labour are just as bad.
The house price to earning ratio was trashed under Labour and Labour are the ones who introduced Student Loans and started heavily raising National Insurance instead of Income Tax so that young people who work are taxed while pensioners aren't.
So who else can we vote for? The Lib Dems maybe - except they want to pander to NIMBYs in a desperate attempt to be relevant to somebody. So they're no good either.
There's nobody decent to vote for. We are fucked.
This is far more a London / SE problem than a young / old, or a national, problem.
I'm sure people in London / SE love having their mouths stuffed with free money, at a cost to the taxpayer of £35bn a year or so most of which goes there, but it's time they realised the damage they are inflicting.
CGT relief on main homes has to go. It is the single biggest problem in our housing market.
From your own chart the cost multiple even in the North is far higher now than it was at the turn of the century.
Prices collapsing back to 2000 levels (in real terms) would be a great thing to happen....
Given current building standards and costs, is that even possible ?
Depends.
National Real House price inflation since 2000 is 80%-90% ahead of retail inflation. And much more extreme in London, of course.
And new houses are only 13% of the market (2019).
In due course the many billions of taxes on new developments would need to be re-examined, or we would need to accept a far higher newbuild premium - which might not be a bad thing as owners of older homes might start investing in them.
We simply need for the government to do less and for wealthy older people to pay a much larger share of their ongoing costs.
That's not an election winning platform.
Dave and George won on a fiscal responsibility platform in 2010 and 2015. No need to outline the specifics.
Even if gets a party through an election, they are still going to have to make the cuts.
And the magnitude of cuts you're after aren't going to come from waste, diversity officers and foreign aid. And public sector pay is getting to the point where you can't get anybody, let alone anybody good.
So what concrete things should the government stop doing? Because if the answer is "welfare for richer pensioners" or "expensive care that prolongs end-of-life", you may have a point, but good luck sneaking that past the electorate.
(And no, I don't have a better answer. Except maybe to get the band to play "Near my God to thee". Before firing the band as an unaffordable luxury.)
It will take a government with real cojones to do what it takes to axe the size of the state to avoid a high tax low growth future. Neither party seems up to it.
Not just to axe the size of the state but also to axe the cost of housing.
We need a house price crash and a return to 3-4x multiples so that people can afford their own home in the same way as the generations before them could but again that would take real cojones and no party is up to it.
Instead what we may need to rely upon for both is the market ensuring that TINA applies and both are to happen against the wishes of the parties.
A house price crash in money terms is somewhat undesirable, as it leads to negative equity and people unable to move.
They can drop 5% per year without too many problems though. Add a couple of years of 8% inflation and you’re 25% down in real terms.
There’s only two ways to get the ball rolling though, building lots more houses and tighter mortgage requirements.
A decade of moderate inflation with house prices stagnant in nominal terms (therefor falling a lot in value) is the least painful way out of the mess. Of course if inflation gets too high ...
We simply need for the government to do less and for wealthy older people to pay a much larger share of their ongoing costs.
That's not an election winning platform.
Dave and George won on a fiscal responsibility platform in 2010 and 2015. No need to outline the specifics.
Even if gets a party through an election, they are still going to have to make the cuts.
And the magnitude of cuts you're after aren't going to come from waste, diversity officers and foreign aid. And public sector pay is getting to the point where you can't get anybody, let alone anybody good.
So what concrete things should the government stop doing? Because if the answer is "welfare for richer pensioners" or "expensive care that prolongs end-of-life", you may have a point, but good luck sneaking that past the electorate.
(And no, I don't have a better answer. Except maybe to get the band to play "Near my God to thee". Before firing the band as an unaffordable luxury.)
It will take a government with real cojones to do what it takes to axe the size of the state to avoid a high tax low growth future. Neither party seems up to it.
Not just to axe the size of the state but also to axe the cost of housing.
We need a house price crash and a return to 3-4x multiples so that people can afford their own home in the same way as the generations before them could but again that would take real cojones and no party is up to it.
Instead what we may need to rely upon for both is the market ensuring that TINA applies and both are to happen against the wishes of the parties.
A house price crash in money terms is somewhat undesirable, as it leads to negative equity and people unable to move.
They can drop 5% per year without too many problems though. Add a couple of years of 8% inflation and you’re 25% down in real terms.
There’s only two ways to get the ball rolling though, building lots more houses and tighter mortgage requirements.
After house prices rose 10% last year, adding £300 billion pounds in unearned, untaxed value, negative equity shouldn't be an issue at the moment.
We simply need for the government to do less and for wealthy older people to pay a much larger share of their ongoing costs.
That's not an election winning platform.
Dave and George won on a fiscal responsibility platform in 2010 and 2015. No need to outline the specifics.
The Tories are abandoning their house building pledges, so fat luck.
House prices boom for the elderly, young people get taxed, student loans pegged to inflation and CoL.
We are fucked. Vote Labour.
Labour are just as bad.
The house price to earning ratio was trashed under Labour and Labour are the ones who introduced Student Loans and started heavily raising National Insurance instead of Income Tax so that young people who work are taxed while pensioners aren't.
So who else can we vote for? The Lib Dems maybe - except they want to pander to NIMBYs in a desperate attempt to be relevant to somebody. So they're no good either.
There's nobody decent to vote for. We are fucked.
This is far more a London / SE problem than a young / old, or a national, problem.
I'm sure people in London / SE love having their mouths stuffed with free money, at a cost to the taxpayer of £35bn a year or so most of which goes there, but it's time they realised the damage they are inflicting.
CGT relief on main homes has to go. It is the single biggest problem in our housing market.
From your own chart the cost multiple even in the North is far higher now than it was at the turn of the century.
Prices collapsing back to 2000 levels (in real terms) would be a great thing to happen....
Given current building standards and costs, is that even possible ?
In most of the north people of all sorts buy and sell homes all the time and it isn't a big issue.
House building is not the only market failure. If a free market worked lots of jobs would gravitate to where affordable houses are.
I suspect that the gravitational pull of London and SE is such that however many homes were built it would make little difference to price; just that more people would join the throng to be there. (Like the ice cream van queue in economics).
Idly looking at the local rightmove I note a flat for sale to "Buy To Let Purchasers Only." What sort of scumbag imposes this sort of condition and why? Is it enforceable?
Well, you can choose not to sell something you own for any reason you like, so of course it's enforceable, except a buyer could lie to an extent.
The only reason I can think of for such a condition is that it might be expected that a buy-to-let purchaser might be less hassle in terms of mortgage approvals, completion dates, etc.
Ah, TheWhiteRabbit has the likely answer - a sitting tenant.
That turns out to be right, existing s/hold tenancy in small print
We simply need for the government to do less and for wealthy older people to pay a much larger share of their ongoing costs.
That's not an election winning platform.
Dave and George won on a fiscal responsibility platform in 2010 and 2015. No need to outline the specifics.
Even if gets a party through an election, they are still going to have to make the cuts.
And the magnitude of cuts you're after aren't going to come from waste, diversity officers and foreign aid. And public sector pay is getting to the point where you can't get anybody, let alone anybody good.
So what concrete things should the government stop doing? Because if the answer is "welfare for richer pensioners" or "expensive care that prolongs end-of-life", you may have a point, but good luck sneaking that past the electorate.
(And no, I don't have a better answer. Except maybe to get the band to play "Near my God to thee". Before firing the band as an unaffordable luxury.)
It will take a government with real cojones to do what it takes to axe the size of the state to avoid a high tax low growth future. Neither party seems up to it.
So what specific things is the government spending money on now, that it should stop spending money on?
Cuts: State pension for retirees with more than £50k in other income, I'd start tapering at £40k until it's all gone by £50k.
All in working tax credits.
All housing benefits paid to private landlords over a period of 5 years, social housing to be built to replace.
No social care subsidy for anyone who has the means to pay their own way.
Revenue raising: Increase the additional home stamp duty surcharge to 5% and then an additional 1% every two years until it reaches at least 3-4 years of lost yield (something like 15%) for BTL leeches.
Annual value surcharge on second properties of 0.5-1% per year to be hypothecated into building of new homes for below market rate rent and sale and upkeep of existing social housing.
Annual value surcharge of 20% on foreign owned property to be put into the same fund as above, include properties owned by foreign domiciled trusts or any tax avoidance vehicles.
Increase CGT on non-primary residential property sales to the same as income tax rates.
Pension income is now NIable.
Tax cuts:
Eliminate the NI rise.
Reverse the CT rises.
Special rate of zero tax on new green energy investments (including Gen 4 nuclear and fusion) and derived operating profit for 20 years.
We simply need for the government to do less and for wealthy older people to pay a much larger share of their ongoing costs.
That's not an election winning platform.
Dave and George won on a fiscal responsibility platform in 2010 and 2015. No need to outline the specifics.
The Tories are abandoning their house building pledges, so fat luck.
House prices boom for the elderly, young people get taxed, student loans pegged to inflation and CoL.
We are fucked. Vote Labour.
Labour are just as bad.
The house price to earning ratio was trashed under Labour and Labour are the ones who introduced Student Loans and started heavily raising National Insurance instead of Income Tax so that young people who work are taxed while pensioners aren't.
So who else can we vote for? The Lib Dems maybe - except they want to pander to NIMBYs in a desperate attempt to be relevant to somebody. So they're no good either.
There's nobody decent to vote for. We are fucked.
This is far more a London / SE problem than a young / old, or a national, problem.
I'm sure people in London / SE love having their mouths stuffed with free money, at a cost to the taxpayer of £35bn a year or so most of which goes there, but it's time they realised the damage they are inflicting.
CGT relief on main homes has to go. It is the single biggest problem preventing a more functional housing market.
I agree it's primarily a London problem - but it does bleed through to other parts and affect their residents, esp. when the second homes issue is taken into account.
We simply need for the government to do less and for wealthy older people to pay a much larger share of their ongoing costs.
That's not an election winning platform.
Dave and George won on a fiscal responsibility platform in 2010 and 2015. No need to outline the specifics.
Even if gets a party through an election, they are still going to have to make the cuts.
And the magnitude of cuts you're after aren't going to come from waste, diversity officers and foreign aid. And public sector pay is getting to the point where you can't get anybody, let alone anybody good.
So what concrete things should the government stop doing? Because if the answer is "welfare for richer pensioners" or "expensive care that prolongs end-of-life", you may have a point, but good luck sneaking that past the electorate.
(And no, I don't have a better answer. Except maybe to get the band to play "Near my God to thee". Before firing the band as an unaffordable luxury.)
It will take a government with real cojones to do what it takes to axe the size of the state to avoid a high tax low growth future. Neither party seems up to it.
Not just to axe the size of the state but also to axe the cost of housing.
We need a house price crash and a return to 3-4x multiples so that people can afford their own home in the same way as the generations before them could but again that would take real cojones and no party is up to it.
Instead what we may need to rely upon for both is the market ensuring that TINA applies and both are to happen against the wishes of the parties.
A house price crash in money terms is somewhat undesirable, as it leads to negative equity and people unable to move.
They can drop 5% per year without too many problems though. Add a couple of years of 8% inflation and you’re 25% down in real terms.
There’s only two ways to get the ball rolling though, building lots more houses and tighter mortgage requirements.
After house prices rose 10% last year, adding £300 billion pounds in unearned, untaxed value, negative equity shouldn't be an issue at the moment.
I make the gain rather more than double that, but that is juggling with zeroes.
We simply need for the government to do less and for wealthy older people to pay a much larger share of their ongoing costs.
That's not an election winning platform.
Dave and George won on a fiscal responsibility platform in 2010 and 2015. No need to outline the specifics.
Even if gets a party through an election, they are still going to have to make the cuts.
And the magnitude of cuts you're after aren't going to come from waste, diversity officers and foreign aid. And public sector pay is getting to the point where you can't get anybody, let alone anybody good.
So what concrete things should the government stop doing? Because if the answer is "welfare for richer pensioners" or "expensive care that prolongs end-of-life", you may have a point, but good luck sneaking that past the electorate.
(And no, I don't have a better answer. Except maybe to get the band to play "Near my God to thee". Before firing the band as an unaffordable luxury.)
It will take a government with real cojones to do what it takes to axe the size of the state to avoid a high tax low growth future. Neither party seems up to it.
Not just to axe the size of the state but also to axe the cost of housing.
We need a house price crash and a return to 3-4x multiples so that people can afford their own home in the same way as the generations before them could but again that would take real cojones and no party is up to it.
Instead what we may need to rely upon for both is the market ensuring that TINA applies and both are to happen against the wishes of the parties.
Trouble is, somehow we need to engineer a house price crash without leaving half the country in negative equity. That's going to be challenging, to put it mildly.
We also need to do something about putting in infrastructure to match the additional housing - my town is growing by about 20% in five years. It was a pleasant place without major traffic problems. It seems fairly clear that its going to be a traffic nightmare by the time the builders have finished, and the local council has zero intention of doing anything about it. We've no obvious plans for more schools, doctors etc, and even attempts to get a new supermarket through planning get repeatedly scuppered.
To be honest if some people end up in negative equity I'm OK with that, especially if those people are speculators "investing" in property.
Whatever happened to the warning "investments can go down as well as up"?
100% agreed though that we need the infrastructure to match the housing.
We simply need for the government to do less and for wealthy older people to pay a much larger share of their ongoing costs.
That's not an election winning platform.
Dave and George won on a fiscal responsibility platform in 2010 and 2015. No need to outline the specifics.
Even if gets a party through an election, they are still going to have to make the cuts.
And the magnitude of cuts you're after aren't going to come from waste, diversity officers and foreign aid. And public sector pay is getting to the point where you can't get anybody, let alone anybody good.
So what concrete things should the government stop doing? Because if the answer is "welfare for richer pensioners" or "expensive care that prolongs end-of-life", you may have a point, but good luck sneaking that past the electorate.
(And no, I don't have a better answer. Except maybe to get the band to play "Near my God to thee". Before firing the band as an unaffordable luxury.)
It will take a government with real cojones to do what it takes to axe the size of the state to avoid a high tax low growth future. Neither party seems up to it.
Not just to axe the size of the state but also to axe the cost of housing.
We need a house price crash and a return to 3-4x multiples so that people can afford their own home in the same way as the generations before them could but again that would take real cojones and no party is up to it.
Instead what we may need to rely upon for both is the market ensuring that TINA applies and both are to happen against the wishes of the parties.
A house price crash in money terms is somewhat undesirable, as it leads to negative equity and people unable to move.
They can drop 5% per year without too many problems though. Add a couple of years of 8% inflation and you’re 25% down in real terms.
There’s only two ways to get the ball rolling though, building lots more houses and tighter mortgage requirements.
A decade of moderate inflation with house prices stagnant in nominal terms (therefor falling a lot in value) is the least painful way out of the mess. Of course if inflation gets too high ...
But it's not easy to see how you sustain moderate inflation for several years without interest rates and mortgage rates going up to match.
And if you do that, then it's game over for a lot of mortgage payers.
And once again, the problem is generational. The price of my house falls by 50%, hey ho, it wasn't real money in the first place and I've still got a house.
For someone who started buying a house with a mortgage in the last decade, a 50% house price fall wipes them out and then some.
Going back to the 1980's, house price inflation has been a very popular something-for-nothing. But something-for-nothing tends to be followed by nothing-for-something.
The Tories have an 80 seat majority and still fuck the young. God help us
Yeah. Widespread educational interruption, soaring mental health problems and long term cancellations of activities like sport. And now increases in hepatitis due to weakened immune systems, apparently.
Actually labour wanted more of all that. Getting rid of lockdown was 'reckless'.
We simply need for the government to do less and for wealthy older people to pay a much larger share of their ongoing costs.
That's not an election winning platform.
Dave and George won on a fiscal responsibility platform in 2010 and 2015. No need to outline the specifics.
Even if gets a party through an election, they are still going to have to make the cuts.
And the magnitude of cuts you're after aren't going to come from waste, diversity officers and foreign aid. And public sector pay is getting to the point where you can't get anybody, let alone anybody good.
So what concrete things should the government stop doing? Because if the answer is "welfare for richer pensioners" or "expensive care that prolongs end-of-life", you may have a point, but good luck sneaking that past the electorate.
(And no, I don't have a better answer. Except maybe to get the band to play "Near my God to thee". Before firing the band as an unaffordable luxury.)
It will take a government with real cojones to do what it takes to axe the size of the state to avoid a high tax low growth future. Neither party seems up to it.
Where do you cut? Schools are underfunded, local government services are close to collapse, infrastructure is degrading, defence will have to rise because of Russia, and working age and child welfare spending is at poverty levels already. Increased state spending is being driven by an ageing population (health, pensions and social care), while almost everything else is already down in real terms. In my view the only way to tackle spending is to raise the pension age and go after savings including housing wealth much more to pay for social care. You're not going to get that from the Tories, aka the Old Age Welfare Gravy Train party.
We simply need for the government to do less and for wealthy older people to pay a much larger share of their ongoing costs.
That's not an election winning platform.
Dave and George won on a fiscal responsibility platform in 2010 and 2015. No need to outline the specifics.
Even if gets a party through an election, they are still going to have to make the cuts.
And the magnitude of cuts you're after aren't going to come from waste, diversity officers and foreign aid. And public sector pay is getting to the point where you can't get anybody, let alone anybody good.
So what concrete things should the government stop doing? Because if the answer is "welfare for richer pensioners" or "expensive care that prolongs end-of-life", you may have a point, but good luck sneaking that past the electorate.
(And no, I don't have a better answer. Except maybe to get the band to play "Near my God to thee". Before firing the band as an unaffordable luxury.)
It will take a government with real cojones to do what it takes to axe the size of the state to avoid a high tax low growth future. Neither party seems up to it.
So what specific things is the government spending money on now, that it should stop spending money on?
Cuts: State pension for retirees with more than £50k in other income, I'd start tapering at £40k until it's all gone by £50k.
All in working tax credits.
All housing benefits paid to private landlords over a period of 5 years, social housing to be built to replace.
No social care subsidy for anyone who has the means to pay their own way.
Revenue raising: Increase the additional home stamp duty surcharge to 5% and then an additional 1% every two years until it reaches at least 3-4 years of lost yield (something like 15%) for BTL leeches.
Annual value surcharge on second properties of 0.5-1% per year to be hypothecated into building of new homes for below market rate rent and sale and upkeep of existing social housing.
Annual value surcharge of 20% on foreign owned property to be put into the same fund as above, include properties owned by foreign domiciled trusts or any tax avoidance vehicles.
Increase CGT on non-primary residential property sales to the same as income tax rates.
Pension income is now NIable.
Tax cuts:
Eliminate the NI rise.
Reverse the CT rises.
Special rate of zero tax on new green energy investments (including Gen 4 nuclear and fusion) and derived operating profit for 20 years.
I'd beg to disagree on the NI and state pension - leave the state pension for high income people. It's paid for through NI after all. Deleting it will ensure that Tories will do everything they can to stamp the state pension out as they get no benefit. Either than or abolich employee NI and convert it to proper income tax, while also eliminating the NI credits for the purposes of state pension.
Edit: one reason is to save on the administration - infamously incompetent - of State Pension. Just been reading in the Which website about yet more problems therein.
We simply need for the government to do less and for wealthy older people to pay a much larger share of their ongoing costs.
That's not an election winning platform.
Dave and George won on a fiscal responsibility platform in 2010 and 2015. No need to outline the specifics.
Even if gets a party through an election, they are still going to have to make the cuts.
And the magnitude of cuts you're after aren't going to come from waste, diversity officers and foreign aid. And public sector pay is getting to the point where you can't get anybody, let alone anybody good.
So what concrete things should the government stop doing? Because if the answer is "welfare for richer pensioners" or "expensive care that prolongs end-of-life", you may have a point, but good luck sneaking that past the electorate.
(And no, I don't have a better answer. Except maybe to get the band to play "Near my God to thee". Before firing the band as an unaffordable luxury.)
It will take a government with real cojones to do what it takes to axe the size of the state to avoid a high tax low growth future. Neither party seems up to it.
So what specific things is the government spending money on now, that it should stop spending money on?
Cuts: State pension for retirees with more than £50k in other income, I'd start tapering at £40k until it's all gone by £50k.
All in working tax credits.
All housing benefits paid to private landlords over a period of 5 years, social housing to be built to replace.
No social care subsidy for anyone who has the means to pay their own way.
Revenue raising: Increase the additional home stamp duty surcharge to 5% and then an additional 1% every two years until it reaches at least 3-4 years of lost yield (something like 15%) for BTL leeches.
Annual value surcharge on second properties of 0.5-1% per year to be hypothecated into building of new homes for below market rate rent and sale and upkeep of existing social housing.
Annual value surcharge of 20% on foreign owned property to be put into the same fund as above, include properties owned by foreign domiciled trusts or any tax avoidance vehicles.
Increase CGT on non-primary residential property sales to the same as income tax rates.
Pension income is now NIable.
Tax cuts:
Eliminate the NI rise.
Reverse the CT rises.
Special rate of zero tax on new green energy investments (including Gen 4 nuclear and fusion) and derived operating profit for 20 years.
I'd beg to disagree on the NI and state pension - leave the state pension for high income people. It's paid for through NI after all. Deleting it will ensure that Tories will do everything they can to stamp the state pension out as they get no benefit. Either than or abolich employee NI and convert it to proper income tax, while also eliminating the NI credits for the purposes of state pension.
State pension is not paid through NI. NI is just a tax like any other, there is no hypothecation of NI funds, despite what the government might like to say.
Merging NI and Income tax is fine too. It achieves the same end goal.
We simply need for the government to do less and for wealthy older people to pay a much larger share of their ongoing costs.
That's not an election winning platform.
Dave and George won on a fiscal responsibility platform in 2010 and 2015. No need to outline the specifics.
Even if gets a party through an election, they are still going to have to make the cuts.
And the magnitude of cuts you're after aren't going to come from waste, diversity officers and foreign aid. And public sector pay is getting to the point where you can't get anybody, let alone anybody good.
So what concrete things should the government stop doing? Because if the answer is "welfare for richer pensioners" or "expensive care that prolongs end-of-life", you may have a point, but good luck sneaking that past the electorate.
(And no, I don't have a better answer. Except maybe to get the band to play "Near my God to thee". Before firing the band as an unaffordable luxury.)
It will take a government with real cojones to do what it takes to axe the size of the state to avoid a high tax low growth future. Neither party seems up to it.
Not just to axe the size of the state but also to axe the cost of housing.
We need a house price crash and a return to 3-4x multiples so that people can afford their own home in the same way as the generations before them could but again that would take real cojones and no party is up to it.
Instead what we may need to rely upon for both is the market ensuring that TINA applies and both are to happen against the wishes of the parties.
Trouble is, somehow we need to engineer a house price crash without leaving half the country in negative equity. That's going to be challenging, to put it mildly.
We also need to do something about putting in infrastructure to match the additional housing - my town is growing by about 20% in five years. It was a pleasant place without major traffic problems. It seems fairly clear that its going to be a traffic nightmare by the time the builders have finished, and the local council has zero intention of doing anything about it. We've no obvious plans for more schools, doctors etc, and even attempts to get a new supermarket through planning get repeatedly scuppered.
That's already part of the standard planning process.
Have a look at all the docs associated with any local Planning App for a medium-sized housing estate.
But local objectors always try and use it as ammunition. Like the sudden interest that always develops in foxes and bats.
As discussed on here a few days ago, there are currently new reports coming in for nitrate balance in some places.
So global ex-EV battery capacity last year was approximately the same as the UK's energy usage in an hour?
300GWh, that’s around 3m EVs.
Global car sales in 2019 - 68m.
But that's the ex-EV element.
6 TWh then would presumably be around 60m EVs?
Dare I suggest that the headline “Forecast: Li-Ion Battery Market Might Exceed 6 TWh/Year By 2030”, starts with last year’s total car sales and works backwards?
So global ex-EV battery capacity last year was approximately the same as the UK's energy usage in an hour?
300GWh, that’s around 3-4m EVs.
Global car sales in 2019 - 68m.
I realise it's 10 hours.
But your comparison is still fair: it's big compared to the eV market, but tiny compared to overall energy usage (particularly if we assume more heating etc. will be electric in future).
We simply need for the government to do less and for wealthy older people to pay a much larger share of their ongoing costs.
That's not an election winning platform.
Dave and George won on a fiscal responsibility platform in 2010 and 2015. No need to outline the specifics.
Even if gets a party through an election, they are still going to have to make the cuts.
And the magnitude of cuts you're after aren't going to come from waste, diversity officers and foreign aid. And public sector pay is getting to the point where you can't get anybody, let alone anybody good.
So what concrete things should the government stop doing? Because if the answer is "welfare for richer pensioners" or "expensive care that prolongs end-of-life", you may have a point, but good luck sneaking that past the electorate.
(And no, I don't have a better answer. Except maybe to get the band to play "Near my God to thee". Before firing the band as an unaffordable luxury.)
It will take a government with real cojones to do what it takes to axe the size of the state to avoid a high tax low growth future. Neither party seems up to it.
Not just to axe the size of the state but also to axe the cost of housing.
We need a house price crash and a return to 3-4x multiples so that people can afford their own home in the same way as the generations before them could but again that would take real cojones and no party is up to it.
Instead what we may need to rely upon for both is the market ensuring that TINA applies and both are to happen against the wishes of the parties.
A house price crash in money terms is somewhat undesirable, as it leads to negative equity and people unable to move.
They can drop 5% per year without too many problems though. Add a couple of years of 8% inflation and you’re 25% down in real terms.
There’s only two ways to get the ball rolling though, building lots more houses and tighter mortgage requirements.
A decade of moderate inflation with house prices stagnant in nominal terms (therefor falling a lot in value) is the least painful way out of the mess. Of course if inflation gets too high ...
But it's not easy to see how you sustain moderate inflation for several years without interest rates and mortgage rates going up to match.
And if you do that, then it's game over for a lot of mortgage payers.
And once again, the problem is generational. The price of my house falls by 50%, hey ho, it wasn't real money in the first place and I've still got a house.
For someone who started buying a house with a mortgage in the last decade, a 50% house price fall wipes them out and then some.
Going back to the 1980's, house price inflation has been a very popular something-for-nothing. But something-for-nothing tends to be followed by nothing-for-something.
I agree, there should be capital gains tax on all property sales including main residence with taper and some roll-over to purchase a new property. BTW taper is a good principle for CGT as it dampens short term gains - should never have been got rid of.
Breaking: Germany to deliver “Gepard” anti-aircraft tanks to Ukraine.
According to several German media reports, the government has finally approved the delivery of such heavy weapons to Ukraine. The step will be officially announced at the Ukraine conference in Rammstein today. https://twitter.com/vonderburchard/status/1518846126144765952
Note, the ammo is again Swiss, so there might be an attempt to veto, as with the Marder vehicles.
Gepard has been out of service for a decade. Better hope the guys doing mothballing were good at their jobs....
From Wiki...if they can defend the fitba they must be quite something...
"In December 2020, it was announced that a license had been issued for the export of a total of 15 Gepard anti-aircraft tanks to Qatar. Furthermore, four automatic cannons, 30 tubes, 16,000 rounds of ammunition and 45 breechblocks will be delivered as spare parts. Apparently, the Emirate of Qatar plans to use the Gepard tanks during the 2022 World Cup to counter possible terrorist drone attacks"
The basic design is very, very ancient. 1960s.
They have been extensively upgraded over the years, but what that actually means is anyones guess.
Radars and control electronics.
I meant in terms of actual performance - they may be anything from so hopelessly outdated that jamming it's systems is completely trivial to death-on-wheels.
EDIT: Gun vehicles largely became obsolete when aircraft stopped playing nice and used stand off weapons instead. For drones - will they make a come back? Is anyone dusting off the blueprints for the T250 gun?
You're right that they're mostly effective against low flying targets - but given the Russian air to ground effort is pretty inaccurate above low altitude, they're probably quite useful in Ukraine. Also those 35mm cannons would make short work of anything less than an MBT.
We simply need for the government to do less and for wealthy older people to pay a much larger share of their ongoing costs.
That's not an election winning platform.
Dave and George won on a fiscal responsibility platform in 2010 and 2015. No need to outline the specifics.
Even if gets a party through an election, they are still going to have to make the cuts.
And the magnitude of cuts you're after aren't going to come from waste, diversity officers and foreign aid. And public sector pay is getting to the point where you can't get anybody, let alone anybody good.
So what concrete things should the government stop doing? Because if the answer is "welfare for richer pensioners" or "expensive care that prolongs end-of-life", you may have a point, but good luck sneaking that past the electorate.
(And no, I don't have a better answer. Except maybe to get the band to play "Near my God to thee". Before firing the band as an unaffordable luxury.)
It will take a government with real cojones to do what it takes to axe the size of the state to avoid a high tax low growth future. Neither party seems up to it.
Where do you cut? Schools are underfunded, local government services are close to collapse, infrastructure is degrading, defence will have to rise because of Russia, and working age and child welfare spending is at poverty levels already. Increased state spending is being driven by an ageing population (health, pensions and social care), while almost everything else is already down in real terms. In my view the only way to tackle spending is to raise the pension age and go after savings including housing wealth much more to pay for social care. You're not going to get that from the Tories, aka the Old Age Welfare Gravy Train party.
It sounds like Britain is at Chad or Comoros development levels, with its services literally collapsing. Is it at all possible that this is overstated rhetoric with an aim to get more cash, rather than a deliberate assessment?
How much approx would it cost to fill up a car’s petrol tank in 1951?
It’s late in the UK but perhaps some older insomniacs can remember…the online stuff I’ve read suggest it was hideously expensive and I’m having trouble believing it…
According to online data (yes, I know), it was apparently 4s 6d per gallon in 1950.
Comparing prices over time is complicated, because inflation-adjusted prices go down over time (in comparison to average earnings and GDP, which have been historically growing faster than inflation - essentially, a constant £10 "real" price was a bigger impact the further back you go.
Via measuringworth.com:
[RPI adjusted]: real price is £8.20/gallon [As a fraction of average wage]: labour value is £22.42/gallon [As a fraction of average income]: income value of that commodity is £30.73/gallon [As a fraction of GDP]: economic share of that commodity is £40.93/gallon
We need massive investment to get the economy going again. Austerity doesn't work and the fact this is in the conversation again shows the Tories are out of ideas.
We simply need for the government to do less and for wealthy older people to pay a much larger share of their ongoing costs.
That's not an election winning platform.
Dave and George won on a fiscal responsibility platform in 2010 and 2015. No need to outline the specifics.
Even if gets a party through an election, they are still going to have to make the cuts.
And the magnitude of cuts you're after aren't going to come from waste, diversity officers and foreign aid. And public sector pay is getting to the point where you can't get anybody, let alone anybody good.
So what concrete things should the government stop doing? Because if the answer is "welfare for richer pensioners" or "expensive care that prolongs end-of-life", you may have a point, but good luck sneaking that past the electorate.
(And no, I don't have a better answer. Except maybe to get the band to play "Near my God to thee". Before firing the band as an unaffordable luxury.)
It will take a government with real cojones to do what it takes to axe the size of the state to avoid a high tax low growth future. Neither party seems up to it.
So what specific things is the government spending money on now, that it should stop spending money on?
Cuts: State pension for retirees with more than £50k in other income, I'd start tapering at £40k until it's all gone by £50k.
All in working tax credits.
All housing benefits paid to private landlords over a period of 5 years, social housing to be built to replace.
No social care subsidy for anyone who has the means to pay their own way.
Revenue raising: Increase the additional home stamp duty surcharge to 5% and then an additional 1% every two years until it reaches at least 3-4 years of lost yield (something like 15%) for BTL leeches.
Annual value surcharge on second properties of 0.5-1% per year to be hypothecated into building of new homes for below market rate rent and sale and upkeep of existing social housing.
Annual value surcharge of 20% on foreign owned property to be put into the same fund as above, include properties owned by foreign domiciled trusts or any tax avoidance vehicles.
Increase CGT on non-primary residential property sales to the same as income tax rates.
Pension income is now NIable.
Tax cuts:
Eliminate the NI rise.
Reverse the CT rises.
Special rate of zero tax on new green energy investments (including Gen 4 nuclear and fusion) and derived operating profit for 20 years.
I'd beg to disagree on the NI and state pension - leave the state pension for high income people. It's paid for through NI after all. Deleting it will ensure that Tories will do everything they can to stamp the state pension out as they get no benefit. Either than or abolich employee NI and convert it to proper income tax, while also eliminating the NI credits for the purposes of state pension.
State pension is not paid through NI. NI is just a tax like any other, there is no hypothecation of NI funds, despite what the government might like to say.
Merging NI and Income tax is fine too. It achieves the same end goal.
You know and I know that HMG are lying shites. We are entirely agreed on that.
However, the amount of SP one gets depends on how many 'qualifying' years of NI one has paid, with a minimum of 10 years.
We need massive investment to get the economy going again. Austerity doesn't work and the fact this is in the conversation again shows the Tories are out of ideas.
We simply need for the government to do less and for wealthy older people to pay a much larger share of their ongoing costs.
That's not an election winning platform.
Dave and George won on a fiscal responsibility platform in 2010 and 2015. No need to outline the specifics.
Even if gets a party through an election, they are still going to have to make the cuts.
And the magnitude of cuts you're after aren't going to come from waste, diversity officers and foreign aid. And public sector pay is getting to the point where you can't get anybody, let alone anybody good.
So what concrete things should the government stop doing? Because if the answer is "welfare for richer pensioners" or "expensive care that prolongs end-of-life", you may have a point, but good luck sneaking that past the electorate.
(And no, I don't have a better answer. Except maybe to get the band to play "Near my God to thee". Before firing the band as an unaffordable luxury.)
It will take a government with real cojones to do what it takes to axe the size of the state to avoid a high tax low growth future. Neither party seems up to it.
Where do you cut? Schools are underfunded, local government services are close to collapse, infrastructure is degrading, defence will have to rise because of Russia, and working age and child welfare spending is at poverty levels already. Increased state spending is being driven by an ageing population (health, pensions and social care), while almost everything else is already down in real terms. In my view the only way to tackle spending is to raise the pension age and go after savings including housing wealth much more to pay for social care. You're not going to get that from the Tories, aka the Old Age Welfare Gravy Train party.
Merge NI and Income Tax and Employers NI so that all income, earnt and unearnt, is taxed at the same rate.
Abolish Inheritance Tax and simply have all inheritances taxed as per Income Tax rate, so earnt and inherited incomes are treated the same too.
Abolish both Stamp Duty and Council Tax and replace with a % of house price land tax that is paid by the owner, not the tenant. That way if house prices go up then their taxes go up automatically, if house prices come down then taxes come down automatically; owners not planning on moving will have a fiscal incentive to not inflate house prices via NIMBYism.
Merge Income Tax (and NI as above) and Universal Credit so that there's what Milton Friedman called a "negative Income Tax" and people are not trapped in poverty with tax rates approaching 70-100% that way people will be incentivised to earn more and they will automatically pay more in taxes/receive less in benefits.
By abolishing Employers NI and removing the poverty trap there will be far less incentive for employers and employees in cash businesses to under-report earnings which reduces tax take and increases benefit spending.
Accept that people are mortal and we can't keep everyone alive forever. Accept that life is not risk-free.
We simply need for the government to do less and for wealthy older people to pay a much larger share of their ongoing costs.
That's not an election winning platform.
Dave and George won on a fiscal responsibility platform in 2010 and 2015. No need to outline the specifics.
Even if gets a party through an election, they are still going to have to make the cuts.
And the magnitude of cuts you're after aren't going to come from waste, diversity officers and foreign aid. And public sector pay is getting to the point where you can't get anybody, let alone anybody good.
So what concrete things should the government stop doing? Because if the answer is "welfare for richer pensioners" or "expensive care that prolongs end-of-life", you may have a point, but good luck sneaking that past the electorate.
(And no, I don't have a better answer. Except maybe to get the band to play "Near my God to thee". Before firing the band as an unaffordable luxury.)
It will take a government with real cojones to do what it takes to axe the size of the state to avoid a high tax low growth future. Neither party seems up to it.
Where do you cut? Schools are underfunded, local government services are close to collapse, infrastructure is degrading, defence will have to rise because of Russia, and working age and child welfare spending is at poverty levels already. Increased state spending is being driven by an ageing population (health, pensions and social care), while almost everything else is already down in real terms. In my view the only way to tackle spending is to raise the pension age and go after savings including housing wealth much more to pay for social care. You're not going to get that from the Tories, aka the Old Age Welfare Gravy Train party.
A few years ago there was (still is, I think but nothing's happened) a plan for a 'sort of' industrial development locally. There was a protest movement, with all sorts of displays etc. I remarked to one protestor that it would at least provide work. But it'll devalue your house she replied. I commented that that would be my heirs problem!
Mrs C and I also commented, while watching the local TV news, on how well-spoken the objectors to the Suffolk nuclear projects were. People with 'local' accents had different concerns!
We simply need for the government to do less and for wealthy older people to pay a much larger share of their ongoing costs.
That's not an election winning platform.
Dave and George won on a fiscal responsibility platform in 2010 and 2015. No need to outline the specifics.
Even if gets a party through an election, they are still going to have to make the cuts.
And the magnitude of cuts you're after aren't going to come from waste, diversity officers and foreign aid. And public sector pay is getting to the point where you can't get anybody, let alone anybody good.
So what concrete things should the government stop doing? Because if the answer is "welfare for richer pensioners" or "expensive care that prolongs end-of-life", you may have a point, but good luck sneaking that past the electorate.
(And no, I don't have a better answer. Except maybe to get the band to play "Near my God to thee". Before firing the band as an unaffordable luxury.)
It will take a government with real cojones to do what it takes to axe the size of the state to avoid a high tax low growth future. Neither party seems up to it.
So what specific things is the government spending money on now, that it should stop spending money on?
Cuts: State pension for retirees with more than £50k in other income, I'd start tapering at £40k until it's all gone by £50k.
All in working tax credits.
All housing benefits paid to private landlords over a period of 5 years, social housing to be built to replace.
No social care subsidy for anyone who has the means to pay their own way.
Revenue raising: Increase the additional home stamp duty surcharge to 5% and then an additional 1% every two years until it reaches at least 3-4 years of lost yield (something like 15%) for BTL leeches.
Annual value surcharge on second properties of 0.5-1% per year to be hypothecated into building of new homes for below market rate rent and sale and upkeep of existing social housing.
Annual value surcharge of 20% on foreign owned property to be put into the same fund as above, include properties owned by foreign domiciled trusts or any tax avoidance vehicles.
Increase CGT on non-primary residential property sales to the same as income tax rates.
Pension income is now NIable.
Tax cuts:
Eliminate the NI rise.
Reverse the CT rises.
Special rate of zero tax on new green energy investments (including Gen 4 nuclear and fusion) and derived operating profit for 20 years.
I'd beg to disagree on the NI and state pension - leave the state pension for high income people. It's paid for through NI after all. Deleting it will ensure that Tories will do everything they can to stamp the state pension out as they get no benefit. Either than or abolich employee NI and convert it to proper income tax, while also eliminating the NI credits for the purposes of state pension.
State pension is not paid through NI. NI is just a tax like any other, there is no hypothecation of NI funds, despite what the government might like to say.
Merging NI and Income tax is fine too. It achieves the same end goal.
You know and I know that HMG are lying shites. We are entirely agreed on that.
However, the amount of SP one gets depends on how many 'qualifying' years of NI one has paid, with a minimum of 10 years.
Merge it and change it to income tax paid for "X" years for qualification and then the actual money amount is income based rather than some odd rule about how many years someone paid into a system that isn't actually spent on said system with some minimum amount for British citizens who didn't work (housewives, disabled etc...) and have no significant income in retirement.
There's simply no need for the state to be giving people like my dad £9k per year or whatever it is he gets, his income in retirement is well into the higher tax bracket without that. It's literally holiday money for him, he's just about to spend £15k on a family holiday for all of us (6 adults 2 kids) to go to Sicily together while my wife can still fly. He's not someone who needs to be given £9k by the state.
We simply need for the government to do less and for wealthy older people to pay a much larger share of their ongoing costs.
That's not an election winning platform.
Dave and George won on a fiscal responsibility platform in 2010 and 2015. No need to outline the specifics.
The Tories are abandoning their house building pledges, so fat luck.
House prices boom for the elderly, young people get taxed, student loans pegged to inflation and CoL.
We are fucked. Vote Labour.
Labour are just as bad.
The house price to earning ratio was trashed under Labour and Labour are the ones who introduced Student Loans and started heavily raising National Insurance instead of Income Tax so that young people who work are taxed while pensioners aren't.
So who else can we vote for? The Lib Dems maybe - except they want to pander to NIMBYs in a desperate attempt to be relevant to somebody. So they're no good either.
There's nobody decent to vote for. We are fucked.
This is far more a London / SE problem than a young / old, or a national, problem.
I'm sure people in London / SE love having their mouths stuffed with free money, at a cost to the taxpayer of £35bn a year or so most of which goes there, but it's time they realised the damage they are inflicting.
CGT relief on main homes has to go. It is the single biggest problem in our housing market.
From your own chart the cost multiple even in the North is far higher now than it was at the turn of the century.
Prices collapsing back to 2000 levels (in real terms) would be a great thing to happen....
Given current building standards and costs, is that even possible ?
In most of the north people of all sorts buy and sell homes all the time and it isn't a big issue.
House building is not the only market failure. If a free market worked lots of jobs would gravitate to where affordable houses are.
I suspect that the gravitational pull of London and SE is such that however many homes were built it would make little difference to price; just that more people would join the throng to be there. (Like the ice cream van queue in economics).
Meanwhile the north is just great thanks.
I know, I live in Yorkshire.
My question related to this exchange: "From your own chart the cost multiple even in the North is far higher now than it was at the turn of the century...." "...Prices collapsing back to 2000 levels (in real terms) would be a great thing to happen.."
We simply need for the government to do less and for wealthy older people to pay a much larger share of their ongoing costs.
That's not an election winning platform.
Dave and George won on a fiscal responsibility platform in 2010 and 2015. No need to outline the specifics.
Even if gets a party through an election, they are still going to have to make the cuts.
And the magnitude of cuts you're after aren't going to come from waste, diversity officers and foreign aid. And public sector pay is getting to the point where you can't get anybody, let alone anybody good.
So what concrete things should the government stop doing? Because if the answer is "welfare for richer pensioners" or "expensive care that prolongs end-of-life", you may have a point, but good luck sneaking that past the electorate.
(And no, I don't have a better answer. Except maybe to get the band to play "Near my God to thee". Before firing the band as an unaffordable luxury.)
It will take a government with real cojones to do what it takes to axe the size of the state to avoid a high tax low growth future. Neither party seems up to it.
Where do you cut? Schools are underfunded, local government services are close to collapse, infrastructure is degrading, defence will have to rise because of Russia, and working age and child welfare spending is at poverty levels already. Increased state spending is being driven by an ageing population (health, pensions and social care), while almost everything else is already down in real terms. In my view the only way to tackle spending is to raise the pension age and go after savings including housing wealth much more to pay for social care. You're not going to get that from the Tories, aka the Old Age Welfare Gravy Train party.
Merge NI and Income Tax and Employers NI so that all income, earnt and unearnt, is taxed at the same rate.
Abolish Inheritance Tax and simply have all inheritances taxed as per Income Tax rate, so earnt and inherited incomes are treated the same too.
Abolish both Stamp Duty and Council Tax and replace with a % of house price land tax that is paid by the owner, not the tenant. That way if house prices go up then their taxes go up automatically, if house prices come down then taxes come down automatically; owners not planning on moving will have a fiscal incentive to not inflate house prices via NIMBYism.
Merge Income Tax (and NI as above) and Universal Credit so that there's what Milton Friedman called a "negative Income Tax" and people are not trapped in poverty with tax rates approaching 70-100% that way people will be incentivised to earn more and they will automatically pay more in taxes/receive less in benefits.
By abolishing Employers NI and removing the poverty trap there will be far less incentive for employers and employees in cash businesses to under-report earnings which reduces tax take and increases benefit spending.
Accept that people are mortal and we can't keep everyone alive forever. Accept that life is not risk-free.
We need massive investment to get the economy going again. Austerity doesn't work and the fact this is in the conversation again shows the Tories are out of ideas.
Great.
Where do you get the money from?
We found billions to bail the banks out last time and the Iraq War
Maybe not quite, but its difficult to see how Tories can hang on in '24 after 14 years, with soaring energy prices etc. Perhaps they shouldn't wish to? A good election to lose. They need to get rid of BJ, get in someone who at least seems responsible (say Wallace) and go down gracefully, without smashing a la '97. Seems obvs, really.
We simply need for the government to do less and for wealthy older people to pay a much larger share of their ongoing costs.
That's not an election winning platform.
Dave and George won on a fiscal responsibility platform in 2010 and 2015. No need to outline the specifics.
Even if gets a party through an election, they are still going to have to make the cuts.
And the magnitude of cuts you're after aren't going to come from waste, diversity officers and foreign aid. And public sector pay is getting to the point where you can't get anybody, let alone anybody good.
So what concrete things should the government stop doing? Because if the answer is "welfare for richer pensioners" or "expensive care that prolongs end-of-life", you may have a point, but good luck sneaking that past the electorate.
(And no, I don't have a better answer. Except maybe to get the band to play "Near my God to thee". Before firing the band as an unaffordable luxury.)
It will take a government with real cojones to do what it takes to axe the size of the state to avoid a high tax low growth future. Neither party seems up to it.
Where do you cut? Schools are underfunded, local government services are close to collapse, infrastructure is degrading, defence will have to rise because of Russia, and working age and child welfare spending is at poverty levels already. Increased state spending is being driven by an ageing population (health, pensions and social care), while almost everything else is already down in real terms. In my view the only way to tackle spending is to raise the pension age and go after savings including housing wealth much more to pay for social care. You're not going to get that from the Tories, aka the Old Age Welfare Gravy Train party.
Merge NI and Income Tax and Employers NI so that all income, earnt and unearnt, is taxed at the same rate.
Abolish Inheritance Tax and simply have all inheritances taxed as per Income Tax rate, so earnt and inherited incomes are treated the same too.
Abolish both Stamp Duty and Council Tax and replace with a % of house price land tax that is paid by the owner, not the tenant. That way if house prices go up then their taxes go up automatically, if house prices come down then taxes come down automatically; owners not planning on moving will have a fiscal incentive to not inflate house prices via NIMBYism.
Merge Income Tax (and NI as above) and Universal Credit so that there's what Milton Friedman called a "negative Income Tax" and people are not trapped in poverty with tax rates approaching 70-100% that way people will be incentivised to earn more and they will automatically pay more in taxes/receive less in benefits.
By abolishing Employers NI and removing the poverty trap there will be far less incentive for employers and employees in cash businesses to under-report earnings which reduces tax take and increases benefit spending.
Accept that people are mortal and we can't keep everyone alive forever. Accept that life is not risk-free.
I agree with pretty much all of that.
Then get Labour to start adopting it. Their policies on tax, spending and investment are literally identical to the government. They couldn't even muster any real opposition to the completely unfair NI rise that benefits old people and is paid for by the young.
Maybe not quite, but its difficult to see how Tories can hang on in '24 after 14 years, with soaring energy prices etc. Perhaps they shouldn't wish to? A good election to lose. They need to get rid of BJ, get in someone who at least seems responsible (say Wallace) and go down gracefully, without smashing a la '97. Seems obvs, really.
We simply need for the government to do less and for wealthy older people to pay a much larger share of their ongoing costs.
That's not an election winning platform.
Dave and George won on a fiscal responsibility platform in 2010 and 2015. No need to outline the specifics.
The Tories are abandoning their house building pledges, so fat luck.
House prices boom for the elderly, young people get taxed, student loans pegged to inflation and CoL.
We are fucked. Vote Labour.
Labour are just as bad.
The house price to earning ratio was trashed under Labour and Labour are the ones who introduced Student Loans and started heavily raising National Insurance instead of Income Tax so that young people who work are taxed while pensioners aren't.
So who else can we vote for? The Lib Dems maybe - except they want to pander to NIMBYs in a desperate attempt to be relevant to somebody. So they're no good either.
There's nobody decent to vote for. We are fucked.
This is far more a London / SE problem than a young / old, or a national, problem.
I'm sure people in London / SE love having their mouths stuffed with free money, at a cost to the taxpayer of £35bn a year or so most of which goes there, but it's time they realised the damage they are inflicting.
CGT relief on main homes has to go. It is the single biggest problem in our housing market.
From your own chart the cost multiple even in the North is far higher now than it was at the turn of the century.
Prices collapsing back to 2000 levels (in real terms) would be a great thing to happen....
Given current building standards and costs, is that even possible ?
In most of the north people of all sorts buy and sell homes all the time and it isn't a big issue.
House building is not the only market failure. If a free market worked lots of jobs would gravitate to where affordable houses are.
I suspect that the gravitational pull of London and SE is such that however many homes were built it would make little difference to price; just that more people would join the throng to be there. (Like the ice cream van queue in economics).
Meanwhile the north is just great thanks.
I know, I live in Yorkshire.
My question related to this exchange: "From your own chart the cost multiple even in the North is far higher now than it was at the turn of the century...." "...Prices collapsing back to 2000 levels (in real terms) would be a great thing to happen.."
Well indeed. 2000 levels was sub-3x multiple. Its now 4.5x multiple. 4.5x is worse than less than 3x.
The fact its worse in London doesn't make it better in the North now than it was in the past. Indeed the multiple in the North now is far, far higher than the multiple even in London was in the past.
We simply need for the government to do less and for wealthy older people to pay a much larger share of their ongoing costs.
That's not an election winning platform.
Dave and George won on a fiscal responsibility platform in 2010 and 2015. No need to outline the specifics.
Even if gets a party through an election, they are still going to have to make the cuts.
And the magnitude of cuts you're after aren't going to come from waste, diversity officers and foreign aid. And public sector pay is getting to the point where you can't get anybody, let alone anybody good.
So what concrete things should the government stop doing? Because if the answer is "welfare for richer pensioners" or "expensive care that prolongs end-of-life", you may have a point, but good luck sneaking that past the electorate.
(And no, I don't have a better answer. Except maybe to get the band to play "Near my God to thee". Before firing the band as an unaffordable luxury.)
It will take a government with real cojones to do what it takes to axe the size of the state to avoid a high tax low growth future. Neither party seems up to it.
Where do you cut? Schools are underfunded, local government services are close to collapse, infrastructure is degrading, defence will have to rise because of Russia, and working age and child welfare spending is at poverty levels already. Increased state spending is being driven by an ageing population (health, pensions and social care), while almost everything else is already down in real terms. In my view the only way to tackle spending is to raise the pension age and go after savings including housing wealth much more to pay for social care. You're not going to get that from the Tories, aka the Old Age Welfare Gravy Train party.
It sounds like Britain is at Chad or Comoros development levels, with its services literally collapsing. Is it at all possible that this is overstated rhetoric with an aim to get more cash, rather than a deliberate assessment?
Our public services and infrastructure are certainly feeling the strain and are of a poor quality for a country of our per capita income levels. I would hope that Chad is not the benchmark now.
We need massive investment to get the economy going again. Austerity doesn't work and the fact this is in the conversation again shows the Tories are out of ideas.
Great.
Where do you get the money from?
A far better question is what you could productively spend the money on.
Note that if government had, for example, borrowed to build tidal power schemes a decade back, they could be selling power well below the current market price of electricity and be turning a profit after financing costs.
We simply need for the government to do less and for wealthy older people to pay a much larger share of their ongoing costs.
That's not an election winning platform.
Dave and George won on a fiscal responsibility platform in 2010 and 2015. No need to outline the specifics.
Even if gets a party through an election, they are still going to have to make the cuts.
And the magnitude of cuts you're after aren't going to come from waste, diversity officers and foreign aid. And public sector pay is getting to the point where you can't get anybody, let alone anybody good.
So what concrete things should the government stop doing? Because if the answer is "welfare for richer pensioners" or "expensive care that prolongs end-of-life", you may have a point, but good luck sneaking that past the electorate.
(And no, I don't have a better answer. Except maybe to get the band to play "Near my God to thee". Before firing the band as an unaffordable luxury.)
It will take a government with real cojones to do what it takes to axe the size of the state to avoid a high tax low growth future. Neither party seems up to it.
Where do you cut? Schools are underfunded, local government services are close to collapse, infrastructure is degrading, defence will have to rise because of Russia, and working age and child welfare spending is at poverty levels already. Increased state spending is being driven by an ageing population (health, pensions and social care), while almost everything else is already down in real terms. In my view the only way to tackle spending is to raise the pension age and go after savings including housing wealth much more to pay for social care. You're not going to get that from the Tories, aka the Old Age Welfare Gravy Train party.
Merge NI and Income Tax and Employers NI so that all income, earnt and unearnt, is taxed at the same rate.
Abolish Inheritance Tax and simply have all inheritances taxed as per Income Tax rate, so earnt and inherited incomes are treated the same too.
Abolish both Stamp Duty and Council Tax and replace with a % of house price land tax that is paid by the owner, not the tenant. That way if house prices go up then their taxes go up automatically, if house prices come down then taxes come down automatically; owners not planning on moving will have a fiscal incentive to not inflate house prices via NIMBYism.
Merge Income Tax (and NI as above) and Universal Credit so that there's what Milton Friedman called a "negative Income Tax" and people are not trapped in poverty with tax rates approaching 70-100% that way people will be incentivised to earn more and they will automatically pay more in taxes/receive less in benefits.
By abolishing Employers NI and removing the poverty trap there will be far less incentive for employers and employees in cash businesses to under-report earnings which reduces tax take and increases benefit spending.
Accept that people are mortal and we can't keep everyone alive forever. Accept that life is not risk-free.
I agree with pretty much all of that.
Then get Labour to start adopting it. Their policies on tax, spending and investment are literally identical to the government. They couldn't even muster any real opposition to the completely unfair NI rise that benefits old people and is paid for by the young.
They opposed it wholeheartedly and have committed to repealing it, but the government has an 80 seat majority so what can they do to stop it right now?
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov says Western arms shipments to Ukraine mean Nato is "in essence engaged in war with Russia" and there is "considerable" risk of the conflict going nuclear
This is now a settled theme from Russia,.
Tbh I'm amazed they haven't said this from the outset, and it's part of the reason why I think we've being really disingenuous about the No Fly Zone. We have drawn our own line by saying that it's fine to supply tons of military equipment, intelligence and, even, special 'advisors' (SAS) to Ukraine but it's not fine to install a NFZ. 95% of people on here have gone along with this, often vociferously. They've told themselves that the one will help Ukraine but won't escalate it but the other would lead to WWIII and Armageddon.
But it's cant and hypocrisy basically, isn't it? If we're going to support Ukraine, bloody well support Ukraine. We should have backed Zelensky's request and stood up to Putin.
Just my opinion. Don't flame me.
Not going to flame you, but consider this: all but the most psychopathic criminals retain a demented sense of justice, a point quite neatly illustrated by monty python's piranha brothers who nail someone's head to the floor "because he had transgressed the unwritten code." Putin's unwritten code includes no nfz.
Or of course, he is bluffing and we only think it does. But don't fall into the narrative of Stand up to the bully, give Ivan a bloody nose and he will always cave in to true British grit. That is a school story and there's no nukes in schools.
It's amazing how many people think this is fucking Michael Bay film and that Russia will back down if, in some as yet to be defined manner, Ukraine wins.
There is going to have to be a deal sooner or later and the pressure should be on Ukraine and Russia to make it sooner.
What 'pressure to do a deal' can we put on a Russia that is doing, and saying, what it is?
And what makes you think they'll stick with the deal for a microsecond longer than it takes to get what they want?
Again, even nutters have a sense of justice. You adhere to the unwritten code, you don't get your head nailed to the coffee table. Russia's sabre rattling is consistently if...then, else..., not, we are going to nuke you just for shits n giggles and because we can
But OK you think a deal can't be done, so whats your alternative? Give Ivan a dam' good thrashing because then he'll back down, like bullies always do?
The government and people of Russia believe, with 100% confidence, that they will come out of the other end of a nuclear exchange in far better shape than NATO. This is a recurrent theme on Russian TV.
It's a vast and sparsely populated country with shit infrastructure and people who are used to roughing it anyway.
Oh I'm sure that Putin, his cronies and oligarchs with their luxurious palaces and yachts are completely used to roughing it (!)
I don't think they want to spend the rest of their lives living underground.
Russia may be sparsely populated but much of the population is concentrated in a small number of areas. Nearly 10% of the population lives in Moscow, and another 14% lives in the next fourteen cities. It would not take many warheads to destroy those population centres.
I think this is a case where standing up to a bully is actually a lot safer than giving way to him.
We simply need for the government to do less and for wealthy older people to pay a much larger share of their ongoing costs.
That's not an election winning platform.
Dave and George won on a fiscal responsibility platform in 2010 and 2015. No need to outline the specifics.
Even if gets a party through an election, they are still going to have to make the cuts.
And the magnitude of cuts you're after aren't going to come from waste, diversity officers and foreign aid. And public sector pay is getting to the point where you can't get anybody, let alone anybody good.
So what concrete things should the government stop doing? Because if the answer is "welfare for richer pensioners" or "expensive care that prolongs end-of-life", you may have a point, but good luck sneaking that past the electorate.
(And no, I don't have a better answer. Except maybe to get the band to play "Near my God to thee". Before firing the band as an unaffordable luxury.)
It will take a government with real cojones to do what it takes to axe the size of the state to avoid a high tax low growth future. Neither party seems up to it.
Where do you cut? Schools are underfunded, local government services are close to collapse, infrastructure is degrading, defence will have to rise because of Russia, and working age and child welfare spending is at poverty levels already. Increased state spending is being driven by an ageing population (health, pensions and social care), while almost everything else is already down in real terms. In my view the only way to tackle spending is to raise the pension age and go after savings including housing wealth much more to pay for social care. You're not going to get that from the Tories, aka the Old Age Welfare Gravy Train party.
A few years ago there was (still is, I think but nothing's happened) a plan for a 'sort of' industrial development locally. There was a protest movement, with all sorts of displays etc. I remarked to one protestor that it would at least provide work. But it'll devalue your house she replied. I commented that that would be my heirs problem!
Mrs C and I also commented, while watching the local TV news, on how well-spoken the objectors to the Suffolk nuclear projects were. People with 'local' accents had different concerns!
Understandable, though. The area around Sizewell is lovely. RSPB Minsmere next door with its avocets, bitterns, nightingales, marsh harriers, Cetti's warblers, otters, etc. Hopefully it can be protected in any event.
Comments
http://informationr.net/ir/5-3/paper75.html#Context
Idly looking at the local rightmove I note a flat for sale to "Buy To Let Purchasers Only." What sort of scumbag imposes this sort of condition and why? Is it enforceable?
Qatar: In December 2020, it was announced that a license had been issued for the export of a total of 15 Gepard anti-aircraft tanks to Qatar. Furthermore, four automatic cannons, 30 tubes, 16,000 rounds of ammunition and 45 breechblocks will be delivered as spare parts. Apparently, the Emirate of Qatar plans to use the Gepard tanks during the 2022 World Cup to counter possible terrorist drone attacks...
So probably, yes.
Did anyone credible ever believe he had any interest in diplomatic efforts in the first place?
Seizing as much territory as possible was literally the reason the war started and denying that is the only way to make it end. That requires sending heavy armaments to Ukraine.
Ukraine needs to be able to not just halt the invasion but to start to regain lost territory, then there is a hope for peace.
I believe the expenditure on the rocket programme was equivalent relative to the German economy as the Manhattan Project to the Allies.
2 - Yep.
Though one hopes for a Day of the Jackal on May 9th.
This unfortunately is another symbol of Boris the Bastard being utterly clueless about running an administration for practical effectiveness or political benefit.
His speciality is ending up spending the money anyway, having already pissed away the political capital that could have been used to his Govt's benefit.
This is also without the additional £30bn in debt interest we'll end up paying this year, wiping out the remaining COVID subsidies shutdown gains.
Unless the government starts putting a very, very big break on spending of 2-3% cash terms and minus 3-4% real terms the UK is heading into a high tax, low growth period. Just as people are being fiscally dragged to pay more tax, government spending needs to be fiscally dragged for 3-5 years to allow tax receipts to catch up. We simply need for the government to do less and for wealthy older people to pay a much larger share of their ongoing costs.
House prices boom for the elderly, young people get taxed, student loans pegged to inflation and CoL.
We are fucked. Vote Labour.
The house price to earning ratio was trashed under Labour and Labour are the ones who introduced Student Loans and started heavily raising National Insurance instead of Income Tax so that young people who work are taxed while pensioners aren't.
So who else can we vote for? The Lib Dems maybe - except they want to pander to NIMBYs in a desperate attempt to be relevant to somebody. So they're no good either.
There's nobody decent to vote for. We are fucked.
And the magnitude of cuts you're after aren't going to come from waste, diversity officers and foreign aid. And public sector pay is getting to the point where you can't get anybody, let alone anybody good.
So what concrete things should the government stop doing? Because if the answer is "welfare for richer pensioners" or "expensive care that prolongs end-of-life", you may have a point, but good luck sneaking that past the electorate.
(And no, I don't have a better answer. Except maybe to get the band to play "Near my God to thee". Before firing the band as an unaffordable luxury.)
Public sector net debt excluding public sector banks and the Bank of England (PSND ex BoE) is now falling at a percentage of GDP. Debt interest is only growing as the real value of the government's debt pile falls.
The deficit is at 2013 levels, with a further unwind to come.
I think we'll have a clearer picture by the autumn, assuming no further restrictions.
https://www.politico.eu/newsletter/brussels-playbook/french-election-fallout-nato-allies-meet-sanctions-waiting-game/
NY Times live blog
The only reason I can think of for such a condition is that it might be expected that a buy-to-let purchaser might be less hassle in terms of mortgage approvals, completion dates, etc.
Ah, TheWhiteRabbit has the likely answer - a sitting tenant.
We need a house price crash and a return to 3-4x multiples so that people can afford their own home in the same way as the generations before them could but again that would take real cojones and no party is up to it.
Instead what we may need to rely upon for both is the market ensuring that TINA applies and both are to happen against the wishes of the parties.
https://twitter.com/grantshapps/status/1518626889027538944?s=21&t=axCBNV8A0yhDey9vr3tPTg
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/10-top-tips-to-encourage-children-to-read/10-top-tips-to-encourage-children-to-read
If anyone in government had bothered to read the thing, they might also have removed the line in point six about libraries being closed until July. When was that anyway — 2020, 2021?
I'm sure people in London / SE love having their mouths stuffed with free money, at a cost to the taxpayer of £35bn a year or so most of which goes there, but it's time they realised the damage they are inflicting.
CGT relief on main homes has to go. It is the single biggest problem preventing a more functional housing market.
Source: https://www.economicshelp.org/blog/5568/housing/uk-house-price-affordability/
"In December 2020, it was announced that a license had been issued for the export of a total of 15 Gepard anti-aircraft tanks to Qatar. Furthermore, four automatic cannons, 30 tubes, 16,000 rounds of ammunition and 45 breechblocks will be delivered as spare parts. Apparently, the Emirate of Qatar plans to use the Gepard tanks during the 2022 World Cup to counter possible terrorist drone attacks"
Prices collapsing back to 2000 levels (in real terms) would be a great thing to happen. But its worth @CorrectHorseBattery looking at that chart and thinking who was PM in the 2000-2007 period when much of the damage was inflicted.
London multiple in 2007-2013 - about 7.
London multiple in 2014-2021 - about 11.
Multiples in the N consistently on this metric for the last 15 years - about 4.
The graph runs to late 2020, since when the only real change has been to further inflate (unnecessarily) the demand side.
We need tax distortions taking out, and that starts with CGT, the Sacred Cow - as the largest.
They have been extensively upgraded over the years, but what that actually means is anyones guess.
We also need to do something about putting in infrastructure to match the additional housing - my town is growing by about 20% in five years. It was a pleasant place without major traffic problems. It seems fairly clear that its going to be a traffic nightmare by the time the builders have finished, and the local council has zero intention of doing anything about it. We've no obvious plans for more schools, doctors etc, and even attempts to get a new supermarket through planning get repeatedly scuppered.
The total xEV battery deployment in 2021 is estimated at close to 300 GWh.
https://insideevs.com/news/581666/forecast-battery-market-6twh-2030/
They can drop 5% per year without too many problems though. Add a couple of years of 8% inflation and you’re 25% down in real terms.
There’s only two ways to get the ball rolling though, building lots more houses and tighter mortgage requirements.
EDIT: Gun vehicles largely became obsolete when aircraft stopped playing nice and used stand off weapons instead. For drones - will they make a come back? Is anyone dusting off the blueprints for the T250 gun?
National Real House price inflation since 2000 is 80%-90% ahead of retail inflation. And much more extreme in London, of course.
And new houses are only 13% of the market (2019).
In due course the many billions of taxes on new developments would need to be re-examined, or we would need to accept a far higher newbuild premium - which might not be a bad thing as owners of older homes might start investing in them.
But there's headroom.
Angela Rayner's popularity must have spiked, thanks Daily Mail
House building is not the only market failure. If a free market worked lots of jobs would gravitate to where affordable houses are.
I suspect that the gravitational pull of London and SE is such that however many homes were built it would make little difference to price; just that more people would join the throng to be there. (Like the ice cream van queue in economics).
Meanwhile the north is just great thanks.
State pension for retirees with more than £50k in other income, I'd start tapering at £40k until it's all gone by £50k.
All in working tax credits.
All housing benefits paid to private landlords over a period of 5 years, social housing to be built to replace.
No social care subsidy for anyone who has the means to pay their own way.
Revenue raising:
Increase the additional home stamp duty surcharge to 5% and then an additional 1% every two years until it reaches at least 3-4 years of lost yield (something like 15%) for BTL leeches.
Annual value surcharge on second properties of 0.5-1% per year to be hypothecated into building of new homes for below market rate rent and sale and upkeep of existing social housing.
Annual value surcharge of 20% on foreign owned property to be put into the same fund as above, include properties owned by foreign domiciled trusts or any tax avoidance vehicles.
Increase CGT on non-primary residential property sales to the same as income tax rates.
Pension income is now NIable.
Tax cuts:
Eliminate the NI rise.
Reverse the CT rises.
Special rate of zero tax on new green energy investments (including Gen 4 nuclear and fusion) and derived operating profit for 20 years.
Whatever happened to the warning "investments can go down as well as up"?
100% agreed though that we need the infrastructure to match the housing.
And if you do that, then it's game over for a lot of mortgage payers.
And once again, the problem is generational. The price of my house falls by 50%, hey ho, it wasn't real money in the first place and I've still got a house.
For someone who started buying a house with a mortgage in the last decade, a 50% house price fall wipes them out and then some.
Going back to the 1980's, house price inflation has been a very popular something-for-nothing. But something-for-nothing tends to be followed by nothing-for-something.
Global car sales in 2019 - 68m.
Actually labour wanted more of all that. Getting rid of lockdown was 'reckless'.
Edit: one reason is to save on the administration - infamously incompetent - of State Pension. Just been reading in the Which website about yet more problems therein.
6 TWh then would presumably be around 60m EVs?
Merging NI and Income tax is fine too. It achieves the same end goal.
Have a look at all the docs associated with any local Planning App for a medium-sized housing estate.
But local objectors always try and use it as ammunition. Like the sudden interest that always develops in foxes and bats.
As discussed on here a few days ago, there are currently new reports coming in for nitrate balance in some places.
But your comparison is still fair: it's big compared to the eV market, but tiny compared to overall energy usage (particularly if we assume more heating etc. will be electric in future).
Also those 35mm cannons would make short work of anything less than an MBT.
Comparing prices over time is complicated, because inflation-adjusted prices go down over time (in comparison to average earnings and GDP, which have been historically growing faster than inflation - essentially, a constant £10 "real" price was a bigger impact the further back you go.
Via measuringworth.com:
[RPI adjusted]: real price is £8.20/gallon
[As a fraction of average wage]: labour value is £22.42/gallon
[As a fraction of average income]: income value of that commodity is £30.73/gallon
[As a fraction of GDP]: economic share of that commodity is £40.93/gallon
However, the amount of SP one gets depends on how many 'qualifying' years of NI one has paid, with a minimum of 10 years.
https://www.gov.uk/new-state-pension
Hence the waste of effort on admin.
Where do you get the money from?
Abolish Inheritance Tax and simply have all inheritances taxed as per Income Tax rate, so earnt and inherited incomes are treated the same too.
Abolish both Stamp Duty and Council Tax and replace with a % of house price land tax that is paid by the owner, not the tenant. That way if house prices go up then their taxes go up automatically, if house prices come down then taxes come down automatically; owners not planning on moving will have a fiscal incentive to not inflate house prices via NIMBYism.
Merge Income Tax (and NI as above) and Universal Credit so that there's what Milton Friedman called a "negative Income Tax" and people are not trapped in poverty with tax rates approaching 70-100% that way people will be incentivised to earn more and they will automatically pay more in taxes/receive less in benefits.
By abolishing Employers NI and removing the poverty trap there will be far less incentive for employers and employees in cash businesses to under-report earnings which reduces tax take and increases benefit spending.
Accept that people are mortal and we can't keep everyone alive forever. Accept that life is not risk-free.
But it'll devalue your house she replied.
I commented that that would be my heirs problem!
Mrs C and I also commented, while watching the local TV news, on how well-spoken the objectors to the Suffolk nuclear projects were. People with 'local' accents had different concerns!
There's simply no need for the state to be giving people like my dad £9k per year or whatever it is he gets, his income in retirement is well into the higher tax bracket without that. It's literally holiday money for him, he's just about to spend £15k on a family holiday for all of us (6 adults 2 kids) to go to Sicily together while my wife can still fly. He's not someone who needs to be given £9k by the state.
My question related to this exchange:
"From your own chart the cost multiple even in the North is far higher now than it was at the turn of the century...."
"...Prices collapsing back to 2000 levels (in real terms) would be a great thing to happen.."
I hope you are staying safe.
The fact its worse in London doesn't make it better in the North now than it was in the past. Indeed the multiple in the North now is far, far higher than the multiple even in London was in the past.
Note that if government had, for example, borrowed to build tidal power schemes a decade back, they could be selling power well below the current market price of electricity and be turning a profit after financing costs.
Russia may be sparsely populated but much of the population is concentrated in a small number of areas. Nearly 10% of the population lives in Moscow, and another 14% lives in the next fourteen cities. It would not take many warheads to destroy those population centres.
I think this is a case where standing up to a bully is actually a lot safer than giving way to him.