FPT re this being a weird cost of living crisis, Malmesbury said
"Once again, COVID accelerated a process - in this case early retirement/slowing down
Quite a few people "retired" early, by replacing their full time jobs with part time plus pension."
----
This is the unsurprising result of an economy where govt distorts it to such an extent that an average house earns more per year than an average wage.
If you have housing assets why bother working? And in large parts of the country, even if you are working, you will feel poor as cannot afford housing locally.
Hence the weirdness to the cost of living crisis, it is far more divided than previous ones, with haves and have nots largely decided by age rather than class or education.
From my chats with employers in the NE, it isn't the loss of EU or overseas workers, there weren't that many, but the loss of experienced staff to retirement that is hurting them. They are filling the jobs. But not with decades of knowledge. And over promoting earlier than they'd like to.
One thing which might encourage people in their 50s and upwards to retire early or reduce their hours is that they've made all the NI contributions they need to receive the maximum state pension.
By going part time you proportionally reduce your hours worked much more than you reduce your earnings.
And this sort of income and pension planning knowledge is now much easier to access than it was in pre internet days.
Among the middle classes, there is the same phenomenon with regards to the lifetime rules for private pensions. This is affecting the doctors and lawyers, who after years of stuffing five figures into their pension every year for the tax relief, now see what looks like a large pay cut as they’re exposed to the 40% rate in full, and after the £100k personal allowance withdrawal. That last one is a huge big fiscal drag by the way, there will be a million or two caught by it in the next few years.
I’d love to see some retirement statistics, there’s definitely anecdotal evidence that more people than usual retired during the pandemic.
It has certainly made doctors pay tricky.
Pay them more, they can retire earlier. Pay them less, they think sod this, and retire earlier.
Not sure of the short term solution, or if there even is one.
Make working lives better? Not everything is about money. Same with teachers.
Getting rid of the hassle factor is a major step to staff retention.
Absolutely but a key part of making working life better for doctors is surely having enough of them? So them retiring faster than normal whether we keep wages level, up or down is not helpful at all.
Paul Krishnamurty and one of the other guys on the star sports “polling station” video thought NOC looked like value.
The Tories only need to win 7 of the 8 they are defending. Only one got below 60% of the vote in 2018. Superficially, it looks possible. At ward level, it is huge Tory majorities in the wards they win. Over 50% of the borough vote in 2018 and 2022.
Having grown up there, and still having politically-connected rellies there...
Gosport is all up this time, because of new boundaries.
The problem for the Conservatives is that they win their safe wards (basically the seaside ones) by massive majorities on huge turnouts. The trouble is that they sometimes/often struggle in the rest of the borough, which looks like a bit of the north that broke off and got stuck back in the wrong place.
The problem from a betting point of view is that the results in Gosport pretty much depend on one specific Lib Dem activist, the mood he is in and whether he can pull the rest of the party with him. On his day, he can sweep the board, but he can also annoy the rest of his party enough to almost destroy it. That's been true since the 1980's, and he's still at it. I suspect he will be enjoying the government's current tribulations, but I'm too many miles away to know.
NOC is possible, but tricky. Basically, it requires a decent showing by Labour, and they have had a torrid time over the last few years.
In short, search me guv.
(The problem with local elections- unless the national tide is an absolute tsunami, the countercurrents at ward level can make odd things happen in specific places. To take another example, Havering ought to stay NOC, though perhaps Residents-led minority rather than Conservative-led minority. But there are enough wards where the result is something of a lottery that a Conservative majority or a Residents majority aren't impossible.)
Re Havering, I think the same, but then the other day I passed the green in Havering-atte-Bower where there is a scarecrow exhibition/competition going on, and in the stocks is... Boris. And this is the most Tory part of a safe Tory ward.
To be fair. Which other famous person would immediately spring to mind when planning to enter a scarecrow competition?
The Duke of York? But I get your point. But it does suggest a certain public consensus as in another year it might not have been anyone at all in the stocks as most scarecrows are in people's gardens not public spaces.
By the way, the reason the LibDems had a rocky spell in Kingston-u-T is because they screwed up finances. And made a mess of the town centre, although the leaning phone boxes amuse me (my brother thinks they're an example of profligacy). They have since got on top of things and they're surefire to win.
This is one of the reasons I think Woking represents real value at 2/1. The tory minority council have massively screwed up the money. It's the third most debt-ridden council in the entire United Kingdom. Yes that's right: Woking. £1.84 billion in debt. A tory led council. It's staggering.
Last Con election broadcast I saw, a night or so ago, claimed that only Lab or LD councils were in debt and likely to default. I shouted something about Northants at the TV but the chap didn't seem to hear me!
I think lying has become the Con norm under Johnson. Eg I got their leaflet for Camden and it claimed the Lab council only does the bins fortnightly. Just not true. It's every Tuesday. They come early so you put them out Monday night. System works like a dream. It's unimprovable. So if the Tories are planning to make it a referendum on the bins, if they think they have a wedge issue here with this, they're in for a nasty shock. Bins very good under Labour in Camden.
By the way, the reason the LibDems had a rocky spell in Kingston-u-T is because they screwed up finances. And made a mess of the town centre, although the leaning phone boxes amuse me (my brother thinks they're an example of profligacy). They have since got on top of things and they're surefire to win.
This is one of the reasons I think Woking represents real value at 2/1. The tory minority council have massively screwed up the money. It's the third most debt-ridden council in the entire United Kingdom. Yes that's right: Woking. £1.84 billion in debt. A tory led council. It's staggering.
Last Con election broadcast I saw, a night or so ago, claimed that only Lab or LD councils were in debt and likely to default. I shouted something about Northants at the TV but the chap didn't seem to hear me!
I think lying has become the Con norm under Johnson. Eg I got their leaflet for Camden and it claimed the Lab council only does the bins fortnightly. Just not true. It's every Tuesday. They come early so you put them out Monday night. System works like a dream. It's unimprovable. So if the Tories are planning to make it a referendum on the bins, if they think they have a wedge issue here with this, they're in for a nasty shock. Bins very good under Labour in Camden.
Same here in Havering. My leaflet talks about the 'Labour supporting Residents Association' conveniently forgetting that the minority Tory council is sustained in place by the Residents Association.
Residents' councillors will generally back the most NIMBY administration possible
This EU oil embargo is far too slow if it only takes effect at the end of the year. Putin could well resort to national mobilisation if things don't improve for him on the battlefield. We haven't managed to induce the complete financial collapse of Russia as some anticipated. People are being offered well above the average salary to go and fight in Ukraine. We need to make it unaffordable.
I'm not convinced about Putin's call-up plans. Russia's problem is equipment; it does not not a lack untrained recruits. I suppose he could move newbies into the occupied regions to free up battle-hardened troops. One perverse effect of sanctions is increased unemployment so perhaps some will take Putin's shilling.
The Russian Army is driving around mostly empty armoured personnel carriers because it has a severe manpower shortage.
It's one way to use up all the NLAWs in theatre.....
Personal Statement - I recently and mistakenly implied, that JackW is a Reformed Jacobean. When of course we all know he is a Reclaimed Jacobin.
I apologize profusely, unreservedly, repeatedly for any and all discomfort I have caused to JackW personally, and for the shame I have brought upon PB.
Surely a Returned Jacobite?
Please stop calling my Surely!
Resurrected Jacobite? In electoral pact with Restyled Whigs
FPT re this being a weird cost of living crisis, Malmesbury said
"Once again, COVID accelerated a process - in this case early retirement/slowing down
Quite a few people "retired" early, by replacing their full time jobs with part time plus pension."
----
This is the unsurprising result of an economy where govt distorts it to such an extent that an average house earns more per year than an average wage.
If you have housing assets why bother working? And in large parts of the country, even if you are working, you will feel poor as cannot afford housing locally.
Hence the weirdness to the cost of living crisis, it is far more divided than previous ones, with haves and have nots largely decided by age rather than class or education.
From my chats with employers in the NE, it isn't the loss of EU or overseas workers, there weren't that many, but the loss of experienced staff to retirement that is hurting them. They are filling the jobs. But not with decades of knowledge. And over promoting earlier than they'd like to.
One thing which might encourage people in their 50s and upwards to retire early or reduce their hours is that they've made all the NI contributions they need to receive the maximum state pension.
By going part time you proportionally reduce your hours worked much more than you reduce your earnings.
And this sort of income and pension planning knowledge is now much easier to access than it was in pre internet days.
Among the middle classes, there is the same phenomenon with regards to the lifetime rules for private pensions. This is affecting the doctors and lawyers, who after years of stuffing five figures into their pension every year for the tax relief, now see what looks like a large pay cut as they’re exposed to the 40% rate in full, and after the £100k personal allowance withdrawal. That last one is a huge big fiscal drag by the way, there will be a million or two caught by it in the next few years.
I’d love to see some retirement statistics, there’s definitely anecdotal evidence that more people than usual retired during the pandemic.
World's smallest violin time, but I am sure that the really mean rules on pension tax relief are contributing to this. Eg in my case, I can only put IIRC £4k into my pension with tax relief. Everything after that is basically taxed at 45% when it goes in and at least 20% when it comes out (not to mention another 20% when you buy anything except food), ie it's not worth it. Now if I can engineer a few years in some kind of consultancy or part time role down the road and bring my earnings down then I can benefit from the tax relief for £40k per year and get my pension pot up to something respectable. That means a lot less tax revenue and a smaller economy of course. By being too greedy on pension tax relief for high earners I think the tax man is shooting himself in the foot. Also, because I can't benefit from pension tax relief, stuff like BTL is made relatively more attractive.
Isn't that just an argument to make BTL relatively less attractive rather than give 45% rater earners such as ourselves a tax cut? I still like the idea of a 100% CGT rate and 100% income tax rate on BTL profit and capital gain for existing property but 30 year non-transferable nil rate bands for new builds. Take the investment aspect out of BTL but heavily incentivise building of new property.
By the way, the reason the LibDems had a rocky spell in Kingston-u-T is because they screwed up finances. And made a mess of the town centre, although the leaning phone boxes amuse me (my brother thinks they're an example of profligacy). They have since got on top of things and they're surefire to win.
This is one of the reasons I think Woking represents real value at 2/1. The tory minority council have massively screwed up the money. It's the third most debt-ridden council in the entire United Kingdom. Yes that's right: Woking. £1.84 billion in debt. A tory led council. It's staggering.
Last Con election broadcast I saw, a night or so ago, claimed that only Lab or LD councils were in debt and likely to default. I shouted something about Northants at the TV but the chap didn't seem to hear me!
I think lying has become the Con norm under Johnson. Eg I got their leaflet for Camden and it claimed the Lab council only does the bins fortnightly. Just not true. It's every Tuesday. They come early so you put them out Monday night. System works like a dream. It's unimprovable. So if the Tories are planning to make it a referendum on the bins, if they think they have a wedge issue here with this, they're in for a nasty shock. Bins very good under Labour in Camden.
There were a large number of Soviet nukes that Ukraine inherited by virtue of them being based in their territory.
Under the Budapest Accords Ukraine gave these up in return for security guarantees from Russia, various western countries etc
As of course did Kazakhstan.
Am I right in thinking the only country to have given up an independent nuclear weapon voluntarily is South Africa?
No - Ukraine gave them up per the above
Were they independent nuclear weapons though?
No - they didn’t have the maintenance or production facilities.
Given the decay rate of tritium, for a start, the helium contamination problem would have made the weapons (assuming all h bombs) duds in short order. A year or 2. Pulling the tritium capsules (if possible) would turn them (maybe) into very low yield a bombs, but that would require knowledge of the design to know if that would work
If nuclear weaponry requires such complicated maintenance and production, which I presume is expensive in order to remain functional then I have to wonder given the largely decrepit state of the rest of Russia's military hardware whether their nuclear weapons have actually been maintained or not?
Given that this is weaponry that's never really used or displayed, it seems a prime target for a bit of embezzlement strategic redeployment of funds with a box ticked saying that its been maintained while funnelling the funds to more pressing concerns. Like Villas or nice cars.
If the bulk of Russia's hardware is Potemkin, I wonder whether the tritium has already decayed and their nuclear arsenal is Potemkin too.
That’s a logical analysis.
But without reliable intelligence it’s a heck of a bet.
FPT re this being a weird cost of living crisis, Malmesbury said
"Once again, COVID accelerated a process - in this case early retirement/slowing down
Quite a few people "retired" early, by replacing their full time jobs with part time plus pension."
----
This is the unsurprising result of an economy where govt distorts it to such an extent that an average house earns more per year than an average wage.
If you have housing assets why bother working? And in large parts of the country, even if you are working, you will feel poor as cannot afford housing locally.
Hence the weirdness to the cost of living crisis, it is far more divided than previous ones, with haves and have nots largely decided by age rather than class or education.
From my chats with employers in the NE, it isn't the loss of EU or overseas workers, there weren't that many, but the loss of experienced staff to retirement that is hurting them. They are filling the jobs. But not with decades of knowledge. And over promoting earlier than they'd like to.
One thing which might encourage people in their 50s and upwards to retire early or reduce their hours is that they've made all the NI contributions they need to receive the maximum state pension.
By going part time you proportionally reduce your hours worked much more than you reduce your earnings.
And this sort of income and pension planning knowledge is now much easier to access than it was in pre internet days.
Among the middle classes, there is the same phenomenon with regards to the lifetime rules for private pensions. This is affecting the doctors and lawyers, who after years of stuffing five figures into their pension every year for the tax relief, now see what looks like a large pay cut as they’re exposed to the 40% rate in full, and after the £100k personal allowance withdrawal. That last one is a huge big fiscal drag by the way, there will be a million or two caught by it in the next few years.
I’d love to see some retirement statistics, there’s definitely anecdotal evidence that more people than usual retired during the pandemic.
It has certainly made doctors pay tricky.
Pay them more, they can retire earlier. Pay them less, they think sod this, and retire earlier.
Not sure of the short term solution, or if there even is one.
Make working lives better? Not everything is about money. Same with teachers.
Getting rid of the hassle factor is a major step to staff retention.
Absolutely but a key part of making working life better for doctors is surely having enough of them? So them retiring faster than normal whether we keep wages level, up or down is not helpful at all.
Longer term, of course we can train more doctors.
Except that Specialist Training has been trashed over the last few years...
There were a large number of Soviet nukes that Ukraine inherited by virtue of them being based in their territory.
Under the Budapest Accords Ukraine gave these up in return for security guarantees from Russia, various western countries etc
As of course did Kazakhstan.
Am I right in thinking the only country to have given up an independent nuclear weapon voluntarily is South Africa?
No - Ukraine gave them up per the above
Were they independent nuclear weapons though?
No - they didn’t have the maintenance or production facilities.
Given the decay rate of tritium, for a start, the helium contamination problem would have made the weapons (assuming all h bombs) duds in short order. A year or 2. Pulling the tritium capsules (if possible) would turn them (maybe) into very low yield a bombs, but that would require knowledge of the design to know if that would work
If nuclear weaponry requires such complicated maintenance and production, which I presume is expensive in order to remain functional then I have to wonder given the largely decrepit state of the rest of Russia's military hardware whether their nuclear weapons have actually been maintained or not?
Given that this is weaponry that's never really used or displayed, it seems a prime target for a bit of embezzlement strategic redeployment of funds with a box ticked saying that its been maintained while funnelling the funds to more pressing concerns. Like Villas or nice cars.
If the bulk of Russia's hardware is Potemkin, I wonder whether the tritium has already decayed and their nuclear arsenal is Potemkin too.
In American/British designs (most known) the Tritium is in fairly accessible canisters, which are regularly removed for replacement, when the warhead is serviced.
The actual removal of the He3 from Tritium decay is fairly simple.
Tritium is also a extremely expensive. $30K a gram.
It's like every other military. Some of the gear is mint, some of it is haggard old shit, some of it only exists on paper, etc. Only the proportions vary from country to country.
Umm.... I think you'll find Nato countries have generally got far superior kit though I accept we haven't always equipped our soldiers well enough.
If you compare what the Americans were doing 30 YEARS AGO in Desert Storm to where Russia is now there is no comparison.
Expect Friday to be a big political day. Still not sure the media, and political establishment in general, are fully aware of quite what a story is brewing in NI. It may actually impinge on our consciousness for a short time.
By the way, the reason the LibDems had a rocky spell in Kingston-u-T is because they screwed up finances. And made a mess of the town centre, although the leaning phone boxes amuse me (my brother thinks they're an example of profligacy). They have since got on top of things and they're surefire to win.
This is one of the reasons I think Woking represents real value at 2/1. The tory minority council have massively screwed up the money. It's the third most debt-ridden council in the entire United Kingdom. Yes that's right: Woking. £1.84 billion in debt. A tory led council. It's staggering.
Last Con election broadcast I saw, a night or so ago, claimed that only Lab or LD councils were in debt and likely to default. I shouted something about Northants at the TV but the chap didn't seem to hear me!
I think lying has become the Con norm under Johnson. Eg I got their leaflet for Camden and it claimed the Lab council only does the bins fortnightly. Just not true. It's every Tuesday. They come early so you put them out Monday night. System works like a dream. It's unimprovable. So if the Tories are planning to make it a referendum on the bins, if they think they have a wedge issue here with this, they're in for a nasty shock. Bins very good under Labour in Camden.
My council collects rubbish twice a week, with a separate recycling collection once a week.
By the way, the reason the LibDems had a rocky spell in Kingston-u-T is because they screwed up finances. And made a mess of the town centre, although the leaning phone boxes amuse me (my brother thinks they're an example of profligacy). They have since got on top of things and they're surefire to win.
This is one of the reasons I think Woking represents real value at 2/1. The tory minority council have massively screwed up the money. It's the third most debt-ridden council in the entire United Kingdom. Yes that's right: Woking. £1.84 billion in debt. A tory led council. It's staggering.
Last Con election broadcast I saw, a night or so ago, claimed that only Lab or LD councils were in debt and likely to default. I shouted something about Northants at the TV but the chap didn't seem to hear me!
I think lying has become the Con norm under Johnson. Eg I got their leaflet for Camden and it claimed the Lab council only does the bins fortnightly. Just not true. It's every Tuesday. They come early so you put them out Monday night. System works like a dream. It's unimprovable. So if the Tories are planning to make it a referendum on the bins, if they think they have a wedge issue here with this, they're in for a nasty shock. Bins very good under Labour in Camden.
Good job you do not live here in Wales
Our bins are collected ONCE a month
Once a month? That's a rubbish service.
They do collect our recycling and food waste weekly, and our garden waste fortnightly though that is a paid service
FPT re this being a weird cost of living crisis, Malmesbury said
"Once again, COVID accelerated a process - in this case early retirement/slowing down
Quite a few people "retired" early, by replacing their full time jobs with part time plus pension."
----
This is the unsurprising result of an economy where govt distorts it to such an extent that an average house earns more per year than an average wage.
If you have housing assets why bother working? And in large parts of the country, even if you are working, you will feel poor as cannot afford housing locally.
Hence the weirdness to the cost of living crisis, it is far more divided than previous ones, with haves and have nots largely decided by age rather than class or education.
From my chats with employers in the NE, it isn't the loss of EU or overseas workers, there weren't that many, but the loss of experienced staff to retirement that is hurting them. They are filling the jobs. But not with decades of knowledge. And over promoting earlier than they'd like to.
One thing which might encourage people in their 50s and upwards to retire early or reduce their hours is that they've made all the NI contributions they need to receive the maximum state pension.
By going part time you proportionally reduce your hours worked much more than you reduce your earnings.
And this sort of income and pension planning knowledge is now much easier to access than it was in pre internet days.
Among the middle classes, there is the same phenomenon with regards to the lifetime rules for private pensions. This is affecting the doctors and lawyers, who after years of stuffing five figures into their pension every year for the tax relief, now see what looks like a large pay cut as they’re exposed to the 40% rate in full, and after the £100k personal allowance withdrawal. That last one is a huge big fiscal drag by the way, there will be a million or two caught by it in the next few years.
I’d love to see some retirement statistics, there’s definitely anecdotal evidence that more people than usual retired during the pandemic.
World's smallest violin time, but I am sure that the really mean rules on pension tax relief are contributing to this. Eg in my case, I can only put IIRC £4k into my pension with tax relief. Everything after that is basically taxed at 45% when it goes in and at least 20% when it comes out (not to mention another 20% when you buy anything except food), ie it's not worth it. Now if I can engineer a few years in some kind of consultancy or part time role down the road and bring my earnings down then I can benefit from the tax relief for £40k per year and get my pension pot up to something respectable. That means a lot less tax revenue and a smaller economy of course. By being too greedy on pension tax relief for high earners I think the tax man is shooting himself in the foot. Also, because I can't benefit from pension tax relief, stuff like BTL is made relatively more attractive.
If you think about why the government gives relief on pension contributions at all, it is to reduce the number of retired individuals who are a financial cost on the state and future workers. That justification is fine for the first £1m or so of pension savings, but would not cover the second and further millions of pension savings.
Why should you not pay tax on your earnings?
No doubt you will say it is being taxed twice, but only if you put it into a pension wrapper, there is nothing stopping you saving further for retirement in a general investment account, not to mention ISAs (another £0.4-0.8m tax sheltered account over a well paid career) and VCTs, EIS, SEIS.
By the way, the reason the LibDems had a rocky spell in Kingston-u-T is because they screwed up finances. And made a mess of the town centre, although the leaning phone boxes amuse me (my brother thinks they're an example of profligacy). They have since got on top of things and they're surefire to win.
This is one of the reasons I think Woking represents real value at 2/1. The tory minority council have massively screwed up the money. It's the third most debt-ridden council in the entire United Kingdom. Yes that's right: Woking. £1.84 billion in debt. A tory led council. It's staggering.
Last Con election broadcast I saw, a night or so ago, claimed that only Lab or LD councils were in debt and likely to default. I shouted something about Northants at the TV but the chap didn't seem to hear me!
I think lying has become the Con norm under Johnson. Eg I got their leaflet for Camden and it claimed the Lab council only does the bins fortnightly. Just not true. It's every Tuesday. They come early so you put them out Monday night. System works like a dream. It's unimprovable. So if the Tories are planning to make it a referendum on the bins, if they think they have a wedge issue here with this, they're in for a nasty shock. Bins very good under Labour in Camden.
Same here in Havering. My leaflet talks about the 'Labour supporting Residents Association' conveniently forgetting that the minority Tory council is sustained in place by the Residents Association.
Ah, but which Residents' Association? The official (fairly normal) one, the renegade but sort of in-line Independent Residents' Association (like a RA, but very right wing indeed), or the treacherous Residents' Association (who have backed the Conservative administration for the last few years).
There are quite a lot of wards where RA-on-RA action might let Conservatives come through the middle.
Havering politics is utterly bonkers.
Their council is quite forward looking in certain areas
FPT re this being a weird cost of living crisis, Malmesbury said
"Once again, COVID accelerated a process - in this case early retirement/slowing down
Quite a few people "retired" early, by replacing their full time jobs with part time plus pension."
----
This is the unsurprising result of an economy where govt distorts it to such an extent that an average house earns more per year than an average wage.
If you have housing assets why bother working? And in large parts of the country, even if you are working, you will feel poor as cannot afford housing locally.
Hence the weirdness to the cost of living crisis, it is far more divided than previous ones, with haves and have nots largely decided by age rather than class or education.
From my chats with employers in the NE, it isn't the loss of EU or overseas workers, there weren't that many, but the loss of experienced staff to retirement that is hurting them. They are filling the jobs. But not with decades of knowledge. And over promoting earlier than they'd like to.
One thing which might encourage people in their 50s and upwards to retire early or reduce their hours is that they've made all the NI contributions they need to receive the maximum state pension.
By going part time you proportionally reduce your hours worked much more than you reduce your earnings.
And this sort of income and pension planning knowledge is now much easier to access than it was in pre internet days.
The other factor is they will not be paying NI, and income tax is of course focussed on the higher part of the income.
If one has saved for a reasonable occupational and/or private pension and/or ISAs and has a decent income available, then the impact of NI and income tax disporportionately hit the salary and reduce it to something much closer to the net pension etc income than one might think from the ratios of gross income in work vs retirement. I'm sure the news of the increase in the tax known as "NI" will be making this much worse.
Its the same old quandry, the more taxes are increased the more people do to avoid paying them
Time to tax land, then. You can't move that offshore.
FPT re this being a weird cost of living crisis, Malmesbury said
"Once again, COVID accelerated a process - in this case early retirement/slowing down
Quite a few people "retired" early, by replacing their full time jobs with part time plus pension."
----
This is the unsurprising result of an economy where govt distorts it to such an extent that an average house earns more per year than an average wage.
If you have housing assets why bother working? And in large parts of the country, even if you are working, you will feel poor as cannot afford housing locally.
Hence the weirdness to the cost of living crisis, it is far more divided than previous ones, with haves and have nots largely decided by age rather than class or education.
From my chats with employers in the NE, it isn't the loss of EU or overseas workers, there weren't that many, but the loss of experienced staff to retirement that is hurting them. They are filling the jobs. But not with decades of knowledge. And over promoting earlier than they'd like to.
One thing which might encourage people in their 50s and upwards to retire early or reduce their hours is that they've made all the NI contributions they need to receive the maximum state pension.
By going part time you proportionally reduce your hours worked much more than you reduce your earnings.
And this sort of income and pension planning knowledge is now much easier to access than it was in pre internet days.
Among the middle classes, there is the same phenomenon with regards to the lifetime rules for private pensions. This is affecting the doctors and lawyers, who after years of stuffing five figures into their pension every year for the tax relief, now see what looks like a large pay cut as they’re exposed to the 40% rate in full, and after the £100k personal allowance withdrawal. That last one is a huge big fiscal drag by the way, there will be a million or two caught by it in the next few years.
I’d love to see some retirement statistics, there’s definitely anecdotal evidence that more people than usual retired during the pandemic.
World's smallest violin time, but I am sure that the really mean rules on pension tax relief are contributing to this. Eg in my case, I can only put IIRC £4k into my pension with tax relief. Everything after that is basically taxed at 45% when it goes in and at least 20% when it comes out (not to mention another 20% when you buy anything except food), ie it's not worth it. Now if I can engineer a few years in some kind of consultancy or part time role down the road and bring my earnings down then I can benefit from the tax relief for £40k per year and get my pension pot up to something respectable. That means a lot less tax revenue and a smaller economy of course. By being too greedy on pension tax relief for high earners I think the tax man is shooting himself in the foot. Also, because I can't benefit from pension tax relief, stuff like BTL is made relatively more attractive.
Isn't that just an argument to make BTL relatively less attractive rather than give 45% rater earners such as ourselves a tax cut? I still like the idea of a 100% CGT rate and 100% income tax rate on BTL profit and capital gain for existing property but 30 year non-transferable nil rate bands for new builds. Take the investment aspect out of BTL but heavily incentivise building of new property.
That only makes sense if you think all property except new builds should be owner occupied. Does that make sense in somewhere like London, where you have always had a decent proportion of people who want to rent and limited space for building new property? What will they do when there is no rental property available? They won't all be able to afford to buy a flat, even if they wanted to. Or are you advocating for the state to become a much bigger landlord again?
FPT re this being a weird cost of living crisis, Malmesbury said
"Once again, COVID accelerated a process - in this case early retirement/slowing down
Quite a few people "retired" early, by replacing their full time jobs with part time plus pension."
----
This is the unsurprising result of an economy where govt distorts it to such an extent that an average house earns more per year than an average wage.
If you have housing assets why bother working? And in large parts of the country, even if you are working, you will feel poor as cannot afford housing locally.
Hence the weirdness to the cost of living crisis, it is far more divided than previous ones, with haves and have nots largely decided by age rather than class or education.
From my chats with employers in the NE, it isn't the loss of EU or overseas workers, there weren't that many, but the loss of experienced staff to retirement that is hurting them. They are filling the jobs. But not with decades of knowledge. And over promoting earlier than they'd like to.
One thing which might encourage people in their 50s and upwards to retire early or reduce their hours is that they've made all the NI contributions they need to receive the maximum state pension.
By going part time you proportionally reduce your hours worked much more than you reduce your earnings.
And this sort of income and pension planning knowledge is now much easier to access than it was in pre internet days.
Among the middle classes, there is the same phenomenon with regards to the lifetime rules for private pensions. This is affecting the doctors and lawyers, who after years of stuffing five figures into their pension every year for the tax relief, now see what looks like a large pay cut as they’re exposed to the 40% rate in full, and after the £100k personal allowance withdrawal. That last one is a huge big fiscal drag by the way, there will be a million or two caught by it in the next few years.
I’d love to see some retirement statistics, there’s definitely anecdotal evidence that more people than usual retired during the pandemic.
It has certainly made doctors pay tricky.
Pay them more, they can retire earlier. Pay them less, they think sod this, and retire earlier.
Not sure of the short term solution, or if there even is one.
Make working lives better? Not everything is about money. Same with teachers.
Getting rid of the hassle factor is a major step to staff retention.
The hassle factor in many sectors has increased over the past 10 years with bizarre red tape, H & S requirements, exhaustive tendering processes etc. In my area of work staff retention is hard as people can't be bothered anymore and want to do something with less nonsense and all the stress that goes with that.
FPT re this being a weird cost of living crisis, Malmesbury said
"Once again, COVID accelerated a process - in this case early retirement/slowing down
Quite a few people "retired" early, by replacing their full time jobs with part time plus pension."
----
This is the unsurprising result of an economy where govt distorts it to such an extent that an average house earns more per year than an average wage.
If you have housing assets why bother working? And in large parts of the country, even if you are working, you will feel poor as cannot afford housing locally.
Hence the weirdness to the cost of living crisis, it is far more divided than previous ones, with haves and have nots largely decided by age rather than class or education.
From my chats with employers in the NE, it isn't the loss of EU or overseas workers, there weren't that many, but the loss of experienced staff to retirement that is hurting them. They are filling the jobs. But not with decades of knowledge. And over promoting earlier than they'd like to.
One thing which might encourage people in their 50s and upwards to retire early or reduce their hours is that they've made all the NI contributions they need to receive the maximum state pension.
By going part time you proportionally reduce your hours worked much more than you reduce your earnings.
And this sort of income and pension planning knowledge is now much easier to access than it was in pre internet days.
Among the middle classes, there is the same phenomenon with regards to the lifetime rules for private pensions. This is affecting the doctors and lawyers, who after years of stuffing five figures into their pension every year for the tax relief, now see what looks like a large pay cut as they’re exposed to the 40% rate in full, and after the £100k personal allowance withdrawal. That last one is a huge big fiscal drag by the way, there will be a million or two caught by it in the next few years.
I’d love to see some retirement statistics, there’s definitely anecdotal evidence that more people than usual retired during the pandemic.
World's smallest violin time, but I am sure that the really mean rules on pension tax relief are contributing to this. Eg in my case, I can only put IIRC £4k into my pension with tax relief. Everything after that is basically taxed at 45% when it goes in and at least 20% when it comes out (not to mention another 20% when you buy anything except food), ie it's not worth it. Now if I can engineer a few years in some kind of consultancy or part time role down the road and bring my earnings down then I can benefit from the tax relief for £40k per year and get my pension pot up to something respectable. That means a lot less tax revenue and a smaller economy of course. By being too greedy on pension tax relief for high earners I think the tax man is shooting himself in the foot. Also, because I can't benefit from pension tax relief, stuff like BTL is made relatively more attractive.
Isn't that just an argument to make BTL relatively less attractive rather than give 45% rater earners such as ourselves a tax cut? I still like the idea of a 100% CGT rate and 100% income tax rate on BTL profit and capital gain for existing property but 30 year non-transferable nil rate bands for new builds. Take the investment aspect out of BTL but heavily incentivise building of new property.
That only makes sense if you think all property except new builds should be owner occupied. Does that make sense in somewhere like London, where you have always had a decent proportion of people who want to rent and limited space for building new property? What will they do when there is no rental property available? They won't all be able to afford to buy a flat, even if they wanted to. Or are you advocating for the state to become a much bigger landlord again?
I'm advocating that the state and housing associations become significantly bigger landlords.
By the way, the reason the LibDems had a rocky spell in Kingston-u-T is because they screwed up finances. And made a mess of the town centre, although the leaning phone boxes amuse me (my brother thinks they're an example of profligacy). They have since got on top of things and they're surefire to win.
This is one of the reasons I think Woking represents real value at 2/1. The tory minority council have massively screwed up the money. It's the third most debt-ridden council in the entire United Kingdom. Yes that's right: Woking. £1.84 billion in debt. A tory led council. It's staggering.
Last Con election broadcast I saw, a night or so ago, claimed that only Lab or LD councils were in debt and likely to default. I shouted something about Northants at the TV but the chap didn't seem to hear me!
I think lying has become the Con norm under Johnson. Eg I got their leaflet for Camden and it claimed the Lab council only does the bins fortnightly. Just not true. It's every Tuesday. They come early so you put them out Monday night. System works like a dream. It's unimprovable. So if the Tories are planning to make it a referendum on the bins, if they think they have a wedge issue here with this, they're in for a nasty shock. Bins very good under Labour in Camden.
I could hardly believe this.
Are you saying in London boroughs, your rubbish is collected every week ? It certainly seems to be the case in the borough webpages I have spot-checked.
WTF .. I think everywhere in Wales, rubbish bins are collected once every two weeks (usually longer).
In Gwynedd, it is every three weeks. In Abertawe it is every two weeks, in Conwy, it is every 4 weeks,
Just absolutely typical of London, preaching to the rest of the country... but not practising what they preach
The rest of us have been told to reduce our landfill, so we get reduced collections.
Expect Friday to be a big political day. Still not sure the media, and political establishment in general, are fully aware of quite what a story is brewing in NI. It may actually impinge on our consciousness for a short time.
Last nights NI debate was a car crash for the DUP Leader . Came last and if people in NI had any sense they’d ensure that the DUP don’t even make second place . Essentially he told viewers fxck the cost of living crisis we care more about trying to get the NI protocol removed and will refuse to take part in the assembly until that happens .
This EU oil embargo is far too slow if it only takes effect at the end of the year. Putin could well resort to national mobilisation if things don't improve for him on the battlefield. We haven't managed to induce the complete financial collapse of Russia as some anticipated. People are being offered well above the average salary to go and fight in Ukraine. We need to make it unaffordable.
What we need now, is for Lavrov to upset the Saudis, as the Russians did a couple of years ago, and watch OPEC up production to drive the price (and Russia’s main source of foreign currency) down. This would be good for everyone except Russia.
It’s already been said that Russian reserves are close to full, at which point they will need to start shutting production down or burn it off, if they can’t sell it. They also rely heavily on Western equipment and services for their O&G industry, which will quickly become unserviceable due to sanctions.
Surely some of the Arab states such as Egypt must be horrified by the blockade on Odessa. Rising food prices in the Arab world would be very dangerous for the Saudis. I can't understand why it's in their interests for Putin to continue the war.
This EU oil embargo is far too slow if it only takes effect at the end of the year. Putin could well resort to national mobilisation if things don't improve for him on the battlefield. We haven't managed to induce the complete financial collapse of Russia as some anticipated. People are being offered well above the average salary to go and fight in Ukraine. We need to make it unaffordable.
I'm not convinced about Putin's call-up plans. Russia's problem is equipment; it does not not a lack untrained recruits. I suppose he could move newbies into the occupied regions to free up battle-hardened troops. One perverse effect of sanctions is increased unemployment so perhaps some will take Putin's shilling.
The Russian Army is driving around mostly empty armoured personnel carriers because it has a severe manpower shortage.
Are they down to conscripting their bots? IF not as cannon fodder, maybe as fire wardens?
I think the issue is that Russian military doctrine for a major war involves national mobilisation and using conscripts to provide the numbers for their frontline units.
They've been fighting a major war without the mobilisation, which means they lack infantry to make combined arms operations work properly, and so have suffered massive losses in equipment and trained personnel.
It's possible that they've suffered so many losses that they'd now struggle to mobilise lots of conscripts, because they won't have the officers, specialists or equipment to go alongside large numbers.
It's been a monumental blunder, but it leaves a lot of room for them to improve if they were to stop sabotaging their own effort.
FPT re this being a weird cost of living crisis, Malmesbury said
"Once again, COVID accelerated a process - in this case early retirement/slowing down
Quite a few people "retired" early, by replacing their full time jobs with part time plus pension."
----
This is the unsurprising result of an economy where govt distorts it to such an extent that an average house earns more per year than an average wage.
If you have housing assets why bother working? And in large parts of the country, even if you are working, you will feel poor as cannot afford housing locally.
Hence the weirdness to the cost of living crisis, it is far more divided than previous ones, with haves and have nots largely decided by age rather than class or education.
From my chats with employers in the NE, it isn't the loss of EU or overseas workers, there weren't that many, but the loss of experienced staff to retirement that is hurting them. They are filling the jobs. But not with decades of knowledge. And over promoting earlier than they'd like to.
One thing which might encourage people in their 50s and upwards to retire early or reduce their hours is that they've made all the NI contributions they need to receive the maximum state pension.
By going part time you proportionally reduce your hours worked much more than you reduce your earnings.
And this sort of income and pension planning knowledge is now much easier to access than it was in pre internet days.
Among the middle classes, there is the same phenomenon with regards to the lifetime rules for private pensions. This is affecting the doctors and lawyers, who after years of stuffing five figures into their pension every year for the tax relief, now see what looks like a large pay cut as they’re exposed to the 40% rate in full, and after the £100k personal allowance withdrawal. That last one is a huge big fiscal drag by the way, there will be a million or two caught by it in the next few years.
I’d love to see some retirement statistics, there’s definitely anecdotal evidence that more people than usual retired during the pandemic.
World's smallest violin time, but I am sure that the really mean rules on pension tax relief are contributing to this. Eg in my case, I can only put IIRC £4k into my pension with tax relief. Everything after that is basically taxed at 45% when it goes in and at least 20% when it comes out (not to mention another 20% when you buy anything except food), ie it's not worth it. Now if I can engineer a few years in some kind of consultancy or part time role down the road and bring my earnings down then I can benefit from the tax relief for £40k per year and get my pension pot up to something respectable. That means a lot less tax revenue and a smaller economy of course. By being too greedy on pension tax relief for high earners I think the tax man is shooting himself in the foot. Also, because I can't benefit from pension tax relief, stuff like BTL is made relatively more attractive.
If you think about why the government gives relief on pension contributions at all, it is to reduce the number of retired individuals who are a financial cost on the state and future workers. That justification is fine for the first £1m or so of pension savings, but would not cover the second and further millions of pension savings.
Why should you not pay tax on your earnings?
No doubt you will say it is being taxed twice, but only if you put it into a pension wrapper, there is nothing stopping you saving further for retirement in a general investment account, not to mention ISAs (another £0.4-0.8m tax sheltered account over a well paid career) and VCTs, EIS, SEIS.
I quite like the simplicity of a pension. You put the money away and don't have to think about it. Also to me it makes sense that you are taxed when you receive the income, which, if you put it into a pension, is in retirement. So pension tax relief makes a lot of sense - although it can't be infinite so a lifetime limit makes sense but I don't see why high earners shouldn't be able to save for retirement just like everyone else. (And I don't really believe that governments won't start taxing income from ISA savings in the future).
There were a large number of Soviet nukes that Ukraine inherited by virtue of them being based in their territory.
Under the Budapest Accords Ukraine gave these up in return for security guarantees from Russia, various western countries etc
As of course did Kazakhstan.
Am I right in thinking the only country to have given up an independent nuclear weapon voluntarily is South Africa?
No - Ukraine gave them up per the above
Were they independent nuclear weapons though?
No - they didn’t have the maintenance or production facilities.
Given the decay rate of tritium, for a start, the helium contamination problem would have made the weapons (assuming all h bombs) duds in short order. A year or 2. Pulling the tritium capsules (if possible) would turn them (maybe) into very low yield a bombs, but that would require knowledge of the design to know if that would work
If nuclear weaponry requires such complicated maintenance and production, which I presume is expensive in order to remain functional then I have to wonder given the largely decrepit state of the rest of Russia's military hardware whether their nuclear weapons have actually been maintained or not?
Given that this is weaponry that's never really used or displayed, it seems a prime target for a bit of embezzlement strategic redeployment of funds with a box ticked saying that its been maintained while funnelling the funds to more pressing concerns. Like Villas or nice cars.
If the bulk of Russia's hardware is Potemkin, I wonder whether the tritium has already decayed and their nuclear arsenal is Potemkin too.
In American/British designs (most known) the Tritium is in fairly accessible canisters, which are regularly removed for replacement, when the warhead is serviced.
The actual removal of the He3 from Tritium decay is fairly simple.
Tritium is also a extremely expensive. $30K a gram.
"Each weapon has on average about 4 to 5 grams, with neutron bombs requiring a much larger quantity,. perhaps as much as 25 grams."
So, assuming that Russian multi-stage design resembles US design,
$100K+ of Tritium to steal from each warhead.
It would be cold, cold irony if Russia launched 6000 missiles that all went fizz and it was the retaliatory strike alone that precipitated the nuclear winter.
Paul Waugh @paulwaugh · 5m Latest rumour among Tory MPs: poss @BorisJohnson reshuffle after local elections, to try to control the 're-set' narrative ahead of the Q Speech next week.
Will he move @RishiSunak as sacrificial lamb for the cost of living crisis? Paul Waugh @paulwaugh · 5m Or will Sunak walk? Some MPs think he didn't want to rock the boat before May 5...
By the way, the reason the LibDems had a rocky spell in Kingston-u-T is because they screwed up finances. And made a mess of the town centre, although the leaning phone boxes amuse me (my brother thinks they're an example of profligacy). They have since got on top of things and they're surefire to win.
This is one of the reasons I think Woking represents real value at 2/1. The tory minority council have massively screwed up the money. It's the third most debt-ridden council in the entire United Kingdom. Yes that's right: Woking. £1.84 billion in debt. A tory led council. It's staggering.
Last Con election broadcast I saw, a night or so ago, claimed that only Lab or LD councils were in debt and likely to default. I shouted something about Northants at the TV but the chap didn't seem to hear me!
I think lying has become the Con norm under Johnson. Eg I got their leaflet for Camden and it claimed the Lab council only does the bins fortnightly. Just not true. It's every Tuesday. They come early so you put them out Monday night. System works like a dream. It's unimprovable. So if the Tories are planning to make it a referendum on the bins, if they think they have a wedge issue here with this, they're in for a nasty shock. Bins very good under Labour in Camden.
I could hardly believe this.
Are you saying in London boroughs, your rubbish is collected every week ? It certainly seems to be the case in the borough webpages I have spot-checked.
WTF .. I think everywhere in Wales, rubbish bins are collected once every two weeks (usually longer).
In Gwynedd, it is every three weeks. In Abertawe it is every two weeks, in Conwy, it is every 4 weeks,
Just absolutely typical of London, preaching to the rest of the country... but not practising what they preach
The rest of us have been told to reduce our landfill, so we get reduced collections.
And you say Labour are responsible for this ....
Round here we get a rubbish collection every week that alternates between recycling & general waste. Food waste is collected every week. Generally it seems to work fine - the recyclable / non-recyclable waste split means that bins get to be full roughly when collection happens (and you can get larger bins for larger households).
FPT re this being a weird cost of living crisis, Malmesbury said
"Once again, COVID accelerated a process - in this case early retirement/slowing down
Quite a few people "retired" early, by replacing their full time jobs with part time plus pension."
----
This is the unsurprising result of an economy where govt distorts it to such an extent that an average house earns more per year than an average wage.
If you have housing assets why bother working? And in large parts of the country, even if you are working, you will feel poor as cannot afford housing locally.
Hence the weirdness to the cost of living crisis, it is far more divided than previous ones, with haves and have nots largely decided by age rather than class or education.
From my chats with employers in the NE, it isn't the loss of EU or overseas workers, there weren't that many, but the loss of experienced staff to retirement that is hurting them. They are filling the jobs. But not with decades of knowledge. And over promoting earlier than they'd like to.
One thing which might encourage people in their 50s and upwards to retire early or reduce their hours is that they've made all the NI contributions they need to receive the maximum state pension.
By going part time you proportionally reduce your hours worked much more than you reduce your earnings.
And this sort of income and pension planning knowledge is now much easier to access than it was in pre internet days.
Among the middle classes, there is the same phenomenon with regards to the lifetime rules for private pensions. This is affecting the doctors and lawyers, who after years of stuffing five figures into their pension every year for the tax relief, now see what looks like a large pay cut as they’re exposed to the 40% rate in full, and after the £100k personal allowance withdrawal. That last one is a huge big fiscal drag by the way, there will be a million or two caught by it in the next few years.
I’d love to see some retirement statistics, there’s definitely anecdotal evidence that more people than usual retired during the pandemic.
World's smallest violin time, but I am sure that the really mean rules on pension tax relief are contributing to this. Eg in my case, I can only put IIRC £4k into my pension with tax relief. Everything after that is basically taxed at 45% when it goes in and at least 20% when it comes out (not to mention another 20% when you buy anything except food), ie it's not worth it. Now if I can engineer a few years in some kind of consultancy or part time role down the road and bring my earnings down then I can benefit from the tax relief for £40k per year and get my pension pot up to something respectable. That means a lot less tax revenue and a smaller economy of course. By being too greedy on pension tax relief for high earners I think the tax man is shooting himself in the foot. Also, because I can't benefit from pension tax relief, stuff like BTL is made relatively more attractive.
Isn't that just an argument to make BTL relatively less attractive rather than give 45% rater earners such as ourselves a tax cut? I still like the idea of a 100% CGT rate and 100% income tax rate on BTL profit and capital gain for existing property but 30 year non-transferable nil rate bands for new builds. Take the investment aspect out of BTL but heavily incentivise building of new property.
That only makes sense if you think all property except new builds should be owner occupied. Does that make sense in somewhere like London, where you have always had a decent proportion of people who want to rent and limited space for building new property? What will they do when there is no rental property available? They won't all be able to afford to buy a flat, even if they wanted to. Or are you advocating for the state to become a much bigger landlord again?
I'm advocating that the state and housing associations become significantly bigger landlords.
OK then your proposal makes sense. I am planning to buy a BTL property but with the aim of renting it to refugees at below market rents so your 100% tax won't yield much revenue from us unfortunately.
Paul Waugh @paulwaugh · 5m Latest rumour among Tory MPs: poss @BorisJohnson reshuffle after local elections, to try to control the 're-set' narrative ahead of the Q Speech next week.
Will he move @RishiSunak as sacrificial lamb for the cost of living crisis? Paul Waugh @paulwaugh · 5m Or will Sunak walk? Some MPs think he didn't want to rock the boat before May 5...
By the way, the reason the LibDems had a rocky spell in Kingston-u-T is because they screwed up finances. And made a mess of the town centre, although the leaning phone boxes amuse me (my brother thinks they're an example of profligacy). They have since got on top of things and they're surefire to win.
This is one of the reasons I think Woking represents real value at 2/1. The tory minority council have massively screwed up the money. It's the third most debt-ridden council in the entire United Kingdom. Yes that's right: Woking. £1.84 billion in debt. A tory led council. It's staggering.
Last Con election broadcast I saw, a night or so ago, claimed that only Lab or LD councils were in debt and likely to default. I shouted something about Northants at the TV but the chap didn't seem to hear me!
I think lying has become the Con norm under Johnson. Eg I got their leaflet for Camden and it claimed the Lab council only does the bins fortnightly. Just not true. It's every Tuesday. They come early so you put them out Monday night. System works like a dream. It's unimprovable. So if the Tories are planning to make it a referendum on the bins, if they think they have a wedge issue here with this, they're in for a nasty shock. Bins very good under Labour in Camden.
I could hardly believe this.
Are you saying in London boroughs, your rubbish is collected every week ? It certainly seems to be the case in the borough webpages I have spot-checked.
WTF .. I think everywhere in Wales, rubbish bins are collected once every two weeks (usually longer).
In Gwynedd, it is every three weeks. In Abertawe it is every two weeks, in Conwy, it is every 4 weeks,
Just absolutely typical of London, preaching to the rest of the country... but not practising what they preach
The rest of us have been told to reduce our landfill, so we get reduced collections.
And you say Labour are responsible for this ....
Where I live it's rubbish fortnightly, recycling fortnightly, food waste weekly, garden waste bin (paid for) fortnightly, with larger wheelie bins available if you have a reason such as a large family.
That done, the real issue is access to the local recycling depots for anything out of gauge - closing one would be very unpopular indeed. The council will uplift but at a cost.
There were a large number of Soviet nukes that Ukraine inherited by virtue of them being based in their territory.
Under the Budapest Accords Ukraine gave these up in return for security guarantees from Russia, various western countries etc
As of course did Kazakhstan.
Am I right in thinking the only country to have given up an independent nuclear weapon voluntarily is South Africa?
No - Ukraine gave them up per the above
Were they independent nuclear weapons though?
No - they didn’t have the maintenance or production facilities.
Given the decay rate of tritium, for a start, the helium contamination problem would have made the weapons (assuming all h bombs) duds in short order. A year or 2. Pulling the tritium capsules (if possible) would turn them (maybe) into very low yield a bombs, but that would require knowledge of the design to know if that would work
If nuclear weaponry requires such complicated maintenance and production, which I presume is expensive in order to remain functional then I have to wonder given the largely decrepit state of the rest of Russia's military hardware whether their nuclear weapons have actually been maintained or not?
Given that this is weaponry that's never really used or displayed, it seems a prime target for a bit of embezzlement strategic redeployment of funds with a box ticked saying that its been maintained while funnelling the funds to more pressing concerns. Like Villas or nice cars.
If the bulk of Russia's hardware is Potemkin, I wonder whether the tritium has already decayed and their nuclear arsenal is Potemkin too.
In American/British designs (most known) the Tritium is in fairly accessible canisters, which are regularly removed for replacement, when the warhead is serviced.
The actual removal of the He3 from Tritium decay is fairly simple.
Tritium is also a extremely expensive. $30K a gram.
"Each weapon has on average about 4 to 5 grams, with neutron bombs requiring a much larger quantity,. perhaps as much as 25 grams."
So, assuming that Russian multi-stage design resembles US design,
$100K+ of Tritium to steal from each warhead.
It would be cold, cold irony if Russia launched 6000 missiles that all went fizz and it was the retaliatory strike alone that precipitated the nuclear winter.
By the way, the reason the LibDems had a rocky spell in Kingston-u-T is because they screwed up finances. And made a mess of the town centre, although the leaning phone boxes amuse me (my brother thinks they're an example of profligacy). They have since got on top of things and they're surefire to win.
This is one of the reasons I think Woking represents real value at 2/1. The tory minority council have massively screwed up the money. It's the third most debt-ridden council in the entire United Kingdom. Yes that's right: Woking. £1.84 billion in debt. A tory led council. It's staggering.
Last Con election broadcast I saw, a night or so ago, claimed that only Lab or LD councils were in debt and likely to default. I shouted something about Northants at the TV but the chap didn't seem to hear me!
I think lying has become the Con norm under Johnson. Eg I got their leaflet for Camden and it claimed the Lab council only does the bins fortnightly. Just not true. It's every Tuesday. They come early so you put them out Monday night. System works like a dream. It's unimprovable. So if the Tories are planning to make it a referendum on the bins, if they think they have a wedge issue here with this, they're in for a nasty shock. Bins very good under Labour in Camden.
I could hardly believe this.
Are you saying in London boroughs, your rubbish is collected every week ? It certainly seems to be the case in the borough webpages I have spot-checked.
WTF .. I think everywhere in Wales, rubbish bins are collected once every two weeks (usually longer).
In Gwynedd, it is every three weeks. In Abertawe it is every two weeks, in Conwy, it is every 4 weeks,
Just absolutely typical of London, preaching to the rest of the country... but not practising what they preach
The rest of us have been told to reduce our landfill, so we get reduced collections.
And you say Labour are responsible for this ....
Round here we get a rubbish collection every week that alternates between recycling & general waste. Food waste is collected every week. Generally it seems to work fine - the recyclable / non-recyclable waste split means that bins get to be full roughly when collection happens (and you can get larger bins for larger households).
In Gwynedd, recycling is every week, but rubbish is every 3 weeks.
This is typical for Wales.
In my opinion, it seems to have led to increased fly-tipping in rural Wales, though that is just an impression and I have no statistics to back it up.
But -- what seems extraordinary -- is London seems to have rubbish bin collections *every week* (happy to be corrected, but it does seem to be the case in Camden from the Council webpage).
Expect Friday to be a big political day. Still not sure the media, and political establishment in general, are fully aware of quite what a story is brewing in NI. It may actually impinge on our consciousness for a short time.
Last nights NI debate was a car crash for the DUP Leader . Came last and if people in NI had any sense they’d ensure that the DUP don’t even make second place . Essentially he told viewers fxck the cost of living crisis we care more about trying to get the NI protocol removed and will refuse to take part in the assembly until that happens .
Yes. And the Protocol remains popular too. Not sure a situation where a government can't be formed because the Party who came third refuses (on an issue the vast majority are content with) is going to be tenable for long. IF it happens of course.
FPT re this being a weird cost of living crisis, Malmesbury said
"Once again, COVID accelerated a process - in this case early retirement/slowing down
Quite a few people "retired" early, by replacing their full time jobs with part time plus pension."
----
This is the unsurprising result of an economy where govt distorts it to such an extent that an average house earns more per year than an average wage.
If you have housing assets why bother working? And in large parts of the country, even if you are working, you will feel poor as cannot afford housing locally.
Hence the weirdness to the cost of living crisis, it is far more divided than previous ones, with haves and have nots largely decided by age rather than class or education.
From my chats with employers in the NE, it isn't the loss of EU or overseas workers, there weren't that many, but the loss of experienced staff to retirement that is hurting them. They are filling the jobs. But not with decades of knowledge. And over promoting earlier than they'd like to.
One thing which might encourage people in their 50s and upwards to retire early or reduce their hours is that they've made all the NI contributions they need to receive the maximum state pension.
By going part time you proportionally reduce your hours worked much more than you reduce your earnings.
And this sort of income and pension planning knowledge is now much easier to access than it was in pre internet days.
Among the middle classes, there is the same phenomenon with regards to the lifetime rules for private pensions. This is affecting the doctors and lawyers, who after years of stuffing five figures into their pension every year for the tax relief, now see what looks like a large pay cut as they’re exposed to the 40% rate in full, and after the £100k personal allowance withdrawal. That last one is a huge big fiscal drag by the way, there will be a million or two caught by it in the next few years.
I’d love to see some retirement statistics, there’s definitely anecdotal evidence that more people than usual retired during the pandemic.
World's smallest violin time, but I am sure that the really mean rules on pension tax relief are contributing to this. Eg in my case, I can only put IIRC £4k into my pension with tax relief. Everything after that is basically taxed at 45% when it goes in and at least 20% when it comes out (not to mention another 20% when you buy anything except food), ie it's not worth it. Now if I can engineer a few years in some kind of consultancy or part time role down the road and bring my earnings down then I can benefit from the tax relief for £40k per year and get my pension pot up to something respectable. That means a lot less tax revenue and a smaller economy of course. By being too greedy on pension tax relief for high earners I think the tax man is shooting himself in the foot. Also, because I can't benefit from pension tax relief, stuff like BTL is made relatively more attractive.
If you think about why the government gives relief on pension contributions at all, it is to reduce the number of retired individuals who are a financial cost on the state and future workers. That justification is fine for the first £1m or so of pension savings, but would not cover the second and further millions of pension savings.
Why should you not pay tax on your earnings?
No doubt you will say it is being taxed twice, but only if you put it into a pension wrapper, there is nothing stopping you saving further for retirement in a general investment account, not to mention ISAs (another £0.4-0.8m tax sheltered account over a well paid career) and VCTs, EIS, SEIS.
I quite like the simplicity of a pension. You put the money away and don't have to think about it. Also to me it makes sense that you are taxed when you receive the income, which, if you put it into a pension, is in retirement. So pension tax relief makes a lot of sense - although it can't be infinite so a lifetime limit makes sense but I don't see why high earners shouldn't be able to save for retirement just like everyone else. (And I don't really believe that governments won't start taxing income from ISA savings in the future).
I agree with the simplicity argument. If you invest in a general investment account, the numbers should feed through automatically into your self assessment account. If that was the case then it would be just as simple, just taxed differently.
High earners can of course save for retirement and do so very effectively, getting beneficial tax rates on their first million plus ISAs.
There were a large number of Soviet nukes that Ukraine inherited by virtue of them being based in their territory.
Under the Budapest Accords Ukraine gave these up in return for security guarantees from Russia, various western countries etc
As of course did Kazakhstan.
Am I right in thinking the only country to have given up an independent nuclear weapon voluntarily is South Africa?
No - Ukraine gave them up per the above
Were they independent nuclear weapons though?
No - they didn’t have the maintenance or production facilities.
Given the decay rate of tritium, for a start, the helium contamination problem would have made the weapons (assuming all h bombs) duds in short order. A year or 2. Pulling the tritium capsules (if possible) would turn them (maybe) into very low yield a bombs, but that would require knowledge of the design to know if that would work
If nuclear weaponry requires such complicated maintenance and production, which I presume is expensive in order to remain functional then I have to wonder given the largely decrepit state of the rest of Russia's military hardware whether their nuclear weapons have actually been maintained or not?
Given that this is weaponry that's never really used or displayed, it seems a prime target for a bit of embezzlement strategic redeployment of funds with a box ticked saying that its been maintained while funnelling the funds to more pressing concerns. Like Villas or nice cars.
If the bulk of Russia's hardware is Potemkin, I wonder whether the tritium has already decayed and their nuclear arsenal is Potemkin too.
In American/British designs (most known) the Tritium is in fairly accessible canisters, which are regularly removed for replacement, when the warhead is serviced.
The actual removal of the He3 from Tritium decay is fairly simple.
Tritium is also a extremely expensive. $30K a gram.
"Each weapon has on average about 4 to 5 grams, with neutron bombs requiring a much larger quantity,. perhaps as much as 25 grams."
So, assuming that Russian multi-stage design resembles US design,
$100K+ of Tritium to steal from each warhead.
It would be cold, cold irony if Russia launched 6000 missiles that all went fizz and it was the retaliatory strike alone that precipitated the nuclear winter.
Paul Waugh @paulwaugh · 5m Latest rumour among Tory MPs: poss @BorisJohnson reshuffle after local elections, to try to control the 're-set' narrative ahead of the Q Speech next week.
Will he move @RishiSunak as sacrificial lamb for the cost of living crisis? Paul Waugh @paulwaugh · 5m Or will Sunak walk? Some MPs think he didn't want to rock the boat before May 5...
By the way, the reason the LibDems had a rocky spell in Kingston-u-T is because they screwed up finances. And made a mess of the town centre, although the leaning phone boxes amuse me (my brother thinks they're an example of profligacy). They have since got on top of things and they're surefire to win.
This is one of the reasons I think Woking represents real value at 2/1. The tory minority council have massively screwed up the money. It's the third most debt-ridden council in the entire United Kingdom. Yes that's right: Woking. £1.84 billion in debt. A tory led council. It's staggering.
Last Con election broadcast I saw, a night or so ago, claimed that only Lab or LD councils were in debt and likely to default. I shouted something about Northants at the TV but the chap didn't seem to hear me!
I think lying has become the Con norm under Johnson. Eg I got their leaflet for Camden and it claimed the Lab council only does the bins fortnightly. Just not true. It's every Tuesday. They come early so you put them out Monday night. System works like a dream. It's unimprovable. So if the Tories are planning to make it a referendum on the bins, if they think they have a wedge issue here with this, they're in for a nasty shock. Bins very good under Labour in Camden.
I could hardly believe this.
Are you saying in London boroughs, your rubbish is collected every week ? It certainly seems to be the case in the borough webpages I have spot-checked.
WTF .. I think everywhere in Wales, rubbish bins are collected once every two weeks (usually longer).
In Gwynedd, it is every three weeks. In Abertawe it is every two weeks, in Conwy, it is every 4 weeks,
Just absolutely typical of London, preaching to the rest of the country... but not practising what they preach
The rest of us have been told to reduce our landfill, so we get reduced collections.
And you say Labour are responsible for this ....
In Lewisham the landfill/incinerator rubbish is collected fortnightly and food waste and recycling is collected weekly. Garden waste is weekly (paid for separately) and they will collect large items at a cost and a wait. Anything metal left out will disappear pretty quickly, collected by private operators.
Paul Waugh @paulwaugh · 5m Latest rumour among Tory MPs: poss @BorisJohnson reshuffle after local elections, to try to control the 're-set' narrative ahead of the Q Speech next week.
Will he move @RishiSunak as sacrificial lamb for the cost of living crisis? Paul Waugh @paulwaugh · 5m Or will Sunak walk? Some MPs think he didn't want to rock the boat before May 5...
Paul Waugh @paulwaugh · 5m Latest rumour among Tory MPs: poss @BorisJohnson reshuffle after local elections, to try to control the 're-set' narrative ahead of the Q Speech next week.
Will he move @RishiSunak as sacrificial lamb for the cost of living crisis? Paul Waugh @paulwaugh · 5m Or will Sunak walk? Some MPs think he didn't want to rock the boat before May 5...
Any potential names in the frame for CotE?
Lord Osborne?
Only in TSE's dreams methinks...
Nah, George hasn't been an MP for nearly five years, he's never coming back to politics.
He's loving life too much, recently became a father again, and most importantly, he couldn't reconcile being Chancellor and delivering the policies of Boris Johnson and the modern day Tory party.
By the way, the reason the LibDems had a rocky spell in Kingston-u-T is because they screwed up finances. And made a mess of the town centre, although the leaning phone boxes amuse me (my brother thinks they're an example of profligacy). They have since got on top of things and they're surefire to win.
This is one of the reasons I think Woking represents real value at 2/1. The tory minority council have massively screwed up the money. It's the third most debt-ridden council in the entire United Kingdom. Yes that's right: Woking. £1.84 billion in debt. A tory led council. It's staggering.
Last Con election broadcast I saw, a night or so ago, claimed that only Lab or LD councils were in debt and likely to default. I shouted something about Northants at the TV but the chap didn't seem to hear me!
I think lying has become the Con norm under Johnson. Eg I got their leaflet for Camden and it claimed the Lab council only does the bins fortnightly. Just not true. It's every Tuesday. They come early so you put them out Monday night. System works like a dream. It's unimprovable. So if the Tories are planning to make it a referendum on the bins, if they think they have a wedge issue here with this, they're in for a nasty shock. Bins very good under Labour in Camden.
I could hardly believe this.
Are you saying in London boroughs, your rubbish is collected every week ? It certainly seems to be the case in the borough webpages I have spot-checked.
WTF .. I think everywhere in Wales, rubbish bins are collected once every two weeks (usually longer).
In Gwynedd, it is every three weeks. In Abertawe it is every two weeks, in Conwy, it is every 4 weeks,
Just absolutely typical of London, preaching to the rest of the country... but not practising what they preach
The rest of us have been told to reduce our landfill, so we get reduced collections.
And you say Labour are responsible for this ....
In my daughter's village in Andalusia, Spain rubbish is collected daily. From large communal bins sorted into different categories.
Paul Waugh @paulwaugh · 5m Latest rumour among Tory MPs: poss @BorisJohnson reshuffle after local elections, to try to control the 're-set' narrative ahead of the Q Speech next week.
Will he move @RishiSunak as sacrificial lamb for the cost of living crisis? Paul Waugh @paulwaugh · 5m Or will Sunak walk? Some MPs think he didn't want to rock the boat before May 5...
By the way, the reason the LibDems had a rocky spell in Kingston-u-T is because they screwed up finances. And made a mess of the town centre, although the leaning phone boxes amuse me (my brother thinks they're an example of profligacy). They have since got on top of things and they're surefire to win.
This is one of the reasons I think Woking represents real value at 2/1. The tory minority council have massively screwed up the money. It's the third most debt-ridden council in the entire United Kingdom. Yes that's right: Woking. £1.84 billion in debt. A tory led council. It's staggering.
Last Con election broadcast I saw, a night or so ago, claimed that only Lab or LD councils were in debt and likely to default. I shouted something about Northants at the TV but the chap didn't seem to hear me!
I think lying has become the Con norm under Johnson. Eg I got their leaflet for Camden and it claimed the Lab council only does the bins fortnightly. Just not true. It's every Tuesday. They come early so you put them out Monday night. System works like a dream. It's unimprovable. So if the Tories are planning to make it a referendum on the bins, if they think they have a wedge issue here with this, they're in for a nasty shock. Bins very good under Labour in Camden.
I could hardly believe this.
Are you saying in London boroughs, your rubbish is collected every week ? It certainly seems to be the case in the borough webpages I have spot-checked.
WTF .. I think everywhere in Wales, rubbish bins are collected once every two weeks (usually longer).
In Gwynedd, it is every three weeks. In Abertawe it is every two weeks, in Conwy, it is every 4 weeks,
Just absolutely typical of London, preaching to the rest of the country... but not practising what they preach
The rest of us have been told to reduce our landfill, so we get reduced collections.
And you say Labour are responsible for this ....
Round here we get a rubbish collection every week that alternates between recycling & general waste. Food waste is collected every week. Generally it seems to work fine - the recyclable / non-recyclable waste split means that bins get to be full roughly when collection happens (and you can get larger bins for larger households).
In Gwynedd, recycling is every week, but rubbish is every 3 weeks.
This is typical for Wales.
In my opinion, it seems to have led to increased fly-tipping in rural Wales, though that is just an impression and I have no statistics to back it up.
But -- what seems extraordinary -- is London seems to have rubbish bin collections *every week* (happy to be corrected, but it does seem to be the case in Camden from the Council webpage).
They have lots of foxes in Camden with limited other food sources vs rubbish bins
FPT re this being a weird cost of living crisis, Malmesbury said
"Once again, COVID accelerated a process - in this case early retirement/slowing down
Quite a few people "retired" early, by replacing their full time jobs with part time plus pension."
----
This is the unsurprising result of an economy where govt distorts it to such an extent that an average house earns more per year than an average wage.
If you have housing assets why bother working? And in large parts of the country, even if you are working, you will feel poor as cannot afford housing locally.
Hence the weirdness to the cost of living crisis, it is far more divided than previous ones, with haves and have nots largely decided by age rather than class or education.
From my chats with employers in the NE, it isn't the loss of EU or overseas workers, there weren't that many, but the loss of experienced staff to retirement that is hurting them. They are filling the jobs. But not with decades of knowledge. And over promoting earlier than they'd like to.
One thing which might encourage people in their 50s and upwards to retire early or reduce their hours is that they've made all the NI contributions they need to receive the maximum state pension.
By going part time you proportionally reduce your hours worked much more than you reduce your earnings.
And this sort of income and pension planning knowledge is now much easier to access than it was in pre internet days.
Among the middle classes, there is the same phenomenon with regards to the lifetime rules for private pensions. This is affecting the doctors and lawyers, who after years of stuffing five figures into their pension every year for the tax relief, now see what looks like a large pay cut as they’re exposed to the 40% rate in full, and after the £100k personal allowance withdrawal. That last one is a huge big fiscal drag by the way, there will be a million or two caught by it in the next few years.
I’d love to see some retirement statistics, there’s definitely anecdotal evidence that more people than usual retired during the pandemic.
World's smallest violin time, but I am sure that the really mean rules on pension tax relief are contributing to this. Eg in my case, I can only put IIRC £4k into my pension with tax relief. Everything after that is basically taxed at 45% when it goes in and at least 20% when it comes out (not to mention another 20% when you buy anything except food), ie it's not worth it. Now if I can engineer a few years in some kind of consultancy or part time role down the road and bring my earnings down then I can benefit from the tax relief for £40k per year and get my pension pot up to something respectable. That means a lot less tax revenue and a smaller economy of course. By being too greedy on pension tax relief for high earners I think the tax man is shooting himself in the foot. Also, because I can't benefit from pension tax relief, stuff like BTL is made relatively more attractive.
If you think about why the government gives relief on pension contributions at all, it is to reduce the number of retired individuals who are a financial cost on the state and future workers. That justification is fine for the first £1m or so of pension savings, but would not cover the second and further millions of pension savings.
Why should you not pay tax on your earnings?
No doubt you will say it is being taxed twice, but only if you put it into a pension wrapper, there is nothing stopping you saving further for retirement in a general investment account, not to mention ISAs (another £0.4-0.8m tax sheltered account over a well paid career) and VCTs, EIS, SEIS.
I quite like the simplicity of a pension. You put the money away and don't have to think about it. Also to me it makes sense that you are taxed when you receive the income, which, if you put it into a pension, is in retirement. So pension tax relief makes a lot of sense - although it can't be infinite so a lifetime limit makes sense but I don't see why high earners shouldn't be able to save for retirement just like everyone else. (And I don't really believe that governments won't start taxing income from ISA savings in the future).
I agree with the simplicity argument. If you invest in a general investment account, the numbers should feed through automatically into your self assessment account. If that was the case then it would be just as simple, just taxed differently.
High earners can of course save for retirement and do so very effectively, getting beneficial tax rates on their first million plus ISAs.
Not really with pensions though, you can only pay in £4k/year before you lose all tax relief. So you'd need to live for 250 years to benefit from the tax relief on your first £1mn.
By the way, the reason the LibDems had a rocky spell in Kingston-u-T is because they screwed up finances. And made a mess of the town centre, although the leaning phone boxes amuse me (my brother thinks they're an example of profligacy). They have since got on top of things and they're surefire to win.
This is one of the reasons I think Woking represents real value at 2/1. The tory minority council have massively screwed up the money. It's the third most debt-ridden council in the entire United Kingdom. Yes that's right: Woking. £1.84 billion in debt. A tory led council. It's staggering.
Last Con election broadcast I saw, a night or so ago, claimed that only Lab or LD councils were in debt and likely to default. I shouted something about Northants at the TV but the chap didn't seem to hear me!
I think lying has become the Con norm under Johnson. Eg I got their leaflet for Camden and it claimed the Lab council only does the bins fortnightly. Just not true. It's every Tuesday. They come early so you put them out Monday night. System works like a dream. It's unimprovable. So if the Tories are planning to make it a referendum on the bins, if they think they have a wedge issue here with this, they're in for a nasty shock. Bins very good under Labour in Camden.
The WhatsApp group for Fortune Green is full of complaints about Camden not collecting the bins from the local shops and restaurants, the resulting fly-tipping and rubbish strewn around the streets and how complaints to Camden result in no action. The Lib Dems are making a big thing of it. The impression is that matters have got worse. So "unimprovable" is overstating it, I think.
As for Copeland, you'd hardly know there was an election. The local Tory (I assume) came round at the very start with a leaflet about all the local stuff he was doing. The Lib Dems have done no canvassing at all - not even a leaflet. And eventually the Labour candidate left a leaflet with my milk bottles saying that the lovely lady running the local and very good theatre in Millom supported her.
That's it. People are much more exercised about the proposals for an Iron Line locally with the celebrated Dutch garden designer, Piet Oudolf, involved and the next Spring Fair at Holker Hall.
By the way, the reason the LibDems had a rocky spell in Kingston-u-T is because they screwed up finances. And made a mess of the town centre, although the leaning phone boxes amuse me (my brother thinks they're an example of profligacy). They have since got on top of things and they're surefire to win.
This is one of the reasons I think Woking represents real value at 2/1. The tory minority council have massively screwed up the money. It's the third most debt-ridden council in the entire United Kingdom. Yes that's right: Woking. £1.84 billion in debt. A tory led council. It's staggering.
Last Con election broadcast I saw, a night or so ago, claimed that only Lab or LD councils were in debt and likely to default. I shouted something about Northants at the TV but the chap didn't seem to hear me!
I think lying has become the Con norm under Johnson. Eg I got their leaflet for Camden and it claimed the Lab council only does the bins fortnightly. Just not true. It's every Tuesday. They come early so you put them out Monday night. System works like a dream. It's unimprovable. So if the Tories are planning to make it a referendum on the bins, if they think they have a wedge issue here with this, they're in for a nasty shock. Bins very good under Labour in Camden.
I could hardly believe this.
Are you saying in London boroughs, your rubbish is collected every week ? It certainly seems to be the case in the borough webpages I have spot-checked.
WTF .. I think everywhere in Wales, rubbish bins are collected once every two weeks (usually longer).
In Gwynedd, it is every three weeks. In Abertawe it is every two weeks, in Conwy, it is every 4 weeks,
Just absolutely typical of London, preaching to the rest of the country... but not practising what they preach
The rest of us have been told to reduce our landfill, so we get reduced collections.
And you say Labour are responsible for this ....
When I lived in Greenwich, IIRC the blocks of flats get their industrial sized bins collected at least once a week (twice for the bigger blocks) but the houses (sometimes in the same street) only every two weeks.
By the way, the reason the LibDems had a rocky spell in Kingston-u-T is because they screwed up finances. And made a mess of the town centre, although the leaning phone boxes amuse me (my brother thinks they're an example of profligacy). They have since got on top of things and they're surefire to win.
This is one of the reasons I think Woking represents real value at 2/1. The tory minority council have massively screwed up the money. It's the third most debt-ridden council in the entire United Kingdom. Yes that's right: Woking. £1.84 billion in debt. A tory led council. It's staggering.
Last Con election broadcast I saw, a night or so ago, claimed that only Lab or LD councils were in debt and likely to default. I shouted something about Northants at the TV but the chap didn't seem to hear me!
I think lying has become the Con norm under Johnson. Eg I got their leaflet for Camden and it claimed the Lab council only does the bins fortnightly. Just not true. It's every Tuesday. They come early so you put them out Monday night. System works like a dream. It's unimprovable. So if the Tories are planning to make it a referendum on the bins, if they think they have a wedge issue here with this, they're in for a nasty shock. Bins very good under Labour in Camden.
I could hardly believe this.
Are you saying in London boroughs, your rubbish is collected every week ? It certainly seems to be the case in the borough webpages I have spot-checked.
WTF .. I think everywhere in Wales, rubbish bins are collected once every two weeks (usually longer).
In Gwynedd, it is every three weeks. In Abertawe it is every two weeks, in Conwy, it is every 4 weeks,
Just absolutely typical of London, preaching to the rest of the country... but not practising what they preach
The rest of us have been told to reduce our landfill, so we get reduced collections.
And you say Labour are responsible for this ....
Round here we get a rubbish collection every week that alternates between recycling & general waste. Food waste is collected every week. Generally it seems to work fine - the recyclable / non-recyclable waste split means that bins get to be full roughly when collection happens (and you can get larger bins for larger households).
In Gwynedd, recycling is every week, but rubbish is every 3 weeks.
This is typical for Wales.
In my opinion, it seems to have led to increased fly-tipping in rural Wales, though that is just an impression and I have no statistics to back it up.
But -- what seems extraordinary -- is London seems to have rubbish bin collections *every week* (happy to be corrected, but it does seem to be the case in Camden from the Council webpage).
Fly tipping in Wales is largely due to recycling depots charging for household building waste
Paul Waugh @paulwaugh · 5m Latest rumour among Tory MPs: poss @BorisJohnson reshuffle after local elections, to try to control the 're-set' narrative ahead of the Q Speech next week.
Will he move @RishiSunak as sacrificial lamb for the cost of living crisis? Paul Waugh @paulwaugh · 5m Or will Sunak walk? Some MPs think he didn't want to rock the boat before May 5...
Any potential names in the frame for CotE?
Every minister sacked is another letter to the '22!
Expect Friday to be a big political day. Still not sure the media, and political establishment in general, are fully aware of quite what a story is brewing in NI. It may actually impinge on our consciousness for a short time.
Last nights NI debate was a car crash for the DUP Leader . Came last and if people in NI had any sense they’d ensure that the DUP don’t even make second place . Essentially he told viewers fxck the cost of living crisis we care more about trying to get the NI protocol removed and will refuse to take part in the assembly until that happens .
Yes. And the Protocol remains popular too. Not sure a situation where a government can't be formed because the Party who came third refuses (on an issue the vast majority are content with) is going to be tenable for long. IF it happens of course.
It will be interesting to see what happens if the Alliance does end up in second place.
Paul Waugh @paulwaugh · 5m Latest rumour among Tory MPs: poss @BorisJohnson reshuffle after local elections, to try to control the 're-set' narrative ahead of the Q Speech next week.
Will he move @RishiSunak as sacrificial lamb for the cost of living crisis? Paul Waugh @paulwaugh · 5m Or will Sunak walk? Some MPs think he didn't want to rock the boat before May 5...
Any potential names in the frame for CotE?
Lord Osborne?
Only in TSE's dreams methinks...
Nah, George hasn't been an MP for nearly five years, he's never coming back to politics.
He's loving life too much, recently became a father again, and most importantly, he couldn't reconcile being Chancellor and delivering the policies of Boris Johnson and the modern day Tory party.
By the way, the reason the LibDems had a rocky spell in Kingston-u-T is because they screwed up finances. And made a mess of the town centre, although the leaning phone boxes amuse me (my brother thinks they're an example of profligacy). They have since got on top of things and they're surefire to win.
This is one of the reasons I think Woking represents real value at 2/1. The tory minority council have massively screwed up the money. It's the third most debt-ridden council in the entire United Kingdom. Yes that's right: Woking. £1.84 billion in debt. A tory led council. It's staggering.
Last Con election broadcast I saw, a night or so ago, claimed that only Lab or LD councils were in debt and likely to default. I shouted something about Northants at the TV but the chap didn't seem to hear me!
I think lying has become the Con norm under Johnson. Eg I got their leaflet for Camden and it claimed the Lab council only does the bins fortnightly. Just not true. It's every Tuesday. They come early so you put them out Monday night. System works like a dream. It's unimprovable. So if the Tories are planning to make it a referendum on the bins, if they think they have a wedge issue here with this, they're in for a nasty shock. Bins very good under Labour in Camden.
I could hardly believe this.
Are you saying in London boroughs, your rubbish is collected every week ? It certainly seems to be the case in the borough webpages I have spot-checked.
WTF .. I think everywhere in Wales, rubbish bins are collected once every two weeks (usually longer).
In Gwynedd, it is every three weeks. In Abertawe it is every two weeks, in Conwy, it is every 4 weeks,
Just absolutely typical of London, preaching to the rest of the country... but not practising what they preach
The rest of us have been told to reduce our landfill, so we get reduced collections.
And you say Labour are responsible for this ....
Round here we get a rubbish collection every week that alternates between recycling & general waste. Food waste is collected every week. Generally it seems to work fine - the recyclable / non-recyclable waste split means that bins get to be full roughly when collection happens (and you can get larger bins for larger households).
In Gwynedd, recycling is every week, but rubbish is every 3 weeks.
This is typical for Wales.
In my opinion, it seems to have led to increased fly-tipping in rural Wales, though that is just an impression and I have no statistics to back it up.
But -- what seems extraordinary -- is London seems to have rubbish bin collections *every week* (happy to be corrected, but it does seem to be the case in Camden from the Council webpage).
I find it quite extraordinary that any council is still clinging on to what I consider a proper waste collection service - everything, every week. Any less is totally inadequate.
This EU oil embargo is far too slow if it only takes effect at the end of the year. Putin could well resort to national mobilisation if things don't improve for him on the battlefield. We haven't managed to induce the complete financial collapse of Russia as some anticipated. People are being offered well above the average salary to go and fight in Ukraine. We need to make it unaffordable.
What we need now, is for Lavrov to upset the Saudis, as the Russians did a couple of years ago, and watch OPEC up production to drive the price (and Russia’s main source of foreign currency) down. This would be good for everyone except Russia.
It’s already been said that Russian reserves are close to full, at which point they will need to start shutting production down or burn it off, if they can’t sell it. They also rely heavily on Western equipment and services for their O&G industry, which will quickly become unserviceable due to sanctions.
Surely some of the Arab states such as Egypt must be horrified by the blockade on Odessa. Rising food prices in the Arab world would be very dangerous for the Saudis. I can't understand why it's in their interests for Putin to continue the war.
Russia has been reported to have stolen enough grain across the South of Ukraine that warnings of famine in the area are starting to be made.
Perhaps Arab countries are thinking that Russia might be their best hope for future grain supplies?
Paul Waugh @paulwaugh · 5m Latest rumour among Tory MPs: poss @BorisJohnson reshuffle after local elections, to try to control the 're-set' narrative ahead of the Q Speech next week.
Will he move @RishiSunak as sacrificial lamb for the cost of living crisis? Paul Waugh @paulwaugh · 5m Or will Sunak walk? Some MPs think he didn't want to rock the boat before May 5...
Any potential names in the frame for CotE?
Lord Osborne?
Only in TSE's dreams methinks...
Nah, George hasn't been an MP for nearly five years, he's never coming back to politics.
He's loving life too much, recently became a father again, and most importantly, he couldn't reconcile being Chancellor and delivering the policies of Boris Johnson and the modern day Tory party.
So money has nothing to do with it?
Nope, he's wealthy as it is, can do a stint as Chancellor for a few years, and still pick up where he left off when he finishes in Number 11 again.
Paul Waugh @paulwaugh · 5m Latest rumour among Tory MPs: poss @BorisJohnson reshuffle after local elections, to try to control the 're-set' narrative ahead of the Q Speech next week.
Will he move @RishiSunak as sacrificial lamb for the cost of living crisis? Paul Waugh @paulwaugh · 5m Or will Sunak walk? Some MPs think he didn't want to rock the boat before May 5...
Any potential names in the frame for CotE?
Lord Osborne?
Only in TSE's dreams methinks...
Nah, George hasn't been an MP for nearly five years, he's never coming back to politics.
He's loving life too much, recently became a father again, and most importantly, he couldn't reconcile being Chancellor and delivering the policies of Boris Johnson and the modern day Tory party.
Probably too busy sleeping off a life on benefits.
This EU oil embargo is far too slow if it only takes effect at the end of the year. Putin could well resort to national mobilisation if things don't improve for him on the battlefield. We haven't managed to induce the complete financial collapse of Russia as some anticipated. People are being offered well above the average salary to go and fight in Ukraine. We need to make it unaffordable.
What we need now, is for Lavrov to upset the Saudis, as the Russians did a couple of years ago, and watch OPEC up production to drive the price (and Russia’s main source of foreign currency) down. This would be good for everyone except Russia.
It’s already been said that Russian reserves are close to full, at which point they will need to start shutting production down or burn it off, if they can’t sell it. They also rely heavily on Western equipment and services for their O&G industry, which will quickly become unserviceable due to sanctions.
Surely some of the Arab states such as Egypt must be horrified by the blockade on Odessa. Rising food prices in the Arab world would be very dangerous for the Saudis. I can't understand why it's in their interests for Putin to continue the war.
Indeed. The Middle East isn’t close to being self-sufficient in food, and while there’s not yet a problem of rising prices, it has the potential to become one in the poorer parts of the region, if the war continues into the summer.
The one thing that is being noticed here, in middle-class expat territory, is the price of petrol. Now around a dollar a litre, close to double where it has been in recent years. We are not known for our love of small, fuel-efficient cars.
Paul Waugh @paulwaugh · 5m Latest rumour among Tory MPs: poss @BorisJohnson reshuffle after local elections, to try to control the 're-set' narrative ahead of the Q Speech next week.
Will he move @RishiSunak as sacrificial lamb for the cost of living crisis? Paul Waugh @paulwaugh · 5m Or will Sunak walk? Some MPs think he didn't want to rock the boat before May 5...
Any potential names in the frame for CotE?
Liz Truss
Could Boris move the foreign sec with Ukraine still looming large?
By the way, the reason the LibDems had a rocky spell in Kingston-u-T is because they screwed up finances. And made a mess of the town centre, although the leaning phone boxes amuse me (my brother thinks they're an example of profligacy). They have since got on top of things and they're surefire to win.
This is one of the reasons I think Woking represents real value at 2/1. The tory minority council have massively screwed up the money. It's the third most debt-ridden council in the entire United Kingdom. Yes that's right: Woking. £1.84 billion in debt. A tory led council. It's staggering.
Last Con election broadcast I saw, a night or so ago, claimed that only Lab or LD councils were in debt and likely to default. I shouted something about Northants at the TV but the chap didn't seem to hear me!
I think lying has become the Con norm under Johnson. Eg I got their leaflet for Camden and it claimed the Lab council only does the bins fortnightly. Just not true. It's every Tuesday. They come early so you put them out Monday night. System works like a dream. It's unimprovable. So if the Tories are planning to make it a referendum on the bins, if they think they have a wedge issue here with this, they're in for a nasty shock. Bins very good under Labour in Camden.
The WhatsApp group for Fortune Green is full of complaints about Camden not collecting the bins from the local shops and restaurants, the resulting fly-tipping and rubbish strewn around the streets and how complaints to Camden result in no action. The Lib Dems are making a big thing of it. The impression is that matters have got worse. So "unimprovable" is overstating it, I think.
As for Copeland, you'd hardly know there was an election. The local Tory (I assume) came round at the very start with a leaflet about all the local stuff he was doing. The Lib Dems have done no canvassing at all - not even a leaflet. And eventually the Labour candidate left a leaflet with my milk bottles saying that the lovely lady running the local and very good theatre in Millom supported her.
That's it. People are much more exercised about the proposals for an Iron Line locally with the celebrated Dutch garden designer, Piet Oudolf, involved and the next Spring Fair at Holker Hall.
I haven't seen any leaflets in Cambridge at all, since the campaign started. We usually get something from the LDs at least. I submitted my postal vote a couple of weeks ago, mind, so it would've been pointless!
Paul Waugh @paulwaugh · 5m Latest rumour among Tory MPs: poss @BorisJohnson reshuffle after local elections, to try to control the 're-set' narrative ahead of the Q Speech next week.
Will he move @RishiSunak as sacrificial lamb for the cost of living crisis? Paul Waugh @paulwaugh · 5m Or will Sunak walk? Some MPs think he didn't want to rock the boat before May 5...
Any potential names in the frame for CotE?
Lord Osborne?
Only in TSE's dreams methinks...
Nah, George hasn't been an MP for nearly five years, he's never coming back to politics.
He's loving life too much, recently became a father again, and most importantly, he couldn't reconcile being Chancellor and delivering the policies of Boris Johnson and the modern day Tory party.
That would be a father again via his former adviser having divorced his wife.
On some things at least he might still fit in well with Boris!
Paul Waugh @paulwaugh · 5m Latest rumour among Tory MPs: poss @BorisJohnson reshuffle after local elections, to try to control the 're-set' narrative ahead of the Q Speech next week.
Will he move @RishiSunak as sacrificial lamb for the cost of living crisis? Paul Waugh @paulwaugh · 5m Or will Sunak walk? Some MPs think he didn't want to rock the boat before May 5...
Any potential names in the frame for CotE?
Lord Osborne?
Only in TSE's dreams methinks...
Nah, George hasn't been an MP for nearly five years, he's never coming back to politics.
He's loving life too much, recently became a father again, and most importantly, he couldn't reconcile being Chancellor and delivering the policies of Boris Johnson and the modern day Tory party.
That would be a father again via his former adviser having divorced his wife.
On some things at least he might still fit in well with Boris!
The party of family values... They love families so much they have more than one of them.
Paul Waugh @paulwaugh · 5m Latest rumour among Tory MPs: poss @BorisJohnson reshuffle after local elections, to try to control the 're-set' narrative ahead of the Q Speech next week.
Will he move @RishiSunak as sacrificial lamb for the cost of living crisis? Paul Waugh @paulwaugh · 5m Or will Sunak walk? Some MPs think he didn't want to rock the boat before May 5...
Any potential names in the frame for CotE?
Liz Truss
That works. She gets the blame for the next round of cost of living crisis, government debt crisis and so on. Leaving Johnson with one less person who could replace him.
Hunt would be very well advised to turn down any offer to be anywhere near this government.
FPT re this being a weird cost of living crisis, Malmesbury said
"Once again, COVID accelerated a process - in this case early retirement/slowing down
Quite a few people "retired" early, by replacing their full time jobs with part time plus pension."
----
This is the unsurprising result of an economy where govt distorts it to such an extent that an average house earns more per year than an average wage.
If you have housing assets why bother working? And in large parts of the country, even if you are working, you will feel poor as cannot afford housing locally.
Hence the weirdness to the cost of living crisis, it is far more divided than previous ones, with haves and have nots largely decided by age rather than class or education.
From my chats with employers in the NE, it isn't the loss of EU or overseas workers, there weren't that many, but the loss of experienced staff to retirement that is hurting them. They are filling the jobs. But not with decades of knowledge. And over promoting earlier than they'd like to.
One thing which might encourage people in their 50s and upwards to retire early or reduce their hours is that they've made all the NI contributions they need to receive the maximum state pension.
By going part time you proportionally reduce your hours worked much more than you reduce your earnings.
And this sort of income and pension planning knowledge is now much easier to access than it was in pre internet days.
Among the middle classes, there is the same phenomenon with regards to the lifetime rules for private pensions. This is affecting the doctors and lawyers, who after years of stuffing five figures into their pension every year for the tax relief, now see what looks like a large pay cut as they’re exposed to the 40% rate in full, and after the £100k personal allowance withdrawal. That last one is a huge big fiscal drag by the way, there will be a million or two caught by it in the next few years.
I’d love to see some retirement statistics, there’s definitely anecdotal evidence that more people than usual retired during the pandemic.
World's smallest violin time, but I am sure that the really mean rules on pension tax relief are contributing to this. Eg in my case, I can only put IIRC £4k into my pension with tax relief. Everything after that is basically taxed at 45% when it goes in and at least 20% when it comes out (not to mention another 20% when you buy anything except food), ie it's not worth it. Now if I can engineer a few years in some kind of consultancy or part time role down the road and bring my earnings down then I can benefit from the tax relief for £40k per year and get my pension pot up to something respectable. That means a lot less tax revenue and a smaller economy of course. By being too greedy on pension tax relief for high earners I think the tax man is shooting himself in the foot. Also, because I can't benefit from pension tax relief, stuff like BTL is made relatively more attractive.
If you think about why the government gives relief on pension contributions at all, it is to reduce the number of retired individuals who are a financial cost on the state and future workers. That justification is fine for the first £1m or so of pension savings, but would not cover the second and further millions of pension savings.
Why should you not pay tax on your earnings?
No doubt you will say it is being taxed twice, but only if you put it into a pension wrapper, there is nothing stopping you saving further for retirement in a general investment account, not to mention ISAs (another £0.4-0.8m tax sheltered account over a well paid career) and VCTs, EIS, SEIS.
I quite like the simplicity of a pension. You put the money away and don't have to think about it. Also to me it makes sense that you are taxed when you receive the income, which, if you put it into a pension, is in retirement. So pension tax relief makes a lot of sense - although it can't be infinite so a lifetime limit makes sense but I don't see why high earners shouldn't be able to save for retirement just like everyone else. (And I don't really believe that governments won't start taxing income from ISA savings in the future).
I agree with the simplicity argument. If you invest in a general investment account, the numbers should feed through automatically into your self assessment account. If that was the case then it would be just as simple, just taxed differently.
High earners can of course save for retirement and do so very effectively, getting beneficial tax rates on their first million plus ISAs.
Not really with pensions though, you can only pay in £4k/year before you lose all tax relief. So you'd need to live for 250 years to benefit from the tax relief on your first £1mn.
That is only for those earning over £312k per year, the highest 0.1% or so of earners. Definitely a case of worlds smallest violin.
By the way, the reason the LibDems had a rocky spell in Kingston-u-T is because they screwed up finances. And made a mess of the town centre, although the leaning phone boxes amuse me (my brother thinks they're an example of profligacy). They have since got on top of things and they're surefire to win.
This is one of the reasons I think Woking represents real value at 2/1. The tory minority council have massively screwed up the money. It's the third most debt-ridden council in the entire United Kingdom. Yes that's right: Woking. £1.84 billion in debt. A tory led council. It's staggering.
Last Con election broadcast I saw, a night or so ago, claimed that only Lab or LD councils were in debt and likely to default. I shouted something about Northants at the TV but the chap didn't seem to hear me!
I think lying has become the Con norm under Johnson. Eg I got their leaflet for Camden and it claimed the Lab council only does the bins fortnightly. Just not true. It's every Tuesday. They come early so you put them out Monday night. System works like a dream. It's unimprovable. So if the Tories are planning to make it a referendum on the bins, if they think they have a wedge issue here with this, they're in for a nasty shock. Bins very good under Labour in Camden.
I could hardly believe this.
Are you saying in London boroughs, your rubbish is collected every week ? It certainly seems to be the case in the borough webpages I have spot-checked.
WTF .. I think everywhere in Wales, rubbish bins are collected once every two weeks (usually longer).
In Gwynedd, it is every three weeks. In Abertawe it is every two weeks, in Conwy, it is every 4 weeks,
Just absolutely typical of London, preaching to the rest of the country... but not practising what they preach
The rest of us have been told to reduce our landfill, so we get reduced collections.
And you say Labour are responsible for this ....
I could manage with traditional bins being collected once/month. Our recycling bin on the other hand is normally overflowing after 2 weeks. All the soft plastics which are normally marked as not recyclable we now take to the Coop who will recycle it. Means we end up with minimal waste going in the "normal" bin.
My preferred collection routine would be: - Ordinary bins: Every 4 weeks (currently every 2) - Recycle bins: Every week (currently every 2) - Food waste bins: Every 2 weeks (currently every 2)
I think councils need to work on recycling soft plastics. A lot of what goes into ordinary bins could be recycled.
Paul Waugh @paulwaugh · 5m Latest rumour among Tory MPs: poss @BorisJohnson reshuffle after local elections, to try to control the 're-set' narrative ahead of the Q Speech next week.
Will he move @RishiSunak as sacrificial lamb for the cost of living crisis? Paul Waugh @paulwaugh · 5m Or will Sunak walk? Some MPs think he didn't want to rock the boat before May 5...
Any potential names in the frame for CotE?
Lord Osborne?
Only in TSE's dreams methinks...
Nah, George hasn't been an MP for nearly five years, he's never coming back to politics.
He's loving life too much, recently became a father again, and most importantly, he couldn't reconcile being Chancellor and delivering the policies of Boris Johnson and the modern day Tory party.
That would be a father again via his former adviser having divorced his wife.
On some things at least he might still fit in well with Boris!
The party of family values... They love families so much they have more than one of them.
Or if Rees Mogg have 6 children with his wife. Jacob takes the traditional Roman Catholic view and does not use contraception
Does everyone else have food waste bins? We don't. Not even plastic or glass. All of that goes straight to landfill.
No, though rumours of a service in the pipeline, they started taking plastic trays in recycling a month or so back, as opposed to just plastic bottles.
Paul Waugh @paulwaugh · 5m Latest rumour among Tory MPs: poss @BorisJohnson reshuffle after local elections, to try to control the 're-set' narrative ahead of the Q Speech next week.
Will he move @RishiSunak as sacrificial lamb for the cost of living crisis? Paul Waugh @paulwaugh · 5m Or will Sunak walk? Some MPs think he didn't want to rock the boat before May 5...
Any potential names in the frame for CotE?
Lord Osborne?
Only in TSE's dreams methinks...
Nah, George hasn't been an MP for nearly five years, he's never coming back to politics.
He's loving life too much, recently became a father again, and most importantly, he couldn't reconcile being Chancellor and delivering the policies of Boris Johnson and the modern day Tory party.
That would be a father again via his former adviser having divorced his wife.
On some things at least he might still fit in well with Boris!
The party of family values... They love families so much they have more than one of them.
Or if Rees Mogg have 7 children with his wife. Jacob takes the traditional Roman Catholic view and does not use contraception
By the way, the reason the LibDems had a rocky spell in Kingston-u-T is because they screwed up finances. And made a mess of the town centre, although the leaning phone boxes amuse me (my brother thinks they're an example of profligacy). They have since got on top of things and they're surefire to win.
This is one of the reasons I think Woking represents real value at 2/1. The tory minority council have massively screwed up the money. It's the third most debt-ridden council in the entire United Kingdom. Yes that's right: Woking. £1.84 billion in debt. A tory led council. It's staggering.
Last Con election broadcast I saw, a night or so ago, claimed that only Lab or LD councils were in debt and likely to default. I shouted something about Northants at the TV but the chap didn't seem to hear me!
I think lying has become the Con norm under Johnson. Eg I got their leaflet for Camden and it claimed the Lab council only does the bins fortnightly. Just not true. It's every Tuesday. They come early so you put them out Monday night. System works like a dream. It's unimprovable. So if the Tories are planning to make it a referendum on the bins, if they think they have a wedge issue here with this, they're in for a nasty shock. Bins very good under Labour in Camden.
I could hardly believe this.
Are you saying in London boroughs, your rubbish is collected every week ? It certainly seems to be the case in the borough webpages I have spot-checked.
WTF .. I think everywhere in Wales, rubbish bins are collected once every two weeks (usually longer).
In Gwynedd, it is every three weeks. In Abertawe it is every two weeks, in Conwy, it is every 4 weeks,
Just absolutely typical of London, preaching to the rest of the country... but not practising what they preach
The rest of us have been told to reduce our landfill, so we get reduced collections.
And you say Labour are responsible for this ....
In my daughter's village in Andalusia, Spain rubbish is collected daily. From large communal bins sorted into different categories.
Was the same in Taipei. The bin lorry played a tune like an ice cream van does here. Which was a signal to head downstairs and chuck it in the back yourself as it went by. This was an art. You had to trot, aim and fire. Trying not to be run over. Frailer folk took their place early. They also had older blokes on cycle rickshaws who collected recycling by category. So, the cardboard, paper, food etc. people would follow like a swarm. As dozens of scooters weaved in and out to overtake. Taxis honked, and everyone yelled insults in Taiwanese. Happy days.
Paul Waugh @paulwaugh · 5m Latest rumour among Tory MPs: poss @BorisJohnson reshuffle after local elections, to try to control the 're-set' narrative ahead of the Q Speech next week.
Will he move @RishiSunak as sacrificial lamb for the cost of living crisis? Paul Waugh @paulwaugh · 5m Or will Sunak walk? Some MPs think he didn't want to rock the boat before May 5...
Any potential names in the frame for CotE?
Lord Osborne?
Only in TSE's dreams methinks...
Nah, George hasn't been an MP for nearly five years, he's never coming back to politics.
He's loving life too much, recently became a father again, and most importantly, he couldn't reconcile being Chancellor and delivering the policies of Boris Johnson and the modern day Tory party.
That would be a father again via his former adviser having divorced his wife.
On some things at least he might still fit in well with Boris!
The party of family values... They love families so much they have more than one of them.
Or if Rees Mogg have 6 children with his wife. Jacob takes the traditional Roman Catholic view and does not use contraception
If capable AI existed vanilla would have known not to show me that post...
By the way, the reason the LibDems had a rocky spell in Kingston-u-T is because they screwed up finances. And made a mess of the town centre, although the leaning phone boxes amuse me (my brother thinks they're an example of profligacy). They have since got on top of things and they're surefire to win.
This is one of the reasons I think Woking represents real value at 2/1. The tory minority council have massively screwed up the money. It's the third most debt-ridden council in the entire United Kingdom. Yes that's right: Woking. £1.84 billion in debt. A tory led council. It's staggering.
Last Con election broadcast I saw, a night or so ago, claimed that only Lab or LD councils were in debt and likely to default. I shouted something about Northants at the TV but the chap didn't seem to hear me!
I think lying has become the Con norm under Johnson. Eg I got their leaflet for Camden and it claimed the Lab council only does the bins fortnightly. Just not true. It's every Tuesday. They come early so you put them out Monday night. System works like a dream. It's unimprovable. So if the Tories are planning to make it a referendum on the bins, if they think they have a wedge issue here with this, they're in for a nasty shock. Bins very good under Labour in Camden.
I could hardly believe this.
Are you saying in London boroughs, your rubbish is collected every week ? It certainly seems to be the case in the borough webpages I have spot-checked.
WTF .. I think everywhere in Wales, rubbish bins are collected once every two weeks (usually longer).
In Gwynedd, it is every three weeks. In Abertawe it is every two weeks, in Conwy, it is every 4 weeks,
Just absolutely typical of London, preaching to the rest of the country... but not practising what they preach
The rest of us have been told to reduce our landfill, so we get reduced collections.
And you say Labour are responsible for this ....
Round here we get a rubbish collection every week that alternates between recycling & general waste. Food waste is collected every week. Generally it seems to work fine - the recyclable / non-recyclable waste split means that bins get to be full roughly when collection happens (and you can get larger bins for larger households).
Same here. Seems to be OK. Glass is collected from the bins about twice a week; we live nearby so hear the crashing!
Paul Waugh @paulwaugh · 5m Latest rumour among Tory MPs: poss @BorisJohnson reshuffle after local elections, to try to control the 're-set' narrative ahead of the Q Speech next week.
Will he move @RishiSunak as sacrificial lamb for the cost of living crisis? Paul Waugh @paulwaugh · 5m Or will Sunak walk? Some MPs think he didn't want to rock the boat before May 5...
Any potential names in the frame for CotE?
Lord Osborne?
Only in TSE's dreams methinks...
Nah, George hasn't been an MP for nearly five years, he's never coming back to politics.
He's loving life too much, recently became a father again, and most importantly, he couldn't reconcile being Chancellor and delivering the policies of Boris Johnson and the modern day Tory party.
That would be a father again via his former adviser having divorced his wife.
On some things at least he might still fit in well with Boris!
The party of family values... They love families so much they have more than one of them.
Or if Rees Mogg have 6 children with his wife. Jacob takes the traditional Roman Catholic view and does not use contraception
Nah, Jacob Rees-Mogg strikes me as the type of person who buys contraceptives but doesn't know how to use it.
By the way, the reason the LibDems had a rocky spell in Kingston-u-T is because they screwed up finances. And made a mess of the town centre, although the leaning phone boxes amuse me (my brother thinks they're an example of profligacy). They have since got on top of things and they're surefire to win.
This is one of the reasons I think Woking represents real value at 2/1. The tory minority council have massively screwed up the money. It's the third most debt-ridden council in the entire United Kingdom. Yes that's right: Woking. £1.84 billion in debt. A tory led council. It's staggering.
Last Con election broadcast I saw, a night or so ago, claimed that only Lab or LD councils were in debt and likely to default. I shouted something about Northants at the TV but the chap didn't seem to hear me!
I think lying has become the Con norm under Johnson. Eg I got their leaflet for Camden and it claimed the Lab council only does the bins fortnightly. Just not true. It's every Tuesday. They come early so you put them out Monday night. System works like a dream. It's unimprovable. So if the Tories are planning to make it a referendum on the bins, if they think they have a wedge issue here with this, they're in for a nasty shock. Bins very good under Labour in Camden.
I could hardly believe this.
Are you saying in London boroughs, your rubbish is collected every week ? It certainly seems to be the case in the borough webpages I have spot-checked.
WTF .. I think everywhere in Wales, rubbish bins are collected once every two weeks (usually longer).
In Gwynedd, it is every three weeks. In Abertawe it is every two weeks, in Conwy, it is every 4 weeks,
Just absolutely typical of London, preaching to the rest of the country... but not practising what they preach
The rest of us have been told to reduce our landfill, so we get reduced collections.
And you say Labour are responsible for this ....
I could manage with traditional bins being collected once/month. Our recycling bin on the other hand is normally overflowing after 2 weeks. All the soft plastics which are normally marked as not recyclable we now take to the Coop who will recycle it. Means we end up with minimal waste going in the "normal" bin.
My preferred collection routine would be: - Ordinary bins: Every 4 weeks (currently every 2) - Recycle bins: Every week (currently every 2) - Food waste bins: Every 2 weeks (currently every 2)
I think councils need to work on recycling soft plastics. A lot of what goes into ordinary bins could be recycled.
Food waste every two weeks, at least in summer, seems sub-optimal.
Take a look at this picture. Looks like an old Lada with a Z painted on it. What does it say about the situation for the Russian forces if they are using these types of vehicle?
By the way, the reason the LibDems had a rocky spell in Kingston-u-T is because they screwed up finances. And made a mess of the town centre, although the leaning phone boxes amuse me (my brother thinks they're an example of profligacy). They have since got on top of things and they're surefire to win.
This is one of the reasons I think Woking represents real value at 2/1. The tory minority council have massively screwed up the money. It's the third most debt-ridden council in the entire United Kingdom. Yes that's right: Woking. £1.84 billion in debt. A tory led council. It's staggering.
Last Con election broadcast I saw, a night or so ago, claimed that only Lab or LD councils were in debt and likely to default. I shouted something about Northants at the TV but the chap didn't seem to hear me!
I think lying has become the Con norm under Johnson. Eg I got their leaflet for Camden and it claimed the Lab council only does the bins fortnightly. Just not true. It's every Tuesday. They come early so you put them out Monday night. System works like a dream. It's unimprovable. So if the Tories are planning to make it a referendum on the bins, if they think they have a wedge issue here with this, they're in for a nasty shock. Bins very good under Labour in Camden.
I could hardly believe this.
Are you saying in London boroughs, your rubbish is collected every week ? It certainly seems to be the case in the borough webpages I have spot-checked.
WTF .. I think everywhere in Wales, rubbish bins are collected once every two weeks (usually longer).
In Gwynedd, it is every three weeks. In Abertawe it is every two weeks, in Conwy, it is every 4 weeks,
Just absolutely typical of London, preaching to the rest of the country... but not practising what they preach
The rest of us have been told to reduce our landfill, so we get reduced collections.
And you say Labour are responsible for this ....
I could manage with traditional bins being collected once/month. Our recycling bin on the other hand is normally overflowing after 2 weeks. All the soft plastics which are normally marked as not recyclable we now take to the Coop who will recycle it. Means we end up with minimal waste going in the "normal" bin.
My preferred collection routine would be: - Ordinary bins: Every 4 weeks (currently every 2) - Recycle bins: Every week (currently every 2) - Food waste bins: Every 2 weeks (currently every 2)
I think councils need to work on recycling soft plastics. A lot of what goes into ordinary bins could be recycled.
Food waste every two weeks, at least in summer, seems sub-optimal.
Had no issue with it myself even in the Summer. The bins lock so keeps everything contained.
Take a look at this picture. Looks like an old Lada with a Z painted on it. What does it say about the situation for the Russian forces if they are using these types of vehicle?
Take a look at this picture. Looks like an old Lada with a Z painted on it. What does it say about the situation for the Russian forces if they are using these types of vehicle?
Another missile launcher with a Ukranian flag on it, good to see!
The old Lada was probably looted. There’s quite an astonishing collection of 1980s and 1990s cars in Ukraine, both Soviet and Western brands. They’ll be easier to hot wire and keep running than more modern types.
Comments
Kingston upon Thames voted for Cameron but hates Boris and Brexit so likely more LD gains there
(I’ve been cataloguing old baby photos and some of the expressions are superb)
Longer term, of course we can train more doctors.
Our bins are collected ONCE a month
Resurrected Jacobite? In electoral pact with Restyled Whigs
But without reliable intelligence it’s a heck of a bet.
Are you feeling lucky, punk?
The actual removal of the He3 from Tritium decay is fairly simple.
Tritium is also a extremely expensive. $30K a gram.
https://nuke.fas.org/cochran/nuc_88101901a_85.pdf
"Each weapon has on average about 4 to 5 grams, with neutron bombs requiring a much larger quantity,. perhaps as much as 25 grams."
So, assuming that Russian multi-stage design resembles US design,
$100K+ of Tritium to steal from each warhead.
If you compare what the Americans were doing 30 YEARS AGO in Desert Storm to where Russia is now there is no comparison.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/after-haniyeh-lavrov-call-hamas-delegation-jets-off-to-moscow-for-meeting-with-russian-officials/
Still not sure the media, and political establishment in general, are fully aware of quite what a story is brewing in NI. It may actually impinge on our consciousness for a short time.
So your paltry approach is absolutely improveable
Why should you not pay tax on your earnings?
No doubt you will say it is being taxed twice, but only if you put it into a pension wrapper, there is nothing stopping you saving further for retirement in a general investment account, not to mention ISAs (another £0.4-0.8m tax sheltered account over a well paid career) and VCTs, EIS, SEIS.
Are you saying in London boroughs, your rubbish is collected every week ? It certainly seems to be the case in the borough webpages I have spot-checked.
WTF .. I think everywhere in Wales, rubbish bins are collected once every two weeks (usually longer).
In Gwynedd, it is every three weeks. In Abertawe it is every two weeks, in Conwy, it is every 4 weeks,
Just absolutely typical of London, preaching to the rest of the country... but not practising what they preach
The rest of us have been told to reduce our landfill, so we get reduced collections.
And you say Labour are responsible for this ....
They've been fighting a major war without the mobilisation, which means they lack infantry to make combined arms operations work properly, and so have suffered massive losses in equipment and trained personnel.
It's possible that they've suffered so many losses that they'd now struggle to mobilise lots of conscripts, because they won't have the officers, specialists or equipment to go alongside large numbers.
It's been a monumental blunder, but it leaves a lot of room for them to improve if they were to stop sabotaging their own effort.
That done, the real issue is access to the local recycling depots for anything out of gauge - closing one would be very unpopular indeed. The council will uplift but at a cost.
Not cold cold irony…
In Gwynedd, recycling is every week, but rubbish is every 3 weeks.
This is typical for Wales.
In my opinion, it seems to have led to increased fly-tipping in rural Wales, though that is just an impression and I have no statistics to back it up.
But -- what seems extraordinary -- is London seems to have rubbish bin collections *every week* (happy to be corrected, but it does seem to be the case in Camden from the Council webpage).
Not sure a situation where a government can't be formed because the Party who came third refuses (on an issue the vast majority are content with) is going to be tenable for long.
IF it happens of course.
High earners can of course save for retirement and do so very effectively, getting beneficial tax rates on their first million plus ISAs.
1. Weekly food waste collection using food caddies (a small caddy for inside your property and a larger caddy to use outside and for collection).
2. Fortnightly dry recycling collection
3. Three-weekly refuse collection (using your existing grey wheeled bin).
+. Fortnightly chargeable garden waste collection .
He's loving life too much, recently became a father again, and most importantly, he couldn't reconcile being Chancellor and delivering the policies of Boris Johnson and the modern day Tory party.
As for Copeland, you'd hardly know there was an election. The local Tory (I assume) came round at the very start with a leaflet about all the local stuff he was doing. The Lib Dems have done no canvassing at all - not even a leaflet. And eventually the Labour candidate left a leaflet with my milk bottles saying that the lovely lady running the local and very good theatre in Millom supported her.
That's it. People are much more exercised about the proposals for an Iron Line locally with the celebrated Dutch garden designer, Piet Oudolf, involved and the next Spring Fair at Holker Hall.
https://election.pressassociation.com/locals/provisional-may-election-declaration-times-in-chronological-order/
We don't. Not even plastic or glass. All of that goes straight to landfill.
Liverpool are the first English team to reach 10 European Cup / Champions League finals:
10 - Liverpool
9
8
7
6
5 - Man Utd
4
3 - Chelsea
2 - Nottingham Forest
1 - Arsenal, Aston Villa, Leeds United, Man City, Tottenham
https://twitter.com/WinnerpoolLFC/status/1521622071209603072
Perhaps Arab countries are thinking that Russia might be their best hope for future grain supplies?
The one thing that is being noticed here, in middle-class expat territory, is the price of petrol. Now around a dollar a litre, close to double where it has been in recent years. We are not known for our love of small, fuel-efficient cars.
How about Nadine for CotE?
On some things at least he might still fit in well with Boris!
Hunt would be very well advised to turn down any offer to be anywhere near this government.
My preferred collection routine would be:
- Ordinary bins: Every 4 weeks (currently every 2)
- Recycle bins: Every week (currently every 2)
- Food waste bins: Every 2 weeks (currently every 2)
I think councils need to work on recycling soft plastics. A lot of what goes into ordinary bins could be recycled.
They also had older blokes on cycle rickshaws who collected recycling by category.
So, the cardboard, paper, food etc. people would follow like a swarm.
As dozens of scooters weaved in and out to overtake. Taxis honked, and everyone yelled insults in Taiwanese.
Happy days.
https://twitter.com/Arslon_Xudosi/status/1521805180597059585
Take a look at this picture. Looks like an old Lada with a Z painted on it. What does it say about the situation for the Russian forces if they are using these types of vehicle?
Dorries. Patel. Shapps. Jenrick. That one with the really large head.
So most London boroughs and some mets are overnight - the initial perspective will be based on those?
https://scramble.nl/civil-news/the-return-of-the-junkers-ju-52
Persuade some of your Home Guard 1940 reenactment group to learn parachuting, and that's the opposition sorted out.
The old Lada was probably looted. There’s quite an astonishing collection of 1980s and 1990s cars in Ukraine, both Soviet and Western brands. They’ll be easier to hot wire and keep running than more modern types.