I was in town today and took the opportunity to ride Crossrail on its first official day, as I was mildly curious to discover what £20 billion buys you in 2022. On the whole I was moderately impressed, at least compared to other government procurement cockups or wastes of similar magnitude, like the Olympics or Northern Ireland.
It is fast and fairly smooth, apart from the need to change at Paddington and Liverpool Street. Hopefully those will be sorted out next year. And it obviously isn't great that Bond Street isn't open yet. , there A distinctly weird touch was just outside Paddington station, where a group of young lovelies in Crossrail t-shirts were singing "Purple Train, Purple Train, Purple Train".
How easy is it to get between the Heathrow Express and Elizabeth Line platforms?
The Elizabeth Line station is underground, along the western flank of the main station. Exit the HEx and turn right through the main course, turn right briefly onto platform 1, and then turn left at the little bronze Paddington Bear, and you'll wind up right outside either of two entrances to the Lizzie Line.
I notice on Google maps that from here to Heathrow is showing as 1:11 (at its fastest) using Elizabeth + Heathrow Express, or 1:27 if I change to the Paddington leg of the EL. Interesting to see what is fastest once they've joined up the 2 lines later this year. Do you know if there will be express-style trains that stop through central London then go fast to Heathrow without stopping?
At present, there are two Heathrow service patterns. Heathrow T5 trains that stop everywhere, including Acton, Ealing, West Ealing, Hanwell, Southall and Hayes. And the Heathrow T2/T3 trains that skip Acton, West Ealing and Hanwell.
Belay that! Looks like Acton, West Ealing and Hanwell have very recently got their T2/T3 service!
Doesn't look, ATM anyway, as if one will be able to go from Shenfield to Heathrow yet. Or, from the website, without changing.
No that is some time off. IIRC Abbey Wood to Heathrow/Reading will be available from the autumn, the same time that Bond Street opens. At that point Shenfield trains will only run to Paddington. Full timetable up and running with trains every 2.5 mins through central section by May next year. The central section is very impressive. Nice trains too. Exciting times.
On the state pension. It would be cruel to cut the spending power of the state pension, as there are many pensioners who have absolutely no other income, and the state pension is pretty paltry.
The solution is to maintain the real value of the state pension, but use other mechanisms (tax, NI etc.) to raise money from those pensioners who have extra income and can afford to pay more. Progressive taxation, in other words.
Spot on. When you have a few bob an extra £9000 a year always helps. On its own it doesn't get to first base. Pensioners should be taxed properly and progressively.
Merge tax and NI. Though there is a case for bringing back the age allowance there used to be, as being old is genuinely more expensive in some ways.
Absolutely not, NI should be hypothecated specifically for the state pension, contributory unemployment benefits and the NHS and social care
You were spending months telling us that NI is already solely for pension and unemployment. Now siddenly it's not. It's actually a tax and merged with other taxes into a single pool.
It isn't as you cannot get the state pension without sufficient NI contributions or credits, you cannot get JSA now without sufficient NI contributions (unlike UC) and the rise in NI for those earning over £35k is specifically to fund the NHS and social care
NI isn't hypothecated, it goes straight into the general fund.
NI Contributions as qualifiers for pensions and benefits are a purely administrative process.
On the state pension. It would be cruel to cut the spending power of the state pension, as there are many pensioners who have absolutely no other income, and the state pension is pretty paltry.
The solution is to maintain the real value of the state pension, but use other mechanisms (tax, NI etc.) to raise money from those pensioners who have extra income and can afford to pay more. Progressive taxation, in other words.
Spot on. When you have a few bob an extra £9000 a year always helps. On its own it doesn't get to first base. Pensioners should be taxed properly and progressively.
why the bus pass and winter fuel allowance are not classed as taxable income I never know - given the actual state pension is taxable income but not these add-ons
No. Abolish them all instead of complexifying the tax system; but ensure a decent income. The ludicrous add ons like free this and that, bus pass, (no use to millions who never see a bus anywhere near) fuel allowance and all that is gimmickry for politicians.
The bus pass is actually rather useful - it gets oldies out of the house and incrseases service usage, so helps maintain services. It's a much underestimated bit of social kit, I think, and as it is useful for almost anyone, bus services permitting, these in the tax paying brackets get some benefit too. .
It's great for boozy days out.
I have never understood why someone would live to old age somewhere there isn't public transport. However much you like living in the sticks, it makes sense to move to a town after you retire with good access to services, transport etc. At some point you may be unable to drive and need to maintain an independent life.
Indeed. But even within a town it's not always possible to get what you need within easy walking distance for an oldie. The bus rides mount up just for the shops and doctor's visits (no pun intended).
On the state pension. It would be cruel to cut the spending power of the state pension, as there are many pensioners who have absolutely no other income, and the state pension is pretty paltry.
The solution is to maintain the real value of the state pension, but use other mechanisms (tax, NI etc.) to raise money from those pensioners who have extra income and can afford to pay more. Progressive taxation, in other words.
Spot on. When you have a few bob an extra £9000 a year always helps. On its own it doesn't get to first base. Pensioners should be taxed properly and progressively.
Merge tax and NI. Though there is a case for bringing back the age allowance there used to be, as being old is genuinely more expensive in some ways.
this is hard and unfair to do though given pensions have been paid for with post NI money (pre PAYE but post NI money)- people who saved for a pension would effectively be paying NI twice on the same income
That's neither hard nor unfair.
The coming demographic timebomb and the issue about the unaffordability of pensions when boomers retired was well known and well discussed many decades ago, but it wasn't resolved at the time. When working they neither saved for, nor paid for, their own retirement despite knowing that the timebomb was coming nothing was done to diffuse it.
While we knew decades ago that there was a coming timebomb, what was little expected or discussed was that rather than fix matters they'd be made even worse by the generation that never saved for their own retirement instead using their voting power to further and further burden the young, and further and further extract more welfare for themselves.
Today's earners are expected to fund the unfunded pension of the obligations of the past, plus save for their own pensions in the future, plus pay other taxes like the young person's graduate tax (the misnamed Student Loan) etc that were never paid by prior generations, plus have higher levels of NI than the past, all while pensioners face lower levels of income tax on their pensions than in the past.
Never has one generation stolen so much from another generation before. Rectifying that would not be in the least bit unfair.
except of course it is unfair especially on those who are of working age now and paying pension contributions after NI has been deducted from their pay packet. What it will mean is that nobody saves for a pension as you get doubel NI taxed on it
Why is that unfair? They didn't fund their own retirement, had today's pensioners rectified this issue while they were working and bequeathed a pot of saved funds to be used for their retirement there would be no issue. Pensions could go up or down linked to the performance of that pot and that would be the end of the matter.
They didn't, they made it tomorrow's problem. They knew the demographic issues were coming and chose not to do anything about it while working. Rectifying that now is not unfair.
of course workers fund their retirement ? especially in the private sector
No, they didn't. Today's state pension, where is the pot of funds to pay for that? Bus passes and all the other welfare that pensioners get, where is the pot of funds to pay for that? Savings to pay for nursing homes, where is the pot of funds to pay for that?
Most of the welfare state now is absorbed by pensioners, and none of it was saved for.
I am talking about pensions that are not the state pension - you pay into a pension when working out of wages that have been effectively taxed at the NI rate (as you get the PAYE back) -that is why pensions (when recieved) are taxed for PAYE but not NI as you have not already paid PAYE on that income but you have NI
The Teachers’ Pension Scheme (TPS) is one of the largest unfunded public sector pension schemes, alongside those relating to the National Health Service (NHS), civil servants, and the armed forces. ‘Unfunded’ means that although employers and employees pay contributions, these go directly to the government: crucially, the amount does not cover the full cost of paying pensions. Currently there is an annual shortfall of £4bn, which the government covers out of borrowing: in other words, adding to the public sector net debt (i.e. the deficit) each year.
No pot of funds to pay for them; furthermore, the pensions currently being paid (let alone those promised to future generations) are in excess of what was already paid in and spent.
Tottenham Court Road to Paddington in FIVE minutes
Farringdon to Canary Wharf: ten minutes
Heathrow to anywhere in central London: thirty minutes, 44 minutes to Canary Wharf
Game-changer for a lot of places along the line
More money spunked on London and the South East while the rest of the nation gets nothing.
Au contraire. We get massive bus cuts.
Rest of the country needs to stop voting Tory if they don't want that kind of thing to happen to them.
Well New Labour gave us sweet FA too in terms of transport investment. Both HS2 and Crossrail started under their watch as well. Money lavished on the south east and London.
Government net support for bus travel in England outside London in real terms (2020/21 prices) rose from £1.02bn in 1996/97 to £1.89bn in 2009/10. By 2019/20 it had fallen back to £1.35bn. So Tory governments = "massive bus cuts" outside of London. Yet these areas keep voting Tory. Data from www.gov.uk/government/statistical-data-sets/bus05-subsidies-and-concessions; BUS0502, tab BUS0502b.
That's because most people outside London (and perhaps a few other big cities) never use buses.
Because there aren't any busses.
Nah. There are plenty of buses where I live. There's also a direct train from 5 minutes walk from my front door to 5 minutes walk from my wife's workplace - and it's still better to drive.
Serious question, why is it better to drive.
What's the train journey time and frequency of service?
I suspect I know the answer but it's best to have it confirmed.
2 tph in the peak but not every 30 minutes, 1 tph off-peak. Takes about 20 minutes.
Buses are about every 5 minutes but obviously much slower, journey time up to an hour in the peak.
Thought it would be - that's the typical story of too slow compared to driving (bus) and a too infrequent train service...
Even if there was a train every 15 minutes it would still be better to drive. Cheaper, for one thing.
That's a function of the way you pay for driving.
You pay a huge upfront cost to have a car, and several large costs each year to continue to own one - but once you do that, the costs per mile are pretty low. Whereas the costs to you personally of having public transport available are very low, but the costs per mile of making a journey are high.
If this is seen as a problem there are solutions, but they require more of a remodelling of behaviours than most people are prepared to make. (Our family wouldn't need to own two cars - what a waste of assets! - if we could be reasonably sure one would be available to use when we wanted. The cost per mile could be high, but the overall cost of motoring would still be lower - but the motivation to use non-car modes when we could, like, for 800m trips to One Stop to buy milk, would be there. We'd be better off, public transport would be more viable and therefore more plentiful and therefore more attractive, the planet would be cleaner. But we'd have to stop using the boot of the car as a shed for things-without-permanent-homes.)
A couple of decades ago I worked on a project for the DfT. I developed the road routing portion of their transport portal. The basic idea being you would put in origin and destination and it would give you a route for road, rail and bus to get there. The idea being when people used it and saw how much cheaper and convenient public transport was that they would get out of their cars.
They ended up loading all sorts of costs such as cost of car, wear and tear, insurance onto the road costing. As I remember cost of car was calculated for example as average price paid for a new car/ average number of miles expected in a cars lifetime.
85% of the time it was still cheaper and quicker to go by car than public transport. This number rapidly increasing as you added car occupants. As I remember we calculated put car passengers to 2 and it was literally 5% of journeys that were cheaper by public transport still.
There is no way that travelling by train is cheaper than driving by car. However, the question is do I wish to spend 5 hours driving to London or 2 hours working on a train.
When i was sent to London on work I tried to avoid either option and spend 2 hours on the train eating ,drinking and generally lazing
I find this screaming at politicians across the road like this pretty pathetic. Its a terrible import from America.
Indeed, that's neither incredible nor original by Sam Coates, he does it all the time.
A devastating interview would be incredible content, but I've never seen him be able to pull that off.
Simply shouting at people without reply might get likes on Twitter though. It certainly seems to suit the way Twitter operates, so I can see why our resident Retweeter likes it.
BBC Panorama tonight is responsible journalism
Coates and others shouting across Downing Street is simply pathetic
I was in town today and took the opportunity to ride Crossrail on its first official day, as I was mildly curious to discover what £20 billion buys you in 2022. On the whole I was moderately impressed, at least compared to other government procurement cockups or wastes of similar magnitude, like the Olympics or Northern Ireland.
It is fast and fairly smooth, apart from the need to change at Paddington and Liverpool Street. Hopefully those will be sorted out next year. And it obviously isn't great that Bond Street isn't open yet. , there A distinctly weird touch was just outside Paddington station, where a group of young lovelies in Crossrail t-shirts were singing "Purple Train, Purple Train, Purple Train".
How easy is it to get between the Heathrow Express and Elizabeth Line platforms?
The Elizabeth Line station is underground, along the western flank of the main station. Exit the HEx and turn right through the main course, turn right briefly onto platform 1, and then turn left at the little bronze Paddington Bear, and you'll wind up right outside either of two entrances to the Lizzie Line.
I notice on Google maps that from here to Heathrow is showing as 1:11 (at its fastest) using Elizabeth + Heathrow Express, or 1:27 if I change to the Paddington leg of the EL. Interesting to see what is fastest once they've joined up the 2 lines later this year. Do you know if there will be express-style trains that stop through central London then go fast to Heathrow without stopping?
At present, there are two Heathrow service patterns. Heathrow T5 trains that stop everywhere, including Acton, Ealing, West Ealing, Hanwell, Southall and Hayes. And the Heathrow T2/T3 trains that skip Acton, West Ealing and Hanwell.
Belay that! Looks like Acton, West Ealing and Hanwell have very recently got their T2/T3 service!
On the state pension. It would be cruel to cut the spending power of the state pension, as there are many pensioners who have absolutely no other income, and the state pension is pretty paltry.
The solution is to maintain the real value of the state pension, but use other mechanisms (tax, NI etc.) to raise money from those pensioners who have extra income and can afford to pay more. Progressive taxation, in other words.
Spot on. When you have a few bob an extra £9000 a year always helps. On its own it doesn't get to first base. Pensioners should be taxed properly and progressively.
why the bus pass and winter fuel allowance are not classed as taxable income I never know - given the actual state pension is taxable income but not these add-ons
No. Abolish them all instead of complexifying the tax system; but ensure a decent income. The ludicrous add ons like free this and that, bus pass, (no use to millions who never see a bus anywhere near) fuel allowance and all that is gimmickry for politicians.
The bus pass is actually rather useful - it gets oldies out of the house and incrseases service usage, so helps maintain services. It's a much underestimated bit of social kit, I think, and as it is useful for almost anyone, bus services permitting, these in the tax paying brackets get some benefit too. .
It's great for boozy days out.
I have never understood why someone would live to old age somewhere there isn't public transport. However much you like living in the sticks, it makes sense to move to a town after you retire with good access to services, transport etc. At some point you may be unable to drive and need to maintain an independent life.
Indeed. But even within a town it's not always possible to get what you need within easy walking distance for an oldie. The bus rides mount up just for the shops and doctor's visits (no pun intended).
Indeed. And for days out. And obviously for access to airports (when I retire I intend to spend much of the first few years out of the country. And I quite often fly out of one airport and back into another so driving isn't the answer.)
Tottenham Court Road to Paddington in FIVE minutes
Farringdon to Canary Wharf: ten minutes
Heathrow to anywhere in central London: thirty minutes, 44 minutes to Canary Wharf
Game-changer for a lot of places along the line
More money spunked on London and the South East while the rest of the nation gets nothing.
Au contraire. We get massive bus cuts.
Rest of the country needs to stop voting Tory if they don't want that kind of thing to happen to them.
Well New Labour gave us sweet FA too in terms of transport investment. Both HS2 and Crossrail started under their watch as well. Money lavished on the south east and London.
Government net support for bus travel in England outside London in real terms (2020/21 prices) rose from £1.02bn in 1996/97 to £1.89bn in 2009/10. By 2019/20 it had fallen back to £1.35bn. So Tory governments = "massive bus cuts" outside of London. Yet these areas keep voting Tory. Data from www.gov.uk/government/statistical-data-sets/bus05-subsidies-and-concessions; BUS0502, tab BUS0502b.
That's because most people outside London (and perhaps a few other big cities) never use buses.
Because there aren't any busses.
Nah. There are plenty of buses where I live. There's also a direct train from 5 minutes walk from my front door to 5 minutes walk from my wife's workplace - and it's still better to drive.
Serious question, why is it better to drive.
What's the train journey time and frequency of service?
I suspect I know the answer but it's best to have it confirmed.
2 tph in the peak but not every 30 minutes, 1 tph off-peak. Takes about 20 minutes.
Buses are about every 5 minutes but obviously much slower, journey time up to an hour in the peak.
Thought it would be - that's the typical story of too slow compared to driving (bus) and a too infrequent train service...
Even if there was a train every 15 minutes it would still be better to drive. Cheaper, for one thing.
That's a function of the way you pay for driving.
You pay a huge upfront cost to have a car, and several large costs each year to continue to own one - but once you do that, the costs per mile are pretty low. Whereas the costs to you personally of having public transport available are very low, but the costs per mile of making a journey are high.
If this is seen as a problem there are solutions, but they require more of a remodelling of behaviours than most people are prepared to make. (Our family wouldn't need to own two cars - what a waste of assets! - if we could be reasonably sure one would be available to use when we wanted. The cost per mile could be high, but the overall cost of motoring would still be lower - but the motivation to use non-car modes when we could, like, for 800m trips to One Stop to buy milk, would be there. We'd be better off, public transport would be more viable and therefore more plentiful and therefore more attractive, the planet would be cleaner. But we'd have to stop using the boot of the car as a shed for things-without-permanent-homes.)
A couple of decades ago I worked on a project for the DfT. I developed the road routing portion of their transport portal. The basic idea being you would put in origin and destination and it would give you a route for road, rail and bus to get there. The idea being when people used it and saw how much cheaper and convenient public transport was that they would get out of their cars.
They ended up loading all sorts of costs such as cost of car, wear and tear, insurance onto the road costing. As I remember cost of car was calculated for example as average price paid for a new car/ average number of miles expected in a cars lifetime.
85% of the time it was still cheaper and quicker to go by car than public transport. This number rapidly increasing as you added car occupants. As I remember we calculated put car passengers to 2 and it was literally 5% of journeys that were cheaper by public transport still.
There is no way that travelling by train is cheaper than driving by car. However, the question is do I wish to spend 5 hours driving to London or 2 hours working on a train.
When i was sent to London on work I tried to avoid either option and spend 2 hours on the train eating ,drinking and generally lazing
Used to do the same when flying because my laptop was just that bit too big for working on a plane...
On the state pension. It would be cruel to cut the spending power of the state pension, as there are many pensioners who have absolutely no other income, and the state pension is pretty paltry.
The solution is to maintain the real value of the state pension, but use other mechanisms (tax, NI etc.) to raise money from those pensioners who have extra income and can afford to pay more. Progressive taxation, in other words.
Spot on. When you have a few bob an extra £9000 a year always helps. On its own it doesn't get to first base. Pensioners should be taxed properly and progressively.
Merge tax and NI. Though there is a case for bringing back the age allowance there used to be, as being old is genuinely more expensive in some ways.
this is hard and unfair to do though given pensions have been paid for with post NI money (pre PAYE but post NI money)- people who saved for a pension would effectively be paying NI twice on the same income
That's neither hard nor unfair.
The coming demographic timebomb and the issue about the unaffordability of pensions when boomers retired was well known and well discussed many decades ago, but it wasn't resolved at the time. When working they neither saved for, nor paid for, their own retirement despite knowing that the timebomb was coming nothing was done to diffuse it.
While we knew decades ago that there was a coming timebomb, what was little expected or discussed was that rather than fix matters they'd be made even worse by the generation that never saved for their own retirement instead using their voting power to further and further burden the young, and further and further extract more welfare for themselves.
Today's earners are expected to fund the unfunded pension of the obligations of the past, plus save for their own pensions in the future, plus pay other taxes like the young person's graduate tax (the misnamed Student Loan) etc that were never paid by prior generations, plus have higher levels of NI than the past, all while pensioners face lower levels of income tax on their pensions than in the past.
Never has one generation stolen so much from another generation before. Rectifying that would not be in the least bit unfair.
except of course it is unfair especially on those who are of working age now and paying pension contributions after NI has been deducted from their pay packet. What it will mean is that nobody saves for a pension as you get doubel NI taxed on it
Why is that unfair? They didn't fund their own retirement, had today's pensioners rectified this issue while they were working and bequeathed a pot of saved funds to be used for their retirement there would be no issue. Pensions could go up or down linked to the performance of that pot and that would be the end of the matter.
They didn't, they made it tomorrow's problem. They knew the demographic issues were coming and chose not to do anything about it while working. Rectifying that now is not unfair.
of course workers fund their retirement ? especially in the private sector
No, they didn't. Today's state pension, where is the pot of funds to pay for that? Bus passes and all the other welfare that pensioners get, where is the pot of funds to pay for that? Savings to pay for nursing homes, where is the pot of funds to pay for that?
Most of the welfare state now is absorbed by pensioners, and none of it was saved for.
I am talking about pensions that are not the state pension - you pay into a pension when working out of wages that have been effectively taxed at the NI rate (as you get the PAYE back) -that is why pensions (when recieved) are taxed for PAYE but not NI as you have not already paid PAYE on that income but you have NI
The Teachers’ Pension Scheme (TPS) is one of the largest unfunded public sector pension schemes, alongside those relating to the National Health Service (NHS), civil servants, and the armed forces. ‘Unfunded’ means that although employers and employees pay contributions, these go directly to the government: crucially, the amount does not cover the full cost of paying pensions. Currently there is an annual shortfall of £4bn, which the government covers out of borrowing: in other words, adding to the public sector net debt (i.e. the deficit) each year.
No pot of funds to pay for them; furthermore, the pensions currently being paid (let alone those promised to future generations) are in excess of what was already paid in and spent.
yes i did say it relates more to private sector workers due to the effective huge employer contributions that public sector schemes like the teachers get
Tottenham Court Road to Paddington in FIVE minutes
Farringdon to Canary Wharf: ten minutes
Heathrow to anywhere in central London: thirty minutes, 44 minutes to Canary Wharf
Game-changer for a lot of places along the line
More money spunked on London and the South East while the rest of the nation gets nothing.
Au contraire. We get massive bus cuts.
Rest of the country needs to stop voting Tory if they don't want that kind of thing to happen to them.
Well New Labour gave us sweet FA too in terms of transport investment. Both HS2 and Crossrail started under their watch as well. Money lavished on the south east and London.
Government net support for bus travel in England outside London in real terms (2020/21 prices) rose from £1.02bn in 1996/97 to £1.89bn in 2009/10. By 2019/20 it had fallen back to £1.35bn. So Tory governments = "massive bus cuts" outside of London. Yet these areas keep voting Tory. Data from www.gov.uk/government/statistical-data-sets/bus05-subsidies-and-concessions; BUS0502, tab BUS0502b.
That's because most people outside London (and perhaps a few other big cities) never use buses.
Because there aren't any busses.
Nah. There are plenty of buses where I live. There's also a direct train from 5 minutes walk from my front door to 5 minutes walk from my wife's workplace - and it's still better to drive.
Serious question, why is it better to drive.
What's the train journey time and frequency of service?
I suspect I know the answer but it's best to have it confirmed.
2 tph in the peak but not every 30 minutes, 1 tph off-peak. Takes about 20 minutes.
Buses are about every 5 minutes but obviously much slower, journey time up to an hour in the peak.
Thought it would be - that's the typical story of too slow compared to driving (bus) and a too infrequent train service...
Even if there was a train every 15 minutes it would still be better to drive. Cheaper, for one thing.
That's a function of the way you pay for driving.
You pay a huge upfront cost to have a car, and several large costs each year to continue to own one - but once you do that, the costs per mile are pretty low. Whereas the costs to you personally of having public transport available are very low, but the costs per mile of making a journey are high.
If this is seen as a problem there are solutions, but they require more of a remodelling of behaviours than most people are prepared to make. (Our family wouldn't need to own two cars - what a waste of assets! - if we could be reasonably sure one would be available to use when we wanted. The cost per mile could be high, but the overall cost of motoring would still be lower - but the motivation to use non-car modes when we could, like, for 800m trips to One Stop to buy milk, would be there. We'd be better off, public transport would be more viable and therefore more plentiful and therefore more attractive, the planet would be cleaner. But we'd have to stop using the boot of the car as a shed for things-without-permanent-homes.)
A couple of decades ago I worked on a project for the DfT. I developed the road routing portion of their transport portal. The basic idea being you would put in origin and destination and it would give you a route for road, rail and bus to get there. The idea being when people used it and saw how much cheaper and convenient public transport was that they would get out of their cars.
They ended up loading all sorts of costs such as cost of car, wear and tear, insurance onto the road costing. As I remember cost of car was calculated for example as average price paid for a new car/ average number of miles expected in a cars lifetime.
85% of the time it was still cheaper and quicker to go by car than public transport. This number rapidly increasing as you added car occupants. As I remember we calculated put car passengers to 2 and it was literally 5% of journeys that were cheaper by public transport still.
There is no way that travelling by train is cheaper than driving by car. However, the question is do I wish to spend 5 hours driving to London or 2 hours working on a train.
Blimey. Where are you travelling from that driving to London is so much slower?
I was in town today and took the opportunity to ride Crossrail on its first official day, as I was mildly curious to discover what £20 billion buys you in 2022. On the whole I was moderately impressed, at least compared to other government procurement cockups or wastes of similar magnitude, like the Olympics or Northern Ireland.
It is fast and fairly smooth, apart from the need to change at Paddington and Liverpool Street. Hopefully those will be sorted out next year. And it obviously isn't great that Bond Street isn't open yet. , there A distinctly weird touch was just outside Paddington station, where a group of young lovelies in Crossrail t-shirts were singing "Purple Train, Purple Train, Purple Train".
How easy is it to get between the Heathrow Express and Elizabeth Line platforms?
The Elizabeth Line station is underground, along the western flank of the main station. Exit the HEx and turn right through the main course, turn right briefly onto platform 1, and then turn left at the little bronze Paddington Bear, and you'll wind up right outside either of two entrances to the Lizzie Line.
I notice on Google maps that from here to Heathrow is showing as 1:11 (at its fastest) using Elizabeth + Heathrow Express, or 1:27 if I change to the Paddington leg of the EL. Interesting to see what is fastest once they've joined up the 2 lines later this year. Do you know if there will be express-style trains that stop through central London then go fast to Heathrow without stopping?
At present, there are two Heathrow service patterns. Heathrow T5 trains that stop everywhere, including Acton, Ealing, West Ealing, Hanwell, Southall and Hayes. And the Heathrow T2/T3 trains that skip Acton, West Ealing and Hanwell.
Belay that! Looks like Acton, West Ealing and Hanwell have very recently got their T2/T3 service!
Doesn't look, ATM anyway, as if one will be able to go from Shenfield to Heathrow yet. Or, from the website, without changing.
No that is some time off. IIRC Abbey Wood to Heathrow/Reading will be available from the autumn, the same time that Bond Street opens. At that point Shenfield trains will only run to Paddington. Full timetable up and running with trains every 2.5 mins through central section by May next year. The central section is very impressive. Nice trains too. Exciting times.
That's not going to be a difficult change then. Get off one train and then hop on the next on the same platform, 2.5 minutes later.
Tottenham Court Road to Paddington in FIVE minutes
Farringdon to Canary Wharf: ten minutes
Heathrow to anywhere in central London: thirty minutes, 44 minutes to Canary Wharf
Game-changer for a lot of places along the line
More money spunked on London and the South East while the rest of the nation gets nothing.
Au contraire. We get massive bus cuts.
Rest of the country needs to stop voting Tory if they don't want that kind of thing to happen to them.
Well New Labour gave us sweet FA too in terms of transport investment. Both HS2 and Crossrail started under their watch as well. Money lavished on the south east and London.
Government net support for bus travel in England outside London in real terms (2020/21 prices) rose from £1.02bn in 1996/97 to £1.89bn in 2009/10. By 2019/20 it had fallen back to £1.35bn. So Tory governments = "massive bus cuts" outside of London. Yet these areas keep voting Tory. Data from www.gov.uk/government/statistical-data-sets/bus05-subsidies-and-concessions; BUS0502, tab BUS0502b.
That's because most people outside London (and perhaps a few other big cities) never use buses.
Because there aren't any busses.
Nah. There are plenty of buses where I live. There's also a direct train from 5 minutes walk from my front door to 5 minutes walk from my wife's workplace - and it's still better to drive.
Serious question, why is it better to drive.
What's the train journey time and frequency of service?
I suspect I know the answer but it's best to have it confirmed.
2 tph in the peak but not every 30 minutes, 1 tph off-peak. Takes about 20 minutes.
Buses are about every 5 minutes but obviously much slower, journey time up to an hour in the peak.
Thought it would be - that's the typical story of too slow compared to driving (bus) and a too infrequent train service...
Even if there was a train every 15 minutes it would still be better to drive. Cheaper, for one thing.
That's a function of the way you pay for driving.
You pay a huge upfront cost to have a car, and several large costs each year to continue to own one - but once you do that, the costs per mile are pretty low. Whereas the costs to you personally of having public transport available are very low, but the costs per mile of making a journey are high.
If this is seen as a problem there are solutions, but they require more of a remodelling of behaviours than most people are prepared to make. (Our family wouldn't need to own two cars - what a waste of assets! - if we could be reasonably sure one would be available to use when we wanted. The cost per mile could be high, but the overall cost of motoring would still be lower - but the motivation to use non-car modes when we could, like, for 800m trips to One Stop to buy milk, would be there. We'd be better off, public transport would be more viable and therefore more plentiful and therefore more attractive, the planet would be cleaner. But we'd have to stop using the boot of the car as a shed for things-without-permanent-homes.)
A couple of decades ago I worked on a project for the DfT. I developed the road routing portion of their transport portal. The basic idea being you would put in origin and destination and it would give you a route for road, rail and bus to get there. The idea being when people used it and saw how much cheaper and convenient public transport was that they would get out of their cars.
They ended up loading all sorts of costs such as cost of car, wear and tear, insurance onto the road costing. As I remember cost of car was calculated for example as average price paid for a new car/ average number of miles expected in a cars lifetime.
85% of the time it was still cheaper and quicker to go by car than public transport. This number rapidly increasing as you added car occupants. As I remember we calculated put car passengers to 2 and it was literally 5% of journeys that were cheaper by public transport still.
There is no way that travelling by train is cheaper than driving by car. However, the question is do I wish to spend 5 hours driving to London or 2 hours working on a train.
Blimey. Where are you travelling from that driving to London is so much slower?
On the state pension. It would be cruel to cut the spending power of the state pension, as there are many pensioners who have absolutely no other income, and the state pension is pretty paltry.
The solution is to maintain the real value of the state pension, but use other mechanisms (tax, NI etc.) to raise money from those pensioners who have extra income and can afford to pay more. Progressive taxation, in other words.
Spot on. When you have a few bob an extra £9000 a year always helps. On its own it doesn't get to first base. Pensioners should be taxed properly and progressively.
Merge tax and NI. Though there is a case for bringing back the age allowance there used to be, as being old is genuinely more expensive in some ways.
this is hard and unfair to do though given pensions have been paid for with post NI money (pre PAYE but post NI money)- people who saved for a pension would effectively be paying NI twice on the same income
That's neither hard nor unfair.
The coming demographic timebomb and the issue about the unaffordability of pensions when boomers retired was well known and well discussed many decades ago, but it wasn't resolved at the time. When working they neither saved for, nor paid for, their own retirement despite knowing that the timebomb was coming nothing was done to diffuse it.
While we knew decades ago that there was a coming timebomb, what was little expected or discussed was that rather than fix matters they'd be made even worse by the generation that never saved for their own retirement instead using their voting power to further and further burden the young, and further and further extract more welfare for themselves.
Today's earners are expected to fund the unfunded pension of the obligations of the past, plus save for their own pensions in the future, plus pay other taxes like the young person's graduate tax (the misnamed Student Loan) etc that were never paid by prior generations, plus have higher levels of NI than the past, all while pensioners face lower levels of income tax on their pensions than in the past.
Never has one generation stolen so much from another generation before. Rectifying that would not be in the least bit unfair.
except of course it is unfair especially on those who are of working age now and paying pension contributions after NI has been deducted from their pay packet. What it will mean is that nobody saves for a pension as you get doubel NI taxed on it
Why is that unfair? They didn't fund their own retirement, had today's pensioners rectified this issue while they were working and bequeathed a pot of saved funds to be used for their retirement there would be no issue. Pensions could go up or down linked to the performance of that pot and that would be the end of the matter.
They didn't, they made it tomorrow's problem. They knew the demographic issues were coming and chose not to do anything about it while working. Rectifying that now is not unfair.
of course workers fund their retirement ? especially in the private sector. I agrree todays pensioners need to contribute more but merging NI is not the answer - Inheritance tax and social care loophole closing are
What do you mean by social care loophole?
whereby houses are signed over to relatives etc to stop them being assessed. There is no point having the state pay for care so that 60 something children of care home residents then get a big inheritance
That won't stop them being assessed when the parents still live in the house past the date of the sign-over. It doesn't work for IHT avoidance either because it is not a gift without reservation.
The only legit way I know of (which is not perfect) is in the drafting of wills. If the parents convert ownership of the property from joint tenants to tenants in common they then own a discrete 50% of the house each. They can then write wills willing "their" 50% to their children (in a trust) rather than to their surviving spouse. This takes 50% of the house value out of the assessment of the surviving spouse should that person go on to need social care (as he/she only owns 50% of the asset).
Good grief - what a bunch of snowflakes we have become: "Later in the morning, presenter Annita Mcveigh apologised to any Manchester United fans who may have been offended."
I would have thought most Man U fans would agree!
Not that 6th place is actually rubbish objectively, but in comparison to expectation.
Tottenham Court Road to Paddington in FIVE minutes
Farringdon to Canary Wharf: ten minutes
Heathrow to anywhere in central London: thirty minutes, 44 minutes to Canary Wharf
Game-changer for a lot of places along the line
More money spunked on London and the South East while the rest of the nation gets nothing.
Au contraire. We get massive bus cuts.
Rest of the country needs to stop voting Tory if they don't want that kind of thing to happen to them.
Well New Labour gave us sweet FA too in terms of transport investment. Both HS2 and Crossrail started under their watch as well. Money lavished on the south east and London.
Government net support for bus travel in England outside London in real terms (2020/21 prices) rose from £1.02bn in 1996/97 to £1.89bn in 2009/10. By 2019/20 it had fallen back to £1.35bn. So Tory governments = "massive bus cuts" outside of London. Yet these areas keep voting Tory. Data from www.gov.uk/government/statistical-data-sets/bus05-subsidies-and-concessions; BUS0502, tab BUS0502b.
That's because most people outside London (and perhaps a few other big cities) never use buses.
Because there aren't any busses.
Nah. There are plenty of buses where I live. There's also a direct train from 5 minutes walk from my front door to 5 minutes walk from my wife's workplace - and it's still better to drive.
Serious question, why is it better to drive.
What's the train journey time and frequency of service?
I suspect I know the answer but it's best to have it confirmed.
2 tph in the peak but not every 30 minutes, 1 tph off-peak. Takes about 20 minutes.
Buses are about every 5 minutes but obviously much slower, journey time up to an hour in the peak.
Thought it would be - that's the typical story of too slow compared to driving (bus) and a too infrequent train service...
Even if there was a train every 15 minutes it would still be better to drive. Cheaper, for one thing.
That's a function of the way you pay for driving.
You pay a huge upfront cost to have a car, and several large costs each year to continue to own one - but once you do that, the costs per mile are pretty low. Whereas the costs to you personally of having public transport available are very low, but the costs per mile of making a journey are high.
If this is seen as a problem there are solutions, but they require more of a remodelling of behaviours than most people are prepared to make. (Our family wouldn't need to own two cars - what a waste of assets! - if we could be reasonably sure one would be available to use when we wanted. The cost per mile could be high, but the overall cost of motoring would still be lower - but the motivation to use non-car modes when we could, like, for 800m trips to One Stop to buy milk, would be there. We'd be better off, public transport would be more viable and therefore more plentiful and therefore more attractive, the planet would be cleaner. But we'd have to stop using the boot of the car as a shed for things-without-permanent-homes.)
A couple of decades ago I worked on a project for the DfT. I developed the road routing portion of their transport portal. The basic idea being you would put in origin and destination and it would give you a route for road, rail and bus to get there. The idea being when people used it and saw how much cheaper and convenient public transport was that they would get out of their cars.
They ended up loading all sorts of costs such as cost of car, wear and tear, insurance onto the road costing. As I remember cost of car was calculated for example as average price paid for a new car/ average number of miles expected in a cars lifetime.
85% of the time it was still cheaper and quicker to go by car than public transport. This number rapidly increasing as you added car occupants. As I remember we calculated put car passengers to 2 and it was literally 5% of journeys that were cheaper by public transport still.
There is no way that travelling by train is cheaper than driving by car. However, the question is do I wish to spend 5 hours driving to London or 2 hours working on a train.
Blimey. Where are you travelling from that driving to London is so much slower?
Getting trains to London may be faster but that's simply because our London based DfT spends so much of our taxes on paying for rail routes to London.
For the overwhelming majority of the rest of the nation, there's no question that personal transport is cheaper, more efficient, more convenient and quicker than public transport is.
It might be the same for London too, if commuters who travelled by rail were taxed at the same rate as drivers are and didn't receive any subsidies, but that's not what happens.
I was in town today and took the opportunity to ride Crossrail on its first official day, as I was mildly curious to discover what £20 billion buys you in 2022. On the whole I was moderately impressed, at least compared to other government procurement cockups or wastes of similar magnitude, like the Olympics or Northern Ireland.
It is fast and fairly smooth, apart from the need to change at Paddington and Liverpool Street. Hopefully those will be sorted out next year. And it obviously isn't great that Bond Street isn't open yet. , there A distinctly weird touch was just outside Paddington station, where a group of young lovelies in Crossrail t-shirts were singing "Purple Train, Purple Train, Purple Train".
How easy is it to get between the Heathrow Express and Elizabeth Line platforms?
The Elizabeth Line station is underground, along the western flank of the main station. Exit the HEx and turn right through the main course, turn right briefly onto platform 1, and then turn left at the little bronze Paddington Bear, and you'll wind up right outside either of two entrances to the Lizzie Line.
I notice on Google maps that from here to Heathrow is showing as 1:11 (at its fastest) using Elizabeth + Heathrow Express, or 1:27 if I change to the Paddington leg of the EL. Interesting to see what is fastest once they've joined up the 2 lines later this year. Do you know if there will be express-style trains that stop through central London then go fast to Heathrow without stopping?
At present, there are two Heathrow service patterns. Heathrow T5 trains that stop everywhere, including Acton, Ealing, West Ealing, Hanwell, Southall and Hayes. And the Heathrow T2/T3 trains that skip Acton, West Ealing and Hanwell.
Belay that! Looks like Acton, West Ealing and Hanwell have very recently got their T2/T3 service!
On the state pension. It would be cruel to cut the spending power of the state pension, as there are many pensioners who have absolutely no other income, and the state pension is pretty paltry.
The solution is to maintain the real value of the state pension, but use other mechanisms (tax, NI etc.) to raise money from those pensioners who have extra income and can afford to pay more. Progressive taxation, in other words.
Spot on. When you have a few bob an extra £9000 a year always helps. On its own it doesn't get to first base. Pensioners should be taxed properly and progressively.
why the bus pass and winter fuel allowance are not classed as taxable income I never know - given the actual state pension is taxable income but not these add-ons
No. Abolish them all instead of complexifying the tax system; but ensure a decent income. The ludicrous add ons like free this and that, bus pass, (no use to millions who never see a bus anywhere near) fuel allowance and all that is gimmickry for politicians.
The bus pass is actually rather useful - it gets oldies out of the house and incrseases service usage, so helps maintain services. It's a much underestimated bit of social kit, I think, and as it is useful for almost anyone, bus services permitting, these in the tax paying brackets get some benefit too. .
It's great for boozy days out.
I have never understood why someone would live to old age somewhere there isn't public transport. However much you like living in the sticks, it makes sense to move to a town after you retire with good access to services, transport etc. At some point you may be unable to drive and need to maintain an independent life.
Moving away from your support network might not always be a good idea.
Good grief - what a bunch of snowflakes we have become: "Later in the morning, presenter Annita Mcveigh apologised to any Manchester United fans who may have been offended."
I would have thought most Man U fans would agree!
Not that 6th place is actually rubbish objectively, but in comparison to expectation.
Sure - but it's the fact that the BBC felt the need to come out with a statement like that.
Good grief - what a bunch of snowflakes we have become: "Later in the morning, presenter Annita Mcveigh apologised to any Manchester United fans who may have been offended."
I would have thought most Man U fans would agree!
Not that 6th place is actually rubbish objectively, but in comparison to expectation.
Sure - but it's the fact that the BBC felt the need to come out with a statement like that.
Tottenham Court Road to Paddington in FIVE minutes
Farringdon to Canary Wharf: ten minutes
Heathrow to anywhere in central London: thirty minutes, 44 minutes to Canary Wharf
Game-changer for a lot of places along the line
More money spunked on London and the South East while the rest of the nation gets nothing.
Au contraire. We get massive bus cuts.
Rest of the country needs to stop voting Tory if they don't want that kind of thing to happen to them.
Well New Labour gave us sweet FA too in terms of transport investment. Both HS2 and Crossrail started under their watch as well. Money lavished on the south east and London.
Government net support for bus travel in England outside London in real terms (2020/21 prices) rose from £1.02bn in 1996/97 to £1.89bn in 2009/10. By 2019/20 it had fallen back to £1.35bn. So Tory governments = "massive bus cuts" outside of London. Yet these areas keep voting Tory. Data from www.gov.uk/government/statistical-data-sets/bus05-subsidies-and-concessions; BUS0502, tab BUS0502b.
That's because most people outside London (and perhaps a few other big cities) never use buses.
Because there aren't any busses.
Nah. There are plenty of buses where I live. There's also a direct train from 5 minutes walk from my front door to 5 minutes walk from my wife's workplace - and it's still better to drive.
Serious question, why is it better to drive.
What's the train journey time and frequency of service?
I suspect I know the answer but it's best to have it confirmed.
2 tph in the peak but not every 30 minutes, 1 tph off-peak. Takes about 20 minutes.
Buses are about every 5 minutes but obviously much slower, journey time up to an hour in the peak.
Thought it would be - that's the typical story of too slow compared to driving (bus) and a too infrequent train service...
Even if there was a train every 15 minutes it would still be better to drive. Cheaper, for one thing.
That's a function of the way you pay for driving.
You pay a huge upfront cost to have a car, and several large costs each year to continue to own one - but once you do that, the costs per mile are pretty low. Whereas the costs to you personally of having public transport available are very low, but the costs per mile of making a journey are high.
If this is seen as a problem there are solutions, but they require more of a remodelling of behaviours than most people are prepared to make. (Our family wouldn't need to own two cars - what a waste of assets! - if we could be reasonably sure one would be available to use when we wanted. The cost per mile could be high, but the overall cost of motoring would still be lower - but the motivation to use non-car modes when we could, like, for 800m trips to One Stop to buy milk, would be there. We'd be better off, public transport would be more viable and therefore more plentiful and therefore more attractive, the planet would be cleaner. But we'd have to stop using the boot of the car as a shed for things-without-permanent-homes.)
A couple of decades ago I worked on a project for the DfT. I developed the road routing portion of their transport portal. The basic idea being you would put in origin and destination and it would give you a route for road, rail and bus to get there. The idea being when people used it and saw how much cheaper and convenient public transport was that they would get out of their cars.
They ended up loading all sorts of costs such as cost of car, wear and tear, insurance onto the road costing. As I remember cost of car was calculated for example as average price paid for a new car/ average number of miles expected in a cars lifetime.
85% of the time it was still cheaper and quicker to go by car than public transport. This number rapidly increasing as you added car occupants. As I remember we calculated put car passengers to 2 and it was literally 5% of journeys that were cheaper by public transport still.
There is no way that travelling by train is cheaper than driving by car. However, the question is do I wish to spend 5 hours driving to London or 2 hours working on a train.
Blimey. Where are you travelling from that driving to London is so much slower?
York?
Fair enough, stuck in SWR land I tend to forget how good the ECML is.
If I want to be in the office by 9am and I'm going by train, I have to get the 0539 to get in at 8.15 or so, the next train is not until 0650. And if I'm getting up that early I might as well drive, if I leave home at 5:30am I usually get in around 8:30 even allowing for a leisurely breakfast stop which I can always cut short if there are worse problems than usual.
Tottenham Court Road to Paddington in FIVE minutes
Farringdon to Canary Wharf: ten minutes
Heathrow to anywhere in central London: thirty minutes, 44 minutes to Canary Wharf
Game-changer for a lot of places along the line
More money spunked on London and the South East while the rest of the nation gets nothing.
Au contraire. We get massive bus cuts.
Rest of the country needs to stop voting Tory if they don't want that kind of thing to happen to them.
Well New Labour gave us sweet FA too in terms of transport investment. Both HS2 and Crossrail started under their watch as well. Money lavished on the south east and London.
Government net support for bus travel in England outside London in real terms (2020/21 prices) rose from £1.02bn in 1996/97 to £1.89bn in 2009/10. By 2019/20 it had fallen back to £1.35bn. So Tory governments = "massive bus cuts" outside of London. Yet these areas keep voting Tory. Data from www.gov.uk/government/statistical-data-sets/bus05-subsidies-and-concessions; BUS0502, tab BUS0502b.
That's because most people outside London (and perhaps a few other big cities) never use buses.
Because there aren't any busses.
Nah. There are plenty of buses where I live. There's also a direct train from 5 minutes walk from my front door to 5 minutes walk from my wife's workplace - and it's still better to drive.
Serious question, why is it better to drive.
What's the train journey time and frequency of service?
I suspect I know the answer but it's best to have it confirmed.
2 tph in the peak but not every 30 minutes, 1 tph off-peak. Takes about 20 minutes.
Buses are about every 5 minutes but obviously much slower, journey time up to an hour in the peak.
Thought it would be - that's the typical story of too slow compared to driving (bus) and a too infrequent train service...
Even if there was a train every 15 minutes it would still be better to drive. Cheaper, for one thing.
That's a function of the way you pay for driving.
You pay a huge upfront cost to have a car, and several large costs each year to continue to own one - but once you do that, the costs per mile are pretty low. Whereas the costs to you personally of having public transport available are very low, but the costs per mile of making a journey are high.
If this is seen as a problem there are solutions, but they require more of a remodelling of behaviours than most people are prepared to make. (Our family wouldn't need to own two cars - what a waste of assets! - if we could be reasonably sure one would be available to use when we wanted. The cost per mile could be high, but the overall cost of motoring would still be lower - but the motivation to use non-car modes when we could, like, for 800m trips to One Stop to buy milk, would be there. We'd be better off, public transport would be more viable and therefore more plentiful and therefore more attractive, the planet would be cleaner. But we'd have to stop using the boot of the car as a shed for things-without-permanent-homes.)
A couple of decades ago I worked on a project for the DfT. I developed the road routing portion of their transport portal. The basic idea being you would put in origin and destination and it would give you a route for road, rail and bus to get there. The idea being when people used it and saw how much cheaper and convenient public transport was that they would get out of their cars.
They ended up loading all sorts of costs such as cost of car, wear and tear, insurance onto the road costing. As I remember cost of car was calculated for example as average price paid for a new car/ average number of miles expected in a cars lifetime.
85% of the time it was still cheaper and quicker to go by car than public transport. This number rapidly increasing as you added car occupants. As I remember we calculated put car passengers to 2 and it was literally 5% of journeys that were cheaper by public transport still.
There is no way that travelling by train is cheaper than driving by car. However, the question is do I wish to spend 5 hours driving to London or 2 hours working on a train.
Blimey. Where are you travelling from that driving to London is so much slower?
When I travelled to London on business before I retired the train took just over 3 hours and car 5
I find this screaming at politicians across the road like this pretty pathetic. Its a terrible import from America.
Is that really the case?
I was always struck by some episodes of the Daily Show when Jon Stewart was quite impressed by the bear pit of the Commons, and seemingly impressed by Cameron's responses, contrasting it with an overly deferential american approach.
I don't wish to alarm/over excite PBers, but I'm in charge of PB tomorrow from 12.30pm onwards.
Anyone know when the Sue Grey report is out?
Can't imagine it would be before PMQs so 1pm?
Cool, I'm watching Top Gun: Maverick tomorrow at 10.30 am so it is all good.
Wifey says it is quite brilliant.
I finally watched the original Top Gun for the first time yesterday. Oddly boring. Strange that the parody Hot Shots actually had higher stakes in its plot and deeper emotion tugging for the main character.
BREAKING: Sadiq Khan has written to Acting Met Commissioner Sir Steve House demanding a public explanation as to why Boris was not fined for attending the Lee Cain leaving party. 1/ https://twitter.com/evansma/status/1529102628155695104
The state pension is a pittance, and it would be unfair that the poorest pensioners had a real term cut. Those living on cushy final salary pensions, however…
What is a cushy final salary pension anyway? My final salary teaching pension is barely 250 a week for 32 years in the scheme. I won't get my state pension for 6 years so that's my lot. Out of that I have to find 50 a week for energy, so we are hardly cushy.
Not by any means saying 250 a week is cushy however 13000 a year is equivalent to a DC scheme you would need a pension pot of around 556 k
I plugged in figures till I got to about 13k after 32 years
pension contributions from employer and employee had to be 6500 each per year to get a dc pension annuity value of 12877.
Other figures I used were age 24 retirement age 56 and annual salary 40k. That means both employee and employer would have to be putting in 16.25% of salary.
Yes 250 isnt much but it is a damn sight more than most private sector workers are going to get.
The atmosphere on the Tory backbenches is "sulphurous" after photos emerged of Boris Johnson raising a toast at Downing Street on Monday evening.
While the majority of MPs on the fence about Mr Johnson's future are waiting until tomorrow to make a decision, the pictorial evidence published by ITV News does not appear to have helped matters.
"I'm going to be waiting until I see the report to make a final decision," a senior Conservative MP and former Cabinet minister tells the Telegraph this afternoon.
"But after those photos came out, the mood has been pretty sulphurous. People are pretty shocked."
He's not had many spot on moments in recent weeks, but they do crop up
If people don’t think lying to parliament matters. Or it does, but not as much as Ukraine, etc, fine. But when Boris said there were no parties, all rules were followed, and he was angry to learn about cheese and wine events, that was a bare-faced lie. So why pretend it wasn’t.
On the state pension. It would be cruel to cut the spending power of the state pension, as there are many pensioners who have absolutely no other income, and the state pension is pretty paltry.
The solution is to maintain the real value of the state pension, but use other mechanisms (tax, NI etc.) to raise money from those pensioners who have extra income and can afford to pay more. Progressive taxation, in other words.
Spot on. When you have a few bob an extra £9000 a year always helps. On its own it doesn't get to first base. Pensioners should be taxed properly and progressively.
why the bus pass and winter fuel allowance are not classed as taxable income I never know - given the actual state pension is taxable income but not these add-ons
No. Abolish them all instead of complexifying the tax system; but ensure a decent income. The ludicrous add ons like free this and that, bus pass, (no use to millions who never see a bus anywhere near) fuel allowance and all that is gimmickry for politicians.
The bus pass is actually rather useful - it gets oldies out of the house and incrseases service usage, so helps maintain services. It's a much underestimated bit of social kit, I think, and as it is useful for almost anyone, bus services permitting, these in the tax paying brackets get some benefit too. .
It's great for boozy days out.
I have never understood why someone would live to old age somewhere there isn't public transport. However much you like living in the sticks, it makes sense to move to a town after you retire with good access to services, transport etc. At some point you may be unable to drive and need to maintain an independent life.
Moving away from your support network might not always be a good idea.
I think (hope) we've got a better informal support network in the small town where we live now than we would have had in the suburb from which we moved!
I'm happily more chilled about Boris today, in the sense that there's now sufficient ammo to finish the fool off at the General Election if the tory MPs can't find the ability to do it themselves.
They will get taken to the cleaners if they stick with him.
Meanwhile the cost of living crisis is really biting. Grim.
I wonder if the housing bubble is the next part to burst. It can't hold up with all the other cards falling.
I find this screaming at politicians across the road like this pretty pathetic. Its a terrible import from America.
Is that really the case?
I was always struck by some episodes of the Daily Show when Jon Stewart was quite impressed by the bear pit of the Commons, and seemingly impressed by Cameron's responses, contrasting it with an overly deferential american approach.
Certainly not that way now of course.
PMQs is something else that depends on Lord Hennessy's theory of "decent chaps" who make some effort to answer questions honestly. These days, instead of question and answer, Keir Starmer makes a short speech and Boris rants about something else entirely.
The atmosphere on the Tory backbenches is "sulphurous" after photos emerged of Boris Johnson raising a toast at Downing Street on Monday evening.
While the majority of MPs on the fence about Mr Johnson's future are waiting until tomorrow to make a decision, the pictorial evidence published by ITV News does not appear to have helped matters.
"I'm going to be waiting until I see the report to make a final decision," a senior Conservative MP and former Cabinet minister tells the Telegraph this afternoon.
"But after those photos came out, the mood has been pretty sulphurous. People are pretty shocked."
I love the way that Bozo apologists are claiming that the leaving drinks was not against the rules, even though some of the attendees were fined for being there.
Meanwhile, support for NATO membership keeps declining (68%) and almost reached pre-war levels
Ukraine clearly has a more nuanced view of the EU than do we.
If Ukraine isn't offered full candidate status in June I would expect the EU polling figures to follow the trend in support for NATO membership down.
Possibly. It would be a tragic mistake, since whatever parts of Ukraine do not end up under Russian domination will be very keen to do whatever it takes to get into the EU. With foreign support and such public will even the many challenges to admission criteria could be overcome in relatively quick time. That shouldn't be squandered.
I also don't see what the concern might be from some EU members about going full candidate status as soon as possible. Candidate status won't mean they get admitted any time soon unless they make actual serious progress and the EU will already be pumping billions of aid into Ukraine.
I love the way that Bozo apologists are claiming that the leaving drinks was not against the rules, even though some of the attendees were fined for being there.
Try again.
Who was fined for being there? And when was that announced.
Being fined while at an event is not the same as being fined for being there. If I go to a concert and someone there is fined for taking drugs, does that mean that the concert itself was unlawful? Or that the actions of the individual fined were?
I started reading the British General Election of 2017 the other day (no spoilers please), and noted in its 'praise for previous editions' section there is a quote from politicalbetting.com. I hope they went to the top man himself for that, and it wasn't cribbed from below the line, like how some movie posters and books have started quoting random amazon reviewers.
On the state pension. It would be cruel to cut the spending power of the state pension, as there are many pensioners who have absolutely no other income, and the state pension is pretty paltry.
The solution is to maintain the real value of the state pension, but use other mechanisms (tax, NI etc.) to raise money from those pensioners who have extra income and can afford to pay more. Progressive taxation, in other words.
Spot on. When you have a few bob an extra £9000 a year always helps. On its own it doesn't get to first base. Pensioners should be taxed properly and progressively.
Merge tax and NI. Though there is a case for bringing back the age allowance there used to be, as being old is genuinely more expensive in some ways.
Absolutely not, NI should be hypothecated specifically for the state pension, contributory unemployment benefits and the NHS and social care
You were spending months telling us that NI is already solely for pension and unemployment. Now siddenly it's not. It's actually a tax and merged with other taxes into a single pool.
The atmosphere on the Tory backbenches is "sulphurous" after photos emerged of Boris Johnson raising a toast at Downing Street on Monday evening.
While the majority of MPs on the fence about Mr Johnson's future are waiting until tomorrow to make a decision, the pictorial evidence published by ITV News does not appear to have helped matters.
"I'm going to be waiting until I see the report to make a final decision," a senior Conservative MP and former Cabinet minister tells the Telegraph this afternoon.
"But after those photos came out, the mood has been pretty sulphurous. People are pretty shocked."
torygraff
deja vu all over again
These guys have been (to paraphrase great line from "Spinal Tap") choking on someone else's vomit for . . . how long now?
I love the way that Bozo apologists are claiming that the leaving drinks was not against the rules, even though some of the attendees were fined for being there.
Try again.
It actually is not necessarily inconsistent. We don't know what happened at the event and why some were fined and others not. I would hazard a guess that 10 mins, we are gathered here today to say goodbye to a colleague, with short speech, was deemed borderline iffy, but then for some it descended into a massive piss up, dancing on the tables etc, and that is why they got the FNP.
As I said down thread, the concentration of the specifics of individual events misses the wider point.
I love the way that Bozo apologists are claiming that the leaving drinks was not against the rules, even though some of the attendees were fined for being there.
Try again.
Who was fined for being there? And when was that announced.
Being fined while at an event is not the same as being fined for being there. If I go to a concert and someone there is fined for taking drugs, does that mean that the concert itself was unlawful? Or that the actions of the individual fined were?
*blinks in surprise*
FPN = for being at the actual event. Not what you do there.
I love the way that Bozo apologists are claiming that the leaving drinks was not against the rules, even though some of the attendees were fined for being there.
Try again.
Who was fined for being there? And when was that announced.
Your prolific and increasingly desperate attempts today to defend the indefensible are not your finest moment.
If I had the power I would revert 'staycation' to the original meaning - in the 2008 credit crunch, a staycation was staying at home and taking day trips out.
Somehow it has become corrupted to 'going on holiday in the UK', which in the old days I called a 'holiday'.
I love the way that Bozo apologists are claiming that the leaving drinks was not against the rules, even though some of the attendees were fined for being there.
Try again.
Who was fined for being there? And when was that announced.
Being fined while at an event is not the same as being fined for being there. If I go to a concert and someone there is fined for taking drugs, does that mean that the concert itself was unlawful? Or that the actions of the individual fined were?
*blinks in surprise*
FPN = for being at the actual event. Not what you do there.
When was that said?
If not everyone at the event was fined, then no it was not for being at the event, it was for breaking the law while at the event.
The two are very different things. Its possible for one person to go an event lawfully, and someone else to do something wrong at the same event.
I love the way that Bozo apologists are claiming that the leaving drinks was not against the rules, even though some of the attendees were fined for being there.
Try again.
Who was fined for being there? And when was that announced.
Being fined while at an event is not the same as being fined for being there. If I go to a concert and someone there is fined for taking drugs, does that mean that the concert itself was unlawful? Or that the actions of the individual fined were?
Sky have said just one person was fined at that event
The atmosphere on the Tory backbenches is "sulphurous" after photos emerged of Boris Johnson raising a toast at Downing Street on Monday evening.
While the majority of MPs on the fence about Mr Johnson's future are waiting until tomorrow to make a decision, the pictorial evidence published by ITV News does not appear to have helped matters.
"I'm going to be waiting until I see the report to make a final decision," a senior Conservative MP and former Cabinet minister tells the Telegraph this afternoon.
"But after those photos came out, the mood has been pretty sulphurous. People are pretty shocked."
torygraff
deja vu all over again
And tonight's Panorama is going to be toxic
Familiar pattern. Something comes out on a Monday or Tuesday. There are two or three days of swirling rumour and tales of angry backbenchers, MPs being flooded with livid emails and letters going to Brady. There is a torrid PMQs. Perhaps an Urgent Question. Anonymous sources tell journalists that this cannot go on and this time it is the end.
And then...
Nothing.
Johnson makes it to the weekend and it all dies down yet again.
The atmosphere on the Tory backbenches is "sulphurous" after photos emerged of Boris Johnson raising a toast at Downing Street on Monday evening.
While the majority of MPs on the fence about Mr Johnson's future are waiting until tomorrow to make a decision, the pictorial evidence published by ITV News does not appear to have helped matters.
"I'm going to be waiting until I see the report to make a final decision," a senior Conservative MP and former Cabinet minister tells the Telegraph this afternoon.
"But after those photos came out, the mood has been pretty sulphurous. People are pretty shocked."
torygraff
deja vu all over again
I'm certainly getting strong Corbyn era vibes, with a bunch of unhappy whiners pretending to be 'shocked and appalled' by whatever the latest news story is so they can pretend they are not actively propping up the thing shocking them. No matter how foreseeable that thing was.
At a point only going on the record matters, and anonymous whinging is just a way of assuring yourself you're one of the good 'uns.
I love the way that Bozo apologists are claiming that the leaving drinks was not against the rules, even though some of the attendees were fined for being there.
Try again.
Who was fined for being there? And when was that announced.
Being fined while at an event is not the same as being fined for being there. If I go to a concert and someone there is fined for taking drugs, does that mean that the concert itself was unlawful? Or that the actions of the individual fined were?
Sky have said just one person was fined at that event
All seems very strange
Best guess: someone who doesn't normally work in Downing Street.
I don't wish to alarm/over excite PBers, but I'm in charge of PB tomorrow from 12.30pm onwards.
Anyone know when the Sue Grey report is out?
Can't imagine it would be before PMQs so 1pm?
Cool, I'm watching Top Gun: Maverick tomorrow at 10.30 am so it is all good.
"Work From Home" again?
Six days of annual leave means I don't have to work for nearly a fortnight.
Hurrah for the jubilee and monarchy.
Contrarily, it buggers up some vital timetabling for me, so I'm going republican instead.
Frustrating.
I made a right pickle of a weekend away with the other half, thinking this weekend was the bank holiday weekend, fortunately Klopp got me out of a difficult situation.
My monarchism is going to last as long as the jubilee holiday.
I love the way that Bozo apologists are claiming that the leaving drinks was not against the rules, even though some of the attendees were fined for being there.
Try again.
Who was fined for being there? And when was that announced.
Being fined while at an event is not the same as being fined for being there. If I go to a concert and someone there is fined for taking drugs, does that mean that the concert itself was unlawful? Or that the actions of the individual fined were?
Sky have said just one person was fined at that event
All seems very strange
That does make me wonder what stupid thing they said that no one else did that meant the police felt their behaviour, and only theirs, had crossed the line.
I love the way that Bozo apologists are claiming that the leaving drinks was not against the rules, even though some of the attendees were fined for being there.
Try again.
Who was fined for being there? And when was that announced.
Being fined while at an event is not the same as being fined for being there. If I go to a concert and someone there is fined for taking drugs, does that mean that the concert itself was unlawful? Or that the actions of the individual fined were?
Sky have said just one person was fined at that event
All seems very strange
Just one would imply just one person broke the law.
Plenty of reasons that could be the case. One that springs to mind immediately might be that everyone else had legal reasons to be there, so were not violating the law, but the one who was fined did not, so they were fined while nobody else was.
Plenty of other possible explanations as well. As Cyclefree eloquently explained earlier.
The atmosphere on the Tory backbenches is "sulphurous" after photos emerged of Boris Johnson raising a toast at Downing Street on Monday evening.
While the majority of MPs on the fence about Mr Johnson's future are waiting until tomorrow to make a decision, the pictorial evidence published by ITV News does not appear to have helped matters.
"I'm going to be waiting until I see the report to make a final decision," a senior Conservative MP and former Cabinet minister tells the Telegraph this afternoon.
"But after those photos came out, the mood has been pretty sulphurous. People are pretty shocked."
torygraff
deja vu all over again
And tonight's Panorama is going to be toxic
Familiar pattern. Something comes out on a Monday or Tuesday. There are two or three days of swirling rumour and tales of angry backbenchers, MPs being flooded with livid emails and letters going to Brady. There is a torrid PMQs. Perhaps an Urgent Question. Anonymous sources tell journalists that this cannot go on and this time it is the end.
And then...
Nothing.
Johnson makes it to the weekend and it all dies down yet again.
I just know that phatboi cox is going to shift his ground from await Sue Gray to Await findings of privileges committee on lying to parl.
The state pension is a pittance, and it would be unfair that the poorest pensioners had a real term cut. Those living on cushy final salary pensions, however…
What is a cushy final salary pension anyway? My final salary teaching pension is barely 250 a week for 32 years in the scheme. I won't get my state pension for 6 years so that's my lot. Out of that I have to find 50 a week for energy, so we are hardly cushy.
Not by any means saying 250 a week is cushy however 13000 a year is equivalent to a DC scheme you would need a pension pot of around 556 k
I plugged in figures till I got to about 13k after 32 years
pension contributions from employer and employee had to be 6500 each per year to get a dc pension annuity value of 12877.
Other figures I used were age 24 retirement age 56 and annual salary 40k. That means both employee and employer would have to be putting in 16.25% of salary.
Yes 250 isnt much but it is a damn sight more than most private sector workers are going to get.
It's way over 16% of salary. Index-linked and with a residual pension to spouse until spouse dies. And lump sum of course. With no risk. It's a fiendishly complicated calculation; I tried to crunch the numbers years ago and concluded roughly at 40%. Middle-ranking public sector employees with 40 years service retiring now have DB entitlements which would cost over £1M for someone in the private sector to match. Worth pointing out that some public sector scheme require employee contribution towards this and that some schemes are not as good as they were (e.g. career average rather than final salary).
The atmosphere on the Tory backbenches is "sulphurous" after photos emerged of Boris Johnson raising a toast at Downing Street on Monday evening.
While the majority of MPs on the fence about Mr Johnson's future are waiting until tomorrow to make a decision, the pictorial evidence published by ITV News does not appear to have helped matters.
"I'm going to be waiting until I see the report to make a final decision," a senior Conservative MP and former Cabinet minister tells the Telegraph this afternoon.
"But after those photos came out, the mood has been pretty sulphurous. People are pretty shocked."
torygraff
deja vu all over again
And tonight's Panorama is going to be toxic
Familiar pattern. Something comes out on a Monday or Tuesday. There are two or three days of swirling rumour and tales of angry backbenchers, MPs being flooded with livid emails and letters going to Brady. There is a torrid PMQs. Perhaps an Urgent Question. Anonymous sources tell journalists that this cannot go on and this time it is the end.
And then...
Nothing.
Johnson makes it to the weekend and it all dies down yet again.
No surprise . The extortionate prices levied may have had a captive audience last year but now people can travel and be guaranteed good weather so they’re voting with their feet .
I love Cornwall and Dorset etc, but Turkey is outrageously cheap right now, and… hm…
Even this place, Sivota in Epirus, Greece, is bloody cheap: you can get a nice three star right on the beach with a big pool for £50 a night. Or a fairly luxury apartment with balcony, pool and sea views and a lovely garden for £100, sleeps four people easily
The state pension is a pittance, and it would be unfair that the poorest pensioners had a real term cut. Those living on cushy final salary pensions, however…
What is a cushy final salary pension anyway? My final salary teaching pension is barely 250 a week for 32 years in the scheme. I won't get my state pension for 6 years so that's my lot. Out of that I have to find 50 a week for energy, so we are hardly cushy.
Not by any means saying 250 a week is cushy however 13000 a year is equivalent to a DC scheme you would need a pension pot of around 556 k
I plugged in figures till I got to about 13k after 32 years
pension contributions from employer and employee had to be 6500 each per year to get a dc pension annuity value of 12877.
Other figures I used were age 24 retirement age 56 and annual salary 40k. That means both employee and employer would have to be putting in 16.25% of salary.
Yes 250 isnt much but it is a damn sight more than most private sector workers are going to get.
It's way over 16% of salary. Index-linked and with a residual pension to spouse until spouse dies. And lump sum of course. With no risk. It's a fiendishly complicated calculation; I tried to crunch the numbers years ago and concluded roughly at 40%. Middle-ranking public sector employees with 40 years service retiring now have DB entitlements which would cost over £1M for someone in the private sector to match. Worth pointing out that some public sector scheme require employee contribution towards this and that some schemes are not as good as they were (e.g. career average rather than final salary).
And of course, for many professional and technical positions, the public sector pays below, sometimes far below, private sector rates.
The state pension is a pittance, and it would be unfair that the poorest pensioners had a real term cut. Those living on cushy final salary pensions, however…
What is a cushy final salary pension anyway? My final salary teaching pension is barely 250 a week for 32 years in the scheme. I won't get my state pension for 6 years so that's my lot. Out of that I have to find 50 a week for energy, so we are hardly cushy.
Not by any means saying 250 a week is cushy however 13000 a year is equivalent to a DC scheme you would need a pension pot of around 556 k
I plugged in figures till I got to about 13k after 32 years
pension contributions from employer and employee had to be 6500 each per year to get a dc pension annuity value of 12877.
Other figures I used were age 24 retirement age 56 and annual salary 40k. That means both employee and employer would have to be putting in 16.25% of salary.
Yes 250 isnt much but it is a damn sight more than most private sector workers are going to get.
It's way over 16% of salary. Index-linked and with a residual pension to spouse until spouse dies. And lump sum of course. With no risk. It's a fiendishly complicated calculation; I tried to crunch the numbers years ago and concluded roughly at 40%. Middle-ranking public sector employees with 40 years service retiring now have DB entitlements which would cost over £1M for someone in the private sector to match. Worth pointing out that some public sector scheme require employee contribution towards this and that some schemes are not as good as they were (e.g. career average rather than final salary).
No but they still far exceed what your average private sector worker is going to retire on. I can totally get people looking at their 13k a year and thinking well that doesn't seem gold plated to me. However they don't seem to realise how much the rest of us need to save to a pension to get anywhere near that figure because though they make contributions there is either a huge employer contribution they dont see or a tax payer top up if unfunded.
I love the way that Bozo apologists are claiming that the leaving drinks was not against the rules, even though some of the attendees were fined for being there.
Try again.
Who was fined for being there? And when was that announced.
Being fined while at an event is not the same as being fined for being there. If I go to a concert and someone there is fined for taking drugs, does that mean that the concert itself was unlawful? Or that the actions of the individual fined were?
Sky have said just one person was fined at that event
All seems very strange
Just one would imply just one person broke the law.
Plenty of reasons that could be the case. One that springs to mind immediately might be that everyone else had legal reasons to be there, so were not violating the law, but the one who was fined did not, so they were fined while nobody else was.
Plenty of other possible explanations as well. As Cyclefree eloquently explained earlier.
They all should have been fined because it was an illegal gathering that was quite obviously not essential for work.
Surely a test in a police person's mind over a FPN should be 'what would a jury think was "reasonable" or "essential" ' in this situation given the rules.
I think I know what any jury would have made of these scenes as shown in itv photos.
I love the way that Bozo apologists are claiming that the leaving drinks was not against the rules, even though some of the attendees were fined for being there.
Try again.
Who was fined for being there? And when was that announced.
Being fined while at an event is not the same as being fined for being there. If I go to a concert and someone there is fined for taking drugs, does that mean that the concert itself was unlawful? Or that the actions of the individual fined were?
Sky have said just one person was fined at that event
All seems very strange
Just one would imply just one person broke the law.
Plenty of reasons that could be the case. One that springs to mind immediately might be that everyone else had legal reasons to be there, so were not violating the law, but the one who was fined did not, so they were fined while nobody else was.
Plenty of other possible explanations as well. As Cyclefree eloquently explained earlier.
And yet when Downing Street held a social event to celebrate the Big Dog's first tooth, they fined everyone because social events were banned. So on the same methodology that this was also a social event meritorious of FPNs they should also have fined everyone. Instead the reports have it that a stack of junior staff got done which their boss and the PM mysteriously got off. Despite being there. At the same time.
The atmosphere on the Tory backbenches is "sulphurous" after photos emerged of Boris Johnson raising a toast at Downing Street on Monday evening.
While the majority of MPs on the fence about Mr Johnson's future are waiting until tomorrow to make a decision, the pictorial evidence published by ITV News does not appear to have helped matters.
"I'm going to be waiting until I see the report to make a final decision," a senior Conservative MP and former Cabinet minister tells the Telegraph this afternoon.
"But after those photos came out, the mood has been pretty sulphurous. People are pretty shocked."
torygraff
deja vu all over again
And tonight's Panorama is going to be toxic
Familiar pattern. Something comes out on a Monday or Tuesday. There are two or three days of swirling rumour and tales of angry backbenchers, MPs being flooded with livid emails and letters going to Brady. There is a torrid PMQs. Perhaps an Urgent Question. Anonymous sources tell journalists that this cannot go on and this time it is the end.
And then...
Nothing.
Johnson makes it to the weekend and it all dies down yet again.
Not at all certain this time
Plenty of reportedly enraged junior staffers plus a fixated former Chief of Staff plus a knobble attempt survived Sue Gray herself. Plus very senior ex Met coppers who you would imagine still have contacts saying how the Met has egregiously screwed this up. And given how much angry people and Met coppers like to leak, it would be odd if nothing more comes out.
Tonight's Panorama is starting the process of ripping the lid off the "nobody talks about this, RIGHT?" atmosphere. And once the lid is off its open season on airing shreddied pants.
The atmosphere on the Tory backbenches is "sulphurous" after photos emerged of Boris Johnson raising a toast at Downing Street on Monday evening.
While the majority of MPs on the fence about Mr Johnson's future are waiting until tomorrow to make a decision, the pictorial evidence published by ITV News does not appear to have helped matters.
"I'm going to be waiting until I see the report to make a final decision," a senior Conservative MP and former Cabinet minister tells the Telegraph this afternoon.
"But after those photos came out, the mood has been pretty sulphurous. People are pretty shocked."
torygraff
deja vu all over again
And tonight's Panorama is going to be toxic
I generally can't stand Panorama these days as it has gone a long way downhill in reliability terms.
Perhaps I'll take the time to re-remind my MP that he has zero chance of my vote if BoJo is still in place. Mind you he did not get it last time, either - but I'll not mention that.
As we await results from today's Primary elections in Arkansas and Georgia (the Big Kahuna) plus some key Texas runoff primaries, note that in Pennsylvania Republican Primary for US Senate, as of this moment:
Mehmet Oz 418,741 31.2% Dave McCormick 417,759 31.1% Kathy Barnette 330,838 24.7% Total reported 1,341,292
Politico.com - McCormick takes Pa. Senate ballot fight to court As of Monday evening, Mehmet Oz was leading David McCormick by fewer than 1,000 votes — well within the margin for an automatic recount in the state.
. . . . David McCormick’s campaign filed a lawsuit Monday afternoon arguing that election officials must count mail-in and absentee ballots that lack a date on their envelope, citing a federal court order released on Friday.
McCormick and his primary opponent, Mehmet Oz, have been squabbling over whether undated ballots should be counted. The fight began late last week, after a three-judge panel on the federal 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals issued a judgment that undated ballots in a 2021 county judgeship election should be counted. . . . .
McCormick’s lawsuit, filed in state court, sues the state’s chief election official and county election boards in order to compel them to count the undated ballots that were returned on time. . . .
The 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals ruled on Friday that the state’s laws requiring ballots be dated by the voter was “immaterial” under a federal statute that originated with the Civil Rights Act of 1964 — meaning it should have no bearing over whether ballots are accepted or rejected.
But the court did not release its full formal opinion, so there has been uncertainty on how — or whether — to apply its finding to other elections aside from that 2021 judgeship contest.
The circuit court may not be the final say on the order. One of the parties in the case — David Ritter, a candidate in that judicial race — asked the court on Monday to stay its judgment, signaling that there would likely be an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.
The Pennsylvania Department of State’s guidance to counties on these ballots, issued Tuesday morning, nods toward that legal uncertainty.
“. . .[O]ut of an abundance of caution the Department advises, that those ballots should be segregated and remain segregated from all other voted ballots during the process of canvassing and tabulation.”
The department added that it anticipated that any litigation around the ballots would be “undertaken on an expedited basis.” . . . .
The atmosphere on the Tory backbenches is "sulphurous" after photos emerged of Boris Johnson raising a toast at Downing Street on Monday evening.
While the majority of MPs on the fence about Mr Johnson's future are waiting until tomorrow to make a decision, the pictorial evidence published by ITV News does not appear to have helped matters.
"I'm going to be waiting until I see the report to make a final decision," a senior Conservative MP and former Cabinet minister tells the Telegraph this afternoon.
"But after those photos came out, the mood has been pretty sulphurous. People are pretty shocked."
torygraff
deja vu all over again
And tonight's Panorama is going to be toxic
Familiar pattern. Something comes out on a Monday or Tuesday. There are two or three days of swirling rumour and tales of angry backbenchers, MPs being flooded with livid emails and letters going to Brady. There is a torrid PMQs. Perhaps an Urgent Question. Anonymous sources tell journalists that this cannot go on and this time it is the end.
And then...
Nothing.
Johnson makes it to the weekend and it all dies down yet again.
Yep, but not the end of the world certainly for Labour. A slow chipping away at the Tory vote share and Johnson staying on as long as possible will maximise the chance of the Conservatives losing the next election. Last thing they need is some fresh face people haven't heard of.
Talking of which see Mark Harper today. Forthright in condemnation of Boris, but suitably right wing on the things backbenchers care about to stand a good chance. I still think he's the leadership dark horse.
As for Labour and the Lib Dems: one last round on partygate this week and then move on to the economy and cost of living and stay there, relentlessly, until the next election.
. . . as the late great Paul Harvey used to say . . . and now for the Rest of the Story re: PA US Senate GOP Primary
Politico.com continued:
. . . . Hours after the judgment was issued Friday, McCormick’s campaign sent a letter to Pennsylvania’s 67 counties arguing that undated ballots should be tallied and requesting a hearing if election boards declined to count them. Oz’s team followed suit with its own letter to counties, making the case that they should be rejected.
Since Oz is ahead, he likely stands to benefit if fewer additional mail-in and absentee ballots are tallied. McCormick, meanwhile, has been outperforming Oz in those ballots, meaning he could gain if more of those votes are counted.
An aide for Oz did not immediately respond to a question on if the campaign plans on intervening in McCormick’s lawsuit. But in a statement issued last week, Oz campaign manager Casey Contres said “the McCormick legal team is following the Democrats’ playbook” and it “will oppose the McCormick legal team’s request that election boards ignore both Pennsylvania’s Supreme Court and state election law and accept legally rejected ballots.”
Grace Griffaton, a spokesperson for the Department of State, said Monday afternoon that there were approximately 5,400 Republican mail-in and absentee ballots left to count, but it is “likely that the estimates include rejected ballots that have not yet been recorded.” It is unclear how many undated ballots have been processed.
Before the guidance from the Department of State, some counties had already decided to count undated ballots in light of the circuit court ruling. Northampton County plans on tallying 380 undated ballots across both parties, according to The Morning Call.
Others counties are more hesitant to do so. In an email attached to McCormick’s lawsuit, an attorney for Blair County emailed lawyers representing both McCormick and Oz about the uncertainty around these ballots.
“While I do not always agree with the guidance provided by the Department of State, Bureau of Elections, and Blair County is not legally obligated to follow such guidance, I also do not believe it would be appropriate for the County to proceed without having reviewed such guidance,” Nathan Karn, the county solicitor, wrote.
SSI - It is a sign of still-lingering (some would say festering) Anglo-colonial influence, that "county solicitor" is a public position in old Pennsylvania.
The state pension is a pittance, and it would be unfair that the poorest pensioners had a real term cut. Those living on cushy final salary pensions, however…
What is a cushy final salary pension anyway? My final salary teaching pension is barely 250 a week for 32 years in the scheme. I won't get my state pension for 6 years so that's my lot. Out of that I have to find 50 a week for energy, so we are hardly cushy.
Not by any means saying 250 a week is cushy however 13000 a year is equivalent to a DC scheme you would need a pension pot of around 556 k
I plugged in figures till I got to about 13k after 32 years
pension contributions from employer and employee had to be 6500 each per year to get a dc pension annuity value of 12877.
Other figures I used were age 24 retirement age 56 and annual salary 40k. That means both employee and employer would have to be putting in 16.25% of salary.
Yes 250 isnt much but it is a damn sight more than most private sector workers are going to get.
It's way over 16% of salary. Index-linked and with a residual pension to spouse until spouse dies. And lump sum of course. With no risk. It's a fiendishly complicated calculation; I tried to crunch the numbers years ago and concluded roughly at 40%. Middle-ranking public sector employees with 40 years service retiring now have DB entitlements which would cost over £1M for someone in the private sector to match. Worth pointing out that some public sector scheme require employee contribution towards this and that some schemes are not as good as they were (e.g. career average rather than final salary).
I suppose I laid myself open by being too generous with the info there. I would say that in my final year teaching at age 60, my employer and me paid at least 25% into the scheme between us.
One thing to realise though was that money was not locked away in a savings scheme, it went straight back into government coffers to "re-spend" as it were on other things like VIM* and missiles and benefits etc. And also, to pay for teacher pensioners at the time.
I thought governments of all colours were trying to get us to invest in pensions to suppliment or even replace the state benefit, so slagging pensioners off for actually using/receiving them is a little rich.
The atmosphere on the Tory backbenches is "sulphurous" after photos emerged of Boris Johnson raising a toast at Downing Street on Monday evening.
While the majority of MPs on the fence about Mr Johnson's future are waiting until tomorrow to make a decision, the pictorial evidence published by ITV News does not appear to have helped matters.
"I'm going to be waiting until I see the report to make a final decision," a senior Conservative MP and former Cabinet minister tells the Telegraph this afternoon.
"But after those photos came out, the mood has been pretty sulphurous. People are pretty shocked."
torygraff
deja vu all over again
And tonight's Panorama is going to be toxic
Familiar pattern. Something comes out on a Monday or Tuesday. There are two or three days of swirling rumour and tales of angry backbenchers, MPs being flooded with livid emails and letters going to Brady. There is a torrid PMQs. Perhaps an Urgent Question. Anonymous sources tell journalists that this cannot go on and this time it is the end.
And then...
Nothing.
Johnson makes it to the weekend and it all dies down yet again.
Yep, but not the end of the world certainly for Labour. A slow chipping away at the Tory vote share and Johnson staying on as long as possible will maximise the chance of the Conservatives losing the next election. Last thing they need is some fresh face people haven't heard of.
Talking of which see Mark Harper today. Forthright in condemnation of Boris, but suitably right wing on the things backbenchers care about to stand a good chance. I still think he's the leadership dark horse.
As for Labour and the Lib Dems: one last round on partygate this week and then move on to the economy and cost of living and stay there, relentlessly, until the next election.
They will have their own beergate moment in July when Durham Police report
Comments
The central section is very impressive. Nice trains too. Exciting times.
NI Contributions as qualifiers for pensions and benefits are a purely administrative process.
The Teachers’ Pension Scheme (TPS) is one of the largest unfunded public sector pension schemes, alongside those relating to the National Health Service (NHS), civil servants, and the armed forces. ‘Unfunded’ means that although employers and employees pay contributions, these go directly to the government: crucially, the amount does not cover the full cost of paying pensions. Currently there is an annual shortfall of £4bn, which the government covers out of borrowing: in other words, adding to the public sector net debt (i.e. the deficit) each year.
No pot of funds to pay for them; furthermore, the pensions currently being paid (let alone those promised to future generations) are in excess of what was already paid in and spent.
Coates and others shouting across Downing Street is simply pathetic
The only legit way I know of (which is not perfect) is in the drafting of wills. If the parents convert ownership of the property from joint tenants to tenants in common they then own a discrete 50% of the house each. They can then write wills willing "their" 50% to their children (in a trust) rather than to their surviving spouse. This takes 50% of the house value out of the assessment of the surviving spouse should that person go on to need social care (as he/she only owns 50% of the asset).
Not that 6th place is actually rubbish objectively, but in comparison to expectation.
For the overwhelming majority of the rest of the nation, there's no question that personal transport is cheaper, more efficient, more convenient and quicker than public transport is.
It might be the same for London too, if commuters who travelled by rail were taxed at the same rate as drivers are and didn't receive any subsidies, but that's not what happens.
Physically there is, sadly, quite a list of inconveniences.
Thank you for asking.
If I want to be in the office by 9am and I'm going by train, I have to get the 0539 to get in at 8.15 or so, the next train is not until 0650. And if I'm getting up that early I might as well drive, if I leave home at 5:30am I usually get in around 8:30 even allowing for a leisurely breakfast stop which I can always cut short if there are worse problems than usual.
I was always struck by some episodes of the Daily Show when Jon Stewart was quite impressed by the bear pit of the Commons, and seemingly impressed by Cameron's responses, contrasting it with an overly deferential american approach.
Certainly not that way now of course.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10849027/Great-British-Staycation-boom-tourism-chiefs-say-numbers-drop-pre-Covid-levels.html
using this site
https://www.which.co.uk/money/pensions-and-retirement/options-for-cashing-in-your-pensions/overview-of-options-for-cashing-in-your-pension/pension-calculator-how-much-money-youll-have-a1jxm4d809k8
I plugged in figures till I got to about 13k after 32 years
pension contributions from employer and employee had to be 6500 each per year to get a dc pension annuity value of 12877.
Other figures I used were age 24 retirement age 56 and annual salary 40k. That means both employee and employer would have to be putting in 16.25% of salary.
Yes 250 isnt much but it is a damn sight more than most private sector workers are going to get.
While the majority of MPs on the fence about Mr Johnson's future are waiting until tomorrow to make a decision, the pictorial evidence published by ITV News does not appear to have helped matters.
"I'm going to be waiting until I see the report to make a final decision," a senior Conservative MP and former Cabinet minister tells the Telegraph this afternoon.
"But after those photos came out, the mood has been pretty sulphurous. People are pretty shocked."
torygraff
deja vu all over again
If people don’t think lying to parliament matters. Or it does, but not as much as Ukraine, etc, fine. But when Boris said there were no parties, all rules were followed, and he was angry to learn about cheese and wine events, that was a bare-faced lie. So why pretend it wasn’t.
https://twitter.com/DPJHodges/status/1528763419624603654?cxt=HHwWjICwxd-OobcqAAAA
They will get taken to the cleaners if they stick with him.
Meanwhile the cost of living crisis is really biting. Grim.
I wonder if the housing bubble is the next part to burst. It can't hold up with all the other cards falling.
Hurrah for the jubilee and monarchy.
Try again.
I also don't see what the concern might be from some EU members about going full candidate status as soon as possible. Candidate status won't mean they get admitted any time soon unless they make actual serious progress and the EU will already be pumping billions of aid into Ukraine.
Bloody sanctions.
On the flip side, did I mention I've got tickets for a football match in Paris this Saturday?
Being fined while at an event is not the same as being fined for being there. If I go to a concert and someone there is fined for taking drugs, does that mean that the concert itself was unlawful? Or that the actions of the individual fined were?
As I said down thread, the concentration of the specifics of individual events misses the wider point.
FPN = for being at the actual event. Not what you do there.
Maybe draw breath and re-consider your stance.
Somehow it has become corrupted to 'going on holiday in the UK', which in the old days I called a 'holiday'.
If not everyone at the event was fined, then no it was not for being at the event, it was for breaking the law while at the event.
The two are very different things. Its possible for one person to go an event lawfully, and someone else to do something wrong at the same event.
All seems very strange
And then...
Nothing.
Johnson makes it to the weekend and it all dies down yet again.
At a point only going on the record matters, and anonymous whinging is just a way of assuring yourself you're one of the good 'uns.
I made a right pickle of a weekend away with the other half, thinking this weekend was the bank holiday weekend, fortunately Klopp got me out of a difficult situation.
My monarchism is going to last as long as the jubilee holiday.
Plenty of reasons that could be the case. One that springs to mind immediately might be that everyone else had legal reasons to be there, so were not violating the law, but the one who was fined did not, so they were fined while nobody else was.
Plenty of other possible explanations as well. As Cyclefree eloquently explained earlier.
Even this place, Sivota in Epirus, Greece, is bloody cheap: you can get a nice three star right on the beach with a big pool for £50 a night. Or a fairly luxury apartment with balcony, pool and sea views and a lovely garden for £100, sleeps four people easily
It's nearly as complex as Ukrainians
https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/eighty-two-percent-ukrainians-oppose-territorial-concessions-poll-2022-05-24/
Surely a test in a police person's mind over a FPN should be 'what would a jury think was "reasonable" or "essential" ' in this situation given the rules.
I think I know what any jury would have made of these scenes as shown in itv photos.
Downing Street said earlier they haven't had it and they want time to read it and make up more lies before it is released.
Tonight's Panorama is starting the process of ripping the lid off the "nobody talks about this, RIGHT?" atmosphere. And once the lid is off its open season on airing shreddied pants.
Perhaps I'll take the time to re-remind my MP that he has zero chance of my vote if BoJo is still in place. Mind you he did not get it last time, either - but I'll not mention that.
Mehmet Oz
418,741 31.2%
Dave McCormick
417,759 31.1%
Kathy Barnette
330,838 24.7%
Total reported
1,341,292
Politico.com - McCormick takes Pa. Senate ballot fight to court
As of Monday evening, Mehmet Oz was leading David McCormick by fewer than 1,000 votes — well within the margin for an automatic recount in the state.
https://www.politico.com/news/2022/05/23/mccormick-oz-pennsylvania-senate-ballot-fight-court-00034570
. . . . David McCormick’s campaign filed a lawsuit Monday afternoon arguing that election officials must count mail-in and absentee ballots that lack a date on their envelope, citing a federal court order released on Friday.
McCormick and his primary opponent, Mehmet Oz, have been squabbling over whether undated ballots should be counted. The fight began late last week, after a three-judge panel on the federal 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals issued a judgment that undated ballots in a 2021 county judgeship election should be counted. . . . .
McCormick’s lawsuit, filed in state court, sues the state’s chief election official and county election boards in order to compel them to count the undated ballots that were returned on time. . . .
The 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals ruled on Friday that the state’s laws requiring ballots be dated by the voter was “immaterial” under a federal statute that originated with the Civil Rights Act of 1964 — meaning it should have no bearing over whether ballots are accepted or rejected.
But the court did not release its full formal opinion, so there has been uncertainty on how — or whether — to apply its finding to other elections aside from that 2021 judgeship contest.
The circuit court may not be the final say on the order. One of the parties in the case — David Ritter, a candidate in that judicial race — asked the court on Monday to stay its judgment, signaling that there would likely be an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.
The Pennsylvania Department of State’s guidance to counties on these ballots, issued Tuesday morning, nods toward that legal uncertainty.
“. . .[O]ut of an abundance of caution the Department advises, that those ballots should be segregated and remain segregated from all other voted ballots during the process of canvassing and tabulation.”
The department added that it anticipated that any litigation around the ballots would be “undertaken on an expedited basis.” . . . .
Talking of which see Mark Harper today. Forthright in condemnation of Boris, but suitably right wing on the things backbenchers care about to stand a good chance. I still think he's the leadership dark horse.
As for Labour and the Lib Dems: one last round on partygate this week and then move on to the economy and cost of living and stay there, relentlessly, until the next election.
Doubtless it will be wait for the Privileges Committee then.
Edit. PM the radio show. Not Big Dog himself.
Edit again.
Now caveated with "if".
Politico.com continued:
. . . . Hours after the judgment was issued Friday, McCormick’s campaign sent a letter to Pennsylvania’s 67 counties arguing that undated ballots should be tallied and requesting a hearing if election boards declined to count them. Oz’s team followed suit with its own letter to counties, making the case that they should be rejected.
Since Oz is ahead, he likely stands to benefit if fewer additional mail-in and absentee ballots are tallied. McCormick, meanwhile, has been outperforming Oz in those ballots, meaning he could gain if more of those votes are counted.
An aide for Oz did not immediately respond to a question on if the campaign plans on intervening in McCormick’s lawsuit. But in a statement issued last week, Oz campaign manager Casey Contres said “the McCormick legal team is following the Democrats’ playbook” and it “will oppose the McCormick legal team’s request that election boards ignore both Pennsylvania’s Supreme Court and state election law and accept legally rejected ballots.”
Grace Griffaton, a spokesperson for the Department of State, said Monday afternoon that there were approximately 5,400 Republican mail-in and absentee ballots left to count, but it is “likely that the estimates include rejected ballots that have not yet been recorded.” It is unclear how many undated ballots have been processed.
Before the guidance from the Department of State, some counties had already decided to count undated ballots in light of the circuit court ruling. Northampton County plans on tallying 380 undated ballots across both parties, according to The Morning Call.
Others counties are more hesitant to do so. In an email attached to McCormick’s lawsuit, an attorney for Blair County emailed lawyers representing both McCormick and Oz about the uncertainty around these ballots.
“While I do not always agree with the guidance provided by the Department of State, Bureau of Elections, and Blair County is not legally obligated to follow such guidance, I also do not believe it would be appropriate for the County to proceed without having reviewed such guidance,” Nathan Karn, the county solicitor, wrote.
SSI - It is a sign of still-lingering (some would say festering) Anglo-colonial influence, that "county solicitor" is a public position in old Pennsylvania.
One thing to realise though was that money was not locked away in a savings scheme, it went straight back into government coffers to "re-spend" as it were on other things like VIM* and missiles and benefits etc. And also, to pay for teacher pensioners at the time.
I thought governments of all colours were trying to get us to invest in pensions to suppliment or even replace the state benefit, so slagging pensioners off for actually using/receiving them is a little rich.
* (Rumpole of the Bailey)