Claire Yaxley owes her mother thousands of pounds, but has still splashed out recently on a Fitbit, an exercise bike and a trip to Butlins.
"Things are getting more difficult every single day," the single mum-of-two admitted. "And yet I'm not putting money aside, I am spending it."
New research seen by the BBC suggests 25% of people are similarly stretched, but reluctant to stop spending.
The Grant Thornton and Retail Economics report surveyed 2,000 UK adults.
Ms Yaxley, who lives near Norwich with her daughters earns around £16,000 a year through various jobs in the education sector.
She has borrowed £6,000 from her mother to help make ends meet, and knows that she should be trying to pay her back, in addition to saving a bit every month given the rising cost of living.
But she said this rarely happens, because she's prioritising spending on treats for her family after a tough few years during the pandemic.
"My income fluctuates, but when I have a bit more, I do spend it rather than save it," she said.
That has included spending £100 on a foldable exercise bike and £430 on a weekend trip to Butlins holiday resort over the school holidays.
Ms Yaxley said she does feel "guilty" for spending on non-essential items, particularly given the rising cost of petrol and food. But after two years of Covid restrictions, she feels like the family deserves it.
How this woman spends her money is her own business. I am not surprised she feels the need to spend on some very minor treats given the last few years.
I don’t get the issue.
It’s the borrowing from your parents saying you’re struggling with money then spending over £500 on bikes and holidays is taking the piss.
Are you feeling OK? There is no indication of her mum's circumstances, and £500 is about one sixth of the price of a decent pair of shoes.*
And if you don't like working class profligacy don't make a living out of it. Make like Samuel L Jackson in the final scene of Pulp Fiction.
*in the sales
Did you get your fraction the wrong way round, or do you really spend 3000 pounds on a pair of decent shoes?
TSE claims that he does.
I have a pair of boots which cost £6,000 (but not to me, I scored them on ebay for £50)
“(The UK’s) rich are still richer than the rich in most advanced economies, but everyone else – the middle class as well as the poor – are falling behind.
The squeezed middle in Britain is now 9 per cent poorer than their counterparts in France.
Low-income households in the UK are now 22 per cent (or £3,800) poorer than their French equivalents.”
Claire Yaxley owes her mother thousands of pounds, but has still splashed out recently on a Fitbit, an exercise bike and a trip to Butlins.
"Things are getting more difficult every single day," the single mum-of-two admitted. "And yet I'm not putting money aside, I am spending it."
New research seen by the BBC suggests 25% of people are similarly stretched, but reluctant to stop spending.
The Grant Thornton and Retail Economics report surveyed 2,000 UK adults.
Ms Yaxley, who lives near Norwich with her daughters earns around £16,000 a year through various jobs in the education sector.
She has borrowed £6,000 from her mother to help make ends meet, and knows that she should be trying to pay her back, in addition to saving a bit every month given the rising cost of living.
But she said this rarely happens, because she's prioritising spending on treats for her family after a tough few years during the pandemic.
"My income fluctuates, but when I have a bit more, I do spend it rather than save it," she said.
That has included spending £100 on a foldable exercise bike and £430 on a weekend trip to Butlins holiday resort over the school holidays.
Ms Yaxley said she does feel "guilty" for spending on non-essential items, particularly given the rising cost of petrol and food. But after two years of Covid restrictions, she feels like the family deserves it.
How this woman spends her money is her own business. I am not surprised she feels the need to spend on some very minor treats given the last few years.
I don’t get the issue.
It’s the borrowing from your parents saying you’re struggling with money then spending over £500 on bikes and holidays is taking the piss.
Are you feeling OK? There is no indication of her mum's circumstances, and £500 is about one sixth of the price of a decent pair of shoes.*
And if you don't like working class profligacy don't make a living out of it. Make like Samuel L Jackson in the final scene of Pulp Fiction.
*in the sales
Did you get your fraction the wrong way round, or do you really spend 3000 pounds on a pair of decent shoes?
I did wonder a little bit, but one never knows on PB, and at least one other poster does like his footwear, so why not? But quite right to check. My own shoes do tend to cost about £80.
With my hindsight vision enabled, personally I would have basically done very little to halt COVID in the UK. I have now come to realise that the old people for whom we burned through £400bn to save the lives are bunch of ungrateful bastards and will continue to screw every last penny out of working age people until they die. If a few hundred thousand extra had snuffed it then it would have solved the care crisis, the NHS crisis, pensions overhang and freed up hundreds of thousands of homes for working age people, and we wouldn't have spent £400bn to keep them alive. My generation and my daughter's generation wouldn't be facing decades of high taxes for it and we'd have a lot of fiscal headroom.
If they weren't so ungrateful I'd maybe feel differently about it, but all I see is the old wankers we ruined two years of our lives for, spend £400bn on saving rinse generations below them for all we're worth so they can live forever with their hands in our pockets.
If your life was 'ruined' by the Covid rules for two years, then I'd argue it might be a problem with your 'life'. The Covid restrictions were sh*t, but there was still lots to do. True, it might not be quite what you would ordinarily do, but there was still stuff to do. Heck, I had a five/six-year old to homeschool, and I don't appear to have found it as a challenging as you.
And if it saved a few hundred thousand people (not just oldies either), then fair enough. Especially for the first lockdown, where we were unsure what the heck we were facing. Sometimes you just have to knuckle down and get on with things.
I really don't understand how you can say your life was 'ruined'. And before you say, I like going out. I like doing things. I like visiting places. But when I could not do these, I adapted. I even found some new things I enjoyed.
I'm actually quite an insular person. My favourite hobbies are things like knitting and walking, which weren't affected by lockdown. I expected to sail through it. There were a few jokes along the lines of, "this is what we've been training for."
But it really was monumentally awful. I find it so much harder to leave the house at all now. And I was lucky in where I spent my lockdowns and with whom. I don't think it does to underestimate the sacrifice made.
And then there really should be a quid pro quo for such sacrifices, given the age profile of who the disease killed. But Max is right. Not only did the young give up their freedom to save the old, they're now being expected to pay for the privilege.
I don't go as far as Max and day that I'd kill all the old if I had my time in the pandemic over again. But I can't disagree that the old are talking the piss.
I'm sorry you went through that, but my argument is with use of the word 'ruined'. The people whose lives were ruined were those who died, or who lost loved ones. Max, you and I still have our lives.
As an aside, we were blooming lucky during this pandemic in one regard: it did not affect the young as much. Imagine how much more hideous it would have been if the ambulances had been filled with people under 18, rather than those over 50.
Utter bollocks.
Deaths are natural, especially deaths of the sick, infirm and old which is who Covid targetted.
There are fates worse than death. There are actions worse than death.
Covid restrictions like closing schools harmed the education of children, many of them will never get the opportunity to get that back.
I'm lucky my children were young. Lockdown measures greatly restricted their education, but they've got a chance to catch that up. I've been working hard with my girls, as have their school, to catch up on the disruption but many don't have that opportunity. Disrupted education could be affecting people's lives for the rest of their life, for decades to come. Some people will live with that for the next seventy or eighty years.
That is far worse than someone in their 80s or 90s reaching the end of their natural life, from natural causes, which is what Covid is.
If we'd allowed Covid to take its course and put £400bn into education etc instead of keeping the extremely old and vulnerable alive a little bit longer while closing schools, then the country would be far better off for it. Harsh but true.
I would argue that your position lacks compassion, humanity and even common sense.
You are utterly wrong on this, but I doubt I will convince you, or you will convince me.
I would argue that I have more compassion for children and their future than I do for those in their 80s and 90s who have lived their lives to the full anyway already.
I think that is the common sense and humane position too.
Fucking over children in order to help those who have already lived their lives, is not common sense, and it is not humane.
As I said, lacking compassion, humanity and common sense.
I need to caveat this a little. My own view is that the March 2020 lockdown was utterly necessary. We knew very little about how this little bu**er acted, how we could protect ourselves, and what its long-term consequences were.
The lockdowns up to and including January 2021 were also probably justified. We knew more about the virus, but not enough vaccine doses had been given to justify relaxing them. We can argue about them. And Starmer was utterly wrong for wanting more restrictions late last year. But IMV the March 2020 one was utterly unavoidable.
Now, why do I think your position lacks common sense? Because even before the lockdown on March 23rd 2020, people were locking themselves down. Many companies had already started WfH. Without 'official' lockdowns, and more would have rapidly happened. And it would have been utterly disorganised and potentially much more harmful to the economy.
Worse, kids would have been affected. We all would have been affected. If the hospitals were swamped with Covid patients (not just the oldies you hate) and you - or your children - got ill, then you may not get the help you need. The health service would have broken down. You would be gambling that no-one you loved would get ill.
The only 'solution' to this would have been quite evil: to reduce the strain on the NHS by not treating oldies.
I've read his comments and I don't agree that they're lacking in compassion, humanity and common sense.
Fair enough. I guess you're not old, or don't expect to get old?
Why do only old people matter?
Why don't young people matter?
I would jump in front of a bus to save my children. Instead we threw our children under the bus to "save" those at the end of their life, from natural deaths.
Who said only old people matter? Who said young people do not matter? Young people got sick with Covid as well. In March 2020 we had zero idea what the long-term consequences of the disease were going to be. And as I've pointed out, there were plenty of ways in which young people could become ill and suffer under your brave new word.
Here is another one: my parents did not die. Because of that, my son has had them for a couple of years longer than might be the case. He is forming memories with them, which would not have happened if they had become ill and died. If they had died, he would have been absolutely devastated.
Screwing schools over for two years, not one term, said that young people don't matter.
Loading £400bn of debt onto our children's shoulders said that young people don't matter.
Sweden did the right thing without having lockdown. We screwed up. I made a mistake supporting what we did, for that I apologise.
Sweden did not do the right thing at all. In comparison to its similar neighbours - Finland and Norway - it had a disastrously bad pandemic. If we had followed the Swedish example it would have been catastrophic.
The notion Sweden had a bad pandemic depends upon what you choose to measure.
Based on what I choose to measure, Sweden had a far better pandemic than its neighbours.
Well you are happy killing off large numbers of people just to maintain your standard of living so I hardly think your view can be taken as a balanced one.
I'm not happy "killing off" anyone. I'm not proposing Logan's Run.
I accept the fact people die of natural causes. That's just natural.
That article suffers a bit from the Grauniad's old problem. "It was caught on his body-worn video."
To be serious for a minute, from what I've read the body cameras have changed policing. They both protect the police from the public, and the public from the police.
Your point being?
Body-worn cameras are a good thing IMO. They help police disprove false accusations against them ("the officer hit me!), and also help prove when officers do something wrong, meaning they are less likely to do something idiotic like hitting a suspect.
Agree totally. By why the kick at Guardian, in this instance?
(Snip)
What's a 'body worn video.' ? I think they must have left the word 'camera' off the end of the sentence, both in the main text and the picture caption.
Yep, there will be issues with police trying to cheat the system. But if that happens, and a suspect accuses them of something, it sort-of makes them look a little bit more guilty, doesn't it?
True. But may also ensure that key evidence never sees the light of day.
Which generally results is large monetary damages paid out by governments > taxpayers (as is gonna happen here in Seattle due to erasure of key texts by Mayor and Police Chief) but the actual culprits get off the hook with respect to civil AND criminal liability,
“Having almost caught up with the economies of France and Germany from the 1990s to the mid-2000s, the UK’s productivity gap with them has almost tripled since 2008 from 6 per cent to 16 per cent…
…weak growth is the reason real wages saw no growth over ten years in the 2010s, having grown by an average of 33 per cent a decade from 1970 to 2007.”
George Osborne. Plan A. Insert Ed Balls' flatline hand gesture here.
For example, buying with a credit card gives you infinitely more protection via Section 75 than a debit card.
The entirety of capitalism is predicated on the idea of debt being good. Anyone who thinks it's evil is a Communist or a Muslim.
Eh?
The entirety of capitalism is predicated on the idea of debt being good. Because capitalism is about making money off lending/investments.
Anyone who thinks it's evil is a Communist or a Muslim. Debt is not generally seen as an evil except people who have strong ideological or religious reasons to hate it. E.g. Communists or Muslims.
For example, buying with a credit card gives you infinitely more protection via Section 75 than a debit card.
The entirety of capitalism is predicated on the idea of debt being good. Anyone who thinks it's evil is a Communist or a Muslim.
Eh?
The entirety of capitalism is predicated on the idea of debt being good. Because capitalism is about making money off lending/investments.
Anyone who thinks it's evil is a Communist or a Muslim. Debt is not generally seen as an evil except people who have strong ideological or religious reasons to hate it. E.g. Communists or Muslims.
I don't know what was hard to understand in that?
Just because you say something, doesn't mean it's true.
With my hindsight vision enabled, personally I would have basically done very little to halt COVID in the UK. I have now come to realise that the old people for whom we burned through £400bn to save the lives are bunch of ungrateful bastards and will continue to screw every last penny out of working age people until they die. If a few hundred thousand extra had snuffed it then it would have solved the care crisis, the NHS crisis, pensions overhang and freed up hundreds of thousands of homes for working age people, and we wouldn't have spent £400bn to keep them alive. My generation and my daughter's generation wouldn't be facing decades of high taxes for it and we'd have a lot of fiscal headroom.
If they weren't so ungrateful I'd maybe feel differently about it, but all I see is the old wankers we ruined two years of our lives for, spend £400bn on saving rinse generations below them for all we're worth so they can live forever with their hands in our pockets.
If your life was 'ruined' by the Covid rules for two years, then I'd argue it might be a problem with your 'life'. The Covid restrictions were sh*t, but there was still lots to do. True, it might not be quite what you would ordinarily do, but there was still stuff to do. Heck, I had a five/six-year old to homeschool, and I don't appear to have found it as a challenging as you.
And if it saved a few hundred thousand people (not just oldies either), then fair enough. Especially for the first lockdown, where we were unsure what the heck we were facing. Sometimes you just have to knuckle down and get on with things.
I really don't understand how you can say your life was 'ruined'. And before you say, I like going out. I like doing things. I like visiting places. But when I could not do these, I adapted. I even found some new things I enjoyed.
I'm actually quite an insular person. My favourite hobbies are things like knitting and walking, which weren't affected by lockdown. I expected to sail through it. There were a few jokes along the lines of, "this is what we've been training for."
But it really was monumentally awful. I find it so much harder to leave the house at all now. And I was lucky in where I spent my lockdowns and with whom. I don't think it does to underestimate the sacrifice made.
And then there really should be a quid pro quo for such sacrifices, given the age profile of who the disease killed. But Max is right. Not only did the young give up their freedom to save the old, they're now being expected to pay for the privilege.
I don't go as far as Max and day that I'd kill all the old if I had my time in the pandemic over again. But I can't disagree that the old are talking the piss.
I'm sorry you went through that, but my argument is with use of the word 'ruined'. The people whose lives were ruined were those who died, or who lost loved ones. Max, you and I still have our lives.
As an aside, we were blooming lucky during this pandemic in one regard: it did not affect the young as much. Imagine how much more hideous it would have been if the ambulances had been filled with people under 18, rather than those over 50.
Utter bollocks.
Deaths are natural, especially deaths of the sick, infirm and old which is who Covid targetted.
There are fates worse than death. There are actions worse than death.
Covid restrictions like closing schools harmed the education of children, many of them will never get the opportunity to get that back.
I'm lucky my children were young. Lockdown measures greatly restricted their education, but they've got a chance to catch that up. I've been working hard with my girls, as have their school, to catch up on the disruption but many don't have that opportunity. Disrupted education could be affecting people's lives for the rest of their life, for decades to come. Some people will live with that for the next seventy or eighty years.
That is far worse than someone in their 80s or 90s reaching the end of their natural life, from natural causes, which is what Covid is.
If we'd allowed Covid to take its course and put £400bn into education etc instead of keeping the extremely old and vulnerable alive a little bit longer while closing schools, then the country would be far better off for it. Harsh but true.
I would argue that your position lacks compassion, humanity and even common sense.
You are utterly wrong on this, but I doubt I will convince you, or you will convince me.
I would argue that I have more compassion for children and their future than I do for those in their 80s and 90s who have lived their lives to the full anyway already.
I think that is the common sense and humane position too.
Fucking over children in order to help those who have already lived their lives, is not common sense, and it is not humane.
As I said, lacking compassion, humanity and common sense.
I need to caveat this a little. My own view is that the March 2020 lockdown was utterly necessary. We knew very little about how this little bu**er acted, how we could protect ourselves, and what its long-term consequences were.
The lockdowns up to and including January 2021 were also probably justified. We knew more about the virus, but not enough vaccine doses had been given to justify relaxing them. We can argue about them. And Starmer was utterly wrong for wanting more restrictions late last year. But IMV the March 2020 one was utterly unavoidable.
Now, why do I think your position lacks common sense? Because even before the lockdown on March 23rd 2020, people were locking themselves down. Many companies had already started WfH. Without 'official' lockdowns, and more would have rapidly happened. And it would have been utterly disorganised and potentially much more harmful to the economy.
Worse, kids would have been affected. We all would have been affected. If the hospitals were swamped with Covid patients (not just the oldies you hate) and you - or your children - got ill, then you may not get the help you need. The health service would have broken down. You would be gambling that no-one you loved would get ill.
The only 'solution' to this would have been quite evil: to reduce the strain on the NHS by not treating oldies.
I've read his comments and I don't agree that they're lacking in compassion, humanity and common sense.
Fair enough. I guess you're not old, or don't expect to get old?
Why do only old people matter?
Why don't young people matter?
I would jump in front of a bus to save my children. Instead we threw our children under the bus to "save" those at the end of their life, from natural deaths.
Who said only old people matter? Who said young people do not matter? Young people got sick with Covid as well. In March 2020 we had zero idea what the long-term consequences of the disease were going to be. And as I've pointed out, there were plenty of ways in which young people could become ill and suffer under your brave new word.
Here is another one: my parents did not die. Because of that, my son has had them for a couple of years longer than might be the case. He is forming memories with them, which would not have happened if they had become ill and died. If they had died, he would have been absolutely devastated.
Screwing schools over for two years, not one term, said that young people don't matter.
Loading £400bn of debt onto our children's shoulders said that young people don't matter.
Sweden did the right thing without having lockdown. We screwed up. I made a mistake supporting what we did, for that I apologise.
Sweden did not do the right thing at all. In comparison to its similar neighbours - Finland and Norway - it had a disastrously bad pandemic. If we had followed the Swedish example it would have been catastrophic.
The notion Sweden had a bad pandemic depends upon what you choose to measure.
Based on what I choose to measure, Sweden had a far better pandemic than its neighbours.
Well you are happy killing off large numbers of people just to maintain your standard of living so I hardly think your view can be taken as a balanced one.
I'm not happy "killing off" anyone. I'm not proposing Logan's Run.
I accept the fact people die of natural causes. That's just natural.
Logan's Run was natural in the sense that the drugs and the syringe were made of 100% natural elements.
For example, buying with a credit card gives you infinitely more protection via Section 75 than a debit card.
The entirety of capitalism is predicated on the idea of debt being good. Anyone who thinks it's evil is a Communist or a Muslim.
Eh?
The entirety of capitalism is predicated on the idea of debt being good. Because capitalism is about making money off lending/investments.
Anyone who thinks it's evil is a Communist or a Muslim. Debt is not generally seen as an evil except people who have strong ideological or religious reasons to hate it. E.g. Communists or Muslims.
I don't know what was hard to understand in that?
Just because you say something, doesn't mean it's true.
So you disagree? Fine, I'm happy to listen to counterarguments. But "Eh?" wasn't exactly a good way of expressing that. I took it to mean you didn't understand what I was saying.
With my hindsight vision enabled, personally I would have basically done very little to halt COVID in the UK. I have now come to realise that the old people for whom we burned through £400bn to save the lives are bunch of ungrateful bastards and will continue to screw every last penny out of working age people until they die. If a few hundred thousand extra had snuffed it then it would have solved the care crisis, the NHS crisis, pensions overhang and freed up hundreds of thousands of homes for working age people, and we wouldn't have spent £400bn to keep them alive. My generation and my daughter's generation wouldn't be facing decades of high taxes for it and we'd have a lot of fiscal headroom.
If they weren't so ungrateful I'd maybe feel differently about it, but all I see is the old wankers we ruined two years of our lives for, spend £400bn on saving rinse generations below them for all we're worth so they can live forever with their hands in our pockets.
If your life was 'ruined' by the Covid rules for two years, then I'd argue it might be a problem with your 'life'. The Covid restrictions were sh*t, but there was still lots to do. True, it might not be quite what you would ordinarily do, but there was still stuff to do. Heck, I had a five/six-year old to homeschool, and I don't appear to have found it as a challenging as you.
And if it saved a few hundred thousand people (not just oldies either), then fair enough. Especially for the first lockdown, where we were unsure what the heck we were facing. Sometimes you just have to knuckle down and get on with things.
I really don't understand how you can say your life was 'ruined'. And before you say, I like going out. I like doing things. I like visiting places. But when I could not do these, I adapted. I even found some new things I enjoyed.
I'm actually quite an insular person. My favourite hobbies are things like knitting and walking, which weren't affected by lockdown. I expected to sail through it. There were a few jokes along the lines of, "this is what we've been training for."
But it really was monumentally awful. I find it so much harder to leave the house at all now. And I was lucky in where I spent my lockdowns and with whom. I don't think it does to underestimate the sacrifice made.
And then there really should be a quid pro quo for such sacrifices, given the age profile of who the disease killed. But Max is right. Not only did the young give up their freedom to save the old, they're now being expected to pay for the privilege.
I don't go as far as Max and day that I'd kill all the old if I had my time in the pandemic over again. But I can't disagree that the old are talking the piss.
I'm sorry you went through that, but my argument is with use of the word 'ruined'. The people whose lives were ruined were those who died, or who lost loved ones. Max, you and I still have our lives.
As an aside, we were blooming lucky during this pandemic in one regard: it did not affect the young as much. Imagine how much more hideous it would have been if the ambulances had been filled with people under 18, rather than those over 50.
Utter bollocks.
Deaths are natural, especially deaths of the sick, infirm and old which is who Covid targetted.
There are fates worse than death. There are actions worse than death.
Covid restrictions like closing schools harmed the education of children, many of them will never get the opportunity to get that back.
I'm lucky my children were young. Lockdown measures greatly restricted their education, but they've got a chance to catch that up. I've been working hard with my girls, as have their school, to catch up on the disruption but many don't have that opportunity. Disrupted education could be affecting people's lives for the rest of their life, for decades to come. Some people will live with that for the next seventy or eighty years.
That is far worse than someone in their 80s or 90s reaching the end of their natural life, from natural causes, which is what Covid is.
If we'd allowed Covid to take its course and put £400bn into education etc instead of keeping the extremely old and vulnerable alive a little bit longer while closing schools, then the country would be far better off for it. Harsh but true.
I would argue that your position lacks compassion, humanity and even common sense.
You are utterly wrong on this, but I doubt I will convince you, or you will convince me.
I would argue that I have more compassion for children and their future than I do for those in their 80s and 90s who have lived their lives to the full anyway already.
I think that is the common sense and humane position too.
Fucking over children in order to help those who have already lived their lives, is not common sense, and it is not humane.
As I said, lacking compassion, humanity and common sense.
I need to caveat this a little. My own view is that the March 2020 lockdown was utterly necessary. We knew very little about how this little bu**er acted, how we could protect ourselves, and what its long-term consequences were.
The lockdowns up to and including January 2021 were also probably justified. We knew more about the virus, but not enough vaccine doses had been given to justify relaxing them. We can argue about them. And Starmer was utterly wrong for wanting more restrictions late last year. But IMV the March 2020 one was utterly unavoidable.
Now, why do I think your position lacks common sense? Because even before the lockdown on March 23rd 2020, people were locking themselves down. Many companies had already started WfH. Without 'official' lockdowns, and more would have rapidly happened. And it would have been utterly disorganised and potentially much more harmful to the economy.
Worse, kids would have been affected. We all would have been affected. If the hospitals were swamped with Covid patients (not just the oldies you hate) and you - or your children - got ill, then you may not get the help you need. The health service would have broken down. You would be gambling that no-one you loved would get ill.
The only 'solution' to this would have been quite evil: to reduce the strain on the NHS by not treating oldies.
I've read his comments and I don't agree that they're lacking in compassion, humanity and common sense.
Fair enough. I guess you're not old, or don't expect to get old?
Why do only old people matter?
Why don't young people matter?
I would jump in front of a bus to save my children. Instead we threw our children under the bus to "save" those at the end of their life, from natural deaths.
Who said only old people matter? Who said young people do not matter? Young people got sick with Covid as well. In March 2020 we had zero idea what the long-term consequences of the disease were going to be. And as I've pointed out, there were plenty of ways in which young people could become ill and suffer under your brave new word.
Here is another one: my parents did not die. Because of that, my son has had them for a couple of years longer than might be the case. He is forming memories with them, which would not have happened if they had become ill and died. If they had died, he would have been absolutely devastated.
Screwing schools over for two years, not one term, said that young people don't matter.
Loading £400bn of debt onto our children's shoulders said that young people don't matter.
Sweden did the right thing without having lockdown. We screwed up. I made a mistake supporting what we did, for that I apologise.
Sweden did not do the right thing at all. In comparison to its similar neighbours - Finland and Norway - it had a disastrously bad pandemic. If we had followed the Swedish example it would have been catastrophic.
The notion Sweden had a bad pandemic depends upon what you choose to measure.
Based on what I choose to measure, Sweden had a far better pandemic than its neighbours.
Well you are happy killing off large numbers of people just to maintain your standard of living so I hardly think your view can be taken as a balanced one.
I'm not happy "killing off" anyone. I'm not proposing Logan's Run.
I accept the fact people die of natural causes. That's just natural.
For example, buying with a credit card gives you infinitely more protection via Section 75 than a debit card.
The entirety of capitalism is predicated on the idea of debt being good. Anyone who thinks it's evil is a Communist or a Muslim.
Eh?
The entirety of capitalism is predicated on the idea of debt being good. Because capitalism is about making money off lending/investments.
Anyone who thinks it's evil is a Communist or a Muslim. Debt is not generally seen as an evil except people who have strong ideological or religious reasons to hate it. E.g. Communists or Muslims.
I don't know what was hard to understand in that?
Just because you say something, doesn't mean it's true.
For example, buying with a credit card gives you infinitely more protection via Section 75 than a debit card.
The entirety of capitalism is predicated on the idea of debt being good. Anyone who thinks it's evil is a Communist or a Muslim.
Eh?
The entirety of capitalism is predicated on the idea of debt being good. Because capitalism is about making money off lending/investments.
Anyone who thinks it's evil is a Communist or a Muslim. Debt is not generally seen as an evil except people who have strong ideological or religious reasons to hate it. E.g. Communists or Muslims.
I don't know what was hard to understand in that?
Just because you say something, doesn't mean it's true.
So you disagree? Fine, I'm happy to listen to counterarguments. But "Eh?" wasn't exactly a good way of expressing that. I took it to mean you didn't understand what I was saying.
Well, shall we start with agreeing what debt is?
Debt and saving are opposite sides of the same coin. You cannot having saving without debt. Because saving is someone choosing not to consume now, because they wish to consume in the future. And debt is someone choosing to consume now, on the proviso that they will hand over some portion of their economic output in the future.
Debt and saving are mechanisms for the time transfer of work.
Christ alive the Penny hate is reaching red alert levels
Daniel Moylan says that when Penny Mordaunt was hired to be Head of Communications for Kensington and Chelsea Council he had to fire her because “she was incompetent… she couldn’t do the job”.
Christ alive the Penny hate is reaching red alert levels
Daniel Moylan says that when Penny Mordaunt was hired to be Head of Communications for Kensington and Chelsea Council he had to fire her because “she was incompetent… she couldn’t do the job”.
For example, buying with a credit card gives you infinitely more protection via Section 75 than a debit card.
The entirety of capitalism is predicated on the idea of debt being good. Anyone who thinks it's evil is a Communist or a Muslim.
Eh?
The entirety of capitalism is predicated on the idea of debt being good. Because capitalism is about making money off lending/investments.
Anyone who thinks it's evil is a Communist or a Muslim. Debt is not generally seen as an evil except people who have strong ideological or religious reasons to hate it. E.g. Communists or Muslims.
I don't know what was hard to understand in that?
Just because you say something, doesn't mean it's true.
So you disagree? Fine, I'm happy to listen to counterarguments. But "Eh?" wasn't exactly a good way of expressing that. I took it to mean you didn't understand what I was saying.
Well, shall we start with agreeing what debt is?
Debt and saving are opposite sides of the same coin. You cannot having saving without debt. Because saving is someone choosing not to consume now, because they wish to consume in the future. And debt is someone choosing to consume now, on the proviso that they will hand over some portion of their economic output in the future.
Debt and saving are mechanisms for the time transfer of work.
Well, look at Rishi. two months ago we were all thinking the non dom shit n stuff was him finished, 8 weeks later all forgotten and he is the one to beat for the top job. Who was this Pincher guy anyway?
1. Income is over-taxed. Wealth is under-taxed. Investment and competition is under-incentivised. Rentierism and monopoly is over-incentivised.
2. UK is already one of the most deregulated economies in the OECD, so it seems likely doing more of that, in itself, is not the answer.
I would tend to agree with that. We want to encourage work, not discourage it. And we want to encourage the efficient allocation of capital.
A modest wealth tax - or as I prefer, a Gross Assets Levy - would be a good thing.
Do we? Work is a means to an end. I think we generally work too much, so "encouraging" it feels like the wrong direction.
Yes.
People who don't work are massively more likely to suffer from depression, ill health, etc.
Work means routine. And humans thrive on routine. It's not for nothing that we say that routine is the spice of life.
Have you established a causal link there? Because it's just as true to say that people who suffer from depression, ill health, etc are massively less likely to work. I can point to a causal explanation for that, and point to confounding variables like age.
For example, buying with a credit card gives you infinitely more protection via Section 75 than a debit card.
I pretty much all my card transactions are on credit card primarily for those reasons and the fact that I get squillions of rewards with my cards.
For example I get £400 pounds worth of Nectar Points each year.
But I concede I was harsh on that woman.
In addition to that (Nectar, M&S points, etc) I also use 0% cards and 0%, no fee balance transfer cards to borrow money foc. When interest rates were previously around 5 - 6% I was borrowing around £100,000 using these cards so earning £5K interest using other peoples money. The more I took out the better my credit rating seemed to get.
It's trad that Balthasar was black. I have slept 6 to a bed with perfect strangers in Pyrenean mountain huts. Not taking your crown off to go to bed is the only noteworthy thing I am seeing there
What goes on in Pyrenean mountain huts stays in Pyrenean mountain huts.
Multiplicity of Tory leadership debates strikes yours truly as truly good thing, for Tories.
While party members, pundits (pungent, PB or otherwise) may complain re: breath & depth of field, they cannot IMHO claim they did not have opportunity to hear & evaluate the candidates and their views, despite the very short time frame for the MP top two process.
Of course also creates opportunities for Labour, Lib Dems, SNP and PC (plus rising threat of extreme Cornish nationalism) to seize upon what is said to beat the next PM and Tory Party about the head and shoulders. But them's the breaks.
On balance, a plus for Conservative Party. Rare right now, and all the more valuable for that.
For example, buying with a credit card gives you infinitely more protection via Section 75 than a debit card.
I pretty much all my card transactions are on credit card primarily for those reasons and the fact that I get squillions of rewards with my cards.
For example I get £400 pounds worth of Nectar Points each year.
But I concede I was harsh on that woman.
Sounds like you'd be (and perhaps actually are) good at giving good advice re: credit & debt to those who need it?
By coincidence, was just reading about Jesse Jones, legendary Texas businessman and key player in FDR's New Deal (though JJ was never himself a New Dealer) who made his fortune, created modern Houston (for better or worse, mostly former) AND helped save capitalism in America (no joke).
His entire career was based on super-intelligent use of credit.
For example, buying with a credit card gives you infinitely more protection via Section 75 than a debit card.
I pretty much all my card transactions are on credit card primarily for those reasons and the fact that I get squillions of rewards with my cards.
For example I get £400 pounds worth of Nectar Points each year.
But I concede I was harsh on that woman.
Humble brag....
Nah, most of those Nectar points were pre plague work expenses.
Plus remember in those days I was getting Nectar points on TPE, Virgin/Avanti Trains, and LNER trains, with bonus offers, at times the train tickets almost became free.
Wealth has grown from 3x to 8x national GDP since the 1980s, but wealth taxes haven’t moved.
Do you have those figures with primary residence equity removed? I mean, equity is real money, but it would be useful to have both sets of figures to see how much is house price inflation…
Spoke to work and they're happy for people to bring family members in on Monday and Tuesday to hang out in our lovely AC office space. My wife and daughter are set to Uber their way in at 10ish and we're setting up a few meeting rooms that already have sofas and TVs for family members who are escaping the heat.
I think I'm very lucky to have an employer who cares about it's people so much because they could easily have said no, but instead they've allocated a bunch of meeting rooms and given us from 8am to 10am to organise them for people to hang out in.
For example, buying with a credit card gives you infinitely more protection via Section 75 than a debit card.
The entirety of capitalism is predicated on the idea of debt being good. Anyone who thinks it's evil is a Communist or a Muslim.
Eh?
The entirety of capitalism is predicated on the idea of debt being good. Because capitalism is about making money off lending/investments.
Anyone who thinks it's evil is a Communist or a Muslim. Debt is not generally seen as an evil except people who have strong ideological or religious reasons to hate it. E.g. Communists or Muslims.
I don't know what was hard to understand in that?
Just because you say something, doesn't mean it's true.
So you disagree? Fine, I'm happy to listen to counterarguments. But "Eh?" wasn't exactly a good way of expressing that. I took it to mean you didn't understand what I was saying.
Well, shall we start with agreeing what debt is?
Debt and saving are opposite sides of the same coin. You cannot having saving without debt. Because saving is someone choosing not to consume now, because they wish to consume in the future. And debt is someone choosing to consume now, on the proviso that they will hand over some portion of their economic output in the future.
Debt and saving are mechanisms for the time transfer of work.
And are therefore the "time transfer of work" is monetised and becomes a commodity to be traded, and hence intrinsic to capitalism.
It's trad that Balthasar was black. I have slept 6 to a bed with perfect strangers in Pyrenean mountain huts. Not taking your crown off to go to bed is the only noteworthy thing I am seeing there
What goes on in Pyrenean mountain huts stays in Pyrenean mountain huts.
Notion that people together in a bed MUST be there for something other than sleep, is product of 20th century.
Most ludicrous example: fact that Abraham Lincoln often shared a bed with other lawyers while touring the judicial circuit in frontier Illinois, is taken as proof-positive that he (and they) were gay.
When alternate explanation - that beds were in rather short supply, and that sharing was preferable to sleeping on the floor - is just a wee bit more likely.
Claire Yaxley owes her mother thousands of pounds, but has still splashed out recently on a Fitbit, an exercise bike and a trip to Butlins.
"Things are getting more difficult every single day," the single mum-of-two admitted. "And yet I'm not putting money aside, I am spending it."
New research seen by the BBC suggests 25% of people are similarly stretched, but reluctant to stop spending.
The Grant Thornton and Retail Economics report surveyed 2,000 UK adults.
Ms Yaxley, who lives near Norwich with her daughters earns around £16,000 a year through various jobs in the education sector.
She has borrowed £6,000 from her mother to help make ends meet, and knows that she should be trying to pay her back, in addition to saving a bit every month given the rising cost of living.
But she said this rarely happens, because she's prioritising spending on treats for her family after a tough few years during the pandemic.
"My income fluctuates, but when I have a bit more, I do spend it rather than save it," she said.
That has included spending £100 on a foldable exercise bike and £430 on a weekend trip to Butlins holiday resort over the school holidays.
Ms Yaxley said she does feel "guilty" for spending on non-essential items, particularly given the rising cost of petrol and food. But after two years of Covid restrictions, she feels like the family deserves it.
How this woman spends her money is her own business. I am not surprised she feels the need to spend on some very minor treats given the last few years.
I don’t get the issue.
It’s the borrowing from your parents saying you’re struggling with money then spending over £500 on bikes and holidays is taking the piss.
Are you feeling OK? There is no indication of her mum's circumstances, and £500 is about one sixth of the price of a decent pair of shoes.*
And if you don't like working class profligacy don't make a living out of it. Make like Samuel L Jackson in the final scene of Pulp Fiction.
*in the sales
Did you get your fraction the wrong way round, or do you really spend 3000 pounds on a pair of decent shoes?
TSE claims that he does.
I have a pair of boots which cost £6,000 (but not to me, I scored them on ebay for £50)
Christ alive the Penny hate is reaching red alert levels
Daniel Moylan says that when Penny Mordaunt was hired to be Head of Communications for Kensington and Chelsea Council he had to fire her because “she was incompetent… she couldn’t do the job”.
I thought Penny Mordaunt came across well in her interview . The attacks on her by Moylan and Frost make me warm to her more given those attacking her are loathsome characters .
And if she pisses off the Daily Mail that’s another plus .
The entirety of capitalism is predicated on the idea of debt being good. Anyone who thinks it's evil is a Communist or a Muslim.
Eh?
The entirety of capitalism is predicated on the idea of debt being good. Because capitalism is about making money off lending/investments.
Anyone who thinks it's evil is a Communist or a Muslim. Debt is not generally seen as an evil except people who have strong ideological or religious reasons to hate it. E.g. Communists or Muslims.
I don't know what was hard to understand in that? So how come it is always socialist governments that end up defaulting on their debt?
The entirety of capitalism is predicated on the idea of debt being good. Anyone who thinks it's evil is a Communist or a Muslim.
Eh?
FAROOQ - The entirety of capitalism is predicated on the idea of debt being good. Because capitalism is about making money off lending/investments.
Anyone who thinks it's evil is a Communist or a Muslim. Debt is not generally seen as an evil except people who have strong ideological or religious reasons to hate it. E.g. Communists or Muslims.
I don't know what was hard to understand in that?
NOA - So how come it is always socialist governments that end up defaulting on their debt?
SSI - Philip II of Spain (Queen Mary's hubby) was a socialist?
Or maybe a communist, seeing he was a serial defaulter: 1557, 1560, 1569, 1575, and 1596.
For example, buying with a credit card gives you infinitely more protection via Section 75 than a debit card.
The entirety of capitalism is predicated on the idea of debt being good. Anyone who thinks it's evil is a Communist or a Muslim.
Eh?
The entirety of capitalism is predicated on the idea of debt being good. Because capitalism is about making money off lending/investments.
Anyone who thinks it's evil is a Communist or a Muslim. Debt is not generally seen as an evil except people who have strong ideological or religious reasons to hate it. E.g. Communists or Muslims.
I don't know what was hard to understand in that?
So how come it is always socialist governments which default on their debt? If they hate debt, why do they borrow so much?
"280 people BURNED to death - basically - as they race from their homes, pets shrieking in pain as their adorable eyes MELT
TENS of THOUSANDS expected to DIE as extreme brutal ravaging temperatures STALK THE LANDS LIKE A DRUNKEN GORGON
Billions of hectares of fertile land INCINERATED. Savage spires of flame eating up entire countries like huge golden cathedrals of Satan with jaws the size of Portugal and even bigger than that
DOGS ON THE MOON
Diane Abbot EXPLODES. Orgasmo-furnaces in HELL. AYYYYYYYYDEATHDEATH ahahahaha DEATH"
Then military training should extend to looking at the weather forecast and the state of the grass.
Sometimes military necessity outweighs such concerns.
In Peacetime? On Salibury plain?
There is a small war going on. You may have seen something in the news about it. We are training some of the soldiers fighting in it. See my link above.
Imagine telling a Ukrainian recruit that we are stopping their training because the grass is too dry.
The alternative was to stop it because everything around them had caught fire...... Great military minds......
The entirety of capitalism is predicated on the idea of debt being good. Anyone who thinks it's evil is a Communist or a Muslim.
Eh?
The entirety of capitalism is predicated on the idea of debt being good. Because capitalism is about making money off lending/investments.
Anyone who thinks it's evil is a Communist or a Muslim. Debt is not generally seen as an evil except people who have strong ideological or religious reasons to hate it. E.g. Communists or Muslims.
I don't know what was hard to understand in that?
So how come it is always socialist governments that end up defaulting on their debt?
Philip II of Spain (Queen Mary's hubby) was a socialist?
Or maybe a communist, seeing he was a serial defaulter: 1557, 1560, 1569, 1575, and 1596.
Exactly what I was trying to say, though I would also add the rather more recent Charles Stuart. Vanilla got in the way with the blockquotes ...
And, I see on checking ,also a number of Yoo-nited States, most recently Arkansas in 1933. Obvs raving commies the lot.
1. Income is over-taxed. Wealth is under-taxed. Investment and competition is under-incentivised. Rentierism and monopoly is over-incentivised.
2. UK is already one of the most deregulated economies in the OECD, so it seems likely doing more of that, in itself, is not the answer.
I would tend to agree with that. We want to encourage work, not discourage it. And we want to encourage the efficient allocation of capital.
A modest wealth tax - or as I prefer, a Gross Assets Levy - would be a good thing.
Do we? Work is a means to an end. I think we generally work too much, so "encouraging" it feels like the wrong direction.
Yes.
People who don't work are massively more likely to suffer from depression, ill health, etc.
Work means routine. And humans thrive on routine. It's not for nothing that we say that routine is the spice of life.
A muddling of cause and effect. Somehow one suspects that people without jobs who are sick suffer because they are impoverished and not because they don't have a tedious employer to please.
I strongly suspect that people who don't bother to work anymore because they are rich enough not to need to are, on average, healthier and happier than workers in minimum wage crap jobs. Or almost all other jobs, come to think of it.
It's trad that Balthasar was black. I have slept 6 to a bed with perfect strangers in Pyrenean mountain huts. Not taking your crown off to go to bed is the only noteworthy thing I am seeing there
What goes on in Pyrenean mountain huts stays in Pyrenean mountain huts.
Notion that people together in a bed MUST be there for something other than sleep, is product of 20th century.
Most ludicrous example: fact that Abraham Lincoln often shared a bed with other lawyers while touring the judicial circuit in frontier Illinois, is taken as proof-positive that he (and they) were gay.
When alternate explanation - that beds were in rather short supply, and that sharing was preferable to sleeping on the floor - is just a wee bit more likely.
Ah but was Abe ever in a Pyrenean mountain hut? We need to know.
If the tweet was from anyone other than Mathew Goodwin, I'd take it a bit more seriously.
'Remarkable quotes from source close to Starmer. Starmer always felt with Boris in charge "Labour would end up losing". But now not scared at all.'
“Despite the sleaze, he thought that by 2024 it would have faded into the background and Labour would struggle to win back the seats in the north and Midlands that it lost in 2019. That’s now changed.”
“Yes, we’re going to need a change of approach because you haven’t got the probity card to play,” they said. “But someone like Sunak is vulnerable to traditional attack lines. He’s very rich and people don’t like that. Mordaunt is a bit more unknowable but she could well implode.”
"280 people BURNED to death - basically - as they race from their homes, pets shrieking in pain as their adorable eyes MELT
TENS of THOUSANDS expected to DIE as extreme brutal ravaging temperatures STALK THE LANDS LIKE A DRUNKEN GORGON
Billions of hectares of fertile land INCINERATED. Savage spires of flame eating up entire countries like huge golden cathedrals of Satan with jaws the size of Portugal and even bigger than that
DOGS ON THE MOON
Diane Abbot EXPLODES. Orgasmo-furnaces in HELL. AYYYYYYYYDEATHDEATH ahahahaha DEATH"
Then military training should extend to looking at the weather forecast and the state of the grass.
Sometimes military necessity outweighs such concerns.
In Peacetime? On Salibury plain?
There is a small war going on. You may have seen something in the news about it. We are training some of the soldiers fighting in it. See my link above.
Imagine telling a Ukrainian recruit that we are stopping their training because the grass is too dry.
The alternative was to stop it because everything around them had caught fire...... Great military minds......
GRass fires can be surprisingly lethal. There is a fine book about a fire in Montana and the smokejumpers who died in it.
For example, buying with a credit card gives you infinitely more protection via Section 75 than a debit card.
I pretty much all my card transactions are on credit card primarily for those reasons and the fact that I get squillions of rewards with my cards.
For example I get £400 pounds worth of Nectar Points each year.
But I concede I was harsh on that woman.
In addition to that (Nectar, M&S points, etc) I also use 0% cards and 0%, no fee balance transfer cards to borrow money foc. When interest rates were previously around 5 - 6% I was borrowing around £100,000 using these cards so earning £5K interest using other peoples money. The more I took out the better my credit rating seemed to get.
When I say borrow I mean not having to pay off what I spend and then when the 0% period is about to expire transfer it to a no transfer fee 0% card.
Lovely evening here in East London - if this were summer, I'd be happy.
I'm told there are people who enjoy extreme heat - I'm not one of them. I have seen the humidity numbers for Tuesday and they offer some hope it won't be the sticky humid heat we usually get in London.
The Arpege model (which is often used by weather watchers for what are called now-casting events) has the core of the heat to the north of London on Monday with mid afternoon maximums of 37-38c. On Tuesday, there's a line stretching from London to south Yorkshire which exceeds 40c by mid afternoon - we could easily see a 41c out of that somewhere but it's a narrow if long area.
The heat is chased out from the south west with the last remnants leaving Lincolnshire after dark - by Wednesday morning London is a chilly 21c.
Small - positive world news story out there - Saudi Arabia has (for the first time) opened its airspace up to Israeli airlines. El Al flights to India, Singapore, Hong Kong and Australia no longer need to make a big circle around it.
This may - or may not - be related to Biden's Middle East visit.
It doesn't really feel like news to me. They've been working together covertly quite a lot. Whether that's a good thing or not depends if you're on the receiving end I suppose.
With my hindsight vision enabled, personally I would have basically done very little to halt COVID in the UK. I have now come to realise that the old people for whom we burned through £400bn to save the lives are bunch of ungrateful bastards and will continue to screw every last penny out of working age people until they die. If a few hundred thousand extra had snuffed it then it would have solved the care crisis, the NHS crisis, pensions overhang and freed up hundreds of thousands of homes for working age people, and we wouldn't have spent £400bn to keep them alive. My generation and my daughter's generation wouldn't be facing decades of high taxes for it and we'd have a lot of fiscal headroom.
If they weren't so ungrateful I'd maybe feel differently about it, but all I see is the old wankers we ruined two years of our lives for, spend £400bn on saving rinse generations below them for all we're worth so they can live forever with their hands in our pockets.
If your life was 'ruined' by the Covid rules for two years, then I'd argue it might be a problem with your 'life'. The Covid restrictions were sh*t, but there was still lots to do. True, it might not be quite what you would ordinarily do, but there was still stuff to do. Heck, I had a five/six-year old to homeschool, and I don't appear to have found it as a challenging as you.
And if it saved a few hundred thousand people (not just oldies either), then fair enough. Especially for the first lockdown, where we were unsure what the heck we were facing. Sometimes you just have to knuckle down and get on with things.
I really don't understand how you can say your life was 'ruined'. And before you say, I like going out. I like doing things. I like visiting places. But when I could not do these, I adapted. I even found some new things I enjoyed.
I'm actually quite an insular person. My favourite hobbies are things like knitting and walking, which weren't affected by lockdown. I expected to sail through it. There were a few jokes along the lines of, "this is what we've been training for."
But it really was monumentally awful. I find it so much harder to leave the house at all now. And I was lucky in where I spent my lockdowns and with whom. I don't think it does to underestimate the sacrifice made.
And then there really should be a quid pro quo for such sacrifices, given the age profile of who the disease killed. But Max is right. Not only did the young give up their freedom to save the old, they're now being expected to pay for the privilege.
I don't go as far as Max and day that I'd kill all the old if I had my time in the pandemic over again. But I can't disagree that the old are talking the piss.
I'm sorry you went through that, but my argument is with use of the word 'ruined'. The people whose lives were ruined were those who died, or who lost loved ones. Max, you and I still have our lives.
As an aside, we were blooming lucky during this pandemic in one regard: it did not affect the young as much. Imagine how much more hideous it would have been if the ambulances had been filled with people under 18, rather than those over 50.
Utter bollocks.
Deaths are natural, especially deaths of the sick, infirm and old which is who Covid targetted.
There are fates worse than death. There are actions worse than death.
Covid restrictions like closing schools harmed the education of children, many of them will never get the opportunity to get that back.
I'm lucky my children were young. Lockdown measures greatly restricted their education, but they've got a chance to catch that up. I've been working hard with my girls, as have their school, to catch up on the disruption but many don't have that opportunity. Disrupted education could be affecting people's lives for the rest of their life, for decades to come. Some people will live with that for the next seventy or eighty years.
That is far worse than someone in their 80s or 90s reaching the end of their natural life, from natural causes, which is what Covid is.
If we'd allowed Covid to take its course and put £400bn into education etc instead of keeping the extremely old and vulnerable alive a little bit longer while closing schools, then the country would be far better off for it. Harsh but true.
I would argue that your position lacks compassion, humanity and even common sense.
You are utterly wrong on this, but I doubt I will convince you, or you will convince me.
I would argue that I have more compassion for children and their future than I do for those in their 80s and 90s who have lived their lives to the full anyway already.
I think that is the common sense and humane position too.
Fucking over children in order to help those who have already lived their lives, is not common sense, and it is not humane.
As I said, lacking compassion, humanity and common sense.
I need to caveat this a little. My own view is that the March 2020 lockdown was utterly necessary. We knew very little about how this little bu**er acted, how we could protect ourselves, and what its long-term consequences were.
The lockdowns up to and including January 2021 were also probably justified. We knew more about the virus, but not enough vaccine doses had been given to justify relaxing them. We can argue about them. And Starmer was utterly wrong for wanting more restrictions late last year. But IMV the March 2020 one was utterly unavoidable.
Now, why do I think your position lacks common sense? Because even before the lockdown on March 23rd 2020, people were locking themselves down. Many companies had already started WfH. Without 'official' lockdowns, and more would have rapidly happened. And it would have been utterly disorganised and potentially much more harmful to the economy.
Worse, kids would have been affected. We all would have been affected. If the hospitals were swamped with Covid patients (not just the oldies you hate) and you - or your children - got ill, then you may not get the help you need. The health service would have broken down. You would be gambling that no-one you loved would get ill.
The only 'solution' to this would have been quite evil: to reduce the strain on the NHS by not treating oldies.
I've read his comments and I don't agree that they're lacking in compassion, humanity and common sense.
Fair enough. I guess you're not old, or don't expect to get old?
Why do only old people matter?
Why don't young people matter?
I would jump in front of a bus to save my children. Instead we threw our children under the bus to "save" those at the end of their life, from natural deaths.
Who said only old people matter? Who said young people do not matter? Young people got sick with Covid as well. In March 2020 we had zero idea what the long-term consequences of the disease were going to be. And as I've pointed out, there were plenty of ways in which young people could become ill and suffer under your brave new word.
Here is another one: my parents did not die. Because of that, my son has had them for a couple of years longer than might be the case. He is forming memories with them, which would not have happened if they had become ill and died. If they had died, he would have been absolutely devastated.
Screwing schools over for two years, not one term, said that young people don't matter.
Loading £400bn of debt onto our children's shoulders said that young people don't matter.
Sweden did the right thing without having lockdown. We screwed up. I made a mistake supporting what we did, for that I apologise.
Sweden did not do the right thing at all. In comparison to its similar neighbours - Finland and Norway - it had a disastrously bad pandemic. If we had followed the Swedish example it would have been catastrophic.
The notion Sweden had a bad pandemic depends upon what you choose to measure.
Based on what I choose to measure, Sweden had a far better pandemic than its neighbours.
Well you are happy killing off large numbers of people just to maintain your standard of living so I hardly think your view can be taken as a balanced one.
I'm not happy "killing off" anyone. I'm not proposing Logan's Run.
I accept the fact people die of natural causes. That's just natural.
Cancer, heart failure, strokes. These are all natural causes. Do you think we should do nothing to prevent these as well?
There is a reason we call some things preventable diseases. Because we can, through our own actions, prevent people dying of them. You seem to believe that if people get over a certain age we should not do anything to try and prevent their deaths even if we can. To be honest I think that is pretty close to Logan's Run.
It is a good job you weren't around and making decisions in the early 19th century when the average life expectancy in the cities was 25. I am sure you would have been there saying it was just natural and we shouldn't do anything to improve it.
Christ alive the Penny hate is reaching red alert levels
Daniel Moylan says that when Penny Mordaunt was hired to be Head of Communications for Kensington and Chelsea Council he had to fire her because “she was incompetent… she couldn’t do the job”.
For example, buying with a credit card gives you infinitely more protection via Section 75 than a debit card.
The entirety of capitalism is predicated on the idea of debt being good. Anyone who thinks it's evil is a Communist or a Muslim.
Eh?
The entirety of capitalism is predicated on the idea of debt being good. Because capitalism is about making money off lending/investments.
Anyone who thinks it's evil is a Communist or a Muslim. Debt is not generally seen as an evil except people who have strong ideological or religious reasons to hate it. E.g. Communists or Muslims.
I don't know what was hard to understand in that?
So how come it is always socialist governments which default on their debt? If they hate debt, why do they borrow so much?
Good lord, do you really believe that? That's obviously not true. What a weird thing to say.
Lovely evening here in East London - if this were summer, I'd be happy.
I'm told there are people who enjoy extreme heat - I'm not one of them. I have seen the humidity numbers for Tuesday and they offer some hope it won't be the sticky humid heat we usually get in London.
The Arpege model (which is often used by weather watchers for what are called now-casting events) has the core of the heat to the north of London on Monday with mid afternoon maximums of 37-38c. On Tuesday, there's a line stretching from London to south Yorkshire which exceeds 40c by mid afternoon - we could easily see a 41c out of that somewhere but it's a narrow if long area.
The heat is chased out from the south west with the last remnants leaving Lincolnshire after dark - by Wednesday morning London is a chilly 21c.
Thank the Gods it looks like this will be a two day heat event.
I thought Penny Mordaunt came across well in her interview . The attacks on her by Moylan and Frost make me warm to her more given those attacking her are loathsome characters .
And if she pisses off the Daily Mail that’s another plus .
I fear it will take it's toll on her, perhaps even in the debate tonight. I know that you should expect attacks in the running for this position, but it's all one target at the moment. Everyone is human, everyone has a breaking point.
1. Income is over-taxed. Wealth is under-taxed. Investment and competition is under-incentivised. Rentierism and monopoly is over-incentivised.
2. UK is already one of the most deregulated economies in the OECD, so it seems likely doing more of that, in itself, is not the answer.
I would tend to agree with that. We want to encourage work, not discourage it. And we want to encourage the efficient allocation of capital.
A modest wealth tax - or as I prefer, a Gross Assets Levy - would be a good thing.
Do we? Work is a means to an end. I think we generally work too much, so "encouraging" it feels like the wrong direction.
Yes.
People who don't work are massively more likely to suffer from depression, ill health, etc.
Work means routine. And humans thrive on routine. It's not for nothing that we say that routine is the spice of life.
A muddling of cause and effect. Somehow one suspects that people without jobs who are sick suffer because they are impoverished and not because they don't have a tedious employer to please.
I strongly suspect that people who don't bother to work anymore because they are rich enough not to need to are, on average, healthier and happier than workers in minimum wage crap jobs. Or almost all other jobs, come to think of it.
Certainly than those who have the misfortune to work in health or education in this country…
1. Income is over-taxed. Wealth is under-taxed. Investment and competition is under-incentivised. Rentierism and monopoly is over-incentivised.
2. UK is already one of the most deregulated economies in the OECD, so it seems likely doing more of that, in itself, is not the answer.
I would tend to agree with that. We want to encourage work, not discourage it. And we want to encourage the efficient allocation of capital.
A modest wealth tax - or as I prefer, a Gross Assets Levy - would be a good thing.
Do we? Work is a means to an end. I think we generally work too much, so "encouraging" it feels like the wrong direction.
Yes.
People who don't work are massively more likely to suffer from depression, ill health, etc.
Work means routine. And humans thrive on routine. It's not for nothing that we say that routine is the spice of life.
Eh? I absolutely love not working. And, in retirement, I reckon I have more routines than I did when working. Logging on to PB at 8.18 every morning, for example.
Lovely evening here in East London - if this were summer, I'd be happy.
I'm told there are people who enjoy extreme heat - I'm not one of them. I have seen the humidity numbers for Tuesday and they offer some hope it won't be the sticky humid heat we usually get in London.
The Arpege model (which is often used by weather watchers for what are called now-casting events) has the core of the heat to the north of London on Monday with mid afternoon maximums of 37-38c. On Tuesday, there's a line stretching from London to south Yorkshire which exceeds 40c by mid afternoon - we could easily see a 41c out of that somewhere but it's a narrow if long area.
The heat is chased out from the south west with the last remnants leaving Lincolnshire after dark - by Wednesday morning London is a chilly 21c.
Thank the Gods it looks like this will be a two day heat event.
Christ alive the Penny hate is reaching red alert levels
Daniel Moylan says that when Penny Mordaunt was hired to be Head of Communications for Kensington and Chelsea Council he had to fire her because “she was incompetent… she couldn’t do the job”.
I smell bullshit. It seems highly improbable anyone was fired by RBKC for incompetence or they would have no staff left.
Who knows, perhaps Penny does have a competency issue. But she's following Boris. As long as she keeps her willy to herself and appoints a reasonable cabinet, she'll look great by comparison.
"280 people BURNED to death - basically - as they race from their homes, pets shrieking in pain as their adorable eyes MELT
TENS of THOUSANDS expected to DIE as extreme brutal ravaging temperatures STALK THE LANDS LIKE A DRUNKEN GORGON
Billions of hectares of fertile land INCINERATED. Savage spires of flame eating up entire countries like huge golden cathedrals of Satan with jaws the size of Portugal and even bigger than that
DOGS ON THE MOON
Diane Abbot EXPLODES. Orgasmo-furnaces in HELL. AYYYYYYYYDEATHDEATH ahahahaha DEATH"
Then military training should extend to looking at the weather forecast and the state of the grass.
Sometimes military necessity outweighs such concerns.
In Peacetime? On Salibury plain?
There is a small war going on. You may have seen something in the news about it. We are training some of the soldiers fighting in it. See my link above.
Imagine telling a Ukrainian recruit that we are stopping their training because the grass is too dry.
As I recall, there was also some international unpleasantness post-9/11.
Just as that Labour flack decided that 9/11 was excellent for burying other bad news, so did the US military trot it out for ANYTHING they wanted to do but had been prevented in the past, thanks to (no doubt wokish) inconvenient (for them) laws and regulations.
The attempt to endanger Seattle's public drinking water supply (one of the best in the world) being especially ignorant AND egregious. And apparently unnecessary, as military found some other places and ways to train soldiers. Certainly was NOT a problem (or THE problem) with invasion of Iraq and war in Afghanistan.
Your argument fails for lack of sufficient bull-shit detection (as already noted) seeing as how UKR training was impeded MORE by setting Salisbury Plain on fire, than it would have been by AVOIDING setting it on fire in the first place.
I thought Penny Mordaunt came across well in her interview . The attacks on her by Moylan and Frost make me warm to her more given those attacking her are loathsome characters .
And if she pisses off the Daily Mail that’s another plus .
I fear it will take it's toll on her, perhaps even in the debate tonight. I know that you should expect attacks in the running for this position, but it's all one target at the moment. Everyone is human, everyone has a breaking point.
If she gets ganged up on in the debate, it'll make the other candidates look bad. I think they'll be clever enough not to do that.
I thought Penny Mordaunt came across well in her interview . The attacks on her by Moylan and Frost make me warm to her more given those attacking her are loathsome characters .
And if she pisses off the Daily Mail that’s another plus .
I fear it will take it's toll on her, perhaps even in the debate tonight. I know that you should expect attacks in the running for this position, but it's all one target at the moment. Everyone is human, everyone has a breaking point.
Far betting that breaking point be reached in a (pre-) leadership debate, than AFTER elevation as Prime Minister?
Like Harry Truman famously said - if you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen.
I thought Penny Mordaunt came across well in her interview . The attacks on her by Moylan and Frost make me warm to her more given those attacking her are loathsome characters .
And if she pisses off the Daily Mail that’s another plus .
I fear it will take it's toll on her, perhaps even in the debate tonight. I know that you should expect attacks in the running for this position, but it's all one target at the moment. Everyone is human, everyone has a breaking point.
If she gets ganged up on in the debate, it'll make the other candidates look bad. I think they'll be clever enough not to do that.
And if PM4PM - or any other hopeful - gets ganged up on AND holds her own, it makes her look good.
Christ alive the Penny hate is reaching red alert levels
Daniel Moylan says that when Penny Mordaunt was hired to be Head of Communications for Kensington and Chelsea Council he had to fire her because “she was incompetent… she couldn’t do the job”.
Christ alive the Penny hate is reaching red alert levels
Daniel Moylan says that when Penny Mordaunt was hired to be Head of Communications for Kensington and Chelsea Council he had to fire her because “she was incompetent… she couldn’t do the job”.
I smell bullshit. It seems highly improbable anyone was fired by RBKC for incompetence or they would have no staff left.
Who knows, perhaps Penny does have a competency issue. But she's following Boris. As long as she keeps her willy to herself and appoints a reasonable cabinet, she'll look great by comparison.
Is this why she talks so much about transgender issues?
That makes it difficult to nominate a competent, moderate centrist, who might actually have practical solutions to the nation's problems, for example, fentanyl.
However bad things get, fentanyl isn't the solution.
Comments
I have a pair of boots which cost £6,000 (but not to me, I scored them on ebay for £50)
The squeezed middle in Britain is now 9 per cent poorer than their counterparts in France.
Low-income households in the UK are now 22 per cent (or £3,800) poorer than their French equivalents.”
·
2h
"I'm looking at the candidates", says one MP, "and I'm beginning to think we should never have dumped Boris".
And so it begins.
https://twitter.com/GoodwinMJ/status/1547954110745366529?s=20&t=tZll7428ACJvQAfvyDML9g
I accept the fact people die of natural causes. That's just natural.
Which generally results is large monetary damages paid out by governments > taxpayers (as is gonna happen here in Seattle due to erasure of key texts by Mayor and Police Chief) but the actual culprits get off the hook with respect to civil AND criminal liability,
Income is over-taxed.
Wealth is under-taxed.
Investment and competition is under-incentivised.
Rentierism and monopoly is over-incentivised.
2.
UK is already one of the most deregulated economies in the OECD, so it seems likely doing more of that, in itself, is not the answer.
Because capitalism is about making money off lending/investments.
Anyone who thinks it's evil is a Communist or a Muslim.
Debt is not generally seen as an evil except people who have strong ideological or religious reasons to hate it. E.g. Communists or Muslims.
I don't know what was hard to understand in that?
Thank you
@keir_starmer
, for visiting Berlin today.
I am convinced: Together we can and will manage the challenges and embrace the opportunities we all face. In #Germany, in the #UK and all over Europe.
A modest wealth tax - or as I prefer, a Gross Assets Levy - would be a good thing.
"Promises, Promises: A History of Debt"
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b054zdp6
Makes a convincing point that debt is absolutely essential for society, and civilisation couldn't have developed without it.
Debt and saving are opposite sides of the same coin. You cannot having saving without debt. Because saving is someone choosing not to consume now, because they wish to consume in the future. And debt is someone choosing to consume now, on the proviso that they will hand over some portion of their economic output in the future.
Debt and saving are mechanisms for the time transfer of work.
Daniel Moylan says that when Penny Mordaunt was hired to be Head of Communications for Kensington and Chelsea Council he had to fire her because “she was incompetent… she couldn’t do the job”.
https://order-order.com/2022/07/15/mordaunts-former-boss-says-he-sacked-her-for-incompetence/
Though presumably a sizeable minority of tory MPs never wanted to dump him.
People who don't work are massively more likely to suffer from depression, ill health, etc.
Work means routine. And humans thrive on routine. It's not for nothing that we say that routine is the spice of life.
For example I get £400 pounds worth of Nectar Points each year.
But I concede I was harsh on that woman.
While party members, pundits (pungent, PB or otherwise) may complain re: breath & depth of field, they cannot IMHO claim they did not have opportunity to hear & evaluate the candidates and their views, despite the very short time frame for the MP top two process.
Of course also creates opportunities for Labour, Lib Dems, SNP and PC (plus rising threat of extreme Cornish nationalism) to seize upon what is said to beat the next PM and Tory Party about the head and shoulders. But them's the breaks.
On balance, a plus for Conservative Party. Rare right now, and all the more valuable for that.
By coincidence, was just reading about Jesse Jones, legendary Texas businessman and key player in FDR's New Deal (though JJ was never himself a New Dealer) who made his fortune, created modern Houston (for better or worse, mostly former) AND helped save capitalism in America (no joke).
His entire career was based on super-intelligent use of credit.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesse_H._Jones
Plus remember in those days I was getting Nectar points on TPE, Virgin/Avanti Trains, and LNER trains, with bonus offers, at times the train tickets almost became free.
Most ludicrous example: fact that Abraham Lincoln often shared a bed with other lawyers while touring the judicial circuit in frontier Illinois, is taken as proof-positive that he (and they) were gay.
When alternate explanation - that beds were in rather short supply, and that sharing was preferable to sleeping on the floor - is just a wee bit more likely.
A small Labour majority with Tories going into Opposition and Kemi becoming LOTO to PM Starmer would be the best outcome at the next election I think.
And if she pisses off the Daily Mail that’s another plus .
Because capitalism is about making money off lending/investments.
Anyone who thinks it's evil is a Communist or a Muslim.
Debt is not generally seen as an evil except people who have strong ideological or religious reasons to hate it. E.g. Communists or Muslims.
I don't know what was hard to understand in that?
So how come it is always socialist governments that end up defaulting on their debt?
...
Because capitalism is about making money off lending/investments.
Anyone who thinks it's evil is a Communist or a Muslim.
Debt is not generally seen as an evil except people who have strong ideological or religious reasons to hate it. E.g. Communists or Muslims.
I don't know what was hard to understand in that?
NOA - So how come it is always socialist governments that end up defaulting on their debt?
SSI - Philip II of Spain (Queen Mary's hubby) was a socialist?
Or maybe a communist, seeing he was a serial defaulter: 1557, 1560, 1569, 1575, and 1596.
If they hate debt, why do they borrow so much?
Philip II of Spain (Queen Mary's hubby) was a socialist?
Or maybe a communist, seeing he was a serial defaulter: 1557, 1560, 1569, 1575, and 1596.
Exactly what I was trying to say, though I would also add the rather more recent Charles Stuart. Vanilla got in the way with the blockquotes ...
And, I see on checking ,also a number of Yoo-nited States, most recently Arkansas in 1933. Obvs raving commies the lot.
I strongly suspect that people who don't bother to work anymore because they are rich enough not to need to are, on average, healthier and happier than workers in minimum wage crap jobs. Or almost all other jobs, come to think of it.
“Despite the sleaze, he thought that by 2024 it would have faded into the background and Labour would struggle to win back the seats in the north and Midlands that it lost in 2019. That’s now changed.”
“Yes, we’re going to need a change of approach because you haven’t got the probity card to play,” they said. “But someone like Sunak is vulnerable to traditional attack lines. He’s very rich and people don’t like that. Mordaunt is a bit more unknowable but she could well implode.”
https://twitter.com/GoodwinMJ/status/1547998482769670147?s=20&t=XZy3ZB_0ZVu0qhwaL7XalA
https://twitter.com/GoodwinMJ/status/1547998571265286146?s=20&t=XZy3ZB_0ZVu0qhwaL7XalA
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mann_Gulch_fire
I'm told there are people who enjoy extreme heat - I'm not one of them. I have seen the humidity numbers for Tuesday and they offer some hope it won't be the sticky humid heat we usually get in London.
The Arpege model (which is often used by weather watchers for what are called now-casting events) has the core of the heat to the north of London on Monday with mid afternoon maximums of 37-38c. On Tuesday, there's a line stretching from London to south Yorkshire which exceeds 40c by mid afternoon - we could easily see a 41c out of that somewhere but it's a narrow if long area.
The heat is chased out from the south west with the last remnants leaving Lincolnshire after dark - by Wednesday morning London is a chilly 21c.
There is a reason we call some things preventable diseases. Because we can, through our own actions, prevent people dying of them. You seem to believe that if people get over a certain age we should not do anything to try and prevent their deaths even if we can. To be honest I think that is pretty close to Logan's Run.
It is a good job you weren't around and making decisions in the early 19th century when the average life expectancy in the cities was 25. I am sure you would have been there saying it was just natural and we shouldn't do anything to improve it.
Logging on to PB at 8.18 every morning, for example.
Just as that Labour flack decided that 9/11 was excellent for burying other bad news, so did the US military trot it out for ANYTHING they wanted to do but had been prevented in the past, thanks to (no doubt wokish) inconvenient (for them) laws and regulations.
The attempt to endanger Seattle's public drinking water supply (one of the best in the world) being especially ignorant AND egregious. And apparently unnecessary, as military found some other places and ways to train soldiers. Certainly was NOT a problem (or THE problem) with invasion of Iraq and war in Afghanistan.
Your argument fails for lack of sufficient bull-shit detection (as already noted) seeing as how UKR training was impeded MORE by setting Salisbury Plain on fire, than it would have been by AVOIDING setting it on fire in the first place.
Like Harry Truman famously said - if you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen.
So I have a routine curry.
Here are my two word assessments of each candidate
Truss - haziest bluster (I’ll never do better than that anagram)
Sunak - Putin’s favourite
Mordant - woo woo?
Tugendhat - ok gone
Badenoch - wtf not