It *is* possible for government policy to grow the economy, despite naysayers on left and right.
True, but it's also highly non-obvious how to go about it. Otherwise every government would do it...
The UK is now some way off the frontier of the productivity / GDP, so there are actually lots of things we could do.
They all involve confronting various vested interests, though.
French style, permanent tax breaks on investment in plant and machinery. At say, 100% tax relief.
Yes. Full relief. For starters.
UK is actually at the bottom end of tax competitiveness for business, despite common belief, and has essentially disincentivised capex until very recently.
We have focused on the low rate of CT rather than the effective rate. Rather than cancel the increase in the base rate we should increase the allowances. I don't see why 100% relief should be the cap either on capital spending or on training. We need incentives to invest in this country and the actual rate of CT is not particularly relevant to that.
After thinking about this for a week, and digging into a bit, we should probably do all of the above AND keep corporation tax lowish.
Too many UK companies are minded to just sweat the existing assets with little attempt to grow, or invest in new kit or invest in training. I have no problem with that kind of company, who are not contributing to our economy in other ways, paying a bit more tax.
In theory I agree but in practice I think there is a more value in the “signalling” of a lowish corporate tax level than a text-book might suggest.
Especially post Brexit, which blew up one of our key pull-factors for investment.
I think there are ways of encouraging foreign investment (such as lower corporation tax for sites in enterprise / freeports) while increasing it for existing / local firms...
Freeports are a nonsense. Brexit claptrap. I feel embarrassed when Rishi mentions it.
Oh they are a crap idea but you were talking about Foreign Investment and using Freeports or similar to focus that investment in places (or sectors) that need it makes complete sense..
The state of UK politics. This is Starmer’s new economic philosophy
“Starmer sets out 5 economic principles of a Labour government
- Financially responsible - Distinctively British - Partnership with business - Help mothers bake apple pie - Re-energise communities - Invest to boost productivity”
Only one of those was added by me
You needn't have made it too obvious. We all know that Labour aren't interested in re-energising communities.
Distinctively British is more than a bit ho hum.
And why are we not building microprocessor factories so we don't mind so much about Taiwan? Duodecimal if necessary.
“Distinctively British” is plain weird
“Like South Korea but in tweed” makes as much sense
And yet, here’s a thing: by incessantly banging on about his patriotism, by standing in front of 3000 floodlit Union Jacks, etc etc, Starmer IS making me warm to him, faintly, inasmuch as I now trust him to stand up for the Union, be nice about our Queen and country, not be a Corbyn style traitor
I guess his focus groups have told him that, post Corbyn, he has to be this blunt and basic. “I’m British, too, and I love Britain too, despite its flaws, let’s make it better”
Not a bad message, for a would-be Labour PM, in the context of Corbyn
The problem is that it's not backed up by his followers.
I posted something on how strongly I feel about this at the weekend and got about 15 members of the pb Lefty herd all liking each other's posts saying being patriotic was racist and stupid.
Are you including my response to that?
I try to make a more thoughtful point, engaging you in discussion, but you'd prefer to argue with those posters who embody your caricature of the left.
No, not you.
A quick scan of Sunday's thread will reveal who the culprits are.
I wasn't on it but curious so I looked. Found this from you -
"Let me let you into a little secret: I have zero time for non-patriots."
I can't help but imagine that spoken sotto voce by somebody in uniform to somebody in cuffs.
"Patriotism" is a fig-leaf for political cowards.
"I am a patriot" "No, I am a patriot" "No, I am TRUE patriot" etc etc until everyone vomits.
How about instead of saying the word actually doing things which are positive for the country? Instead of the opposite as so many "patriots" actually are doing. cf the 6th January coup which was full of "patriots" trying to hang the Veep whilst waving the flag of a hostile former nation.
Yep, and although it might sound semantic I really do think the 'noun v adjective' difference here is crucial.
I don't get the willies when I hear somebody say they are patriotic. But when I hear about Patriots I just about know that's coming from a bad place.
That's the same with many nouns though.
There are a great many self-styled Liberals who can be very illiberal, while anyone who tried to overturn the election results on 6 January 2021 was no patriot, no matter what they called themselves.
Similarly it can work in reverse too, while I've been a Conservative most of my adult life, I've always considered myself a liberal and not a conservative.
That some self-styled Patriots do bad things does not make patriotism bad. That some self-styled Nationalists do bad things does not make nationalism bad. That some self-styled Liberals do bad things does not make liberalism bad.
Ok but I don't mean that. I'm talking about the noun being 'harder' than the adjective. Why? Because when you use the noun you are insinuating that whatever negative trait you're talking about kind of sums up the person rather than (with the adjective) it just being in the mix. With the noun it's not merely something they believe, it's what they are.
Eg: "You are racist" cf "You are A racist". The 2nd is stronger. Ditto, "You are not patriotic" is less in-your-face than "You are not a PATRIOT."
Just a language thing.
It's like that Lucan thing, all his mates banged on whenever questioned about the virtues of loyalty - meaning, siding with a fellow toff against a murdered servant. Patriotism is the same, a *very* minor virtue almost invariably deployed as a cover up for something else. The last resort of the scoundrel, to quote a much greater writer than George bloody Orwell.
Another thing about Orwell, he was much more of his class than he liked to think. That shit about horse racing and suet pudding - that's Eton things. And why are his fellow lefties not allowed to be anti monarchist if that's what they are? Perfectly respectable school of thought. The underlying thought is clear: toff socialism good, lower classes going in for socialism most distasteful.
It's not my favourite bit of Orwell, I must confess. Unfortunately it's the only bit that ever seems to get copied into here.
His socialism was along the lines of, the English working classes are the salt of the earth. They make such good gamekeepers.
Er no. He had the weird idea that if you wanted an equal democratic society, it would be a tad hard to do so from the point of view of hating the majority of population and their culture.
Also difficult for him to work for the revolution while apparently despising all his fellow socialists.
He despised the “socialists” whose fix for inequality and lack of of social mobility, by supporting the most brutal, top down, smash-the-little-people system of government available.
I've just received my new (blue) passport - The Brexit dividend is complete!
Congratulations. You are hereby now entitled to join a long, long queue to get across the Channel (once it's been stamped by a surly French customs agent). Brexit - the joy!
And potential deportation if you get an incompetent border agent who forgets to stamp your passport correctly on the way out.
I have read several times on this very forum that it still only takes seconds to stamp a passport.
This is simply not true. Said surly and incompetent border guard has to leaf through your passport to find the most recent entry and exit stamps to ensure you are compliant with the visa-free 90/180 rule. That takes longer than a few seconds.
But checks were always required, so nothing is new.
If checks take twice as long then if you have twice as many staff on, then nothing has changed. Just staff appropriately based upon today's circumstances.
Sorry, you keep repeating this, but the checks are new. Even if they were required previously, they weren't done. Those of us who hopped across the Channel can testify that most of the time you were just waved through, with the occasional random check.
Indeed - that was my experience too. Normally the only checks outbound were done by the UK Border force, the French normally just checked you were waving the same number of passports at them as there were passengers in the car. They might stop Eastern European vehicles occasionally.
Also @BartholomewRoberts doesn't consider that Dover and Folkestone both have major constraints on capacity due to geography. Given the extra time taken to process, it may be that it isn't possible simply to keep increasing the number of border posts - there needs to be somewhere to put them, and the waiting cars. A more realistic option may be to limit the number of vehicle crossings.
Incidentally I notice that my shiny new blue passport has, in 4 months, already received the same number of stamps (5) as my previous one had in its lifetime.
In the event it takes 24 booths instead of 12 then would the responsible thing to do be:
A: Get 24 booths. Use compulsory purchase orders if necessary.
B: Stick with 12. Blame voters for a choice they may six years ago.
They've had six years to prepare for this. It isn't voters responsibility to deal with this, it's government's responsibility to accept voters choices and adapt.
Have you actually been to Dover? Have you seen where the port actually is? Folkestone isn't much better. Are you planning to requisition the Castle, or the White Cliffs?
Yes I have and yes there's space for 12 extra booths if they're needed. Where there's a will, there's a way.
As @RochdalePioneers has repeatedly said the Port of Dover requested ~£30 million to build new facilities. Oddly enough they didn't seem bothered that they'd need to requisition the White Cliffs to do so.
Considering that EU membership cost us £350mn a week gross, less net, and considering that this is supposedly your big problem with Brexit - spending half of one working day's gross EU membership fees to construct 12 extra booths and eliminate the problem seems like a bit of a bargain does it not?
Extending Article 50 and then the transition period cost us about €20 billion, so €20,000,000,000, so if £30,000,000 is the cost of fixing this and then we're out of the EU and the problem is dealt with, then voting Brexit seems eminently logical does it not?
If after six years this problem is real and hasn't been fixed, that's a failure of one or more of the respective government's not a failure of voting for Brexit.
What we saw on Saturday is that half the booths were manned and a huge backlog built up. What we saw on Sunday was that all the booths were manned and the backlog melted away. This was always going to be one of the busiest weekends of the year. I am not sure that not increasing the number of booths is the problem. The absolute bottleneck is of course the number of ferries that can get in and out of the port. Spending more money on passport control is not going to change that.
I believe the ferries were leaving somewhat empty because passport control couldn't keep up. Brexit requires more checking of passports. If you don't have more checkers you will get delays. Whose fault it is, is up for debate. Either it's Brexit, Dover Port/UKG, geography or the French border control. If it's the latter two they are not things we can control so we will have to live with the delay in that case.
"A senior ally of Liz Truss has launched an attack on Rishi Sunak’s wealth as the Tory leadership race was branded “embarrassing” by a senior minister. Nadine Dorries, the culture secretary, hit out at Sunak for wearing a £3,500 bespoke suit and £450 Prada shoes, comparing the attire with £4.50 earrings Truss is apparently sporting."
Is there a touch of Cosmo Citizen of Nowhere being insinuated about Sunak, I wonder?
Also, racism - is this to any extent at all in the mix?
No. You wish.
I most certainly don't wish.
But why so sure of No?
Because Sunak would've probably won this race if it had taken place a year ago (before he raised taxes) and probably even in January (before the stories about his family's tax affairs). His polling didn't suddenly fall off a cliff because the members all noticed he was Indian.
Also, Badenoch was polling about as well against Sunak as Truss.
Yes, all true and positive and meaningful. But if (say) 10% of the membership are going to vote against him because he's not white it would swing it for Truss.
Is it an absurd thought iyo - that 10% of the Con membership would secretly be like that?
Serious question. I'm not making accusations.
Its a bit like labour and anti-semitism isn't it? You would have to be able to read people's minds to asses their true motivations.
I suppose it is, yes. Certainly if the membership of the Conservative Party in 2022 is virtually free of racism this would be a cause for great rejoicing.
It *is* possible for government policy to grow the economy, despite naysayers on left and right.
True, but it's also highly non-obvious how to go about it. Otherwise every government would do it...
The UK is now some way off the frontier of the productivity / GDP, so there are actually lots of things we could do.
They all involve confronting various vested interests, though.
French style, permanent tax breaks on investment in plant and machinery. At say, 100% tax relief.
Yes. Full relief. For starters.
UK is actually at the bottom end of tax competitiveness for business, despite common belief, and has essentially disincentivised capex until very recently.
We have focused on the low rate of CT rather than the effective rate. Rather than cancel the increase in the base rate we should increase the allowances. I don't see why 100% relief should be the cap either on capital spending or on training. We need incentives to invest in this country and the actual rate of CT is not particularly relevant to that.
After thinking about this for a week, and digging into a bit, we should probably do all of the above AND keep corporation tax lowish.
I would make high quality investment in machinery and high quality training very very tax advantageous.
The average Brit spends 115 hours in traffic each year. Swapping Fuel Duty for Road Pricing would boost GDP for 2 reasons.
1. You can't work if you're stuck in traffic. 2. Your effective labour market is smaller reducing the benefits of agglomeration.
How does reducing your effective labour market solve anything?
or
This study suggest constraints on housing supply have a 13.5% GDP cost in the US. And there are good reasons to believe supply is even more constrained in the UK
Firstly does he know that NIMBYISM is worth a lot of votes. Secondly has he seen how hard it is to do anything in San Francisco (yes I know it's an extreme example but there are plenty of others)..
I don’t think it’s codswallop. It might be politically unrealistic, but it’s pretty obvious that Britain’s productivity is significantly impaired by housing/planning/transport issues.
But look at his solution to a problem - he wishes to price people off commuting to increase the effective labour market size.
How does that work because all you do with road pricing is move the tax from being paid at the pump to being paid per mile on the road - you haven't changed anything beyond when and how it's collected. You haven't done anything to make the commute time shorter.
Actually, he does not.
He suggests that road pricing will smooth traffic flow as people respond to paying full cost of congestion during peak hours.
He references Singapore where, as he notes, average urban traffic speeds have *sped up* in recent years as congestion as decreased.
is he? - he references road pricing rather than dynamic road pricing - if he had referenced dynamic or time based road pricing I would just ask the simple question - where and how are you going to build the infrastructure to do it? Followed by have you seen the cost of doing it for even a small fixed point like the Dartford or Tyne Tunnels...
Now Dynamic Road pricing is possible in a small rich country when you limit it to particular routes - it's a lot harder to do in somewhere like the UK....
I'm sorry to say that I don't -- at the moment -- have any practical advice on betting on American elections, but I can offer this observation: Although few of them will say this out loud, most Republican leaders have concluded that Trump is a loser. I am 99 percent sure, for instance, that Mitch McConnell thinks that, without Trump's refusal to accept his defeat, Republicans would have won the Georgia run-offs and kept control of the Senate.
Whether Trump's idiotic picks, and his divisiveness, will stop the Republicans from capitalizing on the issues, net, I have not even tried to estimate.
(Murdoch's recent attacks on Trump in the New York Post and the Wall Street Journal may reflect, in part, the same realization that Trump is a loser.)
It *is* possible for government policy to grow the economy, despite naysayers on left and right.
True, but it's also highly non-obvious how to go about it. Otherwise every government would do it...
The UK is now some way off the frontier of the productivity / GDP, so there are actually lots of things we could do.
They all involve confronting various vested interests, though.
French style, permanent tax breaks on investment in plant and machinery. At say, 100% tax relief.
Yes. Full relief. For starters.
UK is actually at the bottom end of tax competitiveness for business, despite common belief, and has essentially disincentivised capex until very recently.
We have focused on the low rate of CT rather than the effective rate. Rather than cancel the increase in the base rate we should increase the allowances. I don't see why 100% relief should be the cap either on capital spending or on training. We need incentives to invest in this country and the actual rate of CT is not particularly relevant to that.
After thinking about this for a week, and digging into a bit, we should probably do all of the above AND keep corporation tax lowish.
I would make high quality investment in machinery and high quality training very very tax advantageous.
The average Brit spends 115 hours in traffic each year. Swapping Fuel Duty for Road Pricing would boost GDP for 2 reasons.
1. You can't work if you're stuck in traffic. 2. Your effective labour market is smaller reducing the benefits of agglomeration.
How does reducing your effective labour market solve anything?
or
This study suggest constraints on housing supply have a 13.5% GDP cost in the US. And there are good reasons to believe supply is even more constrained in the UK
Firstly does he know that NIMBYISM is worth a lot of votes. Secondly has he seen how hard it is to do anything in San Francisco (yes I know it's an extreme example but there are plenty of others)..
I don’t think it’s codswallop. It might be politically unrealistic, but it’s pretty obvious that Britain’s productivity is significantly impaired by housing/planning/transport issues.
But look at his solution to a problem - he wishes to price people off commuting to increase the effective labour market size.
How does that work because all you do with road pricing is move the tax from being paid at the pump to being paid per mile on the road - you haven't changed anything beyond when and how it's collected. You haven't done anything to make the commute time shorter.
Actually, he does not.
He suggests that road pricing will smooth traffic flow as people respond to paying full cost of congestion during peak hours.
He references Singapore where, as he notes, average urban traffic speeds have *sped up* in recent years as congestion as decreased.
This is an area I have a bit of knowledge about, and I am fully in agreement that road pricing works in transport planning terms. However, I changed my mind about it during covid when the willingness of the state to appropriate power to itself became apparent. Essentially, for me, it's become very important not to allow the state further tools by which it can know where its population is going and has been. For that freedom, I'll grumpily put up with traffic jams.
It *is* possible for government policy to grow the economy, despite naysayers on left and right.
True, but it's also highly non-obvious how to go about it. Otherwise every government would do it...
The UK is now some way off the frontier of the productivity / GDP, so there are actually lots of things we could do.
They all involve confronting various vested interests, though.
French style, permanent tax breaks on investment in plant and machinery. At say, 100% tax relief.
Yes. Full relief. For starters.
UK is actually at the bottom end of tax competitiveness for business, despite common belief, and has essentially disincentivised capex until very recently.
We have focused on the low rate of CT rather than the effective rate. Rather than cancel the increase in the base rate we should increase the allowances. I don't see why 100% relief should be the cap either on capital spending or on training. We need incentives to invest in this country and the actual rate of CT is not particularly relevant to that.
After thinking about this for a week, and digging into a bit, we should probably do all of the above AND keep corporation tax lowish.
I would make high quality investment in machinery and high quality training very very tax advantageous.
The average Brit spends 115 hours in traffic each year. Swapping Fuel Duty for Road Pricing would boost GDP for 2 reasons.
1. You can't work if you're stuck in traffic. 2. Your effective labour market is smaller reducing the benefits of agglomeration.
How does reducing your effective labour market solve anything?
or
This study suggest constraints on housing supply have a 13.5% GDP cost in the US. And there are good reasons to believe supply is even more constrained in the UK
Firstly does he know that NIMBYISM is worth a lot of votes. Secondly has he seen how hard it is to do anything in San Francisco (yes I know it's an extreme example but there are plenty of others)..
I don’t think it’s codswallop. It might be politically unrealistic, but it’s pretty obvious that Britain’s productivity is significantly impaired by housing/planning/transport issues.
But look at his solution to a problem - he wishes to price people off commuting to increase the effective labour market size.
How does that work because all you do with road pricing is move the tax from being paid at the pump to being paid per mile on the road - you haven't changed anything beyond when and how it's collected. You haven't done anything to make the commute time shorter.
Actually, he does not.
He suggests that road pricing will smooth traffic flow as people respond to paying full cost of congestion during peak hours.
He references Singapore where, as he notes, average urban traffic speeds have *sped up* in recent years as congestion as decreased.
is he? - he references road pricing rather than dynamic road pricing - if he had referenced dynamic or time based road pricing I would just ask the simple question - where and how are you going to build the infrastructure to do it? Followed by have you seen the cost of doing it for even a small fixed point like the Dartford or Tyne Tunnels...
Now Dynamic Road pricing is possible in a small rich country when you limit it to particular routes - it's a lot harder to do in somewhere like the UK....
Easy enough if you GPS track all cars...
I'm sure the Home Office would never suggest such a thing.
It *is* possible for government policy to grow the economy, despite naysayers on left and right.
True, but it's also highly non-obvious how to go about it. Otherwise every government would do it...
The UK is now some way off the frontier of the productivity / GDP, so there are actually lots of things we could do.
They all involve confronting various vested interests, though.
French style, permanent tax breaks on investment in plant and machinery. At say, 100% tax relief.
Yes. Full relief. For starters.
UK is actually at the bottom end of tax competitiveness for business, despite common belief, and has essentially disincentivised capex until very recently.
We have focused on the low rate of CT rather than the effective rate. Rather than cancel the increase in the base rate we should increase the allowances. I don't see why 100% relief should be the cap either on capital spending or on training. We need incentives to invest in this country and the actual rate of CT is not particularly relevant to that.
After thinking about this for a week, and digging into a bit, we should probably do all of the above AND keep corporation tax lowish.
Too many UK companies are minded to just sweat the existing assets with little attempt to grow, or invest in new kit or invest in training. I have no problem with that kind of company, who are not contributing to our economy in other ways, paying a bit more tax.
In theory I agree but in practice I think there is a more value in the “signalling” of a lowish corporate tax level than a text-book might suggest.
Especially post Brexit, which blew up one of our key pull-factors for investment.
I think there are ways of encouraging foreign investment (such as lower corporation tax for sites in enterprise / freeports) while increasing it for existing / local firms...
Freeports are a nonsense. Brexit claptrap. I feel embarrassed when Rishi mentions it.
Oh they are a crap idea but you were talking about Foreign Investment and using Freeports or similar to focus that investment in places (or sectors) that need it makes complete sense..
It just invites the creation of costly distortions to economic geography, White elephant projects like Shannon Airport.
It *is* possible for government policy to grow the economy, despite naysayers on left and right.
True, but it's also highly non-obvious how to go about it. Otherwise every government would do it...
The UK is now some way off the frontier of the productivity / GDP, so there are actually lots of things we could do.
They all involve confronting various vested interests, though.
French style, permanent tax breaks on investment in plant and machinery. At say, 100% tax relief.
Yes. Full relief. For starters.
UK is actually at the bottom end of tax competitiveness for business, despite common belief, and has essentially disincentivised capex until very recently.
We have focused on the low rate of CT rather than the effective rate. Rather than cancel the increase in the base rate we should increase the allowances. I don't see why 100% relief should be the cap either on capital spending or on training. We need incentives to invest in this country and the actual rate of CT is not particularly relevant to that.
After thinking about this for a week, and digging into a bit, we should probably do all of the above AND keep corporation tax lowish.
I would make high quality investment in machinery and high quality training very very tax advantageous.
The average Brit spends 115 hours in traffic each year. Swapping Fuel Duty for Road Pricing would boost GDP for 2 reasons.
1. You can't work if you're stuck in traffic. 2. Your effective labour market is smaller reducing the benefits of agglomeration.
How does reducing your effective labour market solve anything?
or
This study suggest constraints on housing supply have a 13.5% GDP cost in the US. And there are good reasons to believe supply is even more constrained in the UK
Firstly does he know that NIMBYISM is worth a lot of votes. Secondly has he seen how hard it is to do anything in San Francisco (yes I know it's an extreme example but there are plenty of others)..
I don’t think it’s codswallop. It might be politically unrealistic, but it’s pretty obvious that Britain’s productivity is significantly impaired by housing/planning/transport issues.
But look at his solution to a problem - he wishes to price people off commuting to increase the effective labour market size.
How does that work because all you do with road pricing is move the tax from being paid at the pump to being paid per mile on the road - you haven't changed anything beyond when and how it's collected. You haven't done anything to make the commute time shorter.
Actually, he does not.
He suggests that road pricing will smooth traffic flow as people respond to paying full cost of congestion during peak hours.
He references Singapore where, as he notes, average urban traffic speeds have *sped up* in recent years as congestion as decreased.
is he? - he references road pricing rather than dynamic road pricing - if he had referenced dynamic or time based road pricing I would just ask the simple question - where and how are you going to build the infrastructure to do it? Followed by have you seen the cost of doing it for even a small fixed point like the Dartford or Tyne Tunnels...
Now Dynamic Road pricing is possible in a small rich country when you limit it to particular routes - it's a lot harder to do in somewhere like the UK....
He links to another paper which is talking about dynamic pricing.
I don’t have a view on the practicalities of it, I think there’s a premise somewhere that APNR has recently become potentially much cheaper and less obtrusive.
It *is* possible for government policy to grow the economy, despite naysayers on left and right.
True, but it's also highly non-obvious how to go about it. Otherwise every government would do it...
The UK is now some way off the frontier of the productivity / GDP, so there are actually lots of things we could do.
They all involve confronting various vested interests, though.
French style, permanent tax breaks on investment in plant and machinery. At say, 100% tax relief.
Yes. Full relief. For starters.
UK is actually at the bottom end of tax competitiveness for business, despite common belief, and has essentially disincentivised capex until very recently.
We have focused on the low rate of CT rather than the effective rate. Rather than cancel the increase in the base rate we should increase the allowances. I don't see why 100% relief should be the cap either on capital spending or on training. We need incentives to invest in this country and the actual rate of CT is not particularly relevant to that.
After thinking about this for a week, and digging into a bit, we should probably do all of the above AND keep corporation tax lowish.
I would make high quality investment in machinery and high quality training very very tax advantageous.
The average Brit spends 115 hours in traffic each year. Swapping Fuel Duty for Road Pricing would boost GDP for 2 reasons.
1. You can't work if you're stuck in traffic. 2. Your effective labour market is smaller reducing the benefits of agglomeration.
How does reducing your effective labour market solve anything?
or
This study suggest constraints on housing supply have a 13.5% GDP cost in the US. And there are good reasons to believe supply is even more constrained in the UK
Firstly does he know that NIMBYISM is worth a lot of votes. Secondly has he seen how hard it is to do anything in San Francisco (yes I know it's an extreme example but there are plenty of others)..
I don’t think it’s codswallop. It might be politically unrealistic, but it’s pretty obvious that Britain’s productivity is significantly impaired by housing/planning/transport issues.
But look at his solution to a problem - he wishes to price people off commuting to increase the effective labour market size.
How does that work because all you do with road pricing is move the tax from being paid at the pump to being paid per mile on the road - you haven't changed anything beyond when and how it's collected. You haven't done anything to make the commute time shorter.
Actually, he does not.
He suggests that road pricing will smooth traffic flow as people respond to paying full cost of congestion during peak hours.
He references Singapore where, as he notes, average urban traffic speeds have *sped up* in recent years as congestion as decreased.
is he? - he references road pricing rather than dynamic road pricing - if he had referenced dynamic or time based road pricing I would just ask the simple question - where and how are you going to build the infrastructure to do it? Followed by have you seen the cost of doing it for even a small fixed point like the Dartford or Tyne Tunnels...
Now Dynamic Road pricing is possible in a small rich country when you limit it to particular routes - it's a lot harder to do in somewhere like the UK....
The country already has the infrastructure for this due to the number of ANPR camera's strewn along every major route. Indeed they are already used to build congestion data from.
In effect we would only need software that can access the databases to put in a pretty effective road pricing scheme (yes minor roads would largely not be covered but it would cover the majority of traffic)
I'm sorry to say that I don't -- at the moment -- have any practical advice on betting on American elections, but I can offer this observation: Although few of them will say this out loud, most Republican leaders have concluded that Trump is a loser. I am 99 percent sure, for instance, that Mitch McConnell thinks that, without Trump's refusal to accept his defeat, Republicans would have won the Georgia run-offs and kept control of the Senate.
Whether Trump's idiotic picks, and his divisiveness, will stop the Republicans from capitalizing on the issues, net, I have not even tried to estimate.
(Murdoch's recent attacks on Trump in the New York Post and the Wall Street Journal may reflect, in part, the same realization that Trump is a loser.)
There seems to be a strange dynamic at the moment where DeSantis is being portrayed as the real proto-fascist threat, which might paradoxically detoxify Trump and allow him to position himself as the safer known quantity.
I've just received my new (blue) passport - The Brexit dividend is complete!
Congratulations. You are hereby now entitled to join a long, long queue to get across the Channel (once it's been stamped by a surly French customs agent). Brexit - the joy!
And potential deportation if you get an incompetent border agent who forgets to stamp your passport correctly on the way out.
I have read several times on this very forum that it still only takes seconds to stamp a passport.
This is simply not true. Said surly and incompetent border guard has to leaf through your passport to find the most recent entry and exit stamps to ensure you are compliant with the visa-free 90/180 rule. That takes longer than a few seconds.
But checks were always required, so nothing is new.
If checks take twice as long then if you have twice as many staff on, then nothing has changed. Just staff appropriately based upon today's circumstances.
Sorry, you keep repeating this, but the checks are new. Even if they were required previously, they weren't done. Those of us who hopped across the Channel can testify that most of the time you were just waved through, with the occasional random check.
Indeed - that was my experience too. Normally the only checks outbound were done by the UK Border force, the French normally just checked you were waving the same number of passports at them as there were passengers in the car. They might stop Eastern European vehicles occasionally.
Also @BartholomewRoberts doesn't consider that Dover and Folkestone both have major constraints on capacity due to geography. Given the extra time taken to process, it may be that it isn't possible simply to keep increasing the number of border posts - there needs to be somewhere to put them, and the waiting cars. A more realistic option may be to limit the number of vehicle crossings.
Incidentally I notice that my shiny new blue passport has, in 4 months, already received the same number of stamps (5) as my previous one had in its lifetime.
In the event it takes 24 booths instead of 12 then would the responsible thing to do be:
A: Get 24 booths. Use compulsory purchase orders if necessary.
B: Stick with 12. Blame voters for a choice they may six years ago.
They've had six years to prepare for this. It isn't voters responsibility to deal with this, it's government's responsibility to accept voters choices and adapt.
Have you actually been to Dover? Have you seen where the port actually is? Folkestone isn't much better. Are you planning to requisition the Castle, or the White Cliffs?
Yes I have and yes there's space for 12 extra booths if they're needed. Where there's a will, there's a way.
As @RochdalePioneers has repeatedly said the Port of Dover requested ~£30 million to build new facilities. Oddly enough they didn't seem bothered that they'd need to requisition the White Cliffs to do so.
Considering that EU membership cost us £350mn a week gross, less net, and considering that this is supposedly your big problem with Brexit - spending half of one working day's gross EU membership fees to construct 12 extra booths and eliminate the problem seems like a bit of a bargain does it not?
Extending Article 50 and then the transition period cost us about €20 billion, so €20,000,000,000, so if £30,000,000 is the cost of fixing this and then we're out of the EU and the problem is dealt with, then voting Brexit seems eminently logical does it not?
If after six years this problem is real and hasn't been fixed, that's a failure of one or more of the respective government's not a failure of voting for Brexit.
What we saw on Saturday is that half the booths were manned and a huge backlog built up. What we saw on Sunday was that all the booths were manned and the backlog melted away. This was always going to be one of the busiest weekends of the year. I am not sure that not increasing the number of booths is the problem. The absolute bottleneck is of course the number of ferries that can get in and out of the port. Spending more money on passport control is not going to change that.
I believe the ferries were leaving somewhat empty because passport control couldn't keep up. Brexit requires more checking of passports. If you don't have more checkers you will get delays. Whose fault it is, is up for debate. Either it's Brexit, Dover Port/UKG, geography or the French border control. If it's the latter two they are not things we can control so we will have to live with the delay in that case.
Obviously France is the biggie, but it's not the only place in the EU you can sail to from the UK. Are we seeing the same sorts of queues at ports in other EU countries?
It *is* possible for government policy to grow the economy, despite naysayers on left and right.
True, but it's also highly non-obvious how to go about it. Otherwise every government would do it...
The UK is now some way off the frontier of the productivity / GDP, so there are actually lots of things we could do.
They all involve confronting various vested interests, though.
French style, permanent tax breaks on investment in plant and machinery. At say, 100% tax relief.
Yes. Full relief. For starters.
UK is actually at the bottom end of tax competitiveness for business, despite common belief, and has essentially disincentivised capex until very recently.
We have focused on the low rate of CT rather than the effective rate. Rather than cancel the increase in the base rate we should increase the allowances. I don't see why 100% relief should be the cap either on capital spending or on training. We need incentives to invest in this country and the actual rate of CT is not particularly relevant to that.
After thinking about this for a week, and digging into a bit, we should probably do all of the above AND keep corporation tax lowish.
I would make high quality investment in machinery and high quality training very very tax advantageous.
The average Brit spends 115 hours in traffic each year. Swapping Fuel Duty for Road Pricing would boost GDP for 2 reasons.
1. You can't work if you're stuck in traffic. 2. Your effective labour market is smaller reducing the benefits of agglomeration.
How does reducing your effective labour market solve anything?
or
This study suggest constraints on housing supply have a 13.5% GDP cost in the US. And there are good reasons to believe supply is even more constrained in the UK
Firstly does he know that NIMBYISM is worth a lot of votes. Secondly has he seen how hard it is to do anything in San Francisco (yes I know it's an extreme example but there are plenty of others)..
I don’t think it’s codswallop. It might be politically unrealistic, but it’s pretty obvious that Britain’s productivity is significantly impaired by housing/planning/transport issues.
But look at his solution to a problem - he wishes to price people off commuting to increase the effective labour market size.
How does that work because all you do with road pricing is move the tax from being paid at the pump to being paid per mile on the road - you haven't changed anything beyond when and how it's collected. You haven't done anything to make the commute time shorter.
Actually, he does not.
He suggests that road pricing will smooth traffic flow as people respond to paying full cost of congestion during peak hours.
He references Singapore where, as he notes, average urban traffic speeds have *sped up* in recent years as congestion as decreased.
is he? - he references road pricing rather than dynamic road pricing - if he had referenced dynamic or time based road pricing I would just ask the simple question - where and how are you going to build the infrastructure to do it? Followed by have you seen the cost of doing it for even a small fixed point like the Dartford or Tyne Tunnels...
Now Dynamic Road pricing is possible in a small rich country when you limit it to particular routes - it's a lot harder to do in somewhere like the UK....
Easy enough if you GPS track all cars...
I'm sure the Home Office would never suggest such a thing.
You can't GPS all cars - because the car isn't under the Government's control so the GPS can be removed or disabled.
It *is* possible for government policy to grow the economy, despite naysayers on left and right.
True, but it's also highly non-obvious how to go about it. Otherwise every government would do it...
The UK is now some way off the frontier of the productivity / GDP, so there are actually lots of things we could do.
They all involve confronting various vested interests, though.
French style, permanent tax breaks on investment in plant and machinery. At say, 100% tax relief.
Yes. Full relief. For starters.
UK is actually at the bottom end of tax competitiveness for business, despite common belief, and has essentially disincentivised capex until very recently.
We have focused on the low rate of CT rather than the effective rate. Rather than cancel the increase in the base rate we should increase the allowances. I don't see why 100% relief should be the cap either on capital spending or on training. We need incentives to invest in this country and the actual rate of CT is not particularly relevant to that.
After thinking about this for a week, and digging into a bit, we should probably do all of the above AND keep corporation tax lowish.
I would make high quality investment in machinery and high quality training very very tax advantageous.
The average Brit spends 115 hours in traffic each year. Swapping Fuel Duty for Road Pricing would boost GDP for 2 reasons.
1. You can't work if you're stuck in traffic. 2. Your effective labour market is smaller reducing the benefits of agglomeration.
How does reducing your effective labour market solve anything?
or
This study suggest constraints on housing supply have a 13.5% GDP cost in the US. And there are good reasons to believe supply is even more constrained in the UK
Firstly does he know that NIMBYISM is worth a lot of votes. Secondly has he seen how hard it is to do anything in San Francisco (yes I know it's an extreme example but there are plenty of others)..
I don’t think it’s codswallop. It might be politically unrealistic, but it’s pretty obvious that Britain’s productivity is significantly impaired by housing/planning/transport issues.
But look at his solution to a problem - he wishes to price people off commuting to increase the effective labour market size.
How does that work because all you do with road pricing is move the tax from being paid at the pump to being paid per mile on the road - you haven't changed anything beyond when and how it's collected. You haven't done anything to make the commute time shorter.
Actually, he does not.
He suggests that road pricing will smooth traffic flow as people respond to paying full cost of congestion during peak hours.
He references Singapore where, as he notes, average urban traffic speeds have *sped up* in recent years as congestion as decreased.
is he? - he references road pricing rather than dynamic road pricing - if he had referenced dynamic or time based road pricing I would just ask the simple question - where and how are you going to build the infrastructure to do it? Followed by have you seen the cost of doing it for even a small fixed point like the Dartford or Tyne Tunnels...
Now Dynamic Road pricing is possible in a small rich country when you limit it to particular routes - it's a lot harder to do in somewhere like the UK....
Easy enough if you GPS track all cars...
I'm sure the Home Office would never suggest such a thing.
You can't GPS all cars - because the car isn't under the Government's control so the GPS can be removed or disabled.
Isn't GPS going to be required for speed controls? I thought they were going to be mandatory. If it is done on visual sign recognition then there will be plenty fun to be had.
Of course, anything can be disabled, just like you can drive around without insurance.
Presumably you could check each car "exists" when it passes an existing camera.
It *is* possible for government policy to grow the economy, despite naysayers on left and right.
True, but it's also highly non-obvious how to go about it. Otherwise every government would do it...
The UK is now some way off the frontier of the productivity / GDP, so there are actually lots of things we could do.
They all involve confronting various vested interests, though.
French style, permanent tax breaks on investment in plant and machinery. At say, 100% tax relief.
Yes. Full relief. For starters.
UK is actually at the bottom end of tax competitiveness for business, despite common belief, and has essentially disincentivised capex until very recently.
We have focused on the low rate of CT rather than the effective rate. Rather than cancel the increase in the base rate we should increase the allowances. I don't see why 100% relief should be the cap either on capital spending or on training. We need incentives to invest in this country and the actual rate of CT is not particularly relevant to that.
After thinking about this for a week, and digging into a bit, we should probably do all of the above AND keep corporation tax lowish.
I would make high quality investment in machinery and high quality training very very tax advantageous.
The average Brit spends 115 hours in traffic each year. Swapping Fuel Duty for Road Pricing would boost GDP for 2 reasons.
1. You can't work if you're stuck in traffic. 2. Your effective labour market is smaller reducing the benefits of agglomeration.
How does reducing your effective labour market solve anything?
or
This study suggest constraints on housing supply have a 13.5% GDP cost in the US. And there are good reasons to believe supply is even more constrained in the UK
Firstly does he know that NIMBYISM is worth a lot of votes. Secondly has he seen how hard it is to do anything in San Francisco (yes I know it's an extreme example but there are plenty of others)..
I don’t think it’s codswallop. It might be politically unrealistic, but it’s pretty obvious that Britain’s productivity is significantly impaired by housing/planning/transport issues.
But look at his solution to a problem - he wishes to price people off commuting to increase the effective labour market size.
How does that work because all you do with road pricing is move the tax from being paid at the pump to being paid per mile on the road - you haven't changed anything beyond when and how it's collected. You haven't done anything to make the commute time shorter.
Actually, he does not.
He suggests that road pricing will smooth traffic flow as people respond to paying full cost of congestion during peak hours.
He references Singapore where, as he notes, average urban traffic speeds have *sped up* in recent years as congestion as decreased.
is he? - he references road pricing rather than dynamic road pricing - if he had referenced dynamic or time based road pricing I would just ask the simple question - where and how are you going to build the infrastructure to do it? Followed by have you seen the cost of doing it for even a small fixed point like the Dartford or Tyne Tunnels...
Now Dynamic Road pricing is possible in a small rich country when you limit it to particular routes - it's a lot harder to do in somewhere like the UK....
Easy enough if you GPS track all cars...
I'm sure the Home Office would never suggest such a thing.
You can't GPS all cars - because the car isn't under the Government's control so the GPS can be removed or disabled.
AFAICR one of the original aims of the Galileo GNSS was to aid road pricing. I *think* it was something Blair's government, along with some other governments, wanted.
On the plus side: it is 'fairer'. If it is a replacement for road tax then it means the less you travel, the less you pay. You could even alter pricing strategies so you pay more in congested areas such as city centres, and less in the countryside near homes.
On the negative side: the government would know everywhere you drove...
"A senior ally of Liz Truss has launched an attack on Rishi Sunak’s wealth as the Tory leadership race was branded “embarrassing” by a senior minister. Nadine Dorries, the culture secretary, hit out at Sunak for wearing a £3,500 bespoke suit and £450 Prada shoes, comparing the attire with £4.50 earrings Truss is apparently sporting."
Is there a touch of Cosmo Citizen of Nowhere being insinuated about Sunak, I wonder?
Also, racism - is this to any extent at all in the mix?
No. You wish.
I most certainly don't wish.
But why so sure of No?
Because Sunak would've probably won this race if it had taken place a year ago (before he raised taxes) and probably even in January (before the stories about his family's tax affairs). His polling didn't suddenly fall off a cliff because the members all noticed he was Indian.
Also, Badenoch was polling about as well against Sunak as Truss.
Yes, all true and positive and meaningful. But if (say) 10% of the membership are going to vote against him because he's not white it would swing it for Truss.
Is it an absurd thought iyo - that 10% of the Con membership would secretly be like that?
Serious question. I'm not making accusations.
I can't rule it out. It is possible that (say) Badenoch would beat Truss despite being black, rather than it being an irrelevant factor. However, there is no meaningful evidence to support the claim.
Hence my original comment, "you wish": I think you suspect just how prevalent these attitudes are in the Labour party, and you really want it to be just as true for the Conservatives. Because if it isn't, a good chunk of your worldview falls apart, and you are forced to confront just how awful identity politics actually is for improving the lot of minorities, and how much progress the Left has given up on by obsessing over what colour people's skin is.
That's a bit jaundiced towards me. I do happen to believe racism is still widespread - being deeply ingrained from the colonialism which is a large part of what's brought us to where and what we are today. I think this is what you'd expect and I don't see the evidence to contradict it. Although of course the extent to which people are racist isn't easy to get at. Any survey would say hardly anybody is since it'd rely on self-reporting. And let's say I'm wrong and in fact racism has just about disappeared from Britain, here in 2022, would this bother me? No, it truly wouldn't. I'd be happy to be wrong about this. But as we speak I don't think I am.
Regarding our GDP and productivity we have comparative advantage in very-high end manufacturing, creative industries, pharmaceuticals, telecoms, and financial professional services.
Therefore, we'd want policies and trade deals to leverage those globally as best we could, and that includes the EU.
However, in and of itself I don't think that's sufficient because a good mass of our population will never get high paying jobs in any of those sectors and we have to be able to offer them something other than low-wage, low-security, low-value work that is migrant heavy and convenient for those in the thriving sectors but drags down our GDP and income per head and our productivity measures.
Demand for passport control is highly variable. During certain time of the year there is enormous demand for it - because there are tens of thousands of people going on (or coming back from) holidays. There are lots of cars, and each car has many occupants.
At other times, there are just a few tens of lorries (each with just a driver) requiring minimal time and effort.
And this is a much greater issue at Dover than at Heathrow or Luton. People travelling by car to the Continent are much more likely to have kids with them, than those flying.
Governments don't deal well with highly variable things. It would be expensive to have 50 passport control officers there 365 days a year... but getting trained staff there during just the busiest times is far from easy. (Especially as those busiest times are the times when passport officers probably want to go on holiday with their own families.)
HM Government should propose a plan like Nexus/Sentri in the US, which handles land crossings to Mexico and Canada. Basically, you pay a fee, do a background check and register your vehicle. When you are due to cross the border, you tell them who will be in your vehicle, and then you pretty much drive straight through.
Of course, they have a man looking into the vehicle as you go through, and they pull out vehicles where they think there might be a mismatch between who is registered and who is actually travelling. And - of course - there's jail time for all involved if it turned out you lied.
In general, this works very well. People with families do the work ahead of time, and cross quickly. Those who have criminal records or have not, will sit in queues for a couple of hours.
It *is* possible for government policy to grow the economy, despite naysayers on left and right.
True, but it's also highly non-obvious how to go about it. Otherwise every government would do it...
The UK is now some way off the frontier of the productivity / GDP, so there are actually lots of things we could do.
They all involve confronting various vested interests, though.
French style, permanent tax breaks on investment in plant and machinery. At say, 100% tax relief.
Yes. Full relief. For starters.
UK is actually at the bottom end of tax competitiveness for business, despite common belief, and has essentially disincentivised capex until very recently.
We have focused on the low rate of CT rather than the effective rate. Rather than cancel the increase in the base rate we should increase the allowances. I don't see why 100% relief should be the cap either on capital spending or on training. We need incentives to invest in this country and the actual rate of CT is not particularly relevant to that.
After thinking about this for a week, and digging into a bit, we should probably do all of the above AND keep corporation tax lowish.
I would make high quality investment in machinery and high quality training very very tax advantageous.
The average Brit spends 115 hours in traffic each year. Swapping Fuel Duty for Road Pricing would boost GDP for 2 reasons.
1. You can't work if you're stuck in traffic. 2. Your effective labour market is smaller reducing the benefits of agglomeration.
How does reducing your effective labour market solve anything?
or
This study suggest constraints on housing supply have a 13.5% GDP cost in the US. And there are good reasons to believe supply is even more constrained in the UK
Firstly does he know that NIMBYISM is worth a lot of votes. Secondly has he seen how hard it is to do anything in San Francisco (yes I know it's an extreme example but there are plenty of others)..
I don’t think it’s codswallop. It might be politically unrealistic, but it’s pretty obvious that Britain’s productivity is significantly impaired by housing/planning/transport issues.
But look at his solution to a problem - he wishes to price people off commuting to increase the effective labour market size.
How does that work because all you do with road pricing is move the tax from being paid at the pump to being paid per mile on the road - you haven't changed anything beyond when and how it's collected. You haven't done anything to make the commute time shorter.
Actually, he does not.
He suggests that road pricing will smooth traffic flow as people respond to paying full cost of congestion during peak hours.
He references Singapore where, as he notes, average urban traffic speeds have *sped up* in recent years as congestion as decreased.
is he? - he references road pricing rather than dynamic road pricing - if he had referenced dynamic or time based road pricing I would just ask the simple question - where and how are you going to build the infrastructure to do it? Followed by have you seen the cost of doing it for even a small fixed point like the Dartford or Tyne Tunnels...
Now Dynamic Road pricing is possible in a small rich country when you limit it to particular routes - it's a lot harder to do in somewhere like the UK....
Easy enough if you GPS track all cars...
I'm sure the Home Office would never suggest such a thing.
You can't GPS all cars - because the car isn't under the Government's control so the GPS can be removed or disabled.
Isn't GPS going to be required for speed controls? I thought they were going to be mandatory. If it is done on visual sign recognition then there will be plenty fun to be had.
Of course, anything can be disabled, just like you can drive around without insurance.
Presumably you could check each car "exists" when it passes an existing camera.
As an aside I worked at WS Atkins in Blairs first term and got a sight of a DfT discussion document on road pricing which included some proposed figures per mile. Most in our document calculated how much our costs would be to commute and I was second closest to the office at 22 miles.....my costs would have been £150 a week to goto work. Petrol at the time for the commute was costing me £30 a week to compare. Most of us were of the view if it ever came in then we would have to quit and find a job closer to home.
I've just received my new (blue) passport - The Brexit dividend is complete!
Congratulations. You are hereby now entitled to join a long, long queue to get across the Channel (once it's been stamped by a surly French customs agent). Brexit - the joy!
And potential deportation if you get an incompetent border agent who forgets to stamp your passport correctly on the way out.
I have read several times on this very forum that it still only takes seconds to stamp a passport.
This is simply not true. Said surly and incompetent border guard has to leaf through your passport to find the most recent entry and exit stamps to ensure you are compliant with the visa-free 90/180 rule. That takes longer than a few seconds.
But checks were always required, so nothing is new.
If checks take twice as long then if you have twice as many staff on, then nothing has changed. Just staff appropriately based upon today's circumstances.
Sorry, you keep repeating this, but the checks are new. Even if they were required previously, they weren't done. Those of us who hopped across the Channel can testify that most of the time you were just waved through, with the occasional random check.
Indeed - that was my experience too. Normally the only checks outbound were done by the UK Border force, the French normally just checked you were waving the same number of passports at them as there were passengers in the car. They might stop Eastern European vehicles occasionally.
Also @BartholomewRoberts doesn't consider that Dover and Folkestone both have major constraints on capacity due to geography. Given the extra time taken to process, it may be that it isn't possible simply to keep increasing the number of border posts - there needs to be somewhere to put them, and the waiting cars. A more realistic option may be to limit the number of vehicle crossings.
Incidentally I notice that my shiny new blue passport has, in 4 months, already received the same number of stamps (5) as my previous one had in its lifetime.
In the event it takes 24 booths instead of 12 then would the responsible thing to do be:
A: Get 24 booths. Use compulsory purchase orders if necessary.
B: Stick with 12. Blame voters for a choice they may six years ago.
They've had six years to prepare for this. It isn't voters responsibility to deal with this, it's government's responsibility to accept voters choices and adapt.
Have you actually been to Dover? Have you seen where the port actually is? Folkestone isn't much better. Are you planning to requisition the Castle, or the White Cliffs?
Yes I have and yes there's space for 12 extra booths if they're needed. Where there's a will, there's a way.
As @RochdalePioneers has repeatedly said the Port of Dover requested ~£30 million to build new facilities. Oddly enough they didn't seem bothered that they'd need to requisition the White Cliffs to do so.
Considering that EU membership cost us £350mn a week gross, less net, and considering that this is supposedly your big problem with Brexit - spending half of one working day's gross EU membership fees to construct 12 extra booths and eliminate the problem seems like a bit of a bargain does it not?
Extending Article 50 and then the transition period cost us about €20 billion, so €20,000,000,000, so if £30,000,000 is the cost of fixing this and then we're out of the EU and the problem is dealt with, then voting Brexit seems eminently logical does it not?
If after six years this problem is real and hasn't been fixed, that's a failure of one or more of the respective government's not a failure of voting for Brexit.
What we saw on Saturday is that half the booths were manned and a huge backlog built up. What we saw on Sunday was that all the booths were manned and the backlog melted away. This was always going to be one of the busiest weekends of the year. I am not sure that not increasing the number of booths is the problem. The absolute bottleneck is of course the number of ferries that can get in and out of the port. Spending more money on passport control is not going to change that.
I believe the ferries were leaving somewhat empty because passport control couldn't keep up. Brexit requires more checking of passports. If you don't have more checkers you will get delays. Whose fault it is, is up for debate. Either it's Brexit, Dover Port/UKG, geography or the French border control. If it's the latter two they are not things we can control so we will have to live with the delay in that case.
Obviously France is the biggie, but it's not the only place in the EU you can sail to from the UK. Are we seeing the same sorts of queues at ports in other EU countries?
I would argue it's irrelevant whether other countries passport checking is subject to the same delay if France is the place you want to go to. In any case French passport checking at Dover was at the request of UKG so that UK could do its checking in France and avoid asylum seekers turn up on the English coast. That agreement doesn't apply to other countries.
One thing which has been mentioned in newspapers, but not that I have seen in our rather spirited discussions on PB - a chap from the Port of Dover suggesting volumes at the port were higher than in a normal year due to people trying to avoid airport chaos.
I wonder if people travelling in the next few weeks will switch back to airports…
I've just received my new (blue) passport - The Brexit dividend is complete!
Congratulations. You are hereby now entitled to join a long, long queue to get across the Channel (once it's been stamped by a surly French customs agent). Brexit - the joy!
And potential deportation if you get an incompetent border agent who forgets to stamp your passport correctly on the way out.
I have read several times on this very forum that it still only takes seconds to stamp a passport.
This is simply not true. Said surly and incompetent border guard has to leaf through your passport to find the most recent entry and exit stamps to ensure you are compliant with the visa-free 90/180 rule. That takes longer than a few seconds.
But checks were always required, so nothing is new.
If checks take twice as long then if you have twice as many staff on, then nothing has changed. Just staff appropriately based upon today's circumstances.
Sorry, you keep repeating this, but the checks are new. Even if they were required previously, they weren't done. Those of us who hopped across the Channel can testify that most of the time you were just waved through, with the occasional random check.
Indeed - that was my experience too. Normally the only checks outbound were done by the UK Border force, the French normally just checked you were waving the same number of passports at them as there were passengers in the car. They might stop Eastern European vehicles occasionally.
Also @BartholomewRoberts doesn't consider that Dover and Folkestone both have major constraints on capacity due to geography. Given the extra time taken to process, it may be that it isn't possible simply to keep increasing the number of border posts - there needs to be somewhere to put them, and the waiting cars. A more realistic option may be to limit the number of vehicle crossings.
Incidentally I notice that my shiny new blue passport has, in 4 months, already received the same number of stamps (5) as my previous one had in its lifetime.
In the event it takes 24 booths instead of 12 then would the responsible thing to do be:
A: Get 24 booths. Use compulsory purchase orders if necessary.
B: Stick with 12. Blame voters for a choice they may six years ago.
They've had six years to prepare for this. It isn't voters responsibility to deal with this, it's government's responsibility to accept voters choices and adapt.
Have you actually been to Dover? Have you seen where the port actually is? Folkestone isn't much better. Are you planning to requisition the Castle, or the White Cliffs?
Yes I have and yes there's space for 12 extra booths if they're needed. Where there's a will, there's a way.
As @RochdalePioneers has repeatedly said the Port of Dover requested ~£30 million to build new facilities. Oddly enough they didn't seem bothered that they'd need to requisition the White Cliffs to do so.
Considering that EU membership cost us £350mn a week gross, less net, and considering that this is supposedly your big problem with Brexit - spending half of one working day's gross EU membership fees to construct 12 extra booths and eliminate the problem seems like a bit of a bargain does it not?
Extending Article 50 and then the transition period cost us about €20 billion, so €20,000,000,000, so if £30,000,000 is the cost of fixing this and then we're out of the EU and the problem is dealt with, then voting Brexit seems eminently logical does it not?
If after six years this problem is real and hasn't been fixed, that's a failure of one or more of the respective government's not a failure of voting for Brexit.
What we saw on Saturday is that half the booths were manned and a huge backlog built up. What we saw on Sunday was that all the booths were manned and the backlog melted away. This was always going to be one of the busiest weekends of the year. I am not sure that not increasing the number of booths is the problem. The absolute bottleneck is of course the number of ferries that can get in and out of the port. Spending more money on passport control is not going to change that.
I believe the ferries were leaving somewhat empty because passport control couldn't keep up. Brexit requires more checking of passports. If you don't have more checkers you will get delays. Whose fault it is, is up for debate. Either it's Brexit, Dover Port/UKG, geography or the French border control. If it's the latter two they are not things we can control so we will have to live with the delay in that case.
Obviously France is the biggie, but it's not the only place in the EU you can sail to from the UK. Are we seeing the same sorts of queues at ports in other EU countries?
I would argue it's irrelevant whether other countries passport checking is subject to the same delay if France is the place you want to go to. In any case French passport checking at Dover was at the request of UKG so that UK could do its checking in France and avoid asylum seekers turn up on the English coast. That agreement doesn't apply to other countries.
So why aren’t the Spain to UK and Netherlands to UK ferries full of asylum seekers?
Best is two - Camborne & Redruth and Norwich South. I keep being next door.
3 for me. Stretford and Urmston, Mansfield and Nottingham East. Just fell lucky that two of them were close to me. I ten fell over on Birmingham Northfield which is not North of Birmingham at all.
If we automate low-end retail, distribution and agricultural jobs and employ fewer people in them working fewer hours then I assume our productivity per head automatically goes up simply because we've fiddled the denominator.
One thing which has been mentioned in newspapers, but not that I have seen in our rather spirited discussions on PB - a chap from the Port of Dover suggesting volumes at the port were higher than in a normal year due to people trying to avoid airport chaos.
I wonder if people travelling in the next few weeks will switch back to airports…
That's a good point that hasn't been commented on much.
One of my friends caught up in it was driving to Spain.
Demand for passport control is highly variable. During certain time of the year there is enormous demand for it - because there are tens of thousands of people going on (or coming back from) holidays. There are lots of cars, and each car has many occupants.
At other times, there are just a few tens of lorries (each with just a driver) requiring minimal time and effort.
And this is a much greater issue at Dover than at Heathrow or Luton. People travelling by car to the Continent are much more likely to have kids with them, than those flying.
Governments don't deal well with highly variable things. It would be expensive to have 50 passport control officers there 365 days a year... but getting trained staff there during just the busiest times is far from easy. (Especially as those busiest times are the times when passport officers probably want to go on holiday with their own families.)
HM Government should propose a plan like Nexus/Sentri in the US, which handles land crossings to Mexico and Canada. Basically, you pay a fee, do a background check and register your vehicle. When you are due to cross the border, you tell them who will be in your vehicle, and then you pretty much drive straight through.
Of course, they have a man looking into the vehicle as you go through, and they pull out vehicles where they think there might be a mismatch between who is registered and who is actually travelling. And - of course - there's jail time for all involved if it turned out you lied.
In general, this works very well. People with families do the work ahead of time, and cross quickly. Those who have criminal records or have not, will sit in queues for a couple of hours.
Sounds good, so presumably this well managed US Mexican land crossing has not been of any political interest over the last decade?
Best is two - Camborne & Redruth and Norwich South. I keep being next door.
3 for me. Stretford and Urmston, Mansfield and Nottingham East. Just fell lucky that two of them were close to me. I ten fell over on Birmingham Northfield which is not North of Birmingham at all.
I managed 5: Spelthorne, Hartlepool, Brentford and Isleworth, Huddersfield and East Yorkshire. I then fell down at Aldridge-Brownhills (knew it was somewhere in the West Midlands but was stuck at throwing darts at the conurbation). I was lucky to have avoided the Scottish seats which all merge into one for me and is my downfall getting that high again.
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Alex Massie essay on Orwell on Jura, h/t @AlastairMeeks
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/rwanda-priti-patel-parliamentary-committee-b2130743.html
OPINION: UK-France travel crisis will only be solved when the British get real about Brexit https://www.thelocal.fr/20220725/opinion-uk-france-travel-crisis-will-only-be-solved-when-the-british-get-real-about-brexit/ via @TheLocalFrance France's news in English
Followed by have you seen the cost of doing it for even a small fixed point like the Dartford or Tyne Tunnels...
Now Dynamic Road pricing is possible in a small rich country when you limit it to particular routes - it's a lot harder to do in somewhere like the UK....
Whether Trump's idiotic picks, and his divisiveness, will stop the Republicans from capitalizing on the issues, net, I have not even tried to estimate.
(Murdoch's recent attacks on Trump in the New York Post and the Wall Street Journal may reflect, in part, the same realization that Trump is a loser.)
However, I changed my mind about it during covid when the willingness of the state to appropriate power to itself became apparent.
Essentially, for me, it's become very important not to allow the state further tools by which it can know where its population is going and has been. For that freedom, I'll grumpily put up with traffic jams.
I'm sure the Home Office would never suggest such a thing.
I don’t have a view on the practicalities of it, I think there’s a premise somewhere that APNR has recently become potentially much cheaper and less obtrusive.
In effect we would only need software that can access the databases to put in a pretty effective road pricing scheme (yes minor roads would largely not be covered but it would cover the majority of traffic)
Suspect in custody.
Of course, anything can be disabled, just like you can drive around without insurance.
Presumably you could check each car "exists" when it passes an existing camera.
On the plus side: it is 'fairer'. If it is a replacement for road tax then it means the less you travel, the less you pay. You could even alter pricing strategies so you pay more in congested areas such as city centres, and less in the countryside near homes.
On the negative side: the government would know everywhere you drove...
NEW THREAD
Therefore, we'd want policies and trade deals to leverage those globally as best we could, and that includes the EU.
However, in and of itself I don't think that's sufficient because a good mass of our population will never get high paying jobs in any of those sectors and we have to be able to offer them something other than low-wage, low-security, low-value work that is migrant heavy and convenient for those in the thriving sectors but drags down our GDP and income per head and our productivity measures.
Demand for passport control is highly variable. During certain time of the year there is enormous demand for it - because there are tens of thousands of people going on (or coming back from) holidays. There are lots of cars, and each car has many occupants.
At other times, there are just a few tens of lorries (each with just a driver) requiring minimal time and effort.
And this is a much greater issue at Dover than at Heathrow or Luton. People travelling by car to the Continent are much more likely to have kids with them, than those flying.
Governments don't deal well with highly variable things. It would be expensive to have 50 passport control officers there 365 days a year... but getting trained staff there during just the busiest times is far from easy. (Especially as those busiest times are the times when passport officers probably want to go on holiday with their own families.)
HM Government should propose a plan like Nexus/Sentri in the US, which handles land crossings to Mexico and Canada. Basically, you pay a fee, do a background check and register your vehicle. When you are due to cross the border, you tell them who will be in your vehicle, and then you pretty much drive straight through.
Of course, they have a man looking into the vehicle as you go through, and they pull out vehicles where they think there might be a mismatch between who is registered and who is actually travelling. And - of course - there's jail time for all involved if it turned out you lied.
In general, this works very well. People with families do the work ahead of time, and cross quickly. Those who have criminal records or have not, will sit in queues for a couple of hours.
I wonder if people travelling in the next few weeks will switch back to airports…
One of my friends caught up in it was driving to Spain.
LAB: 40% (-4)
CON: 34% (-1)
LDEM: 12% (+3)
GRN: 5% (-)
via @RedfieldWilton, 24 Jul
Chgs. w/ 21 Jul