Even if the Ukrainians did carry it out, they have reasons to deny it:
1) If it was a saboteur team, to give them a chance to escape; 2) If they were testing an indigenous rocket or drone - which they must be as AFAICS NATO have not provided them with weaponry that can operate this far from their forces - to try and keep any others for the element of surprise.
But it's still not great for the Russians. 'Sneak attack on airfield that may not be repeated' would be unfortunate but bearable. 'Our forces are so incompetent that in the middle of a war they keep blowing themselves up' is to put it mildly not a great look.
Worth noting that another target in the assembly area of the Russian redeployment in Southern Kherson also went boom yesterday, 150km from the front line.
FPT - it is simply not true to say that the UK gets most of its uranium from Russia; it gets it from Australia under a 1979 agreement, which, incidentally, has over a quarter of the world's supply.
It tends to arrive in the UK as UO3 and then Springfields processes it into reactor fuel.
Why does a mountaineering group process nuclear fuel?
I don't think that she is talking about cutting IT though, is she? She is talking about taking the VAT off fuel and suspending the green levies. Everyone who pays for their fuel pays those and they increase the size of their bills. She is also talking about reversing the NI increase. More people pay NI than IT although Rishi's latest reforms which basically took the lowest paid out of the NI increase will have significantly reduced the difference.
What these tax cuts will not do is give those on benefits the money to pay their vastly increased bills. There simply has to be more help and support for that part of society. Truss failing to recognise that, and the financial implications of that for her CT cuts, is a problem.
I suspect Truss does realise that, and the simple reality is that all governments and all PMs take actions where required.
It is entirely appropriate though for the priority to be reversing the tax hikes. Having people keeping more of their own income they're working for is not a "flaw" and if people aren't working then they have the option of working. We keep being told there's a labour shortage afterall.
Public services need to be paid for. Taxes are a necessary part of a civilised society. I think everyone agrees on that. What there can be disagreement on is what taxes, what rates and who pays them? The NI increases were wrong, not because they increased the tax burden but because they unfairly increased the tax burden on the working population at the expense of the retired who are the main users of both social care and the NHS it was supposedly funding. We need to broaden the net on tax contributions and this will almost certainly involve more capital taxes. I don't hear Truss (or indeed Sunak) talking much about that.
You're not going to hear either Truss or Sunak talking about that either. But we can agree that the NI increases were wrong, and therefore I stand by that reversing them is right. If that means that money is required via alternative taxes - as I've said all governments make other decisions and no prospective leader is ever going to write an entire budget during a leadership election campaign.
But at the least reversing the NI tax hike is a step in the right direction. If there are to be tax hikes, then allowing the NI hike to stand will simply set that up as a ratchet to be turned ever higher to pay for the NHS and Social Care while allowing those not paying NI to evade their responsibilities to your civilised society all together.
Exactly. It's a huge Trojan Horse.
Don't want to put up NI or Income Tax ?
Fine. Put up the "health and social care levy".
Yep, that was the wrong way to do it. Yet another tax that can be raised by governments saying they won’t raise income taxes.
There was a brief mention of UBI on here yesterday, one of those things that works well in theory but is very difficult in practice. The single most difficult thing about it in practice, is that the setting of the rate becomes a political football at election time. It would have to be set by an external committee, in the same way as interest rates, in order to depoliticise it - but which politicians are going to do that?
I take a simple view on this: taxes at every level should never exceed 50% so you always have an incentive to keep progressing as you keep more of what you earn than the government takes.
That applies to UBI benefit withdrawal. It applies to graduates paying 9% on top of Income Tax/NI and the HSC levy, as well as obligatory pensions contributions. And it applies to people earning between 100-120k who face an effective marginal rate of 60%.
We can debate the precise rates within this but that should be the ceiling and the curve should be smoothed throughout.
Completely agreed, and we should include both forms of National Insurance in the calculation as well, since Employers NI is a direct tax on the wages even if its a hidden one which is why its so popular to raise it now in the Treasury, because they can pretend its a 1p rise in tax while actually increasing taxes by 2p.
I hope it's not wishful thinking, but unless something big changes might the Tory party possibly be in real trouble as 2022 wears on? To summarise: its market for the moment has to be the retired or at least late-middle aged gammonians, most of whom would repeal the "woke" Race Relations Act that their hero spoke against in 1968 if ever they got the chance, perhaps shortly after banning the metric system because it's "foreign". This part of the population is so separate from the "red wall" and from almost everyone else in the country too that they must be making brand managers feel faint. They're lucky there's not an election on.
On the other side of the coin, both they and the government machine are doing well with the "cost of living crisis" buzzphrase. What that tells many audiences is "don't support strikes".
But THAT orientation is itself a "wall" that might, just possibly might, crumble. Why? Because if your living standards are falling through the floor to an extent that neither you nor your parents have ever before witnessed, then you've got to do something about it in cooperation with your neighbours, your workmates (if any), your family members, and with people who are in the same position as you in other areas, other workplaces, and other families, otherwise you are completely f***ed. The catch is that you need to have spiritedness (which requires that you switch your f***ing smartphone off - not a single oppositional movement has ever been mainly composed of continuing heroin addicts), and you also need enough energy left in your body before your bodyweight plummets too far owing to lack of food (which requires that you don't hang about).
Will the "something big" happen that the Tory party needs? It might. It's easy to read the proliferation of Ukrainian flags on British flagpoles as an alternative to full-scale British entry into the war. That is kinda true, but only for the time being. There are parts of the population who are itching for war. This is clear for example in messages posted here about destroying Russia as if it were a rebellion in a British colony, and in the belief that if "Putin" isn't stopped he'll soon be threatening the mouth of the Thames - a case of making up reasons for stuff while believing them. We are talking about irrational xenophobes who don't care if Birmingham or Glasgow get nuked so long as the Azov Regiment triumphantly retakes the lost lands of the Donbas (and even the Crimea) and Russian cities get nuked faster than British ones.
Then there is the weakening of many minds since the start of the coronavirus carnival in March 2020. For example, can people who locked themselves up in their houses for months except when taking weekly trips to the supermarket, when legally speaking they weren't required to, recover whatever level of independence of thought they once had? That might be a difficult ask. Many probably can't even remember before smartphones.
Somebody’s either started very early or gone on an all-nighter.
That's you up against the wall when the revolution comes, comrade.
If it is my revolution…. {giggles like a loony}
“Have you considered joining the space program?”
No. You're putting the whole of the DfE on it, remember? I don't want to spend any time with those useless drunken prats.
Sigh. No no no.
This is a proper, wide ranging program.
Parliament is being sent to Pluto
DfE in its entirety is performing the first person’s mission to land on the surface of the Sun.
And those are just the reference missions for proof of capability.
I don't think that she is talking about cutting IT though, is she? She is talking about taking the VAT off fuel and suspending the green levies. Everyone who pays for their fuel pays those and they increase the size of their bills. She is also talking about reversing the NI increase. More people pay NI than IT although Rishi's latest reforms which basically took the lowest paid out of the NI increase will have significantly reduced the difference.
What these tax cuts will not do is give those on benefits the money to pay their vastly increased bills. There simply has to be more help and support for that part of society. Truss failing to recognise that, and the financial implications of that for her CT cuts, is a problem.
I suspect Truss does realise that, and the simple reality is that all governments and all PMs take actions where required.
It is entirely appropriate though for the priority to be reversing the tax hikes. Having people keeping more of their own income they're working for is not a "flaw" and if people aren't working then they have the option of working. We keep being told there's a labour shortage afterall.
Public services need to be paid for. Taxes are a necessary part of a civilised society. I think everyone agrees on that. What there can be disagreement on is what taxes, what rates and who pays them? The NI increases were wrong, not because they increased the tax burden but because they unfairly increased the tax burden on the working population at the expense of the retired who are the main users of both social care and the NHS it was supposedly funding. We need to broaden the net on tax contributions and this will almost certainly involve more capital taxes. I don't hear Truss (or indeed Sunak) talking much about that.
You're not going to hear either Truss or Sunak talking about that either. But we can agree that the NI increases were wrong, and therefore I stand by that reversing them is right. If that means that money is required via alternative taxes - as I've said all governments make other decisions and no prospective leader is ever going to write an entire budget during a leadership election campaign.
But at the least reversing the NI tax hike is a step in the right direction. If there are to be tax hikes, then allowing the NI hike to stand will simply set that up as a ratchet to be turned ever higher to pay for the NHS and Social Care while allowing those not paying NI to evade their responsibilities to your civilised society all together.
Exactly. It's a huge Trojan Horse.
Don't want to put up NI or Income Tax ?
Fine. Put up the "health and social care levy".
Yep, that was the wrong way to do it. Yet another tax that can be raised by governments saying they won’t raise income taxes.
There was a brief mention of UBI on here yesterday, one of those things that works well in theory but is very difficult in practice. The single most difficult thing about it in practice, is that the setting of the rate becomes a political football at election time. It would have to be set by an external committee, in the same way as interest rates, in order to depoliticise it - but which politicians are going to do that?
I take a simple view on this: taxes at every level should never exceed 50% so you always have an incentive to keep progressing as you keep more of what you earn than the government takes.
That applies to UBI benefit withdrawal. It applies to graduates paying 9% on top of Income Tax/NI and the HSC levy, as well as obligatory pensions contributions. And it applies to people earning between 100-120k who face an effective marginal rate of 60%.
We can debate the precise rates within this but that should be the ceiling and the curve should be smoothed throughout.
For some people on benefits the effective marginal tax rate is well above 100%.
We need to stop piggy-backing benefits on UC eligibility - it completely distorts the incentives. And reduce the taper rate even further , even though that will mean "subsidising Asda".
This is something that will damage Liz Truss, I remember a pollster telling me Martin Lewis had astronomical trust figures with the public, compared to the gutter most politicians were found in.
Liz Truss has been urged to ditch “outrageous” claims that tax cuts will deal with energy price rises after she continued to hold out against immediate help with bills yesterday.
Martin Lewis, the money-saving expert, said the frontrunner to become prime minister must set out detailed plans this month and offered to help draw them up as he warned that the energy crisis risked civil unrest and deaths from hypothermia this winter.
Rishi Sunak, who is Truss’s rival in the Tory leadership race, must also commit himself to doubling the package he set out as chancellor in May, Lewis said. He accused the Conservative Party of neglecting a “financial cataclysm” that would push millions into destitution.
There's a reason why scammers use the image of Martin Lewis to try and entice people to hand their money over to them, people trust him on things like this.
I am afraid that Martin Lewis is being completely unrealistic here. How can the government pay everyone's increase in their heating bills? It is completely and utterly unsustainable. What needs to be done is to protect the vulnerable. The rest of us will just have to pay more for our fuel until the price comes down again. Sunak's plans for the first increase was frankly terrible policy and should not be repeated or augmented.
True, in which case tax cuts are worse than useless. The nature of tax cuts is to help those who have more, more.
Rough ballpark for what has to happen is that the bottom third will need a lot, if not complete help with this. That means the £1000 support going up to close to £2500. We're talking people who don't have £2500 spare. That's not happing by tax cuts.
You do realise that the majority of people paying tax are working hard in demanding jobs and trying to raise families, right?
Do you mind if I ask if you are beginning to regret voting for Sunak? Or perhaps that you won't be too upset if he loses?
You seem to be coming around to the idea that his policies of jacking up NI, sorry the "health and social care levy", to pay for everything are perhaps not the best idea.
I almost voted for Truss. I much prefer her views on foreign, defence and security policy. I also liked her opposition to the HSC levy.
What swung it for me was her totally blasé attitude to the national debt, and interest rates, and her really dumb answer to energy bills this Winter - "corporation tax cuts will do it", effectively.
I have a big mortgage to pay. Next after that is energy bills and then council tax.
She mismanages that and my home could become unaffordable for me, which would be an even bigger problems than taxes.
I don't think that she is talking about cutting IT though, is she? She is talking about taking the VAT off fuel and suspending the green levies. Everyone who pays for their fuel pays those and they increase the size of their bills. She is also talking about reversing the NI increase. More people pay NI than IT although Rishi's latest reforms which basically took the lowest paid out of the NI increase will have significantly reduced the difference.
What these tax cuts will not do is give those on benefits the money to pay their vastly increased bills. There simply has to be more help and support for that part of society. Truss failing to recognise that, and the financial implications of that for her CT cuts, is a problem.
I suspect Truss does realise that, and the simple reality is that all governments and all PMs take actions where required.
It is entirely appropriate though for the priority to be reversing the tax hikes. Having people keeping more of their own income they're working for is not a "flaw" and if people aren't working then they have the option of working. We keep being told there's a labour shortage afterall.
Public services need to be paid for. Taxes are a necessary part of a civilised society. I think everyone agrees on that. What there can be disagreement on is what taxes, what rates and who pays them? The NI increases were wrong, not because they increased the tax burden but because they unfairly increased the tax burden on the working population at the expense of the retired who are the main users of both social care and the NHS it was supposedly funding. We need to broaden the net on tax contributions and this will almost certainly involve more capital taxes. I don't hear Truss (or indeed Sunak) talking much about that.
You're not going to hear either Truss or Sunak talking about that either. But we can agree that the NI increases were wrong, and therefore I stand by that reversing them is right. If that means that money is required via alternative taxes - as I've said all governments make other decisions and no prospective leader is ever going to write an entire budget during a leadership election campaign.
But at the least reversing the NI tax hike is a step in the right direction. If there are to be tax hikes, then allowing the NI hike to stand will simply set that up as a ratchet to be turned ever higher to pay for the NHS and Social Care while allowing those not paying NI to evade their responsibilities to your civilised society all together.
Exactly. It's a huge Trojan Horse.
Don't want to put up NI or Income Tax ?
Fine. Put up the "health and social care levy".
Yep, that was the wrong way to do it. Yet another tax that can be raised by governments saying they won’t raise income taxes.
There was a brief mention of UBI on here yesterday, one of those things that works well in theory but is very difficult in practice. The single most difficult thing about it in practice, is that the setting of the rate becomes a political football at election time. It would have to be set by an external committee, in the same way as interest rates, in order to depoliticise it - but which politicians are going to do that?
I take a simple view on this: taxes at every level should never exceed 50% so you always have an incentive to keep progressing as you keep more of what you earn than the government takes.
That applies to UBI benefit withdrawal. It applies to graduates paying 9% on top of Income Tax/NI and the HSC levy, as well as obligatory pensions contributions. And it applies to people earning between 100-120k who face an effective marginal rate of 60%.
We can debate the precise rates within this but that should be the ceiling and the curve should be smoothed throughout.
Completely agreed, and we should include both forms of National Insurance in the calculation as well, since Employers NI is a direct tax on the wages even if its a hidden one which is why its so popular to raise it now in the Treasury, because they can pretend its a 1p rise in tax while actually increasing taxes by 2p.
No.
A UBI should be absolute - pension, tax free allowance and “benefits”, one payment for all.
I don't think that she is talking about cutting IT though, is she? She is talking about taking the VAT off fuel and suspending the green levies. Everyone who pays for their fuel pays those and they increase the size of their bills. She is also talking about reversing the NI increase. More people pay NI than IT although Rishi's latest reforms which basically took the lowest paid out of the NI increase will have significantly reduced the difference.
What these tax cuts will not do is give those on benefits the money to pay their vastly increased bills. There simply has to be more help and support for that part of society. Truss failing to recognise that, and the financial implications of that for her CT cuts, is a problem.
I suspect Truss does realise that, and the simple reality is that all governments and all PMs take actions where required.
It is entirely appropriate though for the priority to be reversing the tax hikes. Having people keeping more of their own income they're working for is not a "flaw" and if people aren't working then they have the option of working. We keep being told there's a labour shortage afterall.
Public services need to be paid for. Taxes are a necessary part of a civilised society. I think everyone agrees on that. What there can be disagreement on is what taxes, what rates and who pays them? The NI increases were wrong, not because they increased the tax burden but because they unfairly increased the tax burden on the working population at the expense of the retired who are the main users of both social care and the NHS it was supposedly funding. We need to broaden the net on tax contributions and this will almost certainly involve more capital taxes. I don't hear Truss (or indeed Sunak) talking much about that.
You're not going to hear either Truss or Sunak talking about that either. But we can agree that the NI increases were wrong, and therefore I stand by that reversing them is right. If that means that money is required via alternative taxes - as I've said all governments make other decisions and no prospective leader is ever going to write an entire budget during a leadership election campaign.
But at the least reversing the NI tax hike is a step in the right direction. If there are to be tax hikes, then allowing the NI hike to stand will simply set that up as a ratchet to be turned ever higher to pay for the NHS and Social Care while allowing those not paying NI to evade their responsibilities to your civilised society all together.
Exactly. It's a huge Trojan Horse.
Don't want to put up NI or Income Tax ?
Fine. Put up the "health and social care levy".
Yep, that was the wrong way to do it. Yet another tax that can be raised by governments saying they won’t raise income taxes.
There was a brief mention of UBI on here yesterday, one of those things that works well in theory but is very difficult in practice. The single most difficult thing about it in practice, is that the setting of the rate becomes a political football at election time. It would have to be set by an external committee, in the same way as interest rates, in order to depoliticise it - but which politicians are going to do that?
I take a simple view on this: taxes at every level should never exceed 50% so you always have an incentive to keep progressing as you keep more of what you earn than the government takes.
That applies to UBI benefit withdrawal. It applies to graduates paying 9% on top of Income Tax/NI and the HSC levy, as well as obligatory pensions contributions. And it applies to people earning between 100-120k who face an effective marginal rate of 60%.
We can debate the precise rates within this but that should be the ceiling and the curve should be smoothed throughout.
For some people on benefits the effective marginal tax rate is well above 100%.
We need to stop piggy-backing benefits on UC eligibility - it completely distorts the incentives. And reduce the taper rate even further , even though that will mean "subsidising Asda".
If you reduce the taper further you bring more people on higher incomes into it's (now higher) thresholds..
I hope it's not wishful thinking, but unless something big changes might the Tory party possibly be in real trouble as 2022 wears on? To summarise: its market for the moment has to be the retired or at least late-middle aged gammonians, most of whom would repeal the "woke" Race Relations Act that their hero spoke against in 1968 if ever they got the chance, perhaps shortly after banning the metric system because it's "foreign". This part of the population is so separate from the "red wall" and from almost everyone else in the country too that they must be making brand managers feel faint. They're lucky there's not an election on.
On the other side of the coin, both they and the government machine are doing well with the "cost of living crisis" buzzphrase. What that tells many audiences is "don't support strikes".
But THAT orientation is itself a "wall" that might, just possibly might, crumble. Why? Because if your living standards are falling through the floor to an extent that neither you nor your parents have ever before witnessed, then you've got to do something about it in cooperation with your neighbours, your workmates (if any), your family members, and with people who are in the same position as you in other areas, other workplaces, and other families, otherwise you are completely f***ed. The catch is that you need to have spiritedness (which requires that you switch your f***ing smartphone off - not a single oppositional movement has ever been mainly composed of continuing heroin addicts), and you also need enough energy left in your body before your bodyweight plummets too far owing to lack of food (which requires that you don't hang about).
Will the "something big" happen that the Tory party needs? It might. It's easy to read the proliferation of Ukrainian flags on British flagpoles as an alternative to full-scale British entry into the war. That is kinda true, but only for the time being. There are parts of the population who are itching for war. This is clear for example in messages posted here about destroying Russia as if it were a rebellion in a British colony, and in the belief that if "Putin" isn't stopped he'll soon be threatening the mouth of the Thames - a case of making up reasons for stuff while believing them. We are talking about irrational xenophobes who don't care if Birmingham or Glasgow get nuked so long as the Azov Regiment triumphantly retakes the lost lands of the Donbas (and even the Crimea) and Russian cities get nuked faster than British ones.
Then there is the weakening of many minds since the start of the coronavirus carnival in March 2020. For example, can people who locked themselves up in their houses for months except when taking weekly trips to the supermarket, when legally speaking they weren't required to, recover whatever level of independence of thought they once had? That might be a difficult ask. Many probably can't even remember before smartphones.
Somebody’s either started very early or gone on an all-nighter.
The Moscow Dynamo might have a time zone advantage over the rest of us.
I don't think that she is talking about cutting IT though, is she? She is talking about taking the VAT off fuel and suspending the green levies. Everyone who pays for their fuel pays those and they increase the size of their bills. She is also talking about reversing the NI increase. More people pay NI than IT although Rishi's latest reforms which basically took the lowest paid out of the NI increase will have significantly reduced the difference.
What these tax cuts will not do is give those on benefits the money to pay their vastly increased bills. There simply has to be more help and support for that part of society. Truss failing to recognise that, and the financial implications of that for her CT cuts, is a problem.
I suspect Truss does realise that, and the simple reality is that all governments and all PMs take actions where required.
It is entirely appropriate though for the priority to be reversing the tax hikes. Having people keeping more of their own income they're working for is not a "flaw" and if people aren't working then they have the option of working. We keep being told there's a labour shortage afterall.
Public services need to be paid for. Taxes are a necessary part of a civilised society. I think everyone agrees on that. What there can be disagreement on is what taxes, what rates and who pays them? The NI increases were wrong, not because they increased the tax burden but because they unfairly increased the tax burden on the working population at the expense of the retired who are the main users of both social care and the NHS it was supposedly funding. We need to broaden the net on tax contributions and this will almost certainly involve more capital taxes. I don't hear Truss (or indeed Sunak) talking much about that.
You're not going to hear either Truss or Sunak talking about that either. But we can agree that the NI increases were wrong, and therefore I stand by that reversing them is right. If that means that money is required via alternative taxes - as I've said all governments make other decisions and no prospective leader is ever going to write an entire budget during a leadership election campaign.
But at the least reversing the NI tax hike is a step in the right direction. If there are to be tax hikes, then allowing the NI hike to stand will simply set that up as a ratchet to be turned ever higher to pay for the NHS and Social Care while allowing those not paying NI to evade their responsibilities to your civilised society all together.
Exactly. It's a huge Trojan Horse.
Don't want to put up NI or Income Tax ?
Fine. Put up the "health and social care levy".
Yep, that was the wrong way to do it. Yet another tax that can be raised by governments saying they won’t raise income taxes.
There was a brief mention of UBI on here yesterday, one of those things that works well in theory but is very difficult in practice. The single most difficult thing about it in practice, is that the setting of the rate becomes a political football at election time. It would have to be set by an external committee, in the same way as interest rates, in order to depoliticise it - but which politicians are going to do that?
I take a simple view on this: taxes at every level should never exceed 50% so you always have an incentive to keep progressing as you keep more of what you earn than the government takes.
That applies to UBI benefit withdrawal. It applies to graduates paying 9% on top of Income Tax/NI and the HSC levy, as well as obligatory pensions contributions. And it applies to people earning between 100-120k who face an effective marginal rate of 60%.
We can debate the precise rates within this but that should be the ceiling and the curve should be smoothed throughout.
Completely agreed, and we should include both forms of National Insurance in the calculation as well, since Employers NI is a direct tax on the wages even if its a hidden one which is why its so popular to raise it now in the Treasury, because they can pretend its a 1p rise in tax while actually increasing taxes by 2p.
Side note on that - adding Employer NI to employee NI would require large changes to dividend taxes to compensate for the impact it would have on income v dividend calculations for company directors.
A civilian asks: if you've got ~30 warplanes and lots of explosives at an airbase, is there a reason that you'd normally put the planes so near the explosives that they'll be destroyed if the explosives go up in an accident (or after an enemy strike), rather than e.g. a mile away at another part of the base?
All types of stupid shit happens when there is a war on. The base is probably packed to beyond capacity with aircraft, weapons and the vodka swilling muzhiki who are nominally in charge of them.
The RAF once blew up 4,000 tons of HE making a 300m wide and 50m deep hole in Staffordshire by using a chisel on a detonator.
I don't think that she is talking about cutting IT though, is she? She is talking about taking the VAT off fuel and suspending the green levies. Everyone who pays for their fuel pays those and they increase the size of their bills. She is also talking about reversing the NI increase. More people pay NI than IT although Rishi's latest reforms which basically took the lowest paid out of the NI increase will have significantly reduced the difference.
What these tax cuts will not do is give those on benefits the money to pay their vastly increased bills. There simply has to be more help and support for that part of society. Truss failing to recognise that, and the financial implications of that for her CT cuts, is a problem.
I suspect Truss does realise that, and the simple reality is that all governments and all PMs take actions where required.
It is entirely appropriate though for the priority to be reversing the tax hikes. Having people keeping more of their own income they're working for is not a "flaw" and if people aren't working then they have the option of working. We keep being told there's a labour shortage afterall.
Public services need to be paid for. Taxes are a necessary part of a civilised society. I think everyone agrees on that. What there can be disagreement on is what taxes, what rates and who pays them? The NI increases were wrong, not because they increased the tax burden but because they unfairly increased the tax burden on the working population at the expense of the retired who are the main users of both social care and the NHS it was supposedly funding. We need to broaden the net on tax contributions and this will almost certainly involve more capital taxes. I don't hear Truss (or indeed Sunak) talking much about that.
You're not going to hear either Truss or Sunak talking about that either. But we can agree that the NI increases were wrong, and therefore I stand by that reversing them is right. If that means that money is required via alternative taxes - as I've said all governments make other decisions and no prospective leader is ever going to write an entire budget during a leadership election campaign.
But at the least reversing the NI tax hike is a step in the right direction. If there are to be tax hikes, then allowing the NI hike to stand will simply set that up as a ratchet to be turned ever higher to pay for the NHS and Social Care while allowing those not paying NI to evade their responsibilities to your civilised society all together.
Exactly. It's a huge Trojan Horse.
Don't want to put up NI or Income Tax ?
Fine. Put up the "health and social care levy".
Yep, that was the wrong way to do it. Yet another tax that can be raised by governments saying they won’t raise income taxes.
There was a brief mention of UBI on here yesterday, one of those things that works well in theory but is very difficult in practice. The single most difficult thing about it in practice, is that the setting of the rate becomes a political football at election time. It would have to be set by an external committee, in the same way as interest rates, in order to depoliticise it - but which politicians are going to do that?
I take a simple view on this: taxes at every level should never exceed 50% so you always have an incentive to keep progressing as you keep more of what you earn than the government takes.
That applies to UBI benefit withdrawal. It applies to graduates paying 9% on top of Income Tax/NI and the HSC levy, as well as obligatory pensions contributions. And it applies to people earning between 100-120k who face an effective marginal rate of 60%.
We can debate the precise rates within this but that should be the ceiling and the curve should be smoothed throughout.
For some people on benefits the effective marginal tax rate is well above 100%.
We need to stop piggy-backing benefits on UC eligibility - it completely distorts the incentives. And reduce the taper rate even further , even though that will mean "subsidising Asda".
I don't think that she is talking about cutting IT though, is she? She is talking about taking the VAT off fuel and suspending the green levies. Everyone who pays for their fuel pays those and they increase the size of their bills. She is also talking about reversing the NI increase. More people pay NI than IT although Rishi's latest reforms which basically took the lowest paid out of the NI increase will have significantly reduced the difference.
What these tax cuts will not do is give those on benefits the money to pay their vastly increased bills. There simply has to be more help and support for that part of society. Truss failing to recognise that, and the financial implications of that for her CT cuts, is a problem.
I suspect Truss does realise that, and the simple reality is that all governments and all PMs take actions where required.
It is entirely appropriate though for the priority to be reversing the tax hikes. Having people keeping more of their own income they're working for is not a "flaw" and if people aren't working then they have the option of working. We keep being told there's a labour shortage afterall.
Public services need to be paid for. Taxes are a necessary part of a civilised society. I think everyone agrees on that. What there can be disagreement on is what taxes, what rates and who pays them? The NI increases were wrong, not because they increased the tax burden but because they unfairly increased the tax burden on the working population at the expense of the retired who are the main users of both social care and the NHS it was supposedly funding. We need to broaden the net on tax contributions and this will almost certainly involve more capital taxes. I don't hear Truss (or indeed Sunak) talking much about that.
You're not going to hear either Truss or Sunak talking about that either. But we can agree that the NI increases were wrong, and therefore I stand by that reversing them is right. If that means that money is required via alternative taxes - as I've said all governments make other decisions and no prospective leader is ever going to write an entire budget during a leadership election campaign.
But at the least reversing the NI tax hike is a step in the right direction. If there are to be tax hikes, then allowing the NI hike to stand will simply set that up as a ratchet to be turned ever higher to pay for the NHS and Social Care while allowing those not paying NI to evade their responsibilities to your civilised society all together.
Exactly. It's a huge Trojan Horse.
Don't want to put up NI or Income Tax ?
Fine. Put up the "health and social care levy".
Yep, that was the wrong way to do it. Yet another tax that can be raised by governments saying they won’t raise income taxes.
There was a brief mention of UBI on here yesterday, one of those things that works well in theory but is very difficult in practice. The single most difficult thing about it in practice, is that the setting of the rate becomes a political football at election time. It would have to be set by an external committee, in the same way as interest rates, in order to depoliticise it - but which politicians are going to do that?
I take a simple view on this: taxes at every level should never exceed 50% so you always have an incentive to keep progressing as you keep more of what you earn than the government takes.
That applies to UBI benefit withdrawal. It applies to graduates paying 9% on top of Income Tax/NI and the HSC levy, as well as obligatory pensions contributions. And it applies to people earning between 100-120k who face an effective marginal rate of 60%.
We can debate the precise rates within this but that should be the ceiling and the curve should be smoothed throughout.
For some people on benefits the effective marginal tax rate is well above 100%.
We need to stop piggy-backing benefits on UC eligibility - it completely distorts the incentives. And reduce the taper rate even further , even though that will mean "subsidising Asda".
I'm curious if anyone has figures to hand of how much Employers NI the Treasury takes from what could have been Asda's employees wages while supposedly subsidising Asda?
I suspect there are plenty of minimum wage full time workers at Asda who are paying tax, national insurance and Employers NI and yet they aren't entitled to any benefits, while there will be many workers at the same pay rate in the same company with kids who work eg 16 hours per week who are.
The idea its Asda's fault or responsibility to pay a wage suitably high that it will fully support multiple children on just 16 hours per week is odd to say the least.
I don't think that she is talking about cutting IT though, is she? She is talking about taking the VAT off fuel and suspending the green levies. Everyone who pays for their fuel pays those and they increase the size of their bills. She is also talking about reversing the NI increase. More people pay NI than IT although Rishi's latest reforms which basically took the lowest paid out of the NI increase will have significantly reduced the difference.
What these tax cuts will not do is give those on benefits the money to pay their vastly increased bills. There simply has to be more help and support for that part of society. Truss failing to recognise that, and the financial implications of that for her CT cuts, is a problem.
I suspect Truss does realise that, and the simple reality is that all governments and all PMs take actions where required.
It is entirely appropriate though for the priority to be reversing the tax hikes. Having people keeping more of their own income they're working for is not a "flaw" and if people aren't working then they have the option of working. We keep being told there's a labour shortage afterall.
Public services need to be paid for. Taxes are a necessary part of a civilised society. I think everyone agrees on that. What there can be disagreement on is what taxes, what rates and who pays them? The NI increases were wrong, not because they increased the tax burden but because they unfairly increased the tax burden on the working population at the expense of the retired who are the main users of both social care and the NHS it was supposedly funding. We need to broaden the net on tax contributions and this will almost certainly involve more capital taxes. I don't hear Truss (or indeed Sunak) talking much about that.
You're not going to hear either Truss or Sunak talking about that either. But we can agree that the NI increases were wrong, and therefore I stand by that reversing them is right. If that means that money is required via alternative taxes - as I've said all governments make other decisions and no prospective leader is ever going to write an entire budget during a leadership election campaign.
But at the least reversing the NI tax hike is a step in the right direction. If there are to be tax hikes, then allowing the NI hike to stand will simply set that up as a ratchet to be turned ever higher to pay for the NHS and Social Care while allowing those not paying NI to evade their responsibilities to your civilised society all together.
Exactly. It's a huge Trojan Horse.
Don't want to put up NI or Income Tax ?
Fine. Put up the "health and social care levy".
Even worse, want to get credit for cutting Income Tax?
Put up the "health and social care levy" by more.
If that levy is allowed to stand, it will end up dominating our taxation. If the only thing Truss winning achieves is killing that levy off, then that alone would make her election worthwhile.
Absolutely. As soon as it was announced it was obvious that the direction of travel would see the NHS and Social Care Levy at 12.5% (charged on employees and employers), basic rate of income tax abolished, inheritance tax abolished.
This is something that will damage Liz Truss, I remember a pollster telling me Martin Lewis had astronomical trust figures with the public, compared to the gutter most politicians were found in.
Liz Truss has been urged to ditch “outrageous” claims that tax cuts will deal with energy price rises after she continued to hold out against immediate help with bills yesterday.
Martin Lewis, the money-saving expert, said the frontrunner to become prime minister must set out detailed plans this month and offered to help draw them up as he warned that the energy crisis risked civil unrest and deaths from hypothermia this winter.
Rishi Sunak, who is Truss’s rival in the Tory leadership race, must also commit himself to doubling the package he set out as chancellor in May, Lewis said. He accused the Conservative Party of neglecting a “financial cataclysm” that would push millions into destitution.
There's a reason why scammers use the image of Martin Lewis to try and entice people to hand their money over to them, people trust him on things like this.
I am afraid that Martin Lewis is being completely unrealistic here. How can the government pay everyone's increase in their heating bills? It is completely and utterly unsustainable. What needs to be done is to protect the vulnerable. The rest of us will just have to pay more for our fuel until the price comes down again. Sunak's plans for the first increase was frankly terrible policy and should not be repeated or augmented.
True, in which case tax cuts are worse than useless. The nature of tax cuts is to help those who have more, more.
Rough ballpark for what has to happen is that the bottom third will need a lot, if not complete help with this. That means the £1000 support going up to close to £2500. We're talking people who don't have £2500 spare. That's not happing by tax cuts.
You do realise that the majority of people paying tax are working hard in demanding jobs and trying to raise families, right?
Funnily enough- yes I do realise that.
But there are some other things I also realise.
First is that there is a huge (hopefully short-lived) increase in the cost of living coming up, that it's going to hit the low-paid worst and that tax cuts do least for them.
Second is that tax cuts have to be earned. That can be by growing the economy whilst freezing the public sector, or it can be by the state stopping doing things. And both of those need a better worked-out plan than "They should just do it."
I don't think that she is talking about cutting IT though, is she? She is talking about taking the VAT off fuel and suspending the green levies. Everyone who pays for their fuel pays those and they increase the size of their bills. She is also talking about reversing the NI increase. More people pay NI than IT although Rishi's latest reforms which basically took the lowest paid out of the NI increase will have significantly reduced the difference.
What these tax cuts will not do is give those on benefits the money to pay their vastly increased bills. There simply has to be more help and support for that part of society. Truss failing to recognise that, and the financial implications of that for her CT cuts, is a problem.
I suspect Truss does realise that, and the simple reality is that all governments and all PMs take actions where required.
It is entirely appropriate though for the priority to be reversing the tax hikes. Having people keeping more of their own income they're working for is not a "flaw" and if people aren't working then they have the option of working. We keep being told there's a labour shortage afterall.
Public services need to be paid for. Taxes are a necessary part of a civilised society. I think everyone agrees on that. What there can be disagreement on is what taxes, what rates and who pays them? The NI increases were wrong, not because they increased the tax burden but because they unfairly increased the tax burden on the working population at the expense of the retired who are the main users of both social care and the NHS it was supposedly funding. We need to broaden the net on tax contributions and this will almost certainly involve more capital taxes. I don't hear Truss (or indeed Sunak) talking much about that.
You're not going to hear either Truss or Sunak talking about that either. But we can agree that the NI increases were wrong, and therefore I stand by that reversing them is right. If that means that money is required via alternative taxes - as I've said all governments make other decisions and no prospective leader is ever going to write an entire budget during a leadership election campaign.
But at the least reversing the NI tax hike is a step in the right direction. If there are to be tax hikes, then allowing the NI hike to stand will simply set that up as a ratchet to be turned ever higher to pay for the NHS and Social Care while allowing those not paying NI to evade their responsibilities to your civilised society all together.
Exactly. It's a huge Trojan Horse.
Don't want to put up NI or Income Tax ?
Fine. Put up the "health and social care levy".
Yep, that was the wrong way to do it. Yet another tax that can be raised by governments saying they won’t raise income taxes.
There was a brief mention of UBI on here yesterday, one of those things that works well in theory but is very difficult in practice. The single most difficult thing about it in practice, is that the setting of the rate becomes a political football at election time. It would have to be set by an external committee, in the same way as interest rates, in order to depoliticise it - but which politicians are going to do that?
I take a simple view on this: taxes at every level should never exceed 50% so you always have an incentive to keep progressing as you keep more of what you earn than the government takes.
That applies to UBI benefit withdrawal. It applies to graduates paying 9% on top of Income Tax/NI and the HSC levy, as well as obligatory pensions contributions. And it applies to people earning between 100-120k who face an effective marginal rate of 60%.
We can debate the precise rates within this but that should be the ceiling and the curve should be smoothed throughout.
Completely agreed, and we should include both forms of National Insurance in the calculation as well, since Employers NI is a direct tax on the wages even if its a hidden one which is why its so popular to raise it now in the Treasury, because they can pretend its a 1p rise in tax while actually increasing taxes by 2p.
No.
A UBI should be absolute - pension, tax free allowance and “benefits”, one payment for all.
No withdrawal, no taper.
A UBI should be and I completely agree with you on that.
I understood though that the taper being referred to was the current UC one though, as Casino since noted.
The advantage of UBI is that it can and should roll everything into one and have one flat net tax rate.
Professor John Curtice is generally held in high regard on this board. Does the rule hold today?
The next Tory leader "won't keep the Union safe" by following Boris Johnson's blunt refusal to allow an IndyRef2, the country's top pollster has said.
Professor John Curtice claimed whoever enters Downing Street next month would be better off trying to persuade Scots of the benefits of remaining in the UK.
“My own view is that if Unionists have any sense, they will get involved. Whatever happens, whether we have a referendum or not, Nicola Sturgeon is going to spend the next 12 months trying to increase the level of support for independence.
“If you want to make the Union safe, by far and away the best thing to do, is to actually make the case for the Union and persuade people.
“The reason the Union is in trouble is because, at the moment, only half the people in Scotland want to stay inside it.
"If you can change that fundamental, the Union will be safe. But so long as you don't change that, it won't be.
"I would submit that the attempt in the last two years to simply argue about process has not got the Unionists anywhere."
“… if Unionists have any sense…” The man is a comedian.
What a ludicrous argument. A Tory government which grants an indyref2 before a generation is up has at best a 50% chance of winning it and keeping the Union together. A Tory government which refuses indyref2 has a 100% chance of keeping the Union together as Union matters are reserved to Westminster under the Scotland Act 1998.
The Tories also would not and should not ever need SNP support to form a government unlike Labour. As long as the Tories are largest party even in a hung parliament they can try and stay in government and refuse an indyref2 and leave it to Starmer to u turn and do a deal with the nationalists for No 10 if Labour fails to get most seats
Away and play with your train set, if you can't think of something new to say.
Tbf a cracking bit of honesty from HYUFD with ‘has at best a 50% chance of winning’, the cowardly hypocrisy of referendum blocking Unionism revealed in all its glory.
And he was saying the other day that HMG should still oppose indy if 99% of Scots voters were for it.
I'm frustrated by the conflation of petrol/diesel costs and those for heating people's homes.
As far as I can tell, domestic travel by car is basically inelastic. Edinburgh is as busy as ever, people sat in spaces idling with the engine on etc. It's obviously hurting people who drive, and slowing the economy, but the focus of the government should not be those who still have the money to drive about, but on those who are considering cancelling their direct debit for gas/elec for their homes.
The whole thing is stupid. Why was I given £400 to help with the cost, when I don't have any real money worries? Why is my fuel cheaper when I just use it to drive to the beach/the mountains?
A civilian asks: if you've got ~30 warplanes and lots of explosives at an airbase, is there a reason that you'd normally put the planes so near the explosives that they'll be destroyed if the explosives go up in an accident (or after an enemy strike), rather than e.g. a mile away at another part of the base?
All types of stupid shit happens when there is a war on. The base is probably packed to beyond capacity with aircraft, weapons and the vodka swilling muzhiki who are nominally in charge of them.
The RAF once blew up 4,000 tons of HE making a 300m wide and 50m deep hole in Staffordshire by using a chisel on a detonator.
The Germans beat that by using dynamite to break up congealed fertiliser in a fertiliser factory.
This is something that will damage Liz Truss, I remember a pollster telling me Martin Lewis had astronomical trust figures with the public, compared to the gutter most politicians were found in.
Liz Truss has been urged to ditch “outrageous” claims that tax cuts will deal with energy price rises after she continued to hold out against immediate help with bills yesterday.
Martin Lewis, the money-saving expert, said the frontrunner to become prime minister must set out detailed plans this month and offered to help draw them up as he warned that the energy crisis risked civil unrest and deaths from hypothermia this winter.
Rishi Sunak, who is Truss’s rival in the Tory leadership race, must also commit himself to doubling the package he set out as chancellor in May, Lewis said. He accused the Conservative Party of neglecting a “financial cataclysm” that would push millions into destitution.
There's a reason why scammers use the image of Martin Lewis to try and entice people to hand their money over to them, people trust him on things like this.
I am afraid that Martin Lewis is being completely unrealistic here. How can the government pay everyone's increase in their heating bills? It is completely and utterly unsustainable. What needs to be done is to protect the vulnerable. The rest of us will just have to pay more for our fuel until the price comes down again. Sunak's plans for the first increase was frankly terrible policy and should not be repeated or augmented.
True, in which case tax cuts are worse than useless. The nature of tax cuts is to help those who have more, more.
Rough ballpark for what has to happen is that the bottom third will need a lot, if not complete help with this. That means the £1000 support going up to close to £2500. We're talking people who don't have £2500 spare. That's not happing by tax cuts.
Alternatively reducing taxation encourages those who don't have much to be able to work to get more, so paying their bills and having more afterwards.
Ratcheting up taxes on those who are working for a living in order to further swell the welfare state isn't the only option.
The tragedy is that so much of the welfare bill is the state subsidising the profits of Asda etc. Companies refused to pay decent wages, so faced with millions working and still living in penury Gordon Brown came up with Working Tax Credits.
I support a "what works" approach to most things, but despite working short term this hasn't worked long term. The right approach would have been to offer companies corporation tax cuts if they pay appropriate wages. Instead, CTax has collapsed down to 19% with companies not required to do anything in return for it.
So there is no way back now. Companies won't pay a living wage because why should they. Government has no leverage any more other than demonise working people as "claiming benefits". No, that would be their employers.
Sorry but that's utter codswallop. A full time 37.5h worker even on the legal minimum 'living wage' of £9.50 per hour is earning over £18.5k per annum and is paying a lot in tax including national insurance and employers national insurance which is a hidden tax on wages. And without kids a couple working full time even on minimum wage aren't entitled to tax credits/universal credit.
Tax credits wasn't set up to deal with low wages, the "minimum wage" was set up to deal with that, it was pure welfare. Asda etc aren't going to pay for someone who is working only 16 hours per week to support lots of children, if you want the state to do that then argue for that, don't claim its corporate welfare. Asda didn't choose to get pregnant and have kids.
What I love about your posts is that you post self-inflated guff like "that's utter codswallop" and then write what you just accused others of.
The reason why people get things like Working Families Tax Credit is because their wages are insufficient to pay the bills. You demonstrate that (a) you don't know this and (b) you don't care, but others do know and care.
A civilian asks: if you've got ~30 warplanes and lots of explosives at an airbase, is there a reason that you'd normally put the planes so near the explosives that they'll be destroyed if the explosives go up in an accident (or after an enemy strike), rather than e.g. a mile away at another part of the base?
All types of stupid shit happens when there is a war on. The base is probably packed to beyond capacity with aircraft, weapons and the vodka swilling muzhiki who are nominally in charge of them.
The RAF once blew up 4,000 tons of HE making a 300m wide and 50m deep hole in Staffordshire by using a chisel on a detonator.
TBF we don't know that for sure re Faulds - blaming the jet jockey, or in this case the bomb trolley jockey, rather than the system has always been a favourite let-out for courts martial convened into some crash or disaster.
The way that bombs and POL were handled at times has been pretty horrifying - the Port Chicago disaster, and the West Loch at Pearl Harbor, for instance, but in both cases there was huge pressure to get on with it.
This is something that will damage Liz Truss, I remember a pollster telling me Martin Lewis had astronomical trust figures with the public, compared to the gutter most politicians were found in.
Liz Truss has been urged to ditch “outrageous” claims that tax cuts will deal with energy price rises after she continued to hold out against immediate help with bills yesterday.
Martin Lewis, the money-saving expert, said the frontrunner to become prime minister must set out detailed plans this month and offered to help draw them up as he warned that the energy crisis risked civil unrest and deaths from hypothermia this winter.
Rishi Sunak, who is Truss’s rival in the Tory leadership race, must also commit himself to doubling the package he set out as chancellor in May, Lewis said. He accused the Conservative Party of neglecting a “financial cataclysm” that would push millions into destitution.
There's a reason why scammers use the image of Martin Lewis to try and entice people to hand their money over to them, people trust him on things like this.
I am afraid that Martin Lewis is being completely unrealistic here. How can the government pay everyone's increase in their heating bills? It is completely and utterly unsustainable. What needs to be done is to protect the vulnerable. The rest of us will just have to pay more for our fuel until the price comes down again. Sunak's plans for the first increase was frankly terrible policy and should not be repeated or augmented.
Lewis is right. Reduce the price cap increases to perhaps 20% instead of 80%+ and pay the energy suppliers the difference. This will significantly cut inflation and therefore a lot of future government spending and debt repayments that are linked to RPI and CPI rates, so is nowhere near as expensive as it sounds.
Truss has said other obviously stupid things in this campaign (regional pay was the obvious one) but has backtracked on those with commendable speed. If not with commendable grace.
On this one- tax cuts but no handouts- she has repeatedly stuck to her guns. Despite the really obvious hole alluded to in the header.
What's going on?
She has persuaded herself that Brexit has been a mega success and that new trade deals have transformed Britain. Despite her personal involvement with said trade deals which clearly do not.
So she is a simpleton who believes spun lies like they are truth. Clever politicians lie - but aren't supposed to believe their lies, that is for the voters. Mistress Truss though, not smart enough.
So I suspect she is doubling down again and again because she genuinely believes that a pittance in tax cuts to the wealthy will help poor and middle income people pay energy bill increases many many times greater.
Or more simply: in your guts, you know she's nuts.
I don't think that she is talking about cutting IT though, is she? She is talking about taking the VAT off fuel and suspending the green levies. Everyone who pays for their fuel pays those and they increase the size of their bills. She is also talking about reversing the NI increase. More people pay NI than IT although Rishi's latest reforms which basically took the lowest paid out of the NI increase will have significantly reduced the difference.
What these tax cuts will not do is give those on benefits the money to pay their vastly increased bills. There simply has to be more help and support for that part of society. Truss failing to recognise that, and the financial implications of that for her CT cuts, is a problem.
I suspect Truss does realise that, and the simple reality is that all governments and all PMs take actions where required.
It is entirely appropriate though for the priority to be reversing the tax hikes. Having people keeping more of their own income they're working for is not a "flaw" and if people aren't working then they have the option of working. We keep being told there's a labour shortage afterall.
Public services need to be paid for. Taxes are a necessary part of a civilised society. I think everyone agrees on that. What there can be disagreement on is what taxes, what rates and who pays them? The NI increases were wrong, not because they increased the tax burden but because they unfairly increased the tax burden on the working population at the expense of the retired who are the main users of both social care and the NHS it was supposedly funding. We need to broaden the net on tax contributions and this will almost certainly involve more capital taxes. I don't hear Truss (or indeed Sunak) talking much about that.
You're not going to hear either Truss or Sunak talking about that either. But we can agree that the NI increases were wrong, and therefore I stand by that reversing them is right. If that means that money is required via alternative taxes - as I've said all governments make other decisions and no prospective leader is ever going to write an entire budget during a leadership election campaign.
But at the least reversing the NI tax hike is a step in the right direction. If there are to be tax hikes, then allowing the NI hike to stand will simply set that up as a ratchet to be turned ever higher to pay for the NHS and Social Care while allowing those not paying NI to evade their responsibilities to your civilised society all together.
Exactly. It's a huge Trojan Horse.
Don't want to put up NI or Income Tax ?
Fine. Put up the "health and social care levy".
Yep, that was the wrong way to do it. Yet another tax that can be raised by governments saying they won’t raise income taxes.
There was a brief mention of UBI on here yesterday, one of those things that works well in theory but is very difficult in practice. The single most difficult thing about it in practice, is that the setting of the rate becomes a political football at election time. It would have to be set by an external committee, in the same way as interest rates, in order to depoliticise it - but which politicians are going to do that?
I take a simple view on this: taxes at every level should never exceed 50% so you always have an incentive to keep progressing as you keep more of what you earn than the government takes.
That applies to UBI benefit withdrawal. It applies to graduates paying 9% on top of Income Tax/NI and the HSC levy, as well as obligatory pensions contributions. And it applies to people earning between 100-120k who face an effective marginal rate of 60%.
We can debate the precise rates within this but that should be the ceiling and the curve should be smoothed throughout.
You’re opening premise does not make sense to me. If tax is 60%, I still have an incentive to keep progressing, because I get to keep 40% of my additional income. It’s not as much of an incentive as it would be were tax 49%, but it’s still an incentive. There’s nothing magical about 50% as a tax rate.
A civilian asks: if you've got ~30 warplanes and lots of explosives at an airbase, is there a reason that you'd normally put the planes so near the explosives that they'll be destroyed if the explosives go up in an accident (or after an enemy strike), rather than e.g. a mile away at another part of the base?
All types of stupid shit happens when there is a war on. The base is probably packed to beyond capacity with aircraft, weapons and the vodka swilling muzhiki who are nominally in charge of them.
The RAF once blew up 4,000 tons of HE making a 300m wide and 50m deep hole in Staffordshire by using a chisel on a detonator.
The Germans beat that by using dynamite to break up congealed fertiliser in a fertiliser factory.
My favourite ever usenet post
Gunpowder is made from finely ground sulphur charcoal saltpetre
I have learnt that it is better to grind the ingredients prior to combining them.
I'm frustrated by the conflation of petrol/diesel costs and those for heating people's homes.
As far as I can tell, domestic travel by car is basically inelastic. Edinburgh is as busy as ever, people sat in spaces idling with the engine on etc. It's obviously hurting people who drive, and slowing the economy, but the focus of the government should not be those who still have the money to drive about, but on those who are considering cancelling their direct debit for gas/elec for their homes.
The whole thing is stupid. Why was I given £400 to help with the cost, when I don't have any real money worries? Why is my fuel cheaper when I just use it to drive to the beach/the mountains?
I don't think that she is talking about cutting IT though, is she? She is talking about taking the VAT off fuel and suspending the green levies. Everyone who pays for their fuel pays those and they increase the size of their bills. She is also talking about reversing the NI increase. More people pay NI than IT although Rishi's latest reforms which basically took the lowest paid out of the NI increase will have significantly reduced the difference.
What these tax cuts will not do is give those on benefits the money to pay their vastly increased bills. There simply has to be more help and support for that part of society. Truss failing to recognise that, and the financial implications of that for her CT cuts, is a problem.
I suspect Truss does realise that, and the simple reality is that all governments and all PMs take actions where required.
It is entirely appropriate though for the priority to be reversing the tax hikes. Having people keeping more of their own income they're working for is not a "flaw" and if people aren't working then they have the option of working. We keep being told there's a labour shortage afterall.
Public services need to be paid for. Taxes are a necessary part of a civilised society. I think everyone agrees on that. What there can be disagreement on is what taxes, what rates and who pays them? The NI increases were wrong, not because they increased the tax burden but because they unfairly increased the tax burden on the working population at the expense of the retired who are the main users of both social care and the NHS it was supposedly funding. We need to broaden the net on tax contributions and this will almost certainly involve more capital taxes. I don't hear Truss (or indeed Sunak) talking much about that.
You're not going to hear either Truss or Sunak talking about that either. But we can agree that the NI increases were wrong, and therefore I stand by that reversing them is right. If that means that money is required via alternative taxes - as I've said all governments make other decisions and no prospective leader is ever going to write an entire budget during a leadership election campaign.
But at the least reversing the NI tax hike is a step in the right direction. If there are to be tax hikes, then allowing the NI hike to stand will simply set that up as a ratchet to be turned ever higher to pay for the NHS and Social Care while allowing those not paying NI to evade their responsibilities to your civilised society all together.
Exactly. It's a huge Trojan Horse.
Don't want to put up NI or Income Tax ?
Fine. Put up the "health and social care levy".
Yep, that was the wrong way to do it. Yet another tax that can be raised by governments saying they won’t raise income taxes.
There was a brief mention of UBI on here yesterday, one of those things that works well in theory but is very difficult in practice. The single most difficult thing about it in practice, is that the setting of the rate becomes a political football at election time. It would have to be set by an external committee, in the same way as interest rates, in order to depoliticise it - but which politicians are going to do that?
I take a simple view on this: taxes at every level should never exceed 50% so you always have an incentive to keep progressing as you keep more of what you earn than the government takes.
That applies to UBI benefit withdrawal. It applies to graduates paying 9% on top of Income Tax/NI and the HSC levy, as well as obligatory pensions contributions. And it applies to people earning between 100-120k who face an effective marginal rate of 60%.
We can debate the precise rates within this but that should be the ceiling and the curve should be smoothed throughout.
For some people on benefits the effective marginal tax rate is well above 100%.
We need to stop piggy-backing benefits on UC eligibility - it completely distorts the incentives. And reduce the taper rate even further , even though that will mean "subsidising Asda".
I'm curious if anyone has figures to hand of how much Employers NI the Treasury takes from what could have been Asda's employees wages while supposedly subsidising Asda?
I suspect there are plenty of minimum wage full time workers at Asda who are paying tax, national insurance and Employers NI and yet they aren't entitled to any benefits, while there will be many workers at the same pay rate in the same company with kids who work eg 16 hours per week who are.
The idea its Asda's fault or responsibility to pay a wage suitably high that it will fully support multiple children on just 16 hours per week is odd to say the least.
You don't get it. Full time minimum wage jobs do not pay enough to pay the bills. Plenty of people are working their arses off - far harder than you who spends half the working day dossing on here (as we all do). Hard graft. In shit jobs. Unable to keep the roof over their heads.
You may not give a shit about other people. Mistress Truss probably doesn't. But will be forced to when the winter of bill discontent forces her to because the sight of people freezing to death is bad for opinion poll ratings. "People die, so what" may work for an ideologue, less so for actual politicians.
I don't think that she is talking about cutting IT though, is she? She is talking about taking the VAT off fuel and suspending the green levies. Everyone who pays for their fuel pays those and they increase the size of their bills. She is also talking about reversing the NI increase. More people pay NI than IT although Rishi's latest reforms which basically took the lowest paid out of the NI increase will have significantly reduced the difference.
What these tax cuts will not do is give those on benefits the money to pay their vastly increased bills. There simply has to be more help and support for that part of society. Truss failing to recognise that, and the financial implications of that for her CT cuts, is a problem.
I suspect Truss does realise that, and the simple reality is that all governments and all PMs take actions where required.
It is entirely appropriate though for the priority to be reversing the tax hikes. Having people keeping more of their own income they're working for is not a "flaw" and if people aren't working then they have the option of working. We keep being told there's a labour shortage afterall.
Public services need to be paid for. Taxes are a necessary part of a civilised society. I think everyone agrees on that. What there can be disagreement on is what taxes, what rates and who pays them? The NI increases were wrong, not because they increased the tax burden but because they unfairly increased the tax burden on the working population at the expense of the retired who are the main users of both social care and the NHS it was supposedly funding. We need to broaden the net on tax contributions and this will almost certainly involve more capital taxes. I don't hear Truss (or indeed Sunak) talking much about that.
You're not going to hear either Truss or Sunak talking about that either. But we can agree that the NI increases were wrong, and therefore I stand by that reversing them is right. If that means that money is required via alternative taxes - as I've said all governments make other decisions and no prospective leader is ever going to write an entire budget during a leadership election campaign.
But at the least reversing the NI tax hike is a step in the right direction. If there are to be tax hikes, then allowing the NI hike to stand will simply set that up as a ratchet to be turned ever higher to pay for the NHS and Social Care while allowing those not paying NI to evade their responsibilities to your civilised society all together.
Exactly. It's a huge Trojan Horse.
Don't want to put up NI or Income Tax ?
Fine. Put up the "health and social care levy".
Yep, that was the wrong way to do it. Yet another tax that can be raised by governments saying they won’t raise income taxes.
There was a brief mention of UBI on here yesterday, one of those things that works well in theory but is very difficult in practice. The single most difficult thing about it in practice, is that the setting of the rate becomes a political football at election time. It would have to be set by an external committee, in the same way as interest rates, in order to depoliticise it - but which politicians are going to do that?
I take a simple view on this: taxes at every level should never exceed 50% so you always have an incentive to keep progressing as you keep more of what you earn than the government takes.
That applies to UBI benefit withdrawal. It applies to graduates paying 9% on top of Income Tax/NI and the HSC levy, as well as obligatory pensions contributions. And it applies to people earning between 100-120k who face an effective marginal rate of 60%.
We can debate the precise rates within this but that should be the ceiling and the curve should be smoothed throughout.
For some people on benefits the effective marginal tax rate is well above 100%.
We need to stop piggy-backing benefits on UC eligibility - it completely distorts the incentives. And reduce the taper rate even further , even though that will mean "subsidising Asda".
If you reduce the taper further you bring more people on higher incomes into it's (now higher) thresholds..
Yes, indeed. And due to a big lump in the earnings distribution (around full time work, I think), it ends up being unbelievably expensive.
So it's very difficult to solve without fully aligning it with income tax rate thresholds and rates.
Professor John Curtice is generally held in high regard on this board. Does the rule hold today?
The next Tory leader "won't keep the Union safe" by following Boris Johnson's blunt refusal to allow an IndyRef2, the country's top pollster has said.
Professor John Curtice claimed whoever enters Downing Street next month would be better off trying to persuade Scots of the benefits of remaining in the UK.
“My own view is that if Unionists have any sense, they will get involved. Whatever happens, whether we have a referendum or not, Nicola Sturgeon is going to spend the next 12 months trying to increase the level of support for independence.
“If you want to make the Union safe, by far and away the best thing to do, is to actually make the case for the Union and persuade people.
“The reason the Union is in trouble is because, at the moment, only half the people in Scotland want to stay inside it.
"If you can change that fundamental, the Union will be safe. But so long as you don't change that, it won't be.
"I would submit that the attempt in the last two years to simply argue about process has not got the Unionists anywhere."
“… if Unionists have any sense…” The man is a comedian.
I agree with him. The government needs to run a positive case for the Union consistently. Help for those struggling with heating bills is as good a place as any to start.
Good morning
I absolutely agree and would expect most of us who value the union understand that hardline rejection by Westminster for indyref2 is only making independence more likely
Better to lance the boil and win the case for the union
I come from a time when the vast majority of dwellings had no central heating and no hot water on tap unless you were lucky enough to have a storage tank with an immersion heater. Generally hot water for washing-up came from a kettle. In the winter there was frost on the inside of the windows in the morning and the bath-room was cold. The only source of heating was an open coal or gas fire in the living room. In the winter, which was much colder than it is now, we put on jumpers and cardigans and an extra blanket on the bed. We have clearly progressed from then to "Heat or eat"!
We were lucky. Mum and Dad had a water boiler at the back of the coal fire, solid bit of copper that was as I saw when I rediscovered i t in the shed when clearing the house recently, for a hot water tank. Else that was it apart from plug-in electric fires when really needed, and apart from a fire in the sitting room on special occasions. The fireplaces in the bedrooms were not in use that I recall (late 1950s on). Indeed no fireplaces in two bedrooms, but lots of ice patterns on the window. I recall a portable paraffin heater in the bathroom, but only for my bathtime and only when I was very small.
A civilian asks: if you've got ~30 warplanes and lots of explosives at an airbase, is there a reason that you'd normally put the planes so near the explosives that they'll be destroyed if the explosives go up in an accident (or after an enemy strike), rather than e.g. a mile away at another part of the base?
That is a very good question. If you ever get to meet him, perhaps you could ask Vlade.
This is something that will damage Liz Truss, I remember a pollster telling me Martin Lewis had astronomical trust figures with the public, compared to the gutter most politicians were found in.
Liz Truss has been urged to ditch “outrageous” claims that tax cuts will deal with energy price rises after she continued to hold out against immediate help with bills yesterday.
Martin Lewis, the money-saving expert, said the frontrunner to become prime minister must set out detailed plans this month and offered to help draw them up as he warned that the energy crisis risked civil unrest and deaths from hypothermia this winter.
Rishi Sunak, who is Truss’s rival in the Tory leadership race, must also commit himself to doubling the package he set out as chancellor in May, Lewis said. He accused the Conservative Party of neglecting a “financial cataclysm” that would push millions into destitution.
There's a reason why scammers use the image of Martin Lewis to try and entice people to hand their money over to them, people trust him on things like this.
I am afraid that Martin Lewis is being completely unrealistic here. How can the government pay everyone's increase in their heating bills? It is completely and utterly unsustainable. What needs to be done is to protect the vulnerable. The rest of us will just have to pay more for our fuel until the price comes down again. Sunak's plans for the first increase was frankly terrible policy and should not be repeated or augmented.
True, in which case tax cuts are worse than useless. The nature of tax cuts is to help those who have more, more.
Rough ballpark for what has to happen is that the bottom third will need a lot, if not complete help with this. That means the £1000 support going up to close to £2500. We're talking people who don't have £2500 spare. That's not happing by tax cuts.
You do realise that the majority of people paying tax are working hard in demanding jobs and trying to raise families, right?
Funnily enough- yes I do realise that.
But there are some other things I also realise.
First is that there is a huge (hopefully short-lived) increase in the cost of living coming up, that it's going to hit the low-paid worst and that tax cuts do least for them.
Second is that tax cuts have to be earned. That can be by growing the economy whilst freezing the public sector, or it can be by the state stopping doing things. And both of those need a better worked-out plan than "They should just do it."
The economy won't grow if its most productive earners are taxes into oblivion.
Truss has said other obviously stupid things in this campaign (regional pay was the obvious one) but has backtracked on those with commendable speed. If not with commendable grace.
On this one- tax cuts but no handouts- she has repeatedly stuck to her guns. Despite the really obvious hole alluded to in the header.
What's going on?
She has persuaded herself that Brexit has been a mega success and that new trade deals have transformed Britain. Despite her personal involvement with said trade deals which clearly do not.
So she is a simpleton who believes spun lies like they are truth. Clever politicians lie - but aren't supposed to believe their lies, that is for the voters. Mistress Truss though, not smart enough.
So I suspect she is doubling down again and again because she genuinely believes that a pittance in tax cuts to the wealthy will help poor and middle income people pay energy bill increases many many times greater.
Or more simply: in your guts, you know she's nuts.
With Mistress Truss, the pertinent question is "whose nuts?"
I'm frustrated by the conflation of petrol/diesel costs and those for heating people's homes.
As far as I can tell, domestic travel by car is basically inelastic. Edinburgh is as busy as ever, people sat in spaces idling with the engine on etc. It's obviously hurting people who drive, and slowing the economy, but the focus of the government should not be those who still have the money to drive about, but on those who are considering cancelling their direct debit for gas/elec for their homes.
The whole thing is stupid. Why was I given £400 to help with the cost, when I don't have any real money worries? Why is my fuel cheaper when I just use it to drive to the beach/the mountains?
Good for you. Millions of us drive to work.
It's an argument that's a classic sign of a metropolitan dweller, usually in London: " we need to make it much harder and more expensive for people to use their cars so they switch to public transport".
TBF we don't know that for sure re Faulds - blaming the jet jockey, or in this case the bomb trolley jockey, rather than the system has always been a favourite let-out for courts martial convened into some crash or disaster.
The way that bombs and POL were handled at times has been pretty horrifying - the Port Chicago disaster, and the West Loch at Pearl Harbor, for instance, but in both cases there was huge pressure to get on with it.
There is a story in one of Richard Feynman's books IIRC about the plant that was refining Uranium for the Manhattan Project.
They stacked all of the refined product together in one big pile...
I come from a time when the vast majority of dwellings had no central heating and no hot water on tap unless you were lucky enough to have a storage tank with an immersion heater. Generally hot water for washing-up came from a kettle. In the winter there was frost on the inside of the windows in the morning and the bath-room was cold. The only source of heating was an open coal or gas fire in the living room. In the winter, which was much colder than it is now, we put on jumpers and cardigans and an extra blanket on the bed. We have clearly progressed from then to "Heat or eat"!
For me very much so especially living in Berwick in the 50s where it was perishing cold in the winter
I don't think that she is talking about cutting IT though, is she? She is talking about taking the VAT off fuel and suspending the green levies. Everyone who pays for their fuel pays those and they increase the size of their bills. She is also talking about reversing the NI increase. More people pay NI than IT although Rishi's latest reforms which basically took the lowest paid out of the NI increase will have significantly reduced the difference.
What these tax cuts will not do is give those on benefits the money to pay their vastly increased bills. There simply has to be more help and support for that part of society. Truss failing to recognise that, and the financial implications of that for her CT cuts, is a problem.
I suspect Truss does realise that, and the simple reality is that all governments and all PMs take actions where required.
It is entirely appropriate though for the priority to be reversing the tax hikes. Having people keeping more of their own income they're working for is not a "flaw" and if people aren't working then they have the option of working. We keep being told there's a labour shortage afterall.
Public services need to be paid for. Taxes are a necessary part of a civilised society. I think everyone agrees on that. What there can be disagreement on is what taxes, what rates and who pays them? The NI increases were wrong, not because they increased the tax burden but because they unfairly increased the tax burden on the working population at the expense of the retired who are the main users of both social care and the NHS it was supposedly funding. We need to broaden the net on tax contributions and this will almost certainly involve more capital taxes. I don't hear Truss (or indeed Sunak) talking much about that.
You're not going to hear either Truss or Sunak talking about that either. But we can agree that the NI increases were wrong, and therefore I stand by that reversing them is right. If that means that money is required via alternative taxes - as I've said all governments make other decisions and no prospective leader is ever going to write an entire budget during a leadership election campaign.
But at the least reversing the NI tax hike is a step in the right direction. If there are to be tax hikes, then allowing the NI hike to stand will simply set that up as a ratchet to be turned ever higher to pay for the NHS and Social Care while allowing those not paying NI to evade their responsibilities to your civilised society all together.
Exactly. It's a huge Trojan Horse.
Don't want to put up NI or Income Tax ?
Fine. Put up the "health and social care levy".
Yep, that was the wrong way to do it. Yet another tax that can be raised by governments saying they won’t raise income taxes.
There was a brief mention of UBI on here yesterday, one of those things that works well in theory but is very difficult in practice. The single most difficult thing about it in practice, is that the setting of the rate becomes a political football at election time. It would have to be set by an external committee, in the same way as interest rates, in order to depoliticise it - but which politicians are going to do that?
I take a simple view on this: taxes at every level should never exceed 50% so you always have an incentive to keep progressing as you keep more of what you earn than the government takes.
That applies to UBI benefit withdrawal. It applies to graduates paying 9% on top of Income Tax/NI and the HSC levy, as well as obligatory pensions contributions. And it applies to people earning between 100-120k who face an effective marginal rate of 60%.
We can debate the precise rates within this but that should be the ceiling and the curve should be smoothed throughout.
You’re opening premise does not make sense to me. If tax is 60%, I still have an incentive to keep progressing, because I get to keep 40% of my additional income. It’s not as much of an incentive as it would be were tax 49%, but it’s still an incentive. There’s nothing magical about 50% as a tax rate.
It is true that there is no mathematical or logical reason to cap taxes at 50% but perhaps there is an emotional one. A lot of people do feel differently when they are above 50%, even if that is not logical (whether a particular tax is 52 or 48 is not usually a massive deal when there are many other different taxes that could also be higher or lower), so from a nudge perspective 50% is just a touch "magical".
I don't think that she is talking about cutting IT though, is she? She is talking about taking the VAT off fuel and suspending the green levies. Everyone who pays for their fuel pays those and they increase the size of their bills. She is also talking about reversing the NI increase. More people pay NI than IT although Rishi's latest reforms which basically took the lowest paid out of the NI increase will have significantly reduced the difference.
What these tax cuts will not do is give those on benefits the money to pay their vastly increased bills. There simply has to be more help and support for that part of society. Truss failing to recognise that, and the financial implications of that for her CT cuts, is a problem.
I suspect Truss does realise that, and the simple reality is that all governments and all PMs take actions where required.
It is entirely appropriate though for the priority to be reversing the tax hikes. Having people keeping more of their own income they're working for is not a "flaw" and if people aren't working then they have the option of working. We keep being told there's a labour shortage afterall.
Public services need to be paid for. Taxes are a necessary part of a civilised society. I think everyone agrees on that. What there can be disagreement on is what taxes, what rates and who pays them? The NI increases were wrong, not because they increased the tax burden but because they unfairly increased the tax burden on the working population at the expense of the retired who are the main users of both social care and the NHS it was supposedly funding. We need to broaden the net on tax contributions and this will almost certainly involve more capital taxes. I don't hear Truss (or indeed Sunak) talking much about that.
You're not going to hear either Truss or Sunak talking about that either. But we can agree that the NI increases were wrong, and therefore I stand by that reversing them is right. If that means that money is required via alternative taxes - as I've said all governments make other decisions and no prospective leader is ever going to write an entire budget during a leadership election campaign.
But at the least reversing the NI tax hike is a step in the right direction. If there are to be tax hikes, then allowing the NI hike to stand will simply set that up as a ratchet to be turned ever higher to pay for the NHS and Social Care while allowing those not paying NI to evade their responsibilities to your civilised society all together.
Exactly. It's a huge Trojan Horse.
Don't want to put up NI or Income Tax ?
Fine. Put up the "health and social care levy".
Yep, that was the wrong way to do it. Yet another tax that can be raised by governments saying they won’t raise income taxes.
There was a brief mention of UBI on here yesterday, one of those things that works well in theory but is very difficult in practice. The single most difficult thing about it in practice, is that the setting of the rate becomes a political football at election time. It would have to be set by an external committee, in the same way as interest rates, in order to depoliticise it - but which politicians are going to do that?
I take a simple view on this: taxes at every level should never exceed 50% so you always have an incentive to keep progressing as you keep more of what you earn than the government takes.
That applies to UBI benefit withdrawal. It applies to graduates paying 9% on top of Income Tax/NI and the HSC levy, as well as obligatory pensions contributions. And it applies to people earning between 100-120k who face an effective marginal rate of 60%.
We can debate the precise rates within this but that should be the ceiling and the curve should be smoothed throughout.
You’re opening premise does not make sense to me. If tax is 60%, I still have an incentive to keep progressing, because I get to keep 40% of my additional income. It’s not as much of an incentive as it would be were tax 49%, but it’s still an incentive. There’s nothing magical about 50% as a tax rate.
Yes there is, because you get a raise and you keep >50% of the amount as net income.
You don't take a big promotion or lots of extra responsibility for a raise of which you only keep 30-40%.
A civilian asks: if you've got ~30 warplanes and lots of explosives at an airbase, is there a reason that you'd normally put the planes so near the explosives that they'll be destroyed if the explosives go up in an accident (or after an enemy strike), rather than e.g. a mile away at another part of the base?
All types of stupid shit happens when there is a war on. The base is probably packed to beyond capacity with aircraft, weapons and the vodka swilling muzhiki who are nominally in charge of them.
The RAF once blew up 4,000 tons of HE making a 300m wide and 50m deep hole in Staffordshire by using a chisel on a detonator.
The Germans beat that by using dynamite to break up congealed fertiliser in a fertiliser factory.
My favourite ever usenet post
Gunpowder is made from finely ground sulphur charcoal saltpetre
I have learnt that it is better to grind the ingredients prior to combining them.
This seemed from the context not to be a joke.
But the ingredients had to be *ground together* to combine them, in 'edge runner' mills. Basically put some mix on a millstone trough and drive huge millstones round and round on their edges in a circle on top.
I've seem some. Very heavy walls on three sides, flimsy walls and roof, earthen banks all around, or dug into a valley side, well away from the next mill. No wonder.
I'm frustrated by the conflation of petrol/diesel costs and those for heating people's homes.
As far as I can tell, domestic travel by car is basically inelastic. Edinburgh is as busy as ever, people sat in spaces idling with the engine on etc. It's obviously hurting people who drive, and slowing the economy, but the focus of the government should not be those who still have the money to drive about, but on those who are considering cancelling their direct debit for gas/elec for their homes.
The whole thing is stupid. Why was I given £400 to help with the cost, when I don't have any real money worries? Why is my fuel cheaper when I just use it to drive to the beach/the mountains?
Good for you. Millions of us drive to work.
I recognised that in my post. It's hurting, I'm sure. And it's likely to kill the economy in the north, Scottish Highlands etc.
But it's a different problem to not being able to heat your home. You have a job that you can afford to drive to.
I'm sure they could dream up a more targeted intervention. A boost to UC?
I don't think that she is talking about cutting IT though, is she? She is talking about taking the VAT off fuel and suspending the green levies. Everyone who pays for their fuel pays those and they increase the size of their bills. She is also talking about reversing the NI increase. More people pay NI than IT although Rishi's latest reforms which basically took the lowest paid out of the NI increase will have significantly reduced the difference.
What these tax cuts will not do is give those on benefits the money to pay their vastly increased bills. There simply has to be more help and support for that part of society. Truss failing to recognise that, and the financial implications of that for her CT cuts, is a problem.
I suspect Truss does realise that, and the simple reality is that all governments and all PMs take actions where required.
It is entirely appropriate though for the priority to be reversing the tax hikes. Having people keeping more of their own income they're working for is not a "flaw" and if people aren't working then they have the option of working. We keep being told there's a labour shortage afterall.
Public services need to be paid for. Taxes are a necessary part of a civilised society. I think everyone agrees on that. What there can be disagreement on is what taxes, what rates and who pays them? The NI increases were wrong, not because they increased the tax burden but because they unfairly increased the tax burden on the working population at the expense of the retired who are the main users of both social care and the NHS it was supposedly funding. We need to broaden the net on tax contributions and this will almost certainly involve more capital taxes. I don't hear Truss (or indeed Sunak) talking much about that.
You're not going to hear either Truss or Sunak talking about that either. But we can agree that the NI increases were wrong, and therefore I stand by that reversing them is right. If that means that money is required via alternative taxes - as I've said all governments make other decisions and no prospective leader is ever going to write an entire budget during a leadership election campaign.
But at the least reversing the NI tax hike is a step in the right direction. If there are to be tax hikes, then allowing the NI hike to stand will simply set that up as a ratchet to be turned ever higher to pay for the NHS and Social Care while allowing those not paying NI to evade their responsibilities to your civilised society all together.
Exactly. It's a huge Trojan Horse.
Don't want to put up NI or Income Tax ?
Fine. Put up the "health and social care levy".
Yep, that was the wrong way to do it. Yet another tax that can be raised by governments saying they won’t raise income taxes.
There was a brief mention of UBI on here yesterday, one of those things that works well in theory but is very difficult in practice. The single most difficult thing about it in practice, is that the setting of the rate becomes a political football at election time. It would have to be set by an external committee, in the same way as interest rates, in order to depoliticise it - but which politicians are going to do that?
I take a simple view on this: taxes at every level should never exceed 50% so you always have an incentive to keep progressing as you keep more of what you earn than the government takes.
That applies to UBI benefit withdrawal. It applies to graduates paying 9% on top of Income Tax/NI and the HSC levy, as well as obligatory pensions contributions. And it applies to people earning between 100-120k who face an effective marginal rate of 60%.
We can debate the precise rates within this but that should be the ceiling and the curve should be smoothed throughout.
You’re opening premise does not make sense to me. If tax is 60%, I still have an incentive to keep progressing, because I get to keep 40% of my additional income. It’s not as much of an incentive as it would be were tax 49%, but it’s still an incentive. There’s nothing magical about 50% as a tax rate.
Yes there is, because you get a raise and you keep >50% of the amount as net income.
You don't take a big promotion or lots of extra responsibility for a raise of which you only keep 30-40%.
Your employer just needs to make the raise bigger to make it worthwhile
Professor John Curtice is generally held in high regard on this board. Does the rule hold today?
The next Tory leader "won't keep the Union safe" by following Boris Johnson's blunt refusal to allow an IndyRef2, the country's top pollster has said.
Professor John Curtice claimed whoever enters Downing Street next month would be better off trying to persuade Scots of the benefits of remaining in the UK.
“My own view is that if Unionists have any sense, they will get involved. Whatever happens, whether we have a referendum or not, Nicola Sturgeon is going to spend the next 12 months trying to increase the level of support for independence.
“If you want to make the Union safe, by far and away the best thing to do, is to actually make the case for the Union and persuade people.
“The reason the Union is in trouble is because, at the moment, only half the people in Scotland want to stay inside it.
"If you can change that fundamental, the Union will be safe. But so long as you don't change that, it won't be.
"I would submit that the attempt in the last two years to simply argue about process has not got the Unionists anywhere."
“… if Unionists have any sense…” The man is a comedian.
I agree with him. The government needs to run a positive case for the Union consistently. Help for those struggling with heating bills is as good a place as any to start.
Good morning
I absolutely agree and would expect most of us who value the union understand that hardline rejection by Westminster for indyref2 is only making independence more likely
Better to lance the boil and win the case for the union
You wouldn't lance the boil, give the SNP indyref2 now before a generation is up since 2014 and even if you win it the SNP would demand indyref3 within 5 to 10 years
I don't think that she is talking about cutting IT though, is she? She is talking about taking the VAT off fuel and suspending the green levies. Everyone who pays for their fuel pays those and they increase the size of their bills. She is also talking about reversing the NI increase. More people pay NI than IT although Rishi's latest reforms which basically took the lowest paid out of the NI increase will have significantly reduced the difference.
What these tax cuts will not do is give those on benefits the money to pay their vastly increased bills. There simply has to be more help and support for that part of society. Truss failing to recognise that, and the financial implications of that for her CT cuts, is a problem.
I suspect Truss does realise that, and the simple reality is that all governments and all PMs take actions where required.
It is entirely appropriate though for the priority to be reversing the tax hikes. Having people keeping more of their own income they're working for is not a "flaw" and if people aren't working then they have the option of working. We keep being told there's a labour shortage afterall.
Public services need to be paid for. Taxes are a necessary part of a civilised society. I think everyone agrees on that. What there can be disagreement on is what taxes, what rates and who pays them? The NI increases were wrong, not because they increased the tax burden but because they unfairly increased the tax burden on the working population at the expense of the retired who are the main users of both social care and the NHS it was supposedly funding. We need to broaden the net on tax contributions and this will almost certainly involve more capital taxes. I don't hear Truss (or indeed Sunak) talking much about that.
You're not going to hear either Truss or Sunak talking about that either. But we can agree that the NI increases were wrong, and therefore I stand by that reversing them is right. If that means that money is required via alternative taxes - as I've said all governments make other decisions and no prospective leader is ever going to write an entire budget during a leadership election campaign.
But at the least reversing the NI tax hike is a step in the right direction. If there are to be tax hikes, then allowing the NI hike to stand will simply set that up as a ratchet to be turned ever higher to pay for the NHS and Social Care while allowing those not paying NI to evade their responsibilities to your civilised society all together.
Exactly. It's a huge Trojan Horse.
Don't want to put up NI or Income Tax ?
Fine. Put up the "health and social care levy".
Yep, that was the wrong way to do it. Yet another tax that can be raised by governments saying they won’t raise income taxes.
There was a brief mention of UBI on here yesterday, one of those things that works well in theory but is very difficult in practice. The single most difficult thing about it in practice, is that the setting of the rate becomes a political football at election time. It would have to be set by an external committee, in the same way as interest rates, in order to depoliticise it - but which politicians are going to do that?
I take a simple view on this: taxes at every level should never exceed 50% so you always have an incentive to keep progressing as you keep more of what you earn than the government takes.
That applies to UBI benefit withdrawal. It applies to graduates paying 9% on top of Income Tax/NI and the HSC levy, as well as obligatory pensions contributions. And it applies to people earning between 100-120k who face an effective marginal rate of 60%.
We can debate the precise rates within this but that should be the ceiling and the curve should be smoothed throughout.
You’re opening premise does not make sense to me. If tax is 60%, I still have an incentive to keep progressing, because I get to keep 40% of my additional income. It’s not as much of an incentive as it would be were tax 49%, but it’s still an incentive. There’s nothing magical about 50% as a tax rate.
Tax rates, and changes in tax rates, do have an impact on behaviour at the margin though.
Two decades ago, as a young IT support worker, I was saving for a deposit and would happily work all the overtime I could get - until I banged into the 40% income tax rate, when I decided that working on Sundays for what was effectively about £8 an hour net, wasn’t worth it, and carefully managed the overtime after that to avoid the higher tax rate.
The higher the effective tax rate, the more likely it is to drive behavioural changes. That applies equially to those on benefits facing 60%, or those on £100k facing the same rate.
This is something that will damage Liz Truss, I remember a pollster telling me Martin Lewis had astronomical trust figures with the public, compared to the gutter most politicians were found in.
Liz Truss has been urged to ditch “outrageous” claims that tax cuts will deal with energy price rises after she continued to hold out against immediate help with bills yesterday.
Martin Lewis, the money-saving expert, said the frontrunner to become prime minister must set out detailed plans this month and offered to help draw them up as he warned that the energy crisis risked civil unrest and deaths from hypothermia this winter.
Rishi Sunak, who is Truss’s rival in the Tory leadership race, must also commit himself to doubling the package he set out as chancellor in May, Lewis said. He accused the Conservative Party of neglecting a “financial cataclysm” that would push millions into destitution.
There's a reason why scammers use the image of Martin Lewis to try and entice people to hand their money over to them, people trust him on things like this.
I am afraid that Martin Lewis is being completely unrealistic here. How can the government pay everyone's increase in their heating bills? It is completely and utterly unsustainable. What needs to be done is to protect the vulnerable. The rest of us will just have to pay more for our fuel until the price comes down again. Sunak's plans for the first increase was frankly terrible policy and should not be repeated or augmented.
True, in which case tax cuts are worse than useless. The nature of tax cuts is to help those who have more, more.
Rough ballpark for what has to happen is that the bottom third will need a lot, if not complete help with this. That means the £1000 support going up to close to £2500. We're talking people who don't have £2500 spare. That's not happing by tax cuts.
You do realise that the majority of people paying tax are working hard in demanding jobs and trying to raise families, right?
Funnily enough- yes I do realise that.
But there are some other things I also realise.
First is that there is a huge (hopefully short-lived) increase in the cost of living coming up, that it's going to hit the low-paid worst and that tax cuts do least for them.
Second is that tax cuts have to be earned. That can be by growing the economy whilst freezing the public sector, or it can be by the state stopping doing things. And both of those need a better worked-out plan than "They should just do it."
The economy won't grow if its most productive earners are taxes into oblivion.
A civilian asks: if you've got ~30 warplanes and lots of explosives at an airbase, is there a reason that you'd normally put the planes so near the explosives that they'll be destroyed if the explosives go up in an accident (or after an enemy strike), rather than e.g. a mile away at another part of the base?
All types of stupid shit happens when there is a war on. The base is probably packed to beyond capacity with aircraft, weapons and the vodka swilling muzhiki who are nominally in charge of them.
The RAF once blew up 4,000 tons of HE making a 300m wide and 50m deep hole in Staffordshire by using a chisel on a detonator.
There's sattelite photos from the morning of the attack. There were half a dozen planes parked practically wing tip to wingtip
A civilian asks: if you've got ~30 warplanes and lots of explosives at an airbase, is there a reason that you'd normally put the planes so near the explosives that they'll be destroyed if the explosives go up in an accident (or after an enemy strike), rather than e.g. a mile away at another part of the base?
All types of stupid shit happens when there is a war on. The base is probably packed to beyond capacity with aircraft, weapons and the vodka swilling muzhiki who are nominally in charge of them.
The RAF once blew up 4,000 tons of HE making a 300m wide and 50m deep hole in Staffordshire by using a chisel on a detonator.
TBF we don't know that for sure re Faulds - blaming the jet jockey, or in this case the bomb trolley jockey, rather than the system has always been a favourite let-out for courts martial convened into some crash or disaster.
The way that bombs and POL were handled at times has been pretty horrifying - the Port Chicago disaster, and the West Loch at Pearl Harbor, for instance, but in both cases there was huge pressure to get on with it.
“Gunner” Grant is a man to revere in some ways - saved a flagship. But he did go along with the face saving for the brass….
I come from a time when the vast majority of dwellings had no central heating and no hot water on tap unless you were lucky enough to have a storage tank with an immersion heater. Generally hot water for washing-up came from a kettle. In the winter there was frost on the inside of the windows in the morning and the bath-room was cold. The only source of heating was an open coal or gas fire in the living room. In the winter, which was much colder than it is now, we put on jumpers and cardigans and an extra blanket on the bed. We have clearly progressed from then to "Heat or eat"!
For me very much so especially living in Berwick in the 50s where it was perishing cold in the winter
Ditto, coke fired range cooker no central heating
The unfair thing is I can (and will) revert to that if necessary: turn off oil boiler, burn wood, use mira shower, live virtually energy free. The equivalent modern town house would be gas, electric or freeze.
A civilian asks: if you've got ~30 warplanes and lots of explosives at an airbase, is there a reason that you'd normally put the planes so near the explosives that they'll be destroyed if the explosives go up in an accident (or after an enemy strike), rather than e.g. a mile away at another part of the base?
That is a very good question. If you ever get to meet him, perhaps you could ask Vlade.
Professor John Curtice is generally held in high regard on this board. Does the rule hold today?
The next Tory leader "won't keep the Union safe" by following Boris Johnson's blunt refusal to allow an IndyRef2, the country's top pollster has said.
Professor John Curtice claimed whoever enters Downing Street next month would be better off trying to persuade Scots of the benefits of remaining in the UK.
“My own view is that if Unionists have any sense, they will get involved. Whatever happens, whether we have a referendum or not, Nicola Sturgeon is going to spend the next 12 months trying to increase the level of support for independence.
“If you want to make the Union safe, by far and away the best thing to do, is to actually make the case for the Union and persuade people.
“The reason the Union is in trouble is because, at the moment, only half the people in Scotland want to stay inside it.
"If you can change that fundamental, the Union will be safe. But so long as you don't change that, it won't be.
"I would submit that the attempt in the last two years to simply argue about process has not got the Unionists anywhere."
“… if Unionists have any sense…” The man is a comedian.
I agree with him. The government needs to run a positive case for the Union consistently. Help for those struggling with heating bills is as good a place as any to start.
The idea a single Yes voter is going to switch to No because they get a few more Westminster funds for heating bills that would in turn have to be funded by tax rises anyway is divorced from reality
This is something that will damage Liz Truss, I remember a pollster telling me Martin Lewis had astronomical trust figures with the public, compared to the gutter most politicians were found in.
Liz Truss has been urged to ditch “outrageous” claims that tax cuts will deal with energy price rises after she continued to hold out against immediate help with bills yesterday.
Martin Lewis, the money-saving expert, said the frontrunner to become prime minister must set out detailed plans this month and offered to help draw them up as he warned that the energy crisis risked civil unrest and deaths from hypothermia this winter.
Rishi Sunak, who is Truss’s rival in the Tory leadership race, must also commit himself to doubling the package he set out as chancellor in May, Lewis said. He accused the Conservative Party of neglecting a “financial cataclysm” that would push millions into destitution.
There's a reason why scammers use the image of Martin Lewis to try and entice people to hand their money over to them, people trust him on things like this.
I am afraid that Martin Lewis is being completely unrealistic here. How can the government pay everyone's increase in their heating bills? It is completely and utterly unsustainable. What needs to be done is to protect the vulnerable. The rest of us will just have to pay more for our fuel until the price comes down again. Sunak's plans for the first increase was frankly terrible policy and should not be repeated or augmented.
True, in which case tax cuts are worse than useless. The nature of tax cuts is to help those who have more, more.
Rough ballpark for what has to happen is that the bottom third will need a lot, if not complete help with this. That means the £1000 support going up to close to £2500. We're talking people who don't have £2500 spare. That's not happing by tax cuts.
Alternatively reducing taxation encourages those who don't have much to be able to work to get more, so paying their bills and having more afterwards.
Ratcheting up taxes on those who are working for a living in order to further swell the welfare state isn't the only option.
The tragedy is that so much of the welfare bill is the state subsidising the profits of Asda etc. Companies refused to pay decent wages, so faced with millions working and still living in penury Gordon Brown came up with Working Tax Credits.
I support a "what works" approach to most things, but despite working short term this hasn't worked long term. The right approach would have been to offer companies corporation tax cuts if they pay appropriate wages. Instead, CTax has collapsed down to 19% with companies not required to do anything in return for it.
So there is no way back now. Companies won't pay a living wage because why should they. Government has no leverage any more other than demonise working people as "claiming benefits". No, that would be their employers.
Sorry but that's utter codswallop. A full time 37.5h worker even on the legal minimum 'living wage' of £9.50 per hour is earning over £18.5k per annum and is paying a lot in tax including national insurance and employers national insurance which is a hidden tax on wages. And without kids a couple working full time even on minimum wage aren't entitled to tax credits/universal credit.
Tax credits wasn't set up to deal with low wages, the "minimum wage" was set up to deal with that, it was pure welfare. Asda etc aren't going to pay for someone who is working only 16 hours per week to support lots of children, if you want the state to do that then argue for that, don't claim its corporate welfare. Asda didn't choose to get pregnant and have kids.
What I love about your posts is that you post self-inflated guff like "that's utter codswallop" and then write what you just accused others of.
The reason why people get things like Working Families Tax Credit is because their wages are insufficient to pay the bills. You demonstrate that (a) you don't know this and (b) you don't care, but others do know and care.
No, the reason people get things like Universal Credit is because its welfare for their personal circumstances.
If all Asda's employees are getting UC then you could argue that was Asda's fault, but they're not. Its not true, so either you don't understand that, in which case you're wrong, or you do understand that but are wilfully misleading anyway.
If someone is wanting to support a family with multiple children on just 16 hours work per week then is that (a) their own responsibility, (b) the taxpayers responsibility or (c) Asda's responsibility?
Professor John Curtice is generally held in high regard on this board. Does the rule hold today?
The next Tory leader "won't keep the Union safe" by following Boris Johnson's blunt refusal to allow an IndyRef2, the country's top pollster has said.
Professor John Curtice claimed whoever enters Downing Street next month would be better off trying to persuade Scots of the benefits of remaining in the UK.
“My own view is that if Unionists have any sense, they will get involved. Whatever happens, whether we have a referendum or not, Nicola Sturgeon is going to spend the next 12 months trying to increase the level of support for independence.
“If you want to make the Union safe, by far and away the best thing to do, is to actually make the case for the Union and persuade people.
“The reason the Union is in trouble is because, at the moment, only half the people in Scotland want to stay inside it.
"If you can change that fundamental, the Union will be safe. But so long as you don't change that, it won't be.
"I would submit that the attempt in the last two years to simply argue about process has not got the Unionists anywhere."
“… if Unionists have any sense…” The man is a comedian.
What a ludicrous argument. A Tory government which grants an indyref2 before a generation is up has at best a 50% chance of winning it and keeping the Union together. A Tory government which refuses indyref2 has a 100% chance of keeping the Union together as Union matters are reserved to Westminster under the Scotland Act 1998.
The Tories also would not and should not ever need SNP support to form a government unlike Labour. As long as the Tories are largest party even in a hung parliament they can try and stay in government and refuse an indyref2 and leave it to Starmer to u turn and do a deal with the nationalists for No 10 if Labour fails to get most seats
How on earth is it a ludicrous argument to try and convince the Scots of the benefits of the Union rather than antagonise them. If Scots want to stay the issue goes away.
How do the Tories benefit by being aggressive to the Scots.
I don't think that she is talking about cutting IT though, is she? She is talking about taking the VAT off fuel and suspending the green levies. Everyone who pays for their fuel pays those and they increase the size of their bills. She is also talking about reversing the NI increase. More people pay NI than IT although Rishi's latest reforms which basically took the lowest paid out of the NI increase will have significantly reduced the difference.
What these tax cuts will not do is give those on benefits the money to pay their vastly increased bills. There simply has to be more help and support for that part of society. Truss failing to recognise that, and the financial implications of that for her CT cuts, is a problem.
I suspect Truss does realise that, and the simple reality is that all governments and all PMs take actions where required.
It is entirely appropriate though for the priority to be reversing the tax hikes. Having people keeping more of their own income they're working for is not a "flaw" and if people aren't working then they have the option of working. We keep being told there's a labour shortage afterall.
Public services need to be paid for. Taxes are a necessary part of a civilised society. I think everyone agrees on that. What there can be disagreement on is what taxes, what rates and who pays them? The NI increases were wrong, not because they increased the tax burden but because they unfairly increased the tax burden on the working population at the expense of the retired who are the main users of both social care and the NHS it was supposedly funding. We need to broaden the net on tax contributions and this will almost certainly involve more capital taxes. I don't hear Truss (or indeed Sunak) talking much about that.
You're not going to hear either Truss or Sunak talking about that either. But we can agree that the NI increases were wrong, and therefore I stand by that reversing them is right. If that means that money is required via alternative taxes - as I've said all governments make other decisions and no prospective leader is ever going to write an entire budget during a leadership election campaign.
But at the least reversing the NI tax hike is a step in the right direction. If there are to be tax hikes, then allowing the NI hike to stand will simply set that up as a ratchet to be turned ever higher to pay for the NHS and Social Care while allowing those not paying NI to evade their responsibilities to your civilised society all together.
Exactly. It's a huge Trojan Horse.
Don't want to put up NI or Income Tax ?
Fine. Put up the "health and social care levy".
Yep, that was the wrong way to do it. Yet another tax that can be raised by governments saying they won’t raise income taxes.
There was a brief mention of UBI on here yesterday, one of those things that works well in theory but is very difficult in practice. The single most difficult thing about it in practice, is that the setting of the rate becomes a political football at election time. It would have to be set by an external committee, in the same way as interest rates, in order to depoliticise it - but which politicians are going to do that?
I take a simple view on this: taxes at every level should never exceed 50% so you always have an incentive to keep progressing as you keep more of what you earn than the government takes.
That applies to UBI benefit withdrawal. It applies to graduates paying 9% on top of Income Tax/NI and the HSC levy, as well as obligatory pensions contributions. And it applies to people earning between 100-120k who face an effective marginal rate of 60%.
We can debate the precise rates within this but that should be the ceiling and the curve should be smoothed throughout.
You’re opening premise does not make sense to me. If tax is 60%, I still have an incentive to keep progressing, because I get to keep 40% of my additional income. It’s not as much of an incentive as it would be were tax 49%, but it’s still an incentive. There’s nothing magical about 50% as a tax rate.
Yes there is, because you get a raise and you keep >50% of the amount as net income.
You don't take a big promotion or lots of extra responsibility for a raise of which you only keep 30-40%.
Clearly, the incentive increases the more you keep, but the idea that no-one will seek a promotion when taxes are above 50% is demonstrable nonsense. We know this because vast numbers of people have sought promotions when their taxes were above 50%.
“We’re going to lose the next general election. Bad news is coming flooding towards us.
“With the energy bills, there are going to be demonstrations in the streets, and at some stage it’ll turn violent. This is a poll tax-plus situation. If Labour were clever and linked up with the Lib Dems, they could wipe the Tories out for a generation.”
but it also contains this gem...
“If you go to Church’s for a pair of gentleman’s first-class leather brogues off the shelf, they cost about £380, so people have actually forgotten what real shoes cost!”
TBF we don't know that for sure re Faulds - blaming the jet jockey, or in this case the bomb trolley jockey, rather than the system has always been a favourite let-out for courts martial convened into some crash or disaster.
The way that bombs and POL were handled at times has been pretty horrifying - the Port Chicago disaster, and the West Loch at Pearl Harbor, for instance, but in both cases there was huge pressure to get on with it.
There is a story in one of Richard Feynman's books IIRC about the plant that was refining Uranium for the Manhattan Project.
They stacked all of the refined product together in one big pile...
IIRC he randomly pointed at a diagram he didn’t understand and asked “What about here” - the Du Pont guys gathered round, looked and went “Oh”.
There have been a few critical mass accidents. Solutions and precipitates are a nightmare for that….
I hope it's not wishful thinking, but unless something big changes might the Tory party possibly be in real trouble as 2022 wears on? To summarise: its market for the moment has to be the retired or at least late-middle aged gammonians, most of whom would repeal the "woke" Race Relations Act that their hero spoke against in 1968 if ever they got the chance, perhaps shortly after banning the metric system because it's "foreign". This part of the population is so separate from the "red wall" and from almost everyone else in the country too that they must be making brand managers feel faint. They're lucky there's not an election on.
On the other side of the coin, both they and the government machine are doing well with the "cost of living crisis" buzzphrase. What that tells many audiences is "don't support strikes".
But THAT orientation is itself a "wall" that might, just possibly might, crumble. Why? Because if your living standards are falling through the floor to an extent that neither you nor your parents have ever before witnessed, then you've got to do something about it in cooperation with your neighbours, your workmates (if any), your family members, and with people who are in the same position as you in other areas, other workplaces, and other families, otherwise you are completely f***ed. The catch is that you need to have spiritedness (which requires that you switch your f***ing smartphone off - not a single oppositional movement has ever been mainly composed of continuing heroin addicts), and you also need enough energy left in your body before your bodyweight plummets too far owing to lack of food (which requires that you don't hang about).
Will the "something big" happen that the Tory party needs? It might. It's easy to read the proliferation of Ukrainian flags on British flagpoles as an alternative to full-scale British entry into the war. That is kinda true, but only for the time being. There are parts of the population who are itching for war. This is clear for example in messages posted here about destroying Russia as if it were a rebellion in a British colony, and in the belief that if "Putin" isn't stopped he'll soon be threatening the mouth of the Thames - a case of making up reasons for stuff while believing them. We are talking about irrational xenophobes who don't care if Birmingham or Glasgow get nuked so long as the Azov Regiment triumphantly retakes the lost lands of the Donbas (and even the Crimea) and Russian cities get nuked faster than British ones.
Then there is the weakening of many minds since the start of the coronavirus carnival in March 2020. For example, can people who locked themselves up in their houses for months except when taking weekly trips to the supermarket, when legally speaking they weren't required to, recover whatever level of independence of thought they once had? That might be a difficult ask. Many probably can't even remember before smartphones.
Somebody’s either started very early or gone on an all-nighter.
That's you up against the wall when the revolution comes, comrade.
If it is my revolution…. {giggles like a loony}
“Have you considered joining the space program?”
No. You're putting the whole of the DfE on it, remember? I don't want to spend any time with those useless drunken prats.
Sigh. No no no.
This is a proper, wide ranging program.
Parliament is being sent to Pluto
DfE in its entirety is performing the first person’s mission to land on the surface of the Sun.
And those are just the reference missions for proof of capability.
I was going to suggest Uranus as a better destination.
But then it occurred to me 650 bigheads in Uranus might be rather painful for you.
A civilian asks: if you've got ~30 warplanes and lots of explosives at an airbase, is there a reason that you'd normally put the planes so near the explosives that they'll be destroyed if the explosives go up in an accident (or after an enemy strike), rather than e.g. a mile away at another part of the base?
All types of stupid shit happens when there is a war on. The base is probably packed to beyond capacity with aircraft, weapons and the vodka swilling muzhiki who are nominally in charge of them.
The RAF once blew up 4,000 tons of HE making a 300m wide and 50m deep hole in Staffordshire by using a chisel on a detonator.
The Germans beat that by using dynamite to break up congealed fertiliser in a fertiliser factory.
My favourite ever usenet post
Gunpowder is made from finely ground sulphur charcoal saltpetre
I have learnt that it is better to grind the ingredients prior to combining them.
This seemed from the context not to be a joke.
But the ingredients had to be *ground together* to combine them, in 'edge runner' mills. Basically put some mix on a millstone trough and drive huge millstones round and round on their edges in a circle on top.
I've seem some. Very heavy walls on three sides, flimsy walls and roof, earthen banks all around, or dug into a valley side, well away from the next mill. No wonder.
Powdermills is just down the road here. Always wondered whether putting it in the wettest part of the country was part of the plan.
Professor John Curtice is generally held in high regard on this board. Does the rule hold today?
The next Tory leader "won't keep the Union safe" by following Boris Johnson's blunt refusal to allow an IndyRef2, the country's top pollster has said.
Professor John Curtice claimed whoever enters Downing Street next month would be better off trying to persuade Scots of the benefits of remaining in the UK.
“My own view is that if Unionists have any sense, they will get involved. Whatever happens, whether we have a referendum or not, Nicola Sturgeon is going to spend the next 12 months trying to increase the level of support for independence.
“If you want to make the Union safe, by far and away the best thing to do, is to actually make the case for the Union and persuade people.
“The reason the Union is in trouble is because, at the moment, only half the people in Scotland want to stay inside it.
"If you can change that fundamental, the Union will be safe. But so long as you don't change that, it won't be.
"I would submit that the attempt in the last two years to simply argue about process has not got the Unionists anywhere."
“… if Unionists have any sense…” The man is a comedian.
I agree with him. The government needs to run a positive case for the Union consistently. Help for those struggling with heating bills is as good a place as any to start.
Good morning
I absolutely agree and would expect most of us who value the union understand that hardline rejection by Westminster for indyref2 is only making independence more likely
Better to lance the boil and win the case for the union
You wouldn't lance the boil, give the SNP indyref2 now before a generation is up since 2014 and even if you win it the SNP would demand indyref3 within 5 to 10 years
To be honest your attitude to indyref2 is extreme and antagonistic and you simply have no understanding of Scotland or its people
Scotland matters to me and my family and the idea you can suppress indyref2 indefinitely leads to independence
As far as repetitive independence referendums are concerned I have lived with these demands ever since I was a wee boy living in Berwick in the 1950s and it is worth noting Berwick has changed hands between Scotland and England 13 times
This is something that will damage Liz Truss, I remember a pollster telling me Martin Lewis had astronomical trust figures with the public, compared to the gutter most politicians were found in.
Liz Truss has been urged to ditch “outrageous” claims that tax cuts will deal with energy price rises after she continued to hold out against immediate help with bills yesterday.
Martin Lewis, the money-saving expert, said the frontrunner to become prime minister must set out detailed plans this month and offered to help draw them up as he warned that the energy crisis risked civil unrest and deaths from hypothermia this winter.
Rishi Sunak, who is Truss’s rival in the Tory leadership race, must also commit himself to doubling the package he set out as chancellor in May, Lewis said. He accused the Conservative Party of neglecting a “financial cataclysm” that would push millions into destitution.
There's a reason why scammers use the image of Martin Lewis to try and entice people to hand their money over to them, people trust him on things like this.
I am afraid that Martin Lewis is being completely unrealistic here. How can the government pay everyone's increase in their heating bills? It is completely and utterly unsustainable. What needs to be done is to protect the vulnerable. The rest of us will just have to pay more for our fuel until the price comes down again. Sunak's plans for the first increase was frankly terrible policy and should not be repeated or augmented.
True, in which case tax cuts are worse than useless. The nature of tax cuts is to help those who have more, more.
Rough ballpark for what has to happen is that the bottom third will need a lot, if not complete help with this. That means the £1000 support going up to close to £2500. We're talking people who don't have £2500 spare. That's not happing by tax cuts.
Alternatively reducing taxation encourages those who don't have much to be able to work to get more, so paying their bills and having more afterwards.
Ratcheting up taxes on those who are working for a living in order to further swell the welfare state isn't the only option.
The tragedy is that so much of the welfare bill is the state subsidising the profits of Asda etc. Companies refused to pay decent wages, so faced with millions working and still living in penury Gordon Brown came up with Working Tax Credits.
I support a "what works" approach to most things, but despite working short term this hasn't worked long term. The right approach would have been to offer companies corporation tax cuts if they pay appropriate wages. Instead, CTax has collapsed down to 19% with companies not required to do anything in return for it.
So there is no way back now. Companies won't pay a living wage because why should they. Government has no leverage any more other than demonise working people as "claiming benefits". No, that would be their employers.
Sorry but that's utter codswallop. A full time 37.5h worker even on the legal minimum 'living wage' of £9.50 per hour is earning over £18.5k per annum and is paying a lot in tax including national insurance and employers national insurance which is a hidden tax on wages. And without kids a couple working full time even on minimum wage aren't entitled to tax credits/universal credit.
Tax credits wasn't set up to deal with low wages, the "minimum wage" was set up to deal with that, it was pure welfare. Asda etc aren't going to pay for someone who is working only 16 hours per week to support lots of children, if you want the state to do that then argue for that, don't claim its corporate welfare. Asda didn't choose to get pregnant and have kids.
What I love about your posts is that you post self-inflated guff like "that's utter codswallop" and then write what you just accused others of.
The reason why people get things like Working Families Tax Credit is because their wages are insufficient to pay the bills. You demonstrate that (a) you don't know this and (b) you don't care, but others do know and care.
No, the reason people get things like Universal Credit is because its welfare for their personal circumstances.
If all Asda's employees are getting UC then you could argue that was Asda's fault, but they're not. Its not true, so either you don't understand that, in which case you're wrong, or you do understand that but are wilfully misleading anyway.
If someone is wanting to support a family with multiple children on just 16 hours work per week then is that (a) their own responsibility, (b) the taxpayers responsibility or (c) Asda's responsibility?
Your other idiot tendency is to post daft strawmen arguments - in this case that ALL Asda employees are on UC.
You missed the sarcastic shrug emoji. To really help make your "argument".
Mate of mine (yes, I know) just had 19 solar panels put on their house (the stable block, aksherly). Cost (incl battery, fancy remote stuff) around £13,000. The way things are going now the payback will be a month and a half.
I don't think that she is talking about cutting IT though, is she? She is talking about taking the VAT off fuel and suspending the green levies. Everyone who pays for their fuel pays those and they increase the size of their bills. She is also talking about reversing the NI increase. More people pay NI than IT although Rishi's latest reforms which basically took the lowest paid out of the NI increase will have significantly reduced the difference.
What these tax cuts will not do is give those on benefits the money to pay their vastly increased bills. There simply has to be more help and support for that part of society. Truss failing to recognise that, and the financial implications of that for her CT cuts, is a problem.
I suspect Truss does realise that, and the simple reality is that all governments and all PMs take actions where required.
It is entirely appropriate though for the priority to be reversing the tax hikes. Having people keeping more of their own income they're working for is not a "flaw" and if people aren't working then they have the option of working. We keep being told there's a labour shortage afterall.
Public services need to be paid for. Taxes are a necessary part of a civilised society. I think everyone agrees on that. What there can be disagreement on is what taxes, what rates and who pays them? The NI increases were wrong, not because they increased the tax burden but because they unfairly increased the tax burden on the working population at the expense of the retired who are the main users of both social care and the NHS it was supposedly funding. We need to broaden the net on tax contributions and this will almost certainly involve more capital taxes. I don't hear Truss (or indeed Sunak) talking much about that.
You're not going to hear either Truss or Sunak talking about that either. But we can agree that the NI increases were wrong, and therefore I stand by that reversing them is right. If that means that money is required via alternative taxes - as I've said all governments make other decisions and no prospective leader is ever going to write an entire budget during a leadership election campaign.
But at the least reversing the NI tax hike is a step in the right direction. If there are to be tax hikes, then allowing the NI hike to stand will simply set that up as a ratchet to be turned ever higher to pay for the NHS and Social Care while allowing those not paying NI to evade their responsibilities to your civilised society all together.
Exactly. It's a huge Trojan Horse.
Don't want to put up NI or Income Tax ?
Fine. Put up the "health and social care levy".
Yep, that was the wrong way to do it. Yet another tax that can be raised by governments saying they won’t raise income taxes.
There was a brief mention of UBI on here yesterday, one of those things that works well in theory but is very difficult in practice. The single most difficult thing about it in practice, is that the setting of the rate becomes a political football at election time. It would have to be set by an external committee, in the same way as interest rates, in order to depoliticise it - but which politicians are going to do that?
I take a simple view on this: taxes at every level should never exceed 50% so you always have an incentive to keep progressing as you keep more of what you earn than the government takes.
That applies to UBI benefit withdrawal. It applies to graduates paying 9% on top of Income Tax/NI and the HSC levy, as well as obligatory pensions contributions. And it applies to people earning between 100-120k who face an effective marginal rate of 60%.
We can debate the precise rates within this but that should be the ceiling and the curve should be smoothed throughout.
You’re opening premise does not make sense to me. If tax is 60%, I still have an incentive to keep progressing, because I get to keep 40% of my additional income. It’s not as much of an incentive as it would be were tax 49%, but it’s still an incentive. There’s nothing magical about 50% as a tax rate.
Tax rates, and changes in tax rates, do have an impact on behaviour at the margin though.
Two decades ago, as a young IT support worker, I was saving for a deposit and would happily work all the overtime I could get - until I banged into the 40% income tax rate, when I decided that working on Sundays for what was effectively about £8 an hour net, wasn’t worth it, and carefully managed the overtime after that to avoid the higher tax rate.
The higher the effective tax rate, the more likely it is to drive behavioural changes. That applies equially to those on benefits facing 60%, or those on £100k facing the same rate.
I don’t disagree with that. I disagree with 50% being some magical cut-off. A tax of 61% will reduce incentives compared to a tax of 60%. A tax of 41% will reduce incentives compared to a tax of 40%.
A civilian asks: if you've got ~30 warplanes and lots of explosives at an airbase, is there a reason that you'd normally put the planes so near the explosives that they'll be destroyed if the explosives go up in an accident (or after an enemy strike), rather than e.g. a mile away at another part of the base?
All types of stupid shit happens when there is a war on. The base is probably packed to beyond capacity with aircraft, weapons and the vodka swilling muzhiki who are nominally in charge of them.
The RAF once blew up 4,000 tons of HE making a 300m wide and 50m deep hole in Staffordshire by using a chisel on a detonator.
Speaking as somebody whose knowledge of explosives is confined to the fact that they go bang, what idiot used a chisel on a detonator and why?
I come from a time when the vast majority of dwellings had no central heating and no hot water on tap unless you were lucky enough to have a storage tank with an immersion heater. Generally hot water for washing-up came from a kettle. In the winter there was frost on the inside of the windows in the morning and the bath-room was cold. The only source of heating was an open coal or gas fire in the living room. In the winter, which was much colder than it is now, we put on jumpers and cardigans and an extra blanket on the bed. We have clearly progressed from then to "Heat or eat"!
For me very much so especially living in Berwick in the 50s where it was perishing cold in the winter
Ditto, coke fired range cooker no central heating
The unfair thing is I can (and will) revert to that if necessary: turn off oil boiler, burn wood, use mira shower, live virtually energy free. The equivalent modern town house would be gas, electric or freeze.
Getting dressed under the bed clothes was a daily feature in the winter
I don't think that she is talking about cutting IT though, is she? She is talking about taking the VAT off fuel and suspending the green levies. Everyone who pays for their fuel pays those and they increase the size of their bills. She is also talking about reversing the NI increase. More people pay NI than IT although Rishi's latest reforms which basically took the lowest paid out of the NI increase will have significantly reduced the difference.
What these tax cuts will not do is give those on benefits the money to pay their vastly increased bills. There simply has to be more help and support for that part of society. Truss failing to recognise that, and the financial implications of that for her CT cuts, is a problem.
I suspect Truss does realise that, and the simple reality is that all governments and all PMs take actions where required.
It is entirely appropriate though for the priority to be reversing the tax hikes. Having people keeping more of their own income they're working for is not a "flaw" and if people aren't working then they have the option of working. We keep being told there's a labour shortage afterall.
Public services need to be paid for. Taxes are a necessary part of a civilised society. I think everyone agrees on that. What there can be disagreement on is what taxes, what rates and who pays them? The NI increases were wrong, not because they increased the tax burden but because they unfairly increased the tax burden on the working population at the expense of the retired who are the main users of both social care and the NHS it was supposedly funding. We need to broaden the net on tax contributions and this will almost certainly involve more capital taxes. I don't hear Truss (or indeed Sunak) talking much about that.
You're not going to hear either Truss or Sunak talking about that either. But we can agree that the NI increases were wrong, and therefore I stand by that reversing them is right. If that means that money is required via alternative taxes - as I've said all governments make other decisions and no prospective leader is ever going to write an entire budget during a leadership election campaign.
But at the least reversing the NI tax hike is a step in the right direction. If there are to be tax hikes, then allowing the NI hike to stand will simply set that up as a ratchet to be turned ever higher to pay for the NHS and Social Care while allowing those not paying NI to evade their responsibilities to your civilised society all together.
Exactly. It's a huge Trojan Horse.
Don't want to put up NI or Income Tax ?
Fine. Put up the "health and social care levy".
Yep, that was the wrong way to do it. Yet another tax that can be raised by governments saying they won’t raise income taxes.
There was a brief mention of UBI on here yesterday, one of those things that works well in theory but is very difficult in practice. The single most difficult thing about it in practice, is that the setting of the rate becomes a political football at election time. It would have to be set by an external committee, in the same way as interest rates, in order to depoliticise it - but which politicians are going to do that?
I take a simple view on this: taxes at every level should never exceed 50% so you always have an incentive to keep progressing as you keep more of what you earn than the government takes.
That applies to UBI benefit withdrawal. It applies to graduates paying 9% on top of Income Tax/NI and the HSC levy, as well as obligatory pensions contributions. And it applies to people earning between 100-120k who face an effective marginal rate of 60%.
We can debate the precise rates within this but that should be the ceiling and the curve should be smoothed throughout.
You’re opening premise does not make sense to me. If tax is 60%, I still have an incentive to keep progressing, because I get to keep 40% of my additional income. It’s not as much of an incentive as it would be were tax 49%, but it’s still an incentive. There’s nothing magical about 50% as a tax rate.
Yes there is, because you get a raise and you keep >50% of the amount as net income.
You don't take a big promotion or lots of extra responsibility for a raise of which you only keep 30-40%.
Your employer just needs to make the raise bigger to make it worthwhile
It can do so but it needs to be very large you'll still be pissed at the take back.
This shouldn't really need to be debated - look at the evidence for those who stay on UC because it's "not worth" them getting a job at a withdrawal rate of 65%+ or how Nick Palmer has lamented himself voting for the 100-120k 60% tax trap in the dying days of the Brown government.
This is something that will damage Liz Truss, I remember a pollster telling me Martin Lewis had astronomical trust figures with the public, compared to the gutter most politicians were found in.
Liz Truss has been urged to ditch “outrageous” claims that tax cuts will deal with energy price rises after she continued to hold out against immediate help with bills yesterday.
Martin Lewis, the money-saving expert, said the frontrunner to become prime minister must set out detailed plans this month and offered to help draw them up as he warned that the energy crisis risked civil unrest and deaths from hypothermia this winter.
Rishi Sunak, who is Truss’s rival in the Tory leadership race, must also commit himself to doubling the package he set out as chancellor in May, Lewis said. He accused the Conservative Party of neglecting a “financial cataclysm” that would push millions into destitution.
There's a reason why scammers use the image of Martin Lewis to try and entice people to hand their money over to them, people trust him on things like this.
I am afraid that Martin Lewis is being completely unrealistic here. How can the government pay everyone's increase in their heating bills? It is completely and utterly unsustainable. What needs to be done is to protect the vulnerable. The rest of us will just have to pay more for our fuel until the price comes down again. Sunak's plans for the first increase was frankly terrible policy and should not be repeated or augmented.
Lewis is right. Reduce the price cap increases to perhaps 20% instead of 80%+ and pay the energy suppliers the difference. This will significantly cut inflation and therefore a lot of future government spending and debt repayments that are linked to RPI and CPI rates, so is nowhere near as expensive as it sounds.
As a temporary expedient, that is not a terrible notion. But it would still be very expensive indeed.
It's fair to say that there are no good options. What's needed is a hard assessment of the least damaging ones. 'Tax cuts' is just a silly distraction at the moment, utterly irrelevant to something that will be the most consequential financial hit in decades for a large part of the population.
Professor John Curtice is generally held in high regard on this board. Does the rule hold today?
The next Tory leader "won't keep the Union safe" by following Boris Johnson's blunt refusal to allow an IndyRef2, the country's top pollster has said.
Professor John Curtice claimed whoever enters Downing Street next month would be better off trying to persuade Scots of the benefits of remaining in the UK.
“My own view is that if Unionists have any sense, they will get involved. Whatever happens, whether we have a referendum or not, Nicola Sturgeon is going to spend the next 12 months trying to increase the level of support for independence.
“If you want to make the Union safe, by far and away the best thing to do, is to actually make the case for the Union and persuade people.
“The reason the Union is in trouble is because, at the moment, only half the people in Scotland want to stay inside it.
"If you can change that fundamental, the Union will be safe. But so long as you don't change that, it won't be.
"I would submit that the attempt in the last two years to simply argue about process has not got the Unionists anywhere."
“… if Unionists have any sense…” The man is a comedian.
I agree with him. The government needs to run a positive case for the Union consistently. Help for those struggling with heating bills is as good a place as any to start.
Good morning
I absolutely agree and would expect most of us who value the union understand that hardline rejection by Westminster for indyref2 is only making independence more likely
Better to lance the boil and win the case for the union
You wouldn't lance the boil, give the SNP indyref2 now before a generation is up since 2014 and even if you win it the SNP would demand indyref3 within 5 to 10 years
To be honest your attitude to indyref2 is extreme and antagonistic and you simply have no understanding of Scotland or its people
Scotland matters to me and my family and the idea you can suppress indyref2 indefinitely leads to independence
As far as repetitive independence referendums are concerned I have lived with these demands ever since I was a wee boy living in Berwick in the 1950s and it is worth noting Berwick has changed hands between Scotland and England 13 times
Rubbish. The future of the Union is reserved to Westminster and one thing Truss was absolutely right about was she would ignore Sturgeon and her indyref2 bleatings. The SNP should focus on the domestic policies they have responsibility for at Holyrood, giving in to them until they get independence is exactly what actually will lead to independence
I don't think that she is talking about cutting IT though, is she? She is talking about taking the VAT off fuel and suspending the green levies. Everyone who pays for their fuel pays those and they increase the size of their bills. She is also talking about reversing the NI increase. More people pay NI than IT although Rishi's latest reforms which basically took the lowest paid out of the NI increase will have significantly reduced the difference.
What these tax cuts will not do is give those on benefits the money to pay their vastly increased bills. There simply has to be more help and support for that part of society. Truss failing to recognise that, and the financial implications of that for her CT cuts, is a problem.
I suspect Truss does realise that, and the simple reality is that all governments and all PMs take actions where required.
It is entirely appropriate though for the priority to be reversing the tax hikes. Having people keeping more of their own income they're working for is not a "flaw" and if people aren't working then they have the option of working. We keep being told there's a labour shortage afterall.
Public services need to be paid for. Taxes are a necessary part of a civilised society. I think everyone agrees on that. What there can be disagreement on is what taxes, what rates and who pays them? The NI increases were wrong, not because they increased the tax burden but because they unfairly increased the tax burden on the working population at the expense of the retired who are the main users of both social care and the NHS it was supposedly funding. We need to broaden the net on tax contributions and this will almost certainly involve more capital taxes. I don't hear Truss (or indeed Sunak) talking much about that.
You're not going to hear either Truss or Sunak talking about that either. But we can agree that the NI increases were wrong, and therefore I stand by that reversing them is right. If that means that money is required via alternative taxes - as I've said all governments make other decisions and no prospective leader is ever going to write an entire budget during a leadership election campaign.
But at the least reversing the NI tax hike is a step in the right direction. If there are to be tax hikes, then allowing the NI hike to stand will simply set that up as a ratchet to be turned ever higher to pay for the NHS and Social Care while allowing those not paying NI to evade their responsibilities to your civilised society all together.
Exactly. It's a huge Trojan Horse.
Don't want to put up NI or Income Tax ?
Fine. Put up the "health and social care levy".
Yep, that was the wrong way to do it. Yet another tax that can be raised by governments saying they won’t raise income taxes.
There was a brief mention of UBI on here yesterday, one of those things that works well in theory but is very difficult in practice. The single most difficult thing about it in practice, is that the setting of the rate becomes a political football at election time. It would have to be set by an external committee, in the same way as interest rates, in order to depoliticise it - but which politicians are going to do that?
I take a simple view on this: taxes at every level should never exceed 50% so you always have an incentive to keep progressing as you keep more of what you earn than the government takes.
That applies to UBI benefit withdrawal. It applies to graduates paying 9% on top of Income Tax/NI and the HSC levy, as well as obligatory pensions contributions. And it applies to people earning between 100-120k who face an effective marginal rate of 60%.
We can debate the precise rates within this but that should be the ceiling and the curve should be smoothed throughout.
For some people on benefits the effective marginal tax rate is well above 100%.
We need to stop piggy-backing benefits on UC eligibility - it completely distorts the incentives. And reduce the taper rate even further , even though that will mean "subsidising Asda".
I'm curious if anyone has figures to hand of how much Employers NI the Treasury takes from what could have been Asda's employees wages while supposedly subsidising Asda?
I suspect there are plenty of minimum wage full time workers at Asda who are paying tax, national insurance and Employers NI and yet they aren't entitled to any benefits, while there will be many workers at the same pay rate in the same company with kids who work eg 16 hours per week who are.
The idea its Asda's fault or responsibility to pay a wage suitably high that it will fully support multiple children on just 16 hours per week is odd to say the least.
You don't get it. Full time minimum wage jobs do not pay enough to pay the bills. Plenty of people are working their arses off - far harder than you who spends half the working day dossing on here (as we all do). Hard graft. In shit jobs. Unable to keep the roof over their heads.
You may not give a shit about other people. Mistress Truss probably doesn't. But will be forced to when the winter of bill discontent forces her to because the sight of people freezing to death is bad for opinion poll ratings. "People die, so what" may work for an ideologue, less so for actual politicians.
I do understand that people work hard, which is why I want them to be able to keep more of their own income.
I have long railed that we tax people who are on UC far too much. If you combine Income Tax, Employee NI alone and UC Taper then someone on UC is on a marginal tax rate of 70%. That is the state that has done that, not ASDA or any other employer. For every extra £1 their employer pays them (not even including Employer NI here) the hard worker gets 30 pence in the pound. And that's without counting any other means-tested benefits either, or potentially Student Loan payments too.
That is unjustifiable and contemptible. You may think all is fine and dandy with that situation, but I never have.
Professor John Curtice is generally held in high regard on this board. Does the rule hold today?
The next Tory leader "won't keep the Union safe" by following Boris Johnson's blunt refusal to allow an IndyRef2, the country's top pollster has said.
Professor John Curtice claimed whoever enters Downing Street next month would be better off trying to persuade Scots of the benefits of remaining in the UK.
“My own view is that if Unionists have any sense, they will get involved. Whatever happens, whether we have a referendum or not, Nicola Sturgeon is going to spend the next 12 months trying to increase the level of support for independence.
“If you want to make the Union safe, by far and away the best thing to do, is to actually make the case for the Union and persuade people.
“The reason the Union is in trouble is because, at the moment, only half the people in Scotland want to stay inside it.
"If you can change that fundamental, the Union will be safe. But so long as you don't change that, it won't be.
"I would submit that the attempt in the last two years to simply argue about process has not got the Unionists anywhere."
“… if Unionists have any sense…” The man is a comedian.
I agree with him. The government needs to run a positive case for the Union consistently. Help for those struggling with heating bills is as good a place as any to start.
In order to run a positive case for the Union consistently, you need to run a positive case for the Union’s government consistently. These findings suggest that Unionists are failing in that key task:
- “Thinking about how the leadership election has been conducted, and how the candidates and their campaigns have behaved towards one another, do you think it has shown the Conservative party in a good or bad light?” - Scottish respondents (excl Neither/Not sure)
A good light 1.5% A bad light 98.5%
(YG/The Times; 4-5 August)
Perhaps choosing a mendacious Oaf as leader wasn’t such a smart move last time round?
Professor John Curtice is generally held in high regard on this board. Does the rule hold today?
The next Tory leader "won't keep the Union safe" by following Boris Johnson's blunt refusal to allow an IndyRef2, the country's top pollster has said.
Professor John Curtice claimed whoever enters Downing Street next month would be better off trying to persuade Scots of the benefits of remaining in the UK.
“My own view is that if Unionists have any sense, they will get involved. Whatever happens, whether we have a referendum or not, Nicola Sturgeon is going to spend the next 12 months trying to increase the level of support for independence.
“If you want to make the Union safe, by far and away the best thing to do, is to actually make the case for the Union and persuade people.
“The reason the Union is in trouble is because, at the moment, only half the people in Scotland want to stay inside it.
"If you can change that fundamental, the Union will be safe. But so long as you don't change that, it won't be.
"I would submit that the attempt in the last two years to simply argue about process has not got the Unionists anywhere."
“… if Unionists have any sense…” The man is a comedian.
I agree with him. The government needs to run a positive case for the Union consistently. Help for those struggling with heating bills is as good a place as any to start.
The idea a single Yes voter is going to switch to No because they get a few more Westminster funds for heating bills that would in turn have to be funded by tax rises anyway is divorced from reality
@davidl said 'to start' not 'just' so your reply is not logical.
“We’re going to lose the next general election. Bad news is coming flooding towards us.
“With the energy bills, there are going to be demonstrations in the streets, and at some stage it’ll turn violent. This is a poll tax-plus situation. If Labour were clever and linked up with the Lib Dems, they could wipe the Tories out for a generation.”
but it also contains this gem...
“If you go to Church’s for a pair of gentleman’s first-class leather brogues off the shelf, they cost about £380, so people have actually forgotten what real shoes cost!”
Good morning one and all!
The story about the shoes remind me of Sam Vines, Terry Pratchett's hero; cheap boots cost a lot less than expensive ones, but the expensive ones last a lifetime while the cheap ones only last two or three years!
Two decades ago, as a young IT support worker, I was saving for a deposit and would happily work all the overtime I could get - until I banged into the 40% income tax rate, when I decided that working on Sundays for what was effectively about £8 an hour net, wasn’t worth it, and carefully managed the overtime after that to avoid the higher tax rate.
You'll disagree, I'm sure, but personally I think "discourages people from working a ton of overtime" is a good outcome. Working long hours is (as a generality) bad for the person who does it both for their quality of life and for their health (which costs the state in the long run), and it tends to bail the employer out from doing what they ought and employing enough staff to get the work done without overtime, so it increases unemployment too (costing the state again, and bad for that person who might have been employed to do the work).
I don't think that she is talking about cutting IT though, is she? She is talking about taking the VAT off fuel and suspending the green levies. Everyone who pays for their fuel pays those and they increase the size of their bills. She is also talking about reversing the NI increase. More people pay NI than IT although Rishi's latest reforms which basically took the lowest paid out of the NI increase will have significantly reduced the difference.
What these tax cuts will not do is give those on benefits the money to pay their vastly increased bills. There simply has to be more help and support for that part of society. Truss failing to recognise that, and the financial implications of that for her CT cuts, is a problem.
I suspect Truss does realise that, and the simple reality is that all governments and all PMs take actions where required.
It is entirely appropriate though for the priority to be reversing the tax hikes. Having people keeping more of their own income they're working for is not a "flaw" and if people aren't working then they have the option of working. We keep being told there's a labour shortage afterall.
Public services need to be paid for. Taxes are a necessary part of a civilised society. I think everyone agrees on that. What there can be disagreement on is what taxes, what rates and who pays them? The NI increases were wrong, not because they increased the tax burden but because they unfairly increased the tax burden on the working population at the expense of the retired who are the main users of both social care and the NHS it was supposedly funding. We need to broaden the net on tax contributions and this will almost certainly involve more capital taxes. I don't hear Truss (or indeed Sunak) talking much about that.
You're not going to hear either Truss or Sunak talking about that either. But we can agree that the NI increases were wrong, and therefore I stand by that reversing them is right. If that means that money is required via alternative taxes - as I've said all governments make other decisions and no prospective leader is ever going to write an entire budget during a leadership election campaign.
But at the least reversing the NI tax hike is a step in the right direction. If there are to be tax hikes, then allowing the NI hike to stand will simply set that up as a ratchet to be turned ever higher to pay for the NHS and Social Care while allowing those not paying NI to evade their responsibilities to your civilised society all together.
Exactly. It's a huge Trojan Horse.
Don't want to put up NI or Income Tax ?
Fine. Put up the "health and social care levy".
Yep, that was the wrong way to do it. Yet another tax that can be raised by governments saying they won’t raise income taxes.
There was a brief mention of UBI on here yesterday, one of those things that works well in theory but is very difficult in practice. The single most difficult thing about it in practice, is that the setting of the rate becomes a political football at election time. It would have to be set by an external committee, in the same way as interest rates, in order to depoliticise it - but which politicians are going to do that?
I take a simple view on this: taxes at every level should never exceed 50% so you always have an incentive to keep progressing as you keep more of what you earn than the government takes.
That applies to UBI benefit withdrawal. It applies to graduates paying 9% on top of Income Tax/NI and the HSC levy, as well as obligatory pensions contributions. And it applies to people earning between 100-120k who face an effective marginal rate of 60%.
We can debate the precise rates within this but that should be the ceiling and the curve should be smoothed throughout.
You’re opening premise does not make sense to me. If tax is 60%, I still have an incentive to keep progressing, because I get to keep 40% of my additional income. It’s not as much of an incentive as it would be were tax 49%, but it’s still an incentive. There’s nothing magical about 50% as a tax rate.
Yes there is, because you get a raise and you keep >50% of the amount as net income.
You don't take a big promotion or lots of extra responsibility for a raise of which you only keep 30-40%.
Clearly, the incentive increases the more you keep, but the idea that no-one will seek a promotion when taxes are above 50% is demonstrable nonsense. We know this because vast numbers of people have sought promotions when their taxes were above 50%.
You haven't demonstrated its nonsense, just asserted that it is - for one thing you can't demonstrate those that didn't apply for a promotion or turned it down as a result. And it is absolutely a factor in the brackets I mentioned: UC, graduates and the 100k tax trap.
There's always a frictional cost to tax. No such thing as a free lunch.
Not taking more than 50% of someone's gross pay in tax should be a basic principle of fairness that we can all agree on at every level.
Professor John Curtice is generally held in high regard on this board. Does the rule hold today?
The next Tory leader "won't keep the Union safe" by following Boris Johnson's blunt refusal to allow an IndyRef2, the country's top pollster has said.
Professor John Curtice claimed whoever enters Downing Street next month would be better off trying to persuade Scots of the benefits of remaining in the UK.
“My own view is that if Unionists have any sense, they will get involved. Whatever happens, whether we have a referendum or not, Nicola Sturgeon is going to spend the next 12 months trying to increase the level of support for independence.
“If you want to make the Union safe, by far and away the best thing to do, is to actually make the case for the Union and persuade people.
“The reason the Union is in trouble is because, at the moment, only half the people in Scotland want to stay inside it.
"If you can change that fundamental, the Union will be safe. But so long as you don't change that, it won't be.
"I would submit that the attempt in the last two years to simply argue about process has not got the Unionists anywhere."
“… if Unionists have any sense…” The man is a comedian.
What a ludicrous argument. A Tory government which grants an indyref2 before a generation is up has at best a 50% chance of winning it and keeping the Union together. A Tory government which refuses indyref2 has a 100% chance of keeping the Union together as Union matters are reserved to Westminster under the Scotland Act 1998.
The Tories also would not and should not ever need SNP support to form a government unlike Labour. As long as the Tories are largest party even in a hung parliament they can try and stay in government and refuse an indyref2 and leave it to Starmer to u turn and do a deal with the nationalists for No 10 if Labour fails to get most seats
How on earth is it a ludicrous argument to try and convince the Scots of the benefits of the Union rather than antagonise them. If Scots want to stay the issue goes away.
How do the Tories benefit by being aggressive to the Scots.
Scotland is divided in a 50 50 no man's land on the Union and independence. Nothing Westminster does will likely shift that much.
However giving the SNP an indyref2 before a generation is up will just lead to the SNP demanding indyref3, indyref4, indyref5 etc until they get the result they want even if won
A civilian asks: if you've got ~30 warplanes and lots of explosives at an airbase, is there a reason that you'd normally put the planes so near the explosives that they'll be destroyed if the explosives go up in an accident (or after an enemy strike), rather than e.g. a mile away at another part of the base?
All types of stupid shit happens when there is a war on. The base is probably packed to beyond capacity with aircraft, weapons and the vodka swilling muzhiki who are nominally in charge of them.
The RAF once blew up 4,000 tons of HE making a 300m wide and 50m deep hole in Staffordshire by using a chisel on a detonator.
Speaking as somebody whose knowledge of explosives is confined to the fact that they go bang, what idiot used a chisel on a detonator and why?
Truss has said other obviously stupid things in this campaign (regional pay was the obvious one) but has backtracked on those with commendable speed. If not with commendable grace.
On this one- tax cuts but no handouts- she has repeatedly stuck to her guns. Despite the really obvious hole alluded to in the header.
What's going on?
Presumably Liz Truss really believes in tax cuts but no handouts — whether on its merits or as an attack line and dividing line from Rishi Sunak, it matters little — whereas regional pay was just a line pitched by the loopier elements of Team Truss, that could be ditched with little cost. I'm reasonably sure Truss told what she thought was the truth and that her regional pay policy applied only to new civil servants, and that she dropped it once she actually read her own press release and realised her opponents were right and it would apply to teachers and midwives in order to reach the claimed savings.
It is to Liz Truss's credit that she is quick to drop unworkable policies; to her detriment that she adopts them so uncritically in the first place.
This is something that will damage Liz Truss, I remember a pollster telling me Martin Lewis had astronomical trust figures with the public, compared to the gutter most politicians were found in.
Liz Truss has been urged to ditch “outrageous” claims that tax cuts will deal with energy price rises after she continued to hold out against immediate help with bills yesterday.
Martin Lewis, the money-saving expert, said the frontrunner to become prime minister must set out detailed plans this month and offered to help draw them up as he warned that the energy crisis risked civil unrest and deaths from hypothermia this winter.
Rishi Sunak, who is Truss’s rival in the Tory leadership race, must also commit himself to doubling the package he set out as chancellor in May, Lewis said. He accused the Conservative Party of neglecting a “financial cataclysm” that would push millions into destitution.
There's a reason why scammers use the image of Martin Lewis to try and entice people to hand their money over to them, people trust him on things like this.
I am afraid that Martin Lewis is being completely unrealistic here. How can the government pay everyone's increase in their heating bills? It is completely and utterly unsustainable. What needs to be done is to protect the vulnerable. The rest of us will just have to pay more for our fuel until the price comes down again. Sunak's plans for the first increase was frankly terrible policy and should not be repeated or augmented.
True, in which case tax cuts are worse than useless. The nature of tax cuts is to help those who have more, more.
Rough ballpark for what has to happen is that the bottom third will need a lot, if not complete help with this. That means the £1000 support going up to close to £2500. We're talking people who don't have £2500 spare. That's not happing by tax cuts.
Alternatively reducing taxation encourages those who don't have much to be able to work to get more, so paying their bills and having more afterwards.
Ratcheting up taxes on those who are working for a living in order to further swell the welfare state isn't the only option.
The tragedy is that so much of the welfare bill is the state subsidising the profits of Asda etc. Companies refused to pay decent wages, so faced with millions working and still living in penury Gordon Brown came up with Working Tax Credits.
I support a "what works" approach to most things, but despite working short term this hasn't worked long term. The right approach would have been to offer companies corporation tax cuts if they pay appropriate wages. Instead, CTax has collapsed down to 19% with companies not required to do anything in return for it.
So there is no way back now. Companies won't pay a living wage because why should they. Government has no leverage any more other than demonise working people as "claiming benefits". No, that would be their employers.
Sorry but that's utter codswallop. A full time 37.5h worker even on the legal minimum 'living wage' of £9.50 per hour is earning over £18.5k per annum and is paying a lot in tax including national insurance and employers national insurance which is a hidden tax on wages. And without kids a couple working full time even on minimum wage aren't entitled to tax credits/universal credit.
Tax credits wasn't set up to deal with low wages, the "minimum wage" was set up to deal with that, it was pure welfare. Asda etc aren't going to pay for someone who is working only 16 hours per week to support lots of children, if you want the state to do that then argue for that, don't claim its corporate welfare. Asda didn't choose to get pregnant and have kids.
What I love about your posts is that you post self-inflated guff like "that's utter codswallop" and then write what you just accused others of.
The reason why people get things like Working Families Tax Credit is because their wages are insufficient to pay the bills. You demonstrate that (a) you don't know this and (b) you don't care, but others do know and care.
No, the reason people get things like Universal Credit is because its welfare for their personal circumstances.
If all Asda's employees are getting UC then you could argue that was Asda's fault, but they're not. Its not true, so either you don't understand that, in which case you're wrong, or you do understand that but are wilfully misleading anyway.
If someone is wanting to support a family with multiple children on just 16 hours work per week then is that (a) their own responsibility, (b) the taxpayers responsibility or (c) Asda's responsibility?
Your other idiot tendency is to post daft strawmen arguments - in this case that ALL Asda employees are on UC.
You missed the sarcastic shrug emoji. To really help make your "argument".
Its not daft, you're trying to pretend it is ASDA's responsibility that those who work 16 hours a week for them who have children are getting welfare.
Why are ASDA responsible for the children of its part time employees?
I don't think that she is talking about cutting IT though, is she? She is talking about taking the VAT off fuel and suspending the green levies. Everyone who pays for their fuel pays those and they increase the size of their bills. She is also talking about reversing the NI increase. More people pay NI than IT although Rishi's latest reforms which basically took the lowest paid out of the NI increase will have significantly reduced the difference.
What these tax cuts will not do is give those on benefits the money to pay their vastly increased bills. There simply has to be more help and support for that part of society. Truss failing to recognise that, and the financial implications of that for her CT cuts, is a problem.
I suspect Truss does realise that, and the simple reality is that all governments and all PMs take actions where required.
It is entirely appropriate though for the priority to be reversing the tax hikes. Having people keeping more of their own income they're working for is not a "flaw" and if people aren't working then they have the option of working. We keep being told there's a labour shortage afterall.
Public services need to be paid for. Taxes are a necessary part of a civilised society. I think everyone agrees on that. What there can be disagreement on is what taxes, what rates and who pays them? The NI increases were wrong, not because they increased the tax burden but because they unfairly increased the tax burden on the working population at the expense of the retired who are the main users of both social care and the NHS it was supposedly funding. We need to broaden the net on tax contributions and this will almost certainly involve more capital taxes. I don't hear Truss (or indeed Sunak) talking much about that.
You're not going to hear either Truss or Sunak talking about that either. But we can agree that the NI increases were wrong, and therefore I stand by that reversing them is right. If that means that money is required via alternative taxes - as I've said all governments make other decisions and no prospective leader is ever going to write an entire budget during a leadership election campaign.
But at the least reversing the NI tax hike is a step in the right direction. If there are to be tax hikes, then allowing the NI hike to stand will simply set that up as a ratchet to be turned ever higher to pay for the NHS and Social Care while allowing those not paying NI to evade their responsibilities to your civilised society all together.
Exactly. It's a huge Trojan Horse.
Don't want to put up NI or Income Tax ?
Fine. Put up the "health and social care levy".
Yep, that was the wrong way to do it. Yet another tax that can be raised by governments saying they won’t raise income taxes.
There was a brief mention of UBI on here yesterday, one of those things that works well in theory but is very difficult in practice. The single most difficult thing about it in practice, is that the setting of the rate becomes a political football at election time. It would have to be set by an external committee, in the same way as interest rates, in order to depoliticise it - but which politicians are going to do that?
I take a simple view on this: taxes at every level should never exceed 50% so you always have an incentive to keep progressing as you keep more of what you earn than the government takes.
That applies to UBI benefit withdrawal. It applies to graduates paying 9% on top of Income Tax/NI and the HSC levy, as well as obligatory pensions contributions. And it applies to people earning between 100-120k who face an effective marginal rate of 60%.
We can debate the precise rates within this but that should be the ceiling and the curve should be smoothed throughout.
You’re opening premise does not make sense to me. If tax is 60%, I still have an incentive to keep progressing, because I get to keep 40% of my additional income. It’s not as much of an incentive as it would be were tax 49%, but it’s still an incentive. There’s nothing magical about 50% as a tax rate.
Tax rates, and changes in tax rates, do have an impact on behaviour at the margin though.
Two decades ago, as a young IT support worker, I was saving for a deposit and would happily work all the overtime I could get - until I banged into the 40% income tax rate, when I decided that working on Sundays for what was effectively about £8 an hour net, wasn’t worth it, and carefully managed the overtime after that to avoid the higher tax rate.
The higher the effective tax rate, the more likely it is to drive behavioural changes. That applies equially to those on benefits facing 60%, or those on £100k facing the same rate.
I don’t disagree with that. I disagree with 50% being some magical cut-off. A tax of 61% will reduce incentives compared to a tax of 60%. A tax of 41% will reduce incentives compared to a tax of 40%.
Yes, these things occur at the margin, but there’s evidence that 50% is a psycological threshold, the point at which you’re working more for ‘the man’, than for yourself. The treasury did some research on this a decade or so ago, which saw the additional rate moved from 50% (+2% NI) to 45% (+2%) under Osborne. 47% was identified as the peak of the Laffer curve for income on high-earning individuals, the point at which most tax was raised.
A civilian asks: if you've got ~30 warplanes and lots of explosives at an airbase, is there a reason that you'd normally put the planes so near the explosives that they'll be destroyed if the explosives go up in an accident (or after an enemy strike), rather than e.g. a mile away at another part of the base?
All types of stupid shit happens when there is a war on. The base is probably packed to beyond capacity with aircraft, weapons and the vodka swilling muzhiki who are nominally in charge of them.
The RAF once blew up 4,000 tons of HE making a 300m wide and 50m deep hole in Staffordshire by using a chisel on a detonator.
At Warminster a fellow PCBC-er, when told to ensure the det cord leading to the charge was covered by surrounding foliage or even underground, promptly walked over to the det cord and adjacent PE4 charge and began to stamp it into the ground.
After some rapid DS "take covers" we came to learn that det cord is not always initiated by stamping.
I come from a time when the vast majority of dwellings had no central heating and no hot water on tap unless you were lucky enough to have a storage tank with an immersion heater. Generally hot water for washing-up came from a kettle. In the winter there was frost on the inside of the windows in the morning and the bath-room was cold. The only source of heating was an open coal or gas fire in the living room. In the winter, which was much colder than it is now, we put on jumpers and cardigans and an extra blanket on the bed. We have clearly progressed from then to "Heat or eat"!
For me very much so especially living in Berwick in the 50s where it was perishing cold in the winter
Ditto, coke fired range cooker no central heating
The unfair thing is I can (and will) revert to that if necessary: turn off oil boiler, burn wood, use mira shower, live virtually energy free. The equivalent modern town house would be gas, electric or freeze.
Getting dressed under the bed clothes was a daily feature in the winter
Well a selling point of Brexit was we could all do those fun things we used to do before 1973.
A civilian asks: if you've got ~30 warplanes and lots of explosives at an airbase, is there a reason that you'd normally put the planes so near the explosives that they'll be destroyed if the explosives go up in an accident (or after an enemy strike), rather than e.g. a mile away at another part of the base?
That is a very good question. If you ever get to meet him, perhaps you could ask Vlade.
Professor John Curtice is generally held in high regard on this board. Does the rule hold today?
The next Tory leader "won't keep the Union safe" by following Boris Johnson's blunt refusal to allow an IndyRef2, the country's top pollster has said.
Professor John Curtice claimed whoever enters Downing Street next month would be better off trying to persuade Scots of the benefits of remaining in the UK.
“My own view is that if Unionists have any sense, they will get involved. Whatever happens, whether we have a referendum or not, Nicola Sturgeon is going to spend the next 12 months trying to increase the level of support for independence.
“If you want to make the Union safe, by far and away the best thing to do, is to actually make the case for the Union and persuade people.
“The reason the Union is in trouble is because, at the moment, only half the people in Scotland want to stay inside it.
"If you can change that fundamental, the Union will be safe. But so long as you don't change that, it won't be.
"I would submit that the attempt in the last two years to simply argue about process has not got the Unionists anywhere."
“… if Unionists have any sense…” The man is a comedian.
I agree with him. The government needs to run a positive case for the Union consistently. Help for those struggling with heating bills is as good a place as any to start.
Good morning
I absolutely agree and would expect most of us who value the union understand that hardline rejection by Westminster for indyref2 is only making independence more likely
Better to lance the boil and win the case for the union
You wouldn't lance the boil, give the SNP indyref2 now before a generation is up since 2014 and even if you win it the SNP would demand indyref3 within 5 to 10 years
To be honest your attitude to indyref2 is extreme and antagonistic and you simply have no understanding of Scotland or its people
Scotland matters to me and my family and the idea you can suppress indyref2 indefinitely leads to independence
As far as repetitive independence referendums are concerned I have lived with these demands ever since I was a wee boy living in Berwick in the 1950s and it is worth noting Berwick has changed hands between Scotland and England 13 times
Rubbish. The future of the Union is reserved to Westminster and one thing Truss was absolutely right about was she would ignore Sturgeon and her indyref2 bleatings. The SNP should focus on the domestic policies they have responsibility for at Holyrood, giving in to them until they get independence is exactly what actually will lead to independence
I don't think that she is talking about cutting IT though, is she? She is talking about taking the VAT off fuel and suspending the green levies. Everyone who pays for their fuel pays those and they increase the size of their bills. She is also talking about reversing the NI increase. More people pay NI than IT although Rishi's latest reforms which basically took the lowest paid out of the NI increase will have significantly reduced the difference.
What these tax cuts will not do is give those on benefits the money to pay their vastly increased bills. There simply has to be more help and support for that part of society. Truss failing to recognise that, and the financial implications of that for her CT cuts, is a problem.
I suspect Truss does realise that, and the simple reality is that all governments and all PMs take actions where required.
It is entirely appropriate though for the priority to be reversing the tax hikes. Having people keeping more of their own income they're working for is not a "flaw" and if people aren't working then they have the option of working. We keep being told there's a labour shortage afterall.
Public services need to be paid for. Taxes are a necessary part of a civilised society. I think everyone agrees on that. What there can be disagreement on is what taxes, what rates and who pays them? The NI increases were wrong, not because they increased the tax burden but because they unfairly increased the tax burden on the working population at the expense of the retired who are the main users of both social care and the NHS it was supposedly funding. We need to broaden the net on tax contributions and this will almost certainly involve more capital taxes. I don't hear Truss (or indeed Sunak) talking much about that.
You're not going to hear either Truss or Sunak talking about that either. But we can agree that the NI increases were wrong, and therefore I stand by that reversing them is right. If that means that money is required via alternative taxes - as I've said all governments make other decisions and no prospective leader is ever going to write an entire budget during a leadership election campaign.
But at the least reversing the NI tax hike is a step in the right direction. If there are to be tax hikes, then allowing the NI hike to stand will simply set that up as a ratchet to be turned ever higher to pay for the NHS and Social Care while allowing those not paying NI to evade their responsibilities to your civilised society all together.
Exactly. It's a huge Trojan Horse.
Don't want to put up NI or Income Tax ?
Fine. Put up the "health and social care levy".
Yep, that was the wrong way to do it. Yet another tax that can be raised by governments saying they won’t raise income taxes.
There was a brief mention of UBI on here yesterday, one of those things that works well in theory but is very difficult in practice. The single most difficult thing about it in practice, is that the setting of the rate becomes a political football at election time. It would have to be set by an external committee, in the same way as interest rates, in order to depoliticise it - but which politicians are going to do that?
I take a simple view on this: taxes at every level should never exceed 50% so you always have an incentive to keep progressing as you keep more of what you earn than the government takes.
That applies to UBI benefit withdrawal. It applies to graduates paying 9% on top of Income Tax/NI and the HSC levy, as well as obligatory pensions contributions. And it applies to people earning between 100-120k who face an effective marginal rate of 60%.
We can debate the precise rates within this but that should be the ceiling and the curve should be smoothed throughout.
You’re opening premise does not make sense to me. If tax is 60%, I still have an incentive to keep progressing, because I get to keep 40% of my additional income. It’s not as much of an incentive as it would be were tax 49%, but it’s still an incentive. There’s nothing magical about 50% as a tax rate.
Yes there is, because you get a raise and you keep >50% of the amount as net income.
You don't take a big promotion or lots of extra responsibility for a raise of which you only keep 30-40%.
Your employer just needs to make the raise bigger to make it worthwhile
It can do so but it needs to be very large you'll still be pissed at the take back.
This shouldn't really need to be debated - look at the evidence for those who stay on UC because it's "not worth" them getting a job at a withdrawal rate of 65%+ or how Nick Palmer has lamented himself voting for the 100-120k 60% tax trap in the dying days of the Brown government.
These people tend not to be righties
Unfair taxes drive behaviours.
And that level of tax on high wages would of course be followed by a rapid departure of high paid executives of international companies from London. I didn't say it was a good idea.
A civilian asks: if you've got ~30 warplanes and lots of explosives at an airbase, is there a reason that you'd normally put the planes so near the explosives that they'll be destroyed if the explosives go up in an accident (or after an enemy strike), rather than e.g. a mile away at another part of the base?
All types of stupid shit happens when there is a war on. The base is probably packed to beyond capacity with aircraft, weapons and the vodka swilling muzhiki who are nominally in charge of them.
The RAF once blew up 4,000 tons of HE making a 300m wide and 50m deep hole in Staffordshire by using a chisel on a detonator.
The Tories are merrily hacking away at the Union with a chisel.
Professor John Curtice is generally held in high regard on this board. Does the rule hold today?
The next Tory leader "won't keep the Union safe" by following Boris Johnson's blunt refusal to allow an IndyRef2, the country's top pollster has said.
Professor John Curtice claimed whoever enters Downing Street next month would be better off trying to persuade Scots of the benefits of remaining in the UK.
“My own view is that if Unionists have any sense, they will get involved. Whatever happens, whether we have a referendum or not, Nicola Sturgeon is going to spend the next 12 months trying to increase the level of support for independence.
“If you want to make the Union safe, by far and away the best thing to do, is to actually make the case for the Union and persuade people.
“The reason the Union is in trouble is because, at the moment, only half the people in Scotland want to stay inside it.
"If you can change that fundamental, the Union will be safe. But so long as you don't change that, it won't be.
"I would submit that the attempt in the last two years to simply argue about process has not got the Unionists anywhere."
“… if Unionists have any sense…” The man is a comedian.
I agree with him. The government needs to run a positive case for the Union consistently. Help for those struggling with heating bills is as good a place as any to start.
Good morning
I absolutely agree and would expect most of us who value the union understand that hardline rejection by Westminster for indyref2 is only making independence more likely
Better to lance the boil and win the case for the union
You wouldn't lance the boil, give the SNP indyref2 now before a generation is up since 2014 and even if you win it the SNP would demand indyref3 within 5 to 10 years
To be honest your attitude to indyref2 is extreme and antagonistic and you simply have no understanding of Scotland or its people
Scotland matters to me and my family and the idea you can suppress indyref2 indefinitely leads to independence
As far as repetitive independence referendums are concerned I have lived with these demands ever since I was a wee boy living in Berwick in the 1950s and it is worth noting Berwick has changed hands between Scotland and England 13 times
Rubbish. The future of the Union is reserved to Westminster and one thing Truss was absolutely right about was she would ignore Sturgeon and her indyref2 bleatings. The SNP should focus on the domestic policies they have responsibility for at Holyrood, giving in to them until they get independence is exactly what actually will lead to independence
Taken to its logical conclusion you are saying: 1. The future of the union is reserved to English voters - who elect most Westminster MPs, and 2. The say of the people of Scotland counts for nothing
You couldn't make the SNPs case any better if you tried. Hell, telling me that my vote is irrelevant and worthless is a driver to make ME think of voting Yes, and I was a candidate for a No party only a few months ago.
Truss has said other obviously stupid things in this campaign (regional pay was the obvious one) but has backtracked on those with commendable speed. If not with commendable grace.
On this one- tax cuts but no handouts- she has repeatedly stuck to her guns. Despite the really obvious hole alluded to in the header.
What's going on?
She has persuaded herself that Brexit has been a mega success and that new trade deals have transformed Britain. Despite her personal involvement with said trade deals which clearly do not.
So she is a simpleton who believes spun lies like they are truth. Clever politicians lie - but aren't supposed to believe their lies, that is for the voters. Mistress Truss though, not smart enough.
So I suspect she is doubling down again and again because she genuinely believes that a pittance in tax cuts to the wealthy will help poor and middle income people pay energy bill increases many many times greater.
She doesn't seem to have spotted the clash between her Australian trade deal and wanting to see crops and livestock on British farms.
This is something that will damage Liz Truss, I remember a pollster telling me Martin Lewis had astronomical trust figures with the public, compared to the gutter most politicians were found in.
Liz Truss has been urged to ditch “outrageous” claims that tax cuts will deal with energy price rises after she continued to hold out against immediate help with bills yesterday.
Martin Lewis, the money-saving expert, said the frontrunner to become prime minister must set out detailed plans this month and offered to help draw them up as he warned that the energy crisis risked civil unrest and deaths from hypothermia this winter.
Rishi Sunak, who is Truss’s rival in the Tory leadership race, must also commit himself to doubling the package he set out as chancellor in May, Lewis said. He accused the Conservative Party of neglecting a “financial cataclysm” that would push millions into destitution.
There's a reason why scammers use the image of Martin Lewis to try and entice people to hand their money over to them, people trust him on things like this.
I am afraid that Martin Lewis is being completely unrealistic here. How can the government pay everyone's increase in their heating bills? It is completely and utterly unsustainable. What needs to be done is to protect the vulnerable. The rest of us will just have to pay more for our fuel until the price comes down again. Sunak's plans for the first increase was frankly terrible policy and should not be repeated or augmented.
Lewis is right. Reduce the price cap increases to perhaps 20% instead of 80%+ and pay the energy suppliers the difference. This will significantly cut inflation and therefore a lot of future government spending and debt repayments that are linked to RPI and CPI rates, so is nowhere near as expensive as it sounds.
As a temporary expedient, that is not a terrible notion. But it would still be very expensive indeed.
It's fair to say that there are no good options. What's needed is a hard assessment of the least damaging ones. 'Tax cuts' is just a silly distraction at the moment, utterly irrelevant to something that will be the most consequential financial hit in decades for a large part of the population.
About 30m households have to find £3,000 each more than pre crisis for household energy alone, so yes of course every solution is expensive.
Collectively it is more efficient for them to do this in a way that both keeps inflation as low as possible and avoids cant pay/wont pay clogging up courts and bankrupting more suppliers, with further knock on costs, that we will have without it.
Comments
https://twitter.com/EuromaidanPress/status/1557021927016906752?t=BpDVjXYSwyMn4qs7l2W14Q&s=19
Missiles, drones, partisans, saboteurs? It serves the Ukranians to keep the Russians guessing and sweating.
This is a proper, wide ranging program.
Parliament is being sent to Pluto
DfE in its entirety is performing the first person’s mission to land on the surface of the Sun.
And those are just the reference missions for proof of capability.
We need to stop piggy-backing benefits on UC eligibility - it completely distorts the incentives. And reduce the taper rate even further , even though that will mean "subsidising Asda".
What swung it for me was her totally blasé attitude to the national debt, and interest rates, and her really dumb answer to energy bills this Winter - "corporation tax cuts will do it", effectively.
I have a big mortgage to pay. Next after that is energy bills and then council tax.
She mismanages that and my home could become unaffordable for me, which would be an even bigger problems than taxes.
A UBI should be absolute - pension, tax free allowance and “benefits”, one payment for all.
No withdrawal, no taper.
The RAF once blew up 4,000 tons of HE making a 300m wide and 50m deep hole in Staffordshire by using a chisel on a detonator.
I suspect there are plenty of minimum wage full time workers at Asda who are paying tax, national insurance and Employers NI and yet they aren't entitled to any benefits, while there will be many workers at the same pay rate in the same company with kids who work eg 16 hours per week who are.
The idea its Asda's fault or responsibility to pay a wage suitably high that it will fully support multiple children on just 16 hours per week is odd to say the least.
But there are some other things I also realise.
First is that there is a huge (hopefully short-lived) increase in the cost of living coming up, that it's going to hit the low-paid worst and that tax cuts do least for them.
Second is that tax cuts have to be earned. That can be by growing the economy whilst freezing the public sector, or it can be by the state stopping doing things. And both of those need a better worked-out plan than "They should just do it."
I understood though that the taper being referred to was the current UC one though, as Casino since noted.
The advantage of UBI is that it can and should roll everything into one and have one flat net tax rate.
As far as I can tell, domestic travel by car is basically inelastic. Edinburgh is as busy as ever, people sat in spaces idling with the engine on etc. It's obviously hurting people who drive, and slowing the economy, but the focus of the government should not be those who still have the money to drive about, but on those who are considering cancelling their direct debit for gas/elec for their homes.
The whole thing is stupid. Why was I given £400 to help with the cost, when I don't have any real money worries? Why is my fuel cheaper when I just use it to drive to the beach/the mountains?
The reason why people get things like Working Families Tax Credit is because their wages are insufficient to pay the bills. You demonstrate that (a) you don't know this and (b) you don't care, but others do know and care.
The way that bombs and POL were handled at times has been pretty horrifying - the Port Chicago disaster, and the West Loch at Pearl Harbor, for instance, but in both cases there was huge pressure to get on with it.
Gunpowder is made from finely ground sulphur charcoal saltpetre
I have learnt that it is better to grind the ingredients prior to combining them.
This seemed from the context not to be a joke.
You may not give a shit about other people. Mistress Truss probably doesn't. But will be forced to when the winter of bill discontent forces her to because the sight of people freezing to death is bad for opinion poll ratings. "People die, so what" may work for an ideologue, less so for actual politicians.
So it's very difficult to solve without fully aligning it with income tax rate thresholds and rates.
UBI here we come?
I absolutely agree and would expect most of us who value the union understand that hardline rejection by Westminster for indyref2 is only making independence more likely
Better to lance the boil and win the case for the union
If you ever get to meet him, perhaps you could ask Vlade.
Also, take a look at this video, and give us your expert assessment.
https://mobile.twitter.com/Gerashchenko_en/status/1557248601591521280
We need to tax asset wealth not income.
Income taxes are maxed out.
Dicks.
They stacked all of the refined product together in one big pile...
You don't take a big promotion or lots of extra responsibility for a raise of which you only keep 30-40%.
What are the actual caps for unit charges and standing rates ?
There ought to be four - gas standing, electric standing, gas unit, electric unit. But I can never see the breakdown.
http://catchingphotons.co.uk/blog/explosives/ici-nobel-explosives-part-ii/
I've seem some. Very heavy walls on three sides, flimsy walls and roof, earthen banks all around, or dug into a valley side, well away from the next mill. No wonder.
But it's a different problem to not being able to heat your home. You have a job that you can afford to drive to.
I'm sure they could dream up a more targeted intervention. A boost to UC?
Two decades ago, as a young IT support worker, I was saving for a deposit and would happily work all the overtime I could get - until I banged into the 40% income tax rate, when I decided that working on Sundays for what was effectively about £8 an hour net, wasn’t worth it, and carefully managed the overtime after that to avoid the higher tax rate.
The higher the effective tax rate, the more likely it is to drive behavioural changes. That applies equially to those on benefits facing 60%, or those on £100k facing the same rate.
Table halfway down the linked page easier to read.
https://www.moneysavingexpert.com/utilities/what-is-the-energy-price-cap/
Average price-capped rates
New price cap
(from 1 April 2022) Previous price cap
(until 31 March 2022)
Gas
Unit rate: 7.37p per kWh
Standing charge: 27.22p per day
Unit rate: 4.07p per kWh
Standing charge: 26.12p per day
Electricity
Unit rate: 28.34p per kWh
Standing charge: 45.34p per day
Unit rate: 20.8p per kWh
Standing charge: 24.88p per day
The unfair thing is I can (and will) revert to that if necessary: turn off oil boiler, burn wood, use mira shower, live virtually energy free. The equivalent modern town house would be gas, electric or freeze.
If all Asda's employees are getting UC then you could argue that was Asda's fault, but they're not. Its not true, so either you don't understand that, in which case you're wrong, or you do understand that but are wilfully misleading anyway.
If someone is wanting to support a family with multiple children on just 16 hours work per week then is that (a) their own responsibility, (b) the taxpayers responsibility or (c) Asda's responsibility?
How do the Tories benefit by being aggressive to the Scots.
https://twitter.com/sima_kotecha/status/1557265849404325888
From the New Statesman article upthread
“We’re going to lose the next general election. Bad news is coming flooding towards us.
“With the energy bills, there are going to be demonstrations in the streets, and at some stage it’ll turn violent. This is a poll tax-plus situation. If Labour were clever and linked up with the Lib Dems, they could wipe the Tories out for a generation.”
but it also contains this gem...
“If you go to Church’s for a pair of gentleman’s first-class leather brogues off the shelf, they cost about £380, so people have actually forgotten what real shoes cost!”
There have been a few critical mass accidents. Solutions and precipitates are a nightmare for that….
But then it occurred to me 650 bigheads in Uranus might be rather painful for you.
https://twitter.com/MattChorley/status/1557251580885442562?s=20&t=8soOLC3pVEuNP1GKOZyKPA
Scotland matters to me and my family and the idea you can suppress indyref2 indefinitely leads to independence
As far as repetitive independence referendums are concerned I have lived with these demands ever since I was a wee boy living in Berwick in the 1950s and it is worth noting Berwick has changed hands between Scotland and England 13 times
You missed the sarcastic shrug emoji. To really help make your "argument".
This shouldn't really need to be debated - look at the evidence for those who stay on UC because it's "not worth" them getting a job at a withdrawal rate of 65%+ or how Nick Palmer has lamented himself voting for the 100-120k 60% tax trap in the dying days of the Brown government.
These people tend not to be righties
Unfair taxes drive behaviours.
It's fair to say that there are no good options. What's needed is a hard assessment of the least damaging ones.
'Tax cuts' is just a silly distraction at the moment, utterly irrelevant to something that will be the most consequential financial hit in decades for a large part of the population.
I have long railed that we tax people who are on UC far too much. If you combine Income Tax, Employee NI alone and UC Taper then someone on UC is on a marginal tax rate of 70%. That is the state that has done that, not ASDA or any other employer. For every extra £1 their employer pays them (not even including Employer NI here) the hard worker gets 30 pence in the pound. And that's without counting any other means-tested benefits either, or potentially Student Loan payments too.
That is unjustifiable and contemptible. You may think all is fine and dandy with that situation, but I never have.
- “Thinking about how the leadership election has been conducted, and how the candidates and their campaigns have behaved towards one another, do you think it has shown the Conservative party in a good or bad light?”
- Scottish respondents
(excl Neither/Not sure)
A good light 1.5%
A bad light 98.5%
(YG/The Times; 4-5 August)
Perhaps choosing a mendacious Oaf as leader wasn’t such a smart move last time round?
The story about the shoes remind me of Sam Vines, Terry Pratchett's hero; cheap boots cost a lot less than expensive ones, but the expensive ones last a lifetime while the cheap ones only last two or three years!
There's always a frictional cost to tax. No such thing as a free lunch.
Not taking more than 50% of someone's gross pay in tax should be a basic principle of fairness that we can all agree on at every level.
Liz Truss’s Tories will be polling in the low 30s/high 20s by the end of March next year.
However giving the SNP an indyref2 before a generation is up will just lead to the SNP demanding indyref3, indyref4, indyref5 etc until they get the result they want even if won
It is to Liz Truss's credit that she is quick to drop unworkable policies; to her detriment that she adopts them so uncritically in the first place.
Why are ASDA responsible for the children of its part time employees?
After some rapid DS "take covers" we came to learn that det cord is not always initiated by stamping.
That is very much in the hands of the people.
Stand back!
1. The future of the union is reserved to English voters - who elect most Westminster MPs, and
2. The say of the people of Scotland counts for nothing
You couldn't make the SNPs case any better if you tried. Hell, telling me that my vote is irrelevant and worthless is a driver to make ME think of voting Yes, and I was a candidate for a No party only a few months ago.
Collectively it is more efficient for them to do this in a way that both keeps inflation as low as possible and avoids cant pay/wont pay clogging up courts and bankrupting more suppliers, with further knock on costs, that we will have without it.