The future of the Union is reserved to Westminster
No it isn't
Yes it is under the Scotland Act 1998
The legality of a referendum is reserved to Westminster, but not "the future of the Union"
That is very much in the hands of the people.
No, it is precisely the Union the Scotland Act 1998 maintains as a reserved power to Westminster. Indeed even if a non binding wildcat referendum was held without Westminster consent
“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!
Those *are* the cheap ones
And he is out by a factor of over x2. £940 a pair.
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?
FFS BR you really do dig yourselves into a trench. If you read all the way up the thread I said that Asda et al won't act now as they can't. The blame is not and never was on the employers. Whilst they benefit from the policy framework they do not create it.
Nor is the part time working parent what I am talking about. They will always get some social security because part time parents.
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.
Why? 50% isn't magic. It may be that pragmatically and experimentally it turns out that 48% is more effective for generating government income. Or maybe 52%. But that's a practicality thing, not a fairness thing. Fairness in taxation is a wider argument about what's being done with the money and whether the people it's being taken from are being asked for more than their fair share (in a wide sense that considers ability to pay), and applies at all % values.
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).
Perhaps, but I was 23, single, and working towards a specific goal of buying a house. Given the choice of working 40 hours a week for £20k, or 60 hours a week for £35k, I’d take the higher income every time as a youngster. I agree with the general premise though, but units of labour are not fungible, and there’s always a variability in workload and a lag in training up new staff.
This blue on blue is destructive and indeed unacceptable
Do have to ask what idiot in the Tory high command decided that a long protracted campaign was a good idea. This could have been done and dusted at the end of July, Bonzo dispatched to Northstead and the new PM in place with a ministerial team looking at how to tackle the coming winter of hell.
Instead, they dig themselves deeper into positions that won't help and keep attacking the other and their own party's record in government.
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?
Just wondering idly whether oaf is gender specific or if it can be applied to a woman..
This blue on blue is destructive and indeed unacceptable
Do have to ask what idiot in the Tory high command decided that a long protracted campaign was a good idea. This could have been done and dusted at the end of July, Bonzo dispatched to Northstead and the new PM in place with a ministerial team looking at how to tackle the coming winter of hell.
Instead, they dig themselves deeper into positions that won't help and keep attacking the other and their own party's record in government.
Well it was hardly as if the swift coronations of Brown in 2007 and May in 2016 as PM helped them develop campaigning skills ahead of the next general election was it?
The future of the Union is reserved to Westminster
No it isn't
Yes it is under the Scotland Act 1998
The legality of a referendum is reserved to Westminster, but not "the future of the Union"
That is very much in the hands of the people.
No, it is precisely the Union the Scotland Act 1998 maintains as a reserved power to Westminster. Indeed even if a non binding wildcat referendum was held without Westminster consent
Indeed you really do think that Scottish voters should have zero say. Vote for whatever you like, we English will just tell you what you can have.
That *isn't* the case for maintaining the union. Its the case for dissolving a constitutional prison. Because you are not in charge, and your party won't be for long, and other people aren't as undemocratic as you.
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
Does it not cross your mind that we all get better on in this world by, well 'by getting on' rather than aggressively just saying 'no' without listening and considering the arguments you disagree with. Have you ever negotiated a commercial contract? Two rules worth bearing in mind:
a) A one sided deal always goes wrong
b) Give stuff away that is more important to your opponent than you. Try and get stuff that is more important to you than your opponent.
It might be worth considering this when dealing with Scotland to avoid things getting worse. Think NI.
This blue on blue is destructive and indeed unacceptable
Do have to ask what idiot in the Tory high command decided that a long protracted campaign was a good idea. This could have been done and dusted at the end of July, Bonzo dispatched to Northstead and the new PM in place with a ministerial team looking at how to tackle the coming winter of hell.
Instead, they dig themselves deeper into positions that won't help and keep attacking the other and their own party's record in government.
Well it was hardly as if the swift coronations of Brown in 2007 and May in 2016 as PM helped them develop campaigning skills ahead of the next general election was it?
Park the whataboutery.
Is the current spectacle of your party spending the summer attacking itself whilst the country slides into crisis good for your party? Yes or no?
This blue on blue is destructive and indeed unacceptable
Do have to ask what idiot in the Tory high command decided that a long protracted campaign was a good idea. This could have been done and dusted at the end of July, Bonzo dispatched to Northstead and the new PM in place with a ministerial team looking at how to tackle the coming winter of hell.
Instead, they dig themselves deeper into positions that won't help and keep attacking the other and their own party's record in government.
This blue on blue is destructive and indeed unacceptable
Do have to ask what idiot in the Tory high command decided that a long protracted campaign was a good idea. This could have been done and dusted at the end of July, Bonzo dispatched to Northstead and the new PM in place with a ministerial team looking at how to tackle the coming winter of hell.
Instead, they dig themselves deeper into positions that won't help and keep attacking the other and their own party's record in government.
It defies all logic but then this is the conservative party in August 22
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?
Just wondering idly whether oaf is gender specific or if it can be applied to a woman..
Perth hustings 16 August is when Paisley will achieve real cut through. Wait and see.
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.
LOL.
There was a piece in one of the papers (S Times I think) this weekend looking at solar panels and the cost pay back period. iirc on average the payback period had already halved since the price explosion in electric. There's now huge demand to fit panels - industry is stretched with long wait times especially for battery backup.
The future of the Union is reserved to Westminster
No it isn't
Yes it is under the Scotland Act 1998
The legality of a referendum is reserved to Westminster, but not "the future of the Union"
That is very much in the hands of the people.
No, it is precisely the Union the Scotland Act 1998 maintains as a reserved power to Westminster. Indeed even if a non binding wildcat referendum was held without Westminster consent
Indeed you really do think that Scottish voters should have zero say. Vote for whatever you like, we English will just tell you what you can have.
That *isn't* the case for maintaining the union. Its the case for dissolving a constitutional prison. Because you are not in charge, and your party won't be for long, and other people aren't as undemocratic as you.
No we we have a Westminster parliament including Scottish as well as English MPs. Scotland has its own parliament too.
Plus even Starmer has ruled out a deal with the SNP, not just we Tories refusing indyref2. Though we will see if Sir Keir holds to that if it is his only route to no 10
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?
FFS BR you really do dig yourselves into a trench. If you read all the way up the thread I said that Asda et al won't act now as they can't. The blame is not and never was on the employers. Whilst they benefit from the policy framework they do not create it.
Nor is the part time working parent what I am talking about. They will always get some social security because part time parents.
Climb out of your trench for a minute.
Asda don't benefit from the policy framework, at all. They are harmed by the framework.
Asda is paying National Insurance for the wages it pays to people, then after that it pays people who marginally are keeping just thirty pence in the pound of what Asda pays them, the rest goes along with the Employers NI straight back to the Exchequer. That framework is not good for Asda or for its employees.
If low wages were the problem then why are people long who work just 24 hours on minimum wage facing a 70% marginal tax rate on every extra pound they earn from then on? Shouldn't they be keeping some of their own money if low wages were supposedly the problem?
UC is primarily welfare towards parents, that creates a high marginal tax rate, its nothing to do with low wages though its not as bad as what came before.
“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!
Those *are* the cheap ones
And he is out by a factor of over x2. £940 a pair.
I keep half an eye on quality shoe price and by my estimation Church’s prices have gone up by around 50% over the last couple of years (comparable brands nowhere close). Cost of living well crisis ahoy..
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.
LOL.
There was a piece in one of the papers (S Times I think) this weekend looking at solar panels and the cost pay back period. iirc on average the payback period had already halved since the price explosion in electric. There's now huge demand to fit panels - industry is stretched with long wait times especially for battery backup.
Price has doubled. I paid £6,500 for 16 panels in 2013
Sadly not on my present house
ETA actually my rig 16 panels 4kw is still about that, difference must be the batteries
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.
LOL.
There was a piece in one of the papers (S Times I think) this weekend looking at solar panels and the cost pay back period. iirc on average the payback period had already halved since the price explosion in electric. There's now huge demand to fit panels - industry is stretched with long wait times especially for battery backup.
Price has doubled. I paid £6,500 for 16 panels in 2013
Sadly not on my present house
The company wanted to do this one apparently because it was 19 panels in a row and they wanted that as an example of their work. Finished in two days. Friends can't think of what electric appliances to leave on next.
This blue on blue is destructive and indeed unacceptable
Do have to ask what idiot in the Tory high command decided that a long protracted campaign was a good idea. This could have been done and dusted at the end of July, Bonzo dispatched to Northstead and the new PM in place with a ministerial team looking at how to tackle the coming winter of hell.
Instead, they dig themselves deeper into positions that won't help and keep attacking the other and their own party's record in government.
The 1990 regeneration (which is the best example of one that worked) was fairly good-natured (Margaret went with grateful thanks, but it was accepted that she had to go; the three candidates would clearly happily have served under each other), but also mercifully brief.
This one- we have Sunak and Truss throwing huge stones at each other, justifiably throwing stones at each other's flaws, but forgetting that they are both in the same greenhouse.
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
Not talking about giving them a vote (although I think we should) but talking about being positive about the Union rather than being aggressive towards the Scots. That is what Curtis said.
Listening to last nights hustings it seems apparent that Truss is saying whatever is necessary to be elected including pleasing the Johnson wing when she said she would vote against the privileges committee
I have little doubt she will be PM on the 6th September and what happens next will be fascinating
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
Not talking about giving them a vote (although I think we should) but talking about being positive about the Union rather than being aggressive towards the Scots. That is what Curtis said.
Aggressive towards the nationalists is not the same as aggressive towards the Scots. Given half the Scots are Unionists and hate the Nationalists
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.
Not just high-paid executives. They tend to be on 3-4 times as much still, and well clear of the tax trap. It affects GPs, hospital consultants, air traffic controllers, seniors in professional services, and even specialist electricians.
It's also worth bearing in mind this isn't a 'permanent' state of wealth but typically something you reach in your 40s after a grinding path to get there in your career, maintaining it perhaps for 15 years or so, before dropping down again - you might well have started from nothing, as I did.
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.
LOL.
There was a piece in one of the papers (S Times I think) this weekend looking at solar panels and the cost pay back period. iirc on average the payback period had already halved since the price explosion in electric. There's now huge demand to fit panels - industry is stretched with long wait times especially for battery backup.
This is one of the problems with any commitment to ramp up installation of solar panels and other energy saving measures that the capacity to undertake the work is not there and the savings certainly will not be available to mitigate the energy price rises in the next year
We have solar panels and they were an excellent investment
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.
It is pretty unreasonable to expect everyone to agree at every level just because it is your idea of fairness.
From a practical point of view I do agree with the idea of capping at 50%, but only because there are many people around like yourself who think over 50% is inherently unfair, and many multiple taxes so we can raise (or lower) so it is not particularly limiting on the state to do so. If that group did not exist or were smaller it wouldn't have my support.
Listening to last nights hustings it seems apparent that Truss is saying whatever is necessary to be elected including pleasing the Johnson wing when she said she would vote against the privileges committee
I have little doubt she will be PM on the 6th September and what happens next will be fascinating
"Fascinating" in the Wednesday Addams sense?
One possibility is that Truss is saying this stuff not believing a word of it, and she will tack back to reality (Johnson has to go, we can't let poor people freeze this winter even if they aren't taxpayers). In which case many of her backers will be furious with her.
The other is that she really does believe all this stuff, in which case the last person to leave the country won't need to turn off the lights becuase they will already have been disconnected.
This blue on blue is destructive and indeed unacceptable
Do have to ask what idiot in the Tory high command decided that a long protracted campaign was a good idea. This could have been done and dusted at the end of July, Bonzo dispatched to Northstead and the new PM in place with a ministerial team looking at how to tackle the coming winter of hell.
Instead, they dig themselves deeper into positions that won't help and keep attacking the other and their own party's record in government.
But blue on blue has been the name of the game since the end of the coalition, and it doesn't seem to have harmed their ability to hold onto power. I do wonder if part of the blue on blue (and the similar cut throat nature over the pond of the GOP shafting their own leadership / unruly members) helps stabilise the cognitive dissonance some members must have about believing they are the victim / underdog / antiestablishment party whilst also being the literal Conservative party, who have led government for 10 years, won the economic ideological battle, and that any civil discourse that would take us down a social democratic route means you get called a Stalinist. Because their is always a purer part of the party, there is always a secret enemy within giving in to the libs, so they always have to fight harder to make the party better. And this radicalises the base alongside the party, in a continual amping up of rhetoric and policy.
The future of the Union is reserved to Westminster
No it isn't
Yes it is under the Scotland Act 1998
The legality of a referendum is reserved to Westminster, but not "the future of the Union"
That is very much in the hands of the people.
No, it is precisely the Union the Scotland Act 1998 maintains as a reserved power to Westminster. Indeed even if a non binding wildcat referendum was held without Westminster consent
Indeed you really do think that Scottish voters should have zero say. Vote for whatever you like, we English will just tell you what you can have.
That *isn't* the case for maintaining the union. Its the case for dissolving a constitutional prison. Because you are not in charge, and your party won't be for long, and other people aren't as undemocratic as you.
No we we have a Westminster parliament including Scottish as well as English MPs. Scotland has its own parliament too.
Plus even Starmer has ruled out a deal with the SNP, not just we Tories refusing indyref2. Though we will see if Sir Keir holds to that if it is his only route to no 10
Park what Labour may or may not do - your statements are not about party politics. You just said "We have a Westminster parliament". True - with a massive English majority.
Scotland could elect 100% SNP MPs to that parliament on an "independence now" mandate. And they would be massively outvoted by English MPs.
You are saying that there is no democratic power to a Scottish vote with regards to Scottish affairs. Indeed the only nation in the union with that power is England.
Scotland has no say over Scotland. Your words. You don't see the problem with that because you are a buffoon, but there is a very real problem that goes way beyond any twaddle you post about what any individual politician says.
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
Not talking about giving them a vote (although I think we should) but talking about being positive about the Union rather than being aggressive towards the Scots. That is what Curtis said.
Aggressive towards the nationalists is not the same as aggressive towards the Scots. Given half the Scots are Unionists and hate the Nationalists
It comes over as aggressive to all of them. It certainly comes over as aggressive to me (although not a Scot I am also not pro Indy)
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
Not talking about giving them a vote (although I think we should) but talking about being positive about the Union rather than being aggressive towards the Scots. That is what Curtis said.
Aggressive towards the nationalists is not the same as aggressive towards the Scots. Given half the Scots are Unionists and hate the Nationalists
That may be your intention but you risk coming across as anti-Scottish, just as one or two independence supporters lean into Anglophobia. An important part of political leadership is persuasion. If you cannot manage that, then consider limiting yourself to asserting that any Conservative government will not grant indyref to just once or twice a day.
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.
Indeed.
My point was that Truss is effectively ignoring any of this argument in her leadership pitch. The effects of any marginal changes in tax rates are completely dwarfed by the financial effects of the (temporary, but possibly a quite protracted temporary) spike in energy prices. To be concentrating her campaign on tax cuts demonstrates a shocking unseriousness in our likely next Prime Minister.
This blue on blue is destructive and indeed unacceptable
Do have to ask what idiot in the Tory high command decided that a long protracted campaign was a good idea. This could have been done and dusted at the end of July, Bonzo dispatched to Northstead and the new PM in place with a ministerial team looking at how to tackle the coming winter of hell.
Instead, they dig themselves deeper into positions that won't help and keep attacking the other and their own party's record in government.
But blue on blue has been the name of the game since the end of the coalition, and it doesn't seem to have harmed their ability to hold onto power. I do wonder if part of the blue on blue (and the similar cut throat nature over the pond of the GOP shafting their own leadership / unruly members) helps stabilise the cognitive dissonance some members must have about believing they are the victim / underdog / antiestablishment party whilst also being the literal Conservative party, who have led government for 10 years, won the economic ideological battle, and that any civil discourse that would take us down a social democratic route means you get called a Stalinist. Because their is always a purer part of the party, there is always a secret enemy within giving in to the libs, so they always have to fight harder to make the party better. And this radicalises the base alongside the party, in a continual amping up of rhetoric and policy.
Economic ideologies never win long term. They have hegemony until their contradictions become so overwhelmingly apparent that they are either radically modified or violently overturned.
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.
We need to tax asset wealth not income.
Income taxes are maxed out.
I look forward to you supporting Labour's policy on this!
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.
Indeed.
My point was that Truss is effectively ignoring any of this argument in her leadership pitch. The effects of any marginal changes in tax rates are completely dwarfed by the financial effects of the (temporary, but possibly a quite protracted temporary) spike in energy prices. To be concentrating her campaign on tax cuts demonstrates a shocking unseriousness in our likely next Prime Minister.
Can we have shocking unseriousness in a successor to Bozo? Unseriousness sure, but we should no longer be remotely shocked by it.
She is following his blueprint. Tell the audience today what it wants to hear, and deal with tomorrow later, not caring whether she needs to completely change course in a month or twos time.
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
Not talking about giving them a vote (although I think we should) but talking about being positive about the Union rather than being aggressive towards the Scots. That is what Curtis said.
Aggressive towards the nationalists is not the same as aggressive towards the Scots. Given half the Scots are Unionists and hate the Nationalists
It comes over as aggressive to all of them. It certainly comes over as aggressive to me (although not a Scot I am also not pro Indy)
It is not only aggressive but very antagonistic and indeed even ugly with threats of military intervention
Fortunately @HYUFD seems to be quite unique in his attitude to the Scots and has no understanding of them at 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.
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.
I've never said there isn't a frictional cost to tax. I agree with the point made eloquently by Bart that there's a problem with the UC taper.
However, you claimed that, "You don't take a big promotion or lots of extra responsibility for a raise of which you only keep 30-40%." Yet there have been many countries and many periods where top rates of tax have been at least 60% and people did continue to take big promotion or lots of extra responsibility.
I don't disagree about the frictional cost to tax. I disagree with your absolutist position that anything over 50% is a disaster.
This blue on blue is destructive and indeed unacceptable
Do have to ask what idiot in the Tory high command decided that a long protracted campaign was a good idea. This could have been done and dusted at the end of July, Bonzo dispatched to Northstead and the new PM in place with a ministerial team looking at how to tackle the coming winter of hell.
Instead, they dig themselves deeper into positions that won't help and keep attacking the other and their own party's record in government.
But blue on blue has been the name of the game since the end of the coalition, and it doesn't seem to have harmed their ability to hold onto power. I do wonder if part of the blue on blue (and the similar cut throat nature over the pond of the GOP shafting their own leadership / unruly members) helps stabilise the cognitive dissonance some members must have about believing they are the victim / underdog / antiestablishment party whilst also being the literal Conservative party, who have led government for 10 years, won the economic ideological battle, and that any civil discourse that would take us down a social democratic route means you get called a Stalinist. Because their is always a purer part of the party, there is always a secret enemy within giving in to the libs, so they always have to fight harder to make the party better. And this radicalises the base alongside the party, in a continual amping up of rhetoric and policy.
Economic ideologies never win long term. They have hegemony until their contradictions become so overwhelmingly apparent that they are either radically modified or violently overturned.
You say that, but we are in a crisis where neoliberalism is so deeply rooted in the political establishment that Labour are complaining that the Tories are going to explode the debt and accusing them of finding a magic money tree.
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
Why do you think nothing Westminster does will likely shift that much? I think a more competent Government that appeared more in sync with Scotland's concerns would shift it.
Listening to last nights hustings it seems apparent that Truss is saying whatever is necessary to be elected including pleasing the Johnson wing when she said she would vote against the privileges committee
I have little doubt she will be PM on the 6th September and what happens next will be fascinating
What happens next on 6th September is we all get paid out and aftertime our bets on pb, and then we debate the new markets on the Prime Minister's exit date.
Listening to last nights hustings it seems apparent that Truss is saying whatever is necessary to be elected including pleasing the Johnson wing when she said she would vote against the privileges committee
I have little doubt she will be PM on the 6th September and what happens next will be fascinating
She has often said "what you see is what you get" so expect the uncosted campaign pronouncements to become policy.
The future of the Union is reserved to Westminster
No it isn't
Yes it is under the Scotland Act 1998
The legality of a referendum is reserved to Westminster, but not "the future of the Union"
That is very much in the hands of the people.
No, it is precisely the Union the Scotland Act 1998 maintains as a reserved power to Westminster. Indeed even if a non binding wildcat referendum was held without Westminster consent
Yes, but the argument is that the UK government needs to make a positive case for the UK. The obvious starting point, is in branding projects in the same way the SG and EU always have done.
When schemes such as the furlough scheme or the energy bill rebates come down the line to the public, it needs to be made clear that these are projects of the UK government - no matter how much the SG try to sell them as being slightly different and therefore wholly Scottish. If you’re giving a credit to the electricity bill, make sure the line item on the bill refers to UK Gov Credit.
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.
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.
I've never said there isn't a frictional cost to tax. I agree with the point made eloquently by Bart that there's a problem with the UC taper.
However, you claimed that, "You don't take a big promotion or lots of extra responsibility for a raise of which you only keep 30-40%." Yet there have been many countries and many periods where top rates of tax have been at least 60% and people did continue to take big promotion or lots of extra responsibility.
I don't disagree about the frictional cost to tax. I disagree with your absolutist position that anything over 50% is a disaster.
Did he say it was a disaster? He said it was a point of fairness, and it strikes me as a fairly reasonable one too.
People should be able to keep at least half of what they're earning. Even if its just half, past that point it really strikes as unfair. Maybe not disastrous, but unfair.
I don't think its fair people working 24 hours a week on UC only keep 30 pence in the pound past that point. I don't think its fair that people facing income tax cliff edges keep just 40 pence in the pound at that point either.
Smooth it out, even if it means higher tax rates for those currently enjoying lower marginal rates, and it would be fairer for me.
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
Ukraine have claimed 9 aircraft destroyed yesterday, presumably most at the airbase.
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.
Not just high-paid executives. They tend to be on 3-4 times as much still, and well clear of the tax trap. It affects GPs, hospital consultants, air traffic controllers, seniors in professional services, and even specialist electricians.
It's also worth bearing in mind this isn't a 'permanent' state of wealth but typically something you reach in your 40s after a grinding path to get there in your career, maintaining it perhaps for 15 years or so, before dropping down again - you might well have started from nothing, as I did.
Tax reform needs to be approached in an integrated manner, though.
Far too many tax measures are temporary gimmicks designed to appeal to a particular group, or address some short term expediency. The reality is that the Treasury will have a massive crisis on its hands over the winter. Any serious look at the tax system is off the table for a while.
“The flaw in Liz’s reliance on tax cuts - Over the past week the big debate in the Tory leadership contest has been on the best way of helping families in the face of the huge energy price increases that are due in the autumn.”
It is only a “flaw” if you assume that the objective of her “plan” (does it deserve such a label?) is to help families.
I do not consider that to be her objective.
Her objective is to bribe well-off people into voting Tory.
The flaw in her “plan” is that it is not the well-off who she needs to win a Con Maj. What her plan may be effective in doing instead is preventing a Canada-style Con extinction event.
Voting intention by social grade
AB Lab 44% Con 28% LD 15% Grn 4% Ref 2%
C1 Lab 49% Con 22% LD 12% Grn 5% Ref 3%
C2 Lab 42% Con 34% Ref 8% LD 8% Grn 3%
DE Con 36% Lab 33% LD 11% Ref 4% Grn 4%
(Savanta ComRes; 2,272; 22-24 July)
The only demographic where the Conservatives are in the lead is DE, and these are the people who need help the most and the Truss plan will help the least.
The level of Lab lead in the ABC1 age is truly remarkable, but I draw the opposite conclusion. This is where the Cons need to regain voters.
I think though that the Truss/Sunak social agenda repels far more than a financial bung attracts.
Agreed. There's been a quiet revulsion among many well-off people against the reckless populism of the last couple of years. I have plenty of friends who normally vote Tory (I've never benen in the "never kissed a Tory" camp and half my family are deeply Tory). A chunk of them simply turn up their noses at the idea now, though they aren't necessarily voting Labour either - LibDems or abstention are the usual options. Throwing money at them misses the point.
“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!
Those *are* the cheap ones
And he is out by a factor of over x2. £940 a pair.
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
Not talking about giving them a vote (although I think we should) but talking about being positive about the Union rather than being aggressive towards the Scots. That is what Curtis said.
Aggressive towards the nationalists is not the same as aggressive towards the Scots. Given half the Scots are Unionists and hate the Nationalists
You talk a great deal of shite sometimes.
We're having an almost perpetual debate in Scotland that is of enormous emotional resonance, yet it's almost entirely good natured.
The only people I dislike are the blood and soil nationalists, who are basically fascists, and people like you who consider Scotland literally like a colony.
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.
I love the way he lures you in with the idea the post might actually be about the Conservative Party, before veering off and hitting all the key talking points about the Azov Regiment.
I think this one's going for the longevity record - perhaps it's like a rodeo where he wins he prize if he stays on the site longer than anyone else without falling off (ie without getting the ban hammer). Still not fooling anybody though
This blue on blue is destructive and indeed unacceptable
Do have to ask what idiot in the Tory high command decided that a long protracted campaign was a good idea. This could have been done and dusted at the end of July, Bonzo dispatched to Northstead and the new PM in place with a ministerial team looking at how to tackle the coming winter of hell.
Instead, they dig themselves deeper into positions that won't help and keep attacking the other and their own party's record in government.
But blue on blue has been the name of the game since the end of the coalition, and it doesn't seem to have harmed their ability to hold onto power. I do wonder if part of the blue on blue (and the similar cut throat nature over the pond of the GOP shafting their own leadership / unruly members) helps stabilise the cognitive dissonance some members must have about believing they are the victim / underdog / antiestablishment party whilst also being the literal Conservative party, who have led government for 10 years, won the economic ideological battle, and that any civil discourse that would take us down a social democratic route means you get called a Stalinist. Because their is always a purer part of the party, there is always a secret enemy within giving in to the libs, so they always have to fight harder to make the party better. And this radicalises the base alongside the party, in a continual amping up of rhetoric and policy.
Economic ideologies never win long term. They have hegemony until their contradictions become so overwhelmingly apparent that they are either radically modified or violently overturned.
You say that, but we are in a crisis where neoliberalism is so deeply rooted in the political establishment that Labour are complaining that the Tories are going to explode the debt and accusing them of finding a magic money tree.
Oh indeed. We are approaching crisis point. In the original meaning of the word.
One loud-mouthed Tory Yoon is a little bit poorer.
Tory peer Michelle Mone pays out £50,000 to end row after 'racism' claim The Glaswegian businesswoman was said to have sent the message to Richard Lynton-Jones in a row on WhatsApp in 2019.
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.
I've never said there isn't a frictional cost to tax. I agree with the point made eloquently by Bart that there's a problem with the UC taper.
However, you claimed that, "You don't take a big promotion or lots of extra responsibility for a raise of which you only keep 30-40%." Yet there have been many countries and many periods where top rates of tax have been at least 60% and people did continue to take big promotion or lots of extra responsibility.
I don't disagree about the frictional cost to tax. I disagree with your absolutist position that anything over 50% is a disaster.
Until 1988, the top rate of income tax was 60 per cent. Perhaps members should take a closer look at the Thatcherite economics both Rishi and Liz are so keen on.
“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!
Those *are* the cheap ones
And he is out by a factor of over x2. £940 a pair.
I keep half an eye on quality shoe price and by my estimation Church’s prices have gone up by around 50% over the last couple of years (comparable brands nowhere close). Cost of living well crisis ahoy..
I just bought some new motorcycle boots (vegan Alpinestars) - £520!
I think I paid about £380 about 18 months ago but destroyed those in the infamous Fireblade crash where I broke my wrist. In an urban environment.
Why are people not fleeing the high tax Nordic states?
Which high tax Nordic states do you have in mind?
Many did which is why the Nordic states have reversed high tax policies that backfired.
Many Nordic states have higher but flatter tax rates without the 'NYC skyline' peaks and troughs of cliff edges we have in this country. Higher taxes is something I disagree with politically, though higher but flatter taxes are fairer for me than trapping many people in even higher marginal tax rates like we do in this country.
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.
I love the way he lures you in with the idea the post might actually be about the Conservative Party, before veering off and hitting all the key talking points about the Azov Regiment.
I think this one's going for the longevity record - perhaps it's like a rodeo where he wins he prize if he stays on the site longer than anyone else without falling off (ie without getting the ban hammer). Still not fooling anybody though
Perhaps they get sent here to refine their schtick. I don't think they're expecting to persuade anyone on this board.
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.
I've never said there isn't a frictional cost to tax. I agree with the point made eloquently by Bart that there's a problem with the UC taper.
However, you claimed that, "You don't take a big promotion or lots of extra responsibility for a raise of which you only keep 30-40%." Yet there have been many countries and many periods where top rates of tax have been at least 60% and people did continue to take big promotion or lots of extra responsibility.
I don't disagree about the frictional cost to tax. I disagree with your absolutist position that anything over 50% is a disaster.
Until 1988, the top rate of income tax was 60 per cent. Perhaps members should take a closer look at the Thatcherite economics both Rishi and Liz are so keen on.
Though taxes now are the highest they've been in 74 years, not just since 1988.
60% marginal tax rate is less than we currently tax people, not more.
Interesting. Just looked at my latest electric bill in detail and started checking against previous ones and I notice that 3 or 4 years ago the night time rate was ≈ 1/2 the day rate.
No longer. Now night time is only a tad less than day.
Is this just my supplier (I'm with a small green energy company).
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?
Just wondering idly whether oaf is gender specific or if it can be applied to a woman..
How about:
DROUD, Drowd, n.1 [drʌud]
1. A cod-fish, esp. one of poor quality, “a sickly or spawned cod”
2. A useless, slovenly person; “a worthless female”
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?
Just wondering idly whether oaf is gender specific or if it can be applied to a woman..
Perth hustings 16 August is when Paisley will achieve real cut through. Wait and see.
Undoubtedly!
Her claim to be a Buddy in the master-stroke that will save the Union.
Interesting. Just looked at my latest electric bill in detail and started checking against previous ones and I notice that 3 or 4 years ago the night time rate was ≈ 1/2 the day rate.
No longer. Now night time is only a tad less than day.
Is this just my supplier (I'm with a small green energy company).
Hard to tell I've just gone to Octopus and they don't display their prices anymore.
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.
I've never said there isn't a frictional cost to tax. I agree with the point made eloquently by Bart that there's a problem with the UC taper.
However, you claimed that, "You don't take a big promotion or lots of extra responsibility for a raise of which you only keep 30-40%." Yet there have been many countries and many periods where top rates of tax have been at least 60% and people did continue to take big promotion or lots of extra responsibility.
I don't disagree about the frictional cost to tax. I disagree with your absolutist position that anything over 50% is a disaster.
Until 1988, the top rate of income tax was 60 per cent. Perhaps members should take a closer look at the Thatcherite economics both Rishi and Liz are so keen on.
Though taxes now are the highest they've been in 74 years, not just since 1988.
60% marginal tax rate is less than we currently tax people, not more.
The tax take (as a proportion of gdp) is highest, not any particular tax rate. This has been the case for some years.
One loud-mouthed Tory Yoon is a little bit poorer.
Tory peer Michelle Mone pays out £50,000 to end row after 'racism' claim The Glaswegian businesswoman was said to have sent the message to Richard Lynton-Jones in a row on WhatsApp in 2019.
This blue on blue is destructive and indeed unacceptable
Do have to ask what idiot in the Tory high command decided that a long protracted campaign was a good idea. This could have been done and dusted at the end of July, Bonzo dispatched to Northstead and the new PM in place with a ministerial team looking at how to tackle the coming winter of hell.
Instead, they dig themselves deeper into positions that won't help and keep attacking the other and their own party's record in government.
But blue on blue has been the name of the game since the end of the coalition, and it doesn't seem to have harmed their ability to hold onto power. I do wonder if part of the blue on blue (and the similar cut throat nature over the pond of the GOP shafting their own leadership / unruly members) helps stabilise the cognitive dissonance some members must have about believing they are the victim / underdog / antiestablishment party whilst also being the literal Conservative party, who have led government for 10 years, won the economic ideological battle, and that any civil discourse that would take us down a social democratic route means you get called a Stalinist. Because their is always a purer part of the party, there is always a secret enemy within giving in to the libs, so they always have to fight harder to make the party better. And this radicalises the base alongside the party, in a continual amping up of rhetoric and policy.
Economic ideologies never win long term. They have hegemony until their contradictions become so overwhelmingly apparent that they are either radically modified or violently overturned.
You say that, but we are in a crisis where neoliberalism is so deeply rooted in the political establishment that Labour are complaining that the Tories are going to explode the debt and accusing them of finding a magic money tree.
Was musing the other night whether we'd actually seen the completion of re-alignment post- Brexit, without anyone noticing it as the single most long lasting effect. Labour as the party of the establishment, voted for by the influential and well-paid. Offering managerial competence of the status quo. The Tories, radical, idealist and interventionist? An innate belief that government is for change?
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
Not talking about giving them a vote (although I think we should) but talking about being positive about the Union rather than being aggressive towards the Scots. That is what Curtis said.
The key to understanding FUDHY’s straw men and non sequiturs is that he has no concern whatsoever for the future of the Union. His sole concern is the future of his beloved Conservative Party.
“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!
Those *are* the cheap ones
And he is out by a factor of over x2. £940 a pair.
I keep half an eye on quality shoe price and by my estimation Church’s prices have gone up by around 50% over the last couple of years (comparable brands nowhere close). Cost of living well crisis ahoy..
I just bought some new motorcycle boots (vegan Alpinestars) - £520!
I think I paid about £380 about 18 months ago but destroyed those in the infamous Fireblade crash where I broke my wrist. In an urban environment.
Just bought a pair of these in a charity shop (much less than £520); I sense Truss would find them quite beguiling.
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.
I've never said there isn't a frictional cost to tax. I agree with the point made eloquently by Bart that there's a problem with the UC taper.
However, you claimed that, "You don't take a big promotion or lots of extra responsibility for a raise of which you only keep 30-40%." Yet there have been many countries and many periods where top rates of tax have been at least 60% and people did continue to take big promotion or lots of extra responsibility.
I don't disagree about the frictional cost to tax. I disagree with your absolutist position that anything over 50% is a disaster.
Until 1988, the top rate of income tax was 60 per cent. Perhaps members should take a closer look at the Thatcherite economics both Rishi and Liz are so keen on.
Wage inequality was much less then too. Bosses getting perhaps 5-10x more relative to average worker and then being taxed less on 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.
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.
I've never said there isn't a frictional cost to tax. I agree with the point made eloquently by Bart that there's a problem with the UC taper.
However, you claimed that, "You don't take a big promotion or lots of extra responsibility for a raise of which you only keep 30-40%." Yet there have been many countries and many periods where top rates of tax have been at least 60% and people did continue to take big promotion or lots of extra responsibility.
I don't disagree about the frictional cost to tax. I disagree with your absolutist position that anything over 50% is a disaster.
Until 1988, the top rate of income tax was 60 per cent. Perhaps members should take a closer look at the Thatcherite economics both Rishi and Liz are so keen on.
Though taxes now are the highest they've been in 74 years, not just since 1988.
60% marginal tax rate is less than we currently tax people, not more.
The tax take (as a proportion of gdp) is highest, not any particular tax rate. This has been the case for some years.
Real marginal tax rates exceed 60% now for many people, that's precisely what we've been discussing.
That its not called "Income Tax" anymore doesn't make it better. Marginal Income Taxes now for many people are higher than they were when they were capped at 60%.
One loud-mouthed Tory Yoon is a little bit poorer.
Tory peer Michelle Mone pays out £50,000 to end row after 'racism' claim The Glaswegian businesswoman was said to have sent the message to Richard Lynton-Jones in a row on WhatsApp in 2019.
But almost certainly not as poor as a sad loser Anglo-phobe like you
Wrong on all counts.
I am comfortably off. I have led a very successful life. I am an Anglophile.
Incidentally, one of your daft wee BritNat colleagues had a mental breakdown last night, accusing me, inter alia, of having never visited London! A most bizarre accusation. It is probably the city - outwith my home countries - that I have visited most frequently. In fact we were seriously considering moving there just prior to Covid hitting. The production team for that big tv show about folk buying houses were trying to book filming dates in our calendars. Shame PB never got to delight in that spectacle! 😄
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.
I love the way he lures you in with the idea the post might actually be about the Conservative Party, before veering off and hitting all the key talking points about the Azov Regiment.
I think this one's going for the longevity record - perhaps it's like a rodeo where he wins he prize if he stays on the site longer than anyone else without falling off (ie without getting the ban hammer). Still not fooling anybody though
9/10.
It was "spiritedness" that gave the game away - a ghastly compound derivative of two suffixes bolted onto the end of "spirit" which would, in itself, suffice. No native English speaker from Anchorage to Dunedin would coin such a dreary neologism.
“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!
Those *are* the cheap ones
And he is out by a factor of over x2. £940 a pair.
I keep half an eye on quality shoe price and by my estimation Church’s prices have gone up by around 50% over the last couple of years (comparable brands nowhere close). Cost of living well crisis ahoy..
I just bought some new motorcycle boots (vegan Alpinestars) - £520!
I think I paid about £380 about 18 months ago but destroyed those in the infamous Fireblade crash where I broke my wrist. In an urban environment.
Just bought a pair of these in a charity shop (much less than £520); I sense Truss would find them quite beguiling.
She'd put them on and make you do a mukbang while she did that laugh that sounds like Julia Roberts in a centrifuge.
Interesting. Just looked at my latest electric bill in detail and started checking against previous ones and I notice that 3 or 4 years ago the night time rate was ≈ 1/2 the day rate.
No longer. Now night time is only a tad less than day.
Is this just my supplier (I'm with a small green energy company).
I suspect they have just slapped on a fixed amount on all units rather than a percentage, hence no longer half.
“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!
Those *are* the cheap ones
And he is out by a factor of over x2. £940 a pair.
I keep half an eye on quality shoe price and by my estimation Church’s prices have gone up by around 50% over the last couple of years (comparable brands nowhere close). Cost of living well crisis ahoy..
I just bought some new motorcycle boots (vegan Alpinestars) - £520!
I think I paid about £380 about 18 months ago but destroyed those in the infamous Fireblade crash where I broke my wrist. In an urban environment.
Just bought a pair of these in a charity shop (much less than £520); I sense Truss would find them quite beguiling.
Clock these: Giddens polo boots, probably £5000 first hand. £50 on eBay as "I think they are for motorcycling".
This blue on blue is destructive and indeed unacceptable
Do have to ask what idiot in the Tory high command decided that a long protracted campaign was a good idea. This could have been done and dusted at the end of July, Bonzo dispatched to Northstead and the new PM in place with a ministerial team looking at how to tackle the coming winter of hell.
Instead, they dig themselves deeper into positions that won't help and keep attacking the other and their own party's record in government.
But blue on blue has been the name of the game since the end of the coalition, and it doesn't seem to have harmed their ability to hold onto power. I do wonder if part of the blue on blue (and the similar cut throat nature over the pond of the GOP shafting their own leadership / unruly members) helps stabilise the cognitive dissonance some members must have about believing they are the victim / underdog / antiestablishment party whilst also being the literal Conservative party, who have led government for 10 years, won the economic ideological battle, and that any civil discourse that would take us down a social democratic route means you get called a Stalinist. Because their is always a purer part of the party, there is always a secret enemy within giving in to the libs, so they always have to fight harder to make the party better. And this radicalises the base alongside the party, in a continual amping up of rhetoric and policy.
Economic ideologies never win long term. They have hegemony until their contradictions become so overwhelmingly apparent that they are either radically modified or violently overturned.
You say that, but we are in a crisis where neoliberalism is so deeply rooted in the political establishment that Labour are complaining that the Tories are going to explode the debt and accusing them of finding a magic money tree.
Was musing the other night whether we'd actually seen the completion of re-alignment post- Brexit, without anyone noticing it as the single most long lasting effect. Labour as the party of the establishment, voted for by the influential and well-paid. Offering managerial competence of the status quo. The Tories, radical, idealist and interventionist? An innate belief that government is for change?
I mean, I think that would be optimistic. The theory I sign up to is that the modern era (Thatcher onwards) has been the Tories asset stripping the state and rolling back the gains of the working class, with the New Labour movement coming in once this creates a crisis and then shoring up the new status quo. It's just now that we've got to a point where all the silver is already sold off, and to shore up the status quo is to claim government has no ability to help anyone, which is hugely unpopular.
This blue on blue is destructive and indeed unacceptable
Do have to ask what idiot in the Tory high command decided that a long protracted campaign was a good idea. This could have been done and dusted at the end of July, Bonzo dispatched to Northstead and the new PM in place with a ministerial team looking at how to tackle the coming winter of hell.
Instead, they dig themselves deeper into positions that won't help and keep attacking the other and their own party's record in government.
But blue on blue has been the name of the game since the end of the coalition, and it doesn't seem to have harmed their ability to hold onto power. I do wonder if part of the blue on blue (and the similar cut throat nature over the pond of the GOP shafting their own leadership / unruly members) helps stabilise the cognitive dissonance some members must have about believing they are the victim / underdog / antiestablishment party whilst also being the literal Conservative party, who have led government for 10 years, won the economic ideological battle, and that any civil discourse that would take us down a social democratic route means you get called a Stalinist. Because their is always a purer part of the party, there is always a secret enemy within giving in to the libs, so they always have to fight harder to make the party better. And this radicalises the base alongside the party, in a continual amping up of rhetoric and policy.
Economic ideologies never win long term. They have hegemony until their contradictions become so overwhelmingly apparent that they are either radically modified or violently overturned.
You say that, but we are in a crisis where neoliberalism is so deeply rooted in the political establishment that Labour are complaining that the Tories are going to explode the debt and accusing them of finding a magic money tree.
Was musing the other night whether we'd actually seen the completion of re-alignment post- Brexit, without anyone noticing it as the single most long lasting effect. Labour as the party of the establishment, voted for by the influential and well-paid. Offering managerial competence of the status quo. The Tories, radical, idealist and interventionist? An innate belief that government is for change?
That would be something if the Tories were actually doing anything rather than be reactionary to crisis's often of their own making.
Is there an iota of value in backing the Rishter at any price now? Surely he's just hanging out of his own arsehole at this point. Shall I do a daft ton on him?
Why are people not fleeing the high tax Nordic states?
Which high tax Nordic states do you have in mind?
Many did which is why the Nordic states have reversed high tax policies that backfired.
Many Nordic states have higher but flatter tax rates without the 'NYC skyline' peaks and troughs of cliff edges we have in this country. Higher taxes is something I disagree with politically, though higher but flatter taxes are fairer for me than trapping many people in even higher marginal tax rates like we do in this country.
In my experience (Finland), the taxes are higher for the lower paid because you always have to pay a flat municipal tax of around 20%. What this means in practice is that wages are higher for the lower paid, so it is harder to run a small business, and prices are higher than the UK, but not so much nowadays given the weak euro.
Generally the services are much better. Massive swimming pools, beautiful parks and gardens and public squares, awesome libraries, fantastic public transport, cycle lanes, world beating schools etc.
There doesn't seem to be an industry of small accountants. You just go to the tax office and do what you are told.
There is something quite liberating and enterprising about the UK and its enormous complexity, loopholes and general inequality.
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.
It is pretty unreasonable to expect everyone to agree at every level just because it is your idea of fairness.
From a practical point of view I do agree with the idea of capping at 50%, but only because there are many people around like yourself who think over 50% is inherently unfair, and many multiple taxes so we can raise (or lower) so it is not particularly limiting on the state to do so. If that group did not exist or were smaller it wouldn't have my support.
Removal of the personal allowance creates a 62% marginal rate for tax payers over £106000 at present. That could be abolished and the 45% band lowered to recoup the lost tax and create a better system.
This blue on blue is destructive and indeed unacceptable
Do have to ask what idiot in the Tory high command decided that a long protracted campaign was a good idea. This could have been done and dusted at the end of July, Bonzo dispatched to Northstead and the new PM in place with a ministerial team looking at how to tackle the coming winter of hell.
Instead, they dig themselves deeper into positions that won't help and keep attacking the other and their own party's record in government.
But blue on blue has been the name of the game since the end of the coalition, and it doesn't seem to have harmed their ability to hold onto power. I do wonder if part of the blue on blue (and the similar cut throat nature over the pond of the GOP shafting their own leadership / unruly members) helps stabilise the cognitive dissonance some members must have about believing they are the victim / underdog / antiestablishment party whilst also being the literal Conservative party, who have led government for 10 years, won the economic ideological battle, and that any civil discourse that would take us down a social democratic route means you get called a Stalinist. Because their is always a purer part of the party, there is always a secret enemy within giving in to the libs, so they always have to fight harder to make the party better. And this radicalises the base alongside the party, in a continual amping up of rhetoric and policy.
Economic ideologies never win long term. They have hegemony until their contradictions become so overwhelmingly apparent that they are either radically modified or violently overturned.
You say that, but we are in a crisis where neoliberalism is so deeply rooted in the political establishment that Labour are complaining that the Tories are going to explode the debt and accusing them of finding a magic money tree.
Was musing the other night whether we'd actually seen the completion of re-alignment post- Brexit, without anyone noticing it as the single most long lasting effect. Labour as the party of the establishment, voted for by the influential and well-paid. Offering managerial competence of the status quo. The Tories, radical, idealist and interventionist? An innate belief that government is for change?
I mean, I think that would be optimistic. The theory I sign up to is that the modern era (Thatcher onwards) has been the Tories asset stripping the state and rolling back the gains of the working class, with the New Labour movement coming in once this creates a crisis and then shoring up the new status quo. It's just now that we've got to a point where all the silver is already sold off, and to shore up the status quo is to claim government has no ability to help anyone, which is hugely unpopular.
Why are people not fleeing the high tax Nordic states?
Which high tax Nordic states do you have in mind?
Many did which is why the Nordic states have reversed high tax policies that backfired.
Many Nordic states have higher but flatter tax rates without the 'NYC skyline' peaks and troughs of cliff edges we have in this country. Higher taxes is something I disagree with politically, though higher but flatter taxes are fairer for me than trapping many people in even higher marginal tax rates like we do in this country.
In my experience (Finland), the taxes are higher for the lower paid because you always have to pay a flat municipal tax of around 20%. What this means in practice is that wages are higher for the lower paid, so it is harder to run a small business, and prices are higher than the UK, but not so much nowadays given the weak euro.
Generally the services are much better. Massive swimming pools, beautiful parks and gardens and public squares, awesome libraries, fantastic public transport, cycle lanes, world beating schools etc.
There doesn't seem to be an industry of small accountants. You just go to the tax office and do what you are told.
There is something quite liberating and enterprising about the UK and its enormous complexity, loopholes and general inequality.
The other thing about Finland, is that there isn't really house price inflation, or much opportunity to speculate on property. The value of property is derived from how old it is and how much maintanence it needs. Many plots are, in more recent times, just rented from the local government (another source of revenue).
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.
LOL.
There was a piece in one of the papers (S Times I think) this weekend looking at solar panels and the cost pay back period. iirc on average the payback period had already halved since the price explosion in electric. There's now huge demand to fit panels - industry is stretched with long wait times especially for battery backup.
Price has doubled. I paid £6,500 for 16 panels in 2013
Sadly not on my present house
Around 50-60% of that 13k will be for the house battery and fitting.
Current cost of 4kWp of solar fitted has gone back up to 6k, which is surprisingly close to your £6,500 in 2013 when all the extra work had to be done for FITs.
In between it went some way under 5k. Interesting stuff.
Is there an iota of value in backing the Rishter at any price now? Surely he's just hanging out of his own arsehole at this point. Shall I do a daft ton on him?
Why are people not fleeing the high tax Nordic states?
Which high tax Nordic states do you have in mind?
Many did which is why the Nordic states have reversed high tax policies that backfired.
Many Nordic states have higher but flatter tax rates without the 'NYC skyline' peaks and troughs of cliff edges we have in this country. Higher taxes is something I disagree with politically, though higher but flatter taxes are fairer for me than trapping many people in even higher marginal tax rates like we do in this country.
In my experience (Finland), the taxes are higher for the lower paid because you always have to pay a flat municipal tax of around 20%. What this means in practice is that wages are higher for the lower paid, so it is harder to run a small business, and prices are higher than the UK, but not so much nowadays given the weak euro.
Generally the services are much better. Massive swimming pools, beautiful parks and gardens and public squares, awesome libraries, fantastic public transport, cycle lanes, world beating schools etc.
There doesn't seem to be an industry of small accountants. You just go to the tax office and do what you are told.
There is something quite liberating and enterprising about the UK and its enormous complexity, loopholes and general inequality.
Yeah the UK is amazing. I mean, who could want world beating schools, fantastic public transport and awesome libraries, right? Much better to live in a land of private wealth and public squalor.
“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!
Those *are* the cheap ones
And he is out by a factor of over x2. £940 a pair.
I keep half an eye on quality shoe price and by my estimation Church’s prices have gone up by around 50% over the last couple of years (comparable brands nowhere close). Cost of living well crisis ahoy..
I just bought some new motorcycle boots (vegan Alpinestars) - £520!
I think I paid about £380 about 18 months ago but destroyed those in the infamous Fireblade crash where I broke my wrist. In an urban environment.
Just bought a pair of these in a charity shop (much less than £520); I sense Truss would find them quite beguiling.
Clock these: Giddens polo boots, probably £5000 first hand. £50 on eBay as "I think they are for motorcycling".
You bought? Assume at that rrp they'd be bespoke so you'd be taking a gamble on where the original owner's bunions were.
On a minorly connected note I was heartened to see in the recent Charlie Watts profile that Huntsman probably had more suit patterns for him in their basement than for any other customer. We shall not see his like again.
Comments
And he is out by a factor of over x2. £940 a pair.
https://www.church-footwear.com/gb/en/men/style/oxfords.html
Nor is the part time working parent what I am talking about. They will always get some social security because part time parents.
Climb out of your trench for a minute.
Instead, they dig themselves deeper into positions that won't help and keep attacking the other and their own party's record in government.
Anyone want to tell me why she isn’t a gift to the Lib Dems?
Lord Howard, former Tory party leader, says his favoured candidate Rishi Sunak has the experience needed to address the cost of living crisis
#R4Today https://twitter.com/BBCr4today/status/1557272898607480838/video/1
That *isn't* the case for maintaining the union. Its the case for dissolving a constitutional prison. Because you are not in charge, and your party won't be for long, and other people aren't as undemocratic as you.
a) A one sided deal always goes wrong
b) Give stuff away that is more important to your opponent than you. Try and get stuff that is more important to you than your opponent.
It might be worth considering this when dealing with Scotland to avoid things getting worse. Think NI.
Is the current spectacle of your party spending the summer attacking itself whilst the country slides into crisis good for your party? Yes or no?
There was a piece in one of the papers (S Times I think) this weekend looking at solar panels and the cost pay back period. iirc on average the payback period had already halved since the price explosion in electric. There's now huge demand to fit panels - industry is stretched with long wait times especially for battery backup.
Plus even Starmer has ruled out a deal with the SNP, not just we Tories refusing indyref2. Though we will see if Sir Keir holds to that if it is his only route to no 10
Only 6.3% whilst pensioners get a bung, thanks
Asda is paying National Insurance for the wages it pays to people, then after that it pays people who marginally are keeping just thirty pence in the pound of what Asda pays them, the rest goes along with the Employers NI straight back to the Exchequer. That framework is not good for Asda or for its employees.
If low wages were the problem then why are people long who work just 24 hours on minimum wage facing a 70% marginal tax rate on every extra pound they earn from then on? Shouldn't they be keeping some of their own money if low wages were supposedly the problem?
UC is primarily welfare towards parents, that creates a high marginal tax rate, its nothing to do with low wages though its not as bad as what came before.
Sadly not on my present house
ETA actually my rig 16 panels 4kw is still about that, difference must be the batteries
This one- we have Sunak and Truss throwing huge stones at each other, justifiably throwing stones at each other's flaws, but forgetting that they are both in the same greenhouse.
I have little doubt she will be PM on the 6th September and what happens next will be fascinating
nationalists is not the same as aggressive towards the Scots. Given half the Scots are Unionists and hate the Nationalists
It's also worth bearing in mind this isn't a 'permanent' state of wealth but typically something you reach in your 40s after a grinding path to get there in your career, maintaining it perhaps for 15 years or so, before dropping down again - you might well have started from nothing, as I did.
We have solar panels and they were an excellent investment
From a practical point of view I do agree with the idea of capping at 50%, but only because there are many people around like yourself who think over 50% is inherently unfair, and many multiple taxes so we can raise (or lower) so it is not particularly limiting on the state to do so. If that group did not exist or were smaller it wouldn't have my support.
One possibility is that Truss is saying this stuff not believing a word of it, and she will tack back to reality (Johnson has to go, we can't let poor people freeze this winter even if they aren't taxpayers). In which case many of her backers will be furious with her.
The other is that she really does believe all this stuff, in which case the last person to leave the country won't need to turn off the lights becuase they will already have been disconnected.
Or maybe we will get the worst of both worlds.
Scotland could elect 100% SNP MPs to that parliament on an "independence now" mandate. And they would be massively outvoted by English MPs.
You are saying that there is no democratic power to a Scottish vote with regards to Scottish affairs. Indeed the only nation in the union with that power is England.
Scotland has no say over Scotland. Your words. You don't see the problem with that because you are a buffoon, but there is a very real problem that goes way beyond any twaddle you post about what any individual politician says.
My point was that Truss is effectively ignoring any of this argument in her leadership pitch.
The effects of any marginal changes in tax rates are completely dwarfed by the financial effects of the (temporary, but possibly a quite protracted temporary) spike in energy prices. To be concentrating her campaign on tax cuts demonstrates a shocking unseriousness in our likely next Prime Minister.
They have hegemony until their contradictions become so overwhelmingly apparent that they are either radically modified or violently overturned.
She is following his blueprint. Tell the audience today what it wants to hear, and deal with tomorrow later, not caring whether she needs to completely change course in a month or twos time.
Fortunately @HYUFD seems to be quite unique in his attitude to the Scots and has no understanding of them at all
However, you claimed that, "You don't take a big promotion or lots of extra responsibility for a raise of which you only keep 30-40%." Yet there have been many countries and many periods where top rates of tax have been at least 60% and people did continue to take big promotion or lots of extra responsibility.
I don't disagree about the frictional cost to tax. I disagree with your absolutist position that anything over 50% is a disaster.
Her word is her bond...age.
When schemes such as the furlough scheme or the energy bill rebates come down the line to the public, it needs to be made clear that these are projects of the UK government - no matter how much the SG try to sell them as being slightly different and therefore wholly Scottish. If you’re giving a credit to the electricity bill, make sure the line item on the bill refers to UK Gov Credit.
HMRC found the opposite in 2012 as well, which is why the rate was lowered from 50% to 45%: https://www.bbc.com/news/business-17465733
People should be able to keep at least half of what they're earning. Even if its just half, past that point it really strikes as unfair. Maybe not disastrous, but unfair.
I don't think its fair people working 24 hours a week on UC only keep 30 pence in the pound past that point. I don't think its fair that people facing income tax cliff edges keep just 40 pence in the pound at that point either.
Smooth it out, even if it means higher tax rates for those currently enjoying lower marginal rates, and it would be fairer for me.
Far too many tax measures are temporary gimmicks designed to appeal to a particular group, or address some short term expediency. The reality is that the Treasury will have a massive crisis on its hands over the winter. Any serious look at the tax system is off the table for a while.
We're having an almost perpetual debate in Scotland that is of enormous emotional resonance, yet it's almost entirely good natured.
The only people I dislike are the blood and soil nationalists, who are basically fascists, and people like you who consider Scotland literally like a colony.
Tory peer Michelle Mone pays out £50,000 to end row after 'racism' claim
The Glaswegian businesswoman was said to have sent the message to Richard Lynton-Jones in a row on WhatsApp in 2019.
https://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/politics/michelle-mone-payout-racism-claim-27685387
But when will she be dragged into the dock for this?
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2022/apr/29/nca-launches-investigation-ppe-firm-linked-to-michelle-mone
I think I paid about £380 about 18 months ago but destroyed those in the infamous Fireblade crash where I broke my wrist. In an urban environment.
Many did which is why the Nordic states have reversed high tax policies that backfired.
Many Nordic states have higher but flatter tax rates without the 'NYC skyline' peaks and troughs of cliff edges we have in this country. Higher taxes is something I disagree with politically, though higher but flatter taxes are fairer for me than trapping many people in even higher marginal tax rates like we do in this country.
I don't think they're expecting to persuade anyone on this board.
60% marginal tax rate is less than we currently tax people, not more.
No longer. Now night time is only a tad less than day.
Is this just my supplier (I'm with a small green energy company).
DROUD, Drowd, n.1
[drʌud]
1. A cod-fish, esp. one of poor quality, “a sickly or spawned cod”
2. A useless, slovenly person; “a worthless female”
https://dsl.ac.uk/entry/snd/droud_n1
Her claim to be a Buddy in the master-stroke that will save the Union.
Unless we take it again from the bergening.
Labour as the party of the establishment, voted for by the influential and well-paid. Offering managerial competence of the status quo.
The Tories, radical, idealist and interventionist? An innate belief that government is for change?
That its not called "Income Tax" anymore doesn't make it better. Marginal Income Taxes now for many people are higher than they were when they were capped at 60%.
I am comfortably off.
I have led a very successful life.
I am an Anglophile.
Incidentally, one of your daft wee BritNat colleagues had a mental breakdown last night, accusing me, inter alia, of having never visited London! A most bizarre accusation. It is probably the city - outwith my home countries - that I have visited most frequently. In fact we were seriously considering moving there just prior to Covid hitting. The production team for that big tv show about folk buying houses were trying to book filming dates in our calendars. Shame PB never got to delight in that spectacle! 😄
It was "spiritedness" that gave the game away - a ghastly compound derivative of two suffixes bolted onto the end of "spirit" which would, in itself, suffice. No native English speaker from Anchorage to Dunedin would coin such a dreary neologism.
Generally the services are much better. Massive swimming pools, beautiful parks and gardens and public squares, awesome libraries, fantastic public transport, cycle lanes, world beating schools etc.
There doesn't seem to be an industry of small accountants. You just go to the tax office and do what you are told.
There is something quite liberating and enterprising about the UK and its enormous complexity, loopholes and general inequality.
Current cost of 4kWp of solar fitted has gone back up to 6k, which is surprisingly close to your £6,500 in 2013 when all the extra work had to be done for FITs.
In between it went some way under 5k. Interesting stuff.
On a minorly connected note I was heartened to see in the recent Charlie Watts profile that Huntsman probably had more suit patterns for him in their basement than for any other customer. We shall not see his like again.